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Dr. Erskine, by chance or misfortune, is called to consult on a borderline recruit at just the wrong time. He doesn't witness Steve and Bucky's argument in the recruitment center.
Steve is 4F'd again, and on a red dawn day, Bucky returns to the European front.
Steve scrapes by the best he can, doing his part and buying war bonds with extra cash to do his part. He tries to enlist a couple more times, but the officers are soon onto him. Finally, he's forced to stop when one threatens to bring him up on charges of fraud. The day after, he catches a movie staring a new actor named Hodges who plays Captain America.
Steve watches strong and brave Captain Hodges punch out Hitler on the big screen like it's nothing, and tries not to feel bitter.
Meanwhile, Sgt. Barnes is captured with the rest of the survivors of the 107th, and put into a labor camp. When an escape plan goes wrong, he takes the beating for his men, and is "volunteered" for the lab. Weeks later, he comes out of a drug and pain induced stupor to see that the room around him is on fire. He never knows how exactly he breaks free of his restraints -- maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe the heat and embers have warped the bindings just enough -- but he staggers out of hell and joins the 107th as they flee.
They have been rescued by a movie star calling himself Captain America.
Hodges is a bear of a man, and he laughs as he casually snaps a captured HYDRA officer's neck. The brass call him a hero, but Bucky doesn't like the mean look in Hodges' eye. His friend, Steve, would have called him a bully, and he'd be right.
Bucky's awarded a fistful of metals, and sent back home to Brooklyn on temporary leave to recover. But every time he closes his eyes, he's back in that lab, or watching his men getting blown to bits by HYDRA weapons. He wakes up screaming more nights than not, which scares his ma and little sisters. So he takes to sleeping at Steve's tiny apartment. Steve says he doesn't mind, and Bucky almost believes him.
Steve's five foot four, and barely over one-hundred pounds. It's shameful to admit the only time Bucky feels safe is when Steve's in the same room, but it's God's honest truth.
The war's going badly for the Allies. Bucky and Steve both can read between the lines the newspapers print out. The Nazis have new weapons, and there's a dust-up when Captain America goes rogue and leads an entire squad of men into a suicide run.
It was the last of the 107th. Falsworth, Gabe, Dum-Dum, Morita and the others are dead. That night, Bucky goes out and buys the worst gut-rotting hooch he can get his hands on. It knocks Steve flat out after a half glass. But... maybe the grief's too much for Bucky. It doesn't do a thing for him.
Bucky knows he should expect new orders anytime now -- he's needed, combat fatigue or no. And Steve's making noises 'bout maybe heading up to Canada, seeing if they'll enlist him on a fake ID.
Then, on a crisp October day, HYDRA manages to fly a fleet of airplanes and a whole damn army up over the Arctic and down again. They bomb several points on the Eastern Seaboard: Portland Maine, New York, Boston, and all the way down to Richmond Virginia. Then wave after wave of their troops touch ground.
The HYDRA invasion of the United States has begun.
Most of the able-bodied men are already either in the Pacific or Europe, leaving combat injured, like Bucky, the sick, and men too old and boys too young to fight. But they've got no choice. HYDRA troops aren't showing no mercy, and no one's willing to just lay down and die.
Later, he'll be ashamed to admit it, but Bucky didn't even consider the women. The ones who had taken up men's jobs while their men went overseas, the ones who were just as fit and stubborn as anyone in the 107th, and who have access to their families guns to boot. It's Steve who thinks of them, who organizes anyone on their street who will carry a weapon. Male, female, all the colors of the rainbow. If they're willing to fight for the country, they're welcome.
He's the seed crystal everyone galvanizes around. Together, their band of women and misfits push out the small force trying to occupy their neighborhood. And Bucky surprises himself, too, with how fast he can run. How high and how far he can jump. Something has changed in him. He can precision-shoot a HYDRA infantryman from a football field length away without a scope.
He's scared, but he's also glad of it. He needs all the strength in his body to keep Steve out of trouble, because Steve -- stubborn, beautiful Steve -- is not running from this fight.
Their small guerrilla band strikes at HYDRA at their vulnerable points, especially at their supply lines. Bucky has his insight gained his time in Europe, and a couple old vets from the Great War add their pieces. But to everyone's surprise, it's Steve who has some of the best ideas. He's a natural tactician, and even if he's useless in his own fights (it takes too many close calls, one asthma attack, and several outright screaming matches from Bucky's end to convince Steve to stay back) he knows how to move people around. Where to place them, and where they should camp out next.
There's good in Steve, there's undying hope in him that attracts others. It's not long before their little band grows into a militia, with Steve at the head. He can't fight, but he can lead. Steve's come into his own and Bucky couldn't be more proud for him.
Historians will pour over the events of the Brooklyn Militia during the long winter of 1945, and the series of skirmishes and outright battles. How slowly, stubbornly, the people pushed HYDRA first out of their own neighborhoods, then out of others.
By the end, everyone's calling Steve 'Commander Rogers'. They're singing Bucky's praises, too, for his bravery and shootin' skills. Together, he and Steve make one heck of a team. One man the brains, the other the brawn, and both of them all guts.
Bucky and Steve habitually stay up late, planning for the next battle, the contingencies in case something goes wrong -- and it almost always does. Best laid plans, and all that.
Bucky tries to blame exhaustion and after-victory giddiness when he first kisses Steve. But Steve doesn't want to hear it, and grips Bucky by the lapels, kissing back. Just as hungry, just as fierce.
The whole world has gone insane, most of his hometown is a warzone, and almost everyone Bucky knows growing up has died in the first attack. There's no excuse for the joy swelling in his chest every time he looks at Steve. Only, when Steve catches Bucky's eye and grins slyly back, Bucky knows he's feeling the same way. He's got the madness in him, too.
By late April, they've nearly claimed back all of the outer Burroughs. From what little they've heard 'bout Europe, the war's starting to turn back to the good over there.
Then the Red Skull shows up with the once Captain America by his side. Both are crazy-eyed devils, and Bucky and the best of the Brooklyn Militia fight them in what's left of Ebbot's field.
Whatever's in Bucky -- whatever's making him stronger, faster, fitter -- the Red Skull and Captain America have, too. They want Bucky to leave his puny Commander Rogers and join them as Gods. When Bucky colorfully refuses, Hodges breaks Bucky's left arm in three places.
It's Steve who comes to his rescue, leading the second string, and the cavalry -- salvaged automobiles, and a few machine guns they managed to save until then. The fight is, at best, a draw, with both sides retreat to lick their wounds.
Bucky's left arm is badly mangled. The doctors do what they can, but rationing made good medicine hard to come by even before the invasion. His arm goes septic within a week.
Anesthesia doesn't work so well on Bucky anymore. He gets the best (and the worst) whiskey and vodka, and whatever else they manage to force down his throat. He vaguely remembers holding onto Steve's hand like a lifeline as the doctors saw through bone. It takes everything he has not to crush Steve's fingers.
Their doctor's name is Erskine. He's new to Brooklyn Militia, but had heard of Bucky before, and saw how quickly he healed. He comes to Steve with an idea based on some theories he had been researching before he'd fled to America.
Bucky's not certain he can trust Erskine, but HYDRA are pushing the lines of the Militia back over area they spent blood on just a few months ago. Besides, he needs to be Steve's weapon, and he's all but useless with one arm.
It's not right how the second surgery hurts more than the first. The metal arm is big and clunky, and makes whirring noises every time he moves. But Erskine is right: the ends of Bucky's nerves bind to the 'cybernetics', helped along by an injection that Erskine himself prepared. Some kind of new steroid, Erskine says.
Steve doesn't quite look Bucky in the eye for almost three days after the second surgery.
The arm doesn't feel like his natural one. He has metal instead of skin, but it moves like a dream. And if anything, Bucky feels even better than before. He's healed up and on his feet in a quarter of the time the doctor's gave him.
Steve kinda likes the arm, too. Bucky shows him all the new tricks he can do with it.
Then, an encrypted message comes from the west. Pacific Army forces have managed to hoof it across country, past HYDRA break lines. They want to reclaim New York in one final push. Brooklyn Militia from the east, Pacific Army from the west, and HYDRA caught in the middle.
Operation Nutcracker is a go, and this time Steve refuses point-blank to stay back. Bucky's worried fiercely for him, but there's nothing for it.
The fight is long and bloody, and once again at the end the Red Skull and Captain Hodges show their ugly mugs. This time, Bucky's ready for them. Hodges is a mean son of a gun, but he's crazy, and soon overreaches. Bucky knocks him flat out with a left hook. He's glad of his metal arm.
He turns to see Steve's distracted the Red Skull, and is hiding behind a flat piece of sheet-metal Steve's using as a shield. With a roar, Bucky goes after him, but the Red Skull is cooler than Hodges, a smarter fighter, too. He has Bucky on his back, when Commander Rogers, wheezing from an impending asthma attack, takes his shot.
It's the little guy who puts a bullet straight through the Red Skull's eye and ends the HYDRA occupation on American soil.
Later, there will be more award ceremonies, the president will come out of hiding to reclaim and rebuild the White House. There will be a tickertape parade or two. Later, speeches will be made, historians will get mostly right all the details of East Coast occupation. High Schools will be named for Steve and Bucky. And, once the full story comes out decades later, they will both be the icons of a whole new fight... one for gay and lesbian equal rights.
But now Bucky throws his good arm around Steve and drags him close. They cling together, kiss, breathing each other in. They are alive, and beyond, their militia is mopping up the remaining HYDRA forces.
The sun, reddened by smoke drifting over the sky, casts slating evening light on a freed city and two of it's greatest heroes.