There are infinite realities within the multiverse; each unique unto itself. In one reality, there is eternal peace where all of humanity lives in community with nature and the entire planet is a paradise. In another reality, there is never ending war where the few survivors scrabble across the dead and desolate planet with insane abandon in the hopes that they may kill their foes before they, themselves, perish.
Some realities are extraordinarily similar to this one that you live in. Others are more different. It matters not what the differences are, just that they exist. Very seldom do realities interact, but on the rare occasion they do share a person or persons, it is a historic nexus for the receiving universe. This story is a recounting of one such melding of realities. It is a story of family, of healing, of love and of adventure. It is how wounded and broken people found each other through horrific events and helped each other heal all the while finding love that would outlast their own lives and through this love, save their entire planet.
Chapter One
Arc One: Natalia and Steven, Marvel Universe-1122
20 February 1944
1st US Infantry Division
Near Weymouth, England
"Listen up! In two nights, we're going to air drop into the Krakow sector to help our Soviet friends start dealing with their own HYDRA problem." Gesturing at the map of Southern Poland, Captain Rogers continued, "We'll do a night drop in this area, to the east and north of the city," he indicated to an isolated area on the map, "and link up with elements of the 228th Tank Brigade. They're the parent command of a new Soviet unit like us called GRU Spetsnaz." Double checking the paperwork in his hand, Rogers continued, "The unit we're working with is the 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade. They're commanded by a Major Romanova, who will have overall command of the operation."
He saw that tidbit of information raise more than a few eyebrows. Steve hadn't been too happy about being under orders from a Russian officer, but Colonel Phillips had reminded him, "I don't give a single, actual fuck what you like Rogers. This is a war and we're all one big happy family. Go requisition a bottle of Vodka to take to your new best friend. Now, get the hell out of my office."
It was a response that was to Steve, unfortunately, very familiar.
"Romanova? What the hell kind of name is Romanova?" muttered Corporal Happy Sam Sawyer.
"Russian, I believe," Bucky Barnes replied sarcastically.
"We're working for the Russkies?" shouted an outraged Pinky Pinkerton, one of the unit's snipers.
"Yes, we are Pinkerton. Now, if you'd all let me continue?" Rogers asked with more humor than command.
"Yeah, go ahead Cap," Sergeant Dum Dum Dugan growled as he stared down the rest of the Commandos. Steve's acute hearing heard the follow up to the troops, "Shut up or you'll meet me behind the mess hall. Understand?"
"Sorry, Dum Dum," came the collective muttering of the unit's enlisted personnel.
Shaking his head at the antics of his troops, Steve met the gaze of his best friend. Bucky just rolled his eyes as Steve turned back to the map. "Right. The HYDRA facility near Krakow is well behind German lines. In fact, we'll be closer to the Eastern Front than any friendly Western Resistance units. Polish resistance is strong, but we have no contacts in this area. Nevertheless, this facility's production of infantry weapons and tank guns is slaughtering the Red Army on the Eastern Front. SHAEF wants this factory out of business soonest…"
.oOo.
22 February 1944
Near Krakow, Poland
"Geezus! It's cold!"
The serum that turned Steve into the Super Soldier inured him to most of the effects of the elements, but he had to agree with Morita. It was really cold. Frost was forming on the scarves of his men as breath blossomed in the early evening air. Usually, there were random scents that his enhanced senses could pick up. Animals, natural plant matter decomposition and other things. Not tonight. The only thing he could smell was cold. Looking about, he counted heads to insure he had all his men. Catching the eye of his XO, Falsworth, they exchanged nods that all were present before Rogers gave the rally signal in the deepening gloom of twilight.
"Barnes, you've got point. We're moving east-by-southeast toward the Vistula River. Let me know when you see it. We'll be close to the rendezvous at that point." Glancing at his watch, he commanded, "Let's move people, we've only got an hour to link up with 3rd Guards."
"Least it's all flat. Just a few hills," muttered Gabe Jones, the communications specialist as the unit formed into two staggered lines following the Brooklyn native who was on point.
"D'accord, mon ami," Jacques Dernier, the demolition specialist, agreed in an equally subdued undertone.
The woods they traversed were silent as twilight slipped to full night. Illuminated by the full moon, the landscape took on an eerie quality covered with frost and snow. The cold had forced all fauna to bed down in their dens for warmth, Steve supposed. Hearing the muttering around him concerning numb feet and numb fingers, he thought that the animals may have had the right of things. He remembered being unutterably cold during the New York winters as a boy before the Serum. It was something he didn't miss.
As was his wont when marching, he recited the rosary in his head. He may be a full-grown man in a war struggling with some of the slime of humanity for the future of the planet, but Steven Grant Rogers knew his mother would be extremely disappointed in him should he slack in his faith. Mass on Sundays was hit and miss nowadays, and he knew his Ma would understand. But the daily rosary? "You can say that walking to school, Steven," she'd reprimand in her southern Irish brogue. So, he did. He did it for himself and for his mother. He always said the rosary on long marches.
They encountered no opposition or…anything…on the march to the river. There was one moment where Steve thought he heard the drone of an aircraft in the distance, but wasn't sure. It was there and gone just as fast. When the sluggish, wide waterway came into view, Steve called a halt. The Commandos formed a defensive ring – just in case – while he ran to the front to confer with Bucky. With Falsworth leaning over his shoulder, the three reviewed the map under a red flashlight. Quickly agreeing on their position and the next leg of the march, the Captain ran back to his troops.
"Saddle up," he hissed in an undertone that carried in the night air. Barnes bent their course due east. They should link up with the Red Army in a half an hour or so.
.oOo.
He heard it just as Bucky raised his hand for contact. The racking of a round into the chamber of a rifle had a very distinctive sound. The Commandos went to ground, but Steve ran to the front. Trusting that Falsworth had the unit well in hand, he made it to his point man's side just as he heard an accented voice hiss, "Red light!"
Sighing in relief, he nodded to Bucky who gave the countersign, "Blue light!"
From the trees and bushes ahead a score or more of winter camouflage soldiers emerged into the moonlight. Standing at his tallest, he unslung his shield from his back to his left arm. Steve advanced slowly, calling in a hiss, "3rd Guards?"
A short soldier moved to the fore, the others parting as a wave to allow access. A soft voice replied "Da. You are the Howling Commandos?" There was more than a hint of amusement at his unit's name.
Rolling his eyes, for Steve thought it was a ridiculous name that the newsreels had hung on them, Steve replied in kind. "Da."
Their commander extended a slim gloved hand, "Major Romanova, Captain. It is very good to meet you."
Steve frowned. First off, the commander's voice was all wrong. If he didn't know better, he'd swear this soldier was a woman. Not that he had a problem with strong women. Peggy Carter would kick his butt in a flat minute and if he did that. She and Bucky were his best friends and both gentlemen knew where they stood with their brunette friend. Peggy took no guff from nobody. No nonsense at all.
Second off, there was a desperate enthusiasm in the enunciation of 'very' that caught him off guard. He couldn't explain it, but it seemed a personal statement. That she (?) was grateful to meet him for herself, not as the commander of her unit.
Shaking away the distraction he turned and waved to Falsworth and Barnes. As they hurried to his side, he murmured, "My XO and First Sergeant."
The major pulled the scarf down from her face revealing deep green eyes, full lips, and a decidedly feminine face. Definitely a woman. She turned back to her troops, snapping her fingers twice. Turning back to Steve while pulling a map out of the case at her side, she explained, "My XO and First Sergeant as well." Laying out the map on a convenient stump, she murmured with a slight Russian accent, "Let us get down to business, shall we? These HYDRA weapons, how powerful are they?"
Without having to consider, Steve replied, "At full power, one shot can vaporize a soldier."
Her eyes widening in shock, she muttered, "Yebena mat."
Recognizing the phrase from his neighbor back in Brooklyn, Mr. Petrov, Steve nodded in grim concurrence. "Da."
.oOo.
The march to the HYDRA facility should have only taken a short hour. The Russian Spetsnaz troops kept to themselves but seemed very competent to Steve. With them on the right, the Commandos took the left while Barnes and the Soviet point man joined up leading the Team as they wended through the woods to their infiltration point. Just to his right, the slight Major Romanova marched, her PPS-43 submachine gun cradled in her elbow. Steve had his shield on his arm, but no weapon drawn, so he couldn't really comment on her seeming nonchalance, but she must have picked up on his observations.
"We are all of us more than we appear, are we not Comrade Captain?" The slight curl of the corner of her mouth could have been a trick of the light but the lightness of her tone gave away her confident amusement.
"My apologies, Ma'am. I mean no…" his words cut off midsentence as he spun about, lifting his shield to cover himself and the Major. The ping of a ricocheting bullet galvanized the troops but before anyone could raise a weapon, Romanova had smoothly stepped out from the blockage of his shield, sighted, and fired a single shot. A long moment later, the thud of a corpse hitting the ground surprised the Americans.
"Is this common for HYDRA to have long range sniper sentries?" she asked while returning to the line of march. The Russian troops took her extraordinary response as a matter of course, explaining their earlier deference of her when the two units linked up.
Blinking away his surprise, Steve hurried to catch up to her, "Not consistently. We hit a chemical weapon plant in the Pyrenees last month that had snipers, but the others have only had close in defenses."
She nodded, "Then we must hurry, Captain, for I am sure that where there is one, there are many. They also probably will have radios." She paused to meet his gaze, "And I thank you for saving my life."
He smiled at her. Steve was beginning to like Major Romanova. "You're very welcome, ma'am."
She nodded and smiled before lifting her fingers to her mouth to whistle three quick chirps. To Steve she explained, "We run now."
He nodded his concurrence, giving the 'double time' hand signal to his troops. Steve blinked in surprise when she dashed away at speeds that only he could truly match. Nodding at her earlier truth that they were all more than they appeared, he hurried to catch up to her. At her side, he saw that she wasn't even breathing hard while both were searching left and right of their path for more sentries.
Five minutes later, and having left their troops to hurry behind the evidently two enhanced soldiers, he saw light peeking through the trees. "There," she hissed.
They pulled up. While Steve looked back for their men, Romanova held binoculars to her eyes, scanning the walls surrounding the facility. After a thorough inspection, she lowered her binoculars and declared, "Udovletvoryat." Turning to him, she explained, "All is as expected."
He nodded his understanding. As Falsworth and Barnes arrived, Romanova started barking orders in Russian. Turning to his men, he ordered, "Get to our assigned assault positions. We're not going to give them a chance to catch wind of us." Catching the slim Major's eye, he half asked, and half told, "We go in ten minutes?"
She nodded, "Da." They crouched together over an unblemished snow bank that Steve began to draw on with his finger.
The HYDRA facility was an elongated rectangle. "If they do the layout like the other facilities we've destroyed, this area here," he indicated on the crude drawing in the snow, "will be where their finished weapons area stored in preparation for distribution to active units. Here," he circled the area next to the storage area, "this is where they store fuel for the trucks and aircraft that are used for distribution."
Romanova blinked, "They store fuel next to high explosives."
Steve grinned, but it wasn't very friendly; much more sharklike than human. "Da."
They decided that the Russians would attack from the east while the Americans would attack from the west. "Fitting, no?" she'd observed with more than a little humor.
Steve was bursting to ask, for it seemed evident to him that she was physically enhanced as he was. Now was not the time, though. The Spetsnaz took off at a loping run to reach their initial point. Looking through the trees as the Russians headed off to circle the compound, he muttered, "We've a HYDRA factory to burn down."
.oOo.
Dernier had just slithered back from his combustible tasking when the explosions on the far side of the facility announced that the Soviets were on the move. "Fire in the hole!" he called while detonating their own explosives. The flash had just started to fade when he called, "Forward!" Sprinting forward, he knew his men were on his heels.
Perhaps it was the time of night (it was 0300) but the resistance was extremely light. Steve blocked a conventional rifle shot as Pinkerton sighted and fired on the shooter. One less HYDRA sniper. As he reached the door next to the loading dock, Steve didn't even pause. Lowering his shoulder, he held his shield in place as a battering ram into and through the door. Knocked off its hinges, the rebounding door caused quite a ruckus.
All the lights were on inside.
And there was no weaponry anywhere to be seen.
His men rushed in behind him as he looked across the expanse of the empty warehouse area to see Major Romanova wearing the surprised expression that he had to be wearing as well. "Barnes! Take Morita, Fury, Pinkerton and Jones to secure the egress from this door to our insertion point. That's our escape and the Russians are coming with us."
"Yes, sir!" his friend replied as he ran past with the other four soldiers in tow.
"XO! I want a room-by-room search going north. Find those weapons. I'll ask our Soviet friends to look south."
"Yes, sir!" Falsworth replied as he called, "Dugan! Get over here!"
Running across the empty area, he saw 3rd Guards orienting in the same manner as he men. Calling out to Romanova, he told her, "My men are working north, if your men will go south."
She nodded, not replying as she continued her stream of Russian orders. A large group of men detached from the rest to head south into the facility.
"Sir!" a voice called. Turning he saw Happy Sawyer running up to him. "Ain't no fucking Germans, but two rooms down is full of fuel tanks!"
Steve could feel himself and Romanova both unclench at the news. The raid wouldn't be a complete failure. "Dernier?"
"Already on it, Cap."
Just then, a Russian sergeant came running up. With his extremely limited understanding of Russian, he only understood, "Petrol."
"Looks like the Russians found more fuel."
Romanova ordered, "Explosive timers set for minimum. We've been here too long already. The Germans are surrendering the facility to kill us." She met Steve's gaze, "To kill you and me."
With what Steve knew of Schmidt, he'd do anything to destroy anyone who even came close to rivaling his power. Captain America and his Russian counterpart would have to be eliminated soonest. His ego would tolerate nothing less.
Turning to Sawyer, he ordered, "You heard the Major. Get the word to Dernier."
"Things are going too well," he muttered to himself. Looking around, there was no enemy in sight. There were no automated defenses. There was no pending counterattack. "This isn't right."
Next to him, Romanova's head was swiveling left and right and she was muttering under her breath – presumably the same as him. "We must hurry. The HYDRA swine will…."
What she thought the HYDRA swine were going to do, he didn't find out for a few days. Instead, he was lifted off his feet by an explosion from the south. Apparently, the Spetsnaz took their Commander's direction of 'minimum' on the explosives' timers seriously. Romanova landed on him and he quickly threw his shield up over the both of them as debris began to rain down on them. Pulling his legs up, he rolled the both of them over to get more coverage from his shield.
When the debris stopped falling, Steve's hearing returned and with it the screams of the injured.
Looking to the south, he saw that the Russian troops had been hit hard. Grabbing the satchel of explosives from the passing Dernier, Steve made up his mind. Turning to his XO, he ordered, "Get the men to the exfiltration point. I'm going to help the Russians. Let the pilot know that they may be coming home with us." He looked meaningfully at the British officer, "Do not wait for me."
Falsworth didn't reply, for this wasn't the first time that his Captain had stayed behind, facilitating his unit's egress. He nodded to Rogers before he ran off shouting, "Commandos! We are leaving!"
Steve turned to the Major, "Ma'am, how can I help?"
.oOo.
There were a dozen fully ambulatory Spetsnaz soldiers who Romanova sent with the Commandos. Steve was lifting a slab of concrete off of three more Russians as gunfire sounded to his right. Grunting, he shouted, "Toropit'sya!" Unfortunately, the German counterattack killed the pinned men as Romanova cut down the initial wave of Waffen SS troopers boiling into the building. Those first few were quickly replaced five times over and still more men rushed into the damaged facility.
Groaning, Steve let the concrete slab drop. There was no helping those men, now. Sprinting to follow Romanova deeper into the facility, he wondered why SS troops were the counterattacking units and not HYDRA troops. Shaking off the question as irrelevant in the moment, he grabbed an MP40 from a dead German. Romanova leapt into the air, doing a full twisting somersault before landing facing back toward the Germans. As she lay down a covering fire, Steve got under cover. After he re-oriented toward the German assault, he did a quick evaluation. There was no way he and she could take the troops that were rushing them. Already, there were over one hundred black uniformed SS troops in the facility. Shaking his head angrily, he shouted, "Go!" Romanova sprinted further into the facility until reaching cover. They leapfrogged deeper into the facility, placing explosives on flammable containers.
"Here!" Romanova shouted. Steve ran over to see her standing at an opened armored door. Inside were crate after crate of HYDRA energy weapons.
"Cover my back," he shouted while sprinting to the middle of the room. Once there, he placed the remaining ten pounds of Composition C on top of a glowing crate full of energy weapons, set the detonator, and turned to high tail it out of the room. Passing the Russian major who was firing back into the facility, he shouted, "Twenty seconds!"
In a blink, she was next to him as they barreled through the empty facility. Steve's internal countdown had hit ten when they jumped out a window overlooking the Vistula River. Both were windmilling their arms and legs to stay upright as they started to fall the two and a half stories to the freezing water below.
KA-RUMP
The concussive force knocked Steve head over heels, skipping him across the river like a flat rock. After an eternity of moments, he landed in the shallows on the far side. Groaning, Captain America stood in the waist high freezing cold water. "I never knew that water could be so hard," he grumbled to himself.
"Oy," Romanova muttered in concurrence as she waded to the riverbank ten feet away. Her helmet had been blown clean off and in the light of the moon and the burning and exploding factory, he saw that her short hair was a vibrant red.
Hurrying after her, he called, "Major! Are you alright?"
She turned, her eyes finding him before they widened in surprise, "Drop!" she shouted. As Steve dove to the right, he watched her raise her PPS-43 before firing a long burst. Crab walking through the shallows to the riverbank, he saw her retreat into the bushes while providing covering fire against the SS troops on the far bank.
Another burst of German machine gun fire from the east – on their side of the river - decided their next direction. "Can you run?" He asked. "Are you wounded?"
"Nyet. I am sore, but unwounded. You?"
"I'm fine. I've no weapon save this," he hefted his shield that'd been on his back. "Do you want me on point and you can cover our retreat?"
She looked at him with an evaluating eye, "Do you really think we can link up with the airlift out of here?"
He glanced at his watch. The plane had taken off two minutes before. "No. What is your secondary egress plan?"
She looked at him hard, before replying in clipped tones, "The surviving soldiers are to move under cover through enemy lines to rejoin advancing Soviet forces on the Eastern Front."
Steve blinked. "That's over six hundred miles through German lines."
Major Romanova nodded grimly, "Da."
Shaking off the insanity of her orders, he observed, "There's no one in that direction," he jabbed his thumb over his left shoulder, "shooting at us. I recommend to the Major that we run that way until people stop shooting at us."
She grinned, "I agree. You lead, I will cover our retreat." Narrowing her eyes at him, she ordered, "I am just as fast or even faster than you, Rogers. Do not go slowly."
Snapping a sloppy salute, he replied with a grin, "Yes, ma'am," before taking off at a loping run that would eat miles and put some distance between them and their pursuers.
Right behind him, he heard the lithe footsteps of Major Romanova keeping pace with him even as he sped up.
A/N
1. I own nothing. Recommendation for this chapter is Hi by Natascha Romanoff. Great fic, check it out
2. Marvel Universe 1122 is my own invention where this part of the story takes place.
3. Translations courtesy of Google Translate
Russian Translations
Da = yes
Yebena mat = Holy Shit
Udovletvoryat = good/satisfactory