Steph chuckled. "More like, I got into a fight with past me and needed to distract her to land a blow and knock her out." She recounted how, at that time, they were fighting someone who could take on other people's appearance, so seeing double had made her younger self assume she was the enemy. "Fighting yourself is weird. You make the same moves, have the same weaknesses. So yeah, I figured telling her you were alive oughta work. If I'd had more time, I would've given her the coordinates to the facility in Siberia." But she hadn't been prepared for that.
Bucky had a point. She nodded, shifting to snuggle a bit more into him. "My Ma was worried about me being alone after she passed. And Becca, God... she told me how heartbroken she'd been. You had a funeral, at least. My death was just splashed on the front pages of every paper in the country."
"Of course you got into a fight with yourself. Only you, I swear," Bucky said, grinning softly. If anyone was going to end up in a fight with themself, it was definitely Steph Rogers.
However, at the mention of the papers, Bucky's grin disappeared. "Yeah, I... I know about the front pages," he started, frowning as he thought back. "I held out for longer than they expected, so they were still working on breaking me when you crashed. Sometimes they'd bring those papers in to show me. Sometimes they'd read excerpts." HYDRA had known good and well that Bucky was close with Captain America, so they knew they could use those papers against him. At least they didn't realize how close they were, not that it would have changed anything.
"Hey!" Steph laughed and punched Bucky's arm playfully. "I didn't do it on purpose! How was I to know I would run into her?" She knew what it sounded like though, so she couldn't really complain about his teasing.
She pursed her lips into a thin line as he recounted how HYDRA had used her supposed death against him. It was even worse now that she knew how he felt about her. "I'm so sorry, Buck." She buried her face into the crook of his neck. "You know I'd change it if I could, right?"
She'd thought about using the Stones to go back and save him. Stop his fall or stop HYDRA or whatever it took. But how could she leave him now? This Bucky was hers, and while saving another version of him would temper her guilt, this one just wanted her to be here.
"I know you would. But we're here now, so none of that trying to change shit when we go on our trip," he started and held her close, eyes closing instead of staring at the ceiling. "Don't want you accidentally changing too much and us not getting here." Would Bucky rather lose his arm, decades of his life, and be tortured than lose Stephanie Rogers? Absolutely. Was that healthy? Probably not.
"Besides, the papers weren't your fault. They didn't need to show me that shit, but they knew we were close. Even if they didn't realize how important you were to me, they knew it'd be an easy way to twist the knife." How could they not? Even before the two of them teamed up with the rest of the Howlies to take out HYDRA bases across Europe, Schmidt and Zola watched Steph make a special point of saving him from that first base. "Now, the plane crash itself? Apparently, that actually was your fault."
"Do you expect me to want to live in a world without you?" Steph knew it was a joke, but the words were out of her almost immediately. Certainly with a touch of defensiveness and her voice breaking a little. It just hit a bit too close to home, as she still felt as she did in '45; the only reason she didn't try anything after he turned into dust was because she felt killing herself would be the easy way out, and she didn't deserve that for failing.
She never really did grieve him, just cycled through anger and denial and back again.
She didn't cry, but she didn't say anything for a while, just kept her face buried into the crook of his neck. If she lost him again, after everything, after finding out that he loved her, she wouldn't know what to do with herself. She hoped they would never have to find out.
"Sorry," Bucky said quietly. "That was a stupid thing to joke about."
After that, Bucky also went silent for a few minutes. He just held her, almost convinced he could feel her heart beat where their chests were pressed together as he stared at the ceiling.
"I would have probably done the same thing," he said eventually. "If I had to live in a world knowing you were gone? I don't know what would keep me going." Bucky didn't put her on a pedestal, exactly. He knew she had flaws -- lots of them, that he would let her know about whenever he needed to -- but she was also the most important person in the world to him, and always had been. Ever since they were kids, no one had come before Steph in his mind.
"Sorry," Steph said after a while. "I just... I don't know, I guess I just never imagined a world where I outlived you, so I... didn't know what to do with it." She sighed. "You know the first thing I did after I woke up in the future? I visited your grave." Well, after she punched her way out of a SHIELD facility and ran barefoot into Times Square like a crazy person anyway. Fury had had no choice but to drive her to Brooklyn.
"Then Fury showed me the Wall of Valor, and it had your name, and the boys', and Howard's, and I... I never felt so alone." Visiting Becca, and later on Peggy, had helped with the displacement and the loneliness, but not with the grief. Especially after Becca had said that her family kept some of Steph's stuff, though the rest they'd placed in Bucky's empty casket alongside most of his books and photos.
"He would've wanted you next to him," Becca had told her.
"So did I," Steph had agreed.
Hugging him tightly, she said, "Sorry. You're here now. Probably should focus on that, yeah?" She just never really talked about any of that, not even with Natasha, who she'd gotten pretty close with after the Snap. She'd mentioned a few things to Sam back when they hung out in D.C., but it hadn't been anything specific; she knew he ran a support group and didn't want to be psychoanalyzed.
The fact that they had both lost each other without ever letting go wasn't lost on Bucky. If he had let go of her, she probably wouldn't have been able to get through to him. Though, the loss did help those assholes break him.
After all, without Steph what reason did he have to keep going?
Bucky hugged her back just as tightly and pressed a kiss to her hair. "Hey, you've got nothing to be sorry about, you hear me? It's probably good for us to talk about these things or something." Distracting himself slightly, Bucky moved his good hand so he could play with the ends of her hair.
"I don't think I ever told you that when I got my draft letter, I seriously thought about grabbing you and running. Taking you to the west coast, or Canada, or somewhere far from New York so I couldn't get shipped out," he admitted. Until those newspapers with Steph splashed across them, that draft letter was the worst piece of paper he had ever seen. "Even wondered how many people I could convince my name was Buck Rogers, like the comic strip, cause I knew it'd be easiest if I tried to go by names that were kinda different, but that I was used to."
"We used to talk about everything," Steph agreed, then after a moment amended with a soft laugh, "except our feelings."
Case in point: how Bucky really felt about being drafted. "And here I thought you were raring to go, just like every other young man in Brooklyn." She didn't know anyone who didn't want to be part of the war effort, and they would have been shamed otherwise. In hindsight, though? "We should have run." Maybe she would have died after a few years. Maybe the Allies wouldn't have won. But maybe they would have been spared from... all this.
She shifted to rest her cheek against his shoulder. "Maybe we should tell them to run," she said quietly.
"You just nailed why I didn't mention not wanting to go," Bucky said with a soft laugh. "The other guys were all for it, but I just wanted to stay home with you. So I waited to get drafted instead of enlisting, then faked it after that." At least after all those years of pretending to be interested in other girls, Bucky had plenty of practice faking things. Maybe he shoulda gone into acting.
"If he got caught, he'd get thrown in jail, though. They'd still end up separated." And then Steph, small and sickly and wonderful, would be stranded somewhere unfamiliar on her own during exceptionally hard times, with no family of her own back home to return to. It was better to at least leave her where his family could try to keep an eye on her for him, wasn't it? Those were the sorts of things that Bucky thought about back then.
Unless it had worked, of course. But there was no way for them to know if it would have or not.
"You really are a dumbass," Steph sighed in exasperation, but there was a lot more affection in her tone than the words implied. She propped herself back up so she could kiss Bucky and murmur into his mouth, "But my dumbass."
He would choose to fall off a train and get tortured and his mind screwed than lose her, which was incredibly stupid, but who was she to call him out? She would choose to be experimented on and jump off planes without a parachute and get buried in the ice than lose him. So yeah, that shut down whatever ideas she might have had about interfering with their past. But going on that mission together, definitely. Just in case. If anything happened, they at least had each other.
Resting her forehead against his for a moment, she closed her eyes, then said quietly, "It might take me a while longer to forgive myself, so please bear with me, but I promise I won't run off and do anything that might separate us." She'd been trying to save everyone for so long, she hadn't realized she needed saving.
"Always have been," Bucky said with a quiet chuckle. He'd always been a dumbass, and he'd always been hers. He would do absolutely anything for the woman who was stretched out on top of him and he never wanted to be without her again.
Hell, the only reason he'd opted to stay in Wakanda so long was to make sure he was well enough that he would be safe for her to be around. The peace and quiet were great, and he grew to love those stupid goats, but it was all so maybe one day she would be safe with him. Bucky was well ware that he would never be perfect--the doctors in Wakanda called it PTSD?--but he was a hell of a lot better than he had been before.
"I don't think there's anything you need to forgive yourself for," he told her and let his own eyes slide closed. "But I get it. And I'll be here with you while you work on it, yeah?"
"Thank you." It wasn't healthy, Steph knew. Hell, she probably should be going to therapy — not that she believed in the stuff. But that Bucky understood and would be there for her was more than enough. He had always been all that she needed.
They snuggled in companionable silence, which also meant they were able to catch the end of the movie. She then pushed herself up to get off the couch and put on another film, though not without stealing a kiss first. It was so nice to be free to do that as much as she wanted. Which was going to be a lot. "Care for another, or do you wanna do something else?"
She absolutely wanted to have sex again, but found herself chickening out from outright saying or initiating it.
Bucky didn't hesitate to kiss Steph back before she got up, then watched her with a small grin on his face as she moved around the room. "You can turn on another movie if you want," he told her simply. "I mean, we can always just ignore it if we decide we want to do something else."
Besides, it wasn't exactly like he had any big plans for the day. Just... spending time with Steph. The next day was when they were supposed to go buy wedding clothes and whatnot. She had a much better grip on modern things, such as movies, technology, and different kinds of activities, than he did anyway.
"I don't care what we do today, dove. Long as it's with you."
Steph rummaged through her DVDs, then perked up with an, "Oh!" She turned to Bucky and held up The Lord of the Rings. "They made a sequel to The Hobbit." She pulled the disc out and handed him the case so he could look it over while she set things up, after which she resumed curling up beside him.
"I've never actually seen this," she confessed with a soft laugh. "I kept thinking you would've loved to watch this, and it made me sad and decide not to." Then there was just so much avenging, especially after the whole HYDRA fiasco. "I bought the trilogy while you were in Wakanda, hoping to watch it with you one day."
One day did come, just over five long years later.
Bucky blinked a bit when Steph told him about the sequel, then reached out and took the case from her, looking it over. "I loved The Hobbit," he said with a smile. He'd read it multiple times after it came out, completely enraptured by the world Tolkien had built. "And this was based on a book? Not just a random movie they made?"
If it was a book, he was going to have to track it down to read for himself. He didn't even know or care what it was about, but it sounded amazing. After a moment, Bucky tossed the case onto the coffee table and rolled onto his side on the couch, a slight look of excitement on his face as he held his arm up, offering the space in front of him so he could hold her while they watched the movie. Because dammit, there was a much higher chance of Bucky actually paying attention to this one.
(Though, what he saw of Treasure Planet had also been very good.)
"Yeah, it's a trilogy or something? We should be able to find it easily, it's very popular," Steph answered as she finished setting things up. Then she settled into the space Bucky had reserved for her, snuggling close.
He was so happy. The last time she'd seen him this happy, not counting two days ago, was before the war. She was going to do her best to keep it that way.
The movie wasn't animated, but she had taken an interest in fantasy and scifi after she woke up in the future — because he had loved those genres, and it was a way for her to feel like he was still around. It seemed like there was finally a way she could put that knowledge to use, so while they watched, she made a mental list of movies and books to show him.
When Steph settled against him on the couch, Bucky pulled the throw blanket off the back to cover the two of them, then wrapped his arm around her middle to hold her close. She was warm against him, but that didn't stop him from getting a chill more easily than he used to. Probably from all his time frozen. And he currently only had his underwear and tank top until they washed those spare clothes Steph had dug out for him.
Besides, curling up under a blanket together just seemed like it would be... comfortable. And didn't the two of them deserve to be comfortable?
The movie was good enough that they were a little while into it before Bucky spoke again. But it really had nothing to do with the movie itself. "I don't know what I'd do without you," he told her, his voice soft.
Steph had found Bucky's hand and laced their fingers together, wanting to be close to him in all the ways possible. When he spoke, she gave it a good squeeze. "I'm not going anywhere. You'll never be without my dumb ass giving you grief," she assured him.
After a moment she added, more seriously, "But just in case something like Thanos happens again... live for me, okay? Or at least try. Don't do what I did and waste away."
Easier said than done, of course. And she was probably being a hypocrite again, because she wasn't sure she could bear losing him a third time.
Sighing, Bucky tightened his arms around her. "I can't promise that, Steph," he told her honestly. "I'll try, but I can't promise it'd work." He'd try. Maybe. Probably.
"I guess we'll just have to work to make sure none of that shit happens again. Or we could just retire and stay out of it from now on." He never wanted to be in the fight in the first place, as evidenced by the fact that he was drafted, even though the Smithsonian insisted he enlisted. Instead, Bucky had always just wanted to have a good, peaceful life with his dreamgirl.
But at least now they were engaged, so he was getting closer to that goal.
"Retirement sounds good. I'm so tired, Buck." Steph had already told him that, but she wanted him to know she was serious about it and it wasn't just part of some adrenaline-fueled post-battle confession. "Sam can have the shield. He does what I do, just slower," she said with a small chuckle to herself as she parrotted Sam's own line. "He'll make a good Captain America, though he'll have the work cut out for him." She had a hard enough time being a woman, despite being traditionally American-looking, with her blonde hair and baby blues.
She shifted to peer up at Bucky then. "Where do you wanna go? We gotta go somewhere they can't find us so we don't get roped into shit anymore." She was a do gooder by nature, so she'd have to position herself away from temptation. If their friends showed up needing help, she might not be able to say no.
"So am I." Bucky felt like he'd been tired for eighty years or more, which he sort of had been. Up until a couple of days ago, he'd felt his best when he was staying in Wakanda, but even there he was tired all the time. And he didn't care who Steph gave the shield to, just that if she retired, he would be going with her. And if she didn't (he really hoped she did, though), he'd still be going with her.
"I don't know. Somewhere with running water. And electricity." Bucky had neither in his shack, and while he adapted, he didn't want to have to live like that forever. "But we've got time to figure it out. We both have loose ends we need to deal with before we can just leave town." And no matter where they went, Steph had friends. Eventually, someone would show up wanting her help, which meant they'd also get Bucky's help. But it would have to be a pretty dire situation for him to not try to talk Steph out of helping. "You have anywhere in mind?"
"Definitely not anywhere that freezes, but also where we don't stick out too much. We can scout some locations and add them to our honeymooon itinerary?" They'd initially decided to go somewhere in Asia for the beaches, but outside of the tourist areas they would stand out, and Bucky probably might not like getting sand into his arm on a regular basis. They should have time to figure out their future living though. They certainly have the means to afford it.
Her expression suddenly turned thoughtful. "Though we could just stay in the area. Remember those houses we liked looking at and joked about buying when we got older? Maybe one of them's for sale. We just make everyone think we moved to, I dunno, Alaska."
"We could probably take our time checking places out," he started, grinning as he ran a hand up and down the side of her arm. "With the trial and everything resettling, it's not like we know what's going to be going on a year from now anyway."
Bucky chuckled softly as he nuzzled the back of Steph's head with the tip of his nose, his eyes sliding closed. "What, like hint about how much I liked Romania, but don't mention buying a house here?" That would be kinda funny, actually, and he wondered how long they would be able to pull off living under everyone's noses without them noticing. "I honestly don't know where else I'd wanna go. I never really pictured retiring anywhere but Brooklyn when we were kids. Nowhere that gets worse winters than here, though. Not if we can help it, alright?"
"Yeah, that's the idea." Steph laughed. "We'll probably be traveling a lot anyway, so we won't really be home all that much either. And we can always go somewhere warm during winter." Like migratory birds. It wasn't actually a bad idea. Between the rest of the world, and space, there was so much for them to see.
She pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat, then nestled back against him again. "Me either. Or anywhere you wanted, in those times I allowed myself to dream." Most of the time she just assumed she was going to die young while he'd marry some other girl who would take care of him instead of the other way around. "I liked that house at the end of the street. The one that looked haunted." A cranky middle-aged man who'd fought in the war with her Da lived in that one; it was only once she was on the front too that she understood how war changed a person.
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Bucky had a point. She nodded, shifting to snuggle a bit more into him. "My Ma was worried about me being alone after she passed. And Becca, God... she told me how heartbroken she'd been. You had a funeral, at least. My death was just splashed on the front pages of every paper in the country."
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However, at the mention of the papers, Bucky's grin disappeared. "Yeah, I... I know about the front pages," he started, frowning as he thought back. "I held out for longer than they expected, so they were still working on breaking me when you crashed. Sometimes they'd bring those papers in to show me. Sometimes they'd read excerpts." HYDRA had known good and well that Bucky was close with Captain America, so they knew they could use those papers against him. At least they didn't realize how close they were, not that it would have changed anything.
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She pursed her lips into a thin line as he recounted how HYDRA had used her supposed death against him. It was even worse now that she knew how he felt about her. "I'm so sorry, Buck." She buried her face into the crook of his neck. "You know I'd change it if I could, right?"
She'd thought about using the Stones to go back and save him. Stop his fall or stop HYDRA or whatever it took. But how could she leave him now? This Bucky was hers, and while saving another version of him would temper her guilt, this one just wanted her to be here.
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"Besides, the papers weren't your fault. They didn't need to show me that shit, but they knew we were close. Even if they didn't realize how important you were to me, they knew it'd be an easy way to twist the knife." How could they not? Even before the two of them teamed up with the rest of the Howlies to take out HYDRA bases across Europe, Schmidt and Zola watched Steph make a special point of saving him from that first base. "Now, the plane crash itself? Apparently, that actually was your fault."
Bad joke, Bucky.
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She never really did grieve him, just cycled through anger and denial and back again.
She didn't cry, but she didn't say anything for a while, just kept her face buried into the crook of his neck. If she lost him again, after everything, after finding out that he loved her, she wouldn't know what to do with herself. She hoped they would never have to find out.
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After that, Bucky also went silent for a few minutes. He just held her, almost convinced he could feel her heart beat where their chests were pressed together as he stared at the ceiling.
"I would have probably done the same thing," he said eventually. "If I had to live in a world knowing you were gone? I don't know what would keep me going." Bucky didn't put her on a pedestal, exactly. He knew she had flaws -- lots of them, that he would let her know about whenever he needed to -- but she was also the most important person in the world to him, and always had been. Ever since they were kids, no one had come before Steph in his mind.
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"Then Fury showed me the Wall of Valor, and it had your name, and the boys', and Howard's, and I... I never felt so alone." Visiting Becca, and later on Peggy, had helped with the displacement and the loneliness, but not with the grief. Especially after Becca had said that her family kept some of Steph's stuff, though the rest they'd placed in Bucky's empty casket alongside most of his books and photos.
"He would've wanted you next to him," Becca had told her.
"So did I," Steph had agreed.
Hugging him tightly, she said, "Sorry. You're here now. Probably should focus on that, yeah?" She just never really talked about any of that, not even with Natasha, who she'd gotten pretty close with after the Snap. She'd mentioned a few things to Sam back when they hung out in D.C., but it hadn't been anything specific; she knew he ran a support group and didn't want to be psychoanalyzed.
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After all, without Steph what reason did he have to keep going?
Bucky hugged her back just as tightly and pressed a kiss to her hair. "Hey, you've got nothing to be sorry about, you hear me? It's probably good for us to talk about these things or something." Distracting himself slightly, Bucky moved his good hand so he could play with the ends of her hair.
"I don't think I ever told you that when I got my draft letter, I seriously thought about grabbing you and running. Taking you to the west coast, or Canada, or somewhere far from New York so I couldn't get shipped out," he admitted. Until those newspapers with Steph splashed across them, that draft letter was the worst piece of paper he had ever seen. "Even wondered how many people I could convince my name was Buck Rogers, like the comic strip, cause I knew it'd be easiest if I tried to go by names that were kinda different, but that I was used to."
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Case in point: how Bucky really felt about being drafted. "And here I thought you were raring to go, just like every other young man in Brooklyn." She didn't know anyone who didn't want to be part of the war effort, and they would have been shamed otherwise. In hindsight, though? "We should have run." Maybe she would have died after a few years. Maybe the Allies wouldn't have won. But maybe they would have been spared from... all this.
She shifted to rest her cheek against his shoulder. "Maybe we should tell them to run," she said quietly.
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"If he got caught, he'd get thrown in jail, though. They'd still end up separated." And then Steph, small and sickly and wonderful, would be stranded somewhere unfamiliar on her own during exceptionally hard times, with no family of her own back home to return to. It was better to at least leave her where his family could try to keep an eye on her for him, wasn't it? Those were the sorts of things that Bucky thought about back then.
Unless it had worked, of course. But there was no way for them to know if it would have or not.
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He would choose to fall off a train and get tortured and his mind screwed than lose her, which was incredibly stupid, but who was she to call him out? She would choose to be experimented on and jump off planes without a parachute and get buried in the ice than lose him. So yeah, that shut down whatever ideas she might have had about interfering with their past. But going on that mission together, definitely. Just in case. If anything happened, they at least had each other.
Resting her forehead against his for a moment, she closed her eyes, then said quietly, "It might take me a while longer to forgive myself, so please bear with me, but I promise I won't run off and do anything that might separate us." She'd been trying to save everyone for so long, she hadn't realized she needed saving.
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Hell, the only reason he'd opted to stay in Wakanda so long was to make sure he was well enough that he would be safe for her to be around. The peace and quiet were great, and he grew to love those stupid goats, but it was all so maybe one day she would be safe with him. Bucky was well ware that he would never be perfect--the doctors in Wakanda called it PTSD?--but he was a hell of a lot better than he had been before.
"I don't think there's anything you need to forgive yourself for," he told her and let his own eyes slide closed. "But I get it. And I'll be here with you while you work on it, yeah?"
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They snuggled in companionable silence, which also meant they were able to catch the end of the movie. She then pushed herself up to get off the couch and put on another film, though not without stealing a kiss first. It was so nice to be free to do that as much as she wanted. Which was going to be a lot. "Care for another, or do you wanna do something else?"
She absolutely wanted to have sex again, but found herself chickening out from outright saying or initiating it.
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Besides, it wasn't exactly like he had any big plans for the day. Just... spending time with Steph. The next day was when they were supposed to go buy wedding clothes and whatnot. She had a much better grip on modern things, such as movies, technology, and different kinds of activities, than he did anyway.
"I don't care what we do today, dove. Long as it's with you."
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"I've never actually seen this," she confessed with a soft laugh. "I kept thinking you would've loved to watch this, and it made me sad and decide not to." Then there was just so much avenging, especially after the whole HYDRA fiasco. "I bought the trilogy while you were in Wakanda, hoping to watch it with you one day."
One day did come, just over five long years later.
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If it was a book, he was going to have to track it down to read for himself. He didn't even know or care what it was about, but it sounded amazing. After a moment, Bucky tossed the case onto the coffee table and rolled onto his side on the couch, a slight look of excitement on his face as he held his arm up, offering the space in front of him so he could hold her while they watched the movie. Because dammit, there was a much higher chance of Bucky actually paying attention to this one.
(Though, what he saw of Treasure Planet had also been very good.)
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He was so happy. The last time she'd seen him this happy, not counting two days ago, was before the war. She was going to do her best to keep it that way.
The movie wasn't animated, but she had taken an interest in fantasy and scifi after she woke up in the future — because he had loved those genres, and it was a way for her to feel like he was still around. It seemed like there was finally a way she could put that knowledge to use, so while they watched, she made a mental list of movies and books to show him.
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Besides, curling up under a blanket together just seemed like it would be... comfortable. And didn't the two of them deserve to be comfortable?
The movie was good enough that they were a little while into it before Bucky spoke again. But it really had nothing to do with the movie itself. "I don't know what I'd do without you," he told her, his voice soft.
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After a moment she added, more seriously, "But just in case something like Thanos happens again... live for me, okay? Or at least try. Don't do what I did and waste away."
Easier said than done, of course. And she was probably being a hypocrite again, because she wasn't sure she could bear losing him a third time.
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"I guess we'll just have to work to make sure none of that shit happens again. Or we could just retire and stay out of it from now on." He never wanted to be in the fight in the first place, as evidenced by the fact that he was drafted, even though the Smithsonian insisted he enlisted. Instead, Bucky had always just wanted to have a good, peaceful life with his dreamgirl.
But at least now they were engaged, so he was getting closer to that goal.
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She shifted to peer up at Bucky then. "Where do you wanna go? We gotta go somewhere they can't find us so we don't get roped into shit anymore." She was a do gooder by nature, so she'd have to position herself away from temptation. If their friends showed up needing help, she might not be able to say no.
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"I don't know. Somewhere with running water. And electricity." Bucky had neither in his shack, and while he adapted, he didn't want to have to live like that forever. "But we've got time to figure it out. We both have loose ends we need to deal with before we can just leave town." And no matter where they went, Steph had friends. Eventually, someone would show up wanting her help, which meant they'd also get Bucky's help. But it would have to be a pretty dire situation for him to not try to talk Steph out of helping. "You have anywhere in mind?"
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Her expression suddenly turned thoughtful. "Though we could just stay in the area. Remember those houses we liked looking at and joked about buying when we got older? Maybe one of them's for sale. We just make everyone think we moved to, I dunno, Alaska."
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Bucky chuckled softly as he nuzzled the back of Steph's head with the tip of his nose, his eyes sliding closed. "What, like hint about how much I liked Romania, but don't mention buying a house here?" That would be kinda funny, actually, and he wondered how long they would be able to pull off living under everyone's noses without them noticing. "I honestly don't know where else I'd wanna go. I never really pictured retiring anywhere but Brooklyn when we were kids. Nowhere that gets worse winters than here, though. Not if we can help it, alright?"
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She pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat, then nestled back against him again. "Me either. Or anywhere you wanted, in those times I allowed myself to dream." Most of the time she just assumed she was going to die young while he'd marry some other girl who would take care of him instead of the other way around. "I liked that house at the end of the street. The one that looked haunted." A cranky middle-aged man who'd fought in the war with her Da lived in that one; it was only once she was on the front too that she understood how war changed a person.
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