Steve is big again and there is much rejoicing! Now it's time to get back to work.


The whole thing down in Howard's lab had taken less than an hour, but, needless to say, there had been no going back to bed afterwards. Steve was on Cloud Nine, bouncing around the lab like a kid on Christmas morning—Bucky didn't think he'd seen him so ready to just float away since the day he and Peggy had gotten together and he'd come back to the dorm and told Bucky she'd kissed him.

Since they were all too wired up to sleep anyway, Howard decided to go ahead and run a few tests to make sure everything had gone the way it was supposed to. Steve was happy to acquiesce, but he was just so excited to have everything back again that Howard actually had a hard time getting him to sit still.

Steve looked ridiculous, dancing around the lab in his bathrobe like a four-year-old on a sugar high, but that wasn't why Bucky was laughing. Steve's excitement was contagious, and all these things, these good things that his best friend had been given and deserved to have, he had them all back now. More than that, he had back that spark in his eye, that spring in his step, that confidence that he'd been trying so hard to find since Más Afuera. Steve was happy again, and Bucky was happy too.

They all headed back upstairs around sunrise. Bucky and Peggy walked at a much more reasonable pace, while Steve ran up the stairs, back down to join them, then up again. Then down and up a few more times. Everyone's reactions back in the dorm when they woke up and saw Steve were pretty fantastic. Jacques was so delighted, he grabbed Steve and kissed his cheeks, exclaiming congratulations in French, and that did seem to bring Steve back down to earth a little bit.

Far and away, however, the best reaction to Steve's return to super-soldier was Professor Phillips. While it was true that Howard and Samantha had been thorough in their testing prior to sticking Steve back into the experiment box, they had evidently forgotten the part about telling Phillips they were going to do it. Defense Against the Dark Arts was their first class of the day, and they'd all stood outside and waited for several minutes as the sound of Phillips yelling echoed down the corridor.

"How can you be a genius and be this stupid?!" Phillips demanded. "Boy, you don't have the good sense God gave to cottage cheese, I swear—"

"Sir, we tested everything before we started," Howard replied. "It was perfectly safe—"

"Don't interrupt me; I wasn't finished," Phillips snapped. "You take one of my best men and stick him inside your magic microwave without so much as a note? Of all the hare-brained…"

It went on in this vein for a little while longer before the door opened and the class tried their best to act as though they hadn't heard a thing. Howard walked out looking mildly chastised but not overly bothered by the dressing down, shooting Steve and Bucky a wink as he passed. They all filed in to class and sat down, though Steve hovered a little awkwardly by Phillips' desk.

"Um, I'm sorry, Sir, I didn't know he didn't tell you," Steve started. True, neither he or Bucky had asked, but they'd assumed it had been alright to go ahead.

"I know," Phillips said, still sounding annoyed. His glower softened just a little when he looked up. "Either way, I'm glad it worked. Now, go sit down."

Steve's excitement lasted the rest of the day. He could do magic in classes again as well as he used to be able to, though he got a little over-enthusiastic in his excitement, which did lead to another desk fire in Transfiguration. Just a little one. Bucky intended to give him grief about that one for a long time.

After school, they went down to the training area so Steve could run around some more and test out his muscles and stamina again. Steve was usually pretty good about being careful when they sparred, but, given his exuberance throughout the rest of the day, Bucky declined the offer to go a few rounds with him. Dugan had no such qualms, and got a broken wrist and jaw for his trouble, but he didn't seem to mind overly much. Steve apologized a lot and Dugan waved it off and came back from the infirmary not too much later good as new.

"That's just showing off," Jim said, watching with a raised eyebrow as Steve jumped and flipped around the exercise bars.

"I would say he's just excited," Bucky said with a grin. "But that is a lot of unnecessary twirling." Steve swung himself up on one of the bars and into the air, executing several mid-air spins before landing with a flourish that would not have been out of place at a swing-dance competition.

"There's nothing wrong with a bit of flair," Peggy said, her head tilted to one side as she watched Steve. She shot Bucky a little grin. "Like Vicki said with you and Quidditch—it's rather lovely to watch."

It took a couple of days for Steve to come down off his high, although Bucky still caught him flexing or doing little jumps or stretches when he didn't think anyone was looking, like he was testing to make sure the serum was still working. Things got back to normal fairly quickly, like they always seemed to after missions. Moving into February, teachers were starting to talk about N.E.W.T.'s like they were tomorrow, with homework increasing accordingly, so it was kind of a relief when they got to go out on some lower-key missions. Or it was a different kind of pressure, anyway. There was another factory mission, and a capture-and-extract they ran with Peggy in Amsterdam, which netted them not only the spy they went in after, but two more as well.

As far as Schmidt's factories went, they were really starting to cull them down. He'd built more since Steve's initial intel from the map in Azzano—he kind of had to, the way they were going through them—but the S.S.R.'s intelligence network was good at keeping up with the new ones, and production was slowing down. That did make Bucky a little edgy, just knowing that they had to be pissing Schmidt off, and he and the rest of the team were keeping an eye out for retaliation, but none seemed to be forthcoming. Either Schmidt had decided it wasn't worth the trouble, or he had his hands full elsewhere. Peggy suspected it was the latter. They were hearing more and more about the Valkyrie, and factory output and the capturing of people to work in them was slowing down, which she thought meant that whatever the Valkyrie was, it was getting close to being finished. Their spies were digging as deep as they could to try to figure out what in the hell the thing was and where they could find it. Phillips was pushing harder on the factory-destroying missions—if they couldn't figure out what the Valkyrie was, maybe they could blow enough stuff up to keep it from getting finished.

They started gearing up to take out another factory they'd found in Poland. It was after sunset when they apparated in, landing in the snowy forest surrounding the factory. They spread out around the perimeter, taking their time getting set up—they'd been starting to run into more warding around the factories as Hydra got a little more desperate. Jim and Dugan, along with Patrick, the 89th's curse guy, and Alex, the 107th's, spent a lot of time studying the perimeter spells and muttering to themselves. Bucky left Steve to confer with Colin and Ethan and went to check in with some of the Fifth-Years who were having some trouble with their Patronuses.

"I just can't get it to work, Sergeant," Alfie sighed. "I don't understand, I've done it on missions before." Corporeal Patronuses were a tad advanced for Fifth-Year magic, but it was a required skill for all the military units before they were cleared for duty.

"Me too," said Caleb, another one of the 107th's Fifth-Years (Bucky really had to stop thinking of them as the new guys—they'd been at this for six months now). "It's not…You don't think they've got something in there messing with our magic, do you?" he asked nervously.

"Nah," Bucky assured him. "You're just nervous. In the heat of battle, it's just kind of instinct, but all this standing around gets to you, you know?"

"Are you not nervous, then?" Noah asked.

" 'Course I am," Bucky replied with a smile. "Anyone who's not nervous before a fight like this is either stupid or doesn't know what he's in for." That got a smile from the three of them. "I've just had more practice standing around being nervous than you guys have." He quickly conjured up a Patronus, the large bear glowing a warm silver before vanishing. "I know you guys know that you need a happy memory—a strong one. Some people mix it up, whatever comes into their heads, but for moments like this, you want a go-to one. Find one you know that works, use the same one every time. That way you're not searching for one while a Dementor's getting closer. Let me hear it—tell me what you've got." Since they weren't in the habit of having a go-to memory, taking the time now to really think about it would help solidify it for them.

"Hmm," Caleb mused. He smiled. "Last Christmas, when my sister had a baby and I became an uncle."

"Playing Quidditch with my brother," Noah said.

"Getting picked for the 107th," Alfie said with a grin. "I never got picked for anything before."

"Alright," Bucky said, smiling. "While we've got a few minutes, really feel all those feelings, soak 'em in. And another thing that should help with being nervous," he told them. "Yeah, we're going into a fight, and there's spells and guns and Hydra guys trying to kill us, but not one of us is going in there alone. If you run into a Dementor and can't find it in you to make the spell work, someone else on your team is going to have your back. If you go down, someone on your team will be there to pick you back up. Bad things might happen, but you've got people to help you. Remember that."

"Yes, Sir," Alfie said, still grinning, and after a moment, a shiny silver badger shot out of the end of his wand. "Ha!"

"Told you," Bucky said. Caleb and Noah seemed inspired by Alfie's success, and their Patronuses joined his. Bucky made them practice a few more times before sending them off to where their teams were getting ready, confident that their confidence would hold.

"New guys okay?" Steve asked him when he came back.

"Yeah," Bucky replied. "Just antsy from standing around so long."

"Well, we're about to go in," Steve said. He checked his radio, making sure everyone had their comms open on the right frequency.

"107th in position," Colin's voice chirped in Bucky's ear.

"89th in position," Ethan echoed.

"Howling Commandos in position," Steve said. He cast one more look around the group. "Everyone ready to move on my mark. Three. Two. One."

The silence of the night was broken as the three teams rushed forward, defenses going down as they stormed the gates. Explosions and fires lit up the darkness, spells and bullets flying through the air. Blue lightning crackled from the energy guns on both sides, while Dementors glided through the night.

Bucky kept his focus on the path in front of him, fighting off anything in their way and trusting the rest of the men to take care of the things that weren't. They made it into the building without too much trouble. The 89th split for the prison wing and the Howlies headed for the main floor. Like clockwork, Monty, Dugan and Jacques disappeared to lay explosives while Jim and Gabe hit the communication office and Steve and Bucky fought off opposition. Bucky was familiar enough with the rhythm of Steve's fighting by now that he didn't have to think about it—he just moved in and out and up and back, covering and being covered, ducking and throwing and darting and switching, as in sync as if they were each other's shadows.

Steve grabbed Bucky and turned, his shield up at the sound of an energy weapon powering up, although, to both of their surprise, instead of blue lightning crackling around the edges of Steve's shield, a silent wave of energy pulsed out of the weapon and sent them both flying back into a wall of machinery.

Bucky was impressed with how quick Steve was to adjust, even in midair, spinning the two of them so that his shield took the brunt of the impact. That meant he was on the bottom when they landed, though, so Bucky flung up a shield spell to protect them as they shoved aside all the machine parts that had come loose in the collision and landed on them.

"Ow," Bucky complained. "Freaking Coleman guns. I thought we had 'em all by now." Eric Coleman's magically enhanced weaponry had been giving them grief ever since they had discovered them a year ago. The black marketeer had sold them to whoever had the money, and Hydra had been a regular customer. "You okay?"

"I'm good," Steve panted, climbing to his feet. "Keep the shield up for a second." He flung his own shield back in the direction of their attacker, and there was a satisfying clang before it came flying back to his hand. "Guys, be advised, we've got some of those enhanced Coleman guns in play," he said over the radio.

"Seeing some out here too, Captain," came Colin's voice. "Your lads and the 89th will want to be careful on the way out."

"Roger that," they heard Ethan reply.

They got back to the fight, and it wasn't too much later that the 89th started getting the prisoners outside. Jim and Gabe had come down from the office by then, so Bucky broke off to help cover the escape. From where he sat, he could see most of the fight, and it was looking ugly. Coleman's guns looked different from the Tesseract guns that Hydra made, and now that he knew there were some out here, they were easy enough to spot. "Steve, there's a lot of those Coleman guns out here," he said from his perch up on a roof. "You guys really need to watch it coming out."

"Copy that," Steve said.

Bucky turned his attention to the end of the building where the prisoners were coming out. The 107th was keeping most of the fighting down on their end. Some soldiers were breaking through, though, firing faster than Bucky could keep up with. Ethan's guys were shielding the prisoners, but Bucky saw a few of them go down—not fatally, thankfully, since they were getting back up, but at least two of them looked like they took a hit from one of those guns that shot the fiery bullets, the way they had to be carried out.

"89th is taking more fire than I can cover!" Bucky yelled into his radio between shots. "We need backup on the east side of the building now!"

"On it, Sergeant!" came a voice that it took Bucky a second to place, but the burst of green fire he caught out of the side of his eye told him Alfie had come to help.

"Watch the guns, kid," Bucky told him, taking out two more Hydra soldiers and pausing to reload. "Same ones that got you that first mission." Alfie had taken a shot in the leg from one of those guns, and Bucky was sure he had no desire to repeat the experience.

"Aye, aye, Sir," Alfie replied. Another burst of green fire exploded somewhere off to his left.

Once the prisoners finally cleared the perimeter, Bucky swung around to focus his fire on the main fight. It was chaos, and between the smoke and dust and flames, it was hard to tell who was fighting who. He caught Steve and Patrick, took out one of the guys fighting them before turning to cover Jacques who was covering Chris who bleeding pretty badly. He spotted Ethan and Gabe and Jim, fired into a knot of Hydra soldiers, then lost sight of everyone as a truck exploded and sent dust and smoke billowing over the whole yard. Bucky cursed, taking the time to reload his rifle and fighting the urge to slide off the roof and join the melee. His job was up here and they needed eyes above the chaos—like right now, when a patch of smoke cleared just in time for him to shoot a guy who was about to take off Charlie's head.

His eyes darted over to the right, drawn by a flash of noise and color. There were four Hydra guys, two of them carrying Coleman guns, and they must have been a version Bucky had never seen before, because Colin was on the ground screaming and clutching at what looked like only part of his leg. Bucky took one of them and then another with a headshot, and then the other two were flying through the air as Alfie appeared, howling with fury and flinging his green flames every which way. Caleb ducked in behind him to cover their leader, and Bucky fired a couple more shots to cover them before turning to the crowd converging on Steve and Monty.

"Where the hell are all these guys coming from?!" Gabe yelled over the comms.

"We need a medic over by the supply truck!" Caleb called.

"Defensive spells going back up on the south side!" Jim yelled. "Do not retreat to the south, repeat, do not retreat south!"

"Medic to the end of the loading dock!" called Alex.

"Dementors coming around the south side of the building! I need help!" Dugan called.

On and on the radio screamed, and Bucky couldn't do anything but keep shooting, shoving off the crushing panic hovering over his chest. He covered Charlie running for Colin, and Jim going to Chris and Kevin. He covered Monty and Alex and Steve and Ethan and Gabe and Jacques, and he hadn't seen Alfie in a while and Dugan was still yelling for help and Patrick and Noah were running and things were exploding and this was just getting uglier and maybe they were going to lose, but there were still people in Hydra black trying to kill his friends, so Bucky kept shooting.

Finally, finally, they'd fought a hole big enough to escape through, and Steve was calling the retreat over the radio, yelling at Monty to light the place up. Bucky slid down off the roof and ran, slowing down enough to help Caleb pull Phillip up off the ground, and the three of them ran for the fence.

An explosion rocked the night behind them, and they stopped to lower Phillip back down next to some of the other wounded. "You know the spell to slow that bleeding down?" Bucky panted.

Caleb nodded, too out of breath to talk, but pulling out his wand and passing it over Phillip's midsection. Bucky pushed himself to his feet quickly—if he stayed down, he might not get back up for a while. "Give me a count," Steve's voice came over the radio—he'd made it out alright, and one of the tense knots in Bucky's stomach uncurled.

He made his way through the trees, stopping at knots of people and counting, offering spells and help where he could. There were a lot of wounded—aside from the usual magical injuries and bullet holes, those creative guns of Coleman's had done plenty of damage, and Bucky spat out a curse for the inventor and wished that Peggy hadn't killed him in Paris so that Bucky could do it right now.

He ran into Monty helping with the counting, and Dugan and Jacques were alive and upright and working on keeping watch until everyone could move. He finally found Alfie, and the kid was covered in blood and dirt but didn't actually look like he was hurt. He was sitting in a small clearing with Charlie and Colin, cradling Colin's head in his lap and crying. Colin was lying very still, his eyes closed, and nausea rose in Bucky's throat for a moment before Colin grunted and squinted an eye open to glare up at Alfie. "Will you stop crying on my face, you wee numpty? I'm not dead."

Bucky choked down a laugh at the statement, though he could certainly see why Alfie was so upset. Colin looked awful—from this close, Bucky could see that he did still have all of his leg, technically, but it wasn't hanging on by very much. "How is he?" he asked softly, crouching down next to where Charlie was working.

"Not good," Charlie huffed. "I can't do anything but stabilize it enough to move him and hope Rains can fix it. It won't kill him, but I don't know if we can save the leg."

Bucky nodded, clapped Charlie on the shoulder and slid over closer to Colin's head. "What do you need?" he asked.

"Seeing as I'm a bit otherwise occupied," Colin said, gesturing down at his leg with a wince. "Can you make sure someone's doing the counting for my lads?"

"Already on it," Bucky assured him. "You need anything for the pain?"

Colin shook his head. "Charlie's a step ahead of you, mate. I'm feeling alright. If a bit damp," he added with a nod up at Alfie.

Bucky smiled and nodded, patting Alfie on the shoulder as he stood up. "He'll be alright, kid," Bucky assured him. "You did good covering him and getting him out of there." Alfie nodded, but didn't say anything, his eyes still focused on Charlie's work.

Bucky kept walking through, checking in with Monty and the guys from the 89th who were getting counts. He kept seeing people running little spells to help stop bleeding or fix minor broken bones, and, sure, they all knew how to do that and they all usually helped out with that, but Jim should be doing some of the bigger stuff, especially since Charlie was busy with Colin. Where was he?

"Hey, Steve?" Bucky said into his radio. "Do you know where Jim is? We got lots of guys around here who need some help. And I haven't seen Gabe yet either."

There was no response for just a beat too long, then Steve replied. "We're over by the big rock where we started."

"Is something wrong?" Bucky asked worriedly. Steve's voice was just a little too quiet, a touch too flat.

"Yeah," Steve said.

Bucky was already heading for the rock anyway, but he picked up his pace, an anxious weight settling into his stomach. Steve was fine, he'd sounded alright, but Jim and Gabe were with him, and he'd said something was wrong. Was one of them hurt?

He relayed his last count to Monty so he could take over and pushed through the trees around the big rock. For a moment, he felt relieved at the sight that greeted him. Steve was on his feet and Gabe was sitting down, neither of them looking injured. Jim was on the ground, but he was kneeling, working, not hurt, and that was good, everyone was okay, but then Bucky's eyes took in the rest of the scene. Jim was kneeling down and Ethan was lying in front of him, gasping in pain, and Jim's hands were inside his stomach and there was blood everywhere, staining the snow a deep red that looked black in the moonlight, and there was way too much of it. Whatever Jim was doing, it wasn't working.

"It isn't working, it isn't working!" Jim said desperately, pulling his hands up and grabbing for his wand again. "I can't—" He looked up at Steve as if he was hoping he could help. "I can't stop it with magic, and it's too fast for anything else. Everything inside is just…melting."

A fresh wave of blood spilled out of the hole in Ethan's stomach, and Bucky clamped a hand to his mouth in horror as he realized what was happening. He'd seen what a lot of Coleman's weapons could do, and he'd seen this one in the lab but never in action—the bullet released some sort of potion or acid or magic that dissolved everything it touched. That wasn't just blood pooling out of Ethan's body, it was his internal organs liquifying.

"Jim," Ethan rasped. He reached up a hand and wrapped it around Jim's wrist. "It's alright."

"No," Jim said. "No, I can do this, I can figure something out—"

"You can't," Ethan said. "I don't think—ah! I don't think there's enough to put back together." He managed a very pained smile. "Thanks for trying."

"What were you thinking?!" Gabe demanded, and Bucky was surprised for a moment that he would address Jim like that, especially right now, but then he realized he was talking to Ethan. "Why would you do that?"

"S'my job," Ethan groaned. "Rescuing people."

"You shouldn't have done that for me," Gabe insisted, and he sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

"Yeah, I should've," Ethan said. A tiny, pained, but genuine smile crossed his face. "You're a man worth saving, Jones." He closed his eyes, grimacing and crying out in pain. Steve moved forward and knelt down next to him, taking his hand. "Rogers," Ethan breathed. " 'm sorry. For everything, I…"

"Ssh," Steve told him, squeezing his hand and resting his other one on his shoulder. "You've already told me that." He smiled sadly. "I forgave you for all that a long time ago."

Ethan nodded. "I've tried to live up to that."

"And you have," Steve assured him. "You're a good guy, Ethan."

Whatever Ethan was going to say to that was cut off with another cry of pain, and he arched his back up off the ground, sending more blood and guts flowing down into the snow. "Bloody hell, that hurts," he breathed. He looked up at Steve, tears of anguish shining in his eyes. "Don't tell my mum about this part?" he asked softly. "Let her think I went quick."

Steve nodded, his own eyes glistening. "I will," he said. Ethan's breathing was slowing down, his pained breaths coming farther apart. It wouldn't be long now. Steve moved his hand off of Ethan's shoulder and cupped the back of his head, lifting it up off the snow. "There are a lot of people who are alive out there because of you and what you've done," he told him. "Thank you," he said solemnly, his voice starting to waver. He squeezed Ethan's hand tighter. "Ethan Green, it's been an honor serving with you."

Ethan smiled, and Bucky saw his shaking fingers tighten as much as they could manage in Steve's grip. "The honor's all mine, Captain." He held Steve's gaze a few seconds longer, then sighed heavily, his hand going slack and his head dropping back. Steve laid his head back down softly, letting go of his hand and folding it carefully on top of his chest. He reached up and gently closed the eyes that were staring up sightlessly at the sky, finally free of pain. A cold, heavy silence descended over the clearing as he pulled his hand back.

Ethan was gone.


This was an unexpected loss, and we'll see on Friday that no one is quite sure how to handle it. See you then.