Sam

Overwhelmed by instincts he doesn't know he still has, Sam swerves at the sound of the explosion and slams on the brakes. He spills out of the car, staring back up the road in horror. Behind them in the dusk, he can see the silhouette of the hillside and a patch of bright orange flame. There's a plume of smoke rising like a ghost against the dark blue sky.

"What the fuck?" he gasps, because just as he knows it was the house that just went up, he also knows that HYDRA was not responsible for it. They haven't seen any other vehicles on the road, and no second team could have gotten there that fast. So unless HYDRA somehow launched another domestic missile strike without SHIELD or Pierce, there is only one person who could have blown up that house.

"Barnes, what the actual fuck?" Sam yells, even though he knows it's bad and he's losing his calm but this is all getting to be a bit too fucking much. He's crashing from the adrenaline, scared, exhausted, but it's more than that. He's put his entire life on hold to help a friend-of-a-friend who just came close to cutting his throat and might still kill him at any moment, and Captain America just got shot in the head, and now he's fleeing the crime scene of a multiple homicide where the same friend-of-a-friend just blew up another friend's home and his wrist really fucking hurts.

He knows he's been unfair as soon as he's done shouting, but it's too late. The damage is done. Barnes goes all stiff, and for a second Sam thinks he's going to attack. But instead Barnes just hunches his shoulders in, curling down over his knees. His hands, flesh and metal, interlock at the back of his neck, and it's almost like if he was out of the car, he'd be kneeling on the floor at Sam's feet like a beaten dog.

"Winter – don't do that," Sam says but it's no good. The Soldier is silent and Sam can just make out his unfocused staring through the curtain of his hair, can hear his soft, uneven breathing. "Please," Sam asks again, but Barnes has dissociated, hard, and so far they haven't found anything that helps bring him back to himself until he's ready.

Sam just stands in the middle of the road next to the idling car, watching the distant flames glow a dull orange against the sky and comes to a realisation. He doesn't know what to do. Both Steve and Barnes should be in the hospital. Sam could always turn round and head straight there now Barnes is too out of it to object. Steve could get a much needed MRI and Barnes...Barnes would be instantly seized by SWAT or the army or the CIA and dragged off to some secret supermax dungeon under GTMO, probably never to be seen again. Fuck.

Sam can't do it. Besides, it's probably too late now. It's not so remote up here that a house blowing up won't result in the whole county crawling with cops inside of two hours. And there's the other HYDRA agents Barnes was afraid of - they can't be far behind.

Sam turns back to the car and spends a few valuable minutes reassuring himself that Steve isn't so badly hurt that they need to risk the hospital regardless of the danger. Fortunately for Sam's peace of mind Steve opens his eyes a crack when Sam gives him a firm shake and even mutters something uncomplimentary before going back to sleep. Motor and verbal response, a GCS of 11 or 12, normal pupil reaction...It could be a lot worse. They obviously gave out hard heads back in the day. And as for Barnes...well. There's so much blood on him Sam has no idea if any of it belongs to the man himself. But he had been walking around fine back at the cabin after all, so all Sam can do for now is hope he's not hurt so bad it can't wait. They have to get moving.

A little more reassured that no-one is going to die on his watch, Sam sets off again. He doesn't know where they're going except away from the burning remains of the cabin, so he just keeps driving, taking them west.

After about forty minutes, Steve wakes up again. He's still sleepy and pretty out of it, but Sam is again reassured that the prolonged unconsciousness is not as bad as he first feared. It seems possible that the supersoldier serum is acting to concentrate the healing somehow, taking recovery time for a severe concussion from a month down into a few hours. If that is the case, a stretch of unconsciousness this long is probably less worrying for Steve than it might be for a normal, unenhanced person. Still, having Steve even somewhat alert improves Sam's stress levels considerably. Not that Steve is awake for long; he coughs, rubs his head, groans, and then starts asking questions. Is Bucky all right, what happened at the cabin, where are they? Once Sam has reassured him on all counts and asked a few questions of his own, Steve falls asleep again.

Barnes himself doesn't react to the sound of Steve's voice, and remains silent and unmoving, staring unblinking down at his knees.

They stop for the first time after about three hours when Sam's eyes close involuntarily and he almost drives them into a tree. He's exhausted and the adrenaline has long since fizzled out. He pulls off at a gas station and kills the engine, opening the door to let in the cold night air and a rich scent of pine. He rubs his probably fractured wrist and breathes in the night. He's feeling guilty about yelling at Barnes; the guy is sick and, God above, Sam knows it's not his fault. If anyone is not to blame for this clusterfuck, it's Barnes. He's a victim in all this. A murderous, terrifying, weaponized, six foot, 260-pound cyborg victim.

Sam gets out of the car, and checks first on Steve - he's out of it - and then crosses round to the passenger side to look in on Barnes. The Soldier has remained in his curled-up position since they left the house, and the levels of Sam's ever-present worry are starting to creep back up again. Sam opens the door and crouches down in the dirt.

"Winter?"

As he expected there's no reply. Sam reaches out and gives the right elbow a cautious shake, ready to leap back if the Winter Soldier wakes up fighting or with the gun in his hand. Barnes does stir, but he moves slowly, unhooking his stiff fingers and lowering his arms to his knees. He doesn't raise his head, but Sam can see his expression now and, under the smears of dried blood, he's somehow managing to look both blank and miserable at the same time.

Sam feels like a piece of shit. In the last few days, Barnes has been kind of astonishing. Sam can absolutely believe that the Winter Soldier's brainwashing was capable of putting him into stand-down if he became too injured to complete a mission. After all, HYDRA had invested a lot of time and effort into their Asset. They wouldn't want him killed or permanently injured for no good reason. And at first, after Barnes gave up on attacking Steve that did seem to be what was happening.

But.

The men that attacked the house had to have been from HYDRA, and they had to have been coming for Barnes. There were at least nine guys in the house, maybe ten; not enough to take on Captain America and the Winter Soldier together. They must not have expected Barnes to fight back. They had been sent to ambush Steve and Sam, and reclaim HYDRA property, not go up against two supersoldiers. But despite all the brainwashing and torture and amnesia, Barnes had not gone with them. They thought he would be theirs instantly, meek and compliant, but whatever the fuck had happened in the house, the last thing Barnes had been was compliant. Not to Hydra, at any rate. He'd protected Steve, hid him when he was injured, called for backup. And then he had, brutally and unflinchingly, slaughtered every single one of his former allies.

It seems that Barnes made a choice for the first time in 70 years. He chose Steve.

"Winter," Sam calls him again. "Come on, look at me."

Barnes's eyes move slowly and he doesn't seem to be able to look up any higher than Sam's knees. But he is listening.

"Listen. I'm really sorry I yelled at you," Sam says. "That was bad and I shouldn't have done it. You didn't do anything wrong. You saved Steve, you called me when you needed help, and you protected us. I know the explosion was just you trying to hide our tracks; I get that. I just shouted because I was stressed and worried about Steve. That's not an excuse I know, and I'm sorry. You did good, okay? I want you to tell me you understand."

It comes across a little patronising despite Sam's best efforts, but Christ, he has no idea what the guy is able to comprehend right now anyway. Barnes is silent. He seems to be processing all that for a few moments before finally he nods. His head comes up a little.

"That's good," Sam encourages, starting to wonder if Barnes has received anything like praise in a really long time. "Now, can you tell me if you're hurt anywherel? Were you injured in the fighting?"

Barnes shakes his head. Sam hopes he knows what he's talking about.

"Okay, great. I'm going to get some gas, okay? I want you to stay here, and look after Steve. "

Barnes doesn't look up, but to Sam's surprise, he picks up Sam's Glock from where it has been resting on his thighs. He slides it onto the dash and then moves his hand away. Sam looks at it.

"Are you...giving that back to me?" he asks. Barnes nods, so Sam slowly takes the gun, and shoves it into his jacket. He's confused, but he doesn't ask any more questions. Maybe Barnes thinks Sam is the most capable of looking after them right now. Or maybe he's assuming Sam is just going to hold up the gas station instead of paying. The guy was a supervillain after all, so really, who can say.

Sam fills up the tank, and then heads into the small store. It's late, maybe 2100, but the sign says the place is open 24/7. He grabs a handful of granola bars and some bottles of water. The clerk glowers, like Sam is wasting his time, but he rings him up.

"Not seen you before."

Sam nods. "Just passing through. Taking the scenic route, but I think I got us lost. Can you tell me if there's a motel around here?"

The guy scowls and launches into a rant about the crappiness of the town, the lack of jobs and the obvious mental problems anyone visiting such a backwater must clearly be suffering.

Eventually Sam manages to get out of him that there's a motel ('a flea-ridden shithole') about twenty miles south of where they are. It's not ideal, but they just need somewhere to hole up while they decide what to do.

He heads back over to the car and the first thing he notices is that the passenger seat is empty. His breath catches, and then he sees that the rear door of the car is open too. He slows his pace, and approaches cautiously. Barnes is crouching low to the tarmac by the rear door, looking down at Steve curled up on the back seat. The Soldier's flesh hand is pressing gently on the dressing on Steve's head. He's taking care of Steve, just like Sam told him to.

Sam feels a weird sensation in his chest. He's proud. Proud that this barely functioning, traumatised fucking mess of a serial murderer, who - FYI, just tore a man's throat out with his teeth - can even comprehend gentleness anymore.

He approaches slowly, making sure to scuff his feet so the Soldier isn't taken by surprise. Even so, Barnes snatches his hand away from Steve like he's been electrocuted. Without a word or a glance to Sam, Barnes scuttles silently back to the passenger seat and gets in, leaving the door that Sam opened for him untouched. Sam sighs, but seeing Barnes walking on the tarmac has just reminded him that the guy is still barefoot and wearing nothing but a blood-soaked t-shirt and sweatpants. Apart from the obvious downsides to sporting a murder-hobo-chic look accessorized in fresh blood spatter, they're out in the countryside in the middle of the night in freaking November. The guy needs some more layers.

Sam opens the trunk of the car, and then gets his next unpleasant surprise of the night. There is a black trash bag in the trunk that wasn't there before. Poking out of the top Sam can just see the barrels of what look like two M4 Carbines. He pokes Barnes's stash of stolen guns and a goddamn grenade rolls out. It has the pin intact, but still. This is getting ridiculous.

The other supplies Sam picked up earlier, before everything went to shit, are still in the trunk, so Sam shoves aside the stolen weaponry and grabs some of the clothes he bought, the first aid box and one of the jars of applesauce. He checks the cut on Steve's head, but it stopped bleeding some time ago and looks like it is starting to close. Good. Then he goes back to Barnes and inspects the Soldier's bare feet as best he can without touching them. They are bloody and cut-up, but there doesn't seem to be any embedded glass or debris that he can see by the light on his phone. Sam makes the Soldier stick his feet out of the car and sluices them off with water, just in case. Then he hands over a pair of socks and the running shoes which Barnes dutifully puts on, and then the hoodie.

Barnes lifts the hoodie to pull it on and then something really weird happens. As he raises his robotic arm, the thing twitches, sudden and violent. For a split second Sam thinks the Soldier is going to strike out at him, but then Barnes grabs the metal wrist in his other hand and drags the prosthetic in close to his chest. He hunches forward around it, breathing hard, trembling. Like he's in pain.

"You okay?" Sam asks, but gets only silence back. After half a minute or so, whatever it is finally passes, and Barnes relaxes, letting the arm fall to his side. But before Sam can ask more, he notices a sudden strange buzzing sound. He wonders for a moment if it is yet another further malfunction with the arm, until he realises he's been hearing that sound for a while, just too quietly to notice until the metal touched it and amplified the vibration.

"Hey, what is that? Is that a phone?"

Barnes reaches across with his flesh hand and into his left pocket. He pulls out a white cell phone and obediently drops it into Sam's waiting hand. The handset stops vibrating, and the cracked screen flashes up with the message ' 21 missed calls' . It's Steve's phone. Barnes must have had it since he called Sam earlier. Sam scrolls through the missed calls, eight from himself from earlier, two from an unknown number and ten from Tony Stark.

Sam stands up and pushes the hoodie back to Barnes. "All right. One thing at a time. Let's finish getting you dressed. Put that on," he instructs, and waits while the other man does it. The arm almost doesn't fit, and he makes a mental note to get a larger size next time. But at least the thing doesn't seem to malfunction this time and Barns manages dressing on his own. Sam puts the jar of applesauce and a plastic spoon on the dash. "I just have to make a phone call, okay? I'll be standing just over there. In the meantime, I want you to try and eat that, but it's okay to stop if it makes you feel sick. But I want you to try."

Sam leaves Barnes staring at the jar, and crosses over towards the trees at the edge of the parking lot. He's probably not out of Barnes' hearing range, but it makes him feel a little better anyway. He dry swallows a bunch of Tylenol, cracks the ice pack that he pinched from Barnes' stash and wraps it around his swollen wrist. Then, cradling the limb to his chest, he takes a deep breath, and hits 'redial'.

The phone rings twice. Then a voice Sam had heard a hundred times on the TV says:

"You know what? Too late, buddy. You just go ahead and die in a fire and don't bother to call anyone. See if I care."

"Mr Stark?" Sam asks after a pause. He knows it is, but he's still cautious. The man's tone changes instantly.

"Um, yeah, and exactly who the fuck are you? 'Cause this is Steve Rogers phone and if you've done something to him, I swear to God that I will-"

"No, it's okay, I'm a friend of Steve's," Sam says, having images of Tony Stark calling down some kind of drone strike on them all because Sam has Steve's phone and sounded 'a bit suspicious'. "My name is Sam, Sam Wilson."

"Well, excuse me if I don't believe you, Mr I'm-apparently-a-friend-of-Steve's-but-his-other-friends-have-literally-never-heard-of-me-before Wilson," Stark snaps. "Now you listen to me very carefully; Hill's already sent a SHIELD team, former SHIELD whatever, to the house to manage the scene and I am in the middle of testing the Mark 43 prototype, which I totally Did Not Build by the way, so if I have to come out there myself and personally kick your ass I'm gonna be in so much-"

"Sir." A posh-sounding guy with a British accent is suddenly on the line, interrupting Stark's tirade. "Sir, former Staff Sergeant Sam Wilson is indeed an associate of Captain Rogers. He assisted the Captain and Black Widow at the Battle of DC and the Battle of the Triskelion against the HYDRA uprising. He works at the Veterans' Association in Washington, and he lives at 1058-"

"Some SHIELD guy?" Stark says. "JARVIS, I think I'd remember-"

"He is not a member of SHIELD, Sir. He was the pilot flying the EXO-7 Falcon winged exoskeleton. I have verified his voice pattern."

"Listen, why don't I just hang up and you guys can talk amongst yourselves?" Sam says, both irritated and alarmed at how much this Jarvis guy seems to know about him. They have his freaking address?

"Sure thing, Feathers, except the only way you're getting out of this conversation is if you put Steve Rogers on the line, and then flap your ass straight over to NYC so I can take a look at those wings," Stark says. "That rig looked heavier than a pig dipped in mud, and you can't bank for shit, I saw the footage. Surprised that gear didn't dump your ass straight into the Potomac the moment you took off. You gotta let me-"

Sam takes the opportunity of Stark monologuing to inhale a granola bar. The sub he ate in the park seems like a really long time ago and he really needs a burger and a coffee, or maybe ten, before he can deal with this crap. As soon as there's a pause in Stark's flow of words, he interrupts.

"Man, there's nothing I'd like better than to have Tony Stark work on my wings, particularly as the rig is currently in, like, eight pieces. But I'm kinda in the middle of something here, so I'm just returning your call to let you know Steve's okay."

"Then what, has the old man finally gone so senile he's forgotten how to answer the damn phone?" Stark has switched from engineer back to mother hen in a heartbeat. "JARVIS picked up reports of the explosion; something blows up around here these days and I just know Steve Rogers will be found hip-deep in that crap, then he's not answering his calls and they find the place on fire and full of corpses... Seriously, what the hell? Tell me this wasn't the Winter-fucking-Soldier."

"It wasn't," Sam assures him, then reconsiders. "Okay, I guess actually it was, but a team attacked the house, I'm pretty sure they were HYDRA. Steve was hurt. Barnes took them all out. He burnt down the house to destroy the evidence."

"Steve's hurt?" Stark snaps, and if Sam was concerned before by Stark's apparently devil-may-care attitude towards Steve, the way Stark says those two words proves him wrong. "Tell me. Now."

"He's got a concussion," Sam explains, deciding to sensor the bit where Steve got shot in the damn head. "He's asleep right now. We're on the road, I'm heading for a motel so they can sleep if off. I'll have him call you in the morning."

"Wait, 'they'? New guy, you better not be telling me you still have the Winter Psycho with you."

Sam winces, hoping Barnes' hearing is not as good as he thinks it is.

"Yeah, Barnes is here," Sam says. "He's in the car eating applesauce."

"Fuck that!" Stark snaps. "I told Steve he was out of his goddamn mind not turning him in the moment he showed up on your doorstep. Sick or not, he's fucking Hydra, and...you know what, never mind. Clearly everyone but me has suspended all rational thought. I don't even know why I let Steve talk me out of this the first time around. JARVIS, get that SHIELD team off stand-down, deploy immediately. They'll be with you in thirty minutes, Tinkerbell."

"I am asking you not to do that, Stark," says Sam, and seriously, this guy is an asshole. "Trust me, a truck full of former SHIELD agents is gonna be the last thing you want Steve to see when he wakes up. And Barnes is doing okay right now but if he thinks he's under attack I don't know what could happen. You have to let Steve handle this. We're gonna get Barnes somewhere safe and then we'll figure out what to do from there."

"Somewhere safe?" Stark splutters. "You don't even have a plan. This guy killed Nick Fury, came damn close to killing Steve and Natasha. You think I'm just gonna let you-"

"I'm not asking for your permission, Stark," Sam says, exhaustion making his tone more biting than usual. "I'm just doing you the courtesy of keeping you up to date. Steve is safe, the Winter Soldier is not currently a danger to us, and we definitely do not need goddamn SHIELD involved. I'm going to turn this phone off in case anyone is tracking it, but I'll have Steve call you back when he's awake."

There is a good ten second pause, and then Stark snaps.

"Fine. But if you both wake up in the morning to find Red Son has carved the State Anthem of the Soviet Union into your foreheads with a hunting knife, don't come crying to me."

The line goes dead.

The passenger seat is empty again when Sam gets back to the car, only this time Barnes isn't in the back with Steve. Sam looks around and even under the car, but there's no sign of him anywhere. The guy has vanished.

"Winter? Where're you at, buddy?" He calls into the dark, trying to sound curious and not at all pissed off. If Barnes gets spooked again, he might disappear for good.

There's no reply. Sam is trying to work out if he has enough energy left to even be alarmed, when he turns around to find Barnes standing silently about five foot from him like a fucking ninja. He must have just stepped out of the trees.

"Jesus!" Sam starts, can't help himself. "Give a guy some warning next time you're creeping about, I coulda shot you."

Barnes just stares at him for a moment, and then to Sam's utter astonishment, speaks.

"Had to take a leak," he says, and his mouth twists up at the side like he's actually amused. Then the almost-smile vanishes and the Soldier turns away and gets back into the passenger seat.

Dumfounded, Sam follows him back to the car, and they set off.

Barnes is silent as they drive in the direction the gas station attendant had reluctantly pointed out to them. When Sam glances at him, the brief flash of awareness he'd just shown seems to have disappeared as quickly as it came; Barnes is just staring at the dashboard, unseeing and unblinking. As he drives, Sam's own exhausted thoughts swirl around the mess of contradictions that is the Winter Soldier. In the last two days, Bucky Barnes has puked his guts up, sobbed his heart out, pissed himself, been catatonic and generally incapable of washing, feeding, or caring for himself in any significant way. He hasn't managed any human interaction that wasn't about his mission . But now in the last few hours he's protected Steve, hidden their tracks, gave Sam his gun back, and issued one pretty spectacular fuck you to the guys who've been controlling his every thought for half a century. In the last ten minutes alone he smiled, talked in English, took himself off to piss without prior instruction, and, from the empty applesauce jar in the footwell, he's even fed himself. If it wasn't for the fact that all that came with the price tag of Barnes burning down a house and murdering nine men, several of them quite brutally, Sam might almost call it progress.

They arrive at the motel and its every bit as much of a shithole as the gas station attendant complained it was. Sam parks at the far end of the lot and leaves Barnes with strict orders not to move until he gets back. Last thing they need is someone seeing a blood-soaked creep wandering around the motel and calling the cops. The teenager at the desk is reading a copy of the National Geographic with a manatee on the front cover, and he eyes Sam with yet more suspicion. Sam ad libs something about the awesome bachelor party he's just driven the guys back from and how this one guy is so wasted he can't even walk, so can they have a room at the end of the row cause their hangovers are gonna be deadly tomorrow? The teen looks vaguely jealous but checks Sam in and tosses him a key to Room 21; two queens and a fold-out bed.

When he gets back to the car, Barnes is, for once, exactly where Sam had left him, staring blankly head. He doesn't respond to Sam's voice. Sam carefully unclips the guy's seat belt for him, being careful not to touch him, and then goes round to wake Steve. Steve surfaces a little when Sam shakes him, mumbling something that sounds like "...movement in the treeline, Monty, 10 o'clock". Sam has to physically haul him from the car but fortunately Steve gets his feet under him with minimal need for Sam to use his fucked-up wrist and the two of them successfully make it into the motel room. Steve slumps onto the nearest bed, holding his head, and just gives a vague thumbs up when Sam asks if he's okay.

Sam leaves him for the moment and goes back to the car to fetch Barnes as he clearly isn't going to follow them in on his own. The guy is huddled into the hoodie but, from what little of his face is showing, Sam can see he's as spaced out again, looking almost as exhausted as Steve. They all need sleep. It takes a few firm calls of "Winter?" and an order to move before Barnes finally stirs himself and Sam leads him back into the motel room. Under the harsh lights, the dried-up smears of blood all over his face and his teeth look even worse, so Sam prods Barnes straight into the bathroom with orders to wash. Sam turns the shower on for him and waits around long enough to check he can manage to undress himself and then leaves the guy to it.

Back in the bedroom, Steve is slumped over his knees, looking like he's about to hurl.

"Hey man, you okay?"

Steve groans. "Yeah. Where's Bucky? Is he okay?"

"He's in the shower. Maybe seems a little better than before, actually. Dude, I cannot believe you let some crappy Nazi knock-off shoot you in the head. You've been out of it for hours."

Steve groans again. "I feel terrible. What year is it?"

It's meant to be a joke but, given the situation, it just comes across as kind of sad.

"Ha ha," Sam humours him. "You tell me, old man. Come on, you must have had your bell rung enough times to know the drill by now."

Steve humorlessly supplies the answers to Sam's questions; what day it is, the President's name, a bunch of key dates from history, as well as reciting a load of army regulations. Sam expands the usual exam by prompting Steve to tell him as much as he can remember about the attack on the cabin, but it's not much. Steve and Bucky had both heard the engine of a vehicle coming up the drive at around the same time but Bucky had recognised the danger first. Steve had been halfway down the hall to grab his shield when the door had been kicked in. He remembers turning over a table and dragging Barnes down behind it. Dodging bullet fire, punching someone, maybe several someones, and then, nothing at all. He barely finished his retelling before he's asleep again. Sam's baseline concern cranks up another notch.

Sam makes a few more trips to the car to bring in the basics of their stuff: clothes and food, the Glock and Steve's shield. Looks like the tranq gun and Nat's super-soldier cuffs were both victims of the fire, and Sam can only fervently pray that this strange truce Steve has going on with Barnes will hold out. He dithers for a moment but decides that the bag of weapons the Soldier stripped from the HYDRA agents is safest left locked up in the trunk. He keeps his Glock.

Once he's back in the room, Sam balances Steve's shield on the side table where Steve will see it when he wakes up, and then hides the Glock where he can get to it quickly if he needs to. Then he grabs a set of the new clothes for Barnes, along with a few toiletries and knocks on the bathroom door. It's been a while, maybe the guy has drowned.

"Winter? It's Sam. Can I come in? Got some clothes for you."

There's a long, long silence. The water is still going. Sam waits, and finally a quiet voice inside says, "Ja. Kommen Sie herein."

Sam frowns; Barnes has muddled his English and Russian a lot so far, but this is the first German they've heard. A sign of just how tired Barnes is? But at least he's managed to shower without incident. Sam goes into the bathroom and finds that of course that positive thought had been too soon. Barnes is crouching on the floor of the shower cubicle, naked and shivering under the beat of the spray because he either couldn't or wouldn't turn the heat up and the water is goddamn freezing. It takes maybe forty minutes and most of his sanity but eventually Sam manages to get Barnes blood-free, dry and warm, without another meltdown. Steve sleeps through it all.

Sam deposits Barnes, now in clean sweats, t-shirt and socks on the other bed, curled up against the headboard and blinking unevenly. Sam makes him eat another jar of applesauce, while he himself consumes a joyless meal of cold beans straight out of the can, before ordering the Soldier to sleep. Barnes seems to struggle with himself for a moment, and Sam sees his eyes flick between the door, the window, Steve and then to Sam.

"Дозор?" He asks. "Watch...?"

Sam nods. "I'm on watch, yes. No-one is going to get in. You can sleep."

The effect is instantaneous. Barnes sighs, slumps a little, and is out faster than a winter nightfall. Sam is left alone.


Ja. Kommen Sie herein - Yes. Come in.

Дозор - Watch