#its fine nina just wait until i send you stalag arc with a heart

[jakes3resin]

Trying to find an accurate crying meme to explain how this hurt me. Just come back online to see what's up, and @getinthefuckingjaeger sends me this with a heart emoticon?!

I'm fine I'm so so so fine because why wouldn't I be fine reading Bubbles' POV watching Bucky breakdown after losing his soulmate knowing that Harry is going to be in Bucky's place in a few days, the same place Bubbles' was before Harry, Dougie, and Ev came back to life and walked through the door to resurrect Bubbles' heart.

Comparing Bucky to a sequoia? Your mind! As soon as I saw that, I thought 'if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?' And Bubbles forcing himself to watch because he's aware that this is killing Bucky as it had killed him. Harry being unable to watch, but the reader knowing that he's going to go through the same grief soon.

Bubbles detailing what will surely be Harry's own actions in the years to come like some kind of Cassandra foreseeing the fall of Troy. Baby boy that's gonna be your man after he loses you I'm so sorry.

The last bit?? THE LAST PRETTY FACE?! Poetic, cinematic, amazing, showstopping, heartbreaking, all of the above. I need 3-5 business days to recover.

Nina wants us dead y'all just dead from the grief with a '<3' on the gravestone.

I can't recommend this enough everyone needs to read this

“We’re not gonna be like them, Joe.” Harry’s fierce tone catches Joe off guard. "We're gonna make it."

(Joe, Harry, and Major Egan's grief)

“Harry, look.” Joe presses his chin into Harry’s hair, careful not to dislodge his best friend’s head from its rest on Joe’s shoulder. “Over there.”

He glances down and over thick, messy dark curls to watch Harry squint in the pre-dawn light. They’re perched on one of the many observation towers on base - far away enough from the heart of the operations and closer to where the ground crew park the forts under repair. Joe waits as Harry scan the tarmac for a second. The hitch in his breath tells Joe that he’s seen it.

Joe drops his head on Harry’s, the two of them lone observers of a single jeep making its way down the tarmac until it turned and parked by one of the forts on the hardstand.

The signature white of Major Egan’s sheepskin is the only bright spot in the blue light of twilight. The figure sits straight as a ramrod as the engines die down and the headlights fade to nothing. Joe and Harry breathe in tandem, eyes focused on Egan as he sits there with an empty passenger seat, staring at nothing. 

Joe counts down the seconds by the ticking of his wristwatch, each passing of the needle like the countdown of a bomb.

He counts to the sixth minute and the time bomb explodes with a small gasp that Joe does not need to be there to hear. Idly, he thinks of trees falling in forests.

Watching John Egan fall, Joe thinks, is like watching a giant sequoia being felled by explosives. It is heartbreaking, terrifying, and it sparks a kind of anger in his heart at the destruction of something so timeless and seemingly indestructible. 

It’s intrusive and personal, but the thought of something so immutable breaking down without a witness feels blasphemous. So Joe sits there, wrapped around Harry with his head bowed and he makes himself watch. He forces himself to witness the destruction of John Egan as he slumps over the steering wheel, his broad back curved and defeated, but still breathing.

How soon does a felled tree know it is dead?

“I wish I saw what happened.” Harry whispers, voice hollow. Joe feels the way Harry’s arm tightens around his waist and he turns to bury his face into dark curls, no longer have the appetite to watch the loss of another life. “I wish I could tell him what happened.” 

Joe is silent for a long while. 

He casts his thoughts to the few hours he spent walking around as a solid ghost on the grounds of Thorpe Abbotts, his body still existing among the living whilst his soul is lost over the skies of enemy territory. 

He takes the grief that was a brief, but oppressing friend to him in those scant hours into his hands and he turns it over and over. He pokes and prods at the dark ball of tar that, for a few hours, dripped messily all over his heart before Harry came back and scraped every last bit of it away. 

He imagines the black viscous thing crawling all over Egan’s heart like the sticky reaches of an eldritch creature, getting into the ventricles, clogging the arteries, and poisoning the blood system to ensure death at molecular level.

The enormity of it steals his breath.

“I wish you did, too.” Joe mumbles into the riot of curls. Without opening his eyes, Joe scoops Harry’s thighs and lays them sideways over his, manhandling Harry until they are as close as humanly possible without tumbling over the edge of the tower.

“‘No record’, was all that I had to go on with.” 

Harry makes a distressed noise. 

“I don’t know what I would have done if I knew where you went down, but at least I knew you were somewhere and not everywhere at once. It’s stupid, Harry - It’s so stupid, but,” Joe swallows, breaths coming out in shuddering gasps. He wraps his arms closer around Harry and Harry reciprocates. “But it feels better, somehow, to look at a map and know that’s the last place on earth you existed because it's not like I’d be getting a body, ain’t it.” 

Joe imagines himself living through this war. 

Ten, twenty, thirty years down the road, when he has a wife and children and grandchildren - he’ll tell them all about the love of his life Harry Crosby who he will introduce as his best friend. He’ll show them all the pictures he has of Harry, tell them stories about Harry, and then he’ll pull out maps and point out his last resting place. 

He imagines visiting an obscure German countryside in his golden years, casting his eyes up at the blue skies and telling Harry to hold on, he’s coming. 

Maybe, in that future without Harry, the world might grow kinder to folks like them and Joe wouldn’t have to pretend. Maybe, hopefully, his grandchildren can look at Harry’s pictures and see the truth as clear as day and they would understand. Maybe then his grief can speak its truth - a bereaved lover.

Joe allows himself to sink through the maybes a few seconds more before resuming his vigil.

Major Egan is sitting upright in the jeep now. He rubs his hand over his face, presses the heel of his palm to his eyes, his mouth hanging open with exaggerated breathing. They watch quietly as Egan stumbles out of the jeep and drags himself over and up into the parked fort.

The hatch closed like a period at the end of a love story. 

“We’re not gonna be like them, Joe.”

Harry’s fierce tone catches Joe off guard. He pulls away to look at Harry’s white, terrified face. He’s not looking back at Joe, but the bruises his fingers press into Joe’s side speaks louder than any gaze ever could.

“We’re gonna go home and Jean’s gonna fuss over us and then you and her are gonna sing every Friday night in our lounge, and you’re gonna tell me to shut up because it’s scaring the cats.”

Harry stops speaking as though he ran out of breath. His gaze cuts to Joe so suddenly that his heart skips a beat. He sees an ultimatum in those brown eyes, an all or nothing.

“We’re gonna make it.” 

–

Joe goes up the next day on the Munster mission, lucky snowglobe in his vest pocket, and Harry’s face is the last pretty face he sees.   

–

(for Abbie (@moghraidhs) and her ability to express 'nina, why would you?' very clearly through a single thumbs up emoji)