we're only getting older || Bucky Barnes || ✔️

Part 3

He walked into the nursing home alone. With a baseball cap on his head and dark sunglasses to hide his face, Steve checked in and was directed to the common area where he would see his second family.

Steve didn't really have a family before he went into the ice, his mother having died long before he became a super soldier, but coming out of the ice 70 years later, he felt more alone than ever.

He reached out to Peggy, to Bella, Becca, and Beth, but the lives they lived was so different than his, every time he saw them, he could only imagine what could have been... what he could have lived had he not been Captain America.

Regardless of the emotional ache that came with the visits, Steve couldn't help but keep visiting. He had to keep his connection to the past and old life alive despite it growing weaker every day.

He walked to the little circular table in the corner of the recreation room. The table had a vase with a dozen yellow roses and seated there were two older women.

"Bella?" Steve asked cautiously. "Bella Barnes?"

"Barnes?" The woman said, her head turning to the sound. "I haven't been called that in many years." Her eyes widened when Steve removed his cap and glasses. "Steve?"

She stood up from her chair, albeit very slowly, and hobbled towards her brother's best friend. "Steve!"

She wrapped him in a hug and Steve felt like he was transported back to the Barnes household that was always filled with warm hugs and fresh baked cookies, courtesy of Bella.

"It's good to see you, Belle," Steve said into her shoulder. He had to crouch down to fit into her hug, since she seemed to shrink in her old age, but it was far from uncomfortable. Steve finally felt at home in the new age. "Last time I tried to visit, Beth told me you were at home with your family."

"She told me." Bella pulled back, looking Steve up and down, not releasing her hold on both his biceps. "My, my, Steve. I would say you haven't aged a day, but the last time I saw you I could have sworn you were a few feet shorter and a few pounds lighter."

Steve studied Bella the same way she was studying him. Steve noticed wrinkles where there were none before, but her (now gray) hair pulled into a sharp bun was as familiar as ever.

He knew Bella was trying to keep the tone light because that was who she was: the mediator, the peacekeeper, the calm, cool, collected older sister, but there was a guilt in him that ate him up to no end. There was no way Bella hadn't hated him when she heard the news, but the way she pushed that to the side as she stood before him now with her classic Bella smile and lovely attitude that brought up old shame he tried to hide.

And the fact that she had the same electric blue eyes as Bucky opened an old wound he had spent so long trying to heal and forget.

"I couldn't save Bucky," Steve burst out and at Bella's shocked and confused face he continued, "I tried and I am so sorry. I should have done something. It was my fault he fell that night and I am so—"

"Steve," Bella interrupted, "when you went into the ice, the whole world mourned the loss of Captain America, but to us, we lost both our brothers in one war." Bella let her hands drop to her side. "We mourned for you, Steve. Of course, the government threw you a grand funeral, but we had a small one. With our folks and the three of us. You were our family too, Steve."

She brought a hand up to Steve's face, her small, wrinkled hands wiping away at stray tears he didn't realize were falling. "It wasn't your fault. We knew you did the best you could and we are so proud of you." She let her arm loop around Steve's elbow and guided him to the table. "Come have a seat next to Becca. I'll get us some tea."