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Steve had gotten used to sleeping next to Bucky, even though he could never be sure who would wake up next to him. Axel, Yasha and the asset had gotten used to it too, and even the asset no longer threw punches or elbows if he woke up as the little spoon. He just shoved Steve's arm off him and rolled off the bed, and if no one saw that he wasn't always scowling every time anymore, then he had no one to murder silently.
All in all, the situation had worked out for the best, all four brothers agreed, and Bucky was the happiest he'd been since - well, since any of them could remember, except perhaps Steve.
Looking back, Axel wonders if he should have guessed what was coming.
---
After another mission with the Avengers, Steve and Bucky lay in bed spooning post-coitally, and this time it was Bucky's turn to be the little spoon. Steve kept running his fingers through Bucky's hair, and Bucky pressed a kiss into the wrist of the arm wrapped over him until they both drifted off, Bucky still with a small smile on his face, wrapped in Steve like a giant heated blanket.
He rode the wave of happiness into sleep, until the only thoughts he was wrapped up in were Steve...... Steve.........
Steve.
In the Brooklyn apartment inside Bucky's head, the other three felt the wave of happiness coming from their brother as he drifted off, powerful enough to reach them, and the asset jumped to his feet, the feeling mostly alien to him and making him twitchy.
Then the other two joined him on their feet when Bucky materialized only for a moment, transparent like a ghost, eyes closed and smiling softly with the smile their body still wore in sleep, before he vanished again, fading back out.
For a moment the three brothers thought he had gone up top again, then all three had the sense of something slipping through their fingers like sand.
They screamed for Bucky to wake up for nearly ten minutes, until the asset vanished, waking up their body still screaming Bucky's name, and disoriented, he threw a fist at Steve when Steve jerked awake beside him from the scream.
His fist clocked Steve on the side of his jaw, and the asset barely noticed as Steve grabbed his shoulders and spun him around, both hands on his head and growling.
"Bucky?!" Steve asked, panic in his voice. He paused for a moment when the asset didn't respond, still growling. Steve ignored JARVIS' voice in the background, asking something. "G?" he tried again.
The asset met his eyes for a moment, which Steve took as confirmation. Panic still coursed through his body, and he gave G the smallest shake. "What's happened?"
For a moment, Steve wasn't sure G even heard him. Then his body sagged for a moment and Steve recognized that G had gone under. He waited, still shaking, hoping Bucky was going to be the one to explain what the hell was going on.
Instead, Steve immediately recognized Axel from the look in his eyes when he met Steve's eyes, before slumping down like he had forgotten how to sit up without help.
"Axel?" Steve asked, unable to keep the panic out of his voice.
Axel's shoulders shook slightly under Steve's hands.
He mumbled something but all Steve caught was Bucky's name.
"What about Bucky?"
"He...he went deep. We can't find him," Axel spoke so quietly that Steve had to lean in to hear him.
"What do you mean...'went deep'... Like what he was afraid would happen to you three?"
Axel nodded, not meeting Steve's eyes.
"He'd tried to do it before and we screamed until he woke up. That was before you found us," he added, as Steve sucked in air like a drowning man. "We don't think he tried to this time. We could feel it - he was happy. And then...he vanished in the apartment and he's not answering."
Steve stared at Axel as he seemingly wilted into a pile on the bed, and then his head whipped around as he heard the door behind him open, and Barton, Nat and Tony, all the Avengers in the Tower at the moment, were standing in the doorway looking worried. Their eyes widened when they saw Bucky curled up on the bed.
"What the hell happened, Cap?" Barton asked, still eyeing Bucky. "JARVIS just told us he thought you needed us."
Steve just sat there staring at them, and his mouth opened and shut but he couldn't get any words out, while the concern on the Avengers' faces deepened.
Finally, it was Axel who spoke, head still practically in his own lap, hands wrapped around himself and over his head like he was afraid he would come apart.
"Bucky's gone."
---
They couldn't reach Dr Strange at three in the morning, but when he got into his office he was definitely greeted with a voicemail inbox full of panicked Steve messages.
He called back just after eight in the morning, and Steve rushed over immediately, Yasha following him. Like Steve, the brothers hadn’t slept all night, rotating who was on top.
G seemed to be on top the least, Axel and Yasha having realized he seemed to react to Bucky disappearing the worst, wanting to lash out physically, and because (Yasha told Steve, when the latter asked) the asset was able to keep screaming for Bucky far longer than either of the others before their growing migraines forced them to swap, and let the person on top’s ears stop ringing.
Dr Strange immediately had them shown in, and Steve didn’t take his eyes off Yasha as he sat on the edge of a couch, clearly tense, but about Bucky, not about Strange shifting through the brothers’ minds again.
Steve found his attention drifting while Yasha, and then later, Axel, answered some of Dr Strange’s questions. G came out briefly but quickly went back under, when it was clear he was not in a state of mind to sit quietly and talk. (Steve had jerked into attentiveness when he was up top, ready to grab him if it looked like he was going to start throwing punches, but G merely grunted and actually growled a bit in what Steve thought was irritation and worry before going under again.)
It seemed to take far too long for Dr Strange to actually get Bu- to get Axel, now, to lie back and try to relax.
“Listen to my voice,” he commands once again, and then Steve watched as both Axel and Dr Strange’s expressions went slack, and Steve could only fidget in nervousness as he waited.
---
Warmth, and darkness.
Warmth.
Quiet.
No errant thoughts constantly flickering through his brain.
No fear or guilt over what he had done.
No worry over who he might hurt in the future.
Peace, quiet, warmth, and Steve, the Steve in his memories, at any time in his memories either small and sick and braver than anyone he had ever met, or tall and strong and still the bravest, most stubborn person he had ever met.
He was drifting.
Everything was still until he felt...something.
The barest flicker of something, like the lightest touch on the back of an arm.
The feeling grew just the tiniest amount stronger.
It was a sound, he finally realized. A sound?
A word, he realized.
The voice was saying the same word, over and over.
The voice? Yes, it was a voice. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t think.
He wished it would go away, leave him alone.
Then there were three voices, different ones. They all sounded strangely the same, but he could tell they were different, somehow.
They were still repeating the same word, over and over.
The voices were getting louder, too.
He tried to block them out, to ignore them.
They wouldn’t go away.
Finally, he realized the word they were repeating meant something.
It was a name.
A name?
Whose name?
His name?
His name. He had a name.
Bucky, the voices were screaming.
And suddenly, he was standing in the apartment he and Steve had shared in Brooklyn, that he had shared more recently with his three brothers for the past several decades.
As soon as he appeared, he remembered everything, and he cringed slightly as all three brothers crowded around him, just barely not touching him.
They were all yelling at him, but he could tell it was in relief. He threw them the barest hint of a smile, and opened his mouth to apologize but felt himself drifting to the surface again instead.
He opened his eyes as Dr Strange removed his hand from the back of his neck, and all he could see was Steve’s face, leaning over him with a look of concern and - just a little - hope.
“Bucky?” He asked.
Bucky smiled.