Chapter Text
“Sir, one of our men under one of Fury’s command has been posted to watch guard at the infirmary. He says it’s Captain America.”
“Captain America? What on earth is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, it’s Captain America. Details are still slim, but apparently he’s just been found alive. Looks like he’s straight out of the history books. He’s under watch while he recovers, but rumor has it that Fury’s got plans for him.”
“He does, does he? Make sure that whatever happens with him, we know about it. This is too big for us to pass up.”
Steve Rogers thinks he might vomit.
Yesterday, he and Bucky died trying to stop an experimental Nazi plane from taking off. Today, he woke up in New York City nearly 70 years in the future. He had no time to stop and think about what was going on, between the sight of an alien New York lit up brighter than he could ever have imagined, being debriefed by a strange organization that claimed to be on his side, and being given a whole host of materials to catch him up to speed with the rest of the world. It was all he could do just to absorb the information being thrown at him, never mind process and interrogate it.
He feels like he’s floating in a dream. This city is supposed to be New York, and he supposes that he can somewhat tell that it is, in the way the streets intersect, but it feels wholly foreign. There’s technology everywhere he’s never seen in his life. Not a single person he recognizes or knows. And he’s alone.
That’s when it sets in. Only now, in the quiet emptiness of this cavernous apartment, can he begin to think about his final few moments before dying. The sensation of falling too fast to take a breath while he watches the plane, and by extension, Bucky, explode into nothingness. He let Bucky die, and he feels his chest cave in.
He let a child die for him. He knows that Bucky wasn’t a child by then, and that Steve was only four years older than him anyway—they were both kids, really. And Cap and Bucky had been partners, equally skilled. But Steve had never been able to help feeling that Bucky was like a little brother. He didn’t have to watch out for him, Bucky could take care of himself just fine. But he wanted to.
And then he still jumped off the plane while Bucky was stuck to it, and let him face death all alone.
For the first time in god knows how long, Steve hunches over and weeps.
He dives into the research materials he’s been given. Fury and SHIELD had been nice enough to give him some basic history texts and a primer on modern culture and technology. The books are a good enough place to start, he reasons. If he wants to know more, he’ll find more.
He starts with World War 2, of course. It had been his primary focus for the past five years, of course he wanted to know more about it as soon as possible. Fury had already told him that the Allies had won, thankfully, but not much else. Or maybe he had and Steve hadn’t absorbed it.
So when he cracks open a history book and finds out that the war had ended in Europe in May 1945, followed by the rest of the war in September, he begins to laugh. Well isn’t that funny? Just a few weeks after he and Bucky died, the war finally ended! If they’d just held out a little while longer, they could’ve lived to see the end of the war!
Except Steve has, hasn’t he? It’s just Bucky who hasn’t. Bucky, who’d spent a huge chunk of his life training for and living the war, who’d practically been defined by it. If anyone deserved to live to see the end of it, it was him. And yet, he didn’t. Because he died a scant few weeks earlier, left behind by a country and a world all too happy to celebrate without him.
Steve Rogers thinks this might actually just be a very creative corner of hell.
A week later, Fury calls him back into SHIELD to introduce him to a Commander Brooks. Brooks is here to issue him orders. A relief aid mission of some sort for hurricane victims in Florida. He runs Steve through an explanation of what happened, where he’s going, how many victims there are, and how they’re going to run this relief mission.
Steve nods along and agrees, for formality’s sake. He knows he doesn’t really have a choice here. That apartment full of groceries and clothes and history books doesn’t come free, after all. Steve knows when it’s his time to pay up. He just doesn’t understand why they’d assign the world’s only super soldier and man out of time to a relief mission.
He’s given a day to prepare for it, but he elects to go that night. After all, it’s not like he has much to do in the way of preparations. He has no one to say goodbye to and barely owns more than the clothes on his back. So he spends the rest of the day getting set up with his new squad within SHIELD under Brooks. He’s given a SHIELD uniform that declares him to be Corporal Rogers, which he can’t help but grin at. He doesn’t know if the rank hierarchy at SHIELD is the same as the army’s (or, hell, if the Army even has the same ranks he remembers), but he can’t help but wonder if someone here knows that, out of the tights, he’d been a corporal in the war too.
Steve departs on a plane that night, anonymous among dozens of other members of his squad. As Corporal Rogers, he is no more remarkable than any of the rest of them, and they barely pay him any attention at all.
The next day, he’s put to work. Brooks’s orders to him are simple: take the box he’s handed, and pass it along to the next person in the line. They’ve formed a human chain of dozens to transport boxes of supplies from a helicopter drop into a warehouse. It takes them the better part of the day to unload everything, but when they finish there’s still more work to do. Steve is put on the first shift to guard the warehouse.
It’s only then, when Steve has nothing to do but stand around and think, that some of this begins to strike him as strange. Why did they drop the supplies by a remote warehouse? Looking outside, he’s pretty sure the road is blocked by fallen trees and branches—this place isn’t going to be accessible to the hurricane victims who need these supplies. And, he notices the following day on his next guard shift, the men patrolling the warehouse’s perimeter outside are armed. It seems unnecessary.
Once his shift ends, he tracks down Brooks to ask about it. Brooks gives him a long, scrutinizing look before eventually grunting.
“This was just phase one. We’ll be distributing the supplies to people soon. We’re guarding the warehouse from looters until then.”
Steve’s brow furrows. “Sir, shouldn’t we distribute them as soon as possible? What’s the point in waiting, especially when it means we’re sitting ducks for whoever we’re guarding against?”
Brooks glares at him sharply. “I know who you are, Rogers. You’re used to calling the shots. But don’t think that you know all the details and variables at play here. This is all bigger than just what you can see.”
Steve’s lips press into a thin line. Brooks holds his gaze a few seconds longer, then waves his hand at him. “Get out of my sight, Rogers. We’re done here.”
Steve stares him down a few moments. Neither of them breathe or blink. Then, he turns around and leaves. He doesn’t ask any more questions for the duration of the mission, he knows he won’t get answers. By the time he boards the plane to return to New York, the supplies have still not left the warehouse.
After returning home, he is not assigned to any further missions. He hears nothing from Brooks, or anyone else for that matter. After a full day of dead silence, Steve is determined to understand what exactly he’s meant to do now. He makes his way to Fury’s office, because it’s the only one he knows how to find and he is the closest thing Steve has so far to a friendly face here.
Which is pretty dire, he thinks with the slightest grin to himself.
He finds Fury’s office door shut, so he knocks on it a few times and announces himself.
“Director Fury, sir? This is Corporal Rogers.”
The sound of shuffling papers and possibly a groan, followed by silence. Then, a gruff “alright, alright, come in.”
Steve steps into the office and shuts the door behind him. Standing tall with his arms folded behind him, he approaches Fury at his desk.
“Sir, I’m here to express some concerns about the relief mission I was sent on a few days ago. It seems...tactically inefficient.” He explains his concerns to Fury, who doesn’t budge from his slumped, arm-crossed seat.
“Rogers, why are you wasting my time with this? Take this to Brooks.” Fury waves his hand dismissively.
“I already have. He says I don’t have all the context.”
“Which you don’t .”
Steve can’t help but bristle at that.
“Just because I don’t know the big picture doesn’t mean I can’t identify inefficiency when it’s right in front of me. Sir.” He squares his shoulders like the leader he is. “We should be air dropping pallets of supplies directly into disaster zones so that we can distribute goods to those in need in the quickest possible fashion. If we divide up the goods through the area and send a few men to each, we could get aid to people far quicker than we are right now.”
Fury groans, long-suffering.
“Cap, national icon or not, you are here by my good graces. I didn’t have to find you a place to live and get you all the support you’re getting, but I figure any man who’s socked Hitler in the jaw deserves a reward. Now, that said, I’m still a mere mortal and I don’t need any more headaches than I’ve already got, so if you’re not going to do your job, you’re more than welcome to find a new one.”
Steve’s lips thin out as he squares his shoulders. He’s clearly not going to find any sympathy here, nor is he going to receive an explanation. Something roils in his chest. He isn’t owed an explanation, certainly, but it doesn’t bode well that no matter how logically he explains his concerns and offers better alternatives, he isn’t given a shred of information. It’s a single mission where everything went just as planned—but something about this leaves a bad taste in his mouth and bodes poorly.
Not to mention, his reputation precedes him here in a way that only ever seems to serve as a way for his superiors to put him in his place. Perhaps it’s that last bit, that final indignity that forces him to speak rashly.
“Then maybe I will.”
And with that, he strides out of the office.
“It seems Captain America isn’t cooperating with orders as nicely as we’d like. He’s asking a lot of unnecessary questions.”
“I see. I have an idea that might make him a bit more...strategically helpful.”
After that discussion, Steve leaves to continue stewing alone in the vast expanse of his new apartment. He receives no further orders, nor does he send anything indicating his resignation. If Fury took his parting words seriously, he has no idea, and for the time being, he can’t bring himself to care. He returns to his new hobbies of reading up on what he’d missed in the past 70 years and mourning Bucky.
He thinks about all the ways he could have saved Bucky. He could have ripped Bucky off the rocket and taken him with him. He could have braked the motorcycle instead of jumping it onto the rocket. He could have broken free of his restraints and beaten Zemo senseless before he tortured Bucky and made him scream before Steve’s eyes. He could have spotted the agents that ambushed them on their last mission, prevented their capture at Zemo’s hands in the first place.
Except he couldn’t. He’d had no way of knowing what would come, what would happen. He’d done the best he could with what he had at the time, and so had Bucky. And yet, he can’t help but grasp at straws in his memories, desperately rifling through what if after what if , as if he’d had any choice in the matter.
Steve doesn’t know what’s worse: the thought that he could have saved Bucky and didn’t, or that he was always powerless to save him in the first place.
Occasionally he even guilts himself into going outside and exploring a very different New York. It’s after one of these disorienting neighborhood walks (this time through Greenwich Village—he’s still working up the nerve to go back to the Lower East Side) that he gets a message on his phone. Steve fumbles the phone out of the pocket, still unfamiliar with it. So far he’s been able to gather that it’s interactive and activated by his fingertip and can instantly send and deliver telegrams. By the sheer amount of stuff he sees on the screen, he can tell there’s a lot more, but he doesn’t want to dive into the further complexities of it just yet.
He finally gets the message open to see it’s from Fury. He furrows his brow—this is the first time Fury’s said anything to him in a week. The message is curt, but not as curt as he’d expect from a telegram. Maybe that’s just the kind of man Fury is.
You’re getting a new roommate. Not enough apartments available on short notice so we had to double you up. Furniture’s already all set up for him.
Steve furrows his brow at the message. He’s not sure what to make of it. That’s all the explanation he gets? He couldn’t have at least been called in and been told this directly with more details on the sudden change and who his new roommate is? This is all a little too haphazard and messy from an organization as secretive and classified as SHIELD, especially considering the swift officiality of his own apartment assignment.
Steve barely has time to check out the new furniture arrangements—his bed’s been pushed to the side of the bedroom to make way for a second bed—before there’s a knock at the door. That must be the new roommate, he supposes. He opens the door and is struck dumb.
Because it’s Bucky. Bucky, who two weeks earlier had died and then been left to gather dust in history for 60 years. Bucky, who he’d locked himself up in his apartment and grieved over for two weeks.
A dreamlike state, similar to what his first day in the future felt like, takes over him.
“Hey, Steve. Fancy seeing you here, huh?” Bucky shifts his grip on his duffel bag and gives him a grin that’s equal parts wry and nervous.
“B-Bucky!” He stammers, suddenly unable to form words. “Y-you’re—”
“Aw come on, it’s not that surprising!” Bucky laughs, just as boisterous and cocky as he remembers. “If you can survive falling off a plane, why wouldn’t I too? Now are you gonna let me in, or what?”
Steve can’t even begin to string words together right now, so he dumbly steps aside to let Bucky into the apartment. As he steps in, he looks around and whistles, impressed.
“Wow, they really set you up here, huh? No wonder they couldn’t give me my own place—your apartment’s too big for them to fit any others in here!”
“When did you—how—what—”
Bucky unceremoniously dumps the duffel bag in the middle of the living room and crosses his arms with a smirk.
“You got a question in there somewhere?” It’s obviously rhetorical though, because he doesn’t even wait for Steve to ask a question before continuing. “When they found you in the ocean, they figured I must’ve been in the same area. They told me they were expecting to just find a body they could finally bury, but apparently we were both frozen like fossils in the middle of the ocean. I only just finished defrosting yesterday and got the all-clear from medical a few hours ago.”
“And now you’re here,” says Steve, his voice unexpectedly weak.
“And you’re damn lucky I am! You know you’re useless without me, Cap.”
Somehow, that’s what finally pulls Steve out of the haze. It’s only been a few weeks, but he feels like he somehow forgot this—the camaraderie, the bravado, the way Bucky acts like he’s the one who keeps Steve out of trouble. The return of the familiar dynamic feels like it’s simultaneously squeezing his heart in his chest as well as releasing it from a tension he hadn’t known had built up.
He laughs wetly and blinks away the tears before grabbing Bucky’s duffel bag.
“Let’s get you moved in, then, huh?”
It doesn’t take long to get him settled. Like Steve himself, Bucky has little more than a few outfits and a phone to his name—all provided by SHIELD, of course. It’s quick and easy to get his things squared away in the new dresser that was brought in earlier that day. The bedroom now has two beds and they find some spare linens in a closet to make the new bed with.
It’s haphazard, but they can’t complain. After all, they usually slept in far worse conditions during the war. Sharing a bedroom is nothing, especially one as spacious as this.
Steve can’t help but furtively steal glances at Bucky throughout the day, afraid he’ll vanish into thin air the second he looks away. It feels too good, too perfect to be true. After spending weeks playing Bucky’s death over and over in his head, coming to terms with the loss, grappling with his role in it, he feels almost...unworthy. How could he deserve this when he’d let go of that rocket and left Bucky helpless in his final moments? After failing Bucky so thoroughly, this is a happy ending he hasn’t earned.
Steve Rogers knows the universe is unfair. But just this once, he selfishly, gratefully accepts it.
A few days after Bucky moves in, Steve finally gets new orders. Or so he assumes, at least—a vague text from Fury tells him to come to his office at 1300. And yeah, sure, the last time he met with Fury, he threatened to quit altogether. But he’s had time to cool down since then, and he’s willing to give this another shot. Even if his COs maintain a condescending attitude towards him, he can still help and he can still push for more transparent information. After all, what is Captain America if not stubborn?
And, perhaps more selfishly, he feels he owes it as a personal favor to SHIELD now. Not just for the apartment and the money and the support in adjusting to a new life, but for going the extra mile to search for Bucky and bring him back too. After reuniting with the partner he was sure was dead (the partner he was sure he’d left to die alone), giving SHIELD the benefit of the doubt feels like the least he can do.
Steve packs the SHIELD uniform he received for his last mission into a bag and prepares to head out. As he steps out into the living room on his way to the front door, though, he spots Bucky on the couch, feet propped up and reading a book and definitely not preparing for a mission of any kind.
“Are you…” He stops and rephrases his thoughts. “Do you work for SHIELD now too?” He’d just assumed that, since both he and Bucky had been fished out of the ocean and revived by the same people, they’d both be drafted by their saviors. Especially since they were one of the most famous duos, not just in their own time but throughout history, apparently. In the excitement of finding out his partner was alive, Steve had forgotten to ask.
Bucky cranes his head to look over at Steve and his bag.
“Oh. Yeah, I do, but I’m not front line anymore. I’m working on the administrative side of things now.” He grins smugly. “I figure I’ve earned the right to try my hand at some desk work. So I may not be working with you directly anymore, but I know all about the operations you get sent on.” The grin turns devious, like sitting behind a desk with intel suddenly means Bucky’s a general who can give Steve orders.
Steve rolls his eyes. “Okay, Bucky, have fun with that. I bet you’ll be itching to join me in a week.”
Then he leaves, bag in tow. It’s strange, he thinks, as he leaves the apartment building. He hadn’t even known that desk work was an option.
That mission, as well as the next several, fall into a familiar rhythm. Steve gets a vague text telling him to report for orders (although the texts are sent by Brooks directly now), he gets shipped off to some disaster area or another in the US, he moves relief supplies off a helicopter into a warehouse that he guards, and then he goes home without ever seeing the supplies get distributed. Every time he tries to bring up the ludicrousness of it to his CO, he’s dismissed before he can even start. He tries bringing it up to his fellow squadmates, but they have no patience for him; some huff in annoyance, some tell him to stop giving a shit about things above his pay grade, and some aggressively ignore him.
On his fourth mission, Steve is guarding the warehouse’s main entrance. He’s in the Houston, Texas area helping with relief efforts after a category 5 hurricane decimated the entire region. Their patrols are much stricter this time around since the warehouse is so close to residential areas—more people around means more reason to guard against them, apparently.
He feels like he’s falling asleep on his feet—honestly, how did Bucky do all those stakeouts without falling asleep?—when he spots a few people coming towards him. They’re not in uniform. In fact, it looks like a mother and her teenaged son. Their hair is messy, their clothes are rumpled, and they look absolutely exhausted. Steve would bet anything on them being hurricane victims.
“Oh, thank god—who are you, Coast Guard? Red Cross?” the mother asks. She holds her hands up and soon so does her son, no doubt wary of the rifle Steve is forced to carry with him on guard duty. “Listen, we lost—we lost everything in the storm and we’re just trying to get by. Food, clothes, water—anything! Please, we’ll take anything. The shelters are all packed, they can’t take us, and it’s—it’s been days.” Her voice wobbles, like she’s one step away from crying.
Steve doesn’t even have to think about it.
“Of course, ma’am,” he says, in that Captain America voice that’s meant to sound confident and reassuring. He isn’t Cap right now, but they need that strong tone. “Just stay there and don’t go anywhere. I’ll go grab some things for you and come right back.”
He retreats into the warehouse and makes a beeline for the nearest stack of boxes, trying to look like he isn’t blatantly in the wrong place. He’s just about to open one of them when he hears Brooks barking his name.
“ Rogers ! What in the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing away from your post?!” Brooks stomps up to him.
“There are two hurricane victims at our doorstep who just need some help. What’s the harm in giving them a few things? The supplies will be getting to the victims eventually anyway.”
“What did I tell you last time, Rogers? This isn’t your job! You follow my orders, and my orders are to stand guard ! I don’t give a rat’s ass who comes up to talk to you and how desperate they are, you stand at your post and keep watch! They’ll get their goddamn supplies just fine so long as you do what I tell you and keep this operation running! You understand me, corporal?”
Brooks is trying to intimidate him. He’s standing over Steve, getting into his personal space, trying to make him feel like a worm. Steve isn’t having it. He stands his ground and sets his jaw. Brooks isn’t happy to see that his subordinate isn’t cowed.
“I said, do you understand me, corporal ?”
“Yes, sir,” Steve grits out.
“Good. Now get back to your position before I decide to court martial you.”
Brooks stares him down until he stands up and exits the warehouse. When he returns to his post, he intends to apologize to the mother and son, but they’re gone. He keeps his head down for the rest of the mission, but he can’t stop thinking about them.
Steve is both distraught and furious when he finally makes his way home in the middle of the night. He slams the door to the apartment a little too loudly and Bucky, who’s awake on the couch and reading at 3 in the morning for some reason, looks up at him and raises an eyebrow.
“Bad day at the office?” he asks.
“The CO’s an asshole,” Steve grumbles, dropping his bag carelessly on the floor. Bucky laughs.
“Yeah, him and every other CO under the sun. Welcome to the party.”
“It’s just—” and then Steve stops himself.
Bucky rolls his eyes. “You’re not gonna compromise any intel security, if that’s what you’re worried about. Hell, I might have an even higher clearance than you do.”
Well. No excuses left now.
“It’s disaster relief. We’re always doing disaster relief. Getting supplies, distributing them to the area, all that stuff. But I’ve never seen anything actually going to anyone! We just unload the pallets, guard them, and leave. Even if there’s people right there we could be helping!” Steve doesn’t know when he began waving his arms around, but he’s clearly more worked up about this than he thought. “There were a couple people standing right in front of me, desperate for anything , and I got threatened with a court martial for trying to help them.”
Bucky purses his lips and sets down his book. Silence, then, he sighs.
“You know that just because you’re not there doing things doesn’t mean they aren’t happening, right? You don’t have to do everything .”
Steve furrows his brow. “What?”
“Even if you don’t see the supplies going to people, they still are. You don’t have to see people getting their lives saved to know that they are.”
“And what about those people who came to me begging for help? They were close enough to help and nobody did. What good reason could there possibly be for that?”
Quiet, then Bucky sighs again. “I’m not saying it was right. You should’ve been able to help them. But think about it—could you do more good staying where you are, or getting kicked out on the streets after a court martial? Sometimes, Steve, you have to play the long game.”
Steve is silent as he thinks that over. He’d expected Bucky to commiserate with him, not...this. But, he thinks, maybe it makes sense. Bucky had always been the covert operative between them and much of the work he did was kept secret even from Steve. In fact, it was so secret that Steve forgot about it entirely most of the time. Remembering it now, he supposes that this sort of pragmatic approach makes sense from someone like Bucky. He’s telling him that he can’t use Captain America’s bombastic, symbolic tactics here; Corporal Rogers requires a stealthier approach.
A hand claps on his shoulder and Steve looks up. He hadn’t noticed when Bucky stood up and approached him.
“Come on, pal. Let’s get you into bed before you get any crankier.”
Steve huffs an exhausted laugh and lets Bucky steer him towards the bedroom.
The soldier wakes the next morning at around 9. He’s not usually one to sleep in, but this is what he gets for staying up until 3 waiting for Rogers. He wouldn’t have bothered, but they sent him Rogers’s return flight information, which they wouldn’t have done unless they specifically wanted the soldier to greet Rogers upon his return. It became apparent why when he saw the look on Rogers’s face.
Not that he knew what to do with it when confronted by it. He’s running this op on a couple history books and some old newsreel footage; figuring out what to say and how to say it in a way that won’t rouse suspicion is impossible. The soldier has shot diplomats in the middle of speeches, but it’s talking to Steve Rogers like he knows what he’s doing that makes him nervous.
With a sigh, he gets up and quietly gets dressed so as not to wake Rogers, then heads into the SHIELD offices for work. Technically, he’s always working, so it’s not like it matters when (or even if) he actually shows up physically as long as the job gets done, but it’s good to keep up appearances.
Plus, it’s always easier to get answers to his questions in person.
When he enters the office, he greets the receptionist, making sure they see him, then badges into the interior of the building. His walk is more winding than he’d like, but such minor nuisances are just a part of the job. Throwing people off. Misdirection. A few extra minutes walking is a small price to pay for security and stealth, but damn if it isn’t annoying. Like a papercut he can’t ignore.
When he finally makes it to Pierce’s door, he knocks in his designated pattern.
“Permission to enter?”
Some shuffling of papers and chairs being moved, then: “Ah, yes, of course.”
As the soldier steps into the room and shuts the door behind him, Pierce grins and says, “There he is, my man of the hour!”
The soldier doesn’t react, instead standing at attention once he reaches Pierce’s desk. He’s always wary of the man’s false enthusiasm for him. It makes it harder to tell what he’s actually thinking, where he actually stands with him.
“So, it’s been a while since your new assignment. How are things?” Pierce leans back in his seat, chin propped in his hand.
“How do you think?” He phrases it lightly, a genuine question. The soldier noticed at least five bugs hidden around the apartment. Pierce, or at least a team of analysts with the time to pore over hours of recordings, has clearly been listening in.
“Hmm.” Pierce’s smile drops, just a little. “I think you’re doing excellently thus far. You handled last night expertly, as expected of the Winter Soldier. But I asked because I want to know how you feel about it.”
Obviously, Pierce can tell this isn’t a social visit. Might as well dive into what he came here for.
“Why am I assigned to this mission?”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” Again with the non-answers.
“I’m designed for quick infiltration and exfiltration and wetwork. You have plenty of agents who are far better at long-term undercover work. So why me?” The soldier pauses, then adds: “Sir.”
Pierce has his fingers over his mouth thoughtfully. He motions to the chair across the desk and the soldier takes a seat. “You sell yourself short, soldier. You may not think it, but you truly are the best man for the job. It’s not about how much training you have, it’s you . No one could keep better tabs on Steve Rogers than you.”
It doesn’t answer his question, but the soldier nods anyway.
“Now,” Pierce says, standing from his chair. The soldier takes that as his cue to stand too. Pierce takes his hand and grasps it in what looks like a grateful handshake. “Go out there and make us proud.”