When he comes out of the ice, Shuri gives him the good news first: He's clean. Hydra can't control him anymore.

But there's bad news too, because there's always bad news, and when she tells him, Bucky understands why they didn't call Steve to be here for this. They were smart enough to know what kind of luck they'd have getting him out of the room long enough to share this in private.

"The last traces of the drugs they gave you are also gone from your system," Shuri says, and Bucky doesn't know her all that well, but he's still pretty sure this kind of hesitance isn't typical of her. "Although without examining your arm I cannot be entirely sure, I believe it was still administering small doses of the drugs even long after your escape from Hydra. With the arm gone . . . "

Bucky glances down at the empty space where the arm should be. It's just capped for now, waiting for a replacement, but the replacement won't have whatever Hydra was pumping into him.

"Isn't that good news?" he asks. It's not, he knows it's not just by looking at her face, but sometime between seeing Steve again and going into the ice, a little bit of hope had crept back into him without his permission, and he wants to cling to it for just a bit longer.

"I do not know exactly what they were giving you," Shuri says, "but I have seen the effects that were beginning to occur before you went into stasis, and I have projected how those effects are likely to progress. You will not survive much longer without the drugs. If not for the serum they gave you, I do not think you would have lasted this long."

It takes a moment for that to sink in.

Of course Hydra wouldn't want him to be able to live without them. Of course all the little pains and shakes he tried to convince himself were nothing were far worse than that. Of course he would have to face Steve's hopeful face and tell him the awful truth that Bucky would be leaving him.

Again.

"I attempted to reverse engineer the drugs. I have something we could administer if you wish, though the side effects are a great risk. The original drugs were, I believe, designed to inhibit independent thought and make you complaisant, and any replacement - "

"No," he says instantly. He won't be controlled again. Not even if it's his only chance to survive.

She doesn't try to dissuade him. "Then we can buy you time," she says quietly. "A few years, even. I can make no promises beyond that."

"That's fine," he says, voice distant to his own ears. "How do we do that?"

She reels off a list of other drugs, lesser substitutes to control symptoms and delay degeneration. He nods whenever she pauses for breath.

"Don't tell Steve," he says when she's done. "I'll take care of that."

And he does mean to tell Steve. He does. After the first video call when Steve's face lights up to see him like every single Christmas he missed in the ice has all come at once. After the first visit when Steve catches him in a bonebreaking hug. After Steve asks him to come with him to fight the good fight again, and Bucky has to tell him no, though not for the reasons Steve thinks. After, after, after . . .

He can't do it. He just can't. He still has time, and Steve deserves happiness for as long as he can get it.

Then they come to tell him there's a fight coming, and he smiles when he sees Steve again, but of course he can't say anything now. Before a battle is the worst possible time.

And then for five years, that for him pass in a blink, there is no after.

By the time the funeral's over, Bucky's pretty much caught up on everything that's happened while he was gone. He knows someone's going to have to go drop those stupid stones back where they came from, and after the wistful look in Steve's eyes when he was describing his part in their trip to the past to get the things, Bucky's got a pretty good idea of who it should be.

"So I've been thinking," he says as Steve drives them back to the hotel they've both been staying at ever since the battle where the Avengers facility became a pile of smoking rubble, "you should be the one to volunteer to take the stones back."

Steve considers this for a moment. "You might be right," he says. "Clint and Scott shouldn't have to risk going back, not when they've just gotten their families back, I know Thor wants to head off with the Guardians soon, and it might be hard for Bruce to get some of them back unnoticed."

There are other options now, of course, with everyone returned, but Steve isn't yet back in the habit of considering them available for missions, and now isn't the moment to remind him. "Right," he agrees. "And didn't you tell me that you ended up getting the Tesseract from Peggy's office?"

"Not her office exactly," Steve says. "Just - the facility her office was in." His hands tighten on the steering wheel.

"So if you go back, you could see her again," Bucky prompts.

"I could," Steve says. His voice is pained. "It's probably better if I don't, though. Seeing her last time on just the other side of the glass and not being able to say anything . . . I don't know if I could do that again."

"Who says you can't talk to her?"

Steve shakes his head. "It wouldn't be fair to her to show up and upset everything just to leave again."

Steve is the best man Bucky has ever known. He is also, on certain occasions, a bit thick.

"So don't leave," Bucky suggests and tries to make it sound like the easiest, most natural thing in the world, instead of like a series of words that are already making panic claw at his throat.

The wheel jerks in Steve's hands and the car starts to swerve. Steve catches himself quickly and turns it into a more controlled swerve that lands them safely just off the road. The moment Steve's slammed the car into park, he whirls on Bucky. "What?"

"Don't leave," Bucky says patiently. "You wanted to marry her, right?"

Steve swallows hard, and Bucky knows that it isn't just in the past tense.

"So do that," he says gently. "Make that your last stop and go have a life."

"I can't mess up the past," Steve says automatically. "Otherwise - "

"Why are you so sure you would be?"

"She had a husband."

Bucky raises his eyebrows. "Yeah, you mentioned that. Who was he?"

Steve looks away. "It was classified for the safety of everyone involved."

Bucky snorts. "And what, she couldn't even tell you? Even if he was still alive, what danger could there have possibly been? Who would have cared at that point?" Bucky pauses to let that sink in. "Unless, of course, you were the guy."

Steve just shakes his head. "There was a documentary," he says stubbornly. "It said I rescued her husband during the war, in 1945."

Bucky stares at Steve for a long moment. "Steve," he finally says. "You know Peggy was a spy, right? A spy that was apparently trying to keep her marriage confidential? So has it occurred to you, at any point, that spies lie?"

Steve doesn't answer that one.

"Also," Bucky says after considering things for a moment, "from a certain point of view, you rescued yourself lots of times in 1945. I mean, not half so many times as we had to pull your stupid, self-sacrificing self out of trouble, but it did happen."

Steve's grip on the steering wheel now looks downright painful. "Maybe it could have been me," he finally concedes, "but it won't be. I'm not just going to leave you, Buck. I've done the whole 'alone in another century' thing. I wouldn't do that to you."

A lump rises in Bucky's throat. He shoves it back down. Now's not the time to be getting all sentimental. If he does, Steve'll never agree to leave. "You don't owe me anything."

The look Steve shoots him says, quite eloquently, that they have had this fight before, and Steve is quite willing to pound Bucky's head through the windshield if that's what it takes to get it through his thick skull that this isn't about obligation.

Alright, maybe they're both a bit thick.

"I'll be alright," Bucky revises. "I'll have . . . my goats." He frowns. "Probably. What do you think happened to them while I was gone?"

Judging by Steve's unimpressed look, goats are not going to be sufficient here.

"I'll have Sam?"

Steve doesn't look any more impressed. Bucky doesn't blame him. He likes Sam, he does, but he's not sure he's ever managed to have a conversation with him for longer than five minutes that hasn't ended with a concerned Steve hastily intervening.

Or just getting snarky at both of them, but. Still.

Bucky breaks down and tells the truth. "I won't need anyone. Not for long, anyway."

Steve's face gets that pinched looked Bucky hates. "Buck?"

Bucky lets it out. The prognosis, what Shuri's been doing, all of it. "So it's probably a good thing I got snapped, really," he says with a weak smile when he's done. "I might not have been here for that last battle if I hadn't been, and if I had been, I wouldn't have been in any condition to fight."

Steve's eyes had gone wide and watery, but they're closed now. "Are you sure there's nothing - "

"I'm sure."

Steve's hand reaches blindly for Bucky's arm and latches onto his wrist instead. He holds on painfully tightly like he's still trying to keep Bucky from falling from that long ago train.

There'd been no saving him from the hungry maw of the ravine that time. There's no saving him this time either.

"I don't want to leave you here alone," Bucky says quietly into the silence. "Just - go have that dance. Marry Peggy. Name one of your kids Buchanan and blame it on me."

"James," Steve bargains, and Bucky knows he's won.

Though he feels a bit uneasy about how the stubbornness hasn't quite disappeared from Steve's eyes.

He can't quite stop himself from telling Steve he'll miss him. He might only have a few years left, but they'll be a long few years without him.

He hears the faint noises of someone moving in the trees even as they send Steve off, but he doesn't pay much attention until the five seconds have passed and his last, dying kernel of hope that maybe, just maybe, Steve would do the stupid, stubborn thing is gone.

Then he turns and sees an old man sitting on a bench, and even though he's never seen Steve old, even though there was a time he thought he never would, he still knows Steve instinctively.

He lets Sam go first. Sam's the one who didn't know this was coming. He deserves first shot at explanations.

Then Dr. Banner wants to know, of course, and he offers to try to send time through Steve like they apparently accidentally did to Scott, but Steve turns him down.

"I've got a few years left in me," he says. "That's all I need."

Realization slowly dawns.

He grabs Steve by the arm and - gently - drags him away. Steve's fragile again, though still not quite as fragile as he was pre-serum, and Bucky knows all about walking that fine line between too rough and hurting Steve and too gentle and him hurting his fist on your face.

"You did this on purpose," Bucky says, and he doesn't quite know how he did it yet, but he still knows it.

"I took the Tesseract back to the right time," Steve says, "and then I took one more hop back. Just like I told Sam." His innocent expression might fool the media, but it'll never fool Bucky.

Bucky examines him through narrowed eyes. Steve's old, but not as old as he should be if he took back all his stolen time. "You didn't go back to 1945."

"No," Steve agrees. "A lot of it was guesswork, but I did my best to figure it out, and then I did my best to stay alive. We probably won't go out quite together, but neither of us should have to be alone too long."

"I knew you were taking all the stupid with you," Bucky says through a thick throat.

Steve's eyes light up with decades of stories of stupid stunts that Bucky wasn't around to stop and will now have to listen to Steve share. "You have no idea," he says. "But I'm back now, so we can be stupid together."

"To the end of the line," Bucky tells him.

No matter how soon or long that might be.