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“We were alone, you know. Me and Nat.”
The statement hangs in the air between them: heavy. Painful.
Bucky doesn’t respond. He’s not sure what he could say to that. Hell, he’s not even sure why Steve said it in the first place. His eyes dart over to him, then drop to the ground. He’s careful not to shift, not to move his feet or clear his throat. Bucky lets the silence simmer until Steve continues.
“Maybe that sounds stupid—Banner was still around. So was Stark.” It’s Steve who finally clears his throat, like Stark’s name is a lump in it. History and memory and guilt, all rolled into a ball big enough to choke on. “But that wasn’t the same. It just wasn’t, for them.”
Steve exhales a long breath and lapses back into silence. He’s facing straight ahead, eyes firmly latched onto the horizon and not Bucky. Bucky waits, again. His chest hurts, from the waiting.
“I’ve been alone for a long time, Buck.” At that, Steve huffs a bitter laugh. “Jesus, this all sounds stupid—who am I to talk about being alone, huh, pal? Who am I. I don’t—I don’t know how to say it right. I don’t know.”
“It’s not stupid,” Bucky says softly, breaking his silence. He sees Steve look over at him in his periphery. He keeps his eyes on the ground.
Steve watches him for another moment, then looks away. Another long, low exhale. “Thanks, Buck.” Bucky nods, grateful that it was the right thing, grateful that Steve looked at him. He may not be sure what’s happening, but he’s always been able to feel a bad thing coming in his bones.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that… God, I miss her. I miss her like hell, Buck. She was all I had these last five years. She was—she was the only good thing.”
Steve stops abruptly and takes a ragged inhale. Bucky can tell how close he is to crying—knows how much he hates to cry, how rarely he ever did it growing up. Bucky hasn’t seen Steve cry this side of the century, and the thought of seeing it now makes him feel sick with grief. He reaches a hand out and gently lays it on Steve’s back, resting it there for a moment before he begins to rub small circles there between his shoulders. He can feel Steve lean into the touch, just a little, and it’s enough. It’s always enough.
“Bucky, I—I didn’t think I was ever going to get you back again. I’d lost you so many times before, and then I lost you again, and Sam, and—fuck, it felt like we lost everyone. Wanda, Fury, Hill. Vision was dead. So many people died, and then the rest of you just vanished. I’d never felt so alone. Didn’t even feel that alone when they pulled me out of the ice.”
Bucky continues his slow, firm circles. Steve shudders under his touch and keeps going.
“And Natasha—we’d never wanted anything from each other before. Not anything like—like what we had, after it happened. After we lost everyone.”
Bucky understands, then, what Steve is trying to tell him. He feels his heart clench in his chest. This is a many-layered pain, the one that is unfurling within him; one that knocks something loose inside of him, something he’s locked away for a long time. He never pauses his hand on Steve’s back. He’s beginning to feel that he needs the contact just as much as Steve.
“I don’t think we’d have ever wanted it if things had been different. But they weren’t. And now—it wasn't supposed to be like this, Buck. She was supposed to get a life. I wanted that for her so badly. I wasn't supposed to be it. She deserved more. "
He ran a hand over his face and blinked, hard.
"God, Bucky, I had no idea. I had no idea I would have to lose somebody else to get you back again.” If Steve notices the way Bucky’s hand twitches against his back and falls still, it doesn’t show—he continues on as if the words are forcing their way out of him.
“You don’t know the—the relief I felt, when you were back. How fucking happy I was. But she’s dead. She’s dead, Bucky, and how can I be happy when I’ve lost another goddamn person? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me that everyone I love dies?”
“Steve—” Bucky starts, his voice cracking, a brokenness he wasn’t expecting creeping into his voice from somewhere deep inside of him where it lives and lurks. But then Steve is facing him, and his hands are framing Bucky’s face, and he’s staring so intently into his eyes that Bucky wants to disappear into the ground where he can’t be seen, can’t feel, can’t remember, can’t want.
“I wouldn’t change it. There’s not a goddamn thing I can do about any of this, now, but I wouldn’t stop it from happening again if I could. And I hate myself for that. I really do, Buck.” Steve’s voice breaks, and Bucky is frozen, frozen like cryo, frozen like the surface of a dark and vicious lake that no light can reach the bottom of, “I think there’s something wrong with me, Bucky. I couldn’t risk you again. I don’t think I can risk anyone, anymore. I couldn’t live with myself. I don’t know if I can, now.”
Bucky pulls Steve in without hesitation, wrapping his arms tightly around him, pulling his head into the crook of his shoulder. It happens in a breath, and once it’s done, he’s not sure why he didn’t do it sooner.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says gruffly into his ear. Steve starts to shake his head, and Bucky gives him a little shake of his own—gentle, but firm. “Nothing wrong with you, Steve,” he repeats. Steve’s arms are just as tight around him, holding him close enough for it to hurt as he tries to take deep, shuddering breaths.
“You’re not alone,” Bucky continues. “I know it doesn’t feel like that. I know you’re grieving. I know you miss her, and I know you’ve lost so many people, and I’m sorry that I’ve been one of them. I really am, Steve. I’m so fucking sorry I’ve been part of your pain.” Somehow, Steve’s arms manage to tighten more.
“I know what it’s like, Steve.” His voice is a whisper now; his head tilted towards Steve’s, his lips a breath away from his ear. “I know what it’s like to lose her, too. You’re not alone.”
Bucky’s not sure if it's a mistake to confess this to Steve in the midst of his grief, but what have their lives been together, if not a series of shared pains? He’s never let Steve carry it alone, if he could help it. He doesn’t need to carry it alone, now.
“We met before cryo. The Red Room. I had nothing; I was nothing. She made me remember what it was like to be human and not just a weapon. I was so haunted, Steve.” He can barely hear himself over the pounding in his head, in his heart. Steve is silent now, still holding him close. Bucky’s voice grows softer still. “I might’ve put a bullet in my brain to quiet the ghosts, if not for Natasha.”
It pours out of him: he is a tap unscrewed, flushing out memories, flushing out a buried pain, a secret only fit for his best friend.
“She was the only good thing for me, too. And then I didn’t remember her, after, not for a long time. But I remembered you. I don’t know if she knew me still, how she remembered me after everything that happened. But I felt that guilt, Steve. I feel it now. You’re not alone. I loved her, too. You’re not alone.”
They stay like that: clutching each other like their lives depend on it.
They stay like that: holding the pain between them, together.