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Steve blinked rapidly and brushed at his face. The snow was falling thicker now, accumulating in his hair and on his lashes.
Step. Step. Another step. Another one.
He resisted the urge to count, instead focusing on the feeling of his feet crunching through the snow with a quiet schwick schwick schwick. The slight resistance to break free. The creeping chill in his fingers, his face.
The soft whisper in his heart, growing more urgent, more pressured.
He’s here, he’s here. He’s here! He! Is! Here!
Soft whispers giving way to strident tones, bells ringing in his head and he’s so fucking distracted — moving forward takes all of his effort now and he’s stumbling, moving faster and faster. He’d be running if it wasn’t for the snow slowing him down, and then he stops suddenly, nearly falls because he arrived between one breath he’s here, here, here and the next.
Despite the cold Steve’s toeing off his boots, pulling off his socks. Shrugging out of his outer layers and packing everything up neatly into his bag and shoving it deep into the snow. Hopefully it will be undisturbed. He hasn’t seen much in the way of scavengers — mostly just large quadrupedal beasts that seem to graze, poking through the snow drifts with long, delicate proboscises that uncoil from their heads and necks. They’re not easy to spot, their lilac shaded fur seeming to fade into the violet hued sky, dappled with reflections of the multiple moons that never leave the sky.
Steve wiggles his toes into the snow. It’s cold, stealing his breath away. He’s confident in the serum, can already feel it turning over, revving up in preparation for this new environmental threat. Still, he can’t help feeling apprehensive as he wades into the icy water of the lake.
He hates the water. Hates swimming. Has hated it ever since —
Ever since the Valkyrie. Ever since that fateful day, when the plane had crashed into the ocean, and the sky had torn open an incursion he knows now that’s what had happened.
But at the time, he’d just fallen. Fallen from one ocean into another, leaving his own Earth behind and descending into a primordial deep. And as he’d fallen, he’d known. Known with a deep certainty that his world had been destroyed, leaving him stranded.
Steve’s up to his thighs in the lake, shivering. Dreading the moment he’ll need to put his head under, the moment he’ll become fully submerged but it’s inevitable, unavoidable. The culmination of a chase across a hundred worlds, through countless timelines.
When Steve’s world had died, he’d nearly died too, drowning in an unfamiliar ocean. His eyes had burned, and he hadn’t been sure if it was the salt water or his tears. Slowly, slowly, his body had gone unresponsive and he’d sunk deeper, and deeper.
And then — a metal hand had gripped him, tender and cruel at the back of his neck, dragging him out of the ocean, and into yet another world.
A beach this time, sand hot underneath him. He’d gasped and choked for air while water had run out his nose and he’d squeezed his eyes shut against the bright, painful light of the sun that had hung so close, so much closer than Earth’s sun.
And as unconsciousness had loomed closer, there’d been a delicate brush of lips against his forehead. A soft, choked whisper in his ear, “Stevie” but his eyelids had been so heavy, his body sinking deeper and deeper into the heated, welcoming sand and by the time he’d forced them open —
He’d been alone.
Steve had been looking ever since.
And now. Now he’s here and Steve is here, plunging his head underwater, blinking his eyes open. He can feel his eyes shift and accommodate, attempting to focus in the watery surround. Head breaking above water once more, a deep breath, lungs filling, stretching in a way that is purely a result of the serum.
Steve dives, swimming deeper and deeper under the water, past strange, delicate looking fish and through tangled plants that seem to suck at his skin. His lungs are burning now, and instead of getting darker, the water is brightening, lightening to a nearly incandescent glow and there’s pressure so much pressure in his ears and his eyes and it’s too much, it’s too much even for his enhanced body and then
He’s breaking free, into blessed air and struggling free from the depths. And as his eyes adapt and the glow becomes more manageable, his body keeps working without the input of his brain, and he’s on his feet, in a staggering, zig-zagging run until he nearly falls against his goal. His hands come up hard against the smooth glass surface of the softly lit capsule, resulting in an audible thump.
And Bucky Barnes opens his eyes.