Author's Note: Many thanks to you lovely readers for your condolences/well-wishes. The story progress is now back on schedule, so I'm happy to release the next chapter! Those of you who've read Running To You may find one of these scenes very familiar. Cue the ominous music.

We Were Soldiers

54. Sins of Mine

"Planes!"

The alarm came loud and clear, shouted back by the men sent ahead to scout, passed from person to person like a ripple echoing down the line. Bucky didn't need to shout orders at his men; nobody had to shout orders. Fast as they could manage, the troops fled with the gear they were carrying, legs racing and lungs panting as they climbed uphill, to the shelter of the nearby trees.

Meanwhile, the men closest to the tanks and jeeps unfolded olive-drab tarpaulins and threw them roughly over the vehicles. The tank crews didn't have time to leave their positions; they would have to sit tight and trust to the shoddy camouflage.

As soon as he reached the trees, Bucky dropped his handhold on the heavy canvas tent and let it fall to the ground. He sank down behind it as men continued pouring into the area, pressing themselves under whatever cover they could find. The sound of engines reached his ears, and Bucky held his breath. He was too deep in the woods to see the planes overhead this time, but he could picture them in his mind's eye, a swarm of menacing raptors ready to rain down death and destruction. The SSR had been caught out three days ago, losing a tank and almost all of their howitzers to an opportunistic flight of enemy Stuka who'd spotted the gleam of sunlight on metal below.

"Do you think they're ours, or theirs?" Hawkins asked.

Bucky didn't dare exhale to reply. He knew it was stupid, that holding his breath wouldn't make him any less visible to the eyes in the sky, but he couldn't help it.

"I think at this point, it doesn't matter," said Gusty. "I bet our own guys are just as likely to bomb us believing we're the enemy."

"They might not even be bombers," said Mex. "They might be fighters. We might be okay. They can't make a strafing run so close to these trees."

Bucky held on to that thought as the droning of engines at altitude grew louder. He guessed the planes to be almost directly overhead, and had to fight the urge to duck down closer to the ground. The intermittent forests he'd previously cursed for slowing their progress through the Alps and making their marches more difficult, he now sent prayers of thanks for. Time and time again, they had fled to the safety of the trees when the sky-watching scouts reported planes approaching. This was the second time today, and it was only going to get worse the closer they got to Austria.

The trees were a beautiful illusion. They had no true power to keep the men safe. If enemy bombers—or hell, even friendly bombers—decide to drop their eggs on the forest sheltering the SSR, those gathered beneath the evergreen branches would die just as swiftly as if they'd been in a city or out in the open. But the brass were banking on the assumption that bombers wouldn't waste their payloads on a forest, not unless they had confirmed intel that a significant enemy force was sheltered there. So far, either the brass had been right, or the SSR hadn't been seen.

The planes passed without incident, and Bucky finally breathed deeply. His hands shook. Nerves frayed. Enemy ground-forces were bad enough. The prospect of land mines was bad enough. Now they had to contend with death from above, and planes could travel much faster than men and tanks. It hadn't escaped Bucky's notice that the route Hawkswell took them on through the Alps was never more than a stone's throw away from significant arboreal cover.

"How much more of this are we gonna have to take?" Hodge complained as the order came back to resume the march.

"Consider it an incentive," Bucky told him. "The faster we win the war, the sooner we have to stop worrying about being bombed by the Luftwaffe.

"D'ya think if we take Italy, Germany might surrender?" asked Franklin.

"I hope so." Something told him it would take more than losing Italy to make the Nazis surrender, but it never hurt to have hope. For as long as they had hope, they had a chance.

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

They stopped an hour before nightfall, which was odd; the colonels liked to keep them marching until the last scrap of light faded from the sky. They'd tried marching in darkness as a defence against aerial assault, but had given it up as too hazardous after several servicemen were almost lost to falls and landslides.

Most of the 107th sank wearily down when they came to a halt, but Bucky remained on his feet. No orders had come to set up camp—not that they could set up much of a camp to speak of. The valleys were too narrow and the ground too rocky to allow the larger tents to be erected. Some of the troops slept in pup tents, but there weren't enough to go around. Over half of the soldiers ended up sleeping beneath the open sky each time they stopped for the night.

"I'm gonna go find out what's happening," he told the rest of the men. "We don't usually get to stop this early in the day."

Finding out what was happening wasn't as easy as he'd imagined. First he had to run an obstacle course of men and equipment, bodies and bags strewn over every inch of dry, solid ground. He muttered apologies as he accidentally kicked men too tired or complacent to move, and almost broke his damn neck tripping over a bag someone had rudely left in the middle of an obvious path through the chaos.

"Mind that bag with your clumsy feet," Stark warned, popping out of nowhere. "Its contents are both highly fragile and devastatingly volatile."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have left it in the middle of the path." Bucky tossed the bag at Stark. The expression of fright on the inventor's face as he caught it on its downward curve was enough to make Bucky regret throwing it in the first instance. Sometimes, it was hard to tell when Stark was bullshitting.

He couldn't find the colonels, but Agent Carter was hovering near a dark, rectangular hole that led into the side of the mountain they'd been skirting for the past half hour. When she saw him approach, she donned a mask of practised patience.

"Agent Carter, why've we stopped so early?" he asked before she could offer some snippy rebuttal in advance of his question.

"We discovered this abandoned mine," Carter said, gesturing to the ominously black hole, "and the colonels wanted to assess its suitability as a place to stay tonight. Perhaps even to launch future excursions from."

He shot the hole a rather dubious glance. "The colonels went in there?"

"With a team of engineers."

"Oh, well, if they're with engineers, I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong."

One dark, elegant eyebrow rose in faux surprise. "Sarcasm does not become you, Sergeant. I suggest you return to your comrades and await the colonels' decision."

He didn't have many options. He still wasn't sure if Carter outranked him—she'd suggested he go back, not ordered it—and he wasn't willing to put that question to rest. Not over something as trivial as this. He gave her a mock salute that Wells would've been proud of, and returned to the regiment.

Half an hour later, they got their orders. The engineers had assessed the integrity of the mines and deemed them safe enough to shelter in for the night. The vehicles were to be left under the cover of tarps beneath the shelter of the trees, and all personnel were to take refuge underground. The prospect of sleeping in a cold, dark cave did not appeal to Bucky, but the prospect of being safe from German planes did.

"C'mon you lot," he said, chivvying them to their tired feet. "The sooner we're underground, the sooner we can relax."

Wells eyed the departing tanks with a sort of wistful longing. "Y'think the brass will let me bunk with the tank crews?"

"Why would you even want to? I heard the insides of those things smell pretty ripe. Don't you wanna be safe from the Luftwaffe for a night?"

The very idea seemed to disagree with Wells. He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he launched into an explanation. "I have a dream, and in that dream, I die at a ripe old age, probably in some sort of aviation accident. Maybe the fuel tank ignites in mid-air, or maybe there's a crash-landing… doesn't really matter. Point is, the death I have envisioned for myself takes place somewhere with a decent view, such as the open skies. My death does not involve getting crushed by a hundred thousand million tons of mountain."

"A hundred thousand million isn't even a number," Hodge scoffed. He glanced around the rest of the group. "Is it?"

"The engineers say it's safe," Bucky told Wells.

"Oh, well, if the engineers say it's safe, I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong," said Wells, accompanied by a roll of his blue eyes.

Bucky punched him sharply on the arm for being a jerk. "Come on, let's get moving. I bet you'll feel much better after a good night's sleep."

Wells grumbled quietly to himself, but he complied. The rest of the men followed with less grumbling as they piled their heavy equipment outside the mine and covered it with one side of the large regimental tent. Oil lamps were brought out and lit using Zippos, and Stark passed around a few hand-crank flashlights. As their group approached the mine entrance, the men clustered around him, and he realised they weren't any happier about the prospect of being under a mountain than he was. Still, he couldn't let their spirits sink any lower.

"Anybody read The Hobbit?" he asked them.

"What, that kids' book about fairies and dragons?" Wells scoffed. "Too advanced for me; I'm still trying to get through The Little Engine That Could."

"If you continue being an ass, I'm not gonna let you in to our regiment's Thanksgiving-in-Venice party," he warned.

"Fine. I'll have my own party, with gambling, and women of questionable integrity."

Their voices fell to whispers as they walked down the cold stone passage. Shadows pooled around them, moving with them as the lamps were carried deeper into the tunnels. When Bucky reached out to run his hand along the wall hewn from rock, the surface was rough and cold to his touch. It was still preferable to being bombed by the Luftwaffe.

"I think we should have a canary," Franklin whispered. "Isn't that what miners use to make sure there aren't any poisonous gases in mines?"

"I think we are the canaries," Wells said bitterly.

"Hey Sarge," Gusty said to Bucky, "do you know anything about mining?"

"No, why? Do you?"

"No, but I wondered what kind of mine this was. Maybe if it was a gem mine, I might find a left over jewel or something. Or, you know, an interesting fossil. For Audrey."

"You'd give your girl a fossil?" asked Wells.

"Sure, if I can't find a gem. I mean, fossils are unique and pretty rare, right? Audrey likes that sort of thing."

"You're a lucky man, Gusty. I wish I had a dame who'd be happy getting a bit of a dead thing calcified in rock. Somehow, I always manage to pick the demanding, high-maintenance ones."

"I really can't tell whether your thanks is sincere or sarcastic," Gusty sniffed, "so I'm gonna choose to believe it's the former."

"We'll keep our eyes open for gems or fossils," Bucky assured him.

"Somebody let me know if you see a diamond," said Wells. "It'll make my proposal to Rita all the sweeter if I can tell her the rock in her ring was handpicked by me."

They came to a branching of four tunnels and found one of the engineers waiting there, clipboard in hand. He glanced up as they approached and consulted the scribbles on his paper.

"107th Infantry? A quarter of you down the left tunnel with Captain Banks' group, a quarter of you in the right tunnel with Colonel Phillips, and two quarters in the centre tunnels with Colonel Hawkswell and Major Smith."

"We're being split up?" Bucky asked.

The lieutenant nodded. "Colonels' orders."

"Of course they gotta split us up." Wells said, his tone gloating. "Remember what Weiss told us about eggs and baskets? This way, they can't lose all their infantry at once in the event of a cave-in."

Those close enough to hear began looking worriedly around at the tunnel walls, and Bucky sent Wells a mental kick.

"We've identified alternative routes out of the mountain," the engineer continued, "but nothing as wide as the passage we came down."

"Alright, Gusty, you take a group and shack up with Banks' lot. Biggs, Tex, ditto for the right and centre-right tunnels. Wells"—images of his fellow sergeant spending the whole night telling the men in his group the odds of being crushed to death in a cave in ran through his mind—"we'll take a group down the centre-left tunnel." That way he could keep an eye on his friend and stamp down on any bullshit before it could chip away at the men's morale. "Davies, take the remainder of the regiment down the centre-right."

Down the centre-left tunnel, Bucky found groups from various different branches making up their beds on the hard rock floor. A few stoves had been brought out, and men were digging into their ration kits to pick out the choicest morsels. The tunnel opened out into a more spherical cave, which was only half full. His quarter of men quickly made themselves at home, bartering amongst themselves for the least rock-strewn spots. Before long, they too were cooking a communal meal of canned meat, beans and a medley of vegetables.

Over on his bedroll and blanket, Wells was reading his A Tree Grows in Brooklyn book once again. By now the book had been read so many times that the spine was faded, the dog-eared pages curled with damp and dirt. Bucky had tried to get another copy through Gusty, but it seemed Wells had the only one in the entire company.

"When are you gonna let me read that book?" he asked his friend.

"How 'bout never? I've seen how ham-fisted you are with books."

"Bullshit."

"I'll bequeath it to you in my will."

"Can I at least read the summary on the back?"

"No."

Bucky eyed the book. Performed a quick mental calculation. Reached swiftly forward and made a grab, attempting to pluck it from his friend's hands… only, Wells was faster. He rolled back across his blanket and was up on his feet while Bucky's hand was still closing around thin air.

"Paws off my book, Barnes," Wells warned with a grin.

"C'mon, I just wanna know what it's about. Whether there's actually even a tree in it."

"Patience is a virtue."

"I don't wanna wait until you're dead before I get to read it; that's just macabre."

"Well, alright, I guess you can read it." He held the book out, but as soon as Bucky moved to take it, he snatched it back. "Heheh, I changed my mind."

"Wells, you bastard," he growled, leaping forward. "Gimme!"

Wells side-stepped, putting Mex and one of the stoves between Bucky and himself. "Tell you what, I'll let you read it if you can reach it." He stood on his tiptoes, holding the book high in the air; high enough that Bucky would have to jump if he wanted to grab it. But Bucky wasn't gonna jump for any damn book; that was just the sort of dirty trick he'd tormented his own younger brother with, when they'd been kids.

Instead of jumping, he aimed a swift but relatively gentle jab at Wells' solar plexus. Wells immediately doubled over to protect his ribs, and Bucky made another grab for the book. This time he managed to get a hand on it, but Wells used his doubled-over shoulder to push him back against the cave wall, knocking some of the air from his lungs. Their ensuing struggle for the book was watched by a very amused group of men, until Colonel Hawkswell appeared from behind and favoured them both with an unimpressed scowl.

"Sergeant Barnes, Sergeant Wells, you can put that excess energy to good use tonight; you have guard duty at the head of the tunnel we came down."

Bucky let go of the book and straightened up to salute. Wells didn't let go of the book as he saluted.

"Yessir," he agreed. So much for a good night's sleep.

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

In the darkness of the tunnel, the tiny campfire didn't so much banish the shadows, as create them. They danced around the bare rock walls, their joyous saltation a mockery of Bucky's aching legs and still-blistered feet. Though he wasn't truly cold, he reached his hands down towards the flames, letting them linger for a moment. Next to him, Wells threw a small pebble at one of the shadows, catching it every time it bounced off the wall.

"How're your feet?" Wells asked at last.

"Sore."

"Should'a worn two pairs of socks."

"We can't all be smart-asses," Bucky replied tersely. Sometimes, Wells could be annoying as hell—especially when he knew he was right. "If I'd known when we broke camp this morning that we'd be travelling so far, I would'a worn two pairs."

"Always wear two pairs, just in case."

"Noted."

The forced march across the lower spine of the mountain range was tougher on the feet than the march across France had been. The one benefit they had was that the Germans didn't have much of a defence, this far north. Very likely, they thought nobody was crazy enough to march across the Alps. Clearly, they'd never met the U.S. brass.

"This time next week we'll be putting our feet up in Milan," said Wells.

Even in the dim light, Bucky could see the dark shadows beneath his friend's eyes. He suspected Wells was still kicking himself over Carrot and Pearson. Wells never talked about Pearson, and neither did Biggs, but at least the private had dropped the notion that he was a source of bad luck for the regiment.

"Dancing with Italian women, no doubt?" Bucky offered.

Wells merely pulled his face. "In Milan? No. Rome, maybe." He sighed, and flung the stone he'd been tossing into the fire, dislodging a bit of kindling which spluttered and hissed and made the shadows jump more violently. "What the hell are we doing here, Barnes?"

"You mean, why did I sign up? Or why are we being forced to march through the Alps? You know the answer to the second one as much as I do."

"No, not that. I mean here, in this tunnel."

"We picked the short straw. Or the colonel hates us." When his quip failed to elicit a smile, his concern for his friend increased. "You know what we're doing; we're on guard duty."

"Yeah, protecting the rest of the troops in the mine from the rampaging Kraut horde, just the two of us." Wells rolled his eyes. "There's no Germans here. They couldn't even see our fire, unless they were right on top of us."

Bucky shrugged. "Colonel wants someone to keep watch, and that someone is us. If you've got a problem with it, you might wanna take it up with him."

"I'll write him a strongly worded letter." Wells threw himself onto the floor beside the fire, laying belly-down so he could watch the flames dance. His rifle was seemingly forgotten behind him. Bucky knew that if any of the officers came up to check on them, they'd be all over Wells for his lack of discipline and vigilance… but he couldn't bring himself to tell his friend to sit up and be prepared to fire at the non-existent German horde. Besides, he could keep watch for the both of them.

"Speaking about letters—"

"Don't." Wells scowled at him, his blue eyes shadowed by his falling brows. "I don't wanna talk about letters."

"I was only gonna ask if you've sent any home yet."

"Yeah, well, don't."

"Alright."

Without warning, Wells pushed himself up, grabbed his gun and marched to the tunnel's exit.

"Where are you going?" Bucky asked him, his hand hovering over his own rifle.

"To water the trees. And I swear, if you follow me, I'll shoot you in the foot."

Bucky let his friend go. Regulations said no man was supposed to go anywhere alone, but right then, he really did believe Wells would shoot him in the foot if he tried to follow. Besides, it wasn't as if there was any danger here. And really, how long could Wells take?

He took ten minutes, and as each minute progressed, Bucky mentally kicked himself a half-dozen times for letting his friend go off alone regardless of the threat. When he was sure ten minutes had passed, he picked up his rifle and pushed his aching, complaining leg muscles into a standing position. For another minute he stood there tensing and flexing them, trying to work feeling back into his toes, then he set out on a limp to look for his friend before they could both be court-martialled for breaking regs.

Wells appeared from behind a tree trunk as soon as Bucky stepped out the tunnel, the moonlight making him easily visible. "Thought I warned you about following me? Can't a guy take a piss without a committee?"

"If it takes you this long, pal, you really should go see a medic, because there is something seriously wrong with you."

"Shy bladder," Wells shrugged, and pushed past him. "C'mon, back in the warren before someone comes to check we haven't been overrun by invisible Germans and discovers us gone."

Back in the tunnel, the shadows had grown smaller, so Bucky piled a few more pieces of wood on the fire and watched as the hungry flames accepted his offering of fuel. Now, if only it were so easy for the rest of the company to get food. Marching on cans and rations made everyone miserable.

He settled back down to sit beside the fire, and was glad when Wells did the same. The guy had been fidgety all night, like he just couldn't bring himself to sit still. Maybe now he'd relax a bit, give himself some rest.

"So," Wells said at last. "You got any more letters back from home yet?"

Bucky accepted the peace offering. "Yeah. A V-mail from my sister, Mary-Ann, a couple of days ago. It came in that supply drop we recovered." Supply drops were a pain, because the pilots always dropped them in the wrong places. Probably did it on purpose, just to screw with the ground forces. The 107th had been sent to recover the drop, and had found their supplies almost five miles out from the designated area. Luckily, they hadn't landed in the sort of swamp Dugan and Wells had endured during their previous recovery.

"She the one who's madly in love with me?"

"Only in your dreams," he snorted. "And my nightmares."

Finally, he got a grin out of Wells. It was just a small one, but it was a start. It didn't dispel the dark shadows beneath his blue eyes, but it did bring a little sparkle back to them.

"Is she pretty? Got any pictures?"

"Yes and no. And I'm not just saying that because I'm her brother." He smiled as his sister's face appeared in his mind. Sometimes it seemed every guy in Brooklyn wanted to ask Mary-Ann out to the theatre, or to the rides at Coney Island, or dancing at the music hall, but Bucky made sure to vet each and every one. Maybe that's why she and three of her friends had gone down to Baltimore at the first chance they got, to work in the new shipyard there, building the Liberty Fleet. In Baltimore, there was no-one to vet her choice of dance partner.

"I don't suppose she's the type to be swept off her feet by a darkly handsome black-Irish fella with a devil-may-care attitude and more brains than common sense?"

Bucky opened his mouth to say 'No,' but stopped himself. That actually sounded exactly like the kinda guy Mary-Ann would be swept off her feet by. Of course, he could hardly tell Wells that.

"Sorry, pal, but she'd see through your act right away."

"Act? You wound me, Sergeant Barnes. I'm a hundred percent genuine."

"A hundred percent bullshit, more like," he scoffed. "Seriously, 'giant kraken monster'?"

Wells laughed, such a rare occurrence since Carrot's death that it sounded like a strange—but very welcome—piece of music. "Yeah, you got me there. Okay, so I'm about seventy percent genuine, thirty percent bullshit. Or I guess you can switch those around, sometimes." He glanced up, his eyes scanning the rocky ceiling. "Y'know, they think we're safe down here, but I bet these mines go back to Roman times, at least. One lucky bomb and the whole mountain will come down on our heads… cradle and all."

"Jeez, man, why've you always gotta make everything so macabre?"

Wells looked at him for a moment, his blue eyes thoughtful as he chewed on his lower lip. "I think you're the first person to ever ask me that."

"That's probably because you're about seventy percent bullshit."

"Well, yeah," Wells admitted. After a moment he put his gun aside and picked up another stone, turning it over and over in his fingers. "You ever go to church, Barnes?"

"Of course."

"Ever do confession?"

"Yeah." His mom had made him do it, every Sunday after Mass. Problem was, he'd been a pretty straight kid, and despite the occasional impure thought, he didn't really feel he had much to confess about. At thirteen, he'd started inventing reasons to confess, just to satisfy his mother's demand, but the priest had seen through his ruse pretty quickly. Of course, that had given him something real to confess to, but the priest had barred him from confession after that, telling him only to come back when he felt genuinely repentant. He hadn't been back since. "You?"

"Once."

"Only once? I would've thought a… what was it, a darkly handsome black-Irish fella with a devil-may-care attitude and more brains than common sense, would have had a whole lot of sins to confess to."

"Without a doubt," Wells nodded, as unrepentant as Bucky. "God, my thoughts alone would have an entire convent of nuns saying a thousand hail-Marys for my soul. But… well…" He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, a worried frown etching itself onto his face. "Alright, I'm just gonna come out and say it. Just… don't get all judgemental, okay? I don't think you're the judgemental type, otherwise I wouldn't be telling you this, but…"

"Spit it out, Wells," Bucky instructed. This was just going to be another giant piss-take. Like that whole slave-trade diatribe bullshit. Wells would come out with something stupid and trivial, then laugh at how concerned his friend had been.

"Okay." He opened his eyes and tossed the stone into the fire. "See, the thing is, I'm what you'd call… claustrophobic." He quickly closed his eyes again. "Shit, I can barely even say the word without hyperventilating. Don't mind me, I'm just imagining a field. A big, open field, with no trees, and no mountains, and lots of fluffy clouds… no, wait: no clouds. Sky goes on forever."

Bucky studied his friend closely. Wells' normally pale skin had been burnt to deep red during the first week in France, and now it had tanned to a pale almond… but even still, his skin looked paler than it had for a while, and a sheen of sweat had appeared on his face. Now, he understood why Wells hadn't been in a hurry to get back from watering the trees. But if his claustrophobia was this bad, why hadn't he said anything sooner?

"Bet you're wondering why I never mentioned this before now," Wells said. He opened both eyes to narrow slits. "Truth is, I thought I could control it. On the boat, I knew it was just two weeks. It was a goddamn hell, but at least there was an end in sight. And I got around it by staying up on deck as much as possible. Even when it was raining, that was better than being in the troop quarters. Never thought I'd have to come into a goddamn mine."

"How long have you been like this?" Bucky asked.

"Ever since I was a little kid." Wells gave a humourless snort and sat up a little straighter. "Your daddy ever strap you as punishment?"

"No… he never needed to. Though, one time he did throw a boot at me. I definitely deserved it, though." He couldn't even remember what he'd been doing at the time; all he could recall was that the boot-throwing was justified, and it had never happened again.

"My dad was always big on discipline. Came from the Navy, served as an officer until he wasn't fit for it anymore. Highly decorated, skipper of his own warship… and he ran our home like he ran a ship, too."

Bucky sat in silence as a knot of horror formed in his stomach. He wanted to tell his friend to shut up, to stop talking about it. Wells was breaking all the unspoken rules. The rules everybody knew instinctively, like not talking about the particularly unpleasant things unless you could put a twisted, humourous spin on them. Wells was normally an expert on twisted, humourous spins, but Bucky knew this time his friend was just going to tell it straight. And that was something else you never did. You didn't tell it straight.

"The strap was pretty common, until I was about twelve, but it was always followed by the cupboard. And even when I was too big for strapping, the cupboard was there. It was a tiny, dark little coal cupboard under the stairs. It wasn't tall enough for a twelve year old to stand in, so you had to sit, or stoop, and there was no light inside it, so as soon as the door was closed, there was only darkness. It had a lock on the outside, a heavy iron deadbolt, and hearing that bolt slide into place was like hearing the tolling of your own funeral bell.

"Weird thing is, getting strapped, that's just pain. It fades. It heals. But the cupboard… you can't heal from that. It doesn't fade. It stays with you. Even when you're out of it, it never truly leaves you. When you're a little kid, you don't understand it. The strap, you understand. But not the darkness. And not why your mom doesn't come to let you out when you start crying. You don't understand that crying only makes it worse. For every five minutes you cry and wail and beg to be let out, you get another half-hour added to your time. That cupboard drove my eldest brother to the Navy, and the next two to the Army. Just to try and get away from it. Get away from the man who put them in there."

"Shit." What else was there to say?

Wells nodded glumly in understanding. "My first confession, it was like being back in that cupboard all over again. After that, I couldn't go back. I decided church wasn't for me. Ran away from home every Sunday morning, and got locked in the cupboard for it when I returned every Sunday night. But at least it was a private cupboard, and not some cupboard in the middle of a public church. And at least I knew what my cupboard was about. Those confessional booths? The church? Worshipping a god who either doesn't exist or is deaf to prayers and indifferent to suffering. I'd take the cupboard at home over that any day."

Bucky kept quiet, didn't even bother trying to offer some excuse on God's behalf. Whatever faith Wells had once possessed had been seriously torn apart by what his own father had put him through. No amount of platitudes would make that right.

"So. Now you know. My big secret."

"You ever talk to your brothers about this?"

Wells snorted. "Are you kidding? You don't talk to your brothers about this sorta stuff. Hell no."

"That's a shame. I like to think that my brother—or my sisters—could talk to me about anything. Even if it was difficult, or painful."

"That's because you're a better brother than mine. Or a less damaged one. I dunno. It's probably not their fault. When you cry alone in the dark, and nobody comes to reassure you, you eventually learn to stop crying. To just shut yourself down. I guess that's what they did. What I thought I did, until we got to this godsforsaken mine. Anyway, Barnes, thanks for not being all judgemental. And for not making jokes. I can't tell any of this to any of the others… they'd just yank my chain with it."

"My lips are sealed," he promised. "Do you ever… y'know, write to your brothers?"

Wells quickly shook his head. "We're not that close. When we were younger, I used to look up to them… they seemed so big, so strong, I thought nothing could ever scare them like I was scared of the cupboard. I had that illusion shattered pretty early. And looking back on it, I think they felt bad that they couldn't protect me. Take you, for example. I've only known you for a couple of months, but I already know you're the kinda guy who'll do anything for his family. You'll lay down your life to protect them, right?" Bucky nodded. "My brothers and I… none of us could protect each other. I think we all felt we'd failed."

"I guess that's understandable," Bucky admitted. And also pretty messed up. A brother was supposed to protect his siblings from the schoolyard bully, from the mean kid down the street, from the cowards who ran in gangs because they were too scared to act alone. But to protect your brothers and sisters from your own father, who subjected them to the very same torture… it was just wrong. "I know you probably don't want my advice, but I wanna give it anyway."

"Hit me."

"I think you should write a letter to your brothers. Even if you don't send it right away. Even if you keep it until after the war. Just have it there, ready, in case it needs to be sent. I know you say you and your brothers weren't close, but I get the impression that maybe you want to be. And if you feel like that, maybe they do, too. Maybe they just don't know how to start things off. This is a pretty broken world we live in right now, and everybody deserves the chance to say what's on their mind. Everyone deserves the opportunity to write letters to the people they care about. To say the things they wished they had the time, or opportunity, or courage, to say before."

Wells sat in silence for a long time, his fingers toying with one of the buttons on his olive drab jacket. The fact that he hadn't turned it into some sort of joke showed just how seriously he was taking the suggestion. Finally, he nodded, and met Bucky's gaze.

"You're right. I'll do it. A letter to the people I care about. But I'm not gonna send it. I'll hang on to it, like you said, until after the war. Or until it needs to be sent. If… if I keep it in my footlocker wherever we end up making camp, and if I can't send it myself, if it needs to be sent… will you take care of it for me?"

"Yeah. Of course. But don't think like that. You'll deliver it yourself, after the war. In person." Wells' only response was a sad smile, so Bucky brought the conversation back to the point he'd initially been exploring, before his friend's terrible confession. "But I gotta ask one thing. Actually, re-ask, since you kinda evaded it the first time."

"Oh?"

"Why so macabre? Given your claustrophobia, why'd you go on and on at Carrot about all that slavery bullshit, and the U-boats torpedoing the Monty? Surely that can't have been healthy for you to think about."

A small grin appeared on Wells' face, and Bucky knew then that his friend was going to be okay. "Not sure I should tell you that. Personal trick. But what the hell, maybe it won't even work for you. Maybe it's just a thing I do because I'm crazy and it helps me cope. But I figured out long ago that if something makes you uncomfortable, and I mean really uncomfortable, then you can make yourself feel less uncomfortable by shifting some of that discomfort to someone else. Worried about U-boat attacks? Make someone else shit their pants at the thought. Kept awake by the terrible food and ever-encroaching darkness? Make someone else fear it more. Doesn't matter if it's real, it can be total bullshit, as long as someone else is more uncomfortable than you."

"That's pretty messed up."

"Yeah. Just out of curiosity, how uncomfortable are you right now?"

"On a scale of one to ten?" Bucky pondered. "Probably approaching a five." It wasn't every day you had to sit and listen to a friend's torturous childhood nightmares.

"Hmm. Talking's been a useful distraction, but I'm still hovering around a seven. That means we need to get you up to an eight, so I feel better." He tapped his chin thoughtfully, the flames of the fire reflected in his eyes giving him a particularly nefarious look as he studied Bucky like he'd just found a new victim to torment. "When you did your winter training, did they ever make you do that thing, for surviving hypothermia? You know, get your squad-mates together, strip naked and huddle in a sleeping bag to share body heat?"

"You're an ass," Bucky scoffed.

Wells closed his eyes and leant back against the wall, a smug grin on his face. "I know."

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

There was thunder. A deep, bone-shaking rumble that reverberated through the ground. Bucky sat up and glanced at Wells across the dying flames of the fire.

"I've never heard thunder that loud before," he said.

Then came the shouts and wails and cries. They flooded the tunnel, causing every hair on Bucky's body to stand on end. And still the earth shook.

Wells looked back at him, his blue eyes wide with fear.

"I don't think that's thunder."