An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Characters: James “Bucky” Barnes, Steve Rogers, Avengers Team (MCU)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Amnesia, Comic Book Science, Domestic Avengers, Avengers Family, Tony Stark Has a Heart, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Oblivious Steve Rogers, Explicit Sexual Content, Social Media, Awesome Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Domestic Fluff, Happy Ending, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Complete
“I watched a documentary on the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima a while ago. In the blast radius, sometimes a… a person blocked the bleaching effect of the radiation. So the person was vaporized, but a shadow was left behind, on a bridge or a wall – their shape, their outline, when they were completely gone,“ Steve said. "It’s called a nuclear shadow.”
“If you’re implying the Soldier is like a nuclear shadow, then that is seriously fucking dark, man,” Sam said dryly.
Before the fall of the Soviet Union, the Winter Soldier was sent to the American arm of Hydra - only there was a malfunction in the cryo-unit that meant it couldn’t be opened, and it was left, powered but abandoned, in an underground base.
25 years later, the Avengers find it.
One of the fingers twitched.
Steve jolted to a stop in front of the cryotube door, staring fixedly at the hand, almost sure he’d been seeing things – or maybe the stress on the metal was causing movement within.
The hand dropped away from the glass.
Steve stopped breathing, trying to peer through the glass, but of course the damn Russians hadn’t put an interior light on the upright coffin they used for freezing a human, so he couldn’t see a thing. He tipped his head forward, listening, and almost jumped a foot when he heard something thump heavily against the door from the inside.
“Steve?” Nat called. The cryotube was no longer venting now, and the clouds of vapor were beginning to clear – he could just make her out, standing with a handgun in each hand.
He heard it then. Three distinct taps against the metal. Someone knocking.
“He’s alive,” Steve said breathlessly to himself. And then louder: “He’s alive!”
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