Steve Rogers went back to the past to reconnect with his true love, Peggy Carter. That's what everyone in 2023 thought. The truth is he went back to right a wrong, several of them in fact. He went back to save his friend, James Buchanan "Bucky" B...
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It's cold out and the hole in his shoe is covered in ice from the snow that worked its way towards the warmth of his skinny foot. The resulting accumulation of the frozen material feels like a rock as he runs away from two boys, Wally Webster and Vinnie D'Agostino. He had a run-in with them before, in the summer. That's how he met Bucky, as the older and bigger boy heard the sounds of Steve getting his ass kicked and joined the fray. But this time, the two bullies caught him alone as he went to the grocers for his Ma, to buy some eggs, now lying broken in the gutter, forty cents wasted. Bastards. He manages to get away from them when Mr. Friedman yells at the three of them to stop and the two bigger boys hesitate, but he quickly loses his advantage. They manage to catch up to Steve as the smaller boy heads down an alleyway. He tries to climb the locked fence at the end, but the two bigger boys catch up to him and pull him down, shoving him against some garbage cans, knocking them over and spilling the stinking mess over the pavement. A stray cat yowls and streaks away from where it had been gnawing on a dead rat. He can feel the blood trickling over his face from a cut on his eyebrow but he's angry now and steels himself for what's to come. Standing up, Steve cocks his fists and takes the stance that Bucky showed him after that first battle together.
"You owe me forty cents," he declares. "Those eggs were for my ma."
"Sure, Rogers," says Vinnie. "Just let me find some spare change in my pocket."
Both Vinnie and Wally laugh at his apparent wit then they close in menacingly on Steve. Suddenly, one of them is knocked down from behind and Steve takes his opportunity to hit the one left standing, Vinnie. He catches him on just the perfect spot on the boy's jaw, sending him down like a sack of potatoes, not moving from where he lays crumpled on the debris from the scattered garbage cans. Meanwhile, Bucky is straddled across Wally's middle, whaling away at his face, punch after punch, bringing more blood out of the other boy's obvious broken nose.
"That'll teach you to gang up on a smaller kid," grunts Bucky, as he hits Wally at least a dozen times. "Leave him alone, you hear me?"
Webster is covering his face with his arms now, crying his eyes out and calling for his ma. Steve puts his hand on Bucky's arm and for a moment, the wild-eyed boy raises his left fist to him. Then he sees that it's Steve, but Bucky still keeps his hand raised without hitting the smaller boy, the adrenaline coursing through his veins making him seem like some sort of mythical being caught in the middle of an epic battle.
At that moment, the older Steven who was dreaming this realized this is exactly how Bucky looked on the third helicarrier, when he kept hitting him over and over again. That was when Steven told Bucky to finish it because he was with him until the end of the line. That was when he fell into the water below, the stunned look on Bucky's face confirmation that he remembered. That was the beginning of getting Bucky back before he deliberately left him behind in 2023.
