we're only getting older || Bucky Barnes || ✔️

Part 4

Steve was gone.

And Bucky was alone.

Steve had passed along the shield to Sam with the expectation that Bucky would follow Sam with the same loyalty he followed Steve with, but he didn't follow Captain America for Captain America. He followed Steve. He would follow Steve to the end of the line and he did.

They had reached the end of the line.

Sam annoyed him to no end, but there were moments where Bucky could see why Steve would choose Sam to carry the mantle.

Sam was a good man. An annoying and bothersome man, but a good one all the same.

There were some stark differences between the two that Bucky recognized instantaneously.

Steve was more the quiet kind when he did stupid stuff like using his own body as a grenade cover and overthrowing the government; Sam would be loud while he did the same damn thing.

While Steve was patient with him and waited for his memories to come back to him, Sam would push him off the deep end and agitate him until the memories resurfaced unwillingly.

Key word being "unwilling." He wanted to remember his past as any sane person would (and Bucky had finally been diagnosed as sane), but when those memories he so longed for came, it also arrived with a wave of sadness and longing and confusion and a complete concoction of feelings he hadn't felt since before he was the Winter Soldier. He was finally in somewhat of a good place in his life and found a kind of peace with what he had now. He didn't want to know more about his family besides what Steve had told him those years ago before the Snap and the Blip.

So while on a mission, when Sam kept pushing and bugging him to talk about his family, Bucky blurted out, "They're alive; I don't want to see them!" before jumping out of the moving plane.

A total Steve move, he would admit, but not wanting to talk about his past and his feelings was all Bucky.

He thought that might quell Sam's curiosity, so it was much to his chagrin to find out that all it did was fuel the flame of questions.

"So you don't like your family? Did they reach out to you? Do they even know you're alive? Who am I kidding, by now everyone knows about the Winter Soldier. So who's still alive anyway?" Sam asked while they walked along the dirt road after the mission went slightly wrong.

Bucky didn't reply.

"It's probably not your parents. So... are your siblings still alive? Cousins? Wife and kids? Wait, are you married?"

Bucky groaned. "Can you shut up?"

"Just answer the questions, man!"

"It's my sisters and they don't want to see me."

"And you know that how?"

Bucky kept walking forward.

"Have you reached out to them?" Sam asked.

"No."

"Why not? Do you hate them cause I completely understand family rivalries. My sister and aunt had this major argument over our family's Christmas cards that—"

"I don't hate them," Bucky interrupted.

"Then why don't you want to see them?"

Bucky just kept walking forward in silence with Sam walking faster to keep pace. After a few minutes of silence, he finally answered, "I don't want them to see me like this."

"Like what? With that awful haircut? If you just went to that barber I recommended—"

"You know what I mean," Bucky said. He held up his metal arm. "Like this."

"You can't let your arm keep you from reconnecting with your past."

"Arm? This isn't an arm, it's a weapon. I am not going anywhere near them... where I can hurt them. What if something happens and I forget and black out and—"

"Then just go without it," Sam said candidly.

"What?" Bucky paused in his steps.

"Your arm is removable, right?" Sam stopped too and faced Bucky. "Just go visit them without the arm."

"I—"

"What? Are you chicken? Are you scared?" Sam teased. "You can't see your sisters?"

Bucky shook his head, hiding a small laugh as he continued walking. "You remind me of one of them."

"Which one?" Sam asked, jogging to keep up with the super soldier. "Is she hot?"