"Looks like we were right, in a way. You and me... we're permanent."

There wasn't a Steve Rogers without the man sitting across from him, not properly. If he was honest, and he tried to be if only to himself, then he'd admit that he hadn't felt properly alive since that day on the train.

It wasn't healthy, even he knew it wasn't exactly healthy, but that didn't make it any less true. And of all the illnesses he'd ever had, it was the one he was glad that the serum hadn't touched. He'd loved Peggy, and he'd never regret loving her, but she wasn't so firmly stitched into him as Bucky was. As Jim was.