The Silence Between Gunshots
11 parts Ongoing Bucky Barnes is only a few months out of Hydra-barely a year into piecing his life back together, if you could even call it that. He's tired, quiet, and living low in a city that doesn't look at him twice. That's how he likes it. Until one rainy afternoon, in a half-empty diner that smells like burnt coffee and old vinyl, he meets someone who doesn't fit anywhere either.
Nero Aspen doesn't look like much at first glance-just a scrawny teenager in a tattered hoodie, poking at a plate of food he can't pay for and probably won't finish. But there's something off about him. Something in the way he doesn't flinch when the waitress raises her voice, in the way his eyes flick too fast, like he's seen too much. And maybe that's because he has. Nero's tied with Bucky on the trauma scale. An ex-brainwashed assassin or a demigod that can't remember his original dimension.
Bucky doesn't know any of that yet. He just knows the kid looks cold and out of place. So he pays for the meal, shrugs it off. Something Alpine, his cat, would definitely side-eye him for-she was hoping that money would go toward a new cat toy. Instead, it goes toward a quiet gesture Bucky doesn't realize will change everything.
What starts as a random act of kindness spirals into something deeper-something messier. Because you can't run from Hydra forever. And you can't outrun gods, curses, or the things that make you feel human, even if you want to.