worthallthis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
worthallthis) wrote2020-08-30 09:54 pm
worthallthis) wrote2020-08-30 09:54 pm
Entry tags:
The Last Voyages: Warden AU
B graduates and returns to his own timeline, but now he knows some shit, and he wants to make things better....
After fishing Steve out of the river, B waits around long enough to make sure medical services find him, then slips off to collect his cat and his one duffel back of stuff he allowed himself from his room on the Barge: his sheepskin rug, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, Becca's notebook, his memory notebooks with all Steve's drawings tucked inside, his inmate file, his three most comfortable hoodies, Steve's painting of the Brooklyn Bridge and one of Godric's landscapes, his arm repair tools from Entrapta, and his "holy cow" mug from Misty. Then he goes on the run.
But not as hard or as long as he did in the original timeline. He has a cat to worry about, after all. Mostly he spends his time either doing research on himself and the modern world, or rooting out HYDRA cells to destroy. He doesn't kill anyone-- he doesn’t want to do that anymore-- but he leaves behind a lot of rubble, concussions, and shot-out kneecaps for local authorities to find. He sends regular little souvenirs to America, postcards to send Sam on a wild goose chase and trinkets to try and keep Steve from worrying too much. His main goal is to find the mindstone scepter, but he never does get his hands on it in time to stop the events of Age of Ultron. Sokovia falls from the sky, and he knows things are picking up again, so he shows up at the Avengers compound in the middle of the night, and lets Steve find him in the common room in the morning, waiting for him.
B gets used to being called Bucky. He helps train the new Avengers kids, mostly secretly, because he's still kind of a terrorist. He learns to cook a little and brushes up on his first aid skills and his social skills, and gets... somewhat better about his various phobias. Not great, but better. Vesta becomes the compound pet but she still loves B best. He and Steve tell Tony about his parents, which doesn't go well but which doesn’t result in the extreme blow-out brawl of Civil War, either. Tony isn't happy, and doesn't want anything to do with him, but abject apologies and back-up from Wanda on how HYDRA operates go over better than revealing secrets in the middle of an already stressed situation.
The Sokovia Accords still happen, though in the events leading up to them, Steve is less paralyzed by Bucky's name and Wanda has had even more stringent training under the paranoid eye of the former Winter Soldier, so the damage from Rumlow's bomb isn't nearly as bad as it could be, and the Avengers aren't as shell-shocked when Ross drops the Accords on them because B was able to warn them it was coming. There are still arguments, though, and the divide is still pretty much where it was in Civil War. Zemo still blows up the UN summit and frames Bucky for it, and B flees the Avengers compound in order to not draw suspicion on them, letting himself be caught in the Midwest instead of New York (or Romania).
Zemo still triggers him, but this time he escapes the compound, and actually flies to Siberia to meet Zemo. There's no fight at the airport, but it still takes Steve a while to track down where he's supposed to go, from hints B left behind in case this very thing happened. At the facility in Siberia, Zemo has B shoot the other Winter Soldiers and wait for Steve and Tony. When Tony refuses to play along and fight B and Steve, Zemo instead taunts them with B and makes them fight B, instead. T'Challa still overhears it all and goes to apprehend Zemo, while Tony eventually blasts off B's arm in a desperate attempt to stop him from tearing the suit apart. Steve crouching over him as he lays on the ground in pain is enough to bring him out of it. He has a good cry over having killed people again, and trying to kill Steve again, and then they all get airlifted by T’Challa to Wakanda when the supports for the now-missing arm try to suffocate him.
The Wakandans get him stabilized, and the additional trauma from the fight is what pushes B to go back into cryo. Steve and Sam still have to go on the run, still being non-compliant with the Accords, but no one else is implicated, and Tony helps cover for them since seeing exactly what the trigger words do helped make him a little less angry, too-- as did making excited new friends with Shuri because holy shit that kid is a genius. Steve retrieves Vesta for him from the Avengers compound and B does some more rehabilitating Wakanda-style on a goat farm, up until the events of Infinity War. Thanos still kicks everyone's asses and B is still dusted, unfortunately, because B couldn't give much more warning than they got in canon, since he only knows something is going to happen to kill half the world, not when, where, or how. Just saying "a guy named Thanos is coming" doesn’t really give anyone an action plan.
The events of Endgame happen with only slight differences, in that Tony is less hostile to Steve over the five years, but he still moves on, and Steve still falls into his deep depression. The arguments against time travel when Scott resurfaces are less "I can’t lose what I have" and more "it literally won't work, you’ll all die", but in the end Tony still comes through. The scheme works, everyone is undusted, and Thanos barges into the timeline to wreck everyone's shit again. That battle goes about the same, too, and Tony sacrifices himself to save them all-- and then Steve opts to live in the past to avoid the uncertainty of loss in the future.
B is devastated, certain he's done something wrong somehow to mess up the timeline and this Steve, who he feels would never have done that otherwise. The rest of the remaining Avengers scatter, Sam gives up the shield, and his cat got adopted by a nice Wakandan family during his dusting, leaving him alone. In the run-up to the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, he withdraws from what life he'd started to participate in, goes to his dumb therapy appointments that somehow only make him feel worse and worse the longer he goes, and starts to quietly think about the Barge again. He's all but decided to try and call the Admiral-- not that he knows how, exactly-- when John Walker shows up on his TV screen with Steve's shield.
The events of TFATWS unfold about how they did in canon, only with B silently wrestling with his desire to just leave the world while the few supports he had left (the Wakandans, Yori, the dumb therapy that at least gave him a routine, even Sam to some extent) are yanked away from him one by one, but feeling like he can't leave until the world has the Captain America it deserves again, and the supersoldiers are neutralized. They free Zemo (temporarily), track the Flagsmashers and stop them, deal with John Walker, and lecture world leaders on morality. Well, Sam does the lecturing, B just makes pointed looks at people to pay the fuck attention. What changes is the ending. He doesn't turn in his book to his therapist, he doesn’t go to Sam's barbecue, he just leaves Sam a message: he'll check in every few months, but he has to leave, and he's sorry. After all, Sam doesn’t need him. Nobody in this world needs him, and maybe he can do something to unfuck whatever he did to ruin Steve in this timeline.
The Admiral picks him up.
After fishing Steve out of the river, B waits around long enough to make sure medical services find him, then slips off to collect his cat and his one duffel back of stuff he allowed himself from his room on the Barge: his sheepskin rug, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, Becca's notebook, his memory notebooks with all Steve's drawings tucked inside, his inmate file, his three most comfortable hoodies, Steve's painting of the Brooklyn Bridge and one of Godric's landscapes, his arm repair tools from Entrapta, and his "holy cow" mug from Misty. Then he goes on the run.
But not as hard or as long as he did in the original timeline. He has a cat to worry about, after all. Mostly he spends his time either doing research on himself and the modern world, or rooting out HYDRA cells to destroy. He doesn't kill anyone-- he doesn’t want to do that anymore-- but he leaves behind a lot of rubble, concussions, and shot-out kneecaps for local authorities to find. He sends regular little souvenirs to America, postcards to send Sam on a wild goose chase and trinkets to try and keep Steve from worrying too much. His main goal is to find the mindstone scepter, but he never does get his hands on it in time to stop the events of Age of Ultron. Sokovia falls from the sky, and he knows things are picking up again, so he shows up at the Avengers compound in the middle of the night, and lets Steve find him in the common room in the morning, waiting for him.
B gets used to being called Bucky. He helps train the new Avengers kids, mostly secretly, because he's still kind of a terrorist. He learns to cook a little and brushes up on his first aid skills and his social skills, and gets... somewhat better about his various phobias. Not great, but better. Vesta becomes the compound pet but she still loves B best. He and Steve tell Tony about his parents, which doesn't go well but which doesn’t result in the extreme blow-out brawl of Civil War, either. Tony isn't happy, and doesn't want anything to do with him, but abject apologies and back-up from Wanda on how HYDRA operates go over better than revealing secrets in the middle of an already stressed situation.
The Sokovia Accords still happen, though in the events leading up to them, Steve is less paralyzed by Bucky's name and Wanda has had even more stringent training under the paranoid eye of the former Winter Soldier, so the damage from Rumlow's bomb isn't nearly as bad as it could be, and the Avengers aren't as shell-shocked when Ross drops the Accords on them because B was able to warn them it was coming. There are still arguments, though, and the divide is still pretty much where it was in Civil War. Zemo still blows up the UN summit and frames Bucky for it, and B flees the Avengers compound in order to not draw suspicion on them, letting himself be caught in the Midwest instead of New York (or Romania).
Zemo still triggers him, but this time he escapes the compound, and actually flies to Siberia to meet Zemo. There's no fight at the airport, but it still takes Steve a while to track down where he's supposed to go, from hints B left behind in case this very thing happened. At the facility in Siberia, Zemo has B shoot the other Winter Soldiers and wait for Steve and Tony. When Tony refuses to play along and fight B and Steve, Zemo instead taunts them with B and makes them fight B, instead. T'Challa still overhears it all and goes to apprehend Zemo, while Tony eventually blasts off B's arm in a desperate attempt to stop him from tearing the suit apart. Steve crouching over him as he lays on the ground in pain is enough to bring him out of it. He has a good cry over having killed people again, and trying to kill Steve again, and then they all get airlifted by T’Challa to Wakanda when the supports for the now-missing arm try to suffocate him.
The Wakandans get him stabilized, and the additional trauma from the fight is what pushes B to go back into cryo. Steve and Sam still have to go on the run, still being non-compliant with the Accords, but no one else is implicated, and Tony helps cover for them since seeing exactly what the trigger words do helped make him a little less angry, too-- as did making excited new friends with Shuri because holy shit that kid is a genius. Steve retrieves Vesta for him from the Avengers compound and B does some more rehabilitating Wakanda-style on a goat farm, up until the events of Infinity War. Thanos still kicks everyone's asses and B is still dusted, unfortunately, because B couldn't give much more warning than they got in canon, since he only knows something is going to happen to kill half the world, not when, where, or how. Just saying "a guy named Thanos is coming" doesn’t really give anyone an action plan.
The events of Endgame happen with only slight differences, in that Tony is less hostile to Steve over the five years, but he still moves on, and Steve still falls into his deep depression. The arguments against time travel when Scott resurfaces are less "I can’t lose what I have" and more "it literally won't work, you’ll all die", but in the end Tony still comes through. The scheme works, everyone is undusted, and Thanos barges into the timeline to wreck everyone's shit again. That battle goes about the same, too, and Tony sacrifices himself to save them all-- and then Steve opts to live in the past to avoid the uncertainty of loss in the future.
B is devastated, certain he's done something wrong somehow to mess up the timeline and this Steve, who he feels would never have done that otherwise. The rest of the remaining Avengers scatter, Sam gives up the shield, and his cat got adopted by a nice Wakandan family during his dusting, leaving him alone. In the run-up to the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, he withdraws from what life he'd started to participate in, goes to his dumb therapy appointments that somehow only make him feel worse and worse the longer he goes, and starts to quietly think about the Barge again. He's all but decided to try and call the Admiral-- not that he knows how, exactly-- when John Walker shows up on his TV screen with Steve's shield.
The events of TFATWS unfold about how they did in canon, only with B silently wrestling with his desire to just leave the world while the few supports he had left (the Wakandans, Yori, the dumb therapy that at least gave him a routine, even Sam to some extent) are yanked away from him one by one, but feeling like he can't leave until the world has the Captain America it deserves again, and the supersoldiers are neutralized. They free Zemo (temporarily), track the Flagsmashers and stop them, deal with John Walker, and lecture world leaders on morality. Well, Sam does the lecturing, B just makes pointed looks at people to pay the fuck attention. What changes is the ending. He doesn't turn in his book to his therapist, he doesn’t go to Sam's barbecue, he just leaves Sam a message: he'll check in every few months, but he has to leave, and he's sorry. After all, Sam doesn’t need him. Nobody in this world needs him, and maybe he can do something to unfuck whatever he did to ruin Steve in this timeline.
The Admiral picks him up.