Disclaimer- I still own nothing. This chapter will be focused entirely on Cap. Hope you guys enjoy it.
"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone on Coney Island?" Bucky asked, observing the long zip line in front of him.
"Yeah, and I threw up?" his best friend and commander Steve Rogers answered.
"This isn't payback, is it?"
"Now why would I do that?" Steve asked with a grin.
"We were right; Doctor Zola's on the train. Hydra dispatcher came him permission to open up the throttle," Gabe Jones spoke up from where he and Jim Morita were huddled around a stolen Hydra radio. "Wherever he's going they must need him bad."
Bucky and Steve exchanged a look, right as Steve turned back toward the zip line and put his helmet on.
James Montgomery Falsworth crouched at the edge of the cliff with a pair of binoculars, monitoring the train. "Let's get going, because they're moving like the devil."
Steve attached his cable and readied himself. "We've got about a ten second window, you miss that window, we're bugs on a windshield."
Falsworth looked down at the looming space between them and the train tracks. "Mind the gap."
"Better get moving bugs," came the voice of Dum-Dum Dugan, another member of Captain Americas team; The Howling Commandos.
Jacques Dernier nicknames "Frenchie" he raised his finger waiting for the train to reach an exact point before he spoke. When he did, it was French, and Steve pushed his feet from the ground, zipping through the air. Behind him, Bucky placed his own cable on the line, and the same French word was repeated mere seconds later.
The third and final person that would operate this mission with Bucky and Steve was Gabe. By now all three were in the air, practically flying through the air on the zip line.
Steve could hear the beat of the train below him, he was waiting; waiting for the right time to let go of his cable and drop down on the black train. He could see its front pass him, and it was at this time he left go, landing in a crouch. He could hear Gabe and Bucky landing safely behind him.
They all knew what they needed to do, standing up they walked across the top of the still moving train, until Steve reached a latter and began his decent. Bucky crouched again looking around himself, surveying the train to see if any unwanted Hydra agents had climbed atop the train.
Gabe had too crouched, about three meters back; cocking his gun, waiting for Bucky to descend as well. He watched as both Steve and Bucky disappeared into the dark train, and waited.
The part of the train they had entered held no agents. It held boxed upon a shelf in the middle of the compartment, but no living thing as of yet. With his pistol drawn, Steve cautiously walked down the left side, while Bucky with his rifle walked down the right. There was two connecting doors at the end, both men exchanged another glance; Steve started through, just as he crossed both, the first slid shut right in front of Bucky, causing Steve to turn around. The second door slid shut down as he did so.
Abruptly Bucky turned around, there, at the back of the compartment, stood multiple Hydra agents. Immediately he started firing. There was a whirring sound of a Hydra gun powering up and Steve turned around again. He was greeted by a single Hydra agent, with large gun and thick armor. Cap fired instinctively and ducked behind a nearby box as his opponent fired.
"Stop him, fire again," came the voice of Arnim Zola from the ceiling.
In the other compartment, Bucky had just taken down a Hydra agent, when multiple more shots were fired. Standing up again he fired. He needed some back up.
The soldier fired at Steve once more, little did he know, that Steve was coming up with the best way to take him out. Jumping up, Steve grabbed hold of pulley on the ceiling, normally used for transporting objects too heavy for people to carry. The soldier charged his weapon again and fired, right and Cap pulled his shield in font of his. The shot did no damage, nor did it faze Steve as he kicked the soldier and jumped down himself. Once again using his shield, he pounded the helmet of the solider.
Bucky had meanwhile long since run out of ammo in his rifle and had switched over to his pistol; firing a few more times, before running out of ammo for his pistol as well. He stayed behind the boxes as he heard the door that led to Steve's compartment open. Steve gestured to his own pistol and tossed it to him. They both knew what the other was thinking and they engaged their plan. Steve rushed forward and knocked the box the Hydra agent was hiding behind causing him to step to the side, unfortunately for him he chose the wrong side and was shot by Bucky.
"I had him on the ropes," Bucky spoke, it was a joke of a sort, Steve had said the same thing back in Brooklyn.
"I know you did," Steve answered breathing out.
There was a charge behind them. The solider Steve had been fighting was not as incapacitated as Steve had hoped. "Get down!" he ordered and shoved his friend behind him with one and used the other to raise his shield.
His feet had not been planted, they slide out from underneath his and the blast ricocheted off his shield and into the side of the train, blowing a massive hole in it. Steve lay on the other side of the compartment, temporarily immobile.
"Fire again," Zola shouted through the train speakers again. "Kill him now!"
Bucky picked up Cap's shield and began his assault on the soldier, firing the gun Steve had given him. The soldier fired, and Bucky not being nearly as strong as Steve went flying and smacked into the unforgiving wall hanging out of the train.
Steve rushed to his feet grabbed his shield and launched it at the unstable solider. The soldier collapsed almost immediately.
Discarding his helmet, Steve ran over to the hole in the train. His best friend was hanging by a railing. "Bucky!"
He grabbed onto the railing next to him and did his best o reach his friend. "Hang on," he called out. He was trying to sound strong, but it came out with desperation. If he had been anyone else he would have panicked when he saw his friend's right hand slip and once again grab onto the railing.
"Grab my hand," Steve yelled over the wind of the train. The railing in which Bucky held onto suddenly broke. "No!"
There was a scream emanating from his friend as he fell to his death. Landing in either the river or the snow, Steve wasn't sure which, but he stood where he was panting staring where Bucky, his best friend and protector when he was young fell.
He was dead.
He had fallen to his death, and Steve couldn't save him.
Steve turned his head and rested it onto his red glove, a look of pain upon his face.
He had lost his best friend, all because he couldn't reach him in time.
"Because I couldn't reach him." The words echoed through his brain as he sat in Stark tower.
Around him, Clint Barton was talking with Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark was babbling with Bruce Banner about some science project they had been working on, and Thor had been telling him about Loki. How he had recently died, and there had been nothing he could do to stop it.
He had offered his condolences to Thor, but that had reminded him about how he had failed. He knew what Thor had meant by he could not stop his brother. Loki had saved Thor, just as Bucky had saved Steve. If Steve could only go back, to change what had happened, to keep his friend alive, he would. Thor had now started to speak about the mischief Loki had gotten into as a young boy, but Steve wasn't listening. He was thinking of the moment, in a split second he had lost him. He remembered what Peggy had said.
"Did you believe in your friend? Did you respect him?"
Steve said nothing, but simply looked at her as if to say yes.
"Then stop blaming yourself. Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice. He damn well must have thought you were worth it."
Her words were true, and he wanted to believe them, but there would always be that guilt. That pain in his heart that said he was failed Bucky.
And that would never go away.
No words could change that.
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