Ascendancy

Chapter 16

        It shocks me, and I unthinkingly twist my torso so that the small area between my shoulder blades is visible.

        Bucky's rough, but warm, fingers trace slowly down my spine. "D*mn it," He mutters.

         I honestly don't care but Bucky's eyes are soaking with pain. I don't want him to be triggered, especially not by me. Galaxy's of regret lie deep in his brain. I want to form a black hole, and churn that guilt into myself, grabbing particles of hurting space until there are no more. But now I have become the meteor.

        "Why did you wear the arm, Bucky?" I whisper. I know saying I'm fine! I'm not hurt, I promise!, will not do the trick.

        "I thought... I thought that it..." Bucky can't tear his eyes from my back, where he is tracing his human fingers over the sour bruise that now barely peeking through the membrane of my skin.

        My head is now leaning on his chest, my legs thrown behind the chair around his waist, and my back exposed to the sun. The sea breeze drifts by. Comatose creeps into my nose, through my veins to be pumped around my body. But instead of sleep being pumped into my blood, red and bursting and oxygenated cells of love float through.

         "I wanted to be normal for you," He whispers.

        "Everyone wants be normal, but everyone wants to be different. Bucky," I stand up, pulling him by the hand to the railing of the veranda, "I don't care if you're missing an arm. The same as I don't care if the ocean dried up, or the sun stopped rising, because I know that something better is beneath all of this. Beneath your skin, is someone who has more depth and hardships then so many, but beats themselves up because the couldn't control them."

        "The sun can't control it's beauty; how people perceive it. You can't control what I see in you, and that's all I see: beauty," I finish.

        I look away, our hands still locked. The ocean simmers, the sun boils within it, and it's beams are thrown around.

        My view is suddenly cut off by a warm palm. The sun still seeps through the flesh, turning it ablaze in red. I look up and Bucky's eyebrows are pulled together, his lips near mine.

        "I love you."

        "I love you too."

        The ocean can dry up, the clouds can forever cover the sun. Bucky can stop loving me, and I can stop loving him. Everyone falls out of love, at least for a while. But there is a commitment that all things hold; we can't simply abandon what we were made to do. The sun will rise again. The ocean will keep beating against the shore. Bucky and I will forever fall back into each other's arms, the love that we were made to give, forever being received by the other.

///

        Step after step after step. Person after person after person. Hat, flip-flop, camera, flash, laugh.

        Life weaves between us. Wanda walks behind me again, Bucky by my side. The concret folds, and refolds again into more steps, until it looks like they are constantly revolving like an escalator. Tourist pass, cut by the metal structure of the Eiffel Tower into tiny fragments of flesh; souls torn by their appearance, and who they really are.

        We finally make it to the second landing. Paris is a painting before us, spilled out onto neverending blue. Bucky pushes by all the people, and then there it is. Just a block of concrete. Just a piece of history carved and recarved by feet. Until, a metal memorial was stamped into it.

        In loving memory of Francis Smith (1980-2005). "When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the path of men."