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By the virtue of their existence, angels remember everything. Samuel remembers the birthing point of his existence and the minuscule part of God’s will that had gone into making his being. He remembers the creation of the world and the universe, and watching a human being take its first step.
Angels are not omnipotent, but they see further than humans do. Perhaps that gives one the impression that they’re that much wiser.
Sam was often considered to be foolish amongst his brothers and sisters. He spent too much time at the seeing pools, neglecting his celestial duties until it was almost too late to do them. But he couldn’t help it; humans were fascinating.
He never interfered with human lives in any big way (he isn’t a guardian angel, after all, such a post is high above him), but he enjoyed watching them grow and change and love and die. Sometimes it almost felt like he was living there with them. He was not unhappy with his life as an angel. Far from it, as heaven is a beautiful place and his Father’s love was more than enough to make everyone joyous.
But, one day his attention was drawn by a human boy. His soul was strong and beautiful, but it inhabited a frail vessel and Sam watched him struggle to reconcile the two. He looked on in worry, as the boy’s mother stroked hair, and told him fairytales of knights and dragons and poor paupers rising up to become kings. She called him Steve and whispered prayers for him at night, when he wouldn’t hear her crying over the wheezing in his lungs.
Something touched him about this boy and for the first time he considered influencing the happenings below. It was strictly forbidden for him to do something like that, but he couldn’t help it. He felt protective of Steve.
He starts small, reaching out with his Grace to soothe a bruise or ease a cough or divert the path of a bully. It's not much and Sam watches with worry as the years pass and Steve's suffering doesn't ease.
Thankfully, he is not alone in his vigil over Steve. Steve has a friend named Bucky, who is physically stronger and he protects Steve where Sam cannot. Bucky's soul shines brightly also, with cold fire where Steve runs hot, but with the same strength and loyalty. Sam watches them shine together and feels his Grace move in response.
They grow from boys to men in what seems like a blink (and it probably is, to an angel). Steve's mother dies and there is nothing Sam can do. Death is not his domain. But Bucky is there and Sam is grateful for it. He watches them curl up together, shivering in the cold, and vows to protect them from anything that seeks to harm them.
Sam watches Steve and Bucky, while the heavenly choir speaks of war in urgent whispers. A terrible war, they call it, worse than the ones before.
Sam watches Steve and Bucky, and war comes. It separates them and Sam feels himself break apart just as they do. Steve screams from the stings of a thousand needles piercing his skin, forging him anew, and meanwhile, Sam is trying to keep the bullets from piercing Bucky’s fragile body, thousands of miles away.
When he next sees Steve, he's changed in body, but not in soul. Sam breathes a sigh of relief that brushes against Bucky's dreams and wards them from nightmares.
The next few months are the longest Sam can remember existing. He's torn between soothing Steve's anxieties, and protecting Bucky from the bullets and the shadow growing inside his head.
Then, Bucky is captured and Sam must focus all his attention on keeping him alive. The touch of his Grace numbs the needle marks and eases his dreams so they don't drive him insane. Sam is so focused on Bucky that seeing Steve burst through the door of the prison cell is almost a surprise. After that, it’s a simple thing to give Steve a parody of Sam's own wings to help him across the fiery chasm.
The war rages on, with Steve and Bucky in the centre of it. Sam has duties he must attend to, but they go unsolved, because he doesn’t want to leave them alone for even a moment. His fears are not unfunded, it turns out, because all it takes is a rusty pipe snapping and then Bucky is falling. Sam manages to slow his fall just the barest fraction, so that instead of Bucky's neck snapping, his arm does.
Days later, Sam listens to Steve's last words, reaching out with his Grace to ease his fear before he hits the water.
After that, there is nothing.
Sam spreads his wings and flies to the Garden to request an audience with God. He stands in front of his Father and awaits his Judgement. He has sinned by interfering and so he must be punished. He has loved another being more than God and so cannot remain an angel.
The Father is just and his verdict is swift. Sam is to be cast out from heaven and left to live as a mortal as punishment for his sin.
Sam spreads his wings, thought he knows that they are futile against the horror of his fall. As he feels his Grace disintegrate into fiery agony, his last thought is a prayer for Steve and Bucky.
*
When he opens his eyes, they're blurry and he feels helpless in a way he can't remember ever being. He’s an infant, barely born, and as the nurses hand him to his Mother he sinks against her chest and feels at peace.
He learns patience in those early years, as he fights his way through a multitude of emotions and new experiences. Humans only have five senses and their world seems muted after the brilliance of heavenly creation. Sam learns to speak wishing he could sing, and struggles to his feet mourning his wings. He learns to love his parents and if his mom sometimes tells him he’s too serious, he knows she doesn't love him any less. He learns to joke just to please her.
How do you explain to your parents that you’ve seen things beyond their imagination, and watched over their ancestors before there was any notion of their existence? How do you explain that you live in constant grief over two men you loved enough to give up your wings for, and ultimately failed to protect?
You don’t, of course. So instead he smiles when he feels like weeping and looks up to the sky until the tears dry.
Sam’s teenage years are an exercise in self-restraint. His body is in a near constant state of contradiction with itself, with too long limbs and a cocktail of hormones. He makes fleeting connections with good people, but nothing ever deepens. He won’t let it, not when there are two people he’d loved and now can never see again.
When his education ends, he signs up for the military, and finds the pararescue squad. He’d been a warrior in the Lord’s garrison once, but war had taken all he’d had from him, so he makes it his mission to steal lives back from it in return. As an angel he’d been powerless to save the lives of the humans in his care, but now he’s free from such constraints, limited only by his own human endurance.
He signs up for project Exo-7, despite knowing the risks of it. In his life, he’d had only one fear and that had already come to pass. He straps on the wings, hopelessly aware that they’re steel instead of part of his body, and he returns to the sky. The vastness of it, the rush of air upon ascent, and the freedom, all of it is as familiar as the day he was born from his Father’s mercy to fly with his brothers and sisters upon the plains of Heaven. When he lands there are tears in his eyes. His instructors say he’s a natural.
Sam first meets Riley in the sky. He captures the other man’s gaze and grins in welcome, and a bond is made where he’d thought there was no room for one. Riley is a strong soul, as helplessly in love with the sky as Sam and they become brothers in all but blood, flying among the clouds, swooping down to change the course of fate for another fortunate soul.
He loses Riley to a lucky shot. By now, he’s lived long enough to know that there are some fates that can’t be changed, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. He buries his brother, numbed by grief, and asks for a discharge. It’s granted, but in return he must give up his wings. Once again, he’s alone.
Sam returns to New York, staggered by loss. Instead of feeling comforted, he feels daunted by the familiarity.
Sam packs his bags and moves to Washington. He spends about a month waiting for a hint of a star to appear on the skyline, before he walks to a Veteran Centre and signs up for group therapy. It helps.
He’s at home, washing dishes, when the aliens invade New York. The TV is on in the background and he freezes in horror at the grotesque monsters on the screen, still clutching onto a soapy plate. There, amidst the carnage, he spots a hint of familiar blue. Something shatters and it takes him a moment to realize it’s the plate, not his mind. There, on the TV screen is Steve, covered in sweat and ash, but still so beautiful.
He’s already buying a ticket to New York when reason catches up to him. Is he supposed to walk up to the man and say: “I was there when you died, but apparently you didn’t die after all? Crazy stuff. Sorry about Bucky; he might have been alive when you went down. Oh, and by the way, I used to be an angel, but now I’m not anymore. Also, I’m still in love with you.” Yeah, there’s no way that’s going to go over well. He cancels the trip. Steve disappears from public radar after the aliens are defeated.
He’s never far from Sam’s mind though and his heart aches for him. Perhaps Sam is one of the few people in the world, who knows what it means to be stripped from everything you know so completely. He knows what Steve is going through, but he’s powerless to help. He wishes, not for the first time, for the omnipresent gaze granted by his former Grace.
Sam has taken to jogging in the mornings, finding a certain joy in the exertion and the clean-slate feel of a new dawn. On this particular day, he hits the streets even earlier than usual, plagued by nightmares (he never got used to those – angels don’t sleep and they don’t feel terror, and his nightmares are a mix of both). He sticks to his usual pace, losing himself in the rhythm of his feet on pavement.
A runner wizzes by with an “On your left!” spoken in a voice so familiar it almost stops Sam dead in his tracks. His calm is gone, warring with hope and fear. The man passes him again, and hope wins. It’s Steve.
Sam’s mind is a confused jumble of thoughts and feelings, trying and failing to find the right words to say and terrified he won’t be able to say them if Steve disappears again. Finally, he stops, exhausted, knowing that he’s pushed himself too much.
Then, a miracle happens. Steve stops to speak to him and Sam still has no words, so he just opens his mouth and hopes that what comes out isn’t his whole life story.
Steve laughs and he reaches out a hand to pull him up, and Sam tries not to dwell of the fact that it’s the first time they’ve touched. Steve is grinning, but Sam can see the burden in the tense line of his back and the barest hint of darkness in his eyes. But listening to him and seeing his chest expand with his breath; he’s still the same Steve that Sam had always known. It’s jarring, but wonderful at the same time.
Then, Steve is gone, driving away with a beautiful red-headed woman. Sam walks home on autopilot, trying to make sense of the messy ball of emotions he’s feeling. His front door slams shut behind him and he abruptly realizes that he hadn’t even asked Steve for his number. The resulting laughter has a tinge of hysteria to it.
He comes to work in a daze, waving off the receptionist’s worried question with a smile. He hopes that his group doesn’t notice the way he can’t seem to focus today, preoccupied with Steve’s words from that morning and the way his smile had had an edge of bitterness to it.
So, of course, who else could be waiting for him in the hall but Steve? It seems like the man is making a game out of surprising him.
Things take a turn for the serious, when Steve and the red-headed woman, Natasha, turn up on his front porch a few days later. He knows not to ask questions by the hunted look in their eyes, just opens his door and checks the perimeter for any intruders.
And it’s been years, but nothing had really changed. He’s still ready to protect Steve no matter the cost to his personal well-being. It just seems fitting that he do it by wearing his wings again.
After years of quiet, Sam gets dropped in the heat of battle again.
The battle comes in the form of a man.
He’s relentless and merciless, and they cannot win. Then, the muzzle hits the floor with the loudest noise in the ensuing silence and the world stands still.
Sam had seen the beasts of hell rising from their depths and had looked upon them with no fear in his heart. But he knows fear now, in the face of one wearing Bucky’s face with empty eyes.
He watches Steve retreat before his eyes, aches at his sadness where it matches his own, but now is not the time for grief. It’s time to fight. Grief comes after, when the wounds are dealt and the blood flow stopped.
So Sam is silent and he fights. Bucky’s hand rips the wings from his back for the second time, and well, he supposes it’s some kind of poetic justice. Again, he’s left watching, helpless and wingless, as the two people he loves most in the world fall to their deaths.
Except for how they don’t. Except for how Steve opens his eyes in a white hospital room and Marvin Gaye is no heavenly harps, but they make do. Sam hasn’t slept in what feels like forever and the world is a little bit blurry, but he sees Steve’s smile crystal clear. It makes something in his chest, something bleeding and razor sharp, seal up and disappear.
Steve drops back to sleep soon after, exhausted, but smiling. Sam watches the edges of bruises underneath his bandages, already fading, then lays his head down on the edge of the hospital bed and closes his eyes. He wakes up with Steve’s hand brushing the traces of ash from his hair.
The marks fade from Steve’s skin quickly, much quicker than they would on an average man. It should upset him, a reminder of his own fragile mortality now that Sam’s muscle and bones are just organic matter, not divine will, but it’s comforting instead. Steve can take a beating now and their path to Bucky is paved with blood and pain.
Sam is almost insulted that Steve has to ask if he’s coming with him, but then again he doesn’t know Sam, not really and not yet. That’s fine; they have plenty of time or at least the illusion of it.
They take Sam’s car, following the clues in the files Natasha brought them. After a while, the world outside the window starts blurring, highways merging into highways, the same old billboards advertising the same old towns. And the same old news: no Bucky Barnes.
There are plenty of HYDRA hide-outs; doors to kick through, people to punch. But it feels like they’re walking in circles, always a beat too late. A glimpse in the lens of a surveillance camera, cardboard shelters and bloody fingerprints are the only sign that who they’re searching for is even still alive.
Sam squints at the few grainy images they have and tries to forget the dead eyes. He tries to remember how they looked before and tries to remember Bucky’s voice without the sounds of screams in the background. Sometimes, he succeeds. Human memory is a fickle thing, nothing like the all-pervasive knowledge of an angel.
Steve is better at it than Sam is. He keeps the faith and Sam follows his lead, because he’s never needed to believe anything as desperately before.
He almost tells Steve a few times. When the world outside their car is dark and quiet, and the motor hums underneath Sam’s favorite Marvin Gaye record. It feels like they’re the only two people in the whole world. That’s when he almost tells him; the whole story, of an angel who loved two humans more than he loved God and how he was punished for it.
But then Steve will let out a sigh and shift in his sleep, and Sam would snap his mouth shut, reaching up absentmindedly to brush the tears from his eyes. He doesn’t know if Steve still believes in fairy tales, so he drives on and lets him sleep, reaching over to touch his hand whenever it seems like peaceful dreams might turn into nightmares.
*
They find Bucky.
Or more accurately, he finds them.
Sam opens the door of their hotel room somewhere in the middle of Arkansas, only to find Bucky sitting on the steps leading up to it. He doesn’t look at Sam, but Sam can see the muscles strain where they blend harshly into the metal of his arm. It could be a trap. But it seems more like an invitation.
Sam chances a look back into the room, where Steve is still sleeping soundly. The sheet had slipped down overnight to expose his pale collarbones. Sam steps out and closes the door firmly behind him.
Taking the next few steps to settle on the stairwell next to Bucky is a leap of faith. He breathes an inaudible sigh of relief when he sees that Bucky is unarmed.
They watch the sunrise together. As the sunrays spread across the sky to paint the clouds in shades of muted pink, Bucky turns to look at him.
Sam watches his reflection in the dark iris of Bucky’s familiar (lucid) blue eyes and feels like he could fly.
Bucky lets Sam help him off the step, lets him shepherd him through the door and into Steve’s arms.
The rest is a whirlwind apologies and half-finished explanations, and the two of them are clinging to each other so hard they can barely breathe out all the words they want to say. Sam steps out and closes the door behind him.
He goes for a walk and the puffy white clouds drift slowly across the sky, and if he raises his hand can almost touch them.
*
The next evening, Bucky looks at him from the bed across and says: “I remember you.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “You ripped the wings off my back.” He says it calmly, with a small smile, aware that he’s the only one in the room that knows the irony of that statement. Bucky flinches, but doesn’t look away.
“Not that,” he shakes his head. “I knew you before. I think I dreamt you. When I was captured back in the war, and I didn’t think I could survive another needle bite, I dreamt of you and you made the pain go away.”
Sam buries his face in his hands and cries.
He wipes his eyes after what feels like hours later, Steve’s hands clumsily patting his back. Bucky’s hand is on his knee from where he’s kneeling on the floor in front of him.
He tells them the whole story.
Sam tells them about being an angel and seeing two souls that shined brighter than heaven, and they believe him. He tells him about flying and about his fall, and they understand.
*
Later on, they’re all pressed as closely together as they can get on two tiny motel beds. Sam watches Steve and Bucky sleep and prays for the first time since his fall.
He doesn’t know if his Father can hear, if he’ll even listen to him after so long, but he just wants to thank him. He wants Him to know he’s happy.