The first thought Bucky has, watching Stevie fall, is that he's supposed to go into shock. Time is supposed to slow to a crawl, so that he can hear each beat of his heart like rolling thunder. His focus is supposed to narrow, until everything is just the stretched-out moment where he reaches for her. The rest of the world is supposed to fall away, sounds muted and colors washed out, so that all he can see is the slowly spreading red stain blooming across the white star on her chest.
It doesn't happen at all like that. It's loud, chaotic, and everything moves much too quickly.
"Captain!"
"What the hell?"
"Where did it come from?"
"Get down!"
Stevie hits her knees in the dirt, one hand outstretched for balance, the other pressed to the wound near her heart. She crumples sideways as soon as she's down, but Bucky is already there. He catches her shoulders and slips behind her, holding her tight.
"Bucky?" she says, and then coughs up a mouthful of blood.
Bucky's well-trained hands are already pressed to the entrance wound, over her star. "Breathe," he snaps harshly, pulling her into his lap and crawling backwards away from the shooter. "Just breathe for me, Stevie," he begs, like he has a thousand times before, like this is nothing more than another asthma attack.
The Commandos had dispersed at the first sign of gunfire, as they've been trained to do. The sight of their Captain going down, though, seems to have frozen them in place. Bucky should start shouting orders, take charge, but all he can think about is the bullet somewhere in Stevie's chest cavity. She's coughing up blood. Every instinct is telling him that it's a fatal shot. If it didn't nick one of the big arteries in that area, then she's going to drown in her own blood as it fills up her lungs.
"Gabe! Get Cap and Sarge to the extraction point, fast as you can." It's Monty's voice, and Bucky has never been so glad of that unflappable English calm, or the officer training of one Lieutenant James Montgomery Falsworth. "Jim, you're covering them. Dum Dum, Jacques, you're with me; we're going to keep the Germans busy until that plane gets here."
Bucky registers Gabe's presence at his elbow, and then they're hauling Stevie upright between them. Bucky keeps his hand pressed to the entrance wound, even though part of him knows it's a delaying tactic at best. Stevie lets out a hoarse cry of pain, and more blood bubbles up to coat her lips and teeth.
"B—Buck—"
"Easy," Bucky says, as gently as he can. (His adrenaline is so high that it doesn't come out very gentle at all.) He wishes he had one of those field-ready morphine doses, to give her some relief. "Just breathe, Stevie. You've got to breathe for me."
Maybe shock does set in, belatedly, at that point. Bucky doesn't remember much of the rush to the landing field, but that may just be because he doesn't look away from Stevie's face the entire time. She's gone pale, almost gray, the way she hasn't since the last time she was fighting off pneumonia in the hospital. Her eyes have rolled back in her head, and she's unresponsive.
Bucky doesn't stop talking to her, though, not for a second. "Come on, Stevie," he says, holding her close. (If he's rocking her, just a bit, the way he'd do when they were kids and she couldn't sleep for coughing, he doesn't quite register it.) "You're going to be fine. What good is that stupid serum otherwise, huh? You've just got to keep breathing for me, Stevie. Please."
At some point, Bucky notices that Gabe has sprinkled sulfa powder on her wound and covered it with a wad of bandages; his slender fingers are pressed to the pulse point at her slack wrist. His eyes are tight and worried, lips forming a slim line. "Five minutes, for the plane," he says, when he sees Bucky staring at him.
Five minutes until the plane lands; a couple more to get everyone on board and take back off. Thirty minutes to fly back across the Channel (if they don't get shot down). Ten or fifteen more to get Stevie unloaded at the airfield and rushed to the closest military hospital.
It's too long. But it's already been too long, and Stevie is still breathing, albeit shallowly. The serum is allowing her to hold on, when anyone else would have been dead by now.
"Come on," Bucky whispers. "Come on, Stevie. Just breathe."
It's the longest hour of Bucky's life.
He barely registers the rest of the Commandos around him as they lift Stevie into the back of the plane; he doesn't ask if the shooter was alone or part of a patrol or how they secured the area in order to let the plane land safely. He doesn't know if they fly unmolested all the way back across the Channel, or if they spend the whole flight dodging anti-aircraft fire. All he knows is that Stevie is still breathing, slow and shallow. She's still warm and real in his arms. For now.
The medics at the RAF airfield are waiting for them on the runway; somebody must have radioed ahead. They must understand the look in his eye, because nobody says a word when he jumps into the ambulance after her stretcher.
Bucky holds her hand as the medics swarm around her. (Someone has unclipped the shield from her back in order to lay her flat on the stretcher, and Bucky is absently carrying it in his other hand.) "Almost there, Stevie," he says. "Come on."
Then they're at the hospital, and they unload her and carry her stretcher into the triage area. Someone is yelling, "Surgery Three! Prep Surgery Three, and somebody find Dr. Abrams! We've got a gunshot wound to the upper chest cavity with heavy internal bleeding and a possible punctured lung!"
"Sergeant? Sergeant, I need to you let him go. We have to take him."
Bucky looks up and sees several medics (doctors?) and nurses crowded around Stevie's stretcher in the hallway. They're trying to take her into a doorway, and there's an orderly blocking Bucky from going with them. They can't take her until he lets go.
One of the nurses leans over with a massive pair of scissors. She gets them in the collar of Stevie's uniform and starts to cut down. The reinforced fabric doesn't tear easily, but her motions are strong and practiced, and the material begins to yield.
"No, don't!" Bucky lets go of Stevie's hand to make a grab for the scissors.
"Sergeant," one of the nurses says again. She's got a grip on his arm and is trying to pull him away. He's off-balance enough that she succeeds in moving him half a step, out of range to stop what's happening. "Let them do their jobs. We'll take good care of him; I promise."
Bucky stares as the blades slice through Stevie's uniform top, feeling helpless. "You don't understand."
The scissors cut through the Captain America uniform from throat to navel, and the padded compression shirt beneath. When the nurses peel the fabric back, exposing Stevie's bare chest, everything stops. (Bucky can finally see the damage, angry swelling and stark red blood against her pale skin, but that's not what everyone else is staring at.)
"What is this?" one of the doctors demands.
"Help her," Bucky pleads. It's loud in the sudden silence of the hospital corridor.
"Her?" somebody else says, obviously too far away to see for themselves. "This is Captain America!"
"Yes, it is," Bucky says. "And she's dying. Help her!"
It breaks the spell. Even though mutters and whispers are spreading rapidly through the watching crowd, the doctors and nurses immediately around Stevie's stretcher snap back into action. Bucky finally allows the nurse who had spoken to him pull him away, and the stretcher disappears through a doorway.
Bucky's knees give out, and for a long moment all he hears is a rushing sound in his ears.
"—blood on you. Are you hurt? Sergeant Barnes?"
Bucky blinks. He's sitting on the floor of the triage room, back pressed to a wall. The same nurse is crouched in front of him, one hand gently pressed to his elbow, looking at him in concern.
"What?" he says.
"Are you hurt, Sergeant?" she asks again. She's slim and petite, in her mid or late thirties, and she has that forced-calm presence that instantly makes Bucky think, painfully, of Sarah Rogers. "Will you let me check you for injuries? You've got a lot of blood on you."
"No," Bucky says. His mouth is dry, but he licks his lips anyway. "No, it's not mine."
He looks at his hands, then. He's startled to see that they're bright red up to his wrists, like he's dipped them in a bucket of paint. His stomach roils unpleasantly, but he forces down the urge to vomit. The room around him spins for just a moment, all color draining away.
"—classic shock symptoms. Are you sure you aren't hurt?"
"I'm fine," Bucky says. "Scrapes and bruises." He doesn't even feel those at the moment, although he remembers getting them, trekking across France and trading fire with German defenders for the last week. "When can I see her?"
The nurse falters. "Captain Rogers?"
Bucky nods.
"They're taking him—her, I mean—to surgery," the nurse stammers. "They'll have to go in and try to repair the damage the bullet did internally. It's very close to her heart and lungs." She hesitates. "She might need a blood transfusion. Is there anything falsified on her tags other than her gender?"
Bucky blinks. "What?"
"It lists her blood type on her identification tags—her dog tags," the nurse explains calmly. "But it also says 'Steven.' Do you know if any other information is wrong? It could be the difference between saving her and not, Sergeant."
"No," Bucky says. "No, it's accurate. She just had to lie about her name, or they wouldn't let her be Captain America."
The nurse actually smiles at him. "No, I suppose not," she says. "Can you move to a chair, or are you more comfortable on the floor?"
Bucky tenses. From where he's sitting right now, he can see down the corridor to the door through which Stevie disappeared, but if he moves—
"It's fine; you can stay right there," the nurse says quickly. "Try to take some deep breaths, Sergeant. I'll be right back. Will you be all right for a moment?"
Bucky nods, and she gets up. She comes back with a blanket that she puts around his shoulders. She also has a basin of warm water and a soft cloth. She asks Bucky if he'd like to wash the blood off his hands. They both realize quickly that he's shaking too badly to do it himself, so—without another word—the nurse does it for him. It somehow manages to be both professional and tender at the same time, and Bucky finds his head falling back against the wall behind him.
Someone puts a mug of hot, overly sweet tea on the floor next to him, and he drinks it.
The Howling Commandos arrive. All five of them arrange themselves on the floor around Bucky. They leave one at a time to go to the restroom and clean up from being in the field. Somebody from the hospital staff comes over, irritated with the way they're taking up space, but the same nurse who has been keeping an eye on Bucky intercedes for them, and they're allowed to stay.
There's food, brought to them on little trays. Jim and Dum Dum try to cajole Bucky into eating at least a little bit of his—normally he's ravenous after a mission—but the smell alone is almost enough to make him hurl. The idea of trying to swallow anything makes him feel sick.
Bucky lets his eyes fall closed. He doesn't sleep, but it keeps people from trying to talk to him.
"—just barely coming out of shock, sir," Bucky's nurse is saying somewhere nearby. "I don't think—"
"Thank you, ma'am," a stern voice says, one that Bucky recognizes as belonging to Colonel Phillips. "That will be all."
The Howling Commandos leap upright. Monty pulls Bucky up with him. It's only then that Bucky realizes he still has the blanket over his shoulders and Stevie's shield on one arm. He thinks about dropping one, or both, but his hands don't seem to be responsive.
"Care to explain to me what the hell is going on, Sergeant?" Colonel Phillips says.
Bucky glances up. The Colonel looks angry. It's only Bucky's familiarity with the man's bluster that lets him see the genuine worry underneath.
"Sir," Monty says carefully. "The Sergeant hasn't said a word since we got here. I think—"
"It's okay, Monty," Bucky interrupts. His voice is hoarse.
Monty nods and falls silent.
"Mission was a success, sir," Bucky says. There's no emotion in his tone. "At the time of our last report, there were eleven men remaining, not counting the team. When it became clear no extraction was coming, the Captain gave the order for them to go to ground and seek out Resistance contacts, if they could. They'll need retrievals organized as soon as possible."
"I'll see to it," Phillips says. He shakes his head. "How's the Captain? What happened?"
Bucky swallows. "I don't—I don't know, sir. We were headed to the extraction point when a sniper took a shot at St—at the Captain. I'm not sure exactly what happened after that. I just—I was closest, so I was giving medical attention."
"How bad?" Phillips asks quietly.
"Upper chest cavity," Bucky recites clinically. "Center of mass. Kill shot, on anybody else." He swallows again, but he can't get rid of the tightness in his throat. "It's the serum, sir. It's keeping her alive, for now. They took her into surgery."
Around him, the Commandos go tense. Phillips just raises his eyebrows.
"They had to cut her uniform open, sir," Bucky explains.
The Colonel crosses his arms. "Is it containable?" he asks.
"I don't know," Bucky says honestly. "I don't know how many people saw, or who they've talked to since."
Phillips flicks his eyes around at the Commandos. "Don't think I haven't noticed that the five of you don't look shocked," he says sternly. "We'll save that discussion for later. I need to see what the damage is."
"Sir," Bucky says, and the others echo him.
Phillips hesitates. "Is there any point in ordering you back to base, Sergeant?"
Bucky doesn't even blink. "No, sir." It's not overtly defiant, but there's no room for argument, either.
"Very well," Phillips says. "Stay here and keep me updated on the Captain's progress." He glances around at the five Howling Commandos, who have flanked Bucky like an honor guard, like they're protecting him. He sighs. "That goes for all of you, too, I suppose."
"Yes, sir," Bucky says. "Thank you, sir." He swallows. "Mar—Agent Carter. Somebody needs to—"
"Already been recalled," Phillips says, a bit softer. "She'll be here in a few hours."
Bucky nods.
Phillips disappears, presumably to interrogate the staff about how many people now know Captain America's little secret. The Commandos resettle in their circle on the floor. Someone refills Bucky's tea mug again, but he doesn't drink it this time.
They go back to their waiting.
Bucky pulls Stevie's shield into his lap and runs his fingers around the curved edge, over and over. It's battered and scuffed, the way it always is when they come back from a mission. She'll have to repaint it, when she wakes up. It will probably be the first thing she asks about. Bucky sometimes wonders if he doesn't come in third place in her affections, behind Peggy and the shield. Funny, that he's jealous of an inanimate object but not a living, breathing woman.
The false calm is broken by a frantic nurse slamming through the door where Stevie had disappeared. Her hair is falling loose of its professional twist, and her eyes are wide and frightened. "Sergeant Barnes?" she calls as she comes toward them. "Bucky Barnes?"
Bucky is already on his feet. "What is it?"
"We need your help," the nurse says, babbling. "She keeps waking up. She's struggling, and she keeps calling for you—"
Bucky doesn't wait to hear the rest. The shield drops from his hands, landing with a clang on the hospital floor, forgotten. (It sits there, the centerpiece of their circle, as each of the Commandos consider, and then dismiss, the idea of picking it up.)
When Bucky follows the nurse through the doorway, he runs straight into a nightmare.
The surgery room is brightly lit and packed with people. The thick smell of blood is everywhere, with the sharp tang of antiseptic laid underneath. Stevie is on her back on the table in the center, and she's thrashing wildly. There are straps hanging down from the table's edge, clearly snapped when she woke up. She's screaming. There are no words, just an unending sound of terror and pain.
Bucky stops dead in the doorway. He can't breathe. For a moment all he can see is Dr. Zola with his round face and cold glasses. His blood is burning, and the needles are digging into his arms. He can't move, can't get away; he's strapped down—
"—restrain her, Sergeant!"
Someone is yelling in Bucky's ear, but the words don't make any sense.
"She has to be still and let us work!"
Bucky wants to turn around and run as fast as he can. He wants to put his back to the wall to protect himself. He wants to attack all the doctors and nurses around Stevie, get her loose and take her somewhere safe. In the back of his mind, he knows this is different, that these doctors are trying to help, but that doesn't stop the panic in his gut. He can't be here. He can't.
Then Stevie's scream chokes off with a wet cough, and she calls out, "Bucky!"
Bucky's by her side in an instant, without registering the movement in between. His skin is still crawling, but he ignores it. He's never heard her say his name like that, like she's scared and alone and he's the only one who can save her. She never calls for him, never asks for help; that's why he has to keep such a close eye on her. She's never said his name like that, like she needs him.
"I'm here," he says, and puts his hands on her shoulders, pushing her down flat on the table. (His eyes slide away from the open wound on her chest, enlarged by scalpel marks and dotted with stitches, or the tube in the center draining the blood from her lungs.) "It's me; I'm here."
"Calm her down, Sergeant," one of the doctors instructs. "Her blood pressure is spiking. She's too strong for the restraints to—"
"She's struggling because she's in pain," Bucky snaps, interrupting him. "Give her some goddamn morphine!"
"We tried," somebody shouts back. "Her metabolism is too fast; she burns right through it. We can't keep her under for more than a few minutes at a time, either."
Bucky feels like he's been punched in the gut, all the breath leaving his lungs in a rush. No wonder Stevie is screaming and trying to get away, if she's been awake during surgery with nothing to dull the pain.
"Did you at least get the bullet out?" he manages to ask.
The same doctor gives him a terse nod.
"It's like nothing I've ever seen," a nurse says somewhere behind him. It doesn't sound like she's talking to Bucky, but he can hear her anyway. "The bullet snapped a rib, but it had already fused. It was crooked, though, and they had to break it again to set it properly."
Bucky closes his eyes. He shifts until he's standing behind Stevie's head, hands still on her shoulders. He leans down and presses his forehead to hers, upside-down. She's cold and clammy and shaking like a leaf. "Easy. You're safe, Stevie. They're trying to help."
"Bucky!" she screams again. It sounds like a sob.
"I'm here," Bucky says. "I'm right here." He feels tears on his cheeks and doesn't bother wiping them away. "You need to be still, Stevie. You have to let them help you."
Bucky can see the tendons standing out in her neck. He can feel the way every muscle in her arms and back is clenched, shaking in tension. The sweat on her forehead is sour and cold.
"I've got you," Bucky tells her. His hands are shaking, too, but he presses soothing patterns into her skin where he can reach. "I've got you, baby girl, and I'm not letting go." It's something that Sarah Rogers used to say, when Stevie was hurting or scared, fighting a fever or struggling to breathe. It calms her down when nothing else will. Bucky picked it up as a kid, but he only gets away with using it when she's too delirious to be embarrassed about it. "You're going to be just fine. I've got you, Stevie. Try to relax."
A full-body shudder goes through her, almost a convulsion.
"I know," Bucky says, desperate. "I know it hurts." He clenches his teeth until his jaw aches. "Try to pass out, if you can." He swipes a hand through her sweat-damp hair. "Just fall asleep, Stevie."
"Buck …?"
"I'll be right here," he promises. "I've got you, baby girl. Just fall asleep, and it will all be a bad dream."
It takes several more minutes, and Bucky repeating the same soothing phrases over and over, but Stevie eventually goes limp on the table. From the tears welling up in the corners of her eyes, it's not deep enough to avoid the pain, but he'll take what he can get. At least she's no longer fighting.
Around him, the doctors and nurses bustle quietly about their business, talking in hushed tones and careful not to bump him. They get her stabilized, eventually, and finish closing up the wound. (Bucky turns his face away and keeps saying, "It's okay; they're trying to help." He's reassuring himself more than her, but they don't have to know that.)
Sometime later, they move her to a private room, get her tucked into a bed, and find a chair for Bucky to sit in by her side. Nurses and doctors come in and out every few minutes, taking measurements or adjusting the transfusion needle in her arm, but Bucky barely notices them. He holds Stevie's hand on the covers, puts his head down on the thin mattress, and shakes. It's better in here than it was in the operating room, but it's still a hospital, and for a while he can't do anything but breathe and hold Stevie's hand.
Eventually, the familiarity of the routine becomes comforting. This is, after all, something he used to do before the war. Bucky long ago lost count of the number of times he's sat next to a hospital bed, watching Stevie sleep and wondering if this would finally be the thing that took her from him. (When her Ma was still alive, she would cajole the other nurses into letting Bucky stay; afterward, there was no one else, and Bucky was listed as her next of kin.) But the serum was supposed to change all that. It was supposed to fix her so that Bucky never had to do this again, this awful waiting and wondering.
The door opens. Bucky looks up, and he sees Peggy come inside. For the first time since Bucky met her, she doesn't look completely put-together; her makeup is hastily done, and there's a single lonely wrinkle across the bottom of her uniform skirt. One curl of her dark hair didn't make it into the tie, and she keeps having to toss her head to get it out of her face.
Bucky gets to his feet. "Margaret," he says. "I'm sorry. It was a sniper; I never saw him. I didn't even have time to—"
That's as far as he gets. Peggy comes forward and wraps her arms around him, squeezing tight. Bucky lowers his face to the side of her neck and breathes deep, reveling in the familiar scent of English tea and gunpowder. Peggy. It doesn't make his guilt vanish, but it eases something inside him anyway. She is trust, and comfort. She is a warm smile and a sharp wit, a quick mind and a steady trigger finger. She's a waltz on the living room carpet by the firelight, offbeat to a holiday tune. He's missed her.
It's a long moment before Peggy pulls away. "How is he?" she asks.
(She doesn't say anything about the tremble in Bucky's hands, and he doesn't say a word about the tears on her cheeks, further wrecking her makeup.)
"She's stable," Bucky replies. When Peggy gives him a startled look, he gestures toward the bed. They've bandaged and wrapped Stevie's chest, and given her a flimsy gown, but it's obvious that she isn't wearing Stark's compression shirt anymore. "They had to cut off the uniform. The bullet hit her in the upper chest." He swallows again. "The whole hospital knows, by now."
Peggy shakes this news off and goes to the bedside. "But she's going to be all right?" she asks.
Bucky watches as Peggy lifts one of Stevie's hands to hold, twining their fingers together. "We don't really know yet," he admits quietly. "She's stable. That's the best they can do, for now. The serum …" His hands hadn't ever really stopped shaking, but if they had, they'd start up again, in anger this time. "I swear, if Erskine wasn't already dead, I'd kill him myself."
Peggy glances at him, frowning. "What? Why? It means she has a much better chance of survival than anyone else would have."
Bucky shakes his head. "Did you know they can't give her any morphine or anesthesia?" he asks. It comes out accusatory, even though he doesn't really think Peggy is to blame. "She burns right through it in just a few minutes. They had to do surgery—scalpels and stitches and they broke one of her ribs—and she was awake for it."
Peggy presses her free hand over her mouth. After a moment to collect herself, she says, "There were—there were theories, about the serum assisting with breaking down toxins and poisons, and preventing disease. But I don't think anybody ever thought about something like this."
Bucky clenches his jaw so tight he hears his teeth creak. Trust them to turn Stevie into a weapon without figuring out how to take care of her, afterward.
"I'm so sorry," Peggy says quietly. "That must have been awful, for both of you."
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. It's not Peggy's fault that the serum made the necessary medical treatment so much more traumatic than it should have been. It's certainly not her fault that doctors and needles and listening to somebody screaming, strapped down to a table, dredges up particularly awful memories, for him. (He wonders, suddenly, how much Stevie's told her about his time with Dr. Zola.)
When he has himself under control, Bucky turns for the door. "Come get me, if you need to leave." he says. "I don't ... She shouldn't be alone, in case she wakes up."
"Don't be ridiculous," Peggy snaps instantly. "Don't you dare leave."
Bucky turns back around, tension visible across his shoulders at the unexpected harshness in her voice.
It's Peggy's turn to take a steadying breath. "No, I'm sorry. Of course you can go, if you need to. I understand hospitals may have ... unpleasant associations, for you." She hesitates, and there's something vulnerable in her eyes. "Will you stay, if you can? I'm not entirely sure I can stand being alone, just now."
"Yeah," Bucky says quietly. "Me, either."
Something in him relaxes slightly at the thought that Peggy won't kick him out, won't banish him to the hallway with the other Commandos. When Stevie is sick in a hospital bed, his place is by her side. He's fought tooth and nail for that right ever since he was a kid. He'd have gone, if Peggy wanted him to, but he's glad she doesn't.
"Stay, James," Peggy asks him. "Please."
When the Howling Commandos are allowed to come back to the room some time later, Peggy is sitting in the chair by the bed, with Bucky on the ground next to her. She has one hand entwined with Stevie's on the covers, and the other buried in Bucky's hair where his head rests on her thigh. He had been asleep, and wakes up just enough to make note of the new people in the room, without moving. When he's satisfied that it's his team, and not a threat (or more doctors, which is a separate category, because these doctors are trying to help), he closes his eyes again, comfortable in Peggy's hold.
No one says a word. They just put down Stevie's shield, propping it carefully between Bucky's leg and the nearby wall, and file back out to wait for news.
/~*~/
By the winter of 1941, when Bucky is a few months away from his twenty-fifth birthday, a young man by the name of Steven G. Rogers has been officially rejected from the United States Army. Bucky knows this because Stevie tells him about it, the day after she goes. She knows that it will upset him, so she feels obligated to inform him when she does it, out of some misguided sense of honesty.
Bucky is not-so-secretly relieved when the papers come back with the big, friendly 4F medical disqualification. (There had been no danger of her getting exposed as a girl, after all; the doctor took one look at her paperwork and sent her packing, no medical exam required.) Bucky may have made his peace, such as it is, with Stevie choosing her own path in life, but that doesn't mean he can pretend to think her desire to be a soldier is anything but suicidal. There's a difference between respecting her choices and thinking they're good ones.
"Why don't you try for the WAAC?" Bucky offers one Saturday evening.
They're milling around the lobby of the cinema, waiting for the picture to start. They got there early, eager to see each other—it's been almost a week, this time, with all the extra shifts Bucky is picking up at the factory with so many men signing up for the war America is still, technically, not fighting—and it's warmer in here than on the frigid street corner. They haven't gone into the theater proper yet, preferring to talk where they can stand and face each other rather than sitting side-by-side and staring at the curtain.
This way, Stevie can give him a look that says he's being an idiot. "The WAAC is for girls," she says. "Hence, Women's Army Auxiliary Corps."
Bucky rolls his eyes. There's no one standing near enough to overhear them, so her deliberately missing the point is just stupid. "I know that," he says. "If the Army won't take Steve, maybe you should try as Stephanie."
Stevie crosses her arms. "It might not even happen, Buck. Congress hasn't approved it yet." She shakes her head. "And even if it does, I don't want to type reports and work a switchboard. I want to be a real soldier."
Bucky raises his eyebrows. "Are you trying to say the jobs those gals are going to do aren't just as important?" He waits long enough to see the guilt creep into her eyes. "Because I have a feeling they'd disagree with you on that one."
"Of course those jobs are important, too," Stevie says. She looks embarrassed. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just not for me." She gives a helpless little shrug. "I need to be out there, with the guys risking their lives."
Of course she does. If Bucky didn't know better, he'd think she was suicidal.
"Well, if combat zones and physical danger are so important to you, you could try for a nursing spot," he suggests.
They're a lot more financially stable than they were five years ago, or even three years ago. The war in Europe has been good for the economy, at least, since they're sending so many supplies to England. They could afford to send her to nursing school, if she wanted. (It's been more than a year since they've lived together or pooled money for anything, but Bucky has a habit of forgetting that. He's used to thinking 'we,' not 'I.')
"It's not the front lines, exactly," Bucky admits. "You'd be within bombing range, though."
Stevie makes a face at him.
"Plus," Bucky says, his tone slipping into bitterness, "if it's danger you want, you in a hospital around a bunch of sick people would probably kill you faster than a bullet anyway."
Stevie glares at him. That was a low blow, and Bucky knows it, given the way that Sarah Rogers died. He's usually better about not poking at that particular wound, but any time the war or Stevie trying to get into the Army come up, his words come fast and thick and sometimes without thought.
"Look," Stevie says, forcibly smoothing out her features. "We've done good, yeah? We haven't argued in months. Can't we just have our night together and enjoy it?" She pouts at him, just a little. (That's not fair, because limited exposure to Stevie Rogers has made her ability to wheedle him into anything more potent, not less.) "I haven't seen you all week. I don't want to fight."
Bucky can't very well argue with that. "You got it, Stevie," he says, and slings his arm over her shoulders so that her neck fits perfectly in the crook of his elbow. It pulls her off-balance, just enough that she happens to fall into him a little. "Want some popcorn?" he asks brightly.
Bucky doesn't take in much of the picture, preferring to slouch almost sideways in his seat so he can casually watch Stevie instead. She'd kick him if she knew, but he's carefully monitoring her breathing, trying to see if the cold weather has gotten into her lungs.
It's the worst part about not living together: He doesn't know when she's coming down with a cold or if she's earning enough to eat properly. More than a year apart should have given Bucky time to get used to it, but he hasn't yet. Maybe he never will. He still catches himself turning to say something to her at his apartment, sometimes, forgetting that she isn't there.
Bucky misses their easy intimacy like a constant ache, but he was Stevie's best friend for more than a decade before all the rest of it, and this part is as comfortable as an old, worn-in pair of boots. He slips right back into the role without complications, most of the time. And if he catches himself about to cross that line, to let his hugs linger or stand too long with his forehead pressed to hers, well. It's okay, because Stevie understands. It's hard for her, too. Sometimes, it's her that slips up.
Sometimes, she kisses him goodbye at the end of the night. Bucky doesn't know whether to crave those, or hate them for reminding him of the way they used to be, when everything between them wasn't broken and sharp and awkward.
"Ice cream?" Bucky asks as they file out of the theater after the picture is over. (He couldn't name the main character or say anything about the plot at all, but Stevie is smiling, so she must have enjoyed it.)
Stevie laughs and shakes her head at him. "It's December, Buck."
"So there won't be a crowd," Bucky says. "Come on. My treat."
"You paid for the picture," Stevie protests. He hears the real argument underneath, the distinct tone of This is not a date, Bucky. Even if she had been out tonight as Stephanie, in her skirts and heels instead of pants and a nice shirt, she'd be conscious of something like that.
"Relax," Bucky says, rolling his eyes. "I just got paid yesterday, okay?"
Stevie hesitates another moment, but finally nods. "Fine," she says, put-upon.
It's enough to make Bucky reflexively worry (more). It's not like her to give up that quickly. Have the newspaper and magazine jobs been drying up lately? Is her rent too high without a roommate to split the expense?
(Bucky would know better, if he stopped to think for half a second. The less money Stevie has, the more stubborn she gets about accepting free food or help. The fact that she's willing to let him pay for things probably means she's doing better than she ever has before, just like he is. Doesn't stop him worrying, though.)
The soda shop is about to close when they rush in, and the proprietor gives them a strange look when they order milkshakes, seeing as how it's so cold outside. They drink them hurriedly, not wanting to keep the owner after closing time. It gives Bucky a tingling headache.
They walk fast on the way back to Stevie's apartment, hands stuffed deep into coat pockets, trying to stay at least a little bit warm. By the time they make it, they're both shivering.
"That was a dumb idea," Stevie tells him, struggling to get her key into the lock with a shaking hand. "You talk me into the stupidest things, Buck."
He gives her an incredulous look. "I talk you into stupid things?" he repeats, blowing warm breath on his cupped hands. "Are you kidding? I'm supposed to be the reasonable one, remember?"
"This one was definitely on you," she says firmly as they stumble inside. She has to fight a gust of wind to get the door shut behind them.
Bucky rolls his eyes. "If we're keeping count, I think I've still got some catching up to do on that front."
Stevie makes them coffee to chase away the chill, and it's somewhere around then—leaning against the door frame between her kitchen and living room, watching her go about the ritual of water and grounds and cups, listening to her tell a meaningless story about office politics up at the newspaper—that Bucky realizes he can do this. Just this, for the rest of his life, if this is what she wants. He doesn't need more than this. She's happy, at least in this one isolated moment, when she's forgotten about the Army that won't take her and the war nobody will let her fight.
When Stevie hands him a mug, Bucky takes it with a grin and lets the steam coming up thaw out his frozen nose. She smiles at him as their fingers don't quite brush, and Bucky opens his mouth before he can stop himself.
"I think I love you best, just like this," he says, quiet and earnest.
Stevie raises her eyebrows at him. "With coffee?" she asks. Cheeky little punk. "I never knew you were so easy to please, Buck."
Bucky smirks. "Fastest way to my heart," he says, with a little extra drawl in his words, and it makes her laugh.
(He's pretty sure she knows what he really means.)
When the coffee is gone and the pot and mugs cleaned and put away, it's far later than they meant to stay up. Bucky makes his way to the door, trying to be a good friend who lets Stevie get at least some sleep before church in the morning. She'd never forgive herself for falling asleep in the pew.
He manages to get one arm in his heavy coat, but trying to thread the second one through the sleeve isn't as successful. He's sleepy and happy and Stevie's living room is warm and inviting. He has to bite back a yawn that cracks his jaw.
"Forget it, Stevie," Bucky says, voice at a low mumble. "I'm just going to sleep on the couch. It's too late to walk home."
He hasn't made a habit of it, not wanting to push things, but it won't be the first time, either. Usually it's when he's been drinking, and she's the one who suggests it as a safer alternative to letting him walk all the way home by himself. The only exception is a couple of days last winter, when she was so sick that she couldn't turn down help, no matter who it came from. She'd still been mad at him then, only a few weeks removed from their break-up. She'd thanked him and kicked him out in the same breath, once her fever broke.
(Bucky never mentions the way she'd acted while delirious, how she'd smiled at him like he hung the moon whenever he entered a room, or refused to sleep unless he was sitting on the bed and holding her hand. High fevers have always done that to her, turned her sweet and cuddly and unselfconscious about it. She never remembers, afterward.)
"You don't have to sleep on the couch, you know," Stevie says quietly.
Bucky pauses halfway through peeling off his uncooperative coat. "What?"
Stevie is looking at him, warm and soft and fond, and she smiles. "You can stay with me," she says. Just in case he isn't getting it, she nods back toward her bedroom door. "I kind of miss it. It's cold, this time of year, sleeping alone."
It's true that they shared a bed during lots of winters, long before there was anything romantic between them, but that's a piece of their old friendship they haven't tried in the wake of their fight. Something about it feels a little too intimate, like they're flirting with that invisible line they've mutually decided not to cross.
Bucky's not going to turn her down, though. If nothing else, maybe it will fend off this winter's bout with pneumonia a little longer.
For a moment, it's exactly like old times as they get ready for bed and brush the coffee smell off their teeth. (After everything else they've shared in their lives, a toothbrush is hardly worth a mention.) They move together the way they always have, not in step but somehow in rhythm anyway. They don't have to consciously make space for each other, because they still do it naturally, even after a year apart.
They fit in Stevie's tiny bed like interlocking gears. Something hot and tight in Bucky's chest that he hadn't even known was there sighs in relief. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close under the blankets. Maybe it should be awkward, after so long, but it's the easiest thing in the world.
Stevie tucks herself up against his side. She kisses his shoulder once, light and sweet, before falling almost instantly asleep.
"I've missed this, too," Bucky whispers in her hair, and closes his eyes.
He sleeps better than he has since she left.
It's well after midnight on Sunday morning, December 7th. Tomorrow, America will be at war.
/~*~/
The serum does its job. By nightfall of that first day, the doctors are confident that Stevie is out of any real danger. By the afternoon of the next day, which the doctors assure them is preposterously fast, Stevie is awake and coherent, in pain but able to smile and talk through it. By the third morning, she's up and walking (with a little help), and the ugly wound has sealed. Based on her rate of recovery, they say, by next week it will be little more than a puckered scar. Next month, no one will ever be able to tell she got shot.
By the end of the first week, Stevie predictably wants out. Out of bed, out of the hospital, and back out in the field.
"You very nearly died, Captain," Colonel Phillips tells her, arms crossed as he stares her down.
Stevie is still in the private hospital room, but she's standing up to address the Colonel. It's the first time they've been face-to-face since their last briefing before the France mission, at least while Stevie's been conscious. She'd demanded appropriate clothes in lieu of her hospital gown, and she and the staff had finally compromised. They'd managed to find her a large enough (barely) spare WAC uniform, and hastily attached an SSR pin, a Howling Commando patch, and her regular US Army Captain's bars.
She looks a bit ridiculous, but now that her secret is out none of the nurses are willing to put her in a man's uniform. It'd be scandalous, and never mind that she's been wearing one for over a year (and something a lot stupider in the field). At least they'd put her rank insignia on it. Technically women officers aren't allowed to be in command of male troops, so there'd been some discussion about whether her officer's commission should be revoked, since no one who spent three seconds with her was stupid enough to suggest actually switching her into the WAC permanently.
(The Commandos have stood around for the last two days snapping to attention, saluting, and calling her 'sir' in a way they never actually do in the field, just to get the point across to anyone paying attention. Thank God Stevie had talked Bucky into telling them the truth fourteen months ago; he doesn't want to think about how much harder this would be without their unflinching support.)
"And if my brush with death were the real reason I was still under house arrest, sir," Stevie answers calmly, "I'd address that by saying that the serum worked exactly as advertised, and put me back together just fine. I'm fit for active duty, and everybody knows it."
The Colonel scowls.
Bucky almost feels bad for him. Stevie had sent Bucky back to base for a few days to get a feel for the timetable, Buck, before I go crazy in this hospital. He'd charmed, flirted, or snuck his way into meetings, or at least into lurking in the hallways outside where he could overhear the arguments. (Of course, they'd been held more or less at shouting volume, so half the base had probably heard bits and pieces). Phillips is on their side, it seems. He's been lobbying to change nothing but the official paperwork and get Captain Stephanie Rogers back in the fight.
The vast majority of the non-SSR brass, who hadn't been informed of Captain America's little secret until it first hit the London papers a few days ago, seem to be in shock. The ones that aren't outright denying that it could possibly be true are busy finding ways to justify Stevie's success in light of her gender, including (to Bucky's fury) attributing all her combat accomplishments to Bucky or the other Commandos, and trying to claim Captain America as nothing but a face for the cameras. Some of them want her court-martialed for lying on her enlistment form. Several of the ones who haven't gone that far still say she should be dishonorably discharged and sent home in disgrace.
("Disgrace for what, exactly?" Dum Dum had demanded, when Bucky shared that tidbit with the team last night. "Being a fucking war hero?"
"For being the wrong kind of war hero," Gabe had said quietly, with too much understanding in his voice.)
"Rogers, listen to me," Phillips says. For once the bluster is nowhere to be found in his voice. He looks tired, and surprisingly old. "This is the same game we've been playing from the start, just with different advantages and obstacles. It's about using public opinion, manipulating the press, and smoothing over egos."
It's Stevie's turn to scowl. "I am not going back to the USO. And I'm certainly not doing it in skirts and heels, wearing lipstick and batting my eyelashes. I'm a soldier." There's something belligerent in her eyes, and Bucky recognizes it; it's the look she used to get just before throwing a punch in a fight that she already knew was going to hurt. "I had this argument with Brandt two years ago. I won it the first time, and I'm not backing down from it now."
Bucky glances at her. That's a story he hasn't heard; he didn't know the senator's original concept had been for a female icon. What would they have called her? Miss America? While he can certainly appreciate the effect Stevie's serum-enhanced body might have on a crowd if she was wearing a skirt that showed off her legs and a top that flaunted her curves, it just feels wrong to him. Not wrong because she'd be beautiful (she was always beautiful; it was just a little harder to notice, before), but wrong because that would be all she was allowed to be. There's more to Stephanie Rogers than a pretty face. Didn't she prove that the first time she jumped off a stage to go soldiering?
"No one is asking you to be something you're not," the Colonel insists. Every line of him is weary and frustrated, but Stevie isn't in the right frame of mind to cut him any slack. "You're still Captain America. You're still a soldier." He rubs at his tight forehead. "I trust I don't have to tell you how hard some of us had to fight just to get you that much?"
Stevie doesn't look impressed. "Thank you for supporting me," she says. It comes out flat. (Bucky knows she means it, somewhere deep down, even if she doesn't at the moment.) "But I earned that, so excuse me if I don't feel like giving you credit for letting me keep it."
Bucky sighs. He wonders how much longer they can keep up this conversation (it's been almost two hours already) before he has to send them to separate corners to cool down. He always gets the fun jobs; why couldn't Peggy be running interference for this? She must have been smart enough to leave the moment she heard Phillips had entered the hospital. The rest of the Commandos certainly were. It's almost enough to make him wish he hadn't argued with that one absurd nurse who had been so opposed to leaving Stevie alone in a room with two men, God forbid, and no chaperone.
"Rogers," Phillips starts again. Then he pauses, lets his head hang for a moment, and softens his voice. "Stephanie," he says. "It's nobody's fault, but we can't contain it any longer. The papers are running with this story. We have a limited window to try to control the way it gets spun. I know you understand that, because you're smart, and you know how to twist the press to get what you want."
Stevie stares at him for a moment, as if daring him to think flattery is going to get him anywhere.
Phillips, though, is looking at Bucky. "Both of you do," he says, even quieter.
Bucky tries on his best innocent look.
"Oh, don't give me that, Barnes," Phillips snaps. "I'm not an idiot. Corporal Morita put in his report that you ordered him to break regulations and call for a retrieval on any Allied channel he could find."
Stevie glances at Bucky, who shrugs. "It was worth a shot," he says. "We just needed to get the message to somebody who would think more about the political backlash of leaving Captain America to die, instead of the tactical reasons not to risk an extraction."
Phillips nods, like Bucky's just proved his point.
Stevie's face goes sour. "I'm not just another soldier; I'm a symbol," she says, repeating what Bucky had told her just before the sniper took her down. "And I knew that going in."
"Part of the price you paid, to get what you wanted," Phillips agrees. "If you don't like it, tough. It's too late to change that now, Captain."
Stevie doesn't look happy about it, but she finally relaxes some of the tension in her shoulders and lets her spine rest at a more natural angle. "What exactly are you asking me to do, sir?"
The plan, as it turns out, isn't as bad as they were afraid it would be. Stevie agrees to most of it, including wearing the modified WAC uniform instead of a regular Army one any time she's seen in public. She'll be allowed to return to base, and to keep her command post—on paper, at least—as leader of the Howling Commandos.
"Good," Bucky says. "Because otherwise I think you'd have a mutiny on your hands, sir."
Stevie ignores that in favor of asking the really important question. "And our mission?"
Phillips hesitates.
Stevie's anger snaps back into sharp focus. "You're turning all of us into dancing monkeys for the press?" she demands. "Schmidt and HYDRA are still out there, Colonel, and we—"
"I know," Phillips interrupts. "And SSR Command is working on it. The next time we confirm a HYDRA target, I have every intention of sending you after it. In secret, if I have to." He tries on a smile. "I'll take a page out of your book, and get permission after you come back successful, if that's what it takes."
Stevie doesn't look mollified.
"In the meantime," the Colonel says, preemptively wincing as if knows how well his next words are going to go over, "you're banned from active combat duty."
"That's bullshit," Stevie says immediately. "Sir."
"It's a US Army regulation," Phillips says. "Women aren't allowed in combat. Some people are afraid that if we make an exception for you, it will undermine the whole system."
Stevie holds her ground. "Good thing I'm officially assigned to the SSR, then, and not the US Army. We have several female agents who go into the field."
Phillips sighs again. "That's different, and you know it. You might be technically classified as 'covert,' but you're not a spy, Rogers. We don't send our female agents to the front lines, or ask them to assault enemy bases."
Bucky thinks about Peggy Carter with her sharp eye, cool head, and indomitable attitude, and wonders if maybe they'd be closer to the end of this war if they had.
"Fine," Stevie says, tight-lipped. "What are we doing, then?"
"Working on your image," Phillips says.
Stevie raises her eyebrows.
"Reactions are going to be all over the spectrum, and mostly negative," Phillips explains. "You're a hero, and people love to see their heroes fall. You're going to have to convince them that Stephanie Rogers can still be Captain America."
"Them?" Stevie repeats.
"The press. The American public. The rank and file soldiers who idolized you. The brass who don't know what to do with you."
Stevie shakes her head. "I'm not sure that's possible."
"You made half the world love you, Captain, and you did it while telling lies." Phillips actually reaches out and puts his hand on Stevie's shoulder, like he's trying to be comforting. "Now you get a chance to do it while telling the truth. Surely that's easier?"
Her smile is wry. "There'll be people who will never accept me," she warns him. "No matter what I do."
"I'm aware," Phillips replies dryly. "I've been shouting at several of them for the last three days."
Bucky shrugs. "You don't have to convince everyone, Stevie," he says quietly. "Just enough of them to get the rest out of your way."
Phillips nods. "And not that you haven't proven capable of handling the press on your own, but a word of advice, Captain?"
Stevie gives him her attention. "Sir?"
"A female Captain America cannot be romantically involved with another woman," the Colonel says flatly. "They'll forgive a lot, especially if you make it clear that Agent Carter, as a very dear friend, agreed to be your cover story. But you're going to have to be discreet, from now on."
Stevie's jaw clenches, but she doesn't argue.
"And," Phillips adds, eyes tight, as if he really hates having to say this, "if you don't want the world speculating about your love life, or spreading rumors that you're sleeping with the entire Western Front, you'd better give them a convincing replacement story." He glances at Bucky, just in case they've missed the obvious implication. "Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Stevie says quietly.
Bucky echoes her.
"How soon can you have a strategy in place for the press?" the Colonel asks.
"Tomorrow," Stevie answers, with the barest hint of a sigh. "The sooner the better. I don't intend to stay benched for any longer than necessary."
"Good. I'll inform them, and get a schedule worked out for you." Phillips turns to the door, but he stops and adds, "For what it's worth, Rogers, I'm sorry. We kept your secret precisely because I didn't want to make you deal with this. Any of this." He hesitates. "I'm afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better."
Stevie nods. "I know, sir. And thank you." The words come out more or less professionally.
She even manages to wait until the door is shut behind him to start crying.