Chapter 9

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Eastern Europe had never been Steve's favorite place in the world. This time of year it was cold and damp, with a keen wind. Global politics and stresses made it impossible to navigate easily, and the fact that they were operating under only the slimmest of sanctions from the United States didn't help much either.

The story Peggy had told the office back home was that she was taking her new husband to England as a sort of belated honeymoon in order to meet her family.

Never mind that neither her parents nor her brother had survived the war. Nobody other than Colonel Phillips had read her file enough to know that particular detail, and he was very carefully Not Asking Questions.

Plausible deniability was an admirable thing.

They'd met up with Falsworth in Dover and Dernier in Paris. Both had been just as surprised and delighted at Steve's unexpected resurrection, and both had immediately hardened into determination when they learned their beloved Sarge was also alive and held prisoner.

"Shocking," Falsworth had grumbled under his breath. "Truly shocking." His mustache was as carefully groomed as ever—he'd hardly changed a bit. Morita, on the other hand, had changed the most out of their small band. Clean-shaven and twenty pounds heavier, he had returned home and found an office job. He was married now too, with a baby on the way.

Steve, when he'd learned that, almost hadn't let his old friend come along.

"No," he said. "I can't guarantee you'd be safe, and I don't—I can't—they deserve more. Your family deserves a husband and father who's alive and can come back to them."

Morita raised his chin a notch, every inch the stubborn Nisei who had confronted Steve over his inclusion on the team. "And Barnes has a family who deserves to have their son and brother come home to 'em," he fired back. "Don't forget—I spent months in a cage with that guy, before you came to rescue us. I owe him a lot. We all do."

So Morita stayed on.

It was an odd honeymoon, very unconventional. Once the team left cities and hotels behind and started driving and camping cross-country through the war-torn countryside, there was little to no privacy for the bride and groom, with no opportunity for much more than hand-holding and the occasional quick kiss.

Morita and Dernier and Jones looked immensely pleased every time they caught the couple sharing these little moments of affection.

Dugan, on the other hand, played the adolescent and pretended to be dismayed.

"Don't do anything that'll make me come over and dump a bucket of water on your heads," he warned the first night in the field.

Peggy sniffed decidedly from where she was laying out her bedroll beside Steve's in the pup tent they would share. "I have no intention of making a spectacle of myself," she retorted tartly, fondly. "But it is chilly, and if you think I intend to freeze my toes off when I have a perfectly good husband to help keep me warm, you'd better think twice."

It was slightly awkward to bed down together so near the others. They all slept fully clothed, since the chill in the air made it impractical to do anything else, but even so, Steve felt rather as though he were doing something terribly indecent the first night when everybody turned in and Peggy slipped under his blanket and found her way into his arms. Her breath hissed shivering between her teeth; she tucked her stockinged toes under his leg to keep warm.

"You okay?" he breathed, pulling her closer, and she nodded, nuzzling her face into his neck.

Steve involuntarily yelped, softly. Her nose was like an ice cube.

Dugan's teasing stage-whisper pierced the darkness. "Getting frisky, you two?"

Peggy hauled herself up on an elbow, letting a gust of cold air under the blanket, and lobbed a convenient pine cone out the open end of the pup tent directly at Dugan's head. "Pipe down, you," she demanded, and a round of sleepy chuckles followed Dum Dum's mock injured groan.

Grinning, Steve lay still and looked up at the triangle of night sky visible through the tent opening as Peggy lay down again. It always took her a while to find a comfortable sleeping position; he knew that now, and he loved that he was even in a position to learn such an intimate thing about her. At long last she settled, and he relaxed, tugging the blanket up over her shoulder, breathing in the scent of her hair and the pine forest around them.

"I love you," he whispered, unable to help himself.

She tipped up her head. "I love you too," she breathed. They kissed, silently in the darkness so the others wouldn't hear, and then she snuggled close again, her head under his chin.

Peggy fell asleep quickly. Steve stayed awake, looking out at the sky again. The stars shone down, brighter than they'd ever been in New York. Close at hand, he could hear the breathing of his teammates. Jones sat the first watch, nearly invisible against the dark trees at his back.

It was all so familiar—so wonderfully familiar.

For the first time, the future in his past seemed almost unreal, as though all of it—the aliens, the friends, the companions, the enhanced weaponry—had been some kind of impossible dream. A difficult, wonderful, dream filled with tragedy and friendship and moments of satisfaction, but a dream that he was oh so glad to have woken from.

Gently, he pressed his lips to the crown of Peggy's head, and closed his eyes, great gratitude swelling up in him for this second chance.

Thank you, God, he thought to the starry skies above, and drifted off to sleep.

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"So where did this intel on Barnes come from anyway? Can we trust the source?"

It was Falsworth who asked, their third day on the trail. They'd paused for lunch, parking the big army surplus truck they'd acquired and eating in the shade of the cab. Even though they were in the middle of nowhere, they still kept their voices low and tried to avoid using fire.

If Soviet forces caught them this far inside their borders and without papers, it would be considered espionage at the best, an act of war at the worst.

"Friend of mine." Steve's throat grew tight. "Ex-Soviet operative."

Morita puckered his eyebrows. "Can we trust him?"

The words wrenched out of him without his consent. "Her. Natasha Romanoff." Even saying her name brought pain—he sucked in a controlled breath. "I've trusted her with my life more times than I can count, and she always came through."

Dugan and Dernier shot cautiously worried looks at each other and then at Peggy. Gabe swallowed the mouthful of hard biscuit he'd been chewing and carefully asked, "Will we be meeting up with her?"

If they were worried about Peggy finding out that her husband had been running around with a Russian woman, their fears were put to rest as Peggy put down her sandwich and reached to slip her hand into Steve's in silent support. She knew about Natasha, and as much of Vormir as he'd dared tell her.

Steve squeezed her hand gratefully.

"She's—dead." The words were so, so hard to get out. He'd grieved her every day since her death, but it was a loss he knew wouldn't ease up soon. "Died just before I got back. Went out a hero."

The rest of the Commandos nodded, understanding perhaps more than Steve meant to say. He hoped they wouldn't still think he'd been stepping out on Peggy with her. He loved both women, just in very different ways.

Because Peggy was the love of his life—but Natasha was the sister he never had.

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For a while, it seemed the intel was wrong.

Three days of hiking and driving later, and they couldn't find the base.

"It should be just here," Peggy insisted, flipping through the files from Bucky's folder. Steve had held the later ones back, but there was enough documentation from this time period that he'd been almost certain they could find the location.

Now, however, it seemed less likely.

Dernier, ever distractible, had wandered away from the others. Now he came running back, waving both hands in his excitable way. "I have found, have found," he hissed. "Beneath. Is below, tu comprends?"

They didn't understand, not at first; not until they followed him through the trees to where the ground dropped off into a ravine—and there, flanked by silent guards, they saw the front door set flush into the rocky wall.

The blood pounded in Steve's ears; he caught his breath with a sense of something like grim triumph.

"Gotcha."

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The base was given very little warning. Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos hit like a force of nature, sweeping in through the front doors and bowling over everything in their path.

"Try not to let them know we're Americans," Steve had urged them in the moments before the attack. Falsworth cleared his throat pointedly, and the captain nodded, acknowledging the point; "well, Allies then. We don't have authority to be conducting an armed strike this far East."

Anything with English or French writing had been left in the truck, which they concealed a good half-day's march away before working their way back to the hidden base. Peggy had torn the labels out of Steve's jacket—Jones left his engraved canteen under the driver's seat.

If anything happened to any one of them, they needed to leave no clue that could be followed back to their home countries.

Honestly though, with the element of surprise on their side, the day appeared to be going their way. The base didn't seem to have many guards, and the research assistants who were there cowered and ran, more interested in getting away from the unexpected attack than staying and fighting. Steve knew from his notes that this was mainly a research station, but he didn't recognize any faces from the records he'd memorized in the future.

It appeared that the chief scientists were away from the base at the moment, which—while it was a stroke of luck—Steve found himself disappointed about.

He'd read what those beasts had done to his friend. He'd seen the scars, heard Bucky's hoarse screams as he relived these very days in nightmares.

And the part of him that had always yearned for justice felt a fierce regret that he was unable to teach those men a lesson.

The Commandos pressed deeper and deeper into the base, kicking open door after door in a hasty, driven search for their lost fellow. If he was here, they would find him.

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In the end, it was Gabe Jones who found him.

Steve had never seen his old friend look so ill as he did in that moment, turning from the door he'd just kicked down and waving Steve over.

The sight that greeted his eyes when he reached Gabe's side nearly made him sick.

The room was stark, sterile, freezing cold. There was a drain in the center of the tiled floor, and a hose coiled neatly at the side, convenient for cleaning up whatever unspeakable mess might be made.

And in the center of the room sat what was left of James Buchanan Barnes.

He was naked, strapped down into a chair that looked like a more archaic version of the wiping equipment Steve had uncovered in half a dozen Hydra bases after the Triskelion disaster in the future. Burns seared his face and head beneath the roughly hacked hair; evidently the exact voltage of electricity was still being determined.

He stared blankly forward, no flicker of life or recognition in his eyes.

This man wasn't yet the cold, merciless soldier, but neither was he the young man they had all known.

Gabe started forward. Steve grabbed his shoulder. "Stay back," he ordered tersely. If Bucky turned violent, Gabe would be dead. Instead, he drew his own gun and pressed it into Jones' hand so it couldn't be stolen and used against him, and then stepped forward.

"Bucky?" he asked, reaching for the first strap binding his friend's flesh arm and beginning to loosen it. It had been tightened to the point where it cut viciously into Bucky's skin, glued to his body with dried blood. "Can you hear me, Buck?"

One eyelid twitched, but there was no other movement.

Behind him he heard Peggy's familiar step, and then her sudden intake of breath as she saw the horrible scene.

"Watch the door," he ordered whoever would listen, and jerked the next two straps free, keeping his voice low and soothing. Bucky's missing arm had been replaced by an older version of the metal arm he was familiar with, he noted. Still functional, but definitely not as seamless as the one he'd seen in 2012, and not even in the same league as the one Wakanda had provided.

The instant the last strap fell from his arm, Bucky moved, quick as a flash, clamping the freed hand around Steve's throat in a vice-like grip. Behind him, somebody gasped in horror. Steve had the advantage though; Bucky's metal arm and his torso were still strapped down, and after a moment or two he was able to break the chokehold.

"Bucky," he tried again, and then cleared his throat. Bruises were already forming; he could feel them. "Buck, it's me. It's Steve. We're here to get you out. Time to go home, buddy."

And just for an instant, he saw it; a shift deep in Bucky's eyes, a look of something dawning. The hand paused, trembled once, and then slowly lowered to his side.

Time was running out. Steve gambled and wrenched the rest of the straps free. Bucky didn't try to attack him again, and let him half-lift him to his feet, seeming totally unaware of his surroundings. He didn't try to make a lunge for anybody though, so Steve counted that as a win.

"Here." Soft cloth was shoved into his hand, and Steve tore his eyes from his best friend's face just long enough to see that Peggy was handing him a white coat. It was like something a doctor or scientist would wear, and long enough that it would give their old friend at least a modicum of modesty. "Dernier's almost finished. We're running out of time," she warned.

Bucky didn't balk at having the white coat put on him. His eyes didn't leave Steve's face throughout the process. A furrow was growing between his brows, as though he was confused or angered by something.

Steve prayed it was the former.

"Come on," he urged his friend. "We gotta go."

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They made it almost to the front before they ran into trouble.

Whether additional forces had been called in, or a routine shift change had taken place, Steve figured he'd never know. All he knew was that suddenly there were far too many enemies and way too many guns, and not enough Commandos to go around.

Morita had been left to keep the exit clear. They found him sheltering behind an overturned desk, clutching weakly at his bloody side, his gun leveled at the doorway leading into the outer foyer.

He had the advantageous position. Their enemies couldn't get past him as long as his ammunition held—the bodies on the floor testified to his aim—but neither could the Commandos get out.

Dugan swore and dropped beside Morita, trying to staunch the steady flow of blood. Morita yelped and cursed faintly between clenched teeth.

"I can't get a good angle," Falsworth called, eyes narrowed in concentration as he tried to get an unobstructed shot without exposing himself. A bullet splintered the doorframe an inch above his head, and he jolted back into the safety of their hallway.

Jones backtracked a few yards, but then returned shaking his head. They had known coming in that there was no back exit to the place. The base was like a bottle, with the only way in or out through the foyer that was just ahead.

And now armed forces stood in their way.

They were outnumbered, wounded, and well and truly hemmed in.

Automatically, Steve reached to touch the comm in his ear, but it was empty. His team wouldn't be born for another fifty years or so.

Instead, he turned on his heel.

"Protect," he ordered Bucky, first in English, then in Russian, one hand firm on his friend's shoulder, the other hand reaching for Peggy, tugging her closer. He knew it was an order the Winter Soldier had once known, but he didn't know if this Bucky had reached that point yet. Either way, he had to try. "Protect Agent Carter, Buck."

Bucky blinked, and his gaze flickered from Steve to Peggy and back again. He looked increasingly confused, but Steve figured that would have to do.

Either way, there was no more time.

"Take care of him," he begged Peggy. Her eyes were filled with love and faith and concern—she nodded.

Then Steve Rogers stooped, pressed one last hasty kiss to his wife's lips, and burst around the corner like an avenging angel.

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It was not a pretty fight.

He had faced odds like these before—twenty, twenty five, thirty to one, but not usually without his shield. Still, these men had colluded with the human experimentation and torture of his very best friend.

They had no idea what hit them.

Everything slipped into a smooth, adrenaline-driven sequence of tactics. There wasn't time to think, so Steve just let his instincts and over a decade of combat and martial arts training take over. He didn't even try to pull his punches—his wife's life and the lives of the men who followed him were in his hands, and he didn't dare let up.

Kick—punch—shove—leap—dodge—kick again—gun, gun, get the—NOW!

Most of the men went down fast or retreated. Three or four tried to keep up the assault, but Steve rapidly slapped their guns away, driving his elbows, knees, feet deep into everything he could. Somebody landed on his back, and a glint of steel set his instincts screaming. He caught the attacker's wrist right before the eight-inch knife could plunge into his eye, and felt the crack of bone as he twisted hard, before throwing the man over his head and into another man's face.

And then—then there was nobody left to face him. He stood alone in a room scattered with the bodies of his attackers. They were either dead or wounded; he had no desire to determine which.

Steve straightened slowly, scanning his surroundings before turning back to the mouth of the hallway from which the Commandos were cautiously emerging. From their wide eyes, he knew he'd just shown more than he'd wanted.

The captain they'd last seen hadn't fought like this.

"You okay?" he asked. He'd heard the shots, knew that his men had been picking off what few of his attackers they could without hitting him in the process. "Are you…"

"We're fine," Peggy spoke for the others, squeezing past them. One of Morita's arms was over her shoulder; Gabe Jones had the other. "We need to get Jim out of…"

A shot split the air.

On alert, Steve spun around, only to see one of his previously downed attackers sprawl backwards onto the floor, a gun in his hand. The man had clearly been aiming to shoot him in the head or back—but Steve didn't feel the blooming pain of a bullet wound.

That man hadn't fired a shot.

Because Bucky had.

Bucky Barnes stood in the mouth of the hallway, pistol still pointing at the man he had killed. Dugan slapped at his own hip in shock, apparently only just discovering his gun wasn't in the holster. Everyone else stood very still.

"Bucky?" Steve asked. His heart twisted in his chest with mingled hope and fear. "Buck?"

Bucky's face was drawn, his eyes haunted. Slowly, slowly, he raised his gaze from the man on the floor to the captain's face. His hand flexed around the grip of the gun, but he didn't redirect it at anybody. Instead, he licked his lips.

"...S-steve?"

Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and Bucky Barnes passed out cold.

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Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a very happy holiday season to you all! I'm so grateful to you all for sticking with me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Oooh, and there's fan art! Fellow fanfiction author DocMui commissioned a truly lovely piece inspired by this story. I can't add a link, but head on over to his Tumblr account at greenjacketwhitehatdocmui to see it!

Guest Review Replies:

Ryn (5/29/2022) I hope you see this! I wanted to thank you for your lovely comments! Never apologize for the rambling—you have no idea how happy it makes me. I'm utterly thrilled you're enjoying it, and that you liked the way the characters grew and changed during the intervening years while remaining in love. Thank you so much! I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

DBZfan45: Thank you so much! It's always a pleasure to know you're enjoying this. I love the image of Colonel Phillips as Steve's father-in-law figure. :D

Em: Awww, thank you! And yes! You caught the Easter egg! That is an excellent song to have on your Spotify wrapped—I really should add it to my playlist. Thanks again for your kind review!

My-secret-garden: Hi, and thank you! Yes, time travel is confusing and I'm being pretty hand-wavy about it all, so no worries. And I do indeed have Tumblr, and followed you! Okay, I loved your comment about married life, because that's one of my biggest fanfiction pet peeves. People have their otp be all cute and romantic and affectionate—and then they get married and bam—the cuteness is gone and it's never mentioned again. And that bothers me because the cutest couples I know are the ones who are married and live/laugh/love together. So I try super hard in all my stories to keep the magic going, and I'm thrilled that you noticed.