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FUGUE: where are we going?

Maybe he can learn to love back if he just tries—and maybe, if he wishes for it hard enough, the sun will never set and the war will end.

{1943}

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It's Bucky's last night in Brooklyn, and he spends it at the Stark Expo, looking to a future that he isn't sure he's going to see.

An hour ago, he picked Steve up out of the dirt, protected him from a new bully, same as he's done every other day all his life. It might be exhausting, cleaning up Steve's messes, if he didn't love him so damn much. Because it is love, what he feels—if not the same sort of love that Steve harbors for him.

He asked, "Where are we going?" and all Bucky wanted to say back was, "We aren't going anywhere."

They're about to be separated, stuck on opposite sides of the ocean, and it isn't fair. If Steve was as strong in body as he is in heart, he'd make the best kind of soldier. But Bucky, he'll only do what he has to, kill to make it home, back to his mother and his sisters and Steve. Steve, who might as well be a little brother to him, always in need of rescue, but quick to rescue Bucky back in all the ways that he can.

He wants to be honest with Steve, but "the future" is a much easier answer to give.

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