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Stark's blow wasn't aimed at Steve.
Yet it was Steve's body Bucky was holding, one hand covering the wound on Steve’s stomach, the other cuddling Steve's head on his womb.
"I just got you back, I just got you back." Bucky whispered, tears pooling in his eyes. "You can't leave me, Stevie, we just reunited. You said you wouldn't leave me, Steve, please..."
Footsteps made Bucky look up.
He saw the son of the man who had been killed, the one who wanted him dead.
"Please, help him." Bucky begged, tears pooling in his eyes. "I won't fight you, but please, save him."
"I can't do anything for your friend, James." The prince sat down next to him. "He's far away now."
Bucky shook his head, returning his gaze to Steve.
He leaned down, kissing him lightly on the lips.
“Please, don’t leave me.” He begged, staring into Steve’s blue eyes, which, usually full of life, a light that nothing had ever extinguished, now seemed almost gray.
“Come on, James,” the prince said, helping him up. “It’s not safe for you two here.”
Bucky, still holding Steve, let himself be carried.
Do you hear that, Stevie? He wanted to say. We’re going to be safe. You and me. To the end of the line.
***
They were flying toward Siberia, toward the other Winter Soldiers.
Ivan, Dimtri, Nikolai, Josef, and Irina.
Bucky remembered now that they had volunteered for HYDRA’s experiments. They wanted the serum, they wanted to be the new Captain Americas.
Bucky hated it.
But he hated even more that they had been frozen because they were uncontrollable.
They weren't controllable, but Bucky was.
So maybe, deep down, Bucky wanted to do those things.
"I don't know if I'm worth all of this, Steve." Bucky muttered, not looking at Steve, not wanting to see compassion or pity in his eyes.
He knew Steve would say he wasn't the one doing those things, that it wasn't his fault.
That he wasn't in control.
"What are you talking about?" Steve looked incredulous. "Of course you do!"
Steve released the controls, evidently on autopilot (Bucky hoped they wouldn't crash just because that punk wanted to make a point), and strode over to Bucky. "You don't know how grateful I am to God when I know you're still alive and I can still hold you, feel you!"
Steve pulled Bucky into a hug, his body completely enveloping Bucky's, like Bucky remembered him doing when Steve was the little one.
“Don't say that again, please?” Steve murmured, kissing Bucky's hair, before pulling back and seeking Bucky's eyes. “I can't lose you again, Buck.”
“You can't love me.” Bucky croaked, his voice cracking. “Not after everything I've done.”
“I'll never stop loving you,” Steve promised. “In every universe, I love you. I know it.”
Bucky had no way of resisting: he leaned in and locked his lips with Steve's.
Finally, since 1945, Bucky felt like he could breathe.
***
The trigger words were gone, and Bucky didn't care.
He didn't care about the trigger words.
He just wanted Steve.
And, without Steve, Bucky might as well accept the trigger words and that emptiness that would take away all the pain.
“You know,” the man with the glowing hands who had helped free him from HYDRA’s mind control turned to him, his voice gentle, “I saw 1400605 different timelines.”
Bucky groaned, unable to make any more noise. Not wanting to make any more noise.
He didn’t care to say anything else, he just wanted Steve, to talk to Steve.
Like before the war, when Bucky practically picked him up and told him everything.
And it was just the two of them.
Bucky loved those little stolen moments, between him and Steve.
Those moments that were just theirs, without beings like Tony Stark around.
“And… he loved you in all of them.”
Bucky felt tears fill his eyes.
Why couldn’t they have had more time in this universe?
Bucky didn’t doubt Steve’s love, he just wished he hadn’t lost him.
***
Bucky had cut his hair, the repetitive, mechanical movements as he stared at himself in the mirror.
He remembered Steve's fingers running through his short hair, messing it up, before sitting down to draw him.
Natalia, Natasha, or whatever Steve's lethal redhead friend was called that days, had given him notebooks of Steve's drawings, saved from 2012, the year Steve had woken up in a future without flying cars but with fucking aliens.
Some of them were signed.
Under the Helicarrier, Steve had written, hastily, covered in a few wet stains, most likely tears, Bucky would love this.
Bucky had thrown a glass against the wall after reading that, because he knew Steve had loved him their whole lives, and it was unfair that, once they were both in a future where they could love each other in public, without fearing their love, Steve had been torn away from him.
His blue eyes were ringed with red.
Bucky had stopped crying simply because he had run out of tears.
But he had to be grateful to HYDRA for one thing, the very thing that would allow him to do what he had to do now.
Steve had always believed in Bucky's innate goodness, in his heroism, as if Bucky hadn't kicked the ass of everyone who had hurt Steve in the alleys, his hands itching when he saw the bruises on Steve's face, or when he heard him panting slightly from running to the police, who couldn't stand a second-generation immigrant telling them how to do their job.
He couldn't bring Steve back, he'd tried and failed.
But what he could do was kill Tony Stark.