The Lightest Path

11

The struggle between holding on,
and letting go.

- d.j.

Bucky was in a dark room with a little light. He was moving, like he was in a moving vehicle. And it was cold.
Very cold.
It was a very long time ago since he was here.
Freight car
The trigger word was like an answer. Well, an answer he didn't want to have, because then he knew where he was. In that freight car. In that train.
High in the mountains.
The word echoed against the stone and ice and snow outside, was carried by the wind.
He reacted startled when he heard metal being ripped apart after a blast, and he turned to see the damage. The wall was being ripped, the act of the claws of a monster, and Bucky moved to the side to see the person who cried for help.
With his body pressed against the metal, so he wouldn't fall, he looked at the man.
His old self, Sargent Barnes.
Bucky was being flooded with fear of the fall, as it flashed in front of his eyes when he looked down.
He remembered.
Before the fall. How he and Steve fought. How Bucky grabbed the shield and was being blast outside. The reach for Steve... and the long fall down as he wished it would be over. That he would hit the ground and be done with it.
Instead he fell into a frozen river, lost his arm and was being found by the Soviet Union.
He wasn't dead.
His body wasn't dead, but Bucky Barnes was. He died at the moment Zola came in. He died when the Winter Soldier woke up.
Bucky pushed the memory away.
With a last desperate effort, Sargent Barnes snagged the jagged edge. Bucky himself leaned towards him, reaching out.
He had to save him.
He lunged for Sargent Barnes, trying to reach him. He had to get to him. Bucky had to save the old James Buchanan Barnes. What was left of it.
What was left of it after everything that happened to him.
"Grab my hand!" he yelled into the cold wind. The words were carried away like leaves, but he didn't give up. Neither did the person he tried to save.
Sargent Barnes reached out, but slipped away. They touched their fingertips for a moment, and then it was too late.
Freight car
He fell, but not to his death. To something worse.
"Bucky, no!" And then Bucky realised he sounded like Steve.
In horror he watched how his old self fell into a bottomless pit of ice and snow and cold. Bucky cried tears of sorrow and he screamed and he wanted to jump after him, after the person he once was and the person he wanted to be again.
Maybe he would die now.
Then it would all be over. Everything. He would have peace. He would never think about HYDRA ever again, about what he did.
All the pain and death he created, all the waste of time when he left his true love in his long, useless life. It would all be gone.
But his life wasn't useless anymore.
Not for him. Grace needed him, maybe just as much as he needed her. And Steve risked so much for him. He couldn't do that to them.
They didn't deserve that.
Bucky moved a little forward, was ready to jump. But he couldn't. Even though if he wanted to jump and be over with it. Maybe he wanted to jump after the fallen Bucky to save himself.
To save the man everyone wanted, instead of the broken man he was now.
For Grace, because she deserved a man that wasn't in a knot with himself, that wasn't troubled with a manipulated mind.
For Steve, because he wanted to be his friend again, even though Sam would always be better for him than Bucky could ever become again. Steve did not replace him. No, he could not. He just found someone who was better. Better to the world. Better to Steve. It hurt Bucky.
That Steve found someone whom was better to him. Whom was more worthy of everything.
But he couldn't blame him.
Steve deserved someone like Sam, he always did. And Bucky... wasn't ready to grow like that. He had to heal first. He had to get everything in a line again.
To become himself once more.
Bucky took a deep breath. Was that it? he thought. Did he only want to save the old Bucky for those two?
And then he realised it. No. Not just for them.
For himself. Because... Just because. He didn't have a particular reason. He just wanted... to be himself again.
Because he didn't feel like him. Not like himself. Not like he was before.
For more than seventy years he had been someone else. A puppet. Manipulated.
A stranger to the man that fell down, screaming and begging for help in silence. Bucky's tears felt like falling snow, it was that cold in the mountains.
He didn't see James Buchanan Barnes anymore when he became one with the ice beneath.
"NO!" Bucky cried and he stumbled back inside.
He lost him.
He was gone. And he would never come back. The old Bucky, the man that he once was... He was dead.
And the dead didn't come back to life.
Not ever.
Bucky became sick and he clenched his fists.
He leaned against he metal wall, and silent tears rolled down as he tried to accept the fact that he would never be the same again.
Sargent Barnes was gone. He would never come back and Bucky knew. Even if he would find peace... He would stay dead. That spark would never light up again.
He swallowed and wondered...
Wondered who he was now. Not the Bucky who fell. Not what they created - the Winter Soldier. He was none of them. Not anymore.
Freight car
Both... died. In some ways.
Sargent Barnes fell down and gave his life for the Howling Commandos.
The Winter Soldier would maybe never really be gone. But when he woke up, HYDRA would be out of his mind.
He would be someone new. Neither of those two.
When he woke up, who would he be?