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"You have to-to promise me. Promise me, Buck."
"No," Bucky shook his head. "No. I'm not—that's never what I wanted, Steve, you know that's never what I fucking wanted you—"
He couldn't breathe, the anger in him dissipating as fast as it came. After all, it was probably considered to be angry at someone whose life was bleeding out through the bullet wounds that littered his body. And Bucky could never, ever be angry at him.
The sorrow in Steve's eyes, the look on his face that told of a goodbye he couldn't bear to speak, was ripping what was left in his chest cavity into fucking pieces. The pieces of his life that he slowly regained after Hydra had taken it all, gone, just like that. Torn apart by a strike of grief that would never end.
And it felt like turning to dust all over again, reaching out towards him in a panic only to find Steve wasn't there anymore, and that Bucky wasn't anywhere at all. It felt like falling off that train in 1945, it feels like his brain being wiped a million times over in Hydra's leather chair, it felt like his body crumbling until there was nothing left of it for Steve to hold on to. In the end, he'd always come back.
And he didn't want to leave, god fucking damnit, he didn't want to leave. If leaving meant Steve would die and staying meant that he would live then he'd never fucking go anywhere again, he swore. Maybe if he stayed, maybe if he held him close enough, he could save what couldn't be saved.
"—You bastard," he choked through the sob building in his throat. He had never liked war, had never wanted it in the first place. When he was drafted, he'd had no choice. As a coward, he fought to save his own goddamn life, and when Steve came—when Steve came, it was all for him.
Every bullet through a man's brain, every life he snuffed out through the barrel of his sniper rifle...
Even when he became the Winter Soldier, all of it had been for Steve. Not the murders of innocent people nor the meaningless violence nor the weapon he'd become at the hands of a Nazi regime, but when he remembered—
when he remembered, it was Steve he held on to, through the conditioning, the torture, the memory wipes. When he remembered he grasped onto the memory of his frail, sickly body and his warm smile and held on, promising that one day he wouldn't forget. That one day he would remember all of it and when they couldn't control him anymore he would keep remembering.
Because Steve deserved to be remembered, and when he found out he was still alive, Bucky promised he'd never let go of the Steve that pleaded with him now. But he didn't want the shield. He didn't want the burden of Captain America that Steve had carried from the 1940s into the 21st century.
Now, he couldn't let go, and his fingertips were tighter than ever on Steve's stealth suit, pale and trembling as he tried not to cry, as the love of his life slipped away from his grasp despite how hard he was holding on. Like this was his life and suddenly all he wanted to do was live.
Steve's hand curled against Bucky's, horrifyingly calm. Acceptance, he thought distantly, was always the most terrifying part. He wasn't shaking, wasn't erratic; his eyes were dry and his throat was clear, even though there were too many bullets invading his body, too many holes ripped into it that leaked dark, crimson stains across the navy of his suit.
Aside from the glazed film of his eyes, you would've never known that Steve Rogers was a dying man.
"Please," Bucky begged, voice hoarse and strained but he needed to say this, needed Steve to know before he was gone forever because this was his last chance. Through eighty-something years of friendship, loyalty, love, do-overs, it all ended here, somewhere in the middle of the world where time both didn't exist and was rushing by too fast for him to catch up.
Alone, because war still waged on, too far away from them now, razing across grasslands and forests and villages.
They were all that was left, two dying men whose hearts were one, glass tipping back on the edge of a cliff to fall into the abyss below. Into nothingness.
"I love you," Bucky said with such desperation that it shocked him. Steve was still here, still looking up at him with glassy eyes and furrowing brows that gave away the fight his body was losing. He would never back down from a fight, which was perhaps the only reason he could still hold on.
The stupid, stubborn fucking man.
The words he'd held back for so long poured out of him in shaky breaths and stinted words as he held back sobs. "I'm in love with you, okay? And I'm going to marry you I—fuck, I'm going to marry you one day, Steven Grant Rogers, even if you don't like it."
It was the most empty promise he'd ever made, but Steve wheezed in what was supposed to be a chuckle, anyways, and Bucky held on tighter, pressing closer, cradling Steve's face with his free hand, trying to touch every living, breathing part of him that he could as if he could convince himself that he wasn't a dead man. Not yet, not here, not now.
Bucky didn't bother wiping away the tears that streamed like rivers down his face, or the snot that pooled below his nose as he continued, "I didn't—I never followed him, okay? I never followed Captain America. That's not who you are.
"You're Steve, okay? You're my Stevie. It's always been you, you know that? 'Til the end of the line, I promised—"
The first sob wracked through his body, then, trembles turning into tremors that shook his bones like a violent earthquake tearing from the ground, upheaving the dam he'd built to keep it all back, to prevent himself from losing control. It all came to the forefront, rushing in like rapids spilling into a dry lake, filling it up, consuming him until all that he knew was pain.
"Buck," Steve whispered gently, trying to swallow against the agony that burned inside of him, everywhere all at once, and he attempted to push past it so he could form words. Because this wasn't just Bucky's goodbye, this was his. The one he'd never gotten a chance to have every time Bucky had left him.
It was his turn to die, and he couldn't leave Bucky like Bucky had left him, hanging on to a metal pole with no end in sight, no warning.
"Take it. Take-take the shield." He paused to cough and Bucky watched, with horrified eyes, as he spat up blood and bile onto the patchy, burned grass. "Don't—don't want you to forget me this time. Please. Please."
And Bucky couldn't refuse, not when it was the last thing Steve was asking him to do and the words were running out on his tongue and their time was quickly running out. He leaned in, shaking with cries as he pressed his forehead to Steve's, covered in sweat and mud from the final fight.
"Okay," he replied so quietly that their serum-enhanced ears had barely picked it up. "Okay, punk. I love you. I love you to the ends of the earth, I love you with all that I am and all that I've ever wanted to be. I love you with even the worst parts of me, and it consumes me. You consume me, and it will always be here with me."
Bucky retracted his cybernetic hand from Steve's cheek to press it against his own chest and thumped it hard, twice. "In my heart, because my heart is yours, Stevie, and nothing is gonna change that, you got that? Until the end of the line, and then whatever the hell comes after."
How he had managed to say it without his heart breaking down and failing him was beyond him, because Steve's eyes were so far away from him now that it was pulsating with only the darkest, most wretched kind of pain that threaded itself down into the marrow of his bones and around the soft flesh of his throat, yanking and pulling until he suffocated with the weight of what this was. Loss.
But Steve was with him enough to quirk his lips into a small smile. No pain, no death, just the warmth and fondness that Bucky had always loved; the sile that had always been reserved for him and him only.
And he said, "I love you, Buck. 'Til the end of the line, and... and whatever the hell comes after."
Bucky's hand buried itself into Steve's long hair, grasping so tight he was afraid he would rip it out, but he just held on with both hands and cried into his lover's arms, as violent and numb and cruel as the Winter Soldier was, the pain encompassing him like a blanket that had never known warmth or softness.
He could hear Steve's heartbeat—feel it in his fingertips where he pressed against his skin, reverberating against his chest. And once, it would've beat in time with his, but it was too-slow, too-stuttery, too-wrong.
Bucky stayed with him, cradling Steve in his arms and praying to a god that wasn't real that he would be okay, that this wasn't it for them after enduring an entire lifetime apart thinking the other was dead, only to be reunited and know love and peace and then this.
He prayed and begged and cried because it was all he could do, but when Steve's heart stopped and his body succumbed to the pain, he knew it would never be enough. Nothing would ever be able to bring Steve back to him.
He was gone, and when Bucky found the strength what felt like days later to pull away and look at him, his skin crawled and his stomach heaved and all he had left in him was a single, blood-curdling, heart-wrenching scream that tore through his lips with abandon, echoing across the empty field.
Steve's eyes were still opened, as glassy as they had been the last time he'd seen them alive, but-but vacant, like someone had carved up the soul inside and dug it out until there was nothing left. His mouth was slack, and Bucky would never know if there was something more he wanted to say, words forever frozen on his lips.
Bucky had never believed in a forever. As a kid, he knew he wouldn't be staying with his family forever. When Sarah Rogers became sick he knew she wouldn't be staying with them forever. When he was shipped out to Europe, he knew the war wouldn't last forever—but Steve?
Steve was the only thing that had felt like forever. His forever. They were destined, Bucky and Steve, and they would love each other until the end of time, had vowed themselves to each other in a time they would've gotten killed for it, and then now...
Bucky would love Steve forever. Steve was his one great love, and one was enough for him. Steve had been enough for him. They'd had a future together, once. Even though Bucky didn't believe he would survive the war, he and Steve still talked about what they were going to do afterward, where they were going to go.
They had their entire lives planned out with nobody but each other and that was going to be it for them. They were it for each other.
So he knew, when the fight ended and the Avengers eventually found him, clutching his dead soulmate's body with desperate hands, that this would not be forever, either. One day, he would be with Steve again. Until the end of time, wherever they ended up.
Bucky and Steve had spent 70 years apart before finding their way back to one another. What were another 70 years, if it meant finally knowing true peace?
He would marry him one day, even if he had to die all over again to do it. Even if there was no afterlife, no happy ending but the one they had now. Bucky was going to marry the love of his life, even in death. After all, they'd always been destined for more.
Death was nothing but a stepping off point.