Author's note : So sorry, guys ! Wrong chapter updated. Here's the good one.
"How?" he murmured. The emotion in his voice was hardly concealed as he watched the steady and peaceful motion of his friend's chest. Standing by the foot of the hospital bed, Steve played in his head the last moments the two of them shared in the quinjet before crashing.
As real as the crash was, so was the presence of Bucky. He looked just as young as before and his face didn't show any faint sign of aging just like him (his whole body had frozen at the sight of his unaltered reflection in the car window when the Colonel and his team were driving him out of Times Square).
"It seems Hydra's experiments on your friend were far more advanced than anyone would have suspected. His metabolism is strong and resilient as if he had been given a replica of the super-serum used on you," Colonel Fury answered. He then turned his head to him with a slightly raised eyebrow. "...Which is incidentally why you also survived."
It seemed the colonel wanted to make a point to refocus the conversation on him. It was true Steve had omitted to show any form interest in understanding he was still alive.
"Then why isn't he awake like I am?" Steve asked dully.
Bucky seemed peaceful from what it looked and anyone would have believed he was merely sound asleep.
"Don't worry, captain. All the doctors are very optimistic. He will wake up soon. In this time or the other, you still do things faster than the rest of us. It's only a matter of time before he does the same…Days or weeks, at most."
Steve's face twitched. He would trade places with him in a second if he were given the choice. Part of him hated HYDRA for what they had made Bucky endure, but another part, more selfish, quietly breathed a sigh of relief for not having lost him too…for not having to go through all this on his own. They would have each other; they would face this reality together. Bucky would find the words to reassure him.
He always had. Only he had to key to soothing his concerns and fears. He had done it all the times his army application was rejected and his determination wobbled; he had done it that one time he lost his mother and his world shattered. Now that his world was shattered again, Steve needed his best friend more than ever.
"The S.H.I.E.L.D. will provide an apartment for you. Nothing luxurious but still cozier than any room here," the Colonel said. "A place that would feel a bit like a home."
Home. This word sounded like a shallow shell. He had lost his home the moment he had crashed into the ocean. He couldn't think of anything from his past that could have possibly made it to the new millennium. Except Bucky. Bucky was his last and only bearing and it was still uncertain he would keep it. Not as long as he was in this coma.
"I have to stay with him," he said eventually with a strong nod. "He needs me."
Just as much as he needed him. It wasn't like he had any other place to be or a better thing to do. All he wanted - and needed – was to hold on tightly to the only constant he had in this strange, foreign world.
"Of course," the Colonel answered quite understandingly. "You can come see him as many times as you wish until he wakes up."
Steve didn't look at him – like he hadn't since the moment he had stepped into the room, incapable of diverting eyes from his unconscious best friend.
Colonel Fury stepped back and made his way towards the exit to leave him some privacy.
"Once you are ready, you can go to agent Johnson who was there when you woke up. She'll give you civil clothes and some personal belongings we managed to retrieve from the ice."
Steve hardly reacted, and even less showed any enthusiasm. His interlocutor gave him a last sympathetic nod and opened the door.
"And by the way," he said. "Welcome back."
These last words caught Steve's curiosity. Welcome back? It wasn't his world, it wasn't his time. He slightly turned his head to him and stared, at an honest loss for words. He had no idea what to answer, he didn't even have any idea how he felt. Was all this a matter to rejoice about? He certainly couldn't call it a tragedy either; he and Bucky were alive after all. But what made all this profoundly daunting was if they would truly ever belong here.
He gave a formal nod, from Captain to Colonel then waited for him to step out of the room and close the door to walk up to Bucky's side. He pulled the chair that was in the corner closer to his friend and sat next to him.
He would probably spend long hours here today, and the day after, and the day after again, sitting at this exact same spot, listening to the heavy silence hanging over them in the room, watching Bucky's unconscious body, but it didn't scare him to the least. That was the best use of his time he could ever make. Just the two of them and nobody else: that was how they had always done it anyway.
When Steve eventually left Bucky's room, the sun was going down. He looked at Bucky and promised him he would come back the next morning, then he gently closed the door behind him, irrationally anxious not to make any disturbing noise.
As he slowly walked along the corridor, he remembered what the Colonel had told him about retrieving his personal belongings. The woman who had welcomed him when he had woken up earlier in the day suddenly appeared out of a room at the sound of his footsteps, this time dressed in a uniform from her time.
"Is there anything I can do for you, Captain Rogers?" she asked formally but yet with a hint of sympathy.
He put a hand on his waist and rubbed his jaw slightly.
"Actually, yes," he said, a bit uncomfortable. "The Colonel told me some of my belongings had been found…"
The agent nodded immediately understanding where he was getting at.
"Of course," she spoke softly. "You can come with me."
She walked down the hallway to a door isolated in the corner. She took a card out of her pocket and swiped it a mechanism that didn't look more advanced than the one they had in 1942. The little LED light bulb turned green and the sound of the unlocked bolt resonated. She opened the door and took him into an office.
She motioned for him to wait where he was standing by slightly raising her hand then made her around to the wooden desk. She unlocked the drawer using a small silver key from her pocket and took a pouch out. He realized how tragic it was that all the remnants of his past life held into a small and insignificant bag.
His heartbeat quickened as he instantly recognized the compass she took out of the pouch. She held it out over to him with a barely visible but still soft smile. He swallowed hard as he reached for it.
The object felt just like the last time he had hold it in the palm of his hand, like it was just yesterday (and technically, to him, it was). He opened it delicately, more afraid than ever to see it break due to old and rusty joints. It terrified him to realize his compass was over 75 old years old; it terrified him even more to realize he was even older.
The picture of Peggy was more worn than it used to be but it surprisingly remained in good condition considering it had lived a lifetime. He felt a lump in his throat as he gazed at Peggy and recalled their last conversation over the radio. For the first time since the beginning of this crazy day, he felt grief; grief for his past life; for his memories; for the youth he had lost, wasted away. The sight of Peggy raised a warm feeling though, like a soothing bandage, remnants of the strong affection (and infatuation) he had for her.
The agent, who was still standing across the desk, remained silent as she granted him some quiet time to digest the whole thing. She eventually said softly:
"Your uniform and your shield are safely kept in S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters for now."
As fond as he was of his shield, it sounded quite irrelevant at this moment. It wasn't like S.H.I.E.L.D planned on hiring him, right? Hydra being defeated along with the Nazis, it wasn't like the world needed him again. Captain America was just as obsolete as the compass he was holding.
The sound of the pouch being squeezed shut and put away felt like an annoying screech to his ear that made him frown.
"Why are you putting it away?" he asked.
The agent blinked, looking clueless.
"I…I'm afraid this is all we found," she answered hesitantly while probing him cautiously, understanding this wasn't the answer he was expecting.
He looked alert then stared down at the compass as he tried to gather up the right words, making sure not to display any visible emotion along.
"There…there was a paper," he babbled, holding in the sadness rising up dangerously and that was now trapped at the back of his throat, unable to make eye contact with the agent standing who was completely oblivious of the distress he was now in. "A drawing."
She looked even more clueless than before, staring at him with a combination of confusion and unbearable compassion. He didn't know if it was whether the fact she looked at him with such pity or the fact she tried to sympathize although she couldn't feel even a tenth of the unnameable turmoil he was feeling right now that bothered him the most.
"I…I think it's gone," she said as softly as possible.
It hurt him just as hard.
"No," he protested with a cracked voice, trying to make sense out of this. The thought of not seeing her face tonight (or ever) was beyond distressing, beyond acceptable somehow. He had just spent the day accepting unacceptable things but this special one at this late hour of the day was simply intolerable. "It-it was…right next to the compass on the dashboard. I had it in front of me the whole time. It was right before me."
He cut himself short as he realized his emotions had taken over and a heavy silence, just as bad as his protest, followed.
The agent looked at him with genuine softness but also with a modest distance to express how foreign she would remain to the pain he was feeling even if she tried.
"The paper must have dissolved in the water...," she murmured, putting an awful (and ruthless) lot of sense into the whole situation. "I'm so sorry."
She was, he had no doubt about it, but it didn't alleviate a thing. The worst was that his first thought was to go find comfort from Bucky. The drawing was gone, she was gone, and Bucky couldn't make this truth any less distressful. Although he had already lost her once in 1943 and accepted it, there was something more permanent and irreversible this time and what made it all so tragic was that they'd never have their chance at being together.
'This isn't our time yet.'
The words resonated inside his head as vividly as that day she had said them to him on the pavement. And God he had believed them with all his heart for it was the only way he could resort to let her walk out of his life. The portrait being gone only cemented the fact he had lost her for good on that day of 1943 to reality.
"Yeah," he said with a worn out and defeated voice. "Me too."
The next days went by sluggishly. And it wasn't until the day he was given the key to his temporary apartment that he finally took a stroll outside. So far, his days had consisted of sitting by Bucky's bedside and waiting, putting (the shadow of) his life on hold along with his best friend's. He caught himself grieving over the loss of hisdrawing way too many times to keep the count.
Colonel Fury offered to have an agent escort him there but he had declined politely. The colonel seemed to respect his choice.
The apartment was quite central although he still needed to use the subway to get there. The streets seemed busier and louder than what he remembered from the first time he had experienced it five days before. Funnily enough, the subway turned out to be most familiar spot of New York City as it was the least unchanged.
Except for a few details and more electronics (this world seemed to be undergoing an electronics invasion without realizing), the platforms and the stations were nearly as similar as the last time he had treaded them. He stood in the middle of the train looking at the commuters and felt like stranger among them.
The apartment turned out to be as dull as he had imagined it to be. The furniture was simple but nice and comfortable, the architecture not so modern, but the whole thing lacked essence and warmness. A pied-a-terre; not a home. Standing in the main room where the sunlight barely slipped through between the closed shades, he felt like the antique piece of the furniture of the house.
When agent Johnson called that evening, he asked to have a copy of his companions' files transferred to him, including a copy of a civilian going by the name of Natalie Rushman who lived in New York in the early 1940s. The only way he thought of to get a proper closure with his past life...or perhaps to keep a bond with it, he didn't know. All he knew was that he thrived to label every single thing he had missed. Google was good at it for the most part but there were information it simply couldn't provide; questions it simply couldn't answer.
The next couple of days improved. Steve returned to Bucky's room with an old record-player he had had the hardest time to find.
"Never heard of an iPod?" one of the salesperson had asked him dully with a stunned look.
He wished he could have responded with a good come back but it was deplorable to admit he had indeed never heard of such a thing until now.
He had accidentally walked by a 'vintage' store a few hours later and seen the record player on display.
Steve stepped out of the elevator with a genuine smile since he had woken up, thrilled at the prospect of this brighter day. The military nurses and security officers winced when they saw him carry it down the corridor to Bucky's room as it probably went against a dozen rules from the protocol. They didn't say a word nevertheless, driven by a certain respect for the figure he once had been and maybe also by some form of understanding.
He plugged it in as soon as he stepped inside the room and played 'I've heard that song before' by Helen Forrest and Harry James. It was Bucky's favorite.
At the end of the day, he played what was his favorite song of the moment, 'I'll be seeing you' by Bing Crosby. Bucky would have kicked him for it but it would have been worth it if it had meant him waking up earlier than predicted to proceed to doing so.
That same evening when he came back to the apartment, he turned on for the first time the 'laptop' that had been left for his personal use and, after multiple tedious attempts, searched the word iPod. He didn't sleep that night as he tried to read through the multitude of archives that Google had to offer.
He did the same the evenings after.
Nearly a week later, he decided to bring it along with him to fill Bucky in with all the data he had gathered.
"I won't be reading you any article from Wikipedia. I found it to be quite unreliable," he commented out loud as he turned on the machine.
When one of the nurses walked in the room and found him reading historic facts while the record-player was playing, she halted and stared with a raised eyebrow.
"You had a laptop all along?" she asked.
He looked at her with a guilty expression although he didn't know what he was guilty of. This was when he found out the Internet could be used for researching, but also for listening to music for free, watching films, buying things, dating (?) and barely any other thing his brain would have never made the wish of.
When she walked out of the room and he played one of the songs on Youtube, he remained perplexed.
"What do you think?" he asked Bucky turning to him. The muscle right at the corner of his mouth happened to twitch at this moment (as it often did and that the doctors said was normal).
"Yeah…" Steve answered with a shrug. "I'm not a fan either."
He played music only on the record-player after that.