December // A Winter Soldier Story

epilogue

✮ e p i l o g u e ✮

32°

It is 2040 when he finally suffers a hit he can't shake off. He has been waiting over a hundred years to finally rest - to find out what happens when his body can no longer carry on. He lays in a puddle of red, and the sight instantly flashes him back in time, to twenty six years ago. To when it was not him who was laying in a puddle of red, but her.

He wonders, as he gasps for air and the world around him is fading in and out, if this is what it felt like when she made her exit from life. If she felt scared, or if she felt a strange sense of relief, like he did now.

It's been a long time since he last saw her. He went on from that day she left and made a life for himself that he wishes she could've seen. He never fell in love again, but he finally established a home for himself, made friends, got into work for the government to help take down the last traces that remained of Hydra. For the last twenty six years, he has saved people, become an Avenger, and, in several instances, actually deeply enjoyed life. His memory returned in pieces, and he was able to rediscover who he was and intertwine it with who he had become.

As he lays in the grass with a tear streaking through the flesh of his abdomen, he catches sight out of the corner of his eye of children being evacuated from the building he had just helped bring down. Twenty-some small feet shuffle around and breathe in fresh air for the first time in who knows how long, their eyes wide with fear and hope. He lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as he watches them rediscover the world. His mission to rescue kids from being tortured at the last known Hydra base in the world has been successful, and oddly fitting - it must be fate that the only reason he is here today to finish off Hydra is because Hydra forced him to live past his time. And now, while he may finally be dying, he can rest knowing that he did his job and saved these children from death on his last day of life. Like Lea believed - one end leads to other beginnings.

A choking sound emerges from his throat as he starts to struggle to breathe. His abdomen burns with cold - it is early winter. He is thankful the agony has not yet registered in his brain.

With the last of the time he has left, he thinks in fragmented thoughts, making last-minute musings about life. He will miss the new friends he has made, and the city he calls home. But he knows that they will continue on without him and thrive. Did Lea know this when she died? Did she know Bucky would carry on in the way that he did? He can't be sure, but she easily could have. She always had answers for everything.

Did Steve know when he died that Bucky would be ok? Surely, he did too. It's been fifteen years since he passed and the world lost its Captain America. Bucky has missed him fiercely during this time, but Steve ended up having the greatest epilogue to his life that Bucky could've ever wished for him by returning to Peggy. Bucky couldn't hold it against Steve for wanting to go back to his one and only love - not when he wishes he could do the same - and he couldn't hold it against Steve for dying, either, not when Steve is finally able to rest.

Bucky sucks in the deepest breath he can muster. The year is 2040. It has been 123 years since this body of his got its first glimpse of the Earth, and since then he has seen all of the wonders and horrors it holds. He has seen the birth and death of nations and generations. He has witnessed the plight of man from the World Wars all the way through a time he once considered to be something he would never live to see. He has seen himself become both a hero and a villain. He has lived longer, and more, than any man can or should.

He is tired, and eager to finally relax his muscles and mind and ease himself of all of the pain he has endured in this lifetime. The blood is rising in his throat and the ground is saturated with the sticky substance, each moment ticking by both fast and slow at the same time. He can feel the shaking in his hands slowly ebb as he loses feeling in his nerves - eventually, all he can see is a sliver of the sky above him.

He watches as a single snowflake falls. A feeling of anticipation, excitement, and overwhelming relief overtakes him as he waits to see the two people he has missed for so long.

He remembers her words. Winter is long, but it never lasts forever. He thinks, she was right.

His last breath leaves his lungs. His chest does not rise again.

✮✮✮

In the darkness, three figures reach for each other.

They are all both something and nothing, broken and whole. Exhausted by the journey that was life, renewed by their newfound freedom from flesh and blood.

Here they can find peace. Two of the figures touch - they have not felt the other in twenty six years. A light as bright as sun reflecting off snow fills the space as they speak the thousands of words they've been waiting to say for two and a half decades.