#she doesnt want to have anything to do with such things | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lovelyrecs · 1 day ago

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“What’s my thing?” Natasha demanded. “Do you not notice yourself posing?” you asked, sliding your leg to the side. “It’s such a thing.”

really huge fan of the way this is phrased, i can't describe it BUT i can't believe i just noticed this is a spectacular take on the new girl pogos

“That’s a cartoon movie, Y/N,” Rhodey said. “That’s nothing like real life.”

😭

“I��ll walk you out,” Natasha said, pushing her chair back so abruptly Steve almost lost his balance.

she's up to something and it's making me nervous also the banter between them is so 2012 avengers 😭 i missed them

“You were shot,” he says sharply as you step back into the sweltering New York sun. “You shouldn’t even be standing up right now, let alone waltz around town.”

waltz around town LMAO and i thought steve was the motherer

You put her outside yesterday. Right?

WAIT YES SHE DID

“It isn’t, by the way,” you tell Bucky. “It’s depressing as hell.”

SHE WATCHED IT 😭

“Maybe there’s something that’s messing with your powers as well as mine,” you say now, looking at Bucky again. He puts his cup down, swallowing heavily. What kind of maniac doesn’t like chocolate in his coffee, you wonder.

her experiment!! her little bright light in this. thing

“That is the technical term, actually,” Bruce says. “Have you noticed any other physical changes? Insomnia, loss of strength, headaches?”

LMAOO

“It was.” At least if the stench is anything to go by. You turn to Bucky. “We collected a sample, and you put it in your pocket. It must have broken when the computers exploded, and when I started the loop …” It was absorbed into it.

OH MY GOSH HOLY CRAP SO HE DOESNT HAVE POWERS RIGHT NOW. THAT'S WHY IT'S SO EASY FOR HIM TO DIE BECAUSE HE HASNT HAD FAST HEALING THE ENTIRE TIME. BUT LIKE. OKAY LET'S SAY THEY FIGURE OUT A WAY TO FIX IT. WON'T IT JUST BE ERASED? IF HE DIES?? wait okay. does this mean he could have eternal life. from, well, reader's pov? like okay they fix him and give him back super healing but then he dies from some other innocuous reason and he restarts on that day. that's actually kind of sweet

You don’t say it out loud. The look in Bucky’s eyes confuses you, because even though he seems to put it together at the same time as you, his expression turns strangely warm, almost careful. It’s such a stark contrast to his usual quiet demeanor that it takes you another moment or two to figure it out. He looks at you as if you’re about to break.

oh my GOSHDSHSH. strangely warm almost careful. i'm so conflicted is he relieved? a little? why??? or WHAT 😭 i'm so stressed out

“I haven’t been in here since 1936,” he told you five days ago.

!! how strange must that be!!! knowing so much about him, having been told and let in and then... he doesn't remember. but you do. i'm devastated

None, you think. It makes zero difference, and you both know it, even though he’s nice or smart enough to not tell you to your face.

yes it does!!! yes it does!! because it has to!!!

“Mhm, right.” You scroll to the bottom. “Well, I guess that leaves blowing ourselves up, then. Can’t hurt.”

i LOOOOVE THAT MOVIE. PALM SPRINGS IS INCREDIBLE

“Hey!” Bucky says loudly. “No ignoring the dying man. What’s the Groundhog Day option?”

he WOULD use that to get his way

“Hold on a second,” Bucky interjects, cheeks slightly tinged, “so you’d rather I keep dying than just see if it works?” “What?” Your face is burning. So are his eyes. “No, I—it’s just not that easy.” “Sounds pretty straightforward to me,” he argues. “It’s not about the sex!” The words tumble out of your mouth to the beat of your heart. “He has to fall in love with her, that’s what breaks his loop in the movie. It’s a completely different situation!” There’s a beat where the two of you stare at each other before Bucky’s face goes blank of emotion. “Right.” He nods, his jaw set tight.

this fucking interaction has me going insane. all the hope he'd had about them being a them dissipating because he thinks she doesn't want him to that point and then hearing that it's about love and he's taking it like. she's saying she could never fall in love with me and she's saying he has to be in love with her i hate them both please PLEASE my head is in my hands i feel like i'm going through a divorce right now

Now, though, you’re left with no other option than to have it keep moving with you, each passing second making the temporal rift between you and her larger.

HELLO??? why would you do this NOOOO like now i'm thinking about her relationship with time, how she's always been able to pull at it and it was a kind of comfort to not be too far away in terms of it but now it's moving and it's moving away and she can't do anything about it.

He can’t see you like this, not when you look as broken as you feel. Your insides are twisting, screaming, yearning for someone to rock you in their lap and tell you everything is going to be alright. But they’re all gone.

i'm going to scream and burst into tears i can't do this

“Step on my feet,” he tells you softly, so you can tell it’s a request, not a demand. “There are shards everywhere and you’re already bleeding.”

he'll take it for her 😭 like he has like he is 😭😭😭

time after time [4]

series summary: After what starts out as a fairly normal mission, you find yourself stuck in a time loop. Which would already be bad enough in itself if it didn’t also mean having to watch Bucky die over and over again.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 9.2k

chapter warnings: description of a panic attack; this writer is still grappling with the events of endgame and the nature of time travel; underneath the banter, tensions are rising

please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: welcome back everyone. i missed you. 💚

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

four: groundhog day

“She needs a thing.”

It was one of the rare evenings when Natasha and you weren’t the only ones at the Compound, so you’d ordered take-out and given yourselves the evening off. It felt nice, normal even, a dinner between friends that hadn’t seen each other in a while but comfortably fell back into their old rhythm. You weren’t the new girl anymore, but still new enough to this kind of life, and so it felt like a big deal when they included you like this. For better or worse.

“I don’t need a thing,” you said with a roll of your eyes.

Steve was getting better with his chopsticks, but he was still the last one eating. Rhodey, apparently, was bored out of his mind and tried taking it out on you.

“Of course you do,” he said, “we all have a thing!”

“Rhodey,” you replied sternly. “I don’t want a thing.”

“I don’t have a thing,” Natasha said.

“Oh, please,” you both said in unison.

“Do I have a thing?” Steve asked, grin still easy on his face.

“You have a vibranium shield,” Rhodey said, “that you throw like a boomerang.”

“What’s my thing?” Natasha demanded.

“Do you not notice yourself posing?” you asked, sliding your leg to the side. “It’s such a thing.”

“Had a shield,” Steve said. “And it was magnetic.”

“You’ve also grown like ten inches since the forties, man, is that not enough of a thing for you?”

“Fine, alright,” Steve conceded. “You good, Nat?”

“Of course.” The absent-minded smile vanished from her face, replaced by a wicked grin as she contemplated you. “How about a cape?”

You groaned. “I’m not going to wear a cape.”

“Why not? It’s classic!” Rhodey snorted.

“It’s showy. None of you have a cape!”

“Thor has a cape,” Steve said.

“Thor is literally a god, that’s different.”

“Doctor Strange had a cloak. That’s kind of like a cape. Time power people wear capes,” Rhodey added.

“I don’t want to be associated with Strange!”

It came out sharper than you intended. You all sat in silence for half a minute, busying yourselves with your drinks. You buried your head in your hands. Natasha blew on the rim of her bottle.

You wondered if you should just try and rewind the moment, but you weren’t sure if you had the energy for it. And you didn’t want this awkwardness to last any longer than it already did.

“You know,” Steve said after a while, “Vision wore a cape, too.”

“Oh my god,” you sighed. This was just happening, apparently.

“So did Loki, though,” Natasha pointed out.

“Have none of you seen The Incredibles?” you asked. “Capes are terrible!”

“That’s a cartoon movie, Y/N,” Rhodey said. “That’s nothing like real life.”

“Is that one for the list?” Steve asked.

“You can shoot lasers out of your hands, you’re telling me the danger of getting sucked into a void is more unrealistic than that?” You stole one of the spring rolls off Steve’s plate. “It’s definitely one for the list.”

“If you’re getting sucked into a void, I doubt whether or not you were wearing a cape at the time would make much of a difference,” Rhodey snorted, taking another sip of his drink.

“And you could use it as a weapon,” Natasha added. “If it’s the right material.”

“Like an armor made of fabric,” Steve nodded, pocketing his notebook again. “I’ve heard of that.”

“I was thinking she could strangle someone with it, but sure, armor works, too,” Natasha shrugged. You laughed at Steve’s confoundedly impressed face. “Anyway,” she continued, still contemplating you, “I’ve got an idea you might like.”

“I’m not going to wear a cape,” you said again, but Natasha wasn’t listening to you anymore, turning her attention towards Rhodey again instead.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for the night?”

“Nah,” he said with a fond smile. “I gotta be in D.C. early tomorrow. In fact, I should probably head out.”

“Already?” Steve said, one of his arms draped comfortably around the back of Natasha’s chair.

“I thought we were doing poker night,” you agreed. Despite his ribbing, you didn’t want Rhodey to leave yet. You still craved this sense of normalcy that came when people hung out with each other, just because they could.

Just because they wanted to.

“Again,” Rhodey said, stretching his legs before getting up, “I’m not playing cards against you lousy cheats anymore.” He pointed at you and Natasha.

“We would never cheat,” you protested in fake outrage.

“We’re far too talented for that,” Natasha agreed, winking at you.

“Lousy. Cheats.” You weren’t as stiff anymore as he hugged you goodbye, even squeezed back a little. “Call me about your next meeting.”

Steve nodded. “Fly safely, alright?”

“I’ll walk you out,” Natasha said, pushing her chair back so abruptly Steve almost lost his balance.

There was an unease to her steps that became more noticeable on the evenings she took Rhodey aside, and you watched them leave with a slight frown. Considering how effortlessly she’d been teasing your deepest worries out of you over the past months, you couldn’t shake the feeling that her own walls wouldn’t come down so soon.

“Wanna play me for the last one?” Steve interrupted your thoughts, nodding towards the lonely leftover spring roll.

Your stomach grumbled in appreciation as you reached for the deck of cards already placed next to the empty food containers. “You’re not scared I’m gonna scam you, then?”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” he shrugged. “Besides, you have a tell.”

“I do?” And here you thought you’d stopped sweating. "What’s my tell?"

"You don’t like lying."

Your fingers halted for just a fraction of a moment as you were shuffling the cards and you frowned. "That so?"

"Don’t get me wrong, you’re good at pretend." Steve gently took the deck out of your hands. "But when you feel bad about something, it’s like a neon sign above your head. You only need to know where to look."

He dealt the cards.

* * * * *

The sign next to the door tells you it’s still, again, and endlessly happy hour. "Get two of your favorites for the price of one!" it says in Lucy’s beautiful handwriting next to a lovely drawing of two colorful plastic cups.

Inside, the air conditioning is on full blast and the smell of ground coffee is enough to make you sigh contentedly. The queue, as usual, is at least ten deep, so you have some time to watch the people around you while you wait.

You’re late today, and you can see the remnants of a spilled drink behind a little yellow triangle proclaiming "Caution! Wet floor". Apparently it’s busy enough today that no one’s had the time to clean up in the past hour. You still grimace as you step up to the counter.

"How’s it going, Luce?"

"Ask for a frappuccino and I will fucking murder you." Your colleague tugs a strand of hair back under her cap with a sigh. "I swear, if I see another child today, I’m gonna quit."

"That bad?" you ask with a sympathetic smile. Holidays always are, particularly at this store, since it’s only a hop and a fall from Grand Central. You still remember your last New Year’s Eve shift with a shudder.

"Please kill me," Lucy says dryly and then, like always, "Usual?"

"Please," you say, adding the rest of your order. "Love what you’ve done with your face, by the way!"

"Thank you," she says, proudly turning her head so you can admire the other side of her red-white-and-blue themed makeup. "No one’s said anything all morning, can you believe that?"

Yes. Yes, you can, because this is New York and also she tells you every day. "Shut up!"

"I know, right?" She leans forward on her elbows, cracking her back. "You working this weekend?"

The way things are looking, you’re never working again. "Not ’til Wednesday."

"Boo, lucky," she groans as you sign your receipt. "I should go down with my hours, too. I feel like I’m in every day. Hi, welcome to Starbucks, what can I get started for ya?"

Her code switch as she talks to the next customer in line has you shuffle forward to the bar, carefully stepping around the melting puddle of a drink on the floor with a slight hiss as you strain your side slightly too much. The wound is healing, but so, so slowly.

You scroll through your phone while you wait for your drinks to be ready, handing out straws to people and wordlessly pointing them to the restroom before they harass your stressed coworkers. This part of the day in the late morning is your quiet time, and the almost familiar crowd with their incredibly mundane needs is strangely soothing to your nerves in their predictability.

It almost makes you miss work. Almost.

Your name is called, but before you can step up to collect your order, a familiar figure swoops in in front of you. You roll your eyes.

"What are you doing here," you groan.

"I could ask you the same thing," Bucky says, keeping the paper tray just out of your reach with a stern look on his face. "I thought you were sleeping."

"I was. Now I’m getting coffee." You reach for the tray again to no avail, and the stretch doesn’t feel fun at all. Still, you send him another reprimanding glare. "Bucky, I’m slightly wounded, I haven’t lost the use of my arms."

"You were shot," he says sharply as you step back into the sweltering New York sun. "You shouldn’t even be standing up right now, let alone waltz around town."

"Oh, I forgot, the man from the forties has a medical degree. Are you going to prescribe me cocaine?" You won’t admit it, but it’s a struggle to keep up with his long strides. To your great annoyance, Bucky seems to notice and slows down.

"If I would, at least I’d make sure you’d never use it," he says dryly, not looking at you. "That mine?"

"One to the left," you say, crossing your arms and watching as he takes a swig of coffee. Another failure today, it seems. "And I wasn’t shot," you add, muttering, "I was shot at."

"And the living time machine has a PhD in English."

"I have a myriad of talents."

"Mazel tov." The elevator dings before you can add the attempt to kick a super soldier in the shin to your skillset. "Sam ordered pizza, but I assume you knew that already," Bucky says as the doors close.

You curse quietly. The thought of Italian food has started to make you sick to your stomach; one of the many tragedies of your current situation. Bucky grins.

"I take that as a yes."

You grab your own cup of coffee off the paper tray with a little too much vigor, cursing again.

"You alright?"

"Shut up." You take an angry gulp of coffee.

"Tell me," Bucky says, watching you with an unimpressed expression. "Have you always been this stubborn or did you pick that up from Steve?"

"Why," you say blankly, "did you get your being incredibly annoying from him, too?"

He rolls his eyes. "I wouldn’t have to be if you’d just sit down and stop moving around so much. It’s not hard."

"I’m fine." The elevator finally stops and you hobble outside with gritted teeth, deliberately not looking at Bucky. Only a few more steps.

"No, stop that," you hear a voice before you turn the corner. "You can’t have that. You’re—you’re lactose intolerant!"

Both of you halt and take a moment to assess the delivery guy next to your front door. A pile of pizza boxes is precariously balanced on his left arm while with his right hand he’s trying to constrain a furious white ball of fluff.

You blink.

He notices both of you staring at him and quickly straightens up. "Oh. Hi! Sorry. I got your pizza and, uhm, your cat? I think?"

Alpine meows angrily.

"He was scratching at your door trying to get in," the guy continues, watching with big eyes as Bucky pries the struggling cat from his leg.

"She," he says, looking back at you with a frown.

You consider the cat.

You put her outside yesterday. Right?

"Sorry," the delivery guy says miserably, catching you before you get lost in thought.

"It’s fine," you say, finally looking at him again, forcing a friendly grin onto your face. "Would you mind bringing these in?"

It’s a coincidence. Of course it is.

* * *

“So let me get this straight,” Sam says, again. “You’re stuck in a time loop.”

You nod.

“Like Groundhog Day,” you and Sam confirm.

“Or Doubled and Redoubled,” you and Bucky offer.

“What the hell’s that?” you and Sam ask.

“It’s a good story,” you and Bucky say.

“It isn’t, by the way,” you tell Bucky. “It’s depressing as hell.”

“Don’t ever do that again,” he says, a flicker of annoyance in his eye.

You slouch down in one of Alpine’s supposed spots with a deep sigh, ignoring the pain in your side. “And how would you know?”

Sam still looks somewhat unconvinced, despite your little presentation. Apparently, you introducing him to the poor unsuspecting delivery guy every day isn’t quite the same as showing him your blood-drenched hands first thing in the morning.

“And Bucky’s gonna die?” he asks, putting his half-eaten slice of pizza back into the box.

You close your eyes. “He is.”

“How?”

Shot. Stabbed. Crushed to death. Blown to pieces. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive.

“Does it matter?” You twist your rings around and around, another endless circle. “But it’s connected to the loop, somehow. Just like my powers.”

“What about your powers?” Bucky asks, and you don’t need to look at him to know he’s frowning again. He’s frowning so much these days. Today.

Talking about your powers feels like admitting to all your deficiencies, but you suppose this is your purgatory. Over and over, until sometimes, you reach a new little fork in the road. The tiniest bit of change.

It’s all you can cling to.

“My powers are like a remote control, right? You can pause or speed things up, no problem. Rewinding is the tricky bit.”

You get up with only a slight wince and grab the green whiteboard marker from the table, drawing a straight line on the plexiglass board. Today, you’ve come prepared for this.

“People usually think time is linear, right?” you continue. “And it kind of is, but only in this direction.” You draw a little arrowhead on the left side of the line and then point at the other end. “This right here, that’s now. There’s a pretty clear path from now to any point in the past, based on what we did with the information we had at any given moment. But, every time we make a decision, it could also go another way, right? Like, for example, if I used the blue marker.”

You draw a second arrow in blue from where the green one points at, ending it slightly above that one. Sam raises a hand.

“Yes?”

“What difference does it make which color you use?”

“In this case, none,” you answer, changing your pen again. “But if I go back in time and, say, turn left instead of right somewhere or tell you where someone’s gonna hit you before they do, that does make a difference, because it influences your decision.”

The red line curves more upwards than the other two, its arrow pointing in a completely different direction.

“The trick,” you say, tapping it, “is in avoiding something like this for random events and staying as close to the original path as possible.”

“What about the other paths, though?” Sam asks. “Do they just disappear?”

“I don’t know,” you shrug, capping the pen. “They do for me. Normally, once I go back, I can’t return to the very first timeline again.”

Things are never the same when you’ve already lived through them once. Your knowledge of the outcome mars everything that comes before, whether you want that or not. That’s what makes this loop so different; because even though you know what’s going to happen, you’re still unable to prevent it.

And that never changes.

“So, essentially,” Bucky comments, “you’re switching realities every time you go back.”

You blink, considering it for a moment. “I mean, I guess so? I haven’t thought about it that way.”

“You haven’t thought about it that way?” Bucky says incredulously.

“Well, I don’t exactly have a degree in time travel,” you sigh, rubbing your temples. “I just do it.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t think about it.”

“What does all of this have to do with you Bill Murray-ing through this day?” Sam interjects.

“Who’s Bill Murray?”

“No one,” you say sharply. “Right now, time is fucked. Today isn’t moving on, it got stuck on repeat. That’s why my powers don’t work, either, you can’t go anywhere if it’s just the same point in time over and over again. Just one timeline tied into a knot.”

Or a single reality, you suppose. Maybe Bucky has a point.

“So everything just resets each time Bucky dies?” Sam says.

“Just like in a video game,” you confirm, slowly lowering yourself back down.

“That makes me feel so much better,” Bucky says, watching you with another frown.

“A rigged one,” Sam says. “It shouldn’t be that easy.”

And there’s your fork.

Your heart is pounding as you ask, “What do you mean?”

Sam raises his eyebrows. “He’s got the serum, remember? It should be about impossible to kill Bucky in a normal fight, let alone do it over and over again when he knows it’s coming.”

“I heal fast, I’m not invincible,” Bucky counters.

“No, he’s right.” If it weren’t so terrible to go through over and over again, it’d be almost comical how easily Bucky’s been killed over these past few days. You’ve had to take a mental note to keep him away from scissors. With your wound rendering you essentially useless in the fight, it’s often over long before Sam flies ahead through the tunnels, your alarm drowning out the string of curses falling out of your mouth.

“I can’t tell you what happened,” you inevitably tell Sam each morning as he helps you retie your tourniquet because your bandages have vanished again overnight. “I promised Bucky.”

“Are you shooting each other now?” he always asks. “Because you’re not supposed to do that literally.”

“Like what?” he says.

“Could be a number of things,” Bruce says when you ask him the same question half an hour later.

It’s nice to see his face, even though you can see the bookshelf on the wall behind him through the projection if you squint. He looks as rattled as he always does, but with that glee in his eye that he gets when he’s presented with a particularly difficult problem. It makes Torres watch him wearily through his own phone screen, propped up against the books on the conference table.

“The most likely one is some sort of substance that’s working to lessen the effects of the serum in your blood,” Bruce continues, addressing Bucky. “Did you ingest anything, breathe something in?”

Bucky looks at you.

“There’s this substance at the lab,” you say. “You don’t touch it, but it’s this weird sort of blue … shit.” You gesture vaguely as Sam snorts.

“That is the technical term, actually,” Bruce says. “Have you noticed any other physical changes? Insomnia, loss of strength, headaches?”

“No changes,” Bucky says. It’s not really an answer.

“That’s the thing, Bruce,” you remind him gently. “Nothing has been changing. It can’t.”

“Fascinating,” he says. “And how long did you say this has been going on for?”

You bite the inside of your cheek. You’ve started tallying up the days on your thigh, just out of sight from everyone, hidden by your clothes. You have to make sure you’re not losing any of them. It seems like it’d make them less significant, somehow.

“Too long,” Sam answers for you, putting his notepad down on the table. You can make out a lot of question marks.

Day twenty-four. It should be July 27th today, but you’re still three weeks behind.

“Right, apologies.” Bruce pushes his glasses up his nose, his nervous glance darting between Bucky and you. “I can ask around, but obviously I can’t tell you if this even does what you’re suspecting without getting a sample to my lab.”

“Actually, sir,” Torres speaks up. “There’s been rumors for a while now.”

Sam stops his pacing as Torres adjusts the angle of his phone while he’s walking.

“The first generation of Flag Smashers were all super soldiers themselves,” he continues. “Now, though, ULTIMATUM have been actively looking for a way to make super soldiers more human again. To level the playing field for everybody.”

One world, one people.

One dead body.

“Meaning what?” Sam asks, his arms still crossed.

“Meaning, according to my sources, they’re trying to develop a way to strip super people of their abilities.”

“That’d mean years of research, testing, a whole roster of scientists they’d have to recruit,” Bruce says doubtfully. “Even if they have the funding for that, they’d need a sample of the original serum or something similar enough to work with.”

Sam sits. The look he exchanges with Bucky tells you he has his suspicions about the latter.

“The super soldier serum was recreated before,” Torres shrugs, oblivious to their silent conversation. “I bet they’re still working with the data they collected back then. Also, these are just rumors at this point. If they’re true at all, they’re still in early stages.”

“Hypothetically,” you say to Bruce, “what would that look like?”

“It’s hard to predict the outcome of experiments like that,” he says. “It’s less than clear how an individual’s actual cells get altered. But my best guess is, they’d try to phase out any advancements one by one, to ensure they’re moving in the direction they want.”

“One by one,” you repeat. “Like, start with the fast healing, for example.”

“Exactly,” Bruce nods. “It’d still have to be administered somehow, though.”

“Eat anything weird lately, Buck?” Sam asks dryly.

“It’s not necessarily something you ate,” Bruce adds at Bucky’s stony expression. “It might also be intravenous, similar to the original serum.”

“What about skin contact?” you ask, a small puzzle piece finally fitting into place.

“Sure, that’s possible. But it’d have to be quite potent stuff.”

It was absorbed into it.

He looks at you as if you’re about to break.

You suppose he’s not far off, either, as you barely listen to Bruce and Torres saying their goodbyes to Sam and you’re left contemplating all the things you did wrong to end up here, now, again.

The list is endless.

“So what’s next?” Sam says, and you finally turn your head to look at the clock.

“You leave to give your speech,” you answer.

“I’m not gonna do the stupid speech.”

“Yes, you are,” you and Bucky say simultaneously, and you shrug at his scowl.

“Bucky and I need to do something, anyway,” you add.

Sam doesn’t like this any better today than any other day, but he still lets himself be convinced to get changed. You’ve been over this more than once, after all.

“What are we doing, then?” Bucky asks once it’s only the two of you.

You grimace slightly. “I need you to break me into the library.”

* * *

Before the loop, it’s been a while since you’ve been to any library. For the first time in a while, maybe all your life, you’ve enjoyed owning most of the books you read instead of lending them from somewhere.

So it still feels kind of like a novelty, setting foot into the Schwarzman Building. Even if it’s through the back entrance while the security guard is on his lunch break, enjoying a bit of sunshine on the steps outside.

It’d be so much easier if you had your powers, you think as you watch Bucky get through the locks you show him, more discretely than he probably has to. Stopping the flow of time has always come easiest to you, and in situations like this one, it was your most useful asset. You would have simply halted time and slipped past opened doors while everything waited for you to will it forward again.

Instead, you wait for Bucky.

The routine of it all is calming by now, in a way, his tongue poking his cheek in concentration, the only sound either of you makes the quiet clicks of keyboards and doors and locks until you can finally enter the reading hall through a small, unassuming stairwell leading up to the third floor. He seems to get a little quicker at it every day, as if his body retained some form of muscle memory from the countless redos as well.

The last door opens.

It’s not quite as impressive as entering through the marble-tiled entrance hall on Fifth, you suppose, but when the smell of pages and dust hits you again as you ascend the stairs, you can’t help but release a small, content sigh.

You’ve not been to the Main Branch often, and not in a while, but usually when you’d peruse the countless rows of books, there’d be groups of children and tourists dotted between the densely packed shelves, the reading tables filled with overcaffeinated students and academics and librarians and the usual array of curious caricatures omnipresent in any library. It’d been quiet, sticky, lively, like a school library during finals week, and you didn’t hate it but it wasn’t quite like this.

It’s blissfully quiet.

Every step you take creaks softly as if you’re about to break through the wooden floorboards. Your pace only stays determined until you reach the main reading room, because you can’t help but stop in a spot of sunshine and close your eyes to breathe it in, this peaceful stillness of life and the wonderful, familiar smell of books. Just for a second.

When you open them again, Bucky is staring at you.

“I haven’t been in here since 1936,” he told you five days ago.

“Hasn’t changed a bit, I bet,” you said.

The way he tilted his head seemed so precious. Like he was walking through his memories right in front of you. “Well, I definitely remember the gift shop. And the computers.”

“We need to go downstairs,” you say now, shaking your head to resettle yourself in the never-ending present.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Bucky asks, following you with his hands still in his pockets.

“Anything we can find on the astral plane. Which, sadly, isn’t a whole bunch.”

You can’t risk using the internal searching system on the library computers when you’re not even supposed to be in here, not unless you want to waste another afternoon getting caught, so the search to find even the right section has been quite tedious. There’s been a lot of running around in circles.

“Why?”

You just assume he’s not wondering why there’s not a lot of publicly available grimoires on magic shit. “Because Strange is an evasive asshole.”

There’s still no sign of life from anyone at Bleecker Street, or any of the Sanctums for that matter. Since no jet or plane would make it to Kamar-Taj in what limited hours you have, it seems the only way to reach Strange is in trying to get back to the astral dimension.

And figuring that out is a bitch.

“Weird," Bucky says, "that you two shouldn’t get along.”

“Fuck you, Barnes,” you snort.

You watch him stride away through the aisles with a small grin, appearing aimless, before he invariably stops in front of the same shelf. With a shake of your head, you continue walking.

"What is it with you and Voltaire," you murmur, not intending for him to hear.

"What’s wrong with Voltaire?" he still replies.

"Nothing," you say, looking down the next aisle over. "Dense, is all."

"We used to have this at home," Bucky says, pulling the volume off the shelf. "I remember my ma tryin’ to get through it, but with the four of us, she never managed."

You turn back towards him, surprised he’s offering you this glimpse into his past. "I didn’t know you had siblings."

It’s a half-truth. He brings up Rebecca rarely enough, but the fact that there used to be even more Barnes children is news to you. You’re almost shocked he’s mentioning it at all. Maybe it’s a mistake.

"Yeah." Bucky’s gaze is still absent, the memories clinging to him like fog. It makes you want to wipe them away gently.

You turn down the aisle sharply, not waiting for him to follow as you push through a door.

The upstairs library is already huge, but it’s nothing compared to the countless rows of stacks hidden downstairs and underground. It’s taken you almost two days to gain some semblance of orientation in this maze, and it takes you almost five minutes to find the shelf you were looking at yesterday. It doesn’t help your confusion in the slightest that the books seem to be mostly organized by size instead of topic.

With a sigh, you carry another stack of volumes to one of the reading tables. The additional trouble with doing research on a single day with everything constantly resetting while you’re running out of time is that there’s really no good way for you to take notes. You only have so much real estate on your own skin that you can comfortably reach in a public space, and there’s a spot right below your elbow that you keep empty.

You’ve been combing through all kinds of books on mysticism, but most of it has been a bunch of baloney and esoteric nonsense. While the theory of an astral plane is already hard enough for you to grasp, the practical step-by-step guide to getting there is either decidedly under-researched or they’re deliberately keeping it from you.

You’re about to put another book to the side after it tells you to meditate when you can hear Bucky approaching from the stacks behind you.

"Any luck yet?"

"Depends," you sigh. "Are you ready to take the next step in redefining your relationship with Jesus? Because, boy, do I have the almanac for you."

"I’m good," he says, and there’s the slightest hint of amusement in his voice. You bury your head in your hands.

Every day, it’s harder to look at him.

He doesn’t say it, but you see the determination in his eyes each day, the absolute certainty that today is the day. The last one.

It always is, for him, and his unexpected faith in you shatters you to the core. Meanwhile, you’re not even capable of asking for help.

"It’s not your fault, Twelve," Bucky says, and you flinch.

"Of course it’s my fault," you say quietly. "Who do you think got us into this mess."

"So you set out to kill me repeatedly?"

You shoot up straight. "Of course not!"

Bucky just leans against the table next to you, flicking through one of the books without paying it any attention. You press your lips together.

"What difference does it make, though? We’re here anyway."

"If you don’t know that already, I don’t know how to tell you," he says calmly.

None, you think. It makes zero difference, and you both know it, even though he’s nice or smart enough to not tell you to your face.

"I’m sorry," you say, once again, because lately all you want to do is apologize to him, no matter how many times he forgets.

Bucky frowns, but before he can say something else that will undoubtedly break your composure completely, you quickly clear your throat.

"Could you get me this one book down, actually? It’s on the top shelf and, well …" Stretching is still a struggle.

He shrugs and follows you back into the labyrinth. The silence tears at you in a way it hasn’t before, and you twist your fingers in front of your chest. You never look at your rings anymore.

"I never asked," Bucky says casually, dragging the fingers of his right hand along the spines as you keep looking for the book you’re after. "Do you have any siblings?"

Your hands still.

For a moment, you consider telling him. About your family. About the life you used to have, before everything. It seems so long ago, now, almost like a distant dream. You don’t dwell on it too long.

"Ask me tomorrow?" Your voice is thin.

He follows your gaze to the shelf and easily picks out the book you want. His eyes are very blue when he turns back to you, his head slightly tilted to the side. "Are you gonna tell me then?"

You swallow as you slowly take the book out of his hands and hold it against your chest. "Remember to ask me," you say, almost pleadingly, "and I might."

He doesn’t, so you don’t. It shouldn’t hurt.

* * *

"Here’s what I don’t get," Sam says, leaning back in his chair. "You said you only saw Strange once. Shouldn’t that happen every day, if you’re stuck in a time loop?"

You want to yell, and yell, and never stop.

"Theoretically, yes," you say, again. "Our time, here, is looped. But Bucky’s right."

"Hear that?" Bucky tells Sam. You both ignore him.

"Every time I go back in time, I essentially switch realities, except right now, that’s not happening because we’re stuck on repeat. That’s not true for the astral plane though, because it’s a different reality. So Strange can do whatever he wants, because he’s not part of the loop."

"I’m getting a headache," Sam says.

"Get in line, man," Bucky remarks. "I’m apparently dying."

"We’re missing something," you say, staring at the plexiglass board until your eyes start burning.

"Sanity?" Sam suggests.

"Well, let’s think about this rationally," Bucky says, voice only slightly laced with sarcasm. "How many other times do we know something like this has happened?"

You pull up the list of movies you already had ready for this question, pointing at them one by one. "Endless loop. Saving each other, that’s not working out so far. That one was terrible." You let out a heavy breath of air. "I guess we could try threatening Loki and see if it helps."

"Loki’s dead, though."

"Mhm, right." You scroll to the bottom. "Well, I guess that leaves blowing ourselves up, then. Can’t hurt."

"Sounds like a Friday night to me," Bucky says.

"Alright, lemmings one and two, let’s calm down again," Sam cuts in. "You said it’s because of the mission, right? Why don’t you just sit this one out, then?"

You roll your eyes. "Haven’t heard that before."

"I’m not letting the two of you go in there alone if these guys are dangerous enough to get one of us killed," Bucky predictably says.

"I can call Torres for backup," Sam tries. "Or, I don’t know, one of those guys in midtown."

"Give it up, Sam," you interrupt. "He’s not going to listen. We’ve been over this every day."

"Well, is there any part of the mission we—"

"Any part of the mission we overlooked?" you cut him off, voice getting louder until you’re shouting. "I don’t know, because every time I think I’ve got everything covered, something new pops up, and nothing fucking changes anyway! And then we’re here again, over and over, and I’m starting to go insane!"

Alpine hisses at you from her place on Bucky’s lap.

"You do realize we’re trying to help. Don’t you," Sam says, so calmly that your anger dissipates immediately. The usual wave of guilt hits you, instead, and you bite the inside of your cheek until you draw blood.

"I’m sorry," you say. "It’s just—everywhere I look, there’s a roadblock."

"I know." Sam pinches his nose as he stares at the board. "I’m guessing you’ve tried the Groundhog Day option?"

Your heart drops.

Usually, you see this coming, but your thoughts are too muddled today. You feel the heat rising to your cheeks and Bucky scrunches his eyebrows together.

"What’s the Groundhog Day option?"

"It wouldn’t work," you say sharply, sending Sam a glare. He seems entertained by it.

"And how’d you know that?"

"Because it’s a movie," you hiss. "And a stupid one at that, things don’t work in real life like they do in a Hollywood film!"

"Hey!" Bucky says loudly. "No ignoring the dying man. What’s the Groundhog Day option?"

"You guys fucking breaks the loop," Sam answers before you can stop him. Alpine jumps to the floor and parades away. For the first time, you admire her.

"Oh," Bucky says, after a painfully long pause.

"Yeah. Oh." You don’t meet his eye. "Like I said, it’s stupid. And it isn’t how time works."

"It doesn’t work by you accidentally creating a loop either, though, does it," Bucky says, nodding at your half-hearted drawings on the board.

"Bucky, I’m not going to sleep with you just in case. That’s not even how it works in the goddamn movie," you say with a pointed look at Sam, who shrugs.

"I just thought I’d ask."

"Hold on a second," Bucky interjects, cheeks slightly tinged, "so you’d rather I keep dying than just see if it works?"

"What?" Your face is burning. So are his eyes. "No, I—it’s just not that easy."

"Sounds pretty straightforward to me," he argues.

"It’s not about the sex!" The words tumble out of your mouth to the beat of your heart. "He has to fall in love with her, that’s what breaks his loop in the movie. It’s a completely different situation!"

There’s a beat where the two of you stare at each other before Bucky’s face goes blank of emotion.

"Right." He nods, his jaw set tight.

Something inside you curls. "Sam, could you give us a minute?"

Sam looks between the two of you uncomfortably. It’s clear he doesn’t particularly want to stay, but he doesn’t want to leave the two of you alone, either. "You sure?"

"Not necessary," Bucky says, standing up. "I’m going for a walk."

"Bucky—"

"Don’t," he says, and the iciness in his voice freezes you to the spot. "And don’t follow me!"

You flinch as the door slams shut behind him.

"That went well," Sam says.

"Really?" You glare at him. "Did you have to bring up fucking Groundhog Day?"

"Sorry that my frame of reference for breaking a time loop isn’t wider than nineties pop culture," he says, crossing his arms. "Also, I don’t see what the problem is."

You stare at him and his expectantly raised eyebrows. Your heart is still thundering.

"I don’t fucking have time for this," you say, and turn your back.

* * *

When you enter the kitchen, it takes you a moment to realize that Sam is still on the phone.

"That’s nice," he says, nodding his head to acknowledge you. "No. Nah, but I’m leaving now. Yeah. Tell them hi from me, okay. Okay. You, too. See ya."

"How’s Sarah?" you ask after he ends the call.

"Good. She’s good." He starts folding up the recycling and you can’t bring yourself to tell him there’s no need. "They’re hosting the barbecue again this year, so the boys are thrilled."

"Sounds lovely," you say, twisting your necklace between your fingers.

"It’s chaos." He laughs. "Man, I miss 'em. Always feels like it’s been too long."

Even longer than he is able to remember, you think with a pang in your heart.

"Why didn’t you fly home for the holiday?" you ask.

"Because," Sam says, rolling his shoulders, "I can’t just be uncle Sam for Cass and AJ today, I have to be uncle Sam for the whole country. That’s my part on America’s day now." He shrugs it off. "Just how it is."

"I’m sorry," you say. It’s hard for you to imagine how he is able to handle all of this pressure, the scrutiny, the weight of everyone’s expectations on his back. You can barely handle your own life, and what’s that, by comparison?

"Don’t be." His neck cracks and he sighs quietly. "Kinda signed up for this, didn’t I?"

You look at the shield, casually placed on the kitchen counter, waiting for him to pick it up on the way out. It’s always looked heavier than it is.

"Besides," Sam continues, "pizza is almost as good as homemade hot dogs."

You successfully swallow down your slight gag. "It’s not that far to Louisiana. There’s still time for that hot dog."

He knows what you’re doing, and so his lopsided grin doesn’t reach his eyes. "Let’s get our cyborg through the day, alright? I’ll see her soon enough."

He squeezes your shoulder and heads for his room to change.

His words tug at something deep inside you, long after he’s closed the door behind him. Something you have to keep locked, normally, deep in the core of your ribcage, like an unruly bird, because otherwise it’ll keep breaking free and rendering you unable to move.

You sit crosslegged on the floor next to your window, your back to the wall, just like she used to. You feel ridiculous, but that birdlike thing inside compels you and you’re weak. The back of your closet seems to scream your name, begging you to keep digging until you find the sad remnants of an embrace in a soft piece of fabric.

You ignore it.

Still, your phone finds its way into your hand, and before you can stop yourself you’re scrolling through abysmally few contacts, your finger hovering over one of them for a whole ten seconds before you press it. There’s no air in your lungs as it rings an infinite amount of times, and then—

"You’ve reached Nat."

Her voice is like a kiss on the forehead and an ice cold shower at the same time. The room in front of you starts to blur.

"I obviously can’t talk right now, but I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If it’s about one of the kids, try the main office. Thanks!"

"Hey, Natasha," you say a few seconds after the beep, your voice thick. "It’s me. I just … I wanted to tell you that I really miss your voice."

You laugh wetly, because already, it’s fading from your memory again. A tear rolls down your cheek.

"So sappy, I know, but it’s true. I miss you, and I really need you today. Every day, actually." The lump in your throat grows. "Sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. I love you, Nat."

You end the call and throw your phone on the floor, not caring if it breaks.

Normally, when you cry like this, you halt the world. Your emotions aren’t for anyone to witness, not like this. Not when everything is spinning and every gasp for air makes your entire body shake.

Now, though, you’re left with no other option than to have it keep moving with you, each passing second making the temporal rift between you and her larger.

You are incapable of saving anyone, no matter your promise. Useless.

You don’t hear the knock on the door, only his voice on the other side.

"Y/N? Can I come in?"

You clap your hand over your mouth so hard even more tears spring to your eyes, desperately trying to slow your breathing. You find yourself nodding.

"No!" you shout, and it sounds pathetically whiny.

But they’re all gone.

You have no one.

"Please?" he says again, and something about the way he does makes white-hot anger course through you.

You barely notice yourself rising to your feet, blindly grabbing the first thing within reach and throwing it with everything you have left in you. Your lamp crashes to the floor, the screen off center, the bulb shattering into a million pieces. Your alarm clock is next, the screen only cracking before you smash it against the wall and it finally stops its incessant ticking. You sweep everything off your desk with a swing of your blood-stained pillow, not caring about the noise or the damage or anything, really.

Your actions have no consequences anymore.

Pictures and books and clothes all fall victim to your wrath for the second time, and you step on them all, kicking and shoving until there’s a crack underneath your heel and you wince.

The splintered frame hurts more than the shards. You couldn’t care less about your own face, unrecognizable underneath the broken glass, but Natasha and Steve’s wide grins have also been shattered by the fall. It’s almost poetic, in a horrible way, and when you wrap your arms around yourself and stumble backwards, you notice that you’re shaking.

"Please," you whisper, sure it’s too quiet for anyone to hear, sure that by now, he’s long gone.

The door opens, anyway.

You don’t turn away from the picture, tears falling silently now. He gingerly steps over your mess until he’s so close you can feel him right behind you. It takes you another minute to catch your breath enough to speak.

"It’s not fair," you say quietly, voice still quivering. "I know I’m cursed, but why is it that everyone else has to pay? Why her? Why you?"

"You’re not cursed," Bucky says and you laugh mirthlessly.

"No, I am. I damned myself and I’m taking everyone else down with me, and I don’t even know … I don’t know how to stop this."

"Twelve—"

"Don’t—" you start, but you don’t have the energy anymore. It’s all been drained from you. Bucky sighs.

"Powers or not, you’re still in control of your actions."

It only makes you cry harder.

"Can I—" He clears his throat. "Can I give you a hug?"

And it’s so easy to turn, finally, and to find yourself enveloped by his arms, your fingers digging into his shirt so tightly it has to hurt, but he doesn’t say anything. His heartbeat is so loud when you’re this close, so alive, and he holds you through the next shaky fall of tears, warm and steady, hands pressing tightly against your back as if to remind you he’s still here.

At least for now.

"Step on my feet," he tells you softly, so you can tell it’s a request, not a demand. "There are shards everywhere and you’re already bleeding."

You do so, hesitantly, and Bucky clears the way out for both of you, slowly walking backwards with you leaning on him until you reach the threshold.

You barely notice as he sits you down on a bed, only whimpering as he carefully pries your fingers from his shirt to retreat a step from you, taking his warmth with him.

"I’ll be right back, doll."

He squeezes your hands before he lets go, and you fall back on the bed in shameful exhaustion. You can feel your mind drifting, as if you’re in a trance, your limbs heavy by your side. Something at the back of your head seems to tingle, like a memory or an inkling.

And then you feel the pull again.

This time, instead of falling it’s like treading waters, onwards and upwards through a thick, gooey resistance in the air, fighting the urge to open your eyes, incredibly aware of every itch in your body until … you’re not.

You feel very light, somehow, as if you’ve been carrying a heavy backpack that’s no longer dragging you down. Hesitantly, you open your eyes.

Odd angles and off colors, and the still disconcerting sight of your own body sleeping in bed.

Your gaze drops to your wrist. The now familiar band of green symbols is still wrapped around it, but when you concentrate, you can feel the slightest glimmer of your powers in that empty void inside of you.

Different realities. He was right.

"You’re back, then."

A mad laugh escapes you as you drop your hand. "Really? That’s all?"

Strange raises an eyebrow at you, his cloak flapping slightly. He’s sitting at your desk, seemingly without a care in the world, two steaming cups in front of him.

"Did you expect to be complimented for the bare minimum?" he asks, unperturbed. "Because then we’re both in for disappointment."

"You know what?" you say sharply, straightening up. "A single nice word would be great! You have no idea, no clue what I am going through here!"

"What you are going through?" He takes a sip of tea. "Imagine how Sergeant Barnes must feel."

Again, you feel rage bubbling up inside you. "That is all I imagine! Okay? I am failing him every single day, over and over again. And he doesn’t even really know it, which makes it worse because he still thinks that somehow, I’m going to save him, even though it’s all my fault!"

"Contrition. How refreshing." Strange’s cool gray eyes fixate on you. "Sit down."

You stare at him blankly.

"Don’t mistake my presence here for kindness," he says when you show no intentions of moving. "Your powers, left unchecked, continue to be a menace to the structure of space and time, and trust me, you don’t want to start tearing that down."

"Or what?" you say.

"Chaos," Strange answers. "Now sit. Down."

You sit on the edge of your reading chair, not letting him out of your sight for a second. The other mug of tea scoots closer to your end of the table on its own. A sweet, herbal smell drifts over. You eye it warily.

"I can’t well poison you without a body," Strange says, rolling his eyes. You suppose he has a point. "Here’s the deal," he continues. "I am going to help you in exchange for honest answers."

"You didn’t offer your help last time," you mutter around the rim of your mug.

"You were too busy acting tough and shouting at me to ask for it. Most people don’t react too generously to that."

The tea is both soothing and energizing at the same time; you’ve never tasted anything like it. "So I answer your questions and you help me … how?"

"Like I said, the only one capable of ending the loop is the one who started it in the first place." Strange’s cloak points at you. You frown back at it. "But for that, you need a stronger hold on your powers."

"And how do I do that, then?"

Strange’s eyes narrow ever so slightly as he looks at you from head to toe. "Black tourmaline and silver."

Reflexively, you reach for your necklace.

"A bit primitive, but effective, as it seems," he continues. "Your own idea?"

You need him, you remind yourself. As much as it pains you.

"My mother’s," you answer reluctantly.

"Of course." Strange puts his fingertips together in a triangle, thinking. "That’d keep others from sniffing up your powers from miles away. Smart woman, your mother. Quick thinking. But that’s not all, is it?"

"Listen, doc, I’m not going to tell you my life story unless you give me something in return," you say, putting your empty mug back on the desk. "What are we going to do about my powers?"

Strange reaches into thin air and his hand vanishes in a mirror crack. When he pulls it back, he’s holding a book in it that he throws into your lap. "You get to studying."

* * * * *

"Can I ask you a weird question?" you said later that evening, staring at the ceiling. A content sort of exhaustion had started to set in, but none of you were ready to call it a night quite yet.

"Of course," Natasha said from her upside-down position on the couch, continuing to play with Steve’s hand in her lap.

You pushed up to your elbows. "Do you believe in fate?"

"Not really," Steve answered without so much as a pause.

"Seriously?" Nat turned her head towards him. "You don’t think there might be a reason we’re sitting here right now?"

"Sure I do." He booped her nose with their entwined fingers. "We’re here because we chose to be here. Like I chose to take the serum and you chose to escape the Red Room."

The quick shadows dancing across her face made you wonder whether Steve didn’t know everything about Natasha’s past, either. You sat up slowly, crossing your feet underneath you.

"So you don’t think there’s one way things are supposed to go, some grand plan or scheme or whatever, and we just … I don’t know. Pretend we can mess with it?" You fiddled around with your necklace.

"Nah," Steve said with a tired smile. "Everyone can change something."

"That’s putting a lot of faith in individuals, isn’t it?" Natasha asked.

"What do you think, then?"

She thought about it, wriggling her toes in the air. Her nails were painted as red as the roots of her hair. "I like the thought of serendipity," she finally settled on.

You grinned. "You mean, you like the movie Serendipity, you sap."

She threw a pillow at your head and you laughed. "I will neither confirm nor deny that," she said with a charming twinkle in her eye. "But that whole 'fate or free will' thing—I don’t know, I just don’t think there’s a clear cut answer like that."

Steve hummed. "So, happy accidents?"

"Yeah." She smiled at him. "Sometimes. Not fated, just fortunate."

"I think I like that," you said thoughtfully, pressing the pillow to your chest.

"Why are you asking?" Natasha looked at you and you dropped your gaze.

"Just wondering," you mumbled. You were pretty sure she knew, anyway.

Nat had a way of understanding things that bordered on the telepathic, an empathy that always seemed so out of place with everything else you’d learned about her, with what little you knew was in her past.

Whether or not there was a higher power behind it, it had to be a rare miracle in a series of coincidences that Natasha Romanoff had stayed as good as she did.

Serendipitous, almost.

Later, when you lay in bed and had the world stop to listen to your own heartbeat, you kept coming back to that thought. Green wisps of time curled around your fingers like shimmering jewelry, and you asked yourself if those accidents ever felt happy in the moment or if that was something you had to conclude later.

Maybe sometimes there was no way of telling at all.

chapter five

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#i'm crushed i'm emotionally exhausted i feel like i'm there #genuinely feel like i just ran a mile #please let them be happy 😭😭#bucky barnes series rec #marvel rec

205 notes · View notes

lovelyrecs · 11 hours ago

Text

"In other fun news," you tell Bucky as you are sitting cross-legged in the astral plane, on the edge of the bed he isn’t using, "apparently we have been underestimating our delivery guy."

she's talking to him in her little dimension 😭😭 she misses talking to him so much she'll just pretend he's listening 😭😭

The whole part with a certain Peter Parker telling you that he knows all of you and you’ve simply forgotten him because of sorcery—only for him to not recall any of it the next time he delivers food to your doorstep—doesn’t exactly help this maddening situation, especially not when Sam squints at you in the ring one morning and says, "Something’s weird."

IT DIDNT MEAN ANYTHING??? IT EITHER DIDNT MEAN ANYTHING OR IT MEANT SHIT'S GETTING WORSE AND I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE I PREFER

"What did it?"

HE DOESNT REMEMBER??? HE DOESNT REMEMBER THAT SHE'S TOLD HIM AND THAT SHES TRIED?? HE THINKS SHES DOING THIS ON PURPOSE???

"I know. Do you think I haven’t tried? To stop this?" You hiccup. "I’ve been trying to do that for weeks."

LITERALLY LITERALLY SHES BEEB STUCK HERE TOO FOR LONGWR SHE'S BEEN TRYING TO FIX IT

Bucky’s hum is like goosebumps down your spine. "I was on my way to find you. Alpine sat on the top stair and kept screaming her lungs out."

🥹 SHE KNEW

"If I’m not going, you’re not going," he interrupts before you can finish your protest. "But Sam’s gotta know. And you have to come downstairs with me."

he's scared she's still going to jump 😭😭 or he doesnt even want to possibility to be nearby

He takes your wrists in his hands and pulls them away from his chest, and maybe you’re still a little dizzy, and then he says, "I never hit the ground."

WHATAT SO IS IT HIM?? WHAT

He meets your eyes, then, vehemently. "I would never do that."

so he's saying he has the capability and sometimes the thoughts to do terrible things but he would never do that. and he thinks he's a bad person 😭 he breaks my heart

"Keep remindin’ me and I might." He clears his throat. "Your turn, Twelve."

OH??? that's. unexpectedly and blessedly romantic. am i seeing the light ???🙏🙏???

"How much time do we still have before the loop starts to disintegrate?" Bucky asks. Smart question. He’s so smart.

that is so cute 😭😭

You kiss him.

YESSS YESSS AND EVERYONE CHEERS!! I DROP TO MY KNEES AND CRY OUT OF RELIEF

time after time [8]

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 12.3k

chapter warnings: Angsty with a capital A; suicidal ideation and attempted suicide (within the context of ending a time loop); finally, some big conversations are being had. please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: i wasn't sure whether i really wanted to post this one tonight, but you know what? i've missed this story. so here you go.

series masterlist | main masterlist | read on ao3

eight: edge of tomorrow

On the good days, life at the Compound felt like a dream.

The world was a mess, but you’d found your own little corner in it, and despite the long hours and the high pressure, you felt happy for the first time in ages. Trusting others did wonders for your confidence.

In turn, you felt like you had a good grip on your powers most of the time now.

Natasha was the one who helped you focus them the most. She seemed to understand something about them that you had never considered yourself, and the more you trained together, the more balanced you felt.

Your reaction time shortened. Your reflexes grew more instinctual, your fighting movements smoothened. It was a slow process, arduous and mostly the opposite of fun; learning that you were of no use to anyone when you were through all the resets you could manage had been one of the hardest lessons so far, especially since you could never predict when you’d reach that point.

But despite all that, you felt yourself getting better. Stronger, too. And almost never fainting after overextending yourself anymore.

You’d always had lots of time, but now, you also had people you cared about. It was a new thing again, a strange feeling, but good.

You’d do almost anything to keep it.

Most nights, you went to bed with a smile, but it vanished some time after you fell asleep.

Usually, your nightmares looked like this: You were walking through a bright void, and as you walked on, you realized you were surrounded by mirrors, an endless labyrinth of them. Each of your mirror selfs was turning a different direction as you walked, seemingly aimless, all of them chattering to themselves or each other, words you couldn't quite understand growing louder and louder until you were surrounded by a whirlwind of noise that shook you ever which way until you didn’t know up from down anymore.

None of you seemed to have any idea where you were trying to go, and slowly, your breaths grew more panicked as you realized that you still felt a presence, somewhere above you; something malicious.

And you felt it steering you like you were its lost little puppet on a string, around and around, until you felt the heat of flames licking at your skin and your world set on fire, the mirrors splintering into a million pieces.

You were aware that you should be in pain, but your mind was only set on dread, twisting its icy fingers into your heart and pulling. There was no space to feel hurt; this was a twisted torture chamber crafted from fear and living from fear and allowing nothing else but fear.

When you woke up, you’d be drenched in sweat and hollowed out, your throat sore even though you couldn’t remember screaming. Hell was an endless, empty place, and when you sat up in bed in the middle of the night, you’d have to give yourself a couple of minutes before you got out of bed on shaky legs and snuck outside.

You had been living at the Compound long enough you knew how to slip past super soldier ears and spy instincts unnoticed. The hallway seemed even emptier than usual at this time, almost like it had been crafted from another nightmare.

This one was dark, though, soft and gentle, so maybe it wasn’t as bad.

When the doors finally opened, you gulped down a greedy breath of fresh air, reality finally settling into you again. You sat down on the front stairs, wrapped your arms around your knees and looked at the sky.

It was cloudy, but every now and then, you could see the stars peeking through. It soothed your heart and made it feel sore at the same time.

You heard the door open behind you, but you didn’t turn your head. Light steps approached you, legs crossing next to where you were sitting, and half of a heavy blanket was wrapped around your shoulders.

"You’re like a living ice block," Natasha complained quietly as she bumped into your side.

You chuckled quietly, wriggling your naked toes. "Why are you up?"

"You’re not as sneaky as you think you are."

"Sorry," you said, tilting your head to the side so she could rest her head on your shoulder. "Did I wake you?"

"It’s alright," she yawned. "It was either you or Steve’s snoring."

The man did sleep like a locomotive. Neither of you were going to say anything about it, though. It was nice to hear he finally got some sleep again at all. Even if he might as well have put FRIDAY up to make an announcement.

You were nearing the fourth anniversary of the Snap. That fact alone was hard on all of you, but you felt guilty for another reason.

"Nat?" you said, and she hummed. "You know, my life’s been a lot better since … since I got here."

That wasn’t what you were going to say initially, but the truth felt too selfish. Too unfair. What did your happiness mean in the face of half the universe disappearing?

"You’re sweet," she mumbled, but you didn’t feel that way at all. What you felt was a harsh knot in your stomach at all times, because how was it you had spent the last couple of years? You’d found a new family. You’d laughed more times than you could count, found purpose in your powers again, learned to take up a space you considered your own, free of the burdens of anyone else’s rules or commands.

The only thing still haunting you were your dreams, and even they were easy to forget when you were awake. It didn’t seem right. How come you got to be so lucky in the face of all this tragedy?

"Nightmare again?" Natasha asked quietly.

"Yeah," you answered, staring out at the black lake. "You?"

"Yup." She sighed and stretched out her arms. "Wanna go get donuts for breakfast?"

You turned your head to look at her, grinning. "That’s the best idea you’ve had all week."

"That’s hurtful. It’s Friday."

"I said what I said."

It all felt too good to be true, and you knew it.

When was the second shoe going to drop?

* * * * *

"In other fun news," you tell Bucky as you are sitting cross-legged in the astral plane, on the edge of the bed he isn’t using, "apparently we have been underestimating our delivery guy."

He frowns in his sleep and you chuckle at the timeliness of it. Alpine whines at you.

"I know," you tell her earnestly. "Haven’t I always said that the wizard guys are bad news?"

You roll your eyes, continuing to flick through the pages of one of the ancient tomes that have come to live on the right side of Bucky’s bed. Ever since Strange’s disappearance, you’ve fallen into a new sort of routine, coming in here to conduct your research and feel at least a little less alone.

Even if you’re just fooling yourself.

Despite your best efforts, Alpine has proven not to be much of a conversationalist or particularly interested in magical theory. She’s mostly taken to flopping down on the bed next to you and falling soundly asleep as soon as the pretty green lights twinkling on your fingertips have ceased to be interesting. Honestly, you’re jealous.

"Anyway," you continue, uncapping your pen. "I feel like I’m on the right track, but I still can’t figure out why the last try didn’t do anything."

According to everything you’ve read, it makes no sense for a reaction of that impact not to have made any sort of dent on the loop. It’s possible that it simply is a case of a slower, gradual deterioration of its structure, but you’ve been stuck here far too long already. You are sick of waiting.

The fact that you’re only making tediously slow progress on your reading doesn’t exactly help either; but these grimoires are just so boring. You don’t understand half of the things written in them, and the rest of the time you have to literally catch the sentences before they are trying to slip away from you onto the next page.

Frankly, being a wizard full-time must be exhausting.

You’re not about to pity Strange of all people, though, especially not when a drawing of the time stone catches your eye before the ink has a chance to fade away. Quickly, you snap your fingers and create the tiniest of orbs on the tip of your thumb, leaning over the book.

In the emerald light, the illustration stays where it’s supposed to be, even though the lines blur a little in protest underneath your translucent hands. The words surrounding the stone appear to describe some sort of ritual, requiring all kinds of horrible-sounding ingredients and complicated incantations as well as—

You jerk the book away from you so violently it falls on the floor, missing Bucky’s head by a hair’s breadth. Alpine flinches, hissing miserably at the intrusion.

Bad news might have still been an understatement, you think as you try to breathe calmly again. This was a brush from the past you do not appreciate. Not at all.

"I don’t know how much longer I can do this," you say, hiding your face in your hands. "Maybe this reality is just doomed to collapse and I have to accept that."

Something soft bumps through your elbow and you sigh. Alpine has been uncharacteristically affectionate with you ever since you started seeing her in the astral dimension. Her eyes are somber when you look at her, as if in reaction to your distress.

"I’m quite a mess, huh?" you murmur, and she doesn’t even attempt to scratch you when you pat her head. She purrs quietly.

One glance at the alarm clock tells you it won’t be long until Bucky gets up. Those last couple of minutes before he wakes are the worst for him, muscles twitching with the visions his nightmares are putting him through. You wish you could make it any easier on him, but there’s nothing you can do.

"I think your dad was tagging the other day," you tell the cat.

Of all the recent tiny changes in the loop, the absolute worst ones are what you’ve dubbed the TAGs—temporary awareness glitches.

They never last more than a couple of minutes, but that doesn’t make them any less painful. Hearing the words, "Haven’t we done this before?" from a random stranger at a crossing made you almost topple over the first time. Then, there are the murmured "I think I’m going crazy"s and "It’s just a dream"s when you pass people in the street; not every day, and never the same person twice, but still more often than you’d like.

He’s forgotten about it all again by the time he gets out of the shower, and fuck, you think you might be going green with envy.

It’s the TAGs that make you double down on your studies, because even more than unexplained celestial phenomena and little time skips here and there, they seem like a pretty tell-tale sign that your universe isn’t holding up so well.

You keep scratching Alpine’s head with one hand while picking up the book from the floor with the other, suppressing a shudder going up your spine as you flip the page over.

You manage to scrape together a couple of measly notes on energy flow and general power recovery, which you then copy to your own sleeping body’s naked arms before bringing yourself back into the present. The notes are still there in this reality, and if you touched your skin, the ink would smear. It’s a mystery to you how the timing of it all works out, but it’s not one you’re going to waste your time and focus on.

Especially not because it’s already way later than you usually wake up.

Cursing, you stumble to your feet, slipping out of your loungewear and pulling on your combat suit. This is usually how it goes these days, with you telling Sam through the door that you need "just a couple more minutes" while already being fully dressed, letting yourself catch your breath and shut off your mind for the mission to come.

You’ve been doing this too damn long.

With a last tug at your gloves to make sure that your rings aren’t getting stuck, you flop down on the edge of your unmade bed, ready for the knock to come.

Except … it doesn’t.

You keep looking at the clock with a frown, as if that would change the fact that it’s almost five now and the hallway stays silent. At 5:04, you risk a look outside despite your get-up. Everything is dead quiet, even though you normally leave in precisely seven minutes and Bucky is notoriously noisy when doing his final weapons check.

"Guys?" you call out hesitantly. No one answers.

When you make your way downstairs, the shield is no longer leaning against the kitchen cabinets, and there’s an empty spot on the shelf where Bucky keeps his combat boots.

You have a terrible feeling about this.

Your hands are starting to get clammy, so you pull the gloves off impatiently, dropping them on the couch table. This time, when you look at your phone, there’s a new message.

Cap 🫡: New lead re lab. Taking J and the grump, u rest up!

You turn and run back upstairs.

At the end of the top floor hallway, there’s a narrow metal staircase leading to the private roof. It’s not very interesting; the space is cramped due to the solar panels that power the last remaining quinjet in the small hangar. Most plants you’ve tried growing up there have long since died, the wind relentlessly tearing at hair and vines alike. The latch is kept closed at all times unless someone is up there.

It’s open now.

When you burst outside, you’re still hoping against all odds. Expecting the jet gearing up for take-off, or Bucky and Sam loading the supplies into the back, looking at you oddly, the exhausted "did you jump again" look on their faces.

But there’s nothing there, not even a dark spec of the craft in sight against the beautiful sunset.

They’re long gone.

* * *

You don’t know what to do.

You can feel yourself spiraling, your heart racing as you stumble back down the narrow stairs, but you don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to fix this.

This isn’t just a small, inconsequential glitch like all the others have been; this is a shift in the narrative of the entire day. If you’re not with them during that mission, all kinds of things could happen. Maybe the white jacket from that very first time gets him again, or maybe Riff finds a new target for their knives, or maybe …

Or maybe it means Bucky will live.

Maybe that’s the possibility you’ve never dared to consider; that you might have to take yourself out of the picture entirely for him to have a fighting chance. Give up what little control over the situation you have left and let them try to get through this without you.

It’s not like we haven’t done this sort of thing before.

Your feet find their way to Bucky’s room faster than you can consciously catch up with them, and even though you expect it to be locked, the door swings open easily.

The astral plane couldn’t have prepared you for this: it smells like him in here. Warm and safe, just like you remember his embrace. The way the room feels to you is a vast contrast to the way it looks; the walls are even paler when they’re not warping around the edge of your vision, Bucky’s absence emphasized by the fact that he hasn’t put his mark on anything in here at all.

There’s a cat-shaped indent on the right side of the bed, and a couple of white hairs on the carpet. Even Alpine is gone, though. The whole apartment is uncannily quiet, in a way it’s never been on this particular Friday.

It’s almost like it used to be before anyone but you lived here, and you hate it.

You sit down on the floor next to the bed and lean your head back until it touches the bedding, hands twitching for your phone. There’s never been a reason for you to call him before; you’ve mostly had one-sided text conversations about picking up dinner and taking out the trash. You’re not even sure what you’d want to tell him. Don’t die without me?

This is ridiculous. You shouldn’t even try.

There’s a clicking sound when he picks up, and then more silence. Breathing. You can hear your own heartbeat rushing through your head.

Five seconds pass, ten, maybe more. Neither of you says anything, as if both of you have run out of things to say long ago. Maybe there’s nothing left to say today.

"Please come home."

The word seems unfamiliar on your tongue, but it’s never sounded more true. Despite time repeating endlessly, despite the empty walls and untold truths. Home.

There’s an admission hidden inside its four letters that feels, to you at least, a little like removing the mask you’ve been wearing, even though there’s no one here to see, even though he won’t get it.

You can hear Bucky exhale slowly, almost like a sigh, and then he hangs up. You throw your phone across the room, watch it break as it skitters across the floor, and then you cover your eyes and you hope.

What an ill-placed sentiment.

Your head is jolted forward and you sit up in bed with the sun in your face and FRIDAY blasting The All-American Rejects at full volume, and you don’t even have the energy to be angry anymore. Minutes pass, days, weeks. It’s still July 4th. The green band of symbols is still slowly winding across your wrist.

Not going with them didn’t change a damn thing about his situation, and now you’re going to have to pretend all over agai—

There’s a pounding at the door, but before you can call out to Sam like you always do, you hear a different voice from the hall. "Open up."

You stumble out of bed, more falling over than walking to open the door. Bucky is standing on the other side, his chest heaving, blue eyes refusing to meet yours but narrowing at the sight of you. Alive.

Again.

The shock of it is enough to make you huff. It makes something flicker in his eye, but you can’t make any sense of it. Your heartbeat is way too loud to focus on anything at all, anything but the sweat on his brow and the harsh tick in his jaw, his teeth grinding so hard it must hurt.

"What the fuck," he says quietly, and your hand flies to your arm. It’s still covered in smudged pen markings, barely hidden by the shirt you wake up in.

"What?" you say, trying to sound normal. You miss normal.

Bucky’s hand tightens around your doorframe.

"I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I want you to stop." His voice is low, dangerously low. You can’t tell whether he’s furious or sad or disgusted or in pain; the wall has closed up over his emotions and he is as unreadable as ever.

Tell me.

"What do you mean?" you ask, your voice cracking a little.

"For fuck’s sake, Y/N, you know exactly that I keep dying," Bucky says, finally looking at you. You stop breathing. "You know it shouldn’t be Friday anymore, but it is, over and over again, and I know it’s because of you. You’re the one doing this."

You can’t move.

You can’t speak.

You’ve really thought it couldn’t get any worse than the short glimpses of awareness you’ve seen people go through recently; it couldn’t possibly get any worse than being witness to Bucky’s death every single day for weeks. But this—this is different.

That look in his eyes is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, and it doesn’t feel like a glitch.

He moves towards you and you involuntarily take a half-step back, your fingers twitching uselessly at your sides. For a moment, something vulnerable flashes on his face, but it’s quickly replaced by that unreadable wall.

You barely even notice yourself shaking your head. "It wasn’t—Bucky, I didn’t mean to—"

"Then what is that?"

He’s staring at your wrist now—no. At the green symbols dancing around your wrist.

Only now does it occur to you that you haven’t done anything to camouflage them.

"Nothing," you say reflexively.

"Bullshit." He catches your arm before you can hide it behind your back, his fingers closing tightly around it. The emerald runes reflect dimly in his eyes, giving them an odd shine. "What is that?"

"It’s a time loop," you say quietly. "The one we’re both stuck in."

Neither of you moves, the truth hanging between you as sharp and painful as a knife. You want to reach out, cup his face in your hands and tell him that everything was going to be alright.

But you’re frozen to the spot in your doorway, and you can’t lie to Bucky Barnes.

"What did it?"

Of all the questions you’ve come to expect from previous times you’ve told him, this isn’t one of them. "What do you mean, what did it?"

"Well, something must’ve set you off. Or do you regularly decide to kill people repeatedly and you’ve only just gotten to me?" He drags a hand across his face. "God, I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid."

You’re sure Bucky must feel your blood boiling through your pulse point. "Is that what you think of me? Do you think this is—what, this is fun for me? This is my idea of a holiday special?"

"If you asked me on Thursday, I’d’ve said no, but weirdly enough, I’m not so sure anymore now."

He might as well have cut you in two.

"Wow." You snatch your arm out of his grasp, ignoring how your wrist gives a painful throb. "You know, Barnes, I know you hated me when we first met but I thought we’d moved past that in the last few months. Good to see that you still think so little of me you’d have me be capable of being that cruel."

"Then tell me I’m wrong." You hate the way he yells it, almost like a plea. Almost like a prayer. It makes you want to curl up into a ball and scream. "Tell me you don’t have any clue what’s happening here or why, and that this has nothing to do with you and me."

You want to lie. You want to lie, you want to take it all back, you want to get out of this day.

Useless.

"I can’t," you whisper, and you try conveying all the things you’re not saying through your eyes, because there’s too much to say and you don’t know where to start. It’s not enough.

A slow nod washes his features with ice. "I thought so."

You feel a bout of panic rising up. "No, Bucky, please let me explain—"

"No, I am done with this. Do you hear me? I want you to make it stop. Now. Today. And until then …" He drags a hand through his hair, his jaw locking again. "Just—stay away from me."

Your throat is constricting, his name barely making its way over your lips before he’s gone, his fists still clenched tightly. There’s a hand-shaped dent in the metal frame of your doorway.

"Okay, would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?"

You manage to shut the door in Sam’s face and lock it before your knees give in.

* * *

It’s impossible to tell how much time passes. Everything is so quiet around you that at first, you think the world must have stopped around you, blissfully holding its breath just for you.

Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe your powers are finally returning.

But when you open your eyes, there’s no mistaking the warped shapes and colors around you, and despite everything else, the letdown still tugs at your heart.

Still not good enough.

These past couple of times, with Strange gone, you’ve almost started to appreciate the weird quietude of this place; the blurred colors and washed out edges that distinguished this reality so much from your own started to look almost beautiful. It’s a space nearly out of time, just as much caught in liminality as yourself, but in a slower, much more refined way.

There’s something calming about existing somewhere far, far removed from your actual life with nothing and no one but a cat to disturb you.

It doesn’t feel like this today.

Today, everything has been heightened to look too sharp, too kaleidoscopically technicolor. The air feels thinner without your physical lungs processing it first, and you gasp so much you send yourself into a coughing fit.

Your sleeping body’s eyebrow twitches. She doesn’t know shit yet.

But Bucky does.

There’s no way this is the same as some of the TAGs you’ve encountered before. None of those lasted longer than a few moments, as far as you could tell, and absolutely none of those people came to any logical conclusions about your involvement with the creation of the loop itself. No, this is something different, something huge, something …

Shit.

It must’ve happened when you tried to change the loop. It must have reset it in a way, made him aware like you, except he’s the one who’s actually dying every day and—

For fuck’s sake, it’s been days. Days, and he’s only coming to you now.

I am sick of you pretending to fix stuff.

He doesn’t look any different in his sleep, and yet you don’t feel any of the usual calm looking at him. Something cold and sharp has taken a hold of your insides, gripping them tight.

You swallow down your nausea and grab the first book from the pile, blindly thumbing through it as you recall exactly where you went wrong during your attempt to dissolve the loop. Your mother always used to tell you to be careful what you wished for; clearly, the lesson still hasn’t sunk in.

This isn’t what you wanted.

You blink through the blurriness and catch part of an illustration just before it bleeds through to the other side; something green and gold and repulsively familiar. You quickly turn the page before the drawing evades you completely.

The Eye of Agamotto stares at you menacingly, and something in your stomach churns.

The remainder of the page is covered in the same small, slanted handwriting you’re already familiar with, spiraling around the Eye in its center at a leisurely pace that speeds up when it notices your attention; you hate spell books so much.

Part of the passage stands out to you, anyway, like something big and ugly and exactly what you’ve been looking for.

"… deliberately loop segments of time through the formation of a literal energy loop over the wielder’s wrist. Upon the wielder’s death, the timeline will …"

The words drip off the edge of the page before you can take in the rest of the sentence, and when you flip it over, they’re gone. They refuse to reappear, no matter how many times you flip back and forth.

The timeline will what? Move on? Repeat anyway? Disintegrate?

You groan frustratedly, throwing the book across the room as a rush of power floods through you, making your hands flare up. You push the useless green light away from you, and a ball of it forms in the center of the room, bathing everything in an eerie emerald shine.

Something very heavy settles in your chest; the knowledge of what might well be the only way out of this loop, after all. The one possibility you haven’t really allowed yourself to consider because you promised not to do anything stupid and this would be stupid, probably.

And you’re afraid.

It’s ironic, really; you’ve been trying to find a solution for so long at this point, and now you don’t like the one you’re presented with. You’re selfish, after all, and you don’t want to die. You’re terrified of it, just like you are of all the things that you have no control over.

But is it worth more than Bucky’s life?

If there’s a chance, even the slightest chance that he’ll make it out of this, that he won’t have to go through this anymore once you’ve left the picture, shouldn’t you do it anyway?

I want you to make it stop.

"Bucky …" you start, trailing off just as soon as you take a closer look of his face again. That familiar frown, and that light smattering of freckles on his cheekbones.

There’s nothing you could tell him here, anyway. This reality doesn’t help anyone; it’s as inconsequential as your actions so far.

You wake on the floor of your bedroom on the last July 4th and for once, there’s no blood on the bed. Your skin is sticky with cold sweat.

For a moment, you don’t know what to do next. You don’t know how to do it. Your gun is kept in the safe, and you’re not sure your hands wouldn’t be shaking too much, anyway; plus, you don’t want to leave any more of a mess than you already have.

You sit up slowly, staring out of the window. "FRIDAY?" you say hoarsely. The A.I. jingles to life pleasantly. "How high up would you say we are?"

"You are on the 92nd floor, or about one thousand, one hundred and twelve feet above ground."

"That should do it," you mumble. You’re feeling very light-headed somehow.

This would either work to end the loop, or you’ll wake up on Friday the same way you always do. Either way, Bucky doesn’t have to die again. The more you think about it, the more sense it makes. Why on earth you haven’t thought about this for longer than two seconds before is beyond you, really.

It has to work. You’re the one who inadvertently created the loop, and you’re the one maintaining it. Take out the head, and the whole thing goes down. Right?

It feels strange to pull your door closed behind you, not knowing if you’ll be back after this. You wonder if you should leave something behind, just in case. For Sam, maybe. Bucky will put it together, anyway.

Don’t do anything stupid.

You push the memory of his voice away. That was a different, long-gone version of him, one that didn’t really understand what was going on in the first place. One that was wrong.

Something whines at your feet. Alpine tilts her head at you when you bend down to pet her behind the ears, letting out a little sigh. Her fur is so soft.

She indulges you for a moment longer, and then she sinks her claws into your shin.

You yelp, staggering a half-step back and instinctively pressing a hand to the scratches, eyes stinging at the burn. Alpine looks at you haughtily.

"You really are a hellcat," you mumble. "And here I thought you were starting to like me."

You’ve never seen a cat stare at anyone so disapprovingly, but somehow, she manages.

* * *

One thousand-odd feet looks even higher than it sounds. You can barely see the people on the streets all the way down, barely hear the sound of traffic over the wind and your own rushing pulse.

There’s a certain kind of calm that comes with the clarity you’re experiencing.

You don’t want to do it; of course you don’t. But even apart from your determination to save Bucky, the thought of it is somehow … tempting. You’re so tired. Everything stays unchanged, no matter what you do, and you just want it all to stop.

Your hands are clammy around the railing. The midday sun is absolutely merciless, and for a moment you wish you’d changed out of your sleep things into something else. What would be the point of that, though?

It would just take a couple of seconds, at most. If you’re lucky, you’ll pass out from fright before you hit the ground.

Your naked toes inch closer to the ledge.

You’ve never been scared of heights, but usually you’re not planning to fall. You lean over a little more, forcing your fingers to let go, one by one.

Right hand. You tuck your necklace under your collar. Maybe you should’ve taken it off. Slowly, carefully, your grip loosens completely.

"What in the—"

You flinch, and you let go.

This is it, you think, closing your eyes shut as you lose your balance, it’s actually happening.

Things slow down again; there’s a split second of regret panging through your heart, followed by a surge of something through your lungs, something you haven’t felt in this reality for quite some time, and then—

A painful jolt goes through your entire body and you yelp as someone grabs your hand and you are hauled back onto the roof, your hip slamming into the railing.

You stumble into him, making a desperate sobbing sound as your knees buckle for the second time today.

"Are you out of your mind?!"

There’s a raw edge to Bucky’s voice that only your fucked-up brain could come up with. He’s still pulling you into him tightly, his arms like a life raft around you.

"Let go of me."

"I can’t."

"Bucky, if I die before we go on that mission then you won’t have to. Either it’ll reset or the loop will be over."

"No."

"What do you mean, 'no'? You said it yourself, you know—you know this is my fault. I have to fix this."

"Not like this." You can feel his heart thundering in his chest as he pulls you impossibly closer. "Never—not like this."

So you cry.

You both sink to the floor of the roof and you cry and you sob and you curse in Bucky’s arms for the second time because it simply isn’t fair.

"I don’t know what else to do." You take a shuddering breath. "Maybe they were right. Maybe I shouldn’t even be here. Maybe I’m just doomed to make everything worse forever. Maybe the only way to get out of this mess is to take me out of the equation."

"You’re wrong." Bucky exhales onto your neck.

"How can you possibly know that?"

"I just do. We’ll find another way." He swallows heavily. You can feel it, just like you can feel his thunderous heartbeat. "I—I’m so sorry."

"Why the hell would you be sorry?" you say quietly.

"Because this isn’t what I meant."

"I know. Do you think I haven’t tried? To stop this?" You hiccup. "I’ve been trying to do that for weeks."

He stiffens. "How long have you been stuck here?"

Wordlessly, you pull up the leg of your pants a little to reveal the tally marks you’ve been making; one for each loop.

Bucky just stares for a very long time, long enough for you to start squirming under his gaze. When he finally does speak again, his voice cracks at the seams. "Please tell me you’re joking."

"Why, are you going to laugh?" You miss his laugh. But how could you tell him that?

He doesn’t answer. Instead, his thumb ghosts over your skin as if he’s trying to count the days he’s missed. His other arm tightens slightly around you when he finally averts his eyes.

"I know, right?" you almost laugh, but it’s so nice not to pretend anymore, even though everything hurts and you hate him seeing you like this, but you don’t hate it as much as you used to. And you just can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

You still can’t bring yourself to move away from his touch, either. He might have to pry you off him at some point, as soon as he’s done feeling bad for and indulging you.

"Why did you come up here, anyway?" you ask at some point when your breaths have finally calmed again under his fingers soothingly rubbing circles into your back. Your thigh.

Bucky’s hum is like goosebumps down your spine. "I was on my way to find you. Alpine sat on the top stair and kept screaming her lungs out."

"Oh," you exhale. You rub your cheeks, slowly, contemplatively. "I’m sorry, Buck."

"You don’t have to apologize—"

"Not just for …" You nod your head at the ledge, cringing. "I mean, I am—I didn’t think you’d be …" There? Shocked? Giving a damn?

"You scared the shit out of me," Bucky says quietly.

And you don’t know how to respond to that. You can’t look at him, can’t find the right words because suddenly they all taste wrong in your mouth, too overwhelming or and too small at the same time.

I’m scared for you all the time, you think.

Finally, you settle on, "I’m sorry I got you stuck in here." It doesn’t even begin to cover what you’re trying to say, but it’ll have to do for now.

He shifts in front of you, and you realize that his shirt is basically soaked through. Between the sun burning down on the roof and you sitting so close to him you’re basically in his lap, he must be unbearably uncomfortable.

So you swallow heavily, and you retreat a little, your eyes downcast. "I’m okay now," you mumble. "You don’t have to keep touching me."

It seems like Bucky hesitates for a moment before he pulls back completely. "Right."

He gets to his feet again and your heart tugs uncomfortably, but then he reaches out his hand to you. You stare at it for a second before taking it. The metal has warmed slightly, but it’s still cool to the touch. Cool and familiar.

He lets go of you almost immediately to glance at his watch. "We should probably get downstairs. Sam’s gonna start looking for us."

"Stay," you whisper, before you think about it, before you can try not to sound so damn desperate. "Stay here, just this once. Please."

You meet his gaze again. There’s something different in his eyes now, something other than the pain and the pent up anger you’ve seen earlier, softer and more focused at the same time.

There’s a pause.

"Let’s go downstairs," Bucky says, that determined tick in his jaw returning. It makes your heart sink.

"Bucky—"

"If I’m not going, you’re not going," he interrupts before you can finish your protest. "But Sam’s gotta know. And you have to come downstairs with me."

You blink at him as something unfolds in your chest. "Okay."

* * *

By the time the sun starts to set, your head is aching almost as badly as the bruises on your side.

Honesty, as it turns out, is surprisingly exhausting, especially after you’ve spent all this time keeping your cards to yourself. It takes a long time to untangle the web of near-identical days that you’ve accumulated, to explain the mess of notes and references scattered on your skin. All the things that have happened, the research you’ve conducted, the different attempts you’ve tried to stop this day from ending how it always does, it all comes out in a blurt and terrible diagrams.

It’s familiar, in a way. You’ve done this dozens of times, after all, with Sam pacing and Bucky staring and your coffee getting cold on the living room table.

Only now, there’s a kernel of hope mixed into the same old sense of underlying dread. Perhaps, it whispers, this could be the last time you’re recounting all of this. Perhaps there is a way out for both of you, now that someone else remembers this whole shitshow happening in the first place. Perhaps, if you don’t lose time to explanations every single day—

"So, just to recap," Sam says, pinching his nose. "You’re both stuck in a time loop."

You nod.

"Like Groundhog Day," you and Sam confirm.

"Or Doubled and Redoubled," you and Bucky offer.

"What the hell’s that?" you and Sam ask.

"It’s a good story," you and Bucky say.

"Still isn’t, by the way," you tell him. "And don’t ever make me say that again."

His gaze hasn’t left you once, swooping over you repeatedly, like you’re a flight risk. It lingers, sometimes, on the scratches across your arm, or the smeared ink on your legs.

"No one’s forced you," he replies and you roll your eyes.

Even though you’re already starting to fall back into your usual patterns, something has irrevocably shifted, that small glimmer of hope being overshadowed by a vulnerability you’re not used to.

Awful or not, in a way, the loop has given you the same sense of relief your resets usually provide. Now that you know Bucky is just as aware as you are, you can no longer hide in the knowledge that he won’t remember a thing as soon as the day starts again.

Of course that means you no longer have to carry everything that happened on your own anymore, but you won’t be able to predict his reactions to the things you say or do either. And while that’s been the case for every day that wasn’t this damn Friday before, there’s one last thing that he doesn’t know has changed since today’s started. One last memory you haven’t shared, sitting in a park with the sunlight catching his smile, your heart pounding wildly.

I take calculated risks.

Now’s not the time.

"Alright, that was upsetting," Sam says, bringing you back to the present. "What I don’t get is why we’ve all been doing the same sorta stuff every day, mission and all, when that’s clearly not working."

You bite the inside of your cheek, but when you glance at Sam, he’s frowning at Bucky. Not for the first time, an entire conversation appears to happen between them in complete silence, one that ends with Bucky almost imperceptibly shaking his head.

Sam’s jaw clenches. "Fine," he says. "Have it your way, but you gotta sort your shit out at some point." He looks back at you. "What happens if we don’t go on that mission at all today?"

"I don’t know," you reply. "We only managed that once, and Bucky died anyway. And earlier than usual."

You don’t mention the roof. Neither of you has, even though you feel like it still clings your skin, making every inch of you sticky with shame.

"Alright," Sam says, rubbing at his eyes with the palm of his hand. "I’mma call backup and try to buy us some time. You two stay here and don’t invent any new dumb ways to die."

"You sure about this?" you ask warily. "We’ve never tried this before."

"Neither have I," he says, a tired grin flitting across his face as he grabs his jacket. "It’ll be just like old times."

Can’t say that, bud.

"Sam," Bucky says and he halts for a moment, hovering, "be careful."

You cross your arms in front of your chest as you watch Sam’s shoulders square up. He doesn’t turn back around, so it’s impossible to tell whether the sound he makes in his throat is a laugh or a sigh.

"What’s the worst that could happen?" he asks.

Thankfully, he doesn’t wait for a reply.

"Now what?" Bucky asks when you sit down on the couch opposite him, leaning your head back and wrinkling your nose when the motion pulls some of your strained muscles.

"You heard the man," you say. "We’re gonna sit here and not move and hope the ceiling doesn’t drop on your head." You blink one of your eyes open. "Thinking about it, maybe you should move away from underneath that lamp."

"Very funny."

"Oh, I’m not joking."

With an exasperated sigh, he crosses over and flings himself down next to you. His thigh brushes your knee, and your stomach makes an annoying little swoop at the contact.

You force yourself to lean back again, like you don’t even notice. Like you can’t feel his gaze on you.

"Are you planning on ignoring me now?"

As if that was ever an option. Your heart gives a painful tug.

"Oh," you say, ignoring it, "did you want to pretend that we’re good at having a normal conversation?"

"What’re you reading?"

You do open your eyes, then, and find him already thumbing through your book; you must’ve left it on the couch table this morning. It feels like that was lifetimes ago.

"No worries, be my guest," you say dryly. "You’re not the kind of person who dog-ears other people’s books, are you?"

One of Bucky’s eyebrows lifts with a crooked grin. "Wouldn’t you like to know."

"Give it here right now," you say, trying to grab it from his hands; he holds it out of your reach so quickly you can barely see him move, and you huff exasperatedly. "Bucky, I swear—"

"What, you gonna learn me?"

It’s more than the tone of his voice that makes you sit back on your heels; it’s the faint glimmer of a smile as he gently flicks through the pages, like someone who’s very familiar with their contents. "Have you read it?"

"Only several hundred times when my sisters wouldn’t fall asleep. They liked the part about it being 'not the sorta night for bed'."

"I can’t imagine why," you say quietly as Bucky continues to skim through the book, lost in his memory. It makes you ache a little. "Three sisters, huh?"

"Yup." He absent-mindedly traces the frame of an illustration with his right thumb. "I’m the oldest. Was."

There’s a dull sort of grief in that single word, one that makes your fingers twitch. Not because you want to reach out for time, but you want to reach out for him.

Instead, you let out a light laugh. "I don’t see it."

He puts the book down. "What, me growing up with a bunch of little pests?"

"You being nice enough to read them the same story every single night."

"Because I’m not nice?" There’s no venom in his voice, just vague amusement.

"You’re not patient," you answer.

Bucky raises a single eyebrow. "I can be very patient if I want to."

"So you just don’t want to, usually?"

His jaw ticks. "I really don’t."

Something hums in the air between you with unexpected ferocity, making your head swim with the confusing mixture of feelings you’ve gone through today. This loop in particular has left you hollow, too bone-tired to examine what this new, different tension might mean. At least it’s no longer pure animosity.

You think.

You clear your throat. "We’re both gonna have to be for a couple more hours. If we make it to July 5th, it might finally get us out of the loop."

"What, we’ve never tried just sitting around before?"

"Oh, I did. But you wouldn’t, whether I told you about the loop or not." This is the first time you’re both on the same page; at least the first time you’re both aware of it.

The gears are turning in Bucky’s head as he lowers it, frowning at the floor as he’s putting something together. You put your book to the side again and pull one knee up on the couch, waiting for a moment.

"Say it," you prompt him gently.

He lets out a slow, measured breath. "Do you think there’s a reason why we’re stuck in here?"

An involuntary laugh comes out of your throat, joyless and sudden. "You’re talking to it."

"You’ve reset things before, though. What makes it different now?"

"You died," you say quietly.

"Exactly." An angry flush washes over his cheeks. "So what if this isn’t about you and your powers at all? What if there’s something that I still need to do?"

"You think your unfinished business made the time loop? Like the universe intervening or something?"

"No, but … I don’t know. It feels like this is happening on purpose. Not because of you," he adds hastily. "More like, because of everything I did."

His voice catches on the last word, and the urge to reach for his hand becomes near overwhelming. The one closer to you is the vibranium one, though, and you’re sure he doesn’t need that reminder right now.

So instead, you let him sit in the silence for a moment. His head is probably loud enough.

"How long are you going to try punishing yourself for things you had no control over?" you finally ask.

Bucky scoffs. "You’re one to talk."

It’s not really a fair comparison, but it still makes you want to roll your eyes. Then, you remember something.

With a triumphant hum, you reach between the couch cushions. Every day, Sam loses his sharpie in there, and most of the time you’re too tired to remind him.

"Give me your arm," you say, gesturing over his lap.

He frowns. Of course he does. "Why?"

"Just trust me for a second."

Apparently, that works. His muscles flex involuntarily at your touch and you bite the inside of your cheek.

"How are your hands so cold?" he mumbles.

I just run cold. "Hold still."

"What’s that supposed to be?" He cranes his head. "I swear, if you draw a penis on me—”

"No. Self. Deprication," you interrupt him, underlining the words on his arm before capping the pen. "You got it? This was your idea originally, so you should like it."

Bucky stares at you, and you realize your heads are very close together. His eyes are sparkling with something like wonder and hope, and for once, you don’t feel like it’s suffocating you. It makes your insides flutter.

You move out of his space so hastily you startle Alpine, who hisses at both of you before jumping off the couch.

"I’m sorry," you say. "About earlier. I didn’t want …" For him to see you like that.

Bucky nods, finally looking away and closing his mouth again. You can’t help but follow the movement with your eyes.

"No, I’m sorry. I never wanted you to think that—that that was what I meant when I asked you to end this."

"I know that," you say, frowning. "I found something in Strange’s books about time loops—did you think I would just throw myself off the building because you were angry with me?"

"Of course not." It comes out a little too fast.

"Well, for the record, I wasn’t. So stop that." When he continues twisting his fingers, you slap at his hands, immediately regretting it when you hit the metal with a little too much force.

"What did you do that for?"

"I don’t know!"

"Idiot," he mumbles, catching your hand and frowning at it.

Just then, there’s the sound of an explosion outside, and you both flinch, heads whipping around to the window.

It’s the fireworks.

Crimson red, cobalt blue and bright white sparkles illuminate the night sky. You’d both missed it for the past todays. You’ve never made it this far.

Your look returns to Bucky again, because he hasn’t let go of his hand yet. He’s staring outside, his shoulders rigid, his fingers softly twitching around yours when the next pyrotechnic round cracks thunderously through the night.

"FRIDAY," you say, looking up. "Could you turn on the soundproofing?"

A blinking light around the windows indicates your command is being executed. The next colorful explosion outside is no louder than raindrops on the window.

Slowly, you tug your hand out of Bucky’s only to reach for him again properly. Your fingers slot between his, and he sighs quietly. You’re not looking at each other at all; you’re just watching the lights.

You know there’ll be music outside, parties going on all over the country, but in here there’s only the view of the night sky and the silenced cracking of the fireworks.

An unexpected wave of sadness hits you as another shower of light explodes outside. You think of your last New Year’s Eve at the Compound, of sharing a bottle of champagne with your friends as you watched a soundless firework display much like this one. Nat kissed you on the cheek when the clock hit midnight, and Steve stared outside with a look of apprehensive wonder on his face.

None of you were in a particularly cheerful mood, not after five years of not knowing how to bring everyone back, but still, there was a sense of calm that washed over everyone. The serenity of new beginnings, you supposed. With the familiar sight of Nat demolishing a bowl of leftover Christmas chocolates and Bruce humming Auld Lang Syne. You could only ever remember the chorus.

"We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne …"

"I have a good feeling about this year," Natasha said, leaning her head back against the couch with a tired smile.

Steve nodded, thumb continuously rubbing his old compass like he always did when he had that lost look in his eyes. "Yeah, me too," he said.

Not for the first time, you wonder whether they’d already known it would be your last New Year’s together. Whether they’d felt it in their bones somehow. You certainly hadn’t.

You would have tried to change it if you had.

Bucky exhales deeply when the wave of fireworks dies down. His thumb is absent-mindedly tracing light patterns on the back of your hand and you try your best to suppress a shudder, rubbing the tears from your eyes with your other hand.

"You okay?" he asks softly, not turning his head. Neither of you are ready to break this spell quite yet, caught up in the moment after resurfacing from the past.

"Sometimes, I miss the Blip," you answer.

Immediately, there’s the familiar ache of shame and longing. Bucky doesn’t say anything, but the patterns continue.

"I know it’s stupid, and terrible," you continue. "I know I shouldn’t. But I—that was the first time I felt like I had a proper purpose. I had people I cared about and who cared about me. I could just disappear from my old life, and no one would even think to look for me. They’d just assume I’d turned to dust, like all the others."

He knows the broad strokes of this, of course, but it’s not something you’d usually talk about. You don’t like thinking about your brush with genuine power all that much; it still makes you sick to your stomach.

"I was always told that I didn’t deserve my powers. That I was useless, that someone like me shouldn’t even exist. And that’s true, in a way, but it’s not like it’s my fault. I didn’t ask for them. But this … the only thing that I can do is trying to use them to help others, and now I can’t even do that anymore."

"I know what you mean," Bucky says. "But you’re wrong. You’re not useless, you never were. You were still the one in control, even though you didn’t feel like it, then. Your powers knew."

"I don’t feel like I’m in control right now."

You’re not entirely sure you’re still talking about your powers. He still hasn’t let go of your hand.

"You know what else is stupid?" you say. "They keep promising rain. On the radio. They say it’s 'a blessing we’re stayin' dry on Independence Day, but on the weekend, it’ll start pouring down," you imitate the woman from your local station. "Sometimes it feels like it’ll never rain again and it’s my fault."

"You hate the rain," he says, and you hiccup a laugh.

"Do I? I can’t even remember."

Bucky hums. "Were you ever going to tell me about the loop if I hadn’t confronted you?"

"I told you so many times," you reply. "You always forgot."

He sweeps a finger across your knuckles. "I’m not forgetting anymore."

"I know that now." You’re not breathing. You should breathe.

"Why did you stop?"

You pull your hand away and a shudder runs down your spine. "Because it fucking hurt."

He turns to face you, then, his eyes molten. "Twelve …"

"I don’t mean to interrupt," FRIDAY says with a tinkle. You flinch as the television flickers on all by itself. "But there’s news coverage coming in from the last pinged location of Captain Wilson."

They might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water over the both of you. All the softness on Bucky’s face freezes over, showing something else entirely.

Fear.

"Turn the volume up, FRIDAY."

"—yet unclear as to whether these explosions were also set by the organization. There are eye witnesses placing Captain America still inside the building, as well as at least thirteen civilians that have been trapped by the flames."

The footage from the scene isn’t anywhere close to the lab, but you recognize the building, anyway. You pass it about halfway through your daily mission flight, a highrise with an interestingly shaped roof. On screen, flames are licking out the windows.

This has never happened before. Then again, you’ve never made it far enough through the day. Was this always bound to happen or did something glitch again? Your heart is thundering wildly as the reporter continues.

"First Lieutenant Joaquín Torres, better known as the Falcon, has been transferred to Elmhurst Medical Center. His condition is still unclear."

"No," you whisper.

Bucky has gone white as a sheet next to you, his fingers gripped around the edge of the couch. "Is this …"

"This is new," you confirm shakily. "Fuck, Sam—"

"This won’t be it," Bucky says, standing up with a jolt.

"What?"

Alpine chooses that moment to jump onto your lap, and you struggle to pick her up to hurry after Bucky.

"This can’t be the one that sticks, alright? I won’t have it."

He’s taking the steps two at a time. At first you foolishly think he’s headed for his room to get changed; to try and make it there, help out, come up with a plan. Instead, he reaches under his pillow and your heart drops.

"Let’s talk about this for a second," you blurt out, plea, shriek, you’re not entirely sure. You’ve come so close. The magazine clicks into place. "Bucky!"

"Sam might not have a second," Bucky says, not turning around. It comes out pressed, like he’s forcing himself not to shout. "We don’t know what happens if he dies before I do, do we?"

"Well, no, but—"

"No but. I’ve lost too many people, I’m not going to lose Sam, too, alright? Not if we both know I can prevent—"

Alpine jumps onto his shoulder.

You stagger backwards with the force of it, and so it takes you a moment to realize that her claws are fully extended and she’s hissing into his ear.

To see him caught off-guard is still such a surreal occurrence, but not more so than his cat acting anything but affectionate towards Bucky. He’s cursing, arms flailing as he tries to push her off him, and within a split second, you have his gun in your hands.

"Damn it, Y/N!"

"Listen to me." It feels strange to point his own weapon at him, especially considering what he was just attempting. "We’re the closest we’ve ever been to midnight, which means this day is nearly over. I’ll get my powers back and we can fix whatever is going on with Sam, I promise you. It’s going to be fine."

"You don’t know that. Even with your powers, we might be too slow." Doubt churns heavily in your stomach as Bucky takes a step closer. His hands close around yours, pointing the gun straight at his heart. "Just do it."

You shake your head without looking away from his eyes. "I can’t."

His fingers press down on your knuckles. "We’re running out of time, Twelve."

Old anger bubbles up at the very core of you, and just before you’re forced to squeeze the trigger, you twist around in his hold. The shots go through the window instead, smashing the glass into a million pieces as the thunderous clash of the fireworks returns. You squeeze your eyes shut as the shards slice into your skin. Your ears are ringing with the sudden noise of it all by the time the gun drops to the floor, the magazine emptied.

For a moment, you both just stand there, breathing heavily. Somewhere behind you, you hear a disdainful meow.

"Geez, I hate you," Bucky murmurs, his voice vaguely pained. Your eyes fly open right as he leans in.

It all happens so fast.

He presses a featherlight kiss to your forehead before he lets go of you and leaps towards the ruined window.

And then he’s gone.

Too late, a startled cry falls from your lips.

You’ve seen him die so many deaths, but somehow, the intentionality of this one feels worse, much worse. You feel sick with it, the feeling spreading through you like poison, a quick thunderous rush of pain.

Then, you jerk forward and sit up in bed, the sun in your face, FRIDAY blasting The All-American Rejects at full volume.

* * *

"Rise and shine, McFly! Time to get your ass ki—ooff!"

You slam into Sam’s chest before he can even finish his sentence, wrapping your arms around him tightly. After a moment or so, he hums and settles into it.

Sam gives really nice hugs. It’s not something you’ve consciously noticed before, but then again, it’s not something you usually do. This time, though, he seems to feel that you need it; or maybe some part of him does as well.

Apart from you clinging to Bucky on the roof and in some other bygone version of today, it might be the longest time someone’s hugged you in years, and it makes your heart ache just a little.

"Maybe I should tell FRIDAY to wake you up more often."

"Don’t even think about it, birdbrain," you mumble, squeezing him one more time for good measure. "I’m just glad you’re okay."

"I’m fine," Sam grins, still slightly perplexed as he steps back. "Did you have a bad dream or something?"

"Something," you say. "Have you seen Bucky?"

"Not yet, why?" He falls into step next to you. Easily, no tension in his shoulders. Same as always.

Your heart twists a little when you glance at him. For dozens of loops now, you’ve tried so hard to forget that your situation has any impact on anyone else; like you’re really just stuck in a game, the only real person that gets to make decisions, that gets to leave an imprint, however temporary.

Finding out that Bucky’s started to remember as well makes you remember that you’re not, though. This is just as real for everyone else, maybe more so, because it’s always their first run-through. It’s not the TAGs that show you glimpses of who they are; it’s moments like these. Seemingly inconsequential ones that never are, that no one who hasn’t seen them a hundred times would pay attention to.

Like the fact that Sam’s humming that odious song when you slow down, not bothered at all by your silence. He holds the door open for you and meets your gaze with a merry look in his eyes that makes another flood of relief rush through you.

He’s alright. And he has no clue that if this were any regular kind of universe, it would be Saturday and he’d be dead.

"Just wondering."

After all this is over, maybe you’ll make him another pie. Doesn’t matter that he won’t remember he deserves it.

Doubt creeps in again during training, though.

Yester-today was different. Even if Bucky says he’s been aware for a while, who’s to say that wasn’t a fluke as well? What if, despite everything, that was your one and only chance not to have to go through this alone? What if—

"Jesus, shit."

Pain sears through you as you drop to the mat, something warm and wet dripping down your chin. That’s what you get for being distracted, apparently: more blood.

"I’m so sorry," Sam says when he comes back into focus. "I didn’t mean to hit you that hard."

"S’okay," you mumble, your eyes stinging as you feel for your nose. At least it doesn’t appear broken this time around. "I jus’ … I gotta lie down for a secon’, I thing."

"You sure you’re fine?"

"So fine," you say, giving him a slightly shaky thumbs-up. "Honestly, I needed that."

"You are such a weirdo," he says, still not looking entirely convinced. "Get some ice on that soon, okay? I don’t want Buck to scalp me."

"Yup," you say, your head still swimming enough for the words not to make any sense. Maybe you should close your eyes and just wait here for a little while, you think as the gym door shuts with a click. You’re fairly sure the bleeding has stopped.

"You know, I hate to say it, but you look like shit."

At this point, you should have gotten used to the instant comfort the sound of his voice brings every day. You haven’t.

"You’re a damn bad liar, Barnes," you say, sitting up. "I’m a fucking treat and you know it."

He’s not sitting with his back to you, like he usually would, instead leaning against the side of the ring with his arms crossed. His hair is still damp and curling up at the front; his cheeks are stained pink from his run.

"So," Bucky says, tapping his nose. "Wanted to convince yourself that it worked?"

Another weight falls off your chest. He remembers.

"I know you," you say lightly. "You’re big on physical proof of timefoolery."

Your gaze flits to his arm. The writing has disappeared. Pity. Would’ve been a nice confirmation of your point.

He rolls his eyes. "Come here."

Gentle hands hold up your chin to wipe your face with a cloth he produces from … wait a second.

"That’s not your dirty arm rag, is it?"

"It’s clean."

"You’ve not done laundry."

"Neither have you."

"Please get that thing away from me."

You put your hands on his chest to shove him away, but you can feel his heartbeat through his shirt, and your usual instinct to antagonize him vanishes. There it is again, right there, against all odds. Steady and strong.

Alive.

"Hey. Look at me."

You do, and for some reason, he’s grinning. Tiredly, but still grinning. Like he’s onto something and you’re not.

"What?" you say breathlessly, and his smile widens like he wants to rub it in, too.

He takes your wrists in his hands and pulls them away from his chest, and maybe you’re still a little dizzy, and then he says, "I never hit the ground."

* * * * *

On the bad days, you often found yourself sitting alone in the darkened briefing room, having FRIDAY show you the pictures of the Vanished over and over and over again.

If you had been there, a nagging little voice in your head kept telling you, Thanos might never have gotten the stones. If you hadn’t taken yourself out of the equation …

Might not. Should have. A lifetime of them.

Echoes of memories had started invading your sleep again, too.

"Where are you, impossible child?"

You didn’t appreciate being reminded of that part of your past and so, when your dreams insisted on it, you tortured yourself with all the things you did, theoretically, have control over; even if it was too late for that now. It had been storming all night, raindrops still drumming against the windows.

You reached for the pendant around your neck, absently tapping it against your lips as the photos flashed across the wall opposite you.

The light switch flipped on and you found yourself blinking in the sudden brightness of it all. When the stars cleared from your vision, you recognized Steve in the doorway.

"Long night?" he asked.

When you didn’t answer, he pulled up a chair, for once not commenting on your feet on the table. Instead, he threw something into your lap.

You almost fell out of your chair.

"I had to fix up the pages a little," he said. "Took longer to dry than expected."

You stared at the cover of the old, well-loved edition of The Wind in the Willows that you thought you’d lost forever over a week ago. The colors had been touched up, the smallest details carved out anew with skilled hands and precise memory.

It looked better than the day you got it, and it still smelled the same when you opened it up.

"How," you whispered, your voice thick with wonder.

"It looked like something special."

"It is." You looked over at him, gratitude welling up in your eyes. "Thank you."

Steve didn’t comment on your uncharacteristically emotional outbreak, didn’t ask any questions, but you felt like you needed to explain it nevertheless.

"When I was younger, my powers used to be a lot more unpredictable than they are now, if you can believe it." You rubbed your cheek with one hand. "I used to get stuck between moments for hours on end, usually when I was somewhere new. Unfamiliar."

It had been the scariest part of your powers, then, before you’d learned to live with the unexpected silences.

"I always say I got it from the library, but really, I just picked it out of a donation box and started carrying it around with me. Then at least when it happened again, I’d have something to read."

It felt strange, now, to try to put it into words, how much comfort this little book had brought you in those long, dark hours.

There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worse of all, no way out.

But there was a way out, in the end. There was a way, and a door, and a warm, safe space waiting at the end of it, and no matter what happened, things turned out alright by the time you reached the last page.

It was pure coincidence that had brought this story to you at the right time, but it had always felt a little like destiny, looking back. And the fact that Steve had brought it back to you?

To say you owed him a favor would’ve been an understatement.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," you said.

"There’s a date stamped on the first page. I think it’s from when the library accepted the donation?"

You blinked. Nodded. You knew it well, even though you hadn’t stopped to look at it for years, usually preferring to skip the front matter and diving right into the story.

His next question came out softer. "How old are you?"

You’d always aged weirdly. Probably part of your powers, you’d supposed. Time had never passed for you like it did for everyone else, and it had been a living nightmare to try to keep up with it.

"I’m not sure," you said, your thumb playing with the edge of the pages. "I was ten when I got it, I think. It’s been a while."

You knew your birthday, but you’d been skipping through the timeline since you were in diapers, and so there was no way of knowing how long you’d actually been alive. How much did people age when they were stuck in limbo? How much did they age when time reversed, or sped up? Your body didn’t change when your powers activated, it never did, but that just made any clear answer that much more impossible.

Maybe you’d always been a little out of time, too, in your very own way.

You sat in silence for a while, staring at the ever-changing pictures on the wall. You were so sick of them, but you could never stop watching; you’d made yourself remember their names and faces, even though you weren’t sure what kind of penance you were getting out of that.

Nick Fury. King T’Challa. Maria Hill. Sam Wilson. Scott Lang. You glanced at Steve when Bucky Barnes’ photograph appeared, but the sadness in his eyes had hardened to a constant layer of ice by then, and his face didn’t change anymore. You had a feeling that the two of you had similar pastimes when sleep wasn’t restful.

"What about your family?"

"Don’t have anyone left," you said.

"Me neither," Steve said. "Not apart from everyone here."

You almost smiled at that, but he didn’t. "How do you bear it?" you asked instead. "Again?"

He shrugged, his eyes closing in grim resolution. "We try to fix it. That’s all we can ever do."

You couldn’t help but silently agree. It was the most hopeful you’d felt in a while, that night, surrounded by pictures of the past you were still trying to save.

That was a few weeks before Thanos happened again, and everything good in your life disappeared into thin air.

chapter nine

thank you for reading!! you can follow my library blog @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications 💚

#bucky barnes series rec #marvel rec

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