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No words appear before me in the aftermath. Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness.
I've got a lot to pine about. I've got a lot to live without.
Steve Rogers wanted to be someone else ever since he was young. Ever since he was in his Kindergarten play, cast as a tree because he was too shy to say anything, he wanted to be someone who wasn't Steve Rogers. He liked being a tree, being strong, and beautiful, instead of the Brooklyn-born kid he was, who was skinny, and sickly, and had a war-broken family. He brought new life, instead of being taken out by how the wind blew on a Summer day.
Sunday afternoon, after the end of the play, he sat on the ground backstage with his costume on his lap, upset that he had to be himself now. He’d been stewing in anger when another kid wandered up. He was a year older, which meant he'd been one of the characters with lines, important lines. The boy sat down, pulled off the wolf mask he’d been wearing, and let out a loud, annoyed sigh. He turned to Steve and rolled his eyes.
“I hate having to act like I’m somebody else. It’s so stupid.”
Steve turned the brown haired, blue eyed boy with an expression of surprise on his face, because he’d loved being someone else, if only for a few hours. “Oh…”
“Yeah. My mom always says that the best person you can be is who you are. She said that growing up is learning who you’re going to be, and it can be really bad to pretend to be someone else. It can be really bad if you pretend to be someone who you don’t even actually want to be.” His accent was thick, and he glanced down at the wolf mask that had been on his face moments earlier. He kicked it with the toe of his shoe and it slipped across the ground toward Steve, who picked it up and looked at it.
“I thought it was fun to be someone else.”
The boy turned to Steve and looked at him curiously, his brown eyebrows dipped down in the middle and crinkled. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Everyone makes fun of me because of who I am, maybe if I was someone else, they’d be nicer to me.”
“Well, maybe if everyone else was different, if they were kind, and good to talk to like you, then they wouldn’t be mean. Ever thought about that?”
Steve was thinking that over when a woman walked up to them and bent down to press a kiss to the other boy’s cheek. “You did amazing remembering your lines, Bucky.” She dipped her mouth down to his ear and whispered something that made the boy smile. Steve never really saw his mom all too much. During the day he was at school, and then at night, she would only kiss him goodnight before she left for work.
“Momma, this is my friend, he says he liked being someone else in the play. Isn’t that silly?”
Bucky’s mom just turned sad, blue eyes on Steve, and Steve glanced up at her, smiling softly, like they both knew a secret no else knew. Like they both knew why Steve wanted to be someone else, and they both understood that it wasn’t silly, like Bucky had thought.
“What’s your name, honey?”
“Steve Rogers, ma’am.”
The lady smiled, and held out a hand for Steve to take, and he got up, holding on and letting his tree costume fall to the ground. Bucky stood up too, grabbing Steve’s hand in his. Bucky’s mom squeezed his hand with a smile. “How about you come over for dinner, Stevie? I bet we can help you come to like exactly who you are.”
Bucky and Steve were friends from then on, and soon, Bucky learned that Steve had something wrong with his brain, something that made him sad even when he wanted to be happy. Something that told him he wasn’t worth the friendship Bucky had shown him. Bucky’s mom tried to help, and so did Bucky’s sister, Becca. She walked around school yellin’ at the top of her lungs how great Stevie was, and after that, people started being a bit nicer to him. Maybe just because they were scared of Becca.
But even with friends, and a new family, the thought always lingered in the back of Steve’s mind.
“What if you were someone really great?”
. . .
Did some bird flap its wings over in Asia? Did some force take you because I didn’t pray? Every single thing to come has turned into ashes.
“Let’s hear it for Captain America!”
Bucky fell off a train, and with him went one of the last people who actually knew who Steven Rogers was.
“Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American Way? Who vows to fight like a man for what’s right night and day? The Star Spangled Man—!”
Steve sank his airplane into the Arctic thinking about the look on Mrs. Barnes’ face when he’d told her the news about Bucky. She had dropped onto her knees on the porch when she saw him, and the letter. She’d sobbed into his shoulder, into his leather jacket that Bucky used to always steal from him. She held tight to his face, and whispered to Steve, “he loved you for who you were, Stevie. You know that. He loved you so fiercely, I don’t think anything could have stopped it.”
Captain America cried then, too.
“When you two first met, my baby was already saving you, and I know that he would be happy to know he saved you in the end. Now you have to go on and be Captain America, but I want you to know that it will never be who I knew, who my baby knew, and that will be hell on earth for you Stevie, but it’s what we’ll have to do. We will have to be the ones who remember who my Bucky was, and who his best friend Stevie Rogers was. Go fight the war, and go win, honey, and you show them who you are behind that shield. And you never forget that I’m here for you, and that I’ll never treat you like a piece of fabric with fifty stars on it.
I’ll treat you like I always have, Stevie. I’ll treat you like you’re home.”
It's all over now, all out to sea. It's not meant to be.
I'm never gonna meet what could've been, would've been… what should've been you.
“Who the hell is Bucky?”
The only thing Bucky hated more than anything, was the thought of being turned into someone he wasn’t. And the only thing Steve wanted was to be someone who was better than who he was.
Only one of them got their wish in the end.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. You were bigger than the whole sky, you were more than just a short time.