Whumpcember (day 12)
Pairing: Bucky x Reader (Zombie apocalypse au)
Prompt: I have nowhere else to go
Word Count: 5.8k
Warnings: Enemies to lovers; zombies; mentions of murder; blood; death
Author’s note: This got a little too long for a fic that was initially meant to be a Drabble but I couldn’t bring myself to let it end earlier. And this was quite fun, since I’ve never written something like this before.
[Divider by @sweetmelodygraphics ]
Masterlist | Whumpcember Masterlist
Your side is stinging terribly, pulsing with every unsteady step.
Your legs fail at mimicking a normal stride, falling back into a limp.
Your hands tremble, defying every command to just stay still.
Your lungs sear with every breath, dragging air like fire down a raw throat.
Your head swims in chaotic loops, spinning with images and echoes you can’t escape.
Your shoulder and back throb from an impact you took earlier, sharp pain shooting up your spine with every jolt of your uneven stride.
The enormity of what just happened refuses to fit neatly into thought.
The sun is not even all up in the sky and your day already took a turn so cruel, you are teetering on the edge of collapse.
You stopped keeping track of time since this whole apocalyptic shit began but it's safe to say that you just lost everything you had in the span of maybe three hours.
You are exhausted. You are tired. You are in fear. You are in shock.
Acknowledging all of that is dangerous right now.
The world feels off-kilter.
Nausea rises again. Though there is nothing left in your stomach. You already emptied it on the forest floor before you stumbled into the trees, desperate to escape.
The acrid taste still lingers at the back of your throat.
The trees around you sway in your periphery, tall shadows painted in moonlight. It’s not the wind that makes them sway. It’s your vision. Branches claw at the sky like the dread claws at your resolve.
Your body is screaming at you to stop and collapse into the dirt, but you know if you let it, you won’t ever stand back up again.
You have to keep going.
You have to press on.
Your world has crumbled into rot and hunger, and all you have left is the instinct to run.
Run and survive.
Whatever that means now.
You have no sense of the distance you’ve put between you and the nightmarish scene you had to leave behind, no measure of the miles your aching legs already crossed.
You don’t know if they are right behind you. If they’re even coming for you.
It was barely dawn when they came.
It wasn’t a warning shot or a distant sound that reached the camp first. No, it was the impact.
The sound of boots trampling through the undergrowth, bodies charging through the trees, wild shapes silhouetted against the rising sun. Barked commands that carried no meaning, only menace.
You had barely time to register what was happening when they were already in the heart of the camp.
They scattered supplies, spilled meager rations into the dirt, kicked apart the fire pit still faintly glowing from the night before when your small group all sat in a circle around it.
With the first scream, violence erupted.
Blades flashed and mocking laughter rang out from all sides as you heard your companions cry out in terror and pain.
They scrambled from their makeshift shelters, some clutching weapons, others still groggy, confused, unarmed. There was no time to gather thoughts, no time to plan. The raiders were already upon you, tearing through tents and slaughtering everyone in their way.
You watched as Caleb lunged for them, but they cut him down before he even reached anybody.
You tried to get little Benjamin to safety but he got ripped away from you in a matter of seconds and you only felt the slash of a knife against your side.
You heard the guttural sobs of Jonna and her wide eyes as she couldn’t tear them off the lifeless body of her husband. You tried to reach her, grabbing her and getting her away but before you could, she got hit and fell. Just like her husband had moments earlier.
The thud of bodies hitting the ground, the clash of metal, the desperate screams of the people you knew and trusted, cutting off as quickly as they began, the splattered blood everywhere across the ground, slick on leaves, staining clothes of people who’d been alive only seconds earlier. Blood that is all over you, painted in your hair, in your face, on your hands-
You heave the bile against a nearby tree.
Your throat burns. The images burn. The memories burn.
The world is already torn apart as it is but they ripped at everything you had fought for.
You were pinned on the ground at one point. Brutally shoved down and the impact took your breath away. However, you were able to move out of the way of the knife that was meant for your face and instead buried into the ground. The surprise of your attacker weakened his hold on you and you were able to flee, but not without taking a few more hits.
Your friends were dead. Everything was destroyed.
So you ran.
You ran, stumbled, fell, scrambled up, and ran again.
You wondered if the raiders stayed to strip your makeshift camp bare or if they followed you. The last one alive. The one that slipped through their grasp.
Or maybe they’ve decided you’re not worth the effort, and your life hangs by nothing but chance.
After all, you feel death knocking on your door. And it will kick it in, hinges breaking and wood splintering if you don’t open it yourself.
But you won’t.
You push on. You will push your body to its breaking point.
Even if your mind shatters way before your body does.
Because you know you will crumble if you allow your thoughts to win over your body.
You just lost everything you had.
Your group was only on the move.
The camp was supposed to be a fleeting thing. A place to catch your breath from traveling. This morning you were all supposed to pack what little you had and keep moving and get closer to the sanctuary you had spoken of. A place you were going to build. A place where no raid, no nightmare, no lifeless beast could touch you.
So, if you had risen earlier, broken down the camp faster, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened. Perhaps your friends - the few people who so graciously took you in almost two years ago - would still be alive.
You don’t even know who the marauders were. They came out of nowhere.
A realization makes your blood run cold.
Something you remembered only now.
The sounds.
You heard it between the screams of your friends at one point. Low, throaty, and too familiar. The kind of sound that makes your pulse rise and pricks the back of your neck.
It was the sound you learned to fear. The sound your world had been drowning in for years now.
The sound of the dead - those shambling remnants of humanity, curses to wander the earth as mindless husks.
You remember the way they started moving so differently than when they came into your camp - some of them sluggish, others unnervingly erratic.
And you begin to wonder. Perhaps they had been bitten before raiding your camp.
And perhaps that’s the reason they came. They knew their time was up. They probably felt the infection eating at them, death clawing closer. Maybe attacking your group was their last violent eruption of humanity, the last thing they did with a conscious mind before they fell to the disease that had already claimed their souls.
They didn’t have anything left to lose. No loved ones to mourn. No future to fight for. Just an empty void ahead. A transformation into something even crueler than the monsters they already were. Perhaps they wanted this last conscious act to mean something. To carve their names into the memory of the world before they became nothing more than rotting corpses, stumbling through the dirt without a single thought in mind.
It makes you sick.
If they wanted to be remembered, they succeeded. You will remember. You will remember the massacre, the destruction, the screams, the wicked laughter that curdled your blood.
You will remember them because the screams of the people you came to love and trust have planted themselves into your chest and they won’t ever leave.
Maybe that’s what they wanted. To leave a mark, no matter how meaningless, no matter how vile. Or maybe they simply wanted to take something beautiful and shred it before they joined the walking rot.
Either way, they are gone now and you are left.
Alone.
You are left alone.
On the way to the one place you never thought your feet would lead you to again.
The one you meant to leave behind. To forget. To never return to. To move on.
Though you have to admit to yourself it never worked as well as you had hoped.
It has been two years since you left.
Two years of telling you to lock those doors with memories you tried to forget for so long.
And now, the thought of going back lets dread curl around your chest. It’s the dread of walking into a place you don’t know if you’re welcome anymore. The dread of facing what you left behind - facing who you left behind.
But there is also a flicker of something else. Something that feels too fragile, too dangerous to name. You tell yourself it’s nothing - just a memory, nostalgia - but you can’t quite smother it.
Because those people were your family once. Before you left, before you found the group you traveled with these last two years, they were your everything. Your friends, your loved ones, your sanctuary.
They were the ones that held you together when the world fell apart, the ones who gave you a purpose in this now purposeless society.
You left them behind to find something that you lost again just earlier.
The new group you had come to call your own, the people you fought beside, laughed with, dreamed with. All gone. Taken from you in a single, brutal morning. By people you couldn’t even take revenge on anymore. By people who aren’t even people anymore.
And you know your new companions never replaced your first family but they were home nonetheless.
But now, you have nowhere else to go but the place you called home first.
Though, would you really be welcome after all this time?
Would they let you in? Would they open their gates and arms for you?
Would he let you in?
Because truly, that is the only question that matters. You know the hearts of the others, know that they would be happy to see you again.
Sam, with his wide toothy grin. He’d throw his arms around you and clap you on the back and tell you something that would make you laugh despite everything.
Steve, with that glint in his eyes. Because he never truly believed you wouldn’t return.
Wanda, with the tears in her gaze. She’d pull you into her embrace, whispering how she’d prayed for this and never given up hope.
Natasha, with her amused smirk. She’d stand a step behind with her arms crossed and tease you that it only took two years for you to miss them enough to lose all the dignity you could hold onto and came back.
And all the others who would greet you with happy smiles and tears and hugs. Because that’s who they are. Who they’ve always been. They are pure love for those they call their own.
And you have been one of them.
Of course, your sight would first be met with concern at your condition, but the joyful reunion would eventually happen. Banner would fuss over you but keep the worry out of his calm hands and voice like the professional he is. Tony would bark orders, his mind already working ten steps ahead. Peter would hover nearby, ready to help, ready to do whatever was needed to put you back together.
You imagine how they would patch you up, make sure you didn’t collapse right there at their feet. They’d press water into your hands, bandage the gashes, stitch the torn skin. They would give you time to breathe, to settle.
A smile almost manages to spread over your lips but the exhaustion in your bones tugs the corners of your mouth back down.
And there is this one person you’re not sure about. What will he do when he sees you? What will he say? Will he say anything at all?
There is a reason you left, after all.
The community you all lived in was a big one with men and women and children and elders all sharing a beautiful and vast space.
You had all agreed on not having a single leader to rule but rather having the few most trusted people who started this whole thing to do councils every so often.
Once, you were one of them.
You would meet up, usually when the night had already started, discussing and making decisions - everything involving supply runs, how to keep the walls protected, how to celebrate a birth or mourn a loss, and so on.
Bucky was a part of that as well.
And that’s where the trouble lay.
You two never really seemed to see each other eye to eye. You would fight and banter - him calling you stubborn and reckless, you calling him pragmatic and intolerant. The disagreements were constant, heated, and sometimes public enough to turn heads and the other council members to end up disappointed and helpless.
It went on like that for years. Though the day it all fell apart will forever live in the cracks of your mind. Guilt never dulls no matter how much distance you put between them and yourself.
It was a supply run. Something that’s been routine by now. A scavenging mission into hostile territory, dangerous but necessary. Food was running low, medicine almost gone.
You were walking through the woods - a sector closer to dead zone, but Bucky and you were both fueled by anger at the other’s stubbornness to pay attention to the little group of people you took with you. They were good at ignoring your bickering.
“We do it my way. Slow, methodical. We’re not losin’ anyone because of some reckless stunt.” His tone was flat. Final.
“I’ve never put anyone in danger, Bucky,” you defended with fire in your voice.
Bucky’s voice was hard. “You charge in without thinkin’, every single time-”
“Yes, and I always do that alone, Barnes. Don’t you think I know the risks? I wouldn’t ask anyone to-”
“Damn it, Y/n,” he cut off, voice sharp. “It’s bad enough that you do it-”
“If we only ever go slow, people will starve. We can’t afford to waste time, Barnes. You want to lose them sitting on your hands instead of taking a risk? That’s on you, not on me.”
Bucky talked lower then, harshly.“That’s not taking a risk, Y/n! That’s fuckin’ suicide.”
The actual mistake was in the silence that followed. No compromise, no meeting of minds. Just the brittle quiet that stretched between you both and the tension that lingered even over the other group members walking with you.
Bucky’s jaw was tight, his steps heavy. Yours were no lighter.
It happened fast. As it always did. One moment, the woods were still, only the crunch of the leaves underfoot and a few insects in bushes and trees surrounding you.
The next, groans split the air, coming from every direction - shadows lurking between trees, their figures misshapen, their eyes empty.
There were too many of them. That was clear from the first breath, but you didn’t have time to process it, to count.
You shouted for the group to move, to break toward the clearing just ahead and they started rushing away until Bucky’s voice rose behind you. His commanding tone seethed in your veins.
“No! Fall back - circle to the ridge!”
But the clearing was closer. The clearing was safer.
So you said as much.
But that’s all the hesitation it took for the dead to gather closer. Close enough.
You lost precious time, precious ground. The damage had already been done.
Two people didn’t make it. Two lives, lost in the spaces between your choices.
The argument that followed was like nothing before. No banter. Not bickering. It was an unfiltered and ugly thing, charged by your guilt and his. Words were thrown, accusations hurled. It was awful.
And when the shouting stopped, there was nothing but silence. Thick. Unbearable.
Neither of you could let go of your anger, your grief, your pride long enough to see that you’d both failed them.
That day something shattered in your connection. Whatever that had been. The tension that always accompanied your relationship. It felt corrosive. Wrong.
And that’s when you made the decision. The decision to leave, that now led you to come back again.
Will he resent you? That thought is a blade that has turned itself dull from too much use, yet it still cuts at you in ways you can’t dodge.
You imagine him standing there, arms crossed, his face as unreadable as it would be stoic, staring at you with the fire that always burned behind his eyes.
Will he even let you step inside? Or will his anger boil over and turn you away, pushing you back into the wilderness you barely even escaped from?
Will he relish in your brokenness, in the way life has stripped you down to your very bones? Will he find satisfaction in seeing you this fragile, this vulnerable, clinging to scraps of pride as your body barely holds itself together? The image of his piercing gaze, not softened by time or mercy, sends a shiver down your spine.
But it also just might be your body starting to give out, you realize when more shivers whack your form.
You push on.
And you wonder. Could there maybe also be relief in those eyes, hidden behind the mask he always wears so well. Relief that you’re still alive, that whatever dark roads you’ve walked since haven’t claimed you completely.
Or would that relief be poisoned by something bitter - the satisfaction not of your survival, but of seeing you humbled, seeing you brought low enough to crawl back to him, back to the home you lied to yourself you were fine living without.
You picture his face shifting. A flicker of something softer crossing his features before he buries it deep. Will it pain him to see the bruises painted across your skin, the blood that’s long since dried on your hands and clothes, the tremble in your limbs while you stand before him like a ghost returned from the grave?
Will he turn you away, disgusted not by your injuries but by the weakness they represent?
You wonder if he’d speak at all. Silence, from him, could be worse than anger. After all, anger means caring. You don’t get angry if you don’t care.
So, perhaps you will be left to fill the empty space with your many regrets and guilty feelings.
Maybe he won’t even look at you. Don’t throw you a single glance, his gaze fixed somewhere distant.
But your conscience can’t help but imagine things.
Because what if he’d feel something he wouldn’t dare admit, not even to himself. That the faintest pull of relief isn’t for the pain you’re in, not for the way life has broken you, but that it is for the simple fact that you’re here, alive, breathing. Maybe that relief would be buried under layers of what he’d felt for you all those years. But it would be there.
Honestly, you don’t think you will ever get an answer to any of those questions. Because you feel your mind start to drift too much. As if the images in your head start to turn into dreams and your body is luring you into sleep to live them out.
You’re giving up.
And you are still not close enough to your old and now only sanctuary despite walking and dragging your frail form for hours and miles on end.
Your head is spinning, images and voices now blurred and upside down and all wrong.
Not even noticing you stopped dragging yourself forward, you start to lean the whole weight of your body against a nearby tree.
The bark is rough against your skin, scraping through fabric, digging into bruises, and tearing them raw. It should hurt. You know it should hurt, but it barely even registers anymore. It’s just another sensation - one more thing slipping away.
Your eyelids droop. They feel so heavy. The forest is shapeless around you, just a mess of color and shadow.
Your breaths come shallow and uneven, lungs forgetting to do their job. Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you know this is it. This is where you’ll stop, where you’ll finally collapse and leave it all behind.
And the thought somehow isn’t as terrifying anymore. There’s a strange, unfamiliar peace blooming in your chest. You think about how your body would lie here, half-curled in the dirt, skin pale and bloodied, eyes forever closed.
Bucky might find you.
One day he might stumble upon your corpse on the ground. Maybe he’ll kneel beside your lifeless form, the frown on his face deepening, lips pressing into a grim line. Maybe he’ll tell you that he was right. That you were reckless and should have listened. Maybe his voice will tremble just a little.
The bickering you shared will follow you even into death.
The thought makes you want to laugh, but your body is too far gone for that. It’s barely your body anymore. It’s a shell of nothing. The world tilts, spins, then tilts again. You feel yourself begin to let go.
You won’t wake up. Not this time. And somehow, that’s okay. The peace blossoms brighter in your chest, warm and soft, as if the weight of the world is finally lifting.
You lost everything you had. And not even just today. You lost it two years ago when you decided it was the best to leave your home.
Your eyes slip shut and you don’t try to press them back open again. Your body is slumping to the ground, bark scraping against you, the ground rushing closer. The cold earth is pressed against your face. Your breath falters and slows.
Your body feels dead by now but your mind still blinks with awareness. And funnily enough, it can’t seem to let go of Bucky. His sharp face. His strong voice, the cadence of it so deeply carved into your memory that it echoes so clearly as if he were sitting right beside you.
“Y/n!”
“Shit, Y/n!”
It calls your name. The sound so urgent and frantic, it pulls you back for a fleeting second, though you are sure none of your muscles even twitch.
You are actually impressed with yourself. His voice sounds so real, so vivid. How is your mind able to conjure something so precise on the verge of unraveling completely? It’s him, down to the inflection, the roughness, the bite.
But you know it isn’t really him. That wouldn’t make any sense. Your mind is exaggerating. You’ve blown the image of him out of proportion, dressed him in a panic he wouldn’t wear for you, not for this.
If he found you like this - broken, slumped, slipping away - perhaps his voice wouldn’t even crack.
The day you said your goodbyes, Bucky wasn’t even there with the others. He wasn’t there when you hugged Sam, his arms lingering around you. Not when Steve couldn’t evoke a smile that wasn’t tight or sad. Not when Wanda touched your cheek with shaking fingers, her tearful eyes searching you for a reason to make you stay and telling you you’d always be welcome to come back home. Not when Natasha ordered you, not to get yourself killed out there, what was a little too late now.
You didn’t really expect him to come. Actually, it was better this way, you had thought. Cleaner. No last harsh words, no heated standoff, no last-minute chance for him to dig deep again.
Some stubborn, foolish part of you had hoped of course.
But that was when you saw him as you made your way to the gates.
He stood at the edge of the grounds you were about to leave behind, hidden in the shadows of bushes and trees. His arms were crossed over his chest, his figure rigid, his face set in stone.
You willed not to let your heart clench, but it did. You told yourself he was just there for a final gloat, some grim satisfaction in watching you go. In seeing you lose.
But his eyes held yours. So unwavering and intense. It burned through you. His features were dark, but also, he did stand covered in shadows. However, there was no smirk, no triumph, no venomous parting shot.
But he didn’t move. He didn’t step forward, didn’t say a single thing. He didn’t do anything but hold your gaze as if daring you to be the one to break it.
And you did.
You had a new life to attend to.
And you didn’t look back when leaving.
Still, you felt the burn of his eyes on you, so much more intense than ever before.
You guessed he dropped that stoic, seemingly unhappy mask the moment you were out of sight. Maybe he even threw a silent celebration, relieved to finally be free of you, of the friction you brought into his life.
But the small annoying voice in the back of your mind whispered something else. Something that actually made you consider turning back around before you got ahold of yourself again.
It told you that maybe his expression had stayed dark long after you were gone. That maybe his gaze lingered on the empty path where you’d disappeared. That maybe his arms stayed crossed, not to shield himself from the cold but to stop himself from reaching out.
And your brain now doesn’t seem to have any doubts either because you might actually feel hands shaking you, gripping your face. There weren’t many times when you came in contact with Bucky’s hands, and only fleeting and unintentional, so you don’t know if your conscience got the feeling of his hands on you right but you relish it anyway.
You hope he’d worry. You hope so much. Why, you don’t even know. It’s not like it matters anymore. But you need him to worry.
You need him to feel something sharp, something visceral. You need the cracks in his stoic armor to show and your name on his lips to sound like a prayer instead of a reprimand.
“Stay with me, Y/n! Come on!” It’s a snarl and a plea at the same time.
His voice is pulling you back - or maybe it’s pulling you under. You can’t really tell the difference. It is the kind of sound that is too rough to be tender, too desperate to be cruel.
His voice gnaws at something in your awareness, steering something deep in your bones.
Hell, your dying brain is doing a hella good job.
The world shifts again. Or maybe it’s you who shifts. The sharp bark of the tree is gone suddenly, as though the earth has abandoned you. Or perhaps your body just lost any kind of sensation, because there is nothing solid beneath you anymore. The ground is gone.
Free fall grips your stomach for a second, and panic sparks weakly in the recesses of your mind. But before the fear can take root, you feel something else. Something warm.
Not the feverish heat that’s been chewing at your skin for hours. Not the sticky warmth of blood still drying against your ribs.
No, this is something different. Hard, but not unkind. Solid, but not unforgiving. It presses against your body, and for the first time in what feels like days, it doesn’t hurt.
You don’t know what is happening. You only know you want more of it. Tilting your head as best as it would go, you lean into it as much as your useless limbs allow, seeking that warmth like it’s the only thing keeping you from succumbing to nothingness.
And then the pieces click together.
You’re being carried.
There is an arm under your legs, another braced firmly around your back. The grip is strong but it is trembling faintly against you.
You are cradled against something warm, something alive. And there is a pounding against your ear that is way too rapid to seem healthy.
None of this makes sense, not really, but the sensation of movement - the sway and jolt of steps, hurried but careful - tells you that you’re not imagining this.
Someone has you. Someone’s carrying you.
Your battered mind, of course, latches onto Bucky again.
Your brain shapes the thought of him so effortlessly. Some part of you knew it could only ever be him. You picture his face, sharp and shadowed, his jaw clenched, his eyes dark and heavy with something you don’t dare name.
“Damn it, stay with me! Stay awake!”
Is this him saying that? Or is this your mind still indulging in the vivid fantasies from before? Perhaps this wasn’t your mind all along. Perhaps all of this wasn’t a fantasy of your brain. This was him.
You feel the tight hold with which he is gripping you, how it feels less like he is carrying you and more like he’s keeping you from slipping away entirely.
It doesn’t seem like the Bucky you knew. The one who looked at you with barely concealed irritation, who argued with you until you were both red-faced and seething.
But then again, maybe it does. Maybe this is the same man, stripped bare of all his armor, his stoic resolve fractured like you had imagined. Maybe this is what he looks like when he doesn’t have time to mask the cracks.
The thought makes your chest ache. Or maybe that’s just your ribs - stabbed, bruised, barely functional. You can’t tell anymore.
You want to open your eyes, to confirm what you already know, but your eyelids are heavy, unwilling.
You want to reach for him, to feel with your hands that his worry really is your reality and not all in your head, but your arms hang limply at your sides. Useless.
But your face is pressed against his shoulder. The speeding throbbing of what you assume to be his heart is still in your ear and it makes this so much more real.
“Don’t you dare die on me now, Y/n! Not after this.” His ragged words send swaying currents through the still waters of your fading consciousness. “Not like that! Not after I’ve been looking for you for two damn years!”
Wait.
What?
The words ring like a bell, too loud, too pronounced. You feel yourself struggling with comprehending the meaning of this but the shock still rushes up your spine.
Bucky was looking for you. He didn’t celebrate your departure. He came after you.
You left two years ago. Bucky started searching for you two years ago.
“I should’ve stopped you. Fuck, I should have stopped you. I never should’ve let you leave.” His voice is a single crack. So much remorse seeping into his tone, it even latches onto your chest.
“God I’m so sorry I let you leave. I’m so sorry for everything, Y/n! There’s so much I gotta tell you. So much I gotta make right. So you don’t get to do this, alright? You don’t get to die on me!”
His voice doesn’t sound like him at all. The Bucky you remember used measured words, calculated, controlled. Doubt again creeps in that this really is real and not just your mind all up in shambles. Because there is so much pain in his voice. Pain you never saw inflicted in anything he did. Or said. Not to you at least.
Your body jolts in his grip, caused by his hands. He might have tried to shake some life back into you but his hands don’t stop shaking. They are trembling so heavily, as if he’s terrified you’re going to slip through his grasp at any second. As if you’re going to die in his arms. Maybe you will.
“You’re staying with me, you hear me?” he continues, low voice filled with gravel, so wild and anguished. “There’s so much I need to tell you. So much I need to say. But I can’t-” his voice gives out and you basically hear him trying to hold himself together. His breaths are uneven and broken. “I can’t do it like this. No, not like that. So you gotta pull through. You can’t leave me before I get the chance to tell you. Can’t die on me now that I’ve finally fucking found you. You can’t, Y/n! Please! Stay with me. Just stay.”
You try to open your eyes. Try to let your fingers twitch. Try to open your mouth. But there’s nothing.
You can’t tell him that you’re trying. You can’t tell him that you want to hear what he has to say. Can’t tell him that you’re clinging to his every word. Can’t tell him that you’re fading away.
Only a broken exhale slips through.
His arms tighten, pulling you impossibly closer.
He’s pushing himself. His muscles strain and coil, his body still trembles against you. His voice is breathless and full of despair..
“Stay awake! Look at me. Just- please open your eyes. Just for a second. I need to see them. Need to know you’re still in there, okay?” His words are torn, pulled apart, and put together in a desperate attempt. Tears fill his voice. “You always had to prove me wrong, so do it again. Fight. Fight, Y/n! Please!”
Bucky makes it sound like it could actually be easy. But unfortunately, it’s not. His voice is more distant now. Perhaps it’s giving out. Perhaps it’s the hope that leaves him, taking his voice.
Yet, you’re trying to hold onto it. You’re trying so much.
If he says more, you don’t catch it. You don’t catch anything anymore. You think you might be okay with that. Because even if this isn’t real - even if this is all just a fever dream conjured by a dying mind - you think it’s a good way to go.
Sheltered in warmth. In motion. In the arms of the one person you never thought would come for you.
