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Steve watches his entire world fall.
It’s not even a metaphor. God, he wishes it was. But it’s not. He can’t but watch as his whole world, his other half, the only thing that still really matters to him falls. Leaves. Disappears before his eyes. The scream rings in his ears above the howls of the wind and he still hears it days after it happens.
A part of him coaxes him to jump after him. To catch him, to help him, to die with him, he doesn’t know - but he knows he should jump too.
He doesn’t. He holds on to the train and stares as the figure he’s so used to seeing becomes smaller and smaller until it’s gone.
Gone.
Steve doesn’t remember a world where Bucky isn’t. He got a glimpse of it when he left for the war – but he was still there, somehow. In his dreams, in the memories their apartment still held, in the letters he’d write every week regardless of the lack of answers, in the drawings he’d stay up all night working on because every damn time he closed his eyes to sleep he’d see him.
Gone.
Steve doesn’t wanna live in a world where Bucky isn’t. It makes no sense, it hurts, it feels unreal, it feels wrong. Wrong. It’s wrong. Steve isn’t without Bucky and he cannot bear it.
So Steve hides behind Captain America. He allows himself a night of weakness, a night of tears before going back to the jaws of death. He shuts the world out and does his duty. He wins, and he avenges what he lost – but not because he wants to avenge it. He even lacks that motivation now. He wins because that’s what Captain America is supposed to do, and he’s nothing but Captain America right now.
But Steve is still in there, too. It feels like he fell that day too, but he didn’t.
He didn’t, and he should have
he should have
he fucking should have.
Because Steve can’t be without Bucky. It’s wrong and it hurts like fucking hell and once Captain America does his duty – there’s nothing left for Steve Rogers.
There’s nothing left but to follow. Bucky followed Captain America and ended up gone because of it. It’s only fair Steve Roger does the same.
He’s almost grateful when he finds himself on that plane, and Captain America says it’s the only way but Steve Rogers knows he’d do it even if it wasn’t. He’s almost grateful when the radio dies and he’s left with nothing but his thoughts and the promise of joining his other half, his entire world – wherever that might be.
He wonders if he will. Inseparable. They’ve followed each other everywhere, been together through heaven and hell – it’d make sense that they are together in this one too. Inseparable. Please.
As the ice gets closer and closer, he feels more at peace that he has in the last couple of weeks. This is what he has to do, where he’s supposed to be. For the first time since that damned train, he feels okay. He should have fallen then, but he’s doing it now, and everything seems back into place.
His last thought before the cold takes over is a silent prayer to a god he doesn’t believe in anymore. Please, let him follow. Please, let them be together in this too. Please, let them be together again. At last. Please.
(Miles away, in a place just as cold and over a metal table, Bucky Barnes wakes up and finds himself alone in the world.)