Day 6 - Tropes and Cliches: Swept off Your Feet
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The trouble with Italy in springtime, Steve decided, was the mountains.
The second biggest problem with Italy in the springtime was the rivers.
Unfortunately, the two were related.
"No, Steve." Bucky stood at his shoulder, and together they stared out across the muddy, churning river, swollen with the recent meltoff from the mountains. "You're not doing this. There's gotta be a way around it."
"You know there isn't." Steve didn't take his eyes off the water. "Scouts have been up and down for fifty miles - this is the best fording spot."
"This is a terrible fording spot," Bucky retorted.
Steve couldn't argue with that one.
Jones yanked hard one more time at the knot he was tying around the captain's waist, and then slapped him on the shoulder. "Okay, you're good to go. We'll be paying out the line from here. If you lose your footing, grab hold of the line and try to float feet-first down the river until we can pull you out."
Steve nodded once, puffed out his cheeks in a quick exhale, and then bumped Bucky with his shoulder.
"See ya on the other side," he said, and then stepped into the water.
The rapid current pooled harmlessly around his boot-soles - and then around his ankles. By the third step, it was up to his knees. The water was ice-cold; only hours ago it had melted from the high Alpine snowbanks above their heads. Steve could feel stones shifting under his feet, and took a moment to steady himself before taking another step.
That next step was almost his last. The current was everywhere now, tugging at his clothes, splashing up his thighs until he was wet to the waist. A rock turned beneath his foot without warning, and he almost went down, the rapid river waters taking hold and using his momentary distraction to their advantage. By the time he regained solid footing, he was completely drenched and shivering.
Okay. Okay. He could do this.
Slowly, step by step, Steve moved forward, cautiously planting each foot and testing the slippery stones of the riverbed before transferring his weight. It was all he could do to keep his footing against the mighty press of water; the muscles of his legs shook with the strain as he braced himself against the current, and he knew nobody else on the team could have made it.
Other than one spot in the middle, where the water rose to hit him mid-ribs, most of the passage was waist-deep or lower. Twice more he nearly lost his footing, but at last he staggered out the other side. Water poured from his clothing in streams; a shout of triumph rose on the other side.
Things moved quickly after that. Cutting the rope around him - Gabe's knot had swollen with water - he coiled his end of the line around his arm, reeling in the heavier rope that Gabe had fastened to the end. Hitching the sturdy rope around the base of the strongest-looking tree he could find, he then turned, waved once, and began the crossing again, laying a second line of strong rope behind him as he came.
The crossing back was easier. With the first rope already in place, he had a handhold - something to hang onto. He emerged from the water among his friends with a grin, then stopped short at the somber faces that met him.
"What's up?" he asked, shaking his head every which way to clear the drops out of his face. "I lose something?"
Morita shook his head. "We just have less time than we thought, is all." He gestured towards the top of the mountain that towered above them. In the time it had taken the captain to ford the river, dark clouds had gathered around it. A roll of thunder split the air as he watched. The air had grown damp and cool, though there was no rain where they were standing.
For a moment, Steve didn't grasp the significance. He'd grown up in a city - this wasn't something he had experience with.
"The water's gonna start rising as soon as all that rainwater up there hits the river system," Morita explained. "We don't get across, we'll be stuck here for two weeks waiting for it to be passable."
Steve frowned, then looked at the rolling water and the two stretches of rope spanning the gulf. Then he looked up at his team with a gleam in his eye.
"Then we'd better hurry."
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They did hurry. If this had been a regular expedition, furnished with tanks and other vehicles, they would've had to build a bridge or flatten the riverbank enough for the tank to make the crossing. As it was, everybody simply did up their equipment in oilcloth, hitched it as high on their backs as they could, and started across one at a time.
Steve himself made the crossing a couple times, carrying Dernier's pack since it had the bulk of their stock of explosives and the Frenchman was too short for it to be kept absolutely dry on his back. Then he carried Morita's pack, and finally Peggy's.
Peggy had been loath to let him take her pack.
"I can carry it perfectly well myself," she argued, chin held high. She was so used to people treating her as though she was somehow incapable because she was a woman, that sometimes she lashed out even when no insult was intended, such as now.
"You can," Steve agreed. He knew how she felt. "You also have the charts - and your pack will be halfway in the water by the time you make it across. Look at Morita."
Peggy looked, and had to agree, purely for practicality's sake. Their shorter friend was in the water almost up to his armpits, clinging to the ropes as he pulled himself across. The current was strong enough he wasn't even trying to walk - just dragging himself along the ropes with his arms, kicking to keep afloat. Yes, the water had definitely risen in just the time it had taken to get the bulk of their party across. Only Bucky and Peggy had yet to cross.
"Fine," she said. "But I want it back on the other side."
"You got it," Steve answered with a grin, hitched her stuff on his back. "Ladies first?" he asked, but she planted both hands on his arm and shoved him forward with an exasperated sound that made his smile only widen as he started into the water, Peggy at his heels.
The current was far stronger than before. Water that had hit him at his ribs before now came decidedly higher. Peggy's things would probably be damp anyway, even with him carrying them. If she'd worn her own pack, she wouldn't have had a single dry corner left in it.
Clambering out the other side, Steve shucked off her pack, and then turned just in time to hear a shout of alarm from Bucky on the far bank. Raising his eyes to follow his friend's pointing hand, Steve looked upstream - and felt his heart turn over in his chest.
A sudden swell of water roared downstream towards them, sweeping small branches and churned-up foam before it. The rainwater had reached them.
Peggy!
She was only halfway across, in the middle of the river, just where the water was deepest. For the briefest of instants he saw her white face, her wide eyes, her tightening grip on the ropes—
—and then the water swept her off her feet, and she was gone.
"Peggy!"
He didn't hesitate, leaping into the river after her in a long, low dive that ended abruptly when his head came directly into contact with a stone with a force that momentarily blinded him. Had he been anybody else, it would have broken his neck on impact. Stunned, he flailed - gagged on water, saw stars. The current buffeted him, shoved him down, swept him downstream with a force he couldn't have comprehended before.
What cared nature for Captain America?
Only the urgency of Peggy's danger thrumming through his veins brought Steve back to himself, helped him claw his way up through the water until his head broke the surface and he choked in a lungful of air, promptly coughed it up, and then drew another. He tried to float feet-first down the river, the way Gabe had told him, twisting around for any sight of Peggy.
He couldn't see her. Couldn't see his friends either - he'd been swept far past their makeshift ford and into the deeper, rougher, more dangerous waters that they'd chosen not to cross in the first place.
"PEGGY?" he roared as loudly as he could. "PEGGY!"
Helpless terror clawed at his insides, even as he clung to the rocks the current tried impishly to impale him on. She could have been anywhere by now. He could have passed her in the water. She could be dashed to pieces against the stones somewhere - or floating dead…
His panic broke his concentration, and Steve went under again. The dunking seemed to do him good, for by the time he got his head above water once more, he'd realized his mistake.
Steve Rogers, thanks to the serum, had been strong enough to break to the surface. But Peggy Carter - she should have been in exactly the same position he'd been in earlier, tumbled along the bottom, at the mercy of the waves and water.
He gulped in one last lungful of air, and then let himself go.
The river was more than happy to take him again, pulling him under. This time, though, he didn't fight it - swimming with the current even as he kept one arm curled over his head to protect it from another impact. He couldn't help anybody if he was knocked unconscious.
Prickly branches suddenly jabbed into him without warning - and then he slammed into something hard. Now that he was no longer moving with the water, the weight of the current against him suddenly multiplied, crushing him and flattening him against - what was it, a sunken tree? - until he could barely move. It dragged him down, down, his shirt sliding up with the motion, bark and sticks scraping his exposed flesh.
...and then something soft - something yielding.
A body.
It was trapped against the same tree trunk, dragged down by the same current, tangled in the branches.
With a concerted effort, Steve managed to push himself back against the current enough to get one hand down and grab it. His hand closed around long, silky hair - and he knew.
He'd found her.
It took every ounce of his strength to push back against the current, to wedge an arm between her body and the trunk, to drag her free, branches snapping, fabric tearing. Tree limbs as thick as his arm barred his way; he bared his teeth and struggled up in a mad scramble for the surface, using the massive muscles in his back and legs to force his way through against the overwhelming pressure of the water
His lungs were starting to burn for air.
And Peggy wasn't moving.
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Steve never clearly remembered the part afterward; how he'd finally made it to the surface, dragging Peggy Carter after him - how he'd struggled through the crashing rapids and rocks to get to shore - how he'd clung to the grass and bushes one-handed until with a mighty effort he'd pulled them both from the current and onto dry land. The only things he did remember distinctly were the way Peggy's wet hair clung to her face in fantastic swirls - and the way her head had sagged backward, mouth open, body limp and slack against his.
Her skin was cold - white - bloodless. Water spilled from her lips.
She wasn't breathing.
No, no, no…
His heart pounded heavy and terrified in his chest, and he felt as though he were watching from a distance as his hands began mechanically going through the motions they'd all learned in training camp. Laying her flat on her stomach, head downwards on the bank, he stretched her one arm straight up and angled the other one across, pillowing her head. Then he took her jaw in his hand, carefully, if hurriedly, feeling around inside her mouth. His hands shook as he made sure her tongue wasn't blocking her airway.
Nope - all clear.
For one moment he fumbled at her pulse, but his fingers were numb from the icy water, and he was shaking too badly to tell whether or not her heart still beat. Besides, there was no time.
Kneeling over her legs, he grasped the loose material on either side of her hips, lifting them clear of the ground, doing his best to let gravity drain the water from her lungs and airway. Then he laid her down again, and put his hands on her back. Her jacket was gone - probably still tangled in the branches at the bottom of the river - but that made it easier to tell where he was supposed to put his hands, just at the bottom of her rib cage. Keeping his elbows straight, he swung his weight slowly forward, pressing down.
Water poured from her open mouth.
He let up instantly, and then swung his weight onto her again. Over and over - two seconds to push down, release, wait, then repeat.
"Peggy?" he begged. "Can you hear me? I need you to start breathing. Please, Peggy."
She didn't react - not a flicker, not a twitch.
How long had she been underwater?
Back at the base, their first aid instructor had been very clear about this. "Five minutes underwater and they're almost certainly dead," he'd stressed. "But try to revive them anyway. Keep it up for two hours, if you can, or until a medical professional reaches you and confirms they're dead."
The river had confused his sense of time - the river, and possibly the blow to his head. He had no idea how long it had been before he'd found her; it could have been two minutes or twenty. Blood kept trickling into his eyes and dripping from his hair onto the back of Peggy's sodden shirt as he pressed down over - and over - and over.
Perhaps he was doing it wrong.
The thought almost paralyzed him. The water coming from her mouth had slowed to a trickle, but perhaps he was pushing too hard, hurting her? Steve knew he was a big man now, heavier than most. The last thing he wanted to do was to cause more damage.
"Oh, God," he heard himself say, and wondered vaguely how long he'd been praying. "Please, let her live, let her live. Breathe, Peggy - Peggy?"
He never liked to think back to the black despair of those endless minutes, later.
And then, finally, a twitch. He felt it in the muscles of her back beneath his hands, heard it a moment later as she feebly gagged on the water still in her throat. He swung his weight down and then released it one more time, and then leaned over her, searching again for a pulse. He found it, that time - and her throat moved a little at his touch.
Beneath him, her back rose and fell in a shallow, wet breath.
The rush of warm relief turned his elbows and knees to liquid. He only just managed to keep from collapsing as he crawled around and half-fell at her side. Dizziness blinded him for a moment - he was only just now starting to recognize the throbbing pain in his head. Peggy took another breath, and then began to cough, shaking in violent full-body spasms as her body tried to get rid of the water she'd swallowed; the water still in her lungs.
Steve patted her back gently, and kept up a soothing stream of quiet encouragement, stroking her tangled hair out of her eyes even as he mopped the blood out of his own. When he was sure she wouldn't aspirate all that she was choking up, he took a moment to run his hands down her skull, her spine, her arms, her legs, feeling for the bones. She was bruised and battered, but nothing seemed to be broken except two fingers, which he quietly straightened and then tied together with a strip torn from his own shirt. Chances were she was still too out of it to feel the pain, and he wanted to spare her whatever he could.
At last her breathing hitched, evened out. She blinked open those dark brown eyes he'd never thought he would see again, and squinted blearily up at him. Her lips moved to shape his name, but she was too weak to make a sound.
"I'm right here," he promised. Then, because she was shivering and he had nothing dry to give her, he carefully scooped her into his arms, out of the mud where she'd been lying. "Right here," he continued, settling her in a drier location before taking her unbroken hand in his. The others are coming to get us, so we'll just hold on until then, okay?"
She nodded faintly, her forehead smoothed - and then she slept.
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It took the Commandos an hour to find them. At the sight of Steve's bloody hair and Peggy's white face they had stopped, aghast - but then Steve had looked up from where he'd curled around her, trying to share his body heat, and grinned at them, and they'd known it was all right.
Bucky, as it turned out, had been the one to discover them. He'd seen them on the shore from where he'd been scouring the other side of the river, and had turned, running all the way back up to their makeshift ford, where he'd dragged himself and his pack across the ropes by main force and what had to have been a superhuman effort against the still-rising water. He had then caught up with the Commandos, who were in turn searching their side of the river, and passed them in his mad dash to reach his best friend.
"Told you so," he'd retorted, punching Steve lightly in the shoulder as soon as he was sure neither Steve's life nor Peggy's was actively in danger.
"You did, Buck." Steve grimaced - Morita was just tying off the thread after stitching up the six-inch gash in his scalp, and was evidently catching a lot of hair in the process. "You did."
Peggy, having been wrapped in dry blankets and dosed with something out of Dugan's canteen, had fallen asleep again. Nothing was visible but the top of her damp head, and one ear. Everybody pretended not to notice how Steve's eyes wandered her direction every minute or so to make sure she was still breathing.
"We camping here tonight?" Gabe asked. He rubbed his shoulders - he was the only one who had thought to grab the others' packs as they fled down the river in their search for the captain and agent.
Steve looked up at the sky, and then at Monty, who obligingly checked his pocket watch. "We still have time."
The captain nodded with decision. "Let's go, then," he said. "At least let's find a better spot to spend the night."
Without comment, the men divided the load. Bucky silently picked up Steve's pack, while Monty grabbed Peggy's. Steve, on the other hand, went to his knees at Peggy's side. Very, very gently, he got her into his arms and stood, adjusting her weight against him.
"Let's move out," he ordered.
Preoccupied with walking and the persistent throbbing in his head, he missed when Peggy eventually woke. Only her soft murmur alerted him to the fact that she was awake.
"What was that?" he asked, pausing and bowing his head to hear her better.
Peggy was blinking rather dreamily. There was faint color in her lips and cheeks now, much to his satisfaction. "...did you just sweep me off my feet?" she repeated, before her voice trailed off into a sleepy mumble.
Steve grinned, and wondered just how strong the stuff was that Dugan had put in his canteen.
"I think it was the river that swept you off your feet," he corrected her. "But I caught you."
She seemed to consider his answer for a moment, and then nodded before snuggling her head against his shoulder in a move that made his heart speed up. Surely, she wouldn't remember a bit of this when she woke in the morning - but Steve stowed the sweet moment away in his heart anyway.
They had cheated death today. Hopefully they would cheat death tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until the war was over. But either way, he planned to be there to catch her for as long as he lived.
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Um - so I was going to take this cliche and run with it - but then I think it ran away with me. This got a lot more technical than I meant for it to.
A couple notes. PLEASE DO NOT ever get in a river even to wade if the local authorities deem it unsafe. Even the most seemingly tame river can be deadly, especially during the spring runoff or if you're in an area prone to flash floods. We lose a couple people in my area every year because they don't follow posted warnings.
If you ever are in a river, and are being swept away, some people suggest to try to float feet-first, so you can fend off the rocks that come at you. Try not to be washed up against a ledge or tree-trunk. The water sweeping under it can suck you down and get you stuck underwater. Also, don't ever dive headfirst into water if you don't know how deep it is. BAD idea, Steve.
The artificial respiration method Steve uses on Peggy is an outdated one, described in the first aid book distributed to soldiers in 1943. CPR as we know it didn't come about until 1960.
Last Steggy Week thing from me will be up soon!
