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T'Challa gives Bucky a jet when he leaves to go find Steve. "Do not break this," he says, like Bucky is a child. "It is worth more than your arm."
Bucky looks down at the sleek arm that is now on his left. "So I can break the arm?"
"Do not do that either." T'Challa hesitates. He won't tell Bucky to stay, that's not in his nature. "Be careful, my friend." His eyes are kind and he doesn't hesitates to embrace Bucky.
Leaving Siberia after Zemo is a memory of a bleary haze of pain and regret and anguish. Bucky remembers stumbling from the bunker, Steve's shoulders under his one arm, the only thing keeping him standing. This wasn't a wound he'd bleed out from, but the circuits and wires melded into his bones and nerves were frayed and exposed and each movement was a festering wound scraping over concrete. They'd come over the ridge and they had seen T'Challa standing by their quinjet, back straight and head tilted like he'd been waiting for awhile.
He'd thought it was the end. Steve was still standing but Bucky could feel the fine tremors shaking his whole body. Broken ribs. Ruptured organs. Nothing he couldn't heal from - but he could barely win against T'Challa when he was at full capacity. And needing to protect Bucky at the same time? Not going to happen.
He'd told Steve, mumbled it in his ear. "You have to leave me. You have to go," because T'Challa wasn't going to let Bucky leave and Bucky wasn't going to watch Steve die in a futile attempt to protect him from the inevitable.
Steve had tightened his grip on him, mouth twisting in almost a snarl, like a wounded bear lashing out in a last chance at life. He was already shifting Bucky behind him, already trying to shield him when there was no shield left, when T'Challa had held out his hands.
"Captain Rogers," he'd said, voice level. "I have taken Zemo prisoner. I know the truth and I have seen the cost of vengeance. I do not wish to harm either of you anymore. My country will welcome both you and your friend. You will be safe there."
Steve had wavered, legs buckling just a little but he kept his shoulders straight, Bucky tucked against him. "We're fugitives now, your highness," he said, weariness dulling his voice. "You would be violating the treaty by taking us in."
T'Challa had stepped aside. "There are things more important than the laws of men. I will not command you. But I have prepared my people. If you land in Wakanda, you will be given safe haven for as long as you desire."
Steve had turned his head to look at Bucky, asking. Bucky had been half blind with pain and exhaustion. But he had nodded.
T'Challa had helped them stagger into the quinjet. He'd plugged the coordinates of his private airfield into their guidance system and had helped Steve lay Bucky down on the narrow bunk in the back of the quinjet.
Bucky had been half insensate, his whole side twitching as his nerves spasmed. "Thank you," he'd managed to say though, through clenched teeth.
Steve pressed his hand into Bucky's shoulder and had shaken T'Challa's hand with the other. "Tony is..." His voice had faded then rallied. "I disabled his suit. He's down in the bunker. If you could."
"I will see him and Zemo safely to Berlin," T'Challa had said. "You have my word. Now go. I will see you both soon."
They had landed in Wakanda seven hours later. Steve had gripped one of their remaining guns tightly when the royal guard had boarded to escort them off the airfield. He'd kept Bucky behind him, using his body as protection as best he could. Bucky had watched him, seen how his fingers had reached for the shield that wasn't there. He hadn't let anyone carry Bucky but him - hadn't let them take Bucky anywhere he couldn't follow.
"We stay together," he'd said, hoarse but stubborn. His fingers had been locked around Bucky's wrist.
Bucky'd been only barely there and the jungle had been so green, blurry and bright and over stimulating. He'd seen a waterfall and thought they were in paradise. He'd felt Steve smoothing his hair back, tipping a water bottle to his mouth. "You're safe. I won't let anyone hurt you or take you away again."
They'd been given warm, quiet rooms in the palace. Medical personnel had come, cleaned the bare live wires up from the metal stump. They had been sparking and rubbing and frying, burning like acid against Bucky's bones. They cauterized the exposed circuits, took away the pain and covered it with something soft and thick so that every brush of air didn't feel like an electrical shock.
And then. And then.
Bucky remembers Steve's heartbreak and fear and crying at his bedside when he thought Bucky was asleep. But, after weeks of trying and failing to remove the programming with existing technology, it had been the only way.
He hadn't lied about his memories. He remembers everything. He remembers shooting Steve in the stomach, breaking his face on his fist, wrapping his metal hand around his neck. If he had been able to do that to the dearest person, then there was no trusting his mind. Not while the triggers were still in. And the the doctors said it would take time. But they could do it. It was the best way.
Even if he had to break Steve's heart.
That had been seven months ago.
Now he had an arm and a jet and a brain that was his own. The nightmares are there, lingering tightly beneath the surface like a waiting sea monster. But no one will call him soldat again.
They tell him that Steve had stayed in Wakanda for six months after he had gone to sleep. There's security footage of Steve pacing the medical center, sitting next to a glass cryo chamber, day in and day out. He would talk in a low voice, too soft for the camera's speakers. But sometimes he would turn at just the right angle and Bucky could read his lips.
Then, a call had come in and Steve had gone, reluctantly, leaving a letter behind just in case, planning to only be gone days. He'd gone to Spain, chasing a report of a Hydra base, and then had vanished into the ether. Radio silence for two weeks.
Sam and Natasha were there now, slinking below the radar, but it was hard to look for an international fugitive while trying to not let the authorities know he was missing.
He knows T'Challa doesn't want him to go. He thinks he should let Sam and Natasha keep looking for Steve.
"What else can you do?" he had asked just last yesterday. "You have just woken up. You need rest. And peace."
Hydra had spent years programming Bucky, left him in on their most intimate secrets since he was incapable of telling and no one foresaw him ever being rescued. No one thought he would ever use this information against them. This is something he can do.
After all, there is no peace without Steve. Bucky has been following him into battle all of his life. Hydra hadn't changed that.
So he leaves, takes the jet and the supplies that T'Challa offers. "I won't be gone long," he promises. Then he takes off for Europe.
He meets up with both Sam and Natasha in Barcelona, at a cafe by the water where men in dark shirts and sunglasses lounge all day.
Natasha is a brunette now, mousy brown hair hanging straight around her face and sunglasses over her eyes. She studies him hard when he sits down across from them. "You look well," she says and her voice seems higher. She moves loosely like she is a grad student on a break year.
"I'm sorry about trying to kill you," he says.
She shrugs, flippant and easy. "It didn't stick."
Sam just nods at him. He has a thick beard and it makes him seem gruff and untouchable. He also has wire rimmed glasses. "Ground rules. No ripping my wings off. And I ride shotgun."
Bucky smiles because he likes Sam.
The base Steve had been investigating is on the coast, nestled at the edges of a small town between green hills and orchards.
"He called the day after he got here," Sam says as they drive in on a bumpy road. "I was supposed to meet him the next day. He said there was nothing here. That it was a false lead and he was going home. I didn't even realize anything was wrong until T'Challa called just last week asking where he was. I got here the next day. But no trail."
"We've been asking around, went out to the base. It looks abandoned. It's like he vanished into thin air. Maybe he wanted to get away for awhile." Natasha is driving and her fingernails are painted blue like the sky. It's chipping on the tops and there's a gold ring on her thumb.
"Steve's never been that good at blending in," Bucky says. The memories are glossed over with the years between, but he can still hear Steve's loud stubbornness echoing over Brooklyn streets. "He wouldn't have gone underground without a word."
Natasha flattens her mouth like she would've smiled. "I've tried to give him lessons," she says. "But he prefers the direct approach."
The base does look abandoned. There are overgrown weeds and rocks and bats fly out when Bucky pulls open the metal blast doors. Everything smells of must and decay and salty mold from ocean water. All the light bulbs are burnt out and his flashlight is a flickering gleam against dripping walls.
"Where did the lead come from?" he asks, kicking over a bucket lying in a corner. A crab scuttles out, going for a green looking puddle near the the door.
Sam shrugs. "Steve got the call directly. Said it was from someone in the US. State department or CIA or something."
"Sharon?" Bucky asks, remembering a blonde girl and Steve's mouth on hers and the matching ache in his own chest.
"We asked. Not her."
There's a desk covered in cobwebs near the back of the room. The chair is broken in front of it, leaning on two legs. He steps closer. An aged sheet of paper is on the desk, wrinkled at the edges, and ink faded. It's numbers, numbers written from top to bottom in a careful, cramped hand.
"Yeah we couldn't make sense of it either," Sam says.
Bucky stares down, he recognizes the hand, recognizes a code that Hydra had bore into his head long ago. "I know where he is."
They land in Pakistan a day later. Bucky calls T'Challa before they touch down: "If you don't hear from us in two days, call Stark and tell him where we are."
T'Challa is silent for a moment. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?"
"Something like that."
"Be safe, my friend."
They buy a jeep from a local. It's a rickety thing with no suspension and no air conditioning and bald tires. The engine smells of rotten eggs and diesel but it'll work.
"Did they ever..." he asks Natasha when the sky has grown dark but the air is still hot and dusty. Sam is pretending to sleep in the back.
"Program me?" Her fingers are pale against the dark edges of her sleeves. She's wearing a dark cap, pulled low across her forehead. "Not like you. They demanded a different type of loyalty."
"I am sorry," he offers.
She leans her head against the seat, studies him. He can't really see her in the dim light, just the slightly dark part of her mouth and the etch of her cheekbones. "I wouldn't have let you go if I believed you were to blame," she says. "Steve says you're a good man. That's good enough. It was always good enough."
"You trust him," Bucky says.
"Steve's easy to trust." She blinks at him. "You're in love with him."
Bucky feels cold water in his gut and his fists go tight.
"It's okay," she says. "I just didn't realize. I always knew he was at least a little in love with you. But I didn't know it was mutual. He always made you out to be a big lady's man."
"You of all people," Bucky says, "should understand the difference between making time and love."
She's still watching him, calm like a wide and fast river. "Does he know?"
Bucky thinks of sticky sheets and squeaky bed springs in Brooklyn and shared body heat in a war. He thinks of pressing his pen hard into his notebook and writing: "I loved him." And then months later when the feelings tangled up in his chest had started to loosen and straighten out into something that made sense, "I love him."
He thinks of Steve now, waiting for Bucky to bring him home.
"He will now," he says. And that's that.
There are caves ringing the canyon and they leave the jeep in a dip between two hills, off the road and half behind some low shrubbery. The coordinates aren't precise - but this area seems familiar. There's a small Hydra outpost in one of the caves and that should be where Steve is.
Sam gets his wings out and Natasha has her hair pulled back tight. Bucky flexes his fingers. "They'll know we're here when we hit the canyon. We'll have to move fast."
They keep low to the ground, move across the beaten dirt and grass, and they're almost to the mouth of the canyon when the unmarked helicopter comes into view, blades thumping against the quiet night.
"Shit," Bucky says, pulls them all back behind a cluster of rocks and the helicopter lands in the middle of the canyon, flood lights coming on.
Thaddeus Ross gets out and Natasha mutters something dark and Sam tenses beside them. There's four men in black helmets, guns in hand, and they all stand lined up at the foot of the caves like they're waiting for something.
Sam twists a little. "That bastard," he says, voice so low that his mouth barely moves.
Bucky pulls out the long sniper rifle from from his rucksack, sets it up. The sight lines are bad but this wouldn't be the hardest assassination he's ever pulled off. His brain flinches away from the thought.
There's movement and then a flashlight clicks on at the mouth of one of the caves from higher up on the canyon wall. Three men are there, faces covered. A steep, winding path leads down to Ross but neither of the groups move for a long moment.
"You brought the money?" One of the men by the cave finally calls.
Ross gestures at a duffle bag, laying near his feet. "Ten million."
"We agreed to fifteen."
"We agreed to fifteen if you got Barnes's location out of him. Last you told me, that was impossible."
"You will not have any better luck," the man returns. His mouth twists in the shadows. "The captain is stubborn. And I guarantee we are more skilled in the art than you."
"It is still ten." Ross has his arms folded. "It's ten and I don't arrest you for weapons dealing."
Natasha slithers from behind them, moving around the rock, trying to circle back to get better sight lines.
Bucky hears a thumping drag and then sees a flash of blonde in the weak moonlight, wavering at the mouth of the cave. Steve.
He's being carted between two men, one holding each arm. His hands are unbound but his head is tipped forward like he doesn't have the strength to keep it up. Bucky can't see his face, just the spread of his shoulders and the brightness of his hair and the way his feet make trails in the dirt as they drag him down the path.
Two of Ross's men step forward, carrying the duffle. They drop it at the foot of the path and step back.
"We can't let them get in the chopper," Bucky says. "On my mark."
He takes a deep breath. He'll have to drop the men holding Steve first. And then the men with the guns. It'll be close. But he can do it.
Then the sky lights up with a flare, yellow and red and so bright he has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment.
"Secretary Ross," a booming voice says. "Fancy meeting you here."
Bucky tips his head back, squints against the light.
Iron Man is hovering above the canyon, sleek and shiny and deadly.
"Stark. What the hell are you doing?" Ross demands. He's stepping back toward the chopper.
"I could ask you the same question, sir. I don't think the committee approved this mission."
"I'm trying apprehend a dangerous fugitive," Ross snaps back. He turns back to the men holding Steve. "Take your money and give us Captain Rogers."
Tony hovers closer. "And here I thought you were helping Hydra with the kidnapping and torture of an American war hero. Silly me. Of course, if I made that mistake, I do wonder what your bosses back in Washington will think. Especially when they find out just how long you've been working for Hydra."
Ross ignores him. "We're leaving. See you back in Washington, Stark."
"Not so fast," Stark says and something bright and fast comes zipping out of his hands and heading toward the helicopter.
Bucky drops the two men holding Steve as the helicopter explodes and immediately turns to get his bead on the other two closest. They go down hard, still looking at the helicopter and not for him.
Then Natasha is slipping into the fray like a black shadow, orange flames painting her as just a dark strip of a thing. The two other men from the cave go down. Bucky drops his rifle and heads down the slope, dust kicking up under his boots.
The air smells of burning fuel and metal and the smoke and heat is pouring across the canyon. He can't see Sam or Tony.
Steve is crumpled face down on the ground, hasn't moved from where the men dropped him.
Bucky's almost to him when one of the other men from the cave snatches him up, gun pointed to his head.
"Don't come any closer," he screams and Bucky slows.
Steve's bulky and heavy in the man's grip, limp with his arms flopping like he doesn't even know he's being moved. The man is trying to hold Steve up with one arm and hold the gun to his head with the other. It's only adrenaline that's got him this far and Bucky knows he's not going to be able to drag Steve to an escape route. The man is sweaty and desperate and he's shaking badly in the flickering light. Steve's head is drooped forward and Bucky still can't see his face.
Bucky holds out his hands because the gun is pressed tight to Steve's skull and a trembling finger is clenching at the trigger. "Okay, okay," he says. "Just..."
There's a pop and the man's head slumps, strings cut. The gun tumbles and they fall forward, Steve breaking the fall of the dead man.
Sam shoots out of the darkness, both guns held firmly. "Took care of the others up at the cave too," he says grimly. Then he helps Bucky pull the guy off of Steve.
There's blood covering the back of Steve's skull, soaking into the collar of the ripped t-shirt he's wearing. It's bright and fresh and the world slows as Bucky reaches for him.
"It's not his," Bucky says, once he's felt across his skull and back and found no gaping holes. The guy had bled all over him. He rolls Steve over, cradling his head to keep it from flopping.
"Steve?" Sam says. He's checking Steve's pulse, digging into his neck. "We need to get him to a hospital."
Because that's really easy to do when Steve's one of the most recognizable fugitives in the world. Bucky sits down hard and pulls Steve up against him, running his hand over his hair.
Steve is breathing in slight raspy gasps, like he can't quite get enough of oxygen on each inhale. His eyes are closed and his face is a bruised. There's blood under his nose and Bucky thinks his jaw and his cheek might be broken. His hands are dragging in the dirt and Bucky picks one up. The fingers are crooked and swollen, like the bones were smashed and they healed all wrong. There's burns covering the palms and extending up the wrists. His t-shirt and jeans are caked with dried blood and dirt and he's shivering just a little against Bucky's chest.
Bucky hears heavy footsteps and his head shoots up.
Stark is standing there, still fully covered by his armor. "Is he okay?"
"Does he look okay?" Sam asks. "He needs medical help but we all know that the second he shows up, he'll be arrested. Unless you arrest us all first."
Stark holds up his hands. "I didn't come for that," he says. "I didn't even know that you were going to be here."
"What did you come for then?" Natasha says. She comes to crouch by Bucky, her hands drifting over Steve's shoulders. She settles a gentle hand on his face like she's trying to comfort.
Stark finally flips back his visor. "I was monitoring Ross's calls. And I..." He hesitates. "I found out that he'd known about Hydra for years. He'd helped fund some of Zola's projects. When Barnes was blamed for the bombing, he jumped at the chance to tie up a loose end. Cap was right not to trust him."
"Where is he now?" Bucky asks.
Stark points and Bucky sees Ross on the ground, hands and feet cuffed. Blood is trickling down his face and his eyes are closed. "Knocked him out. I'll take him back to DC and the proper authorities."
Natasha is the one that gets up, extends that olive branch of trust. "If you want to help, you can fly me back to our jet so I can bring it here. Steve's not gonna do well in that car we drove in on." She turns to Bucky. "We can take him back to Wakanda. He'll make it there."
When they get back with the jet, Steve still hasn't regained consciousness and it's making a knotty feeling twist around Bucky's lungs. Ross hasn't either and that's good - too much temptation otherwise.
Stark drifts nearby as Sam and Bucky hoist Steve up together, trying to support his neck as they walk him up the ramp.
"He has a ruptured spleen, decreased kidney function, and his liver is lacerated. They have may perforated his large intestine. Six, no, seven broken ribs. One's punctured his lung. His wrist and his femur is broken. There's some blood around his brain. They should do a full blood panel when you guys land. They gave him something." Stark rattles off. He doesn't follow them onto the jet.
"We don't need your help, Stark," Sam says, settling Steve down into the cot.
Bucky tucks a blanket around his shoulders, smooths it across his chest.
Stark stands in the bloody canyon, burning helicopter still flickering behind him. He looks small. "I know you don't. He never did either. Just..." He steps forward, something urgent on his face. "Tell me when he's okay. I just. I want to know."
Natasha nods.
Bucky radios T'Challa from the air. "We found him. We'll need medical staff to meet us," he says.
Sam is talking to Steve behind him, warm voice murmuring softly over words. He's using a water bottle and a clean t-shirt to get some of the worst of the blood and grime off of Steve's face and arms.
Steve's face is pale beneath the bruises, swollen eyes still shut. He looks small and beat half to hell and Bucky thinks of Steve standing in a cold space - standing because Bucky couldn't stand.
"I could do this all day," Steve had said. And Bucky feels humbled, broken, in the face of that kind of devotion.
They must've given him something. It's the only reason Bucky can think why Steve would still be out. He's injured, in pain. But this shouldn't mean long periods of unconsciousness.
He'll be okay. Bucky repeats this as the jet takes off and heads for Wakanda. If Wakanda could fix Bucky's messed up head, then they could surely fix whatever was wrong with Steve.
When he'd woken up in a soft bed, after the cryo, it had barely even felt like waking up. He had closed his eyes to Steve's warm presence hovering over him and when he blinked awake, Steve had been gone. He would've doubted the amount of time he'd spent asleep had it not been for the feeling inside. His head had felt whole for the first time since he'd been a kid in Brooklyn. Not light, not clean - just all his own. All the ghosts were his now. He would always feel the heavy weight of the scars all over his psyche. But they were all familiar, like old enemies. The places that had been lost to him for decades felt over sensitized and raw, like new skin under a too soon pulled scab.
The doctors had sat on the bed and talked about neural mapping and how they would recheck the spots in six months to make sure nothing was returning. But Bucky had known all of it was gone, had felt it in his soul.
"Where's Steve?" He'd asked.
They'd brought T'Challa into explain. About how Steve had been there every day and then he'd been called away on a short mission that couldn't wait. And had never returned.
"We had considered waiting for his return to bring you back," T'Challa had told him. "Once the doctors were sure you were healed though - I did not want to leave you to sleep any longer."
Now it was Bucky's turn.
There's an ambulance, glossy and stocked to the gills, waiting for them on the tarmac when Bucky sets the jet down as smooth as silk.
"His highness apologizes," one of the medics says as they lug the stretcher in. "He's on a conference call with Washington but he will visit as soon as time permits him."
Bucky meets Natasha's gaze. She nods. Tony, then. Dragging Ross through the mud as he deserves.
Possibly, Bucky thinks, he should feel more vindicated that the man who had wanted his head on a very public platter was actually an agent of Hydra. Instead, he just feels satisfied - and maybe a little sad he missed his chance to slug him one good.
He helps the medics move Steve from the cot to the stretcher, holding his head steady. He presses their foreheads together once, feels Steve's still too fast breaths on his cheek. They cover him in a thick gray blanket and then roll out into the warm jungle air.
It feels like home.
This is a good place, Bucky thinks. A good place for them both to rest. He doesn't let go of Steve's hand when they climb into the back of the ambulance.
T'Challa comes when Steve is settled in a room and Bucky has been banished to the hallway so they can run tests. Natasha and Sam are being shown to their rooms, so Bucky is alone. He's sitting on the floor, arms draped over his knees when T'Challa crouches next to him.
"Secretary Ross," he says, "will be tried for conspiracy and treason. Stark presented a great deal of evidence of his involvement with Hydra. They say," he draws out the words, like he's afraid of what he will say next. "They say he made frequent use of the Winter Soldier's talents."
Bucky looks down. "I think he was afraid I would remember enough to identify him," he says. "He was going to use the Accords to keep Steve from interfering in hunting for me."
"A good many people underestimate your captain." T'Challa cracks a small grin.
"He's not mine." The words are automatic.
T'Challa's face goes flat and unimpressed. "Bucky, I would consider you a friend. And Steve as well. There is no life where you do not belong to each other."
Bucky feels laid bare. "Thank you," he says again. "I know you and he didn't agree on a lot."
"We spoke often, your captain and I, while you slept. I think our minds are aligned more than we had believed. I think there are solutions to be found that will put this matter to rest. For all of us." T'Challa claps his knee. "But - no matter what happens: you will both have a home here for as long as you live, my friend. And now, I have a country to govern."
Sam wanders back a few minutes later, washed and shaved back down to his usual goatee. "That thing was itchy," he says, tugging at the spot where the beard had been. "Never doing that again." He looks in the glass window to Steve's room. "He was there for two weeks," he says, voice small.
Bucky stands beside him.
A sleek machine with a blue light glowing from the underside is sweeping over Steve's midsection, healing the organs below.
"He'll be okay,"Bucky says. "He's healing nicely."
Sam has guilt written all over his face but he smiles anyway. "You're doing good, Barnes," he says. "You seem..."
"Different?" Bucky guesses.
"No." Sam watches him a moment more, something soft in the tilt of his mouth. "You seem like how I imagined you from all Steve's stories. I can see it now."
Bucky thinks of Steve waking up. He thinks of Steve opening his eyes and Bucky will say, "Remember back in Brooklyn when I brought you oranges and we cut them in slices and sat on the fire escape and juice trailed down your chin and I wanted to lick it off."
And Steve will look at him and think he's just like the boy who walked away from him at a world fair. He'll be exactly who Steve wants him to be.
Except. Even as he thinks it, he knows he's lying because he will never be that boy again. He's Bucky. He's old and tired and new and mended. There's scar tissue and rough edges and brand new skin, pink and fresh and spotless.
"I'm not that boy," he says out loud. "Even with all of that stuff pulled out of my brain, I'm never gonna be that boy again."
Sam looks at him thoughtfully. "No, you're not. But neither is Steve."
The doctors come out then and tell them that Steve should wake up soon. Bucky's suspicions had been correct: they had given Steve some sort of sedative only minutes before Ross's arrival so that he could be easily crated back to the States. It looked like it would fully metabolize within another couple hours and then he would wake up. His other injuries were progressing nicely. Steve would be fine.
Natasha is actually the one there when Steve wakes up.
Bucky comes in from getting some lunch and she's gripping both of Steve's broken hands and her eyes are wet and Steve is smiling gently. Her head is bent toward him like she's praying. This is the first time, Bucky realizes, they've seen each other since the airport in Germany.
Steve looks toward the door and his face breaks like the sun coming through clouds. "Buck," he says, voice just a little hoarse.
He drifts to the bed, drawn like always by sheer force of Steve's gravity. "You're awake," he says, puts a hand on Steve's shoulders and feels the muscles shift with life.
His face is still bruised like an overripe fruit. His lower leg is splinted and elevated. There's bandages peeking out from under his gown and he still has an IV in one arm.
Natasha gets up. "I'll leave you two." She doesn't look like she's been crying, eyes clear and cheeks unstained. But Bucky spies the the crumpled tissue in one hand, mascara smeared across the corners.
Steve grips her hand. "Thank you," he says.
When they're alone, Bucky pulls up the chair and sits close so his knees bump the bed frame. "They fixed my head," he says.
"Natasha told me." Steve's hands are still bandaged but they look straight and their normal size. He seems like he's holding something bright and warm inside of himself, and it's too big to be contained so it's spilling from his cheeks and eyes and hands and mouth. "I'm so happy, Bucky."
"So T'Challa said," Bucky hesitates. "He said I could stay here still, though. As long as I needed."
Steve is watching him and it feels like the heat of the sun. "Is that what you want." It's not a question.
Bucky thinks of alleys and canyons and Siberian fields. "I want to follow you," he says. It's been 70 years. All pretense has been burned away and only bare truth remains. Steve was his home.
"I don't have the uniform anymore," Steve says, like he's repeating an inside joke. "You always liked the uniform."
The words call back a dusky bar and and piano and Steve glowing in half light.
"Whatever uniform you're wearing," Bucky says.
Steve gazes back at him and smiles. He looks calm and happy, content after a long stretch of war.
Bucky thinks he's never been more beautiful. Then he takes a deep breath, swallows at the end of it. "Remember Maggie?" he asks, because he knows Steve likes it when he brings up memories. "That girl around the block that lived above the deli?"
"Blonde curls? Longest girl you went steady with. When you called it quits, you said you were gonna be a confirmed bachelor." Steve smiles, eyes distant. "Found some nice girl here that measures up?"
"She reminded me of you," Bucky says. "That's why I went with her for so long. I could close my eyes and pretend she was you." He sees her wide blue eyes and wispy blonde hair and slim, flat-chested body. "And then I realized what I was doing, and I knew I was never gonna marry a girl."
Steve stares at him. His bandaged hands clench around the blankets.
"I'm sorry to," Bucky gestures, "dump this all on you but now that my head's on straight, all the feelings are just the same. I know I'm not the same guy I was so don't worry if it's not the same. And you're not gonna get rid of me. But Romanov says it's mutual and I thought..."
That too much time had been wasted already. He hangs his head.
Steve takes his hand, holds it clumsily around the splints and bandages. "Well," he says and something deep in his throat is wet. "Natasha always did know me best."
Bucky leans down and kisses him. It's a weird angle and Steve tastes like sand and copper and his lips are chapped and Bucky's sure his stubble is scratching weird and their noses bump. But it feels like coming home after a long walk through the desert.
Steve's hand presses against his cheek and he huffs into Bucky's mouth and when Bucky opens his eyes, he's smiling.
T'Challa comes the next morning, after Steve has slept and his face is slowly returning to its normal coloring.
"Ross has pleaded guilty," the king says, face drawn with weariness. "There will be no trial. You and all of your friends condemned under Ross will be pardoned. You can thank Tony for that."
Bucky feels Steve tense under his hand.
"Tomorrow, they will ratify an amendment to the Sokovia Accords. It's called the Wakanda Amendment. Anyone accused of violating the Accords is guaranteed a trial by jury and a lawyer. There will be no secret prisons. No kill orders. And..." he smiles for real this time. "The committee overseeing all decisions is now required to have at least two enhanced humans on the panel. At least a third of the sitting members at all times. It's still oversight - but it won't be Ross and we will have a say over our own destiny."
Steve is still tense, but his shoulders are relaxing. "Who?" he asks.
If possible, the smile on T'Challa's face grows wider. "At the urging of Mr. Stark, the signatory nations have nominated myself and you, Captain Rogers. I do not have the time required - so you will be president of the committee."
Steve stops and his hands freeze on the bed. "Me, your highness?" he asks, voice quiet. He turns to look at Bucky, eyes huge in his face.
Bucky nods. Because who else could it be? He's followed Steve for years, laid his life in Steve's hands easily and readily, time after time. Natasha has. Sam has. Steve has earned the trust.
T'Challa touches his arm. "The safest hands were always yours," he says. "Now it will just be more official. Stark believes it too. He sent something." T'Challa reaches below him, pulls out a large flat box, lays it on Steve's lap. "He hired a private plane just to get it here."
Steve lifts the lid. His shield is nestled in white tissue paper, polished and smoothed as if it had never seen battle. He touches it, hand stroking over the upper curve. Then he turns, lifting his hand away, and his face shudders once. "I still. I want there to be other changes. I don't want to treat people as weapons."
"We will never forget," T'Challa swears. "And you will always remind us. But this is a start. A new beginning. Take it, Steve."
Steve looks to Bucky. "Can I do it?" he asks, soft and unsure.
Bucky smiles and thinks of the boy who always fought for the little guy and always saw the good in people and always knew what was right. "Everyone trusts you, Cap," he says, falling back on the title. "No one better to represent us. You should take it."
So Steve lifts the shield and the story begins again.