Warning, major Captain America: The Winter Soldier spoilers.



When he was small, his mother would claim that if a person were a season, he would be summer. Fiery and hotheaded and full of energy, in full bloom at all times. She told him that he should hold onto that, should thrive in it. A hand would brush through golden hair, and she would whisper that summer was a time for a life, a time for the world to celebrate. Hot and bright, a heavy presence no matter which way to look at it.

He told her that yes, mama, he will always be the summer, always be the best he could be.

He didn't mention the fear that he could not be summer if he were so weak, because the summer months were strong and solid, a visceral, physical thing that stuck to the skin of people. How then, could he be summer if he was as memorable as a bag of flour? As strong as a newborn pup who couldn't see?

Even when his mother was wilting before his eyes, yellow skin and pallid features, eyes red and rheumy through the sickness, she crooned to him and called him her summer flower, her Sun, her Star, and he let her. And when she died on a sweltering, July day, he realized, tears running down his cheeks, that summer isn't always a good thing. Summer suffocates and engulfs and takes over. Summer commands and takes and takes and takes. It builds, but it also dries. Creates droughts and heat.

Of everything he had ever seen die, Steve thinks his mother died in the worst way possible. At least in battle it's quick, sudden and violent without the need for weeks and weeks of slow-dragging sickness.

Except, of course, those deaths that weren't physical, but emotionally, as everything inside someone died.

Steve was the summer, and he would suffocate and strangle everything he ever knew.


The first time Steve wakes up, the sterile fumes and cold white of the hospital creating a dull, almost auditory drone in his subconscious, he blinks open his eyes immediately. He feels a pang of guilt at the momentary thrum of disappointment that courses through his veins at the sight of Sam Wilson sitting next to him, playing music that he doesn't know, doesn't recognize.

It's not that he isn't thrilledrelievedhappy that Sam is here, with Steve, because he is. He feels it deep in his bones, the sheer feeling of company sitting comfortably in the back of his head. Steve Rogers is not used to feeling anything but lonely in this jagged maze of technology and modernness, and such camaraderie is a blessing.

No, he feels a sorrow in his chest because for a moment, before he opened his eyes, he had the insane thought that he would be sitting there (who else has been there for me?). No metal arm glinting in the sunlight, no too-long hair that hides him. No blank eyes that don't recognize him. Just him and that smirk that managed to look both cocky and self-deprecating all in one go.

He chokes back a sob at the thought of a lean, solid figure leaning against the widow, smoke curling upwards and a lazy, slow-drawn smirk on a youthful face. He tries not to feel his soul break apart at the thought of two boys- one frail and weak, weak, weak and the other lanky and strong, strong, strong (oh, how he was wrong)- playing with small soldiers behind the apartment buildings, a thrum of longing in each of their souls, one with a wish be somebody, and one with a wish to be a good man someday.

Steve doesn't remember who was who.

"On your left." He says, and Steve has to swallow down another wave of emotions, instead glancing over and smiling at Sam, Sam who has been loyal to a fault and doesn't deserve whatever Hell Steven Rogers has brought to him, like a personal devil. Sam, who doesn't deserve anything that has happened to him, ever. But life doesn't care.

He's still drowsy, though. The nurses must have pumped in enough pain meds to knock out a horse considering he can feel the lazy, curling way his mind is working, half-clouded in a haze of emotions and words, memories and wants. His muscles don't respond correctly, either, a bit more sluggish than usual, so Steve quits attempting to sit up and just lolls his head further so he can see Sam better.

Sam is still looking at him, and Steve realizes this is the first true friend he has made since the ice, someone who trusts him unconditionally and doesn't have an alternate agenda right now, except help Steve and recover and survive.

He didn't know Sam before war, but Steve feels that something was ripped away from this man, not unlike how his wings were torn from his body by a metal arm (a red star as vibrant as blood). The war always does it, regardless of it's form, and as Steve looks across his hospital-thin mattress and looks Sam in the eye, he sees himself reflected. Sees battle-weary eyes behind a mask of confidence, sees a burning ember that floats deep in Sam's soul and keeps him afloat, alight in this mad and confusing world. An flame that wavers and floats like a candle in the wind. Lostconfuseduselesssadsadsad. Sam hides it well, but Steve knows how to look, how to regard his own eyes in the mirror. It's the same look he sees in Natasha sometimes, in Tony and Clint and all of the men and women he has fought beside.

The look that Bucky tried to hide from him behind playful looks and sly smirks, tried to push down with bottles of whiskey (it took more to get him drunk, after Hydra, and the two of them made sure never to say anything, never to bring it up). Eyes that could never quite hide emotion well, or maybe they did. But not to Steve, because Steve has always known how to look at Bucky, know how to read him.

Except now. Now, all he sees in his mind is blank eyes and stiff posture and who the hell is Bucky?

"He saved me." His voice is rough and tarnished, like gravel has spun around his throat, and all that floats through his head is the memory of two seventeen year-old kids on the landing outside their apartment, chugging back a bottle of cheap whiskey, amber complimenting the grey-blue of his eyes, the upturned pout of his mouth. His whiskey-rough voice as he murmured, too close, 'we'll be real men soon, Steve.' It makes his voice crack, as he continues, "I need to save him."

He saves me, I save him. Hydra and pneumonia and asthma and Germany. Endless cycles of saving, of circling. He's all I have left. It says something about them, he thinks.

Maybe it's a testament to their fast-grown friendship, or the look of determination in Steve's eyes, but Sam merely nods, the backdrop to whatever music he's playing fading down as it switches to the next song. Sam leans forward in his chair, giving Steve a look he can't decode, but before he can ask, the man says, "I know."

And he does, maybe. After all, he lost Reilly, his wingman, his partner. Curiously, he wonders which is worse. Losing him forever, or getting him back, the way Steve has.

Steve lets Sam hand him a cup of water, drinks it down and feels his sandpaper throat give way just a little, wet his aching body just a small amount. He's reminded of summer droughts.

By now, the haze of drugs and pain has clouded his mind further again, and he just nods, letting his eyes slip closed. Steve is fairly certain he heard a faint sigh below the drone of music, but he's not sure. He feels the pat of a hand on his shoulder before he falls under waves of water, and Steve can only hope he doesn't fall under for seventy years of dreamless slumber again.


  He was leaning against the railing of their balcony, flicking ash down to the street. His silhouette was beautiful, strong, but Steve would never say anything, couldn't. 'Hey, how are you doing?' He asked, hesitating, and Bucky turned around, haggard eyes searching, lips turned downwards. His hands were white-knuckled from where they grasped the tarnished metal balcony, breathing ragged from too-many tears.

  'I-I couldn't stay. It was…' He trailed off, shaking his head and turning back to look over the balcony, down to the streets of Brooklyn, head bowed. It was the close Steve had ever seen him fracture, except maybe when he had asthma attacks.

  'I understand.' Steve said, stepping closer to him and standing beside his tall and shaking form. It was true, he did. His mother had died the summer before, from the same sickness. 'Come on.' And though he was small and tiny, he felt stronger than Bucky in that moment, wrappin a hand around his wrist and pulling him back into the shabby, gritty apartment. Theirs, now. Bucky went, pliant and silent with grief, and Steve just pressed him into the single mattress, and the two of them laid with each other, comforting each other like they always did.

  They said nothing but the language of comfort, whispered nothing but breaths on the back of each other's necks, and sure, they were too close, pressed too close to be brotherly, they didn't care. 'I won't lose you.' Bucky murmured at the coming of dawn, twisting to stare into Steve's wide blue eyes. 'Ever. Regardless of what happens.'


  'I believe you.' Steve had said, but even then, the seeds of doubt had spread through his skinny limbs, because how could Bucky want you to stay? How would he stay near Steve? Steve needed Bucky, not the other way around. They were both twenty-two, and it was August. The Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor in December.


The second time he wakes, Steve doesn't open his eyes at first, just steadies his breathing and takes in his surroundings with his ears, smells. He's reminded of summer days in Brooklyn, when everything could be smelled and everything could be heard, and two boys ran through the streets (one stopping to catch his breath) and pretended they were blind, pretended they had super hearing and super smell. Steve could laugh at that, but it would be a bitter, sad thing.

He doesn't want to be disappointed again, when he opens his eyes, doesn't think that would be fair.

He feels a presence sitting in the chair next to his, and when he slits open an eye, expecting Sam to crack some sort of thinly-veiled joke that he would be forced to laugh at through a raw throat, Steve feels the breath pushed from his lungs, chest heaving. It reminds him of those numerous times where he would hold him and comfort him when he went through an asthma attack.

The metal of his arm is covered in a hoodie, jeans and hiking boots instead of the Winter Soldier uniform, blatant otherness diminished somewhat by the civilian clothes. His head is bowed, a curtain of hair hanging low, hands clasped together in his lap. There's tension in his shoulder, like he's ready to take flight, his feet light and airy on the floor. He's so still, not doing anything, and it's that fact that makes him think that crashing into the Arctic was better than this. Bucky, unless he was shooting, sniping, was never still, not in moments of stillness.

"Bucky?" It's wrenched from his mouth, jagged and weak, surprisehopesorrow infused into every one of Steve's enhanced cells.

The soldier- Bucky, because he will never not be Bucky to Steve, regardless of circumstances- jerks his head up, grey-blue eyes empty and dull, but ringed with a faint air of angerfearconfusionbrokenness. Steve wonders if Bucky can even feel full emotions anymore. The man stares at Steve with a tilted head before his face crumbles into... Something. Something even Steve can't understand.

"Don't call me that." Bucky says slowly, enunciating each word carefully. His voice is scratchy from disuse, tone dull and flat as though all emotion were weeded out long ago. If Steve closes his eyes, he could almost pretend it's not him, for a second, could pretend it's some stranger that he doesn't need to care about.

He wishes that it wasn't him. Bucky shouldn't be a ghost, shouldn't be hollow.

"It's your name." Is all Steve can respond with, and he tries to sit up, to see Bucky better, but a solid (cold) metal hand pushes him back, and though his eyes remain carefully blank, the corners of his eyes wrinkle in concern. Steve lets himself be pushed, gaze dropping down to dexterous metal fingers with curiosity, with horror, sorrow.

Bucky sees him looking and draws his hand back, sitting back in his chair. The thumb of the silver hand presses into each of the fingertips in a surprisingly human gesture, and Steve finds himself enraptured by the movement.

He's silent for a few more moments, brows drawn down in thought, before he says, slowly, "I don't have a name." He's hesitant, that much is obvious, and Steve finds it hard to relate this... This man with the creature on the bridge, on the ship. That raw, vicious brutality is starkly different from the unsure man in front of him.

"All men have names, Buck." Steve replies, raising an arching eyebrow from his spot on the bed as Bucky snarls at the name, face twisting in sudden rage. It feels as though if he treats Bucky the way he used to, he can keep himself from sobbing, from responding to this tragedy. He wriggles up so that he's at least sitting, and his glare stops his companion- enemy? friend?- from pushing him down again.

"I'm not a man."

It's automatic, sudden, the words thrown from the soldier's- Bucky's- mouth, a conditioned response. Not for the first time, Steve wants to completely destroy Bucky's captors, make them pay for completely breaking down his friend.

"What are you, then?" He asks, warily, voice shaky. His throat begins to well up with pent-up emotion, as he realizes he can't... He can't treat this man exactly like Bucky. He wants to, god he does. But it's impossible, when the dead eyes in front of him carry only the recognition of someone he was supposed to kill, a mark

The cool mask of control (or perhaps, it's just emptiness) cracks, shatters like ice on a pond, shoulder lowering as Bucky whispers, "I... I don't know." He looks down at his clasped hands, one flesh and one silver, hair hanging low, and Steve understands then that this man is fragile. That he's shaken something loose from his broken mind on that bridge just a few days ago.

They wiped him and scrubbed his identity away, leaving a shell behind that responds to orders and commands. And now his orders are gone, and his last mission... Was Steve. Captain America was supposed to die on that plane (again), and instead, Bucky saved him. Saved him like he should have when his fingers failed to keep Bucky from falling.

Steve wets his lips, looking at the hunched-over man, and feels the need to huddle with him, like he used to during Brooklyn winters, conserving body heat (Thriving with each other's presence). He wants to keep him safe the way he wanted to be able to do in a frail body, and once again, he's helpless, even with the serum. It feels needlessly cruel to ask, "What are you doing here?" He doesn't care, he doesn't care why Bucky is here, just as long as he is. Here. With him.

The soldier looks up, and locks eyes with Steve again, hesitant as he replies, "I knew you." He sounds confused, head tilting to the side slightly as he regards Steve once more. There's a tightening to his clenched hands, too, and maybe he's mad. It would be something, though. Anything.

The air forcibly removes itself from Steve's lungs ('c'mon, Steve, just breathe. You'll get through it, bud,' he murmured from right behind Steve's ear, solid arms wrapped around the blond's smaller frame as he coughed and hacked), at that, mouth agape in shock. "Y-you remember?" Hope wells through his heart, even though he should know better.

"No."

Bucky stands up, hands clasped behind his back in perfect posture, and moves over to the window, brushing aside the curtains to glance out, averting his gaze from Steve. "I don't. Remember. I just... I knew you. Not from a mission. From... Before. Was there a before?"

It's a jumbled mess of words, slightly slurred from a faint Russian dialect, and Steve gets the distinct impression that Bucky doesn't know how to express himself anymore. Doesn't know the words for emotions. Why would he, considering he's a weapon now, an unfeeling thing with no autonomy?

('What are'ya going to be when you grow up?' Steve asked one day, as they laid in a giant mess of pillows in the living room.

'I wanna be a soldier like my dad.' Bucky replied proudly, puffing out his ten-year old chest like he was king of the world, a glimmer of mischief and determination shining in his eyes. 'What do you wanna be?' He sighed and laid his head across Steve's lap dramatically, pout of his lips grinning upwards, summer freckles stark on his cheeks, splattered across his nose, and Steve remembered his mother telling him stories about the stars in people's faces, the light of people's eyes and the magic of lips. Steve thought to himself that if he were summer, then Bucky was his night sky.

'I dunno...' He replied, thinking long and hard, then decided, 'I wanna be a soldier, too.' Because, really, he'd go wherever Bucky went. He was Bucky's now.

 Bucky's eyes had shone and glimmered with happiness, with love, and Steve had ran frail fingers through his hair, thinking about his life and Bucky's, not two distinct things but two entwined threads of life. He had read Greek myths once, and thought that maybe the Fates had threaded their yarns of life together, forever and ever.)

The soldier turns dead eyes to Steve again, hands clenched at his side. "I don't. Know. What to do. You're my mission. But I... I can't." His voice is hollow, but there's more to it than there was before, a dull sense of emotion. "I don't know."

"Yeah, Buck, I'm your mission." Steve says, giving a drawn-out sigh, before quirking a humorless smile. "I hope you stop trying to kill me, though."

The soldier snarls out a "Don't call me that," but it's half-hearted at best, feet moving him to the foot of Steve's bed, staring, chest heaving.

Steve surrenders, raising his hands up as far as he can, still trying so hard to keep the emotions pushed back as far as he can. Trying to use good-natured humour to bring Bucky back. He never could stay away from a fight, after all, and this one seemed to be an uphill battle. "Fine. What do I call you, then? 'Winter Soldier' is rather... Long."

The soldier mutters to himself in a string of Russian, scowling, before he shrugs, a stiff, unfamiliar gesture. He's obviously not used to making it, not used to giving any sort of assent.

"You don't. Don't call me anything. I'm not… Not him. I don't know you. Leave me alone." He says finally, narrowing his eyes and grabbing the edge of his bed with his flesh hand, tension in every line of his body.

"To be fair, you're the one who came to me." Steve replies, holding himself together piece by broken piece, distancing himself yet longing. He wants to scream and cry because Bucky is right here, right in front of him, but it's not. Not him. Or maybe it is. Too much has changed for the both of them. Neither of them are recognizable, anymore.

His head is starting to get fuzzy again, body still healing, but he wants to stay awake, wants to see Bucky, hold him and never let go (grab his hand to make up for the time you didn't, on a cold Austrian train), see if he still has freckles, but Steve's limbs are loose and exhausted.

He stares levelly at Steve, blank, blank, just a blink of his dead eyes before he turns around and is gone, leaving no traces he was ever there to begin with. He could be a ghost, could be fake. Steve wants to thrash and cry and chase after him, but his head is too fuzzy, too cloudy and he finds himself falling from consciousness.

(Sometimes, after it happened, he dreamt it was him that fell from the train. Bucky who lived and he who died, because that would have been fairer for the world at large. Would have made more sense. Bucky had promise, was smarter and better than Steve, and Steve was just… Steve. Nobody. Steve was an endless raging summer of anger and headstrong emotions, forever wanting more and more and more. There was an obligation. Bucky protected Steve in Brooklyn, and he would protect Bucky in Europe.

Why he-scrawny, Brooklyn Steve Rogers deserves to live more than caring, defiant, charismatic Bucky, he had no idea. He may not be physically small anymore, but he was pretty sure he was on the inside.

Sometimes, he dreamt that he fell and fell happily with the knowledge that Bucky was okay. Those were the worst dreams, the ones that made him scream and shout in barren camps in Germany, because they were dreams. Not reality. And that was the worst of all, to wake up alive and well.

It wasn't that he wanted to die, it was that he wasn't so sure he wanted to live, anymore.)

His last realization before waves drown him under blankets (like the Potomac was supposed to do) is that Bucky is probably gone for good and will leave Steve even more broken than he was. Dead and gone for seventy years, and then back, worse than dead, before fading to the shadows like he belongs there. Like he doesn't belong by Steve's side. Like he hasn't been glued to his hip ever since he cleaned the blood off of his too-skinny face.

He doesn't notice the dog tags laying on his bedside table, faded from the years but still recognizable.