Chapter Text
Steve Rogers knows what nearly dying feels like. He knows it better than most.
So he’s sure, he’s real sure about the fact that this isn’t half-measures, this isn’t a trial run, a part-way: this is the main event, this is the real deal, because for all the times he’s grasped at the last of the air in the world, in his lungs; for all that he’s felt the weight of the universe crushing at his ribs, round his heart; for all the force his body, this body can endure in the blood that races through his veins, there are limits, there are goddamned limits to what can be survived, what can be felt and known when a man makes it out the other side and this is the line that’s crossed, this is the straw and the camel and the breaking, breaking, breaking.
“It’s too late, Steve,” Bucky’s voice across the comm is flat, layered with static. “The deadlock’s irreversible. S’the only way.”
Steve knows what nearly dying feels like. Steve knows that, and this—those words, that voice, this impossible burning that courses through him like the serum in reverse, this.
This is so much worse than nearly.
It’s not as if Steve’s blind to the risks of who they are, of what they do. It’s not that he didn’t know that rushing A.I.M.’s subterranean labs on the imminent threat of civilian-targeted bioterrorism wasn’t going to involve a gamble or two.
Because Steve knew that. Steve knew all that like he knew the span of his arms and the swell of his lungs.
He knew that.
“They’re set to release over,” Skye breathes out across their comlink. “Jesus,” she hisses, and it settles low in Steve’s gut. “Every major metropolitan center north of the Equator.”
“They, well, they’re,” Simmons stammers. “Dr. Banner,” and Steve can see the look on Jemma’s face, can damn well visualize the particular silence from Bruce that emanates across the connection.
“Christ,” Bruce’s voice is low, is strained, is marveling and terrified all at once.
Steve closes his eyes and breathes; breathes.
“Weaponized Extremis,” Bruce murmurs. “It’s more unstable than I’ve ever…” and Steve wants to believe he’s heard it wrong except he hasn’t, he knows that he hasn’t.
“It’ll be quick,” Bruce finally speaks with certainty, grim as it is. “It’ll disperse after initial exposure, but those who do take it first hand,” and fuck, but Steve can make out the way Bruce’s throat works hard around the rest of it, around what comes next.
“It’s about chaos,” Bruce exhales, defeated in a way he shouldn’t be, in a way Steve can’t stand. “Death, and chaos. I don’t know what kind of damage this strain would manage per victim,” and Bruce’s breathing, the way the inhales follow the exhales: they’re short and they’re shallow and it’s too fucking much. “The blast radius could be…”
“The systems are already in place,” Skye’s voice comes through, stronger but without reassurance: worse, really. “The signal’s remote, it originates from this facility, I just,” Steve can hear her teeth grind, hard, as she bites out:
“I can’t hack it.”
“Unless we can get our hands on each and every one of the buried capsules within the next,” May pauses; “twelve minutes,” and she’s summing up the obvious, pushing the envelope, making this about the next move when there are no next moves—
“Fall back.”
Because that’s all Steve can think of, that’s all Steve can control just now.
“Tony, alert the appropriate authorities, see if anything can be done to minimize casualties.”
“Already done, Cap,” Stark’s voice rings tinny through Steve’s earpiece. “The CDC’s involved, Rhodey’s on it.”
Steve breathes out, slow and heavy, and he’s good at strategy, that’s why he’s leading this op off the front lines, taking the bird’s eye view while Coulson and Fury have got the rest of the team digging for what’s left of Killian’s intel, anything they can chalk up as a lead: he breathes out fuller, deeper when he sees the heat signatures exiting the premises, counts them as they regroup, as they rally back, except—
“Captain!”
“May,” Steve answers, because this is Melinda May, this is the living legend, and that tone in her voice is not welcome; “what’s—”
“Steve,” Bruce comes in, voice tight. “It’s James.”
And that’s when it starts, really. That’s when the dying in him starts.
“He’s locked the compound down.”
“Good,” Steve says, because delusion’s an ally, delusion’s a necessity, because the way Bruce’s voice dips and sways is not right, it cannot mean what it has to mean. “Best to keep containment on-site as best we can.”
“Cap?” and Skye’s voice is only strangled, only pinched because of the distance, because the connection is shit, that’s all, that’s all: “Bucky’s locked the compound down. But he’s still inside.”
And Steve: he’s always had a tricky heart, a wild thing that never liked to listen, and the serum might have made all its bumbling irrelevant, but Steve: he’d nearly forgotten what it felt like, when the whole production got caught on itself, when the pumping and the bleeding and the force of all the need welled up too vast, too full and made him feel faint with it, made him feel small again for all that he’s ripping at the seams.
“What the hell,” Steve snarls; “Bucky!”
“Steve,” Bucky’s voice wafts through, and it does nothing but catch in the tangle at the center of Steve’s chest, all pummeled in the melee there, all knotted so it can’t ever live outside.
“I’ve seen these systems before,” Bucky says it, plain. “There’s a way to stop it.”
Bucky says it, plain.
“Buck?”
The resignation there; the grim determination: that’s real fucking plain, too.
“It’s all very typical evil-fucker style, really,” Bucky starts mumbling, babbling, all words and words to cover the falling. “Self-destruct mechanisms, manually triggered,” he pauses, and Steve can hear the way he swallows: “Immediate detonation.”
Bucky chokes out a laugh that’s wet; Steve chokes down a sob that’s feral.
“Cut off the head, as they say.”
“Bucky,” Steve’s voice is just this side of trembling. “Get the hell out of there.”
“Do you think if I save the world,” Bucky ignores him; Bucky asks instead, less rhetorical than hopeful, than desperate: “do you think that’ll make me even, for everything else?”
“Shut up,” Steve rasps, vicious and violent and cutting through his core and he needs a thing to hit, he needs something warm and real to take apart and watch as it crumbles because this is the end times, this is a reckoning and he’ll go down with his hands bloody, he’ll go down with his heart blown wide, goddamnit.
He will.
“Just,” Steve exhales, closes his eyes until he can open them and damn well see the red. “Shut the fuck up and get yourself out of there. Now,” Steve bites it out with all the authority he’s ever assumed, ever been given on a whim, or on a dare, or on the hope of it being worthwhile because he needs it, he needs this. “That’s an order.”
“It’s too late, Steve,” Bucky says simply. “The deadlock’s irreversible. S’the only way.”
“You’ve got five minutes to make it reversible,” Steve demands, but it’s coming apart, it’s starting to splinter, and he’s grasping at straws. “Or else I’m sending in the Hulk.”
“These aren’t your average brick walls, Stevie,” Bucky chides, some hollow laughter in his tone that makes Steve sick in his gut. “Even Bruce ain’t gonna make a dent, at least,” Bucky breathes out slow, and Steve can see the exact shape of his mouth, the purse of his lips where the lungs empty through: “not fast enough.”
Jesus. Jesus.
“But, five minutes,” and Bucky’s talking again, wistful, talking, and oh god, oh god: “Five minutes could be enough.”
Oh god.
“We’ve danced around this enough times, I think. Screwed it up enough times that I should know exactly what needs saying, what I’ve always regretted leaving unspoken when I thought I might, when we...”
And Bucky’s voice, wry and wrung and faint is far, so fucking far away and what kind of friend, what kind of partner, what kind of man is Steve Rogers that this is where they are, this is where they always are and Bucky can survive torture and rewiring and a lifetime of the consequences of Steve’s own inadequacies, Steve’s own inability to protect Bucky in kind and yet here he is, James Buchanan Barnes, staring down the jaws of death for Steve one more time while Steve looks on, failing to keep up his end, fucking failing.
“I’m lucky, this time,” Bucky continues, voice thickening with every word, every goddamned syllable. “Fuck, but I’m lucky, because you know, now,” he huffs a bit, a laugh or a moan or a whimper, and Steve should be there to hold it, to feel it, to know it for sure and to take it in entirely, to be indecipherable from all that Bucky is because that’s the only truth in this, that’s the only truth that’s never changed.
“Maybe you always did know,” Bucky muses. “But you know, this time, and you’re safe, and I can say what I need to without worrying about anything at all, without worrying about anyone coming after you, anyone hurtin’ you,” Bucky’s voice falters, and Steve’s breath, Steve’s heartbeat follows suit when Bucky whispers: “Don’t have to worry about me hurting you.”
Steve means to protest, to tear that notion down to its bones so he can break each of them, one by one, but he doesn’t, can’t manage: can only squeeze out a pathetic little moan because it hurts to hear it spoken, hurts to think that after everything, Bucky still can’t see.
“I love you, punk,” Bucky tells him in earnest, in passionate, slow-murmured wonder that Steve’s never been worthy of, not once. “You’re the best part of every world I’ve ever known and God Almighty, but I love the hell out of you.”
And there’s so much love there, in that, that Steve could drown in it.
There’s so much of a goodbye, in that, that Steve thinks it might just stop his heart right then and there.
“Bucky, I can’t,” Steve starts, fights against the way that words, all the words, any words fit wrong against his tongue because they’re not Bucky, they’re not home, they are not the beginning and the end of everything he fights for and believes.
“I can’t do this without you.”
“‘Course you can, Steve,” Bucky scoffs, but it’s a watery sound; “you’re—”
“I don’t want to,” Steve hisses through the clench of his teeth, of his chest. “I don’t want to do any of this without you.”
And it’s a weighted thing; a heavy thing, and it contains all the resignation, all the well-deserved renunciation that Bucky’d always talked him out of, way back when, when Steve’s body betrayed him, dragged him closer to the dark except that now, now it’s the heart of him in every way, the soul of him that keeps him close, and he’s losing, he’s losing, and he cannot help it.
He doesn’t want to goddamned help it.
“Don’t you talk that way,” Bucky breathes out, a threat made of fear. “Don’t you ever talk that way.”
“Fuck you, James Barnes,” Steve tears out, lets the words bleed where they dislodge from the walls of his chest beneath the ribs. “You ain’t got no right.”
Steve’s gasping, panting: the air’s too thin. The end’s too near.
“I promised you, ‘til the end of the line,” Bucky finally says to him, his voice filling all the voids by only halves, beautiful and boundless but brief, emphasizing all the holes to be left, all the places that will cave until the whole gives out.
“I got more wear out of that than I ever dreamed, Stevie, got more than I ever deserved,” Bucky continues, and if Steve’s cheeks are wet, fuck it, fuck everything.
“My line was up decades ago,” Bucky confesses like a sinner, like a man meeting his maker and ready to repent for all he stole and never earned, and that’s wrong, that’s wrong.
“And yet,” he picks back up; “there’s here, and there’s you,” Bucky’s breathing trips, and he exhales on a scattered wind: “Can’t outrun the devil for always.”
No, but Steve’d kill the devil with his own hands, make any deal that his soul was worth for the making to get that bastard away from Bucky, to make any of this stop spinning, stop careening out of control.
“But your line, Steve,” Bucky’s saying, Bucky’s speaking. “You got so much more to do. So much more to see, to live for—”
“Bullshit,” Steve damn well snarls, because there are walls in him, and those walls are terrible things, they hold back terrible things, and they’re shaking like Steve’s shaking; they’re shaking because Steve’s trembling inside his very soul. “Bullshit.”
“Stevie—”
“I crashed a jet into the Arctic because that was how I avenged you,” Steve snaps, Steve bleeds into the space between them, far and near because Bucky’s tied up in him, in every breath and every cell. “I ran myself down with it because there’s a world with you in it, Buck, and then there’s just grey.”
There’s silence, and Steve closes his eyes and focuses on the knots wound up where his heart belongs for beating, and he finds where Bucky lives inside the fray, the scowl and the smile of him, all the ice and fire, oscillating and pumping life better, more real than anything.
Anything.
“I’m not worth that, Steve,” Bucky breathes from far, far away. “I wasn’t ever worth that.”
“You’re worth everything,” Steve exhales, hand on his own chest as he begs it: “Don’t leave me.”
“I don’t want to,” and now Bucky’s voice is giving, Bucky’s fire is waning, Bucky’s heart is breaking and Steve can’t stand that, can’t stand hearing it like this, where he’s not there to pick up the pieces and fit them together and give them back to this man, this man—
“But we can’t let this happen, Stevie,” Bucky’s pleading, reasoning. “The virus. All those people, all those good people, dead because of some crazies,” and it’s true, it’s true, except—
“There will always be crazies,” Steve tries, but it’s hollow, too much like his chest as all the knots start to tighten, start to threaten what they hold.
“Then there will always have to be people willing to stop them,” Bucky breathes, and Steve can hear the smile through the tearing, through the tears.
“It doesn’t have to be you,” Steve begs the universe, begs God and every angel, begs Bucky, just please.
“This time, babe,” Bucky’s voice is barely there, now, as he takes everything, as he gives everything and the surface Steve stands upon start to give. “This time, it does.”
There’s a sob that’s bigger than Steve, that consumes him, that escapes him and starts to undo him with the way that it echoes, reverberates.
“We all got ourselves a number,” Bucky breathes it, tries to convince them both. “I’m just glad that,” Bucky pauses, and Steve can hear the pumping of his heart like a mallet, like all the things that aim to crush and destroy, and that’s accurate, that’s okay, so long as the job gets done. “Of all the times mine’s been pulled, this time, if it’s up for good?”
And Bucky’s voice pitches lower, now, tender.
“At least I got to do it right,” he whispers. “I got to be with you.”
And Bucky’s voice is that broad hand of his cupped against Steve’s cheek, all rough skin and calluses and the aching sort of love that makes the world go round when it wants to give up that ghost—Bucky’s voice is something perfect, something offered, and Steve can’t help but take it, even though he knows it won’t last.
Even though Steve knows he won’t survive the loss.
“Stevie,” Bucky starts, the sound shaky. “I—”
The comm feed cuts, and Steve stills, and sound travels too slow, too slow.
When the ground shakes, Steve can count out three full beats of his wasted, wracking heart before he hears the way the explosion screams.
“No,” Steve whispers, and he can’t feel his limbs, clutches at the display in front of him but his arms are weak, are feeble, and his sight’s all blurry, all tunneled as he crumples to the floor. “No!”
There are people, his team, and they’re filing into the bunker, now, they’re coming up behind him, but that’s a smokescreen, that’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing, that’s unspeakable, unnameable, that’s beyond him, now, because Steve can feel the fire in the marrow of his bones, Steve can feel shrapnel hollowing his arteries, Steve can feel the force of momentum and demise taking him apart, piece by piece.
Steve Rogers knows what nearly dying feels like.
It’s not this; not this.
Not nearly.