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Chapter Text

Sam scrubs tiredly at his eyes. ‘It’s just…’ This is the wrong time for this and he knows that but somehow he keeps going, questions and half-formed ideas colliding until he says without really meaning to, ‘If you had the option to do it all again, I mean like the train and everything, in the Alps, would you?’

Bucky stares at him like he’s lost his mind which is, Sam thinks, a reasonable reaction. ‘You mean, given the option would I choose not to fall off the fucking train?!’

Sam raises an arm and drops it back on the counterpane. A scratchy counterpane. One more reason to hate being in here. Bucky is studying the ceiling again and his throat bobs before he speaks and when he does his voice is quiet and calm.

‘I like to think we did a lot of good, those years. We probably didn’t know what the hell we were actually doing half the time, but we did it. I guess we were pretty good at it. If you’re asking if I wish I hadn’t gone on that mission… I wish I hadn’t ended up in seventy years of hell because I couldn’t keep my goddamn balance.’ He sighs, a little ragged around the edges. He’s looking at Sam and his blue eyes are clear. ‘If you’re asking me would I still have followed Steve, then yes. I would. That was my choice. My choice. And I’d choose it again. Like I choose now.’

Just Two Guys - Chapter 14

Northern Italy, 1945

The smell of cordite on the air is ever-present these days, along with the rumbling of tanks and heavy artillery fire, ack-ack guns and firefights lighting up the night sky. It is not yet night but the heavy cloud lies low, blotting out the sun and the lengthening shadows pull into evening, softening the lines of canvas tents and communication cables.

Peggy makes a circuit of the camp, skirting its edges and breathing in the clean scent of cold air and bracken and pine from the forest running along the west perimeter. Rolls of wire a few feet from the tree-line marking where the camp officially ends, rough wooden beams at regular intervals holding the boundary in place. She tries to look beyond it, imagine that it’s the woods beyond her father’s house where she and Michael used to play, where they would be pirates and knights and adventurers and- 

And soldiers.

It had all been romantic and exciting then and after Michael had died it been important and necessary and still exciting. It is still important and necessary. It’s also hard and brutal and lonely and she is so, so tired. If it wasn’t all so important…

She’s left her gloves in her tent, regrets the oversight, plunges her hands deep into the pockets of her heavy jacket. The leather and fur keep out the worst of the cold, at least, but it’s insidious, finding its way through thinner layers and biting against her cheeks.

Peggy plods on, her feet feeling heavier than they have for a long time. She still keeps her spine straight but it feels like more and more of an effort lately, the relentless, unchanging grind of battle after battle after battle in this unending war.

They had said over by Christmas in the September of ’39. 

She thinks about that sometimes and the laughter borders on hysteria. She remembers Michael’s face and his scepticism and the resignation that he had only ever shown to a handful of people, like he’d already known he would never come home again. A second generation lost on the battlefields of a world gone mad.

There’s a figure leaning against one of the wooden supports, red glow of a cigarette and the collar of his battered greatcoat turned up against the chill and Peggy hesitates for a moment. Without his distinctive blue jacket he could be just any other soldier in the camp.

Cigarette raised to his lips with an easy grace and even from the distance between them she can see the steely blue-grey of his eyes.

All right, maybe not just any other soldier.

Peggy walks towards him. ‘Sergeant Barnes.’

He turns a fraction, looking at her over his shoulder as though not entirely surprised to see her there and then inclines his head. ‘Agent Carter.’

She joins him at the array of roughly-hewn wooden beams and rolls of wire, careful to avoid the barbs. Bucky digs into one of his coat pockets and retrieves a box of cigarettes, shakes one halfway out and offers it to her. Peggy takes it, placing it loose between her lips and then takes the butt he holds to her, lighting her own from the embers. She takes smoke deep into her lungs, closing her eyes against the sudden rush to her head, everything going pleasantly hazy at the edges. Head tilted back, she blows out a stream of smoke, opens her eyes and watches it dissipate on the cold air. 

She lowers her head. Perched on one of the wooden struts, the white folds stark against the darkness beyond, is the little shape of a bird fashioned out of a piece of paper. 

‘Did you make that?’

Bucky follows her gaze and smiles slightly. ‘Jim taught me. It’s called origami - he learned it from his grandmother. He can make all kindsa things out of bits of paper, you wouldn’t believe it.’ He jabs his cigarette in the direction of the paper bird with its clean lines and angles. ‘Apparently that’s one of your entry-level origami shapes. Little Japanese kids can do ‘em in their sleep.’ He offers her a self-deprecating smile. ‘Took me for-Goddamn-ever.’

Her lips press together. ‘I’m sure.’ Peggy picks it up carefully. Entry-level or not, it’s elegant and precise. ‘It’s very pretty. May I keep it?’

An easy shrug. ‘Sure.’ He takes a final drag of his cigarette, stubs it out against the wooden strut. ‘Jim can make all sorts of flowers - lilies, magnolias, roses…’ He glances at her and his eyes crinkle. ‘Tell you what, I’ll get him to make you a bouquet of roses - for an English Rose.’

Her head tilts back as she laughs. ‘You’re very generous with other people’s time.’

‘He needs something to do in between blowing up Nazis.’ He acquires a meditative air, eyes narrowing partly in thought and partly, she thinks, against the sting of cold. ‘Actually, I reckon I’ll get Steve to ask him - sort of thing the big lug should be doing  for you anyhow.’

‘I think he probably has more pressing matters on his mind.’ Her voice is low and she can’t help the longing that threads its way through her words.

He looks at her, head tilted back and his brows draw together. ‘What, you mean like a crummy little war?’

‘Yes, if we want to get specific about it.’

‘Phooey,’ he says, waving a hand with an assumed nonchalance that doesn’t match the shadows behind his eyes and the lines drawn in his face. ‘That takes about two brain cells - three, tops. The rest should definitely go on more important things.’

Peggy smiles, wry, leans a little heavier against the supports and takes gentle puffs of her cigarette. ‘A little difficult to think what could be more important sometimes.’

‘No, it isn’t. Maybe they aren’t big things but they’re worth something.’ His eyes are silver-grey rimming big black pupils, sunken shadows beneath like bruises. ‘Okay, so going out dancing, having family dinner on a Friday, not working out ten different ways to kill someone and just calling that Tuesday, maybe that’s all pretty frivolous next to this but it’s life, Peggy, it’s life and it’s important and I want it back.’ 

His head bows and his shoulders shake. She flicks away the remnants of her cigarette and places a careful hand against his back, feels the touch shudder through him. The carefully compartmentalised world that she has structured and ordered and tries hard not to think about too much in the tormenting witching hours while the howitzers pound overhead presses closer, the fissures coming all-too close to splintering, breaking.

Bucky raises his head again, spreading a grin across his face that looks like a rictus and she feels her scalp prickle.

‘Maybe I’ll get Jim to teach me how to make the roses after all.’ It’s close to his usual tone, but not quite close enough. The effort strains through every word. ‘It’s nice to have something to do with my hands that isn’t just…’ He turns them over slowly, studying them, as though they don’t quite belong to him. Work-roughened and calloused, but the fingers are long and sensitive. Artist’s hands. He doesn’t have the flair that Steve does but his technical sketches are flawless, he has a sharp draftsman’s eye and some of the renderings detail improvements to their existing weaponry that show a keen intellect and an engineer’s mind. They even impressed Howard and he’s already been talking about Barnes going to work for him when it’s all over. The when seems to get achingly further and further away.

‘I used to box,’ he says suddenly, his voice still quiet.

Peggy nods slightly. ‘I remember you mentioned something.’

‘A lot of people think it’s two guys just slugging it out but there’s a skill to it. You have to be precise, smart about it. It’s not about who can inflict the most damage.’ He takes in and releases a long breath. There’s a faint tremor in those well-shaped hands. ‘I never wanted to hurt anyone, y’know? Not really. Even in a good clean one-on-one fight, I never wanted to hurt anyone. And now…’ Disgust tugs at the corners of his mobile mouth.

She thinks about what they knew before and all that they know now and all of the justifications for their actions. ‘The Nazis, what they do, what they’ve done, it’s evil. They have to be stopped.’

Bucky’s shoulders are still high and tense but his spine is straight, head held high. ‘I know - we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys. It’s just- Sometimes I wonder if that’s what they think, too. Are there a bunch of scared-shitless German kids who think they’re doing the right thing and wondering why some asshole came all the way from America to climb half-way up a tree and take potshots at them and their friends.’

All the things that they know; Peggy pushes down the wave of nausea. ‘War isn’t about individual people. We can’t think of it like that.’

The line of his jaw bunches. ‘Maybe we should. Maybe there’d be a little less Goddamn war if we did.’

‘Maybe.’

From somewhere in the camp there’s the tinny buzz of a radio, a tune playing that she can’t quite make out. The cold has made her nose run and she digs into her pockets for a tissue, fingers brushing against the clean edges of the little paper bird. She blows her nose, aware that it will be red and shiny and can hear her mother’s admonitions about the need to carry powder at all times-

She agrees with her mother, really, but it isn’t always practical. Perhaps she should talk to Howard about it: if he can fashion her a lipstick that’s a knock-out in more ways than one, after all…

Bucky’s hunched shoulders have not loosened and he’s staring at her, that appraising look that she knows from briefings and Steve’s wilder ideas and a night in a pub in London that feels like a lifetime ago.

‘You and Steve - you’re gonna look out for each other, right?’ An urgency riding under what he says. 

She frowns, uncertain, and Peggy hates feeling uncertain. ‘Of course. We all look out for each other.’ The phrasing sounds a little wrong; it feels very right.

‘I mean always,’ he says, insistent. ‘During this, after this.’ Bucky huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘Y’know, if you asked him real nice the Padre would probably marry the pair of you tomorrow.’

Peggy widens her eyes at him. ‘Dear Lord, Barnes, you’re worse than my mother!’

That catches him and he rears back fractionally. Something warmer breaks through the silvered blue and the harsh lines soften. ‘Barnes? Have I been demoted?’

‘James.’ She fixes her eyes on him and he meets her gaze. ‘Is it the mission?’

He stares out into the darkened forest, silent and banked down in snow. It would be beautiful, she thinks. He’s silent.

‘The zip-line was your idea.’

Bucky’s head tilts back with a yelp of laughter. ‘You know that was a joke, right? Me and my big mouth - should have known by now that the stupidest idea would always be the one Steve goes for.’

Peggy pulls her jacket tighter, burrowing her chin into the fur collar. ‘If you think we should call it off…’

His eyes narrow slightly, head tilting as he considers it. ‘The plan is all kinds of crazy but that makes no never mind - most of our plans are crazy. This is probably the best opportunity we have to-’ A pause and he bites the inside of his cheek. ‘The train slows down going around the curve, as long as we drop straight it should be a pretty stable landing. After that, business as usual.’

He bites the inside of his cheek again. Peggy waits.

‘It’s just-’

The cold air stings her skin when she pulls her hand out of a pocket. She lays it gently on his arm. ‘James.’

His head moves and he doesn’t quite look at her, as though what he’s about to say is shameful.

‘Seeing Zola again, hearing him… I guess I knew it was coming someday, but it was always sort of in the abstract. But now that it’s come to it, I-’ He moistens his lips. ‘I was pretty out of it most of the time in that damn lab of his. He was shooting me up with God knows what but he talked, on and on and I couldn’t understand most of it, which is probably a blessing. Maybe. Strapped down onto a table and he’d … he’d hover over me. Talking like we were friends. He’d stroke my face and call me his beautiful soldier. His perfect specimen. Gave me the fucking creeps, I can tell you.’ He glances at her. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. I’ve heard the word creeps before.’ Spoken between her teeth. Her stomach fighting its way up into her throat. His hands bunch together hard, nails digging into the palms. Peggy moves her hand from his arm, places it gently over his and after a moment he relaxes enough that he turns one hand up to meet hers. Their fingers lace together.

‘The stuff he shot me up with- I’d hallucinate. Not know where I was. Sometimes…’ His voice has dropped to barely a whisper and he stares into the dark woods. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I’m still back there and all of this is just the dream.’

For a moment Peggy presses her head against his shoulder, feels his solidity and his wounded strength. After a moment his cheek rests against her hair.

‘Have you talked to Steve about it?’

He straightens again and so does she. Peggy studies his profile; one corner of his mouth twitches. ‘Got more things on his mind.’

‘He loves you,’ she says. ‘More than anyone in the world.’ She feels the truth of it and finds that she doesn’t mind at all. 

One shoulder shrugs and he murmurs something unintelligible, lost on the cold wind that’s picked up and thrums against the taut canvas roofs and cables running through the camp. A discordant jumble of sounds that seems both oppressively near and wholly removed from where they are. Peggy tightens her grip.

‘We’ll get Zola. He’ll be in prison. He won’t ever be able to hurt anyone ever again.’

‘You mean some government somewhere won’t think he’s worth more working for them? A few years and he’ll be free to do whatever he wants?’ Bitter cynicism that doesn’t really suit him laces his words.

Her head shakes, firm. ‘It won’t happen. I won’t let it. I promise you, James, I won’t let him hurt anyone. I won’t let him hurt you. Not again.’

Bucky takes a breath and stares into the silence of the snow-covered pines. ‘Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.’

Peggy blinks at him. ‘That- That’s lovely. What is that?’

His fingers slide from hers. ‘It’s a poem. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.” I was thinking about it before you got here.’

Maybe it’s the sudden stab of cold now that the sun has gone. Maybe it’s the words or maybe it’s the way he said them. Peggy shivers, wraps her arms around her body. The light and shadow throw his face into bold relief, hollowing out his eyes and cheeks, touching his dark hair with silver and for a moment she sees a future echo, the face of the man he could become in the face of the beautiful boy beside her. 

‘It’s pretty well known in the States. I could write it out for you, if you like.’

Peggy raises a smile and feels the effort in her cheeks. ‘That would be very kind.’

He turns suddenly, his shoulders throwing open and he grins at her, wide, his eyes crinkling, and it’s as though the last few minutes haven’t happened, as though he has always been this blaze of warmth all along. ‘Speaking of being really, unbelievably kind…’

‘I did not say that-’

He digs into one of the many pockets in his coat and eventually pulls out a balled-up length of a red woollen-

‘Told you I’d knit one for you.’

Peggy laughs and feels the relief of it crack in her chest. Somehow she feels like weeping and gazes at the scarf dangling from his hands.

‘C’mon, try it on and let me see if it fits.’

She wraps it dutifully around her neck and then looks up at him. He nods gravely.

‘Perfect. Like it was made for you.’

Peggy rolls her eyes and there’s a thickness in her throat that turns her voice husky when she speaks. ‘Idiot.’ She runs it between her fingers and then raises her eyes to his, her head still ducked down. ‘I don’t suppose this has anything to do with Colonel Phillips’ missing red sweater?’

His blue eyes pop wide, an expression of anxious innocence writing itself across his features. ‘First I’ve heard of it?’

Peggy pinches her lips together, failing to bite back the smile that pulls at her mouth. She traces the lines of pattern in the thick red wool. ‘Not the classy moss stitch? I’m crushed.’

Bucky’s head tilts and there’s a complex mix of amusement and affection in his face. ‘You got plenty of class all on your own - it’s the dumb slobs like me who need all the help they can get.’

There’s an answering knot of affection in the centre of her chest. ‘I hate to be the one to break this to you, Sergeant Barnes, but you are a gentleman.’

Even in the dim light she can see the heightening colour in his cheeks. His head ducks and he busies himself with twitching her newly acquired (and possibly larcenous) scarf into a better position.

‘Yeah, well…’ Voice gruff. He looks ridiculously young. And then he looks up at her, his hands stilling and his eyes big and blue and earnest. ‘You’re a good friend. Don’t take this the wrong way, Carter, but I sort of love you. A little.’

The knot resolves itself into something resolute and certain. ‘And in the same spirit, Barnes, I sort of love you too.’

All of his lines soften then and he pushes himself away from the wooden strut and the rolls of wire and holds out his arm to her. ‘Walk you back to camp? Y’know, like a gentleman.’

‘Don’t push it.’ Her hand comes to rest in the crook of his arm.

Just for a moment he half-turns, eyes going back to the snow-blanketed trees and the dark silence deep in the woods. And then he turns back and they walk on.

Chapter Text

Washington D.C., 2014

The lilacs glow brightly in their patch of sunshine, vivid purple in the honeyed light. Their scent fills the room and Steve studies them for some moments. Peggy’s mother had grown them in the garden back in England, she had once told him; they remind her of home and Steve always tries to bring her some when he can.

If he’s completely honest it isn’t just for Peggy’s sake: the scent always guides her down a path of memory and Steve desperately wants, no needs, her to remember. Only the three of them left in the world who lived through it, who remember, and somehow Bucky now seems further away than when Steve thought he was dead.

Peggy had fallen asleep almost mid-sentence and he isn’t sure quite how she’ll be when she wakes. Sometimes the conversation continues as though nothing has happened. Sometimes she sees him as though for the first time since 1945.

The first time that he’d had to tell her that Bucky was dead she had wept.

When he told her about Hydra and SHIELD and the Winter Soldier her dark eyes had blazed with the same old righteous anger.

And she had wept again for her lost friend.

The door pushes open and one of the nurses edges into the room, cheeks rounded in a smile and her black eyes bright. The orange dot on her name badge marks her out as a newbie.

‘Hey. Hi.’ She straightens slightly. ‘Captain Rogers. Everything okay?’

He smiles at her. She looks little more than a child, he thinks, all eager and innocent and full of hope. He wonders if he ever looked that young, even Before. He’s seen the photos of himself and isn’t sure.

‘We’re fine, thanks’ -he looks at her name-badge- ‘Aamina.’

She dimples at him.

‘Peggy’s asleep.’

‘Just resting my eyes,’ Peggy says, eyes snapping open and damn he would almost believe her except that she really had been asleep.

Aamina beams, undeterred by the sharpness in her charge’s tone. ‘We’ve had a lot of visitors this week, haven’t we, Ms Carter?’

‘Have we,’ Peggy states flatly.

‘So many handsome young men. You’ll have to tell me the secret - put it on my Bumble profile.’

Peggy mutters something unintelligible, stirring restlessly against her pillows.

‘They will come around with tea in a few minutes, Captain Rogers,’ Aamina tells him, smiling happily. ‘Or coffee, if you prefer.’

‘Tea’s great, thanks.’

She nods and then turns her attention to Peggy, taking her pulse with efficiency and fluffing the pillows despite the grumbling protests to all of it. ‘Tea in a few minutes,’ Aamina states, clearly and loudly.

‘Yes, I heard it the first time,’ Peggy tells her, terse. Aamina rolls her eyes at Steve as though they are in a cheerful conspiracy.

When the door closes behind the doggedly upbeat Aamina, Steve pulls his chair closer to the bed.

‘Still drilling the new recruits, huh?’

Peggy turns back the counterpane, smoothing her hands across the surface and then folds them together. ‘Someone has to,’ she says, just as prim and certain as she had been back at Camp Lehigh. Her gaze rests on Steve and her face softens, fondness warming her deep brown eyes and then they move restlessly, searching beyond him for something before coming back to him. ‘When is James coming back?’

It’s a cold stab down through his stomach every time and he tells himself that he shouldn’t expect it to be any different but it’s still hard, every time. He schools his face into something neutral and reassuring.

‘He’s on a long mission,’ he says and tells himself that it isn’t exactly a lie.

Peggy’s head turns and she stares up at the ceiling. ‘He looks so tired.’ 

He tries to remember Bucky in those days before-

In those days. But all he ever sees is clear blue eyes, that incandescent smile, a zest for life that had built and coloured a whole world for Steve even when he had been confined to a sickbed for months on end; but even life experienced second-hand had still somehow been joyous when Bucky had been the one living it for both of them.

‘He told me his poem again,’ Peggy says, her smile misted by emotions Steve can’t pin down. Too many all at once. ‘I couldn’t remember it and he said he couldn’t remember it either. But we got it in the end.’ She shakes her head, indulgent, but there's something fierce behind her eyes. ‘Silly boy.’ 

A frown builds across Steve’s face; iciness creeps across his cheeks until he can feel himself going numb. ‘What poem? Peggy. Who- Who are you talking about?’

Her head turns and the gaze she fixes on Steve is intent and clear and serious. ‘It’s time you brought him home. He thinks he’s doing the right thing but we have to bring him home, Steve.’

He’d been too focussed on Peggy, he thinks, vaguely, as though someone had slugged him across the head. It’s only now, now when she’s talking about things that don’t seem to make any sense but the weight of them starts to register that he notices. At last. The little pile of paper roses on the nightstand.

It is a pleasant room. Objectively. High windows allowing a lot of natural light, walls painted a cheerful but restful colour, comfortable furniture. The chair that he sits in is unimaginably soft, nothing hard in its lines, nothing in it that would take scans or shackle him or invade his mind and drag who he is out of his head.

Whoever he is. He is still not sure.

James Buchanan Barnes.

The man on the bridge had called him that. Told him that. In the museum there had been pictures of a man with his face and that name attached. Perhaps that really is his name. 

The bed that the woman lies in also looks comfortable, the mattress soft and the blankets warm. It is good, he thinks, that she is comfortable. He is not sure why he should think this, why there should be … something … when he looks at her. He has written all of it in his notebook. He will asses the information later. In the museum there had been video playing. Most of the people in it are dead. The woman named Peggy Carter had not been dead. There had also been a photograph of three people: the man called James Buchanan Barnes, who he might be or might have been or something, the man called Steve Rogers who he thinks he might know and who had told him they were friends, and in between them Peggy Carter. 

They had all stared at the camera, heads held high and smiling with something like defiance. He thinks he likes these people.

He studies the face of the woman in the bed. Her hair is grey and her skin is lined and sagging but beneath that the bone structure is the same - firm and strong and resolute. This is the Peggy Carter from the video and the photograph. This is someone that James Buchanan Barnes had known. 

She had been beautiful then. He tilts his head and studies her face. She is still beautiful, he decides. The lines of her face still strong and resolute. 

A girl in a red dress, chin lifted high-

Memories come like waves, disorientating and pulling him under, no context for the sudden burst of images and emotions and sometimes, he thinks, sometimes he used to teeter on the brink of it and it was almost easier to submit to the chair but he’snotgoingbacknotgoingbacknotgoingback-

A girl in a red dress, chin lifted high and her dark eyes flashing with humour and then longing and the same girl with her face illumined by firelight and she’s laughing and then again, face serious and her dark hair silvered by searchlights and something red around her throat like a rope or a garotte or his hands-

Heart pounding, leaping up into his throat; he pushes himself back down into the too-soft chair. He would never hurt that girl. That woman. This woman. He would never hurt her.

He is not sure why he is so certain of this, but he knows it. She is his-

She had been a friend of James Buchanan Barnes.

He has not decided what he will do if she wakes. He has opened one of the windows enough that egress will be easy, a matter of seconds. Or if one of the nurses or orderlies come in. He can leave before they see him. 

It had been easy getting to her, worryingly so. That it worries (?) him is … curious. That is something else that he will assess later. The security is not what it should be, not to protect someone who is so important. She must be important, he thinks. She is in a museum and important things are in museums. Like Steve Rogers, he is also in a museum. He is Captain America. He is important. And-

He frowns.

James Buchanan Barnes is also in a museum. 

But he is not important. Important things are not put in muzzles and chains and cages and tanks and the Chair and wiped and wiped and wiped and-

His head hurts. He stares at her face and sees a girl in a red dress, dark hair curled about her shoulders and she smiles, amused despite herself and friends, they had been friends.

He should go before she wakes, he thinks. He thinks that he does not want to leave her.

He is still sitting in the too-soft chair when the rhythm of her breathing changes, when she stirs, her head moving on the pillow, and then her eyes blink open. He sits, as unmoving as though he were watching a target, readying himself-

No. She is not a target. She is his-

Perhaps she had been his-

James Buchanan Barnes had been-

‘James.’

He looks at her. She is smiling. She is still beautiful.

‘James…’ A hand lifts, pawing at the air as though searching. He leans forward and takes it tentatively in his. Her skin feels as thin and delicate as paper, blue veins stark through the white. She is frail. Her eyes still burn.

‘Where have you been?’

Lost, he thinks. I have been lost. He remains silent. Her fingers tighten around his. 

‘It’s been a long war,’ she says, soft. Something so gentle in her tone, a far-off chord that dances on the messy edges of his mind.

He nods and his eyes search her face, a careful look. It is strange, the way that she looks at him. It is an absence, he realises after long moments. There is an absence of fear in her face, in her eyes, when she looks at him. She had reached for him, wanting him nearer. Her hand in his feels small, the fingers cool, but strong. 

‘I’ve been trying to remember your poem,’ she says, a faint frown deepening between her brows. Bright brown eyes fixed on him again. ‘I forget things too much these days.’ A huff of irritation and then she smiles slightly. ‘Can you tell it to me?’

He moistens his lips. ‘I don’t know any poems.’ His throat feels like sandpaper, voice harsh and roughened. Did he always sound like this? Or is it that he has spoken so little for so long that the effort of it sometimes feels like too much.

Peggy tuts, her lips thinning in a line of disapproval. ‘You wrote it out for me. Something about woods. Woods in the snow.’ He tries to pull back but her fingers tighten on his and he stills.

Endless woods, sometimes in snow and sometimes not, sometimes he was hunted and sometimes he was the hunter, shouts on the air and screams, flames licking across the horizon and blood, always blood-

‘Promises to keep,’ she says suddenly, a note of triumph in her voice and her gaze is expectant. And then, without warning, with barely a breath, her eyes fill with tears and her face trembles. ‘I promised you… Oh God, James, I’m so sorry!’

He stares at her. Blinks. Tears track down her cheeks and she struggles against the weight of the blankets, trying to push herself up. ‘All those years- I didn’t know. I’d have done anything if I’d known. I begged them not to work with Zola. God, you even said that they’d do it… Zola. And then Fennhoff-’

Focus. I need your complete focus, can you give me that? Focus.

Faces above him while he was strapped down and always those voices, then new voices but the same words over and over, pushing out everything else from his mind, those words and the burning, screaming pain and the killing and killing and killing and it was always him, it was always his hands-

‘James! Oh, darling, don’t. Please don’t cry, I can’t bear it!’

He touches his cheek and it is wet. Vision blurring. He blinks and more tears fall but her face becomes clearer. Somehow the tears ease the tightness in his throat, the cracking pain in his chest. Other fingers against his cheek. Peggy, wiping at the tears and he feels the tremble in her fingers. Darling is an endearment. A sign of affection. Like the tenderness in touching someone the way that she does now, with gentleness and care. An odd sound, a sob. He realises it is coming from him. He squeezes his eyes shut, leans into her hand.

Woods buried deep in snow, rolls of barbed wire glinting under searchlights. Cigarette smoke on the air. A girl with dark hair and bright brown eyes leans her head against his shoulder. Her hand in his is small, her fingers cool and strong.

He opens his eyes, pulls away from her enough that he can see her clearly. ‘I know you,’ he says. ‘Peggy. I know you.’

Her smile is wide then, beautiful. A face he had once known.

‘I- I never wanted to hurt anyone,’ he tells her, voice still ragged. And it makes her cry again.

He does not want her to weep. It is a sign of pain and he does not want her to hurt, does not want to be the source of her pain. Unpractised fingers wipe at her cheeks with as much delicacy as he can manage. Peggy catches hold of his hand and then the other, flesh and metal held tight in her grasp. She presses her lips against the knuckles of both hands.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

She kisses his hands, her breath hitching, eyes shining with the tears that she cannot stop. She pulls him closer. He buries his face in her soft hair and he cries.

Sam had killed the time waiting for Steve in swiping right a few times on an app that he never follows up on, getting himself a coffee from a cart set up on the edge of the park across the street and practising his Arabic with a pretty nurse on her break.

He’s leaning against the hood of his rental (courtesy of the insurance company while they sort out the shit-show of his claim) when Steve appears in the doorway and then starts down the flight of stone steps. Sam bins his empty coffee cup, swings the car-keys gracelessly between his fingers and then stops when he sees Steve’s face. Flat and pale and there’s a tightness around his lips.

‘Hey.’ Sam touches his shoulder. ‘Everything okay?’ He glances towards the building. ‘Is- Is she..?’

Steve’s eyes come to Sam and he stares at him as though he’s having trouble focussing. 

‘He’s been here. He came to see her.’

Sam frowns. ‘Who?’

‘Bucky.’

And he feels his stomach drop. Shit. ‘Shit. Is she okay?’

Steve blinks then and all but shrugs Sam’s hand off his shoulder. ‘Of course she’s okay. He wouldn’t hurt her, Sam. Never.’

Sam holds up his hands. ‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry.’

The broad shoulders slump; Steve leans heavily against the hood and the metal creaks ominously-

Just got that, Rogers, Sam thinks idly and imagines the reaction of his insurance company at another story of super-soldier-inflicted vehicular damage.

‘She said he thinks he’s doing the right thing staying away. He- He’s trying to make sure no-one else gets hurt. Jesus.’ His face crumples and he buries his head in his hands. ‘Goddammit, Buck.’

Sam leans next to him. That- That is unexpected. He’s seen the damage the man can do and the memory of those blue eyes with their complete lack of expression still sends an unpleasant buzz of fear down his spine.

Steve pulls in a deep breath, staring somewhere into the middle distance. A group of middle-aged women in form-fitting athleisurewear and all with the same bouncy blonde ponytails jog down the street and turn into the park through the iron gates. 

‘I just don’t get why he came to Peggy and not me.’

Sam sucks on a tooth. ‘If he had, would you have let him go again?’

‘No.’ Sharp and without hesitation.

‘That’s probably why, then. Not like Peggy Carter can take him down.’

A slight smile plays at the corners of his mouth. ‘She could have, once.’

Sam pushes himself off the hood, turns himself around so he’s facing Steve completely. ‘So. You wanna stake this place out?’

Steve glances at him, at the building, back again. He shakes his head. ‘No. He won’t come back here. He made her paper roses,’ he adds after a moment.

Sam folds his arms across his chest. ‘What, was that some signal y’all had back in the day?’

‘Wh-’ There’s a flash of amusement across Steve’s sombre features. ‘No, it- Morita taught Bucky origami. He went through a phase of making little birds and flowers, left the damn things all over the place. It was just before he-he…’

Sam nods. ‘That’s good,’ he says, voice soft. ‘He’s remembering. That’s a good sign.’ And he says it with more hope than he actually feels.

‘Yeah.’ Steve dashes a hand across his eyes. ‘C’mon.’

They get into the car and peel away from the kerb. 

Neither notice the figure in the baggy hoodie and baseball cap standing in the gates to the park, clear blue eyes watching them. 

Chapter Text

‘Uncle Bucky!’ Cass, voice far too loud for this conversation and for a Friday night. ‘We’re starting the movie and you’ll miss it. Are you coming?!’

‘I’ll be right there, buddy.’

The door bangs shut. The boys’ adoring trust, the patient gentleness in Bucky’s quiet voice - it clenches around Sam’s heart each and every time. He stands from the seat; Bucky stays in place, gaze fixed in the middle distance and somewhere far away from them. Sarah is already busying herself, gathering glasses and bottles. 

She stoops suddenly, her long braids swinging against Bucky’s shoulder and she murmurs, ‘Grumpy Cat,’ at him, her breath warm on his cheek.

A laugh is shocked out of him. ‘I- I looked that up, I do not look like that!’

Sarah straightens, starts to move away but she’s still angled towards him as she walks. ‘I dunno, a lot of people thought Grumpy Cat was hella cute.’

‘D-did you think he’s cute?’ he calls after her retreating figure, his voice rising by at least one octave.

Just Two Guys - Chapter 16

Delacroix, 2025

The household is winding down for the night but there are still signs of life and activity in all its corners. The boys calling nosily to each other between their bedroom and the bathroom, re-enacting their favourite parts of the film, yelling lines in a sort of call-and-response that is filled with childish enthusiasm. An indulgence that Sarah will wind down once both have been showered and are vibrating slightly less with the sheer joy of youth and in having shared one of their favourite things with all of their favourite people. Sarah herself in the kitchen, stacking the dishwasher and humming along with the music playing low on the radio.

Which leaves Sam and Bucky working on restoring some semblance of order to the living room, Bucky shaking out the couch cushions and marvelling at how much popcorn has been deposited down the sides. Almost as much, he’s certain, as had been devoured by the boys’ voracious appetites.

It had been a good night. Lights turned low and faces illumined by the flickering screen. Cass had watched Bucky closely and Bucky had dutifully reacted with the appropriate surprise at the assorted reveals about the Skywalker family ties.

‘I bet you didn’t expect that, huh?’ Cass, pushing his glasses up his nose and peering into Bucky’s face happily, blinking when the lights get switched back on.

‘No,’ Bucky tells him, solemn, ‘I did not expect it.’

Which had been true. The first time, at least.

A.J. bounces on his nest of cushions, spilling bits of popcorn from the near-empty bowl. ‘And Luke Skywalker has a metal hand, too!’ He tilts his head critically and his eyebrows knit together. ‘But his isn’t as cool as yours. And I bet he isn’t as strong even if he does have a light-sabre!’

Their uncomplicated affection is something he always finds simultaneously grounding and piercing. Bright eyes full of energetic optimism and their unending chatter. He thinks about his own twelve-year-old self and the science fiction films and adventures series that would play before the matinée every Saturday and how much that little boy had loved them. How real they had seemed and how corny they had probably been- 

‘Hey, earth to Bionic Man.’

Bucky’s hands come up, automatic, just in time to catch the heavy, worn cushion with its faded cover that’s fraying at one corner that Sam had aimed right at his face.

‘Nearly had you there,’ Sam says, an obnoxious grin splitting his face.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bucky grouses amiably, fluffs up the cushion and places it at just the same angle that Sarah always does and he can feel Sam rolling his eyes.

‘You good?’ Sam, straightening up the pile of magazines that Sarah had worked her way through while they had watched. 

‘Just thinking about how much I would have loved those films when I was their age.’

Sam’s smile spreads, his eyes crinkling at the edges and it’s one of his deliberately shit-eating grins but there’s a tenderness in his gaze that Bucky had once found overwhelming and much, much safer to ignore altogether. ‘Oh, like your giant nerd ass doesn’t still love all of that space opera shit, huh?’

‘The films are okay,’ Bucky says, non-committal, collecting up the innumerable little squares of coloured paper that A.J. has been using for some class project or other. ‘They’re just basically a Medieval quest narrative but with laser swords. And the first one is pretty much a rip-off of Hidden Fortress.’

A healthy frown has been building across Sam’s face, one of Cass’ action figures swinging between his fingers. ‘You get that off some film bro’s rant on YouTube?’

Bucky blinks. So many, so very many, things that Sam says that have no translation whatsoever. Why is he like this..? he wonders and still in the same thought is it’s not him, it’s me. 

But he narrows his eyes anyway and takes a long moment before answering. ‘No, I got that from watching Hidden Fortress like a normal person.’ He sees Sam’s mouth start to open and holds up a hand. ‘Do not say it.’ 

And is rewarded by Sam’s widest smile that clashes with his attempt at a scowl and his muttered, ‘Never let me have any fun…’

‘It’s a good film, you’d like it,’ Bucky says after a moment.

‘I’ve seen Star Wars.’

Bucky rolls his eyes (and sometimes worries that one day he’ll do that so hard they won’t come back down and it will all be Sam’s fault). ‘No, idiot, Hidden Fortress. Toshiro Mifune’s in it.’

He is met with a blank look and huffs out a breath, pulls his phone out of his pocket, jabs at the screen and then holds it out to Sam. ‘Him.’

Sam takes the phone, peers at the screen and the series of black-and-white images with his lips pushed out and tilts his head a fraction. ‘Huh. I know him from somewhere.’

Bucky sighs and reclaims his phone. ‘He played Jim Morita in that Captain America movie.’

And Sam’s face brightens immediately. ‘Oh yeah… He was great!’

‘Kinda wasted in that one,’ Bucky mutters. Jim would have got a kick out of the movie, though - a real cynic, he’d always found all of that showy patriotic fervour hilarious. At least they’d got a Japanese actor to play him; Frenchie had been played by an Italian, for God’s sake.

The spotty memories of that group of men, when they had started to creep back in through the numerous fractures in his mind, had seemed unbelievable at first. Too boisterous, too loud, too full of life to really have existed in the morass of blood and fire that always seemed to be their backdrop.

Even harder to believe that he had been one of them.

Later, when he’d grabbed hold of as many pieces as he could the memories had been too painful to go near, all of that love and loyalty gone and the only comfort he could take from it was that he hadn’t killed any of them. That was the one thing he had made sure of.

There is comfort now in remembering, in hearing their voices providing an occasional commentary in his head, a painful sort of pleasure in telling Sam some of the old stories.

Sam loves hearing all of that stuff. Sometimes it looks likes it’s killing him not to ask more, to pry a little further and sometimes Bucky lets him. That’s healing. Probably.

He’s followed Sam out onto the porch, more out of habit than anything, and it never hurts to have two pairs of eyes do the usual perimeter sweep. There’s yet more squares of paper scattered over the little table on the porch and Bucky starts gathering them up. He wonders idly if Dum Dum ever got around to marrying the girl whose picture he’d pull out whenever he was feeling sentimental or had had too much of that shitty bathtub gin.

‘Buck.’

What had her name been? Eileen, maybe?

‘Bucky.’

Or perhaps Irene. Something like that. One of those names that now seem sweet and old-fashioned and he still quite likes-

‘Hey!’

He starts and Sam stands, hands on hips and a healthy frown built across his face, unhappy lines etching around his mouth.

‘What?’

Under the porch light Sam’s skin gleams bronze and his eyes glitter, his head tilted back a fraction in the patented Sam Head Tilt of Concern. ‘You sure you’re okay? You’ve been quiet, even for you.’

Which is an outright lie: Bucky has been practically chatty tonight. Not just tonight but of late in general. Something about Delacroix, he thinks, even from the first. Being here had felt like the first time he’d been able to catch his breath since Wakanda. He realises that he still hasn’t said anything and that Sam has rapidly escalated into the Scowl of Worry. Bucky attempts to ease his own features into a reassuring smile. It feels more like a grimace.

‘I’m fine, Sam.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Bucky leans against the railings, fingers working at a piece of paper without thinking about it. ‘Honestly, I’m fine, I’m just … thinking.’

‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ Sam mutters, an automatic response. But the lines of his shoulders ease and he joins Bucky by the railings, leans against one of the uprights that Sarah is trying to coax a planter of honeysuckle to twine itself around. Folds his arms across his chest. Sam’s eyes are still on him, dark pools that catch the light from the bare bulb over the porch door.

‘If it upset you, what Sarah asked earlier-’

‘It didn’t,’ he says, fast and firm. He can hear her voice still joining in with the bluesy songs playing on the radio in the kitchen, the husky catch and the way she always breaks a little over the top notes-

‘I’d have said so if it had.’

Sam nods. ‘Okay.’

‘I don’t mind talking about Steve.’ Bucky angles himself a little more towards Sam and watches him for a moment. ‘Do you?’

The dark eyes blink and a frown, a different one, works its way across Sam’s face. ‘Why would I?’

He could leave it at that, Bucky thinks to himself. He could let this go and they’ll carry on with what remains of the night, all easy jokes and shooting the shit and maybe coax Sarah into an extra glass of wine and a game of Scrabble or Monopoly and the thought of that fills him with an intolerable longing but the lingering confessional of earlier and his own nostalgic meanderings press with their own strange urgency.

‘I think-’ Bucky takes a breath. ‘I think there was a part of me that thought that he wouldn’t go through with it. Like, when he was actually confronted by what he was doing, he’d think, I dunno, better of it…’

Sam, for once in his life, is silent, waiting him out. Bucky huffs out a breath. ‘When he told me about it, I didn’t really question it. Not to his face. I didn’t feel like I had the right, not after everything.’

Sam unfolds his arms, scratches the back of his neck. ‘You said he asked you to go with him - did you ask him to stay?’

The words had been there, burning at the back of his throat while he felt the fragile world he had started building for himself slipping away. ‘No. Like I said - didn’t think I had the right for that.’

The floorboards on the porch creak as Sam shifts his weight, his mouth tightening and the glitter in his eyes sharpens.  

Etta James, Bucky thinks helplessly, Sarah has moved on to Etta James and he really loves the way she sings along, the voices blending together.

‘I thought Steve had already talked to you about the shield. That it was something you had worked out; if I’d known- I should have given you some warning, Sam. I’m sorry.’

‘Hey!’ Blade sharp and Sam leans forward slightly. ‘That is not on you. Steve and his dumb ass decisions and inability to communicate are all his problems. They are not your responsibility. You apologised for riding my ass about giving up the shield and I get why you did that. We’re good on all of that. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Bucky says. Sam raises his eyebrows. ‘Okay!’

There’s a grunt in response. Sam pushes himself away from the upright and the grunt turns into more of a groan; he presses the fingers of his right hand into his left shoulder joint and rotates his left arm, grimacing at the motion. ‘Damn.’

Bucky watches him, appraising. ‘It’s the trajectories, Sam, you gotta keep practising, buddy.’

‘I know, I know. Stupid big vibranium dinner plate. Who the hell ever thought a shield makes a good weapon outside of, like, Knights of the Round Table, or something?’

You could always give it up, Bucky thinks and yeah, no, too soon. Instead, he settles for: ‘You should get set up with regular physio or a masseur or something. There’s a good place in town - Carlton goes there for his knee, apparently. He could probably get you an introductory rate or something.’

‘Stop mother henning,’ Sam grumbles and it wins a wry smile from Bucky. Dum Dum used to say much the same thing on the regular.

‘Being a sergeant was about eighty per-cent mother henning, you know,’ he says.

Eyebrows twitch in a combination of amusement and suspicion. ‘What’s the other twenty per-cent?’

‘Yelling. Or glaring. I was never much of a yeller, so…’ He shrugs and sees the glint in Sam’s eyes but at least he has the satisfaction that he handed this one to the man deliberately on a plate. He’d be disappointed if Sam didn’t take it.

‘Oh-ho, so the staring problem is military strategy, huh? They drill you on that in basic training?’

Bucky smiles. ‘Something like that. Steve used to say it was just a Barnes thing.’ His mother had been the one clipping them around the ear; his father would level an oppressively disappointed stare over youthful transgressions that felt worse than any physical punishment. Maybe Steve had had a point.

Sam rotates his shoulder and winces again, gingerly shaking out his left arm. ‘Pity you can’t get really low dose serum in just one area. Just to target really, really annoying pain.’

‘Aren’t those called cortisone shots?’

‘I guess,’ Sam huffs. He leans both elbows against the railings. The sky has deepened to a clear velvet blue, studded with silver, and the moon rises high and full. He turns his head and studies Bucky for a moment. ‘Hey, can I ask you something? About the serum?’

Bucky stares across the lawn, pushes out a long breath. ‘Go on.’

There’s a pause while Sam seems to pick his words. ‘That whole good becomes great, bad becomes worse… You believe that?’

Of all the questions…He almost wants to cry with it. Or laugh. Or some hysterical combination of the two. He does and doesn’t concentrate on the precise folds of paper under his fingers and doesn’t see them at all. Steve had served himself up as a lab-rat like the dope he’d always been; Bucky had been turned into one kicking and screami-

‘I don’t know. It-’ Shaky breath through his chest. ‘It … amplifies … things. I guess. Not just strength and reflexes and hearing, but…’ He moistens his lips. ‘It’s like everything gets ramped up, kinda like adrenaline but all of the time. But does it make people better or worse… I don- I don’t know.’

‘You had it for, what, two years during the war?’

Bucky bows his head under the unrelenting gentleness of Sam’s tone. ‘Yeah. Not like Steve’s, it was a knock-off. I didn’t look any different, not the way he did. But-but yeah, that must have been the first time.’

More times after that. He’s read what was left of his own files, the things that hadn’t been torched when Hydra fell and piecing it together along with his own memories of liquid pumped into his veins that made every nerve ending scream, raw and exposed and agonising and Zola’s face with his eyes opaque behind his glasses, telling him you will be my greatest achievement, my beautiful soldier-

‘You didn’t go on a murderous rampage around Europe, though.’

He smiles sourly, feeling something kick in the pit of his stomach. ‘Apart from the one we were supposed to be going on, you mean?’

He sees the words catch Sam in the middle of his chest, his face flattening. ‘You know what I mean. You weren’t out of control; you didn’t want to start killing everything that moved.’

No. He’d just been focussed, precise, cold- 

Bile burning at the back of his throat and he presses it down. Paper scrunches between his fingers. ‘Only when Steve told me his terrible plans.’ He keeps his tone light.

‘Y-’ Sam’s eyes widen and he straightens, one accusing finger coming up. ‘You told me Steve always had a plan,’ he complains. ‘Rode my ass about not having a plan and how Steve always had some great plan!’

‘He did always have a plan,’ Bucky agrees calmly. ‘Not once did I say they were great. Occasionally they were okay, mostly they were insane. But he had them, which was my point.’

Sam stares at him, the porch light and his own indignation turning his dark eyes a glinting silver. ‘I hate you.’

He takes it, philosophical. ‘I know. But you do remember Steve’s plans, right? They were always just basically hitting something or someone really hard. It was my job, and Peggy’s, to make sure those plans actually worked.’  

Sam’s mouth works for a moment and then he snort-laughs softly and leans against the railings again. ‘What was she like?’

‘Peggy?’

He nods.

Bucky thinks about her the last time he had seen her, her hair silvered and face lined with age and experience and the grief of loss. Her memories patchy and uncertain, the past and present often as hopelessly entangled for her as they had been for him.

And he remembers a girl in a red dress standing upright and prim beside the bar in a London pub, her mouth set and her eyes daring him to make a pass and he - the almost-innocent, only slightly broken boy he had been then - had accepted this as a challenge, had set out to circumvent her defences, mocking both her and himself until she had laughed at him and they had started out again, assessing one another until they had come to the silent mutual decision that they could be friends. As two people who loved Steve, they could be friends. Somewhere over that time they had become friends that had nothing at all to do with Steve.

‘Peggy. She was…’ He feels his lips quirk into a smile, remembering the fire in her fine dark eyes and the way she would throw her head back when she laughed. ‘I think we were all a little in love with her, one way or another. I mean you’ve seen the videos and photos, she was a knock-out. But it wasn’t just that; she was- God, she was stubborn. Like a mule. Once she’d made up her mind about something, she would not let it go; we’d have some pretty, uh, robust conversations, shall we say, trying to work out strategy. Loyal to her backbone, and smart. Really smart.’ He tilts his head. ‘She had a strong moral compass but she had more grey areas in how she was willing to go about stuff than Steve did.’

There’s a strangely knowing look in Sam’s face that is bordering on fond. ‘Uh-huh,’ he says, the gap in his teeth showing in a faint, soft smile.

Bucky scowls in return. ‘What?’

Sam’s lips squish together, his cheeks rounding and then he shakes his head lightly. ‘Nothing. Go on.’

He hesitates, studying Sam’s face and then continues slowly, ‘She was hard on people but harder on herself. She was also very kind.’ 

There's a flicker across Sam’s face and Bucky narrows his eyes. ‘Okay, what? What’s with the look?’

Dark eyes widen in innocent denial. ‘What look?’

‘That.’ Bucky’s finger traces a circle in the air around Sam’s face. ‘That thing that you’re doing with your face, that look.’ The one he gets when he’s about to say something spectacularly sappy. Like a sap.

‘I do not have a look.’

‘You so too,’ he says heavily, ‘have a look. Knock it off.’

Sam huffs out a laugh, his shoulders shaking slightly. ‘Okay, Buck, me and my face will knock off whatever it is you think we got goin’ on here.’

There’s silence for a time while Bucky watches Sam rearrange his stupid expressive face with all its empathy and earnestness into something more neutral. He blows out a breath. ‘Anyway, Peggy was great. I hope her and Steve were really happy together. Are happy? Whatever.’

‘You think that’s who he went back for?’

Bucky raises his shoulders and drops them. ‘Can’t see who else it would be. He was pretty crazy about her.’ 

The painful twist to Steve’s mouth and the desperation banked down behind his eyes while Bucky felt his world fall away around him, again, staring back dumb and disbelieving.

We can get our lives back, Buck!

I don’t want it back…  

‘He saw her, you know?’ Bucky says suddenly. ‘During that’ -he winces- ‘Time Heist. God, that’s a stupid name.’

‘That was Tic Tac’s idea,’ Sam supplies smoothly, ‘don’t blame the rest of us.

‘It would be,’ Bucky grumbles.

Scott and all that blinding upbeat cheeriness that would be really, really annoying if he wasn’t such a genuinely nice guy. What would an enhanced Scott Lang be like, Bucky wonders vaguely, even more relentlessly cheerful? What had it made him? He feels the breath stutter in his chest, a familiar rhythm whenever he goes near that thought.

‘The serum…’ He swallows. ‘I wondered if-if what it found in me or enhanced, or whatever it is- I wondered if that made it easier for Hydra to do what they did.’

A rushing noise as Sam pulls in a breath. ‘Easier?’

‘Maybe there was just something wrong with me from the start. If I’d been a better person or a stronger one I wouldn’t have given in to them, I wouldn’t have let them turn me into that.’ There’s a small choked sound, wounded, and Bucky glances at Sam, turns his gaze back to the dark roll of grass and the tree-line beyond silhouetted against the sky because the quiet devastation in Sam’s face is unbearable. ‘I’d already killed so many people, even before the Howlies and then it was just- They’ve got the number of kills carved on a plaque in the Smithsonian like it's some fucking trophy but it’s all those people. I know they were the enemy but not every single one of them could’ve been a straight-up bad guy, right? I saw their faces; some of them were just kids. Peggy said I shouldn’t think about it like that but she wasn’t the one pulling the trigger over and over-’ He swallows against the bile lying at the back of his tongue. ‘And I wondered if that was what Steve finally saw, if that was one of the reasons he left.’

The words fade into the heavy silence swaddling the house.

‘Oh, that is some fucked-up next-level Catholic guilt bullshit right there!’

It startles a laugh out of him. Bucky straightens, stares at his friend with a baffled amusement. ‘What?’

Sam holds himself very straight, nostrils flaring and the devastation has been replaced by a blazing anger. ‘Buck. You have to know that none of that is true.’

Within the bare walls of his apartment in a Brooklyn he no longer knew, when the mandated therapy from his mandated therapist reminded him continually that he was a weapon to be held in check, when his best friend had walked away to a place far beyond his being able to reach him at all- All too easy to believe the worst things about himself. Steve had made him someone else’s problem and Sam, always diligent and dutiful, had checked in out of that old loyalty; easy to tell himself that, too, because the idea that Sam might have done it just for him was more than he could take. He would have to be a real person for that.

Being a real person was something that the stubborn, selfish part of him clung to; despite everything, even when he had thought it was all better off ended, he had clung on to life. And despite everything, in this quiet little town that made no demands and held no expectations of him he had found a life worth having. 

‘I know that,’ he says, quiet, and he meets Sam’s eyes with all of their heartfelt fire. ‘Objectively, I know all of that. It’s… It’s just hard to keep a handle on all of it sometimes.’

Sam nods, a jerky motion as though he doesn’t quite trust himself to do anything more. He sucks on a tooth, staring up at a vague point on the porch roof and then looks down again, his face all solemn and serious. 

‘Not gonna lie, those years I was chasing you I wondered the same thing sometimes. Like, was the Winter Soldier in there all along just waiting to be … woken up … or something. But…’

Bucky’s mouth twists up into a slightly sour smile. ‘Charmed you with my winning personality, huh?’

Sam growls and he laughs.

‘No, you’re a bigger pain in the ass than Steve ever said you were and he said plenty, in between telling me how you were the greatest guy in the known universe.’ He pauses and all of his lines soften a fraction, the tension across his shoulders unspooling. ‘You could have gone on a revenge spree after Insight and all of that. If anyone had the- Maybe not the right, but the reason, it was you. Why didn’t you?’

Bucky blinks and then frowns. ‘The Avengers pretty much had all that covered. Besides, Hydra- They’d taken enough of me already.’

Maybe it’s just the light catching in those dark depths but it looks like there’s a sheen across Sam’s eyes.

‘My life became pretty weird after I made friends with the guy lapping me around Memorial Park, what with the androids and aliens and wizards and all but the thing that still blows me away every time is that after everything that happened to you, you can still be the person you are. Okay, so I went out looking for a psychopath. But all I ever found was bits and pieces of someone trying to make sure no one else got hurt, someone out to protect other people. I still see that. Every Goddamn day.’

His jaw aches against the clench of his teeth, holding in a sweet sort of pain that spears through him. ‘Don’t make it weird, Sam.’ His voice sounds far too gruff. He clears his throat.

‘Asshole,’ Sam tells him. And there’s something roughened around his edges.

Bucky offers him a grin that feels a little more feeble and watery than he was hoping. ‘That’s more like it.’ He chews on his lower lip for a moment. ‘But I don’t think you can blame everything on Catholicism. Although, guilt is basically like our superpower.’

Sam rolls his eyes. ‘Oh great, so you got, like, souped-up super-powered guilt? Why am I not surprised.’

The laugh that rises to his lips feels a little easier. He bumps his shoulder against Sam’s, feels the answering pressure that doesn’t move. They lean against each other.

‘That whole good becomes great, bad becomes worse,’ Sam says after a while, ‘I don’t believe it. You said things get amplified and I get that. I mean, it makes sense. And it can’t be easy to deal with but after that… You make a choice what you do with it. Being all oh, the serum made me do it - nah. No. That’s too easy. At some point you gotta take responsibility for what you’re doing, for who you are.’

‘I think that, too,’ Bucky says, after a moment, voice soft. Sam leans a little harder against him. And then straightens. Sam tilts his head.

‘Are those magnolias?’

Bucky looks down at the neat row of little paper flowers lying along the beam of the porch railing. He hadn’t really been aware that his fingers, always searching for an occupation, had been busy with them all this while. ‘Uh,’ he says intelligently. ‘Uh, yeah. Looks like.’

‘Huh.’ The head tilts back. ‘They’re Sarah’s favourite.’

He is painfully aware of that fact. ‘Oh,’ he says.

Sam’s eyebrows have hit an inquisitive angle. ‘What’re you gonna do with them?’

Bucky shrugs, helpless and with a vague feeling of discomfort that he later remembers from presenting overly-ambitious projects at the school science fair. Or asking the prettiest girl in the hall for a dance. ‘Put ‘em in the trash, probably.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Sam nods, rolls his shoulders and suppresses the inevitable wince. ‘Pity. They ain’t bad.’ A smile spreads across his mobile mouth. ‘Hey, I was thinking: it’s about time you got caught up on your animation - you wouldn’t want the boys to think you’re, y’know, not cool. Or that you’re ancient. Or something.’

He would really be the worst poker player, Bucky thinks with indulgent patience; Sam can’t keep his thoughts off his face.

‘Next movie night we should watch Frozen.’

Bucky pulls in a breath and holds it for a moment. ‘Are you suggesting,’ he says levelly, ‘that I should watch a film called Frozen? Frozen, Samuel?!’

Distress shutters across Sam’s face. ‘I- Wha- No, wait, it’s not like-’

Bucky gathers up the twists of paper magnolias, holding them between his hands with more care than is needed. ‘Just let it go, Sam,’ he says and passes Sam into the house.

There’s a pause and then-

‘Oh, you son-of-a-bitch!’ 

He grins and then stands, uncertain, and feeling unwanted heat creeping up his cheeks. The radio still plays soft in the kitchen and he catches the pungent chemical scent of acetone and toluene- Sarah is painting her nails and he can picture the angle of her head as she works, the graceful lines of her neck and the soft burnished sheen of her skin.

The porch door closes heavily, Sam still muttering under his breath. There’s a creak on the stairs and they both look up; A.J. frowns down at them, accusing, his new Ant-Man pyjamas bright and a little too big until he grows into them. 

‘Uncle Sam!’ His aggrieved voice comes as an announcement. ‘You were going to read us a story.’

Sam winces. ‘Yeah, no, I’m sorry, I’ll be right up.’

A.J. blinks owlishly. 

‘Seriously, I’m coming.’ Sam starts moving. ‘See? I’m coming right now.’

A.J. remains on his stair until Sam joins him and then slips his hand into his uncle’s and they disappear back up the staircase. Bucky listens to the creaks as their footsteps move to the boys’ room and the low hum of voices and then it all settles. He stares at the pile of paper in his hands. The curving lines of paper flowers stare back.

He used to make grand statements to Steve about how he should make romantic gestures when they’d been in the middle of a battle-zone - and even before then - and no wonder Steve used to give him shit about it because of all the dumb ideas…

If he at least had some magnolia perfume to spray on them-

They are the Goddamn state flower, he can just buy her some magnolias-

He should scrunch up the sad bits of paper and just get rid of them. They are kinda pretty, though, the paper pearly ivory and pink. There is something inherently funny in a bouquet of paper flowers, he thinks; and he really loves the way that Sarah laughs, the way her eyes shine and then scrunch up and she’s so uninhibited and her smile spreads wide.

He approaches the doorway to the kitchen and taps lightly on the frame.

‘Hey, Sarah…’