Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

by the ocean weekender

In another life, Steve would have gone with them. And in another, they would all have lived. And in yet another, they would never have met in the first place. But this is this life, and they have seen the end of the war and Steve has not. Too many have died. Steve has lost too many people but they lost him first. Or: Steve and Bucky manage the future through many new songs

There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.

Sometimes, Steve finds himself drawing without thinking. It only happens when there's nothing to do and no one to talk to and the future is just too much of a change. Then he can just sit on the couch, but he doesn't fit on it long ways anymore- the serum saw to that.

"You don't need me anymore, Stevie," Bucky laughs but his eyes are wild and his laugh is forced and they both try to ignore the fact that he isn't joking.

He draws the long gone, the dead and the aged and the changed. The ones who can't go back, who didn't make it back.

Bucky (his, not the broken man of the future), Peggy (like she used to be, a lethal beauty), the Howling Commandos, Howard Stark (who changed, who swerved so he didn't hit a ghost), his Ma, Bucky's Ma (before she took his two sisters and put his best friend in an orphanage. Bitch.), little old Mrs Goodman with one leg on the next floor down, a girl with red hair and a tutu ("Child of the Red Room, Steve"), creaky old buildings that no longer exist ("Time makes everyone a bitch, Spangles, you know that").

Too many have died. Steve has lost too many people but they lost him first.

The radio changes, no longer 40's dance, now modern. "Things we lost to the flames, things we'll never see again… things we lost in the fire, fire, fire," but Steve lost them to the ice.

Here they talked of revolution.
Here it was they lit the flame.
Here they sang about tomorrow
And tomorrow never came.

Fire crackles and the orange flames consume another stick, gorging on the food in an attempt to keep from dying out. Steve remembers winters spent in a feverish haze, relief coming only in the form of cool hands and litanies of nonsense flowing like silk.

They're making good progress- should get back to base and two weeks of leave in three days. The Hydra post they had been sent to destroy was already abandoned when they got there, with food and blankets left behind.

Literally: nature overtaking the cracked concrete already. "That is damn creepy," Morita put it bluntly and the others had nodded as Dugan cursed in Irish and Bucky covered them all with his rifle.

He is the only one left awake; Bucky is staring at the ceiling of their tent pretending to sleep as shaking fingers trace over needle scars. Gabe and Dernier and Morita are all playing poker whilst pretending not to.

Gabe is one hell of a linguist and medic but his poker face is shit.

Another crackle is swallowed by the trees.

Steve wonders is maybe he should go to pretend-sleep too.

There's a rustling movement from the vicinity of Dugan and Falsworth's tent (the Englishman prefers 'Monty' and the Irishman 'Dum Dum'. No one tells him why). Falsworth appears, coughing like scrawny Steve did every winter, like Sarah Rogers with TB. Dugan appears soon next, holding the other upright as his knees start to buckle.

Steve shuffles back slightly, not wanting to be seen.

"Hiding away, Stevie? You never would hide before- guess your body isn't the only thing that's changed," Bucky probably never even realised he had said it out loud and Steve wanted to cry because both of them were different. They couldn't go back to Brooklyn and pretend.

"You shouldn't be here, lad," Dugan tells Falsworth gently (he goes back to Irish when he's concerned). Falsworth might be a gentlemen but he gives Dugan the two fingers (neither will tell the others what it means, damn Brits) and says something along the lines of being fine. Steve shuffles a little further back, because Dugan had complained at the start of the mission.

"'s that damn English stiff upper lip, Captain."

But Steve knows what it's like to be kept behind.

It chafes, it wears you down, and it hurts.

So he said that it was the Englishman's decision.

And Dugan helps the other back inside the tent and Steve shuffles forward again.

From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn
And they rose with voices ringing
And I can hear them now!
The very words that they had sung
Became their last communion
On this lonely barricade at dawn.

Sometimes, without meaning to, his hands betray him and the pictures turn to the aged and the changed in their coffins, the gravestones of the dead and dying.

Except, really, the whole world has betrayed him by letting him live.

Steve recently invested in a shredder- Tony thought it would be a good idea to show him a documentary about identity theft- and those pictures go straight in it with no hesitation several times over.

He doesn't need a reminder- he was there talking of an equal world with them.

On occasion he can still hear them, echoing round his mind (he doesn't tell Sam- he doesn't need another person thinking he's lost it. Himself is enough).

"A black soldier bunking with the white ones?" Sam asks once.

"We ended up on newspapers- he and Morita thought that maybe things would change, after."

Sam doesn't say "they still haven't much" and Steve is grateful.

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.

He moves to Stark (sorry, Avengers) Tower for a while and Tony and Clint band together to keep throwing meaningless pop culture references at him left right and center.

He enlists Jarvis to help him find 'Born in the USA' on YouTube.

First kick I took was when I hit the ground…they put a rifle in my hand, sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill… had a brother… they're still there, he's all gone.

He puts the song first on his 'play list'.

He has nowhere to run and nowhere to go.

For a time though, the new scenery helps- it's new and big and the future and with so many people coming and going it's a broken little family and he fits right in.

"We're all looking for something when we get out," Natasha agrees. "Even if we don't know what it is.

Phantom faces at the windows.
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

Eventually, of course, Bucky turns up. But not. Bucky died in the chair 'he' tells Steve. 'He' has decided he doesn't want a name just yet. Tony has started to call him various names relating to some Harry Potter villain (Steve is only halfway through the first book).

'He' is silent, but seemingly more used to the future than Steve because he understands what 'Twitter' and 'Facebook' are, even if it is fragmented and shaky. There are good days when 'he' is calm and docile and comfortably quiet and sometimes helps cook. Then there are medium days, when he'll curl up on the sofa or under the bed, refusing to move. And there are bad days, where if the Winter Soldier programming doesn't take over, anger and rage will. Steve isn't sure which is worse.

Except he isn't sure why he's 'Steve' still. 'He' screamed once that he 'sacrificed Steve for the Captain' and got Bucky killed for it. No one tries to argue that Bucky died under leather straps and needles in 1942.

And then there's times where he'll stare at old videos and pictures and maybe it isn't very healthy but it keeps him quiet and Steve pretends it'll help him remember.

Of course, the unspoken truth is that 'he' does remember. Maybe not all of it- but enough. Enough to understand.

In the night, when Steve can't sleep and no one else is around, he'll sit on the kitchen counter with hands hugging a mug of tea and looking at the empty table. Jarvis will feed the music from his 'play list' to the kitchen for him.

'Life, life is a long time, too long by far.'

Once, he crossed path with Buck- 'he'; it's exactly as when he sits there, except with different music.

'Sorrow found me when I was young, sorrow waited, sorrow won.'

It sounds beautifully depressing and Steve declines when Jarvis offers to switch to his play list.

'We are reckless, we are the wild youth, chasing visions of our futures, one day we will reveal the truth, that he will die before he gets there.

And over and over it plays whilst the tea grows cold.

'Maybe tomorrow, we'll find our way home'.

'Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now.'

'To face what I've done and do my time.'

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more.

There's a remembrance service at a cemetery. Steve takes 'James' as he's calling himself now. They sit at the back, ever-silent James fitting in perfectly. There's music playing all through the service, but Steve only hears fragments of songs and speeches.

'You better learn it fast, you better learn it young, 'cuz someday never comes.'

'It's too cold outside, for angels to fly, for angels to die.'

There's a war memorial in the cemetery, box of white stone scarred with the names of the dead. Steve thinks it's a good thing people don't do memorials for the broken- there wouldn't be enough room.

James stands next to him, huddled in his too-big hoody. Remembers the long gone, the dead and the aged and the changed. Steve feels his breath catch like it used to way back when in Brooklyn during asthma attacks. There's far too many people, and he feels guilty, to be here alive and well when millions of others didn't make it back.

"I've got no right to do any less than them," scrawny Stevie told Bucky and he meant it.

James suddenly reaches out and grabs his hand, flesh on clammy flesh and he wonders if he's hallucinating it but then doesn't care. It feels more real than the rest of his life has since he's slammed into the future.

"What was their sacrifice for?" James asks, voice raspy and unused.

Steve opens his mouth, then stops and closes it again. He doesn't need to say one of the trite things like 'freedom' or 'a better world'. They had been fighting for both and yet so many other things all at the same time. 'A better world' sounds good; yet Steve can't honestly say he would stay here, in this loud electric future. Where too much but nothing at all has changed. Given the chance, he can't truthfully deny he wouldn't go back to Brooklyn and Bucky and scrawny skinny little Stevie. To his Ma, Bucky's Ma, to little old Mrs Goodman with one leg on the next floor down. To winters spent in a feverish haze of cool hands and silky litanies, with saving up money and picking up dimes from gutters to be able to go to Coney Island and eat hotdogs.

"Their sacrifice was for this," Steve tells James eventually, but it's hollow and empty and cold.

---

The songs in this story are, in this order:

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables- Les Miserables

Things we lost in the fire- Bastille

Born in the USA- Bruce Springsteen

Life is a long time- Los campesinos

Sorrow- the national

Youth- Daughter

Maybe Tomorrow- Stereophonics

Airplanes- BOB with Hayley Williams

Dustbowl Dance- Mumford and Sons

Someday never comes- CCR

A-team- Ed sheeran