Chapter Text
He was unconscious before he hit the water.
A small blessing, really. Drowning would be a terrible way to die. It was bad enough that the best friend he thought he'd lost in almost exactly the same way seventy years ago had been the one to hurl him from the sky.
After seeing what had become of Bucky, Steve was sure he deserved this death.
That moment when he had lost hold of Bucky, watched him fall away into the gorge, had haunted him all these years. He'd thought he had deserved dying in a plane crash seventy years ago. When he woke up from the ice, Bucky's death had haunted him still. Like no time at all had passed. Some small hope ignited in his chest when he saw that Bucky was still alive, trapped in the body of the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed assassin bent on killing him. Natasha had been right; the Winter Soldier was a ghost – the ghost of Bucky Barnes, sent through time to kill him. To seek vengeance for his lost life.
Steve was tired, beaten. The wind whipped against him. Above, he could see Bucky dangling there by his arm, watching him fall from the helicarrier to the water so far below.
The cold darkness wrapped around him like a shroud.
***
"His hand moved! Do you think he's waking up?"
A fog kept Steve from fully awakening. He had thought for sure he was dead, but the sharp pain in his ribs when he took a deep breath told him he was not. A warm pressure enveloped his hand, occasionally squeezing, steady. And that voice... he hadn't quite been awake enough to hear it.
"Muscle spasms are common in coma patients," said a female voice.
"He's only been in a coma for two days," said the other voice, male. So familiar.
Steve's eyes fluttered open, blinking against the dim lighting.
"Look, he's waking up..."
Blurred faces looked back at him. A woman in regulation blue scrubs and short hair. A nurse. The face belonged to a man with short dark hair. The man belonged to the hand holding his. He blinked and stared, willing the fog to go away. As his vision focused, he realized that the man's hair wasn't short. It was pulled back. The man's face resolved into something so strange yet familiar he stared for a good minute before he could speak.
"Bucky?"
The face of his best friend broke into a wide smile. "You're awake!" Bucky said, and before Steve could even comprehend how happy Bucky sounded, the way he looked like the Winter Soldier but with old Bucky's friendly expression, Bucky had jumped up from the plastic chair beside the bed, leaned in, and kissed Steve on the mouth.
This wasn't some best friends sort of extreme happiness kiss - the kind he might have planted on Bucky after he'd rescued Bucky and the rest of the 107th from the clutches of Zola, if he hadn't been pressed for time back then, if the other guys wouldn't have razzed him for it - he'd been that happy to see his best friend alive. The lips that pressed against his right now were happy too - he could feel the way Bucky was smiling against him, but at this point the kiss had lingered much longer than a best friends kiss.
If that was a thing. Steve had never kissed his best friend. Punched in the arm, slapped on the back, hugged, but never kissed.
Shock had frozen him in place. It was all so bizarre, unreal. When Bucky pulled away, and saw the way Steve was looking at him, a perplexed little wrinkle formed in his forehead, but then other people were coming into the room, and Steve was left wondering what the fuck had just happened.
It reminded him of waking up in that room seventy years in the future. The room had looked like it belonged to the time when he had died, but there had been small chinks in the facade, and he had quickly understood that something wasn’t right.
Something here wasn’t quite right.
"How long have I been out?" he tried to ask. His voice sounded creaky, and Bucky turned to pour a glass of water.
Steve stared at Bucky as his friend carefully doled out the water, dribbling just a swallow or two over his lips before pulling the glass away. "Two days," said Bucky, glancing over his shoulder at the doctor who had just arrived.
That's right, Steve had heard it as he was waking up. Two days. Not nearly enough time for Bucky to turn from assassin into... whatever he was now. Steve couldn’t stop staring at him.
He noticed, for the first time, that Bucky's left hand, the one holding the glass of water, was not made of metal. "Your arm," Steve said.
Wrapping his fingers around Bucky's wrist, he pulled up the sleeve of the slouchy gray sweater Bucky wore draped over a blue t-shirt. Bucky took the glass from his left hand with his right, looking entirely baffled by Steve's comment. He stared at Steve while Steve turned the wrist over. The outline of a star was tattooed on Bucky's inner wrist in blue.
Steve ran his thumb over it, then jerked his hand away. He couldn't believe he had just touched Bucky, his best friend, that way.
Even though his best friend had just kissed him. On the lips.
Something was definitely not right here. He looked to the doctor in the white coat carrying the clipboard, and his mouth dropped open.
"Bruce?" Steve asked.
The doctor appeared startled, and looked down at his own name tag, which read "Dr. Bruce Banner, M.D." He peered down at Steve through his wire-rim glasses. "Do I know you?" he said.
"Yes," Steve said slowly. "Don’t you remember me? Steve? Steve Rogers?"
Bruce looked down at his clipboard then back up at Steve. "I'm sorry," he said, shrugging. “I don’t think we’ve met?” Then he said to Bucky, "It does appear that there's no amnesia."
"He knew exactly who I was," Bucky said eagerly. "He woke up and said my name."
"Good. That's certainly... good." Bruce peered at Steve again. "Did we... go to school together, perhaps?"
How could Bruce have forgotten the Avengers Initiative? New York? Did he not remember stuff that happened when he hulked out? Steve glanced at the nurses in the room and decided it wouldn't be wise to mention the Hulk.
But another familiar face caught his eye. A pretty one, with bright red lips and soft brown hair.
It couldn't be. He stared at her. She noticed and tried not to, tried to do her job, which was checking all the tubes and wires hooking him up to the machines on his left. It couldn't be her. He rubbed at his eyes and looked again. Finally he had to say it. "Peggy?"
She couldn't avoid him now. The other nurses stopped what they were doing and their heads swung back and forth between the two of them.
"Y-yes?" she asked. The same clipped British accent.
"Peg, you're not even wearing your nametag," hissed one of the other nurses - her name tag said "Angie." Now they all just stared at him.
"Steve, how do you know these people?" Bucky asked. His voice sounded far away, because Steve could not comprehend how Peggy could possibly be here, looking like this. Like she hadn't aged. He'd visited her in the nursing home just last week.
A granddaughter, his brain answered. She's related to Peggy. Named after her. Hell of a coincidence, but the only logical explanation.
"...evidence that coma patients can hear," Bruce was saying. "He may have heard us address each other in familiar terms, and now he..."
"Knows our names?" Peggy asked. "But Dr. Banner, we never call you anything but Dr. Banner."
"Unless we're calling you McDreamy," muttered Angie.
Peggy pressed her lips together to keep her composure.
"It's the only explanation I can think of," Bruce said. "We'll have to do some tests, make sure brain functioning is normal."
Pen lights flashing in his eyes. Pulse, blood pressure, blood tests. He managed to answer a whole list of questions correctly: Who is the current president? What's your middle name? How old are you?
That last one he answered automatically - twenty-six - but when Bruce then asked for his birth date, he didn't speak right away. Bruce didn't know he was the Hulk, Peggy wasn't in a nursing home, and Bucky had both arms.
Bucky had kissed him.
Somehow, he knew that if he told them the answer on the tip of his tongue - July 4th, 1920 - they'd all look at him like he was a lunatic. Which was how they'd looked at him for simply knowing their names.
"July fourth," he said. He did the math, waiting to see if Bruce would ask for it.
He didn't.
"We'll get you down for an MRI. If that goes well, we'll just keep him overnight for observation, then he'll be free to go." Bruce had switched to addressing Bucky. Why would he do that? Bruce didn't even know Bucky.
"Thanks," Bucky said.
Steve couldn't help but feel relieved when everyone else left. “What happened to me?” he asked, reaching up to touch his own face. Everything felt the same there. He had a bandage on his temple, and his cheekbone on the same side was sensitive, but his face felt like his face. That was something.
“You got hit by a car.” Bucky picked up his hand again, held it between both of his hands. Kissed Steve’s knuckles. “You were lucky. A few bruised ribs. The head injury was the scariest part of it.” Bucky smiled against Steve’s hand. “I’m just so glad you woke up.”
“How... did it happen?” Steve eased his hand out of Bucky’s grip and tried to resist the urge to rub his knuckles against the blankets. Bucky let it go with a questioning look. An unhappy look.
“Apparently you were walking home from work. That’s all I know – it was some bystander who called the ambulance. The driver took off. The hospital called me after you arrived at the ER.”
“Why would they call you?” Steve asked. Even as he said the words, he couldn’t think of who else might be called for him in an emergency. His parents were long dead. No next of kin. No girlfriend. Maybe they’d call Natasha, or Sam, or someone else from S.H.I.E.L.D. Former S.H.I.E.L.D., he reminded himself.
Bucky’s face fell, just a little. “I tried to call you when you didn’t come home from work at the normal time. But you didn’t answer. I think they called the number you had listed as Home in your contacts.”
They had called the number listed as “Home” and Bucky had answered?
“So, we’re roommates?” Steve asked.
Licking his lips, Bucky looked away from a second, then returned to look at Steve apprehensively. He sat back in his chair. “You don’t remember?”
Steve glanced at the door. He didn’t want the doctor back in here to poke and prod at him.
“I mean, you remember me, right?” Bucky asked. “How can you remember me, and not remember...” The sentence trailed off.
“I don’t know,” Steve said.
For long moments Bucky was quiet. Between glances at the window, the walls, the bed, the monitors, his hands, loose threads on his ripped up jeans, Bucky sneaked glances at Steve in the bed. But Steve couldn’t stop looking at Bucky. He’d seen his best friend through so much – childhood, being teenagers, back alley fights – they’d fought side by side, in war. He’d seen Bucky dirty and damaged, cleaned up and ready for a night out, he’d seen the shadow of his best friend in an expressionless face looking only to kill, to complete his mission.
This Bucky... looked soft. His face clean shaven. Bits of hair falling out from the elastic holding it back from his face. That loose gray sweater. This Bucky hadn’t been in any war. This Bucky hadn’t been tortured.
Who was he?
Finally Bucky glanced up at the clock. “I guess... visiting hours are almost over,” he said. “I could stay the night, if you want...?”
“I’m okay,” Steve said quickly. So quickly that Bucky’s face pinched up in... what? Disappointment? “You should go home and get some sleep. I’ll be fine.”
“Sure,” said Bucky. He stood awkwardly, reached for the bag that had been stowed behind the armchair next to the bed. He swung the strap of the messenger bag over his head. “Uh, I’ll come back tomorrow. Ten A.M. I’ll bring you some clothes and stuff. I don’t know when they’ll do the MRI but even if you don’t get discharged tomorrow you’ll have clothes.” Bucky took a step toward him, then seemed to think better of it. He smiled tightly, not meeting Steve’s eyes. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Steve said.
As soon as Bucky left, Steve swung his feet over the side of the bed and grabbed the IV stand, dragged it into the bathroom with him. For a long time he stared at himself in the mirror. His face was the same. His face was the same. It didn’t make sense until he realized how hard he was gripping the edge of the porcelain sink.
Now he stared at his hands. He looked around, and eventually settled on the metal shaft of the IV stand. Gripping it between his two hands, he pushed and pulled at it. Strained until he could feel his muscles trembling.
It didn’t even bend.
Who was he?