heavy is the heart that holds your ghost ✯

[dysmorphics]

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[dysmorphics]

[ Slipped into Bucky's jacket pocket, which he doesn't find until he's out at sea. It's hastily scribbled, and there are smudges on the paper; she'd been crying. ]

June 15, 1943

You're sound asleep with your head on my lap and I wonder, selfishly, if there is a way I can keep you here, but I guess I've lost my chance a long time ago. So don't die, Buck. Get your dumb ass back here to me and live out your dreams and buy one of those flying cars and walk Becca down the aisle when she marries that punk from the other side of town. (You know she loves you, right? You're lucky to have a sister. I wish I did.)

I don't really believe in God anymore but I will pray for your safe return every day anyway. Maybe I'll have to go fight him so he listens just this once.

I lo


Yours,
Stephanie

[ On the empty part of the paper, near her name, is an equally hastily sketched self-portrait, which is the only time she's ever drawn herself. Still, it's beautifully rendered. Below it, a footnote reads: So you don't forget me. ]

[centuryshaped]

[There's a party that night with what the camp can scrape together for a celebration. Once upon a time, Bucky would have been in the thick of it, probably would have asked the entire USO kickline for a dance. Instead, he shows his face long enough for people to remember he was there, then slips out to find a quiet spot and a smoke. The only USO girl he wants to dance with is being showered with attention and all he really wants is a moment to think.

He's been checked out in the medical tent, where they had been surprised at the lack of infection. He doesn't know what to make of how fast his bruises faded and skin knit back together during the long trek back to camp. Zola had given him something for the illness before the torture began, and his memories of everything after that are patchy.

His hands don't shake as he lights up. They haven't since he watched the rat bastard scurry off after Schmitt. The last time they so much as trembled feels like when Stephanie's strange new face appeared through the dark and she dragged him to his feet. He winces at the memory of what he'd done before realizing she was, in fact, very real, and he wasn't dead after all.

Bucky exhales slowly, a thin plume of smoke into the cold night air. Maybe she'll forgive him. They've gotten past worse, sort of.]

[dysmorphics]

◜continued from here◞

That is an exaggeration.

[ Oh come on. ]