Final.

[onlyforthedream]

It’s a cold Spring day in 1945. I’m about 4,000 miles from my home, riding a stolen motorcycle toward the edge of a cliff, a concrete jetty built out of the stone of an old castle. Directly in front of me is an experimental drone plane, lifting off the runway, winging its way toward turning this war in favor of the Nazis. Directly behind me is my best friend, my brother, and that’s the only reason I think I can do this.

It doesn’t help that I know I can’t, but it doesn’t change anything, either.

People said, after the war, that it had made our country. That World War II was the moment that decided who we were as a generation and shaped the rest of the century.

This is the moment that made us who we are. It’s truer for no one more so than Bucky and me.

“Bucky,” I say. Not the exclamation of all the times before, not the question. We’re about to go over. He’s about to make the fatal leap.

Fateful leap. Either way.

Comments

[onlyapassenger]

Instinct will kick in; Bucky knows it the second he dares to look back at Steve, sees the expression on his face. Reason won’t keep Bucky on this plane when it’s ready to blow, not when he knows how to escape, and so it is that he repeats his mistake from all those years ago, makes certain that his sleeve gets caught under the metal plating so that he can’t escape. He’s tying his own damn noose and he’s forcing his friend -- his brother, the most important person he has met and ever will -- to watch.

Adrenaline courses through him, its familiarity steadying, but he’s no longer sure if it’s born out of fear... Or rage.

“Let go,” he screams over the roar of the engine. His eyes sting from the biting cold of the wind, but he won’t allow any tears to fall. He will have dignity in death, even if he knows there’s no such thing. That death is messy and necessary, but never dignified.

“Dammit, Steve-- Let go.”

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

There’s a moment- one I know, a sadly familiar twist in my stomach- where I think my grip will hold. It’s there in every dream, it’s built into my memory. My eyes lock with Bucky’s. I hear his words, not in the distant ringing way of dreams but immediate, loud. There’s a plummeting sensation in the pit of my stomach and I haven’t even fallen yet.

“Bucky,” I say, as the cold dampness of the sea air and fresh blood on my hands breaks whatever traction I had and I slip, the rough spring air buffeting my body as I fall, faster than I remember, to the murky grey-blue channel waters below.

I can barely hear the explosion over the wind in my ears. As I hit the water and the cold of it sends my body into shock, the last thing I see before before the current pulls me down is a blossom of red and gold across the sky, refracted and warped.

I think I’m sorry, and then it’s done.