"Distant lover, lover,
so many miles away,
Heaven knows that I long for you."
Kabul, Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was substantial, and no amount of US intervention would succeed in rescuing the wreckage of Kabul. Security forces struggled in the act of restoring some semblance of order, and though admittance was the first step of extracting denial, the Taliban were three steps ahead at all times. By being here, Captain Steven Grant Rogers was placing his life, and the lives of countless others, on the line.
All the same, orders were orders, and S.H.I.E.L.D. intelligence was compromised. It was his job to retrieve it or die trying, and he wasn't sure he feared death any more than he feared cockroaches.
He'd held a cockroach, once.
"Every night, every night.
And sometimes I yearn
through the day."
He hadn't wanted to leave home. Hadn't wanted to leave Bucky, more specifically, at such a crucial stage in his rehabilitation; though they'd arranged a "Steve's not here" routine, the soldier feared after his last three missions that it wasn't working out as they'd presumed. With all the will in the world, he'd tried to convince Bucky that it was fine, he'd stay, Fury couldn't force him to go (they both knew he could, but liked to ignore this fact and pretend that Steve had at least /some/ choice in his career), but all of his attempts fell short. Bucky had said "C'mon Stevie, you can't stay just for me; the world needs you. You're a big boy now... Yeah, you're a big boy."
He'd smiled, but something about the glisten in his eyes told Steve that it was forced.
"Distant lover,
you should think about me,
and say a prayer for me."
They'd stood in complete wordlessness, shattered by the tick, tock, tick of a wall-mounted clock that neither used. The bag upon Steve's shoulder weighed him down, and suddenly he felt as though he couldn't carry its avoirdupois. Steve still remembered the flutter of Bucky's eyelashes, the way his lips quirked in a smile, the way that those fingers burned into his flesh. He could still feel that touch, and it made him smile on the harder nights, because at least he knew it was real.
Unlike anything else, he knew that it was real, and that he existed. That Bucky existed. That if his friend found the sketchbooks filled with just him, saw the pencil-marks beneath his nails, he'd never live it down. This, at least, was comforting.
"Please, please baby,
think about me sometimes.
Think about me here.
Here in misery, misery."
He's running, only he isn't quite sure where to.
Co-ordinates make little sense to him aside from their direction, and all the same he follows them because that's what he's trained to do.
For a moment, the super-soldier reconsiders his choice of costume; granted, it's better than the red, but silver glints in starlight whether coated with fog or fume, and perhaps a black shield would make marginally more sense. He's aware from the gunfire that the rings make him a hefty bullseye. All the same, as he ducks against a wall with seven agents in tow, counting the seconds upon his fingers before nodding, in turn, to the agent before him, he wonders what he's doing here.
As it happens, the war has only just begun.
"As I reminisce, oh baby,
through our joyful summer together,
the promises we made,
all the daily letters."
With a single kick, the door flies off its hinges. Perhaps they should just have used the handle, because in an instant five gunmen are on them. Only, their bullets don't piece his shield like his shield pierces their skin; there's blood on his cheeks that's not his own, and there's a severed head in the corner. Had he not seen worse, done worst, then perhaps he'd be shocked.
He isn't, and that's almost sad.
They're down an agent whose gun had not fired on time, and she's lying on the floor, choking. She won't die for at least three minutes, but there's no saving her now, and dejection crashes down upon Steve like a hammer. A brown-haired man places his pistol to her head, and fires.
At least, Steve thinks with his back to the hall, ear to the door at the end (he can hear shuffling inside, abject panic- though he's not sure whether it's from the gunfire or what's likely to follow- and presumed they've found their man), she'd died with reason.
She'd died being brave. Braver than he believed he would ever have even a meagre shred of hope to be.
All the same, he still would have liked to save her.
"Then, all of a sudden,
everything seemed to explode.
Now, I gaze out my window
sugar, down a lonesome road."
Inside the room are three men. There's classified information in the memory sticks they're holding; Steve knows because of the way they try to conceal them. It's almost slapstick, the speed at which their arms raise once they're gazing into the crimson eyes of snipers. Two of the three have their arms raised, anyway, and he gives the order, shield in hand.
"There's nowhere for you to go. Hands up."
His hands stay down, and another voice beckons "sir, put your hands in the air or I will shoot."
Steve's the first to recognise the blinking against the man's chest, followed shortly by a further three whose expressions contort to one of abject horror. They have families. They have friends. They were going to visit Rome or Sicily or Krakow.
The man is smirking, and whatever he says, nobody understands except the man with the gun.
"West, no, hold your fire!"
"Distant lover,
sugar, how can you treat my heart
so mean and cruel?
Sugar, sugar."
When Steve wakes up- when Steve finally wakes up- he'll still remember the blast and maybe that's the worst of it. Suddenly, it doesn't matter quite so much to Natasha or Tony or Clint whether or not the intelligence was recovered (not as much as it matters to Fury, anyway, whose 'get well' wish came in the form of a formal notice for temporary suspension and congratulations on a successful mission), because it's been two months.
Two months, and they've visited him every day at first, and then once a week. Bruce doesn't come any more because the very sight of broken Steve infuriates him. Nat only comes for Bucky.
Bucky Barnes is the only person who still turns up every day with a book, or some music that he may or may not have taken from Sam's collection, or a Captain America figurine to show Steve when he wakes up. If he wakes up.
No. Not if- when.
All the same, Steve's not moving, and Bucky's never felt so helpless in all of his life.
"That every moment when I spent with you,
I treasure it like it was
a precious jewel. Oh baby,
Lord have mercy."
Twice weekly, he'll sit and hold Steve's hand in his own, trace absent patterns against its surface and wish that he'd hold back. He never does.
Bucky'll tell him about the time they went to Coney Island and he threw up on the Cyclone, or does he remember when he had the biggest crush on Isabella Marshall, and his eyes very nearly popped out of his head when they started talking, only for her to ask him if he thought Bucky liked her as much as she liked him? He never had accepted her invitation for dinner at home. No, he'd never take any dame, no matter how beautiful, that upset little Stevie.
He speaks as though Steve is listening because the pretty blonde nurse told him that it sometimes helps draw people out of a coma.
Coma.
The word sickens him.
"Oh, baby, don't go.
Please, come back baby.
Somethin' I wanna say;
when you left, you took all of me with you."
They've had a few scares. Steve's heart stopped once, and Bucky's with it. Sam had dragged him from the room, still screaming and kicking, and when he collapsed in the waiting room he was surrounded with Sam and Tony and Nat, all doting and warm, even though he swore that through his tears he watched each of them cry a little bit, too.
Steve was fine, though, and Bucky hopes that he heard his well thought out rant of 'you fucking dick. You absolute fucking dick, don't you dare do that to me again. No, don't you dare, I need you, you can't leave me. You just can't. 'Til the end of the line, remember..? God, please wake up. I don't like this anymore. It's not funny.'
Bucky keeps telling him stories, even if he's repeating the same ones, because he's afraid that Steve will wake with amnesia otherwise, and he really, quite desperately doesn't want that.
"Come on, Sleeping Beauty," whispers Bucky at 3am (though he should have left five hours ago; the pretty blonde nurse, the one that told him to keep talking and reading and singing because Steve was only holding on for him had taken pity and let him stay past hours), reaching for Steve's hand. When, for the first time, his soldier squeezes back, he starts to cry, and this time he hopes that Steve /doesn't/ hear. "It's time to wake up. Don't make me kiss you. I'll kiss you again and again, so don't make me kiss you."
"My Lord, I wonder,
so you wanna hear me scream? Plead?
And please, please, oh please baby,
Come back and hold me, girl.
Baby please, please."