CA:TWS vignette: Hard Landing
I wrote a Bucky-POV missing scene story for the first movie, La Caduta and I sort of wish I still had that title available to me here, but I suppose that this is a kind of sequel to that one, what comes after in every sense. Steve rescues Bucky, but not the one he came for, and Bucky is unsure of how to deal with that.
Hard Landing
1500 words | PG-13 | Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers
summary: He starts walking away, unsure if he is supposed to make sure that Steve is still breathing or that Captain America is not.
He jumps after Steve/Captain America, not sure why. No, that's not true. He's not sure which reason is more important, which impetus is driving him, because he is unable to understand anything in the chaos of his mind, everything jumbled and superimposed and warping around on itself.
Steve is his friend, his brother, his savior. Captain America is his mission, his enemy, his sole chance to escape Pierce's disappointment and anger and The Machine.
Conflicting imperatives, conflicting facts, conflicting feelings that disturb him most of all. Killing Captain America is the reason he was woken; it is a necessary step in the long-gestating plan to order the world on a more peaceful axis. Protecting Steve is instinct, a behavior learned from childhood and honed through frequent practice as they grew to adulthood.
He is a weapon, stripped of all that is inessential and inefficient, given everything he needs to perform his function, built for the battlefield and carefully put away between uses because he would be wasted outside of it and he is too valuable for that. He is a man, full of frailty and weakness who understands privation and fear and pain and longing; the battlefield is not his home, is nowhere near his home, but he is there because he is cannon fodder and he prays he'll get out of it alive.
He doesn't. And then the battlefield becomes everything, eternal and soothing because it is all he knows and there is no one better at the art of war.
There are sketchpads, pages of loose sheets with charcoal drawings, watercolors drying on the kitchen table. "We have to eat here, you realize that?" "Why are you drawing my foot?" and he knows that's his own voice asking the man who is falling into the river below him.
Captain America/Steve lands badly, the looseness of his limp body the only thing that keeps him from shattering on impact. Codename: Winter Soldier/Bucky twists and folds himself in the air to chase him, crossing his arms over his chest and holding his legs together, and breaks the surface with a force that still jars him in his bones and makes him ache. He finds his quarry and manages to get both of them to the riverbank before his lungs burst and his body is overcome by pain. It's a near thing and he drops Captain America/Steve halfway out of the water.
He starts walking away, unsure if he is supposed to make sure that Steve is still breathing or that Captain America is not.
He doesn't go far, just a few steps before he turns around and the vulnerability of what he sees hurts him in ways that the water landing didn't. The vanquished Captain America, lying still and pale as fresh blood wells up to replace what the water washed clean, is superimposed by Steve, the Steve from before everything, and the snarl of Codename: Winter Soldier is shouted down by the fear of young Bucky Barnes that Steve's really not okay this time and he just needs to see him breathe.
CPR is part of his skill set because he's been on protection assignments; Bucky Barnes died before it was ever developed. He waits for Captain America/Steve to cough up water, never rousing enough to be conscious of what he's doing, and then steps away. There's still a rattle when Captain America/Steve breathes, but not enough to choke him, and that will do.
He starts walking away again, but then runs into the river because he feels bile rising and he can't leave evidence. He falls to his knees and throws up until there are just dry heaves, aware that his sick is floating around him and not caring because it's less disgusting than what's in his head. Parallel tracks of Codename: Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes, but they are not balanced, not even close. Winter Soldier's memories are many and bright and vivid, covered in blood and lit by fire; Bucky Barnes's are muted in tone and palette and so brief. He doesn't understand Bucky's memories even as he knows that they are his own; they feel like a stranger's, like they are spoken in another language, complicated and knit of many colors. Winter Soldier's are elemental and clear, the Machine made them clear by stripping away everything else but what was necessary for mission completion.
He stands up and wades further into the water to clean himself up; he dives under the surface, undecided if he wants to come back up because he knows that he can never be clean. The filth is not on his skin, but underneath it. He forces himself up to breathe air because Winter Soldier will not give Captain America the victory of dying in front of him and Bucky can't break Steve's heart like that. Better to do it elsewhere, leaving them both to wonder about his fate, the Captain in fear and Steve in hope.
Back at the river bank, he sits near (but not close) to the supine Captain America/Steve and inventories his weapons, since that at least is something understandable, something with an actual answer. His pistol is water-logged and he breaks it down, drying what he can on the chamois he keeps for such a purpose. The salt may ruin everything, but not today. He lost one knife in the fall, but the other and his dagger are still strapped in and ready for use. He prepares himself for battle, unsure of who the enemy is and aware that it is probably him.
He hears voices before he can see the speakers and stands, ready to defend Captain America/Steve even if he hasn't settled whether the other man is a war prize or a gift. The voices resolve themselves into men aboard a Coast Guard vessel cruising slowly up the river and Winter Soldier and Bucky wait to see if they come to praise him for his defeat of Captain America or kill him for the murder of their icon.
It's the former. They recognize Winter Soldier and Bucky lets him do what he does best, helps him, because whatever else is undecided in the conflict between their demands for his sense of self, they are both furious at what has been done to them and more than willing to take it out on the nearest complicit party. The five men on the boat had nothing to do with the torture, not in Italy and not in Pierce's dungeon in Virginia, but they say Hail HYDRA and that is enough.
He kills them quickly and mostly cleanly because he needs clothes, even a uniform that will raise questions, if he is to get himself away from this river bank without detection. He destroys the boat's GPS and then tosses it for useful items, finding food and water and a first-aid kit that he can use for himself and to bind Steve's wounds so that he won't bleed out before rescue arrives. He will stand watch over Captain America/Steve until help comes and proves itself capable, but he will not allow them to see him. He takes the dead men's phones and wallets, sorting the contents of the latter between what can be used indefinitely (cash, etc.) and what can be used until someone is looking for the dead men.
The hours of watch pass fitfully, the hyperawareness required near impossible when all he can hear are the screams of the dead and all he can see is destruction except when he looks at Steve and that's when he can, for fleeting moments, feel like Bucky Barnes and only Bucky Barnes. In those heartbeats he can hear laughter and sarcasm and feel warmth that is alien to him because it has nothing to do with fire, because it comes from within him and within Steve and is given freely and not wrapped in pain.
The imperative to kill Captain America is faded and the longer he goes without Pierce and the others plucking inconvenient facts from his head like weeds, the less his memories seem to be parallel tracks and the more they bleed together.
There is so much blood.
The next voices to approach come from the shore after dusk and they are friendlies, marines in full gear who see Captain America lying unmoving on the ground and shout "Corpsman up!" and he watches them with the cold assessment of the Winter Soldier and the desperation of Bucky Barnes. He's not sure which one of them guides him through the darkness away from where Steve is being strapped to a board so that he can be stretchered away. He knows that he can't face Steve until he figures that out, if he ever can.
Also posted at DW.
Hard Landing
1500 words | PG-13 | Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers
summary: He starts walking away, unsure if he is supposed to make sure that Steve is still breathing or that Captain America is not.
He jumps after Steve/Captain America, not sure why. No, that's not true. He's not sure which reason is more important, which impetus is driving him, because he is unable to understand anything in the chaos of his mind, everything jumbled and superimposed and warping around on itself.
Steve is his friend, his brother, his savior. Captain America is his mission, his enemy, his sole chance to escape Pierce's disappointment and anger and The Machine.
Conflicting imperatives, conflicting facts, conflicting feelings that disturb him most of all. Killing Captain America is the reason he was woken; it is a necessary step in the long-gestating plan to order the world on a more peaceful axis. Protecting Steve is instinct, a behavior learned from childhood and honed through frequent practice as they grew to adulthood.
He is a weapon, stripped of all that is inessential and inefficient, given everything he needs to perform his function, built for the battlefield and carefully put away between uses because he would be wasted outside of it and he is too valuable for that. He is a man, full of frailty and weakness who understands privation and fear and pain and longing; the battlefield is not his home, is nowhere near his home, but he is there because he is cannon fodder and he prays he'll get out of it alive.
He doesn't. And then the battlefield becomes everything, eternal and soothing because it is all he knows and there is no one better at the art of war.
There are sketchpads, pages of loose sheets with charcoal drawings, watercolors drying on the kitchen table. "We have to eat here, you realize that?" "Why are you drawing my foot?" and he knows that's his own voice asking the man who is falling into the river below him.
Captain America/Steve lands badly, the looseness of his limp body the only thing that keeps him from shattering on impact. Codename: Winter Soldier/Bucky twists and folds himself in the air to chase him, crossing his arms over his chest and holding his legs together, and breaks the surface with a force that still jars him in his bones and makes him ache. He finds his quarry and manages to get both of them to the riverbank before his lungs burst and his body is overcome by pain. It's a near thing and he drops Captain America/Steve halfway out of the water.
He starts walking away, unsure if he is supposed to make sure that Steve is still breathing or that Captain America is not.
He doesn't go far, just a few steps before he turns around and the vulnerability of what he sees hurts him in ways that the water landing didn't. The vanquished Captain America, lying still and pale as fresh blood wells up to replace what the water washed clean, is superimposed by Steve, the Steve from before everything, and the snarl of Codename: Winter Soldier is shouted down by the fear of young Bucky Barnes that Steve's really not okay this time and he just needs to see him breathe.
CPR is part of his skill set because he's been on protection assignments; Bucky Barnes died before it was ever developed. He waits for Captain America/Steve to cough up water, never rousing enough to be conscious of what he's doing, and then steps away. There's still a rattle when Captain America/Steve breathes, but not enough to choke him, and that will do.
He starts walking away again, but then runs into the river because he feels bile rising and he can't leave evidence. He falls to his knees and throws up until there are just dry heaves, aware that his sick is floating around him and not caring because it's less disgusting than what's in his head. Parallel tracks of Codename: Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes, but they are not balanced, not even close. Winter Soldier's memories are many and bright and vivid, covered in blood and lit by fire; Bucky Barnes's are muted in tone and palette and so brief. He doesn't understand Bucky's memories even as he knows that they are his own; they feel like a stranger's, like they are spoken in another language, complicated and knit of many colors. Winter Soldier's are elemental and clear, the Machine made them clear by stripping away everything else but what was necessary for mission completion.
He stands up and wades further into the water to clean himself up; he dives under the surface, undecided if he wants to come back up because he knows that he can never be clean. The filth is not on his skin, but underneath it. He forces himself up to breathe air because Winter Soldier will not give Captain America the victory of dying in front of him and Bucky can't break Steve's heart like that. Better to do it elsewhere, leaving them both to wonder about his fate, the Captain in fear and Steve in hope.
Back at the river bank, he sits near (but not close) to the supine Captain America/Steve and inventories his weapons, since that at least is something understandable, something with an actual answer. His pistol is water-logged and he breaks it down, drying what he can on the chamois he keeps for such a purpose. The salt may ruin everything, but not today. He lost one knife in the fall, but the other and his dagger are still strapped in and ready for use. He prepares himself for battle, unsure of who the enemy is and aware that it is probably him.
He hears voices before he can see the speakers and stands, ready to defend Captain America/Steve even if he hasn't settled whether the other man is a war prize or a gift. The voices resolve themselves into men aboard a Coast Guard vessel cruising slowly up the river and Winter Soldier and Bucky wait to see if they come to praise him for his defeat of Captain America or kill him for the murder of their icon.
It's the former. They recognize Winter Soldier and Bucky lets him do what he does best, helps him, because whatever else is undecided in the conflict between their demands for his sense of self, they are both furious at what has been done to them and more than willing to take it out on the nearest complicit party. The five men on the boat had nothing to do with the torture, not in Italy and not in Pierce's dungeon in Virginia, but they say Hail HYDRA and that is enough.
He kills them quickly and mostly cleanly because he needs clothes, even a uniform that will raise questions, if he is to get himself away from this river bank without detection. He destroys the boat's GPS and then tosses it for useful items, finding food and water and a first-aid kit that he can use for himself and to bind Steve's wounds so that he won't bleed out before rescue arrives. He will stand watch over Captain America/Steve until help comes and proves itself capable, but he will not allow them to see him. He takes the dead men's phones and wallets, sorting the contents of the latter between what can be used indefinitely (cash, etc.) and what can be used until someone is looking for the dead men.
The hours of watch pass fitfully, the hyperawareness required near impossible when all he can hear are the screams of the dead and all he can see is destruction except when he looks at Steve and that's when he can, for fleeting moments, feel like Bucky Barnes and only Bucky Barnes. In those heartbeats he can hear laughter and sarcasm and feel warmth that is alien to him because it has nothing to do with fire, because it comes from within him and within Steve and is given freely and not wrapped in pain.
The imperative to kill Captain America is faded and the longer he goes without Pierce and the others plucking inconvenient facts from his head like weeds, the less his memories seem to be parallel tracks and the more they bleed together.
There is so much blood.
The next voices to approach come from the shore after dusk and they are friendlies, marines in full gear who see Captain America lying unmoving on the ground and shout "Corpsman up!" and he watches them with the cold assessment of the Winter Soldier and the desperation of Bucky Barnes. He's not sure which one of them guides him through the darkness away from where Steve is being strapped to a board so that he can be stretchered away. He knows that he can't face Steve until he figures that out, if he ever can.
Also posted at DW.