Chapter 5: Lazarus
A blur of motion and time swirled around him. He was on the ground, then moving backward and upward onto his knees. The world around him seemed to dissolve momentarily, and he was on the ground again, crashing into something hard. Air rushed into his chest, tinged with smoke and dust, and he realized he was gasping. That meant he was breathing – and he was alive. Images coalesced in front of him. Bodies. Colors.
Blue. Red and Gold. A red cape.
He blinked up at them, and the images solidified. He found himself staring into several faces—Steve, Tony, and Dr. Strange. Thor and green Banner stood behind the sorcerer.
His gaze slid over them, coming to settle on his own. A momentary wave of disorientation washed over him as he looked at his own battered, bearded face, and realization returned.
He was in 2023, at the battlefield with Thanos.
That realization brought panic that he'd somehow screwed up and the entire universe would die and be reborn thanks to him. "Thanos." He leaned forward, his gaze sweeping the area, searching for Chitauri, Thanos, for…
There was nothing, just a cluster of survivors, along with Steve and the others.
"Thanos is gone. You destroyed his forces," Steve said, his voice soft but heavy.
Relief drained the breath from Bucky's lungs, but confusion soon took its place. He focused on Steve's bloodied, dirt-streaked face. Tear tracks lined his cheeks. He looked like something that had been swallowed and spit back out.
God, it was good to see him again…to be close enough to touch him. "What happened? How am I alive?" Then, a thought occurred to him. "Am I alive?"
Dr. Strange answered. "Your friend Captain Rogers here was about to make a cosmically foolish decision and unsuccessfully attempt to use the time stone to rewind your physical essence to an earlier state. I intervened and did it for him—successfully, of course."
Bucky stared at the sorcerer, processing the man's words. "You used the time stone to bring me back?"
Strange nodded.
Bucky leaned his head back and sighed. Well, this development really put a crimp in his plan. What was he supposed to do now? He had no way back to the timeline he'd came from—as much as that one sucked, it was where he belonged. Having two of him in one timeline was never part of his plan. The world certainly didn't need a duplicate of him; one had done more than enough damage.
There was nothing for him here anymore than there was in his timeline. Soon, Steve would step on a platform and vanish into the past.
He took a deep, resigned breath. "You're a real pain in the ass, Steve."
All of a sudden, Bucky found himself pulled into a crushing hug against his old friend. "Hey," He couldn't help but melt against Steve and brought his arms up to return the embrace. The hug felt like home, but it brought a sharp pain to the center of his chest because he knew what he'd lost…and what he would soon lose again.
After a moment, Steve pulled back, and Bucky sank against the pile of debris behind him as his gaze darted from face to face. Bucky tried to keep his voice steady when he asked, "Um, why didn't anyone think of that with Tony the first time around?"
"Well, would you look at that?" Clint's voice interrupted the moment.
Bucky watched as all heads snapped up. Steve pushed himself to his feet with a groan, his gaze focused on something behind Bucky. Clint held out a hand and gestured in the same direction.
Bucky rose to his feet and turned to follow their gazes. The Avengers complex stood about a football field away, looking new and completely unscathed. Large tents reminiscent of the ones the U.S. army used in WWII peppered the battered grounds around it. He stared, dumbfounded, at the sight. The restoration of the Avenger's complex hadn't been on his list, nor had the cluster of WWII tents. When he was using the gauntlet, he vaguely remembered hearing the moans of the injured around him and thinking about himself and the other prisoners returning to base camp after being captured by the Germans. The idea of having a soft place to land for the injured around him had just popped into his mind, but it had no specificity to it. Had that shadow of a thought from his dying brain somehow created this? And, if so, what other things had he inadvertently done?
"I'll get these stones to safety." Dr. Strange's voice interrupted Bucky's stupor. The sorcerer seemed entirely unfazed by the building's appearance.
"What the hell is happening? Where are we?" an unfamiliar male voice exclaimed.
All heads turned toward the voice and, for a moment, time seemed to stop as Bucky stared at the two figures standing a few feet away. He recognized them instantly. The older man with the gray hair wearing a slightly vintage business suit was Howard Stark, and the blonde woman standing next to him was his wife Maria. She wore a light blue business dress. A string of pearls adorned her neck.
Tony stumbled toward them. "Mom? Dad?"
Maria Stark tilted her head and looked at her son, her brow creased. Tears filled her eyes. "Tony?"
Tony dropped hard to his knees in front of them, disbelief evident in the slouch of his shoulders and the limpness of his arms. He shook his head.
"My God." Pepper came up alongside him in her silver suit, her helmet retracted. Her eyes were fixed on the couple in front of him. "Tony…." She reached down and put a guiding metal hand on his arm and helped him back to his feet.
"What's happening here?" Howard Stark asked, his eyes darting around the torn landscape, hopping from face to face, and then settling on Bucky.
Bucky froze under that gaze, vaguely aware of his past twin making a shaky retreat, but his own feet refused to move under the force of the once-dead man's stare. Howard's attention was soon diverted when Tony took a couple of stumbling steps toward them and pulled each one into a firm, ecstatic embrace.
"What's happening?" Fear laced Maria Stark's question, and her right hand absently clutched at her throat. "Tony? What's happened to you? You're hurt, and…and you look so much older."
Tony leaned back. "This is going to take some time to explain, Mom. Just…" He turned to glance back at Bucky, his eyes and face wet, and swallowed hard. "Thank you."
Bucky nodded an acknowledgment. Suddenly, other voices rose, some familiar, some not. Movement caught his eye, and his gaze shifted to the shock of red hair walking toward Banner. Yori's son was a few feet behind her, terror on his face as he stood in one spot and took in the chaotic surroundings.
Steve stood alongside Bucky, taking in the developments one by one as they became evident, until his eyes, too, found the familiar redhead.
"Well, this is unexpected." Natasha walked up to Thor and Banner. Both men's heads whipped toward her, but Banner looked as though he'd been punched in the gut.
"Natasha?" Bruce whispered.
She studied him skeptically. "Is this an alternate dimension? Is that where I got sent?"
Banner pulled her into a gentle hug, his right arm healed. "How are you here? I tried to bring you back."
Clint was there suddenly, his eyes glistening, an odd emotion that looked like a mixture of joy and anger on his face. He stared at her, and she pulled away from Banner, giving the green guy an affectionate pat on the arm, to meet Clint's steady gaze with a firm one of her own.
"Clint." She nodded her head. "I guess this answers the question of which of us would win in a fight."
His face broke out into a huge grin, and he hugged her. "Damn you! Goddamn you, Natasha!"
Banner walked up to Bucky, shaking his head. "Was this you? How?"
Clint and Natasha turned toward him as well. Bucky glanced over at Steve, who looked to be completely and utterly shell-shocked.
"The guardian of the stone told us this couldn't be undone," Clint said.
Bucky looked into Natasha's face. She seemed human. He wasn't sure his idea would work. In fact, he still wasn't sure it had. His stomach dropped for a moment as he considered the possibility that the woman before him was nothing more than a facsimile that looked and sounded like Natasha but was empty inside.
"I'm not sure if I did the right thing here." He looked from Natasha to Clint and back again. "How do you feel?"
Natasha eyed him curiously. "Confused." A hint of a smile touched her lips. "I take it I have you to thank for this, somehow?"
"Bucky?" Steve prodded. "Why did it work for you and not Banner?"
Bucky sighed. "When I was in the hotel room working out my list of things I wanted to accomplish with the stones, I wasn't sure about Natasha. I remembered that Banner had tried, but she couldn't be brought back. I took a break and turned on the T.V. for a few minutes. A science fiction show was on." He glanced at Steve. "Star Trek. It was written in your book. Did you ever watch it?"
Steve nodded. "A little."
"Well, turns out there are a lot of different Star Treks. I have no idea how many, and they all seem to take place in different times or places. It's confusing. Anyway, one of them has a guy named Ryker with a beard, and the episode had to do with a transporter accident that made a duplicate of Ryker. The transporter sort of reads a person's pattern, kills them, and then makes a copy of them somewhere else. Well, in the episode, the original Ryker didn't get killed, just copied. Anyway, it gave me the idea. If I couldn't resurrect Natasha, could I make an exact duplicate of her in the moment before she died?"
"So, I'm a…copy?" Natasha's face went slack.
"I'm not actually sure if you're the copy or the original," Bucky explained. "I just wished for a copy and for you to be here. It was more of an image and concept in my head. But one of you died, and one of you came here." He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry that I couldn't save you completely. One of you still died."
Banner spoke up. "Does it really matter if you're the original or a copy? If the copy is exact, it's the same as the original. He basically created a Star Trek transporter effect to read your pattern and bring you here."
"But what about the soul?" Clint asked. "He said a soul for a soul."
"Can a soul be copied?" Natasha asked.
"And what happened to the other Natasha's soul?" Clint asked.
Bucky shook his head. He wasn't even sure there was a soul, or a God—he used to believe in such things, but after everything he'd seen, he couldn't imagine there being one all-powerful God, certainly not a loving one, anyway. If there was no God, was there even a soul? Maybe all he or anyone else was was simply an arrangement of atoms and the soul was the collection of thoughts, feelings, and memories that made up each person.
"I'm sorry. I don't know." Bucky looked into her green eyes. "Did I make the wrong call? Is this worse?"
Natasha smiled. "I don't feel any different than I did before. So, thank you, I guess."
Clint moved forward and stopped to stand a few inches from Bucky, studying him for several seconds. Bucky held his gaze, prepared to take the punch, if that's what Barton needed.
"Clint," Steve put a gentle hand on a Barton's arm.
Barton leaned forward and pulled Bucky against him. "Thank you," he whispered, then gave Bucky a quick pat on the shoulder as he tilted back slowly to cast a smug look at Steve. "I'm glad I picked your side to help save this guy." He flashed a muted smile, then offered Natasha one final, long look. "Let's go help some of the survivors." He swiped quicky at his eyes as he walked off.
She nodded and, with a lingering look at Bucky, followed Clint as he led the way. Banner nodded approvingly at Bucky, then smiled and leaned forward. Bucky once again found himself pulled into a hug, but this time the force of it almost made him pass out.
"Bruce," Steve's voice intruded, "ease up. I think you're crushing him."
"Oh, right, sorry." Banner released Bucky. "Thank you, man."
"You're…welcome." Bucky gasped, sucking in a much-needed breath. He still hadn't gotten used to having people look into his face and thank him instead of begging for their lives.
Banner turned and headed after Natasha and Clint to help the injured. Bucky watched them leave. It felt awkward being hugged so much. Except for a couple of recent incidents with Steve and Sam, the last time he could remember hugging another human being was in 1943.
Bucky took a breath and spotted RJ Nakajima. The young man had wandered only a few feet away from his spot. He was wearing the same sweater and lanyard that he had on the day Bucky shot him.
Bucky swallowed and slapped Steve gently on the arm. "I, uh, I have to go deal with something." He walked toward RJ, vaguely aware of Steve following behind, at a slower pace, giving him space.
Bucky approached RJ. He didn't think the man would recognize him without the face mask and long hair. That was one small blessing.
"Hey." Bucky cautiously approached the younger Nakajima. "RJ, right?"
RJ turned to him suddenly, surprised, terrified. "What? I…" He swallowed. "There was a guy. He had a gun. He…" RJ shook his head and looked around. "Where am I? What's happening?"
Bucky held his hands up, trying to imagine what RJ must be feeling. One minute, he'd taken a bullet through the head, and the next minute, he was here. It would be a lot for anyone to process. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay. I know you must be pretty overwhelmed and scared. You're okay. You're safe here. It's a lot to explain. You're Yori's son, right? I know your father. He's been very worried about you." Bucky gestured toward the tents surrounding the Avenger's campus. "Why don't you come with me. We'll get you situated, and then arrange a ride home."
RJ hesitantly moved closer to Bucky. "Where am I?"
"You're in New York."
RJ stopped and shook his head. "That's not possible, I was…."
"At the Hotel Inessa, I know. It's okay, we'll explain it all. It's going to take some time. Just follow me. I promise you'll be safe."
RJ nodded absently, still taking in the devastation around him. When he reached Bucky, he looked back at him. "Thank you, uh…who…" His voice trailed off as he looked into Bucky's eyes. "Do I know you? Who are you?" There was a hesitation in his voice.
Don't recognize me. Bucky took a deep breath and forced a reassuring smile. "My name's Bucky. You like Red Bean Mochi, right?" He hoped to distract RJ from trying to piece together why he seemed familiar. "Your dad told me that's one of your favorites. I know he'd love to share some with you when we get you back home."
"Have we met?"
Bucky hesitated. "Once."
RJ tilted his head. "Where was that? Was it with my Dad?"
"No." Bucky turned toward the tents. "We can talk about that later, but right now, there's a lot going on here, as you can see." He swept a hand out at the smoldering debris and bodies. "Let's get you to one of the tents, okay, so I can work on helping some of these injured."
That seemed to do the trick, because RJ nodded and moved to follow Bucky. "Of course." He coughed and looked around. "But...what happened here?"
"It's a long story," he answered, as he led RJ to one of the tents and set him down on an empty cot. He offered the young man a reassuring smile. "Good thing you have your name tag on you." He pointed to the dangling lanyard. "We'll get you a ride to Brooklyn soon, okay?"
RJ just nodded as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.
"I don't think you're going to have active service," Bucky said. "You gonna be okay here for a little bit?"
RJ nodded once again, absently, as he stared down at his phone.
Bucky turned to leave, but RJ's soft voice stopped him. "Is this...Yomi?"
Bucky glanced back at him. Yomi. The Japanese word for the underworld. "No. You're very much alive."
"Hey, does anyone know who this is?" Bruce's voice carried from a distance.
"Stay here. You'll be okay," Bucky told RJ, then ducked out of the tent.
He spotted Steve a few feet away, helping an injured Wakandan into a tent. Bucky followed Bruce's voice, navigating around a pile of debris, and saw Banner Hulk standing near two huddled figures—a mother shielding her little girl. Bruce took a step toward the two but stopped and shifted awkwardly on his feet as soon as the trembling woman screamed and tightened her hold on her toddler.
Bucky came to a halt, feeling sucker-punched. He knew their faces. He'd seen them regularly in his sleep for over forty years. He hadn't meant to bring them back. They'd been gone too long.
Banner looked at him. "Is this one of the people you mentioned in your letter?"
The letter? Bucky blinked. Shit. He'd forgotten about the letters. How did Bruce know what he'd written?
"Barnes?" Bruce prodded.
"Right." Bucky looked at the woman and the three-year-old girl. He knew their names and that the mother was someone Hydra had considered a threat.
He walked up to them, held his hands out at his sides and, in the softest, most reassuring voice he could muster, spoke to them in Russian. "Ne boysya. Nikto ne prichinit tebe vreda. Ty v bezopasnosti." Don't be afraid. No one is going to hurt you. You're safe.
The mother looked up at him, her brow furrowed with confusion for a second, then her expression melted to horror. She screamed, holding up one trembling hand as she shoved her daughter behind her. "No. No, please, I'll stop," she pleaded in Russian. "I'll destroy everything I have on Dmitry. Please, let us go. Don't hurt my baby.
Bucky took a step back. There it was—the thing he was used to—begging, pleading. She had begged him back then, just like this, wrapping herself around her daughter. He'd killed them both. He hadn't been wearing his mask back then, so she'd obviously recognized him immediately.
Bucky swallowed hard. He heard footsteps behind him.
"Who are they?" Steve whispered to him.
Bucky glanced briefly at Steve, trying to talk around the sudden lump in his throat. "Anya Petrov. Her daughter is Sophia." He looked away as he forced the words from his throat. "I assassinated them when I was the Winter Soldier. I didn't mean to bring them back. They died in 1979."
"I'll go get someone to help," Banner said, then quickly headed out of sight.
Bucky studied the shaking woman as she hugged her daughter. Sophia's scared brown eyes peered up at him, tears on her cheeks. Her chin quivered. Her small hands clutched at her mother's shirt.
Bucky backed further away as he told her in Russian, "I'm not going to hurt you." He looked at Steve. "I'm going to find Natasha." She spoke Russian and would probably have more success calming them. He was terrifying them. He had to get out of there.
"Right here." She moved past him, then crouched down in front of the woman and child and spoke softly to them in Russian.
"Are you okay?" Steve's firm hand came down on his shoulder, and he guided Bucky away.
They turned. A lone figure stood several yards away. His shoulders were hunched, and blood dripped down the side of his face, but the long hair, beard, and firearm made him unmistakable.
"Bucky." Steve moved forward, limping alongside as they approached the other super soldier.
They stopped a few feet away. Bucky looked at his counterpart from a year ago and recognized the emotions in his dark eyes.
The other man held his gaze. "What exactly have you done?"
"Made amends, the best I can." He paused for a moment. He knew what the other man was thinking because the thoughts were his own. "I didn't mean to bring them back after all these decades. I wouldn't want to do that to someone. Their faces just…"
The past Bucky took a breath, "…popped into your head?"
Bucky nodded. He eyed his past self. He remembered taking pretty much a direct hit from Thanos' ship. Once again, it was a miracle he was alive. He'd been out of commission for a couple of days, so he knew his counterpart didn't have much left in his fuel tank. "You should take a load off. I remember what I felt like after this battle."
"I'll be fine." The tone was flat, almost suspicious.
"You took a big hit. You've got a fractured tibia, busted ribs, a five-inch gash in your right side, and a concussion." He took a step closer to his younger self in anticipation. "You won't die, but—"
When his wounded twin crumpled to his knees, the firearm dropping from his right arm, Bucky was there first, putting a hand on his chest to keep him upright. Steve was a close second behind, though he moved stiffly as he crouched beside both of them.
The wounded soldier groaned, then managed a self-deprecating smile up at them. "Okay, so, maybe 'fine' is a bit strong of a word, but I'll live."
The sound of a thruster gave the older Bucky notice of an incoming, and he rose to his feet as Sam dropped from the sky a few feet away. He smiled at the Falcon. "Nice of you to join the party, Sam."
Sam looked at him, confused, then down at the other Bucky. "What the hell is going on here?"
Suddenly there was a commotion, and they all turned to see 13 men, some dressed in dark flight gear, others in bright orange jackets, stumbling around, panicked, confused.
Bucky stared at the men, heat rising to his cheeks, stinging his eyes. There they were—all the men he'd killed on the helicarrier in 2014, men who'd given their lives to help Steve. A couple of the airmen spotted him, their faces shifting from confusion to sudden alertness. Two of them raised firearms at him.
Steve was instantly in front of him before Bucky could stop him, barking a quick order, "Stand down!"
They looked confused but slowly lowered their guns. Steve's shoulders relaxed. "It's going to be quite the explanation, gentlemen." He nodded at Sam. "Can you show these guys to the tents?"
"On it," Sam said, giving Bucky another quizzical look.
Steve turned to the younger Bucky and crouched next to him. "Let's get you patched up, buddy."
Author's Note
As always, reviews/comments appreciated!