I posted this on AO3 recently, but thought I'd post it here too. My first proper Avengers fic.
Eventual Tony/Steve/Bucky.
Enjoy!
When Bucky had fallen, Steve had fantasised for hours about seeing him again. It would have all been a mistaken; Bucky would have been caught by something, a bizarre twist of fate that would keep him alive, maybe he'd be a little banged up but he'd be alive. Then he'd brush himself off and make his way to an Allied camp. Come and find him.
He'd done it before hadn't he? Gone straight into that Hydra base, found him right there. Saved him for the first time.
"You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"
"Hell no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him."
He'd follow, just like he said. He'd come and find him, and Steve wouldn't be able to keep the emotions in check. He'd tear up, the way he'd always done too easily. Bucky used to make fun of him at the movies for that. But he wouldn't make fun of him now. He'd just smile. Make a joke.
Then Steve would spill out those feelings he'd kept under lock and key for so long. But it would be okay because Bucky was alive and that was all that mattered. He was alive and they were together again.
It didn't happen. Bucky didn't come back. And then there was Hydra and Johann Schmidt and bombs and that was it. Steve was heading the same way. Ice and everything.
"Peggy, this is my choice."
Even as that plane went down, as Steve said his goodbyes to Peggy, as the water got closer, it was still that fantasy with Bucky that played over and over. They'd laugh, Steve would cry because that's what Steve did, but they'd mostly laugh.
Steve's very last thought before everything went dark was what would happen if Bucky came back and Steve wasn't there?
And that was it.
Steve doesn't know if he dreamed in the ice. He can't remember it. He doubts it, but he knows that if he did it would still be that same scene. Over and over again like a film stuck on a loop.
When he wakes up, his first thought is Bucky. Just one fleeting replay of everything. Then things become more complicated. He discovers the year, and it hurts because he knows that even if his scenario had become a reality, he would have missed it. Bucky would still be gone.
"You've been asleep Cap. For almost seventy years."
After that, he doesn't know what else to do but stay in the dingy gym this SHIELD have provided him. Too lost in the past to even look at the present.
That is, until Director Fury shows up again.
"You with the mission sir?"
"I am."
What choice does Steve have but to say yes?
It all gets even more confusing after that. Tesseracts and men who were practically Gods, controlling lightning and conjuring illusions and controlling minds. It made failed super soldiers with rubber faces seem uninteresting in comparison.
And of course, there was Tony Stark.
"Always a way out... You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."
"A hero? Like you? You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!"
Abrasive, rude, utterly infuriating. Steve couldn't stand Howard's son at first. The man was nothing but a reminder of how the world had changed so drastically, and paired with Steve's own short fuse, they clashed. A lot. At night, Steve would choke down resentments about Tony to think about Bucky instead, about the friends he'd lost. He didn't get a lot of sleep.
Loki was defeated, the portal closed, and only then did things begin to change.
Steve saw a new side to Tony that day, he'd seen a hero in him, and it meant something. He didn't know what. But there was warmth there that hadn't been present before. Tony was intelligent, witty, smooth-talking and good looking, but underneath it all there was also a good man. That meant something to Steve.
When Thor returned to Asgard with Loki, the Avengers went their separate ways. Tony offered Steve somewhere to live, a home, but Steve turned it down. He chose instead to take the motorbike Bruce had been given, taking some time. The offer had sparked a familiar warmth in the pit of Steve's stomach, the smile when Tony had shook his hand had made him mirror the expression.
He'd promised to come back when he was done, Tony had made him promise. With a look he'd seen before, somewhere else. In a fantasy.
He definitely needed to be alone.
The night after he left, lying in a motel bed, he thought about Bucky again. He played his fantasy over and over until his head and his heart hurt. It was even more of a foolish dream now. It was impossible. He would never see Bucky again.
He didn't sob like he'd expected to. He didn't even make a sound asides his own breathing. Just tears. It occurred to him that he had never mourned. Not really. A night in a bombed out bar trying desperately to get drunk. Alone, coming up with the fantasy he now clung to.
But it was just that wasn't it? A fantasy. And one he'd have to let go if he had any hope of surviving in this new world.
Steve fell asleep with wet eyes, but when he woke, things were clearer than they had been for weeks in his own grasp of time. Clearer than they had been for over seventy years in the reality of it. He went back to New York that morning.
"Good to see you back Cap." Tony had smiled.
"Good to be back." Steve had replied, that warmth returning again.
That night he didn't think about Bucky.
He had to let the fantasy go.