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The mountains whizzed by in a blur of grey and white, and Steve could hardly feel his hands as he reached through the frigid air. His heart was pounding against his ribs, threatening to break through the bones and jump right out of his chest. Bucky’s eyes were impossibly wide. He met Steve’s own terror stricken gaze with something like certainty lurking in the blue of his irises. The cliffside waited hungrily, ready to swallow him at any moment, but Steve clenched his jaw, steadied his grip on the ruined wall of the train even as it wobbled in the wind.
“Grab my hand!” His voice was nearly drowned out by the rumble of the train over the tracks, by the howling wind racing past them. He stretched his arm as far as he could, desperately grasping for any purchase his fingers could find. The collar of Bucky’s shirt fluttered just out of reach. It brushed Steve’s fingertips with every push and pull of the wind, every jolt of the train. Then, he felt the cool metal of Bucky’s dog tags. He gripped them until the edges bit into the flesh of his palm, tightened his hold until his knuckles went as white as the snow whipping against his skin. Steve met Bucky’s gaze as he dangled over the tracks. He could feel hot, trickling blood welling on his palm.
Then, the train jumped violently, wheels bouncing on some unseen bump in the metal rails. The car shook, and the bar that Bucky was clinging to groaned as it tore away from the door. Time seemed to slow, each second stretching out before Steve as if to taunt him. The bar shifted, then snapped completely, and Bucky dropped towards the waiting abyss. For just a moment, he seemed to hang midair, fear written across his face and in his saucer-wide eyes. But then, the ball chain around his neck snapped. The metal gave way, and Bucky slipped out of Steve’s grasp.
“Bucky! No!” The words ripped from Steve’s chest, tearing past his throat and leaving the coppery tang of blood to stain his tongue. He couldn’t seem to move as Bucky disappeared into the darkness of the ravine. The rocky shadows consumed his dark uniform, the cavernous clifface dragging him down until it was as though he’d never existed. All that remained of him was the strangled scream that still hung in the air, ringing in Steve’s ears as he stared into the empty air where his friend had just been. All that was left of him was the broken chain that swayed in the wind, the metal discs still clenched in Steve’s fist. His palm stung where the tags had broken his skin, where blood had trickled across the dented aluminum, but he hardly felt it.
Steve stared down at his palm.
The bar was desolate, broken down and full of dust that hung in the air like fog. Broken glass littered the floor, cast amongst the rubble and the toppled furniture, and Steve almost wondered at the survival of the bottle that sat before him. Almost.
The indention in his flesh was red and angry. It was all clean lines and dried blood and deep compressions in his skin, and the divots spelt out a name across the flat of his palm. James B. Barnes.
Steve felt like he was going to be sick. His stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with the half empty bottle sitting on the scratched up table in front of him. He swallowed thickly, his eyes burning and raw.
“I can’t get drunk,” he said, and Peggy said something about metabolism. She picked up a toppled over chair and pulled it over to his table.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, but Bucky’s name was written across his skin in blood.
Your fault, your fault, your fault. The words repeated like a mantra in his head, the words on his hand staring up at him relentlessly, and Steve scoffed. He gave a shake of his head as heat began to build behind his eyes once again.
“I’m not gonna stop until all of Hydra’s dead or captured,” he said.
Or until I’m dead.