The problem with Russian weapons designs, Evangeline decided as she continued to pour over the documents and files spread out on the table in front of her, was that they were written in Russian. A language she knew exactly to nothing of. Even German would have been better, and all she knew of that language was gesundheit, that Mister translated to herr, Miss was frauline, and Missus was frau. Apart from that, the only word that she'd ever picked up – and she only remembered it at all because it tickled her funny bone – was that rathaus was the German word for the building in which their politics happened. Rat-House. Never had there been a more suitable word for a den of politicians. Her Russian though? Initially non-existent, but now rapidly expanding.
So there she was, pouring over the plans that had flown through the tent-flap a quarter of an hour before lunch, slightly battered from the trip across the better part of two continents in roughly twelve-to-fourteen hours, but otherwise whole... and with a Russian-English translation dictionary at her side. Because translation charms were nothing more than a myth. After all, if they did exist, then it wouldn't have been necessary to employ Barty Crouch senior in the Department of International Co-operation, where his primary strength was that he could speak fluently in more than ten languages.
Yes, she supposed that she could give the plans and files to one of the linguists in Intelligence, but she was surrounded by the inception of a covert organisation. She could practically smell it. The way the Colonel had wanted to hang onto Zola, even with his demonstrated fanaticism to Hydra's cause (to the point of living, where others had simply died), screamed of long-term planning. The kind of long-term planning that involved secret plans, clever tricks, and high levels of paranoia.
In a word: spies.
Evangeline had gotten more than her fill of secret organisations, spies, and lies back in her later Hogwarts years. Yes, some of it had been necessary, she could admit that. She would never agree that all of it had been needed though. Never. Too many people had died specifically because of secrets that hadn't been told.
She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath through her nose, and banished her should-haves, could-haves, and would-haves. Hind-sight was all well and good, but dwelling on the road already travelled was pointless unless it helped to navigate the road ahead.
At least with Erskine's formula, she was getting a dictation directly from his spirit, and she was getting it in English. Long-winded, complex English, peppered all throughout with appropriately medical and scientific Latin, but she could work with that much more easily and quickly than she could the Russian. She was just grateful that the scientists the plans had been stolen from hadn't worked in some horribly complicated code on top of the rest.
Everything was also hideously complex. Of course, the sort of things being done were impossible, so a hideously complex plan/blueprint/recipe was to be expected. God might be able to just speak the world into being, but humans (even the magical ones) couldn't think of realistically approaching that. Ever. The simplest answer would not always be the most ideal solution, sadly. The simplest answer for Bucky would be to re-attach his own arm. Magic could return separated appendages to their owners, splinching happened often enough and had been a regular accident for those learning to apparate for long enough that a solution had been found a long time ago.
But it had to be the person's own flesh being restored to their person. Evangeline couldn't cut a suitable arm off a dead or dying person, attach it to Bucky, and expect that to work. If that was possible then George wouldn't still be missing an ear, and Moody certainly wouldn't have been hobbling about on a peg before he'd been caught out and snatched up because of it.
Pettigrew's silver hand was... liquid metal (not silver, for all that it looked silver in its molten state) transfigured from the used cauldron, that was linked to both Riddle and Pettigrew through the Dark Mark, animated, and controlled by magical fluctuations (instead of neural synapses) and will. It had been created by Riddle's magic, but maintained by Pettigrew's own magical core.
At least, so far as she could guess. It wasn't like she'd gotten the opportunity to examine it in any great detail. She was going off assumptions based on her current medical knowledge and on what she had seen with her own eyes as a teenager with no goals beyond living to the end of the war, winning it, and killing as many of the enemy as she could along the way. Assumptions that said the feat was not replicable. Especially on a person who lacked a functioning magical core – Bucky actually had a neat little magical... wick, would probably be the best word for it. He had the potential to be magical, but had never triggered it. A sort of 'missing link' between squib and full witch or wizard. Something like the 'hedgewitch' category from fairy-stories.
It wasn't like she wanted to spend the rest of her life transfiguring magical limbs for people anyway, even if she could get them to work without the patient having a magical core to sustain and operate them. Better to figure out a viable design, something a bit more reasonable for everyday use than the weapon that the Russians had come up with, patent it, and then have it manufactured for sale to those who needed it.
There was so much to do. She had to translate all the Russian, yes, and that was a daunting task to begin with, but there was more to it than that. She needed to figure out each limb from each joint, because no two amputations were identical. It was part of why normal prosthetic limbs cost as much as they did, despite a lot of them being really quite basic in both form and function. Okay, she didn't need to do that for Bucky, but for the sake of being comprehensive...
"How's it going?"
Evangeline jumped in surprise and turned in her seat. It was Bucky (of course it was Bucky, at the moment, he was the only person apart from herself able to enter her tent). She'd just been so absorbed in the work and her thoughts that she hadn't heard him. Well, not consciously at least, or he'd have been hit with a stunner already.
"My written Russian is improving in leaps and bounds," she answered with a wry, not wholly pleased (and definitely not amused, because it wasn't funny!) twist to her mouth. "Sorry I've been such a poor hostess."
"You've been busy being a good doctor," Bucky said with a shake of his head, words and actions dismissing and forgiving all at once. "Thought you might like to know, the men have started returning."
"Do they look victorious? Or are these the ones that had to escape a bad situation?" she asked even as she turned away from her work. She needed to get away from the plans for a bit. The words were still swimming before her eyes even now when she wasn't looking at them. Apparently, she'd really needed to move about too, because her spine had been one long series of pops, clicks and cracks as she stood up from the chair. "How long have I been sitting here?" she moaned out.
"I'd say the only reason you're not hungry right now is because I brought you a plate of sandwiches four hours ago, which you seem to have decimated even though it was piled high enough to feed me when I was a bottomless pit of a growing teenager," Bucky answered with an amused smirk as he gestured to the plate of crumbs that sat just passed the piles of paper. "And you'd been working on those plans for about three hours before I brought you the sandwiches."
Evangeline grimaced at the revelation that she'd been sitting at her desk, pouring over schematics, designs, and a language she didn't understand, for seven hours.
"I should make us some dinner," she said.
"That's what the Mess Sergeant is for," Bucky countered with a gentle smile.
"My cooking tastes better than his," Evangeline asserted firmly. It was healthier too. The food in the mess tent was all boiled to death, but then, boiling and frying was the only way they seemed to cook food in this era, and boiling was safer out here on the field. "Besides, I like cooking."
"You don't want to go meet the returning men?" Bucky checked. "They're rolling in with stolen tanks and trucks, cheering the victory."
"And your friend?"
Bucky grinned a wide, happy, contented grin.
"He's here too, safe and sound, and all thanks to you. He was back first, actually. Had to crash Schmitt's plane, apparently. Your portkey meant he could escape the wreckage and we don't need to send out search-parties," he reported.
"And you're not with him now?" Evangeline queried, slightly stunned. She knew how important Rogers was to Bucky. They'd just had that conversation that morning, before the files on her desk had flown through the tent-flap.
"I've already fussed over him enough," Bucky said with a shake of his head. "Made him eat something, got the blow-by-blow. He really is a punk. He finally got himself a date with Agent Carter. They agreed to it over the radio while he was aiming the stupid plane to crash into the ocean."
Evangeline laughed at that.
"It's the first date he'll ever have that I haven't set him up for," Bucky declared, the cant of his lips proud, but the shake of his head a little disbelieving. "And I'm never going to let him forget just how he got it."
"I suppose that means you wormed the details out of him. Do you also plan on following him to make sure it's a successful date?" Evangeline teased.
"Eight o'clock, a week from next Saturday," Bucky confirmed. "They're going dancing at the Stork Club, which should be entertaining. As many double-dates as I've pulled him out on, he's never stayed long enough to get to the dancing part, which left me having to dance with two girls."
"A true hardship, I'm sure," Evangeline quipped with a raised eyebrow and a tucked away smirk, not sincere in the least.
"It's definitely a strange turn-about," Bucky said, the smile falling away to seriousness. "I... Of the two of us, it was always me the dames liked and him they barely saw, however much I tried, and however much I tried to get him to try. Then Agent Carter walked into the bar and it was the other way around. I'm still not entirely sure how to handle that, and without an arm..."
"Maybe the answer, for now, is to let him go on his date to the Stork Club without you, while you go on a date without him somewhere else?" Evangeline suggested, and moved to walk passed him to the kitchen.
"I can see how much work you're putting into both the prosthetic and serum ideas, but I don't think either one would be ready in the time-frame you're suggesting," Bucky pointed out reasonably as he let her pass him, and followed behind her at an easy pace. It was incredible to think that his leg had been broken just a couple of days ago, and now he didn't even need the borrowed walking stick to help him get around.
"You could go on a date as you are," Evangeline said.
"Somehow, I don't think there are a whole lot of dames interested in stepping out with a one-armed sergeant," Bucky pointed out ruefully. "Not that wouldn't be pitying me the whole time, anyway."
"I could think of one," Evangeline mumbled.
Bucky still heard her.
"Yeah," he agreed, and his bright blue eyes darkened a little as they lingered on her back. "Me too, but she's the sort of quality lady that deserves the best. Apparently I'm great, but I'm not the best, and I know it. I hear she's working on a serum that could put me in the way of maybe being the man she deserves though. Think I'll got for it. See how that works out for me."
Evangeline smiled to herself at that.
~oOo~
"Would you care to repeat that?" Colonel Philips said, all at once an order, a request, and a demand, as he set his hands on his hips and his most disbelieving expression on his face.
"I want to put Sergeant James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes through the Super Soldier Process," Evangeline enunciated carefully, to make absolutely sure that both of the men sitting opposite her had heard and understood what she had just said. Bucky wasn't present. He was keeping Rogers and Carter distracted for a bit, regaling the Agent with embarrassing stories about his best friend.
It wasn't that the pair weren't trusted not to know, but Carter would have told Rogers, and Bucky didn't want to get his best friend's hopes up – just in case it didn't work out.
"That's what I thought you said."
"But without Doctor Erskine, we have no formula," Howard Stark pointed out reasonably. "Captain Rogers donated some of his blood after the procedure, but we've found no way to synthesise the formula from it yet. I can set up the equipment, but it doesn't mean a thing without the Doc's serum."
Evangeline reached into a pocket of her coat and pulled out a stoppered vial of glowing blue formula. Erskine's recipe. While everyone else celebrated bringing down the Hydra Base where Schmitt had been, and took a couple of days off before they got on with the business of hunting down the scientific bases that Evangeline and mapped out for them (to say nothing of doing their fair share of fighting the rest of the war as well), she'd been working the whole time.
Evangeline had settled into a bit of a routine. Prosthetic plans in the morning, serum in the afternoon. Bucky generally joined her in her tent mid-morning, put a record on, and settled down across from her with one of her many, many books. She might throw out a question or two about what he wanted the arm capable of in the morning, but otherwise they were just together. Bucky made sure she stopped for lunch, which would sometimes be sandwiches he made, and would sometimes be soup that she'd put on the stove while she made her breakfast. After lunch, he went back to reading, and Evangeline switched out the papers she poured over. She occasionally took blood samples from him to run tests, but again, it was mostly reading and not talking. Just sitting near each other while they did their own thing.
Of course, Bucky was just as content to spend a few minutes here and there throughout the day just watching Evangeline as she worked. He had to limit himself to how much he watched her though, because being watched for too long made her twitchy.
When seven o'clock rolled around, Bucky put his book back on whatever shelf he'd pulled it from, pulled Evangeline away from her desk again, and dragged her out to the mess tent for dinner. The food there was never as good as her cooking, but it got her out for a little while, which was just as much the point as feeding her was. After dinner they often returned to her tent and settled down on her couch together for a couple of hours. They would just talk, about her life and about his, before he went back to his own tent for the night. Some nights though, they'd join Steve and the Commandos when they got leave to go into the nearby town, where the destination was always the pub for food that was slightly better than the mess offered, as well as drinks, carousing, and a few hands of cards.
Evangeline didn't drink anywhere near enough to get drunk though, and she knew better than to try and match even the lightweights of the group drink for drink. She got quiet and solemn when she was drunk, and she didn't want to ever bring down their cheer. She had produced a bottle of Odgen's Finest Firewhiskey one night though, and challenged all patrons to take a shot. Rogers, who supposedly couldn't get drunk any more, had swayed in a very promising manner (at least, if the aim was to get the man drunk) after taking his turn.
To be completely fair though, she had poured him a double, and there was a bit of magic in Firewhiskey, which made it all the more potent.
"Is that what I think it is?" Colonel Philips asked carefully, his eyes fixed on the vial and its contents, and his words pulling Evangeline back from where her thoughts had wandered.
"If you think it's Doctor Erskine's formula, then yes," Evangeline confirmed. Recreating a highly complex formula from exact notes that didn't have to be translated was a lot easier than having to first translate notes, and then modify the plans based on what she did and didn't want the cybernetic prosthetic arm to do. Also what Bucky did and didn't want the arm to do as well.
It had been the better part of half a year since Bucky had agreed to try the serum for an answer to his one-armed state, but they'd also kept half-a-mind to the possibility of his needing the prosthetic arm despite the procedure. Both projects were slow going. Erskine's formula was easier, yes, but that by no stretch made it easy – and she'd also had to make sure that Erskine's formula wouldn't react badly to Zola's meddling, which had meant taking a few pints of Bucky's blood and running tests.
Lots and lots of tests.
For comparison's sake: Erskine's formula was learning to comprehensively communicate in three different-but-related languages well enough to have deep and meaningful exchanges in all of them – and tweaking it to not react poorly to what was already in Bucky was adding in another two languages. The prosthetic, on the other hand (not to be pun-y) was more like translating nuclear physics, bio-chemical engineering, and every aspect of medicine ever into three vastly different languages, without a reference guide to make sure everything was correct, and having to use iambic pentameter, just because it wasn't hard enough already.
Not that anybody not involved in the process understood that at all.
"Wow," Howard Stark breathed, eyes wide. He at least had an inkling of understanding, having been involved with Erskine before, as well as being the person to examine what Axis-forces technology came in after the battles.
"I'm not going to ask how you managed it," Colonel Philips decided after a moment of just silently staring at the vial. "You were right about those bases, and that camp, and Schmitt's cousin. You made time spin backwards. You made it so that Rogers was transported out of a plane crash back to camp on a word. What I am going to ask is why you want to stick that into a man who's missing an arm."
"For that reason exactly," Evangeline stated plainly. "As I understand it, Captain Rogers grew almost a foot due to the procedure. That is a very extensive muscular and skeletal change. I'm not certain, but I believe that it could, just maybe, cause Sergeant Barnes' arm to grow back."
"And if it doesn't?" Howard asked, cautiously playing devil's advocate.
"I'm still working on figuring out the blueprints for the prosthetic as well," Evangeline assured the man. "The formula just got finished first."
"If it works, you think we could put all our amputees through this process?" Colonel Philips suggested curiously.
"I don't know," Evangeline answered, but the way she shook her head as she said so wasn't encouraging. "I honestly wouldn't suggest it at all for most people though. The essential principle of Doctor Erskine's formula is always going to be one of the amplification. Good becomes great, but bad becomes worse, to use his phrasing."
"Meaning we could have another Red Skull on our hands by accident," Howard registered, "and that's if it even does work to grow Barnes' arm back. If it doesn't, then that line of discussion is moot anyway."
"Except that the Doc here is also working on a real fancy prosthetic, right?" Colonel Philips interjected. "Could you imagine a team of Super Soldiers, each one with an arm or a leg that doubles as a weapon, ploughing through the Axis' forces?"
"No," Evangeline cut off firmly. "Because, so far as I can understand from the stolen blueprints I'm in the middle of translating and working from, each limb will have to be custom made and fitted for each person, then specifically calibrated for use while it's being fitted. This limb will be superior to any other prosthetic out there, but it will also take at least three months to build and another week on top of that to... to install on a person. To fit and finesse it to the individual who is going to be living with it for the rest of their lives."
"So we'd have to find men who first of all, fit the model of a 'good man', which is hard enough to find in the first place, especially in the army, because we don't win wars with niceness," Colonel Philips started listing off, clearly on a grumble. "Then if we find one who is an amputee and willing to go through the Super Soldier process, which was neither easy nor cheap the first time around, and it doesn't make any lost limbs grow back, then it will be another three months and change to get them the new limb, which I expect will be as difficult and expensive as the Super Soldier program was in the first place."
"That sounds about right," Evangeline agreed.
"Great," Colonel Philips complained as he sank back into his chair. "Then why am I letting you do it to Sergeant Barnes?" he demanded ruefully.
"You're not paying me to do the research on the prosthetic," Evangeline reminded. "I'll get my name on the patent when I'm done, that's my prize for that. You're letting me put Sergeant Barnes through the Super Soldier process to find out if it will re-grow lost limbs at all. We know the formula works in general thanks to Captain Rogers. I am potentially, tentatively willing to supply more formula for more soldiers for as long as this war lasts, provided that men can be found who meet the criteria – and by that I mean my criteria and Doctor Erskine's, not your criteria, Colonel."
Philips sighed in frustration. As Evangeline had pointed out, there wasn't really anything to lose – the loss had already happened when Erskine was shot. Now that they had the formula in hand again, well, the original plans to have an army of Super Soldiers could be tentatively put back on the table.
He agreed to give it the go-ahead anyway – on the proviso that, if it worked, Barnes was reinstated to active duty, rather than only taking part in the war from the logistics chair.
Evangeline countered that, in that case, it would be up to Barnes if he still wanted to go through with the procedure.