For Steven Grant Rogers, the man behind the Captain America character, everything felt urgent. He didn't stop to let himself think or feel before he raided the immense HYDRA facility. He pocketed one of the glowing blue cartridges without thinking about it; it was strange, so he took one. His attacks on the guards in the cellblock weren't planned ahead. Steve's heart was hammering away inside his chest, strong and without faltering. There wasn't time to think.

After he got the cages open and realised that Bucky wasn't among the prisoners, Steve's heart froze in his chest for just a moment. It was impossible. He wouldn't believe it yet. Stepping between a GI with a bowler hat and what Steve assumed was a Nisei soldier, Steve asked, "Is there anyone else? I'm looking for a Sergeant James Barnes."

His enhanced hearing was picking up so many sounds that he barely heard a Brit say, "There's an isolation ward in the factory, but no one's ever come back from it."

That was all Steve needed to hear. All the other voices washed over him, unheard. He didn't ask any other follow up questions or wait to hear if there was more he should know. Leaving the men with a brief sitrep of the surrounding area and where he'd rendezvous with them, Steve took off back toward the factory.

He barely felt the blows he dealt to the HYDRA guards. His stamina didn't waver. The breath never faltered in his lungs. Vision didn't narrow, hands never shook. This was incredible. This was wonderful – if only he weren't so afraid to get to this isolation ward and realise that Bucky wasn't there. Steve might have enjoyed the feeling of overcoming all of these hostiles in the way he'd always wanted to his entire life if it weren't for the niggling worry for Bucky.

Because it honestly felt unreal. Impossible. Steve could not conceive of a world that didn't have Bucky in it. He couldn't remember being alive and not knowing Bucky. The notion of Bucky – the person Steve had known virtually his entire life, his oldest friend, the person who was his goddamn brother in every respect but blood – not existing at the same time as Steve just did not make sense. It had obviously shut down Steve's higher mental functions and made him do insane things like attack a heavily fortified enemy base singlehandedly without a plan.

But, to Steve, there wasn't any other option. He had to.

When the guards suddenly seemed to be scarce and he saw a little man in a suit and glasses making a break for it, he knew he was in the right place. When Steve actually found Bucky in that isolation ward where he was strapped down to a table situated directly beneath the most sinister-looking equipment a person could imagine, Steve felt like he finally took a deep breath. A real breath. The first one since Peggy sent ice through his blood when she told him his latest audience had contained the remnants of the 107th.

With that breath, he said, "Oh my god."

After that breath, Steve immediately wanted to throw up. He'd expected Bucky to be either perfectly alive in the factory or as dead as Phillips had told him he was. Steve hadn't counted on finding him like this. Steve wanted to throw up, and he was angry about it. The straps holding Bucky down were no match for Steve's wrath. The hardware buckled under the force of him, tinkling to the concrete floor. The last strap snapped against the edge of the table when he threw it off of Bucky's chest. He wanted them off.

"Is—is that…?" Bucky slurred.

Steve hated the way it sounded. Unsure, cautious, vulnerable. He spoke over it, "It's me. It's Steve."

"Steve?" Bucky reached an uncoordinated hand up toward him.

"Come on," he said. Couldn't stand the sight of him lying there and sounding like that. Gripping Bucky's shoulders – why did he feel so different to Steve's new hands, so fragile and thin? – Steve sat up his friend and pulled him off that table.

"Steve."

He hated the groan Bucky made when his feet hit the ground. Hated the way such a small movement seemed to have winded him. Hated that he couldn't straighten up or balance himself. But he was breathing and alive and responding, and it was more than Steve had an hour ago. He couldn't help himself from clapping a hand against the side of Bucky's head and scanning his friend head to toe to prove to himself this was real.

"I thought you were dead," Steve finally said.

Bucky stared him up and down with glassy eyes just the same way Steve had and said, "I thought you were smaller."

Right, Steve told himself. He didn't exactly look the same as the last time that he'd seen Bucky. The state Bucky was in, clearly doped up to the gills with something, he probably couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. They'd have to get to that later.

Steve scanned the room, looking for anything that might be useful to bring Bucky back to himself. His eyes caught on a map that was visible inside a window set a storey up from their position. A shielded mezzanine for observation? Steve stared and committed the locations of the little flags on the map to memory until he registered Bucky's grip convulsing on his arms.

Priorities.

"Come on." Steve shifted so that one of Bucky's arms was around his neck and one of his own arms was curled around Bucky's back.

Steve turned and started to leave. But Bucky's feet didn't move even though his hand was clutching Steve's jacket. Lucky the serum had improved Steve's reflexes; he wouldn't have been able to catch Bucky's other elbow before he hit the floor otherwise. Steve started for the door again and said in the calmest voice he could manage given the circumstances, "I gotcha."

The toes of Bucky's boots dragged for the first few steps before he was able to get his feet underneath himself. His knees buckled with every step. He kept sliding in Steve's grip, but Steve was reluctant to hold on any tighter. Bucky was already holding back choppy gasps from what little pressure Steve was using to hold him.

"What happened to you?" Bucky said.

Steve checked the shadows for anyone waiting in ambush for them outside the door. "I joined the Army."

Bucky shoved himself away once they were in the hallway, and Steve let him even though he wasn't walking in a straight line and still wasn't holding himself fully upright. Too many times had Steve been on the other side of this particular arrangement and done the same thing when Bucky was bringing him home after a back-alley fight. Maybe he just needed a few steps to walk it off.

"Did it hurt?" came the next congested question.

Steve threw a glance behind himself. "A little."

"Is it permanent?"

Steve should have known better than to think that Bucky wouldn't try to lecture him immediately. "So far."

He picked up the pace then and didn't get anymore questions. Like riding a bike. Like getting on your feet immediately after a long sleep. Bucky just needed to get up and moving, then he'd be alright. That's what Steve told himself. What he made himself believe, because there wasn't time to do anything else. They had to get out of here, and, if Bucky was going to walk under his own power, then Steve was going to let him. There was no room to think that he couldn't hold himself together.

Steve expected Bucky to navigate up and down the rickety staircases that were groaning from their combined weight and the heat. And he did it. He mostly kept up with the pace Steve set. Through smoke that contained god-knew-what particulates, hot debris shooting at them from all directions, through the faceoff with Schmidt, across the unanchored girder over an inferno: Bucky held up.

Even though Steve knew Bucky wouldn't leave once the girder fell with both of them on opposite sides, he told him to anyway. Steve knew what he was going to attempt even before Bucky's refusal. And he knew as soon as his feet left the landing that he'd misjudged the jump. He just barley wouldn't have enough distance. Bucky knew it. Steve saw in slow motion the realisation growing in his eyes as the hot smoke from some explosion surged up around them.

So it wasn't a surprise to either of them that Bucky threw half of himself over the railing and caught Steve's wrist. The railing deformed around Bucky's abdomen with Steve's new mass handing off the end of his arm. Enhanced hearing picked up the sound of Bucky's groan over the next explosion below. Steve gripped a nearby section of railing and released his hold on Bucky's arm as quickly as he could. Even though this section of railing was heat fatigued and bent, it felt more stable than Bucky's arm. Steve pulled himself up and over the railing as his friend pushed himself off the bent rail and fell to his knees heavily.

"Come on," Steve said breathlessly. "Almost there."

But Bucky wasn't getting up. He was coughing and panting and clenching his hands over and over again, looking like he was getting ready to be sick. Another thing below them exploded. The surge of heat was almost painful through the metal mesh of the landing. The air was clouded with more dark smoke, and it was getting so thick that Steve was having a hard time seeing through it.

"Bucky, come on." Steve stumbled toward him and reached a hand out. Bucky didn't acknowledge it. He coughed and coughed and tried to get in a breath between them. So Steve grabbed his arm again and dragged him upright. "Let's go. You're alright."

It struck Steve again how many times he had lived this arms-slung-over-each-other's-shoulders walk as he dragged Bucky to the blinking red light of the exit. How many times? How many times had Bucky led Steve home while he was barely conscious? The role reversal wasn't entirely welcome right now, Steve thought.

On the other side of the door with the blinking light was another staircase. Steve charged up it and through the next door at the top. Thankfully, they were outside once they got through that one. On the roof. Bucky's knees gave again, and Steve lowered him to the ground carefully. Kept one hand on Bucky's back and the other on his chest while his friend retched bile and black saliva onto the roof. Steve watched the chaos going on down on the grounds. The other prisoners had commandeered trucks and armoured vehicles. They'd breached the outer gates and barbed wire fences. There were flashes of light from those strange weapons that HYDRA carried and the familiar rattle and bang of conventional weapons.

Looked like it was a pretty even fight so far, Steve was glad to see.

Bucky stopped trying to puke his literal guts out and slumped against Steve's leg. The roof rumbled beneath them with more explosions.

"This is a dream," Bucky said weakly.

Steve laughed and was about to respond when he heard boots on the stairs behind them. German shouting echoed up to the them. Hand tight on Bucky's arm, Steve dragged him away from the doorway. Two HYDRA soldiers, one bearing some sort of arm-mounted cannon and the other with a conventional sidearm.

Steve charged without much thought. The edge of the shield he was still carrying came down on the arm of the soldier with the pistol with a crunch. Steve followed that up with a punch to the face. The soldier's partial facemask deformed under the blow, and he dropped. The blue-light cannon was going to be a different story. Steve went for the knees of that one before retreating toward Bucky.

When he heard the tell-tale sound of the cannon engaging and powering up, Steve glanced over the edge of the roof. The factory had a sort of A-shaped frame until the last two stories. It'd be steep, but they could slide down and maybe make a jump for it, Steve decided. He looped an arm around Bucky's middle and took both of them over the side of the roof headfirst just in time for the place where they were standing to be engulfed in blue light.

Bucky's breath was fluttering against Steve's neck, his pulse like a hummingbird.

"Don't pass out," Steve said. He swung around so they were sliding down the side of the building feetfirst.

"Uh," was the reply.

There was some sort of temporary-looking building set not far from the edge of the main factory. Steve decided it was close enough for him to jump to instead of them crashing into the ground at this speed. So he pulled up his knees, tucked Bucky's head into his shoulder, and jumped less than a foot from the edge of the slanted roof. He twisted while they were airborne so that when they crashed into the roof of the nearby building and it deformed around them, Steve took as much of the impact as he could.

The sounds of the battle were much louder down here. Steve sat up gingerly – super serum definitely didn't make jumping off of roofs easy or painless. Bucky stayed limp against him.

"Hey," Steve said with the uncomfortable urgency in his stomach again. "Bucky, hey, don't pass out yet."

Something massive exploded in the factory. It busted open half of the place. Steve covered as much of them as he could with his shield. It suddenly felt really inadequate. Debris clanged off of it; a wave of heat surrounded them. Steve stayed under the cover until the air had cooled back to normal and nothing else threatened to cave their heads in. He pushed himself up and looked around.

There were a lot more men in olive drab fatigues running around than the black of HYDRA's soldiers. It took a few moments of staring for Steve to realise that the huge detonation had been rigged on purpose. A wave of prisoners was moving methodically across the grounds and eliminating the HYDRA forces that had been forced out into the open.

"I'll be damned," Steve said. "You seein' this?"

No response besides a faint, shaky breath. Steve held either side of Bucky's head securely between his hands. Ignored the heat and sweat coming off of him. It was better than cold and waxy. Bucky's eyelids fluttered, his eyes moving sluggishly back and forth beneath.

"Bucky, stay awake. Come on. There you go. C'mon back. Just like after you went eight rounds with Buster Rowe, huh? Hang in there. Good. Good. Hey."

"God, just kill me." Bucky dropped his forehead against Steve's shoulder, but the movement was deliberate. There was no reason to panic.

Steve laughed and let himself rest a hand on the back of Bucky's neck for the space of a few breaths. He thought of making a joke about the current state of Bucky's hair, but a voice in the back of Steve's head said that now really wasn't the time. "Not after I just went through all this trouble to get you, Buck. Think you can stand?"

"Maybe."

But he managed it with Steve giving him a hand up. Steve jumped down from the temporary building's roof first and then turned back to catch Bucky, who dropped down like a ragdoll. They made slow progress toward the back of the line of prisoners sweeping the grounds with Bucky's feet only taking every fifth step. He was starting to tremble involuntarily, and it took every last ounce of Steve's self-control not to just pick Bucky up and run him to the nearest medic.

When they were close enough to the line of prisoners – done with their sweep by the time Steve finally caught up to them, someone called out, "Captain America's made it out!"

"Whuh they sayin'?" Bucky said.

"Nothing."

"Jimmy!" someone boomed.

A group of three men rushed them with a fourth lingering close behind. Steve stiffened reflexively. Bucky looked irritated in a vague sort of way.

"That Dum Dum?" he murmured.

"Who?" said Steve.

Bucky picked up his head and looked at the four men that were nearly upon them. "Jesus," he breathed.

Against some new-born instinct, Steve let Bucky push away from him and stumble toward the others.

"Fucking Jesus," Bucky said.

A prisoner in bowler hat already had his arms around him by then. Bucky hugged him back in a dazed sort of way.

"You made it out OK?" Steve's enhanced ears heard Bucky saying.

"Yeah, Sarge, we're fine. Was gonna say the same about you. You alright?"

"No."

The other two and the one lingering back started cracking up.

"You don't say?" one of them said.

"S'OK, Sarge," said the one with the bowler. "We're all alright. S'OK."

"Tha's goo..."

Steve could hear the exhaustion in Bucky's voice and wasn't surprised to see him lean heavily into the soldier with the bowler. His knees went soft and the other took the rest of his weight. He ran a hand up and down Bucky's back in a comforting gesture and blinked several times in quick succession. He said something to the others over his shoulder, but Steve didn't pay attention. He was too busy staring at a spot on Bucky's back that had been revealed when he slumped into his friend and his field sweater rode up. The flesh there was bruised and marred with puncture marks. Steve's blood started to boil immediately.

Jesus Christ, if Steve ever saw that little guy in the glasses again, it wouldn't be soon enough.