Work Text:
Bucky wished he were still falling; pain once again became a very real enemy to him once he hit the ground. True, there was snow that might have cushioned his fall, but he fell several hundred feet from the jagged, torn hole in the train car. From that height, snow could do nothing but freeze him to the bone.
He could see Steve still, holding his hand out with a desperate glint in his eye. He could see the despair, too, as he fell down, down, down.
It was agony, laying there spread-eagled at the bottom of the mountain, but something was missing. He mustered the strength to turn his head slowly, carefully, to see his left side. The bright white snow was smeared with an ugly, blooming stain of crimson. Something was missing, something was very, very wrong. Not that all this other shit was wrong, he thought. He was laying at the bottom of a mountain and he was gonna –
He couldn’t think it. It wasn’t going to happen. He was going to go home, and not in a box. Maybe without an arm –
Oh god. Oh god.
That’s what was wrong. His arm. It was gone, ripped from him during the rapid descent in some way. The red slash across the snow grew as he bled out. But Steve would find him, he knew it. Just like he always found Steve. Steve would find him and bring him back to base and everything would be fine. Everything would be fine.
He kept repeating this to himself, whispering it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine until it became a dull and breathy mantra. But the pain was becoming more and more real as the minutes passed by. His breaths came in short, erratic gasps and that pool of blood was looking awfully big. Everything was dim and bleak after a while. The d-word was cropping up in the back of his mind, no matter how hard he tried to shake it out. No, he said to the voice, I’m not gonna die.
But he knew then. It was over. He was dying, and he had been from the moment he fell off that damn train. And why deny it? At least it was an end to the fear and sorrow that had haunted him from his first battle all the way to Italy and had only followed him with the Commandos. It was an end to the monster in his head and his heart that had infected him on his first sighting of Captain America. Steve. What had they done to Steve? The pipsqueak who always had a journal on him in case he felt “inspired” enough to put it down to graphite memory. The little guy who always had a bit of a rattling cough after that pneumonia scare, something that always had terrified Bucky because what if it came back? Steve didn't belong in the game that is war, and he definitely shouldn’t be the man they send to the front lines, or worse, behind enemy ones. It didn't matter whether he was big or small. Steve didn't belong.
All Bucky had wanted was to come home from the war. It would have been nice to come back unscathed, even, but no soldier truly comes back from battle unwounded. All he wanted was to come home, then. To come home to his raggedy apartment in Brooklyn, where he knew every alley and avenue. To come home to Steve.
It was a dream, he realized, that would never have been fulfilled. It was fading out of him as as fast as his consciousness was draining from his mouth and his eyes and the ugly, bloody carcass that was his arm.
As the edges of his vision blurred and darkened, Bucky had just one wish. He wanted Steve to stay the same. He had wanted one thing to not be taken from him by the damn war, but Steve was tight in their clutches. So Bucky had to compromise. Now, he just wanted Steve to be okay. He wanted Steve to get through this mess and go home. He didn't need Bucky’s help to get by, and that was going to have to do because Bucky couldn't be there. Steve had to be fine.
The darkness was closing in on Bucky now, and for the first time in a long time he could admit that he was scared. But Steve was gonna be okay. He was gonna be there, even if Steve didn't know it. He was gonna be there ‘til the end of the line.