This is not the Endgame

My pride is made to say forgive

 "There was another funny feeling, and all of a sudden I'm heading back into battle against the same goons we left, just not in Wakanda anymore. This guy, Dr Strange, calls himself the Sorcerer Supreme, gives us a heads up and then does something really weird and opens portals, and that's how we got from Wakanda to the old Avengers facility. And let me tell you, there was some really weird things going on there," Bucky said, reliving the memory. "Outer space people and ships. Then apparently Tony Stark gets a hold of the Infinity stones and snaps his fingers, then the invaders dust. There's a funeral for him--but not for Natasha, she died getting one of those stones, the Avengers never even bothered with a headstone somewhere--that we all have to attend, then Steve says he'll return the Infinity stones back to where we got them, or else they'll screw up the timeline, and there are at least two conflicting rationales for how all the time travel works, and none of it really makes good sense, so I'm sorry, I can't explain it. Nobody really can, apparently. And Steve tells me that he's not coming back. That he's tired, he wants to retire in a world that makes sense to him, have a life. And that's what he does. When the time for his return in this time passes, there's consternation, then Steve, who's aged and almost at the end of his life, shows up and gives Sam his shield. It was broken by Thanos in the fight, but this one is whole and perfect. Tells him to be Cap. Won't say what happened." Bucky shook his head. "Then we got on with our lives. I gather information for the Avengers. Sam is Cap, doing a great job. The Avengers aren't much, compared to what they were before the Snap, but they're still out there, doing their best. I finally feel like I have my feet under me again, I'm learning how to live again, then this happens. I have no idea what Younger!Steve is doing here or why." Ava sat and processed this. It took awhile. "As for the rest of it... I'm going to have to talk to Steve. Find out what's going on." He shook his head. "Sam probably already knows; he was a lot closer to Steve than he is to me." He fell silent; what peace he had came from her gently stroking fingers and compassion.  "I'm both glad to see him and ready to punch his face in. I want to both welcome him back and turn my back on him like he did on me."

"Well, if you punch his face in, I know where there's a good urgent care for your hand, which will be a mess, it's just a couple streets over," she said pacifically, and Bucky emitted a horrible sound, a choked cross between a chuckle and a snort, and she started to laugh, and he joined in.

"I guess it'll work out or it won't. He was my oldest friend, but balanced against that is the fact that he just up and vanished. And it wasn't always easy or fun to be his friend, back then, he was like a dark raincloud in need of a leash, focused on what other people thought of him, fighting when he didn't need to, feeling undervalued and underappreciated. Which he was, but not by me. I was always hauling him out of scrapes, people asked me why I let him hang around, tried to make me feel stupid for it. But he was my brother." She nodded. "It's hard, though. I understand the allure of the past, but it's not something I'd ever want to go back to. I've changed so much, it would also look like a foreign place. The people I knew then, all gone. The bones of the city are similar, even if the skin isn't the same. It's haunting, sometimes. We nearly got into a physical fight. He was furious when I said that Peggy Carter hadn't been interested in him until stepped out of the vitaray chamber, that she was just interested in getting Captain America on her side, serve her ambition. She caught some woman kissing him once, and shot at him right after when he was choosing his shield. They didn't know how the vibranium shield would perform, and anyway, a ricochet could have killed somebody, but she wasn't ever called to account for it. She did a lot of questionable things that Philips never bothered to take action on when she was working for him. She massaged his ego by ostentatiously ignoring me in the bar, and that was pretty powerful, because he had always been overlooked by women to that point. She had him pretty much eating out of her hand, but they didn't have much time together--she went off on intelligence-gathering missions and we'd go back to the field soon after. Her plan went to pot once he put the Valkyrie in the ice and was lost. But she would have managed his reappearance for her benefit, not his, and I'd bet every cent in my bank account that she'd never agree to look for me. She was fine working with the Hydra scientists, which included Zola. Hydra knew what she was doing because Zola and the others kept them informed. SHIELD provided cover for their activities and they only cared about results. And there was a lot of inequality. Gabe, one of the Howling Commandos, had a hard time, even though Truman desegregated the army and federal employment. His brother in arms was treated as less than because of his skin color, and Steve didn't seem to mind that. That's when Steve kind of lost it and took a swing at me.