Warning: Major Endgame spoilers
A/N: I was bothered by the end of Endgame, because I thought Steve should have tried to find Bucky and save him when he was back in time. So I wrote this story to make myself feel better. I hope you enjoy it.
Bucky sits on the bench overlooking the lake. It's almost sunset and he's gonna sit on a bench overlooking a lake and watch it. He feels faintly stupid, but he can finally admit to himself that he likes watching the sunset, and nobody can use that against him. Does that mean that he's happy? He has no idea, but here he sits, making his own damn choices like a free man.
He doesn't look up when Stevie approaches, but he does scoot over a little on the bench to make room for him. When Stevie doesn't sit down, Bucky spares him a glance and discovers he's got a file folder in his hand and his serious we-need-to-talk face on. Bucky turns back toward the evening light show without comment. If Stevie's got something to say, he can say it to Bucky's profile, because Bucky's not going to miss the main event.
"We need to talk," Stevie says, like Bucky hadn't already figured that out.
Bucky wants to say, Do we have to? Can't we just sit and enjoy the sunset? but all those words seem like too much effort, so he just says, "Ok."
"I'm not coming back, Bucky."
Bucky cuts his eyes to Stevie, then focuses back on the sky, which is just starting to turn pink along the horizon. "What the hell you talking about, punk?" he says evenly.
"I mean after I put the stones back. I'm not coming back here. I mean, I'm not coming back now. It's hard to explain."
"I get that part. Question is why not?" Bucky's already got a pretty good idea of the answer to that question too. A chance to go back to his time, to live the life he was meant to live—who wouldn't jump at that? Stevie would be a fool not to stay there.
"I'm going to go save you."
That yanks Bucky's eyes away from the sunset. "What?" he snaps.
"I'm going to go save you. Look," he says, holding out the file. Bucky keeps his hands in his pockets, silently refusing to take it. Maybe it he ignores it, Stevie will give up this moronic idea. After a moment, Stevie flips the file open and says, "I know where you were. SHIELD had all the records on you. They knew you were alive for years and they never did anything to help you. So I'm going to go make it right."
God, Stevie is such an idiot. Certifiable Grade A Stupid. How did he ever survive all these years without Bucky looking after him? "Like hell you are."
"What do you mean? Why shouldn't I?"
"You wouldn't be rescuing me."
Stevie finally sits on the bench and flips through the file. Bucky catches a glimpse of an autopsy photo of Howard Stark before Stevie tucks it away again and pulls out a typed page covered in notes in Steve's squared-off handwriting. "Yes, I would. See, look at this. In 1967 you were spotted in Copenhagen. I can go there. . . then . . . and pull you out. I could fix it all."
Bucky keeps his eyes trained on the sunset, where the bottom edge of the sun is snuggled up against the horizon now. The streaky clouds high in the sky are stained orange and red. He doesn't need to look at the file. He already knows what it says. 'Spotted in Copenhagen' leaves out the detail that what he was spotted doing was blowing a man's brains out."You can't change the past, Stevie."
"But I can! I fought myself. I told myself you were alive."
Bucky feels like he's losing IQ points just being a part of this conversation. "Uh-huh. And when you came back here, was anything different?"
Stevie looks puzzled. Goddammit, Bucky's gonna have to explain the whole damn thing. Saying all those words might just kill him. "Did ya. . . have different memories? Like finding me earlier, or fighting yourself from the other side, any of that shit?"
"Well, no, but—"
"No, you didn't. So you didn't change anything."
"How could telling myself that not change anything? It had to!"
Bucky takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly through his nose. Patience. Sam is always yammering on about being willing to open up and share. He never says how much other people's stupidity is going to test his patience. "You didn't change anything for you. You changed a lot for that version of you. In that other reality. Whatever. But you didn't change anything for YOU. For THIS you."
Silence.
"So if you go back, and you rescue me, you wouldn't really be rescuing ME. You'd be rescuing a different version of me. But this me. . . well, I'd just be left here without you."
Silence.
"So you ain't gonna do nothing stupid like that, are you?"
"But—" Stevie breaks off, apparently finally realizing there's no but, there's no argument that can breach Bucky's ironclad logic. After a moment of silence, Bucky tears his eyes away from the deepening purple clouds long enough to glimpse Stevie's troubled profile, still tilted down at the file in his hands, where a picture of Bucky's bruised face has floated to the surface, like a ghost. That Bucky was a ghost; his memories of that time are certainly ghost-like, floating in and out of his brain, vanishing into wisps of smoke when he tries to pin them down. Ghost-Bucky has stringy hair hanging half over his face, and his eyes look disturbingly blank. Bucky may not like it, but his experiences made him who he is. Without that, he wouldn't have. . . this. He wouldn't be maybe. . . almost. . . sort of a little bit happy, even though the sun's sunk below the horizon now, and he missed the final hurrah.
Watching Stevie's sad face, Bucky suddenly has an idea. It's not an awful idea, like most of his ideas are. This one is a Good idea. Good in the sense that it is Good. Bucky's done a lot of messed up shit in his life. Mainly the ideas his brain comes up with are crap like That guy saw you, better break his neck or Run that car off the road, and he's gotta put his brain in a headlock until he can get control back. But this one is a GOOD idea.
"What you're gonna do," Bucky says, "is you're gonna make a change for the only person you can really make a change for, and that's you. You're gonna go back to 1946 and you're gonna rescue YOU."
"What do you mean?"
"Peggy."
"What about her? She married someone else. Even if I could find her, she's never gonna be for me."
"Did she?"
". . . Well, yeah. Remember, in the Smithsonian. She said she married. . ." Stevie trails off, frowning.
"Who? She didn't say, did she? What if that's because she married YOU? You go back there, then, whatever, and you find her, and you marry her."
"Just like that, huh?" Stevie's mouth tugs up at the corner, like it does when thinks you're being ridiculous but he's humoring you. Everyone seems to find that smirk charming, but Bucky thinks it's annoying. "Just go. . . marry her? What if she doesn't want to marry me?"
"Are you shitting me? She wanted to marry ya, believe me, punk."
The smirk drops. Steve leans forward on the bench and gazes earnestly up into Bucky's face. "Do you really think that, Bucky?" he says in a serious voice, eyes wide. Goddammit, the man is blind. That's the only possibility. How else could he miss the obvious? But then again, Stevie wasn't used to getting attention from girls, at least not back then. He wouldn't have recognized the signs. It was a new one for Bucky too at the time, having a girl ignore him in favor of Stevie.
"Yeah, she had it bad. Trust me."
"But Bucky. . . what if I change something, something important? Peggy accomplished a lot. What if me being there messes everything up?"
"Then you tell her everything, and you both keep your mouths shut. You got a file on me, you can get one on her. You know what she's supposed to do. You don't mess with anything, keep it the same, except you're there, where you belong, with the only person who ever made you happy."
Stevie stares at his hands like he's thinking about it, but after a minute he shakes his head. "No, I can't do that. I can't go back there, knowing what's happening to you, and not do anything about it."
"Why not? All your life you've done everything for someone else. You can finally do something for you."
"It wouldn't be fair to you."
Dammit, Stevie has to let him do this. Stevie has to let him do something Good for once in his fucking life. "How about if I give you special dispensation? Like a priest?" He does the sign of the cross, awkwardly because it's been a long time, and mumbles something that's as close as he can get to Latin. It's at least half Russian, but Stevie doesn't have to know that. He finishes it up by tapping Stevie on the head while chanting, "Anno Domini. Amen"
Stevie's grinning, but Bucky is serious now. "There. Now you can go and not feel guilty, see? So you go be happy, and live a good life. And then when you get back to now, you come back here. For us, it won't feel like any time at all."
Stevie blinks at him dumbly, but he's got a dopey little smile on his face, so he obviously likes that idea. Good. It's about time he saw some sense.
But then Stevie has to go and ruin it by saying, "How about, if I come back here, I give you my shield, and you can be the new Captain America?"
"Your shield is broken, dumbass. Thanos chopped it to bits."
"I happen to know where there's a spare. It's sitting in a closet in Tony's workshop, gathering dust. He won't even miss it."
Now it's Bucky's turn to stare. Be Captain America? Him, a former Russian assassin? That is a colossally stupid idea. He can't be Captain America. He can't talk in front of people. He is absolute shit at giving inspirational speeches. He needs alone time, for fuck's sake. His brain is constantly trying to get him to murder people. Captain America can't do shit like that.
On the other hand, there is someone in their group who would be a perfect Captain America, as much as it pains him to say it.. . .
"Sam."
"What?"
"Not me. Sam should be the next Cap."
"Sam?"
"Yeah. Think about it. He loves people. I hate people, man. You have no idea how much I hate people, but Sam loves them. I can't talk in front of people. But Sam's good at it."
"I never thought I'd hear you talking that way about Sam."
"I don't have to like the guy to know he'd be perfect for this job. Sam's good. Me, I'm just. . . doing the best I can."
"Title of your sex tape."
"Huh?"
"Title of your sex tape." Stevie raises his hand like he's gesturing to a movie marquee. "Bucky Barnes: I'm doing the best I can."
Bucky chuckles, even though he can feel his ears heating up. "We gotta get you back to the right time period quick. This century is a bad influence on you," he says, even though that's not exactly true. Stevie has always been a little punk. Bucky is constantly surprised by how everyone around here apologizes when they swear in front of Stevie, like he's the language police. Back in the day he could give as good as he got.
"But you guys are ok, aren't you? I mean, you don't hate each other anymore, right? Because if Sam's Captain America, he's gonna need some back-up. Will you be there for him the way he's been there for me?"
Shit. Bucky's gonna get roped into this one way or the other, isn't he? No good deed goes unpunished. Now Stevie's eyes are shining, the way they always do when he's got some sort of hare-brained scheme cooking, so there's no way Bucky's gonna get out of it. If he wants Stevie to drop his former hare-brained scheme of trying to save some alternate version of Bucky, and go live the life he's supposed to live, he's gonna have to agree to this one.
"Yeah. Ok. Sure. Whatever."
"You sound so enthusiastic about it, too."
"I said yes, didn't I, punk? So it's yes. You're gonna go find Peggy and be happy, and I'm gonna stay here and be. . . Sam's sidekick."
"There it is!" Steve says enthusiastically, clapping him on the shoulder. "Sam's sidekick. I should get you a t-shirt."
"Don't you fucking dare."