Chapter Text
“Goddammit,” Bucky hissed to himself as pain sang in his side, his skull, his shoulder. That rain of energy bolts from Thanos’s sky ships had done a number on him. Filled his mouth with dust and his body with hurt, over and over, before a crazy glowy flying woman came and he was clear to throw himself back into the fight.
Endless fight after endless fight. All the way back to Steve. Half the battle fighting to get back to Steve’s side as the blond led the universe’s combined armies forward, as he buffeted the glove onward and away, as he made his precious, superpowered body the barrier between Thanos and the rest of reality.
And at last, in the quiet and the dust, Bucky saw Steve standing vigil before he saw Tony, where the brunet lay collapsed against metal his great brain might once have shaped. Bucky always saw Steve.
Saw his exhaustion. Grief - they’d become friends again. Pain in how he held himself - how many injuries did that suit disguise?
It took Steve an age to break through the weight of that, and to sense Bucky’s presence behind him. When he did, he almost came to attention, shoulders flaring back. The position only lasted a breath, because Steve pivoted towards him.
Tremulous, the blond froze there with Bucky in full view. He’d seen Bucky during the fight, thrown him a grateful nod of acknowledgement as Bucky took out two creatures bearing down on him. But in this moment, with the battle won, he inhaled the sight of Bucky with wide blue eyes. After years of being perceived only as danger, being regarded as some kind of elixir felt miraculous.
They were allowed to hug, and by God did Steve look like he needed one. But when Bucky crossed the distance between them, he wasn’t met with an embrace. Instead, Steve’s hands reached up to cup his cheeks, and he was dragged into a fierce kiss that tasted of blood and muck and starvation. For a moment, Bucky hesitated. They’d never shown the world this. But Steve’s need shouted the louder than decades of hiding, and Bucky kissed him back with all the fervour Steve seemed to need reflected back.
A few breathless, burning seconds lost to the kiss’s consumption. Then a twinge of pain brought Bucky’s awareness back. Steve’s hands had tightened on his body, clutching over abrasions won only minutes before. The depth of Steve’s desperation struck Bucky then - the flavor of it wasn’t right. This wasn’t a kiss buoyed by ‘we saved the world’. It wasn’t even a ‘we almost died’ kiss. They’d traded enough of those. Bucky knew them.
No. Something was wrong.
Bucky twitched backwards, and it was enough to bring Steve up short. He trembled in place, still holding too tight to Bucky. Bucky tried to make himself open, to let Steve know that he was worried about him. And Steve had to have registered it. The blond took a shuddering breath, shutting his eyes for a moment of recognition, of acceptance.
“There’s still work to do,” Steve admitted. He didn’t step away.
“You’re hurt,” Bucky said, knowing even as he did that it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to what came next.
“Lotta people got hurt.”
The hands finally released Bucky, and he was grateful the uniform hid the bruises. Steve clearly needed a lot of things, but more guilt wasn’t one of them. His arms were overflowing with that sentiment already.
Steve’s palpable reluctance to separate warred with other instincts. His eyes flicked away once, twice, as the dust’s eerie silence bled away to be replaced by the sounds of alien pain and human grief. Still, they were drawn back to Bucky. They seemed to scan every creased, clogged feature as if archiving each inch of him.
When Steve said, “I’ll find you when I can,” his voice cracked with the weight of his reluctance to part.
“Pal.” Bucky reached back across the inches dividing them to grasp Steve’s shoulder. Had he not been hyper-aware of the smashed organs and shattered ribs Steve was hiding, he’d have shaken some sense into him. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got your six.”
-
Five years.
Christ and all the Saints.
He’d lost another five years.
All Bucky’s foolish hopes that he would get to live through time rather than experiencing it in fits and starts between defrostings. That looked rather in vain now.
He’d had to take the anger away with him into the shower. Steve had enough on his plate. He didn’t need to witness Bucky processing that too.
Steve had lost him again for five years.
Sinking down into the corner of the shower, pressing his back against the warm stone walls, letting the hot flow disrupt the clinging grime and whisk it away down the drain, Bucky couldn’t help but register that wallowing worked better when the cubicles were smaller. Something about the opulent Wakandan walk in set up, in a room large enough to house a family of four made his self-pity seem all the more pathetic, all the more unworthy, and all the less satisfying. Bucky committed himself to a little wallowing all the same. Ignored the burn as the spray caught on healing injuries not yet properly closed.
Not 24 hours ago, he’d been sneaking Steve off to his deceptive little mud home. Steve pressed up against his back as Bucky’s bike soared through the lanes, arms wound tight around his waist as they giggled like runaway teens, leaving the lights of the city behind. They’d got one last glorious fuck in before yet another fight of their lives, forgetting the looming battle in favor of heated reunion after weeks of the White Wolf and Nomad taking jobs apart. If he tried, Bucky could imagine the burn of it still lingering.
But Bucky’s 24 hours had been a half decade for Steve.
Another half decade where Steve was alone.
Steve who was still outside. Steve who was probably still bleeding.
Bucky had to pull himself together for Steve. Couldn’t let the flashes of disorientation lure him away. The frantic pulsing as the ice melted, shivering as he took in the languages of those around him, the signs on the walls, trying to find a where and a when because those were always better than finding a why and a who upoj awakening.
He turned the water to the hottest setting.
Not cold this time. Dust. Weakness. A body bound together with artificial strength, holding itself together with a tightness borne of trauma, falling apart as if the serum had failed. Defenseless again.
He’d cried out for Steve, hadn’t he? Tried to run to him even as his legs turned to nothing.
Not the first time he’d screamed for Steve and hadn’t been saved until too late. Add it to the list of things Steve was tormenting himself with.
That thought was enough to force Bucky to drag himself back to his feet. They were under him. Pale. Ten toes curled slightly with the tension he was braced by. Bucky forced them to patter in the pools of lingering water. Still there.
He hurried through the rest of the clean up, though it took long minutes of scrubbing before the water stopped running a foul mix of brown sludge and reawakened blood and black ichor he didn’t really want to contemplate.
Wondering if he could convince Steve to join him, Bucky left the shower to run when he got out. Briefly, he dried off the worst - with the softest towel he’d ever used, God bless the Wakandans - and stepped towards the bathroom door. There, he hesitated. Steve was speaking to someone.
Not wanting to interrupt something important, Bucky paused.
“Yeah, ‘bout an hour hopefully,” Steve’s deep voice proclaimed. A pause - phone call or ear piece, Bucky derived. “No, don’t wake her up. Just keep the door locked, FRIDAY’ll activate if there’s anything worrisome near. And… Tell her I love her if she gets up before I’m home. Bye Nancy.”
“The hell?”
Disbelief drove Bucky forward, footsteps disconnected from his own consciousness until he stood in front of Steve. Steve who had his phone dangling from one hand. Steve who was wearing a nervous expression.
Steve who had fallen in love with someone else.
Steve who had given up on them.
Steve who had, just hours before, kissed Bucky in public for the first time in a century of vowing they were it for each other.
Hurried syllables tripped out of Steve’s mouth before Bucky was forced to demand clarity. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“I’ve watched the Notebook too, Rogers. I know what that means these days,” Bucky said.
“That’s not the No- It’s really not,” Steve retorted.
“Uhuh. Who’s Nancy?”
Tell her I love her.
I love her.
Bucky couldn’t have misheard that. Not even his stew of a brain would put those words in Steve’s mouth.
That was meant to be his heart pounding away in Steve’s chest. Had been when it was a fragile birdcage. Had been when layers of muscle wrapped themselves around Steve anew. Bucky had given him that heart over and over. How could Steve have given it away?
They’d whispered their I love yous, vows anew, just that morning. Drenched in golden dawn light, rocking against each other for one last breathless completion. Bucky had traced Steve’s freckles, admired the interplay of black and gold against soft milky skin and sweet light brown patches. Steve’s humanity had been perfect before the serum, and there it was on display for Bucky. Bucky alone.
Was that their last time? They always knew it came with that risk, but this wasn’t what was meant to break them.
Steve gestured to the mattress. “Will you sit? Let me explain.”
This was happening. Steve was going to explain how lonesome he’d been. How he’d thought Bucky was gone forever. How the kiss had been a reflex, and a mistake.
Wasn’t cheating if you were a widower.
Serve Bucky right for believing Steve would never come back for him. They were square in their doubt. No way was Bucky sitting down to take that.
He folded his arms, raising the metal protectively over the skin that had just realized it was naked and exposed. The shower was a distant backdrop to the conversation.
Oh, this was going to hurt so bad. Once again, Bucky could feel the ground racing to meet him as he plummeted towards it.
“Okay, okay. Look, Buck - Christ, I’ve thought about this conversation a thousand times and still-” Steve pushed his hand through his hair, and succeeded only in making his disheveled appearance more chaotic.
Impatient for this injury to come to its natural conclusion, Bucky snapped, “Spit it out.”
“Alright, alright. Three years ago, two years after the Snap - See, the repopulation people had been part of the conversation for some time, and it took a while for them to sort out the pro-natalists and the white supremacists and the eugenicists. Nazis everywhere, honestly. But once that was done -“
Violently, Bucky slashed a hand through the air just to sever the ramble. “Steve. Who the hell is Nancy?”
A flare of red caught Bucky’s eye as Steve braced himself against the mattress. He knew it had to be bad for Steve to be bleeding through his suit, but couldn’t spare the luxury of sympathy.
“Nancy’s my nanny,” Steve explained.
“A… goat?”
“No! Well. Not my nanny. She - I’ve got a daughter, Buck. Nancy looks after my daughter while I’m away.”
Bucky wished he had taken a seat. His legs buckled for the second time that day, but this time they didn’t vanish.
It was that serious then. Bucky looked to Steve’s hands, saw the tears in the skin and the soot embedded in the creases and the bruising dying the left purple. No ring. Not married, or kept safe?
They’d never done that. Never needed it.
Had Steve always wanted that?
Fuck it, HYDRA had already taken any concept of dignity Bucky had. Thanos couldn’t rob him of what he didn’t possess.
“Choose me,” Bucky said. “Whoever it is. Don’t choose them. Choose me. We can sort the kid out, it’ll be complicated but - please.” He couldn’t beg Steve not to leave him. Bucky was the one who’d done that. But that’s what it felt like. Steve was leaving him. Had left him.
Somehow, Steve was still speaking. “Darlin’, you gotta hear me out. There ain’t no choosing needed. She’s already our daughter.”
Something bitter and self-defeating made Bucky emit a twisted laugh. “Won’t her Mom have something to say about that?”
Inexplicably, Steve frowned. “Her Mom? No, Buck. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”
“Well, help me out here, will you? Cos. This ain’t stackin’ up.”
“Just - Bucky.” Slowly, painfully, Steve pushed himself to his feet. He grayed as he did so. Losing the battle between healing factor and the long-drain of adrenaline’s protective promises. Though Bucky tried to resist, he couldn’t help it. He reached to steady the man he loved, who was exhausted and hurting, even as it might be the last time Bucky could help him. “Gimme a minute, okay?” Steve asked, simultaneous with a grateful look. He folded his hand over Bucky’s arm. “Please just listen,” until Bucky nodded. “I carried her. I gave birth to her. It was an experiment. I volunteered. You’ve heard that one before, I know.” Steve gave the flattest smile. “They were looking to restore population numbers. Wanted to give men the chance to carry too. So I tried it. Let myself be their guinea pig, figurehead, whatever. Surgery took. Donor egg, and then… the obvious for me, but - God, I knew you might hate me for this. There’s no one I wanted to have a child with but you. I didn’t know if we’d ever get you back. But this way, I could have a part of you.”
It was so much information, and Bucky could only cling to the ride-along. “What did you do?”
Avoiding eye contact with all he had, Steve said, “SHIELD. Natasha. I didn’t ask too many questions. Only - was it possible? And the answer was yes. They had your DNA. They put it in the egg. And I grew her. A bit o’ you and a bit o’ me and, dear Christ a whole lot of her own personality from somewhere that’s all her. We have a two year old little girl, sweetheart.”
“I’d say I don’t believe you. But-” Bucky twisted his vibranium fingers in the air.
Steve was already easing out of Bucky’s hold to palm his phone. “Here, you can see.”
Bucky found himself looking at a photograph of a small girl with a contented smile tucked against Steve’s unmistakeable shoulder. She was still at that stage where her head seemed too big for her body, and silver eyes were crescents, close to sleeping bliss. Bucky’s silver eyes. Bucky’s thick brown curls. But unmistakably Steve’s too. Something in the faintness of her eyebrows, or in the roundness of her cheeks. She was nestled against Steve as if his arms were the safest place in the world to be.
“What’s her name?”
“Meredith,” Steve replied. Filled with pride; an emotion he so rarely held. “Little Merry.” Steve ran an affectionate thumb over the screen, not caring how it jumped and smudged. “She’s waiting for us. I talk to her about you all the time. Will you come meet her?”