dappered | (no subject)

[ It's Tuesday in Avengers Tower.

A lot of the particulars of this arrangement had gone over his head, given that he'd been all but catatonic from shock and exhaustion through half of it (turns out using the Cube for a major temporal displacement actually took a lot of energy from the bearer, in this case him) but it seemed to include a lot of shouting and posturing while he'd suffered a fatal disconnect over which Steve he was supposed to back up, the tiny angry one or the big angry one. But the gist of it, explained by Howard Stark's son, is this: the Tesseract fucks with time, and sometimes deigns to answers wishes. Even those not spoken out loud. One flash of blue light later it had dumped all four of them here in the future in some kind of 'temporal bubble,' whatever the fuck that was, and it's keeping them here indefinitely.

Stark promises he's working on fixing it, but the future has things like inhalers and endless amounts of hot water, so there's that. Bucky's not in any big freaking hurry to head back to the war front in any case, even if being stuck here means staring at the frankly terrifying person who is supposedly future-him, or one possible version of future-him.

They're all under what's effectively house arrest in Stark's future robot building, given leave to go wherever they want in the Tower. They've all got their own bedrooms, their own kitchens, even their own floors if they want them, but Bucky had shown up at younger Steve's door at first opportunity and hadn't left him since.

(Part of him thought that maybe, maybe he should be throwing in with the other one, the older one with shadows under his eyes and a look on his face like someone had just kicked him in the stomach, the one Bucky remembered from Europe, but stress had brought on one of Stevie's attacks and Bucky couldn't leave him alone for that.)

He'd been kicked out eventually, though, told to go do his worrying and hovering somewhere else and take his stupid glowing alien box with him, which meant that Steve wanted some space to be upset in peace and that was fine, that was all fine, Brooklyn Steve didn't really know him since he'd been taken off to the camp and. Yeah. He's different. He's killed a lot of people since then, has watched his best friend waffle between science experiment, propaganda darling and one man army with maybe 10% of the training he needs to do the jobs they've got him doing. He's got a glowing alien box that always comes back to him, no matter how he tries to get rid of it. It bothers Steve that he's different. Not a one of them really know each other right now.

He drifts into the kitchen out of lack of anything better to do, still dressed in yesterday's clothes because he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep while Steve rasped in the bed next to him, mechanically opening cabinets and going through drawers, staring in something like hopeless frustration at the array of supposed edibles. The packages are all brightly colored and there are three kinds of everything, all declared to be low-fat or pure organic or a good source of vitamin whatever, like it wasn't possible for a guy to just get milk anymore without having to make some kind of choice about it. The labels are in every kind of language possible, of which he can only read three with his fragmentary French, Italian, and German. There's butter, more than he knows what to do with, and real meat, impossibly fresh, and the house robot has told him that if there's anything he wants that isn't there, he just has to ask for it and it'll be delivered.

All he wants is a goddamn loaf of bread and some cheese to make a sandwich, jesus. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Yeah, sorry, pal, but his job isn't to make things easier. Steve sours even further and looks away, weighing his words.

It's one thing to tip all your cards, but he needs the information all the same and this is as good as it gets, it seems. ]

Well, he hasn't told me squat. Not him or the other one. They dance around it like they think I'm gonna faint or run away. Somethin' bad happened to both of them, something I - you weren't around to stop.

Because it's my fault.

[ Steve says simply, and the truth of it hurts just the same when spoken aloud as when he'd said it to himself.

he leans against the counter and regards him. ]

I couldn't save him in time.

[ He's prepared for a lot of shit. There's a whole laundry list of things that he's braced himself for if it came down to it, but nothing quite hits the way that simple string of words does, harsh and seemingly over-loud in the quiet of the room. ]

Couldn't save him from what?

[ From the fall? From the plane? There are so many differences between everything that he doesn't even know. ]

From falling.

[ Steve's holding it together, but the truth of it is that he had never not been wrecked by that. He sees it in his mind's eye, again and again, and he sees it now in the other man's eyes. He doesn't even pretend to smile this time, pained and still hurting. ]

The one time he needed me, and I wasn't fast enough. He fell, and HYDRA took him.

[ It clicks in to place, just like that. The differences between the older Bucky and the younger, the cube, the mission, the little bits and pieces he's been fed in hopes he wouldn't get a full picture.

The floor drops out from under him and Steve stares, mute and horrified and a little sick. ]

We didn't go back?

[ I would have gone back, he wants to say. ]

We [ couldn't ] didn't.

[ Steve should've gone back, he knows he should have; but grief is blinding and crippling and it was all he could do not to fall apart. To finish the mission, to know, in the last moments of the sinking plane -- that maybe he could have joined him. ]

I thought he was already dead.

[ Jesus. Steve sinks to the nearest place he can sit and try to sort through this. No wonder everything is such a mess. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out - that there was more to this than what he's being told now, too, but even this much is nauseating. ]

But he wasn't. What -- what happened?

No, he wasn't.

[ ...Yeah, no. He can't do this. He remembers everything that's been done to him because he'd read the reports over and over, seen the photographs. He swallows, hard, and it's difficult not to drown under all the guilt, the blossoming hatred for himself. What use is a supersoldier when he can't do something as simple as save the person he loves?

He rubs tiredly at his eyes, and feels the sting behind them. ]

Listen to me. When you get bigger, when you go to war and when you find Bucky again, send him home. Even if ten guys need to drag him back kicking and screaming. [ To save him from this -- Steve had been so selfish, so stupid, too blind to see what was happening to Bucky before he'd asked him for the moon and stars. ] You need to send him home.

[ This whole conversation feels like something he's woefully unprepared for no matter how hard and how badly he wants to be. Steve digs his teeth into his bottom lip, his stomach aching in a way that has nothing to do with ulcers. ]

Before -- before that happens?

[ He can do it. He'll have to, to save Bucky, because there isn't anything in the world Steve wouldn't do to save him. ]

What if I don't remember when we go back?

You have to, for Bucky.

[ And they both know the lengths they'd go to for him, the things they'd sacrifice just so he would be safe, unhurt. No matter their ups and downs the only thing is constant in their lives: their love for Bucky Barnes. He's quiet for a few moments, then. ]

You love him, don't you? [ A pause. ] You love him like I do.

[ how is that even a question. Steve's head jerks up, shoulders squaring, tensing. Of course he loves Bucky. He loves him more than anything in the whole goddamn world, and the idea of failing him is fucking terrifying. ]

You know I do.