Steve traces the wheel of the monocycle almost thoughtlessly. He's finished the sketch a few minutes ago, but until the rain clears up, he's stuck doing nothing, waiting for the next show.
"Hello, Steve," an accented voice talks behind him. When he turns, he's surprised to see Margaret Carter there.
"Hi."
"Hi." She looks like she doesn't quite know what to do, and after a few seconds of just standing there, she moves to sit beside him.
"What are you doing here?" Steve asks as she lowers herself one step above him. He'd thought the SSR was tasked with taking down H.Y.D.R.A, but in his mind, that hadn't exactly involved regular soldiers. He had thought she would be on a mission like Lucy, to be honest.
"Officially, I'm not here at all. That was quite the performance."
"Yeah." He passes his hand under his nose, if only to do something with his hands. "I had to improvise a little bit. Crows I'm used to are usually more, uh…" He moves his hands, trying to find the words. "Twelve," he settles for.
"I understand you're America's New Hope," she says, and yeah, Steve is glad to see a familiar face, but there is just this one thing— "What?" she asks when she sees his face.
"Look, Agent Carter, I—"
"I can't discuss Agent Rogers' mission, but she was assigned to Berlin. Last we heard of her, it was on September."
"That was two months ago," he states, although she must realize that, must know that two months was a dangerously long time not to know from someone who was supposed to be feeding them info on a weekly basis if she could.
"It takes time for information to travel, especially since she's so far inside. Though, to be honest, it wasn't a very successful mission so far. There are talks about pulling her out of it now that H.Y.D.R.A is independent from the Nazis."
Steve stays quiet for a few seconds as he processes it. He knows that a failed mission would weight on Lucy's mind. She would think as personal, as her not being able to get information instead of a bad placement.
"What?"
"I just…Lucy and I, for the longest time, we dreamed of this. I dreamt of coming over seas, being on the front lines. She dreamt of being useful, of…belonging here in the SSR. We finally get everything we wanted…and her mission doesn't work and I'm wearing tights."
The sound of the ambulance cuts the conversation in half, and whatever Agent Carter would have answered is lost. They watch as they pull a man from there, and Steve can't help what he says.
"They look like they've been through hell," he says, because he had seen their faces when he had been up there, had seen tired eyes and tired bones, had seen what war did to men who fought and killed and saw friends die for a war barely even fought in their own continents.
"These men more than most." Steve looks at her, and Agent Carter hesitates only for a second. "Schmidt sent out a force to Azzano. Two hundred men went up against him, back in September, and less than fifty returned." Steve looks down as he weights the numbers. "Your audience contained what was left of the 107th." And that gets him his attention.
The one-o-seventh. Sergeant James Barnes. Shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.
"The rest were killed or captured," she continues.
"The 107th?" And he needs to know, because Bucky would know him from voice alone, would have known it was him on that stage, would have tracked him down for a glimpse of his face, to know he was okay and alive, just like he would have and—
"What?" Peggy asks him.
Howard gets him near enough that infiltrating is not hard at all. It's only a matter of using his new body to knock some guards on their asses and that's it, although he knows that means it's only a matter of time before they wake up and raise the alarm.
He finds the prisoners after a few wrong turns that leave him face to face with guards, but the important thing is that he finds them.
"I'm looking for Sergeant James Barnes," he says once all the cages—fucking cages, god— are open.
"There's an isolation in the factory, but no one's ever come back from it. Not him, not his sister," one man says, and Steve looks back at him at that.
"His sister?" Steve asks, and thinks of Annie and Izzy and Becky, and wonders how the hell one of them could have ended up there.
"Blonde, glasses. Her name was Lucy?" another man pipes up, and his Lucy isn't blonde, but his Lucy had been on a mission where she would have wanted to change her appearance to fit the Nazi ideal and blonde made sense.
"That's not his sister," he says, almost as an afterthought, because maybe she was. Maybe, after so many years, Lucy was his sister just as Steve was his brother in everything but name, because she was his best friend just as much as Steve was. He focuses back on the men in front of him. "All right. The tree line is northwest, eighty yards past the gate. Get out fast and give 'em hell. I'll meet you guys in the clearing with anybody else I find."
Looking for the isolation ward with the vague directions he was given is not as hard as he thought it would be, and the man escaping only gives him the idea he's on the right path.
There is a voice, repeating numbers and rank and James Buchanan Barnes.
"Bucky. Oh my God," he swears, and he snaps the leather holding him down easier than he rips papers, holds him by the shoulders and pulls him up. "Hey, it's me."
"Steve?" Bucky stands up with his help, grabbing his arms to keep himself up. Steve uses one hand to touch the side of his head, to thumb over the cut on his cheek.
"I thought you were dead," Steve breathes.
"Lucy didn't tell me how big you got—Lucy. We need to get Lucy." Bucky takes a step forward and nearly fall to his face, so Steve helps him regain his balance when he sees a map.
"C'mon." He grabs Buck by the shoulders and starts walking, and he knows he's kind of just dragging him along, but they really need to get Luce.
"Can you walk? Do you know where she is?" Steve looks around, trying to find another room where she could be.
"Yeah, yeah. No, I haven't seen her since they took me, but it can't be that far from here. The doctor would still be talking about her when he came in here, sometimes." Bucky takes a step away from him, manages to stay on his feet and starts to check places with him.
"Did it hurt?" Buck asks after a few seconds.
"What, when I fell from Heaven?" Steve takes a quick look at him before going back to walking towards the next door.
"What they did to you?" Buck scoffs, managing a weak attempt to shove him.
"A little."
"Is it permanent?"
"So far." Steve takes a sharp right and sees a table not unlike where Bucky was. "Buck, in here!" Steve gets closer and sees a blonde woman, an inch of blood red hair growing from her roots. She's wearing a uniform of some kind, H.Y.D.R.A.'s logo right above her heart, eyes closed. Lucy.
"Hey. Hey, Luce. C'mon, doll," he speakes as he snaps the bands around her. He takes a second to take her in, the way she's s skinny but doesn't look sickly. She seems tired, dark rings around her eyes. He wonders if she was getting sleep or if they were torturing her with it. God, how could this happen to both his best friends.
"Hey, sweetheart. Let's get out of here." Buck comes up at his side and takes her arm, letting her get up slowly.
"Lucy. Hey, stay with me." She's watching him, with a little smile on her lips, but her eyes are not really seeing. She's murmuring something, but Steve can't pick it up, not with the bombs going off outside. He thinks it could be Irish.
They help her to her feet, but her movements are stiff, and when she tries to take a step, she trips. He doesn't hesitate to take her bridal style, letting Buck pass one of her arms around his neck and then dashing to grab her glasses from a nearby table.
"You got her? Let's get out of here. The boys are wrecking enough chaos this place is coming down anytime now." Buck starts to lead the way out, Steve hot on his heels with his wife in his arms.
After a few seconds, it starts to become evident the bombs aren't from the boys.
"Up here!" Buck calls when they see the fire cutting their path. They climb stairs, Steve thanking God and Mary and Jesus and every goddamn saint they could think of for the super soldier serum.
They're just about to cross when Schmidt and his doctor appear, and with their voices Lucy moves her head just a little, whimpering and trying to pull herself closer to his chest when she sees the doctor. He can sense Buck stiffening by his side, not looking away from the man when he accepts Lucy from his arms.
Then they fight for less a minute, and among the heat and the fear and the adrenaline, at least Steve can appreciate Buck's try of humor when he asks if he's got a red skull too.
They need a way out, and they need it fast, so Steve takes Lucy again and climbs more stairs. They reach a beam that looks sturdy enough and Steve rushes Buck first, letting him go and then watching as it gives out under him just in time for him to jump to the other side.
"There has to be another way!" Bucky yells, and Steve can feel the way Lucy's fingers tighten around the shoulder of his torn jacket, fingers not quite bending, but still strong.
"Just go! Get out of here!" Steve urges him, and he can barely hear when Lucy whispers 'go' under her breath, eyes clenching shut.
"NO! Not without you!"
So Steve looks around and decides to wing it.
"I can jump, but I'm not sure I can reach the other side. I don't see other way, Luce." Steve lays her down beside him, leaning on the railing that's luckily not yet hot enough to burn. His hand holds her head up, and she doesn't seem to be able to move it much, but manages something like a nod, so Steve lets her go and bends the bars until there's enough space for them.
"Steve," she whispers when he takes her again. "You are my love."
"I love you too," he whispers back, taking a deep breath and leaping.
"Can I joke yet about the bruising I'm going to have on my ass tomorrow? You're heavy as fuck, Luce."
"Not funny yet," Lucy says, her voice now slightly louder as she smiles at them from where she's sitting on the back of a car, feet hanging and head resting on a seat.
"Can you move yet?" Steve asks, marching beside Bucky. He'd tried to get everyone to rest, but most men were adamant they were getting as fast as they could to camp.
"A little stiff around the knees, but I've been working on my heels and they're back." Lucy twists her heels in circles, her bare feet brown at the bottom. "It's the same with my wrists."
She catches his eyes and reads him as well as she always could, because she shakes her head a little to tell him she wouldn't talk about it just yet. Steve frowns a little, and she raises her eyebrows until he rolls his eyes and nods.
"You know, James. I gotta say I was a little skeptical 'bout you being a Sarge and all, but look at that trigger safety. Look at that finger resting near but not on the trigger, hand relaxed, pointing away from things you don't wanna shoot—you were listening!" Lucy laughs, eyebrows raised and her mouth open in that a third smile, a third smirk and a third tongue on her cheek face she made when she teased them and waited for their reaction.
"Keep the smart talk and you're going to be walking the next ten miles, I know the driver."
Steve look between Buck, hurt and dirty and tired but smiling, and Lucy, with tense shoulders but sparkling eyes, fills his lungs for the first time in over four months and smiles.