Steve's first attempt to visit the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian had been a miserable failure. On his second attempt he'd at least made it inside, and then the first thing he had seen had been Bucky's face on a large glass mural and he'd fled. Finally, on his third attempt, he was actually observing it. Reading the plaques and listening to the narration, seeing what pictures and artifacts had survived.
Historians had done a pretty good job, for the most, of getting things right. Their uniforms had been practically flawless, of course, and the stories fairly accurate (mild exaggerations mostly, here and there). But not one had gotten Bucky right. Nothing mentioned how pretty much all of Steve's sketchbooks, except the ones on display, were at least 90% Bucky. That the picture of Peggy in his compass was only stuck, very haphazardly, on the surface while underneath and carefully secured behind glass was one of Bucky (standing with Steve's ma, because Bucky had gotten protectively concerned about Steve carrying around a picture of only him).
Even the interview reel that played periodically in a quiet darkened room was wrong. It featured mostly Peggy, though every Commando made an appearance even if sometimes it was in pairs. Bucky, as far as Steve could tell, had the least time. The only soundbites they'd used had been comments about their life before the serum and were, for all intents and appearances, upbeat. Bucky looked sad at times, but the mood was supposed to be light and his tone was often teasing.
But Steve knew. He could hear how sarcastic Bucky's humor was. Could see the way the makeup hadn't quite covered the dark circles under Bucky's eyes. The way his expression sometimes went a little numb, his smile frequently forced. His hair was obviously freshly cut, maybe even that day, but still longer than Steve had ever seen it. But his clothes were the most telling; his fatigues, which had always fit so perfectly because Bucky had always tailored them himself, hung a little loose. Bucky had lost weight and not cared enough to fix his uniform.
It made Steve's heart ache. Bucky had been hurting so badly after his death and no one had noticed or cared enough to help. Bucky probably wouldn't have let them, just like he tried after Azzano except then Steve had been there to call him out. And while all the Commandos had known Bucky would never let Steve get away with that stuff, they had no idea that he did the same for Bucky. Was the only one Bucky had trusted enough to let look after him.
Steve wandered out of the theater in a daze and found himself in front of the plaque about Bucky. All the Commando's had one. They were a little bit clinical at times, talking about birth dates and general struggles; like the racism Gabe and Morita had faced in the army before joining the Commandos and, Steve was sad to learn, after. Bucky's was much the same. It talked about his birth and how long they'd been friends, his rise to sergeant and his time as a POW. Of course his work as Steve's second was mentioned, including their last mission together and the loss of his arm when he fell.
And the thing Steve would forever be proud of; after the war Bucky had been given a significant amount of money, a condolence package on top of everything the government owed to them both since Steve had left everything to him. And he had used it to create the Sarah Roger's Project, a collection of hospitals across the country (and now the world) dedicated to helping kids. It was still the leading expert on childhood asthma.
And it was only now that Steve realized there was something strange, something different about Bucky's plaque. Because when it came to what happened to him after the war, the Project was all it mentioned. The other Commandos plaques mentioned weddings and kids, where they'd lived and gone, what they'd done, when and how they'd died, where they were buried. But not Bucky's. And that didn't sit right with Steve.
As soon as he was back at his apartment he pulled up JARVIS on his phone. Tony had stared at him for a solid five minutes when Steve had asked if it was possible; Steve was sure it was less because the idea had never occurred to him and more that he didn't expect Steve to understand the technology well enough to ask. But regardless, Tony had agreed with enthusiasm and had even gone so far as to give all the Avengers remote access to JARVIS.
It came in handy at moments like this.
"How can I be of assistance, Captain?" JARVIS greeted.
"I need you to look up something. I want to know everything recorded about Bucky's life after the war." Steve said as he took a seat.
"Certainly. Just a moment." JARVIS went quiet and Steve waited impatiently until about thirty seconds later JARVIS said "I have compiled everything publically available, as well as from SHIELD's records. Would you like me to send it to your phone?"
"Please." Steve confirmed and a moment later his phone had downloaded the files. "Thanks JARVIS." Steve added.
"You are most welcome." JARVIS deactivated himself and Steve settled into his armchair. It was very comfortable and he had Pepper to thank for that. But at the moment he was more focused on what he was reading.
SHIELD kept detailed notes of everything that had happened before and during the war, not unexpectedly. Even they didn't mention Bucky and Steve's true relationship, though. There were detailed records of Bucky's time in the hospital and the therapy following the loss of his arm, which made up about the first six months after his discharge. After Steve's "death". There were two interviews noted, including the one from the museum, and JARVIS had helpfully included the footage. There was everything that had gone into the Sarah Roger's Project and it mentioned that afterward Bucky had spent some time helping Howard search for the Valkyrie.
And then abruptly, after about five years, there was just nothing. It was like Bucky had disappeared off the face of the earth. There was no mention of any weddings or kids. No obituaries honoring his death or saying where he was buried. No addresses or phone numbers. No SHIELD missions, covert or otherwise. There was nothing.
Steve reactivated JARVIS and asked "JARVIS, is there a problem with the files?"
"What do you mean, Captain?" JARVIS questioned.
"Why isn't there anything after 1955?" Steve explained.
"One moment." JARVIS sounded distinctly confused and Steve waited impatiently for JARVIS to finish doing whatever he was doing. It didn't take long. "There is no mistake, Captain. There is simply nothing recorded about James Buchannan Barnes after 1955." Even JARVIS sounded surprised and wasn't that an unusual occurrence.
"Look into this, JARVIS. I want to know what happened to him." Steve ordered.
"Of course, sir." JARVIS agreed.
"I'm going to watch these interviews, see if I can't get any clues. Let me know if you find anything?" Steve requested.
"I will, Captain." JARVIS deactivated again and Steve pulled up the first interview. It was a discharge debrief with SHIELD, still the SSR at the time since it had happened pretty shortly after Steve's death, and not publicly available anywhere. It was also clinical and while Bucky mentioned a few details Steve hadn't known, it was mostly familiar. Reruns of their missions, who and what had been captured or killed, the when and where. It was almost too clinical; it offered Steve no insights into what had happened to Bucky, even if it did give him a glimpse of how harrowed Bucky had been during his recovery.
The other interview was from the museum. The camera was steady, aimed at Bucky who was seated slightly left and facing off to the right side of the screen. The way he was turned minimized the obviousness of his missing arm but Steve saw how it made him sit differently, with his shoulders slightly crooked. The interviewer, a woman Steve couldn't see because she was seated behind the camera, opened with "you're a hard man to get a hold of, Sergeant Barnes."
"Been busy." It looked and sounded casual and slightly flirty, playful in the way Bucky always was unless a situation called for otherwise. But Steve could tell his heart wasn't in it; there was no gleam in his eyes, even with the slight quirk in his lips, and his hand remained still in his lap.
"Well, thank you for making time for this." The interviewer answered; she no doubt bought Bucky's act if the new lilt in her words was any indication. She asked a few expected questions about the Commandos and their work, and then moved on to the ones about their childhood and what it was like growing up with Steve.
Slowly, the longer the questions went on, Bucky's facade gave way to exhaustion. He shrunk further and further into himself. His answers became shorter. Steve realized how much altering they'd done to the reel in the exhibit and why Bucky's portions of it had been so short; so little of the footage was the right tone.
And then the interviewer asked "Do you miss him?"
Like a dragon that had just been woken from a long sleep, Bucky's entire body changed. He sat up straight and there was a look in his eyes. The same that had been there when Bucky had screamed "not without you" across a wall fire, one that had never matched up to the fire in Bucky's gaze.
"Do I miss him? Of course I fucking miss him! He was my best friend and he meant everything to me and now he's gone and we don't even have a body to bury! Or maybe you'd prefer I go into all the gory details. How I can't sleep at night without him there or how eating makes me sick. How everything feels bland and colorless because he's dead!" Bucky had risen from his seat a bit and he looked terrifying as he spat the words at the interviewer.
There was a heartbreaking beat of silence before someone moved forward. Peggy. She stepped between Bucky and the camera and murmured to him. Slowly he sank back into the chair like he was a puppet with cut strings and after a moment Peggy stepped back away from him. Once she was off camera, the interviewer took another moment to recover before she said "Okay, let's try that again, shall we? Is everything still taping?" She asked, though her voice shook just a little and Steve tried to feel bad that she'd been so startled. He didn't.
There were murmured confirmations and then something made Bucky sit up.
He looked utterly exhausted, worn and drained and Steve utterly hated the interviewer when she repeated her question of "Do you miss him?"
"Yeah, of course I do. He was my best friend." Bucky answered and now that Steve saw it he couldn't unsee how weary Bucky was in the footage. How forced his tone was. He was carrying the weight of a war, of a thousand deaths, and no one noticed. How Steve hadn't seen it was an utter mystery to him.
"If you could have said anything to him, before he died, what would you have said?" The interview asked and for a moment, Bucky's expression gave away everything. Steve knew exactly what he would have said and it was nobody's business but theirs.
Bucky stood up abruptly and said "Interview's over." before he walked away. The others on the set objected, insisted he returned to his seat, but Bucky ignored them all. He almost knocked the camera over as he brushed past and Steve almost vindictively wished he had as the recording finally stopped.
Steve sat there for a few minutes and probably would have for hours if JARVIS hadn't come to life with a gentle "Captain Rogers?"
Steve took a moment to center himself then said, "yes, JARVIS?"
"I have found something that may be of interest to you." JARVIS said.
"Go ahead." Steve encouraged and a document popped up on his screen. He scrolled through it as JARVIS spoke.
"These are the meeting notes documented by Stark Sr. between himself and Sergeant Barnes and is the last known reference to the Sergeant before his disappearance." JARVIS explained. Steve kept reading, but the notes were vague and heavily redacted. There were a couple mentions of tests the pair did, on Bucky for some reason, but the results and all the specifics were blacked out.
"Any chance of recovering the redacted information?" Steve asked.
"I'm sorry, Captain, but no." JARVIS did sound sorry and Steve sighed as he rubbed his face with his hand.
Finally he couldn't sit still any longer. "I'm going for a run, JARVIS. Keep looking for anything you can on Bucky, alright?" Steve requested.
"Certainly, Captain." JARVIS agreed and Steve turned him off. He changed into running clothes in a daze and left his phone home. The moment his feet hit the sidewalk he started running. Technically, he was jogging, but he easily outpaced even a sprinting standard human.
He ran for a long time, long enough the sun was going down before he finally dropped onto a park bench panting. He didn't feel much better, but maybe a little. His anger was gone at least, but now he was achingly lonely. His heart hurt, both for Bucky's pain and the fact he himself was alone. God how he wished Bucky was here. He closed his eyes and slumped against the bench.
"Well, punk, took you long enough to stop running. Was starting to think I'd have to go get dinner by myself." Steve simply smiled at Bucky's voice because, yeah, that was exactly how Bucky would have told him off. After a moment he realized he shouldn't be hearing Bucky's voice and sat upright as his eyes snapped open. And then he couldn't quite believe he wasn't dreaming because standing there in front of him was Bucky.
Dressed in casual and mostly black but certainly modern clothes, he looked no different from how Steve last remembered him. Well, that wasn't precisely true; the last time he'd seen Bucky had been when they'd wheeled his best friend into the operating room because he'd fallen down a mountain, his left arm was gone, and he'd already spent a couple of hours bleeding out in the snow. This Bucky in front of him was healthy, practically glowing. His hair was markedly different and his skin was tanned like Steve hadn't seen since Bucky's summer working on the docks. But there was something so quintessentially Bucky Steve could never mistake him for anyone else.
"Bucky?" Steve whispered and he nodded.
"Hey, Stevie." Bucky answered with the hint of a mischievous smile on his face. Steve practically launched himself from the bench and grabbed him. Bucky only laughed as Steve all but pat him down, making sure he was real and actually there. Bucky simply let him. "It's okay, Stevie. I'm here, I'm real. I'll explain it all to you, I promise, but I'm here. I swear.." Bucky spoke gently and when fingers carded through his hair Steve was finally able to move back a little.
"Bucky. Oh, god, Bucky. You're here. How? What… I don't… How are you still alive? You look like you haven't aged a day." Steve couldn't get the words out quickly enough and Bucky chuckled, almost embarrassed, as he rubbed his neck.
"Yeah, about that. Turns out whatever Zola did was a bit more successful than we'd thought. Howard was pretty sure it was the only reason I survived the fall and it was definitely the reason I stopped aging." Bucky offered and it took Steve a few minutes to reconcile that. It made sense, but his brain didn't want to believe it.
"And you… that's why you disappeared." He said quietly and Bucky nodded. He seemed unsurprised Steve had already noticed.
"Figured it'd be less suspicious that way. Howard helped; set up some bank accounts that fed through one another back to Stark accounts that would keep me paid through the years. Got me transport without needing an ID, that kind of stuff. Oh, Stevie, if I'd known you were still alive in the Valkyrie I never would have stopped looking and I'm so sorry for that." The look on Bucky's face, the pain, was heartbreaking.
Steve couldn't help reaching for him, cradling Bucky to his chest. Bucky let him, sank into his no doubt too strong grip and held him back. Pressed to his chest like this, he could feel Bucky's warmth. His heartbeat. It reassured him, more than anything, that this was real. Bucky was here, in his arms, 70 years into the future.
"How? I… Where have you been?" Steve started to pull back just a little, to see Bucky's face, and abruptly realized that Bucky had two arms. "You… your arm. You lost it." Steve mumbled and Bucky nodded.
He lifted his left arm and moved the fingers. It couldn't be real, but it moved just like it was. "It's a bit of a long story, but it was a gift from some really incredible people. I've been staying with them for about 40 years now." Bucky explained. "They're descended from aliens so the whole unaging thing doesn't really phase them. The arm's vibranium, if you were curious…" Bucky trailed off as Steve ran his hands over Bucky's left arm.
As Steve pushed up his sleeve and ran his hands over it he realized it didn't feel like skin. It was metal, though it was warm. He could feel grooves, interlocking plates that shifted every time Bucky moved his arm or fingers. "Here." Bucky pulled free of his grip, gently, and pressed a backwards seven into the palm using his human thumb.
The skin and hair suddenly shimmered and faded away, leaving gleaming black and gold in their place. He held it back out and Steve could only gape as he touched it. "This is… Tony would love to get a look at this." Was all he could offer, because he didn't have words to describe how beautiful it was. How utterly elegant.
Bucky chuckled under his breath and muttered "yeah, I think Shuri would maim me if I ever let a Stark get ahold of her tech."
"Shuri?" Steve asked and Bucky nodded.
"Yeah, long story short, she's my... charge, I guess? I've been her protector ever since she was born." Bucky explained. "And she's the princess of Wakanda, more or less? Her brother's the king." He added, even rubbing at his neck like he was embarrassed to admit that while Steve could only stare. After a moment Bucky looked up and smiled at him.
Steve couldn't help himself. He didn't care that they were in public and anyone could see. That after the Battle of New York he'd been mobbed pretty much any time he went in public. He grabbed Bucky and kissed him. Bucky made a surprised noise, but after a moment melted against him and kissed him back with a moan that was desperate and slightly pained, filled with every ounce of longing Steve felt for him too. Steve pulled him closer, because he never wanted to let Bucky go, but eventually they did need to breathe. He didn't pull back far, just rested his forehead against Bucky's as they panted and basically shared each other's air.
"Damn, Stevie. I forgot how good that could be." Bucky muttered breathlessly and Steve chuckled, feeling a bit breathless himself.
"I believe I was promised dinner?" Steve finally said and Bucky laughed, warm and open and bright and it made Steve's heart flutter.
"Whatever you want, Stevie. I'll take you anywhere you want, give you anything you want. Show you the world as I've come to know it." Bucky promised, as sincere as he'd always been. And Steve kissed him again. He couldn't help it. He loved this man, had loved him for literal decades. Had thought he'd lost him and now Bucky was here, in his arms, and Steve didn't care what the rest of the world thought. He wouldn't give this moment up for anything.