Chapter 1
Shit.
Bad enough Becca caught him and some guy with their pants down behind the bathrooms. Worse, she’d let out a squeal and ran, the stupid little fucker. By the time he’d fumbled an apology, tripped over his pants and got them up and buckled she was nowhere in sight.
"Becks!"
Yeah. Running through Riverside Park with a still half-hard boner. That was fun. Not to mention the sex hair and a stranger’s cum all down his face. The looks he was getting…
It wasn’t his fault, damnit. Becca’d been hitting it off with some rich kids and their nanny, and he’d snuck away to smoke. So he wasn’t big brother of the year, sue him. He was seventeen and selfish, mulling over getting a soda when some guy in a Armani tracksuit and three hundred dollar shoes gave him a Look, and what the hell. He’d make a few bucks, get some oxy and maybe fucking feel something for once.
But she’d been right there. And she’d been safe.
Now he’d lost his little sister in goddamn Manhattan.
Bucky sent a frantic glance towards the playground. Debbie and Hattie were still on the swings, chattering away with the Banana Republic twins and their nanny. He stopped. Ran a hand through his hair. Shit. Hattie wasn’t even in preschool yet. He couldn’t just run after Becca and leave them there.
But Becca’d gone off on her own to fuck knows where and the world was a shit place for anyone let alone little girls, and damnit there were at least a dozen grown ups here. Shit day. Shit choices. Fuck. Mom was going to kill him.
...
He’d been Debbie’s age when 9/11 happened. And if he’d known today was the day goddamn aliens were going to come out of the sky and the US government tried to nuke NYC he wouldn’t’ve been out in the park turning tricks let alone taking his kid sisters there in the first place.
…
The only consolation (if there was a consolation) were cell phones. Thank G-d for fucking cell phones. Everyone had one these days. It wasn’t like before. Not when Dad’d been late getting him to school that morning because Bucky was being a brat and wouldn’t even hug him goodbye. Then the teachers started crying, one after another, and kids were getting pulled out of class and no one would tell him what the fuck was going on and he’d never seen an adult so terrified, never been so fucking scared in his life. Then mom came and she was crying, and there were planes falling out of the sky all over America and the Towers were gone and his Dad worked down there and no one knew what was happening and no one could tell him his Dad was okay. His mom spent the whole day screaming and shaking and Bucky watched the smoke rising from Midtown and thought it was the end of the world.
But when the skies were full of strange ships and aliens and the buildings were falling and he ducked behind a dumpster for shelter he didn’t think to call. Didn’t think to text. Didn’t think about Mom, didn’t think of Debbie or Hattie or even Becca out there all on her own. He curled up in a ball and watched himself from far, far away as his mind went blank. No fear. No pain. Acceptance bordering on relief: He was going to die here. It would be okay. He had his phone on him. They’d find him.
There'd be a body to bury. It wouldn’t be like before.
…
But as the dust settled and sirens screamed he came back to himself. The phone was all cracked to hell but it had battery and signal and he couldn’t even text his hands were shaking so bad but he could call so he did. Called the one person who could possibly give a shit about some fucked up teen like him, the one person in the world who’d worry herself sick over him like she’d done for George Barnes so long ago.
“James!”
“Ma.”
“I was so worried! Are you alright? Are you safe? And the girls? Where are you, sweetie, I’ll come and get you—James? James! Sweetheart answer me. James! Where are you? What’s happened? Where are the girls!”
Bucky felt a lump grow in his throat. It tasted like dust and cum and choked back shame. “I don’t have ‘em, ma.”
...
It all worked out in the end, though. Debbie remembered mom’s cell through the panic so some woman named Katrya called, said they were alive at least, though it’d be hours before they could reach them. Then Becca’d got her picture plastered all over the news getting carried to an ambulance by Captain fucking America and the girls were crying all the way to the hospital and Becca wouldn’t talk she was still so shaken and Mom couldn’t even look at him he was such a colossal shitty fuck up of a son. So Bucky went home, climbed out on the fire escape and lit up a cigarette to watch the smoke rising over Midtown and knew it was the end of the fucking world.
But the next day the sun came up like nothing happened, and Bucky blew some businessman behind the bodega and tried heroin for the first time. Saturday Mom dragged them all to Temple, like G-d (or the concept of G-d, however you relate to it when fucking Thor was battling aliens and your government tried to turn Midtown into a re-enactment of Sodom and Gomorrah) ever gave a shit about them. Call him Ishmael because Bucky’d gave up fighting any idea of G-d a long time ago.
He’d grown up Reformed if anything, so it wasn’t like they’d ever kept Kosher or even Shabbat. He hadn’t really been to temple much except Yom Kippur or someone’s Bar Mitzvah. But the world was in crisis, so Mom did that thing that grown ups do where they pretend everything’s going to be okay but you know it isn’t and suddenly became super Jewish again. And people prayed and they sang and the crotchety old survivors laughed and said they’d lived through Hitler and everybody said shit like ‘solidarity’ and ‘community’ as if humanity’s understanding of the universe hadn’t changed and a bunch of kids hadn’t got crushed, his little sisters almost among them. Then because he was the poor screw-up of a kid who lost his dad on 9/11 and everyone knew it Rabbi Arenson had arranged for him to help open the Ark and Bucky lost his shit. Lost it right there in temple laughing so hard he was crying and Becca was scared of him again.
...
They sat him down with Dr. Zacharias and he lied his way through. He’d tried some drugs who hadn’t. Sure he’d been sexually active once but he used a condom, so it was okay? This was all confidential, right? Don’t tell his mom? Of course wasn’t going to hurt himself again. She told him to take some new meds and do these breathing exercises and what did he think about yoga or these group sessions for youth affected by the Chitauri invasion and to talk to his mom or his step-dad or a Rabbi or the counselor at school and she was here for him, her door was always open, he could always call. It hadn’t helped before, it wouldn’t help now, but he said thank you, ma’am like a good little boy because he’d known her before the world had gone to shit and she'd been kind.
...
He didn’t bother to cheek the pills anymore. It didn't help. He hadn't thought it would.
He slept. He ate. August came and he even went to school at least half the days, and sometimes stayed through lunch. He avoided his siblings and if Mom left the house she took the girls with her. He hadn’t died in the Chitauri Invasion. Not even when he’d wanted to. He’d been scared of the pain but not the dying. He’d be pissed at his concept of G-d but the universe wasn’t unfair or ironic it was simply indifferent. A single human named Bucky Barnes among the billions to have existed and will have ever existed was as inconsequential as an atom. He didn’t ask to be born, didn’t ask for this body and had no hope of a world to come. So he shot up with dirty needles and let older guys fuck him and stood close to the edge of the subway platform and wondered what it’d feel like to fall.