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“ This is a nightmare .”
“I’ve had better nightmares .”
The room was deadly silent, broken only by the ticking of the clock and the strokes of the pencil, with which Steve was furiously sketching away on the paper. The last few months had gone away in a flash, the only sign that time had been passing was the change in weather. For Steve though, the lines in his sketchbook was also a sign that time had indeed been passing by.
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Colours are a funny thing. Ask any artist. You try mixing them, to get different shades. Funny thing is, you will never get the same shade by mixing two same colours. But Steve’s world was grey. There were colours, but they were drab. Nothing colourful.
He understood the meaning of colourful on a cold, rainy, grey night when he was thirteen.
When James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes stepped into his life.
There was blood dripping from Steve’s nose. Did not matter, his world had more colour now. Somehow, Bucky managed to retain his colours. His colours remained vibrant, they did not turn drab.
That night there was drawing in his sketchbook, of a pair of eyes, under which was written, “...his eyes are blue, the kind of blue ocean is before the storm hits.”
Steve’s world wasn’t grey for the first time in thirteen years.
Instead, it bled colours. For some years.
Bucky had been enlisted.
“Don’t do anything stupid until I come back.”
How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”
One last hug.
One stumbling goodbye.
He never said that, did he?
He stood and watched Bucky walk away, his figure melting away in the darkness.
Around him, Steve’s world turned grey.
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Two years. So many trials. Followed by rejection. Who would want someone like him in the army?
Until they did.
Steve was enlisted.
Maybe, the army had colours. Maybe, he would find Bucky there. Maybe.
He did not find Bucky there.
Instead, he found Margaret Carter (“It’s Peggy, Steve.”)
She was beautiful, no doubt. But beauty was never something that mattered most to Steve. If he did, it would be hypocrisy. He wasn’t beautiful. Not in the direct sense of the word at least.
No, it wasn’t beauty that caught his eye. It was the aura around her that did. Head held high. She knew the position she held. She knew she earned it. She knew her self worth, no one else’s opinion mattered.
She treated him like a human. Unlike the rest. She was bleeding colours.
She added colour. Her colours weren’t anything like Buckys. They didn’t need to be. She was her colour.
He drew her in his sketchbook too.
Then, all of a sudden, before he could soak in the colours she bled, he became Captain America.
He was America’s values, personified. But instead of actually doing what all those books selling about him were saying, he had become propaganda. Doing shows. Captain America received lots of acclaims. Not Steve Rogers. Not the man under the uniform. Not the man behind the shield.
“And these are your only two options? A lab rat or a dancing monkey?”
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Bucky. He had to save him. He couldn’t be dead.
It wasn’t possible.
He was right. Bucky wasn’t dead.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I thought you were smaller.”
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He would take hydra down. He would. Bucky would go with him.
Looking back, he wishes he didn’t.
One slip.
Funny how one thing can change everything right?
When Bucky fell, Steve wanted to jump after him. He couldn’t...Bucky couldn’t…
No. Steve didn’t jump. He just stood and watched his world turn grey.
But he couldn’t stop fighting.
He went to the ice, fighting. All the time watching his world turn greyer.
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He woke up nearly seventy years later.
Some organisation called S.H.I.E.L.D.
They gave him a house.
Didn’t feel like home.
Then New York happened.
There was Tony, Howard’s son. He would come off as narcissistic, but he wasn’t. He just built a wall around him. He bled colours too. It just was never stable.
There was Thor. He bled colours like it was water. It flowed out of him, staining, colouring everything around him.
There was Bruce. His colours were drier. They flowed with great difficulty. But they flowed.
There was Clint. He had loads of colours. It was impossible to say when they would flow.
Then there was Natasha. She rarely flowed colours. They stained her. They did not flow. They clung to her.
He drew all of them.
New York was followed by Sokovia.
His world was nowhere as colourful as it was before he went into the ice, but some colour was there. He thought, at least this much was there. He never learnt, that if you have something, the fear of losing it followed. He did not think he would lose all of it so easily.
Maybe Sokovia was where it all started to fall apart.
Washington D.C.
Bucky wasn’t dead. He wasn’t Bucky either.
Bucky, his Bucky, the one he grew up with, tried to kill him.
Natasha helped. So did Sam. But how would they help with the fact that the battle was raging inside him?
“Cuz I’m with you till the end of the line.”
Who pulled him out of the water?
Who left his shield by his bed in the apartment?
He knew who. There was no mistaking the dirty scrawl on the note left on his shield.
He realised his world was colourful, yet a drab grey.
Maybe it all started to fall apart here.
He did not want to sign the accords. They would restrict him.
There was more to that than he told the others. Bucky was there on his mind the entire time.
Leipzig Halle.
He fought again. But against the team, he was a part of.
Who ripped them apart? Like a piece of paper, who ripped them apart? Like they were nothing; like they never were.
Who was to blame?
Siberia started to drain all the colours.
As he plunged the shield in the arc reactor, his world started to drain of colours.
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He hated the letter he sent to Tony.
It was an insult.
Not to him. Not to Tony. But to the very fact that they were a team before. He hated it.
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Thanos was not something he ever prepared for. He did not even give them a chance to fight. He tried, to hold him off. They saw Tony was gone on that doughnut-like spaceship.
They hurried to save Wanda and vision. Then went to Rhodey. Bruce was there too. He told them what happened.
They returned to Wakanda. They tried to fight.
Keyword: tried.
Thanos never gave them a chance. He came and defeated them. That’s it.
It took him only a minute.
He tried to hold him off. Thanos hit him once in the head. He went down like a rag doll.
When he got up, Thanos was gone. Thor was standing there, his Stormbreaker at his feet.
“Thor! What happened?! Thor!”
“Steve…?”
Bucky fell to dust. He was just gone. The person he spent his entire life fighting for, gone.
His world drained itself of any traces of colour.
So many were gone.
Wanda, Sam, T’Challa, Princess Shuri. They were the ones he could name.
What about the nameless ones? The ones whose family wouldn’t even know what happened?
What about them?
What hurts more? Being the victim, or the survivor?
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He looked at the fallen every day. Just to remind himself that he failed to be the hero Dr. Erskine planned him to be.
He watched the world go up in flames around him. He saw the reports, people dying because of accidents. Children orphaned. Parents who lost their children. People who lost their partners. Animals going extinct. Who would they blame?
He walked past Natasha’s room the other day. He heard her trying to breathe. He was about to knock on her door when he stopped. What would he say?
Looking back, maybe it all started to fall apart the day he agreed to the serum.
Thor left.
Tony hadn’t yet returned.
Rhodey was trying to help Bruce contact whoever Fury tried to send the signal.
That Raccoon didn’t leave his room.
One month went, then two. Things never got better. His world never got any colour.
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The clock ticked way too loud. The only other thing that broke the perfect silence of midnight was the sound of his pencil, as he sketched away in his sketchbook. He sketched as if his life depended on it. He sketched till the pencil broke. Till he couldn’t sketch anymore.
Till his tears coloured his sketch.
Till his colourless world bled on it.