[V]

[onlyforthedream]

I don’t pull the bike to a careening halt this time. I don’t gun it to catch up. I don’t do anything, at first. I’m too stunned to take any immediate action.

This shouldn’t be happening. We beat it. I got it right, the last time. No innocents killed, the tide of the war turned for the better. I did it right, finally, stopped the plane and walked away with Bucky at my side. So what are we doing here? Why has the loop begun again? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s no longer following its own set of rules- whatever ‘it’ is. The island, I guess.

I let go of the throttle and the bike slows on its own. I put a foot out as an afterthought, stopping the bike at the edge of the runway, and stare at the plane as it flies.

What more can I do? What is there to do differently? What do I do?

I don’t know. God help me, I don’t know.

Comments

[onlyapassenger]

"Cap."

Bucky waits before speaking up, appreciating the need for a moment's silence under the circumstances. The taste of salt water lingers on his lips from a dip in the Atlantic that never happened, that was erased just as surely as what happened in the rest of the loops. His earlier elation is but a distant memory, replaced with cold resignation. His heart's caught in his throat, an unknowable emotion sitting heavy in his chest -- not anger or sadness, nothing so simple as can be defined. Of all the times to be right, he hoped this wouldn't have been it.

They were never meant to save the day, not in a way that they themselves could appreciate. The plane's already too far for them to possibly reach, but Bucky's attention is squarely on his friend. His brother.

"Steve."

Louder, this time.

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

There’s a resignation in Bucky’s tone that makes my stomach sink like a stone. I don’t know what to say. I need more time.

“...” I turn my head to look back at him, wanting to fight what I see written in his expression. I want to rail against it the way I did earlier, but I can’t. I’m still getting a grip on what’s just happened- and what hasn’t.

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky can only sigh, averting his gaze the moment Steve turns, not wanting to face him just yet after all, even if he knows he must. It’s his job to get them both through this, not in the manner in which they might’ve longed for, but the only way he knows how. Still, it’s a hell of a thing to come up against, and while Bucky’s never one to shy away from a fight, in this, he displays uncharacteristic hesitance.

“Yeah,” he says on the rush of an exhale, clapping a hand to Steve’s shoulder just long enough to give himself the means to get off the bike, and stand. He’ll be back on it shortly, he’s sure of it, right down to his bones, and he might as well take the opportunity to stretch his legs while he can before he’s forced to relive this moment one more time.

“That’s about right.”

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

I let the bike fall onto its side as I stand and follow Bucky. I can see what he’s doing, and I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to accept this, and I don’t want him to try to tell me to. This is wrong. It always has been. I screwed up, and spent the rest of my life desperate for a way to rectify the mistake. And now that it’s done, what? I’m supposed to learn some cosmic lesson about not being able to change the past? Again? There’s supposed to be some grand reveal that things had to happen this way for a reason, that I should accept that? Like it was destiny, like it was fate?

Like hell.

“No,” I say, “it isn’t. This isn’t right.”

[onlyapassenger]

“That’s not what I meant.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, smudging gunpowder on his face, then lets go just as quickly once he realizes what he’s done, letting out a quiet scoff in annoyance. This will disappear, too.

“Just--” Another sigh. “Never mind.”

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

“Say it, Buck,” I say, my voice worn even to my own ears.

“If you’ve got something to say, say it, because I...” I shake my head, looking at the plane as it becomes less and less defined against the stark grey of the sky.

“I have no words for this.”

[onlyapassenger]

It’s not an order, not really, but it might as well be; defying it by staying pointedly silent inspires in Bucky the same burning sense of shame, if nothing else. It’s his turn to delay the inevitable, to not say what they both know to be true. He rotates his left shoulder and flexes his left hand, allowing himself to appreciate those parts he’ll lose at the end of all this when they inevitably see the mission through to its predetermined conclusion.

Finally, he says, “I’ve got a few.”

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

“What is the point of going through this,” I muse aloud, “if it’s not to take this chance to fix what was broken? I’ve been here, before.”

I bow my head, trying to keep my thoughts together, not willing to fly off the handle again.

“I’ve done this already, more than once, over the years. I even managed to save you one time. So what... What? What is being asked of us?”

[onlyapassenger]

“No matter what we do, here, Steve, we’re going to wake up back on the Island,” says Bucky, voice level and steady even if he feels like he's coming apart. This is his hell as much as Steve's, but one of them's got to keep a cool head.

It says something that it's got to be Bucky.

"None of this-- It isn't real. If we freeze or if we win or-- Or if we blow up. It doesn't matter what we do, because we'll end up right we started, and none of what happened that day will have changed."

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

“But the choices we make here matter, because it’s us that’s making them,” I say evenly. Looking at Bucky now, that painfully young profile, the age etched into his eyes, I refuse to believe otherwise.

“We’re not stuck going through the motions.” I look back at the plane. Any second now, we’ll be pulled back to the start again. Time stretches on forever in both directions and the anticipation of the next moment, or the next, sits agitatedly under my skin but this moment feels static and drawn out.

“Even if nothing changes- really changes- can change, what we choose to do, here and now, it has to be important, because we’re making the choice.”

[onlyapassenger]

He lets out a shaky breath, forcing his hands to stay at his sides, fingers unfurled. Bowing his head, he stares, for a moment, at the ground, gathering to himself to say the words that Steve very obviously does not want to hear.

“Have you even considered that you’re making the wrong one?”

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

“No.”

The word is out of my mouth before I realize I’ve spoken.

“No. What other option is there?”

[onlyapassenger]

They worked together so closely for so long that words aren’t always necessary to communicate. Bucky can read Steve’s face with the easy familiarity that one skims a favorite book. As closed off as Bucky’s become over the years, he has little doubt that Steve can say the same about him in return, even now -- especially now, Bucky’s face too young to successfully hide the burdens he’ll see in later years.

“Steve.”

Just a word. It’s all he needs.

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

I break away, turning toward the ocean. The plane is just a glint in the sky where the weak sunlight catches it through the cloud cover. This can’t be happening. I realize watching the plane, waiting for the ball to drop, is a cheap cop out though and I force myself to face Bucky.

“I can’t. I can’t, Buck.”

[onlyapassenger]

“I know,” Bucky says, and he does. He trusts Steve with his life, and always has; the man won’t willfully put him in jeopardy, won’t willfully sacrifice him, not if there’s some other way. But the fact remains that there isn’t; this could never end any other way, and if the island seeks to teach them a lesson, it’s surely this one. After all, even when Bucky managed to fight off the Soviets, managed to free himself before he’d been turned into their operative, he woke up to find himself in the Winter Soldier’s uniform; their wardens seem intent on reminding them at every turn that their efforts are futile. Why should this be so different?

“But you have to, don’t you? This... All of this... It’s already happened, Steve. Whether we like it or not, this is the moment that made us who we are. There’s no going back.”

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

This is the moment that made us who we are. The words hit all the harder for ringing true. He’s right, of course. This is the moment who made us who we are. I take the shield from my back and turn it over in my hands. Strangely, I still feel the weight of it pulling on my shoulders.

In this moment, Bucky is turned into an unwilling assassin with a road to atonement that stretches longer than the span of my life. In this moment, I become irrevocably anchored to one ultimate truth that all my years with the Avengers can’t even change- That nothing you do, nothing you fail to do, can ever really be undone. I don’t know why I say it. I had a conversation with Dr. Erskine about it once, about the difference between what must be and what is meant to be, about the place of God in war. I told him then I wasn’t sure, but that it seemed too easy an out. Destiny.

I fit the shield to my arm and lift my head. The sky is darkening at one end of the horizon but still brittle, bright-grey at the other end. Either a storm or the sun is setting, I don’t know. Either way, the air bites more coldly.

“If there’s no going back,” I echo, and turn my head to look back at Bucky, “then let’s go be heroes.”