Warning: Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War
Not sure if I'm gonna continue this, so for now, please enjoy it as it is.
.
"Stay down. Final warning."
Bucky laid on the ground. His vision was hazy, his body numb and he was only half-aware of his surroundings. His mind was stuck in another lifetime, falling in another abyss where a missing arm was just the beginning of an unspeakable, horrible nightmare in which there were only orders, killings and emptiness.
His friend stood up despite the warning, drawing up his fists.
"I could do this all day," said Steve.
The familiarity of the challenge revoked a wave of memories - deranged, incomplete and every bit as painful as the loss of his arm, but memories nonetheless - in Bucky with a clarity of mind that he hadn't experienced in a long while. It made him realize there was only one possible outcome to this battle. Stark's mask was iron as he aimed at his former teammate, repulsor building up energy.
Steve's eyes showed as much regret as determination. But he didn't move away.
Stark fired.
The blast hit Bucky in the back just when he pushed Steve out of range with his remaining arm. He groaned.
Time froze for a single horrifying moment as the two boys from Brooklyn locked eyes. They both realized the similarity as well as consequences in shocked silence. Then the world started moving forward again. Bucky's front crashed against one of the concrete pillars sideways, ribs cracking with a crushing sound. Steve instinctually reached out, but the momentum of the blast had already carried him further, past the concrete towards the grey horizon. It tipped him over the edge of the platform.
"No!" yelled Steve. He sounded so wounded that Bucky almost regretted their trading places.
Almost.
His fate must have been stuck in a loop. It was like he was destined to fall again and again and again until he finally got the dying part right. As much as he wanted to stay - to keep fighting at Steve's side, like he was born to do - it looked like that was a future long lost. Apparently his body was unable to do anything but fall when Steve was around - on the train in the high Alps, into the water of the Pontemac and now here in Siberia.
It would have been a curse, if it hadn't been his own choice every single time. Because as long as it meant that Steve Rogers would live, the fall of Bucky Barnes was a trade he was willing to accept.
He closed his eyes quietly.
"Rogers! Don't-!"
The voice - or rather, the intonation, a lot like anger, almost like concern, but not quite either of them - startled Bucky enough to draw him out of his own mind. A bad premonition settled in his stomach, twisting and turning uneasily, before he found the will to open his eyes and look up. There, in a flash of red, white and blue, he saw Steve jump from the edge of the platform as if he had nothing to lose.
Bucky stared. Steve dove through the air with the attitude of someone who knew how to maneuver himself without support or parachute.
"Bucky!" shouted Steve. "Grab my hand!"
The knot in his stomach tighetened and smashed what was left of his hope ever since they entered the godforsaken building prepared to die into little bread crumbs. Together with the torment however grew an emotion Bucky hadn't experienced this intense in years, decades even, because his mind had either been too empty or too broken to focus on anything else beyond its own cage. It took over all his senses, consumed him from inside out and overwhelmed all his other possible responses at the man jumping to save his life in favor of this one emotion. He opened his mouth.
"God damn it Steve!" yelled Bucky with a fury that was on par with Stark's raging vengeance. "You thickheaded, reckless, dumb little shit that you are-"
"Buck!" urged Steve. "Quickly!"
Any other man would've followed the Captain's orders hearing the urgency in his voice. But Bucky was not just another man, not just a follower of Captain America the symbol of hope and leader of the Avengers, he was Steve Roger's friend first and foremost. And as any good friend would do when they see a friend be stupidly reckless for no good reason, it was up to him to talk some sense into that friend. Or, uh, yell.
"No!" snapped Bucky. He would've folded his arms for good measure if he had been able to. "Go save the world instead!"
Steve blinked, frantic urgency momentarily taking a backseat. The two little boys from Brooklyn stared at each other.
"No Buck," said Steve in a voice so quiet that if it weren't for the serum Bucky wouldn't have heard him at all. "Not without you."
The echo of those familiar words stared Bucky in the face. Steve had listened to him back then, and made an effort to defy the burning fate of hellfire by jumping straight through it in a reckless gamble to get both their asses out of that hellhole. Bucky took a moment to really look at Steve. Behind the almost infuriating calm he displayed there was a fear hiding in the shadows of his eyes, the memory of a loss that never truly left his friend that made Bucky instantly reshuffle his priorities.
After a moment - even if there was no time for such things as the ground came closer and closer with every passing second - he nodded, and reached out with his hand.
Relief washed over Steve's features as he took it, immediately pulling them together. Before Bucky even realized Steve had already turned them mid-air so that now he was the one on top and Steve's back was directed towards the frozen terrain beneath them. Steve put one arm behind his back and encircled his head against his chest with his other hand. Bucky could feel how incredibly tense his friend was through that point of contact, counting every second in the air to brace themselves for impact.
"I told you," muttered Steve. "'Till the end of the line, ya jerk."
Suddenly Bucky's throat was all constricted and he couldn't see jack shit even if he wanted to. The killer was that he'd have done the same if their roles were reversed and they both knew it. That was how their friendship had worked from the start and realizing that apparently for Steve nothing had changed even now meant more to him than he'd ever be able to express into words. He swallowed the lump in his throat away.
"You're such a punk," managed Bucky finally, voice breaking.
Steve just pulled them even closer in response.
Steve Rogers - stupid, stubborn, punk that he was - deserved a life much better than this. Bucky didn't want to be the person for whom Steve risked that chance on happiness, but he knew that once Steve made up his mind nothing would let him change it. Not even Bucky.
What was more, part of him was grateful for the solid presence of his friend. He found relief in not being alone as he relived his darkest memory at the start of his longest adventure. Nothing he'd say or do now would change his fall or Steve's jump anyway.
In the end Bucky resigned himself to their mutual stupidity. He put his single arm behind Steve's head.
The cold wind around them howled for their blood.
They hit the ground.
.
I like my stories like I like Steve Rogers. A tragic human being for whom death would be more mercy than being alive.
R&R is like oxygen :)