Leave Me Behind [Winter Soldier] III

Gone [Chapter 1]

"This will be a winter so desolate, only memory can fill the emptiness."

John Geddes

Gone.

Everything was gone.

Every part of him was gone.

Until it wasn't.

James Buchanan Barnes could feel again, starting with the tips of his fingers, then his real arm. Followed by the vibranium arm gifted to him by King T'Challa and all those in Wakanda who accepted him. And suddenly he was whole again. His whole body intact, all one again. His blue eyes adjusted to his surroundings; forest. He had been here before, this was familiar. Bucky tried to remember what happened, why was he here? Where was this place? If he was whole, why did he feel so empty inside?

"O," he whispered to himself. Why did it feel like it had been longer than it had? Why did it feel as though she had not been part of his life for so long? As though the world took her away from him, snatched her away. He looked down at the ground below him, his sturdy footing. Then he remembered.

He remembered everything.

There was no time for mourning; no time to think back on her time alive, that short few years of happiness they had, ripped apart. He felt ripped apart. She was gone; so long ago taken from him. Then Bucky remembered the fight, the fight for the fate of the universe. How Thanos won, how Thanos tricked Bucky into imaging a life with Ophelia that he could never have. She was dead, fractured skull, swelling of the brain, dead, gone. And then he was dead, he was gone.

Thanos won.

So why was Bucky back?

Conflict bloomed in his head; when he started to fade away and turn to dust, he felt peace for the first time in a long time. For the first time in over seventy years. He never felt true peace, even when hidden away in Romania with Ophelia. They were fugitives, criminals, hiding, living in terrible conditions. Always looking over their shoulders.

When he died, he felt peace.

Now he was back, and Bucky felt empty. Whole, yes. But an empty pit inside of him that was growing larger and larger.

A woman in red garb approached him. "Come, we have been called to the fight."

"What fight?"

"The fight to change the fate of the universe."

"I thought... I thought that was over."

"Fate has changed – it's time," the woman told him. She twisted her hands in a calculated movement, orange sparks flying in front of them. The orange sparks turned into a spinning circle, which opened and revealed desolation. Like the void inside of him, it opened up to something dark, something ugly, yet something that offered him hope.

If fate brought him back, so be it. The portal revealed nothing but grey -destroyed foundation of a building foreign to Bucky, like the foundation of what his reputation was built on. Destruction. He looked at the woman in red, and she nodded to him. But not before saying, "Five years ago, many of us perished. Today, we were given a second chance. We were not left behind, because they did not move on."

"Who?" Bucky asked.

"The Avengers."

Something inside Bucky began to stitch back together with those words. There were some people who never gave up, no matter what had been lost or how bad the odds seemed. One of those people was Steve Rogers. He never gave up on anyone. He didn't give up on Bucky when his mind was controlled by HYDRA, not once in the minute he realized he was alive did he stop searching for him. Then there was Ophelia, even after everything Bucky did to her with his blood-stained hands, O never gave up on him.