Sirens ring out in the streets, beyond the dusty windows he's careful not to clean, not to brush his fingers against, not to look out of. The sound echoes the empty hallways that lead to his apartment—what if it leads them here, to you, what if it leads him.
But it carries on its way, down the street, passes by the building, the empty hallways, the dusty windows, without leaving much more than clenched fists and gritted teeth in its wake. It's like this often, in this part of town. It used to be like this—back—somewhere—he breathes in and out.

He's been keeping count of time, noting it down on his journal, one sunset at a time up to five, six hundred, and any moment, any day, sirens could signal things shattering, the end of this; any day he could return. He doesn't ever open the windows either, light comes in diffused by dirty glass. He doesn't open them because of all those sounds, outside, that could lead them to him. And then the wind that could turn and fold and scatter the pages of the notebook he's devoted to the man on the bridge, blowing away flyers and memorabilia collected over the many days, up to six hundred, that have passed since—since you plunged into those waters, extended your hand at him, and carried him out. (Who are you?)

He writes it all down, every single shard of memory that comes his way from before all that death. A line about dancing lessons and practice—for when he finds the one, for when he doesn't need you to drag him to dates he only goes on for your sake. Would you go to them if not for him? Would you prefer it was only the two of you?—a line about serum, about lies—a soldier from Brooklyn, Ohio, Michigan, Poughkeepsie—and then no lines about aches, longing, emptiness deep inside. But he keeps journals of all the days since, and those before. —Sunsets in New York before the war, before the cold, before you, before him.—

He bites into the plum, not ripe enough, and wonders if all good memories will sting worse than the bad ones—You don't really know who you are and still you're unworthy, he's so much more, he's not you in any way. He never was.

Steve's choice's been made before he's shown the picture of The Winter Soldier, responsible for the death of the Starks, responsible for him losing focus when that man said 'your Bucky'. It was made before he let Tony's taunt get to him—he hasn't seen your dark side and you suspect he wouldn't take it, like he wouldn't take Bucky's—and before he saw The Winter Soldier turn towards him for the first time—maybe even before your mother's death when you and Bucky would walk up to Ciro's joint, when Bucky worked the best of his charms to get the two of you free gelato in the summer heat. Steve's choice was made when the world was him and Bucky, lying on the hard floor of Bucky's room—the one he shared with his brother—the last day of school.

When he finds Bucky in Bucharest he makes the same choice all over again, knows it's a choice he'll never stop making—You think he'd do it for you.

Sirens ring out in the streets. This is it, he thinks. Or maybe not, as they pass him by—maybe finally it is, they're looking at you.
He's still holding onto the crumpled newspaper that accuses him of being in Vienna when he finds the man on the bridge now at his apartment. Recoiling from him, from him, from him—you are guilty, you are guilty—he keeps a safe distance, protects one of them from the other. Steve's holding onto the journal he's devoted to their memories—maybe he knows.
"D'you know me?"
He doesn't—For now you're safe, put them up, keep him away, metal barbed wire fences guard the trenches. You're guilty, you're guilty, your metal hand can't feel the warmth of his anymore; recoil from him, from him, from his voice saying your name, asking "Why?" when you've said you don't remember, you don't know, as if he didn't really believe your words. Recoil into your guilt, hide in there—
"I don't do that anymore," he says and doesn't add but maybe he does. The soldier still exists, he knows, takes just a couple of words to bring him back. If he does say that, will the way Steve looks at him change? Will he leave? Will he recoil—away from you the way you're supposed to move away from him with your guilt? Killing you is the best strategy, so why is he on your side?

He pretends he can't remember: "You're Steve" he says, but Steve knows he didn't see this in any museum. How long has it been? How many museums would use Steve before they use Captain? How many people? Why does your name on those lips never sound foreign, distant, pulled out of a past no one—no one but him now that she's gone, no one else—shares with you?
"Why?" Steve asks, demands to know. He says he doesn't know and—you try to believe him. Maybe that'd be easier—Bucky never lied to you before—and this is Bucky, Steve has to believe that—in the same way he believed you were Steve underneath the Captain America uniform, the muscles, the height.

He recoils away from Steve and wants to reach his hands out towards him—who are you, who are you; always someone else's: weapon, target, killer-
But now, fitting like a glove, wrapped tight over you, whatever's left of you, his, his, his. He is by your side, when the others catch up, to bring you in, you go because he will.
When they call your name you say it's Bucky, when they ask for home—not Romania, not Brooklyn, the real one—it's his face you see, Steve's hand extended towards you-

You have to run away from him, him, holding onto the helicopter with his bare hands. So does the Soldier. He's better at getting away, because Bucky always wants to stay: who's the man on the bridge trying to save, The Soldier or Bucky? Which one are you?

Which one are you? Steve wants to know.

So he asks, after he's pulled you out of the water, after you feel yourself waking up again (You are guilty, you are guilty, you are guilty, colors washed out, always feel like you're falling away from the only one good thing in your life, you who promised to protect him and didn't—In your journal you wrote down the dreams in which you wake and he's there to greet you, taller than you remember, taller, bigger, him—death, this must be, the place where he greets you with a smile in the middle of war, of being captured, of your body being tore open—open, open, for someone else to use, a public body, to scar, to put words, orders, deaths inside of—you write down the dreams and they come far too often but never death, you bring that with you, you drop it—you can't let him see you like this: you are guilty.)
"Your mom's name is Sara"—who's speaking this time?—"you used to wear newspapers in your shoes."
"You can't read about that in a museum."

—You've said too much. You've put them down, you've tore down the walls, you've opened them up, you need to recoil, again, take it easy. He'll take you to Siberia. He'll see for himself. Maybe then he won't keep on believing in you, in the things you say.

"There's always a band of idiots to follow you into these things," Bucky says from the backseat of the VW on their way to the airport. Steve suspects this is aimed at Sam, Sam certainly seems to think so, if his swatting a hand behind him to strike at Bucky blindly is any indication, but it also means the alertness that keeps his muscles and nerves tense at all times is giving way, even if he doesn't know this himself. Steve doesn't mention it, if he did then Bucky'd retreat even more. It's easier if they pretend they follow the same codes they did before—one hug and then back away, look at the long legs, the pretty dresses, pretend you can't feel his eyes on you, the way the girls' voices lilt when they say "your friend", stressing the words too much, "is your friend staying", "is your friend coming", one more hug and then back away, his hand lingering on your back just your imagination Steve, nothing more—Those codes are familiar, if nothing else, they're safer than the ones that reside in Bucky's brain without his knowledge, and whatever it is Steve holds on to.

It feels to him like it's been years since they've been alone, just the two of them. The murmur of the jet's engine comfortably lulling in the background, even the voices in his head are drowned out by the white noise while his eyes fix on the back of Steve's head and the stormy clouds that envelop their flight on their way into Siberia, into the winter that wins wars. In truth it really hasn't: it was just them when he pulled Steve out of the water, and just them at the bridge, just them in his apartment, and just them when Steve pulled him out of the water. But for what it's worth, it's really been years since he's been Bucky so thoroughly—so his—and maybe years since Steve has been so—so yours.
Your body's been opened up and tore apart and used for different means in various ways but now it's you opening yourself—you, Bucky, you, his Bucky—opened up for him when you speak and you go in head first—
"I don't know that I'm worth all this to you..."
—because he has to stop pulling you out eventually.

When he speaks from the backseat of the jet, Steve knows for sure whatever walls were there must be gone—he's given into it, the fear of you retreating your hand from his touch, of you recoiling at the feel of cold metal against your warm skin—

"It wasn't you," Steve says—
You see greatness in him and find that which you're not, which you never were: Bucky, who saw you for you before any serum, before any deed, before you reached puberty even and chose your side, carrying the burdens of others on his back: yours, the country's, the other him. Bucky following you—not the Captain, not the Avenger, not the myth everyone you know now has grown up with—no questions asked, both of you idiots, together—
"You didn't have a choice."

"I know,"—
You see greatness in him and find that which you're not, which you never were: him, willing to give up his life for yours, once and always, again; fighting for the voiceless, the powerless, those whose bodies belong not to them but others, with a body that's not originally his own so he knows where they come from. You can't keep your promise to stay with him until the end: all you can do is find him in the alleyways were he's being beat up and offer your hand, rub his shoulders, promise him again to stay, in whatever capacity, now that he doesn't need you—
"But I did it."

Silence stretches out over the vast white land spread before them when the jet's door opens. Silence that's settled between them when he used words he thinks Steve couldn't really take in. Long ago he resigned himself, not willingly, to the kind of silence that others fill up with their own meanings, like they filled up his body with words that rendered him speechless. That wordless understanding he and Steve shared once, lifetimes ago, won't ever return—sharing a cart on the Ferris Wheel because no one would sit with Steve and you would sit with no one but, without a word between you; holding the punching bag while Steve striked at it with all his might and you didn't have to say, let's go again, let's try again, because he'd never give up—but something like it might, he lets himself hope, when Steve smiles at him and mentions the freezing truck, the trip to Coney Island.

Vivid in your mind is the feeling of Steve's small frame leaning on your arm, your hand curled on his shoulder, the strong smell of chemicals that helped keep the ice, the back of his hand against your thigh, the way the breeze rustled Steve's hair when he laughed at you trying to get that bear while you knew he watched you intently. Her figure is a blur: there were so many, you have a hard time telling them apart. Maybe you would've grown to carry adolescent guilt over the way you treated them, subjected them to dates with a rival they'd never live up to, maybe you would've if you and Steve had been allowed to see the end of war, of your times, of your life. The guilt you now carry—unsurmountable—doesn't allow really fathoming the fates of those girls, you hope at least they forgave you, because you won't.

To stave off the cold he had his arm around your shoulders the whole ride so you mention the redhead whose name he can't remember—you wonder if he even remembers her at all—because you need those codes from back then to ground you both now, those codes, what little you allow, the things you speak: long legs, pretty dresses, the names of those girls—

The things you speak account for nothing when you're confronted with the possibility, all too tangible, that he'll be ripped from you again, that you will lose him again and notice your punches are more vicious, more like his before he remembered, and Tony does too, scared that you will, really will this time, kill him off.

The things you speak account for nothing when up against the ones you do, choose him, once and again, until the end.

Maybe Tony wanted a family, with Steve and Natasha and Bruce and Clint and Thor, and maybe for a while there it could've worked but he wouldn't have followed Steve Rogers anywhere—you suspect, and if you have to choose between him and the Captain you'll always do what Bucky did. You can abandon the shield many times over but you'd never leave him, you'd choose him all over again if you had to. He'd do it for you.

Wakanda sounds like miracles. T'Challa walks him through the procedure, the things he'll feel before going under and what they'll do in the meantime. He wonders if he really cares enough to listen, realizes he doesn't because all the while his eyes are on Steve who holds his gaze. Ridiculous, maybe the Soldier would've wanted to know—maybe not—but now that Steve is there he's blind to all else—this time it's you opening yourself, what you've gotten back, for him to take, with eyes closed and hope in your throat, your heart—Ridiculous, the Soldier would think you—maybe not—the cloak of what you are is someone else's—it's his—again. But he'd do it for you.