If you're lost you can look and you will find me, time after time. Whoever said you can’t change the past clearly didn’t have a time machine. Below are my Top 5 Favorite Stories:
“the things that stay the same” (T, 4k) by BucksomeBarnes
Steve's finished returning the Infinity Stones and has enough Pym Particles to make one last stop to see Bucky in 1939.
+ Alt Endgame. Bucky is reassured things will turn out okay. Incredibly sweet.
-☆-
“All Over Again” (T, 2k) by fmo
Steve wakes up in 1944, where everyone is still alive. Where Bucky is still alive.
It's not as simple as it seems.
+ Post Defrosting. Steve gets a chance to talk to past Bucky, but some things aren’t adding up.
-☆-
“Where All Roads Lead” (E, 46k) by DrowningByDegrees and alby_mangroves
When Steve Rogers inadvertently touches a relic in the course of a mission gone sideways during WWII, he’s catapulted seventy years into the future. Before he's even sure where he's ended up, his search for help puts him in contact with Bucky Barnes, a historian and college professor who has built a career around studying Captain America.
With Bucky's help, Steve means to find out how exactly he ended up in 2017, and solve the bigger mystery of how to get home. There's just one problem. The closer they get to their goal, the less certain Steve is that he wants to go home.
+ Shrunkyclunks. Modern Bucky learns you shouldn’t meet your heroes. (Or should you?)
-☆-
“Strangers in the Street” (T, 15k) by crinklefries
Bucky is eighteen, not stupid, so he shakes his head.
“No thanks, fella,” he says.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” the man says.
It’s such a funny thing to say that Bucky pauses, frowning. In between his fingers is the thin white cylinder, its ends neatly trimmed.
“You don’t know me,” he says.
“Maybe,” the man says. His voice is deep in a way that Bucky can’t catch, but can swallow. It rattles into him, a tenor so low it makes his jaw ache, warms him in the chilled night air. “I thought I did, once.”
*
(Every five years, Bucky meets the same tall, blond stranger.)
+ Alternate Universes. Bucky is always meant to be with Steve
-☆-
“this time is difficult” (M, 5k) by radialarch
Steve goes back in time to save Bucky. But time is a complicated thing.
+ Post WS. Some things you can’t prevent, but you can certainly improve them.
-☆-
*More time travel stories in the Art, Endgame Fix-It, Double Trouble, and Groundhog Day lists
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
{So I got @bucksomebarnes for the secret santa and wrote Bucky being a dweeb and being useless on a mission because he just loves Nat so much
Summary: In their first undercover mission together since being reunited, Natasha and Bucky find themselves at a black tie event with the goal to break up a gambling ring. Hopefully, Bucky hasn't forgotten how to dance. }
