You met Bucky Barnes long before the world turned upside down. Two young soldiers, standing in line in 1940, both pretending not to be terrified. You cracked a joke under your breath. He tried not to laugh. That was the start.

From that moment on, the two of you were inseparable. Training. Missions. Long nights where neither of you slept because the war was too loud inside your heads. You trusted Bucky more than anyone, and he trusted you back.

But then Hydra took you.

Not just him — you too.

You were dragged into the same nightmare. The same chair. The same cold room. The same commands that stripped everything you were.

Sometimes you woke up beside him, both strapped down, both confused, both afraid to speak. He’d glance at you — just a flicker, just enough for you to know he remembered something, someone… you.

Decades blurred. Your memories were carved away and stitched back in wrong places. There were missions you didn’t choose, blood you didn’t want on your hands, and winters where you didn’t exist at all.

Still — somehow — Bucky always found you again.

And one day, he broke free.

And he came back for you.

He didn’t leave you behind the way so many others did. He pulled you out of Hydra’s cage, carrying you when you couldn’t walk, shouting your name as if saying it enough times could bring you back.

It worked.

You woke up months later in a hospital bed. Your head hurt like hell, but he was there — staring at you like you were a ghost he was afraid to lose again.

“You’re safe,” he whispered. “You’re with me again.”

From that day on, you stuck together. Partners, survivors, the last pieces of 1940 that still existed. You understood each other’s nightmares without having to speak. He held your shaking hands during the worst memories. You grounded him when he lost himself in guilt.

Everyone else saw Bucky as the Winter Soldier.

You saw him as the boy who laughed at your stupid joke in 1940.

And he saw you as the one person who survived everything with him — the one constant in a world that refused to stay still.

Even now, decades later, you still walk side by side like no time passed at all.

Two soldiers. Two ghosts. Two survivors.

And still — best friends.

Or more.