Work Text:
Bucky knew something was going to happen today. He may not have remembered every nuance of Steve Rogers but he’d caught enough of the half-finished thoughts and muttered comments to figure Steve had an ulterior motive for volunteering for the Return Trip.
He knew.
But his head had been spinning since he got the new arm. He should have slowed down – asked Steve what the real plan was. That would’ve saved him the gut-punch when it happened.
But it wasn’t a surprise when Steve blew past his return window. And then it really wasn’t a surprise when Bucky saw the elderly man at the edge of the pond.
Still hurt though, like a mule kick to the ribs.
He let Sam go first so he could stall a moment - try to get his head wrapped around what had happened. What was happening. He tried to collect his thoughts, but they were darting around his brain like a box of mice.
“How does it feel?”
“Like it’s someone elses…”
“It isn’t.”
God, was Steve really doing this? Leaving him like this?
Not that Steve owed him anything. Steve was owed the world. He couldn’t fault him for taking it.
Bucky barely remembered his own family, but he clearly remembered each and every target he was sent to murder. He was not the kind of man you hung around for.
It was silent at the lakes edge and Bucky realized he’d been staring at his feet. He glanced up. Both Steve and Sam were staring at him with big sappy eyes.
“Sam, would you give us a minute?” Steve asked softly.
Sam ducked his head in a nod and headed back towards Bucky, reaching over to clap Bucky’s shoulder as he passed by. Bucky gave him a tight-lipped smile.
He forced his leaden feet to take him to that bench. He forced his stiff knees to bend as he took his seat – as far from Steve as the bench would allow. He didn’t look at Steve yet. He hunched over his clasped hands that he forced to be still in his lap.
And he felt Steve’s eyes on him.
Bucky figured he should offer a quippy greeting, choke out a joke on his age, his attire, but he was drawing a blank.
“I’ve been…thinking,” Steve started, and paused long enough to give Bucky plenty of time to tease him about thinking.
Bucky said nothing, but he felt a stir of anger flicker in his belly. He did his best to stifle it.
Steve cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about this apology for a long long time now. I’ve rehearsed it thousands of times – especially after Peg passed. I took seven years to prepare after she was gone.”
Bucky let out a chuff of air that could have been a laugh or it could have been a scoff. “You land on anything good?” he asked, his eyes fixed somewhere out on the lake.
“I did not,” Steve admitted. “Peggy had some great ideas but I never wrote them down.” He heaved a weary sigh. “How does a fella tell his best friend that he’s sorry?”
Bucky’s jaw clenched. Released. He sucked in a breath through his nose. “You don’t. Any good friend worth his salt would understand,” he said woodenly. “He’d understand that one of them needed to get back home and it might as well be the one who had the best shot of making a good run of it.”
“Buck—”
“You take care of my sisters?” Bucky suddenly asked, glancing over at Steve to find rheumy old eyes watching him.
“I wasn’t supposed to be alive so I couldn’t visit, but Peg did. We made sure they were okay. Peggy even stepped in once to scare off a real sleazeball from Becca. She ended up marrying a really swell guy.”
Bucky sucked on his teeth to distract himself from the sudden pressure building behind his eyes. He nodded. “Thanks. What uh…What was it like being back?”
“Quiet,” Steve said wistfully. “So quiet. The whole world was a lot slower, all of a sudden. I had time to really think again, without a computer in my pocket.” He chuckled.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna get used to that one any time soon,” Bucky said with a grimace.
“You’ll get there, pal. It’ll happen,” Steve assured him. “You still got a whole life ahead of you, Buck. And you love technology.”
Bucky’s lips twisted sardonically. “Sure. Just go get a piece of that life that Tony was talking about?” That anger flared again, flashing across his face before he could lock it down.
“Buck…”
“What life, Steve? I got nobody waiting for me,” Bucky snapped. He forced his eyes back out to the lake. “I’m glad you could go back for Peggy, I really am, but even if I could go back…” He lifted his metal hand. “There’s not much of me left that could fit in there.”
“Look, there’s mental health experts here—”
Bucky groaned, waving off the idea of a head doctor. He’d had plenty of that in Wakanda already.
“—help, Buck. There’s help for you here in this time that we never had at home,” Steve continued.
Bucky scowled out over the water, and Steve’s hand came to rest on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Bucky,” Steve said softly. “I’m not sorry for going, but I’m sorry that I didn’t take you with me. It was a snap decision.”
“Don’t you bullshit me, Rogers.” Bucky glared at him.
Steve ducked his head with a smirk. “Alright, I thought about it in the nights leading up to the mission. But I didn’t have the guts to commit until I took the Tesseract back to the base in 1970. I saw her again,” Steve admitted.
“In her office?” Bucky asked, guessing Steve probably didn’t just stumble on her but probably went back to the office to snoop.
Steve shook his head. “In the hallway, if you can believe it. She walked right up to me like she knew I’d be there. Looked me dead in the eye and said ‘you’re late, Captain. You gotta go back a few more decades’. And then, as if that weren’t enough, she took my hand and gave it a squeeze and she said ‘it’ll be alright, soldier. I’ll have a roast in the oven, you’ll be just in time.”
Steve paused, searching back through old memories of that moment.
“I thought about coming here first, talking to you. Maybe you would’a come with me then. But—”
“Bruce wouldn’t have let you,” Bucky insisted. “He’d panic about the timelines.”
“He would’ve,” Steve agreed.
“So, you went for it,” Bucky concluded.
“I had to,” Steve insisted, a pleading apology in his thin, weary voice.
“Bruce is probably shitting bricks right now,” Bucky theorized, glancing back over his shoulder where he could see the big green man in the trees with Sam.
“You’re not wrong,” Steve sighed. “I’m sorry, Bucky.” He squeezed Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky shook his head. “No, don’t be sorry. Not your fault that I missed the only train home.”
The jealousy was sour in his stomach, but Bucky didn’t even realize that he was crying until Steve was scooching closer and tugging him into a side hug. Bucky let his head thunk down on Steve’s shoulder, let the old man wrap his other arm around him.
The overwhelm hit him then. It tended to come in waves, usually when he got too deep into his own head. He’d only just gotten a decent lid on it when the war had come to Wakanda. And now he was back again, in that whirlpool that threatened to drown him in the murky waters of his trauma.
Bucky was struck then with just how much life Steve must have lived those seconds that they waited for him here. That was one hell of a five-second lifetime.
“We’ll get you sorted out, kid,” Steve murmured.
“I’m as old as you are, you old coot,” Bucky complained.
“You look like you could be my grandson, you whipper snapper,” Steve countered.
“Wow, you really did take all the stupid with you.”
“Well at least I kept my hair trimmed.”
“Not sure I could handle someone getting close to my head with a pair of scissors,” Bucky glowered.
He straightened up, sniffling, wiping at his cheeks.
“I’ll help you out, pal,” Steve insisted. “I’ve given my fair share of haircuts over the years. We’re getting you your back-pay too. Did you know that you’re longest-imprisoned POW in the world?”
“Yeah, if they don’t count me as a traitor and execute me on the spot,” Bucky grumbled.
“I already hired a lawyer and got her started getting expert testimony on your captivity,” Steve insisted. “King T’Challa and Princess Shuri—”
“I’ll just go live off-grid somewhere,” Bucky said with a grimace. “They’ll never find me.”
“Not in todays time, pal. Besides, you’ve been in the shadows long enough, Buck. It’s time to come back into the light.”
Bucky heaved a sigh, his head bobbing in a weak nod. The light. It scared the shit out of him.
“Y-you’re coming with me though, right?” he asked, and he hated how pitiful he sounded.
Steve went real quiet.
He felt the old fist gently bump against his shoulder.
Panic crept across his scalp.
“Steve…”
“I’m about outta line, Buck,” Steve murmured.
Bucky stared at him and he noticed the fatigue in Steve’s eyes. He had to be pushing 106 by now. How long could a super soldier keep kicking? Clearly, some things had started slowing down in his best friend.
“These last seven-eight years,” Steve went on, “they’ve been pretty tough, with Peggy gone, with the blip. Don’t got much left in the tank.”
Bucky’s mouth went dry. A knot formed in his stomach and he felt like he was going to puke.
“I’ma get your name clear,” Steve said, “I got that fight left in me. But then…Peggy and I bought a cabin up by Lake Placid. It’s a good place to wind down. Real peaceful. You can come visit but—”
“But I got a lot of life left to live,” Bucky spat out, acidly.
“You do, Buck. You got the whole world in front of you. It’d be a shame if you spent it watching me die,” Steve said bluntly. “Go make friends. Find a girl. Make a family. Get a job that makes you happy.”
“Yeah…get a job. Not a lot of people hiring assassins,” Bucky grumbled.
Steve chuckled. “Maybe you’d make a good politician. Keep the world in line, Congressman Barnes.”
“God no,” Bucky hissed. He shook his head. The overwhelm was starting to circle back around to him again and he pulled in a deep breath and held it – as if that would stop the tears from leaking down his cheeks.
Steve pulled him back down into another side hug, and they sat that way for a few minutes until the world stopped spinning around him. But then the questions started spinning around him instead. Questions about the past, about his future, about Peggy, about Steve – did they have kids? Were there Steve Juniors running around out there? How did he handle laying low? Did he just stay home all this time—
It struck him then, like a sledge hammer. The question.
Bucky sat up, leaned away from Steve. And Steve did not reach for him. Rogers knew what question was on fire now in Bucky’s chest.
“Buck…”
He shook his head, eyes tilted downward. “Steve, I gotta ask you…a-about me…”
“Why didn’t your past change,” Steve supplied. “Did I try going after you? Did I leave you there?”
Bucky found it hard to breathe all of a sudden. He nodded.
And Steve let out a long-suffering sigh. “That one I actually have an answer to.”
Bucky glanced sideways at him.
“Peggy and I talked about this a lot. Bruce is worried about what I might have done to the timeline—”
“So you left me there.”
“I know it doesn’t sit nice, Bucky. I know this is a betrayal. You’re actually pretty important to history, believe it or not. If I’da stopped that timeline…We wouldn’t be here. Thanos probably would’ve come anyway and we might not have beat ‘im.”
A cold weight settled in his chest. It was heavy. Some luck he had. He was probably the most unlucky bastard to ever have existed, in any timeline. Not even Steve – the actual Captain America – would save him.
There was a sniffle from beside him. Steve was crying. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Buck…” he huffled.
Bucky just nodded, tears in his own eyes. He didn’t trust any words to his quivering lips.
He felt the distance now.
It yawned open between them. The years, the experiences, the stark differences in their lives where their paths diverged. The choices made. The choices Steve made.
And this was always how life would shake out, wasn’t it? Steve Rogers – loyal to a fault, but loyal to whom? The greater good.
And Bucky Barnes was very far from that greater good.
Bucky dragged a hand across his eyes and tried to get his emotions locked down again but he felt funny now. His hands were freezing, and his feet. He felt light headed. He had to get out of there.
“Don’t be sorry, Steve,” he heard himself choke out. “I understand. I-I’m…I’m glad you had a good life.”
He forced himself to stand on wobbly legs. He forced himself to walk away. And by the time he got on his motorcycle, the tears had stopped enough for him to see.
And Bucky Barnes locked himself down. He closed himself up in a shell, numb to the world around him.
In the months that followed, Steve made good on his word – and of course he did. The Winter Soldier trial went startlingly fast. They granted him a pardon, and even handed him that big fat check that Steve promised they would, contingent on his going to therapy. He even tried to find himself some friends, a girl, a family.
And, funny enough, it was Sam Wilson’s family that he found.
It was the swampy air of Delacroix that finally snuck in past his shell. It was home cookin’ and sweet Sarah and too much video game time with the boys. It was afternoons on the boat with Sam, gently getting his feelings teased past the anger, the abandonment, the rejection.
So when the invite came, nine months after the Return Trip Mission, Bucky was able to answer it.
Steve missed him and would he like to visit? It was lovely at Lake Placid in the summer.
He made Sam come with him.
They drove in companionable silence nearly the whole way up to New York. Steve was right, it was beautiful. He had vague memories of his family taking a vacation in upstate New York, when he was a kid. Steve had come with them, of course. He couldn’t remember if they came all the way to Lake Placid though.
“You gonna be okay?” Sam asked him, breaking the warm blanket of quiet.
Bucky glanced over at him and nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said automatically.
And he was, wasn’t he? He was ok. Nothing was on fire. He’d gone to therapy. He’d spent a lot of time with the Wilsons. He was much better now than he was nine months ago.
“You look like you’re gonna puke,” Sam observed.
“I’m fine, Sam. Steve and I…we need to get this over with. Move on,” Bucky insisted.
“You know, it’s alright that you felt abandoned by Steve—”
“We’ve already had this conversation, Sam,” Bucky grumped.
“I know, I just thought I’d go over the major points again for you.”
“If I say I’m fine again, will you believe me?”
“Maybe, if you can say it without turning green,” Sam drawled.
“Samuel—”
“Yes, James?”
“Shut up, I’m fine.”
“Mmhmm. Ok.”
“Okay.”
Bucky chewed on his lip as Sam took them down a single lane road through the forest that would lead them to Steve’s cabin.
He was there to make amends. Or rather, to let Steve make amends. He was there to forgive Steve. He was there to embrace his best friend and let that friendship override the betrayal. What’s done was done. There was no fixing it, no matter how much Bucky wished they could.
To his surprise, he found that he wanted to forgive Steve. He wanted to hold on to this last shred of family that he had from his former life. The one shining beacon – even if that beacon was a little tarnished now. Who wasn’t, these days?
There was the cabin. It was bigger than he’d expected – clearly Steve and Peggy had done well for themselves. It was just a stones throw from the lakeshore, deep enough in the wilderness that it felt secluded. He saw Steve immediately, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch.
Sam put the car into park, peering out of the windshield. “Hey man, I’m gonna make a phone call for a few minutes. Might need to pull back out onto the main road for it. You guys take your time, okay?”
Bucky looked over at him and gave the man a curt nod. “Thanks Sam.”
“Any time, Buck. Hey, don’t go hitting an old man, alright?”
Bucky frowned as he pushed the door open. “I’m not gonna hit him!”
A chuckle trilled down from the porch. “I sure hope not,” Steve called.
Bucky shot him an abashed smirk and awkwardly lumbered up the porch steps.
Steve looked even older, somehow. It’d only been a few months and he looked thin. Worn down – like how he imagined Bilbo to look in Rivendell. And sad. He looked sad.
“Steve…”
“Bucky. I’m glad you came. Please, sit.” He gestured to an empty rocking chair and Bucky shuffled to it and sat.
The car started again and Bucky watched as Sam backed down the driveway, giving them some space.
Awkward.
What was he supposed to do now?
He wasn’t sure so he rocked, gently, pushing the rocker with his toes as he looked out on the lake – a different lake this time.
“You cut your hair,” Steve observed.
Bucky reached up to muss his fingers through it. “Yeah…I kinda hate it,” he admitted. He hated it because he had to keep going back every month to get it trimmed and it just…it felt like too much some days.
“Well, it’ll look just fine longer, I’m sure.”
Another silence.
“Bucky, thank you for coming today. I know you have good reasons to stay away—”
“I wanted to come,” Bucky said quickly. “I did. We uh…we can’t seem to catch a break on time anymore, can we? Never seems to be enough.”
“No, never is,” Steve agreed. “Buck, I-I am sorry. It tore me up inside, all those years…”
Bucky snuck a glance over at him and saw Steves watery eyes again. It was hard to see them in such an old face – not because Steve was old but because Bucky wasn’t old with him.
“Me too,” Bucky whispered. “It tore me up too.”
Steve swallowed. “I’m sure there’s nothing I can say that makes up for what I did.”
Bucky shook his head. “No, probably not. But I think maybe we’ve spent enough time being tore up over it. I’d like to say I’d make the same call if our positions were reversed but I don’t think I coulda been that strong. You probably made the right call, Steve.”
“Yeah, but it’s that probably that gets me,” Steve admitted, his voice hitching.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Bucky heaved a sigh.
“I’m sorry—”
“I forgive you, Steve,” Bucky blurted, fixing Steve with a hard stare.
And Steve nearly melted and then Bucky nearly melted too.
“Y-you do?” Steve rasped.
“Yeah, you dumb twerp. Stop getting mushy on me,” Bucky huffed.
Steve let out a snuffled chuckle. “Big jerk…”
“I dunno, I just forgave you for a whole lot. I’m pretty sure that makes me a big damn hero. Probably bigger than Captain America,” Bucky insisted, wiping at his eyes.
“Y’know, it’s that probably that gets me.”
“Every god-damned time.” He shook his head and sniffled, dragging at his eyes again. It was a little galling that they wouldn’t stay dry.
“How are you doing with forgiving yourself?” Steve asked.
Bucky looked at him, one corner of his mouth lifted like a shrug. “Working on that one…Might take me a while.”
“You’ll get there. You’re a big damn hero, after all,” Steve insisted with a tilt of his head.
“Probably.”
“Not this time, pal.”
Oh those stupid eyes of his, refusing to stay dry.
But at least his chest felt looser. His shoulders felt lighter. The pain was still there but it was like the pain after you pull a splinter or a thorn out of your skin. A whisper, an echo. For now, anyway. And in its place, there was relief. Because, now, the healing could begin in earnest.
“I’m glad you brought Sam with you,” Steve mused as he sniffled in the rocking chair beside him. “I’ve got some fresh salmon in the refrigerator. He’s cooks a mean salmon.”
“He’ll cook us anything we ask for. We look like a pair of pathetic old men out here, crying,” Bucky grumbled.
“That’s alright, Sam’s good for that. He’s a good man. I’m glad you two connected.”
“I’m glad you picked him to pick up the shield. That was a good call,” Bucky said with a nod.
“Would you keep an eye out for each other? For me?” Steve pled in a small tone.
Bucky nodded again, not trusting himself to say anything because that plea got a little too close to the truth that Steve wasn’t going to last forever. One day, it’d just be Bucky and Sam, looking out for each other.
“Thank you, Buck.”
“Yeah,” Bucky muttered. He swallowed against the lump in his throat.
“I got a case of beer in the fridge too,” Steve assured him. “Figured we’d need it if we’re gonna beat Sam at pinochle after dinner.”
“Sam’s awful at pinochle. We don’t have to worry about that.”
“Is he? He’s beat me a few times…”
Bucky paused, frowning as he considered the handful of times he’d tried teaching pinochle to Sam. Had…had he been throwing the game this whole time? If he was throwing pinochle to make Bucky feel better about himself, he was gonna kill Sam.
“Alright, he’s going down,” Bucky insisted.
And Steve just laughed.
They spent the weekend with him at the cabin – a peaceful, quiet, slow-world weekend. By the end of it, he didn’t even have to flinch at the thought of Steve in the past. It’d come back, he was sure – pain had a way of doing that, given enough time.
But for now, he was fine.
For now, he was at rest.
And maybe his own five-second lifetime wouldn’t be so bad after all.