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The scream of metal stopped before Bucky realized they were no longer falling.
Silence rushed in, then the world returned in pieces: the stench of fuel, the tick-tick of cooling metal, the thin whine of something dying in the dash. A soft, human sound threaded through it all.
“M—Bucky.”
He was upside down.
Seat belt digging into his chest, blood sticky in his hair, cold slicing through the shattered fuselage like a knife. Snow blew in through the torn side of the fuselage, a glittering curtain. He blinked, swallowed, and got his hands to work—thumb finds buckle, twist, brace. He dropped like a cut line and his bad shoulder lit up white.
“Maeve?” He coughed, smoke and frost battling each other in his lungs. “Talk to me.”
“Here.” She was half-curled under a collapsed strut, face white with shock and dotted with glass. Her right leg lay at an angle that made the back of his neck go hot. Sweat had iced at her temple. When she tried to move, she made that soft sound again and bit down on it like a secret.
He slid to her on his knees, boots skidding on a dusting of snow and broken glass. He did the quick scan he’d been trained to do—even before the Army, he’d learned it on Brooklyn sidewalks and barroom floors: airway, breathing, blood.
Breathing, fast and high.
Blood, yes, but not gushing.
The worst of it was her right leg: swelling already, bone pushing a wrong hill under her jeans. The rest was cuts, a bruise blooming under her jaw, a shallow slice across her palm where she’d tried to catch herself on something that had teeth.
“Don’t move,” he said, already shrugging off his jacket. The cold bit his back and made his skin pebble. “You with me?”
Maeve blinked hard, pulling her gaze away from her leg like she had to wrench it. “I hate flying, just so you know.”
“Noted.” He crouched lower so she didn’t have to tilt her head. “You hit your head?”
“Just my pride.” Her laugh cracked. “And the rest of me. You’re bleeding.”
“Head wounds look dramatic.” He pressed the jacket into the snow to pack it and slid it under her neck for support as he held up three finger. “How many fingers?”
“Three. Still prettier than me,” she muttered, then hissed as a gust found them. “Jesus. Where are we?”
“Big white nowhere.” He glanced past her, over the ripped-open fuselage where the tail should have been. Mountains ringed the valley—pine, granite, sky the color of a bruise. No smoke from other wreckage, no sound of rotors. Their pilot had managed a miracle to get them down at all; the miracle had a brutal sense of humor.
He forced himself to look at the radio panel. Dead. The emergency beacon light blinked once, twice, and went dark.
“Of course,” Maeve said weakly, following his look. “We used up our luck not dying.”
“We didn’t use it up,” Bucky said, and let the steel in his voice make it true. “We borrowed it. We’re gonna pay it back by getting the hell out of here.”
She swallowed, nodded. “Orders, Sergeant.”
“First we get you off the cold.” He scanned the cabin. Their small cargo plane had become a torn can: ribs of aluminum, straps, an avalanche of crates and canvas. The survival kit locker had burst open, mercifully; orange plastic winked under a bench.
He moved quickly—more quickly than his shoulder liked—hauling out a mylar blanket, a compact stove the size of a fist, a water filter. He shoved the stove into his pocket, spread the blanket over Maeve, and tucked it close around her shoulders. Her teeth chattered once, hard.
“Talk to me,” he said again, gentler. “On a scale from one to ‘don’t be a coward,’ how bad’s the leg?”
“Somewhere between ‘creative profanity’ and ‘oh God I can see stars.’” She blinked moisture out of her eyes and the tears froze at the corners. “Bucky, it’s—it’s wrong.”
“I know.” He squeezed her wrist, just a heartbeat. “We’re going to make a splint. Then we get you warm. Then we think about walking.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “You can’t carry me that far.”
“I can carry you as far as I have to,” he said. He didn’t soften the words with a smile. He let the promise hang there. “But let’s make that splint first.”
“Okay.” She took a breath so deep it shook and blew it out slow. “Okay. Tell me what you need.”
“Knife.” He patted his pockets out of habit, found it, and the blade clicked open with a satisfying sound. “Two straight, sturdy pieces, about forearm length. Fabric or tape. Something to pad. We’ll cut your jean cuff—sorry.”
“You’d better owe me new jeans,” she said, and the ghost of her grin steadied him.
He scavenged the cabin with ruthless brevity. The seat rails had snapped where the fuselage buckled; two slats of aluminum came away with a lever and a curse. He stripped the foam from a headrest for padding. Duct tape hung in limp garlands off the emergency kit; he wound it around his wrist like a bracelet to warm the adhesive. He cut a length of seatbelt webbing and looped it through his belt buckle, a makeshift strap.
When he crouched back beside her, he spoke in the voice that had pulled men out of fire and worse. “Listen. It’s going to hurt. I can give you something after to take the edge off, but I need you clear right now.”
“Give me your hand.” She reached for him before he could finish. “Something to hold onto.”
He gave her the metal one. She squeezed without needing to worry about breaking bone.
“We need your leg straight to set it,” he said. “On three. One—”
She let out a sharp, furious sound as he moved on two, and he didn’t apologize. He kept her calf braced in his palm, feeling the heat of swelling through denim, and laid the padded slats along her shin, one inside, one outside. The bone wasn’t through skin—small mercy—but it wanted to be.
“Breathe,” he said. “In. Out. Eyes on me.”
Her breath hitched. “You always—” Her voice thinned to thread. “—always gotta be contrary. You said three.”
“I lied,” he said calmly, cutting the tape with his teeth. “You’d tense on three.”
He wound the duct tape snug, not strangling. Tape, strap, tape. Secure at ankle and below the knee; leave the swelling room. He worked by feel and memory and the particular terror of seeing someone you love in pieces. Love. The word arrived and didn’t explode. It simply sat at the center of him and warmed his frozen bones like a coal.
“Last one,” he said. “Count with me.”
“One.” She dragged in air.
“Two.” He pulled the strap taut to stabilize the whole frame.
“Three.” Her nails bit into his palm, metal and flesh both. She swallowed a scream and tasted blood from her lip.
“Good,” he said. “God, Maeve, you’re good.” He secured the final tape, smoothed the padding, and sat back on his heels, breathing hard. “Talk. Still with me?”
“Mostly,” she whispered. “My leg is… not appreciative. The rest is considering a union.” She blinked up at him, sweat shining cold on her forehead. “You okay?”
“Fine.” He wasn’t, but fine was the floor and he wasn’t going lower. He dug into the med kit for ibuprofen, an instant heat pack, gauze. He made her swallow the pills dry, then cracked the heat pack and tucked it under the blanket along her ribs where large vessels could carry warmth. “Small sips,” he said, lifting her head for a drink. “Shock’s a bastard.”
“I’ve met nicer bastards,” she said faintly, and a little color came back into her cheeks when he huffed a laugh.
They moved by increments. He built a windbreak out of two snapped seats and a line of crates, tarped with a section of wing skin he wrestled out into the snow with his shoulder screaming. He set the tiny stove and sheltered it with his body while it licked a blue flame up against the pan’s belly. Melted snow became lukewarm water in the canteen. A flare fired into gray daylight drew no answer but the sigh of trees.
He kept talking. It wasn’t about content; it was about cadence. He told her what he was doing, what came next, the plan after that, every instruction laced with a promise he didn’t name. She listened, eyes half-closed, mouth set.
“Bucky,” she said, small as a secret. “If I pass out, don’t let me go too long.”
“You’re not passing out.”
“That’s… optimistic.”
“That’s tactical.” He poured the hot water into a packet of something that claimed to be soup and tasted like salt. “We need to move before night. We find shelter or we make it.”
Her gaze slid to the mountains. Wind worried the treeline, drawing a soft roar. “How far?”
“At worst, miles,” he said. He didn’t say too many. “At best, there’s a ranger station half a day’s hike from any flight route. We make a sled. I pull. You yell at me when I get stubborn and don’t drink water.”
She blinked. “Fair division of labor.”
He made the sled from a cargo door panel and parachute cord. He tested the drag with his own weight because asking less of her than he’d ask of himself was how he’d learned to love and live at the same time. The panel groaned, the cord held. He padded the head with his jacket and the tail with blankets.
When he lifted her—so careful, so slow—the world drew to a point of heat and breath.
“Hey,” he said, mouth close to her temple. “Eyes on me. Breathe with me.”
She matched him. In, two, three. Out, two, three. He felt her find the rhythm and ride it. He could have wept with the relief of that small forward motion.
Lashing her to the sled hurt her and he knew it and he did it anyway because the alternative was losing her to the valley. He let her rage, soft and exhausted, let her call him names, let her grit her teeth so hard he worried for her molars. He kissed the hair at her crown once, briefly, before the wind could steal the warmth.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But go.”
He drew the cord over his shoulder and leaned into it. The sled jerked, slewed, steadied. Snow squealed under the panel. His boots dug in, found purchase, lost it, found it again. The first ten yards taught him the slope; the next twenty taught him his legs. After fifty he couldn’t feel his fingers. After a hundred his breath sawed in his chest and froze his scarf with his own sweat.
When he paused to adjust the line, Maeve’s lips were blue. He crouched and pressed his gloved hand to her cheek, then his bare hand—metal would steal heat; skin would give it.
“You still with me?”
“Alive,” she managed. “Your hero complex is showing.”
“Good,” he said roughly. “It’ll keep us warm.”
They made a rhythm of it. Twenty yards. Stop. Check her color. Sip water. Blow hot breath into his own fingers. Thirty yards. Stop. Repack the heat pack against her core. Forty yards. Stop. Listen to the wind like it might decide to change. It didn’t.
Cloud pushed down like a hand. Afternoon went sickly gray. The temperature slid with the sun. When he caught the smell—faint and resinous—relief hit him so hard he swayed.
“Smoke,” he said.
Maeve blinked sluggishly, searching. “I don’t see—”
“Don’t need to.” He tipped his head. “It’s in the trees. Sap. Someone’s burned here before.”
A stand of firs gathered at the base of a rock shoulder, snow thinner under their boughs where wind couldn’t lay hands. A black scatter at the center said fire ring. Bucky hauled the sled into the cradle of trees and dropped the cord with a breath that bent him in half.
He moved fast because the cold punished hesitation. He used the knife to shave curls from a pine knot, fed them to a spark from the flint in the kit. Fire caught, thought about it, then hurried into itself like a body remembering how to breathe. He fed it twigs, sticks, bigger pieces, jealousy bright in his chest as if he were building another creature to love.
He lifted Maeve again, the world dimming at the edges with effort, and settled her close but not too close to the flames. He stripped his own gloves, pressed his palms to her cheeks and then to her hands, one and then the other, until she hissed and the color bloomed back into her knuckles.
“Hey,” she said, eyes focusing more. “You’re shivering.”
“Efficient circulation,” he said. His teeth clicked audibly. “Trade you blanket for my pride.”
He eased down beside her, shoulder to shoulder, then closer, then closer, until sharing breath wasn’t optional but sensible. He maneuvered the mylar around both of them, tucked it like a mother tucks a child. He hated how thin she felt in his arm. He hated the way her breath snagged when the fire popped. He loved that she kept her gaze on him anyway, choosing the anchor even when there were brighter things to look at.
“You should sleep,” he said.
“You shouldn’t freeze,” she returned, formidable even drowning in exhaustion. “Here.” She tugged at his scarf with clumsy fingers and wrapped it higher, covering the raw bite along his hairline. “Your head.”
“It’s dramatic,” he said, softer now. “Looks worse than it is.”
“Still your head,” she said. “I like what’s in it.”
He dipped his head so his forehead met hers. The fire spat, wind fretted, the mountain muttered to itself. He let his eyes close for a heartbeat, then another. He could sleep in slices: five minutes here, ten there, the way he’d learned in places where sleep was a gamble you won by not wanting it too much.
“Bucky,” Maeve’s voice had that thread of fear again, “What if no one comes.”
“We move at dawn,” he said. “Clouds break by noon.” He didn’t know if that was true. He made it true anyway. “There’s always a way down if you keep your feet under you.”
“Mine aren’t under me.”
He adjusted the blanket tighter. “Then you borrow mine.”
They ate the worst soup in human history and he massaged life back into her uninjured foot through boot leather until she hissed and then sighed. He checked the splint again, fingers gentle. Swelling had slowed. She slept for five minutes and woke with a little cry; he put his hand over her heart and counted with her until the count caught the rhythm of the muscle under his palm.
The night came like a door closing. Stars burned with indifferent beauty. The fire sank to coals and he fed it again and again, a ritual, a litany, a promise.
At some point she said, small and clear in the dark, “Why did you lie?”
He blinked away smoke. “About which one? I’ve been very busy.”
“On three.” Her fingers found his, slid between them. “You moved on two.”
He didn’t smile. “Because I didn’t want you to hurt more than you had to. And because sometimes we get through the worst by not seeing it coming.”
“Don’t do that again,” she said. “Not with me. Let me see it.”
He turned his hand so he could hold hers right—not a grip, not a brace, a thing that chose to stay. “Okay,” he said. “No more lying.”
“Even if it scares me.”
“Especially then.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, and then, because the truth was a thing to spend before it froze, “Me too.”
Dawn came reluctant and silver. The wind had wandered off to bully another ridge.
They broke camp with hands that didn’t feel like theirs. He doused the fire until it hissed a complaint and then consented. He checked the line of clouds stacking over the northern pass and chose south without consulting anything but his gut.
“Ready?” he asked, and this time he waited for her yes.
“Yes,” she said. “But if you fall on your ass I’m going to laugh even if it kills me.”
“Fair,” he said, teeth flashing. “But you’re buying the next pair of jeans.”
“Deal.”
They moved into the new day. The sled hissed over snow. His breath timed itself to hers by reflex now: a matched metronome in the quiet. The sun lifted, weak and honest. The mountain shrugged and let them pass.
They found the ranger station by accident and inevitability at once—its roofline tucked into the trees like something embarrassed to be hopeful. The radio stuttered, then caught. Voices filled the little room like a miracle they hadn’t used up after all.
Later, much later, after the medevac and the blizzard that chased it and the sticky heat of hospital blankets, he sat on the edge of Maeve’s bed and watched her sleep without flinching from the nothing-to-do of it.
Her leg was braced in something that wasn’t a door panel. Her color had returned. Her hand was bandaged where glass had kissed it. The curl of her lip was almost a smile.
When she woke, the first thing she did was reach for him. He gave her his flesh hand this time, and she squeezed just as hard.
“You moved on two,” she murmured, mouth dry and eyes bright.
He nodded. “No more of that.”
“Good.” She exhaled, eyes closing on the tail end of a laugh. “Because I want to see it. All of it. The falling, the splinting, the getting up again. That’s the point, right?”
He leaned forward until his forehead rested against hers, hospital beeps ticking their steady drum. “That’s the point,” he said. “We keep each other here.”
Outside the window, snow fell soft as breath. Inside, warmth held. He counted with her one more time just because he could, and because there would be other days when they’d need the practice, and because love, like a fire in the cold, thrived on attention and fuel and the stubborn refusal to let it go out.