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Steve was sitting in his room listening to music on his computer. Tony had introduced him to YouTube and he stumbled across some songs that made his heart break to shreds. He had just been looking for music from back before the war, the kind Bucky would have danced to with a pretty dame. Those ones made him smile. The one he's listening to right now though? Not so much. George Canyon singing “I want you to live, I want you to love...I want you to fall in love again, I want to see you smile again.” It was enough to make him feel like his heart was being torn to shreds. He could hear Bucky saying it all.
It wasn't enough for him to turn off the music though, and the website decided to keep torturing him. Next was Justin Moore, singing “here's to the ones that didn't make it back home, the ones we ain't seen in so long...in a better place up there, but they sure left a hole down here”. It felt like just a couple months ago that he watched Bucky fall and he didn't understand why the pain was still so great, the hole so vast in his chest. It felt like he was missing a part of himself.
Billy Ray Cyrus this time. “All gave some, some gave all, some stood through for the red, white and blue, and some had to fall” and his heart broke again. It felt like a gaping wound.
It felt like he was in a dream, and YouTube agreed, playing “Just a Dream” by Carrie Underwood. “Baby, why'd you leave me, why'd you have to go, I was countin' on forever, now I'll never know, I can't even breath, it's like I'm lookin' from a distance, standin' in the background, everybody's sayin' he's comin' home now, this can't be happening, this is just a dream”. He related. He couldn't breathe. Something important was missing.
Finally he couldn't stand it anymore and slammed the laptop shut, glad that Tony reinforced this one. He turned over, grabbing the pillow next to him and curled into a ball, sobbing. He couldn't breath through the pain in his chest. It felt like before the serum, when he'd have an episode, he couldn't breath, and Bucky would come up behind him, wrap his arms around his small friend and coax him to start breathing again. But Bucky wasn't here. Bucky never would be here. Steve would never breath again.