"Captain."
Steve didn't jump when he heard Falsworth calling him; he'd heard the major approaching. But his hands still twitched in his book. The nub of pencil he'd been using rolled free of his fingers. He snapped closed the compass Bucky had given him; Peggy's face disappeared within. Steve looked up.
"May I?" Falsworth gestured to the place beside Steve.
He nodded. "Please." The notebook fell closed; the compass nestled between the pages.
Falsworth settled down beside Steve with his back against the hull. The ship rocked on the waves. Steve resisted the urge to close his eyes and fall asleep. He wasn't even tired, but something about the rocking of the sea made him want to try for a nap. Maybe it was the ride in the submarine. Maybe it was the weather: cold and heavy with fog.
Possible still that his mind was several miles away, with Peggy on a warship. The S.S.R.'s main forces were distracting the defences of Danzig and the surrounding coast. Steve's team had been taken from England to the Baltic by submarine. They were then transferred to an empty refugee ship that had come from Norway. The S.S.R., some friendly troops from Finland, a few Soviets, and what remained of the Polish resistance were providing the distraction the Howlers needed to crack into the country undetected.
Steve hadn't been a big fan of the plan, but he wasn't in command over everything.
Captain and major sat in silence for a little bit, breathing the same stale cabin air.
"Alright?" Falsworth finally said.
"Oh, yeah. Yes." Steve gave Falsworth a sidelong glance and a half smile. "You?"
Falsworth made a face and bobbed his head. "I've been better. And I'm willing to bet you have been, too."
There really was no point denying it, but Steve knew that you were supposed to gripe upstream, not down. He wasn't supposed to complain to the Commandos. He was supposed to direct that to Phillips. Besides, Steve wasn't naturally the type to admit to a weakness to anyone except Bucky. Until recently, his weaknesses were all too visible and easily exploited. Old habits, he supposed.
So Steve didn't know what to say in response, and Falsworth didn't appear to have anything more to add at the moment. So they sat side by side and watched the rest of the men. Morita was writing, hunched over and making faces at the paper as he wrote. Jones, Dugan, and Bucky were lying in a pile, mumbling to each other and laughing quietly through their noses. Steve couldn't see for sure, but he thought he saw Dernier trying to read a small paperback that had last been in Dugan's possession when they were on base.
Steve noticed a bit of a shine in Falsworth's eyes on the edge of his vision.
"Permission to speak freely?" Falsworth said. He rolled his head casually in Steve's direction.
"Of course."
Falsworth nodded his head and drank from his canteen before he began to speak. "I don't miss commanding."
Steve nodded slowly. "No?"
"I've never admitted it to anyone — not even myself until recently — but I was relieved when my men were captured. I'm quite ashamed to say it. I was raised on stories of glory earned on the field of battle and having a stiff upper lip. Never backing down. The whole Churchill mentality was my childhood. It wasn't until my baptism of fire that I realized the stories aren't real, d'you know what I mean?" A wan smile tweaked up the corners of his mouth. "There are never any stories about the men that were treated as pawns — the men that I sent out into the field to their deaths."
"You can't control every outcome." Steve parroted the line that was said so often in the S.S.R.'s planning rooms.
Falsworth made a dismissive gesture with his hand, then seemed to nod in agreement.
"You tell yourself that you're saving so many more lives than you'll lose, when you look at the whole picture. You tell yourself that, even though you lost Tommy, you've saved Mary and John and Paul and Mark at home. You don't know Mary or John or Paul or Mark." Falsworth took a moment to fiddle with the cap of his canteen. He took a breath and continued, "But you knew Tommy. You trained with Tommy and laughed with him. You've been in foxholes with Tommy and you've heard so much about his family that they might as well be yours. You've slept on Tommy's shoulder and he's slept on yours. You've been hungry together, you've been scared together, you've bled together. Tommy's more of a brother to you than anyone you ever shared blood with."
Falsworth shook his head and drank from his canteen again. Steve watched him carefully, transfixed, trying to move as little as possible. He waited for the major to collect himself and get out what was on his mind.
Falsworth continued, tapping his fingertip deliberately on the hull of the boat, "So when you lose Tommy . . . You hate the people that killed him, but you also start to hate what Tommy died for. Which is of course what you still stand for. You think Mary and John and Paul and Mark put together aren't worth the mud on Tommy's boots. Tommy wouldn't be dead if it weren't for them." His voice shook just slightest amount. "Next thing you know, you hate Tommy for dying — you hate the man you trained with, laughed with; the man you shared a foxhole with; the man who slept on your shoulder and who let you sleep on his. You hate him for dying and leaving you here. You hate that he made you feel like this.
"But you can't say any of that. All you can do is keep going forward even though you're losing Tommys every day, over and over again. And you can't let it get to you. Can't let the rot that's growing inside you show on the outside. That's what commanding was like for me, and I don't miss it."
There was a minute tremor in Falsworth's hand. Steve could hear the liquid inside the major's canteen splashing lightly against the sides. A year ago, he wouldn't have been able to hear it. Steve's hands tightened on his book so that the outline of the compass pressed creases into the cover.
Falsworth wasn't done.
"When I was captured, I was commanding one hundred and forty-six men. We were in Krausberg for fifty-four days. By the time you turned up, I'd stopped counting how many of my men had died. I'd stopped counting at sixty-two. Sixty-two men died in Krausberg. I'd lost more men in that camp in a shorter timespan than I'd ever lost in the field, and I was relieved.
"In the camp, it wasn't my fault when they died, you see. That's what I told myself. We were prisoners, and I wasn't responsible for their deaths anymore. They weren't my men anymore. They just kept dying, and I didn't want to hate them anymore. All the war stories our fathers told us about glory and duty are lies."
Steve said, "My father would never talk about it."
Never mind that Steve had hardly been old enough to ask real questions before the mustard gas had claimed what the War hadn't taken of his father. Even if asked, Steve was sure his father wouldn't have answered. He was quiet like that, preferring to tend to the window boxes than chew the fat at a pub. Steve remembered sitting on the sidewalk across from their apartment and making his first clumsy sketches of his father's planters in June. That was almost all he really remembered of the man: cheap but well-tended flowers.
"No. I don't suppose I ever will either," said Falsworth.
They drank from their respective canteens. Steve's book was deformed because of the compass. It didn't bother him as much as it might have.
Falsworth looked over at him with a bleak little smile. "Of course, then the 107th arrived at Krausberg. And there was some loud and arrogant American NCO called Sergeant Barnes jumping between the prisoners and the guards. He was actively trying to prevent the men from dying who I had already written off. And he'd put us all to sleep at night telling stories about this kid back home named Rogers."
It made Steve bite the inside of his cheek to keep his face from cracking. The sudden change in tone left him with emotional whiplash.
"At the risk of sounding over-dramatic," said Falsworth, "I think Barnes, Dugan, Jones, and Dernier saved me from becoming something irredeemable. The way they protected all the others, regardless of who they were or where they came from . . . When Barnes's pneumonia got bad, I surprised myself by being more frightened of him dying than worried about myself catching it. What we planned on the factory floor that day — I suppose I just couldn't stand to lose another Tommy." He shook a hand, presumably to illustrate his feelings of what had happened to this particular Tommy after the incident on the factory floor.
Steve had a hard time swallowing around an imaginary obstruction in his throat. So he looked down at his hands and rubbed the corner of his notebook's cover.
"I must thank HYDRA for putting me in a cell with those men." Falsworth glanced wistfully around at their comrades. Steve followed his gaze and watched Jones, Bucky, and Dugan snickering among themselves. Morita and Dernier were watching with passing interest, the light having faded too much for either of them to continue what they'd been doing.
Falsworth sighed and said, "I don't mean to whinge at you, Captain. I suppose I just wanted you to know that I appreciate the weight of your position."
Words deserted Steve, so he nodded. Luckily, he was interrupted anyway. One of the crew came down to the narrow, slick stairs and called out in some wavering Scandinavian accent, "Howling Commandos, you're up."
The men moved as one toward their pile of gear. As Steve was strapping his last holster in place, he caught the major's eye and nodded once. The gesture was returned with wry, twisted lips. After that, Steve started to think of Falsworth as Monty.
The refugee boat couldn't take them to a dock for obvious reasons. The S.S.R. had sent them out with inflatable boats; they paddled those to shore. Barnes and Frenchie got to be in a boat with Rogers, the lucky assholes. Cap did all the work and they just sat there like bumps on a log. Dugan and Monty had to do most of the paddling in their boat with Jim and Gabe. Gabe offered to take over rowing halfway to shore, but both Dugan and Monty refused. Better to have Gabe indebted to him, Dugan reasoned. Gabe frowned like he knew the hole he was falling into by not grabbing an oar right away.
No one shot at them as they paddled in, so it was off to an OK start.
Frenchie said, "We beat you to shore. Why so slow?"
"Hey, we had more weight in our boat," Dugan said.
They all looked at Rogers and made comparisons and calculations in their heads.
"Alright, that's enough," said Cap. He looked appropriately nettled. "Jones."
Gabe pulled out the map and Dugan oriented them. After a brief conference, they were moving out in a skirmish line (except there was no one coming up behind them). It gave Dugan a lot of time to think about how distinctive of a sight they must make. I mean, obviously, there was Captain America in their midst. And even if he wasn't currently wearing the flag costume, he was still easy to recognize. (None of them were currently wearing their standard uniforms. It had been decided that they'd come into Poland in civvies. They wouldn't change until they were detected or they got to Bydgoszcz, whichever came first.) Not a lot of men hanging around this continent that were still big like Rogers though. They'd all shrunk from lack of proper nutrition, or they'd been too big of a target on the front. Then there was Gabe — you just didn't see a lot of black men walking around these parts. And Morita was an even more curious sight to see than Gabe (at least in Dugan's opinion). Since Novara, they now knew that HYDRA knew what to look for when it came to Barnes, too.
So only Monty, Frenchie, and Dugan could really go walking around these parts without giving the squad away. How much of a factor had this been to the S.S.R. as they'd planned this mission? Dugan didn't think they'd weighed it enough. They walked 'til the sun was below the horizon. Then Gabe and Rogers disappeared below a pup tent to examine the map with the flashlight. The rest of them stood around tapping their toes. Gabe left the tent first and Dugan took his place, examining the aerial images Rogers had pulled out. They squabbled for a bit and then decided on the place they'd spend the night: a village which had been evacuated and effectively reduced to rubble two years ago.
When they were about half a kilometre out from their destination, Rogers sent Team James to investigate and make sure the place was clear. Barnes, Monty, and Jim dropped their bags but drew their sidearms before heading off for the ruined town. They came back after twenty minutes with the all-clear.
That was how, an hour later, around a well-hidden fire and after Jim had given a report on their progress to Phillips via radio, Frenchie was able to say, "Let's play a game."
This was met with a lot of bitching and moaning. No small amount from Dugan. He didn't do it because he didn't want to talk — the opposite was actually true. Mostly, he just wanted to make noise.
"What'd you have in mind?" said Gabe.
Frenchie shrugged. "I want to be entertained." He spread his arms and gestured to the group at large to start making suggestions.
"I got an idea," said Jim.
"Let's hear it," said Dugan. He drank from his special canteen and handed it off to the right. Monty accepted it and took a drink.
"You're always goin' on about how you never know a guy better than if you've been in a foxhole with him."
"Yeah."
"You and Barnes have been in a few battles, right?"
Both Dugan and Barnes nodded.
"Since day one of basic," said Barnes.
Jim took the canteen from Monty and nodded at Dugan. "Think you know Barnes better than Cap?"
Gabe whistled and leaned back on his pack as if a show was about to start. Dugan caught Rogers's eyes; the guy looked like he would just love for Dugan to accept this challenge.
"You know," said Dugan, "I think I just might."
"Geez," said Barnes.
The room rearranged itself around the fire so that three of them were on one side and the other four were across from them. Jim asked the questions, Barnes whispered the answers to Monty while Dugan gave his answer to Frenchie and Rogers gave his to Gabe.
It started innocently enough; the questions were mostly trivia like Barnes's drink of choice (Single malt whisky; Lagavulin when he can get it. If they're talking beer, it's Guinness.) and how many sisters he had. Goddamn Rogers answered every question immediately; he didn't even need a second to think about it. He didn't wipe the floor with Dugan, but he maintained a commanding lead.
But you really do learn a lot about a guy when you share a foxhole with him, though. Dugan made an impressive comeback when they got to this-or-that questions and preferences with dames. A lot of stuff had happened at Fort McCoy that Rogers didn't know about, a lot of things that show you the measure of a man in short amount of time. What did Rogers think people talked about during basic training anyway?
Never mind that the answer to any question about broads was "redhead" when it came to Barnes.
Naturally, the questions got more and more vulgar as the time and liquor passed. Jim and Frenchie started going in on hypothetical situations and what everyone would do in them. They quickly became ludicrous. Barnes's face was flushed from either embarrassment or drink; it was impossible to tell which.
He shoved the canteen into Monty's hand and said, "Get that thing away from me before I say something I'm never going to live down."
"I didn't realize you were so modest, Sarge," Dugan teased.
"I did," Rogers said smugly.
Barnes whipped a stone across the fire and said, "Shut up, Steve."
The game devolved from there. Soon they were guessing the answers to questions about everyone, the topics occasionally lewd. Jim absolutely roasted them, his answers as hilarious as they were cutting. Nobody even cared if there was some insult in what he said, because he was mostly right.
Dugan spat a mouthful of his hooch — the fire flared wildly because of it — when they finally got Gabe going. The guy could be a comedian. He was quiet about it; you really had to pay attention to catch his humour. But once you knew it was there, you were living a new life. Dugan was struck by how Gabe could make a place like Macon, Georgia sound like a funny place to live. Then again, Dugan knew that sometimes all you could do in a shitty situation was laugh your way through it and grit your teeth. It was what they'd done, all of them, in Krausberg. It was what they were still doing now.
Things wound down fast after the liquor hit a critical point (they were going to need to pace themselves for this mission). Men dropped off except for Dugan, who had first watch, and Rogers, who claimed not to be tired. (Yeah, right.) Everyone knew he was still jumpy about what had happened to Barnes in Novara. And, to be fair, Rogers was worried about everything all the time, in addition to Barnes.
Unhealthy, the two of them. And Dugan was only half joking.
"I was surprised," Rogers said lowly so he wouldn't wake the others. "You knew more about him than I thought you would."
"Yeah, well, we met in a crucible," said Dugan.
Rogers shrugged. "I'm glad."
"He taught half of our barracks at basic how to read with nothing but the field manual. We had a lot of young kids and guys that stopped goin' to school when they were real young. He did it without making any of us feel like a box of rocks for it." Dugan's gaze felt heavy, like he'd done something he ought to be embarrassed about. He saw a lifeline and reached for it. "You know, I kicked his ass about three days in at McCoy."
"No kidding." Rogers smirked at him. "Do tell."
"I thought he was a cocky bastard; I couldn't stand him. Know-it-all college boy, I thought, bound for Officer Candidate School. And I wanted to beat his ass because I thought he thought he was hot shit. We were disciplined together, of course, and the rest is history. I wasn't even jealous of him when he got promoted to sergeant. Our CO at the time, Captain Fonte, ended up with more trouble after he got us to get along than he had before. And Fonte was straight as an arrow, loved rules. I swear there was never a loose thread on his uniform. He was sniffing for a promotion and he thought he'd get it by busting the enlisted men's balls. God, we made things so hard on him."
Rogers almost smiled. "Sounds about right."
"We accidentally started a fire in the mess once, me and Jimmy," Dugan went on. He laughed to himself. "It was Jimmy's fault, by the way. The cigarette would have never had anything to burn if he hadn't left all those newspapers on the floor."
"Do I wanna ask what you were trying to do in the first place?"
Dugan's face bent into a downturned smile without any thought. "Maybe not. It was sort of a thing with us, getting up to no good in the mess. Thinking about it now though, I gotta wonder if you were the bad influence or he was."
Rogers snorted and looked at his hands. "A little bit of both? Probably mostly me though. Bucky only got involved in the trouble when he had to pull me out of it."
"Well you rubbed off on him pretty good. There's was this guy in our company — he was awful, total chicken shit. His name was Falister— so, naturally, he had a lot of nicknames. Always going through everyone's footlocker and ratting 'em out for stupid infractions. Fonte loved him." Dugan rolled his eyes at Rogers so that the captain could really feel the magnitude of asshole he was talking about. "We had this real young kid in our barracks. Didn't have a single hair on his face, probably not even old enough to enlist and lied on the enlistment form. Great kid, totally innocent. And Falister turns him in for contraband —a magazine that one of the guys had given him as a joke. The kid ended up doing seven-mile night marches for two weeks in full gear.
"So with our next weekend pass, Jimmy asked me to come with him to all the surrounding towns. I said sure. We'd done the same thing before: drinking, dancing with dames, seeing what wearing the uniform in public could get us. You know the deal. But this time, Jimmy went to every drug story that he could find and bought them out of prophylactics. He had to have spent two months' pay on the things. I was embarrassed just walking next to him with all those. There had to be hundreds, maybe close to a thousand — I have no idea. It was a lot. God knows how, but he got them all back into base. Jimmy shoved handfuls of 'em into everything Falister owned. They were in the lining of his helmet, the toes of his boots, his pillowcase, and every last pocket of his pack. His field jacket, his canteen, under his bunk, in his socks, in his hat and mess kit — somehow he got one shoved down the end of a rifle and in the butt of it. All the rest went in Falister's footlocker."
Dugan laughed and stared up at the ceiling. "Fonte did his usual contraband shakedown of the barracks the next day and found 'em. I'll never forget to looks on either of their faces. And they kept finding more for weeks afterward. The asshole was facing disciplinary action right up until we left the camp for hoarding resources. Permanent latrine duty for repeating offenses. He couldn't go an hour without someone telling him to 'put it on before he put it in'."
There was a faint smile on Rogers's face. It was the look all people had when you told an amusing story that they hadn't been there to experience. Dugan almost regretted telling it. But he shrugged and said, "I thought it said a lot about what kind of person Jimmy is."
"What, that he's sexually responsible?" Rogers's smile became a little less indistinct, but his eyes were on his hands again. "What happened to him? Falister."
"I don't know," said Dugan. "Must've lost track of 'em; they all died so fast. He wasn't in Krausberg. That much I know for sure."
"I hope he made it," Rogers said.
Dugan almost felt fond thinking about him. "Me, too."
The next morning, Jim called in to Phillips to let HQ know they were on track. The colonel demanded to speak directly to Cap, which Jim relayed to his commanding officer. Apparently, the brass didn't put it past Cap to leave someone with the radio while he wandered off to cause trouble on his own. It wasn't an entirely unfounded idea, Jim had to admit.
Then they moved out in their loose line again, still in civvies. Jim felt naked without his gear hanging off him. It was a feeling that was present when they were on base, too, but it wasn't nearly as strong. How many seconds would it take for Jim to arm himself if someone decided to just start shooting? How many of seconds did it take to lose someone? Less than one. It was stupid to walk around with all their gear shoved, disassembled, into their packs. It made Jim extra cranky.
The walking only lasted for about an hour and a half before they were able to commandeer transportation. A woman recognized them on the road and called out to them. Jim had advised caution and was already reaching for his Colt when the woman mentioned the S.S.R. and how a lost group of mixed men might be wandering by. She gave them a small, open truck. Her husband had used it to haul their harvest to the markets in Bydgoszcz. Jim didn't ask what exactly she and her husband sold, but the back of the truck smelled like five-day old ass. And while the open bed left them exposed, Jim was grateful that it at least made the smell easier to bear.
Dum Dum and Monty rode in the cab; the rest of them were squashed together with all their packs in the back. Jim just knew his clothes were going to pick up the smell. He'd have to burn them and ask the brass for something new. This was simply intolerable. The weather was changing from ice-fucking-cold to wet and miserable every few hours; they'd need different threads to make it through. Well, he was sure that Cap wouldn't be getting anything new. Stark didn't have too many of those American flag costumes stored up on base. Jim heard Europe could be a bitch in the heat. It almost made him think of the summers at home. He almost smiled before he remembered that home wasn't like that anymore. His family was taken from their own homes and put in a cage in a desert. Was that his fate, too, if he lived long enough to see the end of the war?
They ran low on fuel about halfway to their destination. Cap and Gabe went to siphon off some more from what was left in a nearby village. The rest of them hid the truck in a ditch and watched the area around them like hawks. No one had stopped them so far in the trip, which was suspicious. It put them all on edge; someone should have realized they infiltrated the country by now, be it HYDRA or standard issue Krauts.
Jim heard gunfire from the town and was immediately ready for a fight. Cap and Gabe were streaking back toward them. In the rear was Cap, laying down covering fire and using his shield to let Gabe get back to the squad with the filched fuel. Gabe slid down into the ditch. Frenchie relieved him of the fuel canisters and immediately began dumping the contents into the truck's tank. Gabe fumbled with his Browning; Jim was fighting uselessly with his pack and trying to free his grease gun.
Cap had stopped running and was now facing the oncoming bullets. Without a word to the rest of them, he was running back toward the enemy, dodging fire as if it were nothing. Jim had stopped trying to do anything helpful by then, just watching the captain jump to impossible heights and whip that shield into the top window of a home. He went right in the window after the shield.
A second story window. He jumped from the ground to a second story window.
A moment later, all firing stopped.
No more than a minute later, Cap was jogging back toward them as if nothing had ever happened.
Bang.
Jim jumped in surprise when a gun fired no more than two yards away; it was Barnes. The round bit into the ground a single step in front of the captain. Rogers stopped and stared.
Barnes duck-faced hard at Cap and then holstered his sidearm without saying a word.
Cap didn't look one bit like he'd been chastised, and he continued to approach them. There was a shit-eating grin on his face. "Let's move out."
So they did. The truck trundled toward Bydgoszcz during the night. They ditched the truck a few miles out, checked in via radio, and then approached the city on foot. It took a concentrated effort for Jim not to look at the mounds of dirt, deserted territory, and wonder if that was where all those bodies were buried, one on top of the next. He thought of bones rattling like soda bottles filled with pebbles.
At the first crumbled brick wall they came to, Cap sank behind it for cover. The rest of them followed. On the map was the location they were supposed to rendezvous with their hosts. The area would need to be scouted first. That meant Team James would be deployed. Jim dropped down to both knees and swung his pack around to his front. He assembled his M3 and clipped on his bandolier that held all the extra magazines. He knew Monty and Barnes were doing the same things.
Cap said lowly, "Alright. Monty, Morita, and Dernier, go scope out the area and make contact with our hosts. If it's clear, Dernier, come back here and lead the rest of us in. Go."
Jim sat there feeling a little stunned. He had just assumed. Barnes looked like someone had spat in his face. The order took longer than usual to carry out, but no one mentioned the change in what had become their status quo. Tension built among them so fast that Jim was just grateful that his squad had moved out before it erupted into something bad.
For what it was worth, Frenchie didn't throw Jim off his game at all. Monty seemed to handle the interruption of Team James just fine, too. They slipped between the buildings one at a time, trading positions and signalling the others forward when given the all-clear. There was a close call when a man in a dark uniform crossed the street moments before Jim was about to signal the others across the street. Aborting the gesture, Jim watched where the guy went and noted how fast he was moving. The night was too dark and any light that might have shone out the windows were blocked by heavy curtains. It was impossible to tell if the guy was HYDRA or not. There wasn't even enough light to reflect off of any potential decorations on the guy's uniform.
Once the man was gone behind a corner, Jim waited and watched for any others. Nothing so much as shivered, and he motioned for Monty and Frenchie to cross over. Monty signalled for them to stop when they'd reached the approximate location of their host. Jim slid the latest of Stark's inventions out of his pocket and clicked out the code he'd been taught before they left Great Dunmow. Then he clicked it out three and half more times. Waiting was all that they had to do next. It was because they were waiting with bated breath that they were able to hear the clicking of heels on the road long before the person wearing those shoes was upon them.
Frenchie was the first of them to recognize the footsteps. His head popped up above the ruined cart they were taking shelter behind and he scanned around for the source. Jim was getting ready to pull the man back down when he heard Agent Carter's voice.
"Hello, boys. Don't just stand there. We can't be caught out after curfew."
They just stared at her for a long time. How the heck had she gotten here? How had she arrived before them? She had been on one of the boats that were distracting the coastal defences when they invaded, hadn't she?
Again, Frenchie came to life first. He saluted Carter and snuck out after her. Monty caught Jim's eye. They stared at each other for a while. Jim shook himself and made his body move. Now four in number, they slithered between a few more alleyways before Carter led them down a short staircase and into a shop's cellar.
"Who's getting the rest?" she asked once they were inside.
"I am," said Frenchie.
"You remember the way?"
"I do."
Carter nodded her head. "Good. Then get the others. Don't knock on the door when you bring the rest. There are single-man patrols out all night. If they don't see you, they'll hear when you knock. Just enter."
"Yes, ma'am." And then Frenchie was gone again.
Jim and Monty had hardly crossed the threshold of the cellar. They both stared at each other and their dim surroundings. A few stubby candles were their only lights down here. If this place had electricity, there weren't any bulbs down here. Wooden crates were arranged like chairs around a spool. Thick ropes wound around the spool. Jim took a tentative step forward and turned to get a good look at the place. There was a staircase sitting deep in shadows on the other side of the cellar. It was cold but the moisture in the air was more noticeable. Jim wasn't confident that the wood of the crates wouldn't splinter if he tried to sit on it.
"If you don't mind," said Monty slowly, "how did you get here?"
Jim turned and watched Agent Carter hold back her smile. "War is a game of spies as well as soldiers, Major."
"Is this one of those things that Phillips wanted to make different?" Jim found himself speaking without thinking about the words first. "You're Barnes's babysitter?"
"I suppose that's one way to view the situation, yes."
"Cap's gonna flip his lid."
"I'd hate for him to waste his energy."
Jim couldn't help it; he cracked a toothy smile. Agent Carter in the field. He had to admit that it was something he was curious to see. He said, "So how'd you get here so fast?"
Carter went and sat on one of the crates. It didn't splinter. "I can appear as a friend when I need to. This isn't my first time blending in with the locals in Axis territory. And maybe Mr Stark was generous enough to help expedite my travel."
"Sounds like quite a tale," said Monty. He shed some of his gear and leaned against a stack of crates.
"It is. A classified tale."
"All the good ones are," said Jim. Monty nodded knowingly.
Carter smirked and said, "But I don't suppose anyone would know if mentioned a few of the details."
"No. Not a single soul around to hear," Jim agreed.
She told them about a con she pulled in this German castle a few years back. It had been about extracting a doctor from Red Skull's custody. Jim didn't need to be told to know that this was the doctor that led the super soldier research. Carter not only had incredible skills — not that she bragged, but it was easy to discern based on the tasks she had to complete to get the doctor — but she could tell a damn story, too. Now that they were running the Bydgoszcz part of the mission with Carter, Jim was excited to see her in action. He hoped she didn't get relegated to intelligence support or something stupid. Even a simple private like himself knew that Carter was destined to do amazing things beyond manage a desk full of maps and reports. She was Agent Carter, not some coffee-fetching secretary. Jim was so wrapped up in her story that he nearly yelped when the cellar door opened and the rest of the unit filed through the door.
As expected, Cap's face did a funny thing when he recognized Carter. Flatly, the captain said, "What are you doing here?"
Even though Jim knew that he could be blunt sometimes, Cap just sounded flat-out rude.
"I'm here to assist your unit on this mission." When the earth caught fire, Jim thought, hopefully Carter and her ice-cold glare would be around to put it out. She kept talking before Cap could get a head of steam going. "Right, now that you're all here, I think it's time to meet your hosts."
Their hosts were two women: Panni Kava and Edda Sierzant. They were terrifying. Jim lost count of all the little holsters they had for tiny little pistols, knives, and canisters of God-knew-what. They had fuckin' paralytic lipstick. Before they started disarming themselves, no one would have been able to tell they were packing so much heat, which was probably the most terrifying part. It was easy to believe that Agent Carter was in with these kinds of people.
Besides being terrifying, the women were superlative people and admirable hosts. They were so friendly. Jim didn't even care that he had to focus so hard on what they were saying because of their accents. It was the least he could do. By the time they were all bedding down in the cellar (with bedding of remarkable quality, given the state of the world), Jim found himself embarrassed that he'd thought people would be struggling so hard in a place like this. Kava and Sierzant were absolutely thriving.
As the breathing of his friends evened out, he reminded himself how much fight it put into him when the world at large thought he wasn't capable. Hadn't Jim first fostered an interest in the military because so many other places had refused to make eye contact with him because of his ethnicity? When people refused to hire a Japanese kid, hadn't it lit a fire under Jim's ass? He had wanted to shove it in all of those people's faces. He wanted to rise above the ones that had turned him down. He had wanted to reach a place where they were beneath him. It was fair to say, Jim thought, that he had achieved that. Never mind what he had paid to get there, what his family was paying right this minute. Being told no had only ever made Jim more determined.
He thought maybe Carter and their Polish hosts felt the same way.
But look at them now. They thrived in this environment. They'd taken the underestimating of their sex and used it to their advantage, made their enemies suffer for ever thinking them as less than. Jim knew the Russians had taken advantage of this skewed view a long time ago, what with their female snipers and armed civilians. He never thought he'd be agreeing with this, but Jim thought the world could learn a few things from the Red Army.
Those thoughts brought him to Gabe. Jim wanted so bad to ask Gabe what he thought of all this, of being considered unequal, less than. How did he stand it? What made him fight for a place that denied him so much? Because Jim couldn't even begin to answer that question for himself. It was easier to just focus on the single job in front of him and ignore what the point of it all was. What would he do and feel if he survived all of this and had to go home? Was there still a home? Did it deserve his service? It sure as hell didn't deserve Gabe Jones's service.
Jim rolled over under his bedding and found Gabe's outline in the dim cellar. One of these days, Jim was gonna ask that man what all this was worth. He went to sleep with a bitter taste in the back of his mouth.
"Panni and Edda will take some of you to examine the bodies that we suspect died due to the biological agent. I'll warn you now that it's very gruesome. Mr. Stark wanted some samples collected, so I'll leave it up to the captain to decide who gets that honour," Peggy said.
"There are frequent patrols of the area," Panni Kava said very deliberately and precisely, apparently very aware of her accent in a room full of (mostly) native English speakers. "We must be careful; it appears that they were expecting visitors."
Steve glanced, for the millionth time, at Peggy. She was nodding her head. "And I'll take the rest of you to the area we think the factory is in. It works nearly all day and night, so it's hard to miss. We'll do some surveillance of their security and formulate a plan accordingly. So who's doing what?"
Steve startled when he realized that Peggy was waiting for him to dole out the tasks. He recovered quickly, kept his eyes on the maps, and said, "Jones, Morita, Dernier: you guys check out the bodies. Try to track any guards. We'll know if something fishy is going on if they've got people guarding dead bodies. Dugan and Monty: stay here. Keep eyes on the streets. Watch the street patrol. Do not engage unless there's a direct attack on your location. They still don't know for sure that we're in the city, and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible. Buck, you're with me and Peggy."
Because their temporary rules were that Peggy went where Bucky went. If they were going to be in close contact with HYDRA and things that could wreak havoc on a human body, Steve didn't want Bucky out of his sight for a one goddamn second.
"We move out in ten."
The men shifted toward their packs to free all their munitions. Dugan was looking longingly at his field jacket; Monty was damn near stroking his beret. Steve didn't blame any of the guys for making eyes at their clothes. There hadn't exactly been a lot of sensible civilian clothes for them to choose from before they started the mission. What they had been able to obtain was thin, which left them all cold, damp, and prone to complaining.
Steve shifted the shield off of his back. It couldn't come with him today. When the first group had gone out to meet Peggy last night, Bucky had gotten some measure of revenge for Steve breaking up Team James: he'd thrown mud at the shield, and he hadn't been very accurate about it. All he'd said was that it needed camouflaging, despite that it had come all the way from Danzig without causing a scene. Steve just hoped Bucky's tantrum would end before something serious happened.
Peggy led the way through town. There had been a silent battle of wills between Steve and Bucky about who would be sandwiched in the middle which Steve won. It was hard to remember his friend being this difficult about everything. Peggy had been amused by the two of them. She didn't say anything, but Steve had made leaps and bounds in the area of Peggy's moods and expressions. Steve also thought she was showing a little bit of apprehension about the mission. Steve shared the feeling.
The city sights offered some distraction, but they were not nice ones. There were dead bodies in pieces between crumbling houses. There were skeletal animals moving slowly on bleeding feet, soon to be corpses or in some desperate soup. Barbed wire fences locked part of the city away from the rest. Hollow eyes peered down between tattered curtains. If they recognized Steve for who he was, they didn't show it. They just stared and watched. He tightened his grip on his sidearm, feeling pity for the citizens alongside distrust for them.
Peggy put a hand out. Immediately, Bucky took a sharp turn down an alley and Steve followed. At the mouth of the alley, Peggy's shoulders rounded and hovered up by her ears. In the space of a single blink, she'd gone from woman on a mission to dejected local searching the trash in the gutter for a scrap of food. Steve heard the boots then, watched German soldiers come upon Peggy.
A hand gripped Steve's sleeve tight. He whirled and was ready to beat off an attack. It was just Bucky, though. Of course, it was only Bucky. Steve hadn't realized he'd been heading out of the alley and toward Peggy. Bucky shook his head and made a face that told Steve to watch.
Peggy spoke in shaking Polish to the soldiers. Steve watched their faces change from those of predators to pale faces flush with sympathy. One offered her something from his pocket. Steve couldn't see what. Peggy accepted and bowed her head with gratitude. Steve watched her wipe away tears that weren't really there. The other soldier spoke in broken Polish to her and handed over a tin with a smile. There looked to be genuine regret on the faces of the two men.
The soldiers left then and Peggy kicked around in the piles of refuse for a little longer. Then she glanced down the alley, and Steve and Bucky went to her. She was smiling.
"Want some canned meat?" she said and held out the tin the soldiers had given her.
"What else did you get?" Bucky asked. "Their addresses?"
Peggy's eyes twinkled. "Sergeant Barnes."
"Alright," Steve said. "We should get moving."
He couldn't say why their light-heartedness was bothering him.
Peggy quirked her lips and then started moving. Bucky looked at Steve with a question. Holding back a sigh, Steve shoved his friend forward, and they were off again.
They encountered more troops the deeper into the city they went, ghostly eyes from the windows following them the whole way. Sometimes Peggy led them around the soldiers and other times she sent Steve and Bucky into alleys and heaps of trash to hide while Peggy talked her way past the men. After a while, all the soldiers simply disappeared. A block later they were replaced by HYDRA troops with their full masks and thick black uniforms. Peggy stopped trying to talk her way around them. It was all about making it to the dusty black industrial building. It was so close that Steve could taste the pollution in the air. There were no more eyes watching from the windows. Less trash in the streets; what was there looked older, but it wasn't greater in number.
Peggy waved both Steve and Bucky back. Steve had no intention of listening to her this time, and Bucky must have anticipated that. His friend took two twisted handfuls of Steve's jacket and absolutely manhandled Steve back behind the nearest cover. If he wasn't so focused on what Peggy was doing, Steve might have had the presence of mind to wonder how Bucky had been able to move Steve's new body so
Peggy jogged up behind a patrolling HYDRA agent and kicked the back of his knee. She caught him around the neck and backpedalled into an alley, into the space beneath a staircase. There was a brief struggle. Steve strained against Bucky's grip until he grew too annoyed. Steve twisted hard enough to break the grip holding him back, heard Bucky hiss "fuck", and ran for where Peggy had disappeared.
"Peg," he said, skidding to a stop before her hiding space.
Peggy looked up with an eyebrow raised. The soldier was unconscious at her feet and she was stripping him of his gear. "Yes?" she said.
"I thought you . . . " Steve didn't know what he thought.
"Where's the sergeant?"
"I'm right here," said Bucky's voice from behind Steve. He had one hand around the opposite wrist and was rotating the joint. "Asshole," the sergeant tossed at Steve with only the barest amount of venom. "She's completely fine."
"Indeed," Peggy said dryly. She tossed the soldier's helmet to Bucky and said, "That's for you."
"Huh?"
"He's about your size."
"What?"
"You'll need to blend in with the guards if you plan to gather intelligence, Sergeant."
Bucky froze and Steve felt his heart speed up in his chest. "We never talked about this."
"I thought it was implied," said Peggy. "It's easiest to gather information from the inside. We can get closer to the patrols this way."
"Bucky's not going into that building alone," Steve said. "You can't send him into a HYDRA building when they're looking for him."
"Of course not," Peggy said. "I'm going with. My German's better."
Bucky reached for the uniform Peggy was holding out toward him.
"I just need to catch a small soldier and get his uniform," she continued.
"Don't you mean two more?" Steve said. "I'm going with you."
"Don't be ridiculous, Captain," said Peggy. "You're going to keep watch from out here and let us know when our cover gets compromised. I doubt we'd be able to find a soldier who wears a uniform your size anyway. We may need you to come help us get out." Peggy shoved the unconscious HYDRA soldier. "Take this man somewhere that's not easy to find and bind him. I'll be back."
Peggy didn't give Steve a chance to protest. She was gone sneaking between trash and debris. There was nothing to do but pick up the unconscious man and hide him somewhere. Bucky trailed silently along in his wake. They ended up inside a mostly-crumbled building. Steve had tossed the body up into the missing side of the second story and then climbed up himself. He held a hand down and pulled Bucky easily up and into the building, too.
Steve got to work binding up their captive and Bucky was shedding his civilian threads for the HYDRA uniform. Bucky broke the uncomfortable silence between them.
"You should trust her."
"What?" Steve paused and stared.
"Carter. Trust her."
Steve frowned. "I do trust her."
Bucky shrugged and pulled the HYDRA jacket on at the same time. It wasn't the right fit in the shoulders. "Not in the way you should. She won't thank you for it."
Was that what Steve was doing? He didn't want to be that way. He didn't want to be just like all the others that had brushed Peggy to the back. After all she'd done for him when he'd charged into Krausberg, Steve didn't want to treat her like something that needed looking after.
"She's been doing this longer than you have," Bucky said. "Let her. It's an insult to do anything else."
Steve said sceptically, "You like this plan?"
"I'm not scared," he said.
Steve didn't respond; he tied the gag around the soldier's mouth a little harder than he intended though. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw his friend bite his lip and swallow hard.
"I'm not scared," Bucky said again, "and I won't— . . . Nothing's going to happen. We're gonna gather recon and then get out of there."
The memory of the night after they'd completed jump training popped to the forefront of Steve's mind. He looked up from the captive and over to his friend. Bucky didn't look like an Army sergeant who was battle-tested and seasoned, a proven NCO.
To Steve, Bucky looked like he did when they were kids and three strangers had tried to abduct him off the street in broad daylight. Steve had thrown every last ounce of his body weight around trying to beat off three full grown adults while Bucky had screamed until the owner came out of the corner store. The strangers fled, and Steve had stood there with bruised hands, completely winded, praying he didn't have an asthma attack. He hadn't known what to do next. Bucky had hardly moved from where they'd dropped him on the sidewalk. Someone had gone to get George Barnes, and, when he turned up, he slapped Bucky across the face and told him to stop crying.
Steve nodded his head at Bucky and went back to tying up the HYDRA captive. Bucky was in the man's uniform by then, the helmet the only thing not in place.
"How's it look?" he asked with his arms out.
"Horrible," Steve told him.
Peggy found them soon. Steve pulled the knocked-out soldier up first and then Peggy. She stripped him of his uniform and then handed him off to Steve to be bound. She chattered, explaining her plan as she became someone else. She and Bucky would get as close they could, inside if they were able. Peggy made a point to tell Steve that Bucky would never be alone during the whole thing. No matter what she had to do, she told him out of Bucky's earshot, Peggy would make sure Bucky came out of this as good as he went in. Steve didn't know whether to be frustrated with Peggy for suggesting this mission in the first place or to be grateful that she would be going to such great lengths for his friend (really, for Steve's peace of mind).
Peggy didn't coddle anyone. She let them do what they were capable of. Steve admired that about her. So he did his best to mimic it and let Peggy run this show. She really did know best — better than him, and he wasn't ashamed to admit that.
Before they left, Bucky wandered over to Steve and handed him the improved scope that Howard had made for him before they shipped out for this mission. (Howard had gifted Bucky the new removable scope at the same time that he delivered Dugan's repaired hat. Turned out Howard knew when it was time to make something new and when it was better to fix something old.)
"Watch our backs, alright?" Bucky said.
After all these years, Steve knew the request that was hidden in that tone of voice. He nodded and said, "Don't do anything stupid."
And then they were gone and Steve was alone, save two unconscious HYDRA grunts and his doubt. Every so often, Steve would move among the block he was hidden in. He never strayed far from the captives, but he couldn't stand sitting in one place doing nothing. He watched and marked the patrols: their numbers, the time between passes, the weapons they carried, whether or not they spoke to one another. Steve would jump with ease up to the roofs, lie flat on the ground, and find Peggy and Bucky's frames with the scope. Peggy was hard to pick out; the uniform did an impressive job disguising her sex. But Steve would know Bucky's gait anywhere. All he had to do was look for that familiar walk, and he could track them. He only knew where Peggy was because she was beside Buck.
Steve tracked them all the way to the factory. Neither had to engage in any sort of combat. He wondered what they talked about, if they talked at all. Both Peggy and Bucky spoke better German than Steve did, so he reasoned with himself that that could be another reason why he was the one to stay behind. He trusted Peggy, he did. He trusted her with his life, so he ought to trust her with Bucky's too.
Though he was quick to anger and quicker with his fists, Steve never fought without reason. He fought kids bigger than him if he deemed them bullies. Despite the consistent failures of his body, Steve hadn't let it get in the way of his will and his conviction. Whether with fists or words, Steve didn't back down when he saw something he knew was wrong. Weaknesses didn't matter; Steve was so used to his body's limits that they didn't even feel like weaknesses anymore. He knew if he was stubborn and relentless, not even biology could keep him down.
That was Steve: Rub some dirt on it and walk it off. Get back up no matter how far you fall.
Steve knew what he was and what he wasn't. Knew since he was the forty-pound kid that tried to fight off kidnappers despite the odds stacked against him. He was the type of person who would fight the attackers, pursue them until they were caught and punished. He'd never had time to learn anything besides don't stay down. Steve knew better than anyone how to patch a wound and stop a body from bleeding itself dry. He hadn't anticipated it being so difficult to risk someone else's life for the same causes for which he was ready to risk himself. As a captain with a squad depending him, Steve had to know better than to leave one of his men crying on the street until something worse came for them.
The sound of George Barnes's hand smacking Bucky's cheek echoed in Steve's memory to this day. And he still couldn't explain to himself why he hadn't tried to comfort Bucky then.
Rolling off the roof, Steve landed catlike on a tall stack of rubble and went back to check on his captives. They hadn't moved, still unaware. Steve sat beside them and flipped his compass opened. Peggy peered back at him from inside. Some days Steve still wondered where Bucky had found the thing. The compass was Bucky pointing him in the right direction. The compass was Peggy believing in him. It was the Commandos choosing to follow him. It was all the missions, experiences, and stories he was allowed to have because of determination and refusing to stay down. It was confirmation that he was doing the right thing.
Or this war was making him dangerously sentimental.
It was a just a goddamn compass.
The unit rendezvoused back at the Poles' place. The Dead Body Squad had arrived back first, so the first thing out of Jim's mouth when Cap, Barnes, and Carter came tumbling into the room was, "What's with the outfits?"
"When in Rome," said Barnes. He tossed the helmet to Jim. The thing was fucking heavy.
"You breached 'em?" said Dum Dum. He was bent over a plate of something the gals had made. It looked weird but smelled delicious.
Carter grinned. "Yes. Sergeant Barnes and I got a good look around inside."
Jim noticed the captain's lemon-sucking face. He laughed.
"Aren't you going to share?" said Monty.
Kava offered Cater a bowl, which she accepted. The same was done for Cap and Barnes. They all sat around the table that was much too small for all of them. Sierzant sat on the counter and ate out of her lap. Frenchie was leaning against the cupboards on the floor, legs splayed out in front of him and one of the couch cushions beneath him. Jim had claimed one of the chairs at the table when he came in but others had to improvise.
Cap had Gabe give them the report from the graveyard. It had been as awful as Jim had anticipated. There had only been a few guards; Jim made short work of them by clubbing the backs of their heads with the butt of his M3. Frenchie and Gabe did a lot of the investigating of the corpses while Jim kept himself happy and content with being the lookout.
"Mostly seemed like respiratory distress," Gabe said, "but I'm no doctor. Wasn't much outward damage to their bodies."
"All their eyes were opened," Frenchie said.
Yeah, that had been the worst part. None of the corpses were covered or buried fully. Those dead eyes felt like they had been following Jim. He'd been glad to leave.
"Did you collect anything?" said Carter.
Gabe nodded. "We took some samples like you asked. They're in the medic bag."
Carter nodded her head and took a spoonful of the Polish gruel. "Did you notice anything else?"
The guards over the bodies hadn't been very large in number, but they had been there. HYDRA was expecting something to happen with these bodies. Jim knew the ideal case would have been for the S.S.R. to have one (or several) of the bodies back in the lab. They could look over everything and see what had turned these people to shells. Gabe was right: It had looked like some kind of gas attack. The corpses were pale, naked, and covered in marks and bruises, but none of those marks had looked life-threatening. By examination, all of those wounds had been in a state of healing by the time they'd died. It had been Frenchie who'd suggested that these people were all still part of an experiment. Maybe it had to do with those blue-light-laser weapons that were being tested on the Greeks. Maybe they were using something like that to power their biological weapon.
Jim was just glad he wasn't the one who had to deliver the report. It had been hard enough just seeing it, and he hadn't even been the one touching the bodies. Shit like that shouldn't be happening to people. Shouldn't be happening to anything anywhere at any time.
After they relived the graveyard for everyone's benefit, Carter started telling them about the HYDRA building. It was huge and ran all day. There were several troops stationed there, both inside and outside. There was evidence of barracks inside somewhere, so whoever worked inside wasn't leaving. Carter suspected slave labour, possibly women. They'd been disappointed not to find a lot of evidence of the biological weapon; there was mostly only material processing. Raw materials for weapons. Explained the big exhaust towers and the pollution in the air, if they were running smelters. Evidence said they had a lot of material, so they could be building either something really huge or a whole bunch of smaller weapons.
Barnes had added that they hadn't had the chance to scout the whole building without getting themselves caught, but he thought the layout of the factory was similar to that of the one in Krausberg. And that put on the table the possibility of another isolation ward and that was where all the dying people were coming from.
Once they all finished eating and picking each other's reports apart, they splintered into groups. Cap, Carter, and Monty went off to plan their strategy for the attack tomorrow. The rest of them bungled around the sitting room with the Poles. Gabe switched on their gramophone and played records that none of them knew the words to. Frenchie asked Sierzant to dance, and they spun graceful circles around the room. Their smiles turning and turning; Jim got dizzy watching. Kava went up to Barnes. After a few moments of convincing, the two of them weaved in and around the other couple, Kava leading in some sort of folk dance.
Gabe made excellent musical selections considering that he wasn't familiar with any of the options; all of them were excellent for dancing. Jim passed the special canteen back and forth with Dum Dum as they watched the two groups of dance partners. They laughed at how each of their styles differed. Dum Dum suggested Barnes leave room for the Holy Ghost between himself and Kava. Barnes suggested Dum Dum fuck off. Jim thought Sarge had a point.
When they'd passed the canteen between themselves enough times, Dum Dum stood up, pulling Jim with him. They danced violently between the other partners, bumping them into end tables and lamps on purpose. Jim tried to step on Dum Dum's feet every chance he got. They shouted laughter in their ears. Jim hip-checked Frenchie and threw his back against Barnes. The dancing devolved into a shoving match until Carter came out of the bedroom where the battle plans were being written and told them to pipe down or so help her.
They quieted down and settled into the mess they'd created.
Frenchie and Sierzant snuck away together. Kava fell asleep sitting on Barnes's lap. It reminded Jim of Chiyo and he looked away hard and fast. Gabe sang a song in French that Jim didn't recognize. Dum Dum began one next that Barnes joined in with. Jim still didn't know the song, but he knew enough to know it was an Irish one.
Floating between wakefulness and slumber, Jim thought of times when he wasn't as sharp as he was now. He half-listened to Dum Dum and Gabe talk about education and barriers and all the different kinds of freedom there are. Jim's eyes started to sting and he refused to listen to them anymore.
Closing his eyes, he thought to himself, Where did my boy's babysitter go? Beyond that mountain, back to her home.
Jacques Dernier had loved a mute girl once. Back when he was young and wore suits with ties. It had been back when the world was just starting to bloom again after the Great War, when he taught young minds how the elements of the world interacted with each other.
He'd never been married, never had children. But he'd loved a girl who never spoke. She was in the business of pleasure. She wasn't beautiful or wise or impressive in any other way than her simple kindness. With no words to offer, the girl could only ever listen. Her chest was heavy, and she was soft. When he'd lie with her, Jacques imagined all the stories this mute girl could tell and everything she'd heard. He loved her possibilities. He loved her potential.
She had a son whose mind was not meant to understand the world. The chemicals inside his own body couldn't agree with each other. Sometimes she and her son would stay in Jacques's empty house. He treated mother and son gently because they were gentle creatures.
He loved that girl the way a man loves the sun — loves the leaves of the trees even when they turn brown and crumble underfoot. Jacques didn't love her son, but he loved that the mute girl did. But the son hadn't been built to survive the world that he couldn't understand. He died, eventually. The mute girl grieved in silence. Even though Jacques loved her, she'd lost the only thing she truly had. She stopped fighting and let life do to her what it would.
Jacques had loved a prostitute who couldn't speak, and the world took her because she wouldn't speak up for herself after the death of her son. And eventually the world took everything from him too, seemingly overnight — why hadn't they fought back? Why hadn't they resisted harder? Jacques Dernier had loved and lost a girl because she wouldn't speak about the things she'd seen and done. When Germans marched in and took his very home from him, Jacques fought back that time.
It was funny now. Now — after everything. Being where he was now. He could speak and he was fighting and using his knowledge of how the world's elements interacted with one another to seek revenge. The Polish woman beside him was hard and strong. She didn't remind Jacques of the girl he once loved like he loved stones warmed by sunlight. Sometimes he reminded himself of that girl, limited by language, his ability to speak. Then Jacques told himself that he was learning to speak to his comrades, his friends, those he loved. He wasn't a silent partner.
He looked at the woman lying asleep next to him. Her chest rose and fell. She made noises, even in her sleep. He did not love her.
Jacques Dernier had loved a mute girl once, and she'd died for her silence.
Dugan's breath was so loud. Peggy tried to ignore it, but it was so loud. Someone shifted behind her and slapped Dugan's shoulder. She guessed it was Jones. Peering around the corner, she watched the guards change shift at the gate. Behind her, Dugan, Jones, and Dernier settled and became still. She could still hear their breathing.
Peggy leaned away from the corner and looked back at her squad. Get ready, she told them with her eyes. The men nodded to her. Deep in her chest, Peggy felt something very much like happiness and maybe even excitement. She thought she was becoming rather fond of these men.
They heard the dull thud, and Peggy was leading them at a run toward the gate. The guards who were exchanging duties at the gate were dead. Panni and Edda waited for them. They were wearing HYDRA uniforms. They joined the two agents and Peggy led her expanded team into the building. They were quiet around corners. Stopping the team, Peggy pressed herself close to the wall. Chatting German voices were growing closer; there were two. Catching Panni's eye, Peggy nodded. Tossing her sidearm up in the air, she caught it on the end and gripped tight.
The voices were a step away when Peggy jumped out in front of them. She slammed the grip of her gun into the head of the one nearest her and pushed the other behind her, toward the rest of her team. Peggy drove her knee into the first man's groin and caught his chin with an uppercut. The helmet went toppling away, and she smashed the handle of the Colt into his exposed temple. He dropped like a rock. Not a second later there was second thud; Panni had taken care of the second man.
Peggy paused for breath. The boys were staring at her and Panni. Edda was looking amused.
Dugan whistled lowly. "Remind me not to get on your bad side, Peggy."
She smiled at him and patted his shoulder just one time. They moved on down the corridor. A group of four soldiers were up ahead. Edda and the boys were up. Jones caught the man at the back of the pack, putting his rifle around the soldier's neck and pulling him back. Dernier kicked out the pinned man's legs and sliced upward with his knife. At the same time this was happening, Edda shoved one of the soldiers face down and caught a second one's head with her heel with a fan kick. That same foot slammed down on the first soldier's throat; he made a squealing sound. Then he made no sound. Jones jumped at the second soldier, who was almost recovered from the blow to the head by now. They traded blows and blocked punches before Edda kneed the soldier in the chest. Jones dealt the final blow by slamming his head into the wall.
Dugan had taken the easy way. He'd approached the final soldier, ducked a wild fist and a rogue bullet, caught the soldier, and slit his throat with his bayonet.
"Well done," Peggy told him.
They kept moving, taking down enemies as they encountered them until they made it to the loading bay filled with trucks. Dernier pulled the pin out of one of his homemade grenades, wiggled his eyebrows, and threw it into the midst of the busy garage. Peggy ducked, covered her ears, and opened her mouth. The blast was fast and hot. All of them rose and began to mow down the panicking men with their rifles. Dernier retreated with Panni — they had charges to set and another squad to meet.
Peggy jumped over crates and ducked behind them when it suited her. Jones was firing from the hip with his Browning. Another explosion lit up the confining space: Steve had arrived. Peggy couldn't keep the smile from her face when she heard the snarling of the motorbike he was riding. (It was what she had ridden on her way to Bydgoszcz. Howard had finally finished the bike. It was meant to be a gift for Steve. The captain's face had split into a true smile when Peggy had showed it to him after their intelligence mission the day before. She took that smile to mean that she was forgiven for taking Barnes into a HYDRA facility without Steve's direct supervision.)
Steve didn't get off the motorbike once he was inside the loading bay. Quite the opposite. He snapped off shot from his sidearm from the seat and kept circling around the bay. Jones pinned down the remaining forces in the garage so Steve could pull up alongside Peggy. She jumped onto the seat behind him and pointed down the corridor where they were to go to next. Steve opened the throttle and sent them caroming in the direction she'd indicated.
The motor was loud, and the corridor only made it worse by bouncing the sound back down at them. She felt her heartbeat everywhere, even in her fingertips. Steve jerked the handlebars and took a hard right into two open doors. Peggy flailed and gripped Steve's back hard to keep herself from tumbling off. He'd driven them into the assembly room. Peggy and Barnes hadn't been here when they'd snuck in earlier, but they'd seen signs pointing out the direction to this very place. Now they could see what was being built in this place: enormous tanks. They had to be as tall as two-story buildings. Peggy's throat swelled for a moment when she laid eyes on the incomplete tank that sat in the centre of the room. A warship could have been built in this room.
Up on the catwalk around the top of the assembly room, Peggy spotted Dernier laying charges. She loosened her death grip on Steve's back to wave up at him. Then she grabbed her Thompson and strafed the black-clad troops in the room. The tank was being assembled by dirty women in brown sacks. Peggy felt rage in her. She hoped these women got out of here, but none of them were moving as the attack continued. They stood like dazed pylons. When the charges went off in a few minutes, these people probably still won't have moved. There was no time to dwell on it.
Steve yanked the pins from Howard's explosives and popped off the spoons before tossing the sticky bombs at the piles of supplies around the room. The boxes blew up spectacularly; Peggy had to look away and shield her eyes from the blast. Steve drove around the room twice so that they could destroy every pile of tank parts and weapons in the room. Usually, Howard's bombs would set off a subsequent detonation in the pile of weapons.
Peggy gripped Steve's back tight again when he made a sharp turn out the door they'd come in through — her knees almost scraped the concrete floor, so tight was the turn. A burst of fire chased them into the hallway, but they left it far behind soon enough. She could feel Steve's ribs vibrating with laughter and she smacked his back once they were no longer in danger of tipping over.
They came to a long straight corridor; it would lead them to the back of the facility, their ultimate goal. At the back they'd find the so-called Team James raiding the laboratories. Between them and the end of the corridor stood about fifteen men. Steve leaned below the edge of the shield he had on the front of the motorbike like a windscreen. Peggy half-stood from her seat and sprayed indiscriminate bullets over his head and into the swarm of HYDRA soldiers. Her Thompson jammed and she landed hard on her haunches, ducking behind Steve. The soldiers were firing at them now — she could hear the bullets making ping sounds off the shield. Why they didn't shoot out the tires was beyond Peggy.
Steve made the motor growl worse than ever and barrelled right into the soldiers. Once they were in the thick of it, he activated the igniters in the tailpipe. The uncombusted fuel in the exhaust ignited and scorched the soldiers. Peggy turned in her seat and fired her sidearm at the burning men. They dropped to their knees screaming. Steve kept them tearing down the hallway.
Over the engine, Peggy could hear a firefight up ahead. The labs must have been near, and they must have been well-defended. Peggy took the time to rip the spent magazine out of her Thompson and insert a new one. The lab doors were approaching and Peggy unhooked her grappling line. Steve took a hard left into the lab — it was laid out just like the assembly room. It was several stories tall and opened in the middle.
As soon as they were upright, Peggy half-stood again and fired the grappling line toward a safety railing around the third-level. The hook caught and pulled her up and away from Steve. Peggy fired the Thompson one-handed as the line swung her upward through the air. Below, she knew Steve had dived off the bike and sent it rushing into a tank in the middle of the room. She was going to land across the room from the door they'd just entered on the second-level. Conveniently, a soldier engaged in combat with Falsworth was right where her feet were going to be. Peggy caught him in the head and released the line. When she stopped rolling, she shot the man a single time and sprung to her feet.
Falsworth nodded his thanks to her, and she nodded back. The major immediately started defending her back as she searched the tables and desks on the second level of the lab for anything important. She grabbed every file and document she could get her hand on (the other hand was full of her Thompson). There was actually very little resistance.
Peggy later learned that this was because of Steve. He was everywhere. He was dashing between bullets and throwing his shield with reckless abandon. There was the familiar sound of the thing cutting the air constantly. Steve was running right up to groups of soldiers and shoving the shield at their chests and twisting mid-air to kick two in the head at the same time. First, he'd slide his legs under theirs and the next split-second, while the men were airborne, Steve's arm would come swinging around and the shield was cracking their skulls. He'd deflect one soldier's bullets into a different enemy. It was simply unreal; it didn't appear to cost him any effort.
Peggy had paused with her hands hovering over a ledger to watch this display of superhuman abilities. She'd been shaken from the trance when a bullet missed her by a hair. Another shot rang out — even closer than the first but headed in the opposite direction. The helmeted HYDRA soldier sagged to the ground, dead. Peggy looked behind her to see Sergeant Barnes lowering his rifle. He bent his lips upward into a hollow smile and saluted her. Peggy tipped her head and snatched up the ledger, shoving it into her bag of stolen documents.
Morita ran by saying, "Two minutes, everyone! Start heading for the exits!"
She ran for the opposite side of the second level; there were filing cabinets over there. Bullets chased her partway before suddenly ceasing. Peggy knew they didn't stop because of the blind shots she was firing behind her. Something massive exploded below her. The thin balcony she was running on dented upward, tossing her with it. Peggy slid and rolled before she was back on her feet and running. There was no need to look to know that the place was on fire. Whatever canister Steve's motorbike had hit must have finally ignited. Thank God it hadn't been hydrogen or something — they'd all be dead already. Whatever was in there must have been dense.
Throwing open the drawers of the filing cabinet at random, Peggy yanked papers free. She found a small metal briefcase, and, feeling like she'd really gotten something, shoved it into the pack with the other documents victoriously.
"Carter!" shouted Morita. "Gotta go!"
Peggy spun away from the cabinets and over to the railing. The stairs down had been blown off by some blast. What remained was glowing red from the fire beneath it. No matter. Peggy loaded a new line into her grapple gun. She shot it toward a waterline that ran over the centre of the room at the third level. The hook wound itself around the pipe a few times before clinking secure. Peggy hopped over the safety railing and swung off the ledge of the second landing, finger applying steady pressure to the switch that let her descend. Halfway across the room she released the line and fell. Steve's arms broke her fall.
Morita grabbed her sleeve as Steve set her back on her feet. She ran with the communications officer while Steve went to reclaim the bike. Falsworth was waiting at the door, laying down covering fire for them. Peggy and Morita darted out the door and toward the predetermined egress point. To get there, they had to run down another long, straight corridor, though it wasn't as long as the one to the get to the back of the facility. There were no troops in front of them; it was a clear shot out of the place. Dernier met them just as they were exiting.
Just as the four of them broke out into the sunlight, Peggy heard the growling of Steve's motorbike coming up behind them. Dugan, Barnes, and Jones were at the end of the facility's clearing, facing the building. ("Wahoo!" Dugan was positively shrieking in delight.) A HYDRA truck was behind them, idling. Edda and Panni could be seen in the cab. Peggy understood that the boys were laying down the fire necessary for the rest of them to evacuate, and the agents were the get-away drivers. Jones had his Browning mounted on the bipod now, and Dugan was directing him at the soldiers that were up on the balconies of the building. Barnes had his face pinched in a funny duck-like way as he fired precise and controlled shots.
Part of the facility burst outward with a hot flash and streaks of fire. Peggy could feel it on her back, but she didn't pause to look until she had dived into the bed of the idling truck. Morita and Falsworth were in beside her seconds later. The truck started to roll forward. Dernier was fast enough and jumped in while the truck was just beginning to roll. Then Jones was lying on top of all of them at once — and then Dugan was on top of him. The wheels were really rolling under them now.
Morita knocked all the limbs off of himself until he was at the open flaps of the truck. He shouted, "Barnes, get your ass on this truck! What the fuck do you think you're doing? Get in here!"
Peggy could see Barnes holding his ground, firing rounds at the facility again and again. But as soon as Steve shot passed him on the motorbike, Barnes swung his rifle down and sprinted after the truck. Morita and Dugan grabbed the sergeant's arms and hauled him into the bed of the truck.
The seven of them sat there, panting for breath and jittery as the adrenaline of the fight wore off. Peggy let the sound of Steve's motorbike alongside the truck ground her for a moment.
"Whoo," Barnes said, winded. An understatement. Peggy watched him run a hand through his hair. That same hand dug into his blue jacket, pawing around for something. It came away with a pack of cigarettes. "Anybody want one?"
Dugan cuffed the sergeant on the back of the head. "Give me those."
Peggy took one when the pack got passed around to her.
Note: I like to think Dum Dum and Bucky sang "The Parting Glass," because I'm a basic bitch. tbc