Steven, are we going to die?
Ice. Crashing. Crackling. Popping. Sparkling. Shimmering. Fermenting. Simmering. Sweltering. Swallowing. Ice—everywhere. JUST HANG ON PEG, JUST HANG ON. PLEASE, JUST HANG ON.
I think so.
He reached out his arms, she mirrored him, he swallowed her up. His hands wrapped themselves behind her head, crushing her face into his neck, I love you, I love you, too as the plane
If you asked him to explain it, he wouldn't be able to. Because when he woke—if he was actually awake, as part of him didn't really think he was ever awake during the 'waking periods'—he found himself miles and miles below the surface of the world. Submerged within a watery, half-frozen sea, where around him, in this infinite, timeless ocean where he found himself, the world moved around him in tragically slow circles of lifeless motion. He watched images appear, rising from the dunes of the bottom of the sea, sandy people, with grainy faces calling out to him, saying a name he couldn't remember… They were people from a life that had been lived. Perhaps full, in some instances, and perhaps shorter, in others. These images, they must have been from his life. He was certain at times, they were his, at least, but other times, he wasn't.
in one scene, a very recurring one, there was a boy, buck-teeth, thick-haired, his ma didn't want him to tell people his name was Bucky but he did anyway. muttering something about the 'end of the line' as he fell into a ravine
he couldn't remember what that was
another current whipped through the dark, endless sea of memories and a woman stood, cradling to her breast, a tiny child. she was crying. he could hear the soundless, numb cries resounding from this lovely woman, with the lovely face, pocked and pecked from hard, unkind labor and illness in her youth darlin', you've got to live, now. she begged not to god not to jesus not to anybody but the tiny child in her hands that struggled to even take a breath you've got to win this war, you've got to
a man, standing over the sickly child. sick and dying himself. coughing blood onto his cheeks. his eyes drain of all color as all the life leaves his facial features YOU WANT TO GO TO WAR, DIS IS WHAT 'APPENS WHEN YOU GO TO WAR. EVERY GAHDDAMN DAY OF ME FUCKIN EXISTENCE IS A FUCKIN WAR Joseph, leave him alone. NO ME BOY WANTS TO BE A SOLDIER, 'E SHOULD SEE WHAT 'APPENS WHEN A SOLDIER FUCKIN GETS SICK JOSEPH LEAVE HIM—a hand powerfully came down onto the woman's face and she fell back onto the floor and the little sickly golden-haired kid screamed over the man and the woman and fell into a fit of wracking sobs that sounded more like death rattles than cries, tears sliding down his cheeks in thick and gooey masses like sticky maple syrup from the bleeding, cut-out-heart of a tree
but he couldn't remember who he was
he felt like he should know these people
The sea was vast, wide, and far above him was the surface. A sun, round and full of white, silvery light, hung from some distant sky that he wasn't sure he would ever see. It was a shimmering, protruding world, and he knew he couldn't reach it on his own. He looked around the scenes that danced around him slow-motion; a sick child crying over his beaten mother, the 9-year-old buck-toothed kid… These were things he had seen. Things he had already lived. They moved as he knew they would. He knew the precise moment that Joseph would lay his almighty hand into the soft flesh of Sarah, he knew when Bucky would introduce himself, or when he would, inevitably, fall from his hands and to his death.
He recognized the gentle-eyed teenager with the golden hair, with the near-perfect comb over, and the delicate, fragile frame. He knew this kid. It was like looking at an antique daguerreotype of your old man and recognizing the bits and pieces of his face on your own… Except, you know that he's not you. And just as he looked at this weak little man, he knew that that wasn't him. Something had happened to him.
He walked further down the tangled pathway, through the scenes of slow-moving people, until he reached what he had been looking for. A man with the kind eyes and the judgmental smile. He needed to know who you were. He needed to know if he was worth it. Erskine. I CAN DO IT. LET ME DO IT. It was a test. Everything was a test. But he knew this place, this empty laboratory. He knew the dials and the controls and the engines and the whistles. He knew how it worked. He knew the large sealable, lead-based crate they had used. He knew this would make him into something else.
but where did he come from?
GRENADE. GET OUT OF THE WAY. he's still skinny. he was a strip of wire wrapped around an MK II—a fragmentation-based hand grenade. it's force alone would have blown him to bits, but he didn't care. why should he? if he could save the world, wouldn't he? he saved them. he did save them right? he looked up to the empty barracks around him, searching for the countless people he had saved with such a grave sacrifice. is this how he died? no. this isn't how he died. he died after this. this is when he saw her.
Who did he see?
No, this is when he saw her.
WHO DID YOU SEE?
I saw…
WHO DID YOU SEE?
Steven, are we going to die? She was the most remarkable
I saw her.
AND WHO IS SHE?
I… I don't know.
YES, YOU DO—WHO IS SHE?!
The sea was changing, churning, the memories and scenes picked up into dusty residue around him. They were forming into some kind of wildly-created tornado of rocks, sand, and ice. The world was altering. And something, amongst all the clouds of dust and formless, slushy ice, he could see it, then. In the distance, he could see it—a plane.
Steven, are we going to die? Her face was strikingly close, fervently real—bright eyes, bright eyes that could melt hard, forge-worked steel and turn it into poetry worth crying over and a startling collage of features that while sharp and full she had some kind of vitality that radiated off life like she was capable of creating herself like she had been divined, thought of, conceived, replicated, and begotten solely by herself were softer than anything any set of human eyes had ever laid upon. Her lips curved not in edgy lines, but in graceful swoops that meant to offer solace when you pressed your own against hers her laugh created a cosmic event that shattered galaxies and celestial overlays, it rattled her lungs with fire and brassily knocked against Zeus' doorway she was more than anything he ever could have imagined
WHAT WAS HER NAME? YOU KNOW HER NAME.
And the dust settled onto that ancient plane. It wasn't ancient. He had been one with this plane since the very beginning. To know him, was to know this plane.
Why?
Because
she smiled at him from the front seat of a jeep, an exceptionally impressed grin that shined like all the rare jewels of the world
Because she was
he had never seen her cry before. he had never seen the terror in her eyes as he saw them now. flickering with an incessant, but neatly-composed panic. and those tears, those tiny and crystalline tears, interwoven with some kind of unique, vulnerable sadness. what she felt, she felt as no one had ever felt before. she didn't cry. she didn't cry, except when she knew that Steven, are we going to die?
Because she was Peggy.
And Peggy was on the plane.
And
so
was
he.
But then other times,
there was no sea,
no memories,
no distant sun,
nothing.
Just blackness.
Sheer and utter obscurity that coated everything he was and everything he ever would be.
He didn't even know his name.
Then one fine evening, in the afterglow of some fading twilight, he found himself standing in a kitchen. Pale, yellow walls surrounded him, a goldenrod island counter—attached to the wall, jutted out in the middle of the room. On top of it, there was a cutting board, which a paring knife lay across as well as some abandoned remains of vegetables. It was as if someone had started making something but stopped. And further in, making the corner of the kitchen, above the sink, were four Georgian windows, curtained with white sheets that were translucent enough to catch sight of the lovely sunset outside. There was a breeze flowing in from off of the currents of the summer night's air, breathing life into the room, billowing the curtains. And standing there, in the sun's soft, farewell flares, outlined by the pink and orange light, was a dark, curly-haired woman, wearing sandy-colored slacks and a dark blue blouse.
He felt some part of himself freeze at the sight of her, as if he had never anticipated her presence. This couldn't have been right. She didn't belong here. But yet, as he watched her, the way her shoulders moved as she inhaled, the way her hands fussed about in the soapy suds of the sink, the way she seemed to completely dwarf the dipping sun, he knew that she could have belonged anywhere and everywhere, all at once. She was a woman threaded and knitted with the knowledge of some fading civilization, or of some place that was her very own. Perhaps, that's what confused him, it wasn't that she didn't belong, it was the idea that this was her world, and he was simply a traveler she allowed to wander in.
"You have to wake up sometime, my darling." The woman said softly, her back still remained turned to him.
"I know." He admitted.
What did he know? Was he sleeping? He felt himself begin to slip, reeling from the revelation that there was some part of him that knew, and another part that did not. How could she know, but he didn't?
Oh, he realized, staring at the set of her shoulders. So, that was it, then. She made the decisions. Because she knew him better than he knew himself.
"Will you be there?" He asked her, knowing her answer would be some impossible slip of information that he could never possibly hold onto. The vast grandiosity of the woman before him would eclipse all else, even her own words. She filled up every inch of this kitchen, every fiber of the world, as if the entire universe hummed from the very beat of her heart.
The woman turned, her face caught in the rays of the sun's last stretches of gentle light, tinging her curls and features with a golden illumination. Her eyes, lit with this strange, dusky sun, seemed to be filling with colors of violet, black opal, chocolate, hazelnut, and a fleshed-out gold that ringed around her pupils with an intensity that would have made God feel uncomfortable. She cast her gaze onto him, kneading him like he was dough through her weighted gaze, until she came to some kind of conclusion, some kind of judgment, a defiance that she, alone, made. Her lips parted and, with bated breath, muttered something to change everything: "I will."
Then, he was drowning.
The sea was forcing him downwards, pushing him beneath the comforting darkness of some distant past. The memories he had been seeing for centuries and eons and millenniums, flashed by in flashes and blurred arrays of people, smeared faces, names, and dates, all of it hitting him, at once.
A boy whose shirt didn't fit him because he was so scrawny. Name's James Buchanan, but you can call me Bucky—everyone does. And some day, I'm gonna be famous. I mean, I don't know what for, but somethin'.
A little, golden-haired child drawing Hercules fighting the Nemean Lion in his notebook in the dim light of an poorly-furnished dining room. His mother was reaching forward to peer over his shoulder. Ah, so my boy wants to fight the lions?
BUCKY—NO! His best friend, his brother, his fingers slipped through his, as he fell off the edge of a train into an icy river below.
A clash of her brown eyes against the baby blue of his. I'm not leaving you. You're absolutely going to leave me. Excuse me, Captain, I don't believe you have the authority to tell me what to do.
It was then, that he realized, he wasn't sinking into the darkness below, but soaring upwards, towards the white sun above the surface. That was when he saw, standing on a tiny fishing boat, was Peggy. Her hands outstretched, reaching for his, and though her face was distorted in the murky waters, he could almost make out every feature.
Pearson winds up for a third pitch and—wait for it—it's good. A stark, cold breath of air blew across his face.
She was nodding at him, in what seemed like encouragement, her hands dipping beneath the surface of the translucent water. He felt himself reaching for her, his hands lifting themselves upwards into the watery space above him. He was moving too slow. He felt he would never reach her. But then he heard her voice, screaming at him from across the dimensional gap between them. "JUST A LITTLE FURTHER, MY LOVE—COME, HOLD ONTO ME."
There's gotta be at least ten thousand people here, Bob—it's like all of New York City came out to see the Dodgers.
There were frightened tears in her eyes as she kept screaming to him, practically leaning over the boat, now, pushing most of her arms into the water. He could feel his breath beginning to shorten, burning in his lungs as he tried with everything to hold it in place—he was actually drowning. STEVE, PLEASE, DARLING, TAKE MY HANDS.
Folks, would you flip my wig—criminy! Look at the swing from Sanders, my God.
And then, finally, triumphant, as in one single leap, his fingers laced through hers and she tore him out of the water, pulling him out of the freezing ice water and into her arms. She encompassed him, breathed life back into his chapped, bruised lips, and pulled herself tighter against him. "Wake up, my darling, wake-
His eyes fluttered open, and Steve Rogers, for the first time in 70 years, woke up.
