Everybody's doing it and here's my version...

you're a boomerang, you'll see
Avengers; Steve/Peggy, Steve/Bucky; post-Endgame; au; g; 1850 words
"It's not goodbye," Steve insists. "I'll see you again."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. I'll just be taking the long way back."

Title from Snow Patrol. Thanks to Angelgazing for listening.

Or read it on AO3.

~*~

you're a boomerang, you'll see

After Tony's funeral, and after the smaller, less crowded wake they have for Nat, Steve tells Bruce he'll return the stones. Bruce nods and gets to work on the itinerary. Steve wanders the grounds around the lake house in the dark, the stars sharp and bright overheard and his hands shoved into his pockets, thumb worrying over the smooth metal of his compass.

His meandering takes him to the room Bucky's staying in and all he has to do is knock—Bucky takes one look at his face and shakes his head, letting out a rueful little laugh Steve hasn't heard since 1943.

"You're not coming back, are you?" He glances down, away, long strands of his hair hiding his eyes.

"I—I don't know, Buck. I don't think so." He looks over Bucky's shoulder at the lamp on the bedside table, the book splayed face down on the comforter. Bucky'd always been rough on his books—dog-earing pages, scribbling notes in the margins, and on one memorable occasion, throwing a book against the bedroom wall with a disgusted, "That's not how a combustion engine works!" The book currently having its spine broken is called The Gone-Away World and Steve decides he doesn't need to know anymore about that.

Bucky nods. "Okay. I—Okay." He palms the back of Steve's neck, so familiar and loved and missed that Steve's heart does a little stutter at the touch. Bucky presses their foreheads together—he's already brushed his teeth and Steve breathes in peppermint-scented air and tries to hold it in his lungs. He's tired. He's so tired. He can see his exhaustion mirrored in Bucky's eyes, and for the first time in a long time, he feels known. Natasha had seen him, had understood him, in ways that almost no one else ever has, but Bucky knows him like he knows his own face, and that makes everything infinitely easier and harder at the same time. The moment is endless and over too soon and possibly the last of its kind. But Steve can't think about that as Bucky lets him go. "I get it, I guess."

"Yeah," Steve says, deflating. He'd expected more of an argument maybe, but Bucky's respecting his choice. He always has. Oh, he'd happily mouth off about it to hell and back, but he knew better than anyone that trying to argue Steve out of a decision was like trying to argue with the sea.

"Take care of yourself."

"It's not goodbye," Steve insists. "I'll see you again."

"You think so?"

"Yeah." Steve has to believe it. "I'll just be taking the long way back."

"If you say so." He nods but his tone is skeptical. Then he gives Steve a wry half-grin, the most he's looked like himself since this awkward conversation started. "Give my regards to Carter."

Steve huffs and can't help but smile in return. "I will."

Bucky steps back into his room, hand on the door, already closing it. Steve tries to shrug off the pain of that; it's only what he deserves. "Get some sleep, Steve."

"You too, Bucky. Night."

"Good night." The door closes with a quiet click, and then the sliver of light beneath the door vanishes.

Steve stands in the hallway feeling like a jerk. He sets his jaw and squares his shoulders. Tomorrow's the first day of the rest of his life.

*

Steve isn't sure any trip involving time travel can be considered long, but he's worn out by the time he reaches 1947. Los Angeles is unfamiliar—he'd spent a few weeks there in '43, making films, and a few more weeks there on a mission for SHIELD in 2013, and neither recollection helps him now—but he eventually finds his way to the address he'd found for Peggy in the old SHIELD files.

She greets him at the door with a shotgun and he has to do some pretty fast talking to get inside without getting shot.

They don't do much talking after that. He finally gets his dance, sweet and slow to the honeyed voice of Ella Fitzgerald, and then Peggy takes him to bed.

Afterward, when he's able to think again, he presses a kiss to the top of her head, then her left eyelid, her nose, her cheek. She laughs softly and murmurs something indistinct with sleep that might be "I love you" or might be his name. Maybe they're the same thing..

"Bucky sends his regards," he says, and all her languid drowsiness disappears.

"Barnes is dead." She pushes her way out from under his arm and stands, pulling her robe on in one swift motion.

Steve sits up too. "No, he's not. He was taken by the Russians. But we can save him."

"You've been drowned in the North Atlantic for two years, Steve. How can you possibly know that?"

Steve sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "It's a long story."

"I've got time."

He laughs at that, though there's an edge to it. "I guess you do." He tries to get his thoughts in order—he doesn't understand a lot about this time travel stuff, but he's pretty sure none of the movies Sam and Nat made him watch while they were on the run were anything like factual, so he doesn't think he's going to cause the future to be any worse than it already was. Is. That future is his past, according to Bruce, so they can make a new one now—save Bucky, burn HYDRA out of SHIELD before it even gets a toehold, be ready for Thanos years before he arrives...

"That wasn't an invitation to stall."

"I wasn't!" At her frown he temporizes, "I didn't mean to. I'm just thinking of how to explain it so you'll believe me."

"You might be surprised at what I can believe."

He can tell his face is going dopey when he smiles at her. "I might, huh. Well, okay then." He intends to only give her a sketch but her incisive questioning leads to more and more details being filled in, and he remembers how sharp her briefings always were, and how penetrating her debriefings could be, especially when a mission turned on some minor detail that someone less discerning would overlook.

He talks long into the night, the dark warmth of her bedroom making it easy to tell her much more than he'd ever planned, and it's late enough to be called early when they're done.

"I'll make some tea," she says, leading him to the kitchen, "and then you can be on your way."

"On my—on my way? I was hoping, I thought I—we might—Peggy, I love you."

She turns and gives him a soft smile and a brief kiss. "I love you too, Steve, but if what you're saying is true, you are not my Steve."

"What does that mean?"

"I've never known a Steve Rogers who gave up and ran away from a fight. So clearly, you are not the same man I knew."

Steve pushes a hand through his hair in frustration. "Peggy—"

"You're tired, darling, and you've lost so much." She cups his cheek gently. "I understand. But you have a whole life to live in that future of yours."

He frowns, and presses a kiss to the palm of her hand. "A life without you."

"Yes, I suppose so." She sighs. "As I lived mine without you."

"It doesn't have to be that way now, though. I'm here."

"You're here, and he's still frozen in the wreck of the Valkyrie. Is that really the approach you want to take with me?"

Steve sags in defeat and slumps into a chair. "Yes?"

"No." She sits down beside him and takes his hands in hers. "This is a lovely interlude, a sweet dream, but you can't come back and live your life in the past. None of us can. We must move forward, always, or what is the point?"

He lets out a little huff. "You—future you—told me that none of us can go back."

"And I was right. You should listen to me. I'm very smart, you know."

He lifts her hands to his lips and kisses them, one after the other. "I know."

"Now tell me everything I need to know to keep this terrible future at bay. It seems I have a lot of work to do." She squeezes his hands. "We both do."

"All right," he says, unhappy but unable to fight her.

She makes tea and takes notes as he details the major events of the next seventy years. "Finding you and Barnes will be my first priority. Howard has been looking for you, you know."

"I know," he says. "Tell him—Make sure it doesn't ruin things with his family, okay? He'll have a son." Steve stops and forces a mouthful of tea past the lump in his throat. "The world needs him. He's a good man."

"I will," she says. "I promise."

Steve talks himself hoarse, and when he's done, he takes Peggy back to bed. If now is all he gets, he's going to make the most of it.

*

Steve steps off the platform at the appointed time, resigned to his fate. The look of shocked joy on Bucky's face jolts him out of his lethargy and the smile he musters in response is sincere, if small. He speaks to Sam first, though, gives him the spare shield Howard had made and Peggy had kept for him, and his blessing to become the new Captain America.

Then he walks over to Bucky and slings an arm over his shoulder. "Told you I'd see you again."

"Carter kicked your ass, huh?"

Steve's smile widens. "She sure did."

"I always liked that about her."

"I know you did." It's comfortable, being with Bucky like this. He'd missed Bucky so much for so long, and then been so ready to walk away from him once he got him back. He's not sure what that says about him. Nothing good, probably. "She sends her regards."

"I know it's selfish," Bucky says, "but I'm glad you came back. I know I could have been fine without you, but I'm glad I get to have you here with me."

"Me too, Buck." Steve remembers his first days out of the ice, shock after shock of the future and then aliens and Avengers and everything being too much all at once. If he'd had Bucky with him then, maybe he'd have handled it better. Maybe he can be what Bucky needs him to be now.

"And in that other timeline, Peggy saves the both of us."

Steve laughs then, loud and genuine. "Of course she does. She'll make a better world, and we'll fix this one." He can't muster up his usual conviction, but Bucky doesn't call him on it.

"Come on," Bucky says. "We should eat. I'll make pancakes."

"Okay," Steve replies, and lets Bucky lead him inside. It's the first day of the rest of his life. He might as well start it off right.

end

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Feedback is always welcome.

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