Work Text:
Bucky lies a lot.
He lies about his age; it’s a bad lie. He lies at his job (jobs — plural); it’s better. He lies about his health, and it’s the best one because he knows the right words and the right symptoms — his childhood was spent around Steve’s mom, a nurse, and Steve’s doctors.
He doesn’t want to lie to Steve, but he does — he sees no other choice. It starts with an omission, with a silent agreement, when in reality he can’t be far enough from it, from Steve’s words, beliefs, Steve’s goodness. It ends with full-fledged words.
He lies and lies and lies.
He doesn’t want to go to war.
Steve dreams. Steve worries. Steve talks, and with every word Bucky feels like he’s falling — crushing — dying. Steve talks as a person who deserves to be heard, and his words have power, determination, passion. They are the words of a man in command. Bucky is the only one to hear them.
He doesn’t say he’s grateful for it (he lies, lies, lies). He tells Steve he’s right. Maybe he is. Yet, Bucky finds out he hates the sentiment.
Here’s the thing: Bucky’s not a coward. He doesn’t think himself to be one, at least.
He’s not scared of being killed or hurt. Not afraid of the monsters they tell about in papers or on the radio.
It’s hard to be scared of something that you’ve never seen.
Bucky’s fears — real ones — are those: disease and death and poverty and blood dried at the ground of a back alley. His family, left without an income, hungry and broken and lost. Steve, dead.
Maybe it’s hubris, the way Bucky thinks people he loves cannot survive without him. He bandages Steve’s hands one evening and thinks: no, please, no. Please, don’t.
When Steve asks him what’s wrong, he lies.
Bucky sees the nightmares every night, sees what can be the reality if he is to leave them. Maybe it’s hubris. Maybe it’s desperation. Maybe it’s his damnation. Who knows?
When Steve asks him in the mornings, determined and tired and sad, heart bleeding for people in real danger — for all the death, for all the horrors that are so far from them, Bucky lies.
Lies and lies and lies, but then he gets drafted, and it’s the end.
Bucky doesn’t think of war much. It’s a looming threat, a part of life. It’s incomprehensible.
He gets his training to be a sniper. He’s smart, he’s good, he’s respected. He boasts a little, like every young man around. He lies.
He doesn’t think of home.
Bucky sees the first man he kills through the gunsight. He never forgets his face. When he gets asked about it by an impressed private, he smiles. He lies. He boasts.
He cries that night.
Days come, and the crying stops. He’s too hungry, too tired, and death is too common. He’s a little bit lost. It’s kill or be killed, someone says, and Bucky chooses to kill, but he lies.
He always lies.
There’s a part of him that scares him now, a competent, ruthless, horrible part, and he sees a gaunt face in a rare mirror, the eyes that seem dead, and he thinks that the mirror lies just to get some sleep.
Guys from his unit tell jokes and sing songs. He joins them, repeats them. Smiles.
When the night is dark, Bucky thinks of home, when the dawn is coming, he thinks of home, when the rain comes, he thinks of home, and it’s like the knife in his gut. He hasn’t got a girl back there like many do, so by the light of the fire he tells all the stories of Steve. He calls him a brother. He calls him a dumbass. He laughs, and he doesn’t care, and the stories of rude drunks and back alley fights are bittersweet, full of longing.
He lies — of course, he lies.
They get speeches sometimes — to raise their spirits. They say of righteousness and hope and all of it. Bucky doesn’t believe a word of them and thinks of Steve. But he nods and pretends and repeats and goes on.
Death goes on.
The first time he sees corpses with hands tied behind their back, Bucky throws up.
He’s so fed up with lying.
He knows German. Not much, but enough. It’s a useful skill: prisoners talk.
Bucky hears an enemy soldier cry and say that he didn’t know what he went to war for. The soldier asks for his mother and begs for his life. Bucky takes his hands. The boy is way younger than he is, barely twenty. He’s blond and blue-eyed and reminds Bucky of home in a sick, twisted way. He gets shot — still in Bucky’s arms — by German fire.
He hears a clear American voice talk about reason in getting rid of the Jews. He thinks of his mother, Hebrew on her tongue.
He thinks of home. Not too much — it’s painful if it’s too much. He thinks of slogans and propaganda and beliefs of freedom.
The real war is blood and dirt and tears and vomit. The real war has no right, no truth, no meaning. The ground is the sky, and the sky is the ground, dead is alive, and alive is dead.
He lies. He tells the truth.
At Azzano, Bucky gets dragged away and tied up to a table, but no question is asked. There’s just pain.
He tells them his rank and number.
He tells the truth.
He tells the truth.
He tells the truth.
He tells—
There’s a man, a man with a voice like Steve’s, and maybe Bucky’s already dead, but maybe he isn't — who knows? The difference isn't that big. The sky is ground, dead is alive, he is lost, he is lost, he stumbles and falls, but Steve catches him, Steve’s at his side, and it’s enough.
Steve will always catch him whenever he falls.