Steve's Diary

July 1, 2016

Dearest Diary,

It took us a while to figure out everything that was going on with Bucky, but we finally got a pinpoint on his whereabouts.

He's in Bucharest, Romania.

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Today, Sam and I decided the only way to go about this was to infiltrate wherever Bucky was staying. After we figured out where, exactly, that was, we made our way in.

And, by we and our, I mean I and my... I didn't wanna trouble him with this, so, I kinda did it all on my own. Stupid or not, I think this is the only way.

I walked into the room believed to be his and walked around. There was a lot of stuff in there for someone like him, at least in my opinion. He was never one to carry this much stuff around. Maybe he's finally taken refuge here.

It felt weird to look around at a place that was his but not ours. Everything I ever knew about him wasn't just him alone. It was me and him - both of us - Bucky and Steve, until the very end.

His bed was unmade, just as he always left it. I was almost tempted to make it for him like I did all those years ago- but I knew I had to be quick about this and quickly shook the thought away.

There were books on almost empty shelves. Papers written on and tossed all around. Newspapers covering the view from the street through the windows.

I approached the kitchen and found a worn down booklet resting on top of the fridge. I flipped through its very many written-in pages. I found a picture of myself inside it, reading:

CAPTAIN AMERICA RETROSPECTIVE

I saw the words written across the pages had been formatted the same and it was undoubtedly done by his own free will. What could this possibly be?

By God- this was Bucky's diary.

"Heads up, Cap," Sam told me on the radio in my ear. he must have seen someone approaching that I was too busy thinking about the past to notice. "German Special Forces approaching from the south."

Damnit. They found him after the same amount of time we did. If only I would have stayed up a little longer or worked a little harder, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

"Understood," I replied, still looking through the diary.

Just then, though, the room felt a little too quiet. It was silent before, sure, but now it felt as if it was entirely too much on purpose. There was someone else in there with me, there had to be. I turned around and closed the booklet, holding it in the hand opposite my shield.

It was Bucky.

I looked him up and down, assessing why on Earth he had been in simple street clothes right now. Surely he knew something was about to happen, so why hadn't he suited up?

"Do you know me?" I asked almost immediately to see if he'd regained his whits about him.

He waited a minute and just looked at me, his eyes never wavering from mine. "You're Steve," he relayed, his voice calmer than the last time we had spoken. He sounded the same, but didn't look very much the same at all. "I read about you in a museum."

"They've set the perimeter," Sam notified me. I placed the diary on the table before me.

"I know you're nervous... and you have plenty of reason to be," I stepped closer. "But you're lying."

"I wasn't in Vienna. I don't do that anymore," he said.

"They're entering the building," Sam added. God, what terrible timing.