flowers, come what may.

janie | 27 | just fandom things <3

[yourladyjane]

I do not consent to having any of my work reposted, translated, or copied to third party sites. Please also note that this blog is extremely anti-generative AI. If you use them, kindly keep me and my stories far, far away from it.

ｍａｓｔｅｒｌｉｓｔ

⁰¹ BUCKY BARNES MASTERLIST ⁰² STEVE ROGERS MASTERLIST ⤷ OTHER CEVANS CHARACTERS ⤷ OTHER MARVEL CHARACTERS ⁰³ MISC. CHARACTERS ⁰⁴ VERSES/ANTHOLOGIES/CROSSOVERS

ｗｏｒｋｉｎｇ ｏｎ . . .

🌱 alt. universe 🌻 fluff 🍁 mature ❄️ angst

ｓｔｅｖｅ ｒｏｇｅｒｓ 〡 marvel

blossom & bloom 〡 🌻 ❄️ (self-indulgent rom-com series / fake dating / friends to lovers)

conflict of the mind 〡 🌻 (nomad!steve x bounty hunter!reader / mild enemies to lovers)

i didn’t come here to leave you 〡 ❄️ (time travel fiascos / open ending)

skies wide open 〡 ❄️ 🌱 (captain hydra!steve / angst angst angst)

just like magic 〡 🌻 ❄️ 🌱 (fractured fairytale AU / skinny!steve)

ｂｕｃｋｙ ｂａｒｎｅｓ〡 marvel

run off the world 〡 🌻 🍁 (bounty hunter!bucky x thief!reader / enemies to lovers)

requiem 〡 ❄️ 🌻 🌱 (captain hook!bucky x fairy!reader / a longer, series version of this fic)

untitled 〡 ❄️ 🌻 🌱 (prince!bucky x crossdressing!reader / fractured fairytale AU)

ｂｏｂ ｒｅｙｎｏｌｄｓ〡 marvel

under your sun 〡 🌻 ❄️ (vigilante!reader / mistaken identities / two-party love triangle)

ｊｏａｑｕｉｎ ｔｏｒｒｅｓ〡 marvel

in the golden hour 〡 🌻 (ft. lots of dogs / collection of vignettes / continuation of this fic)

ｖｅｒｓｅｓ ／ ａｎｔｈｏｌｏｇｉｅｓ

the gods we can touch 〡 ❄️ 🌻 (inspired by album of the same name by aurora / mythology collection)

once upon a dream 〡 🌻 ❄️ 🌱 (fractured fairytale collection)

copyright © 2026 by yourladyjane. All rights reserved. Do not repost, translate, or copy to third party sites. No part of this work may be fed into any AI software or websites. Minors are asked not to interact with my blog; you are responsible for your own media consumption. Anon asks are currently closed because some of you are very mean and ruined it for everybody else.

[yourladyjane]

if u get a ★★★★★ in ur inbox it means ur moot appreciates u, and your efforts in the community !!!!! send this to 10 mutuals to continue the love 🏩

— @elixirfromthestars 🫶🏼

OMG what do you mean i left this in my inbox since november??? 😭

i’m so sorry, darling, i’m so bad at this. thank you for sending this to me, i love you so very much! 🩷

[ronearoundblindly]

'The Root of All Ransom' Masterlist

Ransom Drysdale x rich!Reader (enemies-to-lovers) ⛈🔥🦆

Ransom hates you, that one, self-made, rich bitch who wins all the philanthropy awards, but he finds a way to use you to anger his mother, Linda. Bonus that he can get some ass in the process. What could possibly go wrong? Money is the only thing he loves, right?

Angst, romance, and smut; each chapter has its own warnings. Please read them carefully. MINORS DNI 18+ ONLY You will find all-age friendly fic on my Light Masterlist, but not here!

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Mini One-shots:

Gifts Given -- set between pt. 4 and 5

Gifts Received -- set during or anytime after pt. 4

Love of My Life -- set days after pt. 6

A Fluffy Blanket -- set after pt. 6

Beck and Call -- set anytime after pt. 4

Help with A Basic Task -- set after pt. 6

Ski Resort -- teeny tiny drabble after pt. 7

Fire & Ice -- between pt. 7 and 8

Is that a 'yes?' -- kinda anywhere after pt. 6

The Ransomizer -- idk but you're dating...

Out of Spite -- after pt. 7

(Dirty Headcanon; Another)

Shipper asks: 1, 2, 3

The Stoop -- between pt. 7 & 8

The Sequel:

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

***Ransom Demands parts will be labeled 1-6 in their stand-alone posts but 7-12 here for chronology and specifics of where mini-tales are in between.

[Main Masterlist]

[yourladyjane]

oh this seems like it’ll be fun.

please share a favourite line or two (or even a whole entire passage if you want!) that you’ve written!

OR tag one of your favourite writers and share a line of theirs that stuck with you 🩷

and then tag some more friends~

@anika-ann @bcksbarnes @cevansbrat0007 @darsynia @elixirfromthestars @gremlin-girly @intrepidacious @jackys-stuff-blog @marvelstoriesepic @mercurial-chuckles @marvelettesassemblenow @navybrat817 @rintxt @ronearoundblindly @saiyanprincessswanie @steviebbboi @stellar-solar-flare @stargazingfangirl18 @writing-for-marvel 🩷

[ronearoundblindly]

Mine are

He’s an amoeba of a man staring evolution in the face.

From The Root of All Ransom

and

His face cracked, an avalanche unmoored from a stable mountain.

From Your Dog, His Tricks

and I remember these off the top of my head because, like, oh shit, gurl, you should write or something…

Npt @thezombieprostitute @peyton-warren @ellethespaceunicorn @indigo-jungle @real-jane @foxgloveprincess @holylulusworld @tuiccim @buckets-and-trees @nekoannie-chan and anyone else who has a beloved line!

[yourladyjane]

Oooh, both of those got me intrigued!! 👀👀👀👀

That first one is actually brilliant for Ransom 🤭

[yourladyjane]

oh this seems like it’ll be fun.

please share a favourite line or two (or even a whole entire passage if you want!) that you’ve written!

OR tag one of your favourite writers and share a line of theirs that stuck with you 🩷

and then tag some more friends~

@anika-ann @bcksbarnes @cevansbrat0007 @darsynia @elixirfromthestars @gremlin-girly @intrepidacious @jackys-stuff-blog @marvelstoriesepic @mercurial-chuckles @marvelettesassemblenow @navybrat817 @rintxt @ronearoundblindly @saiyanprincessswanie @steviebbboi @stellar-solar-flare @stargazingfangirl18 @writing-for-marvel 🩷

[vigilantekisser]

masterlist

hi! :D i'm joey (she/her), 21! i write sometimes but lurk more often

i write nsfw and dark content, read and heed the tags. don't like don't interact or you will be blocked otherwise

likewise, everything here is fictional. if you're not into it, block me

18+ only please

masterlist under the cut

matt murdock/daredevil

scent of peace [ao3]

voicemail, vase, vigilante

ten and two

soft serve

fortune cookie

moonstruck

heartstring

what's in matt's wallet?

valentine's day eve

my goat is washed 🔥 (tired!matt)

after hours

secretary!reader blurb

the very injured caterpillar

that's all

series:

infinity on high (college!matt)

🔞:

let it be done unto me (husband!matt, breeding kink)

cross the line (professor!matt)

apple lotion (college!matt)

timeout

how many kisses are enough?

my dark/mean!matt tag

dex/ben poindexter/bullseye

ring toss [ao3]

off target [ao3]

cat, interrupted [ao3]

dex vs. the emoji industrial complex

slammer

metronome

how does he text?

🔞:

trigger happy [ao3]

loser [ao3]

misfit (part 2 to loser)

backslide

reroll

pegging dex

general tags: #🖋️ - all writing

do not feed my works to generative ai or i will kill myself ((ヽ(๑╹◡╹๑)ﾉ))♬

[blackout-strike]

Tumblr March 2026 Blackouts

So we're all pissed at the new update as we should be and I've been seeing many people proposing blackouts, which is amazing! But all the dates are different and people might get confused at what's happening when, so I just want to organize every blackout (at least that I saw) in one place.

So far I saw six people with dates.

The earliest one, organized by @yourlocalfandomfriendo begins on March 18th and will last 48 hours.

This overlaps with a second proposed blackout by @veejiez for March 19th.

There is also one on the 20th proposed by @daysleftofsecondterm and another one on the same day from 6AM UTC to 6AM UTC on the 21st by @everythingwsnormalhere.

These three days are all very soon so not everyone may see them in time to participate, but if you are able to participate for any or all of these days, I highly encourage you do. Otherwise there are two more blackouts coming up:

The next one after these will be on March 24th as organized by @aroacesafeplaceforall who suggested doing 12 hours.

And the last one, which I personally have a lot of hope for as it's a major day for activity on Tumblr and a blackout then could be especially impactful: April 1st, as proposed by @darkwood-sleddog

There is also a discord set up by @yourlocalfandomfriendo and @aroacesafeplaceforall for anyone interested in joining in!

SO OVERALL, it may sound like a lot, but no one expects everyone to participate to every date here. But PLEASE try to participate in at least one or two of these, even if you feel it may not do much.

Typical strikes, the ones we hear about all the time, win by withholding their labour for consistent periods of time; that's the power people have at work because that's what's exploited.

For blackout strikes, we need to withhold our attention; the resource we own which is exploited through the selling of both advertisements and data.

My comparison of blackout strikes with regular strikes will be for a whole other post, but for the time being, just know that

withholding our attention is our digital bargaining weapon

Tumblr literally lost 63% of its monthly traffic from 2024 to 2025; they are not in a position to play around with those of us still here.

So PLEASE try participating. We cannot let every decent online space get enshittified with no care or consideration for the communities using those spaces.

And where labour strikers risk losing incomes and jobs, all blackout strikers risk is... gaining some of their attention back for a little bit.

[snowbairdd]

Isabella Wei as Posy Li in BRIDGERTON season 4

[yourladyjane]

hey who knows how to code? lets just create our own app lol

[tumblr]

Reblogs in a chain now get their own notes

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!

[changes]

It’s very clear that you all have strong feelings about Tumblr and about this change. We hear you. The passion people have for how Tumblr works is one of the things that makes this place special.

As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.

Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.

If you’d like to talk directly beyond the comments, leave a reply and we’ll follow up with as many of you as we can. We want to work with you to make Tumblr better.

[mercurial-chuckles]

How about this instead?

First and foremost, ET TU, @tumblr? (Sorry, I needed to do that.)

Okay, so I've seen the new proposed changes as to how the notes work, and I know how strongly we disagree and how heartbreaking and overwhelming they feel.

If I may, I have a workaround @tumblr @changes @staff

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

When I read about these changes, like every other creator, I was devastated, as the engagement is already too low, and this would shatter everything we adore about reblogs. It ultimately got me thinking.

How about this instead: Reblogging an original post yields double the notes for the creator, while the reblogger's reblog yields them a note too (or some weighted scoring based on development feasibility), but the original creator will be able to see the reblogs and the engagement on their post. This way, engagement increases (which has been a primary concern for most of us creators). Original creators will be ecstatic, and everyone will give importance to reblogging, if they want engagement, and this beautiful abode we escape to becomes invincible and a haven.

If this could be developed, it would be a fairytale ending for all of us.

You happy. We happy. Reblogger happy. Everyone happy.

What do you guys think? Please feel free to share your ideas.

I'm curious. Indulge me, if you will. What do you think?

This could resolve the misery.

Nah, I like the changes better.

No changes.

Voting ended onMar 24

Tagging some of my beautiful mutuals:

@anika-ann @stellar-solar-flare @steviebbboi @yenzys-lucky-charm @castielscaplan @nekoannie-chan @azriona @late-to-the-party-81 @artficlly @estrellacercadelvolcan @buckybarnesfic @soelstress @societyfolklore @navybrat817 @thevillainswhore @sunday-bug @themaradwrites @thenameswinter99 @jackys-stuff-blog @claudette13 @flowersforbuckymain @gremlin-girly @yourladyjane @vunblr @elixirfromthestars @eloquentlytired @lokischambermaid @sosa2imagines @saiyanprincessswanie @bigtreefest @zaraomarrogers @mrs-elsie-barnes @labella420 @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory @jobean12-blog @bitchy-bi-trash @salvatoreitmeanssaviour @our-marvel-universe @drabblesandsnippets @thewritergremlin-rae @buckets-and-trees @skaye44

[yourladyjane]

I get where this is coming from, sweetie! 🩷 And it is a fine alternative—that is, if they really must roll out an update. But my question is, what is the point of changing it now? What is this supposed to even accomplish?

I like seeing what others have to add to a chain, and it’s nice to be able to see your post/work spread across the site. I just don’t see how the update is supposed to change anything for the better.

And of course, with this new system, @staff won’t even see all the discourse happening in the reblogs or comments of those reblogs!! So it’s actually wild and they are just further alienating themselves from their userbase?!?!?

*sigh* Nothing about these new @changes makes any sense 🙃

[tumblr]

Reblogs in a chain now get their own notes

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!

[changes]

It’s very clear that you all have strong feelings about Tumblr and about this change. We hear you. The passion people have for how Tumblr works is one of the things that makes this place special.

As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.

Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.

If you’d like to talk directly beyond the comments, leave a reply and we’ll follow up with as many of you as we can. We want to work with you to make Tumblr better.

[yourladyjane]

Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.

Umm... that’s exactly what it’s going to do, though?

It’s actually crazy that @staff’s response to this whole saga is pretty much:

Hey, we’ve heard you loud and clear: you hate these changes—BUT! We’re going to go forward with them regardless because we lowkey don’t care about your opinion, but feel free to share them anyway! 😃

Honestly, if you’re just going to turn into another Instagram or TikTok where nothing else matters except the amount of clicks/likes each post gets, then why should I bother with Tumblr at all? Why don’t I just move over there and let this site die its timely death?

I have yet to hear anything about what these changes are supposed to even achieve? Why was it even necessary? Are you guys just bored at HQ, or what?

JFC of all the things you could have addressed, you instead chose to hit the creatives where it hurts—which is a majority of your userbase and why a lot of people are even here.

I’ve said it in the comments and I’ll say it again—community engagement and user interaction are already at an all-time low. This is only going to make it worse, and quite honestly, makes me wonder why I’m even still here.

Snap out of whatever trance you’re in and get your shit together, @staff @changes @tumblr

[intrepidacious]

time after time - masterlist

summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x time witch!reader

series word count: 130.7k (136.3k+ including bonus chapters)

warnings: f!reader; more or less canon compliant; time loops, canon typical violence, repeated major character death (in a russian doll/supernatural's mystery spot sort of way); slow burn, mutual annoyance to reluctant friends to lovers; negative self-talk; just a lot of angst (but with an eventual happy ending i promise!!); lots of banter; hella self-indulgent 💚

this series is set after the events of the falcon and the winter soldier and will include spoilers for marvel projects up to and including multiverse of madness

please mind that my blog is 18+ only, minors and ageless accounts will be blocked

a/n: welcome to the fic i've been thinking about for almost a year!! i am beyond excited and terrified to finally start sharing this. if you want to get notified whenever i post a new chapter, you can follow @intrepidacious-fics and turn on notifications or follow along on my ao3 💚

✨ this series is finished as of 12 july 2025

my chapters are on the long side so they will also be posted in parts for easier reading in the app; the parts and the full chapters are identical contentwise

one: turn back the clock ↳ Bucky gets killed during a mission and you accidentally start a time loop | 6.0k

part one

part two

two: twice upon a time ↳ You struggle to cope with your new situation and meet a sorcerer | 8.2k

part one

part two

three: every day’s a holiday ↳ Ten days into the loop, you finally decide to ask for help | 10.1k

part one

part two

part three

four: groundhog day ↳ Library heists, bad ideas, and a decision | 9.2k

part one

part two

five: carousel ↳ Bucky has a secret and you have a revelation | 10.9k

part one

part two

part three

six: butterfly effect ↳ You go back to the start, and something changes | 12.8k

part one

part two

part three

part four

seven: spellbound ↳ There's a problem with this day | 11.1k

part one

part two

part three

eight: edge of tomorrow ↳ The truth comes out, and you scramble to fix things | 12.3k

part one

part two

part three

nine: out of the past ↳ Some ill-advised choices and a road trip | 12.9k

part one

part two

part three

part four

ten: about time ↳ The fallout, some truths, and time being really weird | 12.2k

part one

part two

part three

eleven: tomorrow we live ↳ How to end a time loop | 9.8k

part one

part two

part three

twelve: serendipity ↳ Something's weird about today | 11.2k

part one

part two

part three

epilogue ↳ Saturday: what a concept | 3.5k

bonus chapters

these are mostly set outside of the time loop; not required reading, but there will be some nods to these in the main story. bonus chapters can be read in any order and without knowing the main story

frequently asked questions about time travel ↳ Five times people asked you something about time travel, and one time you’re desperate for an answer yourself

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ↳ One day in Bucky's time loop

57 seconds ↳ How Bucky met Twelve

somewhere in time ↳ a bantery little snippet that was cut for time from the main story

cause and effect ↳ How Bucky fell in love with Twelve: Slowly, and then all at once.

alpine's pov ↳ set during chapter 8

fun stuff

🎵 series playlist

#️⃣ browse the series tag

moodboards by @barnesafterglow 💚

moodboard by @sweetascanbee 💚

moodboards by @idkitsem 💚

moodboards by @treatbuckywkisses 💚

moodboard by yours truly 💚

[intrepidacious]

time after time [fin]

series summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 3.5k

chapter warnings: a whole bunch of fluff and a couple of last minute cameos 💚 also a mid credits scene? gotta stick to the genre. please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: this is it, folks 🥺 it's been an absolute honour.

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

epilogue

You can hear rain.

It’s a soft noise and you’re drowsy, but the sound lingers at the back of your mind, keeping you awake. Your limbs are heavy and, oh, so comfortable. It’s like you’ve been padded with marshmallows.

Breathing is weirdly difficult, though. It feels as though an elephant is sitting on your chest.

Unwilling, you blink your eyes open.

At first, you’re confused, because this isn’t your room. You’re in a hospital bed in a white and quiet room. When you turn your head to the side, you see a small bouquet of fresh flowers and a little box on your nightstand.

Next to it, Bucky is curled up in a chair. His limbs are too long for the position he’s in to be anything but uncomfortable, but he’s managed to nod off despite that. His hair is damp and he’s got several nasty cuts on his face; but he looks almost peaceful like this.

Slowly, reality kicks back in and you remember snippets of what’s happened. The mission. Bucky dying. Crushing your amulet with the heel of your boot. Energy and power rushing through you, consolidating themselves. The time loop.

Shit, the time loop.

"Bucky," you croak. Your voice sounds like a stranger’s, raw and unused. You try and reach out for him when he doesn’t wake up, but your arms are just too damn heavy. "Bucky!" you try again.

He jolts upright, concern immediately settling into his features before he realizes it’s you who woke him. His face gets softer, then.

"You’re awake." You’ve never heard him sound so careful, so unsure.

A flurry of emotions rushes through you, and you can’t make sense of all of them because you’re still so sleepy. The past few hours—days? weeks?—feel hazy in a rather pleasant way, like they’re waiting for you to pick through and unravel them at your own pace.

Whenever you’re ready.

"You look like shit," you say quietly.

Bucky breathes a laugh that eases some of the tension in his shoulders. "Fuck you."

Your fingers twitch towards him, but he either doesn’t notice or pretends not to, studying your face like he doesn’t believe you’re really in front of him. It’s exhilarating, to be looked at like that.

"What day is it?" you whisper.

Another hint of that smile you adore. "Pretty late on Saturday."

The rush of relief that courses through you is enough to make your vision blur. "Are you sure?"

He takes a newspaper from a pile on the floor you hadn’t noticed. "They kicked me out for a while earlier. Bought every copy they had at the stand round the corner."

You gasp slightly, painfully, as you read the date printed on the title page. Saturday, July 5.

"It’s really over?"

"It’s really over," he confirms, solidly settled in this brilliant, magnificent new world that is Saturday. "And we’re both alive."

"Sam?" Hope tastes different without the bitter tang of things stuck in stasis.

Bucky’s eyes twinkle. "Went home about ten minutes ago. He’s gonna be pissed, he was here all night, too."

You really could get used to this warm feeling in your chest. "You were here all night?"

He tilts his head at you. "I’m not about to leave my best girl after she’s just saved the world."

"Hardly," you mumble, even though you feel your cheeks heat up.

Tentatively, you reach out for your powers. There’s a tired spark of acknowledgement you’re too exhausted to do much with; it lets you breathe a little easier.

Bucky’s chair screeches closer to your bed. "How’s your head, gorgeous?" he asks quietly, fingers trailing along the sides of your face.

"'M okay." You scrunch up your nose. "I can’t believe you made me stomp on my necklace and it worked."

His grin is easy, relieved. "I’ll buy you a new one."

"How did you know that’d work?"

"It was a calculated risk," he shrugs.

You groan. "Reckless idiot."

"Look who’s talking." He rests his forehead against yours. "You had me a little worried there, sweetheart."

You wince when his voice twists painfully in your stomach, guilt settling heavily.

"I’m so sorry," you whisper. "I’m sorry I didn’t warn you, and that I just—"

You can feel him shake his head. "Not right now. We’re gonna talk about you nearly giving me a heart attack another time, but not right now."

You swallow. "Okay."

"I might lock away our firearms for a while."

"That’s fair. I don’t plan to do that again any time soon."

"You better don’t," he growls.

You put your hand up to his chest, and there it is, the steady thumping you’ve never been able to let go. You feel that? it seems to say. It was all worth it.

"No dying for either of us for a while yet, alright?" you say quietly, and Bucky huffs.

"Deal."

"Are we good?"

He breathes you in, slowly. "We’re okay."

The monitor next to your bed starts beeping loudly enough for a nurse to rush into the room. She has to clear her throat twice for Bucky to finally sit up again.

"I see you kept the drip in and everything," she tells you with raised eyebrows. "Good job."

"Bucky?" you say admonishingly.

"Ignore Claire," he says. "I’m fine."

She sighs in exasperation. "Despite your best efforts. Now shoo, I need to look at my patient." Her hands are cool and efficient, and the way she ignores Bucky makes you think this isn’t her first time patching up lone Avengers. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit boiled in the microwave," you mumble.

"Good. Then I did my job right." She takes your temperature and nods approvingly, referencing your vitals on her tablet. "You have a mild concussion and a sprained ankle as well as a couple of minor contusions, so we’re gonna keep you one more night just to be on the safe side."

"Sounds great," you croak sleepily.

Bucky looks at you warmly as the nurse—Claire—finishes your check-up and helps you sit up a little straighter.

"I’ll see if we can find some food for you, you’re probably starving," she concludes, giving you one last scrutinizing look. "Do you need anything else?"

"Actually, could you open a window?" you say.

Claire frowns. "You sure? It’s a downpour outside."

"I know." The thought is making you positively giddy.

Bucky helps push your bed closer to the cracked window. Heavy raindrops hail against the glass. The sky outside is gray and wild, and there’s the cacophany of traffic and sirens and a howling wind.

But the air smells like rain and new beginnings.

You remember the stone just after Claire has left you to your own devices again, your eyes widening. "Did you take the—”

He drops the small box from your nightstand into your lap. "Is it what I think it is?"

You pull off the lid, and there it is again, nestled into the corner of the box like it wants to hide away from prying eyes: the time stone.

Different than you remember, so small, so unassuming; and yet, it hums with magic, familiar and changed all at once, a warm pulse connected to your very core.

"Pretty sure," you say.

"What are you gonna do with it?" Bucky asks.

You contemplate the stone a moment longer, thinking about all the different possibilities; all the realities that could split off from this one. In all honesty, though, you’ve known the answer all along. "I think I’ll bring it back."

"Good call."

"Thank you. I have my moments." You put the box aside, looking at him. "You know what I’m gonna do after that?"

"What?" he says warily.

"I’m getting out of this town immediately. In fact, I’m kidnapping you and we’ll go to, I don’t know, Canada."

"We are?" Bucky chuckles.

"We can rent a cabin," you continue, "do absolutely nothing except read and go on walks and just—shit, what about our cat?"

Something in his gaze shifts, turns it even fonder. He kisses you, careful not to put pressure on you. Your heart pounds against your bruised ribs.

"What was that for?" you whisper against his lips.

"Nothing. I like your plans."

You smile tiredly. "When did you turn soft on me, Barnes?"

"Sweetheart, if you don’t know already, there’s no use in telling you."

You exhale, your lungs stinging. "Maybe you should, though," you say. "You should keep telling me."

A light blush creeps onto his cheeks. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He kisses you again.

* * *

It’s still overcast a few days later when you’re standing in front of Bleecker Street’s Sanctum Sanctorum, your heart hammering. The air around you hums with familiar whispers.

I knew you’d be back. Still not good enough after all this—

"Oh, fuck off." You pull the door bell.

Your neck prickles with nerves as you stand there and wait for someone to come to the door, shuffling from one foot to the other. Bucky offered to come with you, but this is something you have to do on your own. You’ve told him as much.

Besides, you’re no longer scared of these people.

"What are they gonna do, trap me in another time loop?"

"Not funny."

He’s sitting in the coffee shop on the corner. You let him think you’ve not spotted him there in his cap and sunglasses; he needs that win, after the week you’ve both had.

While you’re there on the doorstep, you pull the time stone out of your bag again. For something supposedly so powerful, it really looks rather harmless. Just a pretty little stone with sharp edges. When you close your fist around it, you can feel a soft vibration, like a content low hum. It makes something tickle pleasantly down your spine.

"Sorry, sorry, I got your tip right—whoops. You’re not the pizza."

"I—" You stare at the young woman in front of you. She doesn’t look particularly Mystic Arts-y with her graphic t-shirt and electric blue shorts, and yet she looks like she’s very much at home.

Maybe things have changed since the Blip.

You’re still gonna take a little shortcut; for old times’ sake.

"Whoops. You’re not the pizza."

It’s great to have your powers back.

"Hi Katy. Is Wong in?"

She sighs. "I know you want me to ask why you know my name but you’d be surprised how quickly you get used to this shit. You wanna come in?"

You step over the threshold with a smile and the entire building whoomps.

It’s a sensation that’s not quite physical, like a sigh of air blasting out of all the windows at once, rushing through your hair and making the lamps in the foyer flicker. The stone in your hand pulsates warmly.

"Okay, that was freaky," Katy tells you. She turns around to shout up the stairs, "Wong? It’s for you, it’s—what was your name?"

"Y/N."

"It’s Y/N!"

It takes a couple of seconds before a muffled shout responds, "Do I know a Y/N?"

"How am I supposed to know?!" Katy answers.

There’s another break, followed by a crackling in the air and a string of curse words in a language you’ve not heard in a long while. "I’ll be there in a minute!"

"He’s gonna be five," Katy says. "You’d think timing’s the one thing they get right but …"

"Oh, I know what you mean. I like your boots, by the way."

"Thanks! They’re really uncomfortable."

You put the stone back into your bag and sit down in one of the couches near the stairs and she crosses her legs underneath her like she’s done it a hundred times before. Weirdly, you’re still not curious enough to ask.

This house feels like the kind of place where people just show up.

"Afternoon," Wong frowns about seven minutes later, looking at you from head to toe. "Have we met?"

You smile. "A couple of weeks ago, but not yet."

He nods slowly. "Tea?"

"For the record, I hate this."

"It’s just a teeny, tiny paradox," you tell Katy with a grin. "They happen all the time. The more you think about it, the less sense it’s gonna make."

"Believe it or not, that doesn’t make me feel any better whatsoever, but thank you for trying."

"Any time."

"Don’t you have anything better to do?" Wong asks.

"Not really. I’d love some tea, though."

"Tea comes with a side of time talk," you warn her.

"Never cared much for tea. You guys go ahead."

Wong sighs, gesturing towards one of the doors on the far side of the entrance hall. As it turns out, it leads to a rather cozy little office with a large window overlooking Sullivan Street. It smells like old books and candle wax, and there’s a framed Sopranos poster above the unlit fireplace.

"So, Miss Y/N," Wong says, sitting down behind the desk. "What can I do for you?"

"I came to you to report a time anomaly."

You start your explanation with the loop. With Bucky’s death, with the countless fruitless attempts to save his life and your reluctance to ask for help. You tell him about your meetings with Strange, about Bucky starting to remember the loop, about your previous visit to the Sanctum.

You talk about the way it ended as your tea goes cold.

Wong’s a good listener, only interrupting for a few clarifying questions. He doesn’t, you notice, inquire about your initial distrust of the Mystic Arts.

Finally, you’re coming to the last part of your tale, rummaging through your bag. "And then … well, I thought I’d return this."

You set the time stone on the table in front of you.

Wong’s chair clatters to the ground when he stands abruptly, his mouth agape.

"I think I restored it to an earlier stage, before it ever got pulverized in the first place." You frown. "I’m not sure why it changed colors, though."

It’s a rather nice shade of orange. Much less jarring than the cool shade of green you remember it being.

"Remarkable," Wong mutters, holding up his hand. The stone lifts off the table, humming gently. The sound vibrates through your chest. "I’ll have to do some research, but as it stands—you seem to have reached for the last remaining strands of the dying loop’s energy and knotted them into this one, and so they … crystallized."

In other words, you beat the closed system theory. Schrödinger can go fuck himself.

"Does that mean what I think it does, though?" you ask, leaning your head on your crossed arms on the table. "If the stones are interconnected, does that mean they’re all back?"

Wong shakes his head. "Quite possibly."

You hum. "Someone should probably go check on that."

"And you’re telling me that you did all of that—including resets of the entire timeline instead of performing a simple time slip, for your entire life—you did all of that by accident?"

You shrug, watching the amber specs of light dance all around the room. "I like the thought of serendipity."

* * *

"Hey."

"Mmm. Not yet."

"Sweetheart. It’s been an hour."

"No. It definitely hasn’t. It’s barely been thirty seconds."

Bucky chuckles, the only sound in a languidly slow universe on a perfectly cloudy afternoon. His breath tingles the back of your neck as he kisses your shoulder.

"Why do I get the feeling this is less about me and more about you procrastinating your meeting?"

"What meeting?" you say innocently.

"You know, time wizard shit? Happens every Friday?"

"Oh, that meeting." You burrow your nose into his shirt. "It got canceled."

"No, it didn’t. I saw you curse out your calendar yesterday."

"What are you, my overseer? We have a cat for that." One that’s currently curled up near the foot of the bed, sleeping. "Besides, I’m fine," you continue. "I can skip the meeting every now and then. Every week is just excessive."

"Doctor’s orders," Bucky reminds you, and you groan.

Wong’s unfortunately been too busy, so you’ve once again been stuck training your powers with a freshly multiversal Strange.

("Three-Eyes, are you sleeping?"

"Very funny."

"How do you sleep with it?"

"Silenor."

"Am I gonna get one of those?"

"No."

"Because I really don’t think it would work with my complexion."

"Are you done?"

"Sure. Let’s take the table quite away.")

Suffice it to say, he’s been even more on edge than during the loop. You’re quite sick of hearing about interdimensional travel and multiversal theory. What you lack and crave is practice, not philosophizing, and yet, somehow, it always seems to circle back around to that.

You sit up to scowl at Bucky, propped up as he is on your pillow. "Why do I feel like you want to get rid of me?"

His fingers continue tracing invisible patterns across your back, gentle and unwavering. "I don’t want you to exert yourself."

"You wanna do that yourself." He nudges you playfully and you laugh. "Seriously, I’m good. Ever since the stone’s been returned, my powers have felt … lighter. So much easier."

"Yeah?"

It really has been easier. You’ve gained a new confidence around your powers, even though you know, deep down, that you probably couldn’t create something as complex as that time loop again if you tried. It’s a pretty good thing you have no intention of doing anything like that ever again.

"Promise," you tell Bucky, and hold your hand up.

He wraps his pinkie around yours and pulls it close to kiss it. Warmth spreads in your chest and your belly.

"I’m not winning this one, am I?"

"Nope," you grin.

"And here I was gonna buy you coffee on the way."

You hum into his mouth. "You could do that later."

"Think you’ll be able to walk later?"

"Honestly, Buck, in front of the cat?"

His laugh is muffled by another kiss, soft and familiar by now, and yet no less electrifying. He kisses you like he doesn’t need air to breathe, and when you finally separate and he looks at you, his eyes are full of disbelief and wonder.

"Is this real?"

His hands are solid around your hips, anchoring you to the moment. You’re not entirely sure you’d be convinced if he didn’t provide that reminder; the world is too deliciously content to be believed.

But he’s here. His cheeks pink, his eyes dark enough to drown in, his heartbeat strong and steady and fast under your touch.

"You want me to pinch you?" you say, lightly scratching the back of his neck. His hair’s gotten longer since the loop, and now it’s thoroughly mussed by your fingers.

"I’d rather you didn’t," Bucky says. "If it’s not real, it’s a damn nice dream for a change."

There’s a slight waver in his voice that rasps against his careful façade of lightheartedness. So instead of teasing him further, you kiss him again.

Honestly, you should’ve been doing this all along. For months. Years. Lifetimes.

His lips slant perfectly against yours, coaxing, tasting, a soft, silent declaration of something yet unnamed spilling from his mouth to yours.

How people in relationships got anything done at all is beyond your comprehension.

People in relationships.

You try to banish the thought. Somehow, after everything you’ve been through, it feels both too trivial and too intense.

"What’s wrong?" Bucky murmurs into your mouth.

"Are we … that is, you and me …" you trail off, looking desperately for a turn of phrase that doesn’t come on too strong. "You know."

He moves to nudge his nose against yours, grinning. "Yes?"

"An … item?"

"An item."

"You know—going steady?" you wince. "Is that the right phrase?"

Bucky snorts. "Sure, it is."

You bite the inside of your cheek. "So?"

He tilts up your chin again, your gazes locking. Oddly bright blue eyes that have always been able to see right through you.

"Sweetheart," he says softly. "I’ve wanted you to be my girl for a very long time. Whatever you wanna call this is fine with me."

A gentle shiver trickles down your spine.

"Okay. I’d like that."

You feel the world return to its normal speed with a gentle whoosh. The AC hums. There’s music in the living room, and you can hear Sam potter around in the kitchen. Alpine purrs in her sleep.

Gloriously, life goes on and on.

"A very long time, huh?"

Bucky smirks. "Are you gloating?"

"Well, it’s not every day I hear about my accidental charms. It was the post-its, wasn’t it?"

He’s still smiling as he pulls you back towards his lips.

* * *

.

.

.

.

.

.

Error: Delayed transmission.

.

.

.

Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Your dialed number is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up, or press one for more options.

Beep.

"Hey hon, it’s me. Sorry for calling so late, the kids are driving me crazy. Listen, I got your voice message and I’m worried about you, so call me back soon, alright? I miss you, too. I’m always there when you need to talk, I hope you know that. Love you. Call me!"

July 4, 2025 at 10:19 PM

[Call Back] [Delete]

.

.

.

—fin—

this story began at 1am in my notes app when i couldn't fall asleep one night and was suddenly struck by an idea for a time loop story i tentatively called july 4th. i'd never written for bucky barnes before in my life. i'd only been reading reader insert fanfic for about a month. that was exactly four years ago, almost to the minute. since then, i've not spent a single day not thinking about this story. my life has changed in so many ways since it began, even though it's not always felt like it. it's a story about love, and about grief, and everything that connects the two with just a sprinkle of magic. it's meant the world to me and it will always mean the world to me, and i hope that it resonates with some of you.

in my life, i've been exceedingly lucky in one area, and that's friendships. it'd take too long to shout out every single person that kept me going through this strange and lonely process that's writing a time travel story (i tried, but i tend to ramble), but i will say this: i have, without a shadow of the doubt, some of the kindest, loveliest, most wonderful mutuals ever to be found on this earth. i've been talking about this fic nonstop for the past few years, and you were there, listening and encouraging and telling me you think about this story. that's absolutely everything a fic writer could wish for.

so: for every kind word, for every kudos and comment and moodboard and bookmark, whether you just found this story or you've been waiting for its conclusion for over three years—thank you. finishing this story was so fucking hard, and i'll never forget the boundless support i got from the people in my life. thank you thank you thank you 💚

[yourladyjane]

Nika, I promise you I’m tearing up right now.

Tbh I wasn’t all that anxious after the previous chapter (I literally almost typed “episode” because I feel like I’ve just binged a really amazing show, which, I fully believe someone should adapt some version of this because it’s just that good), because I do remember you telling me there was going to be a happy ending.

Oh, what an ending it was.

I feel bittersweet and oh so delighted at the same time. I honestly don’t have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the journey I’ve been on over the last day lol. Yes, I read this entire story in less than 24 hours and I regret absolutely nothing.

I don’t think there’s anything I can say that others haven’t already, but I do want to say that this is possibly one of the best things I have read. Period. I was invested from minute one, engrossed for the next thousand.

The humorous banter despite all the angst, the relationships between all of the characters, the character development, the clever plot devices and pop culture references, and oh my god, the romance of course.

And Jesus Christ, and that voicemail at the very end. If I weren’t crying already, I would be now.

To those who haven’t read this fic yet, please do it now. I promise you won’t regret it and it’s worth every pixel on your screen and every second of your time. Work like this, the literal magic this writer has woven together for us, deserves to be appreciated and shared.

I’ll be thinking about these two for a long time, and while I’m sad that it’s over, I’m so happy for the two of them and it’s so satisfying to see how far they’ve both come. But I love that this was more than just a love story. You’ve put together something really special and I’m so proud of you.

It’s been such a privilege, my love. Now brb while I sit and stare blankly at the wall for the next few hours, as I always do after I’ve finished a masterpiece 💚💛

Please remember me when you’re a famous author in the future!

[intrepidacious]

time after time [12]

series summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 11.2k

chapter warnings: twelve having a normal friday; a heavy helping of angst to close us out right before the epilogue 💚 please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: it's once again way too late for me but hey. it's still july 4th in new york. i just had to.

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

twelve: serendipity

You wake up with a start to the sun in your face and FRIDAY blasting The All-American Rejects at full volume.

For a moment, you’re completely disoriented, staring at your surroundings in confusion. Your feet are tangled in the sheets, your eyes still bleary, and you have a harrowing headache.

“FRIDAY?” you mumble, confused. The music quietens as the A.I. comes to attention with a gentle tinkle. “Why?”

"Captain Wilson set me to remind you that you have training in ten minutes."

"Shit." You turn over on your stomach and groan into your pillow. "Can you tell him to go fuck himself?"

"Certainly."

"You are the only one that needs to knoow …"

"And please turn that noise off," you groan into your pillow.

The music gently fades into silence.You enjoy a few more moments of keeping your eyes closed before  brginning to crawl backwards out of bed, taking half of the sheets with you. "Are you sure it’s Friday? Feels like it should be Monday, at least."

“Today is Friday, July 4th,” FRIDAY tells you pleasantly.

You whine into your blanket. At least that means tomorrow’s Saturday.

Since saving the world and shift work both happen on kind of an unpredictable schedule, it’s hard to get actual time off sometimes. You’ve had to close up shop and immediately jump on a quinjet one too many times in the past year, and not having any time for yourself has made you "not just irritable but also twice as accident-prone", according to certain people.

So, you’ve insisted on one proper day a week where no one was going to expect anything productive from you, ever. Unless the world was literally about to end, it could do without you for twenty-four hours.

"One more day," you tell yourself as you roll out of bed with a groan. Your head hurts like you’ve got a hangover, even though you’ve not gotten drunk in ages. Every muscle in your body feels as sore as if you’d just finished running a marathon.

Maybe you should start looking into superhero retirement funds.

You splash some cold water in your face, then reach for your rings with a yawn when you notice you’re already wearing them. Geez, you’re more out of it than you thought if you’ve put them on without noticing; only odd thing is that one’s missing. It’s not in the little tray on top of your sink, at least.

If you’ve lost one of them after less than a year, you’re going to be so pissed with yourself. Absentmindedly, you rub the empty space on your pinkie with your thumb.

There’s a pounding at your door that makes you flinch, followed immediately by Sam’s voice. "Rise and shine, McFly! Time to get your ass kicked!"

You look at the clock on your bedroom wall. It’s shortly before 8 a.m., which means you’ve once again slept through your actual alarm and you can’t even blame him for the rough wake-up call.

You’re still going to, though.

"Not gonna happen, birdbrain!" you shout back and go through the pile of semi-clean gym clothes by the foot of your bed. As you get changed, you notice a mark on your wrist, like you’ve burned yourself; it doesn’t hurt, though. Just prickles a little.

You pull an old sweatband over it to deal with it later.

"Don’t ever wake me up like that again!" you call out to Sam, slamming the door to your room behind you.

He pushes away from the wall and falls into step next to you. "Sweet white teenage angst not your style?"

"You’re the worst." The song is stuck in your head now, too.

This is already a horrible day, and you haven’t even had coffee yet.

You push the door to the gym open and hold it for Sam, ignoring his jovial grin in favor of sending another glare his way. Not even the view helps to cheer you up today. For some reason, the picture-perfect blue sky only makes you more annoyed.

You drop your rings into the little metal dish you keep next to the window and climb into the boxing ring after Sam, stretching your back.

"Let’s get this over with, then."

He wiggles his eyebrows and immediately launches into an entirely predictable attack on your weak side. You evade him with a half-step, jabbing a punch at his defenseless torso. Sam coughs in surprise but doesn’t let it stop him. Instead, he aims his next blow at your shoulder. Almost like you’ve expected it, you block him again, then use an upkick to put some distance between you. With a surprised yelp, he loses his balance, only just catching his fall with a roll to the side.

"Damn," he huffs. "Where’d that come from?"

You have no clue. To be honest, you’re not even that winded.

Instead of showing your own surprise, though, you flash him a grin as you offer him a hand. "What was that about getting your ass kicked?"

"Oh, you’re on."

Again, you manage to step out of his way before he makes contact, instinctively watching for his tell. The more annoyed at you he gets, the more clearly his eyes narrow before he launches an attack. It’s not something you’ve consciously picked up on before, but this morning, it seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

Still, Sam’s clearly gotten more sleep than you have, and you’re more evenly matched after the first round. Your head is still heavy, and you feel like someone’s wrapped you in cotton wool and turned you on the spot a couple of times. It makes you wired, lashing out with energy reserves you don’t have. When he attempts to drop you with a well-timed swipe of his leg, your elbow accidentally goes up, crashing into his face.

"Holy—time-out, ow fuck."

"Shit, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!"

Sam groans, tilting his head back. "That was some underground illegal fight club kinda shit."

"Are you okay?"

"I’m fine. Just—let’s maybe call it before I have to explain to the nation why I look like I got beat up in an alley."

"Isn’t that the Captain America style?"

He snorts. "Whatever you did, keep doing that. But don't aim at my face next time, alright?"

"Yessir, captain," you say with a little salute as he climbs out of the ring and makes for the showers.

After your stretches, you stay on the mat, closing your eyes for a moment. Even though your headache has basically disappeared, you still feel odd. Like you’ve misplaced something.

"You look like shit."

You turn your head. Bucky doesn’t even look at you, instead concentrating on the little rag he cleans the inlets in his arm with. They leave glittering golden spots on the floor, hauntingly pretty in the way they dance. Something about it leaves you dizzy.

"Oh, fuck you, Barnes."

A tiny grin passes over his features so quickly you think you must have imagined it altogether. "How are you feeling?"

"Why?" you say skeptically, sitting upright. "Did you do something?"

His eyes meet yours, and there’s something so strangely familiar in them, sad and hopeful and nonsensical; you can’t put your finger on it, but it makes your heart twinge all the same.

"Me?" he says finally, huffing lightly. "Not at all."

"What do you mean?"

His jaw twitches before he lets go. "I think you nearly broke Sam’s nose, there."

"Scared?" you grin.

"Oh, shitless."

You laugh, and a split second, the way he looks at you changes to something much more intense, bright-eyed and steady. His hand tightens on the rag, and you notice some reddish-brown stains along its seam.

You really need to catch up on laundry.

"Don’t worry," you wink, leaning forwards. "I’m still there, watching your back."

"That’s good to know." For a moment, it looks like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t, instead shaking his head. "Take the towel on the right, I already used the other one."

"Thanks, Buck."

He hesitates as he turns away from you, his vibranium fingers flexing as if reaching out for something before he lowers his head and leaves.

Weird, you think before shrugging and heading for the showers.

* * *

As the warm water hits your back, you let out a slow, blissful sigh. You don’t know why your muscles are aching quite so much; it’s like you’ve been moving for a lot longer than that forty minutes sparring session.

At least it’s over now, and by all accounts the rest of the day should be quiet. There’s nothing on the shared hero schedule yet, and you honestly doubt that much is gonna come up on Independence Day, of all days. Most supervillains are gonna be too busy getting drunk and stuffing themselves with hot dogs to make much progress on the whole world domination front.

Well, at least the local ones, you suppose. You’re really not responsible for what happens in, say, Portugal.

Then again, a weekend trip could be fun. You don’t get to travel much, after all. You’d have enjoyed your London stint a lot more, too, if that place wasn’t haunted with so many lingering memories.

Anyway. The best thing about today is that it’s Saturday tomorrow.

Until then, you’ll just hope nothing comes up and enjoy the holiday from the Tower. You’d probably get some coffee later. Maybe catch Sam’s speech on the television. The view of the fireworks is pretty nice from up here, too.

Realistically, though, you’re gonna be in bed by eleven again. Another uneventful day.

Maybe you should be more bummed out about your lack of plans.

When you enter the kitchen, Sam’s already staring at his laptop again over his bowl of cereal, as he’s done for the past couple of mornings as well.

"You okay, Sammy?" you ask, helping yourself to some toast.

"Sure." He rubs his temples. "It’s an extremely low-pressure event. Not like anyone’s gonna pay attention."

"That’s the spirit, Cap. Long live irrelevance."

"Not helpful."

"Can I help?"

He holds up his laptop. "Burn this and get me a new brain?"

"We can burn it tonight if it makes you happy. You just have to smash your grand entrance before then."

Sam groans and buries his face in his hands.

You laugh. "You need caffeine, my friend."

"We’re out of ground coffee," he replies, his voice muffled.

"Luckily, that’s just the kind of problem I actually can help with," you say. "Don’t fret, rescue will be here in ten."

"My hero," Sam says dryly, deleting another paragraph.

You hum around your toast as you collect your shoes from next to the coat rack. The damn song is still stuck in your head.

I go around a time or two, just to waste my time with you …

"You gettin’ coffee?"

You look up at Bucky. "Yeah. Do you want something?"

He shrugs, putting his hands into his jacket pockets. "I’ll come with. Get some fresh air."

You blink in surprise. "Sure."

It’s a quiet elevator ride. You rub the space just behind your temple where most of the pressure is coming from; it’s like you’re having a one-sided migraine.

Bucky keeps glancing at you without turning his head. "Y’alright?"

"Why wouldn’t I be?"

"I dunno," he says. "It’s been a long week."

"You could say that," you laugh. "You have any plans for the weekend?"

You see his spine stiffen. Of course; no actual personal information between you two. You don’t know what you expected. More than that, you don’t know why it stings.

"I’m not sure yet," he replies, and the elevator doors open with a ping.

The entrance hall of the Tower is mostly empty, but the streets are starting to get busy, people heading towards the nearby train station or walking their dogs. The steady buzz of traffic does wonders for your aching head.

The sign next to the door of your Starbucks tells you it’s happy hour. "Get two of your favorites for the price of one!" it says in Lucy’s beautiful handwriting next to a lovely drawing of two colorful plastic cups.

Inside, the air conditioning is on full blast and the smell of ground coffee is enough to make you sigh contentedly. The queue is about ten people deep, so you have some time to watch the people around you while you wait.

Bucky, thankfully, doesn’t seem much for conversation today. Or any day, if you’re being honest. You glance at him from the side again and find his eyes already on you.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think he looked worried. But that doesn’t make any sense.

You move up the line. "How’s it going, Luce?"

"Ask for a frappuccino and I will fucking murder you." Your coworker tugs a strand of hair back under her cap with a sigh. "I swear, if I see another child today, I’m gonna quit."

"That bad already?" you ask with a sympathetic smile. Holidays always are, particularly at this store, since it’s only a hop and a fall from Grand Central.

"Please kill me," Lucy says dryly and then, "Usual?"

"Please," you say. "And a black iced tea with extra honey for Sam."

"Cap excited for the big speech?" she asks casually, tapping your order into the register.

"Driving himself up the walls."

"He’ll be great. Are you getting anything else?"

"What do you want?" you turn to Bucky.

"Same as her," he tells Lucy.

"Really," you say incredulously. "Stealing my order now, are we?"

"Thought I’d try something today," he shrugs. "Special occasions and all that."

"Well, it’s a step up from black coffee," you say and sign your receipt as he wanders off towards the drop-off.

There’s only one person behind you, so you linger at the register and wait for the unimpressed business guy to finish his order, tapping his foot impatiently.

"Love what you’ve done with your face, by the way."

"Thank you," Lucy says, proudly turning her head so you can admire both sides of her red-white-and-blue themed makeup. "Took me ages, too."

"I can imagine."

"You working this weekend?" She leans forward on her elbows, cracking her back.

"Not ’til Wednesday," you say with a grin.

"Boo, lucky," she groans. "I should go down with my hours, too. I feel like I’m in every day."

"Ask about Thursday," Cass calls over from the bar. "Iced grande extra whip caramel macchia—shit!"

Before the drink splashes all over the business man’s suit, Bucky catches the plastic cup at the last second. He hands it to the man with a stern look on his face and mutters something you don’t catch from where you’re standing. The man hurries off, his face reddening quickly.

"Right," Lucy says and pulls a flyer out of her back pocket, not paying any attention to that whole situation. "Cass and Sorin have a gig in Brooklyn next week and it’s gonna be really great."

Her eyes are very wide as she says this, which makes you doubt it.

"At least if our new bassist finally plays their part the way they’re supposed to," Cass says loudly.

"Mhm," Lucy nods. "Do you wanna come with? If you don’t want to hang with us all night, you can bring some friends, too." Her gaze flits over to Bucky, the emphasis hanging in the air between you like a dare.

"What kind of music do you play?" Bucky asks, reaching for the flyer with one hand while handing you your coffee with the other.

"It’s sort of nightcore punk," Cass says.

"There will be alcohol," Lucy adds when Bucky’s face does that thing. "Anyway, it’d be fun if you came. Think about it."

"I will." You raise your coffee cup at the two of them and say your goodbyes.

The hot air outside hits you like a slap to the face. You squint up at the blatantly blue sky; there’s not a single cloud in sight.

"What on earth," Bucky says, coming up next to you, "is nightcore?"

You throw your head back and laugh. "You might get to find out. How’s my coffee?"

He takes a sip and you watch him attentively as he licks his lips and looks at the ground. You don’t know what it is, exactly, but his face changes in a way you don’t expect; twitching, perhaps, but too quick to draw any conclusions from it.

"It’s really good," he says finally. "It’s just what I needed."

* * *

Something’s weird about today. You can’t really put your finger on it, but the odd feeling that’s been following you around all day never lessens, never dissipates. If anything, it grows bigger the longer the day goes on.

You sit down on the couch to read for a bit, and you’ve barely been scrolling on your phone for five minutes when Alpine meows at you.

You ignore her as you usually do, unwilling to collect another scratch on your arm today.

She meows louder.

"What do you want?" you say without looking up from your phone.

"I need a favor," Bucky says, leaning in from behind you. There’s a bemused expression on his face, but it doesn’t entirely wash the haunted look away from his eyes. "And you’re in her spot."

"Why does the cat need a spot on the couch, exactly?" you mumble before the first part registers. "Are you sick?"

"What?"

"Shit, are you dying? I’m not taking care of your cat, I’m putting her up for adoption."

Alpine bonks her head against your palm. She’s starting to really freak you out.

"Good to know," Bucky says. "I need a time pocket."

You snort. "Anything else? You know I can’t do that."

"Have you tried lately?"

"Fuck you, Barnes." For a moment, something flickers across his face, gone too quickly for you to pinpoint.

Alpine chooses that moment to jump up next to you and nudge her head against your hand once again. Then, she climbs into your lap and settles there with another indignant sound. And she starts purring.

You stare at her in surprise. "What the …" You turn to Bucky. "Since when does she like me?"

A tiny grin pulls at the corner of his mouth. "Maybe she just needed some time warming up to ya."

"I’m scared," you say, your hands hovering over her. "I think she’s planning something."

"Do you want me to take her?"

"Don’t you dare."

He almost laughs when he walks off.

Yes, something’s definitely weird about today; you’re not entirely mad about it, though, even though you’d have to put your clothes through the washing. You already know you’re going to be covered in cat hair by the time you get up.

Whenever that might be; you’ve never been trapped by this particular cat before, and you’re pretty sure she’s fallen asleep. Considering your phone is only at 23%, the probability of you actually reading this morning has just skyrocketed.

You glance at your rings, biting the inside of your cheek. They shimmer in the sunshine, dark emerald barely speckled with black. It’s surprising, really, considering how little sleep you’ve been getting. Maybe it could be a good sign.

Have you tried lately?

The world comes to a gentle halt.

Usually, the standstill is more jarring than this, but today it’s more of a gradual thing washing over you and freezing everything else. You turn to look for Bucky who’s frozen mid-step, his arm glittering gold and onyx in the sunshine.

You reach out for something inside of you that could work the way he wants, could manage what he’s asking of you for whatever reason. You’re not sure why you’re trying at all.

It doesn’t matter anyway. Your powers don’t extend to anyone else, they never have. You’re stuck in a familiar silence, one that doesn’t scare you anymore.

And then the cat moves in your lap.

You flinch and reality stutters back to life. Bucky keeps walking, Sam finishes his paragraph, and Alpine turns around sleepily before rolling herself up again.

Your heart is beating so fast you can hear it in your ears. Impossible, you tell yourself. You’ve lost your grip earlier than you thought, is all. The world was already on its way back to moving.

That’s all it was.

Probably.

With a sigh, you gently pet Alpine’s back—you don’t trust this new armistice—and reach for your book. Apparently, you’ve misplaced your bookmark again.

For the next half an hour or so, you struggle to find where you’ve left off, but whenever you think you found the right place, your eyes completely skip over the following paragraph, convinced you’ve already read it. It’s a very unsatisfying conclusion, and you close the book with a frustrated flourish loud enough to wake the cat in your lap. She meows in disdain, like a knife scratching the whole diameter of a dinner plate.

"Is it time for lunch yet?"

"Please," Sam calls. You don’t think he’s moved away from his place at the kitchen counter at all. "Pizza?"

"No pizza," Bucky shouts from the workroom.

"Yes pizza," you say.

"God bless democracy," Sam says. "FRIDAY?"

"Sharing order forms across all devices."

You put your usual order in with a grin before cradling Alpine to your chest and moving to the workroom. You don’t usually go inside; most of the interesting stuff got packed up before the move to Avengers Campus, leaving a sterile looking, well-lit room with a large work bench and a single old rolling chair that Bucky is currently perched on.

"What are you doing?"

"What’s it look like?" he says, tongue poking his cheek.

"Like you’re trying to kill Redwing for good. What’s he done to you again?"

"I’m trying to fix it."

You tilt your head. "And you’re sure you’re feeling well?"

"I’m fine, sweetheart," he says tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Something sharp and hot rushes through you and for a moment, you sway on your feet, dropping Alpine to the ground. When you come back into the present, Bucky’s grabbed your shoulders to steady you.

"What did you say?"

"I said I’m fine, but I feel like you aren’t." He pulls the chair up. "Sit."

"It’s just this headache I’ve had all day," you mumble, following his orders. "I’ll take some painkillers."

"You sure?"

Again, there’s that look in his eyes, something too close to concern to make sense, flickering amidst the blue. It draws you in like a moth to the flame, hypnotically familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

"Yes," you say, forcing your gaze to drop before he notices that your heart has picked up speed. "So why are we trying to fix your archnemesis? How’d you even find him?"

"It’s not my archnemesis." He sighs. "I don’t want Sam to go alone today."

It doesn’t escape your notice that he ignores your other question, but you decide to drop it. "Did you get a tip?"

"You could say that."

"Why don’t you go yourself?" He holds up his arm. "Okay, fair point, most conspicuous person in all of New York. What about me?"

He grins. "You’re a shit spy, Y/L/N."

"I resent that," you scowl.

"Doesn’t make it any less true. Which leaves us with no option than to try this."

"So it’s us now?"

His jaw clenches for a split second before he says, "You thought of something. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here." Before you can protest, the doorbell rings and his spine straightens. "I’ll get it."

His arm brushes against yours as he goes to leave the room, and before you can consciously decide to do it, the world around you stops spinning with a stutter once again. The hum of the AC, the barely audible noise from the city outside, the song playing from the living room speakers; it all halts once more, and a familiar silence envelops you.

You can feel Bucky freeze next to you because you’re still touching; his elbow presses into your side. Of course, it didn’t work. Why would it have?

Usele—

"Wow."

You whip around, keeping hold of Bucky’s arm as the world around you continues not to continue. He’s looking right at you; moving, breathing.

The world has stopped spinning for the two of you.

"Incredible," he says, drinking you in with his eyes. You’re unusually close, with your hand clutching around his metal arm. It’s whirring softly; you can barely hear it in the quiet of the universe.

You let out a breathless laugh. "Not too bad, right?"

Bucky smiles softly. "You’re a genius."

Not a trace of sarcasm in the statement, only honest admiration. Something warms right underneath your collarbone.

"We’ll need another co-conspirator, though," he says before you can make sense of the feeling. "Unless you’ve gotten really good at engineering lately."

"If only you’d told me last week. I could’ve prepared something." You look at where you’re still holding onto him. For some reason, you don’t want to let go. "I don’t know how this works," you confess.

"Only one way to find out."

You get your fingers to loosen, slightly, and Bucky pulls his arm away. Inconceivably, he doesn’t stop moving.

A pulse of your powers ripples through you, but the world stays on pause.

"Can you hold it?"

"I think so," you say, reaching for your necklace with a frown. It’s warm to the touch. "I’ve never done this before, though."

You’d expect more of a strain, if you’re being honest, but right now, it feels simple. Like you’ve merely hit the pause button on a remote control and wandered off.

"What are we doing, then?"

Instead of answering, he leads you into the hallway, past Sam, who’s frozen next to the kitchen counter. He has two different documents pulled up on his laptop, one with the bullet points for his speech later, large font and multiple colors; the other one looks like government protocols, some sort of status report with graphs that are too small for you to decipher at a glance.

"Y/N?"

"Mhm, present." You join Bucky at the front door, raising your eyebrows. "Him?"

"Yup."

"Why?"

"You trust me?"

You blink. He’s never asked you that before, and you don’t think you have an answer.

Again, you consider the young delivery guy in front of you. He’s precariously balanced a stack of pizza boxes on one arm while reading something on his phone, brown hair sticking up wildly in all directions. There’s nothing about him that screams Fixes Drones In Spare Time.

But there’s something weird about today, and you feel your powers bubble up in nervous anticipation.

So you boop the guy on the nose.

He blinks to life again and flinches backwards so violently it’s honestly impressive he doesn’t drop your food. "Holy—"

"It worked!" you laugh.

"Genius," Bucky repeats under his breath.

"What worked? Where did you even—why is it so quiet? Guys? Am I dead again?"

* * *

The weirdest thing about this is still that you’re not putting that much effort in. Usually, with the world on hold, there’s a part of you that has to consciously hold onto that fact for the whole time, even if it’s just a very small part. Today, though, hours pass by and you feel completely fine. Like you’ve done it before and have gotten used to it ages ago.

Gentle swaths of green light dance around your fingers as everything keeps still, and you watch them delightedly. One thousand-odd feet below, New York City is frozen in place, just like it’s been for the past couple of hours.

It’s peaceful up here. You’ve brought your book up a while back, after your phone ran out of battery, but it’s still disconcertingly predictable, and so you’ve resorted to playing with your powers.

"You alright?" Bucky asks, sitting down on the ledge of the roof next to you.

With a last quiver, the light sinks back into your skin. "You keep asking that and it’s getting creepy."

He huffs, looking down on the streets below. His arm is gleaming in the frozen noon sun.

"Parker’s doing good work," he says after a while. "We’ll probably be done soon."

You finally manage to avert your gaze, leaning your head against the half wall next to you. "I still don’t understand why you know him. Or why he happened to have the exact right spare parts for this thing in his backpack."

Judging by the glances and the polite but close-lipped smiles, Peter’s been sworn to secrecy long before he’s started working on Redwing One’s sensors. It’s all very annoying.

"You don’t need to know everything," Bucky says.

"Ugh," you grimace. "Says who?"

"How’s your head?"

You resign yourself to getting no answers out of him today. "Surprisingly okay, considering. I could just fall asleep, though." You yawn. "Pretty sure that’d continue time as usual, though, so maybe not yet."

Bucky contemplates you for a while, and then he says, "Get up."

You pout. "No. Why?"

"Just do it."

Begrudgingly, you let him haul you to your feet. You’re already mentally preparing to refuse to do push-ups or run drills or whatever the army did to purposefully cause sleep deprivation, when he pulls you closer instead. His hands both come to rest at your back while yours, helplessly, settle on his chest.

You can feel his heartbeat like this, sped up due to the serum coursing through his veins. His face is unreadable but steadily on you, when he takes a step towards you, making you stumble backwards. He takes a step back again.

"What are you doing?" you whisper.

"What’s it look like?" Another step, to the side this time. A half-turn.

You bite the inside of your cheek. "I can’t dance."

"True," he says, stepping towards you again. "You also can’t fall asleep while you’re dancing."

You can’t argue with that logic. Besides, it’s weirdly nice. You’ve never seen this side of Bucky before, and it feels odd and right at the same time. Like without you noticing, he’s growing into his own again after a very long time.

"You tell that to all the girls back in your day?" Your hands come up slowly, lightly gripping his shoulders to better keep your balance as you keep swaying. He makes no attempt to stop you.

"I don’t think any of them were that worried about falling asleep."

"Now that’d depend entirely on your skillset, wouldn’t it?"

Bucky stumbles and you hide your laugh in his chest as you fall back into an easy, entirely imaginative rhythm. He smells really nice, you think. Familiar, even though you’ve not been this close to him since … yeah, since when?

For some reason, your fingers keep itching to play with the collar of his shirt. It looks so soft.

"You know," you say, tightening your hold on his shoulders ever so slightly, "I think there’s something terribly wrong with the world today."

"Yeah." He spins you both again, towards the ledge and away again. "Fucking tell me about it."

Again, something warm uncurls in your stomach, soft and comfortable. It’s not enough to let you shake the feeling that’s been haunting you all day, but it’s something, at least.

You keep dancing, and even though your eyes flutter closed every now and then, you feel very wide awake; or maybe you just feel very present, with Bucky’s hands gently pressing against your lower back and his eyes focused somewhere just over your shoulder. Your headache fades to background noise, something tingling at the very back of your mind.

It takes you a long while to notice that the world isn’t completely standing still at all; it’s just moving very, very slowly. Changes so small they are imperceptible to witness, only obvious after they’ve already happened.

Which is a new one in addition to you being able to have two people in your little time pocket with you.

"I’m feeling a little dizzy," you mumble.

Bucky slows, his gaze finding yours again. "Too much spinning?"

No. "Yeah. Probably."

Damn, have his eyes always been so … blue? How come you’ve never let yourself notice before today?

"Maybe we should stop."

You swallow. Your thoughts are a little fuzzy. "I think we have."

Bucky doesn’t smile, but something in his face softens. At some point, his hands must have slipped to your hips, like he’s not sure whether to keep you at this distance or pull you closer.

Why would he hesitate? He can’t stand you, remember?

There’s a whirring in the silence of the universe, and you jerk back. When you turn around, Redwing is hovering just above your head.

"Good news, guys," Peter calls from the door. "I think I did it. That was so cool!"

With an exhale, reality returns back to normal. You take another step away from Bucky, blinking repeatedly. His jaw is clenched tightly, his arms stiff at his sides, like he can still feel the shape of you in his hold and isn’t happy about it.

It shouldn’t hurt.

* * *

"I thought the point was to not have to come here," you shout.

"I told you to stay home and take a nap," Bucky replies. "I believe your exact words were, 'I have never needed a nap in my entire life'."

"Well, I didn’t think you were serious," you reply, gesturing at the packed hall. "You hate crowds. And speeches."

"I don’t hate speeches."

You roll your eyes. Over the speakers, there’s a deafening commercial jingle you’re going to have stuck in your head for the next few hours.

Bucky steers you through the seats in a pattern that makes no sense to you. You’re veering towards the other side of the podium, like he wants to stare at the speakers’ backs. You’re cutting it close on time, and people are giving you dirty looks.

You should’ve taken that stupid nap.

"Where’s Redwing, then?"

Sam wasn’t exactly thrilled about a civilian messing around with his gear—you believe his exact words were, "if you ever touch my stuff again, I’ll laser your other arm off"—but even he’s had to admit that a couple of preliminary tests resulted in Redwing acting functional, at the very least.

"Around," Bucky says.

Throughout the Garden, the crowd erupts in cheers. You can see Sam has entered the stage they’ve erected in the middle of the field, giving a polite wave in his full Captain America uniform, wings extended, the shield hanging loosely from the other arm. His smile is blown up on the screens overhead, large enough that you can see the gap between his front teeth. A small dot in the corner tells you it’s being broadcast live across the nation.

Bucky’s unperturbed even though he squares his shoulders a little. His gaze flits between the screens and the crowd like he’s trying to orient himself.

"Who are we looking for?" you shout over the noise.

Finally, he moves towards one of the rows, mumbling excuses to the annoyed middle-aged couple with matching caps. You pull your own baseball cap deeper into your face when you notice how close to the range of the cameras you’re getting. You’re almost down at the pit, and surrounded by people who’ve brought their own signs. You stop right behind #ONYOURLEFT, as one look at the screens tells you; you’re only just out of frame.

"I don’t like this," you hiss at Bucky, joining the clapping that’s still going on.

"Five minutes," he says. "I promise."

You take your seat, angling yourself so that you’re completely hidden by the sign in front of you, then look back at Bucky. He keeps checking his watch.

"Are you about to make a drug deal? What the hell is happening?"

You search the heads of the people in front of you; none particularly stand out. Everyone’s turning away from you, cheering and wooing as Sam awkwardly scratches his neck. Then, you find the one person apart from Bucky who’s not joining the general merriment; it’s a woman with short blonde hair who’s hunched over in her seat in the row in front of you, typing furiously on her phone.

Then, to your surprise, she half-turns in her seat to take a call. Her face looks familiar, but it takes you a moment to recognize her.

The feedback from the microphone makes you grimace. One glance at Bucky tells you he’s clenched his teeth, his brows furrowed at he stares at the floor in front of you.

In a stadium filled with thousands of people, he’s trying to eavesdrop.

You bump your knee against his and shake your head incredulously. You are crazy, you mouth silently and he grins. It takes him a while to lift his eyes from your lips again. You ignore the way that makes your heart lurch, instead turning to look at the screens.

"Good afternoon, everyone," Sam starts his speech.

Even as the crowd quietens down, you strain to hear anything from the hushed conversation in the row ahead. You only catch a few disconnected words that don’t make any sense; "cooling" and "quicker" and "stakes".

You glance at Bucky again and realize he’s drifted closer to you, his eyes still closed in an effort to hear something.

Your heart gives a painful tug.

You scooch away from his seat, but unfortunately, the woman catches the movement out of the corner of her eye.

"—call you back. Barnes."

"Sharon," he says, opening his eyes. "What a surprise."

Sharon Carter looks him up and down. "Didn’t expect to see you here."

"I like keeping people on their toes."

"I remember." She raises her eyebrows at you. "New girl?"

For the first time in a while, you wish you still had your damn cape.

"You’re being rude, you know," Bucky says, flicking his eyes towards the stage.

"Outside," she mutters, gets up and leave.

"Five minutes?" you say skeptically.

Bucky grimaces. "Maybe ten. Listen, you don’t have to—"

"I’m not staying here," you interrupt. She’s already clocked you, so it’d be weirder not to follow him out.

With a sigh, you make your way through the same frustrated cluster of people in your row again, silently apologizing to Sam on the big screen for missing his first official July 4th speech.

"Now, more than ever, it’s important for us to trust one another," he continues with his firm Cap voice, not noticing the commotion behind his back. "None of us can do this alone."

For a split second, you’re tempted to pull time back and force her to forget seeing either of you. Your fingers are already twitching at your sides, only hesitating when you see the determined look on Bucky’s face.

The door falls shut behind you.

Agent Carter is already waiting for you in the deserted hallway, her arms crossed.

"I’m guessing this isn’t going to be a friendly catch-up," Bucky says loudly.

"Are we friendly?"

She starts walking, Bucky falling in step with her easily while you have to hurry to keep up. Your headache’s started up again.

"What brings you here?" she asks.

"I was gonna ask you the same thing," he replies.

"Can’t I just show my support?" She doesn’t wait for a response before rolling her eyes. "I was going to catch Sam after his speech, but since you’re already here: What were you doing in London?"

Bucky shrugs. "Did some sightseeing. Watched Frozen."

"I mean when you nearly blew up a fucking building in Harley Street."

"Oh, that." His hands disappear into the pockets of his jacket. "Tragic, really. Gaslights are a hazard."

They really are. That nearly was hard work on your part. In your eyes, that mission went well enough—especially since Redwing’s fine again now.

"Director’s not happy," Agent Carter says.

"Last time I checked, Sam and I didn’t work for the CIA. And your part in this is, what, playing messenger?"

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. "Leave the demolition to the builders, alright? That’s all." She looks at you, giving you a cursory, dismissive once-over. "Letting this guy into your life is inviting a whole bunch of trouble."

Something prickles behind your temples.

"I dunno," you say. "I like my odds."

With a razor-sharp smile, she regards both of you one more time, and then walks away.

"Happy Independence Day, Agent," Bucky calls after her.

She gives him the finger without turning around.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, you let out a shaking breath, your shoulders deflating. "What on earth was that about?"

Bucky shakes his head slowly, the gears in his head turning. "I have no fucking clue."

* * *

"Something is very, very wrong here."

"You always say that," Sam says, securing the room ahead and then nodding for you to follow him.

"Yeah, and I’m usually right." Your fingers are itching for you to flick them and speed up this terrible silence so that you can at least know what’s going on. This place already feels too ominously familiar for your liking, even though you’re positive you’ve never been here before.

It’s like a scene out of a nightmare, anyway. What little of the low sunlight makes it in through the dirty windows gives the hallway a strange, eerie atmosphere. The air is thick with a stench you can’t identify.

"Lovely interior design," Sam mumbles. You follow his gaze to a pile of bones that lie scattered in one of the rudimentary holding cells you’re walking past. A spider runs from his flashlight and you grimace.

"Sam," you say, focusing on the half-extended wings on his back again. "Did you invent this mission to get us to go to a haunted house with you?"

He snorts lightly as he pulls the cloth off the crates that are stacked alongside the wall. There’s a single red handprint near the bottom right of each of them. You almost sigh.

"Do you think I’d pass up the opportunity to hear the two of you scream in terror when the vampire puppets creep up on you?"

"Gotta disappoint you, cap," you grin and wait for him to check in with Redwing. "I only scream when there’s good reason."

"Like what?" Bucky says, smirking at you.

An unexpected flash of something hot goes down your spine and you roll your eyes. "Wouldn’t you like to know, wolf boy."

He raises a single eyebrow. "That’s a new one."

"Try to catch up." Your eyes flick to your rings. Two of them have turned a deep black while the others are still a shimmering deep emerald with a few darker specs. Not bad for an afternoon that lasted about ten hours. "We should be good on the resets but this place gives me the creeps, so don’t be stupid, alright?"

"I prefer heroic," Sam says. "They’re closing in, by the way."

"You alright?" Bucky asks while you place the explosives you’ve brought next to the wall Sam has pointed out. It’s not the most elegant way, but there hasn’t been time to research key codes or break in quietly, so you’re going in with a bang.

You nod. "Just haven’t gotten a lot of sleep since …" Wow. For some reason, it feels like ages ago. "It’s gonna be fine," you continue. "Just try not to get killed."

If you didn’t know better, you’d think Bucky looks ever so slightly worried.

"We’ll be okay," you repeat and he nods.

"'Course we will."

The little timer starts counting down from ten.

"Alright, guys," Sam says as all three of you take cover behind the shield. "Five. Four."

"Careful," Bucky says quietly just as you hear Redwing’s tranquilizer shots find their marks outside. You turn to look at Bucky questioningly.

"One."

You shut your eyes just in time before the door gets blasted off its hidden hinges. A cloud of dust hits your face and you start coughing violently.

"Why would you breathe in?" Bucky has the nerve to sound amused as he claps you on the back a few times until the grim has finally cleared from your lungs.

"Shut up," you rasp, roughly drying your eyes with your sleeve.

His hand gives you another almost gentle pat before you looks at the newly cleared entryway. Just like you expected, the lab on the other side looks empty.

"I’m gonna keep One outside just in case there’s any more comin’," Sam says just in time for Redwing Two to whir back towards him and click into place.

You take a look over your shoulder back down the hall. Just outside, you can see the blinking lights of Redwing One’s rear; in the gloomy light, they look wraithlike, and you can’t help but frown as the uneasy feeling sinks deeper into your bones. Like a tingle that claws its way down your spine to settle in your fingertips. You pull your gun out of the holster.

"Don’t you feel like this is way too easy?" you say quietly, reassuming your position in front of Bucky.

"Yup," Sam says, shield still held up in front of him. He keeps moving forward, Redwing Two detaching again to scan the room ahead.

The lab is small and crammed with tables that are overflowing with strangely colored concoctions and stacks upon stacks of papers. You take a step closer, trying to make sense of the strange chemical formulas scribbled next to a bunch of tables and graphs. It’s not exactly your strong subject, though, and you can’t really concentrate with someone else breathing down your neck.

"You’re hovering again, Barnes," you say without looking up; you feel his gaze lingering on you, heavy with something he doesn’t say. "You sure you’re alright?"

Not for the first time today, he seems to be lost in thought. His eyes flicker to the amulet around your neck before returning to your own. "We might have to step on it," he shrugs.

"You’re so weird today," you reply.

"This isn’t it," Sam says, closing the last of the filing cabinets with a bang. "But look at that."

Bucky is still staring at you, and for some reason, you don’t want to look away. You force yourself to, anyway.

"What did you find?"

"Scanner found a hollow behind this one," Sam says, knocking against one of the cabinets. "Someone gimme a hand here."

He moves to the side when Bucky gestures for him to, letting him hook his vibranium arm into the cabinet and pull. With a screech of protest, the entire thing slowly moves open to reveal a broad winding staircase leading downwards. Another wave of the horrid smell hits you, even stronger now, like something metallic that’s being set on fire.

"Show-off," you mumble as you slip past Bucky. Out of the corner of your eye, you think he smirks a little.

The stairs go down deeper and deeper for ages, lit by motion detector lights that turn your shadows into overly large figures on the opposite wall. It doesn’t ease your premonition in the slightest; nor that odd sense of déjà-vu that’s been looming behind you all day.

You really, really need a day off.

Finally, everything opens up and you look down into a large, almost cave-like room. It extends pretty far backwards before it splits into several tunnels that remind you of the one you spotted when you got out of the quinjet earlier.

But despite the stone walls and your being several feet underground, it is surprisingly warm down here, probably due to the several giant containers placed along one of the walls that seem to be the source of the atrocious smell. They are also faintly glowing.

"Are we gonna get radiation poisoning? Because you definitely don’t pay me enough for that." You wrinkle your nose.

"I doubt they’d send their own people 'round the perimeter with nothing more than a face mask if those things were radioactive," Sam says. "And you’re here voluntarily."

"That’s a nice way of putting it," you mumble, but you follow him anyway.

Unlike the lab upstairs, everything here looks orderly, almost pristine. Not a single sheet of paper is unfiled, the metal tables are empty and wiped clean. There’s a gentle whirring sound that leads your gaze to several monitors, some of which are showing different maps and security camera footage while others seem to be tracking the progress of some sort of test.

"Look at that," Sam says again, stepping closer to the containers. "What is that?"

A dark blue liquid is slowly dropping out of a hole near the bottom of one of the containers. Bucky kneels down next to it.

"Don’t touch that!" you say quickly and he looks bemused.

"I wasn’t going to."

Redwing Two bumps into his side and he looks at it irritatedly. Then, he rolls his eyes, moving out of the way so it can collect a little sample in a glass vial.

"Maybe we can send that to Banner, have him take a look." Sam walks over to the computers and plugs in a drive. "We’ll make a copy of that for Torres and then get out of here."

"What do you think that is?" you wonder, crossing your arms in front of your chest. Once again, this mission has you feeling unbelievably superfluous.

You only wish your damn migraine would finally go away.

"Not the serum," Bucky answers as if he could read your thoughts. "But based on what these guys have been up to, it’s not gonna be good."

"Have you been doing research?" you ask.

"Are you impressed?"

You’d roll your eyes, too, if you didn’t know that’d only make that stupid smirk reappear. "Can we leave before I do something I’ll regret?" you shout at Sam.

It returns anyway.

"I think we have another problem right now," Sam says, looking up from the monitors. "We’re getting company."

Only a moment later there’s a thunderous crash and the table to your far left bursts into flames. You stumble backwards. Right overhead, there’s a large round hole where the floor of the small lab on the first floor used to be.

All of a sudden, dozens of people descend upon you from all directions, swarming the lab and surrounding you within seconds. They’re all dressed exactly the same, white jackets over their black overalls, identical white face masks and goggles, and matching black berets.

"Oh, this is like a nightmare flash mob," you shout as you avoid the first kick to your face. "They must’ve sounded a silent alarm!"

"Redwing should’ve been able to intercept that," Sam shouts. "Always the damn glitches!"

Bucky punches another white jacket in the jaw, his eyes darting around wildly. You aim your gun just as Sam flings his wings out, swishing your target off their feet. Behind them, another group closes in. You fire without a second thought, and three of them drop to the ground.

Just as you try to reload your weapon, there’s a sickening cracking noise behind you and someone stumbles into you hard enough your gun drops to the ground. It slides across the floor towards the center of the room.

You start after it, kicking another white jacket in the chin as they reach for it first. They stay down when you hit them over the head with the barrel of your gun.

Another explosion makes you turn back around. A shower of glass splinters and burning pieces of paper rains down through the hole on the first floor, taking bits of the ceiling down with it.

"We better get moving," Sam shouts. "If you take care of the drive and these idiots, I’ll clear the tunnels for a way out of here!"

Wordlessly, Bucky holds up his arm. Sam throws the shield, hitting two more white jackets in the face before Bucky catches it with ease. You kick another one of them in the groin, wrangling the weapon out of their grasp.

"Who the fuck brings a knife to a fight like this?" you shout.

Bucky doesn’t answer, holding up the shield to protect both of you from hailing gunshots. His face is a little pale.

"What’s—wrong—with you—today?" Each of your words is punctuated by a punch.

His eyes catch yours as he raises his gun and shoots, not even looking. Through the comms, you hear a yelp that isn’t Sam’s, followed by the sound of Redwing’s lasers cutting through something that promptly detonates.

"How’re you doing, Sam," he says, still staring at you with that odd expression.

"Get out of there asap," Sam replies. "I can see at least another dozen heading in. I’ll send Redwing to try to cut them off, but it won’t buy us much time."

Something flickers in Bucky’s eyes, somehow resolute and desperate at the same time. "Y/N—"

You tear your gaze away, landing on the monitors on the far side of the room. "I think it’s done."

"Ah, fuck," Bucky says, but you’re already running. Behind you, there’s the metallic clang of the shield hitting a reinforced cap.

You’ve not had to use your powers yet in this fight, and it feels like time is getting impatient with you. It makes you almost trip over your own feet, pulling the drive out of the computer and holding it up triumphantly just as Bucky reaches you.

"See?" you grin. "All—"

He crashes into you at full speed, one hand supporting your head as the other comes around your torso. Less than a second later, the computer explodes.

The two of you are thrown forwards, but Bucky catches your fall, rolling both of you over and out of harm’s way. Your ears are ringing, and you can tell by the buzzing that your intercom is probably broken. Surprisingly, you both seem unharmed apart from that.

Bucky stares at you, face only a few inches from yours, breathing heavily. "How the fuck do you do this?"

Every cell of your body is on fire. "Do what?"

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything but look at you. Then, he quickly presses his forehead to yours closing his eyes. "Geez," he says, and then he mumbles something under his breath, and it almost sounds like—

No. Definitely not.

You shake the broken comm pieces out of your ear and let him pull you back to your feet, your cheeks flaming. Even when you’re standing, he doesn’t let go of your hand, just starts walking in the direction of the tunnels.

Your headache is back in full swing, and something pulls at your insides, a feeling that’s impossible to ignore; and yet you just can’t seem to pinpoint it. It doesn’t make any sense.

"Bucky?" you whisper, stumbling after him, your hands still intertwined. You can see a green flicker dancing between your fingers.

"Yeah?"

"This could’ve gone a lot worse, right?"

He chuckles, a low, lovely sound that strikes a chord at your very core. It makes you speed up to match his long strides. You feel the sudden need to see his eyes.

"Ain’t that the truth, sweetheart."

There’s sweat on his brow and blood on his neck, and somehow, you’ve never seen anything more beautiful in your life.

"Then why do I feel like the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet?"

Bucky looks at you, and you realize with a sudden pang that he looks utterly resigned. Like he, too, knows, deep down, this isn’t over yet.

"Buck—" you start, but at that moment there’s a thunderous clash right behind you, like someone’s ripped a hole through the entire cave wall.

"Run," Bucky says, and then he’s jerking you along, shield up high as you speed through the tunnels. One curve after the other, until you feel like surely you’re almost at the end of it; there’s no way for these burrows to just keep going endlessly, like a labyrinth made of cold stone and darkness.

On and on you keep running, and behind you the horrible sounds continue, coming ever closer. Your lungs are on fire. You can’t see anything, and you know that Bucky is slowing down for your sake, even though you don’t understand why he would.

"You should go," you gasp as you round another curve. "Get Sam. The jet."

"I’m not leaving you," Bucky replies. He is starting to sound out of breath as well, which is about as bad a sign as it gets.

"'M fine," you pant. "Stop time. Get out." Everything is starting to get blurry in front of your eyes.

"Look!"

There’s light. You’d cheer if you weren’t hyperventilating. You can see the end of this tunnel, getting closer and closer, until you finally round another corner and—

Everything opens up and you come to a halt in a large, almost cave-like room. On the far side, a broad winding staircase leads up. The ceiling’s mostly collapsed, with bits of debris lying around everywhere, flames licking at computers and lab equipment.

"How?" you manage.

Bucky lets go of your hand, stepping in front of you. "Maybe we need to—"

Another clashing sound, much louder than before. A feeling of bone-deep despair takes hold of you before you even consciously realize what’s happened.

Your body acts before you do, firing at the white jacket pointing a smoking blaster at you. You don’t know where they even came from; out of nowhere, it seemed. Like they were a bad dream come to life for just one crucial moment.

There’s so much blood.

You fall to your knees next to Bucky, frantically pressing your hands on the wound in his chest. The trouble is, it doesn’t seem to make any sense. You’d expect something bad from a blast like that, but through your blurry eyes, it almost looks like a stab wound. No, gunshot wounds. No, his chest has caved in.

You reach backwards, over and over, but your hands can’t seem to get a grip on time. It keeps slipping through your fingers.

"Bucky, you have to stay with me, do you hear me? Please."

With a jolt, you force the world to stand still so you can maybe think, blinking the tears away, refusing to let him out of focus. His injury settles on gunshot wounds, but he’s still twitching in your hold.

He barely gets your name out, blood bubbling out of the corner of his mouth. He drops his right hand on his chest, just above his heart, his vibranium hand coming up to your face. You’ve never seen it shake before.

Gently, his fingertips trail along the side of your neck, catching in your necklace.

"You," he whispers, barely audible, with so much emotion on his face you can barely breathe.

And then his hand drops and his eyes glaze over.

You scream.

You scream in the quiet of a standing universe, not understanding what just happened, why you were not able to stop it. You don’t understand, you don’t know what the point of any of this strange day was.

You feel it, though. You feel the rage and the shock and the grief, all at once, mixed together so potently you’re sure you need to explode to process it at all. You are consumed by it.

The pendant around your neck grows hot, the physical sensation of it brutal enough to force you back into this moment on the floor of a cold cave with Bucky dead on your feet.

And then, with a strange sort of clarity, you remember what he said earlier.

We might have to step on it.

The strange emphasis he put on the last part, the glance at your necklace, him reaching up. All the little moments in the lead-up to this that haven’t quite made sense.

The thoughts come rushing in, swirling wildly through your brain as you slowly get back up.

What if he knows something you don’t?

Even though that’s impossible. Right?

But there’s that tugging you’ve felt all day that tells you it’s not. Not quite. You just can’t make sense of it right now.

You trust me? Step on it.

You tear your necklace off and look at it one last time before you drop it on stamp on it with your heel until the stone in its center cracks.

A shudder goes through you. Your power is bubbling up underneath your skin as if it’s waking up, as if it’s been waiting for this exact moment, and for the first time in your life, you’re not afraid of it.

You raise your hands out of habit but then you realize, as if you’d known all along, that that’s not necessary; it’s too grand a gesture. You don’t have to reset the whole world, not this time. You only have to reset this.

So you do.

Green waves drip from your hands, billowing down Bucky’s cheeks, his neck, his shoulders. His eyes are still frozen in time, reflecting the lights surrounding both of you, and it’s a new and all-too familiar sight at once.

One by one, the bullets drop out of his chest as if pulled by invisible strings, and you pluck them from the air and toss them to the ground as you sink to your knees.

The holes blown into Bucky’s jacket are gone, like they’d never been there in the first place.

Your head is swimming, showing you new images, different ones as vaguely familiar as memories but too fast to focus on. What’s left behind is this feeling of breathless yearning unlike any you’ve ever felt, like you’re pressing your hand against a glass, looking in on something you can’t quite grasp.

"Bucky?" you whisper, but the void doesn’t answer. It’s still lying in wait, and you’re not done yet.

Another wave of nausea rolls over you, your powers making your entire body tingle, bubbling up like they’re screaming at you to do something. Without even thinking about it, you press the palms of your hands together and push.

A rush of light and energy pours into the place between your hands with concentrated force, and something inside you uncoils, like you’re pulling at the very root of it all. It’s a thread that tightens, and then snaps.

You’re thrown backwards with the force of it, right as the world resumes turning with a stutter. Your hand cramps around the thing in your hand, barely bigger than a coin, its blunt edges cutting you open.

You can just see Bucky sit up with a gasp for air before your head knocks against the stone floor and everything turns black.

* * *

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

You’ve been here before.

This empty nothingness feels familiar to you, even before you open your weary eyes. You’re neither warm nor cold, weirdly weightless, like you’re remembering a dream.

Déjà vu.

The world around you is hazy in the afterglow of the sun just disappearing on the horizon. You’re standing in the middle of an empty street that looks different than you remember, all sharp angles and off colors. It reminds you of the astral realm.

You blink.

You only have a vague recollection of it, like the memories all got jumbled and disconnected, just out of reach.

Your feet have started moving without your conscious decision, walking along this street you vaguely recognize. You’re surrounded by a comfortable quiet, and some deep-rooted knowledge inside you tells you that even though you’re outside of time, right now, you don’t have to carry its weight.

A cool breeze tickles your neck like it’s whispering your name, but when you turn to look over your shoulder, no one’s there. There’s only mist and void.

When you turn back around, there’s a small figure sitting in the middle of the street in front of you, a child wearing a jumpsuit and a yellow shirt that you know for a fact has three little holes below the left sleeve. She’s hugging her knees to herself as she watches you approach through wary eyes, her hands balled into fists so tight her nails must be digging into the palms of her hands.

Oh, you think with a painful tug of your heart. That’s what this is.

You approach slowly, not wanting to frighten the girl, sitting down with your legs crossed underneath you.

"Hi," you say softly.

She doesn’t reply.

"What are you doing?" you prompt.

The girl bites her lip, not sure if she should talk to you. "I’m waiting," she tells you finally.

"What are you waiting for?"

"You know," she says reproachfully. "Things aren’t moving."

You do know. The silence surrounding you is familiar, after all. You’ve known it all your life.

"How long have you been waiting?" you ask.

The girl looks at her feet. She twists her fingers. "I’m not sure," she says. "A long while. It’s very boring."

"I know it is."

She sizes you up carefully, considering all of you right as you are, and you let her. It takes some time.

That’s fine.

"What are you doing here?" she asks finally.

"I’m not sure," you say. "I think I’m here to pick you up."

"To go where?"

"Home?"

She pouts. "But I was waiting."

"I know. It might take a while, though." You tilt your head and she does the same, a little mirror image. "We could drink some hot chocolate while we wait."

That does catch her interest. "Yeah?"

"Sure." You both get up and pat the dust off your legs. "It’s not far, is it?"

"No," she replies, taking your hand. "Just around the corner. Did you forget?"

"Maybe a little."

You start walking and the breeze picks up again, twirling mist between your legs and playing with the girl’s hair. It smells like warm cookies.

As you’re holding her hand, the girl grows a little taller, skipping along. "Does it get easier?" she asks after a while.

"It does," you say. "And it doesn’t. It’s like some things get scarier with time and others are less scary. You know?"

"Not really."

"It’s harder in a lot of ways. But it’s easier when you’re not alone."

"I’m always alone," she whispers.

"No, you’re not. I’m here. And we’re getting hot chocolate."

"You don’t count."

"Now that’s just mean." You pass houses you barely recognize and others you know well, but you’re not there yet. "But if I’m not alone, that means you aren’t either. That’s just how it works."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"So we’ll be okay?"

You squeeze your hand. "We’ll be just fine, honey."

She hums contentedly, some song you vaguely recollect. You’ve not heard it in a long, long time.

"Do you have to go again soon?" the girl asks. "After, I mean."

You look around at the strange colors and the almost forgotten memories, and your steps feel a bit lighter, somehow. You take a deep breath, basking in this frozen little moment.

"I think I have a little more time," you say. "I have to get back, though."

She smiles, widely. "Yes, please."

epilogue

thank you for reading!! you can follow my library blog @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications 💚 i'm gonna do all my sappy callouts in the epilogue so you can already look forward to that 🫶🏼 also if you read this send good vibes because i have to get up for work in like. four hours.

[yourladyjane]

Do you hear that?

That’s the sound of me running at breakneck speed to the epilogue. God, Nika, what have you done to me?

[intrepidacious]

time after time [11]

series summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 9.8k

chapter warnings: time travel 101 (until your head hurts); suicidal ideation within a time loop; a dash of smut 💚 please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: it's like 3am and i've definitely missed some typos and/or descriptors but i really wanted to post this one. we've almost made it folks!!

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

eleven: tomorrow we live

You weren’t well after the battle.

You’d kept yourself out of sight for the most part, evading Strange and the other Masters while kicking alien ass and trying to save as many of your people as you could. You managed, right up until Tony’s snap.

You’d never known him that well, hadn’t particularly liked him much from what you were told, but Pepper Potts had invited you to Morgan’s third birthday party along with Natasha and you’d seen the way that little girl’s eyes lit up when she looked at her dad, and the way he looked back at her. It had made you ache.

Now, you saw him make the decision to end all of this, far ahead in the distance, and all you could do was scream. Because you’d seen what kind of toll it took on a person, and you knew what it meant for his child.

You tried to reset it, but your powers were weak and you were tired and too far away. You only made it back a few seconds and had to watch him snap again. Then, your knees gave way and the world turned black.

You had a strange dream. You were standing in a twilight realm with nothing but a shallow body of water surrounding you. It was quiet, the air impossibly still, and when you moved, the water didn’t make a sound.

"Still not good enough, I see."

Kaecilius looked the same as he did in your nightmares, a stern face and purple-rimmed eyes.

"You’re not here," you whispered. "You’re dead."

"For now," he agreed.

Your hands balled into fists by your sides. "I’m not afraid of you."

Your voice only shook a little bit.

"Of course not," Kaecilius replied. "Fear would be useful." He lifted his arms. "Look around. What do you see?"

"Nothing," you said. "It’s empty."

"Is it, now?"

You watched the shaking reflections at your feet. A dull greenish glimmer surrounded your mirror image, like something was shining at you from behind. When you turned to look over your shoulder, there was nothing.

"Untethered," Kaecilius said quietly.

"What?"

"That’s the price for freedom." He tilted his chin to look at you, and there was that familiar tug in your chest. "Tell me, was it worth it?"

"I lost everything once. I’m not doing it again."

"Oh, but you will."

You couldn’t tell if it was meant as a promise or a warning. Before you could say anything else, the world around you began to flicker at its edges and faded into true nothingness, once and for all.

When you woke up in the med wing, they told you Steve had gone.

"Gone?" you asked, confused. "Gone where?"

"Back," they said, but that was impossible. He was a man out of time, always had been, but he wasn’t supposed to get lost. He had found his place, right here, with his friends, with his family, now that everyone was finally back. He was supposed to be there as you all rebuilt the world.

After Nat, you hadn’t expected to lose him, too, when you’d already lost so many people, and so your body didn’t know how to react. You were stuck in shock and grief in a frozen universe for hours before sleep finally dragged you back down and the world resumed, as it always did.

Continuing, despite.

If this was victory, you didn’t want any part in it.

* * * * *

You’re so warm.

You blink into consciousness deliciously slowly, the midday sun tickling your nose. A steady heartbeat thrums right underneath your ear. You cannot remember the last time you slept this comfortably.

Bucky gently squeezes your side, his right hand continuing to trace invisible lines on the back of your neck. "Hey."

"Hi."

How strange to think that you might just be allowed to kiss him now. How adrenaline spiking.

So you do.

You’re still sprawled on top of Bucky, and nothing has ever felt as right as brushing your lips against his and having him hum into your mouth in response. Again. Again. Why couldn’t the rest of the loop have been just like this?

"We should probably get up," he says finally.

"Are you kidding? I’m never getting up from this couch again." You snuggle closer to him, your nose pressing against his neck. "Tell me something I don't know."

His soft laugh shakes your entire body. "There's several books I could fill with stuff you don't know about."

"Well, I'm starting to run out of things to read, anyway."

Bucky’s fingers keep wandering, brushing your ear, your cheek, careful, soothing touches. As if he’s not quite certain, yet, that you’re not just going to vanish between his hands.

"You were never afraid of me," he says quietly.

You keep playing with the collar of his shirt, the fabric softened with wear. "Why would I have been afraid of you?"

"Even when we first met, when I was awful to you—"

"You weren't awful—"

"No, I was. And you didn't care. At first I thought it was because of your powers, but …" He lets out a sigh. "It's been a very long time since a complete stranger's treated me like a normal guy."

You prop up your chin on his chest. "You are a normal guy."

There's protest in his eyes, but he doesn't voice it. "It was nice," he says instead, "to get to just be myself."

"Ah. So your true self is a complaining asshole."

A playful grin twinkles in his eyes. "Don't pretend like you've hated all of our fights."

You roll your eyes and kiss him again. "I much prefer this."

"Good," Bucky says into your mouth, his voice lower than usual. "Me too."

"Glad we’re agreed for once."

He smiles against your lips, deepening the kiss. You trace the ghost of his dimples underneath his stubbled cheeks, slipping your hands into his hair as he rolls you both over, his weight pressing down on you, your mind finally, blissfully shutting up. You could stay forever in this moment.

"Really? On the couch? Don’t you people have rooms? You know, with doors you could lock?"

"Busted," you stage-whisper.

Bucky’s pupils are huge as he stares down at you, lips red, his hair perfectly mussed. The sight makes you stupidly happy.

Sam clears his throat exaggeratedly, and when your gaze turns to him, he has a shit-eating grin on his face. "Nice to see the two of you … getting along."

"Shut up, Sam," you both say at the same time.

"Seriously though, this," he gestures vaguely at both of you with his spoon, "is good, and it's about damn time, but get a room."

"Don’t you have a speech to write?" Bucky says roughly.

"Get lost, Barnes," Sam replies.

Bucky's smile flickers as he catches your lips with his one more time before sitting up, pulling you with him. His fingers interlock with yours easily, like he's been doing it for ages, his thumb circling the back of your hand.

Something in your chest aches when he pulls away from you, half-expecting the world to fall away and for you to wake up alone in your bed again; but nothing happens. Still, you don't want him to stop touching you, and not just for reality's sake.

"Did you want something?" Bucky asks, talking to Sam while keeping his attention on you.

"Lunch. How do you guys feel about Italian?"

"God, no," Bucky says.

"Literally anything else, please," you say.

"Alright, subtle," Sam snorts. "What, then?"

Bucky raises his eyebrows at you. "I can make lunch," he suggests.

"Jesus Christ," Sam replies.

"Italian sounds great, actually," you add.

"Hey," Bucky says, frowning at you.

"I don't want flames erupting from the oven again."

"That was one time and also not my fault."

One time that he remembers, at least. "Then whose was it, the cat's?"

Alpine, who’s just entered the couch table, meows in protest.

"I can cook," Bucky says.

"Anyone can cook," you reply sweetly. "Doesn't mean everyone should."

"Bold statement from someone who burns coffee for a living."

"If I don’t get another suggestion in the next ten seconds, you can both starve," Sam interrupts.

You think about any options you’ve not grown completely sick of yet. "How about Korean?"

"Thank you," he says, going back to his laptop. The conversation stalls for a while as you try to ignore Bucky’s sideward glances. Finally, Sam looks back at the two of you again, his eyebrow raised. "So when exactly did that happen?"

You exchange a quick look.

"Now, come on, Sam," Bucky says with a smirk. "It’s not like it came overnight."

"You sure about that?" you grin.

"Ew," Sam says. "Whatever that just was, ew. I’m retracting my question. I’m going to make a call."

"Say hi to Sarah!" you call after him.

He makes a crude gesture with his spoon that makes you laugh.

"What was that about my cooking?" Bucky says.

"We’ll work on it," you grin. "We might need another fifty Fridays or so, but one day I’m sure you’ll—" You yelp when he abruptly pulls you into his lap.

"I’ll what?" he asks, and his breath brushes over your lips.

You swallow. "Get there eventually."

"Anyone ever tell you you’re awfully bossy?"

"You did." You lean closer again, lowering your voice. "I think you like it."

He doesn’t respond verbally to that.

Without breaking the kiss, you reach for his left hand and pull it around yourself, shivering pleasantly at the cool touch against your skin. He hesitates briefly before letting his metal fingers curl around your waist, grasping you tighter.

Finally, with a groan, he gently pushes you away.

"I hate to say it," he says, sounding almost wrecked, "but Sam might be onto something."

"You okay?"

He laughs breathlessly, a distinct blush spreading on his cheeks. "Give me a moment."

Alpine chooses that exact moment to claim her spot on the couch once again, meowing at both of you disapprovingly. You can’t help but grin, pulling her onto your lap as you move back onto the couch, careful to keep touching Bucky in at least some way or other.

"Dialing it back, Sarge. Understood."

"Don’t," he hisses.

You tilt your head in delight. "I’m learning so much about you."

He pokes your side and you snort.

For a couple of minutes, you scratch Alpine’s chin and play with her paws, leaning against Bucky’s vibranium arm. She seems perfectly content with all of it, not even extending her claws.

"How do you feel about coffee?" you ask when you feel Bucky relax behind you again.

"Why not," he replies.

"Perfect. One sec." You raise your voice. "Do you want something from Starbucks?"

"Something iced!" Sam shouts back from the other room. "Is the kitchen safe again now?"

"Shut up!" you both reply.

Bucky’s picked up on the fact that he shouldn’t let go of you so the universe doesn’t reset again, or he simply doesn’t want to. You can’t bring yourself to mind either way.

You’re almost delirious with happiness when you’re back in the elevator and he pulls you against him again. You’re still in your pyjamas, probably spattered with blood, and you couldn’t have given less of a shit.

There’s something solid peeking out from underneath Bucky’s shirt, and you frown. "What’s that?"

He hesitates for a moment before pulling on the chain of his dog tags.

It’s your ring.

The ring you used to wear on your pinkie. The one you thought had vanished many loops ago on the floor of your bathroom, threaded through the metal chain to rest above his heart.

"It kept appearing in my pocket," he explains. "I didn’t want to lose it."

You press your lips against his again, a soft, silent thank you. "Keep it," you say.

Something catches your eye like a glint of impossibility, a strange trick of holographic lighting: a tiny spec of green. Before you can take a closer look, however, the elevator pings and you have to step outside into the lobby.

You raise your free hand and look at the rings you’re still wearing out of habit. They’re all pitch black.

"You okay?" Bucky asks.

"Yeah," you mumble. "Yeah, never mind. It was just the light."

It’s busy outside, the midday sun frying the concrete. You don’t talk as you make your way through the crowd, sticking as closely together as possible. At a red light, you manage to steal another kiss and Bucky looks at you like you’ve hung the moon.

"They’re out of iced tea at this time," you tell him, enjoying the feeling of his hand on your lower back. "But if we get Sam a cold brew, I think we should be …"

Your voice trails off when you look around the store. Apart from the two people behind the counter, it’s completely empty. A shiver runs down your spine.

"Something’s wrong," you say.

Bucky tenses, grasping your hand more tightly and putting himself in front of you. The coffee grinder howls, the sound echoing in the empty building.

Slowly, you step up to the counter.

"Hi, welcome to Starbucks." Lucy looks past you like she’s talking to someone invisible standing right between you two. After a pause, she nods and taps at the register. "And will that be for here or to go?"

"Luce?" you say carefully.

"Alright," she smiles. Her colorful make-up is running down the side of her face like red-white-and-blue tears. "It’ll be right over there. Oh, careful about that spill, we’re working on it. Hi, welcome to Starbucks."

"Whole place looks deserted," Bucky tells you.

"Sorry, what was that?" Lucy says.

"It’s like we’re not here," you say quietly.

"It’s not just her," he says. "Look."

Over at the pick-up counter, there’s a pile of spilled cups on the floor. The second barista behind the bar doesn’t notice any of them. He keeps shoving them down by placing new cups in the same spot. Perfectly rehearsed and executed each time, except he’s performing for nobody.

"Like they’re stuck in their script," Bucky says.

"This is bad," you say, "this is really, really bad."

"Hey." He tugs you closer, his eyes locking with yours. "It’s probably just another glitch."

"No, Strange warned me something like this would happen at some point."

Reality folding in on itself.

You bite your cheek so hard it hurts. "The loop is at breaking point. We’re running out of time."

"But that’s good news, right? We’re getting closer to it being over."

"No, it’s not." Your voice is wavering. "I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do."

"Ask for a frappuccino and I will fucking murder you," Lucy says.

You turn towards her again.

"I swear," she continues, fixing her hair with perfectly mechanical movements, "if I see another child today, I’m gonna quit."

"That bad?" you ask quietly.

Her gaze focuses and she turns to stare right at you with clear, empty eyes. "Please kill me."

There’s not a hint of her usual dryness in her voice. You instinctively retreat, bumping into Bucky as you do. The steamer howls, the only noise in the sudden silence.

Lucy keeps looking at you, not keeping up with her own lines. Like she’s waiting for you, or something else.

Please kill me.

You shake your head, sick to your stomach. "I can’t."

An actual tear rolls down her face, and then she snaps her head back to stare at empty air again. "Usual," she says, but it’s not a question this time.

Useless.

You rip your hand out of Bucky’s, and the world around you vanishes in a stream of multicolor as he shouts your name.

* * *

"You talk to her," Sam says, his voice muffled through the door.

There’s a murmur too low for you to understand from where you’re hiding underneath your blanket, pressing the palms of your hands to the sockets of your eyes. The band around your wrist is whirring wildly.

One day.

You’d gotten less than a single day, a single morning of everything working out, of finally thinking that maybe things wouldn’t always be this bad. Of feeling something like hope.

It’d been foolish.

You’re still stuck on Friday, and reality is still crumbling around you, or fading away, or maybe melting into another one; you don’t even know anymore. You’re so sick of this.

You can hear the crunch of your lock being reduced to pieces, and then slow, soft steps into your room. With a soft click, the door closes again. You stay under your blanket.

"Y/N," Bucky says softly.

"I can’t."

He lets out a breath, and your mattress dips. Gently, he pulls the blanket off your head.

Geez, you hate the way he looks at you. Like you’re about to break, and he’s just waiting patiently to pick up each piece and mend them together again.

What the hell have you done to deserve to be looked at like that?

"Hi," he says, and your vision blurs.

You want to kiss him again. You want to wrap yourself around him and protect him from whatever bullshit this day decides to throw at you next.

"Everything is falling apart," you whisper. "It’s gonna keep happening until we find a way out. I’m nowhere closer to knowing what I’m supposed to do, and so we keep circling around, making everything worse. And what if—" You cut yourself off, pressing a hand to your mouth.

"What if what?"

What if it’s just you?

These past few weeks, it’s been a quiet thought, pushed to the very back of your mind with everything else going on. You know that you’ll make it out, which is some relief, but what if it’s just you?

Strange never said anything about Bucky, and you’re still beating yourself up over not asking.

What if this, all of this, will have been for nothing?

No, you can’t think like that.

You put one hand on Bucky’s chest, feeling his heartbeat underneath your palm, soft and steady. He’s still breathing, and that’s all that counts for now.

You’ve made it this far, right?

"I’m just so scared," you whisper. It’s the truth, after all.

"Me too," he says quietly. Both of his hands cup your face, his thumbs gently wiping the tears from your cheeks. "But we’re getting so close. I know it. We just need to keep going. You need to keep going."

A wet laugh bubbles up your throat. "You’re putting a lot of faith into someone who’s not been able to use her powers at all in months at this point."

"Is that what you’re worried about?"

Is it? Truth be told, you’ve gotten so used to the absence of time magic running through your veins. There’s an empty space at your core where you used to be able to feel it, tucked safely away, a reassuring connection to the flow of time itself.

Ever since your visit to the Sanctum, you’ve become very aware that you’re missing that link now. There’s a void inside you that’s been growing whilst you were looking away, a black hole that tastes like regret and loneliness.

All those years, and still …

"My powers were never something I wanted to have, and they’re … I used to feel like an anomaly. Like a mistake. But now …" You swallow a sob. "Everything is going wrong, and now they’ve been gone for so long, and I feel like a part of me is just missing."

It’s such a selfish thing to care about, but Bucky’s been nothing but honest with you, and you owe him as much.

"And so I keep wondering, what if I can never get them back? Or I do, just to stop the loop, but the price to end all of this is giving them up? I mean, what am I going to do then?"

What a waste of time.

You’re so tired, and weary, and sick of having to lean on other people. You should be able to do this, of all things, on your own.

Even when you couldn’t properly control your powers, at least they were yours and yours alone. There was a certain merit in being the only one of your kind, too; no one knew how to control you.

And yet, looking back, it all seems like wasted time you could’ve spent doing good, learning to understand them more intricately, to use them for more important things than getting out of awkward conversations and keeping yourself safe.

Without them gone, would you ever have honestly stopped trying to avoid situations that left you cut open and vulnerable, just as you are right now?

Untethered.

"Hey," Bucky says again and you blink back into the moment. "Didn’t you tell me that the Winter Soldier doesn’t define me? Well, your powers don’t define you."

"But I don’t want to lose them," you say quietly.

Despite the chaos they’re brought. Despite all your mistakes and shortcomings, despite the loop, despite everything that would never have happened without you having these powers in the first place. Because you’re just starting to accept them for what they really are: a gift, and a curse.

It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

"You’ll get them back," Bucky says. Sometimes, you do wonder where he gets his relentless confidence in you from.

"You don’t know that," you say quietly.

He huffs. "You hate clichés. Stop thinking you’re doomed to live in one. That’s not like you."

"Then what is?"

He presses his forehead to yours, and your eyes flutter closed. "You fight."

You can’t help but laugh. "I’m not a fighter."

"Didn’t say you were. I said you fight. You don’t give up so easily."

"Maybe I should. Might save me a lot of racing thoughts."

"You would be bored in five minutes." The knowing smile in his voice is really annoying. "You’re not so bad the way you are, you know."

"I’m not that great, either, though."

"Look at me?"

You do, his hand gently tipping your chin. He’s always so gentle with you.

"Powers or not, doesn’t matter. You’re still you. I wouldn’t want you to be anything else. It’s more than I … it’s more than enough."

His heart is pounding underneath your palm, and there are too many emotions written across his face to make sense of them all, but you feel them. Heartbreakingly so.

"It shouldn’t be," you say. "It’s killed you. Multiple times."

"I don’t care. I’m still here, and so are you. I’ve watched you do great things with and without your powers, time after time, and you’re gonna continue doing that over and over again." He smiles at you in that way of his, soft and sure. "We’ll be okay."

You love him. The thought rushes through you without a shadow of a doubt, a knowledge so certain it might as well be written across your forehead. You love Bucky Barnes with every fiber of your heart.

The problem is, he’s right. You hate clichés.

And so you’re afraid that in the grand scheme of things, love alone won’t be enough.

You lean in to hug him again and his arms envelop you perfectly, like this was where you were supposed to be all along. You bury your nose in his neck and inhale deeply, and you’ve never wanted to freeze a moment in time more than you do right then.

"I want to kiss you so bad right now." A whisper against his skin, another teardrop on his shirt.

His hand comes up to your neck again, pulling you back.

The look in his eyes is devastating, and you wonder how it’s taken you so long to recognize the longing in it. He lets you see it so clearly now, but it’s been there for a long, long time, in flashes and stolen moments, barely concealed behind a veneer of indifference. You’re sure he can see it mirrored in your own gaze right now; you’re almost bursting with it.

You nudge your nose against his, once, twice, and he shivers.

"We need to stop," he whispers, even though he sounds like stopping is the very last thing he wants to do. You can relate. There’s a hair’s breadth between your lips and it takes every single ounce of self-control you have not to close that distance.

The memory of how he kisses you is still too fresh in your mind. The way he perfectly molds into you, the way he holds you like you’re something precious, even now. Like he’s got all the time in the world.

Except you don’t.

There’s still so much you haven’t figured out, and no telling how many loops you have left before reality collapses entirely.

Reluctantly, you pull away from him once again, wrapping your arms around yourself instead. No matter what you do, it always seems one step forwards and two steps back with you and Bucky.

"Okay," you say quietly, letting out one long breath and then nodding. "What’s the plan?"

The corners of Bucky’s eyes crinkle with a grin.

* * *

"What do you want with Redwing?" Sam asks skeptically.

"Repair it." Bucky leans against the kitchen counter. His hair is still damp from his shower, and your eyes keep getting drawn to a single curl that’s hanging into his face.

Sam scoffs and continues his typing. "If it were that easy, I’d have fixed them already. One’s sensors got fried in that explosion, and the bullet that hit Two splintered into about five million tiny pieces."

"Sorry about that," you say.

"You didn’t shoot at him." He pauses, narrowing his eyes at you. "Tell me you didn’t shoot at him."

"I did not shoot at Redwing." You didn’t reset it happening, either, but you feel like now might not be the time to fess up.

"It’s going to take forever to patch them both up again, and I’ve not had that kind of time lately," Sam says, tilting his head at his laptop as a case in point. You feel awful.

"Let me take a look," Bucky presses.

"No offence, man, but you’re not exactly MacGyver," Sam grimaces. "And it’s not like there’s spare parts just lying around the place."

"Redwing’s Stark tech, right?" you ask thoughtfully.

"Wakandan. But the hardware’s still similar enough."

"I have an idea," you say, checking the time. "Either of you guys hungry yet?"

"I don’t know about this," Sam says about forty minutes and one time loop explanation later, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "How old did you say you are?"

"He’s a great kid," you tell him. "He’s a candidate for MIT."

Peter blinks. "I didn’t say—anyway, I, uhm. I used to intern at Stark Industries, so sure, I could take a look at it."

"Did you now," Sam says dryly.

"Yup. Just one summer though. Before the …" He swallows. "I was gone."

Something softens a little in Sam’s expression. "Same here, kiddo."

"Yeah, I know. I mean, I heard, I wasn’t there." Peter clears his throat, tucking his hands into his armpits. "So where’s the bird?"

"Why are you trying to fix your archnemesis?" you say, catching up with Bucky.

"It’s not my—" He cuts himself off, rolling his eyes when you grin. "I’d like an audio recording of the crowd when Sam gives his speech."

"Why?"

He hesitates. "It’s probably not even about the loop. It’s just …"

That frown you can recognize. That inkling suspicion, that 'it’s probably nothing, but I’d like confirmation'. It usually means he’s onto something.

"A clue?"

"Sure. Maybe. A clue."

"Okay then." You slip your pinkie into his.

"What," he chuckles, squeezing back, "no criticizing my plans?"

"I am nothing if not out of ideas," you sigh. "And who knows, maybe it’ll help."

You don’t usually go into Tony Stark’s old workroom. Most of the interesting stuff got packed up before the move to Avengers Campus, leaving a sterile looking, well-lit room with a large work bench and a single old rolling chair that Peter plops onto.

The Redwings are a rather sorry sight, laid out in their cases with all the extra pieces collected in small plastic bags. All of you watch as Peter cracks his knuckles before he carefully unscrews the busted top of Redwing One’s casing. Sam is hovering over his shoulder like he’s about to grade his efforts.

Waiting’s the worst part. At your request, FRIDAY puts on a 70s playlist that makes Sam tap his foot while he questions whether Peter’s declared his major yet—"no, uhm, they want us to do that at the end of our first year and I’ve not been admitted yet, so"—and his most recent eye appointment—"my vision’s 20/20, sir"—until they both finally let out a deep breath.

"Getting the spare parts won’t be the problem," Peter says, swiveling around in his chair. "I have that sorta stuff at home, it’s just a question of replacing the nanosensors and soldering the PCB."

"Sure," you say, understanding most of those words individually.

"The problem is, it’ll take me a couple of hours. There’s no way for me to get it done until, what, 2 p.m.? If we rush, dust could get into the circuit and it’ll all be a worse mess than it is right now."

"Told you," Sam says.

"What about the other one?" Bucky asks.

Peter grimaces. "That one’s gonna need a proper cleaning, ideally with ultrasonic equipment to get all the particles out. Sorry, Sarge."

Bucky just nods, then leaves the room without another word.

"I got it," Sam tells you when you start after him. "Put that lid back on and step away, MIT."

Peter holds up both of his hands, eyes flicking towards you. "Can’t break it if the loop resets, right?"

"You’re good," you confirm, still looking at the door.

His shoulders lose some of their tension as he leans back in his chair, clearly still impressed with everything going on. "So, how does it work?"

Your laugh comes out a little shrill. "I wish I could tell you."

"There was an episode of Star Trek TNG where they got stuck in a collision loop." He plays around with the screwdriver he’s still holding, his hands surprisingly quick. "Have you tried sending yourself messages as well?"

"Kind of," you say, thinking of Bucky’s writing on your arm and the tally marks on your legs.

"So cool."

"I don’t know about that," you reply. "It’s been weeks, and I still don’t understand how this loop is working. Especially now that there’s two of us who are aware it’s happening. Does that mean it’s still just one reality on repeat?"

Peter shrugs. "I dunno, I don’t know much about it, but in my experience, reality’s just what people remember. Who says there’s much more to it?"

"Right," you say. "It’s just us two getting looped. Your reality is mostly fine, it just happens over and over. But if you don’t realize that it does, it’s not actually a loop."

"I mean, maybe, maybe."

Maybe.

You can’t just separate one from the other. There’s that thing called the first law of thermodynamics.

"You know much about thermodynamics, Peter?"

"The, uh, basics, I guess? Perpetual motion is impossible, energy consumed by a system must be resupplied by an external source, everything is balance, that sorta stuff?"

Magic, as a whole, is always a balancing act.

You massage your stinging temples. "Top of your class, were you?"

Something flickers across his face before he smiles. "Nah. I’m more of an applied physics guy."

Once all of this is over, maybe you could introduce him to Bruce. He might enjoy the pop culture references as well.

Before you can suggest as much, Peter takes a look at his phone and curses under his breath. "Shoot, I’m sorry, I gotta go, I got a—photography club."

"Sure, don’t worry about it," you say. The symbols around your wrist tingle again, and you distractedly trace them with your thumb.

Funny, you think, how the timing of your intervention seems to completely derail his day. Last time, he said he was visiting his aunt.

* * *

Here’s the thing: When you’re able to travel through time, looking at the past becomes surprisingly emotionally taxing. Remembering what could have been, what might have been, what should have been in another, better universe is, you suppose, hard on everyone.

For someone with the ability to theoretically do something about all these what ifs, it’s ulcer inducing.

These are the kind of things, therefore, you force yourself to suppress most of the time. Ironically, it’s mostly the sort of moments that, at the time, you want to freeze and preserve forever. Looking back, they’re the ones that hurt the most.

Sometimes, though, you can’t help it. Some routines, some rituals that were established during happier times demand to be maintained, even if you’re the only one who remembers them anymore. Even if there’s other, more pressing things to do, secrets to work out, realities to stabilize.

Your hands know this rhythm.

You’ve let FRIDAY put on some music from one of Sam’s favorite playlists again, and you watch him nod along as he’s typing away on his laptop with a faraway focus. You smile as you wash your hands again, preheat the oven, grease your pan.

It takes him a little while to consciously notice what you’re doing. "Really?" he says. "It’s in the fricking nineties today and you’re baking?"

"We have a functioning AC," you reply. "I thought we should celebrate that."

"The planet is dying."

Be that it were only the planet.

"I’m making turtle pie," you say. "And cinnamon rolls."

That seems to placate him for the time being, because he moves to the living room area without further complaint.

You grimace in concentration as you transfer your pie crust to the pan for prebaking. You’ve never been particularly skilled at pies, but you’ve been living by the motto "trying counts for something" in all other aspects of life lately.

"You’re hovering again, Barnes," you say without turning.

"You’re baking." The surprise in his voice makes you smile.

"I am," you say. "Notice how there aren’t any flames erupting around me."

"Yet," Bucky says, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. "I didn’t know you could bake."

"You never asked." You dust your hands off the excess flour. "It’s easier to think when I have something else to focus on, you know?"

"Can I help?"

You’re tempted to make another dig at his baking skills, but the way he looks at you makes you reconsider. "Can you knead with that arm?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Is that a challenge?"

"I won’t be blamed if you malfunction. Are you dishwasher safe?"

"Give me that." He frowns slightly, looking at the ingredients you’ve started to measure out into your mixing bowl. "I thought you’re making pie?"

"I am. Well, and these."

"Ambitious." He swoops a finger through the mixture to try.

"Lots of thoughts require ambitious projects to procrastinate with."

He nods, and you fall into a sort of companionable silence you’ve not felt with him in a while. Sometimes, your arms brush as you work, and it sends a warm shiver up your entire arm.

You want to interlock your fingers again, pull him towards you, see if you can taste a hint of cinnamon on his lips.

"During the Blip …" you start, immediately unsure whether you want to share this particular story or not.

You watch Bucky’s hands, continuing to slowly and methodically fold the flour into the dough.

"Nat wasn’t allowed in the kitchen at all. She was so much worse than you." You laugh when he elbows you. "But there’s this stress-relief in baking, you know? In doing something with your hands, and by the end of it, you’ve got something you can give to others."

"I get that," he says, scraping at a particularly sticky piece of dough.

You nod and measure out your sugar. "Steve had a lot of late nights, especially those first couple of years, and there was only so much to do at all when you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with everyone blaming you for half the globe being gone."

"How was he?" There’s a careful fondness in Bucky’s voice that he usually hides. It makes you think about your answer.

"Lost, I think," you say, even though it seems lacking. Steve’s out-of-timeliness had always been very different to Bucky’s. You used to think he’d managed to rearrange himself over the years, to reorient himself in this new reality.

You didn’t realize he’d used an old compass before it was too late.

"I mean, everyone was," you add, even though you don’t really know why you’re defending him.

"Were you?"

"Desperately," you huff. "Turns out, though, when the world around you is upside down, it’s really nice to have some fixed points to look forward to."

"Like what?"

"Bath towels. Or making cinnamon rolls on someone’s birthday."

Bucky stops kneading, calculating in his head. "Is it—"

"Yup."

He curses under his breath.

"Yup." You sigh and grab the mixing bowl again. "Hand me the butter?"

"You need to add a pinch of nutmeg. And … cardamom, I think."

You stare at him in surprise.

"That’s ma’s recipe. I used to beg for these when I was a kid. I’ve not had them in ninety years or somethin’."

A warm feeling spreads in your stomach. "About time, then."

Usually, you’d get to skip over this part; the waiting. It’s your least favorite, when you’re stuck in between tasks, your crust in the oven, the other dough still proofing. You’ve never been very good at waiting.

You start scrubbing the counters furiously, your thoughts returning with a vengeance as soon as there’s a lull in your blessed distraction plan. The loop on your wrist is particularly itchy again today.

"Talk to me."

With a frustrated groan, you drop your sponge. "I keep thinking about physics. Like, maybe there’s some sort of equation or quantum experiment that’ll help us out."

Past and present and future all folded into each other and wrapped into one.

But how does any of that make sense with what you’re experiencing?

Humans can only be in one state at one particular time.

"You reckon we’re gonna be spacetime experts before the universe implodes?" Bucky remarks.

"They should just hand us our doctorates right now."

"James Barnes, PhD. My ma’d lose her mind."

"Eh, not as impressive as a racecar driver in the family if you ask me." You turn on the hot water tap to let the bowls soak and yelp when you’re pulled back against his chest.

"That so?"

"Hmm." Your heart is beating wildly as Bucky interlaces your fingers. "I’m still not convinced you should be allowed to drive with that flimsy piece of paper you call a license."

He rests his chin on your shoulder. "That’s pretty hurtful, doll. I’ve never had any complaints about my driving."

"Maybe everyone else you drove had a danger fetish."

You should probably turn off the water again. For the environment. But Bucky’s laugh fans across your cheek before he inhales, deeply, and you are so sick of pulling away from him.

"God, it’s so unfair," he whispers, leaving a trail of goosebumps running down your neck.

"What is?"

"You."

The oven timer starts beeping and you want to smash it with a baseball bat. Reluctantly, Bucky releases you from his hold to retrieve the pie crust while you prevent the imminent flooding of your kitchen sink.

It’s not even noon yet, you remind yourself. You’ve been over this. You don’t know how many semi-stable loops there are left, and you can’t afford to waste another one of them.

No matter how much you want to.

There’s a tense sort of silence between you as you finish up the pie and let Bucky revise your cinnamon roll ingredients.

"You know," you tell him, wiping another bowl clean, "Steve’s tried to recreate these for years."

Bucky crosses out another measurement. "That’s what you get for stealing a family recipe."

It’s started to smell heavenly in here; like dish soap and warm cookies. By the time the rolls are finally ready to bake, you’re sweaty and excited, and Sam’s checked in on the status of the goods twice. The air’s turned giddy with sugar and anticipation, the silence shifting into something more comfortable, almost peaceful.

How lovely to know a day like this can have pockets of lightness, you think; even if they’re fleeting.

Bucky’s hair has started to stick up in the back a little as you move around each other in a routine so easy it feels choreographed. Whenever you look at him, he’s already watching you, and it makes your heart jump every time.

"Hold on, you have a little …"

With a small grin, you reach out to wipe away the trace of glaze on his cheek. He catches your wrist, his eyes darkening.

You don’t breathe.

He pulls your hand closer to his mouth, licking the icing off your thumb without breaking eye contact. Fire rushes down your spine.

"Now who’s not playing fair?" you whisper.

"Fuck fair," he says. It comes out like a plea.

You despise yourself for shaking your head. "It’s too early."

You’ve agreed. There’s too much left to sort through. You’ve not even been to the astral plane today.

"Feels late to me," Bucky says, keeping hold of your hand. "Couple weeks late, at least."

Every part of you aches to close the distance between you, reality be damned. So what if it all unravels? No one but the two of you would remember, anyway.

It’s just you and Bucky, in the end, and doesn’t that count for something? You’ve already lost so much time getting stuck in this single day, time you can’t ever get back, because unlike everyone else, you can’t just go back to the beginning.

Not as long as you’re in the loop.

And just like that, with a sudden, crashing sense of clarity, you know how to finish this.

* * *

"Space and time and reality are related," you explain, drawing a bunch of overlapping circles and labeling them. "That’s what Strange said, that’s what Wong said. Even Peter."

In my experience, reality’s just what people remember.

"Dimension’s all a question of perspective. Right now, for Bucky and me, time is experienced as a loop, but for Sam here, it isn’t. Because he is physically in a different space than we are."

"No, I’m not."

"Yes, you are. This here," you hold up your arm, letting the green runes shimmer in the sunlight, "is breaking down the barriers between dimensions. If reality was stuck in a loop for everyone else, everyone else would remember, but they don’t. It’s just us. It’s just our reality."

"I’m getting a headache," Sam groans into his pie.

"Your timeline is normal," you tell him, drawing an arrow pointing to the left. "July fourth today. July third before that. No detours or anomalies. Your day always goes the way it’s supposed to. It just happens to intersect with our loop." You draw an infinity symbol cutting through the line, then point at its center "We meet right here, at this junction, and then your reality continues the way it’s supposed to and ours resets."

"I thought I’m the one that’s getting reset."

"So did I, at first. But we’re the ones continually jumping back to when Friday begins, over and over, with our memories intact. All of this," you trace over the infinity symbol multiple times, "is one linear timeline that’s weeks long, but been compressed to a single day."

"So then, if my reality continues …" Sam starts. "That means, for every single time you’ve been through the loop, there was a different version of me that just went on from there?"

"Exactly," you say, relieved. "Infinite versions in infinite universes."

"Sometimes I miss the simplicity of a good government conspiracy," he mumbles, grabbing another cinnamon roll.

Bucky frowns. "What does that mean for us?"

"There are versions of us outside the loop—obviously, we don’t just stop existing on July fifth. But because of the time loop, we can’t access them. Our consciousness can’t move on from this day, if you will."

Thus, Friday ad nauseum. And because the universe isn’t built to sustain all of this excess energy in just one single point, reality’s started to fracture; trying to relieve some of the added pressure through cracks and TAGs and inconsistencies.

"Then how do we get out?" Bucky asks.

You rub the empty spot on your pinkie. "That’s the part you’re not gonna like. As long as I’m stuck in the loop, my powers have to keep it upright. They’re tied up in it, that’s why I can’t use them. It’s perpetual motion in a closed system."

"So?"

Your wrist tingles. "So the only way to stop it for good is for me to be on the outside. I need to be the external source of the equation."

"How are you gonna do that?" Sam asks.

All the color drains from Bucky’s face. "No."

"You know I’m right," you say softly.

"No," Bucky repeats.

"I’m not liking this," Sam says, looking between the two of you.

"There’s no guarantee it works."

"It’s the only thing we’ve not tried." You look at Sam with a feeble smile. "I have to die."

"What?"

"I’m not watching you die," Bucky says loudly. His hands are balled into fists so tight they’re shaking. "There has to be something else we can try."

"And what would that be?"

"I don’t know! Maybe we need to go back to the astral plane, try something else."

"It’s not enough. It’s a liminal space."

"It has to be enough!"

"Bucky—"

"I’m not losing you!"

With a single slam, the couch table breaks straight down the middle. Bucky’s breaths are heavy, every muscle tense. A cursory glance would tell you his walls are all the way back up, but his eyes … his eyes tell a different story.

"We’re running out of time," you say gently. "If we do nothing, we’ll inevitably lose. And then we’re all fucked. We don’t know what a disintegrating reality is gonna do to the multiverse at large."

"To be honest, I don’t really give a shit."

Sam reaches out a hand. "Buck …"

"No, Sam. Why don’t I ever get to be selfish?" He shakes his head, his eyes welling up. "Why is it that every time I get a little bit of good in my life, the world’s about to end?"

"It’s going to work," you tell him.

Again, he shakes his head. "You can’t know that."

"No, but I do." You bite the inside of your cheek, hard. "I know because Strange told me I make it out of the loop. I’m the one who tells him how to find me. I can’t do that if I’m dead. It’s going to work."

For a while, Bucky just stares at you, shoulders drooping.

"When were you gonna tell me?" he asks quietly.

You shrug helplessly. "It never seemed like the right time."

"We’re stuck in a goddamn loop, and it never seemed like the right time?"

"Be angry with me all you want, but it doesn’t change the facts. We’ve been going around in circles, because that’s the very nature of this timeline. I need my powers back to set things straight." He refuses to catch your eye. "The only way for me to break the loop is not to be in it."

"How are you even going to know you have to do that if you don’t remember anything about today?"

Your mouth opens, then closes again. It’s a very good question, one you don’t know how to answer. How do you finish something you won’t know you’ve started?

"Plus, the loop’s still there and bound to you, right?" Sam cuts in, nodding at your wrist. "Regardless of perception. Who’s to say it’s not gonna implode if you can’t remember it?"

You let out a long sigh. "Because it’ll have to be bound to Bucky instead of me."

"Then just do that," Bucky argues. "I can handle it."

"I know that," you say. "But I still need my powers back."

"There’s another problem, too," Sam says frowning at the whiteboard. "Say it all works out like you’re saying and you get out of the loop while Bucky’s still inside. That means you have one shot. And if it doesn’t work …"

Yeah. You’ve seen it, too. It’s the biggest risk of your plan, and there’s no safety net that you can put up.

If it doesn’t work, Bucky’s going to stay stuck in the loop forever.

* * *

On the day you’re gonna die, you wake up on the couch in the living room area, alone. A deserted cup of coffee sits on the couch table. Everything is quiet.

You sit up slowly, stretching your aching limbs. Sam must’ve already left for Madison Square Garden, because the shield is no longer propped up against the counter. It gives you a nice window of time.

You bring your cup to the sink and finish the washing-up, carefully setting everything on the rack to dry. You wipe the counters. You check the fridge. You write a post-it for Bucky, just for the hell of it.

Right when you’re about to leave, there’s a meowing at your feet. Alpine stares at you with her wide, solemn eyes, like she means to impart long forgotten wisdoms on you.

More likely, she wants a treat.

"Hi, hellcat," you say fondly and she accepts a couple of scratches under her chin. "You seen your dad?"

She purrs for a bit, then bumps her head against your legs and occupies herself with the leftover tuna in her bowl. You sigh, deciding to leave her to it before she decides you need to be reacquainted with her claws.

"Bye, kitty," you whisper.

Her tail twitches.

You’re not surprised to find Bucky on the roof, looking out over Manhattan with an unreadable look on his face. It’s another perfectly sunny day, cloudless cerulean skies and too many degrees to be wearing a leather jacket.

He doesn’t turn when you step up next to him, and it makes your heart ache a little.

Look at me.

"Are you angry with me?"

He lets out a bone-deep sigh. "No."

"Could’ve fooled me."

It’s been a couple of days since you realized what you’re going to have to do, and to say the bubble has burst would be an understatement. There’s been more arguing; more negotiating; both of you clearly seeing where the other one is coming from and yet unwilling to accept it without a fight.

In the end, it’s made no difference. No matter which way you twist it, you need to stop this loop. And he’s not been able to come up with any other ideas towards that goal, either.

"I’m worried," Bucky says quietly.

You reach out for him, intertwining your pinkie with his metal one. "I’m not going to leave you in the loop. I promise."

He shakes his head. "I don’t give a shit about what happens to me."

"Well, I do."

"I’m worried about you." He tucks his chin into his chest. "That’s a helluva lot of pressure you’re putting yourself under, and you won’t even remember where it came from."

"You forget I thrive under pressure." You cast a sidewards glance at him. "Besides, I’ve got you on my side. So I’ve got nothing to be scared of."

It’s a half-truth. You’re terrified. You keep thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the ways you could fail and condemn him to an infinity of loops in which he’s gonna die and you barely even know him yet.

And yet, when you look at him, your worried mind is soothed, every doubt replaced by something much more certain: He’s going to have your back.

You trust him with your life and you trust him with his, and that’s just going to have to be enough.

"If I—" you start, your voice cracking. "If I don’t get my memories back, when it’s done, I just … I should probably tell you now, right?"

For a few short, unending moments, Bucky doesn’t say anything. Your hands are getting sweaty.

"You know," he says quietly. "We never did try the Groundhog Day option."

Your hand tightens on the railing as your heartbeat kicks up. You glance at him from the side. His face is still hard, but determined. And there it is; that little glint of a challenge in his eyes.

A beat passes.

Your gaze drops to his mouth and he surges.

There’s a new edge to the way he kisses you this time. He holds your face in his hands like you’re something precious, and you can feel him pour all of his desperation into the kiss.

Tears spring to your eyes. You want nothing more than to just melt into the moment, forget everything else and keep kissing him forever. It’s not that simple, though.

"Just in case," you whisper, pulling his mouth to yours again.

You kiss him like it’s the last time and Bucky responds with the same urgency because you both know, deep down, it might well be.

"Just in case," he repeats against your lips as you come up for air, his voice dark and rough and full of fear.

You nod, almost imperceptibly.

He picks you up in one quick, fluid motion, and you rub your nose against his, breathing him in before you find his mouth again.

Again.

More.

You lose your shirt somewhere on the stairs. Your hands are shaking as you attempt to lock his door behind you.

His belt won’t unbuckle. He snaps it in two without taking his lips off your neck, and you let out a surprised laugh as he drops you on his bed.

Despite the growing heat, neither of you hurries this; quite the contrary. It’s a slow, reverent dance. Every inch of clothing that gets removed feels like peeling back another layer, leaving you both fully exposed for the very first time.

You kiss every single scar on his chest as he watches you through half-lidded, glassy eyes, his heart beating so wildly you can feel it just as well as your own. You interlace your fingers and pull him even closer, and when you press another kiss to the palm of his metal hand, he lets out a shaky breath.

When he finally sinks into you, you can taste yourself on his tongue, and your eyes roll back in your head because yes.

Nothing in your whole life has ever felt this right before.

I love you, you think, and the words are at the tip of your tongue when you tumble over the edge as Bucky mumbles sweet praises into your mouth. I love you I love you Iloveyou.

You think that maybe he knows, anyway.

* * *

"What are you thinking about?"

The sun is setting outside, leaving a reddish hue on Bucky’s hair. Your voice is rough after hours of talking and sex. You’ve spilled so many of your secrets you’ve lost count, and he listened to all of them.

Just in case.

You curl your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and Bucky shudders. He presses a kiss to your forehead.

"Nothing."

His eyes betray him, like they always do.

"You are the worst liar I’ve ever met, Barnes."

"Being a good liar isn’t something to be proud of, you know."

There’s something so devastating about the way he looks at you, like he’s watching something shatter right in front of him. He kisses you again, softly, and it makes you forget your next thought.

"You …" He sighs. "I don’t want to lose this."

"Do you still trust me?" you ask him, voice quiet.

Bucky looks at you, huffing breathlessly, hesitant in a way that only lends more conviction to his answer. "Of course I do." Like there’s no doubt to be had.

It sends a thrill through you.

"I think it’s a good plan in theory, but it puts everything back on you again." He cups your cheek in his hand. "You’ll go back to hating me, and then I won’t be able to help you."

"I never hated you," you say. "I mean, you drive me up the walls sometimes, but I never hated you."

"Why not?" he asks. "I would."

You sit up a little to look at him straight, one hand pressed to his chest. "James Buchanan Barnes, you are more than worthy of all the good things in the universe to happen to you. I’m only sorry it took me that long to tell you."

The saddest little smile curls at the edge of his mouth as he evades your eyes.

"Hey," you say. "We’ll be fine."

"Yeah."

You lean in to kiss him, short and sweet. "I need you to promise me something."

"Hm?" A vibration against your lips.

"Don’t do anything stupid."

He grins, and it’s almost honest. "You know me."

"I do. That’s what I’m concerned about. When I do this, we get one try, and if I fail …"

"Don’t worry about me, sweetheart."

As if he’s not made that quite impossible.

"Fuck you, Barnes," you whisper.

His eyes melt a little, and you trace the little lines in their corners. "There she is."

You roll your eyes. "Bucky?"

He looks at you questioningly, and the words die on your lips. Instead, you pull him in for one more kiss, trying to pour everything you’re not able to say into it, your heart beating wildly.

He presses you deeper into the matress, and you savor every second of this feeling. His stubble scratching across your cheek, the way your fingers slip perfectly into his mussed hair, the low, soothing hum of his arm.

This, you think. This should have been the kind of day that got stuck all along.

You roll on top of him again. His hands catch your waist, warm and cold against your skin, and you shudder as he smiles into your mouth.

One more, you think, sinking back into the kiss. One more. Just one more.

You bring him even closer to you with one hand as the other one slips under his pillow, carefully angling yourself forwards.

Just in case.

"It’s strange," you whisper. "Somehow I wish we had more time."

A hot tear falls on Bucky’s cheek. His eyes widen.

It’s the last thing you see before you put his gun against your temple and pull the trigger.

chapter twelve

thank you for reading!! you can follow my library blog @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications 💚 we're in the endgame now and you are so welcome to shout at me in the comments/tags 😈

[yourladyjane]

Can I just say I love it when the title of a fic makes its way into the story somehow?

If it doesn’t work, Bucky’s going to stay stuck in the loop forever.

DUN DUN DUN. The stakes were always sky high, but somehow they’re even higher now. God, the way your mind works.

This chapter was so soft and devastating at the same time. ALSO WTF WAS THAT ENDING?!?!?! HOLY SHIT. AGAIN, WE’VE TALKED ABOUT THIS. OMG OMG OMG NEXT CHAPTER!!!

[intrepidacious]

time after time [10]

series summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 12.2k

chapter warnings: another mystery gets revealed; canon-typical violence; grief; angst and miscommunication but also a surprising amount of fluff; oh, and time-fuckery. i've missed my time-fuckery 😈 please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: it's not friday but i got a new haircut and we're in the endgame now (if you'll excuse the pun) so let's do this

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

ten: about time

You liked the anonymity the big city granted you, even though most days, New York felt almost crushingly huge. The crowds swallowed you up and spat you back out again, feeling dizzied and hollow. Sirens wailed and traffic buzzed and life around you hummed in constant cacophony.

But more people meant a better chance of flying under the radar, and that was exactly what you wanted.

No, what you needed.

Even more so now that you were back in the vicinity of the limelight.

"You know," you said as the building caved in on itself, walls going up in flames one by one. "Sometimes I wonder why anyone still lives in this place."

Sam snorted.

"Seriously," you said, taking your place between him and Bucky again. "Rent is outrageous, the streets are crowded, and every other week another catastrophe happens that insurance companies will weasel their way out of covering. So what’s the point?"

"You didn’t grow up here, did ya?"

You weren’t used to Bucky reacting to your rhetorical questions at all, let alone without venom in his voice. Most of the time, you were sure he tuned you out entirely.

"Why," you said in lieu of answering.

He shook his head. "I’ve been gone a long time and there’s a lot of things that changed, but there’s a feeling you get … that’s still the same. Can’t find that anywhere else."

Like home, you thought with a familiar pang in your heart.

"Can I ask you something?" you asked, kicking a pebble as you were walking. It flew across the sidewalk, landing just in front of Bucky’s shoes. He stepped over it.

"Is there a world in which you’re not gonna if I say no?"

"Do you believe in fate?"

He frowned, clearly not having expected that kind of question. But it tugged at you still. Always had, like a whisper in the back of your mind; what if you chose wrong? What if you irreparably ruined the way things were supposed to go? What if—

"I don’t," Bucky replied.

"Me either," Sam said. "I mean, millions of possible worlds and this is the one we get? I don’t want that to be fate."

You turned towards him. "What if the other options are way worse?"

"Like what? Wait, no, don’t answer that. I’m having an alright day."

"Don’t wanna think about how we might all be puppets pulled by invisible strings with no free will to speak of?"

"Y/N," Sam said, the levity from his tone missing now, tilting his head.

To your right, Bucky’s hands were clenched at his sides, his back very straight. Shit.

A wave of guilt rushed through you, unexpected and brutal, thoughtless, "I didn’t—"

"It comes down to choices," he said, very calmly. "What we are and aren’t able to do. What we know. Who we trust."

You swallowed heavily and dropped the idea of attempting a redo. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t have worked, anyway. "You know, Steve said something similar when I asked him once," you said instead. "About people and choices."

Bucky pushed his sunglasses up his nose. "I bet he did."

Maybe fate, in that one case, would’ve been a kinder option.

For a second, you tried to imagine a universe in which the past had worked out differently; where the Soldier never inhabited that dark place at the edge of Bucky’s mind.

You would’ve gotten along great, you know.

You tried to imagine it for a moment; meeting him back in a time before, walking through the streets of New York City side by side in silence with an easy smile on his face. You doubted he ever smiled at all now.

Besides, there was no point in imagining universes that never would’ve been, anyway. Out there, there was a world in which he’d died a happy man, years or decades ago, and you … you’d still have been alone, just as you were now, floating between realities. Staring at thin air and wondering about what could never have been. That was the only thing constant in your life, the one certainty amidst mediocre decisions and timeless space.

Maybe fate was just an ugly torture; or a sorry consolation.

"Right," you said as the wall of journalists rounded the corner. "I’ll see you back at the Tower."

Bucky clapped Sam on the back. "You got this, Cap."

"You’re both assholes."

You dispersed in opposite directions, and you pulled out your headphones as you headed towards the nearest subway station, putting your playlist on shuffle.

"A long, long time ago … I can still remember how that music used to make me smile …"

It punched the air out of your lungs, and for a moment you stopped in the middle of the street, the world around you pausing in shock. Your vision blurred as slowly, movements and noise returned around you, people bumping into you and cursing as you stared at your screen, the song stuttering back to life note by note.

To your own surprise, you found you were smiling.

Happy accidents, indeed.

* * * * *

It’s never happened, you tell yourself. You’ve gotten quite convincing over the past half hour. Dodge Sam’s kicks, feign to the right, ignore the fact that you just kissed Bucky.

Your rush of Sanctum-induced energy has burned down to a simmer at the very back of your mind again, and even though you should probably examine that and its implications, you’ve not been able to focus all morning.

It’s fine. It’s fine. He’s not going to say anything about it because it’s never happened.

Why, then, when he says your name, does it make you want to bolt?

"Y/N," he says again.

You let out a breath. "Barnes."

This was a mistake. You should’ve just stayed in your room. Should’ve packed your things and just left, moved to Canada, or maybe asked for asylum in Kamar-Taj. Surely, Wong would’ve taken pity on you a second time.

Then again, what good would any of that have done? The loop would never let go of you that easily.

The symbols around your wrist tingle, and you fight the urge to scratch. You can feel that Bucky is staring at you, but you can’t look at him. You can’t.

"You done?" you say with faux lightness. "Don’t worry, I know which towel to take."

Pretend is what you’re good at. No matter how tiring it is, you’ve done it all your life. There’s no other way to cope with realities that are no longer real.

Unfortunately, Bucky’s never been inclined to let you get away with lying. "Stop it," he says now.

He sounds tired.

You slip out of the ring, keeping your head down, refusing to yield, "I’ll see you for coffee?"

His hand closes around your wrist and you freeze mid-step. "We need to—would you please look at me?"

You square your shoulders and finally turn to face him. His eyes are wide, intense, pinning you down like you’re a rare kind of butterfly. Your heart skips a little, and you hate yourself for it.

"We need to talk about this," Bucky says.

You hide a wince. "Do we have to?"

"Yes! You—" His cheeks are tinged a soft shade of pink, but you can’t tell if it’s from his run or frustration. You’re certain he’s never looked at you like this before, bewildered and almost betrayed—"You kissed me."

The sentence drops a chasm between you, reality mended against its will. It’s not real, but it was; and you’re not the only one that remembers.

"I know," you say quietly.

The admission conjures the memory again in even more horrific detail. You can still feel the way his entire body froze up against yours, blood curdling in your bones as the scene replays over and over again. You’ve only just started to become friends on equal terms, and now you’ve gone and thrown something like that at him.

What a colossally stupid thing to do.

Bucky’s hair is mussed, like he’s run his hands through it repeatedly. He searches for something on your face, and you cannot tell for the life of you what he sees. "And it reset the loop."

You blink. So that’s what this is about. Inadvertently, you’ve found the most ill-timed literal loophole of the century. No one died during the last Friday; you didn’t even have to go on the mission or throw yourself off a building. The solution, it appears, is as simple and as complicated as a kiss.

Truly, there couldn’t have been a worse way to make him aware of your feelings.

Then again … what does Bucky know, really? Nothing. He’d caught you in a moment of weakness, is all. A temporary madness. Not a big deal at all. So why make it one?

Your feelings aren’t his burden to bear.

"Look at it this way," you say, with a too-bright smile. "We found a way around you catching a bullet at the end of every day. It’s not like it has to mean anything."

You want to take it back almost as quickly as it comes out, but there’s no way for you to take back the things you say anymore. You both know that, and you let it hang in the air for a while.

Bucky swallows. "Well, did you know that this would happen?"

You want to laugh. Out of all possible reactions he could’ve had, you didn’t see this one coming. "How on earth would I have known that?"

His eyes flit between yours, confirming your honesty. "I don’t know, I’m just—this is a lot to process."

Ah. Ah.

You bite the inside of your cheek so hard you can taste iron. "Take your time, then," you say and turn to leave, but he still doesn’t let go of you.

"Twe—Y/N, come on, give me five seconds here."

"No, it’s fine." An odd kind of hurt rushes through you, making every sentence come out sharp and poisonous. "I love the fact that you were immediately willing to jump off the roof every day but the thought of us kissing is something you need to think about. It’s not like I’m asking you to marry me."

"I know that," Bucky says, his flush darkening, "but call me old-fashioned in that I don’t generally like kissing people transactionally."

So you’re people now.

"You’re old-fashioned," you confirm, freeing your hand from his grip. "This isn’t fun for me either, okay? But since this is literally a matter of life and death, I think it’s a damn good compromise. We don’t have to make this a whole thing."

"Well, maybe it should be a whole thing."

"What does that even mean? This doesn’t change things, not really."

"This changes plenty. You think you like me, don’t you." It sounds like an accusation.

You take a half step towards him. "Why are you saying it like that?"

"Because you don’t, actually."

With a pang, you remember before. The constant bickering, the passive-aggressive notes, your rolling eyes and his glaring. Before, when your feelings were easy and surface level, when developing a crush on James Buchanan Barnes would have seemed as likely as receiving a Nobel prize.

Or unraveling reality because he took a shot that was meant for you.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have taken you this long to decipher what had tenderly started a very long time before Bryant Park. It was there already, in every time you’ve waited for him first thing in the morning, in every cup of coffee and desperate attempt to save him. You see him stone-faced in the quinjet, picking the lock of the public library, guiding you over broken pieces of glass on your bedroom floor, sitting down on the couch next to you, every version of him on this day already so deeply nestled into the very core of your heart that it’s hard to believe it might’ve ever been otherwise.

And so you say, "Of course I do."

"No, you don’t," Bucky says, that tick in his jaw reappearing. "This is just—I don’t know, trauma bonding."

For the first time since the loop started, you actually do want to kill him. "Oh, get a grip, Barnes."

"We’ve never spent this much time together—"

"We fucking live together—"

"—let alone the fact that this whole situation is a nightmare—"

"—and even if we didn’t, I don’t understand what your problem is right now—"

"—so you’re bound to think there’s more to it than—”

"—and also can you stop telling me what I think?"

You stare at each other, unblinking, both of you daring the other to break the silence. Finally, Bucky relents.

"I’m just saying that you wouldn’t be … acting this way if we weren’t the only two people that are aware of what’s happening to us."

You shake your head, slowly. "That’s not true."

His logic is flawed, but can you fault him for that? You’re used to being the person that remembers; you’ve had so much more time to make up your mind, on Friday and all the days that came before.

"You can’t stand me, remember?" Bucky maintains, his back straightening. "Because I do."

"Things changed."

"No." He presses his lips together. "No, not this. You’re wrong. You don’t … like me."

Your shoulders slump, but you don’t look away from him, even as your cheeks burn. "I do."

Even as he backs away from you and your heart aches so badly you want to scream, even as his wide eyes freeze over, slowly, as he regards you in all your fucked-up, sweaty glory. Expecting rejection doesn’t take away from the pain as it happens in real time; and yet, you find yourself meeting it with your head held high.

Somehow you know that even if you had access to your powers right now, you wouldn’t reach for them.

"You can’t do this to me right now," Bucky says, voice devoid of any emotion. "It’s not real."

You let out a joyless laugh and step up to him again. This time, he doesn’t retreat; only watches you with careful, vacant eyes as you put a hand right over his heart. It’s racing under your touch. "Does this feel not real to you?"

He swallows. "It’s temporary. This world is falling apart."

It always is, you think. You don’t say it out loud, though. Instead, you blurt, "We should go out, then."

Something flashes in Bucky’s eyes, gone as quickly as it appears. "What?"

"Out," you repeat, your cheeks flaming. "While were not getting shot at."

"Are you—are you asking me on a date?"

"I’m not actually sure," you say, dropping your hand. "But I can’t keep letting you die, I just can’t. And if that’s the way that you … that we …"

You’re being stripped naked under his unwavering eyes, and you just don’t know what it means. The band around your wrist hums lowly through your blood as you dig your nails into the flesh of your palms.

"If we want to figure this out—whatever this is—we should spend more time together."

"Time," Bucky repeats tonelessly.

"You know what I mean. I mean, maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ll find out we’re never going to get along, but at least I don’t have to watch you die for a couple of loops. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be a big deal," you reiterate, your throat tightening. "Other than you not having to get shot every day. And who knows, maybe we’ll end up as friends after all this."

"Right," Bucky says, frowning. Not budging. The tips of his ears are burning.

There’s a flicker behind his eyes, like he’s keeping himself from saying something else.

Tell me.

Hope is a terrible, dangerous thing, and it only gets people hurt.

"Fine," he says at last. "Let’s try."

* * *

"Big lesson number one: All the time travel in the world can’t make someone love you."

Out of the corner of your eye, you steal a glance at Bucky. He doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes calmly focused on the screen, his expression neutral, his back very straight.

You keep twisting your rings around your fingers and waiting for the blood to stop rushing quite so loudly in your ears.

Your run of terrible ideas, it seems, continues on as you pretend to be invested in the movie while hyperaware of Bucky’s presence next to you. The two of you are next to each other on the same couch, much like you were during the fireworks; only this time, you’re very careful not to touch.

This is what you get for stupid suggestions: awkward silence and the sinking feeling of regret. After all, isn’t more time stuck together kind of the last thing the two of you need right now? Shouldn’t you be doing something to try to end this, once and for all?

Because although you’ve already spent a lot more time with Bucky during these past couple of Fridays, you’ve not done it aimlessly since you lost an afternoon at Bryant Park.

That look on his face he got during that loop is long gone, lifetimes away, and you can’t decide if it’s better or worse that he doesn’t even remember getting it in the first place.

Still, it’s remarkably similar, in some ways. The quiet ease you feel next to him, despite it all. The slight frown between his brows as the movie continues blabbering on in the background. This mix of uncertainty and reassurance rushing through you, making your heart rate go up.

Tell me. What? What did it mean, then? What would it mean, now?

It doesn’t matter. This doesn’t mean anything. It cannot mean anything. You’ve established as much.

Alpine slinks around the couch table and jumps up onto the sofa next to you, pawing at your arm until you let her climb into your lap. She doesn’t settle, exactly, but she keeps tracking the movement of your hands with her head. It distracts you for a while, and you smile as you readjust your position to scratch her head.

She smells a little like Bucky.

"This is so stupid," you finally say. Normally, it’s easy for you to poke fun at the inaccuracies of time travel movies, but this one is … different. You’ve always had a soft spot for it, even though you could never point out why. Maybe it’s the underlying melancholy of its rules that connects to the very core of you.

Right now, though, the characters on screen are having marathon sex and you want to die.

"You’re the one who picked it out," Bucky reminds you, taking a sip of his coffee.

And yeah, fine. In your defense, though, all of his suggestions were at least seventy years old and you had to veto with something to avoid another Hitchcock, or worse, a silent film.

Alpine is still restless in your lap, tapping the inlets in Bucky’s arm like they’re a piece of thread she’s playing with. Without warning, she jumps right over, landing in the crook of his elbow with feline precision.

Unexpectedly, Bucky winces, picking her up with his other hand and putting her down on the floor. She lets out an accusatory cry, bumping her head against his leg.

"Are you okay?" you ask.

"It’s fine," he hisses, looking the opposite of fine. "It happens sometimes. It’s the, uhm." He rolls his shoulder. "Not all the connective tissue healed properly."

"Can I do anything?"

"No, it’s okay. You might wanna just … this is kinda gross."

He grabs the metal arm by the joint and gives a sharp twist. With a whirring, metallic sound, it detaches from its socket, fingers frozen in their strain. It thumps onto the space between you on the couch, and Bucky sighs as the weight disappears from the old scars hidden under his shirt. He doesn’t look at you as he rubs the aching muscles, his jaw tensing even more at the pressure.

You watch him as softness blooms painfully in the pit of your stomach, warm and fond and impossible.

"I’m disappointed," you say at last, your voice cracking ever so slightly.

His fingers halt for just a moment before digging into his skin even more tightly. "I know it’s not—"

"I’m waiting for the gross part," you interrupt him. "I thought you’d have blood bags installed that were gonna explode or something."

An incredulous huff of a laugh escapes him. "That’s your definition of gross?"

"Don’t forget I’ve watched you die literally dozens of times," you remind him, tracing the golden lines laced through the vibranium. It seems less invasive, now that they’re not attached to him. "And I like your arm," you add quietly.

Bucky keeps looking at the screen, but you know he’s watching you out of the corner of his eye. You can feel it.

"It’s grotesque," he says.

"It’s impressive," you correct, absent-mindedly reaching for his pinkie. "But that tracks."

He stays silent for so long, you almost start to believe he’s not heard you at all. Finally, though, he clears his throat and asks, "Is he ever gonna tell her he’s a time traveler?"

It takes you a moment to remember the movie. "I don’t think so."

Bucky nods, producing the small notebook he always carries from his back pocket. "He’s a dick."

You snort and return to your side of the couch. "I know, right? We can watch something else if you want."

"Nah, it’s fine." He flicks through his notebook, jotting something down in the back.

"Do these keep?" you ask when he pockets it again.

"They don’t," he says simply, redirecting his attention to the screen.

You hum, attempting to lure Alpine closer with a shiny bit of chocolate wrapper. She’s decidedly uninterested.

"Were you so bored with the play you decided to ask me to marry you afterwards?"

"Something like that."

"I haven’t even asked," Bucky says and you flinch.

"Huh?" you say, a little shrilly.

"How are you feeling?"

"Oh. Yeah. Mostly normal again, I think."

His gaze flits to your hand as it goes to play with the pendant around your neck before returning to your eyes. "Anything … weird?"

You kissed him you kissed him you kissed him you—

"Not really." You clear your throat.

"I think you’re right, by the way," Bucky says.

"About what?"

He keeps staring straight ahead, his pen tapping against his thigh. "It doesn’t have to mean anything."

Even though it was your suggestion in the first place, it stings a little. You can’t help it.

"If Wong’s right, we’re already running out of time," Bucky continues. "We can figure everything else out once we’re out of this loop, but for now we should just focus on getting this right."

You hesitate. "You’re making it sound like we haven’t been doing just that all along."

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don’t know."

There’s something you’re missing staring you right in the face, but the problem with going through the same day so many times is that you’re running out of things to do. There’s only so much to do in these limited few hours you get before it all starts over again, because everything apart from the two of you stays the same every time.

Bucky’s arm glints in the morning sun like it’s threaded with gold string, his shoulders relaxed, and a different memory stirs in your mind.

That’s a lot of dedication when you could’ve just asked.

"What would you normally be doing right now?"

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "You trying to get rid of me already?"

"No. I’m saying you’re usually more unpredictable."

"Thank you."

"Not really a compliment. Sam has more going on on every given day than the two of us combined, but at least he’s consistent. You’re the one with no hobbies."

"What do you do for fun then?"

"I … Fuck you."

If you didn’t know better, you’d think he blushes.

"So, say there’s no time loop today, no mission, you have no memory of any of this shit. Normal July 4th. Where are you going?"

"Where am I going?"

"Before you remembered, when I didn’t tell you that you were going to die, you always disappeared for hours every morning. And then after Sam’s speech, you were gone again until the mission."

It’s another piece of the puzzle that you’re still missing.

Bucky contemplates you, taking another sip of coffee. His mouth does the little twitch again. "And you’re telling me you’ve never asked me that before?"

"Oh, I did," you reply. "A lot. I also tried following you once and you called me a shit spy."

"Well, you are." There’s a hint of a smile in his voice when he reaches for his arm. "Get your shoes, then."

* * *

It’s a long train ride down to Brooklyn, but it doesn’t feel like it. You manage to get a seat after a few stops, and because Bucky hasn’t said a word to you since you were standing on the platform, you take to watching the people around you.

It’s exciting, in a way, to be in a new space for the first time in a while. Not to know exactly what’s going to happen next. You’ve been making little pockets of time for yourself every now and again, walking different routes home after getting coffee or varying the time at which you leave, but it’s not the same as venturing into a different part of the city. There’s been too much going on for you to have even considered that.

"Are you going to tell me where we’re headed?" you ask after a while, when he has to step over your legs to make room for a stroller.

"Now where’d be the fun in that?" he answers, and then he turns silent again.

A small child is hugging a Mickey Mouse plushie to their chest and pointing at the window, wailing loudly. A girl with a septum piercing and at least three tote bags over her shoulders manages to maneuver a cello case and a scooter onto the carriage, leaning both against the back of some seats before taking out her phone and calmly starting to scroll. An elderly lady watches the whole affair, mumbling to herself disapprovingly, then resumes her knitting.

You catch Bucky already looking at you when you glance up at him. Something about it makes your cheeks heat and turn away quickly.

You remember that his government-issued apartment used to be somewhere near Flatbush, and you have a fleeting thought that this might be where you’re headed, even though that doesn’t really make sense. He still doesn’t make any attempt to move when you pass it by, continuing to stare out the window, his gloved hand wrapped tightly around the handrail above your head.

Finally, the train rolls to its last stop, and you make ready to get off with the rest of the passengers.

"Coney Island, huh?" you say as the heat on the platform slaps you across the face.

"Coney Island," Bucky repeats affirmingly. His hands are back in his pockets, and he doesn’t elaborate, even though you notice the significance in the way he says it.

Two words titling another subchapter in the mystery book that is James Buchanan Barnes.

You follow the masses streaming towards the water and a sigh dislodges from your throat. It’s been way too long since you’ve properly heard the ocean.

The beach is already swarming with people despite the fact it’s not even noon yet, filled with raucous laughter and music playing, but the sound of crashing waves is unmistakable. It fills you with a sense of longing, though for what you’re not sure.

Bucky keeps his hands tucked away as the two of you stroll along the boardwalk, dodging people left and right, until you have to grab hold of his sleeve in order to not get pulled away. His shoulders tense slightly, but he lets you, leading you towards the pier as if he, too, feels the pull coming from the sea.

You can’t figure out the look on his face. It’s like a weight has fallen off him when you left Manhattan, despite the crowds being considerably more dense down here, and yet there’s an anticipatory tension to his frame that you’ve only seen him assume in combat.

You clear your throat and he washes his face off it. "Is it usually like this?" you ask.

"It used to be not quite so bad," Bucky says, which isn’t quite what you asked. "Not this loud at least."

"What?" you shout teasingly. It earns you an eyeroll.

Thirty, you think. Took him long enough.

"We used to come here every summer," he continues, bending down to pick up a perfectly round pebble from the side of the road and weighing it in his hand before slipping it into his pocket. "Ate hot dogs until we were sick. Rode some of the rides if we could afford it. You know them fortune teller automatons? My sisters were obsessed with that."

Maybe you should recount the days you’ve been stuck in the loop, because this feels like an early birthday present. You hold on tightly to his sleeve, not wanting to interrupt the unusual flow of words. Bucky’s smile is miles away. Decades away.

"Becks came with us every year on the fourth, even when she was little. The twins never liked crowds much, but Rebecca loved it all. The noise and the excitement." His mouth tilts up in a grin. "One year, she was desperate for one of those giant stuffed teddy bears you can win," he says, nodding at one of the booths up ahead, "but we were all down to our last couple’a dimes, so she pretended she didn’t want it after all. Steve went, 'Hold on a minute', and he somehow won her that damn bear with two shots."

"Always the hero," you say quietly. Somehow, he hears you through the commotion.

"Yeah." He stops walking, then, leaning against the metal railing of the pier, letting the people flow past you. "The two of us would come here every year before the war, rain or shine, unless one of us was sick."

Nostalgia makes him seem younger, despite the tired eyes and the stubble on his cheek; or maybe this place is its own sort of time capsule and he’s just filling in that space he used to occupy.

"He kept it up." You’re not sure if you should tell him at all, if it helps or if it only makes this day a little more painful. But you figure that if it was you, you’d want to know. "During the Blip, he was always gone for his birthday. Only came home in the evening, I never asked why, though. I figured he just wanted—what?"

Bucky’s snickering. "You know today isn’t actually Steve’s birthday, right?"

"What?"

"He panicked during one of those press tours they had him do in ’41, said his birthday’s on the fourth. Everyone just ran with it without double-checking." He shakes his head. "I mean, Captain America born on Independence Day? The headlines practically wrote themselves."

"But—when’s his actual birthday then?"

"January 4th. Punk made himself half a year older than he actually is."

You laugh. "Of course he’s a Capricorn. That makes so much sense."

Bucky looks at you with raised eyebrows. "Was that a cap pun?"

You shove his arm and immediately regret it when your elbow hits vibranium. "That was terrible," you say. "The point is, he didn’t forget about your tradition."

"That was a while ago, though. 'Specially for him." He ducks his head. "I don’t know. I just wanted to see if …" He huffs mirthlessly. "Don’t think I’d even really want to see him. Not sure what I’d say to him if I did."

"How about, 'Hey, I’m stuck in a time loop, nice to see you?'"

He smiles as you lean against the railing next to him, your shoulders almost touching. "He’s done with that life. It’s fine."

You don’t know how he bears it. Being left behind already hurt bad enough for you, and you only knew Steve a couple of years, or maybe not at all. It sounds too painful, to be forced to keep wondering what if.

"I disagree," you say.

The silence that follows should be heavy, but the sea swallows it up; and so it floats. Around you, life goes on. People are shouting and fighting and laughing. Over at the boardwalk, a couple of buskers are just starting their set. A familiar melody drifts up to you, and it makes your heart ache a little, even though it’s not sad at all. It reminds you of Nat’s smile.

You watch the shadows that you cast over the water and you think, Dance with me, but you don’t say it out loud. You don’t want to ruin this moment.

So instead, you close your eyes and you breathe it in.

* * *

You spend what feels like hours at the pier, ebbing and flowing alongside the crowd in companionable silence, the only two people alive that are aware this day is like a snake biting its own tail; beautiful and sharp-teethed.

"Do you think we should head back?" you ask finally.

"You wanna head back?" Bucky says in lieu of an answer.

"We should. What if something happens to Sam again?"

He watches you, contemplating something for a moment, before he says, "He’s not gonna go without us today."

Torres’ message comes back to your mind, the lack of urgency in it. It seems, in the beginning, you’ve gotten a lot of things wrong, and you’re only just starting to chip away at those miscalculations.

Another memory, again of that day in the park.

I’m good, I didn’t end up going …Wanna just go home?

Home.

If the mission doesn’t have to happen today but you always go anyway …

"Do you ask him to go?"

He doesn’t answer, but you know his face so well by now.

"Oh, Bucky."

"Mission’s the easiest way to shut my mind up." He laughs dryly. "So, you see. Nothing about this is your fault. I pushed the first domino. Everything else happened after that."

You tug on his sleeve until he looks at you. "If I’m not allowed to blame myself, then you aren’t, either." Something twists in your gut. "Does that mean we’re not going on the mission today?"

The other question, the one you’re not asking, hangs in the air. Bucky swallows.

"It’s still early," he says.

"Right." You turn around and lean against the railing, looking at the booths on the other side of the pier. "Well, we’re here."

"I’m not riding the Cyclone with you."

You shudder. "Yeah, no thanks. Do people actually willingly go on that death trap?"

"Some idiots do," he smirks.

"Well, that’s not how I’m gonna go down, so no. I was thinking something like that." You point in the direction of one particular stand you walked past earlier.

Bucky follows your line of sight. "I thought you didn’t want any shooting today."

"That was before I saw that I could win a giant stuffed dragon."

"You know you can’t cheat, right?" He falls into step besides you with familiar ease, his hands back in his pockets.

"Let me rephrase that. That was before I saw that you could win me a giant stuffed dragon." You smile innocently and he laughs.

"I got banned from these things in ’36 but I’m sure you got this, sweetheart."

You nearly trip over your own feet as heat spreads in your chest. Bucky turns and looks at you in amusement.

You force yourself to ignore it, even though your heart is beating wildly. "That’s such a brag."

"Maybe I just want to see how your aim’s coming along."

Not at all, as it turns out. You walk away from the shooting gallery fifteen minutes later with a little plush keychain that looks like a sleeping bear, pouting.

"You could’ve helped me out," you grumble. "Instead of acting like they have your picture still up there ninety years after the fact."

"You never know. Besides, this is … cute."

"Oh, shut up, Barnes."

The keyring clacks against the back of his hand as it magnetically sticks to it. Your fingers brush as you keep holding onto the little bear. Bucky shakes his head.

"Besides," he says, gently tugging you along with the keyring still stuck to him. "You couldn’t have kept him."

He’s not wrong. Everything around you is set in stone in a way that permanence itself has lost all meaning. How can things ever be expected to change in a closed experiment?

You look around and marvel at all these lives around you, happening in just this way every single day in this loop, and yet this is the first time you’re truly aware of them. All these small, magnificent people around you, and yet it still boils down to the two of you.

"Listen, Y/N …" Bucky clears his throat, not looking at you as you keep walking. "There’s a dance to these things, and I’m not … you and me, we’re not …"

His cheeks are a dark shade of pink.

"I don’t think I follow," you say slowly.

"No. Of course. It’s just that … you should know …" He trails off again, mumbling something in Russian.

Your head is already whirring from the constant noise of the past couple of hours, but your heart is pounding faster again, something irrational like hope spreading wild and dangerous in your chest. He regards you with a sidewards glance, his eyes darkening like you’ve seen several times before now, the corner of his jaw twitching in that way of his; and so it’s easy to say it.

"Tell me."

You’ve asked him over and over, time after time, and you still haven’t gotten an answer. Weeks, months of this question that’s entirely meaningless in the grand scheme of things and yet refuses to leave the back of your mind.

Bucky’s mouth opens and closes, like the words are on his tongue but he needs to contain them just a little longer. His eyes trail over your face and off to the side, settling on something with a frown. "You have a …"

Thinking it’s a bug, you look at your arm and blink.

There, just below the elbow, someone has written four words in careful, slightly wonky letters. You don’t have to twist your arm to read them; you’ve done it many times.

No self-deprication. Скажи ей.

Familiar and slightly smudged under the heat of the afternoon sun, like they’ve been there all along. Like you’ve never washed them off your skin at all.

Memories meant for other timelines.

"Sorry." Bucky exhales slowly, then drags his other hand through his hair. "Think you’re up for another stop?"

Once again, you’re no closer to finding out what on earth he’s wanted to tell you all these times.

"Depends," you say, reminding yourself that you have no right to be disappointed. "Is there going to be coffee?"

"I’ll buy you some on the way." He takes a look at his wristwatch. "We have one last stop."

* * *

When you get to the cemetery, the sun is just setting on the horizon and the gates are locked. It doesn’t faze Bucky in the slightest. He just continues walking along the fencing until he reaches a couple of newspaper boxes lining it.

"After you," he says.

You stare at him. "No."

"Yes."

"You realize this is so illegal, right?"

Bucky shrugs. "I’ve done this dozens of times and they’ve not caught me yet. I’ll give you a lift."

"Again, I hate your ideas."

You place your foot into Bucky’s interlaced hands and only wince slightly when he propels you up. You come to a wobbly halt on top of the box, grabbing onto one of the spikes to keep your balance.

Bucky’s arm brushes your side when he climbs up next to you and nimbly jumps down on the other side of the fence. You sigh.

"You couldn’t have just busted the lock?"

"Probably." He opens his arms. "Come on. I’ve got you."

With a murmured curse, you take the leap. You crash into him, stumbling, his hands steadying your shoulders. You inhale involuntarily, letting yourself be surrounded by his presence for a moment before stepping away.

"I got it," you mutter.

You walk in silence as Bucky leads your way. Above your heads behind you, a passing N train rattles by.

It’s a beautiful sight, even though it’s sad. Rows upon rows of gravestones lined up as far as the eye can see, with paths crisscrossing between them.

Finally, he halts close to a spot in the shadow of an evergreen tree. You step up next to him to read the names on the stone, recognizing only the last one right above the inscriptions on the bottom.

REBECCA PROCTOR BARNES, 1926-2024

You remember the time right after he moved into the Tower; the odd hours, the baking, the candles, the silence, the long hair. The tear in his shirt. Your heart twists in regret, your mouth dry.

Bucky’s lips move with words you don’t hear, and then he pulls off his gloves and takes something out of his pocket, bending down. You recognize the pebble he picked up at the beach. He puts it down on the gravestone, then straightens again.

You reach out for his hand and squeeze it in silent condolence. Instead of letting go, he interlaces your fingers. His hand is warm.

Several minutes pass before he tugs on your hand again, pulling you to a bench a few steps back. You’re not sure what to say, and so you stay quiet, biting the inside of your cheek until Bucky bumps his shoulder against yours.

"I think this might be the longest time you’ve shut up since I met you."

You scowl at him. "I was trying to be respectful."

A small grin flits across his face. "There’s a first time for everything."

Another train passes resoundingly, an oddly mundane sound in such a solemn place; still, it adds to it, in a way. It makes you think of putting your loved ones on a train, then waving them good-bye; just for now.

"Where are your parents?" you ask softly.

"Back in Indiana. They moved to take care of my dad’s parents and then stayed to manage the house and all that." He closes his eyes. "I’ve not been there since I was fifteen years old, but I still remember the way the trees smell in summer right after it’s rained."

"And the twins?"

"Mira got married, moved out of state, died while I was in cryo. Jo was in a car crash in ’58. Apparently, she drove races."

You settle your head against his shoulder. "Did they have children?"

"Miriam did. I have a great-niece who’s an architect in Seattle."

"Fancy."

"Right?" He sighs. "It was always Becks and me, though, when we were kids."

"Do you come here a lot?"

"Not as often as I thought I would. But it’s good to remember things."

"Tell me about her."

You can hear his smile when he speaks again, and it’s almost better than seeing it. "She was exactly the kind of little sister you’d read about in novels. Pigtails. Sweet. Annoying as hell." He chuckles. "One time when she was nine, she ate so much cotton candy she was sick all over Steve’s shoes. And that made him sick."

"Gross," you comment, which makes him huff in amusement. Good. "You must miss her a lot."

"Yeah. I do." He hesitates for a moment, then adds, "You’d have liked her."

The admission blooms in your stomach, warm and wistful at the same time. "Somehow, I don’t doubt that."

"Do you have siblings?"

You sit up straight again. "What?"

Ask me tomorrow.

"What?" Bucky asks.

"Why did you ask me that?"

He looks at you like he just can’t figure you out. "I don’t know, it seemed appropriate."

"It’s just … you asked me before. In the loop."

"I have?" His brows knit. "Is it important?"

You hesitate, then shake your head. This day has been full of surprises you can’t make sense of; what’s one more? "I guess not."

"Well?" He looks at you expectantly.

"When I grew up … let’s just say super powers don’t exactly run in the family."

It comes out slower this time, your memories of the past, and Bucky listens just as carefully. You twist your rings around your fingers, over and over again.

"When you can do what I can do … even with my family around, I never felt like I could actually be a part of them. They never really understood what my powers meant and I … I think it scared them. Which I get now, after a shitton of therapy, but try explaining to a six-year-old why her dad never really talks to her."

"That’s horrible."

"I know. But I’m fine now." Strangely, unexpectedly, you find that you really mean it, too. "And then after that … I mean, you know. Those five years I had at the Compound were the first time I felt like I had a real family. We were all kind of broken together."

Bucky stays silent but you can tell his attention is still focused on you.

"I wasn’t in a very good place when you and Sam found me. I’d just lost everything. But then … that mission happened, and I was needed again even though you despised me—"

"I didn’t—"

"—but the truth is, fighting with you was the most fun I’d had in a long time."

"Ditto." He’s still looking at you as if he’s searching for something. As if he didn’t know all your secrets now. Finally, he looks away, clearing his throat. "It’s getting dark."

You nod. "Give me one second."

He watches you let go of his hand and walk back towards Rebecca’s grave, pulling out your keychain and setting it down as well. It looks like the little bear is resting its head on Bucky’s pebble.

The look on his face is heartbreakingly unreadable when you return, and it makes your insides clench in desperation. You come to a halt in front of him, wrapping your arms around yourself.

"We won’t make it ’til midnight," you say.

"Probably not," Bucky agrees.

"And I don’t want to have to go on that mission."

"Me neither."

Your eyes lock.

"Are you going to lose your mind again?" you say quietly.

He looks at the ground between you, hands hidden in the pockets of his jacket again. "No promises."

You swallow heavily. The anticipation makes you near dizzy, even though you’ve agreed that this doesn’t mean anything.

Your breath still hitches when his lips fan over yours, barely touching at first, just hovering, testing the waters. Like either of you have anything to lose. It’s making your stomach flutter.

In the end, you’re the one who leans in properly. You intend for it to be a short peck, but it’s just too tempting to linger, careful, soft, slow. He tastes like your coffee order: a little sweet and a little bitter.

You could see yourself becoming addicted to it.

The thought makes you break the kiss, your hands still on his chest. You can feel his heartbeat through the fabric of his shirt.

Bucky’s eyes open heavily, dark and blue and confused. His cheeks are flushed. "We’re still here?"

You are. You’ve made a fool of yourself. He’s going to die, anyway.

In a panic, you take a step backwards, blinking, wrapping your arms around yourself. Between one blink and the next, you realize you’re sitting in bed, the sun in your face, FRIDAY blasting The All-American Rejects at full volume.

Your lips are still tingling.

* * *

Something has shifted.

You can feel it in the air, humming like it did at the Bleecker Street Sanctum, vibrating with something akin to anticipation. The colors of the astral plane, warped and peculiar as they always are, feel sharpened, more insistently vibrant in their hue.

What now? the walls seem to ask, curling towards you as soon as you’re not looking at them directly; a presence hovering over your shoulder, close enough to feel its strange, otherworldly heat.

You reach for your necklace and feel its magic pulsating slowly and steadily, reassuring you. These ghosts cannot harm you in here; not yet, at least.

And yet, you feel this place quivering with kaleidoscopic impatience, straining against some invisible malevolence unraveling its very core with needle-pointed talons.

Playing with the fabric of everything is a dangerous pastime.

The symbols around your wrist are prickling, and when you examine them more closely, you notice they have started to lift off your skin, sitting there loosely like a worn-out bracelet.

"Y/N!"

Between one blink and the next, you’re squinting at an unforgiving midday sun, and you tumble backwards against a solid chest. Bucky’s arms come up to steady you as you take a gulp of air. It feels like you’ve been holding your head underwater.

"What are you doing up here?"

Slowly, confusion settles into your bones as you take a look at your surroundings. Somehow, you’ve gotten up to the roof again.

"I don’t know," you gasp, twisting in his hold. You can feel your pulse rushing through your ears. "I don’t remember."

You’ve not been able to forget anything in decades, and now it’s like that easy cord of memory has been snapped at some point between the astral plane and here. Gone, like that time has never existed in the first place.

Bucky studies you carefully, his face sober. His hands firm around your forearms, grounding you. It’s what does it, you’ve realized. The loop doesn’t snap back as long as you’re touching.

That doesn’t mean anything, though.

The important thing is, you’ve not woken up blood-soaked in nearly a week.

"You wanna go back downstairs?"

For a moment, the sky turns wild behind his head; you smell magic and fire as purples and greens and oranges swirl around in lazy, misty clouds, the stars glittering impossibly at the corner of your vision.

Bucky’s grip on you tightens and it all fades away until nothing remains but the intense blue of his eyes. You wonder if he might’ve noticed the colors, too, if he’d just looked away from you.

"Yeah," you whisper. "Yeah, that’s a good call."

His gaze flickers down and then leaves you, and it makes you want to restart the loop right then and there. Or at least have him look at you like that again.

It can’t mean anything and you know that, but if hope kills him, then let it break your heart into a million pieces. You welcome the ache. It’s much better than the alternative.

Curious, how you used to feel like you’ve known him for so long, through textbooks and newspaper articles and anecdotes told on long Campus nights. It’d always been hard for you to recognize the person from those stories in the man who was living just a few doors away from you and emptying your fridge. Hell, most days it was difficult to even imagine him capable of a smile.

But things are different now.

Over the course of this one, endless day, you’ve met a side of Bucky you’d barely believed existed before. A gentler person than he usually lets on, even towards you. Funny, too. Stubborn and capable, vicious, loyal, brave. So much more than meets the eye at first, not just the memory of a person, but a real, breathing, flawed, wonderful human being.

He’s got no clue, you think, how easy it is to fall in love with him.

"You wanna go back downstairs?"

You stare back at him, and a shiver runs down your spine. His brow starts to furrow, and so you nod. "Sure."

There’s no time to overthink this, especially not if time starts acting up again. And so you ignore the nausea in your stomach and the fact that, when Bucky holds the door up for you, the sun catches one of your rings in a way that gives it a soft emerald sheen for just a second. When you try to reach out for your powers, anyway, there’s that same surge of emptiness you’re already so familiar with.

Another fluke, then.

Or even more things that are starting to slip through reality’s cracks.

"So you’re both stuck in a time loop," Sam says skeptically.

"No way," Peter pipes up, eyes wide and astonished. "Like Palm Springs?"

"Really? Palm Springs? What’s wrong with Groundhog Day?"

"What, like—like the musical?"

Sam looks at you accusingly. "Who’s the kid again?"

"You gotta get with the times, bud," Bucky smirks, absent-mindedly scratching Alpine between the ears.

"That’s the million dollar question," you reply, turning to look at Peter. He’s tapping his fingers against his leg, his gaze flitting between the three of you. "Because whenever we tell you about this, you’re not surprised that we know you, you’re surprised we remember you."

He chuckles awkwardly. "Is there a difference?"

"There is," Bucky says.

"You’re not aware of the loop," you continue, tilting your head, "so you might be a symptom of it starting to break down."

"Thank you?"

"It would explain why you think we would know you. Maybe you’ve slipped in through some other part of the multiverse."

"Oh," Peter says, blinking. "Oh. Sorry, I didn’t—no, that’s not what’s happening here."

"I know this is a lot."

"It’s not. I mean, I get what you’re saying but this is not a multiverse problem in—the way you’re thinking."

You’re starting to get a headache. "So you are aware of the time loop?"

"No! That’s all—wow. I’m, uh, look …" He coughs, sitting up a little straighter. "So we’ve actually—it’s a bit more complicated than that because, well, there was this—"

"Ever been to Germany, kid?" Bucky interrupts.

All three of you turn to stare at him. Alpine continues to clean her paws.

"I … yeah, once," Peter replies, a curious look on his face. "Through an internship, why … why?"

Bucky nods, his expression unreadable. "He’s a dead end."

"Hey!"

You glance at Sam, but he frowns at Bucky, too. "How do you know that?"

"Call it a hunch."

"Wanna share with the group?" Sam deadpans.

"I’m good."

You rub your temples with an exhausted groan. If Peter doesn’t have anything to do with the loop brushing against other realities at all, you’re quickly running out of ideas. And time.

You manage a vaguely apologetic smile when Peter comes up with an excuse to leave, then continue to stare blankly at your own hands, twisting your rings around your fingers over and over again. They remain relentlessly black.

What’s the point, you think, and not for the first time. What the hell are you supposed to do when every path you start on leads you back in a damn circle like that stupid snake swallowing its own tail?

It used to be a comfort to know you’ll make it out of the loop somehow, but geez, you’d love to be as certain you’d succeed in not destroying the whole multiverse in the process.

Unfortunately, that outcome seems less likely with every Friday that passes. You’d have to make your move soon, but you don’t know what it is. You don’t know how. Even with the majority of the pieces of this day laid out, you still can’t make out the big picture. You don’t have all the answers.

So what’s the fucking point?

"Okay," Bucky says, leaning over the back of the couch until he can look at your face upside-down, "what the hell is going on with you?"

* * *

"I really don't think this should be our priority right now."

"And I think I definitely want a distraction," you say. "How do you feel about sage green?"

"I don't recall," he says pointedly, and you immediately regret your new honesty policy.

"I'm fine, I promise," you say, putting another paint bucket into your shopping cart. You’ve decided that since nothing fucking matters, you’re going to repaint the living room. "Careful, or I'll start thinking you worry about me."

"Will you stop pretending like you don't know I do for one second?"

You ignore him, staring at the shelves intently. "How about lilac?"

"Y/N," he says in that tone.

"Bucky," you echo.

"You're doing the thing again."

"What thing?" you ask, choosing a particularly ghastly shade of canary yellow just to spite him.

He grabs the wiring of your shopping cart to stop you from escaping into the next aisle. "Look at me."

So you do. "I’m fine, Buck."

It’s just that you’re skirting towards an emotional breakdown the likes of which this loop has never seen before. No big deal.

"What are we doing here? Literally, why are we here?" The metal squeaks as it dents between his fingers. "What are we even trying to do if you won't let me in?"

"What do you want me to say?" you ask in exasperation. "That I'm terrified? That I don't know what's happening? You know that already. I've never been an enigma to you. I remember every detail of my life in full technicolor, and it's been exhausting, but this … forgetting things, that's worse."

"You think I can't relate to that?" Bucky says, and your fingers twitch. Old habits.

"That's not fair."

"Neither is you saying we’re in this together and not acting like it. Why are you still trying to carry everything on your own?"

"Because it’s my responsibility—"

"No, it isn’t," he interrupts. "Even if I did die that first time, it still wouldn’t be your responsibility or your burden."

"Burden?" you say thinly. "You think your life is a burden?"

"Twelve."

There's a pull in your stomach at the old nickname, even though you know its intended meaning now. It's making you realize he hasn't used it since your trip to Avengers Campus. "Don’t Twelve me right now."

"Where is everyone?"

You turn around.

The aisles surrounding you are completely empty, like the few other shoppers that have been in here with you have just vanished off the face of the earth. You frown, leaving the cart behind to look around the corner. The store feels bigger, somehow, now that no one else is here. Your steps echo on the laminate flooring; in the distance, there’s some tinny music playing through the speakers, but there’s no other sound.

"I don’t like this," you say.

"Stay right there," Bucky says, stepping up next to you.

You scowl at him. "Did you just pull a gun out of your pocket? Do you always bring that thing when you go shopping?"

"I don’t," he says. "Do you usually wear your tac suit?"

"I’m not—" You look down. "Okay, something is very, very wrong here."

The aisle has grown in length, like you’re walking through an endless, brightly lit tunnel lined by bare shelves. When you look back, it stretches just as far in the other direction, the exit barely visible on the horizon. In a way, it’s very dreamlike, reality warping to create this odd alternative of itself.

"Stay behind me, at least," Bucky says, raising his weapon. He’s still in his civilian clothes, but a stern look has washed over his face.

"In your dreams, Barnes."

He rolls his eyes.

There’s only one way to go and so you continue walking, the aisles crossing yours continuously seemingly leading nowhere. Finally they disappear altogether as the shelves morph into a sort of avenue which shrinks down even more, the lights dimming. Your feet hit granite.

"This is impossible," you say.

"I think this is what Wong meant," Bucky replies grimly.

"We need to go back right now," you say, but when you turn to look over your shoulder, there’s only darkness and stone. "Bucky—"

He pushes you out of the way as a shot sounds through the tunnels, and one moment later you’re swarmed by white jackets on all sides. You curse, rolling to the side and reaching for the knife on your thigh. It’s not there.

"We need to get out of here!" you shout, using your fist instead. Your pendant pulsates around your neck, but when you reach for your powers, there’s still an invisible wall barring you from using them.

"I thought you wanted to pick out paints," Bucky yells back.

"I don’t understand why you’re so mad about the—"

"I watched Groundhog Day."

If it could, time would freeze. You’re begging it to. "No."

"Yeah," he says, shooting at a white jacket. A spray of blood speckles their uniform. "It’s funny. A little fucked up, if you asked me, but when you get to the crux of it—"

"We’re not having this conversation again," you say, punching another one of them in the face. "We’re not."

"Why not?" Bucky demands. "I’d love to have been a part of it as well."

You let out a frustrated scream. "It’s not gonna work like Groundhog Day."

"You don’t know that. Unless you’re not telling me something."

"For fuck’s sake," you yelp, barely evading a knife aimed at your stomach, "do you really think I’d keep it from you if I had slept with you?"

Bucky twists the gun out of someone’s gloved hands and shoves it into yours. "You’re keeping something from me and I want to know why."

You’re back to back now, both of you trying to catch your breath. With the moment of surprise gone, your opponents are circling you now, waiting for your next move.

And you find yourself breaking.

"Your ma liked Voltaire," you say. "Your favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip and your favorite coffee order is mine. If you drink it black, you do this thing with your mouth that I’ve never seen anyone do, and it’s weirdly sweet." You let out a breath. "You have a fucked-up sense of humor, which I think is great, and you watch Hitchcock movies even though you don’t particularly enjoy them, which is just so stupid, and I’ve never met anyone who gives better hugs than you. Satisfied?"

You can feel him straighten behind you. "You’re deflecting," he says.

With a frustrated groan, you shoot at the next white jacket breaking formation. "Maybe I want things to be as simple as a damn movie as well, but they’re not. It’s fictional. Four o’clock!" You duck and Bucky hits the one coming from the side over the head with his arm. "It’s a bunch of writers coming up with a bullshit idea of love saving everyone’s problems once again. The girl falls in love with the guy, the loop ends, la-dee-dah-dah, day over."

"Yeah, that’s way more absurd than what’s happening here."

"Well, clearly it’s not fucking worked out so far, so if you have any other suggestion, I’m all ears."

A beat passes.

You bite the inside of your cheek hard, forcing yourself to stay vigilant. It’s out there now. You need to get out of here.

Bucky sounds very far away, even though he’s right there with you. "What are you saying?"

Your vision swims slightly, and you blink through it. Shoot. Kick. Protect. "Don’t," you say, shaking your head. "Don’t play stupid with me right now, I swear—"

"Y/N—"

"It doesn’t matter, alright? It doesn’t change shit because we’re still stuck in this nightmare that keeps getting worse, and it doesn’t matter what I feel because you don’t feel the same way anyway, and I’ve just been trying to—"

"I do."

You fall silent, staggering on your feet at the emotion in his voice.

"I do," he repeats. "I have."

"What?" Your voice cracks on that single word.

His magazine runs out and he throws the gun away, cursing under his breath. "You think every movie should be ten minutes shorter, as a rule. You don’t really like your job, but you’ve also never sat still for a minute in your life and you’d rather be miserable than ask someone else for help when it comes to money or, well, anything. You hate being alone with your thoughts, but you also wouldn’t admit that with a gun to your head."

Like magnets, you turn at the same time, reaching for each other. There’s blood on his nose. Your hands are shaking.

"I’ve been in love for you for months now and it’s been literally fucking killing me."

Tell her.

The tear falls.

"So stupid," you whisper.

He looks at you in that same way he has countless times before; you’ve never been able to put your finger on the emotion in his gaze, but now you know. You know.

And then a shot rings in your ears and you sit up in bed, the sun in your face, music blasting,

"—when I’ve known this all along—"

Your door slams shut behind you as you run across the hall to the elevator, repeatedly hitting the button to go down.

"Are you okay?" Sam shouts from the doorway just as the doors ping open.

"Fine!" you shout back, naked feet almost slipping as you hammer on the button to go to the lobby.

You can’t wait for Bucky to get back. You’re going to have to find him. Surely, he can’t be that far from the Tower anymore. Maybe you should’ve changed out of your pyjamas, you think on your endless way down, besides, you don’t know at all which direction to go, unless—

The doors slide open to reveal Bucky on the other side, panting. His blue eyes lock onto yours immediately, mirroring your own feelings of terror and hope.

"You still remember, right?"

"Yeah," he says, and your last resolve crumbles to pieces.

You both move at the same time.

It’s a little like having your powers back, because the world around you stops and ceases to exist. Nothing else is real except Bucky’s arms coming around you and pulling you into him, his mouth crashing into yours, your back pressing against the elevator wall.

Nothing about your previous brief, careful kisses could have prepared you for this one. It’s desperate. Neither of you is holding back anymore, all things laid out in the open and expressed in every starving touch. You want to live in this moment forever, breathing him in, swallowing every sound he makes.

When you finally have to come up for air, you involuntarily tighten your grasp on his hair, your eyes shut tightly, afraid you’ll be zapped right back to your bed. Instead, you feel Bucky chase your lips with his own, breathing heavily, his arms still steady and firm around you.

You look at him through heavy-lidded eyes, soaking all of him in. "Don’t let go," you whisper.

He steps even closer until your chests are fully touching, and he catches you easily when you wrap your legs around him.

"Never," he mumbles into your mouth, and then he kisses you again.

* * * * *

There was a package on the kitchen table.

It was addressed to you, which was concerning since you hadn’t actually ordered anything. Even if you had, you’d have used a fake name and had it sent to a p.o. box.

You’d rather be overly cautious than risk getting caught over a clothing delivery.

It wasn’t a very large package, only about the size of a shoe box. Still, you didn’t know what to make of it. You just stared at it from a safe distance.

"Are you gonna open it with your mind?"

You flinched slightly at Bucky’s voice right behind you. "You did this," you said sharply.

He crossed his arms, looking at you with something like a challenge in his eyes. "Do you wanna look inside before you kill me?"

Frowning, you ripped the package open to reveal a metal container. When you put it down on the counter, the locks unlatched with a low hiss. Inside, there were six simple, perfect black rings in differing sizes.

You turned to Bucky again. "What is this?"

"They measure fatigue. At least that’s what they’re supposed to do. May I?"

You were stunned enough to nod without thinking, watching him take one of the smaller rings out of the box. He reached for your hand and slid it onto your pinkie. It was a perfect fit, cool against your skin, just like his vibranium palm. You could feel your pulse rushing in your ears.

The ring turned a beautiful emerald green on your finger.

"Mazel tov," Bucky said. "You appear to be awake."

Your mouth was very dry. He was still holding your hand. "Who did you tell about me?"

"No one. Only that I know someone whose abilities are tied to their energy, and who could use a way to track that more easily." He dropped your hand and leaned against the counter, observing you. "So you’ll be able to tell how many redos you can manage without fainting."

Your thoughts were racing, confusion and awe taking the place of your left-over anger. You put another one of the rings on and watched it turn green on your finger.

"Thank you," you finally whispered. "You don’t know what this …"

Bucky nodded as if he did. "Consider it a peace offering."

"You—this is—can I hug you?"

He looked stunned for a second, stunned and maybe something else, but then he tilted his head and you wrapped your arms around him before he could take it back. It was a bit weird at first, awkward and stiff, until then he carefully put his arms around you, too, gently pulling you in.

Oh, you thought, this is nice.

Bucky’s head was touching yours and the scent of his shampoo made you slightly dizzy. When you let go of him, there was a strange look in his eyes, one that made you take half a step back with an embarrassed chuckle.

"You’re a good hugger, Barnes," you said.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look away, either.

That’s what made you do it: that look. You didn’t know what to make of it, and suddenly you didn’t feel ready to let go.

"Consider it a peace offering."

You looked at your hands. The ring on your pinkie had maintained that glorious shade of emerald green, but the other had turned black. You laughed a little.

"This is incredible," you told Bucky earnestly. This time, you didn’t stumble over your own words. Instead, you watched his face. "Can I give you a hug?"

It wasn’t just surprise that passed over his features, but you couldn’t pinpoint the other thing. His arms enveloped you again and you sighed a little, burying your nose in his shirt until the warm smell of him was all you breathed in. It was just you and him in that moment, and your ever wandering mind was strangely soothed by that thought.

You didn’t let go when you had last time. You just stayed where you were with your eyes closed, letting Bucky rub the lightest circles on the flat of your back. He could probably feel your heartbeat, but for some reason you didn’t care.

"For the record," you mumbled after a while, "I’m thankful, but I’m also still annoyed with you, so this doesn’t change anything."

You could feel him hold back a surprised chuckle and it made you giddy even as he drew away.

"Wouldn’t expect anything else, doll." He takes another step back as if he’d only just noticed how close you were still standing. "Anyway, at least now we’ll know whether bringing you along will actually be useful."

And there it was, albeit with the usual venom in his voice. Maybe he really did mean it as a peace offering. You were willing to believe it for the time being.

"You’re a strange man, James Buchanan Barnes," you said quietly, shaking your head. Hiding your smile.

"Says the time witch."

You gasped in mock surprise. "Did you just call me a witch? Does that make me one of the Big Three?"

Bucky groaned. "It’s not a thing."

You ignored him. "I want a giant black hat for my birthday so I can scare little kids on Hallowe’en. Ooh, and a cauldron. Sam!" You turned to face the opening door. "Bucky finally admitted it!"

"Admitted what?"

"That I’m one of the Big Three!"

"Big three pains in my ass, maybe," Bucky muttered, the tips of his ears turning red.

"There’s just three?"

"Shut up, Sam."

You slipped on the rest of your new rings in delight and watched them each turn a slightly darker shade of green. The one you’d put on earlier stayed black, though, at least for now, as if to remind you the moment had happened.

It wasn’t breaking your promise, you told yourself. After all, he hadn’t shared anything with you at all. If anything, it had been the other way around.

It was just going to stay yours until you figured out what it meant.

chapter eleven

thank you for reading!! you can follow my library blog @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications 💚 also fun fact, my chapters are long enough to crash my drafts whenever i try to post so if you made it to this point, please do consider leaving a comment and/or a reblog. i don't get anything else out of writing this, and i really do love every single one of them.

[yourladyjane]

Oh, so that’s where he went 🥺 I didn’t even have any theories about it, but ugh—that struck me right in the heart. I’m such a sucker for stories that explore Bucky’s past—him missing his family, stuff from his childhood, his friendship with Steve—beyond just the Winter Soldier stuff 🩷🥺

And this was a very aptly titled chapter because GOD DAMN, ABOUT FREAKING TIME. *cue swooning*

[intrepidacious]

time after time [9]

series summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 12.9k

chapter warnings: suicidal ideation in a time loop context; general angst; in many ways, this is a callback chapter but also a step forward; is exposition a warning? please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: i wasn't sure i was gonna post tonight until like an hour ago but hey, it's friday 13th and i'm feeling lucky 🫶🏼 we're in the home stretch now folks

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

nine: out of the past

Home smelled like dish soap and warm cookies.

From your childhood, you remembered that sweet scent wafting from the kitchen to every adjourning room until it knocked on the front door from the inside, welcoming you in its embrace. You never appreciated it as much as you should have, then; maybe children never did. But when the bad days found you, later, you recalled that smell, and it offered a bit of comfort to you, no matter how dismal your surroundings actually were.

At the Compound, smells didn’t linger. No matter how many trays were left out to cool, the air purifier kicked in way too soon and got rid of all sugary traces that tried to stick. It did break your heart a little, but you didn’t know enough about vents to try to mess with them.

The Tower was different, though; a lot of its functions hadn’t been overhauled since 2016, and because all FRIDAY systems were still getting regular service updates, it was simple enough to make minor adjustments to the rest of the set-up. Not that you were baking a lot these days. It was nice to think about it, though. To return from a grueling closing shift and let your nose guide your way home.

Today, it guided your way towards disaster, instead.

"Why are you trying to burn down my kitchen?"

"I got bored," Bucky said, reaching into the oven with his bare hand. You flung up your arms automatically before you realized it was the left one.

You quickly crossed them in front of your chest instead, squinting at the smoking tray. "What are you doing?"

"Making an offering," he muttered distractedly, slapping the crisp pastries with your only good dish towel. "What’s it look like."

You were going to kill him.

"Did your landlord take away your oven for safety reasons or why exactly aren’t these charcoals Made in Brooklyn?" You still hadn't changed the door codes, so you couldn't exactly accuse him of breaking in. It was deeply annoying. "Do you know what time it is?" you said instead.

"Twenty-two forty-five," he said, completely ignoring your first question and not really answering the second. "So you don’t want rugelach?"

"Love rugelach. Prefer them edible."

Maybe you could salvage this. It’d been a long day already, but you’d had quite a lot of coffee and a few minutes should suffice to stop most of the smoke, right?

Otherwise, it’d just linger.

You let out a sigh. "Gimme a sec."

"Could you not—"

With one swift, practiced move, you reached behind and pulled on the thread, teasing time backwards little by little. You watched Bucky return the cursed tray to the oven, his motions jerking, like an old tape that’d been rewound too many times. You found yourself moving into the hallway again, backwards, your shoes returning to your feet, your bag—

Your grip slipped, and you tumbled straight into the coatrack, pulling several hangers noisily down with you. Your ankle twisted with a cracking noise that made tears well up in your eyes.

Great. Just great. Exactly how you’d wanted your evening to go.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Grimacing, you glanced at the time on your phone. You’d barely made it back four minutes. You’d been aiming for six.

"Just take your damn rugelach out of the oven, idiot," you called out sharply.

They still smelled kind of burnt, but not as bad as before. Wincing, you threw your sneaker at the wall to gently roll your foot. It had already started swelling, but at least it didn’t seem broken.

With a relieved sigh, you wiped your cheeks and leaned against the wall to catch your breath. When you opened your eyes again, you flinched backwards, bumping your head.

Today was a dumpster fire.

"What?" you said through gritted teeth when Bucky kept staring at you with raised eyebrows. "This was your fault."

"I magically pushed you into the wall?"

"You just demonstrated your impeccable baking skills. Ow, fuck." Maybe you should just spend the night on the floor. It seemed like the best idea right now. "Why are you bored?"

You didn’t really expect him to answer, but it was the most interesting tidbit of your reset conversation, and you’d promised to share those things.

"Did I say that?" he asked, squatting in front of you. He looked tired as well. There was a long tear through his shirt that you hadn’t noticed earlier. "Why’d you keep your fall?"

"I didn’t keep it," you said disdainfully. "That was a one-time occasion. I overestimated how much energy I had left for my reset."

His frown deepened. "Does that happen a lot?"

"Sometimes," you shrugged. "It’s not like I have a floating health bar I can check every time, you know."

"Sounds impractical."

You huffed. "For once, I agree with you."

He had a pensive look on his face, and you didn’t know what to make of it. Finally, he blinked back into the present and held out his hand. "Come on, Twelve. You should go to bed."

You were too exhausted and aching to question any of it, then. The fact that in all this time since you were introduced, he’d never offered to help you before; or that this was the first time he’d given you that nickname. You didn’t want to ask when you did notice, afterwards, and you couldn’t come up with an explanation on your own until you got a little more used to his military speak, and you remembered what he’d said to Sam.

I’m keeping an eye on her.

You were the danger that was standing right in front of him, and he knew it. He made sure to keep reminding you of the fact that you weren’t to be trusted; that he was watching you.

Then, you remembered telling him about your longest jump backwards being eleven minutes, and you started resenting the nickname a little more. Because no matter which reason was the right one, deep down, you couldn’t fault him for thinking that you weren’t, could never, be good enough.

That was later, though. Right then, you just took his hand.

* * * * *

It doesn’t make any sense.

His hands are still wrapped around your wrists, a light pressure on your pulse. His touch is the only thing tethering you here, cold and warm fingers, and that look of his that you can’t even begin to describe.

I never hit the ground.

"What do you mean," you say quietly, barely a question. "I saw you fall. The loop reset."

That’s how it goes, no matter what else happens. No matter what you do.

"But it reset before I hit the ground," he interrupts your looping thoughts, and there it is again. That awful, useless hope in his eyes. "I don’t remember dying. It didn’t hurt."

You freeze, unable to look away from it. From him. "So, this past week, you always …"

Up until this moment, it hadn’t truly sunk in that Bucky becoming aware of the loops would also mean he’d recall dying; every aspect of it. The pain, the frenzy, the desperation.

Your unwillingness to witness his last moments any longer.

"Doesn’t matter now," you hear him say through a layer of fog and nausea, and how the fuck does he keep doing this? You crave getting that glimmer of optimism back, the sense that there’s another option to explore, a new angle to twist things around in your favor. "We found our loophole."

You blink several times. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it." His thumb swipes across your wrist, gently, and the band tingles. "No more pointless missions that put you and Sam in danger. No more wasting time on trying to save me when it never works out. I can reset us on my own terms."

It’s like something cracks inside you, releasing a cold rush of dread into your bloodstream. "No," you say, "no, that could’ve just been a glitch, we don’t know what’s going on. We have no control over any of this."

Bucky’s face hardens, the triumph that split his mouth into a grin only moments ago a distant memory. "You mean, you don’t."

"Didn’t you just tell me that suicidal behavior can’t be our solution?" you say, unable to hide the bitter edge in your voice.

"That’s different." He drops your hands, finally, as if he’s just noticing he’s been holding onto them this whole time. "You know it’s different."

You can recognize the self-loathing radiating off him all too easily. Useless.

"Forget it," you say, shaking your head. "I won’t let you."

"You won’t let me?" Somehow, he still sounds vaguely amused, and it’s making your blood boil. "Then what’s the alternative, we keep meandering around while I continue to get myself shot every day?"

"I don’t know! Let’s think about this for, like, five seconds."

"I’ve thought about it. And if my options both lead to the same result, anyways, I’d rather choose the one where I at least get somewhat of a say."

Your nails dig into your palms, a sharp, familiar pain. "So you want to, what, pick a time of day where you’re just calling it quits and you plummet to your death?"

"And why not?"

You let out a shrill sort of laugh. "What if it doesn’t work more than once?"

"And what if it does?"

Again, again, he looks at you and something in his gaze shatters. You hate this, and you hate yourself, but you’ve been here before. Hope is the thing that kills him.

"Right," he continues. "You’d rather we keep pretending that nothing’s wrong, like we don’t already know how this day is going to end."

"That’s not fair."

"Nothing about this is fair."

You notice it, then: the fury quietly burning behind his eyes; not with you, necessarily, though you wouldn’t blame him for that, either. No, this is a different kind of rage, one that simmers in the background and hides in the darkest corners, constantly rattling to be let out of its cage. His hands are balled into tight fists now, a single concession to this emotion. It doesn’t seem enough.

Now that you think about it, you wonder if you’ve ever actually seen Bucky Barnes angry.

Annoyed, yes. Frustrated. Pissed off. But those are surface feelings, bubbling up quickly, comparatively easy to live with; nothing like the raw anger that you’ve just caught a glimpse of.

That’s the kind of feeling that, when continually swallowed down, eats you up alive.

So you raise your chin, and you say, "Fight me."

He reflexively moves backwards. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." You get up slowly, wiping some more blood from your nose. The band around your wrist is still tingling. "Or are you scared?"

In all those months you’ve known him, Bucky’s refused to spar with either of you, even though you know for a fact that Sam’s asked several times. He’s not even bothered to come up with a flimsy excuse, just stared blankly and said, "Nope."

"He knows I’d wipe the floor with him again," Sam’s told you in a whisper loud enough to be heard across the living room. If you recall correctly, that was the same night he found white cat hairs all over his bed and had to do laundry at midnight.

Now, Bucky watches you stretch, his gaze intense, calculating. "I don’t want to fight you," he says, but there’s some leftover edge to his voice; more than that, there’s curiosity.

"Bullshit," you reply lowly, tilting your head.

He unlaces his shoes and you smirk.

"Fine." He climbs into the ring, rolling his neck. "What do I get when I win?"

You circle each other on the mat, eyes never leaving each other’s faces. Bucky’s eyebrow is still raised in amusement, a silent challenge for you to make the first move.

"In your dreams, Barnes," you say, and then you do.

He sidesteps your first kicks as easily as a gust of wind, a grin twitching in the corner of his mouth when you follow them with a punch that’s aimed at his stomach but lands on his right arm without much force. The next one doesn’t even graze him, his movements too quick for you to do any damage.

Despite that, he lets you herd him to the other side of the ring, even though you feel it’s more him leading you. Like he’s waiting to see what you’re going to do and is left continually unsurprised. No matter the swirl of confused feelings in your gut, you want to wipe the increasingly smug look off his face.

"Come on, wolf boy," you huff as your foot hits empty space once more. "You’re not gonna hurt me."

His stance changes in a split second, and you barely manage to duck away from his first swing. He’s still holding himself back, you can tell, but the way he holds himself changes from casual defense to downright predatory. You swallow heavily.

"I wouldn’t be so sure about that," he says.

In one quick move he slaps your fist to the side again before his vibranium fingers curl around your neck. He doesn’t put any pressure on it, but your spine still goes rigid as he holds you there for a moment, his gaze slowly dropping down every inch of your body in a way that feels familiar. His thumb twitches with a flutter of your pulse.

He leans in until he hovers right next to your ear and your breath hitches. "And it’s White Wolf."

With a twist, you move out of his hold and aim another kick behind you. It’s not hard enough to hurt—honestly, you’re a little too distracted to put much force into it right now—but he does let go of you with a low chuckle.

Even after that, it’s useless. Every single move you try, Bucky seems to anticipate. It’s like he’s able to tell where you’re about to try to hit him before you even know it yourself.

"Your posture’s terrible," he remarks, blocking your foot again. It sends a jolt of a memory through you.

With the right training, you can use your own weight to your advantage in a fight.

You don’t think you’ve had the right training, exactly, but you’ve certainly never been in better physical shape in your life.

"Thanks," you say, and you think, what the hell.

You feign a punch down, and when he lowers his torso to follow your movement, you turn it into a wonky handstand, yelping as your momentum sends your legs flying forward quicker than anticipated. You feel one of them collide with Bucky’s back, and he huffs in surprise as he staggers, his arms wrapping around you like he’s not sure whether to stop your fall or get you off him. Either way, you both plummet over and into the mat.

There’s a groan from underneath you. "Y’alright, doll?"

"Great," you pant, untangling your legs from his neck but not moving off him quite yet. Instead, you lean forward and press his shoulders to the ground. "One—two—three, yay, I win!"

He gives a short, disbelieving snort of a laugh, and something hot rushes through you again.

The next moment, he flips you both over, catching one of your hands and pinning it to the mat while the other is pressed down by his elbow. Your head is spinning, Bucky’s grin wicked and so close to your face you can feel his breaths fan over your mouth.

"You were saying?"

Your brain short-circuits.

He seems to recognize something is off, because the naked glee in his eyes is slowly, gradually replaced with something else, something you can’t quite name because there’s not a single coherent thought left in your head. You’re acutely aware of the dried blood under your nose. Of a freckle next to his upper lip.

Inhale. Exhale.

And then—

"Am I interrupting something?"

Another rush of heat washes down your body as Bucky takes another couple of seconds to look at you, frowning, like he’s just remembering that you were fighting before all this. Then, he rolls off to the side.

"Go shower, Twelve."

And just like that, the moment has passed.

You push up to your elbows and watch as he ducks out of the ring without so much as another glance at you, an avalanche of your thoughts returning all at once. When you turn to look at Sam, his arms are crossed and his expression seems way too stern and cap-like for this time of day.

"A word?" he says when Bucky shoulders past him, and for some reason you feel like you’re in trouble.

* * *

You stay in the shower until the mirrors fog up and your fingers turn wrinkly, trying and failing to scrub away whatever just happened. It’s like you can still feel him only inches away from your face, hovering, searching. Almost as if he’s waiting for something.

I’m guessing you’ve tried the Groundhog Day option?

Fucking hell, you need to get a hold of yourself right now.

This … training session was a mistake, a miscalculation on your part. Maybe you’ve started losing your mind a little bit after the first couple dozen loops. Lesson learned: find another way to get Bucky to let out his well-earned ire.

One that doesn’t involve him on top of you.

Think you could handle my charm, Y/L/N?

You let the water hit that tense knot at the back of your neck and let out a long sigh. This iteration of today has barely even started and you’re ready to delete it from existence.

Of course, you realize, then, that won’t be quite so easy this time around.

There’s a certain numbness that, according to the heaps of time loop media you’ve consumed early on during all this, seems inevitable when you’re always, always the only person in the world to continually remember the things that happen. Maybe it’s even worse for you, since there once was a time where reversing uncomfortable situations was something you did on the regular. Looking back, those little corrections seem like a preamble for what you’re going through now. Today is a video tape that keeps skipping on the rewind, reliable only in its endless monotony.

It makes you stop considering the long-term consequences of your actions, since there never are any; everything is bound to repeat, with no regard to what you may have done or said that one time during loop number eighty-whatever. Who would remember, except you?

Or so you’ve thought.

The green band around your wrist catches the light and you stare at it for a long time. It shimmers in the steam of the shower, an almost beautiful sort of gleam to it, like it’s gleeful in reminding you of your latest disastrous mistake.

I’m getting Bucky out of this.

As usual, you didn’t do your job as well as you should’ve, and now you’re having to face the consequences of that.

Real stubborn fucking consequences with distractingly blue eyes, that are apparently intent on driving you batshit—

"What was that?"

"Nothing," you mumble, crossing your arms in front of your chest, tapping your fingers one by one. Bucky rolls his eyes for the twenty-eighth time in as many minutes.

Which you know for a fact, since you’ve not let him out of your sight once. Not as he’s rummaged through the fridge with his usual scowl, not as he’s channel-hopped through a couple of lackluster morning shows, not as he’s spent a couple of minutes playing with Alpine before she hopped off his lap to go do whatever cats do. You don’t particularly care today.

If he's so keen on dying, fine, that's his prerogative; but not yet. Not on your watch.

You just need to come up with another solution before he can do anything stupid.

"Are you gonna spend your whole day like this?" he asks, irritated. Good. He doesn’t have a monopoly on staring.

"Depends," you reply. "Got any plans this morning?"

Twenty-nine. That has to be some sort of record.

"Not if I'm gonna be trailed by an overeager barn owl."

"How dare you. And that's Miss Barn Owl to you." You're aiming for lucky number thirty, but no luck. Instead, he lets out a huff.

"I'm not gonna change my mind just because you're annoying, you know."

"When have you ever," you mumble. If only your useless mind could draw anything but a blank.

Endless loop. Saving each other. Threaten Loki. Blow yourselves up. Upon the wielder’s death, the timeline will—

"Twelve …"

You shake your head, your nails biting into your skin, and Bucky cuts himself off, a muscle in his jaw feathering.

Your gaze wanders. He's all sharp angles this morning in his gloves and the leather jacket, like he’s dressed in black armor concealing all the parts that should be gone, bruised, bloodied, broken. A mundane shield anyone else wouldn't even take conscious notice of, because this is just what he does.

Not lately, though. Not at home, not on Friday.

So how many weapons is he hiding right now?

"Okay, we are getting into Annabelle territory."

Out of the corner of your eye, it looks like Sam’s lost some of the ramrod Captain America energy he was radiating earlier. Bucky’s not told you what kind of words were exchanged, so you’re left to chalk it up to another TAG.

That doesn’t calm you even a little bit.

"How's your nose?" Sam asks, leaning against the back of Bucky’s couch.

"Mostly in shape, I think." You dab at your nostrils and it still hurts a little, but there’s no more blood. "How’s your speech?"

"Mostly in shape, I think," he echoes with a lopsided grin that unexpectedly stings.

Again, you can’t help but yearn for a timeline more permanent than this one. Every day Sam writes that speech, and every day he frets about the details for hours and you can’t tell him that he’s always going to end up smashing it. That’s not how this is supposed to go.

"Have I told you lately that I really appreciate you?" you tell him instead.

His eyebrows raise in mild amusement. "Did you take the good painkillers?"

"I’m serious," you protest, even though you may have. "You’re a good friend and a good cap, and you should be told more often."

Sam blinks, glancing at Bucky as if he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Don’t look at me, bud," he replies. "She’s right."

There’s a couple of moments before Sam shakes his head. "Y’all are Looney Tunes today and I think it’s some sorta ploy, so I’m gonna finish this speech and you’re gonna leave."

"Are you kicking us out?" you ask.

"Yup."

"It’s our apartment," Bucky says.

"I don’t care. Shoo. Come back when you’re normal."

Bucky doesn’t move an inch, even as he has to hide a grin when Sam keeps shoving his shoulder, mumbling to himself about needing room to think, and you have an idea. A bad one, perhaps, but it might just work for your purposes.

"I know what we’re gonna do," you tell Bucky and get up from your couch, grabbing your bag.

"That so?"

You hum, pressing the button for the elevator. "But first, we’ll have to steal a car."

* * *

It’s odd to be back.

Everything about it feels wrong.

You used to know this place like the back of your hand and now it’s like you’re looking at it through fun mirrors, making the image all twisted. The Compound is both bigger and smaller than you remember, and the reality of it makes your heart twinge.

Rubble lines the driveway. You’re both silent as the borrowed car shakily bumps around the curve leading up to where the main building used to be. Your fingers drum a nervous rhythm against the dashboard as you look outside. The branches that used to hang low and cast a soft shade over your head now litter the ground.

New ones are already sprouting, though.

Time hasn’t stopped, not even for this battlefield, and that fact makes you feel better and worse at the same time.

Through the open window, the air smells like hot grass and cement. No one’s working today, of course, but the repair work’s been going slow, anyway. There are no new Avengers to house, and Pepper Potts has had more pressing things to do. You wonder if Morgan’s old enough to be in kindergarten yet.

The car slows until Bucky turns the engine off, parked next to a particularly large piece of debris. You take a deep breath before you trust your legs not to buckle underneath you when you climb outside.

The one and only other time you were here after it all happened, you were still amped up on morphine and grief and you barely felt anything at all at the sight of your home of almost five years lying in ruins. Now, you have to grind your teeth, hugging your arms around yourself in a sorry attempt at comfort.

You used to spend hours reading underneath that tree that’s been cleaved in half. If you squint, you could still point your gaze to where your windows would have been.

Yours.

"This feels strange."

You turn to look at Bucky and find him staring at a spot near the tree line, looking out at the lake.

"Yeah," you say, clearing your throat. "Me too."

The look that passes his face is one you haven’t seen in a while, oddly similar to the one you recall him giving you on your bathroom floor. It’s gone within seconds, but it leaves its trace.

The big hall that had housed the time machine is still mostly rubble, and you’re glad for it. You don’t know how Bruce ever managed to get the pieces out and make them work again; you don’t like thinking about it and you would bet Bucky doesn’t either.

You inhale your grief once more and let it out in one long, shaky exhale. Then, you roll your aching shoulders. "Alright," you tell yourself, lifting your chin up to blink against the bright July sun.

It should be autumn by now.

Every step towards the Campus ruins makes something coil inside your chest, something painful and hot and angry. Good, you think. That’s why you’ve come, after all.

"Remember that game Sam used to play?" you ask and your voice comes out both sharper and softer than you expect. "If you could go any place, any time?"

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately, and for one shocking moment you wonder whether you’d jumped away all of Sam’s terrible attempts of camaraderie.

"My ma used to say that home’s not really a place."

It’s a peace offering, you think, or maybe just his way of showing that he understands what you’re trying to say. Of course he does.

You bite the inside of your cheek harder. "Smart woman."

The site in the center of the former entry hall seems as good as any. No reinstalled roof that could cave your heads in, no loose cables lying around to fry certain jinxed super-soldiers to death.

"She was." Bucky stops a couple of steps behind you as you scan your surroundings for what you’re going to need. Luckily, whoever’s responsible for this part of the site isn’t as cleanly as the ULTIMATUM lab guys; everything’s been left right where someone was using it on Thursday. "So, what are we doing here, exactly?"

You blow the cement dust off a pair of slightly singed safety glasses and hand them to him. "Fuck shit up."

He stares at you. "Sorry?"

"Nope." You continue rummaging through the work tools that are lying about. "No more apologizing. That’s the point. We’re stuck in a damn time loop and absolutely nothing we do matters, so we’re going to fuck some shit up."

"Is this you telling me you’ve finally lost your marbles?"

You pull out a crowbar. "I’m telling you I’m furious and I need to break something, and I think you do, too."

He crosses his arms in front of his chest. "Yeah, I don’t think so."

"Come on, Barnes. You must’ve had the urge to just destroy something before." You swing your lever around for emphasis. "What’s the worst that could happen?"

You wince right after you say it, recalling the last time someone’s said that to the both of you. Bucky’s face stays blank, unreadable.

"Someone gets hurt," he says quietly, making it sound like a prediction. Haunted.

"No one’s gonna get hurt," you say, putting on a second pair of glasses. "Look around! No one here except us. And you know what—helmet." You adjust your hair and plop it onto your head. "See?"

"You look ridiculous," he says dryly.

"Thank you." Perhaps your appeal would be more effective if you weren’t already struggling to close the damn latch of your helmet. Unfortunately, your safety glasses are making everything fit a little funky, and you can’t seem to find the right—

"Geez, let me—just hold still for a sec."

You swallow and tilt your head up, trying not to look at his face when Bucky takes a step closer. His fingers brush the tips of your ears as he readjusts the damn goggles, trailing down to your chin. You suppress the urge to shiver when you realize he’s finally taken his gloves off again.

His touch is rough and light and way too close to your pulse point.

The helmet clicks into place and you shake yourself out of your stupor. You hold up your crowbar like a challenge.

"How about we make a game out of it?"

He deliberates, his mouth set in a thin line, slightly blurred by the polycarbonate. "What do you have in mind?"

"Pry of truth," you say. "You name the thing that gets your hackles up, you get to smash something. And you’re not allowed to say me."

"I don’t like that rule."

"That’s a shame. I’ll go first, then."

You narrow your eyes at an old glass bottle sitting on a bench next to the site. "I’ll never be able to listen to any song by the fucking All-American Rejects ever again."

The bottle smashes beautifully and a rush of adrenaline charges through your veins.

"Your turn, Buck."

You look over your shoulder and freeze for a moment, because he’s shrugged off his jacket, putting it on a work table nearby. Smart, you belatedly think, giving himself a bigger range of movement and you the opportunity to ignore his bare arms.

Get a damn grip.

You hold out the crowbar. "Time to get angry."

"You won’t like me angry." He takes it anyway, and you huff.

"Whether I like you or not has never stopped you before."

His jaw twitches. He mutters something to himself before the pry lightly hits the bench and the whole thing flies away. A startled laugh escapes you.

"Out loud, next time."

"My bad," Bucky says, throwing you the crowbar.

"You’re a cheat," you shake your head, pulling back for another swing. "I’m fucking sick of this weather."

More glass shatters when a bunch of tools and containers go flying off the work table with a couple of strikes.

"I already knew that."

"My bad."

There’s a moment where Bucky flashes a quick grin at you, but you recognize something ignite in him. He slams his vibranium fist into some of the brick stones piled up nearby and they fly into little pieces.

He flexes his fingers slowly, a lost look on his face. "Sometimes I can almost forget that this isn’t …"

You swallow, gripping your crowbar more tightly. "I want nothing more than to stop this loop for good, but it also terrifies me."

Crash. Tools and parts and leftover items smash on the rubble ground as you strike them over and over again, splinters flying off in all directions. You ignore the pain when they hit you, and the sounds of more things breaking behind your back, focused only on the next thing in front of you. Each small destruction that’s under your control.

When you’re done, your breaths come out fast and shallow, your anger at yourself, at your situation, escaping you in desperate pants. Because this is your worst secret yet, isn’t it? More terrible than any growing feelings and long-forgotten truths, this nagging fear of what’s next.

As terrible as the loop has been, it’s at least predictable. Who’s to say that what’s after isn’t worse than this one day? What of every other way the future could break your heart, kill those you care about, burn this world to the ground? If nothing else, Friday is the devil you know.

But you can’t stay; and you wouldn’t want to, anyway. That’s the contradiction you’re stuck in.

Your fingers are wrapped around the pry so tightly it hurts, and you force yourself to take a deep, shuddering breath. Then, you turn around, and your eyes widen.

Bucky’s moved farther away from you, as if to make sure not to put you in his path of destruction. In it, no stone’s been left unturned. Work tables are flipped, machines dented and cracked; the newly put-up drywall a couple of yards ahead has several cracks and holes running through it.

He’s a swirling storm of piled up fury and anguish, and you’re the sole witness to his wreckage. It’s quiet, in a way, with a finality to the brunt of each throw, each hit. Like he’s been waiting for this implicit permission to let go a very long time.

Slowly, the dust settles, leaving him alone at the center of it all, the only thing still standing among broken pieces.

"I keep—" he starts, his head still lowered, shaking. "I keep telling myself that I’m no longer the Winter Soldier, but I don’t think it’s true."

You don’t respond immediately; you’re not sure he’d want you to. Taking off your protective gear is a lot easier than putting it on, and you blink against the sun behind him. It leaves his face in shadows.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at me," he spits, every syllable ringing with despair.

"I am," you say quietly, and you are, you are, you are.

And right then, you feel yourself slip, because the truth is that seeing him like this doesn’t make you like him any less than you do seeing him with relaxed shoulders and sun spots across his chest. It’s just a moment or two before you catch yourself, but you’re sure that if he’d looked at you right then, he’d know.

He hesitates, his jaw tight. "I still hear his voice. I keep thinking like him, wanting to act like he would. What if I do? What if one day, I can’t control it?"

You clear your throat. "Can I say something?"

He nods.

"Of course you still have parts of him in you. It’s your past. You can’t get rid of that. That’s, unfortunately, not how it works." You take a couple of steps closer, your shoes dragging on the rubble. "But it doesn’t make you a bad person, either. It wasn’t your fault."

"I’m supposed to stay in control."

"Aren’t you?" you ask. "I mean, you hear the voice, but do you ever act on it?"

He meets your eyes, then, vehemently. "I would never do that."

You nod, not surprised in the slightest. "What does your therapist think?"

He scoffs. "Not much. He called it intrusive thoughts."

"Hm. That’s really concerning," you say, tilting your head. "You’re being a normal human."

Bucky frowns when you come to a stop in front of him, his eyes swimming with confusion.

"Everyone has those thoughts sometimes," you continue, holding up the crowbar again. "Like, I could hit myself with this. Or you. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it. Your thoughts just happen to have a particular flavor to them."

He grinds his teeth. "What if I like being him? When I have these thoughts, my mind is clear. Quiet. Focused. That’s why—"

"What?"

He shakes his head, looking behind you at the rubble surrounding you both. His shoulders deflate at the wasteland before him, and you desperately want to reach for him.

"You’re one of the good ones, Buck," you say, not moving an inch. "Despite your past. Because of your past. It doesn’t make you any less …" Loveable. "You know that, right?"

A beat passes.

"Keep remindin’ me and I might." He clears his throat. "Your turn, Twelve."

It still stings, unexpectedly so. You half-heartedly throw the pry at a couple of bricks, missing by a mile and not caring one bit. You’re out of anger for now.

"I really hate it when you call me that," you admit.

"Why?" he asks, the surprise in his voice genuine.

"Because it makes me … you know how I feel about my powers. It’s like you’re reminding me how I’m not good enough, every time you say that."

Bucky’s gaze on you burns in your neck. "That’s what you think?"

"What else am I supposed to think?" you ask, rolling your eyes. "You said you wanted to keep an eye on me, back when—”

"I think you’re better than you’re telling yourself."

You twist your rings around your fingers, one by one. The space on your pinkie is still empty. "No, I’m not."

"Yes. You are." His boots crunch as he takes a step closer. "You told me eleven minutes on your best days? That’s bullshit."

"It’s not," you huff.

"Remember Marylebone? How much did you jump then?"

London seems like years ago, with July getting stuck. It was another extraction mission, and it went well enough—if you ignored Redwing getting shot to bits, that is. Which you usually did.

"Maybe three minutes," you mumble. Not exactly a span of time to write home about.

"But how many times did you do that?" Bucky insists. "How many times did you hold time still during that?"

Your skin prickles. "That’s different—”

"Not really. Not according to your rings, it’s not. They’re just different aspects of your powers. Also, you made a fucking time loop out of nothing."

"One that I have no control over, remember?"

"Not yet."

You shake your head, pulling your arms around yourself. "How did this turn into you giving me a pep talk?"

"You’re …" He sighs and drags a hand through his hair. Little pieces of dust get stuck in it, and you find yourself wanting to brush them out.

"Likewise." How could he be so positive about all the things you disliked about yourself most while not doing the same for himself?

Bucky picks up another brick from the pile next to you, weighing it in his hand, and something about the movement catches your eye, the sunlight just so that …

"Wait!" you say.

He freezes.

You drop to your knees and start digging through the rubble, pushing the bricks aside and ignoring the cuts you get on your hands until—

"Holy shit," you whisper.

"What’s that?"

It’s stuck underneath a pile of debris, the accumulation of nearly two years of being stuck and forgotten, but somehow, it’s still here. Covered in dirt and a little tattered at the edges when you finally manage to pull it out, but still.

"That’s my invisibility cape."

"You have an invisibility cape?"

"Had," you correct, inspecting it more closely. "I didn’t know it survived."

"For the love of—d’you think you might’ve mentioned this before?"

"I didn’t think it was important."

"Twe—" He pinches his nose with two fingers and lets out a long, slow breath. "Does it still work?"

"I don’t know."

"Well, go on then."

You flap it a few times to get the worst of the dust off, then pull it over your head and watch your body disappear. It’s as much of a journey to the past as you’ve managed throughout this loop, and an incredulous giggle escapes you.

Bucky has a peculiar look on his face as he looks just to the right of where you are.

"You trust me, right?" he says pensively.

It occurs to you that he’s never asked you that before, and so you nod even though he can’t see. "I trust you."

"I have an idea."

* * *

"For the record, I hate your ideas."

"Noted," Bucky replies out of the corner of his mouth, tucking his cap deeper into his face.

You nervously tap your foot, peering at the building on the other side of the street. Bleecker Street isn’t all that busy at this time of day, and even though you're fully hidden by your cape, you can’t help but wish for more of a crowd to hide in. You reach for the amulet around your neck.

"What if something goes wrong?" you murmur.

"It won’t," he says calmly. "You said Sam’s already tried and no one’s there today. Plus, we have more or less infinite tries for this, remember?"

You do, unfortunately. Even though you’d really prefer a better, more elaborate plan to break into the New York Sanctum in much the same way as you did the public library, you don’t think they have a Supreme burglar alarm or anything of the sort. Picking the front door lock, it is.

Annoyingly, Bucky even knows you well enough to understand you don’t want to be seen within a hundred yards of any time wizard territory; hence, the game-changing cape.

You wish you’d kept the damn thing in the dirt.

"You don’t know what they’re capable of," you say quietly.

"True, I don’t. But you do." He waits for a couple of people to pass by before risking a glance in your general direction. "Come on. I would never let anything happen to you in there."

You hate these sunglasses. They make it impossible to tell how he means that.

Before you can voice another reason why you should better head back and go get ice cream somewhere, Bucky’s already moving across the street. Cursing under your breath, you rush to follow him, bumping against his arm to make your presence known.

The tiniest grin flickers in the corner of his mouth, and for a moment you enjoy getting to stare at it without him noticing. Then, you take another step and the air around you changes.

If there was any kind of active warning system, you can pinpoint the exact moment it would have alerted. It’s like you’re entering an invisible bubble that surrounds the building, the air growing just a fraction colder. It’s not the temperature that makes you shiver, though.

Magic hums within the very walls of the house. This energy is different to what you remember, but still similar enough you have to bite your cheek hard to keep concentrating on the task at hand.

You swallow down the bile in your mouth and turn your back on the heavy oak door to make sure no one notices that Bucky isn’t, in fact, struggling with a key but instead breaking and entering in broad daylight.

I knew you’d be back, a voice just behind your shoulder seems to whisper, and you flinch. All those years, and still …

Finally, you hear a quiet click and the door creaks open.

"You with me?" Bucky mutters.

Your nails dig into the palms of your hands. "Let’s do this."

177A Bleecker Street is quite a lot bigger on the inside. In many ways, it looks just as you expected, solemn and intricate, all wooden paneling and marble floors that block the sounds from the street outside. Heavy couches sit along the far walls, framed by doorways. A gigantic staircase leads to the upper floors, spreading out into a gallery.

However, something about it feels … unexpected. The energy you’ve already noticed outside is sparkling like electricity, like a fuse ready to be lit, like fireworks waiting to explode, unprecedented and ever changing. Alive.

For some reason, it’s not all that scary.

Pure magic fills your lungs with every breath, and yet it’s just a house. Dust particles are dancing in the blurry light. Your shoes squeak a little on the stone floors.

Bucky takes off his sunglasses, blinking to readjust to the dim light in here. He takes stock of his surroundings much more quickly than you do, zeroing in on the upper levels.

You hold your hood with one hand as you crane your neck. From your position hovering just behind him in the entrance, you can make out the shapes of a few large shelves.

Bingo.

You’ve agreed that despite Strange’s flakiness, he’s already shown you the books most relevant to your situation that the Sanctum library has to offer. Therefore, if not a reading room, you’re looking for any other magical items that might give you a helping hand, maybe some sort of power boost.

To be honest, you’re hoping for a portal to simply step through and finally leave this day behind for good, but you’d settle for a clue.

Bucky’s fingers twitch ever so slightly by his side. Without thinking, you reach out and wrap your pinkie around his. He doesn’t look at you, but he gently squeezes your finger before pulling away, putting his hands back into his jacket pockets.

He left his gloves in the stolen car.

The stairs creak when you sneak up behind him, but the house remains silent. There’s only the omnipresent hum of electric magic, which gets even stronger when you get closer to the shelves you’ve spotted. It’s calling out to you, but not in the way it did outside; this is a softer whisper, more alluring, more curious. Could it be? it says. I’ve waited so long.

You find yourself trailing off, moving a few paces towards the far wall, your heart pounding a wild rhythm. The shelves are made of glass-paneled dark wood, arranged in a spiral pattern. Their contents look rather unassuming in the pale sunlight falling in from the large circular window, museum-like if not for the absence of proper labeling: a couple of old daggers and wands, dull gemstones, shards of pottery, all carefully bedded on crimson velvet and then left for dust.

None of it screams Gateway Out of Here.

Maybe, you think, you could try to hold a few of these gems in your hand and see what happens, do a couple of gestures to coax your powers back. If only there was one of those rings that—

Behind you, shots are fired, and then something heavy crashes to the floor with a resounding shatter. The thrall breaks.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, to think you’d be safe just because you couldn’t be seen. To think that Bucky would be fine waltzing into a place like this without any real protection, just because you’ve been led to assume it’d be abandoned. You’ve stepped right into the trap, and it’s snapped shut immediately.

You spin around, your hands flying up automatically as if there’s a damn thing you can do.

Time doesn’t freeze, but you wish it would.

Bucky’s tangled in a web of rust-colored twines that curl around his arms, his torso, his neck, cutting off his air flow. His gaze is wild, flitting around the room, searching for you even in your invisibility, a silent command in his eyes: Run.

His gun’s dropped to the floor at his feet, right underneath the tendrils winding their way up his struggling legs. You fall towards it, reaching out right as you’re yanked backwards and the eldritch magic catches hold of you, too. Their otherworldly glow makes shadows dance across the dark shelves, ghostly and distorted.

"I suggest you show your face now," a voice says right behind you.

You can tell the hood is ripped off your head because Bucky throws himself against his bindings again. They tighten even more around him, and he chokes, his eyes still glued to you.

He does it again.

"Please don’t," you cry, "not like this, please stop it!" You’re not even sure who you’re pleading to, your fingers twitching, but there’s nothing you can reach out to, the magic in this place forsaking you again.

"You," the voice behind you says sharply.

Any moment, you should wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

You’re slung backwards and you scream because you can’t see Bucky anymore, can’t do anything except hang there, helpless, eye to eye with the Sorcerer Supreme.

"Zealot," he says, venom in every syllable. "I thought you’d died."

"I’m not," you gasp, the very word stinging. "Please, you need to let go of him."

"I don’t think so. I ought to banish you to the Dark Dimension like the rest of you."

The magic around you starts spinning, surrounding you in a dizzying blur of orange and gold. Your blood rushes in your ears as you feel something pull at your very consciousness, harsh and terrifying, and you’re not waking up, you have to wake up, you—

"We’re facing an Incursion!" you shout, hoping anyone can hear you over the mad cacophony of energy. "Please, there’s no time, call Stephen Strange!"

And then, with a final sputter of color, everything goes black.

* * *

The last time you woke with the smell of Sanctum magic in your lungs was the day Thanos snapped.

Wait. Rewind for context.

Your mother used to call it a gift, but for most of your life, your powers had felt more like a curse.

Sure, they had their uses, sometimes, but at what cost? Most of the time, you couldn’t control them, so when you got older, you tried to hide them instead, as best as you could, to pretend they weren’t there at all. You just wanted to be normal.

But your powers didn’t like that.

Ignorance was a vicious circle: The more you tried to suppress the magic coursing through your blood, the more unpredictable it became, flinging you through the timeline without any regard to your sanity. It was a struggle to control even a fraction of what was happening to you.

You knew you needed help.

The London Sanctum was the only one you were aware of, then, the one safe haven for people who were struggling with things beyond their control. Your mother had told you about it many times.

One can never be too wary of their promises, though, honey, she’d close the story every time. They like to forget them when it’s more convenient.

You never asked how she knew so much about the Sanctum and its inhabitants. Mothers just know things when you’re a child.

Maybe you should’ve listened to her warning more closely, but you were young and overwhelmed and out of options, and so you left familiar faces behind and traded them for a silver lining. For the hope of finally controlling this power that was set on destroying your life.

Time itself.

That first day, you were sitting in the Sanctum's courtyard, looking at the other recruits with wide eyes, to the glimmering portals that, they told you, could bring you to the other side of the world in a single step. For the first time in your life, you were surrounded by magic; it wasn't just your secret burden to bear, it was all around you.

Like an offering, they brought the stone to you that day, suspicion clear in their eyes, and you trembled in your bones knowing that everything would finally be fixed, now. Surely, everything would be fixed. You could feel the energies pulsating from that unassuming little gem, mixing with your own powers, sending apprehensive shivers down your spine.

Yes, you thought, stepping closer to it with your hand outstretched. You can fix this.

It was the one and only time you could recall not remembering anything at all.

You'd lost a few seconds at most, but when you blinked back into consciousness, your head was pounding and the time stone had been snatched away from you once again, safe in its golden cage. You'd never see it again.

How peculiar, you caught a whisper, then another, like voices born out of every nightmare you'd ever had, and you tried jumping back to find out what you'd missed, but your powers didn't obey you.

You let yourself get soothed by the empty promises you'd been warned of, but magic would never seem that light or gentle to you again as it did during that first afternoon.

For a while, things got better anyway.

You studied with the Masters of the Mystic Arts while they studied you. They provided you with all sorts of amulets and cuffs that kept the random jumps under control, but they either couldn’t figure out how your powers came to possess you, of all people, or they just didn’t want to tell you.

Time is sacred, they used to teach, and your very existence went against that premise. You were unpredictable, a variable that could never fit into their precious calculations and theories of the grand, sacred timeline, no matter how hard they tried. You found yourself using your powers even less than before, just to stop them from talking over you.

Impossible girl, the Ancient One used to call you, and you hated it.

Of course, she wasn’t making a reference. She just thought you impossible, along with everyone else.

You went along with it for a couple of months or so before you got tired of trying to do something, anything, and you wanted to go home. That was when things shifted.

You’re not a prisoner, they kept telling you, and it was true, in a way. The doors were always open, and your cuffs weren’t shackles. There were just certain rules to learning, particularly in these important early stages of the process. Rules to who goes where, and what to do, and what to wear at every hour of every day, and also the food all tasted the same, like sad mash of whatever vegetables they were able to find that week, but no. You weren’t a prisoner.

That was just life, here, and everyone else seemed fine with it, so what was your problem, exactly?

You were tired and terrified, and everyone told you that there was something about you that just didn’t make sense, which you could’ve told them from the start if only someone listened to you. Everything seemed pointless.

It was no wonder, then, that when Kaecilius and his band of lunatics offered to take you under their wing, to give you a cause and a reason to use your powers, you thought your luck might finally turn.

You’re such a special girl, they’d tell you. Such a special, clever girl. This is a great thing, you know. It’s your talent to make things right, make them the way they should be. You, my dear, are invaluable.

If it sounded too good to be true, that’s because it was.

Kaecililus’ definition of help, it turned out, meant subjugation; or at least the attempt of it. Do as I tell you. For once, your strangling limits turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

What a disappointment you are.

There were no grand speeches. No fanfare, no declaring you a nuisance; you felt the sentiment, anyway. The special, clever girl was a useless waste of time, after all, and was left behind as such. Never good enough. Not deserving of everlasting life.

Not that you wanted any part of that.

You faded back into oblivion again, unable to leave and unable to stay, stuck somewhere in between in the background where you were met with endless whispers and suspicion, doing your part and eating your mush without complaint. What else were you to do? People didn’t leave this place, after all, not before they understood what they came here to find.

Unless they suddenly started applying to your situation, you were fantastically uninterested in any more lectures.

It took a very long time for you to figure out that you could limit the random time jumps by using your powers as much as you could, small skips and halts to the point of exhaustion. If there was nothing left to use, you reasoned, your body couldn’t act without permission. Slowly, you were able to return their trinkets one by one until the only piece you had left was the one you’d brought from home; silver and black tourmaline. Putting it on again was a small relief.

You were still in London when the world was decimated.

The air was heavy and burnt with dust. It was all that was left of so many. The cries of those left behind dried up quickly, leaving a deafening silence in their wake. That was the part you most remembered in years to come: the smell, and the silence.

You were ready to disappear, too, and when whatever fate there was decided to spare you, you took matters into your own hands. The confusion and panic had raised your adrenaline, and the world stopped easily at your command.

It didn’t take you long to grab the few belongings you had left, to shove them into the wooden box every room was outfitted with, and to turn your back on your prison. You found the portal that would take you closest to home, and you stepped through.

You’d never been lucky for long, though. When you arrived, the front door was locked from the inside, and the television was still running, day and night, with no one left to turn it off. You shouted and knocked and rang the doorbell anyway, until your knuckles hurt and your voice got hoarse, and then you noticed that the name above the door was wrong. Time had once again passed unexpectedly, and this place you'd once called home did not belong to you anymore.

You were a nobody now, just like you’d wanted.

Right?

Right.

…

Anyway.

The first time you met Natasha Romanoff in person, a few weeks after the Snap, she only had to look at you for a couple of seconds to be able to read you like a book.

* * *

When you’re finally done, your voice is hoarse and your palms are bloody. You can tell both Wong and Strange are staring at you, but the only person you look at is Bucky.

He’s leaning against the invisible wall of his cell in the Sanctum’s undercroft, meeting your gaze in grim, unreadable silence. He hasn’t looked away from you once during your whole monologue.

You feel drained, turned completely inside out, presenting your most vulnerable parts for everyone to see; and yet, you keep looking at the one person in this room who’s going to remember any of it, calmly and unwaveringly. It makes your head swim, but you can’t keep looking away.

That me then, you think, your hands tapping a quiet rhythm on the cool stone floor. Disappointed?

A pity, you suppose, that you never did get an answer to that particular question.

To your surprise, Strange is the first to break the silence. "Well, then. You think that’s enough to let them out of there?"

Wong mutters a response you don’t understand, but something flickers in front of you for just a moment, and one blink later, Bucky’s in front of you. He wordlessly holds out his hand.

You don’t hesitate before you take it.

Time slows in a way that’s entirely imaginary as he pulls you back to your feet. Every inch of your skin that’s touching him turns hot and cold at the same time.

If it had been his right hand, you wouldn’t have dared to gently squeeze it before finally letting go.

Bucky looks like he wants to say something, but before he gets a chance to even open his mouth, Strange clears his throat. Not for the first time, you want to set his cloak on fire.

"It’s a good thing you came here."

"Oh, yes," you say. "Thanks again for the warm welcome. What fun we’ve had."

"You did break in," Wong says. "Over the past couple of months, we’ve had to be particularly careful when it comes to unexpected visitors. For what it’s worth, though," he adds, "I am sorry."

There’s an honesty to his voice that you appreciate, though not as much as Bucky staying a half-step in front of you during this whole conversation.

Strange claps his hands. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a tea set appear on the sad old desk that’s been pushed against one of the dungeon walls. "Best not to dwell on it," he says, his cloak gently flapping at you. "May we take a look at your necklace?"

You hesitate. You’ve not taken it off in years, not even to sleep or train. It’s been what’s successfully hidden you away from anyone trying to find you or your powers.

Now that you’ve revealed all of yourself, though, you suppose there’s no point in denying him.

You place the necklace in his palm and he murmurs something. It starts glowing in gentle amber colors.

"It should do," he says to Wong. "Do you want the honors?"

"Here’s what I don’t understand," Wong says, ignoring him. "All of this could’ve been avoided with a few controlled time slips."

"A few what now?" you say.

"It’s the act of reversing time not for the whole universe, but for one small part of it. Even he could do it after just a few months," he says, nodding his head at Strange, who lifts an eyebrow.

"Look at you condoning going against the laws of nature."

"Shut up and do your job. Away from my carpets, this time."

"Your carpets, is it?" Strange says, his cloak flapping impatiently. His gray eyes bore into you one final time, assessing you, you think, or maybe silently telling you something you don’t understand. Then he turns and starts ascending the stairs again.

You wrap your arms around yourself. "I’ve not had months of training," you remind Wong.

"Not that first time," he replies. "From what you’ve told us, though, your training in the astral plane has progressed immensely. You should have much more control over your powers than you ever have before."

"So you’re saying I could do it now?"

"I’m saying there’s at least a chance. May I?"

You fiercely ignore Bucky glancing at you, holding out your arm. The symbols around your wrist buzz and glimmer when Wong murmurs something, his hands hovering over your skin. The smell of magic grows more potent as gentle wisps of light travel along your arm, poking at the loop.

Warm fingers wrap around your other hand this time, and you realize you’ve been shaking.

"With the time anomaly persisting, it will continue getting stronger with every repeat of this day," Wong continues out loud as he’s working. "It will eat away at the fabric between realities until things start to slip through, and then it’s only a matter of time until this one collapses entirely."

You swallow. "What things?"

"People. Places. Memories meant for other timelines. Playing with the fabric of everything is a dangerous pastime."

"It’s not like we’re doing it on purpose," Bucky speaks up for the first time. Your hold on his hand tightens.

Wong glances up at him. "Unfortunately, Sergeant Barnes, there are some rules that don’t care about intent."

"So what if it does?" you say. "Collapse, I mean. You know about me now, can you not portal or time slip us to another reality, let this one disintegrate? It’s cursed, anyway."

"Apart from the fact that that’s not how portals work," Wong says dryly, "that’s a reckless idea. All realities are connected in one way or another. One imploding like this might have disastrous consequences on the entire multiverse."

"This is about the whole sacred timeline thing again, isn’t it?" You roll your eyes. "Who came up with that, anyway? What makes our existence so damn special? I mean, there are endless possibilities out there, aren’t there? An infinite number of realities. Who’s to say we’re more real than the rest of them?"

"Magic, as a whole, is always a balancing act." The symbols return to their place just above your skin, tingling. Wong rubs his hands, looking at you. "Ask your actual question."

"I’m not supposed to exist here, am I?" You’re grateful for the fact that Bucky is still holding your hand, even though you don’t know why he would. It anchors you. "I switch between realities every time I jump back in time, right? So this one isn’t actually mine at all."

"Has anyone ever taught you about the Infinity Stones?"

Had they? You’d learned more about the stones at Campus than you ever had during your time at the Sanctum, but even then—knowing how to find a thing and understanding it aren’t the same thing.

You shake your head.

"The powers held by the stones are interconnected. You don’t just control time, your powers have an influence on space and reality by their very nature as well. You can’t just separate one from the other. Tea?"

You stay silent as he pours it into several mugs and offers you one. It’s steaming hot, and it smells almost exactly like the one you were offered in the astral plane; only with a dash of cinnamon.

"The thing is," Wong continues, blowing on his tea, "in a way, we all hold the same kind of power. These other worlds, they exist alongside this one, all the time, and each time we make a decision, our consciousness merely slips between them. That doesn’t make the ones we left behind more or less ours."

"But the stones got destroyed in our reality," Bucky says.

"There’s that thing called the first law of thermodynamics."

Bucky’s thumb traces an absentminded line along the back of your hand, and you have to hide a shiver. "Energy can’t be created or destroyed, it can only change its form."

"That’s exactly right. So you see, even though the stones may be turned to dust, they’re not gone. Otherwise, our reality—or any like it, in fact—wouldn’t continue to exist."

"That wasn’t my question, though," you argue. "The power of the stones still exists, whatever that means. That’s great. What does that have to do with me? Or with this loop, for that matter."

"You draw from the time stone’s energy more than the other’s," Wong replies. "Since the stones don’t exist in their physical form anymore in our reality, you are pulling the necessary energy from others in which they are still intact, at the moment of using your powers. You’ve been able to jump greater temporal distances more easily before, am I right? Before the stone was crushed into pieces?"

You’re about to deny it, but then he adds, gently, "When you were a child, maybe?"

Memories of repeated accidental time jumps rush through your mind. Memories of getting stuck in the same couple of minutes for hours on end, finally getting out of it after what had felt like years and yet not feeling any different at all.

It’d never made you feel so exhausted, then.

You’d never put it together consciously because the first time you tried using your powers after the Snap, you you’d already been exhausted for so long. You’d blame a lack of practice, of proper technique or attention or adequateness; a lack of freedom to use them however you wanted without feeling prying eyes watch your every move.

Later, you’d mostly blame yourself.

Bucky’s hand slips out of yours and you are brought back to the present again. The tea has gone tepid in your cup when you take a sip; it makes your eyes water with its bitter sting.

"What I’m trying to say is this," Wong continues. "There’s no right or wrong answer to whether you actually belong in this reality, because we all shift between related realities constantly. What you’re doing is unusual, yes, but not unheard of. And it certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exist. Quite the contrary. I’ve found that everything and everyone of us has a purpose here."

You nod, your throat still clogged up.

"The loop," Bucky says. "How do we go about undoing it?"

We.

"It comes back to how it was created in the first place. With internalized magic like yours, the kind used on yourself instead of externally, it comes back to the emotions we feel when we reach out to the stones. They’re essential in what they help create."

Your mind replays the first time you’ve watched Bucky die in front of you. To that desperation, the guilt, the shame. And hidden underneath, still unnoticed, still pushed down, perhaps …

"Here you go," Strange says, returning your necklace. The tourmaline is warm to the touch, humming with newly imbued magic. "Whenever you’re ready, this should do the trick. You might get a bit light-headed."

You both stare at him. "This gets us out?" you ask, your voice cracking.

Strange frowns. "What? No."

"I told you," Wong says with an edge of impatience, "that’s not how portals work."

"Technically not a portal," you mumble, putting the pendant on again, feeling it pulsate warmly against your chest.

True to Strange’s words, you immediately feel a little dizzy with a rush of concentrated magic that has nowhere to go. Even though you’re seated, you have to grasp for Bucky’s arm to keep your balance.

"I’ve imbued the necklace with some of my own powers and linked it more closely to your person," Strange continues, and you dig the nails of your unoccupied hand into your palm to pay attention. "It should help you focus your powers more directly once you’re back in the astral plane and allow you to break the loop in time. Mind you, it’s merely an amplifier, not a quick fix. It might still take a while."

"How much time do we still have before the loop starts to disintegrate?" Bucky asks. Smart question. He’s so smart.

"You’re already past that point, Sergeant Barnes," Wong says, and it sends a chill through you. "But we’ll do our best to help as much as we can. I will set up some wards that should bypass my own consciousness and buy you some more time."

"Thank you," you say quietly, blinking quite a lot. "For all of this."

He nods, slowly, measuring you up, but not in the way you’re used to; for once, you appear to meet expectations. "Good luck, Miss Y/L/N. Let us know how these matters resolve."

"You doing okay, doll?" Bucky chuckles on your way up the stairs. It’s the first time he’s smiled even a little bit all afternoon. He should do it more. Why doesn’t he do it more?

It takes you a bit to notice you’re still holding onto his sleeve. "I’m great," you say. "Superb, really. Did the floor sway like that earlier? Seems like a safety issue. What time is it? I hope Sam’s alright."

"Maybe you should take that thing off again, hm?"

"No no no," you say quickly, immediately tripping over your own feet. Before you plant on your face in the middle of the entrance hall, Bucky manages to hold out his other arm to catch you. "Whoops."

"Very convincing," he says dryly, but there’s something akin to fondness in his eyes when he looks at you.

"You have the prettiest eyes," you tell him with a sigh, "did you know?"

"And you are quite literally drunk on power." A fascinating shadow falls over his face as he steadies you; it mostly reaches his cheeks. "Let’s hope that’ll fade once you get back to the astral plane or else you might just as well kill me yourself."

"I never want to do that. I don’t want that. Do you think I want to kill you?"

"If you did, now’s your chance." He huffs. "Wouldn’t blame ya."

You stare at him, at his oddly bright blue eyes and his self-deprecating scowl and at the way he’s still holding you upright, and then your lightheadedness makes you do something very, incredibly, outrageously stupid.

You kiss him.

It barely takes a moment to make you realize, like a shock of cold water, what it is you’re doing. Bucky freezes when your lips brush against his. They’re so soft.

You immediately jolt your head back, your heartbeat loud enough to reverberate in your ears, "Fuck!"

His eyes are so wide and so blue and he’s still holding your elbow, and so you yank your arms away and tumble backwards just as he says, "You’re not—"

But you’re still falling.

And then, with a start, you wake up.

* * * * *

"You have a lot of empty rooms," Sam said when he found you on one of the couches in the living room area, curled up to watch some Netflix.

You shrugged. "Guess Stark anticipated more people’d be left to use them after … everything."

"And it’s just you?"

You let the question sit for a moment, for some reason looking at your dish towel. "Yup," you replied finally. "Just me."

Sam nodded, apparently lost in thought.

"So yeah," you continued for some reason, "if you’re in the city and need a place, feel free, I guess."

You didn’t expect much to come of it. After all, Sam had his own apartment all the way over in D.C., and you honestly didn’t expect to see him much once this mission was over.

You told yourself that for the first five missions before you accepted that maybe he’d continue asking you to tag along.

In the end, it hadn’t been him who needed a place, anyway. It was Bucky.

He didn’t tell you the particulars about why he had to leave his Brooklyn apartment; you assumed he’d had to leave, because there was truly no other explanation why he’d choose to move in with you, of all people.

Then again, you hardly ever saw him, and if you hadn’t seen him bring an overnight bag and a withering houseplant on the weekend he’d settled in one of the upstairs bedrooms, you wouldn’t have known another person was living in the Tower at all.

Well, that and the food mysteriously disappearing from your fridge now.

Sam was the one most weirded out by your living situation, even though you were absolutely positive it’d been his idea in the first place.

"What did you expect?" you asked, handing him his usual coffee cup. "That we’d immediately become besties just because we share a kitchen?"

"It’s unnatural," he shook his head. "Do you communicate with each other at all?"

"Sure. Sometimes I leave post-its on the fridge and when I come back, they’re in the trash."

"One day, one of you is gonna outweird the other. I just hope I’m out of town." He bit into a rugelach and started coughing. "Jesus, what did you put in these?"

"Ask Bucky. He’s doing a whole midnight baking thing at the moment. I think he’s trying to take the Tower for himself by smoking me out."

Sam decidedly pushes the cookie tin farther away from him. "You’ve not asked him, then?"

"Again, he doesn’t respond to my post-its."

Truthfully, you were still mad at him. How were you supposed to wallow in peace if someone was constantly ignoring your personal space? There were only so many times you could flee into the blissful loneliness of the void.

In other words, you didn’t notice for a very long time that you didn’t seek out the quiet nearly as much anymore these days.

"Hey, Ratatouille," Sam said. "I was gonna tell you both, actually."

It was good progress that made you not flinch quite as much anymore when a cupboard opened just behind you. In fact, you didn’t even move a muscle.

On your second try.

"I was gonna tell you both, actually," Sam said again, taking a sip of coffee. "CIA wants us to quit the ULTIMATUM case."

"What?" you both said at the same time.

"Why?" Bucky asked irritably. "Sharon already sick of your face again?"

Sam threw a piece of rugelach at him. "I don’t think it was her call. But it means I gotta head to Virginia for a while and give them a full debrief so they can do their own 'internal investigation', whatever that’s supposed to mean. After that, we’re on our own."

"I don’t like this," Bucky said.

"Neither do I," Sam replied. "But I’m hoping to get some information out of them while I’m down there."

"So that’s just it?" you said. "They tell us to stop and we just have to drop everything?"

"Officially, yes."

Bucky crossed his arms. "When you say 'we’re on our own' …"

"I don’t trust these people," Sam said. "I want to know what they’re trying to keep hush. But you," he nods at Bucky, "have been pardoned for less than a year, and you," he nods at you, "don’t officially exist. I can’t guarantee either of these things will stay that way if we go against official government orders. So if you want an out, this is it."

You looked at Bucky, and for the first time, you didn’t find any challenge in his eyes. He simply looked at you, letting you make the call first.

Maybe it was a dare in and of itself, but you couldn’t help yourself. Your curiosity had been sparked.

"If you’re waiting for me to chicken out …"

For a fraction of a second, something like a smile made his mouth twitch. "Wouldn’t dream of it."

chapter ten

thank you for reading!! you can follow my library blog @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications 💚 also please consider leaving a comment, it literally helps my motivation so much to hear from you!!

[yourladyjane]

First, I love the rage room scene lol 🤭

Second, Marvel should hire you to write for them because the way you weave all these different characters into this story is seamless.

AND THE SMOOCH. Hurry, they must smooch more!!!! Okay brb I’m running over to chapter 10.