[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?!”

Comments

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

What I want to happen next doesn’t matter. It’s a lesson that most of the villains of my acquaintance have, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes not, beaten into me over the years. Nothing I do will ever undo this. Nothing will ever stop it from happening. I try, though, the only fruitless, hollow ways I can. The plane’s incline steepens and my fingertips slip. I can’t catch myself, but Bucky’s sleeve is caught. He won’t be able to pull it free until it’s too late. And-

“No!”

I won’t be able to free him.

“I’m losing my grip-!”

For another eighty years.

“Drop off, Bucky!” I call out, uselessly, desperately, my diaphragm and lungs and throat burning with the effort, because I’ve already begun to fall.

“Let go!” My eyes are wide as I fall back, even though I don’t want to see it. I can’t look away from him, though, from this final moment. I never can. I have neither the right nor the ability.

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky Barnes' life is hanging in the balance by a literal thread, and though he has the comfort of the future to set his mind at ease, cold as it may be, fear and panic and dread finally pierces through the determination. His heart's trying to beat its way clear through his chest, and though he hasn't any time to spare, for one second, he wishes he could die from that instead.

Time slows... I remember this. Times slows and fragments...

"I can't!" he shouts, trying to wrench his arm free, survival instinct kicking in, even though history tells him it's futile to bother. "I'm stuck!"

[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.