We Were Soldiers
164. Dirty Little Secrets
Jumping jacks were the most efficient way Steve knew of to warm muscles up before a run, so as he waited for the rest of team to show, he began counting them out. His audience was a flock of ladies; they watched him from atop the Strand's decorated roof, ignorant of the males that strutted and bobbed in an effort to gain their attention. They called down 'coo coo' appreciatively, and really did remind him of the gaggles of women from back home who'd tried hanging around back-stage at the USO shows to get a glimpse of him in—or very possibly even out—of uniform.
He'd done thirty-nine jumping jacks by the time Monty strolled yawning down the Strand's steps and began jumping beside his captain. Despite his yawn, every inch of his uniform was perfect and not a single hair was out of place on his head. Sure, several parts of our country may have been reduced to rubble, he'd once said, when Jones had asked him how he always managed to look so immaculate, but that's no excuse to let our standards slip.
"How was the gambling last night?" Steve asked him.
"Very successful. Dugan regained double what he lost to Sergeant Wells, and has been challenged to another match tonight. You know, if you'd told me five years ago that arm-wrestling would be just as lucrative as horse racing, I would've scoffed at the idea."
"Thinking about taking part?"
"Me? Heavens no." The major affected a scandalised air that said he had not only been thinking about it, but had started training for it. "I mean, Sergeant Dugan has a natural upper body strength that most men can't match."
"Uh-huh."
At sixty-seven jumping jacks, Jones appeared. Unlike Monty, he didn't yawn. In fact, he grinned his pearly whites as he joined in the jumping.
"Morning, fellas," Gabe offered.
"Why so chipper?" Steve asked him. "And good morning as well."
Monty snorted loudly. "Gabe abandoned us last night to go dancing with a lady."
Steve's ears immediately perked up. "A lady? Do tell."
"Aw, there's nothing to tell, honest! She's a Wren, came to watch the wrestling of all things. We got to talking about home and family, and she asked if I'd like to take her dancing because it had been a while since she'd been in London."
"So of course he abandoned us without a second thought," Monty said.
"Like you would've done any different if a beautiful woman had asked you to dance."
"I would've given it a second thought, but probably not a third. Anyway, I'm not really that put-out by it; Dugan and I had a bigger share of the winnings without you there."
"I did what now?" Dugan asked, appearing at jumping jack number ninety. He stepped out of the hotel and let the door swing closed behind him, tipping his bowler hat down so that it covered his eyes from the brightness of the rising sun.
"I was just regaling Captain Rogers with the story of how Gabe abandoned us."
"Oh, that. Yeah, his priorities are definitely all wrong."
Gabe merely shook his head. "Are you honestly trying to tell me that if Lizzie asked you to go dancing with her, you'd blow her off to arm-wrestle with some sweaty dock-worker instead?"
"No, but Lizzie wasn't there, was she?" He glanced around, a sly smile creeping across his face as he took in who was present. "Ha! Awake and active before Barnes has even rolled his ass out of bed. All is right with the world again. But where's Frenchie?"
"I asked Jacques to take some breakfast up to Morita," Steve told him. "He'll be down in a moment." He glanced down at his watch. Nearly ten minutes past nine. This was not on the dot. It wasn't even shortly after the dot. Maybe the darts match had turned into darts and drinking… Peggy had said that Sergeant Wells might encourage such things. "I'll go wake Bucky up. The rest of you can be warming up ready for the run."
He jogged into the lobby and said, "Good morning Mr Chipperton," to the concierge. Then he jogged on the spot, because he hated to stop his warm-up once he'd begun.
"Good morning, Captain Rogers. Out for your usual morning constitutional, I see. Will the whole team be joining you on this one, or should I tell the kitchen to prepare extra food?"
"No need, we're all running except for Morita. Have you seen Bucky this morning at all?"
Mr Chipperton shook his head. "No, and I don't expect to see him, either. He looked to be in quite the state last night. I'd be surprised if he's fit for running anything except a shower today."
Steve ceased his on-the-spot jog and tried not to let the frown that he felt inside show on his face. This was something else that Peggy had said Sergeant Wells might encourage. "I see. Exactly how drunk was he when he staggered in?"
"He didn't seem drunk at all, actually. A Sergeant Wells helped him home early, said that Sergeant Barnes had complained of food poisoning or some such. Sergeant Barnes took a hot bath and retired to his room for some much-needed sleep. One of the other staff must have let Sergeant Wells out, after I'd retired to bed myself. I did offer to call a doctor, but both men were adamant his services were not required."
"Thanks, I'll go up and check on him now."
He took the stairs slowly because he wanted a moment to think. His best friend had complained of stomach issues several times over the past few months, and recently he'd begun to think that those complaints were just convenient excuses Bucky was making to go off and meet his friends without having to explain his whereabouts. But what if there really was something wrong with him? The last time he'd mentioned stomach ache was around the time Danny had shown up, but if he was already with Danny, then what did he have to make excuses for?
When he reached Bucky's room he knocked quietly on the door then pressed his ear to the wood. He could definitely hear breathing in there, which was a good sign. Something else was crackling… was it the fire? In this heat? He knocked again, a little louder this time. Bucky had told him to wake him up for the run, if he overslept. "Hey Bucky, are you awake? Mr Chipperton said you came back early last night. Is everything okay?"
The quiet sound of footsteps on a carpeted floor reached his ears, and then the door was opened with a quiet squeak of its hinges. A blast of heat hit him right in the face like a desert wind lacking only in sand, causing his eyes to water. When his vision cleared, he blinked at the figure standing before him. Sergeant Wells looked like a man who hadn't had much in the way of sleep. His black hair was all messy and faint dark circles had set in beneath eyes that squinted out at the brightness of the corridor. His boots and jacket were absent, his shirt hung loosely from his shoulders with the top three buttons open, and a sheen of sweat covered every inch of skin; probably because of the heat.
"Danny?"
"Steve," the man replied. Then, because he seemed to remember the chain of command, he threw up a lazy salute and said, "Captain. Whatever."
"Where's Bucky?"
"In bed. He's fine. Just sleeping it off."
"I'd like to see that for myself," he said, taking a step forward. Normally when he stepped forward, other men stepped back. It hadn't always been that way but he was big enough to loom now and it was surprising how often merely looming got him a little space. Danny, however, did not so much as twitch a muscle. He just stood there, one hand on the door, as if he thought he could stop Steve from making sure his best friend was okay.
"You don't wanna come in here," Danny said. "Trust me. Barnes had food poisoning last night. Ate an undercooked burger. Spent a lot of time making long distance calls to God"
"Food poisoning, huh? He's been getting that a lot recently."
The other man shrugged. "I've often felt that the English undercook things that ought not to be undercooked. Like burgers."
"Why's it so hot in there?" Steve asked, trying to peer over his shoulder. The room was in darkness, but he thought he could see Bucky's uniform neatly folded up on the desk in the corner of the room.
"I get cold easily. Poor circulation. Wanna feel my toes? They're like icicles."
"You were here all night?"
"Course." Danny rolled his eyes in a way that suggested Steve knew nothing. "I wouldn't be much of a friend if I left my sick pal to maybe roll onto his back and drown in his own vomit, would I?"
"I suppose you wouldn't," he agreed. But he needed to make sure his best friend really was fine. Peggy might not have been totally disparaging of the sergeant, and both Dugan and Jones seemed okay with him, but Steve couldn't just take the word of somebody who was essentially a stranger to him. Not where Bucky was concerned. "Thanks for taking care of him. Now, if you don't mind, I'll check on him for myself. He did ask me to wake him this morning for our ten-kay run."
He stepped forward again, but his only option was to step back, or walk straight into the man who still refused to budge. Despite his tired and sweaty demeanor, Danny was suddenly giving off some immovable object vibes.
"Thing is," he said, "Barnes needs sleep right now. He needs quiet, and I told him I would make sure he got it. The only way you're gettin' into this room is if you physically make me move." He let go of the door to take up a boxing stance, one that Steve had seen a hundred different fighters in Bucky's dad's gym use for defending against punches. "So let's have your best shot, eh? I know how strong you are now; I've seen the movies, I know they didn't cheat with special effects. I'm sure a big guy like you could send me flying without breaking a sweat. Because if you wanna disturb my friend, you're gonna have to go through me first."
It would've been a comical display of bravado if Danny hadn't already been aware that he stood no chance in a fight against Steve. But then, hadn't Steve stood up to a lot of bigger guys knowing that he didn't stand a chance against them?
"I could order you to move aside," he pointed out. "Make it an official command."
The smile Danny gave was equal parts genuine and madness. "You could order me to move aside, sure. And it wouldn't be the first time I've disobeyed orders. Ask Phillips for my file, if you don't believe me. He's probably got the unredacted version sitting in a locked drawer somewhere labelled 'dirty little secrets', along with else he ordered us to do in France."
Peggy's words from the night before last came tumbling back into his head. "He's immature, cocky, irreverent, undisciplined and a smart-alec. But very good at his job, and extremely loyal to his friends. He's taken more than one hit for members of the 107th. And I mean that literally."
Maybe this was part of what she meant. If he'd already disobeyed orders for friendship, if he put the welfare of his teammates above the success of the mission, then no order or threat would make him do what he thought ran contrary to that. It was a loyalty Steve could respect on a deep level… in this case, a very deep level, covered with several layers of irritation and mistrust.
"So what'll it be?" the guy asked, still in his defensive position. "I can hit you first, if that helps. Then if anyone questions you about it, you can claim it was self defense. You might even get me for assault on a senior officer."
"I'm not gonna hit you. It wouldn't be a fair fight even if you hadn't been shot." He glanced into the room again, trying to see over to the bed. The only thing within his line of sight was the foot of it, with a couple of blankets on it. "I have a few things to take care of. I'm gonna come back after lunch, and if Bucky isn't awake by then, I'm gonna be bringing a doctor with me. At that point it will be an order, Danny, and I don't care if I have to throw you in a cell for a few hours or days."
He left and made his way back to the staircase, the sergeant's words ringing through his brain. "He's probably got the unredacted version sitting in a locked drawer somewhere 'labelled dirty little secrets', along with else he ordered us to do in France." It always seemed to come back to the past. Austria, which Bucky wouldn't talk about. Italy, which Bucky wouldn't talk about. France, which Bucky—surprise surprise—wouldn't talk about. Just what had Colonel Phillips had them doing out there? Maybe it was finally time for Steve to get some answers.
The team were still waiting outside, and Jacques had joined them too. "Guys, listen up," he said. "I know you're all gonna be disappointed, but this morning's ten-kay is cancelled." A round of disappointed moans passed through the team, belied by the childish grins of triumph on their faces. "Dugan, Jones, I need to speak with you in private. Monty, Jacques, you can have your morning to yourselves."
They didn't need asking twice. In the beat of a heart, both men were gone, while the other two lingered like naughty school boys expecting at any minute to be told they had to stay behind to copy lines on the blackboard. To try and put them at ease, he took them inside and asked Mr Chipperton for private use of the reading room, which he granted without hesitation. On a normal day, Steve might've asked for some food to be sent there, so they could eat and talk at the same time. But today he wanted there to be a distinction between their friend Steve, and their Captain. He liked to think it wasn't because he felt he had to make up for Danny completely failing to show any sort of respect for his rank… but he wasn't all that sure.
Both men seemed to understand that he wasn't speaking to them as their friend anymore. When he led them into the library and took a seat on one of the chairs, they stood to attention. They never stood to attention like that, except for Phillips. Had his face betrayed some emotion? Some of that flaring irritation he felt at being so casually ignored by a man of lower rank? It might have been refreshing to meet someone who wasn't awed by the thought of Captain America, if it wasn't for the circumstances of that lack of awe.
Settled in his seat, with his team members appearing formal, he asked, "I need to know what happened in France."
Jones blinked, and it was obvious he was trying to figure out what exactly Steve was asking. Dugan cleared his throat and said, "If this is about the Parker kid—"
Steve quickly shook his head. "No. Not Normandy. The south of France. Last year. With the SSR."
"How much do you actually know?" the big man countered.
"That you were in the south of France. That Corporal Ferguson got a chocolate cake for his birthday. That Bucky got poisoned at some point and took a nurse hostage. Somehow you all ended up in Italy. Then there was Azzano, followed by Austria."
"Cap," said Dugan, "I'm grateful for whatever Barnes has said to you to get us out of this morning run, however—"
"Bucky hasn't said anything. He's asleep in bed, allegedly recovering from food poisoning. Sergeant Wells brought him home last night, and stayed to keep an eye on him."
"Ha!" Dugan scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Don't let Wells get under your skin, Cap. He's good at figuring out how to annoy people, and then exploiting that for his own benefit. Or hell, just for shits and giggles. Who even knows what makes that guy tick?"
"That may be so," he agreed. And if it was the case, it had definitely worked, because he was feeling pretty annoyed right now. And that fact that he might have let somebody annoy him on purpose only annoyed him even more! "But I still need to know. What was the SSR doing in France last year?"
"I'll tell you everything I know," Dugan agreed. "But I'm not sure how much help it will be."
"And what I know will be even less help," said Jones. "The 370th didn't really mingle with the other regiments all that much. I mean, we played dice and cards with some of the 107th and the 69th, of course. But we didn't even get to see any action until Italy."
"Just tell me what you know," Steve told them. "Any little detail may be useful."
"Alright," Dugan began. "So, a company from the 107th, the whole of the 69th, and the 370th, we were all barracked together at Plymouth for a few months, kicking our feet up and just waiting around for assignment. Plymouth was a fairly boring place, but I guess there could've been worse barracks to be stuck at. Then, in June, when Barnes and the rest of the second 107th company arrived, we got wind that we might be shipping out soon. And sure enough we were marched one night a few days later down to the King George, which took us to the south of France under Colonel Hawkswell's command. We were told that we'd need to rendezvous with the SSR, which was on assignment in the area. When we eventually found them, we discovered they'd met up with survivors of the 9th Infantry, who'd been marooned there following a U-boat attack on their transport ship a few weeks earlier. The 9th was pretty depleted, by that point, and they had no real support.
"The early days in France was a lot of recon and stuff, fairly standard ops. There wasn't much of a Nazi presence in the area, so the biggest threat was the heat and the stukas which began to plague us more as we moved west-ward. At first, the missions that the 107th went out on were fairly standard recon and supply recovery, just like the rest of us—"
"Don't forget about that baby," Jones interjected.
"Baby?" Steve asked.
Dugan shook his head. "They found a baby. It's not relevant to anything. Anyway, one time, the 107th were called up to go on a mission. Nobody else knew the details, not even Hawkswell. They went out in the morning and in the evening they returned without their CO. Both Barnes and Wells received commendations for bringing back their team alive after their lieutenant got himself shot."
So. A commendation. Yet another thing Bucky hadn't mentioned.
"After that," Dugan continued, "they went out on a lot of missions for Phillips. They'd take two or three squads from the 107th. Sometimes they'd be gone for a few hours, sometimes for a day or more. They always went heavily armed and carrying whatever fancy new tech Stark could invent in the field. I don't know where they went or what they were doing. Stark was in on it. Carter, too. I think some of the 9th may have been as well. But I wasn't in the know, and I was happy not to be.
"These sorts of missions happened a few times. Then, when Fall hit and we reached the Italian border, we were told we were going to join the greater war effort. The 107th still had occasional missions, but not like in France. They ran a lot of joint ops with the rest of us. Liberating work camps. Helping the locals take back Como. Search and rescue. Intelligence gathering. That sort of thing."
Steve rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and sank his cheek into his hand as he ran through what his teammates had told him. It went without saying that whatever Phillips had Bucky doing was related to Hydra. It was the SSR's raison d'être, which also explained why Hawkswell wasn't privy to the details.
"You mentioned previously that Bucky took a nurse hostage?" he prompted Jones.
"Our camp was infiltrated by Nazi spies who poisoned Barnes with something that made him go loopy," said Jones.
"It's not as bad as it sounds," Dugan added. "Nurse Klein wasn't hurt. But Barnes broke free of his restraints later that night and ran off with one of those sniper rifles he loves so much. Phillips sent Carter and Wells to either bring him back alive, or stop him before he could hurt anyone. Heh." He rubbed the back of his head with his hand, one of his strongest poker tells. "They brought him back, of course. I heard a couple of the 107th gossiping about it after. They said Wells tied Carter up to stop her shooting Barnes."
He did what?! Surely that couldn't be right. Peggy was no weakling, and Sergeant Wells… well, hadn't he just stood up to Steve? Standing up to Peggy was not a particularly great stretch of the imagination, and it would certainly explain why she hadn't been enthusiastic to see him again. Maybe he'd ask about that, later. But he'd ask Bucky, because he was a complete idiot when it came to women.
"How did Sergeant Wells end up MIA?"
"He went out with a team from the 9th to recover a supply drop," said Gabe. "Krauts got there first, and our guys took casualties. Wells was one of those who didn't make it back from the mission, and the 9th's sergeant said he got hit. So we all thought he was dead. Barnes wasn't on the mission because he and Wells had been boxing earlier, and he took punch to the head that put him in the hospital tent for a checkup, and then they took blood from him."
"I bet that didn't go down well with Bucky," he mused. His best friend didn't take not being there for his friends well. He'd probably been kicking himself this whole time over not being able to protect his pal.
"Barnes took all the 107th's losses hard, Cap," said Dugan. "But Wells' death hit him hardest. Sometimes I think the bullshit was the only thing keeping Barnes together by that point. When Wells didn't come back, it was like he just shut down from feeling anything. Look, I didn't wanna tell you this because it wasn't my place and I hoped Barnes would open up on his own."
"Thanks, I appreciate you telling me now."
Both men relaxed a little. Had he really looked that tense? "What's the next step, Cap?" asked Gabe.
"Now I think I need to speak to Phillips," he said. It was long past time he checked inside the man's drawer of dirty little secrets. Who knew what else he might find in there?
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
Awareness tickled at Bucky's mind and he felt himself rise from some deep, dreamless sleep, just like rising out of the cold depths of the ocean. Everything felt heavy, as if each limb was weighed down, and when he opened his eyes a fraction, he was met with darkness.
His vision adjusted slowly. The darkness wasn't total. Shadows danced across the ceiling, black and orange things that moved lazily, swaying to some internal rhythm only they could feel, moving to a beat he couldn't hear. The smell in the air was of ash and coal smoke, a comforting smell that wrapped itself around his mind and said 'don't worry. You're safe. You're warm. Everything will be fine.'
He wasn't alone. Over by the blackout curtains, still drawn to keep the light in, stood an unmoving figure. At one time he would've dreaded someone seeing him in the aftermath of this sickness, but he was warm, he was in darkness, and he wasn't in a hospital bed, so whoever was there had done the right thing.
A glass of water sat on his night stand, and when he tried to reach out to take it he discovered why his limbs felt heavy; he was weighted down by several woollen blankets and his bed duvet below them. There was something soft brushing against his skin, too. Was that… a bath robe? No wonder moving was so hard. He had almost an entire linen closet of stuff piled on top of him.
When he moved enough to make noise, the figure moved as well. "Don't try to sit up too quickly," a familiar voice said.
"Wells?" he croaked. God, how parched was his throat? Only when he actually tried to speak did he realise how thirsty he was.
"Yeah, it's me. I'll get you your water in a minute. Is it okay if I open the curtains?"
"Blackout," he explained.
"I know, but it's morning. A nice day, too."
He nodded and Wells moved to open the curtains, slowly drawing them back to allow harsh daylight to come rushing in. Bucky closed his eyes against it, but at least it didn't hurt his head, like it tended to when he had hangover. He could tolerate this light; his eyes would adapt. And Wells squinted against it too. He looked as rough as Bucky felt, but he immediately returned to the bed and brought the glass of water closer.
"Can you hold this yourself, or do I have to go down to the kitchen and get you a straw to drink from like a kid?"
"I'll hold it."
So Wells peeled back the blankets until only the duvet remained. The duvet, the bath robe and a couple of towels. Between them and the fire, no wonder he was warm. Yanking a pillow up behind his back, he shuffled upwards like some inelegant slug until he could sit with his arms freed from their cocoon of eiderdown, and accepted the glass from Wells. He drank the whole thing, and then half of a refill, and it tasted like the sweetest thing he'd ever had.
"Are you hungry?" Wells asked, once he'd placed the glass back on the small table.
He nodded. "I always am when… I mean… I could eat."
"Where's the kitchen in this place?"
"Down the stairs," he said. "Take the corridor on the left, go right at the end, and it'll take you to the dining room." Much as he hated the thought of someone waiting on him, he wasn't entirely sure he could stand, much less walk all the way to the dining room, and being seen like this was the last thing in the world that he wanted.
Wells took the door key with him when he left, and clicked the door shut behind him so nobody else could enter. Bucky surveyed his room. He didn't remember much beyond wandering into The Narrows and collapsing on the ground. There were flashes of things. Light. Words. Nothing he could recall clearly. Most of what he remembered was bone-snapping cold, the likes of which he'd experienced in the past. But the bath robe and towels suggested he'd been in the bath at some point, and the blankets and fire said that Wells' had the foresight to keep him warm.
His clothes were folded in a neat pile on the desk, his boots on the floor beneath it. The chair from the desk had been dragged over to the side of the bed. A little niggle of guilt wormed away at his stomach. Had Wells spent the night here, and slept on that uncomfortable wooden chair? It didn't even have a cushion to soften its hard seat. And the fire was still warm… had he been stoking it all night?
He racked his brain, trying to shake loose anything from the night before, but it was useless. Once the shaking had taken hold of him, once pain had slammed into him with all the subtlety of a freight train, rational thought had fled. It had been like that last time, too, when he'd forgotten to cancel his date with Antje. And the time before, in Norway. Pain overruled all else, even memory.
It didn't take long for Wells to return, slipping into the room with a plate piled high with food in one hand and and two mugs of steaming hot coffee in the other. By the looks of it he'd just grabbed a load of everything that was out on the breakfast counter, but Bucky was in no position to be fussy about food. His stomach growled appreciatively at the sight of it. Guilt and hunger fought for dominance, and hunger won out in the end. When Wells deposited the plate on the duvet covering his legs, he tucked in right away.
"What happened?" he asked, when he'd got a couple of pieces of bacon and some mushrooms in his stomach to keep it quiet.
"What do you remember?" Wells countered.
"We met at the Kettle. I started feeling shaky and left. Figured I'd take a shortcut home but I got lost in The Narrows," he said. "After that, everything's just a blank." He pushed the plate towards Wells a little, and his friend reached over from the chair to take a piece of toast.
"I followed you from the Kettle because you're a fuckin' terrible liar, Barnes. You were having a bad time even before you reached The Narrows. When you collapsed, I managed to get you on your feet, but you were adamant you didn't need to see a doctor." His friend scowled at him. "When I got you back here, you said you needed a hot bath."
So. The bath had been his suggestion after all. Only, he didn't remember sayin' it.
"Your concierge gave me the key to the linen closet, and you had what I can only describe as the hottest bath known to man. How you didn't come out scalded I have no idea. After that I brought you up to your room and got you settled comfortably in your bed."
"Then spent the entire night in that chair?"
"No. I paced a bit, too. I thought you were dying, Barnes. I wasn't gonna leave you to die alone." He bit off a large piece of toast and chewed it angrily, as if the toast was to blame for the past twelve hours.
He could only imagine how lonely and terrifying that had been. Bucky had stayed with Carrot at the end, refusing to let him die alone yet knowing he was utterly powerless to stop it from happening. Watching a life slip away in front of you, feeling that anger, frustration and helplessness… it was not something he would wish on anyone. No wonder Wells was pissed at him.
Suddenly, a fragment of something appeared in his mind. "I had a strange dream," he said. Wells paused mid-nibble of his toast. "I dreamed that Steve was here, and you threatened to punch him if he woke me up."
"Oh, that. Yeah, he stopped by an hour ago. Wanted you to go running or something. Don't worry, I got rid of him for now. He'll be back later, but we've got a couple of hours to get you on your feet."
He poked one of the sausages on his plate suspiciously, his gaze focused on the meat. What would it be today? Actual pig, this time? Maybe more chicken? "I'm sorry you had to carry me back here. And get me into the bath. And then drag me up to my room."
"Don't worry about it, we agreed you'd never tell Dugan about it, and it's nothing you wouldn't have done for me. Hell, I remember you carrying me back to the barracks from Plymouth after I fell in a ditch and banged my head."
He smiled at the memory. That had been such a long time ago, in an entirely different life. "Why is it that whenever I thank you for doing something selfless, you point out an instance where I did something similar for you in the past? This isn't barter, you know. Friends can help each other out without any need for trade."
"I guess I just know where I stand, with trade. You do something for me, I do something for you. No sense of anybody owing anybody anything left out there to be claimed later."
"That's not how friendship is supposed to work."
"Then I guess I'm not a very good friend." Bucky opened his mouth to say that anybody who dragged him home, bathed him and got him into his bed went over and above being a good friend, but Wells interjected before he got chance. "What's wrong with your sausage? Those things are for eating y'know, not poking."
"Oh. Jacques thinks it might be horse, on account of the shortage of everything else."
Wells reached over to break a piece off and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully for a moment before swallowing. "It's fine, it's not horse. Tastes completely different."
"You've eaten horse?" he asked, a flat non-question that he knew his friend would answer anyway.
"Yeah. Long time ago." He paused for a moment, and Bucky gestured for him to continue. "Oh, you wanted to hear about it? Fine. Remember how I told you last year about my uncle with the ranch out in Wyoming?"
"Sure do." That was something he remembered clearly, because it had been on their first real night out in England, a conversation about home and dames they'd had whilst strolling through the bleak moors towards Plymouth town.
"Well, every summer during school break, I was bundled off up there to help out with all the work. I got sent off because my dad wanted me to spend my summer breaks doing something physical, to make a man out of me or some other bullshit like that. At the time I made out like it was some real chore, but I actually enjoyed every minute I spent there." He smiled and spread his hands out before him, as if painting a picture right there in the room. "Wyoming is all plains and hills and wide blue skies. I told you that before, right?"
"Yeah."
"Anyway, I was up there one year… can't even remember exactly when. Sometime during the Great Depression. I was probably twelve or thirteen years old, and my uncle had sent me out on the trail with some of the ranch hands to find the horses and gather them for the annual sale. It was the first time he'd let me go on one the overnight drives, and I was really excited, but so desperate not to show it. My cousin Eliett and I were the same age and had this sort of friendly rivalry—you'd like her by the way, she's a confident anything, very much your type—and—"
"Your cousin has a boy's name," he pointed out.
"That's not her real name. Her real name is Eloise, and whenever she got into trouble, which was quite a lot as you might expect from a cousin of mine, my aunt would say, 'Eloise Henrietta Beatrice Wells, what have I told you about so-and-so.' But it was such a mouthful to say that over time, and a great many repetitions, she just shortened it to Eliett, which my cousin liked and made everybody call her after that. So as I was saying, we were out on the trail on an overnight drive, and had just settled down into our sleeping bags when there was a ruckus amongst the pack animals—"
Bucky tried very hard not to grin. "Did you just say ruckus?"
"Shut up." His friend glared back and handed his hot cup of coffee over to him. "It's an actual word in Wyoming. When we heard the ruckus, the ranchers ran over with their guns and found a cougar—what you city-folk would call a mountain lion, I guess—in amongst the horses, which were hobbled to stop them straying. They shot the cougar and it made off bleeding, but the horse it had jumped didn't survive. Waste not, want not, the head rancher said. His name was Smithy, and he'd been a Great War veteran. He had the men cut up the shanks of the poor dead pack horse, and roast it up on the fire. Because when you're on the trail, all you have is hardtack and jerky, so unless you can hunt or forage worth a damn, you're not eating well. We ate pretty well that night. And to be honest it didn't really appeal to me, because I quite liked that old pack horse, she'd been a steady mare, but I didn't want Eliett to think I couldn't do anything she could, so I just ate. Horse has a very particular flavour, and I don't know what these sausages are, but they're not that."
"You know," he said, "that's the first time I've seen you smile while talking about your family."
"That's the part of my family I actually like. My uncle served as a soldier in the Great War, so when he got back, he opened the ranch up to veterans to go if they needed a place to stay. Do some honest work. Recover from the shell shock. Get themselves back on their feet, y'know? I heard a lot of stories about war back then. Most of it seemed like a combination of adventure and horror. So yeah, for six or seven weeks a year, I could be free. Have fun. Ride horses, sleep in hammocks, be a kid.
"It sounds nice."
"It was. If you could get over the fear of rattlesnakes crawling into your sleeping bag at night."
"Uh, rattlesnakes?"
"They like the warmth," Wells explained. "So sometimes you'd wake up and find one had crawled into your sleeping bag with you."
Bucky shuddered. Waking up next to a poisonous snake… it made him glad the worst he had to worry about was waking up to find Charlie had crawled into his bed.
Wells shuffled the chair closer to the bedside and rested his arms on the mattress. The look he gave Bucky was quiet and pointed, and his blue eyes said there was no bullshit now. "London is a small city, pal."
And you can't hide forever.
This would come up. He'd known it from the moment he opened his eyes. But he replied by rote. "I don't wanna talk about it."
"I know. It's hard. Talking about it makes it real." Wells gestured at the bed, and the plate of half-eaten food. "Thing is… it's already real, pal. Last night you got lucky. If I hadn't followed you, who knows what would have happened? Maybe you would've been found by some real unsavoury types. Thieves. Or worse: sailors. Or maybe nobody found you, and you died of hypothermia. I felt how cold you were, I know it might have happened. Do you know why I told you about my claustrophobia? It's because it was it was real. I knew I would have to go back into that mine at some point, and I knew I couldn't handle it. I needed you to know so that you could handle it for me. I needed your help. And right now, I think you need help. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but tell someone. Steve. Stark. Carter. Hell, even the guy with the peanut machine."
Bucky closed his eyes. He was so tired of being weak. So tired of hiding, and pretending everything was okay when everything was very clearly not okay. But nobody else knew that. So long as everyone else thought he was strong, he could pretend that he was. The moment somebody knew how weak he truly was, he could never be strong again. He could only be broken forever.
"I can't talk about it," he said, opening his eyes now that he'd found his resolve. "I'm not brave like you."
Wells cocked his head to the side. "Brave?"
"When you told me about your claustrophobia, and why you suffered so badly… I think that was the bravest thing I've ever seen you do."
"I wasn't brave, I was terrified out of my mind," Wells scoffed.
"But you still did it."
"Not because I was brave." He glanced down at the plate, at the breakfast that was too cold to eat now. "Because I trusted you. I trusted that even if you couldn't find a way to make it better, you would at least listen without judging."
The unspoken implication hung between them, heavy in the air. Wells had trusted him with a secret he had carried for years. The reason why he'd been such an ass on the Monty, the reason why he kept people at arm's length and mixed macabre humour into anything that hit a little too close to home. Wells had trusted him with that. And Bucky couldn't trust back, because he was a coward. And after everything his friend had done for him last night, too. It was a friendship he didn't deserve.
"You look tired," he offered.
Wells looked up at him through shadowed eyes. "I'm fine."
The lie cut through his heart like a knife. That was his lie, the lie he told over and over again to the people who cared about him, never realising until now how deeply it hurt. Hot, unshed tears burned his eyes, and he bit his bottom lip to bring pain to prevent them spilling over. Over the past months he'd become such an expert liar that he'd forgotten how much it hurt to be lied to, the trust that he had earned with such difficulty so easily squandered when the truth became an unwelcome stranger in the room.
"It's strange," Wells continued. "You call it bravery when I share with you. But it's weakness if you think about sharing with me. You hold yourself to a completely different standard to everyone else, and suffer alone because you are afraid to reach out for help. What you don't realise is that sometimes, silence hurts more." He picked up the unfinished plate and carried it to the door, stopping briefly to turn back. "See you around, Barnes."
"Wells, wait, don't go," he said, unable to figure out which was worse: the weakness he felt inside when he thought of Krausberg, or the thought of his friend believing that he didn't care. "Sit."
So Wells did, depositing the plate on the desk beside his neatly piled clothes before taking a seat on the chair beside the bed. He sat in silence and waited.
"I don't want to be a burden to anyone," Bucky told him. "I can't be a burden."
Wells considered that for a moment, then asked, "When you were kids, and pulling bullies off of Steve, was he a burden to you?"
"No."
"Was I a burden, after I shared about my claustrophobia with you?"
"No."
There was never any burden, between friends. And right then, Bucky realised he hadn't been a very good friend. He'd taken on the struggles of his friends, and hadn't let them do the same for him. In holding back, he had denied them the right to an equal friendship. He had until today been the source of strength that kept his friends weak, and he hadn't even realised he'd been doing it.
He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry despite all the water he'd drunk. "I can't talk when you're looking at me. It reminds me too much of…" Too much of being back on that table in Krausberg. Of Dr Zola's face hovering around, peering at him, analysing him like some sort of science experiment, just another subject to be scrutinised.
"Where should I look?"
He shuffled over on the bed, patted the mattress beside him, and said, "Sit here. Look there." He nodded at the painting on the far wall. It was a summer landscape, orchards, hills and fluffy white clouds, a traditionally British watercolour painted as though viewed from some pleasant dream state. So Wells kicked off his boots and sat beside him. "Blanket," Bucky instructed. Wells sighed and pulled one of the itchy woolen blankets up to cover them both. That was better. Blankets were good. Comforting. Civilised. There had been no blankets, in Krausberg.
Now, where to start? "You heard about Azzano?"
Wells nodded. Bucky couldn't see it, because he was focusing ahead on the orchard, but he felt the tiny nodding motion next to him. "Hodge told me."
"Those of us they captured, they took us to a factory in Austria. Threw us into the work cells, had us building something for Hydra. I was in the with Commandos; that's how we all met. But a couple of days in, I got sick. Pneumonia, I think. So they carted me off to isolation." He took a deep, calming breath. Told himself he wasn't alone. He wasn't back there. It couldn't hurt him. It was just a memory. Tried to fix that dream state orchard firmly in his mind, to banish all memory of the iron bars over the windows and the metal table at his back. "At first I thought it was a medical ward. I was on something cold and metal. A hospital gurney, I thought. But it wasn't a hospital. It was a lab. I didn't know what they were doing. Not at the time. They called me subject thirty-six. Monty told me later that the thirty-five guys who went into isolation before me never came out.
"There were… experiments. Needles. I don't know what they injected me with. All I knew was pain. It was like fire and ice running through my veins. Cramp in my muscles, my arms and legs hurting so much I thought my bones would snap. Day after day. I didn't want to be part of that. I tried to resist. When I refused food, they… they brought in a prisoner from the cells. Brought him in front of me. And broke his fingers one by one until I couldn't take his screams anymore and gave in." The dream state orchard blurred, becoming indistinct as the clouds through his tear-filled eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to stop the aching in his chest that accompanied each remembered snap of bone. His defiance had done that. Caused someone agonising pain. The price of trying to be strong was somebody else suffering in his place.
Wells lifted an arm out from beneath the blanket to rest it atop instead, his open hand lying palm up in unspoken invitation. It was a lifeline Bucky needed, because to reject it was to be well and truly alone in that memory. He slipped his hand on top of Wells' and tightened it so that his friend couldn't let go even if he wanted to.
"I don't know how long it went on for," he said. "Days. A week. Two. It felt like forever. I tried fighting, at first. Refused the food until I couldn't. Thrashed whenever they came at me with needles. Kept my mouth shut when they asked me questions. Dr Zola… he was the guy in charge of the experiment… he liked to play German opera. Left it on all night, even when he wasn't there. And when he was, he talked to himself about the experiment, about how much his talents were being wasted, and how he hoped I was the one that would survive phase three. I remember him looking down at me, peering at me through those oversized glasses, studying me like I was some sort of insect.
"That room had no warmth. No sunlight. No dignity. I was chained to the table except for eating or pit stops, and even that was just a metal bucket in the corner of the room, and I had two guards watching over me the whole time I was unrestrained. One time, they got sloppy. Let themselves turn away. Get distracted. Maybe they thought my will was broken, that I had no fight left in me. But I saw an opportunity for freedom. A way to make the pain stop for good. To end each miserable second of my existence. So I tackled them. Grabbed one of their side-arms. Put the muzzle against my head, and pulled the trigger."
The hand holding his tightened reflexively, as if Wells had been shot and felt that pain himself. Bucky squeezed back, wishing it was possible to squeeze hard enough to wring out all the pain in the same way you could squeeze the juice out of an orange. Squeeze it out and pour it down the drain. Be rid of it forever.
"I forgot to take the safety off." He tried to smile. "Not the first time, you'll recall. And I didn't get a second chance. I blacked out after they knocked me unconscious, and when I woke up, they'd added more restraints. I thought I would die there. I begged God to let me die. Over and over again. But you were right. If he is up there… if he ever was… he isn't listening now. He doesn't care. He abandoned me when I needed him, just like he abandoned you when you were a kid. Eventually, Steve came. Rescued everyone in the cells, and came to get me. I didn't recognise him at first. And the only thought that went through my mind when I did, was relief. I thought he'd come to help me die. To take the pain away. Instead he set me free, and I've been living with that pain ever since."
He wanted to lift his hand to run his sleeve across his eyes, but that would've meant letting go, and right now the only thing keeping him from breaking down completely was the hand holding his. For as long as he held on, he knew that he could get through it. That he would be okay after. So he let the tears come, and tried to finish what he needed his friend to know. What he needed someone to finally know.
"This thing that happened to me last night… it's not the first time. It was common right after Krausberg, then the longer I was in London, the more I drank, the more it faded. It comes back without warning. I get tremors first. Tiny shakes in my hands or legs. Then I get cold, and from there it gets worse. I nearly died the first time it happened. We were on a mission in Norway, and it was winter. Took days for me to come around from it. The second time wasn't as bad. When I knew what was happening, I ran a hot bath and soaked in it. That seemed to stop the pain, and the shakes didn't get any worse. Within a day, I was alright.
"Stark… he thinks that Zola was trying to replicate the same serum that Dr Erskine gave to Steve, to make him… but what they injected me with, it wasn't the same. It doesn't work. I'm not strong. I'm not fit. I'm not fast. I'm just broken, and I hurt. Every time this happens, it puts me back there. In my head. On that table, being studied like a lab rat, all alone with nobody to hear me calling out for help. And I feel like even though I'm here, part of me did die in that room, that night I forgot to remove the safety catch. Some part of me will always be left behind on that table."
The crackling of the fire was deafening in the silence that followed. The orchard was coming back into view a little, now that his tears were running empty. Wells had seen him cry before, tears of anger and grief at the senselessness of war and loss of the men he'd called friends. But this was different. These were tears of self-pity, tears solely for himself, and he wasn't entirely sure he deserved them.
"So. Now you know," he said. "Aren't you going to say something?"
"What do you need me to say?" Wells asked. His voice sounded unusually thick with emotion. Had he been crying, too? No; Wells was strong. Much stronger than him. And so long as he didn't look at Wells, he never had to learn otherwise.
"I don't know. I guess… not to worry. That's it's okay now that I'm out. That all of it is in the past and it can't hurt me anymore. You know, all of those platitudes I told you not to tell me… maybe now would be the time to start saying them."
Silence fell again. The clock ticked and the fire crackled, and Wells' grip on his hand remained as firm as that time he'd gone over a cliff in a jeep and been saved only by the strength of his grip around Bucky. Finally, he said, "Unlike you, I am a good liar. But there are two people in this world I can't lie to. One of them is you, and the other is myself. So I can't tell you that it's okay now that you're out. I can't promise it's in the past, or that it can't hurt you anymore. I don't know that, and I won't make a liar out of myself. Not to you. But what I can promise is that if there is pain, if you do hurt, if the nightmares feel so bad that you feel like they're gonna break you… you have the strength to endure it. And if you feel that you don't have strength enough, come to me, and I'll lend you some." He lifted their hands as evidence. "You never told any of this to your teammates, did you?" Bucky shook his head. "Because you need them to believe you're strong and unshakeable. That in the heat of combat, they can count on you to come through for them." He nodded this time. "I understand. And I know why you feel the need to keep up the mask. But that's not me. I'm out of that, now. There is no heat of combat for me, not anymore. I don't need you to watch my back like you used to, and I don't need you to put your life on the line for me. So I don't need the unshakeable soldier routine. All I need is for you to be my friend, and that means feeling comfortable enough to talk about things you might not feel like you can talk about with anyone else. If what you're going through feels overwhelming, you can be weak around me so that you can be strong for your team. And maybe at the same time I can learn to be a better friend as well. You know, less of that trading stuff, and more just… being there. Even if I can only do a desk job now, and I can't play darts properly or throw rocks up the Thames, I can be there. If that's enough."
He looked at the painting, and for a split second he thought he saw the clouds drifting freely in the sky above the orchard to reveal the sun peeking out from behind them. "I think it is."