— Steve —
Bucky was slumped on the floor, his breathing so labored and shaky that there was no way he was getting oxygen. His eyes looked wild and scared, until they just… stopped. Life seemed to drain from his face as he became stiff against the concrete, and that's when I knew that I had to get through that blasted door if I wanted any of us to survive.
He looked up at me with all the strength he had.
His eyes fluttered closed and then reopened. "And you asked me her name. The girl I killed Bolovschi for… Natasha. It was… her. I wanted you to know… before I go. We're at the end of the line, pal."
The admission he managed between breaths shocked me but it made him smile, which I loved to see. She made him happy, and I'd never be able to forget that last smile of his.
"No, no we're not at the end. Buck, listen. Don't go to sleep. Please don't. If you can't do it for me, do it for her," I whispered, my voice nearly failing me on my last two words.
I threw my shoulder into the door with everything I had; the anger toward Percy for going on a hyper focused warpath, the will I had in me that wanted Bucky to live, and the instinct I had that screamed I was dying. My lungs couldn't take a breath, I started to sweat, and I felt like I was going to fall over.
I really could've used Bucky's metal arm for that door.
If I really was the child of a god, which I was still so unknowledgeable about, there was no secret inner strength channeling through me to help. My body was weak, in pain, and screaming for me to stop as I tried to break down the door.
I kicked the door as hard as I possibly could, hard enough to break my foot, but I didn't care. The soles of my shoes absorbed what felt like none of the impact. Luckily, my foot didn't break, because if it had I might have fallen to the floor and given up.
The lock on the steel door shattered, swinging it open and allowing us into whatever fresh terrors the teenager had in store for us. Instead of spikes designed to impale and fire shooting out of walls, the office seemed fairly normal. The room seemed to be a perfect square, and not much bigger than the supply closet that we had waited in before forcing Thorin to admit that he was against his boss. A large desk sat a few feet out from the wall opposite us, my least favorite person of the moment sitting nonchalantly at the desk. In the corner straight ahead of us, there was an armoire filled with God knows what. The oddest part of the entire place was that the air vents were placed within the baseboards on the walls about three feet apart. They weren't on the floor like in your typical place. There were also way too many of them. That office needed good air circulation for a reason unknown to me at the time. The room, being only about ten feet long and wide, didn't have room for much else; that wasn't good for us, because it would make tight fighting quarters. All of us knew that it would come to that at some point.
I put my hands under Bucky's arms and dragged his stiff body into the office, making sure Thorin got inside as well before slamming the metal door shut behind me. Percy got a smug look on his face as he watched us break down his underground office door. He seemed much too confident for someone whose strongest measure of security had just been beaten.
"Well, look who somehow managed-"
"Shut up," I chastised Percy roughly, not in the mood to play games with someone who could be the fourth generation of my bloodline.
I knelt down to Bucky, whose body felt like it had been forced into an early onset of rigor mortis. The only reason I could discount that theory was because I knew he was still alive by the way his chest heaved and his eyes darted around the room. He was so afraid, but he was paralyzed and probably in pain just as I was. As I watched him lay there, stiff and unable to move, I couldn't begin to fathom the thoughts in his head. Was he at peace, or was he afraid to die? The thought of him being afraid to die stuck in my mind, because I hadn't ever thought of him as a man capable of being afraid until that moment. The fact that he was so vulnerable humanized him in my eyes. I had always seen him as Bucky Barnes, the man that had a past that put all fear beneath him. But in that half second, the half second when the pinheads of pupils he had left met my eyes, I knew that he didn't want to die. He was afraid and wasn't ready. I put my hands on his shoulders and looked him in the face, felt his chest moving quickly and shallowly, and did my best to keep my composure.
"Listen, I love the bond we've got going here, but I've got an agenda-"
"What did I say to you." My voice came out sharp and unwavering. "Shut your mouth, or I'll throw you into that wall so hard you won't remember your name." I glared at him until I saw the fear register in his eyes because he knew I was capable of such a threat. He backed off and sat in silence, because what else was he going to do? If he left I'd have Thorin go and bring him back, and if he called anyone else we'd kill them or the hallway would.
"Buck, listen," I whispered, holding his face eye to eye with mine. His eyes stopped on me, staring back into mine with an eerily shallow gaze. If I didn't know better, I would've said that there was no emotion behind those eyes. "Buck, you're going to be okay. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid, just relax, look at me, there you go."
His breathing started slowing down, but his breaths were just as shallow. My hands, placed at the sides of his neck, could feel his faint pulse drumming through him. My thumbs held his jaw to keep his eyes on mine, and I wanted so badly for him to be able to tell me something. I wanted nothing more than to know what he was thinking about.
"You're okay, Buck. If you're hurting, it's okay, because…" I trailed off and took a deep breath, trying to muster the strength to finish my sentence. My eyes filled, and when I looked down at the floor to try to get it to go away, I saw a tear fall onto the fabric of his jacket pocket. I looked back up into his eyes, his pupils still the size of pinheads, and began to talk. "Because I'm with you 'till the end of the line." I sat there, looking at his blurry form through the tears in my eyes, feeling his heartbeat slow, and I knew that it was over. Each breath he took seemed harder for him than the last, and they came further apart each time.
"It's okay, Bucky. You can sleep now, it's alright. We'll be okay."
A few seconds later, he took another breath that I sensed would probably be his last. His eyes fluttered shut, saving me from being forced to look into the emotionlessness in them that took away the life in him.
I felt his pulse slow down as the seconds ticked by since his last breath, becoming fainter and slower until I felt nothing at all.
He was dead.
My head fell to his shoulder, my eyes closed as I felt my face against the fabric of his shirt.
My own breathing had steadied, making his death all the more difficult. Why was I alive and he was dead next to me? I walked through the same hallway for the same amount of time. What made the difference?
As I lay there, resting against his shoulder, I felt like the little kid in Brooklyn all over again. He had kept me alive and I was virtually attached to him whenever I was in trouble. Now, I was in trouble, and I was attached to him, but it wasn't the same. When his last breath left his lungs, I felt a part of me die. A part of me died with him, and the ugly aftermath was bringing itself to light as I stayed unmoving at his side. I didn't care that there were other people in the room, one of which wanted to kill me more than anything. It was his brother that had just died in front of him, and it filled me with an indescribable rage when I glanced over and saw his stone cold expression staring back at me. I gently let Bucky to the ground, lowering him slowly onto his back.
I stood, a fire suddenly alight inside me.
"You monster," I spat through gritted teeth. "You're a monster. You watched your brother die, the brother that sacrificed everything for you, and you couldn't even bring yourself to show some emotion. You stand there like you didn't just watch him in pain, like you couldn't tell that he was afraid to die after he wanted to for so long. Percy, before you moved in with us, he wholeheartedly believed that he should die. You helped him out of that, and when he was finally comfortable with himself and who he was, you killed him and don't even care!" I yelled the last part in his face, trying to pull a reaction, any type of reaction, from him.
It was impossible. He stood there and pretended like he didn't hear me, except for the glare that was trying to intimidate me. I was on such a warpath, it barely registered in my brain as an intimidation tactic.
"He was my brother, you're right. But I had to move on. He wasn't what I needed anymore, so I left to do bigger and better things. It's an unfortunate casualty, really, but I expected some minor setbacks. Nothing I can't overcome."
And with his nonchalance, his lack of caring words, came my unparalleled rage.
I grabbed him by the throat and pulled him merely inches from my face.
"He was your brother and you killed him. You did it and you have no remorse for it, and for that I hope every camera in Asgard and Olympus and all the heavens above are watching. I hope dear uncle Hades in the Underworld is watching, the judges that decide your ultimate fate, and most of all, your own father."
He swallowed hard as his face began to turn cherry red. I loosened my grip a bit; it was still meant to be uncomfortable, but not as lethal.
"My father never cared about me. He left me alone for years without so much as a second look."
I smiled, a ruthless, mirthless smile. He had no idea the gravity of anger that I felt toward him at that moment.
"What about your mom, Percy? What would she think if she saw all of this that you had done? All the destruction and pain you've caused? Look at Paul, and Estelle. Estelle was his daughter, Percy. What's she going to think when she hears about this? She already doesn't understand your problem, but now the only 'family' she has left that cared about her is dead? You really, really didn't think this through, Jackson."
That cut deep.
It fulfilled its intent, making Percy squirm in my grip.
"Don't bring my mom into this. And, just so you know, it was gas. Sarin. Takes effect in seconds, and if he's the one dead on the floor then it means that he was exposed the longest. Seconds make a difference."
I smiled, satisfied with my ability to provoke a reaction. The smile was bittersweet, because he had just revealed to me exactly how he had killed my best friend. My gaze matched his; dark, steely, and full of resolve. Neither of us was going to budge, but I had a feeling that it would be Percy before me because I wasn't the one in a throat hold. My anger welled inside me, finally bursting through to the surface as it had tried to for several minutes.
I threw him against the wall, sending drywall chunks everywhere and dust onto the floor. I heard his body connect with the concrete cinder blocks behind the drywall with a resounding crunch, satisfying me to no end.
His body lay limp, but I could tell that he wasn't dead by the way his back rose and fell.
Thorin looked like he'd seen a ghost, but I could tell that he was relieved to some capacity.
"You- you did it," he muttered, and I smiled.
"I did, didn't I? Kid always had it coming for him one way or another. Don't worry, he's not dead."
Thorin breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Bucky on the floor. "I always liked him. I didn't know him too well, but I always liked him. Not many others did, though. They thought it was unfair that he was able to walk right into the business and take a top spot. I respected him, though, because he seemed like the type of person that knew what he was doing without being outright ruthless."
I wiped the tears from my eyes, looking at him one last time and seeing a rare look of peace settled over him.
"We can't take him up that ladder," I muttered, my eyes fixated on the truly dead body of my best friend. "And we can't go back down that hallway, because there's no way to open that door from the inside. And, for all we know, we could die in there too. We can't risk that, so… we have to leave him."
It was hard for me to admit, but I knew it had to be done. We didn't have an abundance of options, and there was no way we could pull him up a ladder that closely resembled a service ladder in a sewer.
Before we left, though, I strode to Percy's computer and took the hard drive from it, just like Tony had showed me. I pocketed the drive and made a note to have Tony look through it with me when we got back.
Thorin looked at me and nodded slowly, taking one last glance at Bucky before beginning the climb up the metal rungs.
The climb seemed to last forever, the dark tunnel we were enclosed in not helping us any. My eyes were still blurry with tears, making it hard to differentiate between the rungs and the dark concrete they were cemented into.
After what felt like an eternity and a marathon, we reached the top and emerged in the hallway leading to the door on the roof.
"That wasn't so bad," I breathed, and Thorin halfheartedly chuckled.
"Right."
The gaping hole in me hadn't begun to shut yet; I still felt like a part of me had died in that room with Bucky.
I had a feeling that the hole would always be there.
"He was always afraid of that," I muttered, facing Thorin.
"Afraid of what?" he replied gently.
"Being gassed to death. He'd seen it in the war and he said that it was the last way he'd want to die."
We went to try and convince Percy to give it up and not get himself killed, which we didn't really get a chance to do, but we may have gotten something else entirely. If that hard drive had anything on it to help us with what he was doing in this war, that would be a turning point.
The only problem was, Bucky wouldn't be able to tell us what was important and what wasn't.
I ran my fingers through my hair as Thorin and I began the walk back onto the roof. It was silent between us, because we didn't know what to say. There were no words for what had just happened, at least from me. I'd already gone through this once with him, when I thought I'd watched him die after falling from the train. It was different that time; I hadn't felt or watched the life drain from him. I'd just assumed that he couldn't survive and presumed him dead.
"Hey, I can't leave with you, or else Jackson will get suspicious. I'll somehow convince him that you two forced me to help you so I can still get you inside information."
I forced a smile toward him. "Thanks. We- I… couldn't have done it without you."
He gave me a tight lipped smile in return and receded back into the building.
I stepped out onto the roof and immediately got soaked; sometime during our time in the building, it had started to rain. The rain was a heavy, driving rain, the kind that stung your skin upon impact.
I jumped down to the fire escape and took the stairs down in silence, letting the rain soak me to my very core.
When I got down to the sidewalk and saw his car, it made me feel even worse.
He loved that car.
He'd given me the "key" to his car a long time ago. Tony showed him how to program other fingerprints, which in hindsight would become useful.
I opened the car door and sat in the driver's seat, slamming the door behind me and listening to the sound of the rain pounding against the roof.
The tears came down my face again and fell onto my already soaked shirt. My head was pounding, so to alleviate it I leaned my forehead on the steering wheel, my hands gripping it so tight my knuckles turned white. I closed my eyes and just listened to the sound of the pounding, driving rain that Bucky always loved so much.
After a few minutes of absolute stillness, I brought myself to turn his car on. I stripped my jacket and my shirt, holding it in my lap as I drove back to the tower to face everyone else and tell them that I had let my best friend get killed.
The entire way there, between the driving rain and the tears in my eyes, I could barely see anything. It was hovering on the border of reckless endangerment, but I didn't care. I made it into Tony's garage without causing any casualties on the road.
Carrying my jacket and my shirt, I walked through the door leading into the tower from the garage.
"Hello, Mr. Rogers," FRIDAY greeted me, and I half heartedly smiled. It was a nickname that I had just come to understand a few weeks prior.
"Hello, FRIDAY."
"You seem distressed, sir. Are you alright?"
I shrugged, still walking. I needed a real person, not an AI.
"I'm okay, FRIDAY."
"Good to hear, sir."
I kept walking until I reached my bedroom, throwing my clothes on the floor in the bathroom and stepping into the shower. I turned the water as hot as I could take it, steaming the bathroom densely. The water ran through my hair and down my back, washing me of the feeling of death. I still couldn't get over the fact that he'd died in my arms.
After much too long of standing still and crying, my tears mixing with shower water that ran into the drain to be forgotten, I dried off with a towel and wrapped it around my waist, standing at the condensation covered mirror for a moment. I wiped the water with a towel from under the sink and stared at myself, taking in the way my bloodshot, puffy eyes gave way to skin turned pink under water that was much too hot. It was clear that I had been crying, but I knew that it wouldn't matter once I told them.
I steeled myself to go downstairs, picking a pair of pants and a shirt. I ran my fingers through my hair, taking one last glance at myself.
"FRIDAY, where is everyone else?"
"The others are in the top floor living room. Would you like me to request their presence here?"
"No, that's okay. Thanks."
I took the elevator to the top floor, listening to Tony's '80s and '90s rock rotation on the way there. As the doors slid open, I sighed, walking into one of the hardest things I'd ever done.
I sat down beside Nat and she smiled at me, leaning over to tell me something about the movie without looking at me. When she turned her head and saw me, her expression fell.
"Where's Bucky? Steve, what's wrong?"
I looked at her, unable to hold her eyes without seeing the terrible, hollowed out pinpoints of eyes that were left of Bucky.
I started to breathe heavily, thinking of the terrible thing I had just witnessed less than an hour ago.
"Steve, talk to me," she whispered, and I saw a hand on my shoulder but it didn't register. I felt detached, like nothing around me was actually happening and I was just having a nightmare.
"I- he's… gone."
The look on her face couldn't be put into words. She had been the one that gave him some peace all those years ago.
"What happened?"
I couldn't physically form words. I lay there, pretty sure but not certain that I was crying.
"He… Jackson did it. The hall had gas in it, and… Buck was the only one that went in there long enough. Thorin was with us, and he and I broke down the door to Percy's underground office. We took Buck in there, and slammed the door to the hall shut, and after a few minutes, he just… went. The look on his face… he was stiff, his entire body, and his pupils were almost nonexistent. He was scared, so scared, I could see it in his eyes and feel it. He didn't want to die," I finished, my eyes in the heels of my hands.
Nat's arm went around my shoulders, holding me as I cried.
"Steve, I'm so sorry."
By then, everyone else was paying attention. The movie paused and all eyes trained on me.
"Barnes is… gone?" Tony asked, the pitch of his voice rising on the last word. I nodded, glancing at him.
"Jackson did it," I answered, reburying my eyes back into the heels of my hands. "He gassed him. He was always afraid to die that way. He'd watched other men die that way and it always scared him, because he never wanted to have to wait for the inevitable."
No one knew what to say to that, and I didn't blame them. I had no words for anything myself.
Guys I'm so sorry... I've been on vacation for a couple weeks and although writing is important, I needed a break before I start school on Thursday. I haven't posted in a HORRIFIC amount of time, which is probably why the sequel isn't doing as well as the original. I'll try to keep a better posting schedule when I get back into school and into a routine. Thanks to those of you sticking with me and my atrocious infrequent posting!