Blades & Ballet | Bucky x Reader

Twenty-Nine

The following morning, I wake to the sound of soft voices, and I turn my head to see Sam's nephews playing with the shield.

"Hey," I greet with a small wave.

"Put it back," AJ tells his younger brother. "Hurry, hurry!"

Cass quickly leans the shield against the wall, following his older brother as he dashes from the room. I smile at their retreating backs. Despite the mess that Walker made, Steve's legacy still lives on.

With the morning sun rising, I head down to the docks to find Sam trying to remove the pump from the boat. With my help, we detach it from its spot, bringing it up to the dock to start taking it apart.

"Okay," Sam huffs. "There should be a three-sixteenths bolt that goes in the big gear."

"Nope," I reply.

"You didn't even look," Sam remarks.

"I didn't have to," I retort.

"Uh-huh," Sarah states as she approaches us with Y/n at her side. "No. No."

I smile up at the women. "Hi, Y/n."

Y/n smiles back before Sarah cuts in to scold Sam. "I told you specifically that the water pump was not the problem. And yet, here you are."

"Yep, Samuel," I add.

"In our defense, we were supposed to be done long before you woke up," Sam reasons.

"I don't come up to the sky to tell you how to barrel roll or whatever," Sarah retorts. "So don't come down here and start messin' around with things you don't understand."

"Wow," Sam replies. "Wow."

"Bye. Off," Sarah orders as we stand on our spot on the dock. "Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate you. I love you, bro."

I walk straight into Y/n's arms, wrapping her tightly with my own. "Good morning, Doll."

"Good morning," she replies, pulling away to lead us further down the marina.

Sam glances back at her sister before turning to us. "She's a very mean person."

I chuckle, clapping his shoulder. "It's tough love."

"No," Sam argues. "If you did what I told you to do, we would have been done before any of this took place."

Y/n and I laugh as the three of us ger back to work.

Later, Sam and I stand outside his house, tossing the shield against the trees. Y/n leans against a tree nearby, giving us a wide berth to avoid getting hit.

"Feels weird... Picking it up again," Sam states, catching the shield as it rebounds back to him.

He tosses it again, and it bounces of two trees before rebounding to me. I catch it.

"The legacy of that shield is... complicated, to say the least," Sam remarks.

"When Steve told me what he was planning, I don't think either of us really understood what it felt like for a Black man to be handed the shield," I admit. Sam takes a breath. "How could we? I owe you an apology." I hand him the shield as a sign of good will. "I'm sorry."

Sam takes it. "Thank you."

"Whatever happened with Walker, it wasn't your fault," I tell him. "I get it... It's just, that shield's... the closest thing I've got left to a family, so when you retired it... it made me feel like I had nothing left. Made me question everything. You, Steve, me. You know, I've got his, uh... I've got his book. And, uh... I just figured if it worked for him, then it'd work for me..."