Fic ideas I’ll never finish #5928034.7
Inspired by: “What you're doing is against protocol, so if you endanger an operation or if anyone gets hurt, I'll reassign you to Barrow, Alaska, and you'll spend the rest of your years pulling the night shift guarding Blonsky's cryo-cell.” - Agent Coulson, Agents of SHIELD.
(Some logistical issues, what with Barrow being over 2000 miles across treacherous north west passage from Greenland, where the Valkyrie crashed - and my only knowledge of Barrow, Alaska being from the movie “30 Days of Night” - but bear with me...)
Steve wakes up in the icy slurry that is the Valkryie’s cockpit, drowning in memories of New York winters, of Father Gleeson giving him his last rites yet again, when he isn’t, you know, actually drowning, as he crawls his way to somewhat stable ground. He’s surrounded by ice in all directions with no real idea where he is (or how much time has passed) so he makes for the nearest rise in the hopes of getting his bearings. No such luck, just more ice, but in the distance he spies a cabin. There he gets a change of clothes and the sinking feeling that something is very wrong. He finds a trail outside that leads to a road, that leads to a small coastal town. It’s full of strange cars and people in odd clothes talking on communications devices that are beyond even Howard Stark’s wildest imaginings. He can’t bring himself to straight out ask anyone the question that’s sitting heavy on his tongue, instead he seeks the answers out in a local newspaper: He’s in Greenland, seventy years in the future.
He spends the rest of the short day wandering around the town in a daze, unsure what his next move should be when everyone he knows is most likely dead. He spends the night shivering on the floor of the local church, considering his next move. He doesn’t know who won the war, if he’s remembered well or not at all, and so isn’t willing to out himself to the local authorities just yet. First thing the next morning he heads to the docks and finds a captain of a small cargo ship who doesn’t ask too many questions and heads back to the USA the long way around.
“I can’t believe I shaved my beard for this,” Agent Barnes grumbled as he stomped out of the Triskelion. He’d spent two years effectively banished to one of SHIELD’s most isolated outposts following the worst mistake of his career (hitting on Hill seemed to be the most popular rumour but truth was far worse and still classified Level 8) and thought being called back to civilization to face the review board meant his punishment was finally over. How naive. He had appealed their ruling out of sheer stubbornness but they weren’t able to schedule another review until the spring, so Bucky just had to hope he could survive another winter in Barrow, Alaska.
A month later Bucky’s mountain man beard was well on its way back and the routine of double checking the security of the “weather station” was wearing thin. He threw on the required twenty layers and headed into town to collect his last guaranteed delivery before the Arctic was plunged into the darkness for sixty days and he became one good snowstorm away from being cut off from the world. He dawdled on the drive back, taking the scenic route along the coastline to catch one last glimpse of the sun before it disappeared below the horizon. And as he drove past the docks he saw something that was completely impossible: Steve Rogers, alive and well. Steve Rogers with a fricking beard that put his to shame.
The average SHIELD agent would have simply dismissed it as a passing resemblance, if they noticed it at all, but Bucky, despite his current post, was not an average SHIELD agent. He had been trained under Phil Coulson and been exposed to the man’s “academic” interest in the WWII legend for years - he’d bet his last bottle of vodka that the man walking across the street was the same one that "died” saving the world seventy years ago. And if he was the one to bring Captain Rogers in...
Bucky hadn’t even finished the thought before he was pulling his truck up alongside the war hero.
“Hey buddy, don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Bucky called, eyeing Steve’s holey knit sweater and thin coat curiously, “But it’s kinda cold out. You need a ride somewhere?”