Bucky doesn't believe the sky is blue. How can it possibly be blue, when it's always so desolately and dismally grey?

Granted, he doesn't even know what blue looks like. But everyone who can see it describes it like the most wonderful thing.

To which Bucky scoffs, every time.

A lot of it is jealousy, he'll admit. Jealousy and spite, because why do they get to see the world in color when he's stuck here, searching the face of every person he meets and watching, waiting, for something that's never going to come.

For a world of vibrancy and light and beauty that he's only ever imagined.

Bucky tips his head back to look at the clouds. They're still the same, he's heard, when the shift happens. But the sky is said to be a beautiful, wondrous thing.

"You can see every color at once up there," Sam tells him after meeting Clint. "The sunsets? They're magnificent."

Magnificent.

And so, as the years stretch by, Bucky waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Steve's never been impatient, but the day he gets a call from Clint waxing poetic about sunsets and stars his hand shakes as he hangs up the phone, turning away from the window.

The sunset he's watching right now is a pitiful thing — a grey sun sinking into a grey sky, just beneath an indistinct grey horizon. He sighs, resisting the urge to call Clint back and ask him more about it.

Though the most detailed description in the world wouldn't help, really, because Steve doesn't even know how to picture it. His time will come, though.

Someday.

Someday he'll have someone to watch the sunset with, someday it'll be him, excitedly talking on the phone to a friend, telling them about what a wondrous place this world is.

Standing up, Steve shrugs on a jacket.

What good is there in waiting, he decides, when that very person is out there somewhere?

Steve steps outside, into the fading sunlight he'll soon be able to truly see.

Bucky only decides to go out because the boredom and insufferable waiting has him on the brink of losing all hope.

He keeps his head down, though, not wanting to look at the monotonous world around him.

Everyone speaks of red and blue and yellow and orange, and it's not fair.

Because all Bucky sees is charcoal and slate and heather and blandness.

He's told himself a thousand times not to question it. His time will come. Sooner or later, though he really hopes it's sooner.

Bucky decides to lift his chin, stopping his dead-eyed gaze towards the ground.

Insipid as this world is, he might as well face it head-on.

The woman at the bar is beautiful, and smart, and charismatic — Steve's been waiting for her to look his way for the past hour.

She's talking with some friends, an ethereal smile painted on her darkened lips.

Something feels off, but Steve can't help but wonder. He walks over, conjuring up a smile of his own.

Perhaps hearing is approaching footsteps, she turns around —

Steve hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until now, as it all escapes him in a deflated sigh.

As the world remains as it was before, even as their eyes meet.

She offers a beckoning hand. Steve returns with a wave goodbye.

Bucky doesn't know how, but he's ended up at the bar and is currently on his third — or is it fourth? — drink.

It's far too sour, and rather diluted, if he's being honest with himself, but he doesn't really care. Some people who have come past have offered him smiles, waves, winks, words of greeting, but when nothing happens, they all move on.

Perhaps that's what Bucky should do, but he's been sitting here for a few hours now and can't get himself to leave, for some reason.

He orders another drink.

The barista slides it across the table to him, as a voice beside him says, "I'll have the same, it's been a rough night."

Bucky turns to offer his condolences, but freezes as the man's eyes meet his.

"Steve Roge—" he starts to introduce himself, then falters.

His gaze intensifies, and it's all Bucky can do not to fall apart right there.

For those eyes —

He knows it the moment he sees it.

Blue.