“Yeah,” I reply, kicking in the side of the plane’s glass hatch to reach in and grab the control yoke, and start the plane in a wide arc to direct it back toward the island.

“I call this one ‘return to sender’.”

This is how it should have gone. Maybe I would have been killed in a firefight, maybe in the Pacific; maybe I would have made it back home and become a police officer or an illustrator, or an astronaut. Maybe the government would have trotted me out in front of every cause that needed championing, maybe I would have kept on being Captain America even through Vietnam. I don’t know how the world would have changed, but this feeling makes me not care.

This is how it should have gone.

I look over at Bucky, squinting through the force of the wind. I can’t fight my own smile. We’re doing it. No, we did it.

“We’ve got to drop off before it gets too close to the rocks! Ready, partner?”