The fall must have been no longer than a few seconds, yet it felt like it had taken an hour for him to hit the ground. His scream left a burning sensation in his throat, the cold air numbing it just enough. It felt as if the world enclosed around him for just a moment, the whole galaxy zoomed in on the hand that reached out to him. Yet, it was not his destiny to understand the stars; his human folly had let the whole universe slip from his grasp.
Cold.
It hurts.
He didn’t know when he woke, but the train sounded as if it were long gone. The only noise was his heavy breathing as the white sky engulfed him. The snow fell silently, his breath melting the flakes before reaching his face. His body ached against the ground, but he made no attempt to move. He felt warm, though he knew that wasn’t possible. His raggedy breathing sounded almost, peaceful, like the days he and Steve spent making snow angels on the snow-covered, dirty sidewalk as kids.
Behind his breath, he could hear the sounds of laughter, the sounds of his childhood. He could hear his mother telling him to stay home a little bit longer and his sister begging him to teach her how to fight. When his eyes closed to blink, he could see Steve’s hand reaching out to him, not on the broken side of a train, but instead standing before him. He was like the guiding angel to whom Bucky would follow to the afterlife. The light was warm, his eyes persuasive.
The warmth, yet biting cold, that radiated from his left shoulder and arm should have made him fearful of his destiny. He could not feel his hand one bit. The blood so obviously leaking from his body, stealing consciousness from his mind, was not a worry to a man so obviously dead. No one would come for him, it was a height even he couldn’t fathom surviving. It was on a mission path so treacherous that days of searching may lead to nothing, the snow covering his body 6 feet under before the shovels could.
His mouth still hung open, too tired to close it. His eyes were leadened, but his mind told him to stay awake, for there was a reason he survived. The voices in his ear morphed into humming. The song his mother would hum and sing while she put him and her sister to bed every night. Every night, before his teenage rebellion forced him to tear himself away from his mother’s loving grasp. What he would give to hear it once more. What he would do to stand up and drag his corpse to his home and lie in his bed, waiting for his mother to tuck him in one more time.
He wondered if Steve lay in the same mountain range only a mile or so ahead of him. Did the war take him too? Was Steve dying only a few hundred feet from him, yet neither would ever know until their ghosts met wandering in the snow-covered land? Bucky didn’t know how long he was asleep for or if the fall had been so great that the snow would have muffled the engine from the mountain tops.
His breath became labored, more labored than before. His lungs filled with fluid, and his heart slowed to a crawl. He lay in the snow, listening to himself die. He almost wondered why no animals were picking at his corpse; perhaps his alcohol-filled, cigarette-smelling flesh was too disgusting for even a starving beast to want a taste. Perhaps when the Earth warmed, like that Swedish scientist had warned about 50 years ago, his bones would be uncovered, and his skeleton would be buried next to his family, or next to Steve. No, no, if his body was found, he would not be laid next to anyone he knew, his tombstone already made white and pristine next to men he had never met, in a short-cut grass graveyard he could never bear to visit. His empty casket would be dug up, and his rotted, eaten-at pile of discolored bones would be tossed in like a bundle of sticks into a fire pit. He would not have the privilege of being next to the ones he cared for, even if the government claimed that this gravesite was the highest honor a man could receive.
His left arm no longer spilled enough blood to keep his body warm, no feeling left past his shoulder, yet he was feeling hotter than ever. The pins and needles burned at his skin, his forehead sweating as he cried internally to take off his clothes and let the agony end. To make his death faster, to let the world win, and for his body to stop fighting. His breath drew in sharply, shallow to a fault as he coughed and spat up something wet. The metallic taste on his tongue would have made him gag if he had not been choking on it.
His eyes were half open, and he tried to turn, but his body would not move. His mother begged him to stay still, to let the angels guide him. Let himself go, to be free of the pain. Yet, Steve pushed at him. He was no longer holding out a hand to help him to the world beyond but was pressing against his chest with a force that felt overpowering. Steve was wordless as he pointed behind Bucky, but his head would not turn to look. Steve’s mouth opened to yell, to warn, scream to look and see what the world still had to offer.
Do not let yourself go. Bucky tried to read his lips.
Stay alive, I’ll come and find you. His eyes blinked slower, savoring the memory of Steve.
I’m right behind you!
The crunching of snow beneath a pair of heavy boots did not wake Bucky up more than the warning Steve had given him. It was either Grim to reap his soul or Steve to save it. But the voice he heard fit neither description. Although he did not know what he expected Grim to sound like, the words were not those of Death’s. In fact, they did not give him hope at all; the accent was thick, and the words were poisoned with lies.
“Found him.”
“You’re lucky, kid. God noticed you.”