Archive of Our Own

At this point in the war, they should have just expected the warehouse collapse to go wrong in some spectacular way.

That was the thing about the intelligence reports that nobody ever put in writing: half the time they were wrong, and the half when they were right came with no warning about which half they were about to get. Kate had learned that in the first two months of the war and had never once seen it change. 

Tonight had proved, yet again, how unpredictable missions with the Commandos could be. The building outside Portsmouth that HYDRA's local cell was supposedly using as a storage depot for aircraft components turned out to be storing considerably more than aircraft components. They'd spent a majority of the day taking what was useful and destroying what was left, extending their mission an extra twenty-four hours to properly dispose of it all. It was in the early evening that the charge Dugan set on the north wall found something it wasn't meant to find, and the whole eastern half of the structure came down in a wall of orange heat and screaming metal before the Commandos had finished clearing the perimeter.

Kate was two hundred yards out with the medical wagon when it happened, close enough that the shockwave reached her a full second before the sound did, and close enough to see the silhouette of a man thrown backward against the treeline like something had simply discarded him.

She was running before she'd consciously decided to run.

"Cap's down!" someone was shouting, over and over, the words losing their shape the third or fourth time through. Kate's whole body narrowed itself down to the single task of getting there, medical bag slamming against her hip, boots skidding in mud gone slick with the first hard rain of the season. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the phrase Cap's down, the medical half of her brain arguing furiously with the less logical, more human part. There was no time to be angry about how this final mission at the end of a very long week was supposed to be simple and injury-free, because she should have known better than to let her guard down where the Howling Commandos were concerned. Steve Rogers could withstand more than any man could dream of, but that didn't make her worry any less about him, about any soldier that was in her charge.

He wasn't down for long. That was the maddening thing about him, the part that made her curse his stubborn nature under her breath the moment she saw it. By the time she reached the treeline, he was already pushing himself up onto one elbow, shield discarded somewhere in the grass, blood running dark down the side of his uniform from hip to knee. He was saying something to Falsworth about getting back on the line, about the second charge, about how many men they still had unaccounted for on the east side.

"Ah, ah! Don't you dare. Stop moving," Kate called out to him the moment he moved to lift himself up, and to Steve's credit, he paused at her words. She dropped to her knees in the mud beside him, and something in her voice must have held some weight, because for once in his life Steve Rogers actually lowered himself back onto his elbows and waited for help.

"I'm fine, just gotta catch my breath," he panted, which was somehow worse.

"You are bleeding out of a hole in your hip the size of my fist, Rogers. You are the furthest thing from fine that I've seen all week, and that's saying something." She was already cutting into the fabric of his trousers with the shears from her kit, working fast, her hands moving on instinct while the rest of her catalogued the damage with the flat, clinical part of her mind that had gotten her through the war months of exactly this. Shrapnel, a great deal of it, was embedded at multiple depths along his outer hip and upper thigh. Some of it was visible, glinting wet and black in the firelight, though some of it was not visible at all, which was much worse because that meant it was already deep enough that gravity and Steve's own violent, absurd healing factor were working together to bury it. Blood leaked from the edges of the thicker pieces of shrapnel, trickling down the exposed skin with every beat of his strong heart and soaking any fabric it could find on the way.

"It doesn't hurt that bad," Steve said, and his voice cracked very slightly on the word bad, which told her the truth about the pain that his face was too disciplined to admit.

"Not yet, it doesn't," she muttered. She pressed two fingers to the worst of the wounds, feeling for the edges, and felt him go rigid under her hand, a full-body flinch he tried and failed to swallow. She'd seen enough — he needed proper medical intervention, and not the kind she could perform on the muddy forest floor.

"Falsworth, I need him on the wagon. Now."

"Ma'am." Falsworth was already moving to fetch the wagon, already calling for Dernier to help lift with concern etched into the fibers of his tone.

Dugan had quickly made his way over, then skidded to a stop upon seeing Steve on the ground. He hadn't moved at all since. He was standing a few feet back at the edge of the firelight, hat gone, face streaked black with soot, staring at Steve's hip with an expression Kate recognized instantly and had no time to address.

"Dugan?"

"That was my charge," he said, low, like the words were being dragged out of him, scarring his throat as they went. "I told Falsworth the wall was clear before—"

"Dugan, that's not helpful right now. Go handle that second wall, or there will be more of this to treat before the night is through." Her voice didn't soften, not with a job still ahead of him, but something in the set of her jaw promised she hadn't missed what he'd said, and would return to it later.

His hands were wringing out his hat, a devastating look of deep regret written on every inch of his normally-cheery face. Dugan went, but not without one last look at Steve that Kate filed away for the walk home.

"I can walk," Steve argued immediately, stubbornness and something almost embarrassed in nature lacing his words. He seemed to be avoiding looking at his fresh wounds directly, keeping his eyes fixed on the flurry of activity around him as if blissful ignorance of the bleeding injury could make it easier to work around. 

"You can be quiet," Kate replied quickly while reaching for her kit, "which would be a novel experience for you, and considerably more useful to me right now than your legs."

Somewhere behind the pain in his eyes, something in his mouth twitched, like it wanted very badly to be a smile and didn't quite have the strength to become one. She would remember that later — how even flat on his back in the mud with half a warehouse embedded in his hip, some ridiculous, stubborn piece of him had wanted to laugh at her.

The aid tent three miles back was canvas and lantern-light and the particular wartime smell that never left Kate no matter how many times she scrubbed her hands raw — antiseptic and mud and old blood, layered so many times over the months that the tent itself seemed to carry the scent in its fibers.

It took Falsworth, Dernier, and the last-minute assistance of both Jones and Morita to get Steve successfully transferred onto the cot. Falsworth and Dernier were panting in earnest from the effort of wheeling a suprisingly-heavy Steve Rogers through the mud, and had welcomed the extra help when they finally reached the tent. They had visibly  hesitated when the work was done before realizing four massive soldiers at Steve's bedside were more of a hindrance than anything else, and shuffled out before they could be ordered out. In the meantime, she busied herself with getting the lantern angled properly, rolling up her sleeves and mentally steeling her resolve for what was to come. Her right-hand girl, Maggie, took one look at Steve's injury and began boiling water, laying out instruments with the brisk efficiency of someone who had learned not to ask questions until the crisis was over. Maggie was a sharp, curly-haired, petite girl who had been doing this work since before Kate had arrived, and Kate shared a solemn look with her before they both resumed their careful prep work.

"Talk to me, Steve," Kate said, cutting the rest of the ruined trouser leg away with quick, economical strokes of the shears. "Where else? Head, chest, anywhere you're not telling me about?"

"Just the hip." His breath was coming faster now that the adrenaline of the explosion had started to burn off, which was exactly the moment Kate dreaded most in any patient: the moment the body stopped protecting itself with shock and started actually reporting what had happened to it. The bright blue eyes that normally never flinched from a fight had become half-lidded with pain as he stared unseeingly at the tent's canvas ceilings. "It can't be that bad—"

"Don't start, now." She had already made the decision to follow the trail of blood up his chest, the tiny cuts in his dirty uniform hinting at more shrapnel hiding in more than just his hip. She moved to his shirt, fingers finding the tiny buttons and abandoning them almost immediately in favor of the shears. There wasn't time for buttons, anyway, or for propriety. She cut a clean line up the front of his uniform instead, slowly peeling the ruined fabric back from his chest.

"I really think I could've walked."

"Aye, I am aware of your stubborn opinion on the matter and I have chosen to disregard it." She carefully pulled the fabric back the rest of the way, with Steve's breath catching involuntarily at the sharp sensation of cold air on skin. The lantern light fell fully across the wounds, and for one professional, silent second, she simply looked.

It was worse than the hip alone had suggested. The blast had caught him at an angle, and the same spray of metal that had torn into his hip had climbed, in smaller and shallower doses, up along his ribs and across the side of his chest. There were dozens of individual points where fragments the size of a quarter had punched through skin and lodged themselves in the muscle beneath, a dark constellation of them scattered from his hip bone up past his lowest rib, thinning out toward his collarbone. Blood trickled slowly in thin lines from the angry marks after each shortened, labored breath. Between each fragment, the skin had blistered and reddened where the heat of the blast had scorched him in long, uneven streaks without breaking the surface outright. Most of the burns were first-degree, though a few patches along his side were angrier, blistered and weeping, closer to second. A normal soldier would have had these wounds sit open and bleeding, manageable, extractable, a straightforward if unpleasant surgical field. Steve, meanwhile, was a different story entirely.

"Christ, Steve." It came out of her before she could stop it, low and involuntary, and she heard Maggie go still behind her at the sight of it.

"It was just the hip," Steve panted. Even now, even like this, there was something faintly, stubbornly apologetic in it, as though the sheer volume of damage were an inconvenience he was personally responsible for.

"You are covered in shrapnel from your hip to your collarbone and burned in at least six places, and you called that 'just the hip'?" Kate's voice had gone flat with the particular fury she reserved for exactly this kind of male idiocy. "Do you simply not notice pain anymore, or have you decided it isn't worth mentioning unless it's killed you outright?"

"Didn't want you to worry more than you had to."

"I am a medical professional, not your mother, and I will worry precisely as much as the wounds in front of me require, which tonight is considerably more than you'd led me to believe." In all honesty, it was not the worst she'd seen: she'd had men come in with their chest cavities open to the sky, she'd held a boy's intestines in her own two hands trying to keep them warm on the walk back to the wagon, but this was bad in its own particular way, a way specific to him and to nobody else on this entire front. She kept her hands moving, but something in her jaw had tightened, a flash of real anger she didn't quite let herself see completely through. "You can downplay whatever you like to anyone else, but not to me. Never to me. Not when it's your own body you're lying about."

"I wasn't trying to—"

"I know what you were trying to do, and it is a fine impulse in most circumstances and it will get you killed in this one, because I cannot treat what you don't tell me about." She exhaled, hard, through her nose, and made herself stop there, made herself set the anger down rather than spend it on a man already flat on his back with half a night's suffering still ahead of him. As if to unintentionally prove her point, Kate pressed two fingers along the edge of where a burn met a slice of shrapnel to gauge its depth, resulting in a deep grunt of pain from the blonde on the cot. "We'll speak on it properly once you're mended and not a moment before. For now I need you honest with me, please. Is there anything else you haven't told me?"

Steve was quiet for a beat too long, chastened in a way that had nothing to do with pain. He blinked at the ceiling as he took stock of his body, quietly determining what was a normal level of fatigue and pain and what was new. "No. That's all of it. I promise."

"Good." Her voice had already smoothed itself back into something clinical, the anger folded away and set aside in the professional way she pushed past everything that couldn't be useful to her in the next hour. She was already reaching for a fresh cloth, wetting it, beginning the slow work of clearing blood and soot away from his ribs well enough to see the full scope of what she was dealing with.

Steve's body had already started closing over half of it.

She could see it happening in real time if she watched closely enough: the raw, angry edges of the smaller lacerations were knitting themselves shut at a rate that should not have been possible, sealing dirt and fabric and God-knew-what-else beneath newly formed skin. Scattered across his ribs and hip alike was more fragments of shrapnel than she cared to count on first look. There were a dozen at least, likely more once she got a proper light on him, each one visible only as discoloration beneath tissue that was closing over them with every second she spent looking instead of working. The biggest pieces were also the easiest to spot, incredibly dark in contrast to the intimately pale flesh of a hip that rarely saw the sun.

"Oh, for God's sake," she said, mostly to herself.

"What?"

"The serum is trying to heal around the metal that's still inside you. Which means in about ten more minutes, I am not cutting you open, I am excavating you. And that's a considerably worse evening for both of us." She was already reaching for the tray Maggie had set out — scalpel, forceps, curved probe, gauze stacked in a tower that would not be nearly tall enough by the time this was done. "I need you flat and I need you as still as you can manage… and I need you to understand that I am going to hurt you a great deal in the next half hour, and there is very little I can do about that. Apologies in advance, Captain."

Steve's jaw tightened. "Understood."

"I mean it, Steve." Kate took a step towards the top of the cot and Steve's blue eyes flickered to her at the movement. She looked him in the eyes directly for the first time since they'd gotten him into the tent, and something in her voice softened by exactly the amount she allowed it to soften with patients who deserved far better than what they were dealing with. "This isn't going to be gentle. I need you honest with me the whole way through, not brave. I have no use for bravery in this tent."

"Doctors always say that."

"I'm not a doctor."

"Not officially, but might as well be," he said, and there was something almost fond buried under the pain in it, an old argument between them worn soft with repetition. He broke eye contact first by squeezing his lids shut against the fresh roll of pain that washed over the exposed wounds, breath hitching, and it was enough to set Kate in motion once more.

"Officially, no. Unofficially, I am the only thing standing between you and a leg that doesn't work properly for the rest of your very long life, so I'd suggest you stop debating my credentials and let me get started."

The morphine, when Maggie brought it, lasted him roughly four minutes.

Kate watched the syringe empty into his arm and witnessed firsthand, with the particular helpless frustration she reserved only for him, as his enhanced metabolism simply burned through it like paper in a flame. She had only finished delicately cleaning the entire affected area by the time it had worked its way out of his system. It was visible in the way his breathing, which had briefly slowed, sped back up again. It was obvious in the way his eyes, which had briefly gone soft and unfocused, sharpened back into wakeful, aware misery.

"That's not — that's supposed to last longer," Maggie said, staring at the syringe like it had betrayed her personally.

"It's supposed to," Kate agreed grimly. "For anyone who isn't him." She looked at Steve, who was watching both of them with the resigned expression of a man who had been through this particular disappointment before. "How much do you feel right now?"

"All of it," he admitted.

"Wonderful." She didn't waste time being angry about it. There wasn't time for anger, not with tissue closing by the minute. Kate paused in her careful cleaning of his wounds and turned instead to Maggie, who was still glaring at the needle in her hands like it was guilty of a crime. "I'll need at least thirty minutes to get all of this out, so let's get about eight of those ready and you can give him another every—"

"No," Steve piped up immediately, eyes flashing down to her, to Maggie, then back to Kate. "No, I don't— that's too much wasted on just me. Save it for someone else."

Their eyes met then, with Kate very clearly searching his face for the truth about how he was feeling. All she found was pain and resolve, a blond furrowed brow fighting to keep the stinging at bay while the stubborn man that was Steve Rogers insisted with every line of his taut expression that he could handle surgery without morphine.

"What did I say about bravery? That's not necessary—"

"I can take it. That's enough resources for eight other men. And I've had worse. I can do it," Steve insisted through quickened breaths, the fire of something confident burning through his eyes and right into her own. He had resigned himself to his decision and it was clear in the strength of his tone, the same unyielding sound she'd heard from him on more than one stressful occasion. There was little chance of fighting him when he reached that stubborn point of no return, no pushing him to see any other possible answer once his mind was settled. 

She let out a long breath. She understood what he was signing up for, but he most certainly didn't. However, she wouldn't abandon consent in the name of comfort, not when Steve was of sound mind and knew how low their supply stores tended to be. She wasn't sure if she wanted whatever 'worse' conditions he'd endured to actually be worse or better than the live carving of flesh he was about to experience. 

"Fine. Then you'll promise to tell me the moment you can't take it anymore. Yes?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She adjusted her trajectory then, reaching unceremoniously for the leather belt she'd previously loosened but not completely removed around Steve's midsection. He seemed to recognize the sound of the buckle and what she was planning, because he painfully angled his waist enough for her to remove it, letting out a small sound as he lifted himself up enough to slide the leather out from beneath his back.

"Bite down on this. I'd rather you bite through leather than through your own tongue."

He took it without argument, which told her more than anything he might have verbalized about how much pain he was already in, and how much he was actually anticipating.

"We'll start along your ribs," Kate said, positioning the lantern closer, "since there's more of it to remove but less of it buried deep. The hip comes last. Maggie, hold his shoulder down at the far side, I don't want him twisting away from me by instinct."

She began along the lowest of his ribs, where the fragments sat shallowest, and Steve found almost immediately that "shallow" did not mean "painless". The first three came free in quick succession, small dark slivers no larger than a penny, each extraction drawing a sharp, hissed breath through his nose and a full-body flinch he couldn't quite contain, his stomach muscles jumping taut beneath her hand every time the forceps found purchase. He pressed his head back against the cot and grimaced against the pain, his fingers twitching with the urge to reach out for the source of his discomfort and stop it. 

"Good lad," she murmured, dropping the third into the dish. "Four more just like that one, then we're past the easy part and into the ones that'll actually try you."

"That's the easy part? Great," Steve managed through the belt, strained.

The next handful came in a grim, steady rhythm: Kate worked her way up the line of his ribs with the forceps, Maggie's hand kept firm on his shoulder, the metal dish filled with small, irregular black fragments at a rate that made even Maggie's normally unshakeable composure flicker. Some came free easily, releasing their hold on his flesh with a sickening sound that was reliably followed by an uncomfortable exhale from Steve. Others had already begun to seal, requiring the same careful reopening Kate would need again, more urgently, on the hip. By the eighth piece, Steve's breath had turned ragged, sweat beading along his temple and darkening the hair at his collar, a low, involuntary sound escaping him each time metal met air, small and helpless in a way that struck Kate somewhere just beneath the ribs herself. His breathing had turned shallow, heart thrumming wildly where she could see it begging for escape in his chest. He was careful to keep his eyes on the ceiling of the tent or squeezed firmly shut whenever she approached with her tools, choosing instead to bear each careful slice and pull without having the actual imagery to match.

"You're doing grand," she told him, low, not looking up. "More than halfway through the small ones already."

"Doesn't feel like more than half."

"I know. Keep breathing for me." She found the ninth fragment high along his side, close enough to a rib that his whole body went rigid the moment the forceps made contact, a whimper breaking loose before he could catch it. He forced out a breath immediately afterwords, taking her words as seriously as a direct command and doing his best to adhere to them. His chest rose and fell in an unsteady rhythm, breath catching as he naturally, unconsciously, flinched in pain at every touch regardless if it was just her hand or a tool looking for its next victim. There was another small clang as a piece of blood-covered metal was dropped into the dish. "There. Nearly done with this batch."

By the time the last of them (the eleventh, small and stubborn, wedged just beneath his collarbone) came free, Steve was trembling faintly along every limb. His sharp jaw was working around sounds he no longer had the strength to fully contain, tears standing bright and unshed at the corners of his impossibly blue eyes. Maggie silently released him and moved to wring out a cold washcloth, wiping his forehead with it in an effort to give him at least a shred of relief.

"That's the ribs done," Kate said, setting the forceps down and reaching instead for the salve and clean linen laid out beside her. Steve released a single long breath of relief at her words, closing his eyes for a moment. "Now the burns, and then I'm afraid we still have your hip to see to properly."

"There's more?" It came out cracked, more disbelief than complaint, the moment of relief expressly over.

"A few pieces, buried deep. I'm saving the worst for last, same as always. No sense frightening you with it before we've earned the right to be tired."

She began cleaning the blistered patches along his ribs with careful, deliberate pressure. Even this, meant to be the gentler portion of the evening, drew a sharp, broken sound out of him, his hand fisting hard in the blanket beneath him. Teeth clamped down hard on the belt as she applied the salve, new beads of sweat appearing at his hairline. His eyes switched back and forth between opening wide in shock and squeezing tightly closed in agony, a tear finally falling halfway through treating the angry welts along his ribs. The tension in his flexed muscles made it clear that he was doing his absolute best to remain still, but exhaustion was slowly starting to wear away at his resolve. He flinched hard at one point, recoiling against the extreme temperature change as she began working on a new patch of angry skin.

"Sorry," he gritted out, an apologetic look on his face as he forced himself still once more. "Didn't think that would—"

"Burns always surprise people. The nerve endings haven't the sense to know they ought to be grateful the wound's shallow." She worked quickly and thoroughly, wrapping what needed wrapping, leaving what needed air to breathe. Kate tried not to notice, as she worked, how much of his chest and side had been scored by tonight, how close the blast had truly come to taking considerably more from him than a hip full of shrapnel.

When the last of the dressings were secured, Kate allowed herself, and allowed him, one full minute before continuing. Steve was shivering now, hard, a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the temperature in the tent and everything to do with the sheer volume of what his body had already been asked to survive. His teeth had begun to chatter audibly against the leather strap, and a cold sweat had broken out along his whole body despite the shivering, his skin gone pale and faintly clammy under her hand where she checked him.

"Water," Kate said, and Maggie had the belt out of his mouth and a cup to his lips before the word had finished leaving her mouth. Steve's hand came up to help hold it and shook so badly he nearly knocked it from her grip entirely, half of it running down his chin and throat before Maggie caught his wrist and steadied it for him. He didn't seem to notice, or didn't have the strength left to be embarrassed by it, which told Kate more about where he actually was than anything he might have said aloud. His eyes had gone unfocused somewhere around the edges, fixed on nothing in particular, and it took him a beat longer than it should have to actually swallow.

"I know you're tired," she said, low, checking his pulse at the wrist out of habit as much as necessity. Too fast, faster than she liked, thready in a way that made her jaw tighten, but present. "I know. I need a little more from you yet. Four pieces, and then I am finished with you for the night. Just a bit more. Can you hear me, Steve?"

There was silence for a moment as Steve registered her words, eyes fluttering shut as he took several breaths in the blissful pause between procedures. Just as she was about to ask again, he finally gave a nod, his eyes opening just enough to look down and meet her own, something stubborn keeping them alight. 

"Maggie, hold his leg still at the knee. Don't let him flex the hip no matter what he does with the rest of himself." Maggie nodded, moving to close the distance between them and pressing her tanned hands to Steve's leg.

"Right," Kate said, when the last of the burns were finally dressed, moving the lantern lower and turning her full attention to his hip. "This is the part I warned you about. Four pieces, and the deepest of them is going to be the worst thing you feel tonight. Try not to move, and I want you to remember that I have never yet left a man worse than I found him."

Steve's jaw was already tight around the belt Maggie returned unceremoniously to his mouth, and he adjusted his grip on the cot frame in preparation for what was to come. He nodded, once, and Kate began.

She picked up the scalpel, found the first closing wound with two fingers of her free hand, and pressed down hard enough to feel the edges gape open again beneath the pressure. Steve made a sound around the leather strap that he clearly hadn't meant to make: a sharp, muffled, shocked thing that cut off almost as soon as it started, like he'd caught himself and forced it back down his own throat. A crease had already carved itself deep between his brows, and a fine sheen of sweat had broken out along his hairline despite the cold seeping through the canvas.

"I know," Kate said, low, not looking up from her work, the Irish-American accent seeping through more strongly as the night made more demands of them both. "I know, love. I have to open it back up before I can get to what's underneath. Aye, just there — hold for me now."

The first fragment came free almost gently, all things considered — a piece just bigger than a quarter, black and irregular, and she dropped it into the metal dish Maggie had placed at her side. It made a small, ringing sound that felt obscenely ordinary next to the strangled noise Steve made when the forceps found the second one, buried deeper, wedged against something that made him arch up off the cot despite Maggie's grip on his knee.

"Hold him," Kate said sharply, and Maggie threw her whole weight across his shin, and Steve's hands found the edges of the cot frame and gripped hard enough that Kate heard the metal groan. The crease between his brows had deepened into something almost pained to look at on its own, and a thin whimper escaped him around the strap, small and involuntary, the kind of sound a grown man only makes when every ounce of his control has already been spent elsewhere. The sound went straight through her, straight to some old, tender place beneath the clinical calm she wore like armor.

"Be a good lad and hold still for me," she murmured, half to steady him, half to steady herself. "Nearly there."

"Sorry," he got out around the belt, muffled and wrecked. "Sorry, I'm trying— s-sorry—"

"Don't you dare apologize to me." Kate's voice had gone very quiet, the register she used when a patient was closer to the edge than they knew, the one that had talked grown men back from shock more times than she could count. "You're allowed to make noise, Steve. You're allowed to hurt. I would think less of you if you didn't."

"Everyone's — outside," he managed. "They'll hear—"

"Let them." She found the edge of the second fragment properly now, angled the forceps, and pulled at the same moment she used the scalpel to cut a thread of tissue out of the way. This time, the sound he made broke entirely free of the strap, raw and high and nothing at all like the composed, steady voice that gave orders on a battlefield. His whole body had gone rigid, sweat now running freely along his temple and into his hair, dampening and darkening it. His throat was working around the sounds of agony he clearly hated making and could not stop making, his jaw trembling faintly with the effort of holding the rest of himself so unnaturally still. Heaving, exhausted breaths came more freely with each pause in her work as he eagerly took every opportunity to appreciate the momentary lapse in excruciating pain.

Kate didn't look up from the wound, applying pressure and waiting for the serum to kick in and stop the new thread of bleeding she'd caused. She had learned, a long time ago, that looking a patient in the eye during the worst of it sometimes made it harder for them, gave them an audience to perform bravery for instead of a professional to simply survive in front of. He seemed just as eager to avoid whatever look he was imagining on her face, squeezing his eyes shut, quickly losing the fight against any semblance of remaining composure. She kept her eyes on her hands instead, steady, precise, and let her voice do the work of staying with him.

"You're doing well," she said. "Just like that, keep still. This piece looks like the worst of them. The others are shallower. Breathe through it, if you can. Small breaths, don't hold it."

"Kate—" Her name came out broken in half, more air than sound.

"I'm here." Her hands didn't stop moving even as she said it — pressure, angle, the terrible give of tissue parting easily under a blade meant to help rather than harm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn his head away from her, saw his neck struggle with the act of trying to swallow whatever sounds he was forcing back down his throat. "I'm not going anywhere, aye? I need thirty more seconds out of you and then I can pack this one and move to the next. Can you give me thirty seconds?"

He made a sound that might have been agreement, a broken, whimpering thing that caught somewhere low in his chest, and Kate felt it land in her own like a struck bell even as her hands kept working, unshaken and determined. His hands had gone white-knuckled on the cot frame, and one of his heels had dug a furrow into the now-bloody canvas beneath him. Kate worked through the thirty seconds with the particular ruthless focus that had kept soldiers alive on three different fronts, closing off every part of herself that might have flinched at the devastating sounds he was making, saving all of it for later, the way she always did.

The second fragment came free with a wet, terrible give that made Maggie's face go pale even after a year of this work. Steve's whole body went slack all at once, not from relief but from something closer to the edge of consciousness. His breath came in short, uneven pulls, more tears standing unashamed and unacknowledged at the corners of his eyes now, cutting clean lines through the sweat and grime on his face.

"Halfway there. Just two more," Kate glanced quickly at his expression, checking that he was conscious. "Still with me?"

Steve's breaths had dissolved into roughened wheezes by this point, the furrow between his eyebrows deep and unyielding. He grimaced as a fresh wave of pain rolled through the open, exposed wound, swallowing it moments later when he opened his eyes. She couldn't help but notice how dull his normally bright eyes had become, how equally dull his skin tone had turned. There was red at the edges of his eyes now, frustration and pain unashamedly present.

He nodded at the canvas ceiling, clearly trying to slow his heart rate through slow breaths that didn't reach as deeply as they should have, and Kate felt a pang of guilt at the sight that made her heart leap. If anyone didn't deserve to hurt as much as they did right then, it was Steve Rogers. 

She had barely begun on the third fragment when the trouble started.

It should have been the simplest of the four: a shallow and small piece, nowhere near the density of muscle the second had been buried in. However, Kate had misjudged, just slightly, how much time had passed since she'd started, and the super soldier serum had not stopped its relentless work in the interval. The edges of the wound had begun knitting closed even as she worked, sealing around the forceps the way wet clay seals around a hand pressed into it. When she went to draw the fragment free, it clearly intended on putting up one hell of a fight, staying put right where it was.

It was then that she made the executive decision to call in reinforcements, with Steve wincing so hard at the pulling feeling that it was as if Maggie's entire weight on his leg was conpletely nonexistent. She sent Maggie to retrieve the first two of Steve's men that she could find, and she returned with Falsworth and Dernier almost immediately. She was silently thankful Dugan had remained outside, whether by choice or otherwise. What was to come would have only intensified the immense guilt he was no doubt freely carrying, and she simply didn't have the bandwidth to spare his feelings and get Steve the help he needed in a timely fashion. The two men took one look at Steve's exposed hip, at the blood on every surface and discarded gauze that lay around her, before sharing a look that came with a low release of breath. It was a true testament to the amount of pain Steve was in that he merely spared them a single wary glance before locking his eyes shut once more, something apologetic in his features that they all silently agreed not to directly address.

"Hold him steady," she said, sharper than before, and all three of them moved to find a spot to call their own, bearing down hard all at once. Falsworth's full weight pressed across his shoulders, Dernier's forearms braced against his thigh, Maggie's hands locked at his hip. "I need a firmer grip, it's caught—"

Steve made a sound around the strap that was pure animal alarm, his whole body trying to curl inward, and for one terrible second even three sets of hands weren't enough: his shoulder came half off the cot despite Falsworth's weight, Falsworth swearing low and grabbing for a better hold while Dernier's knuckles turned white where he fought to keep the thigh pinned flat. The crease between Steve's brows had become a furrow deep enough to look almost like an injury of its own, sweat soaking the collar of what little remained of his undershirt, his whole face pale and waxen under the lantern light.

"Aye, I know, I'm sorry — it's sealing around it, I have to reopen the edge before I can pull it free, this is going to hurt worse for a moment before it's better, I need you to trust me—"

"Just do it—" His pleading voice broke apart entirely around the leather, and his hand tore free of the cot frame entirely. Steve was strong enough, even now, to break Falsworth's hold on that side for half a second, finding her upper arm instead and gripping hard enough to leave a mark she'd carry for two days after.

She clenched her teeth together and brought the scalpel down.

The sound that tore out of him when the blade found the sealed edge was nothing short of a scream, raw and unrestrained and loud enough that it carried clean through canvas and out into the dark beyond it. Kate heard the low murmur of voices outside go silent altogether, every sound in the camp seeming to hold its breath at once, and she registered it only distantly, a fact to be filed away and not dwelt on, because dwelling on it now would have cost them both more than either could afford. Steve's whole spine had bowed off the cot despite everyone holding him down, his throat working around a second sound that never quite made it out, strangled somewhere between the leather and the sheer force of what his body was doing without his permission.

"Christ," Falsworth said under his breath, bearing down with everything he had. "Nearly had him there."

She didn't stop. She couldn't: stopping now meant the flesh would finish closing entirely, meant she'd be back where she started with a fragment buried an inch deeper than it had been ten seconds ago and meant doing this whole agonizing process over from nothing. She worked the scalpel along the newly sealed edge with a precision that cost her more concentration than anything else that night, reopening just enough, just exactly enough. Steve's breath tore out of him in short, wrecked bursts, whimpers threading through each one that he seemed helpless to keep down, each one landing in Kate's chest like a small, precise blow of its own. His eyes widened in pure, agonizing pain for brief moments before they squeezed shut reflexively, another round of fresh sweat appearing at his temples. His grip on her arm went from painful to bruising, fingers digging in deep enough that she'd find the shape of them in her skin the next morning, but she didn't dare remark on it.

"There," she breathed, when the fragment finally gave, dropping it into the dish with hands that were, for the first time all evening, not completely steady. "There, aye, I have it. It's out. Good lad, you did well. You did so well, it's done."

Steve didn't respond right away. His chest was heaving in a drastic way that was painful just to watch, his eyes squeezed shut, tears finally slipping free at the corners despite everything in him that had been fighting to keep them contained. His grip on her arm hadn't loosened at all. Under her hand, Kate could feel his pulse hammering wild and fast at his wrist, faster than she liked, and the hand he kept tight around her arm began to shake.

"You can let go of me," Kate said, gently, when he made no move to. "I have to finish the last one."

"Can't," he got out, barely audible. "Sorry."

"Then don't." She adjusted her grip on the forceps, adjusting to work less with the arm he held captive so he could hold on as long as he needed to. "I've got you either way."

It took him almost a full minute to loosen his fingers, and when he finally did, it was with a small, humiliated exhale that Kate pretended not to notice, the same way she pretended not to notice most things a man in his position would rather she hadn't seen.

Only one fragment remained, and Steve's body had nothing left to spend on composure by the time she reached it. Every touch of the forceps against already-raw tissue now drew out small, helpless sounds he no longer had the strength to swallow, whimpers that hitched and caught in his throat and struck straight through Kate's own chest each time, no matter how many times she told herself not to let them land. There was a raw edge to his voice now, a coarse and gravelly tinge to the sounds he made that seemed to deeply mirror the physical pain he was in. Wisps of hair around her temples had escaped her bun but she paid them no mind, her focus now on finishing her work as quickly as possible. Steve was fading fast, exhaustion reaching a breaking point after long periods spent tensed and struggling, eyes red and standing out against his pale and clammy skin.

"Almost done," Kate murmured, more to herself than to him at this point, cataloguing the wound with her eyes even as her hands kept moving. "One more, love. It's small. You're nearly through."

"Doesn't feel small," Steve got out, muffled, the words trembling apart at the edges, and something in the wrecked, honest complaint of it made her chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with medicine.

"I know it doesn't." She probed gently for the fourth and final fragment, found it high on his hip, close enough to bone that she had to work with a precision that made her own hands ache with the effort of staying perfectly steady. The furrow between his brows hadn't eased once in the last half hour, sweat plastering his hair dark against his forehead, his whole body drawn tight as a wire. "You're allowed to hate me for this, you know."

"I don't hate you." His voice had gone thin and young somehow, stripped of all its usual careful command. "I just want it to stop."

"It's stopping, aye. Nearly there, one last push. Stay still for me, as still as you can."

It was, absurdly, the smallest piece of the four, and yet it was the one that made him finally, fully break. She made brief eye contact with Maggie, silently signaling her intent to continue, before she quickly made a single long, precise slice into the tender tissue at his hip. A long, shaking sound that had no bravery left in it at all escaped him, just pain, honest and unguarded, a whimper cracking open into something closer to a sob, and his hand found the edge of her sleeve and gripped it like an anchor. She quickly made two more cuts, desperate to reach the offending piece of metal practically running away from them, and she felt rather than saw Steve's chest stutter then stiffen completely.

For one suspended second, his grip on her sleeve went entirely slack, his eyes losing focus somewhere past her shoulder, unseeing, his whole body going strangely, terribly still beneath the three sets of hands that had been fighting to hold it down all night. The color had gone out of his face entirely, lips paling to something bloodless, and a breathless gasp seemed to have swallowed whatever he might have said next.

"He's going," Falsworth said, sharp and low.

Maggie leapt forward, her hand shooting out to grip his jaw and turn his face back toward her own, sharp and quick, her fingers finding the pulse at his throat almost in the same motion. "Steve. Steve, look at me. Stay with us, Captain — eyes on me, now. Breathe through it." For one endless heartbeat, nothing happened at all, his gaze fixed on some point past all of them, and Kate felt her own pulse spike, hands never once stopping their work even as some old, angonizing fear rose up her throat. The cold rush of regret trickled down her spine, her thoughts consumed by the idea that she should have insisted on the morphine, should have pushed him to take the route that wouldn't be as torturous for them all.

Then his eyes snapped back into focus all at once, awareness flooding in worse for the return of it, a fresh, broken sound tearing out of him as every nerve he'd been fighting to quiet came roaring back online together. His fingers found Kate's sleeve again, vise-tight this time, his whole body shaking with the effort of simply staying conscious through it. His chest fell and rose once again in uneven, shallow bursts as he struggled to catch his breath. 

"There he is," Falsworth murmured, easing his grip only fractionally.

Kate let him hold on. She kept working, kept her voice low and even, and did not once tell him to let go.

"There," she said, when it was finally, finally free, dropping it into the dish with the others, four small black pieces of a warehouse that had nearly cost him his leg. "That's all of it. It's over."

Steve didn't say anything. He was breathing like he'd run for miles, sweat-soaked and trembling faintly along every visible muscle, his grip still tight on her sleeve. Kate let the silence sit for a moment as she caught her own breath. His head had fallen back against the cot with force, as if he hadn't the strength necessary to do anything beyond breathing. Around her, Falsworth and Dernier eased their weight off him by degrees, watching him with the wary care of men who had just spent several minutes holding down something considerably stronger than themselves and weren't yet convinced it was over.

"Steve?"

Nothing. His eyes were open but completely unfocused, fixed somewhere on the canvas above them, glassy and distant in a way that made her chest tighten properly this time, real alarm cutting cleanly through the exhaustion. Her eyes met Maggie's equally-concerned ones, the look filled with worry, before she tried once more. "Steve. Look at me."

Still nothing. Kate set the forceps down entirely, both hands going to his face, and something sharper than professional concern entered her voice. "Steve Rogers, look at me. Now."

A beat too long passed before his gaze actually found hers, slow to focus, his breathing shallow and quick in a way she didn't like at all. He was far too cold and far too hot all at the same time, the veins in his neck and arms prominent from the minutes spent tensing muscles that had only begged for relief. Kate pressed two fingers to the pulse point at his throat, no longer for reassurance but for real, careful assessment, and felt it hammering too fast beneath her fingers. It was a long, tense moment before it began, gradually, to settle.

"That's right, just breathe." Something in her own shoulders eased, fractionally, at the confirmation, though her hand stayed at his throat a moment longer than strictly necessary. "Stay with me a while longer yet, aye? I'm nearly done asking things of you tonight."

He managed something that might have been a nod. It was enough.

"Go on, both of you," Kate said quietly to Falsworth and Dernier, not looking up from Steve's face. "I don't need holding for what's left. Thank you, truly."

Falsworth pressed a palm to Steve's shoulder before he straightened, a brief, wordless thing, and Dernier murmured something in French that needed no translation for anyone to understand its meaning. They ducked back out through the tent flap, and Kate heard their voices drop low outside a moment later, no doubt recounting to Falsworth's satisfaction exactly how strong a half-conscious super soldier could be when it mattered.

Kate held his gaze another moment longer before finally allowing herself to move with a long exhale of breath, starting the slow, careful work of cleaning and closing what she'd opened.

"The worst is over," Kate said, quiet now, almost gentle. "I promise you that much."

Stitching him was, by comparison, almost peaceful.

The worst of it had passed, and what remained was tedious rather than agonizing. The dozens of small, careful sutures she skillfully placed along his wounds would, on anyone else, have taken a week to close would, on him, likely be nothing more than faint lines by morning. Kate worked in the particular hush that settled over a field tent after the crisis had passed, Maggie quietly cleaning and restocking supplies at the far table, Dugan's low voice audible somewhere outside asking after him, Falsworth answering in the careful, deflecting tone soldiers used with each other when they didn't yet know how bad it had been.

Steve had gone quiet and pliant beneath her hands, exhausted past the point of protest, and Kate found the rhythm of the needle settling something in her own chest that the last half hour had wound tight. She sent Maggie in search of sustenance for Steve, for the kind of solid meal required to allow for decent healing, though her tone suggested it was also meant as a brief break for herself as well. She seemed quietly thankful for the opportunity to step away after the tense hour they'd all just endured, and Kate could hear her gentle voice fielding questions left and right from the men as they accosted her on her walk to the other end of camp. It was then that Kate pulled and cut away the last of the ruined uniform in her way, yet another casualty Howard Stark no doubt already had an improved replacement ready for.

It was somewhere around the ninth or tenth stitch, working her way along the deepest of the wounds — the one that curved low along his hip, close enough to the inner thigh that she'd had to cut the last of his trousers away entirely to reach it properly — that she noticed the tips of his ears had gone scarlet.

She glanced up. His face was turned resolutely toward the other end of the canvas tent, jaw tight, and it took her one full second to understand that the color in his ears had nothing at all to do with pain.

"Steve?"

"Mm?"

"Are you blushing?"

"No."

"You are unbelievable." Something in her chest, wrung out from the last half hour, loosened just slightly at the sheer, absurd novelty of it. A man who had just endured multiple pieces of shrapnel dug out of his body without complaint, embarrassed now, apparently, by the location of a suture line. "You do understand I have seen considerably more of you in other procedures than a few inches of thigh?"

"I'm aware."

"You survived actual torture on this cot and this is what undoes you?"

"It's not — " He stopped, swallowed, and the flush spread further down his neck. "Do the stitches have to go quite so low?"

Kate looked down at the wound with a raised eyebrow, then back up at him, entirely unable to keep the disbelief off her face. "The shrapnel went quite so low, Steve. I'm simply following where it led."

"Right." He was quiet for a moment, and then, with the particular stubbornness of a man who apparently could not let a losing argument die, continued. "Is there any way to… close it a bit higher up?"

"No."

"Even an inch—?"

"I've not been blessed with the power to relocate your wound to spare your modesty. You'll have to take up that complaint with God himself, I'm afraid. Now, hold still." She resumed the stitch she'd paused, and he made a small, strangled sound that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with pure, mortified propriety, and Kate had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing outright at the absurdity of it: this enormous, serum-enhanced, thoroughly decorated soldier, undone by a needle three inches from his hip and his own shyness.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you're enjoying this," he said, accusing, eyes back to being firmly glued to the ceiling.

"I've just spent nearly an hour extracting shrapnel from your body and treating you for burns while you bit through a leather strap. I am allowed one moment of levity." She tied off the stitch and moved to the next. He flinched at the sensation of her hand finding a new patch of skin, instinctively reacting to the feeling after a long night of painful moments. She paused for a split second while he steadied himself once more, giving his brain the chance to recognize that it was just her hand it was reacting to, not a scalpel.

"Stop wiggling, or I'll leave it worse."

"You mean 'make it worse'."

"I mean precisely what I said." She glanced up at him just long enough to see the confusion cross his face, followed almost immediately by something like reluctant, exhausted amusement. "If you move again before I've finished, I am not going back to correct it. You'll simply have an uneven scar for the rest of your unnaturally long life, and every time you look at it you'll remember that you should have listened to me."

"That's... a little dark for a medical professional."

"I've been told."

She finished the final stitches over a few quiet minutes, sat back slightly, and allowed herself, finally, the smallest exhale of relief, the kind she never let anyone see fully, tucked away behind the clinical mask. She wiped at her forehead with the back of her arm before tossing the used tools onto the pile of bloodied gauze waiting for Maggie. "There. Done. You'll ache for a few days and then you'll heal faster than any man has a right to, and in a week there'll be nothing left to show for it but a faint mark you'll no doubt find some way to be needlessly modest about."

Steve was quiet for a moment, still catching his breath, still thoroughly spent, still faintly pink along the ears despite everything. "Thank you," he said finally, and it came out rougher than he probably meant it to, worn down to something honest by exhaustion. "For — all of it. I know that wasn't easy on your end either."

Kate paused in the middle of packing away her instruments, something in her chest going unexpectedly still at the simple, unguarded sincerity of it.

"It's my job," she said instead, which was true, and also not remotely the whole of it.

"Still." His eyes had drifted half-shut, sleep finally pulling at him now that the worst had passed and the salve on his burns had started to do its work. "You didn't have to be gentle about it, but you were."

"I was far from gentle. I dug metal out of your hip with forceps and carved you with a scalpel and no morphine."

"You were gentle where it counted." His voice was fading, blurring at the edges with fatigue. "Most people aren't. Most doctors I've met just want it over."

"I'm not a doctor," came Kate's automatic reply, an instinctual response to the same argument she had been having for months now. Somehow, even through the dull ache threatening to close his eyes completely, Steve mustered up the strength to give her a very pointed look.

Kate didn't answer that right away. She finished packing her kit instead, cleaned her hands in the basin Maggie had left, and pulled a blanket up over him with the same brisk efficiency she brought to everything… except that her hands lingered, just slightly, at the edge of the fabric near his shoulder, in a way that had nothing to do with efficiency at all. She gave in completely then, pausing for just a moment before giving his shoulder a single, light pat, and appreciated how much better his color looked now that the worst was over with.

"Get some sleep," she said. "I'll check on the stitches in the morning."

"Kate."

"Mhm?"

"Thank you," he said again, already half gone to sleep, and this time she let herself answer honestly. "And thank Maggie for me, too."

"You'll be alright. Rest until Maggie comes back with food for you," she said, quiet enough that she wasn't entirely sure he heard it before sleep took him fully. 

He didn't move again. Outside, the rest of the Commandos had gone quiet, the fires from the warehouse finally burning down to embers somewhere in the distant dark, and Kate sat by the cot a while longer than her duties strictly required, listening to the steady, stubborn rhythm of his breathing. She finally rose to see to the rest of her duties for the night and let him sleep off the worst night of a war that, she already suspected, was going to give him a great many more.

Dugan was waiting when she stepped out of the tent, exactly where she'd known he would be: a dark shape hunched near the treeline, hat still in his hands, worrying the brim between his fingers like it owed him an answer he hadn't gotten yet. He straightened when he saw her, and even in the dim light, she could see how little rest had touched the concerned lines of his face.

"Is he—" His voice cracked on it. "Tell me straight, Doc. Is he gonna be alright?"

"He's going to be just fine, Dugan." She said it plainly, without softening it, because softness right now would have read as pity, and pity was the last thing the man needed. She also pointedly ignored the moniker he'd tacked on without ceremony, a title she didn't have the heart to fight when his expression was clearly tortured with guilt. "Fourteen pieces of shrapnel, half a dozen burns, and by the time the sun's fully up there won't be much left to show for any of it. He'll ache some, but he'll live. That's more than I can say for most men who catch a wall the way he did tonight."

Dugan's face did something complicated, relief fighting with something that looked closer to grief. "I checked that wall myself. Twice. I don't know how I—"

"You didn't do anything wrong." Kate had meant to say it clipped, professional, the same tone she'd used on him hours earlier when there'd been a mission still to finish. It came out gentler than she intended, worn down by the hour and by the sheer, wretched misery written across his face. He was a loud and confident man on most days, but Dugan was also one of the most intensely loyal of the Commandos, always willing to help at the low price of a pint and a good time. It was physically painful to see him so thoroughly upset. "Walls hide things. Reports are wrong. Men make the best calls they can with the information in front of them, and sometimes the information lies. That's the war. It's not you."

"Feels like me."

"I'm sure it does, but no one agrees." She found, standing there in the cold with the last of her own adrenaline finally draining out of her, that she had no heat left in her for him at all — whatever sharpness she'd been saving up to spend on him back at the treeline had gone somewhere else entirely, used up on a night that had already asked enough of everyone. "He doesn't blame you. I don't blame you. You'll do well to stop blaming yourself before it costs you as much as tonight nearly cost him."

Dugan looked past her, toward the tent, toward the shape of Steve asleep inside it. "Can I see him?"

"In the morning. Give yourself time. And he needs the sleep more than you need the reassurance, though I understand why you'd want it." She softened, just slightly, and reached out to still his hands where they were still worrying the brim of his hat toward ruin. "Be a good lad and go sleep the day off. He'll be sitting up giving orders again by tomorrow evening, insufferable as ever, and you'll have wasted a perfectly good night's guilt on a man who'll have forgotten to be angry about it before you have."

Something that might have been a laugh, thin and unconvinced, escaped him. "Yes, ma'am."

She watched him go, shoulders still bowed under something she couldn't fully lift for him no matter how plainly she said the words, and thought, not for the first time, that the wounds she couldn't stitch closed were very often the ones that did the most damage.

Morning came gray and thin through the canvas, the tiny camp already in a flurry of activity, as it tended to be when one of its own was unceremoniously compromised and the order of things was thrown off. Dugan procured her a cup of coffee that was clearly an excuse to mention that he'd brought Steve a cup as well and was feeling a bit better about the situation, which she was thankful for on more than one front. Kate found Steve already awake when she came to check the stitches, sitting up against the cot frame, color back in his face and looking for all the world like a man who hadn't spent half of last night biting through a leather belt.

"You're supposed to be resting," she said, setting her kit down beside him.

"I did!"

"You were unconscious for four hours and awake arguing with Morita about breakfast rations for the last two. That isn't rest in my charts, that's playing at recovery with commentary." She sat on the stool at his bedside without further ado and peeled back the blanket to check the wound and stopped, mildly astonished despite having seen this exact miracle a dozen times before. The stitches were still there, still neat, still holding, but the skin around them had already gone from raw and swollen to something closer to a week's healing. They were a delicate shade of pink and closing cleanly, with none of the angry heat that should have still been radiating off it after what she'd done to him hours earlier.

"How's it look?" Steve asked, craning to see.

"Obscene," Kate said honestly. "A medic's dream, you are. You should be laid up for a week. Instead you'll likely be back on your feet by tonight and insufferable about it by tomorrow."

"Insufferable?"

"You're a terrible patient. You've never listened to my post-discharge recommendations and I doubt you ever will." She probed gently at the edges of the wound, checking for give, for heat, for anything her eyes might have missed, and felt him watch her work with an expression she didn't have a name for yet. It wasn't quite the pained, guarded thing from the night before, but something steadier than that, something that had settled into place somewhere in the last several hours. "Does it hurt now?"

"Some. Not like last night."

"Good. That's expected." She sat back, satisfied, and began repacking her kit with the same brisk efficiency she brought to every morning round. "You'll ache for a day or two along the deepest of them, but the serum will heal you faster with proper food and rest. We'll wait 'til tonight to take the road back to base, it's already been planned so don't try fighting it. Try not to run anywhere important until then."

"No promises."

"There never are, with you." She said it without any real heat, and something about the exchange — the ease of it, the return of the dry back-and-forth they'd built up over months of exactly this kind of morning, made her chest loosen in a way the whole of last night had wound tight.

Steve was quiet for a moment, watching her hands as she worked. "I meant what I said. About the gentle part."

"I heard you the first time."

"I know. I just — " He stopped, seemed to search for the words, which was unusual enough for him that she actually looked up from her kit to watch him find them. "Most people who patch me up treat it like a job that happens to involve me. You made it feel like... like it was actually me you were fixing. Not just the — the serum, or the uniform, or whatever they think I am back home." His ears had gone faintly pink again, though this time it seemed to have nothing to do with the location of any stitches. "I don't know how to explain it better than that."

Kate didn't answer right away. She finished closing her kit, buckled the strap, and allowed herself, for just a moment, the small, rare luxury of being fully honest with someone in the middle of a war that gave her very few chances to be.

"You're not difficult to treat like a person, Steve," she said finally. "Most of the men I patch up in this tent, given the choice, would rather I not see them frightened or see them cry. Or not see any of what actually happens to a body when it's hurting. You didn't ask me to pretend last night. That's rarer than you'd think, in a soldier."

"Didn't have much choice. You had very sharp tools and very little patience for pretending."

"I had considerable patience, thank you very much," she said, standing, gathering her things. "I didn't need you to waste any of yours performing bravery for my benefit. There wasn't a version of last night where that would have helped either of us."

Steve was watching her with something unguarded now, something she recognized without being entirely ready to name it, the beginning of the uncomplicated trust that would carry the two of them through the rest of a war neither of them could yet see the shape of. "Thank you," he said again, simpler this time, no exhaustion left to blur it. "For not letting me pretend."

"Always." Kate paused at the tent flap, glancing back at him sitting up in the gray morning light, stitched and bruised and stubborn as ever and already, she suspected, planning some way to be back on the line before she'd have liked. "Rest today, Rogers. That's an order, not a suggestion."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And for God's sake, stop moving so much. I only just got you closed up properly."

The corner of his mouth curved into the beginning of the smile she'd come to know well over the following months, the one that started small and reluctant before it committed to the whole of his face. Kate found, stepping out into the cold morning air with her kit in hand and Maggie waiting for her, that some part of her had already decided this was a good and honest man worth keeping close for whatever remained of the very long war ahead of them.