ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ ʜᴜʀʀʏ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ ᴍᴇ (ɪ ᴄᴀɴ’ᴛ ʙʀᴇᴀᴛʜᴇ)

It felt like he couldn’t breathe. When Bucky had been captured. Taken.

And as he stormed the Nazi base, when Bucky wasn’t with the other soldiers, that feeling only intensified.

Part of him wished Bucky was dead. It was wrong, and he knew it. But he still hoped. He hoped that they’d just shot him, and he fell, and he died. Just like that. Gone. No pain, maybe didn’t even know it.

He hoped that Bucky had left him. Quickly.

Steve had no family left. Well, that’s not exactly true. He had Bucky, and Bucky’s family. But did that really count?

He had Bucky, Bucky’s little sister Rebecca, Bucky’s mother Winifred, and even Bucky’s asshole of a father, George. Well, George was only an ass sometimes. Sometimes he was a wonderful person and a true role model, but he wasn’t exactly the greatest. He could be violent, on occasion.

Not violent like Steve’s on father was before he left, but George Barnes wasn’t shy about beating his children as a punishment.

But it was hard. It was hard, when he got back from that awful HYDRA base. HYDRA, they called themselves. Nazis.

It was hard, when he and Bucky shared a cabin. It wasn’t even really a cabin, but it wasn’t a tent either. It had just enough room for two cots. It was by no means large, and Steve was by no means small. Not anymore.

He could see the look in Bucky’s eyes, the longing, the fear. He was safe now, he was rescued. But the battle wasn’t over. And Steve could tell by that very look in his eyes meant that the battle would never really be over. Not for Bucky.

He’d known about shell-shocked soldiers returning from war. He knew one, even. Mr. Raynor.

The man was older, and lived not too far from Steve. Steve and Bucky, really, considering how much time Bucky spent there and how he even paid most of the rent.

Mr. Raynor lived alone. No family, no wife, no children. Neighbors would bring him food, sometimes, when they could spare it. He became a social outcast, not unlike Steve.

Steve never really interacted with the man, but he knew that the man wasn’t some kind of freak like some of his neighbors seemed to think. Steve didn’t have any real conversations with him, but he’d seen him in passing. He’d seen the look in his eyes.

And he saw that same look in Bucky’s beautiful blue eyes as they stared at him.

“You don’t look like you,” Bucky told him.

“..I am, though. I am me.” Steve said awkwardly. He didn’t know what to say to that.

“I guess.” Bucky answered back.

That had left Steve feeling worse than he already had been.

He met with Colonel Phillips, got thanked and yelled at at the same time, and then walked right back to his cabin. To Bucky.

He was lying down. He laid on his side, facing the entrance as best he could from the placement of his cot. The two cots were on other side of the entrance, and there was about a foot of room between the ends of the cots and the back wall.

“I can’t lay on my back anymore,” Bucky confessed.

“No?” Steve sat on his cot, pulling off his boots.

“Makes me see things. Things that aren’t there. But they used to be. I remember them.” Bucky wasn’t looking at Steve. He was looking down, so his eyelids looked almost closed. Closed, like his eyes would’ve been in a casket if Steve hadn’t been there when he was.

Steve had no idea what Bucky meant. But he had a feeling the way his brain seemed to be scrambled had something to do with the Nazis that had tortured him.

“I want to go home.” Bucky said suddenly, looking up at Steve.

“I know.” Steve frowned.

“I didn’t wanna come in the first place. But they don’t want me to go, and I can’t leave you. I can’t.” Bucky seemed to be getting distressed.

“You don’t have to. I’m right here. We’re together. And we’re—we’ll make it home. Together.” Steve vowed. Bucky’s eyes watered.

“I just wanna see my ma.” Steve’s heart shattered at the words.

“I know you do. And you will. I’m going to get you home.” Steve promised. You. Not us, his mind reminded him bitterly. Steve couldn’t just leave. Not now. Not when he was basically property of the government and still had a few shows to do. Not when he’s stuck in the army, in the war, in the middle of the one thing that could tear him and Bucky apart any day.

It was clear Bucky was trying to hold in his sobs.

Steve stood, in his undershirt and more comfortable pants, and walked towards his closest friend.

Changing in front of Bucky wasn’t weird. They knew each other well, they were both grown adult men and were in the army. Stuff like that didn’t matter anymore.

Bucky reached for him, and Steve crawled into his cot with him. They barely fit, and Steve was worried that if he moved a bit too much the whole thing would collapse under them.

He took Bucky in his arms.

“You’re warm.” Bucky murmured.

Sharing a bed wasn’t weird for them either. For other men, sharing a bed was a strange thing when it wasn’t necessary. But Bucky and Steve weren’t like most of the other soldiers.

When Steve was smaller, Bucky would share his bed to keep him warm on cold winter nights. It worked for them.

“Yeah.” Steve whispered back.

“I’m scared. M’not..not like I used to be. Nothing is. You aren’t. I’m not. The world isn’t.” Bucky’s brows were furrowed.

“I am too,” Steve breathed. Bucky was right. He would forever be different. And Steve would be, too. He wasn’t smaller. He wasn’t sick, he wasn’t even sure if he smelled the same for Christ’s sake.

The world, obviously, had changed. The war, the fact that they went from Brooklyn to Europe, how instead of candy shops and apartments, life had changed to trenches and gunfire.

Nothing was the same. Not like it had been.

“Remember our first day of school? Back when we were younger?” Steve asked suddenly.

“Kind of?” Bucky replied.

Steve remembered. He had been terrified. He couldn’t do a whole lot due to his various ailments, but being the smallest kid in his class didn’t exactly make it better. Making friends was hard. He couldn’t play the sports with the other boys. He obviously didn’t fit in with the girls.

But he did fit in with Bucky. And that was enough.

“C’mon, Stevie. It won’t be scary. I promise.” A very young Bucky had assured him. His mother had given him a similar reassurance that morning, but his nerves weren’t that easy to be convinced.

Bucky was a year older. They wouldn’t be in the same class, and that scared Steve to death.

“You promised me you’d get me through the day and back home, safe and sound.” Steve murmured against Bucky’s hair. “I’m gonna do the same.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” Steve swore.

——————-

“Fuck!” Steve gasped as he climbed on the outside of the train. Bucky was fine. He was going to go home.

“I just wanna see my ma.”

“Grab my hand!” He shouted, clutching the bar on the side of the train.

Bucky was holding on to an identical one, and he reached for Steve. Their fingers brushed.

And then Bucky jolted. He was falling. He was right there, and Steve had almost had him, and then he was falling, falling, falling.

It felt like time was moving slowly, as cliche as it sounds. He heard Bucky scream. Bucky was leaving him. Steve had lived through so many winters, had survived so many illnesses, just to stay with Bucky. To not leave him. He’d risked his life getting that serum just so he could be with Bucky. He’d lived through war just to be with Bucky. To not leave him.

But here they both were. And Bucky was leaving him.

Please, God, he begged. Let him die. Let him die quickly. Steve couldn’t breathe.

He hoped Bucky would fall and hit his head and that would be it.

He could only imagine Bucky, lying cold and half-dead in the snow for several agonizing hours.

But the train kept moving. Breathless sobs wracked his body. He couldn’t breathe. Fuck, he couldn’t breathe. Not without Bucky.

———————

“Steve?” He knew that voice. He spun around, watching the one person he could never lose begin to fall to the ground.

Bucky’s legs, the legs that had carried him all his life, began to turn to ash. The ash went up his torso, up his chest, up his face. Until he was nothing.

Steve raced towards the pile of dust that was once his beloved.

He grazed his hand over it. He would scream, cry, punch the ground if he could. But he couldn’t breathe. That same breathless feeling that had been with him throughout his entire life—whether he was sick in bed or on a train in the Alps—filled his body again. He clutched at his heart, wondering when it would stop working due to his lack of oxygen. But it never did.

And that made the whole ordeal even worse. He couldn’t breathe.