Gabe glanced up at the captain expectantly when he still hadn't said a word after two minutes. He was just staring at the rise and fall of Galtem Fahroni's chest. For his part, the Italian didn't look bothered that Rogers wasn't asking any questions yet. It was a miracle the guy was still alive. Gabe knew the guy wasn't anywhere near out of the woods, but he was stable for now. If they were going to get any information out of this guy, they had to do it now. Before he had a chance to succumb to his injuries.
"Cap?" Jim said. He was on the radio and sitting across from Gabe. "You ready?"
Rogers cleared his throat and nodded. He finally took his eyes off of Fahroni's breath. Gabe knew that Agent Carter was on the other end of the radio and had been coaching the captain through the debriefing process. None of them were supposed to do this kind of job. But now it was necessary that they did; the help Fahroni needed might not arrive in time.
"OK. Let's start." Rogers sat down beside Fahroni and said, "We're with the S.S.R. and we need to know what sort of work you were doing before you were captured."
Gabe translated the question for Fahroni. The inventor allegedly knew English, but Agent Carter said that his vocabulary was better in his mother tongue. Gabe's Italian wasn't great. Both of them spoke good French though. And with the state this guy was in, Gabe just wanted to make it as easy as possible for him to communicate. Fahroni gave a slow answer, punctuated by grimaces and hitched breaths.
Gabe translated: "He was working in a sanatorium at the foot of the mountains. His job was to do research on respiratory diseases, how to increase respiration. He was making some headway in restoring lung capacity to patients with tuberculosis."
Rogers was biting the inside of his cheek. "How long have you been studying this? Why didn't you ever get sick?"
The translated answer: "He's been studying in sanatoriums for three decades. He took precautions with the patients. He worked a lot with the bodies and not the living patients. In 1938, he got sick but was able to restore his lungs with a treatment he tested on himself."
A pause and then Fahroni went on in French, a weak, wry smile on his face. Gabe said, "He says he knows about Albert Schatz's antibiotic and insists that his treatment is better. Less side effects."
The captain's face might as well have been carved from stone, the deliberate lack of emotion. Gabe supposed he'd lost someone to TB. Hell, who hadn't?
"How were you captured?"
"He was in his lab. They raided and captured him. Took him from there to Milan and then to Novara, where he was interned."
"Nazis or HYDRA?"
"HYDRA."
"Did they take anything from the lab?"
"Yes. They took all his research, confiscated all the equipment and papers. They had him do some experiments in Novara. Threatened his life if he refused to comply."
Rogers nodded. It gave Gabe the chance to glace at Jim. His hand was jumping across a notebook on the table beside the radio, recording the conversation for the S.S.R.'s records. A sigh and then Rogers said, "What did they have him do?"
"He was working on an atomiser device. They wanted him to maintain a substance's potency after it had been reduced to a spray. Something like that. He says he didn't know exactly what they wanted it for. The project was broken up between him and few other researchers. They each only got the information that HYDRA decided they needed to complete their part, not the whole picture. It was definitely about making a substance airborne."
Gabe's stomach was eating itself, and Fahroni's eyes had gone glassy and sad. He looked straight into the captain's eyes. Rogers look horrified, too. There was no need to translate the repeated apologies Fahroni was uttering. Rogers nodded his head, put his hand over one of Fahroni's, and gave the man an understanding look. Gabe caught Jim's eye. The radioman looked less sympathetic than Rogers. There was no contempt in his eyes, but there was something unfriendly about the way Jim looked at Fahroni.
"Did you succeed?" Rogers asked. "Who assigned the project?"
Fahroni didn't need any translation to understand the question, nor did he need any help answering it. The shame on his face was answer enough. He never needed to meet the person who assigned the project. It was all controlled by one man.
Rogers looked skyward, brows pinched. Gabe wiped at his forehead and thought about how much he didn't want to face HYDRA and whatever they were trying to poison the air with. And there were still those modified energy weapons they'd found evidence of in Lamia, the ones that would injure instead of disappear. What was an atomised poison on top of that?
Bucky woke up without remembering when he'd fallen asleep or where he'd fallen asleep. Which wasn't uncommon anymore. But it still made him panic instinctually. There was a sound coming from somewhere, a lilting sort of noise. He turned toward it, ignoring how it felt like his body was filled with sludge. Lead blocks held him down. They wanted to hold him down right where he was.
What the hell had they done to him this time? His brain tried to urge him to check for track marks on his arms or incisions on his hollow belly, but there was no response from the rest of his body. Find the marks and try to calculate how much time he'd lost—why didn't he want to get up? A thought buzzed just beyond the reach of his mind; there was somewhere he needed to be.
The sound stopped then. Paused. Started up again. Singing. Someone was signing. He couldn't make out the words. Foreign. He didn't understand, he never understood why and what are you doing to me! He felt his heart trying to pound but his thickening blood didn't want to hurry.
HYDRA. They'd made his body heavy again, his mind slow and stupid. That—…that was German, wasn't it? That language he didn't understand? It had to be German. (It wasn't just the sludge clogging up his thoughts?)
Somehow his body found his arms and legs and convinced them to move. They did! All of him moved onto his side. At last! The stupid doctor hadn't given the order to tie him down! Or he'd miscalculated the dose, didn't give enough to knock Bucky out for long. Impossible. Incredible. This was his shot. He had to go now. The floor swayed as soon as he thought he was upright. His first footstep was unsteady. He thought he grunted. A few more steps, careful of the rocking of the ground. But he wasn't careful enough: His boot caught on something he hadn't seen on the ground.
That foreign voice again. It sounded different. It must have noticed that he'd gotten up. It was growing ever so slightly louder. Closer.
Then: "What the hell?"
Bucky's heart tried to pound again. He had to hurry. It was so dark and everything he saw was watery; he caromed into a wall when the room slid to the left.
"I got 'em."
That language he didn't understand was right behind him. But then it stopped. Bucky threw himself forward, away from the wall and into a different one. His hands scrambled on the next wall he collided with, searching for a handle, a door knob. That's it! He twisted with as much coordination that he could muster. A waft of cold air was his reward.
A hand closed on his shoulder at the same instant he finally tasted freedom. It pulled him back in a direction that hadn't existed until now. His boots tangled together and tripped him. Another arm caught him.
"Ssshh, Jimmy. It's just me. Where the hell d'you think you're goin'? It's the ass crack of dawn."
His body wouldn't listen when he told it to struggle. Maybe he knew that voice. It wasn't German, after all.
"Hey, hey. Look at me."
He saw nothing distinct even though he felt the hand on his jaw. A person-shaped something had him trapped. But it was speaking English. That was good. The others never spoke English to him. Never spoke to him at all really.
Except for the little one.
"Nope. Looks like you're still not home yet. C'mon, Sarge, back to bed. Get the rest of it outta your system."
Pressure was gone from his chest. One arm was pulled over the shoulder of the person-shaped something and it waited until his boots untangled. He took his own weight again and let himself to be led back the way he came.
But then it happened again: He woke up without knowing when or where he fell asleep. There were voices all around him, but his eyes didn't want to focus enough to show him who it was or how many there were. The familiar dread started spreading in his stomach, heart pounding through mud.
There was so much talking around him. Were they fighting? No, not fighting. An argument. Discussion. They were deciding something. They'd never disagreed with the doctor before. Did this mean…
He tried to pick up his head first. His neck strained, but then his head finally lifted. Something spiked behind his eyes. "Ow."
"Well, he's awake now. As good a time as any."
Someone was approaching, he could feel it. Something pinched at his hand and he knew what happened after they did that. His senses were flooded with white light and a single whining sound. When it faded, he thought he might have been moved. Rearranged? The panic intensified because of the lost seconds. Someone was in front of him speaking words he didn't understand in a low voice. They were bringing something in close to his face. Bucky threw a clumsy hand out in defence. (They hadn't tied his arms down again?) The hand retreated – no retaliatory blow – but then it was coming back all the same.
"The fuck away from me," he said, turning his face away from the hand and whatever it held. Because they'd done this before: He'd struggled and bit at them, but eventually someone held his jaw open and another forced things down his throat.
More words he didn't understand. Bucky really wished his vision would sharpen to something beyond drab-coloured blobs. They kept trying to force something at his mouth, but he fought it. Cursed them. Not again. He wasn't going to fall for this trick again. He'd lived this one too many times.
"Rather be dead," he cut out around attempts of the hand to reach his mouth or immobilise his head. "Rather be fucking dead than take anything from you fucking HYDRA scum!"
The blow finally came: A smack to the side of his head. There wasn't a lot of force behind it, but his head still throbbed sharply for a long time.
Bucky heard a lot of noise from somewhere close by. Boots, he thought, meant more people in the room. He knew what came next. The extra set of hands. He wouldn't be able to fight them off all at once. It meant the restraints and forcing his jaw open. His lungs suddenly couldn't keep up with the demand for breath.
"What's going on?"
He slapped at another attempt from the hand. Couldn't follow the words because he was too busy trying to see the hand and figure out what it was trying to force into him. The restraints came then. Steady pressure at the back of his neck and front of his chest. He strained against them, but they didn't give a single centimetre. These were no mere leather straps.
"No," he said before the pressure at his neck tightened. The hand came back at his face. His heart smacked against his sternum. Whatever warm and soggy thing they put in his mouth sat heavily on his tongue. He forced himself still until the force around his neck was gone. Then he jerked against the chest restraint and spat the thing out of his mouth as forcefully as he could.
Someone laughed.
"Can't say I didn't see that coming!"
The second thing was in his mouth so fast he didn't even have time to struggle against it. A hand closed over his mouth and nose. The panic surged, and there was nothing he could do. Completely and utterly useless against any of it.
"Stop. Stop! Look at him. Christ."
He had already swallowed it by the time the hand allowed him to breathe. The restraints were gone, so he fell away from them. Bucky slapped at a new hand that reached toward him. Told them his name, rank, and serial number until they went away.
Barnes coughed himself awake while Frenchie was singing "Frère Jacques."
"Hey now," Dugan said lightly, slapping him on the back. "That's not how we breathe."
Barnes twisted toward him with clear, albeit watering, eyes. Pupils the normal size again finally. He calmed down in a few seconds but not before the old Italian woman was alerted. She bustled in with the little girl hiding in her skirts. She sat in the chair that Rogers had practically put in Barnes's lap, and immediately took his left hand into hers. Dugan watched the sergeant fight the impulse to yank his hand away.
It was a lot to throw at him seconds after he woke up.
"Migliore," she said after she unwound the bandage.
Dugan watched in morbid fascination as she poked at the stitches and pinched them. She was looking for infection; Dugan recognised it from their horribly rushed first aid training. Thank God clear fluid tinged pink was the only thing that leaked out. Barnes pulled his hand away when his tolerance wore thin. He'd let it go on longer than Dugan had expected.
"Thanks," Barnes said.
Dugan watched him twitch his fingers and make a loose fist, testing the range of motion. It was a wonder there hadn't been nerve damage. Weren't there important tendons or something in the meat of a guy's palm? Dugan didn't know, but he'd take a win when he got one.
The woman nodded her head and turned to the girl. A few soft words had the little one skittering in the direction of the kitchen (a place Dugan had been quick to learn the location of).
"You good?" Dugan said.
Barnes frowned but didn't say no. Shrugged. "Thirsty."
The little girl came back with a tray. She paused and offered Dugan a cup of tea. He accepted it and winked at her. She was a nice kid. She did the same thing for Frenchie. He gave her a weird look which she giggled at. Must have been a European thing. Dugan sipped from the cup in the same way Frenchie did. Then the Frenchmen went on singing, this time they were songs Dugan couldn't name. He thought about bursting out in round of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," but he thought better of it. Frenchie had a good voice. Dugan's wasn't anything to sneeze at, but still. There was a time and place for his kind of song.
Dugan's attention flipped back to Barnes when he made a distressed sound. The old woman was digging through his hair trying to find where the skin had split. Dugan assumed she was going to do another little pinch test. Looked like it hurt, if the teacup shaking in Barnes's hand was anything to go by. The guy still looked a mess, all that blood down the side of his head that they hadn't had a chance to truly wash away, and the bruises on his neck. The rest of the guys had found time to scrub the worst of Novara off by now. Even with one arm still aching and sore, Dugan had had a chance to clean himself up.
Sarge had been useless for going on two days now. He'd woken up that first morning after they'd fled Novara and tried to make a break for it. Dugan had been able to catch him and put him back to bed before he took a header into anything hard and sharp. But they really should have just let him be later that evening. Their sweet old host had slapped him something good when he called her HYDRA scum.
The commotion had naturally drawn Rogers into it, which honestly just made the whole thing worse. Dugan wasn't the best of the team at first aid, but even he knew that Barnes wasn't in any major danger just because he hadn't eaten or drank anything for a day. Sure, he'd be hungry and thirsty and whatever when he came around. But they weren't risking life or death if they waited for him to come down off the injection before he ate something. One piece of milk-soaked bread wasn't worth the hysteria they'd caused. Wasn't worth the feeling they all got in their guts having to listen to Barnes's mutter his own name, rank, and serial for hours. Or having to see the look on the captain's face while it happened.
It looked safe to say that Barnes was completely sobered up now. Had the ol' washed up look to him; the thousand-mile stare was looking extra-long now. He apologised profusely to the Italian woman. She swatted at him and smiled like all battle-hardened women do. Dugan had seen his own mother with that steely look on her face more than once. He made sure to thank the woman when she checked his arm.
"Where's Steve?" Barnes asked once the old woman had left and it was just them, Frenchie, and Monty, who was sleeping like he was in a coffin.
"He's on the radio with Agent Carter, Jim, and Gabe. Their going over Fahroni's debrief."
The sergeant's brow creased and Dugan knew Barnes was trying to remember what had happened, how and when things had moved on without him.
Dugan put Sarge out of his misery by saying, "He caught a shot in the guts. It's not lookin' so good for him. They already interrogated him in case he doesn't live long enough for the brass at the S.S.R. to do it."
Barnes nodded his head. "I should have been there."
"How? Jimmy, you were drugged out of your mind." Again.
"Should have known they were there. Shouldn't have been stupid and let them get the jump on me. Should have fought harder."
"You're an idiot."
How did kids like this last so long out here? Stupid kid was feeling guilty and ashamed of something he had no control over. There was nothing to feel bad about — it's not like the drugs had overcome Barnes because he was weak or lacked will. Dugan got up and grabbed Barnes's Johnson out of the neat line of weapons Monty had arranged that first night. He tossed it into Barnes's lap and then took his seat again.
Without further prompt, Barnes began to strip the rifle and inspect all the components just like Dugan knew he would. Dugan and Frenchie split a deck of dirty playing cards and took turns tossing the cards towards Gabe's upturned helmet in the centre of the room. The only noises in the room were each of their breaths and cards banking off the helmet. They were bandaged and tired and hungry, but it was OK.
They were in the flattest stretch of land they could find given the circumstances. Not great visibility because of the flurry of snow coming down. The thickest clothes among them had been donated to Fahroni, to keep the dying man as protected from the elements as they could manage. He was lying on a door that had been taken from the Italian couple's home, currently carried by Dernier on the front end and Falsworth on the back.
Jones had the Browning set up a bit further back to cover them. Morita was a little nearer, about 90 degrees off from Jones's location. Bucky and Dugan were closest to the landing zone, lying prone and huddled together for warmth since Fahroni wore both their jackets. They'd be the first two to Howard Stark's extraction vehicle. They'd have the shortest run in the open, where they'd help turn the vehicle around and then provide covering fire for Dernier and Falsworth to bring Fahroni in.
Steve was crouched between Bucky's location and Morita's. He'd stay back on defence until the last man was boarded.
The location was pretty quiet. They hadn't been able to run an incredibly thorough survey of enemies in the area, but Peggy had assured Steve via radio that the area looked clean from the aerial reconnaissance S.S.R. had gathered. Steve really hoped that that was accurate. The last thing they needed was artillery that the seven of them had no hope of fending off.
The whine of aircraft engines started to build in Steve's ears. He looked toward the sound but didn't see much beyond the cloud cover. But the sound grew louder so that the others could hear it, too. Steve watched their heads scan overhead briefly. They'd never flown in one of Howard's personal vehicles. They were probably expecting something like the C-47 they'd dropped into Lamia in.
The reflective coating on the thing did work wonders when you were flying in near-whiteout conditions, Steve thought when the belly of the plane and the engines sunk below the clouds. It looked like the same model that had dropped him over Krausberg.
Bucky was the first of the others to see it. He jumped up and held his rifle horizontally overhead, the signal they'd agreed to use to guide Howard in. Dugan was on a knee next to him scanning their surroundings. Steve felt the tension drawing in his legs, preparing for whatever was going to happen here. Maybe just this short amount of time at war was already wearing on his nerves.
Howard's plane bounced down on the dead grass and patches of packed snow and rolled by Bucky and Dugan. They jogged after it as it slowed and guided it in a sharp 180-degree turn that it would not have been able to execute on its own so that it faced the way that it had come. Dugan pulled open the door just behind the wing. Seamlessly, Dernier and Falsworth were trucking forward with the door bearing Fahroni between them. They were in and clear right on time, the door abandoned in the gathering snow.
Then Morita was dashing to the plane. Then Jones. Steve stood to meet Jones halfway and literally cover his back. It was an easy jog into the plane. They took no fire the whole way. Even when Steve got through the door and sealed it closed behind him, not a single shot was used. The engine sound picked up and the ground moved beneath them.
The whole thing didn't last more than three minutes.
Fahroni was laid out across one row of seats. Jones and Dernier were crouched over him. The rest of Steve's men had seated themselves along the aisle opposite Fahroni. Steve put down his shield, relieved, and sank into the seat that sat with its back to the cockpit. He drank half his canteen just to do something with his hands, to hide the shaking from unused adrenaline. He kept his eyes from settling too long on any one of his men, not wanting to see them coming down off the same thing.
Jones approached him after a few minutes of no one moving and speaking in more than a murmur. "Captain."
"What's up?"
Jones shrugged back toward Fahroni. "He passed out. Nothing much is bringin' him around. Bandages are still clean. Dunno if something is bleeding inside though."
Steve nodded. "Just leave him for now. There's nothing we can do here anyway. He'll have to hold out until we get back to base."
Jones nodded. "Yes, sir." He turned to head back.
"Hey," Steve said. "Thanks, Gabe, for looking after him. And all the translating. I appreciate it."
There was a slight bow of Jones's head. "You're welcome, sir." And then he was shuffling through everyone's knees to get to an open seat.
Howard Stark leaned around the partition between the pilot's seat and the one Steve was occupying. "Got a word for ya, Cap."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"Agent Carter wanted me to tell you to keep a close eye on your team when we reach base."
Steve's brow creased. "That's all?"
Howard shrugged. "You know how women are. Seemed like she thought one of your chicks might wander off on its own and get snatched up by mean old Farmer Phillips. Who knows? That poor chick might get sent off to its own private little coop, never to be seen again."
"Thanks," Steve said flatly. "I got it."
When they finally landed at RAF Great Dunmow again, Steve leaned in toward Dugan under the pretense of helping him with their meager gear. Steve said lowly, "Phillips wants to investigate what happened to Bucky. Put him up somewhere where they can do God-knows-what to find out why HYDRA wants him back."
Dugan didn't look surprised at all but a furrow grew between his eyebrows. "They're gonna pull him from the squad?"
Steve shook his head. "Not if I have anything to say about it. While I hold off the brass, would you mind-?"
"We'll wear him like underpants, Cap. Don't worry about that." Dugan looked annoyed and shook his head. "On our goddamn base..."
"Thanks."
The workshop was a damn mess. Why couldn't Howard ever find anything in here? It was his mess; you'd think he'd be able to navigate his own messes. But, no. He flubbed around looking for files and references. The centrifuge was humming and buzzing like it was ready to teleport itself into another dimension. Where was Rogers's damn file? He needed something to compare to.
"You know, when they agreed that I'd be evaluated by a doctor, I didn't expect them to send me to you."
Howard whirled around and stared at Barnes. His sleeves were folded up to the elbow and he was picking at the spot where Rogers had allowed Phillips to draw a single sample of his blood.
Barnes continued, "I thought they were going to send me to a hospital or something."
That was the original plan, Howard thought but stopped himself from saying.
"That can be arranged," Howard said just to see the smirk slide off the sergeant's face. "And for the record, I do have a PhD. Which makes me a doctor. So you can shove that one where the sun don't shine, pal."
Barnes rolled his eyes, and Howard went back to searching through his files. He'd been sent to retrieve the Commandos from the field three days ago. The trip had taken a while, but he'd finally been able to touch down and fly the guys out of there. They were back at Great Dunmow now. Fahroni had made the flight and was still alive, but he hadn't regained consciousness since. Howard knew Agent Carter was supposed to be one of Fahroni's constant companions until the man succumbed; he might say something and they couldn't risk missing it.
All the Commandos had been sent to the aid station when they'd first touched down. After a round of penicillin, just to be safe, they were all fine, even Dugan and his ground beef arm. While that was happening, there was the showdown between Rogers and Phillips. Phillips took HYDRA's specific interest in Barnes very seriously and thought the S.S.R. ought to be figuring out what was so damn interesting about him. From what Peggy had told Howard, S.S.R. already had a bed indefinitely available for Barnes. Rogers took that as the S.S.R. threatening to continue the human experimentation on Barnes that HYDRA had started. (As if Rogers himself weren't a result of human experimentation.)
Howard wished that he had been there to see that first confrontation. He was surprised there hadn't been any court marshalling yet. So far, it looked like Rogers was winning. Probably throwing around the word torture so plainly and frequently was helping him out. Phillips seemed to have backed off on tossing Barnes into a hospital and dissecting him alive. Now they were fighting about whether he should be allowed back in the field or confined to base.
In the meantime, they sent Barnes to Howard for blood testing to find out what he'd been injected with at Novara. S.S.R. privates were outside the door "for Barnes's protection." God knows why they chose Howard for this; he was a mechanical engineer, not that kind of doctor, despite what he'd just told Barnes. Howard suspected Rogers had something to do with him being chosen as Barnes's babysitter. During the extraction, Howard noticed how the captain kept one eye on Barnes the whole time. Maybe Rogers meant it as an honour for Howard to guard his best pal? Maybe it was a good thing. Barnes insisted he was fine to everyone, but, when asked, Rogers admitted to noticing evidence of headaches and reduced coordination.
All the other Commandos played dumb and reported nothing, bless them.
Headaches were probably nothing to worry about — a lingering symptom of the bump on Barnes's head that would, in all likelihood, resolve on its own. All the same, he'd been injected with something and it was important that the S.S.R. find out what it was. Zola had sent men all the way out to Italy for this guy. Howard agreed that it was important to know why, not that he was going to say that to Rogers. The syrette that Jones collected had been turned over to Howard and his team for testing; some of the fluid remained in the tube. They'd been trying to figure out what the hell it was ever since they touched down outside London.
"Have you felt like that before? Anything they gave you in the past have the same effects?" Howard asked.
"I don't know."
Howard sighed for dramatic effect. "Do better than that."
"It's hard to remember."
Pausing in his whirlwind around the lab, Howard looked at Barnes with an arched brow.
Barnes tried again. "I felt a lot of things before. I can't really say whether I experienced that exact feeling. After the injections there was usually…something else. He wasn't exactly testing things one at a time, you know."
He should have been. What kind of scientist conducts a test with that many uncontrolled variables? Idiot.
"It lasted a long time," Howard pointed out. You'd think a guy would remember if he tripped for two whole days before. "I never met someone who was feeling the effects of a syrette-sized dose of anything for two days. It lasts six hours, tops."
Barnes frowned. "What do you mean by that?"
"If you'd been given that drug before, I would think the effects wouldn't last as long. Tolerance and all that."
"Maybe it was a more concentrated dose than I had before. A bigger dose."
Howard inclined his head. "Fair point. But still not an answer. If it was more concentrated, you're lucky it wasn't a fatal overdose, pal."
It was a matter of waiting. Howard went back to collecting his things and tinkering at his bench. It worked.
Barnes: "I don't think I'd ever been given that drug before."
Instead of asking "how do you know", Howard just sat and waited for Barnes to supply the answer himself.
"It didn't cause any . . . I felt fine. Just confused when I woke up. At Krausberg . . . that wasn't how things went at...there."
The centrifuge dinged cheerfully and stopped humming. Howard nearly skipped over and pulled the tubes out and looked at the separated substances. He compared it to notes and images in the Project: Rebirth file.
"What's the word?" Barnes said. Howard ignored the note of apprehension in his voice — for the sake of Barnes's dignity. "Was it poison or what?"
"You seem to be fine to me," he said mostly just to make noise. "I think we can go ahead and agree that there was, at the very least, a strong sedative in there."
"Wow. You must be a genius or somethin'."
Howard could get used to this kid if he didn't get smart every five minutes. (Hello, pot? It's the kettle.) He turned his torso toward Barnes and said, "But there's definitely something in your blood. Look." He held up one of the tubes even though he knew Barnes didn't know what it meant. "It was a big dose, right? We should test your kidneys. Maybe your liver, too. See if it left any scars behind."
Impressive: Barnes's face didn't flinch at all. "I'm fine though."
"Not according to this. Something's fishy with you, Sergeant."
"No one made a fuss after I got back from Krausberg, and you guys did all the same tests then. You did more then."
That was true. But Howard hadn't had anything to do with the testing of Barnes back then. If the guy had dirty blood, Howard wouldn't be surprised if the docs in London had overlooked it and cleared him. They were too busy trying and failing to reverse-engineer Erskine's serum with Rogers's blood. There was no time for Barnes's. No one had time to deny a guy who insisted he was fine and who Captain America wanted in the field. If the captain wanted him, he could have him.
Howard knew these military types. They all looked the other way, said they were just doing their jobs; pleaded ignorance. Funny how people would rather be seen as incompetent than liars. Call him crazy, but Howard would rather be called a liar. Maybe he was just proud though.
What a world they lived in.
"Different time, my friend. HYDRA wants you bad, and we'd like to know why. They went through a lot of trouble just to poke you. The least we can do is find out what they poked you with."
Barnes made a face that Howard had long since stopped trying to decipher. He had a hard time connecting people's faces to their reactions sometimes. Who had the time? Who cared?
So they spent all day in Howard's workshop. And the next day. And the one after that. They spent Barnes's fuckin' birthday in the workshop (really annoying: the rest of the Howlers snuck in with him and kept touching everything). Never mind that the day had been really productive, since Howard abandoned all pretense of investigating Barnes's blood and instead they all went over improvements for the gear. You know, the stuff Howard actually wanted to be working on.
But then the S.S.R. came down hard on him for not making any progress. Phillips was just mad that Rogers still wasn't backing down. Howard thought it was a bad precedent to set with Rogers; don't let him know that he can flip the bird to the military hierarchy and get away with it.
So on it went: Howard and Barnes spent the Ides of March in the workshop. Howard was becoming downright sick of his own laboratory. There were so many things he could be working on that were more interesting than Barnes's blood and that stupid syrette. But Phillips wanted him working on Barnes, and Howard was the type to fulfill his contractual obligations to the military. And he had signed a contract with an unfortunately open clause saying that he would obey whatever unit's commander to which he was assigned.
(Never mind the bit about taking Peggy and Rogers out to Krausberg. It wasn't like Phillips had said he couldn't fly them out there.)
Howard made a complaint to Phillips a day later anyway.
Howard was coming to dread the hour Barnes rolled in after his morning PT. Honestly, why did the guy even have to be here? It's not like he knew how to use the equipment, not like he needed to be present while they sat and waited for reactions to occur. He wasn't helping at all. Howard's mood wasn't improved when all of the tests kept coming back inconclusive. There was definitely signs of something being off in his blood, but there was no test that Howard knew or could create that would tell him how Barnes's blood was different. His results were always just the slightest bit outside of normal for every test Howard could think to run.
And without being allow to draw more samples to see if the first one was somehow contaminated, Howard signed the papers as inconclusive and passed the syrette and Barnes's blood off to the next guy to confirm Howard's findings (or lack thereof).
Just right now all the others were talking about the biological weapon they were sure Fahroni had been coerced into making for HYDRA. Why couldn't Howard be in on that? Surely he was the one who could make the most sense of the schematics. He was the one who had the best chance at recreating the invention. Besides, it was pretty obvious (to Howard) that the aerosol weapon and the funky stuff in Barnes's blood were coming from the same source.
Phillips just shouted him down and told him to keep working on the drug and the blood until he got something besides 'inconclusive.'
"You'll be happy to know," Howard said at the end of the week, "that your kidneys are performing as expected."
"And my liver?"
"As good as can be expected."
"Cheers," Barnes said with a laugh, raising his canteen. From across the shop, Howard could smell the alcohol. He raised his own glass of amber liquid.
They both returned to their individual thoughts. Howard let the centrifuge spin so that he could use the time to work on one of his own projects: the upgraded range for the two-way radios. An hour passed and, out of frustration, Howard said aloud, "How do I make the antenna stronger with only a nominal size increase?"
"Hmm," Barnes said. He was cleaning the sniper rifle. Howard pretended not to notice, pretended not to be relieved that someone was taking care of a product of his design.
About twenty minutes passed with the two of them tinkering in silence, only the whirring of the centrifuge to be heard. Howard was still stuck on the radio when Barnes said, "You ever get that flying car to work?"
Howard's head jumped up. "What?"
"That flying car. At the Expo or whatever. Your flying car from the future. I was there." Barnes smirked. "It broke."
"Yeah, well, I haven't had a lot of time to work on it," Howard said defensively. "I've been a bit busy, what with this silly war and making Rogers huge."
"Thanks for that, by the way." And there wasn't an ounce of sincerity in that voice. Sheesh, it was all venom.
"Wasn't my idea, pal," Howard said. "He volunteered."
Barnes clenched his jaw and stared at the Johnson. He wiped the lens of the scope with a cloth. "Who's going around offering that sort of thing anyway? Testing that sort of shit on people is . . . unethical."
Howard might have agreed with that. "But I don't think it matters when a person agrees to it. Informed consent and all that. He knew the risks."
"A person who agrees to be a science experiment should be the only type of person considered unfit to give consent."
"Rogers wasn't the only guy we could find who wanted to be an experiment, you know."
Barnes looked up and stared at Howard. Howard got literal, actual chills. Guy was cold as ice.
"No, but he was the only one you actually did anything to." They stared at each other until Barnes went back to cleaning his scope. "I guess I should be grateful that he didn't end up a bust, like your flying car did."
"There's nothing wrong that with design! You wait, when this war is done, I'll give you a flying fucking car. No more than three years after the war ends, I'll give you a working model, free of charge. All you gotta do is shut up about the Expo."
Jesus, this guy was so smug. Somebody ought to trip him in front of a bunch of pretty dames.
"That a real deal?"
"You bet it's real, pal." To prove it, Howard hopped up and stuck his hand out in front of Barnes's face.
"A flying car three years after the war ends?"
"Yes. As long as you shut up about it exploding."
"Deal. Just because there aren't any witnesses here doesn't mean this isn't official." The sergeant shook Howard's hand.
Howard rolled his eyes and retook his seat at a workbench. "I can call my notary if you're that worried about it."
"No, it's fine. I'll come see you myself if the deal goes unfulfilled."
An hour later, as Howard was finishing up testing on one of the handheld radios, Barnes said, "What if you could wrap the antenna around the housing of the radio?"
Howard almost missed Barnes's company when word came down that the sergeant no longer had to report to the workshop for testing. Apparently, Rogers, with an assist from Falsworth, had thrown an epic fit that got Barnes back to doing all training and field exercises with the rest of the squad. Phillips had backed down from tossing Barnes in an institution. Now he was going to lose the fight to pull Barnes from the field.
Howard suspected Peggy had something to do with the success of the men's tantrum. The S.S.R.'s sights were set on a HYDRA base set deep inland and well within German-held lands, and they were going to need a lot of help, probably from the locals and, worst-case scenario, the Soviets. Well-fortified base and gathering intel on the suspected biological agent. Yeah, OK. That was important. The study of Barnes's blood wasn't going anywhere. They'd passed everything along to the specialists. Howard was free to return to his other projects.
Sometimes he'd turn the centrifuge on just to listen to it spin.
"They're not still serious about pulling you, are they, Sarge?" Jim asked.
All five of them looked toward Barnes. Shit if he didn't look like he'd been dropped into an ambush.
"Don't know," he said. "I'm not staying behind, that's for damn sure. They approved my transfer after everything in Krausberg. I don't see how anything has changed since then."
Jim knew that wasn't true, but he voiced his agreement with the others. The S.S.R. had agreed to put Barnes on their commando unit. They'd trained him without giving a second thought to what might have gone on in that lab. Yeah, it was different now that they knew HYDRA and Zola wanted him back for something. One school of thought said that it was stupid to send Barnes out into the field. That would basically be like sending HYDRA a gift basket. All they'd have to do is come outside and pick it up.
The other school of thought — the right school of thought – stated that there was no way in goddamn hell HYDRA was going to breathe the same air as Barnes as long as the rest of them were around. Right this minute, Cap was arguing that very point. The brass wanted to pull Barnes from the unit, replace him with some guy none of them had heard of (that none of them trusted). Phillips went on and on saying that it would only be a temporary suspension, but Cap was having none of it. They all knew that even though the brass had agreed to not using Barnes as a pin cushion, if they left him behind on just one mission, there was no guarantee the brass wouldn't go back on their word as soon as the rest of them were looking the other way.
The fight had been waging for as long as they'd been sending Barnes to waste his time in Stark's lab.
Jim knew — as did everyone within a five-mile radius of RAF Great Dunmow — that Cap had flat out refused to go on any more missions if Sergeant Barnes wasn't on the team. Naturally, the rest of them had made formal statements to the colonel expressing the same sentiment. It was all of them or none of them. Let them be court-martialled; they didn't care one iota. Hell, even Agent Carter had expressed her support of keeping Barnes with the team. She very bluntly pointed out the motivations of Cap's first mission to Krausberg and asked Phillips if, after that, he really expected Cap to let HYDRA get their hands on Barnes again — and even if they managed to do that, did the colonel expect HYDRA to be able to keep Barnes for long? They'd have to kill Cap first (and Jim and Dum Dum and Monty and Frenchie and Gabe).
And if that ever happened, Jim thought, they'd be fucked anyway.
She may have also gone on for a bit about how they could use Barnes as bait to lure HYDRA into vulnerable situations. But after seeing the look on Cap's face, no one talked about that idea anymore.
"There's no way," Gabe said. There was a sizeable pile of peanut shells in front of him; someone had sent Captain America a care package full of food, which the rest of them had, naturally, stolen. Jim could handle the slight envy he felt every time he saw the sack of letters waiting for Captain America to read as long as he could take some of the stuff those kids and gals sent. In one box they found a set of brass knuckles. The guys had a good laugh about it, and Dum Dum ended up being the one that got to keep 'em (won after a first-to-500 game of Rummy).
"Yeah," Dum Dum agreed. "They're not gonna do anything now that the captain's refusing to do anything. They don't even have a good reason to keep you here, Sarge."
Monty said, "So they want you back. Haven't we known this since the day we left that factory? Not a damn thing's changed."
Jim knew that everyone was just trying to reassure themselves. All of them were sure Barnes would be back with them by the end of the day, but it brought them some measure of calm to be saying these things out loud together.
"Right," Barnes said and drank from his canteen. He had a pile of peanut shells before him, too.
Jim watched the sergeant rub at the cut on this throat. The thing had bled a lot in the belfry, Jim remembered. But it hardly looked like more than scratch after the old woman had cleaned it up back in Italy. By now it was nothing more than a pink line you only saw when the light was just right. And his hand! That thing had looked ready to fall off back in Italy. It was possible that Jim wasn't remembering correctly and that the thing simply looked worse than it was. Maybe all the blood made the cut look like it had just about hit the bones of Barnes's hand. Only eleven days later and the thing was almost gone. They'd filled Sarge and Dum Dum with penicillin when they got back to base, and hardly any time passed before they were pulling out Barnes's stitches. Dum Dum's had taken a lot longer to be removed. Sometimes Barnes would clench and stretch his hand, staring at it suspiciously. It retained full range of motion, and Barnes hadn't said anything about nerve damage or loss of dexterity.
Frenchie cut a deck of cards and wordlessly started dealing them out to each of the men. Jim accepted the stack accumulating in front of him. They played Rummy and Machiavelli, the latter which they'd learned first in Sicily and then again from the old couple outside Novara. It went on for a few hours; Monty kept score and they tossed peanuts and M&M's among themselves. The game was coming down to a dead heat between Gabe and Dum Dum, the rest of them just playing for fun or ganging up on one of the leaders to bring him down. Their alliance was paid for in snacks.
Cap finally turned up, throwing open the door to Barracks 14 with an air that could be interpreted as either triumph or rage. They all went still and stared at him, grins inching off of their faces like syrup sliding down a wall.
The captain smiled and they all released a breath.
"I'm good to go?" Barnes said.
"Yeah, Buck, you're good," said Cap.
"I knew it," Dum Dum said. Jim watched Gabe peek at Dum Dum's cards while the other was distracted. Never let it be said that Gabe Jones didn't play dirty.
Barnes sat back and shook a handful of M&M's like they were dice. "Well, shit, come grab a seat, Steve. Play for me." He thrust his hand of cards at Cap and scooted over to make room.
The captain obliged but said, "They're still making up their minds about what's going to be different."
"What do you mean?" Frenchie said. He was frowning at his cards but otherwise listening.
"They don't just want to toss us back in the field like nothing happened. Stark's confident that the atomizer and human experimentation are connected." Cap frowned at Barnes's cards and said, "No wonder you're in last place. Are you losing on purpose?"
Barnes hummed and closed his eyes. "Now you're here, so get me some points."
"What sort of things do you think they're going to change?" That was Dum Dum.
"Not sure," said Cap. "But something is going to be done. I think they just want to feel like they didn't get anything out of our negotiations. They want to know more about the weapon. Get a sample of whatever HYRDA's trying to make airborne."
"That's what the next mission is for, isn't it?" said Jim.
Cap nodded and moved some cards around. "Yeah. It's the one in Prague. We're a little bit stuck on those two near the Baltic, seeing how they're both in Germany. And the one near the Maginot Line — they say we might get to that one in June."
"Well, it's not like you had any trouble just walking into Austria," Dum Dum said.
"I didn't have you guys slowing me down."
"Say that again and see how clumsy we get in the field," Jim said. He tossed the four of spades down on the pile. Cap picked up the entire discard pile and got busy.
The night wore on and the mood in the barracks was much lighter than it had been before. Barnes made a remarkable comeback on the scorecard thanks to Cap taking over for him. They should have known better — a guy who grew up sick and bedridden could wipe the floor with them in any non-physical game. Didn't take long for Monty to get crabby and insist that Barnes and Cap couldn't play on a team anymore. The two of them had almost all of the M&M's and peanuts; it wasn't fair. Was weird how Barnes broke up the M&M's by colour before handing them off to Cap, keeping the peanuts for himself.
It struck Jim how much the two of them reminded him of himself and his brother when they were kids. Will had been a pistol, always causing trouble. More than once Jim had to go to the local police and talk his brother out of punishment. This wasn't always easy to do. Will was the youngest of them around; he was everyone's little brother, an irritation they dealt with because he was theirs.
Will used to steal fruit from the neighbour's trees, vandalise bikes from the assholes in town. He'd never keep the bikes, just ruin the spokes or manipulate the chain so that it would fall off when the next kid tried to ride it. Jim never told his brother to stop being a hooligan — God knew that some of those people deserved to have the mickey taken out of 'em. Maybe Jim just liked feeling like he had a job to do and was worth something to someone. He was his brother's keeper. Will needed Jim to watch his back and pull him out of tight corners. Jim was glad to do it. And maybe a few times Jim had been the instigator of these pranks that left the two of them running for their lives, shit-eating grins spread all the way across their cheeks.
He remembered when he introduced Will to Chiyo, and the two of them had hit it off right away. When their parents were at the hatchery working sixteen-hour days, Jim had Chiyo over for dinner with Will. They'd ended up with rice all over the kitchen; an actual food fight had broken out, albeit a mild one. Jim's parents had shouted at him about being wasteful and ungrateful. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still hear Will laughing and his parents pausing in their lecture to crack up, too.
When was the last time he saw his parents? Will and Chiyo? Jim had enlisted with the Rangers before Pearl Harbour and had been away at training when the attack broke the airwaves. Both his parents and his brother had been sexing chicks at the hatchery, last Jim had heard. And now? They were probably in a camp somewhere. No one ever wrote, and if they did, they didn't tell the truth.
Looking at Barnes and Cap sitting shoulder to shoulder, laughing into each other's ears and sharing candy, Jim couldn't help but think about those he had left behind and what he had left them to. He could feel how much he missed his brother like there was an actual hole in his chest. When he thought about what it would have been like to have Will here with him, Jim floundered. Would he want his brother here in this kind of constant danger? It would bring Jim immeasurable joy to be able to see his brother constantly, to not feel so alone and alienated among so many strangers. It would do wonders to help him not feel like an other.
But a different part of him thought that it probably wouldn't be like that. Every time he looked at his brother before a mission, Jim would be thinking, this could be the last time.
Jim couldn't live with that kind of suspense, the constant threat of losing something that important to him — to lose it and watch it happen right before his eyes. How did Cap and Barnes stand it?
Jim wanted so badly to see his parents' faces, touch their hands and their wrinkling cheeks. He didn't want them behind a fence — he wanted them inside Jim's own house. He wanted to take care of them the way they always took care of him. He wanted to marry Chiyo and give his parents grandchildren. Jim wanted so badly to be someone his parents and his brother and his girl could be proud of.
Was there pride to be had for abandoning your family to imprisonment? Was it not the deepest form of dishonour to fight for the liberties of a country which stripped his family of their freedom?
Better not to think about those kinds of things. Better to stay sane in case he survived this war.
Jim could tell himself that he'd never believed they were going to pull Barnes from the team until he was blue in the face; he still felt a sense of relief that they now had confirmation of it. His new team would not be split apart.
A new round of Rummy was being dealt — both Cap and Barnes playing for themselves instead of sharing — when there was a knock at the door, and Agent Carter entered.
"Hello, boys," she said while shucking off her coat.
Since Frenchie and Monty's birthday party, none of them felt quite like they were talking to a superior officer when Carter turned up. Make no mistake, they still acted with the proper respect befitting an agent of her rank. But things were different. Agent Carter was on their side in a way no member of the brass had ever been before.
"How're you, Agent?" Gabe said.
"Want in?" Frenchie asked. The deck snick-ed between his hands as he shuffled. Show-off.
"That's quite alright," she said.
Frenchie dealt the first hand of their new round, and Carter sat on one of the bunks so she could get a good view.
"What'd the colonel say?" Cap said. "You guys get something figured out?"
"As a matter of fact, we have. I'm not sure you're going to like it."
Jim didn't like the hesitance in her voice. That sort of thing had no business being in the voice of someone like Peggy Carter, resident badass.
"Let's hear it." Dum Dum seemed excited about the prospect of something that the captain wouldn't like. Hell, so was Jim. Barnes just looked tired; he was making the same face he'd made when Jim had given him a bottle of aspirin for his birthday.
"The next mission is still going to be in Prague."
"That's far inland," Barnes said.
"Yes."
Jim looked from Barnes to Carter. "So how're we going to get there?" Because all of the bases were pretty deep into German-occupied territory and they'd never survive without support.
"You're going to go down through Poland, actually."
"Jesus," Dum Dum muttered. "We gonna survive walking through Poland?"
Carter said, "We have reason to believe that there has been some testing of strange weapons on the citizens of Bydgoszcz — Bromberg to the Germans. A few of our Scandinavian agents have been able to pass us some information. None of it sounds good."
"Why mention it," said Frenchie, "if our goal is Prague?"
"The city will be on your way. And we have some agents in the occupying German forces there that will help you acquire transportation into Czechoslovakia."
"Poland, here we come," said Monty. "Is this purely an intelligence-gathering mission?"
"Mostly," said Carter, nodding her head.
Jim hummed and looked down at the hand he'd been dealt.
"They'll go over all this in a briefing tomorrow?" Dum Dum asked. When Carter nodded, he said, "Then we'll worry about it later. All I gotta know is that I'll be in Poland causing hell soon."
"There's one more thing, actually."
They looked back to her, pausing in their motions to get the game of cards going again.
"What's that?" said Frenchie.
"You've got a time limit on the mission. They need you back by early May. Colonel Phillips will be contacting you every night during the mission to give you direction so that you stay on schedule. There's an important mission that the Allies are coordinating. General Eisenhower would like you back in time to offer some input, Captain Rogers."
"Eh?" the captain said loudly. He turned a lovely shade of pink.
"The Allied commanders want your opinion on an operation they're planning. You must return from your mission by May. I believe they were hoping your team would be able help. So you must finish up in Prague within April so that we can provide extraction in time for this next mission." Carter looked around at all of them. "Please be quick about it. You all are going to need a little while to recover from the mission before we have to send you out again."
She didn't hang around for much longer after that. She asked Jim to walk her back to her quarters, a request which Jim obliged. The guys held back making any comments to Cap about it but only for Carter's sake.
Outside, Carter said, "I was able to get some information about your family, Private."
Jim's feet wanted to freeze, but he made himself keep taking measured steps forward. "Yeah?"
"Yes."
So it wasn't good news.
"They've been interned at a camp called Manzanar."
Jim clenched his jaw. "How long?"
"Since the summer of 1942."
They walked on in silence. The inside of Jim's head was red-hot. At the door to Carter's quarters, they stopped.
She said, "I'm sorry this has happened, Priv—Jim. I wish I could have given you better news."
"Nah, not your fault, Carter. It's nice to know the truth. Thanks for going through all that trouble for me."
She shook her head and looked at Jim with sad eyes. He wished he knew the reason behind it.
"It wasn't trouble at all."
They heard the story of Bloody Sunday (all of the conflicting stories from all sides) and they were told about the Valley of Death. Colonel Phillips heaped upon Steve and his men all the reports they could get their hands on about the city of Bydgoszcz. They were to expect a city full of death and dying people. Be prepared for bodies in the streets, starved faces peeking at them from the windows.
Steve wasn't looking forward to going to this city. It sounded too much like Novara, except worse. And look what had happened there. At least his team was still together. A part of Steve was already concocting plans to simply go around the city and head straight for Prague. It was stupid, and Steve would never duck a fight that needed to be fought, but it made him feel good just to entertain the idea. If there was evidence of more people being experimented on in that city, they had to go there. Never mind that Peggy had told them that their transportation ticket would be in the city. He wondered what it could be: jeep, train, another tank? A plane? The S.S.R. was constantly surprising him with technology he hadn't even known existed.
Steve looked down at his map and traced the long line from Danzig to Bydgoszcz to Prague. They had to cover that ground in a month. Geez, he should get on his knees and start praying now.
"The distance isn't going to get any shorter if you keep staring at that map," Bucky said.
Steve looked away from the table and over to where his friend had stretched out across Steve's bunk.
He said, "Yeah, well."
"Quit thinking about it. We'll be fine."
"We only have a month to do two missions."
"What did we just do in Italy?"
"That took more than a month."
"Then it's a good thing we're not going all the way up the boot of Italy this time."
Bucky had an arm thrown over his eyes so that Steve got a good view of his scarred palm. It had healed cleaner than they'd expected. There was only a light bit of fabric tied around the wound now; Bucky said the scar felt weird when stuff touched it. Steve didn't say anything, but he thought that the wound probably still hurt. If what HYDRA had attempted to do to Bucky was anything like what Project: Rebirth had done to Steve, then the wound may have closed and scarred on the outside but the inside still hadn't healed all the way. That's what happened to those small wounds Steve had taken in Novara. Good to know that he had to get any bullet fragments or shrapnel out as soon as possible if he didn't want his body healing it inside of him.
Knowing that some similar type of healing could be happening to Bucky made Steve feel a lot of conflicting things. Was there really any doubt that what HYDRA and Zola were trying to do was recreate Erskine's serum? Same as the S.S.R. was now trying to do with Steve's blood samples? No one wanted to say it in the planning rooms at S.S.R. HQ, all of them skirting around saying the words outright. So Steve mostly didn't say anything about it either. Bucky hadn't gotten a foot taller and gained one hundred pounds of muscle. His eyes hadn't seen any better and his hearing was the same. For all Steve knew (hoped), HYDRA had just made Bucky's ability to heal a little bit better. Which Steve was kind of grateful for, in a warped way.
And they maybe gave him chronic headaches, Steve thought when Bucky tried to rub at his temples discretely.
"You take any of that aspirin Morita gave you?" Steve asked.
"No. Figured I'd sleep this one off."
At least they had made it to a place where Buck no longer denied having them. Steve suspected the assurance that Bucky wouldn't be removed from the team had made the difference.
"You should just move in," Steve said while gesturing to his quarters at large. "You're in here more than me anyway."
Bucky hummed and looked at Steve from under his arm. "Can't do that. What would the enlisted men say? They'd call me a traitor."
"They'd probably just call you lazy and greedy."
"Fuck you, Steve."
"Don't have a fit." Steve pushed back from the table and the map, rubbing his eyes. It was too late for this. They'd spent all day in briefings, reading horror stories. Everyone had gone off to try to scrub the images from their heads after their meetings were adjourned for the day. Kicking off his boots and folding his jacket on the table, Steve went to his bunk and kicked the side. "Move," he said to Bucky.
His friend grunted and rolled on to his side. Steve flopped down in the space before it was gone again. Thank God for the benefits of being a CO and having a marginally larger bunk than the rest of the men.
"Christ," came Bucky's muffled voice. "You're runnin' at a thousand degrees."
"Par for the course," Steve reminded him.
He said, ". . . not used to you bein' this warm and it bein' nothin'. Old habits."
"You'll get used to it." Steve felt Bucky shaking his head more than he saw it. He barrelled onward, "Just like I'll get used to seeing the top of your head."
"Shut up. You're an inch taller than me at most."
Steve smirked at the ceiling. He had a lot to be grateful for, despite it all. His mind was a carousel of thoughts and memories and fears, and after a few minutes of letting it spin, Steve said, "Remember when we said we were going to go see the Hoover Dam when it was finished?"
"Yeah." Bucky's voice was hoarse.
"I was just thinking about it and how Morita asked us if we'd ever been out west. I didn't want to mention it because of the whole USO thing, but I saw it when the tour went that way. The Dam, I mean. We mostly stayed east, didn't go much further than Chicago and Milwaukee, but we flew out west for just a few days. Buck, when I saw that dam, it was just so amazing. I'd never seen or imagined anything like it. But, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, I wish Bucky were here, I wish he was seeing this with me.
"I've been thinking about this a lot. I've been thinking about a lot of different things for a long time. When Morita talked about Wyoming and how it was what nature intended, all I could think about was the Hoover Dam and how we used to talk about seeing when it was finished. And I know it's the opposite of what Morita was talking about, but it was still something to see. We'll go when this is all over. Both of us will see the Hoover Dam just like we always said, OK? Maybe we'll make it a trip, huh? Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore — maybe they'll finish that by the time we get home. We'll see Wyoming and tell Morita it's nothin' special compared to everything we've seen."
It wasn't usual for Bucky to let Steve ramble on like this uninterrupted. So he paused and felt Bucky shiver next to him on the cramped bunk. Steve elbowed his friend gently, saying, "Hey, you cold or something?"
The movement stopped and, after a beat, Bucky said, voice still hoarse, "'m not cold, Steve."
So Steve kept going on and on about their hypothetical post-war road trip around the United States. Hawaii, where Bucky could have been assigned in another lifetime. He even suggested that they see some sights in Canada on their way up to the Alaskan Territory, where they'd watch for whales. Maybe they'd see Chichen Itza, too, when they'd seen all the United States had to offer.
He kept talking until Bucky stopped shaking and finally stilled.
Note: Boring chapter is boring, but at least it's over now. tbc