The crickets were loud. I could hear them outside the cabin. Like the entire night had come alive and noisy. I was sitting on the couch in the living room. I didn't know how I'd gotten there. Or even which there I was in. I pushed myself to stand, but my body ached so much I couldn't keep upright. I had to cross the room slowly, holding onto the walls and furniture for support. Then I reached the front door and pushed it open.

The sound hit me like a wall of living music. Crickets and night birds sang a loud chorus. Even the lake seemed more vibrant in the moonlight. Stars flickered overhead. The trees were lush and green. Alive. All of them. So much life.

I sat down on the front steps because it was as far as I could go. But I just wanted to bask in it for a moment, enjoy the feeling of being alive. My body burned. I felt fragile and weak. But I forced my legs out anyway, letting my feet touch the damp, living grass. The air smelled fresh—cleaner than before, with more oxygen in the atmosphere—the way it was supposed to be.I could hear someone walking around inside the house. I didn't know who it was until he stopped in the doorway. I could see the shadow of him in the light spilling out over the steps and onto the grass. I'd know the shape of him anywhere. In shadow. In the dark.

"What are you doing?" Bucky asked.

"It's loud."

"What is?"

"The night. It was so quiet before. Always quiet."

"Do you want some company?"

"Please?" He sat down beside me. There was at least a foot of space between us because he still didn't trust me. Or like me very much. But he was being nice, which made me think Chaos must have been cooperating. "What's it like?" I asked him. "Dying?" He glanced at me and shook his head.

"I can't remember."

"What about before? When they made you go to sleep and come back? Did you ever dream?" He shook his head.

"No. But I always knew what was happening. I dreaded waking up more than I dreaded going to sleep."

"You know—she told me that time isn't as linear as we perceive it."

"Who says that?"

"Chaos." He stared at me for a long moment.

"Jo?" I nodded.

"Yeah. It's me." Only then did he cross that space between us. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, letting me sink into the warmth of his body.

"Why are you thinking about time?" he wondered.

"She said that time is really a sequence of paths. People are the mapmakers. We're only able to see the path we map. Can't go back and try a new path. Can't see the paths we could have taken but didn't. She said you can guess where a person might end up based on which path they're on. And if you know them well enough, you can anticipate which paths they'll take on the journey ahead. Which means—if they went back to try a new path and get you all back, it branched into a new reality, right?"

"More or less." I nodded.

"She also said that there are universes that exist on top of each other. So, it's safe to assume there are other universes where we took different paths. Mapped different choices."

"Must be."

"Do you think we found each other in those universes too? Where we took a different path and it led to something spectacular? That in at least one of them, we got that maybe someday? A future together?" He ran his hand up and down my arm.

"Steve created another branch," he told me. "When he went back to return the stones. He stayed behind. He went back." I looked up.

"That's why he's gone." He nodded.

"He told me that he left me behind because he knew my future was here. And when he came back—he was older. He'd lived out an entire life in that alternate reality. He said that—he couldn't live knowing what I was going through. So he got me out before they were able to turn me into the Winter Soldier. Created a different universe where we were different people."

"So you got to live." He was looking out over the yard and the lake. I felt a slight shrug.

"He said he gave me a choice. He told me that there was something good in my future. But it wouldn't be mine for a very long time. I was still suffering. Struggling with what Hydra had done to me and the things they made me do. So—we made a compromise."

"What was it?"

"I took the shield. I was Captain America. And I went to sleep. They woke me up when needed, and then they'd put me back. I was basically the—anti-Winter Soldier. But every time—it was a choice. And I always chose to go back under."

"Were you happy?" He shook his head slowly.

"I couldn't have been if I kept doing that to myself. But he told me that one day, he woke me up with a new mission. There was this woman who needed to be guarded. I'd have to find her, take her into hiding, and keep her safe until the threat passed. And then I disappeared. For over a year. By the time they tracked us down, I'd already fallen in love with her. And I made another choice. Not to go under again. This time, I wanted to stay awake to be with her."

"Oh."

"That woman was you, Jo," he said. He still wasn't looking at me. But he looked down at his hand now. The metal glimmering in the moonlight. "We found each other anyway. Even when we started on different paths. We fell in love, even with different lives. We actually—he said we got married. We even, uh—had a daughter." I sat up slowly but he still wouldn't look at me. I felt guilty for bringing it up. Hurt that it wouldn't happen in this branch of reality.

"Feels unfair, doesn't it?" He nodded.

"Sometimes I wonder what we did to deserve all this. Why the two of us have to suffer so much. Why didn't we get to live in the reality where things worked out?"

"I don't know." He finally looked at me, still shaking his head sadly.

"If we succeed. What do you want to do with your life? Who do you want to be?"

"I don't know." I tried to smile. But it didn't work. "What about you?" He shook his head again and tried to smile too.

"I don't know. But—I want that future with you. The path we could have taken."

"I want it too. But—what are you going to do if I don't survive?" He looked back down at his feet, clearly not wanting to talk about that.

"I haven't thought about it."

"We probably should."

"You lived without me for two years before you went under. What did you do?"

"I self-destructed. But I was dying, and I had no future. I don't want that for you." I reached out to take his hand, linking our fingers together. He held it but still didn't look at me. "I want you to figure out who you want to be. Find something that brings you peace. And just—live."

"And if I found someone else?" He finally looked at me, but his smile assured me it was a joke. I laughed.

"Well, I'll have no choice but to haunt them. But that's a given."

"Obviously."

"I'll still want you to be happy. I don't want you to miss out on the life you deserve because you made the mistake of falling in love with me."

He leaned over and kissed me right on the lips. His hand came up to gently hold my cheek. The metal was bitingly cold against my overheated skin. It was a soft kiss. Gentle at first. Until his lips parted, and I dug my fingers into his shoulders, wordlessly begging him not to let me go. When he pulled away, he held his face against mine. He didn't want to let me go either.

"I won't find anyone else," he promised.

"Bucky," I tried.

"I'm serious. Don't argue that one with me right now, please?" I sighed and nodded.

"I think I understand something now."

"Yeah?"

"I think—I've chosen some of these memories because I wanted to say goodbye."

"No goodbyes, remember? We made a promise." I smiled. I wanted to tell him there would be no goodbye. That everything would work out and we'd get that beautiful future. We'd find peace. But I couldn't make that promise. And if I couldn't make it, wouldn't it be cruel of me to not say goodbye?

"I asked her to show me things before I went under. So I could say goodbye to everyone I lost. She took me back to this conversation with Graham. The moment I realized he was just a kid who needed a hand. And sometimes all it takes is one single person's help to change someone's life."

"He's a good kid. I was wrong about him." I smiled.

"She took me back to this memory of me and Clara as kids. This game we used to play in the backyard before she got too cool to play with me." He smiled. "I lost my dad too. So she showed me this memory of this night I got drunk and ran off. He found me in his truck and bought me a milkshake and French fries. Didn't say a word about the fact that I was completely shitfaced. The next morning, he told my mom I was sick and couldn't go to school. She never found out I was hungover."

"I met them, you know?" he said with a smile. "They came for—Stark's funeral. Your mom is happy to have your dad back. They asked me about you."

"They weren't too hard on you, were they?"

"Surprisingly not. Asked me why I was dragging my feet getting around to help you. I just—didn't know how to deal with it all yet. I'm sorry I took so long." I shook my head.

"I had no concept of time in there." I smiled but he frowned.

"Keep going." So I did.

"She showed me Ivan. When I wasn't young enough to remember but she was mapping her own memories. I was just a baby. He talked to me before he gave me away. He cried while he did it. Told me that I was the most important thing in the entire world."

"You are." I smiled again, trying not to argue with him. I wasn't. And he knew that. But in this place, in this small slice of the world, it was nice to be important to someone.

"I asked to see you last," I told him. "It was this day in Romania. I can't remember when exactly. Just this moment, I must have gotten up in the middle of the night. You told me to come back to bed. So I crawled in beside you, and you wrapped your arms around me. We fell asleep like that, curled up in each other. I just wanted you to be the last person I saw. I wanted you to be with me when everything went dark." He reached up to sweep his hand over my cheek again, the flesh one this time. His eyebrows were pinched. He looked hurt and sympathetic all at once.

"Let me do it, Jo." I sighed.

"On one condition."

"You and your conditions." He smiled, so I buried my face in his neck. He held me closer, rubbing his hand down my back.

"We do it together. Not you taking the Chaos for me. But splitting it. That way, there's less, and I should be more conscious. Then we can figure out how to take her home. Together."

"Then if things go wrong, we both die."

"That's the only way I'll agree to this. I won't let you die for me."

"But we can die together?"

"I don't want that either. But you won't budge, and I won't either." He kissed the side of my head.

"Gravity," he decided.

"I bet it'll be spectacular."

"Every moment has been spectacular."

Okay, now we're really starting to pull away from canon. As I've mentioned before, I've always tried to keep this story mostly canon compliant. But I've still always thought of it as existing in its own branch of the multiverse. Which is one of the reasons I was so anxious about the direction this story was taking. I knew it would have to split from the MCU eventually. And I was surprised at how long I was able to keep it compliant. But I knew this one was where things would really take off in a different direction. And we're fully on that path now.

So-that being said-Steve's little peace out always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I refuse to believe he was just shacked up with Peggy living his life knowing his best friend was being brutally tortured somewhere. Even knowing he had to keep people from knowing the future, I don't think he would have just stood back and did nothing. So I like to believe he gave Bucky a choice and that universe is where we got Bucky Cap. But in that alternate universe, he still found his way to Jo. I know it's not canon, but you know, neither is this story.

Obviously he doesn't find her in every universe (like the MCU, :( ). But I like to think there are quite a few of them where they found each other. Which is what I like to play with when I'm bored and in a writing slump. I've mentioned a couple of alternate storylines in the comics before (Mostly the Witch Hunter Angela one), and I played around with a few of those storylines. How I could fit Jo into them. Playing in the What If kind of scenarios. How would they have found each other in a Medieval/Fantasy world? How would they have found each other if their roles were reversed? How would they have found each other if Bucky was never put on ice? That kind of thing. Which is why I have so much bonus content, despite never sharing it.

Anyway, a kind of soft, sweet chapter before we start moving into the final act.

Happy New Year and I hope you're all doing well.