Chapter Text
Steve, 2026
Steve grumbles to himself, holding his shield by the edge to tear it, gorily, from the chest of one of the somehow both slimy and armored aliens. It’s like somebody decided armadillos weren’t good enough at survival and so they added on slimy tentacles from squids and snapping jaws from Jaws as well as just straight up from everyone’s worst nightmares… at least they aren’t too fast, nor do they have thickly plated chests and… stomachs? Under bellies? It makes them easy to gut.
The only reason he’s grumbling about this little expedition and not fully focused on fileting the infiltrators - and tearing them up with a grimace - is because there’s none too many of them. They can’t do too much damage all on their own thanks to the fact that they can’t seem to work together all that well (other than the screams they let out when injured calling others over); mostly they’ve just terrorized people without killing and just ruining people's things instead- cars, lawns, storefronts, insurance policies, the works.
The group of them, the creatures, terrorizing downtown slipped through a quickly fixed rip in the timelines that made Strange drop his fork, mid-morning meal, and call to the cloak. Dramatically walking off to do… something. Steve doesn’t really get all the magic that he does, if he’s being honest. Although, before leaving Strange had confided in him to tell him to have the rest of the team, those that weren’t playing politics on Capitol Hill or weren’t busy with their own mission (or off world), on the ready. Team a.k.a one still very sleepy Sam Wilson and one half asleep, tightly curled cat-napping Natasha and one injured Clint, awake because when he's supposed to be resting is when he actually wants to be working. Clint was a no go though; too injured for once. Not just covered in imaginative band-aids.
Now though, the alien goes down in front of him, twitching and slobbering. Steve, without thinking too hard about it, peels the handgun Nat insists he carry - just in case - out of it’s holster on his hip. Shooting the thing in the head with a wince. Both because of the crushed bug underfoot sound and the overwhelming sound of the shot. He’s never understood how Bucky just automatically adjusted to having the serum and still being a sniper. Even still, he’s not the best shot. The sound is so fucking loud that he startles and shuts his eyes every time. He’s only good at point blank range shots. Bucky makes fun of him for it relentlessly.
Swinging his head up to look for the next with scouring eyes, Strange’s voice crackles through the com he’s wearing, hooked into his ear, “incoming!”
Whipping himself around to check what he's got his back to, Steve’s heart races in his chest, expecting to be flying kicked or knocked into the side of the building he’s near by some blast or some shit like it means when Tony says it, a little too late on purpose if he knows it’s not deadly because now it’s an inside joke, but…
He’s alone.
They all started out circled up, Sam circling overhead, and spread out from there. Cleaning the area as they went so the last of the battle, when they were most tired, would be the easiest. So now, he can’t see Strange, nor Nat. Though… didn’t he just see Sam dive bombing down? A little bit ago?
“Dr.!” Natasha comes in over the coms, the sound of her pistols following “-it’d be nice to know what the hell incoming is?”
An alien scales over a car making an unappealing sound that should have goosebumps rising over his skin and his flight instinct kicking in- if his Mom’s example, the military, and the time he’s spent as an Avenger didn’t beat it out of him. All he’s got now, between the two, is fight.
He advances, shoving his gun back and pulling his shield arm in closer. Eying up the most vulnerable place to land his first strike.
“I-” the doctor pauses, amusingly perfectly timed with the creature lunging forward. Steve shoves all of his weight and strength against the shield, sending the thing flying back away from him. It lands and stays stunned for a moment. Then it gets up. He continues, “I foresaw a slip in the timelines in regard to our line specifically. Who or what…” he sighs, there’s another bug being squished sound, “I don’t know,” Steve can’t blame him, he imagines it’s very distracting, avenging and trying to predict the future all at once. “Is there anything-”
Steve kicks the nearest leg on the creature. He hears armor or bone or something crack. It shrieks. In the divot he’s just made, he crushes his shield farther in. It shrieks louder, the leg beginning to ooze disgustingly. More of that fucking slime or whatever. Trying to scramble away, Steve steals a moment to wildly scan around filling in the trailed off bits in his mind anything out of the ordinary and-
Oh, what the fuck?
Steve slumps as much as he can in the middle of combat. Keeping his eyes on what he’s spotted and blindly striking out against the creature. It hisses. Yelps.
Not again.
“BUCKY!?” He shouts, throat dry, over the chaos of the remaining aliens wrecking cars and glass and metal and sirens and dogs barking and screams and everything else that’s wailing.
“Steve-” Sam’s voice crackles through the coms too, amongst the sound of wind. There’s a tone in it that Steve can’t place, maybe like he thinks he’s hallucinating and is extremely concerned but also like he can’t help but laugh a little at the deja vu. Like he’s thinking man, not this shit again. Fuck that.
Either way, it doesn’t matter, the blonde hardly hears him because he’s running- fucking sprinting as fast as he can, through the chaos of the battle they’re winning currently. Not that it matters that they’re winning or losing because Bucky.
That’s fucking Bucky.
That’s Bucky. On top of a car. Dropped there on his ass, looking around terrified because that’s not his Bucky. Well. It’s one of his Bucky’s. From years ago.
It’s Bucky looking as charming and mouth watering as he did on the night before he shipped out in 1943. Clad in deep green, waist pinched in by that wonderful belt, cap tipped just right on his head to accentuate the smirking pout of his pretty mouth.
The creature behind him - the one he’d been in the middle of beating to death before it got him - decides it doesn’t like him having his back turned to it and limps after him. Scuttling disturbingly over roughened asphalt. Making a low creaking noise that raises the hairs on the back of his neck. Suddenly he feels like the prey. It won’t stop him though, fire still singes his veins, unreasoned anger flaring inside him at the thought of that Bucky being hurt, or hell, even at the thought that that Bucky might be perverted by trauma of war.
Bucky yelps, high and terrified, eyes locked on the alien, as he grabs him. Curling his shield-holding arm around him, protecting him, first and foremost, and pulling him down from the overturned car. Slamming them against the building it’s in front of, providing the best shelter around, under the alcove of the front entrance.
“Bucky-” Steve says again, unsure of what else he possibly could say, blocking him in and bashing the alien in front of them. It’s injured cries have gathered two more, crowding up around them. Fuck. The only thing that’s saving him right now is that this isn’t the shit show that was the first battle he had after coming out of the ice. It’s just bad enough that they need all four of them on deck. Using their eyes and ears and hands-
Steve nearly gags, finding the perfect soft spot in one of them to punch through their wriggly yet tough body.
With a single-minded focus, he gets to slicing and dicing.
Punching and kicking.
Blocking and throwing the shield.
“Steve! Bucky? WHAT?!” Sam’s frustrated voice finally breaks through his raging focus, trying to piece together what’s happening as he covers the sky. Bouncing between knocking the aliens down when they try to climb up buildings and helping whoever needs assistance the most.
“I found incoming!” He shouts back. He knows he doesn’t need to shout but fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Frustration from the level of unfairness that the universe is throwing at him- really at Bucky, courses through him. And looking over his shoulder, he makes sure Bucky is still safe.
He is.
He’s just- just looking terrified as all hell.
Strange, over the coms, makes a noise of consideration; a slightly annoyed sounding noise of consideration, so Steve clarifies-
“Incoming is Bucky from 1943. The slip dropped him right in front of me on top of an overturned taxi, my four o’ clock. I’ve got him blocked in behind me. Against a building. It’s not too bad, I think I’ve got the aliens here covered so long as-”
“STEVE?” Bucky finally pieces the dots together, shouting in the middle of his status report. He sounds perfectly positioned between absolute heart-stopping panic and awe.
Again, over his shoulder, he throws a look back at Bucky. He’s scrambling to his feet. “No!” He barks. Bucky startles, freezing in place. He's shaking. Steve has to fight to not do the same, not freeze and stare. He’s so young. “No, I mean-” he tosses his shield, ricocheting it off of one of the armored parts of one of the two remaining creatures to strike the other creature and then send it flying back at himself. Catch. “Yeah, Bucky. It’s me. It’s Steve. I just-” throw. Catch “-stay down! It’s not safe!”
“Steve?” Bucky’s voice is all but a confused and terrified filament of sound, wrapped in what he can tell is his I’m-trying-to-sound-grown voice. Not like I'm a little kid cowering under the bed.
A terribly strong tug from invisible hands grabs at his waist, pulling him back towards this Bucky. Leaving him off center with the need to physically have him. To make sure he’s solid and in one piece. Without a scratch on him. No, he sternly tells himself, throwing everything he has into tearing the aliens in front of him apart. The sooner this is over, the better.
Throw. Punch. “Bucky, listen to me-” catch. Punch. Kick. Throw. “I know this doesn’t make-” breathe. Kick. Kick. Throw. “Any sense, but-” catch “-you trust me right?”
He looks over his shoulder. Bucky is sitting down, legs curled up to his chest, his hands drawn up to his shoulders, almost to his ears, instinctively covering himself as much as he can. Still, the other man manages to find his eyes. He nods, eyes locked on his. For once, Steve is glad he lost the cowl somewhere between being on the run and going to space and losing his Bucky and then getting him back again. It’s a hell of a lot easier to trust somebody when you can see all of their face. Steve nods back quickly, whipping back into the action though, moving through the fight on auto pilot and continuing to talk around- through his fighting, pulling out his handgun. And using in with his shield before long because fuck this.
“You were dropped through a time rip on accident. It’s 2026, you- you were just shipping out-” he can only tell by that heartthrob of a dress uniform, he only got to wear it a few times, “so it would’ve been 1943. I- the, uh, the, fuck- these things are also from a time… time thing. Dr. Strange would say this better. But. Whatever. We don’t, don’t know what else dropped through. But- ugh. It happens now. In the time we’re in. In the time I live in. It’s too difficult to explain but it happens. We can send you back. But-”
“Steve.” Bucky sounds beyond terror now, like he might start crying any second.
He takes all his desperate desire to hug and cuddle this younger Bucky out in the form of violence, kicking the last, nearly untouched, alien in the chest. It goes flying back over the taxi only to crawl back after a moment of stunned, eerie silence with it’s slimy, unsettling jaws gaped.
“It’s gonna be okay.” He stops to grunt and throw his shield through an alien, slicing it in half to bounce off of the turned over car behind it, ricocheting back to him. Bucky chokes behind him, shocked. “just- just stay where you are. I got you. The time, time thing- based on multiverse theory and time travel that we developed to stop our world from collapsing left us with what we call ‘slips’. We can fix them if they don’t fix themselves.”
“Steve you- you’re… eighty three years-” Bucky moans aloud. Disturbed.
Steve barely chokes down a laugh. Trust Bucky to be doing math in a life or death situation. “Don’t worry about the math, pal,” Steve is never going to hear the sound of a big bug being crushed the same way, “I may be one hundred and eight, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
“I- you, you- wha?” Bucky stumbles and stutters behind him, now sounding louder because-
Oh, shit. All the creatures around them are dead.
Lying in bits and pieces, oozing and sizzling, baking in the sun on the asphalt. If they weren’t such dicks, Steve would feel bad for what he’s just done… he kind of still does anyway. There’s no time to think of it though, there’s only time to whirl around to Bucky. Facing him and vomiting out word after word, Steve only half-listens to what he himself is saying, trying to police himself from giving away anything about Bucky’s history (future for this Bucky) if possible. He starts by telling him that he’s alive in the future too and they’re still… still the way they were in the forties. Bucky’s eyes go wide as saucers, fine china saucers because, god, he forgot how good his eyes look when he’s in army green. Then he mentions that they’re alive and in the… shape that they are, in size and lacking age, because of part of their time in the military.
“Bullshit, Rogers.” Bucky’s voice is so self-assured all of the sudden, not sounding like a terrified kid, that it makes Steve freeze for a second. “Joining the military wouldn’t fix your bum ticker nor make you shoot up like a fuckin’ tank.” His eyes drag all over him, getting stuck on the shield, held in his hands, his hands, his forearms, and his chest and face particularly.
The intrusive thought of you have no idea about tanks yet shakes Steve to the core. He blinks. The words, “there were some other things than just boot-camp involved,” fall from his lips. Bucky’s head tilts to the side, eyes growing more curious but no less confused. Sighing, Steve bites the bullet, scanning the scene behind him again before crouching down in front of him as if that'll make him feel better or it'll make the aliens stay away. Gently he says, “they called it the super soldier serum. I got it first, you got some later. It made me… a lot bigger, you less so.” A smile finds its way to his mouth, “it’s not like you’re a giant in the future or anything… I-” swallowing his knowledge that’s not a vague stroke of their future. “I’m not sick anymore. Super strength, super speed, super stamina and agility and, like, durability. The idea was peak human performance, emphasizing everything that was already in me. You- yours…” he can’t bring himself to lie to him. “Yours was mostly the same.”
Bucky’s mouth opens and shuts.
He adds, “sorry I can’t tell you all of it. I-” shaking his head, Steve murmurs, “butterfly effect,” even though he knows that saying wasn’t in their time.
Natasha cuts in through the coms, voice crackling and cracking the oddly peaceful moment they’re having in the middle of the fight. The eye of the storm. “If you’re done with your speech. I could use some help over here, since it seems like you’re all talk and not even breathing hard anymore, Mr. Senior Citizen.” Steve can hear the smirk in her voice, even as she’s trying to sound bored. “Put your incoming in the helicarrier and come join me.”
“Good plan,” he says for her benefit, talking through the com, then talking to Bucky in front of him, “c’mon- I’ll take you somewhere safer.”
Bucky looks weary.
Steve looks him dead in the eyes, imagining what he looks like to this innocent version of Bucky. Grown out hair that’s hardly blonde anymore except for the longer parts where it’s sun-bleached. A beard. Wrinkles he doesn’t remember. Brooklyn drawl softened by years and years of being other places but the isolated, poor streets of their hometown. A thicker jaw- thicker body. A body clad in dirty navy blue, ripped and rolled up from wear and tear (between everything from now from the end of the world… suit making hasn’t been the top priority. Besides… Steve isn’t sure he wants the red white and blue anymore. It needs an update, some young blood.) A shield with the flag he’s sworn to protect and go to war for but doesn’t care for all that much, it’s just cloth and those in the government that swore to uphold its people didn’t. Not during the depression. And still struggling to do such a thing afterwards. Still, Steve’s lips shape the words, “you trust me, don’t you?” as he stands, reaching down, palms up, for him.
“Always.” The younger man breathes, looking all too awed by him.
His heart twists painfully in his chest, “I promise you can trust me always. C’mon, lets get outta here.”
“Steve,” Sam takes him by the shoulders, taller than him now because of the incline of the ramp up to the helicarrier (he got finished before Natasha and himself did, so he’s been guarding Bucky, just in case), “take your boy home.” He tips his head back over his shoulder, where Bucky is sitting, still incredibly wide eyed. “We’ll cover clean up and debrief.”
“Sam-” Steve argues, torn between helping his team and helping his… not his Bucky. Words spill out of his mouth anyway, playing for both sides, “it’s not even dangerous anymore! Other than the fires here and there and they’re already being put out. And it’s not like anyone would notice that, that- that’s Bucky from 1943. There are cars to flip over and pieces of concrete to pick up from the, the buildings and street. I could do a lot of it myself! And it’s not like Wanda is here, you guys could use-”
“Steve-” Sam wagers.
“Sam, c’mon. We gotta do a debrief too. Not just clean up. And I’m sure there’s people hurt out there-”
“Steve.” His voice is firm, calmer to Steve’s calm. Even if he doesn’t feel calm. Not between the debacle of helping the masses or helping Bucky.
“But-”
“Nope. Nope. Nope.” Sam steals the silent air away from him, crossing his arms over his chest, “you’re gonna go home or I’m gonna tell Fury that Bucky Jr.-”
Bucky seems to finally find a little bit of footing, weakly piping up, “hey! I’m not-”
They both turn to look him over, unimpressed with his input. His tongue stops in its tracks. Giving them this disarming kicked puppy look. A pang of guilt kicks Steve in the heart.
Still, if he weren’t in this situation and instead just witnessing it… that’d be pretty fucking funny. The fact that the shit they always give each other is apparently dependent on neither the time nor the age. That good ol’ Barnes and Wilson teasing rift. But he is in the situation, and so, the only thing hearing Bucky’s voice does is make his feet move. Around Sam’s side to Bucky’s. Grabbing his wrist, gentle as he possibly can be - his head painfully wound around the fact that he could shatter all the bones in his body with little more than a flick of his wrist if he doesn’t keep his super strength in check - with a shake of his head, telling him it’s not worth it, then grumbling to Sam, “Fury’s not our boss anymore. In case you forgot.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he rolls his eyes, “but- Fury still has most of the connections and he still can get angry, can’t he?”
“Fine.” Steve says, frowning. Then to Bucky, softer than he should be to not make Bucky upset for treating him differently, but he can’t help himself, “c’mon, Buck. Let's get you… home. I promise we’ll get you back to your time but-” Steve’s voice cracks. Thickly, he swallows. There’s a river of yearning inside him. Selfishly, he’s tempted to keep this Bucky here. With him. Where HYDRA will never corrupt him, never tear flesh from his body and replace it with metal, where his humanity will never be perverted into machinery, where he could be kept safe and happy.
Bucky places his unending pause, seemingly not his angst though, piping up with, “home as in, where you live. Here, in this time, right?”
“Yeah.” Steve nods at the floor, unable to take that pretty pale blue gaze for a moment, fresh and clear like a far-out meadow lake that’s yet to be touched by mankind, unpolluted. “That.”