(Author's Note: So I actually finished writing this story, like, two years ago, and I never got around to uploading the ending online because apparently I'm a bad person. Sorry.)

The Age of Marvels:

Chapter Thirty Six

Captain America

and the

Invaders

Part Thirty Six

During the darkest days of World War II, America stood united against the threat of the Nazi Germany war machine. Our Greatest Generation sacrificed everything in order to stem the forces of oppression from overrunning our very planet, led under the fearless banner of the greatest hero of our time, Captain America. Inspired by his courageous example, and with the aid of his misfit band of Invaders, Captain America led the forces of freedom to victory, changing his world forever.

New Jersey

The home of Mr. Barnes

Words had no place in the deathly silent room where Colonel Fury and Mr. Barnes sat that morning. The unimaginable horror of Namor's experience at Buchenwald had stolen those words away, like a thief in the night. A darkness had descended upon Fury's soul that could never be truly washed away. Some stories are never forgotten, becoming a part of the listener as surely as love or hope ever could, something that the listener will carry with them for the rest of their life. That was the kind of story that James Barnes had told that morning, and it was not something that could simply be shrugged off.

Thankfully, life goes on, and the thunderous pounding of feet that stampeded down the stairs saw to that as mother and son descended upon the living room on their way to a hectic breakfast.

"Morning Grampa!"

"Morning Dad," Barnes' daughter chirped, stopping to give the old man a kiss along with a concerned look. "You two didn't stay up all nighttalking, did you?"

"Don't worry, ma'am. I made sure he got a little sleep," Fury answered with a smile, relieved that the commotion had dispersed the fog of depression that had previously enveloped the room. "Can I help with breakfast?"

"Oh no, that's okay," she replied as she swiftly made her way to the kitchen to check up on her son, who was busy getting himself into God only knows what. "We have to be going in a second, anyway."

Fury sighed as he settled back into the couch, keeping a wary eye on the kitchen as the small child rampaged through the room, his mouth flying at a mile a minute as he wolfed down an entire bowl of Super Sugar Choco Nukes while his mom kept thinking about how grateful she was that she wouldn't have to put up with her hyperactive son while he was at school.

"Just ignore them," Barnes said dismissively, as he sat up in his chair with a mischievous glint in his eye. "This is the part of the story you're really gonna want to hear."

"What do you mean?" Fury asked, confused.

The old man's excitement grew as his infectious smile widened, "I'm about to tell you what happened to me while the Invaders were scattered across Europe..."

April 20, 1945

The resounding drone of the propeller engines dominated the bomb bay of the enormous B-17 Flying Fortress as it made its way ponderously through the skies overlooking Germany during its return trip back to Allied territory. Using the strategic Allied bombing of Germany as cover, its mission had been to fly a high ranking member of the famous Invaders team into the enemy's camp in order to capture an enemy officer, and then wait for extraction. The mission had been a rousing success. Lately Nazi forces in the area had been beaten all the way back to the edges of Berlin itself by the relentless Allied assault. The war was going well. Soldiers were saying that it might be only a matter of days or weeks until the end of the war in Europe, a miracle that many of them had never dared to hope for.

But the war wasn't over yet, and the situation in the cramped, noisy bombing bay proved it. During the course of the long flight, the crew of the B-17 had learned to give the eccentric Invader his space, and now their strategy was paying off. They had expected their passenger to be a cool, collected, respectable hero, (he was a member of the most celebrated unit in the Allied forces, after all), but what they had gotten much more resembled some kind of bumbling buffoon. How he had ever managed to secure the target at all, none of them knew.

"Damn it! How the heck am I ever going to get this thing back on?" James Barnes shouted in frustration as he once again tried to jam his advanced prosthetic arm back into his shoulder. "Why'd they have to go and make this thing so complicated anyway?"

The other passenger, the Nazi officer that James had been sent to capture, just sat on the floor in the corner, tightly bound and helpless, giving his captor a confused look from across the bomb bay.

"Maybe you should try pressing the button on the forearm?" the officer suggested, trying to be helpful.

"Maybe you should shut up!" James snapped, pressing the tiny button despite himself as he fiddled with the prosthetic limb unsuccessfully.

The button clicked into place and the robotic appendage seemed to go limp, which James took as a good sign...until it began shuddering and the hand fell off. James cursed again, livid with rage, as he bent over and tried to scoop up his metal hand while still holding onto the arm with his one remaining good hand. Looking on with something resembling amusement, the German prisoner had to admit that he would have found the whole debacle highly entertaining if he wasn't currently on his way to a prisoner of war camp. He wondered why the rest of the crew wasn't trying to help their irate commander, but then he conceded that if he was in their position, he would want to be associated with the Patriot as little as possible too.

The German thought back to earlier that day when he had been captured. His squad had been decimated during the aerial bombardment, and cut off from the rest of their forces, and taken shelter in an abandoned factory to wait out the mass of bombs falling from the sky. That was when the Patriot had struck, coming out of nowhere and descending upon his men like some kind of mythological force of nature.

Despite his goofy, oafish nature, the Patriot had fought with a speed and skill that boggled the mind. The German officer had never seen anything like it, and had been forced to admit to himself that his men hadn't stood a chance. The best he could do had been to turn tail and run, and when the Patriot had pursued him, tackling him as he had fled the building, he could only struggle as best as he could before he had been subdued. Now he was on his way to the Allied base camp for questioning. He was a high ranking Nazi officer, a valuable source of rare information. They would make sure they got every bit of info he had, using whatever methods they had too. The German gulped in fear as images of horrific torture flashed through his mind. Well, at least he had gone down fighting. During the struggle he had apparently managed to tear the Patriot's mechanized arm off, and he had been trying to reattach it ever since.

The officer would have liked an opportunity to steal the artificial limb and bring it back to command. He had never seen anything like it. Prosthetic limbs were practically nonexistent in Germany, especially ones as advanced as the Patriot's. His superiors would have rewarded him generously for delivering technology like that, but that was just a dream now. There was no telling what his future would bring now that he was in the hands of the enemy. Oh well, if this was the beginning of the end, the officer reasoned with a morbid grin on his face, at least he would go down smiling.

"Crap crap crap crap CRAP!" James shouted, throwing the arm to the floor and then stomping on it for good measure. "Why'd you have to tear my damn arm off? It's not like it came with an instruction manual or anything!"

The German shrugged, trying to look as casual as possible, "Maybe if you untied me I could give you a...hand?"

James stopped what he was doing to throw the Nazi a dirty look, "Was that a pun? That was horrible. I didn't go through months of rehab so I could get mocked by incapacitated Nazis, okay? Try that one more time and I'll drop you out the cargo hold."

"Well at least you don't see me running around throwing tantrums like an infant," the officer muttered to himself.

"I heard that!" James shouted, picking his arm off the floor and throwing it at the German.

"Ow!" the officer shouted as the prosthetic limb hit him in the head and clattered to the floor. "Hey, you should be more careful with that. I bet it cost you an arm and a leg."

"Okay, that's it!" James shouted, his frustration getting the better of him. "I hope that pun was worth it, you damn Kraut, because it's the last one you'll ever make!"

As James marched over to the helpless German, grabbed him, and started dragging him to the lever that would open the cargo hold, exposing him to hundreds of feet of empty air as he plummeted to his death, the officer began to lose it, "Okay, I'll never do it again! Please spare me, I beg you! I think you look very dashing with only one arm!"

James sighed, realizing he could never have killed a helpless prisoner in cold blood anyway, "What the heck, I guess you can stick around. Command would be pretty upset at me if I went to all the trouble to capture you only to kill you anyway. The information you have on enemy troop movements and military locations makes you a pretty valuable prisoner, after all."

"Oh thank you!" replied the German, relieved. "You won't be disappointed! I'll give you all the information you want! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

"Yeah yeah, give it a rest, will you?" James snapped, slouching down into a sitting position against the wall by the prisoner.

"I guess that makes you pretty armless after all, doesn't it?" the Nazi quipped, unable to resist one last pun.

Wincing in pain, the German officer finally decided it was time to shut up as James reached around and slapped him in the face with his own detached robotic arm.

An hour later saw James laying exhausted on the floor next to the still restrained German officer, his discarded arm laying uselessly next to him. The Patriot had finally given up trying to reattach the thing about thirty minutes ago, deciding that it would be easier just to wait until he was back at base in the hopes that one of the medics or mechanics would know how to fix it. In the meantime, frustration and exhaustion had gotten the better of him, as the only sound resonating through the bomb bay was that of the unceasing propeller engines which continued to hum through the awkward silence that had claimed the two enemy soldiers.

"You speak English pretty well for an evil Nazi," said James, his voice lancing through the quiet.

"Thank you," the officer replied after a hesitant pause. "I grew up in a somewhat wealthy family, and since my parents could afford to send me to an elite private school, I learned to speak English, French, and Russian fluently. ...And also I'm not evil."

James snorted, "Yeah, whatever, Kraut. I've seen with my own two eyes the depths you guys have stooped to in order to accomplish your goals. You're monsters, each and every one of you."

The German lost focus as he seemed to stare off into the distance, "...Perhaps in a way you're right. But we are not all of us monsters. Many of us were just following orders."

Hatred blazed in James' eyes as he glared at the prisoner, "Yeah, I've heard that before. Don't think that excuse erases all the atrocities you've committed."

The officer stared at the floor, unable to meet James' gaze, "...I agree," he finally, hesitatingly admitted. "A man has to take responsibilities for his actions, regardless of the circumstances surrounding them. But doesn't that apply to you as well? What kind of sins have you committed in the service of your country?"

"The only thing I've done since the beginning of this war is kill Nazis," James replied with a growl in his voice. "...And annoy Atlantean monarchs."

"You carry out your orders," the German continued, his tone hollow and unfocused, his voice now void of mirth. "Your superiors tell you to kill Nazis, so that's what you do. You follow your orders unquestioningly, unflinchingly...like some kind of automaton. After all, as a soldier, your orders are all that keep you going. They're the only thing that gets you up in the morning. They're the only thing strong enough to motivate you to risk your life in this war day after day, right?"

"I follow my orders to protect my country and the people I love," James replied, resolutely. "I follow my orders because it's the right thing to do."

"And in that way we are no different!" the German shouted, pounding his foot on the floor for emphasis. "We soldiers of the Rhineland do not fight this war because we are somehow evil, or because we wish to rule and oppress our neighbors. Many of us fight simply to protect our nation and our families. How does that make us any more evil than you?"

"Whatever, man. Don't try to feed me that bull," James scowled. "Declaring war against half the planet and murdering hundreds of thousands of people isn't how you protect your country. It's just wrong."

"You do not understand," the officer replied, his voice so low now that it was almost as if he was talking to himself. "You Americans have it so easy. You have an entire continent to call your own, full of abundant space and natural resources. You have no one to answer to but yourselves, and on the rare occasion that you have to soil your self-righteous hands with a little distasteful work, you still come out looking like heroes because you are the ones who write the history books."

"What do you mean?" James asked, tentatively.

"The way you Americans talk, you would have the rest of the world believe that you are like angels, descended from heaven to save us from ourselves, but in reality, nothing could be farther from the truth," the German explained, his voice heavy with contempt. "You have just as much blood on your hands as the rest of us, you just cover it up with your money and power. Consider the British during your little revolution. You abandoned your parent nation over a minor tax dispute that the rest of the world would have considered perfectly acceptable. Consider the Indians, and how you wiped out and relocated an entire race of people just so you could build your cities upon their land. Consider the Africans who you kidnapped and enslaved for generations in order to build the foundation of your country which supposedly offers 'freedom and justice for all'. You claim that your nation embraces tolerance and equality, but your history proves otherwise, doesn't it?"

"Okay, so maybe we're not perfect!" James shouted, his anger getting the best of them. "But at least we..."

The German didn't give him a chance to finish his sentence, "You had everything handed to you on a silver platter, and look at all the mistakes you still made! We, on the other hand, had to build ourselves back up from nothing, NOTHING!"

"What are you talking about?" James asked, despite himself.

"We Germans are a proud people, a strong people," the officer said, his voice cracking with emotion. "Germany is a nation that has proven that it has what it takes to stand the test of time, but after the last war...we were broken. Our country was in shambles, our economy was unsalvageable. We were a people who had always believed that we were meant for something great, a higher destiny, a grand purpose...but we had been reduced to living in the mud, surviving off the scraps of our once proud nation like common beggars."

"Hey man, the depression hit everyone pretty hard," James snapped, still annoyed.

The German shook his head, "Not like this, it didn't. We had no food, no money, no hope, no future. Our people were starving in the streets, forced to work as slave labor for next to no money. Our currency was worthless, worse than worthless really. People had even begun to go back to a crude barter and trade system just to survive. Some had started to whisper that we were living in the end times."

"Now imagine that you and everyone you loved was going through that," continued the officer, looking up at James for the first time. "And then imagine that suddenly an unexpected ray of light shone through the darkness that had consumed everything you held dear. For us, Adolf Hitler was that ray of light. Sure, to the rest of the world it sounds crazy now, but at the time, in the beginning, it wasn't about war or hatred or killing...it was just about feeding our people, about rebuilding something prosperous, about rediscovering a sense of pride in ourselves."

"Hitler offered us a way out. He said we didn't deserve to be toiling in the muck, wallowing in our own squalid filth. We deserved to be back on top, where we were always meant to be, an example to the rest of the world of the best we could be, and what's more, he even had a realistic plan to make it happen."

"We're all adults here," the German said, still looking straight at James. "We all know that politicians say a lot of things. They make a lot of promises, swearing that they can bring about real change and prosperity, but how many of them actually follow through with their empty words? How many of them really bring about the social change and better way of life that they speak of? Well imagine our surprise when someone finally started delivering on their promises. It was like a miracle! The Nazi party was breathing life back into a land that had been slowly choking on its own waste, and now things were finally turning around to the better."

"Adolf Hitler is insane," James responded, emotionlessly.

"Maybe so, but at the time he was a genius, and he was exactly what our country needed," explained the officer, his eyes growing wistful as his mind traveled back through his memories. "Imagine that your family was starving and someone brought you food. Imagine you were sick, and someone brought you medicine. Imagine you were doomed to poverty, and someone brought you jobs and education and opportunity. That man would be a hero to you, and that's what Hitler was to us."

"In the blink of an eye the old order was swept away, and before we knew it, the Third Reich, the glorious new empire of a reinvigorated Germany, was in power," the officer proudly proclaimed. "And we all enthusiastically welcomed it with open arms."

"It was only then that some of us began to see the wolf that we had opened our doors to," continued the German, his voice burdened once again. "The Fuhrer's goal may have been prosperity and strength, but his dreams were fueled by hatred and violence. He preached a gospel of fear and blame that the people ravenously consumed. If we had been filthy and poor, it was the fault of the Jews. If we had been crushed and downtrodden, the blame lay upon the rest of the world. We as a nation were above that, we were above them, and it was the Fuhrer's goal to show them all. For a country that was starved for self-worth and purpose, Hitler gave us everything we needed and more. We now had a glorious destiny and a higher calling. He was just what the doctor ordered for a sick and desperate people."

"But didn't anything he said seem wrong to you?" James asked, confused. "I mean, the man was preaching death and destruction on a biblical scale. Didn't that trigger any mental alarms for anyone?"

"Oh, there was the fringe minority that seemed to take issue with the Fuhrer's message," the German nodded. "But we as a people were truly desperate, truly broken, and he spoke with such passion, such conviction! Let me tell you, I was present at one of his rallies, and the pride which swelled in my soul at his words, the strength I had been missing in my life for so long, was really overwhelming. I had never felt such love for my country. It was nothing short of a religious experience."

"Sounds like a cult to me," the Patriot murmured under his breath.

"Looking back on it, you may not have been far from the truth," the officer admitted. "Soon the mantras of the Third Reich had swept through the entire nation. The gears of war were beginning to turn. We Germans are no strangers to war, and every man, woman, and child could smell it in the air. But we were masters of our own destiny now. We controlled the hands of fate, and we were determined to build our new empire despite the petty protestations of the unworthy and cowardly few protestors. Germany had been denied its rightful place for too long, and our people had suffered and died because of it, and now we were going to seize the future, no matter the cost."

James remained silent as he stared at the prisoner with an expression which lingered somewhere between disgust and amazement. For the first time he was beginning to see the German as more of a human being and less as a demonized walking target. For the first time he realized that there was a reason behind their madness. He realized that hidden somewhere behind the shooting and violence and death, behind the wall of hatred that they presented to the world, that perhaps these Nazi soldiers were just men after all...men who were perhaps not so different from himself. After all the suffering and tragedy they'd visited upon the world, after all the death and danger they'd put James through personally, how could it possibly be that these Nazi bastards were somehow people too?

"It was all going so well at first," the German continued, his voice carrying a note of melancholy that was almost heartbreaking. "We swept across Europe as if we already owned it. We conquered all in our path, just the way we always knew we would...but then things got...complicated."

"The more we fought, the more of my own men I sent to their deaths, the more I wondered why we were fighting," continued the officer. "The longer the war dragged on, the less sense it made to me. I looked around and I saw no glory in our domination of Europe. I saw no justice or peace achieved in taking our rightful place among the world. All I saw, as I looked into the eyes and faces of those over whom we now ruled, was suffering and death, and immeasurable sadness. There was no righteousness in our actions...only cruelty. There was no prosperity to be found in this war...only destruction."

"After that I began to question the words of our Fuhrer more and more, and I felt as if my eyes had been opened for the first time," the German admitted with a hint of reluctance. "But free thinking and open speech are not practices that are encouraged in the Third Reich. Anything less than absolute obedience is strictly punished, and it soon became obvious that Hitler would not hesitate to sink to abhorrent depths to make sure we knew it."

The officer's voice began to break once more, "People began to go missing. Men and women who had spoken out, even casually, against the government began vanishing off the street. The camps and executions which had until that point been reserved for Jews, gypsies, and other dissidents were now tools with which to punish anyone who did anything less than wholeheartedly support the Nazi Party."

"We soldiers may have started fighting this war for our nation and our families," said the officer, staring at James with unnerving intensity. "But most of us continue fighting only out of pure fear. For what chance do our loved ones back home have against our government if we desert our posts? The families of deserters and traitors are shown no mercy when faced with the brutal cruelty of the Third Reich."

A hush had fallen over the bomb bay, as the officer's soft voice was nearly overcome by the incessant droning of the engines, "It became clear to us some time ago that we follow the whims of a mad king. Our Fuhrer has been consumed by insanity, and we are all of us forced to go on marching to his demented tune. We are no better than we were before the war. We are slaves to a government that we allowed to take advantage of us in our blindness, and now we are powerless to stop it. We were so obsessed with glory and perfection that we sold our souls and allowed all of this to happen. What have we done? We have plunged the world into fire and ruin, and now, God help us, we have gone too far to stop."

The German officer looked back up to James, tears threatening to spill from his watery eyes, "I am not a monster, American. I am just a man...just like you. You may judge the Reich for the horrors it has thrust upon the world, but don't blame me. Aren't my people just as much victims of these times as yours are, nothing but products of the hour and place of our birth?"

For a long while James Barnes stared back at the Nazi officer with cold, merciless eyes, "I don't think so, you son of a bitch. You may not be thrilled with yourselves for the unintended consequences of your decisions, but you still can't escape the fact that you all allowed this to happen. You can try to sell me your little sob story til you're blue in the face, but no amount of tragedy can justify what you've done. You can go burn in hell for all I care."

And with that said, the Patriot picked himself up and began walking away to the pilot's cabin at the nose of the plane, leaving the German officer staring down as silent teardrops sprinkled the floor beneath him.

But just before James reached the cabin the bomber was rocked by a violent explosion. The entire aircraft shuddered and quaked while gale force winds and shrapnel shrieked and screamed throughout the interior of the plane, throwing the crew into utter chaos.

James made sure to keep a firm grip on his prosthetic arm as he noticed the B-17 begin a sharp descent and the sound of its engines grew sharper and sharper, a sure sign that something was wrong. Gritting his teeth against the wind that whipped past him, he forced himself into the pilot's cabin to assess the damage.

James' eyes widened as his hand gripped the door frame so tightly that it started to ache. The situation was a dire one. They must have been hit by some kind of anti-aircraft artillery just as they were approaching the German border. The explosion must have mostly caught the bomber's nose, as most of the glass canopy had been destroyed, killing both the pilot and co-pilot in its wake and severely damaging the control console.

James had no time to feel sorrow for the two souls who had just lost their lives as he crouched over the console, trying to ascertain whether or not they could somehow manage to still reach their destination, but it was obvious even to his untrained eye that any further travel would prove impossible, the bomber had suffered far too much damage. All they could do now was evacuate the plane and await rescue, which was not an unrealistic proposition since Nazi activity was practically nonexistent in the area.

"Patriot, what do we do, sir?" asked one of the surviving crewman as he leaned into the cockpit, anxiously.

"Grab the parachutes and evacuate," James barked, his attention focused on the plane's increasingly sharp downward trajectory as he stared out the blasted window. "This crate's going down. I'll be right behind you."

But as James turned to follow the crewman back through the aircraft, something caught his eye from outside the shattered cockpit. Drawing closer and closer at an alarming rate as the plane continued its descent was a tiny German village that hadn't been on their maps. Squinting his eyes against the howling wind for a better look, the Patriot estimated that it couldn't be home to any more than a few hundred people. Unfortunately, that was exactly where the doomed bomber was heading, and if something wasn't done to stop it, when the enormous Flying Fortress crashed into the countryside it would destroy nearly the entire village in the process, wiping out its unsuspecting citizens forever.

James' heart stopped for a moment as he realized that he only had two choices. He could evacuate with the rest of the crew, saving himself at the cost of the innocent villager's lives, or he could stay on board to try and steer the plane as best he could away from the hamlet...sacrificing himself in the inevitable crash in order to spare the civilians. With the bomber dropping as fast is it was, and already damaged by the artillery explosion, it was extremely unlikely that he would survive the crash landing, but if it meant saving lives, did he really have a choice? Before he knew it a tight ball of fear had formed in his gut as he realized that he had already made his decision, and with a determined glint in his eyes, he prepared to seize the controls...

"What's going on, chief?" inquired an unexpected voice with a decidedly pronounced German accent.

"Gah!" James shrieked, whirling around to face the captured German officer, who was leaning against the wall in order to stand upright in the bucking, crippled aircraft. "How the heck did you get over here so fast with your legs all tied up like that?"

"Hey! Do not besmirch the legendary skills of the Dobern Sack Hop Race Champion of 1927!" the officer shouted, his voice rising to a fever pitch.

"Woah...calm down..."

"And 1928!"

"Okay, so you're good at hopping!" James shouted, cutting off the irate prisoner. "Can you focus? We're kind of in a situation, here."

"Oh my god," said the officer, his voice suddenly serious. "We're going down over that village, aren't we? All those people..."

"Don't worry, save yourself," James replied, kicking the pilot's body out of his seat as he took a better position in front of the stick. "I'll stay on board to see if I can pilot this thing away from the village. You just get out of here."

And with that, James reached for his knife and roughly cut through the German's bonds with one deft flick of his arm. With an astonished look on his face, the officer glanced down as the ropes that had restrained him fell to his feet, rendering him once again a free man. For a long minute he flirted with the idea of abandoning his captor and making a run for it, but it soon became clear that his freedom may have come at a high price.

James was having difficulty with the bomber's controls. The stick wasn't responding like it was supposed to, having been damaged in the initial explosion. Many of the dials and indicators weren't working at all, and the constant roar and might of the unrelenting wind made it next to impossible for the Patriot to manage it all with only one arm. His robotic limb was useless as the Patriot was busy sitting on it in a ridiculous effort to make sure that it wasn't blown away; and all the while James was striving in vain to take control of the giant unmanageable aircraft, the German village was looming ever closer.

And then, just like that, the officer knew what he had to do.

With one swift motion, the Nazi reached down and yanked the metallic arm out from under the Patriot, and before James had a chance to react, he reached back and struck the American with a savage blow to the head. James reeled back, nearly knocked unconscious as his body sagged like a rag doll and his vision blurred before him. He didn't know what had come over the German officer, but clearly it had been a mistake to free him. James didn't think it would be right to force the Nazi to die along with the B-17, it just seemed like too cruel a fate. But if it meant saving the lives of the villagers, then he certainly would have done it. If he didn't act fast, an entire settlement would be wiped out because of his own bad judgement call, and he couldn't have that on his conscience.

Unfortunately, he still didn't have full control over his own body, and by the time the stars and blackness had faded from his dazed eyes, he realized that he wasn't in the cockpit anymore at all, and had instead been dragged by the officer to the rear of the plane, where the rest of the crew had already evacuated.

"What...what's happening?" James asked, his speech slurred. "What are you doing?"

"Don't bother thanking me, you're all ready to go," the German said, his voice carrying a hint of forced cheer. "Just think happy thoughts and remember, don't look down."

"I don't understand," replied James, shaking his head to clear it as he realized that he'd just been strapped into a parachute. "What's going on?"

The German officer stopped what he was doing and looked James in the eyes, "I know what you were trying to do, Patriot. You knew the bomber was going to destroy that village when we crashed, so you elected to stay behind and guide it away, sacrificing your own life to save the villagers. But look at yourself, you're literally falling to pieces. There's no way you would have been able to fly this thing with only one arm...so I'm going to have to do it for you."

"What!?" James exclaimed, unable to believe what he was hearing. How could a Nazi, the embodiment of everything he fought against, be willing to make that kind of sacrifice for people he'd never even met before?

"Listen, we don't have much time," the German snapped, shoving James' prosthetic arm into his stunned grasp. "You have to get out of here now! I'll make sure the village is safe, okay?"

"But...you'll die..." James stuttered, a part of him wondering why he suddenly cared so much for a man who only a few hours earlier he had been more than willing to kill.

"These people are my countrymen," the officer explained, his voice filled with a solemn strength. "They're not soldiers or radicals, they're just men and women like me and you. Too many innocent lives have already paid the ultimate price in this war, and these people shouldn't have to suffer for our mistakes."

James felt tears welling up in his eyes as he looked at the German officer for what seemed to be the first time. The Patriot was no stranger to sacrifice. Ever since he had first been recruited by Project Rebirth, he had witnessed time and again how Steve Rogers was willing to put his life on the line for what he believed in, and those actions had made him more than just a man, they had made him a legend. James himself had sacrificed so much in this war already, along with each and every one of his fellow Invaders, but that was what was expected of them. That was what the Invaders were for, to shoulder those kinds of extraordinary burdens so that nobody else would ever have to.

But now for some reason, seeing that kind of sacrifice being made by none other than a German, a Nazi, the dirty bastards that had cost them all so much during their insane, genocidal march of tyranny...it was something that James had never expected to see. This wasn't some larger than life figure who could somehow take these kinds of risks and save the day without a scratch or second thought. This wasn't even an Allied soldier who was sacrificing himself in order to fulfill his duty to his nation. No, this was just a washed up nameless Nazi officer who loved his countrymen and hoped that this one final act would help atone for a lifetime of mistakes.

"Just promise me one thing," the German pleaded, his voice choking with emotion once again. "Promise that when you think of me, you won't remember me as a monster. I just...I just don't think I could bear it."

James looked his friend in the eye, secure in the knowledge that right then, during that fleeting instant, the two enemy soldiers somehow truly understood one another, "I promise to remember you the way you are right now...as a hero."

A moment of silence passed between the two soldiers, until James started to move towards the door, preparing for the jump that would save his life, "By the way, what's your name, soldier?" he asked, calling over his shoulder over the noise of the wind.

"Ernst Schuhmacher!" the officer shouted his reply, turning his back on the American as he began making his way back to the cockpit.

"Godspeed, Ernst Schuhmacher," James said to himself as he took a deep breath, clutched his robotic arm tightly, and leaped from the plane into the endless, empty air above rural Germany.

Present Day

The home of Mr. Barnes

"I never saw Ernst Schuhmacher again," old man Barnes finished as he leaned back into his chair with a tired groan. "He died in the crash that reduced the B-17 Flying Fortress into a giant pile of useless rubble. But his selfless sacrifice saved the lives of everyone in that entire village, and even though he was a Nazi officer, an enemy, he will always be remembered as a hero to me."

"That's an incredible story," Fury replied, his mind once again returning to the real world as Barnes finished his tale. "It's funny, we spend so much time demonizing the enemy during war, that it's easy to forget how human they really are."

The old man nodded, "I never saw the Nazis the same way after that. No matter how justified we were or how necessary it was, it always felt so wrong to me...killing a man on the battlefield. For every life I took I felt like a little piece of myself had died along with him."

"But at least this story has a happy ending," Barnes continued, his chipper tone lightening the atmosphere. "Turns out they erected a statue of old Ernst in the town square of the village, and now it's growing and thriving like never before. Those people will never forget what Ernst did for them. He's a hero to that town. How do you like that?"

Fury returned the old man's smile with his own, "I think Ernst would be proud of the nation that Germany has turned into since the war. And I think that he probably had a bigger role in that than he ever gave himself credit for."