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Moment of Tangency

Summary:

Sam vacations alone. Bucky buys plums. They pass like ships in Bucharest, never knowing what might’ve been.

or

In this universe, they’re just strangers in a foreign city. But for one moment, they almost weren’t.

Notes:

Read Silent Night and Point of Convergence

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

In this reality, there’s no Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Sam started his jog later than usual. It was a nice, quiet run.

Steve got through to Bucky. He needed time—his fractured mind and newfound freedom brought him to Bucharest. Steve hoped for his friend’s return someday.

Sam stops by a fruit stall. He exchanges a glance with a man wearing a cap.

“How much for the plums?” Sam asks the vendor in Romanian, something he learned from his phrasebook. His vacation has been nice and quiet.

Bucky opens his apartment door, a bag of plums in his hand.



Notes:

Moment of Tangency

n. a fleeting glimpse of what might have been.

In geometry, a tangent is the point at which a line “just touches” a curve, where they share precisely the same angle, before separating again and carrying on to infinity.

Excerpt from
”The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”
John Koenig