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There are few places less suited for a love confession than a desert planet at the far end of the universe. But good timing was never a strong suit for Bucky, the poster child for “wrong place, wrong time”.
The rising rocks silhouetted against the red hued sky—and the fact that they are in space—would fill him with wonder in any other circumstance. Instead, he feels uneasy as they approach the base of the mountain where the promised stone awaits. He doesn’t know if it’s the chilly atmosphere or the way his feet lazily sink in the sand, but despite the breathtaking sight, the smell of clean dust and petrichor, and the unadulterated air, the place sings a tune of death. The perfectly still pools of water all around seem barren, and the silence more reminiscent of a cemetery than a church.
“I should probably get a haircut when we get back,” Natasha says, holding a strand of red hair with blonde ends in between her fingertips. A stranger could be fooled by her at-ease demeanor, the way she makes it sound like this is just another Thursday; but Bucky understands the gravity of the moment, knows the all-encompassing sorrow she’s been swimming in as she spent sleepless nights trying to bring everyone back.
He’d been lucky that Steve paired him with her instead of one of the others. It’s not like he hates them, they are just painfully unfamiliar. After the blip, the defeated avengers had scattered like pieces of a forgotten puzzle on a child’s bedroom floor, and he had seen none of them in years. Except for her.
“I like it,” he says, as if it matters. She looks at him and smiles, and maybe it does. The curve of her lips is magic that turns him into a boy shy of seventeen again, and he should be used to it, but even in the middle of this wasteland, his heart flutters all the same.
After the near-end of the world, he’d been trying to get used to his new life in New York. Sure, he kept stumbling into ghosts of innocent men whose life he had snatched away as they begged with fear in their eyes, but it was fine, really. He’d grown restless in Wakanda. They’d offered him peace, a sea of dead stars to stare at as he dozed off at night, quiet. But his thoughts were too loud and his guilt an ever present bedfellow who fed off his idleness. He’d never been one to shy away from a fight, and even had he wanted to this time, he couldn’t run from himself.
He started doing missions for Hill the moment he was back, finding himself running after targets in dark alleys, undercover in uncomfortably fancy hotel bars in the city, or perched behind an M4 under the gray Siberian sky. All by himself—most of the time.
“I bet the raccoon didn’t have to climb a mountain,” Natasha says.
“Well… beats a bloodbath in the basement of a shady billionaire’s house.”
“Aw, you remember? How romantic,” she says with mock delight.
But of course he remembers. It had been their first mission together. She’d shown up at the black market auction he was infiltrating, wearing a green dress with a distracting high slit.
“Come here often?” She’d said as she sat next to him, her scent enveloping him. Her voice was familiar, but he wasn’t sure who it was at first, her face unrecognizable under a nano mask. But when it all went to shit, and they dropped their disguises in favor of a good old-fashioned brawl, there she was, all professionally ruthless and downright impressive.
“Someone sent you to spy on me?” He’d asked her as he shoved away an attacker, raising his voice above the surrounding chaos. Her answer would be no, of course, regardless of the truth.
“Why are you so paranoid? She said, teasing him. “I just thought you could use some help.”
It wasn’t a failed mission, but they ended up more bruised and beaten up than planned. With their cover blown, they tended to each other’s wounds in a dimly lit room at an off-road lodge while they waited for extraction.
“See? I bet you’re glad I’m here now,” she told him as she carefully pressed an alcohol soaked cotton ball against the cuts in his forearm, disregarding his winces.
“I am,” he said. She looked up, her lips twitching into a smile. A matching one grew on his face, pleased with himself that he’d surprised her with his sincere admittance, instead of the snarky reply she’d expected.
Since then, she’d tag along his missions from time to time, and soon, he traded his wariness for trust, then for yearning. He felt improbably lighter by her side, his job not nearly the same without their banter and her teasing and the competitive spirit she had to match his own. Her mere presence became a respite from the haunted house he had built out of his own memories, but it had also cut his old, dusty heart open, exposing the loneliness he’d almost forgotten about.
They would go months without seeing each other—she’d be on missions of her own, he assumed, or living a life that he wasn’t part of—and when the day came for them to work together again, he’d be restless, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest as he waited for her at their agreed upon meeting point.
He never told her, refusing to be the man who made a move on her while she was grieving. As nice as it would have been to be more than some guy she worked with who had a silly—and way too obvious—crush on her, whatever they were would have to do.
But now that they are traveling through time and space, maybe it had been stupid not to tell her. She cares for him, a suspicious amount. And she’d definitely been checking him out that one time he’d changed out of his undercover clothes in their safe house in Prague. Is it foolish to have the audacity to hope for a chance with her? Maybe. She certainly deserves better. But if she wants him, nothing else matters.
As they reach the top of the mountain, her gaze flicks at him, and the little voice in his head whispers that it’s now or never. Don’t be a coward, Bucky.
“Nat…” His heart picks up speed as he realizes he has her full attention. Why is telling her he likes her scarier than whatever they are about to do to get the goddamn stone?
“James.” She stares at him, eyebrows raised. He’s being too transparent. She can surely sense his nervousness and knows what he’s about to say. It doesn’t matter, he decides.
“I know this is probably the worst time to say this, but I don’t know how this is gonna go, and maybe we’ll die and—“ God, he’s rambling.
“Stop that,” she interjects with a stern expression. “No one will die today.” Her tone lowers at the end, like she’s trying to convince herself, too. “What is it, Barnes?”
“I just—” She shifts on her feet, clearly growing impatient. “I might be a little bit in love with you,” he blurts. It is an understatement, but he’s trying not to come off too strong. “So if we make it out alive, then, maybe, if you want, we could…” he trails off, trying to read her expression, suddenly tainted with a hint of sadness. Damn it. Of course it’s a terrible idea to declare his undying affection during the most important mission he’s ever had.
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t know what else to say. It has all been questionably easy. Once upon a time, he’d been used to girls falling at his feet by virtue of his sheer charm, but those days are long gone. He can’t remember the last time he dared ask anything out of life and wasn’t left wanting.
“James,” Natasha says, breaking the silence. His eyes dart across her face, searching for a hint of what she’s about to say. “Actually, there’s something you should know.” There it is. He prepares for the worst, ready to break up with his short-lived victory. “You don’t remember this, but… a long time ago, you and I used to…”
Her pauses are suddenly excruciating.
“Used to what?” His heart races. He’s not ready for the words that will come out of her mouth. Had they known each other before… this? Bucky knows his memories are incomplete, his mind dotted with nameless faces and phrases he once heard but can’t remember where. But he wants to believe that not even a thousand mind wipes could make him forget someone like her.
“We used to be together. You loved me back then, too.”
Is she messing with him?
“When?”
“Seventy years ago, give or take”
“But you—“
“I’m older than I look,” she says, like she can read his mind.
“Oh.” He can’t reconcile what she’s telling him with the ruthless soldier he remembers himself to be. But she isn’t lying. She’d concealed it before, but it’s all plain to see now: the longing, the mourning of the years they can never get back. A cocktail of anger and heartbreak stirs within him at yet another thing they took from him. What else is hiding in the depths of his mind that he doesn’t know about?
She sighs. “Yeah.”
Bucky stares at her, trying to reach for the memories. Maybe if he can focus hard enough, he will remember. But he feels like a child trying to catch soap bubbles that pop at the touch. He curses himself, thinks of the thousand useless memories he would trade for one of her. Tell me all about it, he wants to say. He wants to lay his head on her chest and listen for hours while she plays with his hair. But there’s no time for that, so he settles for an apology.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” She says, closing the distance between them and cupping his cheeks.
His breath hitches at her touch, but he leans into it. He can tell she wishes she hadn’t told him, with regret written all over her face. He wants to reassure her that it’s okay, that despite the tragedy of it all, it feels good to learn that some light had slipped through the cracks of his misery. He’ll make up the memories if he has to.
“Good to know not even brainwashing can stop my game.”
“Idiot,” she says, rolling her eyes, playfully punching his chest. The air feels lighter already.
But guilt creeps in. It’s his fault that she hadn’t told him earlier. Maybe—
“I should have told you before,” he says. “At least we’d have more time…”
“It’s okay,” she says, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear, “we have time now”.
“Aw, how tender.”
They both draw their weapons, startled at the voice of—
“You?” Bucky says. Unless this is some kind of mirage, that’s the guy he and Steve fought during World War II. He looks the same as he did then, red, shriveled skin clinging tightly to his skull.
“A lifetime ago, I, too, sought the stones. I even held one in my hand. But it cast me out, banished me here, guiding others to a treasure I can not possess.”
“We don’t care about your life story, pal.”
“Just tell us where the stone is,” Natasha says, “and we’ll be on our way.”
“Ah. If only it were that easy.”
Bucky’s grip around his weapon tightens, his pulse rising. He wants to grab him by his stupid robe and punch the life out of him, then shoot him in the face a few times for good measure. But he suspects he can’t fight his way out of this one. The Red Skull gestures for them to follow him, and they cautiously do so, until he leads them to the edge of the mountain.
“What you seek lies in front of you… as does what you fear.”
“The stone is down there,” Natasha says.
So they just have to climb down the mountain and get it? That sounds easier than it should be, but he can’t wait to get out of this place, and hurries to step towards the grim cliff.
“For one of you,” the skull says. “For the other… In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love.” Bucky catches a glimpse of pain in Natasha’s gaze when she looks at him for a moment, before turning her head back to the Skull. “An everlasting exchange. A soul, for a soul.”
“I mean, he might be making this shit up for all we know,” James says, pacing back and forth across from her.
For the past few minutes, they’ve been discussing whether to trust a literal skinless Nazi. James is in denial, thinks there has to be another way. “We should just kill him and figure it out on our own,” he’d suggested. It is tempting, but much too optimistic for the situation they’re in.
“He isn’t. Thanos left here with the stone, without his daughter. It’s not a coincidence.”
He sighs, giving up. “Okay then.”
Her stomach drops at his smile. It doesn’t take a mind reader to know what he’s thinking. He can’t. She just got him back.
“No,” she says, rising to her feet. It would be a futile exercise, to beg the soldier she remembers not to die for her. But this man, who shares no memories with her, who doesn’t understand the agony in her voice… Maybe he’ll be reasonable.
“Natasha—”
“No.”
“Did you ever love me?” The question fills her with dread. “Do you still?” He says.
“No.” It’s the greatest lie she’s ever told, and he doesn’t believe it for a second. The air is suddenly colder, and not enough to fill her lungs. She feels like she’s drowning as she watches his expression fill with determination.
“It has to be me,” he says, as confidently wrong as ever.
“Don’t be stupid,” she says. “You’ve barely lived.” I lived a lot of lives before I met you. And after, too. Not to say she has wished for death. She has enjoyed flirting with it, time and time again, but she’s never let it win. I’ll go when I want to go.
“You do know I’m a hundred years old, right?”
“The frozen years don’t count.” He laughs, and a sip of warmth spreads through her chest, not enough to eat the fear away, but enough to let her breathe. She would bottle up the sound if she could. She feels like she has been, ever since the day she heard it for the first time back in the 1950s.
“Funny how you think you can talk me out of this.” She wants to slap the smugness out of him, but that wouldn’t make him any less right.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” Natasha says.
“Isn’t it?”
“What about Steve?”
“He’ll manage. ‘S not like it’s the first time,” he says. He thinks he’s funny. What about me? She already knows the answer. He’s decided he’s doing this for her, and they’ve reached a dead end street.
“There has to be another way,” she says, echoing his words from earlier, but they are hollow. This was their curse. Her curse. Natasha was now convinced that if, by some impossible miracle, they found each other once again, they would lose each other all the same.
“There isn’t.”
She reaches for his hands, almost squeezing them with hers. Why did she have to tell him? She hadn’t for so long, catching no hint of recognition in his eyes. Why give him yet another lost memory to feel guilty about? But then he’d told her he loved her, and she thought he deserved to know. How foolish. How careless. She should have known better.
“Okay, you win,” she says.
And then she kisses him. The warmth of his lips halts time and annihilates space, and they aren’t in this graveyard of a planet anymore, but in a universe where only the two of them exist. He pulls her closer, their kiss growing frantic, his hands wild on the fabric tight to her skin, like he’s trying to take a bit of her with him, save it in his pocket so that he won’t lose it. She belongs nowhere and to no one—that’s the life she’s chosen—but if there’s anyone that gets to keep a piece of her, it’s him. Maybe she should have told him sooner. The thought fills her with melancholy. They could have had years of this, instead of meager seconds at the doorstep of death.
Their gazes meet when they break apart. The sadness in his eyes twists the knife already inside her, and it only strengthens her resolve. Seizing his distraction, Natasha lets go of him and knocks him to the ground.
“I’m sorry, James.”
She starts towards the edge, bracing herself for the fall, but her body slams against the ground under James’ weight instead. She sees it in his eyes, the monster sized fear that could swallow this planet whole.
“I’m not letting you do this,” he says. His tone is grave, but his voice cracks. Please let me do this, his eyes plead, as if he could ever convince her. He doesn’t remember you, Natasha. That’s why he doesn’t know the lengths you’ll go to save him.
“It’s not up to you.”
They struggle, trying to stop each other from leaping off. Her ribs ache. Her head feels like it’s about to explode. It’s been years since they’ve fought like this. His eyes hold the same intensity as they did that day on the highway, but his attacks are weaker. She can beat him. He breaks away from the grip she has on him. No. The tables have turned, and he’s the one charging towards the cliff.
It’s instinct: drawing out her gun, putting her finger on the trigger. But she doesn’t want to fight James; she wants to get rid of the distance between them, undo his laces, his belt, the buckles on his vest, and give him a sliver of that terrifying love she’s been holding in.
The shot is strident in the quiet air. Blood spills out of his leg.
A rush of triumph washes over her, river like, violent and wild, its current bringing the realization that it’s time to go. Death, her old roommate and foe, stares at her from the bottom of the precipice. She doesn’t wrestle with it this time, but runs to it headfirst.
A metal hand grabs her by the ankle—she doesn’t know whether to blame the adrenaline coursing through his veins or the goddam super soldier serum—and drags her far away from where death awaits, so much that it becomes blurrier and blurrier, until it disappears.
“Stay there.” James says.
She has no chance to stop him despite his wounds, but he is slower than before, and she catches him, barely, by his right wrist. In the back of her mind, Natasha knows she won’t hold him for long. Her best bet is to implore him to not let go, to forget this foolish plan and climb back up. But she knows him, and she knows he won’t budge.
Nothing she touches is safe. It was foolish to dare hope that, for once, loving her wouldn’t hurt him.
His face blurs behind the tears that pool in her eyes. Her anguish muffles his words, and she can’t quite make what he’s saying. Something about this being the least he can do.
“Stop that talk. You deserve to live,” she whimpers, “after everything you’ve been through.”
It’s disconcerting, the way tears roll down her eyes for him as she tells him he deserves to live. Does he? It doesn’t matter. He wants to. He has too many wrongs to right, too many lost years to make up for. It would take him a hundred lifetimes to do so, and he doesn’t even get one. But he’s learned something about himself today: he would do anything for Natasha. She doesn’t want to let him, though, holding his hand so tight she might squeeze the air out of him. Just let me go. I’m trying to save you, damn it.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t remember you.”
“Shut up.”
Her tears turn into sobs, and it feels awful to be the one to add to her grief, but if this works the way it’s meant to—and it has to—he’ll give her back everything she’s lost. She’ll be okay without him. For now, he does his best to conjure up words that will ease up her pain, if only for a moment.
“I’m sure there’s a timeline where we get to have each other,” he says as his fingers slip further from her grasp. He wishes they weren’t wearing gloves, that he could feel her touch one more time. “Just think about that version of us if you ever miss me.”
He pictures them going out dancing on a September night, her head resting on his shoulder as they sway to music he’s learned to tolerate. “Let’s go home,” she whispers in his ear when the night grows old, and they spend the hours drenched in one another’s warmth, wrecking their bedroom with love. The sun rises upon them, grazing their bodies softly through the window, but they pay it no mind. Instead, they stay in bed all day, wrapped in each other’s arms, ignoring everyone’s texts. They’re happy, laughing in the face of fate.
His heart sinks at her bitter chuckle.
“Oh, fuck them,” she manages. Of course that isn’t any consolation. Yeah, fuck them .
He can’t remember what falling feels like, only the frightening certainty of death the moment the metal handle broke off the train. But he doesn’t have to wonder for long. It happens much too fast. He can’t conjure up a scream, his life doesn’t flash before his eyes. All he feels is the cold penetrate his glove as their hands slip apart. Then it’s all darkness.