I'm on a roll with these Freebird fics. Angsty with a fluffy ending. This is set post Avengers 2 and post Cap America 3 with vague allusions to what may happen and to the comics and comic!villians but nothing spoilery.
When they find Bucky (or rather Bucky finds them) he tells Steve things won't ever be the same. He can't live up to Steve's memories, he can't be the Bucky of the past. Steve says it's okay, as long as he has Bucky at all he doesn't need anything else. He was wrong.
He remembers something Sam said to him about how he felt when Riley died.
'He fell out of the sky... nothing I could do... like I was just there to watch.'
Steve felt the same way when Bucky fell off that train now the feeling was rising in him again. The Avengers were surrounded by chaos fighting some unknown enemy for the third time this month. They had impersonated Maria and Clint, they could look like whoever they wanted as long as they had a DNA sample and they were friggin' hard to beat especially when they're wearing the face of someone you know. Steve fought off three attackers with some difficulty. He'd already lost his helmet and taken a couple hits and shots but he managed to fight them off. He just chanced a look to the sky towards where Sam was only to see one of his wings on fire and him plummeting to the ground. He felt his heart plummeting with him.
"Tony! Where are you?!" Steve asked over the comms frantically.
"Little busy." Tony answered through labored breath.
"Rhodey!" He got much the same answer from him, he was otherwise occupied. Thor wasn't there so he wasn't an option. Anyone who could help Sam was otherwise unavailable and he had no options. Steve watched with horror as Sam disappear behind a building.
'Nothing I could do... like I was just there to watch.'
Steve cursed Sam for telling him those words because now they were on a loop in his head.
He completely ignores what he's supposed to be doing during this latest alien attack (because that's all they know, they've got no idea what the hell they're fighting just that they aren't of earth). Instead he begins running towards where he saw Sam fall. The building is half collapsed, there's a gaping hole in the ceiling and the entrance has been reduced to a large pile of rubble and rocks. Steve digs and climbs his way inside, completely ignoring the chaos at his back as he tries to get to Sam because maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe he wasn't going to fail another loved one, just this once.
He gets inside and discovers it's a church, he couldn't tell from the outside. He runs deeper inside and immediately finds Sam's body laid before the altar. His wings are splayed out and a pristine Jesus figurine is above him, untouched by the chaos. Sam looks like a fallen angel. He doesn't have to look for very long to tell it's too late. That doesn't stop him from staring.
Bucky and Natasha find him. They were looking for him, calling him through the comms. He doesn't answer to Tony's jests or Bruce's roars or Natasha saying his name through a slightly cracked voice. She's been on edge emotionally since the second attack ended in them finding out Maria and Clint were actually Skurlls and the real them had been kidnapped. Coulson was injured in the process and they haven't heard from Fury at all yet. He can't deal with her right now.
Ultimately it's her cracked voice, the superspy once again losing composure, that breaks him because if Natasha isn't guarded this is serious, this is real and Sam is dead. His cries are what alert them that he's alive but something is wrong.
When Bucky and Natasha happen upon him he's sprawled out on the dusty carpet next to Sam's body before the altar crying and staring at his face with the sun beaming down on them from the hole in the ceiling and Jesus looking down on them. They can hear him repeating the same words over and over:
"It happened again. I did it again." They don't ask him what he means, they understand. They don't correct him, not verbally anyway. He's in so much shock and pain that he barely protests when Bucky picks him up and drags him away, leaving Natasha with Sam.
The thing is Sam wasn't even supposed to be there. Steve had reluctantly requested his presence along with Bucky's because they needed aerial support and another set of boots on the ground seeing as how Thor wasn't on Earth right now because he was doing his own investigation. They had barely gotten out of the last two fights and lost Phil, Clint and Maria in the process. Sam had been happy to help.
'I do what he does, just slower.'
Steve had a bad feeling about it but he let him come anyway. Now he was gone and it was his fault.
Bucky shook his head at him when Steve had come to enough and said so. He had no comforting words, they would be a waste. He knows the truth about Steve's feelings for Sam, the truth he ran from when Sam confronted him with his feelings. He feels like an idiot now for wasting a chance he'll never get back. When Natasha comes back, dusty and weary, she and Bucky bring him to the couch. Bucky sits on it and makes Steve rest his head on his lap while Natasha sits in front of him and cards her fingers through his hair comfortingly. Pepper comes in and sits on the couch too, rubbing his back. Betty comes and places a mug of tea on the coffee table before sitting next to Natasha and placing a hand on his shoulder. Tony, Bruce and Rhodey eventually come and sit on the couch opposite the one he's on.
They all know the truth too. They're trying to comfort him silently. He doesn't cry anymore, he just feels cold and keeps thinking,
'Nothing I could do... like I was just there to watch.'
He hears Natasha say SHIELD has his body. They're doing an autopsy. Fury, who finally shows up to Natasha's (and surprisingly Tony's) relief, asks Bruce if he wants to sit in. He declines, Betty does too. Tony takes him up on the offer, so does Bucky. Later on he watches around a corner as Natasha stands outside Bucky's bedroom. There's a bang from inside, like Bucky put his fist through a wall.
He was never good with grief, not even before. He ignored it before and let it fester until it came out in an almighty rush of emotion. Now grief translates to anger for him. He and Sam had actually been pretty close. Sam helped him a lot. He didn't expect anything from him and they'd become fast friends because of that. He lost him too.
When Bucky finally comes out his eyes are red and wet, like he's been holding back tears for awhile. Natasha hugs him and the Winter Soldier looks warm. Steve doesn't remember what warm is like and it's only been two days.
Skrull, Thor tells them. Shapeshifter race. Devours natural resources, moves on to the next planet. The usual. The Skrulls have Maria and Clint on their ship. They have to take out the mothership to even put a dent in them. They make a plan, they tentatively include Steve but there's something in their looks that tells him they aren't relying on him. He's okay with that.
Thor later takes Steve aside and offers condolences for his loss. Steve almost asks if there's a possibility Sam's alive, almost but he doesn't. He accepts Thor's sympathetic pat on the arm and Jane's look that's trying not to betray pity but failing. He's been pretty damn accepting lately.
That's new. His mother always told him he was too stubborn for his own, even Bucky complained about it when he kept enlisting but now he accepts Tony's liquor and pointless jokes with a fake smile. He accepts Bruce and Betty plying him with tea because they don't know what else to do. He accepts Pepper hugging him every chance she gets and Rhodey sitting silently next to him trying to comfort him with his presence. He accepts the distance Natasha puts between them because they can't help each other right now. They are in the peculiar place of understanding the others pain but being at different ends of the spectrum. He understands what it's like to lose a friend, a brother. He felt that way when Bucky fell off that train, when he sifted through the papers about the Howling Commandos only to find they all died. She knows what it's like to lose the man you love because she watched them destroy Bucky's memories of her and drag him to what she thought was his death but the difference was Clint and Maria might be alive and she got Bucky back but Sam's not coming back. He accepts Bucky staring at him with a familiar yet unidentifiable expression on his face. If he were more lucid he'd figure out what it exactly was but he was busy trying not to keep thinking about Sam's crumpled body and drinking Tony's liquor despite the fact he can't get drunk and pouring tea down his throat so much he's sure he's scorched his vocal cords and getting hugs that should be warm but aren't and sitting silently while screaming in his head and avoiding Natasha while a part of him wishes to reach out to her and listening to words in his head that Sam put there.
'Nothing I could do... like I was just there to watch.' Bucky keeps staring. Steve goes to bed early.
Tony benches him. Says he's too much of a risk, he's too emotional and he's a danger to himself and others. Tony says he understands. Steve says he doesn't because Pepper's alive. Tony tells him of watching Pepper fall and thinking she was dead.
'Nothing I could do... like I was just there to watch.'
Those damn words again. Steve reiterates the point.
Pepper's alive. Tony doesn't understand.
He's on edge and pissed off from being benched. Bucky stays with him and Steve snaps at him because he finally figured out the look in Bucky's eyes. Once he sees Bucky turn that look on Natasha instead of him and he can see it from an outside view he recognizes it as the look you get when you've broken something and can't fix it. He used to look at Bucky like that, hell he probably did a week ago before Sam died. Sam told him he shouldn't do that. He didn't know how to stop. He didn't know how maddening it was until it was turned on him.
Bucky looks at Steve and Natasha like they're dolls he ripped the heads off of or tea cups he's chipped, like if he touched them he'd break them and it pisses Steve off. He tells Bucky as much and for the first time in a week Bucky finally speaks to him instead of just staring.
"I can't fix this. I don't know how. Bullies? I can fight them for you. Watching the man you love fall to his death? I can't fix that for you. There's no one to fight. There's nothing I can do. You're my little brother Steve, so I should be able to fight everyone who tries to hurt you including myself but I can't fight this. I can't save you this time. I don't how to do this, how to give Natasha hope when I can't even help you. I should be able to. I can't… I can't help either of you. Can't even help myself most days."
Steve looks at Bucky, really looks at him. He looks like he'd rather have gouged his eyes out with a plastic spoon than say any of what he just admitted to Steve. He wonders if Bucky felt as bitter yet understanding as he does when the roles were reversed and Steve was giving him that helpless, lost look. Steve walks over to Bucky and stares at him for a moment before hugging him.
"I don't need you to fix me." Steve tells him.
"Then what do you need?" He asks, tentatively wrapping his arms back around Steve (because the memories of hurting Steve are still so vivid they scare him and keep him up at night and despite Natasha and Steve's reassurances he'll never get that particular shade of red out of his ledger). Steve doesn't answer him, Bucky can't give him what he wants.
There's an abnormality in Sam's DNA. That's all they say. Steve's doing his best not to get his hopes up. He does a damn good job at it. SHIELD sends their data and after much analysis by Bruce, Betty and JARVIS they call an Avengers meeting.
"It's a good likeness. Almost exactly Sam but those abnormalities give it away. Skrulls can replicate us straight down to our DNA but they can't completely change every single one of their atoms. There's always room for human error or in this case alien error. Just one or two strands of Skrull DNA intertwined with Sam's is enough to show us the truth. The reason he wouldn't revert to his real form could be because they're using him as a live source like with Hawkeye and Agent Hill." Bruce says. He can feel Bucky's eyes on him. Steve doesn't look, he still isn't getting his hopes up.
"What exactly are you saying?" Rhodey asks after everyone in the room is silent for a bit too long.
"It's delicate to explain. With Clint and Agent Hill they made us believe they were them straight up until they weren't. That's a possibility with Sam, that he's been a Skrull for longer than we know or that he's still alive as a link. Think of Sam as a movie reel, the Skrull would be the projector showing us Sam's image and when 'Sam' died the movie was simply put on pause, not removed." Betty tries to explain more coherently.
"So what you're saying is there's a possibility, however slim, but a possibility that Sam is alive?" Tony asks.
"Well, we're saying that at the very least that corpse doesn't belong to Sam Wilson and if he's alive he's on that ship." Steve can feel their eyes on him. He doesn't know what they're expecting. Scratch that, yes he does but he still isn't getting his hopes up.
They don't find Sam, he finds them just like Bucky did. They make it to the Skrull ship, Steve refusing to be left behind or benched and the others agreeing it's better if he comes. He doesn't take the lead, Tony does with Thor as a second in command. He doesn't protest this. They are met with more Skrull than they had bargained for. Steve has to shoot Bucky impersonators more times than he can count and he already knows he's going to have nightmares about it for weeks to come. When he finally meets up with the real Bucky he happens upon him just as he's shooting a impersonator of Steve before he took the serum and Natasha looking younger than she does now, maybe from her red room days.
Bucky hugs him when he confirms he's the real Steve and they move on. Or try to. They get surrounded and just as they're about to silently make some kind of plan. Clint bursts in to their right, a blonde woman comes in through to their left, someone comes in behind them (Maria they guess) and Sam's on a balcony in front of them. They all begin shooting at the Skrulls and Steve doesn't even think while he's fighting back to back with Bucky. Soon all the Skrulls that had surrounded them are gone. He looks to the balcony where Sam is now climbing down the ladder. He, Clint, Maria and the blonde woman come to stand in front of them.
Clint, Maria and Sam look thin and pale and weak on their feet. Clint and Sam are sporting weeks worth of beard and Maria's hair is longer but their alive. The blonde woman has on a black catsuit, an almost permanent smirk and stick's to Clint's side. She introduces herself as Bobbi Morse, Clint's ex wife. She had her own rescue mission going on for him. They decide to regroup with the others, Steve doesn't even give Sam another passing glance. It's like Sam's the sun. Stare too long and it's blinding, hurts like a bitch too. You need it but sometimes you're not ready for it so you hide.
They manage to defeat the Skrulls. Well, send them to another galaxy at least. They get back to Earth and though there is a big clean up effort ahead they all celebrate. SHIELD immediately takes Maria, Clint and Sam to be checked out. Bobbi, Bruce, Betty, Natasha and Bucky go along. They offer Steve a ride. He declines.
Bucky calls him with the news. They're all completely human, they're dehydrated and malnourished and exhausted but they're human and they're alive. Steve cries when he hangs up, he isn't sure why.
Sam's sitting on the top balcony of Avengers Tower staring at the sky. Steve's staring at him, staring at the damn sun like a fool who doesn't know better. He's sure Sam knows he's there but he doesn't say anything or move, he's waiting for Steve to make a move. He's been avoiding Sam ever since he came back almost a week ago. He doesn't know how to explain what he was feeling when he thought Sam was dead. Expect he does. He could rattle on uselessly but it all boils down to one statement that he can't get himself to say because he's never had to. The only other person he had was Peggy and he never got to tell her, he's never said it. Not even to Bucky, not in so many words.
He walks outside and sits next to Sam silently but that feels too much like when he would sit with Rhodey the week Sam was gone and so he talks, mindlessly chatters about the visible constellations and how when they were young he and Bucky would dream of walking among the stars. They didn't picture it being like how it really was. Childhood naivety made them think it was a better place, especially when the Depression set in. Maybe it had been. It strikes him that the chatter is a lot like how Tony tried to comfort him, fill up a room with enough words so that maybe no thoughts would slip through, Steve doesn't like that either but silence isn't much better. He's quiet enough for Sam to finally get a word in edgewise.
"So… questions. You've got 'em, ask away Cap." Sam says as casually as he would if he were talking to someone at a bus stop about the quality of the public transportation service.
"How long?" Steve asks.
"Not entirely sure, probably pushing on a month."
"What's your last real memory?" Sam smirks a little now but it holds some edge to it.
"I believe the last thing I did as me before the whole kidnapping thing was confess my love to Captain America. Seemed like a good idea at the time, later on not so much."
"I wouldn't worry too much. I hear the guy can be a bit of a dunce. Kinda slow on the uptake, he gets like that." Steve commented. Sam looked at him with a bit of a smile. Steve tried to return it but he still had the image in his head of Sam dropping out of the sky and wings laid bare with Jesus above like a fallen angel and 'Nothing I could do… like I was only there to watch.'
"So why'd they fake your death anyway?" Steve asks before Sam sees that the smile was actually more of a smile-that's-not-actually-a-genuine-smile and starts thinking.
"Well, it's pretty well known that if there was a leader of the group, you're the official unofficial one so they thought if they could break you, and Natasha for that matter, they'd break the team. They didn't realize there's way too many big personalities for that. Whatever Skrull Clint and Maria observed they thought that the way to break you would be through me. I know that they would've had more luck taking Bucky but he's been through enough so in a way I'm glad they took me, save him some more pain and Natasha too. She was probably all over the place with Clint gone plus Maria too. They're her friends, she doesn't have many of those, they're her family. She didn't need Bucky to be gone too. Least I could do." Sam says, shrugging and Steve stares because he can't be that selfless and caring and clueless. He can't be so damn… good.
Everyone thinks Steve's the epitome of goodness but he's done things he isn't proud of and he's got his own brand of red in his ledger. Sam is light and goodness and literally has wings, when he dies Jesus literally watches, he's only missing a friggin' halo. He's the sun and staring at him burns but Steve needs him. For some reason he thinks Steve doesn't care enough about him, that losing him didn't break him and knock him completely off kilter and maybe that's his fault, he was painfully silent when Sam admitted his feelings and he can't be silent anymore. He's been silent and screaming inside his head for so long and Sam is sitting there with him despite the fact that Steve hurt him and turned him away. He cares about the people Steve loves and he's followed Steve into dark places with an iron clad resolve and words of encouragement always at the ready. This man has been his rock and all he's asking for is one thing, one thing from Steve that he's been too afraid to give him.
Thing is Steve's tired and old but young at the same and Sam's a friggin' angel who Steve doesn't deserve but he's alive and even though the words are still there, 'Nothing I could do… like I was just there to watch' keep playing on a loop in his head Sam's right here next to him. So he gently takes Sam's chin and turns his face towards him and kisses him with everything he hasn't said pouring out. Maybe Bucky had it right all those years ago, maybe it wasn't healthy but letting something fester and then burst out in a rush of emotion was so damn relieving, like the relief of Sam's lips moving back against his. Like the touch of his head against Steve's that is the warmest the blonde's felt in days. Like the smile he gives him afterwards. Like the hug Steve sinks into that seeps into his bones. He told Bucky he only needed him. He was wrong and that's okay, it's okay to need them both. To need all the Avengers because there's no way he's going to do 'nothing I could do... like I was just there to watch' again. Not with Sam.
"I love you." He says. Because if he doesn't say it now and something happens he doesn't know what he'll do. Sam's reply is worth the fear.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't love you too." He rests his head on Steve's shoulder and looks back at the stars. He looks at peace and it pleases Steve. He can feel eyes on him. He looks behind him and Bucky's staring at him. It's the first time in two weeks he isn't looking at him like he's broken. He smiles at Steve fondly and he smiles back because he got what he needed, he finally got it back. He got Sam and really that was all he wanted.