[Vignette — Twenty One Pilots]

It should’ve been just another argument. You always fought like it was the end of the world, voices low, tension knotted between your words. Maybe that’s what made it hurt. That it felt real. Like something final. Bucky had said something cruel, too fast. You’d said something that hit back harder.

And then the explosion hit two blocks over. Now he’s on his knees in an alley slick with smoke and broken glass, trying to remember if the last thing you said was “screw you” or “fuck you.” Either way, it hadn’t sounded like goodbye. But this looked like one.

Your body’s twisted awkwardly on the ground, half-buried under debris. Blood seeps from a gash along your temple. You haven’t moved since the blast.

“No, no, no,” he mutters, half to himself, half to whatever god might still be listening. “This isn’t happening.”

He presses fingers to your throat. Waits. Fails to feel anything. Does it again. There it is. Faint. Barely there.

“Okay,” he breathes, voice cracking open. “Okay…”

His arm shakes as he pulls rubble off you, careful like he’s dismantling a bomb. There’s soot streaked across your face. You look… gone. But you’re not. Bucky’s jaw clenches hard enough to ache. “You idiot,” he mutters, brushing your hair back. “Why’d you run in like that?”

No answer, of course. Just shallow breaths and unconscious silence.

A siren cries in the distance. Help’s coming. But he stays close, hand hovering at your cheek like if he keeps you tethered, you won’t slip further away.

“Hey,” he says. “Stay with me. I’m not done being mad at you.”

That’s when your fingers twitch. Bucky stares. A beat. Two. Then your eyes crack open, unfocused but alive. He exhales like it’s the first breath he’s taken since finding you.

He cradles your head in his hand like something precious. Because you are. And he realizes it now, too late to take back the argument, but maybe not too late to say what actually matters.

“You scared me,” he whispers.

And for the first time since the smoke settled, silence doesn’t feel so empty. Because you’re alive.