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Something is really wrong.
The quantum tunnel shimmers closed behind him, and Steve is hit with a wall of humidity that feels like a hot, damp blanket when he opens his face shield. Although they must have been temporarily disrupted by his arrival, the swarm of insects around him start up a chittering racket that leaves his ears buzzing. A dragonfly swoops curiously around his head.
“Stark? Can you hear me?” Steve hisses into his comms, but there is nothing but static. “Tony?” he calls out loud, casting about for any signs of his missing teammate. The grass is a bit flattened where he stepped out of the portal, but otherwise the area is undisturbed.
He sets off in a loose search grid through the trees.
The smell of mangroves and water is strong to his right, so he follows along the water’s edge until the trees thin out. He stops when he reaches the first sign of civilization—a mess of netting and old lobster pots sitting on a wooden pallet.
The timeline display on his wrist fizzles out when he taps the screen, and FRIDAY ignores his whispered pleas into his earpiece. There are no signs of life from his suit’s computer. A sudden lightheadedness catches him off-guard, and he has to bend forward and rest his head between his knees for a moment.
The teetering weight of an avalanche of anxiety that has been ready to go off since the moment he stepped up on the platform is tipping dangerously. He has nothing of himself left to lose in being adrift here, but half the world is waiting on him to finish his mission.
This is not where he’s supposed to be.
Scott tried to warn him.
The shade of the large oak tree canopy above does little to cool the ambient temperature, and Steve tugs at the collar of his suit until he can breathe easier. He was expecting much colder weather, and it’s abundantly clear that this isn’t New Jersey.
The sound of a diesel engine reaches the edge of his hearing. A vehicle, traveling from the east. Slight knocking in one cylinder. It’s still not enough to draw any conclusions about what year he’s dropped out into.
Steve jogs over to the side of the quaint two-story house that sits on the water"s edge across the clearing from where he landed. He ducks behind the front deck as a silver pickup pulls up out the front.
The back door of the truck flings open, and a young boy who can’t be more than nine or ten jumps out. He runs full-tilt across the lawn, shrieking and squealing until he’s swooped up by a man in dark jeans who moves a little too fast for a regular human.
Steve does a double take when he sees the glint of a vibranium arm.
“I almost had you beat, Uncle Bucky!” The boy swings himself around onto Bucky’s shoulders and is almost strangling him tightly around the neck until Bucky tips him upside down in a practiced flip. Bucky sets him down on the porch steps and Steve has to duck away to avoid being seen.
“Almost! Either you’re getting too fast or I’m getting too slow in my old age.”
“You’re not that old!” The boy protests.
“That’s not as reassuring as you think it is, kid.”
Steve sneaks a look, convinced his ears are deceiving him. He’s never heard Bucky sound like this. This isn’t the Bucky he knows, not even the carefree Bucky from their childhood—the Brooklyn accent is too smoothed over and the cadence is wrong.
He peers out between the slats of wood around the bottom of the stairs and sees a second pair of combat boots step down from the truck and walk around to the back of the tray.
“Go get started on your homework, AJ. I’ll be up to help in a minute,” Bucky says as the boy gives him an eye-roll and runs inside, letting the screen door thwap shut behind him.
Steve sneaks closer, using a flower box for cover as Bucky turns around to face the man behind him.
“You need a hand with that, sweetheart?” Bucky calls, laughing.
“Oh now you ask, when I’m almost done?” It’s another familiar voice that Steve would know anywhere.
If Sam is here, it must be at least the late 2010s. Except that Steve can’t imagine when the two of them could possibly have been together without him. Unless this happened when Sam was searching for Bucky alone, Steve is at a loss. The readout on his wrist remains stubbornly blank.
“Good thing you still got your looks, seeing as you’re apparently too old and slow to help me carry the groceries.”
“I’ll show you old and slow,” Bucky grumbles as he pulls Sam forward out of Steve’s line of sight. Steve leans a little further forward so he can see.
Bucky is kissing Sam. Open-mouthed and unselfconscious. Bucky slides his hands over Sam’s hips towards his ass, on the verge of getting indecent. Steve chokes in surprise as Sam starts to lose his grip on the grocery bags.
Steve hears himself make the confused noise, and almost knocks the flower pot off the porch as he tries to avert his eyes and keep out of sight. Only his supersoldier reflexes keep the pot from smashing on the brick path.
Sam is laughing, warm and low. “Don’t start nothing, Buck. Sarah and Cass will be back soon and you’ve got Math tutoring to do.”
His mind starts to spin wildly from one thought to the next. But mostly he gets stuck on “how?” and “what?”.
Steve stays ducked down and looks at the ground. The porch door creaks loudly, opening and shutting, and he slumps down against the side of the house.
His vision goes a little blurry again and his heartbeat is deafeningly loud in his ears. He wants to blame it on the chronoshift, but having his world-view suddenly tilt to the side is a more likely culprit. He finds, upon reflection, that it’s unexpected happiness that has knocked him on his ass.
He’s not sure how long he sits there, until Bucky’s voice drags him back to the present.
“I figured you’d turn up eventually,” Steve freezes, sweat gone cold on his neck. Bucky leans over the railing and peers down at him. The timeline, he thinks, desperately. He’s not supposed to be here.
“Uh, sorry… yeah. Just dropped in to see how my two best pals are,” Steve aims for casual, but his voice comes out half-strangled.
“Yeah, just dropped in from 2023, I’m guessing.” Bucky points to Steve’s suit and raises an eyebrow.
“You sound like you were expecting me.” Steve relaxes minutely. Maybe he hasn’t failed the mission just yet.
“I had a funny feeling.”
Steve tries to parse what Bucky could possibly mean by that. Obviously there is something else going on that he’s not aware of, so he just gives Bucky an unimpressed look.
“You aren’t usually this cryptic.”
“Well, I figure your visit mustn’t have been part of the plan or you wouldn’t be trying to be all inconspicuous hiding down there. I could hear your heart about to jump out of your chest from all the way over here.” Bucky gives him a sly grin. “That, and you pinged my perimeter alarm.”
Bucky holds a phone up with a big red cross blinking on it.
It’s obvious now that he sees Bucky up close. The crow’s feet around his eyes, the slight softness in his body. This isn"t the Bucky that he knows.
“What year is it?”
“2026,” Bucky says.
“So that means…”
“Yeah, welcome to the future.” Bucky smiles and gestures expansively with his left arm to the house, the yard and the general world around them. He looks proud, almost.
Music starts to play from inside the house. The soft warble of Sam’s voice reaches them through the window, along with the aromatic fragrance of something delicious cooking in the kitchen. Steve recognises the song, and the nostalgia hits him like a truck.
“Should you even be talking to me?” Steve frowns, trying to remember what Tony had said about preserving the timeline. They didn’t exactly cover what to do if you accidentally travelled into the future.
Bucky sees his face and laughs. He flops down on the edge of the deck and reaches over to ruffle Steve’s hair. “I won’t spoil too much for you, don’t worry. We just gotta be quiet so nobody else sees you.”
“Right,” Steve says, still unsure.
“It’s really good to see you Steve,” Bucky says, and even after all this time Steve knows the look on his face. It’s the twinkle of a secret in his eye that tells Steve he’s just dying to spill his guts about something Steve will never believe.
Just being here with Bucky is shocking—in a good way—and Steve tries to remember to breathe.
“Holy shit!” he says, letting all the air in his lungs out, holding it for a minute and then taking a deep breath in. “So we won?” He can only hope the tremor in his voice isn’t too obvious.
“It’s not that simple,” Bucky says, after a careful pause. “I really shouldn’t tell you. God knows Strange will come out here and bust my ass for messing up the timeline or something.”
“But you’re back. You’re un-vanished. So is Sam.” Steve feels the ground shoring up under his feet, and the nauseous panic is starting to fade. The evidence of their success is right in front of him. Bucky and Sam, both alive and real.
“You’ve already probably seen more than you should,” Bucky’s tone is a warning, but Steve finds himself wanting to push for more.
The world can’t be that broken if his two best friends are back. What he saw, even though it should have been a private moment, was a sight for sore eyes. Seeing that Bucky and Sam have found something in each other that burns so brightly is as comforting as it is bewildering.
“I certainly got an eyeful,” Steve says after some consideration, and Bucky barks out a laugh.
“Well, that’s what you get for creeping in the bushes.”
“You two look really happy.” Steve’s eyes start to mist over again. A sob escapes before he can stop it.
“Come on man, don’t go to pieces on me now. We’ve gotta get you back to the mission,” Bucky chides, and draws him into a hug. Bucky is warm and solid, and there is the faint but familiar scent of Sam’s aftershave at his collar.
All the despair and heartache of the last five years starts to unwind itself from around his chest. It’s almost too good for Steve to believe, like some kind of fever dream or time-travel induced hallucination. But god help him, it feels real.
Bucky lets Steve rest against him until his hitching breaths even out again. “It’s good to see you too, Buck,” Steve says into the warm space at Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky soothes him with a gentle hand on his back and Steve feels slightly less like throwing himself in the water and letting himself float away.
“I never thought I’d get to have this, you know?” Bucky pulls back to look him in the eyes. “After I went into cryo that last time, I accepted the possibility that I might never wake up. That at least if I stayed frozen, maybe I would find peace...”
Steve remembers standing there, watching as Bucky went under. He’d felt so powerless to do anything but stand by and hope.
“Instead, I got a second chance,” Bucky smiles, and ducks his head, “thanks to you.”
“I’m glad, Buck. I...” Steve flounders, and the right words just won’t come.
“Hey now, come on...” He pats Steve on the shoulder. “You just gotta promise me one thing. Don’t worry about me. When you get us back, you’re going to want to hang around because you think you’re doing the right thing.”
“Of course, you’re my best friends. All I’ve wanted for the last five years is to make it right.”
“And you will. I know you will. But you’ve got to trust that Sam and I, we’re gonna work it out.” Bucky pulls his dog tags out from the neck of his shirt. A ring, understated and classic in design, clinks against the tags on the end of the chain. “We’re gonna be okay, Stevie.”
Steve’s heart feels close to bursting. He almost doesn’t register the quiet words that follow.
“You deserve a second chance too. I don’t know if telling you what you’re gonna do will create some kind of loop or self-fulfilling prophecy, so I won’t. But just promise me you’ll think about what you really want.”
Steve thinks he knows where Bucky is leading him, and all the unspoken signs point to the fact that he isn’t part of their future. There is a flare of pain and fear underneath the growing suspicion. He wonders if perhaps he doesn’t make it.
He grips Bucky’s right hand tightly, pulling it close to his heart. “I promise.”
“You and I are going to have a serious talk when you get back to your time. But you know you can’t tell me about any of this, right?” Bucky’s voice goes deadly serious at the end, and Steve raises his hands in a placating gesture.
“Yeah, I know. It’s gonna kill me, but I can keep my mouth shut,” Steve laughs ruefully, resolving just to be happy in the knowledge that Bucky will somehow manage to win Sam over, without any assistance on his part.
“How long have you two been together?” Steve fishes, but Bucky just glares at him.
“You trying to find a way to ask if this was going on under your nose?”
“All that tension between the two of you does have me wondering now, in retrospect,” Steve says agreeably.
“I’m not admitting to anything else. Sam’s a good man, Steve. One of the best. Past me is gonna need to do some work, but he’ll come around.” Bucky’s eyes go soft. Steve almost wants to laugh at the sappy lump—all vestiges of the wild rogue he used to know seem long gone.
Steve can only imagine what the early stages of their relationship will look like. If it’s anything like what he endured while stuck in a VW beetle driving across Germany, then he isn’t sure he wants to be in the front row after all.
“Well, I’d tell past you good luck, but obviously you don’t need it,” Steve says optimistically. Bucky laughs, his whole body shaking with it until he’s a bit misty-eyed himself.
“Oh you don’t even know the half of it.”
“Can I see Sam?” Steve asks quietly, and Bucky shakes his head.
“I’m sorry. In my timeline, you never spoke to him here. He would have told me.” Bucky’s voice is apologetic. “I can’t let you see him.”
It’s bittersweet. To be here and to see Sam but not to be able to let him know how much it fills Steve’s heart with pure joy to know that he’s happy. To not be able to wrap him up in a hug and hold on for dear life. He would gladly hear every last detail of the years he’s missed—he wants to tell Sam how grateful he is that Bucky is so well loved, after everything that he’s been through.
He wants to say the same to Bucky, proud beyond measure that he’s a good partner for Sam, and that they’re taking on the future together. Sam is worthy of the deep vein of loyalty and love that runs through Bucky’s heart.
“Okay…” Steve nods, and tries not to sound too bereft. “I just really miss him, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” Bucky heaves out a breath. “But you’re going to want to ask him about it. If you two talk… it might change things.”
“The shield?” Steve guesses.
“I know you’re planning to hang it up. All I’ll tell you is that things work out eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“Yeah,” Bucky smiles then, with a strange emotion Steve can’t decipher. It’s not regretful exactly, but it makes Steve wonder.
He wants to know if Sam has taken his place as the leader and hero he should be. He wants to know that the weight of the world’s expectations doesn’t sit too heavy across Sam’s shoulders, and that he won’t resent Steve for leaving him too.
He feels sure now—that he can leave them or be taken from them, and they will find something better for themselves. He thinks about finding something better too. He selfishly wants to know if he survives what’s coming, but he doesn’t dare ask. The answer still scares him.
Bucky doesn’t give anything else away, and falls silent beside him.
Steve looks out over the water, where the soft afternoon light is dappled by the trees.
“It’s really beautiful here,” Steve says, as he takes in his surroundings with a different frame of reference. The heat doesn’t feel quite so oppressive now that he knows he’s standing in Bucky and Sam’s home, not some foreign unknown place. The house looks well-loved and the gardens are well-tended.
“This is Sam’s sister’s place. He and I live a bit closer to town, but we’re out here most days with the kids. It’s… peaceful.”
Bucky has always been great with kids. The gaggle of farmer’s kids in the village in Wakanda where he lived always managed to draw him out of his shell. Steve can only imagine that the trust the youngest Wakandans showed him must have helped him trust himself.
Bucky here and now looks healthy and relaxed as the sunset starts to color the sky. Steve sighs, not wanting to ruin the moment, but the guilt is starting to eat at him again.
“I’ve messed up, Buck,” he admits, holding out his arm with the dead screen. “My suit’s busted. I don’t know if I can get back to the mission.”
“Busted? How?” Bucky grabs the wrist module and taps the screen. Nothing happens.
“When I got here, the screen just went blank. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Bucky hums for a minute, and pokes at the back of Steve’s waist where the particle unit sits. Still nothing.
“Let me call Lang. He might have some ideas,” Bucky says and pulls out his smartphone again. Steve would laugh at the incongruity if it weren’t for the nagging fear that he’s screwed up the whole mission entirely.
He hears Scott’s voice through the speaker, saying something about a hard reset to recalibrate for future timelines and dodgy old technology. Bucky pulls a keychain from his pocket which has a tiny motorcycle replica, and a small round disc that he detaches and clicks into the port of Steve’s suit.
He isn’t sure he understands, but Bucky fiddles with the screen with a technological affinity that pleases Steve as much as it surprises him. Bucky has always been more adaptable to the changing world than Steve—it"s something he"s incredibly grateful for when the screen comes back to life under Bucky"s hands.
“Good as new,” Bucky frowns, “or, y’know. Old.” He grins, lopsided and lets Steve’s wrist go.
“Thank you, and for more than just this,” Steve says, wishing not for the first time, that things were not as they are. His life has always kept him from truly being a part of the world, and now the yawning distance between his life and Bucky’s is all the more pronounced.
He’s got to go. He knows he has to leave, but he desperately wants to stay—to try and bridge the distance—and to spend some time with Sam too.
“Sorry Steve, you’ve gotta go. Lang says the timeline is fragile… and I only have the one spare Pym Particles cartridge.” Bucky looks contrite, but Steve waves him off.
“I won’t let you lose this, Buck. I’ll make sure you and Sam and all our friends are safe if it’s the last thing I do,” Steve says it like a vow.
Bucky flinches, almost imperceptibly. Steve searches his face for the reason, but Bucky keeps his face neutral—an echo of the soldier. It makes him seem burdened, and Steve hates to be the cause of it.
“You do everything you can to keep us safe,” Bucky tells him, “But remember that you’re not alone. Every one of your friends is ready to do whatever it takes.”
It’s obvious now that he’s holding back something big. Steve has no idea what it is that he’s not saying. Steve can’t… he won’t ask.
All he can do is take it on trust that Bucky knows better than he does.
“Goodbye Buck.” Steve taps the screen and opens the portal before he can change his mind. “Give my love to Sam and wish me luck.”
“You don’t need it.” Bucky slings his arm around Steve and pulls him in close, before stepping back, wiping at his eyes with his right hand. “You’ve got a fight ahead of you, but I want you to promise me, when it’s over… you’ll do what we agreed.”
Steve gives him a lazy salute. “I solemnly swear I’ll get a life.”
“You’d better!” Bucky shouts.
Things happen in slow motion then, as Steve turns to go.
Sam emerges suddenly from the house, rushing down the steps to the yard. Bucky catches him around the waist and pulls him back to stop him, before he can get any closer to Steve. He’s confused, then devastated when Bucky wraps him in his arms. The last thing Steve sees is Sam’s face as the portal closes around him.
“Jesus Rogers, you take a detour or what?” Tony tuts impatiently at him as he steps out into the New Jersey sunshine.