You still have the note.

Folded into fourths and tucked inside the pocket of the navy peacoat you haven’t worn since that day. The one you wrapped around yourself like a second skin, hoping it would hold in the pieces of you that kept trying to fall out. (©TRS0525CAI)

He didn’t even say goodbye.

Not really.

Not out loud.

One minute Steve was holding your hand in front of the quantum platform, saying he’d be right back. Just a quick trip to return the stones, a minute tops.

And then he wasn’t.

You waited. Seconds stretched into minutes, minutes turned into panic-induced hell, and when Bruce and Sam finally turned to you, you already knew. You didn’t cry. Not then. You waited until you were alone, until the adrenaline wore off and the walls started to close in. Until your knees hit the tile in your shower and you stayed there for three hours, water long cold, sobs echoing off the glass.

The note wasn’t even sealed. Just scribbled in his handwriting, shaky and uneven like he’d written it with trembling hands.

“I had to. I needed the life I missed. Forgive me.”

You waited. Days. Weeks. Long enough that even the stubborn part of you—the part that thought soulmates didn’t just leave—had to accept the truth.

Steve wasn’t coming back.

And you? You fell apart.

The world got fuzzy. Showering was a distant memory. You ate exactly three crackers and a slice of cold cheese in the span of six days. Natasha tried, then Sam. Even Wanda brought soup. You stared at the wall like it owed you answers. You looked like a ghost of yourself, and in the quiet moments, when you caught your reflection, you thought maybe you’d actually died too.

But Bucky didn’t let you stay gone.

He was quiet at first. Just... there. Bringing coffee. Leaving soup. Sitting outside your door with his back to the wall like he was standing guard against your heartbreak. You ignored him. He stayed anyway.

It took two weeks for you to open the door. And you better believe he made the most of it.

Not every minute, not always up close, but… he was there. Sitting on your couch when you woke up from a cry-soaked nap. Bringing groceries and pretending he didn’t notice when they stayed untouched. Leaving warm tea by your bed in silence. Once, he just laid a blanket over you and whispered, “He was an idiot,” like it might patch the hole in your chest.

Another two weeks passed before you sat on the couch beside him. A month before you spoke in full sentences again.

You didn’t talk about it. Not really. But when the tears stopped coming and your body remembered how to be alive again, he was still there. And eventually, you started looking forward to the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. You started smiling back.

It took a year. A slow, delicate year.

But, you were breathing again.

Mostly.

Bucky had become your something new.

And just when something soft and maybe beautiful was blooming between the two of you—just when he kissed you for the first time on the rooftop at sunset, so tentative like he wasn’t sure he deserved it—Steve walked back through your damn front door.

And suddenly, it was like no time had passed at all. Except it had. And you weren’t the same.

“I made a mistake,” Steve said, voice rough like gravel. “I chose a dream over reality. I chose a memory. And I left my future behind.”

He looked at you with oceans in his eyes, like he expected you to dive back in.

“I thought I needed her,” Steve murmured. “But it was always you.”

But then there was Bucky.

He stood in your kitchen, hands braced on the counter like he was holding the world still.

“I want you to be happy,” he said softly, not looking at you. “Whatever you choose... just remember the things you felt when he was gone.”