ʜɪꜱ ꜱᴀᴠɪᴏʀ ━ Bucky Barnes/Avengers

39: dust and blood to spare

chapter tracklist:

dynasty - miia

can you hold me - nf

___________________

BUCKY

"Did they surrender?"

Steve returns to the front with a defeated look, and anyone could guess that those stone-hungry aliens won't be giving up anytime soon.

"Not exactly," he answers.

"I don't think we can afford 'not exactly'."

The Wakandan king yells a battle cry to his soldiers, while they repeat after him.

There wasn't much we could do but wait. Wait for a signal, an opening, a cue. Anything. But those beasts are swarming the outside barrier like bees hunting for honey, in search of their queen. Their penetrating screams brought shivers down our spines as they allow themselves to burn and decapitate just to get through. Only a few get in at a time, Sam and Rhodey handle it with small fires, but they were starting to outnumber themselves.

"They're killing themselves," Okoye whispers in shock, speaking for all of us. I was just relieved Diane didn't have to witness this firsthand.

Sam talks through comms, "Cap, if these things circle the perimeter and get in behind us. . . there's nothing between them and Vision."

"Then we better keep them in front of us," Rogers responds.

"How exactly do you plan on doing that?"

"We open the barrier." T'Challa finishes. The breaths of each soldier on the field stop to inhale sharply, including mine. As T'Challa instructs his soldier over comms on the command, everyone's form hardens like rock. "On my signal."

"This will be the end of Wakanda." A fellow Wakanda tribe leader, M'Baku, who is fighting beside us murmurs.

Okoye concurs, "Then it will be the noblest ending in history."

We standby for T'Challa's signal. The frontline shield that separated us and them falls on his command, preparing us to run a great distance and into the battlefield. As all of us gear up, the grip on our weapons tightening, sweat dripping from our temples, all in fear of our lives, her face comes across my mind.

This scene felt familiar. Flashes of the blue sky turned white, the earthly brown soil became covered in snow and the towering height of the buildings stood the same as mountains. And then her face right in front of me, saying her goodbyes as she would wait for me to come back from war. Except for this time, she was in the war with me.

There might be a chance I can't protect her.

Or a chance one of us won't walk away from this.

"Wakanda forever!"

The fight finally begins. Our feet take a step forward to indefinite aftermath. What becomes a march turns into a stampede of us running. Steve and T'Challa have a head start in front of us, leading the way and fulfilling their role as leaders while our wave of screams follows behind them. I run with Natasha and M'Baku, but eventually, I lost sight of them once the first punch on those creatures landed.

I raise my gun at one coming from my peripheral view, aiming for its head. It instantly dies, though its muscles spasmed shortly on the soil. Through the sounds of the thudded bullets upon impact, I realized how thick their exterior was. Thankfully, it isn't what a bullet can't handle.

Without time to process, another one comes right in front of me. Just before I could pull the trigger, it pushes me to the ground and I'm faced with its lengthy teeth as it snarls at me. I hold it off by its throat with my gun and scream back at it as I try to push it off, but its weight was probably five times heavier, if anything it's sinking me further into the mud.