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𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐒𝐌
𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘺-𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘦: 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘵
𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘺 ( 𝘣𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘺 𝘣𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘹 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴 )
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𝐛𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐲
IT WAS QUIET THAT day. The guns barely spat fire across the dilapidated battlefield, and the injured barely let a moan of agony escape their chapped lips and parched mouths. The minute hum of the soldiers well enough to move filtered through the air as they shared small conversation about the simple things in life and their loved ones back home; the ones they will never see again if they lose their lives in this dark mark on history.
"Hey, I'm just going to check on the others," a deep voice says, making me jump in shock. I keep forgetting how much he has grown and matured since we were kids in Brooklyn. Very little remains of that silly blond. "Hey, Buck, you alright?"
I nod, scanning my eyes over his figure. "I'm fine. Just keep forgetting, ya know? You're so different."
"Physically. I'm still the same in here." He taps my forehead. "And so are you."
"I know, Steve. Get going, alright?"
"Aye, Sergeant." He steps back and mock salutes.
I watch as he walks away, his blonde hair somehow not filled with grime and muck from the walls of the trenches. His uniform is different though. It's covered in splatters of unidentifiable mixtures, and there are tears from where bullets have worked their way into his body. It's a good thing he is no longer that little kid from Brooklyn. If he were, he would have been long dead.
He has grown considerably since the war began - almost as if he hit a growth spurt when the world needed him most - and he has filled out as well. The skinny objects that we once called arms no longer exist. It's all pure muscle and strength in their place. His once twig-like legs are solid muscle and strong bone to support his newfound weight. He's not scrawny and defenceless any longer; he can protect himself from the bullies this time.
The very thought of him dying makes my stomach drop and a sickness build up within the confines of my body. Losing my best friend is what I am most afraid of in this cruel world, and that hasn't changed since the day I met him. Steve is my weak spot, and anyone who knows me knows that fact. Losing him would make this world no longer worth living in.
Just like that, the world erupts into chaos.
The wailing is so sudden that we don't have time to react, excluding the few screams of horror that leave a handful of the surviving soldiers. The next second, everything goes white. A loud, earth shattering boom! sounds and earth goes flying everywhere. A wall of wind flies out from the source of the blast and sends me flying into the distance, pain flaring up my arm from the debris hitting it. The pain is belittled as my back smashes into a solid wall.
The ringing in my ears and the spinning of my mind is all I can comprehend amongst the pain ravaging my body. Upon my body I can feel a great weight, but why? I force my eyes open, but there is nothing to see. Well, except for a massive hole in the ground. The weight upon me tumbles off as I painfully force myself into a sitting position. It was just dirt, but a lot of it. Why this catastrophe right now? There's barely been fighting all day.
Then it all clicks.
A bomb. They fired a bomb when we were not on our guard. That's what they were waiting for, and they knew that it would all work. A goddamn bomb was the end of some of us, and there was no stopping it. Hell, we don't know how many are even dead right now.
My eyes drift, almost lazily, over the damage caused by the chink in our armour. They quickly fly back to the hole and I feel them widen astronomically. Where it hit... That's where he went. The entirety of where our friends once were is a hole in the ground, and there is no sign of any of them. I can't even see the messy blond head of my best friend.
"Steve," I grunt as I force myself to my feet. The pain that stabs my body almost makes me collapse back to the cold, hard ground, but I force myself to stay upright. "Steve. God damnit. Steve."
The ground shifts beneath my feet and I feel myself begin to tumble to the ground. My mind spins as I regain my footing, a sharp breath of relief leaving me. The ground flattens out the closer I get to the site where the bomb hit, and I begin to make out humanoid rises amongst the dirt. Their faces are lathered in dirt, but I can still put names to them. Sam. Steven. Samuel. Teddy. Robert. Will. They're all lying here, either dead or dying, but they're not the one I'm searching for.
"Steve!"
That's when I see it.
The familiar body shape. The facial features I have looked upon since we were but children in the playground; the blue eyes once full of life, now a cold, steel blue with no sign of the man I fell in love with all those years ago. The very sight brings me to my knees beside the shell of my best friend, and the emptiness fills me as much as it has him.
"Stevie, wake up," I whimper, carefully stroking his cheek. There is still a slight warmth to his skin. He died not too long ago. "Come on, Steve. You promised me. 'Til the end of the line. This isn't it, Steve! Wake up!"
A slight tremor ripples the flesh beneath my fingers as the sun warms his face. "Bucky..."
"Steve? Steve!"
There is no response from my best friend, and I know that it was but my imagination. It's impossible that he is still alive after that bomb. There's no way. He was at the centre of the blast, or close to it. No matter how strong he is, there is no way that he could be alive.
Back at home, there's a whole life that he has yet to live, and it has been ripped out from beneath him. Our home back in Brooklyn is going to be silent. Steve's no longer going to be cracking jokes, and there's going to be a severe lack of the sound of food being cooked - well, food being cooked at all. The emptiness is going to eat me alive, and Steve is going to fill my every waking thought.
We were going to live the rest of our lives together. We had a plan. Steve was going to open up a gym for veterans of the war, and for those who needed to let out the frustrations of their daily lives. I was going to become a tattoo artist and earn enough to buy us an apartment in the richer area of Brooklyn. We were going to do whatever it took to keep our secret, and now it's been taken to the grave. There was so much we had yet to do, and a single second was all it took to tear it all down.
"It's all pointless," I sob into Steve's chest. "All of this is fucking pointless! None of this has any meaning, Steve. This war? There's no point to it. All that we're fighting for, it is meaningless. This war has cost me the life of my best friend, and the one I love. What more can it take from me?!"
