[I]

[onlyforthedream]

There are, immediately, the smells of motor oil; mortar; gunsmoke and the sea. Not the warm, fragrant azure waters that surround the island of Tabula Rasa, but those colder, sharper, stormier waters of the North Atlantic. I know where I am just from breathing in the air, although I also know it can’t be possible. Or shouldn't be, at the very least. My hands are gripping the handlebars of what I recognize, from the sound of the engine as well as my memory, to be a DKW NZ350. A ‘43. I know this bike.

God help me, I know exactly where I am.

I’ve had this dream. Correction- I’ve had this nightmare, more nights than I haven’t, since I woke up to a post-war world. This, what’s happening now, this isn’t a nightmare. This is living it. I know. I can tell the difference, by now.

I also know I’m not alone. Even as the end of the runway, the sharp drop off of the cliff looming ahead of us, rushes up to meet us- as the experimental drone plane that ended the war for me pulls away by critical, creeping inches to my left- I’m turning my head to call over my shoulder to the only other person who could be here with me.

“Bucky?!”

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[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

I can’t actually hear him. I can see his lips move, I can... almost make out the words, but I know what he’s saying. Combined, it’s enough. My own voice is even difficult to hear over the sound of the wind and the roar of the engine, the scream ripping from my throat, a protest that goes unheard by fate, God, or, I assume, Bucky.

No, I think, No. No. No. When the plane explodes, as I knew it would, as it couldn’t help but do, the heat and force of it slam into me and send me rocketing into the water. It’s like an ice cold wall coming up to meet me, to shatter and surge up around me, washing the billowing orange smoke in murky green as it pulls me down. It fills my mouth and my nose as well as my eyes but it can’t block out what’s emblazoned on them and will be for the next half a century. Then I’m numb, from the shock and the icy waters, and then the world is gone.