After the Blip, the world spun slowly back into place—too slowly for some. Chaos had ebbed into quiet, and in that quiet, a different kind of weight settled.

The kind of weight that came after survival.

You had fought. You had lost. You had stood beside legends and watched gods fall. But when the noise stopped, when the missions ended, and the briefings faded into static, you realized you were still standing in the silence—wondering what came next.

Tony was gone. Your mentor. Your anchor. The only person who really saw you before the world knew your name. He was home to you, and now…

Now, home was a ghost.

Steve checked in sometimes. His presence was calming, familiar in a world that felt increasingly foreign. He had a way of grounding you, like Tony did, but softer. Wiser. Eventually, Steve became someone you trusted with the grief you didn’t show anyone else.

Then he said goodbye, too.

You knew what he was planning—the stones, the timelines, the impossible task. But what you didn’t expect was the letter. His words were deliberate, like every sentence had been measured twice. He thanked you. Told you how proud he was. And then, near the end, something else:

“I think you and Bucky might be good for each other.”

There was a location. A date. A time.

And for some reason—maybe it was hope, or maybe it was just the way he wrote your name like he believed in you—you showed up.

You found the place easily. Not a loud bar. Not even a bar, really. Just a quiet, tucked-away café on the edge of Brooklyn, barely touched by time. A place where people weren’t trying to be seen.

And there he was.

Bucky Barnes.

Sitting alone by the window, a coffee untouched in front of him, leather gloves still on like armor. You recognized him instantly—not just the face, but the weight. The kind of silence you understood.

You hadn’t spent much time together. Civil War was a blur of grief and conflict, and Endgame barely gave you room to breathe. But Tony had mentioned him once, in one of the last videos he left behind for you.

"Barnes is a good man," he’d said, voice tired but certain. "Don’t let the past scare you off. I didn’t."

Steve believed it. Tony believed it.

And now, Bucky was looking up at you. Studying. Cautious.

The silence between you wasn’t hostile—it was heavy, sure, but not sharp. More like two people carrying the same kind of ache, unsure what to do with it in peace.

You stood there for just a second longer, then sat across from him. He nodded, eyes scanning your face like he was trying to piece together why you were here. Maybe the same reason he was.

Finally, his voice broke through the quiet—low, rough, but not cold.

"...So," he muttered, almost like he didn’t mean to say it out loud. "Guess we got set up by a couple of ghosts."