A/N: This is for sad-trash-hobo on Tumblr, inspired by (and written to the soundtrack of) Lukas Graham's haunting song, "Better Than Yourself"-which, for me, has all the pain of Steve and Bucky's friendship.

I really wish to every god that you were innocent...I accept you as you are, no, I don't need the truth

There are so many ways that this ends. They wait in Wakanda, they wait for a change, they wait. Steve has too much time on his hands, on his mind.

Steve dreams.

Steve dreams that they take Bucky out of cryo and he kills them one by one.

In the dream, Bucky's eyes are closed, and he only opens them when his steel fingers (his arm, restored) have split open Steve's ribcage and clenched around his heart.

There are so many ways that this ends. Bucky comes out of cryo, and goes back to New York, though he never goes home. Maximum security, and Steve is on the other side of the glass—always on the other side—and Bucky looks peaceful, almost, all the way up to his eyes.

His eyes. God, his eyes.

(Steve wakes up.)

It could end in Wakanda. It could end in New York.

Steve hasn't been suicidal because he has had too much to do, and even now, in the waiting, seventy years wasted are not seventy years running red with blood.

He wonders if it ends with Buck putting a bullet through his own brain. He wanders if the ice is better, or if it is quite the same.

(It only hurts for a moment.)

He always comes back to the prison. He leans against the picture windows of T'Challa's forest and thinks, how many years would they give him? Surely, surely, they would not treat him like a common criminal.

It wasn't you. You didn't have a choice.

I know. But I did it.

Steve hears the voices of the prosecution, the voices of the families. They'll want blood. Bucky didn't want blood, but he took it.

He killed my mom. Steve hears Tony, and he thinks, they don't even trust their heroes.

Bucky isn't even anyone's hero. Anyone's but Steve's.

Sometimes he wants to play the lawyer himself, wants to speak up, explain to Natasha or Clint or any of the others, He doesn't deserve to be punished. He's a victim. We are a nation of justice, not of retribution—

But they are men of no nation, now.

Steve looks at Bucky, on the other side of the glass, and thinks that his face looks peaceful.

Of course, Steve can't see his eyes.

You'd rather stay in hell…

Maybe it already ended. Maybe Bucky never comes out of cryo, maybe he chose from any number of hells, just as Steve drifts among any number of nightmares.

(The devil you know.)

Steve saw Brooklyn, and everything had changed. Steve haunted the Smithsonian and barely even recognized the ghosts. He has tried and tried, but he cannot go back.

Bucky knew pain, and maybe it was safer.

It was the only thing that was left.

No, Steve thinks, and it is though he cannot breathe. Not the only thing.

I'm with you till the end of the line.

Bucky was the oldest of four. Steve, the only child, didn't envy that, because he didn't have to.

Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.

He's not sure what he has now. Nothing, or Bucky, or some strange combination of the two that leaves him feeling emptier than ever.

Maybe it ended here, maybe the end comes across the ocean. Prisons are glass and ice, prisons are iron and steel, prisons are whispers and ink on the printing presses.

In the end, the only certainty is that it will do just that.

(End.)