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“So” Steve sighed deeply “I’m banking on no one seeing this for a while. I don’t anyone even knows I have this computer…. But uh….I just need to get this out.” He rubbed a hand down his face and when he pulled it away tears tracked down his face.
“I don’t think I know how to go on. When I fell….” His head hung down as if in pain “When /he/ fell, I couldn’t pick him back up like he had always done for me. Couldn’t dust him off and hope for the best.” His shoulder shook slightly.
“I thought going into the water would be the end without him. But I guess the world had different plans for me. Things are so different.” His voice got small, almost whispering “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gone through with the experiment. Maybe Bucky would’ve come home then. Back to me, back to the love we shared. I can’t take back what happened now, I can’t wish him back, I can’t beg for it to have been me and not him falling. He deserved so much more than was ever given to him.”
He wiped away the tears that were making it hard to see the camera and cleared his throat, “It feels like the world is closing in on me, like I have one escape and I’m so close to teetering over the edge. I’m trying so hard to find purchase on something, trying hard to hold on to something that makes me want to stay and not join him…..” His eyes met with his feet.
“It’s not really working out.” He let out a wry chuckle “God, this sounds like I’m breaking up with life.” His laughter faded into nothing and it was so very quiet for a moment in the room he was in. He could swear the mic might be able to pick up the sound of his heart rushing in his chest. The sound of the blood in his ears was surely deafening. “I think I am though. It might just be time to break it off. My loose ends have all seemingly been clipped for me”
His eyebrows furrowed, “All I can think of is what Bucky would say to me if he seen me like this and it’s like a punch to the gut, knowing that maybe he does know, maybe he’s been watching over me this whole time. What if he’s been waiting for me, expecting after 70 years I might come join him finally.”
“I’m so tired. I thought about downing the sleeping pills Tony left around for me….. Just pass while I sleep.” He wrung his hands together.
“But I can’t. Because no matter how much I miss Bucky, I’m still too much of a coward to meet him again after having let him down.” He sobbed and wrapped his arms around his abdomen. “I let him down, I did that. I should’ve saved him. I should have fell with him. How could I just leave him, I did that, it was me, he’s dead because of me. I can’t go back I can’t make it better and it feels like my heart is being ripped out of my chest every time I take a breath. I did this. I let him down” His breaths were being pulled in harshly in gasps, between one breath and the next he was on the ground, his face between his knees taking deeper breaths. “Could’ve save him if I had moved just a little bit faster. I try so hard now not to see my team members die, not to let it be my fault when I’m supposed to help them, to protect them and their safety and everytime I hear someone is hurt I can’t bear to hear who it is because all I can see is him falling down the side of that mountain.”
“I did that……” He looked around the room, void of any sign he was actually the person staying here, no personality to be seen. This is how his life felt. Blank.
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The video cut to black and Bucky stared at the screen, he could see his own tears streaming down his reflections face. It was never Steve’s fault……. And now he was gone, too late for Bucky to tell him he loved him one more time.