Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O Muse,
The vengeance, deep and deadly; whence to Greece
Unnumbered ills arose; which many a soul
Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades
Untimely sent; they on the battle plain
Unburied lay, a prey to rav'ning dogs,
And carrion birds; but so had Jove decreed,
From that sad day when first in wordy war,
The mighty Agamemnon, King of men,
Confronted stood by Peleus' godlike son.
Homer - The Iliad, Book I
Acheron. Styx. Cocytus. Phlegethon. Lethe.
The five rivers of the Underworld. None may enter or leave save through their waters.
Patroclus knew the day he must move on. Achilles trailed behind him as he approached Lethe, the river of forgetfulness that served as the passage back into life, away from the babbling shades of the Underworld. Souls were given a choice before they passed on; equal in measure to the life they have lived. A poor but virtuous man may become rich in his next life, a power-hungry king may know the life of a beggar, a woman who died young may know the fullness of old age. The Fates gave with one hand and took with the other, and no life was complete in itself.
Patroclus heard the Fates as he bent his lips to the water. Achilles was behind him, silent and golden, but Patroclus did not think he heard them, for he did not stir when their voices filled the air with the rattle of dry leaves.
Son of kings, warrior, most renowned of beloveds, what is your wish...
Patroclus stilled. The water flowed like molten glass beneath his lips. He saw his own hazy reflection within it, the blurred lines of the dead. No breath stirred its surface.
King or pauper, virgin or wife, man, woman, dead at birth and returned to the shades, what is your wish...
"I may choose anything?" Patroclus said, and at this Achilles shifted. Patroclus did not dare turn his attention from the Fates, but he saw concern in the set of Achilles' shoulders, in the tilt of his head. He did not understand. It could be said of both of them.
Those with such fame as yours may request much, beloved of the gods. Beware.
Of course. The gods only gave mortals choice as a length of rope to hang themselves. To ask much, to demonstrate hubris, was to invite their attention, and attention turned easily to wrath. Better to go unnoticed, if one wished for a peaceful life.
His gaze drifted back, inevitably, to Achilles. Alertness ran through his golden frame, as though he might listen to Patroclus's audience with the Fates, but the twist of frustration across his lips said he still could not.
"Him," Patroclus said. It was the only answer that had ever mattered, in life or death. "To be with him, that is all I wish. He is half of my soul, and I will not suffer life without him."
But in what capacity will you take him? Speak. Many wish to revisit those they knew. Would you be his master? Would you bend him to your will, or chain him to your side? Would you be his death?
"Never!" he choked out. "I wish to protect him, to be by his side for however long he may live. Not to be left alone in this world by his passing, or him by mine. Not again. I want..." his breath caught in his throat, knowing the fearsome extent of what he asked, knowing that it was forbidden, "I want to remember him."
There was a pause, as if the Fates themselves were taken aback.
You ask more than you know. There will be a price.
"Keep your word, and I will bear it."
We always keep our word, even when it seems we do not. Your wish is granted. Go now, but take only a drop of the water.
Patroclus' eyes widened, lips stopped less than an inch from the glassy surface.
Thus do we keep our bargains. You will know him when you see him. To have knowledge before then would drive you mad.
He nodded in understanding as he drew back. To have the memories of being a man while still an infant would drive anyone mad. Instead he cupped his hands and dipped them in, then pressed them to his lips. He felt a chill deeper than winter, than the ice that bound the world itself. It touched his tongue, and the cold was like an explosion within him, tearing through him, rending memory. A final thought occurred and he recoiled from the stream, choking out, "But when will I see him again?"
Fear not. He will be close behind.
Patroclus closed his eyes and nodded with relief. The water trickled from his hands. Memories were crumbling like sandcastles within his mind, his father, the ships, the shine of Hector's eyes as he thrust his bronze spear into Patroclus' throat. Death. Darkness pressed around him, and it was the darkness of the womb, the distant thud of a heartbeat.
Still, he heard one last time Achilles' voice from beyond the veil of death. His answer to the Fates' question, what he wished to be in the next life.
"Not a killer. Only… a good man."
A flash of gold. That was Bucky's first memory of Steve. He'd heard the fighting from the street, the high pitch of children's voices that only sounded like laughter if you weren't listening. There was a grunt beneath it, and a clatter as something heavy hit the tin trash cans. Bucky ducked into the alley, not sure why he did so. He could scrap with the best of them, but it didn't mean he went looking for fights.
There were four boys his age, twelve years old at most, their bodies not yet broadened into adolescence. They were small, slight, but not as much as their target . Bucky saw a flash of gold from amongst the rubbish bins, saw the scrawniest kid he's ever seen in his life struggle to his feet. His fists were ready, there was blood streaming from his nose and rage in his eyes. It awakened in Bucky an answering fire, and he came swinging into the fray. A nose cracked beneath his fist, and he heard the other boys squawk in alarm as they scattered. They weren't prepared for their victim to have friends. The boy Bucky had punched wailed as he clutched his nose. They were only children after all, surprised, rocked back on their heels.
Bucky could have done more, but somewhere in his mind a memory was growing, like a flower poking free of the snow. It blossomed red: a boy's skull shattered upon the ground, dice lying forgotten, and sick terror twisting in his belly. He ignored the other kids as they ran out of the alley, and reached out a hand to the small boy.
"I had 'em on the ropes," the boy said, and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. It came away bloody. There was no resentment in his voice, but there was something more. He was testing Bucky.
"Sure you did," Bucky said, grinning back. The blond boy took his hand and shook it.
"Steve Rogers."
"James Buchanan Barnes. Friends call me Bucky."
"Bucky," Steve repeated, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to assume they were friends now. "Thanks for the help back there."
"Any time," he said back, and it was Patroclus who spoke.
Like Athena sprung fully formed from her father's head, the memories were there, just as the Fates promised. Patroclus was startled by what he saw through Bucky's eyes, at Achilles being so thin and frail. But it was a surprise that passed quickly. Achilles' tenacity was still there, and with time, Bucky would learn that the artist was still there too, the lyre traded for the pencil. This Achilles was mortal, but no less a fighter, it would be all Bucky could do to keep him from the fray. But Bucky was bigger too, bigger than Patroclus had been, and his limbs filled out before Steve's. He could wade in and pull Steve out, and did so more times than he could count. They were inseparable from that point on, and he never asked if Steve remembered too, if he had struck the same bargain.
But Bucky would learn he was not the only one who remembered Achilles.
He saw her sitting on the cot, and cold moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating her black hair like the ocean at night, and her eyes were like the glistening rocks that crush and break the ships of men. She turned at the sound of his approach, and her lips were the color of blood in the water as she frowned her displeasure.
"You again," Thetis said. Thetis, the mother of Achilles but not of Steve. The sea nymph. The goddess. Her voice was the sucking downward spiral of the maelstrom. It crashed in his ears, in his mind, but he was no longer afraid as he had once been. He had died and lived again, while her kind had faded from the earth, leaving nothing but shadow, memory, and cold effigies.
"You again," he said back. He felt like Echo in her cave, and at the sight of Thetis he wondered if that was all he was, an echo repeated from the dark.
Her expression of disdain deepened with her frown, like lines drawn in the sand, and she turned back to Steve. His coughing had eased but he was pale in the cold light, his lips parted in sleep. Bucky could see his ribs, even through the thin shirt Steve wore to bed.
"Why?" Thetis said. "Why may you see him, know him, when I may not?"
"Haven't you already done enough?" he said, and did not bother to keep the anger from his voice.
"I am his mother," she retorted.
"Not in this lifetime."
As he looked at her, he remembered Mrs. Rogers, the woman at the root of all Steve was in this lifetime. The nurse who had patched up soldiers, who had risked tuberculosis to bring care to the dying, who had stayed up with Steve all night while he seemed to cough his own life away. Widowed, but never helpless, she had taught Steve that being frail did not have to mean being weak. Her eyes had been kind and blue like Steve's, though her hair was dark. He had inherited the golden hue from his father.
"I would rather he stayed dead than come back like this," she said, almost spat, and it was the vengeful crash of a wave.
"And that is why you have never deserved him," Bucky said, and there is more Patroclus in it than Barnes. He was fiercely glad, then, that there was nothing of Thetis in Steve's face. "He is better like this."
"Better?" Her voice was chill. "He is mortal, through and through. It lies upon him like a veil."
"Good," Bucky said. "Let him have this, let him have a life. Hasn't he earned that much?"
She smiled then, and it opened her face like a knife wound, the inside of her mouth bloody and red as a gutted fish. "Too late for that, mortal. Can you not see the sign of glory stamped upon his brow? He will know renown or he will know death before the year is over. The greatest battle of this world calls for him, and with its thousand voices it calls for Achilles. Even you must hear its cry."
The war in Europe. The noise of it rose like a tide around them, the rattle of bullets, the roar of mortars and the screams of men. The shadows of barbed wire twined their way across the wall and he saw the new chariots of this era, the rumbling tanks, airplanes like angels of death. In the center sat Thetis, hunched over Steve like a bloodthirsty specter, a banshee on the gable that waits to give its death cry.
"They won't take him," Bucky snapped. They won't, they can't, and no amount of a god's stubborn pride will change that. Steve is too frail, his body already broken, thought his heart wasn't, and that heart was worth so much more than to be another faceless soldier in another man's army. He shouldn't have to make his renown in this life by killing.
But Thetis was right, Bucky could see greatness in Steve, shining like a star. It haloed him, it plucked him out from the crowd even when he was small. It was how Bucky first saw him, struggling to his feet, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, blue eyes blazing as he readied his fists.
"They won't take him," he repeated, but it was as much to reassure himself. He faltered. Thetis' bloody smile was still there and her black star eyes glittered.
"Hubris, mortal," she said mockingly, "to presume to know the ways of the gods."
"The gods are dead," he said.
"And so will this one be, if he does not take up his glory."
"I won't let him," he said.
"Then you will die as well," she said. "They will take you too, and you will only follow him into death if he does not do this."
"You don't know that."
She does not answer that, but for a moment she seemed to solidify, become more real than all the world around them, as if she were the axle upon which the universe turned. He shrank back. No answer was needed, she might as well have spoken aloud. The gods still lived, and even if the sacrifices were gone and their memory faded they still had this: the gift of prophecy.
"Yes, prophecy," she said, reading his thoughts as if plucking them from the air. "Let me offer you another, mortal. Do not take up the shield of Achilles as you once did. It was never yours to bear. Ignore my words, and all that you are now will be destroyed."
She rose then, the hem of her black gown pooling around her like the tattered shreds of night. He could see the first pink fingers of dawn lightening the sky behind her, saw the light warm Steve's hair from white to gold, as if the sun returned life to him.
She was gone between one breath and the next, and Bucky awoke then to the smell of salt water and Steve's body curled against him. The wool of the blanket scratched at his cheek, but the dream did not flee. The dreams of Patroclus never did.
Erskine would tell Steve on the night before the operation, well into the schnapps bottle that Steve could not share, why Schmidt would never recreate the serum.
"…Not if he tried for a thousand years. He only succeeded once because he stole from me, but he did not understand what he did, yes?" Erskine said, and there was a hint of sly humor in his eyes.
"Why not?" Steve said. His voice was sharp and clear in his own ears, cutting through the veil of unreality that seemed to surround this entire experience. His body thrummed with anticipation, as if it knew what was coming, as if it waited for the morning when mortal clay would be turned to gold. Erskine was a stone at the center of it all, solid and dependable, worn by the harsh winds of war and time, and Steve felt an odd rush of affection for the man. He imagined it was the way armor must love the blacksmith that forged it, and wondered if he hadn't accidentally drank from the schnapps bottle, because the world was hazy around him except for Erskine, and his thoughts felt strange and not his own.
"There is," Erskine hiccuped, "a secret ingredient. Impossible to replicate, it will not show up in any scientific test. I know, I have tried. Even if I told you what it was right now you would not believe me. I am like Cassandra," he laughed at this, half to himself as he took another sip.
"Try me," Steve said, leaning in. His knobby elbows dug into knobbier knees as he did so. He was close enough to see the individual white hairs mixed with the gray of Erskine's beard, to smell the alcohol on his breath. Steve had never seen the man so relaxed before, as if after many years Erskine had come to the end of a long road.
Erskine's chuckling subsided, and he gave Steve an owlish look over the rim of his glasses. "Water from the River Styx."
"There's no such thing," Steve said, and was surprised at his own knee-jerk reaction.
Erskine gave a crowing laugh and settled back in his chair, swirling the schnapps in his glass. "There, you see? Even you cannot believe it. It is as they intended."
"They?" Steve said. He was curious, humoring the man. He realized now that Erskine was far into his cups, but the awareness was strange, changing. He had never before disbelieved Erskine as he did now, and the doubt felt like a creature that lived outside of himself, that imposed its will upon him. Steve fought through it, craning his ears and eyes, both damaged and faulty, part deaf and part blind, searching for some sign of falsehood.
"The gods," Erskine said, and it is as if the breath is sucked from the room. The burning filament of the light bulb seemed to flicker like a candle and the room darkened around them until it was like a cave, and they were two early men wearing skins and furs, hunched over a dying fire and speaking of superstition as their shadows dance in ways that did not match their movements. "Schmidt understood that much, but he did not understand what it meant."
His eyes went distant behind his glasses, and Steve's reflection was a single spot of white in the darkness of Erskine's eyes as he mused. "There is a cave in Greece carved from the rock. The source of the River of Acheron, I should not have to tell you that that at least is real. You will believe me if I tell you that. Here, I could even show you on a map. It is in the northwest, and the river flows from there, seething like a cauldron. The ground to either side is red with clay and blood. You must make a sacrifice before you enter to provide payment."
A chill settled upon Steve's shoulders at Erskine's words, and the night itself seemed to press in around them. "What did you do?" he breathed.
"Nothing like you are thinking, nothing your own neighborhood butcher doesn't do every day. I paid for a sheep from the local village, prepared the altar and when all was ready, made the sacrifice. The sheep was meant for slaughter that day in any case. The bones and fat we offered to the gods, and that afternoon we made gyros from the meat," Erskine grinned a bit at that, but then it slipped into a frown and he shook his head. "That is what Schmidt will never understand. They, HYDRA, call themselves mystics but they only believe in their own power. They trust that they understand the will of the gods. Schmidt followed me after, and there he did the unforgivable. He thought that a single animal would not be enough to appease the gods and enter the underworld, that nothing less than a hecatomb would suffice. That is the greatest of sacrifices: one-hundred animals. Only the richest kings could do thus in the ancient world, and Schmidt always did fancy himself a king. And he may have been right, had he stopped there."
Something stirred at the corner of Steve's vision, and though they were alone he thought he saw a figure wavering like a mirage in the shadows of the corner. Erskine's words seemed to echo in that room as well, as if they were not fully his own, as if the past could be played before Steve's eyes like a film instead of merely told.
"Schmidt made his sacrifice, oh yes, but he thought to do better than a king. Instead of animals, he sacrificed one hundred men, women, and children from the nearby village. He slit their throats and stacked their bodies like cordwood, burning them whole upon the altar. Tantalus himself could not have dreamt of such horrors, the black smoke spread for miles, the ground itself cried out at its putrefaction. You see, to the gods human sacrifice has always been an abomination.
"He entered the Underworld, paid the ferryman, and they took him in. He could not have escaped their notice, for the gods are always eager to give mortals what they wish for, so they may twist it to their own doom. He returned with a vial of water from the Styx, black as ink. No light passed through it, even when held to the sun. It is the water that separates this world from the next, life from death, and none may pass it without the boatman's permission, not even light itself."
"But I've seen the formula," Steve interrupted. "You showed it to me, it's not black it's… blue, cerulean." The color wheels of his art classes came back to Steve, had never really left, and he could think of no way that water as dark as what Erskine described would not be visible mixed in with the formula, unless diluted to nothing.
"Yes, that should have been Schmidt's first warning. He had permission, but not their blessing. He had sent too many across the waters of that realm, and they blocked his way. They called for vengeance, and all dead thirst for blood. That is why the water he took was black." Erskine drained the last of his glass as if he too numbered amongst the dead, the liquid stained his lips and his eyes were lost in remembrance.
The figure in the corner was wavering, and Steve thought he could see the suggestion of long hair, a woman's form, tall and proud, a ghost with black eyes. He wondered if it was possible to get drunk on the alcohol fumes coming from Erskine's breath. He felt drunk, or maybe it was just the lack of food and water, or sleep. It was getting late into the night, and yet it seemed the hands of the clock had not moved at all. The figure in the corner felt as if it were watching him.
"Terrible things happened to Schmidt," Erskine said. "But it was only the beginning of his punishment in this world. Rest assured, a more terrible fate awaits him on the other side of the river. You," he pressed his index finger against Steve's chest, over his heart, "will be different. Achilles was made invulnerable by the waters of the River Styx. You will be the new Achilles, but better, because you have known what it is like to be weak."
The light bulbs guttered suddenly and both jerked upright. For a split second, Steve thought he saw a figure clearly within the flashing lights. A woman, fully six feet tall, skin like white stone, her hair a torrent of black. Her eyes were sharp and glinting, her teeth flashed in a grimace. He had only a glimpse of her before she turned, and was gone.
"Power surge," Erskine said, but even he did not sound convinced.
Do not take up the shield of Achilles.
Bucky had awakened to Steve standing above him, sturdy and strong and grinning, and a part of him had screamed at the sight.
Steve looked more like Thetis now, the blood of the gods running through him again. It added a foot of height, of breadth and muscle. Like Achilles' son, Pyrrhus, Steve had tasted the ambrosia of immortals and there was something in him that was greater than before. Gone was the scrappy fighter who would drag a punk out into an alley for pestering a dame. This new creature was molded from gold, bulletproof and divine.
You took him from me! Bucky screamed, even as Patroclus wept for the return of his lover, for the greatest of warriors, who looked down on him in the full flush of his vitality, glowing with it.
Steve should have been at home, he should have been drawing, picking up dames, collecting scrap in his little red wagon, anything, anywhere but here. The greatest of wars had called to him and now it was all spiraling out of control. This was supposed to be the war Patroclus would fight so that Achilles did not need to, it was all that had gotten Bucky through, the only thought that helped him survive the pain of Zola's experiments.
Zola had done something to him. Something that tasted of sulfur and bile, liquid poured down Bucky's throat and injected into his veins. Waters of the River Acheron, because Schmidt had not been allowed back to the Styx. It carried in it the barrier between life and death, but it was not the pure protection that the Styx granted. Bucky could feel it changing him, twisting him, making him hard as stone, strong and precise. Stealing from him his humanity. Whatever they had done to Steve made him more alive. Bucky felt like he was dying by inches.
What happened to you?
I joined the army.
Did it hurt?
A little.
Is it permanent?
So far.
He did not know who spoke. They were mirrors now, though Steve (Achilles) did not know it. Had no reason to suspect, this was a new life after all, and Bucky (Patroclus) had never dared ask if Steve remembered as he did. They were mirrors, had joined the army, been injected, known pain, known they would never be the same.
He hid the changes, and hid them well.
No one questioned that he had become a crack marksman overnight. No one remembered that James Buchanan Barnes had been promoted because there was no one else, because he could keep his head under fire. That he, a boy from Brooklyn, had starved as many winters as he'd eaten, had scuffled in back alleys, and had never shot a gun in his life. That this precision was as new as it was supernatural.
Bucky tried not to think about it, but simply allowed the world to narrow to a single point, to the inhale, the exhale, to the way the target dropped. He felt something new growing within him, something cold as winter, something Patroclus had never known. He had been no archer, no marksman, the bow had been a coward's weapon in his home kingdom, and if he had a talent it was never exploited.
There was more than that, though, more that tore his life apart. He almost didn't recognize her at first. She had been young back then, had died young and filled with so much promise, a priestess of Artemis before she was fourteen. She was to be married by her father, the High King, to the greatest of Greeks, to Achilles. Instead, she had been killed at the altar. Patroclus still remembered the terror in her eyes when the knife came slashing down.
Iphigenia, Peggy, was no longer a little girl. This new life and world had given her more, and she had taken it. She fled her father's court, her home in Britain, when still a teenager. She had begun her career as contact, a safe-house keeper and had worked her way up to full agent before she was eighteen on sheer guts and persistence. She was unrecognizable from the soft princess Patroclus had known, hardly more than a child; except that she had the same dark curls.
It seemed the gods had more wishes to fulfill in this new life than his alone. Perhaps Iphigenia asked for a life with Achilles, perhaps she only asked for a life. In any case, their eyes meet, warm brown and blue, and Bucky was only a shadow. Already he could feel himself fading.
Steve's eyes were distant when they returned to their tent, but they became startled when Bucky pushed him down, kissed him roughly, demanded his attention. He got it, and they make love that night, and it is all things at once for Bucky. He kneaded, and bit and fucked. He moaned and everything was hard and bruising and vital, fingers digging into muscle, hips jerking, fucking deep. He did it to remember that he existed, that for now he has flesh and blood. Steve was taken aback by the ferocity, but the new body could handle it the way the old Steve, his Steve, could not.
Before, Steve had always been on top, and there had been sweetness to his dominance, the rapture on his face, and Bucky reveling in the joy of being claimed. This new Steve has already claimed all that he is, just as Achilles had owned all that Patroclus was and they are melting together now that Steve is a warrior once again, not only a scrapper like Bucky in the back alleys of Brooklyn.
He did not wear his anger, this new Achilles. Steve's rage was buried deep, under a river of calm, beneath the lessons of his mortal mother. Once again Bucky was glad that Thetis could not touch him in this life, that she was no more than a shadow upon the wall, unable to whisper her poison words of glory and prophecy, urging Achilles to his birthright. He could be so much more than that, always could have. Achilles might have been a healer like Asclepius, or a musician like Orpheus, and instead she had made him a killer like no other. Steve does not desire such things, only wished to defeat bullies, those who were strong and feckless as he had once been when he carved his path across the fields of Troy. If Bucky didn't know better, he'd say it was a penance of its own sort. That before Achilles could become more, he must first defeat what he was.
Bucky's fingers dug into the muscles of Steve's thigh, ripping a wanton cry from him even as Steve backs himself harder onto Bucky's cock. Bucky realized his teeth were bared and his eyes stung and he wants to keep this moment as much as he wants to exorcize it. To lance the boil of this pain and let it bleed out, forgotten, to clutch Steve close against him, knowing he will lose him soon. He does not know how he knows, perhaps some gift of prophecy that is as unwanted as it is painful. He will not survive this year, as Thetis has told him, even though he knows Steve will. Must. He has taken up the call of war, and surely that was what the prophecy called for? A life for a life.
His own orgasm speared him, wracked his muscles, brought him low. Bucky collapsed, forehead pressed to the sweat of Steve's back, tasting it there like the salt of the ocean, the taste of a sea nymph's son. Steve was panting beneath him, and Bucky had just enough presence of mind to wrap his hand around Steve' cock, slick with sweat and desire, and stroke him with long, languorous motions that leave Steve whimpering. Steve shudders beneath him, making noises at the back of his throat that are almost enough to make Bucky hard again. Muscles contract around Bucky's softening member, and Steve spends himself on the cot with a muffled cry, teeth clenched. The instant he is finished he goes boneless, and Bucky slips free. For a moment he could only stare. The moonlight bathed Steve in white as if he were her beloved, as if he were Endymion asleep in the glade.
He was beautiful, and Bucky felt his mouth going dry at the sight, his heart clenching painfully at all that was before him and all he must give up. This was not the old world, and Steve was not the Aristos Achaion, the greatest of Greeks, able to make his own law. If he loved Iphigenia, Peggy, he should go to her, and leave Bucky to whatever he was becoming.
"What are you thinking?" Steve said, turning onto his back and looking up at Bucky with half-lidded eyes. Sleep was coming swiftly, already Steve's eyes were shining and satiated, and there was a bloom on his face as he looked up at Bucky. That glow was enough to make Bucky forget for a moment the straps, the table, and the pain of becoming something new, to forget that he must soon give this all up or have it taken from him. His gaze flickered to the corner, expecting to see Thetis, dark eyes like obsidian, edged and disapproving, prepared for vengeance upon the mortal that distracted her son from his destiny. He found nothing there, but Steve followed his eyes curiously, his neck craning, and he turned back too upon seeing nothing.
"Nothin' but how much I hate not being able to take you again right now," Bucky said with a grin he didn't feel. He should have known better than to try to trick Steve, because he caught the lie immediately. Steve propped himself up on his forearms, the drowsiness banished from his eyes. His brow crinkled with concern. They're still sweat-soaked and dripping, and Bucky's skin crawls with the need to wash off, but he was as helpless to Steve now as he was when they were Achilles and Patroclus.
"This isn't about Peggy, is it?" Steve said, and Bucky's mouth twisted in bitterness. Once men had thought Achilles simple for his directness. Bucky could see it now, in how others took Steve's simple goodness, his direct honesty, as a sign of stupidity. It was they that were the fools, they didn't understand the power of a direct thrust to the heart. Steve did not mince words, didn't need to.
Bucky's silence was acknowledgement enough.
"Aaw, Buck," Steve sighed. "Look, she's a swell dame, and you're right, I'm a little in love with her but it's…she's not you. I'm not gonna throw you off for her. It's just dancing."
"She doesn't think that," Bucky said, because it was true.
Steve looked stricken. "She… I mean, she's gotta, right? It ain't nothin' but dancing, we took plenty of girls dancing."
"Dancing means something different in the war, Steve," Bucky said. He could feel his own exhaustion washing through him, as much from the orgasm as from the topic. He fell on his back next to Steve, still not facing him. "Any of us could die any day. I could die tomorrow, and it might not be for some grand, noble last stand. It might just be a lucky sniper, friendly fire, Hell, it could be a goddamn land mine. Someone says they want to go dancing with you, it can mean the rest of their life. You hear the numbers from back home? Every man who gets discharged gets snapped up in the first month, they're starving for men back home. If you'd stayed there you'd probably already be married with two kids by now."
"What if that's not what I wanted?" Steve said, and his voice sounded as if it came from far away.
"Of course it's what you wanted," Bucky said. "Good little Catholic boy like you? The girls just didn't know what they were missing. You go back the way you are now, you'll have to beat 'em off with a stick."
Steve laughed under his breath, and Bucky felt the twist of bitterness deep in his gut. Was he thinking about it now? Going home and getting the picket fence and a cute girl? Or worse, settling down with Peggy in some flat in London, being regular ol' war heroes together. Bucky didn't know why he couldn't picture himself at the end of that line, except that he was probably back in Brooklyn somewhere, taking another faceless girl out, and wondering what he would have had if he wasn't a coward.
"Not sure I'll have to, Buck. There's only one person I want," Steve said, and leaned in for a kiss that stole the breath from Bucky's lungs and he was kissing back, desperately, pushing with his lips and tongue for some sign of a lie. But Steve didn't lie, and neither had Achilles but for different reasons. He can't taste any falsehood now, not an ounce of hesitation with how Steve pushed against him, already hardening again, refractory time courtesy of the serum.
Bucky willed his own erection down. It was too soon, and he didn't want to admit even to himself that he could almost keep up with Steve. He was afraid of what the changes meant. He was learning only now to be careful what he wished for a thousand of years before he were born.
"Don't say nothin' you'll regret," Bucky warned. "You're not Steve Rogers from Brooklyn anymore, and we ain't just friends who can get each other off without it meaning anything. You're Captain America now, Aristos Achaion, you belong to…" Bucky broke off. He had never used the words from their old life like this before. He saw a flash of the war, of the raised hands of the Greek host, the moment he had known Achilles no longer belonged only to him. Saw it overlaid with the moment they returned to the camp, Let's hear it for Captain America!
It was all happening again.
He pushed the memory aside. Wondered if Steve had noticed. "Point is, you belong to everyone now. The whole goddamn nation. They're not gonna take kindly to Captain America being queer."
"The wars gonna end, Buck," Steve said, so gently Bucky could barely stand it. "And when it does they won't care about me anymore. We'll have our pensions, and we've got friends. We can go anywhere we want, anywhere we need to."
"They're not going to let you go just like that," Buck said, and thought he would choke. "They'll remember you for a thousand years. You stand for something now, Steve, you matter."
"I don't need glory," Steve said, and it's all Bucky can do to keep from giving in to Patroclus, to start crying like a little kid right then and there. "I just need you. They'll find someone else, someone who likes being a dancing monkey. There'll be plenty of those once the fighting is over."
"You say that now…"
"And I'll say it tomorrow too," Steve said firmly. "I'd rather spend the one day with you as a grocery bagger in some backwater in France than spend the rest of my life as the best fighter in the army, and that's the God's honest truth, Buck. I learned my lesson on that one."
"When?" Bucky said.
"I—" Steve cut off, looked down, the first time he'd looked sheepish the whole night. "Just…something I figured out while I was out here."
He knows. He remembers, Bucky thought, but could not bring himself to ask.
Author Note: Thank you for reading! This is part 1 of 2. If you enjoyed this, please do consider leaving a review!