Come Back With Me

He Imagines Her

Bucky was still getting used to leading. He never really led anyone in his life so it was strange to have people looking at him for direction.

Him and his team are waiting in the trenches for something to happen. Something that no one ever told Bucky was that there was a lot of waiting in war.

Everyone is silent but they don't exactly expect anything to happen since they have already been sitting there for a couple hours.

Bucky pulls out Lizzie's necklace and holds it in his hand. He squeezes it and thinks of her.

He hopes she is doing well and taking care of herself. He's so glad that at least she'll have Steve to make sure she's doing okay.

He opens his eyes and begins fiddling with the ring on the chain. It's only in that moment that he realizes that there are words etched on the inside of the ring.

The inscription reads, "If I'm Yours, You are Mine".

He remembers saying that to her after they first got together. They've belonged to each other everyday since then and they will belong to each other for the rest of their lives.

What he wouldn't give for five minutes with her.

That's when the first bomb hits.

All of a sudden there is a plethora of gun shots and Bucky begins to shout orders.

They all line up at the trenches and begin firing at the income enemies.

There are a lot of them but they are managing to hold them back temporarily.

They fight for hours but enemies keep coming and they are running low on ammunition and hope.

Bucky goes to call for more backup but then he sees one of his comrades holding up a broken radio.

He closes his eyes for a quick second and takes a deep breath.

Bucky can't help thinking that this is how he dies. He wishes he could go home to Lizzie but he knows that the odds of that are slim.

All of a sudden, a bright blue light hits the incoming soldiers and they are disintegrated. More and more blue lights come and suddenly it is just his team alive. This is definitely nothing Bucky has seen before. It was almost like something straight out of a comic book.

"What the hell was that?" Someone yells.

They walk out from cover to see who has just saved them.

"That looks... new," Dum Dum says.

A tank comes up from the horizon and they all stare at it.

It's Bucky who realizes that the guns are pointing down. At them.

"Get down!" Bucky yells.

The explosion goes off and a few members of his party are killed instantly but most of them lay on the ground either injured or disoriented.

Bucky watches as a group of soldiers surround them.

That is the last thing Bucky sees before he blacks out.

When he wakes, the first thing he notices is that he's in a strange room. The second thing he notices is that he is strapped to a table.

When he imagined how his death would play out if he died in the war, he figured it would be during a fight. Now he knows that his death is going to be much worse.

He knows that they are probably going to torture him for information that he won't give.

He knows he's pretty stubborn and there's no amount of pain that he thinks will make him break. The only thing that could ever break him was sitting thousands of miles away in their tiny Brooklyn house in total safety.

All of a sudden a door opens and a man walks in.

"Sergeant Barnes, so glad to see you awake," the man says in a heavy German accent.

Bucky doesn't say anything and just glares at the man.

"You don't have any questions? I would if I were you," he taunts.

Bucky does have questions, a lot of them but for some reason he doesn't think this man will answer a single one of them, so what was the point?

"We aren't going to kill you Sergeant Barnes if that's what you're thinking. Well, we won't kill you on purpose. If all goes well, then you will survive and thrive," he explains.

What were they going to do? Experiment on him?

He doesn't know why but this idea is way worse than torture to him.

At least if they killed him through torture, he'd get to die as himself. He has no idea what their experimentation will do to him.

He saw the advanced technology they had earlier and he is scared that they have the power to manipulate him into something horrible.

A nurse suddenly enters the room with an IV filled with a blue liquid. The nurse attempts to put it in his arm but he fights against her.

More doctors and nurses flood the room and hold him down until they finally are able to insert the needle into his skin.

He feels like he is on fire as the liquid enters his veins. He never thought that he'd be the type of person to beg for death but if the pain continues on like this, he might just have to.

He can hear a scream and wonders who it is until he realizes that it is him.

Everything is getting fuzzy and confusing because the only thing he can focus on is the pain.

The scientists are watching in great interest as they watch him take in the serum. This is usually the point where the other subjects had succumbed to the pain and their heart stops.

Bucky knows that there's only one way he can get through this pain so he imagines her. He imagines his Ellie.

He usually thinks about past memories but today he thinks of a future he'll never have. He knows that he'll never get out of here alive.

He imagines their reunion and how she'll run to him on the doc and jump into his arms. She'll kiss him and it will be the most glorious feeling in the entire world.

He imagines her in a simple white wedding dress. She'll looks up at him and gives him one of her radiant smiles and then slip his wedding band onto his finger.

He imagines going back home for the first time after the wedding and how he will scoop her into his arms to carry her across the threshold causing her to laugh.

He imagines her walking across the stage at graduation to receive her medical degree and how proud of her he'll be.

He imagines her coming home and telling him that he's going to be a father. He'll sweep her into his arms and spin her around and then put her down when he thinks he might be hurting the baby.

He imagines holding his child in his arms for the first time. A baby that is made of both him and Ellie.

He imagines all the things that he knows he'll never have and that's almost a worse pain then the one that is currently flooding his system.

Eventually, all the serum drains and the scientists begin furiously writing notes. They have finally found a test subject who has taken to the trials.

They know they still have a long way to go. The serum that they just gave him is only meant to make him more durable. It will be harder for him to die but they haven't managed to replicate super strength with the serum.

This serum will keep him alive so they can continue to experiment with their version of the super soldier serum.

Bucky is barely aware that the needle is removed from his arm and that the pain and stopped.

He begins to pass out but the last image in his mind is Lizzie in her beautiful wedding dress as he asks her to dance.