That was incredibly stupid.

That was Loki's thought as he jumped from the train. He was supposed to be chasing Schmidt and the tesseract, not going after a mortal who had probably died hitting the ground thirty seconds ago. But seeing Barnes fall, he'd remembered how Barnes had sat next to Loki and asked about Howard Stark's flying car, and somehow that had turned into a three hour discussion on Science For Rabbits. It had been rare that anyone had ever wanted to discuss the things Loki was interested in, and though it was simple material, Loki had found he liked teaching Barnes.

So Loki had impetuously jumped after him. Because that wasn't stupid or ridiculous, at all. Pure sentimental drivel, was what it was, inspired by Rogers' brash foolish heroics. But he'd done it anyway. Because Rogers' brash stupid heroics had saved Loki's life, and Loki would repay that debt. Barnes would certainly die if Loki didn't jump after him, and Loki knew enough healing he could, possibly, keep Barnes alive. If he wasn't already dead.

Loki wove the seiðr to siphon off the gathering force of his fall so he wouldn't hit the ground too hard himself and for a moment, it felt as if he was flying. Of course, he wasn't, he was still falling, but it was as close as he could get. Well, that wasn't precisely true; there was shapeshifting to a flying form, but true shapeshifting was always more trouble than it was worth.

The ground was still coming up quickly with some rather painful-looking rocks in his landing area, and he pushed himself to a clearer area with a gust of wind. He landed on a snow drift, and rolled to rid himself of his acquired energy from the fall.

Climbing to his feet, he tested everything to check that he was uninjured and tilted his head back to check the position of the train trestles and the moon.

Direction figured, he started to walk swiftly down the narrow canyon toward where Barnes must be.

The ravine was mostly snow and rock, with few trees to block his view. So it took him longer than he thought he should need to find Barnes. But he heard a soft sound above the whine of the wind and approached the river, careful of his footing on the icy-covered rocks.

There, a black shape against the black rocks, where the icy water had shoved him against the opposite bank. Barnes had fallen into the river, through the layer of ice on the top. If he hadn't been moaning, Loki might never have known he was there. Loki didn't want to get wet and swiftly twined seiðr into a narrow bridge of ice across.

He knelt on the rock beside Barnes and reached for him to pull him from the water, hesitating when he saw the blood in the water and staining the ice. But there was nothing else he could do - the cold was suppressing the blood flow and shock, but he was also going to freeze to death if Loki didn't get him out of the water. The only reason the water was flowing at all must be a geothermal spring somewhere upstream keeping the water temperature slightly above freezing in this ravine. But Barnes was lucky, because if it had been solid ice, he'd already be dead.

Loki glanced up at the train track and back down to his friend, amazed that he wasn't dead anyway. He was going to injure Barnes further, pulling him from the water.

But he was hopefully numb and mostly unconscious, and it had to be done.

Very carefully, feeling for bones that shifted wrongly in his ribs, Loki grasped him under the arms and pulled him up. It felt a little strange to be using his full strength, lifting Barnes right out of the water, and it was stranger still that Barnes' eyes opened and looked right at him when Loki was holding him like a baby, feet dangling off the ground.

Barnes' eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.

But holding him up revealed that among the dripping and the pallor, there were several immediate injuries that needed tending. His left arm was shattered and shredded, white bones protruding. A quick probe with seiðr gave back the rather discouraging list of other injuries: Legs, shoulder, ribs, pelvis, and head. It was astonishing he was still alive.

"Let's get you warm, shall we?" he murmured. "Don't die on me, Barnes."

He carried Barnes to the side of the ravine where slabs of granite had fallen in some long-ago slide, leaving one slab flat against the ground and a second leaning against the canyon wall atop it, leaving an open space beneath. It was poor shelter, but it would have to do for now. He laid Barnes atop the flat rock as much underneath the low, makeshift roof as he could.

There was no fuel to sustain a fire in this tree-less frozen ravine, so Loki glanced at his unconscious companion and held out a hand to warm the stones above and below them. Then, since he was already using seiðr as if he was alone, he pulled the water out of Barnes' clothes, to dry him more quickly.

Unfortunately the warmth started to make him bleed more, blood pooling beneath his shattered arm and the white bone, and he stirred, moaning with the pain.

"So, now I have to keep you from bleeding out. This is a problem."

The arm was so badly mangled, having taken a lot of the force of the fall, that as Loki examined it, he shook his head. "I am no expert, my friend, but I cannot leave it as it is and I cannot heal it before you die. The only way I see to do this is to remove it and cauterize what's left. Not ideal, I know, but I think it's the only way. But we can't have you awake during this, can we?"

He put his fingers on Barnes' forehead and twined the seiðr into his mind, forcing him back into deep sleep. Pulling his dagger, he held it before him, and with the same spell he'd used on the stone, but at a far higher level, heated the blade.

The metal blade glowed red, not the heat of forging so it would deform, but hot enough to sear mortal flesh. Then, acting swiftly, he pared off the worst of the damage and cauterized the ends of the vessels at mid-bicep to halt the bleeding. He reset the dislocated shoulder as well with a swift jerk, to halt the continued nerve damage from that.

Rather to his surprise, Barnes didn't die during all this trauma. His blood pressure fell but didn't plummet, and his heart remained strong, even when his breathing faltered and then resumed itself.

Though healing humans with seiðr was not a practiced skill of his, he sent some into Barnes and started knitting the fracture in his fragile skull until the wound stopped bleeding and he didn't sense any damage there anymore. He tried to grab more threads to work on Barnes' leg, but they slipped his grasp and he slumped against the stone. It would have to be enough for now. He hadn't done so much fine work in a long time, and his head ached like a dragon was roasting it for dinner.

His eyes were closed for only a moment, or so he thought, when Barnes stirred with a groan. Loki's eyes shot open, surprised that Barnes was returning to consciousness. Stubborn human.

Loki leaned close so Barnes could see his face as his eyes flickered open. At first the pain overwhelmed him, making him gasp and turn pale when he tried to move anything, but after holding himself still, he opened his eyes again and saw Loki.

"Lukas…" he whispered, frowning in confusion.

"Yes, I'm here with you. Hush, now, Barnes. Rest." He touched Barnes forehead to push him back into sleep again. He resisted, trying to keep his eyes open and parting his lips to issue some protest, but Loki pushed harder, until sleep fell on him like a rock.

Loki hastily checked that his heart was still beating, and let out short breath of relief. "Oops. You're a little tougher than you seem, James."

Glancing upward, he saw that they'd already fallen into the mountain's shadow, and though the sky would remain light for a time, sunset was not that far off. He should take this time and look for better shelter.

Ironically, the place they had jumped off the mountain was a short distance down the ravine and straight up. But the rest of the team had all been under orders to pack and go to the extraction point, so they were long gone. He'd have to find another way out. As this was still a heavily German-controlled area, he would have to be careful. According to the map, the lower valley would open up into some farm villages, and those would probably be crawling with military. This close to the Hydra base, Schmidt would probably have some of his spies around as well. As they had discovered, Hydra was not only a bunch of blank-faced minions, but infiltrators as well.

He glanced at Barnes and shook his head, mostly at himself. "Two hundred years ago, I would never be in this position. I would have let you die, because that's what mortals do. There are always so many of you dying for so little purpose, and yet here I am trying to keep you alive. I am utterly, irretrievably mad."

He was talking to someone unable to respond - that right there was a good indicator of madness.

"But there's no helping it, I suppose. Or that I need to carry you to better shelter for the night."

Before he picked up Barnes, he used the jacket sleeves to tie Barnes' amputated arm across his body to keep that more still, and then, knowing there was nothing to do but to do it, he scooped Barnes up across both arms. His weight was not a problem, but his height and bulk in conjunction with the injuries that Loki was trying not to make worse, made it tremendously awkward. He nudged Barnes' head against his shoulder as best he could to prevent it from hanging back, and hiked him up against his body, to make them more one mass rather than two separate ones.

"I had to carry Thor like this once. You are far less of a burden," he told Barnes as he started walking westward, stepping with care through the snow to the river. He was going to walk on the ice of the river. It would be slippery and risk falling in, since the ice was just a crust, but it would be less exhausting than forcing his way through the snow and leaving trails.

Except for the muffled burble of the river and the soft sounds of Loki's footsteps, all was silent. There were a few faint rustling noises of animals, and cracking ice when he listened. But mostly all he heard was Barnes breathing against him, short and shallow but regular, and his heart seemed strong.

Once he heard an airplane's engines and looked up, but whoever they were, flew to the north side of the canyon out of sight, so he couldn't see which side they belonged to. He lowered his head again, with a sigh. Not that he could have attracted the attention of an Allied plane - well, he could but probably not in a manner the pilot would understand or survive.

"I find myself in the difficult position of both too much power and not enough, James," he murmured. "I am not powerful enough to do what truly needs doing to these enemies, and yet it is difficult to hide and play mortal. If I had the tesseract back in my grip, though, everything would be different. I could walk right into Berlin and end the war. Schmidt still has no true understanding of what he possesses. Which is good for the rest of us, of course, but it is maddening to me that he uses it as a battery. It can alter the very fabric of existence, and he thinks so small. Pathetic."

When he slipped on the ice, losing his footing on a gap he hadn't noticed, he decided to pay more attention to his surroundings and stop chattering to a silent Barnes who couldn't hear him or answer.

He kept an eye on the surrounding cliff walls, searching for caves that might be useful, but found nothing worth taking the time to investigate.

The sun slipped low enough to peer briefly around the southern rim and shine up the valley, right at him. Which made him even more visible against the snow, and he pulled a glamour over them that was not full invisibility, since that was difficult to maintain with both of them, but would give back a muddled image like a mirage. One would have to look closely to notice, and most people rarely looked at anything closely enough.

The river dumped over a short falls and the ravine widened into a broader valley. He stood at the top of the falls on a stone and looked down. Ordinarily he'd jump, but with a glance at Barnes, he decided he should find a better way down. He found a deer trail in the snow that became a faint human path.

Beneath the falls in the valley, there were more trees and bushes, the sun seemed warmer, and even though the winter still lay heavily over the land, he saw his first smoke farther to the west marking what was probably the village.

But the sun was setting and he needed shelter for Barnes before that. His skin was too cold, and if his cells froze, there would be little Loki could do about it.

The closest farm, which included a small house and several outbuildings in the middle of some fallow fields, did not seem to be occupied as there was no smoke coming from it. He he turned his feet in that direction and started straight for it, trusting to the illusion to keep from being noticed.

At closer inspection the small house was clearly empty since the door sat ajar as if Loki was not the first to seek its interior. The inside had been looted, though it seemed only valuables and metal had been taken, since the wooden furniture and ceramic dishware remained by the kitchen area. A rabbit was nesting in the corner and startled by the sudden arrivals, it ran for the door before Loki could stop it.

He laid Barnes on the table, since the mattress looked more like a giant mouse nest than anything a human should sleep on and pulled the door shut. There was a ladder to a loft and he went to check above, finding it full of sleepy birds but also a closed chest that turned out to be full of women's clothes and blankets, and they were only a little moth-eaten. He brought it all down to pad the table and lay the blankets on Barnes.

Weighing the risk of smoke being seen and someone investigating versus keeping his friend warm through the night and using power he could ill-spare, he crushed the wooden chest with his foot and put a few pieces in the hearth and sparked a fire. Gathering snow into one of the bowls he set it by the fire to melt, and an examination of what was left in the kitchen told him all the food was long gone. Luckily that was not urgent yet since Barnes had eaten this morning. He didn't plan for them to stay here very long.

Tasks finished for the moment, he sat in the rickety chair and stretched out his legs with a sigh.

Barnes stirred a bit later, woken by the warmth. He moaned and twisted his body in renewed pain, and Loki scooted his chair closer so Barnes could see him easily.

His eyes flickered open and found Loki.

"Rest, Barnes."

Barnes eyes squinted in confusion as he remembered. "The train…" he said hoarsely.

"Yes, you fell and hurt yourself quite badly," Loki told him.

"I should be dead," Barnes whispered.

Which was probably true. Loki was still impressed he had survived long enough for Loki to get to him. But he smiled. "Some are too stubborn to die easily. As they are too stubborn to rest."

"Everything hurts," he whispered, body shuddering with the pain.

"I'll tend it," Loki promised. "Go to sleep, James."

Barnes' mouth lifted a little. "Ah, was wondering when… you'd give in."

"To what?" Loki asked curiously.

"You said… James."

Loki hadn't even realized he'd used "James" and his smile widened. "You caught me. James," he said it again, liking the sound of it. "Now close your eyes and rest. We're safe here for the night."

He set his hand on Barnes' forehead and this time more gently coaxed him back into sleep away from the pain.

Taking up another strand of seiðr, he probed Barnes' pelvis, finding that the break somehow had improved, not grown worse as Loki expected after the hours of carrying him. "Hm. That is curious. I think you were not as unaffected by Hydra experiments as I assumed. Perhaps that is why you survived the fall at all."

He laid seiðr in the fracture to encourage it to knit a little faster, when sound from outside the small house made him lift his head sharply. A vehicle stopping. Boots in the snow. Coming nearer.

Well, that took less time than I thought. They were close. Damn.

He glanced at Barnes worriedly and checked his knife sheaths, and then shifted his chair around so the table wouldn't block him if he had to move. He twitched the end of the blanket over Barnes' head and waited, crossing his ankles in front of him.

The footsteps outside and the soft murmuring they thought he couldn't hear grew closer, and then the door was yanked open.


tbc...