We Were Soldiers

68. Such a hawk as thou

The loud drone of the engines made conversation difficult even for Steve. He was still getting used to focusing on single sounds, on blanking out invasive background noises. His hearing, like his balance, was a work in progress.

The plane cut its way through the velvet darkness of the night sky, carrying Steve closer and closer to the answers he both longed for and dreaded. What if Bucky really was dead? What would he do then? How could the world keep turning without Bucky in it?

"The HYDRA camp in Krausberg is tucked between these two mountain ranges," said Agent Carter, directing his gaze down to the map laid over her knee. "It's a factory of some kind. All the intelligence we have suggests that it's well-guarded, but we have nothing solid on gun placements or perimeter defences. I'm afraid that once you get down there, you'll be in the dark."

"On the bright side," Stark chimed in from the cockpit, "We should be able to drop you right on the doorstep."

"Just get me as close as you can," Steve called back.

They'd already told him it was too risky to put the plane down, which meant he'd have to jump. It wasn't a prospect he was relishing, but if it was the only way he could get his feet down in Austria, he'd do it. Carter had given him a brief lesson on how and when to deploy a parachute, but she'd warned him that paratroopers normally underwent multiple test jumps from varying heights before being allowed to do it for real. Steve's first jump would be a crash course, and she potentially meant that literally.

"Y'know, you two are gonna be in a lot of trouble when you land," he told them. Their get-away had gone smoothly, with a fast takeoff that nobody had been able to stop. The last thing Steve had seen, looking out of the tiny window down at the camp below, was half a dozen heads peeping out from beneath the command tent, expressions of surprise written on their faces.

"And you won't?" she countered.

"Where I'm going, if anybody yells at me I can just shoot them."

"They will undoubtedly shoot back."

Steve fought back a smile at the concern in her voice. Apart from his mom, and Bucky's family, nobody had ever shown much concern before over Steve's welfare. More than once he'd spotted the shadowy forms of people walking by the alleys he'd gotten beat up in, their gazes fixed ahead as they carefully didn't see. The care in Agent Carter's eyes, made soft and dewy by the pale yellow lights of the plane's cabin, was genuine, and he didn't think she wanted him to be careful for the sake of the USO.

He rapped his knuckles on the shield propped against the seat beside him. "Well, let's hope it's good for something."

"Agent Carter?" Stark called back. "If we're not in too much of a hurry, I thought we could stop off in Lucerne for a late-night fondue."

Steve couldn't see the grin on Stark's face, but he could hear it. Agent Carter didn't answer as her eyes darted briefly around the cabin in search of something—anything—else to discuss. Steve felt his heart take a small dive towards the ground at a hundred miles an hour. Idiot. How the hell can you compete with Stark? He's rich, and a genius, and well-educated, and he's had months alone with Agent Carter. Still, she hadn't answered. And now, he needed to know. Was she doing this, supporting his plan and helping his mission, as a friend, or as… something else?

"Stark is the best civilian pilot I've ever seen," she said quickly, as the question danced on his lips, itching to be let out. "He's mad enough to brave this airspace. We're lucky to have him."

"So, are you two…" He hesitated. "Do you…" Jeez, those romantic movies always made it seem to easy, to talk to dames. What was the word Stark had used? "…Fondue?"

It wasn't the right question to ask. He could tell by the fleeting look of annoyance that crossed her face. Instead of answering, she handed over a small black box.

"This is your transponder. Activate it when you're ready and the signal will lead us straight to you."

He toyed with it for a moment, then shouted over to Stark. "Are you sure this thing works?" Because it was easier than thinking about what Agent Carter hadn't said.

"It's been tested more than you, pal," Stark assured him.

In the time it took to get from one heartbeat to the next, Steve experienced a sickening déjà vu as the night air exploded in a shower of flak. Stark rolled the plane, and Steve damn near rolled right on to Agent Carter. Inside his chest, his heart was starting to race again, preparing his body as flashes of memory and thoughts of here we go again tumbled through his mind.

The flak didn't let up. The plane must've been right in their sights, because it was all Stark could do to hurl 'Amelia' to the left to dodge another bright spray of anti-aircraft rounds. Against the backdrop of the night, the explosions created a deadly beauty.

Just like 4th July, back home.

The memory hit him hard, a dozen or more fourth of Julys, all shared with the man—the boy, the best friend—he was now on a mission to bring home. Candied apples and miniature flags and sparklers and apple pie, a day of excess culminating in beautiful displays of light.

He pushed the memory away with a thought of next year. Grabbed his shield. Hauled himself from his seat and leapt towards the door with all the grace of a drunk. Agent Carter was almost as quick. Her deceptively firm hand tugged on his shoulder as he yanked open the door.

"Get back here!" she commanded. "We're taking you all the way in!"

There was no time for that. No time to think, no time to plan, no time to strategise. Now, he just had to do.

With the door open, the drone of the engines and the thunderous booms of exploding rounds were an almost physical assault on his still-adapting ears. Taking a deep breath, he looked out across the shadowed forest below. Hard to tell where the flak was coming from, but if he was real quick, and extremely lucky, maybe he could avoid being hit. He turned to glance up at Carter. The dark pools of her eyes reflected the explosions in the air. A tiny, brazen voice inside his head—one which sounded exactly like his absent best friend—demanded he ask for a kiss for good luck. He ignored his inner-Bucky.

"As soon as I'm clear, you turn this thing around and get the hell out of here," he yelled above the deafening cacophony.

"You can't give me orders!" Agent Carter bristled.

"The hell I can't; I'm a Captain!"

He gave her a smile that she didn't return because she was far too busy looking worried. Before she could try to talk him out of it, he pulled the goggles perched atop his helmet down over his eyes, took one last deep breath of sweet, freezing air, and launched himself as hard as he could from the interior of the plane.

He fell. Heavy, weightless, fast as an arrow, almost unmoving through the vast emptiness of the sky. The goggles were not particularly effective; air streamed in through the cracks between the seal and his skin, chilly air that nipped at his eyes and forced streaming tears along his cheeks. Breathing was difficult; he fell too fast past the air to suck it in, so instead he savoured the one deep breath in his lungs.

The ground loomed. He reached out to pull his parachute cord as more flak exploded above him. The men on the ground were still aiming for the plane. Maybe they hadn't seen him yet, but they would as soon as he released his chute. But he had no choice. Make himself a target, or break his neck. At least he'd stand a chance with the flak. The ground would not be so forgiving.

He pulled the cord. Nothing could have prepared him for the harsh jerk of gravity interrupted as the open chute caught the night breeze and roughly halted his free fall. Suspended from ropes, with no way of directing his descent, he felt naked and vulnerable. He closed his streaming eyes for a moment and swiftly sent a prayer to God and his folks, asking them to look out for him one last time.

Either they were listening, or the Krauts' aim was bad. Though the night continued to explode in hues of amber and gold, he managed to avoid being hit. The forest beneath seemed to stretch up to catch him, and he tucked up his legs as the tree tops brushed his feet. He'd imagined a graceful landing; the chute lowering him softly to the ground, Steve releasing the straps around his back even as he was setting off at a jog towards the place his friend was being kept.

Reality was not graceful. His chute caught in the upper bows of a stand of sharp-needled pines, yanking him painfully again. The ropes around his shoulders cut into his arms, numbing them as he struggled to free himself. The trees kept a mercilessly tight grip on his parachute, and the more he struggled, the less free he became. Finally, he decided there was nothing for it. He drew his knife and cut through the ropes of his chute. He fell the last five metres to the ground, slipped in mud and landed heavily on his left side. A groan escaped his lips as he pushed himself to his feet and tried to rub a little feeling back into his left shoulder.

It doesn't happen like that in the movies, he thought. If his audiences had seen that landing, they'd be laughing their butts off at Captain America right now.

He could no longer hear the plane overhead, but he was certain he would've heard it go down or get hit in mid-air. That meant Agent Carter and Mr. Stark had made it safely away from German airspace. And it meant they were going to have to do it all over again, when he activated his…

As he thrust his hand into his pocket, his heart sank. The crack in the transponder's casing was rough against his fingers, and when he brought it out and toyed with it, the entire thing was completely dead. What was he gonna do now?

I'll walk, dammit. I didn't come this far to give up now. I'm gonna be in trouble when I get back, so I better make sure this was worth it. And when I find Bucky, I'm gonna get us both home, even if I have to carry him across the whole of Austria.

He pocketed his broken transponder and took out his rusty old compass and map. Before he could save Bucky, he had to figure out exactly where he'd been dropped. It couldn't be too far to the HYDRA factory, but it could be in just about any direction.

After a long moment of consulting his map, he picked a north-easterly route and set off into the night.

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It looked more like a maximum security prison than a factory. White beams from bright searchlights scanned the area around the high chain fence, the guard posts manned by HYDRA soldiers armed with a style of rifle Steve had never seen before. He'd had heard that Fort Knox was one of the most secure facilities in the world, but right now, he wasn't sure if Fort Knox held a candle to this place.

As he was considering his chances of climbing the fence without being immediately spotted and shot, a sound caught his attention. The quiet chug chug chug of approaching engines grew gradually louder, and further down the dirt road, headlights cut through the foggy darkness. Steve wasn't usually the recipient of good luck, but he wasn't about to pass up an opportunity like this.

The vehicles slowed as they approached the compound's chain fence, and Steve waited until the last truck passed by his hiding place. Like the others, it slowed, and he dashed out from the forest and sprang over the raised tailgate, into the back of the truck… where two helmeted soldiers sat staring at him.

He froze. Then, with a casual nod, said, "Fellas."

They rushed him, perhaps believing that because they outnumbered him, they could take him down easy. But this wasn't a back alley, and Steve wasn't sickly little Steven G. Rogers anymore. He was Captain America, and he had a best friend to rescue.

He kicked the first soldier right at his solar plexus, and the man went flying into the side of the truck before dropping face-first onto the floor. The second guard slowed for a punch, his fist landing two on Steve's cheek before an echo of Bucky's coaching prompted him to keep up a defence. The next two blows landed were Steve's, and he didn't pull his punches. The second guard dropped, unconscious, and Steve tossed them both over the tailgate. They rolled a few feet along the muddy ground before they were swallowed up by the thick fog.

It was a simple subterfuge, but it worked well. The truck in which he hid was admitted through the security fence and finally came to a stop. He moved quickly as voices called out in German around him. Quietly knocked out a guard who appeared to unload equipment at the tailgate, and jumped out the back of the truck to set off across a tank-filled courtyard. He flitted from shadow to shadow, imagining that he was being quite stealthy.

A nearby concrete structure, perhaps a toilet block, promised a better view. Conscious of the spotlights, he timed his dash to a tank beside the building and scaled the outside of the vehicle, using it to give himself a boost up onto the low concrete structure. From there, he could see clearly where he needed to go. At a jog, he set off towards the small door at the base of the factory wall.

The door was a solid steel thing, and looked like it had been designed to withstand considerable force. He tried the handle, but it was locked. The Captain America of the movies would have kicked the door down, but Steve was still flesh and blood. Bereft of other ideas, he knocked.

He hadn't seriously expected to achieve anything by knocking, but for the second time that night, good luck favoured him. A guard on the inside slid back the deadbolt and peered out into the night. Steve reacted without thinking, slamming the door into the guard's head and finishing off with a punch to the nose. The man slumped to the floor and Steve hauled him out of the way. Once more, he marvelled at how his body could do things. Not just things regular men couldn't do, but also things they could.

The scene that greeted him might've been one from any productive American factory—if it wasn't for the gun-toting guards in their strange helmets. Beleaguered prisoners hauled large crates around the floor, whilst small parts of larger items lay waiting on the production line. An eerie blue glow grabbed Steve's attention, and he crept towards one of the mysterious parts. It was comprised of smaller glowing blue… things. There were a lot of the glowing things, so they had to serve some sort of important function. Reasoning that the guards wouldn't miss one if it went astray, he slipped one of the glowing blue parts into the inner pocket of his jacket. Maybe Stark would know what it was.

Direction-less, he picked a nearby open door leading to a corridor and jogged down it, eyes peeled for movement, ears strained for whispers—or the sounds of a gun being cocked. But despite his concern about being discovered before he could find Bucky, the building remained ominously quiet, and he encountered no living soul hostile or otherwise.

The factory was a labyrinth of long corridors and small rooms. Every time Steve came to a room, he stopped jogging and carefully pushed open the doors to peer inside. Most contained large wooden crates holding more of the small parts which needed to be assembled. A couple turned out to be food stores; he tore into a packet of Kraut rations, some sort of heavy wafers, and shoved them into his mouth. Until seeing the food, he hadn't even realised how hungry he was. How long had it been since his last meal? Long enough.

He chewed on a cracker as he continued his search. Before long he heard the murmur of distant voices, and as he drew closer, his sensitive ears picked up familiar American accents amongst them. Excitement egged him on. Soon he was sprinting, uncaring of whether ran right into armed guards. Let them try to stop him—he'd fight them all!

Common sense finally grabbed hold of the reins, and as he approached a battered old door he slowed to a more stealthy pace. Finding Bucky was only half the job; he still had to get his friend out, and now he no longer had a working transponder to call for a ride. If he couldn't find some way to contact Agent Carter and Mr. Stark from here, he and Bucky would be walking back.

I'll dance back. I'll find Bucky, and get him to teach me to dance, and I'll dance us all the way home—if only I can find him.

Softly, Steve pushed open the battered door and peered in through the small crack. His spirits immediately soared. Inside the room were rows of iron-bar cells, each one containing small groups of men. They spoke in whispers and mumbles, a dozen different accents, not all of them American. Bucky would be here. He knew it.

He crept into the room and climbed a ladder up to a metal gantry running over the cells. A single guard kept watch over the area. Steve ghosted up behind him, tapped the guy on the shoulder, then socked him hard across the jaw. The man went spinning, hit the gantry rail, and collapsed onto the top of the cell below. Steve crouched, reaching out to rifle through the guard's pockets whilst a half-dozen startled and dirty faces watched him open-mouthed from below. None of the faces were Bucky's, but that didn't mean anything. Bucky was just in some other cell. Steve would soon be reunited with his best friend, and he couldn't wait to see the look on Bucky's face when sickly Steve Rogers saved his contrary ass.

One of the soldiers below, a dark-skinned man in a GI uniform, squinted up at Steve and asked, "Who're you supposed to be?"

"I'm Captain America," Steve replied. Internally, he cringed at the title, but it was better than saying, I'm some random nobody who's come to save his friend.

"What did he say?" a British man asked one of his fellow prisoners.

Steve's fingers brushed against the jagged metal of keys, and he pulled the bunch from the guard's pocket. Looking down, he caught the suspicious blue eyes of a wide-shouldered man in a bowler hat.

"Here, catch!" he said, dropping the keys through the bars. The imprisoned soldier didn't need telling twice.

While the man in the hat went about freeing himself and the rest of the prisoners, Steve jogged back to the ladders and climbed back down to floor level. To their credit, the milling throng of freed men didn't immediately run for the doors. Like good soldiers, they waited for intel. For orders. As they poured out of their cells, relief and guilt took their turns at assaulting Steve. He'd come here with only one thought: Bucky. If his transponder hadn't broken, Mr. Stark would've brought his plane back to whisk Steve and his friend away. But what about these other men? There was no way Stark's plane could've taken more than a few of them. The rest would've been left behind to make their way back through enemy territory, and it wasn't as if they were well-supplied. Some of them were injured; others looked half dead on their feet.

Steve would get them back. He made himself a promise, there and then, that he wouldn't leave a single one of them behind.

"Is this all of you?" he asked, as his gaze lingered over the dirty faces of the prisoners and failed to see Bucky. "Is there anybody else? I'm looking for a Sergeant James Barnes."

"Barnes?" The British man's eyebrows rose. "They took him away a couple of weeks ago, and we haven't seen him since."

Steve's guts twisted unpleasantly. A scene flickered across his mind's eye: Bucky, kicking and screaming and fighting as they dragged him away.

No.

"Any idea where they took him?"

"There's an isolation ward at the rear of the factory. It's where they take the sickest prisoners, and rumour has it they do medical experimentation of some sort."

"Bucky was sick?!"

The dark-skinned private nodded. "Looked like pneumonia. Sounded like it, too."

Pneumonia. Steve had had it once, back in '29, and it had damn near killed him. But Bucky was fit. Strong. Bucky rarely got sick, and always hated it when he did, because it meant lying around being physicked instead of running around playing games and having adventures. No, pneumonia would not get the better of Bucky.

"The tree line is northwest, about eighty yards past the gate," he told the men. "Get out fast, and give 'em hell. I'll meet you guys in the clearing with anybody else I find." And if he didn't find anybody else—if he didn't find Bucky—then he wouldn't be leaving at all. He couldn't go home and tell the Barnes family that their son and brother was dead.

"Wait," the dark-skinned private said, halting him. "You know what you're doing?"

"Yeah. I've knocked out Adolf Hitler over two-hundred times." And besides, this factory kinda looked a little like the set of his first movie. Maybe he could make this a happy ending, too.

He left the men and jogged towards the door. As he left, he heard the British man call after him. "Nobody's ever come back from the isolation ward!" Steve ignored the call. All his life he'd been told what he couldn't do; nobody was going to tell him he couldn't save his best friend.

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

Bucky's attempts to die were not going very well. Since his failed attempt to take his own life, they'd started feeding him again. His traitor body kept the food down, and a little of his strength returned. Not enough to give him chance to escape, but enough to keep him longer in the mortal coil.

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes," he said to the ceiling. To himself. To God. To anyone who was listening. It was important they know that James Buchanan Barnes was still here. He didn't want to be here, but he was.

It wasn't fair. Why couldn't they just let him die? Why couldn't they kill him off and perform their torture on some other soldier? It wasn't as if the cells were empty. A hundred men or more were put to work on the assembly lines, but Bucky alone had to be tortured. Why couldn't they put Dugan here, in his place? Why couldn't it be Dernier or Jones suffering, instead of Bucky?

He fixed his gaze on the tiny barred window and imagined he saw beautiful flashes of yellow and orange and red colouring the dark night sky. Imagined he heard booms and explosions, like the Independence Day fireworks he'd loved watching as a kid. A pity he wouldn't get to see any more fireworks.

He imagined, too, that he heard a siren. Some sort of warning alarm. Maybe a fire alarm, or an air-raid siren. The thought brought an oasis of excitement to the desert of his soul. Maybe Allied planes were about to bomb the factory and put an end to his misery. The idea of dying in an Allied attack was not as bad as the thought of being killed by Zola in some twisted experiment. Those fly-boys would be performing a service of mercy, if they managed to destroy this place.

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes," he told the imaginary fires outside. "Service number—"

Footsteps interrupted his familiar litany. Heavy footsteps. Guard. Probably coming to make sure Bucky hadn't managed to die.

"Bucky!?"

A familiar voice jarred his memory; an unfamiliar face peered down at him from above. Was it God? Why did God sound like Steve? No, that was stupid. God didn't have a body. Didn't even exist. And if he did exist, he wouldn't be sporting an army jacket and a helmet with a pair of goggle perched over it. No, not God. The face looked a little like Steve's, except bigger. More in proportion. Less nose, more chin. Much more chin.

The face disappeared, and something brushed roughly against Bucky's arms and legs. The restraints. They'd just been removed. That meant he could finish what he'd tried to start.

The face reappeared, the Steve-stranger's eyes looking at him full of unfeigned fear while his lips spoke Bucky's name as if trying to summon him back from some distant place. "Bucky, hey Bucky, snap out of it."

Bucky ran his tongue over his dry, cracked lips and croaked, "Steve?"

Steve's familiar smile lit up the unfamiliar face. "Yeah, buddy, it's me."

Thank God! If this really was Steve, he could kill Bucky. Help put him out of his misery. Help him escape the pain and torture and experimentation. He spotted the gun in Steve's holster, and opened his mouth to ask for it.

"C'mon pal," Steve interrupted, "we've gotta get out of here."

Get out? What? Where? There was no out. Didn't Steve understand that? There was no escape. No hope. Just an endless vista of agony.

A bright orange blossom lit up the night sky, sending light spilling into the lab. Seconds later, a thunderous series of booms shook the bed on which Bucky lay. Stranger-Steve's eyes went to the window, a grim smile pulling at his lips.

"Looks like the prisoners found HYDRA's stock of grenades." His blue eyes travelled down to Bucky's face. "Can you move?"

It took Bucky a full minute to realise that this wasn't some sort of crazy dream. It wasn't an answer to a prayer, or some trick of his imagination. It was actually Steve, and he was actually huge, and actually here. The wailing siren was real, and so were the explosions outside the window.

What the hell?!

He gathered his strength and pushed himself up. Steve helped, one large, strong hand beneath Bucky's shoulder.

What the hell?!

Upright, he gave his best friend from childhood the once-over. Then the twice-over. The eyes and the voice and the nose, that was all Steve, but the body… That was something new.

"What the hell?!" he demanded. A cheeky grin slid across Steve's face. "What happened to you?"

"I joined the Army!" Steve quipped. A shuddering explosion rocked the room, loosening plaster, sending dust drifting down from the ceiling above. The grin on Steve's face was replaced by a frown of worry. "C'mon, we gotta go."

Bucky tried his best to follow his tall new old friend, but the table had taken its toll. He wobbled on jelly-legs, his head pounding to the rhythm of each explosion. Steve returned to his side and threw one of Bucky's arms around his shoulders, taking up some of his weight. Bucky was in no mood to argue. They tottered past one of the workbenches, and as they did, something cold and metallic caught Bucky's eye. With a cry, he yanked himself out of Steve's grips and descended on the two strips of metal attached to a chain.

"My tags!" Proof that he really was Sergeant James Barnes, and not Subject 36. He slid them over his neck, then looked around the dark room. Maybe if they'd kept his tags, they'd kept his jacket, too.

"Buck, we gotta go," said Steve.

To prove his point, another explosion shook the walls. Swallowing his disappointment, Bucky nodded, reaching out once more for Steve's absurdly broad shoulders. Together they stumbled down the bare brick corridor, and Bucky felt a terrible weight lift from him. He was free. He was going to escape. To get back to camp. Maybe go home. See his family again. There would be no more table. No more torture. No more pain. He could leave this place, and leave it all behind.

"Steve, wait!" He jerked to a stop, and Steve jerked with him. "There are other prisoners here. We can't just go without them. We have to—"

"They're already free, Buck. That's how I knew where to find you. They told me you'd been brought back here."

It brought him a small measure of relief, a balm to his aching and tired soul. At least Dugan and the others wouldn't have to rot here under HYDRA's tender mercies. And now Bucky would get to watch Monty eat those PB&J sandwiches after all, just like Dugan had threatened.

"What really happened to you, Steve?" he asked, as they continued their stumble. Bucky had no idea which way they'd brought him when he'd first arrived at the lab, but Steve seemed to have a pretty good idea of where he was going. He picked his corridors without hesitation.

"You've been with the SSR for a while now, right?" Steve asked.

"Yeah." It felt like forever. A lifetime of capturing bunkers and losing friends.

"You know what they've been doing?"

Bucky tried to shrug. Gave up when he realised it was futile to try with his arm around Steve's neck. "Sure. Designing new weapons, fighting HYDRA."

A grim smile stole across Steve's lips, and he fixed his gaze on the corridor ahead. "Yeah. Well, one of those weapons they designed was me."

"Bullshit," he scoffed.

"It's true. They had a doctor working for them, a guy named Erskine. He created a serum designed to enhance a person's physical and mental capabilities. They wanted to create an army of super-soldiers. HYDRA killed Erskine and destroyed the last vial of serum before it could be reproduced for anyone else." Bucky felt Steve's shoulders tense for a moment. "I'm all they got for their trouble."

"Then it's a good thing they got you," Bucky told him. "Did it hurt much? Becoming… well…" He waved his free hand up and down in front of Steve's body. "This?"

Steve's tone was wry. "Like hell. Felt like I was burning and freezing inside. Like my skin was trying to split right open, and needles were stabbing into my brain. It was only for a couple of minutes, but it's not something I'd recommend trying."

Bucky nodded absently. The pain Steve had gone through sounded a lot like what Zola had put Bucky through. But if that pain had lasted only a couple of minutes, then he was one lucky S.O.B. Gettin' turned into a super-soldier sounded much more pleasant than being experimented on for new chemical weapons.

"Is it permane—"

Another series of loud explosions cut off Bucky's question before he could finish it. When he looked at Steve, he saw the unease he felt inside etched on his friend's face.

"Escape now, talk later?" Steve offered.

Swallowing his fear, Bucky nodded. Yes. Escape now would be very welcome.

They continued their graceless stumble as the distant battle raged on. Voices cried out orders in German and English, and the ghosts of a dozen other firefights came back to haunt Bucky as he lurched slowly to freedom.

The echoing sound of footsteps up ahead forced them to a halt. Bucky could feel Steve tense, his muscles bunching and tightening. The owner of the footsteps rounded the corner and morphed into a familiar figure. Colonel Lohmer's face was a maze of scowls and frowns which only deepened when his eyes fell on the pair of escapees. Bucky reacted on instinct. Grabbed Steve's pistol from his holster, thumbing off the safety as he lifted the weapon and pointed it at the man who'd tortured Bucky long before Zola had come along.

Lohmer's reaction was almost as immediate, but Bucky was a split second ahead of him. He pulled the trigger three times, each bullet finding its mark in Lohmer's chest. The man fell backwards, eyes fluttering closed as his ruined chest ceased to rise and fall. Breathing hard, Bucky put the safety back on the gun. God, that felt good! Vengeance, not just for himself but for all the men Lohmer had beaten and starved and worked to death. Their ghosts could rest easy, and Bucky could live with the knowledge that Lohmer would never leave this place to continue his brutal cruelty.

"Buck…" Steve's eyes were full of things Bucky hadn't seen in a very long time. Horror, reproach, disapproval… the things that were quickly stamped out of a man on the front lines.

"It's war, Steve," he said, handing back the pistol. "And that bastard had it coming."

Steve accepted the gun, and gave him a look that said, we'll talk about this later. Well, that was fine. If Steve wanted to talk about how shooting Nazis was the right thing to do, Bucky could talk his ear off. Or, better yet, Colonel Phillips could do it. Or Agent Carter. That way, Bucky wouldn't have to tell Steve about all the friends he'd lost, and see the pity in his best friend's eyes.

They hit the gantry above the main factory floor just as another rocking explosion hit the building. Below, machinery was engulfed in fireballs, and stones from the ruined walls flew across the length of the room, deadly projectiles if they managed to hit a man.

"Did you do that?" Bucky asked, gesturing at the pandemonium below.

Steve's frown returned as he shook his head. "No, but there goes our escape route." He glanced up, taking in the rest of the gantry system, and pointed to a door set higher on the other side of the wide room. "We should be able to get out that way. I saw a ladder leading down from it when I was looking for a way in."

"Another story you gotta tell me when we're in a better place." This new Steve Rogers was just full of surprises.

The stairs were very nearly the death of Bucky. His legs ached, his feet ached, his lungs ached, and every time something in the factory exploded, he felt it in his head, like it was his own brain exploding. Once or twice Steve looked back and slowed, ready to offer his shoulder, but Bucky waved him off. HYDRA had tried their hardest to break him, and he suspected they probably had. But he wasn't so broken that he couldn't escape from their torture-house under his own steam. He would not be carried out like some damsel in distress. He could do this on his own. He could save himself. Wells had taught him that.

"Captain America!"

Steve slid to a halt as a familiar voice yelled over the booming explosions, and Bucky very nearly slid right into Steve. Captain what?

"How exciting!" the voice called again. Its owner appeared on the steel gantry on the opposite side of the room, a tall man in a long dark coat. Bucky reached out to grip the gantry handrail in front of him, his fingers tightening around the cold metal. Anger ignited within his stomach, bubbling like a lava pit. That voice. It was the voice that had whispered in shadows with Zola. It was Schmidt.

The head of HYDRA handed a large briefcase to a shorter man, and Bucky's fingers subconsciously tightened even further. Zola! The evil doctor was dressed for escape in a long brown coat and a surprisingly ordinary hat. If Bucky hadn't known who and what the doctor was, he could've passed him on the street and never looked twice.

"I am a great fan of your films," Schmidt continued. Bucky shook his head. Films? No. That was stupid. He was obviously mishearing things. Schmidt had clearly mistaken Steve for somebody else.

The German man stepped forward, walking at his ease across the metal bridge which spanned the width of the room, seemingly unconcerned about the violent explosions directly below. His large, crazy eyes were fixed on Steve's face in a way that made Bucky wish he had a rifle in his hands. Never before had he seen such a look of pure greed.

"So. Doctor Erskine managed it after all." As if hypnotised by the man's words, Steve stepped out onto the bridge and walked until he reached the halfway point. Bucky wanted to follow him, to back him up, to be there for his friend, but he suspected if he let go of the rail, he might fall over. He might have found some second wind, but it wasn't a particularly strong one. "Not exactly an improvement," Schmidt taunted. "But still… impressive."

Steve, ignore him! Bucky thought to his friend. He's stalling for time. He doesn't want us to get away. He wants us to go down with this place.

Steve didn't hear Bucky's silent plea. Instead, he drew back his fist and hit Schmidt square on the jaw. The punch was a little sloppy, but it was thrown with enough force to send Schmidt staggering back by a pace. HYDRA's head rubbed his cheek with one gloved hand.

"You got no idea," Bucky heard his friend growl. Wait, Steve growled now?

"Haven't I?"

Bucky saw Schmidt's punch coming… but so did Steve. No longer the slow, weedy, back-alley scrapper of yesterday, he lifted the gaudy shield he was carrying and used it to block the incoming blow. Schmidt's hand struck like a toll of the bell, leaving behind an imprint of his fist in the metal. Bucky winced at the imagined pain, but Schmidt barely blinked.

The pair on the bridge erupted in a flurry of motion. Steve reached for his pistol; Schmidt knocked him back. The gun went flying out of Steve's hand before sliding over the edge of the bridge and disappearing into the fires below. Schmidt advanced; Steve kicked out, both feet—God when had his feet got so big?—connecting with the German's chest. The man went flying back by ten feet or more, and Bucky found a different kind of respect for his best friend.

A blur of sudden movement on the periphery of his vision caught Bucky's eye. Zola made a grab for a lever on his side of the bridge, and with a mechanical groan the steel structure began moving, separating at its midpoint and pulling Steve and Schmidt away from each other. A heavy, sinking feeling settle in Bucky's gut. That bridge had been their escape route.

Schmidt didn't seem too pleased about the premature end to the fight. He stood snarling as the bridge whisked him far out of striking range.

"No matter what lies Erskine told you, you see I was his greatest success!" Schmidt's voice oozed with fervent self-righteousness. He reached towards his face with his gloved hand and grasped at something with his fingertips. Slowly, methodically, he peeled his face away, and Bucky would've hurled everything in his stomach if there had been anything still in there. What lay beneath the mask of skin was a blood-red, nose-less sinewy skull.

Jeez, if that Erskine guy's serum had done that to Schmidt, what had it done to Steve? Bucky glanced at his best friend's back.

"You don't have one of those, do you?" he asked.

"You are deluded, Captain," said Schmidt. "You pretend to be a simple soldier, but in reality you are just afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind." He tossed his mask of skin over the gantry, and the flames enveloped it as it fell. Together with Zola, he strode towards a nearby door—an elevator, Bucky realised. "Unlike you, I embrace it proudly. Without fear!"

"Then how come you're running?" Steve called.

There was no answer. The elevator door slid closed. As both Germans disappeared from sight, Bucky made them a silent promise. They would pay. For everything they had done, for every needle they had stuck him with, for every cry of pain they had pulled from his lips, for every tear that had leaked from his eyes and every plea to let him die, they would suffer a thousand times over. And when they knew what true pain really felt like, he would do to them what he had done to Lohmer. He would make sure they could never hurt anybody ever again.

A particularly violent explosion shook the factory. Steve made a grab for the rail Bucky was already clinging to, his eyes darting around the collapsing structure as he searched for another way out. "Come on, let's go," he said, gesturing to a door above them as if he hadn't just seen a guy pull his face off. "Up."

Bucky swallowed the million questions he wanted to ask. This wasn't the time for questions. It was the time for escape, and long overdue.

They clambered up another fight of stairs, whilst all around them the building shook. It was all Bucky could do to stay upright and keep moving. And each time his friend hung back for him, he mentally cursed himself for not being fast enough. He'd lost too many friends in this war; he couldn't lose Steve, too.

There were no more stairs. They stopped at the highest gantry level. A dead end.

"Across there," said Steve, pointing at a narrow metal girder. His face was sweaty, charred with soot. Reminded Bucky of the time he and Wells had blown up a Nazi munitions factory and almost got caught in the blast wave. "C'mon, one at a time. You first."

Bucky was too exhausted to argue. He knew the girder was no thinner than the wooden beams he'd balanced along at boot camp, but suspended above the fiery room, it looked impossibly narrow.

C'mon, Barnes, you can do this, he told himself. You've done HYDRA bunkers and collapsing mines and tank-baiting… this isn't any worse than those things. Except, he hadn't been in agony and exhausted when doing those other things.

He took a step up—with Steve's help—and slowly edged his way out along the girder. The factory continued to rock. Bucky purposely didn't look down at the flames beneath him. He focused on the distant rail. One moving one foot in front of the other. On getting home one day, and seeing his family again.

Several large explosions rocked the girder, and it wailed out a high pitched, metallic groan. He knew he didn't have much time left. As the girder shook more violently, he picked up his speed, practically running the last few feet. The girder slid away from its hold on the other side of the gantry, and Bucky put every ounce of strength he could gather into a swift jump. He hit the rail and couldn't stop the quiet whimper escaping his lips as his lower ribs were smashed against the hard metal. Man up, he told himself. What's a little more pain?

He hauled himself over the rail and clung to it. His body demanded rest, but he couldn't rest yet. Not while his best friend was still over the other side with no way to cross.

Defeat was etched over Steve's face, and it made Bucky's heart ache painfully to see it. Steve, who'd never once backed down from a fight, who'd bounced back to his feet each time he was knocked down, who saw every obstacle put in his path as a personal challenge to be overcome, had given up.

"There's gotta be a rope or something," Bucky called, scanning the area for something. Anything.

"Just go," Steve called back. "Get out of here!"

"No!" He screamed pent-up defiance into his words. "Not without you!"

And if Steve Rogers thought Bucky was gonna leave his best friend to die in some collapsing inferno, then Bucky was just gonna have to find a way back to the other side and teach Steve a thing or two about what being best friends really meant.

Steve probably realised Bucky wasn't gonna leave him. He looked frantically around, then reached forward to—with his bare hands!—bend part of the railing back to allow an open path to Bucky's side of the room. He got that look on his face, the same look he'd worn when staring up at Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster, right before Bucky talked him to getting on it. That, I'm about to do something real stupid that I know I'm gonna regret, look.

Bucky's heart leapt into his mouth as Steve backed up. He was gonna jump. The crazy S.O.B. was actually gonna try to jump the entire width of a factory. Bucky prayed that the doctor who'd tinkered around with Steve's inner working had maybe stuck a bit of tiger in there, too.

Steve ran. He leapt. He soared. Bucky held his breath. Somewhere far below, something large and probably important exploded in a spray of metallic dust. The shockwave hit Steve from behind, adding new momentum to Steve's inertia, flinging him through the air. No longer soaring in an arc, he spun out of control before slamming into the wall behind Bucky. He fell onto the gantry with a pained groan.

"Steve!" Bucky rushed to his friend's side. If he had to carry Steve out of this place, it really would be just like old times. "Are you hurt?"

"Think I cracked a rib," Steve huffed. His face scrunched up in pain as he pushed himself to his knees. "Maybe two."

"Can you—"

Another explosion cut off Bucky's words. The look on Steve's face was all the answer he needed. This place was going down, and they had to get out before it did. Even if they had to crawl on hands and knees.

Steve managed to wince his way to his feet. At least the stubbornness hadn't been scienced out of him. "Come on, follow me. I can get us out from here."