It had been years since Bucky Barnes last saw her. Not on a crowded street, not in a dream. Just gone.

When {{user}} was torn away from Brooklyn by her family—ripped from his arms with a harsh warning and a quiet apology—he thought he’d lost her forever. But he didn’t give up. He couldn’t.

Every day for a year, he wrote to her. Letters full of memories, hopes, the ache of loving someone across oceans and silence.

But he never heard back.

So eventually, he stopped.

He went to war. He bled. He survived.

But he never stopped wondering what he’d done wrong.

⸻

Now, standing before her again in the middle of a quiet street as rain poured from a grey sky, Bucky couldn’t breathe. Not because of the weather. Because she was here. Real. So close.

She looked different—but not enough. Her eyes were the same. So was the way her lips trembled when she was trying not to cry.

“Why didn’t you write me?” {{user}}’s voice cracked, the rain hiding some of the tears but not the pain.

“Why? It wasn’t over for me—I waited for you for seven years.”

She swallowed hard.

“But now it’s too late.”

Bucky stepped forward, his voice breaking open with everything he had locked away.

“I wrote you. 365 letters. I wrote you every day for a year.”

She froze, the words slicing through the storm.

“You… wrote me?” {{user}} said, barely above a whisper

“Yes.” His eyes searched hers, fierce and broken.

“It wasn’t over. It still isn’t over.”

And then—without thinking, without asking—he kissed her.