Oh Suzannah, Don't You Cry For Me

Chapter Thirty-Two: Falling Angel

The semester is finally over and I finished all my finals! Whoo! To celebrate, enjoy this chapter!

Chapter Thirty-Two: Falling Angel

By the time they parted ways, the hospital cleared Suzie and sent her back to the frontlines. From where he stood next to Steve, Bucky watched his sister hitch a ride in a Jeep, the tires crunching against the dirt-stained snow. The sun shone in the bright blue sky on the first clear day they had in weeks. The way the light glistened on the drifts of snow stung his eyes and he had to squint to see Suzie rolling away.

Suzie swiveled in her spot to wave goodbye as a surge of worry swelled in his chest. Steve's hand on his shoulder stopped Bucky from running after his sister and pulling her from the Jeep.

"She'll be fine," Steve assured.

Bucky didn't believe him. He wouldn't believe anyone until the war ended and he, Steve, and Suzie returned to Brooklyn. Too many of his fellow soldiers died in front of him, either bleeding to death from a bullet wound or blown to bits from a mortar. The 107th suffered heavy casualties at the Battle of Azzano and never fully recovered from it. More died while at the Hydra factory and they lost several men on the long march after Captain America swooped in and liberated the prisoners.

During the few months he worked alongside the 90th, he witnessed the dead bodies piling up into stacks because they ran out of space to place them. Disease stole almost as many soldiers as regular combat deaths. When he first heard about Suzie contracting pneumonia, he had almost lept out of his foxhole to find her. He had caught pneumonia while at Azzano, and he would have died if not for whatever Zola did to him.

He could have died several times. From the pneumonia at Azzano to Zola's mysterious experiments which had killed who-knows how many men before him and hurt like hellfire in his veins, not all the brushes with death were in the middle of a battle. The drugs Zola had put into him had left him nauseous for weeks, and he worried every night would be his last.

One of his Privates had accidentally stepped on a mine and had blown up three other men. The Private had been only eighteen, and one wrong step had killed four soldiers—four good men whose families would mourn. The blast had fractured a nearby tree, which almost crushed him and several others. It had been his first encounter with death up close, and it had not been his last.

Hell, before Steve became all buff and large, a German blockade in a small town had surrounded Bucky's squad. The brass had sorely underestimated the numbers of the Germans, which cost countless lives. Only himself and five other men from the thirty who laid siege to the village survived. As the only remaining officer in the group, the role of leader fell to him. By some miracle, he managed to lead himself and the rest of the men out of the village, but he suffered a bullet in the shoulder and a shrapnel ricochet in the leg for his troubles. He could have died there—he should have died there. The odds were not in their fair, and the Germans had every opportunity to slaughter them.

But they didn't. They survived. And although it had broken something inside of him at the sight of most of his allies—and several of his friends—lying dead on the streets, bleeding on the ground or torn to shreds from shrapnel and mortars, he had pulled through and got the rest of the men out of there alive.

The wounds from the battle had hurt, but, now, he couldn't even see the scars anymore. Where there used to be evidence of puckered skin now felt smooth to the touch. His leg hair had even grown back over the jagged line on his shin, further obscuring the once-sore patches of scars.

Funnily enough, the bullet he took for Suzie at Hydra's fancy watermill base showed no signs of scarring. The pinpricks of track marks and angry, purple bruises from the thousand and one needles jabbed into his skin at the whim of Zola's psychotic mind had long since faded. The fire burning in his veins had cooled to a dull ache and surprisingly showed no signs of ever being detrimental to his health.