URBAN LEGEND | BUCKY BARNES

eight

It barely took a few days before Juliet let her mind slip completely away from Bucky, Steve and her New York adventures. War was time-consuming, and she wouldn't be the first exhausted soul to admit that.

She had positioned herself comfortably on the edge of a mattress that belonged to a wounded soldier, a soft smile gracing her face as she recited poem after poem. The young boy had been blinded in one eye and infected in the other, but still clutched onto his prized copy of Shakespeare's sonnets as though it was the reason he was still able to breathe. Juliet was more than happy to sit and read to him during her free time. Shakespeare was the reason for her name, so it was only fitting that Juliet went out of her way to celebrate the bard.

"No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe."

The sonnet was painful to read, but Juliet refused to let the boy hear her voice become clogged with furious tears. She just couldn't look at his helpless state, knowing that it would be a few more days before she could even consider attempting to heal him. It made it worse that she had found out that Private Johnny Stevens was only seventeen. Patriotism had driven his innocence into a lie that nearly murdered him.

"You've got a lovely voice, Nurse," Johnny chirped, seemingly unbothered and lively for someone with heavy bandages plastered over their eyes. "Can ya read another one?"

"I've read three already," Juliet teased, her fingers already flicking to one of her favourite sonnets. Literature was a great distraction to any of the soldiers (whether they be nurses or troops), which was why Juliet always carried more novels than clothes in her case.

The boy was lulled into a state of painless euphoria as Juliet's comfort swept over him, and his mouth had been cast in a permanent smile by the time she had finished speaking. His chest stilled, and his soul had slipped into a peaceful world away from pain.

"And yet, by heaven, I think my love is as rare, as any she belied with false compare." Juliet finished the sonnet with a steady voice, the deep exhale she took afterwards threatening to violently tremble. She closed her book and leant forward, pressing a kiss upon Johnny's cooling forehead. Her fingertips stroked his lightly stubbled cheek as she worked to remove his bandages, a tinge of the adulthood that tried to prove he was capable of battling war. His eyes were glassy and rimmed with the puffiness of combined infection and blindness, but still shone the sparkling blue of a boy who just wanted to live out a grand adventure. Swallowing back bile, not from the injury but the scenario, Juliet used her shaking touch to slide his eyelids over his blank eyes. Finally, he could be at peace.

"Jules.." Daisy's voice was soft, her presence aided by the gentle hand she rested on her best friend's shoulder. Juliet flinched at the sudden contact, reality striking and the nurses' guard sliding over her mind once more. Her body tensed, and she reached to tug the thin bed sheet over Johnny's lifeless figure.