Chapter Text
“I know I can’t be the only one who’s holding on for dear life.”
The dishwasher hummed in the quiet of the Brooklyn apartment, the low whir of it nearly drowned by the steady patter of January sleet against the windows. Summer was long gone. Autumn had flown by. The city felt colder now—emptier in ways that had nothing to do with the weather.
Bucky leaned against the white-grained counter, thumb skimming the speech he’d been handed for his next campaign stop. Words blurred. Promises he didn’t know if he could keep. His eyes flicked to the burner phone on the table. Still silent.
Sam hadn’t heard anything. Not yesterday. Not the day before. Not the day before that.
He sighed, dragging a hand over his face and through his hair—longer now, curling at the ends. The beard too. No point in shaving. No reason to pretend like anything was normal.
The burner had come in a plain envelope. No return address. Just a note tucked inside: Just in case.
It wasn’t much. But it was something. And it was all he had.
His real phone buzzed.
Claire DuMont: We’re set for Kansas City.
He stared at the screen a second too long, pulse slowing. Then: 👍
He crossed the kitchen and opened the dishwasher, steam curling out like breath in the winter cold. His left shoulder flexed. He clicked his vibranium arm back into place, rolling it once, twice, to feel it recalibrate.
Bucky stared out the sleet-slicked window, arms crossed, gaze tracking a pale blur on the sidewalk below. It moved—barely. A small twitch against the static gray of the storm. He squinted. Blinked.
A white blob.
He furrowed his brows. Didn’t look like trash. Didn’t move like it either.
By the time his brain caught up, his body was already in motion—jacket tugged over his tank top, campaign notes forgotten on the counter. He jogged down the stairs, boots thudding softly against the worn steps, and pushed the front door open.
The sleet and rain soaked his hair in seconds.
There, huddled on the sidewalk, was a white kitten—ears flat, soaked to the bone, mewling with a pitiful little rasp. It blinked up at him with watery blue eyes, as if it had been waiting.
“Shit,” Bucky breathed, crouching. “Hey, baby. What the hell are you doing out here?”
The kitten didn’t run. Just gave a soft, wheezy cry like it was asking the same question.
He didn’t hesitate. Scooped it up, pressed the shivering ball of fur to his chest, and zipped his jacket halfway to shield it.
“Come on, baby,” he murmured. “Let’s get you inside and safe.”
Back in his apartment, Bucky moved on instinct.
He flipped on the kitchen light, dim and yellow, casting long shadows across the quiet space. The kitten was still trembling inside his jacket, wet fur clinging to fragile bones.
“Hang on,” he murmured, crossing to the sink. He set the kitten gently in the dry basin, where it slumped like a soggy towel, letting out a wheezy squeak of protest.
Bucky dug under the sink, pulled out a bottle of dish soap, and turned it over in his hands. His eyes scanned the back label like he was decoding Hydra files.
No dyes. No bleach. No parabens. “That’ll have to do.”
He ran the faucet until it turned warm, then cupped water into his hand to test the temperature again. Slowly, carefully, he lathered the kitten’s muddy fur, the little thing mewing in miserable protest but too exhausted to fight.
“Yeah, I know,” Bucky muttered. “I hate baths too.”
When the water finally ran clean, he wrapped the kitten in a soft towel from the back of the chair and rubbed gently, cradling it like it might break. Once dry enough, the kitten blinked up at him, dazed and pathetic, like a half-drowned marshmallow with judgmental eyes.
Bucky leaned back against the counter, towel in one hand, kitten swaddled in the other. His hair was dripping, his socks were wet.
He stared at it. It stared back.
“Now what?” he asked it.
The kitten sneezed.
"You’re right,” Bucky said, scratching gently behind the kitten’s damp ears. “You need a doctor’s appointment.”
The kitten purred faintly, its tiny body curling deeper into the towel.
He spent the next hour calling every vet clinic in Brooklyn, one hand scrolling while the other kept the kitten tucked warm against his chest. Finally, a tired-sounding receptionist at an emergency animal hospital said they could fit him in tonight.
Bucky stood, scooped the kitten into his jacket again, and grabbed his phone off the counter. His campaign speech sat beside it, untouched. The burner phone lay next to both—silent and cold, like it had been every day since she left.
He didn’t take it.
He shut the door behind him.
And in the quiet darkness of the apartment, the burner phone began to ring.
The vet said she was fine. Cold, a little underfed, but otherwise healthy—and a girl. So here he was cradling a cotton ball kitten in his leather jacket, his ball cap deflecting sleet as they waited. The kitten would need a name, and more than that it had to have a purpose, a story. He shivered a little in the cold—New York had a polar vortex warning. "Worse than the alps." He muttered to the kitten, and was relieved when the cab finally pulled up to the curb.
It hit him after they stopped at the pet store. Out of the blue.
“Alpine,” Bucky told her softly on the cab ride home, and she blinked up at him like she already knew that would be her name. Back at the apartment, he unloaded the cat carrier, a fresh litter box, and two bags of treats he didn’t remember buying. Alpine prowled the floor in cautious little steps, her tail flicking.
He set her food down, rubbed his hand over his face, and reached for the burner just to check—
1 Missed Call – Unknown Number
His stomach dropped. There was only one person with the burners number.
Bucky licked his lips and closed his eyes. Swallowed hard as he hit call. The line rang once… twice…
Nothing.
He thumped the burner lightly on the counter, jaw tight.
125 days.
No calls. No texts. No her.
His eyes flicked to Alpine, who blinked up at him from the counter. He exhaled, the fight leaving him in one slow breath.
“This is your fault,” he said softly, petting her tiny head. “Missed it because of you, kid.”
But he didn’t really sound mad.
Alpine butted her little head against his metal hand, sniffed it delicately.
“You’d like her,” he murmured. “I bet she’d like you too.”
He scooped the little fluffball up and carried her toward the bedroom—toward the pile of blankets on the floor. He hadn’t slept in the bed since she sent him back to Brooklyn. Since she’d gone dark.
They all had.
Omega was off-grid—not for a mission, but for safety.
He laid down, the kitten finding the nook between his shoulder and jaw to curl up in, her tiny paws kneading biscuits, her little purr rumbling through her chest.
He fell asleep to it.
And he slept right through the burner phone vibrating again in the kitchen.
The morning dawned cold but bright, sunlight glinting off the crusted sleet that clung to the windows like frostbitten ivy. Outside, Brooklyn still wore its coat of gray—salt-streaked streets, stoic buildings, the occasional car crawling past with wipers squealing against frozen glass. But inside the apartment, warmth was beginning to creep in, slow and quiet.
Bucky stirred with a grunt when a tiny paw batted at his nose. Then came a gentle headbutt beneath his chin.
“What?” he rasped, voice thick with sleep and disuse. He rolled onto his side, pulling the sheet higher. “I barely slept—leave me alone.”
Alpine, unimpressed, responded by scaling him like a snowy peak—claws gripping his scalp as her back legs scrambled for leverage. He swore under his breath as she crossed from one ear to the other, tail flicking him in the face like a whip.
“Okay, okay—Jesus, I’m up.”
He sat up with a groan, the sheet falling into a tangle at his waist. Morning light crept in around the edges of the curtain, soft and pale. His watch blinked 7:28 a.m. in stark digital judgment.
“Seriously?” he asked Alpine, who now sat like a gargoyle at the edge of the makeshift bed—her expression blank, her posture regal, like she’d just defeated a mountain lion instead of a grown man in a sleepy haze. “It’s not even seven-thirty. I don’t even have to do anything today.”
He reached for his phone on the nightstand, thumb already prepped to hit ‘snooze’ on a morning that required nothing from him.
Claire: Final draft sent to your email. I removed the line about toppling government to start over.
Bucky: 😒
He let out a dry laugh. “Cowards,” he muttered, tossing the phone lightly onto the blanket. The campaign team had been sanding the edges off him since the day he agreed to run. Soften the lines. Smile more. Use fewer threats in speeches.
The phone buzzed again.
Sam: Morning, sunshine. You still coming down to D.C. in a couple weeks? And what the hell is that white thing you sent me?
His mouth twitched—almost a smile.
Bucky: Yes to D.C. That’s Alpine. Congrats, Sammy. You’re an uncle.
He dropped the phone to the mattress before it could bait him into doomscrolling. No messages from her. No intel. No breadcrumbs. Just the news cycle on repeat, nothing new on the investigation on who set Sablepoint on fire, on who killed the director of it, nothing on the car bomb that killed an employee of Sablepoint.
He stretched, spine cracking in protest, muscles stiff from another night on the floor. “What’s the point,” he muttered to himself, pushing to his feet.
Alpine weaved between his ankles like a furry landmine, nearly tripping him at every step. She beat him to the bathroom and sat patiently on the bathmat like a gremlin summoned from steam. Her tail flicked once. She blinked up at him with those cool blue eyes.
“We're gonna have to set some ground rules,” he grumbled, turning the hot water tap. “No murder attempts before breakfast.”
The pipes groaned. Steam rolled up in thick clouds, fogging the mirror almost instantly. He stripped his sweatpants off with minimal ceremony and stepped into the spray, bracing one hand on the wall as the first blast of heat slapped across his shoulders.
It stung. It always did. Like waking up after frostbite.
He bowed his head beneath the stream, letting the hot water pound across his shoulders, sluicing down his back in steady rivulets. His hair hung in thick, wet strands over his forehead, plastered to his temples.
The dull clink of metal echoed as his dog tags tapped lightly against the tile wall with every breath. They were a constant—cold when he needed grounding, weighty when his hands shook, proof that he was still a soldier, still something… even when he didn’t know what the hell that meant anymore.
He stared down at the whirlpool forming around the drain. The water spun in lazy circles, carrying soap, and pieces of a life he hadn’t meant to start over. He fixated on the swirl, as if somewhere in its churning spiral, the answer might surface—where she was. If she was safe. If she was still breathing. If she ever thought about him the way he thought about her, relentlessly and without permission.
Would he know if she were gone?
Would something inside him splinter, break open, scream out?
Were they still that tethered?
Or had those last moments in the Georgetown kitchen severed whatever thread had tied them together?
He blinked hard, and her face flashed behind his eyes anyway.
Ripley, in her favorite black shirt, her hair in a braid that had come loose at the end—standing in the kitchen under too-warm lights, her face streaked with tears . Her voice had cracked on Flea’s name. But it wasn’t the grief that haunted him—it was the rage beneath it. Cold, precise fury that rippled off her like a storm front. He’d seen it in warzones, in after-action reports, in himself. It was the look someone wore when vengeance came easier than mourning.
He’d tried to reach her then. Physically, emotionally, didn’t matter—she was already pulling away.
Bucky squeezed his eyes shut now, trying to will it out of his head, but the memory stuck fast.
They’d loaded the Bronco in silence. Wick, Bennett, Ripley… what was left of Omega. If they could even call themselves that anymore. The team was splintered, ghosts of who they were. She’d checked her weapon, tossed her plate carrier into the back, and turned to him like it was any other day, any other mission.
No goodbye kiss. No handshake. No parting hug.
Just a final look that saw everything and gave nothing back.
“Bye, Bucky.”
That was it. The last thing she said.
He’d stood there, heart in his throat, while the tires crunched over broken asphalt and the Bronco disappeared into the dusk.
They had rules—ones they all agreed on. If he didn’t hear from them in sixty days, he would go looking. That was the deal. That was the only thing keeping him from tearing the world apart to find her.
The burner phone arrived on day fifty-nine.
He had stared at it for a long time. Like maybe, if he looked long enough, it would offer more than silence.
He hadn’t heard from her since: except for the two missed calls.
Now, with the water still burning against his skin and Alpine’s tiny silhouette visible through the fogged glass, curled on the bathmat like a quiet sentinel, Bucky braced both palms against the tile and bowed his head again.
He could do another day. He could keep breathing.
But he didn’t know how many more mornings he could survive like this—holding his breath in case the next call was goodbye. Or worse—someone showing up on his doorstep with a folded flag and one of her dog tags. Maybe her watch. Something small enough to destroy him completely.
He tipped his face into the stream, water hammering down until his lungs burned. The heat blurred everything—past, present, sense of time. For a second, it almost felt like absolution. Like maybe if he stood there long enough, he could boil the ache out of himself.
He wasn’t okay.
The admission came quiet, more exhale than thought. But it was true in a way that hit him low in the chest. The words tasted like rust and soap.
And somewhere in the fog, Doc Raynor’s voice drifted up—dry, steady, maddeningly calm.
“You don’t have to fix it. You just have to feel it.”
He’d rolled his eyes when she said it in session number thirty‑something, sitting in that too‑bright room with the clock that ticked like gunfire. But now, in the small tiled silence of his apartment, it felt like the only thing keeping him upright.
It’s okay to not be okay.
He gripped the edge of the shower wall, knuckles white against porcelain, and let himself breathe through it—slow, shaky, human. Not a soldier. Not a weapon. Just a man trying to remember what it felt like to still be here.
Bucky turned off the tap. The sound of running water faded, but the pulse in his ears didn’t. He stood there for another minute, dripping onto the tile, steam curling off his skin like ghosts refusing to leave.
Another day. He could do another day.