1925

Ellie: 6

Steve: 6

Bucky: 7

"C'mon James!" A 6-year-old small brunette girl with bright blue eyes whined at her older brother of a similar appearance, If not slightly taller stature, in a small 3-room house in Brooklyn. "Let me meet him!"

Her 8-year-old brother was always going on about this boy he met in the schoolyard, refused to say anything to her except how brave he was, saving that boy from certain death, which Elizabeth always listened to intently. He was so brave! But he wouldn't even tell her the boy's name, saying stuff like how he didn't want Elisabeth embarrassing him in front of his new best friend.

"No, Ellie, you're too young, he won't wanna hang around a baby like you!" Bucky shouted, he loved his little sister to death, but at the end of the day, he was still just a little kid who had an annoying little sister. "And you know how much I hate that name, why can't you call me Bucky like everyone else?" He pouted petulantly.

"You're only a year older than me!" The little girl crossed her arms and stomped her tiny foot, making her short ringlets bounce violently before pausing to point her chin up defiantly. "Oh, and I only call you James when you annoy me, and you always annoy me."

James was about to retort when they heard a baby cry come down the other end of the apartment hallway leading from the living area, to the rooms, followed by a frustrated shout. They both stared at each other with wide eyes as they heard heavy footsteps coming from the crying, towards them. They debated running and hiding, but they knew they didn't have enough time so they both swung towards the approaching footsteps. Not 10 seconds later their very tired father entered the room. Their mothers' death had been hard on George, but adding the fact that she had died as a result of an infection from the birth of the youngest sibling, Rebecca, meant that he was alone in raising the three children.

It had been a year since then and it wasn't getting much better, James had become more volatile, becoming fussy whenever called by the name his mother called him, refusing to go by anything other than "Bucky", and Elizabeth had become withdrawn and shy, but had turned to becoming the mother figure towards the baby. George was glad none of the children had the capacity yet to connect Rebecca's birth, and their mothers' death, he knew it would come soon enough but he had enough problems to deal with at the moment. He had just gotten the baby to sleep when the children's petty arguing had frightened her, making her screech and then cry, George had enough. The children stared up at their father as he attempted to calm himself.

"What in, Gods sweet name, are you two nuisances arguing about this time!" Was the worst question he could have asked, as they both had very different complaints and forgot their earlier fear of making noise as they began talking over one another.

"James won't let me-!"

"She wants to play with me and Steve!"

"Oh, so that's his name!"

"Dad, tell her that it's not right for boys and girls to play together!"

"How dare you, what did you jus-"

"You heard me, you little bra-"

"ENOUGH!"

That was enough to silence the two eldest children, they could hear the youngest crying at the other end of the apartment as a deathly silence fall over the rest of the house. Their father was breathing heavily and had turned to the side to massage his eyes as if to stifle a growing headache, before taking a deep breath, rubbing his hand and turning to his eldest two kids who looked afraid to move a muscle.

"Now look, Buck, You'll be takin' Ellie to meet that friend of yours." Bucky opened his mouth to interject, but George silenced him with a glare and warning finger. "Keep an eye on her, I don't want her getting lost or, lord forbid, somethin' worse, just because you wanted alone time with your little friend." He turned to the girl beside him and just missed her pointing her tongue at him quickly. "And you, young lady, will give those boys their space and, please don't get too loud with the boy, I've met him he looked like a gentle breeze would break him." He pointedly ignored Buckys protective glare at the last part.

As the two walked away from the house with a generous whole dollar between the both of them, they heard their father shout to them from the window of the second story apartment.

"And for heaven's sake, just share the boy would ya, he's a kid, not a toy!"

It would take them a while, but they did, indeed, learn to share Steve.

Steven Grant Rogers would be forever grateful for meeting Bucky on that playground, but, if anybody asked, he had everything under control. They had known each other for a couple weeks now, and his ma finally let him meet up with Bucky after Steve introduced them and he said he was very charming for a kid. Gross. So he sat on one of the wooden park wings with his feet dangling quite high up from the ground as he waited for Buckys arrival. He was daydreaming when he heard what sounded like muffled arguing in the distance.

He spun his head around to look for the noise and had some trouble making out the kids approaching him, he mentally got ready for a fight before they came closer and he immediately recognized his friends Bucky coming towards him, but he realized he wasn't alone. There was a girl that looked slightly younger than Bucky who was trying to keep up with his long strides, almost as if he was trying to get away from her. Regardless of the new girls' arrival. He got up to politely greet the two. Due to Steve's poor hearing, he didn't hear a word of what was said until they were right in front of him and by then they stopped talking.

"Hey Buck" Steve nodded his head in greeting towards the boy while adjusting his ill-fitting overalls that his mother had insisted that he wear. "What's uh-" Steve cleared his throat before quickly looking at the girl in front of him, "What's going on?" He looked a bit confused, which wasn't helped by Bucky sighing with annoyance.

"This is my baby sister Elizabeth, Pop says I have to make sure she doesn't run off, or somethin'" Elizabeth didn't look too pleased with any of it, but she didn't interject, instead choosing to furrow her brows and stick out her lip a bit to show off her displeasure, which was pointedly ignored by the other Barnes who apparently had a strategy. "Don't worry about her, though, we can just ignore her."

"That's not all too polite." Steve spouted out in a barely heard voice before he could stop himself. He didn't have much time to regret it though, as Bucky gave a barking laugh as the girl looked at him in surprise. Steve couldn't help but think Elizabeth was too long a name for her, why couldn't she have a short name like Bucky does?

"Don't worry about it Steve, she's no fun anyway." Bucky didn't seem to take offense at the remark, deciding instead to drag Steve over to the low hanging monkey bars while continuing to talk. "She's just a girl Steve, she won't wanna do boy stuff anyhow."

Bucky tried to get Steve to hang on to the bars with him, but he couldn't get himself to, so they sat on the ground picking at the grass talking about anything and everything. Bucky started rambling on about this new pizza shop that his Pop wouldn't let him go to because it was too pricey. Steve's gaze fell to the girl way behind Bucky lying on her stomach playing with the grass the bored, almost sad look on her face and Steve couldn't help but feel her pain, he knew all too well what being left out of a group felt like.

"Why don't you like Elizabeth?" Buck stopped mid-sentence and looked at his friend before following his gaze to his sister who now had her face laid down on top of her crossed arms staring intently at the green grass.

"What do ya mean? I love her" Bucky chuckled a bit at Steve's even more confused look before adding on, "I mean, she's a pain in the ass, but she's my pain in the ass."

"Then why do you-" Steve stopped, he didn't want to start a conflict with Bucky, he was Steve's only friend. Bucky seemed to catch on as he chuckled again.

"You don't have a sister do ya?" Bucky raised his eyebrow at him, Steve shook his head in response. Bucky pulled his mouth to the side in thought for a few seconds before making up his mind. "I'm gonna go to the corner shop and get a couple of cola's, you stay here and keep an eye on Ellie, okay?" Sometimes Bucky forgot that his Ellie needed friends too, and maybe her having another older brother figure wouldn't be so bad. But if she started to annoy Steve, well, he didn't know what he would do but, probably something.

Bucky made off towards Elizabeth saying a few words in a hushed voice and then making his way down the road. Steve didn't have any time to protest, he sat there, dumbfounded for a few moments. Steve heard some footsteps and turned his small head to see the thin girl plop down beside him. She was close enough to him now that he could see her properly. Due to him being colorblind, he couldn't tell what color her eyes were, but he could tell she had dark hair like her brother, he also had freckles dotting her cheeks and nose. She was looking him in the eye now and he was surprised at how pale she was, Bucky always had that tan from mucking around outside.

"I'm Elizabeth," The girl stuck her tiny hand out to the boy who was probably even tinier than she was. "James calls me Ellie, you can't call me that though, only James is allowed to, said so himself." She added the last part hastily, the last kid to try and call her Ellie ended up in the nurses' office. Ellie scrunched her features into a curious expression as Steve looked confused.

"Who's James?" A look of realization settled on her face, even the teachers had been advised to call James, Bucky as to avoid any tantrums. She quickly explained how Buckys' real name was James, but how he doesn't like it, and then proceeded to beg Steve not to tell James that she revealed his secret as he had made her promise to only call him Bucky or Buck in front of Steve. Steve agreed with a nod, almost as if he were afraid to interrupt her very high-speed rambling that seemed to jump from point, to point without any Segway.

"You can call me anything you like, I've wanted to have a cool nickname like Bucky has, but he gets it from his middle name, did you know he was named after the 15th president of The United States? James Buchanan. But my middle name is our Mom's first name, Winifred, Blugh! James once tried to call me Wini, but it's so old fashioned, so I punched him in his stupid arm! No offense to my mom though, she was real nice, but then she died after my little sister, Becky, was born." Steve's head was rushing at a thousand miles an hour to catch up to what she was saying, his heart dropped when she mentioned her Mom passing, he lost his dad and he knew how much it hurt, he knew bringing it up to Buck wouldn't do any good though, so he made himself swear not to bring it up. "She's so cute and

tiny! She had her 1st birthday the other week, but we couldn't really do anything, Dad said there was no point, cause she wouldn't remember it anyway, which I think is just plain mean!"

"OH MY GOD, ELLIE, SHUT UP!" The small blonde boy and brunette girl was surprised at the shouting and looked over to their right to see Bucky making his way towards them with a look of mock anger on his face. He plopped down beside the two others and handed Steve and Ellie a cola. "Remember what Pop told you about running your mouth too much?" The girl looked down with a bright blush on her face.

"That ladies shouldn't talk too much…" She mumbled, embarrassed. She hadn't even realized she was doing it, she just got so excited! She hadn't had anyone to talk to besides her family, and Steve was such a great listener! "But, Steve didn't mind, did you Steve!" a pair of wide eyes shot up to look at Steve, making a blush crawl on his face. He'd never talked to a girl besides his mother before, even the lady teachers seemed to ignore him! His mouth did a kinda flopping motion as he tried to work out something to say that wouldn't make either kid upset, he really didn't want to pick a side.

"Look what you did Ellie." Bucky pointed dramatically at the sputtering blonde boy. "You broke him!" The two siblings couldn't help it as they started giggling madly, and once Steve realized they weren't making fun of him, he started chuckling along with them.

The three kids stayed chatting together about nothing in particular for hours on end. Steve and Ellie not actually directly talking to each other the entire time. Bucky tried to get Steve to say something to Ellie, but he would just duck his head with a blush. All the other girls at their school always made fun of him for being smaller than all of them, he was surprised he had never noticed the other Barnes sibling, as it was revealed by Bucky that they were in the same class. But soon enough it started to get dark and the siblings needed to start walking home. Bucky hugged Steve and Elisabeth awkwardly nodded her head at Steve.

"See ya later, Steve."

"See ya later, Lizbeth"

Elizabeth grinned in surprise, wrapping her arms around the very surprised boy in a short hug before letting go and running after her older brother. Today was a good day. And it would be the start of the trio's very, very, very, very long friendship.

Authors Note(s),

This is kinda strange for me to write because I'm kinda on a Bucky/ Sebastian Stan kick right now, so I have to keep reminding myself that Steve's the romantic interest in this one.

This will be a mix of knowledge learned from the MCU and the comics WIKI.

If you want music to listen to this, listen to Billie Holiday. It's a 30s artist who I actually listen to all the time, even when I'm not writing these.

I can't believe I have to clarify this, but when I refer to them sharing Steve, I mean as friends. This is not a love triangle, I don't have a problem with Stucky (Don't personally ship it, but you do, you boo), just considering Ellie and Bucky are siblings it would be very inappropriate. So, yeah, any "romantic tension/mention" between the three friends that aren't Steve and Ellie, isn't intended to be romantic.

I want to build the relationship up as much as possible between the three and there's a major event planned out for nearly every year, so if you're expecting all of the childhood and Pre-Serum stories to be shoehorned into one chapter, you'll probably be disappointed.

I know that Bucky may come off as kinda sexist in this chapter, but you gotta remember, at this point, it's about 1925, he's just a 7-year-old kid and he doesn't know any better, as he gets older he'll gain that respect for women that we all know and love.

Also, I had to have a little debate with myself about Bucky swearing, but I eventually decided for it. I don't know, it just seemed to fit as how I would imagine him as a kid.