Chapter Text
If breaking a mirror brings about 7 years of bad luck, Steve was doomed for eternity.
Not that he didn’t already have the worst luck of anyone he’s ever met, but this would just seal his fate. Being a man of many odd superstitions (I mean, come on. He grew up in the 30s), he did his research the first time it happened, using the technological devices he hadn’t even so much as glanced at for the first few days he was thawed out. It certainly was a learning curve, but eventually he figured out the elusive Google search engine. Upon tapping “Breaking a mirror curse” with the little keyboard on the screen and hitting enter, millions of web pages popped up. He clicked on the first one, skimming it quickly, before moving on to the next link. This continued for countless hours, until he thought he got the general idea (in all honesty, he probably got the general idea after the first article, but he kept reading out of confusion).
Apparently, a mirror was a reflection of one’s own soul and by breaking the mirror, you are essentially shattering your soul into pieces. This completely puzzled Steve. Not because it’s an odd thing to think, in fact, it seemed very reasonable to the war hero. But instead, because it begs the question…
How can you break something that’s already shattered?
Thinking about that sentence, he puffed out a self-deprecating laugh. He could practically hear Bucky’s voice saying “Always so dramatic, Stevie” .
And that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Bucky’s words haunted him, like the ghost of Steve Rogers past. His soul was in pieces, and the man whose voice was floating around his head telling him to stop being stupid, was the reason why. God fucking damn it, he couldn’t have a moment of peace. His mind seemed to always provide a thought or a memory tied to Bucky. It was instinctual, like breathing. Painful, like being cut wide open. It was like how Steve remembered breathing before the serum. Each breath a necessity, hungrily drawing in air, yet his body would ache each time and never could quite draw in enough to be satisfied. His body yearned for more and more, but each breath hurt like something else. Loving a dead man was like that, Steve realized. Everything ached for more memories, more thoughts, just a little bit more, but Steve could never give in. His mind, his body, his soul, aching for something he didn’t give it was better than feeling better for a brief moment, before he caught up with reality and realized that Bucky was dead. And just like that, the moment passes, and Steve is hit by memories so vivid that he can practically feel the cold gusts of wind and hear Bucky’s screaming, watching Bucky fall from the train, again and again, unable to close the few inches of distance and reach him.
Words can’t describe how it feels, but he attempts to put it into words that somewhat fit the bill, so that he can conceptualize the loss and pain that he feels. It feels like claws (big, sharp talons. Black ones, that seem to ooze the most vile energy you could possibly conceive, so that even before they touch you, pain shoots through every part of your body, through places you didn’t even know you could feel) reaching into your chest, breaking everything in their way, to get to your heart. People are saying nowadays that your brain does all the feeling, but Steve can’t believe that. Not when your heart is what beats faster when you see that one person, not when it feels like your actual, physical heart is aching, spasming when that person leaves you. So yes, the claws target the heart, where he doesn’t think. Where he just feels. They clutch your heart, stopping the destruction for a moment. And just when you start to take a breath, just when you start to let your guard down, the claws squeeze. They scratch and squeeze and scrape, until your heart turns into something so completely scarred and unrecognizable. That is a very small portion of what Steve feels when he’s immersed in those memories.
When he finally comes back to the SHIELD-sanctioned apartment he resides in, he stares blankly at the beige walls, forcing his brain to come back online. Steve really contemplates in those moments whether the serum actually did anything at all besides give him a six pack, because his mind is fucked up, sick beyond belief. No normally functioning brain would replay the worst, most gut-wrenching memory possible. And worse, no normally functioning brain would actually like the memory a bit. Not because of some weird sadistic urge to watch the love of his life die, but because of what Steve has narrowed one of two reasons. Either, Steve’s mind just wants to torture itself because of the immense guilt he feels for letting Bucky die, for not trying harder and reaching a little further, just a little bit further , or he’s clinging onto his last memory of the man who he loved more than anything. It might be both, if Steve’s being honest.
Steve (months after the initial Google search), being the superstitious man he is, decided to look into what could reverse the mirror curse. He wanted to throw his tablet across the room, when he discovered the first article about the so-called remedy. Fucking bullshit, Steve thought. Of course the cure is to touch the shard of mirror to a tombstone. Taking a few deep breaths, he continued his search for a cure to his bad luck, stumbling across one that actually might work and not be so fucking macabre. Apparently, you have to crush the mirror into dust, so that you can’t see yourself in it anymore.
Ironic, considering the fact that Steve punched the mirrors in the first place because of exactly that reason. Because he couldn’t see himself in those mirrors, not anymore. He looked like- God. He didn’t even know what he looked like. He never really had gotten the chance to get used to what he looked like in the mirror after the serum. He thought it wouldn’t be an issue, as he would either be dead at the end of the war or he would look handsome and muscular, which was pretty much how he always wanted to look. When he looked in the mirror now, he didn’t recognize himself. All he saw was a man, a broken man, with bags under his eyes, greasy hair, and part of his soul missing. So yeah, he punched the mirror, and countless other ones because fuck me, why couldn’t I have just died with the rest of them?
And yes, a part of him realizes how messed up that is, to think that way, but he doesn’t really listen to that part of him. Cognitive dissonance, a part of Steve’s brain that sounds suspiciously like Bucky points out. Steve has saved countless lives from their own minds, convincing them to put the gun down, it’s gonna be okay, or to step off the ledge, let’s get you some help, but for some reason, Steve can’t save himself from his own mind.
To be fair, it’s hard to save yourself when you don’t fully recognize the fact that you need to be saved in the first place. Steve didn’t really consider it a suicidal thing, not something he should get help for. He thought of it as more of a romantic thing, in a sick kind of way. He and Bucky could never be together in a public setting during their lives, not with the laws around homosexuality existing the way they did. But in death, they could. Steve’s body could lie next to Bucky’s empty grave, and it wouldn’t matter that his body wasn’t there, because they’d be together in spirit, in soul.
A part of him liked to believe that he and Bucky had served enough penance for their sins, and that they’d be allowed to stay together, roaming the spirit world together, for the rest of eternity, but to be honest, Steve didn’t know what he believed happened after death. He didn’t know whether his pastor had been right and they’d both be sent to hell for their sins, or whether there was just… nothing. A void. A nothingness. Steve would take the fiery pits of hell with Bucky over any afterlife without Bucky anyday. No amount of torture could change his mind, because being without his best guy was the most soul-crushing torture he could ever conceive of. He could almost hear Bucky’s laugh ring through his ears right after that thought passed through his mind, making fun of him for his melodramatics. He didn’t mind, though. He was glad that the Bucky in his mind would never have to know the torture that is seeing the man you love die, and having to live on without him.
Steve came back to the present and crawled his way out of his thoughts, taking another look at the tablet in front of him. He considered the mirror-crushing method for a moment and compared it to the other methods he had read about.
He made a mental note to stop by the local hardware store to pick up a container, a hammer, and a sheet.