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There’s a lot to be said about human intentions; their effect on the actions humans are pushed to make. It was just a matter of perspective; your selfish mind and your selfless soul were one and the same in the end.
You join the war because the world expects you to give them your everything but it’s you wanting to prove yourself (you’ve got nothing to prove). You volunteer your life for an experiment and sign away your life to the government that wants your efforts to change the warfront but you’re doing this because your best guy is out there being the perfect solider so why can’t you do the same (you’ve got nothing to prove), you find people to fight the good fight with you but you’ve doing this because you want to keep him close and he’s stubborn but so are you (you’ve got nothing to prove).
You see him fall down the ravine and you take your own dive into the ocean, rushing to join him, not wanting to keep his soul waiting. They paint you a war hero and hail you a martyr and call it a done day.
You died trying to prove yourself.
And then you wake up to a future you never wanted to experience in any capacity. This was no heaven or Valhalla.
There was nothing left to experience.
You’d never regretted trying to prove yourself more.
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Waking up to bright future was unwelcome to his senses in a way that felt like the whole world was propriety and hostile and waiting for him to show even the smallest glimpse of the ocean of grief inside him. It felt cold, numb and all sorts of words his appointed therapist used to say in her unfeeling professional voice; Captain, you are mourning for a life that went by without you. The numbness sometimes perpetuated to his other senses, voices sounding drenched in salt water and hands that felt nothing despite the bleeding knuckles screaming otherwise.
They let him figure it out for himself after the rushed crash course of Welcome to the Future 101, handed him a whole pile of old papers and newsclips and boxes of stuff left in his name, records of the people who used to be his, sketches he left behind in his hurry to nosedive into the cold and a whole history of wars and espionage where they used his name to push their agendas.
It was a lot of uncomfortable reading and catching up. A lot of files filled with KIA and DECEASED stamps showing decades of heroism and bravery. He reads about the Howlies and their long eventful lives led by Peggy who shaped the century and spearheaded SHEILD with Howard. Steve was going to stay with SHEILD just for this fact alone. He owed it to her. She was still alive, old and battling a war of memories and he felt too weak to bring himself to show up at her door and face her full strength and resolute leadership. He didn’t want to see that disappointment she would have carried all her life for a coward like him.
He reads about Rebecca Barnes-Proctor who went on to become a neurologist and married an allied solider, felt awful proud seeing her whole life be filled with family and warmth. She deserved this life and she lived a good one, Steve having missed her by a whole two decades.
And that’s when he inevitably comes across the last line in her obituary: survived by her elder brother J. Barnes, co-director of SHEILD and WW-II hero, along with her two children Steven and Anna-Rose. He knew it was going to come up sooner or later, that he’ll have to face the worst possibility this life of his could fathom. Natasha had made sure he was prepared for exactly this instance.
She had found him late one night that first week when he was still grasping at straws and trying to make sense of this new world between therapy talks, med bay visits and seeing peeks of Howard’s kid, Howard had a kid Lord have mercy, hovering in his peripheral with the saddest face known to mankind trying and failing to say whatever was making him hover over Steve like some self-assigned guardian. Steve had stayed quite for all of it. If Tony had something to say, he would have, what with how hyper-verbal that kid is.
Natasha had none of those reservations- or sympathy- that Tony was displaying. She had walked right up to him that first time and told him in no short words that she had something really important to tell him and it would be best if he learned it from her rather than some paper or news. It was her way of being kind, making him face a reality he never wanted to even consider.
She had spoken his name, Bucky, with the fondness of someone who had lived and loved him for years. And Steve- he had felt his whole world stop abruptly at this fact. Here was this perfect stranger, this woman with cold eyes, speaking a name he wanted to hear so desperately but couldn’t. because there was no one alive left worth to speak it to.
Here was Steve Rogers in the bright blinding future feeling his soul grow cold as she spoke of Bucky in more words than he expected. He had survived the ravine and crawled his way to allied territory on sheer-will alone, had made it out alive of that mountain. Survived the war and went on to live a whole life of his own.
Steve had stopped breathing then, feeling the world start to close in on him with the idea that oh, he lived. You could have too had you made the right choice.
But he had made the right choice than, he had made the choice to follow where Bucky had gone, plain and simple. But he had been alive.
Waiting. For sixty long years. It’s only been some four years since his passing. A mission gone really really wrong.
He heard it all from the other side of the glass, her voice becoming distorted with every word she spoke until he couldn’t make sense of anything expect that ringing in his ears and the seeping cold.
Natasha’s voice had cut in, sharp and clear, asking him to breathe and focus on her face. He hadn’t wanted to. It seemed better to just let this numb panic eat him up. He didn’t want to come out the other side of this panic to face the clarity of his wrong choice. He didn’t want to face anything.
He wanted to go back into the ice.
That thought had been most clear in his mind then and still was. Intrusive thoughts spurred by trauma, his SHEILD appointed therapist had called it, like giving it a name would make it bearable.
Steve didn’t think it would ever get bearable. Not Natasha’s presence shadowing him, nor Tony hovering like a worried nervous parent, not Fury with his under-handed offers to become active. None of this made it any bearable.
Here he was a week later, Becca’s obituary in hand and reading exactly what he didn’t want to (and wasn’t it just a lot of things happening against his wishes again and again). Facing the truth of Bucky’s existence and learning that he had gone on to live another sixty years. And Steve was there for none of it.
There was regret, strong and harsh, and there was grief, quiet and consuming. And it left him with no where to go except sit there and let in wash over him. His therapist had said that grief is a slow process of acknowledgment. That he should let it pass over himself and hold on to what feels real. Nothing feels real expect the paper crinkling in his fingers and the constant urge to bowl over and cry his heart out. It’s been three weeks of hard truths and nothing feeling real and he feels an unwarranted anger at SHEILD for finding him and bringing him back home. What he wouldn’t give to stay right where he’d been dead cold for decades.
It hurt to even consider that he had missed Bucky by only four years. For him, it had only been a little more than a month since he saw Bucky fall and even that hurt too much to think about. At least Hydra didn’t exist any longer. But he wasn’t naïve enough to believe that the future did not have its own ethical flaws.
Natasha had asked him to accept the vacation time SHEILD was pushing at him, to sit in this godforsaken empty cabin in the woods with just his ugly thoughts and all these years since the war, in paperbacks and soundbites, to take in. she had said she’d like to take him to Bucky’s grave. He was buried in Arlington and Steve thought it weird that it wasn’t an empty grave like his own is.
He would be just there, six feet below.
Waiting.
Steve wondered if Natasha would consider him crazy if he went there and started digging. Or crying like a child.
He hoped she would understand. He knew he didn’t have enough strength in him to see the cold marble of his best guy’s grave and not have an actual nervous breakdown. Look at him, using proper terms to describe his grief.
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Surprisingly, Tony is the one to visit first. I need a vacation too, Capsicle, this cabin is big enough for us both. Now quit looking at me like that and move. Chop-chop, we’re going to town, tourist-style. He talked Steve’s ears off the next two days, dragging him all over town and showing him all the old childhood haunts he had favored here as a child. SHEILD works on my dime too, you know. I’m a billionaire and this is my land.
Steve found that annoyingly but endearing, this kid’s awkward attempts to reconcile and give him company he never even asked for. He asked Tony about it, and Tony, in the most un-Tony like fashion he has seen yet, had looked serious and possessive and angry; He was more my father than Howard ever was. And that was all he had wanted to say on this subject and Steve could do nothing but feel guilt and wonder.
He thought about it at night, the idea of Bucky being a father figure to someone coming very naturally to his mind. He’d always been like that, giving and caring and protective, with his sisters and Steve too. Those too young kids on the streets and then later, those too young kids on the war front. Steve had yet to hear of Bucky ever marrying or settling down or having kids of his own, but he won’t be surprised if it got mentioned at some point. He’s just not sure how he would react to that.
Natasha joins them a few days later, pulling up in a comfortable looking attire and refusing to be seen without a Starbucks coffee in her hand. Gotta play the part, Steve, we’re on vacation here. Her smile had been kind, or as kind as it could get for someone who was an assassin and might still be. Steve was not sure what to make of her, had only heard whispers in the office hallways about the fear she put in people.
It was her that talked more about Bucky, then Steve and Tony combined. She seemed to trust Steve, had all those years of hearing Bucky regale her with all sorts of anecdotes that Steve had participated in. She knew the Steve before the war and the Steve who fought in alleyways and drew in the candlelight (and Steve felt a little like chocking on his haphazard emotions because someone knew him for who he was). She had confessed to knowing more than what Bucky had ever told her. Said it was his voice and the look on his face that made her reconsider what Steve had meant for him. I never saw him date, tried to set him up every chance but he never took it seriously. She said that with a sad look on her face, holding Steve’s hand and looking out the window at the fogged fauna. It took me too long to understand why. It was you the whole time that had his heart. She looked fierce then, like she was owing to see to the end that Steve should feel comfortable and cared for. The universe is a little too cruel sometimes to orchestrate such tragedies. I know it seems like end of the world for you, but Steve. It isn’t.
Steve let himself cry and she held his hand through it all. And she didn’t stop talking; about what, he wasn’t sure. But her voice had been soothing enough to lull him into the darkness. It was a cruel blessing, to be bought back from the dead. And Steve, he still wanted to go back to the ice. His world had definitely ended and for him, that was what mattered. He thought about Bucky smiling that first time after Ma’s death, small and quick. He had looked at Steve then and said Fancy some music, Darling? Its so quite in here. They had the record play some blues and had slow danced the evening away. It was been perfect, this small world of theirs before the war had come knocking their door. He wondered if he’d ever be able to remake such a perfect world like that again. The impossibility of it was transparent, as clear as the fact that Tony and Nat were there not just for him, but for themselves too.
In the end, it was just these facts; they never got to say goodbye to each other, missed each other by mere weeks and years. Steve wondered What now? I have this life ahead of me and he’s not beside me. Would I go on living and forget his voice and the shape of his existence? Please God, don’t let it come to that. Anything but that. It was a scary future looming in front of him, but filled with people who knew the extent of his tragedy and made him feel understood in unspoken ways.
He knew what lied ahead; mornings waking up alone with the warmth of a memory seeping into the chill air, moments where he’d turn around to speak only to greet empty air, nights filled with regrets and guilt filled wants, days where he’d turn away from all well-meaning company just to wallow in his sorrow. Nat can die trying to set him up but he’s stubborn too. The life of a widower wasn’t one he’d ever imagine he’d take kindly too, but he made it work.
In the end, it was this; he would carry on, like Bucky had before him. He had a legacy to uphold- not just his own- and people who knew him without ever meeting him and in a way, this was family and over time people would come and go and he would face the world for all its new ways and wonders. Alone. Waiting.
He would wait the rest of his life just for Bucky. If he could rush to meet him that one time, then he could be patient here and bide his time this once. It would be no hardship, waiting his whole unnatural life just to cross over to the other side and be where he wants to be.
He knows Bucky is waiting for him there. There’s no rush, he wouldn’t want him to rush. Steve would live his life that the world wants him too and he'd pass by it quietly. Never let it be said that Steve Rogers can't commit.
Bucky definitely got the last laugh about this. No rushing. I'm waiting, punk.