Chapter Text
The church was large; it had been a movie theater once and despite the consecration and redecoration, it still had the sense about it that recidivism was not completely off the table. He waited until the priest had started talking before slipping in to a seat in the last pew in the back. There were a lot of people up front, family, friends, the old ladies who went to every event at the church, but there were still several empty rows between him and the next person. Which was how it had to be. Too many of them would recognize him, even with the dark hair and spectacles and hunched over posture that wouldn't hide him from the people he'd once considered family. Who would still consider him family were he to walk into their open arms. But he couldn't, not only for the blood on his hands, for Bucky's blood on his hands, but also because he carried more than the taint of brimstone with him since he'd escaped hell.
The Russians were looking for him, still. Peggy wasn't sure what kind of a threat that really was, though; it wasn't like the KGB -- new name, same methods -- didn't know how to draw him out if they'd wanted. Most of the people he'd gladly die for were sitting in the pews in front of him. Peggy wasn't pushing him too hard to do anything, too happy to have him back to want to fight, but he knew she thought him a little cowardly for not making contact. "I'm sure Molly Barnes has gotten over the worst of her ire by now."
Peggy was probably right, on all counts, although he knew that Molly had been far angrier at Peggy than at him. Even from a distance, seeing the Barnes clan for the first time in ten years made his chest ache with longing. George and Winifred, older but still hale; Charlie, who'd been a teenager at last meeting, was now a man; Dottie and Helen both looked beautiful; even Great-Uncle Henry was there, a little more frail but still sharp as a tack and if anyone was going to turn around and ask in a too-loud voice why Steve was sitting all the way in the back, it would be him.
Up front, by the font, little Kathleen Mary Barnes accepted baptism with ill humor, letting her displeasure be known as she lay bawling in the arms of her godmother Helen. Next to them, Molly watched the proceedings with a not-quite-dry eye while Bucky looked proud and bemused, like he was rating young Kathy's squalling against the protests previously lodged by her three older siblings, currently crammed into the front pew between their grandparents and showing little interest in the proceedings.
Seeing Bucky with his family, with his children made tears well in his eyes. This was why he'd made his deal with the SSR, why he'd never regretted a single moment of anything he'd done to get Bucky home and away from the reminders of the hell he'd been in. This was who Bucky was supposed to be, this was the life he was supposed to have, and Steve forced himself to focus on that, on what Bucky had, and not on what he'd almost lost. On what he'd had nearly taken from him.
He hadn't really been back in his own head yet when he'd carried Bucky, knife still in his guts, to the MASH's surgery. He hadn't known who he was, who Bucky had been, but he'd seen flashes, glimpses of memories, and they'd all screamed at him to save the man bleeding out in the middle of the dirt road at the edge of the camp. Bucky had been in the care of two surgeons not five minutes later and it had still nearly been too late. Would have been too late for anyone not cursed with the super-soldier serum in their veins, but he only knew that now. Then, he'd fled as soon as the doctors and nurses had taken over, stripping off his blood-soaked uniform and slipping into the darkness. Away from his masters and his past both.
He'd kept free of his masters for two years now and intended to keep things that way, but his past... now he needed it to heal.
Up front, the priest spoke about states of grace and Steve thought that this would be as close as he got. He'd done incomprehensible things, unbelievable things that he had to believe because he had the memories of them and, unlike the memories of his 'life' as a hero of the Soviet Union, these hadn't faded as his true self had re-emerged. He woke up screaming more nights than not, ran himself to exhaustion in failed attempts to flee his memories, and scrubbed his skin raw to wash blood off of hands that would never be clean. He understood, intellectually, that he wasn't to blame for what he'd done, that he'd been drugged and tortured and he'd never in a million years blame anyone else for what they'd done after going through what he'd been through. But that didn't stop the nightmares or the feeling that somehow he should have been able to break free of the Soviet conditioning. Sometimes he wondered if he really ever had, if he ever could be free of Department X or whether their marks went too deep.
Feeling eyes on him, he looked up to find Bucky watching him. Bucky looked shocked and pleased and pained, but in a good way. When Steve met his eyes, he nearly laughed because Bucky was giving him the 'stay right where you are Rogers, I'll be there in a second to bail your ass out of trouble' look he'd been giving Steve since primary school. And God, did Steve want to believe that Bucky could save him from his pain, the way Bucky had already saved him from so much, at such a cost. But he wasn't ready to have that conversation yet, so when the congregation rose as part of the service, he used the cover to slip away. The last thing he'd seen was Bucky looking frustrated but resigned, a look he was very familiar with, too.
He left the gift for Kathleen behind him on the pew.
"Did it do what you'd hoped?" Peggy asked him as she joined him in the study of Howard's Manhattan mansion. Howard was in California, but he'd given them the run of the place for the visit to New York. She'd been in one of the rooms with a telephone when he'd gotten back; she was working while they were here, on some things he knew about and others he didn't ask. The years had hardened her and it hurt him to see it, the way grief and war -- a different war, not a shooting war -- had rubbed away the softness and the hope and left behind the sharp angles and steel. He accepted his own measure of blame for it, for not only making things worse but also for not being there to balance, to dull her sharp edges and remind her to live for herself as well as serve others. That was what he tried to do now, what they tried to do for each other. It was hard work on both accounts.
"What I hoped? No," he answered, holding out his hand for hers as she joined him on the couch. Every time she touched him, it was a blessing. It was a little prick of light in the darkness that still overwhelmed him. He squeezed her hand as he pulled her over so that she she sprawled inelegantly across his thigh. "But I'd hoped for ridiculous things. You can do that when you go into a church -- ask for miracles and wonders and all that magical stuff."
Peggy made a noise that clearly communicated that she knew he was stalling on answering the question.
"It was good," he admitted. "To see everyone. To see Bucky healthy. It was a couple more bricks I get to put on the wall."
The wall between Steve Rogers, whoever that turned out to be now, and The American.
Peggy brought their joined hands to her lips and kissed the back of his palm, leaving a faint lipstick impression behind. "You'd put a lot more bricks on that wall if you'd let them back into your life."
It was his turn to make a vague noise that was nonetheless easily translatable.
Peggy arranged herself into a more comfortable drape over him and they sat there, just enjoying the quiet and the contact, for he didn't know how long. They didn't see each other as often as either of them would like; Peggy was based in DC still and he split his time between Texas and wherever he got sent on his unofficial missions for SHIELD. His assignments were a hodge-podge of surveillance and sabotage, using what the Soviets had let him see against them. SHIELD had asked him to menace, but they hadn't asked him to kill, at least not yet. He didn't know what he'd do if they did; he appreciated in a way he hadn't before how a single well-chosen murder could completely change the course of events, but he hadn't murdered anyone as Steve Rogers and that was a bridge to his old life he did not want to have to burn down because he didn't have that many left. He'd killed plenty as Captain America and his conscience was clean on those deaths, as much as he regretted the necessity of them. He'd take a life if he had to, but he wasn't sure that he really had to. Even a well-selected murder would likely still be useful instead of necessary and allowing himself to cross that line for the sake of convenience, he felt, would be a betrayal of Abraham Erskine's faith in a way nothing he'd done so far had been.
But that remained a question for the future, a theoretical that might never become actual. Especially if he told SHIELD that he didn't want to work for them anymore, something he considered doing more and more. He wanted the people who'd turned him into the American to pay for what they'd done, but he didn't necessarily think he had to be the person to mete out that justice. He wasn't sure going back into the field was doing him any good; it wasn't making him sleep any easier having The American so close to the surface, that was for certain. It wasn't making it easier to find Steve Rogers.
Right now, though, he could find Steve easily enough with Peggy half in his lap, her breath even and steady, and he closed his eyes and just enjoyed the feel of her body against his. He had spent his entire time under Soviet control without anyone touching him in kindness, without him touching anyone else except in malice. He'd had to relearn how to accept physical contact, accept physical intimacy, and there were some days when he simply couldn't. When no matter whom he touched or why, he felt only the sense-memory of bone breaking, of muscle tearing, of viscera sliding, and of the slipperiness of blood. He hated when those times came when he was with Peggy because it meant he was wasting time, time he'd gotten back as a gift. Peggy's answer when that happened was to give him a pencil and tell him to draw her.
He'd taken her advice to heart even when they weren't together. He'd filled sketchbooks by now, sometimes pictures of Peggy but sometimes Bucky or various Barneses, sometimes Brooklyn and the people he'd known there, sometimes the Commandos, and sometimes just what was in front of him that day. Spending most of his time on a ranch, he'd drawn a lot of cows. Sometimes he drew his less-welcome memories, what the American had seen and done and remembered. But he tended to tear those pages out and burn them, making them disappear in a way they wouldn't from his mind.
The clock in the hallway chimed the hour and Peggy stirred. "I should get dressed so we can go to dinner," she said, not yet moving to rise. There were maids in the mansion to keep it up, but the Jarvises had followed Howard to California and so he and Peggy had to dine out if they wanted more than toast and coffee and eggs.
He grunted agreement; he had to change, too. But neither of them moved for another half-hour. Finally they went upstairs to change -- him to dress down a little, her to dress up -- and headed out to walk up to Yorkville to a Hungarian restaurant that Peggy had been told about before going back downtown for drinks and music at Jimmy Ryan's. They returned in the small hours, full of goulash and jazz and when he kissed Peggy, he could taste the sweetness of the gin-and-sins she'd been drinking at the club.
Two days later, Peggy was back down in DC and he was at Penn Station buying a ticket for the train to Oyster Bay.
SHIELD had had people watching after the Barnes family since before Bucky had gone to Korea, Peggy had told him, and they'd kept it up after his return because the risk to them was even more real. The Soviets had come looking and there'd been real fear that they would do more than just look if they thought it would bring Steve out of hiding. Two years later, the concern about an abduction (or worse) was not as acute, but the watchfulness remained and so Steve could easily find out exactly which trains Bucky was going to be working aboard. The Oyster Bay train was not the longest route, but it was in the middle of the day and Bucky had a long layover to include a meal break.
Steve found a seat at the end of the second car and opened up his book. Bucky would be further down the train to be in position to make announcements and monitor the doors and whatever else conductors did when there were other people to take tickets, but he'd walk through the car later on.
Hearing Bucky's voice as he made announcements for the station stops affected him more than he thought it would. Bucky was muting his natural accent to sound more Manhattan neutral and less working-class western Brooklyn, but the tone and timbre of it was still familiar to him when so little of his life was. The moments when he felt like Steve Rogers and not someone who just happened to answer to the name were rare and welcome and painful because of what was outside those moments, when he felt a stranger in his own skin. But he'd known Bucky's voice when he'd known nothing else and hearing it now make him feel present in his body, in his sense of self in a way that so far only being around Peggy had been able to spark.
Bucky himself came through the car right after Albertson, eyes canvassing the car the minute he stepped into it. There were fourteen other people in the car -- Steve had kept track of each entering and exiting passenger, unable to put his guard down even here. Bucky's eyes went wide when he saw Steve but he didn't otherwise react, finishing his survey before moving through the gently rocking car with practiced ease, calling out that the next stop would be Roslyn. When he got to Steve's seat, he looked at the punched ticket pinned to the seat in front of him, saw the station printed on it, and looked Steve right in the eyes. Steve nodded, the answer to the silent question of whether he intended to stay until his ticket said he would.
At Oyster Bay, Steve waited on the platform as Bucky helped the engineer and crew detach the engine from the rest of the train so it could be loaded on to the turntable. He knew that it had taken Bucky months to recover from his injuries from Korea, that Howard's specialists had been needed as much as the serum to undo the damage Steve's knife had inflicted. But Bucky moved now with easy grace, no sign that the wounds Steve had given him bothered him in any way, and he covered a discreet application of his serum-granted strength to a recalcitrant buckle with jokes about Irish luck and the wisdom of experience.
Steve had known that Bucky's recovery had been complete because Howard and Peggy had told him, had gone into detail not only about the original wounds, but also about the measures taken to save him by first the Army surgeons and then SHIELD's own doctors and Howard's civilian connections. But seeing it with his own eyes was different and more important than the second-hand explanations. It wouldn't make what he'd done less horrible, wouldn't stop him from dreaming of their fight over and over again, but it would help because now the words had form. Bucky didn't have the swagger of youth anymore, but his motions had a confidence in its place that spoke of more than simple maturity.
There were plenty of train workers around and once it was clear things were proceeding smoothly, Steve could hear Bucky thanking the others for letting him get out of other tasks, promising to make it up to them, and to be back on time. He slapped a few backs as he made his way from the open yard back to the station, cracking wise, and he got laughs as he passed. Still the same charmer after all.
"Come on," Bucky said once he'd joined Steve on the platform. "Let's go eat."
As if they had only not seen each other in a couple of days, as if it hadn't been a decade. As if time passing was the only issue between them.
Something must've shown on his face because Bucky cocked an eyebrow. "If you try to apologize for Korea, I'm going to slug you. If you want to apologize for staying away for two years, that I'll listen to. But we can eat while you do it."
Steve made an exasperated noise, unable to accept Bucky's forgiveness without asking for it, without fighting for it, without doing something to earn it besides being the shell of the man he used to know. "It can't be that simple," he said, surprised at how uneven his own voice was.
"Why not?" Bucky asked, shaking his head. "What part of it do you think you get to take credit for? What part do you expect me to blame you for?"
Behind them, the noise of the train turnaround spiked and metal hit metal heavily, but it was accompanied by laughter. Bucky looked over his shoulder, then turned back.
"Well?" he prompted.
"I still remember the feel of my knife going in," Steve blurted out. "I remember your hand on mine. I remember the look on your face when you knew you were going to die."
The wry smile on Bucky's face fell and he sighed. "Of course you do," he said, the but I didn't die unspoken but clearly said. "You were an elephant before you had the size and hide to match."
And then he pulled Steve into a fierce hug, holding on. It took Steve a second before he could convince his body that this tight hold wasn't the prelude to violence, before he could relax enough to reciprocate and hold on, too. He was sure Bucky could feel his struggle and then his surrender and Bucky squeezed harder after that.
"I missed you," Bucky said by his ear. "I missed you so goddamned much. And you are an idiot. You are such an idiot."
Steve wasn't sure if he laughed or sobbed or both.
Bucky broke the embrace and pulled back. "Do not get snot on the uniform. Molly's not mad about Korea, but she'll be cross as hell if she has to wash snot off this jacket again this week," he warned, then gestured with his arm toward the street beyond the station. "There's a diner down there that's good."
Steve let himself be led away from the station, Bucky answering one last shouted greeting as they crossed the street.
It wasn't a busy road and the sky was threatening rain, so they had the sidewalk almost to themselves.
"Are you back for good?" Bucky asked.
Steve heard the hopefulness in his voice.
"No," he replied, shrugging when Bucky looked over at him. "I don't know that I can ever be back for good. It's not just the Russians I don't want finding me."
Here in New York, he had the greatest risk of being recognized. Not by someone who knew what Captain America had looked like, but by someone who'd known Steve Rogers before. He'd lived the first twenty-five years of his life here and he'd had friends and classmates and neighbors and coworkers who'd be able to see past the dyed hair and glasses and the size. And while these were all people who'd known him as Steve, he was still figuring out how to know himself as Steve and he wasn't ready or able to assume the weight of being Captain America again as well. It wasn't the uniform, which he would never put on again and still had trouble looking at in pictures. It was the legend, which had been carefully constructed while he'd still been 'alive' and had taken on mythic proportions since his 'death.' There was no way any man lived up to that, but this man, the man he was now... it was so impossible that the very idea of it terrified him.
"You sure you're not throwing the baby away with the bathwater?" Bucky asked as they turned onto a street with shops and cars and noise. "Cutting yourself off from the parts you need to avoid the parts you don't?"
He was more surprised than he possibly should have been that Bucky could still read between his lines. But it made him feel good and he smiled. "That's what Peggy thinks I'm doing, but she's not saying it yet," he admitted. "But right now, I need to be safe. I can't... I can't be him. And most of the time, anything I have to do to assure that is worth it."
The rest of the time, it made him feel empty, like he was hollow inside because the Soviets had scooped everything out to put The American in and, now that The American was gone, there was nothing left but a vacuum.
"The people who miss you here miss you," Bucky said as they paused in front of the diner entrance. "Not him."
Bucky went inside without waiting for an answer, which Steve didn't have. He knew most of his concerns were unjustified, that SHIELD had run a discreet but thorough threat assessment before he'd come to New York last week and they'd deemed it safe not only for a visit, but also to live provided he was smart about it. He knew that now that Bucky knew he was back in control of his faculties and his life, his staying away was hurtful. He also knew that he was depriving himself of far more than Winifred Barnes's roast dinners by staying away from the only family he'd had after his mother had died. But he couldn't shake the fear -- of being recognized, yes, but also of being retaken by the Soviets or causing someone else to suffer because of him. He wasn't used to living his life guided by fear; it hadn't been part of his makeup as Steve. He'd learned to be afraid as Cap, to be afraid of losing men because of his orders, but he'd also learned to conquer that fear. The American had known nothing of the emotion. But he was afraid now and it was a fear he couldn't shake, couldn't master, couldn't defeat. He wore it badly, but he couldn't make himself fight it, either. Peggy hadn't yet forced the issue and he wasn't sure Bucky would, at least not yet.
He was brave enough to follow Bucky inside, though. They found a booth far from the other customers. It was late for lunch, too early for dinner, and there was room. Steve sat facing the door and Bucky didn't call him on it.
"If you're not coming back, can I ask where you are calling home?" Bucky asked after they'd given their orders to the waitress, a tough-looking woman old enough to be their mother.
Steve didn't know if Bucky meant that it might be a secret or that he might not want to tell Bucky and the latter made him shake his head. "I don't call anywhere home," he replied. "But I keep my things at Chester Phillips' ranch outside Amarillo. He's someone familiar enough to feel safe with, but not someone I'd been close enough to for the Soviets to have kept an eye on."
When he'd finally stopped running from his masters and his past and what he'd done to Bucky, he'd found himself in Amarillo because that's where the Colonel -- "call me Chester, dammit, I'm not a colonel anymore" -- was from and where he'd always say that he was going to retire to if Steve and the Commandos didn't drive him to an early grave first. He hadn't even been sure Chester would be there, although he'd known about the firing from the Army because of Izzy. He'd asked around, got directions to the ranch, and had turned up on the front porch half out of his mind with grief and guilt. Chester and Agnes had fed him, put him to bed, and then gotten in contact with Peggy to ask why a man eight years dead had just eaten half a roast and then passed out in their spare bedroom.
Bucky laughed, waiting for the waitress to leave their sodas and the silverware before speaking. "You live on a ranch. With cows and chickens and stuff?"
Steve smiled. "And horses and dogs and cats," he agreed. "But mostly cows. It's been good for me. The Phillipses have been good for me and to me. Let me get my head on straight, put myself back together piece by piece. I'd tried to lay low on my own, but... I couldn't live with the ghosts of the men I'd been as my only companions. I tried and I ended up with a pistol in my mouth almost every night even though I wasn't sure it would work."
Bucky closed his eyes, but when he opened them up Steve could still see the pain and empathy there. In many ways, Bucky's own captivity had been more brutal than his own, full of intentionally-inflicted pain that Bucky had been aware of while it was happening. Steve's own trauma had come after the fact and while it was that 'after' that pushed him to the edge far more often than he'd like, it wasn't as if he'd had eight years of knowing he was a prisoner before that. He'd spent eight years believed himself to be a Russian man from Chelyabinsk who'd lost his memories after getting blown up pushing the Germans out of Romania. And apart from what they'd made him do, Department X had treated him like a prized instrument to be well maintained. There had been no kindness, but there'd been no abuse, either.
"So you remember all of it?" It wasn't quite a question, more confirmation.
He nodded, no need to go into detail about how vividly or how completely. Bucky knew he had a photographic memory, but he didn't know how the serum had changed those memories, making them almost tangible. Reliving The American's crimes was like sitting in a theater watching a play starring himself, far more immediate than seeing Captain America in a newsreel or on the television had been.
Whatever Bucky was going to say next was held back while the waitress brought their meals, reubens for both of them, extra pickles and cole slaw on the side, and wished them a good lunch.
"You could move out here, you know," Bucky said after they'd eaten in silence for a few minutes. "To the Island. Far enough from the city to be safe and you could still be close to people without having to see them if you didn't want. You could take the train in to see Howard or Peggy or whatever."
Steve pushed a pickle back into place with his thumb; he had missed full sours. He hadn't missed Bucky skipping the Barnes clan on the list of people he might want to see. "You see me mowing a lawn every summer weekend?"
"You're milking cows on a ranch," Bucky pointed out reasonably. "I think mowing a lawn in the suburbs is a step in the civilized direction."
Steve, mouth full, could only roll his eyes.
"I might move out here," Bucky admitted, shaking his head with bemused disbelief. "We need to find a new place sooner than later and out here's cheaper than Flushing or Bayside. Kathy's in the cradle with us right now, but the crib's going into Judy's room and it'll be like it was with me and Charlie."
Charlie was eight years younger than Bucky, seven than himself, and little Steve and Bucky had made beds out of couch cushions in the living room because baby Charlie's bedtime had been hours earlier and the shared bedroom was off-limits. Later on, being fifteen and sharing a room with a seven-year-old had been no easier and had sent Bucky over to Steve's more than once.
"It's your own fault," Steve said after he'd swallowed, then grinned at Bucky's glare. "A little self-control never hurt anyone."
"Says you," Bucky retorted, but he was smiling. "Molly's free to say no. She's got no qualms about using the word anywhere else."
Talking about normal things, about what they should have been able to talk about all along, felt weird but also right. It was a relief from the earlier weightiness, however necessary it had been, but more than that, it made him feel like a normal man and it let him appreciate Bucky as one, too, and not as someone's victim -- Zola's or his own.
"Thank you for the gift, by the way," Bucky said after another bite of sandwich. "The priest brought it over yesterday."
Steve nodded. He'd left no name on the card, but he'd drawn a tiny elephant instead, knowing Bucky would recognize it.
"You should come by to meet 'em," Bucky went on, wiping a drip of dressing from his hand before it hit his wrist. "They're okay as far as kids go."
But Bucky's eyes were shining with pride and love as he spoke and Steve found himself smiling in return. He'd always imagined Bucky married with lots of kids, even back when he'd been romancing half of the girls in Brooklyn and Manhattan. For himself, when he had been little, he'd figured it would happen eventually; after, there'd only been Peggy. There was still only Peggy, but the future they had together was an unknown thing. They couldn't just settle down now and have kids and he wasn't sure if she would if they could. She loved him, he knew that in his bones and in his heart, but she loved a lot about her life now, too, and they both knew she'd lose it all if she married anyone, let alone him.
"Moving up here," Steve began, not wanting to either commit or refuse to visit Bucky at home. "Maybe it's something I can work toward."
Bucky gave him a look that clearly questioned whether he was talking for the sake of talking, so Steve shook his head. "I'm okay where I am, I'm good, but it's not permanent. It's a respite, not a destination. I don't have a home now, but at some point, I'm going to be ready to want one."
Chester and Agnes weren't ever going to throw him out, but judging by the way they'd reacted when he'd told them he was going to New York, they probably thought it was past time for him to start reaching out to people.
"You already need one," Bucky told him. "Up here with us, out in the middle of nowhere where only the postman can find you, wherever it is. You need to put down a root that says 'Steve Rogers lives here' and water the damned thing until it grows."
It sounded like something George Barnes would say and, Steve wagered, had probably said to Bucky at some point after his return from Italy. Didn't make Bucky any less wise for passing it on.
"You're gonna live a long time, Rogers," Bucky went on and Steve knew by the change in tone that these weren't George's words, weren't the words of a father to a young son in need of guidance. These were the words of one super-soldier to another. "There's going to be plenty of time for loneliness down the line. Grab on to what you have while it's here."
For a second, Steve could see the fear of that loneliness in Bucky's eyes and he knew that there was nothing he could promise that would allay that fear. He didn't bother to make a joke about still having Bucky; it might end up being true, but it wasn't funny now and wouldn't be funny later.
"I'm trying," he assured. "I am."
They finished their sandwiches and agreed to coffee and peach pie when the waitress came by.
"Howard said he was ready to go to market with a new sharpshooting rifle," Steve said as he poured cream in his coffee. "You the reason it's got the selector switch in a weird spot?"
Peggy had told him that Howard had promised Bucky to look after his family should he die in Korea and Howard had taken it upon himself to fulfill the terms of the offer even when Bucky didn't quite die. There'd been a steady paycheck as a "design consultant" for Stark Industries' armory from the beginning; once Bucky had been well enough to sit up in a bed, he'd demanded of Howard to let him do something to earn what he'd been given. Howard had told him that the sniper variant of the SI-24 was shipping in the hundreds despite Stark Industries not getting the Army contract and he'd already earned his pay. But Bucky had his pride and Howard saw a neat solution and so Bucky ended up consulting on a new rifle based on what he'd taken to Korea and that had continued on past Bucky's return to the LIRR. ("I'd pay him five times what he makes on the rails to do this for me full time," Howard had told Steve. "But I know better than to ask.")
"It's in a less weird spot than it had been," Bucky replied with a sourness that spoke volumes of long arguments past. "I don't know why he moved it in the first place. It was fine where it was."
There'd been a prototype of the new rifle at the mansion for Steve to look at and it was a strange thing and would probably end up being amazingly expensive and it would still sell because it was designed beautifully for its function and not to be sold as the lowest bidder on a government contract.
"He also said that you and Molly danced up a storm at his last soirée," Steve added with a smile. Bucky and Howard were probably more colleagues than friends, but Steve had known both men well at one point and he could see how they'd get along: Howard with his grand ideas and Bucky with the NCO's long-suffering sigh of 'here we go again.' That, granted, Bucky had mastered long before he'd gotten his first uniform, entirely because of Steve with a side-helping of Dottie. But Howard had the wealth and power to put his ideas in motion the way Steve and Dottie never had and Steve knew well what kind of strange and exhilarating experience it was to see it happen up close.
Bucky shrugged, picking out the peaches and leaving the crust. "I don't much care for them, honestly," he admitted. "Swanning around with the great and the good. There's nothing wrong with what I do, but they make me feel like there is. But it was the first one after Molly'd had the baby and she likes them, so..."
A mother and children entered the diner and the bell over the door chimed as they did so and Bucky pulled out his fob watch to check the time. Steve recognized it as the one George had worn when he'd been a conductor. "I gotta get back. Swanson's likely to forget to lock the pin again and the engine'll be halfway to Mineola while we're still in Glen Cove. You coming back with us?"
Steve shook his head no. "I think I'm going to wander around for a bit, see what's out here."
"Everything out here has a plaque because, sometime fifty years ago, Teddy Roosevelt touched it," Bucky said with an eyeroll.
Steve insisted on paying -- it was a modest sum and he had means -- and they left the diner, pausing out front. Bucky watched him and he let himself be inspected, let Bucky look for whatever it was he'd always looked for before assuring himself that Steve would be okay.
"Well?" Steve asked, because once upon a time he always had.
Bucky gave him half a smile. "You'll do," he answered, then sobered. "But if you wait another two years, so help me God, Rogers, I will hunt you down. And I know where you'll be and I'll have Howard kit me out and you will never know what hit you."
Steve nodded and this time, it was he who initiated the hug.
"I mean it, Steve," Bucky said by his ear. "You send a postcard of a cow pie or whatever it is they have out there. Don't make me wonder if you're still alive."
"I won't," he promised and he meant it.
With a final nod to each other, Bucky started walking back the way they'd come and Steve went in the other direction, finding out quickly that Bucky hadn't been wrong and everything did seem to tie into Teddy Roosevelt. But it was a nice town, despite the ominous weather, and the park by the railroad station looked out on to the Long Island Sound and, in better weather, it would be nice to sit out with a sketchpad.
When he got back to Howard's mansion, it was already late -- he'd stopped for dinner in the city after getting off the train -- and he called Peggy.
"Well?" she prompted right after the hellos.
"You were right," he said with a smile he knew she'd hear. "As usual."
Seeing Bucky had been hard, but not hard at all. He'd need a while to accept Bucky's forgiveness, but... It wasn't that he hadn't realized that he'd missed Bucky. Maybe it was that he hadn't focused enough on how good Bucky's presence would feel instead of how bad his absence had.
A very ladylike snort came down the line. "Of course I was," she told him. "And?"
He didn't know that he wanted a house in a suburb with a lawn to mow. But maybe a place by a forest or a beach, someplace he could set up to be defensible without making it a fortress. Someplace nearer to the people he was more ready to return to than he'd thought. Somewhere where he could build a new life once he'd finished piecing together his old one.
He took a deep breath before answering. "And not yet, but soon."