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“Bucky!”
He’s edging along the side of the train, holding on tight to the metal railing whilst moving as quickly as possible.
“Hang on!”
It’s an order. But the train is thundering in his ears and the desperate request is ripped away from his lips by the wind.
“Grab my hand!”
Holding his arm out, his fingertips outstretched, he watches, powerless, as Bucky gasps and reaches out for him in desperation before there’s the dull snap of the metal giving way and, oh god, he’s falling, he’s falling, and–
Bucky’s scream echoed in his ears as he woke with a jolt, sitting up violently as the sweat poured down his back.
Steve stared for a second at his arm, outstretched as if he could reach back into the past and grab Bucky before he fell, before he balled his hand into a fist and punched the bed with all the force that he could muster.
He glanced at the clock. 3 o’clock in the morning. How was it possible for life to have changed so drastically in less than 12 hours?
12 hours ago, the Howling Commandos had been making their way to that mountainside, eager and determined to capture Dr. Zola.
12 hours ago, Bucky had been talking about his sister’s upcoming wedding; they had put their arms around each other’s shoulders as they’d walked, the feeling familiar and comforting; Bucky had eaten porridge for his breakfast.
Steve pressed his face against the pillow, biting down hard onto his lower lip as he tried not to make a sound. He brought his hand up to wipe his eyes and it came away wet. He dried the hand on his blanket and repeated the motion. Again, his hand was wet.
The ache in his chest was a physical pain; a large space where Bucky had once been, only to be ripped away to leave a void. Memories and longing filled this space, stabbing him in the chest every time he drew breath.
What if he had been a little faster in moving down the side of the train? What if he had stretched out just a little bit further? Could he have reached him in time, saved him from falling?
The lump in his throat tightened painfully, the pressure on his chest causing him to choke out a sob.
He thought back to his mother’s funeral. Bucky had been there by his side the whole day, reminding him that he wasn’t alone, that he still had someone who loved him. “I’m with you til the end of the line, pal,” he had said, clapping his hand to his shoulder before pulling him into a gentle embrace.
He closed his eyes and remembered the way he had smelled, the warmth of his body, the feel of his hand rubbing soft circles against his back as he cried for his mother. He knew his every mannerism, knew his accent to a tee, knew every line and curve of his body.
Bucky had been there his whole life.
Even when he had nothing he had Bucky.
Grief gave way to despair as he realised, like a punch in the stomach, that there would be no new memories between the two of them.
Bucky would never attend his sister’s wedding, never eat another meal, never share another bad pun or innuendo, never share those gentle looks with Steve when they were sure no one else was looking.
Steve took a deep, shuddering breath, curling his legs around the blanket and holding it close, imagining it were Bucky.
It wasn’t fair. He had been 27 years old. Fresh, hot tears spilled down Steve’s face as he realised, feeling sick, that Bucky would never turn 28. He was forever 27, it was fixed, and that felt so, utterly wrong.
He closed his eyes and conjured up Bucky’s face in his mind. He could see him clearly, every line and every freckle, the exact shade of blue of his eyes, the way his hair would sit, the surprising softness of it and the way it smelled.
It was perfect, but it was an illusion. He knew that if he opened his eyes he would only see his room, dark and empty and too large for one person. So he kept his eyes shut, focusing on Bucky until it hurt to think, before he finally passed out with exhaustion.
When he woke, the sharp pain he’d felt the night before had faded to a dull numbness.
He slowly sat up, the room seeming so much greyer than before.
He pulled on his uniform, going through the motions, all the while noting how it seemed that all the colour had somehow drained from the world.
His feet carried him to the makeshift kitchen, where the rest of the Howling Commandos were talking in hushed voices.
They fell silent as he entered the room, and his eyes swept over them: Dum Dum, Morita, Monty, Gabe and Jacques. The five of them were looking at him with so much pity that he found it impossible to look any of them in the eyes.
Instead, he turned his gaze to the two remaining chairs around the table, a strange feeling surging through him briefly as he took his seat, all too aware of the empty one next to him.
Monty pushed a bowl of porridge in front of him and he automatically picked up a spoon and began to eat. Spoon, chew, swallow. Spoon, chew, swallow.
Morita cleared his throat, his voice coming out quiet and cautious, “How are you feeling?”
Spoon, chew, swallow.
The porridge tasted like cardboard.
Steve put the spoon down, turned his attention inwards and found…nothing. Where white hot pain and blistering anger had been the night before, only emptiness existed now. It was as though the void that Bucky had left inside him had become a vacuum. No happiness, no pain, no hope, no Bucky. Just nothing.
He shrugged. Knowing that he should be feeling something and feeling like a monster for not doing so. “I’m not really feeling anything right now,” he answered honestly.
He saw them exchange worried glances but turned away, not caring for their concern anymore.
“I’m not hungry. I’m going to step outside for a bit.”
His voice was flat, and his body moved slowly as if in a dream, but he didn’t care. He heard Dum Dum saying something as he left but he wasn’t listening, drifting where his feet took him until suddenly he was outside and making his way into the trees away from their camp.
His chest was heaving and it took him a few seconds to realise that tears were streaming down his face.
He thought about the empty chair at breakfast, the unused bowl that should have been filled with porridge but hadn’t been and, oh god, he was gone.
His stomach tightened so hard that he thought he was going to throw up and for a second he leaned heavily against a tree, gasping and dry heaving as the cold, harsh reality of life without Bucky finally hit home.
24 hours ago, Bucky had been breathing, his body had been warm, words had tumbled over his lips and thoughts had flowed through his mind. Neurons had fired in his brain, his heart had beat steadily in his chest. He had had hopes and fears, plans for the future. It seemed impossible that all of that, all of Bucky, had just stopped.
He found himself gazing upwards and, for the first time in his life, questioning the existence of God.
Why would you do this, Lord? Why would you take him? He had years left to live, you bastard, give him back!
He cursed heavily and shook his head, willing the blasphemous thoughts from his mind, as bitterness clenched hard around his heart.
This was worse than when his grandparents had died, he decided, worse even than when his mother had died. It was as if the grief, the loss, was counted in the number of years unlived – and Bucky, Bucky had only been 27 goddamn years old.
The blankness in his mind shattered violently as he suddenly sobbed, falling to the ground and punching the earth, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably as the terrible scene replayed itself in his mind once again: Bucky falling from the train, eyes wide and terrified as he screamed.
It was Jacques who found him that evening, lying in a foetal position on the ground, his knuckles bleeding and his face dirty with tears and grime. He gently pulled him to his feet, patted him once on the back and slowly led him back to camp.
Jacques was silent. Whether that was because he didn’t know how to express his condolences in English, or because he sensed Steve needed some time alone with his thoughts, Steve didn’t know. What he did know was that he was grateful for the Frenchman’s silent presence.
He led Steve back to his room and watched as he collapsed into bed, the tiredness suddenly going bone-deep.
Jacques was frowning slightly, as if thinking how to phrase something. “You and Barnes were…close? Non. Err… Intimate?”
Steve stiffened slightly at the question, but nodded nonetheless. He and Bucky had been intimate in a way that went right down the soul. They had always been there for one another, had seen the best and worst of each other, had been best friends – had been more than that.
Jacques had a pained expression on his face, his smile tinged with immense sadness. “I’m sorry, Captain.”
He left the room and Steve curled himself into a ball, screwing his eyes shut and hunching over. Far from the apathy that had consumed him earlier, every emotion and feeling was now heightened, as though he were a nerve, raw and exposed.
He wondered if things would always be this way, from now on; a life of extremes, fluctuating between apathy and anguish but always feeling that the world was now fundamentally wrong. The world had become a confusing and empty place since Bucky Barnes had departed it. Nothing made sense anymore, as if Bucky had been the anchor that had kept him grounded to reality.
This post-Bucky world was alien and cold.
He wanted desperately to wake up, to find out it had all been a terrible nightmare, to hold the man tight and never let go, to whisper in his ear how much he was loved, so that he knew every second of every day just how special he was.
Did he know how special he was?
Much later that evening, Gabe, Morita and Dum Dum slipped into his room, expressions sombre and faces filled with regret and sadness.
They had gone back to the site of the accident.
They hadn’t found a body.
Steve, of course, had insisted on going back to the mountainside himself.
For two weeks, he had gone down to the gorge every day, searching tirelessly and coming back to the camp every evening freezing cold and with a look of tightly-controlled desperation in his eyes.
On the fourteenth night, the Howling Commandos entered the kitchen as Steve was finishing off his dinner and sat down on the kitchen chairs.
Steve forced himself to swallow past the lump in his throat as he glanced at Bucky’s chair, empty except for a fine covering of dust.
The five men seemed to be waiting for something, so he ate his last piece of food and wiped his mouth before finally sitting back and giving them his attention.
“Steve,” Dum Dum began, “We’ve received orders to leave by 0700 hours tomorrow morning. They’ve located the Red Skull and we need to get there before he moves ahead with his plan.”
Steve’s fists tightened and when he spoke he was barely keeping the tremble out of his voice. “But we can’t go yet. We need to find Bucky.”
He closed his eyes as his throat constricted. The thought of leaving without retrieving Bucky’s body was unthinkable. Bucky deserved a dignified burial, on American soil. He deserved to be brought home with the rest of them.
The thought of leaving him alone on some strange European mountainside, thousands of miles away from home, made his stomach turn.
“I can’t leave him here,” it came out as a whisper, and he didn’t even care when the tears fell from his cheeks onto the kitchen table, because he wasn’t ashamed of his feelings for Bucky, and he wasn’t afraid of showing the Howling Commandos how much Bucky had meant to him.
Morita bowed his head sadly. “No one wants to leave him here, Steve, but if we don’t, the Red Skull is going to kill a whole load of innocent people.”
Monty nodded. “Bucky would want us to go and give the Red Skull a huge kick up the backside, don’t you think?” He was smiling but Steve could see the tears shining in his eyes too.
“OK,” he said, feeling dazed and defeated. “We leave by 0700 hours.”
He stood abruptly and stalked back to his room, painfully aware that in the morning he would be leaving the last place that Bucky Barnes had ever called home.
He awoke at 5am the next morning, the sunlight streaming in and lighting up the dust and pollen floating lazily through the air.
Bucky had loved the sunlight in the early morning, sometimes nudging Steve awake so that they could watch the sun rise together – not that he would ever allow anyone to know this; he had always maintained his tough guy exterior.
Steve felt a pang of longing as he watched the dust dancing in the sunlight.
Bucky would have loved this.
He dressed quietly and collected his belongings together, ready for the journey to hunt down the Red Skull.
Taking a deep breath, he then started gathering Bucky’s belongings. He felt like an intruder, rifling through his things, but he forced himself to complete the task at hand. He’d be damned if any single one of his items would be left behind in this strange land.
He tentatively lifted one of Bucky’s shirts to his face and breathed in deeply. It still smelled faintly of him; stale sweat and his underlying natural smell, earthy and warm and home.
Tears trickled from his eyes and he quickly moved the shirt away from his face, not wanting to pollute Bucky’s smell with his salty tears.
He crammed their belongings into two bags and moved quietly to the kitchen, not wanting to wake anyone.
After porridge, he noted that the time was 6am and decided it was time for the others to get up so that they could depart by 0700 hours.
He slipped into their rooms to find them empty. Uneasiness crept into the pit of his stomach as he realised they were missing.
For one desperate moment he thought, no, they can’t be dead too, before forcing himself to be rational.
The Howling Commandos were soldiers; the best of the best. There was no way they could have been taken against their will without a fight, and none of the rooms showed any sign of a struggle.
He was about to check the kitchen again when he heard voices from outside.
Darting back to his room to grab his shield, he silently slipped to the window to peek outside. He relaxed, seeing the five Howling Commandos slowly walking from the woods back towards the camp.
He put down the shield, stepping out into the sunlight to watch them approach.
Upon seeing him, the five men stopped, before Jacques started moving again and walked up to him, a watery smile spreading across his face.
Out of earshot of the other men, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a spinning top.
The breath caught in Steve’s throat. It was Bucky’s. Steve had won it for him at a Christmas fair in New York the previous year. He hadn’t known that Bucky had kept it with him all this time.
Jacques gently placed the spinning top in Steve’s hand. “I found it in the snow, where we waited before, err, boarding the train. He must have dropped it.”
Steve nodded numbly. “How did you know it was his?”
Jacques placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “He showed it to me once. Told me someone he loved very much gave it to him.” He glanced around, making sure the others couldn’t hear them. “I thought you might want it back.”
Steve pulled Jacques into a rough hug, hoping his gratitude was clear through his actions because his throat was suddenly far too tight to speak.
The Frenchman seemed to understand, rubbing his back in a way that reminded the blonde of Bucky, before pulling away and gesturing for Steve to follow him to where the others were waiting.
It was only then that he noticed what they were carrying.
Morita, Dum Dum and Monty were carrying armfuls of wildflowers, whilst Gabe was carrying what looked like a large log.
“We wanted to give Bucky a good send off,” said Morita. “It’s not the same as a proper burial, and the flowers won’t last, but we wanted to mark this occasion somehow. Show him what he meant to us.”
The others nodded earnestly, and Steve would never in a million years have thought that these five macho men would think of paying Bucky a floral tribute, but the fact they had filled him with fierce pride.
“We thought we should put these somewhere in the woods, where they won’t be disturbed by people, but we’ll do whatever you want, Cap. He was your best buddy.”
He was more than that, Steve wanted to say. “That sounds like the best idea,” was what he said out loud.
They walked slowly into the woods until they entered a small clearing that Steve hadn’t known about. The sunlight streamed down, filtering through the trees to cast them in a warm, green light.
There was a few metres where the sun bathed the forest floor and Steve felt instinctively that this was the right place.
“Here,” he murmured, squatting down the touch the grass.
Morita, Dum Dum and Monty gently laid down their flowers, painting the forest floor with a riot of colours, before Gabe stepped forward to place the log in the middle of the floral cascade.
It was only then that Steve saw the words carved carefully into the wood, in beautiful curled lettering.
James Buchanan Barnes, 1917 – 1944.
The world swam in front of his eyes and Steve felt as if he were drowning.
He hadn’t been prepared to see the dates written out. To see the number 1944 brought the crushing finality of their meaning into painfully sharp focus.
1944. This is where the journey ends. The end of the line.
“He hated the name James,” was all he could choke out, and suddenly a laugh escaped from his lips out of nowhere. “He always insisted on being called Bucky. Sometimes I’d call him James just to wind him up and-”
And suddenly he was unable to say anymore, the pain of finally accepting that Bucky was gone – gone, the end of the line – being too much to bear and the tears flowed fast down his cheeks as he allowed himself to break down, to feel the hurt, to enjoy the pain because the pain meant that something meaningful had been lost.
Bucky, his best friend, his more-than-that, his whole life that couldn’t be lived because he had been 27 years old and he would never be a day older, ever again.
“I love you, Bucky,” he whispered the words as he touched the wooden memorial, his fingers tracing the letters and numbers, imprinting them into his tactile memory.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, eyes closed and just letting waves of emotion and flashes of memories roll through him, but after a while he became aware of a hand gently shaking his shoulder.
“Captain.” Jacques’ voice was quiet and close. “It’s 0700 hours.”
Captain America stood up, staring hard at the flowers and James Buchanan Barnes, 1917 – 1944 before turning towards the camp where their belongings were waiting for them.
He took a deep breath, silently promising himself that once they’d defeated the Red Skull he would come back here and not return back to America without Bucky’s body.
“OK, troops.” His voice came out hard and determined. This mission was in honour of James Buchanan Barnes. Failure was not an option. “It’s time to go.”