A story about three siblings

The prompt runs until next week, so oldest children will be posting in the next six hours, middle children will be starting Thursday, and youngests will be starting when someone reminds them to start.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

I originally planned to do something with Natasha, but then the very first fill was a great little piece about Natasha, and I ended up swerving onto a different path. Then, due to a presentation and illness this week along with my plot refusing to stop growing, I realized I wasn't going to finish in time. So, when I saw a post on tumblr about drabbles, I realized I could cut my story down ruthlessly into a drabble per sibling for this meme, and continue working on the longer piece over a longer time. That didn't really work out, and I ended up with a double-drabble for each sibling. Therefore, think of this more as an extended summary than an actual fic. I am proud of the fact that I got it down to exactly 600 words.

Title: Sisterly Love
Fandom: Captain America
Characters: Bucky's three sisters, who I mostly made up. Rebecca Barnes, Grace Barnes, and Alice Barnes.
Summary: Rebecca, Grace, and little Alice live their lives in the shadow of legends. That doesn't stop them from living, and from making their lives their own.

Rebecca Helen Barnes is born a year and a month after her brother, and she spends most of her childhood making sure she doesn’t come in second in anything else. She calls him Bucky, liking how close it sounds to Becca, and he preens. At eleven, a little blond boy stands up to a bully for her; when Bucky comes barreling in to save them both, she learns his name is Steve.

Two years later, she tells Bucky that she’s going to marry Steve one day. Then he’ll properly be part of the family.

At twenty-four, she sees Bucky off to basic next to Steve. That day she realizes: Steve already is family. One month later, she marries Richard Proctor before he ships out for war. Steve should have been at the wedding, but she finds out later he finally managed to get himself shipped out, too.

At twenty-seven, she places photos of Steve and Bucky on her mantelpiece with something raw and aching inside her chest. Little Jimmy tugs on her dress, points one pudgy hand, and asks, “Mama, who’s that?” She holds him up so he can see and tells him, “These are your uncles, Bucky and Steve.”

--

Grace Marie Barnes is just barely twenty when she joins the war effort at the start of ‘43. Bucky and Steve are already overseas, Becca’s engaged, and little Alice cares more about rationing and schoolyard popularity than the war.

The Nurse Corps rejects her, but the new-formed WAACs care more for her brains than her untamable hair or too big features. A year and a half later, she lands in Normandy. She meets Maria and Elizabeth when they’re assigned to share a tent. She kisses Maria for the first time the same day that Elizabeth bleeds out from a bullet wound in front of them.

In September she arrives in Paris, asleep in the back of a truck with Maria. Some of the women are excited for their first glimpse of this famous city, but Grace has hardly slept in two days. Paris will still be there when she wakes. It's still there, too, when she gets the news of Bucky’s death, mocking her with its permanence while her loved ones die. When Steve’s death follows closely after Bucky’s, she is hardly surprised.

She holds Maria closer; it feels like a miracle when Maria is still there at the end.

--

Alice Aliza Barnes arrives unexpectedly two years after the crash of ’29. She almost doesn’t make it through her first few years, but Bucky calls her a fighter and says he knew she would. Her big brother and his best friend are already legends to her, years before she collects comics about them alongside her classmates and boasts to them that Captain America is basically her family.

When her mother gets the letter about Bucky, she cries alone in her room. Steve’s death is broadcast on the radio well before a letter comes, and she cries with her friends for Captain America.

She marries twice; both marriages end when she is caught in affairs. Becca takes her in both times, till she gets back on her feet. A week after she shows up on Becca’s doorstep for the second time, she announces she’s going to travel Europe this time instead of finding another man. She sends regular postcards to Becca, but stays away for years.

Alice is eighty-five when she finds a dirty stranger crying at Becca’s grave. After all the things she’s seen, it is strangely easy to accept when she learns that her brother has finally come home.