Prompt Post 1

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At least one of the characters in your prompt must have been in Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As of May 3, 2014, the spoiler policy is no longer in effect.

Update, April 22, 2014:
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Fill: Here Lies Captain America 1/1

[(Anonymous)]

[shameless "I love Bucky Best!" fill ahoy!]

"Captain Rogers," the senator says, and Steve almost, almost ignores him. Bucky is shaking where he stands. He looks composed, but his lips are parted and there is a definitive wetness to his exhales. His eyes are rimmed with red, the evidence of the earlier break in his testimony, when Steve forcibly pulled him off the stand and into a restroom, so that he could indulge in taking a few sobbing breaths before diving right back in. Steve, at this point, wants one thing and one thing only: to drag Bucky back to the tower in New York, block all access to his room and hold him until the world goes away.

"Captain Rogers?"

"One question," he swears in a whisper, and catches Sam's eye. Sam, bless his generous heart, comes forward to wrap and arm around Bucky's shoulders.

"I will answer one question, ma'am," Steve says as he moves to the witness stand. "Everything Sergeant Barnes told you is the truth, and I believe you have been supplied with adequate proof."

"Captain—"

"One question."

The senator sits back while her colleagues confer among themselves, her eyes fixed on Steve's. Finally she leans forward and speaks into the microphone, her powerful voice soft, yet carrying enough gravity to be heard throughout the room. "We have no doubt that this is indeed Sergeant Barnes, we see the proof of that. We have no doubt that the events he describes are true, because we have independent proof of those. We ask you, Captain Rogers, if we should trust a man who, according to his own words, had been carved as Hydra saw fit. We are asking if you trust him. And why."

Steve doesn't quite think how much he hates the fact that no one fucking stopped Bucky from coming to DC and testifying on Capitol Hill. He doesn't. He thinks about Bucky on the other side of the chasm in the Hydra factory, begging for a miracle and refusing to budge all the same, even when his knees buckled under his weight and he could barely think past how frightened he was. Steve doesn't think about the way Bucky swallowed each time they prepared for a mission back in 1944, doesn't think about the slow intake of breath every time he slid his rifle over his shoulder.

Steve doesn't think at all, to be honest. "Sergeant Barnes would never—" he starts but catches himself. That's not true. Or rather it is true, but it's not what he wants to say. Not what he wants these people to understand. "I met Bucky when we were about ten years old. Maybe eleven. He was chasing off kids who were picking on his baby sister, who was seven and more or less my size, at the time. He picked her up, helped her dust her dress and her face, and sent her on her way back to her friends before he helped me up. I remember that all I could think then was 'he should have fought them earlier.' Because as you can imagine I tried, and it didn't end well." A flash goes off, but Steve can barely see the senator he's speaking to, let alone the reporters surrounding them. "I've seen Bucky bite his tongue to stop himself from trembling when we went into battle, I saw what it cost him every day to get up and fight." Steve closes his eyes and clenches his fists. "I saw him fight off panic when we decided to go after the train Zola was supposed to be on." There was murmuring among the crowd, even a few of the senators were exchanging comments. "And I saw him pick up the rifle every time, and fire precisely, every time. I saw him choose to go into battle, anyway.

"I trust Bucky," Steve says into the ensuing silence. "I trust him absolutely. The fact that he is here today, to confess to the crimes perpetuated by him against his will—no, not against his will. A man with a gun to his had may commit a sin against his will. Bucky has not been given a choice, even a horrible one. Yet crimes have been committed and he came here to answer for them." Steve pauses. His hands are digging into the railing, his breath is short. Hell, he could swear his eyesight is going to hell again, because the room is a blurry mess. "I don't think I would do that. I don't think I would be able to. Not while there are people who can be made to pay for what's been done." He straightens then. Folds his hands behind his back, stands at parade rest. "I have envied Bucky my whole life. I picked fights to prove that if I couldn't be just as strong, I could be brave enough to make my weakness not matter, and then—then I was strong, and I could afford to be brave. It was easy to run into a building controlled by the enemy, to dodge bullets and save people. It was scary, too, but it was easy.

"I think I'm a brave man," he says slowly, willing the senator to understand. "I can say that. I know that about myself, I've been tested enough. I like to think that makes me a good one, too, that I wouldn't hesitate to fight to protect people from harm. Yet…" He pauses, closes his eyes. "If I live another hundred years," he continues softly after a moment, "If I fight off a hundred alien invasions, if I single-handedly defeat all the evil cults still hiding within the various agencies in this country—" he is gratified to hear a few strangled laughs, "I would have considered it my greatest honor if my tombstone said 'here lies Steve Rogers: he was half the man Bucky Barnes was.'"

He doesn't think at all when he steps off the stand. He can tell there's a media pandemonium brewing among the journalists and reporters, but all he does, all he has the capacity to do at this point, is to wrap an arm around Bucky's shoulders to shield him from the flashing cameras, from the senators, from the world, because Bucky looks wrecked. His eyes are broken and terrified, and bright, but Steve holds his gaze, feeling a kind of terror fill him, too, and he says, "you have never disappointed me, Buck."

It's… not the perfect thing to say. It's not even good, he surmises from the way Sam's eyes roll. But Bucky smiles, shaky though it looks, and for a second rests his cheek against Steve's shoulder. "Yeah, well, there was that birthday cake…"

Re: Fill: Here Lies Captain America 1/1

[(Anonymous)]

all the feels!!

Re: Fill: Here Lies Captain America 1/1

[(Anonymous)]

I will love you forever and always, my sweet, sweet nonnie! *sob*

OP

Re: Fill: Here Lies Captain America 1/1

[(Anonymous)]

You've broken me in ways I hadn't thought were possible...