Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 2

Open Your Eyes (Rogers/Barnes x reader)

Follow up to Close Your Eyes (Bucky) and Close Your Eyes (Steve) in this book

"I only have a hazy memory of her," Bucky murmured to himself, standing next to Steve at the tiny and worn headstone that marked your final resting place.  "They took so much from me, and she got pulled away with it." The cemetery was in an older and run-down edge of Brooklyn, marked off by an old and broken fence, the ground covered in the dry and muted leaves of fall, just before the first snowfall of the year. 

"It's not your fault, Buck. You tried to fight them, I know you did."

"Yeah, but I should have fought harder, ya know?  I should have fought to get back to her.  I should be next to her right now, after living the life we wanted...whatever that was. I shouldn't be standing here, alive, carrying a name that she never got to share."

Steve didn't reply this time, now lost in his own swirl of mixed and hazy memories of those days; years with you and Bucky, when life was simpler and they had wistful plans that definitely didn't include running off to fight Hydra while you sat behind waiting for two men who would never return.  "We were so unfair to her," he finally whispered, leaning down to set the flowers he had brought next to your name, "she told us not to go."

"I remember that.  If I concentrate, I think I can hear her," Bucky nodded, closing his eyes and lifting them towards the clear sky and slight breeze.  "Fuck, I was an idiot."

"Still are."

"Thanks, man."

"She knew that we loved her, and that we made a decision despite that.  She knew we were idiots, and she still stayed," Steve began. "After I told her...when I told her that you had fallen from the train, it was as hard as being there to see it happen. It tore her apart even though she tried to keep a strong front for me.  Can you imagine?  Here I was, looking like this," he paused, waving his hand up and down over himself, "and she stayed strong for me? She deserved so much better from me that day."

Bucky shifted uncomfortably, pushing his hands deep into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.  He stared straight ahead, his mind flooding with a few broken pictures of you and a few phrases spoken though not complete, but one stood out amongst the chaos; it was the voice of the man next to him with a sting of betrayal as it replayed in his mind.

"Did you tell her that you loved her?  Once I was out of the way?"

"What?" Steve gasped, turning finally to look at him.  "No, of course not.  I would never...I couldn't..."

"Did she know?"

"No, I don't think so." Steve looked away again and back to your name, struggling to remember the words that he had hastily written to you before his final flight, wondering if Colonel Phillips had ever delivered it to you as he had promised.  "It was in my letter...but if she got it, I don't know if she even read it," he sighed. "When I left she told me that if I died and apologized in a letter that she wouldn't read it."

"She read it," Bucky nodded. "There's no way that she wouldn't let you get the last word.  She knew you better than that."

"And thanks for that," Steve scoffed. 

The two men stood in silence for an eternity again before Bucky finally had a revelation; a full memory of you that brought a wide smile to his face and a genuine laughter rumbling from his chest.  A few tears of relief rolled gently down his cheeks, and when Steve looked at him, the laughter only grew.

"Do you remember how we met her?"

"No..." Steve mumbled, looking aimlessly as he searched his memory, "not off the top...of my...oh...oh, my god," he finally laughed when he found it.  "How in the hell did I forget that?"