A/N: This is a loose companion piece to A Slow Death and A Long Life. It follows Steve and Bucky through the events of Captain America: Civil War. Like the film, it's not explicitly slashy, but the subtext is there.
Resurrection
The truth is, Rumlow isn't personal for Steve the way Steve is for Rumlow. Maybe he would be if his going full Hydra hadn't coincided with Bucky's resurrection, but regardless, Steve simply hasn't had the emotional energy to waste on the guy.
"You know, he knew you. Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky." Rumlow practically spits the name.
Until now.
"What did you say?"
"He remembered you," says Rumlow, clearly relishing this. "I was there. He got all weepy about it. Until they put his brain back in a blender."
Steve just stares at him, horrified.
"He wanted you to know something. He said to me, 'Please tell Rogers, when you gotta go, you gotta go.' And you're coming with me!"
The explosion snaps Steve out of it long enough to coordinate a relief effort, but he can't get Rumlow's voice out of his head. On the flight home he sits away from the others.
He remembered you.
But if that's true…
If Bucky knows who Steve is…
All this time he's told himself Bucky is hiding from Hydra, maybe SHIELD, maybe even the mission he botched when he pulled it out of the Potomac.
It's too painful to think he might just be hiding from Steve.
It all piles on from there. Thaddeus Ross shows up to collar the team while Tony hands him the leash. But Steve doesn't have time to formulate an argument against oversight that isn't purely reflexive before he gets James's text.
She's gone. In her sleep.
And just like that, the last light from his past goes out.
"She loved you, you know," Michelle tells him at the funeral. "When her mind started to go… we were so glad she lived to see you come back."
Steve hasn't interacted with Peggy's family much: James has kept him updated on Peggy's condition, and Eddie and Michelle send the occasional email, but if he's honest, while he hasn't actively avoided them, he's also made it a point not to seek them out.
What he had with Peggy was both so much more and so much less than what she had with her family, and he simply can't figure out how to reconcile the two. It's been easier to just keep them separate.
There are two universes: the one where he and Peggy shared more than just a kiss and a war; and the one he's stuck in, the one where he woke up the day after he promised her a dance and she'd already had a whole life without him.
It's odd now, seeing this glimpse of the life he might have had if he hadn't crashed the plane. Odder still, discussing it with a woman who has nearly four decades of actual living more than he does, and who could have been his daughter in another life: a paradox he may never fully be used to.
"I was the lucky one," he says, and in this one thing he believes that: lucky to have had her then, however briefly; lucky to have had her again so recently. Unlucky in all but this one thing, but oh, what a thing to have been lucky in.
"Maybe you both were," says Michelle, eyes and voice soft.
"Tell me about these Accords everyone's nattering on about," Angela demands when he reaches her in the rounds a few minutes later. "Thaddeus Ross getting in over his head again?"
"Probably," says Steve. "I'm not signing."
"Good!" says Angela firmly.
"You think so?" asks Steve, curious and hopeful and relieved all at once.
Of all Peggy's children, Angela is the one he's interacted with the least: just once, in fact, when he arrived to visit Peggy just as Angela was leaving, and he got the impression she was just as uncomfortable with their paths crossing as he was, uncomfortable in a way her brothers and sister never thought to be.
But it was also obvious in just those few seconds that while Michelle and James inherited their mother's warmth, and Eddie her brilliance, Angela alone possesses the steely tenacity that made Peggy impossible to dismiss in a world that wanted to make her invisible. And it's that part of her, more than anything, he wishes he could consult now.
"Absolutely," says Angela. "Mum would have, I think – after some negotiating, of course – but she wouldn't have wanted you to. She always said you weren't built for the political bullshit."
"The world couldn't function without the political bullshit," says Steve, trying the words out in his mouth: it's easy enough to defend in theory, if not in practice.
"Obviously," says Angela. "That doesn't mean you should pick up a spade and start shoveling shit with the rest of them."
Steve laughs.
"Maybe I should bring you with me next time I see Tony," he says, mostly joking.
"I'm far too old to waste precious time trying to reason with a Stark," she says.
"You're thirty-five years younger than me," Steve points out.
Angela's expression softens, and for a moment Steve catches a glimpse of a young woman who comforted him in a bombed-out bar after the only constant in his life fell from a train six years (a lifetime) ago.
"Is that what you tell yourself?" she says quietly, eyes suddenly overbright. "Oh my dear boy, the burden you must carry. No wonder she worried about you."
Steve's throat tightens, but before he can choke out a response, one of Angela's grandsons pulls her away.
Steve stares after her, but she never once looks back.
It's easier to talk to Sharon about Peggy. Maybe because he first knew her outside the context of Peggy's family, or maybe because she's a few degrees more removed from Peggy than Angela and Michelle. Likely both.
It's easy, too, joking about thigh holsters, to pretend he has another shot at the life he didn't get with Peggy – that he is simply a soldier whose hard-fought war has finally been won; that he has not only earned peace, but that he will also be allowed to enjoy it.
That he is not the man he is.
It doesn't last, but fantasies never do.
He says, "Because I'm the person least likely to die trying."
He means, If I can't save him, I want to die trying.
Bucharest was never going to last.
Logically, he has always known this. He's too conspicuous, too notorious, and most importantly, too valuable.
Too Winter Soldier.
It would have been foolish to think he was going to be left alone forever, and Bucky Barnes is a fool in only one thing.
So he's horrified but not shocked when he sees the newspaper with a supposed photo of him in Vienna. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. He'd hoped he'd have more warning, but that can't be helped now. He's lucky he's been given any warning at all.
He still might be okay if he can make it across the border. He has some cash and a clean passport stashed in Varna. From there he can take a train to Istanbul, or maybe catch a ferry to Odessa if there's one running this week.
All he has to do is strip his flat and grab his notebooks. He's trained for this. He can be in and out in ninety seconds, tops, and not leave behind so much as a hair.
Or he could, if Captain Goddamned America weren't standing in his kitchen, holding a few of Bucky's cherished memories in his hands.
"Understood," the captain murmurs to whoever he's working with. He closes the notebook and turns.
He's more human than he comes across in the newsreels, and far less beautiful than he is in Bucky's cloudy memories.
That's good. Makes things easier.
"You know me?" the captain asks.
"You're Steve. I read about you in a museum." Bucky jerks his chin slightly toward the book in the captain's hand, trying to lend credence to the statement, which technically isn't even a lie.
"I know you're nervous," says the captain; his tone is even, diplomatic, neither cold nor warm. It's oddly infuriating. "You have plenty of reason to be. But you're lying."
"I wasn't in Vienna," says Bucky, both to distract him and because it seems important for the captain to know this. "I don't do that anymore."
The captain barely reacts, apparently not the least surprised.
"Well the people who think you did are coming here now," he says. "They're not planning on taking you alive."
"That's smart," says Bucky tonelessly, because it is. "Good strategy."
He can hear the SWAT team running up the stairs, on the roof, outside the windows.
"This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck," says the captain – no, Steve; whatever he's let be done to him, he will always, before all else, be Steve – and god help him, he actually believes that. Magic and aliens and robot armies, and he's still as naïve as the day he left Bucky at the Stark Expo over seventy years ago.
"It always ends in a fight," says Bucky flatly. He pulls the glove off his metal hand.
"You pulled me from the river," says Steve, sounding almost angry now. "Why?"
That's not the question to ask though, Bucky thinks. Why did I leave you by that river? Do you really not know?
"I don't know," he says, desperately willing Steve to believe the lie.
Get out, get out, get out. You've no idea what I could do to you.
"Yes you do," says Steve, softer, and Bucky feels something inside him break.
The windows shatter.
Bucky fights nearly as hard to evade Steve as he does to escape the SWAT team.
This time, though, Steve won't stop following him.
This time, Steve doesn't give up.
It wasn't his plan to get Bucky captured.
It also, whatever the CIA thinks, wasn't his plan to let Bucky escape.
When it comes down to it, Steve doesn't have a plan beyond keep Bucky alive and in my sight. The second part of that plan isn't going too well.
He wishes Tony would shut up about the Accords. He's trying, but he doesn't have the energy to keep two families together right now. He'd like nothing better than to be able to trust Tony with the Avengers so he can focus on Bucky.
And maybe Tony is finally getting that, because he says, "Barnes gets transferred to an American psych center instead of a Wakandan prison," and that gets Steve's attention.
Bucky gets handed to Wakanda over my dead body, Accords be damned, he wants to say, but instead he picks up one of the pens.
Mum would have … after some negotiating, of course. Maybe he doesn't have to punch his way out of this one after all. It'd be nice not to cause another international incident.
Then Tony mentions Wanda, and Steve remembers why they got into this fight in the first place. There's a bigger picture here, however much easier it would be if there weren't.
Compromise where you can. But where you can't, don't.
He sets the pen down.
Tony can move.
He'd claim he's trying to stop the Winter Soldier from hurting people. Same thing he'd've said if anyone had asked why he'd gone to Bucharest.
He's not, though. He's trying to stop everyone else from hurting Bucky.
He's not holding onto a helicopter to save anyone. He's holding onto a goddamn helicopter because don't leave me don't leave me don't leave me.
The chopper abruptly changes course, slamming toward him, and Steve throws himself out of the way.
He sits up, breathing hard, and tries to get a look through the cracked window, hoping Bucky isn't–
The Winter Soldier's arm shoots out of the windshield; a metal hand closes around Steve's throat.
Steve struggles, gasping as the fingers around his neck tighten, and even as his hand closes around the metal wrist, he's not sure if he's trying to pull it off or just clinging on to whatever of Bucky might be left.
I'm the person least likely to die trying.
This time they fall together.
"Steve," says Sam as they wait for Bucky to wake up, "he threw you down an elevator shaft. He crashed a helicopter on you. He tried to kill you."
"It wasn't him," says Steve flatly. He refuses to look Sam in the eye.
"Yeah, the thing is, it was though," says Sam. "You need to be realistic, Cap. Whoever he was–"
"I've heard this speech before," Steve snaps, and almost instantly regrets it, because Sam didn't sign up for this and he's still trying to help Steve anyway. He sighs. "I know what you're giving up to stay with me. If you want to walk away…"
"Walk where, to prison?" says Sam, but his tone is joking, and Steve relaxes a little. "I'm not going anywhere. I know what I'm staying for. Do you?"
Steve remembers a notebook he'd seen so briefly in Bucharest, and thinks, If I don't, it doesn't matter. There's nothing left for me anywhere else.
But all he says to Sam is, "Yes."
He says, "I knew this would happen."
He means, Why didn't you leave me when you had the chance?
For a man harboring a terrorist, Steve doesn't seem short on friends, and Bucky tries to tell himself that's good. Increases their chances of stopping Zemo.
And it's not like it's exactly surprising. He's kept tabs on Steve since D.C., knows all about his band of super-friends, and anyway, people have been drawn into his orbit since that goddamned serum. Even so…
He was mine first, says a tiny voice in his head, an echo from a life when he was whole enough to believe that should make a difference.
He knows he doesn't deserve Steve anymore, if he ever even did.
That doesn't make seeing Steve with people who might deserve him any easier.
"What's gonna happen to your friends?" Bucky asks.
"Whatever it is," Steve says and then pauses, a thousand ends to the sentence scrolling through his mind.
Whatever it is, it was their choice the way it was never yours.
Whatever it is, it has to be far better than what happened to you.
Whatever it is, it's a small price to pay to keep you safe.
"I'll deal with it," he finally settles for.
"I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve," says Bucky softly, and Steve's breath catches.
Of course you are, he wants to say. You're worth all of it. Every drop of blood, every open wound, every scar, every burnt bridge – you are worth all of it, and none of it was ever worth you. I should have listened to you all those years ago. We should have stayed home.
But then he thinks maybe he's making the same mistake he made back then: thinking this is about him when it's really about Bucky.
"What you did all those years," he starts, and all he can think is, It was my fault. I should have been faster. I should have jumped after you. I should have looked for you. I should have burned the body of Hydra instead of just cutting off the head. I should have saved you.
But it's not about him.
"It wasn't you," he says instead: true but so woefully inadequate. "You didn't have a choice."
"I know," says Bucky quietly. "But I did it."
Steve could light a candle for each of his sins and the world would be ashes long before he struck the final match.
He says, "He's my friend."
He means, He's everything.
"Stay down," says Stark. "Final warning."
Steve struggles to his feet and wearily raises his fists.
"I could do this all day," he gasps, and suddenly he is short and skinny and the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing Bucky has ever known.
It's all just Brooklyn, in the end. Everything they've done and been through, and nothing's really changed. Seventy years later and Steve is still relentlessly, recklessly, fighting to the death for what he thinks is justice.
Except for the first time, Bucky can't step between Steve and his attacker. For the first time, he's not protecting Steve: Steve is protecting him.
He grabs Stark's leg.
"That shield doesn't belong to you!" Tony shouts. "You don't deserve it! My father made that shield!"
Steve pauses.
The shield hangs heavy and cold on his right arm, a physical representation of everything he thought he wanted such a long time ago: strength and respect and heroism.
But against his left arm, Bucky is solid and warm and, most importantly, alive: hope and love and belonging made flesh.
Steve drops the shield.