Scene III: Just One Yesterday

February 24, 1945, Stork Club, Manhattan

Eight o'clock came and went. Bucky didn't know what he'd been expecting; Steve just waltzing in like nothing had happened, maybe. It was stupid. Steve had been dead for over a week and yet there'd still been part of Bucky that had expected the bastard to turn up alive, haulin' ass all the way to New York. It wouldn't have been out of character. But here they were, eight fifteen and they were sitting at the bar in silence, staring into their drinks. Peggy's face was hidden behind her hair but the hunch of her shoulders and the soft sniffs told Bucky everything he needed to know. She'd been hoping for a miracle, just like he had.

"It was worth a shot," Bucky said, laying his hand over top of hers.

Peggy drew a shaky breath. "I suppose it was too much to hope he'd pull off one of his miraculous returns."

"Guess so." He swallowed, but it didn't shift the lump in his throat. He looked around the club again, some small part of him still convinced that if he just looked a little harder he'd see a familiar blond head weaving through the crowd. He knew there was no point. The hissing of the dead radio line still echoed in his ears, permanently etched in his mind. His every memory of Steve was washed over with that fucking sound. A constant reminder—an endless litany of he's dead, he's dead, he's dead...

He wished he'd got on that plane. He wished he'd taken that walk off the end of the HYDRA runway. He wished he'd fallen off that train. Anything but this; forever reliving those final moments in the radio room, his every waking hour haunted by that dead-air symphony.

"Thank you for sitting here with me. I..." Peggy sniffed. "I don't think I could have done this alone."

Bucky squeezed her hand even as guilt washed over him for his earlier thoughts. Suddenly it seemed rather selfish to wish his own pain over only to heap more onto a friend. A week ago it had been thoughts of what Steve would say that had kept him away from the steep drop off the mountain. Now, before he could even start contemplating the pistol in his room, the thought of Peggy sitting there, alone, gave him pause.

"Me neither," he replied, voice unsteady.

They both returned to their drinks, Bucky downing his in a gulp and motioning to the bartender to fill it again. The man gave a dubious glance but concluded, to his own confusion, that Bucky was still stone-cold sober. He had no clue how many shots of whiskey he'd had—he wasn't counting—but he knew he should have been drunk by now. No such luck. He was forever doomed to be sober, apparently.

"You know you don't have to go back with us," Peggy remarked, swirling her wine. "You're free of obligation to the Army. You're home... You could stay."

"And do what?"

"Live your life. Get some normality back..."

Bucky shook his head. "There's nothin' here for me, now. I don't know that I'd do with myself anyway."

Peggy's expression was profoundly sad when she turned to meet his eyes. "What about your family? Surely—"

"I haven't talked to them yet." He swallowed his whiskey with a grimace. He knew his parents read the paper, so they had to have heard. He wasn't ready to face them. "I haven't been able to get in touch with my old friends. I... I knew him my whole life, Peggy. I don't... I don't know how to live without him."He took a breath, struggling to wrangle his emotions. "Our old apartment... It's just empty now. It's like a goddamn mausoleum. If I go back to living there I'm gonna put a gun in my mouth. And I don't want to do that." His last words were nearly a whisper.

"I don't want you to do that either." Peggy's voice had grown quiet too. She turned her hand beneath his to clasp it.

Bucky nodded. "I know. 'S why I'm still here." Peggy's grip on his hand tightened. "So I'm going back to Germany. I'm stickin' with you guys 'cause I don't know how to do anything else anymore." He could vaguely remember being the kid who took his best friends to a science fair and pretended it was a date. He could remember being the boy who cried himself to sleep the day he got his draft notice. He hadn't wanted to fight, he hadn't wanted to kill. He'd been afraid. And even now that he was good at it he still hated it. He hated watching a man drop, knowing that he would never breathe again because of the bullet Bucky had fired. He hated watching a man's eyes go blank, life rushing out of a slice in his throat that Bucky had made. They'd spent so much time talking about the blood on HYDRA's hands, but when Bucky looked at his own they were dripping—gushing—red. It always made him wonder where the line between soldier and murderer really lay. A month ago he would have taken any chance to get away from all the killing. But now every tether to his old life had been cut and he was adrift. He'd got his sergeant's stripes for being the best marksman in the group during basic—for being the most efficient murderer. And now he was afraid that that was all he was good for.

"What will you do when all this is over?"

Bucky stared at the bottom of his empty glass. "I've been trying not to think about it. Figure I'll wait and see it I actually make it to the end of the war."

Peggy nodded, as if she'd expected as much. He wondered what she had planned. She seemed like the planning sort, but how could you plan ahead when there was no way to know if folks'd be interested in employing you. Bucky knew darn well that when the war ended there'd be hundreds of GIs coming home and looking for jobs and dames like Peggy would be out of luck. It wasn't fair, but then again, nothing about this war had been fair so far. Why start now?

Peggy rose from her stool. "We should get out of here before I drink myself into a stupor trying to keep up with you."

"And before I use up all my pay?"

"And that."