*Someone asked for a post WS continuation, and then I couldn’t help myself. So, here it is.*
When Steve wakes up in the future, it would be about the last thing he wanted. Everyone tells him that his soulmark hasn’t faded, which means his soulmate must still be alive, and he tells them that it’s probably just an unexpected consequence of the serum, because he knew who his soulmate is, and they definitely aren’t alive anymore. He remembers the last words his soulmate ever said to him, and he knows he’s never getting them back.
He doesn’t tell anyone that the last words he remembers aren’t the words engraved on his forearm. He doesn’t tell them that what he will never forget are Bucky’s screams as he fell from a moving train, or Bucky’s face twisted up in terror when the rail broke free and everything they knew fell to pieces.
He makes up some story about a pretty girl he met in London who died when a bomb fell on her building. He gives them another fiction to add to the made up Captain America that the world has turned him into, and eventually people stop asking him for more. Bucky may not have been his real soulmate, but he was still Steve’s, and if Steve holds onto him a little possessively, a little jealously, well he thinks he’s allowed to be a bit ridiculous and petty in this regard. He’s given everything for the world; he doesn’t need to give them Bucky as well.
After they’ve been working together for a while, Natasha tells him that it’s more accepted in this day and age for people to date people who aren’t their soulmates. A lot of people have started movements to normalize dating people who aren’t your soulmate, and moving on after a soulmate dies is seen as healthy nowadays. Steve doesn’t tell her that before modern technology allowed people to analyze their soulmarks and pick out the perfect person from a database, plenty of people ended up falling in love with people for whom they were merely “good enough” rather than “made for each other.” He does not tell her the stories he remembers of best friends marrying other people and being happy with their lives and their friendship on realizing that their soulmarks were for each other. He does not tell her about the strangers who would bump into each other in the street and mutter a, “Sorry, don’t mind me;” “No worries, on a street this crowded I’d be surprised if no one ever ran into each other,” and then go breathe sighs of relief that they had found and lost their soulmates and could live their lives without being terrified of losing themselves to another person and forgetting everything else that used to be important, as sometimes happened with soulmates who ended up together.
He hides behind this modern idea that the past was so much stricter on only soulmates being allowed to be together, and tells her that he’s just not ready to date again after losing the perfect person. He deals with Tony’s jokes about his prudishness and old fashioned morals when they are forced to spend time together. He adjusts to the new century, makes a few friends, and lets most of the world believe whatever they want about the comic book superhero that he never really was.
And then the Winter Soldier appears. A soviet ghost from Natasha’s past. An assassin with a kill count that maybe no one knows the full extent of. A man with a metal arm who nearly killed Nick Fury. A figure clothed in Kevlar and metal that finally makes Steve’s heart race, makes his pulse pound and his breathing slow with something he hasn’t felt in years. When the mask finally comes off and Bucky’s face stares at him with blank eyes, the whole world stops just long enough for the man with Bucky’s face to escape. Bucky is alive, and Steve has never felt so lost in his life. It’s not till later, when Hydra’s been exposed and SHIELD has crumbled and Bucky is alive but still lost, that Steve realizes, Bucky was missing his left arm, and that means he doesn’t have a soulmark anymore.
His new friends caution him that Bucky won’t be the same, that he may not even be Bucky anymore, but Steve doesn’t care. Maybe Bucky did die a long time ago in WWII, and maybe this new person with his face will be someone entirely different. Maybe they were never soulmates, and maybe this new person doesn’t even have a soulmate if his mark is gone from his body. Steve has never cared much for rules and he gave up on soulmates a long time ago. But he’s finally found a reason to move forwards, and he’s going to find the man that Bucky has become, because he will always love James Buchanan Barnes, no matter what happens or who they are, and he doesn’t need a mark on his arm with the last words he’ll ever say to his perfect person to tell him that.
