Chapter Two
When he finally woke up again, Bucky was still in the now-dimly lighted hospital room. He was still attached to the machines, but he didn't panic this time. For the first time, Bucky risked looking at his left arm. It didn't hurt anymore (probably thanks to whatever drugs they pumped him full of.) It was covered in gauze and bandages. He couldn't feel his hand at all.
Bucky glanced to his right to see Steve, leaning back on the visitor's couch and scribbling away at his sketch book. For a moment Bucky was overjoyed. He thought the train was going to be the end of the line, but here they both were, finally out of Germany and mostly whole. The doctor hadn't lied to him after all.
"Steve?"
Steve looked up, shock, joy and worry all displayed on his too open face. "Bucky? Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Can't get rid of me that easily, Punk."
Steve set aside his sketch book, and reached out for Bucky's right hand. "I thought you were dead, you Jerk!" There was so much, too much, raw emotion in Steve. He looked as if he had been crying. He also looked older. Not by much, but definitely older than twenty-five. That just added to the many questions circling in Bucky's head. Why am I alive? How'd we get home? What's going on?
Bucky finally settled on asking, "What happened Stevie? How'd we get back to New York?"
Steve took a deep breath and regained his composure before asking, "What's the last thing you remember, Buck?"
Bucky thought for a minute before replying, "Falling off a train."
Steve made sure to look Bucky in the eye, trying to convey all the sincerity in the world. "You're not going to believe this, Bucky, but that was seventy years ago."
Bucky stilled, completely shocked. "You're going to have to run that by me again, Steve. Seventy what?!"
Steve takes another breath and Bucky is reminded of his asthmatic days, where just about anything could knock the wind out of him. "Maybe I should start over, Buck. The year is 2015. Seventy years ago you fell from a train during a mission in Germany. We found you outside Stark Tower three days ago. No one knows how you got here."
Bucky took a minute to try and process that, maybe it was the drugs he was hooked up to or the splitting headache, but he just couldn't. The world just seemed to stop making sense.
"Wait; forget the fact that you don't understand how I'm here. How are you here Steve? Are you trying to tell me that you haven't aged at all in seventy years?"
"No Bucky, I age, just a lot slower than everyone else. I've only been in the 'future' for about three years."
Bucky gave Steve a curious glance. "How'd you get to the future then?"
Steve had that lost expression on his face again, he still looked like he may or may not cry. "After…After you fell, we captured Zola. He gave us the coordinates of HYDRA's main facility. We stormed it, but Schmitt escaped on a plane, so I snuck aboard. He was going to bomb the Eastern Seaboard, Bucky. He had bombs everywhere. After a brutal fight that ended with Schmitt's death, I crashed the plane into the Arctic."
Bucky, who had been listening quietly, sat up in alarm. "You crashed the plane! What?! Please tell me this means you parachuted out first?!" If Steve was going where Bucky thought he was with this, then Bucky really did fail him. Bucky should have been there for Steve, darn it!
"No, Buck, I didn't parachute out. There wasn't enough time. I crashed in the Artic and froze. My body, by some miracle survived. I was kept in a state of suspended animation until three years ago; when I was found and thawed out."
Bucky sat in shocked silence. He didn't know what to say. What could you say when your best friend just told you that he by all rights died? That both of you were now stuck in the future?
Steve seemed to understand. He gave Bucky's hand a squeeze before letting go. "I know it's a lot to take in all at once, but I figured you had the right to know." Steve looked down.
Bucky turned his wide grey-blue eyes to Steve, "Are you ok now? No permanent ice damage?"
Steve smiled sadly and shook his head 'no'. Typical, Bucky always looked out for Steve even though Bucky was in the hospital this time. "I'm fine, and the doctors say you will be too. I don't know how or why you got here, Buck, but I am glad you're here."
Bucky smiled. He had been so sure the train was going to be it, the end of his life. Now he had a second chance and a life in the future. "Me too, Stevie. Me too."
They were so caught up in their reunion, that they never noticed the shadow standing in the doorway throughout their entire conversation. Nor did they notice when it left moments later. It was just as well, if everything went according to plan, the Winter Soldier wouldn't exist much longer any way.