Winter 2016
The air was so frigid here that if Barnes closed his eyes, he would have thought he was in Siberia again. But he didn't close his eyes. Not these days. Not if he could help it. And it did him no good to pretend to be in Siberia. His head needed to be where his body was, and, for the most part, it was these days.
The cold wouldn't last. Already the atmospheric pressure was changing; clouds were gathering in the distance. He watched flashes of lightning in their depths. Thundersnow. The word tumbled around in his head, absurd.
Barnes returned his focus to the low-profile stone building perched on a rolling hill. Distance: three kilometres. A few wooden hovels were grouped around it, looking like nothing more than sheds. Dirt paths — now covered in crusty snow and packed ice — gave the impression that someone actually inhabited this place; that someone walked between these structures.
Distant rumblings reminded Barnes of the storm. It had already been difficult to make it here. When the storm started, it would be virtually impossible to access this place. Zero visibility. Wind. He needed to get moving. Shifting his weight onto his left ankle, he tested its stability. The usual nagging tension. Right wrist resisted rotation like it had during the last three bases he'd raided. That ache up on top of his right shoulder was there; still undecided if the pain there was real or psychosomatic. He catalogued those and a half dozen other stubborn things that hadn't gone away since the spring of 2014.
His world had gotten a lot bigger in the time since then. Bigger, but also a lot more crowded. Maybe that was why he was here now, at another one of HYDRA's forgotten hidey-holes. Maybe he was trying to make his world small again. Thin the crowd. Barnes never looked for anything when he went pursuing HYDRA, but there was always something to be found. Sometimes he left it for someone else to find. Other times it went the same way as the HYDRA goons: to pieces.
HYDRA hunted him, and he hunted HYRDA, too. The heads kept multiplying, and he had no choice but to slay them. Kill them or be killed by them. But they couldn't have him alive again.
A short, garbled radio signal spiked in the comm in his ear. No words in any discernible language, no pattern, no out-of-place Morse code message. Just a rogue frequency. But to him, it was a pulse.
Speaking of pulses. Barnes fished the little S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued cell phone from the inside of his tactical vest. The battery had been dead since the week after Fury gave it to him in a busy French airport.
"Cap'll probably try to kill me for not telling him I'm doing this," Fury had said from two seats away in that airport. They hadn't looked at each other, not directly. "I've seen what you're capable of. I've seen what he's capable of. Between us, I'm more afraid of you." And then he'd gotten up, dropped the phone onto the vacant seat between them, and walked off.
Barnes had spared the phone enough attention to stick a GPS scrambler to the back of it and drop it into his backpack. Now Barnes wondered why he'd never just thrown it away. Why keep it and not use it? Why did he accept it at all?
Now, metal fingers turned the phone over.
Flashes from the incoming storm reflected off its blank screen.
Another pulse from the base skittered through the comm.
His metal fingers closed over the cell phone with steadily increasing pressure. The plastic housing splintered. Screen propagated with a spider web of cracks. The motherboard deformed and released a few of its components into the snow before he dropped the rest of it. Barnes drew out his SIG Sauer and headed for the stone building. He didn't bother trying to conceal his footsteps.
Fury had no idea what either of them were capable of.
Spring 1944
"Eh. Um, I. Eh. Ed…"
"Lemme see," Bucky mumbled. He pulled his head up off of Dugan's shoulder and opened his eyes as little as possible.
Dugan tilted the book toward Bucky and tapped his finger on the offending line.
Bucky squinted from the low light. "Eidetic."
"Eidetic," Dugan repeated. He brought the book back toward himself and studied the print. "Eidetic," he repeated.
"Mmh hmm," Bucky hummed to himself, head returning to its place to rest and eyes closing again. Half-gloved fingers brought his cigarette back to his lips. Besides Dugan's huge shoulder against the side of his head, the cigarette was the only warm thing in the damp and drizzle of spring. The damn tents didn't do a thing to keep out the humidity. Everything felt this close to being soaking wet all the time. The pages of Dugan's book hadn't lasted long before they started curling. Lucky the ink hadn't run too badly anywhere. They might as well have been back in goddamn England.
"Eidetic," Dugan said again.
Bucky didn't need to open his eyes to know that Dugan was looking at him with that brows-raised look of anticipation. Taking his time to blow out smoke away from Dugan, Bucky said, "Perfect visual memory. You can remember every detail of something you've seen."
"Ah. Like Cap and the map."
Bucky nodded. "Yup."
Dugan carried on reading in a low voice, not stumbling on any other words for a few minutes. He dog-eared a page and closed the book at the end of a chapter. "You shoulda been a teacher, Sarge."
Bucky snorted around his cigarette. "Oh yeah? Only thing I'm good at teaching is how to use a gun."
"You're teachin' me," Dugan said with a shrug.
"You already know how. I'm just helping you polish things up."
Dugan shrugged again and they both pretended that it was true. The first blips of raindrops sounded on the canvas overhead. Bucky clenched and unclenched his hands now that the cigarette was out. Lately the tips of his fingers tingled. It made him itchy and fidgety. He worried it'd happen when he needed a steady hand on his trigger.
"You really didn't go to college? Never even wanted to?" Dugan nudged him with his shoulder.
Bucky shook his head. Cracked open one eye. "Needed money."
"That's a shame anyway."
"Hmm."
If he closed his eyes again, Bucky could imagine that he was almost warm. Warm and crouched in a newly-dug foxhole somewhere in Italy, sides pressed into Dugan's and maybe Gabe's too. The reassuring feeling of their breaths a constant reminder of companion life. God, he remembered some of the best nights of sleep he ever got was stuck between the two of them in a three-man foxhole, bickering over his head. Back before everything was the drizzling shits.
These days Bucky didn't sleep as much as he simply passed out from complete and utter exhaustion.
"Time?" Bucky wondered aloud.
They were expecting the rest of the Commandos back soon. They'd set out before daybreak that morning to survey a suspected HYDRA rail supply depot fifteen kilometers beyond their current front. It was a last-minute thing; take out hostiles, install themselves in HYDRA's place, and get the jump on the next supply vehicle that pulled in. A favor to Agent Carter while they were still on base, no doubt. But things were starting to feel late. The team had gotten much better at staying out of the kind of trouble that would cause difficulty for a mission, but you never could be too sure.
A muscle started to twitch in Bucky's thigh, so he stood up without quite knowing where he wanted to go. Dugan looked at him with arched brows.
"I'm gonna go check to see if they're back," Bucky said. The side that Dugan had been leaning against felt suddenly cold.
"Better you than me," Dugan replied. He reached out for the book again and settled into the warmth Bucky's body had left behind.
Outside the tent and in the now-steady rain, Bucky had no choice but to start walking. He didn't particularly want to run into anyone or go asking after the others like some fussing mother hen, but walking could calm him down when things inside him started acting up. They were probably fine. They were probably in the HQ tent being debriefed. So he sloshed through the mud and around the perimeter of camp until he heard a voice over the steady drum of rain.
"Sergeant Barnes!" a figure in the distance called.
Bucky stopped to let them catch up but didn't make an effort to meet them halfway.
"Sergeant Barnes?" the man asked. Private, his uniform revealed. Not SSR. Regular US Army. He had the look of someone who spent a lot of time indoors; ink stains on his fingers. This base was definitely not his natural habitat. Maybe a codebreaker. Maybe just a translator.
"That's me," Bucky said.
"Orders," said the private while holding up a folded bit of paper that was already wavy from the rain. "You're to travel ahead with the Fourth Division replenishments. They're trying to capture an Axis CO they believe is a mole for HYDRA."
That was the mission they'd been briefed on the day before. Bucky hadn't expected to move out so soon. Especially not before the others got back. But this sort of arrangement wasn't unusual. He'd been loaned out as other units' overwatch before for exactly these types of situations. And most of the time it was just more efficient. The rest of the Howlers didn't exactly specialize in skills that needed time. They were commandos; they were fast by definition. So sometimes Bucky went ahead with or without Monty as his scout – he'd used regular Army grunts as support if he was alone. Then he did all the things a sniper needed to do before they took the shot.
(There was only ever one shot.)
"Let me see." Bucky nodded to the folded-up orders.
The private handed them over.
Sure as shit, Peggy and Phillips's signatures were on the bottom of the sheet. Smudged from the fresh ink and the damp. They were the only two authorized to give the order to send him ahead without Steve's consent. Bucky handed it back to the private.
"Now, Sergeant, if you don't mind. It's urgent departure."
"Yeah, alright, let me just get my shit and tell Du—"
"Sir, it's urgent."
"That's great—"
"Sir, Mr Stark already has your gear calibrated and loaded on the transport. They're leaving now."
A bit of old Brooklyn heat kicked up in Bucky's chest. Thoughts of chicken-shit bosses who let the smallest amount of authority go to their head cycled through his memory. But it was hard for Bucky to hold on to that sort of anger these days; he was more often too cold and tired. So he pulled his boots out the growing mud puddle and followed the private toward the idling trucks.
Winter 2016
The door to the stone building opened without much resistance but with a lot of squealing. Barnes gave it a few breaths before he stepped inside. Entryway was clear. The door fell closed behind him and darkness, over him. A few vulnerable moments passed where he couldn't see, but his eyes were enhanced, and they adjusted quickly. The contours of the interior extruded itself from nothing.
He saw: Wooden desk a few metres away from the opposite wall. Desk flanked by metal filing cabinets, flaking green paint. Wooden door all the way to the left of the desk. Wall behind the desk was devoid of any decoration except for two faded outlines of a hammer and sickle on the right and a one by one square metre on the left. The imagery was…too obvious.
Barnes approached the filing cabinet on the left. Four rows, one column. Keyhole at the top. Tugging on the handles with his metal hand: First, fourth, first, third, second, fourth, second. He waited until something inside the keyhole popped. A mechanism below his feet began to turn, time and rust being ground into loose dust.
Barnes walked over to the wooden door on the left and opened it. No resistance. No squealing hinges. Emergency lights were glowing inside the room: red. Bookshelf concealing an elevator straight ahead. Steel door with dual optical and palm scanners to the immediate right. The air was stale with traces of turbine oil and jet fuel. The scent invited Barnes to reclaim a lost memory, but he refused.
Approaching the door, Barnes placed his cybernetic palm onto the scanner and stared straight ahead. The optical scanner wasn't visible. No blinding, obvious red or green light sweeping his sclera or iris. A few heartbeats passed before the groaning clunks within the door echoed. Barnes let his hand squeeze the palm scanner enough for the edges to buckle before he stepped through the door. It swung shut behind him, final.
Stepping out onto the landing, he looked down. Stairs, folding in on themselves by counterclockwise 90-degree turns, eight or so stairs at a time, ten flights down, lit only by those emergency lights. Barnes adjusted his grip and began his descent. He could move silently, but any slipup would go echoing through this endless column. His breathing was light and shallow.
At the first landing, he shoved the door open as smoothly as the disused hinges would allow and stepped into the corridor. Checked the corners first; clear. Barnes found nothing but the droppings of squeaking vermin and rooms full of redacted paper documents. The elevator doors allowed him to pry them apart. The shaft was dark and quiet. No car trundling up the cable. Barnes reached out and gripped the cable. His hand came away with slick black lubricant.
Back the way he came to the stairs.
Down to the next level. The oil and fuel smell grew stronger once he pulled open the next door. Black welding curtains hung from a rod that ran to the entire length of the left-hand side of the hall. No sounds of bodies, but some hums like idle machinery. Barnes approached the end of the curtain closest to him and yanked it back. The hooks skating along the curtain rod sounded like scratching fingernails.
Nothing beyond the veil except for plastic bins. Barnes tipped the lid off of the nearest bin and peered inside. A well-used fuel pump stared benignly back up at him. His eyes nearly began to water. He dropped the lid back down before the stench of jet fuel could get him lightheaded. The bins were dusty, but there was probably still fuel in there. They'd been in use not too long ago.
He checked a few other bins and found more small pumps and valves. All of them reeking of the noxious, stinging odour of TS-1 fuel.
Barnes left them and approached the next split in the welding curtains. Threw it back. Shelves upon shelves of engine parts. No bins. Reeking.
Staging, he decided, and moved on to the next partition.
And there it was, the source of the humming. It was a shallow sink attached to a bulkhead embedded with dials and switches. Thick hoses dangled from the bulkhead into the sink. No barrier to enclose it all. And why would there be one? This was HYDRA in former Soviet territory. No one was going to call OSHA if calibration fluid sprayed on some grunt. Bulky mid-90's-looking computer equipment surrounded the sink. A few cannon plugs were looped around a hook speckled with rust.
It was a test stand, still pulling power. Which meant that something in this building produced electricity, and it was functioning.
Barnes found another test sink and more bins separated by black welding curtains, these ones empty of any components. He left the same way he entered, and his boots made nary a scuff going down to the next floor. The third door had more parts. Bigger: actuators and fuel metering devices. There were wheeled carts with drains in their bottoms. Still smelling of jet fuel. Bigger sinks and hoses than were on the upper floor. Still no people.
Fourth landing: biggest bins yet, but there were no welding curtains. Cinderblock walls with tall steel doors. The scent of oil was much stronger here, overpowering the jet fuel. Inside the first room was a bench. Tools littered the floor and bench top: dried and broken O-rings mixed with miniscule screws. Barnes pulled open one of the drawers to see drill bits and sockets. Despite the black oxide finish, there were flecks of corrosion.
The tang of iron filled his nose. Barnes picked up a flathead screwdriver nestled among the rest of the junk. Copper flecks sloughed off the length of it. Blood.
Squeeeeeeak.
Clank!
His head snapped up at the sound; it came from below. Barnes put the screwdriver back and closed the drawer. Gripped the SIG Sauer. Continued his methodical sweep, clearing sub-floor four. The air in the staircase, when he returned to it, felt charged. Like it had been stirred up. Barnes's left ankle popped the first step down to the next level.
The ground began to hum.
Lights were glowing under the crack of the door to sub-floor five. Barnes put his cybernetic palm flat the door and moved the index finger of his right hand off the trigger guard and onto the trigger. He pulled in one last shallow breath before pushing the door open.
One step in the door and flash!
Spring 1944
The ride to the assignment was nice enough. Being packed in with the replacements for the Fourth Division at least provided some warmth. Travelling with the Commandos usually meant Bucky could close his eyes, tip his head back, and try not to think about anything. Seeing as he wasn't travelling with his usual crew, that type of behaviour might be a bit rude. Better to play nice and try to be friendly. Never mind that his eyes didn't want to close for any longer than necessary when he was surrounded by so many unfamiliar faces.
By the end of it, Bucky was able to swindle some poor sap out of a pair of socks by telling the men some of the Commandos' more exciting stories. The private from the SSR base stayed by his side and laughed a little too loudly at everyone's jokes. Talking so much to people he didn't know never used to take up this much energy.
Besides that, it was an OK transport.
A mid-level CO of the Fourth Division met their truck at the back of a smoking city. After the replacements had gotten off the truck, saluted the officer, and been dismissed, the CO approached Bucky and held his hand out.
"Sergeant Barnes, I presume," he said.
Bucky shook his hand just once before withdrawing from the contact. "That's me, sir."
"Major Woods," he said by way of proper introduction. "Glad to have you."
"Thank you, sir. Happy to be here." Funny how it was so easy to fall into that pattern of speech. Especially after so many missions with the Commandos where they most definitely were not calling Steve "sir."
"Private Mouchard will be your scout. Hope that works for you."
"Yes, sir." Monty was ten times the scout of any other man the Allied forces could scrounge up. No need to complain, though, Bucky thought. The rest of his unit would be here by dark.
"Come, I'll take you to your post and catch you up," said MAJ Woods.
So Bucky adjusted the way his Stark-modified Springfield rifle hung over his shoulder and followed the CO. PVT Mouchard followed like a shadow. The roads were cracked and littered with debris. Bucky tried to observe as much of the damage to the city as he could. It had recently taken a hit; that much was obvious. Stone and metal debris were shoved up against the sides of the buildings that still stood, narrow paths cleared for the Division's vehicles. Most of the wooden debris had been burned up. Scorch marks everywhere. Partially crumbled structures made for good hidey-holes though. A sniper's best friend and worst enemy in a city siege situation.
"The city's split about 60-40 in our favour," Woods was saying. "Germans are holding a stubborn line and most of the action's happening at State and Main. Or whatever they call it over here."
Bucky made a vague noise in response.
"Intelligence says one of the mid-level German COs over there is HYDRA. I know your people are interested in capturing as many of the little bastards as possible before they pop the old fake tooth. We could have liberated this city by now if we weren't trying to capture this guy. But," he said while shrugging, "better we win the war than the battle."
All of this had already been in the briefing back at the SSR camp.
Artillery popped overhead some distance off. PVT Mouchard flinched. Dust from the surrounding buildings showered down on them. Bucky thought the sound was reassuring. At least it wasn't one of those Cube-powered guns.
What a world that he lived in where the sound of artillery was comforting because it wasn't a fucking vaporizing machine.
Woods jogged ahead and led them into a tall, rickety-looking abandoned shop.
"Welcome to your post," he said. They didn't stop to look around. Instead, Woods led them up a few flights of stairs to a dusty attic. The roof looked ready to cave in. The concussion of nearby friendly fire could have meant the end of him. Woods pointed to a window that damn near touched the floorboards. There was a spiderweb of cracks in the pane with a hole punched through the middle. "Our man's name is Popanz. We think their HQ is close to the front. See the low building back there, dark blue roof? We have a raid scheduled tonight at 0230. Your Commandos are supposed to be here no later than 0000 to prep the plan. But with or without your team as support, we're going in."
Bucky nodded.
"Watch over my men, Sergeant. I don't intend to take any more casualties while we're sitting ducks here. I understand the work SSR is doing is vital for the war, believe me. But it's not on the lives of my men if your side doesn't show up on time. If it comes down to mission failure or losing one of our men, I hope you know what choice to make."
"Yes, sir."
An exchange of salutes and then MAJ Woods was stomping down the stairs. Bucky caught the gaze of Mouchard and raised his eyebrows.
"Nice guy."
Mouchard stared. Bit of a moon-faced kid.
Bucky dropped his pack and swung his rifle down beside the window. Taking off his helmet and tossing it aside, Bucky settled down beside his pack. First things first: Gotta take the edge off. He pulled a cigarette out of a pocket of his field jacket and lit it. Pawing through his pack for his bipod and the good scope, Bucky threw a question to his scout, "They got any overwatch?"
The kid didn't answer right away. "That's why you're here, Sergeant."
"I meant the Germans," he said around his cigarette.
"Oh. No. No known enemy snipers."
"Good." Bucky was gonna check that for himself. The Stark-designed scope snapped into place on the Springfield. He looked through it to make sure it hadn't somehow gotten scratched or started fogging up the way so many others had in the elements. "What sort of defences do they have?"
Mouchard approached Bucky at last and pulled out an improvised map of the city. He described the known artillery and anti-aircraft weaponry. Talked about fallen buildings that gave them better sight lines but also gave ground troops trouble getting across town.
"No air support?"
"Nothing consistent. No, sir. Haven't been many reports of resupply reaching their side of the city either."
"Have any distances clocked?"
"Yes." Mouchard flipped his map over to show the same city layout but with different information. He pointed to a thin pencil line connecting their current location to what Bucky assumed was the blue roof building. "Looking at a little less than a kilometre."
"OK."
"Can you hit that?"
"Hmm." Bucky stubbed out his cigarette. "They give you a radio?"
Mouchard gestured to a busted up looking hunk of machinery in the corner. Bucky had initially mistaken it for a debris pile.
"That works?"
A proud little nod from Mouchard. "I got it working. It's a hobby of mine."
"Handy."
"Thank you, sir."
Bucky turned away from his scout then and laid down on his stomach at his rifle, elbows flared wide for support. For all of Stark's genius, he couldn't seem to make a bipod for Bucky at the right height. He peered through the scope and adjusted until the blue roof building was in front of him. If Monty were here, Bucky would have asked him to do this bit. But seeing as Monty wasn't here and that Bucky didn't exactly trust the stand-in, he did it himself. Marking the location of the building and clocking the comings and goings of every drab uniform that walked past it, he spent the next two hours panning around the city and noting likely defences.
(For the record, the enemy most definitely did have at least one sniper.)
Mouchard fiddled with his radio, receiving and sending signals every so often. When Bucky was satisfied with the survey of the city, he made himself comfortable watching the blue roof building. Mouchard found a frequency that was broadcasting some German-language music and left the radio going loud enough for Bucky to hear it. As far as background noise went, it wasn't the worst.
Three and a half hours into his watch, Bucky watched two Germans walking into the building while a third was leaving. The wrist watch he'd placed beside the little notebook containing his observations told him they weren't on schedule with everyone else he'd seen go by.
"What did you say Popanz rank was?"
"Hauptmann," said Mouchard.
Captain, Bucky translated to himself. He pulled back from his rifle to light another cigarette.
After another hour, the sound of Mouchard eating reminded Bucky to do the same. He stood to stretch out his legs first; took the stairs all the way down to the ground floor and then back up to the attic a few times. Then he sat down to eat whatever can his hand closed around first. He ate without tasting it.
When the can was empty, Mouchard spoke up. "Were your stories true?"
"Hmm?"
"The stories you told on the truck. Are they true? Are your missions with Captain America really like that?"
Bucky shrugged. "Some of them. Others are just like what we're doing right now."
"But you move on so quickly."
"Well, yeah. It's a commando outfit."
Mouchard looked thoughtful. "They never stay anywhere for too long?"
Bucky shook his head. "Not if we can help it."
"You never get stuck on something? Need reinforcements?"
"We have support."
"Not with you."
Bucky shrugged to that. It was true that the Commandos didn't usually have backup in the field with them. Not the kind of backup that could be readily put into play. But it was still there. "We have radio back up with the SSR. But we also have all of the Allied forces. Like you."
That shut the kid up for forty-five minutes. But before long: "Why were you chosen?"
Bucky jerked his head back from the binoculars that he'd been using to observe the blue roof building in the fading light. "What?"
"Why did Captain America choose you for his special team?"
It was hard to do anything besides blink at Mouchard.
"Are all of you like him?" he probed. "Enhanced?"
Bucky's tongue felt like it was swelling in his mouth. The words stuck to his throat: "No." He shook his head. "No, we're just soldiers."
"Then why'd you get chosen?"
No words were coming. He stared, dumb, at his scout. Sudden and violent dislike was coiling in his stomach. Finally: "You'd have to ask him."
Mouchard was staring out the cracked window distantly. "No radio contact from them yet. Guess I'll have to wait."
They didn't speak again for a long time. Not until Mouchard announced that it was T-5 minutes until 0230. They hadn't received any radio communication that the Commandos had arrived at 0000, their scheduled time. The suspicion had been roiling in Bucky's gut as the hours had gone by without any word from them. They weren't usually late. They'd never missed a co-operative mission before. They were nearly two and a half hours behind schedule, about to miss an assignment. No contact or explanation.
What if something had happened on base? What if something had gone wrong on the train depot operation? What if they were captured? What if they were prisoners in another camp? Bucky's head swirled with hypotheticals from 0000 to 0225. If he hadn't been so busy stewing about how much he didn't like his scout, Bucky would have told Mouchard to contact Morita's unique radio frequency and ask for status.
"Moving out," Mouchard announced right on time.
Bucky kept his eye pressed to the scope, panning between Woods's men and all the likely enemy defences they'd marked. They made steady progress, meeting very little enemy fire. Only the routine exchange of artillery shells that had been going on all day punctuated the sky.
Bucky followed the progress of the last man in Woods's group for a moment before panning up to the blue roof building. There was a man outside the building waving his arms. He seemed to be staring directly back into the scope, like he knew Bucky was watching.
Pulling back, he muttered, "What the fuck?"
A low droning sound began to swell and shake dust down from the roof above his head.
Something isn't right.
Bucky turned over to look at Mouchard at the precise moment that his own helmet came rocketing out of nowhere and slammed into his temple. Not a moment later, the butt end of an M1 slammed into the back of his head. Bucky's face collided with the wooden floor of the attic. Blood filled his mouth, leaked from the side of his head. Stars exploded over his vision while the toe of a boot attempted to spear through his belly once, twice, three times.
His whole body shuttered in a slow deep convulsion. Bucky clamped his hands over the ankle of the boot coming in for a fourth kick, and he rolled into it, knocking Mouchard off of his feet. The coppery smell of blood was really saturating the air now. The taste was tangible. The sound of howling misery echoed in the recesses of his memory. It helped Bucky come back to his senses.
Rolling away from a struggling Mouchard, Bucky freed his Colt from its side holster and brought it to bear. Mouchard dove to avoid the first shot but couldn't evade the second. It found home in his right shoulder. Blood was rushing in Bucky's ears (and down the side of his head). The fuck was this?
Mouchard lunged suddenly with a field knife in the fist of his unwounded hand. Wrongfooted, Bucky dodged too slowly. The blade skittered across his leg above the knee. Immediately the flesh split and bled, an unusual burn in his thigh. Sounds seemed too thin in his ears. Mouchard's hit wasn't free though: Bucky turned with the lunge and got another shot off before Mouchard ever got his feet under him. The body dropped and seemed to shake the very foundation of their post.
Bucky walked up beside the dying scout. Blood pooled out of his neck and shoulder. Dying eyes tracked Bucky kneeling down and pulling the field knife out of a lifeless hand. A gurgle bubbled out from the private's mouth. Bucky held the eye contact and tipped his ear closer to Mouchard's lips.
"Hail HYDRA."
A frail crack of a capsule in his mouth.
Then the screaming finally reached him. And the blast of anti-aircraft guns. And the ground-shaking detonation of bombs. His senses felt like they'd been cranked up to 1000. Bucky looked out the window in time to see an enormous blue fireball consume the blue roof house. The whole world was erupting with deafening booms. A shell dropped immediately outside the cracked window. There wasn't even time to draw a breath. The attic leapt into the sky and crashed to the ground all in the same instant, taking Bucky with it.
Winter 2016
Barnes turned away and screwed his eyes shut, but the flash bang still seared his vision. Enemy fire chased him into the stairwell. He gave himself all of two seconds before he opened his eyes and walked directly into the fray. Left shoulder first. The deflections of the arm gave away the targets; trajectory easily calculated with each impact. With the left arm up, Barnes fired off three quick rounds of the SIG Sauer in three directions.
Something much softer than a bullet pinged off his left triceps, and he immediately launched himself in that direction. Left hand grasped the hostile's throat and the other disarmed and disabled the weapon. Barnes spun and used the hostile as a shield against the incoming volley of fire.
These types didn't seem too concerned about friendly fire in the slightest. Useful, in the sense that Barnes saw that the small projectiles that had hit his prosthesis were auto-dispensing syrettes. He'd seen them before. Been nailed by 'em before. Made this encounter a little more important. More than one direct hit by those fuckers, and he'd be lights out.
Eyes adjusted to the light by now, Barnes took off human shield-first at the nearest hostile. On the very first step, his stiff left ankle buckled and he caromed off the path he intended to run. One lucky fucking shot zoomed past the human shield and clipped Barnes's right abdominal. Barnes shoved the dead shield into the hostile and shot through two skulls. Aerial twist away from incoming tranq rounds and a few rolls put Barnes behind some sort of test fixture. Bullets bit into his cover.
With his right hand steady on the SIG Sauer, the left unclipped a grenade. He activated the timer, held it for a little longer than he usually would and then lobbed it over the test bed toward the hostiles. It detonated just before it hit the ground. Barnes followed it out from behind his cover as soon as the blast lit up sub-floor five.
Three more snaps off the SIG Sauer put down another group of hostiles. Barnes had to twist and evade more incoming rounds of tranquilizers. A faint buzz of electricity gave away the presence of stun batons. A lull in the action let Barnes estimate a headcount of about 25 hostiles. And then the action started again.
Barnes charged forward. If any of the others landed any hits, he didn't feel them. Hopefully they'd be overwhelmed enough by a direct advance by the Winter Soldier to make mistakes. When the SIG Sauer was spent, he tossed it aside and drew out a tactical knife instead. He knew enough about HYDRA to know that very few of their recruits got any decent knife fighting training. They relied entire too much on guns and small arms for close-quarters combat.
So it was easy to shove their arms up and disrupt their aim. Barnes shoved up the locked arm of one and drove his fist into the ribcage as far as it would go while throwing up a boot to knock the Glock out of a second hostile's grip. The first one fell. Barnes turned into the second and drove his left elbow into his nose.
Twist the gun-arm of the next behind his back and slit his throat.
Kick in another's knee and let gravity drag the belly along the knife's blade.
Duck yet another's wild attempt at a charge, catch him by the arm, spin him around, and drive his face into the side of an empty test bed.
Slit another throat. Put a fist through another chest. Cut a smile into bellies until their intestines threaten to fall out. Gouge eyes, crush necks, snap spinal columns. It all became barely more than a buzz in Barnes's brain. This was easy. This was automatic. His body responded to this with relief. Like riding a bike. He didn't think he'd ever stop feeling this grim satisfaction. Didn't think he wanted to, if it meant survival.
He was breathing hard when the last man dropped to the floor dead. A heavy pressure had been released inside him. A blockage cleared. But he was tired.
The floor was painted red and decorated with viscera. The smell of it make Barnes's stomach turn over. He'd vomit if there were anything left in him to give. His boots left little inverse footprints in the blood, areas clear of the stains that slowly filled in again. Barnes retrieved his SIG Sauer. It was soaked. Blood dripped off of his fist when he held it, ejected the magazine, and reloaded with a fresh one.
Still breathing a little heavily, Barnes inspected the rest of sub-floor five. It only had three small test beds. No hardware anywhere to be found. The scent of jet fuel and oil couldn't be detected above the copper of blood.
Back on the landing of the stairway, Barnes stopped himself and ran a hand through his hair. It was slick with sweat and blood. For some reason, that really annoyed him. It took his breath away for a moment, that annoyance. He pictured himself taking a shower after all of this. Washing all the grime out of his hair; the idea of it was appealing.
Barnes had never made plans to do anything after he went in a base. There was never any guarantee that there would be an after.
His boots began the descent down to sub-floor six. This time he was careful and opened the door as slowly as possible. There were quiet noises, talking. Barnes waited and identified three unique voices. His finger moved from guard to trigger and he was every bit the ghost they all said he was when he slipped inside.
Sub-floors six and seven were actually one room. Sub-floor six was a series of catwalks and a control booth above the ground sub-floor seven. It was a massive test best for an engine. Based on what Barnes had seen up above, it was some kind of late 90s aircraft. This rig would draw a lot of power, the source of which Barnes still hadn't found yet.
In quick succession: Bang-bang-bang. The third one dead before he could have realized what the first shot meant.
Barnes hurried along the catwalk to the control room. Dated panels and green-grainy monitors staring benignly back at him. He efficiently disabled them all, the scratching of a memory pleading all the while to be remembered in the back of his head. Then he exited the control room and walked down the thin iron staircase to sub-floor seven.
The hum of electricity was loud here. The plumbing around the stand had the overpowering scent of jet fuel. It was strong and stinging in Barnes's nose. For the first time in a long time, he wished he was wearing the Winter Soldier's mask. There were no engines mounted to the test bed; the supply lines and electrical harnesses dangled from the top mounting flange.
Barnes manually dismantled the control boxes near the base of the bed. A few rounds from the SIG Sauer would have done the job, but at this range, he'd probably ignite the whole place. There was so much jet fuel stink in the air. The fire suppression system in the room no doubt was faulty by now.
Sub-floor eight: offices. Fifteen hostiles armed mostly with small arms and stun batons. No tranq rounds here.
Sub-floor nine: document storage. Paper documents. Barnes made a nice pile and burned it all.
By the time he reached the landing to sub-floor ten, he could feel the building coming alive. There was a hum of more than just electricity. He could feel the commotion several floors up. The elevator definitely was trundling in its shaft. But it was moving away. Up.
The place is probably set to blow up, he thought to himself.
Barnes pushed open the door to sub-floor ten. The lowest this place could go. He stepped over the threshold at the same time that lights from overhead flicked on. Buzzing and a deep hum. A massive dynamo was sunk into the floor. The sound of it working grew louder as Barnes approached.
No way this was original. A dynamo wasn't exactly the latest tech, but this was no 90's aircraft hardware. He stepped closer. Maybe it wasn't a dynamo after all. A glow seemed to be coming off of it. Faint and…blue? The same kind of blue that painted some of his oldest memories.
Barnes approached the edge of the basin into which the dynamo was sunken. A strange transparent tube was mounted there, permitting the glow. Balanced in the centre of that tube was a single fragment of a shimmering blue something—
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Barnes reacted by the second discharge, but it wasn't fast enough. Three bullets punched into his back. One was a through-and-through; it burst out below Barnes's left ribcage. It pinged against the tube around the blue fragment. Cracks spidered across the glass, and the light swirled turbulently.
What a shit shot, Barnes thought while he pressed his right hand over the exit wound. Warm blood pooled into his fingers. Another bullet was buried and screaming against his right scapula and the last one must be lost somewhere in his left hamstring.
"Didn't think you're the only thing Zola preserved from World War II, did you?" said an approaching voice.
Ice dripped down Barnes's spine. He turned to face the voice.
"To think all that power came from a single fragment of a weapon that survived 1945. He didn't even need the whole Cube to generate all that power for decades."
"Rumlow," he said.
There may have been a mask and new armour, but Barnes would know the voice anywhere. It was often one of the first things he'd heard fresh out of cryo at the end of his tenure with HYDRA.
Rumlow held his hands out, palms forward. "What? No Field Commander? No 'sir'?"
Barnes shook his head. "I don't do that anymore."
"You know it's never been your choice to make."
Jaw clenched, Barnes stared into the depths of the eyes of the mask.
"Come on, Soldier. It's been long enough. Come home."
In a flash, Barnes drew out one of his knives and threw it as hard as he could toward Rumlow. He ran up after it, drawing a second blade as he went. Disable his gun first, Barnes had to remind his rushing mind. He slashed at any part of Rumlow he could, crowded him to keep the rifle out of it. The new armour was a bitch; the gloves had some ridiculous impact enhancers. Rumlow might as well have had two of the Winter Soldier's metal fists with the power to go with it. It fucking hurt to deflect the blows, but he'd lose too much ground dodging.
Rumlow threw a massive punch that Barnes absorbed with his left arm. The impact made his left ankle buckle again. A second punch from the other side stole a half-step of Barnes's offense. Strategic. Rumlow was moving on the offensive, but he left himself open in the transition. Barnes tossed his knife out of his left hand, grabbed Rumlow's gauntleted wrist of the hand that held his automatic rifle, and forced his arm up. Barnes's right hand caught the blade and he turned under Rumlow's raised arm, dragging the blade along his former commander's poorly defended armpit along the way.
Barnes slammed Rumlow's locked arm down over his knee right at the elbow. There was a crack of bones and metal bending in unnatural directions. Rumlow's automatic rifle clattered from his grip. Barnes scraped his boot along the ground and kicked the gun out of reach. At the same moment, a blade that had sprouted from Rumlow's good gauntlet slid between Barnes's ribs and up into his chest. It froze his breath inside him.
They locked eyes. Barnes didn't let go of Rumlow's broken arm just because of a single stab. Instead, he twisted the lower and upper arm in different directions. Rumlow began twisting his knife. He threw a knee into Barnes's face. Blood filled his mouth, and he spat it out at Rumlow's mask. They were both roaring into each other's faces. Rumlow knocked his head against Barnes's hard enough for stars to overlay his vision but not enough to make Barnes release his hold on the broken arm.
A feral part of Barnes honest to God wanted to rip Rumlow's arm clean off his body. He increased his grip with his left hand and twist—
The knife disappeared from inside Barnes's chest, and the reinforced fist exploded toward his throat. Barnes threw himself away, but it caught him high on his left chest. Crack. Part of his brain exploded with warnings, and the prosthesis felt noticeably heavier. His entire body sagged under a new, sudden weight on his left side.
A few steps separated them.
"Gonna be that way, is it?" Rumlow growled. The fingers on his broken side didn't want to curl. "Sp—"
Adrenaline flooded Barnes's body. A scream burst out of him, and he was attacking before he had any plan. It overwhelmed Rumlow. He stepped back with every punch Barnes threw. Each boot to Rumlow's chest fatigued the armour; Barnes could feel it compromising. His heart was desperate in his chest. Brain thought of nothing but flashing lights and klaxons. He launched blow after blow, completely free-flow. The human knuckles were split and bruised. They stamped his blood into every bit of Rumlow they could reach. Barnes controlled this fight and he was driving Rumlow deeper and deeper into the room.
Rumlow's boot scuffed and he staggered. Barnes took full advantage of it. Coiling back into his hips, he sprung forward to drive the prosthesis against Rumlow's helmet. The undamaged gauntlet deflected some of it, but he still staggered. Barnes threw another fist at the helmet. And another. Until the metal deformed and finally fell off when he kicked Rumlow's face.
It was satisfying to see the fear on his naked face.
Don't let up.
Drawing his last tactical knife from the right drop-leg holster, Barnes leapt to bury the blade into Rumlow's face. Both of the gauntlets came up and slowed the assault. Barnes let it. He wanted to see Rumlow's eyes as the knife was buried in his skull. He wanted Rumlow to know it was happening. The point of the blade was mere centimetres away from Rumlow's eye.
Snap.
Something in Barnes's human wrist gave away under Rumlow's defensive hold. His grip slackened on the handle of the knife. Rumlow regripped Barnes's broken wrist and shoved it up to expose his side. Rumlow's boot hooked around Barnes's knee. Three unblocked hits of the reinforced fist landed.
One – his ribs were probably matchsticks in his chest—
Two – hip wrenched from its socket, completely destabilizing him—
Three – impact on his thigh forced his hooked knee to collapse—
He would have gone to ground with it if Rumlow hadn't caught him around the throat with his good gauntlet. It lifted him up and up until the toes of his boots just barely scraped the concrete below. The pressure spiked and it held him there. Blackness closed in on him. Rumlow turned and slammed Barnes down to the ground. His skull made an echoing crack there. Brilliant crackles of light lit up his vision, pulsing on his head.
It felt so remarkably similar to that last fight on the helicarrier—…
Barnes's hand reached for a side arm, but his hand was crushed under the weight of Rumlow's boot. The bones ground together under his heel. Barnes spun from under him, landing on one knee while driving his other boot up into the crease of one of Rumlow's hips. The impact lit up like lightening inside Barnes; all the bones inside of him were misaligned for such a manoeuvre. Rumlow followed the momentum, turning in an about-face and driving his heel back into the side of Barnes's head.
It cleared all the thoughts from his head. The air was light in his chest now. Too much blood in here to breathe—…The ground was tilting up to meet him.
There was a hand on Barnes's shoulder, holding him up while the fist-mounted blade punched through his stomach. The prosthesis came up, grabbed the wrist holding his shoulder, twisted it one hundred and eighty degrees and then punched at Rumlow's with everything he had left. Barnes scrambled backwards at the opening, even though his legs didn't want to comply or bear his weight.
His left hand closed around the grip of his SIG Sauer.
"Spu—"
Bang.
Rumlow closed his mouth on the unsaid word. Smirked. "Missed. Lost your touch, Soldier, hav—"
Glass popped. Blue light and a rushing sound filled the chamber.
Spring 1944
There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except for a persistent, unending ringing in his ears. There was nothing else to feel or see or do. Bucky was aware of nothing except for the annoying goddamn ringing. He lived with it for a second or an eternity. It was the only thing that suggested that he had a body, was still alive.
Until, suddenly, there was a lot to feel and see. Weak beams of light flashed over his eyes. The shifting of heavy, hard, painful things all around him reminded him that he really did have a body and that it felt like it was most likely broken. It was being pinned down, and he couldn't move, God, he couldn't move-…!
A surge of pressure in his head forced a rough breath out of his throat. Bucky wasn't sure if he made a sound – couldn't hear it over that damned ringing in his ears – but he felt the vibrations of his throat. Felt the dry dust and the coughs that wracked his chest. The motion lit up dull pain through his immobile body, like a ringing bell.
He endured the shifting and tried unsuccessfully to stop coughing for…he didn't know how long. Just him and the ringing and the aches until those thin beams of light became wide beams of light and he had to clamp his eyes closed to stop himself from being blinded. The shifting disappeared from part of him, pressure finally relieved. Bucky felt hands on him. Pulling at his clothes and tapping at his face while still more things were being shifted.
Bucky tried to pull away from the touches, but most of his body was still stuck. There was cold air in his lungs – it felt so good – and he coughed some more. Frantic motions around him that he could just barely hear beneath the ringing. Something soft was held against the side of his head. Gentle tapping on his cheek now.
Bucky remembered how to open his eyes. They were immediately assaulted by the lights, but he strained to keep just one squinted open. He knew that he recognized a patch on the arm above him, but his brain wouldn't name it. Instead, it told him that it was friendly. Not HYDRA. Not Commandos either, but it was friendly. His heart slowed down some.
As his eyes adjusted to the beams of light, he saw more. There were three other people digging through rubble, trying to free him from the mess. Buried in the ruins of a bombed building. That tracked. That made sense. Bucky let his head fall back against something hard, panicked but also relieved. Faintly, he wondered how he was still alive.
The tapping was on his cheek again. Bucky looked into the face of the man for the first time. This person who wasn't a foe, but not really a friend either. The man said something that didn't overcome the ringing in his ears. Bucky squinted, trying to read his lips as the man repeated what he said. It was like talking to someone underwater.
Are you OK?
"Yeah," Bucky thought he said. Strange to talk without the auditory feedback. The vibration of his throat set him coughing again.
A new person held out a bandage to the man over Bucky. He nodded his thanks, threw away something red that Bucky just saw on the fringes of his vision, and pressed the bandage to the side of Bucky's head with gentle pressure. An overlay of stars sprinkled in his vision.
We're gonna get you up now, the man holding Bucky's head said. His words were muffled under the ringing.
Bucky hadn't even realized all the pressure was gone from around his body. He was freed. The second man from before came around to one side while the first one shifted onto the side where he was holding the bandage. The two of them helped Bucky sit up. His left hip immediately felt like the insides were being squeezed in a vice, bone attempting to wrench from its joint. Something would give any second. He squirmed in the two men's hold until he was leaning into one of them and his left hip was relatively straight.
Cold distantly registered in his consciousness.
The two men were speaking over his head; he felt the words and vibrations. The pulsing in his head made an even more annoying beat with the ringing. Bucky focused on breathing evenly as the two men lifted him from the rubble in the most awkward carry he'd ever experienced. He got a good view of the sky though. It was lightening. Dawn about to break any minute.
He was put down on a flat part of what must have been the road. The one man stayed close and was messing with the bandage on his head. It was a nice distraction until the other guy started manipulating his left leg. He bent Bucky's knee, braced himself on Bucky's stomach (why'd that hurt so much?), and just started wrenching at his hip.
A guttural scream burst out of him, shaking his throat into ribbons. Where the air came from, Bucky didn't know. He was flying back in time by five months. His body struggled against every touch out of pure instinct. A hand clasped down over his mouth. More hands sturdy on either side of his head. Even more hands holding down Bucky's arms.
The wrenching in his hip stopped for a second. The hand on Bucky's mouth was gone, but something soft was wedged between his teeth instead. The needle was next. It always came next. Fire in his blood for hours, for the rest of his life. Bones ground against each other again. He tried to bite down on the belt in his teeth, but he knew he was screaming. Knew it because he could finally hear something above the ringing in his ears.
Winter 2016
Rumlow was gone. The dynamo was perfectly intact, except for the busted tube in the middle. Gone.
The SIG Sauer fell out of Barnes's grip and clattered away. His hand dropped to the concrete ground. The air felt thick on his lungs, refusing to move. The last of the adrenaline burned off. Barnes's vision flickered, and his head swam. The air was wet with the scent of his own blood. It was saturating his clothes.
It all hurt. To breathe, to smell his blood, to keep his eyes open. His insides were loose, unmoored inside him. Too much blood outside of him.
This is finally it. But as soon as he finished the thought, he had another: I don't want to die. Not here.
He wouldn't mind being dead, but he didn't want his body here, in a place that was HYDRA's. His body another obsolete piece of hardware like the pumps and gearboxes above him.
Barnes wanted to be found.
Plucking up what was left of his will, Barnes pressed his shaking, broken hand to the wound in his lower chest. That first through-and-through from Rumlow. His fingers slid in the blood of the exit wound. Don't be the spleen, he pleaded. No chance of his legs supporting him. He didn't even try. Bracing as best he could, Barnes rolled from his back onto his knees and cybernetic hand. The broken ends of his ribs grated on each other. His right thigh and hip burned and threatened to buckle.
His stomach shoved up into his diaphragm, paralysing. Heave. A pool of bile and pink forced its way through his teeth. For a moment, his vision went black and his chest refused to open. Blood pooled in his right palm.
"'m not stayin' here," he cut through his swollen throat. Everything about breathing wasn't going to hold out. He straightened his right hip as much as he could and let it drag instead.
Cybernetic hand thrown forward. Knees scrabble after it. Force his splintered ribs, deflating lungs, and constricting windpipe to draw in air. Don't pass out. Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Until the stairs.
Barnes rested his forehead against the iron railing. The cold hardly registered. The damp did. Blood, sweat? Urine even? Vision dissolved into black dots, and he felt himself relax.
No.
His head was light and sharp. The centre of his vision came back into focus, but the edges were black and blurred. It was good enough. He reached out and gripped the railing with his left hand. Lean onto his useless right leg and make the left push him upward.
One step.
Then the next.
And the next.
Barnes didn't let himself rest at the landing where the stairs turned to circle back on themselves. Scrabbled across it and began pulling himself up with the same methodical rhythm.
Things went dark between steps. The air would go stagnant in his lungs, and he'd have to stop and force his chest to unlock.
He threw up when he finally made it to the sixth sub-floor landing.
Passed out halfway up the fifth-floor landing and slid down three precious, hard-earned steps before his cybernetic hand stopped the descent. It took a long time for his vision to come back after that. He had to put his head on the concrete step and rest for …
Cold. He could feel himself going cold. His right hand cramped, and that was the only reason he realized he hadn't been holding good pressure on his chest wound. He gripped his tactical vest as hard as his fingers allowed.
Vomit on the fifth sub-floor landing.
The longest rest period yet two steps from the fourth sub-floor where his chest locked after every forced breath.
A horrible moment six steps later where he tried to vomit again but his throat was too swollen to allow much to come out…
When he came to, the floor was shaking, rolling, pitching. The path to the third sub-floor landing felt one hundred stairs long. His left shoulder was feeling too heavy. The cybernetic fingers not closing around the railing evenly.
But he was almost there. He was almost out of HYDRA's shadow. God, don't let him die in here. If he could just get outside, he could bleed out in the snow, in the light. Thoughts of red hair tickling his chin, callused hands drawing the most delicate pencil lines, a blonde moustache and a bowler hat, lacey socks above saddle shoes…
Barnes couldn't have all those things back. He didn't want those things back, not in here. He saw them on the fringes of his dim vision, and they encouraged him to go one more step, one more turn. Ghosts cheering him toward heaven.
Over and over and over until he ascended another stair.
Second sub-floor.
His left leg abandoned him on the way up the next flight. All that was left was his left hand, the fist of HYDRA was all that could get him out now. Only a few joints responded when Barnes told the hand to grip the railing.
Pull.
He put himself down on his right forearm. No strength left to put pressure on his chest, so he didn't waste the effort to try. Didn't care about his vision being mostly black now, dim shifting shapes all he had to go by.
First sub-floor.
There it was. That was the door. The air had changed, chilled and free. It was so close. Eight steps away from the door, the cool air caressing his face, his muscles seized and wouldn't unlock. Small pants were all that made it through his throat, barely. Cybernetic side wouldn't respond, hand only curled on the railing because gravity hadn't shoved it off yet. Constant needles in his chest. His head dropped onto the nearest stair.
I'm never gonna get out of here.
He tipped his head up at the door. The sunlight sneaking through the crack at the bottom would have to be good enough. He stared and wished he had the spare liquids in his body to weep. That light faded slowly, at first. Then, all at once, it was gone.
Spring 1944
He opened his eyes because the improvised aid station was starting to shake in time with heavy footfalls. A new sound was rising over the diminishing tinnitus in his ears, too. Indistinct shouting. Running? Someone's hands were plucking glass and metal from his exposed back, and they stalled, too. He wasn't the only one who sense it. Bucky's heart started to race in his chest, making his entire body ache in time with it. He still felt on edge here in the aid station, even more so since he knew he wasn't in anything near good shape. Couldn't even defend himself against the stranger pulling debris from his flesh.
But no whine of aircraft engines (not that he'd be able to hear it over the ringing) were detected. The ground wasn't shaking like that. Not more bombs then.
Relief.
The ground was shaking like drumbeats picking up tempo. Then stress and pressure drilled nails into the inside of his skull.
Bang!
Bucky jolted from the sound. A ragged breath scraped through his teeth and down his throat. He coughed up sooty phlegm and squeezed his eyes closed.
"Oh, so you were trying to hide him!" a voice sounded clear as day over the ringing in Bucky's ears. It took a moment to place: Dugan. Bucky had to breathe with controlled breaths and blink the wetness from his eyes before he could confirm it really was the corporal.
Then all the rest: Morita, Monty, Frenchie, Gabe, and Steve. The CO. Woods? The CO's second-in-command. Two runners. All of them moving their mouths, words muted by tinnitus or each other. Their faces were easy enough to read: Pissed.
Dugan manhandled a man clearly marked as a medic away from Bucky. Anger on his face, confusion on the medic's.
"…—ou leave a goddamn Gerry alone with our overwatch after you tried to blow him up!"
The second-in-command, red in the face: "THEY SURRENDERED!"
Bucky heard that one loud and clear. His head pounded and he had to take a very long blink.
"This man is a medic and a prisoner of war, and we have put him to use treating our wounded! In case of you didn't know, we have taken immensely heavy casualties—!"
Gabe walked out of the middle of the shouting match and approached Bucky. He was slow and made sure to make eye contact. There was a questioning look on his face.
Bucky nodded once at him even though it made his vision swim.
Gabe patted Bucky's shoulder once and then took up cleaning the debris in his back without missing a beat. The touch made Bucky tense up. Gabe stopped what he was doing immediately.
"Sorry," Bucky mumbled. He forced his shoulders down.
Gentle hands plucked at the wounds again, touching skin as little as possible.
Trying to focus on what was being said over the ringing in Bucky's ears was taking a lot of concentration. The ringing died down as his head squeezed as if caught in a vice. He wanted to throw up.
"Try to relax, ace." Morita was in front of him with hands on either side of Bucky's head. It was sore on the one side. The eye contact did nothing to help at first. It took Bucky by surprise; he hadn't realized he'd closed his eyes or that anyone else had approached him. But a few breaths brought his heart rate back down.
He winced. "Kay."
Morita took his hands away from Bucky's head. He watched Morita notice the tacky blood on his fingers. They locked eyes, and Morita bobbed his head. Irritation was drawing on his face.
"—lutely no respect for order or chain of command!"
"Oh, that's rich coming from the brass asshole that did nothing to report clearly forged assignment papers!"
"Dugan!"
"I have written orders from Col—"
"I don't care if you have written orders from God himself!"
"DUGAN!"
"—have you all court martialled!"
"Can you all take this somewhere fucking else?" Morita shouted.
Steve bodily blocked Woods and all of his men in the doorway. Steve: the only thing between the Commandos and an Army major. Bucky could feel his quadriceps twitching and shaking. Instinct was telling him to get up and defend his team. Get between Steve and any threat. He ought to be right up there deflecting the heat away from…everyone. But his nerves were already a wreck, and his body was ready to quit. Head was that close to shutting off again.
Steve was herding them all out. His voice was ice as he said, "If you're going to court martial anyone, then do it. You can explain to them how you disobeyed your orders to hold off on the mission until radio contact with the SSR. You refused to do that and risked the lives one hundred men for a decoration. And you can explain to everyone how a sniper already on a special assignment ended up under your command, in a different branch of the military."
Steve disappeared into the hallway with the angry brass.
Dugan slammed the door in their wake. Bodily blocked the door.
The tinnitus rose in Bucky's head while the tension diffused in the room, like being sucked into a vacuum. Dugan resisted the urge to pace while Monty found a seat. Frenchie dug around in a pocket and approached Morita. Thread. For stitches.
"Christ, you look like shit." Dugan's sudden voice made Bucky jump. Hadn't realized his eyes had fallen closed again. "Do you need to be evacuated? I'm serious. For the first time in my life."
"Nah," he tried to say. Spat more black saliva beside his boots. Cleared his throat. A canteen suddenly offered. He drank. "Looks worse than it is."
Dugan was looking at him sceptically. "Yeah? Looks like a building fell on top of you."
Bucky cracked a smirk. "Guess it looks exactly like it is."
The room laughed incredulously.
"You good?"
Nodding hurt but Bucky did it anyway. "Couple good sleeps and I'll be right as rain. Honestly. I was on the top floor. Nothing crushed me really. I pretty much just…fell."
Morita patted his shoulder again. "What are we supposed to do with you?"
Gabe said, "Gonna be bad for a few moments. I gotta dig some glass out."
"Kay." Bucky sipped water in reply and let his head rest against the wall. Sitting up like this didn't feel great. Pressure on his hip, aches on his stomach. He really wanted to lie down and go to sleep. Something damp pressed against the side of his head and made him start. It was Morita with a damp bit of cloth – probably a shredded piece of parachute silk – trying to clean the dried blood and dust out from the gash hiding in his hair. The canteen was gone from his hand. Bucky hadn't realized he'd closed his eyes. Again.
"That's the last," said Gabe. "Gonna start stitching now, Sarge."
All Bucky could do was grunt.
Gabe spoke softly, "So what happened? We were ready to move on to our next assignment and couldn't find you. Dugan said you'd gone out to ask about the supply depot mission at HQ and then just never came back. PVT Lorraine said a runner had been sent to give you orders to do a patrol on the perimeter, but no one could find you. We were practically launching a SAR mission for you. It was pure luck that Jim was scanning on the radio and heard the distress calls from the Fourth Division about HYDRA bombing the place."
After another roll of tension, Bucky said, "Well, you know, I came here thinking it was our next assignment. Phillips has sent me ahead to set up encounters before—"
"Without telling any one of us?" Morita muttered. His fingers were gentle but sure as they angled Bucky's head this way and that and searched through his hair for the wound. The sting of cleaning made the inside of Bucky's head pulse.
"Carter and Phillips's signatures were on the orders," Bucky murmured. A wince forced its way out when Morita came just a little too close to the wound.
There was a deep furrow between Monty's brows. "What do you mean?"
"The kid they sent to come get me. Had orders. I looked at 'em. Both Carter and Phillips were on there. I thought…" he lost the thread of it and squeezed his eyes closed to find it. Gabe's stitching and Morita padding at his face was becoming too much touch at once.
"Both of them?" It was Steve. Close. When did he come back?
Bucky's eyes fluttered opened. Gabe wasn't at his back. Morita had peeled back to stand by Monty. There was only Steve. Just Steve sitting beside him with a new cloth, dabbing blood and grime out from his eyes. Bucky's breath didn't feel so high in chest anymore.
"Yeah. Smeared though. I thought it was because of the weather. Was raining."
Steve said something in a lower voice to someone else in the room. Bucky didn't even try to follow it. The ringing was still there in the background. The cloth touched the inner curl of Bucky's ear and he flinched away from it. But then one of Steve's hands settled on his shoulder, constant and steady pressure. The next time the cloth touched his ear, he didn't try pull away.
"Remember how you got here, Bucky?"
"Don't gotta handle me with kid gloves, Steve."
There was a smile in Steve's voice when he said, "Do you remember?"
"Hmm." Humming hurt and he cleared his throat. "Truck with Fourth Division replacements. Little guy that brought the orders came with."
"Do you remember who it was? Did you get a name?"
"French-sounding. Mouchard. He's dead." Bucky didn't react when he felt the cloth at his neck. Didn't react at all until he felt two fingertips settle too long on his jugular. "'m not dead."
A few different versions of muted laughter.
"I know, Buck. Can you look at me real quick?"
Damn eyes kept closing and not opening again. Bucky's neck reclaimed the weight of his head and he turned toward Steve. The fingers on the corners of his jaw guiding the turn were annoying, but it wasn't worth the effort to pull his jaw out of Steve's hands. His eyes followed Steve's gaze as he craned to look at Bucky's eyes from what seemed like five hundred different angles. Steve frowned.
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Just that your face is bruised like your nose was broken, but your nose itself doesn't look broken at all." Steve guided Bucky's head to his collarbone and started cleaning off the side of his head that had been leaning against the wall. Bucky let himself sag into Steve. This was wrong. Steve was supposed to be the one that needed tending to and patching up. Not him. No one did this to Bucky. The role reversal was making him feel even more unbalanced.
He thought he heard Dugan's voice somewhere close by and maybe someone else replying with humour in their voice. But the ringing drowned them out.
"Oh." Bucky watched dust and dirt from his hair infiltrate the fibres of Steve's uniform. Couldn't see anything else through the cradle of Steve's arms.
"Wanna tell me where you got the egg on the back of your head?"
The vibrations from the words might as well have been scrambling Bucky's brains. But he managed to say, "Stock end of an M1. Mouchard."
"The guy that brought you the orders?"
"Yeah."
"You get in a fight before they dropped a building on you?"
Bucky's voice failed him then. Too dry. He nodded instead. Realized his eyes were closed again when a canteen was pressed into his hands.
"Major Woods—" Bucky gestured toward the door and the CO they'd pushed out "—wanted to capture the German commander and the town. Made Mouchard my scout. Wanted me as overwatch for the ground team." Tinnitus rose and fell. Fingers were probing around on his scalp. "I said sure. Nothing we haven't done before. Said you'd be here by 0000 but didn't get any radio comms. Woods started the op without you guys. Saw the guy they wanted waving at me in the scope. Mouchard attacked. Kicked my own helmet at me. Stocked me with the M1. He slashed me leg" – fingers disappeared from his scalp immediately – "I shot him. Didn't hear the planes until the bombs were already falling."
"Azzano all over again," Gabe said.
Bucky nodded. HYDRA attacking Allies and Axis indiscriminately.
"There aren't any cuts like that on your leg, Buck," Steve said.
"Oh." Bucky blinked a few sluggish times. "He was HYDRA. Mouchard."
"Were there others?" someone else's urgent voice asked.
Bucky regretted shaking his head, but his throat was too dry to speak again. Water. Spit. "The kid—he was the only one — as far as I can tell."
Steve: "How'd you know?"
"Said it. Like they all do. Then the cyanide." Bucky's body decided to tell him then that someone was stitching his back again. His spine went stiff but Steve's hand held his head steady against his shoulder before he could pull away. It felt like weights were forcing his eyelids closed.
Shaking on his right shoulder and then Steve's voice, "Let's get you out of here."
He hardly realized his shirt and field jacket were on again. "Yeah," he said.
Hands gripped him under the armpits.
"Don't you dare," Bucky said to the blurry version of Steve in front of him. "I'm not being carried outta here by Captain America."
That was definitely Dugan laughing.
"OK. Whatever you say, Buck."
Hands braced on Gabe's forearms, Bucky stood and tested his hip. Stiff. Felt like trying to unbend an iron rod. It buckled a little but didn't fully collapse. Dugan was there in the bat of an eye, a crutch on his weak side.
Head rush.
"OK," he said heavily to his boots.
And so they moved out of the building, one of the last still standing in the city. No one else met them in the halls. At some point Gabe and Dugan went from human crutches to scooping arms under Bucky's knees and fully carrying him. He grunted in protest.
"Oh, hush," said Gabe.
"Just like leaving Krausberg, eh, Jimmy?"
Bucky swatted the bowler hat off Dugan's head. "Shut up."
Few sounds existed over the tinnitus now that Bucky was moving. Monty saying, "Did you see the captain's face?" And Dugan replying, "He's gonna have Woods's head on spike."
Mostly it was just a drumbeat inside his head and don't forget to breathe until Morita and Gabe were helping him into the back of a truck. Their packs made a suspiciously comfortable-looking pile on the floor. Bucky lay against it, head heavy. The bed vibrated beneath him; Dugan started the engine and eased them into gear. Forward motion.
Bucky watched Morita and Monty talking beside him and listened to the ringing in his ears. He could feel Steve's eyes watching him, searching for all vulnerabilities. A few different hands rested on him, holding him still when the truck hit bumps or had to drive over debris. For once, Bucky didn't mind. It actually felt like a relief. Even without his hearing fully intact, Bucky felt safer. So safe, in fact, that he closed his eyes on purpose.
?
A woman's voice, urgent: "…-am—Listen. Are you with Steve? Get him on the phone now. I don't care what you have to do, get to Upstate as fast as you can. Go to medical and start giving them as much blood as you can survive without—"
Spring 1944
The clear puttering of the engine told him that the ringing in his ears was gone, that he was awake. Bucky groggily blinked at the green canvas of the packs he was sleeping on. The truck bed beneath him vibrated. It lurched and banged. Aches and discomfort seeped into his awareness like a tide: surging in and then receding. When he shifted, lightning lit a path down his spine. A groan fell softly off his lips.
Fingertips put comforting pressure on his shoulder. Overhead: "Cap. He's up again."
Rustling fatigues.
Steve's voice, lower than usual: "I just thought: Did they give him anything?"
Bucky's eyelids felt heavy. He was slow and stupid. He felt like something vulnerable. Defenceless. But, despite that, not unsafe.
The fingertips searched the pockets of his field jacket and trousers. He recognized the way they moved as Morita; direct but with a gentleness he wished no one noticed.
"No syrette," Morita said.
"Anyone have one? Exhaustion's putting him down but pain's bringing him back up," Steve said.
"He's awake, right?" came Gabe's voice. "Ask him."
"Sarge," Morita said. "Helps us out, ace. You get any morphine back there?"
Mouth suddenly cotton-coated, Bucky said, "Nuh."
"You want it?"
Did he? Had Bucky been asked that same thing back in city? The medic was German; maybe he didn't know how to offer it in English.
"Buck." A steady, grounding grip on his shoulder.
He blinked Steve into focus.
"How bad's the pain?"
Bucky held Steve's gaze for as long as his eyelids would allow. Then he nodded once.
Morita's hands were back easing a canvas blanket off of Bucky (where did that come from?). The morphine syrette dangled between Morita's lips by the needle cover like a bizarre cigarette. Steve's hand was still gripping his shoulder. Morita pulled the syrette's cover off with his teeth and moved as swiftly as he could. Bucky's heart didn't even race when the needle broke the skin. He didn't see Zola's face branded into the backs of his eyelids, didn't feel fire burn up his veins like a spark on a fuse. Didn't start to sweat at the force of Steve's grip, a restraint. A thousand warning bells didn't start sounding in his head.
This, at least, HYDRA hadn't taken from him.
?
A man's voice: "Hey."
A woman's voice, quiet: "Hi."
Man: "What do they have him on?"
A pause.
Woman: "Not as much as you'd think."
Man: "Is he in pain?"
Woman: "Probably."
Man: "There's nothing they can give him?"
Woman: "Afraid it'll blow out one of his organs. Don't want anything that could even potentially slow down his healing factor right now."
A pause.
Woman: "Thanks for, you know. They must have replaced his entire blood volume twice before we landed."
Man, angry: "Don't thank me for that, Nat. Jesus."
Shifting. Moving. A long, long pause.
Man: "How…?"
Woman: "He has a pacemaker. Or something like it. HYDRA implanted it when they were grafting the arm on. They found other practical uses for it after the surgeries."
Another long pause
Man: "How long have you been in contact with him?"
Nothing.
Man: "We've been looking for him for almost three years, Nat."
Woman, angry: "You have been looking."
Pause.
Woman: "We've seen each other a few times. I tried to get him to stop, but it's his choice."
Quiet.
Man: "Sorry. It's just…seeing him like this is hard."
Woman: "Be glad you didn't find him."
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiing!
"Bucky, Bucky. Calm down. You're OK. You're fine."
-iiiiiiiiiiiiiinng!
"Stop. There. Good. Jesus, Buck, you always have to do everything full-bore, don't you?"
"Nope, sorry, man. You're not pulling out any tubes on my watch."
"Ssssh. That's better, milii moi."
He tried to breathe out a grunt, but his chest was forced to inhale instead. That only ever meant one thing. His hand wandered clumsily up toward his face and the plastic tube choking him, eyes opening up to nothing but watery splashes of colour.
Something warm intercepted his reach before he got a grip around the tube. "It's alright."
That warmth surrounded his entire hand, guided it back down. He didn't fight it.
Note:
How obvious was it that I favoured writing for one of the timelines more than the other?
Thanks for hanging around until the end. Cheers!