SUMMARY:
Wherever he goes Steve leaves a part of himself behind for someone to find. It used to be nosebleeds, cinema stubs from his pockets, his patience, his fury, a shoe, pride after returning a girl's stolen lunch money or an old lady's missing cat. His dignity, once or twice. Normally, he used to always leave Bucky one of his smiles.
.
BUCKY
.
"I don't know."
"No. I don't remember."
"They spoke German the entire time, so I don't know."
"No."
"I never heard the name Erksine until Steve told me."
"I remember needles, but not what was in them."
"I don't know how long I was there for."
"Yes sometimes."
"They asked about formations….once, maybe twice. Most of the time they didn't speak to me. Just each other."
"I-I told them about a formation in Prevalle but that was weeks old by the time I was captured. But they didn't know that."
"No sir. Nothing else."
"No. No. I don't know."
"I don't remember."
"I don't know." Bucky repeats for the hundredth time. "Like I said, they spoke in German the whole time."
"Really? No English? Not even once?"
Bucky barely restraints a sign of anxious frustration. He's sweating, and his hands are trembling under the table. He doesn't dare lift them to take a drink from the glass of water in front of him out of fear of Philips or Carter seeing; no matter how parched he is.
"No. Not that I-"
"-Can remember? Right." Philips cuts him off to comment. "You don't seem to remember an awful lot Sergeant."
"We can dose you up with four different chemicals and throw some morphine on top and see how much you remember, Colonel, if that'll give you a little perspective!" Bucky finally snaps back, eyes flashing; not even caring at how much trouble it will get him in. A brief, striking thought hits him - if he gets himself dishonourably discharged he can go home and escape this hell hole, but then that would leave Steve alone with the whole Axis army out gunning for him. Not an option.
Philips merely raises an eyebrow at him. His training officer in Wisconsin would have been screaming and spitting in his face in under a second if it had been him. His interest is clearly piqued though - that comment having more life in it than any of the flat dead-toned answers he's given so far.
He wants to leave, desperately.
He wants to go back to packing his bag of new kit for Achnacarry, desperately, and to have not been marched away with nary a word as to why. Agent Carter had been waiting for him outside alone, perhaps as an attempt to put him at ease. Any state of ease he has left in him at this point immediately dropped out with the rest of his stomach in the sparse thirty seconds Steve had to warn him.
He wasn't frog-marched by MP's into the new medical ward, but at the sight of it and a doctor with a stethoscope around his neck he might as well have been. Breath hisses in through his nose before he can stop. His steps falter and start to back up, stumbling.
There's a nurse on the other side of the room. She has a needle and a syringe in her hands. Peggy Carter steps in front of him before he can get two steps into his immediate retreat.
"We need to take some blood-"
"No."
She blinks, but otherwise doesn't change her demeanour. "Sergeant-"
"No." He snaps out vehemently, backs up further and swings out an arm towards the approaching nurse and needle. "Don't you dare come near me with that! Miss." His last minute remembrance of his manners doesn't stop the nurse from jerking back at his arm and tone. Peggy Carter's countenance doesn't flicker, even if he is almost looming over her. He's more panicked than angry, but in many ways that can be more dangerous when it comes violence. She's not intimidated, but she does soften.
"We know you were in the lab in Krausberg." She says, attempting to be reassuring. "We know you were drugged. We need to know with what. You're an intelligent officer Sergeant, with a glowing report, I know you understand the protocol. Especially in this scenario if Captain Rodgers has told you everything I believe he has. We need three, maybe four vials of blood, and a full examination as you've yet to have one. That's it."
Bucky laughs disbelievingly, still shaking his head. "That's it?"
He doesn't care if he's an intelligent officer with a glowing report, he doesn't care if he understands the why, because he does - he's not becoming a lab rat ever ever again.
Carter nods, "And a second interview and debrief."
"Interrogation, you mean?"
Carter doesn't really deny that when she says, "We tend not to interrogate our own men."
"Come on old sport." The doctor says from behind Carter. "You've been fired at by a hundred rounds a minute no doubt, one little jab isn't the end of the world."
It is for him. They don't understand.
"No."
"Now solider-"
"I said no!"
In the end, he knows he doesn't have a choice. It's not something that's changed since he escaped Austria - it probably won't ever change. He doesn't have a choice in this, he doesn't have a choice about leaving this war and going home - not while Steve's here, he doesn't have any real choices left. None that matter. He'll always be trapped, even if he doesn't know what he wants - here or home, home or here.
His conviction sticks on one account - he refuses to lie or sit on the bed utterly and completely, so they take blood and examine him standing in the middle of the room while he watches the exit. They take two vials, but struggle to find a viable vein for the rest. He has to strip to his skivvies so they can examine him fully, and they don't find much of consequence. It's been nearly two weeks since the march. The gutting slice down his middle that was half way to healing when Steve broke him out has since he dug the staples out - and the scabby pinkish scar is obscured by new dark body hair and the fact his ribs are just visible and his stomach is still sunken in a little. It looks several months old, which is acceptable for the amount of time he was in Zola's possession if it occurred at the beginning of his tenure there. He gets away with it. The burns have taken a little longer to heal, small as they are, and are harder to hide while bare from hair; as are his elbows and inner thighs which are still dark and rather sore; even more so now.
He has proper bruises to distract them too, bruises he frantically gave himself with his own fists and the corner of the metal sink in the adjoining bathroom in the fifteen minutes they gave him to strip and prepare himself. They were uncommonly generous in that, and he has a feeling that's entirely down to Agent Carter, who he heard tell the doctor to give him another minute through the door. He surprises himself with his own strength, and with how quickly he's able to injure himself without hesitating.
He's never been hit or thrown from a truck before, but he supposes a man would still be bruised; and so suddenly he is again when he leaves the bathroom, two weeks later. The bruises had already started to set in when he looked at himself one last time in the mirror. They'd taken photographs to document his body too, at every angle and at every distance. Strangely, he'd felt more vulnerable then than when they slid the needles into him.
It had been uncommonly chilly in the ward, as it always is, and is worse in this basement building even though he's now clothed. But he'd started sweating the very moment he'd seen the doctor and hasn't stopped since; any shivers running through his body aren't from the cold. With every question Zola's contagion zones on the heels of his feet, his elbows, his arms, his neck, his forehead, his soft squishy inner organs, his outer thighs and his inner thighs all tingle with unwelcome feeling. With every breath of silence he swallows vomit back down his throat.
"Fair point." Phillips finally harrumphs. "When he wasn't dosing you with four different chemicals and morphine on top, what did he do? Where were you?"
"In a cell." Bucky bites out. "Anytime I wasn't on the table I was in a cell. I don't know what he did."
Carter asks, "Were you alone?"
"In the cell?" He clarifies, swallowing. She nods. "No. Not at the start anyway."
Philips goes down another avenue before Agent Carter can finish that one. "Did you see any machines; technology that wasn't missile or weapons based? Probably seemed like to be 'new-aged'. I'm talking space, science-fiction vibes."
"Everything of Hydra's technology has 'new-aged space vibes'." He counters unhelpfully.
Philips looks at Carter and nods, so she slides a photograph of a free-standing metal cylinder with a small square window on the front of it in front of him.
"Anything like this?"
It's the machine they put Steve in, the Vita Chamber he thinks his friend called it. He knows it it, somehow, deep in his bones. It looks like it encloses completely around the person, head to toe, like a claustrophobia heated coffin. It looks infinitely worse than the 'iron lung'. He feels sick for Steve as well as himself now.
"No. I never saw anything like that." He lies.
.
. . .
.
He vomits spectacularly by the dumpsters behind the canteen when he finally leaves, speed-walking past Steve's blind-spot where he's sat on a crate by the door, obviously waiting for him. He starts sprinting the second he's out of eye-shot, dodging people and corners until he can crouch, head between his knees, and empty his stomach in privacy. There's a rat by his foot and several more scratching from inside the dumpster at his back, so he's not completely alone, but he finds he doesn't mind them.
Just people. People who can ask questions and walk towards him armed with needles and cameras to photograph his shame.
He heaves in the sharp panicked breaths he's been holding back since the bathroom and feels the tears even if they don't fall. He's almost silent as he lets himself come apart, staring at the rat sniffing the sludge by his shoe.
The right pocket of his jacket is heavier than usual, as is his right.
He crouches there for thirty minutes; long enough for the cooks to put a Shepherds pie in the oven and for him to hear them yell about taking it out later through the half-open back door. He barely stops himself from sinking onto his backside or knees, and it's only the thought of the dumpster sludge on his new uniform and the fact he'll be on transport to Achnacarry in under an hour that stops him.
The plan and coming Hydra crusade is still on his future slate for the moment, and they'll revisit the issue when his results have come in and been reviewed. He's still Steve's glorified sidekick, for now anyway. He lets it all out through the trembles in his hands instead of screaming out like he wants to. He backs further into the wall when someone passes by, then stands and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand a few minutes later.
When he walks back past the building he practically ran from Steve is gone from the crate, but Bucky can almost imagine the imprint he's left behind. Wherever he goes Steve leaves a part of himself behind for someone to find. It used to be nosebleeds, cinema stubs from his pockets, his patience, his fury, a shoe, pride after returning a girl's stolen lunch money or an old lady's missing cat. His dignity, once or twice. Normally, he used to always leave Bucky one of his smiles.
The only physical imprint that he was sat on the crate waiting for Bucky to return like a loved one returning on a steaming train platform is a shallow footprint from where his boots sat in the frozen mud. His half packed kit bag is gone from his cot when he returns, as are the rest of his things. There's a note sat on the neatly-made bed in Steve's handwriting.
It says:
Peggy told me you finished and are still coming with us to Achnacarry. Thank god. I was waiting for you outside, but you must not have seen me, and I couldn't find you after. The transport leaves from the gate at 16:00.
I have your stuff.
Let me know your okay, Buck.
I don't know if I'll ever be okay again, Bucky thinks as he folds the note up. He checks his second-hand watch and steals three mints from where he knows one of his week's roommates keeps his tin. He thoroughly washes out his mouth, and looks at his grey-washed face and dishevelled uniform. He jogs to the gate to catch their transport out of Surrey.
Steve's checking his watch worriedly by the bonnet of the bus.
"About bloody time!" Dugan yells from inside when he spots him. "Thought you were never going to turn up!"
"Say, I wanna' know your secret though, Barnes, to get the Captain to do your grunt work." Morita also calls from out the window, "I could do with having my kit carried around for me too!"
Steve watches his arrival with sharp eyes, but turns slightly to call back. "Call it fourteen years of friendship and the knowledge that he's always late and leave it at that. You've got a lot to work up to!"
"Hey! I can be late!" Morita counters to Jones' laughter.
Steve, fingers just short of touching him, asks, "Are you okay?"
Bucky tries to smile at him. "Let's just get out of here, okay?"
.
. . .
.
In his first debrief, before they knew about Zola and the lab and the experiments, they asked about the weaponry they were building in Krausberg, and what he knew about that; they same as they did to every other solider who escaped from there. Because that's what he was, just one of the nearly four-hundred men in a German work camp saved by Captain America.
Occasionally during the debrief Bucky himself was called upon and in every case his mouth felt dry and his chest stuttered so early on, so much so than once somebody else had to swoop in to answer while Bucky sat there with his mouth hanging open like an idiot. He never answered "what time of night would they send you back to the cages?" or "what was the terrain like?" and most definitely didn't answer "who seemed to be in charge?" The others answered a Colonel Kruger, and Bucky didn't correct them, just sat there in silence, Zola's name not even close to forming on his tongue.
In his second, and what he thought final debrief, he told them about the tentacled insignia, and the missiles and that the parts were shipped out to another facility that wasn't on the map Steve saw, and nothing else. They thanked him for his bravery and he left.
They didn't thank him this time.
.
. . .
.
Sixteen something hours in a truck later, with grateful stop off in Middlesborough on the way, he and the other 'commandos', as that's what they're now being hastily trained as, are being screamed at by a fellow called Lieutenant Jackson in the dark outside an old castle, lit by floodlights by the door. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Vaughan is stood five feet behind him in front of their line, observing them all. They were dropped off not at the castle, but at Spean Bridge railway station eight miles away and were told to march with all their equipment the rest of the way. Training and assessment started immediately on arrival apparently, even if they technically hadn't arrived at Achnacarry yet. Once reaching the estate; with the sun down and tripping over their feet they were immediately hustled onto the grassy terrain out front where Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan was stood waiting, and weren't allowed to unpack and get settled first. Both these men are British forces, highly trained.
Now this; this is something Bucky is used to having spent eight months of his life in army training already. It's almost comforting. There's ever so slightly less screaming in Steve's direction, but in no way shape or form does Jackson hold back on account of his rank either. Considering these men have to shove twenty-one weeks of commando training into the span of three or four weeks, he highly doubts their going to pull any punches. So much for a duty break.
Jones, Steve, Falsworth (or 'Monty' as he's been told to call him) are all stood strictly at attention, as are the others, though the aggravation is slightly more visible on the latter faces. He doesn't want to know what he looks like considering he felt carsick for the last hour and a half of their journey and got light-headed on the fourth mile of their eight mile warm up. He still comes a close third, even if he was hunched over by the end, eyes squeezed closed. Dernier came last, very thin himself, while Dugan came to try pat him on the back and check on him after; made sure he stayed standing.
"Looking a little green there, Jimmy." Was all he managed to say before Jackson started yelling again, Steve fell back into line and Bucky shot up straight into rest.
Comfort zone as it is, all Bucky wants to do is find a room with big windows, a lot of light, and a thick blanket he can curl himself up in as tight as he can. He doesn't want to be doing this after the worst conversation of his life, whilst he's paranoid about his still full pockets. He thought he'd have time.
"Physical fitness is a prerequisite." Lieutenant Jackson orders, looking side-long at those of them who are clearly still a little run down and unfit. "And so, any man who fails to live up to the requirements will be returned to their previous unit. It's the same for any recruit who comes here, and it's the same for you lot. Is that clear?"
"Yes sir!" They chorus.
"This training is not one you hold back on; to simulate real life scenarios exercises will be conducted using live ammunition and explosives. We'll conduct cross country runs and boxing matches to improve fitness; speed and endurance marches over the mountain ranges - zip lines, abseiling, climbing, garrotting - all while carrying arms and full equipment. You will be given these and uniforms for all weather conditions. Training night and day, even more so for you lot. Airborne training is also extensive. Correct military protocols are enforced, officers will be saluted, uniforms will be clean; brasses and boots shining on parade. Is that also clear?"
"Yes sir!"
Jackson strides back to the middle of their formation, wrapping things up, finally.
"Your things are in the entry room inside. This is the only time you'll have rooms indoors and pre-cooked food, tomorrow you'll be moved to the tents or huts. Go unpack, food at 20:00. Breakfast starts at 05:30, training at 07:00. Be glad for the late morning start, it's the only one you're likely to get. Now! Go!" Jackson yells and the men disperse - holding back any grumbles until their out of earshot.
"Sergeant Barnes." Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan comments coolly as he goes to follow, summoning him to his side. He's the first one of them he's spoken to directly apart from Steve. Steve carries on walking, but ever so slightly slows, canting his head to listen.
"Yes sir?" Bucky answers with well-trained respect, falling into rest with his hands behind his back.
"Tomorrow - your uniform will be buttoned and spotless. We're training you to operate behind enemy lines in all conditions but don't think for a second respect for he uniform or correct military protocol is of any less import. I want to be able to see myself in your boots and buttons, and no creases by the morning parade. This is the only chance to correct it I'm going to give you. Are we clear?"
"Understood sir. No creases." Bucky replies, eyes ahead and letting himself breathe in relief. He can deal with a uniform infraction. A minute later, the Lieutenant Colonel's eyes on both their backs, Steve tries to sling Bucky's pack over his shoulder too. Bucky shoves him off immediately but as subtly as he can, hissing out a sharp, "Stop!"
Steve, for his credit, covers it nicely. Also probably aware of the gaze, he must have belatedly realized Bucky mustn't let himself be seen as weak in front of these men. The others are somewhere ahead, he can hear them if not see them in the fancy manor building. With dark wood covering the stone walls and slightly faded wallpaper, this is the swankiest training base he's ever seen. It looks like it has big windows. He's going to find the biggest.
"I heard they equipped it specially." Steve comments at his side. "They gave us all private rooms for tonight - if you want to-"
"No." Bucky can't remember how many times he's said that very same word over the last twenty four hours. Maybe for one, Steve will listen where the other's wouldn't now they're away from prying eyes and tight quarters on a moving truck.
"Buck-"
"I don't want to talk about it, Steve." He replies, tone flat. "Thank you for trying to warn me, and not mentioning it before. That probably got you in trouble-"
"-Only a little."
That meant 'a lot' in Steve terms.
"-But it's done. They took blood, and asked hours and hours of questions. I answered. I've done enough talking - I just-I-can you-"
"-Can I leave you alone?" Steve butts in, strangely not looking hurt, but almost as if he was growing used to Bucky pushing him away. He shoves the thought far off - needing a few hours to himself isn't selfishly pushing Steve away, he decides, determinedly not thinking about how many hours he's taken to himself lately.
A member of the estate staff directs them to the rooms serving as the commandos for the night. He has his own room, third door on the right in the fourth corridor on the second floor. Steve has the fifth on the left. Bucky closes the door firmly behind him, and stays with his back to it as he takes the room and the windows in. It's over-facing the side of the estate, overlooking a zip-line and fields and fields of Scottish countryside. He follows the lines of interconnecting hedges until he comes to the line of forest in the distance, and the Scottish Highlands even further.
He's looked at a line of trees before, wishing and dreaming.
It's 19:35 in the evening, in late November - or is it early December now? Dugan and Jones are talking over and to one another through their open doors as they unpack about a game of cards later. Steve says he's in. Morita and Dernier too. Falsworth or Monty, makes a sound of affirmation.
"Good team bonding," Dugan says, "Nothing like seeing how well someone cheats to get the lay of a fella'."
Steve cheats something fierce - so they'll get on.
Bucky doesn't unpack. He leaves the safety of the barred door and the light on, opens the window to let the frosty air in, and makes sure the curtains are open as wide as possible for the sunrise. He pulls the pillows and the top blanket from the bed and tosses them in a pile on the floor. After taking his shoes off, he curls up on his side on top of them. The beds too soft anyway, nowadays he always feels like he'll fall straight through.
.
. . .
.
In the morning he wolfs down two bowls of porridge, starving after he missed the evening meal the night before. He's the first to breakfast, though he passed Falsworth in the corridor when he left his room - probably to go shower and wash.
Bucky did it before dawn so he could watch the sun break past the line of the forest through his window from his pile of blankets. He's spick and span, as promised, no creases in sight. He looks like a mirror of his past self while he feels like a shadow; but he's always been good at putting in a show. You don't knock out your opponent during the first round, you dodge and feign and give the crowd exactly what they want - and earn yourself and pa a few dollars on the side for the trouble.
Speak of devil, Falsworth drops down across from him, porridge doused with rationed honey, taking full advantage of the catering.
"You missed a good game last night."
Bucky glances up, "Did I?" He feigns, just as he's practiced. "I was so pooped I was out like a light the moment I got in." He quirks a smile from the corner of his mouth. "Not used to eleven hour drives or running laps anymore, I guess. Who won?"
Falsworth laughs, sharp and sweet like his tooth. "Which game? We played Rummie and Queenie and Poker, two or three games at a time sometimes. Every time Dugan went to shuffle I thought for sure we'd never finish."
"Yeah, he does that." Bucky replies, grunting, remembering the pack missing three of the hearts Dugan kept in his mud splattered pocket. "He'll go all night if he has the chance. Any of them?" He clarifies after.
"Capta-Rodgers did." Falsworth corrects himself. "Rummie three times and Poker twice."
Bucky snorts, "Of course he did, the fuckin' cheat."
Falsworth coughs around a gulp of coffee. He asks in bewilderment. "Why do - you think he cheated?"
Falsworth only knows Steve as the big hero who can lift twenty men without pulling a muscle; why would 'Captain America' need to cheat?
He doesn't know Steve as the skinny sonvubitch who'll roll on his best friend in a club poker game just to get a win, just to prove the point that he could, even if it would get them kicked out and beaten up afterwards. He's done it so often growing up the boy either can't help it, or doesn't even realize he's doing it half the time since first getting away with it at fifteen. Even now Bucky can't show his face in Joe Swash's backroom Tuesday games on account of his association with the 'crockiest, most cheating little shit he's ever seen on the South side.' It's a miracle Steve hasn't gotten himself shot with all the mobsters he's cheated out of their coin over the years. The guy's so ruthless it's lucky he's smart.
Bucky just raises an eyebrow. "He always cheats. Watch his left hand-" Bucky spills, not even caring he's giving away one of Steve's treasured tells. "-When he goes to scratch his leg. Or behind his ear."
Falsworth's watching him with wide eyes. He gulps down some more coffee and eventually says. "Well I'll be dammed."
Bucky raises his spoon at him in commiseration. "I'm guessing you were only playing for cigarettes and baseball cards, so no harm no foul. How'd you think he used to make his half of the rent when he spent most of the month too sick to work?"
Falsworth starts laughing. "Dugan's going to flip."
"Don't tell him," Bucky replies, "it's more fun that way. Plus, if you tell him he might realize how many times I've scammed a bottle of hooch off him with the same move." Falsworth laughs harder, so Bucky continues. "I swear, if he hadn't started getting too cocky with it, forget about the tail end of the Crash, we would have been rolling in it. Right up until the smart ass went up against the other biggest cheat in Brooklyn and got himself so worked up he started playing so dirty you'd spot it from the moon." Bucky huffs, rolling his eyes before scraping his bowl clean, "Then he only went and got himself a reputation."
Falsworth finishes, chuckling. "Maybe it was best for the rest of our rations that you did miss it then. Did you get your nine hours at least?"
Bucky shrugs, "More or less."
Despite his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed appearance, Falsworth must not have - being up so late and up so early.
"Your bed's too soft, huh?"
Bucky's spoon hand stops scrapping the ceramic as he glances up sharply. Falsworth raises an eyebrow. "I saw the pillows on the floor when I passed you earlier, before the door closed." He admits, obviously keen-eyed. "It's the same for me too."
"Oh yeah?"
Falsworth hums, "Even before the work camp you're sleeping on the ground or in the ground in the trenches. You sleep anywhere; and by the time you actually get to sleep somewhere you're supposed to - it's so soft it's like you'll sink right through. Like you're-"
"-Lying on a cloud." Bucky finishes, softening a little to the man whose so far been nothing but professional. He recognizes the name from the very first conversation he had with a friend-not-friend, a story of how his friend-not-friend was imprisoned.
Falsworth raises his spoon in commiseration this time. "Try putting a couple of blankets under you and build it up - makes it easier to work up to. And believe it or not, once you get past the cloud - it does wonders for your back."
"You do realize we're going back out to lying on frozen mud and dirt in three weeks time, right? And huts or tents tonight?"
"Got to take it while you can get it - and that's my back talking, not my head."
Bucky nods, considering. He reaches for his big glass of water. "I'll try that… Thanks."
.
(The next night, while on the floor of his Nissen hut, Bucky hears Falsworth shouting and mumbling in his sleep about dead men under his command, and realizes that maybe it's not just too soft beds that they share.)
.
"Morning boys!" Dugan rouses from the doorway, Dernier and Steve at his back, chatting to one another in terrible French from Steve's part. Dugan claps him on the back too hard, as he always does, on his way round the table. Bucky winces slightly but allows it. "What are we talking about this fine morning then?"
"You're in a good mood," Bucky comments unhelpfully, "for loosing everything you've gained in the last two weeks in one night."
"Barnes was just dishing out advice so I don't loose my fancy cigarettes on the next game of Rummie," Falsworth adds.
Dugan snorts, rolling his eyes. He ignores Bucky and replies to Falsworth. "Please. Don't listen to a thing out of his mouth, Monty. Such a sore loser-" The man adds, which Bucky argues is absolutely not true - Steve raises his eyebrows at his obvious expression - because it might be a little true. "I'm glad he wasn't playing anyway."
"Gee, thanks." Bucky calls back as Dugan wanders into the kitchen to talk to the staff. "Way to make a guy feel welcome."
Dugan returns a full minute after Steve and Dernier, disrupting the easy peace and quiet he and Falsworth are sharing. He slides a bowl of fruit under Bucky's nose.
"I've already had - two - breakfasts." He admits and waves off.
"Have a third. Get some meat back onto those bones. We're running another six miles today and then some, don't want your frail body giving up on us."
"I'm not-"
"-He's not frail!" He and Steve almost snap back hotly in unison - a trigger for both of them.
Dugan sits back in his seat, turning his head right to left to look at them both. "Are you stubborn and stupid instead? Eat the fruit. Get your greens."
"Technically, they're red and orange-"
"Shut up, Monty."
Steve seems to simmer down, and steals a slice or two of extra apple from him. Bucky rolls his eyes, insides still squirming and god, frail, is he frail now? He steals Steve's coffee, munches on his own apple obediently.
.
. . .
.
Turns out after Project Rebirth and the German doctor getting shot to death a total of one minute and twenty seconds later - no one bothered to test Steve's capabilities.
Oh, they took blood - lots of blood, enough blood that Steve got mighty dizzy for a while, and then took some more - and a very extensive medical exam - far far more extensive than Bucky's that's for sure, as Steve tells him in embarrassment one night - but they never explicitly tested how far Steve's magic-a-million abilities can stretch to. And Steve; facing a lifetime of sitting in a lab and running laps for doctors and technicians he didn't know; took the first ticket out as a propaganda celebrity after a firm rejection from Army Command. Guaranteed when he began he thought it was going to be more than it was, even if he's famous now, and far more useful - but a part of Bucky is overwhelming grateful to realize that while he initially signed up for the greater good - he didn't want to remain a lab rat like Bucky either.
The Allies and the SSR decide to kill two birds with one stone - train them up and get the data they missed out on, and they start pushing Steve to his limits and tracking the progress. For the first week they tell him not to hold back on account of Bucky and the others like he did on their arrival march; and quite frankly; to just fucking go for it.
"Jesus fucking Christ." Bucky mutters, noting the time and marking it down as Steve flashes past him on another lap, tucked in arms helping his already stellar momentum even further.
To keep up the appearance of their friendship and hide his shock he tells Steve he was slower than when he half-ran home to make curfew with three bruised ribs from the Callahan brothers. "You should be disappointed in yourself." He says as he writes down a incredibly small number for the ten mile run Steve's just completed.
"You should shut your mouth." Steve retaliates as Jackson calls him to attention. He doesn't mean it, as what he wants is actually the opposite.
They learn a lot.
Steve can run a mile in two minutes flat, probably under. He can jump a seven foot fence with one leap. He learns to ski to an Olympic level with one lesson, and picks up the names of new equipment and information with incredible ease. Steve's always been super smart no matter what the teachers said, but now his mind moves like a zig zag connecting things that no one would realize are connected until Steve points it out, and then they all go oh. Oh shit, yeah. Concepts, once he has the context come naturally to him. They find out he's practically memorized the Army manual and five war strategy books, and can see things at twice the distance the rest of them can. He can hear even further. He picks up new hand-to-hand combat tricks like he's been doing it his whole life. He flies through the assault course. He can lift, to date, a motorbike and eight USO girls, probably with one hand if he puts some more effort in. He's a real killer-diller now.
The scientist/technician (Bucky's not entirely sure what he is as he generally keeps a rather large distance) the SSR sent up with them says, "skin density is through the roof. It takes a lot of force to break the skin, even more for the muscle to make an impact."
"How do they know that?" Bucky whispers suspiciously because Steve was missing last night. The guy continues to report his findings to them and some of the Achnacarry senior officers. "Did they try and cut you to test it?"
Steve tells him to shush, and then to shut up, he's listening.
"Did they?" He presses, and Steve elbows him to stop. Dugan glances over at him as he hisses. "The fuck, Steve, why would you let them do that? For their own documentation? It's your body - you already know."
Steve glances at him quickly, a flash of vulnerability in his eyes. "I don't actually."
Bucky blinks at him, confused. What? How could you not know your own body?
Bucky knows his own body, even when he didn't have ownership of it. He knows every scar it carries, and the ones it doesn't. He knows every spot of hair he's ever had yanked out of his scalp in a fight, every occasional freckle. He knows his one crooked tooth at the back of his mouth; how fast he can go at a punching bag and how long he can jump rope for before he has to stop. He knows how to orchestrate a saucy wink and plaster that charming smile he became known for on his face even if he doesn't bother to use it anymore.
Steve's always known his own body too. He knew how far he could run before his asthma flared up, how much his shoulder blades used to stick out, how many freckles he used to have peppering his lower back. He knew where and what his limits were so he could always, without hesitation, push them until he nearly permanently crippled himself out of stubbornness. That was the old Steve, he realizes, this is a new Steve. That Steve-of-now doesn't know his own body is fairly, or very, disconcerting. Now that Bucky thinks about it - when he looked at Steve's bare back in the shower block the other day the freckles on his back weren't there anymore. Are all his old scars gone too? Now he wants to check every old mole and freckle on Steve's body to know what else he's lost.
"We still haven't hit the upper limits of what he can do." The scientist or technician or whoever the hell he is says, "I think he could withstand a bullet within reason."
"We're not testing that!" Bucky bursts out loudly before he can stop himself. Steve smacks him in the side behind Dugan as every head turns to look at him, but Steve also looks vaguely glad someone called it so he didn't have too.
Bucky forces himself not to budge on the issue, not to blush at the attention, and the other SSR officer nods and marks it down, motioning to the main results guy. "Yes, best not to test that one, Waters."
.
. . .
.
"How many-" Dernier asks suddenly, faltering as they march their way up a mountain. Dernier's been lagging behind from the middle point of the march as the most underweight of all of them - he tires easier - so Bucky's hanging back out of solidarity. Jackson keeps screaming at them to keep up but Bucky, after eight months under training officers has developed a sure-fire method of ignoring them while not looking like he's ignoring them. "How long have you know each other? Captain Rodgers and you?" He asks in slow, but superb English. He's been learning like they have - but already had the basics down.
Bucky blinks in surprise at the question, but the answer is easier. "Oh. All my life pretty much, give or take a few years of walkin' and talkin'."
"You can tell." Dernier says.
Can you? Bucky thinks, who knew it was true before - Steve's ma told them they were spending to much time together, aged twelve, when they started finishing each others sentences. Now the two of them seem further away than ever with the rush of training and command and Agent Carter. He feels like he hasn't talked to Steve in an age, and yes, that is his fault; even if it is normally. If he even is the same person - because Bucky doesn't feel like Bucky is half the time. He wonders if Steve even still likes him anymore with all these new people suddenly in his life.
"Small things," Dernier clarifies, "but you can tell. Definitely. Even if you are not talking much." That part is said with a very knowing gaze.
"I feel like you're trying to allude to something here, Jacques."
"He looks at you a lot. The Captain." Dernier says, using both hands to support the climb over a particularly steep verge. "He e's worried."
"His natural temperament." Bucky excuses, "you'll see - he worries about everything - even things that aren't his business."
"Like what happened to you?"
Bucky's fingers stiffen, and the air in his nose and lungs gets colder, and too tight. What had happened? What Had Happened to Bucky involved his jaw and fingers being broken, and his belly being cut open, his skin turning to fire then freezing over. What Happened was Bucky began carrying a locust plague inside his lungs, and a substance in his blood that's also at war. And the thing was this: Bucky's jaw was as it always was, and his teeth were all in place. The needle marks on his neck have gone, and it's smooth from shaving and is unblemished. What happened to Bucky while he was away was terrible, awful and disgusting; and it'll always likely be with him; just as Subject #64's memory is and always will be. He misses the feel of a hand in his when he sleeps in his dark hut at night.
"Not something I wanna talk about - to you or him, or anyone." Bucky says right off.
"I see." Dernier says, "I am just saying - you are still very close. But it seems different for you with him - did that make sense?"
"It did, sorta'. I'm dealing with it." He says as a dismissal, at least feeling a bit more secure in his thoughts about Steve if not about himself. "Watch your step."
"Barnes! Frenchman!" Jackson shouts, "get a move on!"
"Yes sir!" Bucky yells back and picks up the pace. He slows as soon as Jackson's red hair is facing them again. Steve catches his eye high in the distance, on the top of the cliff well beyond the others - clicking off his stopwatch. They're making him time himself now since the rest of them can't keep any sort of time with him themselves. He's at a great distance, and while Steve can probably see him with his enhanced twenty-twenty vision, he's still a dark figure in front of a grey sky for Bucky. He doesn't need to see Steve's face to know he's rolling his eyes. Maybe they do still know each other after all. Bucky should probably try harder for him.
Dernier coughs into his elbow as Bucky toes a loose rock just above the man. It wobbles - so he bounces on it to check the stability in a not very safe way. Something cracks beneath it. It jerks so Bucky hops off. "Don't stand on that."
"Are you going to test every rock for me?" Dernier asks, but he doesn't sound sore about it like some people would. Namely Steve; before. He never liked when Bucky tried to do things for him. "When you fall I'm not going to catch you."
"If I fall I don't expect you to, no point loosing all the ground you gained for little old me." He bounces on another wobbly one, and shakes another with his hand, then clambers up using them both. "These are good." He says, ignoring Steve's thrown up arms above him as he sees Bucky doing the reckless bouncing again.
"Merci." ("Thank you") The man says from behind him.
"For what?" Bucky asks, swearing at Steve with a finger behind Jackson's still climbing back. Steve does it right back.
Gabe turns to see what Steve's gesturing at, snorts, and then Bucky has to duck the arm back down as Jackson spins mid-shout of "What the hell are you laughing at - get your ass moving, Private! This isn't a joke!"
"Staying back with me. I know it is deliberate - you could be well up there if you's were trying' like you're supposed to."
"I'm skinny too." He argues.
"Qui, you are - but you are still not trying."
"They cut more slack if there's two skinny fella's behind." Bucky tells him, "then they can't blame it on our lack of perseverance."
"Speak for yourself, mon ami. I have grit." He teases, then adds more gratefully, "though I suppose you have it in a different way." Bucky shrugs good-natured. "Who joined the Army first?" Dernier then asks, his accent curling round every word he says; Army becoming arm-hee. Bucky has always been pretty good at telling what people are saying with accents - but figures it's not fair to make Jacques do all the work in their motley bilingual crew.
"Tu parles beaucoup, Jacques, tu le savais?" ("You talk a lot, Jacques, did you know that?")
"So did you, before." Jacques replies in English. "Stay in one language, I am practicing today." He fires right back. He has a point, seeing as yeah, when they met Bucky was darker than he was when he left Steve; but was still a motherfucking chatterbox.
He shrugs at him as an answer. "I'm talkin' to you now, ain't I? And Steve." He says because it's technically true - who was waiting at the draft office doors a day, and then again in two weeks, and then another week after that following Pearl Harbour? Steve, that's who. "But I've been in it longer - five months before-you know where, overseas. Eight months of training before. Waste of time really, since they just shipped me out like whatever 'cause they needed the numbers."
"Might not be a waste now-" Dernier comments, "you already know some- a lot of this-"
"I know how to shoot, D. Not much else." Bucky waves off, "but Steve first, technically."
Dernier chuckles once, like this confirmed what he already believed. "He seems like the type, a man of action. But he is still learning, yes?"
Bucky glances up at the figure on the cliff, now joined by two others; one stood, one resting on a rock. He doesn't want Dernier or any one of the others to doubt Steve. "He'll pick it up." He defends, "he's quick in his head as well as the rest of him. Always has been."
To his relief Dernier doesn't argue. He seems to have already moved onto a different thread. "I did not intend to join any army but I was - as you Americans say 'drafted' -" he very carefully doesn't say 'like you', which would be a sort-of-correct guess, but it's there. He sighs, "my country did not act quick enough - thought too much of their border defences, and then it was too late. So I took up fighting another way." He continues, "I was already into my fire-tricks - knew my gunpower as a Démolition man." He scratches his chin as Bucky gives him a hand up. "You know the national anthem of France? Maybe you do not. It's called La Marseilles. You know what it tells about? Where it comes from?"
"Can't say I do." Bucky replies, who'd grown up around immigrants but none of them, to his knowledge, properly French aside from Colette - and they normally had much more bodily things on their minds. He can hum it a bit, but only because people tended to hum it at the Allies a lot in Italy.
"It talks - it is about freedom." Dernier says, "from tyrants, any kind, but also from foreign invaders. It is called La Marseillaise because when the revolution was having - was happening - people from my city sang it so much." He draws his canteen out and a small bag of nuts from his pack. After taking a gulp, passes it to Bucky with the last handful of nuts. Bucky takes them both gratefully; he's so fucking hungry. "And so, "Dernier says when he returns the canteen, "when the le boshe - we call them that since the first war - marched into Paris I said to my wife: I know what I must do. Not again."
Bucky listens carefully, knowing this is going somewhere but also infinitely interested too. He can't imagine to know what he would do or how he feel if the bosche marched their way into Times Square or Central Park or even if they landed on the Manhattan shoreline. He lets the nuts sink to his stomach, imagining they're heated chestnuts at Christmas, which is soon. Dernier sounds like Steve; patriotic and determined and so assured in what's right and wrong - Bucky used to be like that too. What Steve would have done if the Germans or the Japs had marched into Washington or home doesn't bear even thinking about; so again, maybe they aren't so different after all. Some things stick.
"I remember when the first war ends. Ended. I was seven years old. Almost eight. We had parties for days and days. I remember the cakes but I remember our flag flying most of all. It's over, everyone says, it's over. But I didn't believe it - and then my father came home and I did."
My pop didn't come home from this war. I thought I wouldn't either - he'd thought he'd leave his ma and sisters and Steve trapped in the uncertainty of his life-death - flesh turned to ash in an crematorium thousands and thousands of miles away.
"I am saying this because you were not born before the first war ended - you grew up free - until now. I understand what it feels like not to let the freedom settle even when you have it…"
"I said I don't want to-"
Dernier holds up a hand as they crest the final verge - he can hear the boys catching their breath and Steve finishing dictating his times and descriptions. "I am just saying, mon ami, not making you talk; that my country may not be free yet, and we are not free of the war either - but we, ourselves, are freer than we were."
He pats Bucky on the shoulder, "It is something to remember."
.
. . .
.
They decide to test Steve's brain next.
It's something about altered brain chemistry or structure or something-something-something, Bucky discovers. He's not entirely sure - outside of making sure Steve didn't suffocate from lack of asthma powder or sweat his way to death from a fever the medical stuff has never been his thing. He knows how to check for a concussion, because that's one of the first things they learnt in Boxing, (and street fighting. So if that's what you two hooligans are going to keep getting up to, Sarah once said, then sit down and learn some more.) He knows how to treat bullet wounds now too; which essentially equates to throw sulphate powder on it and bandage it the hell up; and if you can, stitch it - but concussion wise that's all he knows about the head. Apparently the chemical make-up of the brain is thought to be nearly identical to the makeup of the peripheral nervous system - and seeing how all of Steve's body chemistry has changed it's not that much of a stretch that the stuff in his noggin' has also changed.
"How the hell are they gonna test that?" Dugan asks in general one evening. Why the hell are you even letting them test you, Bucky thinks scornfully.
X-rays won't work because it's all soft tissue, and so that's how he learns about this neurosurgery they do to get an image of the blood vessel structures, injecting filtered blasts of air into the brain with trephine holes drilled into the skull under local anaesthesia.
"It's not usually a painful procedure." The idiot taking the notes says when Bucky marches in and throws the proposed paperwork the man submitted at him in a fit. It's the only time he approaches the guy. "He'd be back at base in a day from the hospital."
"You know what that says there;" Bucky spits at him, jabbing a finger into the descriptions of the proposal - "risks. Haemorrhage, which I asked about - is bleeding inside his head, infection, dangerous changes in intercranial pressure. Drilling into his head. He's not doing that."
.
"You're not doing it." He says directly to Steve too.
"I know I'm not. I said no." Steve says right off.
"You did?"
"Hell yes." Steve says, glancing, green-tinged, at the crinkled paperwork Bucky has now thrown at his feet too. The boys who are around glance awkwardly between them. "Despite what you might think I do have limits, I have a line. I'm not letting them touch my head like that. Too much like…" He trails off. Bucky knows he's thinking about lobotomies.
"Will they listen to you?" Bucky asks outright, ready to run with him and damn the consequences if he needs to.
Steve blinks at him, mind boggled. "What-yes Bucky, of course. They don't do shit like that against your will. It was a stupid suggestion from lower in the ranks. Philips had already canned the whole idea outright when it was suggested - the second it was. I didn't even need to say no. They're not Hydra Bucky."
He swallows, forcing himself to relax. "I know that."
"Do you?" Steve asks, because he's not doing a great job of convincing anybody yet.
.
. . .
.
For all that Steve is the owner of a medal of honour, Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan doesn't restrain from pointing out Steve's inexperience. In privacy of course, four days in. There's several conversations about it in the days that follow, and he just happens to be in the right area to eavesdrop on this one.
Bucky's having some downtime to himself while the others are off boxing or smoking. He's in what he thinks is the old reception room of the estate, remolded in the Victorian style, which has the largest windows he's found in the place so far. The training is brutal, inexplicably so, and they're expected to practice or develop their fitness even when they're not training; but Bucky's not feeling it today. They're all struggling, one way or another. He hears the two officers as they wander past his window in a stroll around the property.
"No offense meant, Captain, but while you're in charge of this squad, you're also the biggest liability. Morita's got communications training - Falsworth's a Major and already Airborne Trained, with command instruction under his belt - Dugan has seven years service - and Barnes already has a fair chunk of our curriculum in him from the training he never finished in the States. You, you have Basic."
Steve sighs out in response, "That's absolutely accurate, sir."
Vaughan hums. He, at least, seems to approve of Steve's honesty.
"We need to ensure you're not one by the end of this. I won't be responsible for your squad failing on it's first mission because of your men slacking in training-"
"They won't, and are not sir-"
"Or a bad call on your part in the field."
"That's…that's fair." This, Steve will allow.
"You'll need, what I can't call anything else other than a 'crash course'. One on one."
"That'd be….That'd be great, sir. I'm here for any advice you can give me - I'm here to listen and learn."
"Good." Lieutenant-Colonel Vaughan replies promptly. "First bit if advice - pick a second. Someone to help you make calls if you struggle to find the right one. There's only so much we can teach you here - and most of it's practical. You're a new unit, but it's best if it's someone you can trust."
"I trust all of them." Steve vehemently insists.
Lieutenant-Colonel Vaughan seems less impressed by that.
"Any one more than the others?"
Steve only pauses for a moment, like he's considering. "Sergeant Barnes."
Through the corner of the curtain, Bucky see's Vaughan nod contemplatively. "You've known each other since you were children, I understand?"
"Yes, sir. He's never led me wrong."
Bucky can't help but close his eyes at that simple but assured statement, biting his lip until it twinges with pain.
"That kind of history can be a good quality in a squad's second, but it also cannot be. One faulty suggestion that you follow, simply because it came from your friend, could be all it takes."
"I wouldn't just follow anything blindly, sir. I'd consider all the options available and judge appropriately." Steve rebuts.
"Perhaps." Vaughan says. "Do you trust Sergeant Barnes judgement at this current state in time?"
They've walked past his vision, but Bucky hears them stop and Steve bristle up. He waits silently, for the answer.
"I'm sorry, sir." Steve replies, respectful but hard. "I don't understand what you're suggesting."
"You're a smart man, Captain Rodgers. You might not have the experience, but you've got a good head on your shoulders - you know exactly what I'm suggesting. I'm high enough in Allied clearance to have yours and all your men's files, even the French Resistance Fighter. The updated ones in fact, as of yesterday. I've read them. And right now, I can't tell if Sergeant Barnes even recognizes the very same act he's playing out for all of us here. Any state of 'fatigue' or shell-"
"He's not fatigued. Or shell shocked."
Bucky breathes in slowly. You tell them, Steve. I'm fine. I'm fine. To everyone else I'm fine. I can handle it. I can cope. I'm not going to fall apart on you, I promise.
"You might not believe so, or you might not want to admit it to yourself - Let me finish!" Vaughan instructs sharply, sounding as if he's put up a hand to stop Steve's interuption. "I'll ask again. Do you trust his judgement one-hundred percent? Because I don't. And only half of that is because of what I read."
"Sir-" Steve finally interrupts.
Vaughan interrupts him right back. "You asked me to be frank, Rodgers, and I am being."
Bucky can physically imagine Steve calming himself down from the between-the-teeth sigh he hears through the open window. Though even to authority it seems Steve's not all that great at hiding his contempt. Probably why he almost got arrested that one time.
"Then what do you suggest, sir?"
"Well, first. You're choice for a second shouldn't be personal, in my opinion, it's best to keep these things professional. Now Barnes' history on paper would be one of the best options, but, there are others."
"Major Falsworth, you mean?" Steve goes to clarify. It makes sense, more than him certainly. Falsworth has the training, completed at that, and is of a higher rank than Steve already, if they're being technical about it.
"That's one option, he has the training." Vaughan allows - ditto - "but unfortunately has proven otherwise on the field."
"I've heard and seen the report he gave following the rescue." Steve says, "I know his account of it and others who were there. I don't judge or infer negatively for that-"
"You should. It was a tough situation, with a bad outcome, but he is accountable. So do consider it Captain, as I've told you to do with Sergeant Barnes. Another option again is Sergeant Dugan. Personality aside-" Bucky can't help but almost snort at that, which would give himself away most likely. "- he shows promise. And he has the most experience out of anyone on your squad - double than most considering he served before the Americans joined the party on this front."
"So Dugan is your suggestion."
"Dugan is a suggestion. As is Falsworth. As is Barnes. None are the perfect choice and I can't make that decision for you, only advise you-"
Bucky gets up, he doesn't need to hear the rest of this conversation. He takes on last look at his big window, and goes to see if the cooks will give him something on the side he doesn't have to cook over a fire himself between meals. He doubts it, but has to try.
Steve always seems to get double or triple the usual portion to account for his metabolism when they cook, and every day Bucky finds himself staring longingly at the plate.
He's hungry all of the time now.
.
. . .
.
"So what else you got?" Gabe asks curiously. "Apart from the insane speed and strength?"
They've just come off watching Steve lift three four metre tree trunks in a row, when it took four of them to lift one easily, followed by clambering up and down the rope like a monkey on the assault course. Then he'd moved onto five tree trunks balanced atop one another, and then a motorbike, and then how many of the semi-commandos he could lift in one go. It turns out all of them; with ease, before he unceremoniously drops them all in a pile as penance for betting he couldn't. They bet him he can't climb the monkey rope with four of them on his back - which if it wasn't getting dark he would probably readily accept. They've been making bets and pot-shots on where his cut off point is going to be whilst marking down their own informal results that Command probably shouldn't see. 'How many commandos can Captain America lift up to the third floor window of a brothel', is not one they'd probably approve of.
"Howard Stark might." Steve had commented casually when Falsworth brought up that exact fact; and Bucky had sprayed his water down his front. He keeps forgetting that Steve's in with the greatest inventor and engineer in their lifetime. Steve likes to laugh at his celebrity crush every time it's brought up, but if you ask him its a perfectly acceptable celebrity crush.
In all honesty the latest competition went on a lot longer than they thought it would.
"Um, healing." Steve says, sat stretched out and swallowing water from his canteen. Before this the SSR men were very carefully and very safely (apparently, not that Bucky believes it) testing how long he could go without water until the numbers of their results log started decreasing - so he's catching up now on all the canteens he and the boys kept trying to throw him to get him to drink outside of eye-shot. He kept refusing, as he wanted the results to be accurate if they were going to do it, and he was fine; so therefore he just had to put up with constantly having to catch the canteens each man kept tossing to him. "It's not just the muscles and blood affected by the serum. That's why they wanted to check the brain chemistry. One of the factors Erksine chose me…"
He clears his throat awkwardly, humble until the very end. Good becomes great, he'd said to Bucky, but Steve has always been great. He kinda wishes Erksine hadn't seen it too sometimes; before; when it was just a Sarah Rodgers and Bucky Barnes secret were the good times. For him anyway, though he wonders more now if they were at all for Steve, and how oblivious he must have been to realize Steve would go this far to change things. Steve continues, "is cause he believed it would amplify personality traits too. So he wanted to make sure he had the right recipient. It's why he didn't want to give it willy-nilly to any guy in the army. We don't want another Red Skull, trust me."
"And has it?"
"Has it what?"
"Amplified your personality traits."
Steve shrugs and says, "I'm not sure" at the same time Bucky says "yes."
He's polishing his shoes to get Vaughan of his back, so he only belatedly realizes Steve's glanced over at him in surprise.
"Do you think so?" He asks, interested. "Peggy thought so a little, but she only knew me for a month and a half before."
"You're more annoying now, does that count?"
"Oh shove off," Steve says, throwing his sweaty over-shirt at him. Bucky would ask if he was cold but it seems Steve's never cold now, he's always warm when Bucky brushes up against him. "I'm serious. Am I? Like; more than I was?"
"Sarge?" Morita prompts as he stops polishing to find the words to describe it.
He looks at Steve, "If I say to you: There's a car coming, the driver's drunk. It's his fault. He got into the car off his face - doesn't care what happens - and he's going to crash. He's not a solider, not in war; this is just normal life. He's going to kill ten people when he does, but if you shoot him at the top of the road he'll die and the car will stop before it hits the people at the bottom of the road. You'll save ten people if you kill him. Gut feeling. Would you do it?"
"Absolutely not. Murder in that way is still murder."
"Wouldn't budge?"
"No." Steve says, looking suspicious and wary, "not a chance."
"See, before you'd still say no - you wouldn't kill him, but you would shoot him somewhere non-lethal to distract him and find a way to change the course of the car. Or you'd throw yourself in front of him halfway down the hill and sacrifice yourself to slow it down. You'd figure a way out of the dilemma in a flash so you didn't have to abide by it, even by gut feeling. There's always normally a but. You're that stubborn that you won't even follow pretend fictional rules let alone real ones."
Steve jerks back, frowning as he thinks about it. The moment of illumination is obvious as he realizes Bucky is right and that it's true - he wouldn't obey the rules. He wouldn't admit he's breaking them, but he wouldn't strictly follow them either. He seems uncomfortably surprised he's only just realized that none of those thoughts went through his head.
"It's like your morality code can't see in shades of grey no more'. Just right and wrong - you've always been that way - it's just a bit more obvious now, I guess. Don't know how else to explain it." Bucky says, then has to say, "stop with that face, will you? It's only a little; you're still you. It's not a big deal."
"Right okay," Steve says eventually, and turns to Gabe. "Guess that's a yes then."
.
. . .
.
Afterwards, with hindsight, Bucky recognizes it probably is a really big deal to Steve to realize his entire method of thinking and ethics has changed without him being aware of it. Bucky's so fucking stupid not to have discerned it before. It's not a big deal? You stupid stupid imbecile. You utter fucking mook, what is wrong with you? He knows what it feels like to feel like you've lost yourself without even realizing you were loosing yourself; and Steve's face after he pointed out the changes said it all. He was frowning, and chewing on the inside of his cheek; gone from "I'm not sure" to "I'm even more different than I first thought."
Steve's never wanted to stand out and be different, but he always has been - he's only ever really wanted, or he did before, to fit in.
When is Bucky going to learn to shut his stupid mouth? Steve is going to fit in and be happy if it's the last thing Bucky does goddammit.
.
. . .
.
"I think I may have screwed up." He says to Steve at breakfast, dragging him over the side to repack their bags. Steve had said, 'mine's already packed' so Bucky had turned it upside down so everything fell out. Steve hadn't even had to energy to be angry at him, gave out more of a resigned, 'really, you're such a fucking asshole.'
'Is this a move to talk to me?' He said after, beginning to repack it.
'Yes,' Bucky had said, ignoring the fact that really he didn't need to orchestrate 'a move' to talk to his best friend. 'I think I may have screwed up.'
"When?" Steve says, "I don't see how. At training the other day, maybe, you were a little-"
"-No not about that, I don't care about that-"
"-You should, you're not even trying-"
"-I meant with us. With you."
Steve shakes his head, bewildered. "What?" He breathes quietly, "what are you-"
"Yesterday. With the stupid - what I said. The personality thing."
"You didn't-you didn't say anything wrong, Buck, just the thing you noticed-"
"No, I did, because it made you feel like shit. I didn't mean it like - fuck I don't know, but you weren't supposed to take it like that. But I get why you are. It is a big deal - I'm sorry."
"And what way have I taken it?" Steve says a little defensively, and then rolls his eyes at himself under his eyelids before Bucky even has to call him on it.
"What I should have said," Bucky stresses, already kicking himself for not thinking this through before he started the goddamn conversation. "-was that yeah; you're sticking to the rules more instead of going explicitly against them - but you're still-you're still you."
"Just different. Different enough that you noticed so easily-"
"No that's not- Jesus, why is that words come so easily when I accidentally say something shitty to you, but when I'm trying to make you feel better all I can come up with is 'you're still you'. What kind of fucking line is that, Jesus Barnes." He spits at himself, annoyed. "Why are you even friends with me?"
Steve's chuckling into himself, trying not to laugh. There's a fondness in his eyes Bucky has only every really seen directed at him or his mother. "What kinda line is that?" He repeats, "The kinda line I'm used to from you, you emotional mook." Steve says, nudging him playfully. "You've got nothing to apologize for…I'm, I'm glad you said it actually. Made me realize that…"
"That what?"
"It's hard to explain -" Steve says, and to be fair to him, unlike Bucky; he opens his mouth and actually tries to explain what's happening to him. "Obviously I knew the serum had changed me, but...it's like its a living thing inside my body and I thought that - you know, we were one in the same, working together to do stuff. And yeah, I admit, it freaked me out yesterday when you said what you said because you were so right - the second I started thinking about it I found like three ways of solving that dilemma so it wasn't a dilemma. It freaked me out because for months I've been letting my gut feelings rule me, like I always have. To realize that the serum itself had overtaken my judgement without me even noticing is crazy because - it means all those decisions weren't actually me making them."
"Well, sure they were. You can't disregard every choice you made 'cause of that. They still will have been your decisions, Steve."
"Not really." Steve disagrees. "The serums not working with me if it's overtaking the way I think - it's like a separate being."
"Or not a-a being? It's not a living thing Steve." Bucky reassures, because god, that's a scary thought.
"I told you it's hard to explain." He commiserates, smiling. "I know now so I can just-make sure that I don't let it overtake me - once I've got that figured out I'll be fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Okay," Bucky says doubtfully, "but for the record - you're still you." He quotes his shitty line to make Steve smile again. His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and Bucky is glad to see it works. "And I'm still sorry."
"You've got nothing to be sorry for, pal." He says nudging him again, "come on, you stop feeling sorry yourself and I will too, how about that?"
.
. . .
.
That night in the evening Bucky decides to join them in cards. A few of the other training recruits and Staff Sergeants join in, so it's a good gang of them. So much so they need several packs of cards, which makes it both harder and easier. Steve's flicking through his cards - seems to make a decision then pauses, and Bucky can see him making sure it's him and not the serum dictating his hand.
Steve scratches at his leg with his left hand. Oh, Bucky thinks in amusement, so we're making the executive moral decision to cheat are we?
Monty pauses ever so slightly, eyes catching it, and puts down a safe five instead of the three like Steve probably wants. Bucky raises an eyebrow at his friend from across the table, and Steve half smirks at him. Dugan swears downheartedly when Steve puts down his second string hand, coming out on top even when thwarted. Dugan folds. Morita and another Staff Sergeant too, getting ready to hand over their wares again.
Bucky lays down his own hand, eyes never leaving Steve's face. Steve's smirk drops.
"You cheated." He instantly accuses.
Bucky leans back in his chair. "Did I?" He asks nonchalantly, folding a card back up his sleeve. "Prove it."
"I didn't see anything untoward." Falsworth immediately backs him up - to Bucky's immense amusement. "But," Falsworth adds, "I think you dropped something Captain."
Steve turns automatically to make sure he hasn't dropped a card.
Seeing nothing like him, Bucky says, "You must be seeing something, Monty, just like Steve is trying to pretend he has." He pulls his winnings towards him. "It's not nice to be a sore loser, Steve."
If Steve were still skinny, he would have hit him by now.
He smacks him over the head on the way to bed instead.
"Jerk."
"Get some better tells, asshole."
.
REFERENCES
BOCHES/BOCHE/BOSCHE: boche or bosche is a derisive term used by the Allies (mostly the French) during World War I and World War II, often collectively ("the Boche" meaning "the Germans"). It is a shortened form of the French slang portmanteau alboche, itself derived from Allemand ("German") and caboche ("head" or "cabbage"). The alternative spellings "Bosch" or "Bosche" are sometimes found.
KILLER-DILLER: 40s Slang word for Something that is the best, or amazing.
VITA CHAMBER: The machine Howard Stark built for Project Rebirth, which is powered by Vita-Rays.
NOTES:
LIEUTENANT COLONEL VAUGHAN AND ACHNACARRY : Vaughan was a real person - and he ran all the training of all the commandos in Achnacarry, which included all British commandos, Polish Resistance and officers, American, Canadian and many others. They trained close to six hundred commandos, who are one of the highest-level of trained soldiers of that era; identical now to the modern day SAS, in the time period of 1941-1943, and continued operating until after the end of the war, training even more. All of the operations described is what is described in the Achnacarry Wikipedia and History page.
NEUROSURGERY MENTIONED : In 1918 the American neurosurgeon Walter Dandy introduced the technique of ventriculography whereby images of the ventricular system within the brain were obtained by injection of filtered air directly into one or both lateral ventricles of the brain via one or more small trephine holes drilled in the skull under local anaesthesia. Though not usually a painful procedure, ventriculography carried significant risks to the patient under investigation, such as haemorrhage, infection, and dangerous changes in intracranial pressure. Nevertheless, the surgical information given by this method was often remarkably precise and greatly enlarged the capabilities and accuracy of neurosurgical treatment.