Steve froze. He’d been feeling around the dog’s collar, looking for a tag when he’d heard the voice; Bucky’s voice. Rogers was sure he’d recognise that anywhere, or at least he thought he was sure. Because this wasn’t the first time he’d thought he’d heard it. More than once when he’d been out on his own in New York, he was positive that he could hear Bucky saying his name, once he even thought he saw him. Steve remembered reading somewhere, as a kid, that no soldier ever escaped a war without a few ghosts, and he guessed that Bucky was his. It wasn’t guilt though, he knew that. It was hard to think about the fact that he’d survived and Barnes hadn’t; that was why it was so easy to turn the plane towards the water. Waking up in 2012, he wasn’t haunted by his friend or some sick feeling that he should have been able to save him -- he just missed him. He wanted Bucky to see the things he’d seen so they could talk about them, laugh about them. Steve knew that’s why he thought he heard him sometimes; and the disappointment always stung when he realised it was just his mind playing tricks. It never got any easier.
So he braced for it, straightened up and turned around to greet whomever it was who’d spoken. The person who wasn’t Bucky, the person who would inevitably say something else and sound nothing like the man he’d grown up with in Brooklyn. Except, when Steve looked over his shoulder the person standing in his line of sign wasn’t someone he didn’t recognise; it was him. It was Bucky.
It wasn’t often that Steve found himself at a complete loss for words. Before the serum, he’d been able to do more damage with a witty comeback than his fists and that had always been his first line of defense -- even if it wasn’t all that great at blocking an opponent’s punches. But at the moment, his mind was drawing up nothing. He didn’t take his eyes off Barnes, didn’t even blink as he turned around to face him directly. He was so afraid that he was imagining this that he didn’t want to do anything to make it stop or make his friend vanish on the dust-laced wind.