Stucky Oneshots!!

You'll Carry On

His limp body in my arms, all the terror held within the dying blue-grey of his eyes. If I had loved this man, why should I have killed him? If I had hated him so, why did I hold him? To missions I gave no second thought, yet the agony upon his features alight in each cell of my body. I hadn't known 'til now that I was human. Whatever the man had told me, he had brought memories to the surface. They were blurred and patchy, hardly memories as much as they were pictures from a time long since passed, but they were mine, and so I cherished them. I left the man on the shore, suddenly aware of the tears that streamed down my face. He was dead at my hands, and I could have saved him. I could have let him go. Whoever he was, I knew him. I knew him, but I killed him, and so I lost him. 

And it was then that I remembered the cold, the feel of a gun in my hand, the weight of the world buried between my shoulder blades. In my hands was the cool metal of a shield, heavy to hold yet light enough to carry above my head.
Bullets ricocheted against the walls, men falling down in all corners of the train, yet they weren't dead because of me. Wherever I was, I was not the enemy.
They were. 
How I knew, I couldn't say, but my guess would have been the way the young man in the blue suit had looked at me. He'd saluted, grinning widely, moonlight dancing in the grey of his irises. He was the very same man who's skull I'd pounded with my metal arm, the same man who's body had fell cold against mine. He looked less wearied in the memory. He looked less tired, less worn, less pained. There was no anguish painted on his sharp features, the corners of his mouth perpetually upturned. It must have been years ago that I had known him, or been his friend. When we had fought together, rather than each other. When the coat of dark crimson, dry and flaky on my hands, had belonged to me only. 

It must have been years since I was anything but a murderer. 

His name was lost to me, but I knew, somehow, that it would be beautiful. That it would suit his righteousness, his need to become a saviour. I knew how good it would taste on the edge of my tongue. His name was all I wanted. It was what I needed to get through the long, drawn hours that threatened to suffocate me. Outside, the streets were damp and cold, rain-water collecting in the potholes and the ditches on the sides of the roads, cars few-and-far between. Nobody wandered around at this time of night, apart from the homeless man and his dog, and the group of children who's brash, loud voices cut through the peaceful silence and the ringing in my ears. They broke the quiet I needed to recall him, my final hope. 
My final hope was dead and gone...

Yet I know his memory would carry on.