The light that had been pouring in through the little rectangular window was gone. Sasha wasn't sure at what point his view had darkened from hazy ocean and wispy clouds to this blackness, but it must have been quite some time ago. Most of the other passengers on the plane were in some level of unconsciousness, and he knew he should be trying to get some shut-eye, too, but, well. Sleep didn't exactly come easily to him under normal circumstances, and especially not when he couldn't even lie down.
He figured it was just as well that the window had gone black; it had been something of a strain to see out of anyway, from the aisle seat. His desire to be in a prime position to spend his flight gazing out the window had been outweighed by his utter unwillingness to be trapped in a seat where there would be two whole seats filled with people blocking him from the closest escape route. That was definitely not an option, so he took his partial view of the sky without too much inner grumbling.
He took a few deep breaths, the kind that he knew were supposed to be calming, and closed his eyes. He wasn't surprised when his muscles refused to relax. Wasn't that the whole point of this trip, anyway? A doctor-ordered vacation to try and get Sasha to unwind and destress, away from Moscow and his routine. America might not have been Sasha's first choice destination, but his therapist seemed to have some weird fixation on Lake George and must have thought he could live vicariously through his patient by sending him there.
Sasha really wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with so much free time, but he guessed he'd have to figure that out when he got there.
Right now he was really, really tired. There were still several more hours until they got to JFK, and he just wanted to sleep, dammit. He sighed and glanced over at his two seat-mates to make sure they were asleep before pulling out his phone and opening up YouTube. He might have been cajoled into telling his therapist the only semi-effective way he'd found of getting to sleep, but that didn't mean he wanted the whole world to know.
The channel he watched most often—okay, pretty much the only channel that worked for him even halfway consistently—had a new video uploaded. It was a longer one, a little over an hour, and Sasha silently thanked the airline for high-speed Wifi and tapped the video's thumbnail, slipping his ear buds in.
This time whoever ran the channel was drawing a scene of a train snaking its way through the countryside. Sasha wouldn't have been able to tell, since the whole screen started out just a blank canvas, except that the guy who narrated the videos as he drew seemed to like spoiling the surprise and telling you exactly what he was planning to do before he did it. Not that Sasha minded too much. The guy's voice, aside from the almost hypnotically smooth movements of pen or pencil across the paper, was ridiculously calming and was probably more than half the reason his videos helped Sasha relax enough to sleep.
Apparently it was a specific train, not just a generic one, so the voice filled the listener in on a bit of its history as he drew. It took a little while, but Sasha could feel the tension in his back start to ease slightly as he listened to the soothing English and then he was blinking at a finished sketch of the countryside, steel rails gracefully making their way through the grass. It was a really nice picture, actually. It took a moment for Sasha to realize the voice had gone silent in his ear and YouTube was asking if he wanted to watch the next video. He must have fallen asleep.
He tapped 'cancel' and closed the app, hoping his current groggy state would allow him to drift off again, but no such luck. He could feel the familiar tension returning to his body already, so he grudgingly unlocked his phone again to check the time. 03:07. Not too long til landing.
3:07 am. Not too long til landing. Steve pocketed his phone for the hundredth time, knowing he would take it out again in probably less than a minute. Could he help it if he was anxious to make sure his friend arrived back in America safely? He knew Nat would roll her eyes if she could see him fidgeting outside the international arrivals. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if she was rolling her eyes right now, wherever in the sky she was, somehow knowing that Steve was acting stupid on her behalf. He hoped it would be at least a somewhat understanding eye-roll, though. For all her feigned nonchalance, he knew Nat was at least as protective as he was of their friends.
He perked up as the beginnings of a new flood of people came through the gate, but no, it was still a bit too early for it to be Natasha's flight. A moment later he recognized the military uniforms of the new arrivals. Oh. Right. There was a big welcome for the troops coming in at this gate that morning, too.
The people around him began to cheer, some of them waving signs they'd made for this occasion, and Steve smiled slightly as some rushed forward to greet their spouses, their siblings, children, and friends. It was touching, really.
It had been a long time since Steve had stopped scanning crowds like these for a familiar face. He wasn't an idiot, wasn't in denial, knew he wouldn't see one. The condolence letter regarding Sergeant James Barnes had come when Steve wasn't even legal drinking age, and a good few years had passed since then. But could he help it if seeing stuff like this still made his chest a little tighter, if other people's joy still gave him a little twinge of pain?
He checked his phone again. The flight from Moscow was due in another ten minutes or so. He did his best not to fidget through those minutes.
His chest eased as finally, finally, he spotted familiar red hair coming smoothly through the gate. He stood and moved toward her. Her eyes found him immediately, of course, and a corner of her mouth quirked up.
She let him give her a hug when he got to her. "Flight go okay?"
She nodded. "They gave me food, so yeah."
"They know how to please. How about the rest of your trip?" he asked, taking her suitcase. She gave him a look but didn't protest.
"It was nice. I'll tell you more later, right now I just kinda want to get out of here. Food or no, red-eyes are not really my favorite."
"Understandable. Come on, I'm parked over here." He turned to lead them toward the exit closest to where he'd parked when a flash of movement caught the corner of his sight, like someone had done a double-take. He glanced over and sure enough, a guy was staring at him, a guy who actually looked a lot like—
A loud smack startled Steve and he jumped before looking down to see that he'd dropped Nat's suitcase.
He could feel Nat's gaze on him, not that he was looking, since once he'd determined the source of the loud noise his eyes had immediately snapped back to the guy who was pointedly not looking at him now, the barest hint of a laugh in his eyes, eyes that looked like—
"Bucky?"
No, more than looked like, this wasn't just some vague resemblance. Those eyes were Bucky's.
But—how?
The guy who was but wasn't Bucky—because he couldn't possibly be, right? His eyes were just playing tricks on him because he'd been thinking about that crowd of soldiers coming home, or something—looked back at him again, and shit, had Steve just spoken out loud? Belatedly he heard the echo of his own breathy question in his mind and realized that yes, he had.
Bucky's (not Bucky's?) brow was wrinkling in confusion. He glanced around a little warily before asking, "Are you talking to me?"
And his voice both was and wasn't Bucky's, too. His accent sounded like he'd come straight from—well, from Moscow. Which, of course, he had. He was a good few inches shorter than Steve, too, which threw him off a bit, but Steve was the one who'd changed in that case. He'd already been catching up to Bucky by the time he left for Iraq.
Steve could feel Natasha's hand on his arm but he ignored it, because he wasn't actually going crazy, right? The guy had been staring at him first, after all.
"Yeah," Steve answered his question, "you know me, don't you?"
Natasha's hand tightened on his arm and he could tell she was about to say something, but Bucky beat her to it.
"Steve, right?"
Shit. Why did he say that? This guy obviously thought he was someone he knew, and now Sasha had just gone and confirmed it, when in reality he knew nothing about this guy except that he had a talent for drawing and a voice that could calm a hurricane. When he'd first heard him talking to his red-haired friend there, it had nearly sent Sasha reeling, because he would know that voice anywhere, had literally heard that voice almost every night before he went to sleep, as creepy as that sounded when he actually thought it in words.
Why, why, why had he said his name? Just because Sasha knew that the channel he watched was called SteveGRogers did not mean that he knew the guy, and now he'd have to pretend that he did (which he wouldn't be able to keep up for long) or admit that he watched him draw more nights than not.
Great. Just great.
"Steve," Steve's friend was saying, and Sasha looked at her mainly as a way to avoid looking at Steve's expression, which was quickly morphing into something painfully hopeful and almost comically confused at once. His friend's voice was low but forceful. "Something's not right here. Let's go."
"But—"
"He doesn't know you, Steve. And I don't think you know him."
"You know me, you know my name," Steve said insistently, addressing Sasha rather than his friend. For one wild moment, he wondered if it could be true, if this stranger might actually know who he was. But how could he? He was an American. If there was one thing Sasha'd never doubted, it was that he was Russian born and bred. The only Americans he'd dealt with were strictly on assignment, and Sasha didn't recognize this guy from any assignment. Your own memory is hardly the most reliable authority, a niggling thought reminded him quietly, but he pushed it aside.
The redhead offered him a small, polite smile. "Excuse my friend, he's a little loopy on medications."
"Don't worry about it," Sasha answered mildly, a bit dazed by all of it.
"What did you say to him?" Steve asked, confusing Sasha even more, until he saw that Steve was staring between them helplessly, a little accusingly even, and he realized Steve's friend had spoken to him in Russian and he had answered in kind automatically.
"I'm Natasha, what's your name?" she asked, in English this time, extending her hand. He reached out to take it, thankful not for the first time that his prosthetic was his left.
"Aleksander. Or Sasha, more often."
Steve was shaking his head before he realized it, because for all his Russian accent and longer hair, there was no way Bucky had a doppelganger who not only looked but sounded like him, and knew Steve's name. But Nat was right, there was something definitely off here. Besides the fact that Bucky was apparently calling himself Sasha, the way he said Steve's name was not the way you'd greet your best friend after years. At best it was the way you'd greet someone you vaguely remembered running into in high school a few times and felt obligated to make small talk with.
Bucky—Sasha?—was speaking again. "I'm sorry, I think you must have mistaken me for someone else. I don't actually know who either of you are." He sounded apologetic.
"How did you know my name?" Steve insisted. Bucky—he resigned himself to the fact that he probably wasn't going to be able to think of him by any other name—actually winced.
"You—your friend said it," he mumbled, gesturing towards Natasha. Steve glanced at her. Had she? It would have been a logical explanation, except for that fact that Bucky wouldn't meet either of their eyes. Natasha's eyes were narrowed. She didn't believe him either. Why would Bucky lie about that, though? Was it possible that he really did remember Steve, and for some reason thought he couldn't let them know?
Steve wasn't sure what the implications of that would be, but he tried not to let his heart run wild with hope.
"Oh, right. Of course," Nat said easily, expression returning to neutral. Whatever Bucky's reasoning, she seemed willing to let it drop for now.
Bucky looked back up at them, shoulders relaxing minutely. "Who do I look like?" he asked curiously.
Steve studied his face, looking for any sign of something other than curiosity. Was it possible that he was detecting a bit of hope in his eyes? Along with… not quite fear, but something close. Wariness, maybe.
"An old friend," he answered.
Bucky nodded slowly, once, and then again. None of them spoke for a moment, then Bucky ventured, "A dead friend?"
Steve sucked in a slow breath, desperately wanting to know what was going on in his head. Was Bucky a dead friend? Or a friend who'd somehow been falsely reported dead and was now standing in front of him? Steve just didn't know what to believe, and if he didn't get some answers soon he thought he might just tear in two.
Bucky must have taken his silence for confirmation, because he nodded again. "You looked like you were seeing a ghost," he offered by way of explanation.
Steve sent a look toward Natasha that he hoped said, you know I can't just let this go, right? which she returned by flattening her mouth in a resigned way that he knew meant, I know.
Steve turned back to Sasha after his silent conversation with his friend. "Look, I know you probably have somewhere to be…but..." He trailed off uncertainly. Sasha took pity and jumped in.
"I don't, actually." The words surprised even him for a moment, and he wasn't sure how to say I feel like for some reason I need to stay with you, tug on this thread, because you're the first people who've looked at me like I might actually be worth taking notice of, without sounding a little... well.
Steve looked even more surprised than he was. "Yeah?"
Sasha fidgeted with the strap on his backpack, unable to meet that hopeful gaze. "Does someone want to show me someplace to get a decent breakfast around here?"