Apparently one easy mission is all they're allowed, because the brass decide to immediately take off the training wheels. Over the next two months, the SSR Special Operations Division Advance Team One—now called the 'Howling Commandos' in all the papers and propaganda features, for some reason Bucky can't figure out—spends more time behind enemy lines than not. Sometimes they even move from target to target, mission to mission, without reporting back to basecamp in between. They get updates and orders over the bulky radio they haul around. Occasionally they get a supply drop with additional ammunition, explosives, batteries, and (if they're lucky) food.
Bucky understands, intellectually, that they have to press their advantage while it lasts. War is a slow-moving machine, but the enemy does learn and adjust eventually. They need to dismantle as much of HYDRA as they can before they adapt to the seven-man strike team that's been tearing them apart. Schmidt and Zola aren't idiots, and they'll come up with new tactics sooner or later. Better to do as much damage as they can before that happens.
Just because Bucky understands doesn't mean he has to like it. He's lost almost ten pounds he didn't have to spare in the first place trying to survive on cold field rations for weeks at a time. (Keeping Stevie's higher metabolism fueled in the field is an absolute nightmare, and she's lost weight, too.) They've forgone normal uniforms entirely in favor of whatever clothing they can find that might survive their rough existence. Sometimes they're fortunate, and get to sleep in barns or cellars provided by local resistance fighters, but more often they're in the woods, under a hedge, or—once, memorably—in a sewer.
Bucky gets used to being primarily nocturnal, sleeping rough in one- or two-hour stretches, and eating whenever he gets a chance instead of on any kind of sensible schedule. He's got sweat, blood, dirt, and God knows what else caked into his skin, and he doesn't want to think what he might smell like. He's almost gotten used to the taste of mud in his teeth. At least it's summertime, so they're not worried about freezing to death in the wild, but the humidity and heat is almost as unbearable.
Every couple of weeks or so, they retreat back to friendly territory, where they can shower, eat real food, and sleep uninterrupted for a couple days. Maybe three, if the brass is feeling particularly generous or the press corps is being overly insistent about getting their new footage and interviews. Then they go back out to do it all over again.
Bucky starts to worry, in the back of his mind, about battle fatigue and whether or not the team is going to burn out. Two months is a long stretch to be so consistently active, without so much as a day of real leave back somewhere like London. It's not like they're sitting in a camp on the front waiting for orders; they're constantly on the move, fighting every day or two, on high alert in enemy territory more often than not. It's going to take a toll.
Somehow, though, they keep going. That map that Stevie carries, listing the HYDRA bases copied from memory on the rescue mission, starts to get emptier. The reports of HYDRA technology and super-weapons decrease all over the Western theater as the Commandos disrupt supply and research across occupied France, Poland, Belgium, and even Italy. There's talk of ranging into Denmark or Finland next, maybe Germany itself. (Bucky's not sure how that would work; supply drops or bombing runs are one thing, but how are they supposed to get evacuated without a friendly airstrip or boat landing?)
For all his worrying, though, maybe Bucky has started to think they're invincible. Nine successful raids in enemy territory across nine and a half weeks, and the worst injury is a bullet graze on Gabe's arm, sustained when he pulled Dum Dum behind cover in the ten seconds they were pinned down before Stevie got to them. He hadn't even realized he'd been hit until they were at the retrieval point, and Agent Carter—who's usually the one sent in to extract them, unless she's on a mission of her own—saw the blood.
There have been close calls—Stevie's shield or Bucky's rifle taking out the right person at just the right moment, Gabe spotting a landmine at the last second, Jacques bluffing his way out of an ambush with nothing but a detonator and some shouted French, Dum Dum and Jim between them managing to get a truck running half a second before explosives would have buried them in a bunker—but it's like they're charmed. Nothing sticks. Every time it looks like things are about to end in disaster, one of them has a brilliant idea or spots an escape route or makes an impossible shot. Their gambles always work.
So Bucky's just as surprised as everyone else on the day that their luck finally turns.
In hindsight, the mission went sour from day one. When they first get the communication over the radio that new intelligence has surfaced about a HYDRA base not far from their location, they've been in occupied France for eleven straight days already. They were in northern Italy for almost a week before that, skipping back and forth across the border to technically-neutral Switzerland, which in reality isn't much safer. Even by their skewed standards, it's been a long deployment, and none of them are at the top of their games.
There's never a question of turning the mission down. They're the only Allied commandos in the region, and the intelligence is sensitive. It comes straight from members of the French Resistance, and there's a narrow window before the Germans expose the spies. They're given less than two days to get in position and execute an attack.
None of them like going in blind, but they don't have a choice. They're Captain America's Howling Commandos; they don't run from a fight. They take on hopeless missions and lost causes and come out the other side grinning for the cameras. They're invincible. Or at least they're supposed to be.
Twelve hours later, Bucky is peering over the back hatch of an old farm truck, sniper rifle precariously balanced as he attempts to cover their retreat into the dark French countryside. He's finding that it's much harder to shoot out the tires of pursuing vehicles when in the back of a moving one, and especially so when his vision is blocked by the steady stream of blood pouring into one of his eyes.
Somewhere behind him, Monty is bleeding profusely from his thigh, biting down on a leather belt in an effort to remain silent as Jim does his best to dig out a bullet with a pair of tweezers and a combat knife. (He has the steadiest hands, after Bucky, who's otherwise occupied.) Gabe and Dum Dum are holding Monty's arms, one on each side, trying to keep him from thrashing around in the bed of the truck and further complicating Bucky's shooting.
Meanwhile, Jacques is struggling to wrap his own ankle, which is (hopefully) just sprained and not broken, cursing quietly in French as every bump in the road bounces him around. He's also haphazardly acting as a go-between for their driver—a local woman named Geneviève who grew up in the area, and has been their Resistance contact for this mission—and Gabe, who is steadfastly translating to English as best as he can while struggling with a thrashing Monty. (Apparently Geneviève, who giggled like a woman half her age and told them to call her Ginette when they met yesterday, has either a strong accent under stress or is using a dialect that Gabe can't parse by himself.)
Stevie is up front in the passenger seat, but she's twisted halfway around to yell back toward the rest of the team. "We don't have enough fuel for a long chase, Buck! Can you get that last truck off our tail or not?"
"It's a little harder than it looks!" Bucky snaps back. He doesn't let the emotion affect his shot, though, waiting until he releases a slow breath before pulling the trigger. He can feel that it's on target before the bullet even leaves the muzzle. Twenty yards behind them, the front left tire of the only remaining pursuing vehicle blows out with a spectacular bang almost as loud as the gunshot itself.
"Happy?" Bucky asks, checking his rifle by feel as he watches the German truck swerve off the road and crash messily into a nearby ditch. From this distance, Bucky isn't sure whether anyone up front could have survived an impact at that speed, but even if the men in the back of the troop carrier are alive, they have no way to catch up to the rapidly disappearing farm truck.
"Are we clear?" Dum Dum asks.
Bucky gives it one more visual sweep before turning around, his back resting against the tailgate with his rifle spread lovingly across his lap. "We're clear," he calls. "Tell Ginette to slow down after a mile or two; we don't want to attract any more attention than we already have."
Jacques immediately begins a stream of French aimed at the driver's seat.
"We need to ditch the truck," Gabe adds. "They could have called ahead with its description to a checkpoint or something."
"He's not going to able to walk, at least not far," Jim points out, gesturing to Monty with his tweezers, which are now bright red up to two inches from the tips. "We need either an emergency air pickup or somewhere to hide out for a while."
"Wonderful," Bucky says. He ejects the spent casing, checks the chamber to be sure it's empty, and engages the safety for good measure. Then he drops his rifle to the truck bed and lists sideways, one hand pressed to the nasty gash above his eye. "Wake me up when you need me."
He passes out before he hears any response.
When he wakes up sometime later, it's to the (far too familiar) sound of Stevie saying, "You are an idiot, Bucky Barnes." There's also the sound of a sigh. "Why didn't you tell me you were hit?"
Bucky forces his eyes open, wincing at the grit stuck under his eyelids. "I made the shot, didn't I?" He has to blink a couple of times before the room comes into focus. It's dark and small, cramped with six grown men and a grown female super soldier huddled inside. A cellar, maybe? It has that earthy, damp smell he's learned to associate with Middle of Nowhere, France. "And besides, I wasn't hit. Just grazed."
"Right," Stevie says, deadpan. "No big deal. Just a bullet graze. On your head."
Bucky shrugs. "See, that's what I like about head wounds. If you're not already dead, you'll probably be fine." He sits up, sucking in a breath as the world decides to spin for a moment. He waits until it's settled a bit before asking, "How's Monty?"
"Sleeping, which is what you should be doing," Monty's voice announces from the far wall. "I think I lost less blood than you did, and I had to let Jim here mangle my leg."
"Hey," Jim mutters from the corner. "Next time I'll leave the bullet in; how's that?"
Bucky settles back against … something. A bag? It feels like one of those heavy-duty burlap sacks, filled with something mushy but lumpy. He doesn't ask.
"Where are we?" he asks instead.
"Ginette's mother's house," Stevie tells him. "We're in the root cellar, just in case a patrol gets nosy, but apparently the odds of that are pretty slim."
"Did we get the radio working?" Bucky asks. The world is getting dark again, although at least it's stopped spinning. "We need to let command know we botched the mission."
"It's taken care of," Stevie says. Her voice has gone tight. "Nothing we can do tonight. Get some sleep."
Bucky realizes that the world is dimming because his eyes are already halfway closed. "Hey," he says, fighting to stay conscious. "Are you all right?"
Fingers brush across his forehead, away from the tender gash over one eye. "I'm fine, Buck," Stevie whispers. "Go back to sleep."
"Okay," Bucky says, and does.
The next time he wakes up, there's a throbbing ache at his hairline and a bandage wrapped tight across his forehead, but his lightheadedness and the tendency of the room to spin have thankfully departed. From the pale light coming in through the cracks around the trapdoor, Bucky assumes that it's morning. Around him, the Commandos are sleeping; Monty is propped up against the wall to stabilize his heavily-bandaged leg, with Jim in the corner next to him as if he's keeping an eye on his handiwork. Gabe, Jacques, and Dum Dum make a sort of dog-pile in the opposite corner, as if they'd all fallen over asleep in the middle of a conversation.
There's a blank space next to Bucky, and when he reaches out with his fingertips he finds the earthen floor still warm.
He gets to his feet silently—or, well, as silently as he can; Gabe has been working on teaching the rest of them true stealth, but it's an uphill battle—and walks over to the wall, carefully stepping around his teammates' limbs. A quick press of his hand to Monty's forehead confirms the lack of a fever, so he's free to let him rest for a while longer without getting too worried.
He makes his way out of the cellar, climbing up into a kitchen. The sunlight streaming in through the half-shuttered windows confirms his suspicions; it's after dawn, but not by much. It's been maybe four hours since the mission went pear-shaped and they had to retreat, which means that Stevie's had—at most—two and a half or three hours of sleep. That's not enough, even for her enhanced body, which means she's up for another reason.
He finds her out back, walking circles around an old motorbike that's propped up next to the porch. It's a prewar model, bulky, with a weak engine. It must have been somebody's hobby, but recent years haven't been kind to it. The handles are starting to rust, the grips peeling away. It looks pitiful, leaning there all alone, abandoned and forgotten. Stevie is letting one hand trail across the throttle, neck, seat, engine, and tires; when she reaches the end, her hand slides back around the other side.
Bucky comes up to her slowly, not wanting to startle her. She acknowledges him with a slight nod, but doesn't speak until Bucky is close enough to reach out and touch the motorcycle himself.
"I was thinking," Stevie says quietly. "It'd be good to do something nice for Ginette's family, after the way she saved our lives. None of us would have gotten out of there, without her." Her hand stills on the steering column. "Do you think you could get this thing running again?"
Bucky feels his hackles start to rise. "Stevie, I ain't touched an engine in … damn. Four years? At least. It's been even longer since I did any real work, not just aimless tinkering."
"I know," Stevie says. There's something sad in her eyes. "I hate that you gave it up. It used to mean a lot to you."
"No it didn't," Bucky says flatly. "I hated it."
"Bucky," she says, chiding. "You were running from your father, not the work itself." She smiles at him. "You were going to teach me, remember? All those summer afternoons hanging around your Pa's garage, and you never did get around to showing me how these things work."
Bucky stares at her for a moment, trying to force down all the unpleasant associations he has with mechanical work. "Why the sudden interest?" he asks.
She won't meet his eyes. "You almost died today, you know," she whispers. "How far was that bullet from going straight through your skull? You'd have been dead before you hit the ground, and I didn't even—" She pauses. She's silent for a long moment before she finally says, "I didn't even notice it had happened. You could have been dead, and I wouldn't have known."
"You were a little busy," Bucky says dryly. He'd been hit trying to cover Stevie after she threw herself shield-first into an entire platoon of HYDRA goons to give the rest of the team enough room to retreat, once it became clear that they were out of other options. "And I'm fine. Head wounds just bleed a lot. You know that."
"I keep going back over the mission," Stevie tells him softly. "Trying to see where it went wrong. Trying to figure out what I should have done differently."
"Hey," Bucky says immediately. He moves closer and puts one hand on the back of her neck, thumb rubbing circles into the tight muscle between her shoulders. "This was not your fault. You know that, right?"
"Doesn't matter," Stevie says. "I'm the captain; it's my team. I'm responsible for what happens. Monty's leg, Jacques's ankle, your head—all that is on me. Even Ginette's poor truck." She swallows again, and Bucky recognizes the sound of her trying not to cry. "And maybe I could forgive myself for all that, since at least everyone came back alive, but we didn't even accomplish anything. We had to turn tail and run before we even got into the base—"
"We were rushed," Bucky points out, stopping her before she gets any more wound up. "Half our intel was no good. We never got the kind of prep we'd need for a real assault. We didn't have the right kind of supplies, or anywhere close to the support we needed." He raises his eyebrows, willing her to hear him. "How is any of that on you?"
"I should have pulled us out sooner, before anybody got hurt," Stevie says. "Or never agreed to the mission in the first place, maybe."
"Stevie …" Bucky doesn't know what to do. "You can't beat yourself up about this. It's a war. Things happen."
"I know." She closes her eyes and leans just slightly into Bucky's shoulder. "I just can't stop thinking about it."
Bucky keeps his thumb massaging the back of her neck, not sure if it's helping but willing to hope. "What can I do?" he whispers.
"I just need to pretend for a minute." She looks at him, eyes tight and miserable. "You, me, and an engine. Something we might have done before all this, before the war changed everything. I need to forget about Captain Rogers, and just be Stevie for a little while."
Bucky nods. "Okay," he says. "Let's tear it open and see what the damage is, all right? Did you find a toolbox around here somewhere?"
By the time the rest of the Commandos come staggering out in search of food—Jacques hobbling on his bad ankle with Gabe's help, while Monty needs to be carried between Dum Dum and Jim—Bucky and Stevie are covered in engine grease, lying sprawled out on the summer grass, tools strewn everywhere, laughing almost hysterically in between bouts of cursing at the motorbike.
"Who are you and what have you done with Cap and Sarge?" Jim asks, deadpan.
That just sets them off again, and it's some time before Stevie gets herself enough under control to make the radio call to base and arrange for an extraction.
Two days later, as the rest of the team watches in awe while Agent Carter verbally flays the SSR Command for setting up their best team to fail with an impossible, poorly-thought-out mission, Bucky sneaks off to have a conversation with Howard Stark. The eccentric inventor is more amenable than Bucky could have hoped, agreeing instantly to surreptitiously spend an hour here and there brushing up Bucky's rusty skillset. After a few wrench-turning sessions, Bucky feels comfortable enough to tell Stark his idea. Stark immediately agrees to arrange it for him, on the condition that Bucky let him be involved.
Three weeks later, just as Monty is starting to walk without a limp and the brass are considering putting them back on active duty, Bucky calls the team together in Stark's workshop late one night, when it's empty. Front and center, polished and gleaming and fine-tuned from the ground up by Bucky's own hands, is a sleek, powerful motorcycle.
Stevie's eyes go comically wide. "Bucky?"
"For you," Bucky confirms, smiling. "I've agreed to let Stark outfit her with some weapons tech, but otherwise I can keep her running for you." He spreads his hands. "Want me to teach you how she works?"
Stevie doesn't seem to care that anyone is watching; she leaps forward and throws her arms around Bucky, like she's still a runt that he can catch without falling down. They manage to stay on their feet—barely—and he laughs, right up until she cuts off the sound with a kiss. It starts light and easy, an expression of sheer joy. Then Bucky puts his arms around her, and her hands work their way into his hair, and suddenly it's something more, something deep and eternal that lodges itself in Bucky's sternum and will never, ever let him go.
"It's complicated, my ass," Dum Dum yells teasingly from behind them, and the rest of the Commandos cheerfully start to catcall and whistle. (They'd locked the doors behind them when they came inside, so nobody's worried about attracting attention.)
Stevie finally pulls back, grinning widely. "What is this for?" she asks, breathless.
Bucky rests their foreheads together, arms still around her waist. "Did you think I was going to forget?"
Her eyes go soft and fond.
"Happy Birthday, Stevie," Bucky says, and this time he's the one who leans forward and kisses her.
"Wait, really?" Monty says, sounding appalled. "Captain America's birthday is the Fourth of July? Are you serious?"
The Commandos burst into laughter around them, but Bucky almost doesn't even hear. Any day now, Colonel Phillips is going to hand down their next assignment. Maybe the brass will take Agent Carter's lecture to heart, and actually prepare them properly this time, or maybe they'll get thrown right back in headfirst, expected to swim or drown. (And the next time disaster strikes, they might not be so lucky.) Either way, they'll have to keep moving, keep fighting.
As long as he can have this, though—even if only once in a while—Bucky thinks he might just be okay.
/~*~/
Bucky and Stevie have their only really bad fight in the autumn of 1940, when Bucky is twenty-three.
It's by no means their first fight, of course. Anybody who runs as hot as Stevie does is going to get into fights left and right, and not all of them are of the beat-up-a-bully variety. When they were kids, they fought about everything: baseball, school, ice cream flavors, books, radio shows, foods. Stevie always had an opinion, and sometimes Bucky would disagree just to get her all riled up. But those weren't really fights, just friendly arguments that got a little heated.
They fight about who's turn it is to wash the dishes or do the laundry. They fight about jobs, and whether Stevie is too sick to go to work on a given day. They fight about money and Bucky's parents and whether or not it's okay for his Ma to slip them some cash if they get behind on rent. They fight about the cost of real art classes, and how Stevie doesn't need Bucky to provide for her, even if he wants to. They fight about which bars to go out to on Friday nights, or how much to spend on alcohol and dates.
They bicker, and quarrel, and occasionally even lose their tempers. It never lasts long. One of them will say something ridiculous and make the other laugh, or else they'll just get tired of snapping at one another. Most of their fights last just a few minutes, and they never stay mad at each other longer than a couple hours. Somewhere along the line, the bickering fades back to their friendly teasing. (Later, they sometimes end fights with heated kisses and disappearing clothes, and Bucky occasionally thinks it's worth whatever started it just for the way they make up, after.)
But this fight is different. It very nearly tears them apart completely.
The war in Europe is escalating as it enters its second year, and even though that spring America had decided to unequivocally stay out of it, now there's going to be the first-ever peacetime draft. Bucky's not sure why, with enlistment already high and still climbing. It's all anyone is talking about, and Bucky's sick of everybody asking him if he's going to join up.
He's gotten used to the lines outside the recruitment center that's on his walk home. He never pays too much attention, but he does scan through it for familiar faces, wondering who else is going to disappear for training. He never says anything, or stops to talk. He doesn't want to have to explain to a recruiter why he can't do his part for his country. (Who'd be there to take care of Stevie, if he went off to be a soldier?)
That day is a Wednesday, and Bucky is heading home after a long shift at the factory. He's beat, and all he wants is to get home, fix up something quick for dinner, and collapse on the couch. (Maybe if he smiles at Stevie just right, she'll knead the tightness out of his back muscles while he reads out loud from one of those pulp magazines she likes.) When he gets to the recruitment office, though, he makes the effort to pick his head up, just enough to flick his eyes through the line. It feels like the least he can do, somehow, to take note of the men who are joining up when he can't.
Third from the doorway, about to disappear inside, is Stevie.
Bucky stares at her, uncomprehending. He's stopped dead in the street, ignoring the gentle press of people parting around him. It feels like the world stops turning, and the earth falls away from his feet. His whole body is drenched in ice.
He's at her side before he registers moving, and he's got one hand on her upper arm so he can pull her around to face him.
"Did you … did you get drafted?" Bucky squeaks.
It doesn't make any sense. The government drafts from their official records, and as far as they're concerned Stevie is still a girl, no matter what it says on her employment paperwork or the rent agreement. There's absolutely no way the US Army has drafted Steven G. Rogers, because he doesn't exist. There is no reason for her to be reporting for duty.
Stevie tries to jerk her arm out of his grasp, but fails. "No," she says, defensive.
Bucky sees the paperwork in her other hand and snatches it. He reads it quickly, and the icy fear turns to molten rage instead. "You're trying to enlist?" he asks, voice carefully controlled, just to be sure. "Steve, what are you thinking?"
A couple of the guys around them chuckle, as if they'd been thinking the same thing, looking at Stevie's scrawny arms and sunken chest.
Stevie squares her shoulders and settles her jaw, and Bucky should have known that meant a fight. "Go home, Buck."
"You're coming with me," Bucky says, and begins to drag her out of line by the arm he's still holding.
"Bucky!" Stevie yells, trying to hold her ground. "Let go!"
"You are not enlisting, Steve," Bucky says firmly.
"Yes I am," Stevie snaps. "There's a war on, and people are dying. I have no right to sit by and let that happen."
The line around them shifts as the next person goes inside. One of the guys behind Stevie crosses his arms and gestures with his large, pointed chin. "You going in or not, shrimp?"
"Yes," Stevie says.
"No," Bucky says.
"Well make up your damn minds," the guy says. "I don't have all day."
"Bucky. Let. Me. Go," Stevie says, and her voice is as low and deadly serious as Bucky has ever heard it.
"Come on," Bucky says, pulling at her arm again. "I swear, you don't have the sense God gave a goldfish. We're leaving."
"No, I'm not."
"For Christ's sake," another man calls out from the line. "Have your argument elsewhere."
Bucky glares at the guy until he backs off. Then he looks back at Stevie, mouth a thin, hard line. "I will drag you home if I have to."
Stevie stretches up to all five-foot-two of her inches. "I'd like to see you try."
There's another round of laughter from the men around them.
Bucky leans forward and hisses in her ear, "Stevie, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you home if you don't leave with me, right now."
Stevie studies his face for a moment, probably trying to decide if he's furious enough to do it.
She waits too long. Bucky shifts his grip on her arm and leans over, ready to sweep out her feet and put her in a fireman's carry.
Stevie struggles like a wild kitten, arms and legs flailing everywhere but too weak to do any real damage. "Okay!" she screams. "Bucky! Put me down!"
Bucky dumps her back to the sidewalk. Truth be told, he hadn't gotten her anywhere close to his shoulder anyway; he's not sure he could have, with her wriggling around like that.
Stevie's face is the brightest red he's ever seen, and he knows it's a mixture of awful embarrassment—the entire line and some of the guys inside the doorway are all laughing uproariously, as if this is the best entertainment they've had all week—and pure, unfettered anger. She's actually shaking with fury, the way she'd been at eight years old in that alley.
"Fine," she says. Her words come out clipped, as if they have to dart out around her grinding teeth and clenched jaw. "Let's go home."
"Glory be," a nearby man says sarcastically. "It's a miracle!"
Around them, the line breaks out into cheers as Stevie stalks off down the street.
Bucky doesn't waste the energy to glare at anybody; Stevie's moving, and that's good enough for him.
Even with her shorter legs and bad lungs, she stays ahead of him all the way back to their apartment. She's only breathing slightly hard when she gets to the door, fumbling for her key with a shaking hand.
"Here, let me—" Bucky starts to say.
Stevie fixes him with a look he's never seen before. It stops him cold, hand still outstretched with his key between two fingers.
Bucky, unlike Stevie, knows when to back down from a fight he's not going to win. He drops his key back in his pocket and waits.
The moment they get through the door, Stevie turns around, slams it shut, flicks the lock, and gives him a shove that makes him stumble back into the wall.
"What the hell, Bucky?" Stevie demands.
Bucky stays leaning against the wall, but his eyes are hot. "I think that's my line," he spits. "Enlisting? Are you crazy?"
"Why is it crazy?" she asks. "Half the neighborhood boys have joined up already."
Bucky just looks at her. "You're not a boy, Stevie. Not really."
Something cold slams into place behind her blue eyes. "You think that makes a difference?" she asks him. "You think that means I can do any less for my country?"
Bucky flounders. He knows these are dangerous waters. "It doesn't matter what I think," he says, trying to deflect. "If they catch you, you'll go to jail!"
Stevie shakes her head. "Dressing up like a fella isn't against the law, last I checked."
"Maybe not," Bucky says. "But lying on your enlistment form is."
Stevie bites her bottom lip. For the first time in all the years he's known her, Bucky doesn't find it cute. "They wouldn't catch me. Nobody ever has, and I've had five years of practice being Steve."
"The Army is different," Bucky insists. "Sleeping and changing in shared barracks, communal showers, people around you all the time … How could you hide in the middle of that?"
"I'd find a way," Stevie says, just as stubborn as ever. "I always do."
Bucky's hand is shaking where he still holds tight to the paperwork she'd filled out. "What would you do if they actually took you?" he asks. His voice comes out hushed, and for the first time he realizes that the emotion churning in his stomach isn't just anger. It's fear.
Stevie freezes. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Even if you were a boy, you couldn't do this," Bucky says. "Christ, Stevie, you run a hundred yards and you can't hardly breathe. How the hell would you even get through basic training?"
She looks like he's slapped her. "Not you," she says quietly.
"What?"
"You're the only one who never told me I couldn't do something just because I was too short, or too weak, or too sickly, or too female." Stevie is glaring at him, just as much righteous anger in her eyes as when she stands up to a bully. "When everybody else was busy laughing at me, you're the one who taught me how to throw a punch, remember?"
"Obviously I shouldn't have encouraged you," Bucky says.
"You think it would have stopped me?" Stevie demands. "I was getting into fights long before I met you, you know. All you did was help me win them, instead of just getting beat or ignored."
Bucky holds up the enlistment paperwork and shakes it at her, like a newspaper in front of a misbehaving puppy. "And this is just more of the same, is it?"
"This is the right thing to do. Or don't you care about that anymore?"
For a moment, Bucky is stunned. Does she really think that him teaching her to fight or stepping in to help her with a bully is ever about it being the right thing to do? It isn't. It's been always about her.
"Jesus, Stevie," Bucky says. He leans toward her, trying to make her hear him. "You would die. Do you understand? You wouldn't last three minutes in a real fight without me, let alone a war zone."
She crosses her arms, and her mouth is a thin, pale line. "I don't need your protection, Bucky Barnes."
"The hell you don't," Bucky snaps back. "You've needed my protection since the day we met, and don't you dare pretend otherwise. This isn't about your pride."
"I am not fragile," Stevie says, punctuating her point by jabbing him in the chest with one finger, hard. "And you know what? I don't need your approval, either."
With that, she spins around and marches for the door.
"So help me God, Stephanie Grace Rogers," Bucky says. He almost doesn't recognize his own voice, because it's hoarse with anger. (He sounds like his father.) "If you go back to that recruitment office, I will tell them you're a girl myself."
She pauses in the open doorway, looking at him over one shoulder. "You wouldn't dare," she hisses.
"Try me," Bucky says. "I'd rather watch you be thrown in jail than let you die in a training camp infirmary, or God forbid, some trench in Europe."
Stevie's so angry now that the shaking has stopped, and her voice has gone quiet and still. She just looks at him for a long moment, tears suspended in the corners of her eyes. "I really thought …" Her voice catches. "I thought you, of all people, would believe in me."
Something about those words hits Bucky hard, and he's already trying to call her back. "Stevie, wait; you know I—"
It's too late. She's gone, and Bucky's left alone with just the slamming of a door.
/~*~/
After the botched mission in June, things start to change. Maybe it was Agent Carter's rapidly-becoming-legendary scolding of the upper brass. Maybe it was Stevie going to bat for her men, demanding better supplies and more downtime between missions. Maybe it was somebody in command doing the math and figuring out that getting Captain America killed by running the Howling Commandos ragged wouldn't be good for troop morale. Maybe it was a combination of all the above.
The exact results are hard to quantify. They're still an advance team, so it's not like their lives are suddenly easy. They still get some of the most dangerous assignments in the entire European theater, starting with a campaign to soften Italian defenses before the Allied invasion of Sicily the same week they go back on active duty after Stevie's birthday. By the time the island officially surrenders six weeks later, they've already been dropped behind the lines on the mainland, getting ready for the real push that starts in September.
The difference is that this time, Stevie is involved from day one instead of being told where to go and what to do. She gets a say in what missions they take, and is given enough leeway to set her own timetable for both drop and extraction, to requisition whatever supplies she deems necessary from the quartermaster, and to act autonomously in the field when new intelligence crops up.
At first she runs every decision and mission plan past Bucky and Peggy, letting the two of them share their perspective and experience. She picks the strategy up quickly, though, and their late-night planning sessions become more about brainstorming and fine-tuning her own ideas. Then it just develops into a habit, until Bucky learns to associate pouring over a map, scanning coded printouts, and working out logistics with the warm smell of British tea and gunpowder that means Peggy. It becomes the best part of his new routine, those hours the three of them spend together.
The increased downtime between missions doesn't lead to real leave, however, much to everyone's disappointment. Instead, it just gives the media and the military press office a more reliable chance of finding them when they want a new article, photo, or reel of film. Sometimes they even take a journalist or a cameraman with them on simple, "low-threat" missions, which mostly means bivouacking near the front keeping an eye out for German or Italian advance scouts or raiders. Once they even stage a scene, stalking through the forest outside basecamp as if they were in enemy territory, complete with Stevie slinging her shield at an invisible enemy. (When they see the film later back in London, Bucky snickers; the shot cuts away before the audience can tell that there was nobody there.)
Bucky hates everything about it. Not just the fakery required to smile for the photos or the absurdity of trying to come up with good quotes for the papers when ninety percent of their missions are highly classified, but the bad taste it leaves in his mouth when he gets identified in a mess hall or at a bar. If he doesn't recognize himself in his own shaving mirror anymore, then who is the stranger whose face is plastered across cinema screens and propaganda posters, and even drawn in comic books? (The first time someone handed him one of those to have him sign, he very nearly tore it in half then and there.) It feels like everything about his life outside of the missions themselves is a lie, and he wonders if this is how Stevie feels all the time, answering to a man's name.
In October, with the Allied lines now relatively secure in Southern Italy, the SSR switches its primary focus back to hunting down HYDRA. Their brief sojourn fighting 'normal' Nazis has given Schmidt the time and relative peace he needed to distance himself from the Third Reich; the new intelligence coming out of Germany indicates the Nazi science division may have gone rogue altogether.
In some ways, this makes the Howling Commandos' job easier, because Schmidt can no longer rely on infinite reinforcements or up-to-date information. In other ways, it makes their job harder, because now Schmidt is off his tenuous leash. The first HYDRA base they hit that month has basement holding cells packed full of executed prisoners, the civilians and POW's mixed indiscriminately with Nazi officers who must have taken issue with HYDRA's new direction.
(Jim, Stevie, and Dum Dum all throw up as they leave that place behind, and nobody says a word to any of them. Nobody says anything when Jacques puts down a few more explosives than absolutely necessary on the way out, either.)
Their tactics start to change. Bucky's not sure if it's entirely predicated on Schmidt and Zola creating ever-more-insane weapons, or if it's just how Stevie's brain works when she's allowed free reign during planning, but their post-mission reports go from being called 'interesting' to 'improbable' to 'outlandish.' Sometimes Bucky catches himself wondering which set of missions are crazier; the made-up ones in the films and comics, or the ones he remembers being real. (The first time he sees Stevie take on a twenty-foot-tall tank with nothing but her shield and a bundle of explosives Jacques threw her mid-leap, Bucky starts to wonder if maybe he's got the two mixed up somehow.)
In mid-October, the weather starts to turn. Now instead of seeking out shade and breezes they're huddling together at night and wishing fondly for extra blankets. The thick blue overcoat that Bucky used to curse even as it protected him from brambles and rough terrain rapidly becomes his favorite possession, after his rifle. He gets used to having to shake off frost crystals from the dew that settles in his hair or on his bedroll overnight.
Then the first real snowfall hits, and Bucky promises himself that he'll never complain about an Italian summer ever again. The only good news is that his reflexive worrying over Stevie's health is entirely unfounded; for the first time in seventeen years, Bucky doesn't have to fret and scrounge up expensive medicines and keep Stevie away from open windows. Even when a quick, savage flu sweeps through the rest of the team in November, the serum protects her. (Bucky doesn't catch it either, probably because he's got an ironclad immune system after all those years of playing nursemaid for Stevie.)
Dum Dum catches a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder during the initial push into mainland Italy, and Gabe ends up with a jagged scar on his knee from a knife-fight with a HYDRA goon near Thanksgiving, but all told the team makes it through to the end of the year relatively unscathed. Their closest call is in mid-December, when they get holed up in an honest-to-God castle somewhere in Denmark after blowing up a supply depot, trying to survive in the midst of a sudden snowfall with half a battalion scouring the countryside for them. Their airlift back to friendly territory can't get through the storm, and they have to play hide-and-seek with five hundred enemy soldiers for nearly two weeks on dwindling supplies and ammunition. It's the closest they've come to having to surrender, and by far the longest they've been stuck behind enemy lines consecutively since those first nine weeks at the beginning of the summer.
When they limp back into camp afterward, Colonel Phillips takes one look at them and assigns them all two weeks of leave before Stevie even opens her mouth to ask. The entire SSR Special Operations Division packs up and heads to London for Christmas.
Monty is going to try to catch a train out to his family estate, and offers them all a chance to come along and witness a 'real English holiday.' After some discussion, Jim and Jacques take him up on it, while Dum Dum and Gabe opt to stay in London instead and spend the entire two weeks barhopping across the city. Bucky considers joining them, but he's never willingly abandoned Stevie at Christmas. (Last year, when he was already in Europe with the 107th and she was busy dancing on some USO stage in the Midwest, wasn't exactly a voluntary separation.)
Stevie dismisses the rest of the team at the edge of the base, reminding them to stay out of trouble and report back in twelve days so that they can catch their ride. Bucky keeps her company as they watch the others split up and head out. He's just about to ask what their plans are for the next two weeks when a messenger interrupts him to say that Phillips wants them in his office.
"We haven't had time to get in any trouble yet," Stevie says.
Bucky shrugs. "Maybe it's preemptive."
The Colonel's office is small, cramped, and cluttered in a way that suggests he's in the middle of doing at least sixteen things that are more important than dealing with Captain America. He's got a lit but ignored cigar in a crystal ashtray, half-buried under a stack of memos (which makes Bucky nervous, because that seems like a fire hazard). In the main room, phones are ringing continuously, and there's the steady clacking of a dozen WAC's typing orders, reports, and condolence letters.
There's only one chair, excepting the one Phillips is occupying behind the desk, so after the Colonel waves off their salutes Bucky stands at Stevie's elbow in parade-rest.
"What can we do for you, sir?" Stevie asks.
"You know," Phillips says, shuffling documents and refusing to look up long enough to make eye contact. "I had my doubts about you, Rogers. I thought it was some kind of tasteless prank when you showed up at my training camp, and that was before I found out about the little secret Dr. Erskine was helping you keep."
Bucky feels his jaw clenching.
"But," Phillips says, enthusiastically filing half an inch of paper into a folder, "I was wrong. If I could go back, I'd kick myself for letting you waste six months on that senator's circus show."
Stevie shifts in her chair. "Thank you, sir," she says, a little awkwardly.
"Nobody can say you haven't been effective in the field," Phillips says. "Hell, you've been a God-send, as far as I'm concerned. How you manage to dismantle HYDRA bases while wearing that nonsense costume I'll never know, but it sure does wonders for the rest of our boys to see it." He makes a face. "Captain America. Who would have thought?"
Stevie glances briefly at Bucky, who makes a helpless sort of motion. He doesn't know where this is going, either.
"I have a good team backing me up, sir," Stevie finally says.
"Well, that's what we're about to find out," Phillips says.
Stevie perks up. "You've got our next assignment?"
Phillips finally sits back in his chair and looks up at them. "The tides are starting to turn, Captain," he says. "Northern Africa is secure, the Russians are holding their own on the Eastern Front, and we've made real progress in Italy. After four years of getting our asses kicked, we're finally in a real position to fight back."
Stevie exchanges another look with Bucky. He sees the speculation in her eyes, and nods.
"Are we talking about an Allied effort to liberate France?" Stevie asks bluntly.
Phillips scowls. "This is top-secret, Rogers. Even I don't have the full story." He tilts his head. "But yes. The wheels are already in motion; it's happening within the year." He leans forward and clasps his hands on his desktop. "Everything is being handled with extreme care. There's going to be a misinformation campaign like nothing we've ever attempted before."
Stevie sits up straighter. "Where do we come in?" she asks.
"You," Phillips says, "are a distraction. You're flashy, you're loud, and somehow all your missions seem to end with an explosion or something on fire."
Bucky bites back a laugh.
"Sir?" Stevie asks.
"We can't really hide an operation of this size," Phillips explains. "What we can do is try to make damn sure the Germans are watching something else."
"You want us to draw attention," Stevie says.
"I want you out on the front lines, being seen to cause trouble. I want the Germans so worried about what Captain America is doing that they don't pay any attention to our real plans." Phillips raises his eyebrows. "Think you can manage that, Rogers?"
Stevie looks at Bucky one more time. He shrugs.
"We'll come up with something, sir," Stevie promises.
"Good. I want your preliminary mission plan on my desk when you report back in two weeks." He makes a shooing motion. "Now go have Christmas. Dismissed."
Bucky waits until they're back on the street before nudging Stevie with one shoulder and saying, "Hey, knock it off." He can already see the gears turning in her head as the strategist in her starts to work on the problem she's been given. "We can plan out our missions later. What are we doing for Christmas?"
"Didn't he tell you?" a crisp voice asks.
Bucky glances up to see Peggy leaning against the door of a car parked by the curb, immaculate—as always—in her uniform, hair pinned back.
Stevie's face lights up as soon as she sees her, and she walks over to give Peggy a quick kiss on the cheek. "You're early," she says quietly.
"No, you're late," Peggy corrects. She turns to Bucky. "My apologies, James. The Captain was supposed to inform you that I keep a flat here in the city. You boys are spending the holiday with me."
Bucky doesn't even have time to offer a polite, token protest before Stevie is bundling him into the backseat of the car.
Peggy's London flat is small but cozy, warm and smelling of gun oil and home-cooked meals. (It smells like burnt home-cooked meals for the next two days, because Peggy didn't believe Bucky when he told her in no uncertain terms to never allow Stevie near the oven. Even Bucky couldn't rescue that fiasco, and they'd nearly had to throw out the pan.)
Bucky stays in the spare bedroom down the hall from Peggy and Stevie, and he falls instantly in love with the mattress. It's softer than anything he's slept on, not just since the war started, but even back in Brooklyn. The blankets are thick and fluffy without being heavy. The pillows smell fresh and clean. He spends the whole first day in bed, only getting up with a grumble when Stevie bodily drags him out to the living room.
There's thick carpets on nearly all the flooring, a fireplace to keep them warm, and—best of all—a radio playing holiday tunes day and night, with not a single war report to be heard. It takes all of one afternoon for Bucky to teach Peggy a jive routine, and in return she teaches him an English waltz. After that, every time Stevie leaves them alone in a room together, she comes back to find them dancing.
Stevie sketches them that way, once, capturing them mid-twirl. On the page, Peggy's hair is streaming out behind her, and Bucky is grinning. Stevie gives it to Bucky as his Christmas present, and he keeps it folded in his breast pocket for the rest of the war. He never shows it to anyone else, but sometimes when he's alone he'll take it out and remember a time when he was happy, when his whole world could be distilled down to a dance with a remarkable woman in his arms.
For a while, they try to avoid even mentioning the war, but it's too tied up in who they are, by now. Stevie makes it four whole days before Bucky comes back in from a smoke on the front step to catch her at the kitchen table, thoughtfully marking up a map and taking notes on a little pad. He doesn't say anything, just sighs and stamps the snow off his boots, then goes in search of Peggy. Fifteen minutes later the three of them are deep in a discussion about the relative tactical value of mountains and rivers in Southern Italy, and what exactly they can do to draw as much attention as possible away from the Western front.
All told, it ends up being one of Bucky's best Christmases ever, even if they do spend more time than he'd like putting together the mission plan for Phillips. There's just something maddeningly perfect about it, this balance between the three of them, and Bucky wakes up one day in that London flat realizing that he could be happy, like this. Not just happy for Stevie, the way he'd always imagined it when he thought about her finding the right woman, but happy in his own right. Peggy's become his friend just as much as she's Stevie's gal. He can't imagine a life without her, anymore. (If he's maybe falling a little bit in love with her, too, he can hardly be blamed. Peggy's an easy woman to love.)
Bucky saves the most important bit for Christmas Day, just before they call it a night and head to bed. He gives Peggy her present first, and she unwraps the brown paper with Margaret written across it to find a package of her evening tea, along with a small tube of hard-to-find lipstick in her favorite shade. She immediately applies it, then leaves a brilliant red kiss mark on his cheek. (Her present to him had been a new cleaning kit for his rifle, with some of the expensive gun oil that he'd once admired her using on her field pistol.)
Bucky pulls out a second package with Stevie's name scrawled across the top. "So you'll always find your way home," Bucky says, tossing it to her.
She opens it, revealing a small compass. When she flicks it open to check the needle, she pauses. Carefully tucked in the lid, where she can always see it, is a photograph of Peggy that Bucky bummed off one of the media hounds that had been tailing them.
Stevie hands the compass off to Peggy, and then walks over to sit across Bucky's legs.
"Merry Christmas, Buck," she whispers. For the first time since her birthday in July, she gives him a real kiss, the kind that makes him melt back into the couch and just cradle her in his arms, for as long as she'll let him.
From the corner of his eye, Bucky can see Peggy watching them. She glances down at the compass with her image tucked inside, and chooses not to say anything. He's not sure, but he thinks he might even see her smile.
The rest of their leave flies by too quickly, and before Bucky knows it, it's time to pack up his gear and head back to base. The rest of the Howling Commandos are reporting tomorrow, but Captain America has to show up a day early to get a jumpstart on planning their next set of missions. As her NCO and team sergeant, Bucky will be busy trying to corral the men and get their supplies and munitions worked out, so that when Stevie says "jump" they're all ready to move.
They help Peggy put the flat back in order, stripping the bedding and covering the furniture with sheets, before they leave. (She's due to report back to SSR Command, too, and with the war escalating she probably won't be back until it's over.) Bucky's going to miss the place, more than he would have thought possible just a few days ago. He's felt more at home here than he has since Brooklyn.
Bucky isn't surprised when Peggy stops them at the door in order to give Stevie a thorough kiss goodbye. He is, however, when she immediately turns to him and does the same, albeit a little more chastely. (Maybe he's not the only one realizing how perfectly the three of them fit together.)
"Be careful, James," Peggy whispers in his ear. "And keep her safe."
"Always," Bucky promises, and follows Stevie back to the war.