fossilised | For Steve

Erskine had been watching Rogers very closely throughout all of this. He had stood up for his friend without a moment hesitation, he was wanting to be a part of the war effort no matter if his role was only to lay on the line, he was exactly the sort of man that Project Rebirth needed. A weak man, who knew the value of strength and would never abuse it.

"On the contrary, he is my candidate."

"What?" The general whirled around to face Erskine. "You can't be serious, doctor. I've got a lot of good men out there, ones who have excelled at the training and always follow orders, this-- this joke will never be a soldier."

"I've made my decision, General, he will be the candidate for Project Rebirth. I will contact Mr. Stark at the end of the week and make the arrangements." He could have no idea that the end of the week would bring about a far different conclusion.

The General exhaled a disgusted noise. "Rogers, I swear to our Almighty God, if you fail to keep up this week then you'll be out, no matter what the doctor says. And Barnes, follow me, you're going into solitary. You hurt two men and can't be trusted in these barracks, and your goddamn Russian needs talking about."

Being nominated for Project Rebirth by the creator of it after only a day left Strve feeling relieved, right up until the General opened his mouth again. Steve blinked, but he didn't move. They could easily move him if they wanted to get to Bucky, but that wasn't the point. Steve needed to protect the only person in his life that mattered... So he could go and make sure that he never became this broken shell of a man who barely remembered their lives together.

Each time Bucky looked at him blankly or failed to smile or seemed like his mind was in pieces, it was like being forced to do those push ups. It was a trial but something worthwhile. And Steve would never abandon Bucky.

"He's not a Soviet operative," Steve said. "He's... My partner. He's already been trained, and is more of a soldier in this army then I might ever be, but he's here to help me through it. We have information on the movement of HYDRA in Europe." There he was, trying to spin the tale so it sounded good without giving away how little he knew. "If you want to keep him in isolation, I'll stay with him. We'll stay together and train together. And if you're in desperate need of translation-- then maybe we can help with that. But we are both good Americans trying to serve this country."

"You're a grown ass man, son, you don't need anyone to hold your hand and 'help you through it'. What do you think this is, the army or the Women's Knitting Circle?"

The General couldn't help exploding. There was a limit to how much insubordination he could take, and how much leeway he was willing to give. He had already given a lot, both of these men had a lot of slack cut, but that wasn't going to fly any more. Barnes had injured two men, one who had a dislocated shoulder and the other who had a severe concussion.

"Barnes, solitary confinement. Rogers, show me one good reason why at the end of the week I don't just send you home. Now, Barnes."

Bucky looked down at Steve with a hollow sort of hopelessness, but he did step away from his friend without any antagonistic behaviour. He needed to make sure Steve didn't wreck all his chances over this.

Steve felt as if he had failed, watching Bucky, defeated, slink away. He was left alone in the barrack for some time before the others returned and he washed himself up and changed out his pillow for Bucky's and tried not to feel as if he had made a huge mistake coming here. Bucky had only asked for two things since coming home from a war decades in the future. He didn't want to hurt anyone else and he wanted to stay with Steve.

Steve should have been happy with that. The Allies didn't need him here. They could do just fine. Thst serum would make someone else Captain America. Steve didn't sleep that night, listening to the unease of the men to his left and right, to the one above him, and morning came too quickly. They all ate together, leaving Steve at the end of the table, silent but trying not to notice that he had been put on the outside. That was just how he lived his life anyway. He needed to try harder now. For Bucky. The rest didn't matter.

After breakfast came running. And the obstacle course. And the wall. There was lunch and then more running. And shooting practice. And sit ups. So many sit ups.

He was dead tired by the end of the night and morning came much too fast.

Maybe Steve wasn't the fastest over the wall, or the best at sit ups, or the most accurate shot. But he had the most grit and perseverance of any of the men there, and it didn't go unnoticed. Perhaps he had been put on the outside, but none of the men training for Project Rebirth were bad guys, most of them just followed the pack, and they respected him for trying. Enough that on the second day they sat with him at breakfast, and on the third day they even offered one or two words of encouragement.

It was easier for them without Barnes there. He was unnerving, strong in a way nobody should be strong, and too much of a reminder of what war could do to people even if they didn't want to quite admit that was what it was.

Four days went by, and then on the fifth morning Agent Carter stood in front of them as they were all eating their breakfasts.

"Men," she said, voice loud and clear. "The war is over. Thanks to intelligence gathered a few days ago, a covert strike was led into the heart of the Nazi occupation and broke their forces late last night. A surrender was announced this morning, April 4th, 1943."

History changed. Not that any of them would know it.

"As a consequence, the government are no longer funding Project Rebirth, and you are all free to remain enlisted during peacetime or take your leave. Private Rogers, a word?"

The war was over. Steve had no idea that it was over early or that circumstances were different from the last time. All he thought about was the Bucky overseas, the one that he was supposed to save. The one he hadn't heard from in almost two weeks and whose status was unclear. He thought, too, of the Bucky in solitary. He thought about what he would need to do to keep him safe as the other man cheered for the war to have ended and still grumbled that they didn't get their chance to see it.

Steve stood almost mechanically. He walked toward Agent Carter and only looked up at her face when it became impossible for him to have a conversation otherwise.

"Where's Bucky? I think it's probably time that we go home," he started with. They would have to wait to see about the other Bucky as men started filing back home.

She drew him off into a private room and gestured to one of the two chairs, taking a seat in the other and crossing her legs with the whisper smooth sound of her nylons rubbing together. Nylons were a luxury, but being an Agent did have some perks.

"I'm sorry to tell you that we've had a telegram from a Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, they say to tell you that James has died in action."

Suspicious, another Barnes, but she kept it to herself under a veneer of professionalism.

"And that Dr. Erskine still wishes to pursue Project Rebirth with you, but without government funding the estimated time of completion is another three to five years."

Having run his legs off and been laid out with his muscles refusing to budge him, this news was the first to signal an asthma attack since he and Bucky had arrived here. He pressed his hands to his knees and leaned forward, not bothering to even try to suck in a breath until his lungs acted against his wishes. He wheezed first and gasped a moment later, bent over fully now.

There were no tears for the death of his best friend becsuse he'd heard this before. 'They thought I was dead but they were wrong.'

"No," he wheezed. "He's not. He's being held in-- I need to get Bucky-- Where--"

His hands flew to his chest as he stood up a little too quickly, feeling dizzy and closed on. It didn't help that his airways had all but closed up. Peggy was quick on the call and Erskine himself administered the inhalant as Steve laid on the floor with his head in Peggy's lap. It was undignified. It was untrue, what they said.

Bucky couldn't be dead. He couldn't.

It was sad, but it was not the first time that Peggy had seen friends and family fall apart at the news. The death of a loved one was always hard and, with war raging, people had known that the shadow of mortality hung ever more present above them. But they needed to continue on, the war had been won, it was a time for celebration.

"I'm sorry, but Sergeant Barnes' body was recovered from a HYDRA base in Italy, he is definitely dead. I'll have someone fetch Private Barnes from solitary confinement for you."

They had changed history.

This Bucky never made it out of his first capture. Captain America had not come for him, the Howling Commandos, or what would have been them, were all slaughtered when the Nazis realised that defeat was coming.

Steve couldn't cry, even after his treatment. He was moved from the floor, from Peggy's lap, to the medical building and was just laying there when Bucky was escorted to him. Just laying there, just thinking. He hadn't given up. He intended to be back in Brooklyn when the body was returned to the family, he intended to see it for himself.

History had been changed the day that Bucky went off to war with the anamolies that eventually brought this Bucky back to him, irrevocably changed from the sweet man that had saluted him upon their parting, girl on Bucky's arm and smile on his face. He'd always remember him like that. His best friend with his whole life in front of him, promise of a family and lots of kids for Steve to babysit on date nights with the wife--

He closed his eyes when Bucky came in.

"They tell me he's dead. But we still have three weeks... We should have had three weeks. What did I do wrong? How do we fix it?"

Death wasn't even a reason for Steve to give up.

Bucky looked like a shadow of the man he had been four days back. There were dark circles under his eyes and his every movement was stiff as though he had been stood at attention for the entire time and had forgotten how to relax anything. But it didn't matter, because he was finally back with his handle-- with Steve again, with soothing blond hair and blue eyes, with someone who cared about him...

Ah.

He flinched as if he had been struck at Steve's first words to him, though that was the only outward reaction to how much his world crumbled all of a sudden. Of course. He was not Bucky, not really Steve's Buck, he was just a means to get to him. This had all been about getting to the other one, and then what? They couldn't exist in the same space it would be too painful, too awkward, and Steve would have his best friend back.

He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing painfully in his throat, before he managed to respond.

"I don't know," he said, voice level. "I will find a way to fix it."

Not Bucky. Stupid of him to think he could ever be more than he was, just a tool to get to another end goal.

It was the sound of that voice, which was Bucky's but not Bucky's, that finally made the tears come. Steve cried into his arm as soundlessly as possible, but with lungs like his, there was no such thing as soundless. Each breath rattled. Each inhale was like a baby's rattle and each exhale was wet.

"You came all the way back here and I wasn't able to do anything for you," he offered, "I'm so sorry, Bucky." He'd failed the man twice over. Both times around now. And what was he doing? Laying here and weeping? He wasn't a child who had lost his mother. Bucky was everything to him, but there was nothing left for Steve to do for him if he was, truly, gone.

He mopped up his tears with his sleeve, embarrassed that Bucky had to see him this way, and sat up, still in uniform, his shirt open and dog tags catching the light.

"Can we go home, Buck?"

"Don't call me that."

It hurt, and it was stupid that it hurt. Why should it matter to him? He had always known he wasn't right any more, he had seen it in the eyes of the Steve of his time, and now he heard it in the hollow aching sobs of this Steve.

"I told you, I'll fix it, I'll find your Buck."

There was just the faintest trace of bitterness on 'your'. He maintained his position at attention at the side of the bed, looking down at Steve impassively.

"Go home, I'll send him to you."

If Bucky thought he was being noble-- He wasn't. Steve wasn't prepared to hear the bitterness and the jealousy in Bucky's voice, he wasn't even sure how to feel about it. All he did know what that he couldn't give up the fight. It wasn't in his nature anyway. His mouth opened and it closed before he struggled for a moment to stand. He pathetically came up to Bucky's shoulder but that didn't mean he was going to back down on this.

"You'll send him to me? No. We do this together. Every time we're apart, something bad happens. I'm not letting it happen again." He didn't think he could stomach addressing the jealousy. It made him want something terrible, it made him suddenly sure that he could accept this veering off of course. There was a flicker of that in his eyes and while the Asset was trained to note the look, Steve wasn't trained to do anything. He just did what he felt. And when he didn't know how he felt, he tried to do too much.

Bucky's words, the promise to send a dead man home, did worry Steve. Were they lying? Was Bucky alive?

He couldn't express those questions now when this man was hurting, thinking he was unwanted.

"Listen to me, pal. You, as much as any other, are my Buck. And I'm your Steve. Even if I'm not strong and I'm not Captain America, even if I'm just some scrawny kid from your past that let you down-- I'm still yours. And you're still mind. To the end of the line. That's just how it will always be. So stop this. We do it together or not at all."

Bucky didn't reach out to Steve, even though the other man was never going to be any physical threat to him, at the moment it seemed like touching him would burn like the sun. He shone, radiant and bright, and Bucky felt himself sink further into the mire of his own mind. He shook his head, bad at expressing this sort of thing, but needing to try.

"No."

Well, that was a start.

"If we find him, when we find him, you won't need-- you'll have one that's-- human." He still wasn't sure all the time that this was what he was, he still felt like a weapon for more than half the time. "I can't be around him, it's too--" Weird. Surely Steve understood, he wouldn't want to stand beside the Captain America version of himself, would he? He wouldn't want to have all his flaws highlighted by the constant presence of everything he should be.

He scrubbed at his face.

"You want him, it was all for-- him. I'll find him."

Every person that Steve stood beside highlighted his flaws. No one did so more than Bucky and Steve loved him with his whole heart and was forever and entirely loyal to him. Even the Bucky that once was outshined him. Steve never minded. Bucky was the radiant one. Bucky was the one with the kind heart and the good looks and the athleticism. He had a lot of friends. He was good to everyone. So even if Steve as he was now stood beside the Steve that he could have been, he would have felt no different. It took more than strength and power, which was a very good thing because Steve didn't have either.

What he did have was someone he loved standing in front of him, crumbling.

"The Bucky that went to war never needed me," Steve pointed out. "I don't think it was because he-- you-- felt sorry for me. But if I were gone, he'd be all right. I don't want to save him because I need him or I want him, pal. I want to save him because I.... Because he would do the same for me. He's got a chance to make people happy, which I have a real bad feeling was stolen from you. This isn't about a choice. Or about wanting someone. Because if I had to chose, I'd chose you to stay with. And you already said that you want to stay with me. Ah man, this is sounding like some sort of inappropriate love poem."

Steve stuck his hand out. What was more manly than a shake?

"We save him. We send him home. And then we come back here together. And if you think the world still needs Captain America, we work with the Doctor here and Agent Carter, and we finish the program. Me. And you. What I told the General a few days ago was true, pal. I can't do any of this without you."

It was this, the heart and the true sense of selflessness, which was why Steve would always be the hero even if he didn't see it in himself. It was why he would always be the one that Bucky would end up following, not the other way around, and it was within that heart that the salvation for this Bucky might just be found.

His eyes widened almost comically wide, shock seeping through him like a bucket of cold water dumped on his head. But then he smiled. Not a big smile, not a grin, but an actual honest to god quirk of his lips upwards, and his eyes thawed. He reached past the handshake to cup his hand behind Steve's neck, a gesture more muscle memory than real memory.

"I won't leave your side."

He had been chosen, it was the least he could do.

"I'll take you to see-- who they brought back. If it's not him, we'll go and find him, I promise."

Both of them.

Steve wasn't sure how to feel with that touch so he told himself not to feel anything and instead smiled right back at his best friend. He hadn't been selfless, not that he thought at least, because his own happiness was always just bundled up with being allowed to be near Bucky. And if he could truly help the man, who never needed anything from him? Well, that was all the better.

Seeing as he had nothing left to do with his hand, Steve went for the hug instead. They were alone so it didn't matter, and that metal arm didn't bother him at all. This felt as good, and conflicting, as sleeping in Bucky's arms had been.

Erskine wanted to double check Steve's contact information for when Project Rebirth could be back online and made Bucky promise to keep training Steve in the meantime. They didn't see the General or Agent Carter before leaving, though, not that Steve really minded.

"We have to return the car," the blond pointed out as he helped Bucky remove the sticks and twigs from the hood of the one they had stashed almost a week before. "With gas money." He wasn't letting Bucky off the hook.

Bucky raised an eyebrow, but he did scribble a note that just said: Thanks for the loan, and then put a ten dollar bill folded up with it on the dashboard, enough for a whole year of gas money. He even made sure to park it back in the same spot they took it from.

He did not go with Steve to the Barnes house, that was just a bad idea. Instead, he went back to Steve's drafty little tenement and waited for him like a dog waiting for a master to come back to him.

It would not be a good visit for Steve.

The family had received Bucky's body, one of the few that made it home, and Steve was allowed to see him in his casket. He was definitely Bucky and definitely dead, he looked at peace, though, and his Ma had dressed him in his best suit ready for burial. They told him it would be next Tuesday.

It had been hard. With Bucky laid out like that in the front room, his medals and his dog tags and photos of him everywhere, Steve had barely been able to keep it together. Especially when his sister looked at him with dark circles under her eyes and muttered, in passing, how it felt to kill everyone that loved him.

Steve didn't answer her but he didn't need to. It felt like he had a mark on his chest. First his father, then his mother, and now Bucky. They were all preceding him into the ground. How? He was the sick one. He was the one that nearly died every winter that he lived lived to see. It was all a cruel joke.

Steve was left alone with the body after Bucky's mother fainted when the Army came to present her with the flag for the casket. Steve didn't say a word to the body, he just looked at him for a long time and then carefully took his hand to roll up his sleeve. The arm that Bucky lost in the train was also the arm with the three freckles by the elbow joint that looked like Orion's Belt. Boom-boom-boom, straight up.

It would tell him definitively that this was Bucky Barnes. Howling Commando. Honor to his country.

Or if, somehow, this could be an imposter. Steve couldn't help himself. He needed to know if he and his Bucky had to move on or if there was still more to do.

Unfortunately for Steve's heart, the freckles at this corpse's elbow told him that this was, undoubtedly, Bucky Barnes. No impostor. It was just the sad fact that history had been changed and Steve hadn't been at the right place or the right time. But it was probably for the better for Bucky, if he had known what it was his destiny to become then he would never have wanted to live to hurt all those people.

Bucky's mother, still wan and pale from her fainting fit, murmured to him that he was welcome in the family pew at the service but that they would like to be alone with their son now. They were all very proud of Bucky, it was an honour to give his life fighting for freedom, but that honour tasted bittersweet.

They didn't know, for how could they, that Steve had another Bucky in his apartment,

One very much alive and playing with Steve's charcoal and paper. He couldn't draw much, he had never been the artist that Steve had been, but he filled page after page with just eyes. Dark, serious, intense eyes under sharp brows. His first handler, the one who haunted his dreams the most.

It was cold that night, as cold as it had been the night that Bucky had arrived at his bedside to stare down at him as he slept, shivering. Steve wasn't sure what to feel, for while he was disappointed in himself for letting his best friend down, someone else was waiting for him. Someone else that needed him was a few blocks away in an old apartment with very poor heating, who he really shouldn't have been away from.

That didn't mean that Steve hadn't almost grasp at Bucky's hand as he laid there in his simple wooden box with a flag draped over half of it. It didn't mean that he didn't think about turning around halfway home to go back and sob like.a child over the last person on earth that truth knew him.

Steve's eyes were red when he opened his door, keys shaking less from emotion than the cold. He could see the back of Bucky's head as he slipped those keys onto the small glass bowl by the door and shut and locked it behind him. "I'm home," he said, voice an emotional wreck. He tried to pull himself together as he headed over to Bucky to look down at his art work. The paper, smudged and crude, genuinely frightened him and he lightly put his hand on a shoulder where metal met flesh. "I'm going to take a bath. It's... We don't need to worry about going to Europe. But I think we might want to find a new place to live soon. The neighborhood is small."

Bucky could see how devastated Steve was, he could recognise the grief in his face, but he had no frame of reference for how to comfort that. It was something alien to him, as so much was now, and so he just sat there and looked up at the man with a hand on his shoulder. The charcoal had stilled on the page, but he hadn't set either down.

"Washington." That was definitely a new place to live, and he didn't just suggest it at random. "Dr. Erskine sent a telegram. On the table."

It seemed like Steve's destiny wasn't quite done with him yet, and he had hope for the future if he could let himself find it. The telegram was, as most telegrams were, brief and to the point.

STEVE ROGERS STOP
THIS IS ERSKINE STOP PROJECT REBIRTH STILL CONTINUING STOP REQUESTING PRESENCE IN WASHINGTON DC FOR TESTS AND TRAINING OVER NEXT THREE YEARS STOP CANNOT PROVIDE FINANCIAL REIMBURSEMENT STOP WILL MAKE SURE TESTS TAKE PLACE ON EVENING OR WEEKEND SO JOB IS POSSIBLE STOP SEND WORD BY RETURN TELEGRAM STOP
DR ERSKINE STOP

Holding the telegram in both hands, and having never run from anything in his entire life, Steve had already made up his mind that he would go. He'd missed his chance to save Bucky, but he could still save other people. He could still be a good soldier. Wars didn't really end in a day, after all. There was a lot of cleaning up to do.

"I guess we're going to Washington. I'll reply tomorrow," Steve said softly and put the card with his key in the little bowl beside the door.

He stayed in his bath tub until the water grew too cold and dried and dressed quickly. He was huddled up in his robe when he peaked back in on Bucky. The eyes on that paper, the nightmare from days ago, and the feel of the other man against him were all very strong pros towards asking him to come to bed.

Steve swallowed back how inappropriate that might be. He could always have Bucky set up the other bed if he declined.

"Do you-- are you tired? Do you want to come to bed?"

Bucky finally set down the charcoal when Steve reappeared huddled up and slightly pink from the warm water of the bath. It was good that he had managed to have a warm bath, it would be good for his lungs, and god knows he had pushed himself far enough over the past few days that he deserved to luxuriate even if only for a half hour or so.

"Do you want me to?"

He had still only really managed to verbalise two things that he wanted - stay with Steve, and not kill anyone else - but the smaller things were harder for him. It was difficult, to feel like he might be disobeying someone who looked so much like a handler. It would be easier if Steve were to order to him to bed and sleep.

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