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In the cell beside Bucky’s, a man pressed himself against the bars. “He!” he said, harsh. “Soldat!”
Bucky ignored him. He had something better to do. Yizkor Elohim nish’mas Steve…
When German elicited no response, the man switched to English, accented as if his tongue was too thick for his mouth. “You. You are mourning, yes? Jude way. For days, you do this, you make me dizzy.”
Bucky rocked back and forth on the floor. His hair hung filthy in his face. His shirt, still torn, hit his jutting ribs with each rhythmic sway of his body. His boots sat beneath the bed, and the soles of his socks were black with dirt. He was low; he was as low as he could get without a grave. She-hahlach l’ōlamō, ba-avur sheb’li neder etayn tz’dakah ba-adō...
“Who has died, my son? Who are you mourning?”
Bucky didn’t respond. He rocked. He closed his eyes. Bis-char zeh t’hay nafshō tz’rurah bitz-rōr hacha-yim...
“Your clothes are torn. Not over your heart, not a parent, but… Your wife?” The man fell silent for a moment. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose; they were shattered in the left lens. “You should not sit shiva alone, American soldier. I sit with you.”
Bucky nodded into his swaying. He appreciated the extra power behind his prayer. He heard the man move back from the bars, and hoped that he would keep his promise.
...im nishmōs Avraham, Yitzchak, v’Ya-akōv; Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, v’Lay-ah...
Bucky shokeled. Time rolled over him like waves, ebbing, untraceable. Days. He was not interrupted; there would be no seudat havra'ah. The Nazis were confident that their prisoners could not escape, and content to let them atrophy, until they were needed.
Yizkor Elohim nish’mas Steve… Yizkor Elohim nish’mas Steve…
He had struggled with the prayer for a long time in his mind. Should he say öchi, or ba’ali? Brother, or lover? Steve was both. There was no word in Hebrew to carry so much meaning. Bucky thought beloved might be appropriate, but he didn’t know it; he was grateful he remembered the Yizkor at all.
It should have been the Kaddish, but he was lost beyond the melodic first line: Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba... He had known his mother’s side only through her yearly memorial, a yahrzeit candle left burning by her bed, the Yizkor left burning in him.
When it came time to insert the deceased’s name and the name of his mother, what should he say then? Steve was not Jewish; he had no Hebrew name. It was not enough.
It’s enough, Steve said, taking Bucky’s face in his hands; Bucky lifted it to the light, yearning for Steve like a plant for sun. His hands were warm, despite the wet chill of the cell, and Bucky was hungry for it. It made him feel real.
“I want you to rest,” Bucky said, shaken by the horrible roughness of his own voice, Brooklyn barely audible. “I want— You deserve—“
Thank you, Steve told him, and kissed his damp temple. An unspoken word dissolved between them— Bucky’s name, or sweetheart, or beloved. There was no word in English to carry so much meaning. I’ve never rested before. But I’ll try. Will you try, too? For me? Try to get some sleep? You’re so tired.
“Doesn’t matter. I have to— have to sit for you.”
If he didn’t finish, who knew what would happen to Steve? He might become trapped somewhere even darker, even colder, than the bottom of the sea.
Let him take over, Steve said, nodding towards the man in other cell. You’ve earned it. Okay?
Bucky blinked, and Steve was gone. He wanted to weep, but he was too weak; there wasn’t enough water to spare. He twisted his neck toward the other cell, but he had been crouched at an awkward angle for more time than he was conscious of, and his muscles cried out. He shut his eyes and breathed, slow. Shuffling along the floor in his socks, he turned his body toward the bars between his cell and the man’s, trying not to move too much too quickly.
“He!” he said, imitating the man.
The man lifted himself from his cot like a vampire from a coffin: one moment prone, the next alert. His eyes sought Bucky’s in the dark, spectacles useless with so little light. “Fuck. What?”
“I need to sleep,” Bucky told him, the words molasses in his dry mouth. “Will you take over my shiva?”
“Who do you talk to?” the man asked. “It is not me. It is someone not here. You übergeschnappt, American soldier?”
Bucky knew that one; überge almost like ugly, snapped, translation crackers, to crack. It was not an answer, so Bucky didn’t dignify the question with his own.
Eventually, the man— rather, his shadow— shrugged. “I do this. I remember some mourning prayer.”
This stranger could give Steve what Bucky could not. He’d lived so long without relief that it was as awful as pain.
“What is dead man’s name?”
“Ste—” Bucky’s voice failed. Nausea overcame him. He put his head between his knees, back burning with this small exertion. His stump throbbed, blood-hot. “Steven Grant Rogers.”
“Dead man other American soldier?”
Bucky nodded.
“Ja,” the man said. “Got it. Go to sleep.”
“Thank you,” Bucky said.
He crawled across the floor to the cot, dragged himself up onto the sheets. His vision swam with red and yellow stains. He was grateful there was no mattress; the metal soothed his fever.
Before he gave in, he had to ask— “What’s your name?”
There was silence, and for a moment, Bucky believed he’d get no answer. Then—
“Joseph.”
“I’m—” He couldn’t speak his truest name here, not where they could hear it. Only Steve could know it, and he’d taken it to another world. “I’m James.”
Nothing more passed between them. Bucky fell asleep to the sound of a slow, steady pipe, dripping somewhere in the prison.
When he woke, he was alone.
He stared at the empty bed behind the bars for eons without comprehension. The truth coalesced slowly.
He had not heard the taking— he did not know how long Joseph had been gone, whether he was dead or still suffering— only that he would not return. He had been here, though. He had. A pair of rims lay crunched in half by the cell opening. Powered glass sprinkled the ground.
Bucky slid from the cot and onto the floor. He resumed his shiva. By his count, he still had three days.
The Nazis had different ideas. They would come for him before he was finished. He would regret this fact for as long as he remembered it.