Chapter Text
─── ｡ﾟ✪: *.🌌.* :ᗢﾟ. ───
"I tried to bring her back."
"And don't do anything stupid until I get back."
How could he? He took all the stupid with him.
When he said those words to him at the goodbyes, he only had to look at Steve's face to confirm his assumption. He's not coming back. He tried to accept it internally, but he couldn't. Steve was his best friend. And now that all was behind them, with Winter Soldier gone, Steve was gone, too. Steve wanted to make up for all the years he'd lost. But not with him. He knew he would go back to Peggy, whom he had loved all his life. He understood. After all, after all Steve had been through, he deserved peace.
But would he, Bucky, ever have peace?
Steve wanted to make up for all those years. How could anyone blame him? He wanted to be happy. He had the opportunity. He took it. If Bucky had been in his position, he probably would have acted the same way.
But he didn't get the chance.
Five years have passed since Thanos snapped. Five years. He spent ninety years going from fight to fight. But now that he was back after all this time and the evil was over, he hoped to be given the chance to... start over. New life. Which he would live with her if she wanted to. He would make up for all those years when both of them had to be their alter egos, not who they really were. He hoped, hoped so much that she would. That there were feelings from that time... left in her.
But Natasha was gone.
And he had no idea what he was going to do next. His best friend was gone. The only woman he ever loved was gone. And he was left alone, with only memories of them. With memories that began to fade slowly, turning into nightmares.
When you lose someone, they say the first few days are the worst. You don't accept loss, but you learn to live with the pain. Bucky couldn't do it. On the contrary, he felt as if each day was worse than the last. At first, the only shock paralyzed him. But then the weight of reality hit him, the knowledge of what it meant. She's dead. He's gone.
Why was life so unfair? Does fate mock him? Is it punishing him for everything he's done in the past?
Natasha may have been gone, but that didn't change the fact that he'd seen her everywhere. Wherever he went, her face was there. Every corner. When he came out of his room at the Avengers' base a few days later, he saw her everywhere. The sound of her laughter, her voice calling him, a flash of red hair. But whenever he looked carefully in the direction the stimuli came from, he never saw her. They were illusions, games of his exhausted mind. Though he always knew she wouldn't be there, her absence always brought him back to his knees.
"Stop, stop, stop," he muttered to himself as he lay on his bed in the middle of the day, pressing his fingers to his temples to both keep the migraine from coming and to suppress the thoughts of Natasha. When it was too much to bear, he got up with a snarl and, like a walking corpse, headed for the kitchen for a drink. She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
"Where's the rest of the team?" he asked, more in a vain attempt to dispel his thoughts than to really care. Wanda sat at the kitchen table, her thin fingers wrapped around a mug of tea. She looked up in surprise as he entered. The only one who was like him was Wanda. They might have been each other's consolation, but they preferred to spend time apart. Everyone deals with grief differently.
"I have no idea. We all live different lives now, don't we?" she said, looking at him with blank eyes.
Barnes grinned. "Depends on who you're talking about. I don't think you and I have drawn the line and moved on." She could only nod and look away. And suddenly he felt sorry for her. After a long time, he thought of someone other than himself and his misery. Wanda was just a child, and life had dealt her so many blows. Bucky swirled a glass of water and decided to sit with her for a moment.
"I miss him," Wanda confessed to him, though it was obvious. Bucky stared at the still surface of the water in his glass and nodded mutely.
"I miss her, too," he said finally. He knew that Wanda was talking about Vision, but of course, Natasha immediately floated into his mind. "I thought... do you think she knew? That we won?"
She looked at him and dared to clasp his hand briefly. "She knows. They both do." She sighed loudly and stared at the far wall. She felt Bucky squeeze her fingers, and that seemed to give her the courage to go on. "But who is the winner, after all, when we have each suffered such losses? We've lost so many friends. Do you think talking about it... can bring you comfort?"
"Comfort?" Bucky echoed in a distant voice. "I don't know. Can talking about it bring me comfort? The only thing that would bring me comfort is seeing her again. If I could finally be with her." Hydra took everything from him. They took him her. He ran his left hand over his haggard face, then flinched slightly when he realized it wasn't his real hand but the one from the vibranium. "I was hoping for peace now, but... this is like a tidal wave that keeps washing over me, again and again. It knocks me down, and when I try to stand up, it just comes for me again. And-"
"And it's just gonna drown you in the end?" Wanda finished quietly. He looked at her in surprise. She smiled a little and tucked her hair behind her ear. "This may surprise you, but I know how you feel. Because I feel the same way you do. After Pietro's death... with Vision, I learned to be happy again. But now he's gone, too."
Bucky nodded. He was glad to have someone here who understood him. He was relieved. "A long time ago," he heard himself say, "Natalia Romanova made me remember what it was to feel human. I loved her. And they punished us both for that. Each in a different, yet identical, way."
"I'm sorry," Wanda said. "Then, after Pietro's death, Vision told me that life isn't just about sadness. I wish I could believe it, but I've had more sad moments in my life than happy moments. If only we could bring them back. I wish nothing more," she whispered, her voice breaking, tears glistening in her eyes.
Bucky looked at her hands. He suspected that it was probably not appropriate to ask such a question, but... "And your magic... couldn't you do something? Can't you -?'
A drop of tear slid down her cheek and landed on the table. She shook her head regretfully. "I don't think bringing the dead to life is in any of our power. Even if somebody wields the most powerful magic. I think it's some higher power," she sighed. "But if we could, I wouldn't hesitate. My hands... for a long time, they could only destroy," she looked at her palms almost with revulsion, as if they had blood on them. "It was until I joined the Avengers and started working on myself. Believe me, if I could help you be happy, I wouldn't hesitate. I want to believe that my magic... my hands... can do other things than destroy. But also to build, to create new things. If I could ease your pain, I would do anything."
Bucky felt a sudden surge of affection for Wanda. They'd worked together in the past, but there hadn't been much interaction between them, and if there had been one, it had been brief conversations. They had never had a serious - and visceral and long - conversation like this before.
He cleared his throat. "And do you think you could at least try...?"
"I don't know, Bucky," she sighed. "In the past, when I influenced and manipulated another's mind, I did not seek to evoke or create pleasant memories. I don't know if I can do that."
"Please try," he said seriously.
"I don't want to hurt you."
He looked deeply into her eyes. "Believe me, I can't get any worse."
Maybe this finally convinced Wanda that she should try it and that Bucky was serious. She exhaled and looked down at her hands. Don't disappoint me. She hadn't used magic in days - since Thanos's defeat. Her hands trembled slightly, and she felt the magic warm her muscles and her fingers vibrate with anticipation. She got up to be closer to Bucky and stood behind him, pointing her fingers close to his temples. She heard him take a ragged breath, hesitated for just a moment before closing her eyes to concentrate and getting to work.
She concentrated on her magic flowing through her body, trying to shape it properly to achieve what she wanted. It was a relief when the red threads burst from her fingers and flooded her with sudden heat. Wanda's brow furrowed, something a little different she hadn't done before. A moment later, she felt it penetrate Bucky's mind, and a white light hit her eyes, spreading all around them.