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He is found in a wonderful, peaceful time.
Humanity has ventured into space. Learned to cure diseases that once seemed deadly. Drew lessons from Hiroshima. Drew lessons from the Vietnam War and the war in Afghanistan.
Activists on television openly speak that there is nothing wrong or shameful in loving people of a different skin color than yours, or people with the same kind of genitals as yours.
The United States and the Soviet Union reach out their hands in friendship.
It feels weird to wake up in such a wonderful world.
Still quite vigorous, but completely unlike his old self, Howard talks about state politics and international issues, economic feasibility, and the complexities of fully involving third-world countries in the global economy.
Peggy dyes her gray hair, having long since shed widow’s mourning, and proudly leads a super-secret spy organization named after his shield.
Steve smiles reservedly, shakes hands, answers questions, poses for photos. And he doesn’t understand why he wakes up.
What the hell is he needed for in this world?
Though, perhaps, only he doesn’t understand. They make widescreen movies and TV shows about him, write books, and talk about him on every channel. Alongside Peggy, they create an exemplary couple, a model for admiration and emulation.
Steve still respects her, but he lives alone.
One day, while going grocery shopping, he sees a huge billboard. It shows a clearly naked man who looks exactly like him, sitting with legs spread apart, between them a large bottle of men’s cologne, from which a tulip rises. A big, dense, scarlet flower that surprisingly accurately mirrors the outline of his fully erect member. On the petals glisten clear drops.
Steve Rogers hasn’t had an erection since they thawed him out.
Steve Rogers desperately needs to kill someone.
He doesn’t make a fuss. His intimate details are known to hundreds and thousands of people: doctors, analysts, sly reporters who pay doctors enough to silence their conscience, and everyone who reads the nasty articles of those reporters.
Besides, the tulip on his right hand isn’t a secret at all. Even during the war, this symbol is lovingly referenced and dissected in comics dedicated to him. A natural mark, a soulmate sign — a scarlet tulip growing from the center of his palm, its large flower reaching almost to his elbow.
Romantics and gossip lovers alike speculate that somewhere on Peggy Carter’s body there is a daisy encoded in her name, surely blooming and fragrant when it touches his tulip.
When Rogers comes to Peggy, he says only:
“Peggy, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on. If you don’t show me the enemies, I’ll start killing civilians.”
“That will be hard to cover up, Steve, and it will hurt our reputation,” Peggy says calmly, fixing her hair. “I will show you those you can kill — and should.”
She looks satisfied.
Steve is satisfied at first, too.
S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t immediately notice that he tries to kill himself on missions.
Steve doesn’t immediately notice that they stubbornly keep him alive. He is useful to them on a global scale; his use is practical. His image positively influences the perception of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the United States on the world stage. Stocks rise, oil prices fluctuate within favorable economic limits, the world prospers.
No matter how much blood he loses, they always have enough donor blood to pump back into him.
Steve doesn’t think much about it until, after a severe abdominal injury, they instantly find a perfectly matching healthy kidney for transplant.
And then several more organs.
“Where do you get suitable donors for me?” Steve asks Howard, because they both know the enhanced super-soldier body doesn’t want to accept just anything inside.
“Don’t worry, Steve. Everything is under control. Why so suspicious? Do you see any angry relatives? We have crowds of people willing to donate their organs to you. Crowds! Armies!”
“Howard, don’t lie,” Steve says simply, because he hates being lied to.
“Steve, everything is under control, relax. No complaints. Everything is under control.”
“Howard, I want to know.”
“No, you don’t,” Howard replies. “Go rest. You have noble missions one after another. You’re overworked.”
Steve hates it since childhood when people keep secrets from him.
He doesn’t go to Peggy. He can’t stand hearing lies from her too.
He begins to search, think, and piece things together himself.
The tulip on his hand feels very much alive. Since the first time Steve is given blood from an unknown donor, the flower barely pulses, in sync with his heartbeat. Steve can’t think about what it means.
He knows most soulmate marks disappear when the second partner dies.
Steve looks with his eyes and listens with his heart.
He descends very deep into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s underground levels. Below tree roots, below the city sewer and its filth, to underground waters and monster skeletons.
When someone stops the elevator he rides in, he kicks out the bottom, grabs a flashlight with his teeth, and climbs down the shaft.
He feels the flower burning and pulsing under his jacket on his hand. He knows he is on the right path.
In this beautiful future, humanity has defeated many diseases, but not all.
Of course, he knows Zola has been reprogrammed and works for S.H.I.E.L.D. for many years.
But Steve doesn’t expect the old bastard to still be alive.
Everything repeats like a bad dream.
Once a small, intelligent, harmless-looking chubby man with round glasses got scared seeing him in a HYDRA isolation corridor and cowardly ran away. Steve didn’t chase him then because he heard Bucky.
Now the nasty old man, deflates like a burst pustule, coughs blood and rolls his eyes in terror while Steve shakes him like a punching bag, like the disgusting rat he has been all his life.
“Don’t kill me, Captain America,” Zola wheezes and spits. “I know where he is. I’ll show you. I’ll take you to him. To your donor.”
Later, Steve is ashamed to remember this, but he doesn’t recognize the naked, sloppily bandaged man lying in a cold cell with heavy massive shackles. A breathing mask covers his face. Dirty hair sticks to a sweaty forehead, deeply sunken eyes are closed. The poor man has no left hand, only the dull gleam of a steel base of a removed prosthesis beneath the skin. The right hand is chained so the patient has no chance to pull out the IV needles piercing his arm. Deep in the veins, below and above the half-dried, knobby, dull-gray tulip bulb on his forearm.
Steve almost strangles Zola with the hand holding him by the neck from behind. Then throws him to the floor near the cell.
“Unlock it,” he growls out an order.
“I’ll do whatever you say,” Zola croaks obediently. “Anything you want, Captain America. But think about it — he is your perfect donor. While you bloom and shine for the world, he diligently and faithfully feeds you from underground. If you bring him up, you’ll stain yourself. Stain S.H.I.E.L.D. You won’t be so flawless in people’s eyes if they find out about him.”
“I don’t care,” Steve answers very calmly and sincerely.
“Then get ready. Soon you’ll learn how, while you sleep, he kills for them instead of you. But not in daylight, in the darkness of night. He doesn’t kill bad people, as heroes like you say, but just people who get in the way of those at the top. He is like a baited dog, a vicious, brainless mutt. They will try him for crimes if you bring him out.”
Steve kicks Zola away from the cell and unlocks it himself, almost tearing the heavy door off its hinges.
Then he removes the shackles and frees the limp, weak limbs from the clamps with the tenderness of a mother bathing a sick child. Carefully pulls out the needles. Doesn’t pull out a single hair removing the mask. When he leans over Bucky’s dry parted lips, he doesn’t seek a kiss. He catches his breath. Bucky is alive.
Bucky is alive.
All this time, his Bucky has been alive.
Steve carries him in his arms and looks at Zola with a cold, expressionless gaze.
“I saved him for you! I preserved him. You can’t kill me, Captain America! He doesn’t even remember you!” the trembling old man cries plaintively, backing into a corner. “Heroes don’t kill sick old men.”
“Sometimes heroes are fools” Steve concludes thoughtfully and breaks Zola’s spine with a kick.
Bucky wakes up when Steve carries him up the endless spiral staircase — higher and higher and higher. He is silent for a long time, and Steve only understands by his breathing rhythm that he is conscious, observing, evaluating.
“Sleep, Bucky, I still have a long way to go,” Steve softly says.
“Bucky?” he rasps weakly. “Do I know you? Where do I know you from?”
“I’m your other half,” Steve smiles gently and, leaning down, kisses his forehead.
Bucky sharply exhales in a strangled way, then suddenly touches Steve’s cheek with his remaining hand.
“Oh, it’s you. My scarlet flower,” he whispers.
When the truth comes out, the world doesn’t like it. They don’t like such a truth about S.H.I.E.L.D., and they don’t like such a truth about Captain America.
Now they happily and shamelessly smear him with mud, with or without reason. But people mostly treat his unfortunate other half with compassion. On Twitter and internet posts, they write about him with great sympathy and send hundreds of wishes for spiritual and physical healing.
Still, Steve and Bucky don’t really check their mail. They sit on the carpet in a sunbeam from the window, facing each other. Interlacing fingers on their right hands, pressing their palms together so the tulip can feed its bulb with light and air. Giving, not just taking. They both stay silent and simply feel each other, merging back together in every possible way. Steve smiles and dips his brush in paint, drawing new stems on their joined hands. Up and down, flowers reaching for bulbs, bulbs reaching for flowers—a single protective railing for both their hands.
Bucky squints like a cat and slowly moves closer until he rests his temple against Steve’s thigh.
Steve isn’t the romantic or last knight that historians and fans paint him to be. He doesn’t know how to be beautiful, gallant, or elegant — he just clumsily curls around Bucky, protecting him from everything.
He simply has never loved anyone but Bucky.
The END