Complicated Love (Bucky Barnes x Reader)

Chapter 37: 9 Years Later

Flashes of colors surrounded me as I felt my body scramble. I didn't know whether I was going to puke because I'm sick or I'm freaking out. I'm dying. This is what dying feels like.

The feeling stops, and I fall to the floor, happy to feel something solid again. I push myself off from the floor, letting my vision fix itself as the blur clears out.

I lift my head slowly, trying not to get up too quickly or I will puke all my guts out. "Oh no," I mumble, turning around and puking my guts out off the platform of whatever I'm on and onto the floor.

"Did you tell her what you were doing?" I heard a familiar female voice say. I would turn around to see who it was, but more puke is coming out of my system.

"I only had five minutes! Plus I had to avoid my other self," who I believe Steve said, but what does he mean, other self. My throat was raw, and the more I puked, the more I felt like I had to continue puking my guts out.

"Wait! You brought back the Y/n L/n. Like Frostbite? Oh my Thor, my day just got so much better," another voice says. I feel like I emptied most of my stomach, so I lean up slowly again, wiping my mouth.

"Hey, you okay?" Steve says, crouching down next to me. I look at him, getting a good look at him. His hair was a bit longer, he was wearing a different Captain America suit. I look around, not recognizing anything around me.

"Where am I?" I say, quietly, making Steve look around.

"You're, uh. You're in the Avenger's Compound," he says, and he was looking at me, watching me as if I was going to break. There is no Avenger's Compound. Well, I know Tony was having designs for one, but it was a project for the future. I'm being set up.

I grab this 'Steve' by the collar, forcing him to the ground, straddling him, making an icicle, ready to stab him with any signs of attack. "You better tell me who the hell you are, or I swear, I will shove this in your chest and find out for myself," I say.

"Y/n, it's me, Steve, I swear," he says, holding his hands up in surrender.

"No, you're not. But I will say, you do incredibly like him. How the hell do they have cloning technology nowadays too?" I say, but shake my head, needing to focus. "What did you do to Steve? Is he safe?"

"That is Steve, y/n. He's telling you the truth," a voice says behind me, and if I was going crazy, it sounded like Bruce. I felt an abnormally large hand on my left shoulder. I look at it, finding a large green hand, which was attached to the Hulk.

"AHHH!" I scream, getting off of 'Steve' as I use my powers to freeze the Hulk in a block of ice.

"What are you doing?" a girl who looks like Natasha says, eyes widen. Her hair was a lot longer, with blonde tips. Natasha would only ever dye her hair unless she had to go off the radar.

"H-he's the Hulk. You know... he was gonna s-smash things," I stammered.

"Bruce figured out a way to control the Hulk while still being himself. It's Bruce, he just looks like the Hulk," Tony says, trying to calm 'the ice queen'. "Put the icicle down, y/n, no need to freeze anyone else."

Bruce wasn't anywhere close to finding a cure the last time I talked to him, and that was two weeks ago. "Can someone tell me what the hell is going on here?"

"Welcome to the future, snow witch," Thor says, who has a long beard, beer in hand and has become a bit overweight. I look to the left of him, seeing a standing raccoon next to him.

"Is that a raccoon?" I say out loud.

"I'm not a raccoon!" he yelled, making my eyes widen.

"Did he just talk?" I say, barely audible.

"How about I go explain this to you in a different room," Steve says, before leading me away from wherever we are.

...

"So, let's see if I got everything. We were just in 2014, and in the next week, we find out SHIELD is actually Hydra who captured Bucky after he fell back in 1945 and made him the Winter Soldier," I say, my elbows on my knees, trying to take in all of this information.

I continue, repeating everything Steve has told me in the past hour, "So when we were taking down Hydra, he ended up stabbing me in the stomach, killing me. Then, a bunch of stuff happened, Tony made a killing robot, the Avengers broke up, you grew a beard, and then in 2018 a big purple alien named Thanos came to Earth and stole the six infinity stones, one of which gave me my powers."

"When getting those stones, one of which killed a robot named Vision, he snapped his fingers, making half of the universe disappear, including Bucky. So now it's 2023, and Scott Lang, Ant-Man discovered that you could time travel through the Quantum Realm."

"So, you guys wanted to see if you could get infinity stones, and you thought the best trial run was to see if you could get me, since I have part of the Space Stone inside me," I say, finishing the recap, my brain hurting from all the information.

"To sum it all up...yes," Steve says. We were both sitting on the couch in the common area and I could feel Steve's eyes on me, but I had no idea what to do. "Ah, the classic processing stage," he mumbles, making me chuckle. It is Steve.

"God, can you ever let me think in peace. I just figured out that I time traveled another 9 years," I say, and my eyes widen. "I have skipped 75 years of my life."

"Well, the past 9 weren't so much fun without you," he says, and I just realized I died, but Steve kept living. I can't imagine losing Steve, I don't want to know what he went through. "I really missed you."

Steve scooches over next to me, hugging me. "I would say I missed you too, but I say you like 2 minutes before you came into the apartment," I say, making him chuckle and let go of me. "Is, uh, was Bucky okay?"

"After the signing of the Accords and breaking everyone out of the prisons, T'Challa offered to use their advanced technology to get the stuff Hydra did out of his head. He was living a peaceful life before the Battle of Wakanda happened," Steve says, obviously sad about the loss of him.

"I'm really sorry how you lived without us. This whole thing, losing half of the universe. I can't imagine it," I say, not being able to imagine living through that.

"Well, we want your help to fix it. We have someone who knows something about every stone except from the Space Stone, which you have been studying for years. We want all of your knowledge to hopefully get it," Steve says. "Plus, this is a whole excuse to see you again, so I'm not complaining."

"My research on the Space Stone, but if it can help get Bucky back, I'll do it," I say, making Steve smile.

"Great, I can't wait," Steve says. "Let me go introduce you to everyone. And please, don't call the raccoon a raccoon. He's sensitive."