The last funeral Bucky went to had been for an aunt when he was still a teenager. He remembered how much she looked like she'd been to a taxidermist beforehand, with discoloured skin and unflattering eye makeup. Even in black and white the work was just wrong. A small part of him had expected his aunt, never having been a woman to doll herself up, to jump up and peel the thick application from her face. That part of him couldn't help but become awash in disappointment when she didn't. He couldn't stand seeing her this way. Dead was one thing, but made to look like a life-sized toy? It just didn't sit well with him.

He'd decided then that he didn't just dislike funerals, nor did he hate them. No, he flat out loathed them. Granted, they weren't exactly meant to be high-spirited events, but they were still too damn depressing. To him there seemed no point- he was already in mourning, why make some grandiose event out of it? He would have much rather dealt with the loss on his own terms, but with the broken look in Steve's mother's eyes when she explained her need for his support, Bucky knew he'd be void of alone time for a while.

It would have been nice to say Steve looked the way he did before death, before the cancer, but Bucky had never, never seen the blond man's face drained dry of colour, so that would be a lie. He- like Bucky's aunt all those years ago- also had criminal amounts of makeup, and his body was stuffed in a suit he would have never worn if he'd been alive.

It was obviously an expensive piece, with the material clean cut and fitted snugly to Steve's proportions. It didn't even look second hand, unlike most of the things he and Bucky normally bought with their low wage salaries. Bucky wondered how Steve's family even came to afford it.

His wondering a were pushed aside as the pastor gave his sermon before the crowd of mourners. The brown-haired man sat straight and attentive in his seat, but inwardly blocked out every word. There wasn't much to listen to, he figured. Just some reminiscence over the loss and some misplaced prayers. It'd been a long time, but Bucky knew how funerals worked.

Since Steve's- since Christmas Eve, he hasn't gotten a spark of a moment to himself; it'd already been a week. A week of sympathy calls and envelopes in the mail packed full with condolences. A week spent in a flurry to organise the funeral, comforting Steve's mother over the phone, or just making awkward side talk with those who didn't seem to know when a topic of conversation was well run dry. A week holding the absolute torment and agony of losing

the man he loved more than anything he'd ever come across. Bucky couldn't let anyone see how broken he was- he had people who's grief he had to carry on broad shoulders, he couldn't let them see that he was having a hard enough coping as it was.

With the funeral's end came robotic handshakes and stiff, shoulder soaking hugs as people filed back to their cars. It was hours before Bucky finally got to his own, where he sat in utter silence for so long, he almost thought he'd been sitting parked in his truck for days.

He and Steve had bought the truck together years ago. It was old and beat up, rusting in what could qualify as a junk yard behind someone's house, but it was what they could afford. Any extra cash they could spare went to fixing their ride, from new second hand rims to a nice, deep blue paint job. Days they spent out in the garage together left them with grease streaked across their cheeks and grins wide enough to stretch for miles.

Bucky almost found himself smiling at the memory. Almost. Now the truck was a dark grey, no longer differing in hue from the street or the sky. It just wasn't the same truck anymore.

He didn't leave his apartment for a long time after the funeral because of that. The flashbacks of him and Steve dodging soapy sponges and tossing buckets of cold water while they washed the truck in the summer were to much to bear. Instead he became custom to restless pacing on late nights filled with gloom. After piles of attempts to contact him fell through, even Natasha, as stubborn as she was, began to back off. Weeks and months passed with knocks on the door going ignored.

What was there to see now that Steve was gone? Just a world of no colours, smudged and dulled like an old photograph. It wasn't even the loss of colour in his life he moped over. He couldn't have cared less that he'd never again lay eyes on Nat's fire blazing hair, or the royal shade of purple on Bruce's lucky shirt. He could live with black and white and grey; it was Steve he couldn't live without. So what was left for him to enjoy, without the love of his life by his side?

Everything in the home he and Steve shared drove him deeper into his depression.

Sketches were insistently pinned up in every room, a proud display of Steve's artistic ability. The blond, always so modest about his works, would always have tried to convince Bucky to take them down.

"They aren't that great, really. I mean- look at this," he would say, snapping tape as he pulled a sketch of the view of buildings from their window, "You know I've done much better. Besides, it's at least a year old."

And then Bucky would roll his eyes and take the picture from his hands, carefully taping it back up while he said, "Quit deluding yourself, would ya? I like it. Anyways, years from now you'll be glad I kept these. Just watch."

There were no jovial feelings toward the sketches now; not with out the scratching of pencils on paper, carefully tracing what images Steve's head could hold. Bucky always found his art to be astounding but now found he was hardly able to look at it.

The pain that had wrapped around his heart quickly strengthened its grip. Days he spent out of bed, not much was done aside from the frequent swig from a cheap brandy. It didn't reverse the pain, but managed to null it a great deal and that was enough for Bucky.

Drinking wasn't a new ordeal to him- a known drinker at parties- but to this extend was unheard of when it came to the brunet. The times he wasn't draining a bottle down his throat were spent wither by the toilet or on his back, recovering from a crippling hangover. A great deal of money went to fuelling his formed addiction, causing piles of trouble in the area of finance. This lead to a raising concern in the friends with whom he scarcely had contact with over the years.

"James," no one ever called him by his first name. It was a strange word to him, one that felt wrong on his ears. It was a name he was called only a rare number of times, "you need help."

Bucky could hear the cracks in Natasha's voice, a desperate sound coming from his friend. Occasionally she would succeed in getting him to agree in seeing a therapist or attending rehab. He'd seen at least five specialists over the course of three years through her, all of who's help he decided he could do with out.

"I can quit any time," He'd manage out of his stumbling mouth, a phrase known widely to be used by those facing addiction.

Oh, but Bucky wasn't one of them; he was no addict. That was for sure. He was just... Self remedying, filling in that hole he'd been left with when Steve died. He deserved at least a little moments rest from the anguish in his soul. He insisted on this near every passing day whenever guilt began to bubble in his gut.

Of course, with an addiction such as this, there comes consequence- inevitable, tho unable to have been foreseen.

Whatever made Bucky Barnes think he could drive safely from the bar to his apartment, was surely a whim of his unhealthy need to prove his competence under unlikely odds. He weaved his way down a straight path to his old truck, the continued to weave his way down the rain spattered street. Even a sober person would have trouble navigating through the pelting storm.

The crash happened just a block away from the bar he left. It was a wonder it didn't happen earlier, with all the factors counting against the driver. Bucky's car went straight to a line of parked vehicles, leaving him with the only casualties as a result.

Through an intoxicated haze he could make out split screams. The screams where so loud, like thy were coming from inside the car with him. Then there was the pain. It seemed to sneak up on him, past his barricade of alcohol, and wail on his body repeatedly. Oh, god it felt bone crushing, like he was trapped under an enormous amount of weight.

He hardly had time to comprehend what had happened before panic and shock took over, gradually bringing him away from the pain. The bland grey world began to slip away, becoming darker and darker until all around him was just black.