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Steve awoke in the middle of the night to see Bucky sitting on the edge of their shared bed, his back turned to Steve.
Steve’s first thought was that Bucky had a nightmare, but that had always resulted in Bucky reaching out to Steve for comfort. Why would he suddenly decide to deal with it on his own like this?
Gently and quietly so as not to startle Bucky, Steve crept across the bed and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, sliding into a sitting position beside him.
“Bad dream?” Steve asked.
Bucky shook his head.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Couldn’t fall asleep.”
“Want to talk about it?”
After a second, Bucky responded. “I was just thinking… what if I can’t live with it?”
“Live with what?”
“Everything I did, back then.”
Steve knew what Bucky was referring to: the latter’s time as the Winter Soldier under the control of Hydra.
“Bucky, you’re not at fault for anything you were forced to do.”
“That won’t bring back everyone who was killed.”
“It won’t, but that’s the past. There’s nothing we can do to change it.”
“I know. I’m not happy about it, though.”
“Me neither,” Steve confessed. “All that time I was frozen, the United States committed so many atrocities. Wars fueled by greed, installing dictators, exacerbating wealth inequality. As Captain America, I could’ve convinced them to stop it. Not to mention you being kept captive during all those decades.”
“I wasn’t awake the whole time,” Bucky pointed out. “I was frozen for some of it.”
“That’s just as bad,” said Steve. “They treated you like a thing, an object that they could just put away whenever they were done with you.”
“Steve, I know you’d have been there if you could.”
“And you wouldn’t have done everything they conditioned you to do if you’d been able to avoid it,” Steve added. “If you really think you deserve some kind of punishment, the torture they put you through to make you obey them was punishment enough.”
“What if I can’t get past that either?” Bucky asked. “They corrupted me from the inside out. My body and my mind. There was no part of me they left untouched.”
“Yes there is, Bucky.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your soul. They couldn’t get to that.”
“How would you know? How can you be sure that even exists?”
“It’s one of the Infinity Stones. I returned it to the past myself. It’s… the most core part of who we are. It’s what we are. It lives beyond death, for eternity. Nothing can ever destroy it.”
“What makes you think that what they did never affected my soul?”
“Because you were able to come back from it, once you really saw me,” said Steve. “We’re part of each other, Bucky, on a spiritual level. That’s why they couldn’t break you completely, because I was there with you in that way, as part of you. And you recognized the piece of your true self that was part of me. I could see it in your eyes. It’s true, that saying about the eyes being the window to the soul.”
“Well, if there’s such thing as a soul, does that mean there’s an afterlife?” Bucky inquired. “If so, why would I go anywhere except Hell?”
“Because you didn’t want to do any of it, and wouldn’t have if they hadn’t been controlling you, and you’re sorry about all of it,” Steve assured him.
“Then that just means I’ll have to face them again. Everyone who died by my hand, even if I wasn’t in control of my actions.”
“It means those people all went somewhere safe. And if there is a Hell, all the people who hurt you will go there.”
“Somewhere safe,” Bucky repeated. “So, Tony’s parents…”
“He’s with them now. And we’ll see them all again. But that’s the future. We have no more reason to worry about that than the past,” said Steve. “This is the present. We have each other.”
“Sometimes I still don’t feel like I deserve you, Steve.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
That got a slight chuckle out of Bucky. “I know. But I’m not the person you once knew.”
“I’m not the same person I used to be either,” said Steve. “Before my mom died, before the serum, before I went into the ice. We’re both different people now, and that’s OK.”
“I’ve wished before that I’d actually died when I fell from the train,” Bucky admitted. “So nothing after that would’ve been done to me, even if it meant I wouldn’t be here now.”
“I’ve… thought that too,” Steve echoed. “After you fell, I believed that you might be at peace. Even before I knew about the Soul Stone. Then I discovered what you’d actually been through all that time.”
“And even with us both being here now, I hate what it took to get us here,” said Bucky. “You being frozen, me being manipulated. I’m mad that I’m happy about something that resulted from it all.”
“I also feel the same about that,” Steve concurred. “But neither of us blames the other, so why should we blame ourselves?”
“You know, I think we’ve both been through enough,” Bucky agreed. “We should just let ourselves rest.”
It was true. Steve had watched Bucky fall from the train, emerge as a brainwashed assassin, choose to return to cryogenic stasis, and then turn to dust when Thanos snapped his fingers with the Infinity Gauntlet. And Bucky had actually experienced those things, not just witnessed them. Steve himself had crashed an aircraft and been encased in Arctic ice as a result.
Steve leaned closer to Bucky, put an arm around him, and looked him in the eyes. “Whoever you are now, Bucky, I love you. That’s all I’ve ever known, even when I wasn’t sure of who I was or what I was fighting for. Even when I didn’t know if you’d ever remember me, or remember yourself.”
“I love you too, Stevie.”
“And hey, even if you did go to Hell, I’d go down there and rescue you.”
“What if you had to become an angel first?”
“I’d do that.”
“And what if it meant you got stuck there with me?”
“I’d still do it so you wouldn’t be alone there.”
“The opposite of what that alternate you would’ve done.”
When Steve had been tasked with returning to Infinity Stones to their rightful times and places, a mix-up had caused a version of Steve from an alternate reality to return to the present. That Steve had been given the same task, but he’d selfishly decided to live out his life in the past with Peggy Carter, not using that opportunity to change anything about the past to make the present better. He’d emerged as an elderly man, not regretting his choices.
For a terrible second, Bucky had thought that he was seeing his Steve having betrayed him. But then he’d realized that the Steve he knew would never do that. Peggy had lived her own life and had her own family. When Steve had found himself in the future, he’d moved on from her at her insistence. Even given the chance to go back, he still wouldn’t. Moments later, the present Steve returned, and rather than confront his alternate self, he’d simply had him taken back to his own timeline.
“I still can’t believe that,” Steve said now. “Hadn’t he – I, we, whatever – already found a place in the future?”
“I wish I felt that way now. That I have a place in this future,” said Bucky. “The fact that all those bad things you mentioned happened while you were gone proves that the world needs you now.”
“You do have a place, Bucky,” Steve insisted. “The world needs us both, and we need each other.”
“What do you think I could contribute?”
“Bucky, you’re strong enough to take me down. Imagine what you could do now that you’re in control of that strength,” said Steve. “And you can be an inspiration to victims of abuse. You’re living proof that those people can heal and get better.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Bucky replied.
“We’ll figure out the future, one step at a time, together," said Steve. "There's no reason for you to go to Hell, Bucky. You've already been there.”
Bucky nodded. “You’re right. I’m finally getting used to the name Bucky Barnes again.”
“How about Bucky Rogers?”
Bucky was so surprised that he almost pulled away.
“Not yet, obviously,” said Steve. “I don’t know about you, but I’m glad we get to live in a time where we can legally get married and our love isn’t criminalized.”
“Even while we still have living memory of a time that’s almost been forgotten.”
“If we go public, I’m sure it will make a positive difference for a lot of people that Captain America is queer. Or we can keep it quiet. Whatever you want to do, Buck.”
They went in for a long kiss, composed of both of them wanting, giving, and accepting, all in equal measure. Then Steve pulled Bucky into his arms and held him, tightly enough for Bucky to feel secure but not so tightly that he’d feel claustrophobic. They both knew how to find that balance.
Finally Steve looked at Bucky again and said “Let’s both get some sleep.”
Then they laid back down into bed, once again in each other’s arms.