Just A Nurse

Twenty-Six

Hey there,

So as it turns out, I don't really do happy endings. A shame really but also this could never really had had a happy ending because Bucky's fall was inevitable.

Sorry I s'pose, but thanks for sticking around so long and I hope you enjoyed the book. If I do write a sequel, it will be set after Steve wakes up from the ice and will probably follow on the story from a new perspective.

Love E x

Published 31/5/19 @ 11:39 p.m

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Within the month, Steve had crashed a HYDRA plane into the Arctic. So Liv was stood alone in the meeting room, whilst the rest of the office was being boxed up and shipped back to New York. The last time she'd been in that particular room, she'd watched Steve and Bucky organising the last tour of Hydra bases. He'd been laughing with his friend, reaching out for her hand every and then, depending on the reassurance of her presence beside him to get through the meeting, because all joking aside, they had a family now. Charlie had been in her arms at the time, Bucky liked to have him as close as possible at all times because soon he'd be leaving again. Liv had let him go. She had trusted Steve with Bucky's life and let them get on that plane back to France.

Now she stood there, alone. Peggy stopped in the doorway, a box of paperwork in her arms, and she watched her friend staring at Bucky's old chair. The one he'd sat in so many times even Peggy could still picture his jacket hanging off the back of it. Liv was stuck so intently in her own mind that she hadn't even noticed the other woman's heels approach on the wooden floor.

"It's over Olivia," Peggy spoke softly like she was comforting a wounded child.

"What do I do now?" Liv's voice failed her; her words whispered through the silence: sad and desperate.

"You move forward, take the next step. The first is always the hardest, but it will get easier, with time."

"How do I do that? What's the next step? The war is over, the USF is done, I'm all but unemployed and now I have a child to support, a child to raise alone. His child. How do I tell Charlie that his father is dead? I have no home, no job, no Bucky, no Steve, no family. It's just me and Charlie and I don't know what I can do with that."

"You have me and if you want it, I have a job for you. But most importantly: you have a family waiting for you in New York. What you need to do now is go and get your son- because as much as I adore Michael, he is awful with children. And you need to come back to New York with me and Howard and mourn with the other people who lost Steve and Bucky. They are waiting for you in Brooklyn, waiting for their Grandson."

Peggy left Liv to herself, figuring there wasn't much left she could say to make this better. The widow sat tiredly in Bucky's chair. Like she was reaching out for his arms to hold her through the pain one last time. But Bucky never showed, how could he? He wasn't going to, never again, this was her life now and she needed to understand that.

The first step was facing their son. He was a baby, innocent and naive and he was all she had left of James. His small warm body in her arms offered a quiet relief and she was reminded of the mother she had wanted to be. She couldn't fall apart because James' son needed a good mother. If she could give Bucky nothing else, she would give him that. There was still an un-easing pain with every step and breath and thought. Not a day passed when he wasn't at the forefront of her mind.