Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prelude

- Symphony 5 (III. Romanza) by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1943.

Oh hey, there it is. His old pal, pain. He didn't give it the slip after all. It's right behind his breastbone; a sucking void of fierce, burning hurt. Grief. Erskine was kind, and good, and now he's dead. The only man who believed in Steve, who wanted to give Steve a chance. The first person since Bucky to fight for him.

Steve looks up from Erskine’s body. He doesn't even remember that he's not five foot four anymore. He doesn't run after the spy because he's Captain America. He isn’t Captain America yet -- that doesn’t come until later. He runs after the spy because he's Steve Rogers.

Nothing that matters has changed.

1

Speak low when you speak, love
Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak, love
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we're swept apart, too soon

- Speak Low by Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash, 1943

I asked for an army and all I got was you.
You are not enough.

Steve hasn’t really had time to sketch since he started Basic, but he does now. It takes him a while to get the feel for it again. His hands are just the same -- he always had big hands for his frame, with long fingers. But now, the muscles underneath are stronger. He breaks a lot of pencils at first.

He draws the company -- Helen and Lucille and Grace and Gladys and all the other girls. He fills his sketchbook with their stretching, their warmup routines.  He sketches the complicated rigs that hold up the curtains, the curlicues of architectural detailing around the stages. He draws a lot of comics. Steve Monkey has a Captain America costume now. He tries not to make the comics too bitter and satirical. He’s gonna get to travel in a way he and Buck could only ever dream of, back in the day. He should be grateful. He’s gotta remember to be grateful.

Not that he’s gonna get to see the sights or anything. It’ll be mostly hotels and the back-ends of theaters, the occasional fancy party with Brandt -- but not until Steve gets some elocution lessons and learns to keep his mouth shut about things like labor unions and Jim Crow.

He’s got a real paycheck now, too. And since he’s living on Uncle Sam’s dime, he gets to send some money back to Winnie, just the way that Bucky does. There’s even some leftover. He gets a bank account, for cryin’ out loud.

He buys some watercolors with some of the cash leftover from his first paycheck and discovers that he still doesn’t quite have the feel for how the colors go together. He knows how to mix the paint, but his old tricks for faking his way through the color wheel -- they don’t work anymore. There are too many shades, and they all look strange to him. Beautiful, but different. He’s going to have to start from the ground up. Again.

I don't know if I can do this.

Nothing to it. Sell a few bonds,
bonds buy bullets, bullets kill
Nazis. Bing bang boom. You're
an American hero.

They start with troupe of about twenty girls plus Steve and Jimmy, the guy who plays Hitler. They're are the only guys in greasepaint, which makes them natural allies. They become actual friends after Steve accidentally does hit him one time. The punch knocks Jimmy out cold for real and sends his fake mustache flying all the way across the stage. They crack up about it later, and Steve buys him a drink. Turns out Jimmy's got a wife out in Queens and a heart condition that keeps him off the front lines. Steve can empathize with that.

Steve learns his lines. Turns out that, in the end, learning the words isn’t the problem. His memory is better than he remembers. He discovers, to his alarm, that he doesn’t need the cue cards in the end. After only one performance, the words are in his memory like they’re carved into stone. It occurs to him, with a thrill of anxiety, that he can remember every conversation he’s had since he got out of Stark’s machine. He can remember the exact sound that Hydra assassin made as he choked to death. He used to lose his keys in his coat pocket, but he can remember everything, now. With perfect clarity.

He tries not to think about it too much.

So learning his lines isn’t the problem. The problem is that Steve’s stiff as a board and awkward as anything. The director says he needs more “oomph” and that he should “come on like Gangbusters” and then they’ll be golden. Trouble is, Steve doesn’t know how to do any of that.

Jimmy does, though. He acts it out for Steve -- the confident smile, the swagger, the winks and the intonation. Eye contact. Stand tall. Look easy in your own skin. It’s a little weird to watch him doing that while still dressed up in his own costume, but it works. Steve discovers that he only needs to see something once, and then he can imitate it with terrifying accuracy.

Long story short: Steve Rogers learns how to be Captain America from Hitler.

It's just not how I pictured getting there.

The senator's got a lot
of pull up on the hill.
You play ball with us,
you'll be leading your
own platoon in no time.
Take the shield.

The original company of twenty something grows to forty something, and Steve learns all their names and faces without even trying. He discovers that he can sketch them in perfect detail, even if it’s been weeks since he saw them last. He can remember, with absurd accuracy, over forty chorus girls after only being introduced once.

He still can’t talk to them without tripping over his own feet, but he supposes there must be some constants in the universe. It’s almost reassuring, given all the other… changes.

No one had thought to warn him that health would bring its own… complications. He remembers laughing at Buck a lot, when they were sixteen, and Bucky couldn’t stop talking about girls, about fooling around, about sex. Like Bucky couldn’t think about anything else.

Well, Steve’s not laughing now.

Steve’s not sixteen, but for the first time in his damn life, he can jerk off without being vaguely worried that he’s gonna give himself a coronary. Not that that ever stopped him, but... Now he’s surrounded by beautiful, half-naked women almost all day, every day. He’s only human. He doesn’t give himself a coronary. He maybe gives himself a cramp.

And then there’s Carter.

God, Carter.

He dreams about her in her uniform. He dreams about her with that gun. He dreams about her red lips and the way she throws a punch and the way she looked at him after he jumped on the grenade, like he was the best thing she’d ever seen. He dreams about the way she looked at him when he came out of the machine. Her fingers, just brushing his chest. Jesus. 

He dreams about that day, back at Lehigh, when she found him with a bloodied nose and said: Who taught you to throw a punch? And then pulled him aside to show him how to take down someone twice your size. (He doesn’t need to do that anymore, probably. He hasn’t tried Bucky’s jab-jab-cross on anyone yet -- he’s not sure he wants to, he might take their head off.) But back when he was a skinny asthmatic, Agent Carter had taken him into the training room, and showed him how to redirect a punch into a throw, how to turn an opponent’s weight against them. And then she’d hitched up her skirt and shown him how to put a knee right into someone’s gut, hard enough to bring down a 200 pound boxer. He dreams about that: her army-issue skirt hitched up, a glimpse of the silky slip underneath, and the dark straps of a thigh holster against her creamy skin. 

But more than that, more than any of that, he dreams about her smirking at him from the front of an army jeep, looking like she could just eat him up. The feeling of the flag in his fingers, triumph in his chest, tipping his helmet back and feeling the smirk on his face. And Peggy Carter -- Agent Carter, looking at him, like skinny little nobody Steven Grant Rogers was someone she wanted to commandeer for her own personal use.

In his dreams, she does.

For a while, he thinks that maybe the serum sorted out his crooked desires along with his crooked spine. He doesn’t know what to think about that.

But then, when he's in Kansas, one of Bucky's letters catches up to him with a rare glimpse of life at the front; it turns out that the army, like show biz, is a lot of sitting around doing nothing, and Steve can almost feel Bucky sitting next to him, sprawled out and bored, smoking, maybe, head tipped back. He swears he can smell the Lucky Strikes and he misses Buck so much it's like a gut punch.

That night he dreams about his last night with Bucky, a heady what if scenario where Bucky leans in and presses a boozy kiss to Steve’s mouth, and pins him to the bed, and he’s all over Steve, holding him down and taking what he wants, like what he wants is Steve. Steve’s skinny chest and thin arms and stupid stuttering heart. His big, warm hands keep Steve still, his weight holds Steve down. Steve can’t move, can’t do anything but lie there and let Bucky have every inch of him. He doesn’t even know what he wants, exactly. He wants everything, he wants Bucky, he wants-- 

-- He wakes up. He’s panting and hard, staring at the ceiling of the motel room. Jimmy is snoring in the next bed and Steve feels awful, feels like the worst kind of pervert, but he can’t help it.

He gets out of bed, creeps into the bathroom, and locks the door behind him before he… takes care of himself. He closes his eyes and tries to recapture that feeling, that feeling of Bucky all over him, the smell of him… It doesn’t take long. He has to bite the meaty part of his hand to keep from crying out.

He can only really think about it after, when he’s coming down from the high of it, less wound-up. He steadies his breathing and turns on the taps to clean up.

He’s relieved. Not just because of… well. That. But despite everything, despite the fact that he knows it’s wrong, he’s relieved that he still wants Bucky like that. He feels guilty about feeling relieved but he feels guilty about most things. It’s not like he’s magically stopped being Catholic.

But God help him, the whole world is changed around him, he’s changed. He has to look hard to see any Steve Rogers at all in the mirror these days. Those are still his eyes, he’s pretty sure. That’s still his sour, frowning mouth. The little creases on his forehead, they haven’t changed. His heavy brows, his crooked nose. But it’s still surreal to see those familiar features slapped haphazardly above a broad jaw and even broader shoulders. He thinks his hair is more golden, but he can't be sure, because his eyes may look the same to other folks, but they don't see the same.

Wanting Bucky is something that has been a part of him since he was a teenager. He’s glad the serum didn’t take that away from him. He’s fiercely, defiantly glad about it, even if that is a bit twisted.

It doesn’t occur to him until he turns off the taps that, as usual, he was small in the dream. He usually is in his dreams, that’s normal. He was small, and Bucky had held him down on the bed.

Bucky wouldn’t be able to do that now, unless Steve let him.

He could hold Bucky down instead, he realizes, with an electric lurch in his guts.

Steve looks down at himself. “Oh come on,” he says, exasperated. 

After that, he wakes up from shameful dreams about Bucky just about as often as he wakes up from shameful dreams about Carter. It’s all just the same, really. He figures it’s not too much of a sin if he never acts on it. If anything, he almost feels more guilty for dreaming about Carter, because he should have more respect for her somehow. Bucky, he’s pretty sure, would shrug it off and not care too much, if Steve could find a way to tell him and make him understand. Bucky would probably laugh, and gently tease him, just to prove that it isn’t a big deal. There aren’t many boundaries left between them. They’ve known each other too long. Bucky would be nice about it, Steve thinks. He’d let Steve down easy.

But Carter -- Carter demands respect. Every inch of her, from her wide-planted feet to her squared shoulders to her red, red lips -- she radiates confidence like a sun radiates light. Steve envies her that confidence, like every inch of her is saying Don’t You Know Who I Am? with capital letters and everything, and all the while daring you to try something, just daring you and…

Heck. He’s head over heels for her, and he knows it. It’s admiration and desire and attraction and simply wanting to know her better, to get to know her -- it’s all bundled clumsily together and dumped into his lap like a squirming bag of puppies. It’s not exactly the same as how he feels about Bucky; he’s loved Bucky for so long that it’s a well-worn groove in his soul, a tune he’s always going to know, as familiar to him as the streets of Brooklyn. But the fluttering in his chest, the tight feeling he gets in his guts when he thinks about them -- either of ‘em… It’s just the same.

The most obvious difference is that he dreams about Carter in lurid, intimidating technicolor.

Cut! Guys, don’t look at the camera!

Now the Barneses are getting letters from him as well as Bucky. He could maybe get clearance to tell them some of what happened, but he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t know how to tell them that he’s Captain America now.

If he’s honest, he doesn’t want them to know about it. They are a little piece of normal in his life. He’s humiliating himself in front of a live audience three times a week, he doesn’t recognize the person in the mirror half the time, and even the cover of his old sketchbook is an overwhelming shade he’s never seen before. It’s green like Emerald City, green as the leaves on the trees, green as envy. The next one he buys is black, with a blue spine.

These days, he gives out smiles like they’re candy: big charming ones and aw-shucks-ma’am-bashful ones and soft, sincere ones but none of them are his. The only time he smiles like himself is when one of the Barneses’ letters catch up with him, sometimes with a letter from Bucky tucked inside.

Bucky knows that he’s doing work for the war, but like the Barneses, he thinks it’s propaganda work. That much is true. They know that it’s classified. That much is also true. They assume he’s doing art and design work, and he doesn’t tell them otherwise. If they think it’s weird that his work has got him traveling all over, they don’t say anything about it.

Bucky’s letters from the front are always slow to arrive, and they hardly say anything except maybe the odd funny story about the guys in his unit -- how some guy called Dugan lost his helmet and started wearing a bowler instead, or how they found this cat that won’t stop following Buck around, sleeping on his back while he’s waiting for a shot, pawing at the trigger guard when he’s cleaning his rifle, and mewling pitifully outside his tent when it rains. Reminds me of someone, Bucky says in one letter.

It seems like the men in Buck’s unit are real great guys, actually, and like maybe Bucky’s doing okay over there, and Steve...

Steve is so jealous he could spit, even though he hates himself for it. But he can’t help it. It all seems even more wrong now. Bucky’s over there, and Steve’s stuck here. Bucky didn’t even want to go to war. And now Steve’s got everything he ever wanted: he’s strong and healthy and he’s in the army, and he still can’t get to the front. The irony may kill him.

And then, one day, this:

Dear Steve,

Hope you’re okay, wherever you are, and that your work, whatever it is, is going well. Judith can stand on her own two feet now, though she sways like she’s been going at Bucky’s hooch. We haven’t gotten any more letters from him, but he said that he might be out of touch for a bit. We’re not worried.

We’re all busy as bees here in Brooklyn. Joanie and Susan are still working at the munitions factory. Becca’s job keeps her busy too, so I am spending a whole lot of quality time with my favorite grandbaby. There doesn’t seem to be time for anything that ain’t sleeping or eating or working anymore. I don’t know how long it’s been since we went to the pictures. But that’s fine. Just now, all that’s showing are Captain America movies, and George can’t stand them.

It’s starting to get cold here. I found a pair of gloves that looked like they might fit you, so I’m sending them along. Stay warm, Steven. We miss you like hell around here.

Yours,

Ma Barnes

Steve’s breath hitches in his chest. He reads the middle of the letter again, and again. All that’s showing are Captain America movies, and George can’t stand them. They must have seen the posters, of course they had. George can’t stand them. It must've been one of his stupid shorts -- those damn propaganda flicks they filmed in LA.

They hadn’t recognized him. But… of course they hadn't. He was wearing a mask, and the rest of him… well. Of course they hadn't recognized him.

He isn’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified. Perhaps he can be a little of both. He didn’t want his name out there -- he’d said as much when they started all this. Maybe if he gets to be a real soldier, he can be Captain Rogers, but he never wants his name attached to this farce.

He pulls out the gloves -- worn brown leather, carefully wrapped in newspaper, with lining inside. His hands are the same size they always were: big and long-fingered. An artist’s hands, his Ma had said. Like a puppy’s paws, Bucky had teased. He’s finally grown into them.

The gloves fit perfectly, and that eases some of the tight ache behind his breastbone. Some things are the same. Some things are still recognizably his.

He wears them for the rest of the tour.

He’s still wearing them when he finally gets back to New York, the company having swelled to almost a hundred girls, and him, and still Jimmy in his his fake mustache and exaggerated glare. Now, in the finale, Steve lifts a motorcycle over his head, and every time he does, he marvels at the strength of his new body, and how little good it does. Selling war bonds is fine, and he’d rather be doing that than doing nothing, but… he feels intensely helpless.

“You’re a New Yorker, aren't you, Steve?” says Bernadette-call-me-Bernie. She and Steve are out back of the theater, waiting. A lot of show biz is waiting, Steve has learned. The parking lot behind the theater is empty, and Bernie has been teaching Steve how to ride the motorcycle. Bernie joined the company in LA, and has never been to New York, and is getting advice from some of the veterans on what to do on her day off.

Steve cuts the engine and kicks out the stand. He thinks he’s got the hang of how to drive the thing now. He shrugs and nods. He got elocution lessons out in LA, his accent’s more or less gone now, but being back home again… Some of the new girls noticed the Brooklyn coming out.

“So? What’s worth seeing?”

Steve scratches the back of his head. He thinks of Brooklyn, of Flatbush Avenue, of the Barnes house out in Vinegar Hill. He thinks of Prospect Park and of going down to the river to sketch the bridge in the sunset. He thinks of Bucky’s shoulder bumping against his, and sitting out on a fire escape. “Dunno,” he says. “Statue of Liberty?”

“Yeah? What’s it like?”

He smiles and shrugs. “Well…”

She cottons on at once. “Hang on a minute. Captain America has never seen the Statue of Liberty?”  Bernie looks horrified. “Steven.”

“I’ve seen it. From. A distance.” He shrugs. “I always meant to go, but, I don’t know. It was always right there. Figured I could go another time. She’s not going anywhere, is she?”

Bernie puts a hand on her hip and smiles, slow and white and wide. “Well what do you say, sweetheart? You want to come with me?”

Steve feels his face going warm. Mostly, the girls seem to have agreed to keep their paws off Steve, seeing as how there’s, like, a hundred of them. (It makes Steve think of Orpheus, torn to shreds by his frustrated admirers, but Steve doesn’t like to think of himself as Orpheus. Not ever.) Still, sometimes one of the girls will decide to be bold, and Bernie, who rides motorcycles and smokes things that ain’t always cigarettes, is nothing if not bold.

Steve thinks of Carter. He thinks, irrationally, of bumping into Winnie, or Jeanie, or Susan, or Becca, or George. He thinks of Bucky, lying in a trench somewhere in Europe, in the mud, with bullets and bombs hitting the dirt all around him. “Can’t,” he says, which is not a lie. “Gotta meet with some muckity mucks in midtown that day,” which is technically accurate, even though the meeting wouldn’t stop him from having enough time to visit the Statue of Liberty with Bernadette-call-me-Bernie. “Sorry,” he says, which is just plain true.

She just shrugs one shoulder. “Ah well. Can’t blame a gal for trying.”

“Try Coney Island,” Steve suggests, with mischief. “The Cyclone’s a real blast.”

After the show, he’s sitting in his hotel room in New York, feeling absurdly homesick. He’s so close to Brooklyn, and yet so far away. He’s changed so much, he can’t go back. He thinks about going to see the Barneses, about telling them everything that’s happened, but…

Then he’d have to explain why he’s strong and healthy and not in Europe, fighting the Nazis and doing everything he can to keep Bucky safe.

He doesn’t think he could face them, like this.

He leaves New York with a fresh determination to get to Europe. He sells it hard to Brandt, to anyone who will listen. He should go overseas, he insists. Morale of the troops, he tells  them. Good for everyone, he says.

But then he actually gets there, and he doesn’t know what he’d imagined but… it wasn’t this.

He’d known, intellectually, but being there is something else. Seeing it is something else. And he feels like more of a fool than ever, more useless than ever. Men are dying here, leaving pieces of themselves in the mud and what is he doing? What good is he doing?

All the power in his shiny new body and still not able to help.

He can’t imagine feeling more useless than he does right now.

He’s wrong, of course.

I understand you're "America's New Hope?"

Bond sales take a ten percent
bump in every state I visit.

Is that Senator Brandt I hear?

At least he's got me doin' this.
Phillips would have had be stuck in lab.

“And these are your only two options? A lab rat or a dancing monkey?”

He follows her gaze to the open page of his sketchbook. He says nothing, because how is he supposed to explain himself? The only thing worse than feeling this helpless is feeling this helpless in front of her. “You were meant for more than this, you know?”

Her face is so earnest. Those big, beautiful eyes, those red lips, those dark brows lifted in just the faintest suggestion of a challenge. Christ. She believes in him. She believes in him.

She doesn’t know him, though. Meant for more than this? He wasn’t meant for anything. He was meant to die when he was a kid, when he was a teen, before he turned 25. He isn’t meant for anything. He’s alive in defiance of what he was meant for. He’s been given everything he ever dreamed of and he’s still the unluckiest bastard ever born.

Schlemiel, schlimazel, he hears, in Bucky’s voice, and it hits him like a punch right to the middle of his chest.

“What?” she says, gently challenging.

He wants to tell her, he thinks. He wants to make her see -- he wasn’t meant for this, he’s just making do. But he doesn’t know how to put it into words. The great irony of his existence. The feeling of it is too big. If this were Bucky, he'd make a joke. So he says: “You know for the longest time I dreamed about coming overseas and being on the front lines. Serving my country. I finally get everything I wanted, and I'm wearing tights.”

A van beeps behind them and they turn to look. It’s an ambulance, and suddenly Steve feels like the worst kind of ungrateful. Guilt is an air raid siren in his head. Quit feelin’ sorry for yourself, Rogers, what the fuck is wrong with you? He swallows, watching the stretchers being unloaded. “They look like they've been through hell.”

“These men more than most.”

He looks up at her, inquiring.

She sighs, like maybe she shouldn’t be telling him this, but… “Schmidt sent out a force to Azzano. Two hundred men went up against him and less than fifty returned. Your audience contained what was left of the one-oh-seventh--”

The rest of the sentence doesn’t even register.

Let it not be said that Steve is a man without priorities. He is a man who is full to the brim of priorities. His internal filing cabinet is packed with priorities, all neatly labeled and sorted, but…

If guilt is an air raid siren in Steve’s head, then Bucky is an actual air raid. His priorities? Vaporized. His guilt? Fled for the shelters. His loyalty, his duty, his dubious respect for chain of command? Nowhere to be found.

There’s just Bucky.

Or, more accurately, the explosion happening in Steve’s head, where Bucky should be.

“The one-oh-seventh?” Steve repeats. He needs to be sure. He needs to be sure.

She cocks her head, concerned. “What?”

You heard the Colonel,
your friend is most likely
dead.

You don't know that.

Even so, he's devising a
strategy. If he detects…

By the time he's done that,
it could be too late!

Steve!

You told me you thought
I was meant for more than this.
Did you mean that?

Every word.

It’s still an ongoing explosion in Steve’s head when they leave the camp. What if he’s dead? What if he’s hurt? What if--

Peg’s got some kind of portable radio, with a headset, and she’s having a loud conversation that’s half argument, half negotiation with whoever’s on the other end. He misses a fair bit of it, mostly because Bucky, but partially because he’s a bit nervous to be going AWOL like this. He keeps waiting for someone to stop them, but no one questions a man in a jeep, with captain’s insignia and an SSR hellcat in the back, swearing over the radio at some…

“Complete and utter prick,” Peggy mutters as she finishes the call. She turns off the portable radio and climbs over into the front seat. Steve has to work real hard not to look at her legs when she hitches up her skirt like that. She squirms a bit to settle herself and straighten her skirt out.

“Who is?” Steve asks, fixing his eyes back on the road.

“Our pilot,” she says. “Stay on this road, there’s an airstrip a few miles up ahead, he’ll meet us there.”

“You got us a pilot? Is that…”

“We’re not commandeering military resources. He’s a civilian. He’s just…” she sighs. “Mental. He’ll do it.”

Steve casts a glance at her. “For a price?” he guesses, by the sour twist to her mouth.

“Undoubtedly.”

“Agent Carter, I--”

“If you’re about to apologize or say something equally foolish let me remind you that you are atrocious at talking to women and would do better to keep your mouth shut.”

Steve closes his mouth. But after a moment, she sighs. “I'm sorry, that was cruel.”

“No crueler than me dragging you into this mess.” The guilt siren is starting up in his head again, on top of everything else.

“You didn’t drag me into anything,” she informs him primly. “But it’s adorable that you think you could.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He glances over at her, and catches her looking back, with that look like she gave him when he got the flag at Lehigh. He can feel heat creeping up the back of his neck.

She looks away. So does he. “Tell me about your friend. This fellow I’m throwing away my promising career for,” she says, light and bright. “He must be quite something.”

“He's…” Steve says, and for a moment he’s stymied by vocabulary. “He’s my best friend,” he says at last. “I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him.”

“He saved your life?” Peggy says, curious.

“Every damn day, from the time I was about twelve. Guy like me -- like I was, I mean, before all--” he waves a hand down at himself, “--this. I was...” He struggles again. “He was…” Bucky was an invitation to family dinner when Steve couldn’t afford food. Bucky was a hand pulling him back from trouble. Bucky was oxygen when Steve couldn’t breathe. “Bucky’s always had my back.”

The silence stretches out between them. “Bucky?” She says, at last, the single word full of gentle disbelief.

Steve laughs out loud. “James Buchanan,” he says. “There were eight kids called James on his block alone. Everyone got nicknames.”

“What was yours?”

Steve laughs. “Um. Mostly folks didn’t talk to me enough to need to call me anything. Bucky used to call me Stevie. Or Steve-o. Or Sunshine, I hated that.” Why is he telling her this? Why?

“My brother Michael used to call me Lady Lancelot,” she says. “I pretended to hate it.”

Steve looks over at her again, and she’s smiling at him, a bit sadly. He wants to ask more about this brother, but then the Jeep bounces and squeaks over a pothole and he looks back at the road. He’s not actually much of a driver. He had a coupla lessons driving that motorcycle around the parking lot, and a few times he helped the truck drivers moving set pieces, but driving a Jeep down a dirt track is real different.

“Lady Lancelot, huh?” Steve says.

“Mm. I was always pretending to be a knight in shining armor, saving the damsel in distress. Michael used to play at being the monster. Or Merlin. Whatever I needed to be the hero. Later, he helped me get a job at the SOE. Which led to me getting a job with MI5. Which led to this.” When he steals a look at her, she’s looking steadily at him, stony-hard and intent on his face.

Steve swallows, and almost crashes the Jeep again. He looks back at the road. “Agent Carter--”

“Please. We’re going AWOL together, you can call me Peggy.”

“Peggy. This is -- what you’re doing for me, I can’t thank you enough, but I hate to think of you getting into any kinda trouble on account of--”

“Steven, will you listen to what I’m telling you,” she says, exasperated. “I almost turned down that SOE job. Sometimes I wonder, if I hadn’t, if I’d started there earlier, gone farther and faster and refused to let anyone hold me back… Maybe I could’ve saved him.”

Steve’s breath catches. “Peggy--” he starts.

Then her small hand is gripping his forearm, surprisingly strong and tight. “I know what it’s like to lose someone -- to lose family. So I’m telling you now: Go farther. Go faster. Don’t let anyone hold you back. Especially not yourself.”

He looks over at her again, and thinks he’d like nothing better than to slam on the brakes, lean across the gearbox and kiss her right on her red, red lips. He doesn’t do it, of course, but he thinks about it. And she smiles back at him at him like she could eat him alive.

Who are you supposed to be?

I’m… Captain America.

… I beg your pardon?

Chapter Text

2

You could shuffle him with millions,
Soldiers and civilians,
I’d pick him out
In the darkest caves and hallways
I would know him always
Beyond a doubt

- That's Him by Ogden Nash and Kurt Weill, 1943.

Sergeant. 32557…

Bucky? Oh, my God.

Is that…

It's me. It's Steve.

Steve?

Come on.

Steve...

Bucky hadn’t seen him at first, and that gets Steve right where he lives, but he can’t think about it now. He can’t think about the way Bucky stared up at the machine above him. He can’t think about the way Bucky is kitten-weak, leaning on Steve, hunched over like his guts are hurting him. He can’t think about any of that, all he can think about is how to get outta here without getting blown up or shot. So when Bucky says “what happened to you?” And he sounds a bit sick, Steve isn’t really paying attention when he quips back “I joined the army.”

He’s looking left and right, trying to figure which way they need to go to get outta here. They can’t go back the way he came. They’ll have to go up, he decides. Up and out, somehow. He’s got intel to deliver, a map, with locations, locked up in his head. He’s got men outside, escaped prisoners who need a rescue. He’s got to get Bucky out of this horrible slimy basement. Steve kind of wants to just throw Bucky over his shoulder and run, but he suspects that Bucky would murder him for that.

“You said you were doing… doing OWI shit or something. Propaganda work.”

“I was, at first. Toured with the USO and everything.”

“What was it, a freak show?” Bucky says, blurts really. Steve looks back at him, shocked, and a little hurt. Bucky pushes Steve away and sways on his two feet, staring. At least he can walk on his own. Steve is -- his senses are all dialed all the way up, more than he can ever remember. He can hear the guns and explosions outside, can hear guards running away towards the firefight, and he can hear -- Jesus. He can hear Bucky’s damn heartbeat: fluttering-fast and terrified. He really is a freak show. “What did they do to you, Steve? What the fuck did they do to you?” Bucky sounds panicked.

Steve stares at him. “Nothing I didn’t sign up for,” he says. “It was…” he sighs, and shakes his head. “You ain’t gonna believe me.”

“Fuckin’ try me,” Bucky says. He’s listing sideways, one hand curled around his middle, hair falling over his forehead.

Steve opens his mouth. He closes it. “We gotta keep moving,” he says. “Come on.” He starts forward, and Bucky stumbles after him.

“Quit dodgin’ my questions, Rogers,” Bucky snarls.

Steve sighs. He peers around a corner, even though he knows there’s no one there. He can’t hear any heartbeats except his and Bucky’s. “Army was working on this... serum. To make people stronger, faster, healthier.”

There’s a long pause. “And they gave it to you?” he says, incredulous, or horrified, or both.

“I volunteered,” Steve says.

“And are you?” Bucky says.

“Am I what?”

“Stronger, faster, healthier?”

"I look it, don't I?"

"Rogers."

“Well I ain’t got asthma no more. I can outrun a Jeep and pick up a motorcycle so… yeah. Guess so.” He starts down the hallway. He checks back -- Bucky’s there, it’s fine, he looks like hell, but it’s fine -- he looks ahead again. All clear.

He can hear Bucky swallow, behind him, his stumbling steps, weaving. “Did it hurt?”

Steve flashes back to being in the pod, the blazing light of the vita-rays burning him up, inside and out. No one who heard the story had bothered to ask him that. Not even Carter, but then, she’d been there. She’d heard him scream.

“A little,” he lies.

“Is it permanent?”

“So far.” Christ, that’s something he hadn’t thought to worry about before. It’s going to haunt him now, though.

They keep moving up, looking for a way out. There has to be a way out.

Gotta be a rope or something!

Just go! Get out of here!

No! Not without you!

It’s not that Steve didn’t know what his new body could do.

It’s just that when his hand actually fucking catches metal on the far side of the chasm, he comes to realize that maybe he doesn’t know everything his new body can do. His throat feels seared by too-hot air, and he’s not sure he still has eyebrows, but holy fucking shit, he’s got both hands on the metal edge of the far walkway, and he’s looking down at a lake of fire, but it ain’t coming any closer. His feet kick out over thin, hot air, and his shoulders should be screaming in protest at holding all 240 pounds of him, but there’s just a pleasant sort of stretch.

Hands clamp like iron bars on his forearms, gripping so tight he’s sure there will be bruises, and Steve becomes aware that Bucky is speaking. Bucky is, in fact, screaming his name.

Steve looks up from the fire and there’s Bucky’s face, panicked and desperate and wondering all at once. “You crazy idiot, you fucking moron!” He shrieks like a banshee.

And then he’s grabbing at Steve’s shoulders, hauling him up at the same time Steve pulls on the bar. Between the two of them, Steve kind of flops up and over Bucky, like an oversized, patriotic fish that Bucky’s just hauled out of the ocean.

Steve is a bit boneless with shock, but vaguely aware that Bucky is wheezing. Belatedly, Steve remembers that he’s gained about a hundred and fifty pounds since the last time he fell on Bucky in a drunken stupor.

But when he tries to move, he finds that Bucky is hanging doggedly on to Steve’s shirt, and the wheezing is panic. He' repeating what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck in a high, breathless voice.

“Bucky?” Steve says, terrified.

“Oh-- oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Steven what the fuck,” Bucky babbles.

Steve pulls back, hauls Bucky to his feet, manhandling him a bit. He can’t help patting Bucky down, checking for injuries, for anything broken. Bucky just stares at him, shaking like he’s cold even though the air is sweltering.

“Okay,” Steve says, loudly to be heard over the continuing roar of burning. “It’s okay, I’m okay, we made it.”

“You-- asshole--” Bucky gasps. “You asshole.”

“Yeah that’s me, that’s--"

Steve can’t help himself. He grabs Bucky’s head and holds him there, just looks at him. Bucky’s face is damp with sweat, his expression slack, eyes gone glassy, but darting over Steve, frantically. Up here, flushed with heat and lit from below by the raging fire, it’s like seeing him in full technicolor for real. His cheeks are flushed, and there are bruises on his face, and blood, and the red and orange and purple makes him look alive in a way he hadn’t, down in the lab.

“You okay?” Steve asks, because, well, what the hell else can he say?

Bucky stares. “I don’t know,” he blurts back. “Steve, I don’t--”

A boom from below reminds them that they really, really do not have time.

Steve drags Bucky’s arm over his shoulder and hauls him away. There’s got to be a way out of here. They ain’t dying here, not now. Not if Steve has anything to say about it, not if he has to get Bucky to ride piggyback while he climbs down the outside with his bare goddamn hands.

In the end, that is exactly what they have to do.

The indignity of it does, at least, seem to ground Bucky a bit. “If you ever speak a word of this to anyone I will murder you,” Bucky hisses in his ear, as soon as they’re safely outside.

“Sure pal, it’s a promise,” Steve says mindlessly. Bucky is pulling down the sleeves on his shirt, not fast enough to hide the needle marks, the bruising there. Steve feels sick. “Come on, let’s find the others, see if they’ve got a medic.”

There is no medic in the ragtag group of survivors gathered outside the grounds of the still-burning factory. There is, however, a mechanic with some training as a field medic who’s checking over the wounded, seeing who gets to ride on the tanks and trucks, and who has to hump it on foot. Steve pushes Bucky down on a crate while the medic looks him over.

“I’m okay, Jesus. I can walk. I'm fine,” Bucky says. It’s the strangest role reversal, hearing those words from Bucky’s mouth. “Come on, Rogers, quit yer hovering.”

Steve could not possibly stop doing that, even if someone tied him down. The mechanic-turned-medic is a compact little Asian guy -- Fresno, Steve remembers. He’s from Fresno. He’s not really a medic, and he kind of resents that he’s been pushed into the role, but they’re all doing whatever they have to do. He’s checking Bucky’s pupils with light from a flashlight someone dug up somewhere. He makes a sound, then turns Bucky’s head to one side, holding him by the chin.

“You know your name?” Fresno says. He’s looking at the deep, purpling bruise on the side of Bucky’s head, like he doesn’t like the look of it. There’s blood in Bucky’s goddamn ear and Steve needs to know how it got there, he wants to take the factory apart again, with his hands this time--

“James Barnes.”

Fresno raises his brows. “He called you Bucky.”

“Yeah, that’s cuz he’s an asshole,” Bucky retorts.

Fresno rolls his eyes. “Yeah. He can walk. He’s fine.” He moves on to the next guy, and Bucky gets to his feet.

He’s not, Steve wants to say. He’s not fine. He’s still a little hunched over, holding his stomach like it hurts. He’s pale, shaken-looking. His eyes are in deep shadowy hollows. He’s so small, Steve keeps thinking. He’s so much smaller. How did they make him smaller? Is he starving? Did they--

Bucky glances over at him, leans back awkwardly to look up. “Christ,” he says.

Belatedly, the truth hits Steve. Bucky’s just the same, probably. It’s Steve that’s gotten bigger. And maybe Bucky’s skin was always that ashen pale underneath. Steve sees colors different now.

Bucky is staring too, and all at once, they both notice themselves staring. “Sorry,” they say at the same time, except that Bucky adds a soft “fuck,” because of course he does.

“What did they do to you?” Steve asks quietly, worried.

Bucky’s mouth twists and something almost like a laugh comes out of him. “You’re one to talk, pal.” He drags his hands over his face, and presses his fingers against his closed eyes. “Shit. Am I dreaming? Is this…”

It feels like there’s a fist around Steve’s throat. “This is real, Buck.” He puts his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, thinking he can ground him, that he can --

But Bucky flinches all over and pulls back, slipping out of Steve’s grasp, and Steve freezes. He lets his hand fall. He swallows. “I swear it’s real. You ain’t dreaming.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says.

“Come on, man. Lord’s name.”

Bucky laughs again, less horrible this time. He lets his hands drop from his face. His eyes are red, but dry. “Yeah, ok, fuck you, buddy. You’re never this much of an asshole in my dreams.”

You dream about me? Steve wants to ask, a dizzy lurch in his guts.

“Captain,” someone says, a crisp, British voice. Steve turns to look. The man -- he looks like Errol Flynn, Steve thinks vaguely -- throws a crisp salute. “We’ve got the tanks in order. The ones who can’t walk are being loaded up into some of the trucks we captured. Luckily there was a supply truck that survived, so we’ve got some rations.”

Steve blinks, just three rapid blinks, and yeah, they can’t just… they’re not out of the woods yet. They need a leader. “Yeah, alright.” Steve clears his throat, shakes his head, and tries again. Once more with feeling, and pronouncing your r’s. You ain’t on Flatbush Avenue no more, Rogers. “Right. Okay, let’s.” He nods. “Form up. Get weapons out to those that can carry them, make a perimeter. We’ll need scouts and a rear guard.”

“I know some guys,” Bucky says. “Guys with scouting experience. I’ll track them down, get them armed.”

Steve looks at him, a bit wary, but Bucky just shrugs one shoulder, and just like that, they’re in Brooklyn again, conversing silently. It’s not fine, but this ain’t the time, Bucky says, without saying a word. Steve gives a minute nod, which means okay, I trust you.

“We’ll need to get outta here quick, I’ll just--” he reaches for the transponder in his inner pocket. He pulls it out and is kinda surprised to find that there’s a bullet in it. Belatedly, he feels the bruise underneath, throbbing against his ribcage. “Oh,” he says. He hadn't noticed that.

Bucky is staring, and kind of looks like he wants to puke. Or maybe he just wants to murder Steve. Probably both.

“OK. We’ll take the long way,” Steve says, putting the transponder back in his pocket. “Know anyone who knows the area? Been on the ground around here, I mean?”

Bucky swallows, like he’s actually swallowing the urge to call Steve a dumbass. He shakes his head, looks to Errol Flynn over there.

“I’d thought of that,” the Brit says. “I was asking around, but it seems like no. We were all brought in on trucks, no one really knows the terrain around here.”

“That’s alright,” Steve says confidently. “We flew in, but I got a good look at the map. I can get us back to base. We’ll be alright. What’s your name?” he asks.

The Brit throws a salute. “James Montgomery Falsworth, 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade.”

“Falsworth,” Steve says. He won’t forget. “You wanna run rear guard?”

“My pleasure, Captain.” Falsworth snaps off another salute and heads off without complaint.

Steve turns to Bucky. “About those scouts, they should--” Bucky is staring. “What? What is it?”

Bucky opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. And then, eloquently: “Um.”

“What?” Steve says, a bit more insistently. If they can’t get in touch with Peggy and Stark, then they’ve got to get moving. Almost four hundred men, half of them wounded. “What’s wrong?”

“A few things?” Bucky says. “First…” He shakes his head, visibly forcing himself to prioritize, to sort through the mess in his mind. “Steve, you can’t find your keys in your own damn jacket, you get lost in New York City, where the streets are numbered, so forgive me if I’m--”

Steve waves a hand. “I remember stuff better now. It’s not a big deal, don’t worry about it.” It’s downright eerie, the way he can feel his voice drifting back, back in time to Brooklyn as he talks to Bucky. Re-mem-berrr , he starts out saying, but ends with dunwureeyabahdit. His mouth feels weird.

A familiar wrinkle appears on Bucky’s forehead. Worry, etched in a single up-and-down line right between his brows. “Steve. Did that serum mess with your head, too?”

Steve shrugs. “I dunno.”

“Steve,” Bucky says sharply. “You are a terrible liar. Answer my god damn question.”

Steve sighs. “Maybe. Yeah, I think so.”

Bucky goes even paler. “Jesus.”

“Bucky,” Steve says impatiently. “We don’t have time to--”

“No, fine, just… second thing -- you know Falsworth outranks you, right? He’s a major.”

Steve blinks. “Oh. He didn’t say… should I?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Nah. Monty knows what he’s about. If he didn’t think you should be in charge, he’d have pulled rank right off the bat. Guess he trusts you.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that -- which is apparently the wrong thing, because Bucky’s eyes narrow.

“Which is a dumb fucking thing for him to do, since you don’t even notice when you take a bullet to the chest Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Steve, didja think I was gonna let that fuckin’ slide?” Bucky says, punctuating his words with hard pokes at the broken transponder in Steve’s jacket.

“Aw, come on, Buck,” Steve says, feeling abashed.

“I leave you alone for what, six months?” He’s shaking -- with rage, on top of all the rest of it. “I thought I took all the stupid with me?”

Steve rubs a hand against the back of his neck. “It wasn’t stupid.”

“Of course you didn’t think it was stupid, you’re a goddamn idiot.  Pal, you wouldn’t know the smart thing to do if it slapped you on the ass and called you sweetheart. I cannot believe—“

“Bucky…” Steve looks up, and Bucky reluctantly meets his gaze. “They said you were missing. I couldn’t just do nothing.”

A muscle jumps in Bucky’s jaw. The silence stretches out and out and out. “Right,” he says at last. He looks sick about it, not relieved, not grateful, just sick. “Fine. Whatever. I know who I want for my scout team, but ya need to meet someone first.”

“Who?”

“Jones. We’ve got English, Americans, but there’s a contingent of Resistance too -- you’ll need Gabe around to translate for ya when I take the scouts out. Unless the serum taught ya French?”

Steve gives him a look.

“Okay, I didn’t think so.” Bucky pauses.

“Bucky,” Steve starts.

“It’s alright, pal,” he claps Steve’s shoulder, quick and sharp. “Don’t worry about it. You scared the shit outta me, that’s all. Alright?”

“Alright,” Steve says, and tries to believe that it’s so.

Bucky nods. But he’s not meeting Steve’s eye, and he’s still holding his stomach like it hurts as he walks away.

It’s a long trek back to Allied territory, and it’s extremely slow-going. Bucky and his scouts -- mostly picked from his old unit, and a few from his cell block at the factory -- range across the territory ahead. Steve takes point with the main body of the men, listening for Bucky’s whistled all-clears before leading them forward. Falsworth runs the rear guard, which might sound like a plush assignment, but it’s just as dangerous as Bucky’s, with the added complication of trying to cover and confuse the trail they’re leaving.

Bucky got a rifle from somewhere, and he’s walking easier now, a loping, rangy sort of gait that Steve doesn’t recognize. He supposes Buck musta learned it in the army, maybe at the front. Steve notices that he carries his rifle right handed. For a minute, he’s worried that maybe there’s something wrong, maybe Hydra did something. “Thought you were an incurable southpaw,” he says, nodding to the gun.

Bucky shrugs. “I can write with either hand, actually. Anyway, shooting is more about which eye is dominant.”

Steve didn’t think there was anything about Bucky that he didn’t already know. He stares. “Wait. Then why… Sister Beatrice used to smack the crap out of you for that. She threatened to tie your hand behind your back. You said--”

“I said ‘Lady, if you want me to stop writing with my left hand, you’re gonna have to cut it off.’ I thought she was gonna have an aneurism right there at the blackboard.” He smirks a little, almost the way he used to. “I didn’t learn how to be an asshole from you, ya know,” he says.“And anyway. Jeanie's a southpaw too.”

And, Steve realizes, by the time Jeanie got to Sister Beatrice's handwriting classes, the poor nun had given up smacking left hands with rulers. Bucky Barnes: always looking out for others. Always ready to clear the way.

Bucky throws a salute. “It’s all clear up ahead. There’s a good spot to make camp for the night, good cover if we’re smart about it.”

They make camp. They lost two more men during the march: fellas who were on death’s door and crossed over somewhere along the road. Morita, the mechanic-turned-medic, reports it. “I don’t think we coulda saved ‘em,” is Morita’s assessment, but it’s obvious that it still hurts him. Hell, it hurts Steve and he didn’t even know the guys. They do what they can, burying the bodies far away from camp and Steve puts some boulders over the graves to save them from wild animals. He keeps their dog tags in his pocket.

After, though, he can’t sleep. He still feels like he’s buzzing. The adrenaline that carried him through the fight still seems to be going strong. Everything is clear and bright and stark, in his head. Washed clean. The wild animal feeling that had clawed at him from the moment he found out Bucky was missing has finally settled, but the alertness remains. He couldn’t possibly sleep.  

He keeps watch instead, prowling the edges of the camp. He’ll be fine without sleep. He knows this much from the USO, doing a show and then riding all night to get to the next one. He can go days without sleeping, and he knows he won’t sleep until they’re all back in Allied territory.

Thirty miles behind the lines. They did about six today. It’ll probably be four more days until they can get back.

He finds a boulder at the edge of camp, and perches himself on it, staring out into the dark, listening for danger. He’s not hearing heartbeats anymore -- so maybe that’s an adrenaline thing too, but he can still hear every damn fox and badger for at least a hundred yards all around. He figures he’ll hear a Hydra patrol before it gets too close.

Someone comes up behind him, and Steve turns on the rock to see that it’s Bucky. He’s walking tall now, the ashen paleness in his skin less than it was, but… there’s still blood smeared in his ear.

“You should sleep,” Steve says.

“And you should eat,” Bucky counters. He swings his arm, underhand, and tosses something. Steve catches it automatically. A little paper box, with something solid inside. Steve stares at it.

“Where the hell did you get a D Ration out here?” Steve says, wonderingly.

Bucky smirks and climbs onto the boulder to sit next to Steve. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. You gonna share that?”

Steve tears off the packaging and breaks the chocolate bar in half, handing half to Bucky. They munch in silence for a little while.

“I got this memory, see?” Bucky says, softly so only Steve can hear. “I got a real clear memory of making you promise not to join up. I think my exact words were never change.”

It’s a good thing it’s dark, because Steve knows he’s going red as a tomato. He can feel Bucky looking at him, turning his head all slow like and fixing Steve with his eyes. “You, uh. You remember that?” Steve asks. “I’m a little surprised, pal. You were pretty drunk at the time.”

“I said: promise me, Steve. Never change.”

“Yeah, you did. But, uh. I didn’t actually promise anything like that,” he says, with as much dignity as he can muster.

“Oh didn’t you?” Bucky says, and Steve can hear the scoff, the unspoken You fucking punk, say that again, I dare ya.

“I didn’t.” Steve turns his head, meets Bucky’s eye, and lifts his chin, all defiant-like.

“You said ‘that’s a promise,’ I remember you sayin ‘that’s a promise, ya hear?’” Bucky insists.

“Yeah, but I never promised not to change. I said ‘you ain’t ever gettin’ rid of me.’ And guess what? You ain’t. I keep my promises,” he adds. “Haven’t you heard? I’m Captain America.”

“Oh my god, I don’t know what I was worried about, you ain’t changed a bit, have you? They gave you a goddamn body transplant and they still couldn’t make you less of a punk.” He’s grinning though, Steve can see his teeth white in the darkness.

“Well. You can take the kid outta Brooklyn...”

“You’re an asshole, Steve Rogers.”

“That’s Captain Asshole, Sergeant.”

You're late.

Couldn't call my ride.

“Hey! Let’s hear it for Captain America!”

Steve meets Bucky’s eye and they have a silent conversation.

Really? Steve says with his eyes squinty and his mouth slanted.

Don’t expect me to feel sorry about it, Bucky says with a shrug and a completely unapologetic smirk.

Steve huffs. He looks at the crowd around him. These men: the men he saved, and their friends. Smiling for him. Clapping and cheering. A feeling swells in his chest, making his head strangely light. He looks back at Peggy. It’s that face, that same face from the day with the flag and the jeep. Like she’s going to eat him up with a spoon. Christ. He suddenly understands all that nonsense people say about doing something to make their girl proud. He’d do a heck of a lot to make Peggy look at him like that.

Men are patting his shoulders now, slapping him on the back, and each one reverberates through him, like he’s a drum. He sways a bit. His head is spinning.

His head is spinning? The world is… spinning?

“Steve?”

Steve puts a hand out, and Bucky is there, his shoulder under Steve’s grip, his hand on Steve’s waist, steadying him because --  

“Pal?” Bucky says, and there’s worry all over his face and--

Steve wakes up under blankets, to the smell of something god damn delicious. He sits up so sharply his head reels and throbs. He’s in a medical tent -- beds and curtains and antiseptic smells -- and he’s still wearing pieces of his uniform -- his costume shirt with the jacket gone. All of that is secondary to the tray loaded with steaming food: mashed potatoes, a bowl of soup, toast, an apple, and his mouth is instantly watering.  

Someone is laughing at him. It’s Bucky, sitting in a camp chair beside Steve’s cot and nearly pissing himself he’s laughing so hard. Steve can’t even be mad about it right now. He looks up at the nurse who’s holding the tray of food. She looks faintly alarmed. “Is that for me?” he blurts.

“Y-yes,” the nurse says. “But. Take it slow.” She sets the tray in his lap and moves around the cot. “And let me check your vitals.”

Bucky is still howling with laughter. Steve glares. “What happened,” he says, flat. He’s feeling the beginnings of embarrassment. He has a vague suspicion…

“You passed out,” the nurse says while she takes his pulse. “Which is what happens when you aren’t eating.” She’s giving him a look. “For god’s sake. Go slow, you’ll make yourself sick.”

Steve had not noticed his free hand picking up the toast, but he’s already got half of the first piece shoved in his mouth. He makes his hand lower the rest of the piece to the tray. “I ate,” he tries to say, around a mouthful of toast. It comes out more like my aiyuh.

“You ate half a shitty Kraut ration a day and whatever fuckin’ berries we could scavenge,” Bucky says, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “One measly meal a day, for five days of hard marching. Pal. The nice lady says your file suggests you need at least 5000 calories a day to keep your figure.”

“Mwhuh?” is all Steve can say. There’s a bite of apple in his mouth along with the toast. How did that happen? He can feel that his cheeks are full like a chipmunk’s.

Bucky starts laughing again, burying his face in his hands.

“Captain Rogers. In the future, on missions, I suggest you bring double rations for yourself if you don’t want to pass out as soon as the adrenaline wears off.”

Steve nods, slowly. He has been eating more since the serum. He’d attributed it to having money for once -- he could afford second helpings, so why not? And the chorus girls all ate like birds, constantly throwing their leftovers to Steve like he was the family dog.

The nurse leans back and lets his arm go. “You seem… fine.” She looks a little irritated about it. “Now if you don’t mind, I have other patients to attend to.”

She leaves them, and Steve glares at Bucky, who is getting control of himself again. But it all falls to pieces as soon as Bucky gets a load of Steve trying to chew with his mouth stuffed full.

“Christ, I’m sorry pal but you -- that nurse was just standing there with the food, and we were both wondering how in the hell we were gonna wake you up. You were out, my friend. You didn’t so much as twitch when there were four guys loading you into a stretcher. So I’m sitting here, trying not to picture what it’s gonna be like to spoon feed you broth when you’re the size of a fucking elephant. Then she took the cover off and you sit bolt upright like goddamn Dracula.” He wipes his eyes again.

“Four guys?” Steve says, with a terrible, terrible suspicion.

“Yeah, pal. You’ve put on a couple pounds since I saw you last. You barely fit on the stretcher at all.”

Steve blinks, chews, and thinks back. “Oh no.”

“Ohhhhh yes.”

Steve swallows, and looks over at Bucky. “In front of Carter?”

“Very nearly on top of her. Good thing she’s spry, you mighta squashed her flat.” Bucky claps a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t look like that, she was real worried boutcha. It was sweet.”

Steve pushes the tray away and covers his face with both hands. “I fainted. I fainted.”

“It was a very manly, heroic sort of faint,” Bucky says.

Steve wants to die. Bucky just starts laughing again.

It occurs to Steve that Bucky hasn’t laughed like this since Steve found him on the table, so… Maybe he doesn’t mind so much. He drops his hands and finds that Bucky has stolen his apple. Steve pulls the tray back to himself and shovels some mashed potato into his face.

“Jerk,” Steve tries to say. It comes out like yurk, but Bucky gets the idea.

He kicks the leg of Steve’s cot, which creaks ominously under the abuse and Steve’s weight. “Finish your food, punk, we got a letter to write.” He takes a bite of the apple.

Steve crinkles his brow in a questioning way.

Bucky gives him a look. “You better hope that we both die out here pal,” he says, and it’s not funny except that it is, somehow -- hard edged and mean and funny the way they used to joke about being broke and whether they could make rat taste less like rat. “Those fucking condolence letters got sent, you asshole. Including yours. ”

The food turns to ash in his mouth. “Oh fuck.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says.

“Your Ma is going to have a heart attack. I hadn’t told her about--” He starts to say it, to wave helplessly at himself, but Bucky’s barreling on.

“She’s gonna have a heart attack and then she’s gonna kill us.” He grins and punches Steve’s shoulder again. “I can’t believe you put my ma down as your next of kin,” he says, looking oddly touched.

“I put you down as my next of kin. I don’t--” Steve shrugs. “I don’t have anyone else.”

Bucky’s brow crumples a little, but then his eyes go wide, round as saucers. “Wait. When you say you hadn’t told her…”

“How was I supposed to tell her?” Steve says. “I was on the bond circuit. I was Captain America. I was wearing tights. It was humiliating."

“You let my mother find out that you were Captain America in a fucking condolence letter?” he says, aghast.

Steve puts his food aside, and lets his head drop into his hands. “She’s going to murder me.”

Bucky pats his shoulder consolingly. “Yeah, she is. Thanks for taking the heat off me, pal. She’s gonna be so busy murdering you, I might even get away!”

Dear Ma, Pa, Becca, Jeanie, Susan, (and Baby JB),

You’ll be glad to hear the army jumped the gun, sending those letters. We’re all fine here, back at base safe and sound, though I won’t say where. I ain’t hurt at all, and neither is Steve. Stop panicking. I can hear you panicking all the way across the Atlantic, and it ain’t good for your heart. I’m fine, I swear, it wasn't bad at all and--

 

Bucky’s unit got captured, taken to a work camp. He’s not fine, he’s malnourished--

 

Steve’s a damn tattle tale who won’t get his own paper--

 

Dear Barneses. I am sitting on your favorite son as I write this, because he doesn’t want to tell you the truth, but I will: His whole unit got captured, and he got roughed up pretty bad at that camp. They weren’t feeding him enough, and they worked him too hard, and he got sick, but I got him out alive. The nurses say there’s nothing wrong with him that a little time and extra rations won’t heal. He’s going to be okay now. I’ll make sure of it. We’re getting enough to eat -- more than enough. I’m making sure he stays warm and gets plenty of rest. You all looked after me long enough, now I can return th--

 

I was fine, before that giant lug sat on me, Jesus Mary and Joseph, Ma. You should see this asshole. He's the size of a brick shithouse now. He's the size of a Golem, remember, like you used to tell us when we were kids? I ain't convinced yet that this new body of his ain't made of clay. His lungs are better, his heart’s all better, even his spine is straight as an arrow, and more than that, Jesus. He's 6'2" and strong as an ox -- but he’s still Steve. You know our Steven. Heard I was in trouble and came charging into enemy territory with a great big American Flag strapped to his back like an actual goddamn target so if either of us needs looking after, it is, as usual, him. Lucky thing he’s easy to spot in a crowd these days. Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t pull any more stupid stunts.

 

We love you all lots. We’ll write more when we get back to Allied territory. Can’t say where, but we’re going to get some R&R now. We’re both fine, safe and sound, and sorry to have given you such a scare.

Yours,

Bucky & Steve

The nurse spots the fresh blood in Bucky's ear, cleans it away, and makes Bucky stay in the medical tent too. Bucky wheedles and charms his way into getting a cot next to Steve's. Steve doesn't think either of them will sleep, but once the lights are out, between one moment and the next, he's dreaming.

It’s a memory, at first. And because it’s a post-serum memory, it’s terrifyingly vivid. The sickly green light, the shadows, the stench of wet bricks and chemicals and fear thick in his nose, thick enough to taste. And something sweet. A meat-cooking smell that haunts Steve’s memories for the rest of his life.

Bucky’s on the table. He’s staring up, his lips moving, his eyes round, pupils blown terror-wide in the darkness, the blue of them almost completely swallowed up by black. He stares up, right through Steve, at something else.

“Bucky?” Steve says.

Bucky keeps staring into the dark. There’s stubble on his chin, and he stinks of sweat and worse -- an underlying chemical smell that Steve doesn’t know, but he knows isn’t good. He’s unresponsive.

Bile rises in Steve’s throat as he looks over Bucky, the restraints, the marks on him. Bruises on his wrists. Steve can see needle marks in his arms, where the sleeves are riding up. “Oh my god…” Steve’s never been more grateful for his newfound strength. He just rips the straps right off Bucky’s unresisting limbs, his limp body.

Bucky blinks slowly and his eyes focus on Steve at last. “Is… Is that…?” he says, voice thick.

Steve leans over him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his side. He’s warm. He’s alive. “It’s me. It’s Steve,” Steve tells him.

There is a moment of hesitation. An uncertain look in Bucky’s eyes. It’ll clear in a second. He’ll say Steve? And then a soft half-smile will break through the blankness, and it’ll be Bucky looking out at him through the wreckage of what’s been done to him, any second now, that smile -- any second --

“Who?” Bucky says, still looking right through him.

Steve snaps his hands off Bucky and takes a step back. “It’s me,” he says. “It’s Steve.”

Bucky struggles up, to sit sideways on the lab table. He frowns, that familiar frown, with the line between his brows, the slight pout of his lips. “I don’t know you.”

It’s like a terrible fist around his throat, squeezing. He tries to breathe and can’t. “Bucky--” he tries to say, but his voice is gone.

Bucky is standing now, standing straight and tall, taller, taller.

No. Steve is shrinking. He looks down at himself, sees skinny arms, rolled up sleeves, suspenders. It’s him in 1939, before the war, before everything. He looks up at Bucky, and Bucky is huge, dark, and terrible, that wrathful angel look on his face. “Bucky,” Steve chokes out. “It’s me. Please--”

“I don’t know you.” And Bucky looks over him, looks past him, the way people always used to, the way people did, before. “I gotta get outta here,” Bucky says, to himself.

“Bucky, we--”

Bucky looks down at him, and there’s no recognition, only calculation. “You’d only slow me down.”

And then he’s got a gun in his hand, and he’s lifting it, he’s pointing it at Steve and--

Steve is woken by a small, pained sound. Not from him, but from the cot next to his. Ragged breathing, a slight, hurt whine on the inhale and --

And then it stops.

Bucky's awake, and Steve’s awake. Steve opens his eyes and swallows, wonders if he should say something. Bucky rolls onto his back. After a moment, he glances over at Steve. Their eyes meet in the darkness, just the briefest flash of it, of recognition. Then Bucky rolls over, his broad back turned to Steve. So they’re not talking about it. That's fine by Steve.

Not like he wants to talk about it either.

Chapter Text

3

Hide your heart from sight,
Lock your dreams at night,
It could happen to you.

- It Could Happen To You by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke, 1943.

They’re somewhere deep in the southern part of Italy when Steve invents the Howling Commandos.

They aren’t called the Howling Commandos then, of course. They aren’t called anything at that point, they’re just a bunch of tired assholes who’ve been marching across bombed-out countryside, looking for a ride to London. 400 liberated soldiers, some SSR officers, a handful of chorus girls, and Steve, who is a little bit of all of those things, and also none of those things.

In the evenings, after the marching is done, they make little knots around the campfires; humanity reduced to its primitive state, dividing out into its natural components. Everyone slots into place with their kind. The Northerners talking fast and all aloof, the Southerners talking slow and lazy. The old soldiers warm their wounds. The jokesters gravitate to each other, laughing and drinking stolen bottles of chianti.

And then there’s Steve’s campfire. It’s him and Bucky, to start with. Of course. Bucky brings Dum Dum with him, and Dum Dum brings the worst sense of humor Steve’s ever had the misfortune to be subjected to. Then, Gabe joins them. He’s been teaching Steve some French, so he brings Dernier, who it turns out, is a very cheerful madman who always has at least one grenade on his person, even when he’s standing right next to a campfire. Eventually, Morita joins them, and Monty. Monty still somehow smells of cologne, even though there has been exactly no time for bathing since the march south began.

Steve can’t quite figure why they’ve all ended up here, with him. The rank and file might cheer for him out in the field, but they’re not too keen on sharing a campfire with Captain America. On top of that, it’s gotten out that Bucky was the only one to survive the labs, and it seems like most people have decided to steer clear of him. They look at him like maybe he’s dangerous, or contagious. Steve hates it.

So given his strangeness, and Buck’s reputation, and Dugan’s terrible sense of humor, Steve can’t quite figure why Gabe, Dernier, Monty and Morita have decided to latch onto them.

But then he finds out that all four of them are the sole survivors of their respective units. On top of that, Morita caught it from both barrels -- from the guards and the prisoners. Didn’t stop him from providing what medical care he could, even to guys who’d treated him like shit in the cages. Steve admires the heck out of him for it, and has taken to standing behind Morita with his arms crossed whenever someone tries to hassle him. Dugan does the same for Gabe, who got absorbed into the 107th just before Azzano -- because fuck regulations, they needed someone on the radio after their guy took shrapnel to the gut. And there’s other Résistance fighters, but they all give Dernier sad smiles like they know something tragic about him. And Monty won’t say what his story is, but he’s the only Brit aside from Carter, and for a Major, he seems real unwilling to be responsible for any group of men, ever again. That gives Steve an uncomfortable sorta feeling. Like when he looks at Monty, he's looking at a possible future version of himself. What happens to a captain who doesn't go down with his ship?

So. They’re just a buncha dumb mooks with nowhere else to go, really.

Before long, they’re all just telling stupid stories. It started with the tale of the cat that the 107th briefly adopted during their march through Italy, how it used to "assist" Bucky with his sniper missions, pawing at the trigger guard and kneading its claws into his ass when he was supposed to be lying perfectly still. Then Monty tells them about the kitten that grew up with his father’s hunting hounds, and fancied itself a hunting hound. And then Dum Dum starts talking about a stray cat he found in an alley, back in New York, “soaking wet and pissed as hell about being rescued” which leads to:

“Sounds like how me’n Steve met,” Bucky says, brightening up at once.

“Ah geeze here we go,” Steve mutters. He's been quiet so far -- watching from the outside, like he always did, before.

Bucky shows teeth. “Steve doesn’t like this story because he’s the damsel in distress.”

“You?” Dum Dum says, with heavy skepticism.

Steve hunches his big shoulders in.

“He didn’t always look like this you know,” Bucky says. “Most of the time I knew him he was like…” he waves his hand somewhere around five feet off the ground. “Hundred pounds soaking wet. Maybe. Mean as a starving rat and with a similar kinda look, ya know?”

Steve hides his face in his hands. “Bucky no,” he moans. But the guys are already laughing.

“So here’s me, thirteen years old, minding my own damn business. I’m walking past an alley and I hear some sorry schmuck getting his ass handed to him. Now, I’m all set to ignore it. I figure: 'poor kid, whoever he is, but it’s none of mine.' And then I hear the idiot start talking smart in the middle of his own goddamn beatdown." Bucky looks at Steve, eyes sparkling. The look’s got a slightly manic edge to it. “What was it you said?” Bucky asks, with exaggerated thoughtfulness.

Steve sighs. “I don’t remember, Buck.”

"I do. He says, bold as brass balls on a steel mutt: ‘You think you scare me?’ And I’m like: ‘This? I gotta see.’ And what do I see but this asshole,” Bucky says. “All of twelve years old, maybe five feet tall, looking like a bag of twigs with no sense of style--”

“Hey!” Steve protests.

“--and the guy he’s up against--”

“Billy Thompson,” Steve cuts in.

Bucky’s smile falters, strangely, but he barrels on. “Billy Thompson, whose... daddy is a mob enforcer, and who has like twelve inches and at least fifty pounds on Sweet Little Steven Rogers.” 

Steve glares a little. “You’re the crazy idiot who picked a fight against three guys for some dumb kid you didn’t even know.”

“Jesus, fuck, that’s right. Let us not forget!” Bucky says, big and bold, like he’s preaching the Gospel of Steve: “that Billy Thompson was there with his two best pals. ”

“Ahhhh geeze,” Steve says, realizing he’s only dug himself deeper into this.

“It was like watching a terrier pick a fight with a pack of wolves. And man, I can’t let that stand. I’m already starting to box at Goldie’s, so what am I supposed to do? Let this dumbass punk kid take a beating? Can’t do that. And you know what I found out later?” he adds, like it’s the coup de gras.

Steve is already hiding his face.

“They were trying to take his fuckin’ lunch money or something. But Steve didn’t have two bits of lint to rub together, and if he’d told them that, they woulda let him go. So that’s how I met Captain goddamn America: stopping this sorry schmuck from getting his ass beat because he's too fuckin' proud to say he's broke. Story of my life, boys. Story of my motherfucking life.”

Steve looks up to find Bucky pointing at him accusingly. And grinning. It makes Steve’s chest ache a little. Bucky’s been such a mess since Steve pulled him out of that lab. He’s barely sleeping, and sometimes Steve finds him staring out at nothing, looking hunted. But just now, with his head tipped back to one side and that smirk on his face and the firelight -- he looks like himself. There’s that golden Brooklyn boy, shining out through Bucky’s skin. The favorite son. The cocky asshole.

They’re all howling with laughter now, hooting like a bunch of damn monkeys. Morita with his head thrown back, Dum Dum with tears running down his cheeks, heck, even Monty is laughing, head down to hide his smile, but with his shoulders shaking.

“Dear God,” Monty gets out. “It all makes so much more sense now. I mean…” he waves a hand.

“Yeah!” says Morita. “I mean, what kind of moron breaks into a Hydra facility by himself?"

“While dressed as a chorus girl!” Dum Dum interjects.

“And carrying a prop shield,” Gabe finishes.

“Donc il a toujours été fou. Bon à savoir,” Dernier says.

“Oh yeah, he’s always been like this,” Bucky agrees drily. “I’d say he’s gotten saner, but…” he lifts a hand and lets it wobble uncertainly in front of him, like he’s not totally convinced. “I’m pretty sure he could start a fight at a convention of pacifists.”

“That is an exaggeration,” Steve protests, but he’s maybe grinning a little, now.

“It ain’t,” Bucky says. “Listen, pal. You think I just have a sixth sense for when you’re getting your ass beat? That shit takes work. I gotta be systematic about it, checking alleys on both sides of the street because I never know when you’re gonna be down one of ‘em, getting your teeth knocked in.”

“Is that how you do it?” Steve blurts, because he’s been wondering for years how Bucky always manages to find him when he’s in trouble.

This sets the guys off in fresh peels of laughter. Steve smiles, all bashful with his head ducked down, but the guys keep laughing, and Dum Dum leans over to clap Steve on the back hard enough that Steve lurches forward a bit. And then he thinks… heck. This is what it’s like, having friends. He’s been on the outside so long that he can hardly recognize it, can hardly believe it, but suddenly he’s grinning.

This is going to be his team. He decides it right there. Colonel Phillips has been making noises about getting Steve a team. Well, he’s got them.

“Alright, alright,” Steve says. “But you make it sound like I’m the only one who ever got us in trouble. What about Grandma Hubbard’s kitchen, huh?”

So it’s Bucky’s fault, really, that the Howling Commandos come to be. The name won’t come until much later, when some kid on base with stars in his eyes starts calling them that. It sticks, much to Dum Dum’s dismay. But none of that woulda happened if Bucky hadn’t gone out of his way to make sure that these clowns knew Steve Rogers, professional asshole, instead of just being vaguely acquainted with Captain America, living legend.

There's still a long way to go, before the team can become a reality. They have to agree to it. He'll have to run it by Phillips. He'll have to get approval, probably, from Allied Command. But this is the first step, Steve knows. And it would never have happened without Bucky.  

Long after the others have fallen asleep, Steve rolls onto his side. Bucky’s got one arm tucked behind his head on his bedroll, staring up at the stars. Steve can see that he’s awake. He’s not surprised.

“Bucky?” Steve says softly, so quiet that he’s not sure Bucky will hear him.

But Bucky’s hearing has always been real good. “Steve?”

“Thanks,” Steve says.

Bucky turns his head. Steve’s night vision is pretty good now: he can easily make out Bucky’s features, the lines of the tendons in his neck, the squared off jaw, the angle of his cheekbones all painted in silver starlight. “What for?” he asks, amusement in his voice.

“M’not great at…” Steve shrugs. “Talking. The guys, you were… thanks, that’s all.”

Bucky snorts. He settles back on his bedroll, staring up at the sky. It’s a pretty warm night, clear, so no one bothered with tents. “You’re fine at talking, you’re just real dumb about making the first move. S’the same reason you’re so terrible at talking to dames.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, abashed.

“Ste-eve,” Bucky says, a laugh in his voice. “You know I'm right. Now get some sleep. It's a long way back to London.”

“You get some sleep,” Steve protests.

“M’not tired.”

Steve frowns and opens his mouth.

“Go the fuck to sleep, Rogers,” Bucky says gruffly, with a firm but unspoken leave it.

Reluctantly, Steve does.

We're already putting
together the best men.

With all due respect, sir.
So am I.

How about you?
You ready to follow
Captain America into
the jaws of death?

Hell, no. That little
guy from Brooklyn
who was too dumb
not to run away
from a fight. I'm
following him.

I'm invisible. I'm…
I'm turning into you.
It's like some horrible
dream.

They’re some of the last to leave the pub. Bucky is stumbling a bit, reeking of whiskey, and his eyes are hazy, but he keeps saying: “M’not drunk, Rogers. I’m not.”

“Sure you’re not.” There’s no way Bucky isn’t drunk right now, not after all he had. Steve had watched him grimly throwing the stuff back. The barman had been unfazed by it, but he probably knows the look of a man who wants to drink himself into a stupor.

Tonight, they get to bunk in real, proper rooms, with real, proper beds, right here in London. Steve hopes to God it helps. He hopes the whiskey helps. Because as far as he knows, Bucky hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since Steve dragged him out of that factory in Kreischberg.

“Christ. Would ya quit lookin’ at me like that?” Bucky grumbles.

“Can’t help it. You were gone so long I forgot how horrifying your ugly mug is,” Steve shoots back.

Bucky jabs an elbow into Steve’s ribs, hard and fast and with surprising accuracy for someone who’s had as much whiskey as he has. Designated marksman, indeed. Steve pinches Bucky’s side in retaliation. It devolves into a childish slap-fight, until Bucky overbalances, and almost falls face first into the gutter.

Steve catches him, hauls him up, and tugs Bucky’s arm over his shoulder, laughing all the while.

It’s okay, actually, he thinks. During the course of the march, and then the trip back to England, he’s starting to get used to it. Bucky isn’t any smaller, really. Now that he isn’t curling around his own guts in pain, they’re just the same height. They see eye to eye, and Buck’s arm doesn’t dwarf Steve’s shoulders anymore. If anything, Bucky’s grown too: he put on some muscle, and he’s surprisingly heavy. But Steve can take his weight easily now.

They still fit together, like this, how they are now. It’s different, but that’s okay.

Bucky presses his face against Steve’s shoulder and slumps. His forehead feels cool against Steve’s neck. Clammy. Steve swallows and tries not to think about it. Bucky makes a small, confused sound. “You runnin’ a fever, Rogers?”

“What?” Steve says, a little dizzily.

“You’re warm,” Bucky mumbles. “Too warm.”

“Oh, that. Yeah. All the time now,” Steve tells him. “They think it’s gonna make it real hard for me to get sick. It’ll cook the germs right outta me.”

“... God damn.” Bucky sounds wondering, and Steve looks over to find Bucky looking at him like he’s a miracle. Maybe he is, but he really doesn’t need Bucky looking at him like that.

“Shaddup,” Steve grumbles.

They get to the hotel that the Army’s taken over, and Steve walks Bucky to his room. He doesn’t trust Buck to get back to his bed without collapsing in a damn stairwell somewhere.  Steve’s room is way on the other side of the building, with the other officers, but he doesn’t want to leave Bucky alone. He doesn’t want to let Bucky out of his sight.

He watches as Bucky fumbles with the key. His hands are shaking badly.

“Come on, man, what’s going on with you, huh? Thought you soldier boys could hold your whiskey.”

“I’m not drunk, Rogers,” Bucky says again, angrily. “I’m not,” and he enunciates it this time, looking over. He’s pale, and his face is shiny with cold sweat.

“You alright?” Steve asks. “You’re not… you’re not getting sick, are ya? Dum Dum said you got pneumonia or something in the camps--”

“I’m not sick.” Bucky doesn’t sound convinced about it, though.

Concern crawls into Steve’s chest -- it doesn’t belong there. He’s not supposed to be worried about Bucky being sick. It's all the wrong way around.

Bucky's eyes are closed. He bangs his forehead softly against the still-locked door of his hotel room. “I’m not sick,” he repeats. “I’m not drunk. I’m just. I’m tired.” He looks it too, drawn and impossibly weary. He pulls his forehead back from the door and looks at Steve and there’s the fear again, written all over his face. Bucky looks scared, and maybe like he’s about to cry. “I’m so fuckin' tired. I… I ain’t been sleepin' too good, ain’t slept at all since…”

“Not at all?” Steve says, fear clenching around his heart. He’d known it was bad. He hadn’t known it was that bad.

Bucky shakes his head. “Not really? I get one, maybe two hours a night? I can’t -- my head won’t stop. ” He covers his eyes. “And if I finally do get to sleep, then…” he stops. Then the nightmares, Steve knows. One or two hours a night -- and there were a couple of nights they marched right through. It’s been a whole week. And who knows how much sleep Bucky got before that.

God help him. No wonder Bucky looks like death. Steve feels helpless all over again. He wants to march right into Bucky’s head, somehow, and tell the nightmares to back the hell off. But he can’t do that -- he can’t do anything. Even after everything, he’s still helpless.

Not that that's ever stopped him from trying.

“You got couch cushions in there?” Steve says impulsively.

Bucky looks up at him. He blinks unevenly, blue eyes lost and hazy. He’s swaying on his feet, but now that Steve’s looking, he really doesn’t look drunk. He just looks exhausted.

“Nah, fuck that,” Bucky blurts. “I’ve been cold since fucking August. You’re bunking with me, Rogers. Be my goddamn hot water bottle?”

“Romantic,” Steve says drily.

“You want romance? Talk to Carter.” Bucky turns back to the door.

Steve’s face goes hot. “Bucky…”

Bucky finally gets the door open. “Don’t tell me no fuckin’ lies, Rogers.” He sighs heavily and turns on the light. There really isn’t a couch in the room, but the bed’s probably big enough for the two of them. Even now.“I seen the way you look at her. I ain’t blind yet.” Bucky toes off his boots and makes a beeline for the bed, just dropping his jacket to the floor as he goes. “And I seen the way she looks at you. Lucky fuckin’ you.”

“Bucky,” Steve says again, picking up the crumpled uniform jacket and folding it.

“Yeah yeah, I’ll watch my goddamn mouth.” Still half-dressed, Bucky collapses on the bed with a huff. He squirms around like a kid, wriggling his way under the covers.

Steve takes off his uniform jacket too, folds it up neatly next to Bucky’s. It’s just like when they were kids, he tells himself, as he takes off his boots. Just like when it was too cold in the apartment and they’d share to save on heating. Except, well, there’s Carter now. Which… maybe he’d hoped that seeing the two of them side-by-side would somehow make things clearer for Steve.

It… hasn’t.

Steve never thought that he’d long for the days when he was small, when he just had dreams about Bucky and all the girls looked at him askance. As much as that was awful, things were simpler then, and Steve does like when things are simple.

Once he’s in his undershirt and underwear, he turns to the bed. Bucky is lying on his back now, with the covers pulled up under his chin. There’s moonlight coming in the window, and Steve’s vision is good enough now that he can see clearly.

Bucky looks like a corpse. His eyes are open, silvery blue, staring out from the deep shadows of his sockets. The moonlight has bleached all the color out of him. Like a skull. Steve suppresses a shudder at the thought. He’s had enough nightmares about skulls. So no, not a skull. But maybe like he’s frozen under ice. Like Snow White, Steve thinks. Skin as white as snow, hair black as ebony, lips as red as blood.

Nope, that is… not better.

Steve shakes the thought out of his head and gets under the covers. Just like Brooklyn. Just like home, he tells himself. Their shoulders are broader now, all squished together. But they were always close. In each other’s pockets. Steve thinks of a sun-drenched childhood. Lying on the fire escape. Before the war, before his ma died, before he knew what it was to want Bucky the way he still does. The way he can’t quite stop, even though...

“You love her?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t look over, and neither does Steve.

Steve considers this.

It’s easiest not to lie.

“Yeah, I think I do.”

And it’s the truth. It’s magnetic, he thinks. They’re drawn to each other. He’s drawn to the stubbornness in her, the fire. And he’s drawn to the way she sees him, and has always seen him, no matter what he looked like. When she’s in the room, she’s what he wants to look at. And she’s usually looking back.

“Well she’s a bombshell. Ya got good taste I guess.” It should be lighthearted, and teasing, but it sounds forced. Bucky's not used to being overlooked in favor of Steve, of all people. “You know, way you are these days, you could prolly ask her for anything and she’d--”

“It ain’t like that.” Steve’s face is hot. “She ain’t like that,” he adds, and he can hear how his own voice has gone soft.

Bucky rolls onto his side, propping his head up. “Okay, yeah, she’s classy, but trust me, pal. Even if she ain’t like that,” Bucky enunciates, teasingly, “She. Likes. That,” he finishes, tapping Steve in the middle of his newly broad chest.

Steve smacks his hand away, red-faced. Bucky laughs hollowly and flops back onto the bed. They lie there and just breathe for a second.

“I think she wanted me before,” Steve admits. “She kept her distance. She’s been hurt. She’s lost people, and they didn’t know whether I’d make it through the procedure. But--”

“Wait.” Bucky suddenly sounds serious, his voice gone soft.

Steve stops, and waits. Bucky takes a long time to sort through whatever he’s thinking, but if he really hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since Kreischburg -- or hell, probably Azzano -- it’s amazing he can still walk and talk and breathe all at the same time.

“She knew you?” he asks, his voice small.

Steve’s a little thrown. “Uh. Yeah, Buck. She does.”

“I mean you-you. You before you let Stark and Erskine turn you into Frankenstein’s goddamn monster?”

“I’m still me,” Steve says, hurt creeping into his tone, pulling the blankets up to his chin.

“You’re someone else sometimes, too,” Bucky says flatly. “But she knew. The little guy from Brooklyn. She knows you.”

Steve looks over, and finds Bucky looking back. They both look away again.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, she does.”

Bucky sighs. “Well. That’s alright then,” he says, soft. And then, teasing again:“Gawwwd, that dame. She’s gonna get you into so much trouble, I can tell. I know the look when I see it. S’like there’s two of ya now.”

A smile creeps onto Steve's face, unbidden, unstoppable. Bucky’s right. Peggy’s like Steve -- she wants to do the right thing, and she’s got no quit in her, no quit at all. “You know what she said to me?” Steve says. “When I was -- when we went AWOL, for the rescue mission, you know what she said?”

“What?”

“‘Go farther, go faster. Don’t let anyone hold you back.’”

“Oh fuck me. You two deserve each other, Jesus Christ.”

Steve lets out a soft laugh. But he wants to say -- he wants to be able to say that he doesn’t love Bucky any less. Because it’s not like that. He’s drawn to Peggy, sure, but Bucky is already a part of him. He loves them both. He’ll probably never stop loving them both.

But he can’t say that. “We’re gonna need you around,” he says, but that’s not quite right. Peggy doesn’t need anyone around. She needs Steve around like she needs a hole in her head. “I’m gonna need you around, Buck. Who’s gonna stop me getting into trouble, huh?”

“That dame sure won’t.” Bucky sighs. “Well. Like we said when we were kids. Down the hall from each other, right?”

“Sounds… Sounds good” Steve answers, choking up all of a sudden. “Like when we were kids,” he agrees. “But hey -- at least now you don’t have to worry about me so much,” he adds. “I won’t get sick and I don’t think there’s a bully in Brooklyn who’d dare come after me now.”

“Yeah, right,” Bucky says, but--

But it sounds horrible, all of a sudden. He’s trying for that same, joking tone, that slightly stilted teasing, but his voice cracks, breaks, shatters.

When he looks over, Bucky’s got both hands over his face. He’s shaking. “Bucky?” Steve says, alarmed. Where is this coming from? “Jesus, Buck, what's…”

“Do you…” Bucky starts, voice muffled. And then silence again.

“Do I what?”

“You remember Billy Thompson?” Bucky finishes, still hiding his face, voice thick. Thick with tears, Jesus--

“Of course I do. We… Bucky, we just talked about this the other day, with the guys,” Steve says. He's filled with nameless dread -- he can't make sense of where this outburst is coming from, but he's thinking of Bucky, lying on a table and staring at Steve like Steve's a stranger. "What's -- you... you remember that, don't you?"

Bucky takes a shuddering breath and lowers his hands, scrubbing his face dry as he goes. He looks awful, looks wrecked. “Nah, I remember, I just… D’you remember how I got rid of him? Billy Thompson?”

A shiver drags cold fingers up Steve’s spine. He remembers that day very fucking clearly. He still sometimes has dreams about the feeling of his ribs cracking, trapped between Billy’s kicks and the cold, unyielding stones of the church. “We did, Buck.” Billy Thompson had been bullying every kid smaller than him in a three block radius. Steve had come up with a plan to stop him, to scare him into stopping.

“Nah,” Bucky says, quiet but firm. “You came up with a plan, and I…” the word snags in Bucky’s throat, high and choked off.

The plan had been to arrange for a nun catch Billy beating Steve behind the church. Everyone was scared of the nuns. They figured a nun would put the fear of God in Billy Thompson. But Bucky had changed the plan, without warning. He'd made sure that it was Billy’s old man that caught them, not the nun. It mighta been funny, ‘cept that Mr. Thomspon was... Well. There was nothing funny about it.

“I remember,” Steve says. “I know I was real mad at you at the time, but… Well I can’t deny that it worked. Billy never bothered anyone ever again.”

Bucky barks out a laugh, hollow sounding, bitter. It’s the worst thing Steve’s ever heard from Bucky’s mouth. “I’ll fuckin’ say.”

“Bucky--”

“Steve,” Bucky says thickly. “He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge a week later.”

Steve feels like he’s taken a fist under the ribs, like he can’t catch his breath.

“Never told ya that, did I. And you never asked.”

Steve tries to form the shape of Bucky's name, but no sound comes out this time. Billy Thompson was a horrible kid, but he was sixteen, and Steve suddenly has to wonder what happened to him to make him like that, and --

“You were still in the hospital,” Bucky says, quickly, the words coming out of him fast now. “I was so scared that Mr. Thompson was gonna figure out we planned it. I was terrified that he’d blame us, that he'd come after me, come after you, so I -- I told my pa, and God, you shoulda seen the look he gave me, Jesus Christ, like he’d-- like I was--” Bucky chokes again, and Steve thinks he won't be able to finish, but he takes a shuddering breath and continues. “And he told Ma, and she told your ma, and that was why we all moved to Vinegar Hill after, all at once like that. But no one wanted you to know about it, and I couldn’t-- I couldn’t--”

“Bucky,” he says, softly. How long has Bucky been carrying this? It’s been years -- Christ, ten years or more. “It wasn’t--”

“Don’t, man,” Bucky groans. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault. I knew what I was doing. Mr. Thompson was a gun, and I knew exactly how to pull the trigger. I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t even think--”

“You couldn’t have known that Billy would--”

“Like that makes it better?” Bucky puts a hand over his face. “You know what I thought when I heard?” His voice is hollow sounding, terrible, like a voice from the bottom of a tomb. “I thought ‘oh good.’ Who fuckin’ thinks something like that? He was a kid. We shoulda stuck to your plan. I shouldn’t have-- I shouldn’t--”

Steve can’t stand it anymore. He rolls over and puts his arms around Bucky, drags him close, lifts his chin and finds that Bucky -- God, it’s devastating for some reason, but Bucky fits under his chin now. He seems so much smaller, his arms tucked in against Steve’s chest, his broad shoulders hunched, his icy cold nose poking into Steve’s sternum. He’s shaking, his breath high and wheezy like he’s caught the asthma that Steve lost. Christ, he’s babbling, like a child, like he’s lost his mind.

“I kept thinking of him. Fuck, I don’t know why. I kept thinking of him, while I was on the table -- While they were--”

“Bucky--”

“I kept thinking God, why’s this happening to me? and coming back with Billy fuckin’ Thompson.”

“Bucky.”

“You say you need me around? Pal, I need you around, Christ. When you ain’t around... You got no idea what’s inside me, what I -- what I’m turning into, God, what they’re turning me into, Steve, I think they--”

“Stop.” It comes out of his mouth sharp and authoritative. His Captain Voice. “Stop.” Bucky makes a small, choked sound and stops. He’s still shaking, quivering like a rabbit in a trap. “It doesn’t matter,” Steve says, firmly. “I’m here, now. I got you. Alright? I got you.”

He squeezes tighter, holding Bucky close, and something just goes. Something inside Bucky snaps, and he sags, face mashing further into the material of Steve’s undershirt. A shuddering breath, another. Steve squeezes his eyes shut. Whatever just happened, whatever tide of panic almost dragged Bucky down, it’s ebbing now.

He’s breathing again. It’s okay. They’re okay.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, after a moment.

“Language,” Steve murmurs.

Bucky sucks in a sharp breath. “You-- you asshole,” he gasps, outraged, and jabs Steve under the ribs. Steve knows his tricks, though, and he’d already tensed his abs, so Bucky’s fist just hits rock hard muscle. “Fuck you.”

Steve just squeezes harder and says “Shhhh” serenely, like he’s going to smother Bucky to death.

“I’m baring my fucking soul here, you--” Bucky goes on, voice muffled, starting to squirm against the hold. “You little shit!”

“Hmm,” Steve says. “Little?”

Bucky kicks his shin, kicks it again. It kind of hurts. “You huge, enormous, gigantic--”

Steve laughs and lets Bucky go. Bucky punches him in the pec, hard enough to probably bruise. It’ll heal. Steve doesn’t mind.

“Asshole,” Bucky says. His voice is still thick, his eyes red and his face blotchy. But something taut in his shoulders has snapped. Some dam has broken, and whatever was tearing at him has released its hold, for now at least. “Asshole.”

“Yeah, probably.” Steve considers letting it go at that, but he needs... he needs to check. He grabs Bucky’s shoulder, and makes Bucky meet his eye. Bucky isn’t shaking anymore, but he’s still pale and ill-looking. "Alright?"

Bucky shrugs his hold off and lies back. "M'fine. Just... real tired. Real fuckin' tired. Sorry."

Steve shakes his head slightly. “Come on, don't apologize for that, it's nothin'.” Steve says. “Get some rest. That’s an order.”

Bucky throws a mocking salute at the ceiling. “Yessir, Captain America, sir.”

Steve is awakened by pained animal sounds a few hours later. Bucky is whining behind his teeth, curled tight on his side with his back to Steve. Steve can hear Bucky’s heart racing. He can smell the fear on him.

Steve puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder, and the sounds stop. Bucky twitches all over, going from a tense sleep to an even more tense wakefulness. He doesn’t roll over, doesn’t relax.

“You’re alright, Buck,” Steve says quietly. “You can go back to sleep.” Bucky doesn’t, but he does suck in a shuddery breath. “Come on, man. At ease, soldier.”

Bucky lets out the breath. He mumbles something -- probably a swear, Steve thinks tiredly. Only then does Bucky relax into the pillows. A few moments later, he passes out again. His breath is soft and even and slow and Steve realizes, with a pang, that Bucky doesn’t snore anymore. When did that happen? In Basic? In barracks? In a trench or a foxhole somewhere?

Steve lies there for a moment, but once he’s sure Bucky’s down for the count, he slips out and back to the officer’s quarters -- there’ll be awkward questions if he’s still here when the sun comes up.

What do you think?

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

...

Yes. I think it works.

Steve doesn’t see Bucky until after his meeting in Stark’s lab. Bucky looks better, like maybe he got some of the sleep he so desperately needs. Steve watches him, and tries not to let Bucky see that he’s being watched. Bucky notices, because of course he does.

“Spit it out, pal,” Bucky says, in a warning tone, just after lunch. They’re heading out of the building, to an open lot out back where Steve can test out the shield, see what else he can do with it, besides defend himself against the wrath of Agent Carter.

“It’s nothin’, just.” Steve swallows, and lowers his voice, speaking softly so only Bucky can hear. “If you don’t want to. If it’s too much...”

Bucky looks at him sharply, warning. Steve can see the anger there, knows that Bucky’s offended. “Don’t you fuckin say it, Rogers.”

“You can go home,” Steve says anyway. He has to offer. “You know you don’t have to follow me, right?”

“That is a dumb fucking question, Rogers,” Bucky says, glaring. “Jesus. Get your goddamn dinnerplate, asshole, it’s my turn to shoot ya.”

Steve knows -- he knows on some level, that he should push more. He knows that Bucky is covering, and that somewhere underneath the glaring and the snark there’s a shaking, fucked up wreck of a person, screaming and terrified and wracked with guilt. If Steve really was the decent person everyone seems to think he is, he’d push Bucky to go home. If he was really the brilliant tactician, the great leader everyone wants him to be, he’d know better than to send a broken soldier into battle.

Captain America would make sure that Sergeant Barnes got home safe, whether Barnes liked it or not. But Steve Rogers just doesn’t know how to go into a fight without Bucky at his side.

Bucky doesn’t actually get a pistol and shoot at Steve, but Steve spends the rest of the day running and jumping and ducking behind the shield, while Bucky hollers at him to “Cover your damn legs, Rogers, you ain’t a chorus girl no more!”

They’ve got a few weeks to train together in England while Stark and the SSR get them kitted out. This gives Steve time to fight with most of Allied Command about his team. Phillips has given it the go-ahead, but Phillips isn’t the only commanding officer Steve has to deal with, and not all of them are excited about the unit he’s put together.

Bucky and Dum Dum are generally considered to be fine, Steve learns. Steve learns a lot of things.

He gets access to their confidential files, and… It turns out that Bucky was understating the level of training he got. Bucky trained with the SAS. He’s the best marksman in the army. His hand-to-hand is unparallelled. Having seen the file, Steve can’t quite understand why he’s only a Sergeant. Apparently the idea was to pepper the 107th with the best and brightest, so they could go up against Schmidt and his inventions. (And see how that worked out.) Even Dum Dum isn’t the bumbling idiot he sometimes appears to be. He used to be a strong man at the circus, and it wasn’t all for show. His bench press is almost as good as Steve’s, his hand-to-hand almost a match for Bucky’s.

So Allied Command is fine with Steve keeping those two. They say that they’re going to give the SSR command of the entire remaining 107th, to use against Hydra as they see fit. They’d even be alright with him having Carter on his strike team, they say.

Steve doesn’t know what it is that Peggy did to earn their respect -- her file is the only one they won’t allow him to see. He’d love to have her on the team, as a matter of fact. He tries to offer her a place, but she declines, saying “I’m flattered by your proposal, Captain, but I’m afraid I’m not ready to give up my independence,” which makes Steve stammer and turn red, and makes Bucky laugh so hard he has to sit down for a minute. Peggy just smiles sweetly at them both and walks away, hips swaying.

But Steve has to fight for the right to keep Gabe, Morita, and -- to a lesser degree -- even Dernier and Falsworth on the team. There’s a tense night where the guys wait at the pub around the corner while Steve has a meeting with a couple of generals. He brings Bucky and Peggy as backup. Afterwards, they go the bar and the whole group looks up, half expectant, half resigned.

“Hey, so a black guy, a Jap, a Frenchman, a Brit, a Jew, a circus freak, and an idiot go into a bar,” Bucky says loudly, dropping down at the table. “And Allied Command says: ‘What the hell kinda unit is this anyway? You can’t just do what you want, we got rules here.’ And what do you think Rogers says to that?” Bucky claps Steve on the back and Steve turns a little red, because he can tell what’s coming. “He says: ‘Due respect, General, but I’m Captain goddamn America, and you can all go fuck yourselves.’”

“Bucky! That’s not what I said,” Steve complains.

“No,” Peggy says, coming over from the bar with shots of whiskey for everyone. “He said ‘Due respect, General, I’m Captain America, but if you don’t like my unit, I’m sure the British would be happy to take me in. I wouldn’t even have to get a new color scheme. They could call me Union Jack.’”

They all laugh, but it’s a nervous sort of laugh. Steve goes even redder, because yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what he said. He’d been feeling bullied, and he’d lost his temper, and he’s damn lucky Command chose to humor him instead of court-martialing him. "Well, at least it worked. So am I the idiot or the circus freak?" he asks Bucky.

Bucky picks up a glass and gives Steve a look over the top of it. "You can be both, you're very talented."

Steve ducks his head and takes a glass as the others all laugh and take theirs. One drink, he thinks. He doesn’t want to get drunk -- he’s got an example to set. “To the Howling Commandos,” Steve says.

“Ugh, I hate that name,” Dum Dum grumbles, lifting his glass.

“You only hate it because you didn’t come up with it,” Monty says, ruthless.

“Pinkerton’s an idiot,” Dugan rages.

“Ah, non!” Dernier exclaims, and then spends the next fifteen minutes showing them how to toast properly, which involves holding eye contact, clinking glasses individually, and never allowing your arms to cross. It's very bad luck to do otherwise, apparently. They humor him.

Morita and Gabe both exchange little nods with Steve, when he clinks glasses with them. Steve wants to apologize to them for their even needing to feel grateful. They're more than qualified for this team -- it's shameful that Steve had to fight to keep them. Dugan, and Monty, and Dernier all make smart remarks, though Dernier’s is too fast for Steve to understand. Gabe laughs, though.

And Peggy... Peggy holds his eyes from the moment their glasses clink to the moment she puts her red lips to the edge of the tumbler. She doesn’t blush. He does.

Bucky’s eyes are laughing at him when they casually clink glasses, and then finish their drinks. He smirks.

Steve’s got a team now, he thinks, giddily. He feels, in that second, like he can accomplish anything.

Chapter Text

4

Used to ramble through the park
Shadowboxing in the dark
Then you came and caused a spark
That's a four-alarm fire now

 - I’m Beginning to See The Light by Duke Ellington, Don George, Johnny Hodges, and Harry James, 1944.

Mrs. Barnes’ reply arrives while they’re still in England, still training. Steve opens his with some trepidation, half expecting it to be completely swears. Would the censors let that through? Do they censor incoming mail as well as outgoing mail?

Steven Grant Rogers,

Well. I don’t think I should put on paper half of what I want to say. I’ll trust you to fill in the gaps.

What were you thinking? What if you had died? What would we have done without you?

And Captain America? Oh Steven. I’m so proud of you I could spit. I’m so mad at you I could scream. What would your mother say to me? I promised her I’d look after you like my own and here you are--

I need to take a walk.

 

There now. I’m still mad as hell at you, Steven Grant. But.

Thank you for saving my son from that place. I can’t say more than that, and I can’t say it enough. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But you’re my son too , you idiot.

You know I think of you as my own. We all do, here. Now you’re both over there and I don’t know how to live with that, but I know this is everything you always wanted. So I guess I’ll learn to live with it somehow.

You’re one of us, Steven Rogers. And listen -- There’s only one hard and fast rule in the Barnes house and that’s this:

Keep each other safe. I want to see you both home when this is over. If you die out there I will bring you back and kill you all over again.

Pa, Becca, Jeanie, Susan, and Baby JB all send love, thanks, and smacks upside that thick skull you’ve got. You gave us all one hell of a fright.

Yours,

Ma

PS: Write. And no more lying to me, Steven Grant. You tell me how you’re doing. Tell me how he’s doing. Tell me you’re safe. Or if you can’t do that, tell me you’re being careful. Tell me you’re taking care of yourself, and don’t lie to me.

When Steve meets Bucky down at the mess hall a few minutes later, Bucky’s got his own letter out in front of him. He raises it in a salute. “And how are ya, Steven Grant?” he says, at the look on Steve’s face.

“Feeling guilty as hell. I take it you’re James Buchanan today?”

Bucky waves the letter again. “From the very beginning to the bitter end. I almost wish the censors would just let her swear. I think I’d feel better if she’d just called me a fuckwit.”

“She’d never call you a fuckwit.”

“No, she calls me James Buchanan, which is worse.” Bucky heaves a sigh and folds his letter away into his coat pocket. “C’mon, we got a meeting with Carter, don’t we?”

Despite a rocky start, it turns out that Bucky and Peggy get on like a house on fire. Peggy is like Steve in a lot of ways, but she and Bucky think the same way, and they have a lot in common. They’ve both had SAS training. They’ve both been behind enemy lines. They’ve both escaped enemy capture. And they both saw something in Steve before he was Captain America.

To be honest: they scare the shit out of him.

Steve keeps coming into rooms in the SSR wing of Churchill’s bunkers only to find the pair of them with their dark heads together over files, or maps, or blueprints. They smile at him, every time. It never ceases to give Steve a minor heart attack.

Once, and only once does Steve manage to overhear them talking. He’s coming down the hall and the closed door is no match for his spooky senses. He freezes and listens. It's Peggy's voice.

“--Facilities with this layout -- that section there is for quartering non-combatants. The families of the scientists, that sort of thing.”

“And that’s well within the blast radius of the self-destruct,” Bucky notes, resigned, but also not sounding surprised.

“Yes. They do so hate to leave witnesses.” Peggy’s voice shows her distaste. “And that's their war crime, not ours, but still. More trouble than it's worth to send Steve in.”

“It’s like you’re reading my mind.”

“Sounds unpleasant.”

Bucky laughs. “Carter, you got no idea.”

Peggy makes a noise that sounds like behave. Steve is suddenly, confusingly, bafflingly jealous. Of both of them, and for both of them, at the same time. It’s kinda overwhelming. “Now, I can plot a route that would have you in and out between watch changes, before Steve knew you were gone, but--”

“But that's just asking for even more trouble we don’t need.”

Steve frowns, but then it hits him: they're talking about what it would take for Bucky to sneak out while Steve was distracted, trigger the self-destruct, and then get back before Steve even knew he was gone. A self-destruct that could kill non-combatants. He feels a little thrill of shock that they would even consider going behind his back like that. Even though they dismissed it as quickly as they came up with it, he still feels… unsure.

“Now it's like you're reading my mind,” Peggy says, and there’s something in her voice -- like maybe she was testing Bucky. “We can’t have him going off the handle behind enemy lines, and besides that, I won’t ask you to do anything that would undermine his trust in you. So. Will you be able to talk him into staying behind, if you have to?”

“Yeah, he’s not as dumb as he looks.” Bucky laughs. He sounds satisfied, like maybe he was testing Peggy, too. And she passed. “I know that ain’t sayin’ much, but...”

Peggy hums in a way that sounds amused. “Well. Let’s talk standard guard rotations...”

Steve opens the door. They’re leaning over the table, but they look up at his approach. Peggy’s in her uniform, and straightens up when Steve comes in, but Bucky just gives him a cocky smile. He’s not in full uniform -- he doesn’t usually bother with it these days. His dog tags are dangling out of his shirt front. Peggy is pressed-perfect, red lips and dark eyes and a challenge in the set of her shoulders.

“Steven,” Peggy says, unruffled and unembarrassed. “How long have you been eavesdropping?”

“Long enough,” Steve says. He’s not… angry, exactly. But he’s not comfortable being handled. “Thought I was the man with the plan,” he says to them.

Bucky just smirks. “Yeah, and she's the dame with plan B.”

“We’re putting together alternatives for you,” Peggy says. “Captain America is useful for shock and awe, but given where we’re sending you, how far behind enemy lines you’ll be, there will be missions not suited to your skillset.” She's calm, and her voice is reasonable and unrelenting as steel. “That's why you have a team.”

“I'm a supersoldier,” Steve says. “What kinda mission am I not suited for, these days?”

“You're our only supersoldier,” Peggy corrects. “And you're Captain America. We really don't need a photograph of the Star Spangled Man stabbing a soldier in the back or interrogating an unarmed prisoner or…” she waves at the blueprints in front of her. “... Potentially setting off an explosion that could kill noncombatants. Doesn't mesh with your image, darling.”

Steve scowls. He didn’t ditch the costume so they could keep treating him like a chorus girl. “If it needs doing, I can do it,” he says. “I can get my hands dirty.”

Bucky gives a lazy sort of smile. “Thing is… you don't have to.”

Steve feels that like the ground is going out from under him, and it's clear from Buck's expression that he was meant to. Steve scowls. “So what, you'll do it for me?” he says.

Bucky just grins wider. It's the kind of grin a shark would see in the mirror: all teeth and dead eyes. There’s a hardness there -- just a hint of that wrathful angel look. But at the same time, Steve knows -- Bucky got sick when he was drafted, he cried the night before he shipped out. Steve should hate what the war has done to his friend, but...

It ain’t that simple. Nothing is, anymore. Bucky isn’t just Bucky anymore. Maybe he never was. After all, Bucky’s left hook had always been a thing of beauty to Steve.

“We all will.” Peggy is smiling -- and it's the same shark smile that Bucky has, but without teeth. Instead, it's all blood red lips and glittering dark eyes.

Steve swallows, suddenly dry-mouthed. They are terrifying. They are the two most terrifying people he’s ever met, and that probably shouldn’t make his stomach fill with butterflies, but…

Well. Of course, it ain’t that simple.

Bucky also gets along with Stark a little too well. It starts when Steve finds the two of them in the lab, practically cooing over a disassembled sniper rifle.

“I put a scope on her,” Stark is saying. “A good one, not like the shit you had on your Garand. And I can stabilize it some, but the recoil is gonna be a bitch no matter what I tweak. That's just the way Johnson makes them.”

“I can work with that,” Bucky says. “Show me what you did.”

“It’s pretty technical, I can--”

“Just show me, Stark.” Bucky says, a laugh in his eyes. “I’m gonna be doing field maintenance on her, I don't wanna have to come crying to you every time she starts pulling left.”

Stark does a kind of double take. It’s a little hilarious. But then a slow smile creeps over his face. He points a finger. “Barnes. I read your file, didn’t I? You got most of an engineering degree.”

Bucky smirks.

Steve flees.

Before long, Bucky and Stark are manufacturing fancy explosives for Dernier, designing a new kind of radio for Gabe and Morita, and finding ways to fit armor into Steve's dumb outfit.

When they're working on cars, planes, and radios, Morita is usually there too. Morita makes a decent field medic, but that ain't what he trained as. He did repairs, he says. “Mostly on the company’s transports and comms, but then our medic took a hit so I picked up repairing people too.” He says it like it was easy, like anyone could do it. Like he isn’t a genius in his own right.

When they’re working on guns, though, it's just Howard and Bucky, and they always come back to the Model 1941 Johnson. Bucky practices with it, because no matter how much Stark adjusts and modifies, it's always going to shoot a little differently every time. Sniping with it is part art, but mostly math and diligence and constant maintenance. Bucky spends hours with the gun in pieces on a dropcloth. Dum Dum makes jokes about him playing with his Johnson, but in the end the nickname that sticks is the one that Monty gives.

“Where's Barnes?” Morita asks one day when they're about to go out for drinks.

“With the Mrs,” Monty answers promptly, and from then on, it's Barnes and Mrs Johnson.

“She's a real classy dame,” Bucky says. “Can't go around neglecting her just so I can have drinks with you mooks. I don't wanna be in the doghouse with Mrs Johnson.”

“Fuck all of you, my jokes were funnier!” Dum Dum insists.

“It's more than just a glorified hubcap, you know,” Howard explains. They’re in the lab again. Howard is showing Steve the new uniform, and the new paint job on the shield. “Vibranium is… well we don't know how it works, to be honest, but it doesn't just magically make the vibrations go away.” He looks a little angry about it, actually. “Just because we don’t fully understand it doesn’t make it magic, doesn’t mean we don’t understand some of it,” he mutters, darkly.

“Stark?” Steve prompts.

Howard shakes his head. “Right. So, it transfers the kinetic energy in a way that's almost directional. So…”

Howard plucks up the shield and lays it out on the table. “We didn’t have enough Vibranium for a whole shield, so this is an alloy. Top secret stuff, but… Each ring of the shield is forged slightly differently, and will redirect vibrations in a slightly different way,” he says, tracing his fingers around the rings of the shield in different directions. “If you catch a bullet square on—“

“Like with Agent Carter,” Bucky pipes up, from the corner of Stark’s lab. He’s got goggles on, and he doesn’t look up from his work, but Steve can hear him smirking.

Steve sighs, put-upon.

“Yeah, like with Agent Carter, the bullets just drop, all their kinetic energy absorbed. And you can bet she was aiming with that in mind because… well. She ain’t as stupid as you are, pal.”

“That ain’t sayin’ much,” Bucky points out. It looks like he’s working on a tiny radio, soldering wires into place.

“Thanks,” Steve drawls.

“But,” Howard says, “Much as I hate to admit it, it’s not perfect. I wanted to make it completely vibration-absorbent, as a replacement for a parachute, you know? That’s what I designed it for. In theory, you should be able to drop out of a plane, and land on it without breaking any of your squishy human parts.”

“Should?” Steve says.

“In practice, the stuff is finicky as hell, so if you hit it at the wrong angle, it’s gonna bounce, which is not what you want in a landing device. You gotta know how to hold the thing. Calculating the angles -- even I couldn’t figure it out. If you’re not braced properly, or the angle is wrong, you’re gonna get thrown backwards. And if a bullet hits it at the wrong angle, or too hard, it’s gonna ricochet.”

Steve looks up. He looks over at Bucky. Bucky’s looking up, brows lifted over the goggles.

“Stark,” Steve says slowly. “Bullets that ricochet… That is the opposite of a problem.”

“Dinnerplate means he can’t carry a tommy gun,” Bucky says. “At least, not without shooting half of us by accident. But if he can deflect bullets back…”

“Then I don’t need a tommy gun. Heck, I don’t need ammo.”

“You’re not going into a firefight without ammo you lunatic,” Bucky mutters, looking back down at the radio. It looks like one of those field walkie-talkies, but it’s clearly been redesigned and re-engineered.

“And if the shield bounces," Steve says, already thinking. He looks around the lab, the sturdy cement walls and metal reinforcements. He thinks about angles, about Monty teaching him how to play billiards. And how quickly he’d picked it up. He reaches for the shield. “May I?”

Howard shrugs. “Be my--"

Steve tosses the shield across the lab like a discus. Bucky screams when it clangs against the wall over his head. Howard throws himself down and screams when the ricochet bounces it off the wall over his head. Steve catches it, then immediately yelps and drops it, cradling his hand to his chest as the shield clatters down with a ringing whang-whang-whang.

“--guest?” Howard finishes, half an octave higher than before.

They look at each other in silence, Howard goggling up from the ground like Steve’s a lunatic, and Bucky glaring from the workbench with a what the fuck, Steven? expression that Steve knows only too well.

“You… might be onto something there,” Howard says, still lying on the floor. “Let me write that down, I gotta do some tests, chart out the reverb--"

“Did you just break your hand?” Bucky says, outraged. He shoves the goggles up into his hair so he can glare unimpeded.

Steve doesn’t answer, but shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, his hand still held to his chest.

“Go to medical!” Bucky orders.

Steve obeys.

Steve’s eerie healing abilities mean that it only takes a few hours for the small fractures in his hand to start setting. By day three, it’s like his hand was never broken at all.

Steve is thrilled, but also a little unnerved.

They finally get their marching orders: they’re leaving in January.

Bucky’s looking well rested -- the whole team is. They’re moving like a unit, and Steve can throw the shield, bounce it off two walls, and catch it without breaking any fingers.

Steve gets Christmas presents for everyone on the team: thoughtful, practical things, for the most part. Steve gets Stark to make Dum Dum’s bowler bulletproof. Morita gets a combination medkit and repair kit, so he doesn’t have to fumble around in his bag whenever their transport breaks down, or someone gets stabbed. Monty gets a nicely engraved cigarette case and a lighter that Stark guarantees will never fail. Dernier gets real French wine, smuggled over from actual France. He does not share. Steve begs, borrows, and steals to get Gabe a phonecall home. For an hour, Gabe talks in Cajun French with a sweetheart no one else realized he had, and his eyes shine with tears the whole time.

Peggy gets a pair of brass knuckles, specially made for her small hands. They're done just in time to present them to her before she's whisked away on a mission of her own. It feels terribly familiar to watch someone he cares about walking into danger without him. But the glint in her eye when she fits the brass knuckles over her fingers almost makes him feel sorry for the Nazis.

And for Bucky? A real nice wool coat that buttons all the way up. Peggy assured Steve that the English know how to make a wool coat that keeps out the cold properly. It costs an arm and a leg, and then it costs Steve some of his pride to go begging to Stark.

Stark stares at him when Steve tries to explain what he wants. Make it warmer. Make it bulletproof, if you can. Stark looks a little bemused by this request, as he was by all the other requests. “Everybody’s already got armor,” Howard points out. “And winter gear.”

Steve rubs the back of his neck. “Listen. Bucky and I have been pals for years, I know him. He’s vain as a peacock--” When he’s got his head on straight, Steve thinks, with a pang. Bucky only started pomading his hair again a few days ago. Only started wearing his uniform right when someone hassled him about it. “--and if the armor doesn’t go with whatever look he’s after, he’ll just skip it. He’d kill me for saying this, but…” he sighs. “Dum Dum looks like a tank when he wears that armor, and Gabe and Morita don’t care, but it makes Bucky look like a little kid -- he swims in it. So…  Can you put armor in the coat or not?”

“I’ll do it, no problem,” Howard agrees, amiably.

“Thanks,” Steve says, and then, without a word, pulls out a small box, about the size of a hot dog, and offers it to Howard.

Howard stares at it.

“I would’ve saved it for Christmas, but I didn’t want anyone to put it together and figure out that Captain America bought supplies on London’s black market.” Steve holds the box out again.

Howard, by now deeply intrigued, takes it like it might explode, and opens it. “Holy shit,” he says. “Holy fucking shit.”

Steve grins. Howard had been the hardest to find a present for. What do you buy for the man who has everything? “You like it?”

“Where did you get a cannoli in this flavorless hellscape?” Howard demands, eyes as round as saucers.

“I told you. Black market. I figured you miss New York as much as I do, and you seem like a guy with a sweet tooth.”

Stark stares at him.

“What?” Steve says.

“How do you do it?” Stark asks, like that’s a genuine question and not a complete non-sequitur.

“Do what?”

“I mean…” Stark waves a hand, still looking baffled. “You… care so much. About… people. How do you have time for it? How do you have energy? Is it a serum thing?”

“It’s not a serum thing,” Steve says. “It’s not hard, Howard. It’s called empathy.”

Howard scratches the back of his head. He looks confused. It’s a weird look on his face. “Okay,” he says. “Whatever you say, pal. I’ll trick out your fancy coat before you guys deploy. And I’ll still owe ya for the cannoli.”

In the end, Howard does just as Steve asked and one better. He makes a patch of one of Steve’s little helmet-wings and stitches it onto the left shoulder. He does it himself, by hand, which is quite a thing to see. Steve recognizes the stitches of someone used to making clothes last, darning their own socks, doing their own tailoring. Steve wonders where exactly Howard Stark sprang from, but Howard just brushes him off, waves him away. Go on, get outta here! in that broad showman’s voice, almost as thickly painted on as Steve’s stage voice.

Steve presents the coat to Bucky with an air of faint embarrassment. Bucky grins, and teases the hell out of him about it, of course, but it’s worth it. On the flight over, in the thunderous, frigid belly of one of Stark’s fancy, newfangled “stealth” planes, Bucky puts the coat on. He turns the collar up, tucks his hands into the pockets, and smiles in a way that Steve knows means he’s pleased.

And he looks damn good in that coat.

The first Hydra facility they hit is well behind enemy lines. It’s a four day trek from the drop zone, through mountains and forests, dodging patrols and skirting occupied towns. And, of course, camping. The walk back from Kreischberg had been different: Steve had been running on adrenaline, and he hadn’t bothered to sleep. Now, though, he has time to really savor the experience of being away from hot water, mattresses, and automats.

“Can you believe that we used to dream about going camping?” Bucky murmurs one night, as they’re both lying in their bedrolls, unable to sleep because of Weird Outside Sounds and Even Weirder Silences and also That Fucking Root In Your Back.

“What the hell was wrong with us?” Steve hisses back. “If we make it outta here I ain’t ever staying outside longer than it takes to get to Midtown. I know you said you wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, but pal--”

“They got a hotel at the Grand Canyon? They must have a hotel at the Grand Canyon. We’ll stay at a hotel. Feather mattresses or fuckin’ bust, my friend.”

“Deal.”

The next day they arrive at the rendezvous: a field in the middle of a woodland. It’s dawn, and mist covers the grass around them, faint grey light filtering down. It would be beautiful, but they can all hear the distant crackle of a battle; a town nearby is being bombarded. Not the Allies -- this is infighting. According to the scanty intel, they’re smack in the middle of the murky place where Hitler and Schmidt are struggling for dominance. Neither egomaniac is willing to share anything but propaganda about how their side is faring.

Steve scouts out the area personally, then waves the rest of his team forward. They set up a temporary camp there on the edge of the meadow, waiting for the other team to arrive.

They’re just finishing up their terrible C-ration coffee when a whistle draws their attention.

Peggy comes marching through the mist like a vengeful goddess, followed by a team dressed all in black, with the SSR wing on their shoulders. She’s wearing combat trousers, black, like the rest of her team, and a black jacket cinched tight. She’s carrying a rifle, and her hair is tied up, her lips -- not red today -- are pursed around the whistle that drew Steve’s attention.

Is this what she meant when she said she didn’t want to give up her independence? Steve wonders.

“Peggy,” he says, when she’s close enough. She narrows her eyes at him. “I mean. Agent Carter.”

“Captain,” she says. “Good to see you. And the rest of you. Have you secured our perimeter?” she asks, as though she were asking if he’d made tea.

“Of course, ma’am,” he says, respectfully.

“Good. Is that coffee?”

“For a given definition of coffee,” Bucky says, already pouring a cup for her. “What have you got?”

She takes the tin mug from his hands and smiles slyly over it. “A bit of fun for us all.”

The target is a Hydra storage and transport depot -- a fairly soft target, mostly empty between scheduled arrivals. Hydra is occupied fighting Nazis two towns over, and the depot is only lightly guarded. The plan is for Steve’s gang to come blasting through the front door, Tommy guns blazing, and draw out the guards so Peggy’s little splinter unit can get in and out with the intel. Once they get the go ahead from Peggy, they can either pull back or press on far enough to convince Hydra to pull the trigger on the self-destruct.

“Dealer’s choice, there,” Peggy says airily. She’s watching him carefully as she says it.

Is this a test? Steve thinks as he smiles at her. “We’ll see how the cards fall,” he says. “I’ll make the call when the time comes.”

The slight twitch of her mouth might be approval. He thinks it is.

The depot looks like a large barn, set in idyllic rolling countryside. They plan their assault for that night, just before midnight. It’ll take that long for Peggy’s teams to get into position without being detected, ready to come in the back way once Steve’s team has drawn out the guards.

Steve and the Commandos are in position, just behind a rise, out of sight of the regular patrol, on the other side of a low hillock, waiting. Gabe’s got the walkie-talkie Stark made special for them: it’s really just a souped up SCR-536, a real rush job on Stark’s part, with half the wiring visible and the Stark Industries logo sketched on the side in wax pencil. There’s a little Killroy face sketched on the other side, with the legend BUCKY WAS HERE.

Steve closes his eyes, and listens hard. He can hear the guards moving through their patrols, a steady march, the sound of someone lighting a cigarette. An owl hooting. The bark of a fox. The fighting has moved further off -- even Steve can no longer hear the strange, distant fwump fwump of the blue Hydra guns.

There’s a soft chirp from Gabe’s radio, almost too quiet to hear. Steve looks over. Gabe’s got the unit pressed to his ear. His face is set. He nods to Steve.

Steve nods and holds up five fingers. Gabe sends five clicks back. Five minutes to move. Then he puts the walkie talkie away and gets out his gun. Steve points -- Monty, Bucky, himself, Dugan, and Gabe. He puts his hands together in front of himself, almost like he’s praying. Wedge formation . He points to Morita, makes the sign for following. He points over his head. Main gate.

They wait. The guard is maybe twenty feet away, humming under his breath. Steve can smell his cigarette. Steve draws his pistol, readies his shield.

And then it starts. They come up over the rise. Steve lifts his gun to shoot the guard, but Bucky's there first, and the mook falls to a quick burst from Bucky's Tommy gun and then they're moving on the door in a wedge formation, with Peggy's team moving in from the other direction.

Steve lifts his shield, the motion familiar, though never used in combat before. Bullets ping off the painted metal and he barely feels the impact of them. He kicks down the front doors, one blow from his booted foot and they’re in, guns blazing.

It’s the first time since Kreischburg that Steve gets a chance to really try his new strength and his shield, in a situation where it matters and…

Wow.

Just, oh holy wow.

He’d been too distracted with worry about Bucky to really enjoy it before -- too panicked, running on adrenaline.

Now, though, he feels goddamn invincible. He sights, and shoots, and sights, and shoots. He sees an opening, he leads the team towards it. He sees guards moving in from outside, and shouts for the team to split -- him, Bucky, Monty go left to clear the outside, where the guardhouse is. Dernier, Gabe, Dugan and Morita move the clear the barn.

Steve moves fast, heads outside, blocks  bullets, fires his gun again. He swings the shield, and Hydra goons go flying. His body just does as he asks . He thinks I want to run there, and it just goes. It was one thing to experience that during the USO tour. It was one thing to experience that when his mind was a constant screech of worry for Buck. It was one thing to experience that in training, but this…

His body is a well-oiled machine. And his team --

“Guardhouse,” Bucky shouts.

“I'll clear it,” Steve says.

“We've got this,” Monty agrees  “Go.”

Steve leaps up onto the guardhouse, taking the stairs four at a time. He vaults through the window into the middle of guards still scrambling with radios and guns. One of them only has one arm in his jacket. He looks up in time to get the shield smashed right into his face. Surprise!

Steve takes them down, one after another, unstoppable. He clears the guardhouse in no time and comes out to find Bucky and Monty back to back, clearing the grounds.

It’s the first time Steve sees Bucky in action -- really , properly in action, and he’s a bit surprised because…

Well, it ain’t like he didn’t know that Buck was good at his job, but he also knows that Buck never wanted to be a soldier. He’s maybe the only one of the Howlies who does know that, because everyone else just isn’t at all surprised that Bucky is one scary motherfucker.

He shoots, and shoots, and never, ever seems to miss, no matter which hand he’s shooting with. Steve catches sight of Bucky shooting someone right handed, then tossing the pistol to his left, raising it without hesitation and firing again, all in a matter of seconds. He’s making that face: jaw set and tipped down, brows together, mouth a tight scowl. Steve remembers seeing it at the ends of alleys and once, lit from behind in the side door of St. Agnes. Steve thinks that Bucky is beautiful when he’s got that face on.

Steve leaps over the railing, drops the one story down to the ground, and wordlessly slips into place between Monty and Buck. They circle around to the front of the depot in time to see Dum Dum, Morita, Gabe, and Dernier retreating. Steve’s little splinter team runs in to provide back up, and Steve uses his shield to deflect a beam weapon blast from Gabe. Bucky shoots the guy over Steve’s ducked head, and the team backs towards the entrance.

“Gabe?” Steve says.

Gabe has the radio to his ear, but he shakes his head. No go ahead from Carter. They need to keep up the distraction.

“Fall back,” Steve says to the team, and they retreat out the door. Like hornets from a disturbed nest, the guards are following.

Monty lays down covering fire and Steve and Bucky hold the guards back while the rest make a break for it.

Bucky is on his left, firing quick bursts from his Tommy gun, Steve covering them both with his shield. And it feels like Bucky is an extension of himself in a way that is both familiar and strange. Because Bucky has always been there for him to lean on, but now he doesn’t need to lean. Even so, the sensation of Bucky there, Bucky reacting to little unspoken signals, seeming to know what Steve needs to do before Steve does -- that’s all so familiar Steve could cry.

Steve whirls, seeing movement on the catwalk up above, and Bucky moves at the same moment, aiming, but it’s--

“Don’t shoot! Eagle!”

Steve freezes, looking up at the figure on the walkway. It’s Peggy, with a single smear of red blood on her cheek -- not her own, though Steve feels a moment of gut-wrenching panic about that.

Steve lowers his shield. The silence in the depot rings, as though with the memory of all the gunfire.

“Good lord, Steven, you were supposed to distract them, not kill them all,” Peggy says, with a laugh in her voice.

Steve looks around and realizes, belatedly, that the ground is littered with bodies, and there is no sound of more on the way. He cocks his head, yanks off his helmet. He listens -- he can’t hear any German being spoken anywhere, can’t hear any movement that isn’t accompanied by softly spoken English or French.

He looks at Bucky. Bucky looks back at him. He lowers his gun. They look up at Peggy and shrug in unison.

“Whoops,” they say, at the same time.

Peggy rolls her eyes, and flaps her hand at them as though they’re ridiculous.

So they’re maybe more effective than anticipated, as a team. Dugan has to brace his hands on his knees, he’s laughing so hard about it. Bucky just rolls his eyes and goes off to mind the perimeter, while Steve and Peggy oversee the extraction of everything that’s useful, intelligence-wise.

There’s a small hiccup in that since they killed everyone there anyway, they really should destroy the depot, but they didn’t bring enough by way of munitions for that. Dernier goes on a very long tirade bemoaning this, but there’s a simple enough solution.

Like almost all Hydra facilities, there’s a self-destruct. And yeah, it’s a damn short fuse, to ensure that it’ll only be used in a desperate moment (in fact, they’re damn lucky it wasn’t used.) But there’s a simple solution for that too. Steve orders the rest of the team to a safe distance. He leaves his bike on the open floor of the depot when he sets the self-destruct. He runs down from the office, hops on his bike, and guns it out the door.

He looks back over his shoulder in time to see the facility collapsing in on itself in a roaring fireball. He revs the engine on the bike, tearing down the dirt road until he sees the rest of the team gathered up ahead, waiting for him and watching the fireworks. He skids the bike to a halt in front of them and takes off his helmet.

“Good work,” he calls to the group at large: the Commandos, and Peggy’s strike team. “Although…” he looks to Peggy, with a wry smile on his face. “You can’t tell me that wasn’t a little too easy.”

“Mmm, possibly,” Peggy allows. “Hard to say for sure. Felt easy, all things considered, but that doesn’t change the fact that your team of seven, plus my team of ten, took out a force more than twice our number.”

“Lady’s got a point,” Bucky murmurs, with a slight smile. When did he get back from checking the perimeter?

“Either way…” She lifts the rolled documents folder. “Best we can do is act on the intel we’ve gathered, and proceed with caution.”

Steve grins. “You got another mission for us, then?”

Bucky sighs heavily, and Steve remembers what Bucky said. That dame. She’s gonna get you into so much trouble.

They send Peggy and her team back towards base. The intel and tech that they’ve gathered is too important to risk. But Steve and the Commandos are going deeper into enemy territory, to follow up on a lead about another facility. Peggy warns them that the intel may not be what they think. Steve knows that, intellectually, but he can’t help feeling like they’re even better than they realized. Peggy’s smirk suggests that he’s right. That they are. Peggy’s smirk suggests a lot of things, but she never comes closer than a few feet, never reaches out to touch him. But the way she looks at him… it makes him feel a bit hunted. In a good way.

She throws him a salute, when they part ways back at the rendezvous. Bucky elbows him and gives him a smirk that brings a blush up the back of Steve’s neck.

The Commandos head off on their own, deeper into Austria, riding high on an early success.

Well, you know what they say about pride and falls , Steve thinks when he drops the first Hydra mook from his nest. They’ve been hoofing it through a misty, snowy forest, but they should still be miles from the base they’re supposed to be scouting out. Steve waves for them all to circle up, to come in close.

“We’re too far out,” Monty says softly. “Shouldn’t be hitting their perimeter yet.”

“Trap,” Bucky says, in the terse, laconic way he talks out here in the field.

Steve nods. “Some of the intel at the last place must’ve been planted. Maybe all. We gotta warn Carter about that.”

“Can’t reach them from out here without giving away our position,” Gabe says. He toes the dead guy sprawled out on the ground below them. When he rolls over, they see the radio at his belt. Gabe looks up at Steve. “Did he have time to call it in? Is that what you heard?”

Steve shakes his head. It wasn’t the radio -- it had taken him a while to notice it, to figure out what it was -- a heartbeat that didn’t belong to any of his people, a quiet breathing that didn’t sound like any of his men.

“Pull back?” Monty asks.

Bucky looks to Steve and raises his brows, showing his agreement, but… He must see something in Steve’s face, because he just sighs heavily, the bone-deep weary sigh of the long-suffering.

Steve feels himself grinning.

They turn the trap for them into a trap for Hydra. Gabe and Steve wait by the body, Gabe manning the enemy’s radio. Dernier runs gleefully from tree to tree, planting explosives the way a chef adds a cherry on top. Monty, Dum Dum, and Morita man the perimeter, keeping an eye out for patrols. Bucky stands guard.

Steve stands in the middle of it all, listening for footsteps that don’t belong to any of his team. And then, when they’re good and ready, Gabe turns on the radio. “Das ist Privat Hahn,” he says. They got the name off the man's strange, German-style dog tags, “ich habe Kapitän--” And then Steve cuts off the transmission by smashing the radio with his shield.

And then they’re off to the races as Hydra forces converge on their location.

Steve lies in wait in a makeshift foxhole while Dernier sets off his charges, and Bucky picks them off one by one with his rifle from a different hidey hole. Then, when the Hydra stormtroopers are starting to retreat, to pull back and regroup, suddenly there’s Captain America charging in with his shield and his gun, and the Commandos are howling on all sides.

Steve was fucking born for this , he thinks, bashing his shield up under a trooper’s chin. He turns and flings the shield like a discus, bouncing it between two trooper’s heads and then jumping to catch it.

The team splits into three splinter mini-units, just like they drilled back in England: Monty, who’s fluent in French, runs with Gabe and Dernier, and Bucky leads Morita and Dum Dum. Steve is his own mini unit: a giant diversion and a one-man army. He draws the enemy fire so that one of the others can come up behind, and it works perfectly.

Except, yeah, like Bucky said before. Steve needs to be better about covering his legs. The Hydra troops mostly have conventional weapons, but there are a couple with blue Hydra guns. Steve's the only one who can take them on, so he charges further ahead, drawing the deadly blue beams away from his team.

“Rogers!” He hears behind him, loud and warning. Bucky’s voice. Steve thinks he’s being warned about the guys coming up on his left and he turns to them. He saw them, he heard them, he’s fully aware of what--

He doesn’t really feel the bullet at first, he honestly doesn't. He’s so high on adrenaline, and he’s in the middle of a complicated roll with the shield. And he’s still getting used to the new body. It stings, sure. Feels a bit like the way his chest used to ache when his heart was on the fritz: a stabbing pain, nothing too serious. Nothing compared to when he got the serum. It's not even as bad as stomach ulcers.

He doesn’t think it’s anything more than a graze. He keeps going, doesn't notice right away that anything is wrong.

He goes down on one knee behind the shield and blocks a blast from a beam weapon with it. He peers over, takes aim, and fires with his pistol. The guy drops, the next blast from his weapon taking out one of his own men.

Steve grins, feeling lightheaded, and surges to his feet--

But his leg folds and he goes down hard, face first like when a bully would sweep his legs out from under him. It feels like the ground is spinning. He tries to get up, bracing a hand on his leg and--

His fingers slip on hot slick blood and Steve looks down, surprised to find his whole leg seems to be red with it and---

Yep, that’s -- that hit an artery, Steve thinks, and----

Chapter Text

5

Hush now, don't explain
Just say you'll remain
I'm glad you're back, don't explain

 - Don’t Explain by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr., 1944

Tree branches, black sky, white falling snow, a sharp pain on his cheek ow, what? Someone grabs his chin hard enough to bruise and yanks his head around and oh. Bucky is very angry, shouting at him. But he sounds very far away. Did you just slap me, Buck?

Steve hasn’t been this drunk in years, he thinks. Trees. Snow. He fell asleep in Prospect Park, he thinks. He--

But then Bucky is getting him up, getting him to his feet. He can’t even feel his right leg, it’s so cold. And Bucky is -- why is Bucky so small? It’s like when they first met, when Steve was still a bit taller, even if he was skinnier. But that’s not… that’s not…

His leg won’t hold his weight. There’s something tied painfully tight around his thigh, and he can’t get it to hold him up. Bucky does, though. Bucky’s got him.

Steve wakes up with the worst hangover he can recall having. But, he does wake up, so. That’s a win. And when he opens his eyes, it’s to the by-now-familiar ceiling of his own tent. It’s dark. Moonlight through branches. His nose is cold. He blinks. What happened? They were in the woods, going after Hydra, and…

In a moment of horrified realization, he reaches down, under the blankets and feels bandages packed tight around his thigh. He sits up sharply and looks down. Two legs under the blankets, thank God.

There’s a slick metallic sound to his right and Steve whips his head around. There’s a moment when the tent spins around him dizzily, but then it resolves into a shadowy figure. Moonlight glints off a blade, and he’s half ready to throw himself out of the bed fighting, but…

But it’s Bucky, sitting on a box and sharpening one of his knives. He slides the whetstone along the blade with a thin, ominous shhhhing.

“Go back to sleep,” he says, without looking up. “You lost a lot of blood.”

“Did everyone else get out alright?” Steve asks.

Bucky sighs in a put upon way. “Yeah. Those Hydra cocksuckers called the retreat when you went down, so. Guess we know who the trap was for, huh. And, because I know what you’re gonna ask next, the mission wasn’t a complete bust. We got lucky, one of the guys we took down had a Hydra decrypter in his pack, so. Station X will be thrilled.” He drops the whetstone and puts the knife back in its sheath like he wants to stab it somewhere else entirely.

Steve winces.

Bucky stands up, then, and crosses over to loom over Steve’s cot. Steve lies back and pulls the blankets up to his chest. Bucky’s face is oddly threatening, in the shadows and the moonlight. His eyes are all but lost in blackness and the lines of his frown, the furrow between his brows are all deepened by nightfall.

“Don’t do that again,” Bucky says. “You ran out ahead, too far for me to cover you, too far for Monty to cover you. You wanna draw their fire away, fine.” His face says it's not, but Steve lets him finish. “But when you go out that far, it's us who has to run in and drag your sorry ass back, so. Don’t fucking do it again.”

Bucky’s hands are clenched in fists, and that look on his face is bordering on wild. Defiant and grim. It’s fear -- fear of losing Steve, fear of a mission going south and being killed or worse.

Steve looks down at himself, at his knees under the blankets. Bucky’s right, Steve knows. Steve got ahead of himself, so fucking pleased with himself that he didn’t think. He put the whole team at risk.

This isn’t training. They ain’t playing soldiers on the fire escape anymore. The bodies stacking up around him on these missions might be wearing masks, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t really people. Even if they are bad guys. Even if Steve can’t really bring himself to feel bad about it.

So he swallows and nods. “I know. I won’t.”

Some of the tension drops from Bucky’s shoulders. “You fucking liar,” Bucky says, sounding weary. He looks tired.

“I’ll try,” Steve amends.

Bucky gives him a look. It’s... one hell of a look. Burning and fierce. “You’d better. Now get some fucking sleep and let your Frankenstein serum do its work.”

They get a brief respite after that, to deliver their prize. They get back to base and immediately get on a cargo plane to London, the decrypter held between them: precious cargo.

Peggy meets them at the landing strip, her red lips very thin. She looks furious.

Steve throws a snappy salute. He’s wearing normal army fatigues with the top of his Captain America uniform. He’ll need new uniform trousers from Howard. The other ones were soaked in blood from the waist down.

“Captain,” she says, a voice like ice. “Good to see you alive. Hydra has been telling everyone who will listen that you bled out in a forest in Austria.”

Oh. He swallows. “Well, that’s…”

“He did give it the old college try,” Bucky growls from Steve’s left.

Steve can feel himself going pink. “Bucky,” he says.

“You’re alright?” Peggy says, ignoring the aside and fixing Steve in place with a glare like she’s pins and he’s a bug.

“I’m fine,” he answers, quick and firm. “Won’t even scar.”

“Good.” She turns on her heel and walks away. He doesn’t have to be told to follow. He knows the drill.

She keeps him at arm’s length through the briefing, through the rest of the day. Steve doesn’t like it, but he can’t blame her either. She's lost people in this war already. No one goes running back into that kind of pain without thinking twice.

There’s a dance that night, and Steve could ask her, but he doesn’t. The look in her eyes says she’s not sure she wants to dance with him. She’s still trying to brace herself against the pain.

Bucky pats his arm and doesn’t heckle him about it too much, which is a nice relief.

Less than forty-eight hours later, they’re back on a plane, heading out again. The plan is to hit another Hydra Base, this one in Resia, Italy, and then head to join the front and do some support work there.

It’s another long, uncomfortable flight in the belly of one of Stark’s special planes. Steve sits with his hands hanging between his knees, until Bucky elbows him and hands something over, held delicately between his trigger and middle finger. It’s a photo of Peggy, a small one, cut out from a newspaper. Steve looks up, surprised. Bucky shrugs.

“Buck…” Steve says, blushing under his helmet.

“Stole it outta her file,” Bucky says, speaking up to be heard over the rumble of the plane. “Here’s hopin’ it reminds you not to be such a fuckin’ moron all the time.”

Steve finds a safe spot for it in his compass’ lid.

By the time the Hydra facility at Resia is a pile of smoking ash, thanks to the Commandos and rest of the 107th, there’s another letter waiting for Steve, back at base. This one’s from Becca. Steve tears it open with sooty fingers, hungrily drinking in any words from home.  

Steven Grant,

You are going to give my mother a heart attack. You simply cannot go around getting yourself almost killed like that. I mean at least the news that you were safe reached us before the letter of condolence arrived -- This time . I suppose this is our life now, getting telegrams that say simply News wrong Steve fine All okay.

I’m sorry. Reading back over this now I can’t help thinking it’s an awful letter. You gave us all a hell of a fright, Steven. I'm so glad that you and Bucky are safe (again) and got out without getting hurt too badly (again.)

I trust you two to keep each other safe. You have to know that, scared as we are for you, we're proud as punch of you. Suddenly everyone in the neighborhood is going on and on about how “they know Captain America” but they don’t know shit. We know. You’re ours, Steve.

Those krauts won’t know what hit ‘em.

Yours,

Becca (and Baby JB, who sends a sticky handprint in lieu of a kiss)

Steve tucks the letter carefully away in his foot locker, and goes to wash the smell out of his uniform. They didn’t leave much standing at Resia, but the smell of its burning -- part acrid, part sickly sweet -- had lingered, long after the buildings were rubble and dust.

From Resia, they head to the front. And now they’re actually on the front, embedded within a larger unit, and tailed by a film crew. It’s all part of the propaganda plan. After Steve’s little brush with death in Austria, it’s very important that he be seen, that people see him, both on their side and on the enemy’s side. It’ll be demoralizing for Hydra and a great publicity moment for the Allies. So, Resia had been his big comeback, but now they need people to see him, not just hear about him.

Steve would rather not be filmed. He would rather not be reminded of the Star Spangled Circuit. He would rather be working. Luckily, he’s not alone in that sentiment. For once, the brass agrees with him. Between his massive strength, his eidetic memory, and his extensive, encyclopedic knowledge of Hydra, the Germans, and tactical thinking, he’s just too useful to spend much time in front of a film crew.

“Get your shots on the move or get out of his way,” Colonel Phillips orders the crew, when one of them tentatively suggests an interview. “We’re trying to win a war here.”

So mostly, the film crew hovers at the edges and tries not to get underfoot. Steve mostly tries to forget that they’re there. Sometimes he even manages it; if Bucky’s there to crack some wiseass remark, or if Steve’s busy talking to the men, or the team is together, planning an assault. Every once in awhile, an MP will have to bodily haul the crew away so that they don’t accidentally film anything too sensitive.

With Steve’s help, they don’t just hold back the German counterattack at Anzio, they advance the line deeper into Italy. It’s different, being in the trenches, being with the men. On the one hand, he can really see how he’s helping. He can see it in the way their faces light up when they see him, the way there’s more laughter around the fires in the evenings. He can see it in the way the lines advance fast enough to make Phillips crack a smile. A 10% bump wherever I visit. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Senator Brandt, Steve thinks, looking at the line, the way they’re tightening the noose around Hitler and Schmidt.

But on the other hand…

War really is hell: a ceaseless grind of fighting, or sheltering from bombardments and then going out into No Man’s Land to try and press an advantage. It’s exhausting. It’s grueling.

It’ll be worth it , Steve thinks fiercely, with every swing of his shield, with every inch gained and every man down. It’ll be worth it. It will.

But it’s hard to remember all that when they’re pushing across No-Man’s land and Steve’s leading the charge, shield up, deflecting bullets as best he can.

It’s hard to remember that when he hops the last line of barbed wire, when he grabs the searing hot metal of a machine gun with his hands and bends it in half. He grabs the guy who was manning it, snags a grenade off his belt, and hurls him in one direction, hurls the grenade the other way. It lands in the German defensive line, blasts a hole in the barbed wire.

Then he’s in the trench; it’s his job to hold the counterattack back while the rest of the company pours in through the hole he made. Steve bounces bullets back the way they came, and flings the shield -- mind the walls, he thinks, the shield’s moving fast enough to stick in concrete, much less mud, and if he catches it wrong, he’ll break his fingers again.

At the end of the trench there’s an armored pillbox, and the alarm has already hit. Steve spins, and throws, hard as he can, hoping to jam the door, trap the troops inside it, but then the door opens wide and--

And there’s a kid there, just a fucking kid, no older than Jeanie or Susan, and he doesn’t even see the shield coming--

Steve lurches back in alarm, the smell of blood suddenly thick in his nose. The kid’s body crumples back, but his fucking head falls, and rolls to Steve’s feet, and stares up at him with startled brown eyes and his lips are still moving and --

And there are men pouring out of the pillbox. Steve’s shield is somewhere inside, who knows, maybe it’s ricocheting around like a ping-pong ball. There’s a pistol in his hand, one of Bucky’s knives on his belt. He needs to hold the line until reinforcements arrive. He needs to hold the line, that’s all.

He moves (aim, fire, turn, fire, duck, slash) but his mind is caught on that image -- the boy’s head in the mud, lips moving. His body moves, practically on automatic, but he can't -- he can't--

“Steve? Steve! Oh my god...”

“Come on, pal, Steve, come on, we gotta get you out. Oh Jesus -- fuck, no, you can’t go up there looking like that... Here. Put this on.”

“Cameras off if you don’t want ‘em back in pieces, you fuckin’ hear me?”

Squeak.

Steve starts to feel real again.

He's in a dim, musty smelling tent, sitting on the edge of a cot, with Bucky on the ground at his feet. The rifle is in pieces on it’s tarp, and the sound is Bucky cleaning the pieces of his gun. The rag polishes away the grime with a faint sound, barely audible, like the quietest squeaking of the littlest mouse.

Squeak, squeak, goes the oily rag, as Bucky works to clean dirt out of the gun’s inner workings. His face is serene, absorbed in the work.

Steve’s scrubbed clean, and wearing his everyday gear -- just ordinary fatigues, the uniform nowhere to be seen. He is aware, distantly, that he finished the fight in the trenches. He is aware that they made good progress today, that they captured a line of fortifications, and advanced the front, and… and he knows, distantly, that Bucky found him, standing there, covered in blood. He’s aware that it was Bucky who wrapped him up in a long coat and got him back to base, Bucky who chased off the film crew before they could catch a shot of Captain America with the white star on his shield stained red, his hands tacky with it. He distantly recalls Bucky pushing him at the river, giving him a rag and a last, precious sliver of soap. He remembers staying in the water until even his impervious, unnatural skin went blue, and Bucky dragged him out again.

There’s a blanket tucked around his shoulders.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

He remembers, with clarity, and precision, all those things. But it’s like the memories belong to someone else. He doesn’t remember saying anything. And when he opens his mouth, his jaw protests, like it’s been clenched tight shut for the last few hours.

“Bucky?”

Bucky looks up. “Hey.” His face still looks peaceful. He hadn’t looked that way when he found Steve in the trench, covered in blood and…

Steve lurches to his feet and leaves the tent. It’s gone dark outside, hours have passed. He walks with purpose for the treeline, walks a few feet into it, and abruptly drops to his knees. It feels like the world is what’s crashing down, not just him, but it’s not like he’s falling, it’s like he’s finally waking up. It’s not the world coming down around him, it’s a curtain falling, and there’s reality , it’s like stepping out of the pod again, transformed, but this time he’s stepping into a fucking nightmare.

What is he turning into this time? What the fuck is he turning into now?

For a minute, he stares, panting, at the leaves in front of his face, and then he’s --

There's not much in his stomach, but it’s all coming up, his body just revolting against -- against --

Fuck. He thinks of standing in a warehouse, that first mission, surrounded by bodies, and feeling elated by it. Elated. He thinks of the missions after, the mission in Resia where they didn’t leave any survivors, they burned the place to the fucking ground, and there was that sweet smell in the air again, like the Kreischberg factory, and he thought he was justified, he thought all of it was justified. How the fuck could he think -- how many of those Hydra masks were covering the faces of children, of boys like the one he--

The memory presses closer and he shudders through another spasm of retching, tries to push it away.

Eventually, he gets control of himself, rocks back on his heels, and spits.

“Hey.”

Steve whips his head around, and finds Bucky standing there. He holds out a rag -- not the one he was just using on his rifle. This one is damp and cold and clean. Steve takes it with shaking hands. He cleans his face, the cool cloth a relief to his hot, clammy skin. Bucky gives him a hand up.

Steve can’t even meet Bucky’s eyes. He stares down at his hands. They’re clean now, but he feels like the blood has gotten into the grooves of his fingerprints.

“The shield was… I wasn’t aiming for--” Steve says. “I didn’t mean to… to…”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says at once -- as if he already knows what Steve’s talking about, even though he wasn’t there. He didn’t see. Didn’t see what Steve did. Bucky’s expression is steady and earnest and understanding. “I know you didn’t, pal.”

Steve ducks his head and wipes his face again. He spits to one side, the foul taste in his mouth making him grimace. He sighs. “I’m gonna need to get a ration in me or I’ll be useless in the morning,” he says, glumly apologetic.

Bucky laughs, low, and slings an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in. “It’s okay. I hork up my guts too, usually. After.”

Steve looks over at him.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, with a face like, such is life. “I go ‘check the perimeter,’ and throw up in a bush somewhere. Plenty of us do, it’s just no one talks about it.” He tugs Steve in, like Steve is 5’4” and 95 pounds again, gives him a little shake. “You, they might actually give extra rations. The rest of us just gotta deal.”

“I’ll split with you,” Steve offers.

“I ain’t too proud to take your handouts,” Bucky says frankly.

The mess ain’t open, but Steve is who he is, so they get the extra ration, and split it in the empty mess tent, Steve staring at nothing and trying to think of nothing, nothing, nothing. Bucky’s quiet too, except when he kicks Steve under the table, and asks him something dumb.

Hey what was the name of that kid’s book you accidentally stole from the library? The Hobbit. He’d felt so bad about it when he realized what had happened, but the lady at the desk just told him to keep it, they’d already replaced the missing copy. Steve read it five times, and loved it every time.

Hey, did I see the Wizard of Oz with you, or with that girl Jo? Both, but it wasn’t Josephine, it was Florence. Steve and Bucky went twice and then Bucky took Flo. He cried at the end, the first time. They both did.

Hey, you remember the day Prohibition ended? Not clearly -- that had been the first time Steve got well and truly drunk, thanks to Bucky and the free-flowing booze coming from every celebrating restaurant.

On the way back to the tent, Bucky hooks his arm around Steve again, pulls him in again, and says, low but fierce. “You ain’t doin’ that no more, you hear? It was a dumb plan, put you in a stupid position. Don’t do it again.”

Steve swallows, throat thick. Even though he’s got half a ration in him, he still feels shaky and unsure. “Yeah,” he agrees, “okay.”

Bucky shakes Steve. “I mean it, Rogers. You need a head taken off, I’m the one with the knife. Not you.”

Steve feels sick, at the confirmation that Bucky knows, that Bucky figured out what happened, what he did. He swallows. Yesterday, Steve would’ve argued, that he’s not just a figurehead, that if there’s dirty work to be done, he should be the one doing it, that he doesn’t care about his so-called image.

But that was yesterday.

“Yeah,” Steve says again. “Okay.”

They pull Steve from the line after that. Orders from on high, probably. No one wants to risk a picture of Captain America drenched in blood finding its way into the press.

First, they go south, to Greece. Somehow, away from the constant bombardment and relentless mud, Steve feels like he can start to breathe again. There’s a Hydra base there, on a god damn island. Would be a paradise, except for the squid nazis everywhere.

The Commandos learn how to do an amphibious landing, and take the fortress apart like it’s made of cotton candy. After the base is rubble and Steve has escorted the prisoners to custody (they took prisoners this time, Steve made sure of it) they wait for the landing craft to pick them up, all seven of them lying out on the beach, soaking up the sunlight. Dernier is in the water, buck-ass nude, to the dismay of everyone present. Monty got fucking sunglasses from somewhere, and is sprawled out on a boulder like he's drawn by Leyendecker.

Bucky unceremoniously strips off his shirt and throws himself down on the beach, arms spread wide, dogtags tossed over one shoulder, sand sticking to his too-pale skin.

“You’re gonna burn,” Dugan says, from where he’s fanning himself with his bowler, and looking at the sky to avoid looking at the nude Frenchman frolicking in the surf.

“You say that like your Irish ass ain’t just as pasty as his,” Morita points out, sharing a snigger with Gabe.

Steve takes a break from sketching the crystalline waters and ragged coastline to start dashing off a cartoon of Morita and Gabe tossing around a tiny, leprechaun-Dugan.

“He’s still gonna burn,” Dugan says sullenly.

“Do I look like a man who gives a single fuck?” Bucky says, without opening his eyes.

“He’s messing with you guys. Bucky doesn’t burn,” Steve says, without looking up from his sketchbook.

“No way!” Dugan groans. “He’s as Irish as we are!”

“Half-Irish.” Bucky opens his eyes just long enough to wink. “And tan like a movie star.”

“That is just not fair,” Dugan complains.

“Tell me about it.” Steve looks up, briefly. “And he’s a real asshole about it, so don’t encourage him.”

“Steve burns.” Bucky taps the bridge of his nose. “Right here, every time. And then it peels and he’s just as pale as he was before. ‘Cept for the freckles, oh my god. All over his face. More freckles than skin, it’s hilarious. Shoulda seen him sulking under umbrellas like some kinda cave creature. Like fucking Gollum.”

The men laugh, and Steve sighs and shrugs. “Always used to. Maybe not anymore.” He puts the finishing touches on the angry leprechaun-Dugan, and then starts a sketch of Bucky, sleeping in the sun like a cat.

“I’ve seen the way you go after potatoes. You’re still Irish, Steven. Serum didn’t change that,” Bucky says, eyes still closed, lashes dark against his cheeks.

“Yeah, like you don’t miss colcannon as much as I do,” Steve shoots back.

He adds a smirk to the sleeping Bucky sketch. It’s the same smile he had back when they sunbathed on the fire escape, but his muscles have gone wiry since then, standing out like cords. Steve sketches the shadows of Bucky’s ribs and frowns. They’re all leaner than they were, except for Steve, who would probably have to cut off his legs and arms if he wanted to get back to his pre-war weight. But Bucky is skinny in a way that’s kind of worrying.

He rubs the tip of his nose. It’s starting to burn, he can tell.

They go to France next, Dernier with all his cheerful gravity and black humor guiding them through a series of sabotage missions coordinated with La Résistance . Steve learns more French, and gains new respect for Dernier, who lost most of his family during the invasion, and almost all his friends before Azzano, and yet remains cheerful.

Cheerful, but completely fucking nuts. The man is just utterly unafraid to do things like carry live ordinance, roll under a truck, stick it to the bottom of said truck, and then pop up like a chipper fucking daisy with his fingers in his ears to watch the explosion.

He’s maybe more insane than Steve.

They're cleaning out the last survivors of a Hydra base set up in the ruins of a bombed out town. Steve, Dernier, and Dum Dum are on the ground, flushing out survivors for Bucky, Monty, Gabe, and Morita to pick off. It's a messy job.

A bullet whizzes past his head and he turns to look without thinking. But then there’s a clatter behind him and a Hydra mook drops over a wall. Steve looks at the dead man, the neat bullet hole through the middle of his forehead, and back in the direction the bullet had come from. He sees only the slight flash of light off a scope, nearly lost among the trees. Bucky , he thinks, and then, without thinking, throws a little salute.

When they’ve cleared the base and recovered what intelligence they can, Bucky comes storming over with his rifle hitched up on his shoulder. He looks goddamn livid, brows pulled together. He kicks Steve right in the shin, like they’re kids again.

“Shit, ow!”  Steve says, surprised at the strength behind the kick. “What the hell?”

Bucky flicks Steve’s forehead with his middle finger, right where the A on his helmet would be, if he were wearing it. “Hey Captain Asshole, maybe next time don’t give away your sniper’s position , huh?”

Steve blinks at him while everyone hides laughter behind their hands.

“Swear to fuckin’ Christ, Rogers.” Bucky throws his hands up in the air, just like his Ma, and storms away, swearing a blue streak.

Steve is left scuffing his toe against the dirt and feeling ridiculously sheepish about it. Truth is, despite his strength, and the way his harebrained schemes always seem to work out, and the way everyone is happy to follow his lead, he’s not a soldier, not really. He’s had basic training, and some advanced training with the SSR, and he’s got a good tactical head on his shoulders, but he’s been fighting in this war for all of four months.

He glances up and sees the rest of the team trying not to laugh, trying not to stare. They all look a little uncomfortable. It’s an unusual situation, he knows. This is not army discipline as they have learned it. A sergeant should not talk to a captain that way, not ever, and certainly not in front of the men.

That might work for other units, for other captains and sergeants, but that’s not them. That won’t work for Steve and Bucky, because Steve is self-aware enough to know that he needs someone to stop him when he goes too far. They aren’t a typical unit, and that’s not how Steve leads.

He rubs the spot on his forehead where Bucky flicked him. That had hurt. He runs a hand through his sweaty hair. “Yeah, I deserved that,” he says, and the discomfort evaporates.

Dum Dum claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Cap. Good to know you’re human.”

“Yeah, you know you’re not a real Howling Commando till Sarge has bawled you out at top volume,” says Morita, from where he’s putting a field dressing on Monty’s arm. Monty is smoking a cigarette left-handed and lifts it in a kind of toast to Steve.

Steve huffs. “Bucky’s been bawling me out at top volume since I was twelve years old. You guys have no idea,” he says wryly. They all laugh at that. “Come on. We gotta be ready to move out by 1800.”

They’re in the woods again, a series of hard-and-fast raids following their capture of two more Hydra bases.

Things have gone, as Monty says, pear-shaped. Dernier’s charges are starting to go off, and they all should have gotten clear by now, but there was more Hydra than there were supposed to be. So, they’re still in the thick of fighting, except now things are exploding.

Steve smashes his helmet into someone’s goggled face. He feels the crunch. He fires his pistol -- the last round -- and a guy drops. He holsters the pistol. He turns and there’s Bucky, at his back as always, Tommy gun raised and that expression of murderous intent on his face.

A black-helmeted figure rises up behind Bucky’s back, beam gun raised. Steve reacts, heaves the shield, throws his whole body into it as the truck behind him explodes. He feels like he’s watching the shield going in slow motion, at the same time that the Hydra trooper raises his weapon. He feels like he’s fighting against gravity and air and time itself. Is he fast enough? If he isn’t, Steve’s going to have to watch it, going to have to watch Bucky dissolving into scraps of darkness and dust and--

The shield smashes into the Hydra trooper’s gun and splits it clean in half. For a second, the goon is left holding the broken pieces with the shield lodged halfway into his breastplate.

“Holy shit Steve,” says Bucky, who turned to look when Steve threw the shield. It’s a moment of stillness in the middle of the pitched battle: Steve at one point of a triangle, Bucky at another, both of them staring at the Hydra goon, who’s staring at the pieces of his broken gun.

Then the gun explodes.

Even Steve is thrown back by the blast. His ears are full of a bell-like ringing as the shield is sent flying off into the darkness by the strength of it. The next thing Steve knows, he’s lying on his back three feet away from where he started. He thinks vaguely of Stark saying write that down, but then there’s no time to think anymore.

He whips back to his feet. The trucks are exploding, one after the other. They need to get out of here. Where’s Bucky?

There’s another figure lying on his back a few feet away, stirring weakly. A familiar blue coat. Steve runs to his side.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Bucky is saying, lying on his back in the snow, pale as death. A jagged piece of metal -- some of the barrel from that Hydra gun, is sticking out of his left shoulder.

“Buck,” Steve says, feeling like the word is being torn out of him. He starts to reach for the shrapnel, then pulls back. He should leave it in until Morita can get a proper look at it. They still don’t have a decent medic, a real field medic, but Morita’s got the smallest hands. Why don’t they have a real medic? Steve wonders it for the first time.

“Stevie,” Bucky says, voice thick with pain. Steve hasn’t heard that nickname since before the war, since before the serum.

“We gotta get outta here,” Steve says, pulling Bucky up by his uninjured right arm.

Bucky makes little sounds through gritted teeth as they move, but he mostly carries his own weight. They’re running, more or less, ducking low to avoid bullets and beam weapon blasts and more shrapnel. They flee deeper into the woods, weaving between trees until the shouts have faded to a distant clamor.

“Wait--” Bucky says, and pulls away. He presses his back to a tree, teeth gritted against the pain, head thrown back. “Steve. You gotta get this thing outta me. You got a field dressing?”

“We should wait for Morita to--”

Bucky bangs his head back against the tree trunk, eyes squeezed shut. “We’re leaving a trail, Rogers,” Bucky says through gritted teeth.

Steve looks down. Bucky’s right. There’s blood everywhere, a crimson trail, vivid in the snow. How much has Bucky lost? How much more can he lose?

“Just fucking-- Just do it, alright?” He sinks down to sit with his good shoulder braced against the tree trunk, ready.

Steve drops to his knees in the snow. They need to keep moving -- they need to get this done quick. Steve fumbles a dressing out of his belt pouch. He grabs Bucky’s shoulder to hold him still, and then grabs the end of the metal sticking out of Bucky, like some kind of monstrous obelisk. “Okay. Okay, on three,” He says, quietly. “One.” And then he yanks.

Bucky lets out a small sound, muffled badly behind his teeth. Steve slaps the bandage down and presses hard. There's so much blood already...

“Fuck you , Rogers, I fuckin knew you were gonna do that, you bastard,” Bucky says, voice strained. “Captain goddamn Asshole is what you are, Jesus.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quit yer whining, Babyface.” Dugan started calling Bucky Babyface Barnes after one of the comics managed to make its way to them. They all cracked up over Kid Bucky with his blue hot pants and red tights.

Bucky scowls and hisses: “ Fuck you,” just like he had when Dugan first brought out the comic and waved it around.

Steve ties the bandage off as tight as he can, tight enough that he can hear a little disbelieving groan of pain escape Bucky's throat. But with the dressing packed tight against the wound, he's no longer losing so much blood. “Alright?”

“Alright,” Bucky says, getting up with Steve’s help. He blinks at Steve for a second. “Rogers. Pal. Where’s your fucking dinnerplate?”

Turns out that Gabe has the shield, and hands it over when they regroup at base camp. “Hit a tree trunk next to my ear,” Gabe says, with a rueful little smile. “Damn near took my head off.”

Steve winces.

Morita is peeling Bucky’s field dressing off, and then his jacket, before cutting the shirt away to get a proper look at the wound.  Bucky’s still upright, amazingly. Still sitting up and insisting he’s fine, even though he’s as pale as newfallen snow, except where his skin is smeared with rust-colored stains.

“Never mind me,” Bucky says, joking even as Morita starts stitching him up. “What about the coat?”

Monty has a few artful smudges of smoke on his chiseled face. His spotted Ascot is somehow pristine. He plucks the coat up and examines the tear, the smears of muddy-brown stains. “It’ll patch up good as new,” he says.

“Barnes, you’re as vain as a peacock and lucky as the damn devil,” Morita mutters as he works. “This should’ve hit an artery.”

“Bled like a stuck pig at first,” Bucky admits.

That makes Morita frown. “How much do you think you lost?”

Bucky meets Steve’s eye. He looks… scared. But not so’s anyone else would notice. And Steve’s not gonna point it out. “Enough,” Steve says. It makes him feel sick, thinking of how much of Bucky’s blood is lying out there in the woods. This was too close.

But Bucky’s still here. Still alive. Still staring up at him, blue eyes looking black in the shadows of his face.

Bucky’s still here.

For now.

A few days later, Morita reports that Bucky is healing up real well and faster than he’d have thought.

“Don’t even think there’ll be a scar,” he says, with a confused little smile.

Bucky heals fast enough that he comes along when they go up against the Goliath a week later. Well, Steve calls it the Goliath but everyone else calls the Big Fuckoff Tank. Bucky’s still rubbing at his shoulder like it aches, but it doesn’t affect his shooting, so he’s on sniping duty for the next few missions.

“Doesn’t hurt, just feels weird,” Bucky claims, after that mission. “Itchy.” He rubs his shoulder when he says it. He’s not wearing his blue coat at that point, but it’s rolled up in the bottom of his pack, Steve knows. Waiting for an opportunity to make repairs.

Steve smacks Bucky’s hand away from his shoulder. “That just means it’s healing,” Steve says, who by this time has taken enough stabbings, shrapnel wounds, and bullet holes to know what healing feels like.

As soon as they get a few days to rest, Bucky spends painstaking hours getting the stains out of his beloved coat, and patching the hole so you can barely even tell it was there at all. “Good as new,” he says, pleased. Steve can still feel where the hole was when he puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Nicely hidden, neatly stitched closed, but rough under his thumb, like a scar.

In April, they get pulled out of France without warning, and sent, inexplicably, to Norway. Steve can’t quite fathom it, and Peggy sure is squirrely about it all.

In Norway, their orders come in at the last possible second, every time, over whatever channel they can find. Sometimes it’s a secure channel, and sometimes it ain’t, so they walk into more than one ambush. They don’t have much backup, but they don’t really need it. Steve’s pretty unstoppable, as it turns out, so they always seem to get out fine. They cause a heck of a lot of mayhem, bouncing all over the map and hitting lots of targets. But it all feels pretty pointless -- Steve can’t figure out what the angle is, what they’re going for, here.

By the end of April, they’re heading back to the coast. The route won’t be easy, especially now. A cold rain has settled in around them, so they made camp, set up their tents, hunkered down.

Steve and Bucky share a tent, sitting on their cots with the map spread out on what space there is between them. Rain patters down on the canvas roof, and at least they’re mostly dry, but they’re a long way from warm.

It doesn’t do much for Steve’s mood, and he’s already on edge because he can’t shake the feeling they’re being jerked around. “It doesn’t make any tactical sense,” Steve tells Bucky. “We’re supposed to specialize in taking out Hydra. There ain’t much Hydra up here anymore. They got whatever they needed in Tønsberg, they haven’t been back since then.”

“Steve,” Bucky says flatly, giving him a look. “Thought you were supposed to be a tactical genius now.”

“I-- what?”

Bucky huddles into his coat and glares out grumpily at Steve. “You don’t think it’s weird that we’re basically the only unit the Allies have sent up here, and that they have us bouncing around doing very public raids on wildly unimportant targets? It’s a diversion , Steve. We’re a diversion. They’re ramping up to something big, I think. Somewhere else.”

Steve stares at him, but that’s the missing piece that makes it all make sense. He’s been hearing a lot of chatter on the radio from the First US Army Group, and whispers about something called Fortitude North, but Steve’s never seen the First US Army Group mentioned anywhere before, and whatever Fortitude North is, it looks huge, but it’s not getting much logistical support.

Of course it’s a diversion. And just like that, Steve knows that the Allies are going to land in Europe. Soon. And wherever they’re landing, it won’t be Norway.

“When the hell did you get so smart, huh?” Steve asks.

Bucky glares out at him from deep in his coat. “Ain’t hard to be smarter than you, Rogers.”

It is hard, Steve knows, though he can barely admit as much to himself. He’s not an idiot, actually, and he knows tactics well, but… This is more like what Bucky calls Spy Shit. Steve’s not great at Spy Shit. Deception and misdirection and lies -- He knows the value of it, and he does know how to tell a lie, but it’s not exactly his forte. He’s much better at finding an opening, pressing an advantage, making a split second decision, but that’s different.

“Just hope it doesn’t take too long,” Bucky mutters.

“Cold?” Steve says.

Bucky reaches up and smacks the roof of the tent, where rainwater was starting to pool, threatening to soak through even their Starktech waterproofed canvas. “Fuckin’ hate the cold.”

Steve lifts an arm. “Come on, jerk.”

Bucky narrows his eyes only for a second, then practically bounces off his camp bed and across to Steve’s. He slides in under Steve’s outstretched arm and presses against the length of Steve’s side. He’s shivering, but it only takes a moment for the chills to ease.

Feels like Bucky’s losing weight, Steve notices. He frowns, because he knows Bucky’s eating. He’s seen Bucky wheedling and bargaining and trading smokes for extra food. Sometimes Bucky brings back a rabbit or something to cook over the campfire, and he always insists that the guy who makes the kill gets half. Plus, he may be a city boy, but he’s picked up what’s edible and what ain’t real quick. He’s always stopping to pick berries and taking detours through orchards and shit.

Maybe it’s the way he always throws up after action, Steve thinks, absentmindedly rubbing Bucky’s shoulder. He resolves to start carrying extra rations for Buck too.

Turns out that Bucky’s right. By the end of May, they’re being pulled out of Norway.

“You’re needed elsewhere,” Peggy informs him at the briefing back in London.

“Needed where?” Steve asks.

“Omaha.”

For a split second, Steve thinks they’re sending him back on the Star Spangled Circuit, and flashes violently back to his days in tights. Peggy smiles, like she knows exactly where his mind went, and his terror amuses her.

“Omaha Beach,” she clarifies. “Captain America,” she pulls a sheet of paper up and shows the map beneath it. It’s marked Top Secret and it shows the southern coast of England, the Channel, and Normandy, all marked up with red dotted lines. “Meet Operation Neptune.”

Steve gets a letter from Brooklyn and doesn’t have time to read it -- carries it around in his pocket for hours, for days, and then finally remembers it when he’s changing into his uniform, ready to board. He shoves it into his belt. He misses Brooklyn more than ever and if he dies on the beaches of Normandy, he doesn’t want to have missed one single word from home.

He reads it on the boat, half in darkness, his preternaturally good eyesight picking out the words despite that.

Steve,

Hope you and Bucky are doing alright all in one piece. They say things are starting to turn our way, but I know they probably aren’t telling us everything. Went to the pictures with Winnie the other night and saw you on the newsreels and…

I never wanted this for either of you. After the last war, I thought: at least there won’t be another. At least my sons will be safe. Seeing you and him out there -- I thought it would be a nightmare, and it almost was, but it was almost something else too. Almost made me wish I could serve again. I wanted you to know that. We're all proud of you, Steve. I’m glad you’re Buck’s CO. I trust you to lead him right, and if I could, I’d follow you too.

The army’s damn lucky to have you both, but you boys deserve better than war.

Remember that, and keep each other safe,

Pa

He thinks about tucking it into his uniform, close to his heart, but… it’ll be safer in his belt, which has waterproof pouches and is less likely to take a bullet. He has to get through this, he thinks. Death is not an option today, because he needs to get through this, so he can set the record straight. He needs to tell Mr. Barnes: I ain't the one who keeps Buck right. Bucky keeps me right. For all that he's the commanding officer, Steve doesn't know what would happen to him if he didn't have Bucky at his side. A Steve without Bucky is a train without brakes, Steve knows that now, he's learning it the hard way. 

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

It’s almost time. He wipes his face dry and focuses. He has a job to do.

Chapter Text

6

Times when I know you'll be lonesome
Times when I know you'll be sad
Don't let temptation surround you
Don't let the blues make you bad

- We’ll Be Together Again by Carl T. Fischer and Frankie Laine, 1945.

After Normandy, Steve’s usually perfect memory is just… stalled out. It's worse than that time in the trenches in Italy. It isn't just a strange cloud of unreality, he simply… can't. His memory is a thing that sputters and smokes and -- won’t -- work --

He can recite the facts, the ones he learned before and after, but the fighting itself, all six days of it, while they were struggling to connect the beachheads, are all just… jumbled together flashes. Meaningless.

There are thousands of Allied troops lying dead on the beaches, more than he’s ever seen, more than he ever wanted to see. He thinks, for the first time, about how there were supposed to be more of him. More people like him. How many lives could they have saved with even a half dozen more like Steve, or better? How many could have been spared?

I asked for an army and all I got was you, he hears again in his head, staring out at the beaches. The bodies. The wreckage. You are not enough.

Bucky’s hand on his shoulder pulls him out of it. Bucky’s got blood smeared on his cheek, but he looks uninjured. He squeezes Steve’s shoulder hard enough to bring Steve out of his fog.

“Come on, pal,” Bucky says. “Come away, now.”

Bucky leads him back to the fire, sits him down on a log. Steve puts his head in his hands. His brain feels like -- full of static -- screaming -- his ears are ringing and --

Steve fists his hands in his hair. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?” Bucky asks, careful and quiet.

“I don’t...” He stares at his feet, and swallows, and tries to organize his thoughts. He can usually remember everything. Bucky knows that. Knows about Steve’s eerily accurate recall, his frighteningly precise memory, his senses dialed all the way up with the knob broken off.  He can see everything, hear everything, and remember, but now, he doesn’t-- “...Remember,” He finishes. “I don’t. Anything. It’s just. Pieces. I…” He looks up, helpless.

Bucky frowns and nods like he gets it. He puts a hand on the back of Steve’s neck, and squeezes. “You flooded the engine, pal,” Bucky says, like it’s that simple.

Steve blinks at him. He can hear shelling in the distance. It’s… hard to focus. “...What?”

“Happens sometimes. When the fighting gets intense like that. Too much input, it’s just like with a car. You put too much in, too much fuel, or the wrong kind, you know? The engine stalled. You gotta drain it. Come on.” Bucky doesn’t take his hand off Steve’s nape. He shakes him a little. “Talk to me. You remember the landing?”

“We were...” Steve says, slowly. “They told us we were going to Omaha Beach, there was--”

“That was before,” Bucky says. “Back at HQ, but you remember the landing itself? The name of the boat? You remember who you were standing next to? Focus, pal.”

Steve swallows back bile. “I remember… I…” There is blood in the water, blood in the sand around them. He remembers that. He remembers it all around him, like it’s happening. The smell of it, and bobbing in the water-- “There was a foot, there was--”

“Yeah, I remember that too,” Bucky says quickly. “It’s okay. I’ll remember that for ya. You don’t have to think about. We got onto the beach. Remember that?”

Steve nods. It’s thick around him, in his head. His ears are still ringing with it. “We weren’t in the right place.”

“No one was,” Bucky agrees.

“There was… The engineers hadn’t cleared it. We couldn’t get… we needed to clear the beach. The… mines.” He looks up at Bucky for confirmation.

“You took it upon yourself,” Bucky says drily. “Started throwing hedgehogs around like half-bricks.”

“I did?” Steve says. But even as he says it, he’s lifting a heavy piece of spiked metal, one of dozens, hundreds, like monstrous jacks scattered on the beach by a giant. He’s heaving it up over his head and throwing it back towards a line of anti-tank mines on wooden spikes. Just blow the fuckers, he thinks. Blast our way through.

“You did.” He taps Steve’s shoulder with one finger. The uniform is all torn up there.

“What?” Steve says, staring.

“Shrapnel. Medical gave up digging it out when you told them to fuck off. Pushed itself out a few hours later. Wasn’t all that deep.”

Steve pushes his torn uniform aside. There’s blood, but underneath, the skin is shiny pink and clean. He shudders. There’s another hole, in his side. “Heavy fire,” he says, probing the spot, remembering the round tearing through him. No scar there either, just shiny new skin.

“Yeah, I’ll say. You were covering Morita with the shield, shouting for evac.”

“Morita -- is he?”

“He’s got a concussion, but he’ll be fine. Dugan took a bayonet to the leg, he’ll be fine, too.”

“Bayonet?”

Bucky sighs. “You decided we could lend a hand by taking out a pillbox or two.”

The pillboxes. Low, concrete buildings, heavily fortified. They were blocking the advance, so Steve--

“I punched through the concrete,” Steve recalls.

“With your fists, which was pretty fucking dumb.”

Steve flips him the bird, on automatic. Half in the memory still. A medic setting his fingers, and Bucky shouting at him. Steve flips him off with the broken, bloodied digit all crooked and shiny white bone showing through. Bucky goes green.

The finger is crooked. Not then, in the medic’s tent. Here and now.The skin of his knuckles is pink and raw looking, but closed. The finger is still slightly crooked. Bucky makes a face. “You’re gonna have to get one of the medics to re-break that. Again.” Bucky’s face is full of irritation.

Steve has a flash of memory: Explosions going off all around them, and Bucky flapping his arms in outrage and screeching What the fuck you keep the dinnerplate for? while Steve slams his fist into the concrete again, again, again, grabs the metal hatch and pulls, and twists, and --

“It didn’t hurt,” Steve says.

“I guarantee you it did, pal.”

Steve rubs his eyes. He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired. “Did I do okay?”

“You did fine, Stevie. You did great,” Bucky assures him. He squeezes again, fingers curled around the back of Steve’s neck. Grounding. “You were unstoppable,” he says, in a strange, soft voice. Bucky used to talk like that to his dates. You’re lovely, you’re perfect, you’re beautiful , in that soft, sweet voice. It’s nice to hear it again. Nicer to hear it for him. Even nicer to hear that. You’re unstoppable. It buoys him up inside. Bucky shakes him.

It’s not over yet, Steve knows. It’s still not over. It’s only just getting started. They’ll need to break away from the main body of the advancing Allied forces soon, and go deep into enemy territory, back to attacking Hydra. Intel says that Schmidt is planning something big. The SSR’s operations (and especially the Commandos) have slowed him down, caused delay after delay, but they’re a long way from being stopped.

Steve feels like everything is accelerating, rushing around him and beneath him, speeding him towards some unknown conclusion. Some days it feels like the war will never end, but other days it feels like the end is right there, coming up at him, but it’s concrete. He’s falling.

“Come on, pal,” Bucky says, and Steve remembers where he is again. “Get some rest.”

Steve stares at Bucky and marvels, a little. He doesn’t quite understand how Bucky can even function. Steve’s so tired he can’t see straight, and here Bucky is, propping him up, when Bucky doesn’t even have the serum.

Bucky’s the unstoppable one, not Steve.

They spend the rest of the summer hopping around France and going where they’re needed. It’s a lot of street fighting, a lot of dirty battles and messy advances, a sloppy race towards Berlin.

The plan is to bypass Paris (too many mouths to feed, too complicated) but then the French Resistance stages an uprising and Steve and the Commandos go racing off to help before anyone can tell them not to, and then what’s Eisenhower and Bradley supposed to do? Just let Captain America go in without backup? They send a couple of French divisions and the American 4th Armored.

Steve’s there at the front of the column when they hit the suburbs. He’s there, clearing roadblocks set by the fleeing Germans, lifting trees and pushing aside rubble and sandbags while the Commandos scout ahead, clearing buildings and checking for potential snipers.

Then they’re in the city proper. Too many buildings to clear, so Bucky makes Steve put his helmet back on, like Bucky’s his fretting mom and Steve’s going out into the cold with no coat.

Sometimes there are roaring crowds: civilians and FFI fighters with bands on their upper arms raising their guns over their heads and cheering fiercely. Women keep grabbing Monty and kissing him, for some reason. A few kiss Bucky (which makes Bucky laugh, though not the way he used to), and several smack ones on Dernier when they recognize him as a fellow Frenchman, but for some reason it’s mostly Monty. Monty takes it all with good grace. He has a way of shrugging as though to say it’s only to be expected when you look like me. No one kisses Steve, but that’s only because Steve stays firmly out of reach, standing up on the tank. He learned his lesson back in London. He’s been thanked by the women of America, he has no desire to be thanked again by the women of France.

His strategy backfires when they round the corner and a shot rings out. Steve drops as soon as he feels the bullet graze his collarbone, leaving a line of red fire mere inches from his unarmored throat. He rolls off the tank and shelters underneath it with the other Commandos and the GIs they were traveling with.

He looks over and Bucky’s there, glaring back with that fierce, savage determination on his face. His eyes latch onto Steve’s bleeding shoulder. Steve would call the expression rage, but it’s more biblical than that. It’s wrath. “I got him,” is all he says, and rolls out from under the tank.

“Barnes!” Steve shouts. “Bucky!”

But Bucky’s already away, zig-zagging across the street, low and faster than anything Steve’s seen aside from himself. He kicks down the door to the old church and barrels inside. The street holds its breath. It’s perhaps two minutes later when they hear a man scream and Steve can’t hold position anymore. He crawls out from under the tank and jumps up, ready to--

And then the body of the German sniper falls from the church tower and lands at Steve’s feet. His throat is cut. Steve looks up and sees Bucky looking down at him, gun in one hand, knife in the other, rifle still strapped to his back. Blood pools out into the cobblestones. Behind him, the crowd starts cheering again. Steve glances back at them, and by the time he looks up again, Bucky has vanished into the shadows of the church.

He rejoins them later, near the Eiffel Tower. He looks a little pale, a little tight around the mouth, but he’s ready for action when the action catches up to them again.

There’s a burst of resistance from the remaining Germans. Steve expects to have to wrangle civilians, but the Parisians are well used to the sound of gunfire by now. They don’t need to be told to take shelter, or keep their heads down, or wait for the all-clear. So Steve gets to charge into the fray with Bucky at his side and the Commandos at his back.

They move like a well-oiled machine, albeit one fueled mostly by adrenaline and Dernier’s frantic, enraged patriotism, which seems to come rolling off him in waves. More than once, Steve has to bodily haul Dernier off of Germans who have already surrendered, to stop the normally chipper Frenchman from beating them to death with his bare hands.

Bucky doesn’t help with that particular task. Steve gives him a reproachful look, but Bucky just shrugs, clearly of the opinion that Dernier should be allowed to do whatever he likes, even if whatever he likes is technically a war crime.

Sometimes, Bucky does things like that, or says things like that, and it makes Steve’s chest ache, thinking back on the person Bucky was before the draft letter, before Basic, before the war. Always ready to fight for a friend, and ruthless in their defense, but never forgetting that the other guy was human.

This Bucky doesn’t always seem to care about that so much.

They’re all standing beside and behind Dernier when the Allies raise the tricolor flag of France at the top of the Eiffel Tower. When Dernier’s knees go out from under him, it’s Gabe who catches him, and pretends he didn’t need catching.

By the end of November, Antwerp is in Allied control, and Hitler, they say, is in a bunker in Berlin. The Germans push back in the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge, they’re calling it. Steve wants to be there, but they’re needed elsewhere, they are told.

There’s a Hydra base on the Eastern front that shouldn’t be there, and it’s huge: a sprawling underground mess so secret that wasn’t even on Zola’s map. It’s the heart of a blockade outside of Stalingrad that’s been holding up the Allies’ advance for months now.

So in December, Steve and the Commandos go east instead. As the snow falls thick and fast, they find themselves in Russia, courtesy of a tricked out Stark plane and a parachute jump that leaves even Steve a little pale and shaky once they’re back on solid ground.

They’re being loaned out to the Red Army. Which is. Weird.

None of the Commandos speak a word of Russian, for starters. So it’s nothing like being embedded among the Americans or the French. There’s only one Russian who speaks much English, the leader of the division, Major Karpov. He’s about Steve’s age, possibly a few years younger, with dark hair and a goatee. He has a sweetheart in a town called Kronas. He’s going to marry her, when this is all over, he says. He seems young to be a Major.

When Steve mentions this, Karpov stares at him. “Battlefield promotions,” he says, in a flat, cold voice, and Steve recalls that Eisenhower went from being a colonel to being, well, Eisenhower, in the space of about two months.

The Russians are… they’re harder than the other Allied forces. They’re ragged in a way that has less to do with their uniforms and more to do with how thin their ranks are. Leaner. Meaner. They smile with all their teeth, at things that even the Howlies don’t find funny.

But Steve can’t blame them. Doesn’t judge them at all. The losses they’ve seen… Steve thought he’d seen the worst that war had to offer, back in Italy, in Austria, in France. He thought he’d seen the worst the war could show him on Omaha beach.

But he hadn’t seen a Russian winter. He hadn't seen Stalingrad. He hadn’t seen piles of frozen corpses, thrown together in mass graves. He hadn’t seen men who died in the night found blue in the face and peaceful come morning. He hadn’t felt frostbite on his fingertips, or watched Dugan lose a pinky toe to it. He hadn’t seen civilians burn their own crops out of spite, to let the winter take them all rather than give in to the invaders.

“Alright, lads,” Peggy says. They've been with the Russians for nearly two months now. It's a new year, and just a few days before they’re due to break the blockade. She’s all business, with her hair pulled back, tac pants and heavy boots and winter gear, and she’s never been more beautiful, in Steve’s opinion. "Now pay attention."

They’re all gathered around a map spread across the hood of a jeep, standing in a circle like they’re knights of the round table. It shows the base, it's underground tunnels sketched out in grey beneath the contour lines of the hillside. It also shows the bristling defenses of the blockade. They're marked in red, stretching out north and south from the facility like a river of blood. 

“So it’s to be divide and conquer. We’re splitting up. Captain Rogers, myself, Barnes, and Dernier will be with the main force, under Phillips and Karpov. Monty, you take Gabe, Dugan, and Morita and go with the rest of the battalion. Remember, you’re providing expertise on Hydra: most of the men you’re with won’t have gone up against them before. They don’t know about the Hydra guns, or the experiments, or any of the rest of it.”

“I am not crazy about dividing our forces like this,” Dugan grumbles, leaning in over the map.

Bucky gives him a flat look. “Takes two to tango, Dollface.”

“Or, in this case, make a pincer formation,” Steve finishes.

Dugan keeps grumbling anyway. Not because of the nickname -- Bucky started calling Dugan Dollface, in vengeance for the Babyface Barnes nickname, but it’s become something of a personal callsign between the two of them. No, Steve knows exactly why Dugan is grumbling; Dugan doesn’t trust the Russians. None of them really do.

Karpov's division is a group of hardened men who do not take prisoners. The Howlies don’t generally take prisoners either, but they also don’t make captives dig their own graves and then shoot them so they fall right in. Steve hates it, but he has no authority to stop it. When he tried anyway, Karpov threatened to cut the Howlies loose, see how they liked breaking a blockade with no help from the Russians. Bucky had all but dragged Steve away from that fight.

Now, Steve claps a hand down on Dugan’s shoulder. “I know it’s a crazy plan, but hey -- it’s my crazy plan.” The lie slips easy off his tongue. When did he learn to do that? “I ever let you down before?”

Dugan’s mustache twitches. “No, sir, Captain Rogers, sir,” he says. He only calls Steve sir and Captain Rogers when he is (as Peggy would say) taking the piss.

“Well I ain’t gonna start now, Private Dugan,” Steve says. “Now get outta here, you got your orders.”

Peggy catches his eye as the Howlies break. Her lips are thin. They both know the truth:

It isn’t really Steve’s plan. It’s a joint plan, between the Russian generals and Allied Command. But Steve knows that the other Howlies won’t agree to it if he doesn’t vouch for it, so he does. The pincer move, the coordinated strike, the timing of it, their movements precise as clockwork… It isn’t his plan, but he puts his name on it, puts his faith in it, gives his word to his men that they can make it work, because he thinks they can.

He really thought they could.

They accounted for everything but the winter.

When the blizzard clears, their window has passed, the two halves of their battalion divided, and now both sides are taking heavy fire. Steve’s is the only group with a viable option to retreat.

“We aren’t leaving them,” Steve says, flat. The command tent is shaking a bit, wind and not-so-distant explosions. Phillips sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s used to Steve’s insubordination by now. Karpov just looks coldly furious.

“No one is pleased about this situation, Captain. Half my men are trapped too,” Karpov snarls. “But what is our alternative, eh?” He spreads his hands. “We can retreat, lose the men we have already lost, and lose our advantage. Or we can try to get through, lose men on both sides, and still lose our advantage. Without the other half of the battalion, we are out-manned and out-gunned.”

“I hate nothing more than a no-win situation,” Phillips grumbles. Peggy is standing just behind him, and when she meets Steve’s eyes, her lips -- not red today, just thin and tired and pale -- turn down at the corners.

Steve looks away from her, looks down at the map; the line of fortifications between them and the rest of the battalion. The estimated locations of enemy troops, their approximate numbers and the strength of their artillery.

He sets his jaw.

“Rogers, I do not like that look,” Phillips says sharply.

Steve turns his head to stare him down. “Due respect, Colonel, you don’t have to. This is our best option, tactically.”

“What is?” Karpov says.

“I’ll clear us a path,” Steve says. “Here, where the line is thinnest. If we can break through we’ll have cut them off instead, complete the pincer move that we planned in the first place. It’s worth the risk.”

“The risk of losing Captain America?” Phillips snaps. “Roosevelt himself would have my balls for breakfast.”

Steve sees red for a moment at the thought that they would rather let half a battalion die than lose Captain America -- who is that asshole anyway? Steve kind of wants to kill the bastard himself.

It doesn’t escape his notice that they say nothing about losing half the Howling Commandos, and he’s got exactly no doubts about why that is. The Jap, the black guy, the Brit, and a mouthy Irish kid. Well Steve’s a mouthy Irish kid, and he was one long before he was Captain anything. He’s got more in common with Dugan than he does with Captain America. He’s had his life in Morita’s hands, he’s put Bucky’s life in Morita’s hands. He trusts Gabe to be his ears, to speak his words when he doesn’t know the language. And Falsworth is the one who takes charge when Steve and Buck are out on a two-man op.

They’re his team, but they’re more than that: they’re his brothers.

“He’s right, Colonel,” Peggy says, immediately moving to back Steve up. “Captain America is a tactical asset, not just a mascot. If he can do this, we’ll have an unprecedented show of the power we possess in addition to the advances made. We can break Hydra’s spine right here, right now. It’s worth the risk.”

“And if I can’t you’ll have yourself a martyr,” Steve says. “Captain America dies to save a thousand men. Honor his sacrifice. Buy fucking war bonds.” It comes out angry and insubordinate and he knows it, but before Phillips or Karpov can tell him off--

Bucky materializes out of the shadows. “That’s a dumb fucking plan, Cap,” he says irritably.

Steve glowers. He hates when Bucky calls him that. He’s starting to hate when anyone calls him that. He had almost forgotten Bucky was there, lurking in the back corner. “It’s not.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay, it’s maybe 50% of a decent plan, but 50% is still a failing grade.” He moves to stand on Steve’s left -- he may be Steve’s right hand man, but he habitually stands on the left side, favoring Steve’s good ear (not that he has a bad one anymore) and his non-dominant side. Bucky leans in, scratches his chin. “You wanna pull this off, you’re gonna need one hell of a diversion. Here.” He puts his finger on the paper, right over the base itself. “Send me out first. I’ll break into the base, make some mayhem.”

“What?” Steve says, panic hitting him right in the throat. “Are you kidding me, that’s--”

“Not a bad idea, actually,” Phillips cuts in. “You think you could trip the self-destruct?”

Bucky looks up. “That’s exactly what I think.”

“We don’t even know what’s in there,” Karpov starts, protesting. “Intel, materiel…”

“I agree,” Steve says. He doesn’t, exactly, but he really doesn’t want Bucky going in there alone.

Bucky glares at him, like he knows exactly what Steve’s thinking.

“Barnes is right,” Peggy says softly.

Steve’s head whips around so fast he thinks it might pop right off. But then he remembers… there had been a plan like this -- for Bucky to sneak in and trigger the self-destruct. A plan that he had concocted with Peggy’s help, not Steve’s.

Peggy just cocks a brow. “Potential loss of intel is worth getting the men back, and a diversion like that, coordinated with a precision strike from you to clear the way... This could work.”

Steve wants to say that he knows that it could work, that the fact that it could work is not the god damn point.

“How?” Karpov says, skeptically. “Maybe your supersoldier can clear way, maybe not. But Barnes is not supersoldier. How can he break into facility? He would have to sneak past or neutralize a dozen guards at least.”

“More like two dozen, pal. Won’t be a problem,” Bucky says. “Don’t worry about it.” That Brooklyn accent. Dunwureeyabahtit. He used to say that about having money for the train back, or picking up Steve’s prescriptions, or where they were going to find time to study if they were out dancing. Now Bucky says it about casually slitting a dozen or so throats.

“Trust me, Major, Barnes isn’t the one we have to worry about…” Phillips is saying, “he’s not the troublemaker here--” but Steve isn’t paying attention anymore. His focus has shifted to Bucky. Bucky isn’t looking back, and Steve thinks that Bucky’s avoiding his gaze deliberately.

He knows it when Bucky vanishes after the meeting without saying a word.

They get Steve winter gear to wear over his Captain America uniform. There’s a white coat to go over the red-white-blue, white boots to replace his brown ones. He’s got his sidearm, his rifle, his pockets full of extra ammo.

“Hey.”

Steve looks up, and finds Bucky standing there in the mouth of their tent. He’s already wearing his winter gear: all white and ghostly, with the snow falling thick outside behind him. He steps into the tent and drops his pack down. It rattles.

Bucky’s taken to hoarding weaponry the way a squirrel hoards nuts. He’s got more knives than the rest of the team combined. Some were part of his original kit, but most of them were lifted from dead soldiers, or occasionally gifted to him by grateful citizens. He’s collected them like souvenirs, and he’s taken to personalizing them like his baby sister used to personalize her diary.

Bucky rummages inside the bag for a moment, then pulls out two of his trench knives. One is an old, worn thing from the last war, with brass knuckles in the handle, and the other is one that Bucky made practically from scratch when they were stuck in a trench for three days with nothing to do but wait for the bombardment to stop. Steve knows it’s perfectly balanced.

He holds out the two knives to Steve. “Go on,” Bucky says, not quite meeting Steve’s gaze. “Guns need ammo. Knives don’t.”

Steve takes the two knives and runs his thumbs over the places where Bucky has carved his marks in. Roughly hewn stars to match the one that Steve carries.

Bucky is checking his knives -- the ones he hasn’t given to Steve. And there are plenty. They vanish all over his person, like they’re shy children, hiding in his coattails. He’s got a knife strapped to his gun holster, for cryin’ out loud.

Steve hates that Bucky has to do things like this. He’s going to find a way through the guards. He’s going to do it with knives, with garottes. It’s going to be bloody work, hands on. He’s going to hear the sounds that the guards make as they die. No one else seems to realize the toll it takes on Bucky.

And more than that; he hates that Bucky’s the one taking on this specific mission. This mission into a Hydra stronghold. This mission that has no real extraction plan.

“I don’t want to ask this of you,” Steve says quietly. He looks up and catches an expression of frank irritation on Bucky’s face.

“You didn’t ask me, pal. It was my idea, if you recall.”

And doesn’t that make Steve sick to hear it. “You don’t gotta protect me anymore, Buck,” Steve says, low and sincere.

Bucky gives him a silent, but eloquent, look of long-suffering. Wordlessly, he hands Steve the helmet. Steve kinda hates that stupid fucking helmet by now, but he puts it on almost automatically. “Remember the plan,” Bucky says. “I go, you give me half an hour to set off the self-destruct.”

“I know.”

“And if you don’t see it go off--”

“I know, Buck--”

“If you don’t see it go off,” Bucky says again, firmly. “You get the hell out.”

Steve clenches his jaw.

“Steve,” Bucky says warningly. “You get the hell out, and you sound the retreat. You know I’m right about this. You don’t get to disobey orders, not this time.”

Steve is so angry that it takes a second to unlock his jaw. “You’re not the commanding officer here, Sergeant.”

“You can’t pull that crap on me, we both know you’re as much a Captain as my baby sister,” Bucky snaps back, hard and mean-edged. “You’re only in command here cuz Stark tricked you out like one of his goddamn planes.”

Steve takes a step back, feeling absurdly like he’s been slapped.

Bucky closes his eyes, bows his head. “Shit. Pal, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“You did,” Steve says.

“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Bucky corrects. He rubs his forehead. “Fuck. I just mean--”

“I know what you mean, you made it real clear,” Steve says.

“No.” Bucky looks up sharply. “Willya just listen to me?”

Steve bites his tongue hard enough to sting.

“We chose to follow you, all of us. All the Howlies, even Carter. Against chain of command, against our training, against common goddamn sense. We all chose to follow you.” Bucky’s gaze is painfully direct, painfully open and honest.

Steve swallows thickly. He remembers that long walk back from Austria, not sleeping, and Falsworth taking orders without a peep, even though he should’ve been giving the orders, not following them. Falsworth, who’s been in the war longer than any of them except Dernier, who lost his whole unit and never says a word about it. Falsworth, stuck behind the line with--

“You listening to me, pal?” Bucky says.

“I’m listening,” Steve says.

“We chose you, we follow you, we maybe die for you. We choose that, you gotta respect it. Understand?”

“But--”

“But nothing, pal. We signed up for this.”

“You didn’t,” Steve says, thinking of a draft letter, the look on Bucky’s face the night before he shipped out.

Bucky smiles, almost. “Yeah I did. I signed up for this in 19-fucking-30.”

Steve can feel thick tears creeping up his throat. “Buck. You can’t ask me to leave you behind.”

Bucky’s expression is fierce. “Yeah, I can ask you. I am asking you. This is me. Asking.”

“It’s a fucking Hydra factory,” Steve says, raising his voice, a desperate edge in it now. “It’s a god damn research facility, like--”

Bucky has gone still, like stone, his expression frozen. It’s his turn to look like he’s been slapped. He’s not stupid -- Steve knows. Bucky volunteered for this knowing full well that he’s walking right back into another Kreischsburg.

They don’t talk about Kreischburg, or Azzano, any of it. It’s an unspoken law between them, one of a very few laws that Steve has never broken before.

“I didn’t mean that,” Steve says immediately.

“Yeah you did,” Bucky says, still stiff all over.

“Well I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Steve shoots back, quick as a whip.

With a soft, exasperated sigh, Bucky seems to come un-stuck. He shakes himself a little. “Steve.” He sighs and rubs his forehead. “Look. It ain’t gonna come to that because unlike you I am not a complete idiot. I can do this, you know I can.”

Steve swallows. He does know that. Bucky’s the only one on the team he can trust to do this and come back alive. It’s not that he’s not still worried about it but...

“I know you can, but--”

“But nothing,” Bucky says firmly. “Then that’s all there is to say.” And he deliberately turns his back.

That’s not all there is to say, but Steve doesn’t know how to make the words for it. The grief he feels, the pain of watching Bucky change. Every time they send his best friend out on one of these runs, they leave a piece of James Buchanan Barnes on the battlefield; something soft and smiling dies and dies and dies again. And Steve can’t stand it.

He swallows. “Bucky…”

“Nah, shut up,” Bucky says, grabbing more weapons from his bedroll. How long has he been sleeping with a garotte under his pillow? “Don’t get all mushy on me, there’s no goddamn call for it. Jesus.”

Steve stares at Bucky’s shoulders, broad under the layers of winter gear. He swallows back the tears, but there’s nothing he can do about the tightness in his chest.

If it comes down to it, he doesn’t think he can sound the retreat, even if he wanted to. Leaving Morita, Gabe, Falsworth and Dugan behind -- how could he live with himself after?

And leaving Bucky behind would be like gnawing his own arm off. He can’t do it. He’s not strong enough.

He turns away, leaves the tent so Bucky won’t see the truth written all over his face.

Later, when Bucky’s about to head out, Steve pulls him aside, one more time.

“Be careful, Bucky,” Steve says.

Bucky smiles. Too many teeth, not enough wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. “That ain’t exactly the name of the game, Stevie.”

“Buck--”

“I’ll see you soon, alright?”

“... Alright.”

Waiting for Bucky to trigger the self-destruct is the longest thirty minutes of Steve’s life. 

Peggy finds him sitting on a tree stump, staring at nothing. She’s got a bundle of waxed white canvas in her arms, and asks to see his shield. The white canvas turns out to be a cover. She fits it snugly over the red, white and blue, tight enough that it won’t interfere with the aerodynamics.

She holds it out to him; it looks like a curved painter’s canvas, ready for the oils. Peggy looks fierce. Her face is clean of makeup, her hair pulled back tighter than he’s ever seen it. She’s whipcord thin and wiry, in a way she wasn’t before. It’s been a hard winter for all of them.

He takes the shield and slots it into position on his back. Then he takes the radio she holds out to him. It’s a match to the one Bucky took, the one Morita has, the one Peggy’s got. Howard keeps promising that he’s going to clean up the design and get them properly manufactured models, but the last time Steve saw Howard, the man had passed out at his own worktable. So they’re still working with the cobbled together makeshift ones that Stark and Bucky and Morita put together.

Steve runs his thumb over the wax pencil marks: the sketched Stark Industries logo and the BUCKY WAS HERE doodle. Morita said he didn’t need to leave a mark. He said they’d know it was his because it fucking worked.

“Peggy,” he starts. “I’m not--"

“I know,” she says, without looking up. “Whether or not Barnes can trigger the self-destruct, you've got no intention of leaving any of them behind, no matter what happens.”

“I…” Steve's mouth goes suddenly dry. “How did you know?”

She gives him a look of long-suffering. “Unlike Barnes, I am not interested in fighting losing battles. I have realistic expectations of you, darling. I don't know what he was thinking, imagining he could get you to leave him behind.”

Steve swallows. “Peggy,” he starts, but doesn’t know where to go from there, because -- what does she mean? What does she know?

She rolls her eyes. “Honestly. You're as bad as each other. Self sacrificing idiots, both of you.” Her expression softens. She leans in and puts her strong little hands on his forearm. She looks up at him, warm brown eyes, sharp with understanding. He has no idea what it means, but... “What do you need me to do?” she asks, firm and grounding.

Steve swallows thickly. Whatever she knows, they’ve got a job to do, here and now. “If this doesn’t work, make sure they sound the retreat and leave without me. I'm not going to leave anyone behind, but I can't put the rest of the battalion in danger like that.”

“Alright. I'll do what I can.” Her voice is gentle.

He looks up. She holds his gaze, and he thinks of what Bucky said, that night in London that feels like decades ago. She’s gonna get you into so much trouble, I can tell.

She looks like she's on the verge of saying… something, when a thunderous boom fills the valley. They both whip their heads around. The view is obscured in still-falling snow, but Steve can see clearly enough. Behind the lines, the facility is leaking smoke, fully a third of it ablaze. He can already hear the commotion on the other side of no-man’s land, as soldiers react, wondering whether they’re under attack.

“Well,” Peggy breathes. “That’ll teach us to underestimate Barnes.”

Steve's heart is in his throat. Did Bucky get out without getting captured? Did he get out at all?

He can't think about that right now. He has to trust that Buck knows what he's doing. He's got his own job to do. He draws his pistol and hefts it. “It ain’t over yet,” he says.

“Steve?” she says.

He glances back at her.

“You’re not coming back without them,” she says firmly, “and you are coming back.”

It's not a request. “Yes, ma’am,” Steve says. The look she gives him -- it doesn’t make his heart stutter. No, this one makes his gut feel hot and heavy as molten lead.

He could kiss her, maybe. There’s no one around. He could--

Later, he thinks. Later.

He salutes, and disappears into the softly-falling snow.

He comes out of the whiteness like a huge, frost-covered spirit of vengeance. Like a ghost.

“Jotun!” One of the soldiers shouts in surprise, before his blood smears red across the white canvas on Steve’s shield.

When the fighting is done and they’re rounding up the survivors, as soon as he’s taken the commanding officer’s surrender, Steve just turns on his heel and runs full-tilt towards the still smoldering base, shield still on his arm, winter gear long since abandoned, too stained with mud and blood to make any kind of useful cover.

He slows to a jog as he comes up to the big base doors. Smoke pours out of them, and the yard is scattered with bodies. Karpov’s division had cleared the base, while Steve led the charge against the body of the blockade.

Steve tears off his helmet and throws it aside. “Bucky?” He shouts, staring at the open doors of the compound, the thick black smoke coiling out from it like an oil slick on the air. “BUCKY!”

“Jesus, Steve, no need to fuckin’ shout.”

Steve whips his head around and there’s Bucky, sitting in the shadow by the gate. Vaguely, Steve’s tactical brain notes that it is an ideal location. He can’t be seen by anyone entering the gate or leaving the compound, but he has clear sightlines. He’s sitting on a box with his rifle on his lap. His face is pale, smudged with soot. His jacket is stained with blood on the sleeve and the stomach.

Steve crosses the space between them in a few long strides and hauls Bucky to his feet. Bucky flinches at the touch, but he’s pliant, letting Steve drag him up.

“You hurt?” Steve asks, studying his face. He looks a bit ill, a bit waxen. Could be the usual after action shock, but it could be blood loss, Bucky’s covered in--

“It’s not mine,” Bucky says, voice gone a bit thin. “Third guy -- no, the fourth. He was a bleeder, he was--"

Steve just hauls him in, wraps his arms around Bucky and squeezes.

Bucky takes in a shuddery breath and lets it out. “Rogers, you goddamn sap,” he mumbles on the exhale.

Steve does not give a single fuck about that. He pulls back, holds Bucky at arm’s length. “You alright?”

Bucky nods. He’s staring at his toes. “There were. Labs. They had -- samples. Blood. Schmidt’s blood, I think. They were trying to -- they were testing it. On dogs. I think they were dogs. I’m not -- they weren’t dogs anymore.”

“Oh my god.” Steve pulls him in again and this time, Bucky’s arm comes up, fists in the back of Steve’s suit and hangs on, clinging.

“Torched the place where it. Where they. Can’t let the serum get out. Can’t let anyone else -- if goddamn Karpov got his hands on--"

Steve shudders a little. He knows the Russians are their allies, but he doesn’t like to think what they would do if they ever got their hands on the serum that made him and Schmidt. He doesn’t even fully trust America with the serum, and America isn’t reeling from invasion like a wounded bear, ready to lash out at anyone.

He squeezes Bucky tight, then pulls back, holds him at arm's length with his hands gripping Bucky's shoulders. “You did the right thing.”

Bucky nods, a sharp, juddery double-nod. “Yeah. And…” He takes a breath, visibly steadying himself. “Wasn’t a complete bust. I got something."

Steve pulls back, looks at him. “From the base? Intel?”

Bucky steps back, then kicks open the box he had been sitting on. Steve peers inside and sucks in a sharp breath. “Oh,” he says.

When he looks up, Bucky is grinning. It’s exactly the same shit-eating grin he used to get when he was slapping a winning poker hand down on the table. “Yeah.”

About a year ago, on his second mission, the one where he took a bullet to the leg, the Commandos had captured one of Hydra's version of the Enigma machine, which had led to a rash of victories for the Allies. While Steve was in Norway, helping with the deception plan leading up to Normandy, Schmidt had worked out that his communications were compromised and built a new version, and suddenly all their intercepted Hydra communiques were gibberish again.

So when Peggy sees the Hydra Enigma machine that Bucky retrieved, she grabs him by the ears and kisses him on the forehead. The expression on his face is so thunderstruck that she might as well have hit him with a brick. Then, she spins around, ponytail bouncing, beaming. She grabs Steve by the jaw and pulls him down, then presses a smacker on his cheek too, for good measure. Before he can react, she's practically skipping away -- presumably to see what she and Gabe and Morita can get out of it (even though they’re both still getting treated for minor hypothermia in the medical tent.)

Steve is frozen in place, slightly bent over, cheeks burning. He looks at Bucky, and is somewhat surprised to see that Bucky’s going pink too.

“Don’t look at me, pal, she’s all yours,” Bucky says. “She scares the everliving fuck outta me.”

One side of Steve's mouth lifts in a dopey grin. “Me too,” he says, adoringly.

At the wrap-up meeting, even hard-faced Major Karpov is impressed. In the command tent, when he comes in, he points to Steve, and Bucky in turn. “I would like twenty of him, and a hundred of him, please.”

If Karpov is expecting Steve to bristle at the preference for Bucky over Captain America, he’s going to be sorely disappointed. Steve just shrugs. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

“Get in line,” Phillips adds, much to Steve’s gratification and Bucky’s obvious discomfort. Too bad, pal, get used to praise. Any military commander who’s had the pleasure of working with Bucky and the deep frustration of working with Steve knows which they would prefer to have. Give Bucky a task, a set of goals, and he’ll just do it. Give Steve a task and he’ll do it, but you’re rolling the dice, because he’ll probably do half a dozen other things too. Steve’s a wildcard like that. Also, he usually succeeds, which just pisses people off more.

Karpov is actually smiling, which is downright eerie. He claps a hand on Bucky and Steve’s shoulders. Steve resists the urge to flinch away. He can’t quite blame Karpov for his ruthlessness, given the suffering that they’ve seen since they came to Russia. But that doesn’t mean he likes the man. “Where does one find soldiers like this, hm?” Karpov says, grinning.

Steve swipes a hand through his hair, and Bucky just smiles in a lazy way that doesn’t come anywhere near his eyes. “Brooklyn,” he says drily.

Then they’re gathering around the table, the map. Phillips is there, and Peggy, as well as another Russian that Steve doesn’t recognize, and then Steve and Bucky. The other Russian looks to be middle aged, higher-ranking than Karpov, but apparently he doesn’t speak English, because he just speaks in an undertone to Karpov and lets Karpov speak for both of them.

They are both staring at Steve and Bucky in a way that makes Steve profoundly uncomfortable.

“What’s our next move?” Steve asks, trying to ignore the prickling sensation of eyes on him.

“Zola,” Phillips says, would-be-casual. “Intel says he is currently in Northern Italy, at a Hydra facility there, working on… well, we don’t know what he’s working on, exactly,” Phillips admits. “But we intend to stop him. We suspect that he’ll be called back to Austria before too long. Captain Rogers, we’d like to send your team that way, to intercept, and, if possible, detain Arnim Zola.”

Steve doesn’t look at Bucky. Bucky would murder him for that. But he fancies he can feel the energy in the room shift. He can hear Buck’s normally oh-so-steady heartbeat ratchet up a notch. He can smell adrenaline and just barely detects the faint sound of Bucky grinding his teeth. Even the mention of Zola still does that to him.

“My pleasure,” Steve says, with grim relish.

“In one piece,” Phillips warns.

Steve’s smile is a thing with teeth and no joy. “I’ll make an effort. But I can’t promise anything.”

Phillips sighs heavily. “The Soviets have agreed to offer you a lift as far as Poland. There’s a Hydra base there we want to hit on the way, and then head here...” he points to a spot on the map.

Steve squints at the place, reads the name of the nearby town. Oświęcim. He leans back, looking up at the others.

“I recognize this. They were talking about bombing here, and then they decided against it. Isn’t there supposed to be a camp there?” He’s heard about the camps -- even before the war, before the serum, he’d heard talk. No one was ever sure how much of it was true. They’re starting to liberate them now, but the news is… confused. Unclear. And Steve’s been busy. Anyway, he knows what a work camp looks like. He can feel Bucky’s tension beside him.

Peggy and Phillips exchange a look. “Yes,” Phillips says, shortly. “We’re hoping to liberate it.”

He doesn’t elaborate.

Steve really did think that he knew what a labor camp looked like. He really thought that, by now, he’d seen the worst the war had to offer.

He was wrong.

Chapter Text

7

Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone,

You'll never walk alone.

- You’ll Never Walk Alone by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, 1945.

Steve can hardly bring himself to even think about what he sees at Birkenau. That seems like such a hollow, useless thing to say, but Steve has stared, unflinching, into a lot of darkness. Steve has stared down death and war and the kind of pain that would turn most people into gibbering wrecks. But this...

This is different.

A lot of the prisoners scream when they see Steve, like he’s a nightmare, like they can’t stop themselves. They scream and sob, their skeletal limbs rattling with fear. And it had taken Steve a while to understand why, but -- blond hair, blue eyes, the peak of physical fitness… of course they were scared of him.

Peggy tells him, shakily, that maybe he should wait outside, with the trucks.

He has never felt more useless.

Bucky, though… Bucky helps, especially with the children. He carries them out through the gates on his shoulders, sits with them in the medical tents. He holds thin hands and talks softly. He sings the few Yiddish songs he’d learned from his ma.  He’d talks, and listens, piecing together kindnesses and conversations in what German he has.

Steve can only watch from a safe distance, so he doesn’t make things any worse.

Bucky sleeps like the dead the evening after, while Steve lay awake in his bedroll, feeling sick.

He rolls out of bed early to see if he can do anything to help. But no one is awake except the guards, and of course they don’t need his help. No one does. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, just mindlessly driven to get up and move. The camp is quiet, and Steve shoves his hands in his pockets and just walks.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been aimlessly wandering when he comes around a corner and stumbles upon two men -- thin, and ragged, sharing a cigarette and watching the sunrise with their fingers twined together. The two whip their heads around on too-skinny necks, and jump apart when they see him. One has a red triangle on his striped shirt, the other has a pale triangular spot where a patch had been, once.

“It’s okay,” Steve says to them, and then realizes that they probably can’t understand him, but--

“He is political prisoner, like me,” the man with the cigarette says, tapping the red triangle on his chest. “Lost his patch. But--”

The other man is shaking, terrified eyes huge in his skull-like face.

And Steve can’t -- he can’t say nothing, can’t help trying to -- “Don’t be-- You’re fine, you’re safe here,” he says. And then, in a rush: “They’d have put a pink triangle on me too, if I were -- if it had happened where I come from.”

In a lifetime of saying really, really stupid things, this is the stupidest. He’s wearing the goddamn American flag, and he just told two Germans that he’s queer as a nine-bob-note. He’s never told anyone. His whole life, he never said anything, he--

He’s shaking a little, pale with sudden fright.

The three of them stare at each other. The one with no patch says something fast and low in German. The red-triangle replies in the same language. They exchange nods. Then, the man with the red triangle turns back to Steve and holds out his hand. “I am Karl,” he says. “This is Zbigniew.”

“Sorry?” Steve says.

Karl smiles. “Zbigniew. He is Polish.”

Not German prisoners, then. Or at least, Zbigniew isn’t. Steve shakes Karl’s hand. “I’m Steve.”

“Nice to meet you.” Karl holds out the cigarette next.

“I don’t really smoke,” Steve says. “Oh, but--” He fumbles in his pockets. He always carries his cigarette ration -- it’s often more useful than money. “Here.” He offers one to Zbigniew.

They probably shouldn’t be smoking, Steve thinks, as the man takes the cigarette with thin, shaking fingers. But he doesn’t have it in him to deny them.

Zbigniew smiles. “Sit?” he says, heavily accented.

“Oh, no,” Steve says quickly. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I didn’t mean to--”

“Sit,” Karl says it now, insistent.

Steve hovers for a moment, but he can’t -- he doesn’t want to be rude. “Thanks,” he says, and joins them.

They sit together and watch the sun rise, making awkward conversation across three languages and one common understanding of something they won’t discuss aloud.

Less than a week later, Steve and the Howlies are in the belly of a stealth plane, getting dropped into the foothills of the Alps.

After Birkenau, Steve’s the one who has trouble sleeping.

These days, when they’re on active assignment, Bucky seems able to sleep anywhere. When they’re on leave in London, he starts to rattle to pieces, staying out late, drinking too much but never quite unwinding. But in the field, he’s rock steady, and he can sleep anywhere: tucked into the corners of a transport truck, or sitting upright against a tree, or just stretched out on the ground with his hands folded on his stomach and his feet crossed at the ankle, pack pillowed under his head. He doesn’t snore anymore. Somewhere along the line, Bucky picked up the ability to sleep silently, and anywhere.

Steve envies that just now.

He can’t stop seeing gas chambers, and people turned into walking skeletons. He can’t stop seeing their haunted eyes. He can’t get the smell of it out of his nose.

They're behind enemy lines now, moving fast and silent and skilled across country, headed for the Alps. It's morning; the first morning after a difficult landing in rough terrain. But it's just the seven of them out here, and Steve's enhanced senses mean that they're not exactly easy to sneak up on. It's as close to secure as they'll get until the mission is over.

Most of the Howlies are having breakfast. Bucky is shaving with his makeshift kit and a little mirror propped up on a stump. He looks well rested, very nearly like his old self again.

Steve tries to find a way to ask.

“How can you…” but he doesn't know how the question ends.

Bucky looks over at Steve and raises a brow.

“All those people, Buck,” Steve says softly. Karl and Zbigniew. All of the rest of them. The crowds of them, and the piles and piles and piles of those who didn’t make it. “All that… the chambers, and… but you're…”

Bucky scrapes the razor across his cheek. “Mm. That really got to ya.”

“It didn't get to you?” Steve asks. He feels as horrified and confused as a child. He remembers feeling this way, sometimes, when he was younger, when injustice baffled and hurt him, sitting under his skin. The unfairness of the world. The cruelty of people. “It doesn't get to you?” He asks, again, a little angry that Bucky isn't angrier. “Your ma is--”

“You don't gotta tell me what my ma is and what she ain't,” Bucky says, a warning look in his eye now as he watches Steve in the little mirror. He dips the razor into the tin cup of water he's using to clean up with. “I ain't likely to ever forget it.”

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles. He remembers this too: Bucky and him almost fighting about it a coupla times, about Steve wanting to put Bucky in a box that Bucky didn't fit into, because Bucky was curious about his ma’s people, but never fully invested in it. He was the same way about Church too, once he moved out of his parents’ place. One foot in one world, one foot in the other, never fully in either but content to stay just there, suspended between the two.

Steve usually prefers to pick a side. 

“It's okay, pal, I'm used to it,” Bucky says. “And, well, it's probably pretty shitty of me to find some peace in a thing like that. I guess I'm a shitty guy.”

“You're a shitty guy, but not like that,” Steve mutters.

“Yeah, whatever. Point is: I’m gonna be having nightmares about that place for the rest of my life, sure. But. It wasn’t exactly a surprise to me, ya know. I'd seen something like it before, if you recall. Not on that scale, not that level of… but the same kinda thing.”

Steve remembers: the factory, the lab, Bucky’s face, the way he’d shaken after, the way he hadn’t been able to sleep. “It’s different when it’s civilians. It was their own people,” Steve says.

Bucky looks over at him. “Yeah, it was. Ask Gabe sometime about what Americans do to their own people. Ask Morita.”

Steve opens his mouth, but it’s like the statement has snatched all the words out of his throat. He closes his mouth.

Bucky makes a face, an apologetic sound. “Look. It’s harder on you, because you still got faith in people,” he says.

“You don’t?” Steve says, feeling like Bucky is pulling out his heart, one string at a time.

“I got faith in you,” Bucky says, flatly earnest. Just a statement of fact.

Steve closes his mouth again, a lump in his throat.

“Ahhh don’t get mushy on me,” Bucky says. “Listen. I've seen some awful things -- Hell, I've done some pretty awful things, but that place? That was the worst thing I've ever seen. Ever .”

“So how--”

“You wanna let me finish making my point? Geeze.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “The point is, all the shitty things I've done in this fucking war, the nightmares going on my conscience, the blood on my hands… If it was all in the service of shutting down places like that , stopping the kinds of people who do shit like that? Then it is worth it pal. It is fucking worth it. For the very first time in this whole damn mess, I am absolutely sure that we are doing the right thing.”

It reminds Steve of Notre Dame, in a strange way. When they came into Paris, he’d seen aerial photos. Reconnaissance. He’d seen the shape of it from above, the layout in relation to the rest of the city, et cetera, et cetera. And then he’d been on the ground in front of it: the hugeness of it, the sheer mass . All those stone faces looking down at him. The weight of history upon it, upon him. From above, it looked like a target. From below it looked like it was holding up the sky. The same place, changed completely by the way you look at it.

And that’s how he feels now. One minute he’s looking at those camps and thinking: people did this. Human beings did this to other human beings. And it’s enough to crush him. But then Bucky is changing the angle, showing him another way to look at it. This is what we’re up against. This is what we’re going to stop. This is what’s at stake.

Tension eases out of Steve’s shoulders. Bucky sets his razor aside, and wipes his face with a rag -- it’s maybe the same rag he uses when he’s cleaning his knives and guns. He turns on the stump he’s been sitting on and faces Steve head on.

“You told me something once, before all this,” he starts.

“I’m pretty sure I told ya a lot of things. Whether you listened--”

Bucky rolls his eyes hard. “Can ya let a man finish his fucking thought? Asshole.”

Steve raises his hands like he’s surrendering. A small smile is fighting to exist at the corner of his mouth.

“ You told me ,” Bucky says again, with emphasis. “That it wasn’t easy, but it was simple. Because they were bullies, and they needed to be stopped.”

Steve remembers this conversation. It was almost a fight: back in ‘38, what feels like a century ago. Steve had been ready to go to war right then, but Bucky hadn’t been so sure at the time. Despite the violence, despite everything, he hadn’t been convinced that starting a war was the right way to fix it.

“So it’s all a matter of perspective,” Bucky continues. “Priorities. You taught me how to think like this, Steve. You remember?”

“I remember,” Steve says.

It feels like a thousand little moments they’ve had before. Steve loses something, Bucky finds it and hands it back to him. Books, keys, and occasionally, forgotten lessons. He just hands them back to Steve, like a gift. Whatever it is, if Steve drops it, he can trust Bucky to pick it up. Steve wishes he had more to offer. Bucky deserves better. “Do you remember the day you told me you hated fighting?” he says, quietly.

Bucky glares, suddenly furious and defensive. “I did not -- I never fucking said that,” he hisses. His eyes dart behind Steve, like he’s checking where the others are, like he doesn’t want them to overhear.

Steve resists the urge to look over his shoulder. The Commandos are far enough away, and absorbed enough in eating their breakfasts that they won’t overhear. And they wouldn’t judge Bucky even if they did. He leans in, instead, elbows on knees. “No, you didn’t say that. You didn’t have to. Come on, Bucky, I know you.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches unhappily. “I don’t hate it,” he says, so quietly that Steve’s not sure he’d be able to hear at all without his enhanced senses. “I wouldn’t be this good at it if I hated it. But. I hate that I don’t hate it,” he adds, soft, mumbled, but vehement.

Steve frowns. He kind of knows what Bucky’s talking about. He’s done things that he isn’t proud of, and with his new body, he knows what it is to scare himself. To be scared of his own dark side. But he also trusts his own judgment. He knows he’s doing the right thing, even when it’s something he hates doing. But all this time, Bucky’s been wondering -- all this time it’s been weighing on his conscience, and Steve knew that, but at the same time… who is he to ask this of--

Bucky gives him a look, like he knows exactly what Steve’s thinking. “I’m still here, you asshole. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like something about it.” But his expression says he’s not sure what that something might be.

“You told me,” Steve says slowly, “that it was okay to like it when things were simple. A good clean fight.”

Bucky’s expression softens. “Not much clean about this fight,” he points out, but he looks easier again. And then; shifting gears, to a lighter mood. “You reek, by the way. Jump in a lake, why doncha.”

“You also told me that I was three gallons of fight in a half-pint bottle,” he adds, kicking Bucky’s shin.

Bucky laughs. “Pal, you still are.”

Steve looks down at himself; the unnaturally huge chest, the ground pushed eerily far away by legs that are too long. He likes being tall and healthy and strong, but… that doesn’t make it feel normal. He can’t quite convince himself that it is normal. That he isn’t on borrowed time, still. “Okay,” he laughs. “If you say so.”

“You know,” Bucky says casually. “Sometimes I think that serum didn’t lay a finger on you. Feels more like it scaled the rest of us down. You…” He pokes Steve in the chest with one finger. Steve thinks of Erskine, and feels a pang. “You were always like this, you know.” Bucky leans back, smirking, face soft and clean and looking almost like he did back in Brooklyn. “You ain’t changed a bit.”

Steve swallows, and nearly believes it.

It probably says something about the Howlies that the journey through Austria feels almost like a vacation. Walking under the stars, keeping to the shadows during the day, dodging patrols when they can and killing them when they can’t. Keeping quiet, staying alert.

But this mission feels different. As the hills become foothills become mountains, there’s a subtle rise in tension. This mission is different. This mission is personal, for all of them. Everyone there knows Zola’s cruelty. The Howlies are all survivors of it, and Steve…

Steve’s the only one who saw, firsthand, what Zola did to Bucky. His best friend laid out on a table, strapped down, staring into the dark without seeing, that machine hovering over him, ready to… they still didn’t know what. Zola had taken those notes with him, and outside of his bare bones report, Bucky never talked about it. He didn’t know, he said. He didn’t remember. He must have been unconscious, or the drugs, maybe…

The Allies feared some new breed of mustard gas. Or worse. No one liked to think about what was worse than mustard gas.

But maybe, finally, they can get some answers.

Not far from the Brenner Pass, where they plan to intercept Zola, they get caught unawares by a Hydra patrol.

“Caught” is probably a strong word. In fact what happens is that they’re sheltering in an abandoned barn, and Steve wakes suddenly from sleep to find Gabe’s hand clamped over his mouth, whites showing all around the brown of his eyes. Steve comes awake silently and goes still.

There are voices below them, speaking German. All the Howlies are in the loft, including Dugan, who was on watch by the window and is now crouching wide eyed. He spreads his hands in a what the fuck could I do? kind of way.

Steve listens, hears the Germans rummaging around below. Looking for supplies. Maybe planning to bunk down here themselves. They must’ve known the place was here, come walking up like they owned it, not realizing that the Howlies had decided to spend the night.

Bad luck.

Steve reaches for the shield, waves for Dugan to wake up Dernier, for Gabe to wake up Monty and Morita. Steve turns to wake Bucky and finds him already awake, eyes wide.

But there’s feet on the ladder to the loft before they can do anything, and Steve just reacts, spinning, and smashing the shield against the face of the man who appears at the top of the ladder, throwing him back.

Rapid-fire German cursing is followed by rapid fire German bullets, and Steve lifts his shield to cover himself and curls one arm around Bucky, pulling him in behind the shelter of the vibranium. The motion is all but instinctive by this point, bracing the shield against his shoulder, holding it tight against his body. When bullets hit it off the midline, it twists in his grasp like a living thing, he’s had it knocked out of his hands before, if he’s not careful. Like Howard said, it’s not perfect.  They’re all just making do.

There’s a loud and breathless moment, while the bullets are still flying, when it’s just him and Bucky sharing the air behind the shield, surrounded by the sound of bullets hitting the vibranium. Steve’s body is tensed against the onslaught, with the strain of holding the shield steady, and Bucky is taut, ready to spring, both of them waiting for--

There’s a break in the barrage, and they all move at once.

The patrol is caught off-guard, and the Howlies were caught off guard, and the whole thing is basically a shitshow.

They vault down from the loft in a clumsy, bungled charge, and the walls of the barn are too thin to bounce the shield off, so Steve is reduced to the role of glorified battering ram.

It’s a mess -- there’s no tactics, it’s just a brawl, and the Howlies are all tired enough to fight like they’re drunk. Steve isn’t sure they’re all wearing shoes, and he’s kicking himself for being so fucking careless--

He fires his pistol, fires again, but the damn thing jams. He tosses it aside, smashes the shield into someone’s mask and hears it crunch metal into bone. He turns--

There’s Bucky, a knife in each hand, grappling with a guy twice his size, some huge armored mook with a big rifle. Bucky twists like a snake and the rifle drops, but the guy manages to haul off, to get a square kick planted right in the middle of Bucky’s chest. Bucky goes flying back, lands hard on the ground and Steve hears the air go out of Bucky with a huge oof.

The mook jumps forward, and kicks Bucky hard in the face and Bucky’s head snaps to the side, his body limp as a thrown ragdoll, knives clattering to the floor of the barn, and Steve--

Steve sees red. Goes cold.

He heaves the shield, but he's holding it wrong for a throw, so the whole angle is off. The shield bounces sloppily off the guy’s armor and clatters to the ground with a ringing, echoey whang-whang-whang.

The armored Hydra mook staggers forward, and he turns to face Steve. There’s no tactics, no finesse. Steve just hurls himself forward, grabs the guy by his belt, and the armored H-shaped harness across his chest and heaves him up, over his head. The muscles across his back ache under the strain of it, holding the guy up while he struggles and tries to twist free. Steve throws him down on the concrete.

He jumps on top of the guy and just starts wailing on him with his bare fists. Punching the black helmet feels like punching rock, but Steve’s done that, Steve’s punched through rocks before.

The helmet bows and cracks and Steve gets his fingers in and tears it completely apart. The face underneath is battered, eyes gone wide with terror, mouth open.

Steve sees a glint of red-white-blue in the corner of his eye. He sees, in his mind, Bucky on the ground, like a kicked dog, the grunt of pain when he hit the concrete.

Steve scrabbles for the shield, snatches it off the floor, lifts it over his head and brings it down.

With that, the fight is over.

“Jesus, fuck, Cap!” Morita yelps when he sees Steve getting to his feet, his shield slammed clean through the guy’s neck and two inches into the concrete underneath.

“Mm,” Dernier says, in an approving sort of way. “Guillotine.”

“Frenchie, you belong in a bughouse,” Dum Dum says.

“We all belong in a bughouse,” Gabe says, lowly, sounding a little unnerved.

Steve doesn’t care. He turns to Bucky, and something tight in his chest uncoils when he sees Bucky stirring, starting to prop himself up on his elbows. “You alright?”

Bucky gives a weak thumbs up. He’s nodding, trying to catch his breath, but he’s alright. He’s alright.

Steve turns to the others. “All clear?” he calls.

“All clear,” they chorus back. They look shellshocked -- either from the interrupted rest, or from that clusterfuck of a fight, or from the sight of their Captain decapitating a man with the symbol of patriotism and liberty -- but they’re all in one piece.

That’s all Steve cares about anymore. He looks down at the guy he just killed, the blood cooling on the floor under the corpse. He’s not sorry. He doesn’t feel sickened.

Steve grabs his shield, twists, and wrenches it out of the ground. The decapitated Nazi’s head wobbles, almost comically.  Steve shakes blood off his shield, and it patters like rain into the growing pool under the body. He steps back and looks up to find the other Howlies staring at him. “Well,” he says. “That’s one hell of a reveille.”

“Next time, can we please get the Andrews Sisters?” Dugan complains.

Steve turns and finds Bucky staring up at him, jaw set, looking like a kicked puppy still, his eyes big and hurt and--

“The only Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy you’re gonna get out here is a Buck Private,” Morita says.

“I’m a sergeant,” Bucky wheezes, accepting a hand up from Steve. He presses his palm to his ribs and winces, but his eyes are on Steve, worrying. You alright? the look asks.

Steve shakes his head minutely. I’m fine. You? He asks with raised brows. There’s a bruise blossoming already on Bucky’s cheek, it’s gonna be a real shiner by sunrise.

Bucky nods. I’m fine, we’re all fine. In the background, Dugan is saying something about Abbott and Costello, but Steve’s attention is all on Buck. Bucky gives a little half-smile. “Thanks for the save,” he says, but he looks real sad about it.

Steve gets it. He’s not sure he likes what they’re turning into either.

“Any time,” Steve promises.

They reach the Brenner pass while Zola is still in Northern Italy. They find a good spot, overlooking the Hydra-controlled rail line. They set their zip line, their trap.

They wait. They all wait, breathless in the mountain air. Gabe, Monty, and Steve take turns manning the radio. When the word goes out, they’ll have a few hours to prepare, but no more.

They keep waiting. They sleep in tents, two or three to a tent, bedrolls huddled close to keep from freezing on the mountainside. Dugan, Steve, and Dernier all run hot, so that’s how it falls out. Dugan gets a tent, Dernier gets a tent, and Steve gets a tent. Dugan’s impromptu bedfellows are Morita and Gabe, and Steve honestly doesn’t know if they never sleep, or if they’ve somehow learned how to rib each other while unconscious. Monty and Dernier share, because Dernier snores and Monty can sleep through anything. And of course…

No one even asked to share with Steve. They didn’t need to be told. Sometimes Steve wonders if they think… But no. They all know about Steve and Peggy too, the endless teasing comes from all quarters, but especially from Bucky.

Steve sometimes wonders what they’d think, if they knew the truth. He’s pretty sure that Bucky knows: Steve’s never slept with anyone, not like that. Bucky’s the only one who really knows what Steve looked like before, who knows that Steve’s useless with women. Then there was the serum. Then there was the Star Spangled Circuit. And then the war. Sex just didn’t seem that important, by comparison. He’s been running, non-stop, since 1943. He barely has time to sleep at all, much less lose sleep with someone else.

He’s not sleeping now. He and Bucky are on watch, sitting outside with the radio. Steve’s got one cup of the radio headphones against his ear, but there’s no sound, no change. Bucky’s not far away, his rifle leaning against a boulder. He’s got a knife on his knees, a big scary looking one that he took off a Hydra soldier back in the barn where they got ambushed. He’s got his pa’s pocket knife too. Steve recognizes the familiar shape of it: horn handle, well worn, the blade sharpened too many times.

Bucky has already pried the Hydra logo off: the skull and tentacles tossed down a ravine somewhere a couple days ago. Now he’s carving a new shape into the handle: a star, Steve notes. It’s usually a star. Sometimes a star inside a circle, but always…

Brief static on the line. Then a report: the usual, all-clear, no-worries report. Bucky must have heard it, though, or seen Steve go tense. He stops carving and looks up.

Steve shakes his head. “Situation normal,” he says, softly.

Bucky’s mouth quirks up on one side. “All fucked up?” he asks.

Steve just smiles back and lets the headphones hang around his neck. He’ll hear just fine if something happens. He can hear the owl hooting on the next mountain over, he’s not going to miss a Hydra announcement on the headphones hanging around his neck.

Bucky goes back to carving. “It’s going to be soon,” he says. “He’s already stayed in Italy longer than we thought.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. It should be any day now. “You going to be alright?” he asks. He hadn’t said anything before, because he suspected that Bucky might sock him one for even asking, but… well. He can hear Dernier snoring, and Dugan wheezing long sleepy breaths. It’s just the two of them, now, and he might not get another chance, later. Steve’s been thinking about who should come on the train. Monty needs to stay behind: rear guard, as usual. He trusts Monty to get the rest of the team safely to the rendezvous.

He’s definitely bringing Gabe, for his gift with languages. He’d like to have Bucky too, of course. No one watches his back better than Bucky, but… Practically speaking, he needs to know if Bucky can handle this: taking Zola. Or -- taking Zola alive. Steve’s not totally sure if he can trust Bucky to do that. Bucky’s usually steady, in the field at least. But Zola… Zola’s a pressure point for Bucky.

Bucky’s stopped carving. Then, deliberately, he starts again. “I don’t remember what he did to me very well but I…” His voice is very careful, and very, very flat. “Have questions.” His tone says that he would rather talk about literally anything else. He meets Steve’s gaze, a muscle in his jaw going taut. “He has to be alive for me to get answers.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

Bucky bares his teeth in Steve’s direction. “Maybe not in one piece though.”

They lapse into silence again. Bucky keeps carving, the quiet sound of the knife whittling away pieces of the handle, the whisper of snow falling, the distant sound of a fox barking, an owl hooting.

“It’s gonna change things,” Bucky says. “If we can get him… I mean, we’ve got the advantage now. It’s like… the end is in sight, you know?”

“Yeah,” Steve says.

“You ever think about it?” Bucky asks. “After, I mean. When the war’s over.”

Steve lets out a long breath. He doesn’t know how to say that he hasn’t, that he can’t . The future is a cliff face, and he’s on a train, barreling towards it. The future is the ground, and he’s jumped off a skyscraper. The future is a white wall, as blank as a Russian blizzard.

He cannot imagine what happens after this. He’d never planned on surviving past 25. He’d never planned on surviving the trenches. He’d never planned on surviving the serum. He certainly never planned on surviving this.

Man with a plan. Ha.

He shrugs. “Brooklyn?” he says, because what else is there?

“You know, for an artist, you got no imagination, pal. I tell you what: you can come with me.”

Steve feels himself grinning. “The Grand Canyon?”

“Hell yeah, the Grand Canyon. Arizona, too. The god damn desert,” Bucky says, very firmly. “Warm, dry, sunshine. Clear air. Sky for miles. I am going to warm up, Steve. Sleep on a feather mattress every damn night.”

“That was always your dream,” Steve remembers. “God, since you were what, sixteen? Eighteen?”

Bucky looks at him oddly. “Well yeah, but… I mean, bringing you along was the whole point.”

Steve blinks. “What?”

“Arizona. The…” he waves a hand. “There was that clinic. Like a resort. For people with TB -- for rich people with TB. The air was supposed to be good for bad lungs. You wanted to send your ma there, but you never had the money. I thought, if I ever had the money, we could go together. I thought it'd be good for you, fun for me. I still think it would, by the way. Bit of traveling. Peaceful kinda traveling, not this.” He waves a hand at the view, their zipline, the whole mess. “Bad lungs or good lungs, it’d be good for you to get outta Brooklyn.”

Steve is nearly overcome. Bucky. Always looking out for him. He wants to be annoyed, but the thing is -- no one looks out for him anymore. No one thinks they have to, except Bucky. His chest is suddenly tight, too full, like he’s small again, like he can’t breathe. He stares at Bucky, finally manages to choke out: “That’s where your obsession with Arizona comes from? The fucking TB clinic?”

“That and cowboy movies,” Bucky says airily. “And stars! Steve, the best part about being out here is all that.” He waves a hand up and Steve follows his gaze to the night sky. The impressive spread of the Milky Way, clear in the cold night air. So many more stars here than there were in the city. Steve hardly ever looks at them. “I bet it’s even better in the desert,” Bucky adds, enthusiastic. He looks back at Steve with shining eyes. “Whaddya say? I know you don’t need the better air anymore, but everybody could use more stars, right?”

Steve swallows. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Seriously, though. You think they’ll let Captain America take a vacation with his old war buddy?” Bucky asks. “You think Carter will?” he adds, teasing.

Steve feels a swell of fondness, it’s tangled up with wanting, a confused jumble of desire and affection, but… he can sort it out later, maybe. They’re good feelings. He smiles. “Peggy is… Peggy needs me around like she needs a hole in the head. She’s gonna have so many job offers when this is over. Last thing she’ll need is me underfoot.”

“You do get underfoot,” Bucky agrees solemnly.

“Asshole,” Steve says, kicking his ankle.

Bucky chuckles softly. “Y’know…” He trails off.

Steve looks up. “What?”

“She’s offered me a job,” Bucky says. His eyes are fixed on the knife. “Not… not officially, but when this is all over, she says the SSR is… they’re gonna need people like us. Like her and me, you know? People who can…” He flips the knife in his hands and goes to work on the other side of the handle. The blade is easy in his hands, and Steve swallows. Seems like everyone’s getting job offers except him. Some things don’t change.

“You wanna keep doing that? After?” Steve asks, a little wary.

Bucky shrugs. “I’m good at it.”

“It ain’t the only thing you’re good at,” Steve says. He nudges Bucky, smiles soft and encouraging. “Come on. If Peggy wants you for her strike team, you know she’s going to have to fight Stark for the privilege.”

Bucky grins at that, slyly pleased. “Yeah, but who’s gonna watch your back if I’m in a lab with Stark?”

“Who’s gonna need to watch my back once this is over?” Steve scoffs.

“Oh yeah, like you’re gonna stop fighting.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “Like Captain America is just gonna hang up his shield and--”

“You kidding me?” Steve says. “Christ, I can’t wait to stop being Captain America.” He’s not sure he realizes how true that is until it’s coming out of his mouth in a rush.

Bucky stares at him, blue eyes wide. “You want that?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I’ve wanted that since the first time they shoved me out on that stage. Bucky, come on. I want to help, and if I gotta be Captain America to do that, I don’t mind, but that ain’t…” Steve is suddenly so, so tired. The weariness of it falls on his shoulders like lead. “I ain’t him.”

“Huh.” Bucky blinks a coupla times, just staring, like he’s seeing Steve in a new light. “You think they’ll let you?” he asks, very gently. “You think they’ll let Captain America go?”

Steve lifts and lowers one shoulder. “Captain America is a windup monkey that punches Hitler. Who needs Captain America if there isn’t a war on?”

“Oh Stevie,” Bucky says, in that voice that suggests Steve is being very stupid. “Pal. Friend. They are not gonna let you off the hook that easy. You are the personification of American ingenuity. The Can Do Spirit in the actual flesh. You think they’re gonna put you on a shelf? Pal, they’re gonna put you on the moon.”

Steve grimaces. “Sounds cold.”

“No shit. That’s why you should come to the desert with me.” Bucky blows wood shavings off the knife and flips it easily in his hand, offering the handle to Steve for inspection. “But that’s just my two cents. What do you want?”

Steve can’t remember the last time someone actually asked  him that and meant it. Well -- someone who wasn’t a prisoner tied to a chair for interrogation. What do you want?

He takes the knife, runs his thumb over the neatly carved star. He’s seen Bucky fill those carved stars with blobs of paint, carefully sanding it down until it lays in the handle smooth as enamel. White stars, blue stars, red stars. He shrugs again. “I don’t mind continuing to serve. If that’s what needs doing.”

“That is not an answer,” Bucky needles. “Man, after everything you’ve done for other people, you can do something for yourself. Whatever you do after all this, you don’t have to do it for Carter, you don’t have to do it for me. You certainly don’t have to do jack shit for Uncle Sam. What do you want?”

Steve runs his thumb over the empty star and wonders idly what color Bucky will paint this one. “I don’t know…” he admits. “Honestly? I just want to sleep.”

Bucky laughs at that. “Christ. Me too, pal. Me too.” He kicks Steve’s foot. “Is it time to change watch? Let’s poke Gabe and Morita and get some shuteye.”

In their tent, Bucky lies pressed up against his side, still shivering a bit, waiting for the blankets to warm up. Steve thinks, hesitantly, about the future. He’s not sure how to come back from all this. He doesn’t know what that would even look like.

But he maybe knows what he wants. He has this vision of an apartment -- a home. It would be sunny, and full of the sounds of Brooklyn. It would be a lot like the Barnes place. Sometimes the Barneses would be there, crowded around the table playing cards and laughing and listening to the radio. Sometimes the Howlies would be there, wearing soft, civvie clothes and drinking beer out of his fridge. Peggy would be there there. Maybe in a blue dress. He’s never seen her wear blue, just green, and black, and once, red. She’d look good in blue, he thinks. Bucky would be there. But that was like saying New York would be there. Like saying the sky would be there. Of course Bucky would be there.

Steve has no idea how any of this would work, how to make it happen. But he’s got a good head for tactics, and once he’s got a goal in mind…

He just needs time to make a plan, that’s all. He’s got time for that.

He smiles at the darkened ceiling of the tent. “Grand Canyon, huh?”

“Hm?” Bucky says, a little sleepily from Steve’s side.

“Well,” Steve says, quiet. “I don’t exactly know what I want to do, but I might as well look at something nice while I decide, right? Carter’s gonna be busy saving the world. So, whaddya say? Grand Canyon?”

Bucky chuckles. “Grand fuckin’ Canyon,” he agrees, smug.

“Alright,” Steve rumbles. “It’s a date,” he adds, teasing. A little.

Bucky pokes his side. “Punk!”

“Jerk,” Steve fires back.

In the morning, Gabe wakes them. They have a train to catch.

It all happens so fast after that.

I had him on the ropes.

I know you did.

Later, Steve can’t even ride in the same truck as Zola. He doesn’t trust himself. He squishes into the cab of the other truck and just stares at the road ahead. People maybe try to talk to him. He doesn’t answer.

Mrs. Barnes,

I’m so sorry

Later, Colonel Phillips says that they reached out to the Russians, who had a commando unit of their own not far away. Major Karpov sends his regrets: they weren’t able to recover the body.

Winnie,

Bucky’s gone. He fell and I wish

I tried to reach him, but I couldn’t He was right there Why couldn’t I I should have

Later, Peggy finds him at the pub. He would love her more than ever, if he could feel anything but pain right now. She understands. She knows. She says you won’t be alone. But she’s wrong. She’s wrong about that.

Ma,

I’m so sorry. Bucky’s gone. He fell and I couldn’t reach him in time. I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t enough.

I tried to bring us both home; I swear I did. I couldn’t do that, but I can make them pay. It’s all I can do. It’s the best I can do, now.

Yours,

Steve

Later, he doesn’t even try to take prisoners. I don’t wanna kill anyone, he said, once. He doesn’t know if he was lying then, or just ignorant. He didn’t know himself, maybe. He knows better now.

Don’t you dare be late.
Understood?

You know, I still don’t
know how to dance.

I’ll show you how.
Just be there.

Later, all his steely resolve breaks, like glass, like ice. It’s shattered, jagged and frozen inside him. He lived on borrowed time for so long, but now -- he still feels cheated. He waited too long and now it’s over. It slipped through his fingers -- slipped through his fingers again, and icy regret fills his lungs along with the water.

There should’ve been time for them. For him, for Bucky, for all of them. It’s not fair. He's sorry to do this to Peggy, he’s sorry to do this to Winnie and George and everyone else, he’s sorry but he can’t--

Later, there is only cold.

Coda

- Summer 1 from “Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons” by Max Richter, 2012.

Much, much later, Steve knows that something is wrong when he wakes up. Because, well, for starters, he wakes up . And that is beyond wrong. That is not supposed to happen.

Nothing feels right. The sheets under him are too soft. The woman’s clothes are wrong in lots of small ways. Her hair is wrong, and it smells like… Chemicals. A strange, sickly vanilla smell. And then there’s the radio…

Is this a test? He wonders.

He doesn't realize how wrong everything is until he gets outside.

You've been asleep, Cap.
For almost seventy years.
You gonna be okay?

Seventy years is a long time to feel nothing, Steve thinks. But pain is patient. Pain is always waiting. And this pain had been waiting for him for a long time.

He sets his jaw. He'll face it like he always has. Like he always will. Loss is just another kind of pain. Steve can take it. He knows pain.

“Yeah, I just.” He swallows. Visions of the Stork Club swim before him and fade. The Grand Canyon and the chance to make plans for the future -- a sunny apartment in Brooklyn, after the war -- he missed it. His whole future, and he missed it. “I had a date.”