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It's Bucky's eighth birthday, his first in Brooklyn since they moved from Ohio. His mother packs him a big slice of sticky lemon pound cake in his lunch tin and tells him to share with his friends. He doesn't have the heart to tell her he hasn't got any yet. The boys in second grade still call him a farm boy and make moo'ing noises at him as he passes by. If they're feeling particularly cruel they hold their noses and complain about spotting a cow patty.
It's warm for early March, maybe 45 degrees out and Bucky sits on the playground holding his lunch tin on his skinny knees staring at the piece of cake. His mom spent five whole cents on the lemons, a valuable sum of money for a family of six. He rubs his nose and wonders if he can eat it all without getting sick. A rattling cough interrupts his thoughts and he turns his head, noticing a first grader sat a couple steps away, face turned up towards the sun and still bundled up in a thin coat and knitted mittens when most of the boys on the playground had thrown their coats in a pile, running around in shirts and suspenders.
"You're Steve Rogers, ain't ya?" He asks. His first few weeks at the school he heard the boys in his class mentioning and Steve Rogers and very quickly put two and two together when he saw the small blonde being cornered on the walk home. Bucky's not proud of how he hid behind a stoop to stay out of the way. Steve turns a wide face with big tired eyes and a split lip towards him and Bucky's breath catches for a moment like he's the one with the cough.
"Yes." He answers, staring at Bucky like he can see the sins on his soul like Father Flanagan talks about every Sunday.
"I..." Bucky scoots closer, knowing his Ma will tsk when she sees the scuffed pockets on his school trousers. "My Ma made some cake but it's too much for me. You want some?" He sets his lunch tin close to Steve and clicks open the lid to show off the bright yellow cake with a glossy sugar glaze. Steve looks almost fronted at the thought, curling his lip and staring at Bucky intently.
"My Ma says we don't take charity." He says, and after a moment, "No thank you." Bucky's little heart feels like it's splitting in two, even the school's other outcast won't be friends with him. Embarrassment floods his cheeks and he can tell he's gone red, but then a bright flash of indignation.
"It ain't charity if I'm offering it and you weren't gonna ask in the first place." He says, courage steeled. He splits the cake in two and lifts the sticky, dense cake into his hand a takes a bite. Bucky tries to not look at Steve but hazards a glance, watching a small hand with bruised knuckles lift the cake from the tin. "It's my birthday today." Bucky says, "When's yours?"
Bucky is 17 years old and he's a head taller than Stevie now. His father says the worst of the Depression is behind them, President Roosevelt is continuing to create jobs for young men and Bucky is looking forward to graduating high school next year.
"Hey, Punk!" He calls, jogging up to Steve's side and slinging an arm around his thin shoulders. "You weren't gonna let me walk home alone on my birthday were you?" He asks with a smile.
"Joanna Kelly looked like she was pretty comfortable holding your hand, didn't want to interrupt." Steve says, and Bucky can tell he's gone a bit sour.
"Yeah, but I'm not spending my birthday with her." He answers, giving Steve's shoulder a squeeze. "My Ma's making a chicken tonight, you gonna come?" Bucky asks, blue eyes gone wide, worried Steve will beg off.
"I always do, Jerk." Steve answers, and Bucky gives him that crooked smile that all the girls at their high school go crazy for. Steve feels like his stomach drops to his toes anytime Buck turns it on him.
They're sitting out on the fire escape knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder, Bucky paging through the book on the planets that Steve bought for him at the used bookstore. "You think they'll get pilots to fly up to the stars?" He asks Steve, staring at the night sky. "See if the moon's really made out of cheese?" He laughs at his joke and closes the book, placing it back on the window sill before giving Steve a gentle nudge. "Thanks for the book." His heart is beating heavy in his chest as he looks at Steve, very much aware that his hand is resting over the other boy's.
Steve's stomach drops in his toes again and he tries to not let his breath come out in a wheeze. "FDR's still president, anything's possible with him seems like." He swallows, and the lemon cake they had after dinner feels like it's stuck in his throat. "Buck."
"You're my best guy, Stevie." Bucky says, still looking up at the sky, "To the moon and back."
Bucky is somewhere between 24 and 25 when the world drops out from underneath them. They listen to President Roosevelt on the radio, "December 7th, 1941, a day which will live in infamy..." They're quiet the rest of the night, Bucky heats up leftover meatloaf his Ma made them take home from Sunday dinner. Steve is reheating potatoes on the stove.
"I ain't gonna leave-"
"I'm gonna enlist-"
They say at the same moment. Bucky feels like the air gets punched out of his lungs and wonders if this is what one of Steve's asthma attacks feel like. "Like hell you are, Steve Rogers." He says, finding his voice. "New York's gonna need workers all the same. That fight ain't your fight." Steve's all fury, spite and righteous Irish anger wrapped up in a 90 pound body and it's not often it gets turned on Bucky Barnes.
"It's the right thing to do." He answers, spearing a potato on the end of the fork and turning to look Bucky dead in the eye. "And you goddamn know it."
"That doesn't mean I want to run into a war without a thought in my fool head about what I'm leaving behind, Steve." He takes the meatloaf out of the oven and serves it up on two plates, mouth set in a thin line. "They don't need you an me." He says after a moment. "You think the US Army wants a couple'a queers from Brooklyn?"
The pan Steve'd been heating the potatoes in clatters onto the table. "People are gonna talk Buck, one way or another. You think it's gonna be easy for you to stay around the block when families sent their sons to fight the Nazi's?"
Bucky cuts through his meatloaf with his fork and doesn't bother cooling it before shoving it into his mouth, burning his tongue. "Easier than dying in some trench in No Man's Land. Easier than worrying about your punk ass."
Steve's silverware clangs as it hits his plate. "Not once in my life have I ever asked you to worry about me, Jamie."
Bucky goes quiet. Steve doesn't talk. Bucky does the dishes, Steve presses their shirts for the morning. They both brush their teeth in silence. Steve curls up on his side of the bed, facing away from Bucky and Bucky tries not to be too offended. He lies in bed for a long time, listening to Steve's breath, free from bronchitis, pneumonia, and whatever other chest colds he gets in the winter. Means he'll probably get sick after Christmas.
"It's not cause I don't think you could do it. If anyone could, it's you. You're so stubborn the Devil himself would send you back here cause he wouldn't want to deal with ya." He says just before Steve's breath drops off into long inhales and exhales. "It's cause I don't want to do it." His hand reaches under the blankets to find Steve's squeezing so tightly he feels the bones shift. "I got this awful feeling I wouldn't come back to you."
Bucky spends his 26th birthday at basic. They gave him a rifle and a rank. He wears his hat off regulation and keeps his hair a little too long in the front. He makes it back to Brooklyn and finds his best guy getting the shit kicked out of him in the alley of a movie theater when they were supposed to be seeing Humphrey Bogart. He's got a crooked smile to match his crooked hat so Steve can't see how scared he is to take that ship out of the harbor tomorrow.
They go to Queens to see flying cars and men that fly planes so high they might one day leave the atmosphere. He wants to take Steve dancing, drink some watered down beer until he forgets what's happening tomorrow. But Steve is Steve and since he told him his number got pulled, Steve's been just out of his reach. So he leaves with a hug and a whispered promise. Int he morning he scans the dock hoping to see Steve's blonde hair peeking out from the crowd, maybe standing next to his sisters. He only sees his Ma's hat with roses on the brim and know she's probably crying. He spends most of the first day on the ship puking his guts out and he doesn't think it's just from the rancid beer he had the night before.
James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes never makes it to his 28th birthday. He picks up Captain America's shield in January 1945. He drops out of a train moments later.
He's freezing. His head hurts and the snow falling into his eyes stings. He tries to use his voice but nothing comes out. His left arm is gone. The snow is stained red all around him. If that's the worst he's got after falling down the side of a mountain he's in pretty good shape. Bucky's brain tries to remember bootcamp, what to do if you're in a desperate situation. He can probably use his belt as a tourniquet. He has some sulfa packets stuffed in his jacket. He wishes he would've grabbed a pack of bandages from Gabe. The cold will help though, he spent enough time on the front to know the cold keeps gravely injured men alive far longer than they have reason to.
He's just getting the fingers on his right hand to move on command when he hears fresh snow crunching under military issued boots. Relief floods through him, body flushing with warmth. Stevie came back for him. He found him...again. Steve's got him. Steve.
"Amerikanets?" A deep voice asks. They must see his breath in the cold air because he's grabbed by the shoulders of his coat. There's two of them, they speak back and forth to one another his head's too far gone to catch much but he does catch, 'Zola'. A shiver goes through him. Not again, please not again. Steve. Steve will come back for him any second. He gets a good look at his arm as they drag him through the snow and he finally passes out.
The Soldier does not have birthdays.
The Soldier grapples with what he has done. What he's doing. He hasn't tried to make contact with a handler. Deliberately disobeying orders. He didn't kill the man from the bridge. The man that said he knew him. Steve. Captain Rogers. There was no fear in his eyes as he stared down the soldier, some showed anger. Captain Rogers only had sadness, so the Soldier pulled him from the river.
He visits the museum where Steve's face is ten feet high. Lauded for bravery, congratulated on surviving a fall. The Soldier's face is there too. He did not survive a fall.
"You're name is James Buchanan Barnes. You're my friend, and I'm with you till the end of the line."
The Soldier thinks James Buchanan Barnes would be 97 years old. The Soldier could pass for 30.
Sergeant Barnes. Jamie. Bucky. James Barnes.
The news says the Captain survived another fall.
The Soldier leaves DC the next day. He has had to deal with non-extractions before.
James 'Bucky' Barnes spends his 99th birthday alone in the wet spring of Bucharest. His day begins as it always does, in the half light of dawn, jerked awake by screams. The radio provides some comfort, turned low enough that his neighbors don't bang on the thin plaster walls. There's a station that only plays classical music, Wagner, Lists, Brahms, Mendelssohn. He can identify them and vaguely remembers his father sitting at the table with them and his sisters as they did their homework, quizzing them as each new movement, concerto or symphony began. That memory was one of the first in his notebooks.
He writes the nightmare out, sometimes sketches details. He's not an artist like Steve. Only the city, Zagreb, remains in his memory. He makes four eggs, coffee with sugar and buttered bread when the sun rises. At the market, 'Andrej' buys another bag of plums, 'Andrej' goes to work loading pallets at a supply center. He eats his plums on his break and tries to look exhausted. When the day is done he returns to his apartment.
He writes, 'lemon cake' in his journal and sketches a picture of a cake surrounded by stars and planets. His heart aches as he tries to remember his mother's face.
The White Wolf is 100 years old.
He tells stories to the kids and sometimes they ask why he doesn't look like their grandparents if he does have a century's worth of years to his name. He doesn't know what answer to give them. He trusts Shuri, trusts the people who's village he lives in. He wakes when the sun rises, sleeps after lunch until the heat is bearable and then works again. Steve visits sometimes, but the visits are quiet. Bucky doesn't know what to say, sometimes if he says something too dark the smile from Steve's face will fade and he feels that disappointment keen enough that it's like like his heart is splitting. So he keeps quiet and lets Steve do the talking.
At night when the air is cool and the goats bleat contentedly fro their pen, Bucky will take Steve's hand. He doesn't say anything, and neither does Steve but it's peaceful. Bucky's always been the one to take Steve's hand.