Chapter Text
“Of course you’ll read it,” Steve gasps.
The thick envelope, weighing more or less the same as a life, lies perkily on the table in-between cups of coffee, tiny glasses of water and plates with the remnants of the most decadent dessert any of the trio have ever tasted.
“If this is what they do with their lost bread, I don’t even want to know about the fancy desserts,” Bucky had remarked. He now fidgets in his too-small chair next to Steve, apparently of the same mind, but reluctant to voice his thoughts lest it seem as if they’re ganging up on her.
Dinka appreciates the restraint. It’s these small non-moments that remind her how much she’ll miss Bucky - as much as you can miss another person without breaking. With Steve, it’s different, and not only because they haven’t spent the last two years slumming it across Europe, talking to sketchy characters and bright-eyed idealists who could (almost) be their children. Though they’ve talked about the day in the tunnel, though she is perfectly clear about his reasons for doing what he did, it isn’t something she can simply forget.
The fact that he did it so Bucky wouldn’t have to blunted one part of her resentment; the fact that he probably saved her life another. Talking to her father about Steve’s stay on the island had almost gotten her to like him - after all, it was comforting to know the old man hadn’t been completely alone in the end. That he’d had someone to teach, someone to complain to - two of his favorite practices. In a way, they resembled any ordinary family she knew - with pain, regrets, grudges, but also respect, understanding, and love between them.
She puts up her strongest front now, because leaving Europe is not what Bucky wants to do. It’s yet another lesson she learned from Frane: how to overcome the fear of losing the people you love to allow them to live on their own terms. Bucky deserves to be happy, and Dinka will never stand in the way of that, however lonely her future prospects appear at the moment. She will make her own decisions, Bucky will make his, and they will both be happier for it, in the long run.
“If you aren’t ready.. We can keep it, until you’re back from Cuba?” Bucky suggests a compromise.
“Never mind,” she shrugs, waving them away with the controversial letter in question. “You will miss your light, Stipe.”
Steve’s face is a picture of melancholy when he hears the name Frane used to call him. This is why Bucky had always been a better fit for her, for their missions: this man here - he couldn’t hide what he’s thinking if his life depended on it. She chuckles, remembering the poor showing of Steve-the-socialist from when they first met.
“Even if you don’t read it,” Steve adds, raining cash and coins onto the table, “I’m certain Bonina has, so she can tell you all about it. Might as well find out for yourself.”
“I will not miss my people’s concept of privacy,” Dinka grumbles.
Bucky looks like he’s about to say something, but Steve pushes him along towards their hotel across the street, mumbling about forgotten sketchpads and blunt pencils.
“Don’t forget - dinner at the Grand Colbert, nine sharp, wear your Sunday best!” Bucky calls from across the small square.
Dinka wants to die from the double embarrassment of being yelled at across a bistro, and a bourgeois affair such as a dinner at the Grand Colbert, so she tries her best to act inconspicuously, as if the call wasn’t directed at her.
It doesn’t bother the two, who continue chattering and punching each other’s elbows all the way down to the hotel. They look so young. Though she knows they’re supposed to be the same age - there’s something about the way they’ve lived their lives, their deaths, that has preserved a wonder Dinka can barely recall.
“This is what a year on the island will do to you,” she’d deadpanned to Bucky just the other day, as Steve excitedly inspected what, to her, looked like a very old chair.
She knows it isn't only that. Neither had allowed himself to truly live until now: there was Steve’s illness before he became Captain America, that Bucky had confided in her about; there was poverty before and during and after, and then the war, and then the deaths, the guilt, the coming to terms. Always, there was the internalized notion of being wrong somehow, being other, having to hide.
Even after everything they'd gone through, Bucky had been reluctant to talk to her about the nature of his relationship with Steve. That was, until she’d pulled him aside one night and said, as bluntly as she could (which, he later informed her, was very blunt indeed), that she’d made the mistake of not taking love seriously once. It was the one regret she’d carry until the end of her days, so perhaps - give her the benefit of a doubt? The euphemisms stopped at that point, at least between them, but it didn’t take a genius to see the man was still far from comfortable talking about it.
That is, until she’d jokingly called this their honeymoon, and remarked how much she despised being a third wheel. It had made Bucky laugh, but he didn’t protest the term.
“I hope it never ends,” he’d confessed, with a goofy smile that was entirely inappropriate for a man of his reputation, but made her almost equally happy.
She lights up another smoke now, sneaking peeks at their window through the blossoming chestnut trees, where Bucky is reclining while Steve gathers his supplies. After what seems like an eternity, Steve comes out and stands beside him.
It’s only a sliver of a moment in which their hands touch on the railing - whispering something to each other. Dinka is about to turn away, it feels too private to witness, but they notice her and wave like two maniacs, making all sorts of poses at the window before she gives up all hope of stealth and waves back.
When the shutters finally close on the impromptu cabaret, her thoughts drift back to the letter on the table. She traces the uneven edges of the envelope - it has clearly been opened and stuck back together, lending credence to Steve’s suspicion that Bonina has read its contents.
If only for this reason, she should re-open it and see whether it contains any questionable details of the botched operation in Budapest. The past sweeps over her like a wave up on the beaches leading to the open sea, she is swallowed in its sounds, in the darkness of the tunnel, the disgusting scent of damp earth, motor oil and blood in the underground.
An eerie voice sings in her ear - us two brothers, both waging war…
The war is over, she whispers to the ghost calling from the envelope, from across the years.
She doesn’t see the woman approaching, until she coughs significantly to announce her presence. At first, Dinka thinks it’s the waitress asking (impolitely) whether she requires anything else, a sure cue that she has overstayed her welcome. However, it takes only a glance to realize this person is something else entirely. Though she tries to put on an air of whimsy, shrugging apologetically as she says bonjour with her thick English accent, she exudes a confidence that cannot easily be hidden.
“I was wondering if I might bother you for a cigarette,” she adds in English.
Welcoming a break from her thoughts about Ivan, Dinka nods towards the chair Steve was sitting in and opens the silver case with an engraved fish that she had once bought as a birthday present for the Old Captain. The woman sighs in relief and sits, smiling gratefully as Dinka produces a box of matches. Her nails are neatly manicured, her fingers soft if lined - it’s obvious she comes from money, but those hands have also seen labor in their day, they are not the fragile twigs of high-society ladies that Dinka is used to.
“Thank you,” the woman nods, brushing a couple of errant strands of her thick blond hair away. It’s the kind of hair that looks almost unbelievable on any woman, especially one that is close to Dinka’s age, which her new acquaintance seems to be.
Before she can offer the compliment, the woman flicks the cigarette in the direction of the envelope.
“Love letter?”
“Maybe. I have not read it yet. I am not sure I will.”
She doesn’t know why she opts for honesty instead of a believable lie. She could say anything - it's not like a random woman in a bistro will call her out on a bluff. Perhaps she is too anxious, too weary of hiding and lying in her day-to-day to muster it now, Dinka wonders, but no - it’s something about the person sitting opposite her that inspires immediate trust. How odd.
“I’m sorry," the trustworthy stranger says. "Difficult history?”
“One way of describing it. First love. Well.. second.”
“Still close to the top,” the woman muses. “Why not read it?”
“Sometimes I think it is more important for men to do the writing - to have their say. It will not change anything now, whether I read it or not.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Is it not your people that have the saying - curiosity killed the cat?”
“We also say that the cat has nine lives,” she counters with a challenge.
“Nine? Our cats only have seven!”
“Where are your cats from, that they should be so cruelly shortchanged?”
“Yugoslavia.”
“Ah, lucky lady,” the woman shakes her head as if remembering some beautiful memory one cannot put to words. “The coast! Marvelous.”
“That’s where I spent most of my life,” Dinka shares, as if this will somehow make her seem marvelous, too. Why she cares is anyone’s guess.
They talk about the unknown wonders of the Adriatic, Dinka sharing a few pointers for hypothetical future holidays, before talk switches to travel more generally, and politics, and before long, most of the cigarettes have disappeared from the silver case. Dinka fishes another pack of Gauloises from her handbag, reluctant to let her companion leave.
“I truly didn’t intend to smoke all your cigarettes, I promise,” the companion in question says. “I had a terrible craving, which I daresay has been satisfied for a decade now, at least. And I heard you speak English to your friends before, so I dared to come over and ask.”
“Americans,” Dinka smirks, as if that’s all there is to say about them.
“They seem like a cheerful pair,” the woman states, but it sounds more like a question.
“Americans,” Dinka repeats.
“Yes, I know the type, from back in the war. Married one, even,” she adds with a shocked expression, as if this is somehow surprising to her, too.
“You seem smarter than that,” Dinka teases.
“He’s very special. Like your friends, I’d bet.”
“They are.. Something else.”
“Mhm,” the woman nods and inhales a surprising amount of nicotine, given how much they’ve already smoked. “But, they are happy?”
“They are,” Dinka answers casually, feeling as if she's repeating herself, but going with the flow of the conversation.
The woman doesn’t push the topic, and they both stare at the chestnut blooms above, two strangers again.
“You know, I like letters,” the woman says after a while, collecting her belongings and preparing to leave. “Voices that echo from the past, voices cast into the future. It’s the only way we can time travel.. for now, at least. I think you should read it. And then chuck it into the Seine, give it a bit of the French dramatic flair,” she winks with a grin.
“I am not sure I am ready for it to be over,” Dinka frowns, realizing she’s paraphrasing what Ivan had said to her; the words that haunted her through a decade of what if-s, inexplicable longing… and what for?
She’d thought it was the war, but really, it had been him all along. Who she was, when they were together. Bucky had brought that part of her out once more, helped her see herself as Ivan had seen her - as she’d wanted to be.
This letter is the only thing left in the story of her and Ivan, and as long as it remains unread, he can be a part of her present. As long as there is unfinished business between them, something to cling to, he will be alive; have agency in the world, even if that world is merely her own.
Her companion is unexpectedly considerate - she lets her drift away and then back without saying a word. When she notices Dinka has returned to the present, she steals another cigarette and asks -
“Is it the ending you’re afraid of? Or the beginning?”
“Can it be both? They are often the same.”
Dinka snorts in a very unladylike manner at her faux-deep thought, which elicits a giggle from the woman.
“There’s a poet, you could call him my favorite, I suppose, if we were twelve and thought love can fit into neat hierarchies like that..” Her gaze becomes distant, as if she’s wondering whether to expand on the thought, but decides not to. “I digress. You reminded me of something he wrote just now, a line I return to often. ‘The end is where we start from.’ I've always thought that is a lovely way of seeing love. Life. Everything, really?”
The line rings vaguely familiar, but Dinka can’t put her finger on whether someone had already mentioned it to her (who?) or whether it’s only a reflection of a truth she has known for a long time which makes it appear so.
“Thank you again for the cigarettes, but also - the company. It’s been an unexpected pleasure.”
“Thank you for the advice, madame...?” Dinka smiles, shaking the woman’s hand with a quizzical brow. They haven’t even been introduced.
“Meg,” the woman says at once. It has the air of a stage play about it, the way she offers it for inspection, and not in the casual way one usually pronounces their own name.
“Enchantée. Dina.”
“Dina,” Meg repeats with a mysterious smile, as if she's in on the game. “Have a safe trip, Dina, be it to the future or the past,” she references the letter still sitting on the table, now covered in remnants of ash.
“Oh, I doubt it will be safe. But, I am hoping it will be worth it,” Dinka replies, thinking instead of her flight to Cuba.
“How right you are,” Meg lets go of her hand and points toward Pont Neuf. “Off I go, back home. I daresay, this alone - meeting you- would have made my visit to Paris worthwhile.”
Dinka isn’t sure what to say, so she opts for saying nothing at all.
She watches Meg walk away from the bistro, treading steadily on her thick wooden heels, her long hair swaying in the early summer breeze.
Time travel, what a notion. Dinka smirks as she wedges her fingernail in the small space left open by Bonina’s shoddy attempt at resealing the envelope. When the young waitress finally arrives to (impolitely) ask whether there’s anything else she needs, she orders a glass of red wine.
“You wouldn’t believe my life if I told you about it, Panther.”
As if he’s heard her, from across space and time, the first line she reads hearkens back to her own code-name.
My dearest Kitty…
Words are one of the few available means for humans to achieve immortality. At least for a while, unless one is a Paul or a Peter, a Shakespeare or a Dante (in short, if one is not a woman), one can hope their words will at least make an impression on another’s life. Names are also words, and as long as they remain engraved on the hearts of those left behind, well - it isn't much, but it is a moratorium on death that even The Reaper has to heed.
Steve had planted a tree in the garden he has with Bucky, in Budapest, when Frane died. Dinka had thought it was a bit eccentric at the time, but now, she wishes she had better, more fertile ground than her mind, to commemorate Ivan. With no ideas, she carries the letter for the rest of the afternoon, burning a hole in her handbag, before she lets it go beneath Pont Marie, recalling Meg’s words.
A dramatic flair. Ivan would like that.
Guides have begun telling tourists they should make a wish while passing under the bridge, that they would see it come true by the end of the year. Dinka does not wish for anything: there can be no Godspeeds or safe-travels, no see-you-laters for the souls of communists; only a soldier’s salute to say - I have known you. You were known. It’s fitting, in the end, for the people they were – for how they lived their lives, their brief affair that had gotten them both to this point. Together in Paris.
Soon, she will be heading upstream towards the Louvre, to a small restaurant where she will say - not adieu - but au revoir, to her friends. When they ask if she’s read the letter, she will not reply with a yes or a no, merely sigh and say, 'I have time-traveled today and I am very tired, so ask me tomorrow'. Tomorrow might come next year, or the year after, or never - they will understand. There are things we need to keep to ourselves, for awhile.
The truth is, she hadn’t needed to read the letter at all. As soon as her eyes had come upon the greeting, she realized there was nothing she would learn from it she didn’t already know. It was good that she read it, if only to have confirmation of the thing you understand - after the fact - never needed confirming at all.
After all, they were children raised in very different circumstances, with ideals that somehow still aligned. Thrust into the middle of a very bad situation, having chosen to get involved, was it any surprise that they’d loved each other? That neither of them had forgotten? In another country, they could’ve been super-soldiers, had a second chance not as easily wasted. So much of what determines our destiny depends on where we are born. The times we live through. Who we love. Who loves us in return.
The Seine hurriedly takes the letter away, as if fearing Dinka will change her mind and jump in to reclaim it. Bucky had told her a story once, twice, more times than he would admit to - about Steve’s love of rivers. What they mean, what they have the potential to expose, to carry: everyone down to their end, or beginning, like Meg’s poet would say.
The metaphor is lost on her, a daughter of the sea. Water is water, but the sea - now, that’s different. It doesn’t trick you with promises of travel, of change, of arriving at a safe harbor. It is what it is, a vast and intractable entity, that is both the point of departure and destination.
After Frane’s funeral, she’d gone to the beach below the villa and dove deep to whisper a final goodbye. To him, to her mother. To Tonči.
Nobody answered.
The buoys bobbed up and down in the breeze, their links rattling against each other to keep them in place. The ropes securing the boats to the pier caressed the surface. They made for a pleasing melody underwater, but it was too much like the sound of being chained. The illusion her mother had painted for her had finally served its purpose.
Dinka sprang upwards to inhale, and there - on the outside - she finally let herself hear the real world beckon, in its excruciating chaos and beauty. Ship horns, children’s laughter, cars, friends chattering, crickets, the wind in the conifer needles, waves crashing against rock. The loudest of these was her own breath, signaling, in a sure and steady rhythm: this is what it means to be alive.