Fandom: Avengers
Character(s): Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier | Captain America/Steve R.
Pairing(s): mentions of Peggy/Steve
Warning(s): semi-dark imagery, mentions of violence, spoilers through Avengers: Endgame, possible spoilers for The Falcon & The Winter Soldier
Most days, Bucky doesn't begrudge Steve his happy ending. God only knows Steve deserved to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Most days, Bucky can even smile at the mental image of Captain America running around after a brood of kids, making breakfast on Sunday mornings, kissing Peggy and growing old at her side…
...but then come the nights when Bucky wakes up with the crackle of electricity throbbing through his skull. When he can taste the inside of his mask. When he reaches for a knife that is no longer there. When his arm aches with old wounds and myriad sins. On nights like these, he could punch Steve right in the proverbial teeth.
"WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME BEHIND?!" His heart screams as he stumbles to the bathroom to throw up (again) and splash cool water on his sweat-drenched face. "Why did you leave me?"
It's just another dent in the battered, bruised landscape of Bucky's mind - but some days it is all he can think about.
Because Steve wasn't the only man out of time.
People often forget that, while Bucky didn't sleep for seventy years, he spent most of the time between the 1940's and the 2010's in a drug-fueled haze. Brainwashed. Electrocuted. Conditioned. Woken up long enough for a health check and a mission, then plunged back into cryofreeze for another month, another year, another decade.
(People often forget that Steve was not the only one to leave loved ones in the past.)
Bucky had a sister. Two sisters, in fact. And a mother. And he would give anything to be able to see them again.
His therapist keeps hinting that he will never be able to have a future so long as he's living in the past...but how can he help it? His whole life (back when it was still his) was 70 years in the past. And, as happy as he is for Steve, there are days when Bucky can't help but feel resentful.
Because the end of the line hasn't come yet.
And Steve isn't here.
Like everything else in Bucky's life, Steve is now only a memory.
"Why didn't you take me with you?"
Fin.