Christmas Eve 1944: Bucky Barnes recalls what he did not know would be the last Christmas of the War. He and Toro are on their way to a holiday party; Steve is too busy with military matters to join them, so they head off alone for what Bucky also did not realize would be his own last Christmas for several decades….
Now Bucky—the Winter Soldier—is facing his first Christmas since then, so he walks the city streets solitary and aimless. He receives a call from Nick Fury who asks him to check up on three members of the Young Avengers. Patriot, Hawkeye (the female one) and Vision (the new one) are about to assault a warehouse, thinking it is one of Tony Stark’s secret factory. They are wrong: it is a Hydra base and they would be ruining a lengthy SHIELD operation. Winter Soldier intercepts them, and after a brief skirmish, gives them Fury’s warning. Unfortunately, the commotion is heard by a Hydra sentry; Bucky kills him with a thrown arrow (!) and they are forced, with Fury’s blessing, to clean up the terrorist base. They make short work of the baddies and Bucky hurries off to his intended destination: Jack Monroe’s grave. He can only apologize to the man he killed (while under Aleksander Lukin’s brainwashing) and wishing Jack’s idolizing of Bucky hadn’t warped his life. The three Young Avengers have followed him to the cemetery though, and have learned through Vision’s database who Bucky really is. They tell him it was an honor to serve with him. He tells them that, to him, Christmas has been about looking back on the good and the bad. Jack Monroe was one of the bad things for him and the good is still to come. He advises them to not let the struggle against evil steal everything good from life.
His mind drifts back to that party in 1944: after literally pushing Toro toward an attractive woman, he meets Steve who chose to come after all. Bucky lets Steve in on his next plan: maneuvering Toro and his dance partner over toward the mistletoe….
Back in the present, his next errand takes him to another cemetery where he meets with Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner. Together they visit the grave of Thomas "Toro" Raymond, and Bucky asks how his old pal died. "It’s not a short story," Namor replies. Bucky says, "I’ve got nowhere else to be."