December 24, 1943
The soldier stood and aimed as if to fire at Dum Dum, but froze as a rock sailed over his head – missing his head by a mile, but gathering his attention and causing him to reflexively turn. Alice surged forward to crowd his space and make her a more difficult target. She swiftly removed the knife from the German's side, turned it, and jammed it upwards into his ribs.
He screamed, like a dying child. He screamed, louder than a dying animal. He screamed, blood pouring from his side, drenching her in the evidence of her destruction. It came out like a river, washing her away, away, away from her friends. She called out to them for help, but they couldn't hear her. Their backs remained turned as she grasped at the branches rushing by in reverse, but her bloody hands slipped too easily from their rough surface.
She was carried far away from her friends, the screaming still singing loud, sharp, and wild in her ears.
Alice choked a little on air as she sat upright, her chest heaving. Her eyes darted wildly around the tent, searching for something to hold on to as real as she fought off the nightmare. She grasped at her heavy wool blanket, trying to find comfort there but only remembering the coarse texture of trees slipping away beneath bloody hands.
Pushing her hair back from her face, Alice took a shaky breath to steady herself. Just a dream, she reasoned, it can't really hurt you. Alice flipped open her pocket watch, squinting to see the hands in the feeble light. The hands informed her that she'd only slept for about an hour, and to go back to sleep.
Alice flipped the blanket off and pulled on her heavy coat, braving the bitter evening cold instead. Her breath fogged instantly in the winter air and she blew out heavily, smiling a little. When she had been younger she would find a little stick and pretend to smoke a cigarette – you know, to be cool.
Finally free of the tent that smelled like sweat and fear, Alice shuffled her feet a little in her boots to get the cold leather warming up – Alice couldn't sleep in her boots, it just wasn't comfortable. As a result, she always had to shove her feet into ice-cold leather boots first thing in the morning. As it turned out, putting on ice-cold boots after a nightmare was even worse.
But once outside, the frigid hand of winter batted away her fear and exhaustion, slapping her cheeks with rosy cheer and lifting the heat from her trembling skin. If Alice had a choice in the matter, she would never sleep again, but stand out in the evening air, watching the stars drift past.
The cold crept long fingers deep under her coat and she shuddered, her still-sweaty skin prickling up in response. Maybe I should start a little fire, though. I shouldn't expect that I'm immune to freezing to death. She caught a glimpse of Gloria moving past their tent – returning from a late night chat with the squad, she assumed. "Help me with the fire, would you?" Alice called out, fishing around for some starter paper.
Gloria popped her head around the tent, smiling sheepishly. "Alice! I didn't think you were awake!" Gloria played with her gloved hands, cheeks flush with embarrassment. "I was going to see if Falsworth needed anything. You know, after his wound and all."
Hopeless. Alice tossed the paper down, giving up entirely on the enterprise. "… alright fine – go. I'll just freeze to death all alone."
"Thank you, honey!" Gloria trilled, grabbing the heavy coat it seemed had been her purpose for returning to obtain.
Alice grumbled under her breath as she kicked the little pile of kindling. She was absolutely terrible at starting fires, and thought better of attempting it on her own. Adding a cruel insult to injury, true to Alice's prediction, it started to snow.
Alice's eyelashes caught the delicate flakes as they spun down around the camp, melting at a languid pace into her hair. The faint static sound of snow settling on fallen leaves and branches thickened in the air, muffling normal nighttime sounds. It made an activity of the evening – Alice could listen for hours to the omnipresent, ever-consistent sound of winter taking hold.
It was just her and the night watch tonight, sitting out in the light snowfall, listening to the darkness.
"Can't sleep?" the voice startled her so badly she nearly yelped.
Bucky stood between two trucks, the collar of his coat turned up against the chill. The nurse's tent was pitched on the forest side of the trucks as their best effort for privacy. It meant Alice usually could sleep through the raucous dinner conversation without much trouble, but also that they didn't see many curious passers-by without them directly intending to see a nurse.
"The cold doesn't agree with me," she explained. "Not enough of me exists to create real heat."
Bucky had a funny grin on his face. "I've got more than enough to share, if you don't feel like freezing."
Alice eyed him suspiciously, but she was too cold to refuse outright. "No funny business."
"On my honor," he vowed. "You got a blanket in there?" he gestured to her tent, and Alice retrieved the wool blanket that had been smothering her not too long before as Bucky folded up the edge of the tent like a little awning to keep the snow off of them.
Alice sat down on the ground next to Bucky, keeping her coat tightly wrapped around herself and leaving a solid four inches between herself and the Sergeant. She tugged the offered length of wool around her shoulders and waited for the residual heat to penetrate her cold coat.
Alice mentally admitted to herself that it was much, much cozier inside the blanket with Bucky. The blanket smelled like wood smoke from many nights spent sleeping around the fire, and the smell lingered on Bucky as well.
"So much for 'leave no man behind'." Bucky's voice was much closer now; she could almost feel the tenor of his voice in her chest.
"Gloria's a traitor," Alice replied, blaming the flush of her cheeks on the cold. "But at least she's got good taste."
Bucky snorted with humor. "She doesn't need to import when she's got American goods lying around everywhere."
"Such a convincing argument, you astound me: Buy American, it's laying around." Alice laughed and shivered at the same time, regretting her decision to leave space between her and the much warmer soldier.
Bucky slid from under the blanket, tucking it tightly around Alice. "You stay under there, I'll get a fire started."
"No arguments here," Alice snuggled deeper into the thick green wool. Her nose, eyes, and hair were the only parts of her visible above the blanket, making her into a very childlike figure. Bucky smirked at the sight as he collected starter paper and sticks from a nearby pile and sorted them into some semblance of the correct shape.
Alice didn't know how to bring up a new conversation. A million questions buzzed like insects in her brain, but none of them worth risking the tentative peace Bucky seemed to be trying to establish. She settled for just watching him work, his hands steady and confident, and his shoulders loose and calm.
Alice's staring was beginning to unnerve Bucky. He'd gone looking for the nurse without any real plan when he'd woken up in the night. He'd tried a few times, but she'd either been asleep or seemed busy and he'd abandoned the enterprise entirely.
All of the ways he was used to talking to dames didn't really work with Alice. She didn't flirt or swoon, preferring to keep to herself or have her mind and hands occupied with healing some traumatic injury. She charged towards danger without any apparent consideration for her own safety, to the eternal frustration and salvation of those who wanted to protect her. She did whatever the hell she wanted without apology. She was the oddest duck he'd ever met.
But she wasn't doing anything but watch him. He hadn't been expecting silence, and had been sort of hoping that she would take the lead. But no, she was waiting for him.
"What's your favorite color?" he asked to break the silence, rubbing his hands together to fight off the chill.
Alice tilted her head in confusion like a puppy as she pulled the blanket under her chin to speak. "Why do you ask?"
Bucky shrugged, shuffling the sticks together in a cone shape. "Just making conversation."
She ducked her head down again, frowning. "You'll make fun of me." Her voice was muffled slightly by the blanket.
"I won't," Bucky promised, reaching into his pocket for his stash of matches. He struck one and held the little flame close to the tinder, breathing on it gently to coax it to catch.
Alice appeared to consider it, shuffling a little from her seat on the ground. "Orange. But- it's a specific orange." She huffed, searching for words.
She readjusted the blanket so it wasn't so close to her face and she could wildly gesticulate with a free hand. "There's a Californian poppy that's not red like it is in New York or London. It's this beautifully rich yellow-orange. It's the most magnificent color I've ever seen; you feel warm just looking at it." She sighed, and her breath fogged like steam. "I've never seen another color quite like it in nature. California Poppies are… are the color of California sunsets."
She had leaned forward and escaped the protection of her tent as she spoke, and snow had collected in her hair. It melted in the growing radiant warmth of the fire Bucky had built that cast a warm golden glow against her face. She looked completely out of place in that moment – like she'd bathed in the same sunset she was describing, the passion for it evident on her face.
"Well, damn," Bucky murmured, glancing away as an uncomfortable tightness seized his chest.
"What?" Alice asked.
He rubbed the back of his head, fluffing his hair a little. "I was hoping you were going to say red or green."
She was taken aback. "…why?"
"Well," he exposited, reaching into his jacket. "If it had been green I coulda made a great joke about Army colors. But if it was red…" Bucky produced an apple from his jacket and Alice shrieked in delight.
"Where did you get that?" she cried, her hand already reaching for the perfect sphere.
"Would you believe I found it?" he asked, willingly surrendering the fruit.
Alice looked more skeptically at the apple. "You found wild apples? In winter?"
He produced his knife and took the apple back, slicing a generous wedge for Alice. "Yeah – pretty lucky I managed to save this one. Guys were chowing down like it was their last meal on earth."
She nibbled slowly at the apple slice as Bucky carved a smaller wedge out for himself. "So, you spend much time in California?" Bucky asked.
"No," Alice shook her head, "Only about a week. I was visiting Santa Barbara and – well, I fell in love." Bucky's eyes flickered to her, a question in his eyes. "I fell in love with California. I was at the botanical gardens and they have this whole field of poppies. I sat there until the sun went down over the ocean and they kicked me out to close up."
"So… why didn't you stay there?" he asked, regretting it instantly as her face fell.
"It's complicated." Alice looked down at her shoes, barely peeking out from beneath the blanket. "I don't really like to talk about it."
Well, shit. You ruined it again. "Is it Christmas yet?" he asked abruptly, trying to fix it.
Alice checked her pocket watch. "By twenty-seven minutes, yes."
"Swell," he said. "I've got something for you."
Alice's eyes lit up. "More than the apple? I feel so special."
"Hold out your hand," he requested. Alice stuck an arm out of her blanket wrap almost immediately, hand splayed open in eager anticipation. Her hands were pale and smooth; free of callouses and scars so typical to her line of work.
He pulled the rifle round from his pocket before he lost his nerve and placed it in her open palm. She rolled it between her fingers a few times before she caught sight of the scratches around the tip of the bullet itself. "What…?"
"It's a bullet with your name on it," he explained quickly. "You know how fellas say that somewhere out there, there's a bullet with your name on it?" He pointed at it briefly. "Well, what do you think the odds are of there being two bullets?" He tapped his head knowingly. "Gotta think smart out here."
Alice burst out laughing, holding the round in her lithe fingers, still rolling it from end to end. It was too easy to watch her fingers running from the smooth brass plane of the casing to the softer copper of the bullet, like porcelain dancers. "I'm fairly sure that's not how it works," she chuckled.
"You never know." He shrugged, grinning with her. "Better keep it on you, just to be safe."
"Well alright then." She rolled it more in her fingers. "Is this an apology?" she asked softly.
"It's trying to be one," Bucky replied, looking at the fire instead of at Alice's face. "You gonna let me back in that blanket or let me freeze to death?"
Alice held open one side of the thick wool blanket, looking sheepish. Bucky sat much closer as he rejoined her, their shoulders pressing together. She didn't move away, which he considered a victory.
"You changed your hairstyle," he commented. He'd noticed the very first time in the pub but hadn't gotten a chance to mention it before he put his entire foot in his mouth. She'd switched from her braid – typically pinned in a funny crown – to more modern pin curls, which had softened the shape of her face.
"Hides the scar," she replied with a nod, reaching a free hand up to touch the spot, concealed quite well under the curls. "I don't mind looking at it, but I really don't like when other people look at it."
Bucky wondered if it would be too forward to ask, especially if she had just said – and bit the inside of his cheek to silence himself. He wondered when he had started to care so much about Alice and her safety, and her approval, and her feelings. Bucky wondered when he would know exactly what he was supposed to say or do to sort out what he wanted.
It was when the fire caught her eyes at just the right angle that he knew.
She raised a hand to shield her face as the fire caught in the wind, wincing as her eyes reacted to the sudden burst of light. She turned to ask him a question and her eyes blossomed from pitch-pine darkness into the warmest cinnamon amber.
It was when she stopped his heart and shocked it back to life all with that glance. She smirked at him, with a slice of apple sticking out of the side of her mouth, and commented on the ridiculous nature of the evening, and something about the snow.
It was when he saw the light flicker and burn in her eyes, a burn he could feel deep in his chest that he never wanted to fade away that he knew; he knew there would be no turning away from Alice Shaw ever again. There would be no words and no pride worth hiding in the dark, clinging only to a memory of the fire that hid deep in her soul.
"I don't like small spaces," he admitted abruptly. "It's like being held down again."
Alice held still, processing the abrupt change in the tone of the conversation, then she nodded. "I get that."
"Sleeping's hard," he added.
Alice nodded again. "I can help with that."
"I'm not broken," he defended. "I don't need fixing or anything."
Alice shot him a stern look. "Of course you aren't! I will straight up stab anyone who says otherwise. That place was…" she shuddered, pulling the blanket tighter and picking at the edge.
Bucky didn't need reminding that Alice had spent some dark days in Austria as well. The thought shot into his mind as fierce as any episode, but clearer. He tried to keep his voice gentle as he asked, "Do you have trouble sleeping, doll?"
Alice grew still. "Sometimes," she admitted, sounding much like she had wanted to lie. "But I don't sleep much already, so it's hard to tell the difference."
"Why don't you drink the tea, then?" he probed. It seemed like she had a tea for anything and everything.
She made a wry face. "I don't like using supplies that are meant for my boys. I'm not the one shooting. I'm not the one dying."
He frowned. "We'll do a lot worse if you don't take care of yourself, Alice."
"I know that," she sighed. "It's just… not a choice I like to make."
Bucky wished she would. He wished that she would choose her own safety, if even just once, over the life of some young Private whose balls hadn't dropped yet. Alice wasn't supposed to be the one suffering; she was supposed to be the miraculous angel living above them, occasionally blessing them with her skills and gentle touch before returning to the sanctum of somewhere else that wasn't Axis Territory.
"Buck?" Alice asked, poking his arm.
"Yeah, doll?" he replied, poking her back.
"Did you hear a word I just said?" Her tone implied that she knew he did not.
He nodded sagely. "Of course – you were telling me all about how you're gonna make some more of that hair wash soon, since you smell like you've been sleeping in a barn."
Alice's jaw dropped in offended shock. "I do not!"
"Are you sure?" he asked, sniffing at her shoulder. Alice laughed and leaned away, tucking her head against her shoulder in the damn girliest gesture he had ever seen come out of her. "Smell pretty damn ripe to me." Her laugh came from deep in her chest, and not the high-pitched tinkling chime of a delicate dame back home, leaving it far more powerful and honest than most.
She pushed him away, but the shared blanket somewhat limited the distance. "Look who's talking! I haven't seen a single one of you bathe in the last three weeks!"
"Oh – you're watching us bathe now?" he teased, enjoying the bright flush of red that spread across her face.
"That is not what I meant and you know it," Alice defended, her ears turning red.
"Are you sure?" he pressed. "Tell me, Miss Shaw, do you enjoy an authentic Parisian bath?"
Alice's lips quirked into a teasing smile as she finally embraced the joke. She batted her eyelashes at him and fanned herself delicately. "Why, Sergeant Barnes, a good American girl always buys domestic."
Bucky laughed, enjoying the heat that filled his chest. God, give me the strength to keep my wits around this woman.
The tone of the evening softened as the snow collected on the ground, leveling a subtle hush to the ground. The conversation drifted like the subtle snowbanks, merrily rising and falling with an ease typically excluded from wartime talk. While Alice could send him into a frenzy like no other dame ever had, her presence was also the only moment of peace and calm he could hang onto with both hands.
Alice was real, the way foul-tasting medicine and hot coffee are real. Alice was real in the way that the sudden presence of a deer crossing the road is real, but doesn't always feel real; a moment stolen from another story, another life. She was living her own story, unapologetically disregarding whatever author tried to steer her back towards the modern mold of a woman.
Her eyes drooped heavily as she stared at the fire, the tilt of her head giving Bucky the occasional flash of Cinnamon and amber. "I missed talking to you," she admitted sleepily.
He hummed in response. "I'm a pretty swell guy, I'm not surprised."
"Dodo." Alice elbowed him in the side, but not very forcefully.
Her head fell to rest against his shoulder as she drifted off and Bucky felt no need to move her. A warmth of satisfaction, of relief, filled his chest as Alice's breathing steadied as she slipped deeper into what he could only hope was restful sleep. Bucky could feel the tension unwinding from his shoulders as he watched the snow twirling through the air, falling to earth with the gentlest of dancing spirals. Call me crazy, he thought, but I almost think she needed this more than me. And he'd needed this.
Alice's gentle commands to breathe had stuck deep in his memory, adhered firmly to the shuddering fit when a wave of Shell-Shock threatened to drown him. There would be Alice's voice, repeating calmly and encouragingly as he remembered the steps required to suck air into his lungs. It wasn't the same, though, as seeing her face. It was a decent substitute in the middle of the night. It was a decent substitute in the middle of dinner. But it couldn't compare to seeing her fingers dance over the bullet. It couldn't compare to her ever-changing flickers of motion, the strange juxtaposition of feminine habit and muscular force that all wrapped together into the perfectly unique package of Alice.
It was great having Steve around, but sometimes he was just a physical reminder of everything that had changed. His face and body had filled out with more muscle than any man had a right to carry, and the difference between the picture he had in his head of little Stevie, and the man in front of his could be… jarring.
Alice was already ever-changing. She was already a presence whose temperament and voice lilted and rolled like waves, breathing, riding, walking, and alive. She was an ever-moving, ever-fixed mark in a tumultuous world he was just learning to grasp with two hands.
His own eyes seemed too warm from the fire and he blinked to clear them. His head dipped and snapped up again as he tried to stay awake, but found his head tilting to rest against the nearest surface. It smelled like soapwort and smoke. A little sigh warmed his shoulder as his pillow breathed against him.
He leaned slightly to one side until his shoulder made contact with cold steel, propping himself up against the side of the truck that formed one wall of the tent to keep himself from falling backwards. After all – he couldn't sleep there. He could lean, though. He could lean here and rest his head against a pillow that sighed and smelled like soapwort and smoke.
Bucky moaned in complaint as his pillow moved an hour later and the blanket was loosely wrapped around him – not tightly, not restricted – removing his secondary heat source. Go back to sleep, a familiar undulating voice encouraged, you need your rest.
"Not th' boss'a'me," he grumbled stubbornly, still mostly asleep.
Of course not, the voice chuckled, and a cool hand brushed his cheek. It's just a suggestion.
"m'kay then," he replied, letting himself dip deep down into sleep. He drifted off to the sensation of fingers running through his hair, soothing his anxious brain in waves with each pass. A faint humming of the voice; lyrical, rolling like the waves, quieted the last of his thoughts.
A/N: Not gonna lie, I played a fair amount Star Wars Music to write this chapter. Does anyone want to guess what song in particular?
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