"Grief" >.>
In the end, it wasn’t anything spectacular that took Bucky away from him. It wasn’t some heroic gesture of self-sacrifice. There was no bullet, no explosion, no fiery inferno with Bucky planted firmly in the middle.
In the end, it was something as simple and as stupid as a childhood disease. One most people now were vaccinated for, but the vaccine would come eighty years too late for Bucky.
For Bucky who had chicken pox as a child. Who’d recovered with oatmeal baths and calamine lotion and spread it to his friends at play dates because they didn’t know. Who’d been bedridden for a few days with a fever and some itchy spots, his ma tying cloths to his hands to keep him from scratching til he bled.
In the end, it was something as simple as shingles that took James Buchanan Barnes away from Tony Stark. The virus remained in his system even with the addition of the super-serum, so heavily hidden by his anti-bodies that the serum couldn’t have known to eliminate it. Dormant for almost a hundred years before it reactivated, causing a sharp, burning rash.
Then the fever as the serum amplified the effects. A headache Bucky just couldn’t shake. Fatigue that left him winded.
By the time he let Tony know something was wrong, it was already too late. Inflammation had already begun, slowly putting pressure on his spinal cord and brain stem.
Bucky Barnes, the former Winter Soldier, dead and gone because of a childhood illness. One that probably would have flared up if he’d been released from cryo more frequently. One that killed less than a hundred people per year.
The gravestone was simple. A plain white stone with Bucky’s name carved into it. His rank. His service number and dates. His birthday and the day he died. The same symbol that graced all of the tombstones of the Howling Commandos.
It rained the day they buried him. It rained at Arlington National Cemetary, where Tony had insisted Bucky be buried with full military honors. Where his friends all lay in waiting for he and Steve to join them, among the soldiers who fought and died for something greater than themselves.
It rained and Tony hadn’t brought his umbrella. He twirled the silver band on his right ring finger. Bucky was buried with a matching band, both cast from the metal of his first arm. From the arm that started it all for them.
Tony flinched every time a raindrop smacked him in the face. He listened as the trumpets played taps, the few remaining World War II vets saluting the casket draped in an American flag. Draped with his medals. Draped with the last vestiges of Bucky.
He listened as rifles, raised to the sky, fired out twenty-one rhythmic shots. Twenty-one bullets flew into the sky, to make land wherever the wind took them.
He watched in silence as they folded the flag, in half. Then in half again. Then corner to corner until it became a small triangle. A triangle that was handed to Tony as his widower. The casket was lowered into the ground and oh how it rained.
“What’s wrong, Barnes? Can’t sleep?” Tony asked the shadow of a man perched precariously at the side of his bed.
Bucky looked at him, eyes sunken and skin pale as thunder loomed off in the distance. Tony understood. He hated the ran. He hated the water dripping over his face, the distant shouts of Pashto and broken English echoing in his ears.
Tony pulled back the covers and patted the space beside them. They were friends - friends helped friends, right? If Bucky curled into him a little too close and Tony held him a little too tight, that was between them and the silent lightning that lit up Tony’s bedroom ever so often as the storm got closer and closer and then further away.
Tony shook hands with thirty or forty people. A general, maybe, a colonel, sure, friends and relatives of the Commandos whose graves were a scant few rows away.
The mourners filtered out one by one, umbrellas open and black attire dry as they got in their cars and drove away. Someone asked Tony if he was okay, if he needed a ride home. Tony just stared at the stark white marker. He stared as the sun set and the drizzle became a downpour. He stared as the gravediggers filled the hole in with dirt.
He stared until someone came to drag him away, shivering and cold.
And so silent.
