This is just a short idea that I've been playing around with. I'm not really sure if I'm going to continue it, because so far it looks like a short story to me...And I'm not too sure how to continue it anyway. There'll probably be one or two more chapters to this, but that's if I ever get around to finishing it. I'd just like to put it out and see what you guys think, I guess.
Returning to life was painful. They say that to feel pain is to know you live, and that to live is much harder than to die.
She believes them now.
Where once she had peace and darkness as her companions, she now faced fire in her lungs, aches in her bones, and the certainty that her body had been reshaped wrong.
She couldn't muster the strength to cry, only weep quietly when urged. Putting her to her mother's breast was confusing, and then frustrating when she couldn't suckle enough.
Her ears didn't work properly, she could only hear muffled voices and buzzing. Her eyes were sealed shut, but even the darkness she felt was her friend had been intruded upon—the true black turned to murky non-black.
And worst of all, was the scorching heat on her skin.
The period of time she was laid out on the cot was distressingly stifling. Swaddled in cotton, unable to do more than fidget, she cursed this newfound life. As a baby, she longed to do more than cry, but that was all that was afforded her.
And then.
Her chest hitched.
Her voice sputtered out.
Her limbs stilled.
xXXx
She returned again, just as painfully as the first.
The air clawed at her throat and her first breaths were more akin to a death rattle. A few tears leaked as she felt her body tell her that, again, it was wrong wrong wrong.
Suckling was easier the second time round. There was a method to it in order to compensate for her lack of strength. She managed a decent enough serving and didn't protest when they laid her down on the cot.
But the air was as hot and stifling as ever.
Another unknown period of time passed and she was bundled into her mother's arms, away from the sharp scented place. To…home, she guessed. A sour-smelling, even more stifling place than the previous one. She didn't think the heat could get any worse, but of course it could.
The story of Icarus. Flying too close to the sun and falling into the ocean.
She wondered if boiling up and dying would be the same as that.
xXXx
It took some time to gain enough awareness of her surroundings to realize that the body she had been given was the wrong gender.
She wasn't sure how to deal with this, this further evidence that fate was trying to screw her over, and so she ignored it. She's worn pants before, underwear was generally similar, and if she could now pee standing up, then pee standing up she would.
When she could finally stand, of course.
Crawling was exhausting. Learning to crawl had been exhausting. Shuffling around and clinging to mother was exhausting.
Doing anything with her broken body was exhausting. Was this what she was meant to do for life?
Air never got easier to breathe, and moving felt like her joints should creak loudly to express their disgruntlement.
Sometimes, air got worse and then she had to curl into a ball and tell herself to breathebreathebreathe because not-breathing hurt more and she had to keep calm and move her lungs manually instead of panicking.
The doctor told her mother it was all in her mind.
She knows it's not. Her body may be broken but her mind is whole.
She's still telling herself to breathebreathebreathe when she can't and her broken body just…won't…listen.
She burns up without oxygen and drifts away into cool darkness.
xXXx
To return again.
xXXx
And again.
xXXx
And again.
xXxx
And she is now three years old with her mother singing her to sleep in the cooling air, taking measured breaths and carefully counting her heartbeats. It's tedious, tiring work, but it's worth it because now at least she knows the changing of the years and the turn of the season and that the heat leaves to coolness and the coolness changes to biting cold.
She's three years old and one day twice, three to four months five, and eight times two. She's three years old and twenty-two before and trying to make it to the years between.
But her broken body is a war she has to fight every single day. The not-breathing and the silent creaking and the tears from mother because her only boy is small and weak and useless.
She's three years old and twenty-two and she doesn't have time for the past because she has to live.
xXXx
She makes it to five years before her feet slip and smash her loose pieces apart on the roadside.
xXXx
Four years old.
xXXx
Three.
xXXx
Two.
xXXx
One day and one day and one day and one day. Because she can't take it anymore with this worthless body that stutters and breaks with the slightest breeze. She screams and screams and screams, louder than the other babies, a requiem wail.
And her heart gives out from the stress.
What do the fates want from her?!
xXXx
Eighteen one-days and she stops thinking. Suckles and lays down and does not mind the heat.
It's seven months when she dies, convulsing because she couldn't be bothered to tell herself to breathe.
xXXx
The next go she decides to be careful again. Be careful because she wants to see past five. Be careful because living hurts, but there must be ways to ease the pain.
She learns how to breathe through air that gets stuck in her throat, how to move gently without creaking, how to make mother smile.
She learns that her hands are cleverer than before and that they can put what she sees onto paper. And that what she sees now is more beautiful than what she saw.
She's five years old and living hurts, but she can draw.
She draws her mother's smile.
xXXx
She's five and a half when she dies, choking in her mother's arms.
xXXx
Four years old and this time around, she starts talking. Her mother sings to her and calls her Stevie and loves it when she laughs.
Laughing hurts too.
She talks to mama and mama tells her things. She talks to mama and mama tells her about papa.
Papa is a soldier in a war far, far away.
She tells mama not to cry and mama calls her her darling little boy.
She makes it to six this time.
xXXx
Every time she returns it hurts. Every time she breathes it hurts. It doesn't get better but she learns not to be afraid.
Darkness and peace are friends, but they are not meant to last.
She wonders what happens when she lives to twenty-two but shudders away from it because she might have been born with a broken body, but she needs to keep her mind intact and the disappointment might be the last straw.
xXXx
She's eight when she meets Bucky.
Bucky, Bucky, Bucky Barnes. He bumps into her one day and sends her sprawling (but not smashed) and picks her up and smiles. Then he sees her doing laundry and decides to help.
They go to school together, eat lunch together, play together.
It's the best feeling she has ever had.
xXXx
She's nine when the bullies start picking on her. For being too girly, too small, too useless. And she's only got a ma and no da to scare them off.
Bucky runs in between them with a roar.
She's so touched, she kisses him without thinking.
He blinks and turns bright red and tells her she can't be the princess but he'll keep saving her anyway.
She's almost angry that she's a boy.
xXXx
She's ten when they corner her without him and hit one time too hard.
xXXx
She meets Bucky at seven the next round, helping mama out with the sweeping.
She wants to help mama more, because she's been nothing but good to her. Mama says seven is too early to help wash clothes, but picking up the broom and moving it around is easy enough. So she grabs it and goes outside and—there he is.
He smiles at her and shakes her hand and says, "Hi there, I'm Bucky Barnes."
She beams at him and grips his hand and replies, "Nice to meet you, I'm Steve Rogers."
When the bullies come again, she roars louder than Bucky. She dies thrice but learns how to dodge and weave and strike. She gets cornered near a dumpster and throws the trash can lids at their heads.
The bullies don't really stop, but Bucky's got her back and she's got his now.
xXXx
She can't seem to reach ten years old, but it's not so bad.
She's got mama and now Bucky who always stays with her, no matter how she acts, what age she is, or how useless she gets. Bucky whom she meets at eight and seven and six and five, a dozen and one times again and again. Bucky who smiles and picks her up, Bucky who grins and plays with her, Bucky who's always got her back, her front, her side and never leaves.
She hit Bucky once out of frustration, but he came back the next day.
She never hits Bucky again.
xXXx
She's doodling in school at six years old when Bucky comes up to her and says, "That's real good."
It's their first meeting again and it's different this time, but it's still the same smile that they share. Hers wet and grateful and stretching from ear to ear, his easy and joyful and open. She looks at her drawing and gives it to him and he keeps it in his pocket.
She starts drawing more.
And suddenly, she's got mama and Bucky and drawing in this life, and she's turning eleven tomorrow.
xXXx
She's fifteen when enlistment campaigns start. The telly in Old Mister Thompson's apartment blares on about honor and justice and fighting for America. She's fifteen when Bucky proclaims that he wants to help fight too and that he'll enlist once he's old enough.
She's sixteen when ma dies, shivering from a breeze no one can feel, leaving her with her high school certificate in hand. Mama Barnes takes her in like she's one of them, and Bucky shares his room with her. She draws and draws and Bucky helps her get into Art School.
Bucky goes to war when they're seventeen and never comes back.
She closes her eyes when they get the letter.
They don't open again until she returns.
xXXx
She's six this time and avoiding Bucky. She stays at home as much as possible and when she's at school she clings to the corners. She ducks and weaves and runs, but this time it's Bucky she's going up against.
He catches her one day and no matter what she does, he follows.
She slips on the bridge on a rainy day and he jumps in too, but it's too late and there's water in her lungs.
As she blinks and resigns herself to not-breathing, her face gets wet from not-rain.
It's the first time in so long that she struggles to fight the encroaching darkness. She gasps and clenches her tiny fists and digs in her heels and—Bucky is right there holding on to her.
She's six and she tried to avoid Bucky but couldn't, and for the first time, she fights against her impending death and wins.
She's still blinking and reeling when her fourteenth birthday comes.
xXXx
They're eighteen and ma's gone and Bucky's joining the war. They're seventeen again and she decides that she isn't going to be left behind. If she can fight with Bucky, she will.
She's shorter than everyone else by at least a head, but surely, they have something for her to do?
She's skinny and useless and Steve Rogers from Brooklyn gets a big red 4-F stamp. They don't need her, and she's worthless even as cannon fodder.
She stands at the station and can't bear to wave Bucky goodbye.
She dies before his letter comes.
xXXx
They're fifteen and she's watching the telly with him again. And then—there's a short newsreel that she's never seen before.
She knows about the Nazis, remembered their stories from a life long ago, and hears the talk from her present life neighbours.
Yes, they killed Bucky and the rest of the boys who left, but until then she'd always thought it was just War—you fought them because they were on the other side, not because they were evil.
But now she sees them ransacking Europe and killing people and she sees the Japanese digging their bayonets into pregnant women and remembers. She briefly wonders about TV ratings but that's not the issue—this whole war was because Hitler and Japan wanted more than they had and saw what they wanted in other countries. It's just plain greed and the average German soldier was probably not to blame for the whole thing, but they're trying to take what's not theirs and it's just like those bullies again. She's as American as everyone else here even though people make fun of her ma and da being Irish. She's got just as much to lose as they do if the Axis Powers hit here.
So she's going to fight, even if she doesn't want to kill. She's going to fight and protect her stake here and protect Bucky and all the American children.
She also thinks that she wouldn't mind gutting those Japs with a knife so much—see how they like it.
It's the first time she tries to join the army before Bucky.
It's the first time she tries to join more than once.
It's her fourth time and she's Steve Rogers from Ohio when she meets Dr. Erskine.
Not a really polished piece because it's really something that came up on the fly. I read Avengers but writing it...I'll never do enough research to properly understand it I guess. And I don't follow the comics and I haven't even watched the movies. *facepalm*
But tell me what you think? Or if anyone'd want to use the idea...
Memory25