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You think that you always knew. ***Something about the day had seemed… off, from the very second that you woke up.
Bucky wasn’t beside you, and that in itself was alarming. He always stays – stayed, though the ‘ed’ breaks your heart a little more every time you think it – in bed with you until you wake up, unless there’s a powerful motivator for him to leave.
He likes listening to your even breathing, knowing that you’re safe and alive and warm and real beside him.
Liked.
This is really hard.
He hadn’t been missing for very long – no sooner had you consciously thought ‘where’s Bucky?’ than he was triumphantly striding through the doorway, balancing a tray full of orange juice and eggs and toast (“Breakfast in bed for my beautiful wife!”) – but it had still shaken you in a way that didn’t make sense.
The feeling should have clued you in, you think.
The morning was calm and lazy, your favourite kind. You and Bucky left your room in the Compound and spent some time playing doubles ping-pong with Tony and Pepper, who had taken the day off at Tony’s wheedled insistence. You laughed and joked and Bucky spun you around in delight when you won.
(“It’s not fair,” Tony complained to an unsympathetic Pepper. It was his lack of finesse that had cost them the game.
“Life isn’t fair,” she’d retorted. Little did any of you know how painfully that point would be driven home that day.)
***
You got another horrible feeling when the call came in. Steve and Sam were grave and solemn, which isn’t typical for Sam and clued all of you in that something horrible was going on.
Thanos, a really angry, powerful alien, was coming to Earth. He wanted to collect all the Infinity Stones, which all of you had only recently learned about (Doctor Steven Strange, a new addition to the team, was chagrined when he found out that none of you knew what was going on elsewhere in the multiverse and promptly set about remedying that) and with them eliminate one-half of all living things in the universe.
That was not good, especially since a member of the Avengers had an Infinity Stone embedded in his forehead.
So the team suited up, from wherever they were around the planet, and gathered at the Compound to take the Quinjet to Wakanda, where they were planning to use the super advanced tech to get the stone out of Vision’s head without killing him.
“Please, Buck,” you begged as the team started boarding the aircraft. “I need to come this time.”
He doesn’t want you to go on missions, despite the fact that Moira’s mind-controlled training stuck with you and that you’re constantly working with Nat to improve it, and you hate it because you hate watching the team leave and then having to wait to hear if they’re still alive or not, but you can’t bring yourself to do something that will make him unhappy. You just can’t.
“Please don’t,” he said pleadingly, clutching at you, a look in his eyes that is terrified and panicked. “Please, doll, I’m begging you. Stay here. Stay safe.”
Frustration surged through you, because at that moment you wanted nothing more than to be in Wakanda with the rest of them, but there was no way, when he was looking at you like that, that you’d ignore his feelings.
Footage on the giant flatscreen TV in the corner (Tony has screens everywhere around the Compound) distracted everyone. There was a huge spaceship, a huge and round and intimidating one, flying into New York.
After that, everything dissolved into a blur of chaos. Tony took off in the suit, muttering something to Steve, who nodded and made a call. Bucky kissed you with feverish intensity, like he, too, felt that you wouldn’t be seeing each other again. You held onto him as tightly as possible for as long as you could, and let go when you couldn’t anymore.
And suddenly, with a whoosh, they were gone.
The spaceship retreated back into space, pulling Tony and Peter Parker, a recruit who isn’t even out of high school yet, with it.
Pepper called her husband and stayed on the phone as long as she can, until the sound of his voice fizzled out into static, and then she left the common room, without a word, to find some privacy in which to scream her hysterical feelings.
You paced the Compound’s corridors all day. You couldn’t believe this was happening. There had never been a mission that had called the entire team into action before, not since the battle of New York, so many years ago. A lump of dread settled deep in your belly and stayed there, refusing to budge. You didn’t eat, and night settled, and you didn’t sleep.
And then, as you were watching a reporter recap what had happened earlier, she tilted her head, as though about to ask a question, and then vanished into ash.
It was so horrible that you screamed, involuntarily and loudly. The cameraman swept the room, calling to his coworkers in a panicked voice.
You started crying.
The sound guy was there one second, and the next his headphones were dangling from their cord. The university intern started to shout, but before she could make a sound her face was gone, evaporated into dust. The weatherman, standing in front of his green screen, tried to take a step forward, looking concerned, but his foot hadn’t even touched the ground before it, too, was blowing away.
You called for Pepper as loudly as your trembling voice could in between sobs, bursting through the door into her and Tony’s bedroom. She was sitting there, face red and puffy, staring at you, unsure of what was wrong, and you were so glad to see her that you threw yourself onto her, giving her the biggest hug you had since her wedding.
“What’s going on?” she asked, voice hoarse, and you told her, crying, because Thanos got the Stone and half of everyone is gone.
***
Steve called nearly two hours later, sounding so stunned and quiet that you couldn’t find it in yourself to be angry with him.
“I think you and Pepper should come to Wakanda,” he told you. “We can talk here.”
So the two of you climbed into Tony’s FRIDAY-controlled jet and made the journey to Africa.
***
Of course, you hoped until the very last second.
Bucky is okay, you told yourself over and over, a mantra of desperate grasping at straws. He’s okay, and when I see him he’s going to hug me more tightly than he ever has. It’ll probably hurt, that’s how tight he’ll hug me, and I won’t be able to breathe. That’s what’s going to happen.
But there was a voice in your head, one that was a lot more sure than you, one that said, he’s gone. He’s gone, and there’s nothing you can do.
And when you climb off the jet, legs shaky from the horrors that had happened, and see Steve, eyes red and face drawn, everything crumples. He pulls you into his arms and holds on, which is good because you can’t do anything, you can’t feel anything, you can’t think anything.
He’s gone.
You think about waking up without Bucky beside you. You think about the proud grin on his face as he brought you eggs and toast. You think about his cry of delight when you beat Pepper and Tony at ping pong, and his strong arms holding on tight. You think about the frantic kiss, thick with unspoken emotions and cares, and the feelings that you’d had during all of those moments.
You feel yourself sobbing, shaking with the pain, trembling with the loss, and yet you don’t feel like this can be happening. You feel like this can’t be real, but you know it is. You don’t know how to feel or what to think or how to do anything, but you find that you’re clinging to Steve so you keep doing that. The thought of directing your body to do anything is overwhelming and far too much right now.
Bucky is gone.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
That night, after you’ve seen everyone who’s left of the team and toppled into the bed that a broken-hearted Okoye (general of the Dora Milaje, and acting governor of Wakanda since every member of the royal family suffered the same fate as your family) showed you to, you dream about your wedding.***It was everything you could have wanted and a lot more. It was small – well, as small as anything can be when every member of the Avengers, plus families and significant others, is in attendance. Pepper handled all the decorations and catering, which was good, because you hadn’t even been able to think about such silly details.Tony walked you down the aisle, because it just made sense. Steve was Bucky’s best man, and Melinda was your maid of honour. (Despite the fact that you’d been solidly accepted into the Avengers family, both of you still bonded over being painfully not superhuman, especially compared to everyone around you.)You were swallowing tears from the second the doors to the church opened in front of you, and to this day you’re amazed that you didn’t trip over the flower petals Lila had sprinkled with painstaking care, because you were in such a daze that it felt like dropping your bouquet was not out of the realm of possibilities.You remembered to hand it to Mel, and Bucky took your hands, beaming at you with so much love that your eyes promptly filled with tears, and then his eyes filled with tears too, and the whole ceremony kind of melds together in your memory because you were so focused on not sobbing. The vows were heartfelt and emotional. You don’t remember them word for word, but you have the pieces of paper they were written on tucked away in a drawer for when you want to remember just how much you love the man you married. (Not that it’s hard to remember, but just in case you want an intense refresher.) When the priest pronounced you man and wife, Bucky drew you into one of the most passionate kisses he’d ever given you. (Which was saying something, because Bucky is a very passionate kisser.) He drew back to smile at you, words snatched away by sheer happiness, and the room exploded into cheers and wolf whistles.
Walking down the aisle, hand in hand with the man you love with every inch of you, you felt like you’d just made the best decision of your life. Probably because you had.
The reception was a boisterous affair, with Steve and Sam and Tony fighting for the position of DJ. The food was delicious and the cake was delightful (which, again, was not surprising, because Pepper was in charge), but truth be told you can’t really remember any of it.
What you do remember is watching Bucky smile, shining like the sun, happier than you’ve ever seen him before or since. He laughed at all the jokes Steve made in his best man speech and he cried a little when Steve’s voice got soft.
“Buck, you’re happier with Sunny – I mean (Y/N) – ”
(Everyone in attendance knew your nickname, but Steve had insisted that for your wedding day it should all be official, and was horrified. Afterwards he apologized a million times for messing up the speech. You thought about laughing at him, because it was such a little thing, but the look on his face made you think the better of it.
“Steve,” you’d said seriously, holding his gaze, “Sunny is my name. Maybe it’s not the one I was born with, but it’s one that I have been given and one that I like, and it made my wedding day better, not worse.”
There had been tears in his eyes, and you hadn’t bothered trying to figure out what he was thinking before he pulled you into a huge hug.)
“You’re happier with (Y/N) than I’ve ever seen you in your life.”
That was saying something, because Steve had seen Bucky back in Brooklyn, when he was young and carefree and vibrant and whole, and you knew it, and Bucky already had his arm around you but he squeezed a little tighter and leaned over to press a kiss to your cheek in an attempt to hide the tears that had sprung up in his eyes.
There were so many speeches that you’re beyond thankful that FRIDAY was recording the whole thing, because there is absolutely no way that you’d remember them all now. Tony put them all on a flash drive for you, and you keep that in a drawer with your vows.
After all the speeches were done, Tony surprised you with a slideshow that he’d made from photos and clips that reached all the way back to your time on the JARVIS.
You weren’t even a little bit surprised when a playlist of your favourite love songs crooned softly in the background for the duration of the production. (And no, production is not an exaggeration. We are talking about Tony Stark, after all.)
It surprised you, how world-weary both you and Bucky had looked at the beginning. In the first photo (you and him and Sam sitting on deck chairs, you looking tense and nervous) you could see pain and fatigue in his face, like he was almost ready to give up. And then, just a few snapshots later, the lines of weariness had fallen from his face, and you were relaxed and smiling. After another ten pictures and a clip of all of you splashing around in the pool, the change was almost unbelievable. Your favourite photo from the entire collection was one of you and him on the deck, right before disembarkation. Despite being laden down by duffel bags, you were laughing, head thrown back, no reservations, and Bucky was giggling, eyes crinkling as they looked at you.
When you leaned over and whispered something about the drastic changes in both of you, Bucky looked at you, expression warm.
“That’s what you do for me, darlin’,” he whispered back, and you smiled without meaning to.
That happened a lot with Bucky.
The slideshow covered the beginning of your relationship (because of course FRIDAY just was recording when you had your first kiss in frumpy pajamas, and of course Tony had to include a still from it in the presentation) and the middle of your relationship (you didn’t realize that you spent so much time reading together, or that you fell asleep on his chest on so many separate occasions) and the entirety of your engagement (you had no clue just how often you smiled at your engagement ring, but if these photos are telling the truth it was a lot) and then surprised you by including almost the entirety of that very day. By the time it ended, the photo of Bucky kissing you today fading into black, pretty much everyone in the room had tears in their eyes.
“Did you like it?” Tony asked nervously, when almost everyone was mingling on the dance floor.
Instead of answering, you threw your arms around him, and he hugged you back fiercely.
“I’m so happy for you,” he whispered into your hair. “Even if you are a little nauseating sometimes.”
“Watch yourself, Stark,” Bucky warned playfully. “You better be careful what you say to my wife.”
Calling you his wife was Bucky’s favourite thing to do, and though he used the word so often it never grew old.
“You better be careful yourself,” Tony retorted. “You make her cry once – just once – and I will kill you.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” your groom deadpanned.
With a wink at you and an I’ve-got-my-eyes-on-you glare at Bucky, Tony vanished into the crowd in search of Pepper.
“Don’t worry,” you said as Bucky rested his hands on your hips and you slid your arms around his neck. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Thank you, love of my life,” he said seriously. “I will be able to rest in peace, knowing that you’ll be watching my back.”
You swayed like that for a little while, so full of cake and happiness that words weren’t really necessary. You nestled into Bucky’s chest and felt him pull you closer and rest his chin on top of your head. Every so often, he’d press a kiss into your elaborately done hair.
You were so, so, so in love.
So in love, in fact, that after awhile you were getting a little impatient.
“Wanna get out of here?” Bucky whispered in your ear, and he didn’t have to ask twice.
When you tossed your bouquet over your shoulder, a grinning Cassie caught it. Scott, who had been laughing with Sam, suddenly sobered up, the smile wiped completely off his face. He looked like he’d been doused in ice water. Sam laughed harder at the expression on his face, but Hank Pym (yes, he was invited, because Bucky completely nerded out over the fact that he’d created such amazing technology and there’s no way you’d have turned down something that made him so adorably excited) gave Scott a sympathetic pat.
After some hasty but heartfelt goodbyes to all the Avengers and family you could get the attention of, you and Bucky galloped, giggling hysterically, out to the limo Tony had made ready. Happy very pointedly didn’t look at you, which was good because you were kissing and being kissed so thoroughly that it might have been a little awkward for him. He got you to your five-star hotel in record time, and after that you weren’t heard from for several days, which surprised no one.
***
When you wake up, it’s still dark outside, Bucky is still gone, and your heart aches like you didn’t know it could.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Getting out of bed is somehow harder than it’s ever been in your life. It’s like all your limbs are weighted down with grief, and that makes moving difficult.At first you’re unsure of where to go, because despite meeting the royal family of Wakanda multiple times you’ve never actually been to the country, and the palace is a maze of hallways. But then you catch sight of Natasha and follow her into what looks like a conference room. There are so few people in it that it breaks your heart a little more. Pepper and Rhodey are leaning on each other. Okoye is whispering something to an assistant. Bruce and Natasha reach for each other. Thor is sitting in the corner, and there’s a – is that a raccoon? – perched on the arm of his chair. Steve meets your eyes, and tears fill his. Everyone’s eyes are red-rimmed, everyone looks exhausted, everyone is beaten up, and everyone is not a lot. Obeying Steve’s wordless gesture, you force your sorrow-laden body to walk over and sit down beside him. You sit there in silence for a minute, neither able to find words, until he says, voice broken, “Sharon’s gone, too. Her mom called last night.”“Oh, Steve…” you gasp, unable to find any words, and he leans into you and you wrap your arms around him, shock and horror and anger, anger because this isn’t fair, surging through you. He doesn’t say anything, just breathes very deeply, trying not to cry, and you do the same, because what else are you supposed to do? The world has fallen apart and there isn’t any way to put it back together.Eventually Okoye calls the meeting to order and you are astonished by the composure that she manages to maintain. She stands straight and stays poised, despite the fact that the same pain that is tearing through all of you is gnawing at her, too. Wakanda is lucky to have her as a leader.She acknowledges the losses that have been sustained, and she offers refuge and hospitality to anyone who wants it. (The fact that they now have lots of room is unspoken, but all of you hear it, loud and clear.) She says that if you need anything all you have to do is ask, and then she leaves the room.***You don’t know what to think. You don’t know what to feel, or do, or say. Grief weighs you down.It almost hurts worse that there’s nothing left of him but memories. You have a deep longing, however morbid, to touch his face again, to kiss his forehead, to stroke his hair. You know that it wouldn’t bring him back, even if you could, but it feels as though it might help with this ache, this emptiness, eating away at your insides.Steve takes you to the place where Bucky disintegrated into tiny pieces, where he turned to ash. Knowing exactly how he died, knowing the look that would have been on his face because you saw it on the dusted people in the newsroom on TV, feels like too much, feels like a weight that you shouldn’t have to carry. You fall to your knees and press your hands into the earth.There’s a gun lying nearby, one that you recognize from Bucky’s extensive training and instruction as some sort of SAW, and you think about how proud he’d have been if you’d pointed that out, you think about how excited he was, probably, to show it off when he got back to the Compound (you don’t think he had it when he left; he’s never liked these because they tend to jam, but you’re guessing that since Wakanda is so scientific it’s almost magical they’ve come up with a way around it), and you find yourself gasping for air and clutching the firearm like a teddy bear.Steve starts toward you, probably to take it away because you’re breaking every rule of gun safety in the books, but stops and doesn’t say anything. It’s strange, how much having something tangible to hold on to helps. The pain of losing him is still swirling around in you like a storm, raging and wailing in ways that you can’t, but you keep your hands closed tightly around the gun, like you know Bucky had his right before his death, and it helps keep your broken heart from tearing itself completely and irreparably in two.What’s left of the team and Pepper and everyone else all look at you, concerned, when you follow Steve back into the palace, clutching a machine gun, but no one asks. No one speaks at all, actually. Shock and exhaustion and so much grief have taken the desire for words away.***Everyone hopes against hope that some of those who are assumed dead but were not seen dying will come limping out of the forest, out of the mountain.Rhodey, in particular, who was searching for Sam and never found him, watches the skies religiously. You can almost see the Falcon suit sputtering against the jarringly beautiful sunset (it doesn’t seem right that splendour, that peace, that beauty, should exist anywhere anymore), carrying a battered but breathing Sam, ready to flip some royal Wakandan tables if Melinda isn’t there.(She’s alive, but is staying in New York. She cried on the phone, said that she needs to stay busy to stay okay, and you understood.You don’t like it, but you understood.)It never happens, and slowly but surely hope drains out of everyone like water out of a bathtub, leaving in its place a horrible acceptance. They’re not coming back. They’re gone, and it’s for good. You miss Wanda. You miss Sam, and Tony (no one knows where he is, if he’s okay, if he’s alive), and young, vibrant, excitable Peter. You only met them once or twice, but you miss Shuri and T’Challa, too – their absence has left a deep hole in Wakanda, in the palace, in the team, and you can feel it. You miss Sharon, and you miss Melinda, and you miss Clint, who won’t answer his phone but who Natasha insists is alive. (You trust Natasha’s instincts, and try not to think about Laura or Cooper or Lila or Nathaniel.) You miss Scott, who no one has heard from, and you miss Cassie, and you miss Hope, who was just starting to warm up to the Avengers as a whole and you in particular. You miss the happy, healthy, whole people that the remnant of the team used to be, and you miss laughter and warm belonging.Natasha floats around like a ghost, looking incomplete, somehow, without Bruce, who has shut himself up in his room, or Clint, whose whereabouts are unknown, trailing along behind her. Okoye is very hard to catch a glimpse of – she’s running the country, after all, and that takes a lot of time. Rhodey and Pepper, who clung to each other for comfort at first, have retreated into themselves. Steve tries to stay positive and strong for everyone else but he can’t because there’s too much hurt and loss inside his head to let him come out of his room for very long. Thor and the raccoon (who is indeed a raccoon, called Rocket) spend a lot of time outside, taking long walks and grieving all that they’ve lost. (Rocket’s team is all gone, part of them somewhere in space and one of them turned to ash before his eyes, and Thor has had a horrible year.)You bury yourself in sketchbooks and pencils and shading, drawing more than you have since you met your family. Somehow, while you’re focusing on perfecting the crease of Wanda’s forehead as she tries to understand what Tony’s talking about (he’s very interested in the chemistry of how superpowers work, at the moment, and has spent a lot of time running tests and forming theories on Wanda’s unique abilities) or pulling Sam’s mouth up in a ‘we got you good’ smirk, you forget that they’re gone, and feel like you’re spending time with them. If you try hard enough, you can completely ignore reality until you put your pencils down.4 You try to find some semblancy of normal – whatever normal is – but it doesn’t work. For every meal that you manage to have without falling apart, there’s one where you can’t swallow anything past the lump in your throat, and one that you burst into tears halfway through.It’s not like anyone else is doing any better. Smiles are obsolete in this new post-Thanos world. You find yourself spending a lot of time in the place where Bucky was last intact. Yeah, it’s morbid, but it’s also somehow comforting, and you feel closer to him in some weird way. Most of the time you bring the gun with you. No one questions this, because they think that it’s for your protection, but in reality it’s just a tangible reminder of your man, something that you can touch when the ache threatens to eat you alive. It holds you together in a way that sometimes you think you should be worried about, because it’s so strange, but you’re so full of grief for your husband that worry for yourself doesn’t have any room to grow.Some people leave Wakanda. No one says it, but they’re trying to get away from the memories, escape from the pain, the sorrow, the loss. They’re trying to move on. Start a new life. Get away and hopefully, if they’re very lucky, be at peace someday.You think that it’s a pointless endeavor, that they’d be better off saving themselves the heartache, but you’re not going to say that because that’s not going to help anybody.Bruce and Natasha and Pepper and Rhodey and Steve are some of those that leave in hopes of life getting better once they leave behind the place where they saw their friends die. You pack Steve’s bag for him, to give your empty hands something to do. You have a lot of remarks on the tip of your tongue, a lot of things to say about Sharon and how going back won’t save her, about Bucky and how running from the country where he spent the past year won’t help, but you don’t let them slip off. You just tuck his shirts in as carefully as you can and let him stare out the window in silence. Because what else can you do?You cry when you follow him out onto the pavement outside of the royal building (you still haven’t figured out what it’s called) and wrap him up in as big a hug as you can manage. (Which isn’t really very big, because he’s much bigger than you, but you do your best.) “Bye, Steve,” you whisper into his shoulder, because Natasha left when she knew you wouldn’t be around to see her off and Pepper slipped away without telling you and the lack of goodbyes is making you hurt worse than you already do. This opportunity to give just one of your friends a proper sendoff, is somehow making you feel immensely better. “Be safe.”He returns the hug, holding you just as tight as you’re clinging to him.“You, too,” he says, and when he pulls back and looks in your eyes you can tell that he knows what everyone’s trying to ignore – that this change, this loss that the world has experienced… it’s permanent. They’re not coming back. And you can further tell, because Steve was Bucky’s best friends and is one of your favourite people, that he feels guilty about going back to New York. He feels like a coward.This will not do.“You’ll feel better once you’re home,” you tell him, nodding to back your point up because your voice is so shaky that it’s not very convincing. “I’m glad that you’re going back.”“Yeah?” he says, and his face doesn’t brighten up because you don’t know if that will happen for a really long time, but it does get a little less worn and distraught. “Thanks, Sunny.”You hug him again, because words don’t work so well these days.“There’s lots of room, you know,” he says once you’ve let him go again. “I’d like the company.”And you know he would, but you also know that Brooklyn won’t make you feel any better. ‘Home’ isn’t something that you’ve had for most of your life, and even when you did find one it wasn’t a place. It wasn’t a building or a city. It was people, and in particular one person, and you can’t bring yourself to leave Wakanda. Not now, maybe not ever. You find solace in walking all around, everywhere, talking to W’kabi and Okoye and Nakia and, on one memorable occasion, M’Baku. (It’s a long story, and yes it’s a funny one but you don’t particularly feel like recalling the details right now.) This country soothes your battered heart in a way that tells you it soothed Bucky, too, and that’s enough to make you stay. It keeps you close to the love of your life, even as, in your heart, you know he’s irrevocably gone.“I’ll miss you a lot,” you tell him, “but I can’t. Not yet.”He gives you a sad smile that’s full of understanding and leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead before turning around and boarding the aircraft.He doesn’t look back.***Thor stays, too, and so does Rocket the Raccoon, and sometimes you walk and talk with them because on the good days their banter makes you smile.On the bad days nothing makes you smile, and you stay curled up in bed, under your blankets, crying and clutching the gun that you haven’t been able to let out of your sight since you found it. People have said things to you by now. They’ve told you that it’s unhealthy and that you need to let go, that you’re developing an obsession and that you should go to therapy, that no matter how tightly you cling to his automatic Bucky is not going to come back.You don’t listen, because you can’t, because if you let the gun go then you’re letting Bucky go, and that’s not happening.That is never happening.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You didn’t think you’d ever be ready to go back to New York, back to the city that made Bucky’s heart happy and filled him with contentment, but you were wrong.Not because Wakanda becomes any less like home – on the contrary, the more you stay here the more it feels like home, and the more ready you are to accept Okoye’s invitation and live here permanently, as a member of the royal staff. What your position would be, you’re not exactly sure, but you suspect it would be something very similar to your ‘job’ with the Avengers. Which is to say that you wouldn’t have a job. You would draw a few pictures and offer some suggestions when people asked for them and they’d let you live here. And, to be perfectly honest, you’re okay with that. Someday, you’re sure, you’ll want to make your own way in the world, want to earn your living and not be indebted to anyone, but at the moment that desire, along with every other emotion, it seems, has been sucked out of you.Anyway, none of that matters, because you are ready to go home, because of a call that you get from Natasha.At first you were tempted to decline the call, send her to voicemail. It was petty, but she’d hurt you really badly by leaving without a goodbye, and some really nasty part of you wanted to retaliate and hurt her in return. Of course, in the end you missed her way too much and you were far too curious to reject your friend, so you answered the call, and now you, Thor, and Rocket are on a Wakandan aircraft (you have literally no idea what to call anything in the country, because you’re sure they have really great names but you also don’t want to bother anyone asking for them), flying back to New York to meet one Carol Danvers, who apparently showed up asking for Nick Fury.(Who, incidentally, has also been dusted, and it makes your heart twist, because just thinking about dusting in general inexorably leads your mind back to Bucky, and that hurts like nothing has ever hurt in your life.)“Do you think she’s an alien?” Rocket asks. He finds it hilariously narrow-minded that on Earth any non-Terran is considered an alien. You’ve tried explaining to him that until a few years ago, no one had any idea that any non-Terrans existed, but it hasn’t gotten very far. “I don’t know,” you shrug, because once upon a time the fact that she flies (Natasha was pretty shaken over the phone) would have automatically distinguished her as a non-Earthling, but these days you can’t take anything for granted.“I bet she is,” Rocket says, settling back in his seat. “I bet she has laser eyes and is gonna destroy humanity.”He really likes bringing up how stupid humans are.***You were kind of worried that reuniting with the team was going to be awkward and uncomfortable, but it isn’t. Steve meets you almost as soon as you step off the plane and wraps you up in a big hug.“Missed you,” he whispers.“You, too,” you say, because your throat is closing up and you’ve given up trying to analyze what emotions you’re feeling and why you’re feeling them. Natasha is standing behind Steve, hands behind her back, guilt and uncertainty flickering in her eyes. So she knows, then, that she caused pain by leaving without a word. You’d expected to be a little angry, to feel some of the betrayal that welled up when you found out she’d taken off in the middle of the night resurfacing, but you don’t. You just feel like you’ve missed her a lot and like you need a hug, so you hug her, and she returns it, squeezing extra tight.“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just – ”“It’s okay,” you interrupt, because it is. You have so few people left. You have to keep them close, and getting mad about them doing things while they were hurting and grieving and broken won’t help. It won’t change anything. She looks like she wants to say something else, but Thor is striding past you and she decides to follow him, because lately Thor unsupervised is Thor destroying things. You can’t blame him, but you also don’t really want him to smash up the Compound when there were new countertops installed less than three months ago.(Yes, that’s a silly thing to be concerned about right now. No, you can’t stop yourself from being concerned about it just because you know it’s silly.)You follow Thor inside and find Pepper sitting at a table with a woman with blonde hair and a hardened expression. You slide into the seat next to Pepper and lean your head against her shoulder to let her know you’re there. She leans her head against yours and says, “Sunny, this is Carol Danvers.”“Hi,” you say, and it’s a pretty unenthusiastic greeting coming from you, but after everything that’s happened you can’t really summon up much excitement for anything. “Carol, this is (Y/N) (L/N),” Pepper says, and Carol nods at you. “We were just talking about the possibility of getting Tony back,” Pepper continues, and she’s trying to keep her voice even but you can hear the quiver of excitement.That announcement helps you summon up some excitement of your own, and you sit up straight and try to ignore the thrill that just shot through you.“And Peter?” you clarify, and both of them nod, Pepper looking a little embarrassed that she’d forgotten about the teenager. You can’t blame her. If you found out that there might be a way to get Bucky back, you wouldn’t be able to think about anyone else. “That’s a possibility?” you ask, trying to follow Pepper’s lead and stay calm but finding it impossible because Tony might come home, Peter might come home, Tony might come home, they might –
“As long as they’re still alive,” Carol says, and that douses your exhilaration like a bucket of ice water. Or it would, if you weren’t determined to stay optimistic because this is a ray of hope. You’d thought that the two of them were completely gone, thoroughly un-savable, but now there’s a possibility that they’re not completely gone, not thoroughly un-savable, and you’re going to cling to this like a lifeline.
“So how would we get them?” you ask eagerly, leaning forward so you can study Carol’s face.
“We wouldn’t,” she says, and that takes you aback. “I would.”
Wow. That… rubs you up the wrong way. You’re already having some issues with her attitude, and she’s only said ten words.
“Okay,” you say, trying to stay positive because there’s been nothing positive for what feels like forever and Tony could come home, he could, you could get him home and give him a hug, “How would you get him?”
“I’d fly,” she shrugs. “I’ll go scope out the universe.”
“The – uh – universe?” you repeat, a little surprised that she said it so casually.
“Yeah,” she says, like it was obvious, and you are really having some issues with how overbearingly confident she is. From the looks on Bruce and Pepper’s faces, they’re having some of the same thoughts.
Nat, however, powers through whatever she may be feeling to say, “Okay. When can you leave?”
Carol downs the rest of the (concerningly ambiguous) drink that was sitting in front of her, scrapes her chair back, stands up, and says, “Now.”
***
And she does, just ups and leaves, and you watch her streaking away into the sky with both hope and annoyance welling up inside you. Those two emotions mix in a really weird way.
After she zooms off, most of you head inside. Pepper stays right where she was when Carol took off, staring up at the sky, motionless. Rhodey, after cursing Carol out multiple times (she seems to have clashed with him the most, which is really saying something because she clashed with all of you quite a bit), stays with her.
You wish you could stay with them, but you know instinctively that it wouldn’t be right, that it’s their pain and their hope and their moment, and so despite the pang of guilt and grief and who-knows-what-else that runs through you, you turn around and follow Natasha through the doors of the Compound.
It’s very strange, how much the possibility of Tony and his protégé coming home changes everyone’s outlook. Natasha perks up, Steve paces the floors less, Bruce actually sits down. Pepper doesn’t stop frowning, but her frown softens a considerable amount, and Rhodey actually smiles.
And you… you have still lost half of yourself. Your heart is still torn in two. You still are on the verge of crying at any given moment. But the thought of having Tony back… Tony is one of your best friends, even within the Avengers. He’s the reason you’ve had a job all these years. He’s the reason you have a family at all. He always makes you feel better when you’re feeling down, and he loves his team so fiercely that tears well up in your eyes just thinking about it.
He’s coming home.
He has to be.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You don’t even try to sleep, even though it’s night and you just flew in from Wakanda and there’s time differences and you should probably at least make an effort. You know that you can’t.You haven’t spent any time at all in this room since Bucky… well. It’s been awhile, and being back in here makes everything hurt even more than normal.You are not a fan of this whole losing your entire world thing. Sometimes you wonder how you can miss him so much. It’s like a part of you has been yanked out by a ruthless and cruel hand. You just want to put yourself back together again, and when you think about it often enough it seems possible, until reality hits you and you have to come to terms with the fact that he’s really, truly gone all over again. It sucks.You’re not looking for it – you’re looking for clean underwear so that you can go take a shower – but when you open a drawer a piece of paper pretty much jumps at you.You’d forgotten about leaving it in here.
My Sun,You’re right.I shouldn’t have shut you out.But it’s hard, sweetheart. Sometimes the things I’ve done try to drag me down, and I’m scared of you getting tangled up in them and pulled down, too. I’m trying to get better. You gotta know that. I know it’s no excuse, and I’m sorry. If I come back, we can talk about it then. If not, please know that I love you and that I’m sorry for all the ways I’ve let you down.Your Buck
It’s barely legible because he wrote it in such a hurry. You’d had an argument over him locking the door on you while he was having a panic attack. He did it to protect you, and you knew it and you appreciated it, and you have always and will always feel like a horrible person for being upset about it. It’s not fair to expect…
Wasn’t. It wasn’t fair.
Your knees buckle and you sit down hard on the floor, the note clutched in your hand. The hole in your chest is bleeding again. You can’t think, you can’t breathe, you can’t see clearly through the wave of nausea that hits you.
He wrote you the note in a hurry because he got a call and didn’t have time to wait for you to get back from your run with Sam. You found it on the bed after your shower, and you didn’t think anything of it, because he left you notes every time he left for a mission.
He loved you so much, and he made sure you knew it.
He came back that time. You had the conversation. He kissed you after, slow and gentle and apologetic.
Your eyes burn, but you can’t cry. Your chest is heaving, but you can’t breathe. You need Bucky more than you’ve ever needed anything, but you can’t have him.
You pull your knees up to your chest and bury your face in them, ignoring the fact that your bones are digging into your face. You rock forward and you rock backward.
It hurts.