Haunted By Him

Chapter Eighteen

Steve Rogers has seen a lot of ‘Buckys’ in the past few months. Barnes had been dead for years and he’d lost all hope of ever seeing him again, but then the rumors began to crop up, whispers he’d hear every now and again, and he lived for the day when he’d hear the next one. Bucky was spotted where? Bulgaria? No way. And before that? Puerto Rico. And before that? Uzbekistan. He doesn’t know which ones are true, if any of them are, but as they became more frequent, Steve couldn’t handle it anymore. He put out a notice and racked up a reward of everything he owned and waited, praying that he’d find his best friend.

It had been eight years. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d find.

But now, he’d been through months and months of turning down Bucky impersonators. He felt a new kind of grieving, one that was cropping up almost a decade after Steve thought he’d finished mourning, and it hurt. Every single appointment held the smallest sliver of hope and so far every single one had crushed him.

One or two of the Buckys had been nearly convincing. They looked like him, talked like him, moved like him, but in the end, something always gave them away and Steve began to realize that people were chasing his money. They didn’t care about Bucky at all and no one knew where he was and he was probably actually dead and Steve was tearing open old wounds for what? Scam artists? Con men? All self-proclaimed experts on the life story of Bucky Barnes and none of them accurate enough to fool Steve Rogers.

He’s through. He’s finished. Steve doesn’t think he can take it anymore, doesn’t think he can sit through one more meeting with someone else making a parody of his friend’s good name. He doesn’t think he can see anymore hope crushed.

So I’ll go to this one last appointment, he decides tiredly. And I’ll turn them away. And I’ll go home and I’ll call the whole thing off.