CA: TWS Anniversary Ficlets
Daily ficlets for the CA: TWS 10th Anniversary Event @catws-anniversary. With Huge thanks to @sparkagrace and @cable-knit-sweater for running this wonderful event! 💞
One | March 26th | Theme: On your left | Prompt: The Smithsonian | Words: 250 | Canon compliant | No warnings
In his bed, in the middle of the night, and all alone, Steve wakes up to visions of Bucky falling. Over and over. A recurring nightmare.
(A memory.)
Inside the walls of a museum, during dedicated daytime hours, surrounded by dozens of people, Steve watches Bucky smile. Over and over. A looped bit of film.
(A memory.)
On a lotta days, seeing those forever persevered few seconds of his life helps. There are days it's soothing — a concrete reminder he can hold on to. There are times he uses the bit of film to prove to himself that happy moments and better times were real.
But.
But on other days, watching that smile take shape is somehow more painful than waking up alone in his too-big bedroom with visions of Bucky falling behind his eyes. There are days when Steve watches and all he can think is about those happy moments being long gone. Times when all he can think is that'll he never see, or cause, that expression ever again.
There are days when it's like a repetitive stab to his heart.
But then, sometimes.
Sometimes, he stares at the looped footage, and he lets himself recall a hundred other smiles. Sometimes, his brain draws up images of mornings in Brooklyn and the way Bucky's smiling mouth had looked only inches from Steve's own face, and —
And that hurts, too.
But Steve replays it in his mind, anyway. Over and over again. A moment from long ago.
(A memory.)
(Ficlets Tumblr-exclusive until all are complete.)
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10 daily poems for
the 10 year anniversary of CA: TWS
Thank you @catws-anniversary for putting this event together. Here is my small contribution.
Lights on. Are we rolling?
There’s a man longing for another city
The pool reflects the same sky
It says
I’m sorry everyone you loved are dead and the world is still burning
But third time’s the charm and
On your left makes a friendship
Trouble Man, troubled men
By too-soft sleep and bloodied hands.
Hi, it’s the future calling. Do you have a moment to talk about the wonders of modern medicine and space exploration. And the internet—so helpful, right?
Hello, are you there?
March 26 | On Your Left | Prompt: First Meetings
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Before The First Light
Rating: T
Word count: 884 words
Tags: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, nightmares, minor injuries, Steve Rogers needs a hug, (light?) angst
Written for @catws-anniversary || March 26 prompts: on your left, PTSD, endurance
He’s running.
Steve’s running so fast that even with the serum coursing through his veins, his lungs are starting to burn with the strain of exertion. He barely pays any attention to the bullets whistling past him, dodging and weaving to avoid them, almost just on instinct. It is on instinct. There isn’t much time to think about anything but getting out.
The place is a fucking maze though, so it’s taking longer than he’d planned. So much for that damn song, he thinks, almost laughing at the irony. So much for being the man with a plan.
He presses on, through endless corridors twisting and turning, Hydra soldiers hot on his heels. Steve thinks that maybe they’ve finally figured it out, judging from the screaming and cursing. That he’s just a diversion so the other Howlies could go to work.
By now, they’ve definitely set the place to blow. By now, Steve should’ve made his way out.
A bullet grazes his shoulder, but he tries to ignore the searing pain as he pushes himself harder, his heart hammering in his chest.
Suddenly, he’s outside, the building exploding behind him. He’s hit with a blast of air, pressure, heat, but it just propels him forward faster. There’s still no time to think.
There’s more cursing and shouting. This time it’s not in German though.
It’s in a heavy Brooklyn accent, his favorite in all the fucking world.
“Are you fuckin kidding me? Are you tryin’ to get blown to pieces? For fuck’s sake Rogers!!”
“Just brushing up on my German,” he yells back as he gets closer and closer to the source of the cursing and shouting. “You know, they’d call you an Arsch-”
“Don’t you even think ab- fuck, Stevie, watch out! Three at your 9 o’clock!”
Steve twists and turns to the right, still running towards the treeline that Bucky is shouting at him from. He doesn’t slow down or turn back - he’s made that mistake before and gotten an earful - as Bucky takes out the Hydra goons with his rifle.
He doesn’t slow down or turn back until he gets to Bucky’s position. That’s where he draws the line. Steve’s not ever going anywhere without him.
By the time he comes to a stop, Bucky has taken care of the last stragglers, and Steve collapses against a tree.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, you can say that again,” Bucky grumbles as he drops down from a tree branch. “What the fuck?”
They start running again, side by side, Bucky on his left like always. There’s no benefit in sticking around. There might be more Hydra soldiers out there, and the other Howlies will definitely give them shit if they take much longer catching up to the group.
“Hmm.”
“I was this close to coming in and dragging your ass out. Did we not have a plan?”
“I was fine. I am fine, stop bitching, Buck.”
Bucky pushes his shoulder against Steve’s, and he winces. Of course, Bucky notices. “Fine, huh? I’m thinkin I should just tie myself to you so you don’t go runnin’ off making stupid ass decisions.”
“What makes you think I won’t do that with you tied to me?”
“Good point,” Bucky huffs. “You’d probably enjoy it, and then you’d just drag me int-”
The rest of his sentence gets cut off by a blood curdling scream. Steve’s heart stops. It’s Bucky.
****
Steve jolts awake.
He’s drenched in sweat, his senses still reeling. A little disoriented, he scans his dimly lit room, heart hammering against his ribcage, the image of Bucky lying motionless on the ground, blood staining the fabric of his uniform, still seared freshly into his mind.
It’s hard to ground himself. It seemed so real for a moment, like it was yesterday. But he’s not waking up in a tent in the French countryside, or on his cot back at SSR headquarters in London. He’s not waking up with-
He wakes up alone, in his DC apartment, and it’s never felt more suffocatingly small.
With a heavy sigh, Steve swings his legs over the edge of his bed. His muscles are protesting with the weight of exhaustion that still clings to him, but there’s no point in staying in bed. It’s not like he’s gonna get much more sleep now. He knows what images he’ll see if he closes his eyes.
Instead, he forces himself out of bed, switches out of his sweat-drenched clothes and into his running gear, and makes his way out of the apartment as quickly as he can.
Running - ironically, given tonight’s dream - will help. Just to have a moment, an hour (or two) to not have to think, that’s all he needs. It doesn’t matter that it’s barely light out. He’ll be at it for a while.
Maybe he'll try a different route today. Make his way south towards the Potomac, run a couple laps around the Mall before it’s run over with tourists.
Yeah, that’s what he’ll do. The sunrise over the Mall will make a pretty sight. Not enough to dislodge the dream still haunting him, but he doesn’t think anything ever will be.
He doesn’t take much time to warm up, even if he knows he should. Soon enough, he’s running full speed.
He’s running.
Steve’s running fast, but his lungs don’t burn. His heart, though. His heart aches.
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Ready to celebrate CA:TWS with us?
Before we get started...
A little note, because timezones are a THING, and can be wildly confusing (see your mods pictured in GIF above). We'll be posting each day's prompts at 12am EST (find out what time that is for you here), but that does NOT impact when you can post your content for that day. For reblogs and masterlists we'll include all content if posted on that date, which means that for March 26th we'll include content posted between 8am EST/1pm GMT on the 25th and 8am EST/1pm GMT on the 27th.
To help us out for daily masterlists, please specify in your post which prompt you'll be using, if any.
(If you're not posting for one of our prompts, you can mostly ignore this, since we'll just include your content in the masterlist for the day you ended up posting, as long as its between 8am EST/1pm GMT on March 25th and 8am EST/1pm GMT on April 5th. )
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