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Bucky’s chest rose and fell in steady rhythm—slow, controlled breaths, the kind he learned in therapy. It helped. Sometimes.
But not tonight.
Tonight, the stillness stirred things he hadn’t touched in months. Feelings that never really left. And if he didn’t face them now, they’d claw their way into dreams—and not the kind he could shake off by morning.
It wasn’t the nightmares this time, though.
It was the silence.
That heavy kind of quiet that settles in your bones— the kind that reminds you everything you had is behind you.
He turned restlessly, the blankets twisted around his legs. His body was exhausted, but his mind ran like it was chasing something just out of reach. He glanced at his phone.
3:17 a.m.
A sigh escaped him, weary and frustrated. Alone in his little floor nest, he pushed himself up and padded to the window of his New York apartment. Below, the streets lay still—bathed in blue by a single streetlight, like the whole city was holding its breath.
His eyes softened.
For a moment, he saw them—him and Steve, side by side on that sidewalk, their laughter echoing down the block. Two kids from Brooklyn. Before the war. Before the ice.
And just as quickly as the image came, it vanished.
Only the empty street remained.
“Maybe I should move,” Bucky murmured, barely audible to himself. “But where?”
The thought trailed off as he turned from the window, shaking his head, and poured himself a glass of water. The cold bit at his senses—sharp enough to ground him. He drank slowly, his skin still clammy from the anxious sweat that always came when sleep evaded him.
He moved to the couch and sat at the edge, a pen in one hand, his metal fingers tapping a rhythm against his knee. Restless. Haunted. Awake again.
He didn’t even know why he picked up the pen tonight. Maybe because the silence was louder than anything else. Maybe because it had been over a year, and he still reached for a voice that wasn’t there.
His brow furrowed, like the words were buried somewhere in his bones—if only his hand could find them. He didn’t need noise. He didn’t need distraction.
Just space to listen.
To the longing.
To the grief.
To the part of his heart that only ever beat in time with Steve’s.
Steve was gone now. Gone back to a past Bucky couldn’t follow. And all he could do tonight was sit with the ache of it.
He lit a candle without thinking, and watched the soft flame flicker on the table. The glow reminded him of 1940s campfires—of Steve leaning forward, planning the next mission, hopeful despite the odds.
Then something cracked open in his chest—an old wound that had never quite closed.
And he began to write.
The ink touched paper slowly, like a whisper made solid.
We shared a thousand battles,
But I never said the words out loud.
I never told you what you meant to me, Steve.
How your friendship kept me breathing.
We were brothers without saying it—
Two kids from Brooklyn who never fit anywhere but beside each other.
You were always the light when the world went dark.
Always the compass when I was lost.
You stood by me when I was broken.
You believed in me when I couldn’t remember who I was.
My brother under the sun...
That’s what you are.
Even now. Even though you’re gone—
Off in some past where I can’t follow,
Living a life I’ll never see, in a time I can’t touch.
You were always there with open arms and open heart...
I keep waiting to hear your voice. In my dreams. In the silence.
But it’s just me now. Me and the ghosts.
Trying to fix things. Trying to do better. Trying to be who you saw in me.
Some days I still feel like I’m drowning, still gasping for air.
But then I remember how you looked at me.
Like I was worth saving.
So I keep going.
For you.
Bucky’s breath shuddered out of him. He blinked hard, but didn’t wipe the tears that slid down his cheek. They fell silently onto the page, one by one.
He reread the lines once, then folded the paper slowly—like it was something sacred. Then, with care, he slipped it into the old tin where he kept his medals.
The ones that meant nothing without Steve beside him.
He lowered the pen. His jaw tightened, but his eyes, though glistening, stayed dry. Before turning off the light, he glanced once more at the photo on the wall: Steve, young and bright, grinning beside him.
Before the ice. Before the wars.
"My brother under the sun," he whispered to the empty room.
And for the first time in weeks, he slept.