A/N A glimpse closer in time than usual, but we will still return to the main storyline and work outwards, promise
1945, January, SSR Headquarters
Steve dragged a hand over his face as he waited, seated to the side of the war map. It was uncharacteristically quiet in the room, but that was mostly due to the time of night it was. Steve felt it should have been because of what had happened, but that was unrealistic. No one here had been particularly attached to Bucky, besides maybe Howard. The fact was that no one had known him particularly well - Bucky had been withdrawn after his time with Hydra, and didn't socialize like he'd used to. And no one here had known the Bucky before, the Bucky untouched by Hydra. No one here was damn in love with him, either.
He fought back another wave of fathomless grief, his breath stuttering with the sheer pain of it. They were both gone, and now he had nobody.
"Rogers," came a gruff voice from the doorway, and Steve dropped his hand to look up at Colonel Phillips. The man looked the closest to sympathetic that he'd ever seen him. That still wasn't very sympathetic, but it was something. He found that he didn't particularly want the man's pity, but maybe he needed it.
"Colonel Phillips," he replied simply. Quietly. He knew better than to show the full extent of his grief, but he wasn't capable of putting on a smile right now. A man of Phillips rank and age had definitely lost enough people to understand that at the very least.
"What can I do for you, Rogers? Was trying to get some much needed beauty sleep when I saw your message," Phillips replied, a cautious note to his voice. He was guessing what Steve wanted, but daring to hope that it was something else. It was a vain hope.
"I want to go looking for him. He could be alive," Steve said, looking up from his spot in the chair, the intensity of his gaze not at all lost by the distance to the door. Phillips sighed, half turning away with the slightest shake of his head. Steve was stubborn, unfortunately. "It's possible, sir. Men have had worse falls and survived."
Phillips turned back to Steve, and shook his head, though he looked tired. "Rogers... I know the fallout of someone dying under your command. The guilt. The what-ifs. You'll go crazy if you second-guess every death, especially deaths that you yourself might have only narrowly avoided. Rogers..." He heaved a sigh, and walked forward to sink into the chair across the table from Steve, and met his eyes. "He fell thousands of feet from a moving train. I wouldn't even volunteer you and your durability for such a feat as to survive from that height. He's dead, Steve."
Steve's jaw worked without him really controlling it, and he dropped his watering eyes to the war table, struggling to control himself as he tried to wrestle with the knowledge that Bucky was gone. Phillips had to be right. Serum or not, Bucky wasn't quite as durable as himself, and he was almost certain that such a fall might even kill Dr. Erskine's best and final work.
In the future, after the final decision to put down the plane and the ensuing seventy years of icy darkness, Steve knew he was more durable than expected. Knew that maybe even Bucky had survived the fall. But seventy years had passed without any reports of Bucky being seen again, without any reason to suspect that he was alive. If Bucky had survived the fall, he'd died soon after, and there was nothing for Steve to do about it but move on.
A/N One more chapter coming today!