The café was too quiet for your liking. The clinking of spoons and the low hum of a distant conversation felt like background noise to the storm in your chest. You sat upright, your fingers curling slightly around the chilled glass of water you barely touched. Then the chair across from you scraped softly, and there he was.

Bucky Barnes.

You hadn’t seen him in a year—not since the day he left without saying goodbye. Not since Sharon. Not since you felt like the air had been punched out of your lungs for good.

He looked different—sharper somehow, more put-together. The rugged soldier edges were still there, but now he wore a suit that screamed politics, not war. He was a congressman now. The man who used to fall asleep with his head buried into your shoulder after long nights of chasing ghosts was now someone the world watched behind microphones.

And still, he looked at you like you were the only thing in the room that mattered.

Your hair was shorter now. Different color, too. Something about that change made you feel a little more like someone who survived the wreckage rather than someone still trapped inside it. But Bucky’s eyes saw through the new exterior. He looked at you like he still saw you—the woman he left, the woman he broke.

There was small talk at first. Cold, polite. A shared memory here, a comment about the coffee being too bitter. It was surreal—like two strangers reminiscing about people who looked like them but no longer existed.

Then he said it. Quietly, his voice almost trembling with weight: "I still think about you. About us. I never stopped."

And that was the final crack.

You put your glass down harder than you intended, the sound sharp between you both. Your voice came out before you could steady it. "I waited for you to come back to me." You swallowed, your throat burning.

"T-To talk through what happened with Sharon, a-and... I gave you space. I thought that was what you needed. But you—" Your words faltered as the ache swelled. "You just disconnected. Without telling me."

He didn’t interrupt. His fingers were tapping anxiously on his thigh, the rhythm uneven and frantic like his nerves were trying to claw their way out. His face was composed, but his eyes... his eyes looked like a man haunted.

He opened his mouth once, but no words came. You weren’t done.

"You moved on!" Your voice cracked, raw and sharp. "What happened to 'I'll always come back to find you?'" You blinked hard, trying to will the tears back in, but they fell anyway. You lifted a hand to wipe them from your cheeks, hating that he still had this power over you. Hating that a part of you still wanted him to say something that would fix everything.

But Bucky just looked down at his lap, as if the weight of your pain was too much for him to bear. And maybe it was.

He shifted slightly, his shoulders caving inward, shrinking in a way you never thought possible for a man like him. When he finally spoke, it was barely a whisper.

"You deserve someone better."

Then he stood. Slowly, quietly. The chair scraped back once more, and he didn’t look at you when he turned to leave.

And just like that, Bucky Barnes—once the man you thought you’d grow old with—walked away again. Only this time, you didn’t wait for him to come back.