ʜɪꜱ ꜱᴀᴠɪᴏʀ ━ Bucky Barnes/Avengers

41: off with his head

DIANE

Thanos did as he told me. He spared me.

But at what cost?

• • •

"Please tell me she's alright."

"Her vitals are stable. She lost a lot of blood, but by some miracle, she and the baby are fine."

"She's not hurt anywhere?"

"Yes, but nothing fatal."

"Is she asleep?"

"No."

"Bruce . . . did you know?"

" . . . No."

The door creaks open. I don't greet whoever came in, but hearing their muffled voice through the wooden door I knew Steve had been there for a while. Instead of meeting his gaze with a usual smile, my head is turned the other way to the window, watching nightfall come again for the past three weeks.

Three torturous weeks. Dragging on as if to spite and mock me of our loss and failure, and losing him again. The fight left me more vulnerable than ever before, leaving me unable to heal myself as quickly and deeming my hands almost useless and weak. The wounds all around me healed so slowly and it was like my whole body was beating itself. But even that was incomparable to the aching pain in my chest.

I feel the makeshift hospital bed sink a few inches deeper and the presence of another body next to me. Steve had taken a seat, a slouched back faced me and his head low.

After a long pause, he spoke heavy-heartedly, "You didn't tell me you were pregnant."

I hadn't talked to Steve since then too. While I was busy trying to get as much rest as I needed, he left me alone and busied himself in aiding any city or country that was deeply impacted by the loss. I never got the chance to tell him.

"I couldn't."

"Did Bucky know?"

"Yes," I breathed out.

He sighs broken-heartedly, covering his face with his hands to carry his grief. Steve knew the quality of life Bucky wanted to live. Once the universe finally showed him mercy and had it within his grasp, it decided to take it away.

"By some miracle, Thanos missed your abdomen by a few inches. Anything lower would've been horrible," he says, but his words dissipated into the air. All I could gather from them was that either way I lost, and I might as well have died from it.

I turned away from him so that he couldn't see the tears swelling in my eyes.

"I failed . . ." I whispered out.

"We all did." he agrees, not even trying to counter it. Even he knew himself, the Avengers fucked up. "I'm sorry."

His apology felt meaningless to me in a way that couldn't faze me. Words had no use now for anybody. The snap has brought chaos around the world, everything is on fire, and yet the other half of the world is silenced like everyone here. With the immense shock, none of us had recovered from yet.