Written to: Up, Ship! - Port Blue
Mizpah: The deep, emotional bond between people, especially those separated by distance or death.
Steve has stopped trying to get Bucky to tell him where he goes when he isn't with Steve. Bucky has stopped trying to make up answers, has instead told Steve that he simply doesn't know, can't remember anything past a whitewash of blinding pain and mind-numbing cold.
Steve is always glad when Bucky comes back, and prays to whatever higher being may exist that Bucky will come back to him as he watches him leave.
It has been almost a month, and Steve is haunted by nightmares of that receding, dark back, muscles tense and rigid underneath the skin, thinking, what if, what if this is the last time? He swallows down resentment and panic and hate, tries to remind himself what Bucky's dark hair looked like tied back in a sloppy ponytail, what Bucky looked like as he sat on the floor of the garage and asked Tony to pass him the motor oil so he could grease his metal elbow, the joint had been getting a bit stiff, tries to remember Bucky's scent of musk and salt and spice and hugs Bucky's pillow to his chest as he tries to tell himself that this is no way for Captain America to act. But in these moments, he isn't Captain America, is only Steve Rogers, pre-serum and 4-F and scared.
The other Avengers notice, and give him the space he silently craves, for which he is grateful. Loki has even offered on countless occasions to conjure up a doppelganger Bucky, but Steve has thanked him and refused, thinking that would be quite more than he could bear.
Steve, in a moment of frustration and misery, almost - almost - considers the possibility of Bucky's death, then pushes that thought far, far away.
He didn't feel like it was possible, doesn't feel for sure that Bucky is gone forever. He doesn't feel it.
He wraps himself around Bucky's pillow night after night, whispers a prayer into the downy softness, and hopes beyond all hope that Bucky will be there when he wakes up.
He isn't.
Miles away, Bucky wakes up, soaked in a cold sweat and choking on his own breath. Men in white coats and masks restrain his flailing limbs even as he shouts behind the gag for them to stop, that it hurts; one places a mask over his face, and he tries not to breathe in whatever gas it is, but it is too late, white and cold and numbingly painful as it gathers behind his eyes and soaks into his brain.
As his limbs grow heavy and his eyesight begins to fail, Bucky finds visions of Steve -
eating ice cream, laughing as they walked through Manhattan -
decked out in Captain America regalia, running a hand through already tousled hair as he returned from a shift in the Bronx -
golden hair spilling across a deep blue pillow in the early morning -
and he wonders, not for the first time, if it will be the last time he will remember.