When Beatrice was a child, she had developed the habit of listening at doors—both for the thrill of doing something forbidden and in hopes she would overhear a particularly interesting conversation. Most of the time, however, the conversations she heard would be dull, or they would be about money or politics or other subjects she didn't quite understand.

One particular incident, however, had always stuck in her mind. She couldn't have been more than eight years old, and her father had invited several of his friends from the Navy Yard over to their flat. Thinking back on it, Beatrice wondered if George Barnes had been among them. The men there that night had all served with John in the Great War, she remembered—she'd been expressly forbidden from disturbing them, as their conversation wasn't suitable for a child (especially a girl) to hear. So she'd stayed with Elena in the kitchen while the men took over the parlor.

The walls were thin, though, and their raucous laughter could easily be heard, sparking Beatrice's curiosity. Elena had been trying to teach her to sew—a futile effort—and by some miracle her mother had fallen asleep after making supper, her head tilted to the side and the socks she was darning forgotten on her lap. Sensing her opportunity, Beatrice had tiptoed out of the kitchen and pressed her ear against the door to the parlor, straining to hear the conversation.

She'd recognized her father's voice instantly, but her fascination quickly turned to horror when she heard what he was saying. He was telling a war story, and was already quite inebriated judging by his slurred sentences.

From what Beatrice could piece together, he had once come across a German soldier in the trenches who was dying of what he'd called "consumption", though she now knew it was tuberculosis. But consumption was a more accurate word: according to John, the soldier had nearly wasted away, his skin stretched so tightly that his bones were plainly visible. He could barely move and when he spoke he coughed blood. He was so emaciated and close to death that maggots had already begun to take host in his body, feeding on his flesh. He'd begged her father to kill him, which John had done.

Beatrice had been so horrified by the story that she'd let out an involuntary gasp and clapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. John had already opened the door and discovered her; he'd sent her away and threatened to box her ears, but she had been so traumatized by the story she'd had nightmares about flesh-eating maggots for months, and never eavesdropped again.

She could think of no worse fate than being consumed from the inside out—watching herself slowly die and being powerless to stop it.

So of course it figured that it would someday happen to her.

Beatrice came to hazily, with only a vague sense of the moments immediately preceding her unconsciousness. It had something to do with Ivan, she knew—the Norn Stone?—and Hydra.

Someone made a displeased noise from beside her, and Beatrice slowly turned her head—she couldn't quite move anything else—to see Arnim Zola standing over her, attaching electrodes to her arm. Her sleeve was rolled up to her elbow, the cannula inserted in her arm feeding a clear liquid into her veins. They were also in a train, judging from the scenery flashing by through a small window and the rocking motion under her.

Beatrice figured this all out very fast, but the realization that she had been captured by Hydra—again—sent waves of terror racing through her. She was trapped, like a frog waiting to be dissected, her limbs tied down. There was no using her strength to break free this time: Zola must have kept her carefully sedated, drifting on the edge of consciousness but still paralyzed—and there was no Bucky and Steve to save her.

Oh God, Bucky. Beatrice had no idea how much time had passed since she'd confronted Lorraine, but he would have been frantic when she failed to return. What about Ivan? What had happened to Lorraine and the Norn Stone?

"The serum is beginning to fight the sedative," Zola was saying to her, as casually as if he was dictating a laboratory report. "Your body is growing resistant to the morphine after prolonged exposure. I am afraid you will have to remain conscious for this, Fräulein."

Beatrice couldn't twitch a single finger in response. Whatever burst of strength she'd had to turn her head had disappeared. She prayed that she would fall into oblivion again, but her mind stayed hovering just above the surface no matter how hard she tried to push it under. Whatever Zola was planning to do to her, she knew for certain that she didn't want to be awake for it.

After he'd removed the cannula from her arm, he brought forth a small metal case, the size of a breadbox, the edges of which were glowing slightly from something luminescent within. Beatrice was forced to watch, immobile, as Zola flipped open the case with a pleased smile. A dull blue glow illuminated his face, reflecting off his round glasses. He slowly turned the case around so that she could see it—the cube was smaller than she'd expected, small enough that she could cup it in her hands. The light emanating from its core was like nothing Beatrice had ever seen; her eyes stung as if she was staring directly at the sun. Something was swirling in its depths—a low hum radiated from it, as if it was alive. But it wasn't entirely unfamiliar to her: she had seen the same color, the same crackling electricity, once before. She could almost still feel the phantom pain in her skull where the Hydra soldier's baton had knocked her out and disintegrated the SSR's weapons.

The Tesseract, she thought fuzzily. Hydra's secret weapon, the thing Schmidt had been searching for. Ivan had said it was powerful enough to wipe out entire planets. For it to be in the hands of Hydra was disastrous. But here Beatrice was, staring right at it, and there was absolutely nothing she could do.

Her mind was spinning frantically, like a hamster in a wheel, trying desperately to force her body to move. The rattling of the train did nothing to calm her stomach, which was twisting itself into painful knots. She could only stare blankly up at the roof, unable to move anything except her eyes. And she realized, with a final sickening jolt, that whatever Zola was planning to do to her did not necessarily mean she had to be alive for it. There were plenty of experiments he could do with a corpse. Perhaps he wanted to test just how long a human could stay alive when exposed to the Tesseract's energy—

Beatrice's worst fears were only confirmed when Zola placed the trunk on a shelf that jutted out from the wall above her head and rechecked the placement of the electrodes, which had been placed on every one of her pulse points through which the major arteries pumped blood through her veins. It was basic medical knowledge—what she'd learned during her first day of nursing school—and yet she wished she didn't know exactly what Zola was planning to do. She wished that she was ignorant of what was about to happen to her.

Satisfied that she was bound and utterly helpless, Zola scribbled something in his notebook and went over to the window to close the curtains, casting the compartment in total darkness aside from the faintly glowing Tesseract. Without another word to her, he exited the compartment, the door sliding shut behind him. The sound of the lock clicking into place sounded like the safety being pulled off a gun.

Beatrice wasn't sure how long she lay there, terrified and alone, waiting to die. There was a dull thump above her, as if something had landed on the train, but as the minutes ticked by the hope slowly began to drain out of her.

And then the Tesseract suddenly came to life with a burst of blinding light, and Beatrice felt herself explode in a blast of energy. Her body was no longer a prison, because she didn't have a body anymore. White-hot pain slashed through her insides, and death was not black as she had always imagined—it was blue, blinding agony that seared through her skin, ripping her apart—Schmidt's torture had been floating on a bed of feathers compared to this—she would have done that a thousand times over instead. The morphine pinning her down had finally weakened, and she was writhing around on the cot, screaming, her throat raw—

The pain didn't recede slowly, but vanished as quickly as it started, leaving her gasping and breathless. Her brain didn't know how to respond to the sudden absence of pain, and she stayed curled up in a ball, her arms wrapped around herself and tears leaking from her closed eyelids. If Zola's first experiment had involved the slow buildup of pain until she could no longer stand it, this was akin to being thrown directly into a pit of lava. Shudders were still wracking her entire body as if she had been electrocuted.

At some point she found she could move again, and she rolled over to retch on the floor, but there was nothing in her stomach. The edges of her vision were tinged blue, and she didn't even have the strength to fight when Zola reappeared in the compartment, his small eyes alight with excitement as he regarded her. "Remarkable," he breathed. "The subject has survived the initial procedure."

Initial procedure? Beatrice thought. She felt odd, like she'd had one too many drinks. The numbness after the pain was beginning to fade, replaced by a tingling across her skin that was strongest in her hands. She felt lightheaded, dazed, and barely flinched when a loud, blaring alarm sounded right above her head.

A look of panic flashed across Zola's face. He immediately hurried out of the compartment without another glance at Beatrice, barking orders in German to the other Hydra agents on the train.

She forced herself to move, pushing herself up onto her elbows and into a sitting position. Unfortunately, she had chosen the wrong moment to do so: the train lurched to a sudden, grinding halt, brakes screeching, and Beatrice was thrown forward, tumbling across the floor until her head smashed into the opposite wall. She barely stifled a groan of pain and reached up a hand to comb her fingers through her matted hair, gingerly searching for the wound. Her fingers came away sticky with blood.

The compartment door slid aside with a deafening bang, and Beatrice automatically flinched, expecting Zola. But when a familiar face immediately rushed over to her, she could only stare up at him, frozen, sure it was a trap. "Gabe?" she asked hoarsely. Her voice cracked on the single syllable, as if she hadn't spoken in days.

Gabe Jones was dressed in his Howling Commandos' uniform, a revolver at his side, but when he took in Beatrice's current state he quickly knelt down, holding a hand out to her. "Thank God you're all right," he said as he pulled her up to a standing position, his mouth set in a worried line. "Are you all right?"

"Y—yes, I think so," Beatrice said. She swallowed hard, her eyes landing on the glowing Tesseract. Her stomach rolled, and she had the sudden urge to hurl it out of the window as far as she could. "What are you doing here?"

Gabe frowned, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. "We came to find you," he replied. "When Agent Romanov realized you were missing, he went straight to Colonel Phillips. We managed to track the secretary to King's Cross and monitored the outgoing transmissions until we found this train."

Beatrice slowly shook her head, ignoring the throbbing that came with it. "Lorraine," she muttered. "What happened to her?"

"She's dead," Gabe said bluntly. "Steve and Bucky caught up to her before she could escape."

Ignoring the way her heart skipped a painful beat at the mention of their names, Beatrice said urgently, "You need to find Zola! He's here—"

But no further explanation was needed: before she could even finish her sentence, a muffled gunshot rang throughout the compartment, and Zola's face filled the window of the sliding door, brandishing a pistol.

Gabe swore loudly. "Stay here," he ordered, and strode over to the door, aiming his revolver as he did. But Beatrice knew it was dangerous to stay in one place, and besides, she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the Tesseract as possible. After casting a furtive glance in the direction Gabe had disappeared, where she could hear machine gun fire, she dropped to her hands and knees again and slipped through the opposite door, which appeared to lead into a storage compartment. The howling wind whipped around her as she ducked behind a shelf, suddenly wishing she'd thought to grab a weapon. It was freezing cold; surely there had to be an open door close by.

Beatrice crept forward, sucking in a sharp breath when she saw the source of the fresh air. The culprit wasn't an open door at all: rather, an enormous chunk had been torn right off the side of the train, a gaping hole large enough for several people to fit through. Snow was blowing into the compartment, and in the distance Beatrice could see mountain peaks jutting into the sky. But her attention was caught on the man kneeling in front of the opening, his blond hair and colorful uniform streaked with dirt.

"Steve," she breathed, and began to run to him. He slowly turned his head up to look at her, and Beatrice stopped dead in her tracks, her blood running cold when she saw the expression on his face.

She had never seen such a look of horrified disbelief on anyone before, and knew it would be burned into her mind for the rest of her life. Steve was breathing shallowly, quick short pants as if it physically pained him to inhale any deeper. His eyes were wide and red, his mouth twisted into shock, tears staining his face. He seemed to barely even register her presence—he looked close to vomiting, his hands clenched so tightly into fists that his gloves looked about to tear.

Beatrice immediately dropped down in front of him, placing a cautious hand on his shoulder. "Steve," she whispered again. He looked so utterly defeated that it terrified her. "What happened?"

His blue eyes finally focused on hers, and he sagged even more, as if all the air had been sucked out of him. "Beatrice," he croaked; it seemed an effort to even say her name. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she assured him. "Gabe told me you and Bucky were here."

Steve visibly winced at the mention of Bucky's name, and Beatrice's heart dropped into her stomach. His eyes flickered down to the bracelet on her wrist, the bracelet she'd never taken off since Bucky had given it to her on the day she left for Europe. "I…it's my fault," he said hoarsely. His gaze turned haunted, and Beatrice suddenly knew what he was going to say next. There was only one thing on Earth that would cause him to look that way. "Beatrice…he's gone. He fell off the train. I couldn't save him in time. I'm sorry—" Steve's voice cracked on the final word, and he lowered his head, suppressing a sob.

Beatrice's entire body had gone numb. She saw Steve's grief, knew he was drowning in it, but found she couldn't say a single comforting word. "No," she said, and began to shake her head mechanically, as if her denial would somehow change the outcome. "No, it's not possible. He couldn't have—" She gulped and swallowed hard, staring out the hole that had destroyed the compartment like a gaping wound. The train was stopped on the edge of a sheer cliff, a near-vertical drop punctuated by dozens of rocks jutting out below. She could see nothing but the blinding white of snow, broken only by a dark, frozen river miles below in the ravine. "He's got to be down there," she said desperately. "He could have survived."

"I saw him fall," Steve said. His voice wavered, and he dragged a hand across his face. He seemed barely able to move, like an old man. "No one could have survived that. Not even me."

But Beatrice refused to believe him. There was always a chance. If what Zola had done to him was the same as what he had done to her, Bucky had the Hydra version of the super soldier serum. He might not have been killed by the initial impact. Some logical part of Beatrice's mind knew that this was grasping at straws, but she pushed the thought away. "We have to find him," she said, stumbling over to the window and leaning out to survey the terrain. It would be a steep climb to the bottom, but she was sure it could be done.

The sound of a scuffle behind them barely registered in Beatrice's perception, but Steve's attention was diverted by the appearance of Gabe, who held Zola tightly by the arm and was pointing the doctor's own pistol at his head. "I got him," Gabe said triumphantly. "Bastard put up a fight, too."

But Steve seemed barely to notice Zola. "Gabe," he began wearily. "Bucky's gone." Beatrice knew him well enough to see him gather himself up, even out his expression so that he didn't show weakness in front of Zola. She watched Steve disappear behind the mask of Captain America, only the slight trembling of his hands a betrayal to the depth of his emotions.

Gabe's eyes widened. "What?" he asked, shock crossing his face, but Beatrice was looking at Zola. The doctor didn't outwardly react, but she could see his lips twitch upward in a barely-there smirk.

A livid rage the likes of which she had never felt before seized Beatrice, and before she knew what she was doing she had already launched herself at Zola, her hands closing around his throat and his glasses knocked askew. His eyes immediately began to water as she increased her grip, feeling his neck about to snap under her fingers—

And then Steve pulled her off of Zola, his arms wrapped tightly around her as she struggled and fought against him. "Beatrice, don't," he grunted; it gave her a savage pleasure to know that he had to use his enhanced strength to hold her back. "He has valuable information about Hydra."

Beatrice glared daggers at Zola, snarling; Gabe had steadied him, but the doctor was still wheezing and there were already mottled bruises on his neck where her fingers had been. Still, his smirk hadn't lessened a bit—in fact, it had only widened knowing that he would be kept alive by the SSR, at least until they had what they wanted.

When she couldn't stand to look at his smug face anymore—she had never despised anyone so much, including Schmidt himself—she turned to Steve. "Let me go," she insisted, trying to push him away. When his grip didn't loosen one bit, she sighed and reluctantly ceased her struggles. "I promise not to do anything." It was a mark of Steve's trust in her that he warily relaxed his hold, though his hand still loosely encircled her upper arm.

"I'll see what I can get out of him," Gabe said, and began to drag Zola away, though it was clearly an excuse for separating him and Beatrice. "I sent a distress signal to Falsworth—the others should be arriving soon."

"Thank you, Gabe," Steve said quietly. The other man nodded, casting a worried look at Beatrice, and led Zola away, who went unnaturally quietly. He hadn't said a single word, not even when Beatrice had been trying to choke him, and that unsettled her more than anything.

When they had disappeared, leaving Beatrice and Steve alone again, she twisted around to stare earnestly up at him. "We have to find Bucky," she repeated. Didn't he understand how little time they had? With every second that passed, he could be in even more danger.

A shadow crossed Steve's face, and she saw his mask waver. Suddenly he was looking down at her with a bright blue gaze that was all Steve's, with no trace of the steady confidence of Captain America. "It's too late," he said. "Too dangerous. We wouldn't be able to find anything, not in this storm. He—he wouldn't want us to risk our lives trying to find his body." He suddenly looked away from Beatrice, his jaw working furiously. She felt her eyes fill with tears and a choking panic rose in her chest.

"This is all my fault," she whispered, gritting her teeth and staring down at the floor. "If I hadn't gotten captured—"

"It's not your fault, Beatrice," Steve said gently. "He—we—would have come after you no matter what. All Bucky cared about was that you were safe."

She covered her mouth with her hand, barely stifling the cry that escaped her. Steve looked like a little boy again, lost and utterly broken, before hesitantly reaching out to her again, and this time Beatrice didn't resist. The others would arrive soon, but this was their private moment to grieve together. She buried her face in Steve's chest, and her protests became something like heaving sobs.


"You need to eat something, Beatrice."

Ivan knelt down in front of her, holding out a mug of steaming cocoa. It wasn't the first time he had offered her food, and it wasn't the first time she had refused.

"No," Beatrice said stubbornly, turning her head just as the wind changed direction, earning herself a faceful of snow. Had it been under any other circumstances, she would have laughed.

Ivan sighed, his breath puffing out in a white cloud. He didn't seem to have the energy to argue with her anymore—he hadn't stopped apologizing since they'd met again, insisting that it was his fault Beatrice had been overpowered by Lorraine and smuggled onto the Hydra train. Nor did she have the energy to continue telling him that it had been her choice to do so in the first place.

They had erected a temporary bivouac shelter not far from the train, waiting for the blizzard to clear so that Howard could safely fly in and bring them back to London. The group assigned to the raid had been small, while the rest of the SSR, including Peggy Carter, had remained behind. All of the Howling Commandos were present, of course, but Phillips and Ivan had apparently also insisted on coming along.

They had gotten back the Norn Stone, but lost the chance to retrieve the Tesseract, as one of Zola's guards had managed to avoid capture and escape with it. Beatrice supposed that was partly her fault for leaving it alone, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She couldn't bring herself to care about anything. She hadn't told anyone about Zola's experiment with the Tesseract—she wouldn't be able to stand Phillips' probing questions, didn't want to hear his exasperation with her—"So, Hartley, you decided to become a lab rat again"—and, besides, she didn't feel any different than she did before, at least not physically: the change certainly wasn't as drastic as the one after the serum. The tingling in her extremities still hadn't faded, but that could easily be explained by the cold. She'd refused the offer of a warmer coat and gloves, a decision she was beginning to regret.

Her shock still hadn't quite abated—instead, she was clinging onto the desperate hope that Bucky was still alive; she wouldn't be able to bear anything else. She thought of the woman she had seen so long ago on Christmas Day, the one in the tenement building across from Steve's, receiving notice that her sweetheart had been killed in action. Never had Beatrice imagined the same situation would happen to her years later. What had the woman done? Had she tried to move on with her life, keep her head held high? Or had she begun chasing ghosts, desperate to retain a past that had slipped from her grasp in the blink of an eye?

Beatrice raised her head and looked over at Steve. Steve, who was standing with his back straight and speaking to the Commandos in an even tone, discussing their next strategy. Steve, who couldn't afford to break under the pressure, under the weight of the SSR's expectations for him. He had to go on. Only Beatrice could hear the stark loneliness in his voice, in the set of his jaw. Occasionally he would glance to the left, as if looking for Bucky, before remembering what had happened. It hurt Beatrice even more to look at him, to watch his internal struggle.

But oughtn't she to do the same? To mourn her fiancé privately and go back to the way things had been before, to return to her duties as an army nurse and hopefully prevent the death of more soldiers who might be someone else's fiancé? Compared to Steve, who had known Bucky for nearly his entire life, Beatrice had only known him for two years. What right did she have to shut everyone else out?

Her gaze moved from Steve to Zola, who was in handcuffs being interrogated by Phillips; as far as Beatrice could tell, he still hadn't spoken—refusing to reveal anything in case Schmidt sent soldiers to rescue him. She guessed Phillips would try a different tactic once they were back in England. A sadistic part of her wanted to be the one to face him, to make him suffer for what he had done to her and Bucky. She felt her muscles tense at the thought.

Ivan shifted from where he was still standing beside her, reaching for something in the depths of his overcoat. He cleared his throat and held out a plain envelope marked only with her name. "Sergeant Barnes wanted me to give this to you in case something ever happened to him," he told her. "I believe it is several months old. I have not read it myself, but please do not let yourself fall too far into grief, Beatrice. That is not what he would have wanted for you."

Beatrice bit her tongue instead of snapping back a retort that she knew Bucky wouldn't want her to grieve over him, that she was sick of everyone telling her that as if she hadn't known him better than they had. But she knew Ivan's intentions were good, so she kept quiet and waited until he had left her alone to read it before she tore into the letter, her heart skipping a beat when she saw Bucky's familiar handwriting:

Rosie,

You know what, I was going to write this letter months ago, back before we even started this mission. I kept putting it off, maybe because I thought it would be like hammering the final nail into the coffin. But I swear, Rosie, we were ambushed today at Vaduz, and I was staring right at a blaster for five seconds before I got rid of the Hydra bastard. Don't worry—we all made it out this time, although Falsworth swears his mustache will never be the same again. Listen, my point is that I know I'm not gonna live forever, and I could be killed any day—if you're reading this, I am dead—and so this is my last goodbye to you. Of course it was Steve who suggested writing letters to everyone we care about to be given to them in case something happens to us. But I'm not Keats or whoever that poet is Steve pretends he doesn't read. All I can do is hope that you won't have to read this.

Look, I've always hated writing letters. But there aren't many people I care about left in the world. I'm only writing to you, Steve, and Becca. (Steve's writing a letter to you, too, but I'll be damned if I know what it says). Maybe if we all make it out of this somehow, after the war, we can read them anyway. I would have said all of this to you in person, doll, but since I can't, this is the next best thing.

Sometimes I wonder if I just imagined everything that happened when we were locked up together, that the whole thing was just a hallucination. It wouldn't be the first time. But then I'll read your letters and remember that it was real, all of it. That's the only thing I have right now, you know. I wouldn't care so much if I ended up bleeding out on a field in some godforsaken European country if it wasn't for you. The other guys think I'm pining over you, but Steve's pining over Agent Carter, so we'll call it even. Maybe I am pining. I hate even admitting it—it's a good thing I'll be dead before you read this.

I don't even remember what I was trying to say anymore. I've wasted two whole sheets of paper and I haven't said anything at all. Just—don't pine over me, Rosie. It's only acceptable to do that when the other person is alive. Survive this damn war, go back home, and keep an eye on Steve for me, no matter what he says. Marry a nice guy someday—I promise I won't be mad if you do. Just please be happy. Can you do that for me, Rosie?

God, I love you so much. Even if I lived the rest of my life with you until we're both old and gray, it still wouldn't be long enough. I'm lucky to have had as much time with you as I did. And I don't care how selfish this sounds: please don't forget about me. Keep this letter and don't forget. I don't think I'd be able to stand it if you did.

And here's the last thing: I'm not gonna say goodbye to you. You know I'm not religious, but it would be stupid of me to assume that we're never going to see each other again. Maybe there is some sort of life after this, and maybe we'll both end up there. Wherever "there" is, I'll be waiting for you.

Bucky

Beatrice started to cry again halfway through the letter, and had to pause and swallow the lump in her throat before she could finish it. She read it through three times, her eyes tracing the familiar curve of the letters, the ink often scratched out and blotted, as if he had poured his heart out and then worried it hadn't been good enough. She felt as if her own heart was about to burst, each word piercing into her like a knife. And Beatrice imagined Bucky sprawled at the bottom of a ravine, alone and slowly dying, and the bleakness of the image spurred her into desperate action.

She straightened up from the rock she'd been leaning against and brushed the snow from her clothes, buttoning her coat up to her chin. Her gaze traveled to Steve again, wanting him to join her, but there was no way he would agree to it. For one thing, he was too valuable to the SSR, and he had accepted that they wouldn't be able to find Bucky, alive or not, and the chance that he had been killed on impact was far greater than the risks they would take searching for him—at least according to Phillips. But they weren't personally responsible for Bucky's fall, no matter how many times Steve and Ivan insisted that they were. No, the blame rested squarely on Beatrice's shoulders. It had been her who accepted the mission, her who had lost against Lorraine, her who had taken too long after recovering from the Tesseract instead of trying to find Zola earlier. So it had to be her who searched for him.

Beatrice waited until nobody was paying her any mind before stealing over to the emergency supply crates and rooting around until she found a flashlight. She estimated that, if all went well, she could be back before nightfall—and in time for Howard's return. It would take her a couple of hours to traverse the mountains until she reached the ravine where Bucky had fallen, and she would likely spend several more hours looking for him. The snow would completely bury everything if she waited any longer.

After stuffing a pack of flares into her pockets, she glanced surreptitiously around to make sure no one saw what she was doing before pulling up the hood of her coat and beginning to forge a path up the mountain. The snowdrifts were so high that she lost sight of the camp within minutes, and her footprints were immediately covered by the snow. The radio transceiver in her hand crackled to life, but she ignored its beeping.

It was long, hard work climbing up the rest of the mountain, soon becoming an effort just to put one foot in front of the other. The blowing snow obscured everything more than ten feet ahead—she'd had to wrap her scarf around her face so that only her eyes were uncovered. Only the thought of Bucky kept her going, and the chance that he was suffering even more than her. If it hadn't been for the serum, Beatrice thought, she would have collapsed long ago. No ordinary human could brave this for longer than half an hour. Perhaps there was something to thank Zola for, after all.

She knew she had nearly reached the summit when the air began to grow thinner. She was breathing harder than normal, and was forced to stop and brace her hands against her knees, gasping. Her head spun crazily. I'm almost there, she thought dizzily. Getting down will be easier.

And still it was the thought of Bucky that carried her forward, even when her face began to grow numb under the layers of clothing and she could barely breathe. Beatrice gingerly took a step forward, blind, and tested the weight of a rocky outcrop under her feet. Descending the mountain may have been physically easier than climbing it, but it was much slower work than she had expected.

The rock held the weight of one foot, and she carefully lowered herself onto it, balancing precariously as she felt around for the safest way down. Avalanches were her main concern now; the risk of one happening during a storm was far greater than when the skies were clear. She likely would have little to no warning before one hit, with nowhere to take shelter—all she could do was hope that her luck would hold.

Beatrice dropped to the ground again, landing in a crouch—but she hadn't prepared for the layer of ice hidden under the snow. Her feet scrabbled for purchase as she cartwheeled wildly, grabbing for the rock; but already loose from her weight, it crumbled under her fingertips and she fell to the ground with a panicked yelp, unable to stop her momentum as she tumbled head over heels down the steep edge, rocks digging into her sides as she rolled over and over, sending a spray of snow into the air.

When she finally came to a painful stop, her entire body was covered in bruises and she could barely move. Beatrice spat out a mouthful of snow and tried to turn her head, but the stab of pain that followed nearly caused her to black out. She fell back onto her side, panting. She had failed. She had failed to save Bucky, and even if the storm cleared she didn't have the strength to climb the mountain again. Worst of all, she had landed on her radio, snapping it in half and leaving her unable to send out a distress signal.

But she did still have the flares.

It took all of her remaining strength to reach into her pocket and pull one out, fumbling for the cap with trembling fingers. It immediately began to smoke, and Beatrice tossed it away, but it only stopped rolling a dozen feet from her. She braced herself as the spark launched into the air, a sizzling red band climbing higher and higher until it exploded in a bright blast of smoke, the sound echoing around the mountains. She prayed the others would be able to see it through the whirling snow.

She waited for what felt like hours, her heart thundering—and then, after an agonizingly long time, she heard voices in the distance. Relief flooded her body like the warmth of a fire. Beatrice could only hope she was visible.

The voices steadily grew closer, but it didn't take long before it became clear there was something very wrong. She didn't recognize them at all, and worse, they were speaking Russian.

Someone barked harshly at her, but she didn't understand a word. Beatrice blinked slowly as several faces hovered above her, unfamiliar men who were bundled up so tightly against the cold in fur coats and ushanka hats that their eyes weren't even visible. And all had their weapons pointed directly at her.

It wasn't the SSR at all, but a group of Soviet soldiers. Beatrice had no way of communicating with them; her Russian was poor and she wasn't even sure she was able to speak.

The one who had snapped at her repeated the same question, this time with something menacing in his voice. When Beatrice still didn't respond, he made an angry noise and prodded her with the tip of his boot, turning her over. The movement sent shockwaves of pain through her, and she struggled to push herself up, her arms shaking madly, but she barely lasted five seconds before her muscles gave out and she collapsed onto the ground again, her cheek pressed against the snow. Her eyes drifted closed, and she knew no more.