Where the Pavement Cracks by somedayisours
Miniscule changes give a different ending to the story. (Drabbles. Alternate Endings to CA:WS. Suicide.)
Disclaimer: The idea is mine but the characters and such are not. I'm not making money and so forth.
A/N: There is suicide hinted at/not really described. I saw a post on Tumblr about how the Black Window was aiming to kill the Winter Soldier on the bridge, and I was inspired. Cap's reaction may seem a little over the top but my reasoning is that he gets to see one of the people closest to him die again. Not only that, but the implication that he's been alive, something has been done to him and that Steve has done nothing the whole time. Anywho, thanks for reading.
Lazarus
She watches disbelievingly as the bullet strikes his temple, he raises his gun and she is sure that he really is a ghost, unkillable. That is until his body pitches forward and he falls from the bridge, landing with a undignified thump only a few feet away from her current position. It occurs to her, along with the rest of the world, that she has killed the Winter Soldier a minute after it happens.
When the ghost doesn't rise Hydra flees, and suddenly it is only her, Steve and Sam on the street.
"Is he dead?" Are the first words spoken.
"Yes," Natasha responds without a hint of hesitation in her voice, her gut says different.
Steve is the first to approach, he flips the body and then waits to see if there's any sort of response before removing the goggles and muzzle. All of his body tenses with unconcealed fear, and he croaks out a garbled word that Natasha can't make out.
He speaks again, clearer and more of a plea. "Bucky?" The Captain reaches out, his hand pressed against the dead man's face. She is just able to catch a glimpse of the tear that have sprang from Steve's eyes, and how his shoulders shake. "Why? How?"
Steve looks to Sam then, Natasha can feel his pain in the air. She knows that the questions he has on his tongue, none of them have the answers to.
She just barley catches the twitch of movement out the corner of her eye, and she forces herself to brush it off a paranoia. Steve has started to push the hair out of the Winter Soldier's face to get a better look at the death blow, and she has to reassure herself that she killed the ghost.
He strikes faster than any of them have time to react, and for a moment cold dread works its way into Natasha's heart. There is no mistaking the knife that the newly named Bucky has drawn is ment to bury itself in Steve Roger's throat.
It doesn't.
Steve reacts with a scream of a wounded animal, his hands diving around his friends throat as he attempts to save him. It's in vain.
"It kills me sometimes, how people die."
- Markus Zusak, The Book Thief