Note: I've been working on this on and off for a month, and decided with the new Winter Soldier trailer it was time to post. This is NOT Winter Soldier compliant, but may have some spoilers. (I don't actually know the whole story and don't care to until I've seen the movie, but I've picked up enough from Tumblr and fics to get the jist.)

It happened in a blink of an eye. The moment Bucky would play over and over again in his (unexpectedly) long life began when he thought - knew - he was going to die.

Metal and ice made for a hell of a combination. In the morning briefing, Steve had told all the Commandos to be careful, had even pinned Bucky with an especially severe look. Bucky had grinned right back at his friend and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah Cap, I'll be just as careful as you."

The height of the train tracks overlooking the Alps mountain pass was even worse than any of them had thought, the wind and enemy resistance on the train stronger. Damn those HYDRA weapons.

When Bucky's fingers slipped, when he lost his grip on the train car, he wasn't surprised. Only disappointed in himself. His pin-wheeling arms only found air, and he wondered in the back of his mind if hitting ground would hurt or if dying was like going to sleep.

Then impossibly strong fingers clamped on his wrist, yanking out a sound from Bucky that was half a whoop, half a scream.

"Gotcha," Steve breathed, and with an effortless yank, pulled Bucky back in.

Bucky flashed a grin and opened his mouth to say something he wouldn't remember later-quips between him and Steve came as easily as breathing. Always did, even when they were orphans struggling and starving together. When Steve was skinny and sick, and Bucky, who was older by given value of two months, was brother to him in heart, if not in blood.

There was a flash of movement. A HYDRA-goon comin' round the corner. Bucky raised his gun, got a shot, but not before the goon took one of his own.

The blue blast hit Steve's upraised shield. HYDRA weapons couldn't punch through, of course, but the power of it knocked Steve back a step. A step he didn't have.

Steve's fingers released Bucky's wrist, whether in shock or instinct that he didn't want to drag his friend down, too, Bucky never knew. Their eyes locked for one horrible second, and Bucky was almost bowled over by the knowing in them.

"No-" Bucky reached out, but Steve was an inch too far away. Already gone.

Steve fell off the train in silence. Bucky was the one who screamed.

O O O O

Bucky knew how all the men talked: Captain America couldn't die. He ran faster than a derby horse, was smarter than any ten soldiers put together. They'd made him with Detroit steel in his blood.

The first time after Bucky had the chance to really take Steve in after he'd saved him and the 107th, he'd half believed it himself. What else could turn a shrimp like Steve into this guy - the perfect soldier, only with Steve's heart of gold? They used to sit 'round the campfire and joke that Steve had punched Hitler in the face over two-hundred times.

Steve couldn't be dead.

The Commandos went after him, that night, soon as they'd delivered Zola into custody. There were rumblings from the higher ups of keeping them around for a debriefing, but no one made a move to stop them.

Bucky found Steve the next morning. The air crisp and cold. His body was broken over bare rocks and snow, blood in his blonde hair, shield laying a foot away where it had fallen. His best friend was gone.

They were wrong. Steve was as mortal as any man. But as Bucky knelt and wept over his friend, he'd find out later he was wrong, too. Steve had died, but Captain America... he was immortal.

O O O O

Bucky lost time, after that. The Commandos were leaderless and on standby as the top brass figured out what to do with Zola. Between shots of whiskey, Bucky hoped they were wringing every secret out of him, slow and painful like.

He drank and he remembered, and then he drank some more. Steve's blue, knowing eyes stared at him from the back of his own memories. He couldn't even look Peggy in the face as he gave Steve's shield over to her. Though he'd had a vague memory of her slapping him - not out of anger but, he thought, maybe to sober him up.

Hadn't worked.

It was Colonel Phillips who came to see Bucky at last. Bucky had woken only an hour ago and was having his first whiskey alone in a bar that hadn't opened yet. Well, he'd leave cash in the till.

"You didn't always used to be a crack-shot," Phillips said, sitting down. Even soapy-eyed as he was, Bucky saw that stress and grief had made the Colonel's eyes into pits. His face near to leather with wrinkles.

"No," Bucky said because it was the truth. "I got better with practice." Not a good enough shot to save his best friend, though.

The Colonel gave him a long look, then stole Bucky's tumbler, knocking it back himself. Because he was his superior officer, Bucky didn't object other than to pour himself another drink. The bottle was nearly empty, but being a war-hero meant he didn't have to scrounge very far when he wanted another.

"I have your files, son," Phillips said. "You improved, shall we say exponentially after Rogers rescued you and the 107th."

Bucky favored him a sarcastic smile. "Funny what a brush with death will do for your constitution."

"Funny what human experimentation will do, you mean," he said, voice as dry as tinder. "As I said, I got a good look at your files, Sergeant. You came out of that hellhole stronger, quicker, smarter. You were damn near the only one able to keep up with Rogers on one of his bad days - and if you open your mouth and tell me it's Brooklyn guff, I will knock you on your ass right now. Do you understand me?"

Bucky closed his mouth.

Phillips looked at him hard. "Now, you and I both know we can't prove a thing. 'specially since there's no point of reference to compare you two."

"I wasn't going to let you cut his body into pieces and ship it off to labs," Bucky growled. He hadn't cared if he got court-martialed for it - still didn't. He and the Commandos had burned Steve's body where he was found. It had been the least Bucky could do.

"Steve Rogers gave his body for the good of his country-"

"He gave his life for the war," Bucky snapped, and the still mostly sober part of him wailed at speaking to an officer like this. But with Steve gone he found he didn't give a goddamn about much else. Not anymore. "That's all you can ask of a man. We were his friends. We-I made the call to give him a fit ending he would have wanted. Not Hogan or the others. Me."

"Give me that." Phillips snatched the glass from Bucky's fingers. "You're not too bright when you're drinking, Barnes. Anyone ever tell you that?"

"Only every time I drink," he muttered, sitting back in his chair. He didn't bother telling Phillips that the only way he could stay drunk was to chase them one after another.

The Colonel ran his hand down his face, pulling his skin taunt and smooth for a moment before glaring at Bucky. "Zola gave up the location of the last base, and Stark thinks he can get us there if we move out soon. I'm not here to bring you up on charges, Barnes. I'm here to promote you. The Commandos need a Captain." He paused and let that sink in for a second, his next words full of weight. "America needs a Captain."

Bucky stared at him. Then he laughed. It cut short when he saw that Phillips was serious.

"No," he said. Then again, louder. "No."

He stumbled to his feet and left. Court martial be damned. His skin chilled. He made it a few blocks before he bent over and heaved.

O O O O

The rest of the day Bucky drank only water and water-downed beer that the locals served. With all the drinking he'd done over the last week, he should have felt like he'd been flattened by a truck, but there was truth in what Phillips had said. It was harder for Bucky to get drunk - not impossible, not like it had been for Steve - but harder. He sobered more quickly, too, and he hadn't been hungover once since... since he'd been captured.

He never given it much thought until now. European drinks just weren't what they were back home, was all. And the truth was, he didn't like to think much on what he'd gone through before Steve had saved him. Being strapped down and stuck with round after round of needles - well. It was the stuff nightmares were made of, and nightmares had no business in the war.

Steve had asked him about it once, but whatever the look had been on Bucky's face convinced him not to ask again. That had been that.

Bucky was pouring over the files sent over by HQ on the new HYDRA base when he heard a knock on the door. He glanced up, surprised to see Peggy. Even more unpleasantly surprised to see her gripping Steve's shield between two tightly clenched hands.

"Miss Carter," he said, standing. He knew Peggy must have cried over Steve, but now her face was composed. Her makeup perfect. She was one hell of a looker, even with her eyes flinty and hard.

"You're an idiot," she said, striding up to him. She threw down the shield by his feet. He winced at the unmusical clang, but stopped himself from picking it up.

"He would have wanted you to have it," she said.

Then she strode off.

Slowly, Bucky reached to picked up the shield, running a hand over the rim. It felt like velvet at the edges. He let out a long breath.

O O O O

They had to take the Captain America uniform in a little, of course. Bucky wasn't a slight man, but he didn't have Steve's size, especially in the shoulders.

It felt garish to be wearing it at all, but Phillips had insisted. At least the shield was light in his hands, and if Bucky didn't have Steve's pure power when it came to hand-to-hand, well. Phillips wasn't wrong when he said Bucky was a crack shot.

Red Skull knew Bucky wasn't the real Captain America the moment he'd laid eyes on him, but by then Bucky's blood was up, and he was smart enough to keep out of grappling range while his shield and mouth did the talking.

He laughed aloud as Red Skull held up the magic blue cube and burned up right in front of him. Probably wasn't right for Captain America to gloat at the death of one of his enemies, but Bucky's heart was sore over Steve, and it wasn't like he was the real thing anyway.

This had been about revenge. Pure and simple.

The laugh died when he went to the aero-plane controls and saw that he'd either have to take the whole thing down or blow up the Eastern Seaboard. Worse, two of the mini aero-planes had gotten away with their payload intact. Bucky had tried to stop them when they took off, but there was only one of him and everything had happened so fast...

Once again, he hadn't been quick enough.

He toggled the radio to advise base, even as he took up the yoke and prepared to bring her down. Ahead of him stretched fields of ice.

"Two planes with full payload intact," he said, getting on the horn. "I tried-I got most of them, but I'm sure at least two got away. I think they were headed to New York and Atlanta. Maybe D.C. I'm not sure."

"We read you loud and clear," Colonel Phillips said, his voice tinny over the speakers. "You've done good, son."

Bucky shook his head. It had gone all cock-eyed at the end, with only him to fight on the plane. If Steve were there, they could have done it together. Made sure none of the mini aero-planes took off at all.

Red Skull was gone, but that didn't mean a damn if it's biggest payload made its destination. "I can't let this hit US soil." His fingers curled over the yoke. "I... I'm going to take her down."

There was a pause and Colonel Phillips voice was quiet. "Godspeed, Captain."

He nodded tightly. "Make sure the whole damn country knows about the incoming HYDRA planes. Shoot them down."

"We will. Whatever it takes."

There was a crackling over the radio, then Peggy's voice. "Bucky? We all... He would have been proud."

As the nose of the plane tilted downward and the world filled with ice and snow, Bucky hoped so. He planned to ask Steve about it, when he met up with him again.

O O O O

The universe, Bucky thought, a few hours later (give or take seventy years - though he didn't know that at the time) liked to play jokes on him. One after another.

"Why aren't I dead?" was the first thing he asked the pretty redhead nurse who'd come to take his temperature or give him a sponge-bath, or... Bucky blinked and took in the length of her again. Hello nurse. She was even more of a looker than Peggy.

She smiled at him. "Good Morning, Captain. How are you feeling?"

"Captain?" Bucky repeated. Then it all came back to him. He looked around his bare room, and at the way the woman held herself. Not like a caregiver, but wary, perfectly balanced. Like a fighter. And the radio... "Hey," he said, turning to it. "Wait, I've heard that game before. I watched it at Ebbets Field with Ste-" Bucky sat bolt upright, heart in his throat. "Where am I?"

The woman's smile was forced. "You're at army U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles. If you lie back I can take your temperature."

Bucky was having none of that. He stood, feeling a flash of wooziness that quickly subsided. "What's going on here?" he asked, advancing a step.

He didn't expect her to strike at him with a punch that would have done any bruiser in the Commando's proud. Bucky reacted on instinct, honest, he wasn't the type to hurt a dame, and knocked her fist away. Her sharp kick, he deflected to the flank. He grabbed her arm and flung her around, barely checking to see she hit the bed where he'd been laid up, before he made a break for the door.

Some kind of overhead alarm screeched in his ears as he ran barefoot down a shiny hallway. Men and women in black suits sprang out of his way, some calling after him.

Bucky took a right, going on pure instinct, slammed down another hallway, and then through a metal door helpfully labeled 'Exit'.

He was greeted with bright sunshine, and warm air scented with salt and gardenias. The lawn under his feet was soft and green. The trees flush with early summer leaves. He ran up a slight hill and turned to get his bearings.

Bucky's jaw dropped. There, off in the distance was the Hollywood sign, bigger than what he'd imagined as a kid. And below that, between brown rolling hills lay a valley with...

He'd seen New York from up high, the one time he'd gone on the Empire State building. It had nothing on the sprawling metropolis below him with its boxy skyscrapers and ribbon-like roads choked with gleaming-were those automobiles?

What in the world...?

"Stand down, Captain Barnes," a voice behind Bucky called.

He whipped around to see a black man with an eye patch stride up to him, flanked by several other men and women in dark suits.

"What-" Bucky's words failed him. "What's going on?"

The black man came to a stop a prudent six feet away. "We were hoping to break it to you, gently. You've been asleep for a long time."

A creeping sensation of dread came over him. "What do you mean by long?"

The man's mouth tightened, looking sad. "For just over seventy years."

Everyone was staring at him, probably waiting his reaction. Bucky took another long look at the strange vista out in front of him, his mind screeched to a halt.

The man stepped closer.

"Are you okay, Captain?"

Captain.

"Yeah. It's just-" Bucky swallowed, the pain as fresh as when he'd found Steve's body. "I'm not the Captain."

O O O O

70 years.

7 decades.

3 generations.

Plenty of time for facts to become legend. For legend to become myth. For government sanitized propaganda on America's super soldier to do its dirty work. There were comic books - actual comic books of Captain America's adventures - where Steve hadn't started as a USO clown (Steve's words, not Bucky's) and that a man called Captain America had led his forces at the front, had actually punched out Hitler.

And that Captain America was him.

Seventy years was also plenty of time for classified documents to be unsealed. The problem was that no one really bothered to look behind the legend. As far as the public concerned, Captain America had died not saving his best friend in the alps, but taking a plane down in the arctic. Sparing most of the world from destruction.

Most of it.

Bucky spent a lot of time in the gym they'd built for him. Where everything was made of leather and wood, and hardly any of the new "plastic" that seemed to dominate most modern building materials. He pounded the hell out of punching bags because it was better than looking at the alien Los Angeles skyline, and think of the radioactive ruin that had become of New York.

They'd showed him the videos the third day, after Bucky wised up and realized his Shield handlers weren't talking about whatever became of the two missing HYDRA mini aero-planes.

History didn't blame him, they'd said. Thanks to his warning, army forces had been able to down the plane headed for D.C. He'd saved the president. Parts of outer New York had even been rebuilt - at least, the parts that hadn't been scoured by fallout. But that wasn't good enough. Bucky blamed himself plenty.

His nightmares weren't filled with needles anymore. They were filled with visions of his neighborhood. Friends and family and Steve as he'd been, young and skinny, looking up to a clear blue Brooklyn sky in time to see the first bomb drop.

He was smacking around a punching bag, grimacing and throwing in a few good knee-shots because what the hell he always liked to fight dirty, when he heard the gym door squeak open behind him.

"Something I can help you with?" he asked, not bothering to turn around. He'd been half-expecting visitors of some sort - something had gotten the Shield base buzzing over the last forty-eight hours, though no one said a word why. It was hard to pry secrets out of spies, but Bucky knew battle-front worry when he saw it. Something was up and he'd been expecting either Fury or one of his head shrinks to make their move any day now. Either to drag him out and haul him off to the white-walls, or try to make a hero out of him. He wasn't sure which one he wanted.

"Actually, something you can help the world with," came a voice, different from Fury's but somehow vaguely familiar.

Bucky turned around. A man in a suit stood in his gym. He was well cut, dark hair and eyes, with a fancy stitching to his clothes that Bucky assumed had to be in the modern style. It made him look a little like a dandy.

The man scanned Bucky up and down, tilting odd red-tinted sunglasses off the tip of his nose. There was none of the fawning and offers to shake his hand that Bucky hated - it put this new man apart from the rest immediately. He wasn't awed by Bucky. He looked amused by him.

"And you are?" Bucky asked.

The man's eyes snapped back to his own. "Tony Stark. I suppose you've heard of me by now?"

"Can't say that I have."

Tony Stark clucked his tongue. "My, my, what are they teaching defrosted World War Two veterans these days?"

Their version of history, to start. Bucky thought. He'd picked up on that quickly, too. "A Stark, huh? Related to Howard Stark?"

"He was my father."

Yeah. Bucky could see that in his hoity-toity baring. "And now you're, what? Fury's lackey?"

Stark snorted. "Please, Fury couldn't afford me. He doesn't know I'm here, actually." There was a wooden table nearby, set up for equipment and free-weights. Stark hopped easily on it.

Fury didn't strike Bucky as the type to not know what went on in his building. "That so?"

"What can I say, I'm a fan of how you used to punch out Hitler."

Bucky rolled his eyes and turned away, untapeing his hands. He was already tired of correcting that stupid rumor. What had been a joke seventy years ago was as good as fact now.

Stark spoke again, "The thing is, you and I have something in common, Captain."

Captain. That was one misconception Bucky couldn't correct. Phillips had been as good as his word - the promotion, at least, had been real.

Bucky turned back to stare at Stark. Despite his fancy duds, there was tension in his frame. Maybe he knew something about what was going on in the rest of HQ. "I'll bite. What do I got in common with the son of a millionaire?"

"Billionaire," Stark said as if it mattered. "I made my first billion by the time I was twenty-two. But what we have in common is this: We were both rejected as Avengers, but they need us anyway. Me, because I have," he lifted his fingers in air quotes, "'A textbook narcissistic personality' and you because you keep insisting you're not Captain America."

"That's because I'm not." And what the heck was an Avenger? Irritated, Bucky reached to unhook the punching bag from the overhead catch. Maybe if he cleaned up after himself the man would get the hint that he was ready to leave.

"No, you're the guy who took up the shield and finished the job - do you always do that one-handed?"

Bucky froze, the easily two-hundred pound bag unhooked and swinging free in his right hand. Then he shrugged, setting it down. He'd been making sure not to overexert himself in front of any Shield-folk, but it had been awhile since his time in the HYDRA-base, and he spent most of it afterwards around Steve. Sometimes he honestly forgot what normal people were capable of.

Stark had lowered his sunglasses again, his gaze more speculative in a way Bucky didn't like.

"Have you ever been to New York, Mr. Stark?" Bucky asked.

"Can't say that I have. HYDRA-radiation isn't good for my complexion."

Bucky grimaced. "Captain America - the real man everyone fawns over nowadays - he was my best friend, and I guarantee he would have never allowed that to happen."

"Doubtful. Besides, you lost one city, Barnes. You saved the rest of the country. There's what they call acceptable losses. I should know. I used to be in the weapons manufacturing business."

"What happened? Grew a heart?"

Stark's smile was sharp. "Lost one."

There was a story behind that, Bucky could tell. But he shrugged and hefted the bag onto one shoulder, reaching down to grab a second one. Sometimes they went a little soft if he pounded on it for hours. He dumped them along the wall along with the others. When he turned back, Stark was still there, playing around with some fancy looking screen in his palm as they did nowadays.

"You're pretty spry for an old guy," Stark said, still tapping on the screen. "What's your secret?"

"An apple a day," Bucky snapped. It was a refreshing to finally come across a man who wasn't falling all over himself to say what an honor it was to meet Captain America, but he was in the mood for only so much poking. "What exactly do you want from me, Stark?"

"One question: Do you recognize this?" Stark flicked his fingers over the screen, and an image of light and dust shimmered into reality in front of him. Bucky had a split second of pure marveling - none of the Shield folk had showed him tech like this, almost as if they expected him to faint dead over anything new - and the next for his heart to harden.

"HYDRA's cosmic cube," he said, voice low.

Stark nodded and poked the light-picture, making it rotate on its access. Bucky had grown to hate the thing, but the electric blue glow was beautiful.

"Howard searched for your plane for a good ten years after it went down. In the end, he recovered this and brought it back to the states."

Bucky could read between the lines. Howard Stark had stopped his search - or grown uninterested - after finding the cube. That was fine. He didn't know Howard well, and who in their right mind would believe there would be anything to recover after a decade, anyway?

"They call it the tesseract now," Stark continued. "Shield's had their grabby hands all over it since the fifties, though they hadn't started their 'research' until nine months ago or so."

Sometimes it felt like Bucky was in the ice, still. Like a piece of his heart never fully unthawed. He felt it now - cold all through. "Let me guess. 'Research', like trying to recreate HYDRA weapons?"

Stark looked honestly pleased. "Oh good, a cynic. I approve. I was half-afraid you were going to be all 'Aw shucks, Beaver Cleaver."

Bucky only got about half of that, but he picked up enough from context clues. "I was in war, pal, and I grew up in an orphanage before that. I get how the world works."

"Can't blame me for thinking it though, with a name like Bucky."

Back to poking again. But poking, Bucky could handle. "You call me James, I'll start calling you-what, Antonio?"

"Anthony, actually. And noted." He gave a theatrical shudder and flicked the screen again. The cosmic cube was replaced by the image of a sharp-faced man with lank long dark hair. "Two days ago, it was stolen by this guy. Loki, like the Norse god. Actually, exactly like the Norse god..."

And he went on to explain... quite a few things Bucky had half-heard passing in Shield corridors, but which no one would explain if he asked a direct question: Norse gods who were actually aliens. Space travel. A small town in New Mexico obliterated in an intergalactic pissing match.

Bucky took it all in with the vague feeling he should have been asking a lot more questions from his Shield handlers over the last couple weeks. It was all... very strange. But then again that had been his life since he woke up from the ice. Before, even. Back when his formally shrimpy best friend had rescued him out of hell and battled a red-faced demon with no nose.

When Stark was done speaking, Bucky let out a long breath and looked down at his shoes. There was another angle to this. Had to be. "You know so much. Why do you need me?"

"I don't," Stark said with bluntness Bucky could appreciate. "In fact, I didn't know you were alive until I hacked Shield's AI." Tony Stark's grin was a bearing of teeth. "You're awake, but they're still keeping you under ice, Captain."

"Maybe I like it that way." But when Stark gave him a direct look Bucky shook his head and sighed, glancing around the gym. The 'period specific authentic' decorations he wasn't sure was subtly insulting or just sad. Coming down here, he felt like the relic he was.

Stark's next words were a quiet challenge. "Do you?"

No.

Bucky raised his chin and looked at Stark, really looked at him. Why would a rich man waste his time on a guy like him? The answer came quickly. "You're doing this to tweak Fury's nose. Because he wouldn't let you in on-" What had Stark called it? "-that Avengers thing."

"Maybe I don't think he's using all his resources. Your boss is a spy, Captain. The spy. And he's hiding something. If he can hide a man, what else can he hide?"

"Hell, he's not my boss." He'd signed his enlistment papers with the Army, but hadn't heard a peep from them. Besides, the war was long over. His service was up.

"You said yourself you don't think their researching is for pure purposes," Stark said.

"They're going to-" What was the modern term? "-weaponize the cube."

"Looks like it," Stark agreed. "My company is kind of the biggest name in green energy, yet Shield have arguably the most powerful source of free energy in the world and they haven't approached me? Not Kosher."

"And I'm supposed to believe you don't want it for yourself?" Bucky asked.

There was that odd smile again. "Stark Industries is out of the weapon's business, Captain."

He had no way to trust that, but Bucky figured he could use an ally until push came to shove. If half of what Stark said was true... He hesitated for another moment, but then nodded. "I'm coming on one condition."

"What's that?"

Bucky thought of the HYDRA bases, the slide of the needle entering his vein while he was strapped down to a table and screaming, a flash of knowing blue eyes as the HYDRA blast hit Steve's shield. "When we find the cube, we drop it back in the ocean where it belongs."

Tony Stark hopped down from the table. "Deal." He held out his hand.

Bucky shook it.

To be continued...