Partners With Sam

There is an old saying that you don't choose your family — but if you are very lucky, your family chooses you. This is the story of how an old kid from Brooklyn, fresh out of seventy years of dark, was chosen by a new family on a dock in Louisiana.

When Steve Rogers finally retired, he did two things. First, he handed his round vibranium shield to Sam Wilson and said, "Try it on." Second, he flew up to Wakanda for a long visit, and from there he went somewhere quiet that even the Avengers' best satellites could not find. Steve had earned his rest. He took it.

That left Sam and Bucky, and the rest of the world.

The two of them did not, at first, know what to do with each other. They had only ever been Steve's two best friends, not each other's friends. Steve had been the bridge. Now the bridge was gone. They had to walk across to each other without him.

Sam Wilson, you should know, is one of the most patient men in the world. Before he became the Falcon, he served two tours in the United States Air Force as a pararescue — the people who fly into terrible situations to bring soldiers home. He had counseled veterans at the VA in Washington. He had buried his wingman Riley after a mission in the mountains. He knew, in his bones, how to be kind to people who had been hurt. He saw Bucky and recognized something familiar.

Bucky Barnes was not in a kindness-receiving mood. He was a hundred and six years old. He was fresh out of HYDRA programming, fresh out of Wakanda, fresh out of months of therapy with Dr. Raynor. He had spent seven decades being told what to do. He was not in any hurry to make small talk.

The first time Sam suggested they grab dinner together — somewhere quiet, just the two of them — Bucky considered the request, looked Sam square in the eyes, and said, "No." He walked away.

Sam, who had been turned down by plenty of grumpy veterans in his career at the VA, just laughed and called his sister Sarah. "He'll come around," he said.

It took a mission to make it happen.

A group called the Flag Smashers had appeared in Europe — a young, idealistic crew led by a woman named Karli Morgenthau. They had stolen vials of the Super Soldier Serum and were using it to push the world's governments to undo the borders that had been redrawn after the Blip. Karli was not a villain in the way HYDRA had been. She was a young person who had lost too much and could not see how to grieve it. But she was dangerous. She had a serum in her blood and a real cause and a willingness to hurt people to make the world listen. Sam and Bucky were sent to stop her.

The two of them argued about everything from the moment they got off the plane.

Sam wanted to talk to Karli. Bucky wanted to take her down. Sam liked diplomacy; Bucky liked decisive action. Sam ate balanced meals at proper times of day; Bucky ate plums standing over the sink. Sam liked jazz, especially Marvin Gaye, and would put it on loudly in the rental car. Bucky would reach over and turn it off, every time. Bucky liked the Brooklyn Dodgers, who had not played in Brooklyn since 1957. Sam tried, gently, to explain this to him. Bucky, just as gently, refused to accept it.

They drove from Munich to Riga in a tiny European rental car, all the way across central Europe, arguing the entire way. PUTT-PUTT went the engine. BLAH-BLAH-BLAH went the two heroes. By the end of the trip, they had argued so much they had run out of new things to argue about, and they had started, almost by accident, to actually talk.

Bucky asked Sam, somewhere outside the Polish border, why Sam had handed Steve's shield to the government instead of keeping it.

Sam thought about it for a long minute and said, "Because it wasn't mine yet. A man named John Walker has been wearing it since I gave it back. He's good. He's not Steve. He's making a mess of it. I'm going to have to take it back from him before this is over."

Bucky said, "I'm sorry I yelled at you about that."

Sam said, "You should be. You were wrong."

They drove on in companionable quiet for thirty miles.

That is how friendships actually start, if you've ever paid attention. Not in grand moments. In small admissions. In long drives. In learning when to argue and when to just look out the window.

By the time the Flag Smashers crisis was over — by the time John Walker had been stripped of the shield, by the time Karli Morgenthau had fallen into Sam's arms after he tried, one last time, to talk her out of her path, by the time the world had seen Sam stand up in front of cameras as a new Captain America in red, white, and blue with vibranium wings — Sam and Bucky were partners. Not Steve's two friends anymore. Each other's.

The partnership got really real on a boat in Louisiana.

Sam's sister, Sarah Wilson, ran the family fishing business out of a little bayou town called Delacroix. She had two sons, Cass and AJ, who were ten and seven and full of opinions. The family boat — the Paul and Darlene, named after their parents — had been in the family for two generations. It was falling apart. The bank was about to take it.

Sam mentioned this once, in passing, on a flight back from Latvia.

The next weekend, Bucky showed up in Delacroix.

He drove down from Brooklyn in a borrowed pickup truck. He had a tool bag in the back. He had not called ahead. He just appeared, dusty and tired, on the dock outside the Wilson house. Sarah opened the door, looked at him for a long second, and said, "You must be Bucky."

"Yes ma'am."

"Sam's not here right now."

"That's all right. He said the boat needs work. I'm good at that."

Sarah considered him. Sarah Wilson was not easily impressed. She raised her eyebrows. She said, "Well, come in. We were about to have lunch."

That was the beginning.

For the rest of that weekend, Bucky worked on the boat. He rolled up his sleeves. The Wakandan arm gleamed in the Louisiana sun. He patched the hull. He sanded down the bad wood and replaced it with new boards. He fixed a stuck cleat that Sarah had been wrestling with for months. He carried a heavy outboard motor across the dock as if it were a sack of flour. THUNK, THUNK, THUNK went the hammer. BUZZZZZZ went the saw.

Cass and AJ climbed all over him. They asked him every question two small boys can think of about a vibranium arm. Is it cold? Sometimes. Is it heavy? Not really. Can it pick up the whole boat? Probably, but you should never ask a person to pick up a whole boat just for fun. Did it hurt when they put it on you? Yes, but a princess in Wakanda made the new one, and that one didn't hurt at all. What's a princess in Wakanda like? Smarter than your uncle Sam, but don't tell him I said that.

The boys were delighted.

Sarah watched all of this from the porch. She did not say much. She just watched.

Saturday night, Bucky stayed for dinner. Sarah made gumbo. Bucky ate three bowls. He did the dishes after. He dried them with a towel. He put them back in the right cabinets, which he had quietly figured out by watching Sarah set the table.

Sunday morning, he was up before the sun, finishing the last of the hull work.

Sunday afternoon, when Sam finally rolled in from a mission in D.C., he found the boat fixed, his sister laughing in the kitchen, and his two nephews asleep on the couch with Bucky between them, all three of them snoring.

Sam stood in the doorway for a long quiet moment.

He went to wake Bucky up. Sarah stopped him from the kitchen with one hand. "Let him sleep," she said. "He's part of the family now. He doesn't know it yet, but he is."

That is how Bucky Barnes joined his second family.

From then on, the partnership had a rhythm. Sam built a new Captain America suit, with vibranium given to him by King T'Challa of Wakanda. The suit had wings and a shield and was perfectly Sam — not a copy of Steve's outfit, but its own thing. Sam took to the sky. Bucky stayed on the ground. They worked missions together. They worked them well.

The pattern was simple. Sam talked. Bucky stood just close enough that talking always worked. Sam smiled at the cameras. Bucky stood slightly behind him with his arms crossed, looking like the kind of man who did not need to smile. Sam reminded Bucky that he was a person, not a weapon. Bucky reminded Sam that not every fight was won with a speech.

They argued about jazz. They argued about plums. They argued about whether wings counted as a superpower. ("They are a tool, Sam.") ("They are wings, Bucky.") ("That's a tool with wings on it.")

They never argued about who had each other's back.

When Sam was tired, Bucky was the one who flew down to Louisiana to help Sarah with the boys for a weekend. When Bucky's nightmares came back, Sam was the one who picked up the phone at two in the morning and stayed on the line until Bucky's breathing slowed.

In the soft, slow Louisiana evenings — with the bayou frogs going RIBBIT-RIBBIT, and the gumbo on the stove, and Cass and AJ finally asleep upstairs — the old kid from Brooklyn and the new Captain America would sit on the dock with their feet in the water. The river would chuckle past them in the dark. The stars would be enormous over the Gulf.

Bucky would think about Steve, sometimes. About Brooklyn. About the long, lost years. About the funeral home steps, and the train, and the chair, and Wakanda, and Dr. Raynor's notebook, and the goats, and Sarah at her kitchen sink, and the boys asking about his arm.

He would think: after everything. After every single thing.

I am, finally, finally, in good company.

I am, finally, finally, home.