It's long after the War, and Bucky is feeling severe de ja vu as he storms a HYDRA base, with Steve and the Avengers by his side, like the Howling Commandos did seventy years ago.

But it's this one, just on the outskirts of Texas, where everything goes wrong.

It's at this one, where Steve gets shot.

Blood turns the blue fabric of his uniform red. Bucky whips around, as Steve coughs, falling to the floor and Bucky feels another wave of memories, but this time from even further back, young Steve hacking up his lungs in their apartment, Bucky desperately huddling around the sickly boy.

A lung has been punctured, Bucky thinks, from the rip in his uniform and the amount of blood.

"Steve!" he roars, in fear. Tony turns around, from where he's hovering in mid-air, still blasting HYDRA agents.

Bucky collapses to his knees, next to his fallen friend. Arrows whistle down around them, Clint covering for them from the rafters. Natasha adjusts her position to help him, even though they're on different levels, to help protect their fallen comrade.

Bucky cradles Steve's blonde head in his lap, ignoring how much bigger the other man is.

(it doesn't matter, in Bucky's mind Steve is still the scrawny, blue-eyed kid from Brooklyn, too stubborn to back down from a fight)

"Buck..." Steve rasps, in between wracking coughs.

But Bucky is panicking. Steve's body isn't healing and the super-solider is dying.

"I'm sorry." He whispers into Steve's chest, bending double to cover Steve's face from the carnage of battle. Tears fell from his eyes to mix with the blood on Steve's chest.

He's sorry for falling off the train, he's sorry for leaving Steve alone, he's sorry for trying to kill him and he's sorry for sighing after every fight.

He wants Steve to know that he would have let him have flying saucers instead of liquorice, and even though he didn't appreciate the copious amount of lost blood, of bruised eyes, knuckles, knees, he wouldn't have changed anything for the world.

He would have never have left Steve by choice, he cherished everything that happened

And Steve didn't know that. He didn't know.

"It's okay, Buck."

But its not, its not, its not. Steve is dying and they haven't caught up after the last seventy years, Bucky hadn't caught up with Steve, they hadn't laughed at the stupid inventions people had made. They had too many things to talk about.

Bucky knows its the end of the line, seventy years late, but after cheating death once, he's still childishly hoping that they could do it again.

Steve looks up at Bucky, like he hung the fucking stars and no one should look at Bucky like that and he's crying even more. Steve has a tiny smile, and he reaches a hand, covered in his own blood, up to Bucky's cheek.

"It's okay. It's okay."

And his baby blues slide close and Bucky screams, anything to wake Steve up, because it can't end like this. It just can't.

But later, when his voice is hoarse and Natasha is holding him from behind, maybe hugging him or just trying to get him away from the limp body of Captain America, the grieving Avengers gathered around them and when the bodies of HYDRA agents litter the ground, Bucky whispers:

"It's okay, punk. You had them on the ropes."