Summary: It's been eight months since Bucky left Steve laying on the beach. How will he react when he comes home one night with his door ajar and a familiar face waiting for him in his living room?
Warning: This is a Steve x Bucky fic. Don't like, don't read.
(Author's Note): I wrote this for a friend last year after we went and saw The Winter Soldier. Thanks, Morgan, for encouraging me to write this and thank you being my friend even when it probably would've been easier not to be! I love you, you beautiful ginger creature!
It took a while, perhaps a few seconds or perhaps a few minutes, for Steve to register the question. Even when he finally grasped exactly what it was that the man before him has just asked, the words caught in his throat.
Steve could not, for the life of him, think of anything to say. In all the time that he had spent thinking of nothing but the friend he had thought he had lost, he had never considered that this was how their second reunion would occur. He had expected Bucky to crash into him one day, his eyes cold and foreign, with the intent of finishing his mission. He had expected Bucky to appear from the shadows only to disappear again. He had expected never to see his old friend ever again.
But he had never once considered that Bucky would approach him diplomatically, armed with questions, not threats, and uncertainty in his eyes instead of the detached hostility he had seen before.
Steve didn't know how long he stared silently at the man standing sheepishly in his living room, but eventually he found himself able to unstick his jaw and say the words he had wanted so desperately to tell him that day.
"Your name is James Barnes, but everyone that knows you calls you Bucky. You were born in Shelbyville, Indiana in 1925-"
"I know all that," Bucky interrupted, his gaze never leaving the floor, "I went to the museum. I read the whole passage telling me who I am, I read it over and over again until I could recite by heart. I don't need you to tell me that… I need you… I need you to tell me who I am, as a person, as a goddamn human being."
"You… you are my best friend," Steve choked out, wanting desperately for Bucky to lift his head so he could look into his eyes, "I have known you since we were children, and I watched you grow into the loyal, kind-hearted, and courageous man I know you are. Bucky, I know you better than any other ever did and ever could, but I do not know the man I saw eight months ago, I do not know this man you have become. The Bucky I knew… the Bucky I know… has none of the hate and anger and pain in his heart that I saw in you that day. I do not know what happened to you back then, I do not know what happened to you in the seventy years I lost in that ice, but whatever it was they did to you we can work through it together. Please, Bucky, show me that the friend I grieved for is still there somewhere… Show me that you can remember."
"I want to remember," Bucky confessed quietly, "and sometimes I can… sometimes I feel like I can remember… but it's just… I know that I know you… but no matter how hard I try I cannot remember you. I don't know what happened back then, all I know is that I woke up one day with this goddamn arm and a crowd of people in those goddamn lab coats staring at me like a piece of meat. Since that day, I followed the orders I was given, I gave no thought to what was before because there was no before to think about… until I saw you… until I saw you, all I knew what this goddamn arm and the goddamn lab coats and the goddamn orders, nothing else. But that day, when I saw you, things started coming back. I started remembering, I started wondering about my arm and questioning the lab coats and the orders. Seeing you opened a door, and I can't… I don't want to close it ever again."
"Do you think," Steve asked, his voice wavering and unsteady, "do you think we could ever get back to… how it was? Maybe not exactly, but… something close?"
"If I didn't, do you really think I would've come back?" Bucky asked, a shadow of a smile visible on his lips that melted slowly, replaced by a thoughtful, solemn frown, "I want to fix this. I want this… this not knowing… to end. I don't sleep, and when I do, my dreams are the worst I've ever had. Images of the life I guess I lived fold in on each other... I see things I forgot happened... Like a door unlocking in my mind... Torture... Slaughter... And training others in their use... So much horror... I remember falling… I remember hearing you call out my name… I wake up vomiting and don't feel much better afterwards. My nightmares linger...but I wouldn't expect anything else. Dreams are all I have, it's the only time I get to actually remember the life from before, but… when I'm with you, near you, everything seems clearer… the pieces start to fall into place and… I think that, with time, the picture might finally be whole again."
"Bucky…" Steve tried to say, but ended up whispering the name instead, "if time is what you need, whether it is time spent in my company or time requiring my absence, time is what I will give you."
"I have spent… a lifetime with your absence… so… if you are willing… I would much prefer to live the remainder of it in your company," Bucky said in a quiet, uncertain voice.
"I already lost you once," Steve smiled sadly, stepping forward and placing a hand on Bucky's shoulder, "I never want to feel that pain again. I never want to lose you again," Steve's breath caught as he was suddenly pulled into a hug against a warm, familiar chest he never thought he would feel again, "just remember… I'm with you till the end of the line."
R&R