In all the kerfluffle about losing magic and Steve being small, we kind of forgot about the island's other problem. But, yes. Hydra may or may not be around. There's certainly some skeletons that warrant further investigation. Let's see how that goes.
"You know, what with everything else going on, I'd forgotten about these guys," Jim said, nodding down at the skulls under the bush. After Bucky and Steve had found them, Bucky had let the rest of the guys know, and now they were all, minus Jacques, standing in a semi-circle staring at them.
"That helmet does beg the question, though," Dugan said, pointing at the one in the remains of the Hydra uniform. "Did the rest of them just lose their gear, or are we looking at more than just Hydra soldiers here?"
"Well," Steve mused. "We know no one lives on the island." Intel had told them that much, and they had yet to see a trace that would suggest anywhere but that one little cluster of buildings was inhabited. "And the S.S.R. hasn't hit here before, so it's not any of our guys that they got into it with." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "If they're not all Hydra, then maybe…maybe they're people Hydra brought here."
"Why would they do that?" Gabe wondered.
Steve shrugged. "I don't know. Could be prisoners or something. You know, like people they wanted out of the way, but still wanted something out of."
"Well," Bucky agreed. "This is sure out of the way. Not a bad spot for a political prison. If anyone got out, it's not like they were gonna swim a hundred miles to the next island."
"They've been dead for a while, though," Monty said. "Especially with nothing big eating at them. It takes a bit to end up as bones like this."
"Yeah, but not, like, super long or anything," Jim countered. "Out in the elements, all this moisture in the air…I mean, a few months at least, sure, but I don't think we're talking years."
"No," Monty agreed. "There would be more decay then."
"You think they tripped the no-magic doohickey in the ruins?" Gabe asked. "It was off when we got here, so maybe it resets every now and then."
"Probably," Dugan agreed. "But that wouldn't kill them."
"I think this is what killed them," Steve said. He'd moved closer to the bones and had been nudging some of the roots out of the way with his foot. A piece of rebar was jutting out between the ribs of one of the skeletons. "And I think this guy…" There was a fourth, partial skull farther back in the foliage. "Got his head smashed in."
"I'd say that supports your prisoner theory, Cap," Jim send, leaning in for a closer look. "Maybe when the magic tripped, whoever they had locked up got out. Fight could have gotten ugly real quick."
"You think they're all dead?" Bucky wondered. They hadn't seen anyone yet, but that didn't mean no one was there.
They returned to preparing lunch, all a little more on the alert. Steve was sitting on a fallen log, poking pensive holes in the dirt with a stick. Bucky was glad he had something to occupy his mind, but he really could have done without another mystery—especially since they hadn't solved the first one yet.
Jacques reappeared just as the food was ready. They were a little closer to the buildings than they'd thought, which was good news. Jacques' report was a little less encouraging, though. The building compound was empty, most of it in various states of disrepair. A fight had definitely happened, and there were bodies, but not enough in comparison to the amount of space in the compound. There did seem to be a series of cells, which backed up Steve's prison theory further. One corner of the compound was a little cleaner than the rest, possibly lived in, though Jacques hadn't seen anyone around.
"So, there are either a lot more bodies we haven't found, or someone else alive, somewhere on this island," Steve said.
"If there is someone else around, I'm a bit concerned that they've not left," Monty said. "I mean, if I was Hydra, and my prisoners got out and tried to murder me, I would go home."
"Maybe they couldn't leave," Bucky said. "If they tripped the thing in the ruins, they wouldn't've had magic for a little while. However long it lasts. They couldn't apparate, and we didn't see any boats on the dock or anything." At some point before the team's arrival, however, magic had returned to the island, so they could have apparated out after that—why they didn't was worrying him a little.
"Or maybe whoever's alive is someone who was locked up," Jim suggested. "They wouldn't have wands and stuff to leave with."
Gabe, who had been rapidly translating the discussion into French for Jacques, looked up. "Anybody have any paper? Jacques thinks he can draw us a map of the compound." The only paper they had was the map of the island, so Jacques flipped it over and set to work with a stick of charcoal.
"So, first thing we need to do is check out the compound," Steve said. Jacques hadn't been able to look into each building in detail in the interests of time and safety, but more of them could do a thorough search without getting jumped. "We need to figure out who else is left on this island. It may take us a little while to figure out how to get off, and I don't like the idea of someone running around here who might feel like killing us."
Jacques finished with the map, and they gathered around to study it. Bucky couldn't help smiling a little as Steve broke it up into a search grid, deciding on the safest points of entry and what they should be looking out for. This was hard on all of them, losing their magic, but he couldn't imagine how much harder it was for Steve, losing everything else on top of that. He was still the Captain, though, and everyone was acting like it—Bucky had known the other guys wouldn't lose faith in Steve just because he was tiny again, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things. And their confidence was helping Steve find his again—he was making plans and being the leader just like he always did, and Bucky was proud of him.
By the time they finished eating and planning, they'd had a good, long break, and Steve looked like he'd be able to get going again without any trouble. He was getting his confidence back, but Bucky knew it wavered every time his health got in the way. Steve had been right that if he'd been his normal size, they would have hit the Hydra compound a couple hours ago. He hated feeling like he was a burden to anybody, and even though no one else thought of him that way, Bucky knew that the fact they had to keep slowing down and reconfiguring things on his behalf made him feel like he was. If Steve was stuck like this now…Bucky sighed. He hadn't been lying when he'd said that none of them would be kicking Steve off the team, but they would have to change up the way they operated. Significantly. Steve could still lead and plan and strategize, but he couldn't be out in the field as much, and he would probably see that change in role as pity, relegating him to an add-on because they felt sorry for him.
Bucky forced himself not to think about that right now. Right now, there was a mission. He could worry later.
Steve had them split into two teams as they neared the compound—splitting up would cover more ground faster, and bigger teams kept their odds of being attacked smaller. Gabe needed to stay with Jacques since he could translate for him faster than anyone else could. Dugan and Jim were split one to each team—they couldn't do magic, but they could analyze any evidence of it they came across. They sent Monty with Gabe and Jacques since his French was the second-best, and if they got in a tight spot, communication would need to happen quickly. Dugan went with them—Steve hadn't liked to admit it, but he thought that he should probably stick close to Jim, and Bucky was sticking with Steve.
Their radios still worked—the non-magical ones—and even though the teams were supposed to stay within shouting distance of each other, they were doing regular check-ins too. The compound itself wasn't particularly large—fourteen buildings of varying sizes, most no bigger than an average house. The first two that Bucky, Steve and Jim inspected seemed to be administrative, with very little left worth looking at.
The third was much larger and offered more to investigate. It contained some of the cells Jacques had mentioned, backing up Steve's theory that this had been some kind of prison.
"Oh, yeah," Jim said, studying the walls. "These cells definitely weren't built with bars across the front. When the magic died, whatever shielding there was across the front of here would've just…" He snapped his fingers.
"So, that explains a lot," Bucky said. "Seems kind of stupid, though. Wouldn't you want at least a door or something as a backup?"
"Well, that's why you're not Hydra," Jim said. "You're a lot smarter than them."
"More dead guys over here," Steve said from the other side of a wall. They followed his voice and found another set of bodies. Protected from the elements, these still had their clothes and even some of their skin still clinging to the bones. They did not smell great. The clothes confirmed that, yes, there had been both Hydra soldiers and prisoners fighting. At the rate they kept finding bodies, it was starting to look like nobody won.
"Guys, we got a jackpot over here," Gabe's voice came through the radio. "Little admin building at the top of the hill. We found a log book one of the Hydra commanders kept. It was a prison here—been here ten years, but eight months ago, they tripped the thing in the ruins. Magic went poof, the prisoners revolted, but it looks like Hydra held onto the base for a little while. They kept getting hit by the prisoners who escaped coming back and raiding the place, though."
"Do we know how long it took for the magic to come back to the island?" Steve wondered.
"Not yet," Gabe replied. "I'm just hitting highlights. Gimme a little more time."
"Okay, you keep at that," Steve said. "We've found some more bodies over here, but not much else."
They continued their search, moving on to the next building. Living quarters for the guards, it looked like, though the place had been ransacked within an inch of its life. "I guess if most of the prisoners ran off into the woods, they'd keep coming back and raiding the place for supplies," Bucky mused. Their team was doing alright camping out there, but they'd brought supplies and food. They hadn't seen any animals larger than birds and lizards, so hunting wouldn't have been much of an option. And it was summer down on this side of the globe right now, but eight months ago would have been coming onto winter, and they'd need warmer clothes and blankets. There were still signs that someone had been here recently, though—muddy footprints on the floor, sooty stains from a fire. No one was living here, but people kept coming back.
"What sort of prisoners to do you think they kept here?" Jim wondered, peering into a broken footlocker. "I mean, ideally, if we ran into any of them, they should be on our side, right? Enemy of my enemy and all that."
"In theory," Steve agreed. "Gotta be pretty dangerous, though, to ship 'em all the way out here."
"And depending how long they were incarcerated," Bucky added. "They may be a little on the unhinged side." He knew too well how well Hydra could mess with your head, and he'd been a prisoner for three weeks. How broken would someone be after years in their hands? Steve shot him a sympathetic look.
They headed back to the main path in the middle, meeting up with the other team. Gabe had taken the logbook and a couple of other notebooks he'd found and tucked them into the bag with his radio equipment. Other than those books, both groups were turning up with a whole lot of nothing. They'd both been finding bodies, and sure, there were probably more out in the jungle they hadn't found, but there should have been more for a place this size.
"Does anyone else feel like we're being watched?" Monty asked.
"Kind of have been since we landed, to be honest," Jim replied.
A rumbling sound had them all looking skyward. The sun had yet to be visible through the mist the entire time they'd been here, but it was significantly darker now, and getting cooler. "Sounds like thunder," Gabe said. "We wanna camp out in one of the buildings?"
Steve shot a look at Dugan, then shook his head. "I don't think so. People keep coming back here, and there's nothing left to steal. If this is where whoever is still alive comes for shelter, I'd rather not be here with them."
"If we want out of the rain, we could head for the side of the mountain over there," Dugan said. "Should be able to find an overhang or something to camp out under."
They all agreed and started walking that way, but they hadn't made it more than halfway down the path when the hairs on the back of Bucky's neck stood up. "Someone's here," he said, sliding his hand to his belt for his gun.
"Yep," Dugan said quietly, reaching for his own weapon. Everyone was pulling weapons into easy reach, clicking off the safety.
Bucky looked over at Steve, who swallowed nervously, tightening his grip on his pistol. Steve so rarely used a gun, and Tiny Steve had never touched one. It was going to be unfamiliar and awkward in his hand, no matter that he knew how to use it. "Take your shield back, Steve," he whispered, sliding it down his arm. He couldn't throw it, but he could hide behind it.
Steve slipped the shield onto his own arm, looking marginally less nervous. They were all scared though—the last fight any of them had been in without some kind of magic would have been a schoolyard brawl, and it had been years since they'd gotten into anything like that. Not to mention the threat of death had never been an issue then.
Everything stayed quiet for just a few seconds more, uneasy anticipation hanging heavy in the air, then the sharp snap of a bullet shattered the silence. From behind one of the buildings came a swarm of people, maybe fifteen all together, and they didn't look like they were wearing Hydra uniforms, but they were brandishing guns and other weapons and didn't look like they were in the mood for a discussion about how they should all be on the same side.
Bucky felt woefully unprepared for a battle without his wand, but at least he had his rifle, and it felt familiar and reassuring in his hand. He was shooting to wound, not to kill, and it looked like the other guys were doing the same. If these guys were the former prisoners they looked like, then they didn't want to kill them—it would be awfully hard to make friends later if they did.
Their opponents had no such qualms, though, and Bucky found himself sorely missing magical shields and protective charms. He kept shooting glances at Steve, who was remaining behind his shield and firing his gun, and he looked like he was doing alright. Then the air exploded into chaos as another swarm of people appeared from behind a different building. And there were all the Hydra guys.
The battle had become too close at this point for Bucky's rifle to be much use, though he could still flip it around and whack people in the face with the less-lethal end. People were punching, kicking and brawling, he saw several knives flashing, and was that a bayonet? There were lots of make-shift weapons too—scrap pieces of metal and sharpened sticks and one guy had something with rocks and rope that he was swinging around. Looked like everyone had had time to adapt to the lack of magic.
It was harder to see what was going on with everyone this close, but Bucky's eyes kept darting to where he had last seen Steve. He growled in frustration when he found him—you could take the serum out of the little punk, but that idiotic disregard for his own safety hadn't gone anywhere. He was actually in the fight now, out from behind his shield and brawling like he'd forgotten he didn't have two hundred pounds of muscle to back up his punches anymore. Not that he'd fought any differently last time he was little, but still…
"Steve, get back!" he yelled, but Steve either didn't hear him or ignored him. He had a knife out now, and it finally looked like he was realizing punching people wasn't going to get him anywhere, so he took a page out of Jacques' book, keeping low to the ground and rolling and slashing. That seemed to be working out for him a little better.
While neither of the two sides seemed to be out for the Howlies in particular, they sure didn't seem to mind trying to take them out too. They were fighting on two fronts here, and it was way more people than they could take out. If all the other two sides wanted was each other, then they should cut and run and let them at one another.
Steve was suddenly back by Bucky's side, breathing hard, his knife blade glistening with blood. "We need to get out of here," he said. He gestured for Bucky to call out the retreat—he didn't have the lung capacity anymore to get the volume he needed for that.
"Howling Commandos fall back!" Bucky yelled. They didn't exactly have a base to fall back to, but as long as they got out of here in the same direction…
Everyone started pulling out, fighting their way to the edge of the crowd. Bucky looked around for Steve, fear churning in his gut when he found him, his little feet dangling a good two feet off the ground and a former Hydra prisoner's hands wrapped around his neck. Bucky yelled and started fighting his way over—his handgun was out of ammo, but he slammed the butt of his rifle into one guy's face and scooped up Steve's fallen shield, smashing it into the head of another. Steve swung out with the knife he'd managed to hold on to, slashing the forearms of the man who was holding him and making him cry out and let go in surprise. Steve dropped to the ground in a graceless heap, looking a little blue in the face and gasping for air, but the guy who'd dropped him was quick to recover and kicked him roughly in the stomach before he had time to roll out of the way.
Bucky saw red for a minute, and he never remembered quite what exactly he did; there was just an impression of vibranium meeting bone and his boots meeting flesh. He grabbed Steve's hand and hauled him to his feet and they were running, between the buildings and across the empty space between them and the cover of the jungle. He heard the crack of gunfire and angry voices too close behind them for comfort, and he knew they weren't going to get away at this speed. "Sorry, Stevie," he muttered, and he let go of Steve's hand, looped his arm under Steve's armpits and across his chest instead, and hoisted him off the ground, putting on a burst of speed and racing for the trees. It was hardly the most dignified escape, but at least Steve would be alive enough to be embarrassed about it later.
They hit the treeline and Bucky only slowed down enough to avoid running into anything, still wanting to put some good distance between them and the fight. He ran for several minutes until he only heard silence behind him, stopping at last by the trunk of a giant tree. He set Steve down and his friend leaned back against the tree, sinking shakily to the ground and breathing hard.
"Tell me you managed to hold on to the inhaler," Bucky panted. Steve nodded, already taking it out of his pocket and taking a long pull from it, then another. Bucky dropped down heavily beside him, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. "Let me take a look at you," he said, still trying to catch his breath. Steve wasn't blue anymore, but that didn't mean he was okay.
There were hand-shaped bruises already forming around his neck, and Bucky had to close his eyes for a minute and swallow down the rage that boiled up at the sight of them. Steve sounded like he was breathing alright, but Bucky made a note to keep a closer eye on that. The scrapes from his fall down the hill were oozing blood again, and he was scratched and scraped and bruised and… "Oh, my gosh, Steve, what happened?!" he exclaimed. The right side of Steve's shirt was wet with blood.
Steve looked down at his side curiously, lifting up his arm to see it better, then back up at Bucky. "It's not mine," he said. He'd been trying to look Bucky over for injuries too after he got his breath back, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously as they landed on Bucky's arm. "I think it's yours."
"What?" Bucky asked.
Steve shifted and grabbed the arm Bucky had been carrying him with. The sleeve was torn and Bucky had assumed it was just dirty, but Steve rolled it back carefully, and, oh, okay, that was blood, wasn't it? Kind of a lot of it. "What?" Bucky said again. How had that happened?
"That's a lot of blood," Steve said unhappily. "Here, hold it up over your head for a minute until I find something to clean it with," he said, raising Bucky's injured arm up. "What happened?"
"Dunno," Bucky said. "Guess somebody cut me."
"Somebody cut you," Steve muttered to himself, shaking his head as he busied himself with digging through Bucky's bag. "That's helpful, Buck, thanks."
Bucky shrugged. He didn't know how it had happened, and he was starting to think he'd maybe lost enough blood that it was something to worry about, because that would explain the dizziness and why he suddenly felt so tired. "Ow!" he hissed as something cold started rubbing at his arm.
"Sorry," Steve said, but he didn't stop with the wet cloth he was cleaning Bucky's arm with. "Holy cow, Buck, that's deep," he muttered. Bucky looked down to where Steve was working, then swallowed and looked up again. That was deep. "I think Jim's gonna have to stitch this up," Steve said. "Hopefully this'll hold it until we find him."
Something soft and warm pressed against the wound and Bucky looked down again. "Is that my sock?" he asked. Something oddly clean and white was laying across his arm. Steve was tying it down with little strips of fabric he'd cut off of something.
"Yeah," Steve said, not looking up from his work. "I needed something clean, so I used one of your spare ones. There," he declared, tightening the last knot and making Bucky grunt at the pressure. "That ought to hold it."
"Thanks," Bucky said. He still felt a little light-headed, but he shook his head and forced himself back into the moment. They weren't safe yet.
"You're welcome," Steve replied. "Let's get you up." Bucky wobbled a little, but they got him to his feet, and Steve got under his good arm to support him. "I guess if I have to be little now, at least I'm a good height to make a decent crutch," he said with a little smile, and that got a chuckle out of Bucky.
They checked in over the radio with the other guys and got moving, trying to regroup before the storm hit. They decided to stick with Dugan's plan of heading for the side of the mountain and looking for shelter there.
Fortunately, by the time Bucky and Steve got to the mountain, Gabe, Jacques and Jim were already there, and they'd found a little crevice in the rocks that led back into a fair-sized cave. It took both Steve and Jim to get Bucky inside it—his light-headedness had only gotten worse as they'd gotten closer to the mountain, and he was swaying on his feet now. They only had one non-magical lantern right now, but Gabe had already gotten it lit. Jim let out a low whistle as he inspected Bucky's arm, peeling away the now scarlet-colored sock covering the cut.
"Oh, yeah," he mused, turning away and rifling through his bag. "That's gonna need stitches. A lot."
"He'll be okay, though, right?" Steve asked.
Jim nodded, threading a curved little needle. "Yeah. He lost a lot of blood, though. Go find a canteen, get him some water." He laid a hand on Bucky's good arm and Bucky blinked open eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed. "This is gonna hurt, Sarge," he said apologetically. "A lot. I've got nothing to numb it with. You wanna pass out, I'd…Well, I'd recommend that, actually. Sorry."
Bucky nodded wearily. "Keep an eye on Steve's breathing, huh? Some bad bruises on his neck."
"I will," Jim promised. "Here we go."
Bucky just managed to swallow down a scream as something cold and sterile-smelling splashed over his arm. Something sharp was piercing through the burning skin, tugging on it painfully, and Bucky felt little hands turning his head and holding him up as he vomited onto the rocky floor. The burning and piercing and tugging kept going, and it was just getting worse, and Jim was right, passing out did sound like a good idea…
Steve shifted and tried not to kick Jim in the leg as he tried to find a more comfortable position on the rocky floor. It had been a hell of a night.
Jim had gotten Bucky's arm stitched up as soon as he and Steve had arrived at the cave. Bucky had gotten sick, no doubt from all the blood he'd lost, and then passed out for a while. Jim had finished stitching the wound, then bandaged it up with Bucky's other spare sock acting as a gauze pad and some of the clean bandages from Jim's meager supply holding it in place.
Jim had turned his attention to Steve's throat then, examining the bruises and listening carefully to him breathe. Steve could tell they were swelling up and constricting his airway a little, and Jim hadn't sounded too happy with what he'd heard, so he'd dunked a couple of socks into the stream running through the back of the cave, wrapped the freezing strips of material around Steve's neck and ordered him to sit there and keep his neck straight and not do anything else. He'd also looked the rest of him over and, after deciding the foot-shaped bruise on his stomach wasn't hiding any internal bleeding, declared him well enough, though he'd pulled out some more of that ointment for the numerous cuts Steve had accumulated during the fight.
He'd worked on Gabe then, who'd needed some smaller sets of stitches and a couple of fingers set and splinted, and by the time he was done with that, Jacques had shown back up from where he'd gone to help Dugan and Monty find the cave. He'd also brought back the rest of their gear that they'd set down before going into the compound, which was good. It meant they had things like food and more lanterns and sleeping bags again.
Dugan and Monty had both needed medical attention as well. Nothing too severe, which was good, since Jim's non-magical medical supplies had been fairly limited to begin with. Jim had then proceeded to uncover a cut in his own leg that he'd bandaged up earlier and stitch it back together, and Steve had wanted to get after him for fixing them all up while he was bleeding too, but apparently, it hadn't been bad enough to warrant making the rest of them wait, and at that point it was raining so hard Steve could have yelled at him and he wouldn't have heard it anyway.
When the storm had hit, Steve had been immensely glad they'd found this place. Their tents would be in pieces if they'd tried camping in this, and he could see why the Hydra guys and their former prisoners would fight over a place to get out of it. They'd risked a small fire to cook dinner—little chance of anyone being outside to see it. They hadn't talked while they ate—the roar of the rain made conversation impossible. As soon as they were done, they went to sleep. Dugan and Jacques were on security, and Steve felt bad that he wasn't contributing to that for the second night in a row, but after the day's hiking and fighting, once he'd sat down, he'd had trouble staying awake long enough to eat.
The make-shift cold compresses had done their work on his throat and the swelling had gone down enough to ease his breathing, though Jim had insisted on sleeping next to him so he could keep an ear on it anyway. Steve had laid down to sleep with his back to Bucky's, Jim next to him, and Gabe was on Jim's other side. Monty and Dugan were over there somewhere too—Jacques had first watch. They hadn't wanted to leave the fire going all night, so they were all huddled as close together as they could get—it was cold in the cave. They'd unzipped two of the sleeping bags, then zipped them to one another to make something warmer and slightly softer to lie on, then done the same with three more to go over the top of them all. It kind of worked—that is, it covered them all well enough and kept their body heat in, but it was still chilly. Steve had remembered nights where they'd all piled around him, joking about him being the team furnace, and he'd swallowed down a lump in his throat at the thought of one more thing he wasn't good for anymore. Then he'd fallen asleep.
He woke up sometime when it was still dark because there was a rock jabbing into one of the bruises on his back, and he spent a while trying to shift off of it without kicking anyone and waking them up. By the time he'd gotten that done, his body was still exhausted, but his brain had woken up and didn't want to go back to sleep yet. So he lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of the rain that was loud enough to drown out even Dugan's snoring.
All day yesterday, as they'd hiked and crossed the island and gone slow and taken a lot of breaks on his behalf, all day he'd been wrestling with the situation he was in. He knew that if it had been someone else, say, Dugan had broken his leg, then they would have been doing the same thing and he wouldn't have minded at all. So why did he think the rest of them minded when it was him? He knew they didn't, but it was just hard to remember that in the middle of it all. Every time he got embarrassed about slowing them down and making them take all this trouble, he tried to remind himself that his value to the team—both as the captain and as their friend—hadn't changed. At the same time, though, hadn't it changed a little? Not his value as a person, but what he was able to contribute. That had some value too, didn't it? And that was all gone.
Like in the fight that afternoon. Even without magic, if he'd still been the size he should have been, he would have been able to cause more damage than just slashing at a few ankles, and he never would have gotten picked up and nearly choked to death. Maybe he would have been able to turn the tide enough so they wouldn't've had to retreat, and maybe not, but he still should have been able to call the retreat himself and run for cover on his own two legs. Bucky had saved both of their lives, but the humiliation of being picked up and tucked up under his arm like a rag doll still stung.
He knew no one had any intention of kicking him off the team, and while he was grateful for that, well, what could he actually do anymore? Help them make plans and then just hang back at school while the rest of them carried them out? If he was stuck like this, there was no way he would be out on the field. He couldn't fight and his magic sucked and between his heart and his asthma he'd be more hindrance than help. He'd be the Captain in name only, and this, his job, his mission, everything he did…He would have lost that.
Tears stung sharply behind his eyes again, but he refused to let them fall. Yes, his life was falling apart, and yes, the noise of the rain would keep anyone from hearing him cry, but he wasn't going to do it anyway. He was tough and he didn't give up, and right now that was all he had left. So he was going to hold on to it.
The next morning dawned cold and foggy, but the rain had slowed down to something less deafening and the sun was up there somewhere, and with a little more sleep and the return of the daylight, Steve was able to rally himself again. He was beat down and broken, but that had never stopped him before, and he had a job to do.
"So, what's our play?" Gabe asked as they ate breakfast, holding his bowl of oatmeal awkwardly between his splinted fingers.
Steve had been thinking about that too when he'd been lying awake last night. "I think we need to go," he said. He hated leaving a mission unfinished (he'd only ever done it once before, after the cave with the sirens), but this wasn't giving up. This was his team outnumbered and outgunned and beat to hell, and he had a responsibility to the mission but he had one to the team too. They were still following him, and it was his job to keep them alive. And right now, getting the hell off this godforsaken island was the best way to do that.
"I don't think this is a fight we can win," he went on. "If we still had magic, I'd say we could pull this off, but a bunch of our gear is useless now, and we can't fix ourselves up like we could before." He looked around the group—bruises had darkened and swollen up overnight, cuts were scabbing over or oozing things, and sprains and sore muscles and joints were making themselves heard even louder than they had been last night. Thankfully, no one had gotten hit with anything life-threatening during the fight, but jumping into another one in the shape they were in was just asking for trouble.
"We need to get the hell off of this island and see about getting our magic back and just…" He waved a hand in the general direction of the Hydra base. "Those guys want to tear each other apart, and at this point, I say leave 'em to it."
"Amen," Dugan agreed. There was a round of emphatic nods from the rest of the group.
"Phillips can send someone else over if he wants to figure out what's going on with them," Steve went on. "I say we wait and see if the rain lets up and start working our way back to the boat."
"At least we know that should still be there," Monty said. "We used a real anchor along with all the spells, so it shouldn't've gone anywhere."
"At least there's that," Bucky muttered, and Steve knew he was thinking that if the non-magic thing had hit the boat, it was going to be a hell of a job rowing the hundred miles to the next island. They'd have to cross that bridge when they got there—not much they could do about it now.
They finished eating and packed up their stuff. The rain didn't stop, but it continued to lessen, and if it was going to stop soon, that would be at least one less thing to worry about. While they waited, Jim used the time to check up on everyone's injuries from last night. Gabe couldn't do a lot with his hand and broken fingers, but they were staying in place, and all the stitches Jim had given everyone were holding. He'd unwrapped the ones on Bucky's arm, discarding the sock that was sticky with blood and other stuff—he was worried about these stitches in particular getting infected since there were so many of them—and he washed the wound with disinfectant one more time, which almost made Bucky pass out again. He found another clean sock to pad it with and wrapped it all back up again. He'd checked the bruises on Steve's neck, and while they were still visible and very, very tender, the swelling had gone down enough that it didn't impede his breathing.
Gabe, meanwhile, had been poring through the journals he'd taken from the base. The notes the Hydra commander had kept were sporadic, especially after the prisoners got out, but Gabe did find mention of the fact that after the magic disappeared that first time, their equipment and wands had been destroyed in the fighting—they hadn't had any way of telling when the magic reappeared.
"Well, that's something," Jim mused, looking up from re-bandaging the stitches on his leg. "It answers the question of why they didn't apparate out once the magic came back."
"Still doesn't tell us how long it took," Monty grumbled.
"If we can get off this rock, it might not matter," Dugan said.
Steve knew everyone was hanging on Dugan's declaration that they should all get their magic back once they got out of range of the thing in the ruins. He was hoping so too, but tried not to think too hard about it, since he wasn't sure if that would include everything he'd lost.
"You okay, Steve?" Bucky asked, sitting down carefully next to him.
"Yeah," Steve replied, welcoming the distraction.
Bucky eyed his neck suspiciously. "You look like hell," he said.
Steve snorted. "You seen a mirror lately?"
Bucky chuckled. "Seriously, though, are you breathing alright and everything?"
Steve nodded. "Jim worked up some cold compresses for me last night after he fixed up your arm. It's still sore," he admitted, gingerly touching one of the bruises on his throat. "But the swelling went down." He nodded at Bucky's arm. "What about you?"
"If I hold it really, really still, it doesn't hurt," Bucky said. "Otherwise, I kind of want to scream."
Steve winced sympathetically. All the painkillers that had been in Jim's bag were magical, and so were currently useless. "We should get you a sling or something," he said. "Maybe that would help when we start moving."
Bucky nodded. "Probably a good idea. Get my spare shirt out of my bag," he said, nodding at the leather satchel. "See if that'll work."
Steve spent a few minutes wrapping and tying the shirt, and Jim came over to help him strap Bucky's arm up to immobilize it. The rain had died off by then, so they picked up their gear and very carefully and warily left the cave. They were heading in the opposite direction of the Hydra base, but who knew who had won the fight last night, and who knew who they would run into in the jungle? Everyone had what weapons they could carry ready. Steve checked his compass to point them off in the right direction, sighing as he did so. Nine miles of picking their way through wet, muddy, rocky terrain that was potentially a hell of a lot more hostile now that they knew there were roaming bands of pissed off soldiers out there somewhere.
It was going to be a long hike.
Jim groaned as he sank down into the driest-looking patch of mud he could find, closing his eyes and scrubbing his hands down his face. They had been hiking for two days. It had been raining for at least one and a half of those. Every step he took, he was shoving back branches full of wet leaves that smacked him in the face and sent freezing water dripping down his shirt. This whole, stupid island was either slanting up or slanting down, and he was soaked in mud from scaling the hills and sliding or falling down the slopes. His socks were squishing in his water-logged, over-large shoes. The cut in his thigh was killing him, and after three nights of sleeping on the hard ground, he couldn't even tell where he'd been beaten and hurt during that fight—his body was one giant bruise at this point. He was hungry and cold and wet and sore and he didn't think he'd ever been this miserable in his life. Well, maybe at Azzano.
He shoved himself back up before he fell asleep in the mud. They'd found a reasonably clear patch and decided to set up camp for their fourth—and hopefully last—night on the island that Jim had come to hate with the fire of a thousand suns.
"Gimme a hand with the tents?" Dugan asked wearily.
"Coming," Jim sighed. He, Dugan and Jacques had been on tent duty since they left the cave. Gabe couldn't do anything to help put them up with his hand all splinted up like that. Bucky was down an arm, as was Monty after losing his footing in the mud this afternoon and sliding off a ledge—Jim was pretty sure it was broken, but they'd been trying to find a flat place to camp before they lost the daylight and he hadn't had time to look it over properly yet. Steve technically had enough hands to help, but by the time they stopped for the night, he was huffing and panting and turning worrying shades of pale under all that mud, and Jim would rather work a little harder for shelter than have another medical emergency on his hands. Though an extra set of hands would have been nice. He started walking over to Dugan, shoving his medical bag into Steve's arms to keep it out of the mud less gently than he should have. "Here," he snapped. He did feel a little bad when Steve stumbled a few steps back as he pushed the bag at him.
They got the tents up, and the rest of the guys got a fire going for dinner. They were starting to run out of food too. The fact that Steve ate a lot less now helped stretch out their supplies, but, still, no one had planned on being on this stupid rock for this long. It wasn't helping that they kept running into delays—even with the shape they were in, it shouldn't have taken them two days to go eight and a half miles. They'd had to stop several times when the rain got so bad they couldn't see. There had been four detours to go around a couple of enemy camps and a patrol. Of course, there had been those stupid ruins too. None of them had wanted to go through them again—the anti-magic thing seemed dormant now, but who knew what the hell else was in there—but because of the way the mountains rose up around it, they'd had to go way out of the way, had gotten kind of lost and had to backtrack three times, and then they'd had an unfortunate encounter with a stream and a bunch of leeches. Jim hated this island. He hated it.
Although, leeches aside, at least there was water to drink—plenty of little streams ran down from some kind of spring in the middle of the island and out to sea, and they were never too far from one of them. Without magic, there was no way to clean it aside from boiling it, and at this point, Jim wouldn't be surprised if they all had some sort of stomach parasites from the stuff, but it tasted alright and it hadn't gotten them noticeably sick yet, so what else were they going to do?
The lack of magic was still a sore subject, and getting sorer every day. Yeah, they were sure it would come back when they left—maybe not right away—but they had to leave first. Jim hadn't realized just how much they relied on magic. All these injuries that were slowing them down—it was nothing Jim couldn't have fixed with the wave of a wand or one of the potions he could mix up from his bag. All the gear they'd had to leave behind—simple expanding charms would have let them keep it all, and kept what they did hang on to from being so heavy. Setting up camp every night—tents could have been set up and water-proofed with a simple spell, and they'd be warm and dry when they slept. Hell, forget setting up camp, they could have apparated off this freaking island and saved themselves a lot of pain.
It felt different too, like something was wrong inside of him. Jim had always been fairly sensitive to magic—his had shown up before his second birthday, and he'd always been able to feel it, to sense it, even when he wasn't doing it. He couldn't feel it inside himself now, and it felt…kind of hollow. It felt sort of crushing at the same time, like a weight was hovering over his shoulders and pushing on him. The air around him felt dead and barren too, and that was weird. He didn't think he'd ever been anywhere where there was no magic at all humming in the air. Four days now, and it felt just as weird as it did on the first day. It made him feel jittery and nervous, and, even as exhausted as he was, it made it hard to sleep.
When they finished with the tents and dropped down wearily around the fire, he set to examining everybody's injuries, and the lack of magic didn't just make him feel weird, it made him feel kind of useless. He was so used to magical healing, and the rest of the team relied on him for that. He'd had non-magical first aid training, and he was wracking his brains trying to bring it all back, but without the right equipment, he could only do so much. Why hadn't he brought more non-magical meds? It was never likely they would need it, but it was just good sense. Or it should have been. Because everyone was in pain, and there was nothing Jim could do to fix it.
A couple of Gabe's fingers needed resetting—he'd slid down that same ledge Monty had, and while he hadn't broken anything new, he'd landed bad on that hand, and Jim didn't think he'd ever seen him look so white. The stitches on the back of Dugan's head and on Jacques' shoulder were doing alright, so at least that was something. That arm of Monty's was definitely broken. Some sticks from a nearby tree were enough to splint it, though he used up the last of Steve's giant spare shirt that they'd been tearing up for bandage strips. He really hoped nobody broke anything else before they got to the boat tomorrow.
It took a while to unwrap and clean off Bucky's arm. Truth be told, Jim was getting pretty worried about that one. The stitches were holding, and it wasn't bleeding anymore, but it was oozing something yellow and sticky and disgusting. No matter how much Jim cleaned it and wrapped it up, the damp and the mud got into it, and it was getting infected. The skin all around the wound was swollen and warm, and while it had been just his arm this morning, the fever was definitely spreading. He growled to himself as he washed it—this should have been so easy to fix.
"Hey, look in there and see if there's any yarrow," he said to Steve, who was sitting next to Bucky and holding Jim's bag on his lap, keeping it dry. He'd held on to most of his medical gear, even the magical stuff, in the hope that it would all start working again—some of it was custom-made or hard to find, and he was really hoping it wouldn't all be wasted. One of the things he'd kept was yarrow—aside from its magical properties, it worked to reduce fevers too.
"Here," Steve said in a quiet voice that increased the guilt Jim felt for snapping at him earlier.
He accepted the little bag of yellow powder from Steve's outstretched hand. "Thanks. I, uh, sorry about before," he said. He wasn't actually mad that Steve wasn't doing enough—like he knew Steve thought he was. He was just mad at everything, and Steve had been right there, so that's where it landed. He wasn't mad at Steve at all, actually. He was horrified at what had happened to him, worried for his health, and impressed at how well he was holding it together. If that had happened to Jim, he would have been a sobbing mess. But it had been a hell of a few days and his emotions were stretched dangerously thin and he'd let them get the better of him. He shot Steve an apologetic smile. "Long day," he added, and that was the understatement of the century, but it got a smile out of Steve.
He mixed up some tea out of the yarrow, gave some of it to Steve to fight that low-grade fever he'd had since yesterday—no surprise that he was starting to get sick in all of this—and had Bucky drink the rest of it while he finished cleaning the mud and gunk from around his stitches. Aside from being disgusting, that was not a good color.
"This tastes awful, just so you know," Bucky said, downing the last of the tea.
"I know," Jim said, frowning at the wound. "How bad does this hurt?"
Bucky sighed. "A lot," he admitted. Jim knew Bucky, like all the rest of them, really, never liked to admit when things were wrong. But he knew when Jim needed them to be honest too. Injuries going untreated only made more problems for everyone in the long run. "It's bad enough I'm trying not to use my hand, and the whole arm up to the elbow kind of feels like it's on fire."
Steve's eyebrows furrowed worriedly at this admission, and Jim was pretty sure his expression was mirroring Steve's. "I was afraid of that." He sighed deeply. Yes, they would make it to the edge of the island tomorrow (they could have pushed and done it today, but they'd found a flat place to sleep and it's not like they were going to row anywhere after it got dark), and yes, they could get on the boat and get off the island, but he didn't know how long it would take his magic to come back, or how long it would take them to get to the next island. (He was really, really trying not to think about having to row for a hundred miles.) It could potentially be a while yet before Bucky could get help, and this arm was getting worse. He looked up at Bucky apologetically. "I'm going to have to open this up and clean it out."
Bucky blanched a little, but swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay." He nodded again, steeling himself. "Better do it now while it's still light."
Jim had Jacques get another kettle boiling and bring it over. He was hardly in ideal conditions, but he could at least clean his tools and hands. Steve had offered to get the water, but Jim wanted him to keep sitting and not carry any more heavy things. His breathing had just evened out, and he was still pretty pale. Jim checked him over while he waited for the water to boil. He'd been keeping a pretty good handle on his breathing, but he'd been using the inhaler a lot and it was starting to run low. Jim was mostly worried about his heart. He remembered back at school when they were younger, always being somewhat aware of Steve's heart condition—he always took the stairs pretty slow going to classes up in the towers, and he sometimes pulled himself out of ball games to rest for a while. He still did stuff though, and he'd been fairly active, but this was way past the limits of what that little body had been built for. And Jim didn't like that flutter he was feeling.
"Has it been doing this since you sat down?" he asked Steve.
Steve nodded.
"Doing what?" Bucky demanded.
"Has it slowed down at all?" he asked, waving at Bucky to wait.
"A little," Steve said. "Not as much as it should have by now," he admitted, cheeks coloring a little.
Jim nodded. They'd been walking very slowly and taking a lot of breaks—the shape the rest of them were in, the slow pace wasn't just for Steve anymore—but it was still a long day and, just like last night, Steve had been pushed right to the edge of a breaking point. "I think we should try some digitalin."
Steve nodded again and Jim dug back into his bag. A few drops had helped on that first night after he'd passed out, so just a couple ought to help bring things back down. It was such tricky stuff, but such a small amount ought to be alright.
"What is going on?" Bucky asked.
"His heart's taking longer to get back to resting than it should, so I'm giving him this, and he's going to take it easy for the rest of the night, and he'll be fine," Jim said. "You ready?" he asked, nodding at Bucky's arm.
His needle, tweezers and scissors had been sterilized in the boiling water, and Jim scooped some water out in a cup to cool down just enough to clean his hands and dip a cloth into to dab the area around the stitches clean. "Here we go," he said. The scissors snipped carefully at the first stitch and then the next one, creating enough room to slide carefully underneath the rest of them. Very carefully, Jim cut the stitches open. Bucky had his eyes closed, wincing and taking slow, measured breaths.
When all the stitches were cut, he plucked the little bits of string out of the skin. He paused to clean it off again, as blood and more of that yellow stuff was starting to eke out. Very gently, he placed his hands on either side of the gash and gingerly pulled it open, and, yeah, it definitely wasn't healing right, because it shouldn't have come open so easy.
Steve choked back a gagging noise from where he was leaning in to watch. "If you're going to throw up, turn that way," Jim told him, though he had to stop and take a deep breath before going on too. That was…oh, that was gross.
He'd boiled some strips of cloth along with his tools, and he picked one of them up and started cleaning the wound out, wiping away the blood and the pus. He made it farther than he thought he would before Bucky asked him to stop for a minute, then turned around and vomited into the bushes.
Bucky threw up again by the time Jim was done cleaning everything, and Jim was really glad they were doing this before dinner—there wouldn't've been much point in having him eat first just to throw everything up later.
It took the last of his disinfectant to wash it out once it was cleaned up. They didn't have a lot of garlic left with their food, but Jim had Jacques crush it all up into a paste, and once the wound was stitched back together, he spread the garlic over the top of it before bandaging it back up. "Garlic helps kill bacteria," he explained to Steve, who was watching curiously.
"And it'll keep the vampires away," Bucky hissed through gritted teeth. He was white as a sheet and on the verge of passing out—Jim knew that garlic had to burn like hell—but he was hanging in there.
"Almost done, Sarge," Jim assured him, tying the last of the knots on the bandage. "Alright, I know you're almost horizontal anyway, but let's lay the rest of the way down, okay?" He helped Bucky shift until he was down flat, keeping hold of the injured arm and laying it on Bucky's chest. "Just breathe easy, settle a little bit, and I'll get you something to eat in a minute, okay?"
He got up and groaned as his body protested the movement, gathering up his tools and walking over to the fire. Jacques had some more boiling water ready to clean the tools and his hands off. "How is he?" Dugan asked.
Jim sighed. "Stuff that color should not be coming out of a man's arm," he said. "It's as clean as I can get it, and if the fever and the infection will stay contained, he should be in good shape until we can get somewhere to fix it up right." He sighed again as he ladled out a bowl of soup. "I hate this. I hate this so much, I…"
Dugan clapped him on the shoulder. "Yeah," he agreed. "You never really think how much you use magic until you don't have it, you know?" He pulled his useless wand out of his pocket and spun it thoughtfully in his hand. He nodded over in Steve and Bucky's direction. "How's Cap?"
"Hard to say," Jim sighed. He ate some of the soup before going on. "Physically, his heart is worrying me a little, but if he rests tonight and then we have, what, like, only an hour to go tomorrow? He'll be okay. The rest of it, though…" He trailed off and shook his head. Steve Rogers was one of the strongest people Jim knew, and seeing him like this reminded him that that was true no matter what size he was. Tough as he was, though, there was a slump to his shoulders that had never been there before, a haunted look in his eyes when he sat still for too long and drifted off. He was holding it together, which was more than Jim could see anyone else doing, but it was still killing him.
"Do you think he'll get it back?" he asked Dugan, lowering his voice even though no one else was listening.
Dugan didn't answer for a few minutes, focusing on his own soup. "Maybe," he said at last. "If the serum just got turned off, then getting out of here may be all it needs to wake it back up again."
Jim nodded. They'd had this conversation before. "What if it doesn't?" he asked even more quietly. They'd had the conversation, but they always stopped at this question, too afraid to ask it.
Dugan was quiet again for several long minutes. "Then we'll figure something out," he said. He dropped his spoon down into his empty bowl. "We still need him."
"Yeah," Jim said, nodding his agreement. That was certainly true. If Steve stayed little like this, they'd have to switch a hell of a lot of things up, but his insane ability to throw trucks at Nazis had never been what they needed him for. Jim had already been compiling a list in his head of the meds he would need—magical and non-magical—that would keep Steve in better shape out on the field so that if he stayed small, they wouldn't have to leave him behind on future missions. Dugan was right, they'd figure something out.
Jim finished up his soup and ladled out two more bowls, taking them over to where Steve and Bucky were. He helped Bucky back up into a sitting position, shooed Steve over to the side so he would eat his own dinner instead of trying to help Bucky, and held the bowl steady so Bucky could use his good arm to eat.
Everyone dragged themselves to their tents and collapsed, exhausted, into their sleeping bags. Jim hated camping. It was never a thing his family had done, and sleeping on the ground outside was kind of the worst. He was so tired though, so sore and drained, that getting horizontal was all he needed to do and he was out.
They were all slow getting up and going the next morning. Everything hurt, and it was still gray and drizzly and cold. "I hate this island," Jim grunted into the ground when Monty woke him up.
"Well, then, get up so we can get the hell off of it," Monty replied.
Jim sat up. "Good point."
He checked everyone over again before they got moving. Steve's heart and breathing were back to where they should be, Gabe's hand and Monty's broken arm were painful but staying straight, and Bucky's fever had gone down, so that was something, even if he looked like he wanted to scream every time he moved his arm. Jim reworked his sling to bind the arm to his chest to keep it from moving, and they started hiking again.
When they finally broke through the trees, Jim smiled in relief at the sight of the Pacific Ocean stretching out in front of them. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Please tell me the boat is down there," Bucky groaned.
"At this point, I would swim back to England if it would get me off this rock," Gabe said.
The boat, thankfully, was still anchored where they had left it, though the rains had left a few inches of water in the bottom. Jim followed Jacques down the rocky face of the island, and together they hopped onto the boulder nearest the boat and managed to pull it up and turn it enough to dump the water out, although once he got a good grip of the boat, Jim almost dropped it.
"Do you feel that?" he asked Jacques excitedly. Maybe he was going crazy, wishing so desperately for magic that wasn't there anymore that he was starting to imagine things, but…
Jim realized Jacques wouldn't have understood the question, but the grin on his face told him he was feeling the same thing Jim was. "C'est magique," Jacques said gleefully.
The boat was humming with magic, practically shaking with it—or it felt like it anyway, after so many days of feeling nothing. "Ha!" Jim barked triumphantly.
"What?" Steve asked, leaning out and peering down at them.
"The boat still has magic!" Jim called. The thing in the ruins had cancelled out the magic on the island and apparently not an inch further. Three feet out to sea was enough to leave the enchantments on the boat intact. He laughed as he saw Steve's jaw drop and everyone else's faces appear over the side of the rocks. "We're not going to have to row to Más a Tierra!" He pulled out his wand, and, alright, it still wouldn't do anything, but the boat still had magic, and Jim could feel it, which meant he hadn't lost it. Finally, finally something was going right.
It was a job getting the one-armed brigade down the rocks, but they finally all made it into the boat. The charm on the boat worked like a magic carpet—you just needed the right commands to steer it, no spells or anything like that. Jim sat up in the front to steer and Steve sat next to him, perched on top of one of the backpacks, helping him navigate. That compass of his still wasn't working the way it was supposed to, but it still pointed north, so he was able to keep them on course.
The trip only took an hour and a half, but after about ten minutes in, Jim and Steve were the only ones awake. Everyone was hurt and exhausted, and Jim knew that Dugan and Jacques, who were in the best shape out of all of them, had been working security patrols every night and had gotten half as much sleep as the rest of them because of it. He could have done with a nap too, but the fact that they were going home was filling him with excited adrenaline, and there was something about being out in the boat that invigorated him. He'd missed the ocean.
"You know, we used to have a boat," Jim told Steve. Steve looked up from the compass at him, inviting him to go on. "I mean, we lived in Fresno, but dad had grown up in a fishing village, and he loved the water, so every weekend he'd apparate us over to his cousin's place in Monterey and we'd spend a couple days by the beach." He chuckled. "It wasn't until I was, like, nine, that I realized we actually lived three hours away."
Steve laughed.
"Oh, it was great, though," Jim went on. "Dad would take me out fishing in that boat. Always just me and him—it was our special thing, you know?" He swallowed down a little knot of sadness at the thought. He and his dad hadn't gotten to go fishing since he was fourteen. "We'd be out there for hours," he continued. "And we'd talk about stuff, and then we'd bring the fish back and we'd grill everything. Esther and Dad's cousin's kid would have been running around in all the tide pools catching crabs and stuff for us to cook with the fish. We'd sit around and eat and after it got dark, my Grandma would play the kokyū—that's kind of like a big violin. She'd play these old songs, and you could hear the ocean out the window, and…" He trailed off, swallowing down a knot in his throat.
"Do you miss it?" Steve asked softly. Jim hadn't talked about it an awful lot, but the rest of the guys knew they'd had to move back in Fourth Year—it had been that or internment camps.
"Yeah," Jim replied. They'd had to scatter when they moved. Jim's family had gone to Kansas, and his dad's cousin and his family were in Nebraska somewhere. He wasn't sure where his grandma was. They hadn't heard from her in a long time.
A small hand rested on his arm, and he looked over to see Steve's bright blue eyes shining with the sorrowful understanding of what it was like to have your life uprooted when you were young and to lose people you loved. "I'm sorry," he said gently.
Jim nodded. "I keep hoping, you know, after the war's over, maybe we can all go home."
"I hope you can too," Steve said. "It's wrong that you should have ever had to leave."
"Yeah, well, given our options…" Jim said. He sat up a little straighter. "But enough about that." This trip was the first time he'd seen the ocean in three years. He wanted to enjoy it. He could always brood later. "You do much sailing in New York?"
They talked a little while, comparing the ocean and the sorts of things one did on the beach in California to New York. Jim knew the ocean wasn't warm everywhere like it was back home—case in point, the insufferable island they'd just left—but it was still weird to him to think about going to the beach and being cold.
They were talking about the different ways you could fry fish when the air shimmered in front of them and the ghost of a fluffy little silver animal appeared. Jim recognized it as one of Peggy's martens.
"Steve?" the Patronus asked in Peggy's voice. "Are you hearing this?" It sighed. "I don't know why I'm asking that. You obviously aren't—you haven't been answering. Or if you are hearing and can't answer, that's not good either." The marten sighed again. "Look, we're getting really worried about you all. The radio's giving us nothing, I've sent several Patronuses out to each one of you and there've been no answers, we've been using scrying spells and have even gotten a plane to do a few flyovers and we can't find a trace of you. It's hit the point we're getting ready to apparate out to the island to look for you. If you're getting any of this, please, just give us something—a Patronus, or a word on the radio, or, hell, even Morse Code would do it. If you can't talk, then know we're coming for you. But if you can…If you can, please let me know you're alright." Her voice wavered just a bit there at the end and the marten disappeared.
"I guess the island didn't just cancel our magic—it kept anything else from getting in," Jim said. He'd been wondering about that—they would have started worrying back at school when they missed the first check-in, and in a couple of hours, the team would have been incommunicado for five days now. The anti-magic thing must have acted as some sort of shield, turning off whatever magic was sent there and keeping it from reaching them.
"We can't let them apparate onto that island," Steve said, looking back behind them worriedly, although Más Afuera was well out of sight by now. And good riddance.
"Yeah," Jim agreed. If no other magic could land there, they shouldn't be able to either. He didn't know what exactly happened when an apparation was stopped in the middle, but it probably wasn't good. He consulted his watch. "We should hit land in about fifteen minutes." He checked his wand, but it still wasn't working. "Without magic, I can't speed this thing up any, but if she just sent you that message, they'll wait a little bit to get an answer before apparating anywhere." He really hoped that was true. "We've got time to get word back."
Steve nodded. There had been a wizard they'd gotten the boat from on Más a Tierra. Not S.S.R., but not Hydra either—just a civilian, and when they gave his boat back, they could use his wand to send them a message. Or he could use his wand. Or something.
They hit land and dragged themselves ashore under the concerned eye of the boat's owner. Between Gabe, Bucky and Steve, they managed a stilted, awkward conversation—the three of them spoke some Spanish, but this guy spoke Spanish mixed with something local, and Jacques' translator was still offline. They got enough of what had happened explained that he consented to let one of them use his wand.
Gabe tried fixing the radio, but the magical component remained stubbornly off. He ended up sending Peggy a Patronus, and as the silver bobcat appeared and then flitted off into the air, Jim felt one of the worried coils that had been in his gut for five days unclench. Their wands weren't working yet, but whatever that thing was hadn't killed the magic inside them—they could still do spells, and they worked.
Gabe had just told her not to send a team to the island, and Peggy's marten came back, asking where they were and demanding to know what had happened and if they were all alright. They all looked at one another, unsure of how to answer.
"Tell her there was something on the island that turned all our magic off," Steve said at last. "That's why we couldn't answer her. Tell her we're hurt and still can't get out of here on our own. If she can send a Portkey or something…"
Gabe nodded. "Um," he wondered. "Should I tell her what happened to you?" he asked awkwardly, clearly wishing he didn't have to ask the question.
Steve opened his mouth, then closed it again, raising a hand in an 'I don't know' gesture. "If you can figure out how to say it," he said helplessly. It was a fair point. That wasn't the kind of thing you just wanted to spring on someone, but how the hell did you have that conversation?
Gabe nodded, considering as he conjured another silver bobcat. "Peggy," he said. "There was some kind of…anti-magical artifact on that island, and it turned off all our magic. Jim and Dugan think it'll come back, but we're kind of stuck right now. We've made it to Más a Tierra, but we need you to send someone with a Portkey or something to get us home. We're in rough shape—everybody's hurt, and Jim can't fix us without magic. And just, I guess, so you know, uh, Steve is…uh…well, he's…He had a lot more magic than the rest of us to get turned off, so he's kind of…back how he used to be." He didn't seem to be able to think of anything more to say, and the bobcat vanished.
"Back how he used to be?" Bucky asked. "What the hell kind of explanation is that?"
"Well, I'm sorry," Gabe snapped. "I didn't know what I was supposed to say."
"Buck, it's fine," Steve sighed. He'd perked up a little on the boat, but that slump was back in his shoulders now, worried lines creasing his eyes again. Jim supposed he'd found a weird sort of equilibrium on the island, being little and hiking and camping and just trying to stay alive. But now they were going back to the world they came from, and Steve wasn't supposed to be little there. For Steve's sake, Jim really hoped Dugan was right, that the serum would come back online with everything else.
"How long do you think it'll—" Dugan started, trying to steer the conversation to safer waters, stopping as the air twisted in front of them and Peggy appeared.
"Not long," Jim said, and there was a hell of a lot to have to figure out still, but he couldn't help smiling. "Oh, Peggy Carter, are you a sight for sore eyes."
She was looking at them all anxiously, concern only growing deeper as her eyes raked over the mud and blood coating them all. "What in the hell happened to you?" she asked worriedly.
"It's a very, very long story," Monty groaned.
"Well, we'll be home right off and we'll get you all taken care of," she said, the familiar business-like tone of Peggy On A Mission taking over her worry. "But where's Steve?"
Jim realized with a start that from where she was standing, Steve, who should have been easily visible, was blocked from her view by Bucky. Steve cleared his throat nervously and moved out to where she could see him.
"Over here," he said in a small voice.
Her eyes followed his voice and her hand flew up to cover her mouth, shock etched into every line of her face. "Bloody hell," she whispered.
The team has finally made it off the island and get to go home! Lots still to figure out once they get there, but they can heal and rest and get a good meal and sleep on mattresses again. (Jim may have been channeling the author in this last section-camping is kind of the worst.)
It's been a rough few chapters for them, so while there is still some Tiny Steve emotional stuff ahead, there's also some nice fluff and recovery, not to mention investigating the mystery of the missing magic. This is a science problem that needs fixing, and Howard is on the case.
See you Friday!
