Steve stared at the memorial in the Captain America exhibit in the Smithsonian. Bucky Barnes, the only Howling Commando to give his life in the line of duty. He shouldn't have been. If Steve had only been a bit faster, Bucky might've survived.
Steve would gladly trade his life for Bucky's. Bucky had always been the one stable thing in his life, through losing both parents, sickness, and then in health after the serum cured his body of its ailments. Someone who protected him from life to death.
But regrets like that haunt a person all their lives.
He didn't cry, seeing that once-beloved face. He'd cried over Bucky enough, even though the urge to do so again would surface every once in awhile. But it'd been two years he'd had to grieve and move into acceptance.
But how he missed him. Time had marched on without them, leaving a life-long friendship in the dust bin of the past. Bucky was no longer anything but memorial in a museum. And Steve was alone. Sure, Peggy was still hanging on, but she was slowly going senile, and getting up there in years, she wouldn't make it much longer. Once she was gone, Steve would be left with nothing of the old days.
It wasn't that he wanted to go back, there were good things about the future. But he'd give anything to have his friend back, to have someone to discover new things with who would be just as awed as he was. He wanted Bucky back.
But Bucky was gone, and nothing would change that.