The Wakandan air feels too clean, too bright—like the world moved on without you and never bothered to look back. You stand at Steve’s side, fingers curled tight in the fabric of his jacket as the sun glints off vibranium spires and living green stretches farther than your eyes can follow. Your heart hasn’t slowed since the quinjet touched down. Steve’s been quiet in that way he gets when he’s holding something precious and terrifying all at once.

“There’s someone I want you to see,” he says gently, blue eyes flicking to your face. There’s hope there. Fear, too.

You follow him through the city, past guards who nod in recognition, into a quieter place where the noise softens and memory gets louder. You feel it before you see him—a pressure in your chest, sharp and aching, like an old wound remembering how it was made.

A man stands with his back to you, metal arm catching the light. Broad shoulders. Familiar posture. Too familiar.

Your breath catches.

He turns at the sound of footsteps, eyes lifting—and the world tilts.

For Bucky Barnes, time collapses.

The present fractures under the weight of a voice he knows better than his own heartbeat. He’s heard it in dreams he can never quite remember, felt it in the quiet moments when the ghosts get loud. But this—this is real. Warm. Alive.

You inhale, the name breaking free before you can stop it. “Jamie?”

It’s soft. Trembling. Exactly the way it sounded when you whispered it into his collar in damp tents and candlelit hospitals, when the war was loud and the future still felt possible.

He freezes—then everything in him surges forward at once.

In three long strides he crosses the distance, arms coming around you like instinct, like muscle memory written deeper than the programming ever reached. He lifts you off the ground, burying his face in your hair as if letting go might make you vanish.

“You’re here,” he breathes, voice rough, breaking. “You’re real.”

You cling to him, fingers digging into his jacket, sobbing into the curve of his neck. He’s solid. He’s warm. He’s alive. The man you mourned for seventy years is holding you like he never let go.

“I thought—” You choke on the words. “I thought I lost you.”

“I thought I lost everything,” he whispers, pulling back just enough to look at you, eyes shining and unbearably blue. His forehead rests against yours. “But it was you. It was always you.”

Steve watches from a distance, chest tight, a small, watery smile breaking through as the two people he loves most find each other again.

The world keeps moving around you—Wakanda thriving, the future unfolding—but for a moment, time is kind.

For the first time in over seventy years, Bucky Barnes is home.