We Were Soldiers

60. Goodbyes

The twin pieces of metal felt cold against his chest. He could hear them jingling quietly every time he leant forward to take another spoonful of stew from his bowl. Thanks to Dr. Erskine's serum, Steve's appetite had increased five-fold, but today Mrs. Barnes had filled his stomach to bursting point, just like she had when he'd been a gangly, scrawny kid. Thick stew laden with chunky vegetables and fat-rich dumplings, a mountain of freshly baked crusty bread, an apple pie warming in the oven… she really had outdone herself.

He glanced up to tell her for the third time that everything was delicious, and found five pairs of eyes fixed on him. Mr. Barnes was doing an admirable job of watching Steve whilst polishing off his bowl of soup, but everybody else had barely touched their food. He couldn't blame them for staring. Though he'd written to Bucky's family and told them about his transformation, this was the first time they'd actually seen him since Project Rebirth had made a new man outta him. As they watched, he felt a hot blush creep slowly up his neck. He cleared his throat.

"The soup's wonderful, Mrs. Barnes. Much better than anything I've had on tour."

His comment elicited a smile from Bucky's mom. "Well, I know vegetable stew is your favourite, and I can hardly send you off without giving you your favourite meal."

"Seriously," said Charlie, his unused spoon in his hand, "you could play football. Professionally. In any position. Maybe in all the positions. You could render team sports obsolete."

Steve smiled. When he'd been fourteen years old, Charlie had been taller, heavier and more solidly built than twenty-one year old Steve. Charlie had lighter hair than his older brother, and darker eyes, but he'd inherited the same good looks which seemed to bless the Barnes family. Like Bucky, he'd never had problems attracting girls. Unlike Bucky, he'd mostly just stuck with the same one.

"Kids, don't stare; it's very rude," Mrs. Barnes said. She didn't seem to realise she was staring at his forearms.

Chastised by their mother, they all tucked into lunch. When Steve had written to Bucky's folks, to let them know he'd be along to see them before heading off to war, he hadn't expected Bucky's brother and sisters to show up, too. Mary-Ann had travelled all the way from Baltimore to say goodbye, whilst Janet and Charlie were skipping classes for the day. To Steve, who, growing up, had spent more time in the Barnes' house than in the apartment his mom rented, it was just like old times. Almost like old times. There was one person still missing from the scene of domestic familiarity.

"So, Janet," Steve said, turning to the youngest Barnes child. Sixteen years old, she was a slimmer, shorter version of Rosalie Barnes. She had her mother's smile, and eyes exactly the same shade as Bucky's. "Next time I'm in New York, you might be away at college. Are you planning to go to Vassar, like Mary-Ann?"

Janet offered a quick shrug of her dainty shoulders. "Maybe. I haven't decided yet."

"You'll love Poughkeepsie," Mary-Ann said. "It's positively charming."

"If I do decide to go," Janet pointed out. "I might just get a job."

"You can get better jobs if you have a college education."

"All you're doing with your college education is building ships. You don't even need a high school diploma, to do that."

"It's only until we win the war," Mary-Ann said, stiffening in her seat. "Then I'll go back to teaching."

"Girls, don't argue at the dinner table," Mrs. Barnes sighed. "Or any table, for that matter. It's Steve's last real day in America; let's not give him a reason to want to stay in Europe."

"Sorry, Mom," the girls chimed in unison.

Steve decided to move the conversation onto a slightly safer topic. "How's work treating you, Mary-Ann?"

"It's tiring," she admitted. "Long shifts in cold shipyards… but it's worth it. Which reminds me; when you're en route to Europe, check the metal panel behind the first lifeboat from the front of the ship. You'll be able to tell if you're travelling on one of the Liberty ships I worked on, because I etch every panel in that location with a Shakespearean quote. A different quote for every ship."

"Actually, I'll be going by plane," he admitted.

"You'll be flying across the Atlantic ocean?" Charlie grinned, a sparkle of excitement in his grey eyes.

Steve nodded. "Landing on Sicily. I've never been on a plane before, so I hope I don't get travel-sick." Anya and the other girls who'd be accompanying the show to Europe would never let him live it down, if he vomited on the plane.

An hour later, everybody was as full as Steve. Charlie excused himself and went upstairs for an afternoon nap. Mrs. Barnes herded Mary-Ann and Janet into the kitchen, to help her with dishes. Steve offered to help, as he did every time she cooked for him, but she refused. She never had let him help with the dishes, and she never would.

Mr. Barnes went to the solid oak drinks cabinet where he kept his finest liquors, and poured two small measures of bourbon. He brought the glasses back to the table, with a small wooden box tucked beneath his arm. He handed one of the glasses to Steve, then raised his in toast.

"To your health," Mr. Barnes offered. He gave a quiet grunt as he ran his eyes over Steve's body. "Not that you need it."

They clinked glasses and Steve drank his whiskey in a single gulp. It burned on the way down and made his eyes water. His stomach grumbled about the additional liquid he was putting in it.

With the drinks out of the way, Mr. Barnes opened up the wooden box revealing several long, dark cigars. A smile tugged at Steve's lips. It was a yearly custom. Every Christmas, Bucky bullied Steve into having Christmas dinner at the Barnes' house. Every year, after dinner, and whilst the girls and Mrs. Barnes were clearing away the table, Mr. Barnes took Bucky and Steve, and sometimes Charlie, onto the back porch to finish off their evening of excess with a cigar. If Mr. Barnes was bringing the cigars out now, it could mean only one thing: he didn't expect Steve—or Bucky—to be back in time for Christmas.

"Care to join me outside, Steve?"

"Mr. Barnes, you know smoking isn't good for my—" He stopped as his own objection reached his ears. In the past, if his asthma was okay at Christmas, he had a cigar, even though he wasn't all that keen on the taste. If his asthma was bad, he loitered further down the porch, trying to avoid the clouds of smoke. "Huh. Guess I don't have to worry about my asthma anymore."

There was a crispness to the air outside. Steve didn't feel the cold like he used to, but he still wished the season was changing the other way, heading towards summer, instead of winter. Mr. Barnes clipped the ends of two cigars, then brought out his Zippo, holding the flame to Steve first. For a couple of minutes they puffed in silence, and Steve watched the clouds drift slowly by overhead. The weather seemed fine for an early morning flight.

Finally, he worked up the courage to ask the question that had been weighing on his mind ever since his talk with Terrence, in the lobby of the Velvet Lounge back in California.

"Mr. Barnes? I've heard that war… that it can change a man."

He realised after he finished speaking that it wasn't actually a question, but Mr. Barnes seemed to understand what he wanted to know. He nodded slowly, his blue eyes thoughtful as he considered how to answer.

"It would be more accurate to say that it affects a man," he said at last. "And it affects every man differently. Some come out stronger. Some come out broken. Some, like you say, are changed, not necessarily for the better or worse, but just changed in how they see things, and how they understand things."

Steve stared down at the smoke from his cigar curling over his hands. His large, meaty hands which could do good or could do harm, depending on how he used them.

"Are you worried that he's changed, or that you have?" Mr. Barnes asked, cutting right to the heart of Steve's doubts.

"Both," he admitted. "I know the chances of me finding him out there are slim. It's a big continent, and I've no idea where he is. But what if we end up in the same place, at the same time? What if I look right at him, and don't recognise him? What if he looks at me, and sees only a stranger?"

"War is tough," Mr. Barnes said. His eyes looked wispy, and Steve wondered if he was thinking back to his own time in the Great War. "It's harsh, and cruel, and sometimes it's unjust. But some things are more powerful than violence. Once, when I was younger, a few years before before the kids came along, I was travelling back from Washington state with an older cousin of mine, Frankie Barnes. We'd been on a coast-to-coast road railroad trip, a sort of guys' sojourn away from home, and just as we reached Idaho, the train got turned back at the border by the army.

"We didn't know it then, but a wildfire was raging out of control. Now they call it the Devil's Broom fire, and for good reason; it was such a ferocious firestorm that when we got back to New York, Rose told me they could see the smoke all the way across the country. It burned for two days, and took four before the army would let anyone travel through Idaho. Whole towns were destroyed, and eighty-seven people lost their lives.

"Frankie and I, we hopped off at a station in one of the towns still standing to stretch our legs before the next part of the journey. We could see how close the flames had come; the trees all around the town were burnt to a cinder, and only heavy rainfall had stopped the fire consuming the entire town. While we were there, I saw one of the men from the National Forest Service inspecting the ground where the trees had turned to ash. I asked him, how could the forest ever recover from such devastation? Would the landscape ever be the same again?

"He took me to an area that had been badly scorched, and crouched down to brush away some of the ash and charcoal. As he swept it aside, I saw something tiny and green; a new shoot. It had been only a couple of days since the forest had been destroyed, but already nature was replenishing it. He said, that was the way of things. That fires destroyed the old trees to make room for new growth.

"Sometimes, I think of war as I think of that fire. A dark, terrible, destructive force. But no matter how hard it rages, it can't destroy everything. There are always seeds waiting to germinate. Tiny green shoots ready to spring up with the first rain. Love, friendship, hope, trust… they're the seeds that war can never truly destroy. They're the light within the darkness, and they can grow as tall as mighty redwoods, if they're given the chance. No matter how hard war hits you, something of you will remain. Sometimes it's buried deep, but that's because the deepest places are safest from the heat of the fire. Never give up hope, Steve. Not for yourself, not for Bucky, not for the millions of men fighting for freedom. Hope is the one thing that can survive when everything else dies."

Steve blinked back the tears pooling in his eyes. Mr. Barnes was right. Steve himself was living proof that there was always hope. He'd been a sickly baby; the doctors hadn't expected him to survive. He'd proved them wrong. Then they told his mom he probably wouldn't live past his fifth birthday. They'd proven the doctors wrong together. And when the army enlistment staff had said no, he'd kept pushing until somebody had said yes. Bucky was strong. If anybody could come through the war unscarred by the horrors of it, it would be Steve's best friend. And if Bucky had been affected by war, changed by it, then Steve would just have to bring him home and remind him of who he really was: a good man.

Part of him wanted to stay on that porch letting his cigar burn down forever, but he had one final visit to make. When he told Mr. Barnes it was time for him to go, Charlie was wakened and the rest of the family came out from the kitchen. Mr. Barnes shook his hand and gave him a meaningful nod that said, remember. Charlie pulled him into a back-slapping hug, then promptly shuffled back, in many ways still an awkward teenager.

Mrs. Barned hugged him. The scent of her perfume—jasmine, vanilla and something floral Steve couldn't even begin to guess at—tickled his nose, but he let her hold him close against her for as long as she needed. When she pulled away, her cheeks were damp, and she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled out of thin air.

"Look at you," she said, reaching up to cup his face with one warm hand. Her touch was soft, so much like the touch of his mother as he'd sat by her deathbed. "So brave. So grown up. I remember a time when the top of your head barely reached my shoulder."

"Yeah, that was only three months ago," Charlie grinned. He had Bucky's grin, and everybody laughed.

"If you see my son out there, tell him to be careful," Mrs. Barnes said. "And tell him we love him and miss him very much."

"And tell him to kick Nazi ass," Charlie added.

Mrs. Barnes hugged him one last time, then passed him on to Mary-Ann, who hugged him just as tight.

"You've always been like a second big brother to me," she whispered as she squeezed the life out of his lungs. "Take care of yourself, Steve. I want both my big brothers to come home after the war."

"I promise I'll be careful," he said, with what little air was left in his lungs. She had a grip like a vice! "You know me."

"Yes, and I also know that, according to a newspaper article one of my roommates showed me, you can't even walk down a street in Brooklyn without getting into a back-alley fist-fight with Nazis."

Steve felt that damn blush creep up his neck again. So far, the Barnes family had very diplomatically avoided mentioning his exploits as Captain America. He didn't want to be that. Not to Bucky's family. They knew him. The real him. They probably knew him better than he knew himself.

Mary-Ann managed to keep her tears in check. She pulled back so that Janet could fling herself into his arms to deliver a surprisingly delicate hug. When she too stepped back, he saw that Mrs. Barnes was crying again. For one brief, heart-stopping moment, he felt guilty for leaving them. They'd already seen one son and brother shipped out to war, and though Steve wasn't related by blood, they'd been his family for as long as he could remember. But the call to arms had sounded, and he could feel its beat pulsing in his veins. He couldn't ignore it. Not now. He wouldn't let Dr. Erskine's sacrifice be in vain.

"Are you sure I can't call you a cab?" Mr. Barnes asked.

Steve shook his head. "I want to walk through Brooklyn—" one last time "—to remember what I'm fighting for." He took a deep breath. "I'll bring him home. I promise."

Mr. Barnes wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders as Steve turned and walked away. Mrs. Barnes was sobbing, her cries muffled by the damp handkerchief which was no longer up to its job.

"Steve, wait!" Janet raced after him, throwing her arms around him again. "Take one for Bucky, as well," she said, quiet enough for only him to hear.

He brushed his fingers down her hair, and said, "I'll make sure he gets it."

When she let him go, he didn't look back. Couldn't look back. He didn't want them to see the tears on his cheeks.

: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :

The gravel crunched loudly beneath his sturdy GI boots. The black leather had been polished until he could almost see his reflection. His shirt was neatly tucked in, and his jacket was no longer damp with Mrs. Barnes tears; it had dried during the walk to the florist.

In his arms he carried the largest, most colourful, most magnificent wreath that money could buy. The flowers were an explosion of colour against the olive drab of his uniform, and he couldn't help but smile at his mom's imaginary reproving admonishment. You spent how much on flowers?! Raising a child on her own, Mom had learnt to be thrifty. She wouldn't approve of such extravagance, but Steve was going to Europe, and he didn't know when he'd be back. He'd instructed the florist to keep up the delivery of smaller wreaths on a monthly basis, but he needed to lay this one for himself. Never before had he travelled so far from where his parents rested in eternal peace.

The cemetery was quiet, only a few individual mourners present. When Steve reached his parents' graves, he set the wreath between them, a bridge of colour over the uniform emerald grass. He sank to the ground uncaring of how the damp earth soaked his pants, and took a position between the two headstones.

"Hi Mom. Hi Dad. I'm sorry it's been so long. So much has happened to me over the past few months. I guess I should start at the beginning."

So he told them how Bucky had been deployed to Europe, how he himself had been given a chance with Project Rebirth. Told them all about his big change, and how it had opened doors that he hadn't even known were there. He complained about how long it had taken him to learn his lines, and how the dancers always moaned at him for stepping on their toes. He told them about Kevin, and Angelo, and Freddie the photographer.

He described his movies to them, and how it had been an eye-opener to see how the rest of America lived. How it had given him a new appreciation for home, despite Brooklyn's flaws. The sun was sinking low by the time he got around to telling them about the USO tour going to Europe. The rest of the mourners had left long ago, and Steve had the cemetery entirely to himself.

Reaching beneath the collar of his shirt, he hooked a finger around the ball chain and pulled out the two pieces of metal hanging there.

"I finally got there, Dad. This is who I am now. Rogers. Steven G. Soldier of the U.S. Army. I'm technically a Private, even though I haven't done my full basic training." He looked down at the tags, and tears sprang once more to his eyes when he read the name written on the third line. "When they stamped my tags, they asked me for my next of kin. I had to give them Mrs. Barnes' name. It should've been yours, or Mom's. Bucky's family are great, but I wish, just for once, that I didn't have to share. That I had a family all of my own."

He brushed his hand across his eyes before he could start blubbing like a kid. Jeez, he hadn't even left home yet, and he was already homesick! If Bucky could see him now, Steve was certain his friend would punch him hard on the arm and tell him to stop being so damn emotional. Bucky had probably said his goodbyes with a whistle and a smile and a spring in his step.

Shoving his tags back under his shirt, he looked down at the graves once more.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid of what I might find over there. What I might be asked to do. What I might be willing to do, if I see enough. I wish you were here to give me some advice, Dad. Mr. Barnes has given me plenty to think about, but hearing those things from you… well, they'd be an extra light in the darkness." He tapped his chest, indicating the pocket inside his jacket where he kept the locket his mom had given him all those years ago. "You're always with me. Both of you. And you'll be with me in Europe, too. I want to have something real to hold onto. Something to think about, some sort of moral compass to guide my way. That'll be you, Mom. And Dad, you'll be voice in the back of my mind telling me to stand firm and overcome my fears, just as I'm sure you did in the Great War.

"Well, I better go now. I have an early flight to catch. Not that I suppose they'll leave without me. Still. It's time to go meet destiny."

He stood up and squirmed in discomfort at the wet patch which that soaked through his pants and underwear alike. Before leaving, he reached out with both hands, resting one on each headstone. The polished granite was cold against his skin.

"Goodbye," he whispered. "For now."

This is also totally a cliffhanger.

If I was writing this story as a trilogy, this would be the end of book one. And at 350,000 words (give or take a few) it's been one damn long book. Hope you've enjoyed each and every one of those words! There will now be a short break until the 1 year anniversary of this story (which is September 11th) before chapter 61 is published. Though, I'll post on the 10th, because that's a Sunday, and fits my posting schedule better. So, tune in on 10th September for the start of BOOK TWO! And many thanks to everybody who's been kind enough to drop their thoughts into the review box; your time and input is appreciated.

One last thing. I just wanted to respond to a comment made recently in one of the latest chapter reviews. I don't normally like to get my soapbox out in author notes (the story should do that for me) but if you've read this far, it should be obvious by now that this is not a Fluffy story in which the uglier side of the 1940s is hand-waved away and nobody has to deal with situations which make them uncomfortable. This story reflects REAL LIFE, and not just the real life of the privileged white heteronormative male majority who basically ruled the world at that time (and continue to rule it now). We're all adults here (or mature teens) so I'll toss this author note out there.

There are certain subjects—homophobia, racism and sexism amongst them—which are not "today's politics." These are issues which have existed, and will likely continue to exist, for a very long time. It's disgusting and shameful that in the period in which this story is set, thoroughly unpleasant people—men who murdered and stole and beat their wives and/or kids—were treated with more dignity and respect by the establishment than men who were gay, than people of colour or non-Caucasian heritage, and than women. It's even more disgusting and shameful that this still happens today, and that such acts of intolerance and bigotry are perpetrated by allegedly 'educated' and 'civilised' individuals. For people who struggle on a daily basis to have their voices heard and to exercise their rights as individuals because they are not heteronormative CIS-gendered white men, this isn't just "politics", this is life. This is the right to walk down the street with the person you love, to walk down the street and not be unfairly stopped and searched by law enforcement, to walk down the street without feeling objectified by cat-calls and wolf-whistles and inappropriate sexual comments, to walk down the street and not suffer abuse because who you are on the outside does not reflect who you are on the inside.

The purpose of this story is not just to tell a tale about soldiers; the purpose is also to shine a light into some dark places. To show the conflicts that are personal, political, and internal, as well as military. To highlight the struggles of women trying to earn the right to be seen as equal to men; of men trying to reconcile who they are with what society says they ought to be; of people who are persecuted by the very lawmakers sworn to protect them because they love the 'wrong' person or have the 'wrong' skin colour. If that story isn't for you, there are plenty of stories out there in which nobody questions their sexual identity. In which anti-miscegenation laws don't exist. In which sexism is a thing of the past. In which everybody is Straight And White And Male By Default, even if they aren't. This isn't that story. To make it into that story would be to trivialise the struggles of real heroes, like Alan Turing, who dedicated themselves to freedom and were ultimately and unfairly punished.

That said, this story will have a canon ending for anybody who wants it. See you on the 10th.