He holds the letter in a shaking hand. He wasn't surprised. Of course he wasn't. He had known this was a possibility, feared it ever since the ship had left the harbor - no, as soon as he'd known there would be a ship that would leave the harbor. The fear had haunted his nightmares, nagged at his waking hours.
Yet he was still shaking, still numb, still couldn't quite believe, because hadn't he been invincible? Oh, he'd bled, time and time again, and he'd always been reckless, not the sort you'd peg for a long, dull life with a peaceful death at the end of it, but in his eyes, his friend had always been something a little more than human. He had been a hero, and heroes weren't supposed to die. Friends certainly weren't.
His best friend, quite possibly his only friend, was dead.
The end of the line had come.
He wasn't crying. He hadn't cried for such a long time now. Crying was for babies. Whiners. Children. He had never cried, and if he hadn't, what right had he?
But he was dead. The letter, the dreaded letter said so.
Everyone feared letters in war time. They feared they would stop, feared a certain one would come. There was no law that said he should have been the exception.
But there should have been. There should have been a law, an exception to the draft that said people with reckless, sickly best friends who needed them didn't have to go to war. Goodness knew he had looked for one.
He still couldn't believe Steve had swallowed the lie that he'd enlisted. As if he would ever leave that stupid punk alone by choice.
There should have been a law. There should have been a law that said soldiers on the front only had to worry about bad food and bullets and cold rain and snow, and that civilians only had to worry about getting letters.
But here they were bombing civilians, both sides were, and so perhaps it was only fair that soldiers too had to worry about letters.
Long ones at first that had made him itch with anxiousness.
Ran into some bullies in a back alley today. Don't worry, I took care of them.
There had a been few dark specks on the paper, and he'd been wild with worry for days, convinced it was blood, because there was no way that kid had gotten away clean, not without Bucky to protect him.
I've had a bit of unexpected free time on my hands, so I drew you this. Thought you might be homesick.
Free time, Bucky knew from personal experience, meant fired. What if Steve couldn't pay the rent? What if he couldn't buy food?
And why did the punk force him to read through the lines like this? Didn't he know it just made him worry more?
Only you could nag from a whole continent away. You're a real mother hen, you know that? Yes, fine, I have a bit of a cough. Look on the bright side. I can't try and enlist until it's better. Happy?
No, he wasn't happy. The last time Steve had said he had a "bit of a cold", he'd nearly died.
Nearly. Died.
The paper fell from his hands.
Pneumonia. Frail. Poor dear.
The phrases from the landlady burned through his mind.
Bucky Barnes was no idiot. He could read between the lines.
He's dead. He's dead because you weren't there to make sure there was food on the table. He's dead because you weren't there to make sure he didn't get too beat up. He's dead because you weren't there, and there was no one to keep him warm, to bring him food, to scrounge up and buy medicine, to, to, to -
Because you weren't there.
The 506th was sent to the front.
James Buchanan Barnes was listed MIA.
Hydra strapped him to the table. He didn't move. He didn't even blink. The scientists talked to him. They said no one was coming for him. They said he would have been listed as MIA by now. They said he would have been presumed dead. They said no one knew he was still alive, not even his fellow prisoners.
And the prisoner laughed and laughed and laughed as if that were the funniest thing he'd ever heard.
He'd been dead long before Hydra caught up with him.
The prisoner's heart stopped beating not an hour afterwards. Hydra's plans for the perfect assassin were temporarily put on hold as they searched for another victim.
The U.S. government reluctantly put their own super soldier research on hold. With Dr. Erskine dead, there was little they could do.
Howard Stark started drinking. His son, years later, eventually grew accustomed to his father's rants on the failed experiment. Howard became obsessed with it, convinced that if he could only get it right, he could somehow find redemption.
Tony wished, more than anything, that the skinny little kid who had volunteered for the experiment had lived. Maybe then his father wouldn't have been so distant.
Even after his father's passing, the thought remained with him. For some reason, it grew more and more prominent during battles against the aliens or villain of the week. There were so many disparate heroes, none of whom seemed to be able to work together for more than five minutes without turning on each other. What they needed was a leader. A true hero, not just an "enhanced". They needed a super solider. He really wished that skinny little kid had made it.
It was funny. The records said he'd died of pneumonia. Only SHIELD knew the truth.
Oh, why couldn't Steve Rogers have lived?
. . . . .
A/N: It case it was unclear: Steve got sick before the experiment, but it went ahead anyway. It failed, and Steve died. The official cause of death was pneumonia which is what they told the land lady.