Chapter Text
The warehouse is going up in flames.
Yelena coughs as she tries and fails not to inhale smoke, her eyes streaming. She’s sweating and trying to keep up with Bucky as he hauls her up the stairs and into the main floor of the warehouse, the foundation rumbling with each step.
Various explosives have been rigged, and they blow every few seconds, temporarily deafening her as she tries to locate the exit, the utter chaos that’s been unleashed while she and Bucky were incapacitated. A trap laid because she was too desperate to uncover the past, to find things that maybe should have stayed buried, and her greed for answers will possibly result in them being buried. A poetic, cruel end.
She’s borrowed enough time already.
The main floor is crumbling, boxes and tables flung in every direction from the force of the blasts. Embers sting her skin as she surges on, as a section of the ceiling caves in and Bucky swears. It’s too much, everything coming down at once, and Sam’s voice on comms is getting increasingly harried, something close to panic cracking in his authoritative voice, and that’s when Yelena knows it’s really bad. She hasn’t known Sam for long, but she knows he isn’t scared easily. The desperation in her ear is not inspiring a lot of confidence in their chance of escape.
Yelena wants more time. She wants time to get to know Bucky, to reconcile him now with the James she once knew. She wants to find out if she can still feel things, if she can still fall in love. If the comfort she feels in his presence is linked to their past.
She isn’t sure she ever stopped being in love with him, and now she might never know. Words are too little, too late, and she runs with him as a sense of hopelessness begins to seep into her veins. There is no escape, no rest, no peace for people like them. The past will never release its bony, vicelike grip on her. Yelena will be choking on it when she dies.
Yelena sees the bomb to the right, one clicked into place by meticulous hands just for them, just for this moment. There isn’t time to warn him, to alter their course before it detonates. She isn’t even sure he would hear her if she tried.
There is a split second, a millisecond, an unconscious decision Yelena doesn’t really think about, just moves. She doesn’t think about the fact that he’s a supersoldier and could probably withstand the blast, doesn’t stop to consider the repercussions of the blast on her much-more-vulnerable body. She just reacts, a bolt of fear driving her to throw herself in front of Bucky and shove him away as it blows.
Everything moves a bit slower after that.
A high-pitched whine fills her ears. Yelena blinks awake slowly to find herself on the floor, flames blazing in her vision, her body screaming in pain. It’s hot, too hot, and she tries to move but finds it’s too difficult. Something’s wrong, and she doesn’t know what, but it surely cannot be good.
Yelena tries again, wiping soot from her eyes as they stream, her brain working on half-speed, no coherent thoughts escaping but for one:
James.
Where is he?
Yelena heaves herself to her hands and knees, crawling forward, dodging debris that is raining down like a storm, turned this place into something unrecognizable. A sharp pain lances through her torso and her hand flies to her ribcage as she cries out, her vision going white with delayed agony.
Her fingers meet a hard object, strange and foreign, and it takes her a second to process that it is metal. Shrapnel, to be specific, lodged deep into her side. It rests somewhere between her ribs, and she makes the mistake of looking down at it.
Big mistake. Yelena retches, and the action brings even more pain with it. Her fingers are wet, and something warm trickles from her temple into her eye.
Some part of her brain reminds her not to pull it out, not that she has the strength to do it herself without puking. But leaving it in will at least prevent her from bleeding out, and she has to hope she hasn’t punctured any vital organs in her stupid, stupid move to protect him.
She doesn’t regret it.
Sheets of metal and chunks of concrete surround her, and she staggers to her feet as she tries to find her way out. Her head spins, utterly disoriented, her surroundings tilting like she’s had too much to drink. She has to catch herself on bits of debris to keep her balance, and her hands are scraping against the rough material, but she climbs and crawls and searches for James, her throat too smoke-ravaged to call his name much louder than a whisper.
She’s too weak. She isn’t going to make it.
Maybe he’s okay, she thinks deliriously as her knees buckle not far from what remains of the main doors. They’re blown wide open, light spilling in, but at this moment nothing has ever looked further away. Her strength is fading, whatever’s lodged in her body taking its toll, her blood starting to spill in little drops at her feet. She stares at it with detached observation, wondering if she is actually dying.
But if James is out, if he’s safe…Yelena is okay with dying here. The thought of him surviving is a balm to her fracturing body, a sliver of relief as she clutches her side, trying and failing for the third time to rise to her feet.
Be brave, she tells herself, biting her lip so she doesn’t cry out. You are a Widow. You are invincible even in death.
Yelena takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, feels her head hit the concrete. Prepares for it. Hopes it will be fast, that she’ll pass out from the smoke long before the flames devour her body.
“Lena!”
Hands grab her with such suddenness that she cries out in pain. Her eyes fly open and she lets out a noise of relief. Bucky is kneeling beside her, shaking her awake, repeating her name with urgency.
She tries to say his name, but blood spills out of her mouth instead. That isn’t a good sign.
His eyes shift to the blood in horror, his body tensing as he searches for the wound. As his hands meet the shrapnel in her side and still.
“Might be…too late for me,” Yelena jokes, spitting out a mouthful of blood. It’s on the front of her suit, staining her teeth red. “Sorry about that, soldat.”
Bucky shakes his head. “No. No, I’m getting you out of here.”
Yelena meets his eyes and knows there’s no use arguing with him on this. He isn’t going to leave her behind, even if she’s nothing but a corpse by the time he drags her out of this building, and there’s a fleeting comfort in this. In knowing she will not be alone when she dies, but cradled in the arms of the man who once loved her.
He lifts her into his arms carefully, so her wounded side is facing away from him, trying not to disturb the wound. She wants to tell him it doesn’t matter, that she’s a goner either way, but she can’t quite find the strength.
“Hang on, Lena,” he says in her ear as he moves, as her eyes slip closed and she rests her cheek against his chest and focuses on the beat of his heart, trying to drown out the pain. She’s so tired, and he holds her like his arms are the most secure place on earth, and she thinks wearily that she wishes she could tell him she loves him still.
“Hey, hey, Yelena,” Bucky urges, his voice pitching up in desperation. “Keep your eyes open. Open your eyes, Lena.”
Yelena peers up at him blearily, registering distantly that daylight shines in her face, that they are out of the warehouse. Sun is on her skin, but she doesn’t feel it.
As a matter of fact, she doesn’t feel much of anything.
Bucky is shouting in his comms at Sam, words that garble into nonsense when she listens, and her eyelids weigh a thousand pounds. Sleep sounds wonderful, irresistible even.
“Lena,” Bucky says again, his voice cracking. “Keep your eyes open for me. Come on.” He’s begging now, and it’s strange to hear from the soldat. He does not beg. He bends the world to his whims, forces it to comply. Pleading is not like him.
If Yelena could, she would make fun of him for it. But she can’t so much as speak, a gurgling noise coming from her throat as she tries not to choke on her own blood, as she tries to breathe, and she really does try to keep her eyes open for him. She tries as she’s lifted into the van, as everything blurs, and she swears Bucky is screaming.
Yelena tries. But at the end of the day, she is just a Widow. And Widows, despite what many may think, can die. Widows die like anyone else, just messier, more painful, more tailored to the death and destruction they have wrought upon the world. They get deservingly painful deaths when their usefulness inevitably expires.
They die.
——
Bucky cradles Yelena’s head in his lap as his world collapses beneath him.
Sam is driving, hurtling away from the warehouse as he searches for close safehouses, ones equipped with emergency medical staff. There’s a decent amount, and it will be better than taking her to the hospital. Sam’s resources as Captain America are better than his own, and he trusts where his friend is taking them.
Yelena is going to make it. She has to.
Bucky tries to hold himself together as he staunches the wound in her side, now bleeding through the shrapnel, coming undone. Her body failing, her skin so pale it’s almost gray, cold and clammy. She fucking shielded him from a blast he could have withstood, or would have been less injured if he had. Shielded him without a second thought, threw her body in front of him like he meant something to her.
“Why did you do that?” He whispers softly, smoothing hair back from her death-pale face. He wipes a trickle of blood from her lips as her lids flutter, as she tries like hell to stay awake, to listen to him. Her mouth moves occasionally but he can’t make anything out in her feverish murmuring.
His hands shake as they frame her cheeks; time has elapsed in a strange stretch that is removed from reality, like he’s trapped in a living nightmare and time is immaterial. Bucky’s alternating between murmuring reassurances to Yelena and yelling at Sam to drive faster. He’s helpless, trying like hell to keep his shit together for her, but he’s teetering on the edge of a breakdown for how much this is destroying him.
“Please, Lena,” Bucky says, his fingers stroking her face softly. “You can’t do this, not when we’ve finally figured it all out. We have to talk about this, you know.”
Bucky talks: he walks through the sensory overload of his returned memories, fits them back into place aloud, hoping maybe Yelena can hear him. Maybe she will hear him tell her about their time together in cities across the world, how he felt like his world began on the day he first saw her. How she’s the only one who ever really understood him, helped him find himself again. How she’s the only good memory he has from his time as the Winter Soldier.
You saved me, he says quietly, and he swears her eyelids twitch in response. Like she’s trying to answer but cannot. All she manages is a soft moan of pain.
It seems especially cruel to have come so close to having it all back—having her back. He hasn’t stopped loving her, not really. Now that he remembers, it’s like the intensity of his feelings have returned a hundredfold. He can’t imagine not seeing her green eyes again, not holding her...
He hunches over her as his spirit breaks all over again. Hasn’t he given enough? Hasn’t he suffered enough? To lose her, after all he has lost already? Is there no good thing he won’t destroy in proximity, won’t hurt or maim? The Winter Soldier is part of him, a harbinger of death to all who get close.
Bucky watches with detached horror as the doors open and emergency medics swarm in, transferring Yelena onto a stretcher and rushing her inside. He trails after them, his stomach churning. She looks so small, so fragile, so unlike the unbreakable assassin he’s come to know.
The doors of the operating room close and he’s shut out, left standing there in shock with Yelena’s blood on his hands, her imprint on his soul.
What if it’s the last time he sees her?
Someone shakes him. He snaps his head toward Sam in surprise, unsure how long his friend’s been standing there.
“What?” Bucky rasps.
“We have to let them do their job now,” Sam says slowly, a calm presence in the midst of Bucky’s panic. But the man is still rattled, his gaze trailing toward the door of the operating room. He’s worried about Yelena, too. “They’re gonna do everything they can.”
Bucky takes a shuddering breath, looks at Sam with the most lost expression his friend’s ever seen. It startles Sam, to see him like this.
“I can’t lose her, Sam,” he says, his voice breaking. “Not again.”
“I know, Buck,” Sam responds, like there’s never been a doubt in his mind. Like he could see their link before they could, watching it all play out.
“Not again,” Bucky chokes out, shoulders heaving. “Not—”
Sam hugs him tightly, attempts to hold him in one piece. “I know.”
For the second time in Bucky Barnes’ long and miserable life, he fears he will have to watch Yelena Belova die.