In his mind, Bucky could practically see the baby.
It was Augusts. Entirely hers, the spitting image. Those dark eyes, blackened curls, ski-slope nose. A toothy smile. He wanted it so badly - he burned for it. For her. For their child, that now, he would never know.
He laid in the meadow, staring up into the sun. If he had any good luck at all, and if he stared long enough, he would go blind. A world without August was not a world he wanted to see.
A shadow crossed over his vision and he looked up, wincing as a drop of water fell onto his face. Bucky sat up.
"Hiya, Missy." He patted the pigs head. The pig pushed into his hand, squealing in delight, water dripping from its muzzle. "You go playing in the pond again? You know your momma don't like that."
As if in response, the pig snorted and sat down. Bucky swallowed the lump that had been in his throat for days.
"Yeah," He brushed a piece of grass off of her snout with his only hand. "I miss her too."
Hearing footsteps, Bucky weakly looked up. A vaguely familiar short, stocky blonde woman was making her way over to him, hands shoved in her suit pockets. In the sunlight, her burn scars glistened like open wounds.
"Mr. Barnes," She greeted as she looked down at him and the pig. She extended her hand."It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm-"
"Enola, right?" Bucky nodded numbly, ignoring her hand. "Yeah. She talked about you."
Awkwardly, she shoved her hand back into her pocket.
"I'm just here to speak with you on behalf of the World Security Council. I have some questions-"
"Not interested." Bucky turned back to the pig. "Whatever you're selling, I don't care. No solicitors."
"I'm-" She pushed her glasses back up her nose. "It's important, Mr. Barnes, that the council keeps track of all enhanced beings currently residing on our planet. You are one of those beings."
"Don't talk to me about beings," His voice was soft, but still cold and detached. "I don't care about your stupid council. I lost my wife."
"So did I, not too long ago." Bucky looked up as the woman curled her lip at him. "But I never moped in the mud with a pig."
Bucky stared at her for a long moment. Finally, he patted the ground next to him.
"She did that too," He raised an eyebrow at her as the woman gently knelt down. "The lip-curl thing."
"I just need to review some security details-"
"No," Bucky shook his head at her, still petting the pig. "Like I said, no soliciting. Tell me about her."
Enola gave him a long, slow blink.
"August?"
"No. Your wife."
"Oh." Enola settled into a dry spot of grass, picking at it with her hands. "Yes."
A moment of silence passed between them before she started talking.
"My wife." The agent gulped, folding her hands to compose herself. "We met in a bar in Miami in '96. Lindy was the bartender and I was so...so oblivious to her flirting. My friends practically had to shake the sense into me."
Bucky looked at her, prompting her to continue.
"She was the love of my life. She wore these dangly pink earrings every day- tulips, if I remember correctly. Planted the whole lawn with them. I was so damaged, when I met her. As you probably know, I lost my mother in that awful fire. Thought I had lost August too. My dad remarried, and I felt so alone...and there was Lindy." Enola laughed softly, picking at the grass. "I had spent my entire life in the shadow of Augusts greatness, and here was this woman who only wanted to know about me. In '02 we bought our house, a pink-bricked townhouse in Greenwich. Spent a few years traveling, seeing the world. She fell in love with Paris, so I proposed outside the Louvre. In 2009 we had our first daughter. Tulip. And in 2012 came Summer."
A look of surprise passed over Bucky's face, the first real thing besides grief that he had felt in weeks. She gave him a tired smile.
"I loved my sister, Mr. Barnes, even if we never really got along. I wanted to honor who she was- not who SHIELD made her. So when I found out I was pregnant, I named her Summer. Not August."
Bucky turned back to Missy, who was happily laying across his lap, basking in the sunlight.
"How'd she die? Lindy?"
Enola took a big breath.
"Cervical cancer. Would be about three years now. When we found out, she...she refused chemotherapy. She was already at Stage 5, her chances of surviving it were less than 2%. She didn't want the girls only memory of their mother to be her frail and bald in a hospital bed." Enola nodded slowly. "So we spent eight months traveling. Rome, Minsk, Melbourne, Lima...all the way back to Paris. That's where she passed. Quietly. I woke up in the morning and she was just...gone. So the girls and I returned to New York."
A long moment of silence passed. The nearby trees rustled, shade briefly passing over them. Enola edged into it.
"How could you possibly cope?" Bucky's voice came out strained, choked. "This feeling is...it's all I can think about. Everything reminds me of her. Of what we had, what could have been. I feel like I'm drowning every time I take a breath."
Next to him, Enola chuckled. Bucky looked at her like she was crazy, but she waved him off.
"Excuse me, I uh...." Enola chuckled again, squinting her eyes as she shook her head. "I got a dog."
"A dog?"
"Yeah. A really big, fluffy one. And the grief...it never really goes away, but now I have this dog. Whenever I'm sad, he lays down by my face and cries until I take him for a walk. And it doesn't...it doesn't fix anything, having the dog. But it makes me feel better." Enola stood up, brushing the dirt from her suit pants. "Then, a few months go by, and I get this call saying that my dead-sister is actually now my alive-sister, and that she's blown up a hospital in Arkansas. The pain never really goes away, but I figure out that I'm better off for it. I'm better off because I knew Lindy, the same way that you're better off because you got to know August. I'm so jealous of that, really. So many of us from her past life never really got to know her. In fact, if you're open to it, I'm sure that my dad would love to ask you some questions about her. But that's just the thing, isn't it? Life keeps moving on, and we keep moving with it. So I walk my dog, and I water her tulip garden, and every morning when I wake up, I ignore how cold the bed is without her. I start my day knowing that I am a better person because I got to have her."
The agent took a look around the clearing and then back to Bucky.
"She was lucky too, you know. I feel like she was happy here."
"We were," Bucky nodded solemnly, looking around the clearing. "She loved this little place. But being here...I see her everywhere."
"Yeah. But you see the version of her you want to remember. The good parts. Let that part of her live on, Mr. Barnes." She started making her way out of the clearing, shoving her hands back into her pockets. "I'll be back in the morning, by the way. I really do need to get that council briefing done."
Bucky watched her retreating frame. He turned back to the clearing once she was out of sight, and laid down in the waving grass.
"Whadya' think of that, August?" He asked the sky. "A dog."
A breeze rustled the trees, waving the grass in response. He closed his eyes, for just a moment, and pretended that it was her.
For just a moment, maybe it even was.
YOU ARE READING
SURVIVE ➤ BUCKY BARNES
Fanfiction"i think of you-" "think of me?" August had never identified as a hero. She had never chosen to do what she did. Spending her entire life as a pawn in somebody else's wretched game. She was whatever they made her - a hero, a...
