Chapter Text
This was definitely Steve’s payback for that roller coaster on Coney Island.
Bucky fought back a hysterical cackle as the frigid wind jerked and tossed his body around from where he dangled precariously from the side of the train. The delirium from the war was finally hitting, he thought, almost gleeful in his manic daze.
War brings about madness. He’d seen it himself, fellow soldiers in the trenches crying out at invisible ghosts, begging the devil for salvation, before finally succumbing to the mania, cackling gleefully at hallucinations of their own making.
Since the day he’d killed his first man, Bucky knew this wretched war would rob him of his sanity.
Bucky couldn’t say this is where he’d thought that would happen though. Not seconds before falling to his death, after being blown out of a train by a robotic soldier equipped with two enormous laser guns.
Hell, even his death was a wide ball.
Bucky had spent a long, long time thinking about all the gruesome ways he’d be sent to hell with a one-way ticket. He’d almost been certain that the Hydra facility was going to be his grave. That place, where not being in pain was a rare commodity. That hellhole, where things, he shivered, had been done to him.
Ha. Well, it looked like that all ended today. Bucky was a bit disappointed though; this was not even a contender for the top 5, or even 10 ways he’d predicted himself to die.
'Bucky!' Steve’s pale, anxious face popped out of the hole in the side of the train, pulling Bucky out of his manic spiralling. He clambered frantically toward where Bucky was clutched onto the fragile railing. 'Bucky take my hand!' Steve stretched out a hand towards him.
Bucky’s vision wavered, blurring in and out as he pushed the hysterical thoughts to the back of his mind. He forced it to cooperate – now wasn’t the time for this. He blinked furiously, concentrating on Steve’s terrified expression. His throat caught. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such a frightened expression on his best friend.
There was no time to dwell on that thought though. Bucky could feel the metal under his hand groaning. His stomach turned as the frigid wind whipped his cheeks raw and stung his eyes sore.
He gritted his teeth. It was now or never.
With the last of his strength, Bucky heaved his body towards Steve’s outstretched hand, feeling the thin railing yield to the harsh winds of winter. He felt a ghost of warmth brush against his fing—
He was in free fall.
No.
Nononononono—
A strangled scream pierced through the frigid air.
'Bucky!'
He saw it unfold in slow motion.
Bucky watched as Steve let go of the train to lunge for him. Words of reprimand immediately jumped to the tip of his tongue. What was this idiot doing? Why the hell did he throw himself off the train too? When they were both dead, Bucky was going to march from the gates of hell to pull this punk out of his grave, smack some sense of self-preservation into his empty noggin (not that any attempt to do so had ever worked), then kill the big lug himself – super soldier serum be damned.
A large hand caught his fingers in a vice grip.
They stopped.
Bucky’s heart leapt to his throat, mouth open as he stared at Steve’s scrunched face. He was struggling to heave Bucky up to adjust his hold and secure him with both hands.
Wait. Both hands?
He stopped breathing. If he craned his neck up, he could see it. The only thing that was keeping the two of them from falling into the alps was Steve’s right foot, twisted at an awkward angle and jammed into the side of the train’s panel. His foot was shaking, the effort of holding them up was taking everything.
'Steve, you have to let me go or we’re both going to fall,' Bucky screamed desperately.
'NO.' Steve’s face contorted with pain and effort. His foot must be in agony, and despite his best efforts Bucky could feel his own grip slipping.
'STEVE, LET GO!' Bucky felt tears sting his eyes. Whether from the harsh air or from the inevitability of the situation, there was no time to consider. Not when he knew Steve would continue to be a stubborn ass, refusing to let go until it killed him.
Bucky gritted his teeth, a vague plan forming in his mind. Steve wouldn’t forgive him for this, but he didn’t care. He was one thing, but he couldn’t let his best friend fall too.
As he lifted his free hand to prise Steve’s grip from his own fingers, their eyes met and he froze. Steve’s face was heartbreaking but resolute. For a second those beautiful blue eyes shone too-bright, and he looked like he was trying to memorise all the details of Bucky’s face, which was dumb because how many times had he drawn him, how many years had they spent together, how many–
'Forgive me Buck'
And the next moment he knew, Bucky was flying through the air. Except, not down as he’d expected and been preparing himself for. Rather, he was flying up and–
Bucky landed inside the train, inches away from where he had been blown back by the enemy’s gun. His eyes widened.
No fucking wa-
Bucky scrambled desperately toward the edge of the train.
No. . .
No.
Nononononono–
Surely he was just hanging from–
His breath caught.
The nook where Steve had wedged his foot into was broken. He must have felt it giving way before he’d thrown Bucky up into the train. Bucky stared at the place where he’d last seen Steve. The harsh wind whipped at his face, no less painful than before, but that was completely dwarfed by the utter shock and horror of what had just–
You killed me Buck.
***
Bucky wakes with a strangled gasp. His vision is cloudy with the haze of sleep as he stares blankly up at the white ceiling. Loud, raspy breathing fills the room. It’s followed by a dry sob.
That’s him, Bucky notes emptily, staring into the void.
He tightens his grip on the blanket and forces a deep breath into his shaky lungs. Nausea builds up at the back of his throat, threatening to spill over. Bucky swallows hard, teeth clenched tight. He scrunches his face up, forcing his body to relax from the tense coil it had worked itself into.
An icy shiver caresses the nape of his neck. Another nightmare.
No.
Not a nightmare, he reminds himself drily. Not a nightmare. A memory.
He glances at his bedside table.
04:07, his alarm clock blinks innocently at him.
Ha. Like the 4th of July? Bucky laughs humourlessly. If this was the universe’s version of a joke, it could go fuck itself. But if this was Steve Roger’s ghost creeping its fingers around his throat and haunting him, well. . . it was nothing he didn’t deserve.
Heat rises to the back of his eyes. But as he stares unseeingly at the sterile white ceiling, the dark void gnawing at his insides swallows the tears greedily, leaving an empty, exhausted and broken man in its wake.
One unable to even shed a tear at the last memory of his dearest friend.
Fuck.
Bucky screws his eyes shut and draws his blanket closer, making himself as small as he can. Right now, he just wants to find some dark corner in the world to curl up in and never wake up from. But he can’t do that. Not for lack of wanting, he just can’t — won’t — do that to the shitty person Steve had sacrificed his life for.
No. That was the last thing he would do. That was the least he could do for his best friend.
Even if it cost him an arm an a leg, and well—
He reaches his left arm up, holding it to the ceiling palm-up and listlessly studying its dark metallic sheen. It’s like an empty night sky, he thinks dully. He had accepted the prosthetic shortly after waking up 70 years into the future, from Stark, the son of the Stark he had known — if waking up in the future wasn’t weird enough.
Bucky had crashed the Valkyrie with the hope expectation of death, but waking up to a staged room, a stump and his own failure had sent him spiraling. The new, overwhelmingly colourful and overstimulating environment astounded him, yet also saddened him a little, at how little some things had changed — always more bullies to fight and people to save. So he did what Steve would’ve done: accepted the path to make the world a better place, as an Avenger.
Now he’d fought with it, killed with it, protected people with it, yet– the navy-blue metal whirls quietly as he clenches it into a fist– it still felt strange sometimes.
Bucky exhales heavily, dropping his hand from its tense fist. The metal arm bounces harmlessly onto the bed. The built up exhaustion from everything suddenly rushes up and chokes him. Every single one of his ninety-something years of age is weighing on his back, pulling him down into the void.
He needs to get out. Get out and do something — anything — to get away from the dark nothingness calling him. Wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to do horse shit for him. Maybe he can go out for a run, to work out some of that tension, and that restless energy brewing within his chest but—
The team had just saved New York from a maniacal Norse god and a horde of aliens yesterday. Bucky wasn’t sure if going on a jog amidst a city of buildings on the verge of collapse was the best idea. Safety be damned – he wasn’t sure what seeing all the doom and destruction would do to his already rock bottom emotions.
Maybe he should just stew in his guilt and grief. Bucky briefly casts his memory to the glow of Loki’s scepter yesterday. Remembering it brought flashes of that gun to his mind, of being blown out of that train, and then. . . Well. Bucky stifles the thought, as he re-curls into himself, protecting the misery that courses gleefully through his veins.
Eventually, he falls back into a restless sleep, curled up in his blankets and dreaming of golden hair, bright blue eyes and bubbling laughter. He sleeps with a heavy heart and memories of a beautiful starry Brooklyn sky, with the brightest star right by his side.
I’m sorry Stevie.