A/N: so basically I watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier a couple weeks ago and I tried really, really hard not to write fic about but I clearly failed. So here you go - a by-product of my Stucky feels (no actual Stucky, sorry, but I guess maybe if you squint?).
(also, I've never written Marvel fic before and I don't have the movies memorized, so I apologize in advance if I've gotten anything wrong.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Captain America or anything else in the MCU.
i.
I'm with you 'til the end of the line, pal.
That's all Steve can think when he looks down and sees Bucky, features twisted with desperation and fingers scrabbling at the side of the train. Suddenly, he feels like he has asthma again.
And then Bucky falls, taking Steve's crap lungs with him. His heart, for better or for worse, stays in his chest, thumping painfully against the lining of his ribcage.
Guess this was the end of the line.
ii.
So Fury's been shot, and Kate the Nurse is not a nurse, and the Winter Soldier is running away and Steve is chasing him. And everything's normal until Steve throws the shield and the Soldier catches it—catches it—and Steve just stops, all the breath sucked out of him. He stares, and the Soldier stares back, and Steve freezes. All he can see of the man is his scraggly hair and grey eyes, but somehow, he's familiar, and it makes Steve's gut twist.
(And then the Soldier throws Steve his shield back, and there's no time left for thinking about it but Steve thinks about it anyway, because he's seen those eyes before, he knows it.)
iii.
The Soldier's mask clatters to the ground, and Steve almost does too.
"Bucky?" he croaks, hands dropping to his sides. He sucks in a breath, belatedly realizing he'd forgotten to breathe.
"Who the hell is Bucky?" Bucky's voice snarls back, and God, it's him, it's him, but it's not. It's not the same Bucky who trained Steve for the army and set him up with dames whenever Steve let him. And as the Soldier—Bucky—picks up his gun again, something inside Steve cracks.
iv.
Being wailed upon was bad, but the fact that it was a man wearing Bucky's face and voice doing it made it a thousand times worse. And Steve won't—can't—fight back, not when it's Bucky.
Hit. "YOU'RE MY MISSION!" Hit.
Somehow, Steve finds it in him to say, "then end it, 'cause I'm with you to the end of the line, pal."
And as the floor falls out from beneath him, he catches the surprised expression on Bucky's face, the glazed look in his eyes, and thinks maybe he's gotten through. But his lungs fill with water before he can be sure.
(But when he wakes up and finds himself on the bank of the river, Bucky nowhere to be found, he's more sure of it than ever.)
v.
It was Sam who found him.
Steve thought he was hearing things when Sam called him to say Bucky was trapped in the abandoned warehouse, but he went anyway because it was Bucky, and for better or for worse, he would be there to the end of the line for him. Even if the timing probably (definitely) couldn't be any worse.
And it is Bucky, stuck somewhere between his Winter Soldier look and the more classic Buck—same scraggly hair but less facial hair, slightly better groomed—his features twisted with the same kind of desperation he wore when he fell off the train.
But looking at Bucky doesn't make Steve lose his breath this time—instead, for the first time in seventy years, Steve can breathe right again.
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