I Loved You First | Not Easily Conquered ▸ [STUCKY]

Ch. 11

1980

There are a bunch of stories in this world. I know this because I slept through every single one of them in school with you snoring away right beside me. Long stories, short stories, ghost stories. Sad stories and romance stories, parables, tall tales, and even the stories that have happy endings - And let me tell you, men on Mars make more sense to me than those do these days.

I'm the story that'll never get told, but that doesn't much bother me. They'll remember you which is as it should be. Just like me, they were caught off guard. Nobody ever saw you coming, not the army, not the country. You went and blindsided us all. And now that all the storytellers have got a hold of you, you're gonna live forever.

I remember maybe third day of Catechism when Sister Catherine said that each and every one of us are sinners and there wasn't nothing to be done for it. And I believe it of me, hell yes I do - I'm a killer, stone cold. Some people are good at math and some people are good at art, but me, I'm good at shooting, and it scares me right to the bone the things I'd do for you. When they turn me away from the pearly gates I imagine they'll give me a list full of the names of the Germans I killed for you and won't look twice at what I think about doing every time I curl up around you at night, sayin it's just to keep warm. Because it's fine and all to kill for your country, I think, but not quite the same when you're killing for just one person in particular.

And besides, I've got a whole laundry list of other sins, past even those. I'm a liar and a coward, and once I got the draft I burned the letter so that you'd never find it. I'm so God damn afraid to die, but it's not for me. It's because I can't leave you alone in a world as ugly as this one. Somehow you don't know it, but there's no justice here, not anymore. All the word about the death camps. The shit Morita put up with before he shipped out. You took a knife to the neck last year and still you can't see it, don't understand that Hell isn't some place underneath us, all filled up with fire and brimstone. Hell is right here, and I've been damned for a long time.

I know you're not alone without me anymore. You've got your girl and you've got the boys. I know you can take care of yourself, and it puts me at a loose ends, how you can keep safe on your own now. You don't need me. Doesn't mean I'm not still afraid for you, not scared shitless that this world is gonna eat you alive.

But at least now I understand, I think, the feeling you had when you talked about doing right by your country, because I don't mind living in Hell if it means doing right by you, just the way I'd strip the boots off a million dead Nazis if it meant your feet staying warm and dry.

I see you worrying your daddy's rosary at night, the poor battered old thing, and I wonder how you can still pray. I went to confession a hundred times until I gave up on it, because no matter how many Hail Marys I recited in the dark with you laying next to me, it didn't stop. Sister Catherine would spit on me because I don't have much need for God out here, but I'm glad you do. I'm real glad one of us does. But you keep giving me those big sad eyes of yours, like I'm breakin your heart when I try to explain it to you, and so I'll give it another go, just one last try, even if you'll never know about it -

Ave Maria, gratia plena, get him out of this war, and if you've gotta take someone then take me, because I've got nothing real to go home to but he's got a girl now and I can see the hope written all over his face when he sees her. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, pray for us sinners, but don't spend too much time on my immortal soul, because not even divine intervention can help me now. I know when to walk away from a fight and trying my damnedest not to need him was a losing battle.

I won't be in the history books; that's for you. But I loved you first. As long as they get that right, I don't care what they say.

-

There's a perpetual hush over Arlington that Steve remembers too well from the last time he was here, standing in this exact spot.

The grave is empty: there was nothing of Buck left to bring back. Steve falls to his knees before it anyway, the dusting of snow across the grass seeping through his pants. There are flowers all over it, and notes held down by rocks, and little rainbow flags pushed into the icy grass. Steve presses his fingers to the indented lettering.

JAMES BUCHANAN "BUCKY" BARNES

SGT

US ARMY

SSR

MARCH 10 1917

APRIL 1945

PURPLE HEART

WORLD WAR II

This grave is the only thing of Bucky left in this entire world, this grave and the letters Steve has shoved into his back pocket today. He traces Buck's name, lingers on the base of the Y. There are a million things to say but he can't think of a single one of them and knows that if he opened his mouth his voice wouldn't work besides. So instead he kneels in silence and presses his forehead to the frozen headstone and learns the weight of regret. He knows what it is now to love someone for their whole life and then beyond. Time goes by slowly, but he'll love Buck until time runs out. He'll love Buck when he's got his own grave here, and then he'll keep on loving him, even after that.

It's cold enough that his tears slow on his cheeks, and when they finally sink into the snow Steve thinks of drops in a puddle, of pebbles thrown into the Grand Canyon. It's a long fall; a long way down. None of them really make a sound in the end. But he'll whisper the one truth he knows into the abyss anyway -

You are the soul inside of me. Even now. Even though you're long gone.

It counts for something. Bucky will be loved until the end of time. He's the one who will make it into the history books that really matter. This love, it has counted for something.

-

Steve goes home.

Brooklyn has changed in the years he's been avoiding it. The accents have faded, for one, and for another the roach-infested building he and Bucky made their paltry home in is long gone, replaced by a nice-ish restaurant. Steve doesn't mind so much, past the initial shock. These changes have no right to come as a surprise - he's been away for forty years - but they do anyway, and as he wanders through the familiar streets and smells the familiar Brooklyn smells he feels incomplete, but at least now he knows exactly why.

Still he eats at one of their old haunts that's miraculously still standing, and then he sees some posters for a demonstration happening up in the West Village to raise awareness and education about AIDS, so he takes the B train there and stays for a night in an okay hotel and shows up early to the rally to help kids make signs that say "ACT UP - FIGHT AIDS." They've got a big crowd going and when they start up even more join, holding up the extra signs that have been left out just for that purpose. The police force shows up, but Steve doesn't think it's going to get violent, at least not today.

He spots her bending down to pick up a sign. She's just as beautiful as she was the day they got married, or maybe even lovelier, with thick streaks of grey in her hair and that same smile on her face. Down the way, she holds up her sign. He jogs to catch up with her. They march together. She reaches down and takes his hand.

"I forgot how to be uncompromising in my beliefs," she tells him. "I thought maybe if I came here you could help me remember how."

"Okay," says Steve, his smile huge and uncontainable. "I want to do that. Peggy, I'd love to do that."

She looks at him for a second longer, their hands still folded together as they walk. "I learned the word - bisexual. Is that correct?"

"It is," Steve says. It's the first time he's said it out loud. Around his hand, hers tightens.

He loves her. She knows now.

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