The captain didn't scream when he fell. But you did. He falls from a train in reverse and it's like the last time, the space that you don't remember, except-
-you didn't want to fall. You wanted to stay beside this golden person for as long as he'd let you. You who were tarnished and willing to be behind the barrel of a sniper's rifle. And him? He let himself fall because you wanted him to drop. You are winter's soldier, and he was summer's child burning bright enough to persist through the chill of the decades' ice.
It's a week before the hospital is willing to discharge the captain. You think they'd prefer to keep him longer-he only stays as long as he does, stubborn punk that he is-because of pressure from his visitors. You agree with the flyboy about a longer recovery being necessary. The captain moves as his mother did, when she could still get out of bed; cautious and frail but still unwilling to stay still.
A strange fear twists in your chest. You don't-he shouldn't be so fragile. The damage received during combat has begun recovery, even the dislocated shoulder. You and he had done each other equal damage until he stopped fighting back.
And then he fell. You let him fall.
A directive older than your fractured memories commanded you to follow after. And so you had.
You clear a safehouse of money and mostly concealable weaponry. Used clothing is acquired easily and cheaply. When exhaustion weighs you down like oneirogenic gas you use the money for cheap hotel rooms.
Within those rooms you set yourself ready to react. You have a complex internal equation balancing perceived safety and enacted safety measures. You cannot sleep otherwise, stirring restless and frequent; the quality of sleep is too poor. Entrances are lined with triggers and only then do you fall asleep, knife in hand.
In those climate-controlled rooms you dream of the cold, not quite as bone-achingly sharp now. Later you will think the airconditioner over the bed switched on to an unseasonal cold. For now, the light is golden as it diffuses through the window and lighting up the fog of your breath.
You can see him now, nose and mouth tucked carefully below the blankets, turned towards you. It is cold, but with the two of you sharing blankets and a tiny mattress you are warm. You always awake curled toward the middle of the bed.
Sometimes you dream of him swathed in a worn cotton nightdress, sometimes poured into olive BDUs. You are always dressed alike then. You rest your hand on his neck then, feel the pulse beneath your fingers and the chain holding his dogtags.
In your dreams he sleeps easily like that, like it's a comfort instead of a claymore nestled against his throat.
iOn va voir,/i the captain said, voice marginally distorted by playback.
"Pas sans vous," you mutter, and why does that sound wrong?
You watch the captain when you can. He recovers quickly, but his allies call him to attention even more so.
You cannot always follow him where he goes. So you wait and watch him hollow with pain and fatigue. He conceals too much-his friends see some, but he was hiding his pain away for years before their birth or the ready availability of analgesics of the modern day.
You do not ask the captain about warmth, not when he seems suffocated by its absence. You wait.
i"Do not go gentle into that good night-don't you ever fucking dare. Fucking rage-swear to me-"/i
You find yourself shaking, staring down at not so tiny Stevie Rogers, that determined little shit who was in and out of fights almost as quickly as you could retrieve him from them. The rubble beneath the two of you shifts and settles. Your pulse pounds unsteadily in your ears.
You didn't mean to be here, only to observe. To see what his image recalled. The way the captain fell compelled you to secure the area and approach him and, apparently, initiate contact. He's blearily opening his eyes, behind the dumpsters in an alley cities away from where he last saw you, face suddenly looming close, but no-that's you pressing in close like you have a goddamn right.
"Bucky?" the captain slurs, weary and sad and very probably concussed.
That at least is familiar and grounding, if in a somewhat unbalancing way.
"You're in sorry shape," you say, frowning. He hasn't looked so bad since that last winter he had pneumonia-the last time it was really bad, you think-you think.
(Hiding out in a library's Dewey decimals one day had you reading about recovery from TBI-traumatic brain injury-the brain cannot rebuild whatever was destroyed, but it can create new connections. You don't know if the new connections are in the right places. You don't know if your memories have been linked correctly.)
Being around Steve Rogers seems to reshape even your internal vocabulary and it would be terrifying if there weren't a part of your mind clamoring to take care of Steve.
"Sorry, Buck, no one else checks the back alleys for me on the regular. 'Course," the captain coughs, ragged and weak like he used to, "you're sorting yourself and I meant to find you, find you somewhere safe, but they're always calling me back to help and I have to-I'm finally strong enough to make a difference even though I want to be doing it for you.
"God," Rogers says. "I can't even stop making excuses in my own head."
His eyelids droop like he's about to pass out and you squeeze your hand over the leaking wound on his forearm, cut as if he dropped the shield and still raised his arm to guard against an attack.
"C'mon-" you say, "stay with me punk-"
His eyes blink open again and he breathes in that labored way where you can't quite gauge his pain level beyond "a lot".
"Tell me how to help you," you demand.
Rogers fumbles at his side. Then you take over, flicking a pouch open. Med kit. You rip the leather glove away from the cut-you're surprised at your strength these days, when you remember flickers of alleys and basic training and combat-and press a wad of gauze into place. You cast your gaze to the alley's opening then arc overhead to check the fire escapes and sky. Clear. You're not sure how long they'll stay that way.
Next you check the gauze-blooming red, but slowing. Good. You add another wad of gauze and locate medical tape, securing the layered gauze to a slightly hairy arm. You check the captain's face again: he's blinking unsteadily at you.
"Where's your back-up?"
The captain shakes his head, winces. "There was another incident, something more serious. Someone had to go assist. They needed extraction quickly."
You frown. "Do you have a secure location nearby?"
Rogers thinks, seems to weigh several options. "I have an apartment nearby. There will be less security but you'll need to sweep for bugs."
"That is acceptable," you say, ignoring the withheld option. "Can you balance sufficiently on your bike if I guide it?"
You do not think you can manage something lower profile now. The captain will protest if you commandeer a vehicle and leave it stained in his blood. You need to act quickly, to better treat all of the captain's injuries and not just those that require immediate attention.
"Yeah, sure, I can do that, Buck," the captain says. You hesitate for a moment then dart away.
The bike is something magnificent and powerful. You remember joking drills in forested and canvas-covered encampments between missions-just in case and also because you were the one who had to think of 'in case'-on a similar motorbike. It was probably also Rogers' bike then.
It's probably considered heavy, but you lift the bike over the curb as easily as bicyclists do everyday in the city and guide it to the far mouth of the alley. Rogers could do with some immediate removal from danger, you think, an automatic aside.
Rogers is not as heavy as the bike, but he is more fluid. You manage.
Once on the bike, the captain seems more alert. He leans against the line of your vertebra radiating warmth and a weary expectation of loss but guides you easily. Parking is easier than expected, but apparently no one is willing to steal the parking space Captain America pays for. What's harder is maneuvering the captain up several flights of stairs and down a carpeted hall. You manage. That is what you do with directives, even self-assigned ones more stable than your long-term memory.
An insistent belief tells you that the bathroom will have better lighting. This is where you guide the captain and strip him down to his skivvies. Most of the damage seemed to be the concussion and your examination seems to confirm this. The cut forearm is washed clean and retaped; the captain is visibly recovering, but you wake him periodically as his mother would, when she was alive and her boy had gotten into something serious (again).
You saw the scarring left from your bullets. You oscillate between guilt and blankness; you think protecting him was something that was always important and here you defied that, yet you both acted against each other, in opposition. You think about how deeply the cold wind cuts as you fall from heights that should guarantee your death. You think about the hiss of gas and pain and arching against restraints.
Eventually you settle at the side of the bed where Rogers is not-already angled to easily catch the doorway-satisfied with the captain's recovery. It is entirely unexpected when you fall asleep.
You wake and the captain asleep, face tipped towards you. The deep cold of your dreams is less so-even unblanketed, the captain radiates heat the way his bones used to radiate sharpness-and the way you curled in slumber shows you the captain's face as soon as you open your eyes.
I carry your heart with me, you think, and in mine.
You curl the hand they did not take into his and let your eyes rest further.