He thought he was hallucinating. He’d had those before. Too many times. Flickers of the past in the corners of his vision. But this wasn’t that. This wasn’t a trick of the mind or a remnant of Hydra’s rewiring. This was you.

Across the room, alive, upright, dressed in clean clothes and speaking with a quiet authority that pulled Bucky back through eighty years in half a second. You turned your head slightly, your profile catching the light.

Same eyes. Same posture. Same look you used to give him when Steve wasn’t watching. Only you didn’t look at him yet. Bucky froze where he stood in the lobby of the compound, not moving.

You turned and saw him. Your expression shifted, recognition like a thunderclap behind your eyes. Bucky didn’t know what to do.

“Bucky?” your voice cracked the air like a match.

He breathed in. Finally.

“Yeah,” he managed. “It’s me.”

You were closer now, standing in front of him. And he still didn’t believe it.

“How—how are you here?” he asked, voice low, cautious. “I thought I lost you.”

“They froze me,” you said quietly. “Said I was too valuable. And then… I woke up.”

Bucky stared at you.

He could still feel the letters he never sent burning behind his ribs. The memory of you, war outside the tent, your hand clenched in his like it was the only thing real. They never got to be anything. The world wouldn’t have let them. A man and a man in 1940? Not a valid thing.

He remembered the way you looked at him when he left for a mission without you. Like maybe that was goodbye. But it wasn’t, clearly.

He sighed hard and quietly. And then said, softly, “It’s allowed now. Y’know.”

He meant it like a whisper, a confession, a question.

“I know,” you said. Your voice was steady now. “I read up. A lot’s changed.”

Bucky’s hand flexed at his side. Not his metal one, the other. The real one. The one that used to hold yours in secret.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get a second chance,” he said. “Not with you.”