From: the god of lost things
The flight takes them a week, even with hyperdrive engaged to speed them up. Bucky would have warped them, but their destination is vague enough that he wasn’t sure - still isn’t - that they wouldn’t hit the planet that is their target in an attempt. The whole quadrant is empty on every map - if this one planet was missing, what else is?
So, Bucky keeps them to their top manual speed, and by the time they arrive, it’s obvious that Steve’s ready to have his feet on solid ground again. Bucky’s used to it - has spent most of his life travelling the starry roads, but Steve’s new to this whole thing, and is feeling the ache, the craving for the press of a planet under his feet. It’s an itch that Bucky hasn’t felt in a while, but he knows it’s ilk, so he tries not to tease Steve too much.
When Steve says, “I just want to feel dirt again,” though, it becomes impossible to resist
It’s their sixth day - they’re close now, they’ve entered the Empty Space as Bucky’s taken to overdramaticising it in his head, and Steve’s lying on his back on the floor in the kitchen, as though the more prone he is, the closer he is to the dirt he’s saying he craves. “Dirt,” Bucky says slowly, one eyebrow raising.
“Everything else too, but dirt is universal, dirt is… dirt.” Steve’s looking at him with that expression that Bucky’s been trying to avoid - the one where his brows furrow together, his eyes open up wider, and he just looks so sad that Bucky wants to give him the world - and Steve knows it. “The smell of dirt is something I’ll never take for granted again,” Steve vows.
“We’re almost there,” is Bucky’s reply. “You can shove your whole face in the dirt once we get there if you must,” he adds, “But you need to get off the floor.”
Steve whines like a child, but he does get up, and eventually finds a food on the replicator that seems to satisfy his craving for earthiness - something full of greens, of root vegetables. It holds him steady even as Bucky gets a chirp fromt he computer and heads back up, only to come face to face with the planet they’d been looking for, the one that by all accounts and every map shouldn’t exist.
Steve’s on his heels, and he gasps softly at the sight, eyes going round. Bucky’s almost as entranced by Steve’s expression as he is by the planet ahead - after a while, they start to look the same, but surprise displays differently on Steve’s face every time he displays the expression.
This planet is unique from the others Bucky’s used to visiting, however, by the lack of tech in the air around it, the lack of chatter on the comms system, the lack of contact from the authorities.
If he squints he can see debris - like there had been sattelites orbiting, or had been attempts to stretch their command out further than the planet they inhabited, but if the diary was painting an accurate portrait, that would have been over six hundred years ago. Much of it has been turned to dust by other objects - close asteroid passes maybe, or simply the searing heat of their star whittling away at the joins of metal and rubber.
“Estimated arrival, twelve hours from now,” the computer says in her politely wooden voice, and Bucky looks over at Steve.
“It’s so… green,” Steve says. “No ugly scars of their dominant sentient species, no lights from cities, it’s all - green.
Bucky hums, focuses his eyes a little further in, and nods. “The last mention of sentient communicating species on this planet was about six hundred years ago, by my estimate. This planet isn’t even supposed to exist.” There’s no scarring either - from natural or annatural disasters of any sort. Nothing that gives any sort of hint as to why their civilisation had been so thoroughly removed from history, no hint as to how things had ended this way. Though, he supposes, any evidence of most of those things would be overgrown by now, plants taking back the space that is rightfully theirs.
“There’s your dirt,” Bucky adds with a smile, gets an elbow in his ribs for the trouble. Steve smiles at him though, one of those warm little ones that seem so completely reserved for Bucky.
