Happy New Year! Here's a new chapter to end off 2023.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Hopeless
Brooklyn, Late 1942
Patrons in the small diner on the corner of two popular streets in the heart of Brooklyn chatted away, ready to finish eating and move on to their much busier lives. The number of employees at the diner had been cut in half as several of the chefs, waiters, and dishwashers enlisted in the war efforts. To make up for the lack of male employees, the owner had hired several young women, Suzie included.
Landing her first job at the age of seventeen, she spent most of her weekends and Friday evenings toiling away as a waitress. Her manager, a large, middle-aged man sporting an unattractive combover and bad drinking habits, hated the new hires and took every opportunity to yell at them. The job paid well, and because her mom told her to stick it out until she graduated, Suzie dealt with the manager slurring his words and bellowing as loud as his lungs allowed.
It didn't stop her from complaining about the alcohol on his breath or the blisters on her feet from wearing heels all day. Or the trio of men who sat in the corner booth and tossed unpleasant and profane remarks at the waitresses, most of whom were around Suzie's age—meaning: minors. One of the cooks—an elderly, Irish immigrant woman whom everyone called "Grammy" to the point Suzie didn't even know the woman's actual name—had threatened to beat the trio of men over the head with a frying pan if they didn't shut up. It had worked but they started right back up again once Grammy had a heart attack and quit to spend more time with her family.
Now Grammy-less and undefended from rowdy customers, the diner started to feel the toll of the manager's verbal abuse, the lack of quality food from the government's declaration of rationing, and more people staying at home to eat. She only had to suffer through two more years of high school, then she'd graduate and could move on from the horrible job at the diner. Or maybe the manager would fire her because he lectured her nearly every other day about the tiniest things.
The best part of working there was when he waddled away to drink himself into a stupor in the alleyway, which Suzie thought he desperately needed to do right now.
"For the last time, Susan, you need to write the tickets like this!" the manager bellowed, yanking the paper from Suzie's hand and using a dry pen to scribble over Suzie's writing. He never got Suzie's name right, or anyone's, for that matter. He also tended to change up the way they were to write orders, and he never told anyone about it when he did so. Then, he'd get upset when nobody understood what he meant. He wanted them to read his mind, which sent him off another tirade whenever they all failed to meet his expectations.
He thrust the paper back into Suzie's hands, waiting for her to read the handwriting worse than an illiterate child's and somehow figure out what the jumbled mess of crusty ink said.
"I don't know what this says," Suzie said and turned the slip of paper back toward him.
"Figure it out! How much do I pay you to spend your time messing things up?" the man rumbled, alcohol-laced spittle flying from his mouth and speckling the paper.
"Clearly not enough," Suzie mumbled under her breath. Before she could add anything else, the bell above the door jingled, announcing the arrival of another customer.
Sighing, Suzie shoved the ruined ticket into the manager's hands and turned to pick up her pen and pad from the nearby counter.
Her frown quickly spread into a surprised grin as she caught sight of Bucky sliding into a booth near the window. Suzie grabbed a menu from the stack on the front reception desk and hustled over to his table.
"What are you doing here?" Suzie asked. She plopped the menu down onto the table in front of him and twirled the pen around her fingers impatiently. She could feel her manager's eyes tracking her every movement, and she couldn't wait for her shift to end soon. If only it could come sooner.
"That's one hell of a greeting for a paying customer," Bucky snarked. He grinned up at her but something troubling briefly shone in his eyes before he sniffed and picked up the menu. "Bossman let me have the rest of the day off."
"Really?" Suzie exclaimed, surprised. She glanced behind her to ensure the manager couldn't hear and leaned in closer to her brother. "My boss has been riding my ass all day. Can't catch a break, he's always going on about the stupidest shit."
Bucky snorted. "If you don't like it here, you can quit."
"Ma says I can't 'til I graduate."
"That's dumb. Find something else, something better. We could always use some help sortin' files. You like organizing things, don't you?" He glanced up at her and squinted his eyes. "Are you wearing lipstick?"
He reached out toward her and she slapped his hand away. "Bossman made us wear it. Becca let me borrow hers."
"You look like a clown," Bucky remarked. A sly grin slid over his face and a flare of older brother mischief sparked to life. "You know, Ma and Pa adopted you from the circus. I even helped pick you out from a whole load of clown babies. Saved you from a life of living in tents amongst stinky elephants and whatnot. So, you're welcome."
Accustomed to his teasing, Suzie shot back, "Bold words from someone born in a zoo, you dumb monkey."
A loud guffaw escaped Bucky's lips, causing a nearby couple to glance in their direction. Shaking his head, Bucky handed Suzie the menu and winked. "I'll take the usual, clown-child."
Tucking the menu under her arm, Suzie stuck out her tongue. "Coming right up, monkey-face."
Jotting down Bucky's order the way she and the chefs preferred and pinning the ticket onto the strip above the chef's kitchen counter, Suzie glided around the small dining room to check on her other tables. Feeling mischievous, she glanced in Bucky's direction to shoot him a smirk. His eyes were not on her, however. Instead, he took a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and stared at it while he waited.
Something twitched in his jaw and his eyebrows furrowed as he hunched over the table and read the letter again and again. He didn't look happy—far from it, in fact.
Curiosity killing the cat, she grabbed the coffee pot and walked over to pour him a cup. He quickly set the letter face-down so she couldn't read what it said.
"Are you okay?" Suzie asked while she poured him his usual steaming cup of black coffee—no sugar or cream. What a boring way to drink coffee.
"It's been a long day," Bucky mumbled, one hand resting on top of the letter as if guarding it from Suzie's prying eyes.
"It's barely even noon," Suzie noted.
Bucky just took a sip of the coffee without letting it cool. If it burned, he didn't say anything and quietly returned to rereading the letter once she left him alone. The way he sat there, no usual cheeriness, something weighing him down, worried her. His earlier teasing had been a poor attempt to mask whatever brewed beneath the surface. Suzie hadn't even heard him whistling when he first came in, which he usually did—much to everyone's annoyance at home and presumably also where he worked.
"I don't mean to pry, but is your brother okay?" the chef asked when he handed Suzie the plate of Bucky's burger and fries. They both glanced out the partition in the wall toward Bucky's somber form.
"I don't know," Suzie said, ignoring the slight burn of the warm porcelain.
She used her hip to push open the half-door and hustled through before it could swing back and hit her. Striding to Bucky's table, she set the plate down and wiped her hands on her apron.
Bucky folded the paper onto the table again and whispered a quiet 'thanks.'
Suddenly hungry, Suzie snatched a fry from Bucky's plate, earning her a little 'Hey!'
"What?" Suzie teased. "Unlike you, my boss doesn't let us have breaks."
"You want some ketchup?" Bucky jokingly offered the glass ketchup bottle. "Thief."
Suzie only smirked and returned to the kitchen to pick up another order. By the time she had given another table their food, Bucky had his paper unfolded again and kept staring at it. He didn't eat in his usual fervor of snarfing things down. The subpar food didn't warrant the time to enjoy the taste of it either.
Half of the burger and most of the fries still sat untouched on his plate when he called for the bill. The lack of appetite worried her more than the bouncing of his leg and the way he kept running a hand through his hair.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Suzie asked. She handed Bucky the bill and waited for him to pull out his wallet to pay.
"'M not really hungry." He nodded at his plate. "Want the rest? You should eat something."
"Maybe later," Suzie said despite the audible growl from her stomach.
When she turned to go deposit the money into the till at the front counter, Bucky grabbed her wrist, causing her to pause. He thrust a wad of cash into her hand and curled her fingers around it to hide it from view.
"This is a gift, not a tip." He pulled her down to his level to whisper conspiratorially. "Don't share it, and definitely don't tell your boss. The government can't tax gifts."
Suzie snorted. "Thanks."
"Buy something for yourself after work."
He gave her a quick, half-hearted wink before tugging on his jacket and striding out the front door. The jovial chime of the bell contrasted his somber mood. Taking the chance before her manager could demand her attention elsewhere, Suzie grabbed several fries from Bucky's abandoned plate and started counting the 'gift' in her hand.
She nearly choked on the fries when she realized how much Bucky had given her. Twenty dollars?! Dang, she was rich!
Maybe she'd buy Bucky some of his favorite candy to cheer him up.
Germany, February 1945
In hindsight, she should have done something to help her brother. If only she had been a little more persistent when trying to understand what had made Bucky upset enough to practically skip meals for almost a week. When he had finally announced his enlistment, Ma's face had turned a deathly shade of white, no doubt flashbacks of Pa's untimely death racing through her mind. Suzie didn't understand it then—why his excitement about joining the army seemed forced and the usual cheeriness of his entire demeanor had shifted into something contrived—but now she did.
No doubt the letter he had been reading in the diner had been his draft summons. He had never wanted to join, and despite his terrible lying skills, he had kept it a secret for years. Suzie didn't know if she should be impressed at his ability to keep such a huge revelation secret or concerned about him thinking he should hide the truth. And while she had willingly joined the army at her own behest, she could understand why he had felt the need to lie to his entire family, Steve included.
Rather than hiding it out of worry of others viewing him as a coward, he had lied to protect his family's perceptions about his level of control in the matter. Being drafted meant he had little to no control over the summons while enlisting proved that he did so out of his own volition. Better to betray Ma's hopes than to make her think the army had ripped her baby boy from her without either of their consent.
It still didn't make his absence hurt any less.
Most men, when they enlisted, were eager to join. The widespread propaganda posters, encouragement from politicians, and advertising in every form of media had successfully lied to the masses, painting a picture of glory, honor, and justice. Suzie had once believed it—had believed it up to the first time she pulled the trigger and watched another human die at her hands. Since then, the pit in her stomach never left her, and vivid dreams of bloody shrieks of terrified men—both allies and enemies—haunted her at night.
Steve, precious Steve, had used Bucky's word of his enlistment to refuel his efforts to unsuccessfully enlist. The army had no desire for frail and sickly men to join their ranks and turned him away again. Ma took Bucky's enlistment the hardest, and had spent the first two weeks of Bucky's time at basic training frantically pacing the house, cleaning and recleaning every nook and cranny, and nervously scanning the mail for any letters from the military announcing Bucky's 'unfortunate and heroic death.' No amount of assuring the chances of someone dying at basic training were slim to none could calm her down.
It had only gotten worse once Bucky shipped out—Steve disappeared to, apparently, become a super-human stage performer, Travis started drinking himself to oblivion every other night, and Suzie could hear Ma's footsteps padding across the floor early in the mornings and late in the evenings. For the most part, Becca—bless her sweet, sweet soul—stayed out of the loop, but her quietness and clinginess increased when the letter declaring Bucky MIA, possibly KIA, arrived.
Everything had spiraled downward from there. Wholly unprepared to fight the ever-present battle against the darkness threatening to consume her very being, life dropped Suzie headfirst into a bottomless pit of one traumatic event to the next. Some of it had been her doing—she could admit that her decision to fake her identity and join the army was unconventional at best and highly illegal, stupid, and dangerous at worst—and she probably should have thought about it better before acting upon it. From Ma and Travis's deaths to the sudden reappearance of Bucky and Steve, life had gone from peaceful ignorance to a waking nightmare real quick. It waxed and waned from a valley of despair at bearing witness to the destruction of her comrades to a mountain of constantly worrying about one's safety and the dehumanizing effects of shooting other people in hopes of winning a war bound to fade into the recesses of history.
Yet, bright spots dotted Suzie's new life, scarcely lighting the darkness like sorely missed tiny stars after weeks of cloudy nights. She did find Bucky alive and mostly well, and also unexpectedly reunited with a more muscular Steve along the way. Richard had invited her to be a bridesmaid at his much-anticipated wedding; and Alice said if she were to ever get married, she'd let Suzie be the maid of honor. Items, such as ice cream, clean clothes, showers, and a safe place to sleep at night, which had once been a mundane and expected part of life now became novelties. Although she still did not like the food and thought she could do better cooking despite her limited knowledge of the workings of the kitchen and food, she couldn't complain as long as it didn't come from the ration kits.
After weeks of eating K rations daily, the food of undercooked spam and limp vegetables tasted like heaven. And they all got a break from the frontlines. They had not had a true break since Christmas, and even then, Christmas had passed unenjoyably in the middle of a cross-country campaign several months in the making.
Instead of crammed into a foxhole and eating half-frozen K rations every night, they finally had the opportunity to spread out in a proper camp, eat a decent meal, and converse freely without worrying about their volume or the light and smoke of fires alerting their presence to the enemy. They had the chance to shower in a closed-off tent. The water ran cold through holes drilled into modified PVC pipes serving as a shower head of sorts, but Suzie relished in the chance to remove the stench of sweaty, bloody, gross soldiers.
In addition to the showers, they had an actual house—an abandoned and broken-down house but a house nonetheless—to sleep in. The floors squeaked under each step and threatened to give out at any moment, no glass remained in the windows, and the electricity didn't work, but it kept the wind out and let the soldiers spread out at night instead of curled into a ball in a snowy foxhole.
Most of the buildings in the German town with a name Suzie had no hopes of pronouncing were surprisingly in good shape. The Nazis had not blitzed their citizens as much as they had done to France, Poland, and countless other countries, but the Nazi invasion did not spare all of the homes. The buildings in this particular town were in dire need of remodeling to reinforce the structural integrity. However, Suzie didn't complain about the state of her rather improved—in her opinion—living conditions.
Content to use an overturned barrel as a table, Suzie ate her lunch in the town currently occupied by at least five different Allied battalions. The bustling of at least five thousand soldiers and hundreds more of military staff, officers, and nurses gave her a chance to relax and enjoy her meal without constantly watching her back or being on the lookout for mortars, enemy scouts, and hidden landmines.
As fate would have it, her chance at relaxation did not last long. In the town's once-pristine, snowy central park now churned into slippery mud from Jeep tires and thousands of boots, soldiers sat or stood around barrels, boxes, or crates to eat. Richard and Suzie opted to stand near a shared barrel because Richard had not stopped complaining about tucking his lanky form into a hole in the ground for weeks on end. It felt good to stretch their legs and enjoy the somewhat fresh air.
Rudely interrupting Suzie's lunch, a lone man skirted around the soldiers sprawled around the repurposed park, shouting someone's name. At first, she ignored it, opting instead to sate the hunger growling in her stomach and snarfed down the not-nearly-enough food on the bent sheet of metal acting as a plate.
Then she heard her name, and her head shot up as Richard elbowed her in the side to focus her attention on the man. The insignia on his jacket she couldn't quite make out did not match any of the other battalions.
"Private Riley Barnes?" the man asked, to which Suzie gave a small wave to catch his attention. "There's a letter for you."
Suzie raised an eyebrow in confusion. Normally, the army didn't go around handing out letters in the middle of a meal, let alone send one person to deliver a single letter. They expected soldiers to pick up their mail at a designated place. In the event of being near the frontlines or in wait for an order, one of the sergeants, lieutenants, or a "volunteer" of each platoon would hand out the letters themselves.
"Brass says it's urgent," the man said and handed a sealed envelope to Suzie. The bizarreness of the man giving just one soldier an envelope garnered the attention of the other men and most of those nearby stopped eating to watch it unfold.
Suzie gave him a quiet 'thanks.' He nodded and left the same way he came, not offering any explanation other than a brief, obligatory smile. Checking Richard's reaction for any clues as to what the envelope contained, she saw nothing other than Richard's confused expression mirroring her own.
The first thing she noticed was her name—well, her fake name—written in quivery cursive. Instead of a fancy 'R' in a dark shade of ink, it looked as if the author had started writing a normal, capitol 'S' and then rounded out the top and added a slanted line to make it into an approximation of a capitol 'R.' A glance at the top left corner explained the mistake of changing a 'S' into a 'R'—Steve's full rank and name sat in the return address in the same shaky cursive, albeit there were no blunders about the spelling of his name.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she slid her finger under the flap of the envelope to open it. Perhaps the letter would let her join Bucky and Steve on their hunt for Hydra. Or maybe the brass assumed Captain America's letters should take priority. However, it had never happened with any of his prior letters.
The appearance of the folded paper inside disproved any hopes of rejoining Cap's team. Typed information about Steve's rank, disclaimers about some law she didn't understand, blacked-out sentences, and other, unimportant brass mumbo-jumbo sat on the top of the paper. The spread wings of the SSR's bird logo jutted out in pitch-black ink in the top right of the letter. Steve usually didn't opt for the fancy SSR paper when he wrote letters to Suzie, so one word popped into her head when she saw the logo: official.
Instead of typing the entire letter out on a typewriter, he chose to handwrite the entire thing.
Odd for an official letter from the SSR.
His neat cursive had the flair of a practiced artist, but an abnormal shakiness to the swooping letters caused something inside of her to twitch. Little bubbles of creases dotted the paper. In some places, the splashes of water blotted out the ink, smearing the almost illegible writing and making the ink run. Steve did not normally have this level of sloppiness, and she wondered why he didn't take the time to type it out when he clearly had access to the SSR's official paper.
Then she realized what the blotches were:
Tears.
Dried tears.
From Steve.
Steve had been crying.
As her eyes roved over the tear-stained letter, her heart sank further and further with each passing sentence.
No…
It couldn't…
Tears welled in Suzie's eyes and her throat closed up as her legs almost gave out from under her. Clutching the letter with trembling fingers, she reread the contents, praying for it all to be nothing more than a false illusion. The words only appeared more blurry from the tears stinging her eyes, but the content stayed the same.
No. No! NO!
All sounds of the camp went silent from the buzzing in her ears and she had the overwhelming urge to vomit. Richard's hand reached around the barrel-table to comfort her. His gentle shoulder squeeze was interrupted by Garcia and Lemay sidling up beside them.
"Whatcha got there, Barnes? Captain America sweet on you?" Garcia's words barely made it through the dizziness dancing in Suzie's head.
"Not now, Garcia," Richard said.
They traded further remarks which Suzie couldn't understand in increasingly hostile tones. Dropping her face into her hand while the other clung to the letter, Suzie prayed to wake up from this nightmare. It couldn't be real, not now—not when she had just got him back.
But Steve wouldn't lie, especially not about something like this.
Not caring about her appearance or how others would deem her reaction 'too womanly' for a hardened soldier, Suzie started sobbing in the middle of the muddy park while Richard dissolved into an argument against Garcia and Lemay. Only when someone's hand curled around the edge of the letter and tugged, did Suzie break from her crying and glared up at the perpetrator through reddened eyes.
Garcia's almond-tan fingers yanked the letter from Suzie's grasp, a gleeful grin plastered on his face. He had started growing a mustache at some point, making him appear like a prepubescent Wild West outlaw.
Seeing red, Suzie socked him square in the jaw. Part of the letter ripped off in his hand as he stumbled backward from the hit. Catching the letter before it could drop onto the ground, Suzie spun on her heel and stomped off. Richard followed close on her heels despite Garcia hurling curses at their backs.
Storming into the house serving as their temporary sleeping quarters, Suzie strode up the stairs, past several soldiers lounging around, and finally reached her claimed spot in the living room. Nobody else aside from her and Richard were in the room, leaving her to stew in her thoughts unbothered.
The pitiful scraps of furniture scattered haphazardly around the room to clear space for half a dozen sleeping bags, equipment, and weapons. A few bookshelves boasted empty wooden, shelves, the contents picked clean from prior Nazi troops and now the Allied soldiers who took advantage of the discarded books, trinkets, and 'souvenirs' to send back home to family.
Grabbing hold of one of the flimsy, wooden chairs dragged in from the adjacent dining room, Suzie hoisted it over her head and chucked it against the opposite wall. It clattered to the ground, a leg breaking off from the impact.
Richard, who had been entering the doorway, backed up and held up his hands though the chair had been nowhere close to hitting him.
"Woah, easy there," Richard said. In a more gentle and less teasing tone, he slowly approached where Suzie stood reeling from Garcia's unwarranted appearance and the heartbreaking news from Steve's letter. He reached out to try to placate Suzie's nerves. "I know Garcia's a jerk, but you shouldn't be throwing things. You could get hurt."
"What did I do to deserve this? What did I do?!" Shouting at everyone and no one at the same time, Suzie picked up another chair and threw it across the room. This time it hit the mantel above the brick fireplace and all four legs splintered off and the seat cracked in half.
"Suzie," Richard said, his voice cutting through the tempest storming in her head. "Let's talk about this."
Whirling around, she almost punched him in the face. Her hands balled into fists and lifted upwards before she could stop herself. He didn't do anything to deserve the wrath of the anger twisting in her gut and blazing through her veins. He didn't cause Garcia to tear the letter or for Bucky to…
Suddenly exhausted, she dropped her fist to her side and dejectedly trudged over to her sleeping bag. Sliding down against the wall, she wedged herself into the corner between the two walls and the empty bookshelf sitting next to the fireplace.
Richard hesitantly hovered nearby, unsure whether to sit or stand beside her. He eventually decided to grab the sole unbroken chair. Sitting, he folded his hands in his lap and leaned closer like a doctor consoling a scared child. "What's wrong?"
"Bucky," Suzie whispered. The single utterance of his name brought a fresh wave of tears streaming down her face, and she could feel her lips tremble around unformed words. "H-h…he…he's…"
Unable to bring herself from saying it out for fear of making it real, Suzie passed the letter off to Richard and let him read it for himself. In silence, Suzie glanced off to her right, her mind slipping into numbness. From the angle on the floor, she couldn't look out the window onto the street below, but she could hear the din of the camp rumbling on as if nothing had happened—as if Bucky's body wasn't lying in a ravine somewhere, exposed to the elements and hungry, wild animals.
She had so many questions, some of which were probably explained in the blacked-out sections of the letters. Did the search party find anything since the mailing of the letter? How had Bucky fallen from a mountain in the first place? What the hell kind of mission involved being on a mountain anyway? Where was the mountain: was he somewhere close by in Germany or countries away, out of reach not only physically but also spiritually? Was he meeting Ma, Pa, and Travis up in heaven right now?
And why the hell did it have to be Bucky, the whole reason why she had joined the army—to find and bring home in the first place? Instead of a joyful reunion in Brooklyn full of laughter and cheery hugs, if the search party ever found a body, she would be bringing him home in a flag-covered coffin.
Richard didn't say anything when he finished reading the letter. He just handed it back.
"Don't give me some crap about him dying a hero or some shit," Suzie snapped before he had the chance to think of something. She didn't want to hear empty words of faked sympathy. No amount of orchestrated words of encouragement could ever fill the Bucky-sized hole in her heart.
"I wasn't planning on it," Richard replied, his tone gentle and calm. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Suzie shook her head. She tried to piece the torn edge onto the paper, but she didn't have any tape or glue, so the chunk kept fluttering to the ground. The rip thankfully didn't obscure any of the words aside from de-feathering a part of the bird logo's right wing.
Giving up on fixing the torn letter, Suzie reeled her head back fast enough to make her wince when her head hit the wall a little harder than she had expected. Staring unfocused at a chunk of sun-bleached paint peeling from the sloped ceiling, Suzie swallowed a lump in her throat.
Curling her legs into her chest, Suzie wrapped her arms around her knees and rubbed the heel of her palm over an eye. No longer able to hold her composure, she plopped her forehead onto her knees and bawled.
Richard slid from his chair and nestled himself between Suzie and the bookshelf, their shoulders touching from the tight squeeze. He gently pulled her into a side hug and started rubbing circles over her back. He didn't say a single word, they just sat, letting her ride out the wave of emotions in silence.
They sat there, and Suzie let herself slump against Richard's sturdy shoulder. Between the sobs, Suzie wondered what she had done to deserve such punishment of losing both of her parents, then Travis, and now Bucky. In the blink of an eye and the span of less than a full year, she went from a happy, bustling household to sitting in a rickety house in the middle of a war-torn country. Both of her parents and one of her brothers lay buried together in their church cemetery all the way back home in Brooklyn. Now, when—if—the search party found Bucky's body, he would join them, too. Then the Barnes household would officially go from four happy, healthy children to two sorrowful sisters lamenting the loss of their family.
The thought of sending a letter to Becca sent a shutter down Suzie's spine, and she fell into another fit of sobs. Richard didn't judge her for the way she whimpered like a lost puppy.
Sitting there, wedged between the wall and Richard's supportive form, Suzie hoped Bucky didn't suffer and that it had been a quick and painless end. It would be a small mercy, but a mercy nonetheless.
She could only hope, and yet, she felt drained of any type of faith. All she had been doing was hope, and it got her nowhere other than two dead brothers, two dead parents, and hundreds more of her fellow soldiers lying in shallow graves somewhere or waiting for transports to send them home in body bags. The war could end tomorrow or wage on for another decade, she wouldn't care. Nothing could bring her brothers back. Nothing could undo the damage already done.
After all the loss, all the death, Bucky's death was the final straw that broke the camel's back. She had finally given up on hope.
This chapter is kind of a sad way to end the year, but oh well. This is not the end of the story, because while Bucky's off being captured by Hydra, Suzie's story is far from over. I'm still planning on about no more than 50 chapters, so we've got a bit more to get through. I apologize if things seem like they're speeding along, but I want to get to the "good stuff" soon. Besides, it also makes Suzie's life more hectic, and who doesn't love adding more angst to an already traumatized character? :P
Also, I highly recommend watching Band of Brothers. It's rather graphic and not for the faint of heart, but it shows a true story of soldiers who experienced almost the same things Suzie (and Richard, Bucky, and Steve) have.