Ready Set Breathe (A Steve Rogers Destruction Story)

34 Holidays

I remember everything I don’t want to. I don’t remember Steve, I remember missions. I remember cryo. I remember

I remember

it’s

there was these they had they had guns and i just couldn’t stop being afraid but I made people afraid too was I not better than them I made so many people afraid

I killed them I did that there is  n o  excuse

“What’s that?” Sharon said and Steve jumped and the journal almost fell out of his hands as he turned around to see Sharon leaning against the doorway. Steve looked down at Bucky’s journal in his hands and remembered how Bucky had hid it even from him for so long and felt the need to protect him and his thoughts just the same. He snapped the book closed in his hand and set it on the bed behind him, standing up.

“Nothing,” he said, but the words he had been reading had gouged into him and he hadn’t had time to recover and his voice was hollow. “It’s nothing.” Sharon looked at Steve and he watched her eyes go from his face to the bed behind him and back and Steve held his ground. Sharon looked away after a time and shrugged.

“Okay,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know the delivery is here.” They had ordered Chinese because Steve had promised Sharon dinner, and Steve didn’t quite want to stop reading because he wanted to find the place where Bucky began to feel happy, he didn’t like leaving it in places where Bucky’s sinking emotions dragged Steve down, and he liked to feel hope for Bucky, but for now, he had to leave it, if to prove to Sharon that it really was nothing.

Steve and Sharon sat across from each other at the counter and Steve silently picked at his chow mein as he thought these things, until Sharon said something.

“At least it was a nice service,” she said quietly and Steve nodded in agreement.

“It was,” he said.

“No one ever said what a great storyteller Peggy was,” Sharon said after another quiet moment, shifting her food on her plate thoughtfully, and Steve glanced up at her. “She used to tell the greatest war stories.” Steve looked back down. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear war stories. Not now. “She used to tell me about you, too,” Sharon added and Steve was losing his appetite and he looked away from his dish. “She told me about how wonderful you were.”

“That was kind of her,” Steve replied. Then, he frowned at the counter, and asked, “Didn’t she ever mention Bucky?” Sharon shrugged and looked up at Steve, leaning across the counter with her elbows up.

“Every so often. Mostly in passing,” she said.

“What did she say?” Steve asked and Sharon sighed.

“Very courageous,” she said. “Valorous.” Steve looked back down and nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

Later that day, after Sharon had returned home and Bucky had come back, he and Steve began to talk, as they often did.

Bucky sprawled out on Steve’s couch because night was falling and he looked tired, and turned to Steve, sitting on the other couch and watching out the window as snow began to fall.

“It’s almost Christmas,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “What do you want?”

Steve stared, let out a fast breath and looked down, grimacing, and looked back up, shaking his head just in the slightest.

He wanted to be happy.

He wanted Peggy back.

He wanted to stop feeling guilty, feeling hatred, feeling desperate, feeling washed up on the other side of a nightmare to open his eyes to darkness and cold that his constantly cranked apartment heater couldn’t seem to fully expel.

He wanted things to be happy. That was all. Simple happiness, just for a while, please.

Finally, however, he shrugged and looked down.

“You remember Christmas back then?” Steve asked without answering Bucky’s question and Bucky nodded slowly.

“Most of them,” he said.

“What do you want?” Steve said and Bucky shrugged.

“Nothing you could buy,” he said quietly and Steve scoffed.

“Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it,” he said. A long silence fell between them and the snow blew harder against the window until Bucky spoke up again.

“How are you feeling?” He asked quietly and Steve sucked in a painful breath, his face growing hot with tears he was trying to keep away. He shrugged and cleared his throat.

“I miss her,” he said. “I’ve been missing her.” Bucky looked down and nodded.

“That’s okay,” Bucky said. “It’s okay to miss her. She was a great woman.” He looked at Steve and his mouth pressed together sympathetically, “As long as you know it’s also okay to move on.” Steve stared down at the carpet and his eyebrows furrowed and Bucky shifted. “You can be sad now, but don’t feel like you’re betraying her when you start to feel better. She did the same for you years ago.” Steve tried to swallow.

“Yeah, yeah, she did,” he said quietly as he realized this. “She moved on.”

“And she was happy,” Bucky said. “You can be happy, too. You have that right. You deserve it, alright?” Steve nodded slowly.

“Okay,” he whispered.

He didn’t want to betray Peggy. He didn’t want to move on. He’d rather wallow, and mourn, because it was easier and he already felt the creeping edges of the guilt that would swallow him whole if he abandoned Peggy.

But he wasn’t abandoning her. She’d lived a life, she had moved on from Steve, she’d been happy. He wasn’t abandoning her, she had died. She’d lived her life. Maybe Bucky was right. Maybe it had been her time. Maybe it was their time... Maybe he ought to begin trying to put it to rest, all of it, start over.

Steve didn’t know how to unlove. It was impossible. What’s done is done, there’s no such thing as starting over and he couldn’t go back in time and change what had been made between them.

But maybe, just maybe… He could love again. And maybe, they were two different things.