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Bucky had known this would happen. He’s him, the target of fate, it’s favorite toy. After all, could he be anything different after everything he’d done? Maybe this was a form of retribution, a punishment for the blood seeping into the plates of his arm.
Well, whatever gave him the power to somehow make everything he’s involved in eventually go to crap, this time had to be their best masterpiece.
***********
He’s not stupid, he knows how long it took to build this bridge. To get past the apprehension, the past, the fights, even just the crap that had come from external forces. But finally he had been close with Sam. He’d felt safe, happy again.
He still remembered that first day in Louisiana, planning to drop the suit, get a motel or something like that, then quietly fade out when their plan was solid. He had been so prepared for it.
However, he was unprepared for the acceptance. For kids to hang off of and play with an arm that had for so long been a symbol of them, of those dark rooms where it was so, so cold. It felt like warmth. Though, he supposed, remembering the humid air that came with working alongside Sam on the boat, that warmth had been everywhere.
It had been in the food that day, after the mission had finally been finished. When everyone had gathered at the harbour, a family, with food, happiness, laughter, and something so intense he had nearly cried walking up with that cake.
Love. The connection between these people that had so readily accepted him. The unspoken agreement. That everyone who came here, who was part of this town, would always have a home here.
Bucky hadn’t known what that was like. To leave, to be gone, yes. But to come back. And to know that you had a place, that you always would, no matter how much time had passed.
He’d tried, similarly, to go back to Brooklyn. To find an apartment. To adjust. To find a way to live with himself, and everything he’d done.
He’d gone everywhere within that city, oftentimes driving deep into the night because it was simply something he could do,something he could control. It wasn’t like he was going to sleep if he’d been home anyways.
Because they had come every night. Every face. Their eyes wide in fear. Sometimes they would tremble as he pressed the gun to their skull. Some would be still, as if that would let them leave this place, here in his cold, blood soaked hands. It never worked, staying still. He knew that better than anyone.
Because staying still had never worked for him. Hadn’t shielded him from the hands he wasn’t even fully aware he had to fear. Hadn’t shielded him from when they took what they wanted from him, because they owned his body as well as his mind, right?
He really didn’t like to sleep.
**********
He went to Louisiana really, really intending to get a room somewhere. But, he somehow found himself staying on the couch in the living room of the Wilson house, with a blanket covering him, and the soft knowledge that Sam was just upstairs.
And for the first time since 1945, he slept, by choice, without waking up in a cold sweat. He didn’t think it was solely because of the couch, though it was much softer than the floor of his apartment where he’d usually end up.
And that same feeling, the one that, for the most part, kept the dreams away, was always the strongest when Sam was there.
He could always feel it when he would spend time with AJ and Cass, but it would flare when Sam would come to play too, though asking for nothing too intense, as he lay the shield down on the table, having finished training.
He could always feel it when he was on board the boat, getting hands that were once covered in blood, covered in white paint. But it would always flare when Sam came to help him, to show him something, or when Bucky would go to help Sam in the belowdecks.
And he had felt it again and again in that place. Especially with Sam.
Even when it was time to leave that place, the knowledge it was there, that he could go back, kept that feeling simmering. And knowing he could call Sam for whatever he needed, whether what he needed was a mission partner, a meal, or someone whose voice he could cling to in the aftermath of a nightmare, kept that feeling bright within his soul, warming parts of him that had been so long frozen over.
With Sam, he wasn’t the Winter Soldier, he wasn’t Congressman Barnes, he wasn’t James, no. He was Bucky.
Sam was his sun, in simple terms. But, with any sunrise, and bright day, there would always, inevitablely, be a sunset.
*************
Bucky sits in his room in the Thunderbolts tower, Alpine next to him, as he holds back tears, because he knows that sunlight is gone. Because of him. Because it’s inevitable for him.
He knows it feels inevitable for everyone else here. That they are all bound by that dreaded truth. Bound together, in their dark night.
All of their suns are gone, extinguished. Sisters, family, lovers, they had all lost someone. Though in the case of the kid, he never really had someone to lose. And he knows they will undoubtedly come together, a constellation of those who the world dealt a hand of pain, and sadness, and bad decisions, even if those decisions weren’t their own.
But as Bucky lifts his head and looks out the window, he lets his tears fall freely.
Because this place?
It’s not his boat, repaired with Sam.
A tear.
It’s not his “nephews.”
Another one, cold and wet.
It’s not his humid air.
They’re flowing faster now.
It’s not his sunset on the harbor, arm around the man he loves.
When will they stop flowing?
And as much as he has grown to care for his stars,
He’s sobbing now.
He just wants.
“Please, stop,” as he curls into himself.
His sun back.