Because I Could Not Stop for Death
The ocean crashes against Bucky’s arm, the little grooves filling up with saltwater, the star catching the sunlight and beaming it like a great beacon across the beach. His hair is soaking, dripping water into his eyes and spraying like a dog every time he turns just a little bit. His feet hurt, they burn in the sand and he looks down to see the shells curling against his toes, a little crab a few inches away, a sting ray half way down the shore.
Here Bucky stands, in the ocean with immense power, with a crushing force that could sweep him away in a second without any last words to ring out among the sea foam. Here Bucky stands, waist deep in the ocean, a fatal feat that many have written about, written myths and songs and poems, here he stands. And his hands are pruning up and his eyes sting but he’s alive and breathing and here he stands next to things that are full of life. Here he stands.
Here he stands and for a brief moment, when he’s not dying to riptides, when he’s not drowning while thrashing, when he’s not being devoured by a shark, he feels okay. Because he’s standing in something that could end him in one tug by the moon, in one single instant but it’s not. And nether is he. He’s not killing even though he could, even though in a single flex of his metal arm he can crush a throat, through one eye he can shoot someone in immense wind, one Russian word muttered offhand and he could go back.
But he doesn’t, he isn’t. Instead there are children on the beach and dogs playing with a Frisbee, there are dolphins swimming and breaching the surface, and he is standing. No impending force on society, no menacing cloud coating every fiber of his being.
Here he stands, and he’s alright, because he is free and he has Steve to thank for it.
“Having fun Buck?” Steve calls across the beach and Bucky smiles, flips on his back to look up at the clouds.
Yes, yes he is.
I wrote this before my semi-hiatus and forgot to post it, that’s the only reason it’s here, sorry, my bad...
