Steve stared down at the letter from Bucky with a mixture of humor and loneliness. He had only been gone two weeks for training and already he had written Steve. It must have been the first thing he did after he got settled in. That really wasn't all that unusual, it was as much to make sure Steve didn't run off and do something stupid as it was to keep in touch with his best friend. They were supposed to be there together, training together, fighting together, just as they always had. However, the government didn't seem to think that Steve was fit to fight for his country. Steve disagreed.

The humor at looking at the note came from the doodles that Bucky had made in the margins of the paper. It was a Labrador, dressed up in a military uniform, going through all the basic drill exercise that Bucky had described. That Bucky had tried to prepare Steve for if he got accepted into the military. One of the lab doing jumping jacks, another of him running, pack on his back, another of him sleeping on his back on the cot, little Z's rising from his mouth.

It was what the two of them would do in class as long as they had been friends, which was basically forever. If Bucky got bored during class, which happened often, he would rip out a piece of paper and draw something before slipping it to Steve. Steve would add to the drawing, then pass it back. The drawing would soon become fantastic, with dinosaurs and robots and aliens and all other kinds of nonsense. Both of them had gotten a rap on the knuckles from the teacher more than once when they were caught passing the note. It never stopped them.

Steve pulled out a sheet of paper and started to answer the letter, attempting to sound upbeat as he wrote Bucky back. He told him about the movie that they planned to see together, not spoiling anything, and how everything was in Brooklyn. When he was finished, he read it over and realized how depressed it sounded. Steve didn't think rewriting it was going to help. Instead, in the margins, he drew a mutt, small with its ribs showing, like the ones that they would see on the street all the time. He dressed it in what Steve usually wore and had it doing a bunch of things around the page, kicking a can, sitting in the movie theater, drinking a milkshake.

That's how it had started, as innocent as that. The little figures never got names and neither Steve nor Bucky discussed them in the bulk of the letters they would write one another. However, soon the doodles started to take on a life and become a story. Bucky started it first, drawing his own rendition of the mutt, the lab teaching him how to box. Steve had reciprocated with mutt and the lab going to the movies or walking down at the beach. As Bucky's training started to come to a close a third character was added, a cat, enemy to the dogs, with a little comb mustache. While the body of Bucky's letters were vague about the military action, they had to be, the drawings started to become grimmer, the lab with a bloody nose or black eye. The fighting wasn't going well. However, the lab and the mutt always came out on top, fighting side by side.

When Steve was recruited for the Super Soldier experiments, he was less diligent about answering Bucky's letters. His responses were shorter and he said nothing about finally getting into the army. The comics continued, but they were hastily drawn and lacked the detailed storylines that he had been providing. He didn't want to keep anything from Bucky, he never had before, but he knew he wouldn't approve of Steve letting scientists inject him with god knows what. Then Steve started to do the publicity tours and was rarely home.

It didn't matter, Bucky had stopped writing letters.

He wasn't dead. That was the only thing that Steve thought as he gathered up the supplies that he needed for this suicide mission into enemy territory. Bucky was not dead. Steve had just performed in front of what was left of the 107th and he had found out that most were killed, but some had been captured. Bucky had to be part of those captured because he couldn't be dead. Steve would know if he was dead. He would feel it.

Steve's notebook fell onto the floor as he grabbed his things, his drawings of a monkey on a unicycle staring up at him. When was the last time he had written Bucky? Why hadn't he noticed that his letters had stopped coming? He had been so caught up in the fame in the states that he somehow missed that he had lost contact with the one person he still had in this world. The one person that mattered to him more than anything. Steve felt sick to his stomach and so much self-hatred that he ripped out the picture of the monkey and tore it into little pieces, tossing them into the mud, and crushing them under his boot.

Peggy had disappeared to find someone to fly him into enemy territory, another person he didn't deserve. Until she got back, all he could do was wait, which was the last thing he wanted to do. Steve sat down and flipped open his notebook to a fresh page and started to draw. It was the mutt, still scrawny with its ribs showing, still in Steve's old clothes. He drew it racing through the forest to find the Labrador, helped by a lovely corgi. The mutt found his friend and brought him back to safety. The lab was alright. He had to be alright.

Steve came back to his cot after a grueling mission. They had done what they could, but there was a lot of death out on the battlefield. It felt as if no matter what they did, they weren't doing enough, there was still so much death and destruction. So many innocent people being slaughtered. The Allied forces were pushed further back every day and there was only so much he could do. Everyone looked to Captain America to turn to the tide, but he was still only one man. Even with the Commandos, it wasn't like they could defeat the whole of the Axis army. He couldn't win the war on his own.

There was a folded paper on the pillow and Steve groaned. It was probably another urgent mission that he needed to go on immediately. He might be a super soldier, but he needed to sleep, and honestly he couldn't remember the last time he got eight hours. Still, he flipped open the papers to see drawings staring back at him. A Labrador and a mutt staring up at him, only the mutt was larger than the lab now, dressed in Captain America's uniform. Bucky hadn't drawn the missions they had gone on though, he had drawn the moments between, when they were with the Commandos, who all had been given animal representations, and spending time with Peggy. He had captured the good moments, the ones that Steve forgot when he was tired and drained.

Steve smiled down at the paper, a little of the exhaustion leaving his body. Without saying a word Bucky knew what he needed and had given it to him. He didn't know what he would do without him. Steve changed his clothes and collapsed onto his cot. He should sleep, never knowing when he would need to go on another mission, go to another meeting, be Captain America. However, in that moment he was Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers was an artist.

Pulling out his poorly neglected notebook, Steve flipped to a new page and started to draw.

Peggy, his Peggy, had always been too good to him. After all the years, being sure that she would never see him again, she had still kept his things. He wondered how her husband felt about that, a trunk of Steve Rogers's personal belongings always hidden away in the attic or the basement. A constant reminder of the man that she had loved before she was with him. The way that Peggy talked about her husband, Steve knew that he was a good man, then again Peggy wouldn't be with someone who wasn't a good man. Still, it was probably something that was hard for her husband to take.

Steve had collected the trunk himself, it had been placed in a storage unit when Peggy was no longer able to live in her home. While her memory was going, she made a point to tell him about it, to make him promise he would collect it. He didn't open it for months, not sure he wanted to walk down that particular path. However, eventually he popped it open, sitting on the floor cross legged, and started to pull out the items. They showed the seventy years of wear his body didn't, the ravages of time and being forgotten. He took out each item carefully, inspected it, and then set it aside. Two years of his life in a battered trunk. The only things he had left of his life before the ice, besides Peggy.

At the bottom of the trunk was a battered notebook. Steve's hand shook as he reached down and pulled it out, fingers brushing over the cover. He didn't open it right away, carrying the notebook to his kitchen table and pulling a six pack out of the fridge. He might not be able to get drunk anymore, but he was going to sure as hell try. After downing three of the beers, he flipped open the first page. It was stuffed with old letters and photos. Most of the letters and papers were from Bucky, but there were a few from Peggy. He read those first, smiling at her phrasing and words. She really had a way with them, making every sentence count, getting her point across while still being graceful.

Steve finished the other three beers and pulled out a bottle of whiskey before he started to read the letters from Bucky. Looking through all the comics, all the adventures that the lab and mutt were on. In them, he sees their youthful arrogance, their belief that they could take on the world. That they could face the jaws of death and come out on the other side. It never occurred to them that they wouldn't be together, in life or death. While Steve might still be young, he didn't have that arrogance anymore. That had fallen into the ravine with Bucky all those years ago.

Steve flipped through the notebook after that, finding random doodles that he had done. A full portrait of Peggy that he wonders if he should give to her, some of the Commandos, who were mostly dead, one of Howard Stark. He realized that he never drew Bucky. Why would he need to? They were supposed to be together till the end of the line. A few doodles of the lab and mutt he had done, half thought up story ideas. He thinks of all the story lines that the mutt and the lab didn't get to have. Getting back from the war, getting married, having kids, growing old together. Their adventures were cut short, just like the drawings on the page, forever suspended in the middle of a story, never to be finished.

Steve set aside the notebook and let himself cry.

He was alive. Steve remembered when that was his mantra during that first suicide mission to recover the 107th. Bucky was alive. As Steve lay in the hospital bed recovering from his injuries, that thought bouncing around in his mind. Why hadn't he looked for him? How could he have let his body rot in that ravine without at least looking for him? Why hadn't he done something? He had been so sure that he would know when Bucky died, that he would feel it, yet all these years he had been alive and Steve hadn't known. It didn't matter that he had been under ice for a good portion, it should have never gotten to that point. How could he have left Bucky in that ravine?

Steve didn't know what he would have done if Sam wasn't there. Sam never pressured him to talk or pry into his past. He just listened when Steve spoke and filled up the silence when he didn't, either with his own stories or all the music Steve had missed. For a man that had only known Steve a couple of days before the fight in D.C., he understood him in a way that Steve was starting to think no one would again. Sam kept Steve's self-hatred and guilt at bay, not by praising Steve or sugarcoating the truth, but by reminding Steve that he was human. He might be Captain America, but he was also a man, and a complete idiot sometimes if you believed Sam's telling of events. Sam was probably right about that. It didn't help the nightmares, having Sam around, but at least most of the time he didn't wake up alone. Steve starts to sleep during the day so that Sam is there when he wakes up. He can't stand to be alone with his thoughts, especially after the dreams.

As his wounds started to heal, Steve found himself being restless, but still not able to do anything. Finally, he asks Sam for a notebook or a drawing pad. He tries to draw Bucky from memory, but he finds that he can't get past the line sketches. They never capture him the way that Steve saw him. They seem so flat, so dead, and that wasn't Bucky. Also, they take on the quality of Bucky on the helicarriers; an assassin, dark and cold, which wasn't Bucky either. After quite a few failed attempts, Steve finds himself drawing a Labrador. Not the comic that he used to draw, but an actual dog. He starts to get into it, dressing it in Bucky's sniper gear.

When Steve finishes the picture, he just stares at it for a while. Sam praises it, as do all the nurses who see it, saying it is lovely. Steve doesn't think it's lovely, it makes him sick. He rips it out of his notebook, tears it to shreds, and throws it out. He doesn't need a picture of a stupid dog. He needed Bucky. He was going to find him or die trying.

"You remember those stupid comics that we used to draw?" Steve doesn't know why he asks. Out of all the things he wants to say to Bucky, he wants to understand, he wants to fix, he asks about those stupid drawings. This was one of the first moments they had alone, they were flying toward almost certain death, and he was asking about doodles.

Bucky was quiet in the back. He had been speaking for most of the trip, telling Steve everything he had done. Every assassination, every mission, every legend that made the Winter Soldier so feared. However, he wasn't the Winter Soldier anymore, and his voice shook as he described the men and women he killed, the things he did. He barely got through explaining the assassination of Howard Stark, because Bucky had known him, knew that he was a friend of Steve's. That was nothing compared to him explaining chocking Maria to death. The pain in his voice made Steve want to tell him to stop, to make Bucky believe that it wasn't him doing those things, but Steve knew what it was like to need to exorcise your demons. Peggy had listened to him so many times, taking some of the burden off of him by just listening. Now he had to be that for Bucky because there was nothing else he could do.

At the thought of Peggy, Steve felt another stab of pain. She had lived a long life, but he selfishly hadn't wanted to let her go. He needed something to anchor him to who he was, to remind him of the Steve that was just a mutt on Brooklyn's streets. If she was still alive, would he have fought so hard to keep Bucky with him? Would he have done all of this differently? Would she had helped him figure out what to do? Would he still have Tony at his back and his friends not in prison? Somehow, he doubted it, but she would have helped him not to make such a mess of everything.

"I've been waiting for you to draw the next part," came the voice from behind him. "I want to see what happens next." Steve spins around in his seat to see that Bucky's smiling at him. It's not the smile he remembers, it is sad and broken, but it is a smile. This might not be the Bucky he remembered anymore, but his Bucky was still in there, the boy from Brooklyn who followed him into the jaws of death. Steve realized that neither of them got out unscathed.

"It was your turn to draw," Steve smiled back before turning around. He heard a small huff from the back seat, but could feel Bucky's smile even if he couldn't see him. They could do this, they could put themselves back together. They could figure it out. They had each other, they could do anything.

Steve walks into the room that T'Challa gave him and sighs. He feels old and drained and alone. The weight of everything that has happened, everything that he has done, settles on his shoulders, making it so that he has to sit down or be crushed. In the end, he lost Bucky again, though this time it was Bucky's choice. They only had a few days together, most of it running, it wasn't enough. Logically it made sense, protecting him from the corruption of Hydra, stopping him from doing things he didn't want to do. Yet, Steve felt hollow and empty. He had lost Peggy and he had basically lost Buck. Hell, he had lost everything. Captain America was a fugitive, though he didn't even think he was Captain America anymore. He didn't know who he was.

He flopped down onto the bed, closing his eyes and sighing. Rolling onto his side, something crinkles under his pillow when he moved his head. Steve slipped his hand underneath and touches paper, paper that had not been there before. Sitting back up, he extracts the pages and flips them open. There are five of them, broken into boxes, detailing the adventures of a lab in a military uniform and a mutt in Captain America's uniform. They are crude drawings, being done with Bucky only having one arm now. As Steve's eyes traveled from box to box he watched as they two fought side by side and defeated their enemy, the cat, with the help of a new doodle, a pigeon. That could only be one person. At the bottom of the fifth page, the dogs and the pigeon were all standing with their backs to the viewer, looking at the sunset, three little words scribbled into the bottom of the corner.

Carefully, Steve set the papers on the bed and looked at the floor. He was smiling, but tears were rolling down his cheeks. It seemed like a fitting end to the story after all these years. How long had the lab and the mutt been fighting against the cats? How many forms had the cats taken? How did that no longer fit since the person that was harboring them personified a cat? That fight was over, whether they had won or not was still to be decided.

Steve wiped his eyes and got up, turning on the light over the desk in the room. He grabbed a notebook that had been left there for him and flipped to a clean page, smoothing it out with his fingers as he thought. The hollowness inside him was slowly filling with something else. Something warm and uplifting and bright. It wasn't completely erasing the pain and the ache, nothing would, but it was there to ease it just a bit. Putting the pencil to the paper, Steve divided the paper into boxes, careful that the lines were straight. He knew who he was, who he has always been. A lab and a mutt took shape as the pencil floated across the page, A little older, a little more beat up, but still the same. They were in different clothes, but still the same characters, the same doodles that had started all those years ago when Bucky first wrote to him. As the night grew dark outside Steve continued to draw, his head full of ideas, and his heart full of hope. Those three words that Bucky had written at the bottom ringing in his head, bringing a smile to his lips.

To Be Continued