Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

John has good days and bad days. 

On the good days, he wakes up with Bucky pressed warm against his side. He jokes with Yelena until she threatens him with a knife and trades sarcastic quips with Ava. He watches Bob humor Alexei’s insistence on his position as Steve Roger’s contemporary, and smiles at the lockscreen photo of Caleb on his phone. 

On the good days, he feels like this truly is redemption. 

But on the bad days—

On the bad days, he stares too long at Lemar’s dog tags lying on his nightstand. He reads the latest trending post tearing down the New Avengers. The comments section full of mockeries calling them a “PR stunt” or the “pity team”. He scrolls through photos of Sam shaking hands with diplomats and can’t help but wonder: Would Steve be standing by his side if he were here? Would Bucky too?

Deep down, he already knows the answer. 

On the bad days, he feels like a placeholder. A mistake just waiting to be pushed to the side, erased and forgotten, once something better comes along. A failure. 

Today is one of those days. 

Another bullshit mission from Valentina. Another day of hearing whispers that Sam’s recruiting for something real. Real stakes, real heroes. While she sends them to babysit minor dignitaries and chase black market tech dealers no one cares about. 

John’s sprawled on the couch in the living area of his and Bucky’s shared floor, still half in uniform. He idly thumbs through his phone while the low hum of the AC fills the silence. He tells himself he’s not sulking. Not exactly.

Bucky comes around the corner, fresh from a shower. He’s got a towel around his waist, hair damp, looking infuriatingly serene and beautiful. 

“You okay?” Bucky asks, as he rubs another towel over his hair. 

“Fine,” John lies, without conviction. 

Bucky doesn’t press. He never does. He gives space, like someone who knows what happens when you don’t. But there’s something behind his eyes. Not exactly worry. Just that calm, ever-present watchfulness that makes John feel too seen and too exposed.

“No more missions or briefings today… no toddler playdates. We have the rest of the day. I figured we could go out,” Bucky says casually.

“Out where?” John asks, barely lifting his head.

“I kind of feel like seeing some of the old haunts. Maybe head out to Brooklyn. Maybe Coney Island,” Bucky shrugs. “Thought it might be nice. You ever been on the Cyclone?”

The thought of dragging himself to his feet and being out in public twists something in John’s gut. The cameras. The whispers. The social media speculation: America’s Next Gay Sweethearts? Every other day, it’s more of… Internet Loses It Over Bucky & John Mission Footage. 

If John reads one more exclusive body language breakdown, he might throw his phone. 

Being recognized almost feels as bad as not. 

He shakes his head. “I’m not really feeling it.”

There’s a beat. A pause that hangs in the air between them.

Bucky nods once, but his jaw ticks.

“Alright. You don’t want to go?” he says, his voice light. “Fine. I’ll take Bob. He loves Coney Island. He won’t go on rollercoasters but he’ll eat three corn dogs and a whole funnel cake.” 

There’s no malice behind the words, but John flinches anyway.

“Bucky,” he starts, but then stops when nothing else comes out. He doesn’t even know what he wants to say. 

The other man is already heading down the hall to his room.

“I get it,” Bucky says behind his shoulder. “You’re in a mood. I’ve been there. I’ll leave you to it.”

John sighs. He’s not sulking. He’s not. 

Bucky gives him a soft smile and a kiss on the mouth on his way out. Of course he does. He’s too good for anything else.

And that—that gets under John’s skin too.

Bucky’s fine. Calm. Balanced. Not visibly haunted or bitter. He’s been through hell, and yet he still wants to eat cotton candy and ride rollercoasters until he pukes.

So why the hell can’t John?

*

John can’t shake it, even days later. His knuckles ache and sweat drips down his spine as he circles Bucky in the training room. His head is a thousand miles away. Again. 

Bucky blocks every swing with ease. His kicks don’t land and he gets thrown flat on his back so many times, he’s lost count. 

John lets out a frustrated grunt as he hits the mat. Again. 

“You’re distracted,” Bucky says, staring down at him. He’s not even winded. “And not in the usual way.”

John huffs. “Maybe you’re losing your touch then.”

Bucky offers a hand and John takes it, letting himself be pulled up. 

He could crack a joke, deflect, move a move like they always do when training inevitably spirals into something else. It’s a pattern: flirt, fight, fuck, repeat. 

But his heart’s not in it. And honestly, neither is his dick. 

“I just got shit on my mind,” he mutters, brushing himself off.

“You want to talk about it?” Bucky asks. Not pushing. Just… offering.

John shrugs, avoiding his eyes. “Not really.”

“Okay.” Bucky nods once and turns toward the bench. He grabs his towel and water bottle, packing up to hit the showers like it’s just another day.

“That’s it?” John asks, a little sharper than he means to. A little disappointed, too.

Bucky turns halfway, his expression unreadable. “What—you want me to drag it out of you?”

“No. I just…” John trails off.

Bucky’s eyes soften. “You’re a big boy, John. I’m not going to corner you into opening up. We’ve been doing this long enough. I trust you to come to me when you’re ready.”

He slings his towel over his shoulder, then on his way out, says, “Let me know when you figure out what’s bothering you. I’ll be around.”

The door swings shut behind him and John’s left standing on the mat. Alone again. 

John sighs and runs a hand through his sweat-damp hair. 

“Fucking Barnes,” he mutters under his breath. “What a patient, emotionally intelligent asshole.”

*

The next morning, John shifts awake, eyes blinking slowly open to early light that bleeds through half-drawn blinds. 

Bucky lies beside him, bare-chested, breathing even and slow. Peaceful in a way that John loves to see. 

John watches the steady rise and fall of Bucky’s chest. His gaze lingering on his naked form. The covers are low around his hips. Super soldiers always run too hot at night, even with the AC on full blast. 

He sits up. The air is cool against his bare skin. 

Glancing down at himself, he sees no bruises, no bite marks, no finger-shaped reminders of where Bucky’s hands had gripped him, desperate and aching, only hours ago. 

With super stamina also comes super healing… they never get to leave marks on each other. Not for long, anyway. 

Bucky’s skin is equally as bare, with the exception of the scar that runs along the line of where the vibranium is fused to his body. 

No marks. No proof. Just the memory of Bucky’s breath against his ear, the weight of him in his arms, the way they moved together, in unison, like they know each other by heart.

Gone now. Faded like it never happened.

John moves slowly. He lifts the sheet and places himself between Bucky’s legs. He trails his fingers along the faint line of dark hair down Bucky’s lower abdomen. His eyes flicker up briefly back to Bucky’s face. A smirk tugs at one corner of his mouth upon seeing that he’s still soundly asleep. 

He plants a wet kiss on Bucky’s lower stomach and feels the other man moan and shift in his sleep. A heavy thigh bumps into John’s hip. 

Not wasting any time, John runs his tongue along the length of Bucky’s limp but quickly swelling cock before lifting it to his mouth. He wraps his lips around the tip, gives a slow swirl with his tongue before fully swallowing him down. 

Bucky hardens quickly for him. 

He feels it the second that Bucky fully wakes up. His legs flinching around him as a half gasp, half moan spills from his lips. 

“John,” Bucky whimpers as he takes him fully into his throat. 

He lets Bucky fuck his mouth with clumsy, lazy, half-asleep thrusts. Until his hips pick up their pace, and Bucky groans loud, harsh and frustrated. Rough hands grab John’s head, fingers metal and flesh twisting in his hair. 

John moans at the harsh treatment and swallows Bucky deeper. A few more thrusts and Bucky is coming down his throat, John swallowing every drop. 

A moment passes before John lets Bucky fall from his mouth with an obscene pop and lifts his head enough to press a warm, wet kiss to Bucky’s hip. He keeps pressing kisses to his flesh as he makes his way up his body. 

John loves waking Bucky up with a blow job. Seeing him like this… blissed out, limp, without a care in the world… it makes it all too easy to convince him to spend more time in bed with him before they have to go out and face the world. 

Looking down at Bucky’s face, John grins softly at the sight. Eyes closed, serene, and still coming down from his climax. He’s fucking beautiful. 

He leans down and kisses him hard, hot and wet. Then grinds his hips against Bucky’s to remind him that he’s still got something to take care of. 

“John…” Bucky whispers against him. 

“Shh…” John runs his tongue across Bucky’s bottom lip. “I’m not done with you yet.”

He wets his fingers in his mouth before weaving his hand between their bodies. Bucky pulls his legs up to make it easier. When John finds his entrance, he pushes two fingers in. 

Bucky opens easily for him, even though it’s been hours since they fucked. Probably remnants of lube and come ease the way.

John lines himself up, carefully pushes into him, past that tight ring of muscle until he’s fully settled deep inside. No matter how many times they fuck, John still can’t believe how tight the other man feels around him. 

“Fuck, John—” Bucky’s words choke in his throat. 

John grips his hips hard as he drives into him, again and again. And in return, Bucky pushes back down to meet his thrusts. His cock is showing interest again, where it lies heavy and leaking on his stomach. 

“I’m going to make you come again,” John growls.

His thrusts get more erratic, more urgent, each one aimed at hitting Bucky’s sensitive prostate. He won’t last long now. He drives forward, crashing their lips together. His hips jerk as he empties himself, pressing deep inside as he shudders through his climax. 

Between their bodies, he feels Bucky come wetly between their stomachs. 

For a moment, they breathe, shaking and trembling in each other’s arms. 

The room is thick with the aftermath of something that feels intimate. Grounding. Bucky’s hands are on either side of John’s face, pressing their lips together like they might melt into the other. 

… Until John’s voice cuts through it, low and unsure:

“Do you think we were meant to be together?” 

Bucky pulls back and gives him a weird look. “That’s… heavy.”

“I’m serious.” John shifts, still practically bending the other man in half as his voice lowers. “If things were different—if Steve was still here… would you choose me?” 

The air sharpens. Bucky’s whole body goes still and tense around him. 

“John,” Bucky whispers. Pleading, almost. Eyes begging him not to ask that question.

But John pushes forward, already unraveling. “Come on, Bucky. After everything we’ve been through, I know you. I know every part of you. Your tells, your nightmares. I know how to fuck you until you can’t speak.” He punctuates this with a push of his hips, too much force behind it to be tender. 

“That has to mean something. It has to mean as much as what you had with him.”

Bucky’s jaw clenches. “Okay, I’m not having this conversation like this,” he mutters, then shoves him away with both hands. “Get off.”

John blinks. They pull apart awkwardly, sweat cooling fast. The weight of John’s words ruin any afterglow bliss that was remaining. 

Bucky sits up and yanks the sheet around his waist like armor, hastily wiping away the mess in the process. “Jesus, John.”

“I just want the truth,” John says, his voice rising. “I need to know if I’m just your second choice.”

Bucky shakes his head, his eyes narrowing with hurt. “I can’t believe you’re still hung up on this.”

“How can I not be?” John bites back. “Every time I look at you, I think about how much you love him. How much you want to be with him. How he’s… better than me in every way. Everyday, everywhere I go, it’s constant reminders from everyone that I’m not good enough.”

Bucky watches him, but says nothing. 

John’s voice is quieter now. “Here I am, giving you everything I’ve got, and I still feel like I’m standing in his goddamn shadow.”

Bucky’s voice is tight when he speaks. “You talk about him like he’s still here. You notice that? Steve never even loved me in that way.”

John snorts, bitter. “After everything he did for you? He fought the whole world for Bucky Barnes. I’d bet my life he did. Maybe he just never said it out loud.”

There’s a pause, long enough to feel dangerous.

“I guess I have my answer, huh?” John looks away. 

“No,” Bucky snaps. “You don’t. And you know one more difference between you two? Steve would never make me choose.”

John laughs without humor. “Of course not. Saint Steve. Always taking the high road, right?”

“I told you that you’re not a replacement for him,” Bucky says, almost pleading now. “You know I love you. I’m here, with you. Steve is gone and he’s not coming back. You need to let this go.”

“I can’t!” John’s voice cracks. “I’ve got this… this darkness inside me. It doesn’t let shit go!”

Bucky grimaces, his jaw tense. “We all have that darkness,” he growls.

“Even Steve?”

“Hell yes, even Steve had it,” Bucky says harshly.

John scoffs, not buying it. “I find that hard to believe.”

Bucky’s eyes snap to his. “Then maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”

The silence that follows isn’t peaceful. It’s heavy. Sour. Like a storm that passed too quickly, leaving everything raw and wet and stinking in its wake.

John turns away, pulls on a pair of sweatpants without another word. 

He leaves. 

Bucky doesn't stop him.

The New Avengers eye their latest acquisition with apprehension. 

The odd retro-looking gadget sits innocently on a stainless steel table in the middle of the lab—small, bronze, strange. Harmless looking, really.

Bucky crosses his arms and eyes it warily. “We shouldn’t be touching that thing.”

Ava is already backing toward the door. She told them during the op to retrieve it that her phases got wonky the closer she got to the damn thing. That’s enough of a red flag for her. 

Alexei grunts, peering at it from a few feet away. “Looks like teeny tiny Soviet griddle.”

“It’s not a kitchen appliance,” Yelena mutters, dry. She tugs on Alexei’s arm and pulls him away. “But it is a very bad idea. You too, John.”

John leans over it, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. “You all act like I’m gonna push a button and rip a hole in the universe.”

“Because you probably will,” Ava shoots back from the doorway.

Bucky doesn’t look at John when he says, “Just leave it alone, Walker.”

The cold edge in his voice makes John’s shoulders tense. He’s Walker again. Has been for days now, since their fight. 

John’s bed has been awfully cold and lonely.

Yelena is already halfway out the door. “Let’s let the scientist nerds handle it. I’m getting food.”

“Same,” Ava murmurs. “I don’t want shit to do with that thing.”

One by one, they filter out—grumbling, bickering, uninterested.

John lingers in the room.

He circles the table slowly, eyes still on the device. The screen glints under the lab lights. A dark grid on the face of it. It hums faintly, like it’s waiting to be touched.

John sighs. He can still hear Bucky’s voice from the other night: You know I love you. I’m here, with you. 

It’s not enough. Not enough to ground him. Not enough to keep him from doing something collossally stupid…

His fingers brush the edge of the device. The foreign material is cool to the touch. 

He picks it up. Just a look, John tells himself. He’s just curious. 

One light tap on the interface and the screen flares to life. He sees lines, growing branching lines, symbols that flash onto the screen that he doesn’t recognize and then a pull— 

“Oh sh—”

A pulse of energy floods the room, swallowing John in white light.

And then—

*

The air changes first.

It’s thick with smoke. Cold. Hazy with neon lights and radio static. 

John stumbles out of nothing, catching himself on a metal post. Horns honk nearby. Loud, rowdy voices are shouting on a crowded street. A jukebox croons from nearby.

He stares in disbelief. Frigid cold air fills his lungs. He can see his own breath. It’s dark. 

Nevermind that it was midday in October just moments ago. 

Gone is the tower. The lab. 

In its place: cobblestone sidewalks, tailfinned automobiles, and the warm golden glow of mid-century streetlamps. He reads “Mac’s Tavern” in a bar window, hand-painted and worn by time.

His jaw slackens.

Oh shit. 

And then: Where the hell am I?

John slowly pockets the device that he was gripping tight in his hand and walks unsteadily down the street. His tac gear sticks out like a sore thumb among suits and fedoras, but no one spares a glance his way. 

He needs to get out of sight. Needs to find a quiet, private place to analyze the damn TemPad and figure out how to get back home. With as little interaction as possible, he tells himself. He can’t risk changing time while he’s here. 

He approaches the bar. With only a moment’s hesitation, he steps inside.

*

The place is dim, bathed in yellow light and stained wood. Jazz crackles from an old radio. Smoke curls from too many cigarettes. Men laugh loudly over beers. Everyone seems to belong.

Except John. 

Then John sees him.

In the far booth. Slouched low. A dark coat pulled tight over his frame.

Bucky.

Not quite his Bucky. This one’s older somehow, even though it’s obviously the past. His face is thinner, more drawn. His frame looks slight. There are bags under his eyes and a glass of something strong clutched in his hand. Not the only glass on the table. His hair is shorter but messy, his mouth slack with exhaustion or drink.

He looks lost. Hollow. 

John’s breath catches in his throat.

The other Bucky stares down at the table, tapping one finger against the glass in a rhythm that feels too familiar. Haunted. Slow.

He’s here. Alive. 

John does the math. Judging by the cars on the street, his gut says he’s somewhere in the 50’s… possibly early 60’s. He should be looking at the Winter Soldier. HYDRA would have had him for years by now. A decade. 

John’s stomach twists. He knows this is Bucky. 

John doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. He just stares across the crowded, smoky room.

Then, as if feeling he’s being watched, Bucky’s head lifts.

Their eyes meet across the room.

And for a moment, the world folds in on itself.

Chapter Text

Brooklyn, 1957

The radio hums out some old Presley tune that John only faintly recognizes. It comes across muffled in his ears, half-swallowed by static as he adjusts to his surroundings. 

The air is thick with the scent of spilled beer, old leather, and bad paint. Smoke curls in lazy spirals toward the ceiling, caught in the amber glow of dusty light bulbs.

John stands awkwardly by the door, disoriented, as if his legs had forgotten how to move. 

Barnes isn’t looking at him anymore. He’s gone back to staring at his glass, every aspect of his demeanor screaming that he wants to be left alone. 

It’s not his Bucky.

And yet. 

John moves toward him anyway, driven by a mixture of instinct and longing. 

This Bucky looks older at first glance. But as John gets closer, he thinks maybe not. Maybe the years have just weighed differently on him. His hair is unkempt. His eyes shadowed. He doesn’t have a full beard, but it looks like at least a week’s worth of growth.

He wears a wool jacket over a threadbare shirt. And when John gets close enough, he sees that both hands—the one gripping his glass and the other curled into a fist, ready for a fight—are flesh. 

His knuckles are dirty and bruised. 

Bucky looks like hell. And John’s heart stutters at the sight.

When Bucky’s eyes meet his, they’re glassy and immediately hostile.

“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”

“I’m not selling anything,” John says quietly.

“Then get lost, pal.”

John hesitates, then drops down into the seat next to him anyway.

Bucky stiffens. His eyes narrow and John thinks he’s about to get a glass to the face. But before either of them can get another word out, the bartender comes around, giving Bucky a pointed look and a sigh.

“Are we gonna have a problem, Barnes? You want to keep drinking for free, you better put that fist away.”

Slowly and reluctantly, Bucky unclenches his fist and drops it into his lap. “Fine,” he mutters, before throwing back the rest of his glass. “I’ll have another. And one for my new friend, too—” 

“John.” 

“My new friend, John,” Bucky repeats, plastering a wide, fake smile to his face.

The bartender nods and moves off. 

“They let you drink for free?” John asks, once they’re alone again.

“Veteran’s tab.”

“Ah,” John nods, and takes the offered glass when it comes. 

He swirls it once before asking, casually, “So, can I get your name? Or should I just call you Barnes?”

“James.”

“James,” John echoes, testing it on his tongue. It feels odd. Wrong. 

The other man gives him a strange look, but doesn’t mention it. 

So they drink in silence for a while. James stares ahead, utterly uninterested in conversation. His hand wraps around the glass like it’s the only thing tethering him to the moment. His shoulders are tense, jaw clenched, eyes far away.

John knows he should be doing something smarter, like figuring out how to get back to his timeline. How to get home, to his Bucky. 

But part of him is just too morbidly curious, and wants to know—needs to know, how this Bucky ended up like this. 

“I was a soldier, too,” John says, breaking the silence.

The jukebox stops, clicks, and jumps to a new track.

James doesn’t turn, but his eyes drop to the table. “What branch?”

“Army. Captain. I did a tour in Syria,” John says carefully, not lying. He watches James’ reaction.

“Italy. Sergeant,” James mutters. 

“Right in the thick of it, huh?”

James doesn’t answer. The song drones on, something slow and bluesy in the corner. 

John swirls the amber in his glass. The ice clinks like teeth.

“Some of the worst days of my life,” he says quietly. “And let me guess, when you got back, they just… pinned a few medals on you and then sent you on your way?”

James gives him a sideways glance but says nothing. 

John exhales. “Thirty-six confirmed kills. One op. Close quarters, no backup. Just me and a combat knife once the ammo ran out.” He lets out a low chuckle, but there’s no humor in it. 

“They say I saved my battalion. Said I was a hero. People clapped when I came home, waved flags, gave speeches. I had blood under my nails for days.”

John takes a drink, then sets the glass down slowly. “I hate those medals.”

James tilts his head. “Why?”

John meets his eyes. “Because I remember their faces. Those people weren’t monsters. Some of them were barely armed. Scared. Young. Like me. Wrong place, wrong flag. Doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t make it any easier to sleep at night.”

A long pause stretches between them. James doesn’t speak, but the muscle in his jaw ticks. His fingers tighten around his glass.

“They made me a hero for it,” John adds quietly. “But it just made me feel like a monster.”

James studies him in the dim light. The silence stretches for a beat too long.

“That doesn’t sound like any battle I’ve heard of,” he finally says, his voice low. “Not in my war, anyway.”

John stays quiet. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t defend or explain. He just takes another sip, knowing he’s already said too much. Got too comfortable with someone who wears Bucky’s face. 

But maybe that’s what he came here to face.

Maybe this is the only version of Bucky Barnes he could say it to without flinching.

James turns back to his drink. His voice is rough when he speaks again. “Silver Star. Purple Heart. For bravery in combat, they said. And surviving in HYDRA’s POW camp for two years.” A bitter laugh. “Most of us didn’t make it back. But I guess surviving it made me a hero. The government’s good at that—handing out medals to make up for the shit they can’t fix.”

A beat.

“I threw ‘em in the East River.”

“Two years?” John’s eyes flick down to that hand, the flesh one where John has only ever known to be metal. 

There’s a shift in James’ posture. Something flickers across his face. Pain, or memory. Maybe both. “Went down in ‘43. Behind enemy lines.” He takes a sip from his glass, slower this time, and John can help but watch the amber liquid disappear between red lips. 

“They didn’t come looking for us. My whole unit, written off as dead.”

John frowns. “No one… came to rescue you?”

James gives a sharp, bitter laugh. There’s no humor in it, just something hollow and jagged around the edges.

“No,” he says. “War ended, flags went up, parades rolled out. And we were still rotting in a hole somewhere in the Alps. I think someone stumbled onto us by accident. Scavengers, maybe. Heard a story once that it was Stark, on a weapons recovery trip, to get his hands on HYDRA tech. Who knows. I was half-dead when they pulled me out.”

He tips his glass again, and this time his hand trembles just slightly. “By then, it was too late for most of us. Frostbite. Infection. Starvation. All the other shit they did to us.” He sets the glass down, harder than he probably meant to. “The Army gave me a discharge, a couple of medals, and a bottle of pills. Told me I was lucky.”

His lip curls. “Lucky.”

John’s throat tightens. There’s nothing to say to that. No comfort that wouldn’t feel insulting.

James leans back, eyes drifting toward the window, though his eyes don’t seem to focus on anything at all.

“The government’s good at disappearing the ugly parts of the war,” he mutters. “You’re only a hero if you come back in one piece. And even then… they mostly just want you to shut up.”

John goes still. He exhales, his chest too tight. He knows that truth all too well.

He thinks of Lemar. Of everything they did together. His chest aches to think of him. 

James turns to him, his gaze narrowed, eyes sharp again. “Why are you so interested, anyway?”

John looks at him carefully, not answering right away.

“Maybe I just recognize the kind of man who survived something that should’ve killed him,” he says. “Maybe I don’t like seeing him drink alone.”

James blinks. His guard is still up, but the suspicion eases just a bit.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

John freezes. “I—” 

James looks over his strange, too-modern tactical gear, then back up. “Whatever. I don’t give a shit.” 

He throws back the rest of his drink. “John. Do you feel like getting out of here?”

John blinks. The bar hums quietly around them. Low music, muffled voices, the clink of glass on wood. John doesn’t feel anything from a glass of cheap whisky. Hell, he wouldn’t feel a whole bottle. But his body warms when he looks at James’ face. 

James’ eyes are steady, but his hand trembles where it rests on the table. He sways just enough to let him know that he’s had more than a few before John even stepped into the place. 

“Out of here?” John echoes dumbly, even though he already knows what James means. What he’s offering.

James gives a quiet nod. “My place isn’t far.”

For a moment, John doesn’t move. His gaze drifts toward the door. He thinks of the TemPad hidden in his pocket—his ticket home. The one that will bring him to another world, another time, another version of this man.

He should leave. He should figure out how the device works and get back to the right time. The right man. The one who already knows the worst parts of him and still loves him.

But this James—haunted, raw, and still bleeding even after a decade home from war—looks at him like he’s starving for something real. Something that doesn’t ask questions or keep score.

And John… remembers what it’s like to be that man. 

The John who belongs to this time will never meet this Bucky. He won’t even be born for another thirty years. James likely won’t make it that long with the way he drinks.

“Okay,” John says softly.

James doesn’t smile. Just nods, rises from his seat, and drops a few bills on the table. 

John follows him out into the night.

*

The apartment is small and sparsely furnished. The window glass is cracked, letting in the sharp bite of winter. A stack of unopened letters rests messily on the table.

James disappears into the kitchen while John lingers by the door, shutting it quietly behind them.

“No pressure,” James calls back. “I just don’t feel like drinking alone tonight.”

John exhales slowly. “Yeah, I’ve done that, too. It’s worse.”

They stand there in the quiet. The city beyond the window is a distant hum, a dull blur of street lights and far-off horns. James pours himself another drink. He doesn’t offer to John yet. Instead, he just watches with tired, assessing eyes. 

John shuffles under the weight of that gaze. His fingers twitch against his pocket, brushing over the device beneath. It feels heavier now.

“I shouldn’t be here,” John says. It comes out rough.

“I figured,” James murmurs. “You’ve got that look.”

John raises a brow. “What look? The suit?”

“The kind of man with somethin’ else waitin’ for him.”

The silence stretches, thick and heavy.

James turns toward the window. “So why’d you come home with me?”

John doesn’t answer right away. He thinks of a dozen half-truths and excuses, but none of them feel real.

“I guess,” he begins, then falters. “I wanted to know a version of you… that hasn’t seen all of my mistakes.” 

James turns, and for a second, his expression flickers—some mix of recognition and sorrow that neither of them have earned.

“I don’t know what that means,” he says finally, but his voice is softer now.

John chuckles once, dry and tired. “Me neither.”

While James nurses whatever’s in his glass, John moves slowly through the apartment. It’s sparse, but lived-in. The kind of place meant for surviving, not belonging. It makes him sad. 

On a low shelf, something catches his eye.

A small black-and-white photo, framed in tarnished metal. The edges are worn, the surface slightly faded with age, but the subjects are unmistakable.

Two young school-aged boys, one tall and straight-backed, grinning with a mouth full of teeth. The other is shorter, wiry, with a glint of mischief in his eyes. They’re standing side-by-side, sleeves rolled up, dirt on their knees. Brooklyn in the background.

John stares for a long time, then murmurs, half to himself, “You look like kids.”

James’ voice comes from behind him, quieter than John expects. “We were.”

John turns to find James leaning against the doorframe, a glass in one hand. His eyes are far away.

“This is you and…”

“Steve. My best friend.” James steps closer, eyes fixed on the photo. “I’ve known him my whole life. Always pickin’ fights he couldn’t win. Always thinkin’ he had somethin’ to prove.” 

John’s voice is cautious. “What happened to him?”

James doesn’t answer right away. He steps forward until he’s looking at the picture right over John’s shoulder. Looks at it like it might shatter if he blinked.

“He died while I was overseas. Tuberculosis. It was fast. I didn’t know, of course… not until I got back.”

John says nothing. Just stares at the image of little Steve Rogers. 

“By the time I made it home, they’d already buried him.” James’ voice is flat. A bitter smile twists at his mouth, and for a second, John sees the weight of all the years James has carried—alone, angry, and haunted.

“I was fighting to get back to someone who was already gone.”

The silence stretches. John doesn’t try to fill it. He just stands there, watching a man staring at a picture like it’s the last steady thing in a world that keeps tilting sideways.

James finally looks away. “You think you know what you’re coming home to,” he says, voice almost too soft to hear. “Then the world just… moves on without you.”

John swallows. The words sink into him like lead. Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s the ache of knowing a different version of this man. Or maybe it’s because this James is still bleeding, and John can’t stop it.

He carefully places the picture back on the shelf, feeling like he’s intruding on a wound that never really closed.

Neither of them says anything for a while.

The photograph remains where it is, small and still and eternal.

James sets his glass down with a soft clink on a table. His eyes drift back to John who silently watches him. The pain still lingers in James’ expression, but it’s muted now, folded beneath something else. It’s a terribly familiar look. One that John has seen many times. 

“You gonna keep starin’ at me like that?” James says, his voice low and unsteady. “Or are you planning on doing somethin’ about it?”

John’s brows knit together, still on uneven footing with this not-his-version of Bucky. “Wh-what?”

James steps closer. “Come on. You want this, right?” He gestures vaguely between them. “You didn’t come back to my place just to admire my bad taste in furniture.”

And yes, even haunted and broken, John still wants him. 

But this isn’t his Bucky. 

“James—”

“Don’t make it complicated, sweetheart. Doesn’t have to mean anything.” James’ voice is rough now, a little slurred at the edges. “We’re just two soldiers lookin’ to forget for a little while.”

John hesitates. If he does this—

James reaches for him, arms circling his waist, pulling him in. He lets their mouths meet in a kiss that’s entirely lacking in tenderness. All sharp, starved edges and no warmth. The desperation in it makes John flinch, but he doesn’t pull away.

They stumble back toward the bedroom. James shedding his clothes without ceremony, John trailing after, slower. He tries to focus on skin, heat, pressure—but none of it feels right. 

James drops onto the edge of the bed, eyes heavy-lidded and flushed. “You coming, soldier?”

John nods, but it’s lifeless. His heart’s beating in the wrong rhythm. He starts to unclip the armored pieces of his suit, fingers fumbling, but they feel numb. Everything feels wrong.

James reaches for him, his movements rough and unsteady. His hands get nowhere with the complicated straps and fastenings of John’s suit. 

He kisses like he’s pushing for something that might feel like a connection, but never quite gets there. All force and no finesse. It’s not affection—it’s distraction. And John lets it happen. Lets James push and press and try to find something in him.

His heart thuds with guilt. He closes his eyes and thinks of bright blue eyes, metal fingers ghosting over his chest, and laughter soft against his neck. He thinks of the way his Bucky feels in his arms—heavier, sturdier, and not like he’d break apart if John miscalculated his superhuman strength. 

And that’s when it hits him.

He can’t go through with this. 

John pulls back, his breath catching. “I—I can’t do this.”

James blinks at him, confused and irritated. “What’s wrong?”

John stands, runs a hand over his face. His voice is strained. “I’m sorry. I—I can’t. I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”

There’s a shift in James’ expression. Something hardens. “Right. Of course. You’re one of those.” He laughs, cold and biting. “Figures.”

“No! No, no, it’s not that.” John throws his palms up in surrender. “It’s not about you being a man.”

James’ voice is sharp. “Then what is it?”

John hesitates. Swallows. And then, quietly: “The truth is… I sat down with you because you remind me of someone I know. Someone I care about. Too much, to do this to them.”

James stares at him, the anger draining into something else. Something darker. “Someone who doesn’t know you’re here?”

John doesn’t answer.

James exhales slowly, looking away. “Then you should go.”

A beat. John nods. “Yeah.”

He hesitates at the door, glancing back to get one last look. The bed creaks behind him as James lies back, one arm flung over his eyes. The other is already reaching for the bottle on the table. 

John’s throat tightens. There’s nothing he can do for this version of Bucky. 

He whispers, “Take care of yourself, James.”

The apartment is too quiet as he walks through. The air stinks of stale whiskey and dust. Every step feels like it’s pulling him closer to the man waiting for him in 2028. The one who looks him in the eye and sees him.  

John's jaw tightens. His fingers twitch. 

He opens the door of James’ apartment and walks out.

John crouches in the shadows in a narrow alleyway.

The Tempad glows dimly in his hands, beneath the yellow haze of street lamps. His fingers hover over the interface, eyes narrowing at the cryptic sprawl of temporal coordinates and branching dimensions.

He swipes through the menus. Location logs. Jump sequences. Timestamps that twist through possibilities. It all reads like static. None of it makes a lick of sense. Except for the branching timeline. That one he can sort of follow.

“Come on. One more try…” John mutters to himself. “Come on, come on…” 

He taps on a point along the main branch that he thinks leads home. The Tempad flashes, pulses a deep violet, and then hums sharply to life.

The ground lurches and shifts beneath his feet. Light folds inward. The alley disappears.

*

A flicker. Then a burst of static. 

John stumbles forward as the Tempad fizzles dead in his hand.

He’s inside a building. Grand. Stunning. Frozen in time. 

Vaulted ceilings curve high above him, latticed in gold. Gilded arches gleam with cold elegance. Chandeliers drip with crystal and fractured light. Marble floors stretch beneath his boots.

It’s something out of a painting. 

And then he smells copper. 

Gunfire cracks through the air.

Screams follow, then a thud. Another shot. Another dull, sickening thud. The staccato rhythm of violence. 

There’s shouting. Russian voices, urgent and panicked.

John drops low behind a carved pillar, pressed against cold stone just as another man in a gray suit crumples to the floor. Blood pooling fast beneath him.

Peering over the railing, John sees them—

Bodies littered across the stairs like broken dolls, limbs bent at unnatural angles. Faces frozen in surprise or terror. A massacre. Cold and precise. 

His pulse thunders in his ears. 

At the far end of the hall, John sees him—

Bucky.

Definitely not his Bucky. And John is definitely not back in the right time. 

This one isn’t a broken soldier home from war. This is a weapon in motion, wrapped in black leather. His hair is longer than he’s ever seen it. John can only see his back, but the way he moves—controlled, lethal—is unmistakable.

The Winter Soldier steps past a body without flinching. Snaps a man upright by the throat and shoves him through a pair of ornate double doors, vanishing from sight. 

John doesn’t hesitate. He leaps the railing—two stories down—and lands hard, rolling once before sprinting after him.

He bursts through the doors.

Too late.

The target is already dead, twisted on the marble floor, neck broken. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

A whimper draws his attention.

A witness cowers against the wall. Young. Eyes wide with terror, his entire body trembling. 

The Winter Soldier stands over him, gun leveled at his head.

John doesn’t think. Doesn’t breathe. He just yells—

“Bucky!”

The name cuts through the air like a crack of thunder.

The Winter Soldier goes still. 

He spins like a predator tracking a new threat. His firearm swings around too, and John gets his first real look at him. 

His face is half-hidden behind a black mask, but John sees the eyes.

He would know those eyes anywhere.

Chapter Text

Hotel Inessa, Russia, 1993

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

The Winter Soldier’s voice is low and flat. Mechanical. Not curious. Dangerous.

The witness, forgotten for a fraction of a second, takes the chance John’s given him and bolts from behind the distracted soldier with a burst of desperate speed.

Bucky’s head snaps toward the fleeing man. His arm swings and John sees the shot coming before it happens.

“No—!” John throws himself forward, arms raised.

The gun fires.

The shot goes wide, cracking into a pillar as John slams into Bucky with his full weight, sending them crashing through a heavy door and into the room behind them.

Bucky’s lost the gun, but he’s on his feet before John can blink—metal fist swinging hard and fast with an ugly mechanical whirr. John ducks just in time. The punch whistles past his ear and punches a hole clean through the wall behind him.

Jesus.

John strikes back, quick and efficient. He lands a punch to the gut to drive him back. His leg sweeps low to catch Bucky off-balance before he lunges in an attempt to lock him in a body hold. 

Bucky slips out of his grasp like smoke.

He dodges another blow. In a blur, the metal hand is at John’s throat, cold and unyielding. Bucky yanks him close, their faces separated only by inches of air and that awful mask. Then Bucky hurls him clear across the room with the force of a cannon blast. 

John crashes through a table, wood splinters exploding under him.

He groans, pushing himself up. “Okay,” he mutters, brushing himself off before putting his hands back up. “We’re doing this.”

Bucky lunges at him with a knife in hand.

They collide again, two super soldiers, fists throwing punches like thunderclaps, their movements a blur. But John knows within seconds, as he dodges another swipe of the blade: this is nothing like their sparring sessions at home. Not the soft, wordless dance of trust and challenge that they share in another life.

This Bucky is trying to kill him.

This one is faster. 

The one time Bucky and John really fought—when John was out of his mind with grief, the fresh serum raging wild through his veins like fire—John didn’t see it then, but he knows it now: Bucky was holding back.  

This version of Bucky is ruthless. Not just tactical, but instinctual. Like he was programmed to end threats in seconds.

And now he’s not holding back.

John is stronger—probably. 

He feels it in every traded blow, every blocked strike. Barely, just barely, he manages to knock the knife from Bucky’s hand. He could take him down. Maybe. But he hesitates. Every punch he throws is a hair too slow. Every counter is just shy of full force.

Because even now, even like this, with his face hidden behind a mask, eyes dark and wild—

It’s still Bucky.

And John can’t hurt him.

The Winter Soldier has no such reservations.

The metal arm moves like a weapon of its own, every motion sharp, brutal, and deliberate. It whines with each shift, a sickening grind of gears beneath armored plates. Loud and angry, where the vibranium arm is sleek and silent. 

It’s just enough to throw John off and he ends up taking that metal fist to the temple. His vision explodes in white before he recovers. 

A knee drives painfully into John’s ribs. He hears something crack. Another punch follows, sending him sprawling to the carpet, all the air driven from his lungs. Bucky’s on him in an instant, his knee pinning his chest, and a hand crushing his throat.

The metal arm is raised, poised for the final strike.

Oh fuck, he’s going to do it. He’s going to kill me.

Then—sirens. Russian voices shouting commands. The thunder of boots on marble echoes down the corridor, seeping through the broken doors into their room.

John swallows hard, his eyes darting from the noise outside back to Bucky’s face.

Security? Police? HYDRA?

Bucky freezes as well, head tilting slightly toward the sound. John uses that split-second to slam a fist into Bucky’s jaw. It lands clean and knocks him sideways with a grunt.

John scrambles to his feet, ribs burning, breath coming fast.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t hesitate. He bursts through the tall windows to their side, glass shards raining down in gleaming arcs, before he vanishes into the darkness.

John staggers after him. “Bucky—wait!”

But that name is useless here. He’s calling out to a ghost.

John’s eyes chase the flash of black leather, the glint of metal.

A second later, glass bounces off his suit as John hurls himself through the window after him, hitting the ground running.

The Winter Soldier is already leaping across an alley to another rooftop, landing in a crouch and sprinting again, fluid and inhuman.

John moves just as fast. He burns across the rooftop, wind slicing past him, the cold night air knifing into his lungs. He vaults over railings, jumps onto another roof as he chases after the shadow moving away from him. 

“Bucky!” He shouts again, unable to stop himself.

The Winter Soldier skids to a halt near a ledge. He turns, another gun raised and aimed right for John’s heart. His breathing is steady, and his eyes are so very sharp.

John stops several feet away, hands held out slightly. 

He wishes he had a shield with him. 

They stare at each other across the rooftop, the night stretching wide and silent around them, broken only by the distant wail of sirens and the steady click click click of the metal arm adjusting. The unnatural sound makes John’s stomach twist.

For a moment, neither of them moves. The rooftop lights flicker dimly, casting their shadows in long lines across the rooftop.

John braces for another fight.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead, the Winter Soldier speaks. “You’re not my mission,” he says, voice flat and guarded through the mask. “Why are you following me?”

John opens his mouth—and nothing comes out.

Because the truth sounds insane. Because saying ‘I know you, but you don’t know me’ doesn’t help anyone. Because ‘I love you’ means nothing to this version of Bucky.

He swallows, keeps his voice steady, and says, “You can’t go back.”

Bucky tilts his head, the smallest movement. Calculating. “What?”

“You’re heading to the extraction point, right? Back to HYDRA.”

That earns a twitch. Barely visible. But it’s there. 

John steps closer, slowly, arms still raised in defense. “Your mission’s incomplete,” he says. “You left a witness.”

Something flashes across the soldier’s eyes.

“The target is dead.”

“Soldier, you left a witness.” John’s voice sharpens. “Two, actually. If we’re keeping count. The squirrely fella. And me.”

The soldier’s grip tightens on his pistol. The whir of his arm grows louder for a moment, then quiets. His stance shifts, wary.

“I knocked your shot off. That witness got away.” John lets a bit of arrogance bleed into his words. His Bucky always liked that. 

“If you go back now… they’ll punish you for it. You know that, don’t you?”

A long silence. The wind picks up around them. Somewhere below on the street, a car alarm starts and dies out.

The Winter Soldier looks at him with cold, dead eyes. But John doesn’t flinch.

He sees it, just for a second.

Doubt.

It slips across Bucky’s face like a shadow. Quickly hidden, but there.

His eyes narrow. He doesn’t lower the gun. But he doesn’t fire either.

John takes a breath, soft and careful. He takes another step closer. “You don’t have to go back,” he says softly.

The Winter Soldier tilts his head, stares at him like he’s speaking another language.

“You don’t have to go back,” John repeats. 

Slowly, hesitantly, Bucky lowers the gun. John breathes. 

*

They don’t talk as they run.

John doesn’t know where he’s going. He doesn’t know the Russian streets that he leads them through. He doesn’t know the alleyways, as they cut through the shadows of a city that is completely foreign to him. 

But still, the Winter Soldier follows, silent but sharp, glancing behind them now and then like he expects HYDRA to burst around every corner. 

When they need to find a place to rest, they slip into an old tenement building in the industrial quarter. It’s boarded up, mostly forgotten. John kicks in the door of a second-floor apartment. It smells like dust and old rot, but it’s empty.

It’ll do.

Bucky walks into the room like a caged animal, and John just watches. 

They’ve been running for hours. 

“This is a mistake,” Bucky says after a moment. “You should go. You’re not a part of this. You don’t know what they’ll do to me if I don’t report in.”

John swallows. He takes an uneasy step forward. “I do know.”

Bucky’s eyes narrow, glassy and dangerous. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know your name.”

Bucky stiffens.

John’s voice softens. “Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t react to the word. 

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

The silence is heavy. Bucky flinches like it hurts to hear it. He looks away and says nothing. His eyes stare at something far off in the distance. 

“I know you,” John continues softly. “Bucky, I swear I know you.”

Bucky meets his eyes again—skeptical, furious… unraveling.

“I can explain—”

Bucky shakes his head, cutting him off. “I have trackers on me.”

“What?”

“That’s how they’ll find me.”

Bucky stands in the shadows, unmoving. Then he reaches up.

His fingers find the strap that’s buried under his hair. The black mask comes off in one slow motion. And just like that, John sees him.

His face looks younger than John’s Bucky—by at least a decade. Young, scared. Eyes sharp, but haunted. Bucky stares back at him for a second, like he’s weighing whether to say something.

But then he reaches for another knife strapped behind his back. John flinches at the sight of it, but it’s not for him. 

Bucky digs the sharp point of the blade in between the plates of his forearm. With a soft click, a panel opens on the underside of the arm. He reaches in and pulls out a small blinking chip.

Bucky tosses it to the ground and crushes it under his boot.

He snaps the panel shut. 

Then, with surprising calm, he reaches into his mouth with metal fingers and wrenches out a molar. The tooth glints with something unnatural. He destroys that one, too.

John doesn't hold back a sound of disgust when he sees the blood that Bucky spits on the ground.

He blanches when Bucky turns to him, knife in hand. But Bucky offers the blade, handle first, steady and deliberate. John hesitates, then slowly reaches out and takes the blade from his grip. Bucky turns around, pulling his hair up to expose his neck. 

“I can feel it. It’s buried under the skin. It’ll be easier for you to get it.”

John grimaces. “Fuck,” he mutters quietly.

“Do it quick.”

John takes a steadying breath. He guides Bucky to lean forward slightly. The light is bad. The angle is worse. But the knife is sharp.

“Ready?” John warns.

“Just do it.”

John presses the blade in, slow and methodical. Bucky doesn’t make a sound as his blood pools around the knife’s path. John hears his heart pounding loudly in his ears as he works.

Finally, the tip of the blade hits something unnatural.

He extracts it with care.

Tiny. Black and silver metal. Pulsing faintly.

John crushes it under his boot just like the others.

“They really don’t want to let you go,” he mutters under his breath.

Bucky exhales, but it’s not relief. Just a pause.

John glances around them, looking for a rag, a shirt, anything to press against the wound. Not that it’s bleeding much. Not that Bucky would care, really. But it feels like the decent thing to do. 

He ends up tearing off the flap of his own pocket and holds it out, a small, awkward offering.

Bucky just stares at it.

With a quiet sigh, John reaches up, brushing past his hair to press the scrap of fabric to the skin that’s already stopped bleeding.

Being this close to another version of this man sends a flutter through his stomach.

* 

For a while, they sit in silence in the empty apartment. John’s eyes switch between staring at Bucky and pretending he’s distracted by something outside the window. Bucky doesn’t bother with the pretense and leaves his stare fixated on John. 

“We should keep moving.”

Bucky nods once in agreement, but neither of them moves from their position. 

Their enhanced hearing tells them there’s no danger for the moment. They take advantage to recoup their strength. 

John closes his eyes and exhales slowly. He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing here. But he’s got a version of Bucky that he actually stands a chance at saving, and he can’t just leave him to run back into HYDRA’s hands. 

Eventually, Bucky leans his head back against the wall, eyes dark and narrowed. “You gonna tell me who the hell you are now?” he asks.

John lets out a slow breath. He pulls the Tempad from his pocket and starts poking at it—carefully—just to have something to distract himself with. The blinking dot marks his location in time. He’s on the main branch. Just at the wrong time.  

“I’m not from this time,” John finally says. “I don’t know how I ended up here. But I’m… I’m trying to get home.”

He pauses. “My name is John. You know me in the future.”

Bucky stares at the device in John’s hands warily. The same look his Bucky gave the thing in the lab, John thinks to himself with a dry laugh.

“John. You expect me to believe you’re a time traveler?”

“I don’t care if you believe it. It’s the truth.”

John sits opposite him on the floor, cross-legged. “The Bucky I know… in the future, you got out. You broke free from them. HYDRA lost. They’re dead. And you’re free.” 

Bucky tenses.

“When?”

John’s eyes fall to his lap. The Tempad screen goes dark. “Twenty,” he says softly. “Give or take.”

“Twenty years?” Bucky’s voice cracks. “Twenty years before I’m free?” 

“Thirty years until we meet,” John says, trying to lighten the blow. "I'm about seven years old right now." 

Bucky looks away. “That version of me sounds lucky,” he mutters. “I don’t even know who I am.”

“You’re more than what they made you.”

“Yeah?” Bucky snaps. “And what if I’m nothing without them? What if there’s nothing left underneath all this?”

John shakes his head. “There is. I’ve seen it. I know you don’t believe me—but I know you. I’ve fought next to you. I’ve… I’ve held you. I know who you are.”

Bucky’s breathing hitches.

“Don’t,” he warns, quiet and raw. “Don’t talk to me like you know me.”

“I do know you.”

“You know someone.” Bucky presses a hand to the side of his head, as if trying to quiet the echo of a thousand commands, the remnants of programming as it wears off the longer he’s away from them. 

“Whatever he is… whoever you think I am… I’m not him.”

John’s chest aches. “I know,” he says quietly. “But you could be. One day.”

“I don’t know who I am.” Bucky bows his head. “I don’t remember anything.”

“You will,” John says firmly. “It’ll come back, the longer you’re away from them. Your memories will come back.”

Bucky grimaces. “They never leave me out for longer than a few days. If they do…”

“They wipe you again,” John finishes.

Bucky’s eyes meet his. John almost flinches from the pain he sees behind them. Jesus, Bucky is so young, John thinks to himself. So young when he went off to war for his country and never came home. 

Bucky breaks eye contact first, looking away.  

They fall into silence again, the kind that says more than any words could.

John sees it in the way his jaw clenches, the flash of his eyes—raw, sharp, and familiar. That quiet, dangerous anger, the kind that used to simmer just beneath the surface of his Bucky, when he let John close enough to see it. 

That same rage is starting to show in this version, too.

God, he misses him. His Bucky. The one who laughs quietly at his terrible jokes, who shares coffee with him in the mornings like the world isn’t always on fire. The one who eats his terrible cooking even though he struggles to get through every bite. 

John aches with the weight of how much he misses him. He needs to get back. Needs to look Bucky in the eyes and say what he should’ve said long ago: That Steve doesn’t matter. That he won’t let his insecurities come between them. Not anymore. He just needs to get back home. 

Bucky’s voice eventually cuts off his thoughts. “What’s your plan here, John? We gonna run forever?”

“I don’t have a plan,” John admits. “I just can’t let you go back to them.”

“They’ll find me,” Bucky says quietly. “They always find me.”

“Then we should keep moving.”

*

Outside, the air is cool. They stick to side streets and alleyways, cutting between buildings like ghosts. John leads, Bucky follows. Shadows fade as the sun creeps over the horizon. 

There’s no destination. They’re just two super soldiers on the run. The only goal is to get as far away as they can, as fast as they can. 

John spots a beat-up sedan parked behind a shuttered laundromat. No alarm system, no steering lock. Perfect.

He slips a knife from his boot and jimmies the driver’s side door. It pops with a reluctant click. A moment later, he’s under the dash, fingers moving fast, peeling wires and sparking connections. 

The engine coughs to life.

Bucky’s already in the passenger seat when John throws it into gear. Tires screech softly as they vanish down the road, the rising sun chasing their shadows.

Dust floats lazily in the shafts of early morning light that filter through the windshield. The windows are cracked, letting in the cold Russian air. 

Bucky sits in the passenger seat, his head resting against the window, eyes fixed on the dead streets rolling past. One knee is drawn up on the seat, his metal hand draped loosely over it. He hasn’t moved in a while. Hasn’t spoken either. Neither of them has.

Outside, the wind whistles softly through the old, broken seals of the car doors.

Bucky’s voice breaks the silence, low and distant. “You ever been to Coney Island?”

The words come out rough and low, like they scraped their way up from somewhere far beneath the surface.

John blinks, startled. His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “What?”

Bucky doesn’t look at him. Just keeps watching the empty streets. “Coney Island,” he says again, more to himself this time.

John exhales. “No. I haven’t.”

And just like that, his chest aches as he remembers the invitation. Casual. Right before their stupid fight. He closes his eyes, suddenly flooded with the realization that he and his Bucky weren’t on the best of terms when he disappeared through time. Fuck. Is Bucky looking for him right now? Does he even know John’s gone?

“I think I used to go there,” Bucky murmurs. “Summers, mostly. The rides were fun. Food was garbage. But it didn’t matter.”

Bucky exhales—a quiet sound, not quite a laugh. It still startles John a little. 

“You’re remembering,” John says, his voice softening with surprise.

“It was so… bright,” Bucky says slowly. “Loud. Crowded, but not in a bad way. The kind of crowd that makes you feel like… part of something. Like the world’s still moving and you haven’t been left behind by it yet.”

He tilts his head, the faintest melancholy tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“It felt like home,” he says, barely above a whisper. “I… I remember being… happy.”

John glances at him—really looks. The hard lines in Bucky’s face have eased, just for a moment. The soldier is still there, sitting in that seat. But so is the man he once was. And John feels something stir in his chest, sharp and warm all at once.

He wishes—God, he wishes—he’d said yes to Coney Island. He had no idea how much it meant at the time.

Because he sees it now, the man Bucky could be, in this version. Not a weapon. Not a ghost. Not the haunted husk of a man. Just… Bucky. Real and present.

“Brooklyn is your home,” John says quietly.

Bucky turns his head to look at him, eyes still distant. “You remind me of someone,” he murmurs. Frustration flashes across his face as he tries to pull the memories out of nothing. “I can’t remember who.”

John’s voice is steady, even as his throat tightens. “You will.”

The tension eases. The silence between them isn’t so sharp anymore. 

They’re still hunted. Still raw. But something’s changed. 

When he looks at Bucky, he sees something in his face. Something that says, maybe they’re not just running anymore. 

Maybe they're moving toward something. 

Something that feels like hope.

*

They drive until the world flattens into half-collapsed buildings. They see shattered windows, streets littered with debris. No life. No sound. Just the hum of the engine and the faint screech of tires against broken pavement.

They pass three gas stations. All gutted.

The engine sputters once. Then again.

John glances at the fuel gauge. Empty. 

"Shit."

The car gives one last lurch and dies, coasting to a stop on the shoulder.

John sits there, hands resting on the wheel, staring out at nothing. Bucky’s gaze stays fixed ahead, quiet and unreadable.

“Well,” John mutters, pushing the door open. “Guess we’re walking.”

Bucky follows without a word.

They keep moving on foot, sticking to the shadows in alleyways. The sky deepens into a rich midday blue, warm and endless, in sharp contrast to the cold bite still clinging to the air.

They walk side-by-side, the silence no longer heavy. And they’re just a few blocks from the edge of the industrial quarter when Bucky stops. He’s utterly, impeccably still.

John halts on instinct.

Then, they hear it. Distant, too sharp to be random—footsteps. Not one set. Multiple. Quick. Heavy. Closing in.

A second later, a low whine pierces the air. Not loud, but familiar. Drones.

“Shit,” John breathes.

Bucky’s already moving, grabbing his arm, dragging them into a narrow side passage between two brick buildings.

“How did they find us?” John hisses, his heart pounding now.

The distant footsteps come from multiple directions now, surrounding them. 

Bucky doesn’t answer. Tracking the sound, the shape of the danger closing in, he pulls them into a building. They’re not safe, anything but. They should run, they might be faster, they might be able to get away, but—

Bucky blinks. A small breath escapes him—not fear, but realization.

He drops down suddenly, feeling the sole of his boot with his fingers. He goes for a knife, drags the sharp blade over the lining. And there, tucked deep beneath the insole, is a thin disc no larger than a dime, matte black and humming faintly with energy.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, his voice low. 

John stares at it. “They’ve been tracking us this whole time?”

Bucky crushes the disc in one sharp squeeze of his metal fingers. The pieces crumble like broken glass. But it’s too late.

In the distance, the sound of boots grows louder. Closer. Voices now, they can hear them with their enhanced hearing, distorted over distance, but unmistakably HYDRA.

“We gotta move,” John says. He scans their surroundings with sharp, practiced eyes. They’re in a warehouse. High ceilings, plenty of cover, but also too many angles for ambush. Good for a fight... but not good enough to stay.

“No.” Bucky’s voice is low and steady as he rises to his feet. His posture is tense, every line of his body pulled tight like a wire. He takes a step back from John. Then another. “They’re here. You need to go. Now.”

John narrows his eyes. “Bucky, what are you talking about? We can take them. Together.”

“No,” Bucky says, firmer this time. He’s still backing away, putting space between them. “You don’t understand.”

“Bucky—”

“Please, John. You have to go.”

“We can fight them!” John’s voice sharpens with frustration. “The two of us can take ‘em, easily!”

Bucky’s eyes flicker with something like panic. “No, we can’t. I can’t!”

“What do you mean?”

Bucky shakes his head. “He’s here,” he whispers.

Then they hear it. 

“Желание.” [longing]

The word rolls out across the warehouse, long and deliberate, echoing off steel beams. The voice is unmistakable. Cold and measured. 

Bucky flinches like he’s been struck. “No,” he whispers, eyes wide, jaw clenched. His hands tremble by his sides.

John’s blood drains cold. “Karpov,” he breathes. Vasily Karpov. The handler. “Bucky, we can—” He cuts off. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do. 

“They’ll take me,” Bucky says. His voice cracks. “They always take me. I don’t want to hurt you, John. Please, go.”

“I’m not leaving you—”

“Ржавый.” [rusted]

Bucky lets out a low, guttural sound, grabbing his head, fingers digging into his hair. “No, no, no…” he groans, backing into the shadows like he’s trying to disappear into them.

“Fight it!” John shouts, his eyes sweeping the upper walkways for the source of the voice. HYDRA hasn’t breached yet. If he can take out Karpov—

But Bucky screams. A deep, agonized sound as he tries to fight the activation of his programming and John forgets his plan. Forgets the perimeter and any tactical strategy that might have helped them. He drops to Bucky’s side, his voice urgent and raw.

“You’re going to be okay,” he says, the words spilling out of him feel hollow and empty in the face of the other man’s pain. 

“Семнадцать.” [seventeen]

Bucky’s eyes are wide and full of terror. “I can’t,” he whispers desperately. 

“Bucky, you can fight this! I’m right here—”

“I can’t—”

“Рассвет.” [daybreak]

Another scream. Bucky’s body arches like something’s tearing through him from the inside out.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers.

“No! Look at me, Bucky! Look at me!”

“I don’t want to hurt you—”

“Печь.” [furnace]

Then Bucky lunges. Fast—too fast. He goes for John’s thigh holster, metal fingers closing around the grip of his pistol.

John’s instincts roar to life. He grabs for the gun—but not before Bucky rips it free, the muzzle snapping up toward his own head.

“NO!” 

The gun goes off. 

The shot misses by inches, slamming into a concrete column behind him. The second shot that John’s cost him in as many days. The sound of it tears through the warehouse like thunder. Both men scream—John from panic, Bucky from the sheer overload of his mind coming undone.

“I don’t want to go back,” Bucky sobs, collapsing to the floor, his back pressed against cold concrete. “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go back—”

“I’m sorry,” John says, tears in his eyes now. His hands hover, unsure where to touch. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Девять.” [nine]

Bucky’s breathing staggers. His body jerks with small, involuntary movements. “You can’t save me,” he says hoarsely.

“You can fight this,” John says fiercely. “Bucky, you can fight it. I’ve seen a version of you that is happy, I swear. I’ve seen you laugh. I’ve seen you smile. They don’t break you. They don’t win.”

“Maybe not today,” John goes on, his voice shaking. “Maybe not right now. But one day, you’re going to break free. And you will remember this. You’ll remember me. And you’ll remember that you are so much more than what they made you.”

“Добросердечный.” [benign]

“You’ll be free,” John promises. “I swear to you.”

“John…” Bucky’s voice is barely audible.

“You’re gonna get through this, you hear me? You’re going to be okay. Because you’re stronger than them.”

“Возвращение на Родину.” [homecoming]

“Go,” Bucky whispers. “Go back to your time… Go back to your Bucky.”

John bows his head, eyes squeezed shut as he struggles to hold back the tears. 

“Bucky…” 

“Один.” [one]

Bucky’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. His expression goes still. His posture straightens.

“Товарный вагон.” [freight car]

Cold silence. 

“Bucky?”

Low and hollow, the Winter Soldier speaks: “я готов отвечать.” Ready to comply.

John pulls away, legs giving out as he falls back hard onto the floor. His breath catches in his throat as he stares at Bucky’s blank face. Silent, waiting. Ready to obey orders. Every trace of the man John knows is gone.

John’s heart pounds like a war drum.

They’re out of time.

The next moment, John hears it. The groan of old metal. The warehouse doors creak open, slow at first, then faster, crashing back against the frame. Heavy boots stomp on concrete. HYDRA soldiers. Dozens of them, by the sound of it.

They're here.

John’s hands are trembling as he pulls the Tempad from his pocket. His thumb slips across the screen, nearly dropping it. The interface flickers to life, casting a pale glow on his face.

His breath catches.

The blinking dot that marks his location—it’s not on the main branch anymore.

It’s off to the side. Drifting. Floating.

A new timeline. Diverging further with every second.

Shit.

The footsteps are closer now. Commands echo through the vast space as they sweep the building.

He looks up. Bucky’s still sitting there, stone-still, eyes blank. The Winter Soldier again. The man John tried to save.

Tried—and failed.

He gives Bucky one last look, his heart breaking with it. “I’m sorry,” he breathes.

Then he stabs a trembling finger against a point further along on the main branch. He thinks it’s the main branch. Can’t be sure. The screen shakes in his hands. His vision blurs.

A flash of light erupts around him, sharp and blinding. And then he’s gone.

Silence settles into the space where he left.

Vasily Karpov steps into the warehouse, flanked by soldiers in black combat gear, rifles raised but unnecessary. There is no fight here.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t move an inch as Karpov approaches.

“Солдат,” he says softly. Soldat.

He crouches, face just inches from the man’s blank stare.

“Are you ready for your punishment?”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t blink. Doesn’t speak.

But somewhere, buried deep beneath the silence, something stirs.

Something remembers. And screams. 

[The divergence point]

Hotel Inessa, Russia, 1993 

Red and blue lights strobe across the glittering marble facade of the Hotel Inessa. Outside, snow catches the colors like glittering gems. Inside, the grand lobby is a ruin of elegance. Marble floors slick with blood, crystal chandeliers dancing above shattered glass, and yellow tape cordoning off the evidence of violence. 

One-by-one, bodies are wheeled away under tarps, the silence broken only by the low murmur of radios and the distant snap of camera shutters.

RJ Nakajima stands off to the side, wrapped in a blanket. A Russian police officer stands in front of him, scribbling his statement on a notepad, while a translator relays his questions. 

“You said there were two men?” 

Nakajima nods slowly. “Yeah. One of them—the killer—he came after me. I—I didn’t see his face. He was wearing a mask. He had… dark hair. Long. Almost to his shoulders. He had… a metal arm. Silver. He—he didn’t say anything to me. Not a single word.” 

He pauses, his voice catching on the memory. “He was going to kill me.”

The officer nods, his pen scratching softly across paper. 

“And the other man?” The translator asks. “What do you remember about him?”

Nakajima’s eyes drift to the open lobby doors. For a moment, he sees it all again—the flash of metal, the gun pointed between his eyes, the weight of panic in his chest.

“He distracted him,” Nakajima says. “That’s how I got away. I—I think they fought, maybe. I don’t know, I… I just ran.” He swallows the lump in his throat. “I just ran.” 

Another question. “And did this man say anything?”

Nakajima blinks. The answer comes slower this time, pulled from the fog of adrenaline and terror. 

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Yeah, he did. He yelled something, at the killer. A name.”

He furrows his brow, digging deep for the sound in his memory. 

“Bucky,” he says finally. “The man yelled Bucky.”  

The officer’s pen stills on the notepad, listening to the translator relay his words.

Nakajima turns his gaze back to the wreckage of the lobby. Glass glitters like ice across the once flawless marble floors. Blood blooms across the marble like it may never be wiped clean. 

He shudders at the sight and pulls the blanket tighter around his arms. 

*

[18 years down the branch…]

New York City, 2011

Steve Rogers jolts awake on a hospital bed. His chest heaves with breath that hasn’t been drawn in too many decades. His eyes dart around wildly. He’s disoriented and breathing hard. The room is cold, a sterile white. Too bright. Too quiet. Too wrong.

Footsteps approach.

A silhouette steps into view.

It’s Bucky—looking a few years older than the last time he saw him. He wears a black leather jacket, arms crossed loosely. His hair is short, his eyes sharp, but warm. A metal hand pokes out from his left sleeve. 

Steve freezes. He can’t breathe. He must be dreaming. “... Bucky?”

A long beat. Then Bucky gives him a smile, crooked and tired. “What took you so long, pal?”

Steve’s eyes well with disbelief. His voice breaks when he speaks, “Bucky? How are you alive?”

Bucky steps closer. “Welcome to the future.”

Steve stares, unable to speak. His hand twitches toward his friend, like he’s not sure if he's real. Like he might disappear.

Bucky makes the first move. His hand—warm, solid, real—clasps Steve’s in his own.

“You’re gonna be okay.”

Steve finally exhales. He doesn’t let go.

Chapter Text

The room is too quiet.

Daylight filters through the window, painting light across the sharp angles of Bucky’s face. He lies back on his bed, one arm curled under his head. The metal fingers of the other flex and clench restlessly in his lap like they don’t know what to do in the silence.

He misses John’s voice. The man is loud, always. Borderline obnoxious on the best of days. The kind of loud that fills a room and pushes Bucky out of his head. Most of the time, he doesn’t know whether to smack him or kiss him stupid just to shut him up. 

Now, the silence of his room stretches.

Bucky doesn’t mind peace and quiet. Not anymore. But this feels different. 

This has an undercurrent of anxiety. 

The echo of John’s words still rings in his ears. “If things were different—if Steve was still here… would you choose me?”

The question had come out like it had been sitting in John’s chest too long. Festering. Finally cutting its way out.

Bucky closes his eyes and exhales through his nose. The question stings, not because it’s unfair—but because he gets it. That doubt that John lives with—it’s not invalid. There was a time when Steve was his whole world. The one constant when everything else had been stripped from him. The single point of focus when everything else was noise and programming.  

Bucky hoped that John would never throw it in his face like that. It hurts that he did. 

It’s a farce of a choice. And one that Bucky never had the chance to make. 

Because Steve left. 

John knows damn well that Bucky spent decades having his choices taken from him. 

If Steve was still here… which Steve?

Twenty-six-year-old Bucky Barnes would have followed that scrawny kid from Brooklyn—too dumb to run away from a fight—to the end of the world. Hell, he did. Died for him, too. Multiple times. 

One-hundred-and-six-year-old Bucky had his heart crushed when he watched the battle-worn soldier walk away. The war was over. It took too much from all of them. Steve said he had to go—had to live for himself.

And he didn’t ask Bucky to come with him.

Didn’t even offer.

In that moment, Bucky knew the Steve Rogers he had loved since he was ten years old was already gone. 

He hates how much it still hurts. Hates admitting it, even in the quiet of his own mind. That after everything—all the horrors, all the years lost to war and brainwashing—what lingers most is that quiet, personal ache: Steve didn’t stay for him.

When the dust finally settled, when the world was saved and there were no more battles… Steve wouldn’t build a life with Bucky. Maybe he thought Bucky was too broken. Or maybe Steve was. 

The what-ifs are a familiar loop, worn into the corners of his mind like a song stuck on repeat.

What if he hadn’t fallen off the train? What if he had told Steve how he really felt, back when they still had time? 

What if he hadn’t run from him? 

Those two years after the mask came off, hiding and running and scrambling to piece his mind back together—he was too afraid to let Steve see how damaged he was. Too afraid that if he let Steve find him, to really see him… he’d walk away anyway.

In the end, Steve left all the same. 

And Bucky is left behind to pick up the pieces. Alone.

And he did. He worked, he healed. He clawed his way toward something resembling peace and purpose. 

Then came John. 

John Walker, with his stubborn attitude, his relentless loyalty, and his painfully open heart. John didn’t try to fix him. Didn’t pity him. He just stayed. 

Hell, when it comes down to it, John knows more of his darkness than Steve ever did. 

It’s John who’s there in the middle of the night when the nightmares tear him awake. John, who wraps his arms around him, anchoring him back to the present. John, who listens when Bucky says don’t touch me, and doesn’t take it personally when he says he needs space. 

He’s there when Bucky is ready to come back to himself. 

It’s John who allows Bucky to believe he can be happy again. 

That should be enough.

But John’s doubts are loud. They creep into every quiet moment between them, every look, every hesitation.

And now, after that fight… he doesn’t even know if they’re still together. Neither of them said the words. They’re too stubborn. Too much pride stuffed into two soldiers who don’t know how to lose gracefully, especially not to each other.

Bucky rubs his face with a groan and looks toward the door. He hopes—stupidly—that maybe John will come through it. 

But the door stays shut.

He shifts and pulls his phone from his pocket. He opens it, swipes to the text thread with John, pinned at the top.

The silence there echoes too.

He scrolls up. Between a sparring invite and a briefing reminder, there’s something sweet. 

A photo from a week ago. John, slightly out of frame, grinning like an idiot and holding up a tray of burnt, misshapen cookies with a question: Made these for you. Almost started a fire. Worth it?

His own reply sits just beneath it: Not even close. Trash. Now.

He ended up trying one just to make John happy. It tasted like charred butter and regret. 

Bucky exhales heavily. This feels like them. Softness buried underneath hard edges. But now, it’s been days. And there’s been nothing since the fight.

He scrolls down.

No apology. No check-in. Not even a stupid meme.

Just… silence. 

Bucky pulls a face as he leans back against the pillows. 

It shouldn't be him. He groans internally at the unfairness of it. But if John’s still spinning out in his own guilt and insecurities, buried in that pit of not-good-enough, Bucky knows it won’t get better unless someone reaches out.

And if it has to be him who makes the first move, then fine.

He thumbs back to the home screen and opens Find My, partly out of habit, partly just curious if John is even in the tower right now.

John’s name is there. But next to it, in place of a location, are three little words that make Bucky’s stomach flip: No location found.

He stares at the screen. He pulls down to refresh. Again. And again.

Bucky swallows. The fight is briefly forgotten, replaced by a sick little worry that starts to bloom.

John wouldn’t turn off his phone. He wouldn’t leave it dead. He lives on his phone. Always texting, always scrolling. Always reachable in case the team or Caleb needs him.

Bucky sits up warily, phone gripped tight in his hand.

Where the hell is John?

Siberia, 2016

The world snaps into place with a flash of light and a blast of frigid air.

Snow swirls around him, wind howling through what looks like a desolate Siberian wasteland. Fuck. He’s still in Russia. The sky looms low and bruised, clouds gray and heavy with storm. Around him, the wasteland stretches empty and cold, except for the noise. 

Distant but unmistakable is the metallic clash of something violent, the sharp whine and thunder of energy blasts, the roar of combat carried on the wind.  

John turns slowly, breath visible in heavy puffs. He knows those sounds.

He's heard it so many times before. On battlefields, on screens, in mission briefings. Familiar, unmistakable… and entirely irrelevant to him. 

He can’t bring himself to care. 

He doesn’t want to walk into another fight that has nothing to do with him. He’s tired. He just wants to go back home. 

This isn’t the right time.

His eyes drop to the Tempad still clutched in his hand. Its screen flickers in the cold. 2028 is close—closer than he was before—but it looks like he might still be a rough decade off. 

What’s more concerning is that he’s not on the main timeline. The branching line glows dimly across the screen. A misstep in his scramble to get away. And now he’s landed in the middle of something else entirely, with another unknown complication to catch him off guard.

More reason to leave quickly.

The wind bites harder now, slicing through his gear like knives. In the distance, an energy blast ricochets off what sounds like a wall of ice and steel.

John mutters under his breath, “Damnit.”

He tightens his grip on the Tempad. He needs to try again.

The wind claws at him, relentless and sharp, but it's the noise rising over the gale that freezes him in place.

As his enhanced hearing adjusts, the distant, muffled rhythm of battle sharpens—no longer just impact and percussion, but voices. Shouting.

A metallic shriek splits the air, followed by the unmistakable sonic blast of repulsors. He knows those sounds. He’s seen the damage they can do. He wonders what the hell can move that fast with them.

John's breath catches. He turns, squinting through the white haze. The fight is closer than he thought. Just beyond the ridge. Steel slams into steel. A grunt of impact carries on the wind, followed by another. And another.

He should go. Should hit the Tempad again and keep moving. None of this is his business. He’s not supposed to be here.

But then—

A blast. Loud. Deep. It rumbles beneath his boots, kicking up snow around him.

Another blast. 

Then comes the scream. Raw. Ragged. Guttural.  

“NOOOOOOO!”

John’s head jerks toward the sound. That voice—familiar, though John can’t quite place it—is torn in grief, the kind that comes from something being ripped away.

There’s another crash. More blows of metal on metal. Another scream, a brutal endnote, and then—

Silence.

The wind still howls, but the world beneath it has gone still.

No more shouting. No more fight.

Just snow, the sharp edge of cold, and John’s pulse hammering in his ears.

He stares ahead, heart thudding, the Tempad heavy in his hand.

He should leave.

But something in that scream roots him to the spot, and doesn’t let him walk away.

*

John climbs the ridge with slow, deliberate steps. Each crunch of snow beneath his boots cracks through the silence.

And then he sees it.

The wind doesn’t howl down here. It whispers, as if even the storm knows to lower its voice.

At the base of the stone facility, Tony Stark lies sprawled in the snow, unnaturally still. His face plate is gone—ripped away. His face is pale, slack in death, and his throat… God. It’s a torn ruin of flesh and crushed bone. The arc reactor in his chest is dark and lifeless, leaving only the dull red smear of blood soaking into the white around him.

Beside him rests the shield.

Steve’s shield. Once a gleaming promise, an unbreakable symbol. The lie they all wanted to believe in.

Now, it’s drenched in blood, smeared dark and wet, terrible in a way that makes John’s stomach turn. He knows this violence. He’s seen it in himself. And he’s seen that same shield painted red in another timeline. By his own hands.

It lies abandoned in the snow like the last vestige of something that used to mean something good.

John’s breath hitches, his pulse thudding wildly in his ears. He drags his head away—and sees them.

Steve Rogers, kneeling several feet away.

Bent over Bucky’s body.

Bucky lies limp beneath him, motionless. That silver arm is gone, the edges singed and darkened at the shoulder. Blown off in a blast, probably. But it’s the wound at his neck that tells the real story. Blood pools beneath him, streaming faintly onto the cold ground. There’s no mistaking it. That much blood… Bucky’s face is turned away from him, but John knows.

He’s gone.

Steve doesn’t speak, doesn’t look up, or hear John’s approach. His head is bowed, shoulders shaking with quiet, broken sobs. His arms are curled around Bucky’s body like he can still protect him from something.

But it’s too late.

John’s knees threaten to buckle. He doesn’t know Steve, but he knows the weight in that posture. The brokenness in it. He recognizes the grief that carves a man hollow, and he knows the rage that follows. 

He feels it burning in his own chest, choking in his throat. And he hates it—he hates the mirror of it. He hates Steve Rogers because it’s easier than hating himself for leaving Bucky back in HYDRA's hands. 

In this moment, looking at Steve is like looking at the darkest version of himself. The one who lost everything and let that grief rot into fury.

He should leave. He doesn’t belong here.

But maybe… neither does this variant of Steve. 

John sees red. So much red. 

He steps forward.

His footsteps crunching on snow are loud and deliberate in the brittle silence. Steve doesn’t react—doesn’t even look up. He just holds Bucky tighter, arms locked like he can force the body to stay warm.

John’s fists curl at his sides. His voice comes out low and hoarse.

“You always fail him.” The words come out of him like a punch. “Every goddamn time.”

Steve finally stirs, sluggish. He slowly lifts his head with the heaviness of a man drowning. His eyes are red-rimmed, hollow. He blinks at John, disoriented. “Who the hell are you—”

“It doesn’t matter,” John snaps. “None of it matters. Look at you, holding his body like it means something… after it’s already too late, after you failed him—” 

His voice breaks on the last word.

Steve blinks, like he’s trying to make sense of what he’s hearing, but John’s already stepping closer. His anger carries him forward, bitter and relentless.

“You let him fall from that train. You let him rot in HYDRA’s hands. All those decades, all that pain and torture, just to end like this? You’re the Steve Rogers who saves the world? You couldn’t even save one man.”

Steve’s lips part, but no sound comes out.

John barrels on. “You’re supposed to be the hero. The legacy. Captain fucking America. But he died anyway!”

Something flickers in Steve’s eyes—grief, yes, but something else too. Something colder. Quieter. “Who the hell are you?” He demands quietly, still on his knees in the snow, soaked in Bucky’s blood. 

John laughs, bitter and joyless. “I’m just the guy trying to get back to him. Because I love him and I don’t have the luxury of walking away and pretending it’s all some tragic, inevitable cost of war.”

“You love him?” Steve’s voice is hoarse. Disbelieving.

John’s eyes narrow. “Yeah. I love him. Not some sanitized memory of him. The real him. Scars and all. I stayed. Unlike you, when reality didn’t match, you just fucked off and left to build a new life with someone else.” 

Steve flinches. Just barely. But John sees it. 

“You’re from another time...”

“You let him down again and again, for a lifetime. You don’t get to cry over it now. My Bucky might not have died in the fight with Iron Man, but you didn’t save him either.” 

Steve's eyes snap to his, flickering with something dark. “Your Bucky?” He growls.

“That’s right,” John says, stepping closer. “My Bucky. In my timeline, he survives this day. But that doesn’t mean he was saved. You didn’t save him. You never did.”

His voice drops, all the rage funneled into something cold and poisonous.

“You didn’t save this one, and you didn’t save mine. He was tortured. Broken. Raped. For seventy fucking years—you didn’t fucking save him!”

Steve’s jaw tightens, eyes hollowing before they narrow into something dangerous. The numbness peels away to reveal something raw and vicious underneath.

“You dragged him back from one battlefield to another… just because you didn’t know how to let him go.”

The words hang between them like a blade.

“Until you did.”

He sees the grief etched deep into the lines of Steve’s face. The way he clutches Bucky’s body like he can still anchor himself to what’s left.

And that’s when it hits John. Hard. Sharp as the wind in his lungs. 

The awful, crushing truth. The weight of the bodies he couldn’t protect. The fury at the world—for what it took. The fury at himself—for what he failed to do.

Steve Rogers is the echo of a star-spangled myth. No legend, just a man. Broken in the same places. 

Just like John. 

Both of them cracked open by loss. Both drowning in guilt and failure. This one has failed in all the same places. 

John’s not trying to live up to this man. 

He’s building a life with what he left behind. 

John’s breath catches. For one fragile second, he sees the pain mirrored in Steve’s face. Not just grief, but devastation. If he weren’t so blinded by his own loss, John might have recognized it sooner. Might’ve felt something like kinship. Might’ve taken some bitter comfort in knowing he isn’t the only one unraveling in the absence of the man they both love.

His fury dulls.

“I’m sorry you lost him,” John says, quieter now. “I’ll take care of mine. He’ll never be alone. He’ll never be abandoned, left behind. I’ll love him the way you should have.”

The words hang heavy in the frozen air.

For a moment, Steve doesn’t move.

Then—slowly, he lifts his head.

And something has changed.

His eyes, red-rimmed and wet with grief, sharpen. Harden. There’s a shift in the line of his jaw. When he rises, it’s not with sorrow on his features, but purpose. Cold, precise, and burning through the wreckage of his loss.

“You’re a time traveler,” Steve says, his voice low but no longer broken. There's an edge to it now, steady and lethal. “That’s what you meant to say.”

John doesn’t answer.

Steve steps forward. Bucky’s blood soaks the front of his suit. Probably Tony’s too. Red footprints trail in the snow behind him.

“Then it’s not over,” Steve says. “It doesn’t have to be over.”

John’s grip tightens on the Tempad. “Don’t.”

“I can fix this.”

“You can’t,” John snaps. “You don’t get to fix it now. You don’t get to chase what you already broke—”

Steve’s eyes flick to the Tempad. “Give that to me.”

John reels back like he’s been hit. “What?”

“You said your Bucky’s alive. That he made it past this day. I need to see him.”

“No,” John says, cold and certain. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”

“I can make it right. I can fix this.”

“Like hell you can—”

Steve’s expression twists into something dark. “If there’s any version of him out there still breathing, then I still have a chance.”

“No,” John says again, stepping back. “You had your chance!”

The storm howls around them, forgotten. Steve stares at him, with blood on his hands and something feral in his eyes. A man with nothing left, daring the world to give him one more shot.

John sees it then. In the tilt of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. In those cold, dead eyes is the refusal to mourn, to surrender, to break in any way that won’t take the whole damn world with him. 

This isn’t heroism anymore.

It’s obsession. The beginning of something terrible. 

Behind him lie the bodies of two men who once meant everything. 

Tony Stark, bloodied and broken in the snow. 

Bucky Barnes, torn open and held too late. 

John’s breath catches. 

This is how a hero breaks. 

Steve steps closer, moving like a man possessed. Like the grief has burned itself clean and left only rage behind. 

John freezes. Alarm blooming in his gut. 

He’s seen killers before. Been one. Fought men who have lost everything. But this is different. This is Captain America—the symbol, the myth—stripped down to the raw bone. All that golden-boy righteousness twisted into something dark and merciless.

“I don’t care who you are. You won’t stand in my way,” Steve growls, voice low and steady. “Not when you have a way to bring him back.”

“Don’t do this,” John says, trying to keep his voice level as he tightens his grip on the Tempad, bracing for a fight. “You’re not thinking straight.”

Steve lunges.

He’s all brute force and fury—raw, fast violence with nothing to lose. John blocks the first punch, only to take another into the ribs, hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. John stumbles back, blocking the next blow, but Steve is relentless. Another strike lands across his jaw, then a knee drives up into his gut.

Pain flares, and John grits his teeth, fights through it. He doesn’t stop. Can’t stop. 

Steve grabs him by the straps of his tac suit and slams him into the frozen ground with enough force to rattle bone. Ice cracks beneath them.

“Tell me how to bring him back!” Steve roars, his face inches from John’s, spit and blood mixing in the air between them.

John groans, his vision swimming. “You’re not saving him this way.”

“I don’t care,” Steve snarls. “You’re going to tell me how to fix this. You’re going to take me to him.”

John twists, a desperate surge of adrenaline carrying him far enough to break free. Snow sprays as he hits the ground and rolls, fumbling for the Tempad with shaking hands. There's blood on his tongue. Steve closes in on him like a goddamn storm.

One second. He just needs one second.

Steve grabs for him again—but John is faster this time.

He looks at the timeline, more carefully this time. His thumb slams against the screen of the Tempad just as Steve closes the distance, a bloodied hand outstretched.

Their eyes meet. Steve’s are filled with fury and rage and something far worse as he eyes the device in John’s hands.

Hope.

Frantic, terrible, and hungry.

He doesn’t see John, not really. He sees the last thread of a future where Bucky isn’t gone. A future he’s willing to tear apart time itself to reach.

Reality splits.

A surge of light, then wind and snow are swept away in a vortex. Just before it takes him, John looks back—one last glimpse of Steve Rogers in the storm. No shield. No hero’s weight to carry. Just blood on his hands, eyes burning with something darker than grief, and nothing left to lose. 

Promising. 

A threat born of desperation.

Then John is gone.

Chapter Text

New York City, 2024

The world tilts, then snaps back into focus.

John’s boots land on solid ground, the now familiar hum of time-jumping dies in his ears, leaving only the ambient thrum of a city alive after dark.

It’s night—city night. The kind where vibrant lights cut through the darkness in splashes of bright color. He’s still working through the adrenaline of the fight with the variant Steve. When a warm wind brushes his face, it carries the smell of hot asphalt, car exhaust, and fried food from a food cart. It feels like spring… maybe early summer? 

And beneath it all, he feels the steady, chaotic heartbeat of New York City.

His chest loosens just a fraction. It’s not the season he left, so he knows he's not in the right time. But it doesn’t matter. After strange Russian streets and frozen Siberian wilderness, the sight of these rooftops, the hum of city traffic below… it feels like coming up for air.

He knows this place. Knows the rhythm, the way the night hums. Just being here makes him feel closer to the time he calls home.

A quick sweep tells him he’s on a rooftop. Glancing over the parapet wall at the skyline, there’s no doubt now that he’s back in New York. Across the alley, another building rises, old concrete and rows upon rows of glass windows. His sharp eyes catch on one of those windows, the curtains drawn just enough for him to see inside.

And then his breath stills.

Because standing in that hotel room, slouched and tired and wrapped in that ugly, ill-fitting Captain America suit, is himself.

Not him-now. Him then. Four years ago.

Well, shit. 

That’s a first. Seeing himself in one of these timelines. 

John recognizes it now the same way he did then, the way the suit hangs wrong, loose in the shoulders and too stiff in the arms, like it was made for someone else. He knows the slump in those shoulders, the tremor in those hands as they pour another heavy glass from the bottle on the table. He knows the burn of that swallow and the way the alcohol does nothing.

This is the night they saved the GRC council, and Karli Morgenthau was finally stopped. The night John came for vengeance. And it ended with Sam Wilson taking on the mantle of Captain America in a storm of applause.

It was hard not to feel like a failure then, despite the brief reprieve of knowing Lemar’s killers were either dead or locked up. 

This night—this moment—was the rare, hollow quiet before John had to face Olivia. Before the weight of his failures and how far he’d fallen, settled into his bones and refused to leave.

The memories come rushing back in a wave.

The guilt. The blinding, crushing guilt of losing his best friend.

The deep, ugly rage that followed. A mirror to what he just witnessed on Steve Roger’s face upon losing Bucky.

Then there was the bitter taste of betrayal when the country and government he’d bled for turned on him without hesitation. Tossed him aside like he was nothing, after he’d only done exactly what they’d trained him to do. 

So he tried to drink it away. Downed an entire bottle, then went for another. But the serum had taken that from him, too. No matter how much he drank, the edges stayed sharp. The pain stayed close.

From his rooftop vantage, present-day John watches that younger version of himself slump onto the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes like he could wipe the night away.

And then... something that didn’t happen. Something he doesn’t remember.

There’s a knock at the door.

John straightens, his eyes narrowing as he watches.

In the room, John rises slowly to his feet, crosses to the door, and swings it open. 

It’s Bucky.

The sight of four-years-ago Bucky hits present-day John like a jolt. The short hair. That permanent scowl on his face—like he was trying so desperately to convince the world he was fine. Well-adjusted, or something like it.  

John still grins softly to see him. 

Even through the muffled barrier of glass and distance, John’s enhanced hearing zeroes in on the sound of their voices. The city noise fades to nothing, leaving only the low murmur of conversation between two men who, in John’s memory, had never spoken that night after taking down the Flag Smashers together.

“Can I come in?” Bucky’s voice is rough. Uncertain in a way that John rarely hears.

John slowly, awkwardly nods and steps aside to let him through. “I’d offer you a drink, but…”

“Yeah, that doesn’t work anymore,” Bucky mutters, eyeing the bottles on the table as he steps into the room.

“What are you doing here?”

“I… I wanted to see how you were holding up.”

“I’m fine. Not a scratch on me.”

“That’s not what I meant, John,” Bucky says quietly. 

John shifts, wary. “What do you mean?”

Bucky hesitates. He looks away and then looks back again. “I’m sorry about Lemar,” he finally says. “I know what it’s like to lose the closest person to you. And I get that you’re not okay right now.” 

The younger John doesn’t move for a moment. Then he drops back onto the bed again like the words have weight. 

Bucky continues. “I don’t agree with what you did… but I get why you did it. And… I’m sorry about how I acted when you were given the shield. I got baggage with Steve, y’know and… seeing you in the suit, with the shield, it just—”

“Get to the point,” John cuts in. “And then get out.”

Bucky takes a slow breath through his nose. “You tried to save those people, you tried to do the right thing. You made the right call, and now… I’m trying to do the same.”

“And what… exactly is that?”

“Look, I’m pretty fucked up too,” Bucky says quietly. “And now you have the serum, and I know how… it can make things worse. Let me help you.”

Both Johns are stunned silent. 

“You don’t have to figure this out alone, okay? That’s what I’m trying to say.”

Present-day John’s chest aches, his throat tight like his heart is in it.

Because this? This never happened.

In his timeline, Bucky never came. There was no apology. No offer. No olive branch. He was left to spiral alone. Until Valentina reached out. Until his marriage fell apart.

John leans heavier against the parapet, his eyes glazing as the scene blurs.

And he can’t stop thinking—

If my Bucky had shown up here then…

How different would things have been?

They could have had four more years. Or maybe his marriage wouldn’t have imploded, and they never would have become something more.

John doesn’t let himself linger too long on the possibilities. He’s had enough what-ifs, and each one has felt more wrong than the last. None of them feel like home. 

Instead, he focuses on the one truth he learned here: Bucky reached out. 

He and Bucky aren’t just a fluke. 

It wasn’t dumb luck. It wasn’t just… right place, right time.

There are other worlds where Bucky reaches out first. Where he can stand to be around him. Where he wants to be around him.

And that’s something John didn’t know he needed until now. 

John drags his eyes away from the window, tearing himself from the moment before it swallows him whole. He can’t stay here. This isn’t his timeline.

His fingers slip into his pocket, closing around the cold, familiar shape of the Tempad. 

Four years from now. That’s the target. 

The screen’s glow paints his face in pale light. 

The voices from across the way drift to him—low and tentative, almost fragile. For a moment, John hesitates. One more glance back, and he sees Bucky sitting in one of the chairs by the table. He’s leaning back, talking quietly. 

His younger self is listening. Wary and unsure. But listening.

It’s enough to make his chest ache. 

He wishes the best for them.

John exhales, sharp and final, and presses a finger to the screen.

The rooftop blurs. The air pulls tight and light surges in a flare. The world folds in and yanks him forward into the next jump.

New York City, 2028

The pull of the jump ends with a jolt, and he finds himself landing on expensive tile flooring.

John blinks against the sudden brightness. Sunlight floods through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Watchtower’s main suite. Warm and familiar.

He looks around, his heart hammering, and he feels it—relief so sharp it almost hurts. He’s home. Finally. No frozen tundra, no unfamiliar streets. Just the quiet hum of the tower’s systems and the view of the city sprawling beneath them.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, a wide grin tugging at his mouth. He’s here. It’s 2028. He can feel it. It looks just as he left it. 

He takes a step forward, drinking it in. He sees the scuffs on the wall from that time Yelena tried to throw a plate at his head. Bob’s half-folded blanket is tossed on the couch. There’s the faint smell of coffee in the air. All the little details he’s learned to miss.

He runs to the elevator and punches the number for his shared floor. 

John’s heart leaps as the elevator moves. He’s finally going to see his Bucky.

He’s halfway down the hall toward Bucky’s unit when he passes his own door—and he stutters to a stop. There’s movement inside, the low sounds of someone rustling around the kitchen. 

John grins. He swings open the door.

And freezes.

It’s not Bucky.

Ava drinks from a glass of orange juice in his kitchen. Her dark hair is wet, falling around her shoulders in heavy curls as she turns at his entrance. There’s a towel wrapped around her slender frame. 

She smiles when she sees him—an easy, seductive smile.

“There you are,” she says, like she’s actually happy to see him. “I thought you were getting us breakfast.”

Ava glances down at his empty hands. 

“Why are you suited up?” She asks with a frown as she straightens. “Have we been called for an op?”

For a moment, John’s brain refuses to process what he’s looking at. His grin falters and drops completely. “Ava… what um—what are you—”

Her brow furrows as her frown grows deeper. “Are you alright, darling? You’re looking a little green. You hit your head or something?”

She steps closer to him, her bare feet silent on the floor.

John stays rooted where he is, his pulse pounding in his ears, eyes as wide as dinner plates. 

This isn’t his timeline.

It’s not even close.

“I… I forgot my wallet,” John finishes lamely. He forces a stiff smile before carefully backing away from the beautiful woman wearing very, very little in his kitchen. 

He makes it to the elevator before he remembers how to breathe again. 

“Damnit, damnit, damnit…” He mutters under his breath.

By the time he hits the roof, the Tempad is already in his hands, new coordinates ready to go. He doesn’t spare a glance at the skyline—he doesn’t care how it looks the same, it’s the wrong version of his life—

Light flares around him. The world tears sideways.

* 

The light fades and John lands on familiar flooring. 

He’s in the same place, on the roof of the same tower. His pulse spikes.

He’s already moving before the hum of the jump fully dies away, taking the elevator, then rushing down the hallway in long strides. He marches past his own apartment until he bursts into Bucky’s unit, and then into his bedroom—

It’s him. 

The same hair. The same faint lines around his eyes. The same easy weight to the way he lies back on the bed, a book in his hands, looking casual and serene in a way John fucking missed. 

And the same goddamn stare. 

John’s breath catches. God, it’s him. It has to be him.

He crosses the room in two steps, jumps onto the bed, and pulls Bucky in by the front of his shirt. He crashes their lips together, kissing him hard with no hesitation, no preamble. 

Bucky tenses under him—then melts into the kiss.

The warmth of his mouth and the taste of his tongue are familiar enough to make John’s chest ache.

For a moment, everything is perfect.

Then Bucky breaks the kiss just enough to mumble against his lips. “What, um… what’s going on?” His voice is rough, out of breath, and he looks a bit dazed as he stares up into John’s eyes.

John laughs, too giddy to care. “I just missed you. You wouldn’t believe the kind of hell I’ve been through these last few days.”

The confusion on Bucky’s face doesn’t fade, but neither does the smile tugging at his lips. He pulls John back down and kisses him harder. One hand wraps around the back of his neck, the other buries itself in his hair.

Kissing Bucky is dizzying. Like surfacing after being underwater for too long.  Bucky’s hands are familiar against his skin, one warm and the other cool, smooth metal. A dark, muted black, not shiny silver. 

John shifts, settling over the other man in a way that his body remembers, instinctively. 

He grips Bucky under the thighs, tugging him further down until he’s settled firmly beneath him with John slotted between his thighs. 

He presses their bodies close, chest to chest, not an inch of space between them. That familiar heat, the way Bucky’s breath hitches, the soft gasp and moan that flutters into his mouth—it’s perfect. 

It’s exactly as he remembers. Everything is perfect. Until—

He feels—too late—that another presence has joined them in the room. And then he recognizes the cold press of a gun barrel against the side of his head. 

John freezes and Bucky goes deadly still beneath him. 

“Who the hell are you?” 

The voice is low. Edged with dangerous, lethal intent. 

John turns his head just enough to see the man behind the weapon—

And stares straight into his own furious face.

Not him. But another version of him. And by the look in his eyes, he’s a hair’s breadth from pulling the trigger. 

John’s pulse spikes and his heart drops into his stomach. “Ohhh… fuck.”

Bucky’s gaze snaps between them, his confusion flashing into something harder. Anger tightens his jaw as his grip against John’s shoulders grows painfully hard. 

Bucky shoves him back with enough force to throw John clear off the bed and into the wall behind him. While he’s stumbling back to his feet, Bucky scrambles back to put as much space between them as he can. His eyes blaze with anger, aimed at John in a way he never wants to see again.

The other John—this timeline’s John—keeps the muzzle of his gun locked between John’s eyes like it’s an extension of his arm.

Other John is in gym clothes, sweat clinging to his t-shirt like he just got done a workout—and he probably wasn’t expecting to walk in on himself about to screw his own boyfriend. 

“Wait, wait, wait—” John stammers, his hands lifted in a desperate gesture. “I made a mistake! I’m not—this isn’t—” He awkwardly gestures between him and Bucky. “I’m from another timeline! I thought this was my Bucky!”

Other John’s eyes narrow. “Your Bucky?” His voice is a low growl, and John—himself John—can’t help but groan. Timeline hopping is a goddamn headache. 

“You’ve got two seconds to explain what the hell that means before I decide you’re not walking out of here at all.”

Bucky’s gaze flicks between them, his jaw tight, as John struggles to find the words. His mind is still caught up in that kiss, even as his military brain recognizes the terrible danger he’s in. 

“Start talking, now,” Bucky growls.

“I’ve been stuck—time-traveling,” John blurts, his breath catching. “You could say I’m a little lost. I’m just trying to get back to my timeline.” 

His words trip over each other, frantic. “I’m from a different branch, okay? It looks like this—” He gestures wildly around the room. “But it’s not. I thought this was mine. I thought he was mine. I swear, I’m just trying to get back home. I’m sorry—” 

John whips his head toward Bucky, who still looks hurt and betrayed—“I’m sorry. I thought I was home! I didn’t mean to kiss you—I mean, not you you. I thought you were my Bucky.” The words come out fast and desperate. “I didn’t mean to mess anything up.”

He pauses for breath.

“Why the hell are you kissing Bucky?”

John stops dead. The question hits sideways, not registering any sense in his panicked brain. He stares between their hard faces. 

“Wh-what?” He manages, dumbly.

The other John steps closer, his eyes narrowed dangerously. “Why. Are you kissing. Bucky.” He enunciates each word with deliberate, dangerous weight.

“Well.” John stares between them again, getting the sense that something isn’t quite right about this timeline either. “Bucky is my… I mean, we’re…”

“You’re together,” Bucky finishes for him quietly.   

Other John’s jaw tightens, the muscles jumping hard. “We’re not,” he snaps, quick and sharp—too quick. His grip on the gun doesn’t falter either, but there’s something else under it now, something ugly and unmistakable.

It’s written in the way his eyes cut to Bucky, then back to John.

Jealousy.

John swallows the lump in his throat. “You’re not?” He echoes.

Bucky looks away. Neither confirming nor denying it. His face—John knows him too well by now not to recognize the look—it’s what Bucky looks like when he’s longing and trying awfully hard to pretend he doesn’t feel it.

Looking between their faces… the silence is louder than a gunshot.

“You’re not together?”

And then, after a pause, Bucky says, flat and clipped, “We… fuck. Casually.” 

He doesn’t meet John’s eyes. “But we’re just—”

“Co-workers,” the other John finishes. “Teammates,” he adds like a correction. 

John’s brow climbs so high it might clear his hairline. “Riiight…”

So this is the timeline where John and Bucky don’t get their shit together. Where they fuck without kissing, sleep in different beds, and won’t even admit that they’re friends, let alone anything more. 

They never figured it out.

John bites back the urge to laugh, a little hysterically, maybe. But there’s still a gun to his head, and he’s sure there’s no version of himself that isn’t a bit too trigger-happy. 

“Um… maybe I should go.”

“I think that would be for the best,” the other John says tightly. Like he’s itching to throw him out.

John sneaks one last glance at Bucky as he steps past the bed.

Bucky watches him, not even trying to be subtle about it. His lips are still red—still swollen like John really got him good with that kiss. 

As John passes around the other him, he can’t help but get one good jab in… and so he throws over his shoulder, “He kissed me back, you know.”

He swears he catches the faintest blush creep across Bucky’s cheeks. 

Other John stutters—actually stutters—and whips his head between them, stunned and furious.

John doesn’t wait to see what happens next. He’s already out the door, heading back to the roof. 

He finally chuckles when he's alone.

It’s comforting, in a weird way.

It’s good to know he’s not the dumbest version of himself out there.  

*

John doesn’t linger.

He keeps trying. The world folds in around him with every jump. 

Again. And again.

Each time, 2028 greets him in a different shape—different faces in the tower, a slightly different city on the horizon, different lives playing out before him. Some versions sting more than others…

Like when he walks through the tower and sees the Avengers logo wiped from the facade. In its place: STARK INDUSTRIES, cold and corporate. 

Or when he finds Bucky—but this Bucky is… different. Confident, commanding, and issuing orders to a different team like he’s been leading them for years. There’s no recognition in his eyes when he looks at John.

One time, he catches a news broadcast in the background: “President Osborn addresses the nation…” That’s enough to make him hit the Tempad without another word.

Some versions barely register the difference.

But none of them are his.

So he keeps moving.

Eventually, an awful thought worms its way in.

What if he broke it?

What if, somehow, between the jumps and the detours and the impacts he’s made… the main timeline splintered apart? 

What if there’s no home for him to go back to?

Or what if home is there, but there are so many branches he'll keep jumping for years before finding the right one?

The possibilities, each more awful than the last, lie cold and heavy in his gut.

He's lost. Stranded.

He keeps jumping.

*

John barely feels the next jump, so used to the familiar pull and lurch in his stomach… it barely registers now. 

Then his boots touch down on solid floor again.

Same tower. Same city. 

The same sterile hum of the ventilation overhead, same faint smell of coffee and disinfectant in the air

But this time, when familiar voices drift down the corridor and he steps into the main operations room—he stops cold.

Across the room, Sam Wilson stands tall in full Captain America gear, the stars and stripes gleaming under the overhead lights. Beside him, in civilian clothes, are Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.

John’s pulse kicks into high gear. Steve is alive. Bucky is here.

For a second, his mind goes blank. Like every other jump in this time, he wonders: do they even know him here? Is this one of the timelines where he’s a stranger? Or worse—an enemy?

And then another shuddering thought: is this a friendly Steve, or the other kind?

John slowly steps closer to observe. 

They’re talking about a recent rescue—something Sam pulled off. There’s laughter, easy and unforced, like they’ve been doing this forever.  

John feels it like a weight behind his ribs. That ache of being on the outside, looking in. Like they’re part of a club he was never invited to. 

Steve’s eyes are locked on Bucky, a soft smile on his face, grinning at something the man just said. Bucky huffs a quiet laugh, relaxed in a way John’s only recently started to see in his own Bucky.

It hits him like a punch. They’re alive. They’re happy.

It’s almost too much. 

Before he can spiral, Sam glances up and spots him.

“Hey, I thought you were running an op with Torres,” Sam says, casual but curious.

The knot in John’s chest loosens just a fraction. They know him, at least. John Walker belongs here in this timeline. 

He forces a shrug, schooling his face into something easy. “Just a small change of plans,” he says smoothly. “Needed to check something here, then headed right back out.”

Sam nods and turns back to the others, conversation flowing again.

John drifts a few steps toward one of the consoles on one side of the room, pretending to check the display. His hands move over the controls, fingers tapping aimlessly. He keeps his body angled just enough to watch them out of the corner of his eye.

Steve, Bucky, and Sam. 

Seeing the three of them together now—Sam in full gear, Steve alive, Bucky at his side—John suddenly remembers his nagging doubts from what feels like a lifetime ago: Would the two of them be standing with the new Cap if they could? 

Now he has his answer, and it stings more than he expected.

Steve and Bucky sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, close enough that their arms brush when they shift. Steve murmurs something low, and Bucky’s mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile. But Sam catches it immediately.

“Oh, come on,” Sam groans, rolling his eyes. “Can you two knock it off for five minutes? You’re making the rest of us look bad.”

Steve shoots him a mock glare, and Bucky just smirks. Then, without hesitation, Steve leans in and kisses him. Not a casual peck, not a blink-and-miss-it thing, but a real kiss, warm and certain.

John’s breath catches. For a split second, he forgets where, or when, he is. Not my Bucky, he reminds himself. Not my Bucky.

Hmm. Look at that.

His mouth twists, wry and wounded. He wants to grab his own Bucky, drag him here, just to throw it in his face: I told you so. I told you he was in love with you.

The thought burns and soothes him all at once.

John keeps his head down, pretending to study whatever meaningless data is scrolling across the screen, while he swallows the bitter taste in his mouth. He pretends he can’t hear the laughter drifting across the room.

“Hey, back me up here, John,” Sam calls over, and John glances up before he can stop himself. 

Sam’s grinning like a man who’s been waiting all day to make his point. “Tell these fossils it’s time to dust off the suits and get back in the fight. Quit playing house and come out of retirement already.”

Steve waves him off. “I’ve given enough. Let me enjoy my well-earned geezer years.”

“Yeah?” Sam shoots back. “Tell that to the guy you’re sleeping next to who keeps a knife under his pillow.” 

Bucky snorts. “Can never be too careful.”

And then, John feels their eyes on him, waiting for him to pile on, to side with Sam and take a jab at the two who clearly hung up the suits some time ago.

He opens his mouth… then shuts it again. Something tightens in his chest.

Steve looks good, smiling faintly like the world’s finally let him breathe. Happy. Bucky too. Whatever life they’ve built here in this timeline, it’s working. And as much as it stings, John can’t deny it.

Bucky deserves this. He deserves to be happy. With or without John.

So, John’s voice comes out quiet and steady. “Why mess with a good thing?”

There’s a beat of surprise. Steve gives him a small, grateful smile. Bucky doesn’t say anything, but John catches the subtle shift in his expression, like maybe he didn’t expect kindness from this version of him.

He wonders if he and Bucky are friends in this timeline.

Sam shakes his head, half-laughing. “Man, all of you are getting soft on me.”

John doesn’t argue. He just turns back to the console, pretending the ache in his chest is nothing new.

Bucky’s voice drifts across the room. “Only when it’s one of the big three. Nothing else gets us off the bench.”

The words are final, like a line drawn in the sand. 

John’s lost in thought, staring blankly at nothing, letting the words settle.

He doesn’t notice the footsteps until a voice breaks through.

“You okay?”

It’s Bucky. Close now, quiet. 

John doesn’t meet his eyes. His hands are braced on the edge of the console, knuckles pale with tension. He exhales slowly through his nose.

“Yeah,” he says, too fast.

Bucky doesn’t buy it. Of course he doesn’t. 

“You’re quiet,” Bucky says after a beat. “That’s not like you.”

John shrugs, trying to keep it light. “Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age.”

A flicker of a smile tugs at Bucky’s face, but it doesn’t last. His eyes search John’s like he’s trying to line up two images that don’t quite match. “You sure you’re alright—?”

The air changes.

John feels it under his skin before he sees it. A low hum in his bones, like something winding up. It feels different this time, he’s not even touching the Tempad—

His pulse spikes.

“Shit, I gotta go!” John blurts, already moving. Bucky calls after him, confused, but John doesn’t stop.

He barely clears the hallway when the world goes fuzzy at the edges, colors stretching, pulling apart. Time doesn’t warp so much as tear, like reality itself is being peeled back and grabbing him in its claws.

“What the hell—” he starts, but the words never finish.

The Watchtower fractures around him like shattered glass.

And then he’s gone.

Just ripped out of the moment.

John hits the floor hard, boots skidding on a cold metal platform. The lighting is harsh and fluorescent. He stumbles upright, breath catching, body tense for a fight he can’t see yet.

The room is wide and unfamiliar. White walls, high ceilings. Some kind of lab, built for things beyond his understanding. In the center, a massive ring of machinery looms around him where he stands. It hums with leftover energy, cables snaking across the floor like veins. 

He doesn’t recognize it. 

He takes a few steps back, blinking hard, still trying to orient himself, when a familiar voice slices through the fog.  

“Jesus Christ, finally,” Yelena snaps, storming toward him. “You took your damn time.”

John blinks. “Yelena?”

Before he can process it, she punches him hard in the chest. He barely feels it, but he finches anyway at the anger behind it. 

“Do you have any idea how impossible it was to lock onto your signal?”

Behind her, John spots Bucky hanging back. Arms folded, jaw tight, his gaze sharp and unreadable. He looks equal parts relieved and furious. Maybe… mostly furious now. 

“I—what is this thing?” John asks, his heart pounding. 

Is he back? Is he really back?

John’s eyes dart to the machine again. Around the room, scientists in white coats scramble, shouting instructions over each other. A few stare at him like he’s the unpredictable element in the room.

“Oh, just what was left of Banner’s Quantum Tunnel,” Yelena says, jerking her thumb at the massive contraption. “Most of it was scrap. No instructions. No manual. We barely pulled this off. Next time you feel like being a moron—” She cuts herself off with a long breath through her nose.

She exhales slowly, like she’s holding something back. Probably another punch. 

“You’re lucky we didn’t atomize you,” she finally growls. “Now, where is it?”

“Where is what?” John asks faintly. His eyes are on Bucky now, who still hangs back. Who still hasn’t said a single word. His face hasn’t softened, and now has a hint of murderous intent written all over it. 

John shivers. 

Yelena’s glare could break steel. “The Tempad we told you not to touch, you idiot!”

“Oh! Right.” John fumbles into his pocket and retrieves the thing, happy to hand it over into Yelena’s waiting hands and be rid of it.  

He doesn’t wait to see what she does next. Just steps around her to approach the man he’s seen too many versions of. None of them right. None of them his. None of them this one that he was trying desperately to get back to. 

“You brought me back,” John says, hoarse.

A beat passes. 

Bucky holds his gaze for a long second, unreadable. Then he gives a single, quiet nod. “Yeah. We did.”

Something twists in John’s chest. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He’s back.

Finally. Home.

But the moment barely has time to land before Bucky turns on his heel, face still thunderous, and stalks out of the room without another word.

Chapter Text

John blinks. That wasn’t the welcome he’d been hoping for. 

Sure, he hadn’t expected the warmest reception from Bucky—maybe just a gruff ‘about damn time’ followed by a ‘you handsome idiot, what were you thinking?’ —but he sure as hell hadn’t expected him to tear out of the room like the place was on fire.

And maybe he had been stupid enough to hope for a kiss. Something that said: I missed you. You’re alive. Thank God you’re alive!

Instead, Bucky’s already vanished through the lab’s double doors with long, purposeful strides.

“Bucky—wait!”

John pushes through the doors after him, but the hallways are empty. Footsteps echo ahead, quick and retreating, widening the distance between them. John’s still unsteady from being pulled through the gateway, his legs reluctant to cooperate, but he forces them to keep up. By the time he hits the elevator and realizes he’s still in the Watchtower, Bucky’s long gone.

He finds him in his apartment. 

Bucky is hunched over the kitchen counter, both hands braced against it like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. His shoulders rise and fall in sharp, uneven breaths.

For a second, John thinks Bucky’s having a panic attack. 

“Bucky—”

“Don’t.” His voice is low and dangerous. He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t turn around.

John swallows, steps inside anyway, and shuts the door behind him with a soft click.

“Was it too much to ask for a ‘Gee, John, glad you made it back. How was it being thrown through time like a goddamn pinball? I’m glad you’re alive!’” John pauses his drawl, then throws all caution to the wind. “How about a welcome home kiss for your man?”

Bucky’s glare when he spins his head around is hard enough to cut steel. 

“You think you get a kiss for being an idiot?” 

John grits his teeth, then sighs. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t—”

“You didn’t think. That’s the problem,” Bucky says, eyes flashing, lit with a fury that almost hides the fear underneath.

John’s gut twists. “I didn’t mean for it to—”

“You could’ve been lost.” Bucky’s voice cracks, just barely. It would have hurt less if he’d shouted. “If we hadn’t been able to track your signal… if that damn gateway hadn’t worked, or we just couldn’t figure it out—you could have been gone, forever. And we wouldn’t have found you, John. Not in a day. Not in a year. Not ever. You just would have been gone.”

John stares at him, frozen.

Bucky drags a hand down his face like he’s trying to scrape the thought out of his head. “I kept thinking about where you might have landed. Kept thinking about you being trapped somewhere, some… time that isn’t yours, and if we couldn’t get you back—” He stops, jaw working, but nothing comes out. “You would have been stuck there, living out the rest of your life. And we’d never even know if you were okay.”

The silence between them is heavy, thick enough to choke on.

Bucky swallows hard, and he has to force the words out. “Can you see why I’m maybe losing my mind a little bit here?”

And then John gets it… this isn’t just anger. It’s fear, sharp and blinding. This is about Steve again. That gaping wound they never talk about, of watching him step out of his own time and never come back to the life he left.

“I’m here, Bucky,” John says quietly. “I’m right here.”

Bucky meets his eyes again, nothing guarded left in them now. Just exhaustion, and that faint edge of anger that clings to him. “I could have lost you—”

“You didn’t lose me—”

“—because you were being a fucking idiot!” 

John can’t help it. He smiles. He’s missed this. He’s missed this man. He’s missed him calling him an idiot when he does idiotic things. 

Luckily for him, something softens in Bucky’s expression.

“No, I’m not done,” Bucky mutters stubbornly as John steps closer. “I’m not done being mad at you. I’m not done yelling—”

John closes the space between them and wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist. “I love you,” he says, before kissing him hard enough to steal both their breaths along with any other words Bucky had to say.

Bucky makes a sound caught somewhere between a moan and an ‘I love you, too,’ muffled into John’s mouth.

John groans, low and heavy. He’s been through hell and back to get back to this mouth. He tightens his grip around Bucky’s back, buries his other hand in Bucky’s hair, and tugs at the length just the way Bucky likes it. 

“You can keep yelling if you want,” John murmurs against his lips. “I might get into it.” 

Bucky’s eyes grow dark. But he doesn’t yell again. “You really scared me,” he admits. 

“I know. I’m sorry,” John says, quieter now. “I’m sorry for being an idiot.”

Bucky closes his eyes and groans like he can’t stand to look at him. But he presses their lips together again. “A goddamn moron.” His voice is rough, cracking in the middle. “You could’ve been gone for good—”

“But I’m here. I made it back.”

“Not everyone does.”

John hesitates, then cups his cheek. “I’m not Steve. I’m not gonna disappear on you. Not if I can help it. And I would fight tooth and nail to get back to you. I did.”

Bucky searches his face for a long beat. Then, finally, his shoulders drop.

“I’m here,” John says again.

This time, Bucky lets himself fold forward, forehead pressing into John’s cheek, collapsing against him like he’s letting go of something heavy. “You’re still a fucking moron,” he mutters.

“Hmm,” John hums in agreement.

Bucky pulls back enough to look him in the eye, something like guilt suddenly shimmering within them. “Are you okay? Are you really okay?”

“I am now.”

Bucky studies him, guilt bleeding into his expression. “Where did you go? What did you see? Fuck, John, how long were you gone?” 

John hesitates. “It’s… hard to explain. Maybe later?”

“I was terrified you’d be an old man by the time we pulled you back,” Bucky says quietly. “Val’s lab guys barely knew what they were doing. Trying to make sense of… scraps of Banner’s notes. The whole time, I kept thinking… every second that passes, how long were you trapped there?”

John’s mouth opens, then closes again. Images flash in his mind—the things he saw, clinging to him like smoke. “None of it matters now,” he says, too casual to be convincing. “I’m here.”

Bucky looks like he wants to push, and the sight of it tugs at John’s heart. He silences him with another kiss instead.

“I missed you,” John murmurs between breaths. “I missed you so much. The whole time, I was trying to get back to you—” 

“I love you, you idiot,” Bucky grits out between kisses. “Bed. Now.”

They only make it as far as the couch. 

John’s fault—he’s the one pushing while Bucky stumbles backwards on his feet—when he decides they’re not going to make it the extra few meters to the bedroom.

Their lips remain locked, even as they fall heavily in a tangle of limbs, John landing in Bucky’s lap. He threads his fingers through Bucky’s hair as he presses wet, open-mouthed kisses against his jaw and down his neck, drawing soft gasps as the other man arches beneath him. 

“I fucking missed you,” John breathes, drawing back just enough to see Bucky watching him with lust-filled eyes. He groans when Bucky digs metal fingers into his ass, his other hand palms him roughly through the front of his pants. 

There’s a huff of air from Bucky as he tightens that grip just enough to cross the line into painful. And then, “If you ever do something so stupid again, I will kill you myself.”

John responds by sinking his teeth into his neck. Bucky bites back a sound, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he squirms. The sting on his neck is quickly replaced by burning suction. Then more teeth, wet and hot, down towards his trap until John finally pulls back to admire the trail of marks he’s left behind. 

The clothes come off next, fingers leaving skin to fumble at buckles and straps. Heavy boots and tac gear fly off, landing with a thud on Bucky’s rug. Shirts and underwear come off in a blur, all landing in a haphazard mess on the floor. 

John’s eyes are quickly drawn to the expanse of warm skin, from the seam where the metal is fused to Bucky’s body, down the hard line of muscles, and finally to his heavy cock. It’s a pretty thing, and John’s tongue salivates as he aches to get his mouth on it. 

While he stares, a hand reaches around the back of his neck. John is pulled up again to those soft lips. He melts into the kiss, dragging his hands down Bucky’s shoulders, over the curve of his sides, finally coming to rest on his hips. 

He pulls back slightly, panting softly, just enough to see Bucky looking back at him, looking absolutely wrecked. 

“Jesus, get your mouth on me, already.”

Bucky’s skin is warm, burning, when John brushes his lips against it, his tongue flicking out to taste his flesh as he sucks at the fresh little bruises—a beautiful motley of red and pink on his neck. He wants to see them really pop in the light when they’re done. 

John slides down, settling in the space between Bucky’s legs as he scrapes his teeth along his chest. His tongue swirls around a nipple, and he grins at Bucky’s breathless gasp when he sucks it hard between his lips. The sounds he makes when John scrapes at him with his teeth go straight to his cock. 

He keeps making his way down, sucking and nipping as he goes, even dipping his tongue into his navel. Bucky whines, high and noisily, jerking his hips up like he wants John to get on with it. 

John finally closes his lips around his cock. He runs the flat of his tongue along the length of his shaft, up then down, and up again. He’s rewarded with a breathy moan when, at last, he swirls his tongue over the head.  

Bucky’s fingers curl into his hair, pulling harshly as John takes him deeper into his throat, further and further, and then back up again. He finds his rhythm quickly with Bucky’s hands on him, guiding the way. 

He loses himself in it—the thickness of Bucky’s cock between his lips, filling his mouth, the scent of his skin, the feeling of thick thighs locked around his neck. A reminder of everything he had been fighting desperately to get back to. 

Now, his fingers dig into those thighs, like it might anchor him to the present. 

Bucky whimpers again. He tenses, and John knows he’s close, practically on the brink—so he pulls off of his cock, achingly slow and with an obscene, filthy wet pop. 

Bucky practically snarls at him, blue eyes flashing as he grits out, “Oh, you bastard.”

“That’s what you get for not greeting me with warmth and concern.” John scolds. He nips at a thigh. “I should have you on your knees right now.” 

Bucky lets his head drop back with a frustrated groan. His cock is dripping now, gleaming with saliva, and John grins in sympathy. 

He smirks, lifts Bucky’s thighs up to give himself better access, then dives down again, this time to lick a wet, dirty stripe right across Bucky’s rim.

Bucky might have jerked off the couch if not for John’s hands holding him down.  

He practically howls, hips squirming as John traces the rim with the tip of his tongue, then presses into him, thrusting against the ring of muscle again and again. He gets him wet and sloppy, loosens him up until he’s slipping in with barely any resistance. 

Bucky rocks down against him, then grabs his wrist with a metal hand and yanks it away from his hip. He brings John’s fingers to his mouth, wraps his lips around them, and sucks them deep. His tongue swirls around them, coating each digit in spit as John watches, mesmerised and momentarily frozen at the sight until Bucky pulls them away, pushes his hand down and growls, “I’m getting impatient. Don’t keep me waiting, John.”

Good thing John’s used to following orders. 

Without sparing a moment, he presses those two saliva-slicked fingers against that loose rim, slides them in in a single fluid motion until he’s buried to the last knuckle. It’s a tight fit without proper lube to ease the way. But Bucky doesn’t seem to care as he grinds down on him. His hips rock down, entire body jerking as John’s fingers brush against his prostate. His cock jerks and his breath comes out in ragged huffs as John drives into him again and again. 

And because John is an asshole, he brings him close to the edge, then pulls his fingers out just before Bucky can come without him. 

The startled, devastated whimper is music to his ears. It almost makes John want to prolong this even more, just to hear those wrecked sounds fall from Bucky’s lips. 

But his own cock is reminding him that it needs attention. 

So John reaches behind him, digs into the drawer of the coffee table, where he knows there is a half-empty bottle of lube. He generously coats himself with a glob of it, biting back a groan as he thinks of how good it’s going to feel once he’s buried in Bucky’s heat. 

He doesn’t wait a second longer.

John lines himself up, positions himself against Bucky’s hole, and starts to push in. He goes slow, despite wanting to bury himself in a single thrust. His eyes squeeze shut as the scorching heat swallows his cock and turns his brain to mush. It was worth the wait—none of those other Buckys could hold a candle to his. 

He looks up just in time to catch those blue eyes fluttering shut as he bottoms out. 

Trembling hands wrap around John’s neck, pulling him down as he starts moving his hips. Bucky’s eyes flutter open, and he looks up at John desperately, aching and wanting. 

Their movements speed up, growing erratic, and a little desperate as they move together in rhythm. Bucky brings their lips together again as John’s hips drive into him, each time buried to the hilt, grinding again and again between heavy thrusts. 

John slides a hand between their bodies, wraps it around Bucky’s cock, and with only a few jerks of his hand, curling just right around the head—Bucky’s orgasm spills between them. His head is thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, and he’s biting his bottom lip hard enough to break the skin as he clenches and shudders around John’s cock. 

“Fuck,” John gasps, his frantic thrusts lose their momentum as Bucky clenches tight around him, and he’s spilling inside, lost to the flood of fire in his veins and the feeling of Bucky’s body like a vise around him. 

He slumps over, head falling into the space between Bucky’s head and his shoulder as they both suck in large gulps of air. He moves, gently—but Bucky still hisses at the motion, whispering “no, no, no” under his breath, not wanting him to pull away just yet. 

John chuckles against his skin, light and a little breathy. 

Bucky murmurs something else under his breath, his chest still rising and falling rapidly. 

John lifts his head, runs a hand through Bucky’s sweat-damp hair, and kisses him fiercely. 

“Jesus,” Bucky finally wheezes when they part. “I love you.”

For a moment, the room is dim and quiet except for the rise and fall of their breaths.

John’s about to say it back, as soon as the room stops spinning in the aftermath of coming harder than he thought was possible. 

Bucky’s arms still hold him close. The sides of their faces pressed together, eyes closed. John doesn’t want to move. He could stay here forever, just like this… with the rest of the world a problem for later.

Then the air ripples. They hear a familiar warble.

It’s subtle at first—a faint shimmer by the front door—until the shape pulls into focus and Ava is suddenly there, phased through and standing in Bucky’s kitchen. She retracts her mask, and her expression is shock, her eyes wide. 

John bolts upright at the intrusion, instinct throws himself back from his vulnerable, exposed position, even as he keeps Bucky covered under an arm.

“Jesus—Ava?!” John yelps.

“What the fuck?! Get the hell out!” Bucky barks, grabbing blindly for a throw blanket in a desperate attempt to cover themselves. 

“I—sorry—!” Ava’s voice cracks. She’s shaking, her usual composure completely gone as she keeps her eyes firmly planted on Bucky’s kitchen cabinets and away from their indecent bodies. 

John grabs for his pants to cover his crotch. His dick has sadly wilted, seeing as his plans for round two have been interrupted. “What the hell are you doing here?” He asks roughly.

“This better be good—”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ava blurts, louder than she means to. She won’t look them in the eyes. “You need to come, right now—both of you.” She stumbles over her words, swallowing hard.

Bucky’s eyes narrow. “What’s going on?”

Ava slowly swings her head, her eyes look from one of them to the other, as if worried saying it out loud might make things worse. “Something happened. Someone else came through Banner’s tunnel.”

John freezes halfway into his shirt. “What?”

Bucky’s voice shakes. “Who?”

*

The walk back to the lab is quick but tight as a wire. Ava sets the pace, her boots striking sharply against the floors. The awkwardness of what she’d barged in on clings to the air, but it’s the look on her face—pale, eyes darting—that really settles the knot in Bucky's gut.

Ava isn’t easily shaken. But she keeps shooting them unreadable side glances every time they turn a corner, and she still hasn’t said who came through the portal. 

The lab doors part for them with a hiss. Inside, voices are low and urgent, lab technicians and scientists are scattered about behind glowing consoles. Heads turn as they enter, but the glances are quick, uneasy, and always slide back toward the center of the room. The air tastes metallic, and the faint tang of ozone hangs about. The gateway’s metal frame looms like a sleeping giant, shivering with leftover power.

Bucky’s eyes find Yelena first—tense, arms crossed, jaw tight. Then Alexei, standing a few steps behind her, uncharacteristically silent. 

He follows their line of sight. 

His breath catches. 

It's Steve.

Older than the man who left him behind, with faint silver in his hair, and a few more lines at the corners of his eyes.

But the posture is the same—easy, balanced, the quiet confidence of a soldier who’s always ready to move. His smile blooms slow, soft in a way that pulls Bucky back years in a single heartbeat. It’s in the eyes, too—eyes that look at him like they never stopped knowing him.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve’s voice rolls over him, warm and steady, like no time has passed at all.

Bucky can’t seem to make his mouth work. 

He’s imagined this moment a hundred different ways. It makes him feel desperate, pathetic... in a way he would never admit out loud, not even to Sam. But the Steve in those dreams looked exactly the same as the day he left. A perfect carbon copy. 

Not like this one. He's older, yes. But still familiar in a way that hits him right in the chest.

“Steve?” The name scrapes out of him softer than he meant.

Steve’s smile grows. “Yeah. It’s me. Sorry for the entrance—I guess I skipped a few steps.” He glances around the lab, at the tense faces around them, playing humble. “I didn’t mean to spook anyone.”

Yelena breaks the moment with a sharp, deliberate cough. “He just appeared. Gateway lit up, alarms sounded off, and then…” She waves her arm toward Steve. “There he was.”

Bucky only half-hears her. He feels John at his side, still as stone, gaze flicking between them. Watching. Waiting.

And because the universe seems personally invested in making his life a running gag, it’s in this very moment that he becomes acutely aware of the slow, crawling discomfort of John’s cum leaking out of his ass. 

Bucky thinks the universe has a real sick sense of humor.

Steve’s eyes stay locked on Bucky, the only familiar face in the room. Perhaps the only one that matters. “I’ve been waiting to see you for a long time,” he says, softer now, like it’s just the two of them. “I guess I finally found my way back.”

Bucky swallows. His throat’s too tight. “Where… where—uh… when did you come from?”

There’s the tiniest pause before Steve answers, and then he smiles again, light and reassuring. “It took me a long time to figure out how to get back here,” he says easily. “But I’m here now.”

It’s a thin answer. But it’s the ‘I’m here now’ that makes Bucky’s knees want to give.

Part of him immediately wants to call Sam. 

Part of him wants to tug John aside, to preemptively reassure him that they’re fine, they’re solid, that of course, this changes nothing.

But John is already too quiet.

And then Steve’s eyes drop—not far, just enough. They catch on the edge of Bucky’s collar, on the bruises he knows still litter his neck. Marks that haven’t had time to fade.

Bucky resists the urge to adjust his collar. He has nothing to be ashamed of. He doesn’t know this Steve. Doesn’t even know if it’s his Steve. And even if he were, Bucky can fuck whoever he wants. He doesn’t belong to any version of any Steve.

But the guilt still sparks in his chest. Small, irrational. Dangerous.

Steve’s gaze lingers a moment longer, unreadable, before it lifts back to Bucky’s face. The smile is still there, but it’s too careful, like it’s been practiced. 

Something hollow in his eyes unsettles him. 

“I missed you,” Steve says. 

Somewhere in the hum of machinery, a console beeps. Ava mutters something to Yelena, who hasn’t taken her eyes off Steve. Alexei says something too loud for the moment. John still hasn’t moved.

But none of it registers to Bucky.

Steve takes a slow step forward, closing the distance. “I guess we have a lot to catch up on.”

Bucky’s pulse stutters. Yeah. Starting with where the hell you came from, he thinks—but the words stick in his throat. 

And just like that, the room feels smaller.

Unknown, 2040

The mass of tech and machinery before him hums like a living thing, faint green light crawling across its surface. It’s twisted and patched together from pieces of alien scrap and sorcery. In his world, there’s no one left to tell him not to mix the two.

On the cracked holo-display, a pulsing red dot moves slowly across a grainy map. John Walker. Steve leans closer, thumb tracing the edges of the screen, adjusting the sensors until the coordinates sharpen. The signal spike is steady now, almost as if the signature out of time has found its rightful place again. 

“Finally,” he murmurs, voice low, reverent, almost hungry. “I got you.”

A shadow passes over his expression. His world has only ruin—a wasteland of shattered cities and broken lives, where little worth saving survived. Bones and dust swallowed by a Thanos-torn Earth.

But here? Here, there’s still a chance.

Steve adjusts the dials on the control rig. The device hums to life, singling out the temporal echo he'd been chasing—Walker. The ring of quantum stabilizers flickers to life, forming a circle of yellow-green light in the air.

He takes a deep breath. In the dim light, his eyes gleam—not with hope, exactly, but something sharper: a hunger that hasn’t been sated in years.

“I finally found you,” he says. “I’m coming, Buck.”

A tense beat. His lips curve into something that is almost a smile, but not quite. 

He steps forward. The hum swells into a roar, light swallowing him whole, leaving nothing behind but the echo of a man willing to cross time itself to take what he believes is his.

Chapter Text

The briefing room feels tighter than usual. The holoscreen hums in the center of the room, filled with charts and numbers that Mel tossed up about their latest ratings and current public perception. No one’s really looking at them. 

Everyone is looking at him.

The man himself. The icon. The hero. The one who led the battle that saved the world from Thanos. The first Avenger. 

To Bucky, he’s just Steve Rogers from Brooklyn. 

Steve sits at the far end of the table, posture loose, hands folded with the calm ease of someone with nothing to prove. His uniform is worn, rugged, and patched in places. There’s not a single star or stripe in sight, all muted black and rough around the edge. On him, it carries a quiet gravity. 

Half the room stares in awe. The other half with wariness. Suspicion.

Bucky finds himself falling somewhere in the middle.

Valentina leans forward in her chair, practically glowing as she watches him. “Do you understand what this means?” Her voice is bright with glee. “Captain America, back on the roster. This is a dream. It is truly an honor, Captain Rogers. The public is going to eat this up.”

Bucky grimaces and turns to glower out the window. 

“He’s not Captain America anymore,” John says, his voice sharp and stiff. “That title belongs to Sam.” His eyes swing over to the stoic man who doesn’t flinch under the gaze. 

John continues, “And before anyone gets carried away, this team already has a leader. We don’t need to confuse the chain of command.”

The temperature in the room dips. Eyes slide toward Yelena, waiting. 

But Steve diffuses it with a calm smile. He raises a hand, pacifying the tension. “He’s right. I’m not here to disrupt what you’ve got. I don’t want the spotlight or the title. I’m just grateful to be part of something again. If I can help, I’ll help. If I’m asked to stand down, that’s what I’ll do.”

The words are perfect. Too perfect. Polished humility wrapped in warmth and smiles. 

Steve’s eyes catch Bucky’s, just a few feet away. His smile blooms, lingering just a beat too long.

Valentina beams from the other end of the table. “So humble. A soldier’s soldier. You are truly one of a kind, Steve Rogers.”

She tilts her head, studying him closer. “Tell me—how do you feel about hair dye? Maybe a little ‘Just For Men’? Cover up those grays and the public won’t notice a thing.”

Steve’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t answer.

Bucky’s crooked grin slips out before he can stop it.

Unbothered, Valentina snaps her fingers toward Mel, who stands next to her, dutifully typing away on her tablet. “Make a note: The makeup team needs to take at least a decade off his face. And start sketching a new suit. Something with more red, white, and blue.” She winks at the Captain. “Classic sells.”

Alexei slaps the table with a hand and a booming laugh, hard enough to rattle the water glasses. “This is amazing! Captain America is back! New name pending,” he adds after a beat. “The New Avengers will be stronger than ever. We should celebrate! Drinks!”

Bucky doesn’t even look up from his spot. “It’s nine in the morning.”

“That is good time for vodka,” Alexei insists, oblivious to the tension rolling through the room.

Yelena groans, pressing a finger to her temple. “Please don’t. We’re not celebrating just yet.” She lifts her gaze to Valentina, her tone sharpening. “This isn’t a PR stunt. Not everything is about your headlines.”

Valentina laughs like she just heard a joke. “Please, Yelena. Why don’t you let the adults handle it?”

Yelena stiffens, anger sparking hot in her eyes. Ava shifts in her chair. Even John looks like he’s weighing whether to step in.

And then Steve does.

“Where I come from, no one gets to call the shots unless they’ve been in the fight. You don’t get to belittle the people carrying the weight.”

The room stills.

It’s not loud. Not confrontational. But the words land and carry history with them. Defiance. The same iron certainty that once split the Avengers in two.

Valentina blinks, caught mid-smirk.

Something flickers across Yelena’s face. A mix of surprise, recognition, and perhaps reluctant acknowledgment. She doesn’t trust him, not yet. But the reminder that this is the man Natasha fought beside, believed in, gave her life for their cause… it presses against her walls. That history carries weight, whether she likes it or not. 

Bucky feels it too. The words call back to the Steve Rogers who stood unflinching against governments and accords. The kind of Steve he would remember in his bones. For a moment, it’s like no time has passed at all.

And that thought unsettles him more than he wants to admit.

Alexei, oblivious as ever, slaps the table again. “Yes! See? Captain is right! Strong women, strong team. Yeah?!”

“Alexei,” Yelena hisses.

The moment lingers and fades. 

Valentina shrugs, a catlike smile curling at her lips. “Fine. What you say goes.” With a flick of her wrist, she turns back to Mel, dismissing the matter entirely.

John’s teeth grind together. His words come out harder than he intends. “We’re a unit. If he’s here, he pulls his weight like everyone else.”

“Rogers,” Yelena’s voice is less cutting. She may not trust him, but she knows better than to make an enemy out of him. “I’m the leader of this team. Do you have a problem with that?”

Steve inclines his head, the very picture of deference. “I’m a soldier. I have no problem following orders.” He holds Yelena’s gaze until she finally gives a curt nod.

And just like that, the atmosphere shifts. Valentina is practically glowing, no doubt drafting headlines in her head. Alexei booms about vodka and parades. Yelena hasn’t looked away from Steve. Meanwhile, Ava remains silent and sharp-eyed. She studies Steve, her head tilted slightly, as if dismantling a machine in her mind. 

Bucky notices all of it, including the bristle in John’s shoulders, that sharp, restless contrast to the easy way Steve soaks up the room.

Valentina’s sharp voice sends them jolting out of their thoughts. 

“Alright! Enough gawking. We need messaging, and we need it fast. Mel!” She snaps her fingers at her exhausted aide. “I want press releases ready by the end of the week. If Captain America is back, new name pending , the world will know about it before his face shows up on Instagram and the trolls start writing their own stories!”

Mel groans audibly but is already typing furiously, nodding and muttering under her breath.

“Do you understand the magnitude of this?!”

The team begins to stir, and chairs scrape back as the room dissolves into motion. Alexei shouts something about a toast. Yelena groans, dragging him toward the door with a muttered, “Shut up before you embarrass us in front of Captain America.”

Ava slips out silently after them.

Bucky rises, bracing himself for what’s coming, and yet his chest still jolts when he hears his name spoken in that familiar voice.

“Buck.”

Steve’s hand closes around his wrist as he passes. The grip is gentle but firm. Warm and steady, it sears against Bucky’s skin like a brand.

“You got some time? Maybe we could grab a coffee or something… catch up?” The warmth in his voice is casual and disarming, threaded with that familiar note of camaraderie that digs into old places Bucky thought had long scarred over. 

Bucky swallows, too quickly. His mouth answers before his brain can catch up. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Just… give me a minute. I need to make a quick call first.”

Steve smiles again, soft and patient. “Of course. I’ll wait right here.” And he settles back into his seat to do just that. 

Bucky steps past him, his chest tight. He barely makes it out the door before he nearly collides with John in the hallway.

“Bucky.”

“Hey.”

John’s eyes flick past him toward the conference room. He lowers his voice when he asks, “You okay?”

Bucky hesitates. The easy answer sticks in his throat. He looks at John and sees the worry hiding under the steel in his eyes, the way his hands flex like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

Instead of answering, Bucky lets out a slow breath and asks, “Are you okay?”

The silence stretches, heavier than it should be. 

Finally, John gives a clipped nod. “Yeah.”

Bucky opens his mouth to speak when he’s interrupted by Mel sweeping out of the room. She gives him a strained smile, muttering an apology as she passes—presumably to start drafting those press releases. 

The sounds of Valentina’s sharp, grating voice now directed at Steve bleed through the open door. Bucky grimaces, resists the urge to save him, and presses a hand to John’s shoulder, steering him farther down the hall until the voices fade.

When they’re out of earshot, Bucky speaks, his voice low. “You’re sure you don’t recognize him? Not from any of the places—branches—you’ve been through? Last night, you said you ran into other versions of us… other versions of Steve.”

John’s brow furrows, but his reply is firm. He shakes his head. “None of them looked like this one. Not even close.” His voice softens, choosing his words carefully. “I didn’t see this one. I would remember.”

Bucky studies him, searching, but John holds steady.

John reads the minute shift in Bucky’s expression. “You think he is who he says he is? The one who left?”

Bucky swallows hard, the words heavy in his mouth. “I don’t know.” He stares down the long hallway, then back to John. “I want it to be. I want it to be him. But…” He trails off, his throat closing on the rest. “It’s just a little too convenient, you know? A little too easy.”

It's not possible. 

John waits, his jaw tight, but he doesn’t push. His voice is rough when he asks, “Do you trust him?”

Bucky’s silence stretches. He exhales shakily. “I’m not sure yet. Maybe… maybe he really is my Steve.”

Even as he says it, he doesn’t fully believe it.

Dragging a hand over his face, Bucky mutters, “I have to call Sam. He needs to know what’s going on before he sees it on the internet.”

John nods. “Yeah. Good idea.”

For a moment, they just stand there in the dim hall, still as stone. Then John leans in, brushing Bucky’s lips with his own. The kiss is brief, tentative, but grounding. Bucky lets it linger, breathing him in, before John pulls back.

“I’ll see you later,” John says quietly, giving him one last look before heading down the hall. His footsteps fade, leaving Bucky staring after him.

Bucky takes a breath, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and dials. The line clicks after three rings. Static crackles before Sam’s voice cuts through, sharp and steady.

“Bucky? What’s up?”

Bucky swallows. There’s no easy way to say it, so he just comes out with it. “You’re not gonna believe this, Sam… But Steve’s back.”

There’s a pause on the other end, a beat too long. Bucky hears voices in the background, loud ones. “Run that by me again?”

“It’s a long story. We had Banner’s old portal up and running. He came through. He looks older, but not like… the ancient one that… you know. He says he’s him.” Bucky’s hand tightens around the phone. “I don’t know what to think, man.”

Sam exhales, the kind of breath that sounds like he’s pinching the bridge of his nose. “Our Steve died, Buck. He came back, and he died. You know that. How can it be him?”

“Yeah, I know, but…”

“If it’s really Steve… It’s got to be another version, a variant. There’s millions of us out there.”

“He says he’s the same one. He says he made a mistake going back and staying there,” Bucky’s rambling now, and he can’t stop. “H-he says he spent years trying to figure out how to get back here without the Pym particles—”

“Buck—Bucky, you gotta take a breath,” Sam cuts him off. “Breathe.”

Bucky does. He draws in a ragged breath. “He says… he says he came back because he made a mistake,” he whispers. “That staying with her was a mistake.”

There’s a beat of silence. 

“Sounds like he’s saying exactly what you want him to say,” Sam says quietly. 

“Yeah,” Bucky scoffs. He lets out a bitter laugh. “Five years ago, maybe.”

Sam sighs. “Look… I’m sorry I’m not there. I’m on a mission in the Sahara right now, I can’t drop it cold. But I’ll be back as soon as I can. Just... keep your head clear, alright? Don’t trust him too fast. And don’t let him get too close until we know for sure.”

Bucky closes his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. Thanks, Sam.”

“I’ll see you soon, Buck.”

The line clicks dead. Bucky lowers the phone, the silence around him somehow heavier than before.

*

The coffee shop is quiet, half-empty, and tucked into a side street far enough from the Watchtower that nobody gives them a second glance. The smell of burnt espresso and caramelized sugar clings to the air. Bucky feels the faint absurdity of sitting across from Steve Rogers like it’s just another afternoon. Like decades and timelines and wars hadn’t torn them apart.

Steve cradles his mug in both hands, smiling in that steady, familiar way that makes Bucky’s stomach tighten. “So,” he says, easy and casual. “This John Walker. He’s… important to you?”

Bucky shifts in his chair, caught off guard by the question, though he really should have seen it coming. “Yeah. He is. John and I have… been together a while.”

Steve nods, calm as ever. “I figured. He looked… protective. The way he stood by you in the lab.” He takes a sip of coffee, eyes never leaving Bucky’s face over the rim. “I’m glad you have someone watching your back.”

A look of regret flashes over his face. “That used to be me. It should’ve been me.” 

Bucky doesn’t answer.

Steve presses, gentler this time, fondness dripping from his voice. “Well, if we’re being fair… I guess technically you were the one watching mine.” His blue eyes flicker with a glint of memory. “You remember Denmark? That time you took a bullet for me and tried to walk it off, afraid they’d send you back home if they found out.”

Bucky’s brow furrows. Yeah, he remembers. 

Steve chuckles, but the laugh is dry and overlaid with pain. “I was so pissed at you when I found out.” And then his voice hardens. “You got hurt on my watch. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

The words cut like a knife wrapped in velvet—nostalgia and claim threaded together—when they should feel harmless. Something about them tugs uneasily at Bucky, like someone pressing a finger against scar tissue just to prove they know where it is.

He knows exactly what Steve is doing. Reassuring him that he’s the same guy. The one with the same memories. 

“Where’ve you been, Steve? All this time. You left. Said you were going to live out your life in the past, and then… well, you came back an old man and handed Sam the shield. So, my Steve—he’s gone. Who are you really?”

Steve sets his mug down carefully, fingers lingering at the handle. There’s the faintest pause. “It’s… complicated.” His voice is calm, measured, like he’s turning the idea over even as he speaks. “Time isn’t clean, Buck. Not the way we want it to be. Maybe that guy branched. Another me. He’s the one who stayed behind with her. Made different choices.” 

His eyes lift to Bucky’s, steady and soft. 

Bucky leans forward slightly, eyes narrowing. “You’re saying one guy left, but two of you get to come back?”

Steve’s smile twists like something broken. “I’m saying I tried to live without you. And I couldn’t.”

Bucky’s heart stutters. From the look on Steve’s face, he heard it too. 

“I know I made my choices. I left. I went and had a life with another person. And for a while it was good. But it never felt right. I kept thinking about you. Kept thinking about coming back to you.”  

Steve continues, weaving the past between them like a thread. “You stayed for me. Through the war. After what Zola did. After Denmark. You were off your feet for almost two days...” He scoffs at himself again. “I was an idiot, by the way, for not realizing what Zola did to you then. No one walks off a gut shot in two days.”

Steve leans back. “Again and again, you stayed. And me? I left. I let you down. That’s on me.” He tilts his head now, his eyes softening. “I guess some things never change. Here you are. All these years later, and you’re still saving people.”

It’s comforting, but not in the way Bucky expects, hearing Steve say the words he’s only heard in his wildest dreams. In reality, each memory drops like a carefully chosen stone, reminders of history only they share. He knows your history, the words says. He knows your bond. 

He knows the pieces that John will never touch.

It’s proof of who Steve is—or a damn good act of it. Either way, Bucky feels the hook dig deep.

The space between them hums. For a moment, the clatter of cups and the hiss of steam fade into nothing.

Bucky searches Steve’s face, looking for cracks in the familiar lines, for some tell that this man isn’t the one he wants him to be. He sees the changes, the effects of time. But behind it, is still the same steady warmth in Steve’s gaze, unwavering.

“I’m here now,” Steve continues. “I’m here to stay. It’s my turn to watch your back.”

Bucky forces a small smile, but there’s still a weight in his chest. 

He wants this to be his Steve. He wants it so badly. 

The knot in his gut loosens. Barely.

Steve blends in easily. 

The training floor is busy, sparring mats echoing with the smack of fists and the thud of bodies hitting foam. Steve stands at the center of it like he’s always belonged there, posture relaxed but commanding in that effortless way without even trying.

Alexei is the first to be drawn in. After a few light rounds, he claps Steve on the shoulder with a booming laugh. “The great Captain America himself! I always said you were too stubborn to die.”

Steve chuckles without missing a beat. “Takes one stubborn man to recognize another.”

Alexei beams, instantly hooked. 

“Ugh,” Yelena pulls a disgusted face from where she watches by the weights. “He’s just encouraging him.” 

“Man, this is unreal.” Bob grins beside her like a kid at a parade. “Captain America. I grew up reading his stories. I had an action figure.”

They all watch as Steve gives Alexei a modest look. His tone, gracious and humble, carries across the room. “I’m just another soldier trying to do the job. You’re the ones carrying the torch now.”

Alexei’s already halfway into a story about Soviet campaigns, basking in being taken seriously by Steve Rogers himself.

Ava sidles closer. “Of course the patriotic boys would get along smashingly,” she drawls, her sharp eyes glued to the two of them. 

Yelena crosses her arms, leaning closer to John. Under her breath, she asks, “I don’t suppose you and Bucky have a better idea of what’s going on behind America’s blue eyes?”

John doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to admit it, but the sight of Steve sliding into the team so easily makes something twist hard in his stomach. When Steve laughs at something Alexei says, his gaze narrows. But when Bucky steps onto the mats, rolling his shoulders loose, John’s stomach downright flips. 

“Come on, old man,” Bucky says. His voice is calm, but there’s a touch of challenge under it. “Show me what you got.”

Alexei laughs loud, taking a few steps back. “Ah! Finally, the real fun begins!”

Steve’s mouth curves into a smile—warm, practiced, and unsettlingly familiar. “You sure you want that, Buck?”

Bucky raises his hands. His metal fingers gleam under the lights as the third and fourth digits crook into a beckoning gesture. “Yeah. I’m sure. Just like old times, right?”

John keeps his face expressionless. This is what they planned. No one knows Steve’s moves better than Bucky. This is a test. And if this man isn’t who he claims to be, the cracks will show.

So John keeps his arms crossed as he watches, trying not to let his worry bleed onto his face.

Bucky and Steve circle each other.

The first clash is sharp and clean. A block, a counter, a strike to the ribs that meets a metal forearm halfway. A punch, parried. A sweep of the leg, dodged. Bucky snaps back into a flip to regain space, landing light on the balls of his feet with a grunt. They move like two blurs, the slap of bodies on mats filling the air as they both try to get the other in a hold, and fail. 

The hits come fast—supersoldier fast—but not landing. Every strike anticipated, every defense flawless. They move like two halves of the same rhythm. 

Alexei whistles low. 

“Jesus,” Ava mutters under her breath. 

Yelena says nothing. Her eyes are razor-sharp as she watches the fight.

Bucky feels the rhythm in his bones. He knows this dance. He knows exactly how Steve shifts his weight, how he’ll pivot before a strike. It’s muscle memory. Instinct. They move in perfect harmony. 

“They fight like twins,” Bob whispers, awe in his voice. 

Even John can’t deny it. And his heart sinks the longer he watches the fight.

Then… something changes.

Steve’s pattern shifts. His punches come sharper, the angles twist stranger, becoming less textbook and more feral. He feints with a familiar move, then twists it mid-flow into something else, forcing Bucky to stumble back a step. His footwork quickens, becoming less measured and more aggressive. A fist slices the air where Bucky’s head was a second earlier, forcing him into a desperate roll.

Bucky grits his teeth, metal arm ringing as he blocks. He adjusts, but the rhythm is slipping. This isn’t the Steve he remembers. This is something new, layered on top of the familiar.

The fight crescendos. Steve’s grunt cuts through the noise as he drives forward. A strike that lands, followed by a block. Then Steve twists, flipping into a spin that knocks Bucky off balance. His arm hooks around Bucky’s torso, the momentum yanking his feet out from under him. He slams onto the mat with a grunt, the air punched out of his lungs as Steve pins him, arm locked across his chest like immovable steel.

The silence that follows is heavy. 

They’re both catching their breath. But Bucky’s the one staring up in shock.

Steve pushes off, then extends a hand, still smiling that same easy smile. “I guess I’ve still got it.”

Bucky takes it and lets himself be pulled up. For a moment, he meets Steve’s eyes, searching for... something. All he finds is that steady warmth, unshaken.

“You’ve got a few new moves,” he says breathlessly, his voice rough. 

From the sidelines, Alexei claps like thunder, laughing too loudly.

“I want a rematch,” Bucky grumbles.

Steve laughs and claps a hand on his back. “Maybe after you’ve caught your breath, pal.”

Yelena’s still frowning. But she mutters, “Glad he’s on our team.” 

John stands rigid, arms locked, struggling to keep his face expressionless. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

And Steve sees it. Of course he does. Between Alexei’s laughter and Bob’s stuttered admiration, his gaze flicks briefly to John. There’s no malice there. Just a look. Calm and measured. As if to say, ‘This is easy for me. How about you?’

Bucky relaxes more around Steve after that sparring match.

*

It happens later, in the quiet of the lounge. The chaos of the training floor is long over. Yelena and Ava sit in their usual corner, their voices low. They notice him long before he sets foot their way. 

Steve doesn’t swagger or make an announcement. He doesn’t loom. He just holds a mug of coffee in one hand and offers a smile that’s just shy of self-deprecating. He tilts his head at the empty chair across from them. 

“Mind if I sit? I promise, no speeches.”

Yelena narrows her eyes and feigns consideration. “We’ll see about that.”

Steve chuckles but takes the seat anyway. “Caution’s smart. A guy shows up out of nowhere looking like me? You’d be reckless not to question it.”

That earns the briefest twitch of Ava’s mouth. Yelena, though, smirks openly. “You sound very reasonable for someone who might be lying through his teeth.”

“Could be. But reason and lies don’t mix for long.” Steve tilts his head, grin widening just enough. “And the funny thing about honesty… it goes a long way.”

Ava cuts in, her voice cool and deliberate. “Honesty or performance?”

The air sharpens. Steve doesn’t flinch. He lets the silence stretch, then nods once.

“Fair. If I were you, I’d wonder the same. The truth is… you don’t owe me anything. Not trust, not even your time. That’s on me to earn.” His tone softens. “However long it takes.”

Ava studies him, searching for the slip. The tell. But she finds nothing.

Yelena clicks her tongue, reclining back onto the cushions behind her. “Careful, Rogers. Talk like that, I might start liking you.”

Steve lifts his mug to his mouth. “Then I’m doing something right.”

It’s a small victory. Yelena’s smirk lingers longer than it should. Ava doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t look away either.

Steve knows he’s in.

The briefing ends with the hum of the holoscreen powering off, the mission parameters well ingrained into their heads. Around the prep bay, the team shifts into their own rhythms—checking gear, strapping on weapons, trading low chatter to stave off the monotony of the task. 

Alexei, of course, can’t help himself. He’s halfway through an animated retelling of how he single-handedly wrestled three drones during their last run, his massive hands slicing through the air like he’s reenacting a wrestling match.

Yelena sharpens a blade at the bench beside him, muttering commentary under her breath. “Ah yes, the drones. Truly your greatest foes. Small, round, with tentacles—truly very deadly robots.”

Across the room, Steve adjusts the straps of his new uniform, the star on his chest matte under the lights. He insisted on a darker palette, the navy so deep it looks almost black, the maroon red is muted to the shade of old dried blood. The white lines accenting the suit are clean and minimal. A design stripped down to its essentials.

Beside him, the new shield Valentina had made rests propped against the wall. Forged from a titanium alloy, it’s built for endurance rather than symbolism. Its finish is brushed steel, the muted shine broken only by a single dark band circling the edge. Clean and basic.

Alexei animates a highlight of his story: a so-called heroic dive from the top of a six-story building, taking out another drone on his way down. Never mind that the “dive” looked suspiciously like a drone blast dropping him flat.

Steve chimes in with perfect timing. “Sounds like the floor was the real winner there,” he says with a crooked grin.

Yelena barks a sharp laugh before she can catch herself. Then justifies it with a shrug and says, “That was good.”

Bob chuckles from where he stands in the corner. Even Ava smirks at Alexei’s expense. 

Alexei looks around the room, insisting, “It was tactical!”

Steve just smiles, letting the camaraderie take root.

And Bucky… Bucky laughs, too. A quiet, unguarded laugh. His shoulders ease and his face softens. For the first time since Steve stepped through the portal, John sees that smile that used to mean everything.

John notices. He notices too much. The way Bucky glances sideways at Steve with a look that carries decades of history. 

It tugs at something raw inside of him. In another world, another life, he remembers watching from the sidelines while Steve and Bucky loved each other. Perfect. Untouchable. It had hurt then. It hurts worse now.

John tells himself this is different. Bucky chose him. Bucky continues to choose him and reminds him of it every night when they fall into bed together. 

But looking at Steve, standing tall in that new uniform, his perfect shield by his feet, John feels the first flicker of doubt. What if history is gravity? What if Bucky falls for him all over again?

His own battered and bent shield rests against the bench. The metal still warped from the Sentry’s hands.

Now, Steve frowns down at it, his brows knitting together. “Why…” The single word is loaded as it trails off in equal parts confusion and disbelief.

Bucky immediately rolls his eyes, as he has every time the taco shield is brought up. 

Yelena says firmly to Steve, “Don’t ask.”

Behind him, Bob apologizes—again. “I said I’m sorry about that. You know you can ask for a new one—”

John’s jaw tightens and he cuts him off with a look. He slips the bent shield onto his arm, adjusts it as if the angle might make it look less pathetic. “And I told you. It still works.” 

“It’s a great shield,” John adds after he’s met with silence.

“Is it, though?” Ava croons. 

A few chuckles break out. Even Bucky huffs a laugh through his nose.

Steve doesn’t laugh. He just regards the bent disc for another moment, then nods politely, as if trying to respect the stubbornness. “If it works for you,” he says evenly, before turning away to slip his gloves on.

But John hears what isn’t said. 

He won’t give in. He didn’t then, and he definitely can’t now. If he asks for a replacement from Val, it’ll look like he’s just copying Steve. Like he’s always one step behind him.

So instead, he forces a smile, pats the bent metal, and mutters, “Still works.”

No one believes him.

When he looks up again, he catches Bucky leaning a little too close, smiling at something Steve murmurs just for him.

And though Bucky’s smile only grows when he catches John’s eyes, it still burns. 

Amid the op, John, Bucky, and Ava are pinned down on the roof of a high-rise, bullets sparking off twisted rebar and concrete around them as they take cover. The air is heavy with smoke and dust.

“West side is locked down. We don’t have a clear exit!” Ava calls through their coms, crouched low behind a column.

Yelena’s voice comes through the other side. “We’re on our way. Coming to you from the south stairwell—two minutes!”

John’s eyes dart to a rusted construction crane that still juts precariously from the edge of the building, broken cables swaying in the wind. It had taken a few blasts during the scuffle, but the length of it could still stretch across to the next tower like a bridge if he swings it. 

As long as it doesn’t snap.

“Don’t,” Bucky snaps, reading the intent in his stance before John even moves. “Just wait for backup, John.”

But John is already up and sprinting. He vaults onto the crane, boots thudding on creaking metal. His momentum swings the crane in the direction of the neighboring tower. The whole structure groans under his weight as it moves. Below, fifty stories of empty air stretch wide beneath him.

“John!” Ava’s shout cuts sharply through the air behind him. “You idiot!”

He doesn’t slow down. He charges across the remaining length of the crane, firing his weapon as he goes. The crane sways violently, bolts popping, but he makes it to the far side—dives, rolls, and opens fire, picking off their enemies with precision. Caught between his assault and the arrival of the rest of the team’s crossfire, their enemies fall in seconds.

John straightens when it’s over, chest heaving. He looks to the other side, where his team stands, waiting for the acknowledgment over the hundred or so feet of space between them. A wave, or a nod.

Instead, Bucky and Ava glare at him over the wide stretch of air. Even from his distance, he can see that Bucky’s jaw is clenched. Ava says something furiously to Yelena’s questioning expression. 

The ride back to the tower goes about as well as John expects. 

“You could’ve brought the whole damn crane down. You could have gotten yourself killed! You could have gotten civilians killed!” Bucky’s voice is sharp, shaking with anger. “You realize we don’t have a hulk to catch a goddamn crane, right?!”

John bristles, snapping back, “It worked, didn’t it?”

“You’re lucky that stunt worked,” Ava says, tearing her gloves off and slapping them down onto the seat beside her. 

“How many times are you going to pull shit like this?” Bucky seethes.

To everyone’s surprise, it’s Steve who steps in, his tone calm but firm. “No harm done, Buck. It was a dangerous move, but it worked out—”

“WHAT?” Both men turn on him at once.

“Don’t defend him—” Bucky growls.

“I don’t need you defending me,” John’s words crash over Bucky’s as his eyes flash angrily at Steve.

The tension crackles, the rest of the team watching with the weary silence of people who’ve seen this argument play out many times before.

Steve’s brow lifts. He raises both hands innocently and takes a step back. 

Later, in the operations room, Yelena leans back with her feet on the console as Steve scrolls through the mission footage, reviewing the gunfire, the dust, and John’s reckless maneuver across the crane. 

Steve settles into the chair across from her, his posture relaxed, eyes still on the screen. “John’s got guts,” he says, conversational, as if pointing out a minor fact. “No denying that. But he’s still learning the rhythm. How to move with the team. It takes a while to coordinate like that under pressure.”

Yelena tilts her head, one brow raised, letting the words hang. “Hmm,” she murmurs, voice low. “So… you’re saying the solo act isn’t always the best, huh?” Her voice drips with sarcasm.

Steve’s lips curve into a faint smile. “I’ve learned that the hard way. Capability doesn’t always equal teamwork. And sometimes people just need a little guidance.”

She chuckles dryly. “You always this observant?”

“Only when it matters,” Steve replies, his voice steady. 

Subtly, he adds, “I’m sure John will get there.”

*

Another week, another mission—this time in Eastern Europe. Val’s orders are simple: to take down a strike team led by two mutants before the situation escalates. Their intel lists two heavy targets: going by the names Arclight and Vertigo.  

By the time the team fights through militant backup and breaches the last reinforced door, the compound is already half in ruins.

Arclight strikes first. A thunderous clap of her hands splits apart the corridor, concrete shuddering as the floor cracks. 

Bucky answers with gunfire, bullets cracking against Arclight’s guard until Ava phases through the wall at her flank, catching her off guard. A clean strike from Steve’s shield slams her into the rubble, knocking her out cold. 

The air wavers. Vertigo emerges from the shadows, eyes glowing sickly green. A pulse ripples out like a brutal, invisible wave.

Bucky’s knees buckle, vision swimming. Yelena swears in Russian, slamming a hand against the wall to stay upright before losing that battle. Even John staggers, his teeth bared.  

Alexei pushes forward through the distortion. With a bellow, he tackles the mutant to the ground. Ava materializes beside them, blade crackling with energy as she shoves it to Vertigo’s throat. The mutant crumples with a strangled cry. 

“That’s two down,” John mutters, scanning the wreckage. “Mission complete.”

But Steve’s expression stays tight. His eyes sweep the upper levels, searching the shadows for what he knows is lurking. 

The air shifts. Then comes a sound like a bonesaw going through flesh. From the north end of the compound, another figure spins into view. A whirlwind of bone shards explodes outward like white gunfire. 

“Get down!” Steve barks. 

One shard cuts straight for Bucky’s chest. He doesn’t see it coming. But Steve does. He moves without hesitation, the shield comes up too slow, but his body makes up for it. The bone shard tears through his side with a wet crack.

“Steve!” Bucky shouts as he catches him, both their bodies landing heavily on the ground.

Riptide only laughs, spinning faster, another torrent of bone razors slicing through the air. The team dives for cover until Yelena and John unleash a storm of bullets. Yelena waits for an opening, then presses forward, batons sparking as she drives the mutant back with her strikes. 

John barrels in with a roar, grabs Riptide mid-spin, and crushes him against the wall, ending the fight in one final crash.

The dust settles, bullets and bone crunching under their boots as the team regroups. All eyes go to Steve, who winces only slightly as he looks down at the blood soaking through his side.

Bucky is there. “You’re hit,” he mutters, low and quiet, as he stares at the wound.

Steve shakes his head, offering a faint, lopsided smile. “It’s just a scratch.”

Behind them, Yelena’s voice cuts through, sharp and furious. “I am going to skin that bitch alive.”

Ava exhales hard. “We’re lucky it was only a scratch.”

“She can’t keep sending us in blind! How are we supposed to do the job if we can’t trust her intel?” Yelena snaps. “There were only supposed to be two powered players. Where the fuck did that last one come from?!”   

Steve doesn’t pay them any attention. His gaze is fixed on Bucky. His voice drops when he speaks. “I told you I’d have your back. Guess it was my turn to take one for you.”

Bucky’s jaw clenches, words caught somewhere between anger and guilt. He grabs Steve’s arm—firm, almost rough—and without a word, drags him back to the quinjet in silence. And in doing so, he doesn't see the smirk curving across Steve's mouth, sharp and dangerous in the shadow of victory.

The ride back is quiet. The hum of the quinjet fills the space. The team sits scattered and exhausted, eyes heavy and shoulders drooped.

Bucky sits in the seat next to Steve, eyes blank, staring at nothing. Inside, he simmers with frustration over the other man taking a hit for him—even a minor one. But underneath that, a warmth blooms, fierce and stubborn. The reminder of how much Steve cares, the lengths he would go to protect him, presses against his chest.

Across from them, John sits rigid, his posture stiff, hands resting tensely on his knees. 

Their eyes meet, a silent conversation passing between them. In John’s gaze, Bucky catches the carefully masked panic. The fear that he’s going to lose him, that Bucky’s heart will swing back to Steve. 

No words are spoken, but the look in John’s eyes and the tight set of his jaw say it all.

Steve shifts slightly and turns to him, as if sensing Bucky’s tension. 

Bucky exhales, the anger and gratitude twisting together, settling somewhere in between. Exhaustion seeps in as the adrenaline fades, and he can’t handle the weight of both men’s eyes watching him at once. 

He looks away and shuffles an inch farther from Steve, seeking a little solace. 

The rest of the ride back passes in heavy silence. 

Chapter Text

The elevator ride is smooth as it carries Bucky and John up to their level of the Watchtower. The glass panels reflect the bruises and dust from battle that still cling to their uniforms. 

John’s shield hangs awkwardly at his side. He thought he would be used to it by now. But seeing how Steve throws his shiny new disc around to take down their enemies is enough to irritate him every time he glances down at his own arm. 

Bucky keeps silent. The stiffness in his gait betrays the toll of the third mission this week Valentina had sent them on.

According to Yelena, Val hadn’t bothered with an excuse, nor did she seem to care that her intel could have gotten one of them killed earlier this week. Expect the unexpected, she said. All part of the job.

They swing open the door to Bucky’s unit, the place they both prefer. Bucky keeps his place neat, unlike John, who hardly spends any time in his own apartment at all. Now the space looks and feels lived-in, with John’s things scattered throughout.

As they step inside, a warm, synthetic voice chimes overhead. 

Welcome back, Sergeant Barnes, Captain Walker. Your vitals suggest moderate fatigue and elevated cortisol levels. Shall I recommend meditation protocols?

John freezes mid-step, his shoulders snapping rigid. His eyes dart to the ceiling. “What the hell is that?”

Bucky drops down heavily onto the couch with a dull thud and rubs a hand down his face. “It’s CLOC.”

John frowns. “It’s a clock?”

“No, John.” Bucky sighs, the sound heavy with tender exasperation. “Centrally Located Organic Computer. CLOC.”

The AI’s voice interjects smoothly:  Designation confirmed. Thank you, Sergeant Barnes.

John blinks, mouth half-open, before he scowls. “That is annoying as hell.”

Bucky drops his head back onto the cushions behind him and closes his eyes. “You’d know this if you actually paid attention during the daily, instead of scrolling on your phone. Val’s rolling it out across the building this week.”

Still standing in the entryway, John bristles. He glares up at the tiny security camera in the corner of the room, out of commission until presumably just recently. “I was checking my email for mission updates.”

“Sure,” Bucky says flatly. “Mission updates. On X.”

CLOC chimes again, helpfully: Captain Walker spent ninety-four percent of the briefing accessing non-mission-related data feeds.

Bucky’s chuckle rumbles low and deep. 

John glares at the ceiling. “Great. Even the damn building’s against me.”

Bucky slowly unlaces his boots with sharp tugs. John drops his bent shield onto the counter and then comes over to collapse onto the couch next to him, sprawling wide across it.

John breaks the silence first. “You want to order something for dinner? I’m kind of feeling Thai tonight.”

Bucky doesn’t look up. Slowly, he says, “I kind of told Steve that I’d grab Gray’s Papaya with him.”

John throws his head back with a groan. He’s already resigned himself to sharing Bucky’s time with Steve. An unspoken arrangement where some evenings Bucky will go to Steve’s apartment in the tower. They probably order pizza, rehash the same war stories, and call it bonding while John gets left out in the cold. All the things John can’t compete with, because how do you top Mr. Perfect and the Glory Days ?

Bucky always comes back. Always climbs into bed with him every night. But John thinks he’s still allowed to be a bit miffed about the situation. 

“Why does it feel like he’s taking my boyfriend out on a date?”

“We’re grabbing hot dogs, not candlelight.”

“Doesn’t matter,” John mutters, half serious, half joking. “The guy shows up, steals all the air in the room, and now he’s stealing my dinner plans too. Perfect Steve Rogers,” he mutters under his breath, pulling a face. “What can’t the guy do?”

Bucky snorts under his breath.  

John pauses, then straightens with a serious expression on his face. “Do you think Yelena likes him more than me?”

Bucky finally glances over, his brows furrowed. “Why do you care who Yelena likes more?”

John shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “Well, I already know where you stand.”

That earns him a faint huff of amusement. “Oh, really? Now you’re cracking jokes?”

John shrugs, lopsided and self-deprecating. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’m capable of humor. Dark, bitter, soul-crushing humor, but still.”

Bucky shakes his head and leans back. His expression shifts, suddenly serious. “Steve’s not perfect. You just think he is because you’re trying too hard to measure up.”

John lets out a scoff and rolls his eyes. “Aren’t I always? Story of my life—Captain America’s shadow.”

Bucky studies him for a moment, the look on his face soft and wry. “You’re not in his shadow. You just keep putting yourself there.”

John blinks. He shifts in his seat, trying to cover his discomfort with bravado. “Yeah? And how am I doing?”

Bucky’s smirk curves wider. “Better than you think.”

John pulls a face of consideration. He suddenly shifts closer on the couch, tilting his head toward Bucky. “So… what time are you meeting the old Boy Scout?”

Bucky glances down at his watch. “About an hour.”

John raises a brow. His voice dips lower. “Plenty of time, then. We could… do something else first.” His hand suggestively brushes Bucky’s thigh, casual but deliberate.

Bucky huffs a laugh but doesn’t move away. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Unbelievably efficient,” John counters as he leans in, his grin cocky and wide. His hand slowly trails upward. “I should send you off to him with my marks all over you. Fuck you so hard you’re going to be limping the whole way there, dripping with my—”

The speakers hum to life, interrupting: Human sexual references detected. Tone recorded as inappropriate.

Bucky throws his head back with laughter. 

John groans and snaps at the ceiling, “CLOC, shut the hell up.”

Acknowledged, Captain. Muting.

Bucky smirks, shaking his head. “You keep picking fights with it, one of these days it’s gonna lock you out of the building.”

“Whatever,” John mutters, already tugging Bucky up by the wrist. “Come on. Let’s not waste the little time we’ve got.”

Bucky lets himself be pulled toward the bedroom. The soft thud of their feet on the floor echoes through the quiet apartment. 

They collapse onto the bed, urgency and relief mingling into something familiar. Lips and hands meet, and for the next hour, the world outside the room ceases to exist.

From the corner of Bucky’s bedroom, CLOC’s lens silently swivels.

Tracking, recording, always watching. Even here, in what should be their private sanctuary, nothing goes unseen.

Bucky rounds the corner on one of the R&D levels of the tower. Ahead of him, he catches the familiar curve of John’s shoulders. Blond hair reflects the warm light that shines through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the hall.

Without hesitation, Bucky closes the distance and reaches out, fingers curling around a hand like he’s done so many times before. “Hey!—”

The figure stops and turns. 

Bucky freezes. He jerks his hand back, his heart stumbling for a beat as he looks up into Steve’s face.

“Steve.” Bucky blinks. Then he takes in the faint, embarrassed downturn of the other man’s expression. “Oh. Ohhh. Valentina finally got you, huh?”

Steve exhales through his nose, making a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Yeah. She said we’re going to start press soon. So…” 

Bucky glances up at the freshly cut and dyed blond hair. The new look, in combination with the casual hoodie and jeans, made him almost indistinguishable from John from behind. 

That throws him more than he wants to admit. 

And now, with the cropped blond hair, neatly trimmed beard, and the casual clothes to soften the edges, Steve looks younger—much more like the man Bucky remembers from another life.

“So much for my silver fox days.” Steve’s voice drips with dry humor.

Bucky blinks, still struggling to name the feeling that knots in his chest when confronted with the proof that the two men who matter most to him look so unnervingly alike. 

Steve’s features echo John’s in a way that tricks the mind at first glance. Yet the tilt of his smile, the line of his jaw, the calm steadiness in his eyes—it’s all Steve. 

In his silence, Steve seems to be reading his mind. His eyes narrow with mischief, a smirk tugging at his lips as he tilts his head. “Did you think I was John?”

Bucky’s cheeks warm, and he chooses not to answer. 

Steve grins, his eyes teasing. “You have a type, don’t you?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and lets the moment hang. Then he huffs a laugh and shakes it off. Deflecting, he says, “I gotta hand it to Val—you clean up pretty good, Rogers.”

Steve laughs, and together, they resume walking down the hall. 

Bucky feels the knot in his chest loosen. Still, the resemblance lingers in Bucky’s mind, stubborn as a shadow. 

*

The gym is dead quiet at five-thirty in the morning, save for the steady rhythm of John’s fists hammering into the heavy bag. The chain rattles with each strike, his breath sharp and ragged as sweat darkens the collar of his shirt. He enjoys the solitude at this hour, before the rest of the team is up. Nothing but the sound of his own pulse and the leather cracking under his fists. 

A few more rounds and he might make it back to bed before Bucky is even up. He loves morning sex when Bucky is still groggy with sleep, while he runs hot from adrenaline. 

Lost in his thoughts, John doesn’t notice the figure in the doorway watching him until the bag swings wide and his rhythm breaks.

Steve.

The man leans casually against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest. Even in workout gear, he looks too put-together. Too steady. His head slightly tilted as he studies John, his gaze appraising and unreadable.

“Hope you don’t mind if I join you.”

His instincts scream: I do mind. Instead of voicing it, John wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of a wrist and says, “It’s an open gym, pal.”

Steve’s smile is thin. “I feel like you and I got off on the wrong foot somehow,” he says as he steps into the room. 

John doesn’t bite, turning back to the bag. “Nice hair,” he mutters, before he resumes driving his knuckles into the leather. Handsome bastard, he adds in his own head.

He hopes that would be the end of the conversation. But no such luck. 

Steve’s voice follows him, calm and measured. “Come on, John. You’re Bucky’s partner. And I’m… well—the whole world knows my history with Bucky. You and me, we should try to get along. You know, for his sake.”

The words dig under John’s skin like barbed hooks. Further reminders of the significance of this man in Bucky’s life. The bigger man. He forces a laugh, but it comes out rough and hollow. “Yeah. And you always have his best interests in mind, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” Steve’s answer is immediate. “Bucky’s been through enough. He deserves something good. He deserves stability. I just want to make sure he has that.”

John’s jaw clenches. His fists freeze, and he suddenly thinks he might want to go another round—this time with Steve on the other end instead of a punching bag. 

He’s been itching to fight the guy ever since he watched him spar with Bucky. Partly so he can see how he matches up. And partly just so he can punch that smug, perfect face. But he knows how that would look to Bucky. So he holds back.

“You think I’m not those things?”

Steve doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even blink. He just looks at John with that infuriating calmness. 

“I don’t know, John. You tell me. You’ve barely said ten words to me since I got here. You always seem… tense around me. Is it because you think I’m judging you?” He lets the pause hang in the air. “Or is it because you’re judging yourself?”

The silence that follows is suffocating. John tries to swallow it down, but his throat’s dry. He hates the way Steve just stands here, calm and patient, like he’s not even trying.  

He silently curses Valentina. The new look only sharpens him, makes him look better than ever. It leaves John feeling exposed. Weak. Vulnerable. A pathetic fear claws at him, ridiculous but unstoppable—that Bucky might see this shiny, polished version of Steve, and forget John was ever in the room at all.

Ridiculous. 

John finally mutters, “You think you’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?”

Steve’s smile softens, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I know you think I’m a threat. You don’t need to worry. If there’s one thing I know about Bucky, it’s that he’s loyal. To a fault. He wouldn’t betray you. He wouldn’t leave you just because…” Steve’s voice dips, almost kind. The next words land like a knife. “... well, because history’s hard to compete with.”

John feels the heat crawl up his chest, every nerve screaming at him to swing a fist and break that smug look on Steve’s face.

But Steve is already turning. He pauses right by the door, just long enough to add, “From what I’ve heard, you’re doing better than most people thought you would.”

The heavy bag creaks on its chain. It’s the only sound in the room save for the echo of Steve’s words that hang in the air long after he’s gone. 

*

Ava doesn’t like being snuck up on. That’s supposed to be her trick.  

So she’s glad she doesn’t visibly jump when she looks up from her phone and her coffee to see John standing a mere foot away from the couch she’s sitting on. His jaw is tight, eyes hard in a way that makes her pause. 

He usually greets her with a cocky grin or a sarcastic jab. Today, though, there’s no trace of humor on his face.

“Got a minute?” He asks. But it doesn’t sound like a question.

Ava drops her phone onto the table with a clatter. “Sure. What’s going on?”

John doesn’t waste time. “You’ve been talking shit about me to Yelena?”

She blinks, caught off guard. “What?”

“You heard me.” John’s voice is sharp, edged with something dark that she’s not used to hearing from him. “I see you two always whispering. Laughing. You think I don’t notice? What exactly are you telling her? How I screw up missions? That I’m reckless, that I can’t keep up?”

Ava frowns and straightens. “If I had something to say about you, I’d say it to your face,” she says slowly. “You know that.”

“Do I?” He steps closer and uses every inch of his towering height to loom. “Because it sure feels like you’ve been running your mouth behind my back. Yelena looks at me like she already thinks I’m a joke. Reviewing mission footage, looking for places where I’ve fucked up—”

Her pulse spikes, but she’s not one to back down when forced into a corner. She stands to her full height, meeting him eye to eye. “You’re being paranoid. If you’ve got problems with Yelena, don’t put that on me.”

John scoffs, dry and humorless. “Whatever. Gonna talk shit behind my back?” He leans in, close enough that she can feel his breath. “You better watch yours.”

Ava stiffens, hands curling into fists at her sides. 

For a moment, his gaze pins her in place, unblinking. She’s used to John’s bravado, his stupid, hot-headed temper. But this—this feels different. More dangerous.

And then, just as suddenly, he eases back. His mouth curving into a thin smile.

He walks away, leaving her standing alone, chilled by the coldness of his words.

The next mission goes wrong. And there’s a storm brewing in the air when they return.

Alexei barrels through the bay doors, Yelena limp in his arms. Her head lolls against his chest, her blood painting his suit with even more red as he charges straight for the med bay. 

The double doors slide shut behind them with a whoosh , leaving the rest of the team lingering on the flight deck, raw and vibrating with nerves until it breaks all at once.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Bucky’s voice cracks like a whip, sharp enough to make everyone flinch.

He turns to John, steel eyes burning into him. “You were supposed to wait for my signal. Instead, you—” His gaze drops to the blood on the floor of the quinjet. His jaw locks so hard the muscles jump. “She could have died.”

“Don’t put this on me.” John shoots back, his voice is defensive, coming out too quick. “I was following your signal—”

“You were supposed to wait until she was clear,” Ava snaps, trembling with fury. Her voice is merciless and cold. “We all saw it. You didn’t wait!”

“I was doing my job!” John explodes, spinning on her. His voice is too loud, too defensive, and no one is buying it. “You think I wanted her to get caught in it? I was going after the target like you told me to!”

“No.” Bucky’s voice is low and sharp enough to silence the room. The air stills, and his glare doesn’t waver. “You don’t get to spin this. You ignored protocol. You ignored me . And Yelena is the one paying for it.”

John’s fists clench, then loosen, and then clench again. His voice lowers, desperate now, wobbling between anger and panic. The guilt bleeds into it now, too. “You said she was clear, Bucky. I heard you,” he says quietly. “I swear, I heard you say it.”

Ava scoffs in disbelief. 

Bucky shakes his head, slow and deliberate. The anger fades, replaced by… disappointment, maybe even pity. “I didn’t, John. I told you to hold.”

John’s face twists, searching for footing that he doesn’t have. “Look, I—I know this looks bad, I’m sorry—”

“You’re benched,” Bucky cuts him off flatly. “Until further notice, you’re off all missions.”

The words hit heavier than any blow. John’s expression goes between disbelief and devastation. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m dead serious.” Bucky’s voice stays level and calm. “This isn’t a minor blunder that we can overlook. This isn’t the first time you ignored direct orders—it’s just the first time someone got hurt because of it!”

The silence that follows is suffocating. Ava folds her arms tight. Her glare on John doesn’t soften, and there’s not an inch of kindness in her eyes. 

Steve stands off to the side, quiet through it all as he watches the exchange. His face is unreadable. That calm, steady look gnaws under John’s skin, worse than Bucky and Ava’s shouting. It makes his skin crawl, like Steve’s already decided he’s a fuck up that will never measure up to anything.

The sliding doors hiss open again. Without another word, Bucky strides inside, Ava just a few steps behind. Presumably to check on Yelena. A beat later, Steve wordlessly trails after them—though not before flashing John a look, something sharp and smug that vanishes as quickly as it came.

John stays rooted in the hangar, the silence pressing down heavily. For the first time in a long time, he feels small. And utterly, completely alone.

*

The door of his apartment swings shut behind him. John presses his back against it like he’s holding off an attack. He barely makes it over to the couch before his legs give out. He sits heavily, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, and he drags both palms achingly slow down his own face. 

Now, alone in his apartment where he so rarely spends his time, the silence presses in on him. Choking him like a hand around his throat. He still hears Bucky’s voice echoing in his head: You’re benched.

Benched. Like he’s a rookie who can’t be trusted. Like he’s a liability instead of a soldier.

He’s been called worse. He’s been dragged through the mud before, but this time it cuts deeper—because it came from Bucky.

His fists tighten until the veins stand out against his skin. “Damn it,” he mutters, but the sound comes out cracked and unsteady. He raps his knuckles against his temples as the scenes play out over and over—the image of Yelena falling, the sound of Alexei’s roar as he carried her off, the look on Bucky’s face when he said ‘ you ignored me’ —carving him open.

John tips his head back, staring up at the ceiling. He tells himself it wasn’t his fault, but it feels hollow. He tells himself that he heard the order, that Bucky said Yelena was clear. 

But now… the doubts creep in. 

And he can’t shake it.

You keep fucking up. You’re not good enough. You never were. That’s what they all think. That’s what Bucky thinks.

His breath hitches. “You’re screwing it up again,” John mutters at the empty room, his voice cracking. “You’re losing it. He’s halfway out the door—”

An uglier fear: Out the door and back to Steve.

Steve, standing quietly in the corner. Steve, with his calm eyes, and the way the others look at him like he’s gravity itself, pulling them into his orbit. Steve, slipping into the team as if he’d been there all along, like John was only ever a placeholder for him. For the team. For Bucky.

John rubs his hands over his face, trying to hold himself together. His breath comes fast and shallow as panic bubbles under his ribs. What if Bucky doesn’t trust him anymore? What if Bucky looks at Steve and realizes John was only just a piss poor substitute all along?

“Stop it,” John mutters to himself, forcing his eyes shut. His nails dig crescents into his palms. But the more he tries to shut it out, the louder it gets: You’re not enough. You’ve never been enough. Not for the team, and not for him.

John chokes on a bitter laugh that breaks into something closer to a sob. His throat burns as he presses his hands to his face, ashamed of the hot sting at the corners of his eyes. 

He’s going to leave you. He’s going to leave you for him.

The dangerous, restless energy burns through his limbs. But there’s nowhere for it to go. There’s nothing to fight. No enemy to attack. Only the four walls of the room and himself.

And then—a knock at the door cuts through his spiraling thoughts.

John stiffens and wipes at his face quickly with the heel of his hand. The knock comes again, still soft, but maybe a bit impatient now.

He thinks for a second that it’s Bucky, he hopes that it’s Bucky—

“It’s me,” a voice calls through the door. 

Bob.

John draws a shaky breath and drags himself up to open the door. Bob stands behind it, hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie. He’s dressed in sweats, like usual.

Bob is the one who always stays behind. The one who makes sure there’s hot food waiting when they get back, usually a delivery order from their steady rotation of places. He’s the one who patches up whatever minor cuts and bruises Yelena picks up out there.

This time, the injuries are not so minor. 

Now, Bob shifts uncomfortably outside his door. “Hi,” he says with an awkward wave. 

“Hi,” John grumbles in response.

“Bucky… may have suggested that I check on you.” Bob’s voice is quiet, careful.

John swallows hard, the words hitting him like a balm and a bruise. A small kindness from Bucky. Proof that he hasn’t written him off completely. But the thought twists in his chest anyway.

“He should have done it himself then,” John mutters, his voice low and rough.

Bob studies him for a beat, not flinching at the edge in his tone. He just shrugs. “Maybe he figured you needed someone who hasn’t yelled at you in the last twenty-four hours.”

John scoffs. His throat tightens, and his anger wobbles into something more fragile. Then he sighs and steps back, suddenly exhausted and thankful for the company. 

So Bob steps inside and closes the door behind him. He carefully follows John into the living room.

“I don’t really know the details of what happened,” Bob says to start. “They didn’t tell me. I just kind of figured you shouldn’t be sitting here alone in it.”

John leans back against the couch cushions and stares at the ceiling, unable to meet his eyes. Softly, hesitantly, he asks, “How is she?” 

“She’ll be alright. They’re already patching her up in the healing pod. And you know Yelena’s stubborn as hell. I’m sure she’s gonna have some choice words for you when she wakes up though.”

John squeezes his eyes shut, his chest tightening. “Yeah. I guess I can’t blame her.”

“Yelena’s not as scary as she seems,” Bob says. And then he adds dryly, “I mean, it only really sucks this much when you get in trouble and you’re sleeping with the boss.”

John’s head snaps up and he pulls a face. “Bucky’s not my boss.”

“Sure, pal. Keep telling yourself that.”

For a moment, the tension breaks. But the levity dies quick, and the panic and self-doubt creep in again. He drags his hands through his hair right as it all spills out of him. 

“It just feels like Bucky doesn’t even want me here right now. Like I’m just… screwing everything up again. And Steve—” John cuts himself off, his jaw clenching tight. “Steve’s perfect. It feels like he’s always watching me, waiting for me to fall on my face. Waiting for me to fuck up, so he can swoop in like the perfect hero he is.”

He buries his face in both palms, drowning in his own self-pity.

Bob watches him spin out without interrupting. Then he simply says, “You’re still here though, aren’t you?”

John stops. He pauses, and blinks at him.

“Yelena will be fine. Bucky will cool off. You’ll get another shot. Just don’t tear yourself apart before then.”

“You think they’ll give me another chance?” John says quietly.

“Of course. You’re part of the team.” Bob says easily. Then he adds, “Bucky trusts you. He trusts you with his life.”

John frowns, not really knowing how to answer the nonchalance. “Thanks, Bob.”

Bob leans back in his chair as he ponders. “You know, when Steve first showed up, I was kind of taken with him, living legend and all that. But he’s kind of… standoffish.”

John’s brows pull together.

“He doesn’t really say much to me,” Bob continues casually. “Not like he does with the others, you know? It’s almost like… he goes out of his way to keep his distance.”

John frowns, suddenly unsettled. “He does? From you?”

“Yeah. Like whenever we’re alone, he makes some excuse to leave the room.” Bob shrugs like it doesn’t matter. “I guess I’m too boring for Captain America.” 

John shifts in his seat, suddenly uneasy. Something about that doesn’t sit right with him, though he can’t put his finger on it. Bob isn’t exactly hard to get along with. Hell, he’s the chillest guy in the building. If Steve is keeping his distance from him, it’s not because Bob is boring. 

He tells himself it shouldn’t matter, that he doesn’t care what Steve does or doesn’t do. But suspicion burrows under his skin. There is one reason that someone would want to avoid Bob. A big one. 

And if that’s it, then what the hell is Steve hiding?

*

Bucky sits alone in the dim light of the ops room.

“CLOC, pull the mission logs from today. Video and audio. Ten minutes before exfiltration.”

The AI’s calm voice answers immediately: Compiling requested data, Sergeant Barnes.

The screens flicker to life. Footage queues up across the displays. Bucky leans forward in his chair, eyes fixed on the footage, watching the mission unfold in cold, time-stamped clarity.

He sees Yelena sprinting across the catwalk. Hears the crackle of gunfire below. On another screen, he catches John’s side, crouched behind a pillar. The detonator in his hands. 

Bucky’s jaw works, muscles tightening, waiting for the moment he remembers.

He hears his own voice over the comms, sharp and unambiguous: “Hold position, Walker. We’re not in the clear.”

A beat of silence.

Then John’s voice, low and hard: “Got it. Moving on target.”

The footage jolts—boots pounding on metal, and the camera jerks as an explosion ripples through the air. Yelena’s sharp cry cuts through the noise as she’s thrown hard, followed by the panicked shouts that follow.

Bucky flinches.

He jabs a finger on the console and the feed sputters to a stop, frozen on Yelena’s fall. Silence swallows the room, broken only by his slow, steady breathing.

He drags a hand down his face, eyes closing. His chest aches, not just with anger, but with something heavier and far more tired.

The evidence is there, clear and undeniable.

He gave an order. And John had ignored him.

Bucky leans back in his chair as he exhales slowly, the sound weighted like a sigh. His shoulders sag, all the fire and fury drained, leaving only a dull heaviness. And disappointment.

“Damn it, John,” he mutters to the empty room.

He wanted to believe him. 

But the logs don’t lie.

Bucky returns to an empty apartment. 

The place is dim, washed in the faint glow of the city through the wide windows in his living room. He drifts towards them, pressing his forehead to the cool glass. Below, New York churns with life, but it feels distant. 

The anger has long burned out, leaving behind only a quiet, hollow ache. He doesn’t know what to say to John anymore. And he doesn’t want to yell anymore. So he stands by the window, bathed in the light of the city. He’s resigned to being alone tonight. 

A knock breaks the silence. Bucky frowns, turning away from the city. John wouldn’t usually knock. But tonight is not a usual night. 

When he opens the door, Steve stands behind it. No uniform, just a plain shirt and jeans, hands shoved into his pockets like he’s nervous.

“Hey,” Steve says quietly. “Can I come in?”

Bucky studies him for a beat. “I don’t think I’ll be great company tonight.” But he steps back anyway, letting Steve follow him inside. 

Steve’s presence fills the space immediately, too big for the room, too familiar in ways that unsettle Bucky more than he’d like.

“You okay?”

Bucky shrugs and silently retreats back to the window as Steve settles somewhere behind him. The silence stretches until Steve breaks it, his voice softer than Bucky expects.

“I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

“For not being here.” The words come out simple, but heavy. Steve’s gaze doesn’t waver. “For letting you down when you needed me. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, I tried to do the right thing, but… I kept letting you down.”

Bucky exhales, long and slow. He shakes his head, too tired for this talk. “You made your choice. You don’t need to—”

“I do,” Steve cuts in. He steps closer. In the glass, his reflection looks raw, stripped of the easy steadiness he usually wears. “I regret it, Buck. Every day. I should’ve been here, by your side. Instead, you had to fight your demons alone. And I don’t want to fail you again. I just want to be here for you. With you.”

Bucky looks down at his metal hand, flexing the fingers, the faint whir of servos the only sound for a moment. He really doesn’t want to have this conversation right now. Not when his mind is still on John. “You’re here now, Steve,” he mutters. “It’s fine.”

Steve takes the answer quietly, then steps forward like it’s not enough. “I want a chance to do better this time. To be what I should’ve been. If you’ll let me.”

The apartment goes still, the hum of the city muffled through glass and walls. Bucky’s throat tightens, though he keeps his expression carefully blank.

Something in him softens, just for a beat. He finally turns away from the window to look his oldest friend in the eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you and me never had the chance we deserved. We never got to see if we could’ve been something more. When I lost you, I—” Steve abruptly stops. Then tries again. “This is why I came back. To give us another shot. A real one.” 

Bucky stares at him, chest aching with a familiar pull that’s both comforting and so very dangerous. He knows that look in Steve’s eyes—the steady, unshakable kind of devotion that once anchored him through hell.

When Steve made his choice to stay back in time, Bucky was in no condition to offer himself as an option. And when the dust settled, and Steve was gone, Bucky spent years wondering, doubting, never certain if what he felt was ever returned. Now, he finally has his answer. It’s a comfort, a relief… tangled with the cruel weight of it coming too late.

John’s face flickers in his mind. John’s messy, imperfect brand of loyalty. The stubbornness that makes Bucky furious, yet makes him feel so humanly alive beside him. The man who, against all odds, he’s chosen.

Bucky’s voice is rough when it comes out. “You can’t just walk back in after five years and expect me to drop everything for you. I’m—I’m with John, you know that.”

Steve’s jaw tenses. “I love you. I’ve loved you my whole life. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Bucky closes his eyes for a moment, torn between the weight of history and the fragile, imperfect future he’s building now. 

When he doesn’t answer, Steve’s expression falters. “I told you I’d have your back, and I meant it,” he says carefully. “Which is why I need to say this, even if you don’t want to hear it.”

Bucky frowns, wary now. “Say what?”

Steve’s gaze holds steady. “John’s not good for you.”

Bucky straightens, the muscles in his jaw tightening. “That’s not for you to decide.”

“I know how it sounds,” Steve says, hands open in a show of peace. “But I’ve seen the way he acts. He’s reckless. He’s defensive. He doesn’t listen. And now Yelena’s in the med bay because of it.”

Bucky scoffs. “You think I don’t know all that? I was the one giving the damn order. But you don’t know him like I do, and you’re not writing him off after one bad mission—”

“I’m not writing him off.” Steve’s voice sharpens. “I’m just saying… Someone’s already gotten hurt. Next time, it could be you. And I can’t just sit back and watch that happen.” 

He takes another step closer. “It’s not just this mission. It’s who he is. He doesn’t know how to put the team first. And you…” His voice drops, almost pleading. “You’re the one cleaning up the mess.”

“Don’t.” The word cuts like steel. “Don’t talk like you know him. John’s got his faults, but he’s trying. He’s learning. He’s here.”

“So am I.” Steve’s voice hardens. “He’s dragging you down. Putting you in danger because he can’t get out of his own way.” He lets the words hang in the air, before adding, “He threatened me, Buck. Did you know that?”

Bucky’s brow pulls together. “What?”

“He said he didn’t trust me. Told me to stay away from you. Said that if I made a move, he’d make me regret it. That’s not a partner, that’s paranoia. He sees enemies everywhere. Even in me.”

Bucky shakes his head. “John’s… intense. He’s got his flaws, yeah. But he wouldn’t…” He stops. That kind of rash, impulsive behavior kind of does sound like John.

“He wouldn’t hurt you,” Bucky mutters. Then a beat… “Not badly.”

“No,” Steve says quietly. “Maybe not. But he’s going to get you killed one day. Because he doesn’t think before he acts. Because he doesn’t listen. And because you’ll follow him down with blind loyalty.”

Bucky meets Steve’s eyes with hard steel in his glare. “You don’t know him like I do. You haven’t seen him fight for this team. For me. He’s not perfect, but he doesn’t quit. And I’ll take that over perfect any day.”

The apartment is thick with silence. The low hum of the tower’s systems feels deafening.

Slowly, Steve tilts his head, the angle sharp and unnatural. Like a mask slipping out of place. “I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Not after we finally found our way back to each other.”

Bucky stiffens. He looks away first, uncomfortable. “Not your call to make.”

The words land like a wall between them. Steve doesn’t push further. He just wears that calm, steady look that feels more predatory than comforting.

Bucky’s chest tightens, wanting to break the silence. “I love him, Steve.”

“That’s the problem.” Steve’s voice has dropped to a low growl. “And you’ll forgive him anything. Even when he doesn’t deserve it.” 

Bucky doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“And what about me?”

“What about you?” Bucky echoes.

“I love you, too. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

For a moment, Bucky just stares, blank, unable to reconcile how a profession of love could sound so cold and empty all at once. His throat works. “I—I appreciate that, Steve. But I—”

Bucky breaks off, shutting his eyes, turning away. Too tired to keep fighting. He doesn’t want to argue anymore—not about John, not with Steve. His skull pounds from the mission’s aftermath, with worry for Yelena, and the weight of the mess with John.

And now Steve. Another weight on his chest when he can barely breathe. All he wants in this moment is space—room enough to think.

“I can’t do this right now,” he finally says softly. “I think you should go.”

Steve’s gaze flickers, something unreadable behind it. “Bucky—”

“No.” Bucky’s tone leaves no room. He forces himself to meet Steve’s eyes. “I appreciate you coming by. And thank you for your… concern. But you should really go.”

For a long moment, Steve doesn’t move. Something in his eyes hardens, cold and unexpected. A beat later, his expression smooths into reluctant acceptance. He gives a single, quiet nod and turns, stepping toward the door.

“Alright,” Steve says softly, his hand lingering on the door handle. “You know I just want you safe.”

“Yeah,” Bucky mutters, his gaze fixed on a spot on the floor. “I’ll handle it.”

“Buck. I love you.”

Bucky hesitates. “I love you, too.”

It tastes wrong on his tongue, a chill bleeding into his veins the moment the words leave his mouth. A nameless dread coils in him, and he doesn’t know why the words feel so wrong spoken to this man. 

When the door clicks shut behind Steve, Bucky exhales hard, his shoulders sagging. He takes a breath. His head clears, just slightly, enough to remind him of what matters.

He can’t drown in Steve’s words, replaying them over and over until they hollow him out. John isn’t perfect, and right now things between them are strained and broken. But Bucky loves him. And that love still matters, even if there’s a mess to fix before they can find their footing again.

John’s insecurities about Steve had driven a wedge between them long before the man walked back into their lives. And now, with Steve’s confession hanging in the air… Bucky doesn’t even know where to begin. 

*

In the darkness of the room, the laptop’s glow is the only light that shines. CLOC’s feed flashes across the screen, showing Bucky alone in his apartment, moving methodically, unaware he’s being watched. Every motion is magnified in Steve’s eyes—the flick of his wrist as he places dirty mugs in the sink, the dip of his head as he picks up a discarded hoodie from a chair—like a map he can memorize and own. 

Steve doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even breathe properly. His chest hitches, tight and shallow, in a caged rhythm. Bucky’s movements look ordinary, yet every mundane gesture sends a spike of adrenaline through him—anger, frustration, and obsession tangled into one. 

A strangled sound tears itself from Steve’s throat. His fist lashes out before he even realizes it, smashing through the side table next to him in a splintering crash, scattering everything to the floor.  

The laptop wobbles, still showing Bucky’s movements in cold, muted light.

“Wrong,” Steve whispers to the room. “You’re wrong. He’s wrong for you.”

His hands tremble on the desk. His movements are jagged, exaggerated, as though the walls are closing in, conspiring against him. He mutters under his breath—snatches of accusations and fevered promises—but always circling back to the same thought.

“He’s not good enough for you. He’ll never be good enough. Why can’t you see that, Buck?”

Steve shakes, but forces his gaze to stay on the screen, burning into Bucky’s image as the man walks into the bedroom. CLOC’s feed automatically switches to the other camera for him, so not a single moment is missed. 

The glow of the screen casts his face in a mix of light and shadow that makes him look unhinged as he continues to shake his head furiously. “You’ll thank me when he’s gone. You’ll thank me when I fix this for you, I swear.”

The words come quicker now, tumbling out in a broken rhythm.

“I came back for you. I came back, and you’re wasting yourself on him.” His lips curl into a snarl, dripping with feverish conviction as he mutters, “But I’ll fix it. I’ll fix everything. You’ll see… You’ll see.”

He nods, and then, like a switch has been flipped, Steve goes perfectly still. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, his face lost to the shadows. Each breath returns to a slow, carefully measured rhythm. Every second that passes is spent waiting and planning. 

His thoughts drift to Bucky, to John, and to the space between them that he planted in the cracks and carefully nurtured. He knows what he has to do now. And when the time comes, the obstacle will be gone, leaving only a hollow space behind. That’s where Steve will step in. The partner who understands Bucky better than anyone. He’ll remind him of their bond that never truly broke. Piece by piece, he’ll rebuild what John never could. 

In the end, no one will question it. Not the team. Not Bucky. Especially not Bucky. Because when the dust settles, he’ll make sure he’s the only one standing at Bucky’s side.

He can be patient until then. 

Steve sits unmoving, the laptop’s pale glow carving his face into something sharp and unnatural. The feed plays on, soundless now. He watches Bucky strip down to boxer briefs and climb into bed. His movements are heavy, shoulders bowed. He watches him curl onto his side. He watches him toss and turn, restless into the night.

Steve doesn’t blink. He watches every shift, every sigh, every falter in the man’s breathing as he stares blankly at the ceiling. 

Hours stretch into the night, and still, Steve watches.

When he finally rises, it’s with a steady calm. He crosses the room, kneels in the back of his closet, and draws out a metal case hidden behind a panel of the wall. He flips open the clasps. Inside, nestled in foam, lies a photostatic mask, its hexagonal surface glimmering faintly in the dark. 

Steve changes the settings on the device, moving on from the last identity—the voice that had fooled John in the field. When he lifts the mask carefully, he watches as the new image shimmers across the honeycomb surface. Then he straightens, and with the mask in hand, he turns to leave.

The lock disengages with a quiet click before he even reaches for it. Steve slips into Bucky’s apartment like a shadow. He pauses just outside the bedroom door. Bucky’s breathing is uneven. He’s still awake. Still restless. Steve’s lips press thin, something dark and haunting flashing in his eyes.

He slides the mask into place, feels it hum against his skin as it reshapes around him. 

The door opens, and Steve slips inside.

Bucky lies curled on the bed, his back to the door. His body tenses when the mattress dips under Steve’s weight. Slowly, carefully, Steve climbs in behind him, fitting himself into the shape of John’s absence.

An arm slips around Bucky’s waist. The other man stiffens at first, then turns to look behind him. “John?”

Steve lowers his mouth close to Bucky’s ear and answers in John’s voice, soft and steady. “I couldn’t sleep.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then finally, Bucky exhales. His body eases back into the embrace. He pulls the arm tighter around him, the tension bleeding away as sleep creeps in at last.

Steve holds him close, eyes unblinking. The mask hums faint and warm against his skin, but he doesn’t notice. All that matters is the weight in his arms. The man who has always been his—the man he fought worlds to get back to—even if he doesn’t know it yet.

*

Daylight filters through the window. Bucky stirs, blinking the sleep from his eyes. He rolls onto his back and finds the spot beside him empty. His brow creases. His hand drifts across the sheets. Still warm.

John must’ve slipped away early again. Probably couldn’t sleep either, not with everything going on between them.

The thought settles something in Bucky’s chest. John was here last night. He’s trying. 

With a slow breath, Bucky lets himself believe that everything will be alright.

Chapter Text

The med bay is quiet except for the click-click-click of the widescreen cycling through endless channels and the steady crunch of potato chips. Yelena reclines against a stack of pillows, remote in one hand, the other buried in a half-empty bag of chips. She flips from a cooking show to the news, to a cartoon, then a vintage movie, her scowl deepening with every channel.

“This place has a thousand channels and nothing worth watching,” she grumbles, not even looking over when Bucky steps inside. “If I don’t die from the broken bones and blood loss, boredom will surely finish me off.”

Bucky drops into a chair and ignores the huff she gives when he props his feet up on the edge of her bed. “Nice to see your sense of humor is intact.”

“Humor?” Yelena pauses her channel surfing and turns to him with a scowl. “I’m genuinely suffering.”

Sleek medical panels hover at her bedside, their soft glow tracking vitals while silently speeding along her recovery. The worst of her injuries are already patched—the broken leg, punctured lung, and liver lacerations—yet another advantage of the tower’s medical tech that’s decades ahead of anything a hospital could have done for them. She’ll be on her feet in a couple of days, the doctors say. 

“Don’t you look like hell,” Yelena mutters, her voice scratchy and dry as ever.

“You should see the other guy.”

Her mouth twists. “You mean John?”

The humor doesn’t land. Bucky doesn’t answer right away, just leans back in the chair, elbows on the armrests, carefully avoiding her eyes. The silence stretches until Yelena fills it.

“Ava said you tore him a new one.”

A stab of guilt hits him in the chest before he’s able to force it down. Bucky lets another beat pass. “How are you doing?” He asks quietly.

Yelena snorts. “I’ll live. Alexei won’t stop hovering. He thinks I’ll run out of the room if he leaves me alone for more than five minutes. I finally convinced him to take a fucking shower, he smelled so bad. He’s driving me crazy. He’s acting like a—”

“Like a father?”

Their eyes meet, and a crooked smile tugs at the corner of her mouth before she can stop it.

“Ava’s the opposite. Pretends she isn’t worried. Then she corners me to complain about John.” She shakes her head and turns back to the sitcom that plays on the screen, unimpressed. “She says his temper makes him sloppy. His pride too. At least Bob has the right idea. Brings me snacks, waits on me hand and foot. I might milk this injury thing a little longer.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Bucky says. After a pause, his voice drops quieter. “John hasn’t shown his face, huh?”

The remote stills mid-air. Yelena’s eyes narrow as they cut to him.

“He’s probably scared of you,” Bucky admits.

Her laugh comes sharp and humorless. “Good,” she says, leaning back into the pillows as she reaches into the bag for another chip. “He should be.”

“It could have been worse,” Bucky mutters under his breath. That’s not what Yelena needs to hear right now, but it’s the only thing he can think about. 

“What the hell happened out there?” Yelena asks, her tone sharp as barbs. “Ava told me, but… it doesn’t make any sense. She said it was his fault, that he screwed up. Got a little trigger-happy?”

Bucky exhales hard, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I don’t know. The whole thing feels… off. It doesn’t add up. It’s like I said one thing, and he heard another.” His jaw tightens, and his head drops. “But I’m not gonna defend him. Not this time.”

He forces out another breath. “I told him he’s benched. No more missions. For now.”

Yelena stares. “What?”

“You could have died, Yelena. Whatever’s going on with him out there—it doesn’t work. He’s putting the team in danger.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then nods, slow and careful. “You’re not the only one thinking that,” she says, quieter this time. “Ava’s said things. In private.”

Bucky frowns, wary. “What kind of things?”

Yelena hesitates, like she’s not sure if she should tell him. “At first she was… concerned. She said he was acting erratic, making bad calls in the field, and then getting defensive about it. Losing his temper, you know?” She shifts against her pillows, her eyes never wavering. “But then she said he started getting paranoid. That he even threatened her. Which sounds crazy, right?” 

Bucky stills. Crazy. Except Steve said the same thing.  

He leans back, silent, the weight of it sinking in. This isn’t the John he knows, but he has to be impartial about it. So he doesn’t argue, doesn’t try to explain John’s actions away. He just breathes, slow and heavy as he tries to make it make sense in his head.

The only sound between them is the steady hum of the machines and the mindless chatter of the TV. Neither says what they’re both thinking—that John’s mistakes aren’t isolated, and they’re only getting harder to ignore.

Bucky’s fidgeting gets worse until he finally pulls out his phone. His thumb immediately swipes to his messages and to his thread with John.

At the bottom sits the text he sent this morning, after he woke up to an empty bed and warm sheets next to him: Hey, can we talk?

He hadn’t noticed until now, too tied up with duties, with Yelena laid out in the med bay. But now his eyes catch on the small red icon beside the message and the text beneath it that glares at him mockingly: Not delivered.

His brows knit, a faint frown tugging at his mouth. For a moment, he only stares, unease crawling under his skin. 

He hadn’t even realized.

Before he can consider sending another message, CLOC’s voice suddenly blares overhead, edged with a calm urgency that only an AI could manage: Multiple incidents detected in the building. Casualties found in the combat simulation room and the 40th-level observation deck, requiring immediate assistance.

Bucky and Yelena trade sharp looks, confusion quickly flashing into panic. Before either of them can move, the door bangs open so hard it rattles on its hinges. Bob barrels inside, wide-eyed and breathless with fear. 

“It’s Ava—something happened! She—she needs help!” His words tumble out in a rush, his voice cracked and pitched high with alarm. He jerks his head toward the hall. “Observation deck! Something’s happened! Come on! Now!”

He’s barely coherent, but the terror on his face is enough to get them moving.

Yelena rips the wires from her arms and chest, ignoring the machines’ protests as alarms flare. She shoves herself upright, wincing but moving fast enough. Bucky’s already breaking into a run, following Bob’s lead through the hallways and to the elevators. 

They burst out onto the observation deck—and freeze.

Ava lies sprawled on her front on the sleek floor, her mask still engaged, face hidden. Her body flickers and distorts, phasing in and out of solidity with jagged unpredictability. One second her arm is solid, the next it disappears before their eyes, leaving empty air. A leg follows, then half her torso, each disappearance and reappearance stuttering in sickly waves and warbles.

Her whole form flickers and warps, glitching against itself as if it can’t decide whether to stay here or slip away entirely. 

Bucky stops dead, his breath catching in his throat. Yelena’s hand clamps around his arm, her own face pale, as if to stop him from moving forward to touch her. Bob hovers uselessly beside them, wringing his hands.

“I—I felt something while I was restocking in the lounge. It was like a wave of quantum energy, and—and then I felt her pain. I came up here and I just found her like this.”

None of them moves any closer. 

They stare in shock, helpless, as Ava’s gasps filter through her mask, her body fighting itself with every uncontrolled phase.

“What do we do?” Bob asks, panic sharpening his voice. “How do we help her?”

They don’t know the answer. 

Bucky and Yelena slowly edge forward, as if one wrong move might make her phase out of existence entirely. Ava’s form continues to glitch in and out, her breath ragged and strained, each one sending tremors through her unstable form.

Yelena notices it first—a sputtering spark at the base of Ava’s neck, under the hood, right where the quantum regulator sits. The indicator lights are dark. Dead. The piece that powers the suit, keeps her anchored, and lets her phase without slipping away entirely… has failed.

“Her suit’s busted,” Yelena says quickly as she crouches low. “How the fuck do we get her to stop… doing that?”

Bucky drops to one knee beside her, steady hands already moving toward the regulator. A spark bites at his fingers when they brush over the unit. The casing shifts easily under his touch, as if a few of the screws holding it together were missing.

He lifts the cover, and inside, he sees exposed wires, clipped with surgical precision.

Ava convulses, half her torso vanishing before snapping violently back into place. Bucky grimaces, his heart hammering. He doesn’t know her tech like she does, but he knows how to connect wires back into place. 

“Hold on,” Bucky mutters, pressing a palm against the flickering regulator. He grips the ends of the wires, stripping off pieces of rubber with vibranium fingers, then twists the stripped pieces together, pinching them into a crude knot of metal—ugly, but enough to force the current to flow again.

Sparks spit and burn his flesh fingers. Ava jerks again, phasing in and out with sickening jolts.

Bucky curses under his breath as the regulator shudders, and then catches. The lights blink back on in an uneven glow. Ava slams fully into solid form, collapsing onto the floor in a shaking heap. Her mask retracts, revealing her pale, sweat-slicked face as she gasps for air. 

The suit hums weakly. 

Bucky drops back onto the ground, but the relief he feels is short-lived, knowing that the damage wasn’t random. Those wires were clipped clean, he saw it plain as day. Someone had gotten inside her suit, tampered with it, and left it to fail the moment Ava used her abilities. 

Whoever did it knew exactly what would happen. They knew it could tear her apart until there was nothing left to hold onto. The thought makes Bucky’s blood run cold. 

“Ava?” Yelena’s voice is tight with panic. She eases Ava onto her back carefully, terrified that even the smallest jolt might send her body flickering again. Ava’s eyes are shut, her breathing ragged, her face ghostly pale. She’s out cold. Spent from the pain, from fighting to stay whole.

“We—we need to get her to the med bay,” Yelena stammers, her grip firm as though sheer willpower could anchor Ava in place.

Bucky nods and moves to help. Then he freezes as he remembers CLOC’s earlier warning. There were multiple incidents.

“CLOC, what’s going on in the simulation room?”

The AI’s voice cuts through the room: Captain Rogers has been shot. Medical assistance is needed immediately.

Bucky goes white. The words don’t compute for a moment, echoing hollow in his head. For a moment, he can’t breathe. 

Yelena’s arms tighten around Ava, her eyes wide and blazing. “What the fuck is going on?”

Bucky scans the observation deck, searching for answers, until his gaze falls on CLOC’s camera above—its lens shattered by a single, precise bullet. The sight curdles his stomach.  

“I don’t know,” Bucky mutters, his voice low and grim as steel. “But I’m going to find out.” His eyes turn to Yelena and Bob, to Ava slumped in her arms. “Get her to medical. Don’t let her out of your sight. And find Alexei.”

“And you?” Yelena demands.

Bucky’s jaw hardens. “I’m going to Steve.”

The elevator lurches down, the floor numbers dropping too slowly, every second dragging like a weight on his chest. CLOC’s words replay in his head: Captain Rogers has been shot. By the time the doors slide open on the simulation level, Bucky’s ears are full of the sound of his own heart pounding.

When he steps through the doors, the room inside is a wreck. Panels hang half-torn from the walls, as if hit with tremendous force. Equipment and machinery show clear signs of damage. Glass panels are shattered all around. All clear evidence of a fight. 

And then Bucky sees him.

Steve is standing against the wall, one hand braced on it, holding himself up. The other hand pressed to his side, where blood darkens his shirt. It’s not gushing—but still steady enough to paint his hands red. His chest heaves, each breath ragged and sharp.

“Steve!”

Bucky is across the room in seconds, catching him when he stumbles on his feet. His eyes sweep the room, over the debris, the overturned equipment, but there’s no one else. Just Steve, with bruises shining fresh across his jaw and cheeks. Blood trickles down from his nose and a cut on his brow. He's battered but alive. Relief hits hard, then twists into anger.

Steve looks up, breath rasping. “Buck…” 

“Are you okay?”

Steve grunts, trying to shift upright, but his body betrays him, and he lets out a muffled groan of pain.

Bucky peels his hand away to check the wound himself. It’s bad, but not fatal. Enough to stagger him. He presses Steve’s hand back against his side, his own palm locking over it, anchoring him with steady pressure. 

“What the hell happened?”

Steve hesitantly meets his gaze. They’re only inches apart now, bodies pressed close as Bucky takes some of his weight. The proximity is sharp, almost dizzying. Fragments of their conversation from last night flash into his head. I love you. I’ve loved you my whole life—this man had said to him. Bucky swallows and pushes it down. 

“Steve, what the hell happened here?!” 

Steve’s breath shudders as he leans back against the wall behind him. His hand presses stubbornly to his side, trying to keep the bleeding in check. His eyes dart side to side, as if someone might barge in at any moment. 

Bucky’s brows furrow as the other man only shakes his head, still oddly silent. “Steve, tell me! Who did this to you?”

“Bucky…” Steve’s voice drops to a hoarse whisper, chilling in its calm. “It was John.”

The words hit like ice through Bucky’s veins, sharp enough to make him flinch. Time seems to stutter to a stop, the chaos of the room fading around the edges. John. His John. His throat tightens, a bitter taste rising in his mouth—

No. No, John wouldn’t do this, John wouldn’t hurt Steve. They wouldn't fight each other. But in the pit of his stomach, the doubts start to take shape. 

Bucky shoves the thoughts aside. There’s no space for them, not here, not now. He needs Steve stable, alive. He needs Ava to be okay and Yelena at a hundred percent.

Bucky slips an arm under him, bracing him against his shoulder as he takes his weight. “Come on. Med bay, now. The others are already there.”

Steve makes a sound of protest, his body tensing. But his movements are sluggish, his strength fading fast.

They move together, step by step, out of the wreckage and back out into the sterile hallway.

Bucky’s jaw tightens, his eyes fixed on the elevator doors ahead. “You’re going to talk as soon as we get you patched up.” 

Steve nods weakly, clinging to him, and Bucky doesn’t let go.

Dread coils in his gut, a sick inkling that he’s somehow already lost one of the men he cares about most. 

He’s not about to lose the other. 

*

The med bay feels colder than usual. Ava lies still on the nearest bed, wires and monitors trailing from her body, as her chest rises in shallow, uneven breaths. The faint whir of machines marks the only sign she’s holding on. The doctors don’t know if she’ll wake soon—or at all.

Yelena sits perched at her bedside, arms crossed tight. Her eyes are fixed on Ava’s face like she can will her back to consciousness. Alexei hovers behind her, uncharacteristically silent, while Bob stands stiff by the wall, hands twitching like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

On the other side of the room, Steve winces as his movements tug at the fresh stitches in his side. He’s pale, but already steadier—super soldier healing works fast. Bucky stands near him, his jaw locked, his eyes pinned to the glowing holo-display that CLOC has projected in the center of the room.

Playback beginning, CLOC announces to the room.

The footage flickers to life. They see John slipping into Ava’s quarters. His movements are calculated, operating with military precision. The room watches as he kneels beside her suit, pulling open the panel that hides the regulator. His hands move with purpose, clipping wires with the precision of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.

Yelena inhales sharply, then hisses a curse under her breath. 

Alexei’s hands curl into fists when the feed cuts to the observation deck. 

Ava and John are in a heated argument. CLOC doesn’t provide the audio, but it’s clear that John is baiting her. The sneer on his face is ugly and out of place—far from the man they know. The room holds its breath when he lunges. She phases instinctively, and that’s when the suit sputters. Sparks burst from her back. Her body flickers violently, her scream is vivid across the screen, though unheard in their ears.

Ava drops to the ground. Without a care, John steps over her trembling, unstable body that goes between solid and nothing with violent warbles. 

They watch as John turns to the nearest camera. Without hesitation, he raises his gun, a firearm they all recognize. A single shot cracks silently through the feed, and the footage cuts to black.

The room falls silent. No one breathes.

Bob’s voice breaks the silence first, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Why… why would he do this?”

Yelena’s jaw works, her glare burning into the blank screen. “He tried to kill her.”

Steve presses a hand to his stitched side, his face tight with restrained pain and something else. “Not just that,” he says quietly. “He wanted it to hurt.”

Bucky stands frozen. Every muscle is taut with fury and disbelief. 

The room hangs heavy with silence. Only the faint beeping of Ava’s monitors fills the void.

“This doesn’t make sense.” Bob’s hands twist together, restless. Confused. “He wouldn’t hurt one of us. He’s not—” His throat bobs. “He’s not like that.”

Alexei grunts and gives a nod. “Bob is right. John is many things—stubborn, hotheaded, too sure of himself. But this?” He shakes his head firmly. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Yelena shifts uncomfortably on the edge of her chair, her eyes flicking from the dark screen to Ava’s unconscious form. “I don’t know…” Her words come out slow and hesitant. “I thought we could trust him too… but he’s messed up before. We’ve seen him lose his temper, make rash decisions.” Her fingers tighten around the blankets by the foot of Ava’s bed. “If he did this—”

Bob looks at her, almost pleading. “No! This isn’t like John! There’s got to be something we’re missing!”

“But it is him!” Yelena’s jaw tightens. “We all saw it. And you were all there when he—” She doesn’t finish the sentence. They all remember that not but a few hours ago, it was her lying in the med bay bed.

“He… he would have been pissed about getting benched, right?” Yelena spins to face Bucky. “Maybe he wanted payback?”

“No. No, he wasn’t angry at all.” Bob’s voice is firm. Steady. “He was devastated. He thought we were turning against him, which is exactly what we’re doing!”

Bucky exhales through his nose, sharp and tense, his gaze fixed on Ava’s monitor. He should have checked on John last night. Should’ve pushed harder, made sure they were good—made sure John was good. If he could turn back time, he would have forced himself to go to him and settle whatever storm was brewing. 

But John had been there last night… right? He remembers the weight of his presence, the sound of his voice. Why show up, only to turn around and betray them so horribly? The thought gnaws at him, twisting tighter with every breath. Was that John reaching out... or just messing with his head?

Yelena turns to him. “What do you think? Do you think he would have done this? Do you think he… ” She shakes her head, unwilling to say the rest.

Steve shifts against the bed that he sits on, saving him from an answer.

Steve winces, his bandaged side pulling. Bucky saw the bullet they pulled out of him. Standard issue, the same caliber John carries in his sidearm. Unmistakable. Steve’s voice cuts in quietly, steady but edged with something darker. “We can sit here asking why all night. But the fact is—he did it. And Yelena, and Ava nearly paid with their lives.”

He leaves himself out of it and adds, “We know enough.”

The room stills again, all eyes turning to him.

Bucky exhales hard. He can’t make the image of John he saw on the screen fit the man he thought he knew. In the end, his stubbornness wins out, and he shakes his head. “No. I don’t believe it. John is many things, but betraying us like this? We’re family to him. He wouldn’t turn on us. He’s loyal. This… this isn’t him.”

“How do you explain it then?” Yelena asks.

“I—I don’t know. Maybe the footage is doctored? Maybe it’s mind control?” Bucky is pulling desperately at strings, and he knows it. 

Eventually, Steve’s voice cuts in. “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”

The words land like a knife. Bucky flinches, unable to even consider it. 

Steve continues, his voice soft but firm. “He cornered me earlier. Said I was trying to take his place on the team. Accused me of—” His eyes turn to Bucky’s, where they linger, something deep and dark hidden behind those familiar blue eyes, “—of making a move that I shouldn’t have.” 

He waits, just long enough that the words really land. “And then he accused you of being unfaithful. John clearly wasn’t in his right mind.”

The words hit like a hammer, reverberating through the room.

Bob stares at Steve, stunned. “That’s… that’s crazy. I was with him last night, he wasn’t—”

Yelena cuts in, sharper than before, though her expression is conflicted. “You weren’t there, Bob. You weren’t on the missions where he kept ignoring protocol, ignoring orders. Ava came to me… she warned me. She said he was acting paranoid. She… she even said he threatened her and—” She shakes her head, guilt bleeding from her voice as she whispers, “I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to. Maybe if I did, this wouldn’t have happened—”

“Don’t blame yourself, umnichka,” Alexei says quietly. 

Silence falls again, heavier this time.

Yelena sniffs, but doesn’t speak again. She just stares between Ava’s still form and the dark holo-screen, her mouth a hard line, betraying the helplessness she feels when her friend is hovering between life and death.

The chatter starts again, voices blurring together—Steve’s steady insistence, Alexei’s protests, Bob’s frantic pacing, and Yelena’s guilt. Bucky hears them but doesn’t listen. His mind drifts, a hollow ache filling his chest along with all of his own unanswered questions.

Where the hell is John?

Why won’t he answer his messages?

Why would he do this to them?

Why would he think Bucky would betray what they have together?

Bucky stares at the floor, his jaw clenched, searching for something solid to hold onto—but nothing makes sense anymore.

A sharp ping buzzes in his pocket. His heart lurches and for a second, one desperate, foolish second—he hopes, that it’s John.

He pulls out his phone fast, his eyes falling to the notification banner. It’s not John. 

It’s Sam.

Just a short, simple message: Everything alright over there?

Bucky’s throat tightens. He almost laughs, bitter and weary. Not even close.

He pockets the phone without answering. 

Bucky shakes himself from the fog of too many voices. His jaw sets. “CLOC, when did Walker leave the building?”

The AI answers in its calm, neutral tone: Captain Walker exited the tower approximately three hours, thirty-six minutes ago. Current location is unknown.

Bucky exhales sharply through his nose, already moving for the door. “I’m going after him.”

“Buck—no.” Steve pushes off the bed despite the bandages still fresh on his left side. “You didn’t see his face, alright? He’s dangerous right now. He threatened me. He threatened you. Let him go before he drags you down with him.”

Bucky stops and turns, his eyes dark with defiance. “Not like this. This isn’t the John I know.”

Steve steps closer, his voice desperate as he begs, “You saw the footage. I told you what happened—”

“I have pieces,” Bucky cuts in, his voice sharp. “And pieces don’t make the whole. Not until I hear it from him. I need to know why he did this to us.” 

He turns again and Steve’s voice breaks after him. “Bucky, wait.”

When he looks back, Steve’s expression is anything but steady. One hand clutches his bandaged side, the other reaching out like he could hold him there by sheer force of will. The bruises on his face are a sickly yellow under the harsh fluorescent lights. “Don’t go. Not now. Your team is hurt. Yelena’s still recovering, Ava’s in bad shape, and we don’t even know if she’ll wake up. The rest of us—we need you here. I need you here.”

Bucky’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t answer, but the war inside is written plain across his face.

“Please,” Steve presses, his voice low and raw. “Don’t chase after him now. Stay. Stay with us, and we’ll figure it out together. We’ll come up with a plan and we can go after John when everyone is back on their feet.”

When the trail is cold.

“Just stay,” Steve whispers. 

Bucky’s throat works, but no words come. His gaze flicks to the med bay doors, then back to Steve—torn clean in half. His fists clench at his sides. Every part of him screams to go after John, to demand answers. But Steve’s voice drags at him, heavy and pleading, rooting him to the spot. His team is broken, and they need him. And Steve looks at him like he would shatter the whole damn thing if he walked out that door.

He swallows hard. 

Then he meets Yelena’s eyes. She holds his gaze for a beat, then gives him the smallest nod.

It’s enough.

Bucky shakes his head and turns, his footsteps heavy but certain as he walks out the door.

The med bay doors swing shut behind him, but Steve follows, his footsteps echoing down the sterile hall.

“Bucky, wait!” His voice cracks, ragged with something between desperation and fury. “You have people here who need you, you can’t just leave!”

Anger bursts out of him in a wave and Bucky wheels around, his jaw tight and eyes burning. “Why not? You left me, didn’t you?”

Steve stops dead, his breath hitching at the accusation. “Buck—”

“It seems to be a recurring pattern in the people I choose to love!” The words tear out of him before Bucky can stop them, raw and jagged. His fists curl at his sides, trembling with restraint. 

Why the hell does Steve get to be angry about this? Why does he get to plead and beg when he’s the one who walked away first? Why does he get to act like the victim when Bucky’s always left standing in the wreckage of everyone else’s choices?

The silence that follows is suffocating, heavy enough to press down on them both.

Finally, Bucky shakes his head, his voice low but unshakable. “I’m going after him, Steve. I’m going to find him, and when I do, I’m going to ask why he did this to us. I’m going to ask why he would betray everything that him and I have together. I won’t stop until I hear the truth from his mouth. And if he can’t give me a reason, then he’ll answer for it another way,” he spits the final words with vitriol.

His words hang in the corridor, sharp enough to slice through whatever argument Steve might’ve thrown back. The silence that follows is suffocating. Then he turns his back on Steve, striding toward the elevator without another glance.

Steve doesn’t move. Doesn’t follow. He stands rooted in place, fists curling and uncurling at his sides, knuckles whitening with the effort of staying back. His jaw flexes, eyes dark with a storm he won’t name. He’s caught somewhere between rage and dangerous heartbreak—his expression twisting into something dark. And violent.

The elevator doors slide shut around Bucky with a low hiss, cutting off the last sight of him. 

Steve is left alone in the corridor, his reflection warped and fractured in the polished steel.

*

The strap of his duffel digs into Bucky’s shoulder as he storms through the quiet halls. His shoulders are tense as he walks toward the Watchtower’s private garage. He’s already made up his mind and he’s going after John, no matter what Steve or anyone else says. He doesn't know where John is, but he has a few ideas of where to start looking. 

There are too many unanswered questions. So lost in his thoughts, he almost misses the figure waiting for him in the shadows.

Bucky rounds the last corner and freezes.

John is standing by the garage doors, arms crossed, like he’s been waiting. His figure is half-lit by the overhead fluorescents, but his face is clear enough—jaw set and eyes sharp, his mouth twisted into something between a sneer and a smirk.

“Going somewhere?” John asks, his voice flat.

Bucky exhales through his nose, steadying himself. He narrows his eyes. “John.” The name comes out cautious, edged with disbelief. Why the hell didn’t CLOC warn him that John was in the building? 

He squares his shoulders. “Where the hell have you been? You’ve got a hell of a lot to answer to.”

Instead of answering, John tilts his head just slightly—an unsettling, too-slow motion. “How’s Ava doing?” His tone is mocking in how casual it sounds. “I wasn’t sure if you guys were going to get to her in time. Thought there might be nothing left by the time you did.”

Bucky’s whole body goes rigid. “You bastard.”

John takes a step forward, then another, each one careful and measured. The air between them coils tight, ready to snap. He chuckles, low and humorless. “Don’t look so surprised.”

Bucky’s hands ball into fists at his sides. He drops his bag to the floor, preparing—but not hoping—for a fight. His heart hammers against his ribs. He keeps his voice steady. “Why, John?”

John’s smile sharpens. “It was nice playing house with you for a while. It really was. But it was never going to last. Inevitable. That’s what this was. I knew it the second he stepped through that portal. Him and me in the same universe? It was always going to end this way. Something had to break.”

The words cut deeper than Bucky wants to admit, digging into doubts he thought he had buried. He steps closer until they almost touch, his eyes wavering with unspoken pain. “You think this was us playing house?” His voice cracks, and for the briefest flicker, John’s gaze gleams with something almost… wrong. Too calm. Too certain. 

“Was any of it real to you? Why did you let me believe in us?” His voice wavers, and the words come out ragged. His eyes search the other man’s face, desperate for even the smallest flicker of truth.

The sneer is back again on John’s face. He leans in close, voice dropping low. His words brush Bucky’s ear like venom. “You know the funny thing about you, Bucky? You’re so eager to convince the world that you’re okay, that you’re fixed. But the truth is, all you’ve got left is your damage—and it makes you one hell of a lay.”

“Fuck you.”

John chuckles, cruel and unhurried. “I think it was always the other way around. You’re a hot piece of ass, Barnes. Maybe a little loose, but I’m sure Rogers won’t mind my sloppy seconds.”

“You talk a lot of shit for a man who’s this desperate to matter," Bucky bites, trying miserably to mask his pain. "You’re always comparing yourself to Steve and falling short. It doesn’t matter how loud you swing your weight around, John—you’re still just trying to prove you’re good enough. And once again, you have failed harder than anyone thought possible.”

Something flickers across John’s face, and for a moment, it looks like triumph. But it’s quickly masked with a sardonic shrug. “Well, look on the bright side. Now you don’t have to choose between us. I chose for you.”

Bucky’s stomach knots. Another choice ripped out of his hands.

John takes a step back, his voice cool and final. “Now, you’re going to let me walk out that door. And you’ll never see me again.” 

Bucky’s stance hardens. “You think I’m just going to let you walk out of here after what you did to us?”

John tilts his head, lips curving with scorn. “I don’t think you have it in you to take me down. So why don’t you go back to your new boyfriend—”

“This was never about Steve!”

“Sure, Buck.” John interrupts smoothly. “And how long did it take for you to fall into bed with me? You were dying to get into my pants, as I recall.”

The silence after the jab is taut as a wire. 

Bucky freezes. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t breathe. His blood runs cold, a creeping realization clawing its way up his spine. The words replay in his head, over and over, until finally, the wrongness clicks. 

His stomach drops. 

“John never calls me Buck.”

The other man’s expression falters, just for a fraction of a second, when he realizes his fatal slip.

“Never,” Bucky continues, his voice low and dangerous. “Not once. That’s what Sam calls me. That was Steve’s name for me. But John? He hated it. He hated what it meant. He didn’t want to be measured against them. Didn’t want another reminder that he wasn’t good enough.”

Bucky’s eyes bore into the face in front of him, scanning every detail, every twitch, as he searches for the flaw—proof of what he already knows in his gut.

His hand shoots out, clamping hard around the man’s left side beneath John’s suit. He squeezes hard, digging his fingers in, checking for a reaction. And despite his best efforts, the man flinches, a sharp wince breaking through.

Bucky’s voice comes out like a blade, sharp and dangerous. “Take it off,” he growls through his teeth. “Now.”

The seconds stretch unbearably. Slowly, deliberately, the photostatic veil peels away. John’s features vanish, replaced by familiar cold, hard lines.

Bucky staggers back a step. He had felt it—the wrongness behind John’s words, the eerie familiarity in the way he moved and spoke. And yet, seeing it laid bare in front of him still hits like a punch.

“Steve?”

Steve’s eyes are steady and unflinching. There’s a hardness behind them that makes Bucky’s blood run like ice through his veins.

Dread coils in Bucky’s chest, his mind racing. 

“How long?” Bucky demands, his voice raw and trembling. “How long have you been him? Answer me!”

Steve tilts his head, calm as ever. “Long enough.”

Bucky’s mind spins, flipping through every recent moment he shared with John. Which words were real? Which smiles, touches, and whispers were lies? His stomach twists as he remembers all the times they were intimate. He swallows hard, his voice barely a whisper. “Did you ever…” The question trembles on his lips, but he needs to know, even if the answer shatters him.

“Did you ever fuck me as him?”

Steve’s head tilts to the side. His expression is unnervingly calm. “Do you think I could ever do that to you?”

Bucky swallows, his heart hammering. He doesn’t know anymore. He never thought Steve would ever hurt him. He trusted him, loved him. But this—this isn’t the Steve he knows, and that realization hits him cold and sharp with pain. 

Steve leans closer, his voice dropping to a low rumble. “When I fuck you, I won’t be wearing his face.”

A surge of revulsion rises in Bucky. His hands clench at his sides. “That’s never going to happen.”

Steve’s lips curve into a small, chilling smile, but he says nothing more. Instead, he lets the words hang in the air like a knife poised over everything Bucky thought he knew.

Bucky’s jaw tightens. He’s hit with a wave of relief followed by a sharp stab of guilt, because John is innocent. John is good. John loves him. John is missing— 

“What did you do to John? Where is he? Did you hurt him? I swear if you hurt him—” Bucky’s voice breaks off, unable to finish. 

Steve’s eyes fix on him, unreadable, but a dangerous glint lurks behind them. “You just had to ruin it,” he says, his voice low and bitter. “It was almost perfect. I had everything under control. I had everything the way it should be.”

“What are you talking about?”

Steve’s voice tightens, almost to a hiss. “You just had to interfere. You had to go after him. John would have stayed gone, and I would have taken his place. We would have been happy. But no… you couldn’t let it happen. You had to mess it all up.”

Bucky’s jaw tightens. “You… you’re insane.”

“Insane?” Steve echoes, his voice sharp. “No. My plan was perfect. Careful and calculated. Everything I did was to get us what we deserve. What we always should have had! And you… you ruined it.” He steps closer, too close, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You ruined everything, Buck. And now… I have to fix it again.”

Bucky’s fists ball, trembling at his sides. “You don’t get to decide for us. I love John. You don’t get to decide who I love—”

“I did everything for us! For you!” Steve tilts his head, almost mournful, a cruel smile tugging at his lips. “I watched the world burn to get back to you. And you can’t even see it. You just had to ruin it.”

Bucky’s stomach knots in shock. Horror and fury, all at once. He knows, in that instant, how far Steve is willing to go.

“You’re not my Steve,” he whispers. 

“No.” The other man says quietly. “But I’m going to make you mine, whether you like it or not.” 

Bucky hardens. “CLOC, warn the others. Tell them—”

“I don’t think so.” Steve tilts his head toward the ceiling, his voice light, almost casual. “Tell Val there’s been a change of plans.”

Affirmative, Captain Rogers.

Bucky blinks in shock. “You’re working with Val?” His voice trembles with disbelief, edged with anger. 

Steve chuckles. “C’mon, Buck. How did you not see that coming? Junior varsity Captain America vs the real deal? Her words, not mine.” Steve pauses, surveying Bucky like a predator. He sighs carefully. “Now… what to do with you?”

Bucky takes a step forward, eyes blazing, every nerve in his body screaming for a fight. He’s ready to tear through this version of Steve—because he needs to know where John is.

Steve doesn’t flinch. His voice drops, sharp and cruel, “Every second you waste glaring at me is another second he’s closer to dying alone. You really want that on your conscience?”

The words spear through Bucky’s chest, cold and vicious. His breath stutters. And that moment of hesitation is all Steve needs.

He snaps a sleek restraint off his belt from behind, a polished alloy, reinforced to be Stark-grade, and designed for enhanced strength. In a blur of motion, he lunges and clamps it onto Bucky’s vibranium wrist. The cuff hisses as it powers up, magnetic locks sparking, then it slams Bucky’s arm back against the nearest steel column with a brutal clang.

Bucky snarls, jerking hard against the restraint. Metal groans and sparks flicker, but the cuff holds. His bares his teeth in fury, his chest heaving as he spits, “You son of a bitch.”

Steve steps forward, a smirk cutting sharply across his face. “You’re strong, Buck. You didn’t think I wouldn't come prepared for every contingency?”

Bucky swings with his free arm, a savage right hook that nearly hits Steve in the temple. He ducks by inches, catches Bucky’s wrist in both hands, and without breaking a sweat, he snaps the second cuff closed. This one locks his flesh-and-bone wrist to the same column.

Bucky strains against his restraints, muscles bulging, the metal screaming in protest. He’s caught, helpless, like a caged animal.

Steve steps back calmly to admire his work as Bucky fights against the restraints that hold him, his eyes gleaming with something dark. “Always so stubborn. I love that about you, Buck.”

Bucky spits at his feet, fury radiating off of him like heat. “I swear if you touch me, if you lay a finger on me, I will break it off—”

Steve’s smirk sharpens, but there’s a flicker in his eyes that is quickly masked—something colder, something calculated. His voice dips low and venomous. “You’ll come around. I promise.”

Bucky slams his shoulder forward, the steel column rattling with the force. He does it again and feels the shudder in the metal. “Where is he?!” His screams echo off the concrete walls, his voice raw and shaking with rage. “Where is John? What the fuck did you do to him?!”

Steve doesn’t answer. He just watches, his expression unreadable, as Bucky fights the cuffs like a wild animal trying to tear through its cage.

Unknown, 2040

John staggers, disoriented, as the air around him ripples and snaps. The tower is gone, the simulation room vanished. Steve is gone. This isn't the world he knows. He’s in the cabin of a ship—a spaceship, from the looks of it—and the artificial gravity warps beneath him. 

Through a viewport, the familiar blue and green of Earth is gone. The planet below is a charred, twisted remnant of civilization. No lush green, bodies of water have been blackened, and an orange-gray haze chokes the atmosphere around it. 

John stumbles forward toward the closest console, his eyes glued to the screens before him. Satellite feeds, orbital drones, and live surveillance relay the devastation in harrowing detail: streets littered with wreckage, skyscrapers toppled like fallen toys, and faceless figures scavenge amid the ruins, their movements cautious and desperate.

“What… what the hell is this?” John’s voice is hoarse and trembling. The world feels hostile, alien, and unrecognizable. Civilization broken. Lost.

The realization hits him like a hammer. This is the timeline Steve came from. And he knows this branch, he was here, before—the one where Steve lost Bucky and then himself. Where he went mad from grief and tried to attack John for a desperate chance to fix his mistakes. 

This is the branch that John encountered and likely pushed over the edge into the ruin he sees now. Is that possible, could he have caused this?

John trembles as he looks at the destruction on the monitors. He’s alone, far above the only home he’s ever known, unarmed and trapped in a world that offers no mercy. The enormity of it—the scale of loss—settles cold in his chest.

He caused this. Or at least, he played a part in it, albeit small. 

John leans closer to the console, scanning the feeds, trying to comprehend the ruin Steve left behind. A pulse of fear, sharp and undeniable, drives through him. This is the world Steve escaped from. And now, a future that may be his own undoing.

John scans the horizon, eyes wide, trying to process what he’s just been thrust into.

Chapter Text

The simulation’s lights strobe and storm in a rhythm that matches the rage John is feeling inside. He’s been here hours already, came down as soon as he was up. Not that he got much sleep anyway. He’s not hiding, he’s definitely not avoiding Bucky, Yelena, the others—he’s definitely not hoping to come across a hole he can crawl into and die pathetically. 

John moves smoothly through the mock enemy corridors on reflex and instinct, taking down everything in his path. He lets decades of training take over, each motion precise, every strike clean, efficient, and brutal. The simulated militants drop one after another, bodies crumbling to the ground like discarded husks. 

His rage pours out of him with violent precision. 

Then the simulation comes to an end. The bodies and corridors disappear into air, and John is left standing in a hollow room with nothing but his own heavy breathing. He sighs heavily and lets his shoulders drop. He thought he’d feel better after getting some energy out. Thought the sweat and carnage would lighten his chest. Prove he’s still sharp, that he’s still got it. But the pressure still lingers, heavy as ever. 

Out of nowhere, the hairs on the back of his neck stand tall. 

He knows he’s being watched, can feel the eyes on him from the edge of the room. The air shifts, like someone zapped all the warmth out of the room.

“Figured I’d find you here.” Steve’s voice is quiet and easy. He steps out from the shadows, his silhouette framed against the bank of monitors and consoles surrounding him. “Getting some early practice in?”

John forces his jaw to unclench as his eyes land on the last person he wants to see. He’s not in the mood for another speech on the merits of being a team player or his terrible relationship advice. 

“What the hell do you want?” The question comes out sharper than he intends. A little too defensive. But he squares his shoulders and lifts his chin, because he’s never been one to back down when backed into a corner. 

Steve watches him for a long beat, his expression unreadable. Then he steps around the consoles and into the main open space of the room.

“You know, for a long time, I kept trying to understand what Bucky saw in you,” Steve says, tilting his head as he studies him. His voice is casual in that infuriating way. “On paper, you’re perfect—decorated, polished, a real hero and a perfect soldier. But in person… well, let’s just say I was a little disappointed in what I found.” 

John stiffens. “You don’t know me.”

“I know enough,” Steve says evenly. “I saw a man who blindly followed orders, hiding behind medals and uniforms and false bravado. You don’t think for yourself, John. You’re a follower. That’s your biggest problem. You’re just another mindless soldier in a long, forgettable line of them.” His gaze pins him, steady and merciless. “You’re nothing like me. You’re not the kind of man Bucky deserves. He should have seen that.”

A look of bitter disappointment flashes across Steve’s face before it disappears again. “He should have seen it.”

“Our relationship is none of your damn business,” John growls.

“Everything about Bucky is my business,” Steve’s voice drops. “I swore to him that I would protect him, that I wouldn’t let him down again. So I had to know… I had to see for myself what John Walker is made out of. And you know what I found?” He leans in, ice in his words. “Nothing but polished rhetoric and sanctimonious garbage about honor and service. Pathetic. Weak. Rot. All the way down.” 

John’s brow furrows. His throat works, but nothing comes out.

Steve takes another step closer. “So I put him down.”

“What?” John frowns, sliding from confusion into alarm. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Steve doesn’t flinch. But he lifts one shoulder in a small, casual little motion. “Not here. Not you. Another timeline.”

For a moment, John’s expression is blank, and then the realization blooms into slow, dawning horror. “You… you’re Steve from…”

“I thought you might not recognize me,” Steve says, and there’s a thin, humorless edge to it. “But to not even be suspicious? Turns out you’re even dumber than I thought.”

“How the hell did you…” John trails off, his voice gone small as his eyes go wide.

“I told you that day that you were going to bring me to him. I told you that I was going to fix it. And it took a long time. It took me a long time to figure it out. But here I am, ready for what’s mine.”

“Oh my god, you’re insane,” John manages, through the ice-cold fear that strikes his chest, as memories of that fight with variant Steve flood his head. 

Bucky doesn’t know. Bucky doesn’t know how insane this guy is because John never told him. Because he was exhausted when he finally got home, and then Steve shows up out of nowhere, but John and Bucky were fine, so he omitted this branch among so many others because he didn’t want to come across as rash and ‘kicking a man while he’s down’ and goddamnit, now they’re all in danger. Bucky is in danger—fuck, he should have told him— 

“It’s going to be perfect now.” Steve’s voice has dropped low and venomous. “You’ll be gone, and Bucky will be with me. Just as it should’ve been.”

“Over my dead body,” John growls. 

Steve’s smile is dangerous. “I killed you once already.”

“Not me. Not this version of me.” The words snap out of him, edged with rage. The adrenaline is already spiking, his blood pounding loud in his ears. He wants this fight—has wanted it with Steve, if he’s allowed to admit that. Now he wants to tear this man apart for the way he talks about Bucky like his property.

Steve considers him with a half-bored tilt of his head. “True. The version of you I found in my timeline didn’t have the serum. He put up a good fight, but it was an easy kill in the end. He died screaming. Think you’ll do any better?”

“Why don’t we find out?” John snarls. His fists tighten by his sides. “What are we waiting for?”

“I need you to understand,” Steve says, stepping closer, his smile tightening. “He’s never going to love anyone the way he loved me.” He pauses, savoring the moment, egging him on. “You’re nothing but a placeholder. Until I came back to him.”

John slams into Steve like a freight train, shoulder first, launching both of them into the far wall with a sickening thud that dents the steel behind them. Fists fly in a blinding arc, each punch either blocked, glancing off, or landing with the sick crack of bone on flesh. Blood splatters across the floor in little droplets when his knuckles tear open on teeth, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t stop. 

Steve takes the hits, jaw snapping to the side, lip splitting open, all the while still giving that twisted grin like it’s easy for him. Then he starts changing the rhythm. He blocks every hit with clinical precision, then goes on the offensive. And when he gets a good hit in, his fist like a hammer colliding with John’s temple, a white-hot pain explodes across his vision. 

John staggers, but then lunges again anyway, dragging them both down in a tangle of limbs. Anger slants his judgment. If he had been thinking properly, he would’ve quickly realized that close-quarter grappling techniques are Steve’s strong suit—not his own. How many years had he studied Steve Rogers' fighting style? Steve has the advantage here. He should be kicking himself for this mistake. 

They hit the ground hard. John’s elbow pistons into Steve’s ribs, again and again, until he hears something give. Steve grunts, then snarls, headbutting him so viciously that John’s nose bursts in a spray of blood.

“Fuck—” John chokes, as blood and iron flood his throat. 

He shoves Steve off, kicks him square in the stomach, but he knows his moves are sloppy. He charges with a looping hook—only for Steve to catch his fist, hook an arm around his neck, and drive a knee into his ribs. A spinning hook kick sends him flying. He scrambles up as Steve moves toward him like a tide.

“Is this it?” Steve asks. His face is streaked with blood, but he’s far too calm. “Is this all you’ve got?”

John answers with a roar and attacks like a man possessed—more animal than strategy. Half his blows are blocked, the ones that land barely make the other man flinch. Steve drives a hard knee into his sternum, and the air is driven from John’s lungs in a harsh wheeze. 

Steve takes him down with a textbook grapple—legs hook, torso locked, gravity turned against him. John has no chance of beating Steve on the ground—

John scrambles for the gun at his thigh, but Steve is faster. His pistol is yanked out of its holster and tumbles across the floor, out of reach.

John thrashes on the ground, struggling to draw air against the heavy, muscled thigh that chokes across his neck. He claws and scratches, but the grip doesn’t budge.

“You hit hard,” Steve says, blood dripping from his teeth. “But you fight with no finesse. All rage and wild aggression. It’s pathetic. It’s laughable.”

John jerks forward, connecting a fist hard into Steve’s groin and relishing the grunt of pain he gets for it. For a split second, the grip falters, and John breaks the hold. He pins the other man down, letting his fists rain down in a brutal, desperate frenzy.

Steve reverses them like something inhuman, even by super soldier standards. He rolls, surges up, and suddenly John is flat on his back again. A fist drives down into his cheekbone—once, twice, and a third time—the floor beneath John rattling with each impact.

By the fourth, John can barely see. His ears are ringing, his mouth filling with blood. He spits it in Steve’s face anyway.

“Fuck you,” he manages.

Steve looms over him, eyes wide and dangerous. He wipes the blood away with the back of his hand, then drives another fist into his temple that leaves John sprawling and dazed. 

Steve lets him drop then, limp and gasping, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small device that hums with a quiet energy.

John blinks wearily at it. The glow of the screen is familiar through the haze of pain and adrenaline. He forces his head up, his vision swimming. “What—where did you get that—”

Steve crouches down, grabs him by the hair, and hauls his head up so their eyes lock. There’s nothing human anymore in Steve’s face. “I’m not going to kill you yet. But it’s the end of the line for you.”

The TemPad hums in his hand, its energy surging, and before John can move, Steve taps his thumb on the screen.

The world tears open in a flash of light, swallowing them both.

Seconds later, Steve steps out of another flash and back into the simulation room. Alone. The TemPad dims to a faint pulse as he slips it back into his pocket.

He stands in the quiet wreckage of the room for a moment, then lifts his head. “CLOC. Delete all footage of this incident.” 

Yes, Captain. 

He sniffs, wiping away the blood that had trickled from his nose. His eyes sweep across the floor, landing on John’s firearm. Steve walks over and stoops, fingers curling around the cold weight of the gun. 

“You won’t miss him, Buck. I promise.” Steve breathes, slow and controlled. “And I’ll make sure no one comes between us ever again.”

He lowers the barrel to his own abdomen, holding it mere inches away. The gunshot cracks like thunder, the sound echoing throughout the room. Pain blossoms hot as blood soaks quickly through his clothes. He inhales once, sharp, but otherwise barely flinches.

The gun drops to the ground with a clatter. He staggers to the far side of the room, dragging a heavy hand along desks and consoles on his way. He knocks chairs askew, scattering papers, leaving smears of blood in his wake. Painting a struggle.

CLOC’s voice, calm as ever, comes through the speakers: Audio and video logs have been deleted.

Steve carefully props himself against the wall, one hand clamped to his bleeding gut, crimson spilling through his fingers. His breaths are controlled, his eyes fixed on the door.

He waits. 

24 hours later.

The door closes behind Steve and the hiss of air seals the room off from the rest of the world. Bucky freezes, his eyes tracking his figure as he approaches his cell—reinforced, built for powered individuals, strong enough to hold the Hulk. There’s no way out, not with one arm and not with that specialized glass. Steve tested it himself. He’s not one to just take Val’s word at face value. 

There’s barely anything in the cell. A narrow bed bolted to the floor, a single pillow, no sheets. A small table beside the bed with a few books on top, and no drawer. There’s a stainless steel toilet, and harsh overhead lighting that makes everything look worse. 

Bucky had no idea this wing existed. There’s a lot buried in the lower levels of the Watchtower he doesn’t know about.

“Good morning,” Steve says gently. “How did you sleep?” 

The question is a jest—Steve knows perfectly well he didn’t sleep a single wink. Bucky spent the night circumnavigating every inch of his cage with his fingertips, searching for a weakness, and finding none. 

Now, Bucky watches him approach with the same rage that Steve hasn’t seen since he fought the Winter Soldier. He doesn’t flinch when Steve punches in the code on the panel outside his cell, and the door slides open. He gives him his coldest glare as Steve steps inside. 

“I brought you breakfast.” Steve holds out the tray with his kindest smile, and yet Bucky still shrinks back against the wall. He looks smaller without the arm, Steve thinks. 

“Come on, it’s your favorites.” Eggs, sausage, oatmeal. Orange juice in a plastic cup and a bottle of water. It’s small, domestic, a little sweet.

Bucky’s hand slams into the tray as if it were an insult. Food and drink fly, splattering across the floor in a smear of eggs and orange. He snarls, “Where the hell is John? Tell me. Is he even alive?” The desperation in his voice cuts through the rage. He sounds tired, distressed, a bit frayed at the edges. Could be the lack of sleep, maybe.

Steve sighs and watches the mess for a long beat, as if disappointed by the wasted effort. “When are you going to get over him?” he asks, the question tossed off like a reprimand.

Bucky doesn’t answer. 

Steve turns toward the door, casual and measured. “Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow when you’re in a better mood.” He takes a step to leave.

Bucky’s voice stops him—soft, raw, and entirely unexpected. “I love him.”

Steve freezes mid-step. He turns slowly, the practiced gentleness gone from his face. “No,” he corrects, almost kindly. “You love me.”

For a moment, the man he sees looks small. Less the old, hardened soldier and more the boy Steve remembers. His expression lacks all of the rage that Steve had seen when he dragged him kicking and screaming in his restraints, from the garage down three hidden levels, and threw him into a cell, locking the door with a code. 

“I did love you,” Bucky says softly. “But you’re not the Steve Rogers I knew. Not anymore.”

Steve carefully steps closer, like he’s approaching a cornered animal that he doesn’t want to spook. “I’m still that same guy, Buck. I’m the guy you saved from countless fights when we were kids. The guy who broke the rules to pull you out at Azzano. The one who stood against 117 nations for you. And now, again, I’ve proven how far I’m willing to go for you.” His voice is steady, his eyes locked on Bucky’s.

The other man’s eyes are wide and blue and just a little bit terrified. 

“Don’t you see? I’d do anything for you, Buck. We’re meant to be together.”

“You don’t even see what you’ve become,” Bucky whispers. He shakes his head, his one arm curved almost protectively around himself. “Whatever twisted you… whatever did this… it’s turned you into something I could never love.”

A red-hot rage blooms behind Steve’s eyes, a blinding flash of pain that quickly hardens into anger. He lunges forward. His hand clamps around Bucky’s throat, the other wrenches into his hair, hauling his head back. Up close, Bucky’s fury is raw and beautiful, teeth bared in a twisted snarl. There he is, the man Steve loves, so full of spit and fire. 

“You’ll come around,” Steve murmurs, his breath a gentle whisper against Bucky’s mouth. “You’ll see. I’ll make you see.”

Steve releases his grip and steps back. Then he turns and walks out.

Bucky’s voice chases after him. “How long are you going to keep me here? They’ll find out about you! How long do you think you can hide this under their own roof?”

The door seals shut behind him with a shudder of heavy bolts sliding into place. Bucky’s shouts are muffled now, following him down the corridor. 

“Tell me what you did to him, Steve! Tell me where he is!”

Silence answers. 

*

“What do you mean, Bucky knows?”

Valentina’s mouth is a hard line, fury sparking in her eyes as she glares at Steve. “What do you mean you have him locked up in the containment level?” Her voice is equal parts disgust and disbelief. She stands up straight and jabs a finger in his direction. “Do you even realize what you have done? How are we going to spin this now? This is a nightmare! You have ruined everything!”

Steve stands perfectly still, his hands folded at his waist. “I can still fix this,” he says quietly.

Valentina laughs, thin and sharp. “You can fix it?” She shakes her head, exasperation turning to scorn. “Oh, I should have known better. You people, you superheroes, are so irritating, always thinking you’re smarter than everyone else. You’re not. And now look at you. You have ruined weeks of work. Do you realize all eyes are watching right now?”

Steve’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes harden. “I don’t give a shit. And you better watch yourself, Val. I said I can fix this.”

“Oh, really?” She leans in close over her desk, every word delivered like a scalpel. “How are you going to fix it, Captain? We had a plan. We built it so carefully. You were supposed to turn the team against Walker. You were going to make them question his abilities, his loyalty. You were supposed to convince them that he’s a dangerous, unstable asset. You were supposed to turn Barnes against him! Then Walker’s credibility collapses, and he’s gone. You take his place. It’s clean, legal, domesticated. No scandal, no messy public fallout. Everyone applauds the return of Steve Rogers. We were going to sell—that—narrative.” She emphasizes each word with a slap of her hands, then throws them up when she’s done. “It was going to be perfect.”

Her voice drops, anger mixed with dry sarcasm. “We don’t need two blond-haired, blue-eyed sasquatches on the team, nothing sells like diversity these days. We just needed one face with the right framing, but you—” She cuts herself off, breathless with fury. “You had to make it personal. You let your emotions get the better of you and turned it into a sideshow. I gave you everything you asked for, and you still failed. You’ve ruined everything.”

Steve’s jaw tightens. “It’s not a sideshow,” he says, his voice low. “This is about Bucky.”

Valentina snorts. “Sentiment won’t sell the government or the press. We need Barnes on our side for this to work. He gives us credibility. It’s his word that helps make Walker look unstable. If Barnes won’t play ball—” She raises a brow and glares. “—then he becomes a liability. And we remove the variable.”

When Steve speaks, his voice goes cold and quiet. “You want me to take him out?”

Valentina tilts her head. “If you can’t control him, yes. That gives us a narrative we can sell. Barnes and Walker, two heroes, die in a tragic operation gone wrong. Public grief buys us cover. Then Captain Rogers re-emerges as the steady, stabilizing presence that everyone trusts—the only face credible enough to fill the empty spots on the team. This is something we can work with. It wipes the slate clean and pivots sympathy where we need it.”

Steve laughs then, a short, ugly sound. “You think Bucky is a variable to be discarded? He’s not an asset, Val. He’s my—” His throat tightens, and he stops himself.

“Sentiment is a liability, Captain.” Valentina’s eyes flash coldly. “You’re asking me to back a gamble based on love stories?” She scoffs.

“I won’t let you touch him.”

“Then you find a way to bring Barnes on board. Fully. Break him of his resistance. Or you make him complicit. I don’t care how you do it.”

Steve squares his shoulders. His head tilts to the side. “And if I can’t?”

Valentina’s face hardens. “Let’s not find out.” Her eyes glitter, calculating. “Prove me wrong. Convince me Barnes is on your side, not a stray variable. Otherwise, I’m taking the contingency offline.”

“If you touch him, you won’t live to use the next contingency.”

Valentina studies him for a long second, then inclines her head, a small concession. “Fine,” she says. “You have forty-eight hours to bring Barnes on board. You don’t want to know what happens if you fail.”

Steve lets the words sit, tasting them like cold metal. Then nods, turns, and walks away.

*

The door to the cell slides open with a hiss.

Steve steps inside with another tray balanced in his hand. He doesn’t get two steps into the room before Bucky moves.

The plastic shard flashes out of nowhere—snapped off from one of the trays Steve’s been bringing him food on. Bucky lunges, every ounce of muscle and rage poured into thrusting the sharp point of plastic into Steve’s throat.

But Steve is faster. He twists, catches Bucky’s wrist mid-swing, and slams him against the wall with effortless precision. Bucky snarls and thrashes, trying to drive a knee, an elbow, anything. The effort is wild and sloppy.

Steve holds him there like it costs nothing, the tray of food still delicately balanced in his left hand, without a single crumb spilled. He stares in disbelief, looking down at the jagged shard on the floor like it personally offended him. 

“Are you serious?” Steve presses harder, his hand digging into Bucky’s throat. “You’ve got one arm. You couldn’t beat me with two.”

Bucky’s breath comes ragged, hair falling into his eyes. He glares, jaw clenched so tight it trembles. His chest heaves with hatred and exhaustion.

Steve eventually sighs through his nose, more disappointed than anything else. “You’re not going to win this way, Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t answer, just seethes with hostility and defiance.

Steve finally lets go, taking a step back. Bucky collapses against the wall, too proud to show how badly he’s faring.

“You’re an idiot,” Steve says softly. The words are said with fondness. But it doesn’t quite land in light of their current situation. “I thought you were smarter than this.”

Fear and rage and grief aside, Bucky is a sorry sight. The shadows under his eyes are deeper than they should be. He’s refused every tray Steve has brought for two days now. And while the serum means he can easily go days without sustenance and barely be affected—it doesn’t quiet the gnawing worry in Steve’s chest. Not when it comes to him.

Steve forces his face into a facade of calm. Too much hinges on this. He’s sacrificed too much to get to this point. He can’t fail now.

“Why are you being so stubborn?” Steve asks, quieter now. The edge in his voice is gone, leaving only genuine wonder. He places the tray of sandwiches on the small table before turning back to Bucky. 

“You knew John—what, a few years? You were together less than one. Why do you care so much about him? You and me, Buck, we have so much more history. We’ve been through so much together and apart, we—don’t we deserve the chance we never had? This is that chance.”

Bucky lifts his chin slowly, and when he speaks, his voice is hard and raw. “Because I love him. And because you are not my Steve. My Steve would never hurt me. He would never lock me in a cage like an animal. He would never lie to me. He would never deceive me like you did.”

Steve’s jaw tightens. “I know I’ve done things you can’t forgive. But haven’t we all? Everything I’ve done—” He swallows. “It was all to get back to you.”

Bucky stares back at him with cold eyes. “That doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t make it any better, Steve.”

Steve takes a step closer, and then another, the plea in him thin and brittle. “Look, I know I was gone a long time. And I missed a lot. I should have been here. I should have protected you. It should have been me.”

Bucky gives a humorless snort and rolls his eyes. 

“It wasn’t a lie, Buck,” Steve whispers then, softer than before. “I love you. I can still be your Steve.”

“You can’t be him,” Bucky replies. His words come laced with sorrow. “My Steve left me when I needed him most. He left me, and I—”

“No!” Steve interrupts, voice cracking for the first time. “No, I never left you. I would never have left you.”

Bucky’s face shifts. Shock and maybe something that could be hope, flickering and dying in the same beat. He stares, then he closes his mouth, allowing Steve to continue. 

“You died.” Steve’s voice is barely a whisper. “I couldn’t save you, and you died. I failed.”

Bucky’s mouth opens, closes, then opens again. “When?” he asks, his voice small and frail.

Steve leans forward until his forehead almost touches Bucky’s. “Siberia,” he answers quietly. “Tony—” He stops, the name a flint strike that sparks too many memories. Laughter, camaraderie, rage, blood on the shield. He shakes his head to clear it. “I watched you die. I held you in my arms as you bled out. I lost you, and… everything after that fell apart.”

Bucky’s gaze drops to the floor, the memory hitting him like a cold wind. He can feel the Russian air bite against his skin. He can smell the acrid snap of singed flesh from Tony’s photon blasts. He can taste the copper and blood on his tongue. Every detail is burned into him.

There were times afterward when he wondered if he would have been better off to let Tony finish it then—to die under the hands of the man whose parents had been killed by his own hands. It would’ve been a poetic little end. Easier than dragging himself from one fight to the next, always running, always just surviving.

It took a long time, but he’s finally carved out a life for himself, messy and stubborn, but one that he likes. And he hasn’t thought about his own death in a long time. 

“Your death will always be my greatest failure.”

The silence is thick. Bucky’s shoulders sag, all the fight drained out of him, leaving him hollow and spent. 

Steve lifts a hand and caresses the side of his face, his touch gentle like a lover’s. The tenderness makes Bucky flinch, but he doesn’t move away. He can’t.

Because it’s true—Steve would burn the world down for him. He can’t deny the weight of their past, their history, the years carved into both their bones. Across timelines, endings, and every possible version of them—from the ones who left, to the ones taken or torn away—they have always loved each other. 

Bucky will always love Steve Rogers. That love has been a part of him for as long as he can remember, like a limb. He’ll never be free from it. There is no part of him that wants to be.

“You should eat, Buck,” Steve says quietly. “I know you’re hurting right now, and it kills me to see it. You gotta take care of yourself.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. He stares at the floor, still and silent.

So Steve turns around and leaves, the door locking shut behind him.  

The next time he visits, the tray is empty. 

*

Steve is running out of time. 

The worst part is that he can’t even hide it from Bucky. The other man reads it on his face plain as day. 

“You don’t have a way out of this,” Bucky says flatly.

Steve swallows. He doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“You can’t keep me locked up here forever. And I’m not magically going to fall in love with you. So what’s the plan here, Steve?”

“There are ways to make you compliant.” When Steve lifts his eyes, he expects—fear, anger, maybe even hatred. But Bucky’s eyes are wide with hurt, and that feels like someone’s driven a knife into his gut. 

“You could do that to me? Take away my will, just like HYDRA did, for so many years.”

“No, Buck. Not like that. I would never hurt you like that.”

“You already are!” Bucky spits. “What the fuck else are you going to do to me? Just get it over with already! It’s been days, Steve. You won’t tell me where John is, you won’t even tell me if he’s alive, which I assume means that he is, because why else would you keep silent about it? So just tell me what the fuck you're going to do!”

“I need you to behave. I need you to love me. And I will do anything to make that happen.”

“You’re insane,” Bucky hisses. “Are you really this far gone?”

“I just need time.”

“You don’t have time,” Bucky growls. “You realize you’re in the same building as the Sentry, right? Bob is going to figure you out sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time. And when he realizes you’ve hurt us, he will literally decimate you. You don’t even have a clue to the level of power he is capable of.”

“I know,” Steve says quietly.

“You know,” Bucky echos flatly.

Steve nods. He moves closer, until there’s barely any air between them. He cups Bucky’s face with a tenderness that’s almost unbearable—a kind gesture warped into something terrible and possessive. “You don’t need to be afraid of me. I’ve only ever loved you, Buck.”

Bucky’s laugh is hollow and ugly. “What are you going to do to me?”

Steve’s thumb gently caresses the delicate skin beneath Bucky’s eye. His voice drops lower. “I’m going to take you far, far away from here. To a place where no one you know will ever be able to find you. I’ll have all the time in the world. People break. Even the strongest ones. You break them down, piece by piece, until the walls stop holding, the fight drains out of them, and there’s nothing left. Nothing but the hunger for warmth, for comfort, for something to cling to.”

He leans even closer, whispering the words like a promise. “You may hate me now, for what I’m going to do. But one day you won’t. One day, you’ll look at me, and you’ll realize that I am the only thing you have left. And instead of rage, you’ll feel relief. I’ll be the only one there, the one who feeds you, talks to you, touches you, and keeps you sane.”

Steve’s eyes shine with conviction, a soft intensity that leaves Bucky trembling beneath his touch. 

“That’s what I’m going to do to you. It’s not going to happen fast. Not all at once, but slowly, I’ll peel away the anger, the grief, that stubborn pride of yours, until there’s nothing left but our love. The way it was always meant to be.”

His lips just barely brush against the corner of Bucky’s mouth, intimate and terrifying. “We’ll have all the time in the world to fall in love again. You’ll thank me for this. You’ll love me again. You won’t even remember how to live without me.” 

Bucky’s face crumples in raw and potent grief. Steve feels a stir of pity rise in his chest, then he crushes it down. The way he’s done with every weakness, with ruthless ease. 

“You think you can break me? You think you can make me love this version of you?” Bucky shakes his head, his voice small but steady. “You’re the one that’s broken, Steve. You’re so far gone, you can’t even see it.”

Steve tilts his head, watching him with unblinking calm. His mouth slowly curves into something that would be a smile if not for the deadness in his eyes. “John told me what HYDRA did to you. The things that really haunt you, the ones that never made it into any file or report that I read. The rape. Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle when I break you.” 

Bucky stumbles back and shudders, like the floor has dropped out beneath him. Terror coils in his gut, choking the air from his lungs.

Steve finally steps back, calm and serene, as if he’s just promised something kind.

“There’s just one thing I need to take care of first,” he says. 

He turns and walks away, throwing a few final words over his shoulder. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

*

The screen jumps to the next batch of footage. 

Yelena slouches back in her chair, boots propped on the table, while Bob leans to one side, his head in his hand and his elbow against the armrest.

Their eyes follow every flicker of movement on the screens. They’ve been combing through hours of surveillance, looking for—well, they don’t really know. Just something… anything off about John’s behavior. Signs that they missed.

On the screen, John leans back against the counter in the common room, laughing at something Bucky said. When Bucky smirks and shoves his shoulder, John grins like a fool.

Yelena makes a gagging noise. “Please. Spare me. Next.”

The footage jumps to John in the training room, clapping Alexei on the back after a sparring match. Both men talk animatedly over each other, offering pointers like they both think they’re the mentor in the room. 

Then another clip, John and Steve exchanging words in the hallway, both men looking steady, normal. Nothing sinister.

“This is boring,” Yelena mutters. “We’re getting nowhere with this.”

They let the reels keep cycling until a recent mission feed comes onto the screen. The footage rolls, grainy and chaotic—gunfire flashing across the frame, smoke hanging heavy in the air. Yelena leans back again, arms crossed tight.

“Oh, I remember this one,” she mutters. “Total disaster. We were supposed to secure the convoy, was supposed to be an easy job. Instead—” She gestures at the screen with a nod of her head. “Half the intel burned up with the trucks. Val nearly threw a party when she heard. Clearly, there was something incriminating in there that she wanted gone. Bucky was pissed.”

Bob frowns at the screen. “Wait. What the hell is John doing?”

The camera catches John bursting into frame, pulling one of the operatives back from cover. For a second, it looks normal. Then another angle cuts in—John throwing a punch, slamming the man back into the vehicle. They watch him take out his gun, silencer loaded, and he points it straight at the stacked crates of fuel cannisters. 

Seconds later, he dives off-screen, right before the explosion rips through, white-hot. All three of the transports they’d been after had gone up in a blaze of fire. 

Yelena sits up straight as a ramrod. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no. What did he do?”

Bob leans closer to the monitor, voice low. “He… he caused the explosion.”

But Yelena leans forward, frowning. Something nags at her because she remembers John’s position when the trucks went up, and it was nowhere near the blast. She rewinds and watches again, watches frame by frame. And then rewinds a second time, slower.

Yelena narrows her eyes. 

Bob pivots his head from the screen to Yelena, then back again. “What is it? What do you see?”

She pauses the screen. 

The two of them stare at the frozen frame—John’s face with his gun raised. 

“Where's the damn taco shield?”

Bob frowns. John’s right arm is raised, gun in hand. His left arm is bare. The familiar hunk of bent metal is nowhere in sight. 

Yelena’s teeth grit. “Where the fuck is the taco shield?!” 

The room goes quiet. Bob’s eyebrows lift. John is never without that damned piece of metal in the field. Their eyes slowly meet as they mull over the first piece of evidence that things are not as they seem.

*

Steve steps into the cell. 

“Are you ready?” 

Bucky looks up warily. The lights slice across Steve’s face, shining on flecks of fresh blood still drying on his skin. Bucky’s eyes lock on them, slow and hard. “Where did you go? What did you just do?”

Steve breathes in through his nose, patient, like he’s explaining his actions to a child. “I told you. I had to take care of something.”

Bucky’s knuckles go white on the bed’s frame. “What did you do? Did you just kill someone?”

Steve’s smile is small and cold. “No one you care about.”

“You’re lying.” Bucky’s voice is a rasp. He pushes himself to his feet, the motion stiff and awkward. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Tell me what you did.”

Steve presses his lips together, then the words come out flat. “Valentina’s dead.”

Bucky’s first instinct is disbelief. Then a bitter laugh dies in his throat. “You killed Val?”

“She threatened you.” 

“So you killed her?” 

“She threatened you,” Steve says again. “No one threatens what’s mine.” He tilts his head as if considering the man like a chessboard. Then, almost casually, he lifts his hand, holding out the vibranium arm that gleams under the harsh light. 

Bucky stares at it with suspicion. “Why?” 

“I told you,” Steve answers, still offering it out. “I’m taking you far, far away. Somewhere no one can find you. I figured you’d want your arm back for the trip.”

Bucky looks from the metal and then back up at Steve. The memory of his promises hardens his jaw. “You won’t get away with this. Sam will look for me. He will find you.”

“Then I’ll kill him too.”

The rage and exhausted defiance rise in him again. For a second, Bucky sees the man he remembers—Steve with a shield raised to protect—and then that image shatters like glass. “You’re insane. I’m not going anywhere with you. You give me that arm back, and you’ll have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming. I hope you’re ready for a real fight this time.”

Steve tilts his head, as if he finds the challenge adorable. “I don’t think so. I think I know how to make you behave.”

Bucky bares his teeth, his voice low and rough. “Try me.”

Steve’s expression softens for a fraction. But not with kindness, only a strange tenderness that makes Bucky’s stomach turn. “Let’s go see John.”

Bucky’s face goes still. “What?”

“Come on, Buck.” Steve doesn’t move closer. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out. The TemPad glows faintly in his hand, humming in the silence of the cell.

Bucky’s eyes widen in horror. “No…” His voice cracks. “What the hell did you do?”

Steve smiles wider, something sweet and hot sparking alive inside him.

“Let’s go see how John’s faring where I left him.”

Chapter Text

Low Earth Orbit, Altitude ≈ 495.1 km, 2040

The light fades, and they step into a silence that swallows them whole. 

The air is thin and stale, laced with the faint hiss of recycled oxygen. Beneath them, the steady hum of the ship trembles through the floor, warped by the uneven wobble of artificial gravity. 

Bucky blinks hard as he adjusts to the jump. He slowly takes in his surroundings, trying to ground himself. For a moment, he stands frozen. Then his breath catches. The sound of the ship seems to recede, becoming muffled and distant. His mind struggles against what his eyes are seeing, tries to stitch the images together into something that makes sense.

It’s awful. It’s death and ruin. 

“That’s…” Bucky’s voice cracks. He swallows, tries again. “That’s Earth?”

His reflection shimmers faintly against the viewport glass, fractured by the sickly glow of the planet below. He presses a hand to the cold surface, as if the touch could anchor him to something real. 

The world below is unrecognizable. 

Continents that once shimmered with life—vibrant, green, and lustrous—lie scorched and hollow. In the shadows of the sun, where cities should be lit up in glowing hubs, there is only darkness. Oceans have thickened into tar-black swells, sluggish under the weight of ash and poison. Above it all, the atmosphere hangs heavy and gray, a choking shroud that dims even the sun.

There’s no pulse. No life.

Distracted as he is, he doesn’t sense the other presence in the room. But Steve does. 

Steve’s head tilts slightly, that eerie stillness sliding over him. His gaze flicks toward the shadows in the far corner, just as a blur of motion tears across the room.

The shield whistles through the air, fast and precise, and Bucky barely has time to register the sound before Steve’s hand snaps up, catching it inches from his face. The impact reverberates like thunder, shuddering through the ship’s walls.

Steve’s fingers curl gently around the vibranium, the weight familiar in his hands. He studies the star in its center, the reflection of himself warped across the metal.

Bucky’s heart lurches in his chest as he takes in the third figure in the room.

John stands in the doorway, breath ragged and eyes blazing. Fury has carved lines into his face, his expression feral enough to be almost inhuman. Dried blood darkens the collar of his uniform. Bruises still healing litter across his eyes and cheek. 

Bucky’s breath catches. Relief floods him so fast it’s painful, his chest tightening until it hurts. Seeing John—alive, furious, and fighting—feels like air after drowning.

But the relief is short-lived.

Steve turns the shield over in his hands like an old friend. And then he looks up and smiles—slow, cold, and utterly joyless. “Well,” he says, eyes flicking between the two men. “Isn’t this a nice little reunion.”

John’s eyes finally turn. For a second, disbelief flashes across his face when he sees Bucky. Then he moves. 

“Bucky.”

Bucky meets him halfway, the two colliding in something rough and desperate. His hands tremble as they touch him, his chest, his shoulders, his face—to make sure he’s alive and real. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” John says through gritted teeth. His eyes cut toward Steve, burning with anger. “You know he’s—” His voice shakes and cuts off. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly. “I know. I know what he’s done.”

John gives a short, bitter laugh. “I don’t think you know the half of it.” He turns toward the monitors. 

Steve stands a few feet away, quiet. His expression unreadable as he watches them.

Bucky’s gaze drifts to the screens that show the reality of the world below in awful, gritty detail. New York lies in ruins, the skyline gone, towers broken down to bone and wreckage. The streets are empty and still. Too still, without a single sign of life.  

Bucky staggers to the nearest console. The monitors flicker, static bleeding through satellite feeds. His voice is hoarse when he speaks. “What is this? What… what happened here?”

John’s jaw tightens. “It’s the world he abandoned.” His voice is low and seething. “Thanos won. Half the world turned to dust, and the rest just tried to survive. And then they came. Scavengers, warlords, remnants of Thanos’s army. They saw the planet was vulnerable, descended down like vultures.”

He glances at Steve, venom dripping in his voice. “The Avengers tried, what was left of them anyway. But by that point, there wasn’t much of a defense left. Isn’t that right?” 

Bucky’s eyes stay fixed on the monitors, caught somewhere in the images of ruin and static.

John’s words keep coming, bitter and raw in their accusation. “And you did nothing to stop it. You didn’t fight. You didn’t lead. The Avengers lost. The governments got desperate. They detonated their nuclear stockpiles to drive the invaders away. It worked—and destroyed what was left of the planet. The air became toxic, the oceans poison, the last cities fell into ruin. Any survivors are… barely living. It’s a graveyard down there.”

Bucky’s breath trembles. “You really did let it burn.” His voice is small, breaking under the weight of what he sees.

For the first time, something cracks in Steve’s expression. A shadow of guilt flickers in his eyes—quick, sharp, and almost human. A crack in the glass. Then it’s gone. He lowers the shield in his hands. He hasn’t touched the thing in years. 

John kept himself busy digging around. Answers about his timeline weren’t the only things he unearthed while Steve was gone.

“There was nothing left worth saving,” Steve says quietly.

Bucky turns toward him, his voice breaking. “How can you say that?”

Steve’s eyes move over the hollow, ruined cityscape. When he speaks, his tone is calm and cold, almost gentle. “That world took you from me.”

The words hang in the air. The faint hum of the ship fills the silence as Steve steps closer to the screens. “I had just gotten you back. And then I lost you again. I felt nothing for it anymore.”

Bucky’s stomach twists. “You gave up on everyone,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Everything.”

Steve turns his head slightly, meeting his eyes with a faint, hollow smile. “No. I stopped pretending that the world was worth more than the man I love.”

John’s breath catches audibly behind them.

Bucky stares at his oldest friend’s face—still, serene, and utterly unrepentant—and feels something inside him fracture.

Behind him, John mutters under his breath, “I told you so.”

Bucky turns, disbelief flashing across his face. He gapes, jaw dropping. “Are you serious right now?”

John just lifts a shoulder, bloody and defiant. “What?” His voice is rough but edged with conceit. “I told you he was in love with you.”

Steve chuckles while Bucky stays at a loss for words. His eyes flick between them with something amused, almost a little fond. “It’s a shame. That I have to kill you,” he says, his voice conversational as he looks at John. “I was actually looking forward to having people again. My world has been empty for so long.” 

His gaze shifts to Bucky. “We could’ve had that in your world, Buck. Something quiet. Something ours. It would have been so easy. It would have been nice. But we’re here instead.” He takes a slow step closer. “It doesn’t matter where we are, not really. As long as I have you.”

The air hums with static. Metal groans softly somewhere within the bulkheads.

Bucky plants himself firmly between them, his shoulders squared, breath coming sharp through bared teeth. “You’re not touching John.”

“I have no need for him anymore.”

“It’s two against one, pal.” John drawls with a smirk.

Steve grins slow. “I think I still have the advantage then.”

The ship stirs. A low vibration ripples through the deck plating, subtle at first, then quickly rising. Overhead, the lights flicker menacingly.

“Uh,” John mutters, glancing around. “What the hell—”

Bucky’s instincts scream. “Steve, what are you doing?”

Steve tilts his head toward the ceiling. “Lockdown protocol.”

The ship’s AI answers with a sterile chime: Confirmed.

The hum of the ship grows louder, threading through the walls and beneath their feet. Instinctively, Bucky pulls John behind him.

But it’s too late. 

The hum shifts pitch, a deep vibration rising through the floor. Panels along the walls slide open with a hiss.

Hydraulic arms unfold, clicking into action with clinical precision. Before Bucky can react, a magnetic tether shoots out and snaps around his metal wrist, locking into place. He jerks as he’s dragged to the side, but another wraps around his torso, followed by more cuffs around his other wrist and legs. The more he fights, the tighter they pull, locking him against the bulkhead in a tangle of humming restraints.

“Damnit, Steve, stop this!” He shouts, struggling, as the servos in his arm whine with effort. 

John lunges forward, but the floor beneath him splits open. Restraint cables snap up like vipers, coiling around his arms and dragging him to his knees. A surge of electricity rips through the metal, jerking his body still as he arches in a voiceless scream, muscles locked tight as fifty thousand volts tear through him. He convulses, straining against the current. 

When it finally ends, he goes down trembling, burnt skin singing at the contact points even through his suit. 

Fuck, Bucky flinches at the smell—it carries even from across the room.

Subjects contained, the voice above confirms. 

The room goes still again except for the hum of the engine. Steve stands in the glow, the lights above cutting across his face in stark planes.

Bucky strains against the bonds holding him still. “Steve, stop this. Please. This isn’t you.”

Steve’s eyes turn toward him, unreadable. “Don’t worry. You’ll thank me when this is all over.”

He turns his gaze to John, still bound and breathing hard on the floor. “You should be flattered,” he says. “My plan was perfect. Flawless. I only made one mistake. I didn’t anticipate how much Bucky cared about you.”

John glares up at him, his lip curling through the sweat. “Fuck you.”

Steve’s smile sharpens as he crouches down beside John. The shield rests, propped against the floor as he slowly traces a finger along the rim. He tilts his head, studying him closely. “You tried so hard, didn’t you? The perfect soldier with the record and the uniform. The sense of duty and loyalty. You’ve got the right jawline, too, I suppose. But you could never be me. You could never be Captain America.”  

John spits into his face. “Take a look in the mirror. You’re no Cap either, pal.”

Steve chuckles, soft and humorless, as he wipes away the spit under his eye with a thumb. “No, I stopped pretending a long time ago.” 

He leans closer, his voice dropping until John can feel the breath against his face. “You know the difference between us, John? You want Bucky’s approval. His acceptance. You think if you stand up straight, salute just right, he’ll pat you on the head and call you a good man. Me? I want everything. And I don’t beg for it. That’s the difference between you and me.”

John flinches and wishes he could blame it on the current. “You’re so fucked in the head.”

Steve straightens, smirking faintly. “Maybe. But at least I’m honest with myself.” He glances toward Bucky then, eyes softening in a way that makes everything worse. “And in the end, he’s still standing here. With me. After everything. I’ve won.”

John snarls, trying to push himself up against the steadfast metal restraints. “He’s standing here because you won’t let him go.”

Steve doesn’t deny it. His expression doesn’t change. “Isn’t that what love is? Refusing to let them go?” He looks down at John again, cruel amusement bleeding across his face. “You should be pleased, really. You’re helping me prove my point.”

“You’re insane,” John spits. 

“Steve, stop this.” Bucky’s voice is raw, cutting across the room to drag Steve’s attention away from John. “This isn’t you. Let us go.” 

“Or what?” Steve’s tone is casual as he turns to glance at him.

Bucky swallows, his jaw working. “I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never love you. If you do this, if you hurt him, there is no going back from that.”

A flicker of something almost human appears to pass across Steve’s face. Then it vanishes. He tilts his head. His smile is slow and untroubled. “So, what should I do, Buck? Should I keep him alive then? Use his life as a bargaining chip to make you behave? To make you obedient? To bend you to my will, with the promise that I’ll let him live?”

His voice is dry and clinical, cruelty behind every word. “Would that be any better? Wouldn’t you prefer a clean cut? Just let me kill him, and then we can start our lives together.”

Bucky’s face goes pale. Anger hits first, sharp and blinding, but it curdles fast into dread and horror.

Steve’s eyes glitter. “Because I can do either. I can make you beg, or I can make you mourn. Either way, in the end, you’ll be mine.”

“Steve,” Bucky chokes out, his breath coming sharp and uneven. His eyes lock on Steve’s, wild with panic and fear and stubborn defiance all at once. “Please don’t hurt him. Don’t you fucking touch him.”

Steve turns back to John and rises to his full height, towering over the man on his knees. He draws the gun from his holster in a slow, deliberate motion, then presses the barrel to John’s forehead. 

Bucky wants to scream. He wants to beg. His mouth is open. But no sound comes out. 

“Should I make it quick?” Steve asks softly. “Or draw it out, savor the moment?” 

John lifts his chin. His limbs tremble against the restraints, but his gaze stays steady, feral even. He grins, feeling a little reckless. “Go ahead, kill me. He’ll hate you forever. That’s the only thing you’ll win today.”

“John, shut the fuck up,” Bucky growls. His voice cracks somewhere between panic and fury.

But John never learned how to quit. His grin widens, vicious and cutting. “All this obsession, all this planning, and for what? Bucky will never be yours. You’ve already lost, Rogers—”

“John, shut the fuck up!”

“—You’re the pathetic one!”

Steve inhales slowly through his nose. His face doesn’t twist with anger. No, it smooths out. Composed. Controlled. 

Calmly, he nods. “Slow it is then.” 

He moves the gun from John’s forehead down to his shoulder and fires.

The sound reverberates through the confined space. John jerks violently, a raw scream tearing from his throat before he bites it down, swallowing the pain. The smell of blood and gunpowder soaks the air.

Steve watches, utterly calm, as he studies him. “You talk too much,” he says quietly, lowering the gun to his side. “But that’s alright. We’ve got time.”

Bucky’s breath comes in harsh, uneven bursts. He’s shaking, metal fingers flexing and curling against nothing. His voice is hoarse when he finally speaks. “Steve, please. I’ll behave, okay? Just let him go, and I’ll behave. I’ll stay.”

Steve glances at him, disappointment written across his face. “C’mon, Buck. I know you better than that,” he says quietly. “And you know that I can never let him walk out of here.”

He turns his attention back to John.

John’s breath is ragged, but the sharp, feral grin is back on his face. He drags his head up with effort. “Is that all you’ve got?” he croaks. “Go on, take your time. Gotta make yourself feel like the big man again, huh?”

“John, stop talking,” Bucky’s voice snaps. 

But John presses on, his voice steady with conviction. “You’re not fooling anyone. You’re so desperate, so delusional. It’s laughable. You think hurting me is going to make him love you? This gets you nothing! This isn’t your victory lap, it’s a fucking tantrum! It’s your sad, little meltdown because you can’t stand that he’ll never love you again.”

Something darkens in Steve’s expression—a small twitch at the corner of his mouth that isn’t quite a smile. “Still talking,” he murmurs. “Still fucking talking.”

He raises the gun again.

Bucky realizes what’s about to happen a half-second too late. “Steve, don’t—”

The shot cracks through the room like thunder.

John’s body jolts as the bullet tears through his thigh. He bites down on a scream but can’t stop the strangled sound that escapes, raw with pain. Blood drips down his tac gear, slick and dark.

Bucky flinches like he’s been shot too. His breath catches in his throat. “Stop. Stop. Stop, please.” His voice cracks, trembling with a desperation that borders on hysteria. He shakes his head, straining uselessly against the cuffs that hold him. “Please, Steve. I’ll behave. I swear, I’ll behave. I’ll do anything you want! Just stop this, please—”

“Don’t beg him,” John rasps through gritted teeth. His chest heaves, breath coming in ragged gasps. “Don’t give him that.”

“John…” Bucky’s voice breaks on his name, raw and pleading.

Steve is staring at him now. There’s a strange stillness in his eyes, unreadable. His eyes widen into something like wonder, and it makes Bucky freeze. For a moment, he doesn’t understand the look. Then he suddenly realizes that tears are streaming down his face. 

“You really care this much?”

“Yes,” Bucky whispers. His throat burns. “Please, Steve. If you ever loved me—if any of that was real—you wouldn’t be doing this. This—this isn’t love. Please. You don’t have to do this.”

Steve cocks his head, watching him like something curious and fragile. “Don’t I?”

John laughs weakly from the floor, a jagged, painful sound, as he tugs against the restraints. “He won’t kill me,” he says, forcing the words out between breaths. He looks up at Steve. “I’m your leverage, right? If I’m gone, Bucky will tear you apart. He won’t stop until you’re dead. At least this way, he’s groveling instead of gutting you.”

Steve’s eyes narrow. “You willing to bet your life on that?”

A flash of fear crosses John’s face, but it disappears just as quick. He swallows. And then smirks. “He’ll never look at you the way you want him to,” he says quietly. 

If John is going to die today, he can damn well have the last word. 

“It kills you that he picked me, doesn’t it? Steve Rogers is jealous of me.” John throws his head back with a laugh that’s a little bit hysterical.

“John, shut up,” Bucky begs, his voice breaking again.

But John presses on, laughing low and bitter. “You’ve already lost.”

Steve’s face flashes through grief, devastation, and then into something darker. He turns to Bucky, his voice quiet and dangerously soft. “You love him?”

Bucky hesitates. His throat feels like sandpaper. And then he nods. “Yes.”

“More than you love me?”

“Yes,” Bucky whispers, barely audible.

Steve’s gaze hardens, his hand tightening around the gun. “Then you know what I need to do.”

Bucky shakes his head violently, his voice breaking into a sob. “Don’t. Please, Steve. This won’t fix anything.”

“You don’t know the pain I felt when I lost you.” Steve's eyes go distant and glassy. His voice shakes as he remembers the worst moment of his life. “When I watched you bleed out in my arms. Maybe now you’ll feel some of that pain too. And you’ll understand why I’ve done all this.”

“This won’t change anything,” Bucky whispers again. “This won’t bring me back.”

“No, but I’ll have you again. One day, you’ll come around, and you’ll love me because I will be the last person in the world to love. I will fix us. Because… like I told you, losing you was my greatest failure.”

Behind him, John coughs out a laugh. “Your greatest failure is that you have destroyed yourself and betrayed yourself—for nothing.”

Bucky groans under his breath and closes his eyes in resignation.

Steve raises an eyebrow at the man behind him. “Dostoevsky? Really?”

“Seems fitting. All that guilt and punishment. God’s wrath and all. It’s right up your alley.”

Bucky just shakes his head, some helpless sound caught in his throat between disbelief and despair.

Steve chuckles, low and dark. “Maybe I’m starting to see why Bucky likes you.” 

The laugh fades, echoing off the walls. Then silence, heavy and pulsing. 

Steve’s expression softens in a way that makes Bucky’s stomach twist. “I see it now,” he says quietly. “A soldier too proud to quit. Too stupid to yield. And thinks his moral duty is to accept suffering so others don't have to.”

John swallows, lifting his chin to meet Steve’s eyes. He gives a half-hearted shrug. “Bucky has a type,” he mutters quietly. 

Steve huffs a sound that might have been a laugh. “In another life, you and I might’ve been friends.”

John’s mouth twitches, the faintest ghost of a grin as he recalls some of those branches he saw. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”

Steve nods once. “But not this one.”

He raises the gun again. The muzzle finds John’s forehead, and the world seems to shrink to the sound of Steve’s voice, flat and final: “I can’t let you live in this world with Bucky.”

“Steve—don’t!” Bucky’s voice shatters, desperate and breaking and pleading. “NO—”

John doesn’t breathe. His heart punches against his ribs. For once, he has no words left to say.

The gunshot cracks like thunder.

And John jerks his head to the side on instinct—just in time for the bullet to slice across the side of his head. The world explodes into ringing and light and nausea. He’s seeing double. And then he’s seeing red, as blood streams warm down his bowed head into his eyes, splitting his vision into red and shadow. 

“Ow,” he croaks, as he struggles to hold onto the contents of his stomach. His voice is distant and muffled to his own ears, like he’s underwater. 

The world tilts. Somewhere far away, Bucky is shouting his name, over and over. 

John tries to lift his head, but the strength just isn’t there. 

His vision goes dark as he loses the battle and sags against the restraints that hold him. 

Something inside Bucky breaks. The sound that tears from his throat isn’t human—it’s raw and guttural, ripped straight from the place where pain turns into fury. Metal grinds against metal as his arm wrenches against the cuff that holds him. The restraints groan and creak until they snap with a sharp metallic shriek. He tears the rest free in seconds, splintering the metal into pieces that fly across the floor as they’re ripped away.

The moment John’s body slumps forward, Bucky is already moving.

Steve turns just in time to catch a blur of motion before the impact hits him like a train, slamming him back into the bulkhead. The wall dents and buckles behind him with a deafening sound.

Bucky doesn’t hesitate, and Steve brings the shield up just in time. Vibranium meets vibranium with a thunderous crack that shakes the room. 

Bucky’s fists are relentless—wild and furious, every hit fueled by something deeper than rage. He hammers the shield, Steve’s jaw, anything solid enough to take a hit. 

A dodged blow has a vibranium arm slamming deep into one of the control consoles. Sparks fly. Bucky pulls his arm back as warning lights flash and alarms sound. Bucky just keeps going. Every blow he lands reverberates, the sound a brutal rhythm through the room.

“You think this is love?” Bucky roars, landing a kick into Steve’s gut that sends him back several feet. “You think this is what I wanted?”

Steve grits his teeth, blocking another hit and shoving him back with the shield’s edge. “He’s the one who ruined it,” He spits. “He’s the one who got in the way.”

Bucky surges forward, tackles him, and they crash together into a row of consoles. Glass and metal explode around them in a cascade of sparks. The hum of the ship flickers and groans, dimming as systems go offline.

Steve twists, grabs Bucky by the arm, and throws him—Bucky hits another row of panels hard enough to shatter them. Before Steve can blink, Bucky’s already moving again, rolling to his feet, blood running from a gash above his brow.

The next hits come fast and savage. Their movements blur into a violent rhythm—shield, fist, metal, and bone.

From above, a voice crackles over the speakers, calm amid the chaos: Multiple system failures detected. Immediate repair required.

The words barely register. All that exists in that moment is the brutal sound of fists and the low, furious growl in Bucky’s throat.

Across the room, John stirs, blood still dripping down his temple. He forces his head up at the sounds of the fight.

Steve growls at the sight of him, alive. He draws the gun again, his aim steady and merciless. Another shot rings out, just as Bucky’s boot connects hard with his wrist. The bullet goes wide, another damaging blow swallowed by the ship. The gun skitters across the floor amongst the wreck. 

“Don’t you touch him!”

Steve stumbles, then straightens, with the shield still on his arm. The muscles in his jaw tighten. “You don’t get it, do you?” he says, his voice low and for the first time, trembling with exertion. “We’re not leaving this world. Not you, not him, not me. It’s over, Buck.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the small device that gleams in his palm.

Bucky freezes, eyes widening at the sight of the TemPad that brought them to this hellish place. 

“Don’t—”

Steve crushes it in his grip. The glass shatters, circuitry crackling with a dying spark and a wheeze. “There’s no going back now.”

Bucky doesn’t make a sound as he stares down at the broken pieces lying shattered on the ground. His silence somehow feels worse than a scream. There’s no fury left to give. Only something hollow and resolute. When he moves, it’s with the patience of a man who’s already accepted their fate.

His fists hit Steve, not just with rage, but grief given form. Steve meets him move for move, the two of them locked in a dance that feels far older than either of their lives. Like ghosts retracing old choreography, every move a memory of what they used to be.

Bucky knows how this ends. Maybe he dies here. Maybe they all do. That’s fine. At least it’ll be quiet when it’s over.

In the end, they’re too evenly matched.

Bucky drives Steve back into a wall, his metal hand clamped around his throat. 

Steve chokes out a laugh, the sound hoarse and bitter, and he slams the shield into Bucky’s side, taking the opportunity to spin their positions and pin Bucky with his forearm across his neck, pressing him back into the metal behind him.

“You can’t beat me,” Steve growls. “You’ve already tried.”

“I don’t have to,” Bucky rasps. His grip tightens around Steve’s throat, gold glimmering up and down his arm. “I just have to stop you.”

For a long, agonizing moment, they’re frozen in place, two men locked in a stalemate, trembling with effort, faces inches apart.

Around them, the ship groans, alarms blaring overhead.

The voice speaks again: Critical systems offline. Immediate repair required.

Steve’s face is inches away, eyes wide and wild with something Bucky doesn’t recognize anymore.

“Why do you keep fighting me?” Steve’s voice breaks on the question. Then his arm shifts, leaving his throat to grip Bucky’s jaw in a strong hand, forcing his head in place.

“Because you’re a monster,” Bucky rasps.

Steve’s expression twists. He leans in—too close, too desperate, and trembling with something that isn’t love anymore. The kiss is rough, brief, and a mockery of tenderness. Until Bucky bites down hard on his bottom lip, and Steve wrenches himself away. 

Their breaths shake when they part.

Bucky stares at him, defiant even now, and spits Steve’s blood onto the floor. “Try that again and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

The ship groans under the strain of the damage their fight caused, alarms shrieking around them. 

Steve’s expression twists with cruelty, and he dives into motion again. He swings and throws the shield in a brutal arc. The blow catches Bucky in the ribs, sending him crashing into the opposite wall. The impact leaves a dent in the steel, and he drops to one knee, gasping.

Steve stalks forward, breathing hard but steady, the shield, having bounced back, is still gleaming in his grip. “You’re still fighting me,” he says, almost pitying. Mocking. “Even now. You don’t know how to stop.”

Bucky wipes blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and looks up, eyes blazing. “You’re right,” he rasps. “I don’t.”

“You know I love that about you.”

Steve lunges again. Their movements blur—Steve swings with the shield, Bucky blocks with his arm, the clang rings through the room like a death knell. Bucky drives his shoulder into Steve’s chest, forcing him back, and drives a knee into his sternum. Steve retaliates, throwing a fist into his face with enough force to crack bone.

Bucky’s head snaps to the side, but he doesn’t fall. He turns back, blood still dripping from his lip. But the look in his eyes is hollow. Full of fury. Stripped of reason. 

“Why won’t you stay down?” Steve demands, shoving him back hard with another blow from the shield.

“You first,” Bucky snarls.

Steve swings again, but this time, Bucky catches the rim of the shield mid-arc. The sound of vibranium grinding together fills the air as Bucky’s fingers dig in. Steve strains, muscles corded, but Bucky doesn’t let go. With a snarl more animal than human, he drives his other fist into Steve’s ribs. The hit lands like a hammer blow, the crack of bone audible even over the alarms.

Steve gasps and staggers, but Bucky doesn’t stop. He slams his shoulder forward, wrenches the shield with both hands, and with a roar, finally rips it free. 

The room pulses red, warning lights bathing everything in a haze of blood-colored light.

Several yards away, John stares, silent and motionless, watching the fight with wide eyes.

Bucky looks down at the shield. His chest heaves, every breath uneven. The silver star glints in the flickering light, a cruel echo of everything this shield once meant to him. His hands tremble, even the metal one hums faintly.

Steve must recognize something on his face. Because when he speaks, his voice is uncertain. “Bucky… what are you doing?”

Bucky looks up slowly. His eyes are empty now—quiet, glassy resignation replacing his rage. It’s enough to make Steve falter.

Behind him, John rasps his name.

Bucky turns, tears streaking through the grime on his face. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, voice frayed and raw. “I’m so sorry. I love you, John.”

His grip tightens on the shield as he turns back to Steve. “At least this way… it’ll all be over soon.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bucky lifts the shield, the motion steady and deliberate. “Maybe I’ll just kill us all.”

The words fall like lead. Even Steve flinches. “Bucky—”

But it’s too late. 

Bucky hurls it with everything he has. It cuts through the air like a guillotine, ripping through consoles, panels, entire control banks. Sparks erupt in a storm of blue and white as systems rupture, alarms blaring louder. The lights flicker violently, then plunge the room into half-darkness. The ship shudders beneath them, groaning under the damage.

“Maybe that’s what it takes,” Bucky mutters, staring blankly at the destruction. The ship gives a great shudder, then rumbles, and continues to shake as the systems shut down. “Maybe that’s the only way this ends.”

Steve stares at him, horrified and heartbroken. “You’d rather die?”

Bucky’s eyes glisten, his voice trembles, but there’s no hesitation. “I’d rather die than live another second in this world with you.”

Power grid failure im—minent. Recomm… end immediate… evacua—tion—

Smoke thickens as the deck shudders beneath their feet. The hull moans as it begins its slow descent into Earth’s atmosphere. Somewhere behind them, sharp metallic clicks cut through the noise as John’s restraints fall open. 

John drags himself up on shaking knees, one hand clutching his bleeding leg. 

Multi—multiple systems off—offline. Altitude drop—ping… Power grid f—failure immi—

The voice dies in static. The ship screams around them, alarms blaring, walls rattling, emergency lights pulsing like a dying heartbeat. Smoke curls from split wiring, sparks flying dangerously. The faint hiss of depressurization whispers through the chaos.

Steve turns in place, eyes wide as he takes in the devastation. “What did you do?” He whispers. “What the hell did you do?”

“Not even you could survive this,” Bucky spits. His shoulders sag, the fight drained out of him now that there’s nothing left to do but wait for the inevitable end. “I’d rather burn with this ship than let you own me.”

For the first time, Steve’s composure splinters. He falters, hands trembling at his sides. “Bucky…” he starts, but the ship lurches violently, and they all stumble, gravity tilting beneath them. Through the viewport, the curve of the Earth grows larger, closer, and the air around them begins to sear.

John groans from the floor, his voice hoarse and cracked. “Looks like you lost, Rogers.”

That breaks something in Steve. His thin mask of control twists into something raw and monstrous. With a snarl, he dives for the nearest weapon—the same gun he’d dropped minutes before. Metal scrapes against the ground as he scoops it up, pivots, and raises it toward John.

He means to end it. 

But Bucky moves first.

He throws himself between them as the gunshot cracks. The bullet tears into his chest, a wet, heavy impact that sends him stumbling backward. Air leaves his lungs in a choking gasp. John catches him before he hits the floor, dragging him down, blood slick between them.

The sound Steve makes isn’t human. It rips from somewhere deep, a strangled, broken sob mixed with disbelief. He stumbles forward, eyes wide, rage morphing into horror as he sinks to his knees. The gun slips from his hand, clattering onto the deck. 

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, his voice breaking in his grief. “Why? Why did you do that?” He reaches out for him with trembling fingers, desperate—trying to help, trying to comfort, to fix this like he used to fix everything. 

But Bucky flinches away, dragging himself back despite the blood spilling down his front. Every breath rattles in his chest, sharp and shallow, wet around the bullet in his lung. Each inhale feels like he’s drowning.

“Don’t,” Bucky rasps, his voice wet with blood. He shakes his head weakly, eyes still burning with defiance. He won’t let Steve touch him. Not after everything. Not now.

John tightens his grip around him, pale and shaking, pulling Bucky back against his chest. Instinct takes over. To steady him, protect him, even now, even as the ship burns and breaks apart.

Outside, pieces of the ship streak into flame as they fall away.

Steve watches them—bloodied, broken, but still together—and something inside fractures. His eyes glisten as if the whole world has shifted out from under him. 

The weight of everything he’s done, every compromise, every lie—it all crashes down in one unbearable moment. His voice trembles when he finally speaks.

“Is this really how it ends?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper. “After everything we were… after everything I tried to do…”

He laughs once, soft and bitter. “I told you not to do anything stupid.”

Bucky’s lips twitch, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You started this. I’m just finishing it.” 

The ship groans a deep, gut-wrenching sound as its frame begins to tear apart. Sparks rain around them. Gravity lurches, pulling them sideways as the vessel begins its death spiral toward Earth’s ruined surface.

“I couldn’t let you win, Steve. And you were worth dying for once.”

Steve sways where he kneels, staring at Bucky amidst the haze and the fire. His expression shifts. There’s no fury in eyes anymore, the rage giving way to something hollow and human. Regret. The echo of a man who once fought for something good before the world twisted it.

“I didn’t want it to end like this,” Steve says quietly. “I just wanted you back. I thought if I could—” His breath hitches. “I thought I could fix it.”

Bucky shakes his head weakly. “You can’t fix it. Your Bucky died a long time ago. Maybe… maybe you did too.”

Steve’s throat works, a choked sound escaping. His eyes drop to the deck, to the blood spreading beneath them. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, voice breaking on the words. “For everything.”

Bucky’s chest rises shallowly, each breath a fight. He meets Steve’s gaze, and for a moment, something in him softens. His hand slides across his waist until he finds John’s. He grips it, threads their fingers together, and grounds himself in the only thing he still wants.

John’s other hand reaches for the gun Steve dropped. His fingers close around it, slick with blood. He lifts it slowly, the movement deliberate but trembling with fury.

Bucky doesn’t speak. He just gives the smallest nod—permission, resignation, mercy. Steve sees it too. And he doesn’t fight. His lips twitch into a faint, rueful smile. “Guess I deserve that,” he murmurs.

John steadies his aim, meeting Steve’s gaze. “Yeah,” he says softly. “You do.” 

He pulls the trigger. The shot rings out, clean, sharp, and final. Steve’s head snaps back, and he crumples to the floor, eyes open but empty.

The ship keeps burning. 

John lowers the gun, chest heaving. 

Bucky meets his eyes, and even through the haze of pain, there’s a flicker of relief. It’s over. Finally over.

The alarms wail, but fainter now, drowned out by the roar of the dying engines and the long, terrible groan that ripples through the hull. Through the viewport, Earth looms larger, an ashen, ruined sphere that swells to fill the glass.

Oddly, it feels peaceful.

“It’s getting a little hot in here,” John manages with a dry chuckle. “And I don’t think it’s you.”

Bucky’s answering laugh rattles painfully in his chest. 

John glances at Steve’s lifeless body, then down at the man bleeding in his arms. He pulls Bucky closer, steadying him against his chest. “Bucky,” he says softly, his voice rough. “How’re you doing?”

Bucky blinks slowly, trying to focus. His lungs burn from the smoke. Blood stains his lips when he speaks. “I think…” He tries to laugh, but it comes out as a weak cough. “I think I killed us.”

John swallows hard, his throat tight. The ship shudders again, metal tearing itself apart. The heat rises, and the words die in his throat. The ship is coming apart around them.

“I don’t think there was any other option,” John says quietly. 

Bucky’s eyes drift to Steve’s body, then back to John. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve this. You were just getting back to Caleb—”

The name hits John like a knife. He huffs a broken laugh, shaking his head. “Oh fuck,” he whispers. His eyes glaze for a moment. He hadn’t even thought of his son until now, and that kills him too. Their relationship was just starting to become something real. And now he's going to miss everything.

“He’ll be okay. Olivia is a better parent than I ever was.” John says stubbornly. He squeezes Bucky’s hand. “He won’t even remember me,” he adds quietly, the corner of his mouth twisting. 

Bucky leans his head against John’s shoulder, his voice soft and tired. “Steve was a real dick.”

“Tell me about it,” John says dryly. “Guy shot me three times.”

“How’s your head?”

“Bleeding stopped. Concussion sucks, though. I’m trying really hard not to puke on you.”

Bucky nods. He wouldn’t care if he did. He gives a rasping laugh with blood-stained teeth. “You know Steve was working with Val to take your place on the team?”

John does a double-take. “Really? That was his big plan? He was trying to replace me! Me!”

Bucky manages a wry smile. “I love you, and your damn ego,” he says softly, before leaning up and pressing their lips together in a soft kiss. It’s a trembling touch of lips, too bloody, too late. But it’s a moment that is only theirs. 

The ship bucks violently, and the deck tilts as another blast rips through the hull. They break apart, gripping each other for balance.

“How does the serum handle a… toxic, radioactive planet?” John asks breathlessly.

“We’ll burn up before impact,” Bucky says quietly. 

“Damn.”

“Yeah.” Bucky looks out the viewport at the planet below. A dead world waiting to claim them both. “At least it’s over.”

John tightens his arms around him, his voice a whisper against the roar. “Yeah,” he says. “No one I’d rather die with more.”

The ship groans again. The heat grows unbearably higher. Together, they wait for the fire to take them.

Metal screams as the hull peels apart like an open wound. Fire pours through the cabin in pulsing waves, heat searing through the fractured plating.

Bucky can’t tell if the shaking is from the ship or from his own failing body. His lungs burn with every breath, each inhale slicing through smoke and blood. The damaged one rattles uselessly in his chest, filled with blood that spills into his mouth and out through his lips. 

John’s arms are still locked around him, holding onto him tight. The heat is so intense that it warps the air. “This is it,” he murmurs. He tries his best to hide the fear in his voice. 

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers. His eyelids drag, unbearably heavy now. “I guess it is.”

And then—light.

Not from the flames or the explosion, not from the planet below. A sharp, impossibly white glow opens in front of them, rippling through the smoke like a tear in reality itself. The roar of the ship dims, swallowed by a deep, thrumming pulse that vibrates through the air.

John blinks, disoriented by the glare. “What the hell—”

A familiar figure steps through the light. Tall and radiant, haloed by golden energy that bends fire and smoke away like nothing. With both arms raised, his eyes blaze bright with something unearthly.

“Bob!” John croaks, disbelief cracking through his voice.

More figures emerge behind the Sentry, moving through the distortion. Yelena’s voice cuts sharply, “That’s it, you found them!”

And then Sam, in full Captain America armor, runs straight through the portal to their side. “Bucky! John!”

John tightens his grip on Bucky, his voice rough as he coughs. “Take Bucky first!” He shoves him toward Sam with all the strength he can muster.

Sam catches him, eyes darting to the blood, to the wound, then to Bucky’s face—eyes barely open, breath shallow and fading. Sam hesitates only for a second when his eyes land on Steve’s body. “I got him!” He grits out, hauling Bucky into his arms. He charges toward the portal as Yelena braces the threshold from the other side.

“Come on!” Yelena shouts, running through and reaching for John. Her sharp voice is nearly swallowed by the sound of the ship breaking apart. “Stop dragging your feet, John!”

The ship lurches again. The walls twist inward, screaming under pressure as the air turns molten. Bob stands unmoved in the center of it all, arms raised, his golden aura crackling like lightning as he holds the portal steadily.

The light surges and rushes over them in one sweeping finish. Bob turns. The heat fades fast, sound collapsing into silence. 

For a moment, they’re weightless.

Then it all fades to black.