Now that everyone's healed up from Paris, it's time for another mission, which probably means they'll be getting into more trouble. Another sneaky little Hydra plot is afoot, and Steve is going to have to push the limits of what the serum can do.
Peggy and Bucky had been cleared to go back to school, and after another couple of days, Nurse Rains declared them both fit for active duty again. Steve was kind of skeptical about that, and was glad they didn't have any missions coming up immediately to test it. He wasn't aware of how badly he was hovering over the two of them—he thought he was just making sure they were okay—until Peggy threatened to turn him into a cat again if he didn't back off.
"I'm not made of glass, Steve," she snapped, slapping his hand away from her arm. "I can walk up the bloody stairs without hurting myself."
"Sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, I…" He shook his head. He knew magic could heal a lot of things, and that the Healers at St. Mungo's were more than capable, and that she was fine. He knew she was fine. He just couldn't shake the image of that hole in her stomach, blood that was darker than it should have been pumping out of it way too fast. Couldn't shake the feeling of her blood coating his hands, warm and slick, or the way she shivered in his arms. Couldn't stop hearing her little whimpers of pain or the way her breathing started to gurgle as blood got into her lungs.
Her face softened. "I know it was scary, what happened," she said. "But I'm okay now. I really am."
"Peggy, you almost died," he said softly. "Right there in my arms. I don't know what I…" His voice had started to shake, so he stopped and swallowed hard. He couldn't imagine his life without her in it.
She stood up on her toes and kissed him. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry." She kissed him again, then moved her hands down to pull her shirt out from where it was tucked into her skirt. "But look," she went on. Steve could feel his face heating up as she pulled her shirt up, but she took one of his hands and guided it to the side of her stomach. She placed it over the faint white line that was the only indication she'd been hurt at all—the skin beneath his fingers was cool and smooth and whole. "I'm really alright now."
He nodded and dropped his hand, looking away as she tucked her shirt back in. She was smiling at him when he looked back up. "You're very sweet," she told him. "But I'm fine. And I'm going back to work whether you want me to or not. So you can either let me get on with it, or get out of the way." She said it nicely, but she meant it, so Steve nodded.
He held open the door to Phillips' office for her and followed her to her table in the corner. "How's it coming?" he asked, nodding at the pile of papers Jim and Jacques and Monty had dug out of Coleman's house.
"Good," she said with a nod. "I've been over most of it, and there's no indication Coleman and his partners were working with Hydra. They were just wizards with no scruples and a bit of brains trying to make some money." She ducked down to open a hidden compartment under her desk that Steve knew was there but didn't know how to open. "Actually," she went on, straightening up with a slim folder in her hands. "The fact that mission went so well has been rather helpful."
"Went so well?" Steve repeated incredulously. "Peggy, you got shot!"
"Yes," she agreed. "But not because we were ambushed, or had bad intelligence, or anything like that. Whoever our spy is did not feel the need to sabotage this mission. Hydra wanted to know what Coleman and his boys had too."
Steve hadn't thought of that. He still wouldn't say things had gone well, but she was right about the rest of it. "So, what does that mean?"
"It means I have another puzzle piece to try to fit in with the rest of them. Not a whole picture yet, but more to work with."
They worked together for a little longer before Steve left to meet Bucky and work on homework. Bucky was a little late, on account of an earlier 'homework session' he'd been conducting with Rose McTavish. He arched a curious eyebrow at Steve when he sat down. "What, you're not going to ask me about my leg?" he asked.
"I'm trying not to hover," Steve replied.
Bucky smirked. "Peggy talked to you, didn't she?"
"She threatened to turn me into another cat."
Bucky laughed. "I was wondering where you were getting the energy to hover over both of us at once. It had to be exhausting."
"Okay, you know what?" Steve started huffily.
Bucky laughed and cut him off. "It's fine, Steve. We're all good, and we've got Defense Against the Dark Arts to work on."
Steve glowered, but hefted the book up on the table and started flipping the pages. It's not like Bucky never hovered. When something was wrong with Steve, Bucky was his freaking shadow. Where did he think he'd learned it from?
They went a couple of weeks without any kind of missions coming up, and Steve was able to shove the sight of blood all over Peggy and the fire he'd felt in Bucky's leg back into the corner of his mind where he kept the stuff he didn't like to think about. Life was normal for a little while, and the most exciting thing that happened was a Third-Year somehow managing to conjure a flock of pixies that terrorized the third floor for a couple of days before they were able to be completely rounded up.
"Alright, I know this is short notice," Peggy said, having called the team in for an unexpected Tuesday afternoon briefing. "But Phillips has got an op in Zurich happening on Thursday, and he wants you lot set up security for it."
"What sort of op?" Steve asked.
"Well, that part is mostly classified," Peggy replied.
Jim arched an eyebrow. "Classified? From the people helping him?"
"Yes," Peggy said. "It's very, very delicate. I can tell you that it involves moving some people who might otherwise die if left where they were. Civilians, mostly, one of whom has information on the Tesseract."
"That's all?" Monty wondered.
"That's all I can tell you, yeah," Peggy confirmed. "I can give you a place and a time, since you'll be sorting that, but I can't tell you anything about the people."
"Okay," Steve said before anyone got too huffy about not having the whole picture. "Tell us what you can and what you need us to do."
They'd be going to Zurich in the morning. There was a safe house they could apparate into before heading to an auto parts warehouse on the south side of town. They would be using Polyjuice Potion—which none of them knew how to make but would be provided by Professor Kendall—to take on the appearance of that day's shift of security guards to get inside without a mess. (The real guards had already been apprehended and were being held in the safehouse. Their hairs would be used to complete the Polyjuice Potion, then their memories would be altered and they would be returned to work after the operation was over, none the wiser.) Once inside, they would secure and lock down the building, performing and setting up a list of spells provided by Professor Phillips that would keep the place safe, the magic undetected, and allow the place to act as a waystation for the people coming from wherever they were coming from and going wherever they were going. Once they had it all set up, S.S.R. Aurors would take over from there.
"So, we're not actually going to see any of these people?" Bucky asked.
"No," Peggy confirmed. "It's for their safety and yours. Grindelwald wants several of them, and Schmidt is after a couple as well. The fewer people they interact with on their way, the better."
"So, the Aurors taking over, they've seen the people before?" Gabe asked.
"Mm-hmm. That's why they can't do the set up—they're too busy working security."
"So, why all the Polyjuice Potion and sneaking around?" Jim wondered. "If we're not going to see or be seen anyway, why not just take out the guards inside?"
"Because this really, really secret," Peggy explained. "Any sign of magic outside the building, or any sort of trouble, will draw attention we don't want."
"Alright, cool." Jim grinned. "I've never used Polyjuice Potion before. Can I be a tall guy?"
Steve laughed. "We'll find the tallest one and let you be him."
"Sweet!" Jim exclaimed joyfully.
"And you can be the next tallest one," Steve added when Jacques protested.
The safehouse in Zurich turned out to be a little bed and breakfast run by an elderly witch and wizard. They'd been expecting the team, and showed each of the boys to a room where an unconscious security guard was tucked up asleep in a bed.
"Do not worry, Mäuschen," the old woman told Steve, reaching up to pat him on the cheek. "He sleeps, he knows nothing of this, and he will wake in his own bed unharmed." Steve had been worrying about the guards they'd be replacing. They were just regular civilian, non-magical guys who had no idea about any of this, and it seemed awfully hard on them to use them this way—especially the memory-altering part—but he hadn't been the one to set up this part of the plan. He was glad it wasn't going to hurt any of them.
Steve pulled the flask of Polyjuice Potion from his bag, his lip curling up as he looked at it. It was gray and thick and sort of chunky-looking, and he was pleasantly surprised when he plucked one of his guard's hairs and dropped it in and the potion turned a smooth light blue. It tasted like mint. An odd sensation rolled out from Steve's stomach as he swallowed the potion, and it was a little unnerving to watch the muscles in his arms start to ripple. He felt the same motion moving up his legs and back, though it didn't hurt like he thought it would. His face started to itch as hair prickled and sprouted out into a thin goatee and his eyebrows got bushier. The floor got a little bit closer and his clothes got looser as he shrunk down a few inches to match the man he'd taken the hair from. He stood still for a minute after everything stopped moving, just to make sure, then turned to the mirror on the back of the door.
"Whoa," he breathed. He ran a hand along his jaw and tilted his head, watching the stranger in the mirror move. He was short and stocky now, his hair and his eyes dark, and he was at least thirty years old. He heard movement in the hallway and jumped back into the moment, remembering his time in this body was limited. He quickly changed into the guard's uniform, rolling up his own clothes to stuff into his bag for later. Rushing back downstairs, he found six strangers, dressed like him, waiting awkwardly in the foyer.
"Cap?" one of them asked.
"Yeah," he replied. Wow, his voice was deep! "Okay, um, who's who?"
They identified themselves and Steve committed their new faces to memory. They were only going to look like this for an hour, but it wouldn't do any good for him to get surprised by one of his own teammates because he forgot what they looked like.
They set out for the warehouse. The little witch waved them off, promising that she and her husband would see all the guards returned home. It felt really weird, walking in a body that wasn't his, and it took a minute to get used to the stride of his legs. A tall, thin guy with close-cropped blond hair that he remembered was Bucky came up beside him and grinned. "Finally managed to grow a beard, huh, Stevie?" he said in an unfamiliar voice.
"Shut up," Steve grumbled. Despite his increase in size and the fact that he was keeping ahead of Bucky as far as height, he had yet to have any need for a razor. Bucky, though he preferred to stay clean-shaven, had been shaving since last year, and liked to remind Steve of that periodically.
No one bothered them as they walked, though it felt like everyone should be looking at them, and they switched off with the previous shift at the factory without any hitches. Steve kept forgetting he looked different—he still felt like Steve Rogers—but the other guards simply greeted them cordially and wished them a good shift.
"Well, that was easy," Dugan said.
"Ssh!" Jim hissed. "You'll jinx us."
"Jinx what?" Dugan protested. "We're already inside."
"Yeah, but the mission's not over yet, is it?" Jim replied.
"Guys," Steve said. They stopped. "Okay, let's make sure we're the only ones here." They split off and secured the building just as they had planned. It took a while—it was a large warehouse. By the time they regrouped in the main room, Steve was starting to feel a little nauseous. The potion was wearing off, and based on the way Bucky's hair was rippling and getting longer and Gabe was starting to look a lot more tan than when Steve saw him half an hour ago, he wasn't the only one. They waited to start the next phase until they were back to themselves. It only took a couple of minutes, and it felt just as weird as the first time he changed, but it was good to be back in his own skin—although Steve's clothes were now a lot tighter than they were a few minutes ago.
They all pulled their own clothes out of their bags and changed quickly—Jim and Jacques were practically swimming in their 'tall guy' uniforms. "Okay," Monty said, pulling out the list of spells Phillips had given them. "Let's all do the big ones here first, then we can split off and do the smaller ones."
They worked their way through several spells, warding the building, removing it from the notice of passerby and cloaking magical activity. Jim stayed in the middle of the main room to set up a Secret Keeping spell—once he was done with it, the Howlies would be the only ones (aside from the Aurors who already knew the location) who could find the building until the spell came down. Once that was set, he was able to cast a tricky little transport spell that, since it was cast inside the Secret Keeping location, would act as a kind of door through the spell for the people who would be transporting here. Monty stayed to keep an eye on him while he did it, and the rest of them took off to repeat the warding spells throughout the building.
"So, what, everything just sits here until tomorrow?" Dugan asked when they regrouped.
"They wanted a window to make sure the spells averting people's attention are actually doing that," Steve said. "And once the Aurors show up to switch out with us, they'll make sure it all stays going."
"I don't think I've ever been on a mission and known less about what's going on," Gabe said. "Don't we have to know where these people are going to make that transport thing Jim did work?"
"No," Jim replied. "The one I did isn't a transport spell exactly. It's more of a…bridge. The transport coming in will lock on to it so they'll get here, then it'll anchor to another one wherever they're going to get them out."
"Ils vont à Istanbul," Jacques said.
They all turned to look at him. "How the hell do you know that?" Bucky asked.
Jacques shrugged. "Je n'essayais pas de savoir," he protested. "J'entends juste des choses."
Steve didn't understand how you could learn something so classified without trying, but maybe that was just a side effect of being as sneaky as Jacques was. "You really weren't snooping around trying to figure that out?"
"Non!" Jacques protested again, offended.
"Sorry," Steve said. He looked around at the rest of the team. "I guess it goes without saying that we don't need to share that."
They all nodded in agreement.
"It makes sense, I suppose," Monty said thoughtfully. "Turkey's been very accepting of war refugees—it's a good place to hide."
"Yeah, well, let's just forget we know anyone's going to Turkey," Steve said.
Gabe chuckled. "You especially," he said, pointing at Jacques. "I don't even want to think about how much Peggy would kill you if she knew you found that out."
"Ne t'inquiète pas," Jacques snorted. "Je ne suis pas un idiot."
A soft chime sounded through the air and they all turned towards the front door. "Should be the Aurors," Dugan said, looking down at his watch.
"Jacques, you wanna make sure?" Steve asked.
Jacques nodded and vanished, the rest of them moving towards the door, wands out. No one else should be able to see the building, so it was probably them, but it never hurt to double-check. Jacques reappeared and gave the affirmative, and they opened the door.
Three men came in and looked them over, eyes landing on Steve. Steve nodded to Jim, who cast a couple of deception-detecting spells, then nodded back, satisfied. Steve then walked them through the warehouse, giving them a quick rundown of the spells they'd set up. The Aurors said very little, but seemed satisfied.
"Friendly fellas, aren't they?" Gabe remarked as they left the warehouse.
"It's classified," Monty said with a shrug. "There probably wasn't much they could say."
"Do you think those guards we took the hair from are back at home?" Bucky asked. It was mid-afternoon now.
"I think they're supposed to stay at the safehouse until the op is over," Steve said. "So they don't accidentally walk in on anything."
"I feel kind of bad for them," Bucky commented.
"I don't know," Dugan said. "I might could do with a two-day nap."
"Does magically induced sleep count, though?" Gabe asked. "I've always heard you wake up feeling kind of weird."
"I've always felt alright after sleeping potions and stuff," Steve said.
"Well, sure," Jim replied. "But that's like, medicine. That's different."
"So sleeping spells do make you feel weird?" Bucky asked.
"Dunno," Jim shrugged. "Never been put under one."
They arrived back at the safehouse then. Steve cast the little spell the old woman had shown him that morning that would unlock the door, then he stepped inside and everything went black.
When he woke up, every muscle in his body felt like it was made of lead. His thoughts were fuzzy, like his head was stuffed to bursting with cotton, but there was a brick inside his skull, pounding the cotton flat against the inside of his head, which made it a little easier to think, even though it hurt like hell. He sat up and immediately fell over, just managing to catch himself with one hand.
"Ugggh," groaned a voice to his left that it took a second to place as Jim's. "What the hell kind of stunning spell was that?"
Steve forced his eyes open. Jim was sitting in front of him, cradling his head in both hands. "Stunning spell?" he asked.
"Yeah," Jim croaked. "Sure packed a wallop."
Steve looked around, noting the rest of his team huddled in groaning lumps all around him, then rather belatedly noticing the iron bars surrounding them. The room beyond was bare and dark, a single door at one end. "Where the hell are we?" he asked. He shook his head carefully, and it seemed to clear a little. The brick in his head was slowing down its pounding.
"Looks like a cage," Gabe grunted into the floor.
"Good catch, Jones," Monty groaned, sitting up against the bars behind him. "Wouldn't've spotted that otherwise."
"Shut up, you two," Bucky complained.
"Did anyone see who attacked us?" Steve asked before the argument could go any further. He hadn't seen a thing.
"Pas une chose," Jacques said.
"Nothing," Gabe agreed. "Barely made it inside and it all went black."
"I think it was some kind of automatic spell," Dugan said. "We tripped something going in, but no one would've had to be in the room to cast it."
"You don't think the couple that owned the safehouse…" Steve started.
"I don't think so," Bucky said. He grimaced. "I think I saw the old guy on the floor as I was hitting the ground. If I saw what I think I saw, he wasn't getting up again."
"So it was a setup," Steve replied. If not the couple that owned the place, then who? He shot a significant look at Bucky. They may have just found the evidence Peggy needed to prove her spy was real. "Someone had to know we were coming."
"Very astute, Captain," came a new voice. They all spun to see a tall man with graying hair standing in the doorway. "I did know you were coming."
"And who are you?" Steve asked, pushing himself to his feet. He felt the rest of his team doing the same.
"Damian Gray," he replied coolly. "Hydra special intelligence. So nice to meet you all."
"What do you want?" Steve demanded.
Gray smiled. "Straight to business. I can respect that. What I want is the location of the transport site you've been setting up. Some people will be passing through very shortly that are of great interest to me."
Jim huffed a humorless laugh. "At least we know the shielding spells work."
"Yes, Mr. Morita, congratulations," Gray said drily. "So…location?"
"No," Steve said.
Gray nodded. "I didn't think so. I just thought I'd offer you the chance to do it the easy way." He tilted his head to one side, studying them. "May as well start at the top," he decided. He flicked his wand and the door to the cage swung open. "Would you care to join me, Captain Rogers?"
Bucky made a choking sound and Steve turned his head to look at him. Little tremors were running the length of his body but he was standing completely rigid and Steve realized he couldn't move. Neither could anyone but him, it seemed. He looked back at Gray. "Not really," he said.
Gray twitched his wand and Steve felt himself being jerked forward, sliding across the floor and crashing in a heap at Gray's feet. The cage door slammed shut behind him. "I was just trying to be polite," Gray said. "I wasn't really asking." He flicked his wand down in Steve's direction. "Crucio," he said.
Steve didn't think he'd ever really understood what pain felt like until that moment. He twitched and he writhed and he screamed and he couldn't stop, wave after wave of agony coursing through his body. When it stopped, it took him a moment to realize it, and another to stop screaming. He panted into the stone floor, unable to do more than curl his limbs in against his body with a soft whimper. He was dimly aware of his friends yelling at Gray from somewhere behind him.
"Change your mind?" Gray asked conversationally.
Steve wasn't sure he wouldn't start screaming again if he opened his mouth, so he just glared at Gray and shook his head. Then he did open his mouth and he did start screaming as Gray flicked his wand at him again. Never, not in all the beatings he'd taken, the broken bones and illnesses he'd suffered through, the growing he'd done in Erskine's machine, or any of the battles he'd been in, never had anything hurt like this. Every cell in his body was exploding, burning, stabbing, and the world was starting to go white around the edges.
He didn't know how long it lasted, but he couldn't hold back a sob of relief when it stopped. He was shaking, crying, gulping in huge lungfuls of air to cool his burning throat. Gray crouched down next to him and Steve rolled his head to look at him. "Had enough yet?"
Steve fixed Gray with as stern a look as he could muster. "I could do this all day."
Gray considered him. "Yes," he said at last. "I believe you could. And while it would be fun, I'm afraid I don't have that kind of time." He straightened up. "Let's try something else."
He flicked his wand again and Steve went skidding across the stone floor back into the cage, barreling into the legs of someone who didn't fall over only because Gray had immobilized them all again. "Mr. Jones," he said, beckoning with his free hand. "Your turn."
Steve looked up and saw Gabe swallow hard, but he walked out of the cell and towards Gray. The door of the cage slammed shut again and the legs Steve was laying against moved back, arms reaching down to help him sit up.
"Stevie?" Bucky asked, looking at him worriedly. He shook his sleeve over his hand to wipe away the blood Steve hadn't realized was coming out of his nose.
"M'okay," he said, nodding. Yeah, it hurt like hell, but it was starting to fade. "Get me up."
Bucky took his hand and levered him carefully to his feet. He leaned against the side of the cage as his muscles continued to tremble, but he stayed upright.
"Now," Gray said when Gabe reached him. "I will offer you the chance, Mr. Jones, to give me what I want." Gabe glowered and said nothing. Gray nodded. "This is really more for your Captain anyway. Let's see if all that compassion Doctor Erskine thought was so important is really in there." He flicked his wand down at Gabe. "Crucio," he said again.
As much as it had hurt before, it hurt even worse watching Gabe writhing and screaming in a ball of agony on the floor. Everyone was yelling again, but Steve was just standing there watching in horror. He could make it stop. One sentence and he could make it stop. But he couldn't. He wanted to close his eyes, to pull his hands up over his ears and drown out Gabe's pained screams, but he didn't. If he wasn't going to stop it, then he owed it to Gabe not to turn away.
The minutes seemed to drag on into hours, but Gray finally stopped. He looked down at Gabe, who was shaking and crying softly, then back up at Steve. "Well, Captain?"
Steve swallowed down a painful lump in his throat. Gabe raised his eyes to look at him and minutely shook his head. "I can't," Steve breathed. "I'm so sorry, Gabe, I can't." Gabe blinked, nodded slowly, absolution in his eyes.
"Are you sure?" Gray asked, flicking his wand and making Gabe scream again. Steve said nothing. "Really?" Still no response. Gray did it one more time, watching Steve curiously, then stopped. Gabe was sobbing into the floor. "Interesting," Gray said. "Perhaps you have more of a backbone than I gave you credit for."
He flicked his wand in the direction of the cage, and Steve felt something invisible and solid grab him in a vice grip, keeping him from moving as the door swung open and Gabe skidded across the floor into his feet. Gray twitched his wand again and Jacques flew forward, the cage door slamming behind him with a clang. Steve shivered as mobility returned.
"Let's try a different approach," Gray said. He waved his wand and Jacques staggered and swayed where he stood. "Imperio," Gray muttered. Jacques' eyes glazed over and a knot formed in Steve's stomach. "You know the question, Mr. Dernier. Answer it."
Jacques' mouth opened, then closed, opened and closed again. He closed his eyes and leaned his head to one side, then opened his mouth and started speaking very rapidly. It was very fast, almost too fast for Steve, and he didn't recognize a majority of the words. Gabe, however, chuckled weakly from where he was laying at Steve's feet. "You tell 'im, Jacques," he said.
Gray was watching Jacques with one eyebrow arching in amusement. He flicked his wand and Jacques went silent, blinking clarity back into his eyes. Gray clicked his tongue in disapproval. "You really must watch your language, Mr. Dernier. There are, fortunately, no ladies present." He repeated the flick of the wand that froze them all and sent Jacques back into the cage.
"I must applaud you in your training, gentlemen," Gray said, and he did sound impressed. "Fortunately, I have more options open to me than Unforgivable Curses. But which one…"
Even though he couldn't move, Steve shivered as Gray cast a deeply appraising look over all of them. He didn't know what he was going to do next, but he didn't think it was good. Especially not with the way Gray was smiling like that.
"Mr. Barnes," he said finally. "Let's take a walk, you and I." He motioned with his wand and yanked Bucky forward. Bucky came to a stop next to him, still upright but clearly unable to move. Gray looked back to the cage. "We'll be back in a little while. I would encourage you all to do some thinking while we're away." He motioned with his wand again and started walking, tugging Bucky unevenly along behind him. The door at the far end of the room closed behind them and the cage door slammed shut, allowing Steve and the others to move again.
"Gabe, are you okay?" Steve asked, crouching down beside him. His nose and one of his ears were still bleeding sluggishly, but he'd stopped shaking. Steve's eyes darted up quickly to the other side of the cage, where Jim was checking on Jacques.
"I'll live," Gabe said, accepting the offered hand that pulled him into a sitting position.
"Gabe, I'm so sorry," Steve said.
"It's alright," Gabe told him. "You did the right thing." The smile he gave him was small, but genuine. "Really," he added.
"Guys, what are we gonna do?" Dugan asked. They were wandless, weaponless, and had no idea where they were. Steve wasn't sure they were even in Zurich anymore. His eyes went to the door where Bucky had disappeared, the worried knot in his stomach twisting into several more.
"Any ideas?" he asked, looking around the cage.
"Could we lie?" Monty asked.
Steve shook his head. "Guy like this, he might buy the lie, but he wouldn't let us go before he checked it out. Then he'd just come back and kill us."
"You think the op's still going?" Gabe wondered. "I mean, we don't show up back at home, and if Bucky was right and the old couple's dead, someone's going to notice something's fishy."
"It could go ahead," Jim replied. "They don't need us for it to work. I mean, hopefully someone will start looking for us, but they should be able to tell pretty quickly that the place is still secure and the Aurors on duty could go ahead with it. It would be Phillips' call."
"He might cancel it, depending on how safe he's being with these people," Steve said. He didn't know all the safety measures that were in place, but with what he did know, it's what he would do.
"Depends how crucial it is those folks get out of wherever they are," Dugan pointed out. "Peggy did say they could die if they stayed."
"What I wanna know," Jim said. "Is how Gray knows so much about us. I mean, you, sure," he said, looking over at Steve. "You're the famous one. But he knows all of our names."
Steve considered for a moment. He supposed there was no harm in sharing Peggy's suspicions now. Especially since they seemed to be confirmed. "It's been looking for a while like there's a spy in the S.S.R.," he said. "Enough things going wrong, bad intel getting around…all those ops where teams keep losing people. That's got to be what happened here." There couldn't be any other explanation for it. "Someone tipped him off we were coming, and not just that there would be an S.S.R. team, but us specifically. Gave him names and everything. The person on the inside doesn't know where the location for this op is, but they know it's going on, and they know about the safehouse. So they tell Gray we're coming, but have him wait to grab us until it's all set up. That increases the odds of the mission going through—like Dugan said, they may not have any other choice but to move these people now. And mid-mission is Hydra's only window to catch whoever these people are."
The others nodded slowly, letting Steve's declaration sink in.
"That explains how he knows so much," Monty said. "But that doesn't get us any closer to getting out of here."
"Jim, you want to check out the lock?" Steve asked. He knew the odds of picking a magically sealed lock with just a paperclip weren't good, but they may as well try. Jim nodded and started carefully examining the lock. "We're going to have to use force to get out of here," Steve continued. "Without magic, we don't have many other options."
They spent a while going over every inch of the cage, searching for a weakness. Jacques found one bar that was rusted across the base, but though Steve kicked at it with all his might, it wouldn't budge. He even wrapped his hands around two of the bars and pulled as hard as he could, but no dice. He couldn't bend every kind of metal. Or maybe they were magically reinforced. They continued their inspection, and Steve could tell by the looks on their faces that they, like him, were all trying very hard not to think about what was happening to Bucky and why he was gone so long.
According to Jim's watch, it was five hours later when Gray returned with Bucky. Steve's initial relief that Bucky was alive and upright vanished when they got close enough for him to see Bucky's face. His eyes were glassy and out of focus and his jaw hung slack. His skin was noticeably paler than it should have been, and, though his face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, he was shivering. Gray's hand clamped around his upper arm was clearly the only thing keeping him vertical.
"Bucky?" Steve asked. Bucky blinked but didn't respond. Steve turned his gaze up to Gray. "What did you do?" he growled.
Gray glanced sideways at Bucky's face. "Oh, the spell? He was just being difficult, but I wouldn't worry about it. It'll wear off in a few minutes." He looked back at the cage, flicking his wand and immobilizing them once more as the door swung open. He shoved Bucky forward and slammed the door, but didn't unfreeze them fast enough for anyone to catch Bucky before he hit the ground. As soon as he could move, Steve dropped to his knees next to Bucky and carefully rolled him over so he wasn't lying face down on the floor, resting Bucky's head on his thigh. Bucky groaned and coughed, still shivering. His skin was feverishly warm. "I did give him a little something, though, and if I were you, that's what I would worry about," Gray continued. "It's a special little formula of ours, and while the timing's not as precise as it could be…" He looked at his watch theatrically. "By this time tomorrow, he'll be dead."
Steve's heart dropped into his stomach. "What the hell did you do?!" he demanded.
"The rest of you won't be very far behind him," Gray added as if Steve hadn't spoken. He smirked. "It's terribly contagious." He gave them a moment to take that in before going on. "Thanks to your S.S.R. boys, there actually is an antidote for this, and I could be persuaded to share it with you. I'm afraid the price has gone up, though. I still want the location of the building, but now I also want where everyone is being sent from there." He moved back to the door. "I'll give you some time to think about it, shall I?"
"No, wait!" Steve called, but the door was already slamming behind him. Bucky coughed again, a deeper cough that jerked his head up off of Steve's leg, and Steve looked back down, then over at Jim. "Jim?" he asked. Was Gray telling the truth? He'd obviously done something to Bucky, but had he really…
Jim moved over and knelt in front of Bucky. With Steve behind him, he was able to prop him up into a sitting position and set to carefully examining him, looking into his eyes, feeling places on his neck and the back of his head.
"Well?" Steve asked after a minute.
"He was right about the spell," Jim said. "It's some weird blend of a stunning spell and the Confundus curse. It threw him for a loop, but it's already wearing off."
"What about…" Steve asked, not really sure how to say the rest of it. It was good that whatever spell Gray had hit Bucky with wasn't going to hurt him, but that wasn't really what he was worried about.
Jim sighed deeply and didn't look up. "Give me a minute," he said. "It's harder without magic."
Why did Steve get the feeling Jim was stalling? "Jim," he pressed.
Jim sighed again. He stayed kneeling in front of Bucky, looking up hesitantly to meet Steve's gaze. "It…" He looked away again. "I think it…" He sighed again and looked back at Steve. "It's that special souped-up strain of TB that Hydra developed."
Steve flinched like someone had punched him as the world screeched to a halt. No. No, it couldn't be, it… "The one—" He swallowed hard. "The one that—" He couldn't say it. Couldn't get the words out.
"Yeah," Jim said softly.
"Are you sure?" Steve croaked.
Jim nodded. "He's got all the signs of TB, but it's way too fast to be the normal kind. It—well, we've seen enough of their version to know it takes about twenty-four hours to…" He didn't seem able to say it either. "And Gray was right, it's contagious as hell. We all got it as soon as Bucky came back into the room."
"Wouldn't Gray have it too, then?" Monty asked, and Steve quit listening as Jim explained about quarantines and protective charms and other ways Gray was probably keeping himself safe. All he could do was breathe, and even that was hard right now, his breath coming in jerky gasps as his chest heaved unevenly.
"Hey, Cap?" Steve blinked and realized Jim was trying to talk to him again.
"Yeah?" he rasped.
"There is a cure for this thing. He was right about that too."
"Uh huh," Steve responded. He knew that. It had come too late for his ma, but the S.S.R. had developed a cure. It was out there. They could get it. But it was out there. And they were in here.
There was silence in the cage for several minutes as everyone absorbed this grim news. Steve also got the feeling no one was talking because they were waiting for him, and he, he was the Captain, they needed him to be strong right now, and he could do it, he could do it, he just…he just needed to remember how to breathe first.
"Steve?" He looked down and Bucky was looking up at him, blinking his way back from wherever he'd gone.
"Bucky!" he said, shifting to get a better look at him. He felt the others lean in closer. "Are you okay?"
Bucky cast his eyes around the cage, taking stock of where he was, then shook his head. "He did somethin' to me, Steve," he said, and his voice would have sounded calm to anyone but Steve. His eyes went wide and he started shoving at Steve's chest. "No, you need to get away, I—" He broke off with a violent cough and the knots that hadn't left Steve's stomach twisted even tighter as he watched blood spatter all over his hand. Bucky looked down at his hand in dismay and then back up at Steve. "You're gonna catch it. You have to—"
"We already have it, Sarge," Jim said, leaning in a little closer.
Bucky's eyes darted from Jim to Steve, then he squeezed them shut with a grimace and looked like he was about to throw up. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
"It's not your fault, Buck," Steve told him, rubbing a hand up and down his back. Jacques leaned forward with a handkerchief and Steve took it with a grateful nod, wiping the blood from Bucky's hand. "It would have happened no matter which of us he took out there."
Bucky nodded slowly, trying and sort of succeeding at holding in another cough. " 'm still sorry."
Steve patted his back. Okay. Okay, he could freak out about this later. "Jim," he said, looking up. "What should we be expecting here?"
Jim nodded. "Fever, chills, coughing. General feeling like crap that's just gonna get worse. Weakness and exhaustion are gonna kick in, make it hard to do anything. That's probably why Gray left. Give us some time to really feel this, put the pressure on to answer his questions."
"What kind of time frame are we looking at?"
Jim considered. "Well, twenty-four hours for it to run its course. I'm thinking anywhere between six and ten hours before our energy tanks and it gets hard to do much."
Steve arched an eyebrow. "That's a big window."
"Yeah, well, it's an experimental disease."
Steve looked around at the rest of his team. Outwardly, they looked calm, looking to him and waiting for instructions. The air was humming with a nervous tension, though. They were scared. Their line of work was dangerous, but being prepared for death in combat was one thing. Sitting around and slowly feeling yourself start to fall apart was a whole different ball game.
"Alright," Steve said. "Things haven't really changed. We need to get out of here. Maybe a little faster than before, but…" He shrugged. "Ideas?"
He felt some of the tension lift as they all had something else to focus on. Gabe and Jacques started muttering to one another in French, while Monty was studying the ceiling of the cage, looking for flaws they may not have found earlier. "Dugan, help me check out the hinges on this door," Jim said, scooting over towards the door of the cage. "People don't always secure these as well as they do the locks."
Steve tried to think of something while his friends worked, but he kept getting distracted by Bucky coughing. "Stevie, I'm really sorry," Bucky said.
"Buck, it's alright, it's not your fault," Steve reassured him.
Bucky shook his head. "No, not that. I mean—" Another violent cough. "This," he rasped, gesturing at his chest and throat. "It's, I mean, you've already had to go through this, I don't wanna—"
"It's okay, Buck," Steve said, resting a hand on his chest. "Yeah, this is reminding me of what happened to Ma." There wasn't really any denying that. It hurt, and it hurt a lot. "But you know what else it's doing?"
Bucky shook his head.
"It's making me mad. Hydra's not going to do this to me twice. We're getting out of here. All of us. Alive. And I'm gonna pound Gray into the pavement, and we're all going to be fine." He wasn't sure how that was going to happen yet, but it would.
Bucky smiled tiredly. " 'f anyone can do it, you can," he rasped, reaching up a hand to pat Steve's chest.
The renewed searching of the cage didn't turn up anything new. Jim and Dugan did find the hinges on the door to be less secure than the locks, but still secure enough they couldn't budge them. Steve went after it when they couldn't get anything, but the pins were in too tight and the metal was bulky and strong enough that he still couldn't do anything.
They set to making and evaluating other plans instead. Ideas were thrown out for various deceptions they could try, or ways they could somehow move and get out the door while it was open. They even toyed with the idea of giving Gray what he wanted and then taking him out before he could share the information, and though they kept circling back to it, they kept rejecting it as too risky—he could wait to verify the information before letting them out or giving them the antidote, or there could be more people on the other side of the door who could get away with the intel even if they managed to get him.
Their ideas got more and more desperate as the hours went by. They also began noticing the onset of the symptoms Jim had described. It started off with slow coughs and shivers, growing more intense as the time passed, lethargy setting in. Dugan, somewhat oddly, given his size, seemed to be taking it the worst—by the end of the fourth hour, he'd coughed up what looked like half the blood in his body and was having trouble staying awake. Bucky, having a five hour jump on the rest of them, was looking pretty rough. He kept fading in and out of consciousness, and though his skin continued to grow warmer, he just shook harder, curling up and shivering in a little ball under the jacket Steve had laid over the top of him.
Steve, for his part, didn't feel that bad. A headache was pounding behind his eyeballs, and there had been a persistent, nagging tickle at the back of his throat for a couple of hours now, but there had been no blood, and he didn't feel feverish.
"It's the serum," Jim told him, turning to cough into his elbow. "That whole protective cell whatever. You've still got it, it's just…slower."
That didn't really make Steve feel any better. Actually, it sent a stab of panic through his stomach at the realization that he was going to die, but he was going to have to watch everyone else do it first. The panic turned to nausea and he swallowed hard as an image of his ma floated across his vision. Her hands had felt so cold, her fingers trembling underneath his. It had broken him, watching her die. Watching it happen to everyone else might kill him before the disease did.
Time ticked on, and Steve started to wonder how much of a schedule Gray was really on if he was going to let them sit this long. That was probably why he wanted to know where the refugees were headed next. They might even be there already. Steve didn't know what time Phillips' op was happening. And maybe it was Thursday already. He didn't know.
He did feel pretty awful, though. This thing was working on him slower, but Jim was right, it was still working. His head was pounding again, and his muscles ached. He was starting to feel cold, but he couldn't bring himself to take his jacket back from Bucky. Bucky whimpered, tossing uneasily in his sleep before coughing and spraying blood over the floor. "Hang in there, Buck," Steve whispered, reaching down to pat his shoulder. But hang in there for what? He still didn't know what he was going to do.
When Gray finally did return, Steve groaned and flinched back from the light that came through the door behind him and stabbed into his eyeballs, making the pounding in his head worse. Gray approached the cage, walking irritatingly slowly, seemingly very interested in studying them. Everyone who was awake sat up and glared at him.
"Good morning, gentlemen," Gray said. "How are we feeling today?"
"Go to hell," Monty spat.
Gray clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Mind your manners, Mr. Falsworth. Just because you're feeling unwell is no cause for rudeness. Have you considered my offer?" His eyes raked over them all but rested on Steve.
"Monty already answered you," Bucky rasped, sitting up and surprising them all—they thought he'd been asleep. "He said go to hell."
"So, that's a 'no', is it?" Gray asked. "I must say, Mr. Barnes, you're not looking well at all. I would think, out of all of you, you'd be the first to cooperate—you will be going long before the rest of them do."
Bucky sniffed, coughed, almost fell over. "You think gettin' me sick is gonna make me give you anything, you're barkin' up th' wrong tree. 've had a lot worse 'n this."
"Yes, I suppose you have," Gray said with a smile that Steve didn't like at all. "Although, Arnim didn't really want anything from you back then, did he?" He twitched his wand and yanked Bucky up against the bars at the front of the cage. "If you had the option to make him stop, would you have taken it?" He stepped forward and pulled a knife from his boot, kneeling and tracing a lazy circle across the front of Bucky's shirt. "As I'm sure you remember, there is an awful lot inside of there I could play with."
Steve grabbed Bucky's shoulder and yanked him away from the bars and against his chest, a protective arm shielding his torso. "You're not going to touch him again."
Bucky's hand was clenched in a death grip on Steve's wrist, and Steve could feel him shaking with more than just cold, but he continued to glare resolutely at Gray. "Go to hell," he snarled.
Gray sheathed the knife and stood up, raising his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "As you wish. I'm not the one who's running out of time here." He looked around at the rest of the team—Dugan, who was asleep on the ground, Monty, who was leaning up against the bars and shaking, Gabe, who was pale and sweating, holding on to Jacques who was shivering and sleeping fitfully on his lap, and Jim who was coughing into his elbow. "What you're feeling now is only going to get worse, you know. It's a very unpleasant way to go—as I'm sure Captain Rogers remembers," he added with a smirk, and it was all Steve could do not to launch himself howling at the bars. He wasn't going to give Gray that satisfaction. Bucky tightened his grip on Steve's wrist.
"Any takers?" Gray asked, looking them all over once more. "Though the offer was originally extended to Captain Rogers, I will happily accept an answer from any of you. I will even be generous enough to share the antidote with all seven of you, even if only one of you cooperates." No one said anything, and Gray inclined his head serenely. "Very well. I'll come back again and check later. In the meantime, if any of you change your minds, just give me a shout."
He left and they all sat in silence for a moment, listening to the fading echo of the door slamming. Steve sighed. "Guys, I don't know how to get us out of this," he admitted.
"It's not your fault, Captain," Monty said gently. He nodded resolutely. "We've got time to figure something out yet."
"And if we don't, they gotta be looking for us at home by now," Gabe pointed out. "Maybe Peggy'll come rescue us." He grinned. "She's good at that."
Steve did manage a chuckle at that. They lapsed into silence again, broken only by coughs or groans. Steve kept trying to think of something they could do, but it was getting harder to get his brain to focus. He kept drifting off, and he didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until something slammed into his chest and knocked him against the bars he was leaning on. Bucky was gasping for air and coughing so hard he was jerking up and then thumping against Steve, reminding Steve of the seizure he'd had after the sirens. He moved to readjust the way he was holding him so he was sitting up and leaning back a little bit, and his breathing eased then. He didn't wake, though. Steve was only distantly aware of Bucky's blood spattered all over his hand, reaching down and wiping it absently on the leg of his pants. He looked up and saw Jim watching him sympathetically.
"How much time do we have?" he asked, his voice rough in his throat.
Jim looked down at his watch. "You and me? About ten hours." He looked over worriedly at Bucky. "He's got about five."
"Did Gray come back while I was asleep?"
Jim shook his head.
Steve wasn't sure why it mattered. He wasn't going to get anything out of Gray unless he gave him what he wanted. And Steve couldn't do that. He couldn't. Innocent people's lives depended on him keeping his mouth shut.
What about their lives, though? The Howling Commandos, they were Steve's team. It was his job to keep them safe. And he could. Just a few little words, and he could save their lives. They might hate him for it. But they'd be alive. He stared around the cage. Dugan was curled up in the corner, looking paler and smaller than Steve had ever seen him. Monty was huddled up against him, shaking and trying to stay warm. Jacques was still asleep, snoring and coughing in Gabe's lap, and Gabe was awake, though his eyes were distant, lost in thoughts uninterrupted by the coughs that wracked his body and splattered blood across his hand. Jim was looking kind of gray, breathing like it hurt and staring down at his watch, watching the last seconds of his life tick away. A wave of nausea rolled through Steve's stomach. These guys weren't just his team. They'd been with him, cared about him, since before he was big and strong and famous. They had his back and followed him to places no sane person would go because they believed in him. They were his friends. His family.
Bucky shivered in Steve's arms, and the nausea surged even stronger. Bucky. Bucky was dying and Steve could do something to stop it and he wasn't. What the hell kind of person did that make him? Bucky had been there since before Steve could remember, hurting when he hurt and putting himself in harm's way to save Steve again and again. Bucky had been there for everything, pulling Steve out of every hole he'd fallen into, never hitting back and piecing Steve back together every time he fell apart. He was Steve's protector, teacher, healer, anchor, shelter, brother.
Anger surged through Steve's chest, hot and powerful. Hydra had already taken his ma. She'd died slow and painful and all Steve had been able to do was watch. And now they were coming for the rest of Steve's life. The same tricks, the same pain, the same result. No. Steve growled, and he felt the bars behind him shake a little as angry magic coursed through his veins. There was no way in HELL he was letting Hydra do this again. They'd taken enough from him.
"Stevie?" Bucky rasped. Steve looked down and Bucky's glassy, pain-filled eyes were staring back up at him, worry swimming in their steel-blue depths. "W's wrong?"
Steve laughed humorlessly. "What's wrong? Everything is wrong, Bucky. Everything. But I'm going to fix it."
The worry didn't leave Bucky's eyes. "Wha're y' gonna do?"
Steve swallowed hard. "I'm gonna tell him."
Bucky coughed, tried to sit up straighter, failed. "No," he said desperately. "Stevie, y' can't do that."
"I have to, Buck."
"Steve, people are gonna die."
"People are dying in here!" he snapped. He closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry," he said more quietly. "But I can't…I can't do this, Buck," he said in a small voice. "I sat and I watched while they took Ma, and I can't, I can't do that again. There wasn't anything I could do to stop it then. But there's something I can do to stop it now."
Bucky was looking at him, tears swimming in his eyes, and Steve saw nothing but sympathy there. "I'm sorry, Stevie. I'm so sorry," Bucky whispered. "But you can't do this." He moved one hand to grab Steve's wrist. "Promise me you won't."
Steve was quiet for a long minute, fighting back the tears pooling in his own eyes. Steve knew that if he did this, there wouldn't be any going back. People would die, and their blood would be on Steve's hands for the rest of his life. Consequences would come down from Phillips and the S.S.R. and Steve would take them. People would hate him, despise him, call him weak and a traitor and a coward, and Steve would shoulder all of that. Because this was his world, here in this little cage. And this was the only way he knew how to save it. "I'll do everything I can," he said at last. "But I can't promise that, Buck. I can't. Not if it means saving you."
Bucky looked into his eyes, and Steve knew he understood. "I know," he breathed. "But you have to try, Stevie. Please." He fell back into unconsciousness before Steve could respond.
"I'll try," he whispered.
A couple more hours ticked by, and Steve did the best he could to stay awake, wracking his brains, but he couldn't come up with anything better than just giving Gray what he wanted. Maybe, maybe if Gray would just come back in here and talk to him, maybe he could figure something else out. But he didn't.
"Hey, Cap?" Jim said, jarring Steve's thoughts out of another fruitless plan.
"Yeah?" he croaked. His throat felt raw from all the coughing.
"Listen, if we're dying for this, then we'll die for it," Jim said. "But if we're gonna try anything, we'd better do it soon."
Steve nodded. He felt the tears prickling behind his eyes again. "Jim, I don't know what to do," he said, his voice cracking. "I can't let this happen, I…Help me!"
Just like Bucky had, Jim looked at Steve with nothing but understanding in his dark eyes. "I don't know what we can do either." He paused, coughed. He perked up a little, sudden revelation flickering across his face. "Unless…"
"Unless what?" Steve asked hopefully, latching on to whatever chance he was offering.
"I don't know how well this would work," Jim admitted. "But earlier, that was you shaking the bars, wasn't it?"
"I think so," Steve said. "I just, I was thinking about Hydra and what they're doing, and I got so mad, I…I haven't lost control of my magic since I got big like this."
Jim nodded. "We're not getting out of here without magic. And maybe we can use that."
"Jim, I can't control it. And all it did was rattle the bars a little."
"Yeah, but listen. When wizards get sick, their control on their magic gets a little shaky. That's why magical hospitals have special wards for serious magical diseases, because those bursts of uncontrolled magic can be dangerous. You're sick," he said, pointing at Steve. "And, sure, you look better than I do, but you're still dying. That's pretty far up the shaky magic scale."
"I—"
"On top of that," Jim continued. "Your magic is more powerful than anyone on this team. Maybe all of us put together. If you can get yourself to the point it's just coming out of you, it'll pack a hell of a bigger punch than any of ours would. And if you can focus it at all…" He shrugged.
"That's a lot of 'ifs'," Steve said.
"Yeah. It's all we got, though."
Steve thought. "So, what, I should just get mad?"
"Whatever you were thinking about before," Jim said. "That made you mad enough to shake the bars. Think about that, but just, like, more. If it makes you mad, if it makes you scared, if it makes you sad…" He huffed an apologetic smile. "Everything that sucks, basically."
"I can try," Steve said.
Jim nodded. He beckoned with his hands. "Here, move him over here," he said, nodding at Bucky. "If this does work, we want it to land on the cage, not one of us."
Steve nodded and scooted across the floor, transferring Bucky into Jim's arms, then moved away. He sat in front of the door of the cage, staring at it. He felt awfully silly at first, sitting here just trying to get mad. But Jim didn't say anything and didn't try to rush him, and slowly, he was able to get more lost in his thoughts.
He thought about his friends, sick and hurting behind him. Rage roared through his chest again as he thought about Hydra and what they did—he pictured Gray laughing and gleefully forcing his toxic 'special formula' down Bucky's throat. He pictured Zola with his hands down inside Bucky's guts, pulling things out while Bucky screamed. He pictured Mueller kicking Gabe into an unconscious, bloody mess on the floor. He pictured Jim, comatose on a magic carpet. He pictured Peggy, tied to the bedframe as a Nazi guard leered on. He pictured Jacques, nine years old and watching his family die. He pictured Arthur, frightened eyes staring up at the sky he would never see again, the remains of a Hydra spell glowing like embers in the dark hole in his torso.
Steve swallowed hard, dove deeper into the corner of his mind where he kept the things he was afraid of locked away. He thought about his friends dying, fading out one by one in this dark little cage, and panic surged through his chest. Instead of swallowing it down, he dove into it. He thought about a couple hours from now, Bucky coughing and breathing his last in his arms, his hand letting go of where it was clenched in Steve's sleeve and falling away, lifeless, just as his ma's had done. He imagined each of his teammates dying, slowly, painfully, while he looked on, helpless—Dugan fading out in his sleep, just quietly no longer breathing; Monty shivering and coughing and going still; Gabe sighing and patting Jacques on the shoulder as each of them slipped away; Jim's eyes sorrowful and apologetic as they closed one last time. He thought about Peggy, blood pouring from her stomach and choking her lungs as she slipped away while he held her. Thought about last year, and the factory, and how everyone had disappeared. He'd been so scared then, not knowing if they would come home. He was even more afraid now.
Behind the anger, behind the fear, there was a dark hole, a yawning chasm of sorrow that Bucky had pulled him out of three years ago. The anger roared, the fear swelled, and Steve stood on the edge and looked down inside—there was his ma, her hand going slack in his, her chest failing to rise with even the weakest of breaths. There was Professor Erskine, surprise lingering in his eyes even as life faded from them, blood spreading across the white lab coat he wore. There was Bucky, lost and distant on a metal gurney and then in a hospital bed, screaming in terror he couldn't escape and Steve couldn't save him from. Everything hurt, everyone around him got hurt and suffered and died, and Steve couldn't do a thing to stop it. Never. He'd never been able to stop it.
Distantly, somewhere far away from the whirlpool of rage and fear and pain he was starting to drown in, there was a voice. "Focus it, Steve, focus it!" Jim. Jim wasn't dead, not yet, but he would be soon, and Steve remembered what they were trying to do, why he was teetering on the edge of this abyss. He could feel magic rolling through him, raw and wild, pulsing with his heartbeat, and he knew he had a split second before it came exploding out in a burst of chaos. A flash of memory shot through his brain—Jim and Dugan talking about the hinge on the door—and though he wasn't sure how, was never able to put into words how he did it, he aimed the magic building up inside him and let it go.
There was a distant cracking noise and he slumped over, exhausted and drained, unable to stop shaking. Arms looped around his shoulders and for a moment he stopped trying to control his ragged breathing, his shaking limbs, the tears pouring down his face, and he just slumped into them. "It's alright, Steve, it's okay," came a voice that Steve didn't think usually said things like that.
"Jim?" he asked, lifting his head.
"Hey," Jim said. He smiled. "I think you did it."
He did it? Steve spun where he sat, gaze searching for the door. His eyes landed on the hinge, and for a moment, his heart sank. It was still intact. Then he looked closer. It was mostly intact. A large crack ran its length, the metal twisting up away from the screws. Steve leaned forward and took hold of the pin, still wedged in tightly, but not near as bad as before. He took it in both hands and twisted and wriggled and tugged and his hand slipped and the pin tore a bloody gash across his palm, but that was okay because it came flying out of its setting. The hinge hung crooked now, and Steve pulled back his leg and kicked it, once, twice, then again and it clattered to the floor. He pushed himself up to his knees, swayed, grabbed on to the door for support and it moved. Steve grinned. It was still attached to the upper hinge, but was far too loose on the bottom now. The TB had taken a lot out of him, because it took longer than it should have, but he shoved and kicked and wrenched the door up until the bottom of it was a tangled mess, with more than enough space to crawl out underneath.
Jim was watching in awe, beaming. "Let's get the hell out of here."
Gabe was the only one they could wake up enough to get any coherency out of, so they decided the three of them should go first and find Gray and hopefully a wand or something before they tried to move everyone else. Steve crawled under the mangled remains of the door and got to his feet and promptly fell over again—it took both Gabe and Jim to catch him, and they almost all three hit the floor.
"Easy there, Cap, easy," Jim said, patting his chest. He and Gabe leaned him up against the bars of the cage and he took a minute to get his feet back under him and let the room stop spinning. He realized he hadn't stood up in several hours, and every muscle in his body felt weak and shaky. He couldn't get his hands to stop trembling. The disease was really taking its toll now, but it was more than that. His emotional foray into uncontrolled magic had drained him—probably would have done it on a good day, but now it was almost enough to shove him over the edge into unconsciousness.
"I shoulda thought of that," Jim said. "Doing magic like that's not real good for you."
"You had other things on your mind," Steve rasped. "And it's not like I wouldn't've done it if I'd known that."
"Are you gonna be good to do this?" Gabe asked.
Steve knew he was in terrible shape, and on any other mission, he would have benched himself instead of running the risk of being a liability and putting other people in danger. But this wasn't any other mission, and he didn't have any other choice. He nodded. "I can do it." Adrenaline was coming in and steadying his limbs now. Who knew how long he had, but he'd give it as much as he could.
They moved for the door, pausing to listen carefully in case Gray came bursting through it unexpectedly. They were only a little surprised to discover that the door wasn't locked. "Guess if no one's supposed to get out of the cage, you don't think you need to worry about the door," Gabe mused.
They eased into the next room, which seemed to be deserted. It was a long, low room with no windows, filled with long tables and cauldrons and glass containers and other lab equipment. Steve wondered if Gray had mixed up the enhanced tuberculosis himself. A shiver of anger ran through him as he wondered if Gray had been one of the ones to create it in the first place.
"What's our play here?" Jim asked.
"We need to find Gray and take him out. And anyone else that's here," Steve said. He didn't look forward to the idea of searching the building in their condition, but what option did they have?
"Guys," Gabe said, coughing and pointing to a table in the corner.
"Oh, hello, beautiful," Jim crooned, moving over and snatching up his wand from the pile of their gear.
Steve coughed and swallowed down the iron tang of blood, but he smiled. That would help.
Gabe picked up his wand, steadying himself on the table. "I don't know about you two, but if I try to apparate out of here, I think I'm gonna tear myself in half."
Steve and Jim nodded. They still needed to find the cure.
Gray returned then, and Steve only had a second to savor the look of utter shock on his face before Gray recovered and swung up his wand and fired a bolt of something that shattered the stone in the wall behind them. They all ducked (or fell) out of the way, scrambling to roll behind the tables and out of the line of fire. Steve snatched the nearest wand off the table and rolled behind a shelf. He heard Gray cry out as something Gabe shot at him found its mark, but he didn't go down. Their magic was tenuous at best right now, and Steve knew it. Gray knew it too. There were three of them, but they weren't going to last long. All he had to do was take cover and wait them out.
"Alright," Steve muttered. "Screw this." Instead of aiming at Gray, he took aim at a large shelf filled with binders and rolls of parchment behind him and yanked. The shelf came crashing down, shattering a table full of equipment and pinning Gray to the floor. Steve got up as quickly and carefully as he could, and he saw Jim do the same. Gabe got about halfway up, shaking violently, then fell down again and stayed there. Steve moved a little faster. They needed to do this quick.
Gray's lower body was trapped under the heavy shelf, and he cried out in pain as Steve stepped up and stomped across the top of it towards him, then reached down and grabbed his collar and yanked his head up. "Where's the antidote?" he demanded.
A small smile flickered across the pain on Gray's face. "Erskine really did a fantastic job with you, didn't he? I must admit I am impressed."
"Antidote," Steve growled, his face inches from Gray's.
Gray's smile got wider and more dangerous. "Oh, no, I don't think so." He made a quick motion with his tongue, and though Steve recognized it, he wasn't fast enough to stop him from crunching down on the suicide pill hidden in his teeth. "Impressive you may be, Captain, but you're still going to die. Hail Hydra." He foamed at the mouth and convulsed once, twice, then lay still.
"NO!" Steve shouted.
"Cap, I don't…" came Jim's voice. Steve looked up to see Jim leaning heavily on one of the tables, swaying where he stood.
"No, no, no," Steve said, dropping Gray's collar and hurrying over. "Jim, I need you stay with me. We need to find this antidote, okay?"
Jim nodded. "I know," he said quietly. "But we need to do it quick." He nodded at the far door and gestured with his wand. "Did the spell. Checked for people. No one else here."
"Good," Steve said. "That's good. Okay. Let's find this thing. What am I looking for?"
Jim shook his head. "Dunno what it looks like."
"Here!" Steve said, flinging open a cabinet door to reveal neatly lined-up vials of potions. He steered Jim over to the cabinet. "Is it any of these?"
Jim shook his head again. "Can't—" He broke off and coughed. "Can't see straight to read 'em. Read…" He gestured weakly at the cabinet. "Read th' labels to me."
Steve turned to the cabinet and peered at the vials. "There's no names," he whispered. He whirled back to face Jim. "There's no names, Jim, only numbers."
Jim groaned. "S'not good. Code. Keep other people fr'm messin' with his stuff."
"Jim, what do I do?"
"Maybe…maybe a notebook? Gotta keep track of what numbers is what somewhere."
Steve looked around the lab helplessly. There were enough notebooks and stacks of paper to fill a corner of the library. "Jim, I—" Jim's eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped over sideways. Steve caught him and staggered to the ground with him. "No," he whispered. No, no, no, he couldn't be this close and lose them all now!
His eyes roamed the room desperately, searching for something, for anything that might help. He spotted the table where Gray had stacked their gear and looked at it for a long moment before something clicked in the haze that was filtering into his brain. Radio. Gabe's bag had a radio.
Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered over to the table. He had to dig a little bit to find the radio, slumping against the table in relief when he did. He didn't allow himself to fall any further, though. If he hit the floor, he didn't think he would be able to get up again. And this wasn't over yet.
"H'lo?" he rasped into the radio. "Come in. Peggy? Howard?" Anyone?
"Hello?"
Steve couldn't place the voice, but relief coursed through his chest. "Oh, thank God," he breathed. "Who is this?"
"Ethan Green. Rogers, is that you?"
"Ethan? What…what are you doing there?" That was the last voice he'd been expecting from Howard's lab, and, quite honestly, one of the last he'd wanted to hear.
"Waiting to get some new gear from Stark."
"Well, listen, can you get him or Peggy or…"
"No one else is here," Ethan replied. "They're in a meeting that's running long. Trying to track you lot down—where are you?"
"Not really sure," Steve admitted. Actually Ethan…maybe Ethan wasn't the worst person to get on the other end of the radio after all. "Listen, Ethan, I need you tell me how to make a portkey."
There was silence for a moment. "A portkey? No, look, I can just make one here and come and fetch you."
"No!" Steve snapped. "No, it…It's not safe."
"Are you taking fire?" Ethan asked, suddenly sounding concerned.
"No, it's not that. There's no hostiles around, but we've been contaminated. The whole team. You show up here, you're gonna get it too." He broke off and coughed, pulling the radio away so he didn't get blood all over it. "Just tell me how to make a portkey."
"Have you ever made one before?" Ethan asked.
"No."
"Then now's not the time to learn."
"Ethan—"
"No, listen. It's easy once you know how, but it's really tricky to get right. You sound dreadful, and if you're ill, that's not going to help. You could end up God only knows where. Let me come and get you."
"No, Ethan, this is really dangerous stuff. I don't want anyone else to get this."
"Captain," Ethan replied, and Steve could hear a smile in his voice. "This is hardly the first dangerous mission I've been on. Rescue and extraction isn't a safe line of work, but it's what I do. Let me help you."
"Okay," Steve sighed. Ethan was right, and they were running out of time to argue about it. "Do you know how to get the radio to figure out where we are? I honestly have no clue."
"Yeah," Ethan replied. "Stark must have finessed it a bit. There's a little screen giving coordinates."
"Okay," Steve said. "Come here, and you'll need something big enough for the whole team to get us back, but listen, first, you need to go up to the infirmary and have them set up some kind of quarantine field. The return portkey needs to drop us inside of that. And tell Rains or Phillips or Kendall or whoever that this is the Hydra-enhanced strain of tuberculosis and we need the cure the S.S.R. developed. And quick. Some of us don't have a lot of time left." Bucky had to be under the three-hour mark by now.
"Got it," Ethan replied. "I need a bit of time to get all that done. Can you give me ten minutes?"
"Yeah," Steve replied. "Thank you," he added quietly.
"See you soon," Ethan said, and the line went dead.
Steve was tempted to sink down onto the floor in relief, but he couldn't yet. Ethan was coming here, and most of his team was still back in the cage. If he could get them all in here waiting for him, the faster they'd be able to get out of here.
It took far more effort than Steve knew it should have, moving the rest of the team. Though he used his wand to blast away the cage door so he wouldn't have to crawl under it, they were still a lot for his aching muscles to try to move. It wasn't until he'd already moved Jacques and Monty that it belatedly occurred to him that he could use magic to move them. He then discarded the idea—he wasn't sure how well he could get his magic to work, and he didn't want to drop anyone or slam them into a wall. Dugan, he did have to drag—though his usual strength should have allowed him to carry someone that big, he didn't trust his arms or his legs to manage it.
Bucky came last, and Steve got him up in his arms and cradled him against his chest as he had done with Peggy just a few weeks ago. His breathing was shallow and uneven, reminding him of his ma's last hours and he had to swallow down a rising swell of fear. It was going to be okay. Ethan would be here any minute now. He was going to be fine.
"St've?" Bucky rasped.
Steve looked down and met the bleary eyes blinking up at him. "Hey, Buck," he said softly.
"'s cold," Bucky said.
"I know, I'm sorry," Steve said, trying to readjust the jacket that had been around Bucky and keep it from falling to the floor.
"'m scared, Steve," Bucky whispered. He blinked watery eyes up at him. "I don' wanna die. Not like this."
Steve swallowed down a painful lump in his throat. "You're not going to, Bucky."
"Don' have much time left. I c'n feel it."
Steve lost his balance trying to lay Bucky down next to Gabe, but caught himself and landed on his knees and didn't drop him. "Bucky, you are not going to die," Steve said as firmly as he could muster. "It's all gonna be fine now." He squeezed Bucky's hand as he laid him down. "I promise."
Bucky blinked up at him, and the tears that had been pooling in Steve's eyes finally spilled out at the trust he saw there. "Okay," Bucky whispered. He smiled just a little as his eyelids fluttered shut.
Steve dashed his sleeve across his eyes and sank down a little lower, though he didn't allow himself to sit. The air in front of him twisted and uncurled, and there stood Ethan Green, tossing a clipboard out of his hand and striding toward him holding what looked like a bicycle wheel.
"Bloody hell, you weren't kidding," he said. "Are you alright?"
"Will be," Steve nodded. He squinted. Things were starting to get a little fuzzy. "Zat a bicycle wheel?"
Ethan smiled and nodded. "Yeah. It's handy for moving big groups in small spaces."
"You jus' had that around?"
Ethan's smile widened. "Yeah. Best to be prepared. Now come on, get a hand on it. We'll be off in just a minute."
Steve had arranged his team more or less in a circle with their heads in the center, and Ethan carefully laid the wheel down on top of them. "Don' have enough hands to get 'em to hold it," Steve said, and that hadn't been quite the way he'd wanted those words to come out, but Ethan got the gist.
"They don't have to. You only have to touch a portkey—you don't actually have to have a firm grip on it."
"Oh. S'good." He leaned forward, putting one hand on Bucky's chest to keep his balance and the other on the wheel. "An' we're goin' back inside the quarantine?"
"Everything's all set up," Ethan assured him. "They'll be ready for us."
Steve nodded. "Maybe should send someone here to look through all this," he said, nodding at the room and its contents. Some of it was probably pretty important, and he didn't know if he was going to be conscious enough to relay that to anyone else in a timely manner.
"I'll let Phillips know," Ethan said. "Hold on."
The air twisted and spun and something yanked on Steve's insides and then he was crashing onto a stone floor and rolling to the side. There was commotion surrounding them, and he instinctively pushed himself to his feet, wand at the ready, but it was alright. They were safe. They were back at Hogwarts in the infirmary. Some kind of glowy golden bubble thing was surrounding where they'd landed, and Nurse Rains and some other doctor-y looking people were standing inside of it. They were rushing forward now that they'd landed, and Steve wasn't sure if he could get the words to come out to let them know they were contagious, but then he saw little brass protective charms dancing around their necks, and he recognized those, and he relaxed. They were gonna be okay.
Ethan appeared out of the blurriness that was starting to fill the air and patted him on the arm. "You can stand down now, Captain. Everyone's safe."
Safe. They were safe. They'd made it back and there was medicine and they were gonna be okay. He did it. Stand down. He could stand down now. Everyone was safe. That was his last conscious thought before blackness rolled in and took him.
Once again (as if there was ever any doubt), Steve pulls through, even if it was by the skin of his teeth this time. Time for some well-deserved rest now.
I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and/or a Happy Hanukkah! I'll see you Friday!