Bucky froze when he heard that familiar voice.
A man in a vintage brown jacket and a baseball cap walked up, lifting his head slightly to reveal a pair of smiling blue eyes.
It was Steve Rogers, who had come looking for Bucky.
Steve had already been standing there watching Bucky play for a while.
When he first realized Bucky was missing, a surge of genuine panic had flooded Steve's heart. The parade floats passed through a sea of people, and the two old relics, decades out of touch with the times, had never imagined how powerful a crowd could be. In a single instant, the familiar figure beside him had vanished.
People surged around him. The clamor of voices, children's laughter, and the sounds of amusement rides mingled together, while the dense crowd blurred every individual outline. Steve instinctively tensed every nerve, hurrying through the surrounding area as his gaze swept over the crowd inch by inch.
He was truly worried.
After being frozen, drifting from place to place, and spending half his life haunted by the nightmare of the Winter Soldier, Bucky still habitually withdrew into silence, even now that he had completely escaped the brainwashing. Hydra had tortured his mind over and over. It was a miracle he had not completely broken down, and only a few scattered fragments of his old memories remained.
Setting aside his formidable fighting abilities, Bucky was like a small child. How much fear would he feel, surrounded by all this unfamiliar noise and bustle?
And then there was his arm...
Whenever Bucky went out, he wore long sleeves and gloves to cover that cold metal arm. But if someone discovered it...
The thought alone made Steve's heart pound with dread.
Steve searched along the street, unable to ease his tightly wound