Author's Note: Originally the chapters of this story were going to be entries into "A Thousand Scattered Pages". But upon considering it, I realized that this progression would make more sense if told in order as one companion story. Thanks to ScarletDeva for the ideas that took hold and percolated and became this.
Chapter 1: This is How the World Ends
When Bucky thought about Italy, he pictured Rome: the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, the aqueducts. He thought about pasta and fresh bread and red wine and pretty Italian girls with big dark eyes and lilting language he couldn't understand, but would enjoy anyway. He didn't picture bleak brown mountains and countryside scarred with trenches and pockmarked by mortar. He didn't think about blood-soaked soil and screaming, dying troops. American, English, Italian, German, all sound the same as they lay dying: gurgling screams and wordless groans and sobs and whimpers.
The 107th is one of the bigger battalions, and they've been joined by other units from other Allies. Every push they make, the Nazis push back harder. They're being picked off slowly in a battle of attrition. They're losing. Bucky was pretty sure he would die in Europe. The odds were never in his favor for survival, he knew that coming in, but it's still not easy to make peace with the fact.
The Axis forces push harder into the Italian countryside, crushing dead bodies-and live ones. They gun down anyone in their path-and those off the path. By the light of muzzle flash in the night, Bucky considers writing a letter home to his family. I had them on the ropes, he begins in his mind.
By cold daybreak they're all ready for the inevitable. Weary, knock-kneed with bloodshot eyes, they grab their guns and stuff their helmets on their heads. Bucky wonders if Connie would recognize her Sergeant now: gaunt face smudged with dirt and ash and blood; eyes hollow; hair greasy and askew. He slings his sniper rifle over his shoulder and picks up his automatic. If he's going down, it's fighting the enemy head on, not perched in the trees or hillsides.
The rat tat tat tat of gunfire is white noise to him at this point. His friends fall with strangled screams. Curses fly through the air, louder than bullets. They're being pushed back and soon there will be nowhere left to go but into the darkness. No, he'll go down fighting. That's what he told Steve. Even if it always ends in a fight, keep fighting. He grits his teeth and squeezes the trigger and mows down two Nazis bearing down on him. He keeps holding the trigger, letting out a fierce, animal howl as he shoots the enemy: guys his age, fighting for what they believe in, same as him. What makes him any more right than they think they are?
He fires until his clip is empty and then dives into a trench when he realizes he's out of ammo. His heart beats hard and he spits dirt out of this mouth and winces at the pain in his shoulder. He's got nothing, no spare clips or even loose bullets. The only one in the trench with him is Godfrey, the guy from North Dakota, or maybe it's south, doesn't matter anymore, because Godfrey is dead, riddled with bullet holes.
Bucky's hands tremble as he searches the body for ammunition. He's shaking all over as Godfrey's empty brown eyes stare him down. He does not want to die, but he needs to accept that he, too, will be like Godfrey: dead in this ditch in nowhere, Italy.
And then it's quiet. So quiet he can hear his heart pounding against his sternum, hear his blood pulsing through his veins. He takes a deep breath and clutches his tags. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 107th. Son. Brother. Friend. He feels tears streak down through the grime covering his face and a whine catches in his throat.
This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
But then there is the bang and it is loud and he closes his eyes and tries not to choke on the mud as he lies face down in the ditch to protect himself from the firestorm overhead.
When all is silence but for the crackling of the burning tree skeletons, he dares to look up. The fields are littered with Nazi bodies. He's shaky as he climbs out of the trench, and soaked through from the mud; or maybe he pissed himself, he can't even be ashamed of the possibility he's just so thrilled to be alive. Other guys are doing the same thing, popping up to get a good look at their saviors, too wary to cheer just yet.
The tank that fired on the Nazis is huge, bigger than anything either side has and Bucky knows the cold feeling in his gut isn't fear. It's despair. The soldiers that come out of the tank and onto the field aren't wearing the twisted cross of the Nazis, nor the symbols of the Allies. They are a new contender, well armed with weaponry Bucky's never seen before. They shout across the quiet field: orders, by the tone of it. They begin to round up the survivors. Those that resist are shot by a pulse of blue light energy that disintegrates them on the spot.
Bucky drops his gun.
He lets them take him.
He's too tired to resist and if he's going to die, he'd rather just die than be simply… unmade.
They stagger on for days and nights that blend together in flashes of fire and blue energy. They don't speak; they're too tired, too scared. Some drop dead along the muddy roads. If there is a God, Bucky wonders what he did to piss him off. No, the odds were never very good of him surviving Europe, so why does he keep beating them, unless by some sadistic cosmic game?
He barely realizes it when the thick metal gates clang shut behind him. Barely feels it when an armored guard, wearing a red octopus armband, jabs a bayonet into his spine, forcing him into a holding cage with nearly a dozen other dirty, tired men. All he knows is he can stop marching, lie down, and hope for the world to end.