Gravesen Chronicles news recap: the Nick prequel, now officially entitled "An Eye for an Eye" is complete at 4 chapters. The sequel has reached 75k words with no end in sight. Seriously, all that content is almost exclusively Tony, Steve, and Bucky. It's only going to get bigger once I start working with other characters. Every time I finish a chapter my excitement only grows, so I'm trying to feed your hype too. In other news, I get to host a workshop on writing fanfiction for my creative writing club tonight and I'm super excited. Now please enjoy this chapter :)
Chapter 2: Forward and Back
The next thing Bucky knew he was in the hospital wearing one of those flimsy white-and-blue gowns that he'd seen Steve don on so many occasions and awaiting a procedure that would remove a chunk of whatever this mass was and determine its identity. He hadn't experienced this degree of blood-freezing terror since he last witnessed one of Steve's asthma attacks.
When he got here he'd finally cracked and squeaked out an "Eight" when asked how bad the pain was on a scale of one to ten. He knew they had him on good drugs, but they weren't helping. What helped even less was the text from Steve:
"Where are you?"
Bucky hadn't told him what happened yet. He'd been too busy freaking out about a mass of something in his shoulder that he hadn't paused to tell anyone anything. The only people who knew what was going on were his parents. But Steve deserved to know, didn't he? He always told Bucky when something was going on with him. Bucky started typing out the truth, but deleted it before he could finish. The last thing he wanted to do was make Steve worry prematurely. Bucky's injury had already set him on edge, and he didn't want to make it worse. Both of them were unused to this dynamic in their friendship. Steve got sick and Bucky worried about him. That was how it was supposed to work, not the other way around.
He told Steve this instead: "At an appointment for my shoulder."
"Okay. Good luck. Let me know when you get any news."
"Ok."
Bucky could feel the nerves radiating off of his friend through the phone almost as palpably as he could feel them on his mother beside him. "Is the pain any better?" she asked him. He lied and said yes even though he wanted nothing more than to rip his entire shoulder out just to make it stop. Bucky found himself actually looking forward to the procedure because anesthesia-induced sleep would award him a break from the agony.
This was his first time being put to sleep and he didn't know what to expect. It actually turned out to be a lot less eventful than he thought. The drugs went in, and then he was out. He came to back in the room, his mother's face the first thing he managed to make his eyes focus on. The memory of the pain had faded, which made it all the more difficult to stifle a whine when it returned in full force. He wrenched in a deep breath and clenched his jaw, refusing to give in to it.
"What's the matter?" his mother's voice sounded indistinct through the layers of mental blocks he was attempting to put up to shut out the pain.
"Hurts," he grunted through gritted teeth. It came out sounding more like a childish whimper than a manly grumble, and Bucky just crumpled. He couldn't stop the tortured wail that tore itself from his throat like a wild animal escaping abusive captivity.
A hectic flurry of activity ensued, many voices calling out orders and overlapping each other to form one crazed chorus. Once the tears started, they refused to stop. He tried to mentally retreat, to distance his mind from the relentless stabbing and throbbing that resonated all the way into his chest and back, but a new voice or a new jolt drew him right back out.
"Just make it stop! Please make it stop!" he pleaded.
"They're trying, sweetheart, they're trying," his mother coaxed. In Bucky's opinion, they weren't trying nearly hard enough. After an eternity, the pain finally lessened just enough for him to classify it as an improvement. Sometime after that he passed out.
~0~
Bucky eventually awoke, though he often wished he hadn't. The conclusion of that sleep marked the beginning of the spiral. He knew it couldn't be good when the doctor brought company. And he knew it was really bad when that company introduced herself as Dr. Potts, Gravesen's head oncologist. This time, it was Bucky's mom's turn to cry while his father comforted her. Bucky could do nothing but stare, dumbfounded, at the people explaining that the mass of something in his shoulder was actually an aggressively malignant something. Something called Ewing's sarcoma. A tidal wave of information smashed into them, and Bucky only managed to hold onto a few words before they vanished from his brain like sand through a sieve. Further testing. Chemotherapy. Amputation.
When they left, Bucky turned immediately to the only person he could. He asked his parents for some privacy and then, as soon as the door closed behind them, he called Steve. His tear ducts kicked into gear before his friend could even pick up, and by the time Steve's distinct, ever-congested-sounding voice said hello, Bucky was already sniffling.
"Buck, are you—are you crying?" Steve asked. "Is everything okay?"
"No." Bucky shuddered.
"What's wrong?"
"My—my shoulder."
"Did they figure out what's wrong with it? Come on, Bucky, you've gotta talk to me."
"Th—They found a tumor. It's cancer." Saying the words out loud brought a fresh round of silent tears, and the sound of Steve's frightened gasp only made them fall faster.
"Oh my God. I'm so sorry, Bucky. Are you at Gravesen?"
"Yeah."
"I'll be there in less than an hour."
He wanted to tell Steve that he didn't have to come, that he could handle this alone the way Steve shouldered so much of his own health-related burden, but that desire was dwarfed into nonexistence by the need to have his best friend by his side during the hardest moment of his life to date. If anyone could get Bucky through this with some semblance of his sanity intact, it was Steve.
~0~
The first time Bucky met Steve he didn't even know he was sick. Bucky was only four years old, and the boy didn't look sick. Sure, he was on the skinny side, but Bucky didn't know that meant anything; he barely even noticed it. He was just glad the new neighbors had a kid his age so he could play with him. The last new people to move in nearby didn't have any kids, so when Bucky's parents invited them over to welcome them to the neighborhood he was terribly bored.
Steve wasn't boring. He liked to play with all the same toys that Bucky did, so much so that they didn't want to stop and come to dinner when Bucky's mom called them in. "Boys, come on!" she prompted again, and they reluctantly left their latest block towers un-destroyed by Bucky's biggest trucks. Steve sat down at the table next to his mother and Bucky filled in the empty chair next to him.
As Bucky's parents served dinner, Steve's mom reached into her purse and pulled out a clear box with lots of little compartments. She popped one open, poured out some weird capsule-looking things, and set them on the napkin beside Steve's plate.
"Do I have to?" Steve whined quietly.
"Yes," she said.
"Can't we do the applesauce thing?"
"No. I didn't bring any. You practiced, remember? You can swallow them."
"I don't wanna."
"I know, buddy, and I'm sorry, but you have to. We talked about this." Steve's mom glanced around the table and noticed both Bucky's parents watching her intently. They looked almost as confused as Bucky felt. Steve reluctantly grabbed the capsules and swallowed them with a gulp of water. "See, now wasn't that easy?"
"No," Steve grumbled. His mom ignored him.
"What were those?" Bucky asked in awe. He'd seen his parents swallow things like that sometimes, but only when they had a headache.
"They're my N-zimes," Steve explained. "I have to take them whenever I eat. Mommy used to cut them open and pour the little beads on some applesauce, but now she's making me practice swallowing them like a big kid."
"Do they taste good?"
"They used to taste like applesauce," Steve remarked wistfully. "Now they're just boring." He picked up his fork and reluctantly started eating, so Bucky did the same.
"So, what brings you to Brooklyn?" Bucky's father asked Steve's parents jovially with a slight raise of his glass.
"Besides the company?" Mr. Rogers shot back. The grown-ups all laughed, but Bucky didn't understand why. Neither did Steve.
"I appreciate it, but you couldn't have possibly known about my wife's hospitality beforehand," Mr. Barnes said.
"Oh, stop it," Mrs. Barnes insisted.
"The short version is that Steve brought us here," Mrs. Rogers explained.
"I'd like to hear the long version if you're willing," Mr. Barnes said.
"Of course. We moved here to be closer to Gravesen," Steve's mom explained. Bucky watched Steve visibly cower at the mention of that name.
"The hospital?" Bucky's dad sounded scared now. He turned to Steve and looked at him as if searching for something. Bucky looked too, but he didn't see anything that should make his dad afraid.
"Yes. We were referred to a pulmonology specialist based there, a Dr. Abraham Erskine. Steve has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects his lungs and digestion." The boy in question squirmed uncomfortably. Bucky listened to Mrs. Rogers intently, but he didn't understand a lot of the words she used.
"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that," Bucky's mom said. "Is it serious?"
"As of now, there's no cure. We can only manage it and try to keep his lungs as healthy as possible for as long as possible."
"Mommy, do we have to talk about it?" Steve asked.
"They asked nicely, and it's important to spread awareness wherever we can, Steve," she told him. Steve didn't seem to like that answer, but he stopped arguing. Bucky was afraid now. His new friend had a disease with no cure. Bucky's grandma had had a disease with no cure, and she died. Was Steve going to die too? He didn't want that to happen.
"Is he gonna die?" Bucky asked, failing to keep the fear out of his voice. His parents both turned to him with shock and anger in their eyes, but he didn't understand what he'd said to warrant that. Asking questions was okay, wasn't it?
"No, sweetheart, not for a long time," Mr. Rogers assured him. "He might feel sick sometimes, maybe more often than you do, but nothing like that."
"Good."
"I'm sorry," Mrs. Barnes said to Steve's parents.
"No, it's alright," Mrs. Rogers told her. "It's a reasonable question. They're so young that it's hard to explain the concept of chronic illness. Answering their questions is the best we can do."
She was right. Bucky didn't understand the concept until he was at least ten or eleven. Before that, all he understood was that Steve was different from him and only grew more different with each passing year.
In kindergarten the most exciting thing in Bucky's lunchbox was the occasional piece of candy, but the other kids were always fascinated by Steve's nutritional supplement drinks that looked like milkshakes, even though he hardly ever drank them.
For Christmas when he was five, Bucky got a soccer ball. Steve got a feeding tube. Bucky didn't get to see him that Christmas.
When they met a nice, fluffy dog at the park one time, Bucky had a blast while Steve had an asthma attack and ended up in the hospital.
When Bucky took up playing soccer, Steve took up using the Afflovest.
The summer after second grade, Bucky's family spent two weeks at the beach while Steve's spent three weeks in the hospital while he fought off yet another lung infection.
Bucky sometimes got in trouble for fighting back if some kid made fun of Steve. But when Steve fought back—because he could, despite appearances—he escaped blame. Steve's parents never punished him, and Bucky couldn't help but be jealous when he was grounded for a week while Steve got off scot free.
When they were eleven, Bucky had braces put in his mouth and Steve had a port placed in his chest.
Bucky was bummed when he scored a seventy five on a math test; Steve was bummed when his baseline lung function dropped to seventy five percent.
Whenever Bucky caught a cold he had to stay away from Steve because whenever Steve caught a cold he had to double his daily treatments and sometimes ended up in the hospital.
At age thirteen Bucky got his braces off and Steve got a breathing tube taken out after another bad asthma attack had left him relying on one for three days.
Halfway through the eighth grade, Bucky started occasionally using cologne and Steve started constantly using supplemental oxygen.
Bucky's father strongly considered sending him to a private high school; Steve's parents strongly considered switching him to homeschooling. Fortunately, they both managed to change their parents' minds.
The only thing that didn't change over the years was their friendship.
They were inseparable from that first meeting. Though Steve was born the July before Bucky, his parents kept him back a year and they started school at the same time. Every year they eagerly awaited finding out what teachers they had and crossed their fingers they would be in the same class. The years they did share a teacher probably coincided with the years they learned the least because they spent more time than they ought to whispering to each other and playing games across the desk.
Bucky quickly adapted to the things Steve couldn't do, but for the most part that list was minimal. Sleepovers always took place at the Rogers' apartment because Steve couldn't skip a breathing treatment or a feeding and it was too much of a hassle to bring everything to the Barnes'. Bucky didn't mind one bit, and neither did any of the other friends to join their group over the years. Gabe played on the same soccer team as Bucky and the two instantly became buddies. Timmy and Jim were already close friends and they got to know Steve in third grade, one of the few years Bucky and Steve weren't in the same class. Throughout the rest of elementary school each friend was always in class with at least one other, except for a few weeks in fifth grade when Steve was hospitalized and left Jim alone.
The five of them fit together perfectly, but Steve and Bucky just fit tighter. There were some things that Steve trusted with only Bucky. If they did their homework together after school, Steve sent Timmy, Jim, and Gabe home before his afternoon Afflovest treatment. Only Bucky had the privilege to see him like that. The first few times it grossed him out, but he quickly grew accustomed to it.
For the most part he refused hospital visits from any of their other friends. Bucky didn't like going to Gravesen—the place scared the hell out of him, and there was this one nurse who always scrutinized his visitor's badge like it might be fake—but when Steve asked him to come he never said no. He missed his best friend and Steve must've missed him too. Somehow just being in there made him look sicker, and Bucky hated the reminder that Steve was anything but perfectly healthy. As he got older, it only scared him more. When they were little, Gravesen was the place Steve went to get better when he was sick. He always came back improved. But as time wore on and they both grew to understand just what cystic fibrosis was, Bucky knew that every infection that entailed a hospital visit meant another blow to Steve's lungs and that, eventually, a blow would be crippling.
However, that looming eventuality helped Steve and, by extension, Bucky, see the value in the time that they had. They laughed at even the un-funniest of jokes—or at each other's expense—avoided upsetting their parents (to the best of their ability), shared in each other's successes, and commiserated their failures. As far as Bucky was concerned, they had the "Best Friends" superlative in the bag before they even started high school.
Did you enjoy this flashback to little Bucky and Steve? I know I did. There's much more where this came from when we get to Steve's prequel :)