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Steve was delirious. That he was sure of.
Perhaps he was dreaming. Perhaps just hallucinating. Memories swam like salmon in rivers. Time wasn't moving linearly.
He saw Bucky's face, although it flickered between various states. The clean young man in his uniform, ready to serve his country. The grimy face of a fighter in the middle of battle. The cold stare of the Winter Soldier. The boy who had defended him when he just couldn't back down.
Distantly, Steve thought he felt pain. You tanked a gunshot, he remembered. On the helicarrier.
The memory formed itself into a grainy replay. His body had felt like lead, and even if he wasn't being held down, he wasn't sure if he would have been able to get up.
The blows had hit harder with the emotional punch in the gut that was Bucky denying recognizing him.
He'd been so confident that he would.
It was his eyes, Steve decided. The windows to the soul. The way they'd widened after Steve first said his name. That was recognition.
Even as he'd lay there, feeling bruises form, he'd known that he would recognize him.
He thought about the first time he'd saved Bucky. His first mission as Captain America, unsanctioned as it was.
He'd saved him, and as he'd held him in his arms, he knew that he'd never let it happen again.
And then on that god-damned train, he'd failed. And he failed after that. And everyone else had failed in the seventy years between the Valkyrie and the helicarriers.
But he'd failed first.
When he'd first seen his face as the Winter Soldier, he'd doubted it for a second. Sure, they were a spitting image, but people looked similar sometimes. It was when he spoke that it was cemented.
Voices were harder to forget. Especially when Steve had had his scream on repeat in his head for years.
His thoughts had flickered to What the hell happened? and What the hell did they do to you? How do you make someone forget their own name?
He'd looked afraid. That was the next thing that had hit Steve. It could have been the adrenaline of a fight, but the helicarrier had confirmed it.
The denial. The screaming. He was afraid.
How do you change someone so deeply? How do you make someone into a killer? How do you make them forget themselves? How do you make them forget everyone else in their life? How do you make a soldier change sides? How do you ensure loyalty?
The more Steve thought about it the less he wanted to.
Most of it wasn't even about being sure Bucky would recognize it. He didn't think he could bring himself to hurt him, not after everything that had happened. When it meant the world, maybe, but just himself? No.
The end of the line meant the end. It meant until one of them was dead in the ground, they'd be there. It meant no matter what happened, no matter how they changed, no matter if it was 1944 or 2014, he'd be there.
And the fact that he was alive meant Bucky meant it too.