WHO: Steve Rogers (MCU) & Bucky Barnes (616) WHEN: Today! WHERE: Arlington National Cemetery WHAT: Steve catches up to Bucky. WARNINGS: Bucky, clean yer mouth out.
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Bucky had lost count of the steps it took to the top, despite that he’d start counting them somewhere near the bottom of what was left of the hill. It was easier counting steps because that meant he wasn’t counting the white headstones that littered the overgrown land around him.
Once upon a time, this whole area was perfectly-aligned rows and on well-maintained ground. It looked as if some rodent had made a next between two white slabs that had fallen against each other.
And where there should have been a view of Washington D.C. itself? A crater. Everything was in ruin. Everything was gone. Everyone had been telling him that this was a different world in the future, and he’d been so against the idea. How many times had the Axis tried to trick him and Steve, after all? A little staging, some sympathetic women and ranking officers playing a goddamn fiddle and singing a sob story -- it felt like a put-on.
This, though…
Nothing about the scene before Bucky’s eyes felt phony. His stomach turned as he hunched over, arms linked around his knees. His pack was thrown off to the side. If anyone wanted to come up and gut him, they were free to it. It would probably hurt less than trying to process what had happened to this place.
It hadn't taken long for Steve to figure out where Bucky was headed - if not specifically. He picked up on the direction right away, and there wasn't anything important to the east besides their nation's capital (or what used to be the capital). Steve would have done the same thing, if he'd been that eager to get away. Washington DC had been home for a time. It was that or head northeast to where New York City used to be. That was what he would have done. He hadn't been quite as confused, though, or quite as afraid. Not that he would say that to Bucky when he found him, if it was really Bucky.
That wasn't to say he was never afraid, or that the situations he found himself in never bothered him. Steve was just getting better at rolling with the punches.
Bucky's head-start had kept Steve far enough behind that the young man wasn't in his sights, which was probably for the best, because Steve didn't want to get caught too early. He could have overtaken Bucky easily enough, but he didn't. Natasha was right. He needed to see whatever it was he was trying to find.
Steve waited, even after Bucky stopped and threw his pack aside. This was hard for him, too - harder than he'd expected, knowing what he knew about the world he was in. Knowing was different than seeing the crumbling remains of something that had meant so much.
He waited, to give Bucky time alone to grieve, and then quietly made his way up to where the young man was. "This is the first time I've been here," he commented, "like this."
Bucky had heard the steps approaching, but they were the steady pace of someone who had scoped out the situation. They were walking to him because they’d specifically sought him out, and maybe that would’ve been comforting if it didn’t beg the question of how he’d been found. Maybe yesterday, that would’ve been met with a stubborn streak that only Bucky Barnes could cling to, but right now? The hell with it. That wasn’t the answer he’d come out to retrieve.
Steve’s prompt was left hanging. For a good few seconds, Bucky didn’t even look up. The tone of voice was just about right, but the face wasn’t gonna match. He stared straight ahead, right towards where the Washington Monument should’ve broken above the treetops.
Finally, Bucky relented. “Fought alongside some of the guys buried out here.” There was a short jerk of a nod towards the open spot beside him. “Siddown, if you wanna.”
“Me too.” What Steve didn’t say was that those specific soldiers probably weren’t really buried there, but he kept that thought to himself.
Out of respect for Bucky’s personal space, Steve waited until the seat was offered before settling in. He dropped his own bag on the ground, and then lowered his shield next to it. “Where’d you serve?” Steve asked, prying his own gaze away from the view in front of them to look at the young man beside him. He didn’t look like his Bucky, not exactly, but he had the same sort of resolute look in his eyes and eyebrows that he’d seen before. And he was young, Steve could see that. He wondered how much Bucky would give away - if he’d still try to keep up with the fake identity, or if this hunch of Natasha’s was off-base and Steve’s hopes were about to be shattered. If there was anyone he had a soft spot for, it was Bucky Barnes. “It was the Second World War for me.”
It was hard to not spare a side glance at the shield when it was set down. That red, white, and blue was meant to catch people’s eyes, but it was always something a little more personal when you were on the other side of it with Cap himself. No one would go through the hassle of lugging that thing out here just for show. Actually, no one would lug themselves out here just for show. This was one of those Steve Rogers things. Or, well, maybe that was just wishful thinking coming into play. The only real evidence so far was a guy saying his name was Steve Rogers and maybe a stage prop.
The muscle beneath Bucky’s jawline worked as he wondering what to say next. “Same,” was offered. “Been ‘round most of Europe at this point. Two days ago, I go to bed in London, right? London. And then I wake up, and everyone’s sayin’ it’s not 1945. Let me tell you, I’ve had people try to convince me of less crazy stories -- and they never did it for the benefit of my health, neither,” he finished, half-turning to give the man at his side a skeptical -- if not slightly more resigned -- look.
Steve squinted at Bucky as he listened. He looked younger than his own Bucky had been when he'd shipped off. It was hard to tell, though.
He could relate to what Bucky was telling him, better than the other man knew. Better than he was going to admit to right now. If he was going to get him to open up, he shouldn't open with 'Want to hear about when I woke up in the 21st century?'
A corner of his mouth twitched upwards in a sympathetic smile. "If I hadn't been there for some of the things I've seen, I wouldn't have believed it myself." Portals, aliens, artificial intelligence hell-bent on destroying humanity -- it all sounded like an action movie. "What were you looking for out here? Proof that we were full of it?"
Though his shoulders hefted upwards into a shrug, Bucky knew the obvious answer. “Yeah. More or less. Nothing meant by it, but I don’t believe people just ‘cause they got a soothing bedside manner.” There was a pause, then came a more pointed look. Now that his mind was clearing from the earlier shock, it was easier to focus on the pieces of this puzzle that didn’t fit.
“Now how about you tell me why you followed me out here. Seems a hell of a lot of effort for one runaway. And don’t tell me you were just taking a nice, little jaunt around the neighborhood and thought you’d drop by. I know your kind. You’re terrible liars.”
That was fair. A healthy amount of skepticism was useful. It kept people alive longer than they might have been if they were more like Steve.
And it was fair for him to question what Steve was doing out there, even if he would have done it for anyone. He just might have been faster, if it'd been anyone else.
"You're right, I'm a terrible liar. My best friend would agree with you there," he admitted, although he wasn't ready to confess everything without getting something out of it too. "If I tell you, will you tell me what's really going on with you?"
It was a fair trade, but that didn’t mean Bucky clamped a handshake on the deal. He let another few seconds pass in silence, then gave a slow nod. His gaze returned to the banks of the Potomac. At least that one thing seemed to have stayed constant despite the landscape getting rattled into a new shape.
“Scout’s honor,” was the reply, given with a loose salute. “Since you came this far, I mean -- I got a heart and all. Just make it a good story. That’s all I’m askin’.”
"A good story." Steve's laugh was dry. "I have a lot of those." None of them were lies, though.
His eyes darted to his shield. He hadn't brought it along to prove a point, knowing well enough that it wouldn't be enough to convince Bucky. There were times he did use it in a symbolic way, but this time, it was just practical. He wished he'd been that practical about preparing a speech. "I followed you because I - we were worried about you, … Michael." Steve said the name slowly, raising his eyebrows in a way that signaled he didn't quite believe 'Michael' was being truthful about who he was. Or, at the very least, that he was hiding something. "I know you needed to… see all of this for yourself, but I didn't want you out here alone. I'm not the kind of guy who leaves someone to fend for themselves if I can help it." That was all true. "And I wanted to talk."
That careful enunciation of the name Michael drew out the smallest of smirks from Bucky’s otherwise clamped expression. They could play this game of footsie all damn day, and he could tell that the other man was doing his best to not push too hard. “Guess the redheaded Russian at the blast door didn’t mention that I’m pretty good at looking after myself, huh?”
But he sprawled his arms out, since -- as per the agreement -- it looked like it was his turn to tell Steve a thing or two. “What’s really going on with me? For starters, I got this pal named Steve Rogers, but he’s a little taller than you. But, fine, let’s say you’re from some other world where that’s just the make of things. Fact is that he’s somewhere back in London, in 1945, and that’s a long, long ways off. I don’t ditch. I’m no deserter. And yet…” The arms dropped back to their sides. “Nothing about this place makes a lick of sense.”
Finally, Steve thought, they were getting somewhere. Being pals with a guy named Steve Rogers back in 1945 would explain why he'd been so resistant to the idea that someone else could be Steve, too. Steve knew there were differences between worlds already from what others had said. Would he have been understanding if someone had shown up claiming to be one of his friends, but he hadn't recognized him? He wasn't sure. He wanted to say he would have welcomed them, but he didn't think it would have been easy on either side.
"You're not a deserter," Steve agreed. "You being here, that's not your fault. I - he wouldn't blame you for this. You know that. I've never blamed my pals - the Commandos, I never blamed them for things out of their control during the war. If your pal's anything like me, he's not going to hold this against you." He might not even know. But Steve kept that to himself; they could go over theories about time travel and dimensions on the way back to camp. "No, it doesn't make sense. But here we are anyway."
“Sure feel like one,” Bucky muttered back. He was sitting in the middle of the East Coast, amounting to twiddling his thumbs for all the good it was doing. Whatever Steve was up to, he sure as hell hoped it wasn’t going at Zemo solo. The thought almost zipped down a tangent, though something in the next part of what this alleged Steve said snagged him, and Bucky squinted over once more. “Hold up. What Commandos? You don’t mean Fury’s group? Last I heard, they were tearin’ up Germany. Too busy to send a Christmas card, but me and Steve --”
Bucky stopped. Those gums were flapping too much, which prompted him to fall back into quiet and wait for an answer.
Steve struggled to contain his laughter, but it didn't quite work. "Fury's group? You've gotta be kidding." There was another Fury? A grandfather? He'd met Gabe Jones's grandson, after all. Maybe there was another connection to him between the war and the 21st century that he didn't know about.
He smiled fondly. "The Commandos were my team. Me, Barnes, Dugan, Jones, Morita, Falsworth, Dernier. We took out a lot of HYDRA bases together. So I guess you could say we were tearing up Germany, among other places. Where were you and Steve if you weren't with them?"
Those weren’t names a guy could pull out of thin air, and Bucky knew that. The tension in his shoulders eased ever so slightly. You could beat your fists against the differences all day long, but a few similarities definitely smoothed the fight out of Bucky enough to volunteer just a little more information.
“What, didja piss off Namor for good where you’re from? Not that I’m sayin’ he’s the easiest to get along with --” Bucky raised his hands in mock surrender. “But it didn’t hurt having him helping out. This all supposing, by the way, that I know anything about what I’m talkin’ about right now. Still not completely convinced that I’m not cracking up and strapped somewhere to a chair, but you sound halfway sane. And if your name’s really Fritz or something -- well, you got the Brooklyn accent down good enough to my ears.”
Namor? Steve tilted his head, puzzled by what Bucky was telling him. This alternate universe thing was so confusing. People had all sorts of new stories that Steve didn’t really get. There were new names, and new foes. At the heart of it all, who they were was more constant than what they went through.
“My name’s not Fritz any more than yours is Michael,” he finally said plainly. “I think you sound plenty sane. Just cagey. I think you’re hiding something, but I think you’re sane.” Steve paused. The mental image of Bucky strapped to a chair somewhere was one that had haunted him for months now. What kind of friend was he for leaving Bucky to face that? He shook his head a little, trying to shake the image. “I have the accent because I was born there. Sarah and Joseph were my parents, though my dad… well, it was just me and Mom. She was a nurse.” Any of that would have been easy to learn about from records, though, or from that damn museum exhibit. “Brooklyn’s a part of me, no matter how far away I am. Or when I am. I imagine the same’s true for yours, right?”
Everything was sounding up to snuff, but there was one misstep. Cagey was right -- that last part had physically slammed a barrier down, as Bucky leaned away. His brows were furrowed. Steve knew he wasn’t a Brooklyn kid. Steve would know that. The hell with everything else because it didn’t even process that James Buchanan Barnes could have been born anywhere but out in Indiana. Facts were facts. You could uproot a kid, but the Barnes family had never lived in Brooklyn or anywhere near it. Everything Bucky knew had been thanks to Steve himself or some of the fellas at Camp Lehigh who’d grown up in one of the neighborhoods nearby.
“Someone gave you the wrong the file to study up. Nice try, but no dice. I was starting to believe you, too. And, y’know what? Maybe that out there’s real,” Bucky continued, gesturing at the sprawling acres, “but you…” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’m the confused one, pal.”
"It's not a file," Steve grumbled, exasperated with the run-around this kid was giving him, by the suspicion, and by his own ineptitude at getting him to trust him. "It's my life."
He sighed heavily. "All right. Here's what I think." He had to believe that some things would be the same. That someone hanging around a Steve would have to be another Bucky. That Natasha's instincts weren't wrong. Even though he had his best friend here, this kid was alone, and something in Steve ached. "I think that where there's a Steve, there's gotta be a Bucky, and that's why I'm out here with you. I'd call you James, but we've been through that song and dance before. No point in revisiting that when you'll just insist that I've gotta stop calling you James. Am I close?"
If Steve was looking to gauge a reaction, he wouldn’t have gotten much in the few seconds immediately after. Everyone else -- save for his sister -- had only ever known him as Bucky. Half the time, people were shocked to find out that the birth certificate even had another name on it in front of Buchanan.
Slowly, though, that clenched jaw muscle gave some slack. It was exhausting fighting people at every turn, and there was just no way that story of a first meeting could be whipped up on the spot. In all his polished ability to lie through a smile, even Bucky himself had to admit that it was a cinching, if not closing, argument.
Bucky crossed his arms. There was a small shrug. “Ain’t far,” he casually answered. Then, “You’re still shorter than the guy I know.” And, after another beat, with a half-hearted point at Steve’s chest, “And if you even think about calling me James…”
"What'll you do, James? Beat me up?" Now that they'd had a breakthrough, Steve was relaxed, both in his body language and in the teasing tone of his voice. He had always challenged Bucky in a way he didn't with other people, poking at him, teasing him. They were practically brothers after everything; the only time Steve stopped was when Bucky didn't know who he was. He wasn't about to let a young version of his best friend off the hook that easily.
He dropped the laughter and the jokes after a moment. "Listen - I know I'm not exactly the guy you know. I know you're not my Bucky either. But what's inside, it can't be that different. Maybe we've been through different things, maybe we've seen different things, but at the end of the day, I'm still Steve and you're still Bucky. That's gotta count for something, right?"
“I can take you,” Bucky flung back, not even pausing for a second. “Wipe that shit-eating grin right off that face if you wanna try me, Rogers.” And, strangely enough, using that name didn’t feel as much an ill-fit as Bucky had thought it would. As long as he didn’t overthink this, at least.
“And.” Another pointed finger at Steve’s chest. “Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just ‘cause you’re getting all sappy on me. Knock that off. I came out here to clear my head, not sit through another patent-pending Captain America speech.” Still, there was a glimpse of a grin beneath Bucky’s otherwise unyielding expression.
That phantom smile fell off, though, the moment Bucky looked out over the resting grounds they were currently seated within. This wasn’t really the place for smiles or kidding around. One small discovery that maybe he had a friend in this place wasn’t going to stamp out the fact that the reality of this world was cruel and grim. Without another word, Bucky shoved himself to his feet. Not here. There were plenty of places to meet a friend, but it shouldn’t have to be in a graveyard. “But maybe you can give me one on the way back.”
Following Bucky's gaze, Steve's expression sobered, too. He would have loved a chance to explore the area in depth, and spend time quietly honoring those that had come before, but they should probably head on back. They were miles from Mount Weather as it was; they probably didn't have a whole lot more time to waste here.
He stood as well and picked up his pack and sent a fond ankle Bucky's way. "Don't worry, I have plenty of speeches where that came from. Apparently it's something of a natural talent. You can ask my Bucky yourself when we're back. Or - well, anyone."
They had a good 40-something miles to go, Bucky figured. It would be enough time to talk and get a better grasp of everything. If he decided halfway back that he really wasn’t convinced, then he could take it from there. In the meanwhile...
“Oh, great. Always was a fan of myself -- can’t wait to meet me,” Bucky offered, pulling a slight bow to grab the circular shield off the ground and fling it across the open space towards the other man. “Keep up, Rogers.”