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"Grandpa? You were alive during Pearl Harbor, right?"
Steve nodded.
"I was."
"Did you see it happen?"
"Oh no, no, nothing like that. I was in New York at the time—attending an art class, actually—but I read about it. Everyone read about it. It was devastating."
James frowned.
"Well, that's lame. So you didn't see it happen? Not even on the news?"
Steve laughed, shaking his head.
"The news wasn't the same as it is today, James. But even if it was, something like that… You don't just film something like that. You pray for your life and for your family. That's what you do when war strikes out of the blue like it did that day."
"What about Grandpa Bucky? Where was he during Pearl Harbor?"
"Well, your grandpa was right there in that art class with me."
"He was? I didn't know he could draw."
"He can't much," Steve said with a shake of his head and a fond smile. "But he was the model, and all the ladies were swooning over him."
"But he didn't care, right? Cos he was in love with you."
"Well, not exactly. We hadn't met yet, not before that. I thought he was an arrogant… Er, fool. And he thought I was a stuck-up prude." Steve chuckled, glancing out the window. "We didn't much get along at the time, but he was charming, and I was young and impressionable, and once he decided he wanted me, there wasn't much I could do about it."
Bucky walked by, raising a brow, taking in the sight of Steve in his favorite rocking chair and their grandson sitting on the rug, listening with rapt attention to his stories.
Bucky smiled, leaving them be.
They fought side by side during the war, and yet, the greatest thing they fought for was never the country. It was for love, for each other. They'd go to the ends of the earth just to find each other, and that was something that had never changed, even after all these years.