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Bucky was too tired to even try assigning blame here. It was basically impossible to find one person to blame for multiversal portals opening up and timelines crossing each other and braiding together or fraying apart in ways they weren't supposed to be. Honestly, he didn't care to figure it out. He wasn't here to solve the problem. He was just around to make sure no evil little parasites got through. Multiverses, alternate timelines, branch worlds, everything still bled. A very long, strange life had been consistent at least in that regard.
"Hey, I came as soon as I heard," Sam said, indeed sounding out of breath as he came up to Bucky's side. They were at the Avengers Campus that Sam had opened several years ago. It was for training, or meeting and debriefing, or just crashing for a while. Lots of the heroes had used it. It had been a very good idea.
Not to say that Sam wasn't already in the thick of the emergency. He was. He was on the campus, putting out fires where he could, of course. He'd just come to Bucky's side at that moment. They were in the large common room, where seminars were held. Or what was converted into a giant theater, complete with blankets and pillows on every flat surface for large group movie nights. (Of all the weird things that corralling a bunch of young heroes had brought him, movie nights were high on the list. Half the time, half of them weren’t even talking to each other, yet they’d be in the same room, laughing at the same jokes or jumping at the same scares. It was weird. Young people were weird.)
Right now, it was sheltering many other versions of the same heroes who camped out on the floor with candies and snacks. There were some new heroes too. Wizards and gods and scientists and trainees tried to figure out how to send people back to their own timelines, but no one seemed to be very successful.
"What're the odds that between us both, only one came through?" Sam continued. Because that's why he had to stop whatever containment he'd been working on to be beside Bucky.
Across the room from them, someone with Bucky's face was napping in the corner. Alpine was curled in his lap, napping too. Because she was a traitor.
Seeing Steve after the Battle for Earth, and everything after, that had been a shock. Bucky hadn't considered what long time consciousness would do with the serum. He supposed seventy years off-and-on ice were had skewed some of the aging process. But he certainly hadn't expected to see Steve age like a normal human. Actually, it made next to no sense that he had. But the thought had been nettling in the back of Bucky’s mind since. Some mornings he woke up and stared at himself in the mirror, searching for grey hairs or deeper wrinkles or spots that hadn't been there before.
His daddy hadn't gotten to grow old. He wasn't sure how he'd age. He'd seen pictures of Becca as she’d gotten older, but their odd twin-like similarities seemed to diverge the longer they weren't with each other. By the time she was getting married, she looked like her own self and Bucky couldn't find his features in her face. He figured they wouldn’t reconverge as he got older.
Then again, the cameras back then did kind of suck.
The man who'd appeared in a beignet shop in New Orleans was curmudgeonly and hard-lined. His jaw was still square and his eyes were still bright, but time had etched into his face and his mouth perpetually drooped downwards. The fall out of a boyish pout Bucky had never broken.
He hadn't aged the way Steve had. According to the man, he'd be almost two hundred in another few months. Or a few years. Yet, he only appeared to be in the early stages of aging. Sixty-five at the most, Bucky would wager. He was aging slowly. As Bucky had figured the serum would do. Slowing those processes, keeping him healthy longer.
Bucky hadn't believed he was one of the timeline anomalies. He swore he'd be one of the multiverse ones. A harsh conversation back and forth had quelled some of his doubt.
["Where are you from?" he'd asked the old man.
"Brooklyn. Where the hell are you from? 'Cause if it ain't Brooklyn, you sure as shit ain't a Barnes."
"I'm from Brooklyn, old man. I'm probably older than you are. I was born in 1917."
"Yeah, me too, kid. You're not special. This your first time with this bullshit? You are young. What is this? The 20s again? Christ, you ain't seen nothing yet."
"I've seen enough," Bucky had assured with steel in his voice. "You'd know that if you were me."
The man had hissed a dismissive sound and waved his hand. "HYDRA, the Winter Soldier. At least we weren't conscious for that. You'll be awake for the rest of it."
And then, annoyed and also trying to ignore the swell of dread at the thought of something worse finding him, Bucky had demanded the man pull down the sleeve of his shirt so they could compare the scars around their shoulders line by line. After that, there really couldn't be much arguing. If they weren't the same, they were damn close.]
"They found him back home," Bucky said. "Right outside Judi's. I had to buy him a to-go box just to get him back here."
Sam snorted. "Yeah, that sounds about right."
"He's an asshole," Bucky insisted.
"Yeah," Sam agreed again. "He's you, I get it."
Bucky rolled his eyes and started to make his way back over to the other Barnes. Unconscious, he wasn't so bad. Looking for the details, Bucky could see his own long fingers in the old man's, not nearly as knobby as he was used to seeing on old men. He was still, all these years later, wearing the sleek black watch Sam had gotten him a handful of years ago for Christmas. The one they'd argued about because it was too expensive. Bucky had locked it away in its fine box and hunted for the receipt to return it when it was obvious Sam wasn't going to. Then Sam had set the receipt on fire in the sink. Bucky barely even took the thing off to shower. It was the one thing the boys knew not to play with.
He put his fingers to the band of it now, rubbing them across the fasten gently. The watch the old man was wearing was worn away in the same spot.
He was sitting in a recliner. He'd raised a fuss when a version of Rambeau with literal starlight pouring out of her had jumped up to offer it to him. But then he'd taken it and conked out like the double centenarian he was. The other timeline infractions had shifted away from him, the way everyone moved away from old people snoozing. Sam pulled a foot stool over and sat on it before gently putting his hand on the man's forearm and shaking it. It wasn't how he woke Bucky up.
And the other Barnes woke up disoriented too. His eyes flashed around the room, fingers reaching for a weapon, but falling upon the cat instead. He looked down at it and his eyes widened. His fingers sank into her fur, then he hugged her close. He'd tried to bend over, get his face in her fur, but she was too small and too low in his lap for it to work very well.
"Alpine, you're here already," he whispered. Bucky wasn't sure even Sam heard him. Alpine stretched to butt her head against his cheek and started to make biscuits on his thigh.
Sam leaned back enough to look at Bucky. "Well, that should be more proof for you."
Two hundred years old was far too long for Bucky to delude himself into thinking the old man still had his Alpine. That was ninety years ahead of them. The thought made a knot form in his throat. He had to look away to swallow it down.
"Sir," Sam said, putting his hand on the man's forearm again. He waited until the man lifted his face and settled his gaze on him. "I'm--"
"Sam," the other Barnes almost sobbed. His hand went to the side of Sam's face, cupping it in the same way like he was meant to hold Sam, putting his thumb to the scar under Sam's eye the way Bucky always did. "Oh, look at you, sweetheart. I remember all of this."
Sam beamed a little, the kind of smile that was polite, but also very pleased. He dropped his eyes briefly before bringing them back up. "I'm glad. It's been touch and go with the memory in the past, huh?"
The old man smiled and Bucky saw himself plain as daylight. That was exactly how he always looked in candid photos when he was looking at Sam. It was all the same. The smile, his eyes, the desperate adoration. "I never wanted to forget you."
Sam brought one hand up to hold the back of the other Barnes's and the other up to hold his wrist gently. "Well, it sounds like you didn't."
"You were always so beautiful, but I can't believe how much I loved you like this."
Bucky blushed. It was no new news to Sam. If it wasn't Bucky telling him, it was the media or their teammates or their friends in Delacroix. Still, it felt rawer to hear it said by a mouth that wasn't his. Not really. He hadn't earned any of that yet. He didn't have the memories the other man did. Yet, that was him. Him telling on himself. Fervently, as if Bucky stopped doing that at some point and now he needed to make up for lost time.
"Sometimes I can't believe it either," Sam admitted with a small laugh. "I think you're exaggerating all the time."
The old man shook his head solemnly. "Never about loving you, Samuel Wilson." He dropped his hand away, shifted in the seat, but didn’t put any more distance between him and Sam. "Tell me what you've been doing recently. How are the boys? Is Cass in high school yet?"
"Not quite," Sam said with an easy smile. "Almost. He's still in the eighth grade, but the year's almost done."
The other Barnes was still staring at Sam like he was seeing the sun for the first time. Bucky was familiar with the sentiment, but he'd gotten better at controlling himself the more he was around Sam. He could only handle so much ribbing from their friends.
Alpine stretched in his lap and then snuggled closer again.
Oh.
Bucky blinked back stinging tears as he fully realized what all he could lose in ninety years. A knot snarled in his throat as the air vacated his lungs with one plunge of terror.
Everything. He could lose everything in ninety years.
He took a shaky step back and stepped into one of the Langs. The girl apologized and asked where her dad was, but Bucky couldn't answer. He dodged out of her way without as much as a mumbled apology.
He didn't get very far--just to a pseudo-refreshments table--before his knees went out from under him and he had to catch himself on his forearms against the table. Sam caught up to him a step later and put a hand between Bucky's shoulder blades. It only fueled the building sobs in his throat.
"Hey, are you okay?" Sam asked. He put his other hand over Bucky's right hand, covering the silver band that the old man still wore.
"Tell him anything he wants to hear," Bucky managed to get out. Even in his own ears, he could hear how shaky his voice was. His breath kept catching in his throat, as it passed each rib, tried to squeeze by his thundering, breaking heart. "Tell him everything. Just go sit with him. Please."
"Yeah, sure, of course," Sam agreed. He sounded confused. Bucky knew what his face looked like. The pull of his eyebrows, the pout of his lower lip. Just a little. Enough that he argued he didn't do that, but Bucky saw it every time. "But are you okay?"
Bucky nodded. He didn't trust himself to say anything else. He just waved his hand back towards the old man. "I'm fine. Please," he tried again. “Just let him hear your voice again.”
Sam wasn't convinced, he could tell. But after a few more strokes against his back, he turned and went back to the other man. Bucky put both hands on the table, trying to breathe normally. But every breath just made his chest hurt even more. There was no getting away from the fact that he'd eventually have to live without Sam. He would outlive everyone he loved. He would still go get breakfast at the place down the street--even if it wasn't still called Judi's--and he'd eat alone. Sam wouldn't steal the good almond slivers, wouldn't add the creamer he wanted to Bucky's coffee so he could drink it too. There'd be no newspaper crossword races to see who paid. No one else beside him to pretend like using the booth was justified.
How was he supposed to excise the panic and dread clawing around his ribs and shredding his heart?
Sam laughed from across the room. The old man was halfway through a story-telling gesture, Sam and the cat watching raptly, and he looked brighter, lighter.
At least, Bucky thought, he could give himself that one treasure. He could remind himself how beautiful Sam was, what his laugh sounded like, how in love they were.
He would remember all of it. He'd remember everything he got. For all his life.