#caitfairwrites

His eyes found her first, amidst the crush of strangers. Even a Sunday afternoon, sinking into early evening with the warm spice of salty air and that lingering tang of late summer, saw a swelling, jostling crowd pour from the train carriages. Back from a weekend in the country; a day at the beach. Anything to claim some reprieve from the oppressive heat of the city. 

And yet, Violet was home -- home to her reprieve. As always, the tangled perfume of smoke and tar and progress filled her soul with that strange sense of fulfillment. Reminiscent of London in all the right ways, New York held a charm she had not anticipated, embodied best in that bright blue gaze. The press of his lips against her cheek, chaste enough for public. 

“Hiya, honey,” he said softly, taking the battered suitcase from her other hand. “I missed you.” 

Their usual exchange: I missed you; I was only gone two days; Got real lonesome, if you catch my drift; Oh, Bucky love, stop.

A surefire way to earn laughs and ribbing from other disembarking passengers: it was a language they’d worked on together, built in small moments these past three years. Coy hints of what was to come; bedroom-promises carved into the gold winking from her left hand. As the loose wedding plans (New Year’s Eve; a small, family affair; his mother’s famous chocolate cake) came to shape, Bucky had gotten bolder in all the right ways. 

But now, standing on the platform, her best summer dress dusty at the hem and the weight of a new future in her hands, Violet simply burst into tears. 

The next few minutes unfolded in a wet blur; Bucky steering her gently to a quieter spot on the sidewalk, sobs bubbling up wildly, leaving no room for words between. He tossed out sweet names, a joke; rubbed at her shoulders and her back and pressed her close against his chest until some woman sniffed disapprovingly and the next thing Violet knew, she was sliding into a wooden booth and a steaming cup of coffee was placed in front of her. 

“Vi, honey, you’ve got tell me what’s going on,” Bucky said lowly, rummaging through her purse for a hanky. “Talk to me — something didn’t happen on the train, did it?”

An old man with kindness in his bones and five thousand years in his voice had held her hand for three hours; together, they’d stroked uncertainly over the past. A city, smashed to rubble and stone and stripped to the aching, raw nerve of her; he had darker stories to tell, and shielded her from every one; telling her instead of the candlelight glow on his daughter’s face; of sweet breads and the cool rush of a river against his skin. 

And beyond that — she’d told him of another man. Younger, of course, but old to her. Summer in his eyes all year ‘round and joy woven into his every movement. A hero in olive-green; champion, maybe a young god slid from myth into the dust and the dirt of an unknown grave. Still soaked in his own blood, no rites but the ministrations of a stranger’s shovel. 

The pain of that unfolding scraped at her now, even as Bucky ordered her favourite carrot cake and pushed the mug closer. “Honey?” 

Oh, he was lovely. A real prize, that’s what the other girls said. Handsome war-hero, with or without his left arm, Bucky had come back to Brooklyn with dozens of headlines attached to his name. Started his own garage and never once called Captain America anything other than Steve Rogers. 

He was a man of routine, of ritual. Saturday mornings at the library had been, for months, her least favourite shift, until he’d started coming in. Checking out two books and giving her a smile that seemed to grow ever sweeter and wider each week. Slowly, “Miss Cooper” had become “honey” and “doll” and “angel,” and eventually, over a slice of carrot cake, “Violet.” 

Violet and James. 

Names strung together so neatly and prettily it was as though, his mother said, they were always meant to be twined thus. Theirs had been a carrot-cake courtship, all innocent dates and hands on the right side of the table; evenings with his mother and chaperoning his sister on her own dates. Until the night, a little liquor on their tongues, the world had slid funnily and he’d pressed her back gently against a brick wall, fitting against her in a way that made her think of stars shifting and burning, wounds in a galaxy that seared so beautifully. 

And she’d cried into his neck, told him in plain, shy words of the ache of two and a half years, of desire that burned so hot it hurt — deep in the night. “Oh, honey,” he’d groaned. “Let me take care of you, huh?”

Beer and frayed inhibitions; starlight and a late, late curfew — but despite all that, she went to sleep with the same ache. That same ache between her legs and a circle of gold on her left hand. 

She fiddled with that now, under the harsh, fluorescent glow of the overhead lights. Bucky asked her again, worry and fear licking cruel flames at the edge of every word. “Violet, talk to me, please. Did something happen with your aunt? Or on the train? Did anyone…” 

He closed his eyes; swallowed against the implication. Hatpins worked on well enough on the subway, but train compartments…

“No, no, I’m fine,” she blubbered, dabbing self-consciously at her nose. “I just…I…oh, James, I don’t know where to start.” 

How did one go about breaking a heart? Does it begin with a crack, a creak, a crumble? A chink in the armour; a flaw exposed? 

Should she strike at their weaker moments — for there had been those — and hope that the fault-line would open wider? That time they’d argued over his job; her hours. A dress she couldn’t afford. A friend’s wedding. Baseball teams and unravelling her past and why he wouldn’t go to VA meetings. Why she wouldn’t talk about the mornings she came to him with dark, deep, nightmare-bruises curving under her eyes. 

Bucky reached now, taking her hand in his. Rubbing one thumb against warm, salt-stained flesh and smiling a soft smile. “At the beginning, baby. Just start with what you can. But I need you tell me what’s got you so worked up.”

On the train, she’d told the old man about her fiancé. Dark hair that curled when the air grew damp or he’d spent too long under the hood of a car. Blue eyes that saw, she was sure, her soul. A cheeky, crooked smile and a penchant for small, innocent trouble. 

“Is he a good man?” her new friend had asked. 

“The best,” she’d said. No hesitation. No dithering about adjectives or explanations. Love weighed more than enough to support such a claim. He wasn’t just a good man; he was the best. And he was hers. 

He wanted to be married in the New Year, to claim 1949 for themselves. “I’m gonna love you at midnight, honey,” he’d breathed into her ear, the night his parents had hosted an engagement party. “And I’m gonna love for every minute of every year after that.” 

Her dress had a low waist; pearl buttons. There were hints about lingerie, secrets of slips and garters and lace she knew something about, but not everything. Secrets she could teach him. 

Secrets. Oh-so-heavy. The weight of stolen childhoods, broken hearts. Thick paper, soaked through with death; blood drip-drip-dripping through her dreams...

Violet choked down a sip of coffee, but the taste was ashes in her mouth. There was no room for flavour, for anything other than the crisp, precise weight of horror on her tongue. Horror for what she was about to do, what she was about to say. 

“James,” she said again. Anchoring herself to the moment, to the bright blue hope in his gaze. To the lilting poem of his mouth, for the memory of the warm way it slid against hers. Rocketed heat through her bones and made her feel so, so wanted. “James, I have to tell you something.” 

Her gulping sobs had faded now, but tears still streamed down her cheeks. Hot and chilling in turns, they skated slick as a fever against her skin and Violet made no move to wipe them away. Instead she loosened her hand from his and buried the past; the bright, soft moments of courting and new love; the comfort of settling firm against the contours of a person, finding another soul that fit yours in all the right ways. 

As though she’d crawled through a desert, a ravaged landscape, on bloody fingernails — and then looked up. To see him. An ocean in his eyes and love on his lips and all the joy she had thought the world sapped of held in the palm of his steady hand. 

The hand she let go of; the hand that curved around forever. 

The hand she could not hold now, not anymore. Not with this changed future; these notes played out of tune. “James,” she said. A fourth time. No Bucky, no love. No silly boy or cheeky monkey. 

Just James. An anybody name. 

Her finger had swollen in the late summer heat; it took a fumbling, red-faced, nauseous century to slide the ring loose. 

It hit the centre of his palm like a death knell. 

“James, I-I can’t marry you. I’m sorry.”