I didn't really like The First Avenger that much when I first saw it, in fact, I'm pretty sure I fell asleep. I mean, it was okay, but the Red Skull was a bit stupid, and I wasn't overly sure about Chris Evans (who I have always sort of liked) playing another Marvel superhero, seeing as he was already The Human torch and all, so when The Winter soldier came out, I was all like, "yeah, looks okay, lets give it a go" - little did I know what that movie would do to me.

Oh the squeee, the angst, and Chris Evans' sad puppy-dog eyes... I have had to express all my feels using the medium of fanfiction, and of course, it has taken me this long to get something out as I'm the world's slowest writer.

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy this angst-fest of a Post Winter Soldier story - if you haven't seen the movie yet this fic is full of spoilers, and why are you even reading it?

Hope you Enjoy!

Supernoodle x

20th June 2015

The End of the Line

Chapter 1

-o-

"Breathe, Cap." Sam yells, fumbling with the fiddly hook and eye fastenings at the neck of Steve's uniform jacket. His hands are slick with mud from the riverbank and shaking badly, partly from the cold, partly from adrenaline. It's making a tricky task about a thousand times harder, and he curses the fact that there wasn't any Velcro in the 1940s.

"C'mon, Man. Don't do this."

The blood-streaked water that spills from Steve's blue lips is the only reply. His face, underneath all the cuts and welts and bruising, is bone white.

Do all you can do for the red white and blue.

Sam's going to do all he can do. He's not going to let Captain America die on the banks of the Potomac. Not on his watch. They've just saved the future of the human race, if they can do that, he can damn well save one near indestructible super-soldier.

He can save his friend.

Sticking two fingers under Steve's jaw, he feels for a pulse and after what feels like one of the longest moment of his life, Sam finds the faintest of heartbeats – and he can almost hear Riley's voice in his ear as he fights off the panic that will render him useless if he gives in to it.

When there's a heartbeat, Sammy, there's hope.

Riley never left a man behind, he never once gave up on someone, and tilting Steve's chin up, he pinches his nose shut and blows half a dozen desperately needed breaths down his throat.

"C'mon Cap!" Sam yells again. "You need to breathe now!"

He can hear Natasha's voice crackling through his earpiece, but can't make out what she's saying. He just hopes she's bringing the cavalry, because he might have had the wings back and a weapon in his hands again, but he's not that guy any more. He's not Sergeant Wilson of the 58th Pararescue squadron – he's just plain old Sam now. Sam from the VA. He's not sure he can do this by himself.

"Steve… Please…"

He forces another few breaths down Steve's throat, feels for his pulse again – it's so faint he wonders if he's actually imagining it, but just as he goes in for another breath, Steve jerks beneath him and heaves up about a gallon of murky river water. Sam's never felt so relieved in his life.

"That's it, big guy. Get it out." He soothes, and as gently as he can, he rolls Steve over onto his side, mindful of whatever injuries are hidden underneath the sodden, blood-stained combat suit. On top of everything else Steve's been through today, falling a couple of hundred or so feet into a river from a burning airship is going to cause some damage, Superhero or not, but everything else can be dealt with once he manages to get Steve breathing. No matter what, a casualty's airway always takes priority.

Steve is shuddering beneath his hands, choking and gasping as his body fights between trying to get the water out and pulling air in, and for a horrible few moments, Sam actually thinks he's watching Captain America die right before his eyes.

"Don't do this, Cap…" He pleads, wiping Steve's face as he vomits up more foamy, blood streaked river water, and just as Sam decides to start the rescue breathing again, Steve manages to drag in a wet, rattling breath, followed by another and then another, and after a few moments, his eyes flutter open – well, one does, his right eye is almost completely swollen shut.

"Buck?…" he gasps before going back to the important business of coughing more water out on to the mud and Sam crouches down so Steve can see clearly that it's him. "It's me, Cap. It's Sam. Bucky isn't… Bucky's not here."

He's not entirely sure what went down in that Helicarrier, he knows Steve had been forced to go through The Winter Soldier, to go through what was left of the man who was once his best friend, to take them down, and by the looks of his battered face, it had been a hard won fight. But Steve had been unconscious when he'd found him, laying on the muddy banks of the Potomac like someone had just dragged him out of the river and left him there, and there could have only been one person who could have managed that.

Maybe Steve had got through to him after all? Maybe at the very last minute The Winter Soldier had remembered who he really was and had decided to save his old friend rather than kill him? Maybe that was the first decision James Buchannan Barnes had got to make for himself in over seventy years. He hoped so, for all their sakes, but especially for Steve. He knows full well how much it hurts to lose your best friend. He can't even begin to imagine what a knife to the guts it must be to have that friend come back from the dead as some kind of mindless killing machine intent on executing you and everyone you hold dear.

"Natasha!" Sam yells into his com, hoping to god she can hear him better than he can hear her. "I found him."

"I have your position, Sam." Natasha's voice crackles in his ear. "We're about two minutes out… How bad?"

"Not sure yet." Sam replies. He's not really had much of a chance to check over Steve to see what he was dealing with and he begins a quick field exam. Making a mental checklist of everything he finds, starting with Steve's screwed up eye - definitely a fractured eye socket or cheekbone there, probably a concussion too. Then moving down, he finds the stab wound in his shoulder. It's bleeding sluggishly and looks deep but that's really the least of Steve's problems right now. As he moves lower down Steve's body, he finds the purple stain on the front of his combat jacket and Sam's heart sinks, and it's at that moment that he realises that it's not just mud that's he's kneeling in, it's blood - Steve's blood. And it's everywhere.

"Is he alive, Sam?" Natasha asks, and he can hear the worry in her voice.

Sam yanks open Steve's jacket and pulls up the bloody mess that was once the grey t-shirt that he had given Steve to wear from his own closet that very morning. There he finds the ragged, bleeding hole in the middle of Steve's belly, which looks an awful lot like an exit wound. "Dammit!" He groans. This was bad... So very bad, and leaning over him, Sam pulls up the jacket and shirt from Steve's back and there in the pale meat of his lower back is the neat little bullet-hole that he was hoping he wouldn't see.

"Wilson?" Natasha yells, followed by something in Russian that Sam can't understand but knows full well is cursing.

"Yeah, he's alive." He yells back into his com. "But you need to get here, like now!"

Sam doesn't really know how "super" Steve is. He knows the legend - Captain America, the soldier with the strength of half a platoon of fighting men, the man with the plan who can bench-press 1,200lb and who single-handedly rescued nearly the whole of the 107th Infantry from the clutches of the Red Skull. And he's seen for himself how strong he is, how unbelievably fast, but he doubts very much that Steve has any more blood to spare than the average guy. Sam is used to seeing combat injuries. Used to seeing good guys riddled with bullets and torn up by shrapnel. It was his job, or at least it used to be. Back then he had a full field kit with him, dressings, tourniquets, fluids, morphine... But more importantly, he had Riley by his side and the rest of their unit at his back. Right now he has nothing. Nothing to use to keep Steve's blood inside his body other than Steve's own combat suit, so Sam rolls him over onto his back again as carefully as he can and pulls the sturdy fabric of Steve's jacket tight around his middle.

Steve groans through gritted teeth as Sam's jostling brings him round a little more, and he tries to push Sam away, but there's no strength behind the attempt and Sam takes hold of his hand. "Hey, relax, big guy. I got you. Everything's gonna be okay now," and while he had no idea if this was true or not, the immediate threat was neutralised, the Helicarriers were now nothing more than a smoking pile of wreckage in the middle of the Potomac, and Steve was just about breathing still. Whatever came next could be dealt with by whatever people were left. They had done their bit. Done it a thousand times over and then some.

Folding Steve's shaking hands under his own, Sam applies pressure where he approximates the bleeding hole in Steve's belly to be and the soldier goes rigid beneath him and lets out such an anguished cry that Sam feels like screaming right along with him. He hadn't known Steve long, but that didn't matter – you only had to be around him for five minutes to know what a good guy he was, how much he just wanted to help people, to do the right thing, even if it killed him. He didn't deserve any of this.

"I'm sorry, man." Sam tells him. "I know this hurts, but you just gotta hold on a little while longer, okay? That crazy redhead is on her way." And peering over his shoulder, he sees a helicopter flying through the smoke filled haze towards them and realises he's never been so glad to see something in his whole life.