46.
Caen, France
July 8th, 1944
After an intense stalemate for most of the month of June, the Allies' efforts the penetrate the German forces in Caen prove futile. No matter which angle they attempt to attack from, they can't provide any openings. Multiple operations prove wasteful, leading only to the destruction of the Norman city and the death of many innocent civilians.
That leaves said citizens to begin cleaning up their loved but martyred city, despite the continuing occupancy by the Germans. The Germans bark at them, their words undecipherable. Nevertheless, the citizens go where they're instructed, and they clean up the rubble that's pointed out to them until eventually, the ruined streets resemble roads again rather than gravel.
Some buildings are destroyed, laying in heaps, but some of them are savable. One such is the home of young Frenchwoman Madeleine Dufresne and her daughter Emilie. Madeleine's husband is long gone, called up to fight for the French Resistance, but the card she'd received in the mail only three weeks ago had put a sudden halt to any daydreams she may have had of her husband returning home again.
Madeleine pushes a strand of brown curls from her face as she bends down, sweeping up the plaster that's fallen from the roof onto the floorboards with the rattling of the building in the bombings. Other than everything being coated in a fine layer of dust, a few upturned picture frames and the window in the kitchen being smashed, the house is relatively unharmed.
As she tips the dust into the garbage bag, Madeleine pauses at the familiar buzzing sound coming from the sky, far off in the distance. She's frozen with fear, listening as the droning noise of an aircraft flies over the top of the city, getting insanely loud and rattling the walls as it gets closer. She drops the brush and peers out the window, a sense of dread settling in her stomach, but her eyebrows rise in surprise when instead of dropping bombs or medical materials, the distinctly Allied plane spills out thousands of bright yellow leaflets. They rain down from the sky, floating to the ground as they're caught in the wind, and come to rest all over the streets like a meadow of daffodils growing in the middle of the bitumen.
Madeleine bursts out onto the street outside, along with hundreds of other citizens. She catches one of the pamphlets from mid-air, spinning it around to read it.
Urgent message TO THE INHABITANTS OF THIS CITY
Dropped in a very inaccurate way the day of the strategic bombardments
You who read this leaflet, are in or near to a major centre essential to the enemy for the movement of its troops and materiel. The vital objective close to you will be attacked without delay. There is an urgent need for you to leave the zone of danger where you are with your family for a few days.
Do not clog up the roads. Disperse to the countryside as much as possible.
LEAVE AT ONCE! YOU DO NOT HAVE A MINUTE TO LOSE!
Instantly, chatter starts up between the people on the streets, debating whether or not to evacuate as the leaflets instruct. Some reassure that the town is not of importance. Others cry that for them to receive the leaflets, they must be in danger. A heated debate starts up, loud yelling in beautiful French, and it attracts the attention of the Germans, who come over to investigate the ruckus.
Madeleine feels her breath clog in her throat and her heart thud in her chest. They city's been bombed before and she can't see what would prevent it happening again, to draw the Germans from the city and prevent them from reaching the coast. She immediately goes back inside and shoves clothing and important documents and photo albums into a leather suitcase for her and her daughter, leaving the rooms destroyed in her haste.
Madeleine hoists the suitcase up into her grip and hurries along past the burgeoning crowds of terrified citizens that move in herds toward the evacuation points in the countryside and city's churches. Madeleine attempts to push through them, to get to the school a few streets over where Emilie is, but eventually the crowd gets too thick and she gets caught up. She's swept away with the masses of crying and terrified citizens, urged along by the police men who direct the flow of pedestrian traffic, finding herself being steered away from the school. She tries to cry out, screams for her daughter. A policeman on the edge of the crowd's bellowing voice cuts through the terrified murmuring, reassuring that they will all be safe.
The group splits at a cross roads, half of it heading toward the medieval tunnels on the outskirts of town that serve as shelters, the other half hurrying toward the Abbey of Saint-Étienne, the medieval-aged church that has been converted into a hospital to avoid bombing. A large white sheet sits atop the steeple, a red cross painted onto it in crimson blood to identify it as a makeshift hospital.
The crowd rushes through the large double doors and between the wooden pews under the arched beams of the high ceiling. The statue of Christ himself stands behind the altar with open arms, welcoming them all the sanctuary. Beside him, built into the ground, lies the remains of William the Conqueror, and the Allies wouldn't dare bomb the grave of an English king. The building is strong, the walls impenetrable, and the spirits of both sacred figures will surely protect the people.
The bombing begins a few hours later. They hear the buzzing of hundreds of planes flying overhead, low to the ground, and immediately there's the sound of gunfire as the Germans attempt to shoot down the planes. The first round of bombs is dropped in groups over the city, rocking the earth as though an earthquake had hit. Everyone screams. It's loud, the bombing, the explosions, the screaming, the crumbling of buildings, the scatter of rubble.
Within thirty minutes, the first lot of the wounded are brought into the Abbey, carried by their friends or by Allied soldiers, some of them dragging themselves. Quickly, the pews are occupied by the wounded, lying on them as medics and civilians struggle to save their lives, wrapping wounds and stanching blood loss.
One of the medics yells out to Madeleine and calls her over, slamming her hands over a bleeding gunshot wound to put pressure on the wound while he prepares his equipment. Madeleine kneels beside the panting woman, her hands covered in red, the blood dripping onto the tiled floor. The medic returns with tweezers and a scalpel, moves Madeleine's hands, and immediately digs into the woman to retrieve the bullet and shrapnel. Madeleine looks away, faint, the only thing anchoring her the woman's death grip on her hand.
Another round of bombs hit, closer this time, rattling the church's frame. The screaming and crying intensifies. The wounded moan in pain. A baby screams loudly in the corner, its mother rocking it with small sounds to hush it.
The inside of the church is packed, with hardly any room to move; too many people in one space at once. If the bomb hits the Abbey, despite it being a hospital, there'll be nowhere to run or hide. They're like fish in a barrel, and it's terrifying. All they can do is sit and wait and huddle together, say a silent prayer to the Lord himself, asking to be spared.
Outskirts of Caen, France
July 8th, 1944
Steve looks down at his watch. "Rise and shine, boys. Let's go."
Grumbling after their few hours of restless sleep, the Howling Commandos get up and start shouldering their gear. They step outside of their tents that they've set up and start to dismantle them, rolling the tarp and rods up into a size small enough to shove it back into their packs. Within five minutes, as though they'd done it before, the Commandos have all packed up their tents and gear and shouldered their packs, with rifles in hand, ready to move.
They walk over to join up with the rest of the infantry, who all look just as tired and ragged as them. They've all been out in the French countryside for over a month, encountering skirmish after skirmish and never really getting much closer to Caen itself. Multiple operations have failed, including ones to bomb the city to entice the Germans out, and all their plans of attack have proved futile. They're all tired and need rest with a proper bed and a good amount of food, but it's off the cards as of yet.
Steve and the Commandos could've called to be picked up, but as they've established, they'll be a massive help to the campaign, and they can't bring themselves to leave these men like that.
The Howling Commandos are only a small squad, but the six, heavily-armed men in full battle gear look formidable and intimidating. As they approach, the rest of the infantry watch, but in fascination and fear.
They can hear small arms fire and distant artillery booms echoing from the surrounding villages and from Caen not far in the distance. They can see, through the air, the plane flying over the city, the bombs dropping down on the buildings. Flashes of light and mushroom-shaped explosion appear on the horizon repeatedly. The sky looks like its on fire. The air trembles, and a rumbling sound like thunder rolls of the countryside like a tidal wave.
The magnitude of it all is incredible, strange, otherworldly. Every man is transfixed. They're frozen in place as the lights play on their faces.
Bucky looks down and sees his hand is quivering. He quickly balls it into a fists and squeezes, willing the shakes to leave. When he flattens out his hand, it's still, and he quickly grabs up his rifle in both hands again. He looks up and Steve is looking at him with worry, but he says nothing about it.
"Makes you feel small, doesn't it?" Steve says instead, looking back to the blazing sky.
"It doesn't take this," Bucky replies quietly.
"I wasn't made for this," a small voice says from behind them. Steve and Bucky turn around to see a young boy standing with his friends behind them, his face morphed into an expression of terror, every inch of his body shaking. He can't be older than nineteen, short and small with a tousle of dark curls atop his head, sticking up from under his helmet. "I-I can't. I'm not made for this."
"You think the rest of us were?" Bucky barks at him bitterly, his own fear shining though. The young man recoils and Bucky instantly regrets his words. Bucky takes a deep breath. "Don't worry, pal," Bucky says, much more gently, and the boy relaxes. Bucky puts a hand on his shoulder. "What's your name, kid? You believe in God?"
The boy nods. "Private Alden, sir. And yes, sir, I do."
"Then God'll protect you. This shit would have kept him up all night, anyway," Bucky jokes, and the boy manages to smile. "If you doubt that, you can stick with us, if you want. Captain Rogers here loves it when other people use him as a human shield," Bucky offers, pointing to Steve.
The boy looks slightly confused, but his eyes widen at the sight of Steve in his Captain America costume. "O-okay. Thank you, sir."
Bucky smiles and pats the boy's shoulder one last time for good measure. He turns back to his men just as Sergeant Anderson moves to the front.
"Let's go, they don't pay us to watch the show," Anderson barks.
Instantly, the men follow his lead in a synchronised march toward Caen just over the hill. And if Bucky notices that Private Alden sticks closest to him, he doesn't say anything.
By the time the unit reaches the city, the liberation has already begun. Most of the troops have already headed into the city's streets, despite the fact that the bombers are still flying low over the city.
The Commandos and the infantry, some two-thousand soldiers they've managed to gather together in the last month with reinforcements, sit hiding in the trees on the outskirts of Caen watching as the bombers fly low over the city. The bombs drop from the bellies of the planes with a loud roar before hitting the city, lighting up the land in blasts of red and yellow.
For hours the planes have dropped bombs, over and over, and now the onslaught is nearing its end so that all of the foot soldiers and tanks can move in. Some of the planes have been hit by return fire from the Germans within the city, from both tanks and machine guns. They've crash landed in the fields around the city, smoke rising off in the distance from the burning vehicles.
Still, explosion after explosion, fireball after fireball, the city is slowly but efficiently flattened into rubble. Debris flies everywhere into the sky. The air turns black with smoke, the smell of burning wood and rubber and plastic filling their noses.
The wait, just watching, feels like an eternity. Everyone looks terrified, their eyes wide and their hands trembling. Beads jingle as Dernier busily worries his rosary beads, mumbling prayers under his breath in French. Monty admires a picture of his wife back home, looking so life like she could almost bounce off the paper. Steve pulls out his compass one last time to see his Isabel. Sergeant Anderson has a steely expression, smoking away at a cigarette. And Private Alden is still loyally beside Bucky, crouched beside him, and looking terrified, the light of the fire reflecting in his dark eyes.
Bucky glances around at the hundreds of other soldiers around him, illuminated in shadows beneath the tree canopy. Hundreds of men who look around in a mix of anxiety, calm, and heart-stopping fear. What waits for them in the city, after all, is undeniably worse than what they've been facing the last few weeks, waiting to reach the main fight. The soldiers enjoy the purgatory-like existence, even if it only lasts a few drawn out moments, before they'll crash headlong into the lands of hell and meet the devil himself.
Then suddenly, the four-hundred or so planes turn around in the air and flee back toward London, empty of ammo.
At a yell from Sergeant Anderson, the soldiers push forward to join those already within the city. Steve runs at the front of the group with his shield raised, a light for the men to follow through the darkness. They run from the outskirts of the city into the smoking streets, thankfully bustling with German advancement rather than the Caen civilians. They can barely see far in front of them, can just make out silhouettes and bodies on the ground, but slowly the smoke clears to reveal the wreckage of a once beautiful city.
Bucky sticks as close to Steve as he can, his legs pumping to keep up, and practically drags Alden along with him to keep the boy close. They're all close enough that they bump into each other with each step, their rifles clinking against each other every now and then.
Slowed by the rubble, the Allies' entrance into the city is slackened significantly. However, they utilise the debris as barricades to fire from behind, to reload, to gather their wits and their breath. The Germans fire back using the same technique, setting up debris and abandoned buildings as posts for their defence. As the Allies move through, attempting to push the Germans out of the city, a lot of the men go down to gunshot wounds and grenade fire, hitting the ground with a thud. There's a lot of yelling, but it's drowned out by gunfire, their semi-automatics singing as they let out rounds of bullets.
The infantry separates into groups automatically, as though they'd practised it, to move through the city. The Commandos, plus a few tag-alongs from the infantry, set off down the main street of the town.
In the clock tower ahead, Bucky just spots the glint of metal – a sniper. The sniper takes aim and Bucky yells out, quickly pulling Alden and Dernier and diving through the smashed window of a burnt-out pub just as a shot rings out, hitting one of the infantry men standing beside them. The Commandos jump aside at Bucky's yell, and then the rest of the men copy suit, hiding in the shopfronts along the main street.
"God dammit," Bucky hisses, looking at the man who'd been standing beside them.
He hurriedly gets his rifle ready and sets it up with help from Dernier, getting into a position in which he can see the sniper atop the clock tower but not be shot himself. Bucky takes a few deep breaths and calms himself, looks through the scope, and thinks of nothing but his target. He lines it up and waits for the sniper to move, and he does. His head appears right in the middle of the cross within the scope, and Bucky pulls the trigger. The gun lets off an almighty bang, the sniper jolts backward, and two seconds later, the body topples from the window of the clock tower to the ground below.
"Nice, Buck," comes Steve voice over the intercom.
"We moving on?" Bucky asks.
Steve, who is a few shops up from Bucky, has a better view of what's ahead of them. "Not yet," Steve says. "Germans are coming."
They've got a perfect view of the street from their hiding spots within the shop fronts, and as the Germans troop down the street between them, they shoot from their hideout. The Germans don't even see them, haven't even a second to radio it in before they're torn up by gunfire. Bucky, Dernier and Alden cover each other as they reload, slamming the magazines back into the compartment. The Germans go down quickly, it being about twelve of them to the fifteen or so Allies in the area, and the street falls silent again.
"Let's go," Steve says into the radio.
Bucky nods to the others, readjusting his helmet on his head. They stand then and run back out into the street, meeting up with the others. They make their way along the edges of the buildings, searching for any hiding enemies. It takes a long while before they find anyone, thinking perhaps they chose a dud area of the city to invade. There's an odd German here and there, but Bucky's skills with the rifle take them down as soon as they round the corner.
Within the rubble, the Germans have hidden land mines, dangerous and lurking in wait. None of them notice them, surprisingly, until Alden makes note of the familiar disc shape planted to the ground.
"Stop!" Steve calls, and everyone pauses where they are.
They look around and notice they're surrounded by them on every angle, buried beneath the rubble. It'll be a maze to get out, and they're lucky they made it this far in their naivety without being blown up. It explains why this area of the city is so abandoned.
One of the men from the infantry panics. He sprints away like lightning, a belt of bullets hung around his neck. He doesn't make it far when he runs over the top of a rubble pile. Everyone else dives to the ground, covering their heads. A second later, the mine explodes at waist level, sending the soldier flying into the air every which way with a sprinkle of individual bullets to go with it. A hand falls a few metres from them. Alden makes a gagging sound.
Wary of their exposure in the middle of the street, Bucky hurries up and pushes on Steve's back to get him to move. "We can't stay here. We're sitting ducks."
"Agreed."
Steve leads them in a careful hurry across the road, dodging the rubble piles, toward a darkened alleyway on the other side which will allow them to cut through to the next street and get out of the area. They stick close together, rifles raised against any attackers.
Suddenly, Private Alden trips over his own boots, falling dangerously close to a protruding landmine. Bucky doubles back and grabs him under the arms, his nose only a few inches from the mine. The boy is so shocked he barely moves, his body stiff. Bucky lifts him upright, half-carrying and half-dragging him to safety. He can see how terrified the boy is, and he's got the image of what he thinks the man's mother would look like burned into his mind and he's got to get Alden to safety.
Steve and the others make it to the alley. Steve hurries them through, pointing Monty and Jones to the other end where they can see a group of Allied soldiers standing, in a skirmish against a group of Germans. They run down the narrow and dark alleyway to offer their assistance.
Steve turns when Bucky hasn't passed him yet, seeing Alden terrified and hysterical in Bucky's arms. Steve moves forward to offer a hand, when he freezes.
"Bucky, stop!" Steve yells, but it's too late.
Alden, in his panic, is walking with wide footsteps as Bucky drags him along. His foot flicks out and hits a large piece of rubble, which knocks into a lazy landmine waiting underneath, only visible from where Steve stands. Any scream that might have escaped Steve is lodged in his throat like a bullet. He sees Bucky's face fall in realisation of what's happened, Alden's petrified scream, and then the world explodes in a mass of rubble and fire and heat, throwing Steve backward with the force of it. He smacks into the wall of the building, a throbbing pain moving through the back of his head, and his word goes black before he hits the dirty ground.
Steve wakes up, and he isn't entirely sure how long he's been out. He sits up slowly, his head aching, and when he touches the back of his head, his hair is slick with blood. His stomach also aches, and Steve looks down, seeing a patch of blood starting underneath his uniform.
It all floods back pretty quickly and his eyes snap up to the scene in front of him. There's blood everywhere and not far from where Alden and Bucky had been standing lies Alden, on the ground, bleeding out from a sizeable hole in his stomach. The bomb, "a bouncing betty", exploded at gut height, with fragments penetrating up to twenty yards out from where it exploded.
Steve crawls along the ground over to Alden, appearing over the boy. He's shaking all over, and he grabs up Steve's hand when he offers it. The amount of blood is incredible since the torso of the human body is packed with blood vessels. There's nothing anyone can do for someone hit so close to the blast zone, not even with medical care. The boy will bleed out quickly. Alden takes a few strangles breaths, his eyes wide as he stares up at Steve for help.
"You'll be okay. You'll be okay," Steve promises, hushing him until the boy takes his final breath.
Steve sighs and clamps his eyes shut, taking a few seconds to stabilise himself. Then, he pulls off one of Alden's dog tags and puts it in his own pocket.
This is the exact purpose of the mine, Steve realises – not to kill instantly, but to injure, and to take both the victim and those surrounding him out of the game. But this game is different, because Steve and Bucky are enhanced.
Steve looks up and spots Bucky a few yards away, lying on his stomach. Steve hurries over to him, staying low to the ground. He puts a hand on Bucky's back first and feels the hitched breath that makes his back rise and fall. He breathes a sigh of relief, but they aren't out of the woods, not by a long shot.
"Bucky?" Steve asks, leaning over to look at Bucky's face. His eyes are closed, his brows furrowed in pain, cheek squashed up against a piece of rubble. "Buck, wake up!"
Steve pushes gently on Bucky's shoulder and turns him onto his back so he can inspect the damage. Bucky's got some bleeding on his torso from the mine's impact, but he's also got a massive gash across his forehead where a bruise is starting to form already. Steve realised Bucky must have dived away from the mine at the last second, trying to stay low to the ground, as being lower to the ground increases the chances of surviving a blast from this kind of bomb. Being so close, the blast likely would have still been lethal had Bucky not been enhanced, and still could be for all Steve knows. And the force still would have thrown Bucky, likely headfirst, into the rubble.
"Buck, wake up, talk to me," Steve asks.
He pats Bucky's cheek to try to get him to wake up. When he doesn't, Steve tries rubbing the area on his chest above his sternum, trying to get something out of him. Bucky comes to with a strangled breath and immediately his face screws up in pain, clutching his stomach. Steve hurriedly pulls up Bucky's shirt and jacket, which has been blasted into pieces and singed, and finds some severe puncture wounds in Bucky's stomach, moving around to his back. Steve just prays he doesn't have a magnitude of internal bleeding to go with it, but by all rights he should.
"It's okay, Buck, I'm going to get you help," Steve promises.
He stands carefully and puts his hands under Bucky's shoulders and knees, lifting his friend bridal-style. He'd lift Bucky over his shoulder to free up his hands more, but the pressure on his stomach would be too much. Even this movement makes Bucky groan, but he holds in his scream of pain by clenching his teeth.
Steve starts off through the streets toward the makeshift hospital they'd passed on the way through, set up in the ancient cathedral. His feet can hardly carry him fast enough. He's just glad they're travelling through the parts of the city where the Germans have already been cleared out, moving away from the action.
Bucky's got a sheen of sweat across his forehead mixing with the massive amounts of blood by the time Steve gets him to the Abbey. Steve hurries up the front steps and bursts in through the doors, met immediately with a scene of chaos. The church pews have been converted into beds for the wounded and the medics are running between patients with equipment in hands. There's an awful lot of screaming and crying. A baby is squealing in the far corner. And the poor civilians are helping the medics, their hands covered in blood and their faces terrified and green.
"Someone, help!" Steve calls into the cathedral, his voice echoing along with everyone else's.
He hurries Bucky over to a free pew and lays his friend down. Within seconds, a medic is by his side, his arm laden with tools and equipment and bandages.
"Landmine. German SS. He dived but he still got hit," Steve explains quickly.
The medic, an American soldier, nods and quickly gets to work. He rips off Bucky's shirt and jacket and starts patching up the wounds, staunching the blood flow. Steve hurriedly grabs up a spare piece of cloth and wipes the blood from Bucky's pained face, getting most of it where it's dripping down his eyes and into his mouth and coating his hair. Then, Steve presses the cloth to the wound itself with a bit of pressure. Bucky's wincing under their hands, the pain getting too much for him.
"How'd we ge' here? I'm havin' a real bad day again, Stevie," Bucky slurs, his eyes wide with pain and terror. He looks around at the roof of the cathedral, obviously not able to remember Steve carrying him halfway across the city.
"Yeah, pal, you are."
"Had 'im on the ropes."
Steve suppresses his laugh. "The landmine? Jeez, Buck."
"You gotta go back 'n' fight," Bucky tells Steve, frowning at him disapprovingly. "Leave me, 'm fine."
Steve tries to argue, but the medic agrees with Bucky, claiming he can stabilise the bleeding. Steve promises to be back as soon as possible and leaves the cathedral with an uneasy feeling in his stomach. The last thing he sees is the medic calling over a young French woman, asking her to clean the wound on Bucky's forehead a little more. Steve steps back outside into the loudness of the explosions and gunfire. He closes the doors of the cathedral behind him again, hoping they'll block it all out for the poor people inside.
By the end of the day and after a lot of fighting, shooting, reloading, searching for more ammo, clearing bodies and avoiding landmines, the Allies gain full control of Caen once again and the city is officially liberated after nearly four years of German occupation.
As soon as Steve is able, he plans to hurry back to the cathedral. It's been hours since the fighting officially ended, but technically he's a Captain so the soldiers from all infantries have been coming to him for instruction, particularly those who can't find their own superior officers. They'd begun clean up of the bodies and of the streets, and Steve had radioed for a bomb squad to come to remove the mines from the city streets. Steve had then taken it upon himself to search around to find all the bodies and collect up a dog tag to take to their commanding officers. By the end he has an entire pouch full, weighing heavily on him from where it hangs from his belt.
Steve then gathers up the Howling Commandos and makes sure none of them are injured, but thankfully they have all been spared apart from a few scrapes and bruises, nothing Morita hasn't been able to patch up.
"Where's Serge?" Morita asks.
"He and Alden stepped on a landmine," Steve says quietly. "Buck will be fine, but… Alden's gone." He takes a deep breath. "I'll go find Bucky again, see how he's doing and bring him back if he's alright. You guys see what you can do to help out around here. Don't split up, we'll never find each other again."
The men nod and head off into the crowd together, particularly to the sound of screaming in a building off to their right. Steve isn't even twenty seconds down the road before he hears someone frantically calling for him.
"Cap! Cap, wait!"
Steve recognises it as Morita and he spins around, immediately believing something to be wrong. "What's wrong?"
"That building over there, it's a schoolhouse," Morita explains, pointing to the building the screaming had been coming from. "They've been evacuating it, but there's a whole lot of kids trapped inside by a fallen beam in the back room. We can't get in."
Steve hurries with Morita, sprinting back toward the schoolhouse. On the front lawn are a squad of soldiers, each of them holding one of the children, the rest of the Commandos among them. They're all black with ash and smoke, their clothes and skin discoloured, and a few of them are coughing from inhaling the smoke. They're all crying, mainly, and the soldiers are attempting to calm them, offering them food and stories and songs.
Steve and Morita get inside, and the building is a fiery mess, flames coming from every corner. The roof has caved in from a shell that landed on it, the floor in one classroom with a massive hole to the basement below.
"Wait outside with the others," Steve tells Morita, watching as the man scurries safely back outside.
Steve wraps a piece of cloth around his mouth to keep the smoke from his lungs and then heads deeper into the building. The smoke is thick enough that he can barely see, so Steve ducks low and runs along the hallways to the back room, the only room to not have been evacuated of children yet.
The room is so hot it brings a sweat to Steve's forehead immediately. He spots the three children in the back corner of the classroom, sitting under a metal desk. They're screaming, loudly, and coughing more and more with every breath they take. They're trapped there by a large pile of debris and a metal beam that's fallen from the roof, blocking the path in and out and taking up most of the room.
Steve crawls under one of the smaller exposed beams, far enough off the ground he can just squeeze himself under. As he does he puts a hand down on a broken piece of metal so hot from the flames it burns the skin on his hand. He hurries onward, dodging the flames, and comes to a stop before the largest beam. Putting two hands under it, Steve braces himself and then lifts with all his might, the beam climbing off the ground above his head. Balancing on one leg, Steve uses his other leg to kick the rubble out the way, giving the children a clear path to climb through to reach him.
"Come! Quickly!" Steve grunts, the thick metal beam making his arms strain.
The children quickly crawl quickly through the mess, one after the other, their faced terrified. As soon as they're clear, Steve lets the beam drop carefully, but it still makes a loud thud on the floor, cracking the flimsy wood. Steve takes the large piece of fabric from his mouth, rips it into three, and places it over the children's mouths. Then, he scoops the three children up, who can't be older than eight, juggling them all in his arms. They weight almost nothing compared to the beam.
"Quelqu'un d'autre? (Anyone else?)" Steve asks them, and they shake their heads.
At that, Steve starts off to the outside. He jumps the beam this time, just clearing it, and then runs with the children as close to the ground as he can to stop the smoke. He makes it outside into the fresh air just as the building comes down entirely behind them, the roof of the hallway crashing to the floor and the roof of the building collapsing in on itself with a blast of smoke that billows out into the street. Steve stops and turns back once he's in the clear, watching the building be demolished by the fire. Only a few more seconds and they wouldn't have made it out.
Immediately, Morita is by Steve's side, and he takes one of the children from his hands. Jones takes another, leaving Steve holding a small brunette girl.
"They need a medic, now," Morita says, leading them away from the school toward the abbey where Steve had left Bucky. "They've been in there much longer than anyone else. They could have severe smoke inhalation."
They hurry through the town, the crying children in their hands. Steve gets a good look at the girl in his arms, but she doesn't seem to injured from his point of view. He knows she could have internal injuries, but she's lacking many bruises or cuts, only covered in a layer of ash. She makes eye contact with him as she walks and clasps her arms around Steve's neck, burrowing her head as she cries. Steve holds on a little tighter.
They burst through the doors of the abbey, but no one looks up. It's even busier and more packed than it had been when Steve was here a few hours ago, and the medics look impossibly more frazzled. Steve can't help the fear that shoots through him when he looks over to where he'd left Bucky and he isn't there anymore. He's about to panic and call out for Bucky, when–
"Serge!" Morita says with a smile.
Steve snaps around to look where Morita is, and spots Bucky sitting up against the wall to their left, having given his pew to someone in more need. The woman who had been called over to help Bucky's injuries is still sitting with Bucky, offering him a cup of water and holding a cloth to Bucky's head to cool him off. Bucky's talking to her, looking reminiscent, and Steve thinks he's probably telling her a story.
Bucky looks up at Morita's words and instantly he smiles. The woman looks up too, her face one of recognition as she looks at the men who Bucky must have told her about. Her eyes snap to Steve, and then widen at who sits in his arms. The woman cries out in anguish and jumps up, her dark curls bouncing as she runs over to them.
Madeline's feet can't carry her fast enough across the busy abbey to the Captain, who holds in his arms her little Emilie. She'd been so worried for her daughter, being stuck at the school, but she hadn't the bravery to go out into the fighting to find her. The Captain has a blood-stained face, but kind eyes, and when Madeline approaches he taps the girl on her back, coaching her to look up from where her face is buried in his neck.
Madeline takes her child from Steve's arms and wraps her up in her own embrace, cupping the back of her daughter's head and pressing a longing kiss to her forehead. She can't help the tears of relief that escape her. Emilie cries as well, clutching her mother's neck tightly. She's coughing, a haggard sort of sound like she's been a smoke for thirty years.
Madeline looks up at the young Captain, his haunted expression. He offers her a small smile, but it doesn't come from the soul. She looks him up and down, at the uniform she never thought she'd see in person, but her eyes pause on the pouch attached to his belt full to the brim of blood-spattered dog tags. Her eyes turn soft with pity.
"Merci," she whispers to Steve. "Merci."
Madeline practically flies into his arms, hugging him tightly around the neck, Emilie between them. Steve pauses only a moment before gently hugging her back, wary of the way she cries against his shoulder, loud in his ear. She presses a sweet French kiss to his cheek to his bloodied cheek in thanks.
Steve manages a smile. "You're welcome."
After Morita has explained to Madeline what happened to her daughter, Madeline hustles her daughter over to a medic to get her checked over. The woman is eternally grateful for what the Commandos have done for her. Morita and Jones then move off to take the children around and find their own parents, hoping they're still alive, meeting up with Monty and the others outside where they still wait at the school.
While they're off, Steve walks over to Bucky and takes a seat beside his friend. "How you feelin', Buck?" Steve asks quietly.
"I'm okay," Bucky promises. "The explosion knocked me out, that's why I was so dopey. Medic reckons I have a concussion. Stomach's a bit banged up and cut up, but I'll be fine. It'll heal." Bucky pauses then, looking thoughtful. "I got lucky, Steve."
"Yeah, I guess you did," Steve agrees.
"The kid…?"
Steve shakes his head. "There was nothing I could do."
Bucky nods. "I didn't think so. I don't even know how I survived it. I must have jumped down just fast enough. That poor kid, he had no idea what hit him."
It's all a little blurry for Bucky, which he thinks is probably from the concussion – running for cover from any approaching Germans, the landmine, jumping to the side, being thrown forward, waking up covered in a blanket of debris, Steve carrying him to the abbey, the medic stitching his stomach up. Now, there's a throbbing pain both around his entire stomach and in his forehead from the massive gash along his hairline. It's wrapped up now in a thick bandage that's hot against his head. Bucky puts his head in his hands to try to dull it.
"I wish I could have done something," Steve mumbles. "All I could do was stand there and watch. I was so sure you were gone."
"That's war, Steve. You can't save anything. Something like that happens too quick. You can't do anything. That's what they're designed for."
"I know, but I–" Steve cuts off and puts his head in his hands.
"You haven't lost that many of your own men, Steve. You get used to it after a while. You learn how to deal with it and put it behind you," Bucky tells him.
Steve looks exhausted and beside himself. He unclips the pouch from his belt and shows Bucky just how many dog tags he's collected, how many dead comrades he had to look at to be able to take them for their families. "How? How do you do it? How do you deal with it?" Steve asks, entirely broken. "Because I honestly have no idea."
"Well, because of my mother," Bucky says.
Steve frowns. "What about her?"
"You remember how my grandfather was a great poker player?" Steve nods. "My grandfather taught my Ma everything he knew. She's one of the best poker players you ever saw. Before the Depression, Dad used to go to Saturday night games with friends and lose a bit of money. One day, Dad gets sick, but he still wants to play, so Ma goes with him and helps him out, sits at the table for him and just does what he asks. But then she started playing for herself and from that first night, she never lost. Not once. She could read the men like an open book. And her bluffs? She had sixteen levels of bullshit – her eyes, the tone of her voice, her bets, her jokes, the way she drank her coffee, all of it was mastered. She won more money on shit hands than Dad made on a great one. She won back all the money Dad ever lost and a hellava lot more. And then, when I got older, she taught me all of it, even when she didn't play anymore. That's why I was always so good when we played." Bucky pauses and licks his lips. He looks Steve dead in the eye, then. "I can look at a man's face and tell you exactly what cards he's holding, and if it's a shit hand, I know what cards to deal him to make it a little easier on him."
Steve frowns at that. Bucky knows how to fix someone else's problem, how to help a comrade through a hard time, how to convince the men to behave while still remaining friendly with them. But he still hasn't explained how he himself deals with things. "What about your own hand?" Steve asks, keeping with the metaphor Bucky's using.
"Easy; a pair of deuces, less? I bluff," Bucky says with a shrug. "It used to tear me apart when one of my men got killed, but what was I supposed to do? Break down in front of the ones waiting for me to lead them? Of course not, so I bluffed, and after a while I started to fall for it myself. It made everything so much easier."
"Is that why your hand's been shaking?" Steve asks quietly, eyeing Bucky curiously.
Bucky shrugs again, looking down at the offending limb. "It could be worse. You know the first thing they teach you at O.C.S? Lie to your men. Well, not in so many words, but they tell you that you can have all the firepower in the world, but if your men have bad morale, you'll never win. If you're scared or empty of half-a-step from a section eight, you don't tell your men. You bluff, you lie."
"And how do you bluff yourself?"
"Numbers. Every time one of your men gets killed, you tell yourself you just saved the lives of two, three, ten, a hundred others. You lost, what, fifteen men breaking the one-oh-seventh of Hydra? I'll bet we saved ten times that number by getting those men out, because they either rejoined the fight or went home to their families, and we took down all those Hydra goons, who would have no doubt gone on to kill others. Three hundred men, maybe five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand you saved. Any number you want. See? It's simple, Stevie." Bucky explains, as though it is the easiest thing in the world. "It lets you always choose the mission over men."
"It's a little harder when there's people on my missions I'd never want to lose," Steve notes.
"That's the rub, ain't it," Bucky laughs. "If me and Dugan were both standing in front of you and you had to shoot one or the other, how do you choose?"
"You know who I'd chose," Steve tells Bucky. "It would be hard, but if I had to, I would. I'd save you."
"You know why?" Bucky asks.
"Why?"
"Because that's the way it's always been. That's always been our mission, to look after each other, and to look after our families. And sometimes, when something's been a mission of yours for so long, it's impossible to override it, even if it means you doing the wrong thing."