Med

little abstract intro to my bucky x original female character / AFAB reader. He's not in this clipping, but the first four chapters are up now - right here!

Salem Maria Rogers lands in 2023 with Steve’s memories layered over her own like a ghost inside her skull. She wakes up gasping at night with his battlefield instincts, the smell of gunpowder clinging to dreams she never lived. The way Bucky’s laugh used to crack in his throat, the feel of Mjolnir’s weight in her palm even though it was never her hand that raised it. When she looks in the mirror, sometimes she sees her own green eyes, sometimes she swears they flash that icy blue. Steve isn’t gone, he’s embedded, whispering advice, replaying guilt, steering her hands toward shields that aren’t there. It terrifies her and steadies her in equal measure.

Meeting Bucky, the memories are knives. She knows the choke of the cryo chamber, the red room screams, the years of blood on his hands, because Steve knew, because Steve loved him enough to carry that pain. She flinches at the sight of his metal arm, then reaches for it anyway, because the ache of familiarity pulls her in. Bucky notices. He notices how she calls him “Buck” before anyone tells her the nickname. How she knows the kind of coffee he drinks, black as penance. How she doesn’t fear the jagged silence he carries, but steps into it like she belongs there.

Warnings: Angst, Mention of injury, takes place immediately following endgame, she lands in Times Square at the same time Old Man Steve talks to Bucky and Sam, unsure of what else to put here, I've been writing for over a decade but this is the first thing I've published b/c I'm so attached to my little American Witch <3, main character is AFAB and looks like Steve Rogers (origins of mount caucus) and I truly hope this makes sense because I wrote the first four chapters in one sitting, devastatingly crossfaded, and threw myself into the abstract character study of these two. Enjoy my love for them.

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Before she could understand what she’d become, the Earth hurled her away.

Time split open like a wound. Salem flew through it, twisting, gasping, her screams swallowed by the howling void. Lights turned to centuries. Seconds to eons. The world blurred into spirals of memory and myth.

Botanist. Witch. Descendant of a legend.

Her scream echoed into nothingness as the timestream cracked.

Then, impact.

Not with ground. With him.

A golden-blue shimmer tore sideways in the maelstrom, and Salem collided with a man her bones recognized before her brain did. Broad shoulders. Jaw like carved stone. Blue eyes freighted with wars no book could carry.

Steve Rogers.

He was moving backward through time, returning the Stones, each second peeling a layer of him away. For one breathless moment, he was here, now, with her.

“Who-” his voice fragmented, the word shredded by the rush of collapsing centuries.

“Salem,” she rasped, bioluminescent veins of raw Earth energy coursing under her skin. “Rogers. I’m-”

“Rogers?” A half-smile, half-flinch. “From when?”

“Twenty-two twenty-three.” Her fingers sparked green. “I was a botanist. The Earth died under my hands.”

His eyes flicked over the vines haloing her wrists. “You don’t look dead.”

“Neither do you,” she shot back, a breathless laugh cut with grief. “But you’re bleeding time.”

“So are you.” He steadied her, palm warm against her forearm. “What happened?”

“The soil stopped taking. Roots turned to ash. Oceans soured. I tried to graft hope onto a corpse.” The words tumbled out, scientific and desperate. “Phloem without flow, xylem without lift. I needed a miracle, the planet gave me a spell.”

“You were chosen.” It wasn’t a question.

“I was harvested,” she said. “Ripped and planted somewhere else.”

He nodded, something like recognition flickering. “I know the feeling.”

Their hands touched.

Then time screamed.

Steve arched, jaw clenched, as golden tendrils burst from his chest like roots unspooling from rich loam. Salem gasped as they entered her, not violent, not forced, but chosen and eager, sliding along the green lightning already coiled in her.

Flashes detonated behind her eyes: Fire. Ice. Blood. A shield raised. Bucky’s name torn from a throat. The serum’s acid hymn. Brooklyn alleyways and Hydra steel. Kisses never returned. Names whispered into cooling air. Love folded and stored like a flag.

She reeled for a moment, and then, through him, saw herself. Not only descendant. Design. A convergence drawn by a dying planet and a stubborn man.

“Take it,” he breathed, the edges of him fraying like burnt paper. “Take all of it. The Earth needs a new sentinel.”

“I don’t want to forget you.” Her voice broke. “Don’t make me plant you and walk away.”

“You won’t.” The faintest smile. “You are me.”

His light kept flowing, and she found breath between the waves. “If I’m you, then listen; Roots without soil are just veins in air. I need anchor points. Names. People. Places to graft to.”

“Stark,” he said, no hesitation. “Pepper. Happy. Rhodes. They’re the ring of the tree, strong, stubborn. They’ll brace you.”

“And Bucky?”

A shadow softened his eyes. “Tell him I kept my promise. He’ll know which one.”

“What about you?” The question slipped out, green-fire soft. “Where do you want to be planted?”

“In you,” he said simply. “And-” his gaze drifted, distant as a photograph in a wallet “-I’ve got a dance to get to.”

Warmth swelled behind her ribs, painful and right. “Then let me take the weight you don’t have to carry anymore.”

He huffed a laugh, breath catching as another filament of memory threaded into her. “Careful. It’s heavier than it looks.”

“I’m work in environmental science.” A tear slid hot, vanished in the wind. “I’ve been lifting forests since I could read.”

“What year did you say?” he asked, as if flirting with the idea of a future.

“Two hundred after Tony saves the universe.” The admission trembled. “And we still lose it.”

His jaw tightened. “Then I didn’t teach them enough.”

“You taught us how to stand,” she said. “No one taught us how to listen.”

“Then you will.” A brief squeeze at her hand, human amid the cosmic. “You’ll teach them to kneel to the dirt and hear it breathe.”

Her mouth quirked, grief sharpening into resolve. “Photosynthesis as prayer.”

“Photosynthesis as practice,” he corrected gently. “Every day. All hands.”

The current surged; she staggered, bracing against his chest, against a century of iron will. “Steve, I can feel your compass. It’s… pointing at everyone but you.”

“Good,” he said. “Keep it that way. Heroes are anchors, not destinations.”

“Then give me your due north.” She pleaded, like a 20 year old meeting a blood relative for the first time does.

He exhaled, eyes bright with a thousand lost mornings. “Do what’s right. Not what’s easy. And when the crowd screams, lower your shield only if a hand is reaching for help.”

She laughed through a sob. “That’s not a direction.”

“It’ll get you home.”

More light. More life. He was thinning, outline flickering like a candle in a draft.

“Listen,” she said fast, urgent, “I can graft your discipline to my wild. Your order to my growth. Let me turn purpose into power.”

“You already did,” he murmured. “You showed up.”

“Tell me one selfish thing to do.” she challenged, desperate to hold him one heartbeat longer.

He blinked, surprised, and then, softly, “Plant trees you’ll never see. Eat breakfast. Leave the lab. Dance when no one’s watching.” A beat. “Watch when someone’s dancing.”

“Peggy?” she guessed, tender lightning in her chest.

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

The current hit a crescendo, golden-blue meeting green, a perfect cambium ring. Salem felt him burrow into her marrow, not erasing, rooting. Duty braided with wonder. Courage cross-pollinated with mercy.

“Salem,” he said, name steady even as he frayed, “If you get to meet Stark, don’t let him apologize for dying.”

Her breath hitched. 

“Or tell Pepper.” A wry crinkle at the eye. “He always thinks he could’ve done more. Tell her they did enough to buy you this conversation.”

She nodded hard. “I will.”

“And when you see Sam-” He faltered, smiled with a brother’s pride. “Let him know the air feels different with his wings out. He’ll understand.”

“Steve-”

“Hey.” His thumb, impossibly warm, brushed a tear from her cheek. “Breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Like a soldier. Like a sapling.”

She did. Air tasted like rain on concrete.

“Good,” he said, luminous and fading. “One more thing.”

“Anything.”

“When the world says it’s too late,” he whispered, “tell it you arrived early.”

Her laugh broke open, bright and wet. “That’s terrible.”

“It’s ours.” he said, and the grin was pure Brooklyn.

The last of him lifted, a scatter of golden spores on a timeless wind.

“I’ve got you,” she promised the space he was leaving, hands closing on the light as if it were soil. “I’ll make it grow.”

“And stay with Bucky this time.” came the thinnest echo, as if from the far side of a promised song.

The last of him vanished.

She hit asphalt in a spray of cold rain and taxi-slick. Times Square roared around her; Neon stacked to the sky, a thousand throats shouting, the city’s heart beating in LED.

Her palms stung. Her ribs complained. The ground vibrated with trains and music and hunger.

Above her, a screen cut through the carnival.