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It happens so fast.
Bucky’s blue coat is still visible against the snow as Steve feels his face crumple and his shoulders collapse, like his body understands that a catastrophe has occurred before his brain can process it. He clings to the outside of the train for what feels like miles, hours, until Jones finally pulls him back inside with the remaining Commandos. The wind drowns out the sound of Steve’s hoarse gasping, but they all understand.
He doesn’t remember a thing anyone says when they finally return to London and give Phillips the report of their mission. None of it matters.
---
The inside of the ruined pub is so dark and smoky Steve can barely see. It’s astonishing how a place where all of them had so recently assembled can look as if no one has touched it for a very long time. But they had been there, and the Commandos had played darts, and Peggy had worn that red dress, and Bucky-
Well. Bucky had been alive. A little drunk, maybe, but alive and completely serious as he asserted his faith in Steve. Bucky had always been willing to follow him anywhere, to protect him, and no war or super soldier serum was going to change that. To the end of the line, he used to say when they were younger, and Steve would roll his eyes but still feel a bit warmer every time.
Neither one of them could have thought that it would literally end on a train, of course, or that Bucky would be the first to go. It’s so cruel that it’s almost funny, Steve thinks absently as he tries to ignore the way his vision is starting to blur. Bucky probably would have laughed at that.
---
Steve had let himself tear up a little as soon as he got away from SSR headquarters and out onto the empty streets, but he starts to cry in earnest now. He can still hear the sirens and the repeated blackout announcements - “All citizens remain indoors until further notice”- from inside the damaged building, and feels fairly confident that he can be alone here for as long as he wants. He’s never actually been much of a crier; it takes a lot to get him started, and he’s good at shutting it down pretty quickly. You acquire certain skills when you spend significant portions of your childhood either getting sick or getting punched.
Now, however, his eyes are burning in a way he hasn’t felt since the day of his mother’s funeral. Bucky had tried to comfort him then, saying that he didn’t have to get by on his own. He had offered to stay for as long as Steve needed: for the rest of the night, the rest of the week, the rest of their lives. Steve’s always carried some guilt about brushing him off at first, too proud to admit that he felt like his world was collapsing. The idea that his attempts to seem strong might have come across as ungrateful, and that now he’ll never be able to apologize, is almost too much to stand.
Bucky was the reason that Steve made it through the winter of his mother’s death, and several winters thereafter. He was the family Steve desperately needed, whether they were able to articulate that to each other or not. And Steve may well have been the reason that Bucky wasn’t dead on a table in a Hydra prison, but he’s also the reason that Bucky is dead at the bottom of a mountain.
He grabs a dusty bottle at random from behind the counter and unscrews the top. It’s too dark to make out any of the labels, but the quality of the contents isn’t important. He has a nagging feeling that none of it will have an effect anyway. There hadn’t been time for formal analysis of all the serum’s effects on his body, but there was enough talk early on of overactive metabolism and cellular regeneration to make him suspicious. For the first time in his life, Steve may not be a lightweight who feels tipsy after a beer and a half, and it feels like a punishment.
He’s not supposed to be able to get drunk? Well, his mother wasn’t supposed to die, his country wasn’t supposed to be at war, and his best friend wasn’t supposed to fall off a goddamn train, so maybe the universe can cut him a break for once.
His body never has been good at doing what he wants it to do.
He drinks half the bottle in one go, and it doesn’t even burn. He swallows hard, lays his head down on a rickety table, and abandons any remaining semblance of composure.
---
By the time Peggy shows up, Steve has as least stopped sobbing. He feels terrible and knows he must look worse, but he doesn’t care enough to be embarrassed. Peggy would never intentionally embarrass him anyway, not unless he deserved it. He tries to sit up a little straighter and looks at her through swollen eyes. She’s beautiful, of course: meticulously put-together in sharp contrast to the devastation around her.
Peggy tells him that it’s not his fault, that he can’t blame himself, that Bucky was an adult who was capable of understanding the potential consequences of his decisions. Steve knows, logically, that she’s right. He knows that she cares about him and she cared about Bucky. He knows that things like this happen every day, and he shouldn’t think of any of them as exceptional.
But he also knows that Bucky defended him from bullies when they were children, slept on the floor to make sure Steve was okay when they were older, and agreed without a second thought to follow him “into the jaws of death,” joking and laughing the whole time. He knows that he’ll dream of Bucky’s voice screaming “NOT WITHOUT YOU!” for the rest of his life.
“He damn well must have thought you were worth it,” Peggy says, and her face is so kind that Steve doesn’t know how to tell her that’s exactly the problem.
---
“Who the hell is Bucky?” the man spits, and Steve sees everything again: the dark spot against the Alpine snow, the abandoned London streets, Peggy’s face on his compass, the ice. Seventy years’ worth of guilt hits him so hard in the chest that he would have dropped to his knees even if a team of STRIKE snipers hadn’t been aiming at his head.
He doesn’t understand what’s happening, but he knows that it’s happening because of him. He knows that someone is going to get hurt, and it will be his fault, the way it always is. He was foolish to think that this could ever be over.