So this is, admittedly, not one of my best or favorite chapters, but I had to keep the story moving as we are just about to the end. Enjoy anyway!
I came to when I heard the sound of Roddy's voice rapidly speaking in a language I didn't quite recognize. The world slowly started to come into focus and I was able to pick out the voices of Bucky and Sam as well. I started to sit up but instantly regretted it when I felt the pounding in my head.
Sam came forward and pressed two pills in my hand and motioned to a glass of water by the bedside. "You're going to want to take that, when Rod brought me back I had a hangover for two days."
"Brought you back?" I took the offered medicine and forced my eyes open. I recognized the room as the one Steve and I slept in the last time we were at Sam's house, what seemed like a lifetime ago. "That light? Were you all sent back in time too?"
Roddy nodded. "I was sent back two years, to Bucharest. I ran into a past version of Bucky."
"I was sent home." Sam said. "It took me a few days to even realize something was off, not until Cap passed me on my left during a morning run."
"I was sent back thirty years." Bucky crossed his arms and spoke quietly, with an edge to his voice I didn't recognize. "To Siberia."
We were all quiet for a few moments, taking in the revelation that Bucky had been sent back to relive the hellish nightmare that was his past as a Hydra experiment. I finally broke the silence. "But how did you get us all, Roddy? What actually happened?"
"Nefertiti happened." Roddy leaned both arms on the footboard of the bed. "When we broke into her tomb, we unleashed, well, something. I don't know exactly what she is, or was, but she thought we were trying to steal her power. She punished us all by separating us and throwing us back to the first thing she found in our minds. I found her, with the help of past Bucky, and bargained with her to bring us all back."
"What did you bargain?" Bucky narrowed his eyes at Roddy who simply shrugged his shoulders.
"Doesn't matter. I got all of you back, right?"
"And Cap?" Sam asked. "Why didn't he come back?"
"I don't know." Roddy ran his fingers through his hair.
"I told him to stay." I said quietly.
"You did what?" Bucky started towards the bed looking furious with me. Roddy held up an arm to stop him.
"I - He had a chance to live the life he was supposed to, I told him to take it." I shrugged. A part of me had hoped that Steve was just downstairs, that he come back with me despite what I told him. I willed myself to be happy for him despite the knife working it's way into my heart.
Varying degrees of anger and confusion drifted across Bucky's face. Sam started trying to reason his way through the situation, "So, I wonder if he actually lived? Or is he in some kind of alternate timeline? Or is there an old man version of Steve walking around or-"
"Sam." Roddy cut off his ramblings. "I hate to say it, but that doesn't really matter in the bigger picture."
"Why not?" Bucky crossed his arms and glared at my brother.
"Because, this Egypt site was only one of literally hundreds of coordinates in our Dad's journal. We don't know which ones Hydra knows about or how dangerous they are."
"We have to check each one. We can't let them have even a single one under their control." Bucky slowly uncrossed his arms and nodded his head.
I tried to help them, I really did. After recovering from our Egypt debacle Sam, Bucky, Roddy, and I got in touch with SHIELD and worked with a small team of agents to find the next location. This time, it was a huge, Lovecraftian nightmare of an animal found in Peru that nearly took of Sam's head. Truthfully though, my heart wasn't in it. So I went home.
I went back to my mom's house and totally immersed myself in my Phd studies. I hid between the pages of my books and only came out to send the occasional e-mail to Roddy assuring him that things were fine. In return, I received long encrypted messages letting me know of all the dangers they were fighting. Currently, they were working their way towards Siberia where they found out there were more Winter Soldiers being stored on ice. I took a few moments to feel for Bucky who must be going through hell having to return to that place.
I wrote to Steve. Of course I knew he would never see any of my messages, but it was a strangely calming exercise. I promised myself that I wouldn't grieve - if I could even call it that - for too long. However, as the months continued to tick past, I sunk deeper and deeper into myself and my work. Then one night when I miraculously had the house to myself because of some school function I heard a knock at the door.
I looked at the clock, it was 10pm, much too late for a regular visitor. Perhaps Bucky's paranoia was rubbing off on me, but I grabbed the small hand gun he left with me the last time he and Roddy had visited. After all, he had said at the time, Hydra could still be after me. I cautiously made my way from the office to the front door, keeping the gun ready to be used but out of site just as Bucky had shown me.
When I opened the door I had to make a conscious effort to not drop the gun. There on my mother's doorstep stood Steve in a full World War II era Army dress uniform.
