Here's my latest and unsurprisingly it's all about Steve…well and Bucky and a bit about Maria later. I'm totally blaming/thanking glitteratiglue for this though, especially as she's joined me enthusiastically on the Winter Soldiering of everything.
Anyway, thanks to everyone reading, I appreciate it. And I don't own anything. Marvel do. Cheers and I hope you like this story.
What He Deserved
Everything ached.
From the partially broken bones in his body to the ripped and torn skin that covered them. He could barely see out of his eyes after the hits to the his face and what he could see was rapidly becoming blurry.
A small part of his brain acknowledged that this could be down to the three bullet wounds he had taken, slowly draining his blood out of them, bit e was sure most of it was down to the hits he had been dealt by the Winter Soldier.
Bucky.
His friend. His… enemy?
No. Bucky was never his enemy, not even when he was beating him half to death.
Bucky, who had watched his back as he gallivanted halfway across Europe, and back even further, when he was just a skinny punk charging around Brooklyn, trying to take on the world. Bucky, who had fallen to an icy death that Steve had been too slow to prevent. Bucky, who he had mourned for and then revenged by killing the Red Skull and tossing the Tesseract into the ocean. Bucky, who it now turned out, hadn't died at all, but had suffered – horrifically suffered – at the hands of Hydra.
No. He could never blame Bucky for any of this.
Which was why he couldn't leave him trapped underneath that steel frame, even though the man had just shot him three times, and it was why he had finally – now that Zola's algorithm had failed and people were relatively safe again – stopped fighting, even if his opponent didn't feel the same way.
So he let his old friend beat him, let him pound his face until he could barely see anymore, while all around them the helicarrier disintegrated into flaming pieces. All he could keep doing at that point was talk – keep reminding Bucky of who he was, of what they meant to each, of how sorry he was and how much he wished he could remember – and take the beating he was given.
Because Bucky was his friend, his only constant in life for a long time.
And he deserved to mete out his punishment.
He caught one last glimpse of his childhood companion watching him with a combination of horror, confusion and amazement, and then the glass floor disappeared from under him with a loud crack…
…and he was falling.
Through the pain and self-recrimination, the residual Catholic part of him whispered that this was just. This was the correct retribution. It was only fair this time that it was him to fall while Bucky watched.
He vaguely registered his body hitting the cool water of the Potomac below the helicarrier – a sensation so achingly familiar to crashing the plane – and as darkness crept over him, a traitorous part of his shattered heart cried out in relief.
