Time to go

Like it should be

Steve came up the stairs in a mad dash only to stop when he found Barney standing next to the ledge with faint tear streaks on his cheeks and a far off look on his face.

"Barney!" Steve jogged over to him and tried to hide his fears of what Barney would've done if Steve hadn't made it here in time. "What are you doing up here?"

Barney seemed to stare right through him, "I was talking to Clint." He said vaguely.

Steve bit at his lip, "Barney I think you may be a bit over tired, how about we get away from the edge and we can get some sleep then have this conversation in the morning?"

Barney shook his head, "No, I'm fine. Clint was here, I saw him with my own two eyes."

Steve shifted a little uncomfortably. "I'm sorry Barney-"

"That's what he said," Barney leaned over the edge staring down at the sidewalk many stories below. "Then he jumped over the side."

Steve felt his heart clench, was Barney reliving Clint's suicide in his head?

As Barney spoke he seemed to lean farther over the edge,almost like he was ready to jump after Clint himself.

"Look I know you are dealing with quite a lot right now and you've lost a lot of people in your life,but this isn't the way you should deal with it!" Steve cautiously took a step towards Barney, ready to tackle him down if he tried to take a swan dive over the side.

Barney suddenly stood up and looked Steve right in the eyes.

"Do you know what loss feels like?" He said strangely and Steve could tell something in Barney had snapped."What it really feels like when everything you thought was true was a lie and you've lost the only person that you cared about?"

Steve could feel the wind blowing around him and he knew logically that this breeze was coming off the ocean, but in his mind it was racing over frozen mountain peaks in Germany as he clutched to the side of a speeding train. He knew the constant hum and grating noises were from the streets many stories below, but at the moment they sounded exactly like the clicking of wheels on steel rails and the whizz of wind as the cut through the air.

The second he heard Barney's question he was back on that horrible train as Bucky fell into the ravine, he was back in Washington learning that the winter soldier,this evil and remorseless killer, was his best friend.

Swallowing, Steve answered.

"Yes, I know what it feels like. I understand what it feels like to have pain worm it's way inside you and start chewing."

Barney let out a heartless laugh,"So you know what it feels like? The great Captain America understands?" Barney's voice had lost all of it's normal tone, he was angry and he needed someone to take it out on.

Steve looked at his feet,Barney's words had struck home like he had intended. " I do."

"Oh really? What happened to you that was so horrible?" Barney practically sneered.

That was when Steve snapped, he couldn't handle it anymore. The guilt had been circling him for years now and it was finally coming home to roost. There was no more hiding behind locked doors or ignoring the soul crushing weight on his shoulders.

Captain America looked Barney straight in the eye and answered.

"I watched my best friend die and I couldn't save him. I watched him fall into the ravine and I heard his screams as he disappeared. Then I met the winter soldier, my friend had been alive the entire time. While I was frozen in a block of ice, my friend, my Bucky was being wiped clean of everything he ever knew. He was being turned into a soulless soldier, a person who wasn't even human! A person that became your mission to kill! A person they wiped and started from scratch so many times he didn't even know his own name!"

Steve could feel his facade breaking, this wall of confidence he had spent so much time perfecting crumbled to ash around him. Leaving him to face the facts.

A single tear traced a streak down the large man's face.

"He didn't know me,he didn't even recognize me." He said in a hoarse whisper,falling to his knees with a thud.

That was when the floodgates broke, The amazing Captain America became a sobbing, blubbering mess in front of a man he barely knew on a roof top at three in the morning.

__________________________

Barney had had his fill of depressing things today, but they just seemed to keep on piling up like manure at a feedlot. Proving once and for all that the universe hates Bernard Barton and wants to see him how much shit he can wade through before he drowns.

That was why he had always wished he could've traded lives with someone, even just for a day. Just one day where he could walk somewhere and not cringe whenever a car sped by,or see a marble without instantly remembering Clint. He would've switched lives with literally anyone just to forget those memories,but today he'd found a life that he never wanted.

No matter what, Barney would pick his sucky life a hundred times over before he picked Steve's.

To your best friend die in front of you only to find out he was alive and had been turned into a remorseless killing machine?

No, Barney couldn't do it. He couldn't even began to think about it.

What if that was him? What if he had to see Clint, his little brother become a monster, a man without a soul? What if he had to hunt him down a put a bullet through his brain like a rabid wolf?

The thoughts made him want to vomit.

So Barney stared at the huge man did the only thing he could do, he sat down next to him and hugged him.

It was a strange site to see, two full grown men huddled together on a rooftop, one crying freely for the first time in a very long time, the other trying desperately to hold it in. If it was anywhere else they would've been embarrassed, they would've pulled away within seconds,but it wasn't anywhere else.

Here in the dark they didn't care. All alone on the roof in the middle of New York City, they didn't care. Both Steve and Barney didn't care anymore.

They had both lost their pillars, the thing that had held their worlds together and they didn't care if the world knew how much they were hurting.

Yet neither of them fully registered what was happening, who they were hugging. In their heads they were somewhere different.

Steve was wrapped in Bucky's arms.

And Barney had his arms around Clint.

Like it should be.