A/N: Things will get a little less dark in the next chapter or two. :)
For now... yeah. Have a nice day and go hug a puppy? :D
There are a few small skirmishes on the way to the camp.
None of the returning men are injured, but everyone is already running lean, and the stress is starting to get to them. Bucky takes to carrying a rifle at all times, picking off scouts that nobody else even notices until they come tumbling out of the trees with a bullet put neatly through their head.
Steve has never seen his friend in action before... and it's jarring. Bucky's never been what he'd call aggressive. He'd been the definition of easy-going at home, only ever getting into it with people that jumped him first, or got out of line about his mom, his sisters, or Steve (his honorary kid brother). To see him kill without a second thought, without hesitation… it just tears a new hole in the world as Steve's always known it. He thinks maybe he's starting to understand where that new hardness in Bucky's eyes comes from.
Steve tries not to think too much about that the first time he has to kill an enemy soldier to protect the other men. The whole fight is chaos. They've almost subdued the small advance team that they've stumbled across when he spots one of the enemy sprinting for the trees. He has a split-second to make the choice between shooting the man or letting him raise the alarm. The company can't fight off any appreciable force right now, and they'd definitely take losses if they had to defend themselves against a well-rested unit. His hand shakes when he pulls the trigger.
The entire experience never leaves him, but as he will learn later, this moment is just one of many that will haunt him for the rest of his improbably long life. As it turns out, the memory will actually be one of the least disturbing nightmares in his collection.
Someday, nearly a century from now, night terrors will be like old friends. Sleeping without them will be a novelty.
Any night that he gets back to sleep within a few hours of waking up in a cold sweat becomes a good night.