#we have to look american crises dead in the face and say “yeah ok that's shit. and what else?”

[mangled-by-disuse]

talking to friends about The Horrors, specifically the Trumpian Horrors, and, like

the more I consider it, the more I think that the best thing we outside the US can do - for ourselves, for the world, and for America as well - is to just holler to the fucking rooftops that AMERICA IS NOT THE WORLD.

By which I mean:

we do not let politicians, media, and our own social circles convince us that American issues are the only issues worth discussing;

we challenge politicians, media, and our own social circles on the politics of appeasement;

we challenge ourselves on the assumption that laws passed in the US affect us directly, and we do not place ourselves in American shoes;

we focus on our own shit. Not because it's more important, but because we need to remember that it still exists. Our eyes cannot be on the USA while the legislative and political rights in our own countries are eroded from under us.

we look to the rest of the world. We get used to viewing people who don't look like us, talk like us, or even like us as an equal and crucial part of the political landscape.

WE ARE LOUD ABOUT THIS. In politics, in activism, in social contexts, in our own assessment of our own politics, we remember and hold up that America is NOT the centre of the world, and that American hegemony is NOT inevitable.

This is not because I'm trying to undermine American struggles. This is because the Trump administration is strengthened and bolstered by every other country that chooses to suck the cock of American supremacy in the desperate attempt to maintain the last remnants of the old imperial order.

It is up to everyone in the world to challenge that, and to say: yeah, this fucking sucks, and we want America to be better, but we don't need America.

There are other markets. There are other allies and potential allies. There are other global powers (Personally I think we should try to dismantle global powers entirely, but, you know, one battle at a time) and there are other political shifts.

So much of the current rightward swing in the UK, at least, is directly modelled on MAGA to the point that it's the same movement, to the point where the branches of that movement feed power and influence to one another. You know what has consistently been one of the more successful tactics? Fucking reminding people that they are not, in fact, offering solutions to the problems Britain faces, because these are American solutions and we are not America.

idk it feels stupid to say this. it feels stupid to have to point out that Not Everywhere Is America, and it feels even stupider to think that this is something that needs pointing out to the systems of power. But the more I think about it, the surer I am that one of the tentpoles of American power, and therefore of Trump's power (in the US as well as beyond it!) is just... the willingness of so much of the world to say: yeah, sure, everything is America.

WE ARE NOT AMERICA.

AMERICA DOES NOT HAVE TO CONTROL US.

idk. maybe it won't change shit. but maybe yelling that at international power structures loudly enough - making noise about issues that are not American, focusing our efforts outside America, challenging American supremacy on the global stage - is, in fact, the most useful thing we can do.

[lovemesomerafael]

Here Goes

I don’t even know what I’m saying.  I’m just babbling at this point.  I feel good. I’m so relieved.  I’m actually smiling.  I guess that’s why I can pretend to be so flirty and brave, talking to Peggy. Because I’m not paying the slightest bit of attention to the conversation.  I’m watching the ice come up toward me.  I’m watching it and I know it’s gonna happen so fast it won’t hurt and I’m not even really seeing it.  I’m seeing Bucky.  I’m seeing him smiling at me after he’s hit me with some insult or another.  I’m seeing the way he looked at me when I pulled him off that table in Zola’s lab.  Like he knew I would come for him.  

I know it’s wrong that I didn’t even try.  I know that. I guess I musta stored up some karma points or something because I get to check out saving a bunch of people. This way, people won’t know, not the way they’d have known if I’d jumped after Bucky the way I wanted to.  Oh, who the hell knows.  Maybe they wouldn’t have figured that out, either, but I was just too stunned and that stupid fucking survival instinct kicked in and I kept holding on.  

Three days.  That’s how long I could stand living in a world without him.  That’s my limit.  He’s gonna give me so much shit about that.  I’m gonna be listening to him say, “You can’t live without me” for all eternity. And I’m good with that.  I’m so good with that.  

He’ll throw his arm around my neck like he does, and he’ll laugh into my face, and I’ll probably blush – why is he the only one who can make me blush, when he’s the one who gives me the most shit about it – and then we’ll go find some trouble to get into. Like old times.  Like it should be.  

I knew he wasn’t dead when the 107th was captured.  I knew I’d feel it, and I didn’t.  Which is why I went and got him without a second thought.  Honor, duty, rules, those are all things I care deeply about in my soul, and I’ve done some stuff that gave me an almighty pucker in the name of those things.  But those things were lookin’ at my taillights when Bucky was in trouble.  

The ice is a pretty color. I like that.  It reminds me of his eyes.  Shit, he’s gonna tease me about thinkin’ that.  It would probably freak people out if they could see me right now, smiling and chuckling in the cockpit of this airplane speeding toward the ice. They’d think I’m some sort of suicidal freak.  

I’m not, of course. Just a guy who can’t live with half his soul missing.  A guy who, as it turns out, will follow his best friend anywhere.  Even here.  Funny, I never realized people did this kind of stuff for love.  I thought it was only despair or something.  Well, now that I think that, I guess this is kind of despair, too.  

Except I don’t feel like I’m despairing.  I feel excited.  Happy again. Happy like I know I would never have been able to ever feel in this life again without Bucky in it.  Guess I shoulda known.  If he’d have had time, he woulda wished me to be happy.  And I’d have said, “How can I?  You’re takin’ all the happy with you.”  He woulda punched me for sayin’ that.  But he’d have understood.

Well.  Here goes.  See ya’ in a few, Buck.

 **************

This hurts.  Fuck, this hurts so much.  Why are they doing this?  They’re Americans, too, I can hear their accents clear as day.  Americans torturing Captain America.  Maybe I’m in Hell.  Oh, shit – maybe I killed myself and that’s a sin and I’m in Hell.  But I didn’t kill myself!  God knows that!  I just saw a chance to save people and stop a bully and I couldn’t not do it! Yeah, I was tryin’ to get to Bucky, too, but-

No,  Oh, please, God, no.  Bucky.

I killed myself and now I’m in Hell and being tortured by Americans and I will never, ever, for eternity, get to see Bucky again.  Fuck it. I’m gonna lean into the torture.  Give me something to think about other than the real pain.  This excruciating burning and unspeakable crushing ache everywhere as my body  thaws, that’s what I’ll think about.  And, let’s be real, it does kind of hurt.  

At some point, I musta passed out, or whatever.  Can you pass out in Hell?  Whatever. Now I’m in some kind of, I don’t know, apartment or hospital room or something.  There’s a baseball game on the radio.  I remember this game.  I remember it because I was there with Bucky.  

I’m about to yell and beg for the torturers to come back, because I cannot think about that.  Some girl comes in.  She’s all wrong.  Everything about this is wrong.  And she’s apparently not gonna torture me.  Fuck.  Then I’m out.

************

Huh.  Not technically Hell, then.  New York in the future.  Hell with more advertising.  

Well, now at least Bucky can’t tease me that I can’t live without him.  Apparently, I can, and I have to, even though I would give anything, anything to be dead and with him.  I’ve thought about it, and I realize I dodged a bullet.  Almost blew my chance to ever be with Bucky again.  I can’t kill myself.  Because if I do, then I really will be in Hell (although what could it possibly have to offer that New York in 2011 doesn’t?) and I know for an absolute, bedrock fact that Bucky isn’t in Hell.  

All I can do for the first month is cry.  When I’m not screaming myself awake from nightmares, that is.  

Fucking Nick Fury wants me to join some kind of crusader outfit.  I don’t care. I really don’t.  As long as my uniform can be a little more dignified than the last one, sure.  I’ll be your damn Captain America.  Captain fucking broken-hearted, lonely as all hell, absolutely nothing to lose, please kill me America.  Pretty sure you don’t understand who you’re dealing with here, pal.  I’m as likely to run in front of a bullet with my arms spread than to use this weirdly light shield.  

************

Motherfucking survival instinct.  Motherfucking, damn it all to hell, why aren’t there more swear words, jumpin’ fucked-up shitty useless survival instinct.  It’s why I couldn’t jump after Bucky.  And now I’m putting one foot in front of the other and I feel nothing but towering guilt because I’m surviving and making a life without Bucky that I absolutely do not want and it hurts so fucking much I sometimes fall to my knees with it.  But then some bad guy gets a hard on for world power or some ugly-ass aliens tear a hole in the sky and drive their Steampunk whales through it and I gotta get to work.  So I go.  What the hell.  I can’t kill myself, can’t even make myself let me be killed.  Can’t get back to the real world where things make sense and there’s real butter and no fucking cell phones.  Shit, in this future, even the swells dress like bums.  Bucky would laugh his ass off.

So here I am.  Captain America, bleeding to death whether I’m wounded or not, but I just can’t seem to fucking die.  I just keep on saving the world because I’m Steve I-can-do-this-all-day Rogers, and apparently I really do like getting punched.  

*************

I wonder how long I’ve been staring at this little mark on my shield.  Don’t care, just wonder.  I know the pain’s driven me crazy now, because I’ve been sitting here, looking at this little mark on my shield for so long the sun’s gone down and there’s a pink glow on the horizon again, because I know he made it.  

And it makes me so happy I can’t stop crying.

Bucky is alive.  Bucky is alive when he can’t possibly be.  I don’t understand it, but I also don’t give a rat’s ass how it happened.  I just know Bucky is alive and I’m gonna find him.  

He also wants to kill me. They keep trying to tell me that’s a problem.  Only problem I see is he’s not right here next to me.  Everything else?  Details.

************

Shit, he’s gotten good. I know technically he was trying to kill me, but I’m so fucking proud of him.  I keep thinking of stuff he did, and I just wanna jump up and down and cheer for him.  I can’t stop smiling, thinkin’ about it.  Anyway, how else would I know how unbelievably strong and fast and lethal he is now? Nobody else coulda given him the workout I did.  Of course, nobody else woulda let him live, either.  OK, actually saved his life, but the brass doesn’t need to know that.  And then he turned right around and saved mine back.  ‘Cause he’s Bucky.  And that’s what we do.  

That’s right.  I said smiling.  I haven’t smiled since 1944.  I’ve probably showed my teeth a little, it’s part of the stuff I have to do to keep people from seeing who I’ve been since I lost Bucky.  But I never smiled until I found him again.  Well, I haven’t found him yet. What I meant is, since I knew he was here to be found.

Always before, I wanted crises to come so I’d have something to distract me from missin’ Buck.  But now that I know he’s alive, the world needs to simmer the fuck down because I gotta find him and it’s the only thing I care about. I keep doing my job, because I’ve got this ridiculous urge to do the right thing all the time – oh, when he finds out all the inconvenient shit I’ve done because it was the right thing, I’m never gonna hear the end of it – but my heart and my head are somewhere else.  I don’t know where.  But I’ll find him.

Tony Stark be damned. I love him; he’s my comrade in arms, my friend, my brother, and it hurts like hell to be split from him.  But he’s so wrong about these fucking Accords.  God knows I know about guilt, but Tony’s been blinded by his and he’s putting his trust in the wrong people.  And as much as I care about that, I care more – infinitely more - about Bucky.  And Tony and the rest of the Avengers standing with him are just gonna have to do what they’re gonna do.  Same with the rest of the world and all the governments and nations trying to stand in my way.  Because Bucky’s alive and he’s in trouble and I will get to him, no matter what I have to do. Or who I have to do it to.

*************

I’m lookin’ right at him. And he’s lookin’ at me.  I didn’t know it was possible, I guess I’m a self-centered asshole, but these years have been much harder on him than on me.  Nobody’s stolen my mind and made me into a murderous robot fighting on the wrong side.  Believe it or not, though, there’s an upside.  He only had a few seconds to realize we were bein’ separated, and there’s something to say for that.  The rest of the time, his body was – well, his body was goin’ through what my heart was. Let’s leave it at that.  But his mind, his heart, they were at least safe from the memory of that crevasse and the seventy-odd years of anguish that followed.

I had to do a lot of shit to get us here.  I had to seriously piss off a whole hell of a lot of people, some of whom I love.  I may have burned down some of my most beloved friendships.  And me and Bucky, we got a metric crapton of destruction to answer for.  Don’t care.  There’s one man that’s worth all of that, and anything else I ever have to do.  I’d do it again.  Twenty times over.  A million times over.  As many as it took.

Because let me tell you some universal fucking truths.  Nobody’s ever gonna hurt Bucky again.  And I’m never gonna leave his side.  Somebody swings at him, they’re gonna hit me because I’m gonna be there, standing between him and anybody ever fucking touching him again.  And then they’re gonna get hurt.  Anyone ever tries to get between us again, I will go on a rampage the likes of which this world has never seen.  Is it wrong that I’d use all the expensive serum and rays and whatnot to defy everyone on the planet and burn it the fuck down to protect Bucky Barnes?  I absolutely do not give a shit.  Now that I know what comes after he falls, I’m gonna jump.  Every time. My damn survival instinct’s not backward anymore.  And the more I learn about what they’ve done to him, the more I hope there’s more of Hydra out there somewhere for us to kill and kill and kill until he feels clean and safe and whole again.  

Right now, he doesn’t. Right now, he’s askin’ to be frozen again, because he doesn’t trust his own mind.  It hurts.  It hurts so fucking much it’s takin’ all of my superfuckingsoldier strength not to scream with the pain of it.  But it’s what he wants.  It’s what he says he needs to feel safe, and so that’s what we’re gonna do.  We’ll get him to Wakanda where they think they can heal him.  And by we, I mean me and whoever else, but always, always me.  I will do whatever he asks of me every day for the rest of our lives, and if this is what he wants, this is what he gets, but I will never, ever be separated from him.  Even when he’s in the cryo bed, I’m gonna be right there with him.  

The part of him that’s still all Bucky gets that.  Feels the same way.  He says it all the time, even when he’s making fun of me, callin’ me a barnacle and sayin’ next I’m gonna get a pouch and carry him around like a baby kangaroo.  Because I can’t get close enough to him.  If I can’t feel him touching me, he’s too far away. Sometimes it’s so bad I swear I’d climb into his skin with him if I could.  

But right now, he’s so skittish.  He’s so broken and exhausted and sad.  I have to give him room, and I do, because that’s what he asks me for.  But it’s hard.  I want him to be all Bucky, all the time, like he used to be before those assholes got ahold of him.  And I sure the fuck don’t want to hurt him in any way, ever.  That’s why I’m sittin’ here now, looking in his eyes while they do whatever it is they do to freeze a guy.  And I’m tryin’ to think of all the terrible icicle jokes I can, to make him laugh and let him know that, no matter what, it’s still him and me, together, till the end of the line.