(no subject)

[bottledblond]

Not every universe in the far and wide cosmos is as lucky (however unlucky itself that seems) to encounter Thanos during a time where people live who can do something about it. Steve Rogers, a particular version of Steve Rogers who had only just suffered through his first night of basic training in New Jersey as part of the Army’s Project Rebirth and thus had not yet become Captain America, bent to untie his shoes and saw his hands begin to disintegrate. He doesn’t panic, panicking is for people who do not live like every breath is their last. Instead, he blinks in surprise as the barracks fill with shouting. He has time to contemplate two things. One, he wishes he’d done more with his life. And two, he hopes Bucky will do all right.

He’s still thinking about that last issue when he exhales his last in a universe where Captain America never existed and finishes it bent over in the ruins of the barracks, roof half open to the sky and walls a burnt and ashy gray.

It takes him an hour to get to the road and by then, his asthma is already getting the best of him. He blacks out for the second time ‘that day’ and wakes up staring at the ceiling of what is obviously a hospital.

It just doesn’t sound or smell like a hospital. Sure. People are running around and yelling, but it smells painfully clean, artificially so, and there are machines he’s never seen before connected by wires to his body. He does the thing people should never do and yanks them loose. The machines squawk strangely and frantically and Steve is almost out of bed when two large men in green pajamas force him back.

Nothing makes sense to him for days. People come to talk to him, to find out who he is and who his family is. Evidently Steve Rogers is a popular name, because they bring in more people to talk to him, to ask him questions about his life, but no one has any answers.

He explodes, as he’s wont to do when frustrated, demands answers, but nothing they say makes sense.

By then, the war is over. Not World War II, which has evidently been over for over half a century, but this new war. And Bucky Barnes had been told of his presence. Steve is in bed, arms crossed, looking dour and getting an infusion of something that honestly is helping him breathe better when Bucky bursts into his now private room. It’s been two months

Comments

[bottledblond]

“You said pizza,” Steve replies, unblinking, as a car drives around the port coche leading up the door so an elderly woman can get out. His voice is soft, almost desperately so, as if he’s in shock, but he does move out from under Bucky’s arm as if on instinct to help the woman. “Ma’am, allow me,” he says, in his white button down and khaki trousers, hair still parted in the middle. He helps her right to the door and the kid driving the car yells out that he’ll find a parking space and be right there. “You’ll be all right?” Steve checks with her before helping her to a bench to wait for the driver once she confirms that she’s all right.

If Bucky had at all been wondering if this was a set up himself, that should take full care of it. This was Steve Rogers, innocent, before the serum, before the war, before the crash, never knowing Bucky to be an assassin or HYDRA or how hard he’d had to work to get his life back.

Five years, two months, and Steve has all eyes on him and no agenda to save the world.

He gives Bucky a half smirk, as if recharged by helping the old woman. It had given him time to collect himself, and he’s ready to see what else might happen.

Even if he’s pretty sure they’ll have to start Hail HYDRA ing to fit in, which he’ll refuse, and they’ll likely string him up for it.

He slips his hands into his pockets. “Still living with your mom, Buck?” he teases... he can’t bring himself to ask how they’ll get back home from Jersey.

[woundedwinter]

Bucky doesn't fight it when Steve slips away to help the old woman to the door. When he turns back to him, for a moment all Bucky can see is Steve in Wakanda when they had failed five years ago. The look of exhaustion and defeat shifting into one of confusion as he started to fade into ash, whispering his name one last time.

He shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. He can't afford to lose it now, even if the idea of filling Steve in on the last nintey years makes him vaguely nauseous.

"No. No I got my own place." He shoves his hand in his pocket, the keys biting into the leather of his glove. "Come on. My car's over here."

It's a pretty nondescript vehicle, boring and blue but it's enough. He leaves the radio off and starts the car, turning them back towards New York. "The roads are a lot better than they used to be. It won't take us long."

[bottledblond]

Steve isn’t ready for the drive, though he doesn’t cower or yell as they turn into the highway or pass roadside, outdoor shopping malls with massive signs spouting all sorts of odd sounding places.

He’d had to get over a seatbelt first, though, and the fact that the car knew he wasn’t wearing it with the alarm it sounded as Bucky turned on the ignition.

He’s amazed by how smooth the drive is. By how many cars there are. At one point, he even presses his hands to the windows, cold under his touch, to get a better look.

His awe is somewhat bedraggled. Somewhat tempered by his worry.

And then they get to the tunnel, something that had been built during his childhood but he’d never gone through. His mind is racing as he turns to Bucky. “We’re under the River,” he says, breathing hard. “This is incredible!”

[woundedwinter]

More than once he has to curb the desire to reach out and touch, to be certain that Steve isn't some hallucination cooked up by his damaged head and lonely life. But he keeps his hands on the wheel, only glancing over at Steve when he can while still keeping them on the road.

He takes it all in stride, because of course he would. Even when he was the smallest guy in the room Steve was still the biggest and bravest of any of them.

A quirk of his lips at the amazement and the way he's got his hands pressed to the glass like he can somehow get closer to it all. "Yeah pal, we are."

Parking in the city, as always is something of a nightmare but luck is with him again as he swings into a spot just in front of his building. "Pizza's about a block and a half over. We can walk from here."

Bucky keeps his hands in his pockets as they walk and his jacket on in spite of the warm spring weather. Sooner or later he's going to have to give up both the gloves and jacket but that's a problem for later. He doesn't want Steve to look at him differently. Not yet, anyway.

[bottledblond]

Steve’s eyes are fixed upwards. There’s so much glass and so much shine to the place. He recognizes street names but not the streets themselves and when they come to a corner he remembers the Michaelson Twins used to have an apartment on with their bratty sister and parents and there’s nothing but a coffee shop there and a brick high rise, Steve actually feels himself getting dizzy.

Someone with green hair — oh God! — bumps into him and Steve feels himself careening into a person wearing a bright yellow sweater, midriff left open. Both people yell at him, and Steve mumbles his apologies, unsure of where to turn. He puts a hand to his chest, but his heart rate is fine and he’s breathing all right.

“Okay... okay Buck. I think I believe you,” he says, trying to pull himself together.

[woundedwinter]

When Steve is jostled, Bucky puts his arm around him drawing him in a little closer. The hand on his chest has old memories bubbling up of a pending asthma attack or his heart acting up and Bucky can feel his own chest tighten in anxiety until he realizes that there's no corresponding wheeze or rattle to his breathing like there used to be.

"It's okay Stevie. There's a lot to take in." It's so much to take in, but they have each other now and that's something Bucky will hold on to with all his strength. He can't go back to being alone again.

Thankfully the pizza place he has in mind isn't all that crowded this time of day and Bucky can get them a table. Old habits die hard and he swiftly assesses the place, noting exits and points of entry and scans everyone sitting and eating or looking down at their phones.

"Have a seat. I'm gonna get us a couple of beers." It's a shame he can't get drunk because the stories he's going to have to tell are occasionally wonderful but all too often terrible.

The gloves stay on as he sits down, sliding a beer over to Steve. "Here, better than the crap we used to try and get our hands on."

[bottledblond]

Bucky is hurting, and Steve recognized that by the way he’d grabbed him, the way he had protected him, as if he’d forgotten how much Steve hated it. He didn’t need to be rescued. He wasn’t a damsel in distress. Steve had let it go for now, but only because he recognized the terror in Bucky.

Steve had felt it too, the night before his mother died. He’d been unable to hold her back from death, and in her last lucid moment, he’d tried to do it anyway. He’d been afraid she’d go just that moment, and he’d reacted. Bucky had done exactly the same.

The little shop feels a lot like the ones in the old neighborhood except there aren’t white linen on the tables and the silverware feels cheap. The napkins are even cheaper and he might just die when he sees the plates.

The beer is good, though, better than they could afford, and that leaves Steve looking pale.

“Dont got my wallet. Army confiscated it when I went into the program,” he says, gazing at the beer he doesn’t dare drink for its expense. “I had a few nickels on me in the hospital but....”. He hadn’t thought to grab them.

Crap.

[woundedwinter]

He knows he needs to dial it back, to relax and not crowd Steve while he processes finding himself so far in the future, in a home town he no longer recognizes. That's probably going to take a few phone calls with Sam or god help him his therapist, but for Steve he'll make the effort.

He holds up his hand to try and forestall any more protest. "It's okay. I got nintey years of back pay from the Army plus a pretty nice retirement package. I can cover us."

Okay so the "retirement" is funded by countless HYDRA bases he destroyed and accounts he'd emptied but that can all come much later.

"We can order whatever you want. It's one of the great things about the future," he leans across the table a bit to keep the conversation between the two of them. "Food from all over the world. Oranges in the middle of winter. Fresh apples any time we want em."

"It's not so bad once you get used to it."

[bottledblond]

Oranges in the middle of winter...? Sorry, he’s having trouble getting his mind around that. There’s a blank look to his face as he takes in everything Bucky’s said before his eyes turn back towards the beer.

After a breath, he makes half of it disappear in his stomach. He burps gently behind his fist and exhales heavily.

“Okay. Okay.” Intense blue eyes fix an equally intense gaze on Bucky. “Okay, that’s better. Lay it on me, pal. Cant be any stranger than putting little lenses in my eyeballs to let me see.”

He presses his lips together for a moment.

“Let’s start with us. Before I started off at the hospital, it’d been two days since I saw you. But uh. Yeah. It’s been a lot longer for you, huh?”

[woundedwinter]

Bucky schools his expression into something blank and calm at the statement because things are so much stranger than being able to use contacts. "Yeah. Yeah but before I go into that, we've got to talk about something else first. It's the only way most of this is gonna make sense."

He really, really wishes Strange was around so he could explain timelines and divergence but it's up to him to try on his own.

"This is all gonna sound fantastic and crazy but you've gotta trust me. This is the only way the rest will line up."

Bucky scatters salt on the table and draws a straight line through it. "This? This is my timeline, what I remember from the time I shipped out to right now. Beginning to end, no blips. The thing is, time is kinda funny. It can split off, it can fracture."

He draws a second line along the one representing him. Steve right with him until the end. Until Wakanda. Then it stops. He draws another line from the beginning of Steve's line, connecting it to his.

"See the thing is? I remember shipping out, everything from the war. I remember being captured by the enemy. I remember being tortured." There's only a faint tremor in his hand as he picks up his beer. "Thought I was gonna die there, at least until some skinny punk from back home shows up and saves my life and the entire unit. Project Rebirth, it. it worked. Turned you into a super soldier that saved so many lives."

"Hell, you saved the world a few times over."

[bottledblond]

It’s a whole lot. The diagram is helpful but Bucky is still incredibly vague. He sets his jaw and brushes the salt away so he can lay his drawing book between them. There are many, many full pages, but he doesn’t stop to let Bucky see any. At the first blank set, he pulls a charcoal pencil from his case, slipped from his pocket. A red and a blue drafting pencil join them.

“Let me make sure this is right.” He picks up the black pencil. “So this is time.” He draws a long line and then picks up the blue pencil, which he draws closely to the underside of the black mark. He draws a little circle closest to him. “So this is when we entered the war.” A little bit closer to Bucky he marks another dot. “This is the night before went off to basic.” And another, closer still to Bucky. “And when I got shipped to Camp Lehigh. Uh... so then this is you being captured. And me saving you... and...and I’m guessing this is when I turned to dust for you.” He’s making an assumption. But it’s an educated one. He doesn’t pause and instead makes a mark very close to Bucky now, having to lift himself off of his chair to do it. “And this is now.”

Steve takes up the red pencil and colors over the first blue dot to make it purple. “Enter the war. You left to basic. I left to basic.” And from that third dot, he draws a loop to the last dot by Bucky. He colors it hard, teeth gritting. “Now. So I skipped all of the middle parts. Your version of me puffed into nothing. And way back here, I did the same in another time and place. So you guys fixed what caused it, right? But I didn’t go back there. I came back here. And chances are, the other me, the hero, the one that saved you and the world, he’s way back here.”

Steve drops the pencil in the crease of the book as their pizza is brought over. He presses his lips together yet again, but he doesn’t look away from the steam rising from their lunch.

“You got screwed over, Buck. Sorry.”

[woundedwinter]

"What?" His question is sharp, brows furrowed. "Screwed over? No. Christ no, Stevie. You've got no idea how happy I am to see you again."

He makes a few corrections, adjusting when he was rescued back in Azzano. "The other you disappeared five years ago. Here. We set things right, it was supposed to bring everyone back but we took a lot of losses. People we didn't expect to see back. People like the other Steve."

"Everyone scattered after that," he looks down, away from the delivered pizza. "I was alone. I didn't have anybody. I haven't for a long time."

[bottledblond]

“It still stands that you should have gotten him back and you got me instead.” Things have fallen into place for him. Project Rebirth worked, somehow, and despite his limitations, he was able to do great things. No wonder he’d been grilled by all of those people. The hero version of himself happened to disappear five years ago and the world wanted him back.

He’s going to stew over that for some time. Just, perhaps, not now. Not after Bucky says that he’s been alone.

“Why were you— Never in your whole damned life have you been alone. How many people disappeared? Half, right? I heard someone say it. Is that right? Half isn’t everyone.” He doesn’t have all of the answers.

[woundedwinter]

"Yeah well," he reaches out, taking one of his pencils and tapping at the dot indicating the time he had been captured. "I'm not the guy you remember. HYDRA got their claws on me when I was captured. They, ah, experimented on me."

His hand, steady as a rock when he's holding a weapon, shakes briefly as he marks another point and tries not to think about the train or the shock and grief on Steve's face as he fell. "They got me again here, but this time nobody sprang me. Everyone thought I was dead, even Steve." He grits his teeth and forces himself to continue.

"I broke under the torture. Held out as long as I could, but I broke." The newspaper clipping proclaiming the death of Captain America and his heroic sacrifice had been the tipping point. He remembers that much.

"For decades I wasn't the good guy Steve. I was a brainwashed assassin for HYDRA. I got more kills than I ever really want to think about." His chest is tight and the pencil snaps in his hand. "Not many people want to be around a person like that."

[bottledblond]

That's his pencil, and he rescues it from a hand that looks like it's going to snap it in half. Steve carefully wiggles it from Bucky's hand, sets it down, and after a glance around that no one is paying them too much attention, he sets his own hand over Bucky's thumb and wrist.

"When did you get to be such an idiot?" he asks, once more fixing Bucky in a gaze that never changed when he became Captain America, dropped the title, saved Bucky from the horrors of his life, or faced the end of the world. There's just some things about Steve that don't shift.

He expects Bucky to protest, or look at him like he's hurt, so before anything can happen, he continues:

"I'm missing what sounds like a decade or two from our lives together, but even I know that whatever HYDRA did to you, that wasn't you. And... Okay, say your Steve is back in my shoes, he knows what's gonna happen to you and he's gonna stop it. I know, that won't help you-you but it's gonna help my-you and-- And I'm here now. Blank slate I guess? You're not alone now, dummy. Sorry you're stuck with me, but you are stuck with me."

[woundedwinter]

Since he's pulled himself free of HYDRA, Bucky has been more than a bit touch-starved and the warm and determined hand on his wrist settles him quickly. The familiar expression helps and he makes a sound that's almost a laugh. "You were always the smartest out of us, pal."

"I'm happy you're here Stevie. This you." He doesn't want him comparing himself to the Steve who faded away after the battle. This is his Steve, warm and strong and unscarred by war and all of the things that he'd suffered. "Maybe this way you get the life you were always supposed to have before the war came along."

And the next war and the war after that.

[bottledblond]

Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand before he pulls back and finally grabs the pizza. It’s still hot and greasy as hell, but he lets it drip for a moment before glancing around for the plates. Paper. Seriously?

He can’t help but roll his eyes as he tries to take just one and finally gives up, tilting his head back to take a bite of the slice.

He chews thoughtfully, not because it’s bad at all, but because of what Bucky’s said.

“What if we pick up where I left off? With Project Rebirth?” Steve still has so much fight in him.

[woundedwinter]

"I don't know if we can," he hedges. Steve should be spared the trauma of war and moving from one battle to the next, but it's not his decision to make.

"Erskine was killed. He took all knowledge of the serum with him. HYDRA pumped me full of a knockoff version, but it was never the same."

There were maybe one or two people who could connect the dots that Bruce started with his research, but tonight Bucky can't think that far ahead. "I can make some calls tomorrow, but people have been trying to replicate what Erskine did all those years ago and not figured it out."

He picks up his own pizza, grimacing at the grease on his gloves. Oh well. Good thing he's got a few dozen more back at his place.

"Can we.. just take it slow for a couple days? Get you settled in before I have to start chasing you into more fights?" Bucky is so tired, he needs at least a little calm first because naturally he'll follow Steve anywhere.

[bottledblond]

This is Bucky’s attempt to save him again. Steve already knows it and he already feels the need to lash out and exert his dominance over the situation.

But he can’t. They’ve kept him in the dark for two months, leaving him confused and alone and fighting for information first and foremost. And isn’t that a fight he needs to focus on?

“I’m sorry he was killed. He was a smart, brave man. I’d hoped to get a drink with him. Guess you’ll have to do,” Steve says and lifts his glass towards Bucky. “I’m real flat footed here. At a real disadvantage. I only just figured out that they shrunk down the cinema and you can have it in your home. And we evidently drive under rivers. There’s a lot you’ve got to catch me up on. Up for it?”

[woundedwinter]

He's gonna catch hell for trying to protect Steve but he can't help it. War changed and damaged them both and if he can spare him that, he has to try. He wouldn't be a good friend if he didn't.

"Yeah, yeah I'll get you up to speed," he promises. "Even bring around a few people who might be able to help." But only a few and only when he can stomach it.

[bottledblond]

Steve can catch the meaning from Bucky’s body language, but he plays it off simply by thinking that his sudden presence after being dead for five years might not play well with old friends he doesn’t even know anyway. Steve nods, finishing his slice and his beer.

He’s a lightweight when it comes right down to it, since alcohol post prohibition, the sort he could afford anyway, was still just as likely to make you blind or kill you, and he’d been too sick to add another adverse thing to his health. Given his weight and slight stature, the single beer has his head swimming pleasantly by the end of it and he indulges in two more slices, his smile widening as he grills Bucky on what happened to their neighborhood.

To hear that it had gone to the middle class is exciting. To hear about the rents these days leaves him breathless.

[woundedwinter]

Talking about the old neighborhood is so much easier, steering the conversation towards lighter and better topics. He puts away a couple more beers as they talk and laugh before getting the check.

This was the sense of peace he'd been longing for and Bucky takes a deep breath as they step back outside.

"There's an art store a couple blocks over. We can go by there sometime, get some more sketchbooks for you," he offers.

[bottledblond]

"There's a lot more to do than draw," Steve reminds him, once again putting his own skill on the backburner. He doesn't have the artistic personality, the obsessive need to create, but he is immensely talented. With Smithsonian exhibits dedicated to his art, one would think that Steve was more into it than he actually was.

Sketching passed the time. He'd been planning to go to art school because it was the only thing he was good enough at, and because you didn't need a real degree to work at a soda shop or anything like that.

That said, the guy's sketch book is nearly full. He'd has little else to do for two months, once all of the medication and treatments set in to make him feel almost healthy.

"But..." He thumbs a few smeared pages of the book still between them. "I am almost out of paper."

[woundedwinter]

"I know pal. There's a whole new world and you can do anything you want in it." Bucky would never dream about holding him back. "College, books, it's all out there."

He'd been dithering about school himself, but was never able to settle on a decision. Not while he was still trying to make amends.

The art store is filled with paper of every kind, pencils and pens and markers and Bucky can't make sense of any of it. So he hangs back and lets Steve pick out what he wants. Then it's a trip to the bodega to get some food to fill up his pitifully empty kitchen before they turn towards his place.

"It's not much, but it's secure and it's quiet," he offers as he opens the door. To say the place was sparsely furnished would be an understatement. A couch, a couple of chairs, a bed he can't sleep in and the television.

And he'd left his blankets in a pile on the floor.

[bottledblond]

The alcohol makes the overwhelming aspect of everything bearable. Though Bucky is a cash guy, the amount he leaves for the pizza is insane. And the people ahead of them at the check out counter in the art store, once Steve had gotten over the sticker shock of the most basic of supplies and assured that inflation had scaled up quickly in the last few decades, can use little plastic cards instead of cash. He has almost too many questions, but the swimminess does temper his thoughts down to a low simmer.

Bucky's encouragement has him fill two bags at the counter and he nearly has to grab his heart again before they leave.

Blank, bound up paper should not be twenty dollars. It just shouldn't.

He's still talking about it, and about the markers he'd lovingly selected in multiple shades of french grey, when they enter the apartment.

It's not much, Bucky says. "Pal...this is bigger than my old place," he says, and he hasn't even seen that there is a private bathroom yet. His tenement had everyone sharing that particular space, save for the tub which doubled a table when not in use.

He does, however, note the evidence that Bucky's been sleeping rough, though. That's a shame.