MEET ME ON THE BATTLEFIELD, bucky barnes

BUCKY WAS WALKING beside little Steve, "I don't see what the problem is. You're about to be the last eligible man in New York. You know, there's three and a half million women here." Steve shrugs at his best friend, staring at his feet. Bucky was the man that every girl wanted to sleep with, even for a night, and they threw themselves at him. Steve, well, he never got any women.

"Well, I'd settle for just one."

"Good thing I took care of that," Bucky waves to the dates he's picked up, Connie and Bonnie, and they both squeal.

"What did you tell her about me?" Steve becomes nervous, afraid of what might spill out of his mouth in front of the girl, afraid of embarrassing himself. What happens if he's eating and talking and a piece of food flies into her mouth? Now that was going to be the worst thing that can happen, for sure. Bucky claps him on his bony shoulder, "Only the good stuff." They all walk around, an announcer beginning to talk to the people that are filing about.

"Welcome to the Modern Marvels Pavilion and the World of Tomorrow. A greater world. A better world."

"Oh my god, it's starting!" Connie says excitedly. She tugs Bonnie and Bucky to the stage, leaving Steve to trail behind slowly, defeated as he puts his hands in his pockets; Bucky had gotten him a date and his date only wanted to be with Bucky and the other chick. "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Howard Stark!" The dark-haired man runs out from behind a curtain and goes to the announcer, Mandy, and gives a kiss as he takes the microphone from her hand. He wipes away his lips with a handkerchief. "Ladies and gentlemen, what if I told you that in just a few short years, your automobile won't even have to touch the ground at all." The female helpers take the wheels of the car off as he speaks. "With Stark robotic reversion technology, you'll be able to do just that."

He uses a switch with a red ball glued to the end to make the car hover above the ground, the crowd gasping, "Holy cow." The hovers malfunction and drop the heavy box back on the ground, the crowd stepping back. "I did say a few years, didn't I?" The audience laughs, clapping at his invention, Steve disappearing, "Hey, Steve, what do you say we treat these girls. . ."

At the recruitment center, Steve steps on top of the small machine that glued his face onto the body of the soldier in the wall, but he's too short to fill it out. "Come on," Bucky finds him, "you're kind of missing the point of a double date. We're taking the girls dancing."

"You go ahead, I'll catch up with you."

"You're really going to do this again?"

"Well, it's a fair," Steve shrugs. "I'm gonna try my luck."

"As who? Steve from Ohio? They'll catch you. Or worse, they'll actually take you," Steve sighs at his friend. He shakes his head, "Look, I know you don't think I can do this."

"This isn't a back alley, Steve, it's a war."

"I know it's a war. You don't have to tell me," Steve loved Bucky like a brother, but sometimes Bucky treated him as he were a child and he didn't like that. He didn't need it to be clarified that he was going to sign up for war, not a school debate on why students should be allowed to go to the library whenever they needed to study. "Why are you so keen to fight?" Bucky asks him. "There are so many important jobs."

"What am I going to do? Collect scrap metal. . ."

"Yes!"

". . . in my little red wagon."

"Why not?" Bucky just wanted to protect his friend, the only one that really did care about him, and he wanted to go to war; Steve couldn't even handle himself in a regular fist fight, why does he think he could handle himself in a place where hundreds are being murdered, wounded, and tortured for information. "I'm not going to sit in a factory, Bucky," Steve shakes his head at him again.

"I don't. . ."

"Bucky, come on! There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them. That's what you don't understand. This isn't about me," Steve had always been selfless, a person who would risk his life to save others, and Bucky had a love/hate relationship with that side of him. "Right," Bucky scoffs, "'cause you got nothing to prove." Connie calls out to them, "Hey, Sarge! Are we going dancing?" Bucky turns around, arms splayed wide open in front of him while a smirk spreads across his lips, "Yes, we are." He turns back to Steve, "Don't do anything until I get back."

"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."

"You're a punk."

"Jerk. Be careful," Steve watches Bucky walk away. "Don't win the war until I get there." Bucky salutes and goes back to the girls, and they don't see one person; a woman with dark hair and eyes watching them from far away. She points at Steve and gives a thumbs up.

They had found their man.