Title: Live as I have lived and love as I have loved

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Lord Byron

Warnings: talk of major character death/violence/brainwashing/torture

Pairings: Steve/Bucky

Rating: PG
Wordcount: 545

Point of view: third

Prompt: Any, any, Dopplegangland [BTVS]

Note: Steve Prime is from the movieverse. I have three parts, including this one, but I'd love prompts.

"Well, this is awkward," Tony says into the silence after the second Steve drops out of the portal.

The two Steves are staring at each other, heads tilted to the same side. Steve Prime, the right Steve, is wearing blue jeans and a plain white shirt, and his hair is shorter. The new Steve has on black pants and a gray sweatshirt, and his hair is about as long as -

"Oh, shit," Tony says. "Please don't be a Winter Soldier."

Mirror!Steve's eyes go straight to him, face as blank as Robocop's. "Stark," he says calmly. "I know I killed you."

"Shit," Tony repeats.

.

The two Steves can't stand each other. The only person Mirror!Steve seems to actually like is the good old Buckcicle, so Tony leaves them to whatever trouble they can find while he, Bruce, and Jane figure out how to get Mirror!Steve home.

Mirror!Steve is actively frightening in a way that Bucky in Winter Soldier mode isn't. It can't be that Mirror!Steve killed him, because Winter Soldier Prime killed Tony's parents.

"Maybe it's that we never knew Bucky Barnes before," Jane finally offers after fourteen straight hours in the lab.

Maybe. That sounds right, actually. Bucky Barnes was a good man, and he still is, most of the time. But Mirror!Steve - fuck, but Steve Prime must be going out of his mind.

How horrible is it to see what you could've been? Tony's been wondering about alternate selves for awhile, but now... no. He never wants to meet himself, not if it'll be anything like Steve Prime and Mirror!Steve.

.

Watching Steve Prime and Bucky spar is always a pleasure because it's fucking hot. Watching Mirror!Steve and Bucky spar - it is mind-numbingly terrifying. Neither one of them holds back, and at the end, when both have multiple broken bones, they kiss with blood on their lips.

Steve Prime flees the room and everyone else makes themselves scarce.

.

When they finally figure out the way to send Mirror!Steve home, he doesn't thank them. He's barely said two words to anyone who isn't Bucky. Tony's tried not to think about what that world must be like.

He knows for a fact there isn't a Bucky Barnes.

Mirror!Steve kisses Bucky, a gentle, lingering kiss like nothing any of them have seen from him for the whole goddamned month, and he whispers, "I miss you so much, Bucky." Their foreheads rest together, their long hair tangling, and he says, "You'd hate what I've become."

"No, I wouldn't," Bucky says. Steve Prime's eyes are closed, his lips pressed together, and Tony never wants to see that expression on his face ever again. "It doesn't matter what happens," Bucky says, "what you do, what you're made into. I'll love you 'til the end of the line, Steve. 'til the end and to whatever comes after."

Mirror!Steve holds onto him for a good five minutes and no one says a thing. But finally he pulls away and Bucky lets go, and Tony rips a hole in the fabric of reality. Mirror!Steve steps through and he doesn't look back.

.

It's weeks before Steve and Bucky spar again. Before they're cuddling everywhere, sickeningly adorable, again. Before Bucky starts talking again.

Tony wants to ask so much, but he never ever does.