(In which I write more angst because I found 1 on Instagram and couldn't help myself. Again. I can't Stop!)

He tried to open his eyes. He really did. But it hurt. Everything hurt. His goddamn shoulder felt like it had been put through a blender, damnit. People were talking around him. Taking about him, he realized. 

"I don't know if he'll wake up... or how he'll be when he wakes up... a full recovery may not be a reality for him... after that infection..."

 What infection? What was going on?! 

The talking had stopped by the time he managed to crack one of his eyes open. The light hurt and he had to close it immediately after. But it was progress. 

"Bucky...?"

This voice was gentler and more familiar. It made him want to try again. Slowly, his eyes fluttered open. It was the girl from the bar. He felt relief wash over him, but his heart sank when he looked down. Where his arm was supposed to be, all there was were bandages around his shoulder. Nothing underneath. It was gone. 

"Pegs... where's my arm...? his voice sounded rough. He usually had a gruff voice in the morning, but this was so much worse. It sounded like someone had stomped on his vocal cords. It felt like it too. 

"You lost it during a mission in the mountains. You've been out for two weeks."

The mountains... he didn't even remember BEING in the mountains. None of that mattered though. Because he had a more important question., "Where's Steve...?"

Peggy looked down and she looked like she was trying to swallow a lump in her throat. No... if she was about to say it... he couldn't deal with that. He just couldn't. She looked up at him with tears in her eyes and he knew it before she even said it. 

"He's gone..."

And that was when Bucky Barnes' entire world fell apart. Those two words had him in complete shock. "How...?"

"He had to crash a plane to save New York... it had a bomb..."

That was such a fucking Steve Rogers thing to do. Of course, he would do that. He was a goddamn hero. The reality finally hit him though, and he broke into tears. Poor Peggy tried to comfort him, but he had just lost the love of his life. It would take more than a few hugs and back rubs to fix it. But she tried. 

Three more weeks in the hospital and he was finally allowed to go home. Peggy had stayed with him during the afternoons to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. The doctor sent him home with a bottle of painkillers because the nerves had been damaged, causing him to have mild pain most of the time and then excruciating pain that could sometimes last for hours. Did he have the painkillers? Yes. Did he take them? No. 

It was his fault. He deserved the pain. While Steve was out being stupid, he was sleeping. He didn't want to take the painkillers because he wanted to feel the pain that was meant for him. But somedays he just wanted to dump the whole fucking bottle down his throat. That was why Peggy visited him almost every day. She talked him through some things and she always insisted that he went to a therapist. He rejected it. No way he was doing that. It was hard enough going to the grocery store.  She always left phone numbers anyways. But what was the therapist going to do? Talk to him until he sobbed and then give him more pills so he could either not take them or take too many of them? No thanks. 

He was back to old habits again. Habits Steve had talked him out of. But he couldn't take it anymore! All the money he had saved up so they could go traveling together was now gone because he refused to travel without him. Instead, he spent it on cigarettes, weed, and alcohol. He smoked the cigarettes in hopes that they would slowly kill him like Steve had said they would to make him quit. The weed was to numb him until he forgot and so was the alcohol. The two combined worked wonders. 

He tried to keep this all hidden from Peggy, but she was an agent and agents knew these things.

"What's this?" She asked, holding up the bag of weed that she had found stashed in the bathroom cupboard.

"Would you believe me if I said it was dried parsley?"

"You keep parsley in your bathroom with your cigarettes, cheap alcohol, and unopened painkillers?"

"Yes...?"

"Damnit, Bucky... you told me you'd get help!"

"I don't want help..." he wanted to be with Steve in the stars.

"I don't care if you want it. Tomorrow, eight thirty AM. I'm going to be at your door and you better be ready because we're going straight to the therapist office. If you don't open the door, I'll break it. And if you're not here, I'll find you."

He couldn't remember what he had said, or even if he had said anything. Peggy took everything. All she left were two painkillers. The recommended dosage. He left them on the counter and sat on the fire escape. He wanted to be with Steve in the stars.