A/N… Occasionally I am cruel and like to beat up characters for the heck of it. I thoroughly enjoy tragic drama (like Loki's "death scene" in Thor:DW for example). This is one of those times. I imagine this a time after CAWS without the "reuniting drama" of post CAWS but with the warmth of Steve and Buck's WWII days.
You and Me
The battlefield smoldered in small fires and wispy clouds of smoke mixed with fog. A gentle snow began to fall in the chill late season air. Debris littered as far as the eye could see. Hulks of vehicles both military and civilian lay strewn like a child's carelessly discarded toys. The stench of burning diesel, oil and sulfur hung in the air and clogged his nose. Moans of wounded were everywhere as if the field was haunted with the undead ghosts of the injured.
Steve staggered through the wreckage, his head ringing from the blasts of bombs that the vibranium shield didn't block, a gash above his right eye dripping crimson into his view. Steam clouded from his exhalations. He knew his ribs were bruised or broken and his left leg wasn't 100% either. Who knew where Natasha, Sam or even Stark were now? It didn't matter, anyway. There was only one man he was searching for in this pit of despair: James Barnes.
Last he saw Bucky, they were together behind an overturned city bus under heavy fire from an enemy bunker in front of them. Sitting on the ground, pressing their backs to the icy metal, large caliber bullets blew through the steel like hot knives in butter. Steve looked at Bucky with a worried expression, nervously gripping the handle of his shield tighter.
"Why the frown, Cap? Lost your plan? This is just like old times." Bucky smiled easily but his eyes suggested he was just as terrified. His metal fingers flexed agitatedly over the barrel of his favorite rifle.
"No. Just scared." Rogers replied honestly as ordinance exploded nearby and threw dirt at them. Both men flinched as the hard dirt and concrete fragments clattered over their bodies. Cap's shield deflected most of it.
"Scared? This ain't a haunted house at Coney Island when we were kids, Steve. This is war. What do you have to be scared of?" Bucky chuckled at him, trying to bring some humor to a very dark hour. The Avengers were scattered.
"Losing you. Again." Rogers replied solemnly, his blue eyes dark with uneasiness.
"Aww, c'mon Rogers. Don't get all sappy on me now." Bucky responded with tightness in his voice, grasping the forearm of his best friend, "Together now, right?"
"Together." A faint smile touched Steve's lips as he admired his buddy always trying to cheer a bad situation into something less ominous. Just like when they were kids, Bucky ever being the 'grown up' wiping away tears and bandaging skinned knees.
Standing up, breath condensing in the cool air in rapid white puffs, each man moved to opposite ends of the bus. Bucky positioned his rifle at his shoulder and shouted, "I got you. GO!"
Steve looked at Bucky for a second then dashed into the fray, Barnes's shots finding targets all the way just like old times. Cap's shield ricocheting like a lethal Frisbee, he made it to the bunker and dropped in a grenade. Vaulting off the roof before the explosion, he saw Barnes under fire from the right flank, pushing him back to less secure cover. "Bucky!" Rogers bellowed as flakes drifted down from heaven onto the battle. Swirls of smoke blocked his view. James couldn't hear him but kept retreating back between wreckage as the enemy pressed forward, trying to shoot him down.
A bomb whistled in from overhead and Cap instinctively crouched behind his shield. The ground suddenly liquefied beneath him then violently threw him up and backwards. Lying on the ground, staring at the grey-clouded sky, he didn't know where he was. A deafening silence encompassed his mind with throbs of pain through his body. Flakes landed gently on his nose like the kisses of angels and a cold wind chafed his cheeks.
Who knows how long he lay like that on the rubble. All he knew now, and not well from his addled brain, was that the field fell quiet and Bucky needed to be found.
The bus they had sheltered behind came into view and he followed the last direction he saw James retreating. Rubble, dropped weapons and other refuse from battle were strewn across the ground. There, Steve saw, was something he recognized! Barnes's rifle, dropped carelessly as if he was running away. Kneeling, he saw blood around the weapon, a large stain that lead away from the area. Cap's stomach turned to knots and knives of ice as the flakes became more intense. Soon that blood trail would be covered by snow and invisible.
Trying to shake the head trauma off, he pushed forward to keep on that trail. The dove grey clouds filtered the waning late fall sunlight like a soft cottony haze. Stumbling, breath coming in ragged gasps of steam, Rogers pressed on, ignoring his own injuries, but it was getting harder to do. "Bucky!" he called in a haggard voice into the calm afternoon air, "Bucky!"
Silence greeted him.
The trail led on, sometimes stopping and then changing direction. Every time it stopped, a larger pool of reddish black blood appeared. Steve didn't want to think about what that meant or how much time was left before the inevitable. Rodgers trailed the stream into the shambles of a building. It had that a gaping hole blasted through its wall. Stepping carefully into the building, the light streamed from behind him gently like church windows. Flakes of snow swirled tenderly around as if they were silver winged faeries in a children's story.
The faint glint of a metal arm caught Steve's eye as the rest of his vision grew accustomed to the gloom. James lay face down, folded over an overturned couch of what was once a law office.
"James!" Steve inhaled, throwing down his shield and lunging to the side of his fallen friend. Feeling at Bucky's neck, there was a faint pulse. Steve exhaled a cloud of steam not realizing he had been holding his breath in fear.
Bucky mumbled and groaned almost too quietly to hear what he was trying to say.
"James, Bucky… hang on. Let me see." Cap said as bravely as he could, while grasping Barnes' torso to roll him back off the couch and face up on the floor. Steve's ribs ground against each other painfully as he gnashed his teeth against the agony within, while turning Bucky over. James inhaled a sharp breath of agony, his blue eyes flying open wildly, hands reflexively moving to defend himself. "Whoa, Bucky. It's just me." Steve said quickly through a clenched jaw of anguish seeing his friend so injured.
Rogers lay Bucky down on the floor tenderly, cushioning his head with a pillow from the couch. The cold suddenly seemed sharper and more pervasive in the space. Cap could see the pool of blood from Bucky on the back of the couch now and the floor. Barnes looked at him through half lidded eyes, that same self-sure smile he always wore on his pallid face.
"Took you long… enough." Bucky whispered, his breath a thin stream of condensation. His face was pale as snow, eyes not as bright. Trickles of blood clung to the corners of his lips as he tried to smile wider. He was almost too anemic to do it and panted for breath instead. Roger's soul began to bleed.
"What…?" Steve choked out but then changed his thoughts, "Never mind. Let me see." Kneeling, Cap moved Bucky's limp arms away from his torso and he cut open James's battle suit with a knife. Two large oozing bullet wounds marred the surface of Barnes's abdominals just below his ribs. Steve's eyes widened in terror; these were not minor wounds. "Buck, I… I gotta see if they all came through." Steve admitted softly, knowing James was watching him carefully. Rolling Bucky onto his side, Rogers heard the growls of pain James held back through clenched teeth. There were two exit wounds, soaking his back in sticky scarlet.
"You got some… crappy beside… manner." James joked through shallow breaths and narrowed eyes Rogers rolled him back over. Pain visibly washed over Barnes like waves breaking on a beach. Bucky began to tremble with shock or cold, Rogers couldn't tell.
"Goddamit, Bucky, just stop trying to be stupid for once!" Steve yelled but James held his furious gaze without flinching.
Steve stood up and paced briefly. Think Steve. Stop the bleeding. Call the Avengers… the Army… call someone.
Bucky's fading voice brought him back from his angry tirade, "Just you. And. Me."
Cap stopped mid stride and helplessly looked down at his stricken friend and it hit him finally that it really was just him and Bucky.
"Ok. Ok. We can do this. We can. You and me." Steve said in staccato tones looking for any fabric he could convert into bandages and compression pads. Ripping the couch cushions up, he fashioned a simple wound dressing for the front and back of Bucky.
Barnes tolerated it as best he could, not wanting to cause Steve any more distress. In his minds eye, he knew he was bleeding to death. The shots hit him from the back, like the cowards those bastards were, right below and through his liver. It really was only a matter of time before he had no blood left to give. He briefly wondered what Steve would do without him. Deep down, he really didn't want to go, but that wasn't his choice right now.
Finally done dressing Barnes's wounds, Cap collapsed wearily next to Bucky on the floor, his back to the stripped couch, each breath a large cloud of steam. Rogers was dead tired, his broken ribs were hot pokers in his side and his head pounded with a concussion. Night was fast approaching and temperatures dropping. The snow had not stopped falling and a thin coat of white covered the floor inside the ruined building with more piling up outside. Maybe it was because both of them had experienced extreme cold in their life, neither noticed the drop in temperature. Steve watched Bucky breathing shallowly and irregularly, each exhalation a micro cloud of hope that he was still alive.
"Steve." Bucky murmured and barely opened his eyes, the shaggy brown hair framing his ashen face in the gathering gloom.
"Yeah, Buck?" Rogers said turning his head to look at his friend.
"Remember Christmas?" James exhaled quietly, his face relaxed as if floating in the memory.
"You sure you should be talking? Save your strength." Steve chided Barnes.
"Save for who?" Bucky frowned a weak furrow and Steve saw his point. Give a dying man what he wants; a chance to remember.
"Which one?" Steve replied giving in to James' desire, "They were all equally depressing."
"After… your mom. Jus' you. And me." Bucky exhaled, closing his eyes for a moment. Steve watched him intently thinking he may not open them again.
"Our first Christmas. Yeah. Snowed like the dickens that night. The kids in our apartment were so excited for Santa to come." Steve sighed with the memory, leaning his head back against the frame of the couch, closing his eyes for a moment as the snow eddied in. Barely falling asleep, he jolted awake with a start and looked immediately at Barnes.
Bucky was singularly focused on breathing, but a spark of humor danced in his eyes, "Thought. I lost you. For a. Moment." Each word punctuated by a wisp of condensation.
"Barnes, I swear… " Steve growled good-naturedly, feeling the urge to give Bucky a playful punch in the arm but reconsidered, "That Christmas. I was actually healthy for a change. That was refreshing. I remember you had saved up some spare change from your job and I had some from my drawings." Steve watched Barnes close his eyes but he knew he was listening, "And you decided we should give every kid in that apartment a bottle of Coke for Christmas and a pack of Wrigley's gum. What a fun time that was." His heart grew warmer at the thought of all those kids bounding down the narrow wooden hallway of the rickety tenement Christmas morning knocking on each other's doors saying how Santa had given each of them a little green glass bottle of Coke and a pack of gum.
Steve sat enjoying the reverie for a moment then looked at James who actually was smiling too as if he was also living in the memory.
"How did we do so much with so little?" Rogers asked rhetorically gazing at the first stars appearing from behind the snow clouds in the night sky outside. They twinkled like the old Christmas lights that hung on stores during the season, so faint and dainty.
"Dunno." Bucky replied softly and then abruptly struggled to inhale.
Steve tensed and for once realized what James must have felt when he had his asthma attacks as a boy. Rogers rapidly appreciated more deeply what Bucky had done for him all those years of his sick youth. "Buck, you ok?" Steve asked, frustrated he could not do more.
James panted for breath, his eyes opening wide in fright as his muscles contracted in spasms against his will. He began to cough, trying to clear his airway. Cap rolled him to the side to let him spit. Once he gulped a few good breaths of air, Rogers rolled him back over seeing how that simple action had drained Barnes to a corpse-like state.
Barnes's hands were drawn up to his chest, his face a mask of suffering. Eyes closed he labored for breath but managed to speak, "Steve. Do me. A. Favor."
Steve leaned in, holding his best friend's hand, which was cold as ice, "Anything, Bucky." He resisted the urge to plead with James to stay or hang on, realizing this may be the last time they spoke to each other.
James opened his eyes, blue to blue, and said, "When I'm gone. Don't. Feel sad."
Tears were welling in Cap's eyes as he clutched Bucky's hands in both of his now, "C'mon, Bucky. I have to be sad because who else besides you would put up with a punk like me?"
A silent laugh formed over James's face, "That's. The spirit."
"Bucky." Cap almost sobbed giving in to his sorrow, "Please. Please. Don't go. Not now. We have so much to do. Time to make up. I… really need you. Y'know to get me dates and … stuff."
"Don't be. So hard. On yourself." Bucky rattled out in his rapidly weakening voice. Rogers could almost see James's life leaving him second by second.
"I'm nothing, Buck. Nothing without you. We're together, remember." Steve felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks like liquid metal searing his skin.
James smiled at the corners of his mouth and tried to squeeze Roger's hands back in reply. Just as he was about to lose consciousness, a sound came to their ears; a quinjet.
Lights flooded them in the destroyed corner office as Black Widow with Sam hovered delicately above. Paratrooper EMS deployed down ropes and sprinted to their location. Steve hesitantly stepped back to let them work their magic on his friend.
Bucky was bathed in stunning white halogen lights looking every more like a ghost as the backwash of the quinjet threw up the tiny crystals of snow, stinging their skin.
A medic approached Cap and asked to assess him for injuries. Steve tried to brush him off but the medic stood up to Cap and said, "You can't do any more for him. Let us handle it." With that, he wearily acquiesced.
Fast as lightening, they moved Bucky to a stretcher and up onto the quinjet, Steve close behind some how finding more adrenaline to fuel his exhausted body forward.
Inside, Steve was not allowed to see Bucky as they took off. Sitting in another part of the cargo bay, the medic who stood up to Steve attended to the gash above his eye, splinted his leg and wrapped his broken ribs.
Natasha walked back to see him and put a hand on his shoulder as the medic finished stitching up his eyebrow. "How did you find us?" Steve said in a bone tired voice.
"Women's intuition." She replied warmly, smiling down at him with genuine caring. "He'll make it." Natasha affirmed seeing Steve's distress.
"I'm not so sure." Rogers said softly looking over at the makeshift ER where his best friend fought for his life.
"About you?" Natasha asked also following his gaze.
"About either of us." Rogers replied, feeling as hollow as a drum.