Okay, I'm not going to lie. I recently re-watched Disney's Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and I still loved the movie as much as I remembered loving it years ago. Unfortunately, this time, a plot bunny sank its teeth deep into my muse and now I'm trapped writing a multi-chapter monster of a fic for a fandom probably no one is even a part of anymore. All that to say, my fellow Marvel fans, Avenger fics have taken a backseat. Please be patient-I will return. So here's a little depressing something to tide you over til I get back. (Hopefully.)
Steve doesn't really remember much about his father. A warm laugh and a harsh cough. Long ties and dark shoes. Newspaper and coffee and the preacher talking for a long time over a wooden box in the church cemetery. No one mentions the word death. It's just that Steve's father has passed away. Gone on to his home in Heaven. Steve supposes his home on Earth was just too drafty for him to stay.
He used to have a dog. One summer, when he was thirteen. He had a puppy, a pet, a friend. For twenty-eight days. Then Bucky appeared sopping wet on his doorstep, holding the dead animal between trembling fingers. Steve wondered what was wrong with Reid. Then Bucky said dead. Steve took the animal into his own hands and the little head rolled the wrong way off his palm.
$4.81, $.79, $.03, $6.89, $2.00. The cost of living. It keeps adding up and Steve's head swims as he slouches over the kitchen table trying to do the figures. The numbers mock him, decimals and dollar signs switching places as they run from his brain. His little stack of nickels probably won't be enough, doesn't look like enough, isn't enough. What can he live without? Chocolate, of course. Apples, if he has to. His mother, never. He pours every cent he can into her last dose of medicine. The bottle sits nearly full on the counter until he goes to war six years later and then he doesn't know what happens to it.
The movie screen has no color. Soldiers in black and white, and tanks in black and white, and guns in black and white. It's all so distant. So far away. Nothing like the tan of Steve's worn coat, the blue in his eyes or the red on his split lip. Numbers in the papers, casualties, names. All of it black and white. Bucky's uniform is brown with gold trimming. Not black like the dresses of the grieving women in the neighborhood or white like their faces, white like the ghosts they mourn.
Time speeds up after Bucky ships out. A chance to be worth something. A probability of failure. Seven days. A previously untested experiment. Seven minutes. Then shattering glass and bullets and Erskine fading on the ground between Steve's palms. Angry heart speeding up and pushing newborn muscles and the heat of rage and the cry for justice and the bubbling foaming defiance of an enemy fading on the ground beneath Steve's feet. Two deaths. Good and evil. Black and white.
It snowed in Brooklyn in November. But Steve isn't in Brooklyn and it doesn't snow in southern Italy, not even in November. It rains and turns the ground into slippery mud under his ridiculous boots. He's an outsider, a pretender, a brightly colored piece of propaganda in a camp full of real soldiers who have been through hell and come out the other side. Peggy mentions the 107th and Steve's pulse races and his body races and his mind races and he won't accept death. Not this time. Not this close. Not again. Not ever.
It's late afternoon when he makes up his mind to challenge destiny, evening when he boards a private plane, night when he jumps out into enemy territory. Hydra's soldiers are dressed in black. Shadows, monsters, non-human things. He punches, kicks, and shoots them as he has to, as he's never done before but will do again. They are faceless figures, enemies, obstacles. It doesn't mean much when they fall to the ground lifeless. Bucky's face is shadowed, eyes hooded, cheeks lined. But he is Bucky and he is Steve's best friend and they escape through fire and bullets and past a man with skin like blood and eyes like hatred. The long march back to the Allied base is a frenzied dash for freedom. He doesn't know how many men he saved, how many remained in the factory, how many died along the way. But the numbers don't matter, not really.
War is a pit with jaws that grind men between its teeth. Steve plans, leads, and wins some battles. He plans, leads, and loses others. The mountains of dead soldiers on both sides rise everyday. Bodies litter the field. Innocent, guilty, young, old, whole, torn apart. It doesn't matter, not really. This, Steve thinks, gazing at the men in uniform lying beneath the burning sky, this is death. Some of the men are lifeless. Others are merely exhausted, too tired to pick themselves up from among the corpses.
Days pass in an unmitigated parade of conflict. The struggle to survive is now the fight to be fought. It's no longer so much about peace for Steve's country so much as securing another sunrise for the soldier fighting beside him. Steve meets the men, mingles in their midst, shakes their hands, claps their shoulders, eats their food, drinks their toasts. And counts their bodies at the end of the day, checking dog tags for names to put to mangled faces. Numbers, faces, life, death. It's all part of his routine now. Steve is well acquainted with death.
That's why it catches him by surprise when it takes Bucky. So close. He's right there. No longer a child unable to remember, unable to defend, unable to heal. No longer a witness in a darkened theater, nor an experiment inexplicably gone right. This is more than black and white. More than bullets and bombs. Different than numbers and allies turned into friends. This is blood and brother and trust and shared secrets kept and promises made and loyalty and only three more inches. Wind, snow, metal, ice, death, death, death, death. Bucky screams and Steve's betrayed. Death is black and white and far away and strangers and long ago and not supposed to happen. But it did, right in front of his desperate fingers and horrified eyes. Steve cries and drinks and vows vengeance but none of it feels quite right. Now, Steve thinks, gazing at the empty cot across from his, now I know what death is.
The world could end in a single day and Steve remembers the twenty-six seconds it took for Bucky to be gone. He plans and leads and it feels like a victory until there are no options left. Until he has to die so the world can live. And if he had time to reflect on it, he might have wondered at the exchange. Steve Rogers from Brooklyn, one man in an equal trade for six billion other human beings. But there's no time. Time is running out. Maybe it's always been running out for him and this is just the end of the it. The final grains of sand in his hourglass.
Death isn't what he thought it would be. It's blue and cold. So cold. Wet, choking, freezing, suffocating. Drowning. It's finally Steve's turn and he doesn't die in his sleep, isn't shot through the heart. He's not blown to pieces or disintegrated in a flash of light. He doesn't fall off a train. No, death comes for him and it forces itself inside of him. Closing over his head and swallowing him whole. Death rushes up his nose, down his throat. Fills his lungs and clogs his stomach. Death consumes him, tearing and ripping through his body, stuffing him so full of ice that there's no room for anything else. Life has no place in Steve and he realizes he was wrong before. But now he's right. This, he knows now, without a doubt. This is death.