Alright, new adventure time! Off to Hydra's South American island.

(For the record, these are real islands, although since the 40's, they have been renamed to Alexander Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe Island. Me, I like the translations of the original names, personally. Farther Out To Sea is a great name for an island.)


The journey out to Peggy's secret Hydra island was one that would take a couple of steps. They would be taking a Portkey to Más a Tierra, an island about three hundred miles off the coast of Chile and a lot farther away than any of them had ever apparated before. It was one of a pair of islands, Más a Tierra (Closer to Land) and Más Afuera (Farther Out To Sea), which Gabe chuckled was a practical, if slightly dull way to name islands. Más Afuera was their destination, but being a secret Hydra base and all, they didn't want to just land there uninvited. Más a Tierra was safer, and they were going to land there and take a boat the hundred miles to Más Afuera. Jim and Dugan were going to charm the boat to make the journey faster.

An island off the coast of South America sounded like an exotic enough location, Bucky had to admit, but there was more than just unfamiliar terrain to keep them on their toes. Más Afuera had been uninhabited for a long time before Hydra showed up, and no one was really sure what they were doing out there. It wasn't a factory, and it wasn't strategic. It may have been a lab, or it may have had something to do with the ruins on the island, though no one could find evidence of magical lore on it. The place came up very infrequently in Hydra communiques.

The first part of the journey was smooth enough. The little boat really flew along, an additional charm of Jim's keeping them from being battered by the wind like they should have been at that speed, and it seemed like no time at all before Más Afuera appeared on the horizon.

"Well, that looks…ominous," Bucky said. The island was covered in dark trees, rocky lines of mountains jutting up into sight through the foliage, and the entire thing was shrouded in thick, low-hanging mist.

"I can see the dock Peggy was talking about," Steve said, peering forward through a pair of binoculars. What information they had said there was one dock in front of a small cluster of buildings. Since Hydra were the only people on the island, they were going to go around the other side and try to get out there. "Go that way a little more," he added, waving to the north.

They couldn't really find a good place to land, so they settled for the shortest rocky wall they could find. Monty affixed the boat the wall with magic so it would stay there until they came back, and they tossed the anchor down into the rocks to add some extra stability. Gabe pulled out a few coils of rope that he and Steve magically attached to boulders above them so they could climb up.

Once they were up top, the view did nothing to contradict Bucky's earlier 'ominous' description. The trees were thick and the air felt damp and heavy. The mist hung above them, hiding the rocks that towered above them and blocking the sun that had been so bright out on the water. Bucky shivered.

"Tell me about it," Jim agreed, catching Bucky's motion.

"Is that a skull?" Gabe asked. They turned and looked where he was pointing. Underneath a bush was a grimy, yellowing human skull, grinning out at them in that eerie way that skulls did.

"Yep," Dugan said. A tiny brown lizard crawled out of one of the eye sockets.

"Lovely welcome," Monty said.

"That's been here a while, whoever it is," Steve said.

"So has Hydra," Bucky added. "It's got to be one of them."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "No one else lives on this island." He sighed and looked around at the mist. "So, either something dangerous around here killed him, or he pissed his crew off and they got him. Either way…"

"We're gonna wanna be careful," Jim finished for him.

Steve consulted his little compass from Peggy that pointed to wherever you were trying to go. The arrow spun and pointed off to the south east. "Buildings are that way," Steve said. "Let's go."

"Does Peggy know you stuck her picture inside that thing?" Bucky asked as they started walking, nodding at the compass.

Steve shrugged. "Maybe?"

Bucky grinned. "You should tell her. She'd think it was sweet."

"How about we focus on the creepy island and dead Hydra guy in the bushes?" Steve asked, but he smiled a little.

It was a good thing they'd started this thing early in the morning, because the island was proving difficult to cross. The trees were thick, devoid of paths, and they kept coming across rocky crags or ravines that needed careful crossing. It wasn't hot, but the air was thick and heavy and Bucky found himself sweating anyway.

They didn't come across much in the way of wildlife beyond the odd bird or lizard. After a couple of hours of that, Monty pointed out that that was probably good—if the skull on the cliff had met its demise at the hands of some sort of creature, he would have noticed signs of some sort of large predator by now. They did find another skull not too long after that, though this one was accompanied by an assortment of bones. None of them appeared to have been chewed on, which confirmed Monty's theory, but made Bucky worry a little bit. Yeah, Hydra liked to kill people, but other people. Was something making them turn on themselves?

"I don't know if I like these dead guys," Steve said quietly to him when they took a break for food and water. His thoughts were turning the same way Bucky's were. "One guy, maybe he stepped out of line or something, but two? And they're a good ways apart from each other. They didn't get killed at the same time."

"I know," Bucky said. "I don't like it either."

"Maybe there's something to the ruins after all," Steve said. "Peggy said no one really knows what they are, and there's no lore on them. But that doesn't mean there's nothing here."

Bucky swallowed nervously. Last time they'd gone into something more magical than they'd bargained for, he'd ended up with Schmidt inside his head, and the time before that, Steve had been eaten by a giant snake. "Should we check them out before we hit the Hydra base?" Bucky wondered. He wasn't exactly thrilled about the prospect, but if there was something out there, he'd rather know what it was.

Steve considered, chewing his sandwich thoughtfully. "If it's too much of a detour, I don't like the idea of spending more time than we need to and giving Hydra a better chance of noticing we're here. But the idea of something magical out there that we don't know about is not exactly reassuring. Does Jacques still have that map?"

They didn't know much about the island, but Jacques had a map containing what information they had. There was a rough location of the ruins on it, and after some consulting with the compass and some calculations, they realized they would pass them on their way to the Hydra buildings anyway. The team agreed it was a stop worth making.

It took another hour to arrive at the ruins, and once they did, they realized they would have had to go through them whether they wanted to or not. The mountains sloped up in a steep incline on either side of the ruins, leaving them with no other way to pass without going a hell of a long way around.

They eyed the ruins carefully before moving in. There wasn't a lot to them—a few flat areas of stone or toppled pillars, a crumbling section of wall or a set of stairs leading to nowhere. All of it was mossy and broken, carved out of the same dark stone that the island was made of.

"Well, it doesn't feel magical," Jim said. He waved his wand, running a little spell. "Nothing I'm picking up. But it…"

"It's still pretty creepy," Gabe finished for him.

"Yeah," Jim agreed.

"Well, everyone make sure to keep an eye out," Steve said. "Just because we don't see it doesn't mean there's nothing here. Be careful, but let's move through as quick as we can." He didn't want to spend any more time in here than they had to either.

Bucky's eyes darted everywhere as they moved through the ruins. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was about the place that sent shivers down his spine. It was old and falling apart, but it didn't have the feel that somewhere haunted or cursed might. The mist was thick and heavy and kept any of them from seeing very far, but it wasn't that bad. There weren't even any statues or carvings that would have suggested a sinister purpose for this place. For all he knew, it could have just been some regular old village. But why did it creep him out so much?

"Well, this is…different," Monty said. Bucky looked over to where he was standing. A large flat area in front of him, easily the size of the Hufflepuff common room, was paved over in small stones. The stones were smooth, and seemed clean despite the weathering all the other ones had taken, and they were slightly redder than the rest of the stones. In the center was a little stone slab about waist high, no wider than a manhole cover.

"Is it weird how unmagical this is?" Jim asked. "I'm getting nothing, but it…well, look at it!"

"I know," Dugan agreed, casting some spells of his own. "It's like…" He paused thoughtfully. "It's like it should be magic, but it isn't."

"That's bad, isn't it?" Steve asked.

"Yeah, but I couldn't tell you why," Dugan said. "It just feels wrong."

"We should go around it," Bucky said.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. He nodded to the grass to the left of the flat area.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Jim said as they drew more level with the little slab in the middle. "Do you feel that?"

"Uh huh," Dugan agreed. "Whatever is wrong is getting stronger."

"Yeah, I can feel it now," Steve said.

Bucky could feel it too, though he still couldn't say what it was. He tried to swallow back down the panic rising in his chest as he was very unpleasantly reminded of how wrong everything had felt in the naquadah mine, right before Schmidt…

"Pick up the pace," Steve said.

They started moving faster, but something was happening. The air around them went dead silent, and a deep, throbbing bass note that Bucky felt more than heard rolled out from the little stone slab, and he shivered as he felt it pass through him. As quickly as it happened, it vanished, and everything felt normal again.

"What the hell was that?" Gabe demanded. Even though everything felt normal, everyone looked as freaked out as Bucky felt.

"I don't know, I…" Jim began, raising his wand and checking. His face fell in horror.

"Jim?" Steve asked.

"My wand's not working," Jim said quietly.

The rest of them pulled out their own wands, all trying some sort of spell. Nothing, and Bucky felt nausea surging in his gut. His wand wasn't working either. His cherry and phoenix feather wand was just a stick now. It was like...he felt like he'd lost a limb.

"Okay, we need to get away from that thing," Steve said with a nod at the slab, trying to sound calm, but looking just as freaked out as Bucky felt.

"Yeah," Dugan said. "Maybe it's affecting the wands somehow. There are dark objects that…Maybe they'll start working again if we get far enough away from it."

"Qu'a t'il dit?" Jacques asked.

"He said we should move away from the thing and maybe our wands will work again," Gabe said.

Jacques shook his head, confused. "Je ne comprends pas ce que tu dis."

"Aw, crap," Gabe breathed. He and Jacques launched into a rapid conversation in French before Gabe turned back to the rest of them looking pained. "His translator's not working anymore."

"Okay," Steve said. "Let's get the hell away from that thing."

They hurried off quickly, moving until they were past the flat stone area, then running until they were at the edge of the ruins and in the forest again.

"Whoa!" Monty exclaimed, accompanied by a loud ripping sound and a series of clanks and clatters. His weapons bag was in shreds, swords, knives, guns and curse bombs scattered across the ground.

"What just…" Bucky asked.

"It just…exploded," Monty said, confused. "Everything came just bursting out."

Jim furrowed his eyebrows in thought. "If that thing cancels magic…" His eyes went wide. "Quick, Bucky, open up your bag and turn it over!"

Bucky did so, Jim doing the same, and he understood why just as he undid the clasp on his bag. The bigger-on-the-inside charm wasn't working anymore, and there wasn't room inside for everything. The contents of his bag came spilling out, though since they had an escape route, the bag itself stayed intact.

"Oh, man," Gabe breathed, eyeing the piles of gear on the ground. "What the hell was that thing?"

"And why is it still working?" Dugan wondered. "All our magic was working when we were this far away from it on the other side."

Monty looked up from one of the inert curse bombs he was inspecting. "You don't think it actually…destroyed all our magic, do you?"

They all looked at each other. "I've never heard of anything doing that," Jim said at last. "But, I…" he trailed off hopelessly and shook his head.

"Steve, what do you…" Bucky started to ask, the question dying on his lips as he turned. Steve had one hand propped against a tree, leaning on it heavily as he closed his eyes and breathed like he was trying not to throw up. "Steve, are you okay?"

Steve opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. "Something's wrong," he said softly.

"What—"

"Aaah!" Steve cried, clutching at his stomach and bending over double, his face scrunched up in pain.

"Steve!" Bucky exclaimed, hurrying to his side. Jim was only a few steps behind. "What's wrong?"

"It hurts," Steve hissed between clenched teeth, dropping to his knees and curling up as tightly as he could manage.

Bucky dropped down beside him, shooting a worried look at Jim, who looked just as lost as he felt. Steve continued groaning in pain, then he let out a pained scream, curling in on himself tighter than anyone his size should have been able to. Bucky reached out for him but stopped, his hand hovering just inches above his shoulder. His uniform was starting to slip off his shoulder, and Steve didn't…He didn't just look smaller, he actually was smaller, and…

The hand that had been reaching out to Steve flew back up to cover Bucky's mouth as horrified realization slammed into place. Whatever had just happened was undoing all the magic they had. And the serum in Steve's blood…God help him, it was magic. Active magic. And it was falling apart.

Bucky couldn't do anything but stare, and though it couldn't have taken more than a minute or two, it seemed like an eternity that he was just locked in place watching Steve scream. Then it was over and Steve was breathing hard and shaking, pushing himself to his knees on trembling, skinny little arms.

"What the hell?" Bucky heard Dugan whisper from somewhere behind him. They were all staring in horrified disbelief at a Steve they hadn't seen in two years, short and thin and, holy cow, Bucky had forgotten how incredibly fragile he used to look.

"Steve?" he croaked.

Steve pushed himself up a little straighter to look at him, the motion shrugging his now-enormous uniform off of one scrawny shoulder. The movement of the fabric caught his eye and he looked away from Bucky and down at his arm.

"No," he whispered.

"Steve…" Bucky started, reaching forward but not really sure where to go from there.

"No," Steve said again, sitting back on his knees and looking down at himself. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" He was holding his hands up, staring at them as though he'd never seen them before. "No!" His eyes jumped up and locked on to Bucky's, helpless pleading swimming in their bright blue depths. "No, I—" His breath hitched in his throat, his little chest heaving. "I—" He was having trouble getting anything out past that, and the panicked churning in Bucky's stomach twisted into even tighter knots as he realized Steve wasn't having trouble speaking because he was so distraught—the exertion of his transformation and the mounting panic were ramping up into the first asthma attack he'd had in over two years.

"Hey, whoa, Stevie, you've gotta breathe," he told him, grabbing his shoulders and ignoring how thin and bony they felt.

"I—" Steve gasped. "No, no, I—"

"I know you're freaked out, and I don't know what the hell is going on, but we'll figure this out, Stevie, I swear we will, but right now I need you to try to breathe." They had no magic and Steve hadn't needed an inhaler in more than two years, so Bucky sure as hell didn't have one on him, and if this exploded into a full-blown asthma attack, Bucky had no idea what he was going to do.

Steve was still gasping for breath and Bucky wasn't sure how much of what he was saying was actually penetrating the panic in Steve's head right now, so he sat down on the ground, tugging Steve with him and spinning him so that his back was against Bucky's chest. Bucky would have liked very much to panic right along with Steve, but he forced himself to breathe slow and deep, his chest rising and falling in steady motions. "Like this," he told Steve, putting one hand on Steve's chest to hold him steady. "Just breathe like me. You remember this, right? Sure, you do." It had been a really long time since Bucky had needed to do this for Steve, but it came rushing back like it was yesterday. "Slow and steady," he encouraged. "That's it. Deep breaths. Just in..." He inhaled deeply, held it for several seconds as he felt Steve struggle to do the same. "And out." He exhaled slowly and felt Steve let out a stuttering breath of his own. "There you go," he said, patting his chest warmly. "Okay, let's do it again."

He kept breathing as calmly as he could manage. Steve was doing his best to follow along, and he was breathing a little bit easier now, but it still didn't sound like he was getting enough air. Bucky shot a worried glance over at Jim, who was digging through the mountain of supplies that had spilled out of his bag. Bucky didn't know what in there would work if nothing magic was working right now, but if anyone could find something that would, it was Jim Morita. He focused on helping Steve breathe, and his own breath caught in his throat in surprise when Jim crouched down in front of them with an inhaler.

"Here," he said, and Steve reached up a shaking hand to take it.

Steve put the inhaler to his mouth and closed his eyes, breathing in as deep as he could. After a couple more inhales that were just a little too shaky, he took another pull and that one seemed to settle him. He sat there with his eyes closed for a minute, just focusing on his breathing and making sure he could do it now. Bucky sat back, but left one hand resting on Steve's back until he felt his lungs expanding and filling the way they should.

"Thanks," Steve whispered, looking up at Jim.

Jim nodded back, a sad ghost of his usual smile on his face. "Had that on me for all those factory missions, in case we came across a prisoner or somebody who needed it. It's probably not the same dosage you used to use, but why don't you hang on to it?"

Steve nodded glumly. He turned his head to look back at Bucky, nodding his thanks, though his cheeks were red with embarrassment and he kind of looked like he wanted to cry.

A long, incredibly uncomfortable silence passed as they all stood there wondering what in the hell to do now. "What in the bloody hell just happened?" Monty asked at last.

"When that thing cancelled out everything magical, it wasn't screwing around," Dugan said. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. "I'm gonna go back and take a look at it."

"Are you crazy?" Gabe asked.

Dugan gestured at the circle they were standing in, taking in Steve, the piles of gear and their malfunctioning wands. "What else is it gonna do?" he demanded. "Maybe if we can figure out what it is, we can do something about it."

"I'll come with you," Jim said, standing back up. He looked back down at Steve. "You okay?"

Steve nodded again. Jim nodded back, clearly not knowing what else to say, then walked away with Dugan.

"Steve, I…" Bucky started. He had no idea what to say to even come close to helping. "Are you hurt?" he asked at last.

"No," Steve said quietly. He tugged the shoulder of his uniform back up forlornly. "It's gone, Bucky," he rasped. "All of it. Everything I…" He stopped, his voice wavering dangerously.

"We'll figure it out, Steve," Bucky said.

"How?" Steve asked flatly. "Nobody ever figured out how Erskine's serum worked. They can't make it again. I'm…" He looked down at his hands again in dismay. "I'm stuck like this."

"Maybe not," Bucky said, though he knew he was grasping at straws. "Maybe it's not gone. Maybe it and the rest of our magic is just…off. It could come back."

Steve sniffed and didn't look up, clearly not convinced.

"Steve?" Jacques asked from behind them a little tentatively. They turned and saw him standing there with a bundle of material in his hands. "J'avais, euh, ceux-ci dans mon sac, et je pensais que vous voudriez peut-être quelque chose qui vous va mieux." He extended his hands, offering the spare set of clothes he'd pulled out of his backpack. They would still be kind of big, but they would fit Steve a lot better than his uniform would.

"Thanks," Steve said, managing a tiny smile at the gesture. He accepted the clothes and stood up, kicking off his giant boots and holding up his uniform awkwardly as he walked back behind some bushes to change.

"Thanks, man," Bucky said, smiling at Jacques.

Jacques nodded, then returned to helping Monty sort through the gear from his bag. Bucky busied himself going through his own stuff while he waited for Steve. There was no way he'd be able to carry all of this with him now, and deciding what to keep and what to leave kept his mind off of the much scarier problem of Steve and what they were going to do.

"Do you have any rope or something?" Steve asked, coming back out from behind the bushes. Jacques wasn't particularly tall, but he was taller than Steve, and stockier—his shirt hung loosely on Steve, but it worked, especially with the sleeves rolled up like that. He'd rolled up the pants too, though he was holding onto the waist, which was too big to stay up on its own. Bucky did have some rope, and he cut a length of it so Steve could fashion himself a belt out of it.

"Um," Bucky started. "So…"

"Can we not talk about it right now?" Steve asked. His voice was a little steadier than it had been before, but he in no way looked alright. "I'm just, I'm this close to freaking out, and I can't, I can't do that right now. I need to be able to hold it together until…" Until when, Bucky wasn't sure, and he didn't think Steve knew either, but Steve was right that it wasn't exactly the ideal place for a breakdown.

"Okay," Bucky told him. And who knew? Maybe Dugan and Jim would get something figured out and they could fix things. Steve sat down next to him and helped him sort through his stuff with the intense focus of someone determinedly avoiding thinking about something else, and if that was what he needed to steady himself right now, then Bucky would help him maintain it. They discussed every item that had been in the bag and the pros and cons of keeping or discarding each one.

In the end, there wasn't an awful lot of it he had to abandon completely. Important things went back into his bag, and some smaller stuff could go in his pockets. Weapons went on his back and his belt, and Steve had the bright idea of tying some of the bulkier stuff together with the rope and fixing it to the outsides of some of the backpacks. It was heavier, but still portable that way. That was especially useful as far as all the cooking gear went, and Monty used some of the rope for his weapons cache as well, though there was more of that he would have to leave behind.

By moving some of their gear around, they were hoping to make as much room for Jim's medical stuff as they could, and once Jim and Dugan got back from their investigating, they'd be moving on. To where, no one was sure yet, but it was going to be dark before too long, and they'd need a place to spend the night.

"Hey, Steve?" Gabe said. "Here. I think we're gonna get going soon, and you shouldn't be hiking around this place barefoot." Gabe was carrying a pair of shoes. Bucky had actually been wondering about that—like his uniform, Steve's boots were way too big for him now.

Steve took them uncertainly. "Where'd you get these?"

"They're Jim's," Gabe said. "His feet are closer to your size than Jacques'."

"What's Jim going to wear?"

"Jacques' shoes."

"And Jacques—"

"Let me stop you right there," Gabe said, cutting him off with a smile. "We're playing musical shoes. Dugan's gonna wear your boots, I'm gonna wear his, Bucky's gonna wear mine, Monty's gonna wear Bucky's, Jacques' gonna wear Monty's and Jim's gonna wear his. We'll all be in shoes a little too big, but we can stuff socks or whatever down in the toes, and everybody has shoes this way."

Steve looked down at Jim's shoes in his hands and then back up, smiling at Gabe. "Thanks," he said softly. He looked a little embarrassed, but touched at the same time.

Bucky took Gabe's shoes from him and handed his over to Gabe to give to Monty, and they got back to packing up the rest of the gear. They had everything they were taking repacked by the time Jim and Dugan came back.

"So, whatcha got?" Gabe asked.

"Well," Dugan said. "It's a little hard to know for sure, since we can't exactly test the thing, but we think it's some sort of protective device for the island. Once it's on, it cancels any magical activity in the vicinity—I'm guessing it covers the whole island, which is why it's still working even though we're farther away from it now. Whoever used to live here must have had some serious beef with some wizards at some point."

"Can you turn it off?" Bucky asked.

"Nope. I'm still not really sure how it got turned on," Jim said. "But the good news is, it's got a limited range. I mean, the whole island, yeah, but not beyond that."

"So if we get off the island…" Monty began hopefully.

Jim and Dugan looked at each other. "Hopefully, everything will start to work again," Dugan said.

"You're saying that way too carefully to make me feel better about this," Gabe said.

"It's the best we've got," Dugan said a little shortly.

"Okay," Bucky said. Steve usually stepped in before arguments started, but he didn't look very inclined to say anything right now. He pulled his grandfather's watch out of his pocket and checked the time. "We've got at most an hour and a half before it gets dark. If this isn't something we can fix right now, let's table the discussion and find a place to spend the night."

The other guys looked at one another and nodded, picking up their gear and getting ready to set off. They started walking, Bucky and Steve soon bringing up the rear. That's right, Steve used walk a lot slower, didn't he? His legs were a lot shorter, his lungs couldn't take in as much air, and the thick, moist air wasn't the easiest thing to breathe in the first place—never mind the uneven, hilly terrain and all the roots and branches to step over or crawl around. Thankfully, the rest of the guys were keeping a slower pace too. Bucky sighed. This was going to take some getting used to.

They hiked for nearly an hour. Steve said very little, lost in his own thoughts. Bucky was doing a lot of thinking too—or as much as he could while getting slapped in the face by tree branches and wet leaves. Dugan hoped that the effect of whatever that thing was would wear off after they got off the island, and Bucky was clinging to the hope that was true. He didn't know what they were going to do if it wasn't. Steve was just going on autopilot right now, trying and failing to contain the devastation that Bucky could feel practically rolling off of him. If he was stuck like this…Bucky swallowed hard. It might just kill him.

They still hadn't found a clear patch big enough to camp in, but the trees thinned out as they neared a rocky incline, and the flat area on top looked like it might do the trick. Bucky was glad they were finding a stopping place. They kept slowing down their pace, but Steve was still panting, breathing hard and clearly nearing a breaking point.

The way up the rocks was a little crooked, but mostly patches of sandy gravel between the large boulders. They had to go up in single file to get through some of the tighter spaces. About halfway up, Steve stopped and just stood there for a second, and it was hard to tell with the over-sized shirt hiding the outline of his body, but he looked like he was shaking.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, picking up his pace to catch up from behind him.

Steve didn't appear to have heard him right away, taking a worryingly long time to turn his head to look at Bucky. Sweat was beaded all along his hairline and he looked gray and disoriented. "Um," he said slowly. "I don't…" His eyes rolled back and he dropped before Bucky got close enough to catch him, sliding on the loose gravel and tumbling several yards back down the slope.

"Steve!" Bucky exclaimed, hurrying after him. The others had stopped and turned, and he was vaguely aware of Jim coming down behind him.

Bucky skidded to a stop beside Steve, kneeling next to him and rolling him onto his back. He was covered in dust, and the left half of his face was scraped and bloody from his slide through the rocky dirt. "Steve?" he asked, leaning in and checking for a pulse. He was breathing, a little erratically, but breathing, but his heart was thumping fast and uneven against the hand Bucky laid on his chest. His heart. Oh, crap, his heart. Bucky had been so worried about his breathing, it had gotten pushed right out of his head. "I'm sorry, Stevie," he said, his hands brushing the dust from the front of Steve's shirt as they searched for something to do. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Oh, please be okay! Please—" He felt Jim crashing to a stop next to them.

"What happened?" Jim asked, checking his breath, finding a pulse and counting heartbeats. "Did he have another asthma attack?"

"No," Bucky said, shaking his head numbly. "It's his heart, the heart arrythmia. Jim, I forgot about his heart! I can't believe I forgot!"

"Okay, you're gonna need to stop freaking out, or I'm gonna have to slap you so I can focus on Steve," Jim said, and Bucky nodded. Right. Right, Jim needed to concentrate so he could help Steve. Bucky should have remembered this, though. It didn't matter that it hadn't been an issue in over two years, he should have remembered right away, and he was a terrible, terrible person for forgetting.

"You got water?" Jim asked. Bucky handed him a canteen, and he poured some of it into Steve's mouth, lifting his head up a little to help him swallow. "Has this ever happened before?" he asked.

Bucky nodded. "Yeah. He was twelve last time it happened, though. They switched up his medication after that and it got a lot better. Jim, I don't have any of his medicine, I—"

Jim reached up a hand and put it over Bucky's mouth. "Sh," he told him. "He's okay. He's gonna be okay, but you need to stop it."

"He's gonna be okay?" Bucky asked when Jim removed his hand. This had happened a couple of times before when Steve had been smaller, but, unlike an asthma attack, it wasn't anything Bucky had been able to help with. They'd always taken him to the hospital.

"He is," Jim said. "See? Look." He grabbed Bucky's hand and placed it over Steve's heart. The beat wasn't as even as it should have been, but it was starting to slow back down to something normal. "It's a defense mechanism. His heart got overworked, so his body shut itself down so it would stop doing the thing that was overworking his heart."

"We always had to take him to the hospital when this happened," Bucky said, still not sure this was right.

"Well, yeah, ideally, we should do that too, but it's not exactly an option out here," Jim said. "Look, I'm gonna keep a really close eye on him, and once we get up top," he said with a nod at the top of the hill. "I've got some stuff in my bag that I think will help, but just letting him rest will help a lot." He wrapped a hand around Bucky's forearm and smiled sadly. "We pushed him too hard, and things are all so freaky and messed up right now…You're not the only one who forgot about his heart," he said gently.

Jim took some of the stuff off Bucky's back so he wouldn't be off-balance when he picked up Steve and stood back up. He shifted to get him a little more securely in his arms and started walking again. He'd forgotten how light he was.

There was a flat space up at the top of the hill, and Bucky laid Steve down carefully out of the way of setting up camp. Once they were all sure Steve would be okay, Monty and Gabe started setting up the tents that had been tied to the back of their backpacks, Jacques was refilling canteens from a nearby stream, and Dugan was prowling around trying to figure out how to set up security without any magic. Jim and Bucky used the water from the canteens to wash the dirt off of Steve's face and arms, and Jim found some ointment to dab into all the scrapes to keep them from getting infected. He also dug something out of his bag and gave him a few drops to help with his heart rate. Bucky kept checking Steve's heartbeat, and it had finally resumed a normal rhythm, though he remained unconscious. Jim finally had to order Bucky to go help with dinner and be productive before he worried himself so sick he started puking.

"I've got him, Sarge," Jim assured him. "He's gonna be okay."

"Alright," Bucky agreed quietly, not sure what else to do. Steve would be okay. He would. Bucky wasn't going to let him be anything else.


So, this is a new problem, and without magic, our boys are going to have to be extra-resourceful to get out of this one.

Tune in Friday to see what happens next!