Chapter Text
It was dark, at the bottom of the valley. Cold. He didn't know how long he'd been there, unable to move, the only warmth coming from the hot blood dripping down into the hollow of his neck, but even that stopped, after a while. His eyes were open, but unseeing - white surrounded him, covered his senses in a thick blanket that made it impossible for him to do anything. Dying was agony - at first, it was hot, searing hot like a red-hot poker had been taken to the left side of his body. Then it grew colder, and colder until it was so frigid that it burned just as bad as the poker.
He didn't know how long he lay there for, paralysed in agony. It could have been days. The howls of the creatures that lived in the ravine grew closer, and it grew to the point that he tried to scream out, to lead them to him, just so they could tear at his flesh and quicken his demise. Anything was better than this slow horror.
Finally, after days of suffering, he heard the tell-tale sound of feet in the snow. He could have sobbed in happiness - he'd been found. The animals had found him. They would rip him limb from limb and he would finally be free.
The animals talked to each other, in a language that was familiar, and grasped him with hands that felt like they'd touched his skin before. A woman's face appeared above him - a beautiful woman, with red lips and dark hair and tears in her eyes. He wondered if she was an angel, finally descended from Heaven to take his soul. But why would he go to Heaven? He may not know much, in his pain-addled state, but he knew he was not a good man. A good man would not have such perverse thoughts, do such unholy things, allow another man to kiss him and worship his body like the most sacred of texts.
"Get him into the plane!" a voice yelled - he realised it came from the angel. Why would the angel have a plane? He thought those were human contraptions, certainly not something a celestial would use.
Hands gripped him, and he was lifted into the air. He couldn't see much apart from cold and snow, but in the middle of the white was a blooming flower of red. It was beautiful, he realised - the scarlet painting the blank canvas in such a pretty colour. In the middle of the bloom lay a mangled arm, wrapped in bloodied blue fabric and pale as the driven snow.
-----
The first thing Bucky was aware of when he woke up was the comfort. He was enveloped by warmth, soft fabrics brushing against his frostbitten skin and wrapping him in a gentle embrace. He shifted slightly in the nest, enthralled by the way the fabric moved with the slightest friction, and voices he hadn't been aware of abruptly ceased. A warm palm was placed on his head, and Bucky leaned into it as much as he could.
"Rest, Sergeant," a woman's voice said softly, sweetly. "You had quite the fall."
Arnim Zola. The train. The mission. Gabe. Falling. Steve.
Steve.
Bucky opened his eyes, and for the first few seconds, he couldn't see anything but bright light. The light slowly receded and revealed the woman who'd spoken to him, sitting at his bedside. Peggy Carter.
The first thing Bucky noticed about Peggy was her appearance. For the two years he'd known her, Bucky had never known Peggy to look anything other than flawless. Her lips were always the same shade of red, she never had a hair out of place, and she carried herself with a confidence that was envied or lusted after by every and all members of the SSR. But the Peggy sitting at his bedside looked ragged. Her hair hung loosely around her face, lank and lifeless and lacking its usual lustre. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her shoulders slumped, her face completely devoid of makeup. Still, she smiled at him.
"How are you feeling?" she asked softly. Bucky opened his mouth, tried to speak, but all that came out was a rasping cough. Peggy reached to something out of his line of sight and brought back a cup. She tipped it to his mouth, and he felt water touch his lips. He greedily drank it all, and when she pulled away he slumped back against the bed, exhausted.
"Steve," he managed to croak out, and Peggy's face crumpled into an expression of absolute misery.
"Sleep, James," she whispered. Bucky could do nothing but comply.
------
Bucky didn't know how long it took before he was able to stay awake for longer than a few minutes. He'd woken up a few times after the first, and there had always been someone with him. Sometimes it was Peggy, stroking the hair back from his face and quietly talking to doctors who come into the room. The Howlies came often, no more than two in the room at a time, and even Colonel Phillips had appeared, his usual gruff demeanour firmly in place. Howard Stark had taken to coming in, and Bucky found it quite relaxing to listen to the other man's ramblings without needing to contribute anything to the conversation. He still didn't see Steve.
Finally, when Bucky was able to speak more than one word without passing out, he asked.
"Where's Steve?"
Howard froze, mid-way through a story about his latest conquest, his hands still mid-flail. Bucky watched, wary, as the inventor slowly lowered his hands, not looking at Bucky.
"There are some things we need to tell you," Howard said quietly. Bucky watched him, his brows furrowing in confusion. What was there to tell? He'd fallen off the side of a train, into a ravine, somehow survived, and his best friend was nowhere to be found.
Maybe Steve only came when he was asleep, Bucky mused as he was helped into a wheelchair by a couple of nurses and wheeled down the corridor. He didn't know how much he slept, and it could just be that Steve always caught him when he was asleep.
The place that Bucky had assumed to be a hospital turned out to be another SSR base, although Bucky wasn't sure which one. Were they still in France, or were they in England again? Were they even in Europe at all?
Howard walked beside him, uncharacteristically silent. It wasn't until they walked through a set of doors to a small conference room that Howard spoke, and it wasn't to him.
"Fetch the Howling Commandoes and Agent Carter," Howard said to one of the nurses. The woman nodded and hurried out of the room. The other nurse started fussing over Bucky, checking his pulse and temperature and examining the bandages over the stump of his arm, her manner brisk but not unkind. Howard started pacing, fiddling with something in his hands that emitted a whirring noise every time he twisted its dials.
It wasn't long before Peggy strode into the room, her heels making loud clicking noises on the hard floor. Ever since that first time, Bucky had only ever seen her dressed as impeccably as he remembered. He wondered if it was just a dream. She was quickly followed by Dum Dum, Gabe, Morita, Falsworth and Dernier, each of them giving Bucky a smile. When they got close enough, Dum Dum playfully whacked Bucky's good shoulder.
"What's this about, Howard?" Peggy asked briskly, folding her arms across her chest. "I'm in the middle of something quite important, and-" She cut herself off when she met Bucky's eyes, and all the fight seemed to drain out of her. "Oh. Well, I suppose it needs to happen eventually."
"What needs to happen?" Bucky asked. His voice was still raspy from however long it had been since he fell.
"Sarge, what do you remember about the accident?" Gabe asked gently.
"Uh..." Bucky wracked his brain. "We were on a mission to capture Arnim Zola. You, me and Steve used a zipline to get onto the train, and we split up into two groups. You went one way, Steve and I went the other." Bucky suddenly felt very cold, and shivered. The nurse draped a blanket over his shoulders, and he gripped it with his one hand and smiled at her gratefully.
"Anything else?" Gabe asked, his dark eyes kind.
"There was.. a soldier, I guess. He had those guns, the ones powered by the cube? He blew a hole in the side of the train, and blasted me out of it before Steve could bring him down." Bucky licked his lips absentmindedly. "I hung onto the side. Steve couldn't reach me in time."
"James, do you know why you survived?" Peggy asked gently.
"Luck?"
"Sarge, no offence, but that was a thousand-foot drop, at least," Morita murmured. "No regular human could survive that."
"The only ones who probably could would be Captain Rogers or Johann Schmidt, or someone with a form of the serum," Peggy continued. "James, do you remember anything being different after coming back from Azzano?"
"I don't... I don't know, that was two years ago," Bucky mumbled. "So Zola gave me a serum, I survived. I don't care - where's Steve?"
The room went silent.
"He doesn't know?" Falsworth asked incredulously.
"He's been too sick-" the nurse started.
"It's about Steve!" Falsworth snapped. "He deserves to be the first to know, not the last person in the whole damned country!"
"He wasn't ready," Howard protested. "A shock like that could have caused his heart to stop, permanently! We weren't going to risk it when there was a chance he could die."
Dernier fired off rapid French, his face red and almost spitting with rage. Dum Dum's hand tightened on Bucky's shoulder.
"What's this about?" Bucky found his voice was wavering. "Why won't you tell me where Steve is?"
"Kid-" Dum Dum started, but Bucky shrugged off his hand, standing up shakily. The nurse made an aborted move towards him as if to force him back into his seat, but he glared at her fiercely enough for her to take a couple of steps back.
"Where's Steve?" Bucky snarled. Peggy closed her eyes, let out a breath. When she looked at him again, Bucky was shocked to see tears in her eyes.
"Captain Rogers, in an effort to stop the Red Skull, jumped aboard the Nazi warplane known as the Valkyrie," Howard said quietly, his eyes trained on the floor. "He defeated Schmidt but realised that the Valkyrie was carrying nuclear bombs, one for each of the major cities in Western control. In order to stop the bombing, he crashed the plane somewhere in the Arctic circle."
Howard took a deep breath, and when he looked up, his expression was full of regret. "We haven't found a body."
The world disappeared behind Bucky in a funnel, nothing existing except Howard's face and the words that had just come out of his mouth. We haven't found a body.
A body.
Steve was dead.
A hand rested on his shoulder, and Bucky didn't bother shrugging it off again. He couldn't take his eyes off Howard, his mind off the words that still circulated through his head and through the room like a bitter smoke, a foul disease. The words that Bucky had been dreading since he was a child and realised that Steve might not live through the next illness.
Steve Rogers is dead.
A chilling wail pierced the air, and Bucky felt arms around him, holding him upright. The wail persisted, soaked through the walls and shaking Bucky to the bone, before it finally broke off into sobs, huge, wracking sounds that made the whole world shake. It wasn't until Bucky felt the tears on his cheeks that he realised the sounds were coming from him.
Because Steve Rogers was dead.
And Bucky may as well have been, too.