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breakinglight11Forever Captain:
“Boulder in the Stream”
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~
Summary: “It’s been seven years since Steve Rogers retired to the midcentury after returning the Infinity Stones. By 1954, he’s built a contented new life as Grant Carter, Peggy’s husband and stay-at-home dad to two great kids. But he’s never been able to shake his fears of what his presence here will do to change the progress of the timeline. Or— perhaps worse —that he has no power to affect the course of events at all.
A direct continuation of “His Part to Play.” A more plot-focused adventure story.”
Previous chapters:
1. Glimmer
2. Siege
3. Backup
4. Onslaught
5. Operatives
6. Mission
7. Setting Out
Chapter summary: As Steve sets out on his mission, he reflects on his friendship with Bucky, and why they became so important to one another.
“Boulder in the Stream”
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~
Summary: “It’s been seven years since Steve Rogers retired to the midcentury after returning the Infinity Stones. By 1954, he’s built a contented new life as Grant Carter, Peggy’s husband and stay-at-home dad to two great kids. But he’s never been able to shake his fears of what his presence here will do to change the progress of the timeline. Or— perhaps worse —that he has no power to affect the course of events at all.
A direct continuation of “His Part to Play.” A more plot-focused adventure story.”
Previous chapters:
1. Glimmer
2. Siege
3. Backup
4. Onslaught
5. Operatives
6. Mission
7. Setting Out
Chapter summary: As Steve sets out on his mission, he reflects on his friendship with Bucky, and why they became so important to one another.
~~~
8. Scores in the Paper
"You holding up okay?"
Steve turned in his seat at the question, glancing over to where his old friend Gabe Jones sat piloting the plane. "Yeah," he murmured, with a shake of his head. "Just… thinking."
Gabe nodded, returning his attention to the instrument panel. "I hear you," he said. "It's a hell of a thing."
Less than twelve hours after his goodbye to Peggy, Steve and Gabe were crossing the Atlantic in a small aircraft making their way towards Europe. He thought it safest to keep his travel as separate from Peggy's as possible; if she was indeed the target, they'd certainly be tracking her to Poland, and he didn't want to lose the advantage by drawing attention to his presence there as well. Moving through any official channels seemed imprudent at this stage, but lucky for Steve, they knew the right people to help him get out under the radar.
It had taken Steve some time to reconnect with all the members of his old team when he'd made his return to the midcentury. After the war ended, the Howling Commandos were mostly still serving but frequently sent out separately, on various covert operations across the globe. He hadn't known how to safely reach out to all of them, when he was trying to keep his reappearance beneath notice. But when he'd had the good fortune to encounter Dum-Dum Dugan at precisely the right moment— the day that Elizabeth was born, as it happened —his old friend had helped him quietly spread the word.
Which brought him now to Gabe Jones, who had embraced him with tears in his eyes when they'd reunited back in 1951 for the first time since the war. And now, in 1954, it was Gabe to whom Steve reached out when he needed to travel off of the radar. Of all the commandos, he was the best by far of them behind the wheel, be it plane, ship, or automobile, and in his current service he had the means to get a man across the ocean.
"You sure you want to get wrapped up in this?" Steve had made sure to ask Gabe before they set out. He flew transports mostly now, moving men and equipment as needed across the globe, and had in large part retired from covert ops. He had a family to think of too these days, a wife and three little girls whose photographs were mounted over the control panel.
But when he asked, Gabe didn't hesitate. "That's Barnes out there. One of our own. I'll do what I can, if it means we haven't lost him for good." Because that was what it meant to serve together as the Commandos had. "And I've got a transatlantic coming up. Cargo flight, too. I think they won't notice a little extra weight onboard off the manifest."
The journey gave Steve and Gabe a chance to catch up. They swapped stories of their families, of what occupied them in life now that the war was over. The Jones kids weren't too far off in age from the Carters, from three-year-old Daisy, now talking up a storm, six-year-old Myra, who had just started ballet classes, to eight-year-old Viola, whose only thought and wish in the world was to have a pony of her own. Gabe's wife, Patience, had a brother who worked on a ranch in Montana, and when Viola had the chance to ride for the first time on their last vacation, the obsession had begun.
"I tell you, pal, I rue the day I let that girl touch one hair on that horse's hide," Gabe grumbled. "That mistake's going to come out of my wallet 'til the day she's out of the house." And Steve had chuckled in sympathy; for all he knew, his own little ones might be the same in a few years.
The flight was long enough, though, that eventually they fell into a companionable silence, that allowed Steve's rumination to begin again. It felt good to work with one of the old crew, a truly decent man on whom he knew he could rely. If anything, it made him miss Bucky more than usual.
They were in many ways an unlikely pair, Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes. While Steve had spent all his early years stuck inside, confined to sedentary pursuits due to his many illnesses, Bucky was adventurous and athletic, always roving the city and stirring up hell. But they'd been instant friends from the day they first met when they were just boys, growing up together in the streets of the same Brooklyn neighborhood.
Steve remembered he'd been seven or eight years old. He spent so many of his early days in the local library back then, only leaving when the doors closed, even though his mother was still away at work. One evening he'd been rushing to make it home even though an empty apartment awaited him, in an effort to get back before dark. Kids of his generation might have had a lack of supervision that would have shuddered his Twenty-First Century friends, but it certainly wasn't because they thought the streets were safe.
Rushing, however, could be tough on a small boy with every manner of health problem you could name. Exertion and nerves had gotten the better of him, and he'd only just gotten into to his own neighborhood when the lung spasms began. He groped for the wall of the alley to steady himself, but had to settle for the edge of the nearby dumpster. He bent over his shoes, clinging to the metal for dear life as the asthmatic coughing wracked his body and threatened to knock him off his feet.
He'd been at it for a little while when the voice cut in. "Hey. You okay there?"
Steve turned his head. He saw another boy, about his age, standing in the alley, already much taller than him with a mass of wavy dark hair. He was regarding Steve with concern as he hacked and gasped.
Steve sucked in a breath, and made himself straighten. "Yeah," he wheezed. "Got asthma. It just happens sometimes." He coughed into the crook of his arm. "S'okay, I only need another minute."
Steve knelt beside the dumpster, staring at the new white laces tied on the boy's scuffed brown boots. After a moment, however, the boots took steps toward him, until the boy was close enough to sit down cross-legged on the pavement beside him.
He stuck out his hand, and Steve weakly took it. "Name's Bucky. Well, James Buchanan Barnes— but I like Bucky better. What's yours?"
"Steve," he answered between coughs. "Steve Rogers."
"Nice to meet you, Steve. Do you live around here?"
Steve started to answer, but Bucky waved him off as he started to wheeze. "Wait, you save your breath. Don't worry, I can talk about things." The other boy thought hard for a minute. "You like baseball, Steve?"
He managed a laugh. "Everybody likes baseball."
Bucky grinned. "Hell, yeah!" And Steve, whose mother didn't allow him to swear, had to admit he was impressed with the other boy's fearless abandon.
From there, he chatted amiably about his favorite players, games he'd seen, and his love for the Brooklyn Baseball Club. Back then, they hadn't had an official name yet, and folks called them everything from the Grays, the Bridegrooms, and the Robins before the Dodgers had finally stuck— though Bucky's dad, he said, preferred the more colloquial moniker of Dem Bums. And even though he hated those damn Yankees like any good Brooklyn boy, he had to admit, he sure did like watching Babe Ruth, the Great Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, knock those homers out of the park.
Steve focused on the words, relaxing into the distraction. It pulled him through the heaving of his tightened lungs, until at last his airways began to reopen. It wasn't too long, thank God, before his breathing evened out; he'd caught it before it got too bad. "I think I'm okay now."
"Good." Bucky nodded, as if satisfied. He planted his palms on his knees and leaned on them, as if about to stand. "Well. I'd better go, got to get home to dinner. You get a move on, too, before you miss yours."
Steve shook his head. "Nah. My ma doesn't get off shift until late tonight."
"Huh. What about your dad?"
"Don't got one. He died in the war."
"Brothers? Sisters?"
Again his head shook. "Just me and Ma."
Bucky considered, nodded once, then finally unfolded his legs to stand. "All right. Come on."
"What?" Steve asked as the other boy dragged him up with a rough pull on his elbow.
"You gotta eat, don't you? You're coming with me."
As with the swear, Bucky was so sure and confident Steve could do nothing but follow. He trailed uncertainly after, threading an unfamiliar way through the neighborhood until they arrived at a brownstone a few blocks away from his own. He remembered how nervous, how out of place he'd felt, standing there in the Barneses' warm, bustling kitchen. Would they send him away, throw him out? But Bucky stood there in front of his mother and declared, "Here's my friend Steve. He's hungry."
And Winifred Barnes looked him up and down— taking in, no doubt, his scrawny limbs and rattling chest —and turned back to the china hutch. "I'll set another place," she said. Steve sat down to dinner with the whole of the Barnes family, mother, father, Bucky, and his sister Rebecca, to a simple meal of chicken soup and brown bread. It was delicious, and he'd never forget it.
They'd been inseparable since that day. Now, he had someone to walk home from school with, as it turned out Bucky was just one grade ahead of him at P.S. 172. They hit up the libraries in summer, skating rinks in the winter, and game after game the Dodgers played in the spring. Bucky made sure he never went alone or hungry again, and when the bullies inevitably came after him, Bucky would bravely stick out his chest and throw himself between them, to make sure his friend was safe too.
It meant a lot to Steve, to have such a friend after feeling like an outcast for so long. Still, Steve felt embarrassed sometimes, by just how much he needed him. No matter what, Bucky always stuck by him, even as they grew out of childhood, and the responsibilities of life grew heavier. He got a job on the docks as a longshoreman to help out his parents and sisters, working long hours doing hard labor even as he tried to keep up his grades in school.
Steve remembered one occasion where things had been particularly rough on Buck, when the hours were long, the furnace needed work, he had to get uptown to fix a sink for his grandmother, and he'd had a cold in his head that he just couldn't seem to shake. He'd been so busy Steve had hardly seen him— except when he'd stepped in on Steve's behalf when some local punk made a crack about the morals of unmarried shanty Irish nurses.
"You didn't have to do that, Buck," he told him as they perched on a brick half-wall, eyeing the fight bites visible on Bucky's still-swollen knuckles.
"Sure I did. Nobody talks about your ma that way."
Steve sighed. "Still. I know you got a lot on you. The last thing you need is one more burden."
One big battered fist clamped down on his shoulder, as it had in so many tough times before. "You're not a burden, Steve. You're my friend. Remember, buddy— I'm with you 'til the end of the line."
Bucky was about to go when Steve suddenly stopped him. "Oh, wait, I almost forgot." He fished around in his pocket, until he found the crumpled clipping of newspaper he'd shoved in there. He smoothed it out on the wall between them. "Got this for you."
Bucky turned almost his whole body to look at the clipping. "What's that?"
"Scores from the Dodgers-Giants game this week. In case you missed it."
His friend looked up to blink at him. "You saved this? For me?"
Steve shrugged, and dropped his head. "Well. You were busy this week. Thought you'd want to know."
Bucky was still for one beat longer, staring down at the paper. Then suddenly he reached out with one arm and crushed Steve into a sideways hug.
"Aw, easy," Steve chuckled, collarbone slightly bent. "It's no big deal."
"Maybe. But… thanks, pal." The big arm pressed him one last time, then released. "Thanks a lot."
It didn't seem like much then, compared to how often Bucky kept him safe or fed. But a guy like him, strong enough to take care of everybody around him, folks didn't think ever needed anything. Much less being remembered or thought of. Steve couldn't understand until later, in the years carrying the weight of Captain America, just how much more it meant than just a few scores in a clipping of newspaper.
Back then, he'd always been the one to need Bucky— to lend him a hand, to stick up for him. It was only once they started serving together that Steve felt things even out a little, when they were finally able to watch each other's back. At least, until that fateful day over the mountain pass, a day that even now still haunted Steve's memory. But after their reunion in 2014 and discovering his old friend's fate, Bucky had needed him for once, to protect him, to speak up for him, to try and reach him from where he'd gone.
Now, in this impossible scenario of his travels through time, he actually had the chance to spare Bucky so much of that suffering. After everything they'd meant to each other, how could he not do everything he could? Even if fate, the weight of all the world and all of time, was working against him… he loved Bucky enough to try.
~~~
8. Scores in the Paper
"You holding up okay?"
Steve turned in his seat at the question, glancing over to where his old friend Gabe Jones sat piloting the plane. "Yeah," he murmured, with a shake of his head. "Just… thinking."
Gabe nodded, returning his attention to the instrument panel. "I hear you," he said. "It's a hell of a thing."
Less than twelve hours after his goodbye to Peggy, Steve and Gabe were crossing the Atlantic in a small aircraft making their way towards Europe. He thought it safest to keep his travel as separate from Peggy's as possible; if she was indeed the target, they'd certainly be tracking her to Poland, and he didn't want to lose the advantage by drawing attention to his presence there as well. Moving through any official channels seemed imprudent at this stage, but lucky for Steve, they knew the right people to help him get out under the radar.
It had taken Steve some time to reconnect with all the members of his old team when he'd made his return to the midcentury. After the war ended, the Howling Commandos were mostly still serving but frequently sent out separately, on various covert operations across the globe. He hadn't known how to safely reach out to all of them, when he was trying to keep his reappearance beneath notice. But when he'd had the good fortune to encounter Dum-Dum Dugan at precisely the right moment— the day that Elizabeth was born, as it happened —his old friend had helped him quietly spread the word.
Which brought him now to Gabe Jones, who had embraced him with tears in his eyes when they'd reunited back in 1951 for the first time since the war. And now, in 1954, it was Gabe to whom Steve reached out when he needed to travel off of the radar. Of all the commandos, he was the best by far of them behind the wheel, be it plane, ship, or automobile, and in his current service he had the means to get a man across the ocean.
"You sure you want to get wrapped up in this?" Steve had made sure to ask Gabe before they set out. He flew transports mostly now, moving men and equipment as needed across the globe, and had in large part retired from covert ops. He had a family to think of too these days, a wife and three little girls whose photographs were mounted over the control panel.
But when he asked, Gabe didn't hesitate. "That's Barnes out there. One of our own. I'll do what I can, if it means we haven't lost him for good." Because that was what it meant to serve together as the Commandos had. "And I've got a transatlantic coming up. Cargo flight, too. I think they won't notice a little extra weight onboard off the manifest."
The journey gave Steve and Gabe a chance to catch up. They swapped stories of their families, of what occupied them in life now that the war was over. The Jones kids weren't too far off in age from the Carters, from three-year-old Daisy, now talking up a storm, six-year-old Myra, who had just started ballet classes, to eight-year-old Viola, whose only thought and wish in the world was to have a pony of her own. Gabe's wife, Patience, had a brother who worked on a ranch in Montana, and when Viola had the chance to ride for the first time on their last vacation, the obsession had begun.
"I tell you, pal, I rue the day I let that girl touch one hair on that horse's hide," Gabe grumbled. "That mistake's going to come out of my wallet 'til the day she's out of the house." And Steve had chuckled in sympathy; for all he knew, his own little ones might be the same in a few years.
The flight was long enough, though, that eventually they fell into a companionable silence, that allowed Steve's rumination to begin again. It felt good to work with one of the old crew, a truly decent man on whom he knew he could rely. If anything, it made him miss Bucky more than usual.
They were in many ways an unlikely pair, Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes. While Steve had spent all his early years stuck inside, confined to sedentary pursuits due to his many illnesses, Bucky was adventurous and athletic, always roving the city and stirring up hell. But they'd been instant friends from the day they first met when they were just boys, growing up together in the streets of the same Brooklyn neighborhood.
Steve remembered he'd been seven or eight years old. He spent so many of his early days in the local library back then, only leaving when the doors closed, even though his mother was still away at work. One evening he'd been rushing to make it home even though an empty apartment awaited him, in an effort to get back before dark. Kids of his generation might have had a lack of supervision that would have shuddered his Twenty-First Century friends, but it certainly wasn't because they thought the streets were safe.
Rushing, however, could be tough on a small boy with every manner of health problem you could name. Exertion and nerves had gotten the better of him, and he'd only just gotten into to his own neighborhood when the lung spasms began. He groped for the wall of the alley to steady himself, but had to settle for the edge of the nearby dumpster. He bent over his shoes, clinging to the metal for dear life as the asthmatic coughing wracked his body and threatened to knock him off his feet.
He'd been at it for a little while when the voice cut in. "Hey. You okay there?"
Steve turned his head. He saw another boy, about his age, standing in the alley, already much taller than him with a mass of wavy dark hair. He was regarding Steve with concern as he hacked and gasped.
Steve sucked in a breath, and made himself straighten. "Yeah," he wheezed. "Got asthma. It just happens sometimes." He coughed into the crook of his arm. "S'okay, I only need another minute."
Steve knelt beside the dumpster, staring at the new white laces tied on the boy's scuffed brown boots. After a moment, however, the boots took steps toward him, until the boy was close enough to sit down cross-legged on the pavement beside him.
He stuck out his hand, and Steve weakly took it. "Name's Bucky. Well, James Buchanan Barnes— but I like Bucky better. What's yours?"
"Steve," he answered between coughs. "Steve Rogers."
"Nice to meet you, Steve. Do you live around here?"
Steve started to answer, but Bucky waved him off as he started to wheeze. "Wait, you save your breath. Don't worry, I can talk about things." The other boy thought hard for a minute. "You like baseball, Steve?"
He managed a laugh. "Everybody likes baseball."
Bucky grinned. "Hell, yeah!" And Steve, whose mother didn't allow him to swear, had to admit he was impressed with the other boy's fearless abandon.
From there, he chatted amiably about his favorite players, games he'd seen, and his love for the Brooklyn Baseball Club. Back then, they hadn't had an official name yet, and folks called them everything from the Grays, the Bridegrooms, and the Robins before the Dodgers had finally stuck— though Bucky's dad, he said, preferred the more colloquial moniker of Dem Bums. And even though he hated those damn Yankees like any good Brooklyn boy, he had to admit, he sure did like watching Babe Ruth, the Great Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, knock those homers out of the park.
Steve focused on the words, relaxing into the distraction. It pulled him through the heaving of his tightened lungs, until at last his airways began to reopen. It wasn't too long, thank God, before his breathing evened out; he'd caught it before it got too bad. "I think I'm okay now."
"Good." Bucky nodded, as if satisfied. He planted his palms on his knees and leaned on them, as if about to stand. "Well. I'd better go, got to get home to dinner. You get a move on, too, before you miss yours."
Steve shook his head. "Nah. My ma doesn't get off shift until late tonight."
"Huh. What about your dad?"
"Don't got one. He died in the war."
"Brothers? Sisters?"
Again his head shook. "Just me and Ma."
Bucky considered, nodded once, then finally unfolded his legs to stand. "All right. Come on."
"What?" Steve asked as the other boy dragged him up with a rough pull on his elbow.
"You gotta eat, don't you? You're coming with me."
As with the swear, Bucky was so sure and confident Steve could do nothing but follow. He trailed uncertainly after, threading an unfamiliar way through the neighborhood until they arrived at a brownstone a few blocks away from his own. He remembered how nervous, how out of place he'd felt, standing there in the Barneses' warm, bustling kitchen. Would they send him away, throw him out? But Bucky stood there in front of his mother and declared, "Here's my friend Steve. He's hungry."
And Winifred Barnes looked him up and down— taking in, no doubt, his scrawny limbs and rattling chest —and turned back to the china hutch. "I'll set another place," she said. Steve sat down to dinner with the whole of the Barnes family, mother, father, Bucky, and his sister Rebecca, to a simple meal of chicken soup and brown bread. It was delicious, and he'd never forget it.
They'd been inseparable since that day. Now, he had someone to walk home from school with, as it turned out Bucky was just one grade ahead of him at P.S. 172. They hit up the libraries in summer, skating rinks in the winter, and game after game the Dodgers played in the spring. Bucky made sure he never went alone or hungry again, and when the bullies inevitably came after him, Bucky would bravely stick out his chest and throw himself between them, to make sure his friend was safe too.
It meant a lot to Steve, to have such a friend after feeling like an outcast for so long. Still, Steve felt embarrassed sometimes, by just how much he needed him. No matter what, Bucky always stuck by him, even as they grew out of childhood, and the responsibilities of life grew heavier. He got a job on the docks as a longshoreman to help out his parents and sisters, working long hours doing hard labor even as he tried to keep up his grades in school.
Steve remembered one occasion where things had been particularly rough on Buck, when the hours were long, the furnace needed work, he had to get uptown to fix a sink for his grandmother, and he'd had a cold in his head that he just couldn't seem to shake. He'd been so busy Steve had hardly seen him— except when he'd stepped in on Steve's behalf when some local punk made a crack about the morals of unmarried shanty Irish nurses.
"You didn't have to do that, Buck," he told him as they perched on a brick half-wall, eyeing the fight bites visible on Bucky's still-swollen knuckles.
"Sure I did. Nobody talks about your ma that way."
Steve sighed. "Still. I know you got a lot on you. The last thing you need is one more burden."
One big battered fist clamped down on his shoulder, as it had in so many tough times before. "You're not a burden, Steve. You're my friend. Remember, buddy— I'm with you 'til the end of the line."
Bucky was about to go when Steve suddenly stopped him. "Oh, wait, I almost forgot." He fished around in his pocket, until he found the crumpled clipping of newspaper he'd shoved in there. He smoothed it out on the wall between them. "Got this for you."
Bucky turned almost his whole body to look at the clipping. "What's that?"
"Scores from the Dodgers-Giants game this week. In case you missed it."
His friend looked up to blink at him. "You saved this? For me?"
Steve shrugged, and dropped his head. "Well. You were busy this week. Thought you'd want to know."
Bucky was still for one beat longer, staring down at the paper. Then suddenly he reached out with one arm and crushed Steve into a sideways hug.
"Aw, easy," Steve chuckled, collarbone slightly bent. "It's no big deal."
"Maybe. But… thanks, pal." The big arm pressed him one last time, then released. "Thanks a lot."
It didn't seem like much then, compared to how often Bucky kept him safe or fed. But a guy like him, strong enough to take care of everybody around him, folks didn't think ever needed anything. Much less being remembered or thought of. Steve couldn't understand until later, in the years carrying the weight of Captain America, just how much more it meant than just a few scores in a clipping of newspaper.
Back then, he'd always been the one to need Bucky— to lend him a hand, to stick up for him. It was only once they started serving together that Steve felt things even out a little, when they were finally able to watch each other's back. At least, until that fateful day over the mountain pass, a day that even now still haunted Steve's memory. But after their reunion in 2014 and discovering his old friend's fate, Bucky had needed him for once, to protect him, to speak up for him, to try and reach him from where he'd gone.
Now, in this impossible scenario of his travels through time, he actually had the chance to spare Bucky so much of that suffering. After everything they'd meant to each other, how could he not do everything he could? Even if fate, the weight of all the world and all of time, was working against him… he loved Bucky enough to try.
~~~
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