Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I have a great past, so I’m totally fine.

*

He remembers the way the trees smelled.

“God, why do we always end up in the fuckin’ forest?” Walker bitches behind him, boots crunching on the ground.

He remembers watching the way Steve leaned to the side to pick Mjölnir up by its handle.

“It isn’t always the forest,” Yelena chides. “For Ghost we went to the desert.”

He remembers the way it felt when he knew Steve wasn’t coming back for him this time.

“Even worst, the desert,” Alexei is complaining. He yanks at the belt of his uniform. “Sand in places that need no sand.”

Bucky’s feet keep him moving until he’s at the edge of the quantum travel pad, and then there’s Steve, looking exactly how he did on the day they said goodbye.

“Okay, this is serious now,” Yelena tells the group. “Everyone stop talking.”

He’s done a lot of healing and some moving on, but looking at Steve again, dressed in his nightmare Pym suit, Bucky feels no different than he did that day. This is one of the few moments of Bucky’s life he remembers with crystal clear precision.

“Don’t do anything stupid ‘til I get back,” Steve says in his Captain America voice.

Behind the trees, the edges of the universe start to darken.

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you,” Bucky says. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to play along or not. When they were in Yelena’s nightmare, everything went on around her without her, and that seems so much worse. They hug for the last time a second time, and Bucky quietly adds, “I’m gonna miss you, buddy.”

Steve looks down at him. Bucky wasn’t wrong that day. He thought about it a lot after, how there was something about him that didn’t look like Steve at all.

“It’s gonna be okay, Buck,” he says -- but it wasn’t a promise then, and it doesn’t sound like one today, either.

Bucky doesn’t have anything to say about that.

“How long is this gonna take?” Sam’s voice asks.

Banner’s voice, next, as Bucky watches Steve walk up onto the quantum travel pad. “For him? As long as he needs. For us? Five seconds.” The machine whirls to life and Bucky can’t look away from Steve. “You ready, Cap? Alright, we’ll meet you back here, okay?”

“You bet,” Steve lies.

“Not to compare traumas or anything,” Walker says flatly. “But when does the bad stuff start?”

Yelena immediately snaps back, “Shut up for once.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything to either of them. He and Steve stare right at each other as Steve dials his Pym helmet over his face. Direct eye contact. Bucky forever the last thing Steve looked at before he purposely lost himself to time.

“Going quantum in three, two, one…” It’s been creeping through him but now the feeling is impossible to ignore: the gut rot. The shame. The embarrassment and the knowing that everyone would forever be curious about why Steve left, and why Bucky didn’t go, too? “And returning in five, four, three, two, one.”

Nothing. Sam asks, “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Banner says, but Bucky does. He turns away as Banner continues, “He blew right by his time stamp. He should be here.”

Alexei, standing beside Yelena, loudly whispers to her, “I thought Captain Rogers is on moon.”

The Void is making its way over the water and through the trees, now, and then Steve is back, again, a cruel twist of fate in itself, finally returning to the place he left four years ago.

“Don’t do anything stupid ‘til I get back,” Steve says in his Captain America voice. Then, darkness takes the edge of the quantum travel pad. Things are getting dark fast. “But you already know I’m not. I’m not coming back. Not for you.”

Behind Bucky, Walker asks, “Wait, did he really say that?”

“No,” Bucky manages. Since he fell off the train the cruelest moments of his life have all happened in front of an audience. Why would this day be any different? “He didn’t say it.”

The Void has surrounded them, Sam and Banner gone, just the quantum travel pad, Bucky, Steve, and a group of strangers who are now witnessing one of the worst moments of Bucky’s life.

“You weren’t good enough for me, Buck,” Steve shrugs. “You never were.”

Yelena interrupts it all, says, “Okay,” voice getting louder, “This is enough. Everybody look for a way out.”

“Why didn’t you take me with you?” Bucky asks.

Steve smiles at him. “Sorry, pal. I think your scrambled brains gave you the wrong idea.”

That knocks the wind out of Bucky; absolutely leaves him unable to say another word, but it doesn’t matter, because the world is going black, dead black, and they’re knocked sideways through the quantum travel pad in a dog pile into Alexei’s first apartment.

*

14 MONTHS LATER

*

Every day Bucky waits for Steve to fall out of the sky.

For the first few years, he used to look for Steve in the people on the street. That part was habitual -- always calculating, always scanning, just now with intention to see those eyes or that face. But the years went on and Bucky saw a million people who weren’t the man he was looking for, and one day, his gaze just drifted up to the clouds.

What was it about the future, anyway? Why did people just disappear when things got hard?

“That’s not true,” Yelena says. “And tell me again why he would fall out of the sky.”

They’re sitting on the ledge of the Warwick together, eating lunch and looking down at the city. Bucky scrunches up his sandwich wrapper and tosses it into the bag between them.

“It is true.” He’s been around long enough to know for sure. Sam doesn’t even return his calls anymore. The second question is harder to answer. He thinks for a second, sucking on his teeth and squinting out over the horizon. After a second, he turns to peer over at her, half a smile on his face as he explains, “Stranger things have happened to me and Steve Rogers.”

She snorts and digs around in their lunch bag, says, “Well, you would know,” not unkindly or flippantly.

“I mean, I read about it,” Bucky amends. “He did a lot of stuff when we weren’t together anymore.”

She snorts again. “Sounds like a man.”

Bucky laughs at her and shakes his head. “He was good.” But even as he says it, it doesn’t sound true. He goes back to looking out at the city. The water. Up to the sky, where it’s brightest and hardest not to squint. “When he was here, he was good.”

“As good as he was in the Void?”

“That wasn’t him.” Bucky shakes his head and looks down at the sandwich clenched in his metal hand. He had nightmares again for weeks after that. “Steve was… he was my best friend. He was my family.”

She closes one eye and squints at him. “Family like the wife or family like the brother?”

Bucky makes a face and shoves her so hard she cackles and drops the pickle slice she was about to put in her mouth.

“Hey!” She complains. They watch the pickle roll down the front of her vest and free fall to the busy street below. When it’s gone, she turns to him and accuses, “This is why you don’t date, then.”

“I date.” No he doesn’t. He had a moment on the apps that he hated and sometimes he flirts to get what he needs. She gives him a look. He gets shifty and bites his sandwich. “I’m busy. I work too much.”

She gives him a sarcastic, “Okay,” and they both fall silent again.

“I still miss him,” Bucky finally says. It’s quiet and he’s back to looking up at the sky, waiting for Steve to fall out of the clouds in his Pym suit. The sun behind them makes it so they’re almost too bright to look at. “Every day.” Something changed in him when they were in the Void and he still hasn’t figured it out. “I can’t help that.”

He feels Yelena’s hand on his back, rubbing along the strap of his tac suit and then up over the round of his shoulder.

“Heart breaking means there was so much love,” she says quietly. “That’s what I know.”

Bucky feels that lump back in his throat. The same one he gets every time he thinks about Steve lately, and the raw, open wounds he left behind.

“Have you ever been in a restaurant when someone’s dropped something?” Bucky asks.

Yelena shrugs. “Sure.”

“It’s… that’s what it felt like,” he manages. “Being in a restaurant and hearing something shatter.”

“Everyone stops what they do and look around and say, fuck, that sounded bad.”

“And then you see the poor guy who dropped a hundred plates and think god, that must be so embarrassing.” Bucky pauses and licks his lips. “And for a split second, everyone is in on his moment together. Everyone knows what happened and can see how bad it was.”

“And then the night moves on and everyone leaves the man to clean up his shattered plate.”

Bucky shrugs and looks down at his sandwich, slowly lifts it up to take another bite. “Everyone moved on but I didn’t. I’m still there picking up glass, but the longer it takes, the smaller and harder the pieces get.”

“And even after all that, you still miss him,” Yelena summarizes, looking at him.

Bucky smiles small and sad, then quietly agrees, “Even after all that.”

*

Being part of the New Avengers isn’t a bad thing.

Bucky enjoys the work. He learns he likes being part of a team. It reminds him of the blurry honeymoon between Steve finding him in Bucharest and the war in Wakanda; sharing living space, getting to know each other in-between missions. The fundamental tactical differences that come when you’re not fighting by yourself anymore.

The irony of living in Stark’s old building and having an unlimited bankroll in de la Fontaine is not lost on him, either. Sometimes he really understands what Sam used to say about walking in Steve’s shadows. Bucky and Yelena are friends, and Walker still breaks his heart, but the others are fine, friendly. It’s a good life and it feels more comfortable than Congress or SHIELD.

“Oh good, you’re here,” Valentina says one morning, gigantic grin on her face, and that should have been Bucky’s first warning sign.

He slows his pace as he walks into the briefing room.

Yelena, the only other person in the room, is already sitting at the conference table. She shrugs and tells him, “I don’t know what either.”

“Since when is that good?” he dazedly asks Valentina, but she doesn’t respond. Her grin stays maniacal and wide across her face, but her gaze drifts up over Bucky’s shoulder, back to the door he walked through.

Bucky grimaces at that and turns around and there’s Steve Rogers, 109 years old.

“Steve?” Bucky says.

Valentina’s grin is now assuredly shit-eating. “Oh, sorry, do you two know each other?”

“You!” Yelena accuses, glaring at Steve.

Steve has barely made it into the room. Valentina stands up to greet him properly, smoothing one hand over her skirt as she crosses the room with the other held out. “Captain Rogers, so nice to meet you in person finally.”

“Finally?” Bucky echoes.

Yelena is still giving a death glare from where she sits at the table.

“Ma'am,” Steve greets politely, stepping forward to shake her hand. They do, and then Valentina turns to the side so she isn’t blocking Steve’s view of the table. He and Bucky look right at each other, and then Steve breathes, “Bucky.”

Yelena interrupts. “Oh no no no. No Bucky.” She stands up and mimics the way Steve sounded when he said it. “No Bucky.”

“Steve,” Bucky says again.

Valentina grins and starts walking back towards the table. “God, don’t you just love a reunion?”

“You better start explaining,” Yelena demands, looking between Valentina and Steve. “Both of you.”

Steve looks how he did the last time Bucky saw him, sitting on the bench by the lake at Stark’s house. He’s dressed differently, back in dark blue tac gear similar to Bucky’s own. Plain. No stars, no stripes, no SHIELD.

“Yelena Belova, Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers, Yelena Belova,” Valentina introduces, sounding less impressed in the second half of her introduction. “Widow, Captain, Captain, Widow.”

Steve nods in Yelena’s direction but she just scowls more. Bucky finally laughs.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he sighs as Valentina gestures towards the table.

She sits back down and says, “As delighted as I am by this turn of events, it wasn’t my doing.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Yelena snorts.

Valentina settles back in her chair. “Believe it or don’t.” She turns and looks at Bucky boredly, and then at Steve, still standing awkwardly. “You should be thanking the universe. Loverboy here is only involved because his security clearance recently got the Avengers upgrade.”

Even from here, Bucky can tell Steve’s got a thousand questions he wants to ask. But he clears his throat instead, raises his eyebrows, and soldiers on.

“SWORD has received data that the Fantastic Four are earthbound,” he says, like any of them should know what that means. He has the decency to look sheepish when he makes eye contact with Bucky as he talks. “They’ve been gone for almost seventy years.”

Yelena crosses her arms. “Well that makes two of you.”

“They left earth in the 1960’s with Reed technology,” Steve continues, ignoring her comment and determinately looking back at Valentina. “It was more powerful than they realized. The tech that Reed created not only time travelled, but caused time dilation.”

Valentina turns to look at Bucky and Yelena and explains, “They’ve been in a different timeline this whole time and just figured out a way to get home.”

“Why would they want to?” Bucky asks. Seventy years spent somewhere else is a lifetime. He would know.

Valentina’s voice goes saccharine and sweet. “You’d have to ask them that,” then back to her normal, pointed tone. “What I do know is there’s a spaceship from an alternate universe hurtling towards earth at a gazillion miles a fuckin’ hour, and as the Avengers, it’s your job to stop it.”

“Well when are they getting here?” Yelena asks.

This time, Steve answers. “We don’t know yet. We know they left. We know they’re tracking to land in New York.” He looks at Bucky again and sighs. “We won’t know when until it’s happening.”

“Great,” Bucky says quietly, for both things.

Chapter Text

Bucky leaves the debrief room by himself.

And he makes it all the way to the elevator before Steve catches up to him.

He looks different -- the white and gray hair, the wrinkles on his face, the way his ears stick out a little more than they used to. Bucky glances up as the elevator doors close and is hardly surprised when he sees Steve right there, awkwardly wedging himself through the doors.

They stand silently for a few moments before Bucky asks, “Well?”

“I didn’t know you were on the team,” Steve says stupidly. “I thought it would be Sam.”

Bucky scoffs and stares at him, flabbergasted. After another moment of not saying anything he tilts his head back and when it’s clear Steve’s not talking and boggles again, “WELL?”

“Bucky, I’m sorry,” Steve says, that old familiar voice. “The risk of a split was too high.”

“What, and you marrying Peggy Carter didn’t change the whole fuckin’ universe?” Bucky asks back.

Never in a million years did Bucky think he would be standing here in an elevator having an argument with Steve today, but here he is, and what he said to Yelena the other day sticks in his brain like a tack. Stranger things have happened to him and Steve Rogers.

Steve doesn’t immediately reply, so Bucky carries on, “You didn’t create some nightmare parallel universe where you left me this time just because you felt like it?”

He stares back at Steve staring at him, apparently flabbergasted, standing there with his mouth open before he asks, “Who said I married Peg?”

“Don’t do this to me today,” Bucky says.

Steve’s brow wrinkles up, and even though he’s so much older, he still looks and acts exactly like Steve. It’s crossing the wires in Bucky’s brain.

“Bucky, hold on-” he starts. They reach ground floor and the doors open.

“You know what? We’ve spent more time apart than we ever did together,” Bucky blurts out, all of the worst thoughts he’s had since Steve left tumbling out of his mouth in a way he can’t stop. “Always chasing each other through time and apparently now space.”

“Bucky-”

Neither of them get out, and the doors close again. Bucky smacks the open button. “Maybe the universe isn’t trying to bring us together, Steve,” he says as the doors open again. “Maybe we’re actually supposed to be apart.”

He leaves Steve behind in the elevator, but Steve hurries after him, saying, “Peggy and I weren’t together like that! Bucky, please listen to me.” Bucky’s still storming through the lobby of the Watchtower, and he knows it’s dramatic, he knows all of Valentina’s employees are staring at him, but he can’t stop. “Every time I returned a stone, the risk of a timeline split went up.”

“What, did you pick a fight in every dimension?” Bucky crabs, smacking his way through the main lobby doors metal arm first.

“When I got back they offered me the ice,” Steve calls out to him.

Bucky stops in the middle of the sidewalk and turns around. “Jesus, Steve,” he frowns.

“I said no.” Steve walks up and raises his eyebrows, earnest. “The only other option was to go deep.”

Bucky takes a deep breath in through his nose and frowns, watching as everyone walking along the sidewalk curves around them, giving space on both sides. He studies Steve’s face. He’d know it anywhere. Same nose slope. Eyes he dreamt about when he was a dumb kid.

“Working for SWORD deep,” Bucky finally says flatly.

Steve simply says, “Yeah.”

Bucky grumbles and shakes his head. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“It wasn’t a choice, Buck,” Steve says.

Bucky automatically snaps, “Don’t call me that.”

“Bucky. I’m sorry. There are things I can’t fully explain yet,” Steve tells him quietly, taking a step closer. Bucky feels himself tense and pull back an inch. “And I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need you to trust me.”

They stare at each other, hard eye contact, until Bucky flicks his gaze to the side, over Steve’s shoulder.

The Watchtower stands behind them, evidence that time loops can be achieved through the years simply going on and on.

“It’s good to see you,” Bucky finally says, and then leaves Steve there, alone by himself on the street.

*

He has his own apartment but took Valentina’s offer of keeping a room in the Tower, as well.

Bucky has too much shit to figure out before he gets to go home and fall asleep on the couch to reruns on TV. The conversation with Steve is still thunking around in his head. He makes a sandwich about it.

“We’re not different,” he tells Yelena, currently standing on the other side of the kitchen island. “America did to Steve what HYDRA did to me. And they’re equally unsorry about it.”

She watches him knife mustard out of the jar. “What do you mean?”

“We were both used as science experiments,” he shrugs. “Recipients of medical experiments that went wrong, pivot after pivot after pivot for the good of the country.”

Yelena thinks for a moment. Bucky screws the lid back on. After a while, she asks, “Did Steve like to be Captain America?”

“It’s not that easy. It’s like asking do you like being yourself.”

She snorts. “Well, my answer to that is easy.”

“Captain America isn’t an outfit or the shield,” Bucky explains, not for the first time, voice quiet as he lays folds of turkey across the bread. “It’s something you have or don’t and Steve was the first one who had it.”

Yelena grins at him, then teases, “You have a thing for the men with the shield.”

“Yeah I’m noticing.” Bucky’s not opening that box today. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

He slices up some tomatoes, thin, as she tisks and says, “Alright, we can table that for later. You and Steve Rogers are not the same. You would not run from the fight. You would not hide in the suburbs of the past.”

Even though it’s old news, thinking about it and imagining it hits Bucky in the chest like a punch the same way it did the first time, and even though he doesn’t mean to, he sees it all: Steve and Peggy in a little one bedroom wartime house, curtains blowing gently in the breeze, delicate little flowers painted into the wallpaper.

Bucky stares at the sandwich. “He told me he didn’t marry her.”

“Bullshit, he didn’t marry her,” Yelena scoffs. “He wears a ring.”

He sighs and holds both hands up in a ‘what can I do?’ fashion, and then wipes his palms off on his pants. “I have space problems,” he says. “I can’t be thinking about Steve kissing Peg Carter right now.”

“America is not HYDRA, and whatever happened, Steve did it willingly,” Yelena says pointedly, watching as he slides her sandwich on a plate towards her. She levels him with her big round stare and raises her eyebrows. “Do not forget that.”

“It’s been proven that I can’t,” Bucky says sarcastically, and then, with a sigh, “Not when it comes to Steve.”

Yelena gives him a flat look and then both of their phones ding.

“Simultaneous noises are never good,” she muses, picking up her phone. “Report to deck. What does yours say?”

Bucky flips his phone over and picks up his sandwich. “Same thing.”

“See you in ten,” Yelena says unceremoniously, cramming half of her sandwich into her mouth.

Bucky waves her off and stands there at the counter eating the rest of his.

*

“Satellite image populated,” the robotic voice from Yelena’s handheld says, as they all stand there, staring at the screen. “Extra dimensional ship entering the atmosphere.”

Alexei asks, “Extra dimensional, what does that mean?”

“It’s a cool ship,” Walker muses.

Bucky stares at the screen. The spacecraft moves slowly and then rolls enough to reveal itself as belonging to the Fantastic Four.

“Well, he was right,” Bucky says. “It’s happening, and we know it.”

Walker asks, “Where are they gonna land?”

“Hopefully not Empire statue,” Alexei says. “Bob? Time for cloud ride to space.”

“This isn’t good,” Bucky sighs to everyone, still watching the screen.

*

They’re mobilized within the hour.

“Oh good,” Yelena says when Steve walks in. “Here you are again. Back with not your team.”

Bucky looks up long enough to make eye contact with Steve and then goes back to buckling himself into his uniform. He might not need this many knives in space but he does want to be prepared.

“I’ll be joining you for the duration of this mission, ma’am,” Steve says and even though there are bigger things to deal with right now, even though it’s been years, even though even though even though, Bucky’s eyes tear up.

Yelena wrinkles her nose. “Who is ma’am?”

“Walker, you there?” Bucky asks the bug in his ear.

Walker’s voice replies, “Yup, hear you loud and clear, Buck. They’re rolling out in six.”

“We got six minutes, guys.” Bucky bends over to tuck a couple extra disc grenades into the ankle of his boot. Yelena and Steve are still eyeing each other. “Can we do this later?”

Steve talks to Yelena, says, “This only works if we trust each other,” which is possibly the worst thing he could have chosen to lead with.

Yelena makes an offended gag and opens her mouth to reply.

“What’s the plan?” Bucky interrupts.

“Ugh. You, me, and this one-” Yelena jabs her thumb in Steve’s direction. “Makes sure that spaceship-” she points at the still image of the Fantastic Four’s spacecraft frozen on every screen in the room. “Lands safely and does not take out entirety of Manhattan.”

Steve nods. “Once they’re grounded, we make contact.”

Bucky wrinkles his face up and asks Steve, “Is this normal for you now? Aliens?”

“Step up from space bugs,” Steve smiles - devastatingly so - which is a kick to Bucky’s gut when he’s already down on the ground.

“Hopefully we do not need Bob,” Yelena continues. “Bob stays on lock regardless.”

Steve looks over at her. “Bob?”

“Very important superhero,” she says. “Also Soldier Serum.”

“Three minutes, you guys,” Walker tells them.

Bucky, Yelena and Steve walk out to the helicarrier, where a small spacecraft is ready and rolling for them on the open-sided deck. As they approach the craft crew members scatter, and Bucky nods his awkward thanks as he follows Steve though the loading dock of the craft.

“This looks complicated,” Yelena smiles, plunking herself down in the co-pilot chair.

Jesus, space. Bucky is happy to sit on the bench seat lining the wall behind the cockpit. He reaches back and pulls the strap across his chest as Walker says, “Sixty seconds.”

“Captain Rogers on countdown,” Steve says into the comm. “This is Commodore 616.”

Ground control replies. “Hear you loud and clear, Cap. Go for launch.”

“Ten seconds,” Walker says in Bucky’s ear.

The ship gets louder and starts to roll, and Bucky just watches Steve. The way this is clearly so familiar to him as interacts with the dashboard, focused.

“You’re going.” Walker starts laughing. “Holy hell.”

Bucky’s never been to space before and it feels exactly how all those astronauts on TV ever looked. He peels himself back off the bench when they make atmospheric entry and Steve automatically flips another series of switches.

“You okay?” he asks, glancing back at Bucky over his shoulder.

Bucky says, “Yeah,” and turns to look through the little window beside him. How can earth be so big, but get so small so fast?

“We go in friendly,” Yelena says. “We are earth greeting squad.”

Steve nods. “We can be friendly until there’s a reason not to be. All we know for sure is these guys are from earth, and they want to get back to it safely.”

“Why SWORD?” Bucky asks suddenly. All he can picture is Steve working at a visitor center on the moon, greeting little astronaut tourists and handing out folded hand drawn maps. “There are better places to hide.”

All Steve says is, “Earth was off the table.”

“Earth was off the table,” Yelena scoffs. “Please.”

“With all due respect, ma’am-”

“Again with the ma’am.”

“-this isn’t the time or the place to be explaining-”

“Steve,” Bucky says.

“Oh there will never be a time or place-”

“Steve,” Bucky says again.

“Hey, there’s something coming in hot on your left,” Walker tells him. “Too fast to tell.”

“-it was a complicated situation and I was following-”

“STEVE,” Bucky shouts.

As Steve jerks and Yelena turns to look at him, a blast comes from up ahead and hits the front end of their craft. Bucky swears and grabs the handle on the seat as the whole thing shudders.

“Hey guys, this isn’t friendly fire,” Walker tells them. “These guys are shooting to kill.”

Three more blasts, all fast, all in rapid succession, with one knocking their craft sideways despite Steve’s evasive maneuvering.

“There’s a switch right above where your hand is,” Steve tells Yelena. “Flip it.” Yelena does, and around them, Bucky hears the atmospheric hum of space missiles churning online. “Shoot to disarm and disengage.”

Yelena exchanges fire and Steve swings the craft around again, but already, Bucky can tell they’re no match. He unbuckles his belt and walks himself into the back of the craft, holding onto the walls with both hands so he doesn’t fall over. If their power systems get taken offline, they’re dead.

“There are four of them inside,” Walker says in Bucky’s ear. Then, “Oh, fuck.”

Right as he says it, Bucky stoops over to look through the ship and out the window. He can immediately see exactly what Walker is referring to. In front of their craft is a big, floating fireball of motion. At first Bucky thinks it’s damage taken to their craft -- and then it morphs into the shape of a human.

“We need Bob,” Bucky immediately tells Walker. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

The human made out of fire waves at them through the front window.

“I hate space,” Yelena says, gritting her teeth.

She tries to blast the fire figure but their missile is too slow and he’s too close. Bucky holds onto the ceiling as he makes his way back to the front of the spacecraft. He stops behind Steve’s chair and watches as Yelena tries again to hit the figure.

“If we turn back to earth, they’ll follow us,” Steve says, and Bucky can hear the seriousness in his voice. “It would be mass destruction.”

“Wake Bob up,” Yelena yells into her bug.

Bucky’s still listening to Steve. “Going back to New York isn’t an option,” he agrees, cutting himself off and holding onto Steve’s seat when he dips them fast enough to unbalance everyone. “How well do you know the universe?”

“We don’t need the universe,” Yelena snaps. “We need Bob.”

“Walker we’ve got two options here.” Their spacecraft makes an incredibly intimidating creaking noise. Bucky reaches up to grip the ceiling with his metal arm. “And for the second one, we don’t come back to earth.”

Walker sounds out of breath as he replies, “I’m working on it.”

“Hold off,” Bucky tells Steve. “Buy us five minutes.”

Yelena is still blasting missiles, but it’s clear their tech compared to the Fantastic Four is decades behind. The figure made out of fire whips back and around the other ship again, effortlessly absorbing the missile Yelena shot that otherwise would have blown into their wing.

“Oh I hate the fire man,” Yelena grits.

All three of them watch as the mass of fire turns back to look at them. They’re clearly not human - they’re in space and on fire - but for a second they look it, freakishly so, and Bucky swears he sees a grin cross its face before it raises its arms in the air.

“Oh no,” Bucky says.

Steve hisses, “Alright, that’s five minutes.”

The fire figure gets brighter all over and raises its arms with another grin. Then, a ball of fire, so hot Bucky can see it combusting, held between its hands first, and then raised over its head.

“That’s not good,” Bucky manages, and closes his eyes, bracing for impact.

But then -- nothing. Just a slow, familiar roll of darkness that blankets their ship.

“Bob,” Yelena sighs, relieved.

Bucky opens his eyes and watches as all of the light from space dims. The earth, still below them, disappears, slowly, methodically, until they’re in a pool of complete darkness other than the Fantastic Four’s ship in front of them, and the fire entity, now squirming away from the Void licking at its feet.

“What’s happening?” Steve asks, but there’s no time to answer, because Sentry comes blasting in next, hurdling himself into the fire at a thousand miles an hour.

There’s the pop of heat meeting molecules, and then everything goes broken and familiar and black.

*

Bucky comes to on the glass bridge in Stark Tower, circa 2012.

He blinks, trying to get his surroundings, and instantly realizes they’re in Steve’s Void.

“I have eyes on Loki,” Steve says, raising a hand to his ear. “Fourteenth floor.”

Bucky follows Steve’s gaze, and sees -- Steve.

“I’m not Loki,” the other Steve says, this one not wearing a cowl. “And I don’t wanna hurt you.”

The words are barely out of Steve’s mouth before the other one is charging, moving forward and throwing his shield back over his shoulder as he comes down hard, the edge of one shield hitting straight down the middle of the other. The clang is familiar and lights Bucky up inside in a way he can’t explain.

They lock against each other, each with one foot back, and hit again and again and again-

“What the hell,” Yelena softly wonders.

Steve and Steve run at each other again, shields flying in two different directions as they try to land another hit, gritting their teeth and bracing their weight because they’re so well-matched. They make the same face at each other, frustrated, until one loses his patience and throws his weight.

Bucky watches as they both hit the ground. This was never in any of the documentation Bucky ever read about this day. One lands on top of the other, and bottom Steve’s face bounces off the ground. He shoves himself up onto his forearms and the other does the same as they lock themselves in another grapple.

“Bucky is alive,” Steve grits out.

The other one instantly, immediately lets go. “What?”

And his face still looks exactly like that, frozen in shock, when the moment starts all over again.

Chapter Text

Bucky read everything he could find about that day.

He’d known Steve had gone to Stark Tower for the Mind Stone, and then to Camp Lehigh for the Space Stone. The reports talked about Howard and Peggy and all the research they’d been doing at the same time; how Zola had been there creating databases and uploading his own experimental research too. He was angry at Steve about that for a long time, how he could have destroyed Zola’s data then, the boxes of evidence on how they’d changed Bucky’s body over and over and-

On the bad nights he’d sit on the floor in front of the TV. He’d keep the lights out and drink until he could read the pages without crying. He remembers it all. And there was no documentation of Steve fighting himself.

But, “Bucky is alive,” is what Steve says, and then the room loops on itself.

“What is this?” his Steve asks.

The edges of the room creep darker, Sentry’s hold growing insidious in its power. Bucky says, “This is the Void.”

“How do we leave?” Steve asks next.

“We break out,” Yelena shrugs, simple as that. “Like jail.”

And right then, Captain America’s shield zings past them and bounces off the wall, leaving a crater smashed into the metal in its wake. Bucky knots his eyebrows and, realizing what’s happening, snaps his head back around, towards where Steve fought himself on the bridge.

“Oh no,” he mutters, right as-

The Steve who time travelled back that day raises his eyebrows and pointedly asks Bucky’s Steve, “Is this what you wanted?”

“I don’t know,” his Steve says.

Bucky looks back at the Steve wearing the cowl as he gets up off the floor, shield back in one hand. He looks right at Bucky’s Steve and, frustrated, asks, “How many years was it this time?”

All space past the bridge has ceased to exist; the dark absence of exactly nothing.

He and Yelena look at his Steve as his Steve stares at the other two Steves, clearly thinking, trying to figure out how to answer. Finally, he quietly admits, “Enough.”

“Washington, Potomac, the Senate, the Smithsonian,” the Steve who time travelled this day starts to recite, getting angrier and louder, eyebrows creeping up his forehead. “Bucharest. Siberia. Wakanda.”

The Steve wearing the cowl grimaces, imitates, ”Bucky is alive?”

“I shouldn’t have said it,” Bucky’s Steve says immediately. He raises his eyebrows back. “It was a mistake.”

The Steve who time travelled tisks. “And what did you do after?”

“What I had to,” Bucky’s Steve says-

-and then the shield is violently flying across the room a second time, thrown with a murderous spin from the Steve with the cowl. He moves so fast Bucky can’t even react. The shield bodyslams Bucky’s Steve and knocks him flying into the railing of the bridge.

Glass and metal smash and shatter behind Steve as Bucky automatically jerks forward, watching as Steve collapses forward onto the ground. As Bucky goes to help he feels Yelena grab his arm and he stops without thinking, turning around to see why.

“They’ll kill him,” he tells her.

She nods towards where Steve with the cowl is advancing on Bucky’s Steve, saying, “You left here that day knowing I would look for him.”

“Yes,” Bucky’s Steve admits. He’s still on all fours on the floor, bleeding from the mouth.

He looks up, face already swollen, as the Steve who time travelled frowns down at him. “So why did you say it?”

It takes Bucky’s Steve a minute to respond. He glares up at his younger self, the man who existed in the moments before he said Bucky is alive, but not after.

Finally, Bucky’s Steve brokenly answers, “How many times have we lost him?”

Suddenly the shield again, violent, slicing through the air and crashing into Bucky’s Steve when he’s already down on the ground.

“My whole life,” the Steve with the cowl is raging. He catches the shield and throws it again, without hesitation, at full force. It smashes Bucky’s Steve in the belly, knocks him off his hands and knees and backwards onto the ground. “Over and over and over-”

Bucky’s Steve’s head hits the wall, chin crushed to his chest because of the way his body landed when he flew. The Steve who time travelled that day taunts, “You’re still the man with the plan, huh?”

But the Steve wearing the cowl is still raging. “You were the only person in New York who remembered his name,” he angrily rants, and advances on Bucky’s Steve himself, shield on the ground as he stoops over and picks Bucky’s Steve up by the front of his uniform with both hands.

“Did you tell him what you did when we left here?” the Steve who time travelled asks.

In the grip of the Steve wearing the cowl, Bucky’s Steve spits blood. His head flops backwards and then forwards as he’s shaken by the shoulders.

“Did you?” the Steve with the cowl demands.

Bucky’s Steve looks up at them. Face bruised. Cheekbone broken and swollen.

“We split the timeline,” his Steve admits, voice cracking. “Once that happened, I didn’t get a choice.”

Both Steves stare at him, disgusted, and Bucky moves forward again.

But before he can take his Steve, the Steve who time travelled throws the shield once more. It connects with Bucky’s Steve’s face hard enough to reset the room.

*

The loop starts again. The bridge is darker now.

“Bucky is alive,” Steve tells his younger self.

But Bucky can’t do this a third time.

He knows he has a few seconds before these Steves see his Steve. He bolts forward, past where Steve is grappling with himself, and gets the shield from where it lays on the ground beside them.

“Watch out,” Bucky shouts to his Steve and Yelena, and they look over at him right as he throws the shield up and shatters the ceiling.

As glass rains down, Bucky covers his head with one arm. He waits to feel it: the hailstorm of little bits of glass landing in his hair and neck and down the collar of his suit. But it doesn’t feel right. It’s not what he expected.

Bucky drops his arm and looks up at the snow unmistakably falling from the sky.

Then, without thinking, he looks down. The edge of a wooden track that stretches long across the Alps.

“Oh my god,” he mutters to himself.

Bucky is back inside the train, except now he’s standing at the edge of the door as he watches Steve cling to the ladder outside, face curdled with sorrow as he crushes himself to its shell.

He looks down again exactly in time to see himself as a black dot as he disappears into the ice.

“Oh,” Yelena says sadly from somewhere behind him.

Outside the train, the Steve from that day hangs onto the ladder, openly sobbing now, body convulsing as he cries. Bucky turns around and then there’s his Steve watching too, face still broken and bloodied from the fight.

“Start busting walls,” Bucky tells Yelena. “Get us out of here.”

He turns back to tell Steve the same thing, but Steve’s not where Bucky left him.

Bucky’s heart drops to his feet when he realizes Steve has moved himself to the open frame of the train car, on the opposite side of the door to where his that-day self is hanging off the ladder. His back is turned to Bucky and he’s holding onto the frame edge with one hand as he looks down.

“Steve,” Bucky yells - because he knows. “Don’t!”

He storms forward and grabs the back strap of Steve’s suit with his human hand, fingers looping through the tac straps there. The feeling jolts Steve and he turns around, wind and icy snow blasting past.

“I could do it,” he yells at Bucky over the speed of wind. “I saw where you fell this time.”

Bucky grits his teeth and tightens his fist in Steve’s uniform. He sees the look on Steve’s face. He knows exactly what it is. 70 years don’t do anything to smoke out that kind of love.

“We’re leaving,” Bucky tells him.

Steve looks down the length of the train again. They’ve already travelled a great distance from the spot where Bucky fell, but Bucky knows Steve would walk back anyways.

“Bucky,” Yelena yells from the other side of the train. “It’s here.”

He doesn’t loosen his grip on Steve, but gets close and says, “We have to go, Steve.”

They make direct eye contact and Bucky sees the look in his eyes but it doesn’t matter. Bucky doesn’t care about anything. He can’t and won’t lose Steve again. They aren’t rewriting history where they both fall from this train, one jumping after the other jumping after the other.

“Bucky,” Steve manages, pleading, but Bucky doesn’t care. He raises his eyebrows and pulls, and god, Steve comes.

Bucky holds onto Steve the whole way across the train. When he gets to the other side, where Yelena’s standing beside the exit door to the next car, he raises his eyebrows.

“It’s here,” she tells Bucky. “I can see him through the crack.”

Bucky bashes out the exit door with his metal hand, heart still racing in his chest while his human hand holds onto Steve. The door crumples inwards and then they’re on the other side, and there’s Sentry, sitting in their abandoned spacecraft in the dark.

“Bob,” Yelena breathes, going towards him.

Bucky manhandles Steve through the door before he goes through himself. He’s out of breath from the rush and the drop of adrenaline, but he pushes Steve forward, finally letting go, and when he turns back around to look at where they came from, realizes the door to the train is already gone.

"Sit down," Bucky tells Steve, steering him towards the bench.

Yelena has both arms wrapped around Sentry and Bucky can't hear what she's saying, but can tell she's quietly muttering into his hair from here.

He follows Steve to the bench and falls into it next to him.

They both sit silently for a few long moments, breathing hard. Bucky stares forward for a long time, disassociating, and then tilts his head back and thunks his skull against the wall behind them.

It's a long while before he turns to look over at Steve, but when he does, he says, "This whole time you've been telling me you couldn't risk a split." Steve's still covered in blood, shellshocked expression on his face. "Telling your past self I'm still alive seems like a pretty big risk."

Steve takes a few big, deep breaths, and closes his eyes.

Bucky watches as he leans back against the wall, throat bobbing as he swallows. He inhales through his nose and then his eyes open again. He looks over at Bucky and they make direct, unmistakable eye contact.

"I couldn't not," he says softly, and then, louder, "How could I not say something?"

There's a familiarity in the frustration and anger in his tone. Bucky sees it then. Steve sitting in a board room somewhere, defending his choice when it got brought under fire. He would have had less influence by then, no Tony, just a documented war criminal with Wakandan citizenship arguing about his ex-boyfriend one more time.

Evidence that Steve Rogers didn't give a fuck when it came to saving Bucky Barnes.

"So?" Bucky asks quietly after a moment, when Steve's expression shudders but he doesn't say anything else.

Steve looks back at him carefully. "So what?"

"What happened after?"

Steve's face turns into a grimace and he tilts forward, head in his hands. He's still breathing fast, chest expanding and contracting in a more significant way than it normally does. Bucky reaches one arm out and rests his hand on Steve's back between his shoulder blades. Sees the way his hand still fits perfect there even after all this time.

"The second I said it," Steve tells him, peeling his hands off his face. "The timeline split."

He turns to look at Bucky again. God help them both, Bucky starts laughing because even now, Bucky can see he's not sorry.

"Stephen Strange chased that Steve Rogers through the universe for years," Steve says.

The sorry-not-sorry expression on his face absolutely tickles Bucky. He raises his eyebrows and asks, "Oh yeah? What'd that look like?

Steve shakes his head. "The TVA were so angry." They're back to direct eye contact as Steve tells Bucky about all the ways the universe came to know them. "Entire arms of HYDRA cut off at their base. The Winter Soldier project terminated before it had an infancy. Alexander Pierce dead in his own home anyway."

Bucky laughs again, louder this time, and god, is that fucking joy bubbling through his chest?

Steve shakes his head and finally cracks, going back to rubbing his face with both hands. He mutters into his palms in disbelief, "Sounds like me."

"Steve," Bucky grins. He says it like a term of affection.

Steve sighs again, and then uncurls from himself, sits up straight and looks dead over at Bucky. "I told Peg about you, too." He shakes his head. "Just so she could... just so she knew, if she saw anything, even if it didn't seem right. Maybe she could help."

They watch each other for another long moment, then Bucky asks, "You really didn't marry her, huh?"

Steve shakes his head. "I really didn't." He squeezes his knees. "I just saw an old friend."

"You marry another girl?" Bucky asks next.

Steve looks at him again, totally disgusted. Bucky points a finger at the ring. Steve follows where Bucky is pointing to, and looks down at his own hand, still speckled with blood.

Without hesitation he twists the ring off his finger and hands it over to Bucky.

Bucky knots his eyebrows and accepts the ring from Steve, looking at his face and then down at the ring, the way the tip of his thumb fits inside it as he moves it into the light.

He realizes the inside is inscribed and tilts it again. 32557038.

Bucky jolts, genuinely surprised, and whispers a, "Jesus, Steve."

"Who else would I have wrapped around my finger like that," is all Steve says, quiet.

Bucky looks at his face again and goes to say something, but Yelena interrupts.

"You two," she calls over. Bucky looks over at her. Sentry has drained the Void from their atmosphere. He glances out the window and sees the Fantastic Four's ship is gone. “Time to go home."

Bucky nods and hands the ring back to Steve. Steve immediately puts it back on his finger.

*

On earth, there's a message waiting on Bucky's phone.

"I'm not saying this as Captain America, but as your friend Sam. I heard about Steve. That's so many levels of fucked up, I don't even know where to begin. If you need me, call me. I'll pick up this time. Don't be a stranger, Barnes."

*

Bucky walks into the debrief a few hours after they get back.

"Bob's still out to lunch," Walker says as Bucky comes through the sliding doors.

He looks up and sure enough there's Sentry, floating in the air in front of the windows.

Bucky shakes his head and walks over to the rest of the group. "We need a new strategy."

"Cloud riding plan gets closer every day," Alexei says.

Yelena ignores him and looks back at Bucky. "We still don't know what the Fantastic Four wanted."

"I can't believe they have a guy made out of fire," Walker sighs.

"Yeah, that was an exciting discovery," Bucky says flatly.

Alexei thrusts a patriotic fist up into the air. "Bob kicked the ass of the fire man."

"The fire man was very close to kicking the ass of everyone but Bob," Yelena counters.

As they're talking, the doors hiss again as they open, and Bucky turns to see Steve. He's still beat up from the fight, face bruised and lip split, but the blood's gone. It all still lights Bucky up inside: the face and the fight and the blood that was inside Steve.

"Look who the cat dragged in," Alexei calls.

Steve stays quiet as he walks over, coming to stand between Bucky and Yelena. Walker looks at him from the opposite side of their circle and comments, "That's a pretty good shiner you got there."

"He beat himself up," Yelena explains. "Twice."

Steve looks around their circle flatly, one face after the other, unimpressed.

When he doesn't immediately reply, Yelena nudges him with a smile, "Or maybe three times."

"I've heard that one's the charm," Walker adds.

Steve walked in with a folder in his hand, which Bucky reaches to take. He flips it open in lieu of adding to the bit, all new intel, what seems like every scrap of info every SWORD related agency has on the Fantastic Four.

And, at the end of the file, there's a photo of a man with a metal mask.

Bucky flips it around to show Steve. "Who's this guy?"

Yelena, Walker, and Alexei stop bickering amongst themselves as they turn to look at the picture.

"That's Victor Von Doom," Steve starts.

Yelena raises her eyebrow at him. "Okay..."

"Otherwise known as Dr. Doom," Steve finishes.

Walker says, "Cool name."

"Is this who was shooting at us?" Bucky asks.

Steve shakes his head. "No. He's the sorcerer who had the Fantastic Four believing we were the enemy." Bucky shakes his head too, gaze drifting back down and over the photo. "SWORD now has reason to believe he's piggybacking Reed's technology in an attempt to jump to the sacred timeline."

"That's not good," Bucky immediately says.

He flips the folder back together and hands it to Steve. "If our reports are correct, he was trailing behind the Fantastic Four's craft as they were attempting to enter orbit yesterday."

"What stopped him?" Bucky asks.

Steve raises his eyebrows and looks to the side. Bucky follows his gaze to Bob, still floating.

"Bob is good!" Alexei exclaims, overjoyed.

Steve hands the file to Walker, who accepts it with a soft, "What the fuck."

"You think he’s coming back for another round?” Bucky asks, but even as he says it, it’s not so much a question as it is reading Steve’s thoughts.

Steve nods. “As soon as they regroup and recharge.”

“Great,” Bucky frowns.

Chapter Text

The next day he and Yelena eat breakfast. Mostly, Bucky makes fried eggs and pancakes.

“Thank you,” Yelena says, accepting the plate Bucky hands her.

He slides over the bottle of hot sauce, too. “Have you read the Doom file yet?”

“Sure.” Yelena folds the pancake in half and stabs it with her fork. “Looked at every word. I can’t believe your boyfriend did all that.”

Bucky gives her a flat frown. “We aren’t like that. And he didn’t write it, he’s just the messenger.”

“Traded the shield for the sword and the paperwork,” Yelena sighs. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’m sad for Steve Rogers.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on,” she balks. “The beat up on the bridge? The fall off the train? So sad.” She pouts and then they watch each other and Bucky realizes, horrified, that her sad frown is turning into a cheeky grin. “Look at you.” She puts her best Bucky voice on. “What’s that supposed to mean? Protector.”

Bucky feels silly when he realizes his feathers are in fact a little ruffled.

“Sorry.” He shakes his head and looks down at his food. “He just - it isn’t as straight forward as I thought it was.”

Yelena’s still watching him with that look on her face. “You’re feeling very protective.”

“That’s not new. Usually Steve just isn’t around so it’s not as obvious.”

“Aw.”

They both get quiet again, and Bucky looks down at his pancake and his egg with a sigh. His life has been fucked up in so many ways but there have also been so many moments of beauty and relief. Steve was both of those things to him for such a long time, and then he wasn’t, and now he’s…

“When Steve went, it wasn’t his choice,” Bucky says. “That day on the bridge, when he recovered the Mind Stone and told himself I was alive. He said the timeline split as soon as he said it.”

Yelena groans. “I hate the timeline.”

“That Steve he told, the one who was just fresh out of the ice again, he tore his world apart looking for me,” and Bucky can’t even say it without it, that old feeling right back in his chest. “The TVA came down and gave him two choices until things settled, and I don’t think they ever did.”

Yelena raises one eyebrow and stabs another fried egg off the pan. “What were the choices?”

“Going back on ice, or staying out of earth after he returned the rest of the stones,” Bucky says.

She slaps the egg on her plate and starts cutting it half with her fork. “That was hardly a choice.”

“Me and Steve…” Bucky sighs and trails off, thinking. When he moves his gaze back to Yelena, she’s already looking back at him as she chews. “He’s never had many choices. And I haven’t until recently.”

Yelena makes a face like ‘join the club’ and sticks the other half the egg in her mouth.

“He’d still be on the fuckin’ moon if it wasn’t for this,” Bucky sighs, thumbing the manilla folder sitting at the edge of the counter. “It’s gotta be a big threat for them to have him out of hiding.”

“Dr. Doom,” Yelena sighs, pushing her plate away. “Foolish man.”

Bucky snorts and goes back to stooping over his plate so he can eat his pancake. After a second, he raises an eyebrow and asks, “How’s Bob?”

“He is in there,” Yelena says, referring to Sentry, still floating around the main floor. “The bigger the blast, the longer it takes to find himself again.”

Bucky nods and looks over his shoulder as there’s a knock at the front door.

“Company?” Yelena asks. Bucky shrugs, wiping his hands off before he goes over.

He is unsurprised to open the door and find Steve, hands in his pockets, standing there staring back at him. Steve raises his eyebrows when he sees Yelena ogling them over Bucky’s shoulder. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Breakfast?” Bucky asks rhetorically, already turning around.

Steve follows him through the foyer into the kitchen. “I wanted to see what you thought about the Doom file.”

“What a coincidence,” Yelena says, forgoing a greeting. “We were just talking about it.”

Steve looks at her first, then Bucky, then at the plate Bucky unceremoniously loads up and slides over. “Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky lets that one go. Yelena pointedly raises her eyebrows at him.

“Doom sounds like an evil Stark to me,” Bucky says. “First or second, take your pick.”

Steve laughs as he stands opposite and starts cutting his pancake up with his fork. Bucky watches, helplessly, as Steve devours the food he made. “I hadn’t considered that,” he says, raising his eyebrows and glancing over. Bucky hates that he was already looking. “But I can see it.”

“He rules his country with an iron fist,” Yelena shrugs. “What does he want with earth?”

With a sigh, Steve shakes his head and says, “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

*

Yelena’s temporary ceasefire on Steve has them able to eat breakfast together. They eat everything Bucky made and then Yelena’s phone buzzes.

“Time to check on Bob,” she announces, hopping off Bucky’s kitchen stool.

He and Steve look up from where they’re still thumbing through the Doom file, now spread out across the kitchen counter between their three empty plates and the bottle of hot sauce.

“Send him my regards,” Bucky tells her back.

Steve awkwardly adds, “Hope he feels better.”

“He won’t,” Yelena smiles. She beeps through Bucky’s front door and then she’s gone.

Bucky and Steve don’t say anything for a few minutes, and Bucky just stares at the printouts, sheets and sheets of notes and classified files and photographs. He keeps looking at Steve’s hands, too, skin wrinkled but still tan, gold ring wrapped around that finger.

“She reminds me of her sister,” Steve says after a few minutes, voice soft.

Bucky’s gaze flicks up to Steve’s face. “She talks about her all the time.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s face changes as he looks back down at the file, eyes narrowing, his brow tensing up. “Nat had that effect on people.”

Bucky watches him carefully. Notices the way he blinks when his eyes get watery. “So does Yelena.”

“Yeah,” Steve says again. He laughs softly and wipes one eye as he glances over at Bucky, trying to lighten the mood. “Guess I’m just not used to being on this side of the loyalty knife.”

Bucky’s mouth lifts into a half smile. “We, uh. We discovered Bob’s powers as a group.” He pauses and licks his lips, swallowing tight before he continues. “She’s seen my, you know. My very worst moments.”

Steve looks over, chest raising and falling as he breathes. “What were yours?”

“The day on the quantum pad,” Bucky replies. “When you didn’t come back.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Bucky.”

“There were others, but. You know.” Bucky shrugs. “That would be why she doesn’t like you.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again.

Without thinking, Bucky continues, “Sam was the only other one who knew, and, well, we don’t talk that much anymore.”

“What?”

“-and after she saw it, hell, after everyone saw it, there was no reason to hide or pretend it didn’t happen.”

Steve shakes his head and holds one hand out. “Back up a minute,” he says. “What happened with you and Sam?”

“Politics,” Bucky grimaces. He scrubs a hand over his face. “Would be the short explanation.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, pained.

The tone in his voice and the look on his face snaps Bucky right back to that first day, when Steve walked into the conference room with a “ma’am.”

“Things were hard for everyone after you left, alright?” he frowns, suddenly feeling defensive and ruffly at the implication and disappointment in Steve’s tone. “You left me behind, but you left Sam, too, and with a hell of a lot more responsibility than me.”

Steve scrubs both hands over his face. The Doom file is entirely forgotten on the counter.

“If I could have stayed, I would have,” Steve starts, but Bucky-

“I get it, Steve,” he says. “But the world didn’t stop when you left. Things went on without you because that’s what happens when someone leaves. You have no idea what Sam and I dealt with. So get that tone out of your mouth like you’re disappointed in a part of our relationship that you have no idea about.”

Steve has the good sense to look apologetic at the stupid shit he just said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, guess you are about a lot of things.” Bucky starts stacking their breakfast dishes.

It’s gotta be a cosmic joke at this point, ‘ol Bucky Barnes still bickering with Steve Rogers over dirty breakfast plates in the middle of New York.

“I am!” Now Steve’s back to sounding earnest. “Being up there, it was torture for me too, Buck.”

Bucky looks at him flatly from the other side of the dirty dishes. “It was prison, Steve, and you put yourself in it.”

“Bucky,” Steve sighs, but he doesn’t argue with that.

*

Steve takes the Doom file with him and leaves.

Bucky’s so mad about their conversation that he does actually end up calling Sam.

“Hi,” he says, voice flat, when Sam picks up on the second ring.

Sam counters with a, “Hi,” and they both sit awkwardly, each waiting for the other to take the lead. Sam finally says, “Saw the new suit on TV. It looks real super-y.” There’s a beat. “The blowout’s a nice touch.”

“Sam,” Bucky groans. “Can we not?”

But Sam’s already rolling. “Val’s got money, huh?” he asks. “Maybe not Stark money, but seems damn close. Enough cash to get Steve off the moon anyway.”

“Steve came in thinking you’d be here,” he says.

Which was probably the wrong thing. Sam immediately counters with, “Guess he should have done a better job at following the trademark. New Avengers, Bucky, really?”

“Like I had anything to do with the name Sam-”

“But you knew! You knew, and you-”

“I didn’t know, I stumbled through a fuckin’ backdrop into the front of a thousand cameras-”

“Bucky.”

“Sam.”

They both stop talking. Bucky’s breathing hard and he can hear Sam is the same on the other end of the line. Finally, Sam sighs.

“Alright, this is stupid,” he says. Bucky grits his teeth. “I’m glad you got Steve back,” which is just salt in the wound, because Sam’s the one who knows best- “Good luck with the space war.” There’s a pause, and Bucky chews on his lip, waiting for the last kick. “I hope to hell you don’t need my help.”

*

In a series of unfortunate events, Bucky goes looking for Yelena after talking to Sam, and walks into the conference room to find Val and Steve sitting at the table instead.

Val looks over at him and raises her eyebrows. “Well, you’re just the man of the fuckin’ hour, arent’cha?”

“Not in the mood, Val,” Bucky complains, turning to leave again.

Steve calls, “Bucky.”

“Goddamnit,” Bucky mutters to himself as he turns back around.

There are things projected up on every screen in the room: pictures of the members of the Fantastic Four, ship schematics, a real-time radar trained on the spot they attempted entry. Bucky knows exactly what’s coming out of Steve’s mouth next.

“At first we thought we could wait them out,” Steve says. “But it’s not sustainable with the threat of Doom so high.”

Bucky narrows his gaze. “Who’s we,” he says flatly.

“It’s a PR wet fuckin’ dream,” Val is grinning. She leans back in her chair and spins from side to side, both hands braced on the arms. “Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, reunited for the greater good.”

Steve immediately turns on her with a frown. “That’s not the point-”

“Sure,” she says chippily, still with a smile on her face. “Either way, the internet’s gonna love it.”

“Steve,” Bucky sighs. “What?...”

Steve looks over at him, serious look on his face, clearly unimpressed with the angle Val’s trying to spin.

“You and I.” He stops to clear his throat. Val grins wider. “We. We’re going to attempt first contact. If we can get to them before they try and make re-entry, maybe we can take Doom out at the source.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “And if we can’t?”

“Then our plan changes,” Steve says, like it’s that simple.

He and Steve stare at each other, Bucky clenching his jaw as he thinks. He finally asks, “Why me?”

“This is big, Buck, and you’re the only one I want guarding my six.”

It’s earnest, but it’s honest. Valentina cackles and then groans, “Fuck me. We have to get this shit on social media. God, they’re going to eat you two up.”

“My personal relationships won’t be going anywhere, ma’am,” Steve tells her clearly.

Val waves him off. Bucky clears his throat and they both look over at him.

“When do we leave?” he asks.

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Now.”

*

Which is how Bucky finds himself in another spacecraft, unfortunately now in the co-pilot seat.

“I don’t like space,” he says honestly, gripping the seat as Steve takes them into orbit.

Steve is quiet for a while, calm and confident as he flips switches and talks into the bug in his ear.

After a few minutes, he shrugs. “You get used to it.” Bucky doesn’t know about that. He doesn’t think he would, but there were lots of things in his life he got used to he never thought he would, so maybe Steve’s right. He doesn’t say anything else, then Steve adds, “It was lonely.”

“You weren’t by yourself,” Bucky comments, but he doesn’t really know.

Steve shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t. I have a great team, and I was lucky for that, but god, Buck, seventy years is a long time to be away from you.”

Bucky bites his lips together and stares out the window into space. He and Steve have been away from each other for so long in so many different ways. Now here they are, reunited by the politics between two superhero teams splitting in a certain way, and the biggest universal threat they’ve had so far.

“Yeah.” He glances back over at Steve’s profile. “It’s a long time.”

Steve stares out ahead. Space lights things up in a way earth doesn’t. It makes Steve’s eyes look like they got the whole universe in there.

“When they first told me, I said no,” Steve explains quietly. He shakes his head and Bucky abruptly realizes they’re continuing their conversation from the kitchen this morning. “But it was my fault. I knew it was my fault, and what am I supposed to do about that?” Jesus, Bucky thinks, always Steve Rogers with doing the right thing. “Like I said, Strange went after me in the split I created, so, I guess… I don’t know.” He sighs and admits, “I guess I felt like this me, the real me, had to pay my own penance, too.”

Bucky thinks for a minute, parsing Steve’s words. Then he looks over and says, “You still got that Catholic guilt deep in ya, huh?”

Steve laughs and then shakes his head, still smiling. “It wasn’t about that.”

“Sure, sure,” Bucky muses.

They get quiet again, and Bucky waits for it, because he knows it’s coming. He knows Steve’s just sorting his thoughts out the way Bucky sometimes has to stop to sort his thoughts out, too.

“I was worried they’d do something to you,” Steve finally admits. “I was worried about a lot of things.”

Bucky keeps looking out into space. “I can’t believe they offered you the ice,” he tells his own ghostly reflection in the glass of the window. To have it on the table at all makes Bucky’s skin crawl in a way it hasn’t in years. “I would have had words to say about that.”

“I wouldn’t have done it,” Steve promises. “At least if I was on the moon I could, you know. I could do something up there.”

God help him, a smile creeps across Bucky’s face. “And you didn’t start anymore wars about me while you were up there, huh?” he teases, turning to look back over at Steve. “Just waited patiently on the moon ‘til you got back to that bench.”

“I thought about it,” Steve says right away. “God, Buck, I thought about it so many times, especially when - when I knew - you know. The dates. I knew some of them, when you were out of the ice. Kennedy. Stark.” A moment hangs between them; Bucky lowers his chin as he thinks about what Steve is referring to. “But, you know, if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have you - my you - here with me today.”

Bucky sighs. “Sometimes things just gotta be the way they are.”

“Yeah,” Steve huffs, painfully this time. “I think that’s what I realized.” They both get quiet then, thinking their own thoughts, until Steve laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“They wouldn’t give me clearance to work on any alternate universe missions,” Steve tells him, still genuinely laughing at himself. “The risk of me running into another you and causing problems was too high.”

Bucky laughs a little too. His chest gets all warm despite himself. “I mean… they were right.”

“Yeah.” Steve grins over at him, then; all that Stevie smile. “They were.”

*

“This is so weird,” Bucky says as they approach the Fantastic Four’s Manhattan.

It’s New York, to be sure. Bucky knows that in the way he’d know anything else. But it’s not his New York; this one’s not even in the storybooks. The skyline is different, the water is the wrong color blue. As they get lower Bucky sees things in more detail, and realizes with a weird, creeping feeling in his gut that things look closer to how he remembers them when he left the first time. Before the war.

“And we didn’t go back in time?” Bucky asks Steve, just to be sure.

Steve nods. “Same year as it was when we left earth. We didn’t go backwards, just sideways.”

“Feels like we’re back in the Atomic Age,” Bucky comments. Something about the architecture is like looking in an uneven mirror. “You remember Stark’s Expo?”

Steve drops the spacecraft a little lower. “Course I do.”

“Think I saw that there,” Bucky comments, pointing at a particularly needle-shaped skyscraper that comes around as they loop past it. Steve swings them between buildings; they’re hardly out of place alongside the other cars zipping around the sky. “Where are we going, exactly?”

“A tower in Manhattan,” Steve tells him. “We’ll know it when we see it.”

Bucky leans forward again, staring down at the streets and everything around them as they coast.

A few minutes later Steve says, “That should be it,” and Bucky looks up ahead to a tower that wouldn’t look out of place next to Val’s.

“How do we get in?” Bucky asks.

Steve starts flipping all their comms on. “They’ll already know we’re here. First meeting the other day aside, these people are friendly. Might even be expecting us.”

“Might be?” Bucky grimaces.

As they get closer to the tower, the building itself begins to shift and move. Bucky watches as the glass and metal shutter in on itself and suddenly an open flying space is revealed.

“Identify yourself,” a crackly voice says from the comm unit.

Bucky and Steve look at each other. Steve shrugs, so Bucky reaches up to hold the button. “This is Captain Steve Rogers and Sergeant Bucky Barnes. We’re travelling from Earth-616.” He looks back over at Steve and raises his eyebrows, then tacks on, “We met the other day?”

There’s another crackle, and then quiet. Then, a voice says, “You may land,” and, “Reed will meet you inside.”

Chapter Text

Reed’s waiting for them on the ground outside their craft.

From what Bucky can see, he’s a normal looking guy, friendly face and a spacesuit. He extends his hand to Steve first, greeting him with a warm, “Captain Rogers,” before he does the same for Bucky, a smile and a, “Sergeant Barnes.”

“Nice to meet you, Doctor,” Steve says in his Cap voice. “Steve,” he adds, then, with a nod, “Bucky.”

There’s something familiar about Reed Richards; something that reminds Bucky of the men from his past.

“Reed. I appreciate you coming today,” Reed tells them both. “Also, please accept my sincere apologies for our less-than-friendly entrance the other day.”

Steve shakes his head. “No apology needed. Glad we can be here.”

“The gladness goes both ways,” Reed says. “Let’s go inside.”

He and Steve follow Reed deeper into the hangar, which is bright and busy with people wearing white suits, and then through a series of doors that make Star Trek sounds when they open and close.

Bucky looks around as they walk… this is his first time in an alternate universe, who knows when he’ll be back again? The decor and architecture are how they were outside, too: familiar but like a painting that’s hanging a little crooked and wrong.

They don’t take stairs or an elevator or a future space pod to get to Reed’s office quarters. In fact, they come upon them suddenly -- a sunken living room area smack in the middle of a lab.

“My family and I have been here for years now,” Reed explains, sitting on the sofa that lines the wall of the conversation pit. He motions for them to join him. “It’s not a bad life, but we want to get home.”

Bucky sits next to Steve, who sits next to Reed.

“How do you know Victor Von Doom?” Steve asks, cutting to the chase.

Reed looks at him flatly. “How long do you have?”

“We’d like to hear the story,” is how Steve answers.

Photographs start to pop up on the screens hung around the room, though far as Bucky can tell, Reed didn’t hit a button or make any voice command to have them be that way.

“Doom and I met in college,” is how Reed starts, which is so unexpected, it makes Bucky laugh. And sure enough up there on the screen there’s a black and white science club yearbook photo that has Reed and Doom standing next to each other in matching school sweaters. “He and I always shared a love of science.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Was he good at it?”

“He’s the second best scientist in the universe,” Reed smiles.

Bucky knows exactly what he isn’t saying. He smirks. “Bet he hates that.”

“More than anything,” Reed agrees. “When we all got stuck here, he became obsessed with beating me.”

Steve looks back at Reed as all the photographs blip away. “Stuck how?”

“When my family -- my team -- and I hopped the timeline, Doom followed us. He’d been working on his own tech, and wanted to see how mine worked.” Reed’s mouth flattens into a line and he re-crosses his legs in the opposite direction. “Unfortunately, it didn’t.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Steve says.

Reed shrugs one shoulder. “This world has been wonderful to us in many ways, but it’s not ours. We’ve been trying to get home for years.” As he says it, Bucky watches Steve’s face. The way he casts his gaze down until his lashes fan out over his cheeks with shadows Bucky can see from here. “Many days it felt like waiting for nothing. I have to admit, though, I wasn’t expecting to get the assist from you, Captain.”

“We weren’t expecting to see your boy made out of fire, either,” Bucky counters.

“Well, he wasn’t supposed to be outside the ship,” Reed says honestly. “I tried to keep our re-entry project a secret from Doom, but he found out, and when he did, he cast a spell, burdening us with hostile entry in an attempt to ensure the mission was unsuccessful. I didn’t even know until it was too late.”

Bucky frowns. “Sounds like since he followed you here and got stuck, you two have been at war with each other.”

“We always have been,” Reed says. “And the longer we’ve been here, the more obsessed Doom has become with rejoining the sacred timeline. Even now, I know he’s watching.”

Steve asks, “Why do you say that?”

“He’s the second greatest scientist,” Reed answers. “And the first best sorcerer.”

Bucky grimaces. “A sorcerer,” he repeats, and then, tart, “Great.”

There’s a natural pause in conversation, and then Bucky realizes that, for whatever reason, Reed is looking at them both closely.

“I’ve read about you two.” His gaze flicks back and forth over Steve’s face before it hops to Bucky’s. When Reed catches Bucky’s gaze, Bucky looks away automatically. “You’re integral to the sacred timeline.”

Steve puts his Cap voice back on and says, “Our mission is to get you home safe,” then, “We can talk about the rest after that happens.”

“Of course,” Reed says, smiling as he starts standing up. Bucky and Steve follow. “My team needs a few hours to prepare but we can be ready to go today.”

Bucky wrinkles up his nose. “What are the chances of Doom hopping a ride again?”

“There’s no chance,” Reed says easily, twinkle back in his eye. “It’s a hundred percent probable.”

With a frown, Bucky says, “Got it.”

“Take this.” Reed holds out a small piece of tech, which Steve accepts. “Explore the city while you’re here. I’ll give you a call on this when we’re ready to roll.”

*

Which is how Bucky and Steve find themselves on the sidewalk outside the tower a few minutes later.

They’re in a bustling part of town with a big green space on the other side of the road, a trestle of towers behind them, and busy air traffic in the space between. He and Steve stand there for a minute.

Finally, Bucky says, “Well, this is weird.”

“We’ve done weirder,” Steve counters.

That may or may not be true, but Bucky points out a kid walking past wearing a Captain America backpack anyway. It’s just the shield -- Bucky has seen them all over the city back at home -- but this one has black and blue stripes and a red star in the middle.

“Sure,” Bucky belatedly agrees.

Steve sticks his hands in his pockets and bumps their elbows together as they quietly watch the kid walk away, then asks, “Wanna get lunch?”

“Yeah.” Bucky even smiles. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

*

In their walk around to find someplace to eat, they do a little sight seeing and end up going all the way down to the water to look at the Brooklyn Bridge. Once they’re there they walk along with their hands in their pockets, laughing and chatting and bumping into each other like they used to do when they were kids.

“That looks good,” Bucky finally says, nodding towards a little corner sit-down deli across the street.

They get a table up near the front. The building’s on a corner so it’s got slatted windows facing two streets. His and Steve’s table’s got napkins and silverware and little packets of plain sugar jammed into bowls, and after the waitress comes by, they get coffee and sandwiches, too.

It’s been a long time since Bucky got things that were this simple. In the tower and the years before it, it was efficiency and automation all the time.

His shoulders slowly relax down from his ears for the first time in weeks.

“What’d you think about how Reed talked about Doom?” Steve asks as they pick their sandwiches up.

Bucky snorts. “I think it sounds an awful lot like they were college sweethearts.”

“Buck,” Steve groans. “Be serious.”

The corner of the sandwich goes right into Bucky’s mouth even as he’s talking, eyebrows arching as he exclaims, “I am!” through the lettuce and alfalfa. “We met in college and have a shared love of science?” He shakes a rogue pickle out onto his plate. “Come on, Steve.”

“I don’t think it’s like that.” Steve takes a bite of his sandwich but actually chews and swallows it before he talks, face a grimace. “Richards is married.”

Bucky levels Steve with a dead-eyed stare. “Steve,” he says, voice completely flat.

“What?” Steve complains -- until Bucky pointedly drops his gaze to look at the ring. It takes Steve a second to catch on, but when he does, he blushes. “Forget it.”

It prickles something up on Bucky’s insides in a way nothing else does. He grins, still chewing, as he watches Steve flush out from under the collar of his suit and up behind his ears. “Don’t get coy on me now, Rogers,” Bucky has to tease, leaning forward over the table and everything. “God. Look at those red cheeks.”

Steve is absolutely wilting and melting under the attention. “Bucky.”

“Even at 109 years old, you blush like a little kid.”

They get quiet for a little bit, eating their sandwiches and catching glances with each other and people watching in the diner and out the windows. Every time a craft flies by, Bucky’s gaze snaps to the glass to see how the shadow whips along at a thousand miles an hour.

He isn’t thinking about anything in particular when Steve says, “I hate that I look so different now.”

Bucky knows already but he asks, “What part?”

“What part?” Steve’s eyebrows hitch up his forehead. “The part where I look every year of being 109.”

He does. There’s no denying it and Bucky isn’t about to lie. The more time they spend together, the more chances Bucky gets to look, the more he can see how Steve has changed without him. Steve’s got wrinkles on his forehead and crows feet when he smiles. He’s tanned and aged in a way that is proof he’s been alive and well. Bucky can’t be angry about that at all.

“You’ve lived a life, Steve.” Bucky says it honestly. “Better to have some wrinkles than to have spent the last fifty years on ice.”

Steve frowns. “I hate that we look so different now.” He shakes his head. “You look like my son.”

“Never say that again,” Bucky says, raising both eyebrows.

If he ever tells Sam about that he’d never hear the end of it.

“I know our relationship is complicated and we have a thousand things to figure out,” Steve starts, talking very carefully. Those big blue eyes. “But god, Bucky, how could you ever love me again like this?”

Bucky’s face crumples. “Steve…”

“I hate knowing that part of our relationship is off the table forever,” Steve frowns.

Maybe it is. God, Bucky doesn’t know anything about anything some days, and this whole thing has been a total blast to the side of the head. Will Steve even get to stay on earth after this or does he go back to his little break in case of emergency box on the moon after?

“Steve.” He says it soft as he can. “It’s not…” He hesitates. “Nothing’s forever.”

Steve’s not buying it. “Yeah. Don’t I know it,” is all he says, and that’s that.

*

Five minutes after lunch, Reed’s little tech box lights up and sends them a car.

By the time they get back to the tower everything is in full swing. The Fantastic Four’s ship sits beside theirs in the hangar, and people mill around, doing checks and loads and preparations for flight.

“We’re making re-entry in about an hour,” Bucky tells Yelena as he calls her on the phone while they’re suiting up, Steve beside him in the back of their craft. “Make sure Bob’s ready.”

Yelena’s unworried voice replies, “Bob is Bob.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

She tisks. “When we need Bob, Bob is there.”

“Great,” Bucky sighs. “Can’t wait to wake up in my nightmares.”

He switches the phone to his other ear and holds it with a shoulder as he snaps himself into his combat vest with both hands. That’s when Yelena asks, “Sooooo. How are things with Steve?”

“Fine,” Bucky says flatly, chin squished down to his chest. He glances over at Steve, who’s already looking over at him. Bucky recalibrates his response and tries again, even lifting the tone of his voice a little this time. “Better than fine. Peachy.”

Yelena cackles on the other end of the line. “Oh my god.”

“Listen, can you just make sure you’re ready to catch us when we come hurtling through the fuckin’ atmosphere at the speed of light?” Bucky complains, going back to holding the phone with his hand. “Possibly with an evil sorcerer following us this time?”

Yelena’s still laughing. “Tell boyfriend Steve to send coordinates before you leave.”

“Good idea,” Bucky agrees before promptly handing the phone over. “She wants to talk to you.”

Steve, flabbergasted, takes the phone and brings it up to his ear even as he and Bucky stare at each other, Steve’s eyes big and round. “Hello? I don’t know, I -- what?” There’s that blush again. “No, I… yeah. Okay. Yeah. Alright, see you when we get back.”

He ends the call and holds the phone back out for Bucky.

Bucky pointedly asks, “Well?”

“She’ll have Bob ready,” Steve says, still looking a little disoriented.

Bucky throws the phone down into his pile of stuff on the bench and goes back to buckling into his tac gear. He watches Steve’s back as Steve stoops over to head into the front of the craft, nape of his neck flushed pink again.

“That’s not suspicious at all,” Bucky mutters to himself, tucking a knife into his vest.

*

There’s no time to meet with the rest of the team, fire boy included, before they leave.

In fact they don’t leave their craft again at all. All of a sudden it’s time to go and Steve closes the doors and gives the ground team a thumbs up through the window. Bucky dials their intercom in so it connects with Reed on the Fantastic Four’s ship, and then puts the bug still connected to Walker into his ear.

“Ready for you when you get here,” Walker greets.

Meanwhile, Steve is talking to ground control, saying, “Captain Rogers on countdown,” and, “This is Commodore 616.”

“Go for launch, Captain,” Reed’s ground control tells them.

Steve starts navigating their ship around and out of the tower’s hanger. The plan is for he and Steve to go first and then for the Fantastic Four’s craft to follow. If -- when -- things go wrong, this time they’ll have Sentry waiting and ready to go on the other side.

Still, Bucky knows the odds of this going sideways are high.

“Walker, the second you see anything that isn’t us, tell me,” he says.

Walker replies, “Roger that.”

“Not funny,” Bucky snaps.

When he looks over, Steve is smirking a little.

They lift out of the hangar and wait in the air outside the tower as the Fantastic Four’s ship follows, and this time Bucky hears Reed on the intercom, saying, “Reed Richards on countdown. This is Marvel-1.”

“Go for launch, Doctor,” ground control says.

When Bucky turns to look out the back window, there they are, the Fantastic Four.

In his ear, Walker circles back and promises, “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Thanks John,” Bucky says quietly.

Steve pilots them up between the buildings, and Bucky looks down at the streets below again, watches the way the air vehicles zip around like cars on a highway. He doesn’t look out to the horizon until they’re properly in the sky and he can see the texture of the clouds through their windows.

Once they’re in the atmosphere Steve flips the same switches and they go fast. It doesn’t feel like much more than a minute later when Bucky hears Walker say, “We got you back. Hi, Buck.”

“This feels too easy,” Bucky tells both Walker and Steve.

Steve is navigating them through the atmosphere, back down to their earth. He shrugs. “We’ll fix the hard stuff when we get there.”

“I think he means when it catches you,” Walker says in Bucky’s ear.

Bucky doesn’t reply and Steve doesn’t say anything, either.

They move closer to earth, through the clouds, into the sky. As they get closer to the impending familiarity of their New York, Reed comes through on the intercom, saying, “We’ve entered the atmosphere. Following you down.”

“We hear you loud and clear,” Steve says in his Cap voice. “Meet you on the ground.”

Steve flies them towards New York and then all of a sudden they’re home, the Watchtower coming into view on the horizon looking exactly how they left it this morning. Bucky alternates between tracking the skyline and the radar, sixth sense tingling.

As they land and pull in, the ground crew acts like it’s just another flight. They approach from both sides of the craft as Bucky unbuckles and gets out, Steve doing the same. They hit the ground and the crew jumps in to move the craft off the loading zone and out of Marvel-1’s impending way.

“Well, let’s go watch,” Steve says unceremoniously.

The two of them walk over to the open side of the hangar and look out into Manhattan. The Fantastic Four’s ship looks so much larger here. It’s cumbersome as Reed navigates it through the city, narrowly fitting between buildings and around corners.

In Bucky’s ear, Walker fondly sighs, “God, look at it.”

Bucky opens his mouth to reply, but then Walker cuts himself off with a sharp, “Fuck!”

“Talk, Walker,” Bucky immediately says.

Steve looks over at him worriedly but Walker doesn’t even get a reply in before Bucky knows exactly what he’s talking about. A -- gigantic -- atmospheric -- planet sized -- face appears in the clouds, and it rattles through Bucky’s animal brain in a way he hasn’t felt before.

It’s like seeing the face of God except evil.

“That’s Doom,” Bucky says, right as Steve starts shouting, “Someone get on comm and tell Richards!”

It’s the same face as Bucky saw in all the pictures except now a thousand times bigger. There’s a wave of red alert alarms that flash through the hangar, but Bucky just stands there staring, watching as Marvel-1 stops navigating itself forwards and slowly turns around to face Doom, instead.

Twenty seconds later, Yelena is out of breath and crashing into Bucky’s side.

“What the hell?” she asks. Ships are unloading from the deck as fast as people can get into them, and then there’s the first blast outside, a building-rattling boom that comes from Marvel-1. Yelena grabs his arm properly this time and says, “Okay! Let’s go!’

He runs after Yelena through the hangar, right over to where Steve is getting back into Commodore-616.

“Steve,” Bucky yells, following him up with Yelena right behind them.

The door isn’t even closed when Steve starts lifting off, no ground control this time.

Yelena asks, loudly, “How do we kill him?!”

“We don’t,” Steve shouts back.

Bucky yanks the door closed with his metal arm and tells Yelena, “Doom’s the second best scientist in the universe.”

“So what!”

He gives her a look. “And the first best sorcerer.”

“I hate magic!” Yelena shouts, hurrying into the co-pilot seat.

Bucky might not be one for the space blasters but he left his whole arsenal in here.

“Steve,” he calls, already strapping himself in. “Open the back.”

They’re mid-air when Steve does. Bucky didn’t even realize they got so far away from the hangar already, because when the door cracks open, it’s the city he sees, and then the strange foreign metal of Doom’s face, textured now he can see it up close.

Every ship that was in that hangar is out here alongside Marvel-1 as everyone blasts Doom’s face with everything they’ve got. Steve zips them around while Yelena nails the mask with space beams and Bucky loads out every bullet in his arsenal. The beams leave kitten scratches and Bucky’s bullets sound like peanut shells hitting the floor as they ping and bounce off Doom’s face.

“This isn’t working,” Bucky yells after a few minutes, frustrated.

Yelena stops shooting and Steve just lets them hang there for a minute. Doom isn’t returning their fire but he’s taking absolutely no damage.

A minute passes, and then Yelena says, “He’s laughing at us.”

And it’s true. Doom’s mouth is open and he’s grinning widely, and that’s when Bucky hears it -- the uproarious laughter of the deepest voice in the universe, deep enough to rattle the ground and the ocean and to shake the stars out of the sky.

Right then, Marvel-1 shoots something directly into his open mouth.

“What the hell,” Bucky says, squinting as he tries to watch.

There’s a subsonic boom; a molecular explosion; something they can feel in the air but see no visual evidence of; and then, a zap, and Doom, shrunken back to human-height, hangs foolishly in the air.

“What is going ON,” Yelena yells, blasting again.

Bucky holds onto the ceiling with his metal arm as Steve sends them on a hard, sudden u-turn. The back is still open and Bucky watches, wind blasting in his hair, as Reed and Marvel-1 shoot Doom again, this time with some kind of beam that sends him upwards.

There are people in the streets now, too, and they’re screaming loud enough for Bucky to hear their voices over the sound of war.

He watches Doom hit Marvel-1 back with something, some kind of beam blast, and the ship goes spinning downwards even though Doom is somehow locked to it. The ship slams to the ground and Doom slams into it, taking out the entire side of a building as they go.

Steve lands them back at the hangar and jumps out without turning anything off.

“Steve!” Bucky yells, as Marvel-1 blasts itself and Doom off of street level and back up into the sky.

He follows Steve out of the craft and hears Yelena behind him, yelling, “Hello??” as she follows and calls, “What the hell are we doing?!”

“We need Bob,” Steve shouts at her over his shoulder.

Bucky’s heart drops. He watches as Steve comes to a stop below Sentry, who is floating in the open hangar space and observing from the air.

“Steve,” he calls, breaking into a run to get over there before Steve does something stupid-

Sentry looks down at Steve. A negative black silhouette with pin-pricks of light.

“We haven’t met properly,” Steve tells him, loudly. “I’m Steve. I know you’re Bob. Can you get me up there?”

Bucky grabs Steve’s arm where he’s pointing out at the fight. “Steve, no-”

“Buck, please,” Steve snaps, and when he jerks his arm out of Bucky’s grip they stare right at each other, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do, because all of a sudden he’s right back in that alleyway begging and pleading all over again. “I have to do this.”

Sentry floats above, regarding them with a cool gaze.

“No you don’t,” Bucky says, but it might be a lie. He doesn’t know. “Just hold on for a second,” and for the first time he realizes he’s out of breath, adrenaline absolutely flooding through him as Steve cuts the few threads Bucky didn’t realize he’d been whiteknuckling this whole time. “We can figure something-”

He goes to shove Sentry’s hand away when it floats between them, but Steve is already taking it.

“I’ll be back, Buck,” Steve swears, somehow already up in the air.

Bucky stares up, mouth hanging open, as Sentry takes Steve away.

He doesn’t know what to do until he hears another blast outside, and it jerks him back to life, enough to yell, “Goddamnit!” and break into a run towards the stairs.

Chapter Text

Alexei and Ghost are already street level by the time Bucky and Yelena get down there.

“Walker,” Bucky demands, lifting an arm to bash a piece of falling building debris away from a group of hiding civilians. “Tell me what’s happening.”

In his ear, Walker says, “I can’t see them yet, Buck. They’re too high up.”

Bucky manages a tight, no-teeth smile at the little girl that waves at him as her mom drags her away. He keeps it on his face until she’s far enough away and then lets the expression drop. “Give me anything, Walker.”

“Captain America will be fine,” he hears Alexei say, as he flips a bashed up street sign off the sparking electrical box it flew into. “This is what we are made to do.”

“Steve’s comms are down,” Walker says after a minute.

Bucky stops walking and scrubs a hand over his face. “WALKER.”

“Boyfriend Steve will be back when he is done,” Yelena tells him. Bucky gives her a look, pointed and angry, so she holds both hands out and adds, eyebrows raised, “He is the man with the plan, you know.”

Alexei laughs uproariously and calls over, “This is what I’ve been saying!”

“Oh my god,” Bucky mutters to himself. Belligerent, he lifts and flips a piece of concrete off a car.

He thinks about Sam all the time for all kinds of different reasons, but right now, he misses him in a specific way. There’s no one else on planet earth Bucky can commiserate with about Steve’s stupid ass choices in the way he can with Sam. Sam understood Steve almost as well as Bucky did.

“Okay, I see them,” Walker’s voice finally says. “Bob’s kicking the shit out of Doom.”

Yelena laughs and knocks a piece of debris away. “Go Bob.”

“Where’s Steve?” Bucky asks pointedly.

He hears some clicking around on Walker’s end. “He’s on Richards’ craft… all I know is he’s not the one driving.”

If Bob is kicking the shit out of Doom and Walker can tell Steve is on the ship, hopefully that means Steve is letting Bob handle the magic fight. Bucky turns around and looks up at the sky. It’s too cloudy of a day to see anything, but there sure is the flashbang of war. It lights everything up in pops of electricity and warfare. They’re higher up than Bucky thought they were.

“Can we get me up there?” he asks nobody in particular.

Then -- there’s a bang. It’s big, just one lonesome POP! followed by a secondary blast a few moments later. Bucky is processing the first sound when the second hits him, and he buckles over, nauseous and dizzy as the subsonic component of the blast reaches them. The air ripples.

“What the hell?” he hears Yelena grunt out, and when he turns to squint back at her, he sees her bent in half, too, covering her ears with both hands.

The buildings rumble and dust falls as everything trembles, and Bucky’s chest is heaving, he’s getting ready to throw up, when it all stops. The air goes back to normal.

And then, the rubble of war begins to fall. Metal, velvet, space junk.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks Yelena, reaching out for her arm. She frowns and nods. Bucky helps her stand up straight again and asks Walker, “Where is he?”

Yelena mutters into his side, “I might do the puke and rally,” but Walker is silent.

“Walker,” Bucky says carefully. He stares out at the rubble and sees nothing. “Where is he?”

A long moment, and then Walker, quietly, “I’m trying to get him back.”

He lets go of Yelena or Yelena lets go of him. Bucky doesn’t know. He just stands there and realizes, distantly, that there are tears welling up in his eyes. Bucky doesn’t feel that, though. He doesn’t get a chance to. The heartbreak flips to rage quicker than it ever has before and he recoils, spinning around and blasting his metal fist right through the side of a car.

*

We spent more time apart than we ever did together, is what Bucky told him that day in the elevator. Always chasing each other through time and apparently now space he’d said. Maybe the universe isn’t trying to bring us together, Steve. Maybe we’re actually supposed to be apart.

The emergency crews roll in. Things have stopped falling from the sky, so the cops evacuate the civilians who took shelter in and around the base of the tower, and they start moving big pieces of debris in an attempt to recover what’s underneath. Maybe Bucky hadn’t been wrong.

“We’re working on getting them back,” was the last thing Walker said, before Bucky yanked the bug out of his ear and crushed it in his hand. “They’re here, Buck, we just haven’t found them yet.”

Steve never came back on the radar, and the Fantastic Four hadn’t, either.

*

Most emergency crew vehicles have cleared out. All the civilians have been removed, including those with injuries who went to hospital, and the few who were stuck in the debris and crushed buildings. There are a few police cars parked in the middle of the intersection, lights flashing even though the cops are just talking at each other through their open windows.

Bucky’s been sitting on this broken jersey barrier for hours.

After a long time of being alone, Yelena quietly comes and sits next to him. She doesn’t say anything, just stares ahead as Bucky watches the sky. He feels her hand on the back of his shoulder.

It’s a little bit after that when she tries a gentle, “Bucky…”

“Hold on,” Bucky tells her. He keeps staring at the clouds. “Just give me a minute.”

Yelena doesn’t argue with him or say anything else. She just sits there. And she stares at the sky the way he stares at the sky.

The cops leave. The last ambulance parks itself on the other side of the road. And then, all of a sudden-

Steve.

Falling out of the clouds.

Bucky’s whole face breaks into a grin. He almost isn’t sure for a second, but that’s-

“Steve,” he whispers. And then he laughs.

Yelena snaps her head up and gives him a weird look, but -- that’s Steve.

She turns back to the sky and looks up to where Bucky was staring, but Bucky is already gone, running in the direction he sees Steve falling.

“Bucky!” Yelena shouts after him, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

He tries to track Steve in the air as he runs. Steve doesn’t seem conscious, doesn’t seem like he’s moving around or having any part in how he falls. Bucky keeps looking up, getting one more glance at Steve, before he has to look back at where he’s running.

Steve is headed right for the East River. Bucky hops over fences and through red lights and tries his best not to knock anyone over.

He gets to the front of City Hall as Steve hits the water at about a hundred miles an hour.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes, taking off in a dead run for the last stretch between here and the water.

Then he accidentally knocks over a guy on a bike as he hops the bridge and plunges in after him.

Steve’s sinking slow but like a fucking rock. It’s dark enough in the water that Bucky almost misses him, especially with the dark suit, but he glimpses that face and then he doesn’t see anything else. He follows Steve down all forty feet and reaches him right as he hits the bottom of the riverbank.

He’s unconscious but Bucky can see bubbles coming out of his nose and mouth, which means he’s alive.

Bucky twists his fingers into the front strap of Steve’s uniform, right by where the stitches say ROGERS, and starts kicking them both up to the surface.

It feels like he swims forever and the bottom of the river is so dark, but the closer they get to the surface, the lighter the water gets, and then, Bucky’s head breaks through. He comes up gasping for air, just his face first, until he heaves Steve by the strap and hoists him up against the side of his body.

“Great,” Bucky pants, when he notices the cop lights on the side of the bridge he jumped off of.

He swims them to shore, all Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers’ dead weight, holding Steve’s body up against his until they get out of the water enough that Bucky’s just gotta drag him by the straps. He flops them both onto the embankment and collapses into the grass beside where he dropped Steve.

It’s a minute before he hears Steve cough and choke and start gagging water all over himself.

“You back with me, Rogers?” Bucky asks, turning his head against the dirt to see-

Steve. And holy fucking hell, did Bucky really die down there? He picks his head up and stares at his feet and the river behind them. Who ever knew Heaven was the embankment alongside the deepest part of the East River?

“Yeah,” Steve spits out, rolling to the side as he keeps gagging. “It’s -- it’s me, Buck.”

Bucky looks away from his feet and back at Steve’s face. The one he still sees when he thinks about Steve in his head. There aren’t many wrinkles on it. It doesn’t have crows feet. Just two little lines in-between his eyebrows when he got real serious.

Still breathing hard, Bucky turns his head back to look up at the sky. Steve coughs and spits and throws up all of the water out of his lungs, but Bucky lays, on pins and needles, and thinks of alternate universes.

He squeezes his eyes closed, and, dreading the answer, asks, “Is that really you?”

“What?” Steve sounds offended even as he gags. “Why wouldn’t I-” he stops himself. “Oh.”

Bucky looks back over as Steve stares down at his own hand.

It’s really not the time. The cops are going to be down here thinking Bucky’s trying to kill himself at any moment, but still, he’s gotta ask, “Do you know what happened?”

“Parts of it,” Steve says honestly. He raises his eyebrows at Bucky. “Richards had a time bomb, and he said it was dangerous but necessary.” God, when Steve looks at him like that, with those eyes Bucky hasn’t seen in years and years and years, his heart breaks into pieces about it. “He said it would blast time through us instead of the other way around.”

Bucky groans and flops his head back into the bank. “Why’d he do a crazy thing like that?”

“When we were up there, Richards ran out of cards fast,” Steve says. They both slowly start pushing themselves up, hands and knees and then to their feet. “He said it was the only way to reduce Doom’s power, and, I dunno, Buck. I’m no scientist but it sure worked.”

They start walking along the squishy embankment, Bucky following Steve. “So where did Reed and his crew get to?”

“Probably the Hudson,” Steve says over one shoulder, and it’s such a flippant answer, Bucky laughs.

*

They walk in the direction of Bucky’s apartment, which is closer than the tower.

“So what happens now?” he asks, twisting the belly of his t-shirt to wring the river water out. “Do they send you back to the moon?”

Steve snorts mid-step beside him. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he sighs.

“Well, you know…” Bucky starts, tilting his head in Steve’s direction. He arches an eyebrow and teases, “I may know of a job opening.”

Steve laughs. “Oh yeah? I did hear something about this senate gig you had.” Now Bucky laughs, and god, how did Steve find out about that? “It wouldn’t be there, would it? Following you around with the day’s newspaper and a cup of coffee?”

“No, it wouldn’t be there,” Bucky says, low voice as they toe dangerous territory. “Let’s talk about the newspaper and coffee thing later, though.”

“Bucky,” Steve murmurs in a tone of voice that curls Bucky’s toes up stupid in his boots. He has to stop mid-stride and get a look at Steve instead of going anywhere else, tongue squeezing against the inside of his top teeth at the look on Steve’s face. “Don’t act like I wouldn’t follow you around like a dog if you asked me to.”

The smile that grows is slow because, god, it’s one of those kinds Bucky hasn’t felt in a while.

“The thing about that, Steve, is you’d be following me around, sure, but I’d just be following you,” Bucky promises.

Steve says back, serious, “Two stupid assholes going around in circles.”

“Yeah.” Bucky raises his eyebrows. “Seems like it, huh?”

They both nod, still soaking wet, dripping shitty river water all over the place as everyone else on the sidewalk pointedly walks around them.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be Buck,” Steve says after a minute.

Bucky doesn’t have to think about it anymore. He swears, “Me neither, sweetheart.”