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The way down is long and cold, the wind howling all around him. It seems quite appropriate for a Howlie to go down like this.
It’s weird how the vast empty space around seems to compress him, his world shrinking rapidly and disappearing completely all too soon, one second mere inches from his fingertips, and the next miles and miles above him.
It’s even weirder how he can’t form a cohesive thought, his mind is a jumble of fuckfuckfuck and oh no, Steve! but that’s more or less the same thought, the same fear. The fear of leaving Steve alone, never guarding his six again, never making sure he’s all right, never smiling at the quiet ease in his breaths again. That’s what makes Bucky’s upcoming death truly horrible. And the death is coming quickly. He can’t see it, because he’s still falling back down, can’t look it in the eye the way he should, the way he would if Steve’s face wasn’t somewhere up there, literal light years from the depths of the ravine, the depths of Bucky’s doom.
The icy air around him tugs at his clothes, somehow sliding its cold hands under his coat, chilling him to the bone as he falls and falls, and what should be a quick way to the grave stretches into a cold eternity.
The walls of the ravine close in, as if reaching for him, and he reaches back, his hand flailing on too many pieces of solid slippery rock until it finds an anchor.
And by some miracle he grabs it and holds, and he’s hanging over an empty abyss, the snow not swirling around anymore, but there’s no time to wonder because Steve is right in front of him, frozen in horror, his pupils dilated and his mouth open. Bucky pulls himself up a little bit, just enough to hook an elbow over the edge and look at him one last time, because he knows he won’t hold for long.
“Steve!” he cries before he notices what he’s holding onto is a bridge and there are two rails running all along it. And they are vibrating. Shit.
“Steve, run!”
But no, the stupid punk just stands transfixed, rooted in place, watching Bucky with those blue blue eyes, a glimmer of emotion shining between the gathering tears as his lips move frantically though no sound escapes them. Bucky can already see the headlight of the train drawing near, blinding and heavy and unstoppable.
The bridge vibrates in rhythm with the rails and Bucky slips, his fingertips tearing in the effort to hold, fresh blood smeared over the rock. Steve still refuses to move and Bucky desperately tries to lift himself up and do something, anything, that could save him. But his arms grow weaker with every second and there’s only so much he can do apart from–
“Fly, you fool!” he yells and that’s when the very edge he’s been holding onto gives way. He throws one arm forward, clutching at the rail, and then there’s just the dull thud thud thud of the passing train, the roar of hot air in his ears and the pain of being burned alive as he falls, falls, falls into the core of the Earth, flowing through veins filled with magma as the liquid flame embraces him and holds tight, so tight, tighter than a lover ever could. And he becomes fire too, burning through rock until there’s none left and he’s free falling again, the red heat leaking out of him, or is it blood?
For a moment he can’t tell which way is up and which is down, even the blood is pooling around him like a sticky red cloud, and he’s suspended in nothingness, the source of the dim light unknown, but surely there since he can make out his own body, or what’s left of it, against the surrounding darkness. And then he’s accelerating again, falling so fast he thinks he might throw up, but he’s falling headfirst and the momentum presses his insides together, like they’re huddled close in a desperate attempt not to get torn from him. He falls and falls for what might be hours as well as seconds, through realms of complete darkness and blinding light, through cold wet fog and scorching heat, down narrow tunnels and through vast, possibly endless spaces, surrounded by utter silence and then noises that send shivers down his spine, the voices horrifyingly human and premordially animalistic at the same time. He falls until he’s falling no more and there’s solid surface under him, a chiselled rock or maybe a metal table, and he can’t move, but it doesn’t bother him, because even if he could, he’s not sure he would find the strength to.
Most of the time he’s alone, but sometimes there are others with him. Some kind of people, but not people really, their faces ugly and deformed, and he dimly remembers he’s seen a deformed face before, but not quite like any of these. Because these are real and natural, and he doesn’t know how he’s so sure about this, but he knows this is what makes them different from the one he almost remembers. The ugly faces talk to him in a language he doesn’t understand, a language that doesn’t even sound recognizable to his ear, he only picks up on the word they use when talking about him, and he soon starts to think of himself as Snaga. It’s not a bad name, after all, and he can’t recall ever having a name. It feels comfortable on his tongue as he mouths it, purposely prolonging the vowels so the sense of its ownership lasts longer. He doesn’t dare say it aloud, he doesn’t dare speak at all, because the last time he did, they came and taught him the true depth of pain. So he only moves his lips, making sure his throat is locked and no sound escapes it unbidden, repeating the only word he knows like a prayer: Snaga, Snaga, Snaga. It’s him. He’s Snaga. He’s something to someone and even though their hands are rough and their expressions terrifying, they are usually a welcome company after what must be decades of solitude.
But then there comes a day when they arrive no more and though he waits long, weakness finally claims him and he closes his eyes against the cold that surrounds him. He wakes up once or twice, but the ice holds him still, oppressive all around and intrusive, filling him from the inside, his body frozen and his mind eventually succumbing to the cold that buries him alive but somehow refuses to kill him.
It gives him up one day and he finds he can move again, pain flashing through his body as it turns to flame and then to ice again, only this time the ice means life, not death. His left arm is shiny white, real real ice, and his body is snowstorm, numb hell raging inside, painless and silent but definitely there.
Then they make his eyes close again, though he can no longer tell if the cold that lulls him to sleep comes from without or if it’s all him that freezes and stills, the way bad weather subsides naturally.
The next time he wakes up he’s all alone, a sense of alarm filling his gut. He knows something’s wrong and he’s certain he shouldn’t be awake at all, yet here he is, shrugging off the remnants of numbness and flexing his icy fingers, trying to take in his surroundings. He can’t see much but he can hear clearly: noises above him, still far away but unmistakably there. He follows the sound, the gurgling voices of his ugly-faced owners and strange voices of creatures he can’t identify by ear alone, their melody unrecognized but somehow viscerally familiar. He follows the voices all the way up, so high he can smell the surface of the earth close by, and he walks the stony halls with a racing heart, casting icy shadows on the walls as his left arm shines cold white light that dissipates the darkness, opening his eyes to a narrow passage over an impenetrable chasm.
The walls around vibrate to the rhythm of drums down below, the chant of doom, doom, doom echoing within his skull, unsettling, as if he should know something he can’t remember. He advances, the darkness scattering before him as he crosses a large hall and reaches the edge of the pit, a bridge spanning the emptiness below. And then he realizes the bridge holds a man, a weird creature he has not seen before, but he doubts there can be more of his kind. The man looks fierce and strong, but something about him feels wrong, warm, and the coldness retreats a little. Something tells him it shouldn’t act like this, but there’s no time for that because the man raises his shield and yells: “You cannot pass! The cold ice will not avail you! Go back—”
The man’s voice breaks and he seems to be choking on his own words, suddenly hunched and wobbly. “Bucky?”
The word wakes some sense of familiarity in him, as if some part of the ice inside him started to melt in recognition but he doesn’t know what to do about it. This man disrupted his peace, after all, and he doesn’t wish to see him.
“Who the hell is Bucky?” he shots in response and lunges forward, the ice arm stretching to grab his throat, but the man deflects the blow with his shield and what follows is a hissing sound of the ice melting at the point of contact. He screams in pain and he’s sure the split second of exposure will be the end of him but no blow comes and he looks at the stranger wide-eyed, uncomprehending. And not only does the stranger refuse to continue the fight he started, but he also discards his shield and lets it fall into the nothingness beneath the bridge.
“You know me. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. I’m not gonna fight you; you’re my friend.”
He thinks the stranger says more but the words are a raging storm in his head, no, not a storm, they’re fire, and the fire burns him, his ice-body melting painfully and the ice-cells of his brain exploding from the sudden heat that fills them. He screams and throws himself forward, his left fist landing on the man’s face time after time, and the stranger only lies still, his head hanging over the edge of the bridge, and takes it.
And then he speaks some more, but the already burning ice-brain doesn’t register it, not as individual words, but it must register something, for the ice arm stills and the bridge cracks under them, a piece of rail torn apart, solid stone breaking into pieces, and they fall, fall, fall. The falling feels familiar and he knows there’s a universe of realms to pass on their way down after complete darkness veils them, but somehow they plunge into water. It’s weird because he’s sure there was no ocean on the bottom of the pit.
The surface closes over their heads and he wants to push up, but his ice-body is suddenly melted all the way through and useless in the water, and he goes down until he’s facing the stranger again. He wants to reach for him, but how can he do it with his body melted away in the current, so useless? Surely the man can swim and save himself?
But no, he can’t, his eyes are closed and his limbs float lifelessly in the water. He’ll drown if the ice-body doesn’t work, he’ll die if Bucky–
He tries against all odds and his grip on the stranger’s body is surprisingly firm, his own body flesh and bone where once was snow and metal where the icy arm used to be. The way up is long and slow with their combined weight and his lungs feel tight, screaming for air the way they never screamed on ice, but he has to make it, he has to reach the surface before his body gives out. Not so much for himself as for the str– Steve. For Steve.
He breaks the surface and sucks in the precious air greedily, then pulls Steve’s head high too. But it’s not enough and he can’t tell if Steve’s breathing at all. With no way to do anything about it in the center of the river (because it’s a river), he shushes down the panic alarm ringing in his head and makes his way to the shore, hauling the unconscious man with him. Steve. Yes, that is his name.
The riverbank is flat and grassy and Bucky holds his breath as he drops Steve on it, watching his chest intently, a voice at the back of his mind screaming please, breathe like it’s been there for longer than he remembers. He watches so hard that Steve’s body finally breaks under the pressure and he coughs up some water and breathes, breathes, breathes, each breath short and shallow at first, but definitely there, and a heavy load lifts off Bucky’s own chest as he realizes he really stopped breathing for a moment too.
He looks around and the world is a mess: wrecks of huge planes or helicopters or whatever it was litter the city, one still suspended in the air, though barely. A distant skyscraper smashed by a similar craft, now only half its height and burning. He can hear panicked screams from afar and there’s only one conclusion that comes to his mind, one explanation for all this havoc.
He sighs quietly and lies down next to Steve, carefully slipping his flesh arm under Steve’s head and placing the metal one over his chest, making sure he’s still breathing.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” he says, knowing that he probably can’t be heard, but he still has to while he has this last chance. “Here at the end of all things, Steve.”