"We hit every base we know about," a quiet voice said from behind him. Darkness had fallen fully, and as the air cooled a mist was rising in the headlight beams of the jeeps. Bucky stepped up next to him. He had been searching long past anyone else, vision unhindered by the darkness, but had eventually had to agree with Pinkerton that tracking was useless.

"You and I. We rip through them, every single one, and while we're dismembering them we ask them where she is. And if that doesn't work, we leave the place a mess to scare the rest of the fuckers, and we hit the next base."

Steve felt a release of something like relief in his chest, that someone else knew what to do for once. For once, for this one thing, he didn't have to be totally in charge. "I'll have to sell it to the brass," Steve said quietly, turning away from the bloodbath, his shoulders tight. "But if I can make it about being more aggressive, I think they'll bite." he sounded tired.

"If they don't, we do it anyway," Bucky said quietly. "They can either bring their golden boy up on charges for attacking nazis- they won't- or say it was their plan all along."

Steve nodded. "We move camp now. Get a little sleep in the morning, move out. We'll bring the core team, they can watch our backs."

He nodded. "I'll pass the word, get everyone ready to move." He reached out, then, putting a hand on Steve's shoulder, stopping him in an area of deep shadow and pulling him into a hug. "We'll get her back."

Steve clutched him back hard for a moment. Off by the jeep, he could hear Falsworth cursing, something he'd never heard from the man. He blocked it out, and let go of Bucky. "We'll get her back," he echoed. Time to move.

Bucky nodded. "Anyone you want for sure, anyone you don't want?" he asked, holding Steve's gaze. He was calm, given the circumstances.

"Core team," he said, walking past the jeep, avoiding looking at the blood. "Put Falsworth in the middle of the formation. I don't want him making any mistakes, but we can't leave him out, he won't have it." Steve said, reaching the idling jeep that had brought them here and climbing in. "Leave the grunts. If anyone is going to get taken out by a stray bullet it'd be the non-specialists." He was struggling to keep his head. To keep his calm. Below, his chest was a raging fire, a beast just barely chained.

Bucky nodded, jumping in beside him. "Got it. Don't worry about anything, I'll get it squared away. You just focus on the brass."

Steve nodded shortly, kicking the jeep into gear and pulling off into the night. "They'll agree. Peggy will be on my side, and that's all I need to tip the scales in the planning room at this point. Colonel Phillips will agree."

"Good," he said, watching the road flash by, still on the alert for anything unusual. "Christ, I hope they try to ransom her. I'm looking forward to pulling their skulls off of their spines." His tone was level, conversational. The fact that they were both more than physically capable of what he was describing didn't appear to impact his choice of words.

"I'm praying that they do," Steve said quietly, focusing on the road with laser precision. He had to keep his grip somehow. But if they didn't ransom her... That meant that they were going to keep her. Kill her, maybe, though he doubted that, considering they'd taken her at all. Though, if he was being honest, the loss of her arm concerned him greatly - would they keep her alive through the recovery that entailed? Infection and blood poisoning were common in the trenches, a place he was lucky enough to never have been. And a traumatic injury like that... He shook his head a little. "I need to write a letter to Debbie and Wilhelm's families tonight. Kat's too." He didn't sound happy about it.

"I'll do it," Bucky said, shaking his head. "You do it enough. You can sign off, but don't worry about writing it. Not unless you want to." They pulled into camp, and he jumped out before the jeep stopped moving. "I'll get the boys moving. Don't forget to talk to command about getting a new medical team for the grunts."

Steve parked and jumped out, meeting Bucky on the other side of the jeep briefly. "I'm on it. Thanks for... yeah." He rubbed the back of his head, turning to go. "I'll see you when we move camp."

"See you then," he agreed, walking away without looking at Steve. He couldn't right now. He knew Steve was struggling to hold it together, but right now he wasn't, and seeing the pain in his friend might change that. He couldn't risk both of them being about to lose it. So he found the empty place he'd settled comfortably into after his capture and made himself at home, emotions left out of it for now.

The first base was too easy to rip into. They simply weren't ready for the Commandos. Why would they? They'd been reserved so far, only taking out the weakest bases, in a noticeable pattern. This was a hit from nowhere, and it sent them reeling. Steve was glad that at least if they didn't find Kat (and they didn't) they were at least dealing a major blow to Hydra.

And that was just how it went. They destroyed bases, Bucky and Steve at the forefront - though Steve put himself between Bucky and the rest of the team during fights, to protect the knowledge of the serum - and found nothing. No mentions of Kat, no people who knew anything about her, no officers with special clearances to help them out. Nothing. Steve nearly cracked the skull of the last officer in the base with his bare hands when he heard the defiant No's once again. Instead he put a bullet through his head.

For every bit that Steve was rage incarnate in the battlefield- passion in his movements, in his expression, his voice, his kills, an unstoppable, explosive tank- Bucky was the opposite. He was cold, a void that seemed to suck sound into him, that walked past sprays of bullets like they weren't there (he never mentioned the rare times one caught him), that could find a lifted head in a pitch dark factory floor with a dispassionate shot from across the room. He was a terrible, grim presence, the silence of death after Steve's explosion.

It was in the lull after their first base that Falsworth found them sitting outside Steve's tent, a cup of coffee in both of their hands. Steve reached out with his foot to turn on the lantern as Falsworth stopped in front of them, as if he'd just forgotten to turn it on since it'd gotten dark. "What's on your mind, Falsworth?" he asked, his voice steady in a way that almost nothing else was.

"I wanted to know the plan, sir. To go after Ms. Lewis."

"We're doing it," Bucky said without looking up. Steve was a little more forthcoming.

"We keep hitting bases until someone tells us where she is, or we find her."

Falsworth took a tight inhale, fists curling and uncurling. He looked like he was in the same state Steve felt he was in. "That's it?" he asked tightly. "We know they have her - couldn't we contact them? Make a deal?"

"With who, Falsworth?" Bucky asked levelly. "We don't know who has her, so clearly they aren't interested in negotiating right now. If they were, we would have been contacted." He sounded tired.

"I just would have expected a little more effort from the two of you," he bit back, looking a man on the edge of throwing an ill-decided punch.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Steve cut back, voice sharper than he meant it. He wasn't a good liar.

Falsworth, surprisingly, deflated. "She spent all her time with you two. She disappeared, and you both..." he gestured between them vaguely. "I don't know what arrangement you had, but she was obviously happy."

Bucky spoke up before Steve could. "You cared about her, too, Falsworth. We all did. The plan right now is to raze every nazi fucker from here to Germany until we find out where she is. You can help us, or you can go your own way and try a different approach. Either way, we'll wish you well and help as best we can."

The Brit looked at the two of them silently for a long minute. "I'm not going anywhere," he said finally. "We all make a good team. We're the best bet at finding her. Rogers here is our best bet at breaking down the doors keeping her from us." He turned away a little, adjusting his hat. "My apologies, gentlemen. I didn't mean to cause a fuss."

"This whole thing is a fuss," Bucky muttered, leaning back in his chair. Falsworth nodded, and walked off. Bucky considered his retreating figure, and when he was far enough said "My urge to kill him to preserve our secrecy is probably lack of sleep talking, right?"

Steve laughed a little, half-startled, half-tired. "Yeah, you should get some sleep. If you can. I know that without her..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "I should go soon, try to do the same. But either way... I don't think Falsworth really got the whole package, anyway. He just knew she was..." Happy. He didn't know if Kat was alive or dead, but he hoped desperately that those hadn't been her last few happy months.

"Hey," Bucky said, kicking Steve's boot lightly. "Cut that out. We'll get her back. Won't take long." The words were easy to say. They cost him nothing. He had no hope, no doubt, nothing. Just a desire to keep Steve safe, and to get Kat back, and that was it.

Steve managed a half-smile, and tossed back the rest of his coffee. "Yeah," he agreed, as truthfully as he could. He stood. "I'm going to go try and rest. We move out early tomorrow."

Bucky wanted to tell him to stay. Wanted to hold him and feel warm and actually sleep without nightmares plaguing him. But instead he nodded, toasting with his own mostly-empty mug. "See you then."

He looked at Bucky for a long moment, the unsaid things hanging between them, and then he smiled slightly, nodded, and turned to head off into the dark.

It had been a very long fall. In reality, the time from the bridge to the ground probably only took him a few seconds to cross, but time had seemed to slow. He'd managed to keep his eyes on Steve for a lot of it, watching the realization cross his friend's face at the same time as he was coming to it- He was dead. Or good as. A few more seconds of life between him and oblivion.

He had time to come to terms with it, oddly. It didn't take long. He knew Steve would keep looking for Kat without him, and he hated that he wouldn't be there to help, but he was so tired, and the idea of a little death to smooth over months of exhaustion wasn't an unappealing one.

He had time to wonder briefly if had he slept more he might have found a better grip on the train. Might have lived.

Too late now.

The impact with the ground didn't hurt, which was a pleasant surprise. It exploded, more than anything. A wave of force unlike anything he'd experienced, and he was aware of things pulverizing that were usually supposed to remain solid, but nothing hurt. Not at first. Then darkness came for a while.

He had expected the darkness to last an eternity, but apparently his body- ground to shreds though it was- had other ideas. He woke slowly and found that the previously missing pain had caught up to him with gusto, but calm that had claimed him since he'd lost his grip was still there, still keeping him clear-headed. He looked around. He was dashed across rocks under the now-empty train bridge. Across was a very apt description- he could see bits of himself spread across the terrain, the largest chunk being the pulverized remains of his left arm, which from the looks of it had decided to take a different path to the ground once he'd encountered a boulder a few dozen feet further up the side of the ravine. The ground around him looked like he'd just slept through a rainstorm of blood.

The discovery of James Buchanan Barnes was more a lucky accident than anything else - for Hydra, anyway. It might have been better for Bucky if they'd never happened across him. But they were training - the Prototype was in dire need of testing, now that the serum had cured her of her pesky blood infection, and the arm required environmental testing, as did the serum itself. The officer in charge of the training exercise was lucky enough to have worked with Arnim Zola - the very same Arnim Zola who had been captured on the train hours beforehand. This officer did not even know that yet. But he recognized the man lying immobile in the crimson snow. With a few quick commands to the Prototype, she stepped forward, crunching through the snow. The only sign that the cold affected her was the slightest tint of red on her cheeks.

She bent over the man in the snow, metal hand curling into the back of his coat, content to drag him through the snow, her mind blank.

He was dead, then, he realized, when he saw Kat crossing the snow toward him- or at least dying. She was dead, too, then, coming to get him. That was rough. Steve would be without both of them. But he'd catch up, and apparently there was a life after death after all. Huh.

But as Kat got closer. Details started to filter into his pain-fogged mind that made him reconsider heaven and start running alternatives. Her face, for one. Her eyes were blank- almost dead, though they lacked the fogged, rotted quality of a corpse. They were fixed on him, intelligent, determined... But empty. The second was her arm. Her arm, the one they had found lying in the snow, like his own was now. Hers was there, but looked like it was crafted out of living metal.

The final piece of the puzzle was her uniform. German make, simple, efficient.

Hydra, Bucky realized, what little color that remained draining from his face as she reached for him.

"Kat?" he rasped through a dry, raw throat. But then she picked him up, and the white noise of pain drowned everything else out.

She looked down at the man as he spoke, a twinge of something deep in her chest pinching, but then the man blacked out, and she carried on her work uninterrupted.

They dragged him all the way back to their little nondescript secret base. Too small to be on any of the maps that Captain America had seen. The Prototype lifted the man onto the table as she was directed, and then they took her away again, this time to check her arm after the snows and the biting cold. She passively sat and let them remove her shirt so they could examine the connection between her arm and her body. Her braid was wet from melted snow. The metal arm ached. That was all she registered.

He had had nightmares like this. Cold tables and straps and needles. Faint german conversations passing by. The icy feeling of something pushed into his bloodstream by gravity drip or a plunger. Dim light and bright light and darkness in no sensical order. He had spent months here, had escaped, and was here again, and for a long time that was he knew, all that mattered.

Eventually he began to wonder if this was hell. It would make sense. He'd killed a lot of people, some of whom he hadn't really had a need to, especially after Kat was taken. Spending the rest of eternity strapped to this table, the sting and ache of needles, the feverish chills, the taste of metal and bleach in the air... It was the worst thing he could think of.

He never really dissuaded himself of that idea, especially once he started to see Kat again. Only glimpses at first- she would walk past the doorway, or be standing in the corner of the room like a ghost while they changed his bandages. Then one night he lost control- the cold ache beneath his skin became an itching, a deep need in his muscles to move, and he found out that when he listened, the leather strap over his arm parted. A lot of commotion followed that moment, but what he remembered most was Kat pressed against him, the weight of her warm body against his chest, the weight of her freezing metal arm against his throat.

As he lost consciousness again he decided that he was right. This was definitely hell.

"Er heilt. Das Serum Arnim gab ihm in '43 muss immer noch tun, es ist Arbeit."

[He's healing. The serum Arnim gave him in '43 must still be doing its job.]

"Ohne ihn hätte er den Fall nie überlebt."

[He'd never have survived the fall if it wasn't.] The reply was a little stiff, indicating some slight derision.

"In jedem Fall wird er bald bei Bewusstsein sein, um den Stuhl zu benutzen. Ich möchte ihn jedoch nicht zu mobil haben. Er ist ein Kämpfer, und wir haben seine Stärke nicht gegen die des Prototyps getestet."

[Either way, he'll soon be conscious enough to use the Chair. I don't want him too mobile, however. He's a fighter, and we haven't tested his strength against the Prototype's.]

"Dann beruhige ihn, aber halte ihn bei Bewusstsein. Halten Sie den Prototyp für den Stuhl in Bereitschaft."

[Then sedate him, but keep him conscious. Keep the Prototype on standby for the Chair.]

"Jawohl."

[Yes, sir.]

"Prototype."

The designation came and she opened her eyes from where she'd been resting on the cot they provided her, in a cell with bars that did not bother her. She sat up.

"Come. You are needed." He spoke in English - she had not yet learned enough of the German to understand anything else.

She stood and followed the officer, preternaturally still except for the movements required to walk. He led her to the infirmary.

"You are to help move the Asset to the Chair. He may resist, but we have drugged his body. Do it, now." He opened the door to the room containing a man with a silver arm. The man she'd pulled through the snow. She moved forward, sliding her metal arm under his shoulders, pushing him up.

He felt himself being moved, and opened his eyes. Kat again, closer than she'd been in a long time. The world was hazy, and his body ached, but Kat was within reach. He looked at her, and she stared back dispassionately. Empty. "What'd they do to you, Kat?" he asked quietly, resisting her attempts to move him further than she had, though not violently.

The Prototype looked him in the eyes as he said the name again, a feeling she didn't understand in her chest. The officer in the doorway cleared his throat then, and she pulled harder.

He saw the flicker, for just a moment, and for one stupid second he had hope. "You're Kat. Katherine Lewis. You and I were together, do you remember me? I'm Bucky-" He held her gaze and his ground as she tugged harder, though the drugs in his system made both difficult. She managed to pull him fully upright, but then he made a quick decision and leaned into it, catching her off-guard for a split second, and kissing her hard.

There were cries of alarm from the orderlies and the officer in the doorway, and for a split second something ripped at the Prototype's mind like nails on a chalkboard, but her body - which in these past couple months had begun being conditioned to react to stimuli like a warrior would react - reeled away and then forward again, her flesh arm driving her elbow into his head. She hauled him clean off the table this time, ignoring his ungainly limbs clanging and banging on the floor and table, and began dragging him back out of the room. Her handler looked pleased, saying something to her in German that she didn't understand yet - they'd been teaching her their language, but it hadn't been a priority when the officers could issue commands in English. The Chair was just down the hall. She just had to get the man there before he attacked her again.

Whatever they had drugged him with meant it took longer than he would have liked to get his bearings, but he was soon getting his feet under him again, bare soles finding purchase against cold linoleum. He jerked away from her grasp, trying to twist out of her grip.

She turned to hit him again as he stalled, aiming at his stomach. She glanced toward her handler, who was watching from a few feet away. She kicked at the man's foot, trying to get him limp again, before the handler could get angry.

He managed to get his foot out of the way right before her boot made contact, his own fist landing in her gut. He was surprised to find it almost hurt to punch her. She was solid muscle.

What the hell did they do to you?

He gave up on his right hand, experimenting with the metal of his left as he grabbed ahold of her non-metal wrist, and twisted.

She let go with her right metal arm to grab his instead, a grunt escaping her as he twisted her arm a little past what was comfortable. Her stomach ached where he'd landed a blow, like it did when the handlers beat her five times with their clubs, but she catalogued it and moved past it, and headbutted him, hard enough to make the crown of her head ache.

Normally, he'd discovered, headbutting him was a very bad idea for whoever was doing the headbutting. He'd seen a few enemies concuss themselves pretty badly before he ended them. So when she shifted back, clearly aiming to do just that, he didn't lean away. Hell, he leaned into it a little.

But when she hit him, it hurt. Fuck did it hurt. He didn't black out, not even close, but he saw stars and his ears ached with the impact. He lost a bit of leverage with her arm, but changed tactics, driving his thumb between her bones in an attempt to get control of her through pain.

She didn't make a noise this time, too used to sharp pains, letting go of his metal arm with her identical (if on the other side) arm and driving her fist into his head, leaning into it to try and get him against the wall, her flesh arm pushing into his hand to press against his chest. Her boots slid a little on the floor at his resistance, but she just pressed as hard as she could, punching him again square in the nose. This was taking too long. She would be punished.

The second and third blows to his head did nothing for his coordination. He lost his grip on her arm and with it his tenuous hold on balance, and then she was driving him back into the wall like a natural force.

She drove him into the wall hard enough to inadvertently get a blow into the back of his head, and then she was yanking him forward again, sweeping his feet and catching him under his arms, dragging him towards the Chair once again. She could feel the handler's eyes boring into her from afar, goosebumps on the back of her neck. She would be punished for taking so long, she knew it.

He tried to struggle more, but he was so disoriented that any fight at this point was borderline impossible. He bit whatever was within reach, clawed and twisted, but he didn't have it in him to make any sort of consolidated attack.

She hauled him into the Chair, stepped back, let the restraints close over his arms and head. Her handler stepped forward and she twitched, the slightest movement away from him, but he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the man in the Chair. The scientists came piling on behind him, free to be in the room now that the danger was contained. She watched the man in the Chair in lieu of not having further orders. He looked... She didn't know. The emotion didn't connect for her.

Bucky stared out at the room, trying to understand what was going on. He locked eyes on each face for a few seconds, memorizing features. Did he recognize anyone? Anyone other than Kat, that was. His gaze finally landed on her, and stayed there. "Kat, come on. You have to remember me. We have to get out."

"Wisch ihn ab."

[Wipe him.]

The officer's words were clear enough to the scientists, who moved around the Prototype and began to turn on the Chair. She stood there, staring at him, feeling like she was supposed to do something but not sure what, and then her handler was at her side.

"Back to quarters, Prototype." He said in accented English. She stood there for a moment longer, and then turned on her heels and let the handler lead her away.

"Kat," Bucky said, trying to get her attention as the room spun into motion. Then louder- "Kat!" But she didn't turn, just walked away, the door swinging shut behind her as she followed the man who'd spoken to her.

He looked back at the rest of the room, shifting against the restraints again. He didn't want to be here, didn't want to know what all of the equipment was for. There was a flurry of activity, to fast to track, as people adjusted dials, took notes, flipped a few switches-

Then it felt like someone had poured liquid nitrogen into his skull.

He must have screamed, the cold agony blinding him to much beyond the sensation of pain, his lungs seizing on him afterward and refusing to draw in air as he arched under his restraints. What he had been thinking about slipped away into the whirlpool of pain, the more. The last few hours, the last few... anything. He was finding it harder and harder to remember anything but the pain, anything but this moment... His name, his being... all of it slipping into the icy void.

Then the world went dark.

A/N How's this? Boy its actually kinda hard writing a character who barely ever speaks, u know that? XD Really appreciated the comment we got last time about the pacing! Soothed my fears! Also, occasionally I'll PM people who comment, so watch out for that if you comment, I know FF doesn't send emails anymore!