39. Letting Go

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Author notes:  Believe or not, I dreamed the first part of this

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Author notes: Believe or not, I dreamed the first part of this. As soon as I woke up I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget it.

If he had to do it all over again, Bucky would have made the same decision.  Leading a mission with the newest Avengers under his supervision, meant that he felt responsible for their safety.  It was his choice to enter the building first, assessing the risk before they came in with him.  Just as it was his choice to tell them to leave him behind after the bomb went off, an event that sent tons of debris raining down on him.  Now, as he laid injured in the dark, with his metal arm twisted and lodged behind him and both his legs broken he knew he wasn't getting out alive.  Those who had worked with him before, specifically Peter and Yelena, begged him not to make them leave but he made it clear.

"There is nothing you can do for me," he said, with what he hoped was finality.  "It's too risky for even a sorcerer and with Dr. Strange off somewhere in the multiverse I don't think he can activate the time stone and reverse this." 

He stopped for a moment to cough, feeling the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, likely from bleeding internally. 

"Bucky?" asked Peter over the comms.  "What about Cara?"

Cara ... his girlfriend of 8 months that he planned to propose to.  This would devastate her, but she knew the risks, being a SHIELD employee herself. 

"Tell her I love her and that I'm sorry," he replied, then he refused to answer his comms after that.

Outside, the team sat, despondent.  Shaun, Joaquin, Kate, Yelena, and Peter looked at each other, feeling sick inside.  Then Peter strode into the quinjet and asked Friday to patch him through to the Avengers compound.

"Sam?  We need help."  He filled him in on what happened and what Bucky ordered them to do, explaining none of them wanted to leave.  "We don't leave a team member behind.  I don't care if he made it an order.  It's not right."

As Sam listened to Peter, he got Carol Danvers' attention.  After listening to the gist of the conversation between him and Peter, she asked Friday to alert the remaining Avengers to suit up.  She also asked Friday to contact Wong, thinking they were going to need some magic to rescue Bucky. 

"Peter, stay there," he said.  "We're on our way and you're right, no matter what, we don't leave a team member behind."

It's strange where your mind takes you when it's the only thing still working.  Practically immobilized in the dark, close confines of what Bucky accepted was his tomb, he thought back over his life.  The first twenty years went by fast, not surprising considering it was so long ago and he wasn't even sure he had regained all those memories back.  He thought of his mother's hands.  Not an unusual thing because they were always busy.  Housewives in the 1920s and 1930s were always on the go and his mother was no different; washing clothes by hand, ironing everything, including the sheets, cooking, baking, darning, soothing a fevered brow when he was sick, tying his necktie the first time he wore one.  He sighed at how much he missed her, wished he had been able to see her just once before ....  If he had just been man enough to tell her he loved her before he left for England, the last time he saw her, or Dad, or Rebecca when she was still young.  At least he saw his sister again before she died.  That meant something. 

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