" 'Cause I'm with you until the end of the line," he said and he meant it. There was no way he could keep fighting, not if it meant hurting Bucky. He couldn't do it. So he let his body go lax and he waited. He wasn't sure what he expected, he knew this could very well end with Bucky beating him to death, he prayed if that happened Hydra took that memory. Because he didn't want Bucky to remember it.
The man above him had pulled his arm back ready to hit him again but he had frozen at the words. His eyes wide as he stared down at Steve. Bucky's eyes held so much fear that Steve just wanted to reach out and tell him it would all be okay.
Instead he watched as his friend brought his arm down and instead of hitting him he started to look at his owns. He looked at them like they were something horrid. A slow kind of realization coming over him.
Then he looked back at Steve, "Who..."
Then a crack echoed through the room and Steve felt the ground beneath him disappear and he was falling.
He stared in disbelief as he fell away from Bucky.
This couldn't be happening, he had just found him. He couldn't think of how fate could be so cruel, letting them both be hear years after both of them should have perished only to have it end like this. End before he could say all the things he wanted, end before he could free Bucky, to save him.
A part of him wanted to scream as he fell. But the only sound he made was a gasped when his back slammed into the cold water. The impact cost him his breath and as he started to sink he had to slam his mouth shut to prevent water from getting in.
He tried to swim. But his body wouldn't listen. No matter how hard he screamed in his mind for his arms and legs to move nothing happened. He knew he was hurt but he hadn't realized how bad. He had been to distracted by Bucky.
He wanted to cry out as he felt his body start to go numb from the freezing water. Only a brief thought to how it felt to be submerged in the icy cold once again.
He looked above him as the sun slowly faded away, being swallowed by the darkness of the water around him, he prayed his last words had woken up Bucky. He was almost sure in that last second he had seen him, the real Bucky in the soldiers eyes. Maybe he had saved him after all.
He tried again to command his numb body to move, he didn't want to die like this, drowning because his own body wasn't strong enough to save him. But his body gave no indication of hearing his inward demands. He was weaker now then when he hit the water, and with a dreaded understand in knew he wasn't saving himself this time.
He wasn't ready to go yet, but his lungs were starting to burn and his vision was growing darker. It was getting harder to think.
Fuck he was so tired, he had been fighting for so long.
The burning grew as did the exhaustion and he closed his eyes, to weak to force them to stay open.
Then something was grabbing him. Pulling him upwards. He tried to open his eyes but he didn't have the strength.
Everything was fuzzy was he felt hims face break through the surface of the water. Then he was dragged out of the water and dropped on the hard ground.
He could feel himself loosing consciousness again, and tried to fight it. He was vaguely wear of a hand pressing against his neck and then something pressing against on of his wounds. As he faded into the black he swear he heard a curse and some Bucky walk away from him.