Forgiven

"How did it happen?" a heavy pause passed as the world rolled over them, "Tell me."

Expensive shoes creaked on the tile floor that smelled of hospital antiseptic. Fine silk trousers rustled softly as hands were jammed into pockets anxiously rattling a few nuts and bolts from his shop as if they were a talisman against what lay ahead.

A respirator sighed in the corner sounding like a cold winter wind through cemetery trees.

"I'll tell you… if you forgive me."

Steve Rogers looked up at Tony Stark from Bucky's bedside with angry, red rimmed eyes.

"I'll think about it."

Tony swallowed and rubbed his moustache with a hand like he was embarrassed to be there.

"I guess that will have to do."

Bucky looked out over the edge of the rooftop in the dark. An updraft caught his long hair and stroked it gently on his cheek. He was a creature of habit and had returned to Romania now that the Wakandan's had "fixed" whatever wickedness Hydra had implanted there. Steve had begged him not to go because both of them would be on the lam. To Bucky, the best place to hide is in plain sight and separately even if that killed him inside. Who would look for him in the place he just was? Who would think he'd leave his best friend behind, again.

A smirk crossed his face. Those were coming more often- smiles, smirks and even the occasional laugh, as he thought about where people might think he was hiding. Maybe in Asia, or everyone's bad guy favorite hideout, Brazil. He briefly imagined himself tanning in Rio on the beach with his silver arm flashing in the sun.

Then a cloud swept over his sun-drenched daydream.

"I don't' know if I'm not worth all this, Steve." he had said. He remembered breaking Steve's heart with his tone, but that was what their friendship was; honest to a fault.

"What you did all those years, it wasn't you. You didn't have a choice."

"I know, but I did it."

That still happened to him; the melancholy, the sudden flips in mood from sunny to dark and back again. T'Challa's people could mend a brain but they couldn't fix a broken soul.

The night was calm as traffic passed beneath him on the roadways around the apartment building. People were out walking together, music played and he heard dogs barking in alleyways. Everything was normal, except him.

Bucky knew he was the main reason Steve and Tony were at odds. After Siberia, it was painfully clear there was some bad air that needed blowing out. Barnes offered to turn himself in, Steve adamantly refused based on his POW status that he was no war criminal subject to the law.

"Steve, if I turn myself in, I can get a trial. I can clear my name, move on… maybe let you have a life again." Barnes argued, his eyes sadly pleading.

"Bucky, there is no such thing as a fair trial. I'm not sure there ever was." Rogers bit back, sparks in his eyes.

"When did you become the cynical one?" Barnes returned, surprised at his friends' change of heart.

"When I stopped being an Avenger." Cap said softly, his gaze falling to the floor, shoulders slumping with the reminder that he could never go back. "And you deserve a life as much as me."

Barnes opened his mouth to argue back, but then shut it realizing it was futile. Once Stephen Grant Rogers made up his mind, there was no moving him. They didn't bring it up again.

The Wakandans generously helped Bucky with his mood swings and abysses of melancholy as Rogers slowly let his beard grow in, becoming someone that Bucky didn't quite recognize. Steve was still there, in spirit, but it hurt Barnes to see him closing the good parts of himself off. Captain America was becoming more like the Winter Soldier, freezing his feelings more solid day by day.

Bucky knew exactly how to stop the petrification. He had to get Rogers back with the Avengers.

"Buck, don't leave. You're not well enough yet." Steve stated as Bucky placed his very few possessions in a new backpack. Somehow, T'Challa had seen to it that the notebooks were recovered but the backpack was a loss. The therapists helped Barnes use his notebooks to make him remember the good side of himself. He marked useful memories with small post it note flags and indexed them for specific situations: guilt, anger, sadness, loss. Those notebooks were his own personal bible, line and verse.

"I'm just fine. I can't stay here forever, you know."

"Let's leave together then."

"That's a bad idea."

"Why?"

"Really, Steve?" he looked up from his packing to see the face that the whole world recognized.

"But we have so much to catch up on."

"Not really. I was a murder-cicle for seventy years."

"Don't say it that way, Buck."

"It's the truth."

Cap stood silently. He had no comeback for that.

Bucky felt his discomfort and had the urge to say something supportive and best-friendish. Looking up from his bag on his Army regulation- made bed, he pondered Rogers for a moment remembering their old days as boys. It made him smile a little.

"What are you thinking?" Steve asked, trying not to look dejected.

"What a runt you were."

"Yeah. What a pair we are." Cap agreed, a hint of a tear in one eye.

"Look, punk." Bucky began, "Once you and Stark clear the air, we can come out of the shadows. There are a few good things I remember from my Hydra days and that is you don't stick together. Why do you think Natasha is solo all the time?"

Steve recalled Peggy's funeral and Romanov's voice, "It doesn't matter how we stay together, just that we do." The Avengers always stuck together.

Cap remained quiet, not trusting his voice.

"Just do me a favor, don't send Chicken Little after me again. He's an annoying son of a gun." Barnes growled.

Rogers chuckled at that. Yes, Sam was a pain in the ass.

"I'll be right where you found me." Bucky said cryptically. "See you later, punk."

"Jerk." In Rogers' eyes it was Stark Expo all over again like a bad Groundhog Day.

Bucky hefted the backpack and slung it over his shoulder. He gave a little nod to his best friend and left. As the room door slid silently shut, Steve let the tears roll.

As Barnes walked down the hallway not trusting his legs to turn around and reverse course, a young Wakandan boy matched his pace.

"Got it?"

"Yes!" the boy handed over a small device.

"Are you sure it will pick up all Avenger signals?" Barnes asked critically.

The boy looked sarcastically at him, "This isn't the Bat Signal but it works. I built it myself!"

"What's a Bat Signal?" Bucky asked, confused, looking at the device.

"Never mind." the boy eye rolled and shoved him towards his transport away from Wakanda.

That was the last time he saw Steve in the past few months. The device picked up all the Avengers chatter about how some guy named Nomad looked an awful lot like Steve Rogers but there was no confirmation that it was him. Occasionally he'd hear about some tiny thief, a bird-like drone, some vivid red lights and arrows that do strange things. He was waiting his turn to make things good between Steve and Stark. He just needed the right opportunity. It was a good thing that he was a patient man.