I realized I’ve done nothing much here but reblog recent fandoms I’ve been in and I decided to repost all my Glimpse From the Universe chapters here. Ao3 links for now I’ll add the Tumblr links later.
Summary: Every Chapter shows snippets about VOID, or Chrysanta Godfried's adventure in the multiverse. There is no specific timeline for when or where the events occurred. The chapters are random, some may occur in the same timeline, and some will show or mention characters or events from my previous, and admittedly incomplete, works.
Chapter 1: Tumblr | AO3
Did I Look Pretty From Above? [Jujutsu Kaisen]
ᕱ⑅ᕱ Symptoms: When devoted fan [Name] [L/N] winds up working for him in a setup that feels like it's straight out of a fanfic, they accidentally discovers how painfully human the idol they worships really is.
꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱ Medicine: fluff, angst, comfort, gender natural!reader, alternative universe, SMAU, third person, no use of yn, out of characters, mentioned Aglanaxa
₍ᐢ. ̫ .ᐢ₎ Notes: Hi~☆ Miss me? Sorry for suddenly disappearing without any notice, but now I'm back! This fanfic is based on Tamon-kun B's side and inspired by @milkhalo fanfics! I won't be active though, but I'm still willing to post and finish this series! The plot might have changed a little...
૮₍ ˃ ⤙ ˂ ₎ა MASTERLIST!
✮ Prologue: How it all started ⭑.ᐟ
✮ One: I won the ticket ⭑.ᐟ
✮ Two: New client ⭑.ᐟ
✮ Three: It was you....or not ⭑.ᐟ
MORE CHAPTERS TO BE ADDED
꒰◍ˊ◡ˋ꒱ CHARACTERS!
✮ Chyrsos Heirs Agency - An Enertaiment Agency established by their current C.E.O and founder, Aglaea. The Agency went on a hit after their first idol group, 4mpho debuted. They went on selected and scout other talents as well and became the top Entertaiment Agency in worldwide. ⭑.ᐟ
𐔌 ᛝ STAFF .ᐟ 𐂯
「 ✦ Aglaea ✦ 」 - The C.E.O and Founder of Chyrsos Heirs Agency. She may look like those cold, heartless C.E.O in your stereotypical novel, but she cared about her talents and would worry about their well-being the most.
「 ✦ Cerydra ✦ 」 - Endorsement: Secures sponsorships and brand partnerships for talent. Despite her 'unique' personality, she's actually a kind person deep in her heart. She even has high hopes for this Agency to grow into a better path.
「 ✦ Hysilens✦ 」 - Booking Agent: The primary representative who finds auditions, secures roles, negotiates contracts, and books appearances for clients. Aside from her duty, she also created music for herself sometimes and is really passionate about it.
𐔌 ᛝ SEE YOU TOMORROW .ᐟ 𐂯
「 ✦ Phainon ✦ 」 - The center and main singer for SEE YOU TOMORROW. He has a bright, cheerful and outgoing persona, but in reality he's a total shut-in who's scared of the outside world. He over thinks a lot.
「 ✦ Mydeimos ✦ 」 - The yoyngest of the group, the son of a famous C.E.O in Castrum Kremnos Cooperations. He's the choreographer of the group and everyone always relies on him. He has the prince charming persona, the one that made everyone feel nervous being near with him. But in reality he has the heart of a feather and loves to play with children. He also enjoys cooking sometimes.
「 ✦ Anaxagoras ✦ 」 - The leader, the lyrists and also the rapper of the group. Most of SEE YOU TOMORROW songs lyrics are made by him. He is also the first talent in the agency to be scouted by Aglaea when she sees the potential in him despise the two having heated tension together. He seems like a cold, heartless person on the outside. But in reality, he's a huge Dromas nerd and has a whole collection of them in his room.
「 ✦ Cyrene ✦ 」 - She's the manager of the group, and also Phainon's best friend. She would be the one who handles all of SEE YOU TOMORROW's schedule.
𐔌 ᛝ HELLO, WORLD .ᐟ 𐂯
「 ✦ Hyacine ✦ 」 - She's the main singer and the center of the group. She doesn't need a fake persona because her true self always makes people smile.
「 ✦ Cipher ✦ 」 - The choreographer and the rapper of the group. She is popular for her cat-like features and acting. Aglaea scouted her when she first saw her trying to find money on the streets by singing some rap song and seeing the potential in her.
「 ✦ Castorice ✦ 」 - The lyrist of the group. She would always express her feelings in her lyrics which touched everyone's heart. Aside from that, she has a beautiful natural beauty and a kind personality that warms everyone.
「 ✦ Tribios ✦ 」 - The manager of HELLO, WORLD. She may act childish sometimes, but she's good at dealing with the group's problems and also doing her job really well.
✮ Astral Express - A group of friends and founded family living together in the same household. ⭑.ᐟ
𐔌 ᛝ STUDENTS .ᐟ 𐂯
「 ✦ [Name] ✦ 」 - A devoted fan of Phainon. They lost their family in the last year of her high school and was taken in by the Astral Express. They shut themselves inside their room until they saw Phainon's audition video from two years ago. They were deeply touched by his words and became a fan immediately. They also work as a housecleaner as a part-time job in order to find money to support their oshi. Specialized in Media.
「 ✦ Stelle ✦ 」 - She was raised by the Stellaron Hunters with her twin brother, but the two ended up moving with the Astral Express after entering College. Specialized in Physical Education and Astrology.
「 ✦ Caelus ✦ 」 - He was raised by the Stellaron Hunters with his twin sister, but the two ended up moving with the Astral Express after entering College. Specialized in Math and Science.
「 ✦ Dan Heng ✦ 」 - Due to his past, he decided to leave the Xianzhou Loufu when he was a teenager and moved to somewhere far away. The Astral Express found him and asked him to join, which he agreed to. Specialized in biology and chemistry.
「 ✦ March 7th ✦ 」 - She doesn't know her past. She doesn't know her parents, nor her relatives. The people who take care of her in the orphanage just told her they found her on March 7th at their doorsteps, which is why she decided to name herself after the day she was found. She left the orphanage when she was 15 and found the Astral Express, her place where she can call it home. Specialized in Photography and Media.
「 ✦ Sunday ✦ 」 - Due to personal reason, he had to leave home and his family behind. He was still in touch with hie sister though. The Astral Family found him and decided to take him in. Specialized in Anesthesiology.
𐔌 ᛝ TEACHERS .ᐟ 𐂯
「 ✦ Himeko ✦ 」 - The founder of the Astral Express. She wanted to create a home for those who are lost, who have nowhere to go. She's also a Professor in Star Rail Academy, teaching Astrology.
「 ✦ Welt ✦ 」 - He's the first one to be invited into Astral Express, as he is looking for a new place to stay. He teaches History in Star Rail Academy.
A soft morning, and a lot of soft love—old, suppressed love but just newly confessed. That’s it.
Genre: Pure fluff, soft morning after a night of long-suppressed confessions
Warnings: None
Read time: ~12 mins
There was a particular window in her room that the Sun always seemed to prefer over others when the day was still in its infancy. Its golden fingers, still soft and delicate in the quiet hours, never brushed her curtains with urgency. Instead, they entered her room softly; they lingered. Like the Sun knew she needed soft awakenings, not sudden alarms.
Today was no different—the light curled around the edges of the curtains, spilled onto the wooden floor in golden pools, and eventually reached her face like a whisper.
Moaning softly into the pillow at the intrusion, she stirred reluctantly. Her eyes fluttered open slowly, only to find a familiar figure already sitting on the bench by that window. He was tracing patterns on the foggy glass with one finger, sunlight wrapping around his broad shoulders like a royal cloak. He looked so cosy there, nestled by the soft light and the cushions, that it felt like it was all built for him.
Bucky turned slightly, as if he’d sensed her watching him.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Didn’t mean to wake you. I was just…” he paused, almost shy, “…waiting for you to open your eyes.”
A dreamy smile involuntarily lit up her lips. She stretched, making a small whining sound as she did. For most, it would have sounded annoying; many had even told her so over the past years. But Bucky loved it! He found it cute. He had heard it before, from afar. But this morning, as she lay comfortably cocooned in her bed, as he got to observe her up close in her most intimate haven, he felt lucky!
"You didn't wake me up, soldier," she smiled, and Bucky swore it shone brighter than the sun outside. "You just made waking up feel much better."
In all his years on the planet, the man had never felt so warm inside as he did now. He got up from his seat by the window, and slowly approached her, his eyes never leaving her still sleepy ones. He reached the side of the bed in a few strides, and then, bending over, placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.
"Good morning, doll!"
"Morning, love!"
In the sweet silence that enveloped them, the air hummed with the unspoken memories of the night before. The most fateful evening of their lives! The memories played like a reel playing backwards…
How the long-suppressed feelings had finally found words, how they had both entered her home late at night, dripping wet and laughing like kids, the heavy downpour that had drenched them on the way, how Bucky had volunteered to walk her to her apartment and the sweet pang of excitement that had hit her chest from within, the party before that, the lingering glances and subtle touches that stayed too long to be ignored…
Bucky sat at the edge of the bed, warm metal fingers brushing a damp strand of hair from her forehead—it still carried a little proof of last night’s rain. He chuckled softly, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheek.
“You didn’t dry your hair properly,” he murmured.
She shrugged, grinning. “Was too busy thinking about a certain supersoldier who confessed he’s been in love with me since the week we first went out in the field.”
He groaned, flopping back onto the mattress beside her. “Don’t remind me! I was soaked, freezing, and confessing like a nervous teenager. Pretty sure I sounded like a fool.”
She rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her elbow. “You sounded just like my dreams,” she whispered.
He turned his head to meet her gaze. And there it was again—that look. Like she was the only thing in the room worth noticing. Like the whole world could disappear, and he’d be content just tracing the shape of her soul with his eyes.
“You kissed me first,” he teased.
“Well, you were taking too long!”
His laughter—rare and precious—rumbled in the quiet space between them, and then softened again as his fingers laced through hers. “I still can’t believe I get to wake up like this. With you.”
She smiled and leaned in, brushing her nose against his. “You better believe it, Sergeant Barnes. You’re mine now.”
“And you’re mine,” he echoed, voice low, reverent. “Completely.”
"Wow!" She exhaled with her brows raised.
"What?" Bucky's voice shimmered with amusement and curiosity as he leaned back slightly to watch her.
"You literally gave me shivers with that line!" She chuckled.
Even if for a brief moment, Bucky's smile dropped. His eyes lost their lustre...just for a second. But she noticed.
"Hey! I mean...the good kind of shiver," she placed a reassuring hand on his cheek. "Like the goosebumps you get when you hear your favourite music...or..." she hesitated.
She had tried hard; indeed she had. But the blush that bloomed on her cheeks betrayed her.
"Or...?" He drawled. Bucky knew before she had to utter anything but he was enjoying teasing her.
"Or when the love of your life finally kisses you." She hid her face partially in her pillow and peeked at him with one eye.
Bucky remained quiet for a while. He wished to bask in this moment a little longer. All the times that he had yearned for a love life for himself - and he had rarely done so, given the pattern of his days - he had never imagined such softness and warmth.
He mirrored her movements. Peeking at her with one eye, fingers still laced with hers, he asked softly, "So, I'm the love of your life?"
"Mm-hmmm...."
Bucky grinned—one of those rare, boyish grins that could barely have a place in his past, but one that she had coaxed out of him more times than he could count.
“Love of your life, huh?” he mused, letting his thumb brush along the back of her hand. “Big title!”
“Big shoulders,” she teased, her voice still muffled by the pillow.
“Touché,” he laughed.
But then the laughter faded into something quieter, something reverent.
He pushed himself up a little, just enough to look at her properly, their fingers still tangled in the space between them.
“You know,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, “no one’s ever said that to me before.”
She looked up at him fully now, eyes curious, lips parted slightly.
“Not like that,” he continued, his gaze lowering briefly to their joined hands. “Not with that look in their eyes. Not with that softness in their voice. I’ve had people claim to love me for what they thought I was…or who they wanted me to be. But you…”
He paused, swallowing hard.
“You love me for what I am. Flawed. Quiet. Tired. Complicated. And yet…you choose me.”
Her heart ached in that sweet, overwhelming way, like a song that finds one at the right time.
She reached for him. Cupping his face with both hands, she whispered back, stressing the promise behind each word, “Every. Version. Of you… Always.”
Something—a feeling new and wonderful—hugged his old heart tightly. And just like that, he leaned in—not rushed, not with a fierce passion—but full of that silent, soul-deep knowing. Their lips met in a kiss that felt like coming home.
And for the first time in years, Bucky Barnes felt like maybe, just maybe…he could shield himself from the coldness of the world outside; stay safe in this warmth forever.
One rule your boyfriend has for you posting dress pics to social media
He gets to be in the background of the mirror
The last time your co-workers hit on you because of the first photo, you tried to explain that you have a boyfriend and he will kick anyone's ass if they hit on you. They laughed and said they can take his little ass anytime.
So now, here you are
Dress clad on, flowers in hue that compliments your skin tone and smile
His strong arm secured around your waist, your phone in the other hand taking the picture
It looked like a beast holding a delicate flower in his palm
The mirror pic was all they needed to see that your boyfriend, wasn't some lil boy
But a big ass man with a stone eyed look, and arm muscles bigger than your head
Needless to say, they still had the balls to comment on the post, but not in person anymore
𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 / 𝐭𝐰 – nsfw (18+), MDNI, eventual smut, angst, dark themes, but a happy ending I swear, found family bc I can and they deserve it, the smut is so sweet hahahahaha
Summary: She was his girl—before the war, before Hydra, before the silence. Then she was gone. No body. No answers. Just a ring on his dog tags and a name he never stopped whispering in his sleep. Bucky Barnes survived everything except losing her.
Until one mission, decades later, uncovers something Hydra meant to stay buried. This is a story about memory, grief, and the kind of love that doesn’t care what timeline it finds you in—only that it does.
word count: 12k
Part 1
notes – not proofread.
— reblogs comments & likes are appreciated.
It was late when they finally sat down together. After the dust of Leipzig. After Wakanda.
It had all gone quiet now. And in the gray hours of night, Steve and Bucky sat on the porch behind one of the lesser-used safehouses in upstate New York. There wasn’t much around them except trees and a half-working generator. No Avengers insignia. No weapons. No war.
Just silence.
Steve handed Bucky a glass of something dark, something strong. Neither of them had really spoken much. But that was alright. It had been years since they needed words to communicate.
Eventually, though, it came. “Do you know what happened to her?” Bucky asked, out of nowhere, eyes fixed on the trees.
Steve blinked. “What?”
“You know who,” Bucky said, quieter now. “I tried to write letters to any of her family after I got out of cryo in Wakanda. I wrote to her ma’s address.”
A long pause.
Steve swallowed. “(Y/n)’s mom passed a few months before the accords blew up. But I showed up on her doorstep looking. Her mom—she told me (Y/N) died. Wouldn’t tell me where to find the grave.”
Bucky’s head turned slowly. “What?”
“Right after the Battle of New York. I went looking.” Steve paused. “I thought maybe she’d be alive. Peggy was still, ya know? I tracked down her uncle. He didn’t know anything. Told me her mom was still alive. But yeah, she just told me she was gone.”
“Just like that?” Bucky rasped.
“She didn’t give details. Just said it happened ‘a long time ago’.”
Bucky let out a bitter breath. “Her mom hated me.”
“Not just you,” Steve said. “Me too.”
Bucky tilted his head back, staring at the stars. “I should’ve said something that night. Before I shipped out. I should’ve told her what I felt.”
“She knew. We all did,” Steve said gently. Bucky didn’t speak for a while. Just traced his thumb across the dog tags around his neck. The small silver ring still hung there. Dented now. Faded. But there. Always.
“She gave me this the night before I left,” he said. “Told me to come back with it. Told me maybe I’d get to trade her for something better. She was the only thing I wanted. The only thing that made me feel human. And the world took her too.”
Steve looked down into his drink. “You think she was happy? In the end?”
Bucky was quiet for a long time. “I hope so,” he said, voice tight. “I hope she got away from all of it. From us. From the war. The missions. The mess. I hope she got a quiet life. A home. Maybe a dog. Some guy who loved her every day. Like I wanted to.”
Steve nodded, slow. “I hope she forgot about us.”
“Yeah,” Bucky murmured. “She deserved better than ghosts.”
They didn’t speak after that. They just sat with the ache.
-
The shield had been passed. The fight was over. Steve Rogers was no longer Captain America.
He was an old man now. The sun was soft and the lake was still. Sam had walked away to give them space. And Steve—Steve was waiting, notebook in his lap, eyes already full of the things he hadn’t said.
“You look like ass,” Bucky tried to joke, trying to mask the break in his voice.
Steve chuckled. “Takes one to know one, buddy.”
Bucky sat down beside him. They didn’t look at each other. “How was it?” he asked, eventually.
“Peaceful,” Steve said. “Hard. But peaceful.”
“You found Peggy?”
Steve smiled. “Not just Peggy. (Y/N) was with her when I came back. Different timeline. Different world. But still her. Same right hook.”
Bucky’s fingers tightened around his knee. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Steve looked at him. Really looked. “She had a kid, Buck.” Bucky’s breath left him. “A little boy,” Steve said, reaching into his notebook. “Brown hair. Blue eyes. Wild as anything.”
He handed over a photo, then. Bucky took it with shaking hands. It was a small Polaroid. Slightly worn. You stood in the grass outside a modest brick house, sunlight catching in your hair. You were barefoot, laughing, hips cocked to one side. On your hip sat a toddler—bright-eyed, chubby-cheeked, his fingers tangled in your shirt. Your smile hadn’t changed. The boy looked up at you like you were the whole damn sky.
On the back of the photo, written in your looping script:
Theodore James Barnes.
Teddy when he’s sweet. Theodore James when he’s climbing the counters and shouting like his daddy.
Bucky bowed his head. He didn’t cry loudly. Just breathed through it, shoulders trembling.
“I always thought,” Steve said, “if you hadn’t been taken, if Hydra hadn’t—if you’d had the chance—this might’ve been yours. In this timeline.”
“It was mine,” Bucky whispered. “Somewhere. Even if I wasn’t around. That’s what matters.”
Steve placed a hand over Bucky’s. “I’m sorry it wasn’t in this one.”
Bucky nodded, tears streaking silently down his face. He held the photo to his chest. “Thank you,” he said.
Steve smiled. “Figured you’d want to know.” He handed Bucky the notebook. “Everything I remember,” he said. “She wanted him to know about you. About the man his father had been.”
Bucky stared at it. The photo. The words. The ring around his neck. “You should rest,” Bucky murmured.
“I will,” Steve said. “But you… you’ve still got work to do.”
In the months that followed, Bucky carried that notebook like a relic. He kept the photo in his jacket, tucked near his heart. And the ring? The ring still never left his tags.
In quiet moments, when the world slowed, he would trace the handwriting on the photo. Think about the boy with his eyes and your smile. Think about the life that was stolen. Think about the version of himself that could’ve been a father, a husband, a man who made you laugh in the kitchen. He’d read what Steve wrote down in the back of the notebook. The things you and Steve told Theodore about him.
“Your dad used to walk me home from the diner every night. He was always waiting at the corner, leaning against the brick wall like he belonged to a movie. When I asked why he always showed up right at closing time, he said, “You think I’m lettin’ some punk walk my girl home?”
“He could never sit still for long. Always tapping his fingers, flipping bottle caps, fidgeting like he had ten thoughts all fighting to come out first. You do that too, y’know. Your little fingers never stop moving. Sometimes I look at you and swear I see him bouncing off the walls again, desperate to make someone laugh.”
“I gave him a ring before he went to war. Said to keep it safe. Said he’d trade me for a better one when he got back. I never did get to trade it. But I never wanted a better one. And I think he knew that. Instead, I got you, sweet boy.”
“Your dad used to call me his girl, even when I wasn’t. Even when he was dancing with someone else. Even when I was mad at him. Even when we were just kids and he was trouble in a leather jacket. He always said it like a fact.”
“He was softer than he let on. The world hardened him early. But with me? He’d brush my fingers when he passed the popcorn. He’d hold my wrist like it was something breakable. Like I was.”
“He loved old books but hated endings. He always wanted the heroes to get what they deserved. Said happily-ever-after should be a guarantee, not a gamble.”
“You’ve got his laugh. When you really mean it. When it bursts out of you like sunlight. I hear him in it. Every single time.”
“If he were here, he’d carry you on his shoulders through the park. He’d teach you to skip stones and dance like the music never mattered. He’d call you “little punk” and kiss your hair when you weren’t looking. He would’ve been a good dad. No. Not just good. He would’ve been everything.”
“Sometimes, when you’re asleep, I look at you and think—he came back after all. Not the way I planned. Not the way I hoped. But some part of him made it. Some part of him gets to grow up in you.”
And then, near the very back—faint, almost like she was afraid to write it but couldn’t keep it in:
“If I ever see him again, I’ll forgive him for not coming home. I just want him to know—I never stopped being his.”
He carried it through every mission. Every loss. Every moment of doubt. Not as punishment. But as a promise.
-
The base was cold in that old, forgotten way. No power save for a faint hum running through its lower levels. The kind of place Hydra left behind when it no longer needed cages—just ghosts. It was a standard information recovery op. Scouting what was rumored to be an old Hydra intel lab. Nothing more than hard drives, decaying notes, and flickers of failed science. A quiet mission for the Thunderbolts, all things considered. Get in. Get the data. Get out.
But then Ava called out from the eastern wing. “Found something.”
Bucky turned. Sharp. Still quiet as death. She stood over a rusted filing cabinet, now wrenched open, its contents scattered like bones. Her gloved fingers held a crumbling folder, thick with handwritten reports and photo inserts yellowed with age.
He stepped closer. The air smelled like dust and metal and regret. Ava’s voice was neutral—too neutral. “Facility designation: Project SIREN.”
That codename was familiar. Something he’d heard as the Winter Solider. A threat with many faces, he remembered.
He leaned in, scanning the document that Ava found.
Notes: Emotional resistance to memory suppression. Repeated interference with Winter Soldier protocols. Failed experiment. Consider termination. Only consider keeping active when [REDACTED].
He had worked with her. That much he was starting to remember. Her face would change, variable because of synthetic face masks that HYDRA developed. But one thing he couldn’t forget were her eyes. Haunted. Dead. He remembered that something about her felt familiar, but he had never been able to place it. He assumed it was memories HYDRA had beaten out of him for good.
But SIREN had been kept here. Not a ghost. Not a dream. A real person.
“I knew her,” Bucky said softly, his voice like
Ava tilted her head. “Your partner?”
“Not quite. We only worked together a few times. She was more like a mirror,” he whispered.
She closed the file slowly. Her expression was unreadable, but her voice lowered. “They used her.”
Used her like they used him. Used her worse, he gathered by the look in Ava’s eyes. Bucky’s hands shook. He reached for the file again—but a voice crackled through the comms.
“Uh—guys?” That was Yelena.
A pause. Then John’s voice: “We found something. You’re gonna want to see this.”
The hallway was darker here. Buried beneath layers of concrete and dust, as if the building itself was trying to forget what it held. Yelena stood beside a half-collapsed wall, a flashlight beam fixed on a vault-style door newly wrenched open.
Behind her, John paced.
“I told her not to touch anything,” he muttered. “I said, ‘Let’s wait for Ava and Bucky.’ But no—she had to pry it open like a damn tin can.”
Yelena didn’t look at him. Just pointed. The room inside was square. Small. Silent. And there—like a vision carved in frost—was a girl.
Suspended in cryo. Curled ever so slightly. Skin turned pale. No mask. No disguise. Serene. Tubes and wires wound around the body like vines. The girls hand was pressed faintly against the glass, as if reaching for someone long gone.
Bucky stopped breathing. His vision tunneled. He knew that face.
He knew it.
Not just from dreams. Not from being the Winter Soldier.
His childhood. Your laugh behind the diner. Your body pressed to his in the creek. That final night before he shipped out, the ring you pressed into his hand.
“Come back with it. Maybe you’ll even trade me for a better one,” you’d whispered.
And he’d tried. God, he’d tried.
Ava stepped beside him. Her voice was low. Careful. “That’s her.”
John scoffed. “We don’t know what she is.”
“She’s not a threat,” Bucky said, sharper than he meant.
“She’s Hydra.”
“No.” His voice broke. “She’s not.”
Yelena moved inside the room, brushing her fingers along the control panel. The glass hissed softly as the chamber began to release.
“Yelena—” John warned.
“She’s not staying in here’s John,” she replied coldly. “Not when we know what this place did. Did you not just hear Ava read the file?”
The cryo began to drain. The glass slid open. You slumped forward—your body too limp, too light. Still unconscious, but breathing. Skin clammy. Hair tangled against your cheek. Yelena caught you first. Cradled your weight against her chest, murmuring something in Russian under her breath—soft, like a lullaby.
Then John stepped forward. “Fine. Then let me—” The second his hand touched your shoulder, you flinched. You were unconscious. Barely even alive. But your body knew. It recoiled. Fought.
And Bucky? He was already moving. “Don’t,” he said, pushing past him. “Don’t touch her again.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
He lifted you from Yelena’s arms like you were weightless. One arm behind your knees, the other around your back. Your head lolled against his shoulder and something in you exhaled. A softness bloomed across your expression, even sedated. You relaxed.
He felt it. So did Yelena. Her eyes met his. Wide. Searching. “You know her,” she said.
“Yes.” He said, simply.
“You really know her. Not in a broody Winter Soldier way.”
He didn’t respond, didn’t trust his voice. He just held you tighter as he carried you to the quinjet. Yelena sat beside you, wiping the sweat from your temple with quiet tenderness. Ava was silent, reviewing the data stick she extracted. John paced, fuming, arms crossed.
“She’s not even awake,” he said. “You realize she could be dangerous, right? She’s Hydra.”
“She’s a victim,” Yelena snapped. “And if you’d paid attention, you’d know that.”
“She flinched when you touched her,” Ava added, softly. “Even while sedated.”
The jet hummed beneath them. The sky outside stretched endless. Bucky sat with you curled in his arms, your breath shallow against his neck. He didn’t speak. He just stared. Because even if you didn’t know him anymore, even if you never remembered…
He knew.
You were his girl.
And he wasn’t going to lose you again.
-
The night they took you, the city smelled like burnt coffee and rain. You’d worked a double at the diner—grease still clinging to your skin, tips folded in your apron, sneakers worn through at the toes. You were trying, numbly, to keep going. You wrote to Steve. Got a few letters back, when he could. You tried to push on, knowing that Bucky Barnes would wallop you if you wasted away over him. Some days it worked, and others, like today, you were chased by ghosts.
The walk home wasn’t far. Three blocks, maybe four. Past the laundromat, the pawn shop, and the apartment where Bucky once kissed you so hard you forgot your name.
But that was a memory you didn’t get to keep.
It started with a shadow. A flicker near the lamplight. You turned too late. The needle sank into your neck before you could scream, your body betraying you in one seizing gasp. Then came the darkness—fast, clinical. You didn’t even fall. Just faded, mid-step.
The last sound you heard was the crackle of thunder.
-
The first week is pain. Not questions. Not demands. Just pain. It starts with heat. Then cold. Then restraints. Needles. Spikes of white behind your eyes that make you bite through the leather they shove between your teeth.
They don’t ask who you are. Because they know. They’ve seen the photos. The footage. They know your proximity. Your past. They think this makes you relevant. And worse—useful.
You try to stay quiet. That lasts three days. By day four, you’re screaming. They give you a version of the serum.
It doesn’t go well. Your body rejects the first attempt—violently. You flatline for two minutes. They revive you. Do it again.
The second strain takes. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. Your blood burns. Your bones feel like they’re fusing and splitting at the same time. Your skin becomes a warzone of healing and splitting and healing again. Every nerve screams.
But you survive.
They call that progress.
You don’t sleep much after that. Your body runs hot now. Hyper-aware. Your senses sharpen. Your thoughts become faster—more efficient, more dangerous. You remember things you shouldn’t. Details from rooms you never entered. Faces from files you never touched. Brainwashing is next.
They strap you into the chair. Clamp your skull tight. Feed you frequencies. Visuals. Words. They try the soldier method. Electroshock. Voice-trigger codes.
It doesn’t take. You bite your tongue through the fifth attempt. Spit blood at the tech’s face on the sixth. By the seventh, they freeze you.
Just to cool you off. And that becomes the pattern. Train. Test. Brainwash. Fail. Freeze.
Repeat.
Your cryo chamber becomes a coffin with a timer. Sometimes you wake up in a new facility. Sometimes in the same one, with different walls. Sometimes you’re gone for days. Sometimes years.
They don’t tell you how much time passes between the thaws. Your body stops aging. Your memory fractures more each time.
-
Each time you wake up, you aren’t you anymore. Not completely. They keep wiping things. Rewriting other things. They fill you with languages you didn’t speak, habits you don’t recognize, and memories that weren’t yours.
Your name? It stopped mattering. They gave you another: SIREN.
It wasn’t just a code. It was your purpose. Seduction. Espionage. Infiltration. Elimination. You were not a brute-force weapon. You were meant to slip into the cracks between nations. Into hearts. Into homes. A ghost that looked like desire and vanished like smoke.
And you were good at it. Too good.
Even when the ache in your chest wouldn’t go away. Even when you’d wake up screaming, unable to name who it was you dreamed of. A man with soft hair and blue eyes. A hand on your back. A ring passed from your finger to a chain.
The doctors noted the resistance in your mind—“a high emotional quotient,” they called it. “Strong attachments to prior identity.”
They considered removing the memory centers entirely. But someone higher up stepped in. Ordered them kept. They needed those memories, certain ones. But in the meantime? You were shelved, but alive. Just in case.
Because Steve Rogers was still out there. A rising symbol. A potential threat. And if that time ever came? They wanted a knife in his side that he wouldn’t see coming.
Years passed. Or maybe they didn’t. Time had little meaning in the chambers they kept you in. You slept in cryo, woke only when they needed you. You’d emerge to a world unfamiliar, given a new face, a new language, a new mission. Always alone.
Until one day, they didn’t send you by yourself. You were briefed quickly. Target: a diplomat in Berlin. Your job was to eliminate him in a way that would spark distrust between allied nations. You were the honey trap. But someone else would handle the rest.
You didn’t see your “partner” during prep. You were flown in under blackout protocol, landed in a secluded drop zone, and told only this: “You’ll rendezvous post-event. Extraction will occur simultaneously. Do not interfere.”
It was the third night in the field, after your mark was dead—lips blue from the toxin you kissed into him—that you saw the Winter Soldier.
And your breath stuttered.
He appeared in the chaos of the panic room breach—smoke thick in the air, alarm sirens wailing, blood already pooling on the marble floor. He was fast. Precise. Brutal. He dispatched the guards before they could reach their radios. His mask covered most of his face, but his eyes—
God.
His eyes.
Blue. But not sterile like the others. Not dead, at least not completely. They held something sharp. Something burning. And they locked with yours for just a second—long enough to freeze you in place.
You were in your disguise—one of the hyperrealistic synthetic skins they used to scramble identity. Blonde hair. Light freckles. A cleft chin. But the eyes? The eyes were always yours.
He hesitated. Just for a moment. Just long enough that a guard almost got the jump on him. You reacted instinctively—kicking the man’s gun aside, dropping him with a flash of your blade.
When you turned back, the Soldier was staring at you. Bleeding slightly at the brow. And still—staring.
Like he knew you. Like he didn’t know why.
You should’ve left then. But you couldn’t— your legs wouldn’t let you. Your chest ached. Your hand shook. And for the first time since they turned you into a weapon, you spoke out of turn.
“Do I—” Your voice cracked. “Do I know you?”
His mouth parted. He didn’t answer.
And then—
“Asset compromised.” The comm buzzed in your ear. That was all it took. You were both seized within minutes.
The punishment was brutal. You don’t remember all of it—what they pumped into your veins, what they said while you screamed. But you remember the cold. The straps. The sound of your bones breaking.
They didn’t need answers. They needed obedience.
They put you back under. You woke up years later. Another mission. Another face. Another name.
You didn’t recognize him again—not at first. But you felt him.
You were in a red dress. Silk. Backless. Your hair was dark this time, curled. Your target was a financier with ties to both Hydra and SHIELD. You were to poison him in public. Make it look like a heart attack. The Winter Soldier was backup given the amount of suped up muscle in disguise around the room—costumed as a security guard nearby.
You brushed past him at the entrance. Barely a glance. But your heart slammed in your chest when your arm grazed his. It felt like lightning.
He turned, just slightly. His flesh hand flexed at his side, but his eyes remained unreadable.
Later, after the target was dead and chaos broke out, you were to exit through the east corridor. He was waiting. You collided—literally—too fast in the narrow hall. Your mask was cracked from a fight. You hadn’t realized the synthetic skin had started to split. He reached for you automatically.
And stopped.
Your face was bleeding. The artificial layer sloughing off around your temple. Your real eye showed through, so did half of your face. His breath caught. His hand hovered near your cheek.
He said your code name. Not like an order, more like a question. But you backed away as the HYDRA override kicked in. Your chest seized and pain shot through your limbs like fire.
Both of you were extracted unconscious. You were frozen again. This time, indefinitely. A tool no longer worth the maintenance if it interfered with their prodigal creation.
They placed a red slash across your file. “Do not unfreeze unless Rogers is confirmed active.”
And then… nothing. No sound. No sensation. Just years.
Decades of dreamless dark.
-
The med bay was quiet in a way that unnerved even the most battle-hardened of them. The lights were dimmed—more out of mercy than necessity—and the hum of machines replaced the usual sterile chatter of diagnostics. The walls felt too white, too still. Like a mausoleum trying to pretend it was still breathing.
You hadn’t moved in two days. Yelena had stopped counting the hours and started counting the cups of tea she left untouched on the table by your bed. Eleven, so far. All different blends. She wasn’t sure why. It felt like something she could do. Should do.
You were sedated—not asleep, not unconscious, but somewhere in that strange void between silence and survival. Your body was recovering, barely. Neurological scans showed cryo trauma, layered with years of synthetic memory suppression. Your nervous system was sluggish. Muscles atrophied. There were faint signs of tampering in your frontal lobe—shiny scar tissue left behind from experimental electroshock rerouting. Your DNA had been altered too. Not enhanced, exactly. Refined. Streamlined for obedience.
But your heart still beat.
And that was enough for Bucky to stay.
He hadn’t left since the quinjet landed. He sat beside your bed, elbows on his knees, back straight, like a soldier standing vigil. Sometimes he reached out—fingers hovering just above your wrist or cheek or the soft fold of the blanket near your hip. But he never touched. Not until he could hear you say it was okay.
The machines blinked steadily as it worked to correct your memory. The same system that was used on him in Wakanda, meant to deprogram. To heal.
Each hour that passed, he noticed something else. The shape of your hands. The angle of your jaw. New scars that hadn’t been there in the 40s. The curve of your lashes when your eyes twitched behind closed lids. He watched your lips as they parted with shallow breaths, and remembered the last time he kissed you.
His dog tags clinked softly when he shifted. The ring you gave him still hung from them, heavier now that he was looking at you. Ava had stopped by earlier and tried to get him to sleep. To eat. He hadn’t answered. Just stared.
Now, it was Yelena. She came every morning. Brought her morning tea. Spoke low. Sometimes she read to you from her phone—things she thought might make you laugh, because they made her laugh. “Buzzfeed quizzes,” she muttered under her breath once. “Your taste in 90s sitcoms will reveal your soulmate. Mine said they’re a golden retriever.”
No response. But still, she stayed. She’d gotten in the habit of talking to you like a younger sister might. Teasing. Rambling. Quietly offering scraps of her own story in exchange for the pieces of yours that refused to come. She’d felt a kinship with you the moment she heard Ava read your file and had decided that you would become her friend. You could probably use one.
She was sitting cross-legged now on the padded bench beneath the window, a worn hoodie wrapped around her arms. Her voice was softer than usual. “He hasn’t slept you know,” she said, not looking up, only looking at you.
Bucky didn’t reply. Yelena tilted her head. “He thinks we haven’t noticed. But he’s got that stupid twitch in his right hand again. The one that shows up when he’s about to fall apart.”
He looked down at his fingers. They were still. Perfectly so. But the tremor lived in his chest. “She’ll come back,” Yelena said, looking at him now. “You did.”
Bucky exhaled through his nose. “She was always stronger.”
Yelena’s eyes flicked to you. “Are you going to admit she’s funnier and prettier too, Barnes?” You hadn’t moved. But the monitor tracking your vitals blipped just slightly faster.
“Those too.”
She smiled. “Maybe she’s just tired of your moping.” Bucky’s lips twitched. Yelena stood slowly, stretching. “I’ll go see if I can steal something edible for you from the mess.”
She brushed a gentle hand over your blanket—right above your ankle. Then turned for the door.
That’s when she said it. Soft. Unthinking. Familiar. “You can still take care of yourself: Just don’t let her be alone, Bucky.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d used his name. But this time—
Your fingers twitched. Your pulse spiked. And Bucky’s breath caught in his throat. He turned to you fast—too fast. His chair scraped the floor. Coffee sloshed over the rim of the cup in his hand.
Then you flinched. Your shoulders tensed, lips parting, a whisper of sound escaping your throat like a prayer half-remembered.
“James?”
The coffee slipped from his grip. It hit the ground with a soft thud, the paper cup crumpling, hot liquid bleeding into the linoleum like a slow exhale.
He stood frozen. You hadn’t opened your eyes. But you had spoken. Your voice—ragged, hoarse, barely audible—was still yours.
“James,” you whispered again, brow furrowing. “Bucky—”
And then your lashes fluttered. Just slightly. Just enough.
He dropped to his knees beside you, knuckles white where they clutched the edge of the bed. “Hey,” he said lamely, voice breaking. “I’m right here.”
You didn’t open your eyes all the way. But they twitched. Searched. You were somewhere between sleep and awareness, your lips moving slowly, like your brain was still fighting through fog. “Where…?”
Bucky leaned in, too close, not close enough. “You’re safe,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
Your lips trembled. “I dreamed of…”
His hand hovered over your wrist. Still not touching. Still not trusting himself. “You don’t have to talk,” he said, gently. “Just rest. You’re okay. You’re home.”
But you shook your head faintly. “No… I remember.” He held his breath. “Your eyes,” you said. “You were… you were someone. You were—”
He reached out then. Took your hand. The skin was cool. But it curled around his metal hand on instinct. “I was yours,” he said. “And you were mine. No matter when. Or who.”
Yelena came back in moments later with a power bar and a cup of lukewarm tea. She stopped dead in the doorway. Bucky was crying. Not loudly. Just tears on his cheeks, his forehead pressed to your palm, shoulders bowed. And you?
You were breathing a little deeper now. Still too ashen. But your fingers were tangled in his. Yelena set the tea down. She didn’t say a word. Just stood there, and watched something begin again.
That night, Bucky still didn’t leave the room. The med techs came and went. Scans flickered. They tried to explain the progress. “Neurological flickers—positive signs—no cognitive regression. Memory recovery is going well. She’s not fighting it. She’s welcoming it.”
You’d said his name. And when he whispered yours back into the dark, your lips twitched. That was enough for now. He would wait. As long as it took. Because something in you had started to stir. Some small piece of your heart had turned back toward him.
-
The light in the med bay was softer than before. Not the glaring fluorescent blue of medical scans, not the sterile white of machines, but warm—sunlight from the west windows filtering through slanted blinds, cast stripes on the wall of soft gold. The scent in the air wasn’t bleach anymore. It was… peppermint?
You stirred before you opened your eyes. You didn’t know how you knew you were safe. You didn’t remember the room, or the last place you’d been, or how your name was supposed to feel in your own mouth—but something in you felt still for the first time in years. Your body hurt, but it was the ache of thawed muscles, not needles or punishment.
And you could smell tea.
That, somehow, was the first thing that made you cry.
It wasn’t the stiffness in your bones. It wasn’t the absence of cold. It was peppermint tea and the hum of someone near you—quiet, melodic, like they’d been humming under their breath without realizing it.
Your eyelids dragged open slowly, sticky from disuse. Everything was blurry at first. There was a figure in a hoodie, short blonde hair pushed back slightly by a headband, legs crossed on the bench beside your bed. She had a spoon stuck in her mouth and was flipping through a magazine—People, if your fuzzy vision was right.
You blinked again. She didn’t notice at first. Then you breathed a little louder and her head snapped up. You flinched on instinct, throat dry. “Whoa—hey, hey.” Her voice dropped to a warm hush. “Okay. You’re awake now. That’s new.” She paused, hands coming up in front of her. “Don’t freak out. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
Her accent was familiar. Not just the words—but the tone. You couldn’t place it. You didn’t know her. But you knew her voice. Peppermint tea. Soft stories. Jokes you didn’t understand but liked the sound of.
“You read to me,” you rasped. Your voice barely more than a crackle.
She grinned. “Damn right I did. You were a terrible audience by the way. Slept through all the good parts.”
Your throat burned. You coughed. She was already moving—pouring a small glass of water from the table pitcher. The straw bent carefully toward your mouth.
You took a sip. It was the best thing you’d ever tasted. “Thanks,” you said, and your voice caught again. It sounded foreign. Like something borrowed.
“No thanks needed,” she replied, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face. “I was sick of talking to myself anyway.”
You studied her. Her hands. The callouses on her knuckles. She was pretty. But rough around the edges. Like someone who had been through hell and didn’t regret it. “You’ve been here,” you whispered. “Before.”
She nodded. “Not this exact hellhole, but yeah. Different version. Different people.”
You swallowed. “You stayed with me.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
She smiled like the answer was obvious. “You looked like someone who needed a sister.”
Your chest hurt at that. “Do I have one?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But you’ve got me. Whether you like it or not.”
You smiled for the first time. It felt like your skin was cracking. But it felt good. She grinned back. “That’s better. I was starting to think you’d be all brooding and tragic. You have the face for it. We have enough of those around here.”
You huffed something close to a laugh. “Who are you?”
“Yelena,” she said. “Yelena Belova.”
You blinked slowly. “Am I supposed to know that?”
“Only if you were a fan of Russian horror stories,” she said breezily. “Don’t worry. I’m reformed. Sort of.”
“I don’t remember much.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “Bucky didn’t either apparently, and he turned out… decent. Shitty hair though. Do you think you’re able to make him get a haircut?”
You paused. “Bucky?” A buried recognition in your bones. “He’s the one who…”
“Carried you around like he was afraid you’d disappear?” she offered, leaning back in her chair. “Yeah. That’s him.”
You tried not to panic at the weight of that truth. The enormity of what you didn’t know. What you felt anyway. “I know his voice. I know him. I remember him.”
“Mmhm.” She sipped her tea. “He’s been here since we found you. Haven’t been able to peel him off your side.”
“Where is he?”
“I shoved him into the showers an hour ago. Made him eat a sandwich. Told him I wouldn’t want to wake up either if it stunk that bad around me.”
Your smile returned, barely. “He listened?”
“Eventually. But he left his heart in here somewhere.” She leaned in and tapped the blanket near your chest. “Probably around there.”
You stared at her. “I don’t remember all of him,” you admitted.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t frown. “You will.”
“What if I don’t?”
Yelena shrugged. “Then you’ll meet him all over again. You’ll fall for him twice. Poor bastard doesn’t stand a chance.”
That made your throat catch. She reached for your hand and this time—you let her. “I don’t feel like me,” you whispered. “I don’t know who that is.”
“Then we’ll find her together,” Yelena said. “Piece by piece.”
“Do I… do I want to?” She looked you dead in the eye.
“You’re still alive aren’t you?” she asked. “You didn’t break. And trust me—I know what it means to survive something like that.” You nodded, slow. “You’ve got friends now,” Yelena added. “Idiots, mostly. But good ones. People who will help.”
“Will you?”
“I’m already here, aren’t I?” You blinked at her. It wasn’t trust—not fully. But it could be.
“Now, do you want me to read the Buzzfeed quiz again?” she asked. “Last one said you were most like the color beige. I protested on your behalf.”
You smiled. Truly. Even though you had no idea what she was talking about. And when she picked up her magazine again, still holding your hand, still sipping that terrible tea, you leaned your head against the pillow and whispered, “Thank you.”
Yelena didn’t look up.
But she squeezed your hand anyway.
-
The door opened with a soft hiss of hydraulics. Yelena was halfway through a dramatic reading of a questionable tabloid article about alien love triangles when she paused, turning toward the hallway.
She grinned. “Ah. Look who’s finally decided not to smell like grief and gunpowder.”
You looked up automatically and your breath caught. He stood in the doorway like a man who didn’t believe in miracles. Soaking wet hair curled at the ends, shoulders too broad for the fatigue shirt clinging to them. His eyes—God, his eyes—were blue like the sea just before a storm. Haunted. Wide.
Bucky.
You didn’t remember everything in perfect order. It hadn’t come back in a single rush like some grand unraveling.
But you remembered him.
Your Bucky. You remembered his voice on the street corner, teasing you with a half grin. The hand on your lower back at a dance hall. His hand on your thigh in the movies. The night behind the gym. The creek. The rooftop.
And more than that—
You remembered the winter.
You remembered the cold chamber, the pain, the screaming. But you also remembered another shadow in black leather and a muzzle. Metal fingers curling, hesitating, brushing yours.
You remembered the way his body always hesitated around you. You remembered his eyes—dead and alive all at once. Especially how they looked when he looked at you. It had been him. All this time. Even when neither of you knew it.
And even now, as he stood in the doorway, still dripping from the shower, holding the doorframe like it was the only thing keeping him upright—you felt it again.
The pull. The ache. The knowing. Your body reacted before your mind did. You leaned toward him. Soft. Barely an inch. But instinctive. Like your muscles remembered what your trauma tried to erase.
He froze. Bucky’s eyes were wide. Dazed. He looked like a soldier on the edge of a minefield.
Yelena didn’t say a word. She just stood, quietly squeezed your hand, and made herself scarce, slipping through the door with a grace only widows could manage.
Now it was just the two of you. You, with the monitors still blinking beside your bed. Him, with his heart cracked wide open at the sight of someone he thought he’d never see again.
You blinked and took a breath and said it, simple and soft. “I think I’ve been waiting for you.”
He made a sound that was maybe a gasp. A wordless breaking of breath. He stepped forward—slow, reverent, like you might vanish if he moved too fast.
“You said my name,” he murmured, sitting beside your bed. His voice was wet. Shaking. “Back in the med bay, the first time. You knew.”
You nodded. “Not everything at once,” you whispered. “But enough. More now.”
His hand hovered over the blanket. You reached first. Fingers tangled, shaking. The second your skin touched his, he crumbled. His forehead dropped to the edge of your bed. His metal hand gripped your sheet like a lifeline.
“I thought I lost you,” he choked. “Worse than that—I thought I forgot you.”
“You didn’t,” you said, your thumb brushing the back of his hand.
He looked up at you then, eyes red. You reached for his face. And he let you. You touched the line of his cheek, the stubble along his jaw. Watched his eyes flutter shut as your hand skimmed across the edge of his mouth, memorizing him all over again.
“I remember the night you left,” you whispered. “I remember you holding me. Kissing me. Telling me you’d come back with the ring.”
He swallowed hard. The tags around his neck clinked as he shifted, the ring catching the light. “I tried.” he said.
“I know. I never doubted that.” Silence stretched, warm and full. And then you asked—because you had to. “Steve?”
Bucky stilled. The change in him was quiet. Subtle. But you felt it. “He made it back,” Bucky said slowly. “In the war. He survived the crash. Found me. Saved me. Is one of the greatest heroes the world ever knew.”
“And?” He looked down. You already knew. “And he’s not here now,” you said, voice catching.
“No.” You were quiet for a long time. When you finally spoke again, it was barely a breath. “Did he get a good ending?”
Bucky smiled faintly. Soft. Bitter. But not sad. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, he did. The one he wanted.”
You nodded. “Peggy? Someone else?”
“She was waiting for him.”
You blinked fast. Not in pain. Just in relief. “Good,” you whispered. “That’s good.”
“He saw you,” Bucky said suddenly, voice rough. “In that life. When he stayed back. Said you were with a little boy. Said you were laughing.” Your heart stopped. “He gave me this,” Bucky said, pulling something from the inside of his coat. You didn’t fully understand what he was talking about, but as long as Steve had been happy in the end, you were okay with it.
A photograph. Old. Warm. Slightly faded. A you that you didn’t not recognize was standing in the sunlight, barefoot on a porch with a toddler on your hip. Brown curls. Blue eyes.
You stared at it. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t make sense of any of it. Bucky set it gently on the bed beside you. “I know this is a lot. I’ll help explain it.”
You nodded, but looked back at the picture. “Is he…?” You asked.
“He said his name was Theodore James Barnes,” Bucky said quietly. “You called him Teddy when he was sweet. Theodore James when he was acting like… me.”
You let out a sound that wasn’t a sob but wasn’t anything else either. Bucky moved closer, arms gently circling around your back, careful of your monitors, your bruises, your fragility. You didn’t hesitate. You folded into him like you never left. And when he kissed your temple, you whispered, “I hope that little boy still exists somewhere.”
“He does,” Bucky said.
You didn’t dare dream yet. But for the first time since the war, since the ice, since the pain—
You let yourself hope.
-
Day 9
You sat at the edge of the bed, feet touching the ground for the first time in days. Your muscles trembled under you. Not with fear—though that lingered—but with unfamiliarity. Cryo damage was cruel that way. Even after healing, your nerves had to remember how to hold you.
Bucky crouched in front of you, one steady hand on your knee. “You don’t have to rush this,” he said quietly. “You’ve already done enough.”
You looked down at him and smiled. “I didn’t survive decades of brainwashing and cryo just to stay in bed, Barnes.”
He huffed a laugh. “Alright,” he murmured. “Then let’s get you on your feet.”
His hands found your waist as you braced your palms on his shoulders. He rose with you—slowly—his body moving in tandem with yours as if you’d done this a thousand times. Maybe you had. Maybe not like this, but in other ways. All the ways he’d carried you before.
Your knees wobbled. His grip tightened. You swore you felt your heart stumble. But then—you stood. Fully. Firmly.
Bucky smiled, soft and wide, and whispered, “There she is.”
You let yourself breathe. Then leaned forward, forehead resting against his. Just for a second. Then he stepped back, just enough to extend his arm.
“Walk with me?”
You nodded. “Try and stop me.”
-
Day 13
Yelena was the first to notice the shift. You and Bucky entered the debriefing room slower than usual—but together. You leaned on him only slightly. Your fingers hovered just close enough to his jacket to brush the fabric when you moved.
Alexei looked up from where he was flipping through the mission log. “Ah! Sleeping Beauty walks alone again.”
You rolled your eyes. “And I see that bears still roar.”
John Walker blinked between you and Bucky. “Wait. Are we—are we all pretending like this isn’t insanely weird?”
“What’s weird?” Ava asked, not looking up from the datapad she was scanning.
He gestured toward you two. “That. He’s literally letting her touch him. Former Congressman Stick Up His Ass.”
Yelena smirked. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. I think it’s charming that he’s being so sweet.”
John opened his mouth to argue—then stopped when he saw Bucky touch the small of your back without thinking. Saw the way you turned toward the motion instinctively, your body leaning into it like you’d been doing it for decades.
Bob tilted his head. “They know each other. More than we know them. Do you ever pay attention?”
John narrowed his eyes. “I knew he was acting weird when he carried her out of the facility like she was made of glass.”
“She sort of is right now,” Yelena said. “Muscle atrophy and all that. But that doesn’t mean she’ll break.”
“Exactly,” Bucky said from the doorway, his voice quiet but final.
You looked up at him, meeting his eyes. There was no performance in it. Only memory. And hope.
Yelena stood and crossed the room to you, bumping her shoulder lightly into yours. “Told you we’d be fast friends.”
You smiled. “You did.”
The moment passed between the team like a ripple. Not pity. Not awkwardness. But recognition.
Even in a group made of broken things—vengeful, repurposed, volatile things—they could tell: You and Bucky were something real.
And somehow, that made it feel like all of them had a little more to believe in, too.
-
Day 26
You slammed into the mat harder than you should have, shoulder bouncing, the breath knocked out of you with a sharp grunt. You didn’t pause. Didn’t whine. Just rolled and came up swinging.
John blocked the punch, but only just. “Jesus, you’re in a mood grandma,” he muttered, trying to keep up.
You ducked under his next hit and drove your elbow into his ribs. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
He grunted. “Last week you would at least make a joke before hitting me.”
You didn’t answer. Just swept his legs from under him. He hit the mat with a thud and a groan. “Alright. You win. Uncle.” He deadpanned.
You loomed over him, breathing hard, fists still clenched. Blood trickled from your split lip. Your knuckles ached. And it wasn’t enough. Not yet. But it was something.
John sat up, wiped sweat from his brow, and gave you a look. “You’re gonna have to tell me what the hell you’re working through one of these days.”
You dropped beside him with a heavy breath, sweat stinging your eyes, blood in your mouth, knuckles bruised. “Trust me,” you muttered. “You don’t want the backstory.”
He didn’t argue. Just sat there, chest heaving, towel slung over his shoulder. Then, after a pause—long enough to feel real—he said: “I survived Afghanistan. I know you don’t know what it is, being a popsicle and all that for fuck knows how long, but trust me. It wasn’t pretty. It still keeps me up.”
You glanced at him. “I’ve done things I don’t like talking about,” he went on. “Some of them because I had to. Some because I wanted to. Which might be worse.”
You didn’t reply. Just breathed. “I’m not good with emotions,” he added, eyes fixed ahead. “But I can handle the dark. I can handle scary.”
He looked at you then. Not with pity. Not with judgment. Just a flicker of something that almost resembled understanding. “You ever want to unload it, I won’t run.”
You stared at him for a beat. Then nodded—barely. And he didn’t push. Just tossed you a towel and let you sit in the silence, side by side, both of you bleeding, both of you haunted, both of you still here.
-
Night 30
Some nights were better than others. And some nights, the ghosts pressed too hard against your ribs.
You would find him, then. On those nights when phantom hands pawed at your thighs. You would go and curl into Bucky’s side without a word, limbs heavy with that invisible weight.
Tonight was one of those nights. He was already half-asleep when you climbed into bed, but the second your hand found his chest, his arm tightened around you like a reflex.
You didn’t speak. You didn’t need to. You just listened to his heartbeat.
Steady. Strong. Real.
His flesh hand stroked your back. No urgency. Just quiet devotion.
When you shivered, he pulled the blankets higher. When you whispered his name, he kissed your temple. When you told him you couldn’t sleep because the faces wouldn’t leave you alone, he said, “You don’t have to sleep. Just breathe with me.”
And so you did.
One breath. Then another.
Until the storm passed.
-
Day 36
Yelena didn’t push. She never did. She just made tea, slid it across the counter, and leaned on her elbows.
You sat on the other side, staring at your hands. “I let them touch me,” you said, voice hollow. Yelena blinked slowly. Waited. “On missions. Sometimes not even for intel. Just… to train me. To break me. To see if I could stomach it and still smile.”
Her mouth tightened. “They made you an asset. Not a person.”
“They made me complicit.”
“No.” Her voice was steel. “But you made sure you survived. That’s what counts.”
You finally looked up. “I can’t tell Bucky what I did. Not all of it.”
“I won’t tell Barnes,” she said. “Not unless you want me to.”
You nodded. “Thank you.”
Yelena reached for your hand. “You know what they took from us?”
“Our lives?”
“Our shame,” she corrected. “We don’t owe anyone the clean version of our stories.” You squeezed her fingers and let yourself believe her.
-
Day 40
Yelena taped a neon pink sticky note to your forehead.
“What’s this?” you asked flatly.
“Your daily objective,” she said, grinning. It read: LEARN TO USE A MICROWAVE WITHOUT BREAKING IT.
Behind her, Bob was laughing silently as Ava tried to explain to you that it was important to not put forks in the microwave.
You scowled at them. “How does that thing even work? This is impossible.”
“This is enrichment,” Yelena corrected. “You’ve survived cryo, combat, mind control and getting your memories back. You can survive reheating left overs.”
Later that afternoon, she handed you a phone and said, “Say cheese.”
You blinked. “Why?”
“Selfie. You’re in the group chat now.”
“I—what chat?” Too late. She snapped the photo—your scowl, her smirk, Bob photo-bombing with a spoon on his nose.
Thirty seconds later:
Thunderbolts Group Text
YELENA: Look who finally joined the modern age!
You stared at your face on the screen and didn’t recognize the person you looked back at you. But then you laughed.
And something clicked.
-
Night 44
It was Yelena’s turn to pick.
She chose both How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Hereditary.
You weren’t sure what the logic was, but she claimed it was balance. The team piled into the common room, limbs tangled in blankets and popcorn strewn like confetti. Bob insisted on narrating half the movie in dramatic whispers. Ava corrected every tactical error. John complained about plot holes until you threw a pillow at his face.
Bucky sat behind you, legs bracketing your hips, arms around your waist. You leaned into him without thinking.
You’d forgotten how to laugh with your mouth open. But here? You remembered.
And when the jumpscare hit, you didn’t flinch. You grabbed John’s hand and made him yelp instead.
-
Day 48
Bob had picked another fight with John. You helped. Mostly by egging him on with increasingly ridiculous commentary.
“He insulted my sandwich,” Bob said gravely, holding a wooden spoon like a sword.
“He questioned your honor. I was there.” you added solemnly.
“I did not—!” John started.
“Silence, knave,” you said, throwing a kitchen towel at his head.
Yelena muttered something about “unhinged siblings.” Bucky leaned in from the doorway, arms crossed, smile tugging at his mouth.
“You’re getting into trouble again, I see.”
You looked over your shoulder. “Your fault, Barnes. You said I was being ‘surprisingly well-behaved’.”
He raised a brow. “I did not.”
“You implied it.”
He just shook his head, fond and tired.
Alexei cut in. “God can not help the next op we go on.”
“God help the target,” Ava muttered, walking past with her mug— one of Yelena’s judging by the way it said “WORLDS MOST OKAYEST WIDOW” on it.
Bob saluted you with his spoon. “A tried and true Thunderbolt tradition: chaos first, questions never. Remember that in the field.”
You saluted back.
-
Night 57
You and Bucky sat outside a safehouse under the stars. A small fire cracked in the old pit nearby, casting gold shadows across your face.
You held his hand.
“I’m not fixed,” you said quietly.
“You’re not broken,” he replied.
“I still have dreams. I still see their faces.”
“I know.”
“I still hate what they made me do.”
“I hate what they made you survive.” He offered.
You swallowed. “I still want more,” you whispered.
His head turned, eyes locking with yours.
“More?”
“More life. More days like this. More of you.”
Bucky pulled your hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to it. “Then you’ll have it.”
You leaned into his shoulder. And for the first time in years—
You dreamed.
-
It was Ava’s idea, technically.
“Morale night,” she declared one afternoon in the training room, wiping sweat off her brow after pinning Bob for the third time. “No debriefs, no drills, no dead Hydra files. Just drinks, music, and bad decisions.”
You raised an eyebrow. “Is that last one required?”
Bob, flat on the mat, groaned. “Speak for yourself. I plan to make at least three.”
Yelena snorted. “Count me in.”
John grumbled something about keeping everyone out of the news cycle or Val would kill him. Ava responded by booking the whole back corner of a bar just outside town on Val’s personal card. Nothing flashy. Local place. Brick walls, dart boards, flickering neon. Live music on weekends, an old jukebox when the band didn’t show.
You almost said no.
Almost.
But Bucky’s hand had found yours sometime during the conversation—calm, quiet, just his fingers laced between yours. He didn’t say anything, just gave you a soft look. Like it might be good for both of you to remember what it felt like to be normal.
The bar was warm with bodies and noise. Laughter crackled from the far booth. The bartender poured shots with both hands. Bob had already challenged a stranger to a pool game and was losing spectacularly. John hovered near the door with crossed arms and military posture until Ava dumped a drink into his hand and told him to shut up and live a little.
Yelena was three drinks in and explaining the philosophical underpinnings of The Bachelor to an increasingly horrified civilian man who made the mistake of trying to buy her a drink.
And you? You were watching Bucky from the other side of the room.
He was leaning against the bar, one hand wrapped around a glass of something amber. His sleeves were rolled up. The light caught the faint stubble on his jaw, the glint of his dog tags tucked just under the V of his shirt. His hair, so much longer now than when you’d last gripped it, waved perfectly around his face. It made you squeeze your hand tight to avoid running your fingers through it more than once recently.
He was watching you. Eyes blue and knowing. The same eyes that had once watched you spin in a borrowed dress in a 1940s dance hall. The same ones that had burned through the dark behind the gym. In the creek. On rooftops. In a dingy little apartment with peeling walls and leaky faucets.
He looked like he wanted to bite you and worship you in the same breath. You finished your drink in a single breath.
“Don’t look now,” Yelena murmured beside you, “but your boyfriend’s about to eat the bartop if you don’t go talk to him.”
You smirked. “I’m not his girlfriend. He never asked.”
“Okay, fair. But can you at least go talk to your 94 year long situationship before he starts gnawing the hardwood?”
You didn’t even know what a situationship was. But still, you pushed off your stool and made your way through the crowd.
“You’ve been staring,” you said as you reached him.
Bucky’s eyes didn’t waver. “You wore that on purpose.”
You looked down at the dress. Nothing dramatic. Just a dark slip, soft against your skin. But it clung in the right places. A gift from Ava.
“You like it?”
His voice dropped an octave. “Dangerously.”
You grinned. “What happened to the brooding soldier?”
“He’s still in there,” Bucky murmured. “But he remembers how to dance if you do.”
Your brow arched. “Dance? I thought you didn’t do that anymore. Yelena told me you’ve been turning down any lady who asks.”
“I told her that I don’t enjoy it the same anymore. Before you.” He downed the rest of his drink and extended a hand. “Now, are you going to step on my toes or not?”
You slid your palm into his with a smile. “Lead the way, Bucky.”
The bar didn’t have a dance floor so much as a space near the jukebox where a few couples swayed in time with the soft pulse of blues.
Bucky pulled you close. No hesitation. His hand found your lower back. Too low, again, just like at your high school prom. Yours curled into his shirt.
And just like that, the world shrank. Not backward. Not to the war. Not to the shadows. But to this very moment in time. His breath on your neck. Your smile tucked into his collarbone. The faint press of his knee between your thighs when you swayed too close.
He smelled like soap and whiskey and memory.
“Have you been flirting with me, Sergeant Barnes?” you teased.
“Trying,” he said, voice rough. “You’re not making it easy.”
You leaned back slightly to meet his eyes. And found a glint there—mischief, old and familiar, like a spark that had survived every fire.
“You used to steal my hat,” you said suddenly.
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“In the 40s,” you said, grinning. “You used to steal my stupid knit cap after school and make me chase you three blocks.”
He blinked. And then—
He laughed. Head thrown back, full and unguarded.
“God,” he said, breathless. “I forgot about that.”
“You always gave it back when Steve wasn’t looking. Thought you wouldn’t be cool if you got caught being nice.”
“And you always pretended to be mad.”
“I wasn’t. Not really.”
“I know.”
The song changed. Something slow. Dreamy. You didn’t pull away. Neither did he. His hand slid slightly lower, over the swell of your ass. Your fingers found the back of his neck.
“I dreamed about you,” you said softly.
His breath hitched. “When?”
“Last night. After we spared. You pinned me to the mat. Your hand was on my hip…” He swallowed hard. Your lips brushed his ear. “Didn’t get much sleep after that.”
He growled—low, quiet, but there. “Keep talking like that,” he whispered, “and I’m gonna drag you out of here over my shoulder.”
You bit your lip. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
His mouth brushed your temple. “You’re trouble.”
“Old news, Barnes.”
When the song ended, you didn’t leave each other’s arms. You just stayed, slow dancing to nothing.
Eventually, Yelena sauntered over, raising a brow. “Not to interrupt your very intense eye sex,” she said, “but Bob’s about to be thrown through a window.”
You sighed. “What did he do?”
Bucky chuckled. “I’ll get him.”
“No,” you said, tugging him back. “I got it.”
You pressed a quick, hard kiss to his mouth—his breath stuttered—and then you were gone, disappearing into the chaos with the glint of challenge in your eyes. He watched you go, heart thudding.
And for the first time in a long, long time—
He felt like he might be alive again.
-
It had been a year. Three hundred and sixty-five days since they carried you out of ice and smoke and history. Since Bucky’s hands trembled around your body like you were a miracle that might not stay real. Since the silence between you began to fill—not with old memories, but with new ones.
You’d taken your time. Through the nightmares. Through the nosebleeds and sudden flashbacks and days you couldn’t get out of bed. Through the physical therapy and the sparring and the tears you didn’t want anyone to see, but he always saw anyway.
Through laughter, too. Group texts and terrible popcorn. Bob in a tutu once. Yelena teaching you TikToks. John teaching you restraint (mostly by pissing you off until you practiced it). Alexei teaching you to make the best pancakes you’d ever had.
Through every healing day, Bucky was there. He never asked for more than you could give. Never rushed. Never pulled. But he looked at you like he still felt every breath you took, and that truth never left his touch.
You weren’t his girlfriend. Not really. The word felt too soft. Too easy.
And you weren’t his wife. Not yet. Not in this timeline. But you would be, if he had his way.
The first time you noticed it—really noticed it—you were brushing past him in the kitchen. Your hips bumped, soft and sideways. His hand reached to steady you.
Not an unusual thing. But the way his palm curved over the small of your back—the way his thumb slid just under the hem of your shirt, the callused pad dragging over a place only he had ever really memorized—
It made you freeze.
You looked at him. He didn’t even realize what he’d done at first.
Just smiled.
You felt the air catch in your lungs. Felt your skin buzz where he’d touched you, like your nerves remembered what you’d tried not to want.
Later that night, he pulled you into his lap while you watched something on the couch. You laughed at something Bob said. Bucky leaned forward to kiss your shoulder—and his lips landed in the exact spot he used to kiss, all those lifetimes ago, right before he—
You stilled. He did too. Your head turned, slow.
He met your eyes. He didn’t say it. But he knew.
You could see it in the softness of his smile. The faint heat in his gaze.
He remembered.
It wasn’t that it happened suddenly. It was the slow erosion of distance. It was brushing hands in the hallway. It was waking up with your legs tangled and not untangling them. It was the way his thumb drew slow circles on your hip when you leaned against the counter. It was the way he pressed his mouth behind your ear when you sparred and said, “I remember how your body moves when you’re about to lose control.”
It was the look you gave him after that. It was the dream that night. The one where his mouth was on you and you woke up gasping, hand between your thighs, slick and aching, tears stinging your lashes.
It was the way you said his name the next morning when he passed you a mug. It was the way he blinked, like he knew exactly what you’d dreamed.
Because maybe he had, too.
The night it finally happened, there was no fanfare.
No mission. No storm. No grand music playing. Just the two of you. Home.
You were folding laundry. He was drying his hair. The rain had come down earlier, sharp and quick, and the windows still held little trails of water.
You were wearing one of his shirts. No pants. Just soft cotton and bare thighs. He walked into the room and stopped dead.
You looked up.
The air shifted. Bucky crossed the room without a word. His hands found your waist.
You let him kiss you. And you didn’t stop it this time. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t panic.
You let yourself feel it. His mouth was soft at first. Careful. Then it opened. Deepened. He kissed you like it was still new—but like it was something he knew. Your fingers slid into his damp hair. His hands cupped your jaw. One thumb brushed your cheekbone like he was checking to see if you’d disappear.
You leaned into him. He exhaled against your lips. “Tell me if it’s too fast,” he whispered.
You shook your head. “No. Just—don’t stop, James.”
His mouth hit yours again. Firmer. Hungrier. And he lifted you. Just like that. Hands under your thighs. You wrapped your legs around him without hesitation.
He carried you to the bedroom. Laid you down like you were made of more than bone and blood.
Like you were his beginning and his end.
Clothes fell slow. Reverent. Your shirt first. His eyes drank in the sight of you like it was holy. His shirt next. You watched the ring on his dog tags fall forward, glinting against his chest.
You reached for it. He caught your hand. “Still yours,” he said softly. “Always.”
You pressed a kiss to the tags. To the ring. To the skin just above his heart.
When he finally touched you, it wasn’t with hunger.
Not at first.
It was with memory.
His hands spanned your ribs, palms reverent, as though reacquainting himself with sacred ground. He kissed you like he was rediscovering, not just claiming—slow, mapping the shape of your jaw, the slope of your throat, the valley between your breasts.
His mouth closed around your nipple, gentle at first, then deeper—his tongue drawing soft circles that made your breath catch. Your fingers threaded through his hair. Tugged. You wanted him closer. Always closer.
“Still sensitive there,” he murmured into your skin. His voice was rough, ragged, reverent. You could only nod. Whisper his name like a tether. His hand slid lower. Knuckles dragging down your belly, over your hipbone. When he reached the heat between your thighs, his fingers parted you gently, dragging through your slick folds with aching patience.
“So wet,” he whispered, almost stunned. “For me?”
You whimpered. “Only you. Always you.”
He groaned—deep and guttural—and slid a finger into you. Your hips lifted off the bed instinctively. His thumb found your clit. Drew lazy, knowing circles. The kind that made you writhe. Made you pant. Made you ache for more.
“I know this body,” he whispered, pressing a second finger in. “I remember it.”
His fingers curled. Hit that spot. Your eyes flew open. “Right there,” you gasped. “God, Bucky—”
He kissed you hard, swallowing the sound of your pleasure. Moved his hand in time with your moans. Slid lower to whisper against your throat, “Wanna feel you fall apart again before I get inside you. Need’ta.”
You shattered on his hand. He didn’t stop. He worked you through it—thumb steady, fingers deep. Your thighs shook. Your body trembled. You were soaked. Breathless. And desperate for more.
“Please,” you whispered, reaching for his face, pulling him down. “I need you.”
He was already there. His cock brushed your entrance—hard, flushed, leaking.
He hovered over you, eyes burning. “You sure?”
You wrapped your legs around him, tugging his hips against you, his cock head slipping between your fold, the head pressing in slightly. “I’ve never been more sure.”
He slid in slowly. Inches of stretch, of pressure, of perfect, impossible fullness.
You both gasped. His forehead fell to yours. “Still tight,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Like your body knows me.”
“It does,” you breathed. “It always has.”
When he bottomed out, he didn’t move at first. Just held you. Inside and out.
Then his hips started to rock. Long, slow thrusts—so deep you felt them in your spine. He moved like he was savoring every second. Like each roll of his hips was a sentence in a love letter he couldn’t write.
Your hands roamed. His back, his shoulders, the scar near his ribs. You kissed his throat. Bit his earlobe. Pressed your mouth to the corner of his jaw when he moaned.
“You feel so good,” he whispered. “So fucking good. I missed this. I missed you.”
You cupped his face. Made him look at you. “I’m here. I’m yours. For as long as you’ll have me.”
His rhythm faltered. The words struck something in him. He kissed you harder, deeper, almost bruising. You matched him—thrust for thrust, breath for breath. Then his hand slid between you. His fingers found your clit again.
“I want you to come with me,” he said, voice wrecked. “Wanna feel you take it.”
You did. You broke together. You came with a sob, clenching around him, gasping his name. He followed with a cry—thrusting deep, spilling inside you, forehead pressed to yours, hips stuttering, chest heaving.
For a long moment, there was only breath. Only warmth. Only you.
He didn’t pull out. Not for a while. You stayed tangled, skin against skin, his arms locked around you like he couldn’t let go.
And he didn’t say anything. But the way he kissed your hair? The way he held you afterward like a promise?
Said everything.
-
Morning spilled in quiet through the curtains, painting soft gold across the sheets, across his chest, across your shoulder where you lay curled into him.
Bucky hadn’t moved.
Not all night.
He’d kept his arms around you like you were the only real thing he had left in the world. You’d woken a few times—sore, raw, aching in ways that felt sacred—and each time, he was there. Stroking your spine. Breathing into your hair. Whispering words he never said aloud in the daylight.
Now, the sun had caught him in one of those half-awake moments. Eyes still shut. One hand tracing slow, aimless shapes across your back. You kissed his collarbone.
His fingers paused. Then resumed. “You okay?” he murmured.
“Better than okay.”
You tilted your chin to meet his gaze. The light caught the blue in his eyes. It used to be sharper. Now it was softer. Full of something that steadied you.
Love.
It was always love.
You smiled. “I love you. I wish I had said it when we were kids, and not just assumed that you knew.”
He blinked once. Then again. And then he kissed you—slow, deep, steady. Like the world could end and he’d still say it without words. When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against yours. “I love you,” he whispered. “God, I never stopped.”
You swallowed, emotion catching in your throat. He shifted, getting off the bed. “Wait there,” he said quietly. “Before you say anything else.”
You watched as he bent down and pulled something from the floor. A boot. Worn. Familiar.
He sat up, untied the laces. Reached deep inside.
And when he turned back to you, his palm opened.
There, resting in the center of his hand, was a gold ring. Not the one on his dog tags.
The one he’d thought about giving you since his mother left it for him. Since he was seventeen and joking about marriage under stars and streetlamps.
His mothers ring.
You stared.
He held it gently. Looked at you. “I kept it in my boot,” he said softly. “Since the day she gave it to me. Told me that I should only give it to someone who loved me when I wasn’t easy to love.”
Your heart thudded. “I had it that night,” he continued, “the night before I shipped out. Even before—before the creek. Before we slept together. I already knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That I’d marry you,” he said. “Someday. Somehow. Even if you never said yes. Even if the world ended. I wasn’t completely joking when I used to say that to you.”
Your throat tightened. “I wore it through basic,” he whispered. “Had it in my sock on the front lines. When I fell from the train, it was in there. When Hydra found me. When they broke me. When they remade me. It never left my body.”
Tears slipped down your cheeks. “I forgot everything else,” he said. “But I never lost this. Never let it get taken from me, even when I didn’t know why it mattered.”
He looked at you.
Not like he was asking.
Like he wasn’t sure he had the right.
“But I still don’t know,” he said, voice unsteady, “if I can give you the life you deserve. I’m not who I was. I’m still fighting it—every day.”
You reached for the ring. Took it from his hand. Slid it onto your finger.
It fit.
“I don’t want a past,” you said. “I want you. I want a future we decide on together.”
His breath caught. You leaned in and kissed him, slow and trembling. “I want every morning with you. Every fight. Every dance. Every damn mission with your silly team. I want the future we can build together.”
He didn’t cry. Not quite. But his hands shook as he pulled you into his lap and held you like the sky might collapse.
And when he whispered “I love you” again, you felt the weight of every year it had taken to get here.
going on a date with bucky barnes and it all goes so nicely, so sweetly, so smoothly. you both had so much fun, chemistry and a good time. he's charming, witty and he keeps flirting and complimenting you at every chance he gets. he held your hand all night long, neither of you even noticed it, it just happened naturally, your cheeks hurt from how much you're smiling and both of your hearts are at ease.. that's until the date comes to an end, it's time to pay and you ask him if he wants to go 50/50.
that would be the first time he lets go of your hand that night, it's unintentional just happened out of pure shock. "50... what.." the confusion on his face, you'd think he's an alien seeing earth the first time.
"you know.. 50/50.. we'll split the bill between us"
"split the bill?" he asks and you just nod, he'd blink at you, "50/50.. splitting the bill.. what is this about, i asked you on a date"
now it's your turn to be the alien seeing earth for the first time, "we are on a date, bucky. this is a date"
"no, it's not a date."
"it is a date"
"you're asking me to split the bill, this is not a date"
"oh my god sam was right, you can be such a drama queen." you laugh, he just stares at you, blankly. "it might've been a while since the last time you went on a date so let me break it down for you.. these days, people who go on dates split the bill, they go 50/50" you shrug, "it's normal"
"it's normal? you've done it before?"
you nod, "every date i've been on has been 50/50 yeah"
bucky nearly flips the table. bucky who spent all of his three dollars in the 1940's trying to win a teddybear for a girl he had a crush on, bucky who used to save up most of his income in an old shoe box underneath his bed so he can take his girl to a nice diner, bucky who went to the florist to get you a bouquet of roses and didn't even ask for the price just handed his credit card because to him your smile is priceless, bucky is about to have a stroke.
"you've never been on a date" he says, face still blank.
"yes i have"
"no you haven't. this is your first date." he says, "i'm your first time." he smirks and you blush at the possible implication. "50/50.." he scoffs under his breath, "what else are you gonna tell me next? i should walk on the inside of the sidewalk? keep my jacket on when you're cold? sleep further from the door? not open doors for you? jesus sweetheart what has the world come to?"
you hide your smile, you love it when he rambles like that, he's so calm yet so offended all at once somehow, it's funny and endearing. "what's wrong with walking on the inside of the sidewalk?" you joke and he rolls his eyes making you laugh, "so.. no 50/50? are you sure?" you ask one last time, hands on your purse on your lap.
he keeps his eyes on you as he pays the bill, glaring playfully, gets up and pulls out your chair before putting his black leather jacket on your shoulders, "no doll," he offers you his hand which you quickly hold, intertwining your fingers with his, and opens the door with his metal hand, "no 50/50."
𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 / 𝐭𝐰 – nsfw (18+), MDNI, heavy petting, sex sex sex, breeding kink sorry it’s wartimes, angst, mentions of periods, childhood friends to lovers, Bucky can’t keep his hands off you, especially when he should
Summary: He called you his girl long before he ever kissed you. Long before he fell off the train. Before Hydra. Before the ice. Before he forgot your name—Bucky Barnes was just a boy who called you his girl. The two of you grew up tangled in the Brooklyn trio with Steve: fists and laughter, scraped knees and stolen glances, slow dances and so many kisses. You were never official. But everyone knew. He made sure of it. And when he left for war, he shouted it across the room for all to hear— “You know I’m gonna marry you when I get back, right?”
You never got to answer.
word count: 10k
notes – not proofread. Angst. Smut. Childhood friends to lovers. let me know if we need a part two. or if we want to let it hurt.
tag list: @areyoutheregoditsmecelia
— reblogs comments & likes are appreciated.
Brooklyn was cracked sidewalks and too-loud radios, rain-slick alleyways and fire escapes that burned your palms in summer. It was the scent of bagels on Saturdays and garbage on Sundays. It was home.
And more than that—it was yours, because they were in it.
Steve Rogers was the kind of boy who’d give you his lunch and go hungry just to see you smile— he’d done it so many times when you were younger, pig tails bigger than you, teeth missing when you smiled. Always bruised, always bandaged, always burning to make the world better, even if it beat him bloody for trying.
And Bucky Barnes? He was swagger and shine. The fastest fists in five blocks and the softest smile in the world, if you knew where to look. And you always had— he was your pulse. Had understood you in a way no one else had. And he’d been on your mind since you were 6 years old playing house and he insisted he play your husband and Steve be your dog.
You were the spark between them. The girl with scraped knees, a quicker wit than most priests liked in a confession booth, and a mean right hook when someone called you sweetheart the wrong way.
You’d found each other young—after-school scuffles, shared detention, childhoods built on bare-knuckle loyalty. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t easy. But it was real.
You three had each other in a way that no one else ever could. Knew one another’s laughs and silences. In a glance the three of you could have a conversation that no one else could follow.
By seventeen, you were stitched into their lives like thread in a patchwork quilt—tight and permanent. Steve had the moral compass. Bucky had the charm. And you? You had the fire.
The three of you didn’t match, not on paper. But you matched where it mattered.
Most nights found you curled on the armchair in their tiny apartment with peeling wallpaper. Steve would be reading aloud, stubbornly serious, while Bucky flipped a bottlecap across the kitchen counter, bored out of his skull, making jokes of whatever Steve shared, and looking at you every third word.
Sometimes Bucky would fall asleep with his feet in your lap and your fingers tangled in the hem of his shirt without realizing it. Other times, he’d ruffle your hair just to make you glare at him, grinning like the devil the whole time.
And sometimes—just sometimes—he’d touch you like he forgot he wasn’t supposed to. A hand on your wrist longer than it needed to be. Fingers tracing the side of your palm when you passed the popcorn at the movies.
Not like the girls he danced with on Saturday nights. With them, it was always a show.
With you? It was habit. It was instinct. Like he didn’t know another way to be around you.
-
“You gonna make a habit of putting your hand on my waist every time I walk ahead of you?” The words had come out sharp one evening, just to see what he’d do.
Bucky grinned, unbothered. “Wouldn’t have to if you didn’t look so good doing it.”
You elbowed him. He caught your wrist. His thumb brushed your pulse.
“You’re trouble,” he murmured.
“You’re predictable,” you shot back. But your breath hitched. Just slightly.
He felt it. You saw it in his eyes.
-
Your mother didn’t like either of them, but definitely preferred Steve. He at least called her ma’am and made sure you got home safe if you hung out at the dance hall too late. “That Bucky boy’s bad news with good hair,” she’d said once, scrubbing dishes like she meant to drown the memory of his smirk.
You never denied it.
But your mother hadn’t seen the way Bucky gave up his gloves so Steve wouldn’t get frostbite. Or the way he stopped dead in the street when he heard you crying once, and didn’t ask questions—just offered his shoulder, his coat, and his silence.
You’d seen those things.
You remembered everything.
-
It came fast, the summer storm. One minute the sky was teasing. The next, you were soaked to the bone, barefoot, dress clinging to your skin like a second breath. You pounded up the steps of their apartment, hair plastered to your cheeks, knocking like the world was ending.
Bucky opened the door shirtless.
Of course he did.
Stormlight flashed across his chest, his dog tags glinting.
“You tryna get sick?”
“You tryna lecture me half-naked?”
He threw a towel at your face.
Later, wrapped in flannel and curled under a borrowed blanket, you found yourself on the couch, your wet dress drying in the corner, your socked feet in Bucky’s lap, one hand absently massaging them. He didn’t say a word as he reached down with the other and started playing with your fingers, one by one.
“You always do that?” you asked after a long moment.
“Do what?”
“Touch me like you’re memorizing something.”
He looked at you. Eyes too blue. Voice too soft.
“Maybe I am.”
-
Steve never asked questions. He just gave you his half of dinner when you were short on tips and let you braid his hair once when your hands were shaking too much to hold still otherwise.
He was your protector. But Bucky?
Bucky was your undoing.
And because of that, maybe it was easier not to ask what it meant when he called you his girl in front of other people.
Maybe it was easier to pretend like this was nothing when he danced with someone else and winked at you from across the room.
Maybe it was easier to smile when he touched your lower back like a promise.
-
The diner door jingled behind you as you locked up, the smell of grease and burnt coffee still clinging to your apron. It was a part time job, something to try and help your ma afford rent. Your hands were raw from wiping counters, your feet aching from the double shift, and the wind had the nerve to slap straight through your cardigan like you hadn’t already had enough. Your teeth chattered as you muttered a curse under your breath and started toward the apartment. The street was mostly empty—everyone inside watching the ball game or pretending not to notice the war creeping closer with every headline.
But Bucky was waiting.
He leaned against the brick outside he and Steve’s shared apartment building like a scene from a magazine ad—shoulders slouched, hands in his pockets, collar popped against the wind. His short hair was messy in that deliberate way he somehow always pulled off, and he looked up like he’d known the second your shift ended and you’d be walking past their place to get to yours.
“You planning to freeze to death or just daring me to be chivalrous?” He grinned.
You shot him a look. “I’m planning to go home and sleep for a week.”
“Not dressed like that, you’re not.” He said, looking you up and down. And then, with an exaggerated sigh, he shrugged out of his varsity jacket.
He didn’t toss it. He stepped forward and wrapped it around your shoulders himself. The wool was heavy and warm, still carrying his body heat and the faint smell of soap and cologne.
His hands lingered on your arms. His fingers brushed the side of your neck.
“People are gonna get ideas,” you said, arching a brow.
“They already do,” he said, and smirked like he’d planned that answer for days.
-
You wore it to school the next morning. Told yourself it didn’t mean anything. But everyone knew it did.
The second you stepped through the doors, heads turned. A few girls did double takes. One of Bucky’s old flames narrowed her eyes so hard you could feel the heat of it across the hallway. Whispers were whirling around the cafeteria that “James Barnes was finally going steady— he gave her his letterman jacket.”
Steve spotted you first and immediately burst out laughing. “You really wearing that?”
“It was cold.”
“You don’t even like football. Can’t even name what position Bucky plays.” He sat down next to you, smiling as you huffed, crossing your arms..
“Don’t need to. Looks better on me anyway.”
Bucky joined you both a minute later, eyes tracking the way the jacket hung off your shoulders, sleeves too long, collar tucked up to your jawline. Barnes stitched in cursive over your heart. He looked smug.
“Guess everyone knows who you belong to now,” Bucky said.
You rolled your eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You’re still wearing it.”
He was right.
-
Prom wasn’t supposed to matter to you.
You didn’t buy into the glitz, the promise of magic, the frantic rush for dates. You didn’t expect flowers or fairy-tale endings. You figured you’d go with the girls from work, maybe dance a little, maybe drink something you weren’t supposed to and laugh too hard with Steve.
But Bucky showed up on your stoop with Steve already in tow, both of them grinning, both of them dressed to the nines—hair slicked, ties crooked, their suits just a little too big and shoulders a little too square.
Bucky held out a soft pink corsage. “Figured if I didn’t get to you first, some fool would.”
Steve cleared his throat. “I said that was her decision.”
Bucky just winked. “Exactly. And I’m hoping she makes the right one.” You rolled your eyes. But you took the corsage.
You arrived as a unit—the three of you stepping through the ballroom doors like a living memory, like you belonged on either side of him. A camera flash caught the moment: your hand tucked through Bucky’s arm, Steve on your other side, the corsage ribbon too long and tied messily around your wrist.
The photographer laughed. “Sweetheart’s got two dates tonight?”
Steve blushed. You shrugged. Bucky didn’t miss a beat.
“She always has. She just likes me better.”
The music was loud, the band slightly off-key, and the air smelled like powder, punch, and too much cologne. You danced with Steve first—laughing, clumsy, trying not to step on each other. He was warm and steady, guiding you with gentle hands and soft smiles.
But then Bucky appeared beside you. “My turn,” he said, already taking your hand.
He pulled you close—closer than was polite. His palm pressed to the small of your back. Your hand landed on his chest, where you could feel the rhythmic thud of his heart beneath his starched shirt.
“You clean up nice,” you said, smirking.
“You should see me in uniform.”
“Think I like you better like this.”
He smiled, softer this time. His thumb brushed a line up your spine, and suddenly the space between you was nothing. The world fell away.
And then, in a voice low enough that no one else could hear, he said, “I’m gonna marry you someday, y’know.”
You let out a shaky laugh. “That right?”
“Yeah. So you better stop dancing with Rogers before he steals you.”
You met his gaze then—really met it. “Steve’s not the one who calls me his girl.”
“Damn right he’s not.” He said with the widest grin you’d seen on him in years. You didn’t say anything else. You didn’t need to.
The evening carried on as you stepped outside for air. The night was warm, breezy, thick with the scent of lilacs and cigarette smoke. You leaned against the brick wall behind the gym, watching the stars blur slightly overhead. Your heels were off. Your feet ached. But your chest ached more.
Bucky found you five minutes later.
He looked flushed—tipsy maybe, definitely high on the night, his tie undone and jacket slung over one shoulder. The grin he wore slipped when he saw you.
“Y’know,” he said, voice lower than usual, “for two people who aren’t together, I get real possessive of you.”
You raised an eyebrow. “That right?”
“Yeah. And I think I’m gonna do something stupid.”
Then he kissed you.
It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t slow. It was heat and claim and too many years of touching and not touching. His hand cupped your cheek. Yours fisted in his shirt. The brick was rough at your back. His mouth was soft against yours, but the kiss was anything but.
You kissed him back.
Desperate. Like you might not get the chance again.
Because deep down, you knew.
Something was shifting. War was looming. Time was thinning.
You didn’t talk about it the next day. He joked about the punch. You rolled your eyes. Steve said something about a chaperone catching a couple behind the gym, and Bucky winked at you across the room.
But the kiss stayed in your mouth like a secret, one that neither of you let go of.
And when Bucky brought a girl to the movie theater the next weekend—a blonde in a too-tight dress who laughed too loudly—you dropped your popcorn. Didn’t bother picking it up.
You weren’t together. Not officially.
But it still stung.
-
The heat had been unbearable all week—one of those sticky Brooklyn Julys where the sun felt personal. Shirts clung. Tempers frayed. The air tasted like smoke and warm asphalt.
You’d begged Bucky and Steve to take the long way home, past the orchard fields and the old creek trail you used to run barefoot as kids. The truck pulled to a stop at your request too. Somewhere along the road, nostalgia had kicked in. As you hopped out the car, you kicked off your shoes.
“I’ll race you!” you called over your shoulder, already halfway through the wild grass.
Bucky groaned. “Don’t make me chase you in this heat.”
“You won’t catch me anyway.”
Steve laughed behind you, breathless. “She’s gonna smoke us both.”
But you were already gone—dress hiked up in your fists, hair flying, the wind kissing your skin like freedom.
You reached the edge of the creek first. It shimmered under the late-afternoon sun—cool, glittering temptation. You barely hesitated.
“You won’t do it,” Bucky shouted from behind. “You won’t jump in!”
You looked back over your shoulder, wild-eyed, daring.
“Watch me.” And then—without ceremony, without warning—you unbuttoned your dress. Let it drop.
White cotton bloomers. Thin slip. Bra straps visible, skin flushed from the run.
Bucky choked on his breath. “Jesus,” he muttered, skidding to a stop.
Steve caught up, turned around so fast he nearly tripped. “I’m not looking!”
“Yeah, don’t,” Bucky growled. But he was looking.
You dove in. The water was cold—glorious. It shocked you to your bones and dragged a laugh from your lungs. You surfaced, hair slicked back, arms outstretched. Floating. Grinning.
Steve wandered off muttering something about looking for your shoes and bringing the car closer—like the gentleman he was.
But Bucky stood there frozen, shirt plastered to his chest with sweat, dog tags catching the sun.
“You coming in or what?” you called.
He shook his head. “You’re insane.”
“You’re scared.”
“Of you?” he barked. “Always.”
Then he yanked off his shirt.
You stopped breathing. You’d seen him shirtless before. When you were kids and went swimming. The apartment when you caught him after a bath. But this—under the sun, chest heaving, flushed and glowing—this was something else. He was a man. That much you couldn’t let yourself deny in this moment. He kicked off his boots and waded in.
You drifted toward him, weightless. Watching. Eyes half lidded. When you finally reached him, you splashed his back. “Took you long enough.”
“Could’ve given a guy some warning.”
You grinned. Then—on a whim, bold and stupid—you swam around behind him. Arms looped around his neck. He froze, brain freezing at the feel of your breasts against his back. A low noise came out of his throat; a sound he didn’t even recognize.
He turned around suddenly, and you stumbled forward, arms on either side of his shoulders.
He caught you automatically.
It was instinct. It was effortless. And it was dangerous.
Because suddenly you were wrapped around him in waist-high water, and his hands were on your thighs. His eyes were wide as they held yours. Slowly, so painfully slowly, you wrapped your arms more securely around his shoulders, face inching closer as you settled against him. Your breasts pressed against his chest, his dog tags cold against your skin, sending goosebumps on your arms.
Bucky’s breath hitched in his throat like he was drowning in more than just creekwater.
You stilled. So did he.
“Say something,” you whispered.
He looked at you like you weren’t real. “You’re beautiful,” he said, barely louder than the breeze.
You blinked. Then leaned in. The kiss was soft—uncertain. His mouth brushed yours, tentative, reverent. You kissed him back, eyes fluttering shut. His hands tightened on your hips. One of yours slid into his damp hair. The other curled around the nape of his neck.
And for one suspended moment, nothing existed but this.
Your body molded to his. Your hearts racing in tandem. His lips against yours like he’d been waiting his whole life to be allowed this. Your hips shifting against his, earning a whimper from the man beneath you.
Then—
Honk.
The sound cracked through the air like a gunshot. You jerked away. Steve’s beat-up truck sat at the top of the hill. He was behind the wheel, hand over his eyes.
“I told you I wasn’t looking!” he shouted, embarrassed. “You done swimming, or should I go find a blindfold?!”
You scrambled out of Bucky’s arms like he burned you.
You dressed quickly, heart thudding, hands trembling. Your clothes were soaked and heavy against your skin. Bucky didn’t meet your eyes. When you reached for your dress, he had handed it to you without a word. His knuckles brushed yours. You flinched.
The truck ride home was silent. Steve drove like he was trying not to exist. You sat in the middle. Bucky stared out the passenger window, leg bouncing.
He didn’t touch you. But his wet shirt clung to his chest, and your lips still tingled, and your skin—every inch of it—felt branded.
That night, you laid awake, the window cracked open to the sound of crickets and faraway horns. You told yourself it was just the heat. Just the creek. Just a kiss.
But it wasn’t. It was the kiss. Not like the one from prom when he had been tipsy and jealous of something stupid. This one had weight to it. And because he looked at you different the rest of the day. And the next one.
It was different because you couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of his hands on your thighs. Your legs still ached to wrap around him again.
You couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like if his hands had moved. Had touched you somewhere lower. Somewhere that friends definitely didn’t touch.
Something had changed. And there was no going back.
-
You saw him kiss her.
The redhead from homeroom. The one who laughed too loud and didn’t bother hiding the fact that she wanted him. You saw them through the soda shop window—her fingers curled around his collar, his hand braced on the counter beside her hip.
She kissed him first but he didn’t stop her. What he did do was open his eyes halfway through. Like he felt you watching from across the street.
And then he looked directly at you. You didn’t flinch. Just stared. Held it. Made sure he saw the way your chin lifted, the way your jaw set like you hadn’t just felt something inside you bruise.
The redhead didn’t notice.
But Bucky did.
And that look he gave you? It wasn’t cocky. It wasn’t guilty. It was soft. Apologetic. Desperate. Like he was screaming something behind his eyes.
That night, the three of you went to the movies. A nickel to get in. One screen. Sticky floor. Flickering reel. You barely remember what played.
Steve dozed off halfway through, arms crossed, chin slumped to his chest. The tinny crackle of dialogue filled the theater, but your focus narrowed.
Because Bucky’s hand was on your thigh.
He hadn’t asked. He’d just reached over the armrest between your seats and settled his palm there, warm through the fabric of your dress, his thumb brushing lazy arcs like he was tracing a memory. His pinky grazed the inside seam just above your knee.
You didn’t stop him. You didn’t look at him, either. Your heart hammered so loudly in your chest you couldn’t hear Steve’s soft snores anymore.
He leaned over halfway through a battle scene and whispered, “You’re my girl. You always have been.”
Not just to you. To Steve, too—loud enough for your best friend to hear it through his sleep. You didn’t know what to say. You didn’t believe him, not fully. Not when he’d kissed her. And others. Not when he let you see each girl. But that hand on your thigh said something else. So did his voice.
He didn’t move it the rest of the film.
The walk back to the apartment was quiet. Steve peeled off to check on his mother. Left you alone with Bucky.
Inside, the place smelled like heat and old laundry. The windows were cracked, barely. The two of you stood in the dim yellow of the entryway light, neither willing to speak first.
You sat on the couch. He followed. The silence stretched, warped, bent itself into something heavy.
“You gonna say anything?” you asked, arms crossed.
He sat back, elbows on his knees. “About what?”
“Don’t insult me.”
“She kissed me.”
“And you kissed her back.”
“Wasn’t the same.”
You scoffed. “Funny. You looked pretty into it.”
His eyes snapped to yours, sharp with something almost hurt. “I looked at you.”
That shut you up. Because he had. Because it hadn’t been smug. Because it hadn’t been for show. Because it had felt like he needed you to see it—needed you to know that you were the one who mattered, even if he was too much of a coward to prove it.
You looked away. “You always say I’m your girl.”
“Because it’s true.”
“But you don’t act like it.”
“Don’t I?”
And then he reached for you—fingers curling gently around your wrist. You didn’t pull away. You didn’t breathe.
“You started it,” he said, voice low.
You blinked. “Started what?”
“This.”
Your laugh was bitter. “You really think I started this?”
He leaned in. His forehead nearly brushed yours. “I’m about to end it.” Then he kissed you.
It was nothing like the creek. This was hotter. Rougher. Mouths slanting together like you were both angry. Like you needed to punish each other for all the silence, all the stolen looks and nights spent pretending.
His hands cradled your face like he’d never get to again, he pushed you down onto the couch, your back flush with the uncomfortable cushions. Yours fisted in the front of his shirt like you were sick of waiting, pulling him down on top of you.
He slotted between your thighs with ease. Your legs, your traitorous and aching legs, wrapped around his waist like instinct. His hand touched your bare thigh and you both shuddered.
He kissed you like he was daring you to leave him and you kissed him back like you couldn’t.
You only broke apart when the door creaked open. Steve stepped in, muttering something about the trains. Froze. You were still on the couch, him hovering over you—too close, flushed, guilty.
You looked like a live wire as Bucky leaned away slowly. Steve stared, face a little pink. His brows arched. But he didn’t say a word.
He just walked to the kitchen like he hadn’t seen anything at all. The silence between you and Bucky snapped taut.
Then you said it—without looking at him. “We don’t talk about this.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
And neither of you moved. But that kiss? It hung in the air like smoke. It wasn’t over.
-
It was one of those USO-sponsored community events meant to drum up morale and donations. You’d planned to go with a group of girls. But Bucky showed up at your door in uniform, holding a corsage and an expression you didn’t know how to read.
“You look like you’re about to confess a crime,” you told him.
He handed you the flower. “Only if asking you to dance when you’re down right awful at it counts.”
You laughed and took the flower. “Easy now, Barnes. Or your toes will be the next victim.”
Steve met you both there, and the three of you walked in together—like always. But everything felt different.
Because Bucky didn’t just walk beside you. He touched the small of your back when you moved through the crowd. He whispered jokes into your ear that made you laugh into your wrist, flower he picked out decorating it gently.
And when he took your hand to lead you to the dance floor, he held on like he had no intention of letting go.
You weren’t the best dancer. That much was painfully clear. Neither was he. But he made you feel like you were graceful. Spinning you under the fairy lights, pulling you close when the tempo slowed, letting his hand drift just a little lower than was strictly polite.
Someone tried to cut in—a navy cadet with teeth too white and a smile too practiced. He tapped Bucky’s shoulder, nodding toward you. “Mind if I cut in?”
“She’s taken,” Bucky said, voice calm but cold.
The cadet blinked. “I didn’t see a ring.”
Bucky leaned in. “Doesn’t need one. Corsage is mine. So’s the girl.”
Your heart stopped. The cadet shrugged and walked away. You, on the other hand, spun away from Bucky as soon as the song ended, dragging him toward the hallway behind the bandstand.
“You can’t say things like that,” you hissed. “We’re not—”
He stepped in. “You’re wearing my corsage. You kept my jacket. You’ve kissed me like a lifeline more than once.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t it?” His voice was low. Tired. Honest. The cocky smile faded.
You stared at him. “Why do you keep doing this?” you asked.
“Because I can’t help it.” He said, sounding helpless.
“And what happens when you leave?”
“I’m not leaving you.” He said, voice final. You held his stare for a long moment, before turning on your heel and walking away.
Later, you danced with Steve—trying to cool off, calm down, breathe. He was warm and steady. Polite. Careful. He twirled you and let you lead when you got impatient with the beat.
“You and Bucky,” he said suddenly.
You looked up. “What about us?”
He smiled softly. “You’re good together.”
“We’re not together.”
“You’re the only ones who seem to think so.” You didn’t answer. You couldn’t.
And at the end of the night, you stepped outside to catch your breath. The air was cold, sharp with city wind, and you crossed your arms to keep Bucky’s jacket closed around you.
The man himself found you minutes later. “You looked beautiful in there,” Bucky said.
“You looked smug.”
“I was.” He stepped closer. You didn’t move. “I meant it,” he said. “What I said to that guy.”
You looked up. “Bucky—”
“You’re my girl.” He said it like it was a fact. Like no matter who else he’d kissed or danced with, it didn’t matter because this fact had always been true. Worse, he said it like he was done pretending it wasn’t.
You stared at him. His uniform jacket. His blue eyes. “Even if we’re never official?”
His voice didn’t shake. “Especially then.” He didn’t kiss you. But he touched your cheek, fingers brushing your skin like a prayer.
You let him. Because maybe… he was right. Maybe you had always been his. And maybe he was finally willing to claim it.
-
The city was quiet in that rare, sacred way it only managed after midnight—when the clatter of day had died down, and the wind moved like breath between buildings. You were barefoot, sitting on the roof of Bucky and Steve’s apartment building, legs swinging over the ledge, the flask in your hand already half-empty.
The stars were faint, blurred by smog and distance, but they were enough. Bucky sat beside you, knees bent, forearms resting across them, hair ruffled by the breeze. You passed the flask without looking. He took it without speaking.
Tomorrow—or the day after—he’d be gone. He said he wouldn’t leave you— but he had to. So did Steve.
So you didn’t talk about it. Not directly.
Instead, you talked about stupid things. The mailman who kept mixing up your neighbor’s letters. The kid on the corner who was trying to build a soapbox racer out of trash cans. The weird guy at the corner store who always asked if you wanted to buy “discount stockings.”
And then the silence came and stayed, grew heavy. A reminder that he would be gone soon, that time was running out, and before long your only companion would be the silence of the city when he wasn’t beside you.
“I ever tell you,” Bucky said suddenly, voice quiet, “how often I think about you?”
You didn’t turn your head. Your chest tightened. “Once or twice.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not like this.”
You finally looked at him. His profile was lit by the glow of a distant streetlamp—sharp jaw, tired eyes, that mouth you’d kissed once or twice and never enough.
“I mean,” he went on, “all the time.” He took another sip. Cleared his throat. “I used to tell myself it didn’t matter. That the girls—the flirting, the dates—they were just fun. Easier.” You didn’t say anything. He kept going. “They didn’t scare me the way you did.”
That got your attention. “Scare you?”
He smiled without humor. “Because it’s always been you. And if I let that mean something—really mean something—and then I lost you? I wouldn’t come back from it.”
You blinked. Your heart punched the inside of your ribs.
“I tried,” he said, eyes now on the stars. “Tried to prove it didn’t have to be you. That anyone could make me forget. But I couldn’t.”
The quiet stretched. And then, softer, he said, “I’ve been sweet on you since we were six and you made us play house, and I nearly decked Steve ‘cause you picked him to be your husband.”
You laughed, startled and aching.
“I remember that,” you whispered.
“Yeah. And I remember thinking, No. It’s gotta be me. I’m gonna marry her someday, not Steve.”
You turned to face him fully. “You still believe that?”
His eyes met yours—dark, sure, soft. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
You didn’t hesitate. You kissed him. You climbed into his lap, hands on either side of his face, mouth crashing into his. He grunted, arms coming around you immediately—tight, desperate, anchoring.
His lips moved against yours like he’d been waiting years. Because he had. Because so had you. His hands gripped your waist and yours slid into his hair. You tilted your head and deepened the kiss, rolling your hips against him, and he groaned into your mouth like he was in pain from needing it too long.
You broke first, panting against his lips. “If I don’t come back…” he started, voice low.
“Don’t,” you said, shaking your head. “Don’t say that.”
“I have to.”
You pulled back enough to look him in the eye. “No. You don’t. Because you’re coming back. And when you do…” He waited. “When you do,” you whispered, “this won’t be a maybe anymore.”
His forehead fell to yours. “I’ll hold you to that,” he breathed.
You kissed again, slower this time. Sadder. But you didn’t let go. Not yet.
-
The apartment was too quiet.
Steve had gone to stay with his mother for a few days, giving Bucky space to pack, and maybe giving you space to say goodbye—though neither of you admitted it. His duffel bag was half full, strewn clothes tossed across the bed like a battle he didn’t want to finish.
You sat on the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up to your chest, watching him fold a shirt for the third time. He wasn’t looking at you but his shoulders were tense. His jaw tight.
“You’re folding that like it insulted you.”
He let out a quiet breath. “Trying to get it right.”
“You never fold your clothes.”
He looked up. Smiled a little. “Gotta make a good impression. It’s the army.”
“You made a better one in the creek.” His hands stilled. He looked at you for real then.
Something passed between you. Wordless. Unbearable.
You stood before he could speak and crossed the room slowly. You reached for his wrist, and his hand found yours like muscle memory.
“Can you… stay? Just a little longer?”
He didn’t answer. Just stepped forward, filling the space between you, until your chest pressed against his and you could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
His forehead dropped to yours.
“I don’t want this to be the last time,” you whispered.
“It won’t be.”
“You don’t know that.” Your voice broke.
“I do.” His hand slid up to cradle your cheek. His thumb traced beneath your eye, and for a second, you thought you might cry—but didn’t. Not yet. “I’m gonna come back,” he said, “and when I do…”
“When you do?” you breathed.
“I’m gonna marry you.”
You laughed—quiet and cracked. “You always say that.”
“I’ve always meant it. No matter what I did or who I was with, I’ve always known it was you.”
And then he kissed you. It started gentle. Mouths brushing. Breathing the same air. His hands shaking slightly where they cupped your face. Yours curled in the collar of his shirt.
Then he deepened it like he couldn’t hold back anymore. Like kissing you was the only way he remembered how to live.
You let him. You pulled him closer, backed toward the bed, tugging his shirt loose from his waistband. He followed willingly, stumbling a little as he reached for the buttons of your blouse.
It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t about hunger.
It was about having. About knowing.
He kissed you like he couldn’t breathe without it.
Mouth to mouth, chest to chest, hip to hip. The heat between your legs bloomed fast, an ache you couldn’t hide as he slid his hands over your waist, down your back, gripping like he’d never get the chance again.
“Take this off,” you whispered, fingers tugging at his shirt.
He obeyed. Pulled it over his head in one smooth motion, dog tags falling forward to rest between his collarbones. His body was warm, hard—muscle and memory and home. You let your fingers roam. Let your mouth follow.
“You’re sure?” he asked, voice gravel low, almost a whisper.
You nodded.
“I don’t want to stop once we start, doll.”
“Then don’t.”
Clothes vanished piece by piece. Kisses stole across skin like vows. He moved over you—slow and reverent—his palms skating up your ribs as he stared down at you like he’d never seen something so devastating.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, brushing your hair back. “I’m gonna remember you like this for the rest of my life. Maybe even in the next one.”
His mouth was everywhere. He started slow—kisses down your breasts, your stomach, your hips. And then he lowered himself between your thighs. His mouth left marks on your inner thighs. You shivered at the scrape of his stubble. The heat of his breath.
When he finally licked up the seam of you, you arched clean off the bed.
“Fuck, baby,” he groaned. “You’re soaked for me.”
His tongue was slow at first, teasing, savoring. He licked you open—wide, flat, lazy strokes that had your toes curling. He circled your clit. Sucked. Flicked. Pressed a kiss right to the bundle of nerves that made you cry out.
“You’re gonna come for me,” he muttered. “Right on my tongue. Want to taste it—want to own it.”
You couldn’t respond. Not with how his mouth closed over your clit again and again, not with the way his tongue stroked the exact right spot like he’d mapped it from memory.
Your thighs shook around his head. Your hands fisted in his hair. You tried to hold on. You really did.
But then he groaned against you—“That’s my girl. Always knew you’d be good for me.”— like he needed it, like this was as much for him as it was for you—and you shattered.
You cried out his name as you came, hips grinding into his face, pleasure hitting so hard you couldn’t think.
He licked you through it, held you still with his strong hands. Then he hummed against your oversensitive clit like he wasn’t finished yet. You sagged back, boneless and wrecked, he kissed your thigh. “I’m not done,” he whispered. “Not even close.”
He moved back up your body, mouth slick, eyes dark with something deeper than lust.
He kissed you then—slow, dirty, letting you taste yourself on his lips, on his tongue—and slid two fingers inside you.
You gasped into his mouth.
“So fucking wet,” he muttered. “Tight, too. Jesus.” His fingers curled, slow and sure, hitting that spot that made your eyes flutter and your legs fall open wider.
He worked you methodically—thumb on your clit, fingers buried to the knuckle, curling and thrusting in perfect rhythm.
You were already trembling again.
“You’re gonna come on my hand now,” he told you, voice tight. “Gotta feel you squeeze me before I ever even get inside you.”
You came with a cry, back arching, clenching around his fingers so hard he cursed under his breath.
“Goddamn,” he growled. “You’re gonna ruin me, baby.”
He didn’t give you a break. As soon as your breathing slowed, he pulled his fingers free—slow, wet, watching your slick stretch and fall—and lined himself up.
His cock was thick and flushed, head leaking. You reached to touch him, but he caught your wrist and pressed it to the pillow, kissing the inside of your wrist.
“Later,” he rasped. “I need to be inside you. Now.”
He slid in slow. Inches at a time. Letting you feel every goddamn bit of him. You whimpered. He bit out a curse. “Fuck—so tight. So warm.”
When he bottomed out, he froze. Eyes locked on yours. Chest rising and falling like he couldn’t breathe. “This,” he said. “This is mine. You’re mine.”
You nodded, eyes glassy. “I’m yours.”
It hurt at first, and he held so still, kissing your tears from the corner of your eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispered into your ear. “For giving your first to me. For trusting me with it. It’s mine too, doll. Saved it for you.” He panted. He wanted to move so badly it physically hurt. You were tight, squeezing him like a vice, and he was embarrassed to admit he could come just from this.
“Please,” you whimpered, rocking your hips up slightly, both of you crying out at the feeling. “Keep going, Bucky.”
He started to move—long, deep strokes that made your toes curl and your fingers dig into his back. “Tell me this is good for you,” he breathed, sucking a bruise into your neck.
“It’s good. So good. Please, James.” You cried, hips rocking to meet his.
And he didn’t stop. He kissed you. Praised you. Whispered how perfect you felt, how good you were for him, how no one else had ever touched you like this and now they never would.
He rocked into you harder. Faster. His hand slid down between your bodies, thumb finding your clit again. “I want you to come with me,” he growled. “Want to feel you fall apart while I’m inside you.”
You were already so close. “Please baby, need you,” he whined into your ear. You shattered again, sucking him in harder.
He followed with a guttural moan, burying himself deep, pulsing inside you. “God. Please. I hope it takes.” He whispered so softly that you weren’t sure you were meant to hear it.
You stilled for half a second but you didn’t ask what he meant. You knew.
He was hoping for something more. Something alive.
Something that might survive, even if he didn’t.
You didn’t say anything.
You just kissed him harder, held him tighter, and let him spill into you with a strangled cry.
Except he didn’t stop with one round. He kept going—slower this time. More focused. Drawing out every sound you made. Making love to you like it was the only night he’d ever have.
He kissed your chest. Your shoulders. Your hands. Said your name like it was his favorite prayer. Repeated that he needed to fuck you full until it sticks.
When you rode him in the moonlight—sweat-soaked, back arched, his hands gripping your hips like a lifeline—he whispered, “I’d give you everything. Every piece of me. If I had forever…”
When he took you from behind, your chest pressed to the mattress, his hand tangled in your hair and his voice ragged in your ear, he said, “Still mine. Always mine.”
And when you collapsed in each other’s arms, tangled in blankets and breaths, he held you like time might stop moving.
Later, when you were wrapped together in the hush of the early morning, your head on his chest, his dog tags resting against your shoulder, you reached for something on your hand.
A small silver ring. Nothing fancy. Just your grandmother’s. A family piece with no diamonds, just a smooth band of soft metal and memory.
You took his hand. Pressed it into his palm. “Keep it,” you said. “Come back with it. Maybe you’ll even trade me for a better one.”
He stared at it for a long time. Then slid it onto the chain with his tags. Held it there over his heart.
“You’ll get the better one,” he said. “I promise.”
You almost believed him.
-
The USO hall was too bright.
Balloons bobbed on strings. Streamers hung limp above folding tables. The band played cheerful swing numbers no one really danced to. There were cookies, weak punch, and girls trying to pretend their lipstick wouldn’t smudge on a goodbye.
You stood near the back, heels clicking against the tile, dress pressed and hair curled in a way you hoped looked confident and not like the armor it was. You’d spent the afternoon memorizing how he kissed. The night before, memorizing how he felt.
This morning, you were trying to forget how it felt when the sheets went cold.
Steve found you first. He was clean-shaven, tie a little too tight, nerves showing in the way he adjusted it every ten seconds. He hugged you like family. Kissed your cheek like he might never get the chance again.
And then Bucky arrived. Grinning like the devil. Posture proud, uniform pressed, dog tags glinting alongside the ring you’d given him.
He saw you. And everything else faded. There were other girls in the room. Other friends. Officers. Commanders. But his eyes never left you.
You opened your mouth to speak. He beat you to it.
“You know I’m gonna marry you when I get back, right?” He shouted it so loud, half the room turned. He didn’t care.
He wanted everyone to hear. You saw the flash of mischief in his eyes. The way his chest rose and fell just a little faster as he waited.
Your lips parted. But nothing came out.
You didn’t answer. Because you couldn’t. Because your heart was already breaking. And if you said yes, if you let that hope take root, it would destroy you if he didn’t come back.
So you said nothing. You just looked at him—burned him into your memory. The tilt of his smile. The glint of gold in his hair under the cheap fluorescent light. The way he held himself like nothing could touch him. You offered him a smile in return. Tried not to sob when you saw him look at you like this might be the last time.
Steve laughed beside you. “That idiot always says that.”
But you knew better.
Because this time, it wasn’t a line. It wasn’t a tease. It was a vow.
When the transport was ready, the hall started to clear.
There weren’t enough hugs. There weren’t enough seconds. Steve shook your hand like he didn’t trust himself to do more. You wrapped him in your arms anyway.
Bucky was the last one out the door.
He didn’t try to kiss you. Didn’t say goodbye.
He just brushed a hand over your waist as he passed, fingers grazing the spot on your back where he always touched you. The smallest touch. The deepest claim.
And then he was gone.
You stood in the empty hall long after the music stopped. Long after the doors closed. Long after the other girls dried their eyes and went home.
You didn’t cry.
Not yet.
You just placed your hand where his had been—on your waist. Held it there. Like maybe that would keep him tethered.
Like maybe that would be enough to bring him back.
-
The train rocked steadily beneath him, a lullaby of iron and motion that couldn’t quite drown out the thoughts.
Bucky sat with his back to the rattling wall, helmet resting on his knee, rifle propped beside his seat, the corner of his duffel brushing against his shin. The chatter around him was low—jokes, nervous laughter, boots creaking against metal flooring. Steve was asleep across from him, chin tilted toward his chest.
But Bucky wasn’t tired.
He couldn’t stop thinking about you.
Not about the way you kissed him last night—or not just that. Not even the way you looked stretched out beneath him, whispering his name like a prayer, trembling on his mouth, his fingers, his cock.
It was all of it.
The way you touched his face like he was already a ghost.
The way you pressed that silver ring into his palm, like you knew he’d need something to hold onto.
The way you didn’t say “yes” when he said it—but didn’t say no either.
You hadn’t needed to. He could feel it in your hands. Your body. The way you clung to him like he was already gone.
He bent over slowly, pulling off his boot with care. The soldiers nearby wouldn’t notice. No one paid attention on a ride like this. From inside the soft lining of his sock, he pulled the tiny leather pouch.
Untied the knot.
Slipped the ring into his hand.
His mother’s.
Gold. Simple. Worn around the edges from years of being tucked away and waiting. She’d always told him to give it to a girl who’d love him even when he wasn’t easy to love.
And God, you had.
You loved him before he had medals or missions. Loved him when he was just the neighborhood flirt with calloused knuckles and a smart mouth. When he was still learning how to be good.
He curled his fingers around the ring. Then reached down, laced it tightly into the knot of his boot.
Tucked it against the curve of his ankle, the metal cold against his skin. Fitting. Grounding.
Because every step he took from this point on?
It wasn’t just toward the fight.
It was toward you.
Every march. Every drop from a plane. Every mission run. Every goddamn mile—
One step closer to home.
One step closer to you.
He leaned back against the train wall, heart hammering. Closed his eyes.
He imagined your face. The warmth of your laugh. The sigh you made when he kissed the underside of your jaw. The way you tasted.
He imagined slipping the ring onto your finger.
Not in a church. Not with fanfare.
Maybe just one morning over eggs. Or while you were brushing your hair. Or sitting on the edge of his bed in that old undershirt you stole from him last summer. Or as you held your son on your hip, your nose and his blue eyes. Definitely your smile.
“Still yours,” he’d say. “If you’ll have me.”
He’d make you say yes, eventually. Even if he had to beg.
Especially if he had to beg.
And so, with every rattle of the train, with every mile further from the city, with every breath that carried him deeper into the unknown—
Bucky Barnes reminded himself: He wasn’t going to war for glory.
He was going for you.
And he was going to come back with that ring.
-
You knew something was wrong the moment you saw him.
Steve was standing on your stoop, hat in his hands, pale as snow. He looked older than he had when he left. Like whatever war he’d fought had aged him faster than time ever could. He was larger too. Not the same small guy he’d been when he left.
The envelope in his hand was damp from the cold. He didn’t say hello. Didn’t smile. Didn’t meet your eyes.
“He fell,” he said. Just that.
You blinked. Your fingers curled tighter around the doorframe.
“Off the train,” he added, like that made it make sense. Like that explained anything. “In the Alps. During the mission.”
You shook your head. Not in denial. Just… processing.
“They didn’t recover the body,” Steve said next. Quieter now. “The gorge was too deep. The ice too thick. They… they tried.”
He offered the envelope.
You didn’t take it.
You just stared at it, at the smudge of water across the return address. At the little black seal in the corner.
Steve cleared his throat. “It’s from his CO. I thought—” He stopped. Looked away. “I thought he’d want you to have it.”
That was the last time you saw Steve Rogers.
You didn’t remember taking the envelop or closing the door. You didn’t even remember walking to the kitchen.
You just remembered sitting. Hard tile against your spine. Your legs folding underneath you. Your fingers numb.
The jacket was still there—his letterman. Folded over the back of the kitchen chair like he’d just gone out for bread. You pulled it down, curled it into your lap. Buried your face in it.
It didn’t smell like him anymore.
It just smelled like gone.
You don’t remember how long you stayed there. Hours. Maybe days.
The envelope remained on the counter, unopened.
You didn’t need to read what you already knew.
You just sat on the floor in silence, jacket clutched in shaking hands, trying to keep from slipping under.
At one point—when the light had changed and your back ached from the position—you pressed your fingers to your stomach.
Soft. Curious. Hopeful.
Because you remembered what he said.
“God. Please. I hope it takes.”
You remembered the way he’d looked at you when he filled you with himself—like maybe that would keep a part of him here, no matter what.
So you waited.
You counted days.
You counted dreams.
You pressed your palm to your belly at night and whispered his name into the dark.
You hoped.
And then—
The bleeding came.
Quiet. Cruel.
And final.
The silence that followed wasn’t the absence of noise. It was something deeper. The kind of silence that seeped into your bones and stayed there.
That changed you.
That told you no one was coming home.
Not this time.
For the first time, you let yourself cry.
-
He doesn’t remember falling.
He remembers the moment before—the scream still trapped in his throat, the sight of Steve on the other car, just out of reach. He remembers the sound of the rail splitting, a sickening crack that felt personal. He remembers the light reflecting off the snow, impossibly bright. The sky, wide and uncaring.
And then—
Nothing.
As he falls, he doesn’t pray. Doesn’t scream. He thinks.
About you.
About your lips, parted under his. About your breath in his ear that night, trembling as you whispered his name like you were afraid it would be taken from you. About your hands in his hair, your thighs around his hips, your heartbeat stuttering against his chest.
God. Please. I hope it takes.
He thinks of that, too.
The way he whispered it into your neck like a wish. Like a dare. Like maybe if he left you with something of him—something living—it would keep him alive, too.
He sees a kitchen. A crooked little table. A pile of laundry on the floor. You brushing your hair in the mirror while he buttons a shirt, watching your reflection like a man still stunned you’re real. A baby cries. You roll your eyes. Mutter that he has his daddies attitude. He grins.
Steve and Peggy come over for dinner on Sundays. Peggy brings pie. Steve always forgets the wine. Your kids run barefoot through the hall, and Bucky catches one mid-sprint, lifts her high, presses a kiss to her temple.
He sees all of it.
He believes in all of it. It warms his heart, his body, his soul.
He was warm even when he felt the crack of the ice as his body struck it, louder than antiaircraft fire. Then cold. The kind of cold that steals things. First breath. Then thought. Then shape. The cold slides inside him. Not like a knife. Like rot. Like it’s taking root in his chest and curling around his ribs. He opens his mouth. Swallows ice. He had fallen hard but landed weightless, the world going white around him as he floated, too cold to swim, too cold to breathe. Too cold to do anything but die.
But he wasn’t dead, was he?
He wakes screaming. Except—he doesn’t know if it’s a scream. He thinks it is. His throat is raw. His body is fire. Everything is wrong. His chest spasms. He chokes.
He can’t see. His eyes are crusted shut and when he finally manages to crack them open, the light burns. Something hums. Something buzzes inside his skull.
Spectral clouds dot the corners of his vision, fog gathered and made flesh. Here are the ghosts coming to collect him. He can’t recall any names.
He’s afraid but doesn’t know why.
He wants to fight, but he doesn’t know what. He’s not sure he could, even if he tried. His limbs don’t feel like his own. His whole body is foreign, treacherous in its strangeness. There is pain in places that don’t exist. Weakness in muscles that never relax. The water is gone, but the cold remains.
“What is your name?” a ghost asks. He can’t see his legs, but he tries to move them— to go back to you.
One step closer to her.
One step closer to home.
The ring in his boot. It burns him with its memory. The only thing he knows— back.
He must go back.
To you.
But It’s like trying to break through a shell of thick ice.
“Do you understand me?” the ghost asks, and he does.
He understands the voice, but he still can’t move his legs. He tries his arms that once held you to his chest, but only one of them obeys. His fist closes and opens and closes again. Is it even his own?
“Bucky,” he hears your voice in his mind.
He tries to look for you, but something holds his head in place, and the light is still in his eyes. He wants to stand—he needs to get back to you. He can’t stop hearing you and seeing you. Your laugh. The way you leaned against the diner counter when you were mad at him. The way your fingers brushed his every time you handed him a cup of coffee. The way you kissed him behind the gym. In the creek. On the roof.
He thinks of your belly. Round. Carrying the piece of him he left behind.
You always joked that he’d die on his feet, rising to meet a bullet. But here he is, drowning in light and full of water, with nothing but a hand that isn’t his.
“What is your name?” the ghost asks again, and he knows the answer. He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He tastes blood. Or chemicals. Or both.
Don’t say it, he thinks, as he clenches his jaw until he feels the pain. His whole body trembles with the effort it takes not to answer, to keep his head above the current when it would be so much easier to give in and let himself sink. Away from you. But he can’t. He promised. He still needed to make you his wife. Wanted to see what you named his son. Hopefully not James Junior. No, you wouldn’t do that.
“Almost finished,” the ghost says, and he feels the soothing press of fingers against his forehead, pushing back his hair. You had done that, once. But it wasn’t you. This hand is gloved. Precise.
Suddenly, though, the memory of your hand slipped away.
All he could recall was that someone had touched his hair with tenderness. He was sure of it. But when he reaches for the memory, there’s only empty air.
He can feel the absence of whoever once occupied that space inside him. It steals his breath, the enormity of that chasm. His heartbeat stutters, the tremor echoing in a rising electronic beep.
There are straps across his chest. Ice in his veins. Wires where his skin should be.
The voice is closer now. “Tell me your name,” the ghost says. “I’m going to help you,” it says, firmer this time. “But you have to let go.”
He clenches his jaw.
“Let go of your name.” The voice says again. Not— whose? Whose voice was he thinking about again?
They can’t have that. Not that. Not—
The ice cracks under him. The water funnels in, frothing and studded with glacial ice, and he can’t fight it. He can’t swim. He can’t wait on a tide that will never turn, and it’s not just water as far as he can see. It’s farther. It’s all that’s left.
“Tell me your name?” The cold voice demands.
He’s sitting up now. Sort of. His right arm hurts. Not sore. Wrong.
Heavy.
He looks down and sees metal.
Not a glove. Not a weapon.
A limb.
He screams.
“Tell me your name,” the voice insists.
He shakes his head. It hurts. God, it hurts. He tries to remember something. Anything.
A laugh. A rooftop. A pair of lips, soft and parted.
“Please,” he gasps. “I don’t—” Through a mouthful of cold water, the man gasps his reply, gagging up each word like it’s a sharp-edged fractal of frost.
“Tell me your name.”
He grits his teeth as mind continues to fracture. The memory of you is there, but it’s slipping.
He reaches. He claws for it. Your smile. The pressure of your thighs around his hips. The promise he made.
“I’m gonna marry you when I get back.”
But the cold takes it. The light. The voice.
All of it.
And through lips cracked with frost, through lungs filled with salt and smoke and suffering—
He gasps:
“I… I don’t know.”
Silence.
“Good,” the ghost replies. “Good, that’s perfect.”
-
Time shatters. Or maybe memory does. He’s awake. Then not. Then awake again.
Sometimes he’s in a tank. Floating. Alone. Sometimes he’s strapped to a chair, teeth biting down on a strap of leather, screaming, eyes wide as something drills into his skull.
Sometimes—rarely—he dreams of someone. Not your face, not completely. But the feeling of you. The taste of your kiss. The sound of your voice saying his name.
Bucky.
He tries to answer. Can’t.
He tries to hold on.
But you slip from him, becoming someone unknown.
-
“Soldat?” A ghost asks.
They put the mask on his face.
Slide a command into his skull.
“Gotov podchinyat’sya.” He hears his voice reply.
The lights dim.
The man who kissed you beneath the stars—the one who dreamed of Sunday dinners and your laugh in his kitchen—is gone.
But somewhere, buried under blood and ice, under bone and steel—
James Bucky Barnes still remembers the way your voice shook when you said his name. Still had a small golden ring tucked into his boots, a silver one hung on his dog tags.
