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Bucky is sure Steve, his mission, is telling the truth the moment he throws himself into the water after him, and from that moment on he remembers everything. Everything. Good, bad, and all the scale of greys in between.
(He remembers the feverish cold in the mountains when he fell. He remembers Steve kissing him for the first time in a dark alley on their way back from seeing “It happened one night”. He remembers knives and blood and dying bodies under his hands. He remembers his mother’s loving fingers over his scraped knees.)
He doesn’t sleep for two nights after the river.
On the third day, he ventures into the Smithsonian to make sure his mind is not playing tricks on him and hoping against hope it’s all some weird mirage. That he is not Bucky Barnes, that he is not the Winter Soldier. That he is just a random man with a concussion who has somebody desperately looking for him (“Steve is looking for you, he will be looking for you until the end of the line. You know because you’ll do the same”, a voice he tries to silence insists on screaming inside his head.)
And he is sure he’s not that random man as soon as he lays an eye on the first picture of the exhibition, the same way he knows most of the printed texts have mistakes (“He,… I , was born in 1917,” he thinks. “Steve was the one from ‘18. And I would have never enlisted to go to that fucking war. They made me.”)
He glares at himself in pictures and the confirmation hurts. But it hurts even more to see Steve as he remembers him from before (from the schoolyard, the hood fights, the movie nights, the hidden kisses, the slow dancing inside their home, the cold winters they fought by sharing their body heat), and from after (from a cold cell in Austria, a desperate fuck in the forest, a laughing fit in the middle of a mission, a disappearing face as he fell backwards). It hurts more because he feels the pull of his muscle memory aching to go find him.
Every part of Bucky wants to go to Steve and tell him that he is back and that he remembers; to ask for his help to figure out what to do with the memories.
He doesn’t.
The nightmares, the fear of losing his will, of hurting more people (haven’t you done that enough?), the guilt,.. It all weighs too much. He waits until he is sure Steve is out of the hospital (he watches from the other side of the street), and he disappears with the only company of an empty backpack where he carefully places the Smithsonian’s brochure that has Captain America’s (Steve’s) face on it.
He hops countries for a year and he doesn’t exchange a single word with anybody for six months. His backpack gets heavier and heavier with little notebooks where he vomits all the words that he won’t say out loud, unconsciously leaving random little spaces where he feels like a drawing or sketch would complete the page. They are good memories, those little flashes between nightmares where he can see the man he was and not the ruthless asset they forced him to be.
Fourteen months after he left DC, he finds himself in Bucharest. Fourteen months and too many cargo planes and trains and cars. He is tired (never sleeps too much, because that’s where the horrible dreams find him) and the backpack keeps getting heavier and heavier.
He doesn’t plan to stay, but somehow he does: He gets a job as a night guard where he only sees the other outcasts who work previous and next shift from him, and he rents an apartment that he pays through three other guys.
The few people who talk to him call him Stefan. He was Esteban in Mexico, Istefanos in Turkey and Stefano for two days in Italy. It wasn't deliberate the first time, but he found comfort in being called by his name, in hearing it out loud, and in being allowed to play with the name on his lips from time to time.
He uses his extensive training (as a soldier and as someone he won’t think about) to always keep an eye on the news, on any clues (for Hydra, of course, but also for Steve. He knows Steve has to be looking for him, he’s not fooling himself) but there are none, radio silence. That steady silence is the reason why his notebooks move from the backpack to the apartment, why he starts exchanging a few words with the shopkeepers when he buys his food, why he goes to a shop where they sell books by the weight and why he starts reading again.
He loses himself in fiction, and the flashing moments of peace he gets from it take him by surprise and become another link to the Bucky he once was.
It’s been two years and fifty eight days since he took Steve out of the water and himself out of Hydra’s hands when he sees Steve again: his back to him and one of his notebooks between his hands. He takes a few seconds that he probably doesn’t have just to look at Steve standing there.
He’s dressed like a soldier (a Captain), but when he turns around at the feeling of Bucky’s presence, he looks just like Steve. Neither of them are breathing as much as they need, too overwhelmed with feelings, but working hard on keeping their minds fresh for drawing a strategy.
It’s been more than seventy one years since Bucky last said “Steve” to the right person and with the right intent when he lets it out into the world again, and when he does it feels so raw that he has to remind himself of why he is hiding (not safe for Steve, he is not worth risking it all, guilt) in order to back out a little, trying to gain some emotional distance hoping he can fool Steve.
(“I read about you in a museum.”)
Of course he doesn’t fool him, how could he?
The men start coming in through the windows, and he lets his instincts guide his movements until he’s jumping off the building and trying to run free.
He doesn’t stop to think how he synced his moments with Steve’s in half a second and without talking. He doesn’t stop to think how electric everything felt when he touched Steve’s shoulder.
And he doesn’t stop to think about how his ears keep buzzing minutes after Steve called him “Buck”, how he had made it sound so intimate that a lazy October afternoon in Brooklyn from a lifetime ago appeared before his eyes (entangled legs, young hearts, careless laughs, moaned “Buck ”.)
He tries to run from it all (protect, protect, protect ) but they catch them.
——
It’s seventy three years since he fell, four years since he took Steve out of the Potomac, a year since he went out of cryo and six hours since his mind was fully his again when Steve (bearded, sweaty, sex-haired, naked, and plastered to his side inside their warm hut in Wakanda) breaks their momentary silence.
“I have a present for you, Buck,” he says, extending his arm over Bucky while trying to reach something.
“I don’t think I have energy for another present right now.”
Bucky’s joke is way too evident but it makes them chuckle. Steve kisses him on the lips as an answer and leaves a heavy tote bag over Bucky’s naked stomach.
“Nat collected some favours and we located most of your notebooks in a vault a few months ago; she recently retrieved them and sent them here. I figured that since you finally own your mind now, it was time for you to own your memories, too.”
He’s told Steve about the notebooks a thousand times since he woke up, about how writing down the happy moments that popped into his brain helped him find himself beyond the horrors. About how he stayed awake writing them to keep the nightmares at bay.
Bucky takes Steve’s hand with his right one and places them (joined) over his heart, then he opens one of the little books with his new vibranium one and smiles.
“They are yours, too,” he says before he starts reading out loud.