Hiraeth

by ScratchTheMaven

Summary:

The life of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, as told through moments in time.

Notes:

So, this is something I've been working on for a while (probably way too long for what it is). Basically, I wanted to write a story combining 616 comic canon and the MCU into one universe (this story also includes the MCU canon Captain America: Super-Soldier video game), while also telling the story of a character's life through snippets of memories and dialogue. Thus, this fic was born. For anyone who's curious, I'll post a timeline of events at the end, which I'll update as the story progresses. I hope I succeeded in what I set out to do, and I hope someone out there enjoys this.

- dialogue with {brackets} around it is a foreign language

Chapter 1: Of Things Unsaid

 

 

 

 

Hiraeth: (n: Welsh) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places and people of your past

The first time Steve hears his father shout at his mother, he’s six years old.

It was November, and the drafty building that was their home had let sickness in early that year, so he laid in his cot of a bed and just listened – not that he had to strain his ears in order to do so.  It was the same thing he’d hear every other night for years to come.  His father would stumble in from the bar down the street, wobbly-walking and whiskey-stenched, from a night of trying to drown memories of gunfire and soldiers.  His mother would express concern.  His father would take the defensive (“What right do you have to ask me where I’ve been?”).  Finances and employment would be brought up (“You can’t show up to work drunk and expect to hold down a job.  We’re poor enough as it is, Joseph, so please-– ), and inevitably him (–-for his sake and mine, stop this.”). The ranting and raving always lasted long into the night, leaving both his parents sleepless, tears and apologies abound.

The day’s were different.  At least, the sober days were.  Sober, his father was a different man.  Stern, a bit intimidating, but kinder (in his own way), willing to tell a story or two of coming to America, of Ireland, of his parents, sometimes of the war.  Rarely of the war.

He didn’t shout when he was sober, at least.

A lot of his childhood was filled with ‘at least’s.

‘At least’s and ‘despite’s.

Despite the anger and despair he brought home with him on those nights, despite the fact that his dependency was driving them further and further into poverty, despite the fact that no matter how many times a small blond haired child screamed for his father to stop, it was no relief when Joseph Rogers died five years later on a too-hot August day.  His mother never did say what had killed the man, but Steve didn’t need to hear the words to know it had been the alcohol.

“Stubborn,” his mother had said after the funeral, her voice thick with grief as she blotted at her eyes with a handkerchief (despite her tears, Sarah Rogers held her head high, refusing the pitying looks of passersby), “for all the wrong reasons.”

 

****

 

Two months later the stock market crashed.  His mother started working two jobs and he picked up one as a paperboy to help keep food on the table. Even then, there were too many nights that they went hungry.  Still, his mother managed to keep a smile on her face whenever he was around, though he could see the strain that their situation was putting her through, could see it in her eyes. 

He’d draw her pictures just to make sure her smile was genuine.

 

****

 

His mother rushed over to him when he walked through the door, hands cradling his head and eyes wide as she took in the sight of blood running down his face from where he’d been struck with a brick.

“Heard yer ol’ man finally up an’ drank himself to death.  Introduce me to yer Ma.  I’ll keep ‘er warm fer ya…be helpin’ you too, shrimpo – I’d be yer new Pa!  I’d drink all night, bum around wit’ other dames – you know, just like yer real Pa.")

Somehow Hutch’s words hurt more than the brick he’d thrown.

Of course, when Steve mentioned what they’d said to his mother and his grandfather, who was staying with them in order to help them, he’d let Grandpa Ian soothe his mind with his words.

“He was a good man.  But he lost hope.  A man who loses that…he loses everythin’.”

Though, of course, as he grew older he realized that they were just that: words - words to ease his troubled mind.  He knew now that his father had done those things – perhaps he’d always known but hadn’t wanted to admit it (what child would?).  While his grandfather’s reassurance had held false comfort, it held a true warning.

Never lose hope.

When he was younger, it had sounded so simple.

 

****

 

Somewhere between Black Tuesday and a snowy day in January, Steve got pelted in the head with a rock disguised as a snowball.  It wasn’t anything new, he’d been mugged before on his way home from his paper route, money stashed in his pocket.  Desperation had often been a recurring theme for him those days, and he learned the hard way that desperate times really do lead people to take desperate measures.  Children weren’t excluded from that.  There were no children then.  Not really, at least.

The kids, maybe a year or so older than him, took their methods one step further that day by dangling him over the concrete ledge that dropped into the icy river below.

“Jus’ give us the cash, pipsqueak, an’ we’ll pull ya back up,” said the one holding him by the arms.

“Maybe,” one of the others laughed.

He didn’t have a chance to respond before he heard an unknown voice shout, “Hey!”, a thud, and an “Ow, fuck!” from one of the other boys.  He barely had time to react as the one holding his arms let him go, leaving him to cling onto the ledge, small arms shaking with the effort.  He didn’t have to wait long.

“Grab my hand…I gotcha’."

Shivering from the cold and nerves, Steve looked up at his rescuer, a boy with wind-tousled dark hair, a smudge of soot or dirt on his right cheek, and a wooden bat in his hand, resting against his shoulder.

“You alright?” the boy asked.  “Thought for sure they were gonna' to drown you.”

“You weren’t the only one…but yeah…yeah, I’m alright,” he said tentatively, not entirely sure if his words were true. Was he alright?  He glanced around.  “Where’d you come from?”

“Down there,” he said, gesturing with a nod of his head.  “Orphanage.  Got bored, came here to hit some rocks into the river.  Say…what’s your name?”

“Steve."

“Wanna’ have a go?” the boy asked, holding the bat out to him with a smile that was kind but mischievous.

“Oh, thanks, but no,” Steve said, brushing snow and dirt off his jacket.  “I’m likely to toss myself into the river just by swinging it.”

The other boy’s laughter was cut off by a screeching in the distance.

“James!  James, where’ve you gone off to now?”

Steve looked at him.  “That your name?” he asked, eyes flicking back to the direction of what could only be the matron of the orphanage’s voice.

The boy grinned. “Yeah. But you can call me Bucky.”

 

****

 

Steve had always been somewhat of a quiet person by nature.  He preferred to read books and draw rather than run about outside (admittedly reinforced by his laundry list of ailments).  Bucky was nearly his complete opposite.  Steve was introverted, shy. Bucky was outgoing, mischievous, and scrappy - something Bucky insisted Steve was, too, because-- "What kinda' idiot risks standin' up to someone twice their weight and height?"  Their friendship fell into place like a long lost piece to some puzzle, and through the years – through days after school spent either at his mother’s house or the orphanage, through being dragged out of the house for social events whether they be baseball games or “I told this girl about you, she wants to meet you” match-ups, through Mrs. Rogers becoming mom – friendship evolved into brotherhood.  They had found a family in each other, and things were good for a while.

Then winter came.

Ever since his father died, it seemed his mother fell ill more often.  Colds that lasted a month or so, migraines that kept her bed-ridden in a darkened room for days (“I’m supposed to be the one that’s always sick, Ma, you know that,” he would say, trying to get a smile from her no matter how feeble it was).  Steve thought it was the stress of their situation taking its toll.

It was mid-January, 1936 when she got sick again.  Tuberculosis, the doctors said.

It was late January when she died.

He’d been alone in the house with her when it happened, talking to her and drawing for her at her bedside while he listened to her mumble about carrots and memory in a manner that was unnerving to him. 

“Carrots are good for the memory.  I want you to pay attention and learn.  You keep studying and drawing like you do.  And you’ll be someone.”

“Why would I want to remember this?” he asked, voice barely a whisper.  “I’d just as soon forget it.”

He’d usually chalk it up to the high fever she had, but there was something in her tone of voice that was different.  More serious.  Solemn. 

“When you get better I’m going to take you out to the country.  You’d like that.”

He didn’t like talking about the ‘what if’s and ‘when’s about death and dying, so he tried to keep her distracted, starting speaking in terms of “when you get better…” as if doing so would ensure she did. 

“You got no quit in you.  Just promise your mama…you’ll use your head, too.  Fine line between fearless and foolhardy.  Took your father from us too soon.”

He bit his lip.  “I promise.  I’ll be careful.”

He fought to keep his voice level and even, fought to prevent the shakiness that came with the feeling of grief gripping at his throat because he knew.  He didn’t want to know, but he knew.  This was going to be the last conversation they had.

“I want you to remember.  Always be proud of who you are and where you come from.  Never forget the people who helped you get to where you’re going.  Never forget.”

And he hadn’t.

 

****

 

It seemed both wrong and fitting to have a funeral on Groundhog’s Day, a day when creatures emerging from the ground symbolized spring and new life while those that remained hidden beneath the soil represented the stagnancy of the season.

Winter was death.

It was a small funeral, just Bucky and him, but at least he didn’t have to attend it alone.  Small funeral, small comfort, but, like all of his life, he had no other option but to take what he could get.

 

****

 

Steve stayed with Bucky at the orphanage after that.  It was different from what he was used to (not that Steve expected it to feel like a normal transition), his days spent with either too much free time or far too little.  He heeded Bucky’s advice the best he could (“Don’t backtalk the matron, she carries that cane for a reason”…“Make sure to do the chores exactly as they tell you.  If you don’t, they assume you’re being rebellious and they’ll cheat you out of your dinner for the night”), and aside from the occasional scuffle with some of the older children, his time at the orphanage went smoothly.  And while Steve missed his old home, he didn’t think that he could stay there anymore even if he had the means to do so.  Not with his mother gone.  Not with it feeling so barren and lifeless.

Come mid-July of the following year, Bucky was mysteriously scarce for an entire week.  While a week wasn’t a very long time, Steve found himself almost incapable of functioning properly, unsure of what to do or how to act, all the while asking himself where the hell Bucky could be.  The answer to that came the following Saturday, when he was woken up by gleaming brown eyes and an eager grin.

“Get up,” Bucky said, voice brimming with hushed enthusiasm.  “Pack your things.  We’re leaving.”

“Whu’?” Steve asked, trying to blink away his sleep-blurred vision.  “Leaving?  Where –?  Buck, it’s four in the mornin’.”

“I know what time it is, Steve.  C’mon,” he said, giving his arm a light tug.  His brain screamed go back to sleep but Steve knew better; Bucky would just keep nagging him if he didn’t at least sit up.

Steve yawned and cleared his throat.  “Where are we going?” he asked, reaching for a shirt.

“I found us a place,” said Bucky.

“Found us a –?" Steve stuttered, deadpan.  “Neither of us are of age, how the hell do you expect us to –?”

“Don’t worry,” Bucky assured him, waving a dismissive hand.  “I know a guy.”

“What do you mean ‘you know a guy’?”

“I know a guy,” Bucky repeated, shrugging.  “You done with the interrogation?  Because I’d like to leave.  Wouldn’t you?”

He would. “…But how are we going to suppo—?”

“You worry too much,” Bucky interrupted.  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. And hey,” Bucky had said with a pat on the back that almost sent Steve stumbling forward, “if cash runs low, I’ll just pull a Dillinger and we’ll be set.”

“That’s not funny, Bucky,” Steve said, tone disapproving.

“It’s only not funny because the guy got shot in the end,” he mumbled with a shrug.

 

****

 

The apartment was small, but it was enough.  In fact, Steve would say it was perfect if he wasn’t so wary of using the word.  Things weren’t easy – they’d never been easy – but they felt okay, stable.  As stable as things could feel in their situation.  They both worked, Steve selling artwork on the side of his paper route to bring in extra money.  Now he wonders with a trace of a smile just how many people eventually threw away those cheap sketches, how many people wish they hadn’t now that the world knew Captain America used to be skinny, sickly Steve Rogers, a literal starving artist in Brooklyn many years ago. 

He wonders if anyone's around to be aware of it at all.

 

****

 

His eighteenth birthday party was one he wouldn’t forget, but only because Bucky had been sober enough to tell him the details the day afterwards.  Steve – dwelling too much on the fact that his mother wasn’t there for that day – had gotten so drunk that Bucky had had to keep him out of reach of the water he’d been using to clean his paintbrushes, as he’d been trying to drink it, thinking it was alcohol (“It’s jus’ colored beer, Buck, stop worryin’”).  He wouldn’t forget it, not because it was fun, but because it served as a reminder: he was under no circumstances going to drink that much ever again.

He was eighteen.

He didn’t know that he’d break that promise years later with no Bucky around to take the bottle away from him.

 

****

 

Bucky flipped through the newspaper and scoffed.  “Can you believe people actually think the fire last night was caused by a man who could fly?”

“A man on fire who could fly,” Steve corrected.

“Whatever, you know what I meant,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes as he crumbled the newspaper into a ball and tossed it at Steve, who deflected it with his sketchbook.

“Makes for a good story, you’ve gotta’ admit,” Steve mumbled with a shrug.

“I’d say,” Bucky laughed.  “People’ll believe anything anymore.”

 

****

 

Art school was Bucky’s idea.  Correction: art school was Steve’s idea, a mere contemplation that – once spoken aloud to Bucky – became a priority.  As much as he protested and argued that he didn’t need to go college to keep doing art, and definitely didn’t want Bucky to go through the trouble of pitching in money for it, it was futile.

“No, Buck, that’s money you need.  I feel bad enough as it is just—”

“Stop talking,” Bucky interrupted, waving a hand and giving him an annoyed look.  “It’s not a big deal.  You don’t – and won’t – owe me anything….except that you have to let me sit in on some of the drawing classes.  And I’m not talking about the still-life-plants kind of drawing classes so don’t even think about getting clever with me.”

Steve was stubborn, and normally he would put his foot down and refuse to budge, but this had been something he’d wanted for a long time, and since Bucky now knew that, it was useless trying to dissuade him.

And in the months that followed, Steve couldn’t say that he regretted giving up that particular argument.  His time in art school marked some of the brighter days he had back then.  The stuffy yet comforting aroma of canvases being marked with acrylics, charcoal that seemed to permanently fill the gaps between fingerprints (and permanently mark the sketch pad with an ill-placed hand), the memory of a shell-shocked Bucky with a red-painted smear of a handprint across his face after one of girls didn’t take too kindly to something he’d said, discussions in studio rooms about artists and politicians and the wealthy that lasted long into the night. The little things.  It was the little things, tiny pinpricks of light during rough times, that made those days seem less dark.

Standing out from the rest of his new acquaintances was Alice Chandler.  Alice (whose parents, members of the wealthier portion of society, had named her after the novel by Lewis Carrol - Alice called him Lutwidge) was a self-described ‘belated flapper’, mostly because she wished she’d been old enough to properly experience the social movement herself.  She kept her hair short because ‘it wasn’t practical for a painter’ despite the fact that paint always got in her hair anyway (the one time her hair had been long, she kept it pulled back with various men’s ties she managed to steal).  Alice was an avid reader who shared Steve’s fondness for Of Mice and Men, The Yearling, and The Great Gatsby, and kept The Hobbit by her bedside no matter what other novel she was reading.  She would talk in earnest about films, her favorites being Hell Below, Sporting Blood, and Shanghai Lily, her tastes even impressing Bucky when she mentioned her liking for Hughes and Hawks’ Scarface.  And Florence, her closest friend, swore that Alice had once punched Howard Stark in the face at some old money gala her parents had forced her to attend.

Alice was the most outspoken and quirky person Steve knew back then, and he adored her for it.

They became so close that Bucky once asked why the two of them weren’t at least dating.  Steve had stared at him with an almost dumbfounded expression; he’d have thought the way Alice talked more about Madge Evans and Marlene Dietrich rather than Clark Gable and Cary Grant would explain why, but he’d mumbled an “I’m not sure” and shrugged.  He wasn't going to break the vow of silence he'd been sworn to, weeks before, with Alice confessing her feelings for Florence after one too many stolen bottles of her parents' wine, crying into his shoulder about how they would disown her (or worse) if they ever found out. 

So Steve kept his promise, his silence.  He wouldn’t even think of doing otherwise.  He respected her too much.

 

****

 

Alice coughed, a puff of smoke rolling from her lips, which she tried to swat away with her hand.  “I wonder what music will be like years from now,” she said almost absentmindedly, staring blankly at the record playing Sophie Tucker’s The Lady Is A Tramp.

“Probably absolute shit to listen to,” Bucky said with a scoff.

“I like your optimism,” Steve chimed in dryly.

“Why, thank you,” he grinned.

“Uh huh,” Steve nodded, coughing a little.

“You mind opening the window and smoking that?” Bucky asked, turning to Alice and scowling slightly.  “You’re gonna’ give Steve an asthma attack.”

“She’s not g—” Steve began to protest, shooting Bucky a look.

“Your cave, your window, tough guy,” Alice shrugged with a smile before gesturing to the window.  “Why don’t you do the honors?”

“Sure thing,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes (a small smile betraying his amusement) and walking over to open the window.  He nodded for her to move over by it.  “’Sides, haven’t you seen Reefer Madness?” he asked with a laugh.  “It’d be tragic if you started to suffer from ‘loose morals’.”

“Oh, please, don’t be a hypocrite, Barnes,” Alice laughed.  “I’d hate to see how loose your morals are.”

“You really would,” Steve said, keeping a straight face.  “I’m worried that one day I’m not going to be able to count with both hands how many times I’ve walked in on him with some—”

“It’s not my fault that you get out of class early some days,” Bucky interrupted, giving Steve an incredulous look.  “And it hasn’t been that many times.”

“I did say ‘one day’, didn’t I?” Steve asked.  “You’ve still got a hand left before I can’t keep count.”

 

****

 

The years passed rife with memories (Alice and Bucky mocking the public’s reaction to War of the Worlds, taking shelter from a sudden September hurricane – Bucky rolling his eyes at one man claiming a humanoid sea creature caused the storm, Alice and Florence slow dancing one late night in the art studio to Strange Fruit, Alice teaching Bucky how to blow cigarette smoke rings, Arnie and Florence toasting the re-election of FDR over a bottle of champagne Bucky claimed to have bought).  Memories and moments in time that made Steve realize that for once, since his mother’s death, he was happy.

Happiness isn’t self-sustaining.

When Alice fell ill, Steve didn’t know what to do with himself.  Aside from Bucky, she was the closest friend he had.  So he did the only thing he could think of doing, and kept her company, much to Bucky's tight-lipped and silent dismay, infested by worry. He wasn’t (and still isn’t) sure if he stayed by Alice’s side out of recklessness or because he felt obligated to do so, both as her friend and because of the reminiscence her situation had with his mother’s death.  Maybe it was both.  Either way, Alice didn’t last the week.  Steve watched with furrowed brow and burning nose as Florence sobbed over her open casket, Mr. and Mrs. Chandler – whose hand was on her shoulder comfortingly – at her side, none the wiser that Florence wasn’t just mourning the loss of a friend.

When he left the funeral, he was relieved – and wary – to see Bucky waiting for him outside.  He didn’t say anything, just gave Steve an understanding nod and walked home with him, where they stayed up until dawn talking about Alice’s movie impressions and how hilarious it would have been to actually see her punch Howard Stark in the face.

 

****

 

Ten months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America went to war.

 

****

 

Neither he nor Bucky ever planned on going to war. They each had their different reasons for not wanting to go – unspoken or not.  Bucky never had any interest in being a soldier.  He was content to stay in New York and live his life.

“More women here,” he’d explained with a shrug when Steve asked him if he was going to enlist.  “Besides…I don’t think I quite measure up to the military’s behavioral standards.  Not like my dad did, at least....  So really, it’s neither here nor there. I’m not interested.”

Steve, on the other hand, wanted to enlist as soon as he heard about what happened, much to Bucky’s (very vocal) dismay.

“Steve, you’re an art student.  An artist.  I’m not trying to discourage you—” (yes, he was) “—but unless you’re gonna’ go over there and paint every Nazi flag over with an American one, I don’t see how you have a place in this war.”

His words stung (they usually did when he was trying to adamantly discourage Steve from doing something he saw as reckless), and while they may have been spoken with good intent, they didn’t stop him from pushing the subject.

“I thought you were gonna’ put Norman Rockwell out of business,” Bucky said, exasperated, hands in his pockets as they walked down the street, passing newspaper stands proclaiming headlines of ‘WAR’.

“This is a higher calling,” Steve argued.  “Roosevelt won’t just go after Japan – we’ll be at war with Hitler and Mussolini soon enough.  He’ll need everybody he can get.”

So Bucky tried to prepare him for the enlistment physical (and enjoyed giving him orders and knocking him around in boxing rings a little more than Steve would like to acknowledge) despite how much he didn’t like the idea of Steve going overseas.  He wonders now if maybe they both knew it was all in vain, the training and the encouragement, that they both knew he wouldn’t pass that exam.  If they knew, it went unspoken, the only tell that either of them assumed the outcome being Bucky’s rehearsed sounding apology and Steve’s shrug of indifference after he failed to pass.

So he tried again.  And again.  And again.  Steve from Manhattan.  Steve from New Haven.  Steve from Paramus.  Denied.  Denied.  Denied.

“You know they’re gonna’ catch on to what you’re doing, right?”  Bucky asked the night after Steve’s third attempt to enlist, the faintest glimmer of a smug smirk pulling at the corner of his lips as he moved his Monopoly cannon across the board.  “I mean, you know it’s illegal, right?”

“As if you haven’t falsified legal documents before,” Steve retorted, trying to sound snappish but failing to do so, his tone solemn as he gestured lazily to the space around them.

“That was different,” Bucky argued.

“Yeah?  How so?” he asked, scooting the Scottie dog across the board only to land in jail.

“Because I wasn’t falsifying information to potentially get us killed when I got the apartment,” he said, holding out a fifty for Steve to take.

“That’s debatable," Steve said with a small laugh, aiming for jokes rather than seriousness.  "People talk and make assumptions, and you don't help matters by calling me a 'punk' all the time--"

“Look,” Bucky interrupted, rolling his eyes.  “You gotta’ quit doing this to yourself.  There’s nothing wrong with just staying here in the city and helping out.  Alright?”

And Steve was actually resigned to doing just that, staying in New York and finding some factory job.  It would be okay, he told himself, since Bucky would be staying, too.  Things would be normal (hopefully).

But then Florence stopped by bearing unwelcome news.

Steve had always known that Bucky often got into skirmishes (and maybe the fact that he referred to them as skirmishes spoke to the fact that he knew that they were all-out brawls and turned a blind-eye to them).  He knew Bucky was often angry underneath the façade of fun-loving, brash Brooklyner, but he never knew what to do or say about any of it without coming off as some sort of hypocrite.  He certainly never thought Bucky would end up in jail because of it.

He’d find out the next night from Bucky – freshly released and sporting a deeply bruised eye and a busted lip (“Don’t frown at me like that.  You should have seen the other guy.”) – that he’d gone to a bar and had made the mistake of flirting with an engaged woman.  Steve didn’t ask if Bucky had known she was engaged, and Bucky neither confirmed or denied it.  Steve had his own assumptions (those being that yes, Bucky knew she was engaged).  Either way, what had apparently started as a fight between Bucky and an angered fiancé turned into an all-out bar fight, broken up only for Bucky to get dragged to the nearest jail.  Steve watched Bucky carefully as he recited the story, noticing how his nonchalance and pride over the incident slowly dwindled away the more he spoke of it.

“At least you only had to spend one night in the slammer,” Steve said once Bucky had finished talking, offering a small smile that the brunet didn’t return.

“Yeah…s’pose that’s a plus,” Bucky muttered, kicking at the ground with his foot, the sound of leather scraping against concrete only amplifying the prolonged, sickening twist in his gut telling him that something was very wrong.

“…But?” Steve asked hesitantly.

Bucky heaved a sigh, cheeks puffing out slightly from the exhale.  “It's nothing, Steve. Don't worry about it.”

But Steve wasn't buying it."

And Bucky caved. “Steve, I’ve been drafted.”

“…Drafted?”

“Unofficially.  Samson wants me in the army or a jail cell…thinks it’ll do me good, keep me preoccupied, put my ‘pent up energies to proper use’.”

“He makes you sound like a dog,” Steve said, the wrinkle of a frown creasing his forehead.

“Yeah,” he scoffed.  “You know what they say about dogs...training and exercise.”

“You’re not a dog, Buck,” Steve sighed, exasperated.  Bucky just nodded, silent.  It was odd, unnerving in a way, because Bucky was rarely, if ever, quiet.

“I leave for Virginia tomorrow,” he finally said, his expression something close to pained.  “I’ll be back in ten weeks, but only for a few days before they….”

He didn’t finish the sentence.  Didn’t need to.  They already knew.  The words ship me overseas didn’t need to be uttered.

 

****

 

Two months later and Steve was fading in and out of consciousness amongst the garbage cans in the back alley of a theater, nose bleeding and lip already swelling.  Briefly it dawned on him that while he had no intention of letting this guy get the best of him, the guy had no intentions of walking away simply because Steve kept getting up, was maybe still hitting him because he’s still got up.

When Bucky showed up to save Steve (like he always did), he couldn't really feel the rush of relief he usually felt.  Not when he stood there in full uniform. Not when he forced himself to stand, brushing garbage debris off his clothes.

He still tells himself he at least tried to be proud for Bucky, because he’d be damned if he didn’t see that Bucky was trying to look and sound as proud as he could as he rattled off his rank, name, infantry, and departing location.  He’d also be damned if he didn’t notice how Bucky forced himself to smile, as if there was still something worth celebrating.  That he forced himself to smile for Steve.

Either way, he’s damned, because the night meant to distract both of them from tomorrow ended poorly.

“You really gonna’ do this again?”  Bucky sounded exasperated, but Steve could hear the frustration bordering-on-anger underneath the worry.  Or maybe it was the other way around.

Which is why Steve almost found himself wishing he was back in that alleyway getting punched in the face when he answered, flatly and calmly, “It's a fair,  I’m gonna’ try my luck.”

“As who?  Steve from Ohio?  They’ll catch you, or worse, they’ll actually take you.”

To jail or to war? Steve wondered before dismissing the idea of asking him.

“…Look, I know you don’t think I can do this, but—”

“This isn’t a back alley, Steve, it’s war.”

“I know it’s a war, you don’t have to—”

“Why’re you so keen to fight?  There’s so many important jobs.”

“What do you want me to do?  Collect scrap metal—”

“Yes!”

“—in my little red wagon?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not gonna’ sit in a factory."

“I don’t—”

“Bucky.  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.”

“Right...because you’ve got nothin’ prove.”

Steve didn’t have anything to say to that.  How could he?  Bucky had a point, after all.  While all he said was well and true, a part of him felt the need to prove to himself that he could do this, to prove to himself that he was capable of something more.  He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he couldn’t. 

He still isn’t sure what he would have done.

In the end, Bucky let Steve have his way, too stubborn to see what was probably reason.  He told himself that out of the two of them, he was more likely to be reasonable than Bucky, repeated it like a silent mantra whenever he had doubts from that day forward.  But as Bucky gave him one last flippant salute, his stomach churned with guilt.

The next time Steve would see Bucky in New York, it would be from under the sights of the latter’s gun.

 

****

 

Everyone knows the rest of the story.  Everyone knows that Steve Rogers passed his fourth exam with the promise of a chance.  Everyone knows he was chosen as the first test subject for Project Rebirth, knows he was its only success.  Everyone knows he was paraded about as propaganda only to eventually become a true soldier.  They know of his efforts to end the war in the Allies favor and they know of his sacrifice that brought an end to his story.

They know this because that’s how the legend goes.  That’s how the story’s told.  Grandparents, parents, and history books say as much.

History, spoken or written, doesn’t say everything.

 

****

 

Choices come with consequences.  It doesn’t matter if the choice is a good one or a bad one, they all have consequences.

The first time Steve began to realize the consequences of his choice, he was standing inside a medical tent with Colonel Phillips, eyes scanning the pain-scrunched faces of wounded men.  He told himself that this was why he wanted to be here – needed to be here – because this is what he needed to do (“You were meant for more than this, you know”).  He supposed it was better than being used as some poster boy for war financials, though, admittedly, he realized he might not escape that for the rest of his life.  Not now. 

No, this was better.  Better because he was actually doing something.  Better because he was no longer just the face of empty worded propaganda.  Better because this was real.

Phillips was talking to him (something in a gruff, begrudgingly appreciative tone about how what he’d done “sure was something”), but Steve was barely listening.  He was too busy looking for the one person who seemed to be missing from the medical tent (and why wasn’t he surprised?).

“Sir, do you mind if I…?” Steve asked quietly as soon as a long enough pause of silence fell between them.  The colonel gave him a brief calculating look before nodding his head in the direction of the tent’s exit.  Mumbling a quick thanks, Steve slipped through the flapped door and out into the rain-chilled weather.

It didn’t take him long to find Bucky.  He was sitting outside one of the sleeping tents – maybe his own – far away from any of the other soldiers, still in the tattered and dirty clothes Steve had found him in.  In one hand was a wet washcloth, lightly stained with the blood that discolored the skin near his ear.  In the other was a bottle of rubbing alcohol, from which he took a drink from.  If he noticed Steve standing there, he didn’t act like it, eyes staring blankly ahead as he swished the alcohol around in its container.

“Didn’t see you in the medical tent,” Steve said, looking from the wet ground to Bucky.  He didn’t want to chastise his friend but wasn’t about to act like he thought this was okay either.

Bucky let out a scoff, shaking his head in slight amusement before abruptly stopping the motion, as if it made him dizzy.  “Would it make you feel better if I told you I watered it down first?” he asked, looking to Steve and giving the bottle of alcohol a shake.

“Not really, no,” Steve said flatly.

“Well…good, because I didn’t,” Bucky grimaced, the last of his sentence cut off by a ragged cough, leaving him clutching at his chest with the hand that held the rag.

“Did you—?”

“Steal this from a nurse?” he asked, looking up at Steve with raised eyebrows.  "...Yes."

Sighing, Steve reached down to take the bottle from him and was relieved when Bucky didn’t attempt to hold onto it.  Tightening the cap, he sat down beside his friend, who preoccupied himself with dabbing the cloth at his other bloodied ear until Steve took it from him and began wiping away the blood and grime himself.

“So...I did check in with a nurse while Phillips questioned you, you know,” Bucky said, the hint of a would-be smirk failing to turn the corner of his mouth.  “You can’t scold me about not going.”

“Not scolding," Steve said.  "But the nurse...?"

“Said I’ve got pneumonia.  ‘M not surprised,” Bucky said, pointing to his chest as if that explained everything.  Maybe it did.

“Then why aren’t you in the medical tent where you can get treated?”

Bucky shrugged.  “Needed some space.”

Steve looked at Bucky then, noticed how worn and tired he seemed, realized that for once his friend had no smile to offer him, hadn’t smiled since he’d ripped him free of that table in Zola’s medical ward.  He wondered if that was why Bucky didn’t want to be in the medical tent with the other soldiers.

“I don’t like this,” Bucky said after a while.

“Don’t like what?” asked Steve, continuing to dab at his friend’s wounds with the washcloth.

“This,” Bucky repeated, faintly gesturing to Steve.  “The mother-henning.  Feels off.”

“You just don’t like feeling like you have to be taken care of for once,” Steve said, his words a little too honest than he’d intended.

Bucky made a face as if he were about to disagree, but remained silent for a few minutes.  “…Can I at least punch you in the face so things feel a little more normal?” he asked, trying to turn the bitterness in his voice into amusement.

Steve shook his head.  “I don’t think seeing me with a busted lip’s gonna’ make any of this feel normal.”

“No…probably not.  I mean…we did kinda’ see a man rip off his own face and throw it into the fire,” Bucky said, clicking his tongue a few times before gently swatting Steve’s hand away.  “Can’t get any more fucked up, you think?”

Steve didn’t say anything as he wrung out the cloth, murky red-colored alcohol falling onto the ground below.  “I sure as hell hope not,” he said finally.

Another silence passed between them, Steve thinking about how he'd found his friend murmuring name, rank, and serial number in a delirious haze. Finally, Steve asked, “Is there anything...you want to talk about?” 

Bucky’s face paled slightly.  Steve wasn’t good at this.  Bucky was normally the one who would ask Steve that question.  Bucky, Steve’s older by a year though he never acted it.  Bucky, who would buy Steve beer because no one thought he was of age.  Bucky, who’d cleaned the blood from Steve’s face and stitched his wounds too many times to count and never once complained about it.  Somehow none of that felt necessary anymore.  Something had changed, shifted ever-so-slightly askew in a big enough way to be noticeable, like a missing word from a sentence.  Still, asking if Bucky was alright was like asking if the sun was going to come up tomorrow.  Bucky had always been alright.  Even when he wasn’t, he was.

The silence that followed Steve’s question said otherwise.

“...S’nothing to talk about, really,” Bucky said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

Steve hesitated another moment before asking, “You sure?”

It was either the alcohol or the subject at hand that made Bucky lurch forward to vomit into the mud.

 

****

 

It was supposed to be a night for celebration, the first night of celebration that Steve had experienced since before Alice had died (he couldn’t believe how long ago that seemed).  It was supposed to be their last night to celebrate before things returned to seriousness (not that it ever stopped being serious), to temporarily set aside the horror of the war and what they would soon be inevitably facing and pretend, for once, that things were normal.

It was late, far past closing time, but the owner of the bar let them stay later as a favor.  Dugan and Falsworth were playing an overly inebriated two-person game of cards.  Morita was asleep, drooling onto the table.  Dernier and Jones seemed to be telling each other jokes in French, though Steve could have sworn Jones kept slipping into German, leaving the Frenchman patiently nodding until he began to hear his native language again.  Sober as could be, all Steve could think about was the amused yet disapproving look on Peggy’s face if she could see them now (she hadn’t seemed that impressed five hours ago).

Steve was sitting outside the front of the bar, enjoying the crisp, chill London air when the night abruptly stopped being so celebratory.

“Shove me one more goddamn time and I swear to—”

“Could report you to the court-martial—”

“Fuckin' go ahead. I dare you to, Stark.”

It was as if Steve’s awareness kicked in tenfold as he heard the anger – and the alcohol – in both Bucky and Howard’s voices.  He wasn’t sure when the latter had showed up to the bar (the last Steve had heard, he was supposed to be meeting the engineer at eight in the morning), but he knew that Bucky had already been pretty drunk an hour or so ago, when Steve had left him and a few other soldiers to their game of darts in order to get some fresh air.  He didn’t sound any more sober.

“I wouldn’t dare me, I know people.”

“Big talk, small man,” Bucky scoffed.  “Don’t pull your ‘wealth and status’ bullshit with me, it doesn’t—”

“Money talks, and you, well….”

"'And you', what?  Go on, s—"

Steve had heard enough.

“Hey!” Steve barked, grabbing both of their attentions and causing Stark to stumble into a wall.  “What the hell is going on?”

Bucky blinked vacantly for a moment, either caught off guard by Steve’s sudden presence or just unused to the authoritative tone in his voice (when had that shown up?).  His friend’s confusion only lasted a few seconds before the anger crept back in.

“Oh, nothing,” Bucky said with a scathing laugh, shooting Howard a glare before mumbling on almost incoherently (even to Steve’s keen hearing).  “Just dealing with...trumped up grease monkey’s paranoia...can’t even play a game of darts n’ mess around without the fucker jumping to conclusions. S’much for my fun...stupid bastard....”

Before he could even draw conclusions (though he had a fair enough idea), Stark had spit at the back of Bucky’s head.  Steve didn’t get the chance to grab Bucky’s arm before his friend spun around and punched the shorter man in the face with a distinct smack.  Pushing stunned hesitance aside, Steve snatched Bucky back by the scruff of his uniform before he could throw a second punch, wincing at the sound of fabric tearing and Bucky letting out a cough as the collar of his shirt choked him slightly.  He cast a quick glance at Stark – who looked a little dazed as he held two fingers to his bloodied brow and examined them – before mumbling a quick (and, if he was honest, half-hearted) apology and dragging a struggling-and-still-eager-to-fight Bucky down the street toward the SSR base.

“Will you stop already?” Steve snapped halfway down the block when Bucky tried to pull away again as if he were going to run back and finish what was started.

The shadow of a glare flickered across his friend’s face before he heaved a sigh, the tension seeming to leave him like air burst from a balloon and dropping him like deadweight against Steve’s side, causing Steve to support him much like he had only days ago when he’d hauled him from the Skull’s base.

“Deserved it,” Bucky mumbled, slurred and begrudging.

“I never said he didn’t,” Steve said matter-of-factly.

“...Still mad,” Bucky pointed out, voice barely more than a whisper.

“I’m not mad,” Steve sighed.  “I just...I’m not mad, alright?”

He wasn’t, right?  He felt a little something like anger, but when he rooted around in his brain for the source of it, he knew it wasn’t exactly Bucky’s doing.  He remembered Stark’s mention of the court-martial; maybe he should have just let Bucky finish the fight that had been started...but no.  It was bad enough that he’d gotten the one punch in.  Colonel Phillips didn’t need another reason to question Bucky’s place among Steve’s pick of soldiers - his current health and the circumstances that led to him getting into the army in the first place were reason enough to give the colonel doubt.

“You’re pretty damn quiet for someone who ain’t mad,” Bucky said, breaking through Steve’s thoughts.

“I’m not mad,” Steve repeated, more sure this time.  “I just don’t much care for people threatening my friends.”

Bucky looked at him, momentarily confused by Steve’s comment before smiling a small, lazy sort of smile.

And he’d meant to confront Stark the next day, had even showed up earlier than he was expected just so he could.  Of course...that hadn’t gone as planned (why, why did he take his disgruntled mood out on Peggy by asking such an offensive question? – stupid).  When he did get the chance to speak to the man, he didn’t seem to have any recollection of the events from the night before, the only evidence being the scabbed over cut above his eye.

He was reminded far too much of his father’s enraged intoxications and pleasant sobrieties, too relieved that this whole incident would blow over, would be forgotten, without detriment, that Steve reluctantly decided to let it go.

 

****

 

Time becomes an odd construct when it’s rushed, filled with adrenaline-thudding pulses and the cracks of gunfire.  Odder still when it seems to lag, stretched with endless walking and a need for patience that most of them just didn’t have.  Through the jumble of stillness and hammering hearts, the two weeks that passed felt more like lost months, pages ripped off of calendars that leave you saying, “Wow, that went by fast.”

Maybe that was why Steve felt strangely old as Bucky, Gabe, and he searched the bombed out ruins of a Hydra-attacked city for survivors, keeping their guards up for stray enemies.  Steve’s stomach churned at how, despite the chill in the air, the ground was still warm, the heat under his boots a cruel taunt as to how important timing was, how haunting the price of ‘too late’ could be.

He was about to call out to Bucky and Gabe, who were searching another area of the vicinity, that there were no signs of survivors or hostiles when he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye.

Instinctively, he raised his shield, muscles coiling, ready to release, but froze when he saw the stranger’s hands raised high in threatlessness and heard his frantic shouts of, “Nein! Nein, nein, nein!”

The tattered remains of a gray eagle emblem stitched into the man’s uniform made him hesitate, but only for a second until he realized that he could hardly associate the word ‘man’ with the German soldier; he looked far younger than either him or Bucky.

Steve lowered his shield (naïve), raising one hand to mimic the other’s image of harmlessness (lies, neither of them were harmless) and holding out another to signal an ‘at ease’ to Bucky and Gabe, who had rushed over at the sound of the German’s shouting.  Bucky shot Steve an alarmed ‘what-the-hell-are-you-doing?’ sort of look before reluctantly lowering his gun, doubt still blatant in his expression.  The soldier’s eyes were alight with what Steve had to admit was terror.  His stomach twisted.  He hated that look.  He wasn’t used to having it aimed at him.  He was more adjusted to aiming it at others.

{“Please, I’m just…I’m just passing through,”} the German said, voice as shaky as his hands, still held up as if he hadn’t noticed that the three Americans had lowered their weapons.  {“I d-don’t mean any harm.”}

Steve looked the soldier over once more, studying his demeanor, the wide, pleading eyes (green).  He focused once again on the scraps of cloth that were once a Nazi emblem that were still attached to the man’s – no, boy’s (no, there were no boys in war) – uniform and realized that it hadn’t been damaged in battle but decisively torn off.  Dirt clung to his clothes and to his face.  His left boot had a hole in it.  And again, his eyes; they projected nothing but fear.

(“So many people forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.”)

This man wasn’t his enemy (just another scared soldier).

{I believe you,”} Steve said finally, slowly setting the shield down at his feet despite Bucky’s skeptical, hissed plea of, “Steve…”

{“I-I didn’t want – don’t want – any part of…I just – I’m trying to go ho – Switzerland.  Need to go to Switzerland,”} the German rambled on, elaborating as if doubtful that Steve actually believed his prior words, speaking in slow fragments as if he failed – in his panic – to notice that Stave had spoken to him in coherent German.

{“I believe you,”} he repeated, a bit louder, trying to stress his sincerity with a look.

After a moment’s deliberation, the soldier nodded – nervous, twitchy – and slowly lowered his hands to his sides.

Steve held up a hand in a silent reassurance for the German not to panic before he reached into one of his pockets to pull out a three-ounce package of Arnott’s Plain Biscuits.  {“Hungry?”}

The soldier nodded, a little more earnest and less anxious.

As the four of them sat there behind a large, fractured chunk of concrete that had once been the wall to someone’s home, talking over spare rations, Steve couldn’t help but remember one particular story his father had told him (the one good memory he had of his father wasn’t even a memory of his father) on one of those rare sober days.  It was of the first war (“The Great War”, his father had called it, solemn but proud – and Steve had never understood what was so great about war, but, young as he’d been, he’d managed to be in awe of his father’s tone), how on Christmas the armies set aside their differences to share a peaceful meal on Christmas, how they had shared burial ceremonies for their fallen, sung carols, and even played games of football with one another.  There were parts of the story he’d never cared for, things he preferred to block out but knew that he couldn’t; how Allied commanders banned such truces from happening again, how army units were encouraged to partake in raids and to torment the enemy.  But how could he ignore the darker bits of the story when light still managed to shine through it?  How could he ignore it when, despite those rules, brief truces still occurred after that?  How could he ignore it when government-deemed enemies wanted to reach out to one another in humanity when their leaders ordered artillery bombardments to ensure that they didn’t?

There was something incredibly sad about that, some incredibly disgusting reflection about politics and a depressing discourse about the human condition.

But something hopeful hidden beneath it.

So as they ate and talked and joked, Steve tried to take the moment for all it was worth.  And after they finished their sparse meal, after Steve handed over his map to the German soldier and indicated the safest route into Switzerland, after the soldier pointed out the locations of German camps in the surrounding area, after a sincere “Danke” and "Auf Wiedersehen", he could only hope that that persistence of humanity his father had once talked about would reappear in his own experiences.

Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that it would never be like this again, that, like the soldier walking away from them, he wouldn’t see another moment like this.

(He was right on all counts except for one.  He’d see the soldier again; he, unaged by time – the soldier, a withered old man in Stuttgart)

 

****

 

And there were bad days after that, an abundance of them.  Days when they assisted Allied soldiers in the trenches (the smell: blood, gangrene, burned flesh).  Days when they had no other option but to sleep overnight in a medical tent because they’d returned the wounded to safety (the sound: screams of pain, ragged coughing, men crying themselves to sleep – none of them would ever talk about it the next day; a matter of pride or maybe just a mutual understanding that there was no need to ask, “Are you alright?”, because none of them were).

It was normal on those nights for their group to be disgruntled (Dugan being the most susceptible to agitation).  Some nights, normalcy was a crude joke, an affronted expression, and the laughter that followed (Morita was responsible for most of joking, Falsworth or Jones being the ones to shoot him a look of disapproval).  Plenty of nights went by sleepless (Steve never could sleep the night before or after a big event, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that it carried over into his military life).  When they did sleep, it wasn’t uncommon for them to flit in and out of it restlessly (he wondered how Dernier could stay so full of energy when he only seemed to get a total of two hours of sleep every night).  Sometimes, there were nightmares.

Bucky seemed to suffer from them the most, even on nights when they hadn’t experienced any jarring situations the day before.  Steve didn’t know how often they happened, only that there had been several times he’d woken up to his friend’s shout of panic, wild eyed and dazed looking, as if he were still dragging his consciousness back to the present reality.  Steve would ask if he was alright, because even though he obviously wasn’t, he didn’t know what else to ask.  The question was always followed with an, “I’m fine…I’m fine, don’t worry about it”, as if it was as simple and easy as saying the words.  But it wasn’t.  None of this was easy, especially when his friend was fighting invisible demons.  Sometimes he would ask what the nightmare had been about, but Bucky would just shake his head, scrunching up his eyes and running and hand through his hair to massage his scalp, only to rearrange the luggage he used as a pillow and lay back down to fall asleep.

He never did get an answer to that question.

Steve lay awake one night, unable to sleep due to the prospect of the Hydra base they would be attacking tomorrow, only to have his thoughts interrupted by Bucky mumbling in his sleep, brow furrowed as if he were troubled.  He’d lived with Bucky almost his whole life, long enough to know he was usually a sound sleeper.  He’d seen his fair share of soldiers plagued by nightmares, enough to recognize the signs of one.

He cast a questioning glance at Morita, the only other person among them that was awake, but only received a shrug as an answer.  Trying not to roll his eyes at his friend’s casual indifference, Steve leaned over from where he was sitting to tentatively shake Bucky’s shoulder in an attempt to wake him.

Something in the back of his mind whispered the word ‘mistake’ before it even happened.  Steve recoiled, hands held up defenselessly, as Bucky sprung to his feet as if shocked by some unseen volt of electricity, the Colt M1911A1 that he always kept under his makeshift pillow in his hand and pointed at Steve.

His hands weren’t shaking.

Steve barely heard the deadpan, “Whoa” from Morita over the pounding of his own heart, which seemed to have taken residence between his ears judging by its ardent thudding.  More so than his heartbeat, he was distracted by the look on Bucky’s face.  Cold.  Cold enough to send a shiver down Steve’s spine.

“Buck...put the gun down,” Steve said, a hell of a lot more evenly than he expected himself to sound.  “It’s me...it’s Steve.”

The look on his face remained fixed, leaving Steve with some strange emotion concocted of panic and confusion welling up inside his chest.  He watched as Bucky’s finger twitched to squeeze the trigger before his expression collapsed into apologetic horror.

“Oh, god...fuck,” Bucky said, voice barely more than a whisper as he lowered the gun, finger as far away from the trigger as he could manage without dropping the gun from his trembling hands.  “Shit, Steve...I’m sorry.  I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Steve assured him, lowering his hands to his sides and letting out a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding.  “It’s okay—”

“No, not really,” Bucky huffed, a shaky laugh escaping him, as he tried to find something else around him to look at other than Steve. 

Brow furrowed, Steve watched as his friend seemed to struggle with some internal debate that he was unwilling to share.  If they were honest with themselves, they’d both admit that almost nothing was the same since Steve had dragged Bucky from that Hydra base.  It was beyond the obvious – and maybe even fated – change in the way they treated each other, the near complete reversal of their dynamic.  It was who they’d become, or were becoming, as people.  There was something growing callous beneath the familiar exterior that allowed them to look at each other and say, “I know you”.  For Steve, it was the inevitably complete loss of whatever naiveté, whatever innocence, he had left; the realization that it was happening (and it would happen) and there was nothing he could do to stop it.  For Bucky (so far as Steve could tell), it seemed to be an exhaustive shaking of his foundations, an unnerving, and the almost constant effort to reaffirm that those foundations still existed, that he could still hold his own.

Bucky held the back of his hand to his mouth, examining it only to see blood from where he must have bit into his lip during the nightmare.  Steve thought back, as he did whenever something like this happened (granted, this had never happened before), to the room he’d found Bucky in, the medical ward, strapped down to a table like some laboratory experiment....

“What the hell did they do to you, Buck?” Steve asked.

Bucky ran the tip of tongue across where he’d bitten into his own lip, wiping the blood off his hand and onto his trousers before finally looking at Steve.  “I don’t...I don’t remember,” he said with the feeblest of shrugs, his tone defeated.

It was the utter sincerity in his eyes that unnerved Steve the most.

 

****

 

Things didn’t get any less strange after that.  They didn’t even stay the same level of strange - they escalated.  It started with the news of Naval ships (both American and otherwise) being attacked by an unknown force and ended with three men, two of whom burned in flames and one who was imprisoned, one who would all-too-gladly douse them out.

Jim Hammond, as Steve would find out, was a synthetic man, an android, created by a scientist of the name Phineas Horton.  Made to strike fear into the Germans, he was to be a top secret weapon of war until his ability to burst into flames when in contact with oxygen caused those on Capitol Hill to grow nervous and demand that he be sealed in concrete.  Bucky shot Steve an amused sort of look when Hammond told them he had been responsible for the large scale fire in New York, a result of Horton imbibing his creation with a human awareness and personality that lead to Hammond escaping his concrete tomb.  He spent the following years learning to control his ability, until he came across Toro.

Toro had been given his abilities through birth, the radiation his parents had been exposed to warping his genetic code.  Hammond had taken the boy under his wing after his parents had died in a train accident, from which Toro had managed to escape from.  Teaching him how to control his abilities as he had learned how, the two had worked together ever since.

Namor was another story altogether.  At first, Steve didn’t understand the Atlantean’s hatred for mankind until he’d learned that the reason behind it stemmed from a desperate desire to protect his own people.  Nazis – most likely connected to Hydra – had been dropping depth charges in order to harvest Atlantean corpses in the name of science, causing Namor to vow vengeance for his people and leading him to attack any and all human (or “surface-men”, as he referred to non-Atlanteans) Naval ships and submarines, holding all in his way accountable for the fate of his kind.  His desperation lead him to attacking the New York coast.  Again, Bucky gave Steve a look, remembering the hurricane that had decimated the coast several years ago.  When they’d captured him, Namor refused to speak to anyone in his cell, obstinate and unrepentant.

Of course, Namor’s sentiment toward Hammond, Toro, Steve, and Bucky changed slightly with the news that one of his own was aiding the very people who were bombing his underwater kingdom.  Once the traitor was dealt with, the group was left with a strange sense of armistice, none in the room too sure where this event left them or what it meant for them.

Until the Secretary of War called.

“There are threats out there that I’m not sure – as grand as they are – that your Commandos alone can handle, Rogers.  You need more firepower.  Especially in the face of the weaponry that this...Hydra have at their disposal.  This past week was as good enough proof of that as any....”

“What, exactly, would you have me do, sir?” Steve asked.  “My squad and I’ve been doing all we can to wipe out any Hydra operation we’ve caught wind of since our formation in September.”

“I’m very aware of your efforts and your successes in the past month, Rogers, and we appreciate them,” Stimson said.  “Now, we’re not suggesting your squad be disassembled.  In fact, that’s the last thing we want.  However – and I’ve spoken to President about this earlier today and he agrees with me – if, ah...what’s his name...the prisoner?  The one who’s been sinking our ships in the Atlantic?”

“Namor,” Steve answered.  The Atlantean, who stood in the far corner of the room with his arms crossed over his bare chest, raised a brow at Steve, giving him a haughty, disdainful sort of look.  “Prince Namor,” Steve amended.  “Of Atlantis.  And it wasn’t just U.S. ships he was sinking, sir.”

Namor gave an almost imperceptible nod (of approval or acknowledgement of his title, Steve wasn’t sure) before he continued staring at the ground.

“Right,” Stimson said, his tone near patronizing.  “If you think this...Namor is willing, the President would like to form a squad with more, as I said, firepower.  He’d like for Namor to play a part in such a squad.”

“And what of Hammond?  And Toro?” Steve asked quietly, glancing over to where Hammond was talking to Dugan about his time as a police officer, then over to Toro, who was showing Bucky how high he could raise the flames of his palm.  Namor continued staring at the floor, but Steve thought he was far too still to simply be staring blankly ahead.

“Well, yes, of course.  I did say firepower, didn’t I?” Stimson asked, sounding amused by his own joke.  “You, of course, would be in charge of the squad,” he continued.  “The Howling Commandos would stay active, and you would work with them on low-scale Hydra missions as well as standard special operations.”

Steve hesitated a moment, thinking over the man’s words.  “May I talk it over with the others, sir?” he asked.  “I don’t necessarily think it would be appropriate for me to make decisions for them.”

“Right.  Certainly,” Stimson said, sounding over-cheerful, like he didn’t really want to wait for an answer.  “Just wire me when—”

“-Sir?”

“Yes, Rogers?” the Secretary of War asked, slightly annoyed that he’d been interrupted.

“I’d like to request that Sergeant Barnes also be given the same dual involvement as myself, sir,” Steve said evenly.  He withheld a sigh.  He really hated formal conversation like this, and was learning to hate conversation with politicians in general.  The only good he could say that had come of it, was that he’d learned how to read between the language of such men and, by doing so, had learned to speak like them, learned what to say without overstepping his bounds, learned how to (mostly) get his way with words alone.

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.  “Would it encourage you to take the Invaders Operation into further consideration?”

“Quite possibly, sir.  If only for the fact that - may I remind you - Barnes was assigned to act as my partner in such operations.”

“Well...yes, I suppose that’s true,” Stimson said, sounding a bit taken aback.  “I don’t see why not to allow it, when you put it that way...but do me a favor, Captain, and inform the Atlantean that his prior crimes against the United States will only be pardoned on the condition that he agrees to be a part of this team.”

“Sir, he’s aided us the past two days against enemy forces when he didn’t have to do so,” Steve said, unable to keep the blatant objection out of his tone.  “I would think that alone would be enough to pardon—”

“Enough, Rogers,” Stimson interrupted sharply.  “Do as I ask.  Also, inform Stark that I need to speak with him.  I’d like his assistance with a certain project.”

“Of course, sir,” Steve said blandly.  “If I can drag him away from the bar, sir.”

“See to it that you do,” Stimson said before the line disconnected.

Finally, Steve let out a sigh, running a hand over his face as his brain tried to process the past thirty-two hours, every second of which had felt like something out of a science fiction novel.

He had no qualms against leading people, which was surprising considering he used to be (and, at heart, still was) a scrawny kid being beaten down almost daily – his face, palms, and knees scraped against Brooklyn concrete – and had no issues against letting his best friend call the shots.  It seemed unlikely, but for some reason,  when he spoke, others listened.  However, Steve didn’t much care for the idea of forcing someone to follow his lead (after all, his distaste for such a notion was the reason he was out fighting in this war), and he damn well knew there wasn’t a person in the room (or on land, or even the Earth itself) who could make Namor do something he didn’t want to do.  Steve had learned that much after only two days of knowing the Atlantean.  Namor wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t a willing volunteer like Hammond or Toro.  Namor was royalty of another people.  Namor was a leader, and Steve knew from his own stubbornness that leaders rarely followed.

He was mulling all this over when Namor, who had silently – and unnoticed by Steve – left his spot against the wall to stand in front of him, said, “I accept.”

“Huh?” Steve asked, momentarily confused as he pulled himself from his thoughts.

“Your superior’s offer.  I accept it,” he clarified.

“Oh,” was all Steve would manage to say at first, eyebrows raised in evident surprise.

“So long as you are aware that I am not accepting this offer out of fear of your people,” Namor elaborated.  “I fear no one.  If I would deem it so, I could have every surface-nation crumbled through the efforts of those at my command.”

“Understood,” Steve said with a nod.  After a brief silence, he asked, "Why are you accepting the offer then?”

Namor fixed him with a calculating stare before answering, slowly, as if trying to figure out the reason himself, “Because you are unlike others of your kind.”

Namor left his reasoning at that.

Steve figured it was as good enough a reason as any.

 

****

 

Steve's mind was in for another shock of the seemingly impossible after a particularly nasty encounter with a man calling himself Baron Blood. In the scuffle, the Invaders became acquainted with their opponent's children, Brian and Jacqueline Falsworth, cousins to the man in Steve's Howling Commandos (James was thrilled to hear that Steve had met them, his relief over their safety outweighing his grief over his uncle's unfavorable actions). They talked for some time, the group of them (except for Jacqueline, who was recovering from her father's attack, but healing due to the blood transfusion Hammond had given her), Steve learning that Brian wasn't so different from him, his strength and reflexes - which he'd gained under similar circumstances as Steve, minus the imprisonment - a near match to his own. It was relieving, knowing that there was someone like him out there, serving the same purpose for their country with their advanced abilities as Steve did for his. Namor, Hammond, and Toro were of course included in such a statement, but it wasn't as if Steve or Brian could (safely) catch fire or fly.

"Just think what it would mean if they managed to kill us here...." Brian said one night, the two of them trapped within the walls of an under siege city.

"A lot more than holding a bridge," Steve replied, grave.

"A rather big target now, isn't it?" Brian asked, pointing to the flag on his chest.

(No, Steve thought, no one else held the burdens that they did, no one else understood the weight of those burdens - and through that, a bond was formed)

They all became fast friends with the Falsworth siblings, fighting together and learning from each other, saving one another's backs (Jacqueline - whose near fatal encounter with her father and the blood transfusion from the Torch proved to have lasting, if incredible, results - returning Hammond's act of heroism more than once) enough times that it soon became safe to say they were partners.

A part of the team.

 

****

 

It wasn’t always Hydra.  People seem to leave that part out in stories.  Sure, they remember Captain America’s efforts in the war, they sigh in sympathetic regret at the tales of his short-lived love with Peggy Carter, they talk in appreciative tones about his constant thwarting of the Red Skull’s efforts, of Zemo’s and Zola’s.  They talk of Bucky Barnes (with ill-informed chatter thanks to Roosevelt’s propaganda) and the Howling Commandos.  They’d talk about the Invaders if the U.S. government wasn’t putting a great deal of effort into dissuading any rumors of their existence, unsure if the country was quite ready to acknowledge the existence of such beings.

Still, through their glorification of what he was most known for, they forget that they often aided the general frontlines.  And if they do remember, they lack insight into what exactly that entails.

Nothing was more of an example of that than the Black Forest.

Bucky had been doing one of the many things he’d been trained to do, posing as German in a bar in Nazi occupied Netherlands in order to gather intel.  Steve wasn’t there for that particular mission (his face and voice far too easily recognizable), and he couldn’t help but be secretly relieved despite his worry for his friend’s safety.  It was oddly unnerving watching Bucky play as the enemy, the ease with which he was able to do so, the natural lies.  Sure, he’d been trained to do it, but it was the recognizable charm or authority with which he convinced those he spied on that he was truly one of them...it made Steve think back to their days in Brooklyn, to Bucky talking his way in and out of nearly every situation.  And when talking didn’t work...well, Steve was all too familiar with how readily confrontational Bucky was to not be disconcerted with the ease of his friend’s violence, a bloody echo of what he’d considered to be more innocent times (maybe they were never innocent).

When Bucky returned, ripping off the swastika sewn into the German soldier’s uniform he wore with the utmost disgust, he told them of the soldiers’ gossip of a hidden bunker in the Black Forest.  Two weeks later, he and Bucky were to scout for signs of such a bunker.  Once they gathered the information that there was or wasn’t one on location, they were to return to camp where the Commandos and assisting military squad were keeping base.  Together they would clear the bunker.  It was a stealth mission simply on the basis of precaution.  After all, rumors were rumors, and things taken from drunken German soldiers were to be taken with an extra grain of salt (Bucky disagreed with that, saying words from drunk people were far more reliable, more honest).

The good news was that, yes, there was sufficient evidence to support the fact that there was a hidden bunker or something of the sort in the Black Forest.

The bad news was the sufficient evidence.

Steve had about three seconds to think to himself that the German soldiers at the bar ought to be either discharged for running their mouths about a secret operation in a public location or promoted in rank for cleverly luring them here.  But only three seconds, three seconds before he and Bucky fell under heavy gunfire.

Steve let out a would-be shout in a hiss of pain as a bullet tore through the cloth on his upper arm, skimming flesh with a searing burn.  Grabbing Bucky, Steve rolled to take cover behind a thick-trunked conifer, trying and failing to block out the sound of bullets hitting the snowy ground with a deceivingly dulled lethality.  Biting the inside of his lip, he hazarded a quick glance around the tree to try to see how many people they were up against before ducking back just as a bullet chipped at the bark of the tree beside his head.

“At least thirty,” Bucky said, as if reading his mind.  “Maybe – probably more.”

Steve nodded, heaving a frustrated sigh.  His chest wouldn’t feel this constricted with repressed panic if the others were here.  Okay.  That was probably a lie (more lives to worry about, more lives to be responsible for), but he’d feel more comfortable with what he was thinking of doing, what he didn’t really have a choice to do (there was always a choice).

“They aren’t pressing forward,” Steve remarked, a frown creasing his forehead.

“’Cause they have the high ground,” Bucky said, stuffing extra clips of ammo into his outer pockets for easy grabbing and reloading. 

“Yeah, well....”  Steve began looking at the trees nearby, trying to judge if they could be used as sufficient cover.

“They think we won’t try to press forward,” Bucky scoffed, already catching onto Steve’s idea simply by following his line of sight.  “How very stupid of them.”

“You take the east.  I’ll take the west,” Steve said.  “Move up.  Hit what you can as you go.”

“Gladly.”

War.  It’s not like the movies.  Steve hears that phrase a lot now, and in a lot of ways it's true.  Movies focus on the sound, loud and deafening.  Movies focus on imagery, an overabundance of explosions, things that wouldn’t even explode (at least not how they show them exploding).  Yes, it is loud, it is deafening, it does thrum your eardrums in ways that make you think you’ll go deaf.  Still, the movies are wrong.  They don’t capture the visual blur of the moment, or the odd silence among the cacophony of gunfire.  They definitely don’t tell you that even with the best laid plans, you’re going in blind simply because no outcome is predictable.  And they damn well don’t show what happens to the worst of plans (there’s no Hollywood glory in failure).

So it’s not like the movies.  It wasn’t like the movies as he played war with ducking and running, firing a gun and letting enemy fire backlash against the shield.  A movie couldn’t explain how the fight went by in a daze, a vivid blur, forced to find some place between focused and detached, vaguely aware of the situation’s implications but hyperaware of the bullets flying by and his boots crunching the snow beneath his feet.  A movie couldn’t put into words the mixture of relief and horror when guns were tossed aside and it came to physical blows; relieved that the fight had neared its end and he no longer had to worry about being shot, horrified that being this close left no room for detachment.  A movie couldn’t quite capture the sound of bullets striking vibranium, of vibranium impacting another man’s skull - a sickening crack, a squealch; it definitely couldn’t depict the way it feels, from either man’s perspectives.

God forbid a movie ever try.

The stench of shotgun shells filled the air.  All was starkly silent aside from each heaving breath he took.  Silent until a click to his right sent a prickling chill up his spine and to his neck.  He barely noticed Bucky out of the corner of his eye, looking at him with concern, as several more clicks followed.  Gun.  Empty barrel.  Steve turned to see a wide-eyed and rage-snarling German soldier still attempting to fire his weapon at him as he clutched at his bloody stomach.  Gut shot.  The chill that had crept up Steve's spine spread throughout his body.  Numbly, he registered that he was simply just cold, chilled to the bone despite the adrenaline pounding in his temples like a battle drum.  Yet his hands were warm.  He didn’t have to look to know there was blood on them.

It was only instinct that made Steve step back as the German, spewing a string of profanity, took a swipe at his leg with a dagger.  Steve scrunched up his face, a hushed, injured animal noise – a groan of torn regret – escaping him.  He looked to Bucky, a brief exchange passing between them in silence, an understanding.

Steve turned his back as Bucky pulled the trigger.

He was vaguely aware that he was shaking, looking over the remnants of the battle, at the vivid contrast of red on white snow.  The silence made Steve feel as if something inside him was cracking, the sound of Bucky's boots crunching in the snow the only thing anchoring him steady.  He watched out of the corner of his eye as his friend reached down to scoop up a lone handful of untainted snow, only to press it into the center of Steve's chest.

Steve barely registered that he was wiping blood off the star.

 

****

 

He thinks now that it’s almost like people forget the implications of a World War.  People seem to think that America entered into the fray and solved all the problems, that America won the war (“They say we won…”), as if it were the only country involved that mattered.  They act like the dropping of a nuclear bomb fixed everything.  They forget, or ignore, that other countries played a role (he wonders, if maybe harshly, how people can be so woefully ignorant).  Most of all, they seem to forget about Russia.

People think of Russia in connection with war and think of the Cold War, or they think of Stalin’s label as a dictator and associate the man and the people he ruled with Hitler.  They forget that without Russia there might not have been an Allied victory, at least not as soon as it had ended.  They ignore it because of the years that followed the war.  They don’t care about the harshness of the Eastern front.  They forget.

Steve can’t forget.

It was 1943 during the Battle of Stalingrad.  It was winter and the blatant contrast of blood spatter on snow covered ground.  It was personal, it was vengeance, pride, and necessity.  Most of all, it was hell.  Steve saw more throats slit and bullet-shorn-and-disfigured enemy faces on the Russian front than he cared to remember.  A good portion of the soldier brutality boiled down to the Hilfswillige, the rest simply came down to fighting for country, which, really, was the root of Russian involvement in the war.

It didn’t take long for Steve to learn that, it only took a man looking him straight in the eyes after having shot a prisoner and saying, “This man was a cousin to me.  He brought shame on our country, to fight for our enemy.  He was no longer Russian.”

They may have fought with the Allies, but it was for Russia that they fought.  No one else.

Steve couldn’t get that death out of his mind, even as they trekked through miles of ice and snow.  On one hand, he understood the motivation behind the Russian’s actions.  After all, it was a war, and dead prisoners sent a strong message (we take no prisoners), especially when they’re deserters of your own country (this is what happens to traitors).  On the other hand, Steve avoided killing if he could (he couldn’t) and viewed unnecessary bloodshed (this was a war, what bloodshed was necessary?) with the utmost disdain.  He wasn’t entirely sure if he was more bothered by the man’s justification that the prisoner had no longer been Russian or that he had been family – both screamed undertones of ownership, of possession – but he thought that maybe he was most bothered by the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it.

He supposed, in the end, he didn’t actually understand the soldier’s reasoning.

When they finally reached camp, several miles outside of Kalach, one of the Russian soldiers handed their only prisoner over to his superior officer.  They stood huddled around a pile of firewood as another soldier went to fetch matches, having refused the help of Toro or Hammond and wanting to make the fire on his own.  Bucky, teeth rattling, stood beside Namor, who seemed entirely unfazed by the bitter climate.  Noticing this, the brunet eyed the Atlantean with an almost incredulous expression.

“What, exactly, has you so fixated upon me, Barnes?” Namor asked after a minute.

“Aren’t you cold?” Bucky asked.

“Are you unaware that I call the deepest depths of the ocean my home?” Namor asked, raising a brow.

Bucky scowled.  “Are you unaware just how much of an—”

“—Enough,” Steve interrupted with a sigh, a puff of warm air fading into the breeze.  “Both of you.  I don’t want to hear it today.”

Bucky tried to exchange a sheepish look with Namor that the other simply did not return, leaving him sharing Namor’s unregretful haughtiness out of spite.  Steve shot him a slightly annoyed look.

“What?”  Bucky hissed through a shiver.  “He’s being an—”

“Bucky—”

“—ass,” Bucky finished, staring at the snow at his feet to avoid looking at Steve.  He knew Bucky was only being this level of complaintative and bitter because he, too, was upset about the prisoner’s death.  He’d been the one to protest it the most when it had happened. “...‘Sides...I’m fuckin’ freezing.”

{“You will be here from some time, soldier.  Might as well adjust to the cold.”}

Steve turned around to see Vasily Karpov, the Russian officer overseeing their mission, standing a few feet away.

{“Colonel,”} Steve nodded curtly.

{"Captain,”} Karpov returned, eyeing the group with what Steve interpreted as ill-disguised derision.  {“Are you having problems controlling your soldiers?”}

There was something about Karpov, even upon first meeting him, that just didn’t sit right with Steve.  Whether it was the almost amused tone he used when addressing Steve as he just had, the chilling sharpness in the man’s eyes, or his method’s of gathering information on the enemy, it all boiled down to that fact that his inherent (instinctual) dislike of the colonel was so strong that Steve couldn’t keep up a pleasant façade in his presence.

{“Not in the least, Colonel,”} Steve replied flatly, watching as the soldier who had gone to get matches began to set fire to the pile of wood they stood around.  Looking back to Karpov, Steve asked, returning to English, “Is there something you needed?”

“Why, yes, in fact,” Karpov said with a grim attempt at a smile.  {"Meet me inside the officers’ tent.”}

“I’m right behind you,” Steve nodded, casting another look at the fire, hesitant to look away, before following Karpov.

He didn’t stay long.  Only long enough to hear the information they needed, gritting his teeth through the prisoner’s screams as a soldier carved blood-gushed designs into the man's flesh, gritting his teeth hard enough that when he left the tent his jaw felt stiff.

(“Damn you, you fool!  Hasn’t there been enough death today?”

“You do not understand…you cannot.  You and the Germans, you have your super-soldiers…your secret weapons…but the Russians…we have nothing but our winter.”)

He supposed, in the end, some things he didn’t want to understand.

 

****

 

May found Steve, Bucky, and the Invaders tasked with an interesting mission.  Peggy had passed on information to Steve that she’d received from one of her contacts, information that Arnim Zola was having members of a resistance group abducted and used for experiments.  She made it clear that while the information was useful, it was more of a request for help than anything else (“And this informant never asks for help,” Peggy said.  “It’s serious.”).

Peggy’s informant was a woman named Mirela.

Mirela was a gypsy.  Or, at least, she had been.  Years ago she had been cast out from her own society for, as she put it (with a laugh), “uncouth behavior”, along with her brother and sister, who had defended her actions.  Despite being shunned by their people, the three of them had managed to fend for themselves until the late summer of 1941, when their trio fell under Nazi attack.  Mihai and Aishe were taken away to the Łódź Ghetto (“They are dead,” she said, twirling the frayed strands of cloth that hung from her overcoat.  “Most Roma have been taken to Chełmno by now.”), while Mirela managed to escape with a few wounds.  Since then, she had taken it upon herself to form a resistance against the Nazi regime.  Her group consisted of an array of people; gypsies (Roma, Sinti, Manush, and Iberian Kale), Jews, and several ex-NKVD who refused to work under Stalin’s rule.  To say it was an odd and unlikely group to tackle such forces as the Einsatzkommandos would be an understatement, yet somehow, Mirela and her forces managed to do so, using an array of stratagems to free and recruit prisoners en route to concentration camps and preventing whatever slaughter they could.

“I refuse to tolerate anyone or anything that threatens my people,” Mirela explained to Steve and Bucky with a glint of seriousness in her eyes that Steve could only call ‘lethal’.

“I thought you were cast out from being a gypsy,” Bucky said.

Mirela shot Bucky an amused look that seemed to silently question if he was being serious or not.  “What is a ‘gypsy’ but a cast out person, soldier?” she asked, scratching behind the ears of a scraggly looking German Shepherd.  “What is a ‘gypsy’ but a traveler?  By those standards, I am the ‘gypsy’ and without doubt the rom baro of this group.”

“Rom baro?” Bucky asked.

One of the others seated among them laughed.  “She means to say that she’s our leader,” he said once he’d composed himself.

“Why is that funny?” Steve asked, brow furrowing.  He tried to soften the most likely stern look he was giving the man.

Mirela rolled her eyes and placed a hand on Steve’s shoulder.  “Pay no mind to Pesha.  He finds my use of rom baro entertaining because it is a masculine term and masculine role among Roma.  He lets his amusement make him forgetful of what I can do with a shiv.”  She gave Pesha a honey-warm smile that managed to still come across as threatening.  Pesha immediately averted his eyes.  Steve thought he could see how Mirela was one of Peggy’s informants.

“What’s with the dog?” Bucky asked.

“Hmm?  Him?” Mirela asked, pointing at Pesha.

“No.  No, I meant—”

“I know what you meant, soldier,” Mirela laughed.  “I took the dog from an S.S. officer.  The bastard no longer had need of it.  Besides, this is war, no?”  Bucky nodded.  “And this is Dog.”  She gestured to the animal, which wagged its tail.  “It’s a simple enough strategy.  You take dog of war, once used to kill innocents, and turn it on its masters.  No longer just a dog of war.  Dog of liberation.”

“Still a dog of war,” Bucky said, eyeing the dog warily.  “Still a weapon.”

Mirela shrugged.  “Every weapon has some degree of recoil.  Some weapons even backfire.”

Though the mission went smoothly and the culprits behind the attacks were taken care of, Mirela’s words followed them upon their departure, leaving Steve to question even more than he already did as to whether or not the consequences of the choice he made – the choices that had led him here – were worth the bigger picture, the greater good, or if his actions were simply those draped in the euphemistic duties of the dog of liberty.

Looking over to Bucky, he tried to offer a smile, tried to at least muster a “Good job out there today”, but only managed as weak of a smile as was returned to him.  Neither of them said a word, but Steve knew their thoughts were in the same place – stuck on a bloodstained hillside in the Black Forest, the shift in their roles seismic enough to rattle them months later.  For if Steve was the dog of liberty, that only left one other option for Bucky.

(and, God, he wished it didn’t) 

 

****

 

Rain sloshed against the only window in the room, the sound peaceful aside from the occasional thunderclap (too similar to a bomb being dropped) that cracked through the calm.  It was dark, almost too dark for even Steve to see, but not quite so much that he was blind to the blonde in front of him.

She, on the other hand, was blind to him.

He watched as faded pink irises flicked around, trying to see him despite their inability to do so – a natural impulse.  Hesitant hands reached out to his face only to stop short of their destination.

“May I?” she asked, her voice possessing none of the reluctance of her hands.

Steve nodded at first, almost feeling that words would somehow tarnish the moment, only to remember that he had to speak.  “Yeah,” he said, hushed.  “Yeah, sure.”

She reached out, slowly, and placed a gentle hand on his forehead, fingers resting in his hair.  She ran a fingertip over his eyebrow and eyelid (brushing over lashes), over cheekbone and the bridge of his nose, her hand finally resting along his jaw.  A slight smile turned the corners of her lips, which were painted in a light shade of red lipstick (somewhere between coral and ruby). 

“You have nice bone structure,” she said, a small laugh following her words before she added, “And I can actually feel you blushing.  I’m glad you’re flattered.”  She paused for a moment, a finger lightly tapping against his face in thought.  “What color hair do you have?”

It seemed to Steve that such a simple question would be one she would have asked upon first meeting him, not months afterward.  Months of working together, fighting together, plotting together.  It seemed backwards to ask just now.  He’d feel kept in the dark not knowing anything about the person he was working with, fighting with a stranger rather than someone he could trust.  Then again, maybe that was the point.  Althea was literally in the dark.  Maybe the lack of knowledge (outside of “This is Steve Rogers, Captain America - you’re to work with him”) mixed with the absence of betrayal germinated trust.  Backwards, compared to how he preferred to operate, but meaningful nonetheless.

“Blond,” he said finally.

“Eyes?” she asked.

“Blue,” he answered.  “Althea—”

“Ah-ah, Blondie,” she said with a shake of her head and a ruffle of his hair before her hand left his face.  “It’s just Al.  Only Althea if you’re my superior.  And never ‘Ally’ unless you want to die.”

“Noted,” Steve said with a soft laugh.

“Laugh, but you know I’m being serious,” Al said indifferently.

And he did.  For the most part.  He knew that her threat held truth.  Her blindness didn’t hinder her abilities as a British intelligence operative. She was more than capable of killing him.  Steve would actually think she was being serious if it weren’t for the smallest of grins on her face.

They fell silent for some time as the sound of bombs in the distance pounded through the storm, louder and more daunting that the thunder.  Getting the intel they’d collected back to Bucky and the Commandos would have to wait another night, despite how much Steve had debated on doing otherwise (Al had won that argument).  A part of him hated it – the waiting – but another part of him was (grudgingly) thankful for it.  Not the storm, definitely not the bombs, but for the brief calm.

He still wouldn’t sleep that night.

“You afraid?”

“Huh?” he asked, Al’s question throwing him off.

“Are you afraid?” she repeated.

“Of?”

“In general.  Of this.”  She didn’t have to elaborate for Steve to know what she meant.

He was silent for a while, watching her thumb brush over the back of his hand as if he couldn’t feel it, dully entranced with the motion of it.  He thought of Bucky and Peggy, of the Invaders and the Commandos.

(He never did think of himself)

“I don’t think there’s been a day since this started that I haven’t been afraid.”

"Didn't seem so afraid earlier today. Some would call you a hero for all this, you know that, right?"

Steve didn't hesitate, the words leaving him almost automatically. "I'm not a hero. I'm just a guy who tried to do the right thing...and didn't get shot in the process."

He could see her mulling over his answer in the expression in her face.  At first he thought she had no reply for him as she silently tucked herself in against his side, until she nodded and said, “Keep that.”

“Keep what?” he asked, brow furrowing.

“Your fear. Your humility.  Means you’re only human.  Keep your humanity.”

“And you?” he asked after a small moment of silence.

“Me?” she asked with a laugh, turning slightly to blindly stare up at him (her eyes, to his surprise, managed to find his own).  “Blondie, I can’t see a bloody thing; what do I possibly have to be afraid of?”

His laugh was low, quiet, before it was cut off with a kiss.  Brief and oddly platonic despite its implications.  Al tucked herself against his side, the sound of her steady breathing the only thing that lulled him into a light sleep.

A week later found them sitting in an MI6 safe-house outside of Madrid, Spain with Bucky, Peggy, and Howard.  Spain was an odd place.  While technically neutral, they provided aid to German and Allied forces alike.  It wasn’t such a rare sight to see German soldiers walking about, as well as Jewish refugees (though something was to be said about the tension it caused).  Most of all, Spain allowed German intelligence to operate freely; it was best to keep a low profile (something Steve hated).

“Schellenberg and his spies are aiming to pressure England to end hostilities with Germany.  They’ve been planning this for a while...to our knowledge, as far back as last year—”

“Why wasn’t anything done about it then?” Steve asked.  Peggy gave him a leveled stare.  He winced slightly before adding, “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No need to apologize, Captain,” she said, her expression remaining impassive except for a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth.  “And we tried to do something about it.  Our agent was killed.”

“Poor Scotty,” Al remarked with a sad nod.

“Apparently Dincklage and Westminster take strategic meetings with Himmler rather seriously,” Peggy continued dryly.

“Dincklage and Westminster?” Bucky asked, making a face as he sharpened one of his knives.

“Hans Gunther von Dincklage – German officer and intelligence operative—”

“With a real unfortunate last name,” Bucky finished with a laugh.

Peggy rolled her eyes despite the smile still threatening to ruin her professional façade.  “As for Westminster, she’s the other operative working for Schellenberg.”

“Her name’s gotta’ bother you,” Bucky remarked, looking at Peggy and Al.

“Yes, well…perhaps I should appreciate her sense of irony,” Peggy sighed.

“It’s only a codename,” Al shrugged.  She sat with her arms crossed, cigarette in hand, staring blankly at the floor.

“Nonetheless, she’s connected enough that the S.S. finds her suitable to take up negotiations with Churchill.”

“Do you need me to deal with her?” Howard asked.  He’d been so unusually quiet that Steve had almost forgotten he was even there.

“Deal with her?” Steve asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well…she’s well-connected, which probably means she’s rich.  I’m rich.  Why wouldn’t she—”

“She only goes for Nazi spies and married women, Romeo,” Al interrupted, blowing smoke in his direction as if on accident.

“Oh,” Howard deadpanned, sounding disappointed as he blinked from the smoke.  Bucky and Peggy both rolled their eyes.

“She’s too old for you anyway,” Al continued, tossing a photograph at Howard.  The engineer rolled his eyes before reaching down to pick up the photo he’d let fall to the floor, his eyes going a little wide as he looked at it. 

“…Or not,” Peggy added.

“So, which is it?” Bucky asked, trying (and failing horribly) to keep a straight face.  “Are you a Nazi spy or a married wom—?”

“Shut up, Barnes,” Howard snapped, grimacing.  Steve had to bite back an exasperated sigh.  Since their drunken fight, Howard and Bucky had been unbearable whenever they were forced to work together.  It made keeping things civil extremely difficult.

“Fair question,” Steve said, not quite succeeding in sounding lighthearted.  “You recognize her?”

Howard nodded, still staring at the picture.  “My family went to Monte Carlo when I was ten,” he said.  “For business.  My dad was busy talking to his friend Sam – Goldwyn, you know – when some Grand Duke of Russia comes over to us with her.  Do you even know who this is?”

Steve watched as Bucky shook his head, holding his hand out for the photograph.

“She’s a fashion designer, among other things,” Howard continued, handing the photo to Steve.  “Sam started talking her into working for Hollywood, to get her to design costumes for his actors and actresses.  She agreed but I always heard my dad talking about what a b—”

“I know who she is,” Steve said, sounding a little surprised by his own words as Bucky passed him the photograph.

“You do?” Howard asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh huh,” he nodded.  When he finally looked up from the photo to see Howard looking for more explanation, he added, “I had a friend from art school who was a real fan of her work…her stuff from the 20’s....”

“Yes,” Peggy chimed in.  “Westminster is Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, more commonly known as Coco Chanel.  Very supportive of the Nazi cause, very nasty disposition towards what they deem impure.”

“Funny, I thought you said she had an interest in married women,” Bucky said, brow furrowed slightly.

“I did,” Peggy nodded.  “We’re talking about someone who told everyone that she comes from rich roots when she actually grew up in an orphanage, then later struck up a romance with a Nazi spy to secure safe housing at the Ritz when the Germans invaded France.  She’s a known liar.”

“Shrewd,” Al added, grinning slightly.  “Very shrewd.”

“Anyway, as for the married woman – Vera Lombardi,” Peggy continued, handing another photo to Steve to pass around.  “She was arrested last year in Italy due to being suspected of working for British intelligence.”

“Does she?” Steve asked, glancing at the photo before passing it to Bucky.

“No.  The German police in Rome ordered for her to be released.  Clearly, they want her to work for them, because they involved her with Dincklage and Chanel.”

“You think she accepted their offer then?”

“I doubt it,” Peggy mused.  “She was already falsely accused of espionage and doesn’t seem the type for the job, in my opinion.  She and Chanel used to be business partners…old friends.  She probably thinks their trip to Madrid is to rehash old connections – business or otherwise.  Last week, Barnes and I were able to find out that they’re using her to deliver a letter to Churchill through the British embassy.”

“Why not have Chanel do it herself?” Steve asked.

Bucky gave him a light punch on the arm.  “That’s what I said.  Take out the middleman, less trouble.”

“She doesn’t want to put her reputation at stake,” Al scoffed.

“Pretty sure she’s already putting her reputation at stake by working with Nazis,” Steve countered.

“That’s just it though, isn’t it?” Al asked.  “Sure, people might know where she stands, but they don’t know that she’s working with them.  She doesn’t want that made public.”

“Which is where you come in, Howard,” Peggy said.  Her voice remained the same – even and professional – but Steve knew the breath she took was one of expectant protest.

Almost as if on cue: “Me?” Howard asked, pointing at himself.  “Unless you want me to fly her out of the country or blow her up, there’s not much—”

“Oh, but you were so eager to put your charms to the test a few minutes ago,” Peggy said blithely.

“She’s old – ow!”

“Don’t be such a shallow bastard,” Al snapped, smacking him upside the head.  “No one’s demanding you sleep with her.  Just charm your way into her good graces enough that she’s amiable, then inform her what she’s getting into.  She’ll do the rest.”

“You sure about that?” Steve asked before Howard could protest again.

“Pretty damn positive, Blondie,” Al nodded.  “She won’t want to get tied to anything dealing with espionage again after having her name slandered by her husband’s government.  Trust me.”

“Get yourself cleaned up and looking proper,” Peggy ordered, tossing Howard a washrag.  He frowned at it before looking up at her.  “You still have grease on your face and oil on your hands,” she added.

“What about the rest of us?” Bucky asked.

“Steve, Al, and I will be in the area in case anything goes awry.  I want you on a rooftop with a rifle as a last resort.  And by last resort, I mean only pull the trigger if one of us is killed or injured.  This is a neutral country and I’m sure assassinations in favor of war are frowned upon.”

“Neutrality's debatable if they're lettin' Nazis run intel and spies plot political power-plays,” Bucky grumbled, shrugging a shoulder.

“Regardless,” Peggy said sternly, shooting Steve and brief, exasperated look.  “You’re to keep your finger off the trigger.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he sighed, already reaching for his gun case.

“We’ll meet at the second safe house immediately afterwards.  No bars,” she said, casting a look in Howard’s direction, “and no unnecessary scuffles,” she finished, nodding at Bucky.  “I’ll see you all in a few hours.”

“C’mon, ‘Captain’, we have a blind date,” Al said, giving Steve a light smack upside the head as she stood to leave, smirking at her own little joke.

“You know, I am actually a Captain,” Steve grumbled, rubbing the back of his head.  He looked to Peggy, hoping she didn’t take Al’s statement literally, and was relieved to see that she looked amused.  “If I don’t make it back,” he began in mock graveness, getting to his feet, “it’s because your friend’s abused me into incapacitation.”

“However will we win the war without you?” Peggy asked, rolling her eyes.

It hit him just then how happy he was to actually be face-to-face with her again.  It had been so long since they’d seen each other, too long.  Sure, they kept in contact – they had to, she was one of the people he reported to during missions – but radio transmissions and a voice riddled with static was hardly competition in comparison to the real thing.  It also made him realize just how lonely this was for all of them.  They had each other’s company – irregular, scattered, battle-worn – but only a bittersweet form of companionship, surrounded by death and rubble or discussing war tactics in the dead of night.  He wasn’t sure if that made their moments of normalcy more precious or made them all the more unfair.  Perhaps both.  Whatever it was, it made him want.  He wanted to pull her close, kiss her, something.  But he didn’t.  “See you soon,” was all he said with a small smile.

He told himself that there was work to do.  He told himself there would be time afterwards.  And while they did have time – brief and rushed – once Chanel was taken away by local authorities, it was hardly enough.  So he told himself there would be time – real, genuine time – for them later, when this was all over, after the war.

(he was a fool)

 

****

 

Leisure time was hard to come by for any of them, yet one night found the Invaders around a campfire (provided by an eager Toro), discussing trivial things to past the time. When the topic turned to romance, Steve tried to tune most of the conversation out due to the fact that he didn't have much to add to it, dimly listening to Brian talk about Roger, Bucky's bragging tones turning to admiring ones when he spoke of Gretchen, and watching Hammond cast longing glances towards the tent Jacqueline was sleeping in. Steve caught Toro leaning over to whisper something into Bucky's ear, a grin spreading across his friend's face that could only signal mischief.

"So, Namor," Bucky began, his tone light but his eyes glinting as he stretched, arms held above his head. "You're awfully quiet. No such romantic luck for you?"

The Atlantean was quiet for a moment, giving Bucky a level, impassive stare before returning his gaze to the fire. "For some civilized people it is considered rude to pry about such subjects, Barnes," he said dryly.

"I never said I was civilized." When Namor remained unresponsive, Bucky laughed, stepping it up a notch. "Aw, c'mon, Namor. No Princess Moby Dick waiting for you back home in the ocean?"

Once again, Namor looked at Bucky with a fixed expression, though Steve thought there was a certain slyness in his eyes. "Perhaps one," he said loftily.

"Well?" Toro pressed. "Tell us about her."

Namor sighed. "She's of most noble prestige, beautiful green eyes, and skin the color of deep coral. She is kind, her manner as soft as her tentacles...."

It was clear by the looks of utter disgust on Toro and Bucky's faces that they immediately regretted their question. Steve and Hammond forced themselves to listen politely, occasionally giving a nod of approval, while Brian poked at the fire with a stick, his expression something close to traumatized.

By the end of the night, they all learned to never ask Namor such questions ever again.

 

****

 

He’d heard of Zola from SSR reports, from what little Bucky had spoken of him.  A weapons’ designer and biochemist intent on perfecting and expanding the human body into weaponry, the man who crafted machinery capable of slaughtering droves of people and gave Helmut Gruler the Iron Cross.  He first saw him at an under siege Hydra base, outside of a medical ward where his best friend lay strapped to a table.  He met Zola much later, when he’s drugged and captured – knees bruising on cold concrete – listening to him preach his twisted high ideals for the future as he took blood from him (he’d be damned if he let Zola carry out what he intended with his blood - not after he'd come so far, sabatoging Strucker's and Zemo's efforts to get here).

"There's really no need for this unpleasantness, Captain. We have a great deal in common. I seek perfection, and you embody it. We should be allies, you and I.... The late Dr. Erskine was a brilliant man. I have worked to recreate his Super-Soldier Serum for some time now, using fragmentary notes and samples of the Red Skull's blood. But they represent his early efforts, and my results have been...flawed.

Steve scoffed at the man’s further ramblings, of a future where man and technology became one.  He told him he was wrong.

(He doesn’t want to admit the odd feeling of being spurned that overwhelmed him when he first met Tony Stark)

 

****

 

“If you’d stop fucking moving maybe I can actually stitch you up.”

“I told you, Buck – I don’t need them.”

“The hell you don’t.  I don’t care how fast you heal; you need stitches.”

Steve sighed, casting an exasperated, pleading look to Gabe, who shrugged, giving him a ‘what did you expect?’ look as he handed Bucky something that looked a lot like dental floss.

“Barnes is right, Rogers,” Gabe finally said, passing a bottle of rubbing alcohol to Bucky.  “That laceration looks bad.  We can’t just let you bleed.”

Steve resisted the urge to knock the bottle of alcohol out of Bucky’s hand due to the smug look on his face.  He settled for scowling at him instead.

It was then that he got a better look at his friend’s expression.  He didn’t seem entirely smug at a second glance.  In fact, the self-satisfied look seemed forced.

He seemed angry.

Gabe must have picked up on it, too, probably from watching both of their expressions.  He cleared his throat.  “I’ll uh...I’ll be outside for a moment.  Jim said one of your Invaders needs some medical assistance, so...I’ll be back to check on you.”

“Don’t insult the Atlantean too much,” Bucky said flatly, winding a thread of floss through a needle and pouring some alcohol on it.  Gabe nodded, giving them a quick smile and nod before taking his leave.

Silence.  Uncomfortable silence.  It was new for them, or at least new to Steve.  Usually any silence between them was bearable.  Brief.  At worst, occasionally strained.  This was different.  Overdue, perhaps.  Steve didn’t know what to say – didn’t know what was wrong – and Bucky seemed intent on letting him find out on his own.

Steve didn’t flinch as the needle pierced his skin, but he flinched at the sound of Bucky’s voice.

“You know, this is why you shouldn’t bench me, Cap.  You can’t do everything alone.”

Despondent.  Cool.  All despite the look on his face – forced amiability.

“We got out alive,” Steve said, knowing almost as soon as he said the words how dismissive they sounded.

“Barely,” Bucky scoffed.  Steve had to be imagining that he tugged a little bit harder than necessary as he continued to stitch up his wound.

“Still alive,” he insisted, stolid.

“That’s not the point.”

Steve scratched at the back of his head.  “Look, I needed you with the Commandos today instead of the Invaders.  I don’t see—”

“I’m still on both teams, right?” Bucky asked, pulling the final thread through his skin and cutting it loose from the needle.  “Or was all your insisting with Stimson all for show?”

“What?” Steve barked, scrunching up his nose in indignation.  “Don’t be an idiot, you know that’s not—”

“Then why bench me?”

“I didn’t bench you,” Steve maintained, voice raising slightly.  “Like I said, I needed you with the Commandos today to—”

“To what?  Sit around and—”

“You’ve really gotta’ stop interrupting m—”

“—do nothing – no – all damn day while you’re off doing what you do and—”

“I don’t thi—”

“—you know that I’m your tactical support.  Hammond and Toro and Namor can only have your back so much in the air and you go ahead and remove your ground support?”

“Namor nearly got killed today.  Namor,” Steve emphasized through gritted teeth.

“You’ve been doing this the past few weeks – hell, the past few months!  At Zola’s manor, that Hydra base in Bienwald, Strucker’s—”

“I don’t think you realize just what we were up against today.  If I brought you along you could have been—”

“What?  Killed?!  I’ve slit men’s throats and put bullets through their skulls without blinking when you couldn’t even so much as raise your shield and you’re worried about me?!”

Steve couldn’t say anything.  The quiet was chilling.  Honest.  Though his words were harsh, Steve knew that Bucky wasn’t entirely wrong in saying them.  If he were honest, they were things he’d been expecting to hear since the incident in the Black Forest, and only more so in the missions that followed.  In a lot of ways, Bucky was more of what the government – hell, even the SSR – wanted from Project Rebirth; a soldier, a weapon, someone who would follow orders and carry out their plans with efficiency.  Instead, they’d ended up with Steve; someone who listened to orders and then made decisions as he saw fit, hardly a soldier in comparison.

A weapon that thinks too much isn’t a weapon at all.

Bucky ran a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes as if the motion would calm him.  “...I’m sorry—”

“No, no, that’s...that’s fair,” Steve said, his shoulders slumping, but Bucky pressed on as if he hadn’t heard him.

“I just...I can take care of myself.  I always have.  And I can take care of...I mean, I’m not going to let how things have changed stop me from having your back, okay?  That doesn’t change.  That never changes.”

Once more, Steve wasn’t sure what to say.  He just nodded.  The tension from their argument, however brief it had been, still hung in the air like trench-grime stuck on a boot.  He thought back to Bucky’s last night in New York, the argument they’d had, and tried to compare it to now.  He couldn’t.  This was different.  Heavier.  Heavy enough to feel like a weight was pressing into his chest.  Guilt.  Because despite what he’d said, Steve had been trying to keep Bucky out of the fray of things – his own fear overriding his friend’s wants.

“Unless you’d rather have Namor watch your back,” Bucky added, cutting through the tension simply by filling the silence.  “I’m just sayin', I’m far more likeable.”

It was typical of Bucky to do this, to say something meaningful – even heartfelt – and follow it with a joke or a taunt.  He’d done the same years ago, at the bar in London, too drunk and beaten down to avoid honesty.  And while Steve managed a small smile and a weak laugh, he heard Bucky’s voice.  Flat and weary, not authentic enough to come across as what he’d intended as humor but instead sounding bitter and exhausted.  It twisted Steve’s gut.  He wanted to apologize, wanted to say something, but the words were caught in his throat.  He stayed silent.

“You guys destroyed the base, right?” Bucky asked after enduring another moment of not hearing anything from Steve.  “The Hydra base where Zola was hiding out?”

Steve cleared his throat.  “Uh, yeah...yeah we did.”

“So Zola’s dead?”  Steve could have sworn Bucky’s tone sounded hopeful, almost happy.

“No,” he sighed, the disappointment he’d felt as he had left the ruined Hydra base came flooding back into focus.  “He got away.”

“Oh.”  Bucky looked to the ground, the faintest shadow of a snarl on his face.  “Any word as to how or where?”

“We don’t know how he got away.  But Falsworth told me once I got here that he overheard talk of Zola fleeing to a discreet base sometime in the next week or so.”

“I’m going with you,” Bucky said, looking Steve in the eyes.  The steely determination there was almost unsettling.  He had to look away.  “Steve?”  Bucky’s brows were raised, his expression just verging on pleading.

“I know,” Steve finally said, looking back and keeping eye contact.  “I know you are.”

“Good.”  Bucky’s sounded as if he’d been ready to argue again, voice clipped, expecting Steve to refuse.  Really, Steve know he couldn’t blame him for that.  Had their roles been reversed – reverted back to how things used to be – Steve would have reacted the same way.  Stubborn.  Jaw locked, chewing on the inside of his lip.  Thoroughly pissed off but not wanting to let it show, every fiber of his being screaming, ‘damn it, I’m capable!’  It was only with that realization that Steve threw in the white flag.

“I’m sorry, Buck.”  His whole body seemed to deflate as he said the words.  Steve wanted to tell Bucky that he knew he could take care of himself.  Wanted to say that he’d never doubted that.  Needed to explain that with the way things have changed, the fragility of human life was something he was far more aware of – or maybe the war itself had done that.  Either way, he knew how much more immune to damage he was in comparison to the rest – to him – and that was terrifying.  He’d wanted to come overseas when he was sick and frail and useless with the stupid notion that he’d somehow be able to have Bucky’s back.  To help.  To make sure he got out of this alive because, in the end, that was all that really mattered to him.  Now that he could actually ensure that (and wasn’t that arrogant?), it was all too tempting to throw his weight around, to do whatever it took to keep him out of harm’s way even if that meant keeping him from the fight altogether.

But he didn’t say any of that.

“I was wrong,” he said after a moment.  “To sideline you.  It won’t happen again.”

Bucky seemed to be trying to read his thoughts, his eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly.  Or maybe he already knew what Steve was trying to say, what he hadn’t said.  He must have reached some sort of internal approval, because he nodded, the hints of a smile on his face.

“Can you stand?” Bucky asked, getting to his feet.

“I think, yeah,” Steve nodded.

“Then on your feet, soldier.”  He clapped Steve on the back, being mindful not to hit any wounds.  “We should check on Namor before he gets all pissy that no one’s paying him any attention.”

“He’ll ‘get all pissy’ if we do check on him,” Steve chuckled, shaking his head but getting to his feet anyway.

“So it’s a win-win, or lose-lose, whatever.  Might as well.  Won’t get to see him for another week or so.”

“No arguments here,” Steve said, raising his hands in mock-surrender.

“Good.  Besides, I owe Toro a card game.  Think if Namor’s up to it that I can bribe him into playing?”

“If anyone can bribe anyone into anything, it’s you.  Just know that we have to be up at dawn.”

“Understood,” Bucky nodded, smirking.

Steve was just relieved that the tension seemed to have passed.

(Namor was horrible at cards)

He didn’t once stop to think that Bucky may have once again just been diverting the hostility with humor.

 

****

 

The air was unbelievably frigid at that altitude.  More so at that velocity.  The wind was deafening, his own voice barely audible as he shouted, “Grab my hand!”

He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear the metal railing begin to give way, a slow, agonized screech that he can still bring to mind as if he’d heard it only seconds ago.

And there’s a moment, right before the rail actually gives.  Their eyes meet and though it’s only a few seconds, he knows.  Steve knows that look.  He knows he’s wearing it, too.  It’s a knowing look.  He wants to call it acceptance or even defeat but that doesn’t explain why he still reaches out in desperation.  In vain.

It’s a dead man’s look.

(he thinks if it weren’t for shock, he would have let go of the rail he clung to)

 

****

 

He broke the promise he made when he was eighteen, sitting in the bombed out London bar.

He didn’t much care.

In fact, he was starting to see how easy it must have been for his father to drink himself to death.

(It wasn’t a courtesy his son could share, but just because he couldn’t do something never stopped him from trying)

He wished the planes would drop another wave of bombs (he thinks that’s sick, selfish – it is; he no longer cares)

Peggy tried to talk sense into him.  He barely heard her, unsure if the buzz in his brain was from sadness or anger or that somehow he drank enough to actually get drunk.  Maybe it’s all three.

“Did you believe in your friend?  Did you respect him?”

He wanted everything to just stop, the way it felt like it had, but he knew that it couldn’t, that it wouldn’t.  Life would go on despite him feeling that it had as good as ended.

So he gave Peggy his ultimatum and left for the shelter of the base, walking the streets as if on autopilot.  The next day he’s told of Zola’s interrogation (a part of him fills with rage that the man gets his freedom in exchange for information).  The day after that, the SSR held an emergency meeting. 

“So what are we supposed to do?  It’s not like we can just knock on the front door.”

“Why not?  That’s exactly what we’re gonna’ do.”

They look at him as if he’d suggested a suicide mission.

They ought to.

 

****

 

He learned the hard way that intent and reality are two very different, harshly different, things.  That not caring whether you live or die is shot to hell once you’re faced with imminent, inescapable death.

(He wonders if that’s fancy talk for ‘cowardice’)

Despite the few horrifying seconds of hearing the comm go static, despite the sound of metal being ripped apart and compressed, despite the glass being shattered – shards flying back and ripping through his skin – and despite the gust of unbearably cold air stinging open, bleeding wounds…regret is all he felt the moment before impact.

(Regret is all he feels when he wakes)

Chapter 2: Of Things Undone

Steve reaches out.

Bucky dies.

 

****

 

There’s a buzzing noise.  Faint, at first, but growing louder.  There’s a grinding sound accompanied by it.  No, not just sound.  Sensation.  A faint burning.  No – a pain.  Sharp, agonizing pain jars the body awake, white-hot and constant.  There’s an unmistakable and familiar stench in the room.  Something warm flecks against the side of a face.  There’s an urge to wipe it away.  But nothing happens.  The limb doesn’t respond to the brain’s command.

A man screams as flesh is stripped away and bone is ground smooth.  He thinks it’s a long while before someone orders from him to be put back under….

(Surely it was anesthetic lulling him into unconsciousness now)

 

****

 

“You should try to rest, too, Son,” a voice – a man – says, spoken as if underwater.  “It’s been a long day.”

There aren’t any faces.  Just shapes and silhouettes, dancing and blurring in and out of focus.

“Dad, I—”

There’s nothing here to see.

 

****

 

If childhood was a time to grow your roots, Bucky thought he didn’t have much of one.  Indiana.  Born, but not raised.  Hollow.  Hard to say you’re from anywhere when you move from place to place. Rootless.  It was something he learned to accept.  The normal way of life.

Which wasn’t to say that he had some awful excuse for a childhood, because they had some good times.  It just wasn’t easy to sit back and watch his dad struggle to try and make those good memories, to make them stick out, especially after Mom died.

“How d'you do it?” he’d asked one night.

“Do what, James?”

“Keep…going on.  With things the way they are.”

His dad fell silent for a moment, long enough that Bucky didn’t think he was going to get an answer.  Something like sadness had wound its way into the faint lines on the man’s face.  Finally, he said, “A dog on the hunt doesn’t know he has fleas.”

Perseverance was something he learned to mimic.

So when his dad died, when Becca was taken away and he was left in the hands of an orphanage, he was able to fake a brave smile.  He had no one else to reassure but himself, after all.

Bucky didn’t start smiling true again until—

Until....

He doesn’t remember.

—he began to grow roots not in a place but with a person.

 

****

 

The man wakes up to a room full of people.  Strangers.  Armed strangers.  He searches for names, for something familiar, but nothing comes to mind.  He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there.  Or why there’s mechanical equipment surrounding him, IVs anchored into his veins.  He feels strangely lopsided, unbalanced and uneven, and it’s only after looking can he see the bandages wound around the stub that should be his left shoulder and arm.

A click draws the man’s attention back to the people around him.  Their weapons are drawn, ready to fire if--

If.

One man’s eyes are wide, fearful.  They find his demeanor off-putting.

And it’s at the sound of that click that everything changes.  Instincts take over.  Guns are grasped and used against their holders, stocks rammed into teeth and noses.  Bones are cracked and broken.  Windpipes are crushed.  Necks are snapped.  Fists are bludgeoned against skulls and faces until the man’s hands are red.  Until a sharp pinprick of pain at his neck brings nearly instant drowsiness to the man.  He turns his head slightly just in time to see a syringe dislodged from his skin.  His vision tunnels, his hearing muffles, and the man collapses into darkness.

 

****

 

Loyalty could be ugly.

It wasn't just the pure, idealistic embodiment of morality. Steadfast. Sure. A pat on the back when reassurance was needed or a rightly-timed smile. Sometimes loyalty was a fist. Loyalty was taking a beating. Loyalty could deceive.

And so Bucky Barnes learned to be a con man (a liar, a thief).

It was simple.  Exchange items for favors (steal those cigarettes Earl wants in exchange for the Tijuana bible that Joe wants in exchange for the cash that Bucky needs to save or bribe someone to not break Steve’s face for one week, just one – Steve didn’t need another bloody lip, Mrs. Rogers stressed enough over the last one and she wasn’t well these days).  If that didn’t work, verbal blackmail usually did the trick (“I know all about you and Marlene from 14^th Street. If you keep it up, word might get out to Suzie.  Her old man could have your job, y’know”).  When that didn’t work…well, sometimes it was better to resort to simpler methods – a fist or a kiss, depending on the person.  He could charm and talk his way in and out of any situation or bedroom (or so he liked to think – but history was telling).  And if he stole a dollar or two from someone’s wallet or purse before he left, well…it was for a good cause (not that Steve would agree, but Bucky couldn’t make a career out of ‘odd jobs’ and both their incomes combined weren’t enough to support them).

Bucky Barnes learned to become a gambling man (a cheat, a pawn).

He’d bet on anything.  From horse races to games of pool to how many taxis would pass by within the next minute.  He’d make a bet even when he didn’t have cash to back up his word if he lost (revert to step one: bribery).  If he got caught on the bad end of a gamble, well….

Bucky Barnes learned to be a fighter (a troublemaker, reckless), his younger years splattered with busted lips, bruised eye sockets, and bloody knuckles – shoes scuffing and knees scrapping on back alley concrete as shouts of pain and encouragement bombarded his ears.  It wasn’t long before he started taking bets on back alley altercations and drunken bar brawls, putting his money on himself if need be.  In the beginning, he’d slink home – wherever that was at the time – and crawl into bed, pulling the blankets over his head so no one (especially Steve – god the questions would be endless) would see the results of the day’s ‘game’.

Bucky didn’t go looking for trouble.  He’d swear to that.  Trouble found him.

He was seventeen when it first backfired.

He was walking back to the orphanage, fifteen dollars in his pocket and – for the first time that week – pride over the lack of fresh bruises on his skin when a shout caught his attention.

“Hey, you! Kid! C’mere.”

Words like that usually sent Bucky running in the opposite direction.  Or pretending that he wasn’t the one being addressed (he was always the one being addressed), but he decided to take his chances as he turned around, hands stuffed in the pockets of his tattered coat.  The guy looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, dressed nicely enough to seem like he was doing well for himself despite the times.  He didn’t look like a cop. Bucky let out a sigh of relief.

“What?” he asked, only taking a few steps closer, keeping a good five feet between them so he could get away if he needed.  He was a fast runner.

The man took a step forward.  “Your name’s Barnes, right?”

Stubborn, Bucky held his ground with a scowl.  “Yeah, what of it?”

“Right.  Figured you were him.”  He paused, leveling Bucky with a stern look.  “You broke my son’s nose and gave him enough of a busted lip to need stitches.  I’d like to know why.”

Bucky shifted from one foot to the other.  He hadn’t been confronted about his behavior since—

“Bucky…you have to stop it with the fighting…you’re better than this…I want you to promise me there’ll be no more of this.”

“Okay…I promise….”

 

****

 

He feels drugged when he wakes.  Sluggish.  He’s dimly aware that he’s restrained again, more than aware that they’re drilling something into his skin.  A quick glance tells him that it’s metal.  Circular, like a socket.  Bolts digging into bone.  The press of cool metal against skin.  He bites his lip, unable to find the strength to so much as cry out.  He isn’t sure if he fades out from the drugs or passes out from the pain….

 

****

 

“I—“

“Keep in mind I don’t like liars, son.”

A part of him felt like he didn’t owe this man an explanation (so what if he did break his kid’s nose?  He deserved it.  What kind of guy kicks a ninety pound asthmatic in the gut while he’s down?), another part was suddenly very aware that they were the only ones in the alleyway, that maybe he should run, but none are as overwhelming as the guilt brought about by the man’s tone of voice.  Stern disappointment.  Like last words he’d heard nearly six years ago over a promise he hadn’t kept (couldn’t keep).

His shoulders sagged as he sighed.  “Payback…and money.”

“You stole from my son after you broke his nose?” the man asked, visibly disgusted.

“No!” Bucky amended quickly.  “I got the cash from his friend who didn’t think I could break his nose….”  His voice trailed from defensive to hushed, semi-apologetic. Nothing he said sounded that much better than what he'd been accused of.  “Look, I don’t…I don’t mean any disrespect, but your kid’s an ass and had it coming.”  He held up his hands in a harmless gesture, seeing the man’s jaw clench. 

The man crossed his arms.  “You know Samson, right?  Friend of your old man?”

“How d’you—?”

“I know a lot of things about a lot of people,” he interrupted, waving a dismissive hand.  “I doubt he’d approve if you got into legal trouble over your…activities.”

Bucky was quickly learning that he didn’t like being on the other end of his own game.

“…Probably,” he mumbled, staring at his shoes.

“Of course he wouldn’t.”  The man’s tone was jovial, as if the restrained anger in his voice moments ago had never existed.  “So, I’ll make you a deal.”

Bucky gave him a skeptical look.  “…What kinda’ deal?”

“I own a gym.  If you clean up the place a few times a day and at night – for free – I won’t report you.”

It wasn’t ideal, but he had a feeling – from the fact that the guy seemed used to throwing his weight around –  it could have gone worse.

(And maybe Steve – and even his dad – would prefer things turn out this way)

Every day (eleven to twelve, four to six, seven to close), for weeks, Bucky showed up at Goldie’s Gym and worked.  And while it wasn’t work he cared to do, he would sometimes stay past the time he was needed just to preoccupy himself.  The man, Vince (he never gave a last name), wasn’t so intimidating after a while.  As tensions eased, they even began to talk.  Of home (Vince had come to New York from Italy; Bucky talked about Indiana, about Steve, about the orphanage), of hobbies (Vince enjoyed a good gamble and a stiff drink; Bucky couldn’t help but agree), of family (all of Vince’s family was still in Italy except his brother, who he worked with; Bucky’s family was dead with the exception of Steve and Becca – who he hadn’t heard from in months), of aspirations (Vince said that while he enjoyed the benefits of his business, he looked forward to the day he could retire; Bucky just wanted to get by).  After a while, Bucky could say he thought the guy was decent – maybe not in some people’s opinion, but good enough for his standards even despite the shady business meetings (men in suits walking in and out of the building at odd hours and leaving through the alleyway exit) and enough wealth to make him question how it had been earned (briefcases of cash brought in, divvied out over hushed discussion).  Whenever Vince would catch Bucky looking on during these exchanges, he’d give him a slow nod – almost as if to say, ‘I see you. Keep quiet’.

Bucky didn’t need much convincing.

Leverage, after all.

It was past closing time on the sixth week of working at Goldie’s when Vince came over to where Bucky was mopping the floor, keys jingling slightly in his hand.  He didn’t speak until Bucky looked up.

“Floor looks good,” he said, nodding to it.

“Ought to.”  He laughed but his voice was sullen.  “I’ve been cleaning it for the past hour.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, actually.”

Bucky stopped what he was doing, using the mop to support himself. He was exhausted. “Yeah?”

Vince nodded.  “Don’t you have someplace better to be?  It’s not like you’re getting paid.”

Bucky shrugged.  “Better’n the orphanage.”

“What about your friend?”

He shrugged a shoulder, almost ashamedly, and looked back to the floor, the water from the mop only just now drying, leaving blotches of wet and dry tile scattered about.  “I’m not ignoring him or anything like that.  It’s not that at all.  It’s just….”  How could he go back to that place knowing that was it? That that was the life he and Steve were stuck with?  He couldn’t stand staying there night after night knowing that as soon as Steve turned eighteen he might as well be out on the streets. The matron only kept Bucky around out of begrudgingly accepting his offer to help keep house. She was bound to get fed up eventually.

Vince let out a sigh, looking around the gym like it would give him an idea as to how to comfort Bucky.  “If I put you up in a place, would you pay rent?”

Bucky looked up, eyebrows raised.  “Yeah…yeah, I would.”

Vince nodded.  “I think you’ve worked enough to compensate for my son’s broken nose.”  There was a sliver of amusement to the older man’s voice that faded as he began laying down the rules – all business.  “But you’re a good worker.  If you stay here, I’ll give you eight bucks a week.  I’ll take care of the proper paperwork, you take care of the rest.  Rent’s due the first of the month.  No exceptions.”

He was speechless.  Even opened his mouth in an attention to thank him but the most that came out was a broken sound of what would have been words.  When he went to try again, Vince held up a hand.  “Don’t mention it.  Just keep quiet about the paperwork.  And the rest,” he added, more seriously.

“Yeah,” Bucky nodded, earnest.  “Yeah, of course.”

Vince handed him a piece of paper with a scribbled address with a tired sort of smile.  “I’ll have the proper documents for you tomorrow morning.  Go tell your friend.”

Bucky didn’t need telling twice.

 

****

 

He doesn’t wake again until the whir of the drill sounds too close for comfort, narrow drill-bit burrowing into his scalp to his skull.  He wants to scream but his voice is muffled with cloth.  He wants to lurch away because oh god they’re going to kill him, but his head is firmly secured.  Immobile.  Someone must have increased the IV drip because he hears talk of microchips and nerve-endings and arm functions before he falls into darkness once more.

 

 

****

 

He’s not sure how long he’s been unconscious, but he wakes to darkness.  Some instinct compels him to wave a hand in front of his face only to have muscles twitch in vain – restrained. Again.  His left arm feels like dead weight and for several moments he can’t figure out why.  He tries to move it only for searing pain to rip through the limb, through his brain.  Gritting his teeth and turning to look at the source, he realizes that he’s blindfolded and remembers why his arm feels so heavy – images flashing behind his eyelids, vivid and sanguine.  The realization spurs a headache – throbbing like an extra pulse and strong enough to make his stomach roll, the pounding in his head almost in rhythm to the slow, steady drip of water coming from somewhere in the room.

He wishes he hadn’t noticed.

(No water)

Days (?)

(No food)

He tries to keep count but occasionally the rhythm in which the droplets fall changes to irritatingly rapid to agonizingly slow to outright erratic and it throws him off.  He tries to tune out the sound by thinking of other things but when he tries to search for something to think of there’s nothing there.  His headache intensifies.

Eventually, exhaustion wins out and he begins to drift.  Restlessly.  He doesn’t know how long he sleeps for (not much) when the cloth over his head is yanked away by a man standing near him with a gun in hand.  The room that had been dark just a moment before is now flooded with blinding white light, strong enough to make him recoil – the man beside him bashes him over the head with the end of the gun for doing so (soldier, dressed in a uniform vaguely familiar but not Russian) before leaving, his absence replaced only by a need for sleep denied by light and sound.  Sound, low frequency and static, seeping into the room from god knows where.  The dripping water is gone, instead replaced by the ticking of a clock that seems to skip ahead at odd minutes and hours.  He thinks he stays there for days, but he can’t be sure.

When they finally come to fetch him (dressed in different uniforms), he’s too weak to stand, too weak to fight them as they unshackle and drag him to his feet.  Through tired eyes he sees that one of the men have a syringe in hand, on standby in case he lashes out.  He wants to.  He can’t.  They haul him down a narrow hallway and shove him into a another room.  A nicer room, with a small bed (good) and a small table where a glass of water and a plate of food rest.  He’s tempted to avoid them and simply sleep, but instinct outweighs any shred of caution.  Pure exhaustion or drugged food, he falls asleep fast.

The events go on and on, endless repeat.

(always different uniforms)

And again.

(always with the needle on standby)

Again.

Until one day they strap him into a chair, leather binding one wrist and steel binding the other and jabbing needles into his skin. One pulls him down. Down. Threatens to lull him into the deepest sleep, teetering on the edge of nonexistence until a technician injects him with another drug and his lungs sputter like a poorly oiled engine and his heart races and lodges itself into his throat and he wants to choke and wants--

The scenario repeats before he can realize he wants it to stop.

Endless.

Until they lead him to a third room, a new room, one in which the whir of electronics buzzes through the air, tickling his brain and grating against his nerves.  In the center of the room is a machine-like chair with wires stretching out from its top – a helmet, a mask.  He tries to stop walking but the men on either side of him press forward.  He stumbles, not having much choice but to keep walking.  He’s pushed down, strapped in, a bite block shoved into his mouth unceremoniously and the contraption wheezes into life, sliding into place, closing over his head, the drug pumping through his veins making him feel faded and sloppy.

There’s pain.

He thinks he feels blood trickle past his lips.

He forgets.

 

****

 

“You know, I’ve decided you’re alright.”

“Huh?”

Through Christmases spent opening newspaper wrapped gifts of apples or patch sewn clothes and an accumulation of more friends than enemies, Bucky felt for the first time that he was actually building a life for himself.  Tonight was one of those nights that seemed to prove it.  It was the night of FDR’s reelection and Bucky was on his way to being drunk.  Alice was already there.  Florence had been so for an hour and was slumped against Alice’s shoulder, asleep.  Across the room, Steve and Arnie seemed to be having a serious conversation.

“I said, I’ve decided you’re alright,” Alice repeated.

“Aw, Alice, I’m hurt – you haven’t always thought I’m the best?” Bucky asked, half-grinning at her.

“No.  And come on, I’m trying to be serious,” she said, swatting at his shoulder and missing the mark by a few inches.

“Alright, fine,” he laughed.  “So why just now?  Is it the champagne I bought?”

Alice leveled him with a look.  “You didn’t buy this champagne, Barnes. Or the wine.  Everyone here and their dog knows that.”

“No one here owns’a dog.  Steve’s allergic.”

“Barnes!”  She let out an exasperated sigh.  “Will you shut up and stop wise cracking for once in your life?”

“Being serious,” he deadpanned, expression innocent.

“Barnes.”

“Okay, okay.”  She gave him a skeptical look.  He waved a hand in surrender.  “Honest!”

“Alright…so, what I’m trying to say is – you’re a decent guy.  Even despite the whole...Evelyn business."

It took him longer than it should to mull over such a brief statement, nodding a little in acknowledgement.  “Good t’know, I s’pose.”

“I even get you a little.  Understand you,” Alice continued.  “You’re not as much of a tramp as you make yourself out to be-–”

“Debatable.”

“You do what you do because you care.”  She nodded towards Steve.  “Not many people do-- go out of their way for someone else, I mean.  S’admirable, a bit.”

Bucky never dealt well with compliments, even sober – intoxication didn’t change that.  “Uh…thanks,” he managed with a small laugh.  Maybe he was more drunk than he thought, the glass or two (three?) of wine hitting him like a gentle but insistent lull, making him want to close his eyes, resting his head against the back of the couch.

“He’s something else, huh?” she asked.

Bucky cracked one eye open to see that she was still talking about Steve and looking at Bucky with a warm smile.  “Yeah.  Yeah, he is,” he mumbled before closing his eye again.

Alice laughed, gently getting to her feet so as not to disturb Florence, setting a pillow beneath her head before reaching over to ruffle Bucky’s hair.  “Sleep it off, Barnes.”

 

****

 

He refused to cry at the funeral.

(he’d done enough of that at the last three he’d been to)

 

****

 

February found him huddled in too-thin blankets near the noisy, temperamental heater that occasionally tried to keep their drafty apartment warm, sifting through letters Rebecca had sent him while Steve was in class.  A collection which grew from a scribble to a slanting scrawl as the years passed, describing such trivial things as lunch menus, Claudia who was much too full of herself and liked to boast of her family’s wealth, and proud remarks of good grades to foggy nostalgia (“Do you remember what mom was like?  Sometimes I wish I could.  It’s hard, not knowing how she was and having to hear the other girls talk about going home to see theirs in the summer.”), condolences (“I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s mom.  She sounded like a real nice lady.”), and vague promises of the future (“When I’m finished with school, hopefully I’ll be able to visit you.  I really miss you, Jim.”).  Bucky hadn’t written her in some time, always busy, trying to make money, trying to survive.  For the first time in months he had the time to sit down and write his sister back.

He wanted to tell her that their mom had been kind and patient, that she’d always resembled her.  He’d tell her not to pay attention to Claudia, congratulate her on her grades, tell her he was proud that she’d graduate one day because he wished he’d have been able to do the same.  He’d remind her that she was the only person who could get away with calling him Jim.  He’d write to tell her that he hoped he could convince Samson to let her come back and live with him.  Most of all, Bucky would tell Rebecca that he missed her, too.

And he would have, if Steve hadn’t come home early with a near stricken look on his face.  Bucky stood up, leaving the blank piece of paper he’d been about to write on lying on the floor, immediately jumping to the conclusion that Steve might be having an asthma attack.

“What is it?  What’s wrong?”  He took a step towards Steve only to stop himself from moving further, realizing that his friend seemed to be fine – in regards to health, at least.  Bucky gave him a concerned look, silently questioning.

“We’re at war.”

 

****

 

Bucky didn’t want to go to war.  He didn't care how good the cause.  He was happy where he was, had worked (and stolen) hard to get someplace relatively decent.  Maybe it was wrong, maybe it was selfish, but he wasn’t about to throw it all away for righteousness.

(he never claimed to be selfless)

Steve, on the other hand, felt the exact opposite with such a sincerity that Bucky felt guilty for his own indifference.

“But you—“

“Save your breath,” Steve interrupted, something like disdain in his voice.  “I’ve heard the same script since we were kids.  Am I or am I not talking to the three-time Westside YMCA welterweight champ?”

“Well…sure, but—“

“You can get me ready to pass that physical, Buck! I know you can!”

While Steve’s tone sparked a hope that maybe he could, Bucky pressed on.  “I don’t know that!  I need something to work with first!  You get winded taking three flights of stairs!  You don’t need a trainer, Steve.  You need a complete body transplant.”

He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that he’d gone too far, Steve’s impassive expression staring back at him.

“Forget it, then,” the blond shrugged, turning on his heel and beginning to walk away.  “I’ll figure it out on my own.”

A part of Bucky was perfectly content with letting Steve walk away, no matter how discouraged or hurt.  He needed to hear the truth and it was the truth - there was no way Steve would pass a military physical.  But Bucky didn’t much care for the knot in his stomach that seemed to get worse with each step further that Steve took away from him – and maybe he had been too harsh.  Most of all, when had Steve ever given up on him?

Bucky sighed, shaking his head before he caught up to Steve, hand reaching out for his shoulder.

“I didn’t say no.”

So he talked Vince into letting them use the boxing ring after hours for training sessions and gave it his best shot.  And when the gym was off limits to them, Bucky made Steve run laps around their block while he waited with a stopwatch and a smoked a cigarette, telling him to shave seconds off his time or run faster or pace himself better.  Because he didn’t know how to teach someone how to fight – just knew what other people would try to do, knew how to dodge and how to feint and how to run (when to run) and how to take a punch and mostly how to throw a punch.  And if he enjoyed taking his frustration over Steve’s stubbornness out on his friend during those sessions – well, as long as Steve didn’t know, he didn’t have to feel bad about it.

Weeks passed to find him waiting outside the exam building for Steve, smoking a cigarette from a pack he’d stolen and watching the people pass by, watching men walk into a building as civilians and out of it as soldiers, listening to their conversations change from how important it was to fight to how much they were going to miss Suzie or Zelda or Marie.  A few, mostly the ones on their own, stopped and asked Bucky if he’d enlisted.  He’d lie and say he had, ramble on about a Molly or Catherine or Joan he’d slept with the past month just so the other guy could feel like he had someone to sympathize with.  It was easier than being honest.  Easier than telling someone who was sacrificing all they had and possibly their life that he thought their decision was stupid – if you’d miss something so badly, why leave it behind in the first place?  But who was he to as that?  He was staying behind, a coward comfortable with the title, while every man his age and older walked by him with a noble cause.

An hour passed before Steve finally came back outside.  Bucky quickly stomped out his third cigarette.

“How’d it go?”

Steve didn’t have to say anything for Bucky to know the answer.  His gut twisted over how he’d been secretly hoping his friend wouldn’t pass.

( secretly terrified they’d take him anyway).

“Steve…I’m, I’m sorr—”

“Don’t sweat it, Buck…I’m gonna’ get a second opinion.”

Which was typical of Steve.  Never one to take no for an answer in the face of defeat.  So Bucky nodded, managed a small smile, and kept his tone jovial.  “What’re you gonna’ do?  Lie on the form?  Knew hanging around me would do you no good.”

All he needed to see was a hint of a smile on Steve’s face.  Good.

“C’mon.”  He gave Steve’s shoulder a light shove before nodding for him to follow.  “Let’s grab something to eat and get back home.  You can enlist tomorrow.”

And he did – or tried, at least.  Bucky was sure that was going to be the last of it, but it wasn’t.  A week later, Steve tried for a third time.  And then a fourth.  Bucky knew this was important to him, knew it mattered either because Steve saw what was going on overseas as worth fighting for or because had a point to prove (and no matter how much Steve denied it, Bucky knew he did), but all he could think about was how adamant his best friend seemed to be on dying.

“I just don’t get it,” he huffed, a plume of smoke escaping him from the cigarette between his lips.  He watched it fade away before passing it back to the woman lying beside him.  “He gets sick every time the seasons change.  Colds nearly kill him-– how the hell does he expect to live through a war?”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying I suppose,” Evelyn said with a shrug.  “Does seem a bit excessive though.  Bit idiotic, really.”

Bucky shot her a look out of the corner of his eye before plucking the cigarette from her fingers before she could take another drag.  “He’s a passionate person, s’all.”

The blonde hummed, whether in agreement, disapproval, or indifference, Bucky didn’t much care.  She placed a kiss on his temple before rolling out of bed and to her feet.  “I’m going to wash up.  Eddie’ll be home soon.  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you twice to make yourself scarce,” she added, something close to affection in her voice.  “Not after what almost happened last time.”

“Yeah….”  Last time had sent him hiding in the closet for a few hours before he had a chance to slip out the window and back to his own apartment.  Bucky propped himself up on an elbow.  “Doesn’t he leave a few days from now?”

“Yeah….”

Bucky scowled.  “It’s nearly his last night here and you’re spending it with me?”

Evelyn furrowed her brow, giving Bucky a dark look.  “He’s spending the night with someone he shouldn’t be either.”  She shrugged a shoulder.  “S’don’t give me that tone or that look as if you’re some saint among a sinner.  What’s it matter to you anyway?”

“Doesn’t.  Just wondering what you’ll do when he goes.”

Evelyn shrugged again.  “Kiss him goodbye.  Write him.  What most wives’ll be doing when their husbands leave.”  She gave him an amused look.  “What?  You offerin’ to take care of me?”

Bucky scoffed.  “Hell no….  I’ll still visit you though,” he added, raising an eyebrow.  "If you want, I mean."

Evelyn let out a laugh, shaking her head as she walked into the bathroom.  “I’m sure you will.”

Once he heard the water running, Bucky rolled over, leaning across the mattress to reach into the bedside drawer.  Riffling through its contents, he managed to find twenty dollars.  He sat up – about to go tuck it into the pocket of his jacket (which was lying on the floor across the room) – and paused, crinkling the cash in his hand in hesitation.  Cursing under his breath, Bucky tossed the money back into the drawer and stood to get dressed, snatching the bottle of whiskey he’d brought for them to share on his way out.

When he made his way back home, walking through the lock-picked gym entrance, he wished he had taken the money.

Vince’s son sat on the floor of the greeting desk, head in his hands.  They’d never really gotten along on the few occasions they’d been around each other after Bucky broke his nose years ago, never had much of a reason to care for each other.  As exhausted as Bucky was, he just wanted to go upstairs and collapse into bed, sleep the rest of his worries away.  But he couldn’t ignore the way the other man’s shoulders shook.

“Hey…Jack?”  The man glanced up at the sound of his name, surprise flickering across his face before his expression settled into disgruntled caution.

“Whad’ya want, Barnes?” he asked, trying to scowl through puffy, red eyes.  He must have realized Bucky would have seen that he’d been crying, because he quickly ducked his head to the side.

“Nothing….”  He stood there, quiet for a several seconds.  “You, uh…you alright?”

Jack shook his head.  “Does it look like m’alright, genius?”

A long silence fell over them, long enough for Bucky to decide to sit on the floor beside Jack, nudging him with the bottle of whiskey, offering it to him.  Jack shot a confused, nearly fragile look at him before taking the bottle.

“M’dad’s gone.”  Bucky’s stomach felt like it would bottom out (selfish).  “Dead.  Shot earlier today.”

“By who?” Bucky asked after a moment.

“Cop.  Some other mobster.  Hard to tell.”  Jack opened up the bottle of whiskey and took a moment to pour some down his throat like he hadn’t had anything to drink for days.  “Don’t know what I’m gonna’ do.”

Bucky didn’t know either.  Vince was the only reason he and Steve had a place to live.

“I’m supposed to keep up his business. Not, y’know, the other stuff, but this place….  But I’m shipping off for basic training in two days.  I-– I just don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do.”

With Jack gone, the place would likely close down, leaving Bucky down a job and possibly a place to stay if the police looked into the records of Vince’s tenants.

He wished he’d kept the bottle of whiskey for himself.

They talked through the night until sleep became too strong of a call to ignore.  He woke up the next morning to Steve cautiously prodding his shoulder (to which Bucky woke with a jolt, groaning in pain at sore neck muscles from the way he’d been sleeping), a concerned expression on his face tinged with amusement at the sight of the empty whiskey bottle at his feet.

 

****

 

While Bucky felt he’d finally talked sense into Steve, the fact that it might have been for nothing hung over his head like a too-large hat.  He’d left out the details that they might lose their apartment the night after Steve had found him sleeping on the gym floor.  The great thing about Steve was that he was a quick study – Bucky didn’t have to tell him he’d lost a steady job, didn’t need to go into what all that meant.

Still, he found himself at a nearby bar, trying to think over his options through the muddle of alcohol he’d consumed.

(he never claimed to be rational)

He spotted Evelyn in the crowd, dancing.  And maybe he’d had one drink too many because Bucky went up to her.

(stupid)

“I can have this next dance, right, Ms. Samson?” he asked, a grin falling into place as he took her hand in his.

Evelyn looked surprised for a moment, not expecting to see him, before she let out a laugh.  “You know that’s not my last name anymore, Barnes.”

“So?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in an innocent expression.

She shook her head, exasperated but amused.  “Sure, sure.  You can have this dance.  But just the one,” she added, squeezing his hand.  “Then you need to—”

“Hey!”

Bucky jumped at the shout, audible over the live jazz band, turning to face its source.

“—leave,” Evelyn finished weakly, her hand slipping from Bucky’s grasp.

He didn’t have a chance to open his mouth to say anything before the other man grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.  Bucky swallowed hard – the guy was a lot bigger than he was (vaguely he wondered if this was what Steve felt like all the time – helpless and a little caught off guard).  “You the bastard that’s been sneaking around with my wife?”

He thought about denying it, should have denied it, but he felt cornered and hot in the face and he lashed out.  “I dunno’, are you her husband?”

Eddie snarled, a hand curling into a fist, pulling back and aimed for Bucky’s face.  “You sonofabit—”

As soon as Bucky slammed his forehead into Eddie’s nose, all hell broke lose.

Between the alcohol-riddled blood pounding between his ears, Bucky heard Evelyn shout out.  Probably for them to stop.  But there was no stopping it once Eddie stumbled back into another man, causing him to spill his drink onto someone else’s shirt and prompting a second fight. 

Enraged, Eddie swung at Bucky.  He managed to dodge the first punch, but the second caught him in the mouth, lower lip digging into his own teeth, breaking skin.  The third blow landed just shy of his eye.  Bucky kicked out at his stomach, just to buy himself some time, a rasp of air leaving the soldier’s lungs at the connection.  With a growl, Eddie leapt forward, hands trying to fasten around Bucky’s throat.  He wobbled somewhat as he quickly side-stepped the other man’s actions, thankful that he didn’t bump into anyone else. Not that he could have, the bar had formed a wide circle away from them.. 

He kicked at the outer slope of Eddie’s knee, trying to knock him off balance only for the older man to grab Bucky’s foot and send him falling onto his back.  He barely had time to try to get up when Eddie’s boot connected with his ribs.  Twice.  Three times.  On the fourth, something cracked.  Eddie pulled his leg back for a fifth kick.  Frantic, Bucky grabbed at his ankle and twisted, pulling the man to the ground.  Hissing at the pain in his side, Bucky rolled himself upright, swinging one leg over Eddie until he had him straddled, pinned.

He didn’t know how many times his fist slammed into Eddie’s face, just that it was a bloody mess by the time a cop yanked him away.

“That’s enough!” he shouted.  Bucky wondered when the band had stopped playing.  It was too quiet now.  “You’re under arrest.”

Bucky opened his mouth to protest, but looked at Eddie’s messed up face.  He was beyond ‘he started it’s – older, knew better (or should've).  So he shut his mouth and nodded.

He caught Evelyn’s eye only to watch her look away.

When the door to his holding cell slammed shut, all he could think was that his father had warned him about this.  Everyone had warned him about this.  His eyes stung as he wiped away the blood pooling into a scab on his lower lip.

 

****

 

Two mornings later, limping towards the mailbox with a hand against his bruised ribs, he wasn't surprised to find the letter, lying atop the bills in flagrant means of recognition, deadlier than debt and the threat of getting kicked out into the streets.

Draft notice.

He'd registered, of course. They'd all had to. But he couldn't help the suspicion chipping away at his last layers of resolve, shaking beneath the weight of circumstances too fragile to maintain.

(saying goodbye to Steve was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do)

 

****

 

It started out like Lehigh had been, homesick men cramped together in one space, passing the time talking about the girl back home while some talked about the girl they hoped to meet – for the long-term or only for the night.

But it didn’t take long for things to get bad.

He grew accustomed to running on ground that shook with the assault of mortars and explosions, bullets peppering the dirt, the sound they made as they whizzed past.  He became familiar with barking out orders and following orders, came to know that staying alive was a careful balance of doing both.  Some said it was luck and maybe they were right, but Bucky didn’t count living another day to see people’s legs blown off or bullets lodge themselves into men's throats as lucky.

It was the same.  From place to place.  Unchanging.  Bloodshed.  Pilfered cigarettes from the ground, bent and broken and sometimes soggy but still a relief once lit.  Watching men slowly parish from battlefield or sickness, their wounds turning dark and black from infection or coughing so loudly from pneumonia that everyone was sure their location would be revealed from over a mile away.  Card games with missing cards (“Just pretend this leaf’s the fuckin’ Ace of Spades, alright?”) and the sinking feeling that each battle would be his last and the lie he had to tell himself (it won't be) just to get up in the morning.

He got used to it.

 

****

 

“Radio B Company, tell ‘em we need cover!”

“That might be tough!”

Bucky snarled at the ruined radio, hoping Jones didn’t take it as directed towards him.  The soldier had been separated from his assigned squad over a few days ago, but Bucky couldn’t care less – he was competent, could aim a gun, had a good sense of humor, and knew how to work the radio (not that it was of much help right now, busted to hell and back).  Everyone ran the risk of bleeding out on the battlefield and – as far as he could tell – no one’s differences did them any favors or disservices when it came to dying.  With their captain and radio operator killed in action a week prior, Bucky saw only the good of picking Jones up into his own ranks – he’d deal with the consequences from command later.

(if he ever made it back)

“Bucky, behind you!”

He swung the rifle around.  Aim.  Shoot.  Aim.  Shoot.  He couldn’t tell if they were outnumbered but it sure felt like it. They’d had to fall back twice already.

A stream of blue blurred past the sights of his scope, his target vanishing upon its impact.  Confused, more than a little startled, he peered over his weapon to watch the same thing happen to another group of incoming enemies.

The soldiers around him cheered, congratulating each other and shouting about the Jerries.  He didn’t join in.  Something wasn’t right.  The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach plummeted as the biggest tank he’d ever seen crawled over the hill.

There was a moment’s hesitation (was it an ally tank or an enemy tank?), eyes narrowed, but all doubt was blown away when the cannon adjusted its aim in their direction.

“Down!”

He practically threw Dugan and Jones into the trench with him as he dove for the mud, a jet of electric blue flying over their heads, the ground shaking.  The group behind them wasn’t so lucky, shouts of terror followed by distinct silence.

“Go, move,” he ordered, nudging Dugan to move down along the trench towards the forest.  If they could make it that far, they had a chance to get out alive.

A hair-raising sound and cerulean glow cut their escape short.  Bucky took his eyes off of the dirt and blood in front of him to see a band of soldiers surrounding them with weapons he’d never seen before and masks that covered the majority of their faces.  Thoughts racing (who were they, what army were they from, why weren’t they dead yet?), Bucky wasn’t expecting the butt end of one of the men’s guns to crack against his skull.

{“Drop your weapons!”}  German.  {“Move!”}

They were surrounded and vastly outnumbered.  More than he’d realized.  Maybe he would have said to hell with those odds a year ago, but being cornered and out-matched didn’t mean much because the guys you were fighting weren’t carrying any weapons aside from their fists and the occasional heavy rock.

He dropped his gun.  Dugan and Jones did the same.  Slowly, one at a time, the entrapped soldiers around them followed suit.

He’d always associated defeat in war with death.

He was wrong.

 

****

 

{“Vitals are stable….”}

{“And the drugs?”}

{“Wearing off.  See?”}  Something he thinks might be a hand passes in front of his face, the movement sluggish and leaving traces of its path in its wake.

{“Marakov, get a washcloth for the blood.”}

Nausea rolls through him.

 

****

 

Every breath he took rasped in his chest, lungs protesting as he pushed the cart of supplies he’d been tasked to that day, a cart of metal for what the Nazis (HYDRA, he heard one of them say) called Project Valkyrie.  Bucky didn’t know or care what it was, just wished the damn thing could be done and over with.  Maybe they’d kill him then.

It felt like years ago that he’d left Steve with a sarcastic salute, spent the evening with not one date but two.  Felt like years ago that he’d smirked with pride as the general oversaw his training with a certain level of awe.  “Adept fighter,” they’d said as Samson had his skills demonstrated.  “You’ve earned it,” they’d said, as they promoted him to sergeant before even shipping him off to war.

Fat lot of good it did him, too.

“Sorry about that, Fritzie,” Bucky coughed as Lohmer, the officer overseeing work that day, stomped towards him, having crashed his supply cart, sheets of metal and steel cylinders littering the ground around them.  “Can’t quite shake this damn—” another cough racked his body “—Think…I caught—”  cough  “—pneumonia on the battlefield.  You wouldn’t happen to have a—” cough  “—doctor in this dump—“

“We do.”  Lohmer’s voice was impassive.  “I am him.”

Bucky gritted his teeth as a cylinder was brought crashing down onto his skull, his back, his ribs.  Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard Dugan shouting.

“And this is the cure for what ails you.”

He wasn't sure how long Lohmer beat him, only that he was dragged to his feet, forced to work the rest of the day, hardly able to breathe much less move.  When they finally escorted them back to their cells at the end of the day, he collapsed onto the floor.

“I’d say it’s walking pneumonia,” Jones explained to the others, examining Bucky’s ruined state.  “…Except contusions and broken ribs have taken care of the ‘walking’ part.  If Fritzie makes him work tomorrow, I guarantee he won’t last his shift.”

Bucky tried to listen to the rest of their conversation, their scheming to right the wrong that had been done to him.  He tried to be happy that it was the first time they’d all really gotten along since they got here.

He just wanted to sleep.

He didn't know how long they’d been imprisoned, only that it felt like months.  Restless and sore.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, leaving him to abandon the tacked-off days he’d been carving into the floor of his cell with a ripped off button from his uniform.  No sense in keeping track when the days blurred together.  No sense keeping track when he was forgotten and starved and bleeding. He’d lost track at thirteen.

More than thirteen days and he was dying.  Dugan and the others had bought him time by staging Lohmer’s death as an accident, but the days of rest trying to recover from the injuries he’d sustained from the German’s beating did little to nothing for him.  At night, Dugan looked at him with sympathy, mustache twitching in a way that indicated a frown as he watched Bucky shake with cold sweat and wince every time he shifted, trying to get comfortable.  Jones and Falsworth whispered their concerns as quietly as they could, but the way their eyes kept darting back to him was a pretty strong tell as to what they were talking about.  Morita would try to get him to crack a smile with whatever joke he’d picked up from his shift, usually inappropriate and not always funny but Bucky hoped that his lack of response wasn’t taken as an insult.  It just hurt to laugh.  For the most part, they kept their distance from him.  He didn't begrudge them for it.  They didn’t want to fall ill.  They wanted to live.  But some nights, when the shaking and the coughing were at their worst, Dernier would sit beside him and toss his jacket over him, occasionally talking, asking things in French that Bucky couldn’t answer.

“Y’know I don’t understand a damn thing you’re sayin’, right?” he wheezed one night.

Dernier looked at him a moment, surprised he’d actually spoken, before casting a questioning glance at Jones, who nodded.

“He’s talking about home,” the soldier clarified.

“S’okay,” Bucky mumbled.  He knew his response didn’t make much sense, but he couldn’t find the energy to explain himself.  Explain that he didn’t mind the talking, that he preferred it over silences broken only by the skittering of rats and the cries of dying men.

Dernier seemed to understand and kept on, Bucky doing all he could just to focus on the foreign sound of the other man’s voice.  He liked to imagine that whatever the Frenchman said was nice, that he had good memories of home, because all Bucky could think was how much he missed his.

The guards dragged him from the cell a few nights later, his boots scrapping the ground and only lifting in abortive attempts to walk on his own.  The faces of the prisoners they passed were an array of disgust, empathy, anger, and horror.  He knew why.  Everyone knew why.  No one dragged from their cell for quarantine ever made it back.  Some said there were medical wards like butcher shops, prisoners sliced up as food for the officers’ dogs.  Others said that the guards simply took people out back and shot them, bodies dumped into a rotting trench.  Bucky doubted any of the prisoners knew for sure, but it didn’t much matter.

He was a dead man.

 

****

 

{“Can you hear me?”}

He nods.

{“Can you see me?”}

He blinks, vision blurry, eyes blearily focusing on the man in front of him, something like eagerness glimmering behind his spectacles.

He nods.

{"Can you speak?"}

The answer lodges itself in his throat, clawing its way out in a rasp.

{"Yes."}

{“Good, good.”}  As the doctor (?) nods his approval, he flexes his hands – one metal, one flesh – as if testing the movement.  The doctor gazes on like his being able to do so is something to be proud of.  His eyes flick to a badge on the man’s uniform. Volkov.

{“Do you know where you are?”}

{“Special operations training facility.  Department X.”}  The words leave him without hesitation, without thought.

{“What is your name?”}  Volkov’s words are steady, slow, blank of all wariness despite how his eyes shone with it.

He frowns.  Thinking.  Searching.  He shakes his head.  {“Names aren’t necessary.”}

He watches with detachment as the doctor turns away from him with an allayed sort of grin.  It’s then that he notices the two of them are behind a glass barrier, a group of uniformed men looking on as if they’re animals in a zoo, faces colored by relief as if the lion hadn’t eaten the lamb this time.

Bitterness is at the tip of his tongue but he can’t attach himself to it enough to feel it.

 

****

 

“You are quite the specimen, Mr. Barnes.”

His hands balled into fists at the sound of accented English, refusing to look at the doctor.

“You’ve managed to pass evaluation for treatment.”

“I don’t want your fuckin’ treatment,” he snarled, anger flaring almost against his will.  He bit the inside of his cheek, furious with himself so saying anything at all.

“Ah, but just the other day you were begging for mercy.”

He wanted to say that it was hard not to cry for mercy when you were being electrocuted and drenched with water, hard not to plead when you felt helpless, strapped to a table and tortured, repeating nothing but name, rank, and serial number like some broken record set on an endless cycle.

He wanted to say that he was begging for mercy, because any treatments Zola had to offer were sure to be cruelty in disguise.

“No one has made it this far,” the German rambled, a hint of awe in his voice.  “They usually die from the first batch of chemicals.”

Bucky wanted to say that he’d drank and smoked enough in his life already that he doubted poisons would bother him much, but he was too focused on the clinking of glass, the quiet slush of liquids in vials, the glint of a needle.

“This will not hurt.”

He lied.

 

****

 

They put him through a series of trials.  {“Mission preparation,”} the general tells him (why can’t he remember his name, why is his face familiar, why--?).  Endurance.  Hours in the bone-chilling cold stripped of everything but cargo pants and boots, bound to a post with a chain, muscles aching from stress positions.  Days submerged in a tank, filled with enough water that he has to constantly keep himself afloat to avoid drowning.  Combat.  Weapons.  Always after endurance.  Vital to know he can hold his own against an opponent while depleted of energy, assemble a rifle and wield a blade even when he’s delirious and sore.

He can.  He does.  For weeks.  Starting with a single opponent.  Five.  Ten.  Leaving them disarmed and bruised.

The general is always there.  Watching.  Something like satisfaction on his face.

(he thinks in another life he’d have felt pride over that, but the thought fades nearly as soon as it arises)

As the weeks pass, the endurance tests change from facing the elements to fighting through the haze of drugs, chemicals – always with Volkov there in case things were to go badly.  {“You’re far too important for them to let you die,”} Volkov says, pulling him from the lethal grasp of a neurotoxin, his tone as if chiding a foolish child.

And he believes it, even through the warm miasma of poison.

For a while, at least.

One day they bring out a single opponent.  In shackles.  The fair-haired man stumbles in the snow as they shove him forward, but he doesn’t fall, holds his head up high in defiance.  Captain Marakov stands behind the shackled man with a set of keys, another man on standby with a fatally aimed gun at the captive.  Marakov’s words are hushed beneath the whir of wind storming around them, but he still manages to catch what the captain says.

{“This is your one chance at redemption, comrade.”}  The key slides into place, the words spat out in disdain - an insult.  {“Survive, and you will not be tried for treason.”}

When the shackles fall to the ground, they attack each other like wolves.

They’re well-matched, his opponent knowing where to aim to inflict the most damage, to stun, to cripple.  But he knows how to feint, dodge, counter.  He grabs the fist aimed for his throat with his left hand, metal digging into bones as he twists the man’s arm, pulling him forward and spinning him around to wrap his right arm around his throat.  His opponent rolls himself forward, pulling him along.  They tumble in the snow until the brunet forces himself to his feet, aiming a sharp kick at the man’s ribcage.  Distracted by the pain, the traitor doesn’t realize he’s left himself exposed until a heavy boot presses into his throat – he freezes.  So does the soldier, staring down blankly at the wide-eyed man for a moment before removing the pressure from his throat, taking a step back.

{“Again.”}

The order comes unexpected, but he lets the blond get to his feet before charging, left hand swinging towards his temple.  The man barely moves in time to avoid being knocked out, ducking low and launching himself at the soldier.

They struggle for a good fifteen minutes before he subdues him once more.

{“Again.”}

He hears a whoosh and a soft plunk.  Then another.  They both glance to the side at the sound – knives, thrown into the snow.  There’s only a moment’s hesitation (both trying to figure out what’s off limits here, both deciding that it’s been deemed there are none) before they move to grab both weapons, each ending up with one.  Blood is spilt.  His from a gash to his good shoulder, the man’s from a jagged line dragged from collarbone to chest.

With each disarm, each stall between knuckles smashing into faces and blades drawn across flesh:

{“Again.”}

{“Again.”}

{“Again.”}

{“Again.”}

 

****

 

After hours of feeling like lava was slithering through his veins, hours (?) of on and off electrocution, gritting his teeth and refusing to scream, Bucky let out a shout of pain as one of the guards swung a hammer down onto his kneecap, his shin.  Once.  Twice.  Five times.  He stopped keeping count.  If he hadn’t felt the bones break, he definitely heard them.  Zola watched on with something akin to curiosity.

“Do not look so distressed,” the doctor said, tone filled with a false coddling, tapping the machinery that hung above his head.  “You won’t recall this later, I assure you.”

“Please." He hated himself with every word.  “…Just kill me.”

A small frown crossed Zola’s face at the words before he began to power on the machine.  “I don’t believe that will be necessary.”

 

****

 

{“Again!”}

The man beneath him groans at the general’s order, whether in pain or dread doesn’t much matter at this point, his face already an array of tore skin and blood.  The brunet’s eyes trace the laceration across his torso, blood pooling out and staining the fabric around it.  Vaguely, he wonders what he did to deserve this, tossed into the snow covered (blood spattered) training circle behind the facility like a bone for strays to chew on, a living punching bag for him to test his mettle with.

Not much of a test, he thinks, staring at the forsaken man with something that might pass for pity if he tried.  They’d been at this for hours, the sun starting to set from the high point in the sky it had hung from when they’d started.  In another round or so, the operative won’t be of any use at all – hit so many times that brain damage is inevitable.

{“Please….”}  Blood bubbles up from the man’s lips, a gurgling sound escaping from the back of his throat.  Crushed trachea.  {“Just kill me.”}

He frowns, the words troubling him for some reason.  Nothing bothers him lately (ever?).

{“I said again!”} the general shouts.

He waits for the other man to get to his feet.  He doesn’t.

{“Now!”}  He hears the nervous shuffle of feet from the men on standby, the chatter of weapons being readied, hushed commands not to fire.

{“Winter Soldier, do you hear General Karpov?”}  Captain Marakov is beside him, five feet away – a safe distance.

“He won’t stand,” he mutters, barely audible.

{“What was that?”}  The captain’s tone is confused beneath its irritation.

“I don’t….”  He swallows hard.  {“We can’t fight if he won’t stand.”}

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Marakov look back to the general, uncertain.  He hears a swishing sound, something being swung through the air.  Spinning around, he seizes the club before it makes contact with his skull, glaring at the man on the other end of it.  Something like terror widens his eyes.  It makes his stomach churn.

He grits his teeth.  Something’s wrong and he doesn’t know what.  Wants to know.  Can’t know.

Marakov levels the attacker with an angry look, before glancing back at the Winter Soldier.  {“This man was once this country’s greatest asset.  He forfeited that status when he spared the lives of some Nazi scum.”}  He pauses, ducking his head slightly to catch the soldier’s eye.  He meets the captain’s gaze, brow knitted (in confusion, distaste?).  An ugly smirk tugs at the corner of Marakov’s lips, an understanding passing between them.  {“We did not bring you out here for commentary on obvious things, Winter Soldier.”}

It’s then that he knows Volkov lied.  He’s not important enough to keep alive – this man surely isn’t.

{“Yes, sir,”} he says finally.

{“Carry on then.”}

It’s a simple order, phrased like a suggestion, like he’s just some performer who stumbled over his own feet mid-act.  He moves to turn his attention back to the battered man.

{“Oh…and Soldier?”}

He looks at Marakov over his shoulder.

{“This is not an exercise of mercy.”}

He nods, slow.

It’s not much of a fight.  He beats the man until he no longer resists or moves, until his lungs are no longer straining for intake and his breath no longer comes in wet gasps.  Something twists in the pit of his stomach, in the back of his throat.

He hears Marakov snap his fingers and barely has time to react before seven men tackle him to the ground.  His blood flecks onto the snow beside his victim’s.

 

****

 

{“You said it would work,”} he hears Karpov say, later (did he black out?) that night.  He tries to move only to find that his limbs are restrained, a familiar hum of electronics around his head. 

{“I said it ought to work, and for the most part, it did.”}  Volkov, tone matter-of-fact and indifferent.

{“I have no use for an operative who hesitates to kill,”} scoffs the older man.

{“Do not worry,”} Volkov sighs.  {“It was simply a minor fluke.  It will be amended.”}

{“See to it that that’s true.”}  Karpov turns to look at him then, noticing that he’s awake.  The soldier bites down into the bit in his mouth, pain shocking through him – he refuses to let it shake him.  The general raises a glass to him, still strapped to the chair, blood leaking from his nose.  {“You are my finest creation, my twisted joke on the Americans….  Let us drink to their demise.”}

(he remembers killing the traitor, remembers feeling justified, nothing else)

 

****

 

The questions come automatically, worried out of habit and fueled by something he couldn’t quite place.

“What happened to you?”

“I joined the army.”

“Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Is it permanent?”

“So far.”

Some other time he would have been annoyed by Steve’s short, unhelpful answers (his answers were clear, what was he trying to figure out?), but now he could only be relieved.  Steve was here.  Different, but here.  And he didn’t care that this was some sort of weird drug dream or if he was dead – he was out of that isolation ward and free from the confines of that table, free from the experiments and the torture and the –

No.  What?

The surrealism started to collapse when Steve crossed a fiery gap in one leap, hands grasping the railing that Bucky stood on the other side of.  It ended with the thought that he could let the other man fall to his death and still get out alive, could turn his back without a second thought.

It was only for a second.

If Steve ever noticed the hesitation, he didn’t pick up on it.

He didn’t remember thinking it.

 

****

 

They send him to West Berlin.  He talks with the soldiers and laughs at their jokes.  Chats with the bartender and flirts with the women.

He plants the bomb underneath the Jeep after telling a blonde that he’d pull his car around front for her, take her back to his place.

The explosion goes unsuspected and he crosses the border safely.

Karpov pats Volkov on the back before the drugs kick in and he blacks out.

(he forgets the first mission)

 

****

 

He kills a UN negotiations team by fire in January, snipes a NATO general in West Berlin by May.  British Ambassador Dalton Graines’ New Year’s party ends in a bloody mess in Madripoor and French Defense Minister Jacques Dupuy’s April Fool’s punch line comes with a knife to the gut and a snapped neck, inciting the Algerian Nationalist Movement.  The following month finds the peace conference blown to bits by a rocket launcher.

(if missions fall between the cracks of his memory, he doesn’t notice)

Between assassinations they have him train others.  KGB agents, Department X projects, soldiers.  He teaches them how to shoot a gun, assemble and disassemble a rifle, how to rig someone’s gun to backfire.  He shows them how to throw a knife, how to wield one, what grips to use for different circumstances, how a blade is often deadlier and more efficient than a gun.  He teaches them how to kill, how to snap a neck, strangle and smother, which wounds would bring a quick death and which would bring a slow one.  Teaches them how to torture, that shallow slashes against skin and slightly deeper gashes against muscle can be excruciating and debilitating, how to pull teeth and rip out fingernails, that sometimes the threat of pain is more useful that inflicting it.  Stealth.  Brutality.  Measured mercy.  He watches as Volkov injects several men with a serum only to have them die moments later, shaking in their restraints, froth slipping past their lips.  Watches the second trial go by with apparent success only for the drug to burn out the subjects’ minds.  A waste.

Not all of his students suffer such a fate.  Others go on to be of service.  Sleeper agents.  Spies.  Some are sent to the West, others to various Communist countries to keep an eye on their neighbors.  They hail him as their best, their most prized operative.  The project that hasn’t failed.

(he can’t find it in himself to be proud of that)

This is how they meet.

He’s brought down early one morning (or late at night – there are no clocks on the wall, no way to tell time other than by the rise and fall of the sun, even that hidden behind windowless walls) from his barracks.  He doesn’t protest the against the hour despite how much he’d rather be sleeping. Service is what’s expected from him.

{“We have a new student for you,”} Marakov says.

{“From where?”} he asks.  It’s simple curiosity – a detached sort of thing – yet the captain gives him a calculating glance, as if trying to figure out whether he’s being too curious.  Something causes him to decide that the question is safe enough to answer.  {“The Red Room.  The first operative worthy enough of serum injection.”}

Marakov watches for a reaction, but the Winter Soldier gives none – he knows better.

The shorter man pushes the doors to the training floor open, the light in the room too bright for his sleep-deprived eyes.  General Karpov stands beside a man and woman he’s never met before, talking in hushed tones.  Judging by the man’s military uniform and the woman’s plain black clothing, she is his new student.  Her eyes meet his and though they widen, she doesn't look away.He finds himself checking for potential weaknesses (does she lean her weight more to this side or that one, any visible injuries, overconfidence or timidity?), possible strengths (she’s smaller than him and would have an advantage in close combat, lithe and seemingly strong).  He catches her doing the same, eyes lingering on his left arm.

{“Winter Soldier, this is Black Widow,”} Karpov explains, gesturing as if he needed the direction.  The older man pauses, considering.  {“Natalia Romanova,”} he adds.  Names aren’t necessary.  {“She’s the best the Red Room has to offer.  You’re to teach her everything you know.”}

His instructions are simple enough.  He nods, mute, before moving past them and onto the matted floor of the fighting ring, looking back at the redhead expectantly only to see that she’d taken a stance behind him already.  He watches her move (each step she takes is measured, wary but precise) and thinks about the failed subjects of Volkov’s experiments, dead or driven mad or brain dead, drooling spittle and blood onto their own chins.  Yet she survived.  He’s not sure if that makes her remarkable or terrible.

Silent, he waits for her to make a move.  Enough time passes that he begins to wonder if she will at all, the doubt broken by her fast movements, punches and kicks and elbows and knees.  She isn’t as untrained as most of the people they send his way and it throws him off guard, stumbling somewhat as he steps out of range of one of her kicks.  Trained, but not well enough – he sees his opening.  He grabs hold of her ankle, giving her a pointed look before twisting her off balance.  To her credit, she breaks her fall well, landing on knee and hand.  He doesn’t say anything as he watches her get to her feet.  The brief pause and silence convey an unspoken order to carry on.

(She doesn’t give him another chance to pull her off balance)

They go on this way for weeks, bodies clashing in a series of lessons taught through quiet demonstrations.  If she’s unsettled by his muteness, his lack of direction beyond the bare necessities, she never shows it.  She simply does as he does and does so well.

{“You don’t—“}  She cuts her sentence short, watching him coil the garrote wire he’d been using for the day’s lesson.  They both wear faint red lines around their necks, their bodies adorned with fading bruises from yesterday and the week before – mandated wounds.  “You don’t talk much.”

His eyes flick to hers at the change in language, her words slow and cautious, as if testing the way they sound as she speaks them.

{“They want me to learn it.  English,”} she elaborates.  {“They want to send me to the West.”}

He nods, having figured as much already – agents with enough skill get sent West, where most of their enemies reside.  Silence falls over them again.  Out of the corner of his eye he can see her shift from one foot to the other, an air of impatience about her.  More than that, determination.  It amuses him somewhat, he thinks - muscles twitching into a repressed smirk.  He doesn’t smile.

{“Do I at least get to know your name?”} she asks.

{“Names aren’t necessary.”}  They're the first words he says to her.  If she’s anything more than minutely surprised that he’s spoken, he can’t tell – her eyebrow raising for only a second before returning to the scowl she’s been giving him the past few minutes.  If anything, she seems unimpressed.

{“You know my name,”} she argues.

He opens his mouth to retort, but chokes on words he isn’t sure are there to say.  He can't counter her because she’s right.  He was told her name, and it goes against the rules he’s put into practice since they handed him a weapon (he is a weapon, the only thing they ever handed him was a gun).

He combats the fallacy by deciding he’ll talk more.

(he doesn’t have an answer to give her anyway)

{“You’d do well.  In the West.  But not well enough to be of any use if you don’t know the language.”}

{“They say you speak it,”} she says, eyes falling to the red lines on his neck before returning to his face, watching him nod.  {“So you’ll teach me?”}  She asks the words as if he really has a choice in the matter.  It’s a nice illusion.

“I’ll teach you.”

She grins, slow and satisfied.

(something about that look makes him want to return it)

 

****

 

Bang!

The man’s screams of pain pierce the stagnancy of the room.

Their lessons evolved to include live exercises in a matter of months.

{“Please…please….”}

They were beyond demonstrating the effect of the mere threat of violence.

The Winter Soldier approaches the man, slow, like carefully measured explosives waiting to be lit aflame, never in a hurry.  The captive’s eyes widen in the brief second before he lashes out, gunmetal smashing into lips and teeth.  One falls to the floor, bouncing a few times before rolling to rest several feet away from its bound owner.  He kneels in front of him, something like a vacant smirk on his face as he puts a hand on the man’s ruined knee.

He can feel Natalia watching his every move.

“Talk.  Unless you’d rather not walk out of here at all.”

The other man grits his teeth and stares.

“You don’t have to pretend any longer.  We both know you’re not who you say you are, Grisha.  Or should I say Curtis, since that’s what you seem to prefer?”

Still with a steady stare.  The soldier leans in, putting pressure on the wound.  He doesn’t pay attention to the warm slick of blood pooling between his fingers, doesn’t flinch at the choked scream of pain the action draws from the man in front of him.

“MI6 mole?  Close ties to certain members of SHIELD?”  The only sound is Grisha’s pained breathing.  “No?” he asks, putting more weight against the knee.  “Nothing?”

When Grisha laughs, blood dribbles from his lips.  {“You said you already know who I am.  Why ask questions?”}

{“To get you talking.”}  He removes a knife from the sheath at his thigh, casually rolling the blade over in the palm of his hand in an almost thoughtful manner.  He sees the other man’s eyes flick to the weapon nervously.  {“Let’s make this easy.  Tell me where I can find your contact at SHIELD that you’ve leaked information to, and we’ll get you medical treatment.”}

{“You’re lying.”}

He barely lifts an eyebrow.  {“Why do you think this is happening so close to a hospital, Grisha?  There are always prices to be paid for traitors, but the consequences aren’t all so final.”}

Grisha scoffs.  {“I won’t be able to walk again with what you’ve done to my leg.”}

The soldier glances at the mess of bone and blood, frowning somewhat before a humorless sort of laugh leaves him – deprived of emotion and more of an exhaled huff of air.  {“I seem to have managed quite alright with less,”} he says, nodding towards his left arm.

{“Have you?”}  The other man’s eyes flick from the arm to the knife to his face apprehensively before he decides to press on.  {“I’ve heard things, things about how you—”}

In a flash, the soldier jams the blade between the cartilage and tendon of the other knee.  {“Grisha.”}  He waits until the man’s shouting and swearing ceases to heavy, angry breathing, until they make eye contact, before he twists the blade.  There’s no satisfaction in making the other man suffer.  Simply a means to an end.  {“I’m asking you questions.  And you’re not giving me answers.”}

Tears well up in Grisha’s eyes, straining with the effort not to writhe in pain.  When he doesn’t respond fast enough, the soldier twists the knife again.  {“Mexico City!”} he cries between agonized gasps for breath.  He’s on the verge of going into shock – the soldier can’t help but feel a little relieved that this is drawing to a close.  {“There’s a Colonel in Mexico City who keeps updated files on her whereabouts.  S—she doesn’t stay in one place, it’s not—”}

{“Safe, yes,”} he finishes, slowly easing the knife out of Grisha’s knee, trying to cause as little pain as possible.  {“Colonel…?”}

{“Hart.  Jefferson Hart.”}

He nods, paying no mind to Grisha’s sobbing.  Something in him finds the man’s quick betrayal of where he’d truly set his loyalties repulsive.  He's not sure why.

He wipes the blood off of his knife onto Grisha’s pants before standing.  He goes to sheath it, but stops mid-process, looking back at Natalia.  She’s quiet as he hands her the knife, handle first.  There’s a hesitation at first, but she must realize it for she quickly amends the transgression and takes the weapon.

“Like I showed you,” he says with a nod.

 

****

 

They’re left to their own devices as their superiors debate how to proceed with the intel they’d gathered.

He blocks her punch with his left arm.  She doesn’t flinch at the impact of knuckles against metal, just uses his defensive stance to move into another attack.

“What do you think they’ll decide?”

They're alone, but English had quickly become a secret language between the two of them, a way to speak freely and let their superiors assume it was all in the sake of him teaching a language.  At times, the words felt stunted as they rolled from his lips, other times it felt as natural as breathing (he doesn’t think about how he knows the language, only that he does – he tries to focus on the fact that that’s the only thing that really matters).  Natalia still spoke with an accent and he still spoke hardly at all – slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

“It’s not my place to speculate,” he says, twisting to jab an elbow into her side only for her to duck and twist out of his way.

“I didn’t ask what your place is.”  There’s a shade of irritation in her voice, the usual kind when he responds in such a way.  “I asked your opinion.”

The Winter Soldier clenches his jaw, both at the sharp pain at his lower back that’s bound to become a bruise before the day’s end as well as at Natalia’s insistence that he answer her questions.  He finds that she has a way of doing that, making him grit his teeth, make him think and leave him frustrated when he finds that he has no answers for her (“How old are you?”...“What city are you from?”…“How long have you worked here?”), her seemingly genuine interest in his opinions and thoughts on things (“Do you think the Americans have training facilities such as this one?”…“Is it hard to sleep at night…sometimes…after a mission?”).  He has a feeling that at times she only asks questions to get him talking - or like she's trying to pick him apart at the seams - even if his answers are usually the same (“Names aren’t necessary”…“It’s not my place to say”).  Sparking some kind of anger deep within in, a pit of untapped rage, annoyed at himself for not knowing or caring enough to answer.

Still, he finds himself trying.

“I think they’re sending me to New Mexico.”  His knee makes contact with her stomach, hard enough to knock the air out her lungs had she not softened the blow by moving out of the way in time.  “They might send you on a mission to see if anything we’ve been going over has stuck.”

“Meaning?” she asks, the side of her left boot scrapping against his shin as he dodges a kick.

“Meaning they want to know if they’ve wasted their time with me training you.”  He pulls a knife and swings, wide.  They’ve danced this dance before, with their superiors looking on with hungry expressions on their faces, the generals and colonels, watching with anticipation as if the two of them were nothing more than prized fighting dogs circling each other.

(maybe they are)

{“Time will tell,”} she says with a slight flick of her eyes to the left of him.  Her diverted attention and switch of language cause him to see if they’re no longer alone, looking over his shoulder.  He hears her move before he even realizes his mistake and barely has the chance to react before she’s moving to disarm him and throw him to the ground. He manages to act just in time to turn the attack against her, sending them to ground, his forearm hovering above her neck.

She looks a little shocked, winded.  {“Clever,”} is all he says.  Her eyes briefly fall to his lips and back up to his eyes and when he returns the look, there’s something like a smirk on her face, slight but victorious.  There’s a shuffling in his chest when a thought comes to mind, tingling like an itch that can’t be eased.  Forbidden.

Before he knows what’s happening she has him turned over, flat on his back, her arm pressing down into his throat.  It’s his turn to look shocked.

“Dead man,” she says with a sly grin.  He lies there, blinking, not quite processing her words at first before a soft, hollow laugh slips past him.

(the sound is foreign to the both of them)

Notes:

I had to split this monster of a chapter into two, so the second part of Bucky's POV will hopefully be out a lot sooner than it took me to put this chapter up.