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“...I’m still strong enough to drag you the hell back home.”
Fighting with Bucky was something too familiar for Steve. It was reminiscent of all those years ago in a military camp where a boy had been exposed to war far too young. Of those years of pain and loss when Bucky didn’t know himself, only that Steve was his enemy. The fight dragged on, minutes felt like hours.
Steve’s head was pounding–the thrum of the blood rushing to his head filled his eardrums. His taste buds were overwhelmed with the tang of iron from his split lip. Tears stung his eyes, but he blinked them away, focusing on his mission–bringing Bucky home.
He held on to Bucky’s arm like a vice, not willing to lose Bucky again. It had happened far too many times before.
“Let me go, Steve. Or I’ll make you.”
Looking at the man before him, Steve couldn’t help but see the boy brought to him at Camp Lehigh. The boy he was told was to be his sidekick. His partner, his brother, his son.
In Bucky’s eyes, Steve saw the boy who fell asleep against his shoulder after a late training session.
The kid who was tasked to cross lines, do terrible things–things that Steve’s country couldn’t bear to see their Captain follow through.
The kid that was led to death by his Captain.
The kid that grew up in the shadows, becoming the man that Steve never thought he’d live to see.
All at once, Steve was falling. Tumbling through the air into the icy waters below, and all he could think of was that day. Was this how Bucky felt as well, when his life came to an end in flames and smoke? The chill of the air rushing past his skin, leaving goosebumps and raising his hair. The tightness in his chest, struggling to take a breath. He was Steve and he was Bucky and all he could do was fall, fall, fall. Into the ice and the bloody fire below.