Chapter 36: I'm Not a Soldier
Steve returned from his doctor's visit with two prescriptions: an anti-depressant, and oxygen to wear while exercising. He'd told them about how important it was to him to maintain his routine as long as possible, and they offered him that solution. Steve would do anything it took to stave off frailty for as long as possible, and wearing oxygen to run was a small price to pay. The other meds also helped immensely, and their side effects were barely noticeable beneath all the other pills he already took. The fear of the future took a back seat instead of driving his every waking thought. Steve relaxed, trusting that his team and Bucky would get him through whatever lay ahead. Besides, there was so much good to accompany the bad.
Bruce and Betty got married on a Sunday in January. The fifth, to be exact, because it was the date that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published. According to Bruce, he didn't insist on that date, but they were already planning on an early January wedding and the date happened to line up. It wasn't as big a production as his and Bucky's or Parker and MJ's, but that suited Bruce and Betty just fine. He chose Thor as his best man, which mean Valkyrie got to carry the rings in a pocket of her service dog vest.
Betty's maid of honor was Bruce's cousin Jennifer, which made for a bit of an awkward reunion. "Oh my gosh, I should've guessed you were gay!" she gasped when she saw him and Bucky together. Steve laughed until it turned into a dry, rattling cough. Fortunately, she looked at him with none of the same endearment that she used to. He'd never seen Bucky jealous, and he was perfectly content to keep it that way.
"But seriously, I'm happy for you," she continued.
"Thanks. Did you end up getting into Yale?"
"Yes. And I'll be finishing law school at Harvard this spring."
"That's awesome. Congratulations."
"Thanks."
Despite the small scale—or probably because of it—Steve enjoyed himself immensely. Tony and Natasha went back and forth for a solid twenty minutes arguing over which one of them would be next to marry. Parker eventually shut it down. "It's not a race." Tony insisted he was perfectly okay with remaining the only eligible bachelor in the group. Steve didn't much care when (or even if) they got married, as long as they didn't rush into it for the sole purpose of doing it soon enough that he could attend. It was both sad and heartwarming to think that one day he'd be one of the empty seats in the front row with Carol and Clint.
~0~
In the weeks after Bruce's wedding, Steve started jolting awake in the middle of the night, gasping for breath. Sometimes it would happen more than once in the same night. His doctors told him it was time he started wearing oxygen to sleep. Steve very clearly did not want to take this step towards more debilitating illness, but he had no choice. Ultimately, he accepted it because it allowed him to sleep comfortably through the night and, by extension, Bucky. They were both used to sleeping through the sound of an oxygen concentrator from years of sleepovers when they were younger.
Bucky knew it was only a matter of time before Steve required oxygen therapy even more regularly, so he constantly kept an ear and an eye out for signs his husband was struggling to breathe. One evening, he was in the shower, when he heard a shout.
"Bucky!"
He sprinted to the kitchen, hair still dripping wet. Bucky expected to find Steve in some sort of distress, but instead found him bouncing with excitement. "What's going on?" he asked.
"Netflix is making a TV show based on All Quiet on the Western Front," he explained. Bucky had never seen him so jazzed over anything, especially not a movie or TV show. He knew that as one of Steve's favorite books; it showed more wear and tear than any other volume on their bookshelf. "Bucky, I have never been more excited to watch something in my entire life."
"Oh yeah? When's it come out?" The thought suddenly occurred to him that, if the release date loomed far enough away, Steve might not live to see it. Bucky swallowed down bile at the notion.
"It's just a few weeks away. They just released the trailer. I can't believe I didn't know about this sooner!"
Bucky heaved a sigh of relief. A few weeks was plenty soon enough. Steve had attempted to explain the plot and themes of the book to Bucky countless times, but it never stuck in his head. He just wasn't particularly interested. But he owed it to Steve to at least pretend. "Can I see the trailer?"
"Sure." Steve cued up the video and played it again. Bucky saw a lot of blood and gore for something starring a boy who couldn't have been much older than twenty. He supposed that was part of it.
"I hope they stay true to the book," Steve said as the video concluded. "Screen adaptations sometimes butcher things."
"I hope so too. Is the main character really that young?"
"Yeah. Paul's nineteen."
"Wow."
"I know. But that's how old a lot of Great War soldiers were. Some even younger."
"Great War?"
"World War I. That's what they called it before there was a second one to designate them one and two."
"Gotcha." Bucky would never cease to be amazed by Steve's impressive historical knowledge base. During the trailer, he pointed out all the period-accurate weapons, uniforms, and settings. Bucky could never.
"Will you watch it with me?" Steve asked. "I know you're not into that sort of thing, but I want to share this with you."
"Yeah, of course. If you're this excited, I'm in."
Bucky would have watched hours of documentaries about fonts or something equally as boring just to see that grin on his husband's face. Besides, if he didn't, that was eight hours he didn't get to spend with him.
~0~
Steve talked about the show almost nonstop during the weeks leading up to its release. He watched the trailer probably ten times and reread the book to ensure he'd be able to pinpoint the similarities and differences. On Friday night, they curled up in the corner of the sofa together, Steve's head on Bucky's chest, to watch an episode. Bucky tried to pay attention, but he found it impossible to engage with the characters. He'd never liked period pieces, and everything was so authentically twentieth century that he just couldn't relate. Steve, on the other hand, was positively enthralled. Bucky asked if he wanted to watch the second of the nine episodes, but Steve refused.
"I don't want it to be over too quickly," he insisted. Bucky couldn't argue with that. They watched episode two on Saturday and episode three on Sunday. Monday, they got to episode four.
Bucky hadn't paid that close attention to the first three, watching only because he wanted to spend the time with Steve, but he found he couldn't tear his eyes away from the horrors now depicted on the screen. Paul and his comrades fell under heavy artillery fire while laying barbed wire, and attempted to take shelter in a graveyard. The attacks literally tore the ground to shreds, churning up long-dead corpses to join the fresh ones. "Was it this violent in the book?" he asked.
"Yeah," Steve replied. "But it's way worse seeing it in live action." His grip on Bucky's hand tightened. Another rotten corpse sprung up from the exploding ground and almost landed on Paul. Bucky held his breath and fought not to flinch every time another shell hit. The relief he experienced when the scene finally ended was so palpable, he felt like he'd been part of the battle and could finally retreat to safety. The soldiers returned to camp and discussed their futures. Some hadn't even bothered to think about it because they doubted the war would ever end. It reminded Bucky of his own thoughts in the midst of cancer treatment, when he hadn't dared dream of anything beyond the next dose of chemo. He began to understand why Steve connected so strongly with this story, and—despite the drastically different setting—found a little of himself in this tale.
Episode five wasn't any less graphic; it featured the bloodiest battle Bucky had ever seen on screen and giant rats gnawing at corpses. When they sat down to watch the sixth, Bucky intentionally zoned out to avoid more horrific gore. He made it through probably thirty minutes of the episode before Steve asked him a question about it.
"Are you going to tell the truth?"
"What?" Bucky cursed himself for not following along.
"You're not paying attention, are you?" Steve asked knowingly, craning his head to look Bucky in the eye.
"I am too paying attention."
"Then what just happened?"
"Somebody got blown up?"
Steve whacked him in the thigh. "This is the episode where he gets leave and goes back to his hometown. There's no fighting."
Bucky knew he'd been cornered. "You caught me."
Steve paused the television. "So Paul just visited the mother of his old friend Kemmerich, who died slowly and painfully after losing a leg to gangrene. She asked if he suffered, and Paul lied to her and said it was painless. And then I asked you if you're going to tell the truth."
"About what?"
"You know…if people ask how it was…when I go…are you gonna tell them the truth?"
Bucky's tongue turned to sandpaper. Leave it to Steve to spring a deep and devastating question on him on a random Wednesday night when they were supposedly just relaxing and enjoying each other's company. "Do you think anyone would really ask that?" he fired back, unwilling to even imagine the truth that he may or may not tell one day.
Steve shrugged. "Someone might. I know my parents might want to know. For peace of mind or whatever."
"They're not gonna…be there?" Bucky knew Steve had read All Quiet on the Western Front so many times that he probably knew the show would touch on this moment and he could use it to segway into this. But whether he planned it that way or not, the conversation was rapidly devolving into the very one Bucky never wanted to have but knew they needed to.
"No, they're not gonna be there. I would never put them through that if I can help it."
Bucky swallowed dryly. "But…I am?"
Steve gazed up at him, bright blue eyes full of hope with a hint of desperation. "Will you?"
"Yeah, of course. If you want me there, I'm there." As much as Bucky dreaded the thought of watching his husband die, the idea of leaving him with anyone else—or, heaven forbid alone—through what must be the most terrifying thing a person could experience made him viscerally nauseated.
He felt Steve's body relax against his. Bucky hadn't even realized he'd tensed up. "Yeah, I want you there. Only you, really." He took a deep breath. Bucky knew he must've been thinking about this for a long time. "I…I want it to be just like this. Me and you."
"Okay," Bucky whispered. If Steve wanted to die at the top of Mount Everest, Bucky would have found a way to make it happen. Just being there for him? Bucky was almost offended that Steve felt the need to ask.
"But not here," he continued. "Or in our bed. I don't want to taint the memories of those spaces with something that horrible."
"The spare bedroom?"
"Yeah. The one down here. Doubt I'll be able to do stairs when it comes down to it."
"Okay. Anything else?"
"I…I don't know how long it's gonna take." He sounded scared, more so than Bucky had ever heard. Bucky wondered how many hours he'd spent pondering this, what it would feel like. "But I want to spend it like this." He gestured to their current position.
Bucky poked him in the side. "You mean as the little spoon?"
"No. We're not spooning. Look, your torso is there, and mine's over here."
"Close enough."
"Bucky! I'm trying to have a serious conversation here."
"And I'm trying not to have a sobbing breakdown listening to you talk about dying," Bucky countered.
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry—"
"No, don't you dare apologize. Steve, you have nothing to be sorry for. As much as I hate everything about this, we do need to talk about it. And that's out of your control."
"I know. And there's no good time to bring it up, so I just picked a moment and went for it. This is just as much about your needs as it is mine, so I just need you to tell me honestly if you're okay with it being like this."
"Yeah, of course. Thank you for asking." Bucky knew the moment would be impossible for him no matter what, but doing his part to let Steve go the way he wanted to might make it slightly less impossible.
"Good." Steve turned his head so his left ear pressed against Bucky's chest. "I can feel your heartbeat when we sit like this. It's…comforting."
Bucky kissed the top of his head. Of all the comforts he could possibly offer, that was about as simple as it got. "Do you want to finish the episode?" he asked.
"Yeah." Steve picked up the remote and hit play. But after that conversation, Bucky stood absolutely no chance of paying attention. Steve wanted to die listening to his heartbeat. Steve wanted to die listening to his heartbeat. How the hell was he supposed to live with that knowledge?
~0~
Bucky went back and rewatched the first six episodes in secret, actually paying attention this time. He wanted to follow the last three with the same intention that Steve did. Or maybe he just wanted a distraction from thinking about the moment some indeterminate time in the future when he'd sit with Steve literally dying on his chest. Yeah, it was definitely one of those.
By the time they got to the final episode, he was an emotional wreck. He knew next to nothing about actual World War I history, and certainly nothing about the book, so he had no idea what was coming. Steve knew exactly how it ended, but clearly he was weary of watching it acted out, because he was just as nervous as Bucky.
Even in his worst mental prediction of how the show would end, Bucky never would have thought that Paul, the main character, would die. How many books killed off their main characters? It couldn't be many, because it was a horrible thing to do. Somehow, the lyrics of the song they chose for the end credits only drove the knife deeper into his heart. He only caught some of them, but the ones he heard ripped tears from his eyes in the light of everything he just watched in that finale.
When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son?
One more son
If you can hold on
If you can hold on…hold on
…I wanna stand up, I wanna let go
You know, you know, no you don't, you don't
I wanna shine on, in the hearts of men
…Another head aches, another heart breaks
I'm so much older than I can take
…I got soul, but I'm not a soldier, repeated so many times that it continued to echo through his head even after the voice moved on to another verse.
Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done
Time, truth, and hearts
If you can hold on
If you can hold on
Bucky was breaking down, holding onto Steve because, as the song said, he could. Steve wasn't crying, which was unusual, considering he almost always cracked first during an emotional show or movie. "How is it all quiet when people are dying?" Bucky asked desperately.
"That's the message," Steve sighed. "Individuals don't matter to the people in charge, especially during wartime."
"That's a sucky message."
"That's the point. It's a very anti-war message. People should matter, and it's disturbing that there are some who believe they don't."
"Very disturbing. Tell me again why you like this book?"
Steve shrugged. "I guess I just see a lot of myself in Paul."
Bucky immediately loathed the comparison. Steve fought a very different kind of war, of course, but a war nonetheless, one fought only by the conscripted. He had his orders and he performed them to the best of his ability despite the ever-advancing enemy. He'd seen comrades killed, seen comrades lose limbs, and would one day enter a battle from which he never returned. But there would be no quiet on that day. Only the anguished sobs of everyone he loved and the sound of Bucky's stubborn heart that would continue to beat even when Steve could no longer hear it.
The song is "All These Things That I've Done" by the Killers.
