Author's note: This chapter is kinda sorta M-rated-ish. Those with an aversion to visceral detail may feel a little squeamish.

We Were Soldiers

49. Pressure

They walked for all of the night and most of the next day, eating as they marched, stopping only to refill their canteens from clear mountain streams. Bucky's feet ached. His legs ached. His back ached. But he pushed the men until late afternoon, when the sky began to cloud over and threaten rain. They found a spot on the edge of a small pine forest where a stream bubbled lazily over rounded pebbles, and there they made camp.

"Slavery, thy name is Barnes," Mex complained, knuckling his back. "Seriously, Sarge, I hope you packed plenty of medical tape in those first aid kits, because my feet are about to drop off. In fact, they might already have dropped off six hours ago. Somebody check my feet; are they still attached? I can't even feel them anymore."

Bucky ignored the complaining, turning his attention instead to the sky. The white clouds were turning decidedly grey. "Set up the tents," he instructed. They'd brought ten halves of shelter half tents, and they had twelve men. That meant they were a tent short. But if they kept watch on a two-man rotational shift, there would be enough tent for everyone.

He glanced around for Wells, to tell his friend to get over and help set up their tent, but Wells was already halfway to constructing a tent with Hawkins, so he gestured for Gusty to join him instead, and prayed silently to God that the corporal wasn't feeling particularly nervous today. It only took a few minutes to seal the poppers, insert the poles and peg the guy lines. They soon had a campsite of five perfectly serviceable pup tents.

A couple of men brought out their camping stoves, and they pooled some of their rations together to provide a meal of baked beans, hard bread and impossible to chew chocolate that claimed to be Hersheys but tasted nothing like how Hersheys ought to taste. They talked as they cooked, because talking had been kept to a minimum while they were travelling. Bucky recounted the tale of what had happened inside the Basilico bar, and Gusty, Mex and Hawkins described how they'd gone sneaking through the village to fill the Krauts' car radiators with rice.

"I still think we should'a cut the fuel lines, too," said Gusty. "Imagine the mess if they'd 'accidentally' caught on fire!"

"Imagine the collateral damage, you mean," Bucky told him. "We weren't there to make a noise and blow things up. Not that time. The brass wanted it done quick and quiet."

He eyed their new acquisition as the men kept up the chatter. The Italian hadn't said very much during the journey, and the few things he had said hadn't made any sense, because nobody spoke Italian, and Wells was doing his best not to learn any. The man was currently pushing a helping of beans around a metal dinner tray somebody had used and then washed for him, and he didn't look particularly impressed about what he was being fed. Now seemed an appropriate time to get to know their new friend a little better.

"Ask him what his name is," he said to Wells, nodding in the direction of the foreign man.

Wells pulled an unimpressed face. "But my little book o' translations is in my tent, and I'm too lazy to move." Bucky aimed a pointed stare at him. It was a stare that had always gotten Charlie to eat his vegetables, when he'd been six years old and disinclined to eat anything green. "Fine." Wells clicked his fingers until the Italian was looking at him, then pointed to himself and said, "Mi chiamo Wells." He pointed to Bucky. "Barnes." He pointed to the Italian.

"Roberrrrtoh," the man replied. At least, was what it sounded like to Bucky's ears.

"He says his name's 'Roberto,'" Wells offered helpfully. "I say we call him Rob, for brevity. Or Bob, I'm fine with Bob. Bobby. Whatever."

"And are we positive he doesn't speak any English?" A fine set of fools they'd look using Wells and his infant-level of Italian if the guy understood every damn word they said. Bucky could already imagine Roberto's report to the brass. "And then those buffoons fed me beans and some sort of rock they called bread, and continued to insult my language with their puerile attempts at speaking it." Stark would just love that.

Wells shrugged. "Parla Inglese?"

The man shook his head.

A hopeful light appeared in Wells' eyes. "Parla Français?"

Another head shake, and the hopeful light faded. "Of course. Why would you speak French? It's a useless language. Even more useless than yours."

"We should get an early night," Bucky said, before Wells could begin a whole new rant. "We've marched hard, and we still have three more days of travel. Gusty and I will take the first watch."

How quickly the men retired to their tents was a measure of how exhausted they were. Nobody suggested poker, or dice, or stories. Bucky asked Biggs to keep an eye on Roberto, and the big man directed the Italian to his tent. Roberto didn't look please about that, either; Biggs took up almost a whole tent's worth of space by himself.

"You think we're in any danger, Sarge?" Gusty asked quietly, once they were alone. They sat around one of the rapidly cooling cooking stoves, rifles laid across their knees. Bucky kept both hands on the rifle.

"My gut says no," Bucky told him. "But my gut said 'no' when I sent you out with Tipper and Biggs. It said 'no' right before we were ambushed and Carrot was shot. I'm not sure I trust my gut as much as I used to."

Gusty nodded, and spent a few moments in silent contemplation. When he spoke again, it was with a scant smile on his lips. His eyes were fixed on the distant peaks of the higher Alps. "I've come to realise that any moment might be my last. Even though we're not in the thick of the fighting yet, death can come from anywhere. I never really thought of death as a force before. I just associated it with something that happened to people when they get old. But it's not. It's a force that acts according to its own whims, and it could come for any one of us, at any time. Maybe tonight. Maybe next week. Maybe after the war, when I get back home and I'm crossing the street and some guy ploughs into me with his car because he wasn't paying attention to the road."

"If you're trying to keep up the communal cheer, you're doing a piss poor job," Bucky told him. Hell, even Wells' sulking would've been preferable to Gusty's melancholy musings about death.

"All I'm trying to say, Sarge, is that we all gotta die some day. It's our job to try and make the most of what time we have before we run out of it. Being here, in this war… it's made me realise that I was wasting my life back home. Don't get me wrong, I hate living like this, never knowing which moment's gonna be my last, or which friend's gonna be the next to die. Always hungry, often soaked, tired and aching and sent on missions I have no say in. But it's given me perspective. When I get back home, I'm not gonna waste a single day. And when the war's over, I'm gonna ask Audrey to marry me."

A smile graced Bucky's lips even as a twinge of envy rippled through him. Gusty had known Nurse Klein for only a few short weeks, and he already knew she was the one. It was a surety and confidence Bucky had never experienced. Each time he started seeing a new girl, he wondered if she might be the one. Steve had accused him of falling in love at the drop of a hat, but he didn't think love was what he had fallen into. Attraction, maybe lust, certainly affection. He cared about each and every dame he'd ever dated, even the ones who'd ditched him when they realised he didn't want anything too serious.

"I'm happy for you, Gusty," he said. "And also expecting an invite to your wedding."

"Of course you're invited," Gusty assured him. "Can't get married without my best man, can I?"

Bucky's eyebrows shot up. "Me? Your best man?"

"If you wouldn't mind," the corporal rushed on. "It's just that I've no brothers, and the only cousin I have who could fill that position is an obnoxious jerk. The friends I had back in civvy life… well, they're good pals, but I doubt any of them would take a bullet for me. Not that I expect you to, of course. I'm just sayin'."

"I would be honoured to be your best man, Gusty." The request set a warm fire burning gently in his chest. Bucky Barnes – Best Man. It had a nice ring to it. "Just let me know when I need to start preparing my speech."

Gusty grinned. "I will. But do me a favour?" Bucky nodded. "Don't let Wells help you write it."

"Don't worry. It'll be all my own work, straight from the heart, no bullshit. And any jokes I tell will actually be funny."

"Thanks, Sarge. That means a lot to me."

They fell into a congenial silence. Some of Bucky's friends in civvy life were already married, but he'd never been a best man before. Always figured it would be a position he lost out on in favour of brothers or close relatives, at least until his own brother got married. Or, by some miracle, Steve found a dame he could be happy with. Bucky's best friend wasn't averted to dating, per se, he just didn't have the confidence for it. Had yet to find a girl who didn't look down her nose at him just because he was kinda short and awfully scrawny. Dames could be pretty damn shallow, at times.

Bucky turned his eyes to the area around their tent, but in his mind, he was already planning Gusty's bachelor party.

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The early morning dew dampened their boots and the legs of their pants as they crossed a wide open meadow the next day. They'd set off at first light and ate breakfast as they walked. After half an hour, Baker had spotted a huge spider's web suspended in the tall meadow grass; the dew clung to it in minute droplets, each one refracting the light of the rising sun in tiny, beautiful prisms of rainbow colour, a delicate web of lace strong enough to hold up even beneath the weight of the water. In the middle sat a big, fat spider, lord of its domain, gorged on myriad flies. After a few moments of appreciation for the amazing feat of architecture, the team moved on.

The attack came without warning. One moment they were in an empty meadow of tall grasses and delicate flowers, the next they were being shot at from all directions by men wearing the grey-green uniforms of German infantry. There was no time to shout out commands for offence or defence. As soon as the first shot was fired, Bucky dropped and slipped into survival mode. His eyes scanned his surroundings for the first of his enemies while his hands brought his rifle up in to firing position. He pushed the rest of his team to the back of his mind. There was nowhere to retreat to, and no cover to be sought. All he could do was hope.

Shots screamed through the air. Bucky's finger hugged the trigger of his rifle so closely that the smallest squeeze fired off a shot, and he fired every damn shot he had until his rifle was outta ammo. Sinking down to the ground, he reloaded, and let his mind focus on the rest of the team. He heard the steady ratta-tatta of gunshots around him, and some of his concern faded. His men returned fire as cool and collected as any combat veterans. They'd done this often enough to know how to do their jobs.

The sound of gunfire swung around from the west, and two of his men altered position to cover the group's flank. A few paces back from Bucky, Roberto was pressed so close to the ground that he might've been kissing it. Smart guy, Bucky thought, as he took aim at something moving through the tall grass and dropped another Nazi with a shot to the chest.

He reloaded again, and his thoughts strayed momentarily to the small villages and towns dotted around the Alpine valleys. Could they hear the gunfire from all the way up here? Did they wonder at the sound? Did they look to the cloudless sky, confused about the sudden barrage of thunder? He didn't get chance to wonder for long. As soon as his new clip was in his gun, he sighted again, no hesitation as his finger squeezed the trigger.

The fight seemed to to last forever. After five minutes, or five hours, the gunfire finally stopped. They'd run out of targets to kill.

"Everyone okay?" Bucky yelled, over the stammered pounding of his heart in his chest.

He received a chorus of 'yes' before Biggs called out, "Sarge, Stoller's been hit!"

The fright in the big man's voice set Bucky running, and he wasn't the only one. He arrived at the downed man's location at the same time as Mex and Wells, to find Biggs cradling Stoller's head as the pale-faced soldier panted and cried out in pain. A deep red pool was forming beneath him, blood soaking into the olive drab pants on the inside of his right leg, just above the knee.

The first thought that hit Bucky's mind was shit. It was followed immediately by a wave of panic. He reached back with his memory, back to boot camp, to the advice they'd been given about dealing with bleeding wounds. Wells was one step ahead of him, kneeling down on the outside of Stoller's leg, calling for a medical kit. Bucky took the inside of the bleeding leg and tried to push the panic away, to focus on helping Private Stoller instead of fixating on what if I screw up?

Mex pulled out his first aid kit and handed a pair of scissors to Wells, who started to cut away the trouser leg. As soon as he did, the wound was exposed, scarlet liquid pouring out in a veritable flood. The words of the medical technician who'd put the men through their emergency aid training back in boot camp came echoing back across the months.

Apply direct pressure to the wound. If a soldier loses more than three pints of blood, he's dead. Stop the bleeding. That's the most important thing.

Bucky dropped his gun and used the heel of his palm to press down on the gaping hole in the leg. Exit point. That meant there was probably a similar hole on the other side of the leg. Shit. Blood pooling out instead of spurting; vein hit. Not an artery. That was good, but still dangerous. Too much blood. It was still managing to flow out from beneath his hand, warm and slippery, so he added his left hand, and leant over the wound, letting gravity do his work for him. Right above where Bucky was pressing, Wells added more pressure, trying to stop the blood before it could reach the wound. Wells' breath was a rapid, ragged wind on Bucky's face, and he wondered whether he sounded just as panicked as his friend.

"M—my leg hurts," Stoller whimpered. "Oh god, it hurts." Bucky dared to glance up into Stoller's bedsheet-white face. Biggs had the guy's head on his knees, but that just meant Stoller could look down and see the blood. The guy was shaking, shock starting to set in. And that wasn't the only problem they had.

"Morphine tartrate," Wells snapped at Mex.

Wells couldn't see Mex, because the guy was standing behind him, but Bucky could see him. His normally bronzed face was almost as white as Stoller's, and his brown eyes were wide as they watched the blood flow out from beneath Bucky's hands.

"I… I've never done this before," Mex stammered out, not even looking at the kit in his hands. "I… I don't know what to do."

"You got the training in Basic," Bucky told him. Patience. Getting angry wouldn't help. Anger would lead to panic. He couldn't afford to panic because he had his hands half inside some guy's leg, feeling warm blood seeping out between his fingers, the muscles all sinewy and oh God was that bone? He closed his eyes. Tried not to sway. Felt giddy.

"Don't you fuckin' pass out on me," Wells growled. Bucky thought he was talking to Stoller, but when he opened his eyes he found Wells watching him with a scowl. How the hell did he do it? How the hell did he sit there feeling some guy's life slip away and not want to throw up everything in his stomach? "It's just blood," Wells explained, as if hearing his thoughts. "Don't think about what you're doing, just do it, and where the fuck is that morphine?"

"H—here Sarge," said Mex, holding out the small tube, still with its cap on. "But… I don't do so good around blood."

"Mex, I swear, if you make me let go here just to stick that under the skin, I'm gonna kick your ass."

More men arrived; they stood in a circle around the five on the ground, watching in grave silence.

"Listen, Mex," Bucky said, because Wells' threat didn't seem to be having any effect. He waited until the private looked at his face, and tried to will some calmness into him. Calmness that Bucky himself was only just finding. "Pierce the cap and take it off. Pull up Stoller's shirt. Grab his skin and stick the needle halfway into it, then squeeze the tube. That's all you gotta do. No blood."

"I… I don't think I can do it, Sarge. I… I need to be sick." Mex dropped the syrette and crawled a few paces away, retching and heaving onto the ground.

"Where the hell's Gusty?" demanded Wells. "Gusty!"

"Here, Sarge." Gusty ran up and dropped to the ground, panting.

"Pick up that syrette. Give Stoller the morphine. Then get a tourniquet ready."

Bucky's heart leapt into his mouth. While Gusty busied himself with the morphine, he leant forward a little more so that he could whisper beside Wells' ear without the rest of the men hearing.

"We can't put a tourniquet on him."

"We can, and we will," Wells whispered back.

"You know they're only supposed to be used in life or death situations. If we tighten it too much, he loses his leg."

"Then we won't tighten it too much. But he might lose it anyway." Wells glanced up at him, a sheen of sweat on his face and an uncompromising hardness in his eyes. "The alternative is we sit here trying to stem the flow of blood until his blood pressure drops so low that we lose him. Look around. We're in the middle of a field. The Nazis caught up to us once and may have more reinforcements on the way. We don't have an hour to sit here; we need to get moving, and we can't do that with us up to our arms in Stoller's leg. We put the tourniquet on, we get back to the forest we passed through yesterday, we loosen the tourniquet and see if the bleeding's stopped."

"How many tourniquets have you applied in live situations?" Bucky asked, suspecting the answer even before it came.

"None. But I say, try everything once. Worst case, we lose his leg. Best case, we save his life." Wells gave him a grim smile. "I'll handle the tourniquet. You keep the pressure on. But we could do without the audience. Get rid of everyone who isn't us, Gusty and Biggs."

Bucky nodded in thanks. Wells could'a given the orders, but Bucky had momentarily lost his head, and now his friend was getting him back on a familiar path. Taking his mind away from what might go wrong, and re-establishing a little order.

"Tex, Hawkins, check those Krauts for anything useful. Pearson, Baker, go sit on the perimeter in case we got more Krauts crashing our party. Marsh, make sure Mex is okay. Give him a drink, get him cleaned up."

The men scattered to obey, seemingly grateful for a chance to be useful, to do something. Bucky understood how they felt, because he felt it, too. All he could do was sit there feeling blood pour out from beneath his hands, and wonder whether his memory and authority would have kicked in if Wells hadn't been there and gotten his head into gear first.

They worked fast, now that they had a plan. Gusty had given the morphine to Stoller, prepared the tourniquet, and was now cutting away more of the thick material from around the private's leg. Bucky watched the metallic snip snip snip of the scissors, because it was better than watching blood.

"I've heard this is complete agony," he said at last.

"It's too soon to give him more morphine," said Wells.

"Alright. Biggs, how's he doing?"

"Not good, Sarge," said Biggs. The big man's hands were cradling Stoller's head, brushing his hair in a comforting stroke as the guy's eyelids flickered rapidly. "I think he's in shock. You know, the bad kind. Not the kind that can be fixed by a lie down and a cup of cocoa."

"Hypovolemic shock is caused when there's not enough blood circulating the body," Gusty said. "Without immediate blood transfusion, it can lead to organ failure."

"Y'know," Wells said, "I always wondered what Corporal Ferguson–Nurse Klein pillow talk sounded like. Now, I don't." He continued before Gusty could splutter out an objection. "We don't have the training for a blood transfusion. And even if we had the training, we don't have the equipment. Let's get this tourniquet on and hope it's enough."

"Biggs," Bucky said, "when this goes on, it might hurt him like hell even with the morphine in him. Try to keep his head still."

Biggs merely nodded. He was starting to look pale, too. Did Bucky look as pale? Wells and Gusty seemed to be okay. Maybe some guys just had a higher threshold for seein' blood. And feeling it.

Gusty seemed to be remembering his basic medical training just fine. Bucky watched as he slid the tourniquet around Stoller's thigh, just above where Wells' hands were pressing down on the vein or the artery or whatever, and slid his knife scabbard underneath as an impromptu twisting stick. "Y'want me to do the tourniquet, Sarge?"

Wells shook his head. "You've got clean hands. Grab the sulfanilamide and a bunch of the gauze. Once I start to apply this, mop up as much of the blood as you can. We need to be able to see what's fresh, so I know when to stop turning the tourniquet. Once it stops bleeding, get the sulf on right away; we don't want to give infection a chance to set in. Everyone know what they're doing?"

Bucky nodded. So did Biggs and Gusty.

"Alright. Applying tourniquet now."

He watched as Wells quickly switched places with Gusty, letting go of the leg and picking up the knife scabbard. His hands slipped and slid a few times—they were drenched in blood, after all—but he worked swiftly to tighten the tourniquet, until Stoller began to mumble and groan. The injured man's eyelids flickered again as new pain nearly roused him back to consciousness.

"Mop up," said Wells, as he turned the scabbard more slowly.

Bucky released the pressure he'd been putting on the leg; his hands ached like they never had before. He hadn't realised just how much pressure he'd been using, and it still hadn't been enough to stop the blood flow. He suspected, now, that Wells might be right; Stoller would probably lose the leg. The very thought made his stomach turn, but he forced himself to sit and watch as Gusty used the gauze to absorb blood and apply more pressure, discarding bloody bandage after bloody bandage. After what seemed like an eternity, the bleeding slowed, and with a final twist of the tourniquet, it stopped. Gusty ripped open the sulfanilamide packet and sprinkled the contents directly onto both sides of the wound. Wells sat back and ran a sleeve across his forehead, his hand shaky as he lowered it.

"He's still breathing," Biggs said, breaking the silence. "But he's out cold."

"Stay with him for now," said Wells. "If he stops breathing, or if that leg starts bleeding again, yell real loud."

"I'll watch him too, Sarge," Gusty offered.

Bucky hauled himself to his feet and followed his friend a short distance away. Wells pulled out his canteen and said, "Hold out your hands." Bucky waited for the water to slowly pour out, and tried to wash away as much of the blood as he could while they pondered their new dilemma.

"Stoller really shouldn't be moved," said Wells, passing the canteen over once Bucky's hands were relatively clean, so that Bucky could return the favour. "But I don't see that we got a choice. We can't stay here. Ideally we need a stretcher. At the very least, a splint to keep his leg straight and still while that tourniquet works its magic. But we're a half day's swift march out from that forest and I didn't see any splints in that medical kit."

Bucky watched as Tex and Hawkins turned the Kraut corpses over for anything useful. The guns were tossed aside, but any ammo which fit their own weapons was kept. It gave him an idea.

"What if we unloaded a couple of those German rifles and tied them together, end to end?" he suggested. "Stick one end through Stoller's belt, and use bandages or something to lash his leg to the rifles. One guy could carry his feet, holding the rifle stock on the right leg to keep it still, and another guy could take under his arms. Then, when we get to the forest, we could maybe try to use all the bandages we've got to make a stretcher?"

Wells clapped him on the shoulder. "Genius. But let's take those Kraut jackets; they'd be more useful for a stretcher than bandages."

Bucky nodded. He hated the idea of stripping the dead—even dead enemies—but this was war, and they were desperate. Besides, dead men needed no jackets.

: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :

Stoller mumbled and moaned throughout the night. He wasn't asleep, but he drifted in and out of consciousness as his pain ebbed and flowed. Bucky lay awake in his bedroll, listening to the agonised moans. Around him, most of the men were sleeping, but he couldn't.

It had been two days since Stoller had been shot, and they'd only just reached the middle of the dense forest they'd passed through on their way to San Vinadio. Fear kept him awake for the second night in a row. Fear that if he closed his eyes for even a moment, Stoller would die, and there would be nothing Bucky could do about it. If he stayed awake, listening to the mumbles and moans of a man whose leg was withering and dying, he could at least try to will some life into him. To silently encourage Stoller to hang in there. To silently pray that the mumbles and moans would continue, because he feared the moment they stopped.

After eight attempts to remove the tourniquet, it became obvious it would have to stay on. They'd stopped every ten minutes to loosen the device, and each time they'd watched the blood continue to pour out. The bleeding just wouldn't stop, so they'd applied more sulfanilamide and tightened the tourniquet one last time. Now, they couldn't take it off without killing him.

Another moan from Stoller made Bucky's stomach clench unpleasantly. It was obvious the guy was in agony, but there was nothing he could do about it. Tex and Baker were on watch, and they were taking it in turns to talk quietly to Stoller, to reassure him and dampen handkerchiefs with water from their canteens, which they used to wipe the cold sweat from the injured man's face. It was the only comfort—other than morphine tartrate—that anybody could offer him.

They'd managed to fashion a makeshift stretcher for Stoller out of narrow sapling trunks and the Kraut jackets they'd recovered, but the going was slow. Steady, but slow. They'd only brought enough food for ten days of travel, maximum. Soon they would run out of food. And morphine.

Whenever Bucky dared to close his eyes for a moment, he heard the voice of Sergeant Weiss in his ear. The dead man told him to be a good sergeant. To be hard, for the rest of the team. Dead-Weiss didn't have to say the words Bucky didn't want to hear. He didn't have to tell Bucky to leave Stoller and continue with the mission. He didn't have to say it because Bucky had already considered it and dismissed it. He wouldn't leave a man behind. Never ever. And if that made him a bad sergeant, then he could live with that.

An hour later, Tex 'woke' him, along with Gusty, for their turn at watch. Gusty yawned widely and sat up rubbing his eyes, but Bucky was wide awake. Every mumble and groan was seared across his brain. He instructed Tex and Baker to get some sleep, ordered Gusty to take his gun and sit at the camp's perimeter, then made his way to Stoller's side.

The private had roused, his eyes dull and weary in the moonlight. He hugged his arms to his chest and shivered; Bucky grabbed his own bedroll and lay it over the injured young man.

"I'm sorry, Sarge," Stoller whispered. His voice was hoarse, and full of remorse. "I screwed up."

It suddenly struck Bucky that he didn't even know how old the guy was. Before the mission, he would'a guessed mid-twenties. Now, lying injured and in pain, he seemed no older than his late teens.

"You performed bravely," Bucky told him. "Biggs told me he saw you take out at least two of those Nazi bastards."

"I'm slowing you down. Endangering the mission."

"Bullshit. I actually like the delay. The longer we spend out here, the less chance Phillips has to send us on some other hare-brained mission. We're all enjoying the fresh air and the excellent views. You just concentrate on keeping up your strength, and let me worry about the mission."

Unshed tears pooled in the private's eyes. He rapidly blinked them away, his bottom lip quivering when he spoke again.

"You should leave me behind, Sarge. I'm dead weight."

Inside his chest, Bucky's heart lurched. He shuffled closer to the man on the impromptu stretcher, bending down over him so he could whisper without being overheard.

"So long as you draw breath, you're not dead weight but a member of my team, no matter how injured you are. And there's not a chance in hell I'm gonna leave you to die out here slow and alone."

"Maybe you don't have to." Stoller put on a brave face, but there was a tremulous tone to his voice. "You could leave me with my sidearm."

Bucky quickly shook his head. "So you can do the Nazis' job for them? No way, soldier. That's the pain talking."

"I'm not in pain anymore," Stoller told him. "Well, I am, but it's a sort of cold, numb pain. I feel like the pain isn't even a part of my body anymore."

"That's because we pumped you full of morphine." Bucky edged closer and lay a hand on Stoller's shoulder. "Your job for the rest of this mission is to hang in there. To keep going until we can get you back to camp. And that's an order, soldier. Y'hear me?"

"Yes, Sarge," Stoller sighed.

Bucky wasn't sure that he meant it. He made a mental note to tell the rest of the men on watch to keep their weapons well away from Stoller. The private's stubborn refusal to listen reminded him a little of Steve; there was no telling what the guy might do if he got his hands on a gun or a knife, and Bucky wasn't ready to lose another member of the 107th.