owo bucky barnes self sacrifice 🥺?
A/N: anon, thanks for your patience!!! this is a heart wrencher, fair warning. Bucky is the perfect person for a self-sacrifice fic <3 <3
For You - Bucky Barnes X GN!Reader
Warnings: angst, angst, angst, and more angst; character death; Avengers End Game non-canon; Avengers End Game spoilers
Word Count: 2179
“In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul for a soul.”
As soon as the Stonekeeper’s words met your ears, your eyes snapped up to Bucky’s.
No.
The word tore through you like a bolt of lightning. You saw it in his eyes: that stubborn, noble, horrifically devoted part of him that was always looking for a reason - an excuse, really - to sacrifice himself for the people he loved. For you.
“Bucky, god damnit, no!” You flung yourself at him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. He was warm against you as he enveloped you in his arms, burying his face in your neck. He placed a kiss there, soft and apologetic, to the skin just beneath your jaw. You could feel the goodbye in that kiss.
“Don’t you do it. Don’t you fucking do it!” you raged, balling your hands into fists as you made yourself a dead weight against him. Hot tears sprang into your eyes.
“Y/N, there’s no way to-”
“I don’t care, I don’t care! We’ll figure it out, we always do! Tony will figure it out, Bucky, just please don’t do this, don’t you dare leave me!” Sobs tore loose from your chest as you felt him try to pull out of your embrace. Years you’d been waiting for him, literal years, and this selfish bastard was going to end it all in a blaze of glory, dying for his love. But where did that leave you? Alone and doomed to a life without him. You’d been through this once already, when Tony Stark had learned about Bucky’s role in his parents’ death and practically torn the world apart to get to him. You’d seen flashes of your future without Bucky in it, and you couldn’t bear it. You wouldn’t.
“Y/N, I have to. You know I do.” His voice was gentle, calm, as if he were explaining something to a child. The finality in his voice made you even angrier. You clung to him harder, body shaking now. He’d stopped trying to pry you off of him, but you knew he wasn’t relenting.
Sensing him stonewalling in his decision, you turned your rage to the Stonekeeper. He hovered above the ground a few feet from the two of you, his unnatural crimson skin
framing a bland expression. The emptiness in his eyes as he watched your life literally crumbling around you made your blood boil.
“There must be another way,” you growled through gritted teeth. You wanted to kill him, to shred him to ribbons and let the Soul Stone take his existence as payment for its price.
As if sensing the direction of your thoughts, he shook his head impassively. “The Soul Stone wants a sacrifice of love, not one of convenience.”
You whimpered pitifully as you hid your face in Bucky’s shoulder as if you could hide from the truth in those words. You knew, somehow, that he was right. Killing him - if he could even be killed - wouldn’t be enough of what the Stone demanded. There was only one thing you loved in this world, and only one thing the Stone would accept.
“It’ll be alright, y/n,” Bucky whispered into your ear as you sobbed against him.
“No, it won’t be. But you won’t be here to care, will you? You’ll be gone, and I’ll be left. I can’t lose you… I won’t…”
Your voice trailed off suddenly in a moment of clarity.
There was another option.
You hadn’t considered it before, but it all made sense.
Bucky must have heard the realization in your voice, because in the next instant he tensed against you. Thankfully, your reflexes were faster, thanks to your grueling training in the Red Room. You grabbed the back of Bucky’s jacket and threw him away from you with all your strength. You weren’t able to put as much space between the two of you as you wanted, but it was enough. It would have to be.
With as much force as you could summon, you turned away from him and the impassive Stonekeeper and sprinted towards the edge of the cliff behind you. The strange landscape of Vormir stretched out before you, the perpetual twilight purple and pink tint in the sky illuminating an endless landscape of sand dunes peppered with marshes. It was beautiful, you realized with a hint of bittersweet sadness as you closed the distance to the edge of the cliff.
Time slowed, and you let your eyelids flutter closed as you took the last step towards the edge of the cliff, the sound of air rushing past your ears engulfing you. Just before you felt yourself fall into the empty air, your body jerked backwards as something hard and cold dug into your shoulder. Your legs snapped out from under you like a ragdoll as the momentum of your sprint clashed with the force of the backward pull from your shoulder.
You saw him rush past you in the corner of your eye. Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, his face serene as he took your place and launched over the cliff. Your body launched backwards from where he’d grabbed your shoulder with his vibranium arm, the edge of the cliff receding away from you.
In the moment before he fell below your sight line, Bucky turned back to you, his gaze meeting yours. All the moments you two had shared since you’d met almost four years ago flickered between you in the space of a heartbeat. The memory of when you’d first seen him, your first kiss, countless sunrises waking up tangled together, the feeling of his heartbeat against your cheek, the pointless arguments and the painfully beautifully make-up’s - they all exploded in your mind like a barrage of fireworks.
You reached your arms out towards him, an involuntary shriek of grief splitting the unnatural calm of Vormir as you cried out his name.
He smiled at you - soft, sweet, and happy - before his body fell below the edge of the cliff.
Your back collided with the wall of rock, a bolt of pain ripping through your right rib cage as your heart collapsed on itself in your chest. You crumpled where you lay, the weight of your loss pressing the wind out of your lungs. Bucky would never let you have your damn moment. He’d never let you fight without his watchful eye - even though you’d been part of the Avengers long before him. He’d never let you turn the full force of your hatred for yourself loose. He’d always been there to make sure it was his body and spirit that got broken, not yours. He’d held you together when you’d been determined to tear yourself apart. And even in his last moments, he’d always put you first. Above himself, above everything. You knew he hadn’t really sacrificed himself for the team, or for the half of the galaxy that had been lost when Thanos snapped. He’d done it for you. It was always for you, all for you.
* * * * *
You couldn’t remember leaving the top of that godforsaken mountain, but when your eyelids lifted open, you found yourself flat on your back, floating in a still pool of cold water. The vault of Vormir’s sky above you was painted with vivid streaks of grapefruit pink against an indigo backdrop. The colors were more vibrant, somehow, and you had the distinct impression that this strange planet was grieving Bucky’s loss just as you were.
As you sat up amidst the silence, you felt something small and heavy in your palm. You didn’t need to look down to know what it was. Your heart knew the cost of the Soul Stone too intimately to question whether Bucky’s sacrifice had worked.
You felt years of training struggle to anesthetize yourself against the hollow, broken grief that was pulsing inside you. Giving yourself over to that blank numbness, you pressed the initiator on the Time-Space GPS bracelet Tony had given you. The gut-wrenching sensation of quantum travel blurred your vision as you let your mind submerge into grief…
* * * * *
“Where is he? Where’s Bucky?” Steve Rogers crouched down above you as you struggled not to vomit on the deck of Tony Stark’s shiny, chrome Quantum Tunnel.
Unable to make yourself speak, you stretched out your hand, the apricot-colored Soul Stone glinting merrily against the white of your advanced tech suit.
“Take it,” you cried hoarsely to Steve, his eyes roaming over your face and the Soul Stone as confusion turned to understanding. “Take it, Steve.”
Sensing your desperation, it was Bruce Banner who snatched the accursed stone of your palm. A deadly quiet descended over the room as your friends waited for you to confirm what they were all beginning to piece together. Only the sound of your strangled sobs pierced the quiet; you hadn’t even realized you were still crying.
“No… no, it can’t be… it’s all wrong. Tony? TONY!”
Steve’s grief was the first to surface. It was raw and angry, like yours had been. Of all the Avengers, you knew that Steve would be the one to grieve Bucky alongside you. Although you should have felt comforted by the knowledge that you weren’t alone, feeling the heat of his emotions so close to your own made you inexplicably angry.
“It’s not wrong, Steve,” you replied back, your voice cold and hard as iron. Steve and Tony froze mid-argument, their eyes glued on you, sensing how close you were to snapping.
“Bucky’s dead.” Your voice splintered as you forced the words out. “He’s dead. It’s done.” A memory of Bucky’s calm, loving smile danced across your field of vision unwillingly. Oddly enough, the memory felt like aloe on a burn. It tamped down the red-hot edges of your grief.
His words floated back to you, the last words he’d said to you: it’ll be alright.
No, it won’t, you yelled back at his memory in your mind. It won’t be alright. But I’ll keep going. If only because I know your stubborn ass would hate me if I didn’t.
You’d never been a religious person and you’d certainly never put any stock in the idea of an afterlife. That is, not until you’d lost Bucky. There was no way you could imagine a soul like his blinking out of existence. He burned too brightly, loved too hard. The force of love like that didn’t get extinguished with the death of a body.
As if in confirmation, from somewhere far outside yourself - or from deep within your core, you couldn’t be sure - a feeling stretched out towards you. It was like a caress, a shadow of a memory, and it ran along the length of your mind the way a shiver runs up a spine. It was Bucky. You knew it in the same way you’d known since arriving on Vormir that one of you wouldn’t be coming home. It was the kind of knowledge that lives deep in your bones, an understanding so deep and powerful that it’s beyond words.
Against yourself, you smiled. Tears spilled over your lash line as your eyes crinkled. The sweetness of that caress lingered like an aftertaste before it faded, gently, into the space where it’d come from. Even when it was gone, you knew it was still there, somewhere, even if you couldn’t see it.
The moment faded and your attention slowly settled back to the moment, to the room full of your friends around you. One of your loves was dead, you realized, but gathered around you were the rest. Your friends. Your family.
“Bucky’s dead,” you repeated, standing this time. The grief in your chest wasn’t burning as hot, but the weight still pulled on you. Like a parent comforting a crying child, you held your grief tenderly as you fixed your gaze on your friends one by one. Steve, Tony, Bruce, Scott, Natalie.
“But he’s not gone.”
From that same space where Bucky’s caress had flourished, you felt a twinge of pride. You could picture him, smiling at you with that dreamy, I-never-knew-I-could-be-this-happy mist in his eyes. You did good, kid, he’d say, because he knew you hated it when he called you that.
For you, you replied back, tossing your words towards that feeling of pride. It’s all for you now, you assured him. You wouldn’t let me live for you when you were alive, but you can’t stop me now that you’re dead.
A laugh vibrated in the space where Bucky’s memory hung in your mind. You could picture his laugh, the one that made him throw his head back and his brown eyes sparkle.
And I won’t try, he reassured you.
You let your soul smile back at him. From the corner of your eye, you saw the Soul Stone glimmer like starlight from where Bruce had set it down.
I’ll be waiting, Bucky’s memory said as it receded once again into darkness.
You nodded, physically this time, not caring if your friends thought you were mad.
I know.
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INFINITY WAR Spiderman dust scene analysis: Why the fuck did it hurt so much?
Okay so hello, welcome, we are going to understand that one painful scene. Here is a video of my initial reaction: (Everything here will obviously include spoilers)
So back to analysing this bitch:
This movie as whole is a bit of dystopian masterpiece. It starts with two pretty known people dying and one being left floating out in space. With that start anything can happen. Anyone of our heroes could die. And here we have this OP man Thanos walking around collecting little gems so he can wipe out half the universe. The stakes are high and the movie keeps reminding us of that.
So this "wipe out half the universe" thing reminds us of danger all the time. We know something might happen. It's a writing phenomenon called "bomb under the table" you know it's there but you don't know when or if it'll go off.
And when Thanos snaps his fingers we see shit go down. We see all these side characters and all these heroes silently fade away. We see everything through Tony's eyes, but we think "surely they won't kill off the most important/loved ones" but the the king of wakanda fades and suddenly we hear;
"Stark, I don't feel so good"
and we think NO. NOT HIM. because guess what? Tony dragged this boy in and after that Tony has always been responsable and been there to save his ass. In Civil War Tony let the spider fight, and get hurt, but he also set a boundry that the spider was too much hurt and was done for that day. Even then we see how Peter wants to push on to impress Tony.
Later Tony flies Spiderman out of the water he could've drowned in and makes him warm again.
Even after that Tony helps Parker with the ship that Parker tries to keep together with his webs but can't.
in the start of infinity war we see Peter on his way to work and impress until he physically can't breathe. He falls, but Tony got his back and gives him his Robo suit.
Point is we see how competent and protective Tony is to Peter. He somehow always manages to find and protect the younger hero. The younger hero always thinks that he doesn't need all that help and that he always has more to show and more to give.
So towards the end of Infinity war when we hear Parker seriously admit that he doesn't feel good. That he doesn't have more to give and that he is afraid and WANTS Tony to save him. That hurts because suddenly we are reminded that he is a teenager. A child. A person that might be able to protect himself and stand alone, but not all the way, not all the time. And this time Peter admits that and wants that help that Tony could give him, except in this case he can't. The resourcefull mentor and hero Tony Stark/Iron man is rendered helpless. he has been able to help so many times, but not this time. not the time when the threate would mean certain death.
Tony can only watch and listen as the kid disintegrates in his arms.
Summary: how to make a good death scene/all is lost scene Mentor x Student.
-risk we knew all along (gun under table): Peter could die/get seriously hurt
-risk get avoided most of the time cuz Mentor: Tony is there to save him though, no matter what that kid finds himself in
-breaking character: This confident mentor character stark that is very good at what he does is suddenly rendered completely helpless as he fails and the one he swore to protect dies. The lively, eager, naive and happy go lucky person layes down this "i want to prove myself cuz im strong" thought and instead replaces it with; "pls help me, i dont want this to happen" the total oposite of what he normally does.
-make the bad thing seem impossible (storywise) "how could a story abt heroes end with them losing?" and then make it happen anyway.
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