Note: A lot of overlap in time between this chapter and the last.

It was plain that Captain America was no proper captain. There was nothing conventional about him, Falsworth observed, even accounting for the difference in nationality. The lack of convention or familiarity in tactics was probably why some men were a bit wary of him at first. Some thought he was some sort of elaborate trick put on by HYDRA. It was incredibly difficult for the men to believe they'd actually revolted against their captors and were now seemingly in control of the grounds in so few minutes. It happened so fast, so violently. It couldn't be real. Must have been some communal dream, a shared hallucination.

At least that was what Falsworth was thinking when Dugan asked him to distract Captain America from whatever was going on with Barnes. The captain had some strange focus on Barnes. It put all of them on edge just the slightest bit. If Captain America was some trick of HYDRA's, they didn't want him to have one second alone with their once-lost sergeant, especially when said sergeant was as helpless and defenceless as a new-born babe.

(The captain's single-minded interest in Barnes was cause for much less concern once they realised that the two men knew each other.)

When Falsworth first called him away, feeding him some excuse about night shifts and cleaning crews, the man actually took off back into the burning, collapsing factory. The captain acted with the same certainty and urgency as he had when he'd first freed the rest of the men from their cages. No questions asked, no follow up, nothing but swift action to reach a nebulous goal. Falsworth looked around himself helplessly. Dernier was close enough to have seen the whole exchange.

Falsworth held his hands out in confusion. "I didn't mean to suggest that he run back in there."

Dernier shook his head. "Seems to a be an ask-questions-later type of man."

A single humourless laugh huffed out. "He does." Falsworth looked around himself at the men milling around, their talk a low buzz. Looking back at Dernier, he said, "Lost you during the mad dash to get out. Alright?"

Dernier nodded. "Just fine. An American took me to the medics' quarters. We made sure they could get out."

"Ah," said Falsworth. "I admit I had forgotten about them." The thought troubled something in the back of his mind. Was it shame?

Dernier shrugged. "I did as well. The GI was the one to remind me."

Captain America came back out with four men a few agonisingly long minutes later. They were covered in ash and hacking from smoke inhalation. A handful of medics that Dernier had apparently had a hand in freeing met them on the grounds and hurried them away.

Captain America was dusting himself off and approached Falsworth and Dernier. "Thanks for the heads up. They were the only ones I could get to."

"I'm sure they're grateful," Falsworth said. He was in a little bit of disbelief that the captain had come out with any living men at all.

"Brave of you to go back for them," said Dernier.

The captain looked uncomfortable. "So who's in command around here?"

Someone from the crowd around them blankly asked, "Aren't you in charge after all that?"

Falsworth could see the colour rise in the so-called captain's cheeks. Not typical commander behaviour at all. The captain looked around at the men. Most had stopped what they were doing and were looking in his direction. Hoping for instruction, reassurance. Anything.

He said, "Let's get a headcount. Report to the highest ranking person left from your unit. Alive, dead, missing. Let's establish an aid station for anyone in need of immediate help. We'll need to keep a perimeter manned in case any HYDRA soldiers come back. I need a group to take inventory of our food and water. Another group to sort out the weapons and ammunition we have. Another to assess the vehicles. What can we use, what can we take parts off of. Anyone who feels up to it, we'll need a few people to collect the hostiles' bodies and pull all supplies off of them. Food, clothing, aid supplies, anything that could be used, grab it."

NCOs nodded and walked off to take stock of their squads. Others walked up toward them, hands raised and volunteering for one of the teams the captain had just asked for. Each time, Captain America asked for the soldier's name and nodded his thanks. If someone came up asking for job that was already claimed, the captain pointed them in the direction of the team that had already claimed it.

When they stopped approaching, Captain America turned to Falsworth and Dernier looking slightly uncomfortable.

"I'll get numbers from the French," Dernier said before walking off.

"Thanks," said the captain. Once Dernier was out of range, he turned to Falsworth and said, "Did I miss anything?"

His head may have tilted in confusion.

The captain gestured to Falsworth's uniform. "You're a major."

Ah. Right. That.

"I think you hit all the important things," he said.

It took a long time to get things sorted. The captain ripped a canvas tarp off of a condemned truck and led the men in constructing a cover on their aid station. There seemed to be a significant number of wounded, both walking and otherwise. Supplies looked to be OK. HYDRA had a number of temporary-looking buildings outside the factory that appeared to house their incoming supplies. There were crates of provisions, thankfully including food. There wasn't much in the way of medical supplies though. But they were still able to fashion bandages out of the clothes of the dead. It was nearly impossible to get a good number on how many they'd lost. Those blue-light guns that vanished people didn't exactly leave any bodies or dog tags behind.

When there was literally no other task Falsworth could invent, he had no choice but to lead Captain America back to the relative privacy Dugan, Jones, and Dernier had built around Barnes, away from the action. The sergeant was lying somewhere between his side and stomach on the ground, completely still but for the intermittent rise and fall of his chest.

"All good?" Falsworth asked.

Dugan and Jones were shaking their heads.

"Oh?" Falsworth said.

"He's fucked up," Dugan said flatly, a wary eye at Captain America.

The captain looked distressed to hear it.

"Impossible to say what's wrong with him," said Jones. "But I don't think it's the same things that were bothering him before the doctor took him."

"Before—?" the captain started to say.

Dugan ignored him and said, "He was hot when he first got out here. It's only getting worse. Not talking a lot of sense when we get him to talk at all."

Dernier was nodding. "Seems to be sedated. Definitely been drugged with something. Can see it in the eyes." He pointed to his own.

"Drugged?" the captain tried again.

"Pretty sure he was tortured," Jones added.

The captain made a choked sound. The declaration took Falsworth by surprise, too. Seemed extreme, even for all that he'd seen at the camp. Torture shouldn't be beyond belief for this enemy, but it seemed so…alarming to be talking about it so matter-of-factly.

"You're sure?" he said.

Jones carefully picked up Barnes's arm and eased the cuff of the sweater (a sweater that Barnes most definitely had not been wearing when he'd first been taken from their shared cage) back to expose an impressive array of small wounds just on his forearm. Putting the cuff back and the arm down gently, Jones slid the sweater halfway up the sergeant's back. Falsworth took a step forward to see. A deep violet bruise stretched across the crests of the sergeant's hips and reached up the narrow line of his spine. The sweater wasn't pulled up high enough to see, but Falsworth could imagine that the bruising reached all the way up to Barnes's neck. Needle marks here and there on some vertebrae. Bigger punctures near the hips. There were small incisions curling around his sides, their ends not seen, hidden by clothing.

The captain swore under his breath. Rather looked like he was ready to explode. Shrugging out of his jacket, the captain knelt down beside Barnes. Put a hand on his neck and jaw, perhaps to feel the fever for himself. Eased the balled up jacket under Barnes's head. Pushed the limp hair back from Barnes's forehead a few futile times until the sergeant made a distressed sort of sound and pulled away.

Jones had laid the sweater back into place and looked at Faslworth with sad eyes. "Told me his back hurt when we finally got him to lie down."

"I imagine he wasn't lying."

He laughed in a hollow sort of way. "His chest doesn't look any better. Looks burned in a few spots."

"Looks as though they were experimenting on him," Falsworth said. "Medical experimentation. Those weren't ordinary cuts. Very precise, straight lines."

Dugan made a low humming sound. Near enough to be called a growl. The first reaction he seemed to have in common with the captain, little though Dugan seemed to trust their savior.

Jones gave his companion a warning look and then said to Falsworth, "Hostile forces that run prisoner of war camps are required to provide aid to the men they hold under the Geneva Convention. They could have been using that as a ruse. It was why they kept taking all the sick and none of them ever came back better. Who would be left to say HYDRA wasn't giving them appropriate treatment?"

"No one but Sarge," Dugan bit out.

"And the medics," said Dernier.

Falsworth considered that. "The medics typically had short lifespans themselves."

"So the doctor was counting on them dying off? Didn't hide anything from them since they had expiration dates anyway?" Jones thought out loud.

Nodding, Falsworth said, "All HYDRA would have to do is separate the medics from the rest of the prison's population from the time they saw the experimentation until they hit their end date. The rest of us would never know."

"Wait, wait, wait," the captain finally said. He'd turned to face the rest of them but kept a hand on Barnes's shoulder. "You mean to say there are more people like this?"

The others looked to Falsworth, who decided after a moment to shake his head in the negative. "No one living. The doctor only seemed to take people one at a time."

Dernier added, "There would have been more before Sergeant Barnes, but none living at the same time."

The look on Captain America's face was dangerous. He looked ready for a fight, any fight. It was lucky some other English soldier started calling for him just then. Falsworth went with the captain to answer the call. Anything to keep the man distracted.

He kept it up all through the night. The men helped keep the captain busy, giving him reports and information updates. Seemed like every hour Falsworth had to go drag him away from the place where Dugan, Jones, or Dernier were sitting as guard over Barnes, who was bouncing between semi-coherency and absolute dead sleep. It was a relief when Barnes finally woke all the way up and shouted at the captain to leave him alone. It was then that they all learned that Captain America was actually the famous Steve from Barnes's night-time stories.

Falsworth and Dernier were assured by the captain, as Dugan and Jones took Barnes away to be fed and watered, that he was Steve Rogers and that he had been of small stature the last time Barnes had seen him. They were all promised an explanation for the change. Rogers seemed a bit apprehensive at the thought of explaining his change to Barnes, though. And his reason for putting off that explanation — not wanting to upset the sergeant when he was in such poor health — didn't seem like the entire truth.

Falsworth didn't pursue the thought. He reported the final, tentative numbers of survivors, dead, and presumed-dead to the captain. (Captain America? Steve? Captain Rogers?) The last of the HYDRA soldiers' bodies were thrown into the still-smouldering factory fire. The trucks were loaded with supplies and wounded. The aid station was disassembled.

Dugan and Rogers nearly wet their pants with worry when Barnes went missing after telling Jones he was looking for a latrine. The sergeant eventually turned up with his arm around a GI that he introduced as Jim Morita.

"Another James?" Dernier said with amusement.

"I told you to stay sitting until we left!" Rogers shouted.

"When a man's gotta go, he's gotta go," Barnes said. "Was I supposed to sit here and piss into my boots?"

"You were supposed to come back!"

"I am back."

"You were gone for nearly an hour," Jones mumbled.

"I was taking in the scenery," Barnes said.

"You were supposed to be sitting!"

"He was sitting down," Jim Morita piped up.

"See? Thanks, Jim."

"You're welcome, Bucky."

Barnes rolled his eyes at Rogers. "You didn't say where I had to sit down."

Rogers stared long and blankly at Barnes. He finally said, "Get in the truck."

"No."

"Bucky, get in the goddamn truck."

"No."

"James Buchanan Barnes, so help me God, get in the truck."

"Stop—I don't want to." Barnes's voice lost it combative edge. It sounded on the edge of panicky.

The captain didn't seem to notice that. Nor how Barnes was starting to tremble. Falsworth might not have either if Morita hadn't been making faces at Barnes's shaking hand that was around his neck.

"Just get—"

Dugan cut off the captain, "Aw, just let 'em walk for the first leg. Like you already said, he'll pass out ten minutes in. We'll just toss 'em in a truck then."

"Not gonna pass out," Barnes said in a would-be calm voice.

But the captain finally agreed after more threats of medics and promises of constant companions at Barnes's side. Then they formed up a column with the captain up front exactly where a commanding officer should not be. The sun was just dawning on them as they took their first steps out of the prison's shadow.