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1. Annabelle
“Look, I know you don’t think I can do this--”
“This isn’t a back alley, Steve, it’s war.”
“I know it’s a war, you don’t have to tell me--”
This was supposed to be a fun night--his last fun night, and he wanted to spend it surrounded by people and noise and music that made him feel alive even when it was smooth and slow. He wanted to spend it with a pair of pretty girls who wouldn’t make him think or feel. He wanted to spend it with his best friend, maybe even get drunk enough to tell Steve the thing he’d been trying to tell him for years. What he didn’t want to do was have an argument in the middle of the Army recruiting office, but Steve, the stubborn little brat that he was, wouldn’t let it happen. Just his luck, though, he thought. Ever since the draft notice had come in the mail, what he wanted hadn’t mattered much.
“Why are you so keen to fight? There are so many important jobs--” He’d lied to Steve about being drafted. He’d said he volunteered. He wasn’t sure why he lied, but now he was regretting it. Hearing that Bucky had willingly signed up to go to war had only made Steve more determined.
“What do you want me to do? Collect scrap metal in my little red wagon?” Steve interrupted.
“Yes!” Bucky said, because yes, of course, anything other than watching Steve actually donning a uniform, picking up a rifle as big as he was, and wading into hell. Bucky was about to be shipped off to another country, another continent, when he’d never even left New York before going to basic. It might as well have been a different world, as far as he was concerned. He was about to drink another world’s water, shiver through another world’s night, bleed in another world’s dirt, and the only thing that would make it worse would be if Steve were there with him doing the same.
“I’m not going to sit in a factory, Bucky,” Steve said. When he opened his mouth to argue some more, he cut him off. “Bucky, c’mon. There are men laying down their lives.” And you’re about to be one of them, was what he didn’t say. “I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about me.”
“Right. Because you got nothing to prove.”
Steve glared at him, because he’d hit the nail on the head. He always did with Steve, it was just too easy. They’d been best friends for years, even if what Bucky felt wasn’t exactly brotherly, and he’d always known exactly what was going on inside his head. And Bucky thought, screw it, if this really was going to be the last time he saw Steve, maybe he didn’t need to be drunk to tell him he loved him, maybe he could just do it right here in the light and noise, where he could see Steve’s eyes, where the sheer number of people milling about gave them all the privacy they could ever need for this conversation. He took a breath and was half a second away from saying what he wanted to say, when a voice behind him called out.
“Hey Sarge! Are we going dancing?” Annabelle asked.
Bucky sighed, the moment and his chance vanishing as his scowl melted into a winning smile as he turned. “Yes, we are!” he said, because even if he couldn’t have Steve, he could have music and booze and good night, safe in the knowledge that no one in their right mind would let Steve join the army. He turned back to his friend, searched for the words, and had to settle on, “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”
“How can I?” Steve asked. “You’re taking all the stupid with you.”
“You’re a punk,” he said, and gave him a short hug. It wasn’t much--it was all he would ever get.
“Jerk,” Steve replied, clapping him on the back. “Be careful. Don’t win the war until I get there.”
There wasn’t a single thing he had left to say, other than the truth, so he just gave him a jaunty little salute, and walked away.
2. Zola
Bucky was going to die. He’d suspected it for a while--ever since his first day in Italy, as a matter of fact. But there was a difference between having the vague knowledge that a lucky bullet or a grenade would probably take him out before his next birthday, and knowing beyond a doubt that he could count the number of days he had left on one hand and have enough fingers left over to flip Hydra the bird.
He would have done it too, if his hands hadn’t been shackled behind his back as two guards all but dragged him down a dark hallway. The air was cold and wet, and he was shivering, but he was sweating, too. His skin felt dry and stretched too tight. His lungs felt like someone had stuffed them full of burning straw. Pneumonia, Falsworth had said, when his cough had turned ragged and his breath wheezy. A week sitting chained in the rain and mud before being transferred to this cold hell-hole had wreaked havoc on plenty of soldiers’ health. He’d thought he’d shaken it. He might have still been working a bit too slow, but he’d improved until he didn’t have anything but a few sniffles and the occasional dry hack. Then Lohmer had beaten him to a bloody pulp for mouthing off. His body couldn’t keep up--couldn’t fight both disease and injury--so by the time the swelling had gone down enough to let him see out of both eyes properly, Falsworth had heard the death-knell cough of pneumonia.
He hoped Falsworth was all right. Dugan, too--he’d seen the guard’s stick crack across the big man’s face as he tried to stop them pulling Buck from the cell, while Falsworth shouted, “At least take someone who stands a chance, you bloody bastards!”
He didn’t stand a chance--none of them did. Not for the first time, he was gripped by the sick, overwhelming relief that the army hadn’t been stupid enough to take Steve, because if they had, he’d be right here with him.
The guards hauled him into a room that resembled a doctor’s office the way Hydra resembled the Nazi’s: both were terrifying and teeming with strange things he didn’t understand, but one was comparatively clinical and clean, where the other reeked with crazy. Bucky knew immediately which one he preferred. There was a desk scattered with papers and files and disturbing, gory photographs, a metal table fitted with straps to hold him down, a counter covered in needles and scalpels, and other dirty, metallic things meant to stab and rend and make him bleed.
One of the guards moved to unlock the cuffs holding his hands behind his back, and he let himself go slack, forcing them to hold him up and letting them think he couldn’t even stand on his own two feet anymore. After his hands were free, they moved to transfer him to the table, and Bucky saw his chance--not a chance to survive, but a chance to make these bastards bleed before he kicked the bucket.
He lashed out, his elbow slamming into the guard on his right even as he kicked the legs out from beneath the one on his left. With his hands free, he was able to grab the man’s hair as he fell to the floor and smash his face against the edge of the table, shattering his nose and knocking out a tooth or two. By that point the other guard was back on his feet, and Bucky was coughing and shaking from the exertion, so it didn’t take much effort to clock him one on the chin and bend him over the edge of the table, smashing his face into the metal and pinning his arms behind his back.
A cold shiver that had nothing to do with his fever ran through him as the guards held him there and ripped his jacket off him. The fear was so suffocating and electric he wasn’t even able to give it a name before they pulled back and threw him onto the table, letting the fear fizzle out. The back of his head connected with a thunk, and the guards had a few moments of stillness in which to strap him down before his head cleared. He pulled uselessly at the straps and coughed a few expletives in their faces before the one with the broken nose brought his baton down on his ribs a few times. Tied down like he was, Bucky couldn’t even curl up against the blows.
They left him there, gasping, coughing, wheezing, thinking it was so totally worth it to see those assholes bleed. However, he didn’t have long to relish the small victory. a quarter of an hour later, he heard footsteps on the tile and turned his head to see a small, be-speckled man walking toward him, a clipboard in his hands. The two guards were back, flanking him.
“What is your name?” the short man asked. His English was good, his accent grating.
“Sergeant James Barnes, 32557038,” he said, ending with a cough. “Don’t need to ask yours. Never thought I’d get to meet Elmer Fudd in person.”
One of the guards brought his baton up again, and his whole body flinched, the straps holding him down as the baton slammed into his stomach.
“My name is Dr. Zola,” the man said smoothly as Bucky moaned and coughed. “You are ill. Describe your symptoms.”
“Sergeant James Barnes, 32557038,” he said again, because that’s what he’d been trained to say. Because fuck this guy and his faux bedside manner. Because he might have said something else snarky and cutting, but he didn’t have the energy to think of anything.
“Mm,” was all Zola said, before marking something on the clipboard. He reached out, placed a hand on Bucky’s forehead, and he was too weak to shake him off. After deducing he had a fever-- wonderful and Sherlockian deduction , Bucky wanted to snap, if only he had the energy--Zola retrieved a stethoscope from a drawer, lifted his shirt the best he could around the straps, pressed the cold metal to his skin, and listened to his heartbeat and his wet, labored breathing. When he was satisfied, he pulled away, marked something on his clipboard and then said, “You present a most unique opportunity, Sergeant Barnes. I’ve never before experimented on someone with your… inclinations.”
Bucky just looked at him, letting his eyes ask the question.
He held up an envelope that he’d tucked into the papers on the clipboard, and Bucky felt bile rise in his throat. It was his letter--the one he’d written for Steve and then, instead of putting it in the mail, had hidden in an inside pocket of the jacket these Hydra goons had just ripped off him. He wanted to squirm away, to punch Zola in his stupid piggy face, to crawl into a hole somewhere and never come out, because he’d been stupid enough to think Steve would be the only one to ever read that letter, and even then only read it after Bucky had died.
“... it’s easier to tell you I love you because I know I’ll never have to see the look on your face when you hear it ...” Zola read as one of the guards approached him with a syringe. The needle broke the skin and something blue-ish green entered his blood. “You are rather smitten with this Steve, no? Small wonder Hydra has so thoroughly destroyed every Allied force it has encountered, if they are sending the likes of you to fight.” More needles followed--or maybe that was the sharp prickling of shame he was feeling? He couldn’t tell. The guards didn’t step back until Zola read, “ I might be a coward and a fairy, but at least I’m done lying--”
“What are you doing to me?” Bucky asked, because it wasn’t giving information, it was asking for it, and because the way his limbs were starting to tingle and itch at the injection sites was fairly worrisome. Besides, anything to keep this bastard from reading any more of the letter--the letter that would never get to Steve now, thanks to Zola. Even if he could get it, Bucky wouldn’t want him to read it, not after Zola had let his slimy eyes wander all over it, making everything it said even dirtier with his voice.
“I’m trying to cure you, Sergeant,” he said. “Cure you of your cough, your human weakness, your… unnatural perversion. Either all of it will disappear, or you will.”
By the time Steve showed up and saved his sorry ass, his perversion was still there, but the letter was gone, along with his pneumonia. It would be over seventy years before he realized why.
3. Peggy
Sometimes, when he said things, he couldn’t believe Steve didn’t hear what he really meant. When Bucky meant, “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” Steve heard, “Learn to pick your fights.” When Bucky meant, “I can’t imagine my life without you in it,” Steve heard, “You don’t have to do this on your own.” When Bucky meant, “I love you,” Steve heard, “Take care of yourself.” It’d been that way for years--Bucky would say something and think, that’s it--that’s the one that will give me away. But he wouldn’t take it back, because regardless of his own fears, he meant every single word. Steve just never caught on.
So it came as a surprise when Steve had no such issue with Peggy Carter.
"You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?" Steve asked as people milled around them drunkenly, throwing darts, laughing at the raucous singing in the other room.
"Hell, no,” Bucky said, and watched Steve’s face fall for a second. Hero or not, love of his life or not, Bucky couldn’t help messing with him. “That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight, I'm following him."
That’s what he said. What he meant was he’d loved Steve even before he was tall, strapping, and superhuman. There wasn’t a single person alive who could say the same thing, so how could he possibly think the answer would be no? Why did he think he even had to ask?
And because he could never handle the heavy mood that always settled after he bared his soul to Steve, he quipped, “But you’re keeping the outfit, right?”
He wanted to take Steve outside, away from the noise and the people, where they could walk in the dark and talk--maybe there he could finally stop waiting for Steve to hear what he really meant, and he could just say it. He probably should, before this new phase of the war got started. Steve had the right to know how he felt, had the right to say no, he didn’t want someone like that on his team or watching his back. Not telling him was a lie, a betrayal.
Plus, outside in the dark, it’d be easier to let Steve punch his teeth in, after he told him. That way, he wouldn’t have to see the look on his face.
But on their way out, a woman walked up, all perfumed and soft, filling out a red dress like nobody’s business, and the little flare of courage he’d worked up was smothered in his chest. He barely heard the conversation that passed between Agent Carter and Steve, because Bucky had known Steve for over twenty years, and had loved him for nearly that long, and here was woman, this stranger, who had to love Captain America more than she loved Steve Rogers, but she was looking at him like he invented sunshine just for her, talking about dancing with the right partner, and there was Steve, hearing exactly what she really meant.
So of course, when Bucky shook his head and said, “I’m invisible,” Steve didn’t understand what he meant. He didn’t understand a damn thing.
4. Steve
“Don’t move--you’re gonna be fine, Buck, I gotcha, just don’t move!”
There was a ringing in his ears, and he felt like his whole body was wrapped in a few layers of cotton. Everything was fuzzy and far away. He could barely hear Steve screaming for a medic, but the note of panic in his voice was clear enough. Bucky cast about, trying to find the source of all this misery and confusion.
Grenade, he remembered, the word still burned into his throat from when he’d shouted it in warning. There was a grenade . And with the memory came sensation--the cold bite of snow through his clothes, the ache of Steve leaning over him, holding him down as he tried to writhe away, the wet, slick pain in his abdomen and chest where the shrapnel had lodged.
“Steve,” he said, the familiar name felt foreign in his mouth. “Need to tell ya somethin'.”
“Don’t talk, Bucky, we’re gonna get you patched up,” Steve said, looking down at him, his blue eyes wide. He was trying to be calm and reassuring, but he’d always been a terrible liar. It was his eyes. He never could keep exactly what he was thinking out of his eyes, and right now he was thinking Bucky was going to die.
“‘s important,” Bucky mumbled, because if Steve thought he was going to die, he was probably right, and he’d be damned if he died having lied to his best friend.
“It can wait,” Steve said, and Bucky caught sight of the blurry shape of a field medic crouching over him, a needle flashing in his hand. “Don’t talk, just stay with me.”
“Steve,” he said, feeling his grip on reality slip as the morphine started doing its job. “I’m--”
“Don’t you dare,” Steve snarled, holding him still as the medic started pulling the shrapnel out of him in bloody chunks. “Don’t you dare say goodbye, don’t say you’re sorry. Just stay with me, you’re gonna be fine.”
Bucky didn’t die that day in the snow, but his words died on his lips, disappeared into the chilly, rent air with his frosted breath. When he woke up again in an unfamiliar tent, bandaged and stretched out on a cot with Steve beside him, giving him a weak, watery smile, he hadn’t been able to find them again.
5. Hydra Goon #2569
“I had him on the ropes,” Bucky gasped, glaring down at the dead Hydra agent he’d just shot through the head. He stumbled a bit as the train took a corner and lurched.
“I know you did,” Steve said, his ornery smile taking the bite out his patronization, and Bucky couldn’t decide if he wanted to punch him or kiss him.
But the choice was taken from him as Steve shouted, “Get down!” and an instant later he was blown back, his shield clattering as he hit the floor and took too long to get up. There was another Hydra agent standing in the door to the compartment. He was a big guy, and the metal monstrosity he was wearing made him even bigger. Even if Steve was Captain America now and didn’t need Bucky to stand up for him, standing between him and a big bully was practically instinct, so picking up the shield and firing while Steve struggled to get back on his feet felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Then he was flying, metal rending and screeching around him, and he just barely managed to snag hold of something before he fell. The frigid wind whipped around him as he tried and failed to pull himself up, his fingers slipping on the metal. A moment later, Steve appeared, calling his name, inching his way toward him, and just like that, Bucky knew.
He knew that this was without a doubt his last chance to tell Steve he loved him, his last chance to tell him anything. It was a thought that stretched across his mind like a red-hot band, even as Steve shouted at him to hang on. Even as he reached out to grasp Steve’s outstretched hand, it was the only thing he could think.
But when the scrap he’d been clinging to broke off, sending him plunging into the ravine, it wasn’t a profession of love that ripped its way out of his mouth, it wasn’t even Steve’s name. It was only a scream.
+1. Tony
“Hey, Cap, you got a sec?”
“Sure,” Steve said, marking his page and setting his book to the side. Catch-22, it was called--Bruce had suggested it, something vaguely familiar with it’s WWII setting, but modern enough to help him get caught up. “What do you need?”
The instant he looked up, he could see Tony was agitated. Not upset or drunk or self-destructive, just… twitchy in a way that told Steve he was uncomfortable.
“So, you know how SHIELD sent me all those old Hydra files? Zola’s weapon designs and stuff?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, I was looking over them--nothing new really, but it’s interesting to take a look and see how those idiots tried to control the tesseract, but they did a better job the SHIELD did, so I’m not sure what that says about--” He stopped short at Steve’s raised eyebrow and got back on track. “Anyway, there was more in the files than just weapon schematics. There were some medical files, and um… experiment reports?”
“Zola was trying to replicate Erskine’s serum,” Steve said with a nod, not knowing where this was going and not liking how nervous it was making the usually unflappable Tony. “He even tried it on Bucky when Hydra had him.”
“Exactly,” Tony said. “There was a… there was a file on Barnes.” Steve opened his mouth to say something, but Tony cut him off in a rush. “There’s nothing worth seeing--plenty of stuff in there you don’t need to see, Cap, but this was in there too…”
For the first time, Steve noticed an ancient and yellowing envelope in Tony’s hands. Steve’s name and address were written on the front. It took him a long moment to realize the hollowness in his stomach came from the sight of Bucky’s handwriting.
“You should probably read this,” Tony said. “I read it, I’m sorry. Your name caught my eye, and I just didn’t want to hand you anything that might be…” He trailed off and held the envelope out, his hand shaking minutely. “But, um… I think you should read it.”
“Um, thanks,” Steve whispered and took it.
“Yeah, so... ” Tony ran an embarrassed hand through his hair and said, “I’ll just be in the shop if you uh… if anyone is looking for me.” He all but ran out of the room.
Steve sat for several long, silent minutes, staring at the envelope in his hands. The address scrawled across the front was the old address he’d abandoned when he’d started touring the country as Captain America. He hadn’t bothered to let anyone know he’d moved--he had no one to send him mail, after all. No one but Bucky, he realized, almost seven decades too late. Even if Bucky had managed to mail this letter, he never would have seen it. Odd that he should see it now, so many decades later. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “snail mail”.
He wondered if he should read it, if he should reopen that particular wound, rip out the stitches he’d used to pull his mind and his heart and his soul back together when everything was still tender and raw. After all, James Barnes had died roughly seventy years ago, but to Steve, who hadn’t been able to get his lazy backside out of his frozen bed, it only felt like weeks.
He didn’t want to read it, he realized. He wasn’t ready to bleed like that again--on the inside where no one could see and in a way no one could fix--but he couldn’t just let the letter sit there, taunting him. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy Bucky’s words, either, to rip up the piece of paper that his warm, living hand had once slid across and held.
He didn’t have a choice, he realized. He couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t destroy it, and part of him--his soul, his heart, the warm safe place where he tucked things he couldn’t let himself forget, the part that blamed him for getting Bucky killed in the first place--told him he owed it to Bucky to read what he had to say.
So he took a deep, shaking breath, gently pulled the letter from its envelope, and began to read.
August 17th, 1943
Steve,
I know I write you letters all the time--I hope you’re getting them, ‘cause I haven’t gotten anything back. Should have known you’d be too busy getting your punk face punched to write me a letter. But this one is different. If you’re reading this one, it means I’m dead.
I’ve been doing this war hero thing for a few months now, and there are three things I’m damn sure of: I’m glad you’re not here in this mess, the odds of me reaching my next birthday are basically nil, and I’ve only lied to you twice in my entire life. The idea of lying to my best pal and dying before I can fix it doesn’t sit right with me, so I’m gonna come clean.
First, I didn’t volunteer--I was drafted. I’m not sure why I lied about this one. There you were, chomping at the bit to enlist and unable to, and there I was, able bodied, scared shitless, and too cowardly to keep up with you. Then I got the draft notice. Being brave for other people is always easier than being brave for yourself, I think, so instead of letting you see how scared and doomed I was and letting you lose your mind over the fact that you couldn’t do a damn thing about it, I lied. I’m sorry.
Second, you’ve called me a brother before, plenty of times, and I understand--you love me like a brother. I love you too, but not like a brother. Have for a while now. I wanted to tell you, but every time I tried, I couldn’t find the words. Funny, since I only needed three, but I’m an idiot like that sometimes. This is the part where you’ll probably start to be happy I’m dead, and I don’t blame you. It’s all kinds of twisted and backwards and wrong, and that’s why I never said anything. But now things are different. Now it’s easier to tell you I love you because I know I’ll never have to see the look on your face when you hear it and realize your best friend stabbed you in the back.
You might not feel better now, but I do. I might be a coward and a fairy, but at least I’m done lying to my best friend.
Do me a favor and learn to pick your fights? The nightmares about you getting beaten to death in a back alley without me there to save your skinny ass are almost worse than the nightmares about the Nazis.
Take care of yourself,
Bucky
The only thing that saved the letter was the fact Bucky wrote it. Otherwise, Steve’s shaking hands would have shredded it. He couldn’t help the rage that built up inside him, it wasn’t aimed at Bucky for what he’d had to say, or at Tony for finally giving him the letter, but it was aimed at everything else. At Schmidt and Hydra for killing his best friend. At Zola, for taking this letter from Bucky and stashing it away like the world’s most disgusting pack-rat. At fate, for saving his life and for ripping him away from everything he’d ever known. At himself, for not biting the bullet and telling Bucky how he felt when he was still alive.
It hurt so much, all he could to was carefully fold the letter up, slide it back into its envelope, and place it in the drawer of his night-stand next to a picture he had of his mother and a note Peggy had once written him on a paper napkin. It’s where he kept the things that were shiny and sharp--shiny in that they were beautiful and lovely, sharp because they hurt to look at. Most of the time, he tried to forget they existed, but from time to time, he would lock his bedroom door and spend the night looking at them, turning them over in his hands and letting the ache in his chest bloom all night. He was adding Bucky to that private ritual, and he was sure the churning guilt inside him would rip something, make him bleed.
When he’d had the chance, he hadn’t known, and now that he knew, he had no chance. Did that count as a catch-22? He didn't know. He just knew it hurt like hell.