Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ropes of a pulley were banging against a flagpole when Peggy Carter emerged from intelligence headquarters. Hours in front of maps and reports so fresh the inky, stamped letters were smudged in places had robbed her of her ability to gauge time. It was that indiscernible time of night where one couldn't tell if the sun had just gone down or was about to rise again. Under normal circumstances, she'd never have let herself lose track of time. Peggy hadn't remembered to put her watch back on her wrist since taking it off for a self-appointed mission in which a reflection off of its components could have proven disastrous. There'd been much more pressing matters at hand.

Speaking of…

Cold and damp November clung to Peggy's hair as she set off into the sleepy camp, muddy footprints recording her progress. The base was as morose and tired as it had been when she'd arrived just days before. One might expect a rollicking good time, a celebration of the estimated 400 men returned to the Allies overnight; contraband should have been on full display, drinking, laughing, complete strangers hugging like brothers reunited.

Peggy had seen the type of thing before, but this camp was nothing like that. After the applause and shouting when the men had first arrived, led by Captain America, cartoon come to life, the men had become quite sombre again. They were tired, Peggy knew. The survivors of the prison camp were tired, and the men who had been here before were tired. From what Peggy had heard, nearly half the survivors of the labour camp were in bad shape and needed some form of medical attention. A good portion of those beds were already occupied by troops from the other units. The colonel had already issued an order to prepare room at a hospital in London and to move the survivors out of Italy at the earliest opportunity.

Meeting no one along the way to the aid station, Peggy shouldered her way inside. The floor was covered in bunks and improvised beds. Low lamps casted a glow over the sea of olive drab man-shaped lumps. It was as quiet in here as it was outside: a few murmurs among the patients who were still awake and rain beginning to plunk overhead. Peggy moved carefully between the rows with her head high. Red Cross nurses stretched their lips in an attempt at a smile if they caught her eye; otherwise they kept their heads down and went about their work.

Beyond a few makeshift walls, all the way in the back, Peggy was confident that she'd found what she sought. The reports said he'd been quarantined from the others, and there was no proper quarantine to be had out in the field beyond the canvas screens blocking the last bed from all the others.

Perhaps she'd been too eager or was properly exhausted, but Peggy didn't hear the voice speaking on the other side of the screen until she had already slipped between a gap and was inside the partition.

"Oh," she said, and the voice stopped.

A rather gruff-looking man was staring up at her from a wooden chair, his well-worn boots propped up on the end of a bunk. Another man was lying, apparently asleep, on his side on the bunk with his back to her, barely visible under a suspicious number of blankets. From the looks of it, the man in the chair was just as surprised to see her as she was to see him. It struck Peggy that he had the pinched look of someone who had lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time. There was a book in the seated man's hands, from which he had, presumably, just been reading aloud; Peggy could see several scribbled notes among the print.

She'd been expecting Steve.

"Pardon me," Peggy said. "I'll just—"

"Who's there?" mumbled the man on the bunk.

Both Peggy and the man with the book looked at the one on the bed.

"'S nothin', Sarge, just a—" the seated man took in her uniform with a gaze that was not unfriendly or indecent "—just a runner from HQ."

The man on the bed turned just enough so he could squint up at her with glassy eyes. Peggy was sure he couldn't actually see her, but he turned back over toward his companion and let out a forced exhale. "'M fine."

"I know," said the other.

"I didn't mean to intrude. I really should be go—" Peggy began.

"Lookin' for Rogers?" said the gruff one.

"Actually, I was."

He nodded. "Said he'd be back," the man checked a pocket watch open on a makeshift bedside table, "in T-minus fifteen minutes, if you wanna wait."

Deciding it would be a wasted opportunity to do otherwise, Peggy said, "I suppose I will wait."

The seated man stood and offered her his seat. He pulled a metal pail from under the head of the bunk, turned it upside down, and sat on the bottom. Holding out a hand toward her, he said, "Timothy Dugan. Friends call me Tim. And this big lump is Sergeant Barnes."

She shook his hand and took her seat. "Agent Carter."

"Agent, huh?"

She gave him a smile that was a touch brittle.

"Sorry about the runner bit," Dugan said. "I was going to say you were a nurse or one of them USO broads, but I thought he might try to stand up and be proper." His eyes were on his sleeping companion.

"I won't take it personally."

Dugan marked the page of the book he was holding (something from Agatha Christie) and set it on the side table beside a bowler hat. He said to her, "Agent of what, if you don't mind me asking? I'm a corporal in the 107th myself."

Deciding she didn't want to lie outright to him, Peggy said, "I think I do mind."

"Ah, one of them, huh?" Dugan didn't look amused. "You know that I spent God-knows-how-long in a factory building weapons that shoot blue light and vaporise people? A guy callin' himself Captain America — who I am convinced was an act of divine intervention — turned up and busted us out. Agent Carter, nothing surprises me anymore."

"What are you driving at?" she asked, amused and interested.

Dugan sat back on his bucket and shrugged. "I'm just saying I know both our guys and the bad guys have been getting up to no good."

"You think I'm up to no good?"

"You might be." Dugan shrugged as if it was no matter to him. "I'm no saint myself. Between you and me, Agent Carter, I didn't kill a man for the first time on a battlefield."

"Nor did I." Peggy could tell immediately that she'd scored a point on him then.

In a lower voice, Dugan said, "My sergeant was tied down and used as a human experiment. That doesn't sit right with me."

Peggy supposed that was meant to sound threatening.

He continued, "Not saying I know what all those Germans were doing in that factory, but I'm not that stupid to think our side doesn't have a little of the same thing."

"Corporal, Steve Rogers was never forced onto an exam table and his insides made into playthings."

"That what the reports say?"

"Yes. He'll tell you himself nothing happened to him that he did not agree to have done."

"Did he write the reports?"

She was beginning to quite like this Dugan. He could hold an interesting conversation. Unsure where this was going and rather interested, Peggy said, "No, he didn't."

"Reports tell you what happened, but they don't tell you the story," Dugan said as his eyes drifted toward Sergeant Barnes. "We ought to be able to choose who tells our stories."

There was a pause. Then Dugan spoke again, his eyes on Peggy and a grin cracking his face, "Like I said, I'm choosing to believe that Captain America was an act of divine intervention. So whatever secret division you work for, if they keep this—" he jerked his head toward Barnes "—from ever happening again, you're alright in my book."

"The lesser of two evils, am I?"

Whether she was or not, Peggy didn't find out. A new body appeared in the gap of the partition, and it was not Steve returned as Dugan had said. It was a regular Army officer.

Dugan jumped to his feet and saluted. "Lieutenant Springer—oh! Captain Springer!"

The man called Springer smiled genuinely at Dugan and returned salute. "Corporal! Can't say I ever expected to see you again, but I sure am pleased!" He looked as if he'd rather like to embrace Dugan but held himself back. The two shook hands.

"Congratulations on the promotion, sir," Dugan said.

"Thanks. But I think they actually ran out of bodies and had to start promoting everyone." Springer looked around the space. "How're you though? No wounds?"

"No, sir. I'm doing just fine."

Used to being overlooked by regular Army men, Peggy watched their conversation patiently. Steve should be returning soon, if Dugan was correct about the time.

Springer said, "And Barnes?" His eyes drifted to the sergeant who hadn't so much as snored at the new addition to his bedside party. "You wouldn't believe the rumours going around about him. If half of them are true…" The captain trailed off when he saw Dugan nodding.

"I'm not sure what all they're saying, sir, but they're not entirely wrong."

"Christ almighty. How's he been?" The sincerity in this newly minted captain caught Peggy's attention. It would make him popular among his subordinates but it could be a disaster if he allowed himself to become too attached.

Dugan shrugged. "He got through the worst of it on the march back here, sir. He's mostly just tired, like the rest of us. A few square meals and a lot of rest, and he'll be alright."

"Good, good," Springer said. Concern lingered on his face. "Keep an eye on him, will you, Corporal? If Barnes isn't getting something he needs, send a runner to me. I'll make something happen."

At last Steve arrived through the gap in the curtains. The makeshift quarantine was growing very crowded now. Peggy caught his eye and gave a wave of greeting. His acknowledgement was a look of mild confusion.

"Yes, sir, I'll do that," Dugan said.

"Right," said Springer. He looked on the edge of saying his thanks before he remembered an officer does not thank those ranked below him for following orders.

"Captain Springer," Dugan said while nodding to Steve, "this is the man you can thank for getting us out of there."

"Steve Rogers," Steve said to the captain. They shook hands.

"John Springer."

Dugan added, "Captain Springer is my and Jimmy's superior officer, led us since boot camp. After his promotion, looks like he's our new CO."

Steve and Springer did not exchange salutes, which Peggy knew spoke volumes. Springer did not think Steve was a proper member of the military. For Steve, anyone who was in command when his closest friend was taken prisoner was not worthy of a salute. A bit of a harsh judgement, she thought.

"I can't thank you enough for bringing those men back," Springer said earnestly. He nodded to Barnes. "And particularly for getting me my best sergeant back. We've had to promote Hodge in his absence. It's been a nightmare." This last bit was directed at Dugan, but Peggy and Steve exchanged a look of their own.

Breaking off his look with Peggy, Steve gave Springer an inscrutable smile. "I couldn't leave those men as prisoners after I knew they were there."

Again, Peggy thought that was harsh.

"Right," Springer said again. Cottoning on at last. "Corporal, I'll come back at a more decent hour, see how you two are holding up. Send a runner if you need to. You're sure you're doing alright after all this?"

"Yes, sir."

Captain and corporal exchanged another salute, Springer nodded in acknowledgement to Steve, said "ma'am" to Peggy, and disappeared.

"Good man, Springer," Dugan said to no one in particular. He resumed his heat on the upturned bucket. To Steve: "Oh, there's an Agent Carter here to see you."

"I noticed," Steve said.

Peggy stood. "Yes, I'd like to have a word with you. Perhaps we should take a step away though. I'd hate to disturb the soldiers' recovery."

For a moment Steve looked torn between consenting to the conversation and staying to watch his friend sleep.

"Aw, go on," Dugan said. "Jimmy ain't goin' nowhere."

"Everything been OK since I left?" Steve said.

"Hardly made a peep since things settled down. Look, he's not even sweating anymore!"

True: What Peggy could see of Barnes's skin was definitely not sweaty.

Lack of perspiration was apparently enough to convince Steve as well. He pulled an envelope from a pocket and handed it to Dugan. "If he wakes up again, try reading him this."

Dugan dropped the envelope on the side table and took up the book instead. "Yeah, maybe later. Me and Jimmy are a few pages away from finding out whodunit."

Steve rolled his eyes and signaled to Peggy that he was ready to go. She led the way back through rows and rows of the wounded. Neither of them spoke, not even after they'd exited the aid station and were walking along the muddy pathways. A dull glow was about the place; dawn was on its way.

"So what's up?" Steve asked as they walked toward the perimeter of camp.

"Perhaps I'm speaking too soon," Peggy said, "but I've gotten wind that Colonel Phillips has a mission for you."

"A mission."

"Yes, a real mission."

Steve said dubiously, "A mission more important than selling war bonds?"

The air was still heavy and plinking lazy rain down on them. Peggy thought it might be close to freezing by now. She took one more step and then turned to face Steve. "Perhaps. I'm telling you this because I thought you might like to choose the choir yourself this time around."

Chapter Text

Colonel Chester Phillips looked from the paperwork in his right hand to the line of six men standing opposite him. Steve Rogers stood at the end of the six-man line, a step in front of the others, perpendicular. He was all that stood between them and the brass. Agent Peggy Carter stood behind Phillips. She caught Steve's eye and smiled tightly.

"This is your team," Phillips said dubiously. "These are the best men you put together."

"Yes, sir." After Krausberg, Steve found that his enthusiasm for military protocol was dwindling at an increasing rate. While Colonel Phillips had never scared him, Steve had kept himself to a certain level of respect. Now, though, he was beginning to understand why the enlisted men always had such colourful things to say about the top of the military hierarchy. "These are the best men that the Allies have to offer."

Steve hoped he was the only one who saw Bucky roll his eyes.

Colonel Phillips looked at his paperwork again with a frown. His eyes jumped up and skewered Falsworth. "Is there going to be any trouble with you taking orders from an inferior American officer, Major?"

A near-member of the brass himself, Falsworth didn't look anything close to bothered by Phillips. "Sir, I am honoured to serve under Captain Rogers."

Phillips appeared a little dismayed to hear it. So he moved on and flapped a hand at Dernier. "This one even speak English?"

Dernier nodded and looked as happy as a cartoon. "I am learning more every day, sir," he said. His accent was heavy, but the words were clear.

Steve wondered how all of these men were able to inject so much attitude into their responses without crossing the line into insubordination. It was quickly becoming a skill he was interested in honing.

Moving down the line, Phillips made a tsking sound at Morita. Steve saw a very familiar look on the colonel's face. Colonel Phillips used to look at Steve that way all the time when they did drills at Camp Lehigh. Stepping further down the line (and closer to Steve), Phillips looked at Dugan and Jones and said, "At least they're big."

A smirk blossomed on Bucky's face, and all Steve could think was oh no.

"Yeah, and this one doesn't even need to wear a helmet. His head's so thick already," Bucky said while slapping Dugan on the back. "Sir," he tacked on at the end.

Phillips looked Bucky up and down critically. Steve wished his friend had at least tried to get the wrinkles out of his shirt (Steve hadn't lost enthusiasm for dress uniform protocol yet). It was very unlike Bucky to let his clothes become so untidy, especially the nice ones since they'd seldom had nice clothes back home. A new layer of hard frown creased the colonel's face.

"You're the reason we're all here, aren't you, Sergeant Barnes?"

"Oh, no, sir," Bucky said. "Your people are the ones responsible for all of this." The words were sharp as knives, and his opinion of what the S.S.R. had achieved through Project: Rebirth was more than evident.

Phillips looked hard at Steve. There was disbelief and some anger there. "This is your second in command," he said while gesturing to Bucky.

"Yes, sir," said Steve, "there's no one else I'd rather have. There's no one else I will have." Peggy caught Steve's eye again when he said that.

They all noticed when Bucky rolled his eyes that time.

"This is your team of the best men?" He finally had the tone of a question and not an accusation.

"Yes, sir."

The colonel looked down at his paperwork again. He flipped a few of the sheets and read them again. Steve recognised the resignation on Phillips's face. He signed the papers with a pen handed to him by a nearby private.

"You all have got a lot of work to do. Agent Carter, get these men out of my bunker and out to Great Dunmow." Phillips handed his paperwork over to Peggy and left shaking his head.

"Welcome, gentlemen," Peggy said, "and congratulations on your transfers to the Strategic Scientific Reserve."

Much to the transfers' surprise, they were on a truck headed northeast from London mere hours after their paperwork was signed. None of them were used to the wheels of military turning so quickly. Hell, they'd sat around in the same place for days in the field before orders to move out were ever actuated. Evidently, things in the S.S.R. were going to be different.

They arrived at RAF Great Dunmow and were moved into their barracks. The building was a long and low structure, and it would be going to waste, seeing as it would only be housing the six of them. Captain America had his own quarters nearer to brass HQ.

The sun was just reaching its midpoint (if anyone could see it beyond the clouds) when Agent Carter stood in their doorway and told them it was time to begin training. And so it was that the men who would be called the Howling Commandos were stamped with bruises, sprayed with mud, rinsed in sweat, and parted with the calluses Krausberg had developed on their hands under Agent Carter's drilling. She had them run countless circuits around the airfield that first day, punctuated by bursts of callisthenics; obstacle courses which featured barbed wire pits, rope obstacles, and challenges which required some of them to wade into what looked like small ponds of sludge. There had been no time for PT gear to be administered, so they ran in whatever they happened to be wearing, which happened to be their dress uniforms. And it was raining. After six hours, they were released to their barracks.

"Fuckin' buttons," Bucky said. His hands were damp and shaking from the cold and his jacket refused to cooperate with him.

"Sarge, you're getting mud all over the place," Gabe said. He was unlacing his boots at the door.

Bucky looked at the trail he'd left. "Well . . . hell." Walking the rest of the way to his bunk, he gave up on his jacket and began unlacing his boots.

"Too old," Dernier muttered. When he stretched, the long, empty barracks echoed with his popping joints.

"They're not gonna make us do that every day," Jim Morita said, already collapsed on his own bed. "We just spent months doing hard labour, and Barnes — and Barnes! They can't be putting you through work like that, Sarge!"

Dum Dum cottoned on and said with convincing sincerity, "Yeah! It's too soon for Jimmy to be running around like that. We're a team now, and we gotta stick together. We all refuse to run until our sergeant recovers."

"Do you think that would actually work?" Gabe usually didn't buy into their hijinks. He was one of the only voices of reason that ever helped Bucky keep those yokels alive in the field and then again in... Bucky had quickly learned that an eye had to be kept on Monty; the accent and all that pomp led you to the false conclusion that he was sane.

"If we mention it to Rogers, I think he might do all the work for us," said Monty.

"Think you could do it, Barnes?" Jim threw one of his damp and reeking socks at Bucky to get his attention.

"What, you want me to tell Captain America that I'm s—" he caught himself about to say the word 'still' "—too sick from being tortured to be participating in PT?"

It was easier for all of them to talk about it like it was a joke. Bucky would have preferred they not talk about it at all, but he knew this was an unreasonable preference. He would have wanted to know every last detail if it had been one of the others on that table in place of him. So he tolerated most of their fussing and mother henning. Made it easier on him that the guys disguised it as humour.

"Yes," said Monty. "We want you to extract every last drop of power that you can from that excuse."

"Bring up the pneumonia," Dum Dum suggested with enthusiasm. "I don't think he's heard about that yet."

Most of the men were rooting around in the footlockers that had been placed at the ends of the bunks. There were warm clothes, thank the Lord in Heaven. Bucky finally got all his buttons undone and threw his wet jacket onto the floor. The pins and decorations made smacking noises on the wood. He didn't even care that the jacket landed on the muddy trail he'd created. His clothes continued to be shucked off until he was down to underpants and dog tags. Deciding it would be a crying shame to not make use of the empty beds, Bucky stole three blankets and buried himself under them in his bunk.

"Your mothers will be ashamed of all of you," Bucky said, eyes closed. "Too lazy to participate in PT . . ."

Another dirty sock bounced off of the lump Bucky's body made under the blankets. Fuckin' Dernier. Guy was the smelliest person Bucky had ever met. Stank like chemicals; it was creepy, like he wasn't normal flesh and bone like the rest of them.

"You going to sleep, Sarge?" Dum Dum asked. Bucky believed the word for the look on Dum Dum's face fell somewhere between incredulity and exasperation.

"What's it to you?"

"Nothing. Just that it's seven in the evening," said Monty. "And we're allowed hot food, I've been told."

Gabe piped up, "He is turning ninety-nine tomorrow, fellas. You know how old folks get."

Bucky rolled so his back was facing the men. "Shut up. You're all assholes. But if there's food, you should bring me some."

"Get it yourself," Jim sniped back, quick as ever.

"Be nice to me," said Bucky, "I was tortured."

Five groans and seven smelly socks bounced off his back.

Steve couldn't decide if Brooklyn's bitter winters were better or worse than the eternal dampness that seemed to hang around England. It was beginning to feel like he'd never be properly dry again. The paper he carried was already beginning to curl from exposure to the air. He found his way to the mess hall purely by luck and stamped the muck from his boots as best he could before entering. The place had warmth within it that went beyond sensible heat. It was a different feeling than the stuffiness of the bunkers and intelligence rooms he'd spent most of the day in. Steve felt like he could breathe again.

"Captain!" Dernier called. He waved jovially.

Steve waved back. The mess hall was different from anything Steve was used to. This place seemed to work on-demand rather than on the clock. Well, the mess at Lehigh never served this late, when so few people were around; must be one of those S.S.R. perks. After collecting a tray from the serving lines, Steve joined his new unit at a table smack-dab in the centre of the room.

"So, how was your day, honey?" said Dugan.

"A lot of sittin' around," said Steve, "and talking."

Morita leaned over his metal tray and stared at Steve. "We had to do PT for six hours. Six hours, Cap! They're gonna kill us!"

"Barnes looked ready to keel over," Falsworth said. He wouldn't look Steve in the eye.

Jones nodded and said, "Looked like he did when he was still hacking up his lungs from pneumonia." The shiver he gave seemed a little off.

Steve raised his eyebrows and took a bite of whatever loaf of meat had been served. He had three servings on his plate. Another S.S.R. perk? Or maybe just a Captain America perk. He said, "Is that why he's not here?"

They all nodded gravely and wouldn't look at him. Dugan said, "Went right to sleep under a pile of blankets. Didn't even have the strength to eat first."

"Is that right," Steve said flatly. "I'll talk to him. In the meantime, orders."

He handed out the stacks of papers to his men. His men. It felt good to have a team. Steve felt a bubbling pride inside him. Was this how parents felt when their kids did something good? No wonder everyone tried to have as many as possible.

"First PT, now this," said Morita. He flipped opened his packet of orders. "Stark?" he said. "I'm meeting with Stark?"

Steve nodded while he swallowed. "You're all going to be spending time with people to sharpen your individual skills. We're all going to need a specialty, and someone as a backup for each specialty, if this gonna work."

"Mechanical technician and communications officer," Morita read from a page in his packet. "Not bad for a Ranger, eh?"

"What'd you get?" Dugan asked Falsworth.

"Scouting, reconnaissance, and intelligence officer." The Brit shrugged. "I think I can manage that. And you?"

"Navigation, transportation including armoured trucks and tanks, and artillery." Dugan raised his eyebrows at the list. His moustache was twisted into a strange line, and he nodded.

"Boom!" said Dernier. He clapped his hands; it made a disproportionally loud sound.

"Well that's a surprise," said Jones.

"What are you then?" said Falsworth.

"Translator, code breaker, and drafter. What, am I going to make maps?" Jones looked up and over to Steve with amusement.

Steve shrugged with his mouth full. "I didn't write it."

Dugan looked up from his packet and said, "What's Jimmy doing then?"

Mouth full again — why did they always ask once he took a bite? — Steve just slid Bucky's orders packet across the table.

"What's it say?" Morita had missed getting the file by an inch.

"Marksman," said Dugan. "He's gonna be a sniper."

"You mean he wasn't already?" said Jones.

Steve said, "You're all doing PT drills in the morning, specialty training in the afternoon, and we're all doing manoeuvres in the evening."

"We're going to do that every day?" said Morita, horrified.

Steve nodded and hummed "uh huh." After he finished chewing — he was enjoying Captain America's appetite for now — Steve said, "Colonel Phillips thinks you guys need to get back to form after Krausberg."

"Back to form!" Dugan looked indignant. "We were doing hard labour! That was PT! Just feed us, and we'll be better than ever."

Dernier was muttering darkly in French.

Jones said, "How come none of us are gonna be the medic?"

"All of us are getting first aid training."

Morita threw up his hands. "When are they gonna make us do that? In our sleep?"

Steve held back laughter. "No, there're special days for it."

"Is there anything you can do about this schedule? None of us will make it off the runway if they're gonna run us like this." Morita seemed really upset about all this. Steve struggled to keep his face neutral.

"I'll see if I can talk to the colonel," Steve said without any intention of actually doing it.

They all nodded approvingly. Dugan said, "It's not right, especially with Jimmy still sick." More nodding all around.

Yeah. Bucky. Right. Steve collected his empty dishes and stood up. "I'll see what I can do, and I'll make sure our marksman is still breathing." He returned the dishes, snuck another portion into a mess kit, and picked up Bucky's packet of orders. "Gentlemen," he said in parting.

The tracks between buildings had become increasingly soft and muddy. Steve frowned about it all the way to Barracks 14. Pounding as much mud off his boots as possible again, Steve shouldered the door open and turned on the lights. Bucky was identified immediately as the lump on the second bed to the left. A convenient trail of muddy footprints led right to him. Steve crept over to the bunk, ignoring all the socks lying around it.

Deepening his voice as much as he could, Steve yelled, "James!"

The lump jumped nearly a foot in the air, pale and flailing limbs blossoming out of it. Bucky looked up at Steve through squinted eyes. "Jesus Christ, don't do that to a man, Steve. You sounded just like my pa."

Bucky's father had been prone to bouts of anger and shouting. Bucky's mother said it was shell shock. Steve had found it funny that Bucky reacted to that voice in the same way that he had as a child.

"I've been told that you're too ill to go to the mess," said Steve. He set the mess kit down beside Bucky and took the opportunity to look him over for any real signs of lingering fatigue. The outside of the mess kit was still warm, and Steve tossed the packet of papers down. "And I've got orders for you."

"Don't listen to those idiots," Bucky said, still not moving to sit up. "They're just lazy and trying to get out of doing any work."

"I thought as much," said Steve. He sat down on an empty bunk. "You're really fine?"

Bucky finally made to sit up. The thick layers of blankets shifted around him stiffly. (That's military life for you: If it's not caked with three months of dirt, it's bleached within an inch of its life.) Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Bucky said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little jumpy is all. No thanks to you."

Steve held up his hands in surrender. "I couldn't pass up the opportunity."

Digging around in the mess kit, Bucky muttered, "You're still a punk. Good to know one thing hasn't changed."

Steve didn't try to hold back his laughter, but he couldn't help but notice how much narrower Bucky's shoulders seemed. The serum had done wonders for Steve's eyesight; maybe he just hadn't been seeing Bucky clearly all those years before. Maybe it just seemed different since Steve's own shoulders had become so much broader, his eyelevel so much higher. He should have brought more food.

Another thing: Steve couldn't remember Bucky ever eating so slowly in his life. The sergeant abandoned the mess kit for the stack of papers before it was empty. Bucky's eyebrows jumped on his forehead.

"Sniper, huh?" He looked up at Steve as if the papers could be wrong.

"If that's what it says."

Bucky shrugged to no one and looked back down at the papers. "They want me to study Soviet marksman tactics," he said with surprise. "And I'm going to work with a Russian. S.S.R. is in with the Red Army too?"

Steve said, "It wouldn't surprise me. Seems like they know every entity in the war."

"I hear the Red Army uses broads as snipers," Bucky said.

Steve could see the hesitation on Bucky's face. He could tell that his friend was bothered by the orders. "What is it? You don't want to work with the Soviets?"

"No, it's not that." Bucky kept his eyes on the papers but they weren't moving; he wasn't reading. He just didn't want to look up.

"You don't want to be a sniper? The guys seemed to think you were one already."

Another shrug and a glance up that was so quick Steve wouldn't have been sure it happened if he didn't have superhuman eyesight. "I mean, I'm a good shot. But I'm not a sniper. Well, not until now," Bucky said while flicking the papers in his hands.

Steve bit his tongue to keep himself from openly frowning. Frustration at not being able to read Bucky was building inside him. This had never been an issue before. Steve wondered if it was because of how the serum changed him or if it was because of how the war had changed Bucky.

Leaving the stack of orders to take up the mess kit again, Bucky said, "What about you? What do they have Captain America doing while the rest of us train?"

"Uh," said Steve. His own thick stack of papers was lying behind him on the bunk, and he picked it up when Bucky asked about it. "Quite a few things, actually."

Being tortured apparently didn't make it any harder for Bucky to read Steve like a book. Not even the serum could disguise his thoughts. Steve couldn't say that the fact upset him. Bucky put his hand out, and Steve filled it with Captain America's orders. With baited breath, Steve watched Bucky read the first few pages of his orders and continue to eat meatloaf at a glacial pace.

"Doesn't seem so bad," said Bucky. "You just have to do the work of six men at one time. And learn every combat manoeuvre the army has ever written." He was laughing but it slowed when he saw the look on Steve's face. "What?"

Steve shook his head. He was about to unload everything that had been building up since he marched back into Colonel Phillips's camp with 400 men in tow. "Buck, I don't know how to do any of this. I don't know how to lead men. I don't know anything about combat. I worked so hard to get here, and I just noticed that I'm responsible for the lives six men now. If I make a bonehead call and one of you guys pays the price—"

Bucky shook his head and reached a pallid arm towards Steve's shoulder. "Hey, man, calm down. You know more than you think. You got us all out of there, didn't you? That's not something you sneeze at." Bucky gestured to Steve's pile of orders and said, "This stuff can be learned. What you did — Steve, not just anyone can convince people to follow him back to certain death. These guys trust you. I trust you. The hard part is already over. You can learn strategy and all the technical stuff, no sweat. No one can teach you the instinct you already have."

Staring at his boots with his brow pinched, Steve said, "Would you help me?"

"Help you how? Teach you how to be a textbook CO?"

"Yes."

Bucky laughed and patted Steve on the shoulder. "You better believe I'll help you. Can't have you tellin' the brass that you're going to go bustin' into factories with no plan. And I can already see you running headfirst into enemy fire while the rest of us just try to keep up. Your big new arms aren't bulletproof, you know. Can't punch bullets."

Steve leaned back, and Bucky withdrew his arm. He pulled the blankets up around his shoulders. Ignoring the feeling that stirred in his gut, Steve said, "I don't know. Maybe I could punch a bullet."

"Tell me you're joking. Tell me you haven't already tried."

"Relax. Nothing like that happened."

Bucky's wary glare wasn't what it used to be — it was even more terrifying. "How did they test you?"

"Test me?" said Steve.

"How did they find out how much stronger you'd gotten? You know, how did they quantify it? How did they test the limits of — of you?"

Steve scratched his neck. "They didn't. Not really. I mean, I chased down Dr. Erskine's killer's getaway car. But they never did any physical tests or anything. S.S.R. just collected samples of my blood for a bit, and then I was touring for the USO." It wasn't really necessary to mention the films and performances, so Steve didn't. Concerned about the blank look on his friend's face, Steve pressed the mess kit back into Bucky's hands and said, "Eat."

Relief flooded Steve when he saw that it worked: Bucky accepted the kit and his face became animated again.

"You chased a car?" Bucky was nearly shouting.

"Keep it down. But, yes, and it wasn't a big deal or anything—"

"Steve, you just told me that you chased a fucking car."

There was a time when Steve feared telling Bucky about the fights he had gotten into on the way home from school more than he feared telling his own mother. They were two different kinds of fear. With his mother, Steve feared what wrath she'd let loose on him. But with Bucky, Steve feared what his friend would do to the guys Steve got into the fight with. It was humiliating to have Bucky go hunt them down, exact whatever revenge he felt he had to deliver. Steve was no damsel in distress; he didn't need anyone fighting his battles for him. Not then and certainly not now.

"Steve, do you even know what your limits are? Since you know you can run at least as fast as a fucking car." Bucky would begin lecturing if Steve didn't head him off soon. "Do you even know how strong you are? Do you crush things without meaning to?"

"What? No! I may have broken a few pencils at first—" He was cut off by Bucky throwing his arms up in the air. Steve grumpily thought, Eat your food, Barnes, and shut up. One thing his friend was right about: Steve didn't really know how to fight in this body. He was sure that he'd killed a HYDRA operative or two with his bare hands and the shield in Krausberg. And he had broken things at first, torn paper on accident. But Steve had gotten used to his new proportions before he started working with the USO.

Somehow it was decided (one-sidedly) that Bucky was going to teach Steve to fight properly with his new body.

Steve protested, "No, Bucky! I could hurt you on accident — really hurt you!"

"Good!" his friend shouted. "Maybe it'll give you more motivation to control your giant self!"

Steve begrudgingly agreed, deciding that he would have to come up with a way out of the agreement later. He noticed Bucky shivering then, and said, "I think I'm going to turn in. You should finish eating and then do the same. We're going to be busy the next few days."

"Yeah, yeah," Bucky said, still irritated.

Steve got up and said, "I expect you to be wearing trousers next time I see you, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir, Captain America, sir." He gave Steve a sloppy salute.

Not a second had passed 0500 hours before Barnes was kicking everyone out of their bunks. There was a wealth of bitching and moaning over the manner of the wakeup call, no small amount from Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan. Yeah, he was damn used to being woken up like that; a boot to the side from Sergeant goddamn Barnes had been waking him up for nearly two years now. The guy was a menace. Then again, Dugan wouldn't have it any other way.

"One of these days, Jimmy, I'm gonna wake you up with a boot to the gut. See how you like it."

"I look forward to it, Dum Dum. In the meantime, get your ass up."

So he got his ass up. But, you know, just to humour the kid.

There was one good thing about their transfers: the food. These S.S.R. types fed the men like there wasn't a war going on. Dugan didn't exercise one ounce of self-control and ate until they would serve him no more. That turned out to be a mistake, and he wasn't the only one of them that ended up throwing up during their drills that morning.

"Lesson learned," said Jim Morita. There were thin strings of saliva hanging from his lips.

"No shit," said Dugan.

That force of nature called Agent Carter ran them ragged around the airfield. Dugan thanked whatever god there was that the drills didn't last six hours this time. She released them, and they ran faster than they had all morning just to get away from her, lest she change her mind. There was enough time to stuff their faces some more. Dugan made sure to put a limit on himself this time.

"You guys see we're doing jump training in a few weeks?" said Gabe over their lunch of 'spaghetti' — limp noodles and ketchup. (Hey, it wasn't always good, but they were allowed as much of it as they wanted.)

"Jump training?" said Jim. "Where are we jumping?"

"Out of an airplane, obviously," Monty said. "Have none of you done it?" They each shook their heads at the Brit who was sat there acting as if they had just admitted to never having opened a jam jar. "Well, then, I look forward to teaching you how it's done."

Barnes's face scrunched into that familiar duck face he made when thinking hard. "Doesn't it take paratroopers months to go through jump school? They're not even out of training. The American ones, anyway. We don't have that kind of time."

"I suppose that's why we only get three days to do it," said Gabe.

There were a lot of shrugs around the table. Except for Barnes. He frowned hard at his bastardised spaghetti and muttered, "These people are fuckin' nuts."

And then it was time for their specialised training. Jim and Gabe headed off the S.S.R. HQ bunker, Jim to take lessons or something from Stark and Gabe to meet with . . . someone. The rest of them were taken to a shooting range a short distance away from the airfield and spread out along the range. Defunct trucks and other equipment littered part of the range.

"What's that about?" Dugan asked his instructor.

"Good for practice," he answered and handed Dugan a Panzerschreck.

Dugan whistled lowly. "How many of Jerry's guns you guys got?"

"All of them."

Smug little bastard. HYDRA guns were another story, Dugan soon found out.

He whiled away the hours learning the ins and outs (and feel) of about seven German guns. They'd correctly assumed that Dugan already knew most of the American light artillery guns. When Dugan finally got to fire the Panzerschreck at the broken-down armoured truck, the thing jumped and lit up the range with a hot orange ball.

"Wahoo!" Barnes shouted from the other end of the range. His rifle was waving in the air. (Even from a distance, Dugan could see the sour look on the face of the Russians who were meant to be instructing Barnes. Not fans of distractions, Dugan took it.)

"Wahoo!" Monty echoed, light-hearted.

Another explosion rocked the ground beneath them. All heads turned to the right. A French-accented voice shouted, "Wahoo!"

"Wahoo!" three voices chanted back at him.

So the first day of specialised training went OK. Even if the weather was absolutely miserable. Dugan and the others were reunited with Jim and Gabe at the airfield, and were joined by Captain America himself at the mess hall. It was their first meal all together as a unit. It was decidedly loud. Mostly because of Barnes complaining about how the Russian snipers he was meant to be learning from didn't speak English, except for one of them whose sentences were still forty percent Russian anyway.

"I swear to God, I'm going to be thinking in Russian before the war ends," he complained.

"Hey, one less thing for me know," said Gabe.

Rogers piped up, "Don't you already know some Russian anyway?"

"That's not the point, Steve! These guys are nuts — the sort of shit they were telling me to do."

Monty was nodding his head. "It's true. I'm to be his scout, and I saw the literature from the Red Army sniper schools. It is very nutty indeed."

Barnes and Monty complained about the tactics of the Red Army with great camaraderie.

Rogers leaned toward Dugan on his right and said, "How did you guys look today?"

"Well, it's only day one, but I think we're shaping up pretty good," said Dugan. "We're pretty good at making things go boom at least."

"Good. We'll be doing a lot of that." Rogers seemed satisfied. "Brass wants us to be field ready by Christmas."

"What," Dugan squawked. "That's only four weeks away!"

Nodding, Rogers said, "They're already collecting recon on the base in Greece."

"Hear that, boys? Christmas in the Mediterranean!"

The news was not met with cheers.

Dugan said to Rogers, "Don't worry. We'll be ready. How about you, Cap? Never had to do an op with a plan and orders before, have you?"

Rogers smiled sheepishly. "I actually did have a plan before. I just had to improvise a bit. I'm sure I'll figure it out. And if I don't, then Sergeant Barnes is gonna earn his pay check."

"Jimmy's no Captain America on the battlefield, I can tell you that."

A wrinkle formed on the captain's brow. "What do you mean?"

Dugan laughed at the poorly hidden apprehension on Rogers's face. It was going to be awfully fun taking the piss out of Rogers and Barnes for their obvious and mutual concern for one another. In a morbid sort of way, Dugan couldn't wait to get back out on the battlefield and see who would take a bullet for the other first.

"I mean Jimmy ain't stupid and reckless." Hopefully, Barnes would curb that impulse in Rogers. Hell, Dugan was grateful that the guy had done what he'd done in Krausberg, but he sure as shit didn't want to be a part of any suicide missions like that. The war hadn't driven him that mad yet.

When they assembled just outside the boundary of the airfield for their tactical manoeuver that evening, it almost felt real. Not real real. But real like a dress rehearsal. All of them were in full-gear. Dugan felt a little bad for Jim having to carry all the spare batteries for the radio on his back when they all knew full well that they weren't going to need them.

Rogers opened a large envelope containing their sit rep and the map of the training area. He said, "Our objective is to locate the bunker in the woods, eliminate all security and patrols defending it, and evacuate the prisoners."

He laid the map out so they could all see it. Gabe retrieved from a pocket inside his jacket a map with a leather cover. It was identical to the one Rogers had spread out. Dugan oriented himself and pointed to a spot on the left side of Rogers's map, saying "We're here." Gabe had already made a pencil mark of the same spot on his own map.

"OK," Rogers said. "Bucky, Morita, and Falsworth, you guys go ahead. Scout the area and mark any enemy movements you see on the map." He folded up the map and handed it to Monty. To Morita: "Radio the coordinates back to us, and Gabe will mark 'em on his map. Do not engage any OPs. Go until you see the bunker or until their defences are too strong to sneak by. Signal us, and we'll meet you. Find a place to nest, Buck."

Barnes nodded his head impassively. He handed Rogers his Thompson so he could swing a shitty old Springfield rifle into his hands and said, "Team James moving out."

The four of them watched their scouting crew move out and into the tree line. It was all very dramatic, especially when slow, fat rain drops began to fall.

"Jimmy won't be able to see a damn thing through that scope," Dugan said to no one in particular.

Gabe clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm sure Stark will be able to whip something up for him that won't fog so easily."

"He better," the captain growled.

Dugan couldn't wait until they got back into combat.

They got the first radio signal seven minutes later. Rogers had been given some sort of teeny tiny radio from Stark that could receive signals from the one Jim carried. Gabe listened for Jim's coordinates through the headset and marked the locations of the detected forces on the map in pencil. Sometimes he marked long paths indicating sweeping enemy forces. Jim said over the radio if the OPs were following a time schedule or if they were moving randomly.

After forty minutes, Gabe looked up and said, "They've stopped about three miles in." He was pointing to a specific spot on the map. "They found the bunker, and it has pretty heavy fortifications. Monty said there were two machine guns, one on the north and one on the south. There are groups of three patrolling the entrance of the bunker — on the south-facing side — every four minutes. Barnes is set up here," Gabe finished by tapping a pencil mark on the east side of the bunker.

Rogers nodded. "Alright. We're entering from the west, so Dugan and Jones sweep left and clear out the patrols. I'll take Dernier and go right. We'll pick up Morita and Falsworth and then clear the north side. Sweep down to clear the east, and then attack when you get an opening. Try to keep it quiet, keep your lights off, and cover anything reflective. We don't want anyone knowing we're coming."

"Fix bayonets," Dugan said to himself.

"Aye, aye, Captain," said Dernier.

"Moving out," Rogers said.

"Hit me," Bucky said.

Steve looked at Bucky like he had just suggested that he strip naked and do the hula. "Bucky, I am not going to hit you!" he shouted.

Bucky rolled his eyes. Why were they even friends? "Hit me."

"You've lost it. They really did mess you up in that camp."

Bucky threw a fist at Steve's cheek. He really didn't want to talk about Krausberg right now. It was all Steve ever wanted to talk about. He'd try to sneak it into every goddamn private conversation they had. It was driving Bucky up a fucking wall; he was almost ready to start actively avoiding Steve, and it was only their third night at Great Dunmow.

Steve's new, giant, rock-hard head reeled back from the punch. Bucky was pretty sure he'd just broken something in his hand — thank God he'd swung with his left — and had the presence of mind to dodge Steve's retaliatory swing of his club-like arm. Just to be safe, Bucky took a step back. Despite everything, he didn't really want to die yet.

"What the hell?" Steve shouted. "You punched me."

"It probably didn't even hurt," Bucky said, hoped.

"That's not the issue, Buck."

An obligatory eye roll at that. He stepped forward and jabbed Steve in the oblique, quickly retreating. (Bucky would never admit that this boxing match was just as much for himself as it was for Steve).

"Cut it out." Steve swung his hand at the place where's Bucky's fist had been just seconds ago.

"Fight me."

"I'm not gonna fight you!" Steve was turning, trying to keep Bucky in his sights as he stepped around the captain. "I'll probably hurt you."

"No, you won't." Bucky knocked the back of Steve's head like he used to when they were twelve and Steve had picked a particularly stupid fight. "Fight me, Rogers. You fought all of Brooklyn without any provocation. Fight me. I'm literally asking for it."

"I already admitted that I broke things at first, didn't know my strength. But I figured it out. I know what I can and cannot do, Buck. This is stupid and dangerous. I don't know why you're so dead set on this."

"You're not gonna break me." Bucky made his voice convey the rolling of his eyes. Poor Steve was still turning in circles while Bucky danced around him. "And if you don't want to break anyone else on accident, you'll fight me." Time was up; Bucky shoved his boot into the space behind Steve's knee and made his friend stagger.

And the game was on. Bucky deflected Steve's first swing and dodged the second. From then on, it was mostly a game of jab and dodge. Steve must not have realised how much more of him there was, because he kept leaving himself unprotected and vulnerable. If Bucky got him in the side, Steve covered the area but did it at the expense of his chest and neck. He did have the reflexes, Bucky had to admit. More of Steve's blows were being deflected rather than outright dodged — Bucky was going to be sore in the morning. It ended when Steve landed a pulled punch on Bucky's side. Ironically, it was much like the jab Bucky had used to get this whole mess started. The punch may have been pulled, but that one was definitely a stinger. And Steve knew it.

"Jesus, I'm sorry. I told you that I'd hurt you." Steve was all giant hands and apologetic eyes.

It was so goddamn annoying how the intensity of Steve's sincerity somehow got more powerful just like the rest of him. Bucky forced himself not to rub the hurt from the place where Steve had just hit him. He didn't curl over the spot, but he felt sure it was already bruising. Boxing and war and Krausberg had all reinforced the fact that to reveal a weakness was to lose. And Bucky hated to lose.

"I'm fine," Bucky said. At least his voice sounded normal. "You held back."

"Of course I held back!"

"No, it's good. That's the point of this. You need to know how much is enough to wound but not to kill."

"I'm not doing this again, Bucky — Jesus, I'm not doing this just so I know how hard I have to punch to knock you out!"

"What about when we have to capture some HYDRA goon and they're not being compliant? Are you gonna try to knock them out but accidentally hit too hard? What about when you have to bust down a civilian's door because there might be agents in there? Are you gonna smash it so hard that the building falls down on top of everyone? Steve, you have to know exactly how to control everyone around you and how to control yourself if you're going to lead. You have to know what's enough, and you have to know when enough isn't enough."

Steve was staring at him with that look. The look he always got when he was thinking about something that would eventually land Bucky in trouble. That Steve-Rogers-is-Up-to-No-Good look had gotten Bucky into shit so deep he'd needed a snorkel just to breathe. He could still feel the places where his father had disciplined him because of the trouble Steve and that look had gotten him into.

"I'm not going to fight you."

Stubborn ass: It was a role that both of them could play.

What if I go nuts and someone needs to stop me? What if I go nuts but I don't want to die?

"Yes, you are."

They sparred again the next night.

". . . have been faster if we'd have gone that route, don't you think, Buck? Buck?" Steve looked up from the map he had spread across the table in his quarters and over to the chair his friend had taken up residence in after their sparring.

Bucky took a loud, rasping breath and shook his head quickly. His eyes were puffy and squinted; he was making the duck face again. "What were you saying?"

The number of times Steve had seen this act before was astronomical.

"If you're tired, all you have to do is say so." Steve took a step away from the table and the map.

"No, no," Bucky said. Steve watched his jaw fight a yawn. "Let's keep going. We're running out of time to get this stuff figured out."

They were two weeks in, and jump training started tomorrow. Their training had been gruelling, even Steve had to admit that he felt it. His didn't start his mornings with the same PT as the rest of the guys, but he had his own tests, both physical and strategic. Phillips and Peggy ran him through strange and increasingly more complex tactical situations. It was a very good way to make Steve feel like an absolute idiot — even though he hadn't outright failed any of the tests, it still served to make him feel wholly unprepared to lead anyone on missions.

Steve raised his brows at his friend, doubtful of Bucky's ability carry on in their nightly meetings on strategy and lessons on How to Be a Commanding Officer. Not to mention that Bucky was moving more stiffly than ever after their last spar. Steve still hated himself for agreeing to do it. It left him feeling better, physically, and a little bit guilty because it came at Bucky's expense. Mostly, though, Steve wondered why Bucky insisted on boxing every night.

"Come on, man," Bucky said, "I've got one more war game in me."

He didn't. Bucky made it just long enough to set up another situation for Steve to unravel before he was back in the chair he'd fallen asleep in. Steve stayed bent over the map for a long time. As stupid-tired as Bucky had been, the defences he'd laid out were incredibly logical and damn near perfect. Steve was supposed to come up with an attack plan to break the defences. Other times Bucky flipped the script and had Steve defend a structure while his own forces invaded.

An hour later, Steve was still staring at the map. He was determined to find a way through the puzzle. It was frustrating and beginning to feel impossible. Every solution he thought of put one of his precious few men at risk — a violation of Steve's mission parameters for every mission from here on out. A part of him was suspicious that Bucky had designed the defences just so that Steve had to sacrifice one of his men. He was just beginning to entertain the idea that the only way to take the building was to walk right up to it and start shooting like mad when Bucky started jerking around in his sleep. It wasn't like normal sleep-movements. Steve grew up with this guy; he knew every type of movement Bucky made, conscious or not. But Steve hadn't seen this before. It was almost like Bucky's body was tensing over and over again. Almost like he was being shocked over and over.

"Bucky?" Steve called. If his voice shook, there was no one there to hear it. He took a step around the table, but by the time he got to Bucky, the jerking had stopped. Steve put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

Strangely, Bucky was instantly awake the second contact was initiated. "Jesus, don't sneak up on me like that, Steve."

"You were — shaking in your sleep," Steve said.

The reaction on Bucky's face was easy for Steve to read. Common tactic: evasion. Bucky ran a hand through his hair and said, "Probably just caught a draft from the door."

A draft. Right. The arch of Steve's right eyebrow communicated the words for him. A frown stared back him.

"I think I'm going to head back to the barracks now. You figure that out?" Bucky nodded to the table.

"Yeah," said Steve. "I think I'd just bust in guns blazing."

"Great plan. Why doesn't everybody do that?" Bucky said flatly. He pushed himself out of the chair and cracked his neck. Steve always hated the sound. It conjured images of bones and tendons and muscles — all things he was quite sick of thinking about, being compromised. There were the words "I'll see you in the morning" and Bucky was gone.

Jump training was delayed due to inclement weather. It was of the brass's opinion that the newcomers not leap from planes when the pilots would be having a hard time seeing the drop zone and each other. James Montgomery Falsworth didn't necessarily see the weather as a bad thing; he'd trained in similar conditions his first time around. When one learned a skill under the most difficult circumstances, it was rather easy to do it when conditions were favourable.

But the decision was no longer his to make. A bit of a relief to Falsworth, really.

So they were carted off to bunkers for most of five days and shown aid kits, everything a medic was meant to carry with him. Illnesses versus wounds were the main themes. Bandages of different sizes were packed, unpacked, and packed again the first day (usual lessons and training still took place the rest of the day). They were set the task of splinting each other's legs, spilling sulfa packets on one another's trousers, and stopping the bleeding on non-existent wounds. Tourniquets were explained, and they spent a cheerful afternoon attempting to cut off circulation to one another's extremities. The faffing about really got going once the ammonia inhalants were brought out. It could have carried on for some time if not for Agent Carter. She was rather persuasive in getting them to stop.

Mastering the needle was another matter altogether. First aid training was beginning to surpass Falsworth at that point. He simply had no interest in knowing when he had to inject into someone's bloodstream versus into their muscles. Empty syrettes were given to each of them along with peaches. Agent Carter was again needed to stop Morita and Dugan from complaining that it was a crime to stab something as precious as fresh fruit with a needle. It stopped when they were told they were allowed to eat them in the end. Falsworth just poked at the fruit and abandoned it as soon as Agent Carter said they could stop. The Frenchman took his up and ate it as if it were nothing.

This carried on until the last day when they were brought to the very aid station that had received all of the Krausberg survivors from Italy. Several of those men were still patients there. The seven of them, Captain Rogers included, were made to go up and down the rows with the nurses, changing bandages just so, administering penicillin or morphine in turns. Three of their number rose above the rest: Jones, Dernier, and Barnes. Dugan seemed to have the best bedside manner; he made the most bed-bound men crack gins and even laugh a few times. It was too bad he was so clumsy with all the instruments and equipment.

Falsworth felt he tied with Morita for worst attitude, though, of course, Morita was more adept at the technical bits. His pressure was always right; he could hang fluids, treated burned skin without flinching. But he provided absolutely no comfort or reassurance to anyone. Quite the contrary, actually. Rough though both of them were, Morita had the edge when it came to getting the work done. Falsworth, frankly, did not want to be good at first aid. He didn't want it to be his fault when…

The whole thing was rather morose, and the meal they ate afterward was quieter than what was usual. Though they continued to brush up on medic training during all their group manoeuvres at night, Falsworth was confident in thinking that all of them were relieved to be done with that particular focus.

"Your jump training will consist of three exercises, one exercise to be completed over three successive days," Agent Carter said. It was raining (again), it was miserable, but there was no longer any time to put it off. Jim Morita shivered and burrowed deeper into his coat. "Today you will be learning the proper landing technique and how to pack your parachute. Tomorrow you will be jumping from that tower" — she pointed to a bleak structure at the end of the airfield — "and the day after that you'll be doing two jumps from a C-47."

Barnes was right, these S.S.R. people were nuts. Anyone who jumped out of an aeroplane was nuts — Monty included. That Brit had more loose screws than Dum Dum, and that was saying something. Well, now that Jim thought about it, maybe the Frenchman was the craziest one of them all.

The first day wasn't so bad. Monty took over the instruction for the day, while Agent Carter and Howard Stark chewed the fat on the fringe of the operation. After a few minutes spent going over the procedure of how the exit the plane, the seven of them were up on a wooden platform about four feet high jumping onto the muddy ground. At least it was softer than packed, parched earth.

And then it was step, quarter turn, knees bent, and fall on your ass for three hours. Jim was confident that he wasn't the only one with mud up his rear end by the time Agent Carter called it day for them. Nothing like falling ass-first into a mud puddle over and over again in the goddamn rain. The war was gonna be a breeze after the abuse the S.S.R. put them through. Jim grumbled about how this training was worse than the HYDRA camp, though he wasn't anywhere close to meaning it.

They ate some kind of British food for lunch. Monty said it was an abomination of whatever it was supposed to be, and Jim was inclined to believe him. And the kids back home used to make fun of his lunch. This Limey stuff was gross. Never mind that he ate everything that was put in front of him and damn near licked the plate. Those details were beside the point.

The rest of the day was spent learning how to pack a parachute. Monty said to make sure there were no imperfections in the silk and ensure that all the folds were done correctly. If they weren't, then they'd realize it when they went splat on the drop zone. Jim thought it was a lot to ask of a bunch of guys who had no experience jumping out of planes and floating around on parachutes to pack a 'chute and then use that same pack to jump out of an actual aeroplane.

It was certainly a good motivator to do it right.

The day was pretty light for the most part. Dum Dum even swindled some poor sap into allowing them to drive around the airfield in one of the trucks (he claimed he needed to practice, since transportation was supposed to be his specialty). The bed of the truck was thick with cigarette smoke by the time they decided it was time to turn the truck back in to its keeper.

Cap and Barnes went off to do whatever it was they did together at night. The men had a litany of jokes about what was going on. Jim could think of a whole lot of things that people did at night which left at least one party holding his breath every time he moved.

In a rare bout of seriousness, after the first couple of days of Barnes coming back to the barracks looking like a week-old handkerchief, the five of them — meaning Jim, Dum Dum, Monty, Gabe, and Frenchie — accosted Rogers and demanded to know what was going on. There may or may not have been threats made, in case it came to light that Cap had stormed and utterly destroyed a HYDRA camp, freeing hundreds of men in the process, just so he could personally beat the shit out of the guy who had been getting the shit beat out of him by someone else. (Which was sort of true: They learned that Barnes and Cap were boxing, and all demanded to be in on it, too.)

For his part, Rogers seemed outraged to have been accused of beating the shit out of Barnes. Outraged at Barnes for hiding the fact that his shit was being beat out. If the sneak was hiding that, what else didn't they know about? Which was how the six of them — now including Cap — ended up storming back to the barracks, all ready to give Barnes a verbal licking for being an idiot about hiding his unhealed injuries.

But the guy was asleep. It was common knowledge at Great Dunmow that Sergeant Barnes spent any spare second of time doing his best to imitate a sloth. But they also knew he spent less than a quarter of that time actually sleeping. None of them had the heart to kick his bunk then, especially when he was moanin' and groanin' in his sleep, hamming it up like he fucking knew they were watching him. The men and Cap agreed to postpone the verbal licking for now. It was better that way, they reasoned. They'd have more time to think about what they'd say and collect more examples of exactly how Barnes acted like a moron.

Yeah, and so far, they hadn't gotten around to doling out that lecture. Priorities.

The next morning, they were allowed a late start, thank God. And the sky didn't look ready to piss on them for hours at a time. Again, Agent Carter and Monty led them to the wood and metal tower they'd be doing their practice jumps from. It seemed a lot taller once they got up there. Only Jim and Barnes were displaying the proper amount of apprehension at jumping off the thing, harness or no harness.

"Jesus," Jim said once he'd been outfitted with the safety equipment. "I didn't want to have kids anyway."

All the other men tugged at the straps of the harness, too.

They jumped off the tower so many times it almost wasn't terrifying. Then it was parachute packing again (a test of what they'd learned the day before). There was even time enough for a march and field manoeuvres before the day ended.

Too soon, it was their third and final day of jump training. Now they had to jump out of a moving plane. They'd do it twice that day. One for practice with nothing but their personally packed 'chutes, and another with a full complement of gear, which would add about eighty to ninety pounds. Jim was convinced he was going to crash right to the ground with so much weight strapped to his body.

The men stood around their C-47 that morning. Jim kept exchanging worried looks with Barnes. They were in the same boat; the only sane people here who didn't want to jump out of an aeroplane with nothing but a big old bed sheet strapped to their backs. Why wasn't anyone else ready to shit their pants over this?

"Mind the prop blast on the way out, gents," said Monty casually. "It can be a bit jarring."

"About to get our bells rung, boys!" Dum Dum shouted, clearly enjoying himself.

Then they were boarding the plane. Cap sat right next to the opened door, Barnes across from him. Dum Dum was next to Cap, followed by Jones and Frenchie. Jim sat between Barnes and Monty. Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips sat in seats that were perpendicular to them. Stark and an assistant were flying the C-47. The propellers stuttered to life and the landing gears began rolling beneath them. Jim swallowed down the bile rising in his throat. When he felt the plane become airborne, he was sure he left his stomach somewhere on the ground.

Thankfully, there wasn't much time to think about it before they were at the right height above an open field. Agent Carter unhooked her seatbelt and stood up, using the line running along the top of the plane to steady herself.

"Get ready!" she shouted.

Jim's hands were numb and shaking as he pulled out the hook attached to his parachute bag. All around him, his comrades were doing the same. Monty looked downright bored.

"Stand up!" came Carter's voice over the wind.

They did as she said.

"Hook up!"

Seven hooks latched onto the line overhead. They stood single file, Jim behind Dum Dum's giant back. They checked the line.

"Equipment check!"

Jim patted down Dum Dum and checked that the hook and line to his parachute were in order. Behind him, Gabe was doing the same for him. He felt the tap on his upper arm and saw the thumbs up in his peripheral vision. Jim imitated the motion for Dum Dum.

"Sound off for equipment check!"

One at a time they shouted over the wind. Monty: "Seven OK!"

Frenchie: "Six OK!"

Gabe: "Five OK!"

Jim: "Four OK!"

Dum Dum: "Three OK!"

Barnes: "Two OK!"

Cap: "One OK!"

"Stand in the door," said Agent Carter. She shifted so Cap could fit his broad shoulders in the comparatively narrow space. He braced himself with one boot wedged in the space where the side of the fuselage met the floor and his hands on the outside sides of the door. Agent Carter leaned close to Rogers and said, "Go, go, go!"

And he was out. Jim saw only the captain's head as he did the quarter turn and disappeared. The line shuffled forward and Barnes was gone next. One person away — Jim felt like his lungs couldn't capture the air he was breathing in. Dum Dum was gone. Now Jim was in the door —

One one thousand

— the canopies of the three parachutes below him looked so graceful —

Two one thousand

— Jim's hands gripped the sides of the C-47 —

Three one thousand

— Agent Carter had a hand on his shoulder and shouted, "Go, go, go!" —

Four one thousand

— so Jim launched himself out the door, did a quarter turn, and was falling. The blast from the air behind the propeller jerked him roughly. His parachute flapped above him and opened. He checked the canopy; no tears. It was perfect. The wind buffeted him gently. The country side spread below him rather beautifully. For a sopping wet country that had been bombed for the last few years, this place wasn't so bad.

Jim heard "Wahoooooo" drift up to him on the wind: Dum Dum. "Wahoo!" he shouted in reply as he floated down from the sky. What the hell had he been so worried about?

Jim landed just as he'd learned to do two days ago right in the target drop zone. It was more jarring than it had been when they were jumping off a four-foot wooden platform, but it wasn't bad at all. No broken ankles. He cut his 'chute and rolled the white silk up as best he could. Jogging a short distance away from the DZ, he met up with Cap, Barnes, and Dum Dum.

"Anyone lose it?" he asked.

"Yep," said Dum Dum.

"Threw up before he even cut his 'chute," said Cap. He nodded towards Barnes.

Barnes was still looking a little green. Jim laughed with the rest of them.

"It wasn't so bad. Kind of nice, actually."

Cap said, "Wait 'til you're just floating around and someone's shooting at you. Nothin' you can do but hang there and hope no one shreds the 'chute before you reach the ground."

"God, Steve, shut up," Barnes said. He doubled over again, hands on his knees.

An S.S.R. private collected them in a small, open truck once they'd all landed (unharmed), and she drove them back to the airfield. They had time for lunch, and it was louder than usual. The residual adrenaline from jumping out of an aeroplane amplified their voices inside the mess hall. Agent Carter even joined them for a few minutes. She seemed in a particularly good mood, something she usually didn't allow to show when she was around the men.

Jim, Frenchie, and Barnes spent the rest of the time before the full-gear jump chain smoking outside the mess hall. Howard Stark rounded them up inside his wing of the S.S.R. bunker and threw bags of gear at them so fast that Jim considered just dropping it all on the floor. He'd probably break something powerful, useful, or expensive if he did it. Stark was too trusting.

"What is this?" Barnes asked. There was a rifle in his hands, better than anything any of them had ever seen, Allied or Axis.

"It's your sniper rifle!" Stark looked elated that someone had asked about something he'd had a hand in making. "Take a look at the scope! The lenses have been coated and arranged to all but eliminate fogging, even in the highest humidity."

The scepticism on Barnes's face was priceless and a challenge to Stark, but Jim quickly lost interest as Stark went over all the specs of the modified Johnson rifle. The inventor had already explained to Jim how to use the radio system he'd designed. A good hour and a half was wasted as Stark bounced among the men and explained all the equipment he was outfitting them with and the history behind the designs (none of them particularly cared for the history). They all rolled their eyes at the completed shield Stark presented Cap with. The paint job was a little over the top, Jim had to say.

"Here," Stark said, tossing each of them rather large paper-wrapped packages. "Your new threads. I took all of your preferences into account. Peggy and I came up with the designs. They're pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself. And functional. Well, what are you all standing around for? Go get 'em on and strap all your gear on. We have another jump to do, and Phillips wants it in partial daylight."

Jim had to admit that he looked sharp in the S.S.R. uniform. Was it really a uniform though, since no one else was wearing something like it? He supposed it was OK. This new division wasn't anything like the others, and neither was their new unit. Each person was specialised, and it made sense to Jim that each of their uniforms would be tailored to that specialty. The atmosphere felt charged with them all standing around in their field gear. It was excitement and apprehension and a thousand other things.

Jim really couldn't see what the function of all the colours on Cap's uniform were achieving besides looking like a costume, though.

Barnes shook his head at the captain and said, "It's like they're giving you everything you need to get yourself killed out there. COs aren't supposed to wear identifying markers in the field, and here you are blatantly broadcasting the fact that you're Captain fucking America."

Cap ignored the comments, clapped a hand on the shoulder of Barnes's new jacket, and said, "Coat looks nice, Buck."

They were on the runway at twilight. The equipment was heavy as hell. Cap got help to his feet from Agent Carter. He then proceeded to pull the rest of them to their feet and help them into the C-47. Jim felt like he was walking through water with all the gear strapped to him. They moved in slow motion. When they jumped, the air was filled with seven crazy bastards shouting "Wahoo!"

Peggy got the men transport to the village nearby, and the six of them celebrated the earning of their wings by drinking the local bar dry, having a loud darts tournament, and smoking their way through seven cigarette rations and a cigar apiece. Steve had declined to join them but did come with Peggy to pick up his six drunken men at 0200 hours. The village was all shut down, and the men were stumbling around drunk as skunks. Steve corralled them one at a time and got them into the back of the truck Peggy was waiting in like some bizarre herding game.

"You have them all?" Peggy asked.

"Yeah, that's the last of 'em," Steve said. He got into the passenger's seat next to her. "I think Dugan tried to bite me."

"I'm sure you'll recover," she said crisply.

Back at the airfield, Peggy helped Steve guide the men back to their barracks, one man being guided by each of them. Not one of them could walk on their own without stumbling. Steve's first official order as their commanding officer was to demand the men keep their drunken asses in the truck until he and Peggy came to get them. After they were all delivered to their bunks, Steve reluctantly said good night to Peggy and went to his own quarters.

But less than an hour later, Steve jerked awake when he felt warm breathing on his face. In his haste to shift away, he banged heads with whatever was above him.

"Ah, shit!" A body recoiled from Steve, the outline of a person extruding from the darkness.

"Bucky?" Steve asked the shape. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Steve, what's your head made of?"

"What are you doing in here? Go back to bed." Steve's eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He could see Bucky sitting on the floor a few feet from the edge of his bunk.

"There wasn't enough air in there." Bucky was rubbing his forehead and frowning.

"You're drunk."

"Well, yeah. I jumped out of an aeroplane twice today, Stevie, 'course I'm drunk."

Steve collapsed on to his back and closed his eyes. "Go to bed, Bucky."

Sleep was a centimetre away when a prodding finger called Steve back to wakefulness.

"Steve."

"Go away."

"Steve."

"It's too late for this."

"I don't want to go back."

Steve sighed but kept his eyes stubbornly closed and his back to Bucky. "You can stay here if you're quiet."

"No, I mean I don't want to go back."

"Doesn't make your statement any clearer." Was it possible to sleep and have conversations at the same time? Would the serum let Steve do that?

There was a weight shift; Bucky had sat down on Steve's bed. Steve groaned and propped himself up on his elbow. The only thing he could do was humour Bucky until he passed out. Hell, he had to be nearly there already.

"Steve," he said, "I don't want to go back."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Steve." And that voice just sounded wrong.

"Alright," he said while forcing himself into a sitting position. "What's going on?"

Bucky swayed and shrugged. "I don't know."

"That's helpful." Steve eyed Bucky when there was no reply. His friend had stopped swaying and, instead, was holding himself absolutely still. Steve waved a hand in front of Bucky's face. Not a single blink in response. "Bucky?"

Jumping, Bucky turned to Steve. His brow narrowed in confusion. "What?"

"You're acting really weird." What do British people put in their drinks?

"It's just . . . I really don't want to go back." He shook his head as if his ears were full of water.

In Steve's experience, it was always a good idea to reassure and humour Drunk Bucky. Putting his hand in the place where Bucky's shoulder met his neck, Steve said, "You're not gonna go back, Buck. Not if you don't want to."

"What if they make me?"

Steve fell back down to finally get some sleep. "I'm your captain now, right? You won't go back unless I say so."

There was no reply, just the sound of unsteady footfalls and the squeak of the door opening and closing.

The rest of their time was devoted to more first aid lessons, watching the same three films, playing cards, trading books where they could, and education about the mission in Greece, dubbed Operation Jason. A time or two they were able to get a game of improvised baseball going. It was becoming preferable to invent competitions out on the activity field that Agent Carter had broken them on during their first days than to spend time cooped up with maps and tables. At least being outside afford them the illusion of movement.

The afternoons and part of the evening were spent poring over maps and sand tables of the HYDRA base. Recon images coated every surface of the bunker. Each man was to memorise the lay of the land around the base. So they learned everything the maps and images had to reveal about the base, down to the mountains, hills, and streams. They went over countless combat situations, little black and blue pieces acting out battles on the maps. They trained with their new weapons until they knew every last component. At night, they went on marches and practised manoeuvres against S.S.R. troops dressed in German uniforms. They were as functional and well-oiled as any machine in history.

On 23 December 1943, seven men boarded a plane to undertake their first mission as a unit, destination: the Grecian city of Lamia.

Chapter Text

Howard Stark was their pilot again. Steve was getting used to the guy. Hell, he'd say they were pretty good friends by now, the whole fondue incident aside. Steve and his unit were spread out inside a carrier plane that had been retrofitted to suit Howard's design.They were somewhere over the Atlantic French coast, destined for a base in the southern tip of Italy. Once they landed, the plane would be refuelled and sent back north. Before Howard flew it that direction, though, he was taking the controls of a non-refitted Army C-47 and dropping them off over central Greece. Perhaps Steve was a bit biased toward Howard's personal planes, because it seemed silly not to jump from one of his. It's not like Steve hadn't done it before, and he'd do it again if he needed to, whether he had the brass's permission or not.

There was a chorus of shouts from where a few of the men had drawn together. A card game, probably. It was a pastime of theirs, the incomprehensible game. Steve understood that they had made up most of the rules during their confinement in Krausberg. Since they hadn't had a full deck in the cages, the guys had imagined their hands. Everything about them was very esoteric; it was a privilege to be among them. A feeling much like fondness warmed Steve's insides when he thought about it too long

"More than halfway there," Howard called from the pilot's seat.

"Good," said Steve absentmindedly.

"OK back there, pal?"

"Yeah. Just have my mind on other things."

Howard huffed out a laugh. "Don't blame you. First mission. Wait. That's not true, is it?"

Steve had the presence of mind to look marginally guilty. Not that he actually felt it. And Howard wasn't exactly the best person to make a man feel guilty — he made a man want to do something to feel guilty about.

"I have a perfect record," Steve said.

"Oh, right. Of course," Howard said and nodded his head. He made of show of looking impressed. "I sure hope your team doesn't weigh you down, Captain. You can't run off and leave them in the middle of a burning building."

Steve said, "I would never."

Truth was that he was worried about just that. He had spent all those weeks learning how to call his own shots, and he had spent hours at night learning how to lead his men from the ground. Steve could not think of anything more he could have done to prepare for this. The fear still lingered that he would hit the ground and try to do everything. He'd try to save everyone, do all the work. He'd leave everyone behind, leave them vulnerable. No matter how many times Bucky had told him to wait and let one of us take care of that, Steve knew exactly what his greatest weakness was. It was one thing to call the plays; it was a whole different thing to sit there and have someone else do it.

"Don't kid yourself. You picked a fight with Schmidt, and you want to be the one to finish it," said Howard.

"I just want to stop him. I don't care how it happens."

"So you're telling me that if Barnes had a shot on Schmidt's scary red face, you'd tell him to take it?"

There was a beat of hesitation and they both heard it. Steve answered in the affirmative, but the damage had already been done.

"You shouldn't be like that," said Howard. The way he spoke always sounded casual, regardless of the context. Steve wished he could imitate it. "Your guys are there for a reason. They're the best we got — Phillips made sure of that. Use 'em. There's nothing worse than a guy who confuses protecting his men with making reckless decisions."

How many times had Bucky called Steve reckless? At least a thousand before he'd turned ten. Twenty thousand if you counted 'stupid' as a synonym.

"I'll keep that in mind." It felt like a jinx.

There was another rise in volume from the crowd of men. They were leaning away from a messy pile of playing cards in the centre of their group. Half of Steve's face bent into a smile. Dernier's heavily accented voice was telling them all a story. His tone and pitch changed frequently. Steve imagined him being a very good storyteller and making unique voices for all of the characters. For the most part, though, Steve's head stayed full of worrying and planning.

Howard landed the plane on an Allied base in the southernmost part of the Italian mainland. They got off the plane ("So that's what it's like to exit a plane the sane way!" Bucky said) and were immediately swept up by higher-ups on the base. They took them to the mess to force on them food and supplies they had no room to carry. Steve just shook his head at Dugan and Falsworth trying to rearrange the contents of their bags so that a bottle of hooch would fit. Bucky and Dernier made themselves scarce, probably soliciting for cigarettes. Dernier would probably smoke them; Bucky would smoke half and use the rest for trading. Cigarettes and alcohol were the only kinds of currency that mattered to soldiers, Steve had come to find. And socks. He didn't blame them.

An hour and a half after they'd landed, another plane carrying a battalion from the S.S.R. touched down and unloaded. Phillips, Peggy, and the others would be taking a submarine toward Greece. Steve and the men would be coming from the air and linking up with Greek resistance fighters. Once they had the factory taken out, the sub would launch torpedoes at the HYDRA ships docked nearby.

Steve was called to a last-minute meeting in a borrowed tent. He hunched over an all-too-familiar sand table for forty-five minutes. The meeting ended early when a runner came to inform them that "those howling terrors" were being watched over by almost an entire brigade of MPs. Steve imagined that this was what it had been like when his mother would come to find him in the headmaster's office after he'd been caught fighting at school again.

The tent which Steve was looking for was easily identified. There were about seven armed MPs standing around, but there was also a cacophony of familiar voices shouting from inside. The sound didn't die down when Steve busted through the drab flaps. On the contrary, the volume rose even higher as his men expressed their pleasure at their captain coming to find them and busting them out (again). All six of them were released without penalty (which Steve thought was setting a bad precedent) thanks in large part to Steve's ability to schmooze, which he'd come to refine to a sharp edge during those USO tours and by observing Senator Grant.

Outside the tent, Steve cracked Dugan's and Bucky's heads together — thanks for teaching me to control my strength, Buck — and said, "Try not to get court martialed before we ever complete a mission."

"It was just a bit of fun," said Falsworth. He retrieved Dugan's fallen bowler hat and handed it to its owner. "I daresay they overreacted."

"Isn't it your job to keep these guys in line when I'm busy?" Steve said to Bucky.

Preoccupied with getting his hair to slick back down, Bucky only said, "No."

"You're gonna have to promote his sorry ass to first lieutenant if you want him to do anything, Cap," said Morita. "Barnes is only here for the money."

They all laughed because there was only one reason Bucky was here, and it wasn't money. Though the twenty-five dollar bump in their salaries ("hazard pay") wasn't something any of them were unhappy to be receiving.

"Gear up," said Steve. "We have to meet Howard on the airstrip."

Weighed down with their ninety-pound packs half an hour later, Steve stood before his six men and in front of their C-47. Mere hours away from their first combat jump as a team — for most of them, it would be their first combat jump with any unit. They sat in a single-file line before him. Bucky was in the front, then Dugan, Morita, Jones, Dernier, and Falsworth.

It felt like a moment where Steve should say something to his men. So he tried his best to do that. "Once you board this plane, there's no going back. If you're in, you're in for the whole ride. This thing won't stop until HYDRA's gone and the Germans have surrendered. They're taking something from these people, and they don't look like they're going to be done anytime soon. I intend to stop them at any cost. I chose each of you for reasons beyond your tactical abilities. You're all — each one of you — extraordinary men. You've already survived battlefields and imprisonment. I can't begin to imagine the strength it took to endure half the things all of you have. There's no shame in backing out now. Does anyone want to change their mind?"

Steve looked each of them in the eye after he said it. Six resolute faces stared back at him.

"Then let's give 'em hell."

A chorus of "wahoo" answered him. Steve stepped forward and offered Bucky his hand. The sergeant accepted it, and Steve hauled his friend to his feet. The long barrel of his rifle nearly smacked both of them in the face.

"Did you write that beforehand?" Bucky said in a voice low enough so the others couldn't hear.

"Get on the plane, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir, Captain America." A wink. "You'll get better at 'em once you get more practice."

Why did the name always sound extra ridiculous when Bucky said it?

Steve offered a hand to Dugan next, pulling the man upright. Each tug on the arm was accompanied by firm eye contact. They reassured each other and made every man a promise without saying a word. Waddling like babies with full diapers from the weight of their gear, they made for the plane. It took a long time for them to help each other up the short ladder and into the fuselage. Once they were all in, Steve was a step away from entering when he noticed Peggy watching from across the runway. Their gazes tangled.

Something gripped Steve and he shouted across the airfield, "I'll see you soon!"

Even from a distance Steve could see the challenge in Peggy's eyes. She was definitely something else; something Steve wanted to know well enough to name.

"Don't you dare be late again!"

"Wouldn't dream of it!"

There was a round of groans from inside the C-47, and Steve didn't care one bit.

The sun had gone down but there was still some light when they made their jump from the plane. Bucky had been a little worried about the landing. Hell, he was worried about everything involved in jumping out of a moving aircraft, but he was worried about landing in particular with this jump. Their DZ wasn't exactly ideal. Lamia wasn't known for its flatland.

They'd taken some fire as they came over Greece, but Stark had been able to manoeuver them around the worst of it. Only a few "harmless" holes were punched in the sides. Bucky was sure he'd never like flying. There was concentrated fire once they neared their destination. It took more nerve than Bucky knew he had to jump out of the plane and directly into enemy fire. Seeing Steve's dulled white parachute below him only made the stomach acid jump quicker up his oesophagus. A bullet tore a hole in the silk of his parachute, and the change in descent velocity was easily perceived. Bucky was already close to the ground, but there was no way he'd walk away unscathed from the impact. He yanked hard on the ropes, desperately trying to catch more air beneath the canopy despite the hole. First his ass hit the ground at a speed they'd never practised and then the butt of his Johnson caught him on the jaw. Bucky grunted from the double impact. Twisting and smashing his fist against the buckle across his chest, he shed the harness and rolled up the 'chute. He took a moment to orient himself and then trotted off the DZ (with an ass that was already sore) and to their rendezvous point.

It wasn't until after he met up with Steve that he threw up.

The idiot clapped a giant hand on Bucky's back and said, "Thought you'd be over this by now."

Panting, Bucky said, "Bullet got the 'chute."

Steve's hand stilled and — damn it all to hell. "You're alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. But just . . . just falling like that? For those few seconds — the worst feeling . . ." Bucky gave up on talking and just tried to catch his breath. His jaw was aching anyway. And he was pretty sure his goddamn ass was purple.

"You'll get used to it." The attempt at returning to something regular was appreciated. "Only five more bases after this one."

Bucky groaned. "I'm going to be jumping out of aeroplanes after you for the rest of my life."

Dum Dum and Jim trotted up with their parachutes wrapped sloppily in their arms.

"Landing OK?" Steve said.

"A little more exciting than Great Dunmow," said Dum Dum.

"But OK," Jim finished for the two of them.

Steve nodded. The other two started cutting their parachutes with short field knives. The seven of them had been issued knives like that. They were stored in a slot in each of their boots. Dum Dum cut long strips. Jim cut patches. They'd been told that their 'chutes would be useless after a jump. But then Monty had had the brilliant idea to cut the parachutes up for bandages, God forbid they run out of actual bandages on a single mission. The silk wasn't great for soaking up blood, but it could be made effective for tourniquets or binding up non-bleeding wounds. Bucky was sure they could think of something that would need tying up over the course of a mission. Who knew, maybe they'd need seven parachutes' worth of gags some day?

Dernier had suggested they distribute everything they could to the resistance fighters they encountered. He already planned to use the silk as fuses for his jerry-rigged explosives. Sure, good idea, but still, a lot of parachute to utilise. Bucky pretended not to know that Jim had already stolen a parachute pack from Great Dunmow and sent it home with a proposal to his girl. If he ever got home, she would be married in a wedding gown sewn from parachute silk. Bucky supposed there was romance or significance in the gesture somewhere. He just hoped Steve didn't get any ideas about parachute silk wedding dresses and Agent Carter. She'd probably knock his super soldier teeth out of his head.

The point was that if he never saw a parachute again, it wouldn't be soon enough.

Gabe, Dernier, and Monty showed up in a bunch. Bucky saw the concern on Steve's face.

"What happened?" He demanded an answer more than he asked for one.

"Frenchie's chute caught a few bullets on the way down," said Gabe. "Rough landing."

Bucky couldn't make out the dark, French mutterings but he could tell from the tone that it was filled with curses.

"He says he's fine," Gabe said. "And a few other things that don't bear repeating."

Based on the way Monty was sharing Dernier's weight, it'd been more than a little rough. This place had rocks embedded in its ground everywhere. Bucky's ass ached in sympathy, and wasn't that the strangest thing that had happened to him all week?

All conversation immediately ceased when they heard rustling in the trees behind them. All seven bent their knees, lowering themselves to the ground.

A voice barked out in what Bucky presumed was Greek.

Gabe raised his head a millimetre after a nod from Steve and called back softly, "Ιάσονας."

Three men appeared out of the darkness in phases. Steve slowly stood to his full height, the rest of them following his lead. The leader of the three Greeks broke into a smile and said with a heavy accent, "Captain America! In the flesh!"

Bucky exchanged a look with Monty. The plan was to meet up with the Greek resistance, but how could they be sure these were the right people? Gabe moved forward to stand beside Steve, offering his translation as needed. There was a little book in his hand; he hadn't had that much time to familiarise himself with the language. They'd been assured that these guys were OK with English. Bucky found that the people who said those things were almost always exaggerating. Bucky wasn't going to be useful in the communication department, that was for damn sure. He only knew a handful of Greek letters, and that was only because of school. He doubted that it would help anyone if he told them that epsilon was the symbol for engineering strain.

A few minutes passed while Steve exchanged words with one of the Greeks. The other two looked curiously at the six of them and their leader who wore a flag as a uniform. For their part, the six of them stared back just as openly. There may have been a bit of a scowl on Bucky's face. But his jaw was really starting to hurt (more than his ass), and he didn't like standing out here in the open like this. He couldn't help it if he was looking angry.

Then Steve waved a hand and they were moving out. They fell into an arrangement without even thinking about it. Steve stayed near the front with the Greek leader, the two other Greeks taking point. Gabe was close to Steve, Dum Dum behind the two of them. Jim helped Dernier along behind them. Monty offered support when needed, eyes on their flanks when it wasn't, and Bucky watched everyone's backs.

The Greeks led them to their base camp. It was a group of crumbling stone houses built in staggered rows into the side of a hill. It didn't seem like it should work in reality. Maybe a story book, but not the place where they were all living now — a place where men had red skulls and worlds warred with one another.

Rogers took Gabe and Monty with him to the Greeks' HQ. Dugan and the rest of them were led to one of the crumbling houses on the fringe of the camp and told they would be staying here for now. Dugan tossed his stuff on the floor and sat in a wooden chair. The day hadn't been particularly challenging, but travelling like this took more out of him than battle. It was funny how that worked.

Barnes handed Dernier off to Jim before he went searching through the house. He came back a minute later with a pillow and a blanket. He set it on one of the other chairs and then helped Dernier sit. Frenchie nodded his thanks and muttered some more. Jim and Barnes sat down in the remaining two chairs around the wooden table. Dugan heaved a sigh, content to be not moving. This was familiar, this sitting around. War, for all that it was, moved slowly. Until it didn't, but that was a different story. It was stationary more often than it was chaotic.

Something told Dugan that this wasn't going to be the case for long, not on Rogers's squad. Well, he thought a little sheepishly, it's not like we're making it any easier, what with that 'howling terrors' incident.

"What do you think?" Dugan asked the room at large.

Jim shrugged. "So far, so good."

There was a kerosene lamp in the centre of the wooden table, the only thing giving light to the house. Dugan dug around in his nearest pack and pulled out a clump of bread he'd taken from the Italians. The bottle of grappa tinkled when he moved things around. That was for later. The boys had to celebrate somehow. Dugan broke off a piece of the seed-crusted bread and tossed it to Dernier. He did it twice more, a piece of each of his comrades. They sat in silence and just ate for a few minutes. They chewed slow and breathed.

Barnes got up first. He pushed the chair back from the table and left through the door they came in through. Dernier got up next, dragging the pillow and blanket over to the sagging couch that was a few feet deeper into the house. Jim pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered one to Dugan, which he accepted. The lighter slid out of the extra space in the pack, and Jim lit Dugan's before bringing the flame to his own. An S.S.R. perk: Stark designed damn-near foolproof lighters for them. Dugan sure as hell didn't miss the damp matches that never used to work which the 107th gave them.

Thinking about the 107th and the type of life he lived with them made Dugan feel nostalgic for a time that was only a few weeks gone by. The feeling made him say, "You ever think about your old unit? You were a Ranger, weren't you?"

Jim sighed and blew out a stream of smoke at the same time. "Yeah. Sometimes I miss 'em, but I don't. You know?"

Dugan did know. He knew from his father. Back at Camp McCoy, Dugan had talked about something similar with Barnes, whose father had also been a soldier. Dugan knew that men were never closer to another living person — not even their wives and children — than they were to their fellow soldiers. There was a bond forged under fire that couldn't be replicated anyway else. It didn't last. Once the battles ended, and the men who had survived returned home, the bond disintegrated. Dugan knew that seeing your war buddies after there was no more war just wasn't the same. Friendships like those were a beautiful thing that only lived when everything else was dark and ugly. Starlight that got you through the night until daybreak, until something better.

"You get a chance to talk to any of them before all this?" Dugan gestured and the smoke of his cigarette left a ghost of the motion in the air.

Jim shook his head. "Wasn't any time. Hardly had any time to write home and tell my parents what had happened. Tell 'em why I stopped writing for so long." Most of the old unit died in there anyway.

Dugan nodded. "I didn't even think to write my parents."

Jim picked at the rough surface of the table. Little fakes of wood came up under his thumbnail. "I think they got rounded up in one of those camps. They never said in their letters, but something changed."

It was suddenly difficult to look at Jim. Dugan began picking at the surface of the table, too. "Jesus."

"I was thinking about asking someone if they could get any information about my parents for me. You know, someone with connections in the S.S.R.," Jim said around his cigarette. "Thought I'd push being adjacent to Captain America as far as I can."

"Is that why you sent the parachute back home?"

Jim laughed. "Yeah, sort of. I had a girl back home."

"What?" Dugan whisper-shouted. "You didn't say anything about a girl! I thought we were friends!"

Jim didn't look the slightest bit guilty. "It's sort of a secret."

"What's her name? Damnit, you've been sitting on a cache of good stories!"

"Her name's Chiyo." Jim smiled at him. "Last I heard she was working in a factory, doing her part for the war effort." He didn't roll his eyes, but Dugan could hear it in his voice. There was no one on this earth who was as disinterested in patriotism as soldiers.

He hated to bring it up again, but Dugan said, "She didn't . . . did she?"

Jim shook his head. "Nah. Her father's white as newly fallen snow. She takes after him in looks. She was able to avoid the worst of it."

"Well, that's good."

"Yeah. Haven't heard from her since before the mission where my unit got overrun by HYDRA and I met you all."

Dugan pinched off his cigarette. "I'm sure you've got a backlog of letters from her waiting for you when we get back to base. I mean, they gotta get Captain America his fan mail. Our letters better be getting delivered with the same sense of urgency."

"I'd drink to that." Jim pulled his hands away from the table and sat back in his chair. "What about you? Who's waiting for ol' Timothy back home?"

Dugan rubbed a hand over his chest. "Oh, me? No one but my dear old mother."

They shot the breeze for a little while longer. Dugan came to realize that he didn't really know Jim that well, not outside a military point of view. They traded stories from their childhoods; Dugan's a little more dated than Jim's. Dugan talked about how he broke old Mrs. O'Malley's window playing baseball with the neighborhood kids once, and she got so mad that she tore up the vacant lot they played in. After that, Dugan would swing for her windows every time he was up to bat out of spite. Jim told Dugan about how he and his little brother, when their family lived in the rural parts outside Fresno, would lie in the middle of the road at night and look at the stars. One Independence Day, their neighbours were lighting off fireworks all night while they watched from the road. The noise must have scared the wildlife, because a skunk came streaking out of the corn fields. It sprayed Jim's brother, and he spent the next week reeking worse than anything Jim could remember. The memory still made him laugh so hard tears came to his eyes.

Jim eventually went to sleep on the floor beside Dernier and the couch. Dugan turned the lamp off and sat for a bit. He didn't feel tired enough to sleep; he'd just end up lying there with his mind racing. A particularly social being, Dugan decided to find out where Barnes went. What could he say? After two years, Dugan was used to having the guy around. (And after Krausberg, Dugan felt better having eyes on him.)

As quietly as he could, Dugan exited the front door and looked to the left and right. Instinct told him it was probably wise to go away from the rest of the houses and people. Dugan found Barnes sitting against a large rock. He was about halfway up the slope that their quarters were built into. Dugan might have missed him if he didn't catch the glow of the end of a cigarette. Strange: Barnes knew better than to light a cigarette at night when enemies were around.

"Jimmy," Dugan said. His voice carried just enough. Barnes's head jerked out of his hand. Dugan sat down beside him and plucked the cigarette out of his fingers. He hated to waste it, but Dugan ground it out in the grass. "What do you think you're doing?"

Barnes just blinked at him like he couldn't see clearly.

"You weren't asleep, were you?" said Dugan.

"No," he said while wiping his eyes.

"Maybe you should have been."

Dugan couldn't think of anything else to say, and neither, apparently, could Barnes. They sat together and didn't do anything besides think their individual thoughts. Occasionally, Barnes would wipe at his eyes and Dugan would pretend not to notice.

About ten minutes passed before Dugan said, "Let's go back."

"OK." Barnes staggered back against the rock he'd been sitting against when he stood up. Dugan arched an eyebrow. "Ass is numb," Barnes said by way of explanation.

"I don't know how you're still alive, Jimmy."

He stiff-legged it down the hill and onto the path beside Dugan. "There's no time for dying, Dum Dum. I've got shit to do."

Steve stood in front of the wooden table in their quarters, a map spread out. It was beginning to feel like his natural setting: standing in front of a map. There was enough light from the dawn that he hadn't needed to light the lamp. Steve scratched at his neck. He would have liked to sleep for another hour. He supposed he could go back to sleep after the briefing, but he already knew that he wouldn't do it. There wasn't a chance he'd be able to drop off once he sent some of his men off into the field. Still, his eyes itched and his back ached. If he was feeling the battlefield before any real battles had started, he couldn't imagine what his entirely human squad must feel like.

Steve watched them move slowly. They got up stiffly and slowly from the places they had bedded down the night before. He didn't have the heart to tell them to hurry up. Bucky had told him, during those long nights in Great Dunmow, that he shouldn't be soft on the men. To hell with that, Steve was going to run the show his own way.

Morita made his way over to the table first. He claimed one of the wooden chairs and stared bleary eyed at the map. Dugan came over next. He chose to stand. Falsworth helped Dernier over. That worried Steve. He couldn't afford to have one of the men wounded already. It simply wouldn't do. Hopefully, it was just soreness and they were taking it easy. The two of them sat in the chairs. Steve tried to smile encouraging at them without being obnoxious. Enthusiasm and soldiers had to be mixed carefully.

Bucky and Jones appeared at the same time. Jones looked downright exhausted. Guilt plucked at Steve again; he was about to send him right back into the field. Jones sat in the last chair. Bucky stood on Steve's left and rubbed at a bruise on his jaw. Because the world was not entirely different, Bucky caught Steve watching and shook his head in the way that meant It's nothing. The head shake in combination with the set of his shoulders confirmed that it really was nothing, but Steve made a note to give Bucky shit about the bruise anyway.

"So," Steve began, addressing everyone around the table, "the Greeks have told us that HYDRA is holed up on the top of a hill in an old castle that's surrounded by a stone wall. The Greeks used to use it as a place to store their weapons. They don't think HYDRA knows about it. So we can't just blow the place up."

"Which was your first plan of attack," Dugan said.

Steve allowed himself to smile and conceded the point. "So we want to flush HYDRA out and capture the castle without damaging it too much. The Greeks have been watching the place for a while, so they're taking Falsworth and Jones to scout the area. You're to watch their patrols and take reports from the Greeks. They have a mole in HYDRA's ranks; I guess they've been recruiting locals. The insider is going to be here," he pointed to a place west of the castle on the map, "so one of you guys needs to be there to intercept him. I've been informed that he speaks six languages and one of them is English. Jones doesn't have to be the one to meet him."

"And after that?" Morita asked.

"Depending on how their defences move, we're going to have Dernier rig something up and detonate it. It'll draw the attention of the guards on the ground. Bucky will take out the watchers on the wall while the rest are distracted. I'll go over the wall and open the gates for the rest of us. The Greek resistance will be with us. They'll stay to clear the courtyard, and we'll take care of everything inside. We'll know more after you guys get eyes on the defences and talk to the guy on the inside."

Steve looked up to gauge everyone's reactions. Their eyes were on the map and they were obviously thinking hard. Morita looked up from the map first.

"Sounds good," he said.

They muttered and nodded their heads.

Steve looked at his watch and said, "Scouts are moving out in forty-five minutes. The Greeks are going to come for you, Jones, Falsworth. Get ready."

"Alright," Dugan said.

The men shifted toward their packs, exchanging few words. Bucky didn't move from Steve's side. So Steve headed outside. He walked a few paces down the path and then stopped to lean against the side of one of the stone buildings. As expected, Bucky had followed him.

"What do you think?" Steve said quietly. Something about dawn had always made Steve speak softer.

Bucky shrugged. Steve could tell that he was keeping his hands at his sides very deliberately. "Makes sense," he said. "How many are in the resistance? How much help will we be getting?"

"They've got fifty." Steve tried his hardest to keep his face neutral. There was more potential help inside the HYDRA base if they could get to them. The captured resistance fighters had been taken to work in the base just like Steve's own men had been. There were rumours about a version of the Krausberg isolation ward being present inside the castle in Lamia. Steve hadn't wanted to mention outright that confirmation of this rumour was the priority of speaking with the mole in HYDRA's ranks.

It had actually been Jones who'd suggested that they leave that rumour out of the briefing. They'd gone on to devise their plan of attack, keeping the information in mind. Falsworth had lightly suggested keeping Dernier and Bucky outside the building during the raid. Their skills were better utilized at a distance, he reasoned. Steve had agreed. But really, if the rumour was true, Steve simply didn't want Bucky in there. Withholding this kind of information was probably the exact thing Howard had warned Steve about on their flight to Italy; Steve was confusing protecting Bucky with making a poor tactical decision. Howard would say that it would be better for Bucky to know about the potential of another isolation ward so that he could better prepare himself for the reality. There was some validity to that. But, dammit, this was Steve's team and he'd call the shots however he goddamn liked. If the rumour turned out to be just a rumour, then no harm would be done.

And Falsworth was right: what good was a sniper in close quarters combat?

"How many do they think are in there?" Bucky voice interrupted the argument in Steve's head. Steve knew he had a stupid look on his face because Bucky said more slowly, "How many HYDRA troops do the Greeks think are occupying the base?"

"Uh — not too many. Maybe one hundred or so? They said some of the HYDRA people are leaving and not coming back. The Greeks think that HYDRA's trying to recruit as many people here as possible so that it can be self-sufficient and they can reallocate their resources. It's like Krausberg in that a lot of the manual labor is being done by innocent people, just a lot smaller operation. Non-HYDRA people."

Steve watched Bucky's reaction closely. He didn't give much away.

"OK. It's not bad," he finally said. "Whatever Gabe and Monty find out will help a lot." The conversation was brought to an official end when Bucky fished his cigarettes out of one the pockets of his jacket. Steve declined when Bucky offered him one; Steve already split his ration among the six of them, knowing he'd never use them. "Oh," Bucky said suddenly, pulling something else out of a different pocket and tossing it to Steve.

Steve caught it on his fingertips. It was a compass.

"Merry Christmas, Steve," Bucky said.

Steve didn't say I already have a compass. He thought it, though. The inside was pristine, not a speck of dirt between any of the components. The entire thing was unblemished. The US Army had issued him a compass, one of those that could hide in a zipper, and he'd been using it all during their training. His was smaller and had seen practice, but this one was definitely nicer. Steve didn't doubt that he'd favour this newer one. Hell, he already did.

"Thanks, Buck. Merry Christmas." To delay the full-fledged feeling of guilt, Steve gestured to Bucky's face and said, "Where'd you get that?"

The sergeant smirked and allowed his hand to rise and rub at the mark. "Hit myself in the face with the butt of my rifle when we were landing. I was too concerned with keeping air under the 'chute that I didn't position it the right way."

In other words, Bucky had panicked and gotten himself hurt. (Yeah, fine, a bruise didn't qualify as hurt, but it was something.) Understandable. Especially when Steve took into account how much Bucky seemed to hate these jumps. But everyone knew the jumpy man wasn't the one you wanted on your squad. You want the man that kept his head. Steve was OK saying that whatever had happened last night when they jumped didn't count.

"Guess there's no good way to land with a rifle that big," Steve said.

Bucky nodded and blew cigarette smoke away from Steve. They both watched it swirl and blend until it was no longer discernible. Bucky said, "You remember the last time I was home for Christmas?"

"Yeah." The whole block must have heard the yelling coming from Mr. and Mrs. Barnes' apartment.

Bucky threw his cigarette down with more force than was necessary. He grounded it into the dirt with his boot. "Things have gotten better," Bucky said. "Old man was right."

A lot of things bubbled up in Steve's throat, but he didn't allow himself to say any of them.

Bucky didn't stay on the topic for long anyway. "Hey, did you, uh . . . did you get a chance to see my sister? Or my ma? You know, before you shipped out? I just . . . haven't heard from any of them in a while, with Krausberg and all that."

It took a lot out of Steve not to be hurt by how hesitantly Bucky asked. It was like he was asking a stranger — like they hadn't known each other for twenty years. Steve was left to wonder if the changes in Bucky or the changes in himself had caused this altered dynamic. He hated it.

"Actually, yeah," Steve said. There was that guilt again. How had Steve forgotten? "Before they did the, ah, before the procedure, I had a three-day furlough." The words to say good-bye to everyone in case the serum killed me hung in the air. Steve didn't dare say them but he could tell Bucky had picked up the meaning. Steve continued, "And I went to see your family. They were doing really good, Buck. They missed you, but they were doing OK. I couldn't tell any of them what unit I got into or anything that was going on. Becca didn't believe that I'd gotten into the Army. She thought I'd bought the uniform somewhere and I was trying to pull a fast one on them."

It felt good to see Bucky crack a small smile. Steve didn't feel so blocky and like he didn't belong next to this person he'd known since he was seven.

"Yeah, I bet she thought you were full of it," Bucky said.

It wasn't long after that when the rest of the men joined them outside. The Greeks came to pick up Jones and Falsworth. Steve and the others mingled with the other Greek resistance fighters, talking weapons and tanks and trading stories. Greece hadn't gotten a lot exposure to the rise of Captain America, and Steve had a hell of time trying to explain the redacted version of his creation. The Greeks thought the whole thing was hilarious. The rest of Steve's men found out that Steve had done movies, something Steve had been very deliberately failed to mention. Bucky hadn't said anything when the films got brought up but his eyes downright glittered — it was terrifying.

Their conversations with the Greeks were only half-intelligible due to the language barrier. That didn't stop their communication. If anything, it made it more enjoyable. Dernier was particularly good at getting his points across; he used a lot gestures that involved swinging his arms around. The Greeks seemed to enjoy it.

Their fraternisation was interrupted by the sounds of an engine rumbling through the air. Dugan spotted the plane first and apparently recognised the model as unfriendly just by the way it sounded. He threw his arms out to knock down anyone within the radius and shouted, "It's German — get down!"

The first detonation split the air just then. Steve copied Dugan and used his body and shield to cover those around him from the bombing. The plane was deafening as it flew overhead, little pings of punctuation from machine guns on board. The Greeks scrambled around doubled up on themselves. Someone got to the antiaircraft guns. If they got a hit, it wasn't enough to knock the plane out of the sky.

After it passed the camp, it kept going. Steve looked up over his arm to track the plane's progress. To his surprise it didn't turn around and come back for another pass. It kept heading north — north to the HYDRA facility. It dropped another round of heavy explosives around the stone walls of the base. The plane was able to turn itself around over the base, but it didn't get much further. A shock of blue launched itself from the walls of the HYDRA camp, striking the wing of the bomber. The plane caught fire and left a toxic cloud across the sky as it made its descent. There was a mechanical crunch and the ground shook; the smoking debris gouged a trench down the side of a hill before coming to rest in the space between the Greeks' base and HYDRA's.

Steve stayed where he was for the length of a few breaths. The people around him did the same, slowly pushing themselves up with wary eyes. When he got to his feet, Steve took inventory of his surroundings. All his men were unharmed, and no one was screaming in pain. He hoped that meant that no one had been hit and not that someone was already too dead to scream. Dernier looked a little stiff, but Steve chalked that up to the rough landing from last night. He hoped this was the same case for Jones and Falsworth — no injuries, no exploded plans.

Steve motioned his remaining men together.

Dugan was arranging his bowler hat. "Not going to get used to the Germans fighting HYDRA no matter how many times I see it."

Steve nodded even though he hadn't seen the things that Dugan and the others had. He hadn't seen for himself this sort of thing before. Dugan had. Bucky had. So had Jones. They saw HYDRA turn on the Germans, and the next thing they knew, they were in a forced-labour camp. Jesus.

"We going after the wreckage?" Morita asked.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," said Steve. "Let's gather intelligence before HYDRA does." Seven minutes later, they had all their supplies and weapons. Steve put on his helmet and snapped it securely in place. He took his shield off his back and had it ready on his arm. "I'll take point. Dugan take the rear. Stay back, Buck, and make sure we have a clear field."

Dugan shouted 'ha' more than he laughed. Slapping a hand on Bucky's back, he said, "Ain't this the life, Sarge?" Bucky scowled like his life depended on it.

The one thing Jim noticed as they trekked from the Greeks' camp to the wreckage of the German bomber was that there were a lot of wrecked German planes around here. Something told him that most of these skeletons were here because of HYDRA. Interesting: Was HYDRA's biggest opponent right now the Germans? Did that make the Wehrmacht their ally? If the Germans were fighting HYDRA on top of a two-front battle, how much longer could they keep fighting? Did they have the manpower to keep this up?

Yeah, no wonder HYDRA was recruiting the Greeks. At this rate of fighting, all the Germans would be dead in a few years. They couldn't fight the Allies on the west, the Soviets on the east, and themselves all at the same time. Jim's stomach stirred; he almost felt bad for them. A lot of those Germans were just kids. He'd seen it firsthand. The world is horrible and complex, and I never asked for this, Jim thought. And the rumours they heard about things in the Pacific theatre of war . . . It was a bloodbath over there. The islands must make everything look worse, the idea of paradise a foil to the carnage and brutality of the fighting over there. Rumours were rumours, but Jim hadn't seen or heard anything about the European theatre that compared to what news trickled over from the Pacific. And he really didn't know how he felt about that.

Jim really hoped his little brother hadn't tried to enlist. He really hoped his brother had done something that took him away from those awful camps. The thought of his little brother and his parents, who would suffer and not say a single word about it — the thought of them behind a barbed wire fence filled Jim with irrational rage. It was all the more complicated that the rage was for the very country he was fighting for right now.

He couldn't think about this now. Thoughts like this made being a soldier unbearable. Jim wished he could shake his head and all of these things would drain out of his ears and not complicate things anymore. His boots were so much heavier when he thought about German kids, Pacific islands, and concentration camps.

Boom!

Jim's steps faltered only a little bit. He saw a body fall down the slope at the base of the HYDRA camp; Barnes's handiwork. Seemed a bit early to give away his presence and position, but that wasn't Jim's area of expertise. He didn't know shit about anything but the radio. Or that's what he tried to convince himself of.

Cap had shifted his shield up at the sound of the gunshot. He looked back now to the place where Barnes had bedded down. Jim knew that he probably went for one of the other aeroplane skeletons. There was wreckage everywhere. This place was a mechanical graveyard — thank God Stark wasn't here to see it. The guy would be going nuts. Anyway, Jim knew Barnes enough to know that the guy went for the place with the best view and most cover. Field of view was more important to Barnes than cover; anyone who was anyone knew that. Jim had learned it in those birdcages back in Krausberg, and he had never talked directly to Barnes at the time. You knew it just by watching him.

Jim could remember in excruciating detail how Barnes went to that private's aid when the guards were beating the life out of the kid. Dying of pneumonia, Barnes had launched himself into the middle of that fight and saved that private's life — took out three guards, too, before it was over. Granted, he'd only managed to save the kid because the guards had decided to beat him to within an inch of his life instead (which, to be honest, wasn't too many inches at the time). Zola had stopped it, and then he took Barnes away.

So anyway, Barnes was a bit of a self-sacrificing, overprotective, reckless, stupid, annoying, bossy, admirable son of a bitch.

There was the crack of his rifle two more times, and two more bodies rolled down the slope toward the very plane the four of them were headed toward. Jim's hands tightened on his M3. He wanted to get a shot off. Why did the snipers get to have all the fun?

They made it to the plane without taking any fire; Barnes got all the HYDRA troops before they could fire a single round. Cap put up his fist and then lowered his hand. They all stopped and lowered to a crouch. Behind him, Dugan was on one knee and sweeping the trail they had just travelled. The downed plane was only ten meters away. Frenchie looked over to Jim and raised his eyebrows. Jim shrugged.

Cap had his eyes on the plane, watching and listening for any signs of life. He must not have heard anything, because he turned, pointed to Jim, and gestured for him to follow. Still in a crouch, Jim approached the plane behind the captain. The plane was smoking but there were no obvious, open flames. It occurred to him that there might be explosions possible in metal bird. But if Cap said it was safe to approach, Jim was going to believe him.

The nose had been sheared off by the rocky hills as the plane slid down the slope. Half of a body was situated in the pilot's seat. Jim wondered where his legs had gone and then tried to forget the thought. There was still a hat and sunglasses on the pilot, both of which were undamaged. Rogers slid inside the plane (somehow; he was so big) through the damage in the front. Jim followed him through the hole. Rogers bent over the pilot, perhaps checking if the pilot was still alive. Jim stood back to back with him, M3 up and aimed at bowels of the plane they had yet to see. He thought he saw at least three more destroyed bodies back there.

"Anybody want a Luger?" said Cap.

Jim turned to see the Cap crouched down beside the half-destroyed controls with a leather holster in his hands. The captain nodded and held it out to Jim. He took it.

"Thanks." He'd been after a good keepsake. Jim had planned on sending something good home to his parents and his brother. And to Chiyo.

"Don't thank me," Cap said. "Thank Gerry."

"There's one thing the Krauts are good for," said Jim. He shoved the Luger and its holster into his jacket. "Christmas."

The pilot was missing his hat and sunglasses when Jim looked back to thank the body. Cap nodded to the rest of the plane, and Jim led the way into the fuselage. The bomb bay doors had been lost somewhere along the way. Dirt, mud, and rocks had littered the inside and made it look like the plane had been here for much longer than it actually had been. Four bodies littered the fuselage in varying states of deconstruction. Jim stared down at the body of a machine gunner whose chest still expanded. It was only by millimetres but it was enough to notice. Half the guy's brains were exposed; Jim didn't know how it was possible that his lungs still spasmed.

Jim pulled out his Colt revolver from its holster and shot the body's exposed brains. There was a horrible gurgling rasp and then, blessedly, nothing. He could feel the captain looking at him, but Jim didn't look back. Holstering his sidearm, he knelt down and plucked the decorations off the body's uniform.

"All clear," the captain called for the benefit of Dugan and Dernier. The other two entered by way of the missing door in the side of the fuselage. Cap said, "Look for anything you can. Papers probably got all burned away, but keep your eyes open for anything that the brass could get some intelligence from."

Gabe walked back into camp with Monty and their Greek escorts around 1700 hours. He'd been on his feet for long hours before, but they'd never ached quite like they did right now. Almost two months away from the battlefield had made him so soft. Gabe had worked hard since he was nine years old, when he'd gotten his first job doing mechanical repairs (only requirement for the job: small hands) on a nearby farm. It had been an uphill battle every day since then. He wouldn't give up his education for a job, no matter how much the family needed money. If that made him selfish, Gabe was prepared to accept that. His family had seen hard and lean times; he'd simply banked on the family's ability to continue to persevere.

Hey, it turned out that a war was enough to interrupt his pursuit of education. Gabe didn't try to think so much about why that happened.

He and Monty sought out Captain Rogers on their return. They found him outside their quarters examining a map. They approached and saluted him. Rogers echoed the motion and they stood at rest.

"How'd it go?" he said.

"Pretty good. Not too much excitement," said Monty. He was, of course, referring to the bombing.

"We're all fine," Gabe said. The captain really should work on not being so expressive. At least not in combat zones. "Got a lot to report."

He handed over his notes and the hand-drawn map of the castle the Greeks had given them. Rogers accepted them and looked them over immediately.

"And those rumours turned out to be true, according to our underground friend," Monty said lowly.

The captain kept his eyes on the notes and said, "That complicates things."

"If I may," said Gabe, "I think the plan should still work. There're seventy-three Germans in the facility and twenty-one Greek recruits. The prisoner-workers number in the forties, including those, um, not doing manual labour."

"In other words, it's not as bad as we thought," said Monty.

Captain Rogers looked up and between the two of them. There was a wrinkle between his eyebrows. Gabe thought his nose made him look like a bird, and he didn't know why that thought occurred to him. "What do we expect from the recruits? Are they loyal to HYDRA? Will they fight against us?"

"I'm not sure they'd fight us," Gabe said. "But I don't think they'd help us much. If it was an option, I'm willing to bet that they'd take the cyanide way out."

The captain nodded. Gabe didn't think he looked very satisfied with the answer. Monty exchanged a look with Gabe; they were thinking the same things.

Rogers finally said, "Do we know exactly what they're doing inside? With such a small number, they can't be doing anything too big. And they're in a castle. It's not like they have the best equipment in there."

"There's definitely no forging going on in there."

Monty said, "From what we gather, they're assembling a lot of small parts and testing. Then the parts are shipped to somewhere else. There was, er, a rather lot of evidence suggesting whatever they are building is being tested on the Greek prisoners."

"What do you think?" the captain said.

Monty straightened his spine. "I think they are trying to change their weapons. The ones that shoot blue light and disappear people. Perhaps they want powerful weapons that will wound and incapacitate, not kill."

"And they're testing this on the prisoners."

"It is only a theory, Captain."

The map in the captain's lap snapped when he folded it. Gabe had to work to keep his face impassive. Rogers stood up and said, "We'll find out if you're right soon enough."

Monty escorted both Bucky and Dernier to their positions around the base's walls early the next morning.

"This is the best position around the whole base," Monty told Bucky and gestured to a tree. Then he left to show Dernier to his place, where the explosives he'd spent all night making would be detonated.

So Bucky climbed up the tree, the barrel of his rifle bouncing off his back the whole time. He was feeling acutely irritated this morning. So much so that he was annoyed further when something good happened. Not that there was anything good about this mission aside from the fact that none of them were dead yet.

The tree had no good places for sitting of course, so he arranged himself as best he could while keeping the rifle steady. It was a little before dawn — the first bomb would detonate at dawn. Bucky shook back the sleeve of his jacket to look at his watch. The light was almost non-existent, but he was able to make out the time when he squinted. It would be just as useless, but Bucky peered through the scope of the rifle Stark had modified for him. You'd think making a semi-automatic rifle into a bolt-action one wouldn't be making it any better, but, how Stark explained it, the modification had been necessary in order to accommodate all the other changes he had deemed more important. There had been something about reducing the muzzle flash and sound of firing the rifle. Bucky would have preferred the automation, but he'd been firing that old Springfield since his boots hit the sands in Africa. He could deal with a bolt-action rifle.

Anyway, he looked through the scope and up to the walls. There were shadowy figures moving around on the wall. These wouldn't be easy shots to make. Who ever heard of a sniper making shots from below? Bucky let it bother him, welcomed the irritation, revelled in it. Maybe he'd get a reputation of being the guy who killed from below instead of above.

Yeah, right.

He watched the shadows through his scope for a while, tracked their movements. There were five of them that Bucky was confident he could get before they realised what was happening. Steve would climb the wall — the ten-foot sheer wall — in a section where two men did rounds. Whether they were within his range or not, Bucky was going to hit those bastards. He could see the shape of those packs that powered the blue-light guns on their backs. Yeah, today was not the day that they would see Steve and His Ridiculous Shield vs. Horrifying Blue Light Guns. Not if Bucky had anything to say about it.

The first bomb detonated eleven minutes later. Bucky flattened himself to the branch he was clinging to and lined up his sights with the first guard standing atop Steve's section of the wall. Deep breath in — hold it — let it out slow . . . and squeeze the trigger. The second detonation covered the sound of the shot. Bucky had the second guard pinned before the shouts within the walls had died down. With Steve's section clear, Bucky adjusted himself and cleared the guards on the walls around the detonation sites. He didn't pause until he had to load a new clip, and after that, he went right back to mowing down anything that moved on top of the wall. . . . Could have done it faster if his rifle wasn't bolt-action.

He didn't notice any movement on Steve's section of the wall until it had been breached and the Greeks were streaming in through the gate. Realistically, his job was over. They got in. The fighters would clear the ground inside the walls. Steve and the others would take the inside of the base. So, effectively, Bucky's job was done here.

Then again, he'd always jumped at any chance to work overtime back home. So he sat up on the branch and looked up at the branches above him. Bucky hadn't brought his Thompson, and the Johnson would be next to useless in close combat. His hand fell onto his Colt without needing to be told to. If he just got in, he could scavenge something from the . . . he could find a more suitable weapon once he got inside.

Bucky hung his Johnson by the strap in the tree and dropped to the ground. Pulling his Colt from its holster, he ran for the gate, integrating seamlessly into the stream of Greeks. Immediately upon entering the gates, the man in front of Bucky disappeared in a flash of blue light. Bucky's boots became tangled and he crashed down in the place where a body should have fallen. Another flash of blue went over his head, annihilating something — someone — else. The shots came from above, from the walls — the walls that he was supposed to have cleared. It felt as if his tongue was suddenly too big for his mouth; it was making it hard to breathe. Bucky threw his left hand out to recover his Colt. Rolling over, he put the gun in his right hand and took a single shot, aimed at the wall.

He hit his target. The guard dropped to his knees before falling forward. Part of his body dangled off the edge. Bucky swallowed around his tongue, which was shrinking back to its regular size. Pushing himself to his feet, he dodged around bullets, most of them enemy but a few were friendly, and made it inside the stone castle. HYDRA's modification and additions to the place were easy to spot. Metal fixtures had been driven deep into the stone. There were doors with no rusted hinges and cracks in the stone that were too predictable.

The halls were surprisingly quiet. The shouting from the battle outside hardly carried into the stone halls. Bucky heard his breath rasping and echoing as he moved down the halls. He'd been so stupid; the Colt was still his only weapon. He ought to have brought the Johnson just to have something. It was huge. He could have used it like a club, if need be. Because swinging a rifle around like a baseball bat would definitely stop those blue guns from atomising him.

The rattle of a machine gun sounded deeper within the castle. That was Gabe — Bucky knew the sound of that gun anywhere. It fired continuously for six seconds. He moved faster toward the sound. There were shouts coming from the same direction, but they weren't distinct enough for him to make out any words. His hand was sweating and the Colt was starting to get slick.

There was a T-intersection coming up and it was only by pure chance that Bucky heard the footfalls before he entered the crossway. Instead, he threw his back against the side of the hallway which he knew the person headed his way wouldn't be able to see. Sinking to a knee, Bucky held his sidearm steady. The person was running, the sounds growing louder as he breathed in deeply and held it. He let it out slowly, already beginning to squeeze the trigger —

The person reached the intersection and Bucky saw nothing but the stupid bowler hat on his head. He jerked his arm up as quickly as he could. The shot fired and smashed into the wall. The bullet fractured and the pieces fell harmlessly to the ground.

"Jesus!" Dum Dum shouted. He spun on his toes. There was only a little bit of surprise when he saw Bucky crouched along the wall. "What the fuck are you doing in here?"

Bucky rose to his feet. "I thought you could use the help."

"You're supposed to be outside. You almost shot me."

Yeah, well, I missed, didn't I?

"Now I'm here. Come on, I want to help. Lead the way."

He could see the brief battle on Dum Dum's face. There wasn't a lot of time for deliberation — another round of echoing gunshots slammed into them — so he started running again, and Bucky followed him. Maybe it was the constant sound of their pounding footsteps, but Bucky thought he was breathing a lot easier and his hand wasn't sweating as much. There were no rasping breaths filling up his ears like cotton.

They reached a staircase (metal and winding: placed recently by HYDRA), and Bucky put a hand out to stop Dum Dum from entering the well. Instead, he stepped out onto the top stair and fired two shots straight upward. There was a thud followed by several smaller ones. A black-clad body came to rest a few steps up from where he stood. Bucky looked at Dum Dum, smirking.

"Just move," he said, punching Bucky's shoulder. "Down."

So down they went. Bucky took the lead though he didn't know exactly where they were headed. All he knew was that he wanted to travel in the direction of Gabe's machine gun. Dum Dum fired back up the staircase several times, hitting three guards. Bucky shot anyone that was headed up toward them. By the time Dum Dum jerked him back up two steps to enter the landing they were looking for, he had only reloaded his Colt once.

They hadn't gone three meters down the hall before Bucky heard particularly heavy footsteps down the corridor. He dug his fingers into the back of Dum Dum's field jacket and pulled him down to the ground. Both of their bodies made smacking sounds when they hit the damp stone floor, but the noise was covered up by the discharge of one of those damn blue light guns. This one was practically a cannon. Its barrel was the size of a mortar tube, and the person wielding it clearly struggled to hold it level with his hip. There was no way they were going to get around this guy. There were no doors, nowhere to hide unless they got around him. Bucky shot a few useless rounds at the HYDRA operative. The bullets pinged harmlessly off his armour. There was a click — it seemed louder than it had any right to be — and then a whine as the cannon began to charge up and engage. Futilely, Bucky tried to shield Dum Dum with his body.

He heard something cutting the air — it didn't sound like the discharge of the weapon — and looked up. A loud, metal clang filled the hallway. Bucky's teeth were vibrating. It wasn't until the cannon-wielder collapsed that he realised what was going on. The man dressed an American flag helped clear things up, too. Steve caught his shield midstride (show-off) and slammed it down on its edge against the cannon's barrel. Bucky peeled himself away from Dum Dum. The two of them stood on shaking legs.

Dum Dum pushed his shoulder. "I don't need you lying on me, Sarge. Thanks though."

"Yeah?" Bucky wiped his hair out of his eyes. Why was he sweating so much?

"The hell are you doing in here?" Steve yelled.

"I came to help." Bucky shrugged and tried to look calm and innocent.

"You were supposed to stay outside."

Was Steve actually mad?

Machine gun fire interrupted whatever else Steve was going to say. Dum Dum took off down the hall and Bucky went with him before Steve could say anything. They ran into a chamber that had vaulted ceilings and was filled with smoke. Steve shoved the two of them aside once they made it through the doors; bullets immediately pinged off his shield, which he held aloft. He saved them a few pints of blood in that single gesture. Bucky wasn't going to thank him for it yet. He crawled along the wall, away from the heavy fire. There were overturned metal tables scattered around the room. He took shelter behind one and checked his ammunition. Was there really not a single gun lying around that he could take up?

Bucky put a hand flat on the ground, bracing himself to fire around the edge of the table, but he paused. Broken glass bit at the skin of his palm. He lifted his hand to stare at the blood beading along the tear in his skin. His eyes travelled to the glass, and suddenly, the gunshots and noise were very far away. No sound or sight could penetrate the concentration he had on the blood oozing out of his hand. Not until a bullet punched its way through the metal table he was hiding behind. It missed him, but he let his eyes travel to where the bullet had embedded itself. Instead of Bucky's back, the bullet had burrowed into a pale, naked body that was lying limply against the wall. He could see the track marks on the body's arms and on its neck. It had no hair on its head. The eyes were open and unseeing. The mouth was open, dry but for a little residual blood. There were burns all along the arms and legs, some of them deep enough to expose that which was below the layers of skin.

The silence in his head became one long, high pitched screech. His vision tinted red. Bucky gripped his Colt tight, turned, and stood up from behind the metal table. He fired unblinkingly into the fray. Bucky hardly registered Monty knocking him to the ground or Steve screaming his lungs out at him. He didn't remember how the battle ended. All he could think about were naked bodies with track marks and burns.

Three days later, Captain America and his "howling terrors" were packed away in the tight spaces of a British-made submarine. Howard Stark had had something to do with the design of this one. Steve hated being on the thing. It was so small and narrow. He was sure the place would be uncomfortable even if he hadn't gotten so huge. It was good news when Howard told him that they'd only be aboard for a few days. Steve wasn't sure how long he could take hunching over everywhere he went. Not that the sub allowed for much movement.

They were docking at the same base that they had taken off from in the C-47 five days ago. It felt like they had been in Greece for longer than five days. It also felt like it couldn't possibly had been as long as five whole days. Steve supposed he shouldn't be surprised. War did a funny thing to a person's perception of time. The battles went on for lifetimes; the changes happened so fast.

Steve sat back from the table and ersatz coffee. Peggy was across from him. Patience radiated out of her eyes. She was the one he'd been debriefed by. It was a good thing no one oversaw or otherwise monitored those meetings; it had gone on rather longer than any mission debriefing ought to. Peggy tightened her lips and sat up straighter. Steve's eyes jumped to her.

"Everything went fine," she assured him. "I can't image why you're acting like this. Did something happen? Did you see something?" Questions that could still sound like part of a debriefing if you didn't know any better.

Something had happened. Steve just didn't know what it had been. He didn't know how to describe it — so he'd decided not to mention it up until now. On the other side of the sub's abysmal "mess", Steve's very own "howling terrors" were gathered around their own table. It was much more noisy and crowded than Steve and Peggy's. They were sharing whatever remained of Dugan's grappa and watching Jones and Dernier play cards. Monty was telling a story which got interrupted frequently (they were calling him out on his lies). Steve stared at the way Bucky was slumped against Dugan's shoulder. There was something stirring in Steve's gut, but he didn't know what it was. Like he was willfully ignoring something bad. There was sourness much like guilt in there somewhere, too.

The night after they'd taken back the castle and helped the Greeks set up defences (because there would be a counterattack on HYDRA's part), Steve had tracked Bucky down and really tore into him. It was the first time that Steve could ever remember seeing Bucky pay attention to his lectures. These new lungs did allow Steve to shout better; he'd done a lot of shouting. At the end of it, he'd given Bucky the sunglasses he'd taken off the dead German pilot. The lenses had a mirror finish, so when Bucky put them on, Steve's own reflection had stared back at him, furious and worried.

Bucky was wearing those sunglasses now as he slept against Dugan's shoulder. Guilt and sourness and something bad. Steve looked at Peggy and smiled.

Chapter Text

Steve Rogers was a conundrum. Under normal circumstances, this would be reason enough for Peggy to hound his every step. But she simply couldn't do that. To hound Steve Rogers and figure him out could ruin everything. Peggy was having a hard enough time trying to figure out what she felt about him. Whenever bombs would drop somewhere beyond the safe borders of their newly-erected Italian base, she would see Steve Rogers look to his men — to Sergeant Barnes — to ensure that all was well. The fact that danger was several miles away seemed to make no difference to him.

Peggy didn't like that Steve did that, and she was confident that she knew why.

But the first afternoon on their base in Sicily, while Peggy and Howard were briefing the team on the expected topography around Naples and the Gustav line, they heard unfriendly weapons firing far too close. Hurried boots and shouts pounded outside their tent. As one, the team rose and went to the exit. About a second after Falsworth left the tent, the thing collapsed, shredded, from whizzing shrapnel.

"Insurgents," Dernier said.

Friendly and enemy fire; it was close. Automatic, fast bursts of rounds. The last, wet scream issued from a private's cut throat steps behind them. Peggy spun, sidearm rising, to eliminate the threat. She saw the private fall, looked into the whites of three black-clad enemies' eyes, and found herself pinned to the ground under an immoveable body.

Three quick, clean shots from a Colt overhead. Three bodies collapsed beside where Peggy lay.

"You did not do this again!" Peggy said, shoving at Steve's body, which still pinned her to the ground. "I had them!"

Another something exploded, something big, close enough for them to feel the wave of heat and expanding air. Peggy was getting to her feet when the same controlled Colt fired off two more rounds.

"They're down!" called a voice nearer the big explosion.

It had been Barnes's Colt. She watched him lower the sidearm calm as can be. In the back side of her mind, she filed away the approximate range of the last two shots, factored in all the moving people and obstacles in the way. It was a long, impossible shot from a sidearm on a crowded base.

Marksman indeed, she thought.

Steve stood sheepishly off to the side, looking at neither his men nor Peggy.

Calm spread through the base slowly, the tide coming in.

"Agent Carter," Phillips's voice barked. She turned toward the call. "With me."

She nodded curtly to the team, ignored Steve, and followed the colonel away. He flipped an order over his shoulder to the men: "Go secure our perimeter, damn it."

Peggy didn't want to be protected. She didn't need it; she was more than capable of taking care of herself. But Steve Rogers . . . Peggy didn't pine. She had to fight tooth and nail for every inch she'd progressed in this career. If she started making eyes at Captain America, what would happen then? Would they laugh at her? Would they say the woman was looking for a husband the whole time? The worst question: Would she become nothing more than Captain America's girl, relegated to some sideshow, not even a sidekick?

Sergeant Barnes seemed to be handling the shift of his position relative to Steve well. Peggy couldn't help but feel envious of Sergeant Barnes. He had been willing to become anything — a sidekick — as long as he could stay at Steve Rogers's side. Sergeant Barnes had been at Steve's side since they were children, Peggy reminded herself. (Something told her that it may have been Steve who was at Sergeant Barnes's side back then, not that it mattered.) It was different for him to change for Steve. Peggy would not be changing in the same ways Sergeant Barnes had already chosen to change (or perhaps had change thrust upon him).

Peggy had to swallow down the revulsion she felt about that question. She'd hate for the first question anyone asked her to be about her husband. (Not that she was thinking about marriage and Steve at the same time.) She was her own person, whole and complicated. Peggy had stories to tell and adventures yet to be had.

She was young still. Her opinions and convictions could change. Maybe she'd be satisfied being the foundation for somebody else's stories in the future. Maybe she could be a wife and a mother and be content with that. As it was, Peggy wasn't that woman today. She didn't want anyone to be protecting her right now. She wanted someone to think her an asset during a mission, not some love interest that motivated the hero, a liability to be guarded. Peggy wanted to be the hero, too.

It was because of all those tangled feelings and more that Peggy didn't allow anything to happen between herself and Steve. Now wasn't the time for these types of things anyway. There was a war going on and missions to plan. They both had things bigger than themselves on which to focus. For now, they were just two people on the same team. Peggy thought that was the best way for her and Steve to be — for now.

Steve's interest in her was obvious. Hers wasn't, but it did still exist. So Peggy watched Steve Rogers and tried to figure out if he was the type of person who would leave her where she would be "safe" during a mission, or if he would want her right there beside him because he valued her abilities. Really, she could see him going either way. And the way Steve acted toward Sergeant Barnes didn't help her predict the outcome at all. Peggy had been hoping that observing them would enlighten her. But there was no cracking the code of those two — not unless Peggy enlisted the help of Howard Stark. She had simply ended up more unsure of Steve Rogers.

If there was a balance to be had between emotion and logic during times of war, Peggy hadn't found it yet.

Surprisingly, the team didn't cause an uproar celebrating the New Year. The calendar flipped, and 1943 became 1944 while the six of them were sound asleep. Steve doubted any of them had even been paying the date any mind. They'd only just arrived back in Allied territory, been released from the suffocating confines of the submarine, and dealt with an invasion into their supposed safe base when the year ticked higher. Steve hadn't really noticed the significance until he'd turned up bleary eyed and hungry at S.S.R. HQ the next morning and Peggy greeted him with a light, "Happy New Year, Captain."

So it was back to sand tables and maps. The next base would be the one in Northern Italy. Intelligence reports told them that the base was in the area of Novara. There weren't a lot of resistance fighters with which they could team up. The base was closer to the German border, thus they had better defences having been set up so much longer. It would require them busting through both the Gustav Line (with support) and later through the Gothic Line (in all likelihood, completely unsupported). If it was anything like Krausberg, they'd never be able to drop the seven of them safely at the base via combat jump. They'd be ribbons by the time they reached the ground.

Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die…

That left them with only one real option: The seven of them would troop up Italy and take the base mostly on foot. They destroy the base (no historical landmarks to preserve), clear the surrounding area, and signal for Howard to come get them. Exactly how Howard was to come get them was up in the air. Steve supposed that was up to the inventor to figure out. A voice in Steve's head that sounded suspiciously like Bucky kept saying that the team would end up having to clear an area big enough for Howard to land a plane safely. Which probably wasn't easy to do up in the hills of Northern Italy.

Granted that they ever made it that far into Italy. Two so-far impenetrable lines of German defences stood between them and the HYDRA base. Two lines of which they knew, though Steve was privately coming to trust the S.S.R.'s intel. Who knew what other strongholds would be in their way though. Who knew what strife there was between HYDRA and the Axis powers along the way…

Around 1500 on New Year's Day, Steve was cramming his mouth with something unnamed that he'd stolen from the mess. His meeting had adjourned for the day, and he shuffled along until he found Bucky stretched out in patch of sunlight by the barracks.

"Hey," Steve said. If his ma were there, she'd whack him for talking with his mouth full.

Bucky kept his eyes closed and sighed through his nose. "Are you going to court martial me now that we're back on base?"

Steve sat on the ground beside his friend, eating like it was going out of style. "No. But I should. You can't just ignore my orders like that, Buck."

"You don't have to do the lecture again."

"I believe you were the one who was telling me that war wasn't a back alley."

Bucky groaned.

"And I have to be able to trust you. Trust is what makes us team, what makes us an army and not a bunch of guys with guns. You know who told me that?"

Bucky groaned louder.

Steve suppressed his smile and continued on, "You told me that. I have to be able to trust that you'll follow my orders. If you don't, why would any of the other guys? I can't have my second-in-command questioning me. It undermines the whole point. The NCOs are what hold a unit together. I need you on my side."

Bucky was groaning so loud by now that people were starting to stop and stare.

"Question me when you think I'm making a bad call, but don't do it in front of the guys. If you wanted to raid the base back there, you should have just told me." Not that Steve would have agreed to it. "We're a team, Buck. I need you to trust my judgement, and I need to trust that you have my back."

"Ugh. Jesus, Steve. I heard you when you shouted all this back in Greece. The whole damn country heard you. HYDRA heard you." Bucky cracked just one of his eyes opened to peer at Steve. "And I get it."

"So you won't do anything like that again?"

A pause. "I didn't say that."

Steve slapped Bucky's stomach — Bucky jackknifed with impressive speed — and said, "Jerk."

"We're OK?" Bucky said.

Steve nodded and shoved the last piece of his pilfered meal into his mouth. "Yeah. We're OK."

They shook hands.

"You free for the day?" Bucky said. He was shielding his eyes with one hand, glancing up at Steve.

"Yep."

"Think you can get us a ride to the nearest town?" He sat up. Steve saw the cogs turning in Bucky's head.

"What did you have in mind?"

He shrugged. "Nothin' big. Tomorrow's Monty and Dernier's birthday. Was gonna see what I could get my hands on."

"Yeah!" Steve shouted. The people who had stopped to watch Bucky moan hadn't moved yet and jumped when Steve shouted. He lowered his voice to say, "Yeah, of course. We have to do something."

"We have to do two somethings."

Steve got to his feet and hauled Bucky up, too, even though he hadn't asked for help. "Then let's get going."

Twenty minutes later, they'd secured transport but were arguing. Steve had found a motorcycle they could take to the village. Bucky was refusing to sit in the sidecar.

"I found it," Steve said. "I get to drive it."

Bucky shook his head. He was wearing the sunglasses from Greece. "I'm better at driving than you are."

"I won't fit in the sidecar. Not anymore."

"Come on, Steve. After everything I've done for you, you're gonna make me sit in the sidecar?"

Steve was having a hard time holding back his laughter. "I thought you did all those things for me because we were friends. I didn't realize you were keeping score."

Bucky said, "I did — I wasn't!"

"Then sit in the sidecar, Buck."

"Jesus Christ."

Even over the snarling of the motor, Steve could hear Bucky mumbling and grumbling the whole way to town. When they finally reached civilisation and hid the motorcycle where no one would see it, Bucky was still going on and on. Apparently, Steve owed Bucky something really huge.

Duh, Steve thought. He had owed Bucky since he was seven years old.

"But, really," Bucky was saying, "I have to go to war, become a prisoner, get pneumonia, get strapped to that table, then you bust in and you're taller than me — can't get a broad to look at me for a second and then I'm jumping out of aeroplanes. Now I'm riding in fuckin' sidecars."

Steve clapped a hand on Bucky's shoulder. "Big trees sure do fall hard."

The local Italians recognised Steve a lot more than the Greeks did. So it wasn't really a problem to obtain anything they wanted. Children followed after them. Steve's face got hotter and hotter as the day went on, embarrassed to be receiving so much attention. He'd gotten almost used to it on the USO tour. This was somehow different; he couldn't say how. Bucky put on a good face during all of it, but Steve could tell that his friend wasn't appreciating the crowd. Almost made him jumpy, especially the kids shouting.

A group of teenaged girls approached them and started speaking in fluttered Italian. Steve tried not to look nervous as he waited for them to do something he could react to. Bucky disappeared from Steve's side. Thanks to his new height, Steve was able to track that familiar head of dark hair into a shop that seemed to specialise in cheese.

It took three minutes for Steve to politely shake the girls and escape into the confines of another shop. A bell tinkled when he walked in. The place was empty except for the forty-something woman behind the counter. Based on the smell of the place, Steve decided it was a confectionery. And based on the look of it, the war effort had hit them hard. The shelves were mostly bare; there weren't enough raw materials for them to make large quantities. Flour, sugar, eggs, milk, everything was rationed.

Steve approached the woman at the counter. "Hello."

She bowed her head a few degrees. "Ciao."

Steve communicated with the woman mostly through hand gestures and smiles. She knew a little English, and he knew less Italian. Most of Steve's Italian vocabulary he had learned from his neighbours as a kid and saying any of it now would only get him a slap across the face and likely thrown out of the shop. He picked out an indulgent amount of sweets (relatively speaking, the selection was greatly reduced from what it used to be, he imagined). She tried to hand the wrapped packages over to him for free; the woman recognised him as Captain America and went on about something in Italian. Steve flatly refused to take it without paying. In fact, he made sure to pay double what he thought it should cost. If Steve ever came back to this place, he hoped it would be stocked wall-to-wall with product. The world could use more confectioneries.

It had started to rain a little bit out on the streets. The people hurried out of the wetness, minor as it was. So it was easy to spot Bucky and make it back to the motorcycle without encountering any of Captain America's admirers. There was less grumbling from Bucky on the way back to base this time, but the sour-looking duck face was out in full force. It was still funny.

"Hey, where ya been?" Dugan called to them after they'd returned to base and hid the motorcycle away.

"To town," said Bucky. "You get your mission done?"

Steve didn't like the smile on Dugan's face. He disliked the glimmer in Bucky's eyes even more.

"Oh, yeah. Barely had to walk half a mile."

"Good," said Bucky. He gestured with the packages in his arms. "I got everything. Jim gonna be able to get us in?"

Steve felt very much like an outsider in this conversation. One thing he was sure of was that it had been naïve of him to think they'd make it through New Year's Day without a commotion.

Dugan nodded. "Looks like it. Gabe pulled through, too. In case you couldn't get eggs."

Bucky nodded his head. "I did get eggs. But we can think of something to do with his, don't you think?"

Dugan's moustache was positively quivering. "Definitely."

Bucky turned to Steve and said, "I would thank you for the ride, but I think we're both better off never mentioning it again."

Steve smirked and said, "Follow my orders and then I'll agree never to mention it."

"You're a punk, Steve Rogers."

Bucky and Dugan started to walk in the direction Dugan had come from and the image was so familiar that Steve felt frozen. They were planning some trouble for Dernier and Falsworth's birthday, and Steve wasn't in on it for a reason. It was strange to see Bucky planning some trouble and Steve not being a part of it. Steve couldn't remember the last time something like that had happened. He felt a little left out and maybe a little jealous of Dugan. This was Italy; this was war. From what Steve gathered, Bucky and Dugan were the best of war buddies. They had stories of their own — Bucky had stories that didn't feature Steve. Just like Steve had stories of Camp Lehigh that didn't feature Bucky.

Jeez, Steve was too young to be waxing nostalgic. War was here, and they weren't in Brooklyn. They weren't Steve 'n Bucky anymore, no matter how hard both of them pretended otherwise.

Jim picked the lock to the mess. Dum Dum ran at a crouch through the open door, and Bucky followed behind him. Jim closed the door behind them and Dum Dum locked it again from the inside. They moved in silence through the darkened mess hall, their movements like that of a well-oiled machine, a perfectly trained team.

Until Dum Dum tripped going over the counter to get to the kitchen. Bucky had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.

"Keep your trap shut, Jimmy," Dum Dum hissed.

His ribs felt ready to bust. He took a large, slow breath to relieve the pressure. Bucky made it into the kitchen without tripping over anything. He left his packages on the counter. Dum Dum pulled a bundle of stiff and scratchy canvas out of his pack and jumped back over the counter. He hung the canvas over the windows and then returned to the kitchen.

"Light," he said. Dum Dum unclipped his flashlight from his vest and turned it on. The thing smelled like melting plastic when left on too long, but it would get the job done.

Bucky rummaged around in the cupboards and pulled out two metal bowls. "Good to go?" he said.

"Yes, Sergeant." Dum Dum shined the flashlight directly into his eyes.

Bucky threw up his hand to block it. "Cut it out, jackass. Help me."

Dum Dum came to stand next to him and shine the light down at the scrap of paper on which Gabe had written instructions. Bucky sorted the packages into two piles based on what the paper said.

"Can't be that complicated," Dum Dum said. "I mean, Gabe said he'd been making it since he was eight. If an eight-year old can do it, so can you, Barnes."

It took actual work for Bucky not to roll his eyes. "Thanks, pal." He pushed one of the piles of packages over to Dum Dum. "You do dry, I'll do wet."

It was a miracle, sometime later, when they were standing before two mostly uniform cakes. The smaller one was for taste testing; it was Dum Dum's idea. Bucky had agreed. Gabe had gotten them extra eggs (the hardest ingredient to get their hands on), and they had to make sure the cake was good, right? Gabe was also the one who gave them the recipe. Bucky had to collect the ingredients in town. Dum Dum made whatever crème was supposed to go with the cake. The original recipe called for strawberries, but where would they get strawberries in Italy in January? Chocolate cake had been their first choice (Dernier's favourite), but, yeah right. They weren't going to get cocoa powder out here.

So they'd been in the mess for nearly two hours, and now they were sitting on the floor of the kitchen, backs against the serving counter, and eating cake with their hands. The larger cake was still cooling off; Dum Dum's not-strawberry crème was in one of the metal bowls. Bucky broke off a piece of the small cake and shoved it in his mouth.

"I'm so hungry all the time," he said with his mouth full. Even without the crème, the cake was moist. He had to find out where Gabe's family learned to make unbelievable cakes.

"We're all hungry all the time," Dum Dum said. There were crumbs in his moustache.

"I mean, the intensity of my hunger is greater than what it used to be." It would be perfect if Bucky could have some milk. With this cake — perfection. "Fucking annoying."

"You can't catch a break, Sarge."

"Tell me about it." Bucky held up a piece of cake and said, "Happy New Year, Dum Dum."

Dum Dum touched his own chunk of cake against Bucky's. "Happy New Year, Jimmy."

They were quiet for a few moments, mouths full of cake. It was damn good. Bucky thought about his past New Year's Days. Almost all of the ones he could remember featured Steve in some way, shape, or form. A lot of those days were spent in Steve's stuffy bedroom; winter was always hardest on his immune system. Bucky didn't think there was ever any cake involved.

"We should do this again next year," Bucky said to Dum Dum. "Make it a tradition. New Year's cake."

Dum Dum put his hand out. "It's a deal."

Bucky shook it.

After all their meetings with intelligence at S.S.R. HQ and more weapons practice with Stark, the six of them went to the tent Jim had reserved. Barnes and Dum Dum split off to retrieve the cake they'd made last night. Jim got everyone seated in the tent, got the projector, and made sure the audio was adjusted just so.

"What film is this?" Monty asked for the fourth time. He was being really sore about them making a fuss about his birthday. Jim wished he'd be more like Dernier and enjoy it. Hell, Frenchie was still wearing the ridiculous hat Dum Dum had made for him.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Jim said. "You'll like it. I put in a request to HQ for it while we were still in the field in Greece. I couldn't wait and risk it not getting here in time."

"You've been planning this for far too long," Monty mumbled.

Sure that the equipment was set up the right way, Jim sat in one of the seats clumped together around the projection screen. "Now, make sure you all thank Agent Carter. We wouldn't have been able to get ahold of these films without her help."

There was a dark look on the Englishman's face. Betrayed by his own countrywoman.

"The hell are Barnes and Dugan?" Gabe said.

"Speak of the devil!" Dum Dum's voice boomed from the flap of the tent. The sheet cake in his hands was huge. Whatever they'd covered it in looked sweet and fatty and delicious. Dum Dum stood before Monty and Frenchie and tilted the cake so they could read the message written in crème ('Happy Birthday, you fucking bastards!'). Barnes stood at Dum Dum's shoulder wearing the smuggest smile Jim had ever seen.

"Aha!" Frenchie shouted. He jumped to his feet like he was a cartoon, the stupid hat defying gravity and staying perfectly in place. Somehow, he managed to hug Dum Dum and kiss both of his cheeks without smashing the cake between them. Barnes received the same treatment, though it was a little more awkward because he kept trying to get away from the affectionate Frenchman.

"Merci!" he shouted over and over.

Amused. It was a level of enthusiasm Jim could never manage even if his life depended on it.

"I'm not going to kiss you," Monty said once Frenchie had settled down with a finger full of frosting.

"Ungrateful Limey," Dum Dum said to Barnes.

"You're telling me."

They put the cake on an empty chair. Dum Dum said, "So me and Jimmy made this cake out of Jones's recipe. We don't have plates; we don't have shit." Barnes pulled his field knife from his boot and handed it to Dum Dum, who continued, "We have a knife that's been strapped to Jimmy's foot. Eat with your hands like men. Monty, Frenchie — happy birthday. You're crazy, you're not American, which we all know you'd very much like to be" — this was met with boos — "but you're great men, and I love you like family."

Jim shouted his agreement with Gabe and Barnes.

"Let's eat," Gabe said for all of them.

Dum Dum cut the cake with Barnes's shoe-knife and distributed the chunks. They ate with their hands like savages. Jim set the projector to working before he got his hands covered in frosting and whatever the mystery crème was. (It was damn good, that's what it was.) There was a round of roaring approval from Frenchie and Monty when they saw that their entertainment for the night was none other than a film starring their own CO, Captain America: Defender of Freedom! There was an exclamation point in the title and everything.

"This is the most incredible sponge I've ever had," Monty said between bites of cake. The accent made him seem more ridiculous than anyone else who was eating cake from the palm of their hand. "It shouldn't be allowed to exist at the same time as a war. It's too good and pure perfection."

"Gabe's fault."

"My grandmother's been making the recipe since before I remember," Gabe said. "This doesn't taste exactly like hers, but it's not bad either."

"Hear that, Dum Dum?" Barnes said. "Gabe thinks we're not bad."

"High praise."

The film was half over when the tent flap fluttered opened and the light from outside washed out the picture. The six of them all turned in their seats to stare at the two latecomers, frosting sticky on their fingers. Captain America was staring at them with a strange look on his face. A little behind him, Jim saw Agent Carter looking a little bit smug in that Limey way Monty put on when he wanted to seem intimidating.

"Come grab a seat, you two!" Gabe called.

Frenchie cheered, "We have cake!"

"We've cut it with a knife we found in a boot," Monty said mildly.

"Yeah, close the flap," said Dum Dum impatiently.

"We're trying to watch a movie here," Barnes said.

The two of them entered properly, flap closing and restoring enough darkness for the movie to reappear on the screen.

"Oh, no," Cap said when he saw the images. Jim could see the dawning horror. "How did you get this?"

The six of them pointed in unison to Agent Carter. It was spooky. Cap looked downright betrayed.

Agent Carter gave him a tight smile. "Well, they deserved it, didn't they?"

For his part, Steve was a good sport about it. Even when Barnes flicked frosting at the back of his head when the Captain America on-screen did something Barnes considered stupid. (It was a miracle that a food fight didn't break out.) Agent Carter sat among them like family. Jim was surprised to see her accept a chunk cake and eat it out of her hand just like the rest of them. He didn't know why he was surprised. You'd think he'd be so used to her surprising him that it wouldn't surprise him when he was surprised anymore. (Yeesh, Jim's head hurt when he thought about it.) Just like in the field, Jim thought he functioned better when he didn't think about things too hard.

After the film ended, Jim put on the next one (Captain America: On Foreign Shores!). Somehow — none of them were sure how — they demolished the cake. It had been huge; none of them had thought they would actually finish it. Oh, how they had underestimated themselves. Especially once Gabe started passing around the hooch. It wasn't even the standard gut-rot Jim had been accustomed to out in the field with the Rangers. It was nice to have a good time like this. With their luck, they'd be in the field for every holiday and the rest of their birthdays.

A soldier takes what he can get when he can get it.

"I'm almost afraid to ask how you got the cake," Agent Carter said after they'd cleared the tray.

"Then don't ask," Dum Dum said with a wink.

She smiled at him without curling her lips upward, somehow. "I shall defer to your expert opinion then."

When the film ended, they didn't have a third. So they sat around, leaned against one another, and talked. They just talked, the eight of them. Shooting the breeze like they'd done it for years and years.

05 January 1944: Mail caught up to them in Sicily. There was a literal sack of letters for Steve. A burlap sack full of little kids' shaky handwriting. There were a few letters from dames, which the guys got a kick out of reading. There were so many; Steve would never notice if some never made it to him. Besides, there were photographs.

There was a handful of correspondence which was addressed to the rest of them: one for Jim, three for Gabe, two for Dum Dum, seven for Monty, three for Dernier, and one for Bucky. Also among the stack was a letter addressed to Steve Rogers (as opposed to the burlap sack addressed to Captain America). Bucky recognized the handwriting as his mother's. It made his face twitch when he handed it over to Steve and his Father Christmas-sized sack of letters.

The guys went back to their shared tent and read their letters aloud, sharing the affection enclosed from those back home. Bucky felt like he was filled with hot soup while they read.

On 07 January 1944, the howling terrors and their captain were packed up and shipped into Italy as far north as they safely could (not very far: Salerno). Their ship stopped in the sea, and Bucky could already feel the ground shaking from phantom artillery. Back in mainland Italy. Again. Back to fighting futilely up the Boot-in-the-Sea. The plan was shit; he'd told Steve that. Been there, done that. It drove Bucky nuts when he saw that knowing look in Steve's eye. As if Steve knew the electricity that buzzed behind Bucky's eyes when he thought about marching north through Italy again. North, and the destination was another HYDRA factory.

(He must have walked right past their current mission on his last march…)

Bucky's hands shook on the rope ladder down the ship's portside. Waves not the only cause of his stomach folding itself up into a neat knot. Dum Dum helpfully put himself between Bucky and the rest of the guys. They were shuttled to shore via Higgins boat, disguised by all the other English troopers. Jim had been armed with a camera and took annoying photographs of everyone.

They infested a crummy Covenanter Mrk III and rode that thing until its tracks were ready to fall off in Naples. No tank battle threatened them.

Eventually, they were given transport (a jeep), and Dum Dum drove them northeast. Toward the mountains and the Volturno River. The terrain might have been easier if they'd taken a path up the coast. No, it definitely would have been easier. Their route took them through the central Apennines, where the Germans or HYDRA or whoever-the-fuck would have the high ground with months to fortify their positions. They were going through mountains in January with no tactical advantage.

Phillips and them could bleat all they wanted about "do not engage" and "just blow by anyone you have to," but Bucky knew even a team as small as theirs wasn't going to go through seven lines of heavily fortified defences undetected. Not with a goddamn American flag leading them, a literal target on his arm.

Officially, the regular Allied powers were preparing for a large-ish invasion on Anzio. The Howlers were to make a report via radio to S.S.R. on what sort of resistance they encountered on their way north. Bucky would be surprised if they made it that far and were still able to give a report. There was a lot of shit between the Naples jump-off point and Anzio. And if things went wrong — which they always did — they wouldn't be passing anywhere fucking near Anzio.

It was a shit plan.

But, it was almost too easy to move through the mid-parts of the country. They ran out of fuel for the jeep long before they encountered any real resistance. Gabe and Monty took turns manning the machine gun mounted on the jeep. Dum Dum would switch off driving with Dernier — of all people, he should not have chosen Dernier to switch with. With the lack of fuel, the guys spent the better part of a day disassembling the jeep and stripping it of all its useful parts. This wasn't part of the S.S.R.'s plan, but fuck 'em. Dernier could make something really useful out of these parts, and it might just save their lives.

So they went on foot to the banks of the Volturno River and into the jaws of the defence line. A few miles upstream of the main bridge, they stopped and hunkered down. A few moments were spared to see if regular patrols were made here. Nothing but the wind, cold water, and reeds.

Monty tied a complicated knot around the hilt of a metal stake, and handed it off to Steve. Checking that no one was around their swath of bank, Steve stepped back, breathed deep, and pitched the stake across the river like a javelin. The seven of them stood there stupidly watching the coil of rope disappear meters at a time until thump.

"It landed," Steve announced.

"With plenty of rope to spare," Monty said dryly. He held up the remaining rope, half a meter left to slack.

"Boats," Dum Dum said, and two of Stark's latest instant-inflate boats bloomed in the tall grasses.

Steve, Frenchie, and Jim went across first. Three pairs of hands holding the rope and dragging their tiny boat through the water. Bucky didn't watch. He laid in the tall grass with his Johnson rifle, watching their surrounds through the scope. Special attention was paid to the bridge he could just make out with the aid of the telescopic lens.

The call of a bird not normally found in these parts echoed over the river. Bucky, Dum Dum, Gabe, and Monty crammed in together in the remaining boat. Monty held the loose end of the rope still. The other three pulled on the taut end. Bucky could feel pull from the other end; Steve reeling them in faster than they could pull themselves.

Once they were all on the same side of the river, Gabe reversed a valve on the boats. They deflated at half the speed that they'd filled up. Folded and rolled up sloppily in Monty's pack, Dum Dum said, "They never fold up the second time like they originally are."

"Let's keep moving," was all Steve said.

Feet numb and frost from the reeds still damp on his jacket, Bucky kept moving.

The lack of resistance put everyone on edge, Bucky more than anyone. Imagined scenes like the one he'd seen in Azzano played in his head: German bodies evaporated by HYDRA. As they walked, Bucky let his hearing stretch and extend as far as possible (never mind that Steve could probably hear a lot farther…). Every crunch of snow, every creature slinking through the trees plucked at his nerves. The rustle of his own bandoliers made his breath catch, convinced one of the blue-light guns was charging.

In fact, he'd just stopped short, thinking he'd heard it again, when Steve's voice said, low and harsh, "Get down!"

The seven of them dropped to the ground in a single heartbeat. Gunfire was hot above their heads from seemingly every direction. They'd walked dead into a trap. Relief that it was bullets and not blue light bled out of Bucky's tensed spine. Looking up, his mouth full of leaves and debris, he saw Steve had already whipped up his shield and was charging forward toward the firing.

"Get your ass back here, you fucking nut!" Bucky shouted. Dum Dum was pulling on the back of Bucky's jacket, forcing him in the opposite direction Steve had just run off in. Another set of hands pulled at Bucky's jacket.

"Quit shouting, Barnes," said Monty. "Move! That's it! Away from the bullets — where you won't die."

The two of them each kept a hand tight on Bucky's jacket even though he was going with them toward a dip in the ground covered by a felled, damp tree. It was all the cover that was available. The fire died down as they went (goddamn it, Steve). All six of them made it without leaving a red trail. It took all of seven seconds of eye contact for them to agree on how to proceed. Gabe hefted his Browning to his hip and fired back at the Germans, orthogonal to where Steve had run off. It gave them a safe point on which to fall back.

Bucky's hands weren't listening to him, making it unnecessarily difficult to bring his Thompson to bear. The sound of Steve's stupid shield ringing off of metal kept echoing in Bucky's head. He heard screams and snaps that must have been imagined, because he was nowhere near the men being bludgeoned with Steve's shield.

Under Gabe's suppressing fire, they surged forward. Leaves and mud jumped in fright around their footsteps. They're in the trees.

A metallic, sliding ping — not a bullet, Bucky knew — and Frenchie's voice, "Sticky grenade!"

On his peripheral, Bucky saw the tarred ball fling into a tree ahead to their right. He imagined a fwap of the grenade sticking. A short delay, and then the tree jumped apart with human screams.

Bucky tried not to waste ammunition by firing like a maniac. That was what Gabe was for. So he shot only when he saw something to shoot. The trees, suspicious snow-covered lumps, too-perfect dips in the terrain. Keeping it to short bursts of fire from the Thompson, the forest was a panoply of painful song. He moved forward until there were no more targets. The others had moved forward in a fanned formation, making sure there was no one behind them, and they wouldn't get fully surrounded. Every step of the way, he felt himself stretching away from himself, as if he were going somewhere outside his body.

Bucky stepped into a foxhole and brought the butt of the Thompson down on the helmet there. The head hissed, and a face looked up. Crinkly eyes; he was probably someone's grandfather. Smoother than he thought he was capable, Bucky swiped the bayonet from the German's hand, reversed the direction of the swipe, and opened the old man's throat. Red poured, but Bucky was already moving on.

He tossed the Thompson into his left hand. Not breaking stride, something made him pull his Colt with his right and shoot a pile of stiff snow three meters away. It didn't make a sound, but the "snow" turned red.

Distantly, Bucky thought he'd like to come back for the ghillie suit. The stained fabric could be replaced.

The whole way through, he kept an ear trained on the sound of Steve's shield cutting the air and hitting soft, human bodies. He hardly heard anyone calling out "grenade!" or "get down!" — Bucky just fired at things that moved and kept his progress, not stopping. Nothing but the shield and his own heartbeat filled his ears. He didn't panic. He hardly had to think when to duck and slide. Sometimes he'd roll once or twice on the ground to avoid incoming rounds, but he was back on his feet before his momentum ever gave out.

His rhythm was interrupted when a bullet yanked on his shoulder, pulling up the threads of his jacket. There was no burn of pain so he kept moving. The contact seemed to reignite his senses and make him crash back into his head. No longer on autopilot, watching from above, he ran closer to the ground and swung his Thompson left and right. There was a heavy sound, like so many bodies — Bucky unhooked a grenade, pulled the pin, flipped the spoon, and threw the grenade in the direction he'd sensed the people, all without breaking stride.

"Look out!" That was Dum Dum's voice.

Bucky tried to ignore the advice, tried to quiet his suddenly-loud breathing and get back into that free-flow focus. About two seconds later, though, an enormous explosion threw half the goddamn ground into the air. The concussion shoved Bucky face-first into the ground. Bullets immediately began biting at the ground around him. He'd be Swiss cheese in sec—

The sound of rain on a tin roof and then an arm hooked around Bucky's waist and pulled. The momentum carried him, log-rolling, a meter away. It stopped when he fell onto his back in a foxhole.

Graceful, Barnes. Really smooth.

"You OK?" Steve was shouting at him. That had to be bullets pinging off his shield.

"I'm fine," Bucky said hoarsely.

But then Steve was up and running back into the bullets. Bucky's body wouldn't listen to him when he told it to follow. His lips and tongue couldn't form the words he wanted to shout. They felt swollen between his teeth, too big to articulate words. The air around him felt wrong, as if it weren't even touching him. Bucky felt like he was leaving his body behind again. But it felt different. His mind was going somewhere his body and consciousness couldn't follow. It was the strangest feeling, building up to something.

There was Frenchie's voice in his ear; louder than all the guns though Bucky still couldn't understand the words. The feeling like he was being stretched like taffy and then—

Bucky blinked and the battle was over. It was quiet. It was so, so quiet. He was on his knees behind the branches of a newly fallen tree. The voices of his friends were calm, the only sounds. Two people were staring at him: Steve and Frenchie. In his hands was his Thompson. He was holding it wrong; both hands were on the barrel. There was heat there, under his hands. It was burning the flesh of his palms. The gun had been firing not so long ago.

"We gonna get going or what?" Dum Dum's distant voice said. It sounded forced.

Bucky looked toward the sound. The Earth felt very uneven, like it was balanced on a pin.

Steve sank to one knee. He was so close; it would upset the delicate balance of the world and send them hurtling into space, untethered. "Buck?"

Bucky had to clear his throat before the words would come out: "Yeah, Steve?"

"You ready to go?"

His eyes roved over Frenchie behind Steve's hulking frame. Bucky would let his eyes look at anything as long as it wasn't Steve's dirty face and earnest eyes. Were there cuts and bruises under that dirt? Was there some infection swimming and unfurling in those wounds? The world stopped wobbling and balanced, solid. Bucky's eyes fell back on Steve. Just like after another alley fight in the old days. (Except too different to ever be like that again.)

"Yes, Captain. Of course."

Steve nodded his head once and pulled Bucky to his feet. He didn't stumble. He felt solid. They got into formation, Bucky and Monty in the middle, and moved out. Heading: north. There was a lot of time for Bucky to wonder: What the hell just happened?

There was no way he'd ever ask.

Chapter Text

At Jones's advice, Steve led them to a small village. Morita said that the village held a moderate tactical advantage. A few major roadways passed through it. Not so many that it would be fought over like a turning piece in the war, but enough that they could expect to find some resistance — and supplies. It had been the plan to steal German and Italian transport as they found it. After two weeks in the field, they were ready to get some more supplies.

And Steve was confident they could take these guys. The Germans were dug in and probably had some good defences. But they were also far enough behind the current front lines that there wouldn't be more than fifty guys here. The few skirmishes they'd had in the woods only did more to solidify Steve's confidence. He'd practised these kinds of things all the time. At Great Dunmow, Bucky had made Steve plan his attacks on situations like this. Phillips had had them run field manoeuvers on how to manage exactly this sort of thing. By all accounts, assaulting a small number of unsuspecting enemies was old hat.

As they moved north, they made contact with enemy forces more frequently. Word may have been spreading that a group of commandos was slicing through Axis-held lands like a hot knife through butter. Steve was almost proud. Let them come. Let the Germans throw everything they have at them. Steve's men could take it; they could take and then they could throw it all back tenfold.

Not even Bucky's episode back in the woods dissuaded Steve. It had only happened the one time, whatever that was. And it's not like anything bad had happened as a result. True, Dugan and Jones said it had never happened before, not to Bucky. They'd never seen Bucky go all funny and then tense up, staring off into space for a full minute before jumping back into action as if nothing had happened. That had never happened, especially not during active combat. Dernier had been the only one to actually see the episode. The Frenchman seemed to think there was more to it, but Bucky swore he was fine and didn't know what everyone was making a big deal about.

So Steve let it go and gathered his men around to brief them on the plan of attack he had in mind for the small village. He sent Bucky, Falsworth, and Morita — Team James, the name had stuck — out to scout the town. Bucky and Falsworth set up in the place with the best lines of sight. Morita returned with the sitrep. After that, Steve had Dernier and Jones set up a machine gun nest on the west side of the village. If any of the troops tried to escape, they'd run right into the two of them. That left Steve, Dugan, and Morita to sneak into the town. The three of them cleared out the bigger buildings as quietly as they could. Once the Germans cottoned on to their presence, Bucky and Falsworth opened fire. Bucky sniped or assisted Falsworth with the mortars — his choice. Obviously, Dernier and Jones fired once the element of surprise was exhausted.

The plan worked exactly as they had anticipated. Steve, Dugan, and Morita cleared out about twenty men before the defences even realised they were there. Somehow, not a single mortar round dropped where Steve and the others were. It was truly a brilliant feat on Falsworth's part. Bucky nailed the CO of the unit right in the middle of his chest. The whole assault didn't take more than an hour.

Steve had the guys bed down in the village that night. They had a real building to shelter them from the elements. And there was a healthy stock of food in the village; being at the merging of a few routes always came with that perk. They all ate food that wasn't packaged in a can that night. Morita whipped out that godforsaken camera and took pictures again. Steve stuffed his cake hole so hard his jaw was aching. Being Captain America made him hungry all the time, and it wasn't always helpful. You know, like when there wasn't a lot of food to be had. Though they still took turns with night watch, it was almost like being back on base. Except there was no Colonel Phillips breathing down their necks, no Howard Stark pestering anyone with new weapons they just had to learn how to use for their next mission.

There was no Peggy.

They didn't stay in the village for long. They collected supplies off the bodies they dropped, stuffed all their pockets and free spaces with food and ammunition, siphoned all the fuel they could find into spare cans, and then hopped in a German truck. They left via the road Jones and Dernier had blocked the day before. Dugan drove the truck, as always, because he looked the most German among them (which wasn't very German at all). Bucky rode shotgun and grumbled about how he didn't look Italian one bit. In the bed of the truck, Morita cracked jokes about hairy arms all day long.

They didn't run out of gas this time. Instead, the canvas covering the bed of truck was shot full of holes. They'd been on the road with the truck for only a day before they had a tail firing at them. It was terrifying to be in car chase while bouncing around the bed of the truck. Jones recovered himself first, setting up the bipod for his Browning and shooting out the back of the truck. The rest of them slid from side to side in the bed as Dugan jerked the wheel, trying to avoid incoming shots. To be fair, he was preventing anymore bullets from piercing the canvas of the truck (and everyone inside the truck). That wasn't enough to prevent a lucky shot from flying right between the flaps of canvas. The bullet grazed Jones's hand and he flattened himself to gauge the damage.

A loud crack of gunfire sounded just to the side of the truck. Steve didn't need sight to know that Bucky had leaned out the window of the cab and was firing at their tail. There were about three more gunshots before Dernier was able to rip open his bag and fish out one of his homemade explosives. Morita tossed him a lighter. Dernier caught it, scooted his way to the back of the truck bed, lit the fuse, and chucked the whole thing at the truck behind them.

Dugan took a sharp right turn then, sending the five them into a heap on one side of the bed. Jones's Browning scraped along the bed with them, the barrel still hot. Dernier's explosive detonated not a second later. The heat was immense; Steve put his shield up. Now off-road, Dugan didn't let up on the gas pedal. It was a bumpy ride, even for Steve's enhanced ass. Thankfully, it didn't last more than a few miles. Steve suspected that some internal mechanical part had been damaged in the chase.

As soon as the engine cut out, all seven of them were out of the truck. Steve pointed them in a single direction and hung back until they were all out of sight. All except Bucky, who simply stood there with his rifle ready, scanning the trail they had just come down for any followers. Steve caught his friend's eye and nodded. Bucky lowered his rifle and ran after the rest of them, Steve followed. Steve watched their backs and shot a single round over his shoulder when he heard the snarl of a small engine. Nobody else heard it. Nobody else knew that Steve had just killed a pursuer without even looking.

They stopped about a mile and half away from where they left the truck.

Steve jogged up to the rest of them. His breath wasn't even close to laboured; it was something he didn't think he'd ever get used to. It was something he'd never take for granted.

"Map," he said.

Jones pulled it out of his jacket and unfolded it, handing it over.

Steve flipped opened the compass Bucky had given him for Christmas and leaned toward the map. Jones and Dugan watched over his shoulder as Steve tracked their path from the last marker on the map. He'd always had a good memory, but this was something else. Steve remembered every turn, every bump that had brought them to the place they were now. He could orient himself and his location on the map in seconds. Marking the place, he held the map up for Dugan to see.

"Find our new heading?" he said.

Dugan nodded, looked at the map, pulled out his own compass, and muttered some. "OK," he said after twenty seconds.

"Good?" Steve said to Jones, who nodded. "Move out."

And so they were on the road again.

The weather was beginning to get really fucking cold. Dugan looked forward to the times where they got to ambush Axis-held towns. It usually meant they slept in something approaching a house and found a truck or a jeep to ride in for the next few days. The transports usually never lasted longer than two days, but they were good days. Well, it was nice to sit in the heat of the cab anyway. Their arrangement was always the same: Dugan and Barnes in the front, everyone else bouncing around like sacks of potatoes in the back. Maybe he took some turns a little sharper than he meant to, but, hey. Nobody could prove it.

They were a few days out from the HYDRA base, and Dugan was on third watch. He was sitting on the ground, back against a skimpy tree, Thompson in his lap. Jimmy was sitting beside him. It wasn't the kid's turn to be up, but he didn't sleep much in the field. Never had.

Dugan watched the kid shrug deeper into his coat. The place where a bullet had almost hit him was repaired with black thread. Stitching was good, but the repair was obvious.

"How long we been out here?" Jimmy said.

"Let's see," said Dugan while counting backwards in his head. "Three weeks? Almost four?"

"Jesus."

"I know."

Jimmy was quiet. But then, "I think we're pretty good."

Dugan hummed and twitched his moustache.

"I mean, none of us have really been wounded on the mission. It's gotta be a miracle. Three weeks in the field, no support, behind enemy lines. You'd think one of us would have taken a hit by now."

"You complaining because one of us hasn't bled yet?"

Jimmy shook his head. "Not complaining. Just impressed."

"You'll jinx us."

Even in the low light Dugan could see the smirk on the kid's face.

"Don't believe in jinxes," he murmured.

Dugan snorted through his nose. "I'll know who to look for when we come out of the base looking like Swiss cheese."

A few more minutes passed without any words. The creaks and shifting of the wilderness around them were the only sounds. Icy winds kept slicing through their camp.

"I'm going to try to sleep some," Barnes said quietly.

Dugan let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

The kid added, "You gonna be OK here?"

Dugan nodded. "See ya in four hours, eh?"

"See you."

His eyes tracked Barnes all way into the heart of their camp. The kid took up his place beside the captain. Barnes lay down on his side and curled up so that Rogers's frame blocked the wind. An hour later, when Dugan shook Monty awake for forth watch, Barnes was asleep.

Seven days later, they were downwind of the HYDRA base. Dugan wasn't impressed. It was a barn on a hill. Really, that was it. The group had been delayed a day because they had to sneak through some devastated city's excessive rubble. And the place had been crawling with snipers and "nutters," if Monty was to be believed.

Thank God for Barnes and Jones. Jones asked the citizens where the snipers were, and Barnes took them out. The process took hours. The five of them would hang around for an eternity, chewing their fingernails and waiting for Jones and Barnes to come back. Their hearts leapt into their throats every time they heard a gun fire: Was that Barnes scoring one for them, or was it one of the enemies catching an innocent? It was amazing, the number of Italians who stayed in the city despite the devastating bombings. Without Barnes and Jones, they would have been stuck in the city for weeks, or been forced to go around.

Anyway, that wasn't the case. They'd taken a beaten-up truck from the outskirts, siphoned as much fuel as they had time to collect, and headed out for the base. Rogers picked up a motorcycle in the city, so he rode separate. Poor Jimmy glowered so hard at the motorcycle that it looked like he gave himself a headache. Dugan was still waiting for that moment when either Barnes or Rogers was going to get themselves shot up for the other. That moment was coming; Dugan could feel it.

The captain had them give the actual city of Novara a wide berth. Monty and Jim reported that it was crawling with guards, mostly German ones. Dugan could see in their faces that they were holding back more information. He suspected something worse existed inside that city. It was a partial dump, just like all the cities in this country — all the bombings had taken their heavy toll. But a lot of the place still stood. Besides the city, there weren't a whole lot of defences nearby. Rogers suspected it was because of the HYDRA base. The building was small, so whatever was in there must have packed a big punch.

After several days of observation, the plan was laid out.

"OK. We know they have no anti-aircraft guns," the captain said over a sketch Monty had drawn of the barn and its defences. "There's little to no heavy weapons. We're going to run this show under the assumption that the big guns are inside the barn. That's what's stopping anyone from attacking them.

"We haven't seen any movement in or around the place so far. We had expected a lot stronger defences, which there's no evidence of. So I think we'll just go knock on the door and see what they're up to. Standard formation. Jones, suppressing fire once I get the doors open. Then break up into groups of two. One group goes to the back of the barn left, the other right. One stay back to clear the front."

"And you?" said Barnes. His voice was heavy with an emotion Dugan couldn't quite place.

"I'll go right through centre field."

"Naturally," said Gabe.

Rogers smiled. "Then get ready."

Dugan shed his pack and flipped it opened. He tossed aside aid kits and ration containers, pulling grenades and spare ammunition from the bottom. His bayonet went into a pocket on his jacket. Around him, everyone was doing something similar; Jim had nearly thrown the radio down in his eagerness to relieve himself of its weight. (Why did they make the smallest guy carry that thing around again?) They'd leave the heavy, non-assault items here and only take what they needed. If they all weren't dead, it was the captain's turn to retrieve their belongings.

Dugan patted down all his pockets and checked his belt to make sure he had everything he might need during the assault. There was a crinkle of paper when his hand hit his breast pocket. Letters from home were stored there. Dugan was even working on one for his old lady, if he could just think of the right words to say to her that could explain everything. Anyway, those letters were important for the assault. They were mission-critical.

"Ready to go," Dugan said. He wasn't sure if he was announcing his preparedness or asking if everyone else was ready. Either way, the six others straightened up and looked ready to go. So they left.

It was so goddamned weird just walking up to a base they had spent a month preparing to assault. Nothing but their footsteps and the wind could be heard until they were right outside the goddamn door. Then they could hear metallic shifting and tinkering. The captain caught Gabe's eye and kicked the door to the barn opened. Immediately, Gabe fired his Browning from the hip. Dugan advanced on the captain's right, Barnes on the left. They broke off — Jim followed Dugan to the back of the barn, guns blazing.

There was a surprise: There was a fucking ton of people inside. And they were all armed with variously sized blue-light guns. Dugan kept his back to the wall and took out anyone he could see headed toward them. Beside him, Jim was making sure no one followed. Rogers's damn shield constantly banged against bodies and machinery. The noise was reassuring, but the echo was awful.

Frenchie's voice filled the barn: "Grenade!"

Dugan doubled down and moved forward. He shot multiple rounds into two black-clad HYDRA goons before the grenade went off. The noise rang too loud in the enclosed space. The barn was full of long metal shelving units. There was just enough space between the boxes on the shelves for Dugan to take decent shots through. Slowing, Dugan let Jim take point so he could insert a new magazine into his Thompson. Sometimes he was jealous of Jim's grease gun. But Dugan knew he'd never be able to give up his Thompson. He'd been collecting pictures of the guns since Prohibition.

The aisle Dugan and Jim were running down suddenly became very narrow — the shelving unit to their left was being pushed over on them. Both of them flattened their bodies to the ground, arms over their heads as the shelf crashed into the wall and spilled its contents on top of them. There were several popping and snapping noises coming from the upset boxes.

"God, save us," Dugan growled. Pushing at Jim's shoe, he said, "Get up and move!"

A beam of blue light went whizzing by their heads and smashed into the fallen debris.

"Never mind!"

Jim fought his way out of the debris and shot at the HYDRA goon. It took three bullets to make the guy fall. Dugan cleared a way out of the debris in the meantime. They moved laterally into the next aisle, still headed for the back of the barn. It was so loud inside. So many guns and explosives were going off at once. That telltale engagement of the HYDRA guns made Dugan's stomach nearly fall out his ass. That charge-up time was the only thing that was really helping them now. It gave away their enemies' position and allowed the commandos time to shoot first.

Barnes and Monty were already at the back of the barn when Dugan and Jim finally ran in. There were about thirty HYDRA troops back there. Thankfully, not all of them appeared to be armed with blue energy. They shot regular old metal bullets. It was mayhem. Dugan squeezed the trigger of his Thompson and strafed the huddle of men.

"Frag grenade!" Monty shouted.

Dugan just saw the round little shell fly in the air before he was grabbing Jim and taking cover behind a shelving unit (which wasn't a good idea given what had happened last time something exploded while they were behind one). The detonation was echoed by the screams of their enemies. Dugan popped out from the shelf and shot up the bodies. A few HYDRA men had been able to take cover. Barnes dropped one that already had Dugan in his sights.

"Heads up!" said Jim.

The captain's shield smacked one HYDRA troop in the gut and ricocheted into a second before sailing back to its owner. Dugan didn't even have time to say something smart about the theatrics of Captain America because that whine of an energy gun vibrated in all their ears. It sounded louder than all the rest. Finally, Dugan located where the sound was coming from — the gun was huge, some sort of cannon that could be carried.

"Take cover!" Rogers shouted. He was already running towards Barnes, and Dugan thought, this is it!

Jim dragged Dugan behind a metal storage tank, they both covered their heads and prepared for death. It was so quiet for some reason. There were hurried footfalls; Dugan knew his teammates' treads — it was Frenchie. An impulse driven entirely by protectiveness forced Dugan to look up, words on the tip of his tongue—

Frenchie whipped something small and dark at the cannon wielder. Whatever he threw stuck to the man and forced him to take a step back, overbalance. Frenchie slid behind the same tank as Jim and Dugan less than a second before whatever he'd thrown exploded, followed a fifth of a second later by the discharge of the cannon. Dugan squeezed his eyes closed, but he still felt like the flash of the explosions had seared away his sense of sight.

The three of them stayed curled behind the metal tank and breathed as lightly as they could. Dugan smelt smoke in the air. Of course the barn would be on fire. But why weren't they dead? Frenchie loosened up first; Dugan felt it. He sat up and then pushed himself to his feet. Dugan opened his eyes and saw only white. It took a few watery blinks for any shapes to emerge from the whiteness. He saw Jim rubbing ashes off of his face. They both looked over to the center of the barn.

The roof was gone. Well, most of it. What remained was on fire. There was red all over the place. Long ropes of innards were splattered against the shelves, most of which had toppled over by now. No guns fired. Dugan got to his feet and tried to make sense of it all.

Frenchie's sticky bomb must have detonated before the cannon's shot got off. The force of the bomb sent the cannon discharge into the roof, saving all their lives. The bomb either helped implode the guy or disintegrated him into his main organ systems; Dugan was OK with either possibility.

Impossibly, Dugan accounted for all seven of them standing around the cannon man's insides. Frenchie's face was shining, happy. Jim's face was full of ash. Monty and Jimmy had little cuts on their faces and tears in their clothes; Dugan supposed they caught a shower of shrapnel. Gabe had a dark red spot on his knee. The captain's uniform had split along the right sleeve. Shiny, red flesh was visible. The seven of them simply looked at each other and released a collective sigh.

The moment was shattered by the discharge of a firearm. Dugan's bowler went flying off his head. There was another bang and a clatter of metal. One of the bodies on the ground hadn't been all the way dead and had been within reach of a pistol. Gabe had finished the guy off, but not before he'd put a bullet through Dugan's bowler.

"That son of a bitch," said Dugan as he picked up the prized hat. He peered at his companions through the holes that had been punched through it. "I'm gonna kill 'em."

Rogers smiled and said, "Look for survivors. Let's try to get some information."

"Captain," Barnes said sharply. "A word?"

The falling of Rogers's face would have been visible from the moon.

"Yeah, alright."

The rest of them watched their CO and second-in-command head toward the door. Dugan was sure they'd end up hearing most of that conversation no matter how far away Barnes and Cap walked. Indeed, there was a slapping sound and they heard "what the hell, Steve" loud and clear.

"I can't believe he shot my fucking hat!" Dugan shouted.

The men found eight HYDRA operatives in the wreckage. All of them were either mostly dead or they cracked a cyanide capsule before Steve had a chance to ask any questions. As it was, there were no HYDRA survivors from the assault. They returned to their gear, loaded up their truck, and headed for a village filled with civilians several miles away. An old couple with a very young little girl let them sleep in their parlour. The village was small, but it had pretty impressively-sized houses in it.

Morita got the radio set up outside around 2000 and made contact with S.S.R. Steve gave a tech on the other end their sitrep. Morita handed over the summary of a full report he'd recorded in the hours between the assault on the barn and their arrival at the old couple's place. Steve added his own notes as he read it back to the technician. He described the amendments that had been made to their maps based on the defences they'd found around Novara.

"Just a moment please, Captain," the technician said. "I'm receiving some documents just now."

Steve said, "OK. That's fine." He and Morita caught each other's eye. Steve shrugged and sighed. He was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep. Well, he wanted to eat and then go to sleep. The house smelt amazing; their hostess was cooking them something real to eat. Steve just wanted to fill the aching void in his guts and sleep for days. Not to mention the stinging in his arm. The burn wasn't serious; Jones had cleaned it out and simply taped to Steve's arm a pad that wouldn't stick to the wound. The most painful thing about it would be the tape pulling out his arm hair when it came time to remove the bandage.

"Hello, Captain," said Peggy's voice.

Steve's head jerked up and looked left and right. Morita mirrored him, clearly thinking Steve had detected a threat. Steve gave his best apologetic look and said into the radio's headset, "Hi, Agent Carter."

The eye roll Morita executed could have rivalled Bucky's.

"I hear your mission went well."

"Um — uh, yeah. Yes. We, uh, we eliminated the base. Blew up what remained."

"And you've collected samples of what they were working on?"

"Yes, Agent. As much as we were able." Steve felt his chest shiver every time her voice spoke directly into his hear.

"That's good. I understand that Novara is well defended."

"That's what we gathered."

Peggy said, "Colonel Phillips was curious to know if you and your team are armed enough to make an attempt on the city."

"What." It didn't even sound like a question. Just a flat "what."

"Do you think your men could take Novara?" Her voice was steady, but Steve thought he could detect some strain there. Peggy kept her personal feelings close to her, but he was getting better at reading Peggy Carter's shades and inflections.

"Uh, yes, ma'am, I think we could definitely give it a shot," Steve said. Morita narrowed his eyes at Steve.

"The city holds a tactical advantage, you see," said Peggy. "Several routes intersect near the city. There is also a prisoner camp there. We've had reports of it since the armistice back in September."

"Sounds like there's something specific you need." Steve flapped his hands at Morita until the latter handed over pencil and paper.

"Yes, actually there is. His name is Galtem Fahroni. I can't tell you much more over the radio. Just know that his last known location was near Novara and that he was a friend of the S.S.R. since its conception."

"The city holds a tactical advantage," Steve repeated Peggy's words back to her.

"Yes, Captain."

"We won't let you down," he said. I won't let you down, Peggy.

Steve waited until after everyone was fed and cleaned — the old couple had allowed each of them to bathe, the saints — to announce that their stay in Italy had been extended by one more mission. There wasn't a whole lot of whining from the men. Maybe they were too exhausted to complain.

Chapter Text

Some bird was making a really obnoxious sound. Bucky was sitting outside the old couple's house, feet up on their stone garden wall, trying to ignore the sound. His watch read 0234 and he was on watch. In reality, his head was tipped back against the top of his wooden chair and his eyes were closed. If only that fucking bird would shut up. It was because he was so aware of the sounds around him that he knew Steve was coming long before the captain was beside him saying, "Hard to keep watch with your eyes closed."

Bucky hummed in the back of throat and lifted his head, looking up at Steve. "All quiet here," he said to spite the bird. What kind of bird hangs around in winter at two-fucking-thirty in the morning? What the hell?

"That so?" Steve dragged a chair over — the legs scraping the stone sounded so loud — and sat beside Bucky. "Good."

They both stared out at the landscape. There were few clouds and everything was painted in shades of grey. So this was mountain air? Thin and cold?

"So," Steve said and then sighed. "How're you doing?"

"Who, me?" Bucky looked sideways at Steve. "Well, let's see. We've been in the field for five weeks, travelling across a whole country in the dead of winter. Strangers are constantly trying to kill me. But I don't blame them; I'm trying to kill them, too. I've been eating out of cans and living off of whatever I can take off of dead bodies. Despite that, I'm always cold and hungry, and I'm exhausted but can never sleep. I just got to take my first bath in more than a month a few hours ago. So," Bucky said while smirking at Steve, "I'm doing alright."

One side of Steve's face smiled; he looked down at his hands. "Well that's good. I've got somethin' for you." He opened one of his ammunition pouches and handed over a bundle of waxed paper.

Bucky unwrapped it, very aware of how loudly the paper crinkled. Some type of chocolate rested in the paper. "What's this for?" he said.

Steve quirked an eyebrow. "I thought we agreed not to mention it."

"Ah." The fuckin' side car. Bucky put the whole chunk of chocolate in his mouth and let it sit on his tongue, melting. With his mouth full, he said, "It's a start." When the chocolate had dissolved and left his mouth feeling sour, Bucky said, "How about you? How are you holding up?"

The way Steve looked up and out over the wall and drew in a big breath answered Bucky's question more honestly than any words Steve could speak.

"I'm hanging in there," Steve said.

"You worked so hard to get over here," Bucky said. "I almost feel bad now that you know what it's really like: a whole lotta sitting around and waiting for someone to try to kill you."

"Not exactly how I'd describe it."

"No?" The taste left in his mouth from the chocolate was giving Bucky a headache. Even candy made him miserable. Would anything ever be the same? "Then what's it like for you?"

Those chair legs scraping the ground again, making Bucky grit his teeth — Steve shifted his chair so he could put his boots up on the low wall. His giant new shoulder touched Bucky's regular old shoulder. It felt like a stranger. He'd never be used to this new version of his oldest friend.

"It's like this," said Steve. "I wake up every morning terrified. I see all you guys standing around, looking at me, waiting for me to give an order."

"Steve, we've been over this. You know how to command." Bucky didn't look directly at Steve, but he could see his friend nodding in his peripheral.

"I know. I know what we have to do. I know what the next move is. I'm just terrified to make you guys do it. And I know what you're gonna say, Buck. It's your job. All of you signed up for this voluntarily. You guys are ready and willing to take whatever risks I ask of you. Still, if something happens — and something is bound to happen, it always does — it's gonna happen because of a call I made." Steve huffed a little through his nose and looked straight at Bucky. He met the captain's eyes. "I just don't know how I'm going to live with it."

It took more self-control than Bucky was aware he had not to roll his eyes, to break the suffocating tension Steve had just injected into the air between them. "Come on, man. When one of us bites it, you can't take the blame. We chose to follow you. We chose it. Don't take that away from us." Bucky shrugged his shoulder that was touching Steve's, transferred the motion. "They're all idiots, remember? Not your fault we're stupid."

Steve didn't say anything for a while. Bucky felt his insides squirming. He was sure it didn't have anything to do with the chocolate. This damn conversation was reminding him of thoughts he'd sworn not to think. Tell him, his turbulent stomach told Bucky. You can tell Steve.

But Bucky told his stomach to shut the hell up and said, "Becca got married. Did I tell you?"

Steve looked at him with big eyes. "No, you certainly did not tell me your sister got married. When? Jesus, Buck, why didn't you say anything?"

Shrug. "You've been busy."

Steve slapped the back of Bucky's head light enough so that there was no harm but rough enough to mess up Bucky's hair. "What's his name? Tell me about it."

So Bucky reached a hand into his coat and pulled out the letter he'd received back in Sicily. Though a part of him wanted to tuck it away again and not answer any of Steve's questions, the better part of Bucky made him hand the letter off to Steve. His friend made a lot of noises as he read the two and a half pages contained within. Bucky had nothing to do but sit and stare at the hills, resolutely ignoring the hoots and shouts of that damn bird.

"Gee," Steve said so that Bucky would know he'd finished reading. Bucky put a hand out and tucked the letter back into the interior left breast pocket. "That's some news to get!"

"I know." Bucky was just glad that Steve hadn't mentioned the date on the letter. It would have given him another excuse to bring up Krausberg. Or to make some soft, well-meaning comment about how nothing else had been sent since. "I'm sad to have missed it."

"Probably never would have happened if you were there," Steve teased. "She was lucky to have ever gone on a proper date with the way you intimidated everyone."

"She's my sister. I don't want her being bothered by someone—"

"Someone like you?" Steve cut in.

Bucky laughed through his nose and shoved Steve. "Yeah, I guess I don't want her stuck with someone like me. I mean, whoever this guy is, he can't be any good. All the good ones are here. Or in the Pacific."

"Aw, gee, thanks," Steve said. "I woulda been one of those no-good guys back home."

Bucky laughed. "Hey, I would have had you marry Becca in a heartbeat if it meant you woulda stayed home."

"I know you would. God, could you imagine Becca's face if she heard you talking like that? I'd've been her doormat if we were married."

"Woulda been good for both of you." That godforsaken bird.

"We'll see what she says when I tell her about this conversation when we get home."

Bucky's hand rested on the letter, tucked inside his coat. A wind blew through and his fingers tensed. His stomach squeezed and roiled. "Shit, Steve, you don't think we're actually gonna go home, do you?"

Superhuman body made human movements superfast. Bucky swore he saw Steve blur when the captain whipped his head in Bucky's direction. "Of course we're going home, Buck." Steve said the words with that voice he used before someone started beating the snot out of him in some alley. It was his Fight Me Voice.

So Bucky humoured him. "Say we live. When we get home, you don't expect it to be the same, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

The bird hooted and Bucky said, "I mean, Brooklyn's not gonna be Brooklyn when you get back, Steve. How can it, after what we're doing now? After what we've already done? The things we've seen and . . . You're gonna be different, more different than you already are. You're gonna bring a lot of things back home with you that you're never gonna be able to put down."

The image of his father floated before Bucky's mind's eye. Shell shock, his mother had always said by way of explanation after his father would come down from an episode. Bucky had always known that, even if he survived the war, he wouldn't be coming back in any better shape. It was what had made the decision to enlist so difficult. He'd ended up deciding that it was better that he do it on his own terms than wait for the draft papers to turn up in the mail. Did he want to jump off the bridge, or did he want someone to push him? Neither, but he knew which was the lesser of two evils.

He knew Steve was looking at him in a bad way, but there wasn't much he could do now that the words were out of his mouth.

Steve said, "I know things won't be the same, Buck. Believe me, I've thought a lot about it. It's something I'm willing to accept. I don't expect anything back home to look or feel the same once I get there. Our parents made sure both of us knew that about war. But we're gonna go to Brooklyn when it's all said and done, and even though it won't be the same, it'll still be our home."

Stupid Steve, fighting for ideals. Idiot Steve, always expecting things to work out. Moronic Steve, thinking he can just deal with whatever consequences he'll bear because of this war. Asshole Steve, always running head first into fights he doesn't have a prayer of winning. Fucking Steve.

The feeling in Bucky's gut was verging on becoming painful. So Bucky took a breath and said, "Hey, promise me something? Say yes, and we're even on that thing we're never gonna mention again."

The captain smiled even though Bucky knew Steve could hear the hesitance in his own voice. "What am I agreeing to?"

A forced laugh fell out of Bucky's mouth, an attempt at keeping things light. His eyes fell to his hands. He couldn't look at Steve when he asked. It was— . . . He couldn't look. "Promise me you won't go first."

So much for taking the tension out of the air. Bucky could feel how still Steve had gone through their touching shoulders. That point of contact felt so solid; it could never be broken, connecting them forever. That fucking bird was the only sound to be heard. That strange feeling of becoming separate from his body washed over him. Bucky pressed his shoulder into Steve's to fight the feeling.

"Buck, come on," he heard Steve say from far away.

Shaking his head, Bucky insisted, "You come on, Steve."

"We're gonna be fine. Both of us are gonna be fine. The war is going to end, and we're going to go home. You're gonna see your ma and father and sister again. I'm going to go home with you, and I'll see them all, too."

Bucky hadn't stopped shaking his head. He kept leaning harder and harder on Steve's shoulder. Now wasn't the time to go somewhere else. Bucky wanted to stay right here with Steve. "Even then," he said. "Even then, you don't get to go first."

He was drifting. Time bent around him. Part of him was gone and away but it could still perceive something he knew was Steve pressing on the shoulder Bucky wasn't attached to anymore.

He heard, "OK. "

It was enough comfort for now.

They started into the outer ruins of Novara before daybreak the next morning. The edges of town had been hit particularly hard by the bombings. (Someone on those German bomber planes was shit at their job.) The seven of them were shot at no less than ten times by troops in the rubble. Rogers called them back and laid out a new plan. Surprise! It involved him using himself as bait. Team James would go around the ruins and find a safe place with good sightlines to set up a nest. The captain would walk through the ruins and draw fire from the shooters. When they gave themselves away, Barnes would take them out. Morita would radio the number of men and their location to Dugan, Gabe, and Frenchie. The three of them would then take out whoever remained after Barnes mowed down the sharpshooter.

And the plan actually kind of worked. The only problem was that it took forever for them to gain any ground. After a day and half of securing only two blocks of ruins, the captain called them together for a different plan.

"Same idea," said Rogers, "I draw their fire. But we've gotta get into the city proper and get Fahroni before HYDRA's counterattack arrives. So I figure me, Bucky, and Morita attack the city in this sector. The rest of you wait until we draw enough of their attention and then you guys sneak into the city while they're looking the other way. Scout the area and radio back to us. If we can take on these guys on two fronts, we should move quicker."

"We're not to engage?" Monty asked.

Rogers shook his head. "Not unless you have to. Mark their movements and try to find the camp. Get as deep into the city as you can. We'll blow 'em up from the inside to make sure you can get out."

Dugan felt better when he saw Barnes rubbing his forehead and making his duck face. It was nice not to be the only one with doubts about the plan. It might have worked if they had more men. Seven guys taking a city full of enemies and sharpshooters sounded a little more than optimistic. Dugan had to admit that there really wasn't a better option, not with the support the S.S.R. gave them for this mission. Which was to say, no support at all.

So they moved out. Dugan led his team about a half mile away from where Rogers and the others would initiate the attack. If it had been up to Dugan, he would have had the attack team be the bigger of the two. But it wasn't up to him, so he kept his trap shut. Rogers knew what he was doing. Besides, Barnes nodded his head at the plan. Dugan knew the sergeant didn't like the plan, but when did the kid like anything? If Sarge gave the captain's plan the nod of approval, it was enough to make Dugan fall in line.

They moved so slowly. There could be enemies everywhere — there probably were. So they had to stay out of sight and move at a snail's pace. Monty was in charge of the secondary radio. Stark had designed the thing, but it kind of sucked ass. Thing was cumbersome to use, which was why they hadn't really been going out of their way to use it. It was smaller than Jim's and its range was much shorter. The idea, Stark had explained during their time in Sicily, was for them to be able to communicate with the large radio, not a base hundreds of miles away. Stark had been very clear that his device was not a Handie-Talkie. It was better. When shipped out for Naples, Dugan remembered seeing Stark elbows deep in mechanical parts for more of the handheld, two-way radios. Dugan couldn't hold in a snort when he thought about it. They might not be carrying a Handie-Talkie, but theirs was made of all the same parts.

Dugan ran across the road. No stones reached up to trip him, which he was thankful for. Throwing his back against a building, he turned to peer down the road. Nothing. He watched and waited and counted. Then he turned his gaze to the place he'd just come from. Catching Gabe's eye, Dugan motioned him forward. They did this until all four of them had made it across unharmed.

He led them up the road next. They moved one at a time again, sliding into cracks and alleyways filled with rubble and corpses. Dugan knew that at this very moment the others were letting themselves be seen as they moved among similar ruins. Dugan crouched behind an upturned table and scanned the windows of the buildings nearby. He saw the small barrel of a gun resting on the ledge of one of those windows. Unconsciously, he held his breath and stared, listened. Nothing; too far. Turning, he gestured for the others to get low and then curled his hands into Os, holding them up to his eyes.

Monty slunk forward, hugging the walls and the ground. The Brit sat beside Dugan and watched as he indicated the direction of the gun. Monty pulled out his binoculars and peered in the direction indicated. Dugan slunk completely below the edge of the table and waited. After a few seconds, Monty lowered himself, too.

"I saw four and was able to make out a few shadows, so possibly a few more," Monty breathed.

"Weapons?"

"Not much visible. No evidence of artillery or a nest."

Dugan nodded. So more than likely they were looking at a sniper and his scouting team. Do not engage. "Right. Have Gabe mark it and let's go around. Follow me."

So they were off again, moving laterally to a new street away from the nest. They encountered a few more nests. Most of them were full of machine gunners, not snipers. And thank God for that, Dugan thought. Monty was able to pick out a few places which were full of heavier weapons. Glass bottles lined up unnaturally against a wall or shredded fabric gave away bomb stations. Frenchie even noticed a few wires dangling harmlessly that were in fact rigged for remote detonation. Dugan had Gabe mark the map, and they gave the building a wide berth as they went around.

It took an hour and forty-five minutes for Dugan's team to get into a position where they could travel no further. The four of them were squeezed inside a caved-in building which was pressed up against a house with four machine guns in it. Dugan caught Monty's eye and nodded. The Brit brought Stark's not-Handie-Talkie up to his lips, held down the Talk button, and murmured, "We're at the post office."

Monty put his hand over the speaker as Jim's voice came over, "Copy. Standby for signal."

"Wilco."

Monty put the radio into his bag and braced himself. Dugan forced himself to breathe out and relax his shoulders. His muscles loosened with the exception of hands; they tightened on his Thompson. He really would have rather been on the other side of this mission. That annoying part of his brain kept telling him that Jim, Barnes, and Rogers were about to be shot full of holes for a mission that had no chance of succeeding — for nothing. Dugan's heart pounded. A man never gets used to war, a heart never used to being so close to stopping.

Boom.

The assault had begun. Dugan heard a building crumbling. Immediately, his mind began to count the seconds. More explosions filled in the quiet, then shouts. His muscles were growing more and more taut. The slamming boots of the enemies streaming out of the house echoed in his head. He could hear their foreign voices barking at each other, could hear them disassembling their machine guns and packing up the ammunition. They were headed for the dense gunfire, headed for the rest of their team. Dugan's team. Dugan's friends.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tock.

Go time. Dugan stepped out of the hidey hole and ran for the house full of machine guns. He sprayed bullets into the soldiers' backs. Do not engage, his ass. The bodies dropped and their weapons went flying. Behind him, he knew Monty was tossing hand grenades into the windows of the house. The familiar tack-tack-tack of Gabe's Browning was what life insurance sounded like.

The Germans (or were they Italians? Dugan only knew that they were attacking his friends, which made them enemies) in the street were only just cottoning on to the presence of another team. Dugan shot most of them before they got a chance to turn around. Lucky that they ran in teams of twos. There was a boot colliding with Dugan's side and he was knocked to the ground at the same instant a rifle fired. Barely a blink of an eye later, another rifle fired. A bullet sailed into the stone street millimetres from where Dugan had just been. His first thought was that they'd fuck up his hat even worse than it already was.

He looked up, trying to see sense.

Monty. The damn Limey had knocked him out of the way of a sniper — and then killed the bastard. Damn. Barnes wasn't the only one who had been reading up on sharpshooting tactics, Dugan reminded himself. As the scout, Monty knew a lot more than they gave him credit for. Guy was a major for a reason.

Boom – Frenchie's stolen potato masher had detonated on a fresh pile of German shells just inside the broken window of a building.

Monty glanced at Dugan and said, "Now's not the time to sit around and have tea, Corporal."

"Fuck you, Tommy," Dugan said and pushed himself up to his feet.

All the remaining hostiles in their sector was dead. The sounds Cap's battle seemed unreasonably loud. Dugan would even wager that no one had heard them attacking the men on this street. Good. He could live with that.

"Shall we?" said Gabe.

So they moved deeper into the city. Dugan didn't attack any more troops. He'd been told not to engage. Besides, all of the people that had been hiding in this building had already left to attack the others. Dugan waved a hand and they all ran at a crouch across an intersection.

"Don't look so proud of yourself," Bucky snapped.

Steve bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. It really wasn't funny. It hurt. Not I'm-dying-this-is-it pain, but it was definitely making itself known. The burn on this forearm had already mostly healed. It was just shiny, soft skin now. The gash from the bullet fragment in his calf though. That was still bleeding.

That fragment itself was sitting on the ground beside Steve. Bucky had fished it out with a knife and tweezers. The attack today had gone as well as any of them could have hoped. They'd managed to push fairly deep into the city before being forced to retreat a little. At the end of it, they'd managed to defend most of the ground they'd gained.

Steve, Bucky, and Morita were now holed up in a tower that used to hold a sniper. Bucky had killed the guy during the assault and then pushed the body out the window when the three of them returned to make it their camp. The place was well-stocked, considering the circumstances. The guy must have made this place his nest a long time ago. Steve was happy to have a comfortable place to sleep. They dined on the dead soldier's rations, and Bucky used his aid kit to clean up Steve and Morita. The communication officer had taken some debris to the cheek. Bucky had put a few careful stitches along his cheekbone and left it.

Steve knew that he ought to be grateful that they were still alive and hadn't taken any serious hits. And he was. One of these days he was going to stop feeling guilty over every drop of blood his men spilt. It just wasn't practical to be like this. They'll always get up, Steve told himself. They can walk off anything. Suck it up and keep moving.

He'd get there. Steve would get to that place. He'd get there soon — he had to. In the meantime, he let himself be reassured by the fact that Bucky hadn't sustained a single scratch.

"Don't tell me you're going to start being a mother hen," Steve said.

Bucky put a bandage on Steve's wound and pulled on the straps like he was tying a tourniquet. There was a withering look in his eye for the fraction of a second they made eye contact. The back of Steve's mind was surprised that his body registered the pressure as discomfort for a moment. But then Bucky let off on the ties and continued to apply the dressing per protocol with his duck-faced scowl out in full force. "That an order?"

"Sounds like a hen to me," Morita chimed in.

"You keep your trap shut or else I'll sew that closed, too."

"Calm down, Buck." Steve was well aware that telling someone to calm down was the surest way to fire them up. And, hey, it was amusing when Bucky got going.

"Why don't you just shoot yourself out in the street, Steve? Then everyone will come out to see if you're dead, and we can rescue this asshole we've been sent to save while they're distracted. Isn't that a great fucking plan?"

Morita shrugged. "Actually, it's not bad."

Bucky was absolutely whipping the first aid supplies back into the dead man's kit. "All a bunch of fuckin' idiots. Why did I agree to do this?"

The answer was, of course, because Steve asked him to. Steve knew he was the reason Bucky was still in Europe. Well, maybe not the only reason, but he was the biggest one. The deciding factor. After twenty years, you stop denying how influential you are to your friends. Sometimes Steve felt guilty about it. For all the crap he gave Bucky about Krausberg, Steve hadn't let that stop him from asking Bucky to come back to war. He was the first person that came to mind. The only one that came to mind, really, until Bucky had recommended the rest. For all of his worry, Steve still couldn't imagine not having Bucky with him on this mission.

"Quit your bellyachin', Sarge," said Morita. "It's makin' my face hurt worse."

They all settled down. There was the regular check in from the other team, but other than that, it was peacefully quiet. Bucky and Morita moaned a bit about not being able to smoke but knocked it off before long. Steve passed out more chocolate, feeling a bit like Saint Nicholas, and the three of them relaxed for the night. Bucky sat at the window for first watch.

"Either of you two ever been out west?" Morita asked.

"Pennsylvania," Steve said dryly. He deliberately didn't count anything that had happened on the USO tour. 

"Indiana first," said Bucky. "Then Wisconsin for basic."

Morita laughed. "No, I said out west."

"We didn't have a lot of time or money to go traveling," Steve pointed out. "You been out east?"

"Sure," Morita said. "Saw damn near the whole country from a train. The thing stopped every other state. The west is nice. I'm not talkin' California, though even that is nice, too. "

"What, like Montana?" said Bucky. Steve could hear the distaste in his friend's voice. Bucky had opinions about the countryside.

"Yes, like Montana. Colorado. Wyoming. Everyone forgets about Wyoming."

Bucky said, "What's to remember?"

"The space. There's just so much space. Hills and grass and wild things. No people. My family went out there once, when I was really little. God, I can't remember the reason why we went. But I remember thinking it was out of some storybook. Life as it was intended." Morita snorted. "My mother said I started fussing and saying I was gonna mess it all up."

Steve was quiet. The words made him uneasy. The image Morita had painted in his head contrasted sharply with what surrounded them in reality. Houses and stone buildings. Ruins created from bombs. This city at the base of the mountains — the mountains looked so powerful. Steve remembered that that was the first thing he had thought when they laid eyes on Novara. The city was just a hunk of rocks at the base of nature's might.

"I don't know," Morita continued. "I've been thinking about Wyoming a lot lately. Especially as we were coming up the coast, past all those cities and shit. Nature didn't make buildings and knock them over with bombs. Nature didn't do any of this to people. Makes me wonder if humanity is worth it, you know."

Steve glanced at Bucky. His friend looked as blank as their parachute silk.

"It is," Steve said. "It's worth it."

The next morning, they attacked again. The plan had worked. A lot of the manpower had concentrated in their portion of the city. Steve ran through bullets and rubble like he was born to do it, the wound in his calf barely registering. A useful bit of information: the people holding this city were not well supplied. Steve knew this because they were very conservative with their shots. Also, Bucky and Morita had pointed out yesterday that not all of them had guns.

Granted, there were a lot of machine gunners. It seemed to be the only thing that they did have supplies for. The only thing for it was to run the nests out of ammunition.

One such nest was being set up at the end of the street. Steve tossed his shield up, caught it on its edge, and sent it flying into one of the men. The shield ricocheted into the second, snapped off a wall, and came careening back to Steve. In the time the shield was away, Steve had unholstered his sidearm and shot down a rifleman up on a rooftop.

The cracks of gunfire from Bucky and Morita were all Steve needed to hear to keep moving forward. They were both still fighting, mowing down hostiles before they could get set up. The hardest guns to overcome were the machine gunners. Steve's attacks relied a lot on speed. But he couldn't run between the bullets of a machine gun. He was forced to either knock out the gunner teams before they set up or wait for Bucky or Morita to get a clean shot on one of them. Steve had a shield, though. He could always wait with the shield deflecting the shots until the gunners reached the end of their ammunition belt and then attack. That took a long time sometimes.

Despite the Germans having all night to focus their forces in this part of the city, Steve noticed that his team was able to move much faster into the city. A part of him thought that this might be a trap, but it didn't stop him from punching and throwing his shield for all he was worth.

At 1100, Steve had Bucky and Morita halt forward progress and bunker down for scout work. Steve stayed in the street, drawing fire and curses. He got a lucky break when one bullet bounced off his shield and nailed some poor guy up on a roof right in the chest. If the bullet didn't kill him, the fall off the building sure did. Steve heard the familiar sound of Bucky's Johnson firing, so he knew when to dive for cover. A mortar round detonated a few yards ahead of Steve. More and more rounds fell up the street while the captain retreated to their rendezvous point. The snapping sound of a Thompson could be heard supplying further suppressing fire.

Steve made it to their new hide out and sat heavily on a holey sofa. Morita was already at the radio, marking up positions on a map. A few minutes later, Bucky showed up. He went over to Morita and pointed to three spots on the map that were close together. Morita nodded and marked them in pencil. Bucky craned around, trying to get a look at the stitches on Morita's cheek. He must have been satisfied, because he turned away without doing anything further.

Steve knew that he was next. Bucky caught his eye and flapped his hand upward. Steve yanked his pant leg out of his boot and rolled it up until the bandage was visible. Bucky crouched down to inspect the blood which had seeped all the way through. This was familiar. Their roles were second nature. Steve was grateful for this bit of Bucky's personality remaining unchanged, even though Steve had always hated it, hated being fussed over. You'd think being as sick and boneheaded as he was that Steve would have gotten used to fussing. Or built up a tolerance at the very least. But, no. He had only become more and more annoyed when it happened.

Except for now. Now he was just glad that this small thing had been preserved. His body would mend the wound and stop damn near any infection. Steve knew all of this. He was certain that Bucky was aware of it, too. Whatever the case, Steve found himself touched that Bucky was plucking at the bandage and frowning his duck-faced frown as if nothing had changed.

"It's fine," Steve said for old times' sake.

Bucky hummed just like he always used to when placating Steve. "I'll be the judge of that."

All those hours Bucky had spent at Steve's mother's side had turned the sergeant into a menace. Hell, Bucky had been half-convinced he wanted to be a doctor by the time Steve's ma died. Always used to say that he had a lifetime of experience taking care of Steve. Bucky would have been good at it. He was a natural caretaker. Steve wondered what things would have been like if the Army had tapped Bucky for medic.

On second thought, maybe it was better they hadn't. Steve didn't think Bucky would take it very well if a bunch of guys were calling out for his help and Bucky couldn't get to all of them. A man could only deal with that sort of thing for so long before he lost something of himself.

Morita said, "They've found the camp. It's pretty small. A plaza was blocked off, and there are a bunch of civilians inside it. It has good defences. Machine gun nests, 88s, the whole shebang."

So that's where they've put all of their resources.

Steve smiled. "Well, let's draw them out."

The three of them spent the better part of that afternoon preparing their second phase of the day's attack. They took turns keeping watch in a building across the street and closer to the heart of the city. Steve didn't want any shots to compromise their fall-back point.

At 1600, Steve and Bucky set out for the neighbouring sector of town, laden with explosives and a spool of wire they had claimed from a machine gun nest. They moved slowly and took great care to lay the charges and string the wires. Nearly half a block was rigged by the time they were done. They had to have used a mile of wire. Steve detonated half of the charges. A few minutes ticked by and then the streets were swarming with troops. What a bunch of boneheads. You'd think they'd know better than to just run into the street like that by now.

Anyway, Bucky got to detonate the second half of the charges. The block nearly collapsed. Screams shattered the brittle winter air. Steve flinched and then tapped Bucky's shoulder. They headed back to base and did it again the next day.

Steve's plan didn't change much over the next two days. But their progress was reduced every time the three of them attacked. They eventually were ground to standstill, pinned down by three sharpshooters. Bucky felt a little more on edge every day. His ammunition was running low. These Germans didn't leave their dead in the streets for long, so if he didn't have the time to steal the right kind of ammunition in the middle of a firefight, he wasn't going to get any replenishment.

No way he was going to use one of those piece of shit German long-range rifles either.

Steve had gotten grazed in the side on the last day. Bucky had bottled up his nerves and frustration as he bandaged the wound. The only good thing about all of this was that Steve didn't seem to notice how quickly Bucky was fraying. They didn't have the supplies to keep at this much longer. They didn't have ammunition, food, or first aid to keep this up. And HYDRA was due to show up at their destroyed barn any day now.

That didn't even include the stress Bucky felt about having no visual on Dum Dum and the others for so long. They communicated via radio, but he would have felt better to see for himself that they were all still in one piece.

The plan changed: Steve would wander out into the street and try to draw the fire of the sharpshooters and make them give up their location. Bucky would handle the rest after that. Great theory. Real smart plan.

That was how Bucky had come to lie on the floor for a whole day with his face shoved right up to his scope tracking Steve's progress through this city full of places for snipers to hide. He felt like a string being pulled taut as every second crept by. Even when Steve came back at the end of the day, Bucky couldn't make his shoulders loosen up. His mind was an unending refrain of what if what if what if what if I don't get to him in time?

On the third day, one of the snipers showed himself. Bucky breathed out and squeezed the trigger without hesitation as soon as he saw the muzzle fire. The body slumped where everyone could see. Bucky got up and moved to the tallest tower, a building the three of them had gotten within their boundaries just yesterday. Bucky made himself comfortable in the belfry, bell since gone missing, and found Steve in his scope again. It was cold up there, all exposed to the winds that came down off the mountains.

The second sniper shot at Steve that same day, despite the fact that Bucky had revealed himself as a rival sharpshooter in the area. The second one was dead in a single shot.

The last sniper was smarter than his peers. He knew Bucky was out there, and he didn't shoot at Steve. (Smart move, asshole.) Bucky moved among the tallest buildings and stared through his scope for hours trying to find that fucker. This went on for three days. Three days with no fire. The fibres of Bucky's nerves were giving up one by one. It didn't help that Steve still insisted on walking the streets even though the sniper was too smart to shoot at him.

Nightfall on the third day: Bucky, Steve, and Jim were on the second landing of a former bookshop. Jim was at the radio, face smiling. Steve was right beside him. Bucky couldn't make himself get up from the patched and fraying couch even though it smelled like mould and piss. It wasn't until Jim said "out" that Bucky opened his eyes and tuned back into the conversation.

"Good news. They located Fahroni in the camp."

Steve's jaw dropped. He looked like a fish. A stupid fish. A great, big, stupid fish. "How?"

Jim looked wry. "The Frenchman."

"How?"

"Frenchie got himself caught with a bunch of Italian insurgents — on purpose. So they put him in the camp. Guess he was able to find our guy."

Bucky rose from the couch like a zombie from the grave. "He's a prisoner?" Again?

Jim nodded.

No.

"Yeah. He's been talking to the rest of 'em through some code system with a sock." He shrugged at the look Steve gave him. "That's what they told me. The guys have got a plan to bust 'em out, but they need us to cause major chaos to distract the camp's defences. This one's gotta be big."

Bucky couldn't help but think of their dismal supplies. How in the world were they going to be able to cause a ruckus big enough to distract the Germans from a prisoner break-out? He could see Steve thinking the same things, could see his oldest friend doing the calculations, scheming.

Finally, the captain said, "Tell them we need two days."

Fuck me sideways.

Dugan breathed heavily through his nose so that the ends of his moustache fluttered. He needed a trim.

Wait two more days. Sure. OK. Just sit there and wait. Yeah, yeah, he understood that the others needed to get some things together. They knew Frenchie was in the camp, and it was always best to be not in a camp. Still, Dugan had to work to keep himself in check. They'd all been in the field too long, been hungry and cold for too long. Too close to death for too long.

"Two days gives us more time to plan," said Gabe.

Thank God for Gabe Jones. He could be a very calm voice of reason when he wasn't being fucking nuts.

"Right, right," Dugan said. He stopped fiddling with his moustache. At the rate he was going, he was going to rub the thing off his face.

"The bloody camp is surrounded by landmines," Monty said for the ten thousandth time. "We need a way in that is not the front door."

The camp was surrounded by mines. The four of them had only been able to realise that when a prisoner had tried to make a run for it one day. Guy was blown sky-high in tiny little pieces. So the guards knew which paths were safe (and so too did Dugan). The problem was that they'd didn't have a snowball's chance simply busting through the front door. There were nests everywhere. They'd been stuck trying to solve this problem ever since Frenchie let himself get caught. (Barnes had been right: He was not the most Italian-looking among them. It helped that these Germans apparently couldn't tell French from Italian.)

"We need to disarm the mines before we go in," Monty said. "But we can't just remotely detonate them while there are people inside the camp. They'll be blasted to hell."

Gabe looked skyward. Pensively, he said, "We could evacuate them. Then detonate the mines."

"I like the idea of blowing the camp up, but how the hell are we supposed to get the people out, genius?" Dugan said.

Gabe just pointed up. Dugan and Monty looked in that direction.

"Up and over," he said. "There's nothing preventing us from going over the fence."

Dugan looked at one of the buildings lining the square. It had part of its upper level caved in, exposed. It was high enough. It would get them over the fence, provided they had a line to string into the camp from the building. Dugan saw the potential, but he also saw the problems. What would they do, sneak the men out one at a time on the line? These krauts were dumb, but they would definitely notice the camp's occupants crawling away on a rope strung over their heads.

Monty sighed and said, "We really only need to get Dernier and Fahroni out, you know."

"What, and just leave all these people here?"

Monty shrugged. "It is not our mission. We cannot stage a full attack. And whose side are these people on? Are they Italians who will kill us just as fast as they'll kill their jailers?"

Just leave the people in the camp? Dugan's head pounded. It would be easier that way. Just get their man and their mission and be on their way. So much easier. Dugan's Catholic guilt was already biting at him. Could he get what he came for and leave all these people to whatever fate had in store for them? What if Rogers had come and rescued Barnes, leaving the rest of them in their cages?

Both Monty and Gabe were looking at him. Dugan took off his bowler (which still had a goddamn hole right through the middle of it, thanks HYDRA asshole) and rubbed at his hair. He said, "Let's find a rope."

The second day: Bucky was back in the belfry. He lay prone and stared through the scope of his rifle. Jim was up there with him, mostly just for the company. The third sniper was still out there. And while Steve was also out there, Bucky wouldn't stop waiting for the sniper to slip up. After all, Steve was out there preparing the street for the Big Show. They would be getting into it at 2100.

"So are we gonna talk about this or what?" Jim said. He sounded irritated.

Join the club, pal.

"Talk about what?" Bucky said while moving his lips as little as possible.

"You spacing out."

"I'm not spacing out, I'm doing my job."

Jim snorted. "I'm not talkin' about that."

Bucky pulled his face away from the scope for as long as he dared to give Jim a warning look. "I don't know what you're talking about then."

"I'm not as oblivious as the rest of 'em, Sarge." Jim tossed a bit of stone that had broken off one of the belfry's support columns and caught it in the same hand. "You stare off into space and don't respond to anyone for several minutes at a time. Don't know why your so-called best friend hasn't noticed you going all stiff and blank ten times a night."

Bucky clenched his jaw and focused on the view in his scope. "I'm fine."

"Frenchie thinks it's seizures."

"What?"

"It's what he told me after your freak out near the Winter Line."

"I didn't freak out."

Jim missed the bit of stone and it fell down the open sides of the belfry. They both heard it hit the ground.

"Says you."

"Yeah, says me."

"Nobody expected you to come outta there without a scratch, Sarge."

Bucky set the Johnson rifle down for a moment and looked at his hands. "I don't want to talk about this."

"Tough shit." Jim nudged Bucky's calf with his boot. "We're on your side, Sarge. Seizures or no, all of us are still following you."

Bucky found the nerve to look Jim in the face. "You're following Steve."

Jim snorted in reply. "He's just the captain."

As if there were a difference between the two statements for him.

Jim said, "What I'm trying to say is that you can count on us. If you need us to watch your six 'cause you're feeling funny, we'll do it."

A long time passed where neither of them said anything. They watched a rare artillery shell pop a block over. Bucky eventually said, "I've never had a seizure in my life."

"Would you be able to tell if you had?"

Eye roll. "No one's ever accused me of having one then. How about that?"

Jim shrugged. "Fair enough. Frenchie said yours are subtle. He wouldn’t have noticed if he weren't looking for it. And the freak out in the woods made him look for it."

"I do not have epilepsy."

Jim held up his hands. "No one said that."

"That's what having seizures is."

"Listen, Sarge, I'm no doctor. I'm not saying whether or not you have anything. I'm saying we all heard the rumours about the isolation ward. We saw you practically get your head caved in by those kraut guards and then get dragged back there. Fuck, all of us saw what you were like after Cap busted you outta there. If it wasn't the beating, then it was the drugs. You were fucked up the whole way back to Allied territory."

Bucky swallowed around a growing lump in his throat. "Does this really matter if there's nothing that can be done about it?"

"They make stuff that helps."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "That'll be the day."

"Think about it." Jim gave him a shit-eating toothy grin. "We've got your back in the meantime."

"I got a job to do," Bucky said quietly, almost purred. The barrel of his Johnson swung in smooth degrees over his field of view.

"Yeah, so do all of us. That's why it's better that none of us are caught daydreaming." Jim stretched his shoulders until they popped. "God, I haven't had a cigarette in days. All this shit, and I can't even smoke. So fucking cold up here it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey. You're not even shivering. Look: no gloves and your trigger finger is steady as shit."

Bucky felt the same craving for a cigarette just then. But he also had no desire to actually smoke one while Steve was out there being an idiot. Even Bucky's vices bowed to Steve's position as Priority Number One.

So the day wore on. 2100 came and went and they started to fight again. Steve razed about three city blocks single handed. From the belfry, Bucky saw something catch fire deeper in the city. That was Dum Dum and the others, he supposed. Jim fired the last of their mortars into the densest groups of Germans. They kept hearing sounds of battle get louder and louder. Much too loud for the numbers they were expecting from the Germans. It was almost like an army had arrived.

When the thought crossed Bucky's mind, his lungs froze. Raising his head away from his scope for the first time in hours, he looked, really looked, toward the centre of the city. He saw it: blue flashes of light. In his chest, Bucky's heart contracted painfully and then started beating like crazy. He wheeled on Jim.

"Get Steve!" Bucky shouted. "HYDRA's here! They fucking boxed us in! Followed us right into the city so we couldn't get out! Get on the radio and tell S.S.R.! Then get Steve! Get him the fuck out of there!"

Jim didn't blink once. He took in every word and then he was gone, a single "fuck" the only thing left in his wake.

No wonder it had been relatively easy for only three guys to push into the city. So easy because the city was HYDRA and they were letting three guys force their way in. There was sweat falling into Bucky's eyes; it was cold. A part of him was starting to separate...

"Not now!" he snarled at himself.

Lying back down with his rifle, Bucky quickly located Steve and followed his dumb, star-spangled ass through the battle in the street. Anyone who even looked at the idiot got a bullet through their chests. It didn't matter that Bucky's Johnson was bolt-action. He'd gone on automatic, a machine of a different kind. Dwindling ammo his only limiting factor.

He didn't stop, didn't pause until he heard stones scuffing on the stairs. Boots. Two people. Bucky lowered his rifle and looked toward the hatch which led to the inside of the building. His breath was shallow; his heart was more demanding. Blue light flashed behind him at the same time that the hatch flew opened and white light flashed in front of him. And then voices. German voices. Hands reaching for him, grabbing.

Bucky instantly began to struggle. The tracer round — or whatever that flash of light had been — had left him blind. Bucky kicked and punched violently; it won him more than one grunt of pain from his invisible assailants. It was not lost on him that no one had tried to shoot him. That meant that they wanted him alive. That meant— . . . Bucky screamed like his life depended on it. He screamed like he was already back where they wanted to take him. Something hard hit the side of his head, German barked an inch from his nose. Bucky could smell the man's breath. He didn't stop fighting. When he opened his eyes, it was still too washed out to see anything. There were shifting outlines, but nothing useful.

Lunging, Bucky caught one of the outlines in the chest, knocking them both to the ground. He swung his fists blindly, like a feral animal backed in a corner. Every second allowed his surroundings to extrude to life. Bucky flung a leg out at the second shadow, felt the satisfying pressure when a body fell on his leg. Getting to his feet only made Bucky feel more disoriented — he feared falling over the edge of the belfry.

There was suddenly a body pressed to his back. An arm came around his chest and cold metal pressed into his throat. His skin stung. But he wasn't allowed much time to think about his throat being cut, because the second body was up and there was an all-too familiar needle prick at his neck. And Bucky went fucking ballistic the instant he felt it.

He bit the hand holding the knife, kicked at the knees of the man in front of him. Sight had returned enough for him to see their faces. Bucky turned away from them and pulled out his Colt in the same motion. He shot the first, but the second was on top of him before he could get the next round off. They both hit the ground — the world tilted and Bucky felt like he was at sea.

Not again, not now!

The HYDRA operative shifted on top of him. Bucky saw him reaching for something. The needle — were there more? Flailing, Bucky threw up a knee. The force of the blow knocked the man forward. He still had the knife and it was coming to Bucky's face.

A gunshot sounded. He knew that sound, had been waiting for it — the third sniper had taken a shot!

Feeling like an absolute idiot, Bucky put up a hand to stop the knife. It felt like the blade was cutting his hand in half. He screamed something guttural. Punching with his right, Bucky shoved the man off his chest. He found his Colt and fired at the second man until there were no more rounds. Then it was back to the Johnson — world so heavy and swirly, his head emptying itself of everything except for Steve goddamn it you idiot what if I don't get there in time?

Looking through the scope made Bucky dizzy and nauseated. But he found what he was looking for: A man in a window holding gun with a long barrel. Bucky took the shot. His head was too heavy. So he rested it on the cool stones and hoped— . . .

"Took you long enough!" Rogers shouted when Dugan caught the captain's eyes.

He waved the rest of his men onward: Frenchie, Monty and Gabe with Fahroni supported between them.

"That him?" Rogers nodded at Fahroni.

"Yep. He took some damage on our way out," Dugan said. "Fucking HYDRA. How're we getting out of this thing?"

And the captain actually smiled like he was enjoying all of this. "We fight."

"Yes, but how?"

They heard the heavy creak of tank treads. Great. Rogers smiled and said, "Give me a hand?"

It took two seconds for Dugan to take his meaning. He smiled a crazy smile himself. "I'd be honoured."

They dodged fire and went in a roundabout path to get behind the tank. It was one of the tanks that vaporised people — way better than if they'd commandeered a plain old Tiger. Dugan picked up his last two grenades (potato mashers he'd picked off a kraut a few days earlier) and ran up to the tank, Rogers right beside him. They both jumped on the sides. Rogers ripped the door opened, and Dugan pulled the strings and dropped the potato mashers inside. Slamming the door down, Rogers held up his shield to protect both of them. Debris shot out the front slot of the tank. The captain opened the door once more and Dugan strafed the inside. Sounds of the dying gurgled out.

Rogers jumped inside, tossing out the bodies like they were dirty laundry. Dugan waved the rest of his men over, guiding them inside one at a time. Gabe remained outside, providing covering fire with his Browning. It was tricky getting the openly bleeding and half-aware Fahroni into the tank, and Dugan took a shot to the arm for it.

Monty manned the turret, firing like a "nutter" so that Gabe could get in safely. Dugan fell into place at the controls. They were rolling in no time.

Dugan turned to Rogers. "What, we just gonna ride out of here in this thing?"

"Got any other ideas?" It was only partly a joke.

"Where are the others? Where's the rest of Team James?"

Rogers looked pale under the helmet of his ridiculous uniform. "Morita found me in the field before things got hectic. He went back to our base to radio S.S.R. Bucky was in the bell tower of a church."

"Point me," Dugan said.

The tank rumbled through the streets. Gabe was up with Monty, the two of them blasting their way through town. A curious thing happened when Monty shot out another HYDRA tank: It didn't disappear. Instead, the thing burned and crumbled. Good to know; Dugan steered them clear of any other tanks lest the same fate befall them.

"Who's gonna go get 'em?" Dugan asked the men at large.

Rogers was already headed for the exit.

"Cap, you can't," said Gabe. "They're looking for you. You'll only draw fire. I'll go."

He didn't look happy, but Rogers agreed to let Gabe go find Barnes and Jim. Dugan steered the tank away from the block where their friends were. He didn't stray far but went a good distance, drawing the action away from that block.

Jim was outta ammo.

Jesus Christ.

All he could do was run. He still had the radio going and had the headset on as he slipped between the cracks of the city. There weren't a whole lot of people on the streets, but it was still crawling with HYDRA. Seven guys weren't gonna be enough.

"How are you now, Private?" That was Agent Carter over the radio.

Jim slid down behind a wall and covered his head. Dust and rubble from an explosion up ahead sprinkled down on him.

"Still not dead," he answered.

"We've already sent the planes out, our fastest models," she promised. "Can you get out of the city in an hour?"

Jim sure hoped so. "Peggy, I'll be lucky if I'm still alive in an hour, inside or outside the city."

There was a strange pause. Then: "Just try to be clear. Get out whether you find the others or not."

"Copy that."

Jim cut the radio and got up, kept running. He nearly wet his pants when Gabe appeared out of goddamn nowhere. They nearly collided. They did a stupid twirling hug, both trying not to knock the other clear off his feet.

"What's going on?" Jim demanded.

"We got the guy. Commandeered a tank. Cap has everyone there ready to bolt. Where's Barnes?"

Jim just started running toward the church and its ice-cold belfry. There was definitely a feeling of relief in his chest now that Gabe was with him. Honestly, though, Jim thought anybody who had a gun would have made him feel better. No one shot at them on the way to the church, but there was loud rumbling and sounds of heavy weapons fire just a street over.

Neither broke stride entering the church, and their boots pounded louder than usual as they climbed up and up. Shit, Jim didn't remember there being so many stairs in this thing before. The belfry wasn't this tall, was it? The hatch was already opened, so Jim hoisted himself swiftly out of the stairwell.

"Aw, Jesus."

There were three bodies lying on the ground. Two were clad all in black and the third was Barnes. Sarge was lying face down beside his Johnson. Jim counted the bullet holes in one of the HYDRA men. Overkill. Gabe crouched over Barnes, turning him onto his back.

"He alive?" Jim asked.

"Yeah, he's got a pulse. But look," he said and pointed to Barnes's neck.

The first thing Jim noticed was the cut on the sergeant's throat, but it wasn't what Gabe was pointing to. No, there was a dark little bruise surrounding a small red dot, the sort of thing one gets after they've been injected with something. The exact sort of thing Barnes had been covered in on their march out of Krausberg.

Jim took it back; that hadn't been overkill at all.

And then he saw that Barnes's hand had been nearly cut in two. Gabe noticed it, too. He did what Jim was too horrified to even think to do: pulled out a bandage and immediately wrapped the hand.

"He gonna be OK?" Jim managed to ask.

Gabe shrugged. His eyes caught something on the ground. Jim noticed and looked in the same direction. Gabe reach over and held up a syrette. There weren't many words on the tube. Gabe bent the needle over and put the thing in a pocket.

Gabe tapped Barnes's face. "Sarge," he called. "Hey! Sarge, wake up! Barnes! Hey! Bucky!"

Nothing. Not even a flinch.

"Let's get him out of here," he said.

Jim picked up Barnes's Johnson and slung it over his shoulder. Then he helped Gabe manoeuvre the sergeant's body over the hatch and down. It took a goddamn eternity to get that guy down the stairs. The guy wasn't exactly that big, but his weight was a lot when coupled with the damn batteries for the radio.

In the bottom of the church, Jim flipped on the radio and shouted until he heard Monty reply. "Jim? It's bloody good to hear you."

"Yeah? Great. Where are you? We got Barnes but he's not up for walking, and we can't drag him through the streets."

There was a lot of noise coming from the other end of the radio. Jim would have laughed if his legs weren't burning from supporting Barnes's dead weight. Speaking of, the sergeant made a pathetic noise and drooled yellow bile down his chin. Jim leaned away but Gabe pulled his sleeve down over his hand and wiped the mess away, saying, "There's no need for that, Sarge."

"We're coming to you," Monty said shortly. "Out."

"Copy. Out."

It took them so long. It was like they were driving the tank from the moon. Gabe and Jim put Barnes down on a pew so they could keep watch out the windows. One thing Jim knew for sure was that it was damn difficult to fire Barnes's Johnson. It made sense; you know, the thing had been designed specifically for him. Of course Jim would think it was trash. But it really felt like trash in his hands.

As soon as the tank turned down their street, Jim saw an American flag pop out of the top. Cap was running toward them before his feet ever hit the ground. Jim knew that the best thing he could do now was get the hell out of the way. Gabe knew, too. Cap busted inside without even really noticing either of them. Some sixth sense told him exactly where Barnes was and he charged over to the pew. Jim and Gabe advanced behind him.

"Bucky," Cap said forcefully, like he didn't have time for Sarge to be nappin' like this. "Bucky, wake up or so help me."

Gabe pulled the syrette out of his pocket and said, "We think he was injected with this." He shifted Barnes's head to show the track mark.

Cap stared for a beat and then turned toward Gabe with crazy eyes. Would have been funny if it also wasn't terrifying. "What is it?"

"Not sure. I guess it's some sort of sedative."

Jim watched the captain move Barnes's head, trying to look for more marks (and maybe avoid looking at the wound on his throat). The look on Cap's face could melt diamond. It only got hotter when his fingertips came away from Barnes's hair stained red.

Jim took a step back.

Gabe said evenly, "Or he's unconscious because of a blow to the head."

Jim could see the curling of the captain's lip. To his surprise, Cap threw his shield to Jim. He just barely stopped it from clanging on the ground. His hands stung a bit at the force. Would have been embarrassing, dropping the damn shield. Cap scooped up Barnes. They headed for the door: Jim first with the shield and Barnes's Johnson, Gabe a step behind with a Thompson, and Cap carrying Barnes last.

The tank was right outside, but they still came under heavy fire the moment they stepped out the door. Monty swung the turret in the direction of the worst fire, sending deadly blue light their way. Jim's arm felt odd with the shield on it, deflecting bullets. He was the last one into the tank; they went into it in the reverse order they'd left the church. Once they were all in, Cap said sharply, "Get us out of here."

It took a tank battle to get them out of Novara. Steve really didn't have the patience for it, but there was no choice but to endure it. The tank was really cramped; they were practically sitting in each other's laps. Falsworth fired from the turret and Jones mounted his machine gun up there until the ammunition ran out. Mostly, Dugan tried to sneak them out of city limits without engaging any enemies. They'd made it past the last ruins when planes flew overhead, dropping bombs on the city. Morita said that it was courtesy of the S.S.R.

Steve was relieved but also still fuming. In the limited space of the tank, the bloody side of Bucky's head was pressed against Steve's collarbone. It was cold, a constant reminder. Steve was sure he'd ground his teeth away before they ever got out of this thing.

Dernier was holding pressure to a wound in Fahroni's gut. Every so often the men would trade places tending to the wounds of their mission objective. Jones cleaned up a wound in Dugan's arm while the man kept driving; Dugan refused to come away from the steering column. Steve didn't stir from his place. He just sat there with his arm around Bucky. His friend would convulse every few minutes, saliva and bile sliding out from between his lips. Steve let it happen. He'd thrown up on Bucky more than his fair share in the history of their friendship. It was time to pay it back. So Steve let Bucky sweat on him and made sure his friend didn't aspirate.

Steve had them ditch the tank outside the village they'd started this mission in. Hopefully, the old couple would allow them back for another stay. He sent Jones and Falsworth to do the asking. The rest of them climbed out of the tank and figured out the best way to remove their wounded. It felt good to breathe the cold air after being stuck in the tank for so long. Morita sat on the side of the tank and smoked like his life depended on it. Steve settled down with his back against the tracks, Bucky sat and leaning against him.

Between getting out of the tank and waiting for the others to return, Bucky leaned forward and vomited properly. Steve held him up and patted his back. When he was done, Steve pulled his friend back to his side.

"Feel better?"

Bucky's eyes were glazed like doughnuts. "No."

"Sleep it off, Buck." Steve guided Bucky's sweaty head to his shoulder. His friend offered no resistance, already gone again.

Falsworth and Jones came back not long afterwards.

"Good news," said the Brit.

They disabled the tank.

Their convoy was slow, but the old couple and their little girl met them halfway with a little wagon. Morita and Jones put Fahroni in it and ran with the old man and little girl to the house. The old woman walked with the rest of them, chattering in Italian. Steve didn't mind the noise. It kept him from thinking about the state of his men.

The old woman, with the help of the little girl, changed the arrangement of the parlour. There was a lot more furniture. Fahroni was in a bed in another room being tended to. The old woman flapped a hand between a curled sofa and Bucky. She hurried away once they had complied with her stern gestures.

Steve felt a tiny poke in his leg. When he turned, it was the little girl. She held up a quilt and looked from Bucky back to Steve. He accepted and whispered a thank you. Her face went pink and she disappeared quickly from the room. After throwing the heavy quilt over his friend, Steve pulled a chair over until it was flush against Bucky's and melted into its cushions. Closing his eyes, Steve breathed in deeply.

Everyone was talking lowly. Morita and Jones came back into the room and collapsed onto chairs of their own. The old woman and the girl came around with little cakes and tea. Dugan asked for something stronger, and the woman winked at him. When Steve refused the tea, she came back with water, which he accepted. When they were all distracted with sustenance, the old woman cleaned their wounds. She patched up Dugan's arm properly, with stitches and everything. She pulled out the stitches on Morita's cheek, the ones Bucky had sewn in, and covered what remained with little pieces of cloth bandages.

Any cuts or scrapes anyone had, the old woman cleaned them up and bandaged them if need be. When she came to Bucky, the old woman looked at Steve. He nodded his head and scooted his chair back.

From across the room, Jones said something in soft Italian. The old woman looked back at him, eyebrows raised. To everyone else in the room, Jones said, "His hand."

Steve hadn't paid the bandage on Bucky's hand much mind. He'd been much more concerned with the blood on his head. But the old woman nodded and unwound the bandage. The red had almost bled through. She dropped the soiled bandage into her metal bowl, where the rest of the soiled material went. Steve sucked on his teeth when he saw the meat of Bucky's palm exposed. The old woman had the girl fetch clean water before she started to work on the mess. In no time at all, black threads held Bucky's hand closed. Good as new.

Morita said, once the woman had moved on, "Wanna call base, Cap?"

No, he didn't. But he got up and so did Morita. They took the radio to another room and hailed the S.S.R. on the given frequency. Morita gave their report in a flat sort of voice. He handed the headset over to Steve at the end, saying only, "Agent Carter."

Steve accepted and pulled on the headset. "This is the captain."

"Hello, Steve."

So it was personal.

"Hey, Pegs."

"Are you all right? Ar-are all of you all right?"

"Yeah. We're all still here. Fahroni took a bad hit. Our host is seeing to him now. Doesn't look good."

A pause.

"I'm sorry to hear that. But I am glad that your team is whole."

"Yeah. Me, too."

"Listen, Steve, I was able to intercept some transmissions earlier in the week. I'm damn sure no one else is going to tell you this, so I am."

God, Steve was grateful for Peggy Carter.

"What is it?"

"The message was sent at about the time your team took out the base. It seems they had at least partly been expecting you. After the attack, they sent a message saying 'he's here with the supersoldier' to Germany. Notice the singular, Steve."

"The team . . ."

Peggy cut him off, "No, I don't think the message was referring to the team, Steve. Not the whole team."

All the air went out of Steve. He was like a deflated balloon. He had known this could have happened, didn't he? "They want Bucky."

"That's our current theory. Whatever they were doing in Krausberg, Steve, it wasn't random. And it appears it was important enough for Zola to consider Barnes a high priority. They could have just bombed the city once they knew you were there."

"But they couldn't risk damages." He was so tired. Even with the anger rising in him, Steve was tired.

"How's he doing? Morita said they'd injected him again."

"He's still out. Got sick."

"He'll metabolise it in a few hours. He'll be alright."

"Yeah." Steve sure hoped it was only a few hours. Wished it didn't have to be any hours.

"Steve."

"Yeah, Pegs?"

"You'll be alright. I know you will."

"Thanks. It means a lot."

"I wish there was something I could do to make this easier for you. War's never easy."

"Just get us outta here as soon as you can. The guys need to get out of here." I need to get out of here, maybe you'll make it OK.

"Howard's working on extraction as we speak. I'll see you soon, Steve. Out."

"Out."

Chapter Text

Gabe glanced up at the captain expectantly when he still hadn't said a word after two minutes. He was just staring at the rise and fall of Galtem Fahroni's chest. For his part, the Italian didn't look bothered that Rogers wasn't asking any questions yet. It was a miracle the guy was still alive. Gabe knew the guy wasn't anywhere near out of the woods, but he was stable for now. If they were going to get any information out of this guy, they had to do it now. Before he had a chance to succumb to his injuries.

"Cap?" Jim said. He was on the radio and sitting across from Gabe. "You ready?"

Rogers cleared his throat and nodded. He finally took his eyes off of Fahroni's breath. Gabe knew that Agent Carter was on the other end of the radio and had been coaching the captain through the debriefing process. None of them were supposed to do this kind of job. But now it was necessary that they did; the help Fahroni needed might not arrive in time.

"OK. Let's start." Rogers sat down beside Fahroni and said, "We're with the S.S.R. and we need to know what sort of work you were doing before you were captured."

Gabe translated the question for Fahroni. The inventor allegedly knew English, but Agent Carter said that his vocabulary was better in his mother tongue. Gabe's Italian wasn't great. Both of them spoke good French though. And with the state this guy was in, Gabe just wanted to make it as easy as possible for him to communicate. Fahroni gave a slow answer, punctuated by grimaces and hitched breaths.

Gabe translated: "He was working in a sanatorium at the foot of the mountains. His job was to do research on respiratory diseases, how to increase respiration. He was making some headway in restoring lung capacity to patients with tuberculosis."

Rogers was biting the inside of his cheek. "How long have you been studying this? Why didn't you ever get sick?"

The translated answer: "He's been studying in sanatoriums for three decades. He took precautions with the patients. He worked a lot with the bodies and not the living patients. In 1938, he got sick but was able to restore his lungs with a treatment he tested on himself."

A pause and then Fahroni went on in French, a weak, wry smile on his face. Gabe said, "He says he knows about Albert Schatz's antibiotic and insists that his treatment is better. Less side effects."

The captain's face might as well have been carved from stone, the deliberate lack of emotion. Gabe supposed he'd lost someone to TB. Hell, who hadn't?

"How were you captured?"

"He was in his lab. They raided and captured him. Took him from there to Milan and then to Novara, where he was interned."

"Nazis or HYDRA?"

"HYDRA."

"Did they take anything from the lab?"

"Yes. They took all his research, confiscated all the equipment and papers. They had him do some experiments in Novara. Threatened his life if he refused to comply."

Rogers nodded. It gave Gabe the chance to glace at Jim. His hand was jumping across a notebook on the table beside the radio, recording the conversation for the S.S.R.'s records. A sigh and then Rogers said, "What did they have him do?"

"He was working on an atomiser device. They wanted him to maintain a substance's potency after it had been reduced to a spray. Something like that. He says he didn't know exactly what they wanted it for. The project was broken up between him and few other researchers. They each only got the information that HYDRA decided they needed to complete their part, not the whole picture. It was definitely about making a substance airborne."

Gabe's stomach was eating itself, and Fahroni's eyes had gone glassy and sad. He looked straight into the captain's eyes. Rogers look horrified, too. There was no need to translate the repeated apologies Fahroni was uttering. Rogers nodded his head, put his hand over one of Fahroni's, and gave the man an understanding look. Gabe caught Jim's eye. The radioman looked less sympathetic than Rogers. There was no contempt in his eyes, but there was something unfriendly about the way Jim looked at Fahroni.

"Did you succeed?" Rogers asked. "Who assigned the project?"

Fahroni didn't need any translation to understand the question, nor did he need any help answering it. The shame on his face was answer enough. He never needed to meet the person who assigned the project. It was all controlled by one man.

Rogers looked skyward, brows pinched. Gabe wiped at his forehead and thought about how much he didn't want to face HYDRA and whatever they were trying to poison the air with. And there were still those modified energy weapons they'd found evidence of in Lamia, the ones that would injure instead of disappear. What was an atomised poison on top of that?

Bucky woke up without remembering when he'd fallen asleep or where he'd fallen asleep. Which wasn't uncommon anymore. But it still made him panic instinctually. There was a sound coming from somewhere, a lilting sort of noise. He turned toward it, ignoring how it felt like his body was filled with sludge. Lead blocks held him down. They wanted to hold him down right where he was.

What the hell had they done to him this time? His brain tried to urge him to check for track marks on his arms or incisions on his hollow belly, but there was no response from the rest of his body. Find the marks and try to calculate how much time he'd lost—why didn't he want to get up? A thought buzzed just beyond the reach of his mind; there was somewhere he needed to be.

The sound stopped then. Paused. Started up again. Singing. Someone was signing. He couldn't make out the words. Foreign. He didn't understand, he never understood why and what are you doing to me! He felt his heart trying to pound but his thickening blood didn't want to hurry.

HYDRA. They'd made his body heavy again, his mind slow and stupid. That—…that was German, wasn't it? That language he didn't understand? It had to be German. (It wasn't just the sludge clogging up his thoughts?)

Somehow his body found his arms and legs and convinced them to move. They did! All of him moved onto his side. At last! The stupid doctor hadn't given the order to tie him down! Or he'd miscalculated the dose, didn't give enough to knock Bucky out for long. Impossible. Incredible. This was his shot. He had to go now. The floor swayed as soon as he thought he was upright. His first footstep was unsteady. He thought he grunted. A few more steps, careful of the rocking of the ground. But he wasn't careful enough: His boot caught on something he hadn't seen on the ground.

That foreign voice again. It sounded different. It must have noticed that he'd gotten up. It was growing ever so slightly louder. Closer.

Then: "What the hell?"

Bucky's heart tried to pound again. He had to hurry. It was so dark and everything he saw was watery; he caromed into a wall when the room slid to the left.

"I got 'em."

That language he didn't understand was right behind him. But then it stopped. Bucky threw himself forward, away from the wall and into a different one. His hands scrambled on the next wall he collided with, searching for a handle, a door knob. That's it! He twisted with as much coordination that he could muster. A waft of cold air was his reward.

A hand closed on his shoulder at the same instant he finally tasted freedom. It pulled him back in a direction that hadn't existed until now. His boots tangled together and tripped him. Another arm caught him.

"Ssshh, Jimmy. It's just me. Where the hell d'you think you're goin'? It's the ass crack of dawn."

His body wouldn't listen when he told it to struggle. Maybe he knew that voice. It wasn't German, after all.

"Hey, hey. Look at me."

He saw nothing distinct even though he felt the hand on his jaw. A person-shaped something had him trapped. But it was speaking English. That was good. The others never spoke English to him. Never spoke to him at all really. 

Except for the little one.

"Nope. Looks like you're still not home yet. C'mon, Sarge, back to bed. Get the rest of it outta your system."

Pressure was gone from his chest. One arm was pulled over the shoulder of the person-shaped something and it waited until his boots untangled. He took his own weight again and let himself to be led back the way he came.

But then it happened again: He woke up without knowing when or where he fell asleep. There were voices all around him, but his eyes didn't want to focus enough to show him who it was or how many there were. The familiar dread started spreading in his stomach, heart pounding through mud.

There was so much talking around him. Were they fighting? No, not fighting. An argument. Discussion. They were deciding something. They'd never disagreed with the doctor before. Did this mean…

He tried to pick up his head first. His neck strained, but then his head finally lifted. Something spiked behind his eyes. "Ow."

"Well, he's awake now. As good a time as any."

Someone was approaching, he could feel it. Something pinched at his hand and he knew what happened after they did that. His senses were flooded with white light and a single whining sound. When it faded, he thought he might have been moved. Rearranged? The panic intensified because of the lost seconds. Someone was in front of him speaking words he didn't understand in a low voice. They were bringing something in close to his face. Bucky threw a clumsy hand out in defence. (They hadn't tied his arms down again?) The hand retreated – no retaliatory blow – but then it was coming back all the same.

"The fuck away from me," he said, turning his face away from the hand and whatever it held. Because they'd done this before: He'd struggled and bit at them, but eventually someone held his jaw open and another forced things down his throat.

More words he didn't understand. Bucky really wished his vision would sharpen to something beyond drab-coloured blobs. They kept trying to force something at his mouth, but he fought it. Cursed them. Not again. He wasn't going to fall for this trick again. He'd lived this one too many times.

"Rather be dead," he cut out around attempts of the hand to reach his mouth or immobilise his head. "Rather be fucking dead than take anything from you fucking HYDRA scum!"

The blow finally came: A smack to the side of his head. There wasn't a lot of force behind it, but his head still throbbed sharply for a long time.

Bucky heard a lot of noise from somewhere close by. Boots, he thought, meant more people in the room. He knew what came next. The extra set of hands. He wouldn't be able to fight them off all at once. It meant the restraints and forcing his jaw open. His lungs suddenly couldn't keep up with the demand for breath.

"What's going on?"

He slapped at another attempt from the hand. Couldn't follow the words because he was too busy trying to see the hand and figure out what it was trying to force into him. The restraints came then. Steady pressure at the back of his neck and front of his chest. He strained against them, but they didn't give a single centimetre. These were no mere leather straps.  

"No," he said before the pressure at his neck tightened. The hand came back at his face. His heart smacked against his sternum. Whatever warm and soggy thing they put in his mouth sat heavily on his tongue. He forced himself still until the force around his neck was gone. Then he jerked against the chest restraint and spat the thing out of his mouth as forcefully as he could.

Someone laughed.

"Can't say I didn't see that coming!"

The second thing was in his mouth so fast he didn't even have time to struggle against it. A hand closed over his mouth and nose. The panic surged, and there was nothing he could do. Completely and utterly useless against any of it.

"Stop. Stop! Look at him. Christ."

He had already swallowed it by the time the hand allowed him to breathe. The restraints were gone, so he fell away from them. Bucky slapped at a new hand that reached toward him. Told them his name, rank, and serial number until they went away.

Barnes coughed himself awake while Frenchie was singing "Frère Jacques."

"Hey now," Dugan said lightly, slapping him on the back. "That's not how we breathe."

Barnes twisted toward him with clear, albeit watering, eyes. Pupils the normal size again finally. He calmed down in a few seconds but not before the old Italian woman was alerted. She bustled in with the little girl hiding in her skirts. She sat in the chair that Rogers had practically put in Barnes's lap, and immediately took his left hand into hers. Dugan watched the sergeant fight the impulse to yank his hand away.

It was a lot to throw at him seconds after he woke up.

"Migliore," she said after she unwound the bandage.

Dugan watched in morbid fascination as she poked at the stitches and pinched them. She was looking for infection; Dugan recognised it from their horribly rushed first aid training. Thank God clear fluid tinged pink was the only thing that leaked out. Barnes pulled his hand away when his tolerance wore thin. He'd let it go on longer than Dugan had expected.

"Thanks," Barnes said.

Dugan watched him twitch his fingers and make a loose fist, testing the range of motion. It was a wonder there hadn't been nerve damage. Weren't there important tendons or something in the meat of a guy's palm? Dugan didn't know, but he'd take a win when he got one.

The woman nodded her head and turned to the girl. A few soft words had the little one skittering in the direction of the kitchen (a place Dugan had been quick to learn the location of).

"You good?" Dugan said.

Barnes frowned but didn't say no. Shrugged. "Thirsty."

The little girl came back with a tray. She paused and offered Dugan a cup of tea. He accepted it and winked at her. She was a nice kid. She did the same thing for Frenchie. He gave her a weird look which she giggled at. Must have been a European thing. Dugan sipped from the cup in the same way Frenchie did. Then the Frenchmen went on singing, this time they were songs Dugan couldn't name. He thought about bursting out in round of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," but he thought better of it. Frenchie had a good voice. Dugan's wasn't anything to sneeze at, but still. There was a time and place for his kind of song.

Dugan's attention flipped back to Barnes when he made a distressed sound. The old woman was digging through his hair trying to find where the skin had split. Dugan assumed she was going to do another little pinch test. Looked like it hurt, if the teacup shaking in Barnes's hand was anything to go by. The guy still looked a mess, all that blood down the side of his head that they hadn't had a chance to truly wash away, and the bruises on his neck. The rest of the guys had found time to scrub the worst of Novara off by now. Even with one arm still aching and sore, Dugan had had a chance to clean himself up.

Sarge had been useless for going on two days now. He'd woken up that first morning after they'd fled Novara and tried to make a break for it. Dugan had been able to catch him and put him back to bed before he took a header into anything hard and sharp. But they really should have just let him be later that evening. Their sweet old host had slapped him something good when he called her HYDRA scum.

The commotion had naturally drawn Rogers into it, which honestly just made the whole thing worse. Dugan wasn't the best of the team at first aid, but even he knew that Barnes wasn't in any major danger just because he hadn't eaten or drank anything for a day. Sure, he'd be hungry and thirsty and whatever when he came around. But they weren't risking life or death if they waited for him to come down off the injection before he ate something. One piece of milk-soaked bread wasn't worth the hysteria they'd caused. Wasn't worth the feeling they all got in their guts having to listen to Barnes's mutter his own name, rank, and serial for hours. Or having to see the look on the captain's face while it happened.

It looked safe to say that Barnes was completely sobered up now. Had the ol' washed up look to him; the thousand-mile stare was looking extra-long now. He apologised profusely to the Italian woman. She swatted at him and smiled like all battle-hardened women do. Dugan had seen his own mother with that steely look on her face more than once. He made sure to thank the woman when she checked his arm.

"Where's Steve?" Barnes asked once the old woman had left and it was just them, Frenchie, and Monty, who was sleeping like he was in a coffin.

"He's on the radio with Agent Carter, Jim, and Gabe. Their going over Fahroni's debrief."

The sergeant's brow creased and Dugan knew Barnes was trying to remember what had happened, how and when things had moved on without him.

Dugan put Sarge out of his misery by saying, "He caught a shot in the guts. It's not lookin' so good for him. They already interrogated him in case he doesn't live long enough for the brass at the S.S.R. to do it."

Barnes nodded his head. "I should have been there."

"How? Jimmy, you were drugged out of your mind." Again.

"Should have known they were there. Shouldn't have been stupid and let them get the jump on me. Should have fought harder."

"You're an idiot."

How did kids like this last so long out here? Stupid kid was feeling guilty and ashamed of something he had no control over. There was nothing to feel bad about — it's not like the drugs had overcome Barnes because he was weak or lacked will. Dugan got up and grabbed Barnes's Johnson out of the neat line of weapons Monty had arranged that first night. He tossed it into Barnes's lap and then took his seat again.

Without further prompt, Barnes began to strip the rifle and inspect all the components just like Dugan knew he would. Dugan and Frenchie split a deck of dirty playing cards and took turns tossing the cards towards Gabe's upturned helmet in the centre of the room. The only noises in the room were each of their breaths and cards banking off the helmet. They were bandaged and tired and hungry, but it was OK.

They were in the flattest stretch of land they could find given the circumstances. Not great visibility because of the flurry of snow coming down. The thickest clothes among them had been donated to Fahroni, to keep the dying man as protected from the elements as they could manage. He was lying on a door that had been taken from the Italian couple's home, currently carried by Dernier on the front end and Falsworth on the back.

Jones had the Browning set up a bit further back to cover them. Morita was a little nearer, about 90 degrees off from Jones's location. Bucky and Dugan were closest to the landing zone, lying prone and huddled together for warmth since Fahroni wore both their jackets. They'd be the first two to Howard Stark's extraction vehicle. They'd have the shortest run in the open, where they'd help turn the vehicle around and then provide covering fire for Dernier and Falsworth to bring Fahroni in.

Steve was crouched between Bucky's location and Morita's. He'd stay back on defence until the last man was boarded.

The location was pretty quiet. They hadn't been able to run an incredibly thorough survey of enemies in the area, but Peggy had assured Steve via radio that the area looked clean from the aerial reconnaissance S.S.R. had gathered. Steve really hoped that that was accurate. The last thing they needed was artillery that the seven of them had no hope of fending off.

The whine of aircraft engines started to build in Steve's ears. He looked toward the sound but didn't see much beyond the cloud cover. But the sound grew louder so that the others could hear it, too. Steve watched their heads scan overhead briefly. They'd never flown in one of Howard's personal vehicles. They were probably expecting something like the C-47 they'd dropped into Lamia in.

The reflective coating on the thing did work wonders when you were flying in near-whiteout conditions, Steve thought when the belly of the plane and the engines sunk below the clouds. It looked like the same model that had dropped him over Krausberg.

Bucky was the first of the others to see it. He jumped up and held his rifle horizontally overhead, the signal they'd agreed to use to guide Howard in. Dugan was on a knee next to him scanning their surroundings. Steve felt the tension drawing in his legs, preparing for whatever was going to happen here. Maybe just this short amount of time at war was already wearing on his nerves.

Howard's plane bounced down on the dead grass and patches of packed snow and rolled by Bucky and Dugan. They jogged after it as it slowed and guided it in a sharp 180-degree turn that it would not have been able to execute on its own so that it faced the way that it had come. Dugan pulled open the door just behind the wing. Seamlessly, Dernier and Falsworth were trucking forward with the door bearing Fahroni between them. They were in and clear right on time, the door abandoned in the gathering snow.

Then Morita was dashing to the plane. Then Jones. Steve stood to meet Jones halfway and literally cover his back. It was an easy jog into the plane. They took no fire the whole way. Even when Steve got through the door and sealed it closed behind him, not a single shot was used. The engine sound picked up and the ground moved beneath them.

The whole thing didn't last more than three minutes.

Fahroni was laid out across one row of seats. Jones and Dernier were crouched over him. The rest of Steve's men had seated themselves along the aisle opposite Fahroni. Steve put down his shield, relieved, and sank into the seat that sat with its back to the cockpit. He drank half his canteen just to do something with his hands, to hide the shaking from unused adrenaline. He kept his eyes from settling too long on any one of his men, not wanting to see them coming down off the same thing.

Jones approached him after a few minutes of no one moving and speaking in more than a murmur. "Captain."

"What's up?"

Jones shrugged back toward Fahroni. "He passed out. Nothing much is bringin' him around. Bandages are still clean. Dunno if something is bleeding inside though."

Steve nodded. "Just leave him for now. There's nothing we can do here anyway. He'll have to hold out until we get back to base."

Jones nodded. "Yes, sir." He turned to head back.

"Hey," Steve said. "Thanks, Gabe, for looking after him. And all the translating. I appreciate it."

There was a slight bow of Jones's head. "You're welcome, sir." And then he was shuffling through everyone's knees to get to an open seat.

Howard Stark leaned around the partition between the pilot's seat and the one Steve was occupying. "Got a word for ya, Cap."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Agent Carter wanted me to tell you to keep a close eye on your team when we reach base."

Steve's brow creased. "That's all?"

Howard shrugged. "You know how women are. Seemed like she thought one of your chicks might wander off on its own and get snatched up by mean old Farmer Phillips. Who knows? That poor chick might get sent off to its own private little coop, never to be seen again."

"Thanks," Steve said flatly. "I got it."

When they finally landed at RAF Great Dunmow again, Steve leaned in toward Dugan under the pretense of helping him with their meager gear. Steve said lowly, "Phillips wants to investigate what happened to Bucky. Put him up somewhere where they can do God-knows-what to find out why HYDRA wants him back."

Dugan didn't look surprised at all but a furrow grew between his eyebrows. "They're gonna pull him from the squad?"

Steve shook his head. "Not if I have anything to say about it. While I hold off the brass, would you mind-?"

"We'll wear him like underpants, Cap. Don't worry about that." Dugan looked annoyed and shook his head. "On our goddamn base..."

"Thanks."

The workshop was a damn mess. Why couldn't Howard ever find anything in here? It was his mess; you'd think he'd be able to navigate his own messes. But, no. He flubbed around looking for files and references. The centrifuge was humming and buzzing like it was ready to teleport itself into another dimension. Where was Rogers's damn file? He needed something to compare to.

"You know, when they agreed that I'd be evaluated by a doctor, I didn't expect them to send me to you."

Howard whirled around and stared at Barnes. His sleeves were folded up to the elbow and he was picking at the spot where Rogers had allowed Phillips to draw a single sample of his blood.

Barnes continued, "I thought they were going to send me to a hospital or something."

That was the original plan, Howard thought but stopped himself from saying.

"That can be arranged," Howard said just to see the smirk slide off the sergeant's face. "And for the record, I do have a PhD. Which makes me a doctor. So you can shove that one where the sun don't shine, pal."

Barnes rolled his eyes, and Howard went back to searching through his files. He'd been sent to retrieve the Commandos from the field three days ago. The trip had taken a while, but he'd finally been able to touch down and fly the guys out of there. They were back at Great Dunmow now. Fahroni had made the flight and was still alive, but he hadn't regained consciousness since. Howard knew Agent Carter was supposed to be one of Fahroni's constant companions until the man succumbed; he might say something and they couldn't risk missing it.

All the Commandos had been sent to the aid station when they'd first touched down. After a round of penicillin, just to be safe, they were all fine, even Dugan and his ground beef arm. While that was happening, there was the showdown between Rogers and Phillips. Phillips took HYDRA's specific interest in Barnes very seriously and thought the S.S.R. ought to be figuring out what was so damn interesting about him. From what Peggy had told Howard, S.S.R. already had a bed indefinitely available for Barnes. Rogers took that as the S.S.R. threatening to continue the human experimentation on Barnes that HYDRA had started. (As if Rogers himself weren't a result of human experimentation.)

Howard wished that he had been there to see that first confrontation. He was surprised there hadn't been any court marshalling yet. So far, it looked like Rogers was winning. Probably throwing around the word torture so plainly and frequently was helping him out. Phillips seemed to have backed off on tossing Barnes into a hospital and dissecting him alive. Now they were fighting about whether he should be allowed back in the field or confined to base.

In the meantime, they sent Barnes to Howard for blood testing to find out what he'd been injected with at Novara. S.S.R. privates were outside the door "for Barnes's protection." God knows why they chose Howard for this; he was a mechanical engineer, not that kind of doctor, despite what he'd just told Barnes. Howard suspected Rogers had something to do with him being chosen as Barnes's babysitter. During the extraction, Howard noticed how the captain kept one eye on Barnes the whole time. Maybe Rogers meant it as an honour for Howard to guard his best pal? Maybe it was a good thing. Barnes insisted he was fine to everyone, but, when asked, Rogers admitted to noticing evidence of headaches and reduced coordination.

All the other Commandos played dumb and reported nothing, bless them.

Headaches were probably nothing to worry about — a lingering symptom of the bump on Barnes's head that would, in all likelihood, resolve on its own. All the same, he'd been injected with something and it was important that the S.S.R. find out what it was. Zola had sent men all the way out to Italy for this guy. Howard agreed that it was important to know why, not that he was going to say that to Rogers. The syrette that Jones collected had been turned over to Howard and his team for testing; some of the fluid remained in the tube. They'd been trying to figure out what the hell it was ever since they touched down outside London.

"Have you felt like that before? Anything they gave you in the past have the same effects?" Howard asked.

"I don't know."

Howard sighed for dramatic effect. "Do better than that."

"It's hard to remember."

Pausing in his whirlwind around the lab, Howard looked at Barnes with an arched brow.

Barnes tried again. "I felt a lot of things before. I can't really say whether I experienced that exact feeling. After the injections there was usually…something else. He wasn't exactly testing things one at a time, you know."

He should have been. What kind of scientist conducts a test with that many uncontrolled variables? Idiot.

"It lasted a long time," Howard pointed out. You'd think a guy would remember if he tripped for two whole days before. "I never met someone who was feeling the effects of a syrette-sized dose of anything for two days. It lasts six hours, tops."

Barnes frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"If you'd been given that drug before, I would think the effects wouldn't last as long. Tolerance and all that."

"Maybe it was a more concentrated dose than I had before. A bigger dose."

Howard inclined his head. "Fair point. But still not an answer. If it was more concentrated, you're lucky it wasn't a fatal overdose, pal."

It was a matter of waiting. Howard went back to collecting his things and tinkering at his bench. It worked.

Barnes: "I don't think I'd ever been given that drug before."

Instead of asking "how do you know", Howard just sat and waited for Barnes to supply the answer himself.

"It didn't cause any . . . I felt fine. Just confused when I woke up. At Krausberg . . . that wasn't how things went at...there."

The centrifuge dinged cheerfully and stopped humming. Howard nearly skipped over and pulled the tubes out and looked at the separated substances. He compared it to notes and images in the Project: Rebirth file.

"What's the word?" Barnes said. Howard ignored the note of apprehension in his voice — for the sake of Barnes's dignity. "Was it poison or what?"

"You seem to be fine to me," he said mostly just to make noise. "I think we can go ahead and agree that there was, at the very least, a strong sedative in there."

"Wow. You must be a genius or somethin'."

Howard could get used to this kid if he didn't get smart every five minutes. (Hello, pot? It's the kettle.) He turned his torso toward Barnes and said, "But there's definitely something in your blood. Look." He held up one of the tubes even though he knew Barnes didn't know what it meant. "It was a big dose, right? We should test your kidneys. Maybe your liver, too. See if it left any scars behind."

Impressive: Barnes's face didn't flinch at all. "I'm fine though."

"Not according to this. Something's fishy with you, Sergeant."

"No one made a fuss after I got back from Krausberg, and you guys did all the same tests then. You did more then."

That was true. But Howard hadn't had anything to do with the testing of Barnes back then. If the guy had dirty blood, Howard wouldn't be surprised if the docs in London had overlooked it and cleared him. They were too busy trying and failing to reverse-engineer Erskine's serum with Rogers's blood. There was no time for Barnes's. No one had time to deny a guy who insisted he was fine and who Captain America wanted in the field. If the captain wanted him, he could have him.

Howard knew these military types. They all looked the other way, said they were just doing their jobs; pleaded ignorance. Funny how people would rather be seen as incompetent than liars. Call him crazy, but Howard would rather be called a liar. Maybe he was just proud though.

What a world they lived in.

"Different time, my friend. HYDRA wants you bad, and we'd like to know why. They went through a lot of trouble just to poke you. The least we can do is find out what they poked you with."

Barnes made a face that Howard had long since stopped trying to decipher. He had a hard time connecting people's faces to their reactions sometimes. Who had the time? Who cared?

So they spent all day in Howard's workshop. And the next day. And the one after that. They spent Barnes's fuckin' birthday in the workshop (really annoying: the rest of the Howlers snuck in with him and kept touching everything). Never mind that the day had been really productive, since Howard abandoned all pretense of investigating Barnes's blood and instead they all went over improvements for the gear. You know, the stuff Howard actually wanted to be working on.

But then the S.S.R. came down hard on him for not making any progress. Phillips was just mad that Rogers still wasn't backing down. Howard thought it was a bad precedent to set with Rogers; don't let him know that he can flip the bird to the military hierarchy and get away with it.

So on it went: Howard and Barnes spent the Ides of March in the workshop. Howard was becoming downright sick of his own laboratory. There were so many things he could be working on that were more interesting than Barnes's blood and that stupid syrette. But Phillips wanted him working on Barnes, and Howard was the type to fulfill his contractual obligations to the military. And he had signed a contract with an unfortunately open clause saying that he would obey whatever unit's commander to which he was assigned.

(Never mind the bit about taking Peggy and Rogers out to Krausberg. It wasn't like Phillips had said he couldn't fly them out there.)

Howard made a complaint to Phillips a day later anyway.

Howard was coming to dread the hour Barnes rolled in after his morning PT. Honestly, why did the guy even have to be here? It's not like he knew how to use the equipment, not like he needed to be present while they sat and waited for reactions to occur. He wasn't helping at all. Howard's mood wasn't improved when all of the tests kept coming back inconclusive.  There was definitely signs of something being off in his blood, but there was no test that Howard knew or could create that would tell him how Barnes's blood was different. His results were always just the slightest bit outside of normal for every test Howard could think to run.

And without being allow to draw more samples to see if the first one was somehow contaminated, Howard signed the papers as inconclusive and passed the syrette and Barnes's blood off to the next guy to confirm Howard's findings (or lack thereof).

Just right now all the others were talking about the biological weapon they were sure Fahroni had been coerced into making for HYDRA. Why couldn't Howard be in on that? Surely he was the one who could make the most sense of the schematics. He was the one who had the best chance at recreating the invention. Besides, it was pretty obvious (to Howard) that the aerosol weapon and the funky stuff in Barnes's blood were coming from the same source.

Phillips just shouted him down and told him to keep working on the drug and the blood until he got something besides 'inconclusive.'

"You'll be happy to know," Howard said at the end of the week, "that your kidneys are performing as expected."

"And my liver?"

"As good as can be expected."

"Cheers," Barnes said with a laugh, raising his canteen. From across the shop, Howard could smell the alcohol. He raised his own glass of amber liquid.

They both returned to their individual thoughts. Howard let the centrifuge spin so that he could use the time to work on one of his own projects: the upgraded range for the two-way radios. An hour passed and, out of frustration, Howard said aloud, "How do I make the antenna stronger with only a nominal size increase?"

"Hmm," Barnes said. He was cleaning the sniper rifle. Howard pretended not to notice, pretended not to be relieved that someone was taking care of a product of his design.

About twenty minutes passed with the two of them tinkering in silence, only the whirring of the centrifuge to be heard. Howard was still stuck on the radio when Barnes said, "You ever get that flying car to work?"

Howard's head jumped up. "What?"

"That flying car. At the Expo or whatever. Your flying car from the future. I was there." Barnes smirked. "It broke."

"Yeah, well, I haven't had a lot of time to work on it," Howard said defensively. "I've been a bit busy, what with this silly war and making Rogers huge."

"Thanks for that, by the way." And there wasn't an ounce of sincerity in that voice. Sheesh, it was all venom.

"Wasn't my idea, pal," Howard said. "He volunteered."

Barnes clenched his jaw and stared at the Johnson. He wiped the lens of the scope with a cloth. "Who's going around offering that sort of thing anyway? Testing that sort of shit on people is . . . unethical."

Howard might have agreed with that. "But I don't think it matters when a person agrees to it. Informed consent and all that. He knew the risks."

"A person who agrees to be a science experiment should be the only type of person considered unfit to give consent."

"Rogers wasn't the only guy we could find who wanted to be an experiment, you know."

Barnes looked up and stared at Howard. Howard got literal, actual chills. Guy was cold as ice.

"No, but he was the only one you actually did anything to." They stared at each other until Barnes went back to cleaning his scope. "I guess I should be grateful that he didn't end up a bust, like your flying car did."

"There's nothing wrong that with design! You wait, when this war is done, I'll give you a flying fucking car. No more than three years after the war ends, I'll give you a working model, free of charge. All you gotta do is shut up about the Expo."

Jesus, this guy was so smug. Somebody ought to trip him in front of a bunch of pretty dames.

"That a real deal?"

"You bet it's real, pal." To prove it, Howard hopped up and stuck his hand out in front of Barnes's face.

"A flying car three years after the war ends?"

"Yes. As long as you shut up about it exploding."

"Deal. Just because there aren't any witnesses here doesn't mean this isn't official." The sergeant shook Howard's hand.

Howard rolled his eyes and retook his seat at a workbench. "I can call my notary if you're that worried about it."

"No, it's fine. I'll come see you myself if the deal goes unfulfilled."

An hour later, as Howard was finishing up testing on one of the handheld radios, Barnes said, "What if you could wrap the antenna around the housing of the radio?"

Howard almost missed Barnes's company when word came down that the sergeant no longer had to report to the workshop for testing. Apparently, Rogers, with an assist from Falsworth, had thrown an epic fit that got Barnes back to doing all training and field exercises with the rest of the squad. Phillips had backed down from tossing Barnes in an institution. Now he was going to lose the fight to pull Barnes from the field.

Howard suspected Peggy had something to do with the success of the men's tantrum. The S.S.R.'s sights were set on a HYDRA base set deep inland and well within German-held lands, and they were going to need a lot of help, probably from the locals and, worst-case scenario, the Soviets. Well-fortified base and gathering intel on the suspected biological agent. Yeah, OK. That was important. The study of Barnes's blood wasn't going anywhere. They'd passed everything along to the specialists. Howard was free to return to his other projects.

Sometimes he'd turn the centrifuge on just to listen to it spin.

"They're not still serious about pulling you, are they, Sarge?" Jim asked.

All five of them looked toward Barnes. Shit if he didn't look like he'd been dropped into an ambush.

"Don't know," he said. "I'm not staying behind, that's for damn sure. They approved my transfer after everything in Krausberg. I don't see how anything has changed since then."

Jim knew that wasn't true, but he voiced his agreement with the others. The S.S.R. had agreed to put Barnes on their commando unit. They'd trained him without giving a second thought to what might have gone on in that lab. Yeah, it was different now that they knew HYDRA and Zola wanted him back for something. One school of thought said that it was stupid to send Barnes out into the field. That would basically be like sending HYDRA a gift basket. All they'd have to do is come outside and pick it up.

The other school of thought — the right school of thought – stated that there was no way in goddamn hell HYDRA was going to breathe the same air as Barnes as long as the rest of them were around. Right this minute, Cap was arguing that very point. The brass wanted to pull Barnes from the unit, replace him with some guy none of them had heard of (that none of them trusted). Phillips went on and on saying that it would only be a temporary suspension, but Cap was having none of it. They all knew that even though the brass had agreed to not using Barnes as a pin cushion, if they left him behind on just one mission, there was no guarantee the brass wouldn't go back on their word as soon as the rest of them were looking the other way.

The fight had been waging for as long as they'd been sending Barnes to waste his time in Stark's lab.

Jim knew — as did everyone within a five-mile radius of RAF Great Dunmow — that Cap had flat out refused to go on any more missions if Sergeant Barnes wasn't on the team. Naturally, the rest of them had made formal statements to the colonel expressing the same sentiment. It was all of them or none of them. Let them be court-martialled; they didn't care one iota. Hell, even Agent Carter had expressed her support of keeping Barnes with the team. She very bluntly pointed out the motivations of Cap's first mission to Krausberg and asked Phillips if, after that, he really expected Cap to let HYDRA get their hands on Barnes again — and even if they managed to do that, did the colonel expect HYDRA to be able to keep Barnes for long? They'd have to kill Cap first (and Jim and Dum Dum and Monty and Frenchie and Gabe).

And if that ever happened, Jim thought, they'd be fucked anyway.

She may have also gone on for a bit about how they could use Barnes as bait to lure HYDRA into vulnerable situations. But after seeing the look on Cap's face, no one talked about that idea anymore.

"There's no way," Gabe said. There was a sizeable pile of peanut shells in front of him; someone had sent Captain America a care package full of food, which the rest of them had, naturally, stolen. Jim could handle the slight envy he felt every time he saw the sack of letters waiting for Captain America to read as long as he could take some of the stuff those kids and gals sent. In one box they found a set of brass knuckles. The guys had a good laugh about it, and Dum Dum ended up being the one that got to keep 'em (won after a first-to-500 game of Rummy).

"Yeah," Dum Dum agreed. "They're not gonna do anything now that the captain's refusing to do anything. They don't even have a good reason to keep you here, Sarge."

Monty said, "So they want you back. Haven't we known this since the day we left that factory? Not a damn thing's changed."

Jim knew that everyone was just trying to reassure themselves. All of them were sure Barnes would be back with them by the end of the day, but it brought them some measure of calm to be saying these things out loud together.

"Right," Barnes said and drank from his canteen. He had a pile of peanut shells before him, too.

Jim watched the sergeant rub at the cut on this throat. The thing had bled a lot in the belfry, Jim remembered. But it hardly looked like more than scratch after the old woman had cleaned it up back in Italy. By now it was nothing more than a pink line you only saw when the light was just right. And his hand! That thing had looked ready to fall off back in Italy. It was possible that Jim wasn't remembering correctly and that the thing simply looked worse than it was. Maybe all the blood made the cut look like it had just about hit the bones of Barnes's hand. Only eleven days later and the thing was almost gone. They'd filled Sarge and Dum Dum with penicillin when they got back to base, and hardly any time passed before they were pulling out Barnes's stitches. Dum Dum's had taken a lot longer to be removed. Sometimes Barnes would clench and stretch his hand, staring at it suspiciously. It retained full range of motion, and Barnes hadn't said anything about nerve damage or loss of dexterity.

Frenchie cut a deck of cards and wordlessly started dealing them out to each of the men. Jim accepted the stack accumulating in front of him. They played Rummy and Machiavelli, the latter which they'd learned first in Sicily and then again from the old couple outside Novara. It went on for a few hours; Monty kept score and they tossed peanuts and M&M's among themselves. The game was coming down to a dead heat between Gabe and Dum Dum, the rest of them just playing for fun or ganging up on one of the leaders to bring him down. Their alliance was paid for in snacks.

Cap finally turned up, throwing open the door to Barracks 14 with an air that could be interpreted as either triumph or rage. They all went still and stared at him, grins inching off of their faces like syrup sliding down a wall.

The captain smiled and they all released a breath.

"I'm good to go?" Barnes said.

"Yeah, Buck, you're good," said Cap.

"I knew it," Dum Dum said. Jim watched Gabe peek at Dum Dum's cards while the other was distracted. Never let it be said that Gabe Jones didn't play dirty.

Barnes sat back and shook a handful of M&M's like they were dice. "Well, shit, come grab a seat, Steve. Play for me." He thrust his hand of cards at Cap and scooted over to make room.

The captain obliged but said, "They're still making up their minds about what's going to be different."

"What do you mean?" Frenchie said. He was frowning at his cards but otherwise listening.

"They don't just want to toss us back in the field like nothing happened. Stark's confident that the atomizer and human experimentation are connected." Cap frowned at Barnes's cards and said, "No wonder you're in last place. Are you losing on purpose?"

Barnes hummed and closed his eyes. "Now you're here, so get me some points."

"What sort of things do you think they're going to change?" That was Dum Dum.

"Not sure," said Cap. "But something is going to be done. I think they just want to feel like they didn't get anything out of our negotiations. They want to know more about the weapon. Get a sample of whatever HYRDA's trying to make airborne."

"That's what the next mission is for, isn't it?" said Jim.

Cap nodded and moved some cards around. "Yeah. It's the one in Prague. We're a little bit stuck on those two near the Baltic, seeing how they're both in Germany. And the one near the Maginot Line — they say we might get to that one in June."

"Well, it's not like you had any trouble just walking into Austria," Dum Dum said.

"I didn't have you guys slowing me down."

"Say that again and see how clumsy we get in the field," Jim said. He tossed the four of spades down on the pile. Cap picked up the entire discard pile and got busy.

The night wore on and the mood in the barracks was much lighter than it had been before. Barnes made a remarkable comeback on the scorecard thanks to Cap taking over for him. They should have known better — a guy who grew up sick and bedridden could wipe the floor with them in any non-physical game. Didn't take long for Monty to get crabby and insist that Barnes and Cap couldn't play on a team anymore. The two of them had almost all of the M&M's and peanuts; it wasn't fair. Was weird how Barnes broke up the M&M's by colour before handing them off to Cap, keeping the peanuts for himself.

It struck Jim how much the two of them reminded him of himself and his brother when they were kids. Will had been a pistol, always causing trouble. More than once Jim had to go to the local police and talk his brother out of punishment. This wasn't always easy to do. Will was the youngest of them around; he was everyone's little brother, an irritation they dealt with because he was theirs.

Will used to steal fruit from the neighbour's trees, vandalise bikes from the assholes in town. He'd never keep the bikes, just ruin the spokes or manipulate the chain so that it would fall off when the next kid tried to ride it. Jim never told his brother to stop being a hooligan — God knew that some of those people deserved to have the mickey taken out of 'em. Maybe Jim just liked feeling like he had a job to do and was worth something to someone. He was his brother's keeper. Will needed Jim to watch his back and pull him out of tight corners. Jim was glad to do it. And maybe a few times Jim had been the instigator of these pranks that left the two of them running for their lives, shit-eating grins spread all the way across their cheeks.

He remembered when he introduced Will to Chiyo, and the two of them had hit it off right away. When their parents were at the hatchery working sixteen-hour days, Jim had Chiyo over for dinner with Will. They'd ended up with rice all over the kitchen; an actual food fight had broken out, albeit a mild one. Jim's parents had shouted at him about being wasteful and ungrateful. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still hear Will laughing and his parents pausing in their lecture to crack up, too.

When was the last time he saw his parents? Will and Chiyo? Jim had enlisted with the Rangers before Pearl Harbour and had been away at training when the attack broke the airwaves. Both his parents and his brother had been sexing chicks at the hatchery, last Jim had heard. And now? They were probably in a camp somewhere. No one ever wrote, and if they did, they didn't tell the truth.

Looking at Barnes and Cap sitting shoulder to shoulder, laughing into each other's ears and sharing candy, Jim couldn't help but think about those he had left behind and what he had left them to. He could feel how much he missed his brother like there was an actual hole in his chest. When he thought about what it would have been like to have Will here with him, Jim floundered. Would he want his brother here in this kind of constant danger? It would bring Jim immeasurable joy to be able to see his brother constantly, to not feel so alone and alienated among so many strangers. It would do wonders to help him not feel like an other.

But a different part of him thought that it probably wouldn't be like that. Every time he looked at his brother before a mission, Jim would be thinking, this could be the last time.

Jim couldn't live with that kind of suspense, the constant threat of losing something that important to him — to lose it and watch it happen right before his eyes. How did Cap and Barnes stand it?

Jim wanted so badly to see his parents' faces, touch their hands and their wrinkling cheeks. He didn't want them behind a fence — he wanted them inside Jim's own house. He wanted to take care of them the way they always took care of him. He wanted to marry Chiyo and give his parents grandchildren. Jim wanted so badly to be someone his parents and his brother and his girl could be proud of.

Was there pride to be had for abandoning your family to imprisonment? Was it not the deepest form of dishonour to fight for the liberties of a country which stripped his family of their freedom?

Better not to think about those kinds of things. Better to stay sane in case he survived this war.

Jim could tell himself that he'd never believed they were going to pull Barnes from the team until he was blue in the face; he still felt a sense of relief that they now had confirmation of it. His new team would not be split apart. 

A new round of Rummy was being dealt — both Cap and Barnes playing for themselves instead of sharing — when there was a knock at the door, and Agent Carter entered.

"Hello, boys," she said while shucking off her coat.

Since Frenchie and Monty's birthday party, none of them felt quite like they were talking to a superior officer when Carter turned up. Make no mistake, they still acted with the proper respect befitting an agent of her rank. But things were different. Agent Carter was on their side in a way no member of the brass had ever been before.

"How're you, Agent?" Gabe said.

"Want in?" Frenchie asked. The deck snick-ed between his hands as he shuffled. Show-off.

"That's quite alright," she said.

Frenchie dealt the first hand of their new round, and Carter sat on one of the bunks so she could get a good view.

"What'd the colonel say?" Cap said. "You guys get something figured out?"

"As a matter of fact, we have. I'm not sure you're going to like it."

Jim didn't like the hesitance in her voice. That sort of thing had no business being in the voice of someone like Peggy Carter, resident badass.

"Let's hear it." Dum Dum seemed excited about the prospect of something that the captain wouldn't like. Hell, so was Jim. Barnes just looked tired; he was making the same face he'd made when Jim had given him a bottle of aspirin for his birthday.

"The next mission is still going to be in Prague."

"That's far inland," Barnes said.

"Yes."

Jim looked from Barnes to Carter. "So how're we going to get there?" Because all of the bases were pretty deep into German-occupied territory and they'd never survive without support.

"You're going to go down through Poland, actually."

"Jesus," Dum Dum muttered. "We gonna survive walking through Poland?"

Carter said, "We have reason to believe that there has been some testing of strange weapons on the citizens of Bydgoszcz — Bromberg to the Germans. A few of our Scandinavian agents have been able to pass us some information. None of it sounds good."

"Why mention it," said Frenchie, "if our goal is Prague?"

"The city will be on your way. And we have some agents in the occupying German forces there that will help you acquire transportation into Czechoslovakia."

"Poland, here we come," said Monty. "Is this purely an intelligence-gathering mission?"

"Mostly," said Carter, nodding her head.

Jim hummed and looked down at the hand he'd been dealt.

"They'll go over all this in a briefing tomorrow?" Dum Dum asked. When Carter nodded, he said, "Then we'll worry about it later. All I gotta know is that I'll be in Poland causing hell soon."

"There's one more thing, actually."

They looked back to her, pausing in their motions to get the game of cards going again.

"What's that?" said Frenchie.

"You've got a time limit on the mission. They need you back by early May. Colonel Phillips will be contacting you every night during the mission to give you direction so that you stay on schedule. There's an important mission that the Allies are coordinating. General Eisenhower would like you back in time to offer some input, Captain Rogers."

"Eh?" the captain said loudly. He turned a lovely shade of pink.

"The Allied commanders want your opinion on an operation they're planning. You must return from your mission by May. I believe they were hoping your team would be able help. So you must finish up in Prague within April so that we can provide extraction in time for this next mission." Carter looked around at all of them. "Please be quick about it. You all are going to need a little while to recover from the mission before we have to send you out again."

She didn't hang around for much longer after that. She asked Jim to walk her back to her quarters, a request which Jim obliged. The guys held back making any comments to Cap about it but only for Carter's sake.

Outside, Carter said, "I was able to get some information about your family, Private."

Jim's feet wanted to freeze, but he made himself keep taking measured steps forward. "Yeah?"

"Yes."

So it wasn't good news.

"They've been interned at a camp called Manzanar."

Jim clenched his jaw. "How long?"

"Since the summer of 1942."

They walked on in silence. The inside of Jim's head was red-hot. At the door to Carter's quarters, they stopped.

She said, "I'm sorry this has happened, Priv—Jim. I wish I could have given you better news."

"Nah, not your fault, Carter. It's nice to know the truth. Thanks for going through all that trouble for me."

She shook her head and looked at Jim with sad eyes. He wished he knew the reason behind it.

"It wasn't trouble at all."

They heard the story of Bloody Sunday (all of the conflicting stories from all sides) and they were told about the Valley of Death. Colonel Phillips heaped upon Steve and his men all the reports they could get their hands on about the city of Bydgoszcz. They were to expect a city full of death and dying people. Be prepared for bodies in the streets, starved faces peeking at them from the windows.

Steve wasn't looking forward to going to this city. It sounded too much like Novara, except worse. And look what had happened there. At least his team was still together. A part of Steve was already concocting plans to simply go around the city and head straight for Prague. It was stupid, and Steve would never duck a fight that needed to be fought, but it made him feel good just to entertain the idea. If there was evidence of more people being experimented on in that city, they had to go there. Never mind that Peggy had told them that their transportation ticket would be in the city. He wondered what it could be: jeep, train, another tank? A plane? The S.S.R. was constantly surprising him with technology he hadn't even known existed.

Steve looked down at his map and traced the long line from Danzig to Bydgoszcz to Prague. They had to cover that ground in a month. Geez, he should get on his knees and start praying now.

"The distance isn't going to get any shorter if you keep staring at that map," Bucky said.

Steve looked away from the table and over to where his friend had stretched out across Steve's bunk.

He said, "Yeah, well."

"Quit thinking about it. We'll be fine."

"We only have a month to do two missions."

"What did we just do in Italy?"

"That took more than a month."

"Then it's a good thing we're not going all the way up the boot of Italy this time."

Bucky had an arm thrown over his eyes so that Steve got a good view of his scarred palm. It had healed cleaner than they'd expected. There was only a light bit of fabric tied around the wound now; Bucky said the scar felt weird when stuff touched it. Steve didn't say anything, but he thought that the wound probably still hurt. If what HYDRA had attempted to do to Bucky was anything like what Project: Rebirth had done to Steve, then the wound may have closed and scarred on the outside but the inside still hadn't healed all the way. That's what happened to those small wounds Steve had taken in Novara. Good to know that he had to get any bullet fragments or shrapnel out as soon as possible if he didn't want his body healing it inside of him.

Knowing that some similar type of healing could be happening to Bucky made Steve feel a lot of conflicting things. Was there really any doubt that what HYDRA and Zola were trying to do was recreate Erskine's serum? Same as the S.S.R. was now trying to do with Steve's blood samples? No one wanted to say it in the planning rooms at S.S.R. HQ, all of them skirting around saying the words outright. So Steve mostly didn't say anything about it either. Bucky hadn't gotten a foot taller and gained one hundred pounds of muscle. His eyes hadn't seen any better and his hearing was the same. For all Steve knew (hoped), HYDRA had just made Bucky's ability to heal a little bit better. Which Steve was kind of grateful for, in a warped way.

And they maybe gave him chronic headaches, Steve thought when Bucky tried to rub at his temples discretely.

"You take any of that aspirin Morita gave you?" Steve asked.

"No. Figured I'd sleep this one off."

At least they had made it to a place where Buck no longer denied having them. Steve suspected the assurance that Bucky wouldn't be removed from the team had made the difference.

"You should just move in," Steve said while gesturing to his quarters at large. "You're in here more than me anyway."

Bucky hummed and looked at Steve from under his arm. "Can't do that. What would the enlisted men say? They'd call me a traitor."

"They'd probably just call you lazy and greedy."

"Fuck you, Steve."

"Don't have a fit." Steve pushed back from the table and the map, rubbing his eyes. It was too late for this. They'd spent all day in briefings, reading horror stories. Everyone had gone off to try to scrub the images from their heads after their meetings were adjourned for the day. Kicking off his boots and folding his jacket on the table, Steve went to his bunk and kicked the side. "Move," he said to Bucky.

His friend grunted and rolled on to his side. Steve flopped down in the space before it was gone again. Thank God for the benefits of being a CO and having a marginally larger bunk than the rest of the men.

"Christ," came Bucky's muffled voice. "You're runnin' at a thousand degrees."

"Par for the course," Steve reminded him.

He said, ". . . not used to you bein' this warm and it bein' nothin'. Old habits."

"You'll get used to it." Steve felt Bucky shaking his head more than he saw it. He barrelled onward, "Just like I'll get used to seeing the top of your head."

"Shut up. You're an inch taller than me at most."

Steve smirked at the ceiling. He had a lot to be grateful for, despite it all. His mind was a carousel of thoughts and memories and fears, and after a few minutes of letting it spin, Steve said, "Remember when we said we were going to go see the Hoover Dam when it was finished?"

"Yeah." Bucky's voice was hoarse.

"I was just thinking about it and how Morita asked us if we'd ever been out west. I didn't want to mention it because of the whole USO thing, but I saw it when the tour went that way. The Dam, I mean. We mostly stayed east, didn't go much further than Chicago and Milwaukee, but we flew out west for just a few days. Buck, when I saw that dam, it was just so amazing. I'd never seen or imagined anything like it. But, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, I wish Bucky were here, I wish he was seeing this with me.

"I've been thinking about this a lot. I've been thinking about a lot of different things for a long time. When Morita talked about Wyoming and how it was what nature intended, all I could think about was the Hoover Dam and how we used to talk about seeing when it was finished. And I know it's the opposite of what Morita was talking about, but it was still something to see. We'll go when this is all over. Both of us will see the Hoover Dam just like we always said, OK? Maybe we'll make it a trip, huh? Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore — maybe they'll finish that by the time we get home. We'll see Wyoming and tell Morita it's nothin' special compared to everything we've seen."

It wasn't usual for Bucky to let Steve ramble on like this uninterrupted. So he paused and felt Bucky shiver next to him on the cramped bunk. Steve elbowed his friend gently, saying, "Hey, you cold or something?"

The movement stopped and, after a beat, Bucky said, voice still hoarse, "'m not cold, Steve."

So Steve kept going on and on about their hypothetical post-war road trip around the United States. Hawaii, where Bucky could have been assigned in another lifetime. He even suggested that they see some sights in Canada on their way up to the Alaskan Territory, where they'd watch for whales. Maybe they'd see Chichen Itza, too, when they'd seen all the United States had to offer.

He kept talking until Bucky stopped shaking and finally stilled.

Chapter Text

"Captain."

Steve didn't jump when he heard Falsworth calling him; he'd heard the major approaching. But his hands still twitched in his book. The nub of pencil he'd been using rolled free of his fingers. He snapped closed the compass Bucky had given him; Peggy's face disappeared within. Steve looked up.

"May I?" Falsworth gestured to the place beside Steve.

He nodded. "Please." The notebook fell closed; the compass nestled between the pages.

Falsworth settled down beside Steve with his back against the hull. The ship rocked on the waves. Steve resisted the urge to close his eyes and fall asleep. He wasn't even tired, but something about the rocking of the sea made him want to try for a nap. Maybe it was the ride in the submarine. Maybe it was the weather: cold and heavy with fog.

Possible still that his mind was several miles away, with Peggy on a warship. The S.S.R.'s main forces were distracting the defences of Danzig and the surrounding coast. Steve's team had been taken from England to the Baltic by submarine. They were then transferred to an empty refugee ship that had come from Norway. The S.S.R., some friendly troops from Finland, a few Soviets, and what remained of the Polish resistance were providing the distraction the Howlers needed to crack into the country undetected.

Steve hadn't been a big fan of the plan, but he wasn't in command over everything.

Captain and major sat in silence for a little bit, breathing the same stale cabin air.

"Alright?" Falsworth finally said.

"Oh, yeah. Yes." Steve gave Falsworth a sidelong glance and a half smile. "You?"

Falsworth made a face and bobbed his head. "I've been better. And I'm willing to bet you have been, too."

There really was no point denying it, but Steve knew that you were supposed to gripe upstream, not down. He wasn't supposed to complain to the Commandos. He was supposed to direct that to Phillips. Besides, Steve wasn't naturally the type to admit to a weakness to anyone except Bucky. Until recently, his weaknesses were all too visible and easily exploited. Old habits, he supposed.

So Steve didn't know what to say in response, and Falsworth didn't appear to have anything more to add at the moment. So they sat side by side and watched the rest of the men. Morita was writing, hunched over and making faces at the paper as he wrote. Jones, Dugan, and Bucky were lying in a pile, mumbling to each other and laughing quietly through their noses. Steve couldn't see for sure, but he thought he saw Dernier trying to read a small paperback that had last been in Dugan's possession when they were on base.

Steve noticed a bit of a shine in Falsworth's eyes on the edge of his vision.

"Permission to speak freely?" Falsworth said. He rolled his head casually in Steve's direction.

"Of course."

Falsworth nodded his head and drank from his canteen before he began to speak. "I don't miss commanding."

Steve nodded slowly. "No?"

"I've never admitted it to anyone — not even myself until recently — but I was relieved when my men were captured. I'm quite ashamed to say it. I was raised on stories of glory earned on the field of battle and having a stiff upper lip. Never backing down. The whole Churchill mentality was my childhood. It wasn't until my baptism of fire that I realized the stories aren't real, d'you know what I mean?" A wan smile tweaked up the corners of his mouth. "There are never any stories about the men that were treated as pawns — the men that I sent out into the field to their deaths."

"You can't control every outcome." Steve parroted the line that was said so often in the S.S.R.'s planning rooms.

Falsworth made a dismissive gesture with his hand, then seemed to nod in agreement.

"You tell yourself that you're saving so many more lives than you'll lose, when you look at the whole picture. You tell yourself that, even though you lost Tommy, you've saved Mary and John and Paul and Mark at home. You don't know Mary or John or Paul or Mark." Falsworth took a moment to fiddle with the cap of his canteen. He took a breath and continued, "But you knew Tommy. You trained with Tommy and laughed with him. You've been in foxholes with Tommy and you've heard so much about his family that they might as well be yours. You've slept on Tommy's shoulder and he's slept on yours. You've been hungry together, you've been scared together, you've bled together. Tommy's more of a brother to you than anyone you ever shared blood with."

Falsworth shook his head and drank from his canteen again. Steve watched him carefully, transfixed, trying to move as little as possible. He waited for the major to collect himself and get out what was on his mind.

Falsworth continued, tapping his fingertip deliberately on the hull of the boat, "So when you lose Tommy . . . You hate the people that killed him, but you also start to hate what Tommy died for. Which is of course what you still stand for. You think Mary and John and Paul and Mark put together aren't worth the mud on Tommy's boots. Tommy wouldn't be dead if it weren't for them." His voice shook just slightest amount. "Next thing you know, you hate Tommy for dying — you hate the man you trained with, laughed with; the man you shared a foxhole with; the man who slept on your shoulder and who let you sleep on his. You hate him for dying and leaving you here. You hate that he made you feel like this.

"But you can't say any of that. All you can do is keep going forward even though you're losing Tommys every day, over and over again. And you can't let it get to you. Can't let the rot that's growing inside you show on the outside. That's what commanding was like for me, and I don't miss it."

There was a minute tremor in Falsworth's hand. Steve could hear the liquid inside the major's canteen splashing lightly against the sides. A year ago, he wouldn't have been able to hear it. Steve's hands tightened on his book so that the outline of the compass pressed creases into the cover.

Falsworth wasn't done.

"When I was captured, I was commanding one hundred and forty-six men. We were in Krausberg for fifty-four days. By the time you turned up, I'd stopped counting how many of my men had died. I'd stopped counting at sixty-two. Sixty-two men died in Krausberg. I'd lost more men in that camp in a shorter timespan than I'd ever lost in the field, and I was relieved.

"In the camp, it wasn't my fault when they died, you see. That's what I told myself. We were prisoners, and I wasn't responsible for their deaths anymore. They weren't my men anymore. They just kept dying, and I didn't want to hate them anymore. All the war stories our fathers told us about glory and duty are lies."

Steve said, "My father would never talk about it."

Never mind that Steve had hardly been old enough to ask real questions before the mustard gas had claimed what the War hadn't taken of his father. Even if asked, Steve was sure his father wouldn't have answered. He was quiet like that, preferring to tend to the window boxes than chew the fat at a pub. Steve remembered sitting on the sidewalk across from their apartment and making his first clumsy sketches of his father's planters in June. That was almost all he really remembered of the man: cheap but well-tended flowers.

"No. I don't suppose I ever will either," said Falsworth.

They drank from their respective canteens. Steve's book was deformed because of the compass. It didn't bother him as much as it might have.

Falsworth looked over at him with a bleak little smile. "Of course, then the 107th arrived at Krausberg. And there was some loud and arrogant American NCO called Sergeant Barnes jumping between the prisoners and the guards. He was actively trying to prevent the men from dying who I had already written off. And he'd put us all to sleep at night telling stories about this kid back home named Rogers."

It made Steve bite the inside of his cheek to keep his face from cracking. The sudden change in tone left him with emotional whiplash.

"At the risk of sounding over-dramatic," said Falsworth, "I think Barnes, Dugan, Jones, and Dernier saved me from becoming something irredeemable. The way they protected all the others, regardless of who they were or where they came from . . . When Barnes's pneumonia got bad, I surprised myself by being more frightened of him dying than worried about myself catching it. What we planned on the factory floor that day — I suppose I just couldn't stand to lose another Tommy." He shook a hand, presumably to illustrate his feelings of what had happened to this particular Tommy after the incident on the factory floor.

Steve had a hard time swallowing around an imaginary obstruction in his throat. So he looked down at his hands and rubbed the corner of his notebook's cover.

"I must thank HYDRA for putting me in a cell with those men." Falsworth glanced wistfully around at their comrades. Steve followed his gaze and watched Jones, Bucky, and Dugan snickering among themselves. Morita and Dernier were watching with passing interest, the light having faded too much for either of them to continue what they'd been doing.

Falsworth sighed and said, "I don't mean to whinge at you, Captain. I suppose I just wanted you to know that I appreciate the weight of your position."

Words deserted Steve, so he nodded. Luckily, he was interrupted anyway. One of the crew came down to the narrow, slick stairs and called out in some wavering Scandinavian accent, "Howling Commandos, you're up."

The men moved as one toward their pile of gear. As Steve was strapping his last holster in place, he caught the major's eye and nodded once. The gesture was returned with wry, twisted lips. After that, Steve started to think of Falsworth as Monty.

The refugee boat couldn't take them to a dock for obvious reasons. The S.S.R. had sent them out with inflatable boats; they paddled those to shore. Barnes and Frenchie got to be in a boat with Rogers, the lucky assholes. Cap did all the work and they just sat there like bumps on a log. Dugan and Monty had to do most of the paddling in their boat with Jim and Gabe. Gabe offered to take over rowing halfway to shore, but both Dugan and Monty refused. Better to have Gabe indebted to him, Dugan reasoned. Gabe frowned like he knew the hole he was falling into by not grabbing an oar right away.

No one shot at them as they paddled in, so it was off to an OK start.

Frenchie said, "We beat you to shore. Why so slow?"

"Hey, we had more weight in our boat," Dugan said.

They all looked at Rogers and made comparisons and calculations in their heads.

"Alright, that's enough," said Cap. He looked appropriately nettled. "Jones."

Gabe pulled out the map and Dugan oriented them. After a brief conference, they were moving out in a skirmish line (except there was no one coming up behind them). It gave Dugan a lot of time to think about how distinctive of a sight they must make. I mean, obviously, there was Captain America in their midst. And even if he wasn't currently wearing the flag costume, he was still easy to recognize. (None of them were currently wearing their standard uniforms. It had been decided that they'd come into Poland in civvies. They wouldn't change until they were detected or they got to Bydgoszcz, whichever came first.) Not a lot of men hanging around this continent that were still big like Rogers though. They'd all shrunk from lack of proper nutrition, or they'd been too big of a target on the front. Then there was Gabe — you just didn't see a lot of black men walking around these parts. And Morita was an even more curious sight to see than Gabe (at least in Dugan's opinion). Since Novara, they now knew that HYDRA knew what to look for when it came to Barnes, too.

So only Monty, Frenchie, and Dugan could really go walking around these parts without giving the squad away. How much of a factor had this been to the S.S.R. as they'd planned this mission? Dugan didn't think they'd weighed it enough. They walked 'til the sun was below the horizon. Then Gabe and Rogers disappeared below a pup tent to examine the map with the flashlight. The rest of them stood around tapping their toes. Gabe left the tent first and Dugan took his place, examining the aerial images Rogers had pulled out. They squabbled for a bit and then decided on the place they'd spend the night: a village which had been evacuated and effectively reduced to rubble two years ago.

When they were about half a kilometre out from their destination, Rogers sent Team James to investigate and make sure the place was clear. Barnes, Monty, and Jim dropped their bags but drew their sidearms before heading off for the ruined town. They came back after twenty minutes with the all-clear.

That was how, an hour later, around a well-hidden fire and after Jim had given a report on their progress to Phillips via radio, Frenchie was able to say, "Let's play a game."

This was met with a lot of bitching and moaning. No small amount from Dugan. He didn't do it because he didn't want to talk — the opposite was actually true. Mostly, he just wanted to make noise.

"What'd you have in mind?" said Gabe.

Frenchie shrugged. "I want to be entertained." He spread his arms and gestured to the group at large to start making suggestions.

"I got an idea," said Jim.

"Let's hear it," said Dugan. He drank from his special canteen and handed it off to the right. Monty accepted it and took a drink.

"You're always goin' on about how you never know a guy better than if you've been in a foxhole with him."

"Yeah."

"You and Barnes have been in a few battles, right?"

Both Dugan and Barnes nodded.

"Since day one of basic," said Barnes.

Jim took the canteen from Monty and nodded at Dugan. "Think you know Barnes better than Cap?"

Gabe whistled and leaned back on his pack as if a show was about to start. Dugan caught Rogers's eyes; the guy looked like he would just love for Dugan to accept this challenge.

"You know," said Dugan, "I think I just might."

"Jeez," said Barnes.

The room rearranged itself around the fire so that three of them were on one side and the other four were across from them. Jim asked the questions, Barnes whispered the answers to Monty while Dugan gave his answer to Frenchie and Rogers gave his to Gabe.

It started innocently enough; the questions were mostly trivia like Barnes's drink of choice (Single malt whisky; Lagavulin when he can get it. If they're talking beer, it's Guinness.) and how many sisters he had. Goddamn Rogers answered every question immediately; he didn't even need a second to think about it. He didn't wipe the floor with Dugan, but he maintained a commanding lead.

But you really do learn a lot about a guy when you share a foxhole with him, though. Dugan made an impressive comeback when they got to this-or-that questions and preferences with dames. A lot of stuff had happened at Fort McCoy that Rogers didn't know about, a lot of things that show you the measure of a man in short amount of time. What did Rogers think people talked about during basic training anyway?

Never mind that the answer to any question about broads was "redhead" when it came to Barnes.

Naturally, the questions got more and more vulgar as the time and liquor passed. Jim and Frenchie started going in on hypothetical situations and what everyone would do in them. They quickly became ludicrous. Barnes's face was flushed from either embarrassment or drink; it was impossible to tell which.

He shoved the canteen into Monty's hand and said, "Get that thing away from me before I say something I'm never going to live down."

"I didn't realise you were so modest, Sarge," Dugan teased.

"I did," Rogers said smugly.

Barnes whipped a stone across the fire and said, "Shut up, Steve."

The game devolved from there. Soon they were guessing the answers to questions about everyone, the topics occasionally lewd. Jim absolutely roasted them, his answers as hilarious as they were cutting. Nobody even cared if there was some insult in what he said, because he was mostly right.

Dugan spat a mouthful of his hooch — the fire flared wildly because of it — when they finally got Gabe going. The guy could be a comedian. He was quiet about it; you really had to pay attention to catch his humour. But once you knew it was there, you were living a new life. Dugan was struck by how Gabe could make a place like Macon, Georgia sound like a funny place to live. Then again, Dugan knew that sometimes all you could do in a shitty situation was laugh your way through it and grit your teeth. It was what they'd done, all of them, in Krausberg. It was what they were still doing now.

Things wound down fast after the liquor hit a critical point (they were going to need to pace themselves for this mission). Men dropped off except for Dugan, who had first watch, and Rogers, who claimed not to be tired. (Yeah, right.) Everyone knew he was still jumpy about what had happened to Barnes in Novara. And, to be fair, Rogers was worried about everything all the time, in addition to Barnes.

Unhealthy, the two of them. And Dugan was only half joking.

"I was surprised," Rogers said lowly so he wouldn't wake the others. "You knew more about him than I thought you would."

"Yeah, well, we met in a crucible," said Dugan.

Rogers shrugged. "I'm glad."

"He taught half of our barracks at basic how to read with nothing but the field manual. We had a lot of young kids and guys that stopped goin' to school when they were real young. He did it without making any of us feel like a box of rocks for it." Dugan's gaze felt heavy, like he'd done something he ought to be embarrassed about. He saw a lifeline and reached for it. "You know, I kicked his ass about three days in at McCoy."

"No kidding." Rogers smirked at him. "Do tell."

"I thought he was a cocky bastard; I couldn't stand him. Know-it-all college boy, I thought, bound for Officer Candidate School. And I wanted to beat his ass because I thought he thought he was hot shit. We were disciplined together, of course, and the rest is history. I wasn't even jealous of him when he got promoted to sergeant. Our CO at the time, Captain Fonte, ended up with more trouble after he got us to get along than he had before. And Fonte was straight as an arrow, loved rules. I swear there was never a loose thread on his uniform. He was sniffing for a promotion and he thought he'd get it by busting the enlisted men's balls. God, we made things so hard on him."

Rogers almost smiled. "Sounds about right."

"We accidentally started a fire in the mess once, me and Jimmy," Dugan went on. He laughed to himself. "It was Jimmy's fault, by the way. The cigarette would have never had anything to burn if he hadn't left all those newspapers on the floor."

"Do I wanna ask what you were trying to do in the first place?"

Dugan's face bent into a downturned smile without any thought. "Maybe not. It was sort of a thing with us, getting up to no good in the mess. Thinking about it now though, I gotta wonder if you were the bad influence or he was."

Rogers snorted and looked at his hands. "A little bit of both? Probably mostly me though. Bucky only got involved in the trouble when he had to pull me out of it."

"Well you rubbed off on him pretty good. There's was this guy in our company — he was awful, total chicken shit. His name was Falister— so, naturally, he had a lot of nicknames. Always going through everyone's footlocker and ratting 'em out for stupid infractions. Fonte loved him." Dugan rolled his eyes at Rogers so that the captain could really feel the magnitude of asshole he was talking about. "We had this real young kid in our barracks. Didn't have a single hair on his face, probably not even old enough to enlist and lied on the enlistment form. Great kid, totally innocent. And Falister turns him in for contraband — a magazine that one of the guys had given him as a joke. The kid ended up doing seven-mile night marches for two weeks in full gear.

"So with our next weekend pass, Jimmy asked me to come with him to all the surrounding towns. I said sure. We'd done the same thing before: drinking, dancing with dames, seeing what wearing the uniform in public could get us. You know the deal. But this time, Jimmy went to every drug story that he could find and bought them out of prophylactics. He had to have spent two months' pay on the things. I was embarrassed just walking next to him with all those. There had to be hundreds, maybe close to a thousand — I have no idea. It was a lot. God knows how, but he got them all back into base. Jimmy shoved handfuls of 'em into everything Falister owned. They were in the lining of his helmet, the toes of his boots, his pillowcase, and every last pocket of his pack. His field jacket, his canteen, under his bunk, in his socks, in his hat and mess kit — somehow he got one shoved down the end of a rifle and in the butt of it. All the rest went in Falister's footlocker."

Dugan laughed and stared up at the ceiling. "Fonte did his usual contraband shakedown of the barracks the next day and found 'em. I'll never forget to looks on either of their faces. And they kept finding more for weeks afterward. The asshole was facing disciplinary action right up until we left the camp for hoarding resources. Permanent latrine duty for repeating offenses. He couldn't go an hour without someone telling him to 'put it on before he put it in'."

There was a faint smile on Rogers's face. It was the look all people had when you told an amusing story that they hadn't been there to experience. Dugan almost regretted telling it. But he shrugged and said, "I thought it said a lot about what kind of person Jimmy is."

"What, that he's sexually responsible?" Rogers's smile became a little less indistinct, but his eyes were on his hands again. "What happened to him? Falister."

"I don't know," said Dugan. "Must've lost track of 'em; they all died so fast. He wasn't in Krausberg. That much I know for sure."

"I hope he made it," Rogers said.

Dugan almost felt fond thinking about him. "Me, too."

The next morning, Jim called in to Phillips to let HQ know they were on track. The colonel demanded to speak directly to Cap, which Jim relayed to his commanding officer. Apparently, the brass didn't put it past Cap to leave someone with the radio while he wandered off to cause trouble on his own. It wasn't an entirely unfounded idea, Jim had to admit.

Then they moved out in their loose line again, still in civvies. Jim felt naked without his gear hanging off him. It was a feeling that was present when they were on base, too, but it wasn't nearly as strong. How many seconds would it take for Jim to arm himself if someone decided to just start shooting? How many of seconds did it take to lose someone? Less than one. It was stupid to walk around with all their gear shoved, disassembled, into their packs. It made Jim extra cranky.

The walking only lasted for about an hour and a half before they were able to commandeer transportation. A woman recognised them on the road and called out to them. Jim had advised caution and was already reaching for his Colt when the woman mentioned the S.S.R. and how a lost group of mixed men might be wandering by. She gave them a small, open truck. Her husband had used it to haul their harvest to the markets in Bydgoszcz. Jim didn't ask what exactly she and her husband sold, but the back of the truck smelled like five-day old ass. And while the open bed left them exposed, Jim was grateful that it at least made the smell easier to bear.

Dum Dum and Monty rode in the cab; the rest of them were squashed together with all their packs in the back. Jim just knew his clothes were going to pick up the smell. He'd have to burn them and ask the brass for something new. This was simply intolerable. The weather was changing from ice-fucking-cold to wet and miserable every few hours; they'd need different threads to make it through. Well, he was sure that Cap wouldn't be getting anything new. Stark didn't have too many of those American flag costumes stored up on base. Jim heard Europe could be a bitch in the heat. It almost made him think of the summers at home. He almost smiled before he remembered that home wasn't like that anymore. His family was taken from their own homes and put in a cage in a desert. Was that his fate, too, if he lived long enough to see the end of the war?

They ran low on fuel about halfway to their destination. Cap and Gabe went to siphon off some more from what was left in a nearby village. The rest of them hid the truck in a ditch and watched the area around them like hawks. No one had stopped them so far in the trip, which was suspicious. It put them all on edge; someone should have realised they infiltrated the country by now, be it HYDRA or standard issue Krauts.

Jim heard gunfire from the town and was immediately ready for a fight. Cap and Gabe were streaking back toward them. In the rear was Cap, laying down covering fire and using his shield to let Gabe get back to the squad with the filched fuel. Gabe slid down into the ditch. Frenchie relieved him of the fuel canisters and immediately began dumping the contents into the truck's tank. Gabe fumbled with his Browning; Jim was fighting uselessly with his pack and trying to free his grease gun.

Cap had stopped running and was now facing the oncoming bullets. Without a word to the rest of them, he was running back toward the enemy, dodging fire as if it were nothing. Jim had stopped trying to do anything helpful by then, just watching the captain jump to impossible heights and whip that shield into the top window of a home. He went right in the window after the shield.

A second story window. He jumped from the ground to a second story window.

A moment later, all firing stopped.

No more than a minute later, Cap was jogging back toward them as if nothing had ever happened.

Bang.

Jim jumped in surprise when a gun fired no more than two yards away; it was Barnes. The round bit into the ground a single step in front of the captain. Rogers stopped and stared.

Barnes duck-faced hard at Cap and then holstered his sidearm without saying a word.

Cap didn't look one bit like he'd been chastised, and he continued to approach them. There was a shit-eating grin on his face. "Let's move out."

So they did. The truck trundled toward Bydgoszcz during the night. They ditched the truck a few miles out, checked in via radio, and then approached the city on foot. It took a concentrated effort for Jim not to look at the mounds of dirt, deserted territory, and wonder if that was where all those bodies were buried, one on top of the next. He thought of bones rattling like soda bottles filled with pebbles.

At the first crumbled brick wall they came to, Cap sank behind it for cover. The rest of them followed. On the map was the location they were supposed to rendezvous with their hosts. The area would need to be scouted first. That meant Team James would be deployed. Jim dropped down to both knees and swung his pack around to his front. He assembled his M3 and clipped on his bandolier that held all the extra magazines. He knew Monty and Barnes were doing the same things.

Cap said lowly, "Alright. Monty, Morita, and Dernier, go scope out the area and make contact with our hosts. If it's clear, Dernier, come back here and lead the rest of us in. Go."

Jim sat there feeling a little stunned. He had just assumed. Barnes looked like someone had spat in his face. The order took longer than usual to carry out, but no one mentioned the change in what had become their status quo. Tension built among them so fast that Jim was just grateful that his squad had moved out before it erupted into something bad.

For what it was worth, Frenchie didn't throw Jim off his game at all. Monty seemed to handle the interruption of Team James just fine, too. They slipped between the buildings one at a time, trading positions and signalling the others forward when given the all-clear. There was a close call when a man in a dark uniform crossed the street moments before Jim was about to signal the others across the street. Aborting the gesture, Jim watched where the guy went and noted how fast he was moving. The night was too dark and any light that might have shone out the windows were blocked by heavy curtains. It was impossible to tell if the guy was HYDRA or not. There wasn't even enough light to reflect off of any potential decorations on the guy's uniform.

Once the man was gone behind a corner, Jim waited and watched for any others. Nothing so much as shivered, and he motioned for Monty and Frenchie to cross over. Monty signalled for them to stop when they'd reached the approximate location of their host. Jim slid the latest of Stark's inventions out of his pocket and clicked out the code he'd been taught before they left Great Dunmow. Then he clicked it out three and half more times. Waiting was all that they had to do next. It was because they were waiting with bated breath that they were able to hear the clicking of heels on the road long before the person wearing those shoes was upon them.

Frenchie was the first of them to recognize the footsteps. His head popped up above the ruined cart they were taking shelter behind and he scanned around for the source. Jim was getting ready to pull the man back down when he heard Agent Carter's voice.

"Hello, boys. Don't just stand there. We can't be caught out after curfew."

They just stared at her for a long time. How the heck had she gotten here? How had she arrived before them? She had been on one of the boats that were distracting the coastal defences when they invaded, hadn't she?

Again, Frenchie came to life first. He saluted Carter and snuck out after her. Monty caught Jim's eye. They stared at each other for a while. Jim shook himself and made his body move. Now four in number, they slithered between a few more alleyways before Carter led them down a short staircase and into a shop's cellar.

"Who's getting the rest?" she asked once they were inside.

"I am," said Frenchie.

"You remember the way?"

"I do."

Carter nodded her head. "Good. Then get the others. Don't knock on the door when you bring the rest. There are single-man patrols out all night. If they don't see you, they'll hear when you knock. Just enter."

"Yes, ma'am." And then Frenchie was gone again.

Jim and Monty had hardly crossed the threshold of the cellar. They both stared at each other and their dim surroundings. A few stubby candles were their only lights down here. If this place had electricity, there weren't any bulbs down here. Wooden crates were arranged like chairs around a spool. Thick ropes wound around the spool. Jim took a tentative step forward and turned to get a good look at the place. There was a staircase sitting deep in shadows on the other side of the cellar. It was cold but the moisture in the air was more noticeable. Jim wasn't confident that the wood of the crates wouldn't splinter if he tried to sit on it.

"If you don't mind," said Monty slowly, "how did you get here?"

Jim turned and watched Agent Carter hold back her smile. "War is a game of spies as well as soldiers, Major."

"Is this one of those things that Phillips wanted to make different?" Jim found himself speaking without thinking about the words first. "You're Barnes's babysitter?"

"I suppose that's one way to view the situation, yes."

"Cap's gonna flip his lid."

"I'd hate for him to waste his energy."

Jim couldn't help it; he cracked a toothy smile. Agent Carter in the field. He had to admit that it was something he was curious to see. He said, "So how'd you get here so fast?"

Carter went and sat on one of the crates. It didn't splinter. "I can appear as a friend when I need to. This isn't my first time blending in with the locals in Axis territory. And maybe Mr Stark was generous enough to help expedite my travel."

"Sounds like quite a tale," said Monty. He shed some of his gear and leaned against a stack of crates.

"It is. A classified tale."

"All the good ones are," said Jim. Monty nodded knowingly.

Carter smirked and said, "But I don't suppose anyone would know if mentioned a few of the details."

"No. Not a single soul around to hear," Jim agreed.

She told them about a con she pulled in this German castle a few years back. It had been about extracting a doctor from Red Skull's custody. Jim didn't need to be told to know that this was the doctor that led the super soldier research. Carter not only had incredible skills — not that she bragged, but it was easy to discern based on the tasks she had to complete to get the doctor — but she could tell a damn story, too. Now that they were running the Bydgoszcz part of the mission with Carter, Jim was excited to see her in action. He hoped she didn't get relegated to intelligence support or something stupid. Even a simple private like himself knew that Carter was destined to do amazing things beyond manage a desk full of maps and reports. She was Agent Carter, not some coffee-fetching secretary. Jim was so wrapped up in her story that he nearly yelped when the cellar door opened and the rest of the unit filed through the door.

As expected, Cap's face did a funny thing when he recognized Carter. Flatly, the captain said, "What are you doing here?"

Even though Jim knew that he could be blunt sometimes, Cap just sounded flat-out rude.

"I'm here to assist your unit on this mission." When the earth caught fire, Jim thought, hopefully Carter and her ice-cold glare would be around to put it out. She kept talking before Cap could get a head of steam going. "Right, now that you're all here, I think it's time to meet your hosts."

Their hosts were two women: Panni Kava and Edda Sierzant. They were terrifying. Jim lost count of all the little holsters they had for tiny little pistols, knives, and canisters of God-knew-what. They had fuckin' paralytic lipstick. Before they started disarming themselves, no one would have been able to tell they were packing so much heat, which was probably the most terrifying part. It was easy to believe that Agent Carter was in with these kinds of people.

Besides being terrifying, the women were superlative people and admirable hosts. They were so friendly. Jim didn't even care that he had to focus so hard on what they were saying because of their accents. It was the least he could do. By the time they were all bedding down in the cellar (with bedding of remarkable quality, given the state of the world), Jim found himself embarrassed that he'd thought people would be struggling so hard in a place like this. Kava and Sierzant were absolutely thriving.

As the breathing of his friends evened out, he reminded himself how much fight it put into him when the world at large thought he wasn't capable. Hadn't Jim first fostered an interest in the military because so many other places had refused to make eye contact with him because of his ethnicity? When people refused to hire a Japanese kid, hadn't it lit a fire under Jim's ass? He had wanted to shove it in all of those people's faces. He wanted to rise above the ones that had turned him down. He had wanted to reach a place where they were beneath him. It was fair to say, Jim thought, that he had achieved that. Never mind what he had paid to get there, what his family was paying right this minute. Being told no had only ever made Jim more determined.

He thought maybe Carter and their Polish hosts felt the same way.

But look at them now. They thrived in this environment. They'd taken the underestimating of their sex and used it to their advantage, made their enemies suffer for ever thinking them as less than. Jim knew the Russians had taken advantage of this skewed view a long time ago, what with their female snipers and armed civilians. He never thought he'd be agreeing with this, but Jim thought the world could learn a few things from the Red Army.

Those thoughts brought him to Gabe. Jim wanted so bad to ask Gabe what he thought of all this, of being considered unequal, less than. How did he stand it? What made him fight for a place that denied him so much? Because Jim couldn't even begin to answer that question for himself. It was easier to just focus on the single job in front of him and ignore what the point of it all was. What would he do and feel if he survived all of this and had to go home? Was there still a home? Did it deserve his service? It sure as hell didn't deserve Gabe Jones's service.

Jim rolled over under his bedding and found Gabe's outline in the dim cellar. One of these days, Jim was gonna ask that man what all this was worth. He went to sleep with a bitter taste in the back of his mouth.

"Panni and Edda will take some of you to examine the bodies that we suspect died due to the biological agent. I'll warn you now that it's very gruesome. Mr. Stark wanted some samples collected, so I'll leave it up to the captain to decide who gets that honour," Peggy said.

"There are frequent patrols of the area," Panni Kava said very deliberately and precisely, apparently very aware of her accent in a room full of (mostly) native English speakers. "We must be careful; it appears that they were expecting visitors."

Steve glanced, for the millionth time, at Peggy. She was nodding her head. "And I'll take the rest of you to the area we think the factory is in. It works nearly all day and night, so it's hard to miss. We'll do some surveillance of their security and formulate a plan accordingly. So who's doing what?"

Steve startled when he realised that Peggy was waiting for him to dole out the tasks. He recovered quickly, kept his eyes on the maps, and said, "Jones, Morita, Dernier: you guys check out the bodies. Try to track any guards. We'll know if something fishy is going on if they've got people guarding dead bodies. Dugan and Monty: stay here. Keep eyes on the streets. Watch the street patrol. Do not engage unless there's a direct attack on your location. They still don't know for sure that we're in the city, and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible. Buck, you're with me and Peggy."

Because their temporary rules were that Peggy went where Bucky went. If they were going to be in close contact with HYDRA and things that could wreak havoc on a human body, Steve didn't want Bucky out of his sight for a one goddamn second.

"We move out in ten."

The men shifted toward their packs to free all their munitions. Dugan was looking longingly at his field jacket; Monty was damn near stroking his beret. Steve didn't blame any of the guys for making eyes at their clothes. There hadn't exactly been a lot of sensible civilian clothes for them to choose from before they started the mission. What they had been able to obtain was thin, which left them all cold, damp, and prone to complaining.

Steve shifted the shield off of his back. It couldn't come with him today. When the first group had gone out to meet Peggy last night, Bucky had gotten some measure of revenge for Steve breaking up Team James: he'd thrown mud at the shield, and he hadn't been very accurate about it. All he'd said was that it needed camouflaging, despite that it had come all the way from Danzig without causing a scene. Steve just hoped Bucky's tantrum would end before something serious happened.

Peggy led the way through town. There had been a silent battle of wills between Steve and Bucky about who would be sandwiched in the middle which Steve won. It was hard to remember his friend being this difficult about everything. Peggy had been amused by the two of them. She didn't say anything, but Steve had made leaps and bounds in the area of Peggy's moods and expressions. Steve also thought she was showing a little bit of apprehension about the mission. Steve shared the feeling.

The city sights offered some distraction, but they were not nice ones. There were dead bodies in pieces between crumbling houses. There were skeletal animals moving slowly on bleeding feet, soon to be corpses or in some desperate soup. Barbed wire fences locked part of the city away from the rest. Hollow eyes peered down between tattered curtains. If they recognized Steve for who he was, they didn't show it. They just stared and watched. He tightened his grip on his sidearm, feeling pity for the citizens alongside distrust for them.

Peggy put a hand out. Immediately, Bucky took a sharp turn down an alley and Steve followed. At the mouth of the alley, Peggy's shoulders rounded and hovered up by her ears. In the space of a single blink, she'd gone from woman on a mission to dejected local searching the trash in the gutter for a scrap of food. Steve heard the boots then, watched German soldiers come upon Peggy.

A hand gripped Steve's sleeve tight. He whirled and was ready to beat off an attack. It was just Bucky, though. Of course, it was only Bucky. Steve hadn't realized he'd been heading out of the alley and toward Peggy. Bucky shook his head and made a face that told Steve to watch.

Peggy spoke in shaking Polish to the soldiers. Steve watched their faces change from those of predators to pale faces flush with sympathy. One offered her something from his pocket. Steve couldn't see what. Peggy accepted and bowed her head with gratitude. Steve watched her wipe away tears that weren't really there. The other soldier spoke in broken Polish to her and handed over a tin with a smile. There looked to be genuine regret on the faces of the two men.

The soldiers left then and Peggy kicked around in the piles of refuse for a little longer. Then she glanced down the alley, and Steve and Bucky went to her. She was smiling.

"Want some canned meat?" she said and held out the tin the soldiers had given her.

"What else did you get?" Bucky asked. "Their addresses?"

Peggy's eyes twinkled. "Sergeant Barnes."

"Alright," Steve said. "We should get moving."

He couldn’t say why their light-heartedness was bothering him.

Peggy quirked her lips and then started moving. Bucky looked at Steve with a question. Holding back a sigh, Steve shoved his friend forward, and they were off again.

They encountered more troops the deeper into the city they went, ghostly eyes from the windows following them the whole way. Sometimes Peggy led them around the soldiers and other times she sent Steve and Bucky into alleys and heaps of trash to hide while Peggy talked her way past the men. After a while, all the soldiers simply disappeared. A block later they were replaced by HYDRA troops with their full masks and thick black uniforms. Peggy stopped trying to talk her way around them. It was all about making it to the dusty black industrial building. It was so close that Steve could taste the pollution in the air. There were no more eyes watching from the windows. Less trash in the streets; what was there looked older, but it wasn't greater in number.

Peggy waved both Steve and Bucky back. Steve had no intention of listening to her this time, and Bucky must have anticipated that. His friend took two twisted handfuls of Steve's jacket and absolutely manhandled Steve back behind the nearest cover. If he wasn't so focused on what Peggy was doing, Steve might have had the presence of mind to wonder how Bucky had been able to move Steve's new body so easily.

Peggy jogged up behind a patrolling HYDRA agent and kicked the back of his knee. She caught him around the neck and backpedalled into an alley, into the space beneath a staircase. There was a brief struggle. Steve strained against Bucky's grip until he grew too annoyed. Steve twisted hard enough to break the grip holding him back, heard Bucky hiss "fuck", and ran for where Peggy had disappeared.

"Peg," he said, skidding to a stop before her hiding space.

Peggy looked up with an eyebrow raised. The soldier was unconscious at her feet and she was stripping him of his gear. "Yes?" she said.

"I thought you..." Steve didn't know what he thought.

"Where's the sergeant?"

"I'm right here," said Bucky's voice from behind Steve. He had one hand around the opposite wrist and was rotating the joint. "Asshole," the sergeant tossed at Steve with only the barest amount of venom. "She's completely fine."

"Indeed," Peggy said dryly. She tossed the soldier's helmet to Bucky and said, "That's for you."

"Huh?"

"He's about your size."

"What?"

"You'll need to blend in with the guards if you plan to gather intelligence, Sergeant."

Bucky froze and Steve felt his heart speed up in his chest. "We never talked about this."

"I thought it was implied," said Peggy. "It's easiest to gather information from the inside. We can get closer to the patrols this way."

"Bucky's not going into that building alone," Steve said. "You can't send him into a HYDRA building when they're looking for him."

"Of course not," Peggy said. "I'm going with. My German's better."

Bucky reached for the uniform Peggy was holding out toward him.

"I just need to catch a small soldier and get his uniform," she continued.

"Don't you mean two more?" Steve said. "I'm going with you."

"Don't be ridiculous, Captain," said Peggy. "You're going to keep watch from out here and let us know when our cover gets compromised. I doubt we'd be able to find a soldier who wears a uniform your size anyway. We may need you to come help us get out." Peggy shoved the unconscious HYDRA soldier. "Take this man somewhere that's not easy to find and bind him. I'll be back."

Peggy didn't give Steve a chance to protest. She was gone sneaking between trash and debris. There was nothing to do but pick up the unconscious man and hide him somewhere. Bucky trailed silently along in his wake. They ended up inside a mostly-crumbled building. Steve had tossed the body up into the missing side of the second story and then climbed up himself. He held a hand down and pulled Bucky easily up and into the building, too.

Steve got to work binding up their captive and Bucky was shedding his civilian threads for the HYDRA uniform. Bucky broke the uncomfortable silence between them.

"You should trust her."

"What?" Steve paused and stared.

"Carter. Trust her."

Steve frowned. "I do trust her."

Bucky shrugged and pulled the HYDRA jacket on at the same time. It wasn't the right fit in the shoulders. "Not in the way you should. She won't thank you for it."

Was that what Steve was doing? He didn't want to be that way. He didn't want to be just like all the others that had brushed Peggy to the back. After all she'd done for him when he'd charged into Krausberg, Steve didn't want to treat her like something that needed looking after.

"She's been doing this longer than you have," Bucky said. "Let her. It's an insult to do anything else."

Steve said sceptically, "You like this plan?"

"I'm not scared," he said.

Steve didn't respond; he tied the gag around the soldier's mouth a little harder than he intended though. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw his friend bite his lip and swallow hard.

"I'm not scared," Bucky said again, "and I won't... Nothing's going to happen. We're gonna gather recon and then get out of there."

The memory of the night after they'd completed jump training popped to the forefront of Steve's mind. He looked up from the captive and over to his friend. Bucky didn't look like an Army sergeant who was battle-tested and seasoned, a proven NCO.

To Steve, Bucky looked like he did when they were kids and three strangers had tried to abduct him off the street in broad daylight. Steve had thrown every last ounce of his body weight around trying to beat off three full grown adults while Bucky had screamed until the owner came out of the corner store. The strangers fled, and Steve had stood there with bruised hands, completely winded, praying he didn't have an asthma attack. He hadn't known what to do next. Bucky had hardly moved from where they'd dropped him on the sidewalk. Someone had gone to get George Barnes, and, when he turned up, he slapped Bucky across the face and told him to stop crying.

Steve nodded his head at Bucky and went back to tying up the HYDRA captive. Bucky was in the man's uniform by then, the helmet the only thing not in place.

"How's it look?" he asked with his arms out.

"Horrible," Steve told him.

Peggy found them soon. Steve pulled the knocked-out soldier up first and then Peggy. She stripped him of his uniform and then handed him off to Steve to be bound. She chattered, explaining her plan as she became someone else. She and Bucky would get as close as they could, inside if they were able. Peggy made a point to tell Steve that Bucky would never be alone during the whole thing. No matter what she had to do, she told him out of Bucky's earshot, Peggy would make sure Bucky came out of this as good as he went in. Steve didn't know whether to be frustrated with Peggy for suggesting this mission in the first place or to be grateful that she would be going to such great lengths for his friend (really, for Steve's peace of mind).

Peggy didn't coddle anyone. She let them do what they were capable of. Steve admired that about her. So he did his best to mimic it and let Peggy run this show. She really did know best — better than him, and he wasn't ashamed to admit that.

Before they left, Bucky wandered over to Steve and handed him the improved scope that Howard had made for him before they shipped out for this mission. (Howard had gifted Bucky the new removable scope at the same time that he delivered Dugan's repaired hat. Turned out Howard knew when it was time to make something new and when it was better to fix something old.)

"Watch our backs, alright?" Bucky said.

After all these years, Steve knew the request that was hidden in that tone of voice. He nodded and said, "Don't do anything stupid."

And then they were gone and Steve was alone, save two unconscious HYDRA grunts and his doubt. Every so often, Steve would move among the block he was hidden in. He never strayed far from the captives, but he couldn't stand sitting in one place doing nothing. He watched and marked the patrols: their numbers, the time between passes, the weapons they carried, whether or not they spoke to one another. Steve would jump with ease up to the roofs, lie flat on the ground, and find Peggy and Bucky's frames with the scope. Peggy was hard to pick out; the uniform did an impressive job disguising her sex. But Steve would know Bucky's gait anywhere. All he had to do was look for that familiar walk, and he could track them. He only knew where Peggy was because she was beside Buck.

Steve tracked them all the way to the factory. Neither had to engage in any sort of combat. He wondered what they talked about, if they talked at all. Both Peggy and Bucky spoke better German than Steve did, so he reasoned with himself that that could be another reason why he was the one to stay behind. He trusted Peggy, he did. He trusted her with his life, so he ought to trust her with Bucky's too.

Though he was quick to anger and quicker with his fists, Steve never fought without reason. He fought kids bigger than him if he deemed them bullies. Despite the consistent failures of his body, Steve hadn't let it get in the way of his will and his conviction. Whether with fists or words, Steve didn't back down when he saw something he knew was wrong. Weaknesses didn't matter; Steve was so used to his body's limits that they didn't even feel like weaknesses anymore. He knew if he was stubborn and relentless, not even biology could keep him down.

That was Steve: Rub some dirt on it and walk it off. Get back up no matter how far you fall.

Steve knew what he was and what he wasn't. Knew since he was the forty-pound kid that tried to fight off kidnappers despite the odds stacked against him. He was the type of person who would fight the attackers, pursue them until they were caught and punished. He'd never had time to learn anything besides don't stay down. Steve knew better than anyone how to patch a wound and stop a body from bleeding itself dry. He hadn't anticipated it being so difficult to risk someone else's life for the same causes for which he was ready to risk himself. As a captain with a squad depending him, Steve had to know better than to leave one of his men crying on the street until something worse came for them.

The sound of George Barnes's hand smacking Bucky's cheek echoed in Steve's memory to this day. And he still couldn't explain to himself why he hadn't tried to comfort Bucky then.

Rolling off the roof, Steve landed catlike on a tall stack of rubble and went back to check on his captives. They hadn't moved, still unaware. Steve sat beside them and flipped his compass opened. Peggy peered back at him from inside. Some days Steve still wondered where Bucky had found the thing. The compass was Bucky pointing him in the right direction. The compass was Peggy believing in him. It was the Commandos choosing to follow him. It was all the missions, experiences, and stories he was allowed to have because of determination and refusing to stay down. It was confirmation that he was doing the right thing.

Or this war was making him dangerously sentimental.

It was a just a goddamn compass.

The unit rendezvoused back at the Poles' place. The Dead Body Squad had arrived back first, so the first thing out of Jim's mouth when Cap, Barnes, and Carter came tumbling into the room was, "What's with the outfits?"

"When in Rome," said Barnes. He tossed the helmet to Jim. The thing was fucking heavy.

"You breached 'em?" said Dum Dum. He was bent over a plate of something the gals had made. It looked weird but smelled delicious.

Carter grinned. "Yes. Sergeant Barnes and I got a good look around inside."

Jim noticed the captain's lemon-sucking face. He laughed.

"Aren't you going to share?" said Monty.

Kava offered Carter a bowl, which she accepted. The same was done for Cap and Barnes. They all sat around the table that was much too small for all of them. Sierzant sat on the counter and ate out of her lap. Frenchie was leaning against the cupboards on the floor, legs splayed out in front of him and one of the couch cushions beneath him. Jim had claimed one of the chairs at the table when he came in but others had to improvise.

Cap had Gabe give them the report from the graveyard. It had been as awful as Jim had anticipated. There had only been a few guards; Jim made short work of them by clubbing the backs of their heads with the butt of his M3. Frenchie and Gabe did a lot of the investigating of the corpses while Jim kept himself happy and content with being the lookout.

"Mostly seemed like respiratory distress," Gabe said, "but I'm no doctor. Wasn't much outward damage to their bodies."

"All their eyes were opened," Frenchie said.

Yeah, that had been the worst part. None of the corpses were covered or buried fully. Those dead eyes felt like they had been following Jim. He'd been glad to leave.

"Did you collect anything?" said Carter.

Gabe nodded. "We took some samples like you asked. They're in the medic bag."

Carter nodded her head and took a spoonful of the Polish gruel. "Did you notice anything else?"

The guards over the bodies hadn't been very large in number, but they had been there. HYDRA was expecting something to happen with these bodies. Jim knew the ideal case would have been for the S.S.R. to have one (or several) of the bodies back in the lab. They could look over everything and see what had turned these people to shells. Gabe was right: It had looked like some kind of gas attack. The corpses were pale, naked, and covered in marks and bruises, but none of those marks had looked life-threatening. By examination, all of those wounds had been in a state of healing by the time they'd died. It had been Frenchie who'd suggested that these people were all still part of an experiment. Maybe it had to do with those blue-light-laser weapons that were being tested on the Greeks. Maybe they were using something like that to power their biological weapon.

Jim was just glad he wasn't the one who had to deliver the report. It had been hard enough just seeing it, and he hadn't even been the one touching the bodies. Shit like that shouldn't be happening to people. Shouldn't be happening to anything anywhere at any time.

After they relived the graveyard for everyone's benefit, Carter started telling them about the HYDRA building. It was huge and ran all day. There were several troops stationed there, both inside and outside. There was evidence of barracks inside somewhere, so whoever worked inside wasn't leaving. Carter suspected slave labour, possibly women. They'd been disappointed not to find a lot of evidence of the biological weapon; there was mostly only material processing. Raw materials for weapons. Explained the big exhaust towers and the pollution in the air, if they were running smelters. Evidence said they had a lot of material, so they could be building either something really huge or a whole bunch of smaller weapons.

Barnes had added that they hadn't had the chance to scout the whole building without getting themselves caught, but he thought the layout of the factory was similar to that of the one in Krausberg. And that put on the table the possibility of another isolation ward and that was where all the dying people were coming from.

Once they all finished eating and picking each other's reports apart, they splintered into groups. Cap, Carter, and Monty went off to plan their strategy for the attack tomorrow. The rest of them bungled around the sitting room with the Poles. Gabe switched on their gramophone and played records that none of them knew the words to. Frenchie asked Sierzant to dance, and they spun graceful circles around the room. Their smiles turning and turning; Jim got dizzy watching. Kava went up to Barnes. After a few moments of convincing, the two of them weaved in and around the other couple, Kava leading in some sort of folk dance.

Gabe made excellent musical selections considering that he wasn't familiar with any of the options; all of them were excellent for dancing. Jim passed the special canteen back and forth with Dum Dum as they watched the two groups of dance partners. They laughed at how each of their styles differed. Dum Dum suggested Barnes leave room for the Holy Ghost between himself and Kava. Barnes suggested Dum Dum fuck off. Jim thought Sarge had a point.

When they'd passed the canteen between themselves enough times, Dum Dum stood up, pulling Jim with him. They danced violently between the other partners, bumping them into end tables and lamps on purpose. Jim tried to step on Dum Dum's feet every chance he got. They shouted laughter in their ears. Jim hip-checked Frenchie and threw his back against Barnes. The dancing devolved into a shoving match until Carter came out of the bedroom where the battle plans were being written and told them to pipe down or so help her.

They quieted down and settled into the mess they'd created.

Frenchie and Sierzant snuck away together. Kava fell asleep sitting on Barnes's lap. It reminded Jim of Chiyo and he looked away hard and fast. Gabe sang a song in French that Jim didn't recognize. Dum Dum began one next that Barnes joined in with. Jim still didn't know the song, but he knew enough to know it was an Irish one.

Floating between wakefulness and slumber, Jim thought of times when he wasn't as sharp as he was now. He half-listened to Dum Dum and Gabe talk about education and barriers and all the different kinds of freedom there are. Jim's eyes started to sting and he refused to listen to them anymore.

Closing his eyes, he thought to himself, Where did my boy's babysitter go? Beyond that mountain, back to her home.

Jacques Dernier had loved a mute girl once. Back when he was young and wore suits with ties. It had been back when the world was just starting to bloom again after the Great War, when he taught young minds how the elements of the world interacted with each other.

He'd never been married, never had children. But he'd loved a girl who never spoke. She was in the business of pleasure. She wasn't beautiful or wise or impressive in any other way than her simple kindness. With no words to offer, the girl could only ever listen. Her chest was heavy, and she was soft. When he'd lie with her, Jacques imagined all the stories this mute girl could tell and everything she'd heard. He loved her possibilities. He loved her potential.

She had a son whose mind was not meant to understand the world. The chemicals inside his own body couldn't agree with each other. Sometimes she and her son would stay in Jacques's empty house. He treated mother and son gently because they were gentle creatures.

He loved that girl the way a man loves the sun — loves the leaves of the trees even when they turn brown and crumble underfoot. Jacques didn't love her son, but he loved that the mute girl did. But the son hadn't been built to survive the world that he couldn't understand. He died, eventually. The mute girl grieved in silence. Even though Jacques loved her, she'd lost the only thing she truly had. She stopped fighting and let life do to her what it would.

Jacques had loved a prostitute who couldn't speak, and the world took her because she wouldn't speak up for herself after the death of her son. And eventually the world took everything from him too, seemingly overnight — why hadn't they fought back? Why hadn't they resisted harder? Jacques Dernier had loved and lost a girl because she wouldn't speak about the things she'd seen and done. When Germans marched in and took his very home from him, Jacques fought back that time.

It was funny now. Now — after everything. Being where he was now. He could speak and he was fighting and using his knowledge of how the world's elements interacted with one another to seek revenge. The Polish woman beside him was hard and strong. She didn't remind Jacques of the girl he once loved like he loved stones warmed by sunlight. Sometimes he reminded himself of that girl, limited by language, his ability to speak. Then Jacques told himself that he was learning to speak to his comrades, his friends, those he loved. He wasn't a silent partner.

He looked at the woman lying asleep next to him. Her chest rose and fell. She made noises, even in her sleep. He did not love her.

Jacques Dernier had loved a mute girl once, and she'd died for her silence.

Dugan's breath was so loud. Peggy tried to ignore it, but it was so loud. Someone shifted behind her and slapped Dugan's shoulder. She guessed it was Jones. Peering around the corner, she watched the guards change shift at the gate. Behind her, Dugan, Jones, and Dernier settled and became still. She could still hear their breathing.

Peggy leaned away from the corner and looked back at her squad. Get ready, she told them with her eyes. The men nodded to her. Deep in her chest, Peggy felt something very much like happiness and maybe even excitement. She thought she was becoming rather fond of these men.

They heard the dull thud, and Peggy was leading them at a run toward the gate. The guards who were exchanging duties at the gate were dead. Panni and Edda waited for them. They were wearing HYDRA uniforms. They joined the two agents and Peggy led her expanded team into the building. They were quiet around corners. Stopping the team, Peggy pressed herself close to the wall. Chatting German voices were growing closer; there were two. Catching Panni's eye, Peggy nodded. Tossing her sidearm up in the air, she caught it on the end and gripped tight.

The voices were a step away when Peggy jumped out in front of them. She slammed the grip of her gun into the head of the one nearest her and pushed the other behind her, toward the rest of her team. Peggy drove her knee into the first man's groin and caught his chin with an uppercut. The helmet went toppling away, and she smashed the handle of the Colt into his exposed temple. He dropped like a rock. Not a second later there was second thud; Panni had taken care of the second man.

Peggy paused for breath. The boys were staring at her and Panni. Edda was looking amused.

Dugan whistled lowly. "Remind me not to get on your bad side, Peggy."

She smiled at him and patted his shoulder just one time. They moved on down the corridor. A group of four soldiers were up ahead. Edda and the boys were up. Jones caught the man at the back of the pack, putting his rifle around the soldier's neck and pulling him back. Dernier kicked out the pinned man's legs and sliced upward with his knife. At the same time this was happening, Edda shoved one of the soldiers face down and caught a second one's head with her heel with a fan kick. That same foot slammed down on the first soldier's throat; he made a squealing sound. Then he made no sound. Jones jumped at the second soldier, who was almost recovered from the blow to the head by now. They traded blows and blocked punches before Edda kneed the soldier in the chest. Jones dealt the final blow by slamming his head into the wall.

Dugan had taken the easy way. He'd approached the final soldier, ducked a wild fist and a rogue bullet, caught the soldier, and slit his throat with his bayonet.

"Well done," Peggy told him.

They kept moving, taking down enemies as they encountered them until they made it to the loading bay filled with trucks. Dernier pulled the pin out of one of his homemade grenades, wiggled his eyebrows, and threw it into the midst of the busy garage. Peggy ducked, covered her ears, and opened her mouth. The blast was fast and hot. All of them rose and began to mow down the panicking men with their rifles. Dernier retreated with Panni — they had charges to set and another squad to meet.

Peggy jumped over crates and ducked behind them when it suited her. Jones was firing from the hip with his Browning. Another explosion lit up the confining space: Steve had arrived. Peggy couldn't keep the smile from her face when she heard the snarling of the motorbike he was riding. (It was what she had ridden on her way to Bydgoszcz. Howard had finally finished the bike. It was meant to be a gift for Steve. The captain's face had split into a true smile when Peggy had showed it to him after their intelligence mission the day before. She took that smile to mean that she was forgiven for taking Barnes into a HYDRA facility without Steve's direct supervision.)

Steve didn't get off the motorbike once he was inside the loading bay. Quite the opposite. He snapped off shot from his sidearm from the seat and kept circling around the bay. Jones pinned down the remaining forces in the garage so Steve could pull up alongside Peggy. She jumped onto the seat behind him and pointed down the corridor where they were to go to next. Steve opened the throttle and sent them caroming in the direction she'd indicated.

The motor was loud, and the corridor only made it worse by bouncing the sound back down at them. She felt her heartbeat everywhere, even in her fingertips. Steve jerked the handlebars and took a hard right into two open doors. Peggy flailed and gripped Steve's back hard to keep herself from tumbling off. He'd driven them into the assembly room. Peggy and Barnes hadn't been here when they'd snuck in earlier, but they'd seen signs pointing out the direction to this very place. Now they could see what was being built in this place: enormous tanks. They had to be as tall as two-story buildings. Peggy's throat swelled for a moment when she laid eyes on the incomplete tank that sat in the centre of the room. A warship could have been built in this room. 

Up on the catwalk around the top of the assembly room, Peggy spotted Dernier laying charges. She loosened her death grip on Steve's back to wave up at him. Then she grabbed her Thompson and strafed the black-clad troops in the room. The tank was being assembled by dirty women in brown sacks. Peggy felt rage in her. She hoped these women got out of here, but none of them were moving as the attack continued. They stood like dazed pylons. When the charges went off in a few minutes, these people probably still won't have moved. There was no time to dwell on it.

Steve yanked the pins from Howard's explosives and popped off the spoons before tossing the sticky bombs at the piles of supplies around the room. The boxes blew up spectacularly; Peggy had to look away and shield her eyes from the blast. Steve drove around the room twice so that they could destroy every pile of tank parts and weapons in the room. Usually, Howard's bombs would set off a subsequent detonation in the pile of weapons.

Peggy gripped Steve's back tight again when he made a sharp turn out the door they'd come in through — her knees almost scraped the concrete floor, so tight was the turn. A burst of fire chased them into the hallway, but they left it far behind soon enough. She could feel Steve's ribs vibrating with laughter and she smacked his back once they were no longer in danger of tipping over.

They came to a long straight corridor; it would lead them to the back of the facility, their ultimate goal. At the back they'd find the so-called Team James raiding the laboratories. Between them and the end of the corridor stood about fifteen men. Steve leaned below the edge of the shield he had on the front of the motorbike like a windscreen. Peggy half-stood from her seat and sprayed indiscriminate bullets over his head and into the swarm of HYDRA soldiers. Her Thompson jammed and she landed hard on her haunches, ducking behind Steve. The soldiers were firing at them now — she could hear the bullets making ping sounds off the shield. Why they didn't shoot out the tires was beyond Peggy.

Steve made the motor growl worse than ever and barrelled right into the soldiers. Once they were in the thick of it, he activated the igniters in the tailpipe. The uncombusted fuel in the exhaust ignited and scorched the soldiers. Peggy turned in her seat and fired her sidearm at the burning men. They dropped to their knees screaming. Steve kept them tearing down the hallway.

Over the engine, Peggy could hear a firefight up ahead. The labs must have been near, and they must have been well-defended. Peggy took the time to rip the spent magazine out of her Thompson and insert a new one. The lab doors were approaching and Peggy unhooked her grappling line. Steve took a hard left into the lab — it was laid out just like the assembly room. It was several stories tall and opened in the middle.

As soon as they were upright, Peggy half-stood again and fired the grappling line toward a safety railing around the third-level. The hook caught and pulled her up and away from Steve. Peggy fired the Thompson one-handed as the line swung her upward through the air. Below, she knew Steve had dived off the bike and sent it rushing into a tank in the middle of the room. She was going to land across the room from the door they'd just entered on the second-level. Conveniently, a soldier engaged in combat with Falsworth was right where her feet were going to be. Peggy caught him in the head and released the line. When she stopped rolling, she shot the man a single time and sprung to her feet.

Falsworth nodded his thanks to her, and she nodded back. The major immediately started defending her back as she searched the tables and desks on the second level of the lab for anything important. She grabbed every file and document she could get her hand on (the other hand was full of her Thompson). There was actually very little resistance.

Peggy later learned that this was because of Steve. He was everywhere. He was dashing between bullets and throwing his shield with reckless abandon. There was the familiar sound of the thing cutting the air constantly. Steve was running right up to groups of soldiers and shoving the shield at their chests and twisting mid-air to kick two in the head at the same time. First, he'd slide his legs under theirs and the next split-second, while the men were airborne, Steve's arm would come swinging around and the shield was cracking their skulls. He'd deflect one soldier's bullets into a different enemy. It was simply unreal; it didn't appear to cost him any effort.

Peggy had paused with her hands hovering over a ledger to watch this display of superhuman abilities. She'd been shaken from the trance when a bullet missed her by a hair. Another shot rang out — even closer than the first but headed in the opposite direction. The helmeted HYDRA soldier sagged to the ground, dead. Peggy looked behind her to see Sergeant Barnes lowering his rifle. He bent his lips upward into a hollow smile and saluted her. Peggy tipped her head and snatched up the ledger, shoving it into her bag of stolen documents.

Morita ran by saying, "Two minutes, everyone! Start heading for the exits!"

She ran for the opposite side of the second level; there were filing cabinets over there. Bullets chased her partway before suddenly ceasing. Peggy knew they didn't stop because of the blind shots she was firing behind her. Something massive exploded below her. The thin balcony she was running on dented upward, tossing her with it. Peggy slid and rolled before she was back on her feet and running. There was no need to look to know that the place was on fire. Whatever canister Steve's motorbike had hit must have finally ignited. Thank God it hadn't been hydrogen or something — they'd all be dead already. Whatever was in there must have been dense.

Throwing open the drawers of the filing cabinet at random, Peggy yanked papers free. She found a small metal briefcase, and, feeling like she'd really gotten something, shoved it into the pack with the other documents victoriously.

"Carter!" shouted Morita. "Gotta go!"

Peggy spun away from the cabinets and over to the railing. The stairs down had been blown off by some blast. What remained was glowing red from the fire beneath it. No matter. Peggy loaded a new line into her grapple gun. She shot it toward a waterline that ran over the centre of the room at the third level. The hook wound itself around the pipe a few times before clinking secure. Peggy hopped over the safety railing and swung off the ledge of the second landing, finger applying steady pressure to the switch that let her descend. Halfway across the room she released the line and fell. Steve's arms broke her fall.

Morita grabbed her sleeve as Steve set her back on her feet. She ran with the communications officer while Steve went to reclaim the bike. Falsworth was waiting at the door, laying down covering fire for them. Peggy and Morita darted out the door and toward the predetermined egress point. To get there, they had to run down another long, straight corridor, though it wasn't as long as the one to the get to the back of the facility. There were no troops in front of them; it was a clear shot out of the place. Dernier met them just as they were exiting.

Just as the four of them broke out into the sunlight, Peggy heard the growling of Steve's motorbike coming up behind them. Dugan, Barnes, and Jones were at the end of the facility's clearing, facing the building. ("Wahoo!" Dugan was positively shrieking in delight.) A HYDRA truck was behind them, idling. Edda and Panni could be seen in the cab. Peggy understood that the boys were laying down the fire necessary for the rest of them to evacuate, and the agents were the get-away drivers. Jones had his Browning mounted on the bipod now, and Dugan was directing him at the soldiers that were up on the balconies of the building. Barnes had his face pinched in a funny duck-like way as he fired precise and controlled shots.

Part of the facility burst outward with a hot flash and streaks of fire. Peggy could feel it on her back, but she didn't pause to look until she had dived into the bed of the idling truck. Morita and Falsworth were in beside her seconds later. The truck started to roll forward. Dernier was fast enough and jumped in while the truck was just beginning to roll. Then Jones was lying on top of all of them at once — and then Dugan was on top of him. The wheels were really rolling under them now.

Morita knocked all the limbs off of himself until he was at the open flaps of the truck. He shouted, "Barnes, get your ass on this truck! What the fuck do you think you're doing? Get in here!"

Peggy could see Barnes holding his ground, firing rounds at the facility again and again. But as soon as Steve shot passed him on the motorbike, Barnes swung his rifle down and sprinted after the truck. Morita and Dugan grabbed the sergeant's arms and hauled him into the bed of the truck.

The seven of them sat there, panting for breath and jittery as the adrenaline of the fight wore off. Peggy let the sound of Steve's motorbike alongside the truck ground her for a moment.

"Whoo," Barnes said, winded. An understatement. Peggy watched him run a hand through his hair. That same hand dug into his blue jacket, pawing around for something. It came away with a pack of cigarettes. "Anybody want one?"

Dugan cuffed the sergeant on the back of the head. "Give me those."

Peggy took one when the pack got passed around to her.

Chapter Text

A groan was on the verge of falling out of Bucky's mouth the instant he was halfway conscious. He tried to pull it back and coughed instead. Then he blinked and looked around.

"Hey," Jim said. He and Dum Dum were sitting around an orange glow.

"No fire," Bucky croaked.

"We'll take our chances," Dum Dum said.

"I outrank you."

 Dum Dum just laughed at him. "You alright?"

Bucky nodded and pushed himself up into a sitting position. Wasn't easy to do seeing how his arms didn't particularly feel like they were under his control.

"Happen again?" Jim said.

Another nod.

"How many times this week?"

Bucky shrugged.

"Something we should tell him about?" Dum Dum said.

Him meaning Steve. Bucky reflexively shook his head in the negative.

"It's gettin' worse, Barnes," said Jim. "We can't ignore it forever."

Why not?

"I know."

"What if it happens during a battle again?" Dum Dum said. It was unnatural to see him so close to seriousness.

Bucky scratched at the back of his neck. His hair was getting long. "It only happens when I sleep."

"Bullshit," Jim said.

"Shit, Jimmy, you having seizures at any time ain't good."

"It's not like that." They still hadn't even proved that he was having seizures.

Jim and Dum Dum exchanged a look of exasperation.

"Do you hear yourself?" said Dum Dum. "Do you see yourself when it happens?"

Bucky inspected the dirt that had been under his fingernails for the last three years.

"Every night," Jim said. "It's happened at least once for the last seven nights. You don't always"—Jim shook his hands while searching for the right words—"come around after."

"What the hell do you want me to do about it?" Bucky said.

Their faces went soft, and Bucky hated it. Jim said, "We want you to be OK. Why do you think we haven't said anything to Rogers?"

The better question was why Steve hadn't noticed it for himself. Bucky's throat got tight when he thought about that. He purposefully steered his thoughts away from why Steve hadn't noticed or why his body reacted to that question the way that it did.

"We know you don't wanna go home," Dum Dum said. That softness and understanding in his voice made Bucky want to scream. "We don't wanna send you there in a wooden box either. Could you imagine Rogers?" Dum Dum shivered for dramatic effect.

Bucky bit back a smirk. "I can't leave the punk out here," he confirmed.

"Then we have to do something about this," Jim said in a clipped tone.

"Like what?"

They stared at each other.

"That's what I thought."

The dirt under Bucky's nails was interesting again.

"We'll figure something out," said Dum Dum. "I was gonna suggest we ask Carter what she thinks, if she knows of anything that can be done under the table."

Bucky was thoughtful. "You think she'd do that?"

"What, for Cap's closest friend?" said Jim. "Probably."

Getting by because of who he was friends with? Bucky didn't like the sound of that. Debt was something he took seriously — maybe too seriously. Asking for help wasn't something Bucky usually did unless there was absolutely no other way. If Carter helped him, especially with something so big, then he'd be deep in her pocket. He didn't know the agent well enough to know whether or not her debt was a dangerous place to be.

"Let's just get through this mission and sort it out when we're back at base, hm?" said Dum Dum. Thank God for that guy. He nodded at Bucky. "You know we've got your back, but you gotta tell us when it happens. No one will say anything to Rogers, not until he catches on by himself. But you gotta be honest with us, Jimmy."

"Just try not to lose it in battle again, huh?" said Jim.

Bucky let himself laugh and acquiesce. "Thanks," he whispered to his hands.

"Gotta look out for our own," said Dum Dum.

"Your own?" said Jim. "What kind is that?"

"Hell," Dum Dum said too loudly given the hour, "you're all a bunch of Micks as far as I'm concerned."

Jim rolled his eyes. "Oh boy, that's what I've always wanted."

"Well you're welcome," said Dum Dum with a smile on his face. "Not just anyone gets that honour where I come from."

Bucky said, "You get called a pot-licker a lot where you come from?"

"You get that one a lot?" Dum Dum was laughing.

Shaking his head, Bucky said, "Nah. Steve did, 'cause he was so small."

"No Irish need apply," Dum Dum said. "What about you, Jim? You've got to have heard some good ones."

He shrugged. "Don't really want to get into it."

That was fair.

Jim looked toward Bucky and said, "Since you're up, I'm goin' to sleep. Enjoy your shift."

Bucky nodded. That was also fair. "Sounds good."

Jim burrowed into his own gear, a pup tent serving as his blanket. Running a hand through his stupid long hair, Bucky said, "You goin' too?"

Dum Dum shook his head. "Think I'll stay up a bit longer." He slapped the space next to him. Sit by me, the gesture said. Bucky got up and sat in the indicated space. His body felt heavier than usual.

"Now," said Dum Dum, "I really don't want to have to sit on you if you start going funny during a fight."

"I don't want that either." Shaking hands itched for a cigarette. There was already a fire, so Bucky lit one of his last six. It was easier when he had something to do with his hands — when he had something to do, period.

"I'm serious, Sarge. I'll cradle you like a suckling babe if I think you're not in there."

Looking sideways at Dum Dum, Bucky said, "That a promise?"

The big man barked with laughter and Bucky let show a self-satisfied smile.

"You know, I never had a kid brother before," said Dum Dum. "I think I may have been missing out."

"Who you callin' kid?"

"You, of course."

"You're hardly older than me."

"I think five years is a considerable amount." Dum Dum slung an arm around Bucky's shoulders and shook him a little. "Embrace it. You're someone's kid brother now."

"Fine, but only because your birthday's coming up." He shimmied out of the arm around his shoulders. "Gonna take some getting used to. I've never been the younger one."

"You'll like it."

"That so?"

"Yeah. You let your big brother Timmy take care of things. All you gotta do is make sure I'm fed."

As if Bucky hadn't been making sure everyone around him was fed for his entire life. "Where I come from, that's still part of the big brother's job."

"We're not where you come from anymore."

"You can say that again."

By the time morning came, everyone was back on their typical routine.

Carter had taken all the information they'd gathered from the factory and recorded all their accounts and then she disappeared into the mist. She left Steve the goddamn bike though. Thanks a lot, Carter.

Bucky hadn't been around when they talked about what they'd seen in the building, what they'd learned. Steve and Carter and Monty huddled together to really hash it out when their getaway truck had parked outside the city. All of them pored over the documents and tried to remember every last detail of what they saw inside. They wanted to make a comprehensive report for the S.S.R. for Carter to deliver. All of them got in on this sharing of intelligence except Bucky and Frenchie. The little guy sat next to Bucky on a pile of pebbles that used to be a wall that used to make up part of someone's home. They shared cigarettes and a canteen until it was time to go.

Perhaps Bucky should have been more concerned about what was going on given that HYDRA wanted him, but he just didn't have the nerve to listen. Whatever his mind could imagine was worse than any reality, right? If he was preparing for the worst, it was better to stay in his head. There was nothing worse than what was already in his head.

Speaking of his head, it kept filling with static. Jim said Bucky seized at least once every night. That wasn't wrong (besides the use of the word 'seize'). But it was more accurate to say that whatever it was had happened all night. He was never fully aware, but Bucky knew it was always happening. His head alternated between scratchy static and total blankness all night. He knew it because every time he got up from lying down to sleep, he felt even more exhausted than before. Like he'd gotten no rest at all. You weren't supposed to feel like a rubber band that had been stretched too much every time you got up.

This was war, Bucky told himself. Everyone was tired. His case wasn't unique. Suck it up and get on with it. What right did he have not to feel pain and be tired? What made him think he had the privilege to never struggle?

Be thankful you're still breathing, Barnes. If you can't do that, you know where the door is.

One of the Polish girls went with Carter back toward the sea. The other stayed with them and escorted them a few kilometres south to an airfield. She said that she had a small plane that could take some of them to someplace just outside Prague. Not all of them would fit. Bucky didn't miss a beat and immediately volunteered to keep his feet on the ground. He didn't care that there would be no parachuting out of the small plane — the less time he was airborne, the better.

He pretended not to notice the way the Polish woman — Kava — looked at him when he volunteered for the ground team. There wasn't time for that anymore. No part of Bucky was interested — could be interested.

Jim had to stay with the ground team because Steve still had to make personal radio check-ins with Phillips. Gabe was lucky number four of the ground team. His translating skills really made him a shoo-in for any op where they might encounter locals. Not to mention that his Browning would be invaluable in case they happened to stumble into any firefights. It's just a lot easier to escape when you've got a machine gun providing suppressing fire.

The team had never been separated like this before. Bucky could feel the apprehension building behind his sternum. He told himself to get used to it. The feeling wouldn't be going away until he saw the others safe and sound in Prague. Why did he have to be like this? It would be easier not to care. It would be easier if it were just him and his Johnson; a boy and his rifle.

So things were moving fast and he was in a bad mood (which seemed to be normal — Bucky was tired of being grumpy all the time). Steve had ridden off on that stupid fucking motorcycle and left the rest of them to stumble after him in a car that the other Polish woman obtained for them before she flew off with the others in the plane. She wouldn't say she stole it.

Europeans, Bucky thought.

On the plus side, it wasn't so bad being stuck in a tiny, shitty car with Jim and Gabe. They didn't have to walk, so that was a great. Bucky was so tired he was beginning to doubt his feet could carry him on a full day's march (which was hard to admit and very embarrassing). By now, Bucky knew it was futile to wish for things, but he sometimes found himself wishing that whatever waited for them in Prague would require his sniping skills. That way, he could lie around the whole time. The lack of movement made his head stir, but he would take mental screeching if it meant his body could lie still for a change.

Anyway, it was nice trying to sleep in the car. The cabin was warm (which was rare) and Jim and Gabe's voices were familiar. Bucky would doze sometimes, in the backseat, and when he'd wake up, it was their voices that reminded him where he was. At night, they'd roll the car off the road and into trees or a ditch. Sometimes it was better to sleep outside. Jim liked to lie on the hood of the car and sleep with his back reclined against the windscreen. Bucky hated when he did that; it made him so vulnerable. That guy was absolutely courting death.

Gabe agreed with Bucky, and the two of them made sure to hunker down somewhere with better cover. By the third night, they dug a foxhole together. Their hands were long past blistering — their palms nearly covered completely with callouses by now — as they buried their entrenching tools into the earth again and again. With no shortage of slapping and cursing, they convinced Jim to stop sleeping on the car, and Bucky installed the radioman in the foxhole while Gabe made sure he stayed put. After that, Bucky was free to find his own place to nest and settle in for night watch until Steve came back from marking their perimeter on that godforsaken motorcycle.

When he heard the echo of the engine, he'd dropped from his lofted position in the middle of the tree's branches and sat at the base of the trunk instead.

"Hey," Steve said. He unhooked the shield from his arm and sat down beside Bucky. Bad idea; his ass was going to be wet and muddy in a minute. Bucky didn't say anything — Steve had already sat. What was the point?

He was gonna look like a shit-stained flag.

"Hey," Bucky said.

"Whatcha doin'?"

He bent his head over the paper in his lap. "Writing home."

"Who?"

"Becca. Least I could do for missing the wedding."

"Yeah, well, you were a bit tied up." Bucky snorted and Steve continued, "I'm sure she'll understand."

"You know Becca. I might still be making it up to her next century."

Steve shrugged. "She shouldn't have had a wedding when she knew you were at war. It's her own damn fault you weren't there."

That wasn't going to be good enough for Bucky's sister. But maybe he could stretch the whole Krausberg thing as far as it could go when he got back home. Like he was doing with that excuse while he was still out here.

Steve shifted beside him. "You haven't written anyone yet?"

Bucky shook his head.

"Not since Kr—November?"

"Nope." Steve was staring at him so Bucky added, "Still don't know what to say."

"Oh," said Steve. "Yeah. I can see how . . ." He shook his head and said in much more normal (and less pitying) voice, "Well, you're not supposed to be using a flashlight out here anyway, Sergeant Barnes. Maybe sleep on it another night."

"Yes, Captain. Sorry, sir." Smiling, Bucky clicked off the light he was holding above the paper and folded the draft up, tucking it into a pocket inside his jacket. In the dark, it was easy for Bucky to pretend that they were just kids again. They were little Stevie Rogers and Bucktooth Barnes raising hell in Brooklyn. In the dark, he couldn't see that they weren't on a familiar, dusty city block. There was no proof other than the blood painting the insides of his skull that Bucky wasn't still that kid. In the dark, he couldn't see any of the things that time and war had done to both him and Steve.

"How's it going? You know, being on point constantly," Bucky said.

"It's going well. I know that voice; I know you hate the motorcycle, Buck. You just gotta listen to me and trust me when I say I can take care of myself now."

What Bucky's brain told him: You're obsolete, Barnes. Steve's got confidence and the strength to move mountains now. He's got a girl who could turn you inside out and an army to command. He has bigger and better things to do and no time to be carrying your weight. He thought he was getting something else when he pulled you out of Krausberg and asked you to follow him into hell. You're not what he thought he was getting. It's only out of love for what you used to be that he still carries your useless shell of a body around. Be the bigger man and let him off the hook. Stop sitting there with your mouth open waiting for him to feed you. Have some pride. Salvage what's left of your dignity.

It's time to head home, soldier boy. Broken soldier boy, it's time for you to go home.

It took a lot of will for Bucky to withhold from physically attempting to shake the thoughts from his head. His brain was wrong. Steve still needed him — and even if he didn't, he needed someone to manage the rest of the squad. Who cared if Bucky dropped down one hundred places on Steve's list of Important Things? Steve was still Number One on Bucky's list, and that meant something.

Not yet, he told himself. I'm not that broken yet.

"You keep telling yourself that, Steve."

Neither said anything for a while. Bucky wondered if, in that stretch of silence, Steve was pretending that they were still who they were in 1941. Maybe he too was letting himself imagine just for a few moments that they could still be the same people regardless of where they were or what they had done or what had been done to them.

In the dark, Bucky could pretend Steve was still small and his weak eyes would look first and foremost for Bucky in a crowd. In the dark, Steve hadn't moved on without him — hadn't grown out of their friendship.

It was futile to wish things, but sometimes Bucky wished he could stay in the dark.

Steve turned toward him. He was about to say something Bucky was sure he didn't want to hear — he knew it.

"So, uh," Bucky said abruptly, "who do you want for  next watch?"

"Oh. Um, uh. Jones. We're, uh, we're in the middle of a series of great conversations."

"Jones it is," Bucky said and jumped to his feet. The foxhole wasn't too far away, but it was far enough to breathe.

He was quiet as he shook Gabe by the shoulder. There was the quick, poisonous sting of envy when Gabe's eyes opened and he got to blink real, precious sleep from them.

"Batter up," Bucky said lowly.

When Gabe was ready, Bucky gripped his hand and pulled the translator out of the foxhole.

"Hope it's quiet," Bucky whispered.

"Me, too," said Gabe. "You get some real rest, OK?"

Bucky's cheeks spasmed and so it looked like he smiled truly, if not briefly. The place in the foxhole beside Jim was still warm when Bucky folded himself into it. Jim hummed and opened one eye. He squinted at Bucky with it.

"You still look like shit," Jim said.

"Yeah? And you look like the asshole that shit fell out of."

Jim snorted. "Not bad, Barnes."

"Thanks."

His eyes closed again. "You start shakin' and I'm gonna know. Remember you're not supposed to lie to me."

"I remember."

Joke's on you. The shaking usually only happens in my head. The majority of the iceberg is under the water.

The two of them settled into the foxhole like peas in a pod. Bucky stared up at the budding branches of the tree above him. Time to endure another long night of mental absence without the benefit of rest.

Falsworth didn't like being separated from the rest of the team. The distance reminded him of being a commander, and he hadn't turned out to be much of a commander. The responsibility had eaten at him from the inside out. Since Krausberg and all that had happened there, Falsworth had felt himself begin to regrow what he'd lost. Some of his bitterness was sweetening back to neutral. That hatred of his own men was beginning to subside. The pessimism eased like clouds after a storm. (He was an Englishman, though. Things wouldn't be sunny too often, but it wasn't always clouds and rain.)

But being separated like this was making it worse. He worried about the four Tommys that were still on the ground. Falsworth may not be in charge of lives anymore, but there were still Tommys around him that had the power to undo him. A whole complement of men had dwindled to six, but their weight had increased exponentially. Despite that, Falsworth knew it had been the right choice to abdicate the role of commander and take on a different responsibility. If any of these Tommys died, he'd be done for. But at least he wouldn't be losing them every day — watching pieces of himself turn dead and hard.

Falsworth, Dum Dum, and Frenchie had already landed outside Prague in their little plane, and the Pole was gone again. It had only taken a few hours to fly across those borders. No one even shot at them. Landing in the airfield had been a little tricky, but the resistance fighters met them soon enough and folded them into their ranks like honoured guests. There were celebrations nearly every night. There was never a lot of food; it was wartime after all. But there was always something going around to rot your gut with.

This night, Falsworth drank rubbish foreign ale, learned a new song in a language he didn't understand, and kissed a woman whose name he didn't know (not that that was anything remarkable or unique).

These people — all of these people. It was hard.

The resistance had a German prisoner. The woman whose name Falsworth didn't know had shown it to him; she was responsible for bringing him broth, water, and bread made in part of sawdust. Late that night, after she'd passed out, Falsworth left her and went back to find the prisoner. No one guarded him, not really. He was secure where he was. Falsworth sat across from the prisoner and where he was shackled to a support beam.

This was an appropriate place to be angry. This was an appropriate person to be angry with. Falsworth sat and stared at the prisoner while the resistance still celebrated the arrival of part of Captain America's team three days after the fact. The prisoner looked no older than twenty. Didn't have even the shadow of a moustache, no trace of a pending beard — hell, his face still hinted at the roundness of childhood. Falsworth forced eye contact and the prisoner spat at him. The liquid landed short of Falsworth's boots by about a foot.

No fire ignited in Falsworth's chest. His heart remained steady and cold. It didn't care about this.

Bombs had been dropped on London. So many times, the city would quake and shiver. Parts of it would collapse. It wasn't just London. In cities and towns, the sirens would wail. Falsworth remembered the screams as people panicked and fled for tunnels and underground cover. The unbridled panic in the air. The corpses of those who didn't make it underground would lie under rocks and he would help recover them afterwards. Sometimes he even had to drag the bodies of those who had made it out of rocks — shelter that had taken a direct hit and hadn't stood a chance.

Falsworth had had his hands stained with the blood of children as he lined up their bodies beside those of their parents on cracking streets after the sound of beating propellers and whining engines had faded. The Germans had done that. Because of the fucking Germans, Falsworth had to see these things every time he closed his eyes and let his guard down.

He'd had to write letters home when men who trusted him were blown apart in Africa. It took more and more out of him every time he had to sign his name on those letters. The stack of envelopes. The list of names that didn't mean anything anymore because of him — because of James Montgomery Falsworth, Major, formerly of His Majesty's 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade and currently of Captain Steven Grant Rogers's so-called Howling Commandos.

None of those letters would have had to be written if it wasn't for the Germans (and Falsworth's own ineptitude at commanding). Tommys died because of them, those fucking Krauts. The fucking wooden mines that the detectors couldn't pick up — how many lives did Falsworth lose because he'd sent his men into one of those fields that was supposed to be safe? The Germans and their fucking cleverness and eyes for design.

How many people had died because a lunatic wanted the impossible? How many were still dying? How much suffering was the world feeling this very moment because of a country full of people who refused to do the right thing?

Falsworth looked at the prisoner and didn't feel anything. They hadn't stripped him of his uniform. It wasn't even that dirty. There was a hungry, starved look about him. Defiance still in his blood. But Falsworth couldn't bring himself to be angry with the prisoner or what he represented. Did he know any better? Did he know anything besides the violent struggle it took just to survive? Youth. It wasn't his fault, what he was born into.

That didn't make him guiltless (didn't make either of them guiltless).

Falsworth stared hard at the prisoner, hand on his sidearm. The prisoner was watching that hand. Defiance still. Daring.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. Why had Falsworth hated his men and his home when it was this prisoner's fault that every terrible thing was happening? He didn't hate his enemies like he should. It wasn't fair. Falsworth had hated his men and had been relieved to be free of them. He had been happy when his countrymen died. He thought he hated the Germans for what their bloodlust had turned his home — had turned him — into.

That wasn't it, though. That wasn't who he hated, wasn't what he hated. Standing here now, it wasn't true. He didn't hate the Germans (he should, he should). He hated what they'd made Falsworth see in himself — the truth they'd made him realise. Falsworth stormed across the room and yanked the prisoner's head back by his hair, exposing his neck. Pulling out his Colt, he put the barrel flush against the prisoner's temple. Air was harsh in his throat. Falsworth snarled at the prisoner — there was finally fear in his eyes. The smell of urine tainted the air.

That defiance withered at last.

"I pity you," he growled at the prisoner.

At that child.

Dawn wasn't far away, and Gabe Jones sat beneath a tree with a letter in his lap. The paper was old and brittle now. It was years old. Years. Not merely two or three years old. He'd received the letter after he left for Howard University. Since he'd enlisted, Gabe carried the letter in his pack, folded up in a plastic sheet to protect it from the weather. Moments before he was taken to Krausberg, Gabe had liberated the old paper and tucked it into his boot.

The paper bore creases because of that choice, but at least Gabe still had it.

He was no fool. He knew the paper was old and that war wasn't a place where things were treated gently. When Captain Rogers rescued them from hell and led them back to Allied territory — the very night they returned, Gabe took the letter out of his boot and transcribed it onto a new piece of paper. It wasn't the same, but he now had a backup, a copy. He'd tried to replicate the handwriting as best he could by tracing the words. Later, he'd gotten the help of a journalist and was able to take a picture of the original letter. He carried the copy letter and the photograph with the original, all of them wrapped up in a plastic sheet and nestled in with his spare clothes.

Captain Rogers had retired for the night several hours ago. Gabe was supposed to wake Jim to take the final leg of the night watch, but Gabe had elected to let the man sleep. Jim would never admit it, but he was having a rough go of it lately. Gabe knew his friend could use the sleep. Besides, it was always nice to have someone in your debt when they got the vegetable stew ration and you were stuck with beans, beans, and more beans.

Speaking of C-rations, Gabe was kind of grateful for the splitting up of their team and getting to ride in a car. It was miles better than hearing Dugan and Barnes complain about how heavy the cans were. When the two of them were feeling grouchy at the same time — look out and plug your ears.

Gabe took a small, measured bite of a cracker in his B-unit. It tasted like cardboard. Gabe was almost embarrassed to admit that he was beginning to like the taste. It was better than his own souring mouth — they really needed to get better dental supplies. Maybe a better whetstone for his shaving kit.

And some more goddamn underpants. Gabe knew more than a one of the Commandos had decided to forgo the garment all together. Alternating the two pairs they were issued wasn't worth it to him.

Gabe's fingers played with the edge of the letter. He looked down at it. The light wasn't strong enough to read by, but it had been a long time since Gabe had memorized the contents. With the tip of his index finger, he traced the slight indent of the name at the bottom: Jung-sook Cho.

She'd been an elderly woman who lived on the opposite side of town as Gabe's family. Her house was the only house in her neighbourhood that wasn't inhabited by white people. Jung-sook was a widow who lived with her two grandkids. Their parents had sent the kids with her to the United States to see what they could do. They came from old money, and money is a universal language. The Chos lived in a beautiful house because they could afford it, but none of the neighbours so much as waved hello to her or the kids.

Jung-sook had a beautiful garden. Her lawn was immaculate. There wasn't a single smudge on the paint of her home. Hell, the birds didn't even shit in her yard. There were trees everywhere, but none of the branches were ever dead and hanging. The leaves never rotted in the grass as the seasons changed. Everything about Jung-sook's home was perfect except for — in the eyes of the neighbours — the colour of the people that lived inside.

Gabe had been seven years old when Jung-sook's grandkids moved out. She was alone in the big empty house. Age was stealing her functions. Once when Gabe was walking back from a charity event at church, he saw old Jung-sook lying on the sidewalk in obvious pain. People walked right by her and pretended not to see.

Gabe had gone right up to her and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, are you alright? Do you need some help?"

Jung-sook was proud and stubborn like all old folks, but she let Gabe help her up. Her ankle was injured, so he asked her where she lived and if it was OK if he helped her back there. He was worried, see.

It was the first time Gabe had ever been in such a grand house. To be frank, he'd thought Jung-sook was senile when she gave him directions to her home in the fancy part of town. But she had the key and it unlocked the door. It was so cool and serene inside. He'd never seen or imagined any of the things that decorated the inside.

He guided her to her seat and asked if he should go get anyone; was there anyone here who could help her? Jung-sook said it was only her now. Gabe asked if he could get her anything, if she was comfortable with him being in her home. She asked for water, so he got it for her. After a half hour, Gabe told her that he had to get home but he would like to check up on her the next day, if that was alright.

Jung-sook waved a hand and said "bah."

Gabe showed up the next day and hundreds of days after that. She taught him how to use chopsticks and attempted to teach him to speak Korean. It was his first true experience with another language and the concept that people could communicate in so many different ways. She would laugh and laugh at his pronunciation. It was a doomed attempt; he had no ear for it. But it was a language Gabe thought he regretted not learning. She had him try kimchi and let him watch as she made gomguk. There were hot days sitting out on her back veranda, privacy provided by her leafy trees, where they shared banchan and conversation. On Gabe's thirteenth birthday, she cooked beef marinated in gochujang and smiled at the faces he pulled. Afterward, she poured him some sikhye and asked him how school was.

It was the longest anyone in Gabe's family had stayed in school. His father was already impatient with him and wanted him to drop out so he could help out the family more. Help them out financially. Gabe already had a job doing mechanical repairs at the nearby farm — he'd been doing it since he was nine and they needed small hands to reach tight places. But when school was in session, he didn't have nearly as much time to do other jobs. Gabe knew his father resented it but he never forced Gabe out of school. His disapproval was made loud and clear in other ways. Never did he force his will though. He left that choice up to Gabe.

The decision to stay in school and draw the constant ire of his father and siblings was not an easy a choice to make. Jung-sook helped him. Gabe thought that he probably would have dropped out before he was twelve if it wasn't for her. She advocated education in her quiet, hard voice. If he ever stopped learning, Jung-sook said, she'd beat him senseless and never look his way again. If he stopped learning, he might as well be dead.

She paid for him to go to better schools. She made sure he was fed; Gabe Jones was the only one in school who ate hotteok at lunchtime. When Jung-sook thought Gabe wasn't learning what he ought to, she sat him down and had private tutors teach him. Education was important. Education and family. Gabe learned southern manners at his mother's side and a certain kind of +etiquette at his halmoni Jung-sook's.

His mother demanded to meet Jung-sook when Gabe was eleven. He escorted the old lady to their house on the other side of town. Their home was sweltering. But Jung-sook had looked around their cramped, hot little house with wetness in her eyes. They had chicken and dumplings, creamed corn, and collard greens Gabe's mother had cooked with ham hocks. There was discomfort evident in Jung-sook's posture, but only kind words formed on her lips. Gabe chalked it up to a new place and a room full of strangers.

It wasn't until after he'd graduated high school that Gabe really started to think of Jung-sook as a person who had lived a life and not just a grandmother figure. When faced with the idea of college — an unprecedented option for a man such as himself, where no one in his family had ever made it out of the fifth grade — Gabe went to Jung-sook for advice.

She didn't have much to say. And that was when Gabe understood that Jung-sook wasn't educated. She was never afforded the chance to learn. Her family had money and they took care of her because she was old and they felt obligated to do it. She cooked and watched over children. At her age, she had agreed to raise the grandkids in the United States because it was her only chance to get somewhere else and be away from the culture she both treasured and resented.

Gabe loved her harder for it, understood why she was so insistent that he pursue education if that was what he wanted. His family be damned.

Newly moved in at Howard, Gabe received the letter from Jung-sook. She said she was proud of him. She said she loved him like her own children (who were under Japanese control back home) and her grandkids (who were busy with their lives and didn't get to visit as much as she or they wanted). It was all very pleasant and warm, talking about forging bonds that bridged cultures and defied skin colours. At the bottom of the letter, she'd written that, when the white folks gave her dirty looks and refused to treat her with respect, she told them that if they worked hard enough and prayed every night that one day they could be as good a man as Gabriel Jones.

The wind in Poland picked up and ruffled the yellow page of Gabe's letter. He held in a sigh and traced Jung-sook's name again. The day the original copy of this letter was lost was going to be a dark day for him. Everything that had happened out here — everything that Gabe had done on these battlefields…. He just needed a reminder that he was a good person and he was making the right choice sometimes.

Even though hours in a confined space made his head stormy, Bucky couldn't say that he hated the car-motorcycle arrangement. Gabe woke all of them up and they mussed around like half-dead things for a few minutes until all their brains turned back on. The night had been like the last for Bucky. He breakfasted on two dextrose tablets, a half cup of shit coffee, and a cigarette. Steve was looking at him like his mother did when he came over for Sunday dinner but hadn't met them at church earlier. Bucky's brain was too fried from sizzling and freezing all night for him to put on a show for the captain; he smoked that cigarette until it was just a stub burning his fingertips.

Jim bartered a trade. If he had a little rest, maybe Bucky wouldn't have given away all his "Meat & Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce" for a single can of "Meat with Vegetable Hash", which everyone knew tasted like day-old ass. But hey, Gabe threw in his cigarette ration if Jim gave him a can of the spaghetti in exchange for a packet of the oatmeal cereal. So Bucky didn't feel like he'd been swindled too bad when it was all said and done.

Then it was time to get back on their feet, cover the foxhole as best they could. Steve headed out to ride ahead on the motorcycle. Gabe led Jim and Bucky to the car. They wheeled it back on a path, piled inside, and started out after the motorcycle. Sure, Bucky had a lot to say about the arrangement. But it wasn't all bad.

That was until the thing got blown halfway to hell. They were just motoring down the pathway when car was thrown onto its side. The three of them clattered around inside, banging into each other and the unforgiving walls of the cabin. Bucky's vision twinned and his stomach rolled. It was hot in the car. When the rolling stopped, he struggled to collect himself, lungs on fire. He eventually found an egress point in the place that used to be the back windscreen, and he fell through it in a heap. His body carried him several steps away before his mind ever came back to itself; it was still in the car laughing at Jim's imitation of Monty.

Gunshots were the first thing that he registered. There were shots sounding everywhere. It was like he was in the centre of a deadly circle. But then fire came into focus — the car was on fire!

"Gabe!" he tried to say through clumsy lips. "Jim!"

Fuck, his brain spluttered.

Crackling fire and echoing gunshots and there was a distant mechanical whine somewhere — Bucky went straight back into the burning car to retrieve his friends.

(He'd done this in Africa. He was supposed to be leading a scouting party. He was three bodies behind the point man. They had their rifles in hand but the barrels were pointed down. About three-quarters of a mile from the frontline, they hit resistance. Machine guns. Nonstop rattling.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang until the belt ran out.

"Get down!" Bucky had yelled then. He had twisted his hand into the nearest private's field jacket and yanked him down. The bullets had zinged above their heads — it was so loud. But it wasn't enough to drown out the screaming.

The man on point had taken a hit. He had screamed and screamed.

"Be quiet, shut up!" Bucky had yelled then. "Take cover and be quiet!"

His men had moved like cockroaches fleeing the light; seeking out dark corners where no one would spill their innards. Still the man who had been on point screamed. Bucky could see him from the place where he hid. He could see the man bleeding from his guts. Four holes had been punched in that man's bowels. He never had a chance. He just cried, yelling out, "Momma! Momma!"

But Bucky had pleaded for the man to just shut up and be quiet. He made the others retreat. The bodies that had been in front of Bucky but behind the man on point escaped with the aid of Bucky's covering fire. They were all gone except for Bucky and the dying man.

"Momma. Momma," he said. He was quiet now. Bloody lips.

Bucky didn't know whether or not those were that man's last words. He had left; Bucky turned tail and ran after the rest of his men, leaving that last man to die alone.)

Coward, a voice screamed in Bucky's head now. Coward!

All at once, Bucky's ears filled with the rattling of a machine gun again.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

The belts never ended — it never ended.

There was screaming, too. But it was different. Bucky looked around. He was fifty feet from the burning car somehow. Jim and Gabe were sitting on the ground at his feet. They were breathing hard and sweating, but they weren't burnt to a crisp. They didn't look dead or dying. They didn't call for their mothers.

How much time had he lost?

A gun fired in their direction. By now, Bucky's body reacted to that sound without needing any instruction. He dropped down on top of Gabe, who promptly groaned. Bucky didn't apologize because he heard the engine of Steve's fucking motorcycle again.

"Fuck me," he whispered.

"No thanks," said Gabe. He groaned and rolled out from under Bucky.

Bucky scrambled to his feet. His boots were moving forward before the rest of him was upright. He didn't know what direction he needed to go. Hell, he didn't even know what was going on. But he did know that Steve was out there and there were guns being fired — and the car had been blown up.

And he was a coward, such a big fucking coward.

Ambush? Was that it? Had someone recognized them in the car and blown it off the road?

He couldn't think — couldn't think. The motorcycle's engine tore what little focus he had into two. Bucky's feet started moving faster.

Why didn't he have any weapons?

What was going on? Was any of this real? Was he back—?

Something really fucking painful slammed into his back. The ground caught him and snapped his jaw closed on his tongue. Blood pooled immediately in his mouth. The world realigned itself and his missing time came back to him. It replayed in still frames behind his eyes:

Jim doing a mean imitation of Monty; Gabe and Bucky's laughter filling every last crevice of that car.

A loud bang that hit the back of the car, flipping it up and onto the side Bucky and Jim were sitting on. Bruises on their skin (well, more bruises), smoke in their lungs, flames licking their skin.

Bang- bang-bang. Guns shooting up the outside of the car.

Busting the back window with his elbow.

Crawling out of the car on the side where no shots were being fired.

Going back when he realized Jim and Gabe hadn't gotten out.

Finding Jim first, hooking an arm around his waist and dumping him out the window. It was hot. Then Gabe was out in the same manner.

He dragged the two them as far away as he could while they bitched at him that they were perfectly fine and they could walk on their own.

Steve out there, taking on the shooters on that godforsaken motorcycle — fuck you, Carter!

It was stupid. No one was watching Steve's back. The idiot made himself vulnerable when he shifted his defences to a spot that had been hurt before, leaving the place that had been well-defended before completely open.

Bucky looked up because he was hearing more screaming. It wasn't Steve. Steve wasn't screaming. It was everyone else. The sources of gunfire were being cut off one at a time. Focusing his eyes was hard, but Bucky was able to make out Steve on that stupid, stupid bike cutting through the shooters like a hot knife through butter. Vision twinning, Bucky shook his head, spat out a mouthful of blood, and watched Steve.

He jumped off the bike, kicking it at a machine gunner at the same time. The shield was in place. It cracked the head of a rifleman. Steve ran and planted both boots on the chest of one half of mortar team. He landed on the ground but spun immediately, catching the second man in the face with the heel of his boot. The shield cracked down on the man's face just to be sure.

Steve unholstered his sidearm and shot twice at another rifle man. He unhooked a grenade off one corpse, pulled the wire and threw the thing clear across the circle. Bucky watched in awe as the thing arced over his head and landed about thirty yards to his left — the throw had to have been damn near seventy yards total. And Steve hadn't even looked like he was trying too hard to throw it. Detonation and another machine gun was silenced.

But another one stared up right after the noise of the grenade detonation settled. A few sluggish seconds passed and Bucky recognized it as Gabe's Browning. He was firing back. Why wasn't Bucky firing anything? Why was he just lying here while everyone else was fighting?

The shield flew through the air and into a group of soldiers that were trying to set up artillery — Jesus, they were going to shoot Steve with an anti-tank gun. Bucky tried to get up but something heavy was still holding him down. He shouted in frustration until he realized it was Jim.

"Gonna knock it the fuck off now?" Jim said with acid in his voice.

"Get off," Bucky said. It came out as a snarl.

"Shut up."

He struggled some more but couldn't get any traction and his vision swam. Blood and bile came out in a stringy mixture when Bucky spat again. His eyes searched out Steve again.

The captain was in the middle of the anti-tank crew. The shield bashed heads. Steve's boots made the soldiers' knees bend in ways they shouldn't. His elbows cracked their ribs and orbital bones. Steve favoured hand-to-hand, close quarters fighting over shooting. Bucky couldn't fathom why. The greater the distance between him and death, the better. The shield knocked a soldier off his feet, banked off the anti-tank gun, caught another man in the groin, and jumped back into Steve's grip. Steve kicked one of them that squirmed and was running toward the last group of men standing.

They were neutralized in short order.

The only sound was the crackling of the burning car and it was too quiet. Steve was checking all the bodies. Gabe was probably doing the same. Jim got up and walked toward Steve without a backward glance at Bucky.

Bucky pushed himself up so he was sitting on his heels. Another mouthful of blood, bile, and saliva landed in the grass. He ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth, feeling the slices in it that his teeth had made. It stung and his jaw hurt.

He deserved it.

"Everyone OK?" Steve called.

"OK!" Gabe said.

"Fine," said Jim.

Bucky grunted and got to his feet.

The four of them converged on a hill where the anti-tank gun had been in the process of being setup. Steve frowned at them all.

"How far are we from Prague?" said Jim.

"At the rate we were going, we would have been there in a few hours," said Steve.

"How long now that three of us are walking?" said Gabe.

Steve shrugged and frowned. "You guys aren't walking to Prague."

"Carter leave you a magic carpet, too?" Bucky said.

"The bike's fine. I'll take it and ride ahead, see if I can find some help. Intelligence said we might be able to find sympathetic citizens. We're not quite close enough to contact any resistance OPs yet."

It was Steve's Giving Orders voice. There was no room for argument. A pity since Bucky had some good counterpoints to that plan.

"Get the bodies out of the open. Take all the supplies and papers you can, especially the weapons. Get about a mile away from here; head south. Hunker down. I'll come find you when I get some transportation."

They did as he said and it was awful. They didn't speak much to each other. It was no fun to have to lug bodies around. And it was no fun to add their enemies' supplies to the weight of their own. And then walk a mile. Gabe hadn't gotten much sleep last night; it was a wonder that guy didn't just drop down on the ground the moment they found a decent place to hide.

"Get some shut eye," Bucky said to him after they'd unloaded themselves and established a perimeter some twenty minutes later.

"Yeah. Yeah, OK," Gabe said. His jaw quivered as he held back a yawn.

Jim kept giving Bucky sharp looks, which Bucky steadfastly ignored. An hour and twenty minutes passed before Bucky said, "It won't happen again."

Jim made an angry, disbelieving sound. Bucky thought he deserved that, too.

They saw a wagon rolling toward them a few minutes later. Jim got up and held his grease gun horizontally above his head. Steve waved from the front of the wagon. There was another body beside him on the bench. It was a bearded man, they saw, when the wagon pulled up before them.

Their new wheels were powered by literal horses.

The animals stank and dug at the ground. One snorted at Bucky as he walked by. He jumped in surprise and dropped his pack. All the goddamn cans fell right on his foot. Everyone, including the man who evidently owned the horse-and-carriage, laughed. Bucky stared at them all. Then a breath broke out of his chest and he laughed, too. It felt good to breathe again. He wasn't underwater anymore.

"Even the horses are out to get me," he said while rolling his eyes.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You're gettin' paranoid, Buck." He took the pack and put it in the back of the wagon.

"Let's just get to Prague," he said to Steve and shoved the captain lightly in the shoulder. Bucky settled into the back of the wagon next to his bag and Gabe. Reaching a hand out to the driver — is he called a driver? — Bucky introduced himself and thanked the man for his help. Whether or not the guy spoke English was up for debate. He smiled and nodded and shook Bucky's hand.

The wagon trundled south. Gabe fell asleep on Bucky's shoulder. Jim sat back and stared at Bucky, an annoying smile on his face and his eyebrows arched.

"Again last night," Bucky said lowly, so that Gabe didn't wake (but mostly so that Steve didn't hear).

Jim nodded and all the tension in the air evaporated. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Fuck you, too."

They laughed.

Chapter Text

In all honesty, Jim was sorry to see the horse-drawn carriage go. Sure, it smelled of horseshit and misery, but there was something he liked about the rhythmic clip-clop of those hooves on the ground, even when the sound was muted by dewy grass. It was also nice to go a few kilometres without having to lug the damn radio on his back. Thing got heavy after a while no matter how many "improvements" Stark made to the design. (Eating a few rations was more effective at lightening Jim's load than Stark's tinkering had ever been.)

The other things the engineer invented for them were more interesting. Jim would gladly carry some of those babies around before he packed another battery for the radio. Sure, the guys needed the radio. But they'd been just fine so far, hadn't they? They needed it, but did they really, really need it?

Something to keep his mind off the stink of horseshit.

But they were booted from the carriage by the order of Captain America and told to hoof it the rest of the way to the outskirts of Prague, where they'd be met by some resistance men. From what Jim heard — and he made a point to not hear much — this whole damn country was a mess. And how it had come to be occupied? Yeesh. The Czechs were really unlucky motherfuckers.

When Cap gave the order, Jim shook Barnes off his shoulder; the guy was leaning on Jim real heavy-like. Of course, the lousy Mick didn't have the manners to fall asleep. Just sat there staring off at nothing. Barnes's eyes were starting to look really round, red, and sunken. Looked awful.

Jim and Gabe pulled their packs back on. Was it possible that they could have gotten heavier while they rode in the back of the carriage? Jim was beginning to think so. Gabe wiped at his nose and watched beside Jim as Barnes practically fell out of the back of the carriage. He looked like sludge; his body wasn't truly solid. Just some ball of grease rolling around.

Gabe sniffed and swiped his hand under his nose again.

"You catchin' somethin'?" Barnes said.

He lives after all, thought Jim.

Gabe shrugged. "Just the weather. I'll be fine."

But it brought the life back to Barnes. His arms didn't look so heavy. Lights sparked back to life in his eyes. Jim rolled his own eyes and turned to Cap.

"Lead the way," he said.

Cap had his eyebrows raised at the three of them. But then he shook his head and said, "Form up. I'll be at the head of the column. Morita take the rear—"

"Yes, sir!" Jim said with enthusiasm.

It was the captain's turn to roll his eyes. Pointing at Barnes and Gabe, he said, "You two stay somewhere in-between."

"Between Steve's head and Jim's rear," Barnes said to Gabe. "Where else would a guy want to be?"

Gabe whispered back, "I can think of a few places."

"Wanna tell me about 'em?"

Gabe shook his head. The helmet on his head bobbled comically. "Nah. Those are just for me."

Jim's fingers toyed with a cigarette in his pocket. There wouldn't really be a risk in lighting one. Smoking was allowed during marches. And he was looking at a whole day of listening to those two trade innuendos. Didn't take long for Jim to light one. Cap didn't have much to say about the conversation that took place between them. Occasionally, he'd look over his shoulder (first at Barnes and then at Gabe) and catch Jim's eyes. They'd exchange commentary with the arch of an eyebrow or twitch of the lip.

Bringing up the rear had a few advantages. Jim had a great view of both Barnes and Gabe. Those two knew how to conceal truths on their faces, but, Jim was glad to find, neither knew how to hide it in their postures or the way they walked. He could see the sag of both their shoulders. Barnes's toes would catch in the grass every couple hundred steps before he made a deliberate correction. Then he'd get tired and the cycle would start all over again. Gabe walked more stiffly than usual. Not just stiff, but sloppy at the same time. However that was possible. Their translator was coming down with something and he was hiding it better than Jim thought he would be capable.

All that intelligence and the nice guy persona made Jim think that Gabe Jones didn't tell lies, even lies of omission.

Barnes and Gabe would bump shoulders when their fatigue cycles synched up. Jim rolled his eyes at the two of them laughing and lightly shoving each other to play off the moment. They joked about naps and being drunk from several nights ago.

When it happened for the third time, Gabe said, "Reminds me of my first kiss. There was all sorts of head-knocking."

"That's not how you're supposed to do it," Barnes said.

"Yeah, well, I know that now. It takes practice."

Even from behind, Jim could see Barnes rolling his eyes. "You don't need practice, Gabe."

"Don't try to tell me that you came out of the gate kissing like a Casanova."

"I did! You don't need practice when you just have it. Tell 'em, Steve."

Cap tossed a look over his shoulder that had trouble written all over it. "Casanova isn't really the word I'd use to describe Bucky back then."

"Don't tell me you're still jealous," said Barnes.

Cap shrugged. His shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. "Jealous of what? How much you embarrassed yourself? Betty McPoyle is probably still traumatized."

"If she was so traumatized, then why did she go out with me three times in the tenth grade?"

Cap shrugged. "Some people's brains are never right again after trauma."

Jim sniggered. His imagination was working overtime.

"Wanna elaborate?" Gabe asked the captain.

"If you look really close," said Cap, "you can see a scar under Bucky's chin."

Barnes's hand jumped to his face. "That had nothing to do with Betty and you know it, you lying sack of shit."

"I just remember things differently, I guess," said Cap.

"If that's the way you wanna play it, why don't we talk about the time you tripped into Eleanor Gribsby's chest and needed seven stitches?"

Jim nearly choked on the smoke he'd just inhaled. He'd never get tired of imaging the Rogers that Barnes had grown up with. Cap was just so big. It was hard to imagine him any other way. On the other hand, seeing a guy that used to be so small as a giant must be just as bizarre for Barnes.

Cap looked over his shoulder and said, "It wasn't my fault she was so tall and, uh, developed."

"I think I'd have taken the stitches," Jim said.

"Oh, definitely," said Barnes. "But not the humiliation that a girl whooped your ass. Took months for that one to die down."

"It only happened because she was the biggest one in the class," Cap said. "They stopped talkin' because she could have done it to anyone."

"That, and you got your molars knocked out by Everett Geracy."

"They were loose anyway."

Gabe turned and caught Jim's eye. "Small favours," he said.

Jim said around his cigarette, "There must be more broads like Carter than we realize."

"If that's the case, we're all doomed," said Barnes.

"I look forward to it," said Cap.

"What was that you were saying about places that were just for you, Gabe?" Barnes asked.

The two of 'em snickered like kids on their way home from school. Jim kicked the bottom of Gabe's boot when he took a step. Jim smiled sweetly when Gabe gave him a harmless dirty look, and he lit another cigarette.

It was a long march.

The physical distance that they had to cover wasn't that long at all, Steve noted. It was a mystery why the journey felt like it took so long. He suspected that the awful feeling of being out in the open had something to do with it. But he didn't lead the men into any more ambushes, and the conversation was lively to say the least. Never mind that Steve increased the distance between himself and the rest of them a few times. Being a soldier didn't make him exempt from being a decent human being.

If she were still here, Sarah Rogers would be proud of her son.

A Czech resistance fighter met them outside the city. Jones stepped up to the head of the column with Steve. The Czech and Jones spoke to each other in French, their best mutual language. Jones introduced the man to the rest of them as Jan Novák. They were told to be on alert but not to appear too militant. Then they were off, appearing as normal as possible.

A stinking tram took them deeper into the city. Nazi flags (and, deeper in the heart of the city, HYDRA flags) hung from damn near every window. The people were small and bent as they went about their business. Bent, but not yet broken. The only cars on the streets sported tiny flags bearing swastikas.

After all the things Steve had seen and done, ruined places still made bile rise up in the back of his throat. He'd never seen Prague before the war; never even really cared to know a damn thing about the country with such a weird name, Czechoslovakia. Steve didn't have to know what the place looked like only a few short years ago to know that he was looking at something beautiful as it rotted and died. The city wasn't bombed to hell and littered with the stones that used to contain lives. For the most part, it was one of the most well-preserved cities — architecturally — that Steve had come across since all of this started.

He supposed that was what surrendering to occupation earned a man: Untouched buildings, devastated people.

The sight of Novák talking with the grey locals and leading them through this city reminded Steve that the people here hadn't wanted surrender. They would have taken the bombs over occupation; the freedom to die over a life lived in fear. That obligation to fight for convictions he could never compromise on was what Steve had fought for before he'd ever stepped foot on an army base. None of these people had been given the chance to fight because someone in a fancy suit thought it was better for them to stay put, told them it was for their own good. He was saving their lives by prohibiting action.

The tram stopped and a crowd of German officers boarded. Everyone around Steve shuffled away from them, heads bowed. Every instinct in Steve told him to plant his feet and face those officers head-on. Never had Steve run away from confrontation. Not with bullies, not with his mother, not with his teachers and priests — certainly not with Bucky. If he ran or ducked, another fight would be just around the corner. Better to sort it out here and now.

Steve set his jaw and began to lift his head in the direction of the officers when something stopped him. It was a jab in the arm. Steve looked first at his arm and then at Bucky. His friend's fist was still curled up tight, and the stubborn duck face was in place.

Bucky shook his head. "What do you plan to do? Start a fight in here?" he said in a low voice.

Steve looked from Bucky's hard stare back at the German officers. Another punch and Steve looked away from them.

"Why not?" he said.

Bucky jerked his head toward the front of the car. "That's why not."

Steve bent his neck to see. Three young girls stood huddled together. They were holding hands. Their eyes were closed and their lips were moving. Steve thought it was possible that they might be praying. They were all with child.

"Jesus," he said and quickly looked away. "They can't be more than fifteen."

Bucky didn't say anything, but he stood squarely in front of Steve, his back to the German officers. The message was clear: Pay attention to your surroundings, punk.

So Steve restrained himself and didn't attack the men on the tram even though he dearly wanted to. Novák led them off the tram a few minutes later. It was lucky that a lot of people got off at that same time. Would have looked suspicious otherwise.

Another thing Steve noticed: A lot of the people seemed to be more interested in Jones and Morita than they were in Captain America standing in their midst, hardly disguised at all. He didn't need to know Czech to know that a lot of things that the locals were muttering weren't flattering things. Bucky punched Steve's arm again when a teenager spat on Gabe's boot.

"Damn serum made you worse," Bucky muttered darkly.

"Go take a nap," Steve muttered back.

"Only been using that comeback since you were eight."

Patrols opposed their progress, but Novák led them safely to a group of buildings that seemed to huddle with their heads down just like all the people downtown. The big stone building in the centre of a square was easily identified as their target building. The HYDRA flags hanging what had to be fifty feet from the top of the building really gave it away. Steve didn't fail to notice the obstacles that stood in the way, though. Barbed wire and endless Czech hedgehogs blocked the roads.

Steve caught Morita staring at them. They nodded to each other. Steve immediately started figuring in his head. The size of their target, the number of resistance fighters they had, how much ammunition, how many guns, how much artillery, were there any heavy weapons to be had — what kind of defensive measures did they have the means to employ?

They would be attacking a well-defended position. Elevation was negligible, which was to neither side's advantage — or disadvantage. HYDRA was the enemy here, but Steve needed to know how the other Germans occupying the city would react when they launched an assault on the city. Last time Steve had been in the war room with the S.S.R., it was clear that the Germans were not on the side of HYDRA. What remained unknown was where the Germans would fall when the Allies attacked HYDRA. Steve almost felt bad for them. It must be hard enough for Germans to fight the world without them having to fight themselves, too.

He hated that he was starting to think this way. It was dangerous. He'd have to think about it when they planned the attack on the HYDRA building, but now wasn't that time. Steve shoved it from his mind, but he dreaded it. It was better to get the whole thing over with. Maybe he should keep his mind on the present and get to shelter. Steve didn't want Bucky's bony fist punching anymore craters into his arm.

Through a few shoddy fences of their own, Steve and the others were led into the heart of the resistance. Novák took them inside one of the buildings with a smile. Steve had expected an apartment complex, but instead the building looked more like a boarding house. Behind him, Jones coughed into his jacket. The group of them walked up the stairs and then down a long, narrow hallway. They were inside what was either a poorly arranged recreational area or very casual dining room.

"Well I'll be goddamned," said a familiar voice. Dugan popped out of the crowd of people and approached. Steve held out a hand which Dugan ignored, embracing Steve instead. Steve couldn't say he was upset. Dugan did the same things to Morita, Jones, and Bucky. He stepped back from Bucky, looked at the four of them, and said, "You all look like shit."

"Good to see you, too."

By then, Monty and Dernier had joined the group. Monty shook hands and slapped each of them on the shoulder and left his hand there for a fraction of a second too long. Dernier kissed them.

"What's been going on here?" Steve said.

Dugan looked to Monty and Dernier. It wasn't a great look; Steve was both looking forward to hearing what they had to say and dreading it.

"Let's go somewhere quieter."

They departed from Novák and let Dugan lead the way to a bedroom with two irregularly-sized beds and little other furniture. The seven of them spread out around the room, some sitting and others electing to stand and lean against the stained walls. There were dark curtains pulled over the window. It looked like they were sewn together in the centre to better keep them closed. Steve didn't think too much about it. He sat on the edge of one of the beds. Bucky was already lying down on the one Steve sat on so, naturally, Steve sat on Bucky's hand. Yanking it free, Bucky jabbed a finger into Steve's kidney. Steve slapped Bucky's stomach in retaliation. A flick to Steve's ear resulted in the administration of an unapologetic dead leg to Bucky's left thigh.

"Son of a bitch," Bucky breathed.

Steve was sure only his enhanced ears heard it. He turned toward Bucky and raised an eyebrow. It crossed his mind that he may have forgotten his body's new strength and actually hurt his friend. "What did you say about my mother?" he whispered.

"I said she's a bitch and a whore!" Bucky shouted.

Steve should have hit him harder.

"If you two are done," Monty said loftily.

Steve turned to face the rest of them; Bucky snorted.

"So what have you seen?" Steve said as if he hadn't just taken part in a juvenile slap-fight.

"The short version," said Dugan, "Schmidt is in town."

"Well fuck," said Morita. "How long's he been here?"

"Since we've been here," Monty said. "Haven't seen him much outside the castle. I'm sure you saw it on the way in."

"We did," Steve said. "What do we know about what's going on inside there?"

They talked for hours. Schmidt had been sighted, but there was no word on Zola. Resistance confirmed that there were a lot of weapons moving in and out of the barricaded castle-like building that HYDRA had taken up residence in. Heavier weapons were the main concern. The smaller arms that were powered by the blue light hadn't been noticed. Reports only saw the heavier guns which required a charger to be carried on the wielder's back. Large tanks had been seen rolling around the castle, but they never came out past the elaborate barricades that had been erected.

Steve thought that could be used to their advantage. The tanks couldn't leave the vicinity of the castle. Yeah, they were tanks, but it didn't look like the resistance had any armoured vehicles anyway. It was easier to avoid a tank when you were on the ground (and could run fast enough). The bigger the tank, the less manoeuvrable. And if the size of the tanks that HYDRA was building in Poland were any indication, these new tanks would be slow as molasses in January. Powerful, yes. But slow.

If they could take one for themselves, it would be only too easy to breach the castle. Their objective was always to wipe HYDRA factories off the map, but if there was a chance that they could take in Schmidt, Steve was going to go for it. He only wished that Zola could have been here, too. There were a lot of things Steve had to say to Zola — maybe more than he had to say to Schmidt.

"Who runs the city?" Bucky said. Despite the planning that was taking place, he was still lying in bed. "Germans or HYDRA?"

Monty said, "It appears to be the Germans. HYDRA just goes about its business. I don't think they want any trouble with the people. Just need to get done whatever they're doing. They only fight when the Wehrmacht goes on the offensive."

"The shitty thing is that a lot of the citizens are volunteering to work in the castle," said Dugan. "They're volunteering to work for HYDRA. Maybe they think they're doing it as civilians."

"What, are they under the impression that HYDRA is better than the regular, run-of-the-mill Germans?" Morita asked.

"Maybe," said Dernier. "Germans occupied the country, but then HYDRA came in and fought against them."

"It's not as if life is great here," Jones said. "HYDRA didn't do anything to improve the lives of the citizens."

"No," Steve said forlornly, "but they stood up to the Germans and established dominance in the city. They'd probably rather play host to HYDRA than suffer further occupation." He thought of the pregnant teenagers and the stink of the city, how broken down it was.

"What they think is the lesser of two evils," Bucky said.

"So if the Germans run the town, they're the ones who'll react to chaos in the streets?" Steve said.

"Might be a better question for the resistance fighters, but that appears to be the case," said Monty.

Steve nodded. "We'll need a distraction when we assault the castle. We need to draw out HYDRA's defences."

"Make it look like the Germans are attacking," said Bucky. "They don't care about the citizens, but they care when the Germans try to take back control of the castle."

"When we attack HYDRA, are the German gonna attack us?" said Morita.

Monty said, "This is going to be delicate."

Steve's mind was racing; pieces of a plan were bonding together. He looked behind himself at Bucky. Just a look and he knew his friend was thinking something similar.

Bucky looked to Monty, Dugan, and Dernier and said, "Can we get a German uniform?"

Monty said, "They have a prisoner."

Falsworth and Barnes roused early the next morning thanks to Dugan. Rogers was still sitting up with a few of the resistance fighters and one of the wives who was misplaced from Wales fifteen years ago; she acted as translator. As soon as both major and sergeant were upright, Dugan fell right into the place they vacated. He soaked up their residual warmth while they both cursed him.

In the war room (as it was called), Falsworth and Barnes reported. Rogers looked up and didn't quite smile but made a face that implied he was happy to see them.

"All set?" he said.

They nodded drowsily.

"Got my threads?" said Barnes.

Rogers nodded and indicated the stack of cloth on a chair in the corner. Barnes retrieved it while Falsworth tried not to sway on his feet. Damn but his eyelids were heavy. Rogers met Barnes at the chair. They had a conversation with their eyes and shoulders. Falsworth was used to seeing these exchanges and didn't bother trying to decipher it. Rogers slapped Barnes's back and that was that.

Falsworth followed Barnes out of the room, down the stairs, and out onto the street. They were quiet but companionable. This was one of the first times they got to put their skills to the test. Barnes fell back to let Falsworth lead the way through town. Those few days he had spent in town had been enough for him to be something approaching an authority on navigation. Things would get tricky once they got into German territory — which was outside the resistance's blocks and clear through the HYDRA area too.

They avoided trams and stuck to side streets. Barnes kept the German uniform in his pack. There wasn't much they could do about the Johnson besides break it down partway. It's what they'd been doing since disembarking from the refugee boat, and it hadn't failed them yet.

A few citizens were waking from their dry husks and emerging to get to work. Falsworth made sure to avoid any of the young girls. So many were pregnant and it made something within him squirm when he saw them. Whether they had gotten into the condition on purpose, because of the will of the Germans, or because of something else, Falsworth didn't want to know. Dernier had made the mistake of mentioning it to the resistance. They said that a few were because of the German occupation but most had happened because it was the only way for the young girls to avoid toiling away at work.

Falsworth thought that the girls had signed themselves away to a much more permanent kind of toiling. He knew it wasn't prudent to say aloud. War had turned him into something new. He could think of nothing more masochistic than parenthood.

In the German-occupied sector, the two of them drew together. Barnes kept his head down and swiped his hands at his face a lot.

"Fortunate you haven't had a haircut," Falsworth muttered.

"Don't I know it," Barnes replied. "My mother would skin me alive."

"Bit unreasonable, is she?"

Barnes smirked but didn't otherwise respond.

They only went a few blocks deep into the German-held territory. Then they headed for a tall building. It was on top of a shop that must have had an apartment complex above it. It was handy that Falsworth had spent a lot of his childhood scrambling up trees on the estate. He got creative and scaled the side of the building without too much flailing, and he didn't need to alert any of the occupants in the building, knocking on doors. No one noticed him go up. Partway up the building, he paused on a fire escape and turned back toward Barnes. The sergeant tossed the bag containing his broken-down rifle and the German uniform up. Falsworth caught it, surprised by the ease with which Barnes threw it and how hard the throw was. Then Barnes flew up the side of the building even more easily than Falsworth had moved.

"I'll take it," Barnes said when he joined Falsworth on the fire escape.

He handed the bag over and didn't say anything. They went the rest of the way up the building without much trouble.

"What do you like?" said Faslworth once they were on the roof.

Barnes walked the perimeter of the roof, taking stock of what was already up there. There were a few metal barrels lying around. Falsworth couldn't imagine what used to be kept in those barrels. Something from the shop, he thought. Shouldn't the metal have been reclaimed and recycled for the war effort?

Barnes took one of the badly dented barrels and dragged it across the roof. He fitted it against the ledge and dropped his stuff down. "Here's good," said Barnes.

Falsworth nodded and made himself his own nest beside the barrel. Barnes pulled out his rifle and began to reassemble it, checking the components as he went. The spare rounds tinkled together in the pack. Barnes took a long time to undo all the buttons on his jacket. Falsworth watched the sergeant's fumbling fingers out of the corner of his eye.

"Alright?" he said.

Barnes's head shot up. He smiled. "Yeah. Nerves, I guess."

What a crock. The sergeant got the jacket off and pulled on the German prisoner's field jacket. The buttons were done up just fine. Boots were unlaced and pulled off.

"Your socks are absolutely putrid," Falsworth said.

Barnes shrugged. "We call it 'lived-in' where I come from."

"Remind me never to visit that place then."

"Will do, Major."

He shucked off his trousers once the boots were gone. The German trousers were pulled on. Barnes poked a new hole in the belt to make it fit his waist. Then the boots went on. Lucky they took the same size.

"Boots are damn good," he said.

"I've heard that somewhere before," Falsworth said. He was setting out their supplies: pup tents, stiff blankets, a few of those garbage K-rations from the US Army.

"Helmet's stupid though," said Barnes. He put it on his head anyway.

"Would you prefer a dunce cap?"

"You know, I had to wear the dunce cap in school? Happened all the time."

Falsworth smiled mutedly. "I wish I'd've been there."

"You can't imagine what it was like to be called Bucktooth Barnes and wear a dunce cap at the same time."

"Is that how Rogers ended up as your only friend? Since you've said that he was such a combative shrimp."

Barnes shrugged and gave Falsworth an evasive look. "Maybe."

They finished getting set up and traded infrequent anecdotes from their childhoods. There wasn't a lot of crossover in either of the stories. They had grown up too differently. Falsworth had private tutors and very specific courses. A lot of times, he hardly ever left his family's manor. Barnes was at Catholic school with all the other children of Irish immigrants. Nevertheless, there was something they could find of themselves in the other's tales. There was something about that which comforted Falsworth.

At last, Barnes curled around the barrel, his rifle resting on the length of it. He attached Stark's latest telescopic sight and then peered through it.

"Range," Barnes said.

Falsworth raised his binoculars and found the castle HYDRA was holed up in. A few men milled around outside the building, hauling things on skids. Finding the centre of one of their hideous black flags, he said, "Sixteen hundred meters."

"Me, too."

"Let the game begin."

The hours whittled away up on the rooftop. Falsworth checking his notebook and peering through the binoculars every other minute. Barnes lying like a dirty statue on the barrel, Johnson welded to his hands. The first shot came at 0756.

Falsworth was staring through the binoculars and spotted their target. "Left end of the courtyard," he said. "Black uniform. Mask. Two silver markers on the right sleeve."

"I got him."

"One thousand, six hundred, and fifteen meters."

Barnes tracked the man through the scope while Falsworth did the same with the binoculars. Just as the man in question was turning, Barnes squeezed the trigger. The instant before he fired, Falsworth flattened himself below the ledge. The man was probably dead before he heard the gunfire. Barnes pulled away from the barrel immediately after firing and laid flat beside Falsworth. If anyone saw where the shot came from all they'd have seen was a German helmet.

"Confirmation," Barnes breathed.

Falsworth checked. "Kill confirmed."

They stayed flat for a few minutes. There was a flurry of activity on the street after the shot. Falsworth checked the scene with the binoculars. The body was being dragged out of the courtyard. A dirty red puddle was left behind.

So that was how they spent most of the day. Falsworth would pick out a worthwhile target and Barnes would wait for the right time to shoot. If the time never was right, he didn't take the shot. Instead, Falsworth noted the officer's motion and recorded it. Not a lot of good targets came outside. They watched trucks come in and out of the castle and its courtyard. Based on the way the HYDRA agents walked between the Czech hedgehogs, there were some mines planted beneath the stones.

Around midday, as they were eating the godawful K-rations, Falsworth said, "I noticed you weren't very enthusiastic about your assignment." Barnes looked a little uncertain so Falsworth elaborated, "At Great Dunmow. When we first got there. You didn't seem very taken with the idea of being a sniper. Even when we worked together."

Barnes chewed slower to stave off having to answer. But Falsworth was patient. He was English.

Barnes said, "When you watch those people, what do you see?"

"What do you mean? When I look through the binoculars?"

Barnes nodded and drank from the water canteen. The canteen containing more interesting drink sat unopened, saved for later. "What do you look for?"

"Rank," he said immediately. "I look for indications of rank. Who gives orders to whom. I make sure civilians aren't being dressed up in uniforms to be used as human shields." That seemed to convey the idea of things Falsworth looked for.

Barnes looked at his hands. "I can see if they have cigarettes in their pockets."

Falsworth nearly regretted asking. They didn't talk for the next few hours. Not until after Falsworth called Barnes's fourth shot of the day. That time, Barnes let his helmet linger where anyone could see before he ducked below the barrel.

There were no more opportunities. Falsworth cleaned up and removed the evidence of their stay while Barnes stripped out of the German uniform and became American again. The enemy's uniform cushioned his rifle when he dismantled it again. The helmet was still the most annoying part of the costume; it fit oddly in the pack. Barnes went down the side of the building first. Falsworth dropped the bag down to him and then he went after it. They loped back to the resistance block under the camouflage of the rest of the citizens scurrying home before curfew fell.

Inside the boarding house, Barnes said, "Tell Steve I'll be in my bunk if he needs the uniform back or somethin'."

"Will do."

The sergeant disappeared down the hallway while Falsworth went up the stairs and found the war room packed with the resistance and Dugan. They waved to each other. Dugan mimed holding a shield and pointed down the corridor. Falsworth took that to mean the captain could be found in the recreation room. Seemed odd: the captain and recreation usually didn't end well for everyone else.

As expected, the Czechs were being absolutely destroyed by Captain Rogers in their own card game. Just like all the howling terrors had been before they learned never to teach the captain the rules. He was usually quick to figure out the rules by watching them play anyway. Falsworth had good reason to believe that Barnes whispered tips to Rogers the whole time. Thick and thin, the two of them.

Falsworth observed the game for a while. Rogers noticed him standing there almost immediately, but Falsworth waved a hand, encouraging the captain to finish the hand. It gave Falsworth time to reflect on how much he did not miss commanding. The attention and pressure were not missed in the slightest. Not long after Falsworth arrived, Rogers won the hand and excused himself to many relieved whoops from the Czechs.

"Good game?" said Falsworth.

"Not my best," said Rogers.

"Report."

"Let's go somewhere quieter."

Rogers led the way to an empty bedroom. There were no beds in this room. Just a scratched and crooked table with no chairs. Falsworth pulled out his notebook and gave Rogers a report for the day. Most of the talk was about the four targets that had been eliminated and about how no one ever attacked their location.

Rogers nodded his head once the report was done. "You'll go to a different location tomorrow. I don't want you guys going back to the same place if we can help it. For all we know, they took notice of you but decided to let you get comfortable in one place so they can really get you where it hurts."

Which made a lot of sense. Falsworth nodded. He mentioned the trucks that came and went and the mines he suspected had been planted around the courtyard. Rogers led him to the war room and had him mark the approximate locations on a drawing that had been made of the place by one of the resistance men who, uncannily, happened to be a cartographer.

"It's not a comprehensive list," Falsworth made sure to say.

All the men seemed to understand even if they didn't speak English.

Dugan popped out of the woodwork and slapped a hand on Falsworth's back. The big man smiled to see that he had taken Falsworth by surprise. "The boys are askin' for ya, Monty," said Dugan.

The alcohol on his breath was sharp and sour in Falsworth's nose. It smelt like missing out. Falsworth looked to the captain who nodded once, eyes back on the map. Before disappearing with the brash American, Falsworth inclined his head toward Rogers and said, "Barnes went for a lie-down. Said to come find him if you needed anything."

Rogers hid his relief. "Thanks."

Falsworth left the captain to it. He was willing to bet a full minute wouldn't pass before Rogers went looking for Barnes. Strange how Rogers was always looking out for Barnes but didn't seem to be noticing that Barnes hadn't slept properly for weeks. Falsworth hoped both captain and sergeant survived this war. For both their sakes.

The next few days followed the same pattern as the first one. Dugan kicked Falsworth and Barnes awake and fell into one of their still-warm beds. They met Rogers for about five minutes and then they were back in the streets, searching for a new building to sit on top of. He didn't know how word got out — Falsworth certainly hadn't been talking, and Barnes usually went right to bed when they got back — but everyone would slap Barnes on the back when they returned each evening. The Czechs whistled at the two of them and asked how many bodies had been dropped today. Barnes's kill count had risen dramatically since the first day. More and more HYDRA agents were coming out of the castle as the body count rose. Strange: you'd have expected they'd do the opposite. In five days, Barnes got up to forty-six. The Czechs called him the American Death, which appeared to be a play on the nickname of a Finnish sniper — "the White Death" — who gave the Soviets trouble a few years ago.

The sergeant accepted the attention gracefully and pretended to smile and joke along with the rest. Falsworth knew that Barnes wasn't proud of the number. There was no pride in taking lives away from packs of cigarettes, dropping bodies wearing wedding rings. Falsworth didn't say anything the day that Barnes walked back to the boarding house still wearing the German boots.

This morning was supposed to be the big one. The battle for Prague wasn't going to be like the others. It wasn't going to start with shooting and chaos. Rogers and the resistance had planned this one carefully, each detail ironed out. A few days ago, Morita and Dernier led a raiding party on a German OP. They wiped out the whole place according to reports. They returned with all the uniforms. The women in the boarding house spent the next day cleaning the blood stains on the uniforms and darning any tears. The uniforms were just another part of the battle that would be started today. Even Rogers was going to be out there in full regalia.

(Gabe Jones was meant to go with on the mission, but he had certainly come down with something. His cough was too loud for him to go on the mission. Falsworth was worried that he was catching whatever his comrade had. The scratchy throat was ominous. Not to mention the way his head felt filled with boiling water.)

The men of the resistance were stationed all throughout the city today. A lot of them donned German uniforms. They'd infiltrated most of the buildings in the blocks bordering the HYDRA castle. Falsworth and Barnes were in the top of a clock tower today. It wasn't the highest point in the city, but it was highest vantage point they were going to get that was within reasonable distance of their target.

Around mid-morning, Dernier was going to take his squad of explosives handlers (which, surprisingly, turned out to be nearly all women) and detonate it outside one of the fringe HYDRA buildings. The resistance men disguised as Germans would be in full view and be tossing grenades. Hopefully, this would draw out the HYDRA troops and incense them into battle with the real German forces. Thus, the way into the castle would be much easier to fight through for their smaller forces. The captain, Morita, and Dugan had already spent a night mission laying charges near the mines buried in the path to the castle through the hedgehogs. It was decided that it was easier to simply detonate the mines than to try to avoid them. Falsworth just hoped it was all enough.

Barnes lit a cigarette and leaned against one of the pillars. His back was currently to the castle, Johnson lying in his lap. He blew the smoke upward toward the workings of the clock and the inner dome of the hanging bell.

"Think Schmidt will come out when it starts?" said Falsworth.

"Fuck," said Barnes. "No. Probably not. Bastard'll probably run like he did last time. Tell you one thing, if he does come out, it's one shot I'm not going to hesitate to take."

"I'd just like to see the damn man in person."

He nodded. "Just a creepy little red skull on his neck. It's been a few months — and I wasn't exactly sober the first time I saw him, but I reckon he looks pretty much the same."

"Could you imagine if we actually caught the devil?"

Barnes kept staring upward and puffing on the cigarette. "Nope," he said.

They got to watching the castle through their respective telescopic lenses. Falsworth had his binoculars and Barnes had the removable sight from Stark. Neither saw hide nor hair of Schmidt. To be fair, Falsworth had to look away a lot to muffle another cough in his sleeves. After the fortieth minute of this, Barnes looked at the major with some concern.

"Maybe you ought to head back," he said.

"The battle's about to begin."

"We got time," Barnes said after consulting his wristwatch.

Posh and pretentious as it might seem, Falsworth preferred the pocket variety of watch that had been gifted to him by his grandfather. His family wasn't a lot of things, but gift-givers they were. They spoke in gifts. He could hardly recall anyone saying "I love you" or any similar sentiment. It was always the casual "take care" that came out automatically after chatting with an old friend. There were no kisses on the cheek. No hugs of hello or good-bye. No casual arms flung over shoulders that was so common among the Americans.

It was one of the things that struck Falsworth the hardest once he'd been roped into that bird cage with the Americans and the Frenchman. They were all so tactile — and they were so casual about it! They leant on each other's shoulders and touched while they did everything. Hugs and pats on the back and shaking of arms. It was all so foreign to Falsworth. His family simply didn't do that. There were expectations of him academically, morally. He was to be a lord, and lords must always serve their country wherever they can. They must earn honour and have a history of bravery. All that cheery nonsense that looked good on the family tree but rotted the individual in real-time.

No, he was never shown love in the form of touch or there-ness. He was shown love in the form of things. Gifts were their main form of communication. If someone had something important to say, they said it with a gift. If they were leaving, it was something personal that they were passing on. If there was something new coming to the family, it was something impersonal but functional. Most of the time, gifts were practical. Other times, they were books with notes from your great-great-grandfather or rings your great-aunt prized so much that she never wore them.

In the case of Falsworth going off to war, the gift was the pocket watch his grandfather had given his father, who had given it back to his father upon his return from war.

Gifts often weren't permanent; they were talismans to be lost forever or returned to their giver, should it still be living.

Falsworth hated everything that watch stood for, but it was an admirable piece.

Barnes said, "Believe me when I say that I know what a bad cough sounds like."

"Oh, I believe you. I just don't think it'll make much of a difference being here or there."

"It'll make a difference. Trust me."

As hard as it was to admit, Falsworth knew he was falling ill, if he wasn't bad enough to be labelled so already. Amazingly, he hadn't been ill since he began serving duty. Not during the bombings, not in the sands of Africa, not in Krausberg.

"Monty, just go. I don't want to catch anything," Barnes said with a sideways look on his face. "Send Dum Dum out in your place. If that makes you feel better about this."

Somehow Barnes ended up convincing Falsworth to abandon the bell tower. He knew he moved too fast through the streets. Attention was sticking to him like clothing caught on thorns. A little attention was nothing compared to what the captain would do if he knew that Barnes had been abandoned on top of a tall building again. If Falsworth was caught, the best he could hope for was losing only one limb to the captain's ire.

When he arrived back at the boarding house, Falsworth coughed for nearly two straight minutes. Conveniently, it drew Dugan to his location.

"What's going on here?" he said.

Falsworth hauled in a clear breath. "Barnes," he managed to get out but then had to breathe again. "Barnes sent me back. Wants you up there instead."

Dugan looked as though a dirty trick was being played on him. "You didn't manipulate the poor bastard into giving you the morning off by coughing up a lung, did you?"

Falsworth smiled despite the fire in his chest and throat. "I'm not to question the sergeant's orders." Never mind that Barnes only strongly suggested that Falsworth leave, never commanded it.

He said, "He's at the clock tower above that church. The one from where the bell tolls? You best be off. Wouldn't want anyone to know we left him alone up in one of those again."

Dugan grumbled like a thunderstorm but collected his gear and hit the streets. Falsworth's chest felt empty and rough. He went and sat down in a chair beside an empty fire place. The boarding house was buzzing with last-minute preparations. Somehow, he fell asleep.

Dum Dum Dugan left the boarding house while the other men were arming themselves with the weapons that had just been smuggled in from the French and Greek resistances. His own Thompson kept hitting his back as he shoved his way through the streets. According to his watch, the first explosions were to go off at any minute. Barnes was so full of shit — what was he thinking, sending Monty back so close to the start of the battle?

And just like everything in the world, this went to shit, too. Of course something went wrong and the timing was off. Of course. Dramatic acts were bound to happen when you were part of Captain America's team. So: Dugan heard the crack of Barnes's Johnson (he'd know it anywhere) followed immediately by the popping of the charges they'd placed around the landmines. Terrified shouts from the citizens rose in the air like waves on the sea. The bodies around Dugan began to shift and push against each other; they searched for a safe place which surely did not exist anymore.

In short, the true battle had finally begun.

Dugan picked up his pace, using his size to his advantage and shoving the citizens out of his way. Gunshots were being fired somewhere not too far away. There were smaller pops indicative of grenades and hand-made explosives. (It was a shame that they were wasting so much good hooch on those bombs Frenchie dreamed up with those broads.)

Nothing hit too close to Dugan as he fought the crowds. It didn't help that he was fighting against the flow of citizens. But Dugan had a history of being a bully and a delinquent that he never quite shed. Shoving wasn't something he batted an eye at. Especially when there was someone or something that needed him on the other side of this crowd. The crack of the Johnson was too familiar — Dugan didn't realize he was following the sound like it was a siren's song until he didn't hear it anymore. He looked around himself and realized he'd overshot the church by a good quarter mile.

"Aw, hell," he said aloud.

Around him, the sounds of war were really picking up. A few buildings were trembling nearby. Dugan just barely caught himself on the ledge of a building; a huge squad of German soldiers were mobilizing toward the castle. The plan had worked; they had a three-way fight on their hands. No sooner had he thought it than he heard that heavy, metal scream of an 88 being fired. Those fuckers sounded like damn freight trains trying to take flight. He saw the shell explode in the body of a shop. The whole thing collapsed once the hole had been punched in its middle.

Bang — it was the Johnson. He took off running in the direction of the tower. Dugan could see the damn thing. A flash from the muzzle — but Dugan couldn't hear him fire it over the sound of another 88 being fired. The stones beneath his feet trembled as another building wept onto the road. HYDRA was firing that 88. Heavy rumbling and squeaking told Dugan that a Tiger tank was pulling up the road that sat alongside the church.

Fucking great. Barnes was a bigger pain in the ass than Rogers.

Boots skidding on the pavement, Dugan stood at the base of the clock tower and shouted up, "Fuck you, Jimmy!"

A pale, dirty speck of a face appeared at the opening near the top, looking down. Dugan waved his arm in a "come on" gesture. If he had the volume, Dugan would have said: "Get the fuck out of the tower, asshole." He saw the speck all the way up at the top hold his rifle out of the window horizontally. The speck disappeared. Their signal for "I'm coming, you don't have to yell."

About forty seconds later, an 88 smashed into the clock tower. Dugan heard it and saw it happen at the same time. One by one, the stones began to fall. Like an idiot-moron, he barged through the wooden door to retrieve whatever remained of Barnes.

"Thank God in heaven," Dugan said when he saw the sergeant rolling down the last set of stairs and stumbling down into the rows of pews. The building was crumbling from inside, too, but Barnes regained his feet and charged at Dugan.

"Get out, get out, get out," he was chanting as he reached Dugan. A hand twisted itself in Dugan's jacket and yanked him bodily from the disintegrating church.

The streets weren't any safer from falling stones than the church was, but at least they could see the sky. Dugan freed himself from Barnes's hold and followed his sergeant through the streets. They had little trouble snaking through the German forces. They were too distracted with the HYDRA troops that were invading the streets. The resistance fighters in Wehrmacht uniforms didn't help their confusion much either.

One German officer grabbed hold of Barnes's arm — he was still wearing the German uniform he sniped in — but Dugan whipped the man in the face with the butt of his Thompson so hard that he immediately dropped. Their stride was hardly interrupted. A lot of harsh German words were tossed at their backs. Dugan was pretty sure none of them were complimentary. Whether or not the officer was attempting to get his men to seize them remained unknown — if he was trying to do that, the soldiers were all too busy fighting and being confused to carry out the order.

Now that they were running in the same direction as the majority of the crowd (German soldiers instead of Czech citizens), it was a lot easier to get through. Dugan still shoved people. Maybe he threw a few elbows, too. They weren't HYDRA but they still weren't allies. Actually, in this case, Dugan really didn't want to think about where the Germans fell in relation to the local resistance and himself.

Despite how much he didn't want to think about it, the thought weighed on his mind with every passing second. Just as Dugan realized it, Barnes looked back over his shoulder, caught Dugan's eye, and let out a contagious shout of laughter. It was hard to breathe as they ran through crowds because their laughter was stealing all the air from their lungs. It was insanity. This was war! All around them bombs were dropping and bodies were falling. But James Barnes and Timothy Dugan were laughing.

It was very possible that Gabe's lungs were trying to turn themselves inside out. His head was hot and filled with water that threatened to tip him off-balance if he moved the wrong way. Ah, well, he should have seen an illness coming after all the places they'd been through. He'd been hoping for a simple cold, but it looked like the dice hadn't fallen that way for him. When had they ever, really? His life was all about taking the hand he was dealt and fighting tooth and nail against a deck that had always been stacked against him.

To be quite honest, the victories were especially sweet because of this arrangement. It made Gabe work harder for another taste. He didn't like the situation, but he thought he might appreciate the satisfaction that could be found in the struggle and in never, ever giving up.

Anyway, he was laying down covering fire so that the resistance could push their way through the Czech hedgehogs. The courtyard around the castle wasn't as bare as they would have liked. Seemed as though their plan to head off some of HYDRA's forces hadn't entirely worked. But there was confirmation that the Wehrmacht had engaged HYDRA's forces in the German-held blocks. It was better than nothing.

The all-too-familiar clang of the captain's shield rang above all else. Gabe took a gamble, pulled his eyes away from what was in front of him, and chanced a glance at what Captain Rogers was doing.

Heroics. He was doing literal heroics. Gabe knew the captain carried weapons, but right now Rogers seemed intent on killing HYDRA with his hands. The captain threw the shield around like it was nothing. He kicked chests; surely all the ribs were snapping like dry twigs inside. He wrestled the energy guns out of the HYDRA troops' hands. Never did Rogers fire one of the things at the enemy, though. He just took possession of them, smashed in the troop's face with the butt of the gun, and tore the hose that connected the rifle part to the charge pack.

Gabe wished the captain would change up his style. It was only too clear that Rogers was prioritizing the men with the energy guns. Some of the HYDRA troops with regular old gunpowder weapons were realizing it and catching Rogers in their sights. Gabe swung his Browning around and mowed down the potential offenders with precise, small bursts of fire. He didn't want to get too carried away and spray bullets into a crowd that contained friendlies.

Something big landed in the centre of the courtyard. Bodies simply disappeared, HYDRA and Czech alike. Gabe did a stupid thing by ceasing his fire. He stared at the tank rolling out from behind the castle. It was huge. A true colossus.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Gabe said.

It was easy to see who was with the resistance just then — they were all the people who stopped to stare at the monster of a tank rolling toward them. Blankly, Gabe thanked God in heaven that the monster tank wasn't outfitted with a cannon powered by blue light. Good lord, the thing had to be three stories tall.

There was a streak of blue rushing toward the metal monstrosity. And then two bodies shoved past Gabe, one familiar voice saying, "Aw, fuck no, Steve!"

Really, Gabe didn't have a choice. He ran after Barnes and Dugan; they were off to ensure their captain didn't get himself well and truly exploded.

"Steve!" Barnes was absolutely screaming as the three of them fought their way through the courtyard.

It was packed with fighters. Bayonets were being buried in the stomachs of some. Others were being shot at close range with rifles, some with pistols. Still there were groups of men fighting with fists and broken pieces of barbed wire. Gabe just missed being thrown into one of the hedgehogs by a Czech resistance man smashing a HYDRA agent's head into the rusted metal. The air was thick with the sound of dying men pleading for their mothers. Intestines were kept from spilling out onto the ground by shaking, numb hands. Legs were missing the rest of their body. Glazed eyes stared out from heads that had no backs, brains slipping like thick soup from the leaky bowls of their skulls.

Dum Dum Dugan was doing an excellent job of shoving and throwing elbows at the right men. He even got a few rounds off with his Colt. Gabe's hands were still full with the Browning. If he wanted to draw his sidearm, he'd have to leave the machine gun. And it was too valuable a weapon to leave on the ground where it could be picked up by the wrong side. It wasn't all bad. The barrel was hot from all the firing. Gabe left brands on as many HYDRA soldiers as he could. Their screams often died in their throats; the burn made them vulnerable to the attacks of the resistance fighters.

Barnes caught up to Rogers at the incredibly loud, squeaky tracks of the monster tank. Still shouting, the sergeant ran full-tilt until he crashed into Rogers's side. (Gabe privately thought that would have been the only way to get the captain's attention by this point.)

"Bucky, what the hell—"

"You fucking idiot!" Barnes was shaking Rogers. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Rogers wrenched himself out of Barnes's grip and shoved him back. The shield came up and deflected six shots. The collapsed bullets rained down on their boots.

"This thing will kill everyone if I don't take it out!" Rogers shouted.

"There's no tank buster in the world that could take out this thing!" Dugan said.

Gabe nodded his agreement.

"You're not the only one out here," Barnes said in a voice that suggested he was irritated at everyone for not getting the point he was trying too make. "You have a team!"

"Then help me disable it!" Rogers said. There was anger in his voice. He didn't appreciate the insubordination right now.

"How?" said Dugan.

"Jones, come with me up to the top," said Rogers. "We take out the men inside. Dugan, Buck — knock the treads off."

"How!" Dugan said again.

"Get creative. Hasn't Dernier taught you anything? Jones, with me."

Gabe didn't stick around to hear what Dugan and Barnes were going to plan. He ran after Rogers, who took a few running strides before launching himself up the back of the tank and onto a service ladder that ran the entire height of the tank. Of course. How else would the men get there?

The private scrambled up the side of the tank after the captain. The cannon fired two more rounds before they made it to the top. There was a horrible kick that rocked the whole machine whenever they fired. It taught Gabe a lot. This tank had questionable balance, poor manoeuvrability, and had a long re-load time. All useful. Powerful things are often slow.

At the top, Rogers turned and gave Gabe a significant look. Gabe watched the turret spin and the cannon adjust several degrees. He gestured to it. The captain nodded and wedged his shield into the track that guided the cannon around the turret. Gabe went down on one knee and aimed at a hatch on the tank's body. Sure enough, it popped open. Immediately, Gabe mowed the three men down with his Browning. Then he was on his feet, struggling only a little bit to free a few grenades from their notches. Pulling the pins in turn, Gabe dropped several down the hatch. Slamming the top down, he moved as far away from the hatch as was safe.

Rogers had succeeded in breaking the track. The cannon was now immobile; they just needed to disable its ability to fire. Gabe was about to shout out a ridiculous suggestion when the whole tank shook from a boom coming from down below — Barnes and Dugan at work, Gabe hoped. The tank rocked so that one set of tracks lost contact with the ground. Both Gabe and the captain were knocked off their feet and sent sliding. Rogers got a hand on a rail stuck around the turret; the other hand caught Gabe's left arm.

The tank slammed down with a screech. Inching to the side, Gabe and Rogers peered down. The tracks had been left behind. This tank could no longer move its cannon or roll itself anywhere else.

Rogers had apparently come up with his own idea: Launching to his feet, he ran, jumped impossibly high, and slammed the edge of the shield down on the cannon. It was something out of a science fiction novel, a Greek myth. The shield put a huge deformity in the length of the cannon. No round would make it out of there; it would blow up in the chute and ruin the whole thing.

Rogers landed on the ground, shield first. He rolled a bit and then took out about three HYDRA soldiers in hand-to-hand before Barnes was on him, shouting probably. But Rogers was looking beyond Barnes, up at the castle. Gabe looked too and saw it right away. It was just a small, floating red dot in one of the castle's windows, but Gabe knew what it was. There was only one thing it could ever have been: Schmidt.

The Red Skull was definitely here.

Rogers took off running for the castle. He knocked men out of his way easily. Gabe climbed down off the monster tank with much less fanfare than the captain; he went down the same way he had gotten up. He did it a lot faster though. By the time he reached the ground, he was only a few strides behind Barnes and Dugan as they pursued Captain Rogers into the castle. As they pursued Red Skull, by a transitive property.

Inside the castle was beautiful despite the bodies. It was crammed to bursting with fighting. Weapons were everywhere. They spilled out of cabinets and wooden crates. Hand-to-hand combat dominated, though. The guns were used almost exclusively as blunt-force objects. Gabe heard German and Czech voices echo off the huge expanse of stone walls. The voices cried in their mother tongues "I surrender", but they died anyway. Some men dressed in HYDRA uniforms sans helmet cried and held their hands up in surrender just to have their bellies skewered on the ends of bayoneted rifles.

Here there was no such thing as surrender. Once you're in, you're in for life. What was forgiveness to a world at war?

It was easy to see where the captain had been. All the three of them had to do was follow the trail of blood and bodies. There were smashed-in heads and mangled legs. A few even had bullets buried in their flesh. Barnes led their small pack, shooting with his Colt at anyone who dared to get in his way — or whacking men with the Johnson when the revolver wasn't violent enough. Sometimes the sergeant simply punched with his bare hands. It became less necessary for Barnes to demonstrate such naked ferocity the deeper they ran into the castle. Rogers had already taken care of any resistance they might have encountered. It was simply a game of following the bread crumb bodies now.

The soldiers were the only thing holding back the sergeant. Now that they faced no resistance, he pulled too far ahead of Gabe and his watery lungs. Dugan was getting left behind, too. Gabe suspected that may have had to do with the sort of shape the man was in. But the two of them kept up. They only ever lost sight of Barnes when the sergeant rounded a corner. It was lucky that he seemed to having trouble with the turns. Gabe heard the German boots squeak on the polished, empty floor of the castle.

The ceilings were tall and the walls were still lined with crates. Gabe didn't stop to look, but he had a feeling that these crates carried something more sinister than bullets and rifles.

Gunshots echoed down the long corridors. Barnes shouted in response, angry. Gabe forced his hot lungs to expand to greater capacity and made his body come even with Dugan's. The three of them stumbled onto the same scene in a matter of seconds.

Shots immediately forced them down behind some upturned lab table that definitely wasn't part of the original decoration. Barnes learned around the edge to watch, and Gabe did the same thing on the other side.

Schmidt was standing inside a sort of glass chamber within the ballroom. The chamber was large, dome shaped, and took up half of the room. There was an arched entrance facing them, a bit like an igloo. There was an airtight seal firmly closed. Beyond the sealed door was a middle section between the entry point and the inner dome like a decompression chamber.

A control panel deeper in the room clearly controlled the whole thing. Two HYDRA operatives were at the station. They were the ones pinning Gabe and the others down.

Bodies littered the ground around Schmidt inside the chamber. Gabe could just make out a hazy mist inside the chamber. There was some sort of gas inside. The mask that Schmidt wore was also an obvious hint.

Barnes growled and flattened himself against the side of the table, leaning out as far as he faded to watch Rogers. The captain was standing in the in-between section. It dawned on Gabe that that area was where the people went to decontaminate themselves when coming in from the gas chamber. Rogers wore no gas mask. His intent was clear: He was going in.

Barnes fired his Colt at the glass dome. It didn't even crack the glass. Rogers didn't flinch, certainly didn't look Barnes's way.

"Cap, this is a bad idea," Dugan shouted. He wasn't acknowledged either.

"Steve," Barnes said. That was his command voice. Gabe had heard it often when the sergeant tried to organize the other prisoners at Krausberg. It was the sort of voice that made men turn their heads and sigh out their relief that someone was here to take care of them. "Steve, get back on this side of the glass now."

"Listen to your friends, Captain," Schmidt said tauntingly. "You are out of your depth again."

Gabe watched Rogers's fists tighten. The captain said, "Here you are trying to run again. What are you so afraid of? Aren't you better than all of this? All of this humanity?"

"Your mind is still so small," he said. He walked toward the back of the chamber. Gabe saw that there was another in-between room over there. Another exit. "So much is wasted on you."

The captain broke into the gas chamber in the blink of an eye. Gabe wouldn't have believed his eyes if he didn't hear Rogers firing off his sidearm. The magazine was entirely emptied as he charged Schmidt. He whipped the shield at the red-faced thing. But Schmidt deflected it without so much as stuttering backwards. Gabe had never seen anyone simply absorb the impact of Cap's shield and remain upright.

Schmidt parried with Rogers for a few blows. They moved so fast. It was hard to track the action. But whatever was in the gas acted just as fast. Gabe could see Rogers slowing and watched him take a hit in the side. It knocked him to his knees. It was possible that Gabe's heart had crawled into his throat. He was frozen to the spot. Schmidt was looming over Rogers, a glowing blue sidearm of his own drawn.

Bang-bang.

Gabe whipped around. The two HYDRA agents at the control panel dropped like sacks of potatoes. Barnes was busting through the decontamination chamber and firing at Schmidt. The man looked surprised. Schmidt shifted his hand holding the energy pistol away from Rogers and toward Barnes instead. Rogers looked livid but also two seconds away from being unconscious.

Bang.

Barnes's shot tore the gas mask. Schmidt's eyes went wide; Gabe could see it from his vantage point. He fired his pistol a little wildly, enough to make Barnes duck. Enough to buy him time to clamp a hand over the torn mask and retreat.

The Red Skull escaped, and Barnes retrieved the shield and heaved Rogers into his arms. Gabe and Dugan finally sprang into action. Dugan waited anxiously at the other end of the decontamination chamber — or whatever the fuck it was actually called — as Barnes dragged a now fully-unconscious Rogers across the chamber. Gabe went to read the control panels. He punched a few buttons and got the gas to begin filtering away. Barnes's movements grew laboured much faster than Rogers's had. He had to stop to cough a lot. Dugan went into the chamber after the gas was evacuated to meet the two of them.

Dugan helped Barnes drag Rogers into the clean air. Once they were on the right side of all of it, Barnes fell to all fours and coughed harder than Gabe had ever seen in his life. Thick clumps of bright red blood was spat onto the ground. Barnes turned over and sat heavily, lips stained red.

"Is he OK?" That's what Gabe thought the sergeant was trying to say.

Dugan hovered over Rogers and pressed an ear to his chest. He messed with the captain's eyelids. The verdict was "wheezy."

The whole castle shook. Gabe recognized the sounds outside. An 88 was being fired at their position. It was probably the Germans.

"We gotta go," Gabe said hoarsely. "Evacuation plan."

Dugan looped one of Rogers's arms around his neck. Automatically, Gabe got the other one. They stood with Rogers's strung between them. His boots would be awfully scuffed when he finally woke up.

"C'mon, Jimmy," Dugan said to Barnes. "Up and at 'em. You gotta get us outta here. Steve needs you to get us out of here."

Barnes pushed himself up. He picked up the Johnson he'd dropped before breaking into the gas dome, and with the other hand he took up Cap's shield. Though his steps were a little unsteady and his lungs hacked dryly, his hand hardly shook on the rifle. Gabe coughed in sympathy.

"Move out," Barnes rasped.

As before, they didn't meet a lot of live bodies on their way out. The noise of the fight got closer and louder though. They were nearly there when Barnes leaned hard against the wall. He dragged his body along it, needing the support.

"Hey, hold up," Dugan said.

"Think I need a minute," said Barnes.

"Switch places."

Gabe held up the captain's side until Barnes dragged his feet back toward where the two of them stood. The transfer wasn't easy, but soon Gabe was the one on point with the shield, and Rogers's weight was shared between Dugan and Barnes.

It was a good idea: Gabe was on high alert and firing like mad once they made it around the next turn. The Germans were making an attempt to breach the castle, which, it appeared, had fallen into the hands of the resistance after Rogers, Barnes, Dugan, and Gabe had breached the inside defences.

Jan Novák from the resistance flagged them down. He dodged stray fire and slid up beside Dugan.

"You must leave," he said. "HYDRA has been driven out, but now the German look to rule once more. You cannot fight their numbers."

"We'll stay," said Dugan. "We'll help."

Novák shook his head. "We are grateful, but ending the occupation here is not your mission. We can deal with Germans; your mission is HYDRA."

Gabe felt the pained look on his face. It was mirrored on the faces of Dugan and, to a lesser degree, Barnes.

Novák understood. "You cannot save everyone. We will cover you. Get out of the city and continue your mission. We will continue ours."

They moved on and fought their way out of the city. It was hard at first, the four of them moving in active battle zones. But they made it past the most intense fighting and they moved out to the quieter parts. There was a suburb that had been agreed upon to be their evacuation point. Actually, the S.S.R. had told them that the house would be their point of egress.

Partway there, Dugan shifted out from Cap's weight to take point. Gabe took his place. That was how they arrived at the house in the suburbs several hours later. A woman met them on the drive. She talked to herself in Czech and led them inside. The door locked behind them. Four more women were inside, in addition to three men. They took Rogers and laid him out on a cot. Barnes went with as if inescapable magnetism held the two of them together.

A woman asked Barnes what had happened in the city. The sergeant didn't reply. Gabe was almost embarrassed. Someone ought to tell Barnes about the blood on his chin. He looked feral. The woman moved to Dugan, who gave her a report and asked after the others. No one else had arrived.

Gabe was overcome by a coughing fit all at once. He had to sit down. The little room they were all in shivered with the raspy breath of Captain, Sergeant, and Private.

Two hours later, Dernier turned up on his own. He nearly collapsed. Two of the men carried him inside and made him comfortable on the floor beside Barnes. Gabe tried not to bite his nails. All they had to do was wait for Jim and Monty. And hope the captain woke up.

Chapter Text

Well, wasn't all this just fucking great? Jim was having the life slowly squeezed out of him by a bunch of rocks. This was how he was going to die. By suffocation, trapped under a caved-in house. They didn't write glowing articles about guys who died under rocks back home. God, that was just embarrassing.

Driven by the threat of a humiliating death, Jim put all his strength into pulling his foot out from the pile of fucking rocks it was stuck in. A bit stupidly, he shouted while he did it. Shouting made people stronger, didn't it? Or at least kept them from feeling so much pain?

"Gah, Christ," he breathed. His boot finally wiggled free, probably scuffed to hell. The rocks around him shifted as a result. One pressed onto his spine, pinning him on his stomach. "Fuck me," he said.

"That's not Jim Morita I hear whinging, is it?" a muffled voice said. It hacked out a few dry coughs.

"Shit, that you, Monty?"

"It is indeed."

Jim never thought he'd be so relieved to hear that Limey's voice.

"You stuck under all this, too?" Jim asked.

"Unfortunately."

"How bad?" He was panting a little bit now; that rock on his spine really fucking hurt. And it felt like the air was getting thin.

"I can move both my legs and one arm. You sound worse off."

"Got most of my arms. Got a foot at the price of being pinned."

"Lovely."

"I was jus' gonna say the same thing."

Monty said, "Alright," and then paused for a long time.

Jim did not worry.

"Alright," Monty said again. "I'm going to try to shift some of this debris and get to you. If you feel anything about to crush you, kindly speak up."

"Right," Jim said, dry as the dust coating every inch of him.

It was excruciatingly slow going. Jim was stuck there — the rock on his spine making his breaths shorter and shorter — with nothing to do but listen to Monty struggle, cough, and curse. There would be exciting moments when some pile of debris would shift, but they were quickly followed by bouts of terror when Jim felt the rocks around him shift in response, pinning him in new ways. It could have been his imagination, but it felt like the space around his head was shrinking every time Monty made progress. Jim thought he could feel his own breath bouncing back at him off those rocks.

"Oh — damn," Monty said. It was too fast; no one in the history of time had something good that fast.

Jim heard a large pile of rocks start tumbling, and he felt his heart in his throat. A grunt crawled out of him when a heavier rock than before trapped the leg he had worked so hard to free.

"Bad," Jim croaked. It was hard work not to curse.

"Right. Apologies."

"It's fine." It didn't sound one bit sincere. He was sure Monty would understand though.

Jim's vision was getting shimmery and dark by the time Monty reached him. Thankfully, the rock Monty moved first was the one on Jim's back.

"Ugh," Jim said when the pressure was relieved. Any tension in his body was released. He was a trembling pile of gelatine. Taking deep breaths hurt, so he settled for panting. "Fuck." He had enough breath for that. And this: "Thanks."

"My pleasure," Monty said. He laboured to get Jim's arms their full range of motion next.

They got it eventually, and Jim pushed himself up. He twisted around to look at his pinned legs. He supposed he ought to be grateful he could still feel them. Monty shoved the block of broken concrete and twisted rebar, and Jim strained until he wasn't being crushed anywhere for the second time.

When they were both completely free and breathing less dust-filled air, Jim stood as much as his aching legs allowed and looked at what he'd been entombed under. It was literally a fucking house. He said, "Lucky we're alive, huh?"

The discharge of a firearm answered before Monty could. Both of them dropped to the ground even though the shot was at least two blocks over. Jim heard someone shouting harshly in German — hell, all German sounded harsh to Jim.

"Let's move," Monty said. He coughed a few times.

Jim nodded and then stopped himself cold. "The fuckin' radio," he said suddenly. He went back for the debris and dug around until he found the thing and saved it from becoming ground up trash. (Well, it was already trash, being heavy as all get out.) All the while, Monty stood by, an anxious watchman.

The radio was obviously damaged, but Jim was confident he could repair it. He slung it on his back and followed Monty down the mountain of crippled house-debris. Corpses watched them go with their dead eyes. Not everyone in this war could be as lucky as the dead, Jim thought.

In what was once the street outside the resistance-held territory, Monty threw an arm out, stopping their progress. Jim peered around a pile of debris in time to see a German uniform shoot two young girls in their pregnant bellies.

"Ah, Jesus," Jim said. He twisted away from the scene. He wished the war had hardened him enough so that the girls' hysterical screaming didn't tear him up inside. Jim saw Chiyo. He saw his parents and Will. He saw whatever the fuck Manzanar was.

"Let's keep moving," Monty said, voice hoarse. "This way." It was away from the girls and the Germans and the fresh grief.

Patrols were everywhere. Jim felt like he was in a maze. They had to turn around and adjust their course nearly every block.

"We'll never make it to the safe house with all this," Jim said.

Monty looked back at him. He said, "We could wait them out. See if their patrols lighten up."

"Where we gonna hide, huh? Under those rocks we were just buried under?"

"We'll find something, mate."

Jim snorted. "They call us Howling Commandos. Not exactly a name that conjures images of a stealth team."

Monty shrugged. "We can be versatile."

"Whatever. You're in charge here." Jim didn't miss the way Monty's face contracted in response.

"Right. Seems the bloody castle's intact."

"Think they got transport? We could just bust outta here screamin' in one of their tanks."

"I think we can do better than that."

"We'd live up to our name if we did it my way." He made a face. "And it would be more fun."

Monty laughed and waved a hand: Move out. "You and this title they've given us."

"Not all of us get to be lords," Jim said in a low voice; a patrol was moving by them. "Howler is as good as it gets for guys like me."

Jim almost regretted saying it when Monty looked at him like that. Did it sound bitter? Jim hadn't meant it to sound like that.

Monty looked away and said, "As a lord, I can tell you that Howler is the superior title."

Instead of replying, Jim kicked a stone.

They made it to a building adjacent to the castle. There were a lot of Germans in the area — Barnes's uniform woulda been useful just then — but they were busy cleaning out the remaining HYDRA soldiers and searching the castle. Jim felt his stomach swoop uncertainly when he saw a Wehrmacht soldier weeping over the body of a HYDRA soldier.

What a time to be German, he thought and then resolved to forget that he'd ever laid eyes on the scene or thought that particular thought.

Because the soldiers were so busy, it was easy for Jim and Monty to squeal with delight undetected when Jan Novák hailed them from the window of a nearby building. They tiptoed through the trash and met Novák at the front door. They converged in the basement. Six others were tucked into the small space.

"Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes," Jim told Novák.

He smiled wanly and said, "Your friends have evacuated the city."

"We know where they went," Monty said. "It's our destination as well."

Nodding, Novák said, "Just so. I'm afraid your captain did not look well."

Once again, there was a reason, besides his ethnicity, that Jim was just a private. He was just not meant for a position of leadership.

Monty said, "Tell me."

Novák did. He told them about Gabe, Dum Dum, Barnes, and Cap leaving the castle. Frenchie wasn't with them. The first four hadn't looked in top shape. Cap hadn't even been conscious. Novák stopped talking abruptly. They all heard why: plane engines. Moment later, a building collapsed on Jim's head for the second time that day.

What the actual fuck?

"Sarge. Hey, Sarge. Barnes. Barnes, hey. Jimmy. Bucky!" Dugan shook his sergeant by both shoulders.

"Whuduya want?"

At least it was a response.

"The Army's not payin' ya to mope, you know."

Barnes shrugged and retreated further into his jacket to cough. He was still wearing the German uniform. Dugan had horrible memories of Krausberg and listening to his sergeant cough like that all night.

"Not moping," Barnes said.

Dugan raised his brows. "Oh. Coulda fooled me. What d'you call this?" He gestured to the gear Barnes had scattered around himself at the captain's bedside. Rogers still wasn't awake. All of his breaths were wheezy.

"Um," Barnes said.

"Might as well do somethin' while you're doin' nothin'." He dropped a map into his sergeant's lap.

A smile ticked Barnes's cheek. "I don't know maps, Dum Dum. I just shoot the long gun."

"You just shoot the long gun," Dugan muttered to himself. He snorted. Kicking a bunch of Barnes's shit out of the way, he sat. "You're number two. When the captain's away, you play."

Barnes blinked owlishly back at Dugan. "What?"

"When you know the captain since he was in short pants, you gotta be second-in-command. Can't believe no one's explained this to you yet."

It worked; Barnes kicked at him in response. "I'm not an idiot. But knowing Steve for a long time shouldn't have qualified me to be number two."

Dugan was amused. "Well, if Monty were here, you could argue that he should be in charge."

The sergeant got the hint and picked up the map. "Right. Rescue mission, take two."

"Two?"

"Whatever fuckin' number we're on now." He waved a hand. "Our whole lives are rescue missions. Go get Jones and Dernier. I want them in on this, and I'm not gonna repeat myself."

The sure sign that Barnes was going into command mode: He started calling everyone by their last name. Dugan held back his smile; he felt like he was back in the 107th with Sergeant Kid bossing him around again. Good times, except for that one time when they were captured.

So Dugan hauled himself back to his feet with a long-suffering sigh he didn't mean one bit. Frenchie was first. Poor guy looked awful. Probably coulda used about eighty more hours of sleep.

"Micks," Frenchie said when he accepted Dugan's hand up.

"Not Micks, Frenchie. Life."

It earned him a shove but also a nod of agreement.

"Sarge wants us," Dugan said. "Gotta round up the rest of Team James."

Frenchie slouched off and Dugan went on to Gabe.

"Sheesh," he said. Kneeling down, he shook Gabe. "Gotta get up, buddy."

A long string of coughs answered, and Dugan fought off more flashbacks to their shared captivity. Gabe looked absolutely dried up. His lips were cracked; those eyes looked about ready to sink straight through his skull.

"Can you even breathe through all that snot crusted on your nose?" Dugan said.

Gabe croaked, "Sure. Just gotta open my mouth."

The team was a grade A fucking mess.

"Whus goin' on?" Gabe slurred.

"Monty and Jim are still missing. Cap's still out, so Sarge is gonna get 'em. He wants your advice 'fore we go."

Gabe was nodding but his red-rimmed eyes were closing. "Kay," he said.

Dugan helped the man up and escorted him back to Barnes. Just to be safe, he kept an arm behind Gabe, ready for anything. At Rogers's bedside, Dugan kicked more of Barnes's shit out of the way so Gabe could sit.

Once his own seat was taken, he said, "That's everyone. Let's hear it, boss."

"Don't call me boss," Barnes groused. He flicked the map. "Anyone remember seeing either of these two? I sent Monty back to the boarding house before the attack."

Dugan was nodding and said, before Barnes was finished, "He was hackin' up a lung when he came and got me. As far as I know, he was still in the resistance block when the bombs started flying."

"And Morita?" Frenchie said. Even his words sounded bruised.

Fuck, Dugan couldn't even remember what Jim's assignment had been. Where was that little sour shit supposed to have been? It wasn't as if Dugan had been where he was supposed to be.

All of them shook their heads. No one knew what area he might have been in. Dugan suspected Rogers might have known.

"Great," said Barnes. He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. Dugan didn't miss the glance he threw toward Rogers. "You see the state of things at all, Dernier? The place still standing?"

Frenchie made a face and waved a hand. "Some," he said. "Most of it was localised over the German sections."

"Not terrible," Barnes said. "Know who had control in the end? On our way out, that Czech Novák, told us that HYDRA have been driven out, and it looked like the Germans were the ones in control. You see that? Think they'd be the ones with patrols?"

"I only saw a little bit," said Frenchie. "The chaos was just dying down when I left. Was not very interested in sticking around to see what would happen." He looked down at his hands and the bruises they bore. "I just wanted to get out of there, but the Germans . . . yes. They had control, yes."

Gabe tittered in French. It made Frenchie and him smile wanly at each other. Dugan hoped it was reassurance and comfort. The privacy of the foreign language would have made it ideal. But the moment was broken up when Barnes leaned across and held the map out to Frenchie.

"Everything you remember," the sergeant said.

Frenchie took the map and produced a stubby pencil from nowhere. Seriously, the French.

Barnes looked at Dugan and Gabe while Frenchie bent over the map. He said, "What do our supplies look like?"

It turned out that it wasn't much. They had plenty of ammunition for Barnes's Johnson, though. The pile of grenades was reassuring at least. And the improved explosives Frenchie put on the table — again, he pulled 'em outta nowhere.

In a turn of luck, one of their hosts turned up just then with a tray of something steaming. She stopped short when she saw the pile of munitions.

"Can you help?" Barnes said.

The woman set down her tray, wiped her hands on her skirt, and smiled one wicked smile. "Yes," she said.

They had big guns. Like, big guns. The woman explained that the resistance in Prague used to steal German weapons and dismantle them. A few pieces at a time, they'd hand-deliver the parts to the people in the suburbs, in houses like the one they were in now. The women would reassemble the weapons. A counterattack was brewing in this suburb. They weren't the only house rebuilding stolen guns. The whole goddamn place was a powder keg just waiting for its chance to blow, the right spark.

"Anything smaller?" Barnes asked the woman. "We can't carry something like this."

She nodded her head. Grabbing Sarge's forearm, she led him deeper into the basement. Dugan went in their wake. There were huge boxes of ammunition. A couple of Lugers sat in a pile. Dugan took one without invitation, a handful of magazines came with it. Between the two of them, they were able to collect just enough ammunition to comfort themselves.

"We don't want to deplete your stock," Barnes said when the woman tried to put more supplies into his hands. "Just . . . this is plenty. You have a fight to win, too. Thank you. You've already done so much."

Back among Gabe, Frenchie, and a sleeping Rogers, Barnes and Dugan dumped their newly acquired supplies into the existing pile.

"We've been restocked," Barnes said. He sat again.

Dugan followed suit.

Gabe raised an eyebrow, coughed, and said, "Krauts gotta keep a closer eye on their munitions."

"I'm not cryin' over it," said Barnes. "Alright. We're goin' in mostly blind, but here's the plan. Dernier, Jones, you two keep your lazy asses here and keep breathing. I'll take Dugan back into Prague with me, we'll find those boneheads, and we'll all go back to England and be done with the war."

"Sounds good to me," Gabe said.

Barnes looked back at Rogers. There was a pained bend to his lips. Dugan saw it before the sergeant could cover it again. When he faced the other two, Barnes said, "Dernier, look after our CO 'til he wakes up, will ya?"

Frenchie nodded.

Barnes stepped over his scattered gear and headed for the door. As he passed Dugan, he said, "I need a cigarette."

That was code for "get the hell away from me; I'm gonna explode." So, naturally, Dugan followed Barnes out of the house and into the back garden. Well, he assumed it would have been a garden under different circumstances. Dugan watched Barnes pace and struggle to get his lighter to ignite. He paused and shook the damn thing, cigarette dangling from his lips. Dugan wondered where the sergeant had gotten it; he thought Barnes had run through his ration already.

After another failed attempt at starting the lighter, the thing slipped through Barnes's hands and fell to the ground. Barnes yanked the cigarette out of his mouth and only just held back from shouting. His hands twisted in his hair and he crouched down. "Goddamn it!" he said.

Dugan kept his distance and said, "You don't have to do it like this."

Picking up the lighter and standing tall and straight, Barnes said, "It's fine."

Dugan dug around in his pockets. He tossed the lighter to Barnes when he found it. The sergeant caught it and lit his cigarette on the first try. The lighter made its way back into Dugan's pocket.

"These fuckin' things of Stark's are supposed to work every time," Barnes said. He was calmed already, smoke unfurling out of him.

"When it rains, it pours, Jimmy."

It made Barnes laugh, but not in a happy, funny way.

"Sure does," he said. After a smoky minute — was he gonna offer Dugan a smoke or what — Barnes said, "What do you think?"

"I think we're gonna go get Jim and Monty and we're gonna be fine. The war'll be over by Christmas."

Two-for-two; Barnes laughed again. The stars were out, so Dugan went for three.

"Don't think I've forgotten about our New Year's cake tradition. Deals made over dessert are sacred."

"We won't see each other if the war's over by Christmas."

"None of that, Jimmy. I'll track you down to your momma's house and force you to eat cake with me. You and Rogers never shut up about Brooklyn; I'll be able to find you. It'll be better that way. I'll be able to meet that sister of yours."

The look on Barnes's face would have had Hitler running scared. Dugan's laughter filled up the garden and bounced back on them.

"You come within ten miles of my sister and I'll have to knock your teeth out," Barnes said around his cigarette, but there was a smile there, too. "Becca's married, though, so I guess I don't have to worry about her."

"Ah, marriage don't mean anything. She'll be changin' her mind when I come to visit. I've served with Captain America. What's her husband ever done?"

"I'm going to punch you, Dum Dum. I've never been more serious about anything in my life."

They both filled the garden with laughter. It was what they'd always done. Since Boot Camp. They'd laughed in each other's faces and then they'd laughed together. The two of them were going to laugh their way through the war; that's what they'd said every time they found themselves at the bottom of the same bottle on their weekends away from Fort McCoy.

Waiting until the smiles had faded from their faces, Dugan said, "You know I'm gonna ruin this by telling you that you've got to get some sleep when we finish up here. You're walking a real thin line here."

There was only so long a guy could go on so little sleep, less food, and a lot of stress. Jimmy wasn't exactly a picture of health these days. It made Dugan nervous and grumpy. He hadn't been kidding when he told Barnes that he'd wear the kid like underpants if he started seizing during battle. Dugan was beginning to suspect that stress contributed to how often Barnes went funny like that. Fuck HYDRA and fuck Arnim Shitface Zola.

(And fuck the S.S.R. for sending Barnes back in the field. And — God knew Dugan loved the guy — but fuck Steve Rogers for asking Jimmy to come back in the first place. Kid shoulda took his honourable medical discharge and ran.)

"I know," Barnes said.

Dugan watched the smoke of his cigarette cloud out the stars. "How's it been?"

"No worse."

It sounded like he was being honest.

Sighing, Dugan plucked the cigarette out of Barnes's fingers and let it heat him up inside. "I don't know what we're gonna do here."

"Figure it out," Barnes said. He took the cigarette back but coughed dryly. Sounded like sandpaper was lining the walls of his throat. Dugan took the cigarette back.

"Can you even breathe?" This was just what the kid needed on top of everything else. It was disturbing how often Dugan had been asking his friends that.

"Talking, aren't I?"

Dugan shrugged. "Rogers has the magic serum on his side; I'm not so worried about what that gas did to him. You're just you, Jimmy. And don't even mention what happened in Novara with your hand — I don't care. Sure you're OK?"

"Just feels like a sore throat. It burns a little, but I don't feel poisoned or anything. Steve was in there a lot longer than I was."

Dugan watched Barnes run a hand up and down his throat. Kid probably didn't realise he was doing it.

"You were spitting blood and could hardly hold yourself upright when you got out," Dugan reminded his sergeant.

But Barnes shrugged. "Feel fine now. Look, I'm standing and everything."

Dugan playfully shoved him. "You don't have to be a smartass about it. You're my kid brother now, remember? It's my duty to be worried about you."

"Yeah, well, why don't you focus on being a corporal and not my brother, huh?"

"First of all," said Dugan, "not your brother, your big brother. Second, I don't see why I can't be a corporal and your big brother at the same time."

"At least you won't be able to try anything on my sister if you're my brother — that'd make you her brother, too."

Dugan made the face that had always made Barnes smile like a kid who'd just been given candy for the first time in his life. "Maybe we'll hold off on the brother thing until I get an eyeful of her."

Whatever reply Barnes was about to voice was cut off by the sounds of distant explosions. Both of their heads turned in the direction of the city. The flashes lit up the broken buildings from behind. They hadn't even heard the plane engines or the air raid sirens.

"Who's that?" Barnes said.

"Dunno," Dugan said. "Germans? HYDRA? The resistance? Us?"

Barnes turned back toward the house, slapping a hand on Dugan's chest along the way. "Come on. We gotta get going."

So he followed the acting commander back inside. Dugan knelt down to help Barnes collect all his gear and shove it back into his bandoliers and packs.

"Bring the Johnson," Dugan said when Barnes's hand hesitated over the barrel of the rifle.

A voice from the doorway said, "How can we help?"

Dugan and Barnes both turned toward the door. The women were crowded there. They looked ready to take on a dragon.

Barnes shoved the last of his gear in the pack and got to his feet. Call him biased, but Dugan thought his sergeant looked every bit as commanding and strong as Rogers did just then. It was sort of spooky.

"Look after them," Barnes said. "Keep them safe until we come back. Try not to attract any attention to this place, unless you absolutely must defend it."

The woman who had spoken first nodded solemnly. Maybe she could tangibly feel the weight of what Barnes had asked her to do. Frenchie was supposed to be in charge of the infirm, but that was just a title. Dugan felt better knowing that their wounded teammates would be tended to while they were away. In their current states, Dugan was confident that Rogers, Frenchie, and Gabe couldn't fight off kittens.

Barnes stomped through them all saying, "Move out."

Dugan flapped his hands — all his shit wasn't packed. He shouted at Barnes's back, "You're wearing that?"

"I'll blend in," was the reply.

Dugan really hated that Kraut uniform, and he was positively sick of seeing Jimmy in it. Kid looked a helluva lot better in blue.

Hurrying after his sergeant, Dugan muttered, "It'll get you shot is what it'll get you."

"Then it's a good thing you'll be there to drag me back."

Rescue mission, take one thousand and two.

Jacques sat in a green chair watching his friends sleep. He knew he was not unique in this regard — calling his comrades friends, that is. He supposed it was appropriate for him to call these people friends. They were not his fellow soldiers because he was not a soldier.

What did that make him?

A shift made Jacques look up. Steve's hands were clenching and his brow was pinching. The captain looked as bad a Jacques felt. It was possible that Gabriel looked the worst of the three of them, their lonely-hearts club. He got up and went to crouch beside the captain. The whole way over, Jacques's knees and legs protested. Age was getting to him prematurely. Jacques ignored the hurts and pushed Steve's hair off his face until the creased skin evened out.

It reminded him of his mute girl and her son. 

In a world that didn't exist anymore, the mute prostitute would go out and work during the nights, leaving her son with Jacques. He didn't mind this. Though he had no love for the child beyond human decency, he fostered no ill will toward him either. Life had dealt the mute girl and her son a raw hand. The damaged son would have struggled even if his mother could have spoken to him.

More than once, Jacques took the boy and an old telescope out to a hill near his home. They'd sit in the grass and Jacques would show the boy the moon. Slow and hopeless though the boy was, there were wonders on his face when he looked through the lenses. Jacques would show the boy the heavens through a bit of curved glass. He told the child that they were seeing things no one else had before. Once, they picked a star out and named it after the boy's mother, their mutual love. They showed it to her several nights later. She smiled and held the boy close to her side.

Beautiful, the two of them. He never tired of having them in his home. Never. Not when the boy couldn't walk anymore. Even then, Jacques carried the little body. They'd sit outside and Jacques would tell that sieve in the boy's mind why the leaves on the trees were green, why flowers' petals weren't. He told the little boy why there were tanks in the streets. Never mind that the child couldn't remember and didn't understand in the first place. He'd always nodded and said yes. Yes, he understood; now what about this?

Before the tanks, Jacques would burn metals to show the child the colourful flames. This metal makes blue and that makes orange. The child would clap. Once, he'd ask if stars were like the flames. Jacques had told the boy yes and made up stories. There was something very special about telling a secret to a person who was doomed to forget — or to never understand.

When the boy died, Jacques didn't miss him. Not really. He missed what was no longer available to him. There were no more chances to tell secrets. No smile on his face because he, Jacques, had made someone happy. He didn't miss the boy, but he missed the feeling that making the boy smile gave him.

It was hard to miss him when there were tanks in the streets. It was easy to miss the mute girl, the boy's mother. It was easy to miss her, because Jacques had loved her.

He would miss Steve and Gabriel if they died, Jacques decided, crouched there beside the captain's bed. None of them were going to die here or today. It was just a thought.

"Tea?" a voice said.

Jacques looked up and smiled at the young woman who offered it. "Please," he said and accepted the delicate cup. The woman lingered, her eyes straying to Steve. "Sit, please, and talk with me" he said, "if you'd like."

She made a nervous face and sat. She smoothed her skirts. "Are you well?"

The tea didn't taste particularly good, but the warmth in Jacques's belly was pleasant and welcome. It made his hurts loosen up and relax. Swallowing, he nodded at the woman. "Am I not a perfect imitation of Adonis?"

It made her smile and duck her head. "I do not think I would go so far."

Jacques smiled and drank more tea.

The woman fidgeted and then spoke. "The others — they were wondering about the other one." She gestured to Steve's body. "He seemed to be in charge. The one without the moustache."

"The sergeant?" Jacques said. "The one dressed as a German?"

She nodded. "That's the one."

"He's no German. He is very, very American." Both of them laughed mutedly. "He wore the uniform to blend in while we were in Prague. They wanted him to trick HYDRA into thinking the Germans were instigating a battle."

"Ah," she said, "I see." Tension bled from her posture and she relaxed. She sipped from her own cup. "The uniform was making a few of us nervous. We thought he might be a prisoner of yours." In a tone that suggested it was an afterthought, she said, "He does not look well."

"He is not," Jacques said. He didn't want to discuss James with a stranger, for his own sake as well as the sergeant's. So he diffused the conversation by saying, "No one is."

The woman understood the meaning. "I did not mean to suggest . . ." She couldn't find the word in English.

"You did," Jacques said with a smile. "There is nothing wrong with it, but you understand."

Her cheeks flushed. She said, "I do. Allow me to apologise."

"There's no need for it, but I accept."

"If he is off limits, may I ask about you?"

"You may certainly ask."

"How did a Frenchman come to be in the company of three Americans and a black man?"

An unamused smile twisted Jacques's lips. "The black man is American as well. The other two just went back to find an Englishman and another American who descends from Japan."

The face of the woman was decidedly uncomfortable. "You have quite the team."

Jacques hummed. He was sure neither he nor the woman wanted to dive into the implications of that sentence.

"How did you come to be here?"

It took him a while to collect his thoughts. "It is difficult to talk about," Jacques said.

The woman looked down in sympathy. They both sipped their tea.

"I understand," she said. Her eyes went far away. "It was so normal at first. I had hardly noticed the difference. One day we were us, and the next day, we were suddenly them." She shook her head and looked for enlightenment in her tea. "There were parades in the streets. Some of the children, they actually cheered and smiled. It did not seem so bad at first. We weren't happy about it, but we hardly noticed a change."

Jacques remembered that. The invasion had been so swift and fast. One day they were in their garden and the next they were occupied by foreign troops. And it hadn't been so bad at first. Comparatively. Trucks and marching in the streets, but they were still mostly free to go about life.

It wasn't until people started disappearing and young girls lost their glimmer that they even thought to fight back. Why had they waited so long? They'd known what was brewing — not exactly, but they'd known something. But all of it, all at once. Dizzying. Jacques could no longer sit idly by as his friends and neighbours disappeared. Playing children were gone from the streets; their bones would be shining through their skin soon. Some were forced to house their captors, if their captors were decent. Others were not decent, and whole families were cast out from their own homes with nothing.

Jacques had played host to a small garrison. The mute prostitute was their favourite fixture in Jacques's house. He felt he couldn't protect her. The garrison did not take well to the simple boy in their midst. He could hardly speak. He could no longer walk. He soiled himself and cried at night. On one of the cool nights when the boy had cried the whole house awake, the garrison beat the boy to death with the butts of their rifles. They caved in his simple head before his mother. She didn't say a word or shed a single tear.

The body was left there in the bedroom. A few men of the garrison had gotten caught up in their blood lust. They raped the woman Jacques loved in the same room where her dead son's body lay. She never spoke. She hardly cried. She just stared and refused to say a word. The garrison moved on a few days later. The woman he loved would die where those men left her. Another wave of soldiers goose-stepped into the town. When they requisitioned Jacques's house, he demolished it with explosive plastic. He'd rather the place be ruined than used by abominations.

That was how Jacques ended up here.

Bucky was starting to think that being tired all the time wasn't so bad. Every soldier was tired, but every soldier could fall asleep almost at will. Besides him. Those soldiers didn't have their minds filled with static every time they tried to sleep. When they rested, they actually got rest. Bucky got mental twinging and little shocks.

But all that was starting to seem normal and not so bad now that he was disgustingly, sickeningly hungry. Turned out that his body cared more about food than sleep. That was good to know. But it wasn't good for missions, because his stomach was grumbling with such ferocity that he was sure someone would notice them before he and Dum Dum ever reached Prague again.

While they were standing in an alley waiting for a car with swastika flags to go away, Dum Dum whispered, "Do we need to stop for snacks?"

"No," he whispered back. "Shut up."

"I'm not the one with a monster in my belly." Dum Dum pressed a canteen into Bucky's stomach. "Drink something." His moustache was shaking with amusement. "Maybe you can trick your stomach into thinking it's food."

So he unscrewed the top and guzzled the water until the canteen was nearly empty. A little bit dribbled down his chin, but Bucky was past caring. It felt good in his throat but not entirely good. It reminded him why he was so hungry in the first place. His mouth and throat hurt too much when he ate. His lungs hurt like hell, too, but it wasn't as if his lungs had anything to do with eating. Well, if he was doing it the right way, his lungs had nothing to do with eating.

Bucky gave the canteen back to Dum Dum without screwing the cap on.

"Yeah, you're welcome," the corporal said flatly.

"Let's go," Bucky said. It took a little bit of effort to keep the smile off his face when he heard the canteen chain clanging around as Dum Dum screwed the thing closed. One bad thing about the Kraut uniform — besides the obvious — was that it didn't have nearly as many pockets as his own uniform. He'd been wearing the Wehrmacht get-up for a few days now, but he still wasn't familiar with all the pockets and buttons. It didn't help that, when he had gotten back to the boarding house, he'd changed clothes. The constant going back and forth kept his tired brain confused and his hands reaching for pockets that weren't there.

Bucky never thought he'd see the day when he would be complaining about not wearing the same clothes every single day. War sure did change people.

For most of the beginning of their journey, they didn't need to hide too much. The streets became smoky and dusty the closer they drew to the heart of Prague. Bucky could feel the residue in the air every time he breathed in. It stuck in his blistered lungs and threatened to make him sneeze; he really did not want to sneeze while his airways felt raw and burned. Dum Dum sneezed a few times, and just hearing the sound made Bucky cringe. Luckily, there wasn't anyone around to hear. Besides a few errant cars with those godawful flags, there wasn't anything moving out on the streets.

And the water hadn't tricked his stomach at all. The two of them must've made the sorriest rescue squad in the history of time. Both of them were dirty and bruised. One was sneezing and the other couldn't take two steps without his stomach grumbling.

Dum Dum said, "Is it just me, or do you feel really unprepared for this?"

Bucky raised an eyebrow and said with mock seriousness, "Are you trying to say something about my leadership?"

"Nah, you can't help how woefully unprepared we are. Don't even know what we're walking into."

"We're walking into Prague," Bucky said.

"I don't know."

"I know what you mean," Bucky acquiesced. "It's like this, the whole city's on fire and we're a coupla clowns who're gonna put it out with our water-squirting boutonnieres."

Dum Dum muffled his laughter. "Big fan of clowns, are you?"

The memory bloomed behind Bucky's eyes. He smiled and looked back at Dum Dum over his shoulder. "When we were kids, Steve and I were at this carnival-circus thing — I don't know where exactly. But some clown got Steve with that squirting flower gag. To this day, I have never seen a more unamused look in my life. Water dripping down his face — just entirely flat. The clown, I swear, he looked nervous. Steve decked the guy right on the nose. You know how the noses squeak? God, I nearly wet my pants from laughing."

A few chuckles bubbled out of Dum Dum. "I think I'd like it if everything Rogers punched squeaked like that."

"Me, too." Bucky's mind moved from Steve back to food and cigarettes, but he said absently, "Maybe it would show him just how ridiculous he is."

Their talking died down abruptly when they reached a blown-up tram. The thing was dumped on its side. A few bodies were lying inside the car and a few were hanging out the windows. That wasn't what stopped their conversations though. They stopped because of the sudden appearance of German patrols. The tram car was crawling with soldiers. Using mostly hand signals and facial expressions, Bucky and Dum Dum located all the soldiers around the tram.

Bucky pointed to himself and whispered, "On my mark."

Dum Dum nodded and then they split up. Bucky would consider himself modest, but he also had every confidence in what he knew. Stealth was something he knew. It was child's play to slip and slide around the tram and the gathered Germans, get to a location that had both elevation and cover, and take the first shot. The sounds of Dum Dum's Thompson joined the fray seconds after Bucky took the first shot. All the Germans were shot dead in less than a minute, and the two of them converged at the tram car.

"Not them," Dum Dum said after they'd looked through all the bodies.

"Good," Bucky said. He rifled through the German's packs until he found some cigarettes and canned food. There was an eyeball-sized ball of lard wrapped up in one dead soldier's bag. Bucky threw it to Dum Dum. The corporal caught it one-handed. "I get something of yours of equal value whenever I want," Bucky said.

"What, in exchange for this? No way."

"You caught it. You already accepted the offer."

Dum Dum sighed and slid the ball of lard into one of his pockets. "You were the oldest sibling, weren't you?"

"Still am."

"Jesus, Jimmy."

Of the eleven bodies, seven had packs of cigarettes. None of the packs were full, but between all the bodies, there was an appreciable amount. And they had lighters that fucking worked.

As they were heading out again, Dum Dum said, "You're gonna split those with me, aren't you?"

"We'll see," said Bucky. "These are Kraut smokes. You sure you want Kraut smokes?"

"I don't give a hoot whose smokes they are."

He plucked at his pilfered uniform. "Those are my compatriots. I'm the only with rights to their property."

Dum Dum shoved Bucky's shoulder. "You're a real shit today, Sarge."

"Here, want some of this sausage?"

They shared slivers of a dead German's sausage as they crept deeper into the city. It was a sock in his stomach's mouth, so the grumbling was reduced. A searing throat was worth that, wasn't it? Excitement was always warranted when they got to eat food that wasn't from a can. Bucky didn't know if he really wanted to hear Dum Dum moan with sausage in his mouth, but it definitely made a dent in Bucky's appetite.

The patrols were thicker. They moved a lot, especially after they heard the gunfire from Bucky and Dum Dum's attack on the tram patrol. Bucky elected to avoid as many patrols as they could; he was feeling conservative with the ammunition. They were also way outnumbered and wouldn't be able to win a fight against such a force. Bucky wasn't keen on being captured again, even if they were just run-of-the-mill Germans and not HYDRA. He wouldn't put it past these guys to sell him back to Zola and Schmidt.

With their backs pressed up against a brick building, Bucky caught a few dirty faces staring down at him from a window above. Dum Dum noticed when he saw Bucky's line of sight.

"Kids," Bucky breathed. He caught Dum Dum's eye. What they must think, seeing some guy in a German uniform sneaking around other guys in German uniforms.

The corporal tapped Bucky's chest with the back of his hand and shook his head. They kept moving.

The closer they drew to the resistance block, the closer they also got to the castle and where a majority of the fighting had taken place. The destruction was more and more apparent the closer they got. Dust and debris may have been evident at the outskirts, but it was nothing compared to the state of the heart of the city. Bucky's lungs were searing inside his chest. It didn't seriously take dust this long to settle, did it?

Just a few days ago, when he'd come into the city, it had been mostly intact. The same could no longer be said. Still, it was in much better shape compared to some of the other places Bucky had seen. It was a hell of a lot better than Novara — and fuck that place. There were probably more dead bodies than there were ruined buildings, which made sense in all its gruesome truth. A lot of the German patrols were going through the ruined buildings and pulling out the dead. They were helping the citizens lay the corpses of their families in the streets. Sheets and tattered curtains covered some of the bodies. Most had nothing to hide under. There was a lot of crying; Bucky was used to that and nearly immune to it. Not even the tiny matchstick arms sticking out of a quilt could get a rise out of him if he looked away quick enough.

Besides, some of the German patrolmen weren't helping lay the bodies out. They were frisking the citizens for weapons and food — some were blatantly groping the grieving people, humiliating them further. That never failed to get a rise out of Bucky. But he was glad Steve wasn't here; Steve wouldn't be able to walk by that and carry on with his mission. He'd stop and try to distribute some type of recompense or revenge.

Bucky wasn't like Steve; Bucky could turn a blind eye and the other cheek. When he needed to, when it was advantageous. Like now. He led Dum Dum away from the scenes and back to the resistance.

It wasn't hard to notice that their destination wasn't there anymore. Too close to the castle. Well, the castle wasn't there anymore. The thing was completely gone, flattened to white and grey rubble. Anything that was nearby suffered either the same fate or something on a lesser scale that was still devastating. The place was crawling with Germans: dead ones were being plucked at by dusty, dazed living ones. Safe to say that HYDRA would rather have all their work destroyed than risk someone else finding it and (possibly) using it against them. 

"Well, I guess we know who bombed the place," said Dum Dum. They were crouched behind a pile of former buildings.

"No shit," Bucky said. His eyes were having a hard time understanding the utter destruction. The place was just gone. And the area that was hit was so small. Dust and damage were all over the city, but, really, this was the only area that really looked as if it had gotten well and truly bombed. "Jesus, HYDRA. We're in trouble if they can raid a city with that kind of precision."

Dum Dum peered over the edge of their cover. "Look like there's anyone in charge out there to you?"

Bucky copied Dum Dum's pose and looked. "Doesn't look like. They're just digging through the rocks. Lookin' for bodies or something to salvage?"

"Both."

"Right. I got an idea."

Dum Dum turned so his back was to the rock he'd just been peering over. "I know that tone. Whatever you've got to say, I'm not gonna like. Let's hear it."

"I have the uniform, don't I?" Bucky plucked at the uniform. "I think I could just wander out there and start looking through the rubble for signs of Morita and Falsworth."

"Did your momma drop you on your head when you were a baby?"

"Eh?"

"Jesus, Jimmy. I can't stop you, can I?"

"Nope."

Dum Dum sighed, and Bucky swore he saw the corporal's moustache flutter. "Where we gonna look?"

"Let's get as close as we can to the resistance block. That's our best bet, especially if that's where you last saw Falsworth. Hard to believe that he slept through the whole damn fight."

"Not that hard," said Dum Dum. "Guy looked like the walking dead."

Bucky hadn't forgotten. It was hard to do when Gabe was obviously suffering from the same thing. At least Jim had seemed in good health last Bucky had known. Jim was bitching and sassing them all just like usual. Really, it was probably the only thing that kept their team balanced while they prepared for the assault on the castle. God knew Bucky hadn't been himself that whole time — he still wasn't. And keeping the team balanced was his fucking job as sergeant. Thinking about it now made Bucky that much more motivated to get his act together.

Jim and Dum Dum: team glue.

"Right," Bucky said. "Follow the sound of the Limey coughing. Meet you there." He rolled to his feet and headed off into the thick of the ruins.

"Jimmy, you —" The rest of Dum Dum's words were lost; Bucky had already gone too far away.

The German uniform really worked wonders. No one gave him a second glance (except for the wary eyes of the citizens). None of the soldiers looked Bucky's way. Even though he was missing the helmet, he walked seamlessly among the Krauts. A few tossed a couple German words at him. Bucky understood only a handful, but none tried to stop him searching when he waved them off. The raid must have really shaken these guys since no one questioned his presence. Even in the 107th with all their men and frequent replacement troops backfilling the spots of the dead, Bucky would have recognised a new guy in their midst.

Methodically, Bucky made his way through the wreckage at the castle and toward the old resistance houses. It was better and worse. There were fewer Germans the further he went from the castle, but there were more and more citizens. Their gazes held such contempt. It made Bucky's insides crawl. He'd been among those people just a day ago, and they'd been the friendliest people. They'd slapped his back and called him fond and admirable nicknames. Bucky didn't like being the bad guy here, even though he really wasn't. Every second that they stared at him, seeing an enemy, seeing evil . . . it didn't sit right with him.

More than once he found himself preparing to shout at the citizens that it was just a uniform and that he was still on their side; he was fighting for them. But he kept his silence. It helped that, the closer that he got to the boarding house, a few of the faces recognised him. Their eyes lit up and they looked quickly away so as to not give away his cover. It felt better then. They knew it was just him, still him even though the uniform was wrong. They knew it was just for show; a disguise.

Better news was that a lot more of the resistance buildings were still standing. None were entirely collapsed, though some had taken some pretty bad hits. Good news for these people; bad news for him and the Army. HYDRA could really concentrate the destruction of their air raids. What kind of systems did they have on their aircraft? What kind of aircraft were they using anyway? Bucky was willing to bet that the blue light had something to do with it.

"You!" someone called from a partially collapsed building. Most of its eastern-facing side had been sheared to dust. The insides were exposed like a dollhouse. A man was helping women down from the second level; the stairs had apparently been on the eastern side of the house. "You, come help!"

The English really gave it away. There were only a handful of Czechs that Bucky had met that spoke English. And all of them knew what he looked like and who he was. Familiar faces were good. It was only lucky that no Germans were close enough to notice.

Bucky approached the guy who'd summoned him. "Yeah?"

The Czech pointed to the rubble he and a few others were shifting. "People below. Your friends." He mimed a moustache. "Englander. And the Jap."

"You don't have to say it like that," Bucky said waspishly. But he started moving the debris like his life depended on it. Restraint was necessary; everything in him wanted to start whipping bits of wood and stone behind him like a cartoon. But he was smart about it and shifted carefully, tossing the smaller pieces into a communal pile with the rest of the human excavators. His focus was singular and he hardly noticed anything until he heard signs of life from below the rocks. It wasn't English, but the Czechs around him were able to communicate to those buried beneath.

"Are Morita and Falsworth down there?" he said to the man who had hailed him.

The man gave Bucky an annoyed look and kept talking. The exchange seemed to take forever. An interruption came in the most beautiful sound Bucky had ever heard: Jim Morita's voice. It was muffled and came to Bucky through several layers of crumbled rock, but it was still clear to hear, "You look at us like that one more time and I'm gonna rip your eyes out, got it, pal?"

"Morita!" Bucky shouted. The Czech looked disgruntled.

"Sarge! That you?"

"Sure is. Falsworth with you?"

"I'm here."

"You guys alright?" That was the important question. Bucky's felt dizzy with relief that they were both still alive. And in the same place. What a stroke of luck. Never mind that Monty sounded sick as a dog and that the two of them were buried under half of a building. At least they were under the same building.

"We're fine," Jim said. "'Cept Monty keeps trying to throw up his lungs. And he smells."

Bucky laughed to himself. "Hang tight. We'll get you out."

It was Monty's voice that said, "Is it just you out there, Sergeant?"

"Me and some Czechs. Dum Dum's around here somewhere."

"The others?"

"Jones's sick but not injured. Dernier took it rough but he's still on his feet — in better shape than Jones, I'd say."

"What about Cap?" said Jim.

Bucky shoved at a boulder and said, "Was still out when I left. He'll be fine, though." The second part may have been a wish more than a statement of fact.

"Yeah, well, hurry up and get us outta here. It's the second time a building has fallen on us in twenty-four hours."

"We just don't belong here, do we?" Bucky said. It was too quiet for them to hear, but he meant it all the same.

Dum Dum turned up after ten minutes. Bucky was so focused that he hardly noticed the additional set of hands working beside him.

"They down there?" said the corporal.

"Jesus," Bucky muttered. "Didn't hear you."

"That Dum Dum?" said Jim's voice from below.

"You're damn right," Dum Dum said back.

"Hurry the hell up and get us out, you useless Mick."

They got a laugh out of it and continued to work. Dum Dum said casually and lowly to Bucky, "I think I may have found us a ride outta here, if you're interested."

"How much noise will it make?"

The moustache wiggled. Bucky knew what that meant.

"A whole lotta noise, Jimmy. A tonne of noise," said Dum Dum.

"Let me get a look at these guys before I decide to risk it."

Forty minutes, two bruised and nicked hands, and an innumerable number of curses later, Jim and Monty were free and back on solid ground (with nothing above their heads). Bucky grabbed each of them by the shoulders and looked them over. Jim complained loudly and Monty made exasperated faces. They were well enough to be acting like themselves. But then they started walking and Bucky realised they weren't well at all. Monty was as sick as Gabe, and, after badgering Jim in the same manner Bucky had learned was necessary from a lifetime of dealing with Steve, Bucky saw that one of Jim's ankles had swollen to twice the size of the other one. It was fat and bruised and ugly.

Bucky turned to Dum Dum and said, "We're gonna need your ride."

"Excellent," he said. "I'll lead the way."

Before they left, Bucky thanked the Czechs as best he could. He thought they got the idea even though they didn't have much common language. Bucky knew some German, but it was incredibly difficult to recall at the moment. His head felt full of hot water and cotton. Maybe it was relief that both Jim and Monty were alive mixed up with agitation that both of them were decidedly worse for wear.

Also, Bucky was hungry again and (still) tired. At least his brain hadn't tried to leave his body; that feeling wasn't him having a seizure, was it? No. No, Bucky hadn't lost any time, hadn't blacked out. He could account for everything. Everything was fine. They were all going to be fine.

Anyway, he thanked the Czechs, wished them luck in finding their friends and overthrowing the Germans, and said good-bye without feeling guilty about it. Maybe Jan Novák helped Bucky ignore the guilt. That guy had a way with people. Talking about missions and duties. Bucky really hoped that guy survived all this and lived a life untainted by what had happened there. It was a complete fantasy, but it was what Bucky wanted for that man. It was what he wanted for everyone on the planet that was living through this right now.

"Whaddya think?" Dum Dum said.

They were tucked like sardines in an ally staring out into a street that was halfway between the ruined castle and the resistance blocks — it had taken them forever to get that far with Jim's ankle and Monty's wheezing. There was a small German jeep sitting in the street; a long-barrel gun was mounted to the back. Probably some autocannon or garbage flak gun in case HYDRA decided to come back for a second pass. Four Germans were in the vicinity of the vehicle. One was leaning against the driver's side door.

"Alright," Bucky said after he'd taken in the scene. "I'll put the uniform to work one last time. Dugan, take out that soldier" — he pointed to the one smoking on a stoop that no longer led to a home — "while I've got the driver distracted. Falsworth, Morita. Which of you is the better shot in your condition?"

"Me," Jim said while Monty pointed away from himself.

"Fine. Think you can take out the two rooting through the trunks over there?"

"No problem."

"Dugan, you get to the truck as soon as your man is down. You're driving. I'll take the driver down. We'll come and pick you two up in the alley. OK? Do not leave the alley. Even if you get a better shot, don't leave here."

Jim gave Bucky a snarky look — God, what a relief. "Yes, sir, Captain America," Jim said.

He didn't know why, but Bucky ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up even though it wasn't in any particular order to begin with. Then he trotted out into the street and hailed the German leaning on the truck door by waving his arm. "Hallo!" he said loudly.

"Alles klar?" the driver said back.

Bucky really wished he had Gabe's brain right then. Guy could lie like it was the truth, and it didn't even matter what language he was doing it in. "Uh. Ich brauche Hilfe."

The Kraut rolled his eyes and stopped leaning on the truck. "Natürlich. Kommen Sie. Was brauchen Sie?"

Hungry, tried, worried, and agitated, there was only one thing Bucky's brain could think of to say in response to that in German. "Ein Bier bitte!"

Then he heard six gunshots echo from the alley he'd just left and there were heavy footsteps coming in his direction. Before the second shot rang out, though, Bucky had swung forward and slammed the driver's head into the top edge of the door of the truck. There was a dent in the door. Bucky chose to believe the chipped paint and red splatters had been there before he touched that soldier's head. Bucky hustled around the truck at the same time that he heard Dum Dum vault over the door and the Kraut body, landing right in the driver's seat (maybe Bucky felt the suspension bounce more than he actually heard Dum Dum). They were rolling in a matter of seconds.

At the alley, they paused but didn't completely stop. Monty shoved Jim toward Bucky's waiting hands, so that was who was hauled into the cramped trunk first. Dum Dum was easing onto the gas a little too soon, but Bucky managed to catch Monty's hand, too, pulling him into what little space remained next to Jim.

"Stay down," Bucky told the two of them.

Jim gave him a withering look. Monty coughed. Both of them curled up reluctantly. It probably didn't feel too good since they'd been cramped under two collapsed buildings today. Jim got himself folded into the trunk — impressive. Monty's legs hung out the back, and it didn't look like the Brit cared one bit. He coughed again. It reminded Buck of his own throat and lungs, so he coughed, too.

Bucky stole Dum Dum's Thompson from between the two front seats and passed his Colt back to Jim. Monty had his own Webley out. Dum Dum burned rubber through those streets. The chassis was groaning under their weight and bouncing every time they hit something (which was almost always; there were so many rocks and shit in the streets). Bucky used the Thompson to take out any uniforms that tried to get in their way. Jim fired at the ones Bucky missed; he only missed because Dum Dum couldn't drive to save his life, not because Bucky was a bad shot.

Obviously, that was the reason. Now shut up, Morita.

They ditched the jeep halfway between the city edges and the egress house. The walking was slow, and night was falling again. It was full dark by the time they crossed the gate of their safe house. Another one of the Czech women met them outside. She smiled when she saw that they had come back with the correct number of people (and that they were all alive).

Bucky didn't protest when she hugged him and kissed his cheek. She said with a heavy accent, "Captain is awake." She stepped to Dum Dum and hugged and kissed him, too. Bucky hoped the moustache scratched the lady's skin. She laughed and said, "He is cross with you both."

There were worse things to come back to.

"You keep glarin' like that and your face is gonna get stuck that way forever," Jim said to Rogers.

Dugan had been thinking it, but there was no way that he was going to say it. Besides, it looked funny. So he went back to tinkering with Jim's broken radio. The two of them were bent over the thing with a small collection of tools scattered on the table between them. Rogers was sitting in a third chair pushed further back from the table. He was bent out of shape over Barnes; what else was there for Rogers to get bent out of shape over anyway?

"He shouldn't have done that. It was stupid and risky."

"I think I've heard him say something like that about you," Jim said dryly. Shifting his swollen leg stiffly, he added, "A circle, the two of you."

"He was in command," Dugan said, trying to imitate Jim's frank and factual tone. "Nothing a commander does is stupid."

"Yeah, well." Rogers's voice was hardly raspy, unlike Barnes's. Apparently, all the healing was done while one was asleep. Now, exactly why Cap went down for so long Dugan didn't know. But he was pretty sure that sleep had to have something to do with why he'd recovered so quickly. Hard to believe that there were no ill consequences to Rogers being in that gas dome for so long, but that was what the reality appeared to be. For now, anyway. Shit always snuck up on them later down the line. Wasn't that some law of life or something?

Monty snored loudly from the other room. He, Gabe, and Frenchie had been out like lights the moment they were all reassured that no one was dead. God, Monty snored something awful. Dugan had almost forgotten. Or was it the illness making him so much worse?

From his spot at the table, Dugan could see the bright end of two cigarettes out in the back garden. He knew Barnes and a few of the Czechs were out there. Chances were high that they were making a dent in all those Kraut smokes they had collected on their trip back to the city. That reminded Dugan of the lump of lard in his pocket and his obligation.

"You know Phillips is gonna kill you, right?" Jim said. He pulled a twisted piece of metal out of the radio that he'd been working on for the past twenty minutes. He made a "huh" noise at it and then went back to work.

"I couldn't exactly contact him while I was passed out and without a working radio."

"Doesn't matter. He's still gonna kill ya. Especially after he hears about you and the Red Skull."

"I know," Rogers said.

"And then what's Carter gonna say?" Jim just didn't know when to stop. "She'll probably murder you and then kiss you. Can you imagine?"

Dugan laughed. "I'm sure they can have a proper reunion while they isolate Rogers in medical. Nothing gets a man going like giving blood samples."

"It'll be just like when we got back from Krausberg. You hear her with the 'you're late' line? Geez," Jim said.

"If you two have had enough," Rogers said.

"I'm never going to have enough," Dugan declared.

The radio was fixed a few minutes later. The signal was fuzzy and worse for wear, but it was good enough. Jim and Rogers talked to the S.S.R. while Dugan sat there and ate out one of his pilfered German ration tins. It was some kind of meat that might have been pork before the war. The first war, the Great War. Barnes and the Czechs came in right when Peggy's voice came on over the radio. Dugan was sure someone had gone to rouse her when Jim had first contacted base.

Barnes raised a hand in acknowledgement on his way to the room where Monty's snoring was coming from. Dugan mirrored the motion, and Jim jerked his chin in the sergeant's direction. Rogers frowned and concentrated on talking to the radio.

"Gimmie some of that," Jim said to Dugan. He swatted at the tin but Dugan jerked out of the way in time.

"Get your own."

"I was trapped under two buildings today."

"Too bad. A grown man ought to know how to exit a building by the time he's twenty."

"Asshole."

Dugan passed the tin over. "Don't say I never did anything for you."

It was a long time before Rogers signed off the radio. He handed it back to Jim rather abashedly.

"Get your fill?" Dugan said.

Which Rogers deserved.

"They want us to move out tomorrow evening for extraction," Rogers said.

Dugan said, "We gotta go far? The team's not exactly at its best."

Rogers shook his head. "Not far. We'll get a ride south. Stark's getting us."

"Great," said Jim, "I love dealing with that guy when we're fresh out of the field."

Dugan snorted and Rogers nodded his head in a conceding sort of way.

"Can I give you a bit of advice?" Jim said. That bite was in his voice.

With a sigh, Rogers said, "Sure." He looked like he was already regretting his answer.

"Talk to your sergeant."

"What?"

Dugan looked anywhere but at Jim or Rogers.

"Just . . . talk to your sergeant, Cap."

Chapter Text

Steve took watch for the rest of the night. He purposely let the four-hour window expire when they usually roused the next guy for his shift. It was the least he could do after all the hours he'd spent lying prone while the rest of the guys were running rescue missions. The night was a perfect time to dwell on that fact.

Steve was embarrassed. It reminded him of life before Erskine and the serum. He'd been completely, entirely useless. Knocked out of the fight so easily. Steve hated feeling so powerless, like he made no difference whatsoever. He was supposed to be the leader of his men, and one dome filled with gas had completely knocked him off of his feet. Red Skull had escaped just as easily as last time.

From where Steve was standing, the mission had been a complete failure. He had been a complete failure. He'd failed as a leader and as a super soldier. His enhanced eyes swept the room, and he thought that his team had paid the price for his inadequacy.

Morita was hobbled by his crushed ankle. Jones and Monty were sick with God-knew-what; they were both burning with fever. Dernier wasn't far behind them, and he still looked like he'd been recently flattened by a truck. Bucky was on his last legs. He had been on his last legs since that car got ambushed on their way into Prague. Steve could pick out the distinct sound of air scraping through Bucky's blistered throat from all the other noises in the house. It was a constant reminder that his own lungs faced virtually no consequence from exposure to the gas.

It was a constant reminder that Bucky still put himself on the line to get Steve's foolhardy ass out of trouble. That Steve put Bucky in the position to have to do that in the first place. In this case, Steve supposed he couldn't be too upset about it. Bucky had been right to do it. Again.

Between Monty and Dugan's snores, the rasping of Jones's breathing, Dernier's quiet sleep-talking, and Morita's shifting, Steve heard Bucky's breath catch. The seconds ticked by and he didn't draw a new one. Tension was building in Steve's thighs, about to get up, when he finally heard steady respirations restart.

Talk to your sergeant, Morita had told Steve. Yeah, maybe he should. Maybe it was past time he did that. Bucky had been distant recently, avoiding conversations, smoking too much instead of eating. Steve knew Bucky well enough to know it was intentional. There was plenty of time between now and landing back on base for Steve to corner him and get some answers. Maybe he could even work on being comforting, like he meant to.

Steve wasn't sure how that plan went so far out the window once the guys started to wake up. Dugan was crabby about not being woken up to take a shift on watch. Bucky started doing the same thing. That started an argument between the two of them, Dugan claiming that he was the only guy who was healthy and that Bucky might as well be walking wounded. Bucky did not take that comment well at all. Morita busted up the argument before it got too loud, thank God.

It was impossible to pin Bucky down after that. He was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. All Steve wanted was to ask him if he was OK after the gas (and maybe yell at him a bit for being such a fat idiot going out on a rescue mission with only one other guy for backup and virtually no supplies). But Bucky was putting on a clinic on how to be a gold-standard sergeant.

First, he dug around in their pile of gear, coming away with a bundle of what looked like Wehrmacht-branded iron rations, and went into the kitchen to talk with their hosts. A few minutes after that, Steve watched Bucky go to Morita and check on him. He got the surly comms officer to take his untied boot off willingly. Bucky checked out Morita's ankle, bending it this way and that, and getting Morita's feedback on every angle. The bandage was changed; Bucky wrapped up the ankle in scraps of parachute silk (which they'd been carrying around since Italy) like he'd been doing it his entire life. Negotiations were made about Morita taking a syrette of morphine: not now, but when they were about to move out for extraction, he consent to taking one.

Dernier was next. Bucky gauged his temperature (no resistance from the patient) and checked all his numerous wounds for infection. The worst ones were inspected and re-dressed, and the smaller ones were declared safe to leave exposed. Despite the shape of him, Dernier seemed to be in decent spirits. The two of them kept up an easy flow of conversation that Steve did his best not to eavesdrop on, despite his new sense of hearing.

"Check-in time?" Morita said.

Steve shook himself and tried to focus again. "Right."

Dugan got up to help Morita to his feet then. Steve got up to help support Morita's other side. They got him into the kitchen and situated beside the radio. Dugan stood off to the side so that Morita's foot could be supported on the seat. Steve sat beside Morita and watched him make contact with the S.S.R. The headset was passed Steve's way after Morita and whoever was on the other end had exchanged the necessary passphrases.

"Hello, Steve," came Peggy's voice in the headset.

"Hey, Peggy," he said.

"How is the team? Anything change overnight?"

"No change. We're really going to need medical ready when we get back."

"We gave notice for them to prepare last night. Is there anything specific you'll need?"

"Morita's ankle is questionable. I don't think it's broken, but I really think he needs to stay off of it as much as possible between missions. As much time as we can get."

Morita gave Steve the most wicked, withering look that Steve thought he'd ever seen in his life.

"Limited PT then?" came Peggy's response.

"It's a start. Jones and Falsworth haven't really shown much improvement. Whatever they have, they might need some help." Steve looked up and watched Bucky administer the last of their penicillin to Jones in the other room. "May need another round of antibiotics ready for them."

Dugan tapped Morita on the shoulder, a cigarette held out as an offering. Morita nodded and let Dugan help him up. They headed for the garden.

"Easy enough to prepare that," Peggy's voice said.

"Any chance you could get something nice for the guys, Peg?" Steve said. "They've really gone through it. I'm not so sure about morale at the moment, knowing that they'll be going into another huge mission almost as soon as we get back."

"Hmm," Peggy hummed. The sound crackled a little in Steve's ears. "I think I can arrange something. It's not so short notice that I won't be able to get something. All the generals are gathering for Operation Overlord. You know how all the good stuff that's officially on shortage seems to follow them."

"Funny how that happens."

"Right." A brief pause. "Steve, you know that you'll have to report to medical, too, right?"

"Yeah."

"They're already preparing to collect blood samples from you and Sergeant Barnes. They've made two isolation rooms."

Steve couldn't stop himself from cutting in, "Isolation rooms really aren't necessary. We're not exactly keeping clear of any contamination out here. Too late for any good to come from isolating us."

"It's not up to me, Steve, and I understand how you feel about subjecting Barnes to this particular protocol."

"My feelings haven't changed." Steve stopped himself from adding that Bucky's feelings hadn't changed either, since the man in question was now moving around in the same room as Steve.

"I'm afraid at least one blood sample collection will be unavoidable. If both of you were exposed to HYDRA's biological weapon, we'll want to know. Even if their gas is something else entirely, we need to be sure. Need to know what we're up against. It could be a slow-acting poison. Phillips is more than beside himself about Barnes being exposed to one of HYDRA's drugs again."

Steve looked at the ceiling and sighed heavily. Bucky looked up from where he was setting up one of their portable camp stoves across the table. One of his eyebrows arched and his head tipped in Steve's direction. Steve shook his head. It was then that he noticed there was a real, honest-to-God bowl of hot soup on front of him. His head whipped around to notice that the rest of the guys and a few of the women that lived here all had similar bowls. There was something close enough to the real thing to be called meat floating in the broth. Steve was astounded. He stared at Bucky and the tin of water he was setting to boil on the camp stove.

What? Bucky mouthed.

Steve looked down and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know," he said into the headset. "Believe me. I know."

Peggy must have caught the tone of Steve's voice. "There was one thing that changed overnight. You might happy to know that one Jan Novák contacted us, and Howard will be coordinating the return of your motorbike to our quarters. It'll likely return some time after the rest of your team, but we will be able to get it returned."

"I completely forgot about that," Steve said blankly.

"Howard thought you might say that. He'll likely have a lot to talk to you about on the flight back here, I'm afraid."

"Can't wait."

When Steve finally signed off the radio with Peggy, he realised that Bucky had left the tin of water boiling on the camp stove. It was suspiciously close to Steve's elbow, without putting it at risk of being knocked over. How many times had something just like this been left at his bedside by his mother or Bucky during Steve's lifetime?

"Jesus," Steve said to the hands he covered his face with.

Dugan came in through the back door to the garden then. "You look annoyed," he said.

Steve gestured to the bowl of soup and the improvised humidifier. "The nerve of this guy."

Dugan shrugged. "I think it's actually making him feel better."

"I'll humour him for now," Steve said. "He go outside?"

Dugan nodded. "Having a smoky breakfast, by the looks of it."

"Didn't eat?" Steve gestured toward his own soup bowl.

"Nope." Dugan popped his lips on the word. "Says his stomach is upset."

Steve glared suspiciously at the soup.

"Which was weird," Dugan was saying, "because his stomach was growling something fierce yesterday when we went back for those idiots. Damn near gave away our position a few times." He must have caught sight of Steve's expression, because his tone changed and he said, "This doesn't sound like news to you."

"It's not. He used to do this when we were kids."

"Do what? Prove his stomach can growl louder than artillery?"

"Not eat when he's worried about something."

"Oh." Dugan sat at the table and pointed questioningly at the camp stove.

Steve moved it to his other side but didn't turn it off. If it made Bucky relax, he'd leave the thing going for now.

"There a story to go with this dumbass behaviour?"

Steve laughed through his nose. "He said I needed extra helpings just to keep up with the kids who went without. I'd always refuse him at first. But I almost always ended up taking it anyway."

"You know, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to picture you any other way than how you are now. It's just impossible to think of you as some scrawny kid getting the snot beat out of him in a back alley."

"Well, if you can get Bucky to stop thinking of me that way, I'd appreciate it."

Holding his hands up in mock surrender, Dugan said, "I think that image is in his head until the day he dies."

Steve stirred what remained in the bowl of soup. It really hadn't been that bad at all, for something made out of leftover German rations. "I got sick for a long time when I was ten or so. Bucky hardly ate for two weeks. Kept bringing me all sorts of things, in case one of them caught my appetite and cured me. He passed out at school, smacked his head on a desk on the way down. My mother took a look at him — she was a nurse — and she thought Bucky caught what I had. 'Cause he kept throwing everything up that they fed him. I ratted him out, and, God, his ma was so angry with him."

"Sounds like Sarge has always been Sarge," Dugan said.

"I dunno," Steve said said, "I think it's gotten worse since he joined the Army. He usually only got wrapped up in stupid stuff because he was following me into it. From the stories I've heard, he's been starting some of the stupid stuff himself. Shoulda seen his ma the morning he left for training."

"Told him not to come back with another one of you, did she?"

"Yes. That's exactly what she said. Said risking his life for one was enough."

Dugan looked out toward the window where Bucky and Morita's voices could be heard. "Hasn't made a lick of difference. He stuck his neck out for dumb kids at McCoy, then Africa, and Italy, in Krausberg, and for all of us now…what an idiot."

"No kidding," Steve said, but he was smiling.

They all could have done without the lecture from Bucky about cleaning their weapons later that afternoon. Steve had been amused by the reactions of the others. They had cursed and grumbled but eventually did as Bucky said. The snide comment about them thanking Bucky when their guns didn't jam up during battle was quintessential Barnes sass. Steve could have been back in George and Winnie Barnes's house playing Rummy after Sunday dinner, the feeling was so strong. It was always hitting Steve sideways that there were so many more people that were Bucky's people now. He'd created such a huge family on his own, in the Army.

By the time they were leaving for extraction, Steve almost felt like he should radio HQ to tell Peggy that morale had been increased dramatically. Even their sick and wounded didn't seem too discouraged, though they really hadn't gotten much better. Dugan supported Morita on their march to the extraction point, absolutely necessary since he made good on his deal with Bucky to accept morphine before they left. So he wasn't the steadiest on his feet, the bad ankle notwithstanding. Jones, Monty, and Dernier stumbled along and into each other behind them. Steve took lead, and Bucky brought up the rear. No resistance was encountered the whole way. The boarding of Howard Stark's aircraft was a lot slower than the last one in Italy. No one had the energy to run, apart from Steve and maybe Dugan. Bucky came up from the back of their line to help Dugan get Morita into the fuselage with minimal cursing.

Peggy was right: Howard had a lot to say to Steve about him essentially abandoning the motorbike with the old man with the horse-drawn wagon. It hadn't really seemed that important at the time. And Howard seemed to have inexhaustible resources in that lab of his. If they really wanted Steve to test another bike in the field, he assumed they could acquire another one. HQ was overflowing with Allied and stolen Axis vehicles. Steve endured the lecture for as long as he could before he stopped paying attention.

The sharp looks Morita kept throwing him that screamed, This is exactly what I'm talking about! were a good distraction. That was the signal for Steve to check on Bucky. But every time Morita's gaze would get razor sharp and pin Steve to his seat near the front of the plane, Bucky had a look on his face that might have been the distant sniper-focus. That, or he was sleeping with his eyes open. Which Steve didn't know Bucky to have ever done.

Dugan, next to Morita, would look anywhere but at Steve whenever this happened.

There was a group of S.S.R. technicians that met them all immediately upon landing. Steve didn't mind so much at first, since this kept Howard from giving Steve his full, undivided attention regarding the almost-left-behind motorcycle. The medical staff also got Morita off of his feet immediately. They took him out of Dugan and Bucky's arms, transferring him immediately into a wheeled chair. He did not look happy about the arrangement at all, but he let it happen. Jones and Monty were escorted off the runway by a small group of medics. Dernier went willingly and on steady feet with just one escort.

Peggy was headed toward Steve and Howard at the same time that the medics were herding them in her direction. She met them halfway and then started walking with the group.

"Nice trip?" she said lightly.

"Wonderful," Howard said. "We were going over how we shouldn't purposely abandon useful assets in the field."

"Still?"

"Yes, still."

Steve exchanged a private look with Peggy.

She said, "We're having the whole team be debriefed and then thoroughly examined by the medical staff. We need them in top shape for Overlord. They've all been ordered to rest, regardless of the results of their exams. The order will be lifted as we see fit."

"OK," Steve said, relieved.

"So no PT drills will wait for them in the morning. After they're examined and receive any treatment they need, they'll be released to eat as needed and rest for the night. A proper appreciative meal will be prepared tomorrow for the team. Be sure none of them miss it."

"Will do."

"That includes yourself, Captain. You have morning meetings with Colonel Phillips, myself, Mr Stark, and select Allied generals regarding the planning of Operation Overlord. Do not be afraid to put your foot down with them."

That sounded suspiciously like a warning.

Their group arrived at the low aid station building. Peggy turned and stood to the side as the medics and staff continued inside.

"I'll see you tomorrow then, Captain. Enjoy the hospitality of the aid station in the meantime. Mr Stark, if you would come with me. We have appointments of our own to attend to." She caught Steve's eye before turning on her heel and leading Howard away.

Thank God for medical. Steve never would have been able to corner Bucky if they hadn't all been sent there. Steve sat through the whole thing. He answered the nurse's questions and let her listen to his lungs and heart and look at his throat. He let her collect all the blood that she wanted. Steve was more than used to this procedure, especially since they did it so many times when recreating the serum was a goal Phillips thought he could achieve in a week. Steve's offhand questions to his nurse revealed that the medical staff had been fully informed about the gas. Nearly all of Steve's symptoms had become distant memories by now, but he did his best to describe what he remembered about the castle.

All during his exam and debrief, Steve's thoughts were on his sergeant, two doors down the hall. He already knew Jones, Monty, Morita, and Dernier had been seen, medicated as needed, and ordered — literally ordered — to rest. That intel was thanks again to the helpful nurse. Being a captain sure did entitle him to any bit of information he wanted. Steve had even passed along through the medic staff the assignment that Dugan was to ensure that the rest order was enforced.

All that remained was Bucky.

The nurse left with a final sample of Steve's blood, and, when the door opened again a beat later, a different nurse hovered in the doorway.

"Captain Rogers?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am. Am I all clear?" He was already getting to his feet.

"Oh, I don't — c-could you help with something?"

Steve's mind jumped immediately to Bucky. "Is he alright?"

The nurse said, "Yes, I think so. It's just that he won't move at all now that we're done."

He shoved her out of the way as politely as he could. Since he already knew where Bucky was, Steve let himself into the room. Bucky was sat there in a chair nearly identical to the one Steve had just vacated. If he hadn't known any better, Steve would have said Bucky had been waiting for him. The look on his face was eerie. It looked like it had that time they'd been ambushed on their way up the boot of Italy. Steve was convinced that the episode then had been a black out; he'd heard of hysterical blindness in the field. Perhaps hysterical black outs weren't too far out of the realm of possibility either.

Bending forward and putting a hand on Bucky's shoulder, Steve said, "Bucky."

Bucky blinked and tilted his head toward Steve's voice. His eyes stayed locked on the far distance. It was a gesture he used when he was sniping but wanted to let someone know that he was listening.

Steve looked over his shoulder and said to the nurse standing there, "Do you think you could give us some privacy?"

Face flushed, she hastened to comply with the request.

Back to Bucky, Steve shook him a little and called his name. "Bucky. Come on back, pal."

It did nothing.

"Need your help here, Buck." That got a twitch of the eyes.

Bucky blinked, flashed his gaze to Steve for just a second, and said, "What?" in a cracked voice.

They could have at least given him some water, Steve thought.

What he said was, "C'mon. Follow me." Steve reclaimed his full height then and waited for Bucky to do the same.

There was a pause that was just on this side of too long before Bucky pushed himself upright. At the same time, he rolled the sleeve of his shirt down over the arm that Steve assumed had just given a blood sample. There wasn't any doubt in Steve's mind that the needle stick had been the straw that broke the camel's back for Bucky.

On the way out, Steve told the nurse that Bucky was just tired and to please send a runner to let him know about the blood test. Steve didn't say whether he was talking about Bucky's test or his own. They'd never told him anything about Bucky's tests after Novara while they threatened to pull Bucky from the team. Sure, Steve had no right to Bucky's medical records, but come on!

Again, thank God for Peggy Carter for getting Steve through that crisis, too.

Bucky followed Steve obediently, almost like a dog. He acted appropriately; he smiled and returned gestures to people that saluted them that Steve only half-recognised. But Steve knew Bucky wasn't all there. From the way he walked, Steve knew the lights were on but nobody was home inside Bucky's head. It was like when Bucky drank too much, except he wasn't stumbling when he walked. It was the strangest combination of behaviours Steve had ever seen from his oldest friend. They got all the way to Steve's private quarters, which wasn't exactly a quick trip from the aid station, without running into someone who actually tried to stop them.

Steve steered Bucky by the shoulders to a chair and had him sit. Keeping his hands tight on Bucky's shoulders, Steve stared until Bucky stared back. It took a minute or two, but he saw it the moment Bucky came back.

"Why're ya lookin' at me like that?" Bucky said. He'd leaned away, and his eyes roved over the room. Trying to figure out where he was, Steve knew.

Steve wanted to hit something very acutely in that second. Instead, he tightened his grip so that Bucky looked at him again. There had probably never been as much seriousness in Steve's voice as there was when he said, "Are you OK?"

"I'm fine," Bucky answered, perplexed.

An eyebrow arched itself, and Steve tilted his head doubtfully.

"Kinda tired," Bucky conceded.

He looked it. He looked smeared around the edges, as though someone had tried to erase him. Not even when Bucky was seventeen and working nights at the docks after spending all day in school had he looked so utterly worn down.

(Steve never did figure out what exactly Bucky did down at the docks. He knew his friend wanted to be away from his father as often as possible, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if he'd taken the absolute first job that gave him an excuse for not being home. Bucky never really talked about the job. Steve always imagined it was hauling crates or something. The docks were far from a safe and luxurious place to work.)

Steve let go of Bucky's shoulders and stood up. He sighed, eyed Bucky, and said, "You always take care of everyone but yourself."

"Careful. You're startin' to sound like my ma."

"I know." It was why Steve had said it. "You're sleeping here."

The patented duck face frowned back at him. "What?"

"You heard me. Right now. Go to sleep." Steve pointed to his bunk. Bucky just sat there, so Steve added, "I can make it an order."

"You wouldn't," Bucky said. The words were almost a growl because of the dryness in his throat.

"You can stay awake, but then you'll have to answer all my questions about Krausberg. I know how much you like to talk about it."

Bucky leaned forward after a short stare down to start untying his boots. He was lying in bed a minute later, glaring at Steve, who sat in the chair Bucky had vacated. A runner brought over a packet of briefings Steve was meant to read before going to meet the generals tomorrow.

"I'm going to miss dinner," Bucky said.

"I'll wake you up," Steve lied easily. It wasn’t as if Bucky was eating anything these days anyway.

Bucky snorted and rolled so his back was to Steve.

Twenty minutes later, Steve said, "Bucky, you have to actually sleep if you don't want me to ask about Krausberg."

"I'm trying," he mumbled. "Can't."

"Give me a break. You can't fall asleep when you're dead on your feet?"

"Yes."

Steve thought of his childhood and decided to give comforting Bucky another shot. He'd never been good at it; distraction from what was upsetting Bucky had always come easier to him than outright comfort. It was always easier to just come home and let Winnie Barnes handle that. But, damn it, Bucky deserved for Steve to at least try. Getting up, he gently tapped the toe of his boot against the side of the bed and said, "Budge up."

Bucky didn't even complain before he sat himself up. Steve sat on the bed orthogonally. The two of them shifted until they were sitting shoulder to shoulder, backs against the wall and toes dangling off the long end. There, Steve thought. They could have been sitting out on the fire escape of his apartment back home. Steve went back to reading the briefing packet. As the minutes ticked by, Bucky leaned harder and harder on Steve's shoulder. Which was how he realised Bucky's skin was ice cold.

"You catching what Jones and Monty got?" Steve said lowly in case Bucky was about to drop off.

"Dunno. Maybe," Bucky mumbled.

It was a testament to how not right Bucky was when he didn't complain at all when Steve (feeling very much out of his element) tucked a blanket around Bucky's shoulders. Taking a moment to hesitate and reconsider, Steve decided to take the plunge and throw an arm around Bucky. He pulled him into his side. Steve wished he knew why it was so much harder to put an arm around Bucky when he was unwell. Every other time, it didn't take any thought. It was natural. It was nothing. They'd slept in the same bed as kids; they had very little issues with contact. They'd been tactile with each other since they were seven years old. Whatever it was, Steve felt very aware of himself when Bucky was ill or upset. The feeling made him unsure of himself. It had always been that way, and Steve still couldn't figure it out twenty years later. 

It took about twelve minutes for Bucky's head to drop onto Steve's shoulder. Bucky's eyes wouldn't close though; they'd stayed stubborn and heavy at half-mast, staring at the packet of papers that were in Steve's other hand. Forty minutes after that (two and a half times through the packet), Steve noticed Bucky twitching. It had been so small that Steve was sure he never would have noticed in his old body. (Was it wrong to think of it that way? His old body? Was that quite right?)

Strange: Five or six twitches would go by and then Bucky would get a little rigid. It was almost as if he were holding his breath.

"Bucky." The papers dropped to Steve's lap.

"Mm?"

"You're sure you're OK?"

"Mm."

"Think you could sleep if you lie down?"

"Mm." Like his lips were stuck together. "Time to eat?"

Steve didn't know how Bucky managed to ask without opening his mouth.

"No. Time to sleep."

"Nuh uh."

Steve ended up bullying food out of the mess and bringing it back to his quarters. That was when, half-awake, Bucky raised hell about boiling some water for Steve's lungs. For the first time in the history of their friendship, Steve hadn't thrown a fit over it. Only because Bucky needed it. The breath scraping through his throat was hard for Steve's new hearing to ignore. For all the whining he'd been doing about getting food, Bucky hardly ate anything. Steve nagged and threatened to ask about Krausberg until Bucky ate enough to satisfy Steve. Then he got him to lie down. It was hard work, Steve decided. Having a good bedside manner was not going to be in his wheelhouse. How had Bucky done this so often for Steve and not gone insane? What patience all of this took! Steve had renewed respect and love for his sainted mother.

He tried to focus on the briefing packet again and read through it without being distracted, but Bucky started twitching and holding his breath again. Steve looked toward the ceiling and thought, You haven't been OK for a really long time, Buck.

Dugan and Jones and Morita were all great guys, and Steve was grateful for them. But it was past time that Steve started taking care of his best friend. So he thought as hard and long about Winnie Barnes as he could and then did what he remembered her doing for Bucky when he was upset: He pressed small and gentle circles into the vertebrae of Bucky's neck. A breath was unlocked from his chest.

Steve picked up the packet again with one hand, keeping the other on Bucky.

After the factory in Poland, Peggy had ridden for a lifetime on a too-small ship and did mind-numbing work in the London bunker translating and de-coding the documents they'd taken from the factory. When they stopped receiving reports from the field quite inexplicably, she began to worry. It couldn't have been more than two days that the S.S.R. had gone without a report from Steve and his men, but it had felt like a lifetime to Peggy. Strangely, her anxiety only got more powerful once she'd heard from them. The extraction seemed, to her, to take much longer than it actually had.

Peggy had restrained herself when she greeted Steve on the tarmac. She was entirely professional during debriefings. She made sure to stay clear of medical. She didn't even hover over the men while they ate an enormous meal (relatively speaking, for wartime) in the mess. No, she waited until all the hubbub had died down before she went to Steve's quarters.

Peggy knocked four times on Steve's door and then took one and a half steps back. It was stupid of her heart to flutter like that. It was just Steve for pity's sake. But time went on without an answer and her body didn't return to baseline. There were lights on behind the door. She could see them. Perhaps he'd fallen asleep with the lights on. Perhaps he simply didn't want to be disturbed.

But then she heard, "Come on in. It's open."

So Peggy gripped the doorknob and entered. She just got the door closed behind her when she took in the scene and hesitated. "Er, I'll come back tomorrow, shall I?"

It appeared Peggy wasn't Steve's only guest. He was sitting sideways in his bunk, back against the wall and legs hanging off the long edge. She was pretty certain that that was Sergeant Barnes lying across Steve's bed. Barnes was on his stomach with his head pillowed on his crossed arms and Steve's lap; he was seemingly asleep. Steve held a report file in one hand and the other seemed to be pinching at the vertebrae around the sergeant's neck one at a time.

It struck Peggy as an intimate position. It wasn't sexual; there was nothing erotic or arousing about it. But it implied a complete and total sense of trust, a closeness among family that was palpable. It made outsiders inadvertently hyper-aware of their outside-ness. It was a mother nursing her new-born; sisters braiding each other's hair; brothers tending each other's wounds.

"What?" Steve said. The words shook Peggy from her thoughts. She blinked owlishly at him. "Of course not," he went on. Sergeant Barnes turned his head toward the sound of Steve's voice and pressed his head down into his crossed arms.

"You look occupied," she said. She still hadn't stepped away from the door.

"Nah." Steve reached over to place his report on a little table by the bed. There was one of those little camp stoves on the table. A metal cup was on the flame. Peggy stepped forward at last and saw it was boiling water — a humidifier. Steve said, "He's sleepin' like the dead. We can talk."

Floundering for a bit, she gestured to the improvised humidifier and said, "Clever."

A smile bent Steve's lips. He pointed at Barnes (the other hand was still moving up and down the sergeant's spine). "Was Bucky's idea. Old habit of his. Did stuff like this when I used to get sick all the time."

"I take it that's you telling me you're fine."

That smile again. "Yeah. It was a little rough when I first got up back in Prague. But it's gone now, Pegs, honest. The water's still going for Buck's benefit, not mine."

"After all the excitement with the cut on his hand in Novara, I'd've expected him to be fine as well," Peggy said teasingly.

"No kidding."

Barnes's whole body went tense, and Steve moved his hand to the base of Barnes's neck. Steve pressed his fingers down and moved his thumb in slow circles. The tension bled out of Barnes little by little. Peggy released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding in. Steve seemed to do the same.

"Keeps doing that," Steve muttered. A furrow formed between his brows as if Barnes were a riddle he just couldn't figure out.

Peggy assumed he was speaking to himself and didn't reply.

He looked up to Peggy and said, "I'm getting kind of sick of HYDRA messing with my friends."

Which Peggy didn't doubt, but she was also sure that when Steve said "friends," he really just meant Barnes. They spoke of families until the sun threatened the horizon.

0815: Steve woke up.

He couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours — he and Peggy had stayed up so late. (And a part of Steve suspected that his body was more efficient with this whole 'rest' thing lately.) Just talking; the two of them had done nothing more or less than talk. Peggy reminded Steve of a card game. Slowly, the two of them were showing each other their cards. There was nothing to gain from bluffing in this game. It was exactly the opposite. This was a game of truth, a contest to see who would blink first. Which of them could go longer? Steve was certain Peggy would win. But it was still fun to play along.

Steve thought about Peggy while he got himself ready for the day. The creases in his dress uniform could have spilt atoms — it looked damn uncomfortable. The uniform was necessary for his meeting with the generals today. Steve still couldn't quite believe five-star generals wanted his opinion on an operation. Maybe they just wanted to have a photograph taken to show the folks back home; they'd plaster it on a giant advertisement for war bonds.

At least Peggy would be there. Peggy, Phillips, and Howard would all be there. Steve remembered Peggy saying last night what she'd do if one of the generals asked her to get coffee or serve refreshments. It had been funny, but the truth of it made Steve prickly inside. He'd never really thought too hard about things like that — woman things — until he'd met Peggy. Now, he supposed it ought to have been something he thought about more often. What with his ma and . . . Steve was sure he was going to think of Bucky's sister in a different light now, more aware of what life had been like for her, what it was like now, and what it would be like if this war ever ended.

Steve shrugged at himself in the mirror and turned around. He was across the length of his quarters in a few short strides. Leaning over his bunk, Steve shook Bucky's shoulder.

He said in a relatively quiet voice, "Bucky, wake up, pal."

No response. So Steve shook him a little harder. It earned him a hint of a groan. Subsequent shakes got him nothing. What had Bucky always done when Steve was the one that wouldn't wake up? Dumping water was temping, but Steve quickly ruled it out. It'd just make Steve's bed wet, which was really just hurting him. So Steve tried tickling the sole of Bucky's foot. He got kicked for it, but at least it was a response. Emboldened, Steve tried again and caught him by the ankle when he kicked. That turned out to be stupid (and Steve should have known it would be stupid), because Bucky's whole body locked up like it had been doing all night long.

It was difficult to reach the back of Bucky's neck because of the way he was laying, but Steve managed to coax the tension out of his friend. Steve frowned and kept kneading the back of Bucky's neck like his mother used to do.

"Whuyerdoon?" Bucky said, making Steve jump in surprise.

"Hey," he said, "you OK?"

"Wuzleepin." Bucky was blinking and squinting. He licked his lips and swallowed deliberately.

Steve wanted to get the water boiling again when he saw Bucky do it. "Need somethin' to drink?"

Rocking his head back and forth, he said in a croaking voice, "No."

"That's real convincing, Buck."

Bucky grumbled something unintelligible and stopped trying to hold his eyes opened.

"I gotta go meet those generals. Stay here as long as you need."

"Why'd ya wake me up if yer not kickin' me out?"

"Go back to sleep, jerk." But Bucky had made a good point. Steve guessed he just wanted to make sure Bucky could wake up. After what Morita had said in Prague, Steve had been — not worried exactly, but definitely more aware.

Steve straightened up and leaned away from Bucky and the bunk. Anxiety over meeting with the brass of the brass rushed Steve. An impulse to shake Bucky awake flashed through him again. He resisted acting on it. After Poland and Czechoslovakia, Steve didn't have the heart to put his petty insecurities and self-doubt on Bucky, no matter how much Steve craved the reassurance talking with Bucky always brought him.

No, it was better to let the guy sleep. God knew he needed it. He needed it bad. Besides, Steve was fairly confident Morita and Dugan would cave his head in if he disturbed Bucky at rest. Those two were terrifying. The way Dugan acted was scary in particular, though Morita's bark wasn't something to scoff at. Steve didn't know whether to fear for his life or be glad that someone else was out there looking out for Bucky. It was obvious that Steve hadn't been doing the best of jobs at it lately. Not good enough anyway.

Which had made him think: Steve was sure Bucky's father, very, very deep down, was proud of his son. The Great War had left George Barnes permanently shell shocked, and Steve knew first-hand how hard it was to live with someone like that. He'd been over when George had episodes. Steve had nearly wet himself from fear the first time. They were terrifying to experience. Steve had always considered himself a fighter, and Bucky liked to call him stupid. But Steve wasn't brave or stupid enough to stand up to George Barnes when he was having an episode like Winnie Barnes had. Like Bucky had when he'd turned fourteen, trading off the role of punching bag and protector with his mother.

Bucky had always resented his father's shell shock; he saw it as an unforgivable weakness. Winnie hadn't seen things the same way, and their differing opinions sometimes drove a wedge between the two of them. There had been a lot of nights spent out on the fire escape of Steve's mother's apartment, and, later, out on Steve's own apartment's fire escape. Bucky would sport some new bruise and unload on Steve all the things he'd like to say to his father.

Now, Steve wondered if Krausberg (and everything that had happened since) changed Bucky's opinion of his father. Surely sitting around smoking cigarettes he'd taken off a dead body with a thousand-mile stare wasn't normal, wasn't the picture of health and coping. Henning and fussing over the men just to keep his head above water wasn't normal. Refusing to eat, barely being able to sleep…that wasn't normal.

Steve spent the night thinking about all of these things, even after Peggy came to visit. When he weighed all of it and really thought of it all at the same time, added up and totalled instead of as isolated incidents, he decided that this was something he wanted to do. Who cares if he had to, if he was obligated as the CO. All of the shit that Bucky was living could turn out OK still. It wasn't all that bad. Steve could be there for him like he never really had before. Comforting people wasn't that bad when that person was Bucky. (And probably Peggy.)

"Can't sleep with you sweatin' like that next to me," Bucky said with his eyes closed.

"Sorry," Steve said, "I was just leaving."

Jumping out of planes and directly into enemy fire couldn't hold a candle to how Steve felt about going into a room filled with generals.

"Nope," Bucky groaned. Steve flapped his hands uselessly as Bucky hauled himself into a sitting position. "No, you weren't, you punk." Both hands scrubbed at Bucky's face, and he blinked too many times in a row to be written off as natural. "OK. Tell me. What is it this time?"

"Bucky, go back to sleep. You're in awful shape."

"No, no, no. You're givin' me the eyes; you obviously need something. What is it?"

"It's nothin'. I gotta get goin' or else I'll be late for the generals."

"Ah! OK, so it's that." Bucky straightened up, but he still looked . . . saggy. "Steve, you're great, you're more than your circumstances, don't let those assholes get to you, be confident but God help you if you get combative, keep an open mind, trust yourself because you know I do, no matter what, you're my best pal, you've got Carter and the guys, we'll never desert you, you've faced things worse than a coupla guys with more decorations on their jackets than you. Did I forget anything?"

Steve had started laughing at "you're more than your circumstances." He nodded and said, "No, Buck, you didn't forget anything."

"D'you want me to come with?"

"I think it's invitation only." Steve might as well have shown up holding his mother's hand.

"All you gotta do is get through it, man," Bucky said. "Doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done."

The United States Army motto; Bucky had told Steve the story about how Dugan had come up with it when the two of them were still at Camp McCoy.

"Thanks."

"I'm serious about going with. I can stand outside the door the whole time. Or tell 'em that you don't go anywhere without your second-in-command. You're gonna tell all of us what happens in there anyway."

"None of that is the point, I think. Don't get up. I don't need you hounding the outside of the door." Tempting though the offer may be. Steve never realised how self-conscious he was until he'd been separated from Bucky. Fights were easy regardless of time, space, or body. But anything else caused him hesitation. Women, for one. Audiences filled with buyers of war bonds, for two, though Steve had eventually gotten used to — and dare he say good at — that.

Bucky threw a loose, almost drunk, arm out that caught Steve on the shoulder. The weight of it made Steve's face bend.

"Listen," Bucky said, "I'm glad you're big and all now—"

"No, you're not."

"Let me finish, punk." He shook his head and blinked some more. Steve was patient, and he was rewarded. "I'm glad you're big and all now. I am. You're happier. I'm — dealing with it. I'm happy. I am. But. But," Bucky said and shrugged sleepily, "I'm kind of glad you still need me around."

"Jesus, Bucky—"

"No, no! Don't do the eyes and go 'aw, Bucky'." (Steve held back a laugh.) "Don't. None of that. This is serious stuff, you know. I mean, you got the Adonis body, Carter, everybody wants your attention — I'm glad. OK? Everyone can finally see you the way I've always seen you and all that...shit."

Steve wasn't worried about the generals anymore. Hell, he couldn't even remember when he'd stopped caring. He was just laughing with his best pal. 

"Are you proposin' to me?"

"Actually, I was gonna wait 'til we liberated Paris to do that."

A shout of laughter jumped out of Steve's mouth. He didn't plan it or expect it, but it felt damn good to laugh like that.

"Go to sleep," he said and took Bucky's hand off his shoulder. "I really do have to get going. I'll see you later."

"Yeah, yeah."

Steve heard Bucky collapse back into the bed just as he shut the door.

Whether or not England ever got properly warm, Gabe would like to know. It was damn near May and this sodden rock couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Right now it was pleasant, but experience told Gabe that it wouldn't last for long. Pessimism really wasn't in his nature; sometimes a man couldn't help what he was. Hell if Gabe didn't appreciate the truth in that. So he put his face over his tin cup of real coffee and breathed in the scent. Steam clung pleasantly to his cheeks.

Coffee always smelled better than it tasted, even when it was damn good.

"Agent Carter really outdid herself this time," he said. "There's even milk and sugar. The real stuff."

Beside him, Jacques was nodding. He hadn't poured himself a cup, electing instead to warm his hands on a tin of hot water. "You'd expect tea from an Englishwoman."

"I'm glad she's on our side," Dugan said. He'd gotten himself coffee of the Irish variety. Gabe knew the corporal had been holding out on all of them. "Could you imagine going up against her?"

"What a dark day that would be," Falsworth said. "I'd be willing to wager that the captain'd fall victim to her charms first."

Dugan snorted. "You don't say."

"He's already done that," Gabe said. "I've never seen a man so deeply sunk in it."

Morita spoke up, "D'you reckon she'll come into the field with us again? She's a mighty fierce fighter. You guys see her swing around on that string of hers in Poland?"

"I was more impressed with her than I've ever been with Rogers," Dugan said with a laugh. "You don't see a gal like that too often."

"You don't see a person like that too often," Morita said, "and that counts Cap. Ain't nothin' about Carter came from a lab. That's pure human ferociousness."

Falsworth said, "I was talking with the boys earlier, and it sounds like we'll be part of the first wave of attackers invading France. Perhaps she'll be with us."

"It's France for sure?" asked Morita. He shrugged and said with side eye toward Dugan, "We can ask 'er when we talk to her tomorrow. She'll tell. Carter's in."

"Paris, here we come," Dugan said with his cup raised. "French girls are cuter, right, Jonesy?"

Gabe shrugged without commitment. "Hell of a sight better than the German gals," he said passively. But he was looking at Jacques.

"Ready to go home, Frenchie?" Morita said.

"Oh, I'm looking forward to it very much," he said. "All sorts of fireworks to celebrate my homecoming."

It didn't sound very sincere to Gabe's ears.

"Gonna whip up something special?" That was Dugan.

"Yes," he said. "Been planning for this day since 1940."

"I'll drink to that," Morita said.

They all drank from their assorted vessels. Jacques looked a little droopy around the eyes, Gabe noticed. Best to chalk it up to recovery after the last missions. They'd all stay sane this way. Morita was really starting to rub off on Gabe, so he made a resolution to ask Jacques if he wanted to talk when the others went to the pub and there would be more privacy.

"Get up already," Dugan said. His patience was lost, rusted away by worry but mostly annoyance. He'd have grey hair before the war had a chance to kill him. And wouldn't that just be a crying shame? Grey and dead. No pretty corpse for Timothy Dugan, no, sir.

Barnes groaned and rolled onto his other side.

"For Christ's sake, Jimmy, I know I told you to get some shut eye, but I didn't mean forever!"

Nothin'.

"I think Rogers needs you!"

Nothin' but a sleepy snort of amusement.

"Well, it was worth a shot."

"Go away," Barnes mumbled.

"You've been here for eighteen hours. You gotta get up."

"Why?"

Because you're worrying the guys. Because you're worrying Rogers. Because you're worrying me.

"It's time to eat and then we're going to hit the town. You're comin' with, Sarge."

"Meh."

"C'mon, drinkin' and dancin', your two favourite things."

"'M too old for that sort of thing." Was it possible that Barnes was sinking even deeper into the blankets?

"No one's too old for gettin' drunk as a skunk."

"I am."

Even if Dugan didn't get Barnes out of bed, at least he got the kid alert and carrying on a conversation. Woulda been nice to get some proper food into him. It had only been ersatz coffee, cigarettes, and half cans of ham for the kid this whole time. When they'd gotten back from Czechoslovakia, Barnes had said he was so hungry he felt sick. Dugan thought it shouldn't be so complicated to get a starving man to eat.

Then again, Rogers had said Barnes's behaviour wasn't out of the ordinary. Rogers told Dugan that Barnes had frequently skipped meals during their youth. He hadn't said it, but it was clear as day that Rogers passing out from the gas was what really kicked off this latest round of malaise from Barnes. The way Rogers explained it, Dugan gathered that the finicky eating was a stress response of Barnes's. He was glad to have never known the kid to be that stressed. Until now.

Dugan pushed Barnes and said, "I'll buy you whatever you want at the pub if you get up."

A single squinted eye peered at Dugan from under a mass of dark hair. "You gonna buy me a drink?" he croaked.

"I'll buy ya two drinks if you get up."

After a moment of consideration, Barnes started shedding all his blankets. He griped and groaned a lot. It was all very "the things I do for you."

"Atta boy," Dugan said and slapped Barnes's back once he was upright.

"The hell are my boots?" he mumbled.

Dugan collected the stray footwear and dumped them in Barnes's lap with his shirt and belt. "I'm not tyin' 'em for ya," he said.

"Too bad."

Funny thing was, once he got his boots on, the laces did give Barnes trouble.

"If you ever get those figured out, we might get to the mess while there's still coffee. Real coffee." Dugan punctuated the statement by tapping his toe.

"Real coffee?" Barnes showed enthusiasm for the idea.

"Peggy got it for us. Hurry — Gabe was goin' to town on it."

"Bastard. Why didn't you come get me sooner?"

"I thought you'd be more interested in the booze, to be honest."

"Wrong." Barnes gave up on his laces and tucked them inside his boot instead. He nearly jumped to his feet. "Let's go. Real goddamn coffee, Dum Dum."

"Calm down, tiger," he said.

They exited Rogers's quarters single file but walked side by side once they were outside.

"Almost forgot how brown bases are," Barnes said.

"For some reason, I don't think Gabe shares that opinion."

"That's not what I meant, jackass," Barnes laughed.

"I know. It's true though. We should ask him about it."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I'm surrounded by idiots."

Dugan laughed and splashed mud on Barnes's boots. "He'd get a kick out of it. S'not like it's a secret. Jimmy, he knows he's not white. And don't get me started on Morita. That guy's convinced he's an American from Fresno. I'm not sold, though. No, sir, not me."

"The things war does to a man's head," Barnes said, shaking his own solemnly.

The rest of the team was already gathered around a table in the almost-empty mess hall. They were considerably quieter than usual, but Dugan expected as much; they were all still recovering. But the guys made an effort and brightened up to give Barnes shit about having an eighteen-hour lie-in in Rogers's bed. Lucky for them that Barnes's mouth was filled with coffee. Each of them was all too familiar with his ability to give just as bad as he got. Maybe that was why they guys did it while Barnes drank — no chance that he could fight back.

Hey, they might've been idiots, but they weren't stupid idiots.

Dugan sat with a loaded plate between Jim and Gabe. Barnes sat by Monty with his face firmly hidden in his cup of coffee. The guy was nearly moaning.

"You want us to give you some privacy, Sarge?" Jim said pointedly.

"I don't care what you do," he said. It echoed in the metal cup. "Goddamn real coffee in my mouth right now. Not that black piss they try to sell us out in the field."

"Monty." Dugan redirected the focus of the group loudly. "Where're we headed tonight?"

"There're a few places within a reasonable distance."

"I wouldn't worry about how far away anything is," Dugan said. "You're talking to a transportation specialist. Tell us the good place."

"How foolish of me," Monty said. "In that case, I'd recommend the Lamb."

"What else is out there?" Jim said.

"Nowhere stuffy and uppity," Barnes said.

"You've just eliminated eighty percent of our choices," Dugan said. "We're in England; the whole place is stuffy and uppity."

"I'm not sure they'd take you in any case," Monty said with that delicate Limey attitude.

"What're you talkin' about?" Jim shouted, knowing exactly what Monty was talking about. "We're Cap's gang!"

"All the more reason to barricade the door."

"Hey, you're a part of it. There's no getting out," Barnes told Monty.

"Oh, I'm not complaining."

"Sure sounds like it." Dugan flicked a baked bean off the edge of his plate. It ricocheted off Monty's cheek and landed in Barnes's lap.

"Thanks," Barnes said. He plucked the bean out of his lap and dropped it into his empty cup.

"God created the English to complain," Gabe said with a smirk.

"That's true. I learned it in school," Frenchie chimed in.

"Did you know there's a difference between Frenchmen and toast?" Monty said.

Dugan could see this coming a mile away. He stuffed his face with questionable ham to keep from spoiling the joke.

"Yeah? What's that?" Barnes said. He was busy flipping the bean out of his cup and catching it again to pay attention to what he'd just encouraged.

Maybe he'll be able to tie his shoes now that he can catch beans in cups, Dugan thought while he chewed.

Gabe muttered, "Uh oh," and disappeared behind his own cup.

"I'm stayin' outta this one," Jim said. He held his hands up in surrender when Monty looked at him.

"Pass," Dugan said around his mouthful.

"Go on, tell us then," Frenchie said.

"You can make soldiers out of toast."

"You can do better than that, Monty, please," Jim said. "What's the shortest book ever written?"

"French War Heroes!" Dugan couldn't hold it in any longer.

"Why don't the French eat M&M's?" said Jim.

"Too hard to peel," Barnes said to his bean nonchalantly. "Only I heard that about Italians."

"You should hear the things we say about the Irish back home," Jim said.

Still in a voice that hardly indicated interest, Barnes said, "Heard it all and it hasn't made a lick of difference." His head jerked up at once, suddenly interested. "We ever decide where we're going? Dum Dum's buying."

"Shit, no one told me that," Jim said.

"Hold up," Dugan said, "I said I'd buy you — only you, Sarge — two drinks! Only you, only two."

"Me, everybody — what's the difference?" Barnes said. He turned in his seat, muttering, "Any more of that coffee?"

"I'm not buying and driving!"

"I'll drive," Monty said.

"I'm the transportation specialist!" Dugan realised the hole he was in, but he couldn't stop taking a spade to it.

"I'll drive back," Monty said.

"I'm not gettin' in no car with a drunk Limey behind the wheel," Jim said flatly.

"Dugan, you're driving and paying. That's an order," Barnes said. He was already halfway back to the pot of coffee.

"You can't give me orders to buy everyone drinks!"

"Why not?"

"Yeah, why not?" Jim said. He threw his dirty napkin at Dugan. "Listen to your sergeant, Dum Dum."

"Yeah," Barnes said. "Listen to me."

"Gabe, help me out here," Dugan said. He tried his best to rearrange his face into an innocent expression. It hadn't once worked since Dugan turned ten. And he'd had a lot of run-ins since then.

"Keep me out of it. I'm stayin' on base," Gabe said.

"Frenchie, please!"

"Sorry. Not well enough to go falling off my seat like you youngsters."

What was wrong with these people? No one outgrows getting drunk off their ass. No one!

"Shoulda left you in bed, Jimmy. Yer nothin' but trouble."

"Agreed." He brought his second cup back to the table and buried his face in it.

"So it's settled," Monty said, "our dear Dum Dum will be driving us to the Lamb, buying us all two rounds, and taking us back at the end of the night."

"That's what I heard," Jim said. "Team James ratifies the plan. No take-backs."

Gabe made an unhelpful face when Dugan looked to him. Frenchie was equally useless.

"Aren't we just the best team there ever was?" Dugan shouted and threw up his hands.

Barnes moaned and said, "I'm having a love affair with this coffee."

"Oh, dear," said Monty. The look of concern on his face ought to be captured and shared with the entire world.

"What'll Cap say?" Jim said.

Chapter Text

The Lamb ended up being a pretty snazzy place. It wasn't quite the same reception as they usually got in The Whip and Fiddle. Reactions from these patrons were mixed. Those that recognised them sighed in resignation, and the rest cheered in excitement.

"They think Steve's with us," Barnes whispered and cracked up. "Hate to let 'em down."

"Let's not waste any time we have until they realise it," Monty said. He led them all to the bar.

Barnes ordered his expensive shit on Dugan's dime while the rest got their beer and liked it. Thanks to Dugan's bullying, the four of them got a table right near the piano. Jim made sure to put his foot up on one of the empty seats — it was elevation for his ankle, which would swell up to the size of a cantaloupe if he kept weight on it for too long.

It was also a polite reason to tell the locals to get lost if they tried to join them.

"Still got that coffee buzzing through me," Barnes said after taking a sip of whisky. "I'm gonna explode by the end of the night."

"Pace yourself," Jim said.

"Did you even eat anything at the mess?" Dugan said.

"At least one baked bean," Monty said drily.

"There're peanuts right here." Barnes cracked one open and ate the two legumes inside. He pulled the whole bowl toward himself and took out a second. He said to Dugan, "You can buy me something to eat if you're so worried about it."

To which Dugan laughed sardonically. "Yeah, that's what I wanna do."

"You want your ass kissed while he's at it?" Jim asked.

"Nah. The ass is where I draw the line," Barnes said around a sip of whisky.

"Smart," Dugan said.

"Well, a man's gotta have limits."

Jim reached over and took a handful of peanuts. It only costed him two swats from Barnes. Peanuts went better with beer anyway, and everyone knew it.

"I've heard some interesting rumours," Monty said.

Jim flapped his hands. "Where do you keep hearing things? You only ever talk to us!"

"He's among his people," Dugan said. "He hears everything."

"What have you already heard?" Barnes asked.

"We're first wave on the invasion of France," said Jim.

"Jesus, we're no doin' combat jumps into that shit, are we?" Barnes said. The guy had gone white as a sheet.

"Haven't heard, but all sorts of airborne troops are drilling at bases around England. Your Yankee troops finally decided to show up."

"I'll take that second drink now, Dum Dum," Barnes said after kicking back the rest of his whisky.

They laughed loud enough to turn quite a few nearby heads. Dugan got Barnes his second drink — he was even smiling when he did it. They were going to hell, both Jim and Dugan.

On his way back, Dugan said in a low voice so that only Jim could hear, "You got the next one."

Jim flicked one of the peanuts he'd taken at a Limey at the next table and hid his hands below the table. The Limey turned around, face red. His eyes fell on the bowl in front of Barnes, and he scowled. Jim had to look away to keep from busting up in laughter.

"Whaddya hear, Monty?" Dugan said. The two of them had beer in their moustaches.

Idiots. It looked fuckin' gross.

"I heard," Monty said loftily, "that the Army was going to award Barnes a Bronze Star for what he did in Prague."

"What the hell did I do in Prague? Wear a German uniform better than the Germans?"

"Probably somethin' about leaving no man behind," Jim said while rolling his eyes.

"What?"

"Wait," said Dugan. "Jimmy's gettin' an award for goin' back for you goons who got stuck under a building?"

"Two buildings," Jim corrected.

"Well, when you put it like that," Monty said.

"Hey, you're welcome, Barnes," Jim said. "Maybe Frenchie'll parachute into a tree when we go to France. You can cut him down and get a Medal of Honor."

"How come I'm not getting an award? I went back, too!" Dugan complained.

"Weren't in command," Jim said. "The highest-ranking officer is always the one who gets the credit."

Monty said casually, "They said Captain Rogers has been advocating since Krausberg for Barnes to receive an award."

"You're winding me up," Barnes said.

Dugan said, "I was in Krausberg, too! We all were! Where's our award?"

"Agent Carter got in contact with some men from your old unit," Monty told Barnes. "They all gave testimony to your acts of heroism in Africa and Italy."

Stars were in Barnes's eyes. Or maybe they were bombs going off. "She talked to the 107th?"

"And they were quite complimentary. There were reports signed by some Captain Springer. Did you know him? The survivors of Krausberg had similar sentiments."

Barnes stared dumbfounded at Monty. Jim wished he had their field camera just then.

Monty continued, "All these men were under the impression that you'd acted with valour, and they said they wouldn't be alive today without you."

"It's my job," Barnes said. Jim was happy to hear that his sergeant's higher mental functions had come back. "You don't give decorations to people for just doing what they're supposed to do."

"While Jimmy was lookin' out for the prisoners and gettin' the snot beat outta him by guards, who was lookin' out for him? We were!" Dugan could be one noisy motherfucker. "We're the ones that took out the Kraut that nearly beat you to death. Monty planned the whole thing!"

"Pipe down," Jim said, "you know as well as I do that support crews never get any recognition."

Barnes went back to the bowl of peanuts. "Huh."

"All you got to say is 'huh'?" Dugan shouted.

Sipping his whisky, Barnes shrugged. "Just a rumour."

"If the captain wants you to get a decoration, you'll get a decoration," Jim said. He discreetly flicked another peanut at the Limey at the other table.

"Yeah, well," Barnes said without any real interest.

"What do I gotta do for a medal? Jimmy, if you don't want it, you can always give it to me."

"Never said I didn't want it."

"Coulda fooled me," Jim said while watching the Limey glare at Barnes again.

"Maybe Captain Rogers will get all of us awards," Monty said. "He's just starting with his favourite."

"You gotta do somethin' worthy of a medal first," Barnes said with a smirk.

It was met with a round of boos and laughter.

Three rounds deep — except for Barnes, who was on round five courtesy of the combined efforts of Jim and Dugan — Monty was playing the piano. All the songs he played were unfamiliar to Jim, Dugan, and Barnes, but the rest of the pub shouted the words. It was such a classy place; Jim didn't expect it from these types. Maybe the Brits weren't so bad. The one Jim had been pelting with peanuts all night even bought Barnes a drink, and the two played a few rounds of billiards in a room off the main stage.

Jim and Dugan hustled a few Tommys playing darts and nine ball. They used their winnings to buy the whole joint a round. Not to give the wrong impression that he was a good guy, Dugan pickpocketed two officer-types and bought Barnes his seventh drink. Seven drinks! And the guy was just now starting to get red in the face and smiley.

"Where's he been puttin' it all?" Dugan said while they watched Barnes dance with some blonde broad.

"Hell if I know," Jim said. He turned back to the bar; he had some catching up to do.

Dugan nicked two cigarettes from the guy beside him. It was the guy's own damn fault for talking to a broad with his pack out for the world to see. Jim took one of the cigarettes when Dugan held them out.

"You got a thing for stealin'?" Jim asked.

"Since I was just a wee lad." It was said with a faux Irish accent.

"Jesus, what have you stolen from me?"

"Nothin'. Never take anything from my friends."

Jim had an excellent bullshit face.

"OK, maybe a few cigarettes, but that's it. I promise."

Jim made a scornful sound. "I never trust an Irishman."

"What about a friend?"

No reply for that except to smoke his filched cigarette. But then, "You really steal shit all the time?"

Dugan barked a laugh that made the people around them to turn. "Not so much anymore. I was just a bored kid."

"Whaddya take?"

"Stupid stuff. Candy, coupla baseballs. I'd take cigarettes and sell the cards to the neighbourhood kids for a Coke."

"I woulda thought you'd take potatoes."

Which made him shout with laughter again. It was a happy sound; Jim figured the world could use more happy sounds.

"Nah, we had plenty of potatoes. I did sneak some ears of corn down my trousers at a carnival once."

That was an image that was never gonna leave Jim's mind no matter how hard he tried. He was strongly reminded of his brother listening to this. All the trouble Will got himself into and on purpose.

"Ever get caught?"

"Oh, all the time! But my uncles owned the police station. They just let it happen. They'd threaten juvenile detention a few times at first though."

Jim made a sly face. "They send kids to detention for stealin' candy and cigarettes?"

"No," Dugan said, "but they do for stealin' automobiles and for carryin' booze in 1922."

Jim could only laugh. When he caught his breath, he said, "The hell were you smugglin' alcohol for when you were eight?"

"I was ten, excuse you," Dugan said. He had to shout over the tang of a trumpet; the band had just started up and was playing a rowdy number.

"You didn't answer the question!"

An annoying smile was on his face, the evasive, stupid Mick.

"All I can say is that, where I come from, the Irish stick together."

Jim tapped his cigarette out in the ashtray at his elbow. "You're tellin' me that story someday."

His laughter was easily heard over the brassy music and dancing feet. "As long as you tell me more about that girl Chiyo of yours."

"Deal!" Jim had to shout over the music. His voice just didn't carry like Dugan's did. Was that a genetic characteristic, maximum volume? Or was it something a guy could learn?

Dugan flagged the bartender and picked up the cocktail that arrived.

"The hell is that?" Jim said.

"They call it a Commando."

"Jesus Christ," Jim muttered. Then, "I want one."

The asshole bartender ignored Jim's attempts to get his attention. Dugan shook his head and gestured in the air. The guy took notice then and dropped a second cocktail in front of Dugan, who, in turn, pushed it toward Jim.

"Might just forget to pay tonight," Dugan muttered.

Jim raised his glass and said, "Cheers." He drank.

"Salud," Dugan said. He tipped the glass and said, "I'm gonna deliver this to Jimmy before he miraculously sobers up."

"If we hurry, we can get two more in him before we gotta be back for our brass-ordered rest," Jim shouted at Dugan's back. After he'd gone, Jim felt all the sidelong eyes on him. He brought his glass to his face and muttered, "Fuck you, Monty, the Lamb sucks."

Vera Lynn was playing on the radio. Jacques thought her voice was magnificent. The way it warbled like a little bird about to take flight. It was lonely and hopeful.

"This is a mighty fine song," Gabriel said. He was lying in his bunk, which was next to Jacques's. The two of them were flat on their backs, staring up through the darkness at the exposed beams of Barracks 14. "Mighty fine."

True, it was. Fine, beautiful, hopeful, confident that things would return to the way they were. Home blossomed in Jacques's mind's eye even though the song was about England. The sentiment was the same, and it was universal. It was a dream. What a sweet dream.

Jacques sang a few lines, harmonising with her in French. What a serene three minutes.

Gabriel hummed. "Heavenly."

Jacques saw home painted on the backs of his eyelids. "Like watching cities fall," he said. "They will rise again."

The radio went fuzzy for a bit before it returned to singing another song. This one didn't sing like a bird taking its first flight. They seldom did. It was a hen returning to her clutch.

"You thought much about what goin' home's gonna be like?"

It was kind of Gabriel to ask like this, when it was dark and they were both being serenaded by birds on the radio. It was kind.

"I think about going home every day," Jacques said. "I dream about going home every night."

Clever man, Gabriel Jones. Certainly smarter than most.

Prompted by lovely twittering on the radio, Jacques said, "I think about going home, but my home is not there anymore. The France that raised me is destroyed. It will not come back."

"We'll get France back. They'll clean up and be OK."

"Yes," he told the darkness. "It will be a home again, but it can never be my home again. Nazis took my home, and I will destroy them for it." He already had destroyed them, albeit on a much smaller scale. "Germans took it, and France hardly said a word. Fools with the so-called best army in Europe. I do not know that France; that is not the France that I knew."

"Jacques," said Gabriel. Through the dark, Jacques could feel his companion's sympathy. "They didn't just roll over. The French didn't want occupation. They didn't just let it happen to them."

"No," he said, "but they hardly said no to it."

"You're being too hard on an entire nation. Would you say this about Poland?"

"Poland is different."

"How?"

"Poland has never been my home."

Gabriel was shifting in the dark; Jacques knew he was turning to face his way. The exposed beams seemed suddenly vulnerable.

"Are you going to be alright during all of this?" Gabriel said.

"Yes, I think so. They are people, and people deserve to be free. I want them to be rid of occupation. But I do not want to stay with them, I do not think. I am ready to move on. I'm no soldier, but I think France will need me less than elsewhere. I want to restore to them what they lost, but I know that I have no place among them anymore. They will be a new people, after, and so am I."

Was this betrayal? Jacques thought it might be. He was turning his back on his country by speaking like this, by feeling this way. It was alright, Jacques thought. The country had turned its back on its people a long time ago. He had given up his loyalty to his country only after it had surrendered its loyalty to him. It had failed its citizens by not fighting, not even trying to fight. How does the world's best army let itself be so completely and thoroughly overrun? Why did they favour their comfort when it was only theirs as long as someone else allowed it?

Jacques just couldn't understand, and he couldn't properly explain his own position. His thoughts on this topic still hadn't settled. He couldn't explain how he both longed for France's liberation from occupation while, at the same time, he wanted nothing more to do with the nation. Perhaps the people he wished to free and the institutions which allowed occupation should be separated? Emotions were not yet concrete. He couldn't call them any one thing. They didn't have to be, he knew. Jacques didn't have to know how he felt right now.

What he did know was that he would not be angry with France forever. He was not bitter. This was simply how he felt and how it would be. All of them would carry on for better or worse, for happy or for sorrow. As sure as cities fall, they rise.

Gabriel hummed and said, "Well, OK. I think I understand. If you ever want to talk about it, you know where to find me."

Léo Marjane warbled in the dark and over radio waves.

It was kind.

Here Dugan had been thinking that Brits were stuffy and uptight. Once they got liquored up, they were the nicest fucking people. Their snarky attitudes didn't leave them, and they never took their noses out of the air. But they knew how to have a good time. Their broads knew how to dance. They were buying Dugan and the boys drinks left, right, and centre. He was actually a little bit worried that little Jim Morita would be dead come morning — Dugan had seen that sort of thing before, death by intoxication.

These Brits loved Jimmy. Fuckin' loved the guy. They hung on every one of Barnes's slurred words. Dugan wouldn't have ever agreed to buy the guy a drink if he would have known the Brits were going to get Barnes drunk for him.

Maybe they had gotten him too drunk.

On fifteen drinks, Barnes was laughing louder than the music and hanging off the shoulder of a guy that Jim had been flicking peanut shells at all night. The two of 'em looked like old pals. They sang the Limey bar songs together, swaying back and forth unsteadily. Dugan wasn't so sure that Barnes even realised that he didn't know the Limey.

Just by lookin', Dugan knew something was going to happen.

So, of course, something did happen. At the end of a much-altered rendition of "We'll Meet Again" that only a buncha soldiers could make up, the Limey gripped the back of Barnes's neck. Which must have been meant as a gesture of camaraderie. Dugan didn't see what happened after that, but he did see Barnes clock the guy in the face a second later. The crowd made a sound of surprise or excitement; it was hard to tell which exactly. In the span of a single heartbeat, Dugan felt himself sober up.

Dugan and Monty were on either side of Barnes before anything else could happen — it took more effort than Dugan would ever admit to hold back Barnes's arm from pounding the Limey again. The guy's nose was already bleeding. Jim appeared a second later. Monty laughed and talked down what would have surely turned into an all-out brawl while Dugan and Jim backed Barnes away from the situation. Most of the GIs in the crowd were already jeering at the Limey that had grabbed Barnes. A few Brits tried to get a hand on Barnes, but Dugan made damn sure no one succeeded. His method may not have been so helpful in terms of them preventing a brawl from breaking out though.

"What the hell was that!" Barnes kept shouting. Dugan tightened his grip and laughed at the people around him, keeping things light. "What the hell!"

"I hear ya, what the hell, yeah, you're right," Jim was saying.

The three of them got outside and walked down the street toward their ride. The air was helpful in clearing Dugan's head. Warm air and good booze always carried him away fast and furious. He had a lot of ground to make up if he wanted to get the boys back to base. They'd be late getting to Peggy — and meeting with her was the whole point in getting Barnes liquored up anyway.

"What the hell," Barnes said. His feet kept getting stuck on cracks in the pavement. Dugan and Jim had to frequently adjust how they were holding him so there were no cracked skulls on the ground. Didn't help much that Jim's bum ankle was starting to act up. "The hell did he think he was doin'? I'm—…what the hell!"

"Relax, he probably didn't mean anything by it," Jim said. "Everyone was drunk off their ass. They still are."

"What'd he do anyway?" Dugan asked knowing full well that the question wouldn't calm Barnes down any.

Barnes huffed. "I'm the American Death!" Barnes shouted in a completely different tone of voice. Maybe not so different; he was starting to sound a little hysterical. "They called me the American fucking Death! I should kill that guy!"

"Yeah, good idea," Dugan said, "you can do it in the morning."

"The morning! I'm gonna do it right now."

But the guy couldn't even walk on his own. Couldn't even stand. Dugan's brain was searching for a way to calm Barnes down. Shouldn't have worked him up like that on purpose. The booze was supposed to make Jimmy more agreeable, not piss him off and make him indignant.

"Maybe you oughtta take it as a compliment," Jim said.

"That asshole can't just go around grabbing people!" Barnes shouted.

The streets were empty and the sound seemed to echo. It covered the sound of Monty jogging up behind them, so Dugan jumped when he felt the tap on his shoulder.

"Get out alright?" Jim said.

Monty nodded. "Can't say the same for the other."

"What're they doing?"

"I don't think there's any way it won't get back to his commander."

Dugan flinched inwardly.

"But I'm not so worried about him," Monty said, "are we alright here?"

"Think so," Jim said. "Listen, I'm not drivin'. I can hardly carry Barnes straight. No way I'm gonna be able to stay on the road."

"I'm the transportation specialist!" Dugan yelled not entirely on purpose.

"Yes. Yes, you are. Indeed," Monty said. He took over guiding Barnes for Jim. "Busted your knuckles on his face, did you, Sergeant?"

Dugan looked at Barnes's left hand and saw the proof. "Jesus."

"Shoulda done worse than that to 'em," Barnes slurred. The fight had drained out of him surprisingly fast. "Can't just go 'round grabbin' people like that."

"It was rather rude," Monty said placating.

It wasn't public knowledge, so maybe Dugan should have been more forgiving in his judgement. But he couldn't help but marvel at the stupidity of a guy going anywhere near Barnes's head when he wasn't sober. Being loopy and having people manhandle his head were two things that just didn't go together for Jimmy anymore.

Rogers could probably get away with it though. The only person who could ever get away with anything on Barnes's watch.

"Was rude," Barnes said. In their arms, he slumped so that they were dragging him.

"Your boots are gonna be scuffed something awful, Sarge," Jim said.

"Fuck 'em."

"Not gonna be feelin' that way in the morning," Dugan said in a sing-song voice. He felt like the type of guy that had kids he cared about.

"Yeah, that's for the morning, isn't it?" Barnes looked up at him with a droopy smile. His head fell back so that he was looking skyward. He shouted, "I just want to go to sleep!"

Jim cracked up, and that got Monty smiling. Before Dugan knew it, they were all back to shoving and laughing. Hell, he didn't even hit anything with the truck on the way back to base. Nothing big anyway. The ride was more than a little bumpy, but they were all just fine by the time they got back. No puke, just laughter.

"I'll go check to see if the coast is clear with Carter. Meet you guys at the barracks," Jim said. He snuck away while Dugan returned the jeep they had taken. Barnes was so far gone that he didn't even notice the absence. Monty did a good job at keeping him occupied, too.

The walk back to Barracks 14 was much too loud given the hour, but Dugan figured that the rest of the base could just deal with it. They'd done a lot of shit for these people — they were Captain America's gang!

"Hold up," Barnes said as they walk through the trampled yard they'd all spent November and December shivering and drilling in. Pulling himself out of Dugan and Monty's support system of arms, Barnes made a crooked line for the cluster of flagpoles.

"Jimmy, what're you doing?" Dugan trailed half-heartedly after him.

"I wanna get Union Jack."

"I beg your pardon," said Monty.

Barnes began scrabbling pathetically up the pole. Dugan held in a laugh. "I want the flag," Barnes said. "Gonna send it home to Becca."

"What's she gonna do with it?" said Dugan.

"Have it."

"Jimmy, get down. You're gonna hurt yourself."

"Let him learn," Monty said.

They drew near and watched Barnes scrabble at the pole. He clung to the thing, arms and legs locked around it. Dugan couldn't hold back his laughter as Barnes began to slide down the pole with an incredibly loud squeaking sound. Even Monty's mouth was twisting upward with amusement.

When his ass bumped into the ground, Barnes said, "Damn it," through his own laughter.

"May I suggest you use the pulley?" Monty said.

"There's no challenge in that," Barnes shouted back. "I'm the American Death, and my sister is gonna have a flag with a story." Barnes kicked his boots off — he'd never properly tied them after leaving Rogers's quarters — and yanked his socks off, too.

"C'mon, let's get goin'." Dugan took a few drunken steps forward. "I thought you wanted to hit the sack."

"I do," he said. The pole aided Barnes back to his now-bare feet. "But I'm getting' this flag first. I'm gettin' it for Becca." His jacket and dress shirt fell next so that he wore nothing but his undershirt, trousers, and dog tags. Had Barnes always looked like that? Were the ropes of vessels and tendons always so prominent in his neck? "I'm going to get it."

Dugan picked up the discarded clothing and watched Barnes struggle halfway up the pole. Jim and Peggy were going to be waiting for them.

"I'm gonna get it," Barnes said again. "I'm the American Death. They're givin' me an award for killin' people. I have the best left hook in all of Brooklyn. I missed my baby sister's wedding, and I'm gettin' her a flag."

There was a sound from Barnes that could have been a laugh or it could have been a sob. Dugan looked back at Monty. They shrugged at each other.

"What're they gonna say when they see it gone in the morning?" Dugan asked. "When they see a flag missing? They're gonna think they've been infiltrated."

"Hell if I care," Barnes panted.

"They're gonna think it's a threat," Monty said with a smile. "Someone's vowed to take His Majesty's army out."

"Or they're gonna think some drunk hooligan stole it."

Barnes cackled with laughter; he had reached the top of the pole and was undoing the fasteners on the flag. "They're gonna think it's you, Dum Dum."

"Like hell."

"You're the drunken idiot that's always stealing people's shit."

"Traitor," Dugan said with drama.

Barnes slid down the pole with his prize. When his feet hit the ground, his knees failed to catch him. Barnes hit the dirt for a second time. Dugan pulled his inebriated sergeant up and held him by the upper arms until he stopped swaying.

"I've been working against you the entire time," Barnes said. The flag was stuffed down his shirt and then he took his dress shirt out of Dugan's arms. It hung unbuttoned on Barnes's shoulders. The jacket went on in the same manner, decorations shining in the patchy moonlight.

"You look expectant," Monty said.

Barnes patted the bundled-up flag that made his stomach appear to protrude over his belt. "I am," he said. He made a show of bending down to collect his boots and socks. Dugan and Monty snorted. "Expecting a hangover."

"So are we all," Monty said.

Barnes waddled for show and from drunkenness all the way to the barracks. The boots and socks never made it to his feet; he carried them. The three of them frequently bumped into one another. Monty hummed "Beer Barrel Polka" and before long they were shouting their way through the whole thing. Dugan was the only one to take a tumble, but it was because Monty had hip checked Barnes, who subsequently knocked into Dugan.

Both Monty and Barnes offered Dugan a hand up after they got their fill of laughter. Dugan accepted both offers. The idiots both yanked on Dugan as hard as they could. The three of them stumbled in the opposite direction. Monty and Barnes's backs slammed into the exterior wall of Barracks 8.

"Shut the hell up out there!" a voice from inside shouted.

They snickered and carried on stumbling to their quarters.

Dugan threw open the door to Barracks 14 and shouted, "Honey, I'm home!" He threw the lights on.

Gabe and Frenchie looked at the three of them with bored expressions on their faces.

"Pipe down," Gabe said. "We're listening to music."

"What, this European garbage?" Barnes said. He stumbled over to his bunk and pulled the flag out of his shirt, hiding it in his footlocker.

"Yes," Frenchie said.

"Jim back yet?" Sitting on his own bed, Dugan shed his jacket and put his bowler on the table beside his bed.

"Not yet," Frenchie said.

Monty collapsed, sighing, in his own bunk.

"Back from where?" Barnes was already down to his underpants.

"We're gonna have company," Monty said.

"Oh," Barnes said. "Anyone gonna put on a pot of coffee? It's only polite if we're havin' guests." He squinted out the window.

Dugan thought about running out to the mess and grabbing a can of peaches or beans. Hunger was tickling him like it always did after he spent a night drinking. Plus, Barnes had to be starving. The chance was gone though, because the door opened just then. Jim came through with Peggy.

"Hey, Pegs," Dugan said. He sat up from his reclined position but couldn't seem to make himself stand up and be at attention.

"You all smell like a brewery," she said, scrunching up her nose.

No wonder Rogers was over the moon for her.

"Sorry," Monty said. "It was necessary."

That look on her face was back. The one that rolled its eyes and meant she was thinking that all soldiers were of the same disgusting breed — but they were special.

"What's all this about?" she said impatiently.

"She's just mad that I dragged her away from Cap," Jim said.

"How'd you manage to get her here without him tagging along?" Dugan said.

"Said I needed a lady's touch writing to Chiyo."

"That would do it," Gabe said.

"What is this really about then?" Peggy flapped her hands. "And what's Barnes staring at?"

Dugan, remembering Barnes was sat there naked, turned his attention to his sergeant, already laughing. The humour melted from his face.

"Shit, he's doin' it right now!" Dugan tripped over his boots in his haste to get to Barnes's bunk.

Gabe made it there first, and Peggy was second, curiosity writ across her features. Dugan muscled past both of them to grab Barnes's arms.

"Jimmy. Jimmy, hey, c'mon," he said. He tapped with the fingertips of one hand on Barnes's cheek. "Idiot, cut it out."

"What's this?" Peggy said.

Jim slunk through the crowd to sit on the edge of Barnes's bunk. "We're not sure."

She put a hand on Dugan's shoulder that made him pause. Releasing Barnes, he stood back and let her have centre stage. His every instinct screamed at him not to do it. Peggy crouched and waved her hand in front of Barnes's face. She snapped her fingers and called his name.

"Strange," she said to herself. Turning, she said to the others, "Is he having some sort of fit?"

Dugan shrugged. "It's been happening on and off since Italy. We were ambushed there, and he fought like a machine. Pin-point precision, didn't hesitate to do anything, but you could tell that he wasn't…in there. Then this started to happen."

"On the plane back from Prague he acted like this," Jim said.

"It looks like he has seizures all night long, in his sleep," Frenchie said.

Peggy turned back to Barnes. "Not exactly sleep if he's seizing all night," she said under her breath. The hum she made got Dugan wondering if she'd already known something about this. "Is that what's happening now?"

"I don't—" Dugan began.

Peggy spoke over him, "Look at his eyes."

Dugan did so. It was odd. They looked blank and staring, but when he looked carefully, it almost looked like Barnes's eyes were shivering in their sockets.

"Weird," Dugan said. He shook Barnes around Peggy. This was creeping him out. "Barnes, come on!"

"What on Earth is he doing on battlefields like this?" Peggy's glare was almost accusatory.

Dugan tried not to look guilty.

"Steve doesn't know?" She looked shocked.

"He knows something's wrong," Jim said quickly.

"He's a liability—" Peggy began, gesturing sharply at Barnes.

"Hey," every last one of them said, outrage in their collective voice.

"You're not pullin' our sergeant," Dugan said.

Peggy argued right back. "What if this happens in battle?"

Jim said, "It already has. We were all OK."

"Yes, that time—"

"Agent Carter," said Monty, "the S.S.R. has tried once before to remove Sergeant Barnes from the squad. They were unsuccessful. If they attempted to do so again — I, for one, would not hesitate to accept the risk of execution for mutiny."

Dugan had to blink several times at Monty before his brain started up again. Not once had Monty ever expressed such steadfast commitment to anyone or anything. The alcohol didn't help the look of surprise on Dugan's face.

"The only way we let him off the team is if he chooses to go," Jim said.

Peggy looked around at all of them, and they nodded as her eyes fell on them. "Why have you shown me this and not Steve?"

"We were hoping you could help him."

Her eyes narrowed. "Help him how?"

Gabe shrugged. "Maybe a sedative so he can get some actual sleep. It's worse the longer he's up."

Back at Barnes, Peggy said thoughtfully, "Is it possible that he's epileptic?"

All eyes turned to Dugan. This must have been how Rogers felt.

He said, "I never noticed 'til after Krausberg. But I wasn't really looking before."

"And we can't ask Steve," she said.

Jim shook his head. "Barnes doesn't want 'em to know. We'll respect that." The implied for now wasn't necessary. "Besides, I don't think they'd let him in the army if he had epilepsy."

"He could have hidden it," Peggy said. Gesturing to Barnes, she said, "It would be difficult to tell there was anything wrong if he simply got...distant every so often. He might not even know he has it."

Monty was shaking his head. "I'm confident this is a consequence of Krausberg."

"Could have been exasperated by Krausberg," Frenchie suggested.

They all watched tremors build in Barnes's hands. Dugan jumped when the hands clenched to fists.

"Woah," Barnes said. He blinked at all of them. "Think I drank too muc—Jesus! Carter, what're you — Jesus, Carter, I'm naked!"

Laughter overtook the entire room. Even Peggy's eyes were tearing up.

"Since when do you care about modesty, Sarge?" Jim shouted. He dissolved into laughter a moment later.

"Since I'm drunk!" He smiled a little, calming down. "And since a da—a lady—an agent like Carter's here!"

"Believe me when I say I haven't seen anything worth gossiping about."

God, Barnes went red. The others laughed all the harder.

"For all your talk about soldiers, you're worse than any of us, Peggy!" Dugan said.

The fact that she looked flattered made the whole situation that much better. Monty was holding Jim upright so he didn't slide off the bunk and onto the floor; he was laughing that much.

"The captain's much more impressive to look at, I'm sure," Monty said. His timing was impeccable.

Peggy didn't go red like Barnes, but there was definitely a colour change in her cheeks.

When it all died down, Barnes said, "What's goin' on here anyway?"

"You," Peggy said.

"Me?"

"Your seizures, Sarge," Jim said. There were still loose tears of mirth on his cheeks.

Barnes's face went red again, but the reasons were dramatically different. "What're you talkin' about?"

"Don't insult our intellect," Monty said.

"I'm not in—seizures?" His eyes were wide, but Dugan thought it might be the alcohol. "Who invented that lie?"

"Sarge," Jim said seriously. "C'mon."

"I've had trouble sleeping. I'm not having seizures."

For the first time since Dugan and Jim had come up with the plan to get Peggy's help, it occurred to Dugan that Barnes might feel betrayed. Maybe this wasn't the best approach, but something had to be done.

"Sarge," Dugan said. He shook his head and did something he hadn't done since their first day at Camp McCoy. He said, "Bucky."

And weren't those the most desperate looking eyes that had ever been turned on Dugan?

"C'mon, man. We all just watched it happen."

Jim slapped Barnes's bare shoulder. "You're not gonna make us admit that we're worried about you out loud, are you?"

Barnes mumbled, "Just did."

"You do have seizures in your sleep," Peggy said.

Barnes looked positively violated. Dugan held back a smile; it really wasn't funny.

Peggy added, "I saw last night. I came to speak with Steve last night while you were there. He doesn't realise they're seizures. Neither did I until now. He thinks you're cold or having dreams about Krausberg."

Even Dugan and his life of hooliganism knew no one would dare make a comment about bad dreams in front of Peggy. It was code.

Barnes looked irritated. "What's the point of talkin' about this? You gonna try to send me home again?"

Peggy shook her head. "No. I've already been threatened for suggesting that."

Dugan nodded when Barnes looked to him for confirmation. Hopefully it made up for the betrayal earlier.

"And?" Barnes said.

"They suggested medication."

Vehemently, Barnes shook his head. "No way. I'm not — when I feel like that —"

"How's it any different from how drunk you are now?" Gabe said.

"And how hopped up you were on coffee earlier?" Jim tacked on.

Barnes kept shaking his head. "Wasn't on a battlefield any of those times. You drug me in the field and I'll fall asleep when I'm supposed to be sniping."

"At least you'll be getting some sleep," Dugan said.

"It'll cost one of you your lives," Barnes said. "No. Absolutely not."

"A chance we are willing to take," Frenchie said casually. "If nothing is done, it will cost us your life. Every one of us agree that that is not an acceptable cost."

"Then no one will have a sniper watching their back," Dugan said.

The alcohol was doing its job; it was already clear that Barnes was going to cave.

Maybe Peggy didn't know Barnes enough to pick up on that fact, or maybe she just wanted to lay it on thick. She said, "I'm certain Steve would prefer to have you medicated than having seizures in the field. That would give him a terrible fright, don't you think? The things he would do to try to protect you during an attack would make your hair curl."

A little grin cracked Barnes's face. "Carter, my hair's been curlin' since 1925." A sigh. "What exactly d'you have in mind?"

Dugan wished he knew about Rogers sooner. Sure, Barnes never shut up about the guy since day one of boot camp, but never would Dugan had thought it would be so easy to manipulate Barnes.

"I'm not sure quite yet," Peggy said. "I've an idea, but I'll need a few days to make arrangements. This'll all be off the record book, of course. No paperwork."

"Thanks, Pegs," Jim said.

Dugan and the rest nodded and murmured their gratitude — except for Barnes. He just looked apprehensive. Well, as apprehensive as a drunken man could look.

"I'm not taking anything from Stark," he said.

Peggy said, "Of course not. Nothing experimental. That was the last thing on my mind." She looked thoughtful and added, "The dosage might be tricky since you won't consent to getting an actual recommendation from a proper doctor?"

Barnes made a gesture that affirmed that statement.

"Might take some time for your body to get used to it, if the dose is too high."

"Great," Barnes said drily — again, as dry as a drunken person could be.

"We'll have to get you sorted before you all ship out for France. The hardest — and most foolish — part will be hiding it from Steve."

Dugan nodded his head at the truth of that statement. Would battlefields be enough to distract Captain America from the fact that his best friend was drugged? Maybe, Dugan thought, it had gone this far without him noticing.

"We'll be fine on that front," Jim said. "Guy's dumb as rocks."

"Dumber than that," Barnes said flatly.

Peggy smiled and said, "Expect to hear from me by the end of the week. I've got to invent a reason to go out to a proper hospital." The look she gave Barnes seemed very private. "Hang in there until then. And I want you all to know, officially and on the record, that I think Steve should be made aware of this. You shouldn't keep secrets from him, especially not like this. I don't want to keep things from him, but I'll keep this."

Barnes nodded and blinked a lot. Deliberately, he swallowed. He said, "I'm drunk. None of this counts in the morning."

"Oh, it counts, Jimmy," Dugan said. "Just 'cause it sucks doesn't mean it doesn't count."

Barnes groaned and flopped back on his bunk.

"What about your modesty?" Gabe said.

Lifelessly, Barnes pulled a blanket over his chest and face. "I'm gonna be sick for a million reasons tomorrow morning."

Jim patted his shoulder. "So will all of us."

Peggy cleared her throat. "If that's all, I think I'd better be going."

Everyone but Barnes said thank you and wished her a good night. They were all asleep in short order.

Overall, Dugan thought, not bad.

Chapter Text

There was too much noise outside.

"Oh, my God," Dugan moaned. "Shut up." He flopped onto his stomach and clamped his pillow over his head.

"What, is it too noisy for you, gents?" a voice from outside called. Hands banged on the walls of Barracks 14 from seemingly every direction. "Difficult to sleep with all this ruckus?"

Frenchie went off on a long rant in French that gradually got more and more loud and angry-sounding. It did nothing to stop the banging and senseless shouting. Dugan was feeling his hangover very acutely just now.

"I'm dying right now," Jim groaned.

"Glad I stayed in last night," Gabe said. The guy sounded wide awake and chipper.

Dugan groaned; it was disgusting.

"Shut up out there," Barnes mumbled.

The banging got louder and faster. The assholes outside actually started singing "Star Spangled Man."

"Would be funny," Monty said, "if it were any other day."

Dugan rolled onto his side to give Monty a crooked, amused smile.

"For fuck's sake," Barnes muttered. He rolled out of his bunk and right onto the floor. "Shit, ow."

"Y'alright, Sarge?" Gabe said.

"I'm fucking fine."

Dugan watched Barnes dig around in his gear until he found his Colt.

"Hey, hey," Jim was suddenly awake and flapping his hands. "Hey, Sarge, what're you doin'?"

"I was actually fucking asleep."

Dugan didn't know how, but he sat himself up and spluttered after Barnes as he stomped out of the barracks with the Colt. They didn't have to wait long; "Star Spangled Man" was interrupted by a single discharge of the Colt. There was no screaming or yelling, which Dugan thought was a good sign. It meant Barnes probably hadn't shot someone.

"Shut the fuck up with that shit and get the fuck away from here!"

There was silence and then there was the sound of men tripping over each other in their haste to get away. Dugan laughed to himself. Jim was doing the same. Both of them were imaging the same things, he was sure. And those mental images had to be better than whatever was actually going on out there. In a few seconds, Barnes came slouching back into the barracks. He looked a wreck, and Dugan didn't even try to stop himself from laughing.

"You didn't shoot any of 'em, didja?" Jim said.

"Nope." Barnes threw the Colt down on his footlocker. All of them jumped in fear of accidental discharge. "Safety's on," Barnes mumbled. He got himself lost in his blankets again. "I swear to God, if I don't fall asleep again, I'm going to scalp every one of those assholes."

The rest stared at the lump he made in bed for a moment. Jim and Monty started cracking up first.

"Shut up," Barnes grumbled.

It only made them laugh harder.

Dugan said, "Sarge, you just went outside and shot at our allies in your underpants."

"So?"

"So nothing, I guess. It's just—that was something a cartoon would do."

"I knew the modesty thing was an act," Jim said.

The Barnes lump squirmed in his bunk and said, "Everyone shut the hell up — that's an order."

It was surprisingly easy for Dugan to go back to sleep after that.

Alas, they were awoken once more a few hours later when the barracks door was thrown open. It bounced off the wall and vibrated on its hinges.

"Wuh?" Dugan said. He blinked stupidly toward the door. Sunlight was pouring in behind whoever had thrown the door open so that he couldn't make out the guy's face.

"The hell're you?" Jim said. Really, his grumpy voice was the best Dugan had ever heard.

The guy blew on a whistle; Dugan thought he could feel his skull splitting right down the middle. There was no way he had drunk so much last night that would justify the literal bell ringing inside his head. Someone must've put something in his drink—these Limey bastards. Dugan looked over at Barnes and smiled despite his pounding head. If Dugan was hungover, it was nothing compared to how Barnes looked.

"Do you men have any idea what's going on out here?" the asshole in the doorway shouted.

Everyone blinked toward Barnes.

The asshole said, "All troopers were to assemble outside twenty minutes ago!"

"We're on ordered rest," Barnes said flatly. His voice was on the verge of cutting.

"When the colonel demands it—"

"Which colonel?" Barnes said.

Dugan cracked up at the look on the asshole's face. Everyone knew the type of guy that made a face like that. It was a chicken shit, desk jockey type of asshole who was looking to be promoted without ever doing an ounce of the dirty work. At McCoy, Dugan and Barnes used to give those guys so much hell. Even hungover, they could have torn this guy to shreds. But it looked like Dugan's help wouldn't be needed today.

"What's this insubordination?" the asshole said. "When I say colonel, it doesn't matter which colonel, because all of them outrank you, Sergeant—"

"Barnes," said Barnes.

"Sergeant, the colonel wants all men assembled in the parade area. A sidearm was intentionally fired at a soldier this morning."

"Already told you we're on ordered rest."

"The colonel—"

"Does your colonel work for the S.S.R.?"

"I—what are you—?"

"Get out."

"I have the means to have you court martialled—"

Barnes threw his blankets back and stomped up to the asshole. Dugan was glad he didn't fall flat on the floor this time. Their sergeant got right up in that guy's face and said, "Then fuckin' court martial me. In the meantime, get the fuck outta here and tell your colonel he can kiss my ass. Remember, when you tell him, that it's Sergeant James Barnes."

Poor guy got stared down by a hungry, hungover, sleep-deprived Mick in his skivvies. Dugan was glad he had never been on the receiving end of one of Barnes's outbursts. They were few and far between—really few and really far between—but when they hit, they could devastate whole cities. The Irish, Dugan knew, kept everything inside sealed up nice and tight until the day the pressure grew too high. Then boom! You better duck, because the air would be filled with shrapnel and collateral was acceptable.

The asshole left with his tail between his legs, and Barnes deflated. He mumbled, "No way I'm gonna get to sleep for a third time."

He didn't know about Barnes, but Dugan managed to fall right back to sleep in five minutes. He was awake when they got Barracks 14's third visitor. The rest of the guys were playing a silent card game over Frenchie's bed, and Dugan was reading Barnes's copy of You Can't Go Home Again. Rogers came stomping in, and his eyes went right for Barnes's bunk. Jim and Dugan waved their arms frantically. It worked: Rogers looked at them. He was annoyed, but at least he paused.

"Wouldn't do that if I were you," Jim said quietly.

Rogers still looked pissed off. "What the hell is going on down here? I've just been told Bucky's going to be court martialled."

Dugan laughed as quietly as he could

"It's not funny!"

"He won't be court martialled," Monty said dismissively.

Rogers made big, incredulous eyes at him.

Monty elaborated, "We're too close to a mission. No one wants to waste time and resources court martialling anybody, least of all Captain America's deputy."

"I'm pretty sure he was counting on you to protect him from the consequences," Gabe said.

"Was he wrong?" Frenchie said with a crooked smile.

The look on Rogers's face wasn't exactly amused. He levelled a glare at Barnes.

"Leave him for now, Cap," Jim said. "He's actually sleepin'."

Being told what to do wasn't something that came easy to Rogers. He could frown and scowl with the best of 'em. Dugan rolled his eyes when Rogers went over and kicked Barnes's bunk, heedless of their warnings.

"Bucky!"

The mumbled reply was, "Christ, now what?"

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Where do I start?"

"Bucky."

"Am I talking to Steve or Captain America? Because Captain America can fuck right off."

Rogers still looked pissed, but he gave the rest of them confused looks.

"Told you," Jim said.

"Kid's just cranky from being woken so often," Monty said.

"Probably pretty hungover, too," Dugan said.

Rogers said, "Is that why it smells like a stale brewery in here?"

"Nah, that's Frenchie," Jim said. "You get used to it."

"Do you need to go to medical, Sergeant?"

Dugan whistled. "Low blow, Cap."

"If you don't back off, Steve, I'm going to slug you."

"What has gotten into you?"

"Ask Arnim fucking Zola — hell if I know."

Jim and Monty shook their heads. Gabe just looked sort of sad.

"Leave him for now, " Dugan tried one more time. "We all know how exhausted he is; he can't be held responsible for his actions right now."

"But Dugan can," Gabe said. "And Morita. Falsworth was complicit, too. The three of them practically drowned Barnes in drink."

"Geez, thanks, Judas."

"Please, I'm sure the captain already knows."

"I may have heard a few things," Rogers said distractedly. He leaned over Barnes and frowned. "What happened here?" he said and held up Barnes's left hand by the wrist so that they could all see the split knuckles.

Jim immediately started laughing. "Forgot about that!"

Rogers shook his hold on Barnes's wrist. "Bucky, hey. What happened to your hand?"

"Punching."

"Why were you punching?"

Barnes grunted and pulled his wrist free. He rolled so that his back was to Rogers.

"A bloke at the pub tried to kiss him, I believe," Monty said. "I think the sergeant was rather caught off guard."

"Is that why?" Dugan shouted and started laughing. "I didn't see it, just saw him throw the punch."

Rogers had a funny look on his face that was impossible to decipher. "Bucky?"

"Molestation isn't a joke," Barnes grumbled.

"Don't be dramatic, Buck." Rogers kicked the bunk again, but he put a lot less force behind the kick this time. "You've never been molested."

"Says you."

Several snorts filled the room.

"Guy had it comin' though," Jim said, "at the bar."

"Yeah, 'cause you were throwin' shit at him all night," Dugan said.

"I did no such thing."

Monty shrugged and Gabe said, "You get that close to Sarge's face these days and he's gonna start swinging. Just the way things are."

All of them nodded.

"It's the truth," Dugan said.

Rogers looked from them to Barnes. Sighing, he ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "So he decked a guy last night, fired a weapon at a soldier on base, and mouthed off to an officer all in the span of a few hours?"

"That sounds right," Jim said nodding.

"I take my eyes off him for two seconds and all hell breaks loose," Rogers said. Dugan thought there was rather a lot of affection in the way he said it.

Dugan flapped a hand dismissively. "Nah. We take good care of Jimmy, right, boys?"

Each nodded their assent.

"Besides, I seem to recall him saying you were the one breaking loose all hell," Monty said to Rogers.

"Never shut up about it," Gabe said. "Every night in the foxhole, we had to listen to a story about Steve Rogers's dumb ass."

"Until pneumonia," Frenchie added.

"That's true," said Dugan, "we heard a lot less about Steve Back-in-Brooklyn once the pneumonia set in and Gerry broke his ribs. We took good care of him then, remember, Monty?"

The Brit nodded with his moustache twitching.

Rogers said, "Alright, I get it. You're all on his side."

Dugan smiled with his best shit-eating grin. "The CO leads men and the NCO loves 'em."

"Mom and Dad," Jim said.

"And everyone knows kids love their mamma more than their father," said Gabe.

Rogers said, "So this means you guys don't know anything about the missing flag?"

"What missing flag?" all them said in unison. Every one of their faces was the essence of innocence.

"I don't know why I bothered." Rogers straightened up. "Can all of you just try to lie low while I get all of this to settle? We look like a bunch of nuts running around with guns and no creed—I'm talking to generals, for Pete's sake."

"We'll be good," Dugan said. "We'll make Jimmy be good, too. Just don't have anyone bother us."

"We have complete faith in your ability to get us out of trouble. You're real good at lip service, y'know that, Cap?" said Jim.

The comment got a little bit of a flush going in Rogers's face. He recovered well though: "Yeah, well, it sounds like Bucky is, too."

Dugan could just barely hear Barnes say, "Get the hell outta here, Steve," over everyone else cracking up.

"It's a compliment!" Frenchie said. "You're loved by all!"

"Shut up. I'm sleepin'," Barnes grumbled.

"When're you gonna get up? We're all hungry and want to go eat," Jim said.

"Go ahead, I'll be right here."

Rogers was at the door. He said, "Be quiet, all of you, at least for today while I fix this."

"Let us know how Peggy gets it done, OK?" Dugan said.

They saluted Rogers, and he gave them a different kind of salute in return; it left them all cracking up. Gabe threw a pair of socks at Barnes once they had all calmed down. "Half hour and we're leavin' you here. We're hungry."

"Co-dependent children."

Forty-five minutes later, they were headed for the mess. All of them.

They did more than Steve said and kept quiet for three full days. By then they were crawling the walls and all of them were mostly recovered. Bucky still struggled to sleep for consecutive hours, and he was relieved when the rest order was finally lifted. It was better to run drills with the GIs and Tommys and hit up the firing range than it was to sit around the barracks or sneak past familiar faces just to wander the perimeter.

It was nice to be busy even when Bucky was damn tired still. At least he wasn't so hungry anymore.

Peggy led them in field drills around Great Dunmow; they played situation games with a regiment of GIs day and night. By the end of it, Bucky was sure the shape of his ass was permanently formed into the tree Steve kept having him sit up in. Being sniper wasn't all that great in the best of times. It was hours and hours of waiting for the shot to line up, and he was never sure that the shot ever even would line up when he had eyes on target all day. Being the sniper was awful during drills when he knew he wouldn't be shooting anything no matter what. Why even track if he knew he wasn't going to get a shot off? But Bucky did learn that watching someone through a scope and spacing out looked exactly the same to everyone around him. Boring drills made it harder to ignore the thoughts in his head that wondered what it would be like to shoot one of the GIs. What would it be like to commit friendly fire? Would he feel different than he did when he shot Germans and HYDRA soldiers? Would he feel anything at all?

The night after their drill with the American regiment, Bucky rounded up the guys and brought them to the deserted mess hall. When he had escaped from Barracks 14 during their ordered rest, he'd haggled with two of the S.S.R.'s supply guys and came into ownership of a healthy supply of relatively fresh fruit. He had Pvt Lorraine to thank for helping him divert part of a delivery that was intended for all the generals planning Operation Overlord. That gal was wily and very persuasive.

So he'd brought them all to the mess and sat them down at their customary table, then he went back to the kitchen to retrieve the crates.

Normally he would have taken his men out for a round, but he wasn't so sure he wasn't still hungover from last time—Bucky's head still ached like a no other sometimes. There were little pink scars on his knuckles now, leftovers from the punch he'd thrown. They'd healed fast. Not that there hadn't been any scars on his knuckles before; he had been the middleweight boxing champion at the YMCA back home…back before he left for McCoy and Europe.

Bucky looked from the crates of fruit down to his hands. His wrists looked bonier than they used to, knobby and strung tight with tendons. Flexing the fingers on his left hand, Bucky watched the scar across his palm stretch with his skin. He could remember the feeling when he'd grabbed the knife, and the way the stitches had itched when he woke up in that Italian couple's home. The feeling had made him want to pull them out. Running a finger over the scar didn't produce any sensation. Nothing—it was just material over a wound. Something that didn't belong to him. Maybe it was everything that had happened since leaving Brooklyn, but Bucky thought the scar felt different than his other, older ones.

He wondered what it would be like if his whole palm was like that. What would it be like to have an entire hand made of a scar? Might be useful, an unfeeling but completely functional hand. At the very least, he could grip his weapons by the barrel and not worry about the heat. Bucky clenched his hand and looked up at the rafters of the mess hall.

"Probably welterweight by now," he said to himself.

"You say somethin' in there, Jimmy?" Dum Dum shouted from the other side of the hall. They couldn't see him in the kitchen. That was the point; the fruit were a surprise.

Inside, Bucky's mind and his body were separating. He clenched his eyes closed and gripped the fruit crate as firmly as he could.

"No," he called.

At that same time, the door to the mess opened and he heard Monty say, "We thought you'd stood us up!"

"He was probably just tangled up with Peggy." That was Jim.

Bucky felt like he was hovering just outside the confines of his body. He tried to shake his head, but he wasn't connected to it anymore, wasn't in control. Not right now, dammit. Not here. Not with Steve here.

"That's funny." Steve's voice was echoing. It was coming to Bucky from somewhere a lot farther away than the table on the other side of the mess. "That's hilarious, really."

An abyss was opening, yawning and calm. There was lightning in the distance, but it was quiet and far away. Bucky was safe here above the abyss. His friends were just around the corner.

He started to sink, and that was how he realised he was attached to his body again: He threw an arm out for balance. Someone caught his arm and forced Bucky's head to turn. He blinked, and he blinked, and he blinked a little more. A picture that made sense extruded itself from the blur.

"Are you alright?" Gabe said in a low voice.

He nodded because he didn't think he had control of his voice just yet. His chest felt too loose and his brain might as well have been rolled out like dough. Gabe let go of his face, and Bucky looked down. His left hand was still gripped tight on the fruit crate, and Gabe held his right arm just above the elbow; it was the one he'd thrown out to catch himself. It took concentrated effort to make his hand relax, and it came away with small slivers, chips, and sawdust embedded in his palm.

"How long?" Bucky said.

"Just a minute or two," Gabe said.

"Steve?"

He shook his head.

Bucky tried to sigh in relief, but his chest was still too loose for there to be any satisfaction. He felt liquidus inside his body, liable to float away again at any second.

Gabe's hand tightened its hold above his elbow. "Hey, do you need to sit down? You don't look right."

"No, I'm fine, I just—it feels weird."

"You're sure you're OK? The captain's gonna notice if you're not."

Shaking his hands out helped a little. "Think I might just need a cigarette, Jonesy."

"Well, in cases of emergency," Gabe said while pulling out a hand-rolled cigarette. "I'm always prepared."

Gabe lit it and handed it over. It created a haze in Bucky's loose chest, and he coughed like a dying old man.

"Easy," said Gabe. He picked up the crate of fruit and walked back toward the others. Bucky followed, mind just a half beat out of sync with his body.

"What gives?" Jim complained.

"Sarge was back there smokin'," Gabe said.

"What, doesn't he want to share?" That was Dum Dum.

Bucky sat down between Jim and Monty shaking his head. "I need it more than you, trust me." Dum Dum was looking at him like he knew what had just happened, so Bucky said, "Fruit," to redirect the boys' focus.

"Praise the Lord, it is not even in a can!" Frenchie got to the crate first.

Bucky sat back from the table, and the world shrank to just himself and the cigarette. The voices of his men around him became a comfortable buzz. Citrus scent stung his nose through the smoke of his cigarette. He didn't pay attention to anything around him until it was gone. Dum Dum was giving him a look again.

"You having a coffee moment just now?" he said.

"Maybe," Bucky said. "Toss me an orange."

"How'd you get all this?" Steve said. A giant pile of peels and seeds had accumulated in front of him.

That serum sure had turned him into a pig.

"You're not my only friend, Steve."

"Funny, I seem to remember differently, Bucktooth Barnes."

"You were sick all the time; your memory is shot."

Steve had his mocking face out in full force. Bucky busied himself with the peel of his orange. Damn thing kept breaking off in small pieces. His nails were starting to stain.

"You ought to introduce us to your other friends," Jim said.

"They'd never forgive me."

About fifteen minutes later, Peggy turned up. It was Dum Dum that made a to-do about her arrival, but Steve was making eyes at her. Bucky wasn't surprised to see her making eyes right back at him. Bucky's own eyes wanted to roll, but maybe it was just envy. He ate the last of his orange with purpose. It had made his hands all sticky.

"Are you sure you haven't just eaten a lemon?" Monty said to him in a low voice.

"Shut up." A sad-looking apple was Bucky's next victim. Some sweetness might do him some good.

Peggy sat beside Dum Dum and Frenchie. There was a bundle in her hands that she put on the table.

"What's the word?" Gabe said.

"I've a few remarks by Colonel Phillips on your recent field exercises."

"This oughtta be good."

That annoying Limey smile was on Peggy's face. Monty did it all the time, but Bucky thought Peggy wore it better.

"He thinks you're doing exceptionally well. In fact, he's graciously cancelled all of your field manoeuvres for tomorrow."

Dum Dum's face fell. "And replaced them with what?"

"You'll all be coming down to London."

"For a briefing?" Bucky said with hopeful dread.

Peggy caught his eye—she said something with just the set of her mouth; he couldn't read it though. "Fortunately, it's noting as dull as that. You'll be serving your country by speaking with reporters and standing for photographs."

"Eh?" Dum Dum said loudly.

"Phillips wants us to do this?" Jim said.

Peggy cleanly replied, "I don't recall saying he wanted you to do it."

"We're to be standing around cheering on Captain America, are we?" Monty said.

"That's the idea, I think."

Bucky said to Steve, "Did you know about this?"

The guilt on his face was confirmation enough.

"Think I might not have gotten over that illness," Gabe said.

"Yeah, I can't go to London—my ankle still swells," said Jim.

"I'm sure they can find you a chair," said Peggy.

"We're gonna be the chorus girls this time," Bucky said.

"Peggy, we joined the army to shoot Germans, not to sell war bonds and talk about how brave and strong Rogers is."

"Too bad you're with the S.S.R. now and not the U.S. Army."

"Will we get matching outfits?" Frenchie said.

"Dress uniforms should be appropriate," Peggy said. "I'm sure something can be arranged for you, Dernier. It's mostly interviews, gentlemen, have no fear."

"Steve's coming too, right?" said Bucky.

"Of course. What are soldiers without their captain?"

Dum Dum was rubbing at his temples, making the bowler hat bounce on his head. "You know if they make us do this, we're gonna do it, right?"

Peggy pursed her lips when all of them (sans Steve) made eye contact.

"They're literally asking for it," Dum Dum said.

Steve: "Oh, geez."

"They're ordering it, actually," Peggy said, "not asking."

"Sounds like we gotta do it, boys," Bucky sighed. "Might as well make the best of it."

Steve: "Oh, no."

"Don't get too excited; you're back to drilling the next night. There's a full briefing and instructions on your specific roles for the invasion of France waiting for you. I thought I'd take the liberty of getting you all fresh cleaning kits." Peggy slid a kit across the table to each of them from her bundle. After sliding the last one to Bucky, she said, "Howard's concocted something special for the mechanisms in your Johnson rifle, Barnes. Please be careful you don't use it on a Thompson or your sidearm by mistake." Her eyes roved around all of them. "Remember that it's best to clean your weapons daily." She looked at Bucky for a significant second as she got to her feet. "Personally, I find that cleaning my weapons at night helps me sleep better."

Bucky's stomach started folding in on itself and cramping. "Got it," he said.

"Good night then," Peggy said, a lingering look at Steve. It was so distracting that none of them saw her swipe three oranges and a pear.

Dum Dum was staring at Steve and said, "We get to be your cheerleaders tomorrow, huh?"

Jim said, "We gotta come up with a better name than the Howling Commandos."

"What were the girls actually called?" Monty said.

They all looked to Steve. He shook his head. "I'm not encouraging this."

"Star Spangled somethings," Gabe said. "Make a play off that."

Bucky snorted. "Captain America and his band of Borrowed Brass."

Steve: "Oh, God."

"Cap and the Sack Rats," Jim said.

"Captain America and the Merry Mae West Men," Dum Dum said.

Their cackling grew louder with every suggestion; Gabe was shaking his head but his smile wasn't hidden.

Jim said, "And the Star-Spangled Short Arms."

Steve went red and said, "Alright!"

They gave him shit until the crates of fruit were gone. By the end, some of the guys were actually looking forward to the interviews. The bundle Peggy had given Bucky weighed heavy on his mind so that he couldn't spend much brainpower on coming up with new names for their squad. Back at Barracks 14, Bucky found a bottle with no label hidden in the rifle cleaning kit Peggy had given him—he had expected as much, but still didn't want it. Inside the bottle, hidden among the tablets was a small, handwritten note that said, "Luminal—once per day." Just reading it made Bucky's chest feel loose and his mind separate. The tablets rattled with his shaking hand.

"OK?" Gabe said

They were all watching him, the bastards. Bucky clenched his jaw and nodded.

"We'll take watch," Dum Dum said, "keep an eye on you all night."

"That's stupid, we're on base. No one needs to keep watch."

"We're doin' you a favour, ace. Just take the pill and we'll do the rest."

Stop being so goddamn needy, Barnes. He swallowed a tablet and hid the bottle away in the cleaning kit. The note he tore up and shoved into his nearly-empty pack of cigarettes; he'd burn it next time he used it. Maybe it was all in his head, but Bucky really wanted to puke right then.

They all laid in their bunks and tossed around more alternative names to Howling Commandos when inspiration struck. Approving sounds were made when a good one came up. But there were mostly no words exchanged between them. The lack of conversation was companionable, which was nice. It didn't feel so much like they were all waiting for Bucky to explode. Dum Dum would turn a page in Bucky's copy of You Can't Go Home Again every now and again. He'd make noises when he came to passages Bucky had made note of. Jim was writing a behaviour report; the scratch of his pencil on paper was a comforting sound. Bucky wasn't sure when he lost track of everything and fell asleep—but it happened a lot sooner than he expected.

They woke up late. Jim thought it was the only goddamn time he'd ever miss not hearing the misery pipe. Usually Barnes woke everyone up with enough time to wake up before they were due for drills. But Barnes was sleeping harder than a log in his bunk by the time Dugan kicked everyone's bunk.

"We're gonna be fuckin' late," Dugan said. "Jimmy, get up."

"Who dropped the ball?" Jim whined as he forced himself out from under his blankets.

"Frenchie." Dugan pointed an accusatory finger.

"We're all just fine," he said in an unhurried sort of voice.

"Come on, come on," Dugan said while pulling Barnes up by the arm. "Everyone into your monkey clothes."

Frenchie had a few unblemished threads to wear that were on par with everyone else's respective dress uniforms. The change that came over them in just a few minutes was, frankly, astounding. Jim hadn't realised how shoddy all of them had looked until they'd made a halfway decent attempt at cleaning themselves. Beards were shaved and moustaches were trimmed. Besides a few wrinkles in dress shirts—which was nothing an Eisenhower jacket couldn't hide—they were looking better than they ever had.

"We ready to go? Dugan, you driving?" Monty said.

"Sounds good to me. Frenchie, you got Barnes duty 'cause you fell asleep when you were supposed to be on watch."

Despite the undone top button and loose tie, Barnes didn't look half bad. The hair could use some work, though. Guy's hair had a mind of its own.

Barnes yawned a jaw-cracking yawn and nearly folded up on himself on his bunk.

"Sleep well?" Jim said.

"Think the dose was too high," was the mumbled reply. "Can hardly keep my eyes open."

"Tough shit," Gabe said. He held a hand out, and Barnes took it. Pulling him to his feet, Gabe said, "Gotta do something about that hair."

"Don't bother…been this way my whole life."

"Any hair can be tamed with enough goop," Gabe said. "Don't worry, Sarge, we'll sort you out before we get to London. You'll shine like a new penny."

"I already do," Barnes grunted.

Jim sat up front in the truck Dugan chose to drive to London. The morning was actually nice for a change. Jim smoked and pretended to enjoy the scenery; he was trying out different lines to put into his next letter to Chiyo and his parents. (Could they even get mail in that godforsaken camp? How would his letter be redacted? Would they take one look at the address and burn it?) The surroundings were green now. When had it stopped being grey and brown? London itself was a dingy eyesore—because of all the bombings and shit—but some life still sprung between toppled masonry. It was all gone when some little bird shuffled them out of the truck and down into the S.S.R. bunker. The place was stuffy but also sort of chilly. Jim continued to not know how to feel about all of this.

So everything was status quo.

Cap met them with Peggy and Phillips outside of a briefing room. They all tried to peer inside the room and show proper military respect at the same time. Phillips was gruff and made harsh introductions for everyone and the little media team. The reporter-guy reminded Jim of Howard Stark, only this guy didn't show any signs of intelligent life.

"He's like a bug," Dugan said once the reporter had finished shaking all their hands and was ignoring them in favour of kissing Cap's ass. Maybe they knew each other from his touring USO days.

He was a bug though. The reporter was everywhere, fast talking and touching and rubbing his palms together. He kept saying the word "scoop," which bothered Jim a lot though he couldn't say why. The photographer and his flash were annoying, too, but not as annoying.

"Got any chairs around here?" Barnes said.

Jim and Frenchie wandered with him into the briefing room and found some chairs. They all sat and waited for this shit show to start. It really wouldn't be a surprise if Stark turned up; that guy loved attention almost as much as he loved himself. Maybe he could go toe-to-toe with Bug the Reporter to see who could be the most obnoxious. Jim crossed his ankle over his knee and squeezed it through his boot. The thing did still swell sometimes. It didn't hurt that much, just made his boot feel tight and uncomfortable.

"So dizzy," Barnes said next to him. "Tired."

"Maybe you should have only taken half," Frenchie said.

"Hm," said Barnes. "Next time…if this ever ends."

"Hair looks better," Jim observed. "Who fixed it?"

Barnes shrugged. "Sort of fell asleep in the truck. Monty, I think? Could have been Gabe though."

"No food around here," Frenchie said with a frown.

"Not even water."

"Thought I smelt coffee," Barnes said.

Jim and Frenchie looked at one another and ignored him. They grumbled about the lack of concessions until everyone else assembled around them (Cap in the middle) and the reporter and the photographer were across from them. It felt like a fight was about to break out.

"Alright, so where're you all from?" the plucky little reporter said.

"Our mothers," Barnes said. He maybe meant to whisper it, but it came out loud and clear.

Bug the Reporter laughed over it and posed the question again.

"Bucky and I are from Brooklyn," Cap said. "Dugan's from Boston."

Jim said flatly, seriously, and in his best imitation of his father's accent, "I'm from Tokyo."

Beside him, Cap sighed. If Jim was interpreting Cap's body language correctly, that sigh meant, This is gonna be a long day.

And it was a long day, but it wasn't half bad. The interview was full of shit, but that was mostly because of the answers that they kept giving. Questions for Jim and Gabe were few and far between. They both had to make their sass count when they finally got asked a question.

They all got questions about where they served before being recruited. Jim didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted that Bug was so surprised that Jim used to be a ranger. In fact, Bug had gone so bug-eyed at the reply that he asked a follow up question about it. Gabe didn't get the same interest when he mentioned his all-black unit practically merging with the 107^th when they got cut off from Allied support for a few weeks. Fuckin' Bug.

Then there came questions about their jobs as part of Cap's team—that's how he kept referring to them, Cap's team. Halfway through each of their responses, Bug would interrupt to ask Cap something. It was like the reporter didn't believe any of them and only took it as truth after Cap repeated what they had just been about to say. Jim could read it in the set of Cap's shoulders; he was annoyed with the way Bug was treating them. Wasn't long before Cap was dishing out sassy remarks right along with the rest of them. It was a real team bonding moment.

Then Bug asked about Krausberg. All of them clammed up real quick, chins up and jaw defiant. No. Just no. Krausberg wasn't something they'd talk about like it was a grand old time, all of them living in bird cages together, shootin' the shit. No. Even if all the guys talked about it among themselves like it was just another assignment that they could laugh at, Krausberg wasn't something some reporter got to splash in a news column. Cap took most of the questions. Bug asked a lot about Cap and Barnes's history and how "moving" it was that Cap raided the factory just to get him. Barnes was literally yawning as the guy said it all and, at one point, interrupted to say, "What's the damn question?"

Bug was flustered. "I suppose what I want to ask is, Captain, how did you feel seeing your friend, alive, after all that time? What sort of state was he in? How'd you feel?"

Barnes and Cap exchanged a series of looks no one besides them could ever hope to decipher. Cap turned to Bug and said, "Uh, I was just glad he wasn't dead. I was relieved, and I just wanted to get him—and myself and all the others—out of there."

"Sergeant, what was that like, the moment when Captain America rescued you?"

"I don't recall," Barnes said.

Bug rubbed his hands together; Jim cringed. "C'mon, just a few words for the folks back home. Let 'em know the strength of the bond between their soldiers at war."

Barnes looked unamused (and tired). He said flatly, "I nearly swooned when I opened my eyes and saw Steve's baby blues starin' at me. Thought I'd died and gone to heaven."

Frowning, Bug moved on. Guy was wising up to them.

They really put Cap to work the whole time. He was damn good at spewing placating lines of bullshit. That USO tour did him real good. Jim thought that Cap would probably be able to sell salt to the sea. A dangerous thing—he would have to keep his eye on the captain now or Jim would end up doing something stupid like jumping out of an aeroplane or fighting red-faced devil men.

After Monty gave a very satirical description of what it was like to be a superior officer serving under an inexperienced, inferior officer from a different army, they broke for lunch. Before Jim had even properly stood up, Cap had a hand on Barnes's arm and was dragging him away—probably to a more private corner. Jim guessed even Captain Head-Over-Heels-For-Carter noticed the prolonged sleepiness in Barnes. Jim figured Cap wouldn't find out the truth, not now, anyway. But it was nice to know that Cap was actually paying attention to what Jim had talked to him about after Prague.

After an hour, they reconvened in the briefing room with Bug & Company. There were a few extra people in the room—Army people—and they all knew what was coming. Phillips and Peggy presented Barnes with a Bronze Star. The annoying photographer had his light flashing nonstop as he took pictures of Cap pinning the decoration to Barnes's uniform. As much as he hated to admit it, Jim kind of wanted to see those pictures that were being taken—the proud "aw shucks" smile on Barnes's face was comedy gold.

Once it was pinned on, Cap and Barnes shook hands for the camera. They gave each other a one-armed hug, but they did it so fast the cameraman didn't have a chance to set up and capture the moment. That was just for them.

"Where's ours?" Dugan shouted. It broke up the room into laughter.

It was time for portraits. Bug wanted them arranged in about a thousand different ways. Solo shots, groups, sitting, standing, some standing and some sitting, Cap and everyone, Cap and just one of them at a time, only Gabe and Jim, everyone but Gabe and Jim, everyone but Monty, everyone but Frenchie, the Americans, the "internationals" (which Bug insisted included Jim—the Tokyo comment come back to haunt him). The strangest shots were probably the ones with Cap holding some of the merchandise they were making back home. There were a bunch of issues of comic books Bug wanted Cap to hold up—some of which featured this goofy, pantyhose-wearing kid sidekick called Bucky, which the guys were never gonna let Barnes forget. A group consensus told Dugan to go ahead and steal a handful of the comic books. Jim was sure they'd come in handy one day. There were stuffed bears, too. Jim didn't know if that was better or worse than the comic books.

When the portraits were finally, finally done, they were all released.

"Who's up for a drink?" Dugan said.

Turned out, all of them were.

Everyone in Barracks 14 woke up to Barnes kicking the sides of their bunks.

"Get up, bunk lizards, we have work to do," he said.

"By dawn's early light, is that the old Jimmy waking us up and not the zombie from Prague?" Dugan said with amusement through sleepiness.

There was another thump; Barnes had kicked his bunk again with a lot more force. "Nah, it's someone brand new, and he's telling you to get the fuck up."

Gabe rolled sluggishly into a sitting position. It was good to have Sarge back. He'd missed him.

"You sleep?" Jim said from his bunk. Last night, he had drunk more than anybody else. Gabe was sure he was feeling it now.

"Did I sleep?" said Barnes. "Yeah, I slept. I slept all fucking night, but it's not night anymore. Get up."

"Sergeant Blood," Monty said.

"Nice to meet ya," Dugan said.

It was like old days; Peggy met them in the field and had them drill for hours. Just them, no other regiments or companies for them to work against. Just the guys and Peggy; it felt like they were all closer together. That sense might have come from the shared secret they had from Captain Rogers, but Gabe liked to think it was because they had bonded and fought their way into Peggy's heart the good, wholesome, and sincere way. Gabe and the others were so happy to be back on familiar ground with her that they hardly even complained about her horrible, life-sucking drills. She even made them run the tarmacs in full gear. It was worth noting that Peggy did every single drill with them with the same gear packs. That almost made it feel like she wasn't the one forcing them all to suffer in the first place. It was nice of her to suffer her own will, too.

By the end, they still had smiles on their faces, even Sergeant Blood.

Gabe knew something strange was going to happen when Peggy came with them to the mess—why was it always suspiciously empty when they turned up?—and had a meal with them. He was right to think this, because she said that they were all going to London again, back to the bunker. She sat up front with Dugan in the truck. Gabe thought Dugan was driving more erratically than usual, maybe to make Peggy shout in fright. It didn't work; Peggy sounded like she was having a rather good time.

Captain Rogers met them outside the bunker, and they all had to look the other way while he and Peggy looked at each other. In the bunker, they were brought before a sand table. Colonel Phillips and a few other high-ranking officers were there, too. They were all quiet while Gabe and the others stared down at the sand table. There were maps pinned to walls around the table, markings in red and black everywhere. There were close-up reconnaissance images, hand-drawn approximations of dark areas on maps. Gabe stared at a particularly large map that had five sections called Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, and Utah. Maps hung above each heading, and above those were the words Operation Overlord.

Dernier said quietly, "Normandy."

Chapter Text

Long hours were spent over maps and sand tables after that. God bless them, the S.S.R. put them all into classroom exercises again. Falsworth thought the whole thing was rather charming—like a child showing his parents how to tie his shoes. He wasn't the only one bored senseless in courses about How to Use a Compass—they worked the same in France as they did in England. More than once, Barnes went right to sleep in the middle of the course. If they had the classroom first thing in the morning, Barnes didn't even make it ten minutes in before he was out. More than once, Morita followed suit. No one said anything about it, not even the man leading the course.

After they'd learned how to use a compass and read a map, it was field exercises again. They spent time with bomber squadrons and ground troops. Rogers had Falsworth consult over tactics and plans of attack. When they had Agent Carter on their team during the assault exercises, they were able to overtake a team of seventy infantrymen without a (simulated) casualty. When it came to defending a position, the seven of them (eight if Peggy was included) were understandably at a disadvantage. Though they ran defence situations, not much time was spent on it. They were a commando unit—they were specifically assembled for fast and quiet assaults.

The quiet part was negotiable, Falsworth thought. Dum Dum made "quiet" difficult. Well, maybe all of them, together, made it difficult. Alone they could do it just fine. For example, Frenchie could run through the forest and never make a damned peep. It was something Falsworth found himself frequently forgetting since the Frenchman was usually happily chirping or making things explode on the range to rounds of applause (often his own applause). 

Peggy made a few comments on it while she led them in hand-to-hand drills. Falsworth couldn't help but think about how strange it was that they were being taught close quarters combat by a woman. Who had ever heard of such a thing? That wasn't to say that she wasn't good. Peggy was a wildly effective teacher, truthfully. Perhaps it helped that Captain Rogers wasn't there. She could give as well as Jim Morita and Dum Dum Dugan could dish out; Peggy may very well have been better than Barnes at backtalk.

"Try to keep up, Sergeant," Peggy said during one of their rifle-and-bayonet drills.

Barnes yawned at her and smirked. "Damn grease for my rifle makes me sleepy."

"It's best not to mix it with alcohol, Sergeant," she said diplomatically. "The mechanisms may degrade if you use it improperly. I'd hate for your rifle to stop working."

Dum Dum started laughing, and Barnes said through another yawn, "You tell me now."

"Explains why you look like you're coming back from the dead every morning," Morita said.

"And I still manage to get up before all of you," Barnes said while impaling their straw victim with his bayonet.

"What, do you want a medal for it or something?" Gabe said.

"Another medal," Frenchie said.

Barnes pulled the rifle free. "You're all looking a little green."

Dum Dum shouted a laugh. "And Frenchie's the worst 'cause he can't get a medal no matter what."

Falsworth laughed. What strange things the promise of bits of metal could induce in people. It was all in jest here and now—but it wasn't always so. Falsworth had seen first-hand the type of men that put large stock in decorations. These people didn't have their priorities straight. As long as Falsworth and his fellows lived to see another day, he didn't care how heavy the front of his dress uniform became. The men who chased decorations often were the ones that ended up with metal embedded in their flesh instead.

The point was that their trips off base significantly decreased. Falsworth was excited to hear that they'd be making a combat jump during Operation Overlord. There were several airborne units that would be dropped ahead of the amphibious assault, but Colonel Phillips had their little commando group working independently of that even. HYDRA was their objective, of course, but gaining a foothold in France was the purpose of Operation Overlord. Falsworth thought it might be nice to have a go at it with standard Germans who had nothing but bullets. The threat of being vaporised was always good to avoid.

Their unit's assignment was simple: run full steam ahead to the HYDRA factory near the Maginot Line and cause as much chaos as possible behind the coastal defences so that the Germans' communications were disrupted. Mostly, they were being asked to hamper the influx of reinforcements to the coast while they were on their way to their true purpose. The other airborne divisions were meant to secure supply routes; the ultimate goal for them was to secure a port in Cherbourg. Captain Rogers would lead Falsworth and the others through France. They'd gather intelligence on the state of the defences in Paris and report it back for the incoming infantry units.

But Falsworth was getting too far ahead of himself—something he'd always struggled with as a commander. First things first: they were making a combat jump.

"Is it too late to go back to the 107th?" Barnes said at dinner after the rumours were made official.

"What, are ya scared?" Morita said.

"Yes," Barnes laughed.

"C'mon, Buck," Rogers said, "you do just fine on jumps."

"It's been so long since we did one," Barnes said. "I was hoping we were done with them."

"Wishful thinking if I've ever heard it," Frenchie said.

Dum Dum said, "I was actually kind of startin' to miss 'em. Ya get a rush doin' that."

"That's not a rush—that's your body thinking it's about to die," Barnes said.

"No," Falsworth said, "it is rather fun."

"You said that when Steve asked you to join this stupid unit," Barnes said. He frowned and threw his hands up. "It's what you all said, you buncha idiots."

Gabe slapped a hand on Barnes's back. "You're here, too, aren't you, Sarge?"

"Yeah, well. Someone had to make sure all of you don't die blindly following that punk, and I know best how to corral him."

It was awfully nice to listen to Barnes act like a mother hen again. What was more, Barnes spent a few hours in Rogers's private company in the evenings just like before they were deployed to Lamia. Morita and Dum Dum took the opportunity to recycle their jokes from before, but this time they got to pepper in comments about the bloke that kissed Barnes at the pub. It was Gabe that found out what the two of them were up to: fighting. Physically fighting. But not each other.

"They were throwing the shield around between themselves," Gabe said the night he saw it. "I thought they were playing catch at first. But, no. They were beating up some stuffed uniform—taking turns smashing it with the shield."

Which, of course, meant that the rest of them wanted to get a look. It was quite something to see, when they finally saw it. Morita insisted that they hide and watch the two Americans in secret. Where's the harm in that? Falsworth had thought. So they hid and watched.

At first, Rogers and Barnes just flipped the shield back and forth between each other and spoke about people none of the rest of them knew. Falsworth imagined that the names were friends and family of theirs. As the distance between the two grew and the shield was thrown with more zip, they talked about Rogers and his meetings with the generals. When they moved on to a two-on-one with the straw soldier (there was a portrait pinned in the place where a face ought to be, but no one could make it out). Conversation was replaced by them calling out their locations to each other. They never stopped moving once the assault on the strawman started. Mesmerising was the way they weaved in and out of each other, handing off the shield and attacking their enemy. 

To be quite honest, Falsworth wanted to take part, too.

"Room for five more?" Dum Dum shouted in the middle of their drill.

The two of them froze; the shield clanged into Barnes's arm.

"Fuck," he said and grabbed his arm. He massaged the hurt from it and said belatedly, "Ow."

"You wanna play?" Rogers said. For the first time, Falsworth could see the "punk" Barnes was always talking about when Rogers smirked like that.

"Hell yeah, we wanna play," Morita said.

"I dunno," said the captain. He turned to Barnes. "Can they play, Buck?"

"Only if they know the password." He squeezed his arm one last time and then went to stand even with Rogers. "Think they know the password, Steve?"

"Dunno. Prolly not, Buck."

They crossed their arms in unison and cocked their heads at exactly the same angle, looking for all the world like true Brooklyn punks—not that Falsworth had seen one before now.

Barnes jerked his chin at them. "What's the password?"

It took a few guesses, but Gabe finally got it ("Buck Rogers," they should have known). Rogers slung the shield at him the moment he got it. Surely there'd be bruises on his palms in the morning. Thus, a new exercise was born and their days became even fuller.

Being busy was a relief though. Between the classroom exercises and drills they did with Peggy and the other units, there was hardly any time for causing trouble. They even let Frenchie lead a few lessons on French language to help them communicate with locals and any hidden resistance fighters they may encounter. Stark was even requesting their presence in the lab to test out his latest inventions and improvements he'd made to their equipment. He had Falsworth try out about forty pairs of binoculars in ten different kinds of environments; like the scope on Barnes's sniper rifle, Falsworth's binoculars were prone to fogging. Stark touted some new kind of coating on the lenses and some other sophisticated technology that would help them see in low light.

There was a vast improvement made to the radio unit. Stark had honestly gone and incorporated the system into a uniform. No longer would Jim Morita have to lug the unit around on his back and have his weight doubled by carrying the batteries. There were a few meetings between inventor and technician to adjust the location of various components; wire lengths needed manipulating and relocating so that they did not interfere with any movement or have too much slack that could get caught on anything. In the end, the weight of the radio was reduced by nearly 70% and Morita's range of motion was greatly increased. Admittedly, it was a very thoughtful design with an improved range over the typical radio unit.

A lot of evenings, the six of them and Stark loitered around the shooting range and tried to shoot cans and other improvised targets with prototype "night vision" gadgets. One of the targets was the same portrait that was pinned to the strawman they practised fighting with the shield against. Falsworth hadn't the faintest idea where'd they gotten so many copies of the portrait; Barnes told them not to worry about it and that the GI was called Gilmore Hodge. There were several bullet holes through the eyes of those pictures, and Stark declared Barnes's new scope a roaring success. (Strange was the way Peggy laughed when she saw the shot-up portraits of Hodge papering the walls of Barracks 14. Falsworth considered them lucky not to be accused of threatening the GI in the photo, assuming he was still alive.) These nights on the range were especially looked forward to because sometimes Stark would bring with him good drink and cigars. All of them seemed to find joy in criticising his inventions, too.

There were a few close calls regarding their collective secret from the captain, of course. There was at least one occasion where Rogers came bursting into the barracks in the dead of night and announced that they were to do a night march. They'd all scrambled around and floundered to wake Barnes. He'd stumbled and teetered on the edge of falling asleep through the whole march. To throw the captain off the scent, all of them stumbled and walked crookedly. Conveniently enough, it allowed one of them to carom into Barnes and catch him when he began to fall asleep without raising suspicion.

Rogers said, "You guys go out drinking again?"

"Nah, Monty's lording parents sent him the good stuff, and we were passing it around," Dum Dum said smoothly. "Did we ever find the bottom of that bottle?"

"Can't remember," Morita supplied.

Rogers shook his head and said, "Must've," and they went on the rest of the way.

In the morning, Barnes didn't remember going on the march at all. The news seemed to alarm him, and he resolved to reduce his dose to a quarter of a tablet so that he wouldn't sleep so deeply and the dizziness would ease quicker. It was a good thing, because the following night, the door was thrown open again. It was Phillips this time—it was odd to see him in the flesh outside the S.S.R. bunker in London—and he wanted them to do a simulated attack on a faux HYDRA base. Stark had been talking about his night vision gadgets so much that Phillips had gotten annoyed and demanded a field test. Intuition told Falsworth that Phillips wanted the gadgets to fail. 

The six of them didn't have to act drunk this time since Barnes woke relatively easily. They followed Rogers's orders and successfully took the base while proving the effectiveness of Stark's equipment. Phillips grumbled and was, no doubt, subjected to more gloating from Stark henceforth. 

Another close call happened between Rogers and Peggy. None of them had been there to see it, but Peggy told them about it during their standard morning drills the following day. She'd been raiding the pharmacy that was annexed to the S.S.R. bunker for more tablets for Barnes to carry into the field—they didn't know how long they'd be deployed or when he'd next have a chance to resupply.

"…and he comes sneaking up on me as I'm leaving," Peggy said. "I dropped the bottles all over the floor because he was just suddenly there. Of course, he goes to collect them and be helpful, then he wants to know what they are. I thought for a moment he already knew, and he was daring me to admit it."

"Whaddya say?" said Barnes.

"Oh, relax, I didn't tell him the truth." The sharp look she gave all of them showed how much she might have liked to do otherwise. "I said they were airsickness pills for the parachute regimens. It made sense seeing how I'm to drop with them."

"Do we get any airsickness pills?" Gabe said curiously.

"I'm sure you will, but I won't be in charge of them—I'm not even really in charge of the ones I said I was. It's the medics' job." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "I believe you all will be supplied with stimulants for the invasion. So you can keep up with your captain."

Dum Dum made a highly offended sound.

Barnes laughed and twisted until his spine cracked. "Thanks, Agent, 'preciate you doin' this."

"Yes, well, you better have."

"I do. Sincerely. I owe you big." But it was plain to see how much he hated to owe her, no matter what it was for. Sergeant Barnes wasn't the type that took kindly to owing anyone. Perhaps it was why he went so far out of his way to care for his men and was in turn a horrible patient himself. "Say, why don't you come out with us, huh? It's the last chance before the big day."

"Oh, Sergeant, you flatter me."

"I'm serious. I want you—we all want you to come out with us. You're part of the team, ya know."

"We hear those sad sacks that call ya Cap's girl," Dum Dum said, "and we always tell 'em that you're a lot more'n that, first of all."

Morita kicked a pile of dirt and Gabe smiled.

"I'd say Captain Rogers is the least interesting thing about you," Frenchie said.

The French, Falsworth thought and internally rolled his eyes. He'd never thought he'd be so fond of a Frenchman before; it occurred as an afterthought.

Barnes said, "See? C'mon, we've known you how long and you won't have a single drink with us? If you keep it up, I'm gonna start to think you don't like me."

There was a look of false sympathy on Peggy's face, so Falsworth knew she was going to say something snappy. "I wouldn't want you to think that, Sergeant. It's Dugan I can't stand to be around."

So many genuine smiles going around given the circumstances.

"Fuck him then," said Barnes. "Dum Dum'll stay home and you'll come out with the rest of us."

It was, perhaps, proof that she really was seen as part of their unit that they didn't even try to clean up their language around her.

"I thought I've told you alcohol doesn't go well with your Johnson's lubricant."

Barnes rolled his eyes and gave her a sly grin. "Don't you worry about how I lube my Johnson, Carter."

Further proof, Falsworth thought wryly. 

Morita said, "You've got an awful lot of excuses for why you won't come out with us. You embarrassed to be seen with a coupla guys like us? Is it me? Is it Jonesy?"

Peggy got exasperated. "Oh, please!"

"Agent—Peggy," said Barnes, "if it comes down to greasing my rifle or having a drink, I'm gonna have a drink every single time. I can clean the damn gun the next night; it's not like we're in combat."

"Now that's the right attitude," said Gabe drily.

"No one will mention Cap at all," Morita said.

That was a little ambitious, Falsworth thought. Could they make an entire night without giving her a hard time about it?

"Please," Barnes said.

No less than three of them cracked up when he gave her a smile meant to be charming and convincing. They'd seen it in action in the pubs around the base. It usually worked on the locals. It worked on Pvt Lorraine, but Falsworth suspected there was more to that than Barnes charming the woman. The air about her was intimidating. 

"Don't strain yourself, Jimmy," Dum Dum laughed. "She's into blondes."

Peggy's shoulders slumped and she turned away to hide her smile. "Alright, fine! Stop looking at me like that, Barnes."

He smiled genuinely and turned to slap palms with Dum Dum. "Still got it."

"Barely," Gabe muttered.

"Don't you fucking dare rain on my parade," Barnes said.

Falsworth agreed with the sentiment on a greater, abstract scale, but he couldn't shake the feeling that Barnes's parade would never stop being rained on. All of them—Falsworth expected it of his own life, rain and thunder, however long his life turned out to be.

"Bring an umbrella," Falsworth said.

Their night at The Whip and Fiddle went over well. Dum Dum went to pick Peggy up at her quarters and they all drove in together. Somehow, someway—Falsworth wasn't sure how they managed it—they were all perfectly respectful of Peggy without treating her as a guest or an outsider. Honestly, Falsworth wasn't sure that such a thing could be done. He was glad it was in any case. When they were on base as long as they were right now, they probably sent more time being led by her than they did Captain Rogers.

No one got fall-down drunk that night. In fact, they were just on the green side of tipsy. It was just a lot of talk and a lot of laughter. It was sharing the domesticity of the lives they'd left behind and the ones they hoped to return to but probably never would. A little later in the night, Rogers turned up and joined them. The atmosphere at the table changed, though it was for the better. No spines straightened in the face of a CO (and Falsworth was well versed in how a CO's presence could ruin the enlisted men's nights). Rather, it felt more complete, as it was when they played cards during their downtime on assignments. Their commander he was, but that night—… It felt, strangely, as though they were all just friends having a night out rather than soldiers trying to live before they might not have the chance to do so again.

Dum Dum, Rogers, Gabe, and Falsworth sang a rousing rendition of a song called "Oklahoma!" from an American musical called Oklahoma! that a surprising number of fellow patrons knew. (The damn musical was universal, or so he was told.) Morita, Barnes, Frenchie, and Peggy were all too embarrassed to be associated with them to join in, faces red from drink.

When the song ended and the applause of the pub died down, Peggy put a hand on Falsworth's shoulder to keep herself upright through her laughter. Regaining her breath, she said, "That is—that's it! You four are going to be the death of me! That was bloody wonderful!" Laughter took over her once more.

"Another!" Morita shouted.

A chant started at their table and spread around the pub. So they treated the place to an encore, this time it was "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'." The songs that had tormented all these people on the radio were suddenly beloved when Captain America's Quartet sang them.

Barnes bought a round of beer for the table—a tradition of which Falsworth didn't know the origin. Gabe and Dum Dum assured the outsiders that it was Barnes's duty to buy a round before a big deployment like this. Once he had distributed the glass tankards, he held his aloft. The rest of the table mirrored him.

"Wahoo!" they chorused.

After a false start, a final distribution of mail, and the reading of a statement by some general or colonel, it was time. They were scheduled to leave before all the rest in a squadron of four planes. The troops for Operation Overlord needed all the carrier planes they could get, so two bombers and a twin of the jet Howard had designed for the team, all of which belonged to the S.S.R., would be escorting the Commandos to France. The bombers were to peel off and cause a distraction north of the beaches that would be invaded—south of the Commandos' drop zone— and the duplicate plane would fly with them all the way to their target near the mouth of the River Seine. Howard's jets were apparently designed to fly higher and faster than the others, and its engines ran quieter.

"Which is all well and good," Bucky was complaining as they all situated themselves and their eighty-pound supply bags inside their transport jet, "until we gotta go low and slow for the jump and are shot to pieces."

Steve sighed and dropped his hand heavily on Bucky's shoulder. "We'll be fine."

Bucky made a scornful sound.

"We will. And if something happens—"

"Something always happens."

"—I'm gonna be right there, and when have I ever not had your back?"

Bucky's eyes were nearly bugging out of his head. That airsickness pill he'd taken earlier sure hadn't started working yet. "Uh, how about that time when I went to see Mary DeBohr and her brother nearly skinned me?"

"You kind of deserved that one."

"It's the only fight you ever walked away from, I fucking swear, Steve."

"You were always telling me to stay out of trouble. Michael DeBohr was trouble."

The propellers started up then, and Bucky clamped his mouth closed and adjusted his grip on his rifle.

"How long we gonna be in the air?" Morita called from his place on the other side of the plane's fuselage.

"Long enough," Steve said back.

"Smoke 'em if ya got 'em," Dugan shouted as the plane jerked forward.

In unison, all of them produced their new packs of cigarettes. Steve could hear the snick of the new lighters Howard had made for them over the sound of the propellers, but he was sure that he was the only one. The scent of tobacco permeated the air by the time the landing gears lost contact with the tarmac. The whole thing was rather boring to Steve, the flight. It was dark, so there was nothing to look at really. The new packs for their gear were heavy; even Steve felt the annoying weight of it strapped to his leg. How heavy it must feel to the others…Steve sort of felt bad, not that there was anything he could do about it. The others had rolled their eyes so hard at the last-minute adjustment that they'd simply ignored it and packed a lot of things that were meant to be in the leg bag in their pockets and wherever else things would fit.

So Steve watched the guys start on their second cigarettes and tried to ignore the warm fondness that crept over him every time he thought of his team. They leaned on each other and snorted with quiet laughter. Most communication, if any, was done non-verbally. All half-smiles and shifting shoulders. Steve watched Bucky fidget and take very deliberate breaths every few minutes. It was reassuring to watch him do this. Fidgeting was preferable to the catatonia he'd exhibited on the flight back from Prague.

Leaning toward his sergeant, Steve said, "Is it helping?"

"Huh?"

"The pills."

Bucky's head snapped in Steve's direction so quickly that they nearly smacked foreheads. "W-what?"

"The pills. For airsickness. Is it helping?"

Bucky deflated. "Oh. Yeah. Sure."

"What'd you think I meant?"

"I dunno," he said waspishly. "We're gonna jump out of an aeroplane again. I was thinking about that. You know I'm not in peak mental condition while flying."

Steve laughed while he leaned away. Deciding to leave Bucky to his nervous fidgeting, Steve recited the plan of attack in his head and thought about Peggy. The plan was a stupid thing to waste time thinking about since it was almost guaranteed to be useless once their boots hit the ground. Too many unknowns for it to ever go as planned. As much time as Steve had spent with the generals planning and scheming, he didn't intend on giving even one of the orders they'd talked about. When Steve and the guys jumped, he was going to read the land and make a call that made sense.

As for thinking about Peggy…well, that was natural, wasn't it? She was Peggy, and she was part of the team even if she wasn't being deployed with them. Steve was glad she was being deployed at all. From all those meetings with the brass, Steve had learned that what little remained of the 107th had been trained up hard and was now a speciality unit unofficially attached to the S.S.R. Peggy was in charge of them for the duration of Operation Overlord and however long it took them to take Cherbourg.

In Steve's book, that made Peggy the commander of an independent unit. Colonel Phillips may have been the commander on record, but even he seemed to consider Peggy the actual leader. If he couldn't have her with his own team, Steve thought Peggy was on the next best assignment. The field may be an awful place to be, but Peggy was strong enough to bear it. If anyone could, it was her.

They could hear it when the bombers peeled away from their formation. Distantly, they heard anti-aircraft fire. The men shifted like the feathers of a bird. Steve made sure to make eye contact with each of them and nod. Maybe it didn't mean much—maybe it didn't mean anything—but Steve hoped it gave something to his men. Gave them resolve, stability. A sense that it was OK. They were OK.

"Maybe one day," Steve shouted over the wind and the engines, "but not today."

"Cheers!" Monty said.

Dugan raised his flask. "Wahoo!"

It was echoed up and down the fuselage.

Steve nudged Bucky's shoulder. "You ever send that letter home to Becca?"

Bucky shook his head, and Steve watched him clear his throat. "Uh, no. Nope."

Steve arched his eyebrows. "Been a long time."

"They've waited this long. They can wait a little longer."

"Tell 'em it got lost in the mail."

A light laugh. "Yeah." He rested the back of his head against the vibrating wall behind him. It wasn't really easy to do considering all the gear that was hanging off him, the parachute packs on his back and front. "Nothin' I can tell 'em that won't get censored anyway."

"You can tell them you got your hair cut for the first time in months."

It was as if mentioning Bucky's hair were a magic word that made him mess with it. Worked since they were kids. He ran a hand through it now, smoothing it down to within an inch of its life before Steve even finished making his comment.

He smirked. "That's not a half-bad idea. Teasin' Ma from across the ocean."

"All the reward, no risk."

Winnie Barnes was firmly in favour of making an effort to look put together. Steve wondered if it had to do with how spectacularly the family could fall apart behind closed doors.

Dugan and Falsworth started humming a familiar tune a few minutes later, and, soon enough, they were all singing "Blood on the Risers" over the drone of the engines. The sound changed when they were halfway through the song; the pitches of their voices changed as the plane made its descent to jump altitude so that their "Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die" sounded like someone trying to swallow around a large lump in their throat. When they got the signal from the cockpit—Howard was piloting their escort jet, not the one they were actually being transported in—Steve had all the men stand up, hook up, and do equipment checks.

The anti-aircraft fire started while Jones was calling out the OK for Dugan's equipment. The pilot of their plane tried to evade fire, tossing the seven of them into the walls, while maintaining safe jump height and speed. It wasn't working. Steve straightened up first and peered out the door. They' weren't over land yet, but it was visible, the peaks of the buildings. Below was the protected mouth of the river. He could see Howard's plane trying to distract the ground defences and pull their attention away from Steve's jet.

Their plane listed to one side and then jerked back the other direction. A shell burst outside the fuselage, poking holes with whizzing shrapnel through the metal.

"Anyone hit?" Steve shouted as soon as he could.

"Good!" was chorused back at him.

For a brief second, Steve caught Bucky's eye. He looked determined rather than terrified. Steve still hadn't looked away when the wing of the plane seemed to explode. One moment they were all struggling back to their feet, tethered to the static line overhead—and the next thing Steve was aware of, one of the wings was gone and they were spiralling. Flak was exploding just on the other side of the fuselage; the metal suddenly seemed too thin, flimsy. They were losing altitude fast.

Boom!

And then the back of the plane was just gone—replaced by snapping fire and sucking wind. The flak was relentless. There was screaming, cursing. Steve heard it before he looked: the sound of a clip sliding along the static line.

"Fucking shit!" Jones shouted. So uncharacteristic. That was all Steve heard before he was gone—fell out of the hole that took the place of the plane's tail. Dernier went with him. 

"Wahoo," he heard Dugan saying in a choked voice before he, too, was sucked out the hole. Gone. No sound of 'chutes deploying; would it have even made a difference at this point? 

Steve hadn't even realised that Monty was gone—he must have been first. He was always the last of their stick when they jumped; he had the most experience. God, what if he'd been caught in the blast that made the tail disappear?

"Bucky!" Steve shouted without meaning to, without having to think about it. His heart hammered; he couldn't catch his breath; Bucky was sliding down the fuselage toward the hole.

More shrapnel came whizzing in. Steve felt his flesh open in more than one place.

With one hand gripping the edge of the door, Steve used the other to make a desperate grab at Bucky and—he got him. They gripped each other's wrists tightly. Morita was hanging with his arms around Bucky's waist. Both of them looked to Steve with wide, wide eyes.

"We're gonna get stuck in this thing when it hits ground!" shouted Morita.

They were losing altitude fast and being thrown around by the plane; it was still spiralling a bit. Steve was sure the pilot was dead. He strained to look down. They were still over water—there was a chance.

"I'm gonna let go!" Steve shouted. "We have a better—"

He was cut off by the nose of the plane going up in flames. Nothing left to do, Steve gripped Bucky tight and let go of the door. The three of them slid out through the missing tail of the plane.

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," he heard Bucky chanting.

And then, from Morita, "Wahoo!" Daring the world to do it. 

Steve's parachute jerked—the damned thing actually deployed from the ruined static line—and he nearly lost Bucky and Morita. They both cried out when it happened. Steve feared the jerk of the parachute catching air had wrenched Bucky's arm from its socket. The water below was still rising to meet them too quickly.

"Cut it, cut it," Bucky shouted. "You'll drown!"

Shrapnel whizzed around them (again) and cut the 'chute for Steve. They dropped like rocks. It was only a few seconds between letting go of the plane and crashing into the water. It happened fast, by all means. But for Steve, it seemed to happen in slow motion. Agonisingly slow. Every detail was being engraved into his memory so that he could dream about this—if he lived—vividly and horrifyingly for the rest of his life.

They broke apart when they hit the water though Steve tried his damnedest not to lose his grip on Bucky's wrist. The water was like hitting a brick wall. It just shattered them like brittle glass. Something sucked Steve down once he hit the water—it must have been the ruined plane sinking. Steve kicked and wheeled his arms as hard as he could. He shed his spare 'chute and may have inadvertently lost a bandoleer in the process. Every stroke of his arms was impeded by the shield on his back. Thank God he hadn't lost that. 

Naturally, the first thing Steve did when his head broke the surface was shout, "Bucky!"

But he didn't see anyone. There were waves that kept washing into his eyes. The water stank of fuel and oil, and Steve wondered if it would start burning. Overhead, the sound of Howard's jet's engines was still whining. It was meant for flying at high altitudes—was it so loud because it was lower than it was meant to fly? Flak still exploded, and it fell around Steve like rain. Part of a wing drifted nearby. He dove for it.

Of all things—Dernier was clinging to the debris when Steve surfaced beside it.

"All right?" he shouted.

There was water-diluted blood painting the side of his head, but he nodded. "A-OK."

"See anyone else?"

"Dugan," Dernier said and pointed toward the sea, "think he hit back there."

"Y'see Monty?"

"No!"

Steve looked around, squinted into the shifting waters. He took a chance to breathe and think. He let himself panic for just five seconds before he focused on what needed to get done. Find his team. Find them.

A head broke the water several metres to the north.

"Morita!" There was no hope that he'd heard Steve, but he shouted anyway. To Dernier, he said, "Stay here and look for anyone else." Then he dove and swam as hard as he could toward the radio man. He didn't need to surface at all before he reached Morita. An absent part of Steve marvelled at the results of Erskine's serum and adrenaline when combined.

"Crucified Christ!" Morita shouted when Steve surfaced.

"Didn't think you were a praying man," Steve shot back. "You OK?"

"Mighta just pissed myself, but nothin' broken, I don't think."

"See anyone? Monty, Dugan?"

Morita pointed in the same place as Dernier and said, "Dum Dum's back there, I think. Didn't see Monty."

Gesturing over his shoulder, Steve said, "Dernier's back there. Head that way and look for the others. Can you swim?"

"Yeah, yeah. I can make it."

A shell exploded almost directly above their heads, and both of them retreated below the surface for protection. Steve could have stayed under a lot longer, but he rose to the surface when Morita moved upward. At the surface, Steve looked around and saw another body bobbing further out to sea.

"That Dugan?" Steve asked.

Morita swirled around in the water to look. "Dunno—but that's Barnes and Gabe, isn't it?"

Steve swirled even faster than Morita had. His heart was in his throat again. They were about twenty metres off, Bucky and Jones, both of them clinging to another piece of debris. All at once, Steve was reminded of Howard telling him not to confuse protecting Bucky with making a good tactical decision. It was a lot harder than Steve would ever admit to say, "Bring 'em to the wing if they can make it. I'll get Dugan." Every last fibre of Steve's being screamed at him to go to back. Wrong way, you're going the wrong way!

Not giving Morita a chance to protest, Steve dove beneath the water again. It took more than one return trip to the surface before Steve made it to Dugan's general location. Shouting and turning was required to actually find him; he kept dipping below the surface. Steve hoped against hope that he wasn't dead. Perhaps he put a little too much force behind the gesture when he slapped his hands on Dugan's back.

"Are you alright? Dugan—hey!" Steve said.

The body splutter and splashed. It spat water right into Steve face, which was how he knew that Dugan was more or less fine.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Monty's down there!"

The earth could have been shaking, Steve's heart started to pound so fast. "Underwater?"

"Caught on some shit from the tail—his 'chute!" Dugan slid right out of Steve's grip and went below the surface again.

Pulling in the deepest breath he could, Steve dove. Shifting black shadows clouded his vision, but he didn't dare close his eyes. Even if there was nothing to see, he had a man down here. No one would be left behind, not on Steve's watch. Even—even if it was the worst, they'd bring him home.

The burn had started in Steve's arms and legs as he swam down. His mind raced, calculating how long it had been since they went down. Had Monty been under the whole time? How long could he hold his breath? Had he been wounded by the shell that split the plane open like the entrée can of a K-ration? Somewhere along the descent, Dugan disappeared from Steve's side.

Steve found Monty floating like a ghost. The cords from his parachute were tangled on an indistinct clump of metal. It didn't take much to sever the bond—not for Steve, even with all the water resistance around him. Kicking off the debris, Steve went up and up. He surfaced right beside Dugan. There was no relieved gasp of air from Monty; Steve felt no rise of fall from his chest. Strangely, all the sounds around him faded out. Dugan was speaking, but Steve couldn't hear a word.

With single-minded focus, Steve swam with one arm hitched around Monty's chest. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he knew he couldn't stop. It was all for the better then that Monty spasmed in Steve's grip. A torrent of water spilled over his lips. Breath fought the drain of seawater. Based on the little waves and big splashes nearby, Dugan was celebrating the occasion. Stopping didn't even occur to Steve until he was back at the floating wing. Dugan lagged behind a few metres, but he didn't appear to be in danger of not making it. Not everyone can swim with a super soldier, Steve supposed. Jones met Steve at the tip of the wing and took Monty out of his grip. Guiding the major to their flotation device, Jones helped Monty get a grip on it and leverage himself on top of it. Water continued to cough out of him weakly now that he was arranged in a better position. It was clear to see that Monty wasn't all there yet, still a little dazed and short on oxygen.

Steve didn't want to think about the potential consequences of that.

"Everyone alright?" Even as Steve said it, he thought about the pilot and the co-pilot of their plane. Just as soon as the thought hit him, he knew that they'd never make it if they looked for the others. Leave no one behind, yes, but the pilots…He didn't like it, but he had these six men to think of and an objective that didn't change just because they'd been shot down before they even began.

"All OK—mostly," Jones answered.

Not everyone was up for speaking, it seemed.

Shells still popped overhead; Howard was still in the air. It looked like he was teasing the ground defences, dodging all the flak. Steve imagined it was as annoying for the Germans as Howard's personality was for everyone back at the S.S.R. At least the inventor was consistently annoying. 

"C'mon," Steve said. "Make for the beach there"—he pointed north—"while we still have Howard's cover!"

Each of them gripped the wing and kicked (not Monty though, they just made sure he was secured to the wing and let him rest). If the men were anything like Steve, they'd lost the damned leg bag as soon as they hit the water. At least some of them had had more than one bag of supplies—and the second bag wasn't a literal anchor tied to their leg. Whenever they hit land, they were going to be seriously low on supplies. The part of Steve that hadn't changed one bit since Rebirth was a little excited about that. Gathering what they could from the Germans was going to be something to look forward to.

Still they kicked and kicked. Exhaustion hung on all their faces, Steve could see it. Every minute their clothes and supplies got heavier, cold and damp seeped into their bones. They weren't even at land yet. Flak still popped now and again. Howard was still up there, but the sound of the jet's engines faded when Steve finally felt sand beneath his boots. It was, perhaps, the greatest stroke of luck that they hit a patch of beach that wasn't heavily fortified. Maybe luck—Steve had had them swim further north than they'd planned so that they wouldn't be sitting ducks in the fortified mouth of the Seine.

"Stay low, stay behind me," Steve ordered while taking the shield off his back and moving it to the front of their group.

His six men released the wing and took to their tired, shaking feet, too. Jones came around to help support Monty; it was good to see he was awake if not fully functional just now. Dugan hadn't lost his Tommy gun, and Morita maintained the grease gun. Dernier looked weaponless, but based on his abilities, Steve was confident he'd be just fine scavenging—he might have been the most resourceful guy of them all. The Browning had been in pieces in Jones's supplies. Safe to say that the gun hadn't made it. Again, a German gun would do, if they could find it.

As Steve moved up onto the beach, the men fell into a skirmish line behind him. Instinctively, he felt Bucky at his back. Even a few metres back, Steve could feel him. They moved up the beach until they came to a dip in the sand. It formed a kind of trench; Steve crouched in it with his back to the direction of forward progression. Seconds later, Bucky fell into place beside him. Morita was next, followed by Jones and Monty, Dernier, and Dugan.

Distantly—Steve wasn't even sure if he was really hearing it or if it was a product of his imagination—there were the sounds of aeroplane engines. C-47s, they all knew what they sounded like. It was the first airborne operation dropping to the south. Flak and anti-aircraft fire boomed a thousand miles away, and it echoed in time with the bombs in Steve's head.

"What's the plan?" Bucky said.

Steve took a single second to not know. That's all: just a second. Then he knew. Looking over his shoulder, he said, "There's a pillbox up on the dune. Looks like there's a machine gun muzzle sticking out." He turned back to the others. "MG42 or 34. They're probably on alert after our crash landing and the start of the invasion. You can hear it starting."

Bucky had stretched to look over the sandy ridge and at the pillbox. Hunching back down, he said, "It's a 42."

"We don't want to draw attention," Steve said, "but we're gonna take out the pillbox. I wanna capture the gun. We could use it. Anyone keep any grenades?"

"You just said we're not gonna draw attention!" Dugan stage whispered.

But Bucky pulled a pineapple grenade from his bandoleer and tossed it to Steve. It was wet, but Steve hoped the damned thing still worked.

"Dernier, take Monty down the beach; go north. Dugan, Morita, Jones—swing south. I want you coming in on a flanking manoeuvre. Look for any other defences; we're gonna need their supplies before we slip through the city. Guns, ammo, aid kits. Hold your fire until my mark. Bucky, with me. We're going straight down Broadway."

The men shuffled and Dugan said, "It's gonna be a long day, boys."

Chapter Text

There was a moment while he was trapped beneath the impartial pressure of the sea that Falsworth felt a modicum of relief. The thought of drowning and death didn't frighten him. He wasn't worried about it coming to claim him in the Channel. It seemed fair after all that he'd done and not done on all the battlefields before now. Before Krausberg. There was no panic about not having lived up to any arbitrary expectation. No, he was quite content with the idea as he felt the grip of death closing in around him.

Only it wasn't death, it was Captain Rogers. And it was bringing him back toward the other side of death's slippery scale. It was as he was dragged along the choppy surface and spewed a torrent of seawater that Falsworth decided that he was actually rather happy to be alive. It took his body a bit longer to come to terms with the fact that he hadn't died; it refused to respond in any meaningful way until Frenchie was tattering away in his ear, leading him north up the beach.

"What's that now?" Falsworth asked. His feet were finally finding a rhythm that was useful, and his legs decided now was as good a time as any to resume carrying his weight.

Frenchie kept an arm around him anyway. "I was just talking about how nice it was of an Englishman to finally show up and help. And that I'm not surprised that the first thing he did upon arrival was take a nap."

"It's been a long journey, you see," Falsworth said. "What exactly is our part in all of this?"

"Stay out of the way," Frenchie replied. They ducked below a tangled bush on the line where sand met the reedy slopes. "I'm going to bring us up to the front when they clear the pillbox. Scavenge some weapons, hopefully."

"A good plan."

"I thought so." One of Falsworth's knees buckled, and Frenchie had to compensate for it.

Falsworth said slowly, "Do you mean to say that neither of us has a proper weapon?"

"I do not mean to say that, but it is true."

"Lord."

"Are you talking to yourself?"

An involuntary smile cracked on Falsworth's face. "You're quick, aren't you?"

"Not an option to be otherwise at the moment."

Frenchie hurried them past a swath of unprotected beach until they could collapse behind a little stone wall. Convenient that he chose here; Falsworth's legs had given out at exactly the same moment. Apparently, it took the body a while to come back to itself after experiencing a prolonged lack of oxygen. Maybe the mind, too, because the whole world started rushing and receding with the tide. Falsworth closed his eyes for the length of a prayer and then opened them again.

He felt calmer. He felt in control. He could feel the ends of his fingertips, the heaviness of the sea that his clothing had absorbed. He felt slickness inside his boots that surely meant blisters by the end of the day. The world came into focus in a way that made him realise that it had not been in focus before. Perhaps the fact that he didn't realise that he hadn't been experiencing reality for a moment made his heart tick a little faster inside his chest.

Heavens, is this how Barnes feels all the time? Falsworth put it out of his mind.

He hadn't drowned off the French coast after the plane he was flying in was shot down. That sounded like enough experience for one day, didn't it? But it was just barely daybreak now, and they had an entire day of battle before them. An entire day of keeping up with a super-human captain. There was no time to worry about teammates living their whole lives in a haze following a near-death experience. No time to worry about his feet blistering an hour in to the whole ordeal.

Don't worry about anything, Falsworth thought to himself. Worry got men dead. It killed Tommys when you worried too much about them. (No way he'd survive losing just one more Tommy.) He hadn't drowned, and, no, there was no moment where he had half-hoped that he would. There was a battle before him, and a teammate who needed his assistance.

Falsworth forced his hands to retrieve his binoculars; thank God that he'd packed them somewhere other than the damned ninety-pound leg bag that had immediately fallen off his leg during their, ah, water landing. He peered through the lenses and was astonished to see that they functioned absolutely perfectly. There were no cracks in the glass, no water trapped between the segments. No fog. Truly, Howard Stark was a genius.

(Just as well, Falsworth thought immediately after realising the binoculars were pristine, he'd find something to moan about before long. Nothing was perfect, after all. And he'd never be able to put up with Stark after the inventor had heard that there were no criticisms of his equipment.)

A few second of scanning and he spotted Captain Rogers and Barnes still at the sandy trench Falsworth and Frenchie had left them in. Looked as if they'd fashioned a mirror to a bayonet and were trying to survey the pillbox. Falsworth watched them through the magnified lenses. Saw them put the mirror down and disassemble it. Barnes tucked the mirror away. Sheathed the bayonet. He and Rogers conferred for a moment. Barnes brought his M1 to a ready position and Rogers fitted his arm with the shield.

Rogers launched himself over the edge of the sandy trench and made a zig-zagging path toward the pillbox. The 42 started rattling in his wake mere seconds later. Barnes went up on a knee, still behind the sandbar, and fired off three rounds into the narrow slot of the pillbox. The machine gun went quiet for a few seconds.

Falsworth pulled the binoculars away from his face and stuffed them into his pack.

"That's our signal," he said to Frenchie.

They clamoured to their feet and moved further north up the beach.

Gabe was running at a crouch behind Jim, and Dum Dum was breathing heavily behind the two of them. Both of them had a gun. Gabe had a waterlogged side arm. Lost the Browning in the combat jump – if what they'd just done could be called a combat jump. It was really more like an accident.

Jim held up a hand and their southward progress halted. Gabe and Dum Dum flattened themselves to the terrain and inched up closer to Jim.

"They have a weird little sandy foxhole," Jim reported in a low voice.

"How many?" Gabe asked.

"Looks like two."

"Here," Dum Dum whispered harshly. He got the strap of his Tommy gun off from his shoulder and handed it up to Gabe.

Gabe accepted the gun with some confusion.

Dum Dum worked a long bayonet free from one of his holsters. "Cap said to hold our fire. So we won't use fire. Can handle just two of 'em."

Jim nodded, and Gabe didn't protest. Jim unhooked the grease gun and slid it across the reeds to Gabe.

"Back in a sec," said Jim to him.

He and Dum Dum wiggled their way closer to the foxhole. From his vantage point, Gabe could just make out the distinctive flaring at the bottom of the Germans' helmets. There were only two. Jim crawled one way around the foxhole and Dum Dum went to the other. Gabe held his position, but looked over his shoulder once or twice toward Rogers and Barnes's position.

Jim tossed a stone into the foxhole. Both helmets turned immediately in the direction from which it came, Mausers raised. Dum Dum rose and dropped into the hole on top of them. He captured one around the neck, tossed a handful of sand into the eyes of the second, and then opened the throat of the first one. By then, Jim had gotten a grip around the second and snapped the neck in one smooth motion.

Both Germans dropped to the ground dead. Jim and Dum Dum lowered themselves as far as they could and began to scavenge through the supplies in there. Gabe got to his feet, still staying crouched, and slid down beside them.

"This is cosy," Gabe said.

Quarters sure were close with five men in a foxhole probably made for three.

"Not so bad if Jerry weren't taking up so much room," Jim said easily. He pawed through the German's open field jacket. He came up smiling with a pack of cigarettes.

Dum Dum tossed a German rifle to Gabe. "Mauser OK with you?"

He caught it and checked it over. Nodded. "It'll do for now."

Gabe took the two small aid kits that each of the German soldiers were carrying and then the modest collection of rifle ammunition. Dum Dum took the partially-consumed ration kits. They split the six stick grenades. Bayonets and field knives were collected. They split the last of the water in the canteens; not much. These men must have been due for a refill soon. Cracked binoculars were further crushed by Dum Dum. Gas masks, entrenching tool, something that must have been a cooking pot, ruined gloves, and spare socks. They sorted it all by its likelihood of being useful and then left the piles in the foxhole. They'd come back for it later. No point in loading themselves up with extra weight when there wasn't an immediate fight there.

"Figures," Jim mutter under his breath after he had looked through every last pack the dead soldiers had with them.

"What?" said Gabe.

"What, couldn't find a Luger?" said Dum Dum.

Jim gave him a sour look.

"Don't be naïve, Jim," said Dum Dum with a laugh. "Front liners like these guys were lucky to get a Walther. You already got one in Greece anyway. Don't get greedy. Grab that watch though. Still sounds like it works."

They moved on from the foxhole. The Mauser weighed strangely in Gabe's hands. He wasn't used to the weight or balance of the gun. Not just because it was a German make, but because he really didn't work much with rifles. Usually, the Browning was his main weapon, and Gabe preferred it that way. There was something about the machine gun that made him feel better. It was a useful weapon. A powerful tool for both assault and defence. There was nothing better for laying down covering fire for his team than the Browning – or any machine gun really.

Sure, the belts of ammunition were annoying to carry. And the gun itself could be cumbersome. When he was using it during attacks, the barrel always got hot and ruined his gloves. Howard Stark hadn't yet designed a pair that allowed Gabe the dexterity he needed in the field while also being sufficiently heat-resistant to the barrel of a Browning in battle.

But perhaps it was the bluntness of the weapon that Gabe took comfort it. It wasn't a personal gun. It laid down fire as a deterrent more than anything else. If it hit someone, great. But the gun hardly targeted anyone in particular. Gabe liked that the machine gun hardly ever singled a man out and purposely ended his life. He hardly ever had to look a man in the eyes, watch him, and then have to make the decision to squeeze the trigger.

The machine gun was the opposite of Barnes's Johnson. Gabe was certain he'd never be able to handle the mental burden of being a sniper. It was personal. It was intimate to watch a man, sometimes for hours, before deciding you were going to kill him. Sniping was necessary. Useful. God knew that Gabe was grateful every day that they had Barnes watching all of their backs with that modified rifle. But it was something he'd never be able to do himself.

At the end of the war, Gabe very well may collect more deaths with the Browning and all the other machine guns he had used before and was sure to use after this day. His so-called death count could absolutely be higher than Barnes's. The modified Johnson rifle was a precise tool meant for an exact job. Its marks could be hit with little waste and absolutely no collateral damage. It didn't have to hurt anyone except the man it was supposed to, if the wielder of the rifle felt like it. But the point was that no one was keeping count of Gabe's kills. They were for Barnes – so much so that they'd given him a nickname for it. No one had to confirm that Gabe's bullets found home in someone's body, that the shot had killed and not just wounded. They did that for Barnes. Hell, it was half of Monty's job as scout to help confirm Barnes's kills.

Gabe could never. It was better to kill people with an indiscriminate spray of bullets than to pick out one particular man and end him. If this war ever ended and Gabe got to go home, he could never live with that knowledge looming at the back of his mind. Gabe was glad that Barnes did that job, because God knew that it wasn't an easy one. Wasn't one that just anyone could get on with.

Maybe he was growing too soft for war, Gabe thought.

The three of them had found another observation foxhole filled with two Germans. Dum Dum and Jim disposed of the combatants in much the same was as before: with their bare hands. It seemed so brutal. Gabe was sure he'd be able to do the same thing. There was no doubt in his mind that he would before the end of all of this. But from here, lying in the cover of the grassy dunes, it seemed so visceral.

He'd already known that Dum Dum had a questionable upbringing. He hadn't exactly had a straightforward sense of right and wrong. The man didn't even seem to know that he'd grown up in a less-than moral way until the last few years. Gabe knew that Dum Dum had killed people by the time he was fifteen. Knowing the fact had never made Gabe think less of Dum Dum or distrust him. Dum Dum was a loyal and good man, of that there was no question. But it was exactly those qualities which others had taken advantage of in his youth.

Seeing the lingering brutality of his past up close and in action struck Gabe with particular significance on this grey morning.

But Gabe was even more wrongfooted by seeing little Jim Morita kill with his bare hands. He hadn't known until just now that the radioman could so efficiently and quickly break the neck of men so much bigger than him. There was always some dissatisfaction and friction in Jim. It was easy to tell it was there. Gabe didn't question it or blame him; he often felt the same sense of anger in himself. It was warranted. Both of them were in the confusing, conflicting position of fighting under the flag of a nation that didn't see them as equal or deserving of all their rights.

The two of them certainly didn't express their frustrations with this system in the same ways however.

Jim grouched and complained outwardly. He tried to give back to the world the same disdain it surely had treated him with most of his life. Gabe had experienced the same downward stares and mocking looks. The general distrust people regarded him with, as if he were a danger to society. Jim tried to keep himself cool and distant, let everyone know that he had no interest in befriending them. He wanted everyone to think he would offer no one any help for all the instances where he had been denied the same aid. Every man for himself was the only way he had survived.

But the reality was plain to see: Jim loved deeply. Despite the injustice. He would speak sarcastically and act caustic, but he had a gentle hand. He'd insult you to your face while tending your wounds more carefully than your own mother ever could.

Gabe supposed this part of the war was the easiest for Dum Dum and Jim. One had been born into a life where death and killing was commonplace. It wasn't looked at through any particular moral lens, no negative connotation to the word "murder." For the other, it was the least complicated part of his life. After all the confounding experiences of being told you were other among people that should be your own, having a clearly marked third party being called enemy was easy. Forget how tumultuous your life was at home, this – out on the battlefield – was uncomplicated. "Kill the bad guys" was the simplest task a man in Jim's position could be set. 

Gabe wished he had the same experiences and outlook. He wished it were easier for him. He would still do everything required of him. He knew what he was and was not fighting for. But still. There was a human cost to all of this that transcended nationality. Gabe wanted to be able to call himself a good man at the end of this, and he understood that he would be sacrificing parts of himself to ensure that, in the end, the scales were tipped firmly in the side of "good."

It was just difficult to remember that they were all just doing what they had to do until then.

"Check this out, boys," Dum Dum said.

Gabe shook himself from his thoughts and came up beside Dum Dum to peer over the edge of a ridge. "I'll be damned," he said.

"We got a whole trench system back here."

"How many you think?" said Jim. "Looks like some kind of communication outpost."

"No more than fifty then, right?" said Gabe.

Jim shrugged. "Look. You can see where the main building it. The control building."

"Let's call it fifty tops," said Dum Dum. "Get a good look, fellas. We aren't taking that one head-on. Let's swing back north and get in position, quick."

The familiar sound of an M1 snapped out three times from the north.

"That's our cue, I think," Gabe said.

All three of them swung their necks northward in time to see Captain America running in a nonlinear path up toward the pillbox. As one, they rose to their boots, brought their weapons to bear, and started to close in on the pillbox's flank.

Steve watched Dernier and Monty stumble north, and then he swung his head the other direction to watch Jones, Dugan, and Morita wander south with a little more coordination. He felt Bucky beside him. He was calm and steady, which was a relief to Steve, especially after all of the excitement of their landing. There was a good chance Steve was going to get a good, long I-told-you-so speech at the end of the day regarding combat jumps.

Steve checked the pillbox over his shoulder to make sure the muzzle of the machine gun wasn't following either of his teams. It wasn't. When he turned back around, he caught Bucky's eyes.

"OK?" Bucky said.

Steve nodded. "So far. You?"

He shrugged. "Hair's fucked." Dragged a hand through it to smooth back the strands dripping into his face.

"Think we're doin' well if that's your biggest problem right now." Steve turned to get another look at the pillbox.

"Will you stop that?" Bucky pulled him back below the edge of the sandbar.

"What?"

"Idiot," he muttered under his breath. Bucky dug into one of his packs and pulled out a shaving kit and his bayonet. A mirror the size of his palm slid out of the shaving kit. He picked at a wire that was fixed to the back of the mirror. Looked like the ends had been welded to the back of the mirror in a very non-regulation manner so that it formed a little loop. Bucky slid the bayonet blade through the wire loop and handed it off to Steve.

"What's this?" he said, amused.

Bucky shrugged. "You learn some things in the field."

"Why do you know how to do this?"

"The stupid kit they gave us in the 107th sucked. Couldn’t ever get the mirror to sit right. Just easier to prop it up on the blade."

Steve arched an eyebrow at him. That wasn't the reason.

 "The wire was better," Bucky said. "Other guys would use chewing gum to stick the mirror on, but I always traded my gum rations for cigarettes."

"I'm always learning something new about the creativity of the regular GIs."

Bucky laughed. "Well, yeah. Their gear sucks. You have to be creative if you want to get anything done. Those guys win battles in spite of the incompetent officers saying they have enough supplies, not because of them."

"I'll keep that in mind." Steve settled back into the sand and positioned himself just right so that he could hold the mirror out and see into the pillbox without sticking the bayonet out in the open.

"What's the word?" Bucky asked.

"Can only see two from here," Steve said. "Hard to tell since it's so dark. I think we can count on at least three more?"

Bucky nodded, agreeing with the estimate. "Alright. Tell me the plan so I can get mad about it."

One side of Steve's face grinned. Fixing the shield tight on his forearm, he said, "I'm going to take your grenade, and I'm going to run at the pillbox. You're going to shoot the gunner before they shred me to ribbons. If another one takes his place, you're gonna get him, too."

Bucky snorted but didn't protest.

"I'm going to get close enough to chuck the grenade into the pillbox. It's gonna detonate. I want you to come up on an angle from the north. Shield Monty and Dernier. I'll go around to the back of the box to get any of the guys who survive the blast and are flushed out. If any of them are out before I can get there, Dugan and the others will be blocking their route south."

"And you already said I got the north. Got it. Let's get this over with."

Steve put down the bayonet and took it apart, handing the mirror and blade back to Bucky. He said, "When did you switch to an M1 anyway?"

"Since my Thompson was packed in that fuckin' leg bag that's at the bottom of the goddamn sea."

"You have packed a Thompson, an M1, the Johnson, and a revolver?"

"They were fresh out of vibranium shields."

Steve slapped a hand on Bucky's shoulder and breathed out a laugh. "OK then. Look sharp, Sergeant."

And he vaulted over the sandbar. Took off running, his steps sinking a little bit in the sand each time. It didn't take long for the MG42 to start firing. Steve braced himself and raised the shield. The bullets pinged off of the surface like nothing. It was still strange, after all of this time using the thing, how little it vibrated from the impact of…everything. He made sure to duck and weave, never ran in a plain, straight line.

The familiar-unfamiliar sound of the M1 discharging let him know that Bucky was staying on schedule. And based on the momentary lull of rattling automatic fire, Steve knew that Bucky's shots had found their home. They almost always did. There was enough time for Steve to cover a much bigger distance before one of the other soldiers in the pillbox replaced his companion on the 42. The replacement might have been a bit smarter than the first gunner; he went for Steve's feet.

Ducking and rolling – always keeping the shield between himself and the bullets – he kicked up a puff of loose sand and dirt. The shots stopped abruptly after the Steve heard another M1 discharge. Getting to his feet and pulling the pin on the grenade, he launched it into the narrow slot in the pillbox. Steve didn't wait to see or hear anything else; he ran around the curving edges of the concrete pillbox to find the egress point. There was no denying that there was something satisfying to hear the acoustic detonation of the grenade inside the box.

Black smoke issued from the slot and out the door in the back. Steve was ready when the first soldier stumbled out of the pillbox. The broad side of the shield smacked that soldier in the side of his head likely before he even realised that Steve was there. A second guy came out with a sidearm firing. The bullets deflected off of the shield until Steve was close enough to grab and break the wrist holding the weapon. He kept his grip and drove the shield into the soldier's abdomen twice with enough force to make the splintering of his ribs audible.

Bucky caught up with him by then. He dropped the M1 and drew his Colt instead. They took a few steps inside the pillbox without needing to say a word to each other. There was a body moving near the centre of the room. Steve heard the slide of a stick grenade's priming cord being pulled before he saw anybody actually performing the action.

"Bu—" he started to say.

But he was cut off by Bucky firing the Colt at the body. (There was a ringing in Steve's ears immediately after the echoing bang – definitely better to be outside when something went off in a space like this.) The live grenade dropped from the soldier's hand and rolled toward Bucky.

"Get down!" Steve cut out while ripping the shield off of his forearm. He dove for the grenade and shoved Bucky back out of the way in the same motion, landing with the shield over the top of the grenade.

Steve felt the shield pulse against his ribs, but, apart from that, he never would have known that a live grenade had just exploded under there. Pushing himself up to his knees, Steve picked up the edge of the shield. There was a rush of hot air and a bit of nasty-smelling gases, but that was all. He'd never seen the remains of an exploded grenade in such a concentrated area before. It was almost as anti-climactic as when he'd jumped on that dud of a grenade at Camp Lehigh.

"Steve?" Bucky's voice sounded like it was coming from far away.

He jerked his head away from the remains of the grenade and looked at Bucky. "Yeah? You OK?"

"Am I—you know what? Never mind. I'm not going to say anything." Bucky got to his feet and offered Steve a hand up. He accepted. "Don't ever do that in front of me again."

"I'll do my best."

And they both laughed about it. They were still smiling when Dugan, Jones, and Morita finally turned up.

"You get all those bastards?" Dugan shouted.

"Almost," Morita said. He gestured to a German lying below the slot that the muzzle of the 42 was still sticking out of.

The soldier's legs were a mess, but the rest of him didn't look too far gone. Probably took the worst of the grenade blast that Steve had tossed in from the outside. Helmet lost, they could all see his grey hair in the growing light of dawn. The permanent lines around his eyes and mouth were deep as the man stared at them solemnly. This could have been someone's grandfather.

"Looks like they have a whole communications outpost over the ridge," Morita said slowly. "There's a trench system and a big antenna."

Dernier and Monty appeared behind Dugan, Jones, and Morita just then. It was a relief to see Monty moving under his own power and looking relatively alert.

"How many?" Steve said.

Morita shrugged and Jones said, "We'd guess about fifty."

"It'll be close quarters," Dugan added.

"The trench system back there, right?" Monty said.

They all nodded.

"Any other defences around it?" Steve said,

Dugan shook his head. "Not that we saw. Looks to be a coupla nerds with a decent radio that were set up here on purpose, away from the main action. More for intelligence and surveillance relay than combat."

"We took out a few observation posts that weren't much more than two guys in a foxhole. They had modest but useful supplies," Morita said.

Steve nodded. "Gather up the gear and distribute it. We'll take out the comms. Still not a lot of ammunition, but everyone should be able to have a weapon now. Be smart about your shots. Dernier, keep your eyes open for anything you could make something helpful out of."

Dernier nodded.

Bucky stepped over the wounded German to remove the MG42 from its bipod. He brought it over to Jones and said, "This is for you." He went back and pulled a long belt of ammunition from a box on the ground. He draped it around Jones's shoulders a few times.

"Thanks, Sarge."

Bucky slapped his shoulder and smirked at him. "No problem."

"Go get the supplies you got from the outposts," Steve said to Morita and Dugan. "Help Monty and Dernier gear up. Meet back here. We'll go at them in groups. Two teams will pull their attention, and the last one will go for the antenna."

They all nodded and went to carry out the first part of the plan.

Bucky walked up to Steve's side. Wiped at grease on his hands. "You want me up close or at the back?"

The answer that Steve wanted to give was immediately ready at his lips. But he paused and really thought about it. He could send Bucky to the back and have him distract the Germans, scare 'em when they realised they're being sniped at. Steve reasoned that Bucky could babysit Monty, whom he was still a little concerned about, while he stayed back. But he took that moment to think and finally decided, "You're going for the antenna with Morita."

Bucky's eyes went down to his hands, and he looked like he was holding back a smile. Nodded his head. "Alright, Captain."

The wounded German soldier made a rasping sound just then, and they both looked to him. They couldn’t take prisoners right now. Bucky laid a hand on Steve's shoulder and pushed him toward the exit. He gave Bucky a questioning look in reply.

"Go check on the supplies the guys found. I'll be right there."

It hit Steve what he was saying, but it made the acid in his stomach churn.

"I command the team," Steve said weakly. They couldn't take prisoners right now. By all standards, he should take care of this. He didn't want to, but to have Bucky do it wasn't any better.

"I know," Bucky said. "But I can take this one."

It was there again; that look that came over Bucky's face that made it impossible for Steve to get a read on him. But there was undeniable resolution in the way he was standing. Even though Steve was hating himself for thinking it, he was relieved to have an out. Just this time, he told himself. It wasn't fair to have Bucky do these things. They had to be done, and they weren't easy. But, as commander, it should be Steve to do those hard jobs.

"Go," Bucky said with a hollow voice. "It's fine."

Steve hated it, but he went.

Cap paired Jim up with Barnes to take out the comms tower and the antenna inside of it. So they got to sit around for a bit and get sand up their assholes while the rest of the guys got to cause chaos. Cap went first with Dum Dum. Jim couldn’t argue with that pair. They were really fuckin' distracting. Nothing got the enemies running around like chickens with their heads cut off quite like seeing a guy wearing an American flag running around their base.

It was immediately effective. And obvious that this little outpost really was manned by a bunch of technicians and not even one competent soldier. They really were not expecting to ever see much combat here. What a lucky spot to have their plane shot down.

Speaking of anti-aircraft fire, Monty and Frenchie were already taking care of that. They had a grand total of two guns by the comms building to fend off enemy air forces. Frenchie was able to scrounge up enough TNT to explode the guns. It split the forces: half stayed locked on Cap and Dum Dum's hand-to-hand assault, and the other half took off toward the anti-aircraft guns.

Gabe's reclaimed MG42 started to rattle at the groups approaching the guns. (They'd gambled on Frenchie and Monty needing the covering fire before anyone who got partnered with Cap.)

"Guess that means we're up," Barnes said.

"The victory cigarettes are coming out of your ration," Jim said.

"No way. We're taking 'em off a corpse."

Jim laughed. Fixed his bayonet. "On your mark, Sarge."

Barnes had the M1 slung over one shoulder and his Colt in one hand. He gripped a field knife in the other. Cap's shield made that weird sound that it always made when he chucked it at a huddle of Germans. "Let's go," Barnes said.

So they went.

There wasn't a lot of resistance for them to deal with. Barnes was pretty quick the Colt, so nobody got close enough to require a bayonet or worse. He fell back when he needed to reload, so Jim took the lead. Only a few guys came at them then. Jim was pretty excited to get to try out some of the close quarters moves that Peggy had showed them back at Great Dunmow. They were effective.

When they made it to the main comms building, Barnes kicked the door open, and Jim threw three potato mashers inside. They both turned their backs to the open door while they detonated. Waiting only a few heart beats for some of the smoke to clear out, Barnes went in first with the Colt raised. Jim was just a step behind him.

They cleared out the first floor methodically. Jim led the way up the stairs while Barnes reloaded again. These techs really didn't know how to fight or protect themselves. They were worse than HYDRA grunts by a mile. And that was saying something. Jim couldn't remember if the Germans were this terrible at fighting when he'd been with the Rangers, before he'd been captured. They had seemed a lot more intimidating before. Or maybe that training the S.S.R. put them all through actually counted for something.

A group of five or six woeful Germans rushed them at the top of the stairs. Barnes wasn't done reloading, so he just dropped the damn Colt on the ground. Both of them went in slashing with their respective blades. Jim was sure none of the sad sacks had even gotten their guns raised, let alone got a shot off, before they were all past their expiration dates.

They found one more soldier that was cowering beneath a desk in a corner room. Barnes took care of it and gestured for Jim to lead the way up to the next level as he went to collect the dropped side arm. Two more to go before they reached the top, where the antenna and radio system was sure to be.

"Got one more grenade," Jim suggested as they ascended.

Barnes nodded. "Go for it."

Jim ripped the cord and tossed it around the corner of the stairway. The walls shook and a few more explosions followed. Barnes grinned at him.

"Got yourself a chain reaction, Private."

The three soldiers up on that floor took damage from the blasts. A stick from the bayonet took care of them. Last floor to go. Barnes took the lead that time, this time using the M1 in place of the Colt. Must have run out of ammunition. Jim had hardly even been trying to fire with the Mauser he'd stolen for the occasion.

Turned out to be quite fun up on the last level. The seven-man crew up there must have realised that death was coming for them, because they were all grouped together (stupid) and facing the doorway. Only took one easy strafe to take them all down. A second pass by both of them ensured they were dead.

"Probably could have conserved some bullets between the two of us there," Jim said matter-of-factly.

"Probably," Barnes agreed. "Know how to disable this thing?"

They both approached the giant radio system. The thing was ancient-looking. But maybe after spending so much time around Howard Stark, Jim was starting to forget what normal technology even looked like. He was getting spoiled with all the futuristic bullshit that guy had in his lab. For all Jim could remember, this was a perfectly respectable mid-range radio system. Never mind that the system was so small that it was literally integrated into Jim's own uniform at minimal weight addition and probably had at least twice the range of this old dinosaur.

"Shoot it?" Jim offered.

Barnes snorted. "Why didn't I think of that?"

They hacked at wires instead. Didn't want to waste the bullets. By the time the team reconvened out in the trenches, most of the firefight was over. There were a few panicked strays that they dealt with as quickly as possible. Cap took Dugan and Jones on a final sweep of the place for useful supplies. Jim stayed with Barnes, Monty, and Frenchie to rig up the communications building with more of the explosive Frenchie had found stacked up in one of the trenches. Little bit of grease and a handy spool of wire had them all set.

The hack job to the radio's wires was a non-issue when, after all the useful supplies had been claimed by the team, Frenchie detonated the charges. The tower was demolished. Nothing more than a heap of smoking brick and metal. Maybe there was a round of wahoos as the building lit up the dawn.

Barnes lit the victory cigarettes for everyone partaking in the tradition, and they moved out in an uneven skirmish line. Heading: southwest.

They made it a few kilometres parallel to a roadway before Cap heard the rumbling of an approaching truck. They all laid low in the tall grasses of the ditch. Dum Dum and Gabe were waved forward. On Cap's mark, they sprung up and strafed the truck. Nothing useful in the bed, unfortunately.

"Shame you hit the tires," Monty said with a longing look at the truck.

"Let's keep humping," was the reply.

There were a few other encounters like that. A lot of trucks seemed to be heading in the general direction of the comms outpost that they'd just destroyed. Cap decided that they were going to retrace the tracks of the trucks and find out where the supplies and replacements were coming from. Couldn't have been far, he said. The tire tracks were pretty fresh in the dusty pathways. Wasn't hard to pick out the right trail. Even with Frenchie translating signs and markings along the roadside, they probably could have navigated to the right place.

They could see a small group of buildings in the distance. It could barely be called a village, Jim thought. Quaint. It was small, but Frenchie assured them that a few different roadways intersected in that village. They may not be the major roads, but they were the roads that led to the major roads. If a strategic base needed to be laid with limited resources, that would as good a place as any. Anything bigger and they wouldn't have had the resources to defend it.

Jim laid in the tall grasses of a ditch beside the roadway and waited. Cap went up to the edge with Monty, binoculars out. They muttered back and forth to each other. Dum Dum had cracked open a kraut ration and was testing out the contents and sharing with the others. More of that disgusting cheese they'd found back in Prague was in there. They got Gabe to take a gobful and had to bite down on their sleeves to stop from busting up in laughter at the face he pulled.

"Bucky," Cap whisper-shouted down to them. He made the summoning gesture. "Put the Johnson together."

Barnes nodded and shimmied the pack off of his back. Pulled out the sniper rifle piece by piece and started assembling it.

Jim took one of the stiff crackers that Dum Dum was offering and nearly choked on the thing. It was so dry. They laughed at his distress until Frenchie offered his canteen.

"It sucked out every last drop of spit that I have," Jim complained as soon as the water cleared the blockage. "Why are the Germans trying to choke their own soldiers?"

Dum Dum snickered some more and broke the next cracker in half. He and Frenchie both ate a piece. Dum Dum coughed out a cloud of dry dust after a few chews and they had to stifle more laughter.

"Save one for me," Barnes said. Snapping Stark's telescopic sight onto the fully-assembled rifle, Barnes climbed up the slope to nestle beside Cap and Monty on the edge of the roadway.

"Yeah, right," said Gabe.

"First come, first serve," Dum Dum agreed in a croaky voice.

The each took a fingertip-size clump of some salty-smelling hunk of meat.

"On three, gentlemen" said Dum Dum. "One, two, three!"

They each put the meat into their mouth. It was salty. Jim pulled a face. He was too used to the  horribleness of field rations, regardless of where they came from, that his automatic bodily reaction was to assume it was bad. But after letting the hunk sit on his tongue for a while, it actually didn't end up tasting so terrible. Miles better than the echoing hollowness that could consume their bellies when they spent too much time marching without food.

"That might not be too bad," Gabe said.

"Probably pretty good if you could heat it up," Dum Dum agreed.

Jim shrugged. Didn't disagree with them. They split what remained between the four of them and ate again. Jim was in the middle of coming around to like the sting of salt when the crack of several shots going off at once startled him. That definitely wasn't the sound of Barnes's rifle.

"Shit," he choked out. His hands reached for his grease gun automatically. He turned to check the rest of the team up at the edge of the road. The rigidity of their backs suggested that they were just as surprised as the rest of them.

"Who was that?" Barnes was saying.

Rogers nudged Monty. "Get eyes on them."

Frenchie caught Jim's eyes and said, "They good?"

"Think so. Someone else is out there."

"There," they heard Monty say. "I count four. Helmets don't look flared. They're Allies."

Barnes suggested, "Paratroopers?"

"I'd say so," said Monty. "But if they are, they've missed their drop zone by a wide margin."

Cap turned to the rest of them and said, "Someone just shot out a German truck that was headed our way out of the village. Might be Allies. Jones, get the MG42 up here just in case things get hot. Morita, with me. We're gonna get up close and find out who they are. Stay on the lookout, Monty, and give Morita a signal on the handie-talkie if you see any hostiles approaching while we're out there."

They scrambled to put away the rations and take out the right weapons instead. Jim shimmied up the hill and activated the short-range receiver Stark had built into his uniform. He and Monty tested the receiver with the small handie-talkie that Stark had created for the scout (and the inventor absolutely loathed it when they called it a handie-talkie). It had pretty shit range, and could only reliably work with the main radio that Jim carried. Useful for communication among themselves when they split up into teams like this. But pretty useless otherwise.

"Come feed the belts, Dernier," Barnes said.

Jim heard him climbing up the hill to settle beside Gabe and arrange the ammunition beside the 42. But then Jim was hurrying across the road and sliding down the opposite bank behind Cap. They ran at a crouch through the grasses on the other side. There was no denying that Jim felt incredibly safe beside Cap and that stupid shield he carried. There was also a sense of…not comfort exactly, but there was something about knowing the guys back there were watching their backs that made Jim feel less at-risk as he ran toward an unknown force that just shot out an enemy truck.

Cap slowed down when he saw two men approaching the smoking truck on the road. Jim though that their uniforms looks distinctly American. Too much time with the S.S.R. meant that it was hopeless for him to identify their division patches at this distance.

When they were within shouting distance, Cap stood to his full height and shouted, "Flash!"

Jim stood and stepped around Cap so that the guys could see him, too. He held up his gun horizontally above his head.

"Thunder!" someone replied. "It's fuckin' Captain America!"

A bunch more heads poked out of the grasses. Jim counted eleven in total. He followed Cap as he jogged up to the group of them.

"82nd?" Cap said when they were close enough to see the patches on the sleeves of their uniforms.

So it was. Jim should have known. The red usually stood out by a lot.

"Sure are," said one of them. Other patches identified him as a lieutenant. "Didn't know your team would be in this sector."

"They're not supposed to be," Cap said with a smile. "But neither is yours."

"The C-47's got fucked up," said the lieutenant. "Everything scrambled. Nobody dropped where they were supposed to go. Just as well, Germans seem as confused as we are."

Cap nodded. "This everyone you got?"

"Yes, sir. Our whole stick made it out together, but haven't been able to find the rest of our outfit."

"Alright. Come with us for now until we can find more of yours. You're way north of your target."

"Still in France though, aren't we?"

Cap laughed. "Yeah, still in France. What do your supplies look like?"

"Not too great, Cap. A lot of us lost the damned leg bag."

"Same here." Cap gestured over his shoulder. "We have a decent cache of German weapons. You're welcome to it. We're taking the village. Already dismantled a communications outpost right off the beach. Traced their supply line back to here. French Resistance on my squad says it's a modest strategic target."

"Alright. Whatever you say, Cap, we're with ya."

They had to retrace their steps back to the outpost at the beach to help the American paratroopers get properly outfitted. Jacques was more than happy to collect a bit more TNT. After the battle in the ruins of Novara, Jacques thought that this battle for a small French village would be quite easy. The additional eleven men didn't hurt either.

Steve split up the extra men between them. Jacques was to command three of the paratroopers. They set to work using the socks of the dead Germans to make sticky bombs. Their goal would be to disable any tanks or armoured vehicles in the city. Tim and Jim got two of the paratroopers to flank the village. One trooper was spared to accompany the other two Jameses; they were to clear a path to the tallest building where James Barnes could set up a nest for himself. Gabriel and the captain claimed the rest of the five paratroopers to assist with clearing out the buildings.

And the operation was just as methodical as Steve explained it to be. It was late afternoon when they descended on the village. Jacques felt as if he had run straight out of his own body when they crossed the final gate. He could have been anywhere in the world except for France. Any place anywhere except for the land that raised him. That land had already seen war. It could not be living it again so soon.

Jacques's team was temporarily pinned down on the edge of town by two machine gun high in a stone manor. They had to wait out the captain's group to offer a big enough distraction for Jacques's team to start covering any ground again. These Germans were old, it was true. This slice of his homeland was defended by nothing more than the oldest and frailest that the Reich had to offer. These seniors were intelligent. They were observant and patient.

But this country was Jacques's blood and he knew better. He saw their tanks camouflaged with local grasses and bushes. He knew where heavier weapons hid in the unnatural landscapes of small French plazas. Sticky grenades busted the tracks off of the tanks. They overturned passenger trucks. Jacques took up a reclaimed Mauser rifle to shoot out the tires of Germans attempting to escape on motorbikes. His paratrooper companions made sure the riders did not rise again. A lot of the vehicles that Jacques saw were horse-drawn, and their axles were laughably easy to dismantle. He made an effort to spare the animals, but he couldn't afford to worry about them beyond that. Projectiles found their homes in open upper windows; the likely hidey-holes of snipers and machine gun nests.

If they just kept moving, these old men would grow tired. Their intelligence could not overcome their age. The elderly were no match for Jacques. An even lesser match for Captain Rogers. Against the entire team, they were easily overrun.

The machine guns were the best defence, but that resource was quickly erased once and for all when Jameses Barnes and Falsworth had gotten into position. Combatants dropped like marionettes when they got too close to Jacques or one of his companions. Anyone brave enough to travel openly in the streets didn't last long.

The proper battle was over in less than an hour. The captain had the group break off into twos or threes and sweep the entire village, its buildings, and the land just outside the gates for any remaining Germans. Had them set up watch on each of the roads into and out of the village.

It was during these last sweeps of the village's buildings, the sun finally setting on this awful day of days, that Jacques felt his boots fill with grief. He walked the broken streets, looked at the smoking vehicles he'd ruined. The cracks and holes to places that used to be homes. The scorched earth that used to feed people that lived here. He saw the glass panes shattered in every window of every building. There were no French citizens living here now. The land had been purged of the inhabitants that tended her.

Jacques had never been to this village before now, but he felt the loss this place had suffered. He knew this place was changed. It was damaged beyond recognition. It could never be returned to what it was. He didn't know this place, but he didn't need to. He stood hopelessly in the middle of the cracked roads, turning and looking futilely for something that could be identified as his France. Didn't care who was near enough to see him.

This land was his home.

He had never been to this place.

He grieved for a place he'd never been. Mourned the reality that he'd never get to see this place the way it was meant to be.

"Hey," someone said.

Jacques turned to find James Barnes. He distantly registered that the rest of his squad was watching, hesitant, a little way off.

"Jacques," said James. He reached a hand out. Settled the weight of it on Jacques's shoulder. "Hey."

"This place isn't familiar," he told the sergeant. "Why would it be? I've never been here. Why would I recognise it?"

Jacques grieved for this place.

He didn't feel anything for it.

James didn't look away from it or Jacques's eyes.

"I don't know why I thought I'd feel…I've never been here." He shrugged and feared he'd float away. Feared he would start drowning. It wasn't fair. He'd known this wasn't the France he'd left behind. This wasn't the France he'd fought for before he was captured. How could it ever be the France that'd raised Jacques? How? That place was gone. Unreachable.

James's hand spasmed on Jacques's shoulder. It squeezed for a moment, and then the sergeant was embracing him.

"This is…this isn't the same. I've never been here, but it'll never be the same."

James didn't waver. They understood it together. It broke Jacques's heart.

Chapter Text

Bucky dragged his heels along the pavement to announce his approach. He was pretty sure that it wasn't necessary; Steve could probably hear him coming twenty klicks away now. This village was secure enough to make noise when you walked, and old habits being what they were, it felt good. It was familiar. He really needed something familiar right now.

"Hey," Steve said, looking in his direction. He was sitting at the base of the statue in the centre of the village square. The cracked and scorched stones were upset all around him. Would have been impossible to approach noiselessly anyway.

"Hey," Bucky echoed. He sat himself down on the step beside Steve. It was a vulnerable feeling to be walking around without a weapon. He supposed his field knife still counted for something.

"What's up?" Steve said.

Bucky felt himself shrug. "You know, here on behalf of the guys. We moving out? They want to know if they should take the stims."

"Ah." Steve looked down at his hands. "Those."

"Hmm." Inside his jacket pockets, Bucky clenched his hands into fists to stop the shaking. He was probably just getting tired.

All of them had been issued a handful of Stark-created stimulants with their air sickness pills before departing England. The Germans had used something like these stims when they'd first invaded France, Stark had said. The brass wasn't worried about their super soldier being able to complete his mission, but they did question the ability of his regular-human team to keep up. Hence, the stims. Frenchie had looked at the packets and said the S.S.R. was insane if they thought he was going ingest it. Based on what Stark told the guys on base, the stims were incredible drugs with some potentially nasty side effects.

The indecision on Steve's face was a good distraction from thinking about the experimental stimulants. Bucky offered, "Talk me through it?"

Steve said, "We were able to contact Peggy's squad. They're as out of position as we are. She told me that the troops on some of the beaches are pinned down. Can't advance inland with the trucks and tanks because of some heavy artillery and anti-aircraft instalments that are firing down on them."

"Not surprising," Bucky hummed.

"No, it's not," Steve agreed.

One of Bucky's brows was arched at Steve. "So we're going to meet up with Carter and her team to get the rest of the Allies off the beach?"

The look on Steve's face was confirmation enough.

"Is that the right call?" Steve said.

"You're Captain America. Any call you make is the right call."

"You know what I mean. We have a pretty specific mission that's separate from the rest of the invasion."

Bucky felt his eyes roll on their volition. "You know that we're never going to be able to separate the war with HYDRA from the rest of the war. One and the same."

Steve looked down at his hands. Busted knuckles and dirt and blood caked under the nails. Not much had changed. "Yeah."

"So where's Carter? How far?"

"We agreed on a spot that's about 17 kilometres southeast from here. Might be nice to get there by sunrise."

"OK," Bucky nodded. Static was building in his hands again. "I'll tell the guys to get ready."

"Is it too much?" Steve asked.

"No."

"I don't want you guys to take the stims."

"It's not a big deal," Bucky said. "Everyone knew they were going to have to take 'em eventually. Stark told us to count on needing them at some point."

"To keep up with me." Steve picked up his gloves and started to put them on. "You guys wouldn't need them if you didn't have to keep up with a super soldier."

It forced a dull sort of laugh out of Bucky. "Don't flatter yourself too much, Steve. Those guys would have looked for any excuse to try these things even if they weren't working with you. The way Stark talked about 'em…Jesus. The guys just want to see if they're going to run as fast as the brass said they'd be able to."

"There are side effects to those stims," Steve said stubbornly.

"We'll deal with it when we get there."

He just sat there and kept frowning. "You guys have already been up nearly a day and a half."

"So?"

"So now we're going in for another day. I should let you guys sleep for a little bit."

Too bad there wasn't a little bit of sleep for Bucky. There was only up-for-weeks or dead-to-the-world for hours at a time.

"You already told Carter we'd be there," Bucky said. Didn't know that for a fact, of course. But it was obvious from the moping that Steve had already agreed to the plan. "We don't even know if they'll be that bad. Might be great."

"Nothing is free."

"Might catch a break with these stims though," he said with stubborn optimism. Bucky stood up. Better to end the discussion before Steve could second-guess himself even more.

"Are you gonna take one?" Steve called after he'd already turned and started to walk away.

Bucky paused and shifted to face the captain. "Huh?"

"You gonna take one of the stimulants?"

Half of his face twisted up in amusement. "You tell me."

Steve shook his head. "I'm not doing that."

"Then, this time tomorrow, based on how things go…tell me if you think I did."

"I think I'd rather not know."

Bucky shrugged at him and walked back to the rest of the guys. Not thirty minutes later, they were walking south in two loose groups.

"You are not taking that shit," was the first thing out of Dum Dum's mouth once Steve's group had wandered far enough away that the risk of being overheard was mitigated.

"Yeah, no kidding," Bucky laughed. It wasn't the side effects that he was worried about.

Gabe was cracking up. "Cap really thinks you would? After everything? After Novara?"

Bucky shrugged. "Maybe he overestimates what I'm willing to subject myself to for my country."

"Pffft." Gabe waved a dismissive hand. "He ought to know by now that there's no group of people less patriotic than soldiers."

"I don't think he does," Monty said plainly. "Our sergeant would absolutely take a stim under the right circumstances."

Dum Dum pointed a finger at Monty. "You're right. So we just gotta make sure those circumstances don't line up."

"I'm not going to take one," Bucky said. "At any point."

"Of course you're not," Dum Dum said. "I'll make sure. Hand them over to me."

It didn't cost Bucky anything to comply with the request. He really was not interested in taking anything. Fuck, he didn't even want to be carrying the bottle of Luminal. There wasn't a goddamn shot in hell he'd be caught taking Stark's souped-up stimulant and Luminal. Carter had said that a glass of whisky could mess with how her pill worked on him. He didn't even want to imagine how an experimental stim would interact with it. Despite what the guys said, Bucky did have a sense of self-preservation. And he wouldn't be taking any more experimental drugs, even if it meant saving someone's life.

Probably. Maybe.

Dum Dum tucked Bucky's ration of stimulants into an interior pocket of his field vest. "You're not to touch those unless I'm shot in the heart."

Holding up his hands innocently, Bucky said, "Maybe not even then."

"Good man," Monty said.

"We'll find a way for you to get some sleep somewhere," the corporal decided.

And wasn't that an absolute gas? Bucky laughed hollowly. "Don't be naïve."

"What?"

"You really thought I'd be able to keep up a once-per-night regiment of that stuff in the field? With him breathing down all of our necks?"

Dum Dum shrugged, not at all embarrassed of his optimism. "Like I said, we'd figure something out."

"I'm not going to risk being fucking strung out during a fight."

Monty said calmly, "But you're willing to risk seizing?"

"I don't seize."

He hated the look that Dum Dum and Monty shared over his head. Gabe had the grace to look sympathetic at least.

"I think being a little sleepy is the less risky option, Sarge," Gabe said. "At least we can control when the sleepiness happens."

"Feels a bit like we brought a kooky grandpa into war, doesn't it?" Dum Dum snickered. "He's either napping or staring at the clouds."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Bucky said with his face tipped up toward the sky. But he didn't mean it. Not all of it. It was alright, really, talking like this. If it kept up morale, he could handle it. He could let them fuss and make their jokes.

The handie-talkie in Monty's belt buzzed with a short burst of static. Then Jim's voice came through saying, "Cap says that he doesn't know what the fuck you all are talking about, but he'd appreciate it if you didn't let all of France know that we're here."

"Ah, tell 'em to stop tryin' to eavesdrop," Dum Dum said.

Monty unhooked the radio and said into it, "Acknowledged, but we'd like to suggest that the captain remember that all of France does not have super-hearing. If he's feeling left out, he's better off just saying so."

A crackly version of Jim's laugh came through. "OK. I'll tell 'em."

But they walked for a few klicks in relative silence anyway. An ambush was the last thing they needed at the moment. They already had to move slowly and carefully around any dwellings that they came upon. They didn't have the spare ammunition to clear out buildings and still have supplies leftover for their actual objective. It hadn't sounded like Carter and her team had much of their own. But knowing her, she probably packed smarter than the stupid 90-pound leg bag. Hell, the Army probably didn't even offer her one since it would be considered too heavy for a woman. Who'd be laughing now?

"You think HYDRA's out here?" Dum Dum said. "On the beaches?"

Bucky took a moment to think about it. "Dunno. No? Seems like just regular Germans so far."

A shrug was the response; Dum Dum didn't look convinced.

"Only been shot at with regular bullets," Bucky pointed out. "Fuckin' crazy that I'm not even scared of that shit anymore."

A crease appeared on Dum Dum's face. "Hmm," he said. "You've never been properly shot yet, have you?"

"Fuck, you trying to jinx me?"

He laughed. "Sorry, sorry. Not what I meant."

Bucky thought back to the start of all of this. It seemed a lot longer ago than it actually was. "Besides a few fragments, I don't think I've caught a whole bullet?"

You'd think he'd remember something like that.

"You will one day," Dum Dum declared.

The certainty in his voice made Bucky splutter out a laugh. "I know I will."

"If you could choose, where would you want to be shot?"

The head.

"Jesus, you really asking that?" Bucky said instead. "I don't know. Upper arm? Obviously not my legs. I'll need those to get away."

Dum Dum said, "Ah, I see. You want a scar to match mine from Novara." He gestured with the shoulder of the arm that had gotten chewed up in Italy.

"I've already got my own scar from Novara."

"Big whoop, you tried to cut you hand in half."

"Yeah, that's what happened," Bucky deadpanned.

Dum Dum snorted. "Aw, ain't nothin' to be ashamed of. If it makes you feel any better, I'm sure you'll be shot any day now."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a promise."

"OK then," Bucky laughed. "I bet you get shot again before I get shot once."

"Don't tempt me, Jimmy."

He raised his eyebrows and tipped his head in Dum Dum's direction.

"OK, what's the wager?"

They spent a good amount of time coming up with the best prize for their agreement.

All of her days were the same now. They'd settled into a routine, and where a routine used to bring comfort to her, now it was hollow. The predictability was tight. There was a daily ration of oxygen, and Becca didn't want to use it up before the night put her to bed. And it would begin again the next day. The monotony was dependable. Unyielding. It made her fingertips and cheeks numb from lack of stimulation.

She woke. Dressed and made herself up in the way she'd been told that she had to. Donned that horrid, unflattering uniform they'd given her. Prepare breakfast for herself and sometimes for her husband, if he was home. Too often he slept at his office with his research assistant, the two of them buried in designs, blueprints, coded telegrams from a customer requesting they invent something just on the other side of possible. How do we machine this? Can you fabricate that? Is this geometry something you can manufacture by Monday?

Becca might drink a cup of ersatz coffee on her solitary mornings and have a stare down with the day's newspaper. It teased her, inviting her to go on and open it up. See what news from the frontlines there might be. What triumphs the Allies had had. What they'd found. Who they'd lost. But Becca was growing more and more jaded by the day, and the weight of her wedding band stayed her hand.

And then she was off to work. Just one body among the masses all heading in generally the same direction. There used to be friends she'd make eye contact with, exchange polite chatter. But the energy to keep that up became so great for Becca that her interactions had deteriorated past even friendly nods of acknowledgement. The train cars were so cramped that the commuters couldn't help but constantly bump into each other, but, for Becca, she couldn’t reach any of them if she tried.

These days, Becca kept her head down. Always there was a book with her, something far removed from war or the reality of her life. Her eyes stayed on the page, a hand twisting and working the collar of gold around her third finger until it was free. She read as the train cars filled with commuters who buzzed at each other over her head, the cars rocking them gently into different parts of the city.

The posters and newspapers plastered along the streets changed often, but they were the same really. The red, white, and blue of their faces hardly ever changed. Buy war bonds. Support your country. Scrap metal, volunteer, donate. We can do it. It was as banal as the cracks on the sidewalk for Becca. Unworthy of note now.

Most of her day would be spent stamping condolences into delicate paper. Her office was filled with women just like her, all dressed in the same uniform. Their identical typewriters tamping and pinging away for hours. It was never silent in there. The constant shuffling of papers, carriages shifting those letters back and forth as Becca and the others typed the same message time and time again.

I regret to inform you of the tragic death of your brother/son/husband/cousin/nephew…

Some notices came with notes requesting specific phrases or comments to be included. To seem more personal and not as if they were churned out by WAAC recruits who typed the same thing hundreds of times each day. At lunchtime, all of them in the bullpen would go down to a diner and eat together. Useless, excited prattle the whole time, it wrapped around her, a tingling arm that had been slept on. Becca was always among the women who turned in the largest stack of completed letters to be signed by a commanding officer. It was an easy job if you didn't think of the sheaf clutched in your hand at the end of the day as the lives of people who had been known and loved.

Then it would be the end of the work day and she'd go to a shop and pick up anything she or her parents might need. Take another train filled with alien-yet-familiar faces into a different part of the city. She'd walk the blocks she knew like the back of her hand to her parents' home. She'd let herself in, wedding band returned to her finger from its day journey into the depths of her pocket. Becca would greet her mother warmly, keeping her eyes off of the photographs lining the walls. She'd kiss her father's head just because she knew that he didn't appreciate it. (Really, he wasn't so bad now, but Mother said that was just because of the cirrhosis.)

Mother would ask about her day, and Becca would invent something to tell her. Smile a lot. Tell stories about friends she no longer kept up with or the neighbours' young children. Mother would say something about an insincere desire to have grandchildren (she really just wanted a second chance with her own children). Becca would say something to suggest that a baby was the plan, it was coming.

It would then be Father's turn to say something insulting about Becca's husband. Usually about his cane and limp. As if he'd never seen someone survive a case of childhood polio. As if he'd never seen someone get over their past.

Usually they would have dinner together since her parents knew how busy Becca's husband's firm was. Father never criticised her husband's job. It was desirable to own a metalworking firm that had contracts with Stark Industries and the Army. 

Mother would never fail to say, "Perhaps your brother can work there when he comes home," whenever her husband's work was mentioned. She was always very focussed on what Bucky would do after the war.

Becca would have to bite the inside of her cheek enough for it to hurt more than her heart.

Father always scoffed.

When Becca bade her parents good-night, she walked the same path to the train station that would take her back to her new home. There'd be fewer riders by then. It wouldn't feel so confined in the train car. Back at the house, she'd check the mail for letters that she knew wouldn't be there. Greet her husband if he were there. Tidy up the invisible mess left by the newlywed couple that barely lived here. Go to sleep.

Start again.

And again.

And again.

Until the day the newspaper was everywhere. The same handful of photographs stared down from just about any wall they could be slapped up against. It was perfect timing though, wasn't it? News was just now spreading about the Allied invasion of France. Not even Becca's deliberate ignorance could miss it. Was there a better time to run a Captain America campaign in just about every publication that existed, be it local or national?  It wouldn't be a surprise if the same article ran in British newspapers, too, though perhaps with a bit of a different spin.

Strategic was what it was. Nothing got the masses as excited as a good Captain America piece. The USO tour had worked wonders. There were still children singing the songs, collecting scrap metal that they first shaped into feeble dinner plates. Surely the newspaper spread would make war bonds jump, inspire new volunteers. Even the people at the office were buzzing about it. As service people for the Army, one would think that they'd be immune to that sort of propaganda by now.

It appeared not to be the case.

It was a miracle Becca hadn't noticed this particular edition of every newspaper on her commute to the office. She'd kept her head down the whole way, as usual. She should have been looking for it today, instead of reading a second-hand copy of The Hobbit again. Today, so that she wouldn't have been blindsided like this. Becca wouldn't be sat, shocked, at her little desk with its dense typewriter, surrounded by women gossiping and bombarding her with questions.

"Can you get Captain America to write to us, Rebecca?"

"What's he like?"

"Are his eyes as blue as the posters?"

"Not married yet, is he?"

"He seemed so sweet with the kids when he was on tour!"

"He's so brave, isn't he?"

"Sheesh, you don't see guys like that around the city anymore, do you?"

"I saw him lift that motorcycle in the show. I wish he'd do that to me!"

"Why didn't you tell us about this?"

"Didja used to go steady with Captain America, Rebecca?"

"Ya been dancin' with him before?"

"I bet Cap could really cut a rug, huh?"

(Ha!)

"That's the one, Rebecca, isn't it? On the right? That's your brother?"

She sat at her desk, stunned. Dumb. Rendered completely speechless by a stupid newspaper. By propaganda.

Becca's heart ached as she stared at the spread. Just behind the front page (headline: CAPTAIN AMERICA AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS TO LEAD INVASION TO FRANCE) was a photograph of them. Both of them, both of her brothers. They stood partially facing each other, a posed handshake. The longing to crawl into the photograph and embrace them both was so strong that Becca couldn't even be bothered to read the caption. There they were. Forced, fake smiles on their faces, she noted. A feeble, genuine smile bent her lips upward a few degrees.

She let her eyes focus on Bucky's face. Immediately, her vision clouded up with tears. Sure as day, that was him. He looked small in that photograph beside the new Steve. Bucky's posture looked hard in a way Becca didn't recognise. His face looked brittle in the dingy grey scale photograph. Shadows around his eyes. The hand that gripped Steve's was roped to a sinewy wrist. The blood vessels there were standing out just as proud as the tendons in his neck. Bucky's hair was ever so untamed, something he never would have allowed the public to see when Becca last talked to him. Maybe it was because she had never seen Bucky next to this version of Steve – she hadn't seen Bucky at all for two years. Maybe Steve's transformation just made differences that had always been between them more noticeable.

That pit in her stomach that hadn't gone away since 1942 disagreed.

A wounded part of Becca's heart whined, Why did you stop writing? But she didn't let herself linger on the thought too long. Her eyes were forced off of Bucky's face and onto the other subject of the photograph.

Steve's presence dominated the image, not just because of how he'd physically changed. But in personality, too. He looked every bit like the character from the Captain America films. Confident. Self-assured. The sort of person that would sell you war bonds. The sort of person who could lead battles and win them without a hair out of place. Yes, handsome too. And just as foolhardy as he'd seemed when Becca went to Captain America's last show in New York, where Steve had gotten her behind the stage and she'd watched from the wings. It had been hard to recognise him at first. After whatever happened to him had happened. Becca wasn't so sure he was the same person during that performance. Or when he kissed babies and posed with silly, shrill women afterwards. But then, when it was all over, he had taken off the stupid helmet and turned to Becca.

There you are, she'd thought then. So you're still in there after all.

It was comforting to recognise him here, too.

"Tell us about him, Rebecca. What's Cap really like?"

"Tell us a story from before!"

It took herculean effort to tear her eyes off of the photograph and meet the women huddled around her desk. Becca blinked to clear the gathering moisture from her eyes. Cleared her throat.

"Oh. Um." Her hands were shaking, so she reached for a blank sheet of paper and fed it into the typewriter. "I should get to work."

The others pouted for a few minutes until they realised that Becca wasn't going to be telling any tales about Captain America from her childhood. Their bullpen filled with the thwap and ting of typewriters. Condolence letters didn't type themselves, after all.

Becca made a lot of mistakes that day. Typed too far into the margins. Improper grammar and punctuation. Simple spelling mistakes. Formatting issues that not even the new girls would make. It was too distracting, all those newspapers. Some of the women had already clipped the photographs and hung them on the corkboard. It was too difficult to I regret to inform you when her brothers were watching from everywhere. As if they knew why she worked this job, and they didn't approve.

The women peppered her with questions during their lunch break (the newspapers followed them on the streets outside). Could Becca introduce them to Captain America? (No.) Had she met the other Howling Commandos? (Never heard of them). Would Captain America come do another tour, and could Becca get them backstage? (God, she hoped not.) Would she send their photograph in the next letter she sent Captain America? (No.)

"What about your brother, Rebecca? Does he have anyone waiting for him?"

(Yes. He had a sister and a mother and a piece of shit father waiting for him.)

"Will you send him my portrait?"

The women laughed.

A hurt part of Becca replied, "Why not? I'm sure he could use a laugh."

She left the table and returned to the office before they could make scandalised faces at her. She didn't want to have to apologise to people like that. Not right now. Not with her brothers watching.

Pure muscle memory carried her through the rest of the day. Her head and her hands just could not sync despite Becca's best efforts to think about absolutely nothing. It felt like ignoring someone that you knew was trying to get your attention. She was the first one out of the building when the time came. And she wasn't sure why, but she slid one of the newspapers into her bag. She couldn't stand to look at it, let alone read it. She took it anyway.

Routine brought her to a shop. Becca ghosted through the shelves at a loss. She couldn’t remember what she was meant to pick up here. What did her mother need? Was it something for dinner? Did her father need medicine? Maybe it was Becca that needed something at home. Was there something her husband had asked her to get? Her eyes drifted to the wall of cigarettes. The path was blocked by women she used to know from school sharing the Captain America paper between them.

"Rebecca?"

Something inside of her jerked and restarted. Becca turned toward the voice. "Yes?"

"Are you alright?"

Becca tried to place how this woman knew her. She was taller. A stylish dress that appeared at least partially handmade. The real giveaway: A mass of red hair, perfectly curled.

Why today, of all days?

"Yes, I'm well. How have you been, Dolores?"

There was a look of relief on Dolores's face. Perhaps due to the fact that Becca could actually recognise her? "You know, carrying on. The city's pretty different now, you know? Gotta say that it took me by surprise when I saw the paper this morning."

A smile twitched Becca's cheeks.

Dolores said, "Been so long since I last saw Bucky. Sure looks different in uniform, standin' next to Captain America."

"Yes, he does." One wrong word and she might crack.

"Anyway, I'm sure you and your family are over the moon for him. I mean, wow, a Bronze Star! You all must be so proud."

"Right."

She just kept going: "I know that it's been a while, but I gotta say that I was surprised to hear that he was serving. He didn't seem like the type. Especially with your father and all. But, you know, even though we didn't stick, I'm happy that it's working out for him."

Was it?

The thought must have shown on her face.

Dolores's cheeks coloured. "Sorry. Listen to me carrying on. I think those ladies are all done now." She nodded to the cleared path to the cigarettes. "I've got to run. It was good to see you again, Rebecca. It's been so long. Take care of yourself now."

"Yes, thank you. You do the same, Dolores."

Becca was exhausted. She bought a pack of cigarettes.

Her parents' neighbourhood was especially horrid. The newspapers and their photographs were absolutely everywhere. The closer Becca got to her childhood home the worse it got. Every person that she passed was talking about it. They recognised her. She pretended they were mistaken and kept her head down all the way through her parents' front door.

It was quiet inside. It snapped her head up.

"Mother?" she called.

Her parents were old. They were getting to an age where they both needed looking after. (Becca had been hoping to use them as an excuse to move.)

But then: "She's not here. Don't you listen?"

Father.

"What?" Becca followed the sound of her father's voice to find him in the sitting room beside the radio. It was so low that she knew that he wouldn't have been able to hear it – maybe he didn't realise that it was on? "Where's she gone?"

"She's been telling you for days that she's going to her sister's or some damned place. Won't be back for three days."

"Oh." She hadn't remembered that. Couldn't remember hearing her mother talk about it even.

"Oh," her father mocked her.

Becca kissed his head. "You don't have to be rude."

"Hrmph."

She patted his shoulder just to feel him shrug her off. "I'll fix you something to eat." He was so awful, she was sure her mother couldn't convince any of the neighbours to stop by and feed him.

Becca left her hard-of-hearing father alone in the sitting room with the radio he couldn't hear. Her mind went quiet as she prepared a simple soup. The thud of a knife hitting the wooden cutting board after fighting through vegetables had always been a comforting sound. Peeling potatoes, cracking a carrot. The sounds of kitchens were comforting for Becca. They probably are for everyone, she thought as she set the pot to simmer.

When there was nothing more to do but wait, Becca let her eyes scan the room. On the small table in the corner of the kitchen there was yet another copy of the newspaper. It was unfolded, laid out flat. As if someone had read it. Pursued the print and propaganda. Pored over the photographs.

When did Mother leave again?

"Seen it, have you?" asked her father's rough voice.

Becca jumped and quickly looked away from the newspaper. Only briefly did she let her gaze settle on her father. The pot of soup was a safe place to look.

"It's been everywhere," she told the diced potatoes. Did you read it?

"Look like a coupla clowns if you ask me," Father said. He sat himself heavily in a chair beside the paper. "Still can't believe they actually let the Rogers boy in the field like that."

"He's not exactly a boy anymore," Becca told the soup.

"Hrmph." The pages rustled. "Suppose that's true."

The bubbling of the broth filled her ears. She wished it were loud enough to cover up the sounds of her father shifting the pages. It irritated her, that he was looking at the spread. She wanted to snatch it from his hands. Crumple it, burn it. Do something to it so that her father could never touch it again.

"Bronze Star. Did you read that bit?" he asked.

"Someone mentioned it to me."

"Sergeant Barnes was awarded the Bronze Star Medal by Colonel Chester Phillips. Presented by Captain America, the decoration was in recognition of exceptional and heroic achievements against a hostile force in which Sergeant Barnes set himself apart from his peers on a mission for the Strategic Scientific Reserve in Czechoslovakia," Father read aloud. "Doesn't say what those so-called acts were."

Becca made a vague sound in the back of her throat and stirred the soup.

"Hard to imagine a sniper doing anything exceptional or heroic," he scoffed. "The whole point of them is to be cowardly and shoot people in the back. Suppose that it's a fitting assignment for him after the prison–"

"Do you ever shut up?" The words exploded from Becca, and she turned away from the pot to face her father. Rage and frustration begged to be relieved upon the old man.

He looked as surprised as she felt. Since she was here, though, might as well keep going.

"I won't have you talk about Bucky like that in front of me," Becca said. 

Father stared at her with an inscrutable expression for a few beats. He eventually relaxed and looked away first. It just made her angrier.

"Alright," he said.

They didn't speak again until they were both seated at the table with a bowl of soup. The newspaper was still spread between them. Her father thanked her and watched her not look at the paper.

Eventually he said, "You didn't know he was a sniper."

Becca took a long pause to decide if she wanted to answer honestly. She did.

Her father nodded to the paper. "It said in there. I didn't know before either."

"Why would you know?" she mumbled.

Father shrugged. "From the letters Rogers sends to your mother."

Her brow pinched in the middle. "What?"

"Rogers writes to your mother."

"Since when?" Becca felt hurt this time. Mother would have mentioned something to her about writing to Steve so often. (Or maybe she had mentioned it but Becca had been ignoring it on purpose?)

"Since the camp. Since Rogers got all those prisoners of war freed."

Months of communication she'd missed.

Father cleared his throat. "We got the first before Christmas last year."

"No one told me."

"Your mother didn't want to upset you because of the wedding."

Now, dread. "Why would I be upset?"

Father laughed. "Talking about family members being tortured usually puts a damper on celebrations."

"What do you mean, torture?"

"Torture usually only means one thing, girl."

"What do you mean? When would Bucky have been tortured?"

"Do you think everyone sits about eating chocolate and drinking coffee from the Red Cross in prisoner of war camps?"

"I don't understand."

"It's pretty simple. Rogers wrote to tell your mother that the boy'd been tortured and taken ill in the camp. He'd been evacuated to a secure location in London to recover. Told her not to worry if she didn't get any letters from the boy. He might not be up to writing as he healed. Rogers said he would do what he could to keep her informed."

Becca's world felt as if it were sliding off of its axis.

"I'd like to know who Rogers knows so far up the chain of command," her father was still saying. "Not a shot in a hell a letter like that should have gotten through the censors unmarked."

Emotion swirled turbulently inside of her. How could her own family have kept that from her? (Assuming they had hid it. Had she just ignored them when they told her?) Becca thought mostly of her mother. She felt, for the first time, a little bit betrayed by her. It was a struggle to reconcile this news about Bucky with the images of him in the newspaper.

Her father was saying, "Kindest thing that could happen to him now is to step on a landmine—"

She snapped: "For Pete's sake, he's been gone for two years and you're still awful to him. What good is it to you to talk about him like this when he's not even here? Are you that miserable? Do you really hate him that much?"

It was bizarre, that look that touched her father's face. Was it, for the first time, a bit of shame?

"I don't hate him, Rebecca. I've never hated him."

It was her turn to scoff. "Right. Why else would you say you hope he gets blown up?"

He was shaking his head. "I've done a lot of things wrong—"

"Have you ever done something right?" she rhetorically asked the soup.

"I've done a lot of things wrong, Rebecca. I'm not a good father."

"You're hardly a father at all!"

"You're right."

It stilled her.

"I don't know why I said a lot of the things I have to you and your brother. I forget myself. I forget my family."

"How terrible for you."

"I would rather have not come back from my own war than to have lived like this. I'd rather he not have to come back and live this kind of life, too."

Moisture gathered in the corners of Becca's eyes. From frustration. Maybe from hurt. From confusion.

"You think I was always like this?" her father demanded. "You think someone as good as your mother married me because I was like this?"

"I don't know why Mother stays with you," Becca spat defensively.

"Because she loved what I was before, and she still can't see all these decades later that that man never came back from France. Wasted her life waiting for me to come back. Here you are about to waste yours on your brother. He won't be coming back, Rebecca. It's kinder for everyone if his body doesn't either."

That was what she'd been telling herself for months now, wasn't it? She'd already convinced herself of that. It made missing them easier. Allowed her a jumpstart on the mourning. But hearing it from someone else's mouth sounded so much harsher. It sounded final. It sounded real. It didn't even matter that it was her father and that his words hadn't held water for her since she was a small child.

Father might have been right. Becca might have believed every word he said. But she still hated him for it. She left him there with the newspaper and the dirty dishes. The miserable old man. Becca didn't stop for anyone on the way back to the train station. She smoked her new pack of cigarettes as she waited on the platform, listening to the blood surging in her ears. She avoided eye contact with the handful of people in her car. Instead, she closed her eyes and pretended she were anywhere else, that she were anyone else. And when she recognised the futility of that, she replayed in her head the moment when Steve left Brooklyn and her for good. When she was through with that, she went back even further in time and relived Bucky leaving her, too.

Not be up to writing as he healed, Becca's big left toe. Yeah, not up to writing for nearly a year but he was well enough to be earning bloody Bronze Stars, whatever the fuck that meant. Why hadn't Steve sent that letter to her? He wouldn't have known she was being married at the time. He should have known better than to send something like that to her mother. She was old and delicate now. She couldn't handle getting news like that. Becca could. She was young still. She could do something about it.

Her heart paused mid-beat.

She could do something about it.

Her grip on the box of cigarettes tightened and she got to her feet as the train rumbled into her stop.

"Excuse me, miss," a man's voice stopped her just outside the train. "You left this."

Becca accepted the folded up copy of the newspaper that the man handed her and left him there without thanks. She smoked on her walk home. A light in the window of her apartment told her that her husband was home. Good, she thought. She had things she wanted to speak with him about.

Inside was a mess.

"That you, dear?" his voice called to Becca from the bedroom.

"Yes," she said. Carefully stepping around the mess of clothes and suitcases lining the corridor from the sitting room to the kitchen, Becca called, "What's going on?"

There was a glimpse of him as he rushed from the bedroom to the toilet, his cane clunking heavily in his haste.

"Excellent news, dear."

He didn't elaborate until prompted.

"What is it?"

He finally stopped in front of the small kitchen table to beam at her. "I'm going to London. Customer is trying to reverse engineer a bit of enemy weaponry and they've asked me to come consult."

"And this customer is Stark Industries?" she said.

Her husband gave her a crooked smile. She knew that he wasn't allowed to say who his customers were thanks to the confidentiality agreements. And the fact that the end user was usually the military.

"Isn't it amazing?" He began to rush around again. "Could you fix something quick to eat, dear? I'm famished."

The warning for him to slow down so that he didn't slip and hurt his good leg turned to ashes on Becca's lips. She went to the kitchen, setting her things heavily on the table. A rectangular envelope made of heavy paper slid out from the folds of the newspaper she'd nearly forgotten on the train. The excited buzz of words from her husband faded out of focus when Becca saw it. Her name was on the envelope in cursive. Her old name. (Her real name, as far as she was concerned.)

Rebecca Barnes.

No address.

She slid the flap open with a fingernail. Two pages were inside, folded over each other. A coat of arms was stamped at the top of both pages. A bird, probably an eagle, with the words Strategic Scientific Reserve in a circle around it. Both pages were covered in handwritten cursive. She didn't recognise the penmanship. Skipping to the end of the last page, she saw it was signed in a style that did not match the rest of the letter by a Timothy Dugan. There was a post-script below that in the same handwriting as the body of the letter. It was signed by Gabriel Jones. She didn't know either of them.

Not well enough to write, she reminded herself bitterly.

"Oh," came her husband's voice, close by. "You haven't started anything yet? I'm quite starved, de—"

Becca cut him off, "I need you to get me transferred to a unit in London."

That stopped him dead. "What?"

"I want to come with you to London."

"It's not—Dear, this is last minute. You already have an assignment."

"I can do more than write letters." She pointed to the coat of arms on the letter. "I want to be transferred to this unit."

He was shaking his head incredulously. "Rebecca—"

Frustration boiled over. "Our marriage was meant to benefit us both," Becca said in the sternest voice she could muster. "I am not trying to twist your arm or blackmail you, dear, but my very existence has benefitted you since the moment we got together. It's time for you to hold up your end of the arrangement."

They stared at each other. He stood there with his mouth hanging open a bit before clicking his teeth together. Nodding resolutely, he said, "Alright. OK." He smiled weakly. "I'll see what I can do. Can hardly accept an assignment in London without my wife."

"OK," she said. She looked down at the letter for a moment, at whoever Timothy and Gabriel were. Looked back up. "I'll make you something to eat."

"Thank you," he said after licking his lips. "I'm going to pack up some more. I'll call about getting you transferred after that."

"OK."

Chapter Text

Jim could feel his pulse in his foot with every step that he took. The shaft of his boot was becoming uncomfortably tight, like a fucking sausage casing. When the time finally came to bathe, he was going to have quite the task getting the damned thing off. Probably didn’t even have an ankle anymore. There’d just be one constant-thickness length of flesh from knee to foot.

It wasn’t even one of those discomforts that a person could get used to, like always being just a little bit hungry and tired. It was the kind of pain that jolted up to Jim’s spine in a different way every step. Fuckin’ annoying was what it was. And it made Jim desperate for a distraction.

Luckily, they had Dum Dum Dugan on their team.

Out of the blue, he asked, "You reckon Private Lorraine would go out with me if I asked her? If we ever make it back to base?"

"What?" Gabe asked. Jim couldn't see the machine gunner from his position in their skirmish line, but he could hear the amusement in the question. His own expression mirrored it.

"What? You don't think she'd go for it?" Dugan said.

"I don't know," Gabe said.

"Sure you want to do that?" Jim said and turned to glance over his shoulder to check Dugan's expression.

"Course. She's a great-looking dame."

"Well, sure," said Gabe, "but Sarge has, you know, already been there."

"What? Are you serious?"

"What?" said Jim. "You didn't know?"

"When did this happen?" Dugan actually looked surprised.

Jim caught Gabe shrugging out of the corner of his eye before he had to look forward again.

"Hmm," Gabe was humming. "Well, I think the first time was pretty much as soon as our transfers were approved."

Jim caught Dugan's eye and nodded his head in confirmation.

"I should have fucking known." Dugan was shaking his head. "Wait. That was the first time?"

Gabe nodded.

"Then when…?"

Gabe said, "Then after Novara."

"Bullshit," Dugan said in a voice that bordered on too loud for their circumstances. He caught himself and continued in a quieter voice, "He was a zombie when we got back."

Jim shook his head. "You really think Stark was babysitting him that whole time?"

"They fucked in Stark's lab?" the corporal whisper-shouted.

Jim fought hard to keep his laughter quiet.

Gabe said, "I don't think anyone can vouch for that."

"But it was around the same time as Sarge's birthday," Jim added.

"Oh, well, it was just for fun, right? Jimmy would have fucking told me if it was something more than that. It's been long enough for them to be nothing."

"I don't know," Gabe said.

"I mean, they were still seeing each other right before this jump," Jim said.

"Now you're just pulling my leg."

"No," Gabe was saying. "I swear that we're not."

"I mean," Jim said slickly, "it obviously slowed down once we started drugging him at night."

"I don't believe you all," Dugan said with suspicious eyes.

Jim shrugged.

Gabe said, "He had a lot of time to himself at night when he wasn't sleeping. Not up to us to tell him how to spend that time."

Jim bit down on his tongue to stop the laughter. Dugan was sputtering.

"He would have told me."

"Sarge isn't the type to kiss and tell," Gabe said.

"He tells me," Dugan said, annoyed.

"How do you think he was able to get a hold of all of that fruit for us that one time?" Jim said. "He said himself that we weren't his only friends on base."

They heard the clamp of familiar footsteps; Cap and Monty came upon them.

"What are you guys talking about so loudly?" Cap said.

"Gabe and Jim are saying Jimmy fucked Private Lorraine," Dugan blurted.

Jim just barely stopped himself from adding, Several times.

"You didn't have to say it like that," Gabe muttered.

Cap's eyebrows flew up his forehead.

"I beg your pardon?" Monty said.

"Right," Dugan said in an agreeable tone, as if Monty had said something in his favour. "She doesn't even have red hair."

"They don't always have red hair," Cap replied in an automatic sort of way. Then he shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Let's go. The meeting spot with Peggy's team is just this way." He gestured with his shield.

A whistle announced that Frenchie and Barnes were on their way to the group.

"No one following," Frenchie told the group. "Should be good to go."

Dugan spoke right over him, "Cap, listen, he would have said something, right? You know him almost as well as I do."

Cap made a face at the phrase but didn't address it. "Not always."

Jim and Gabe both cracked up at the same time. Looked like it just distressed Dugan even more. He turned on Barnes, who was standing there with a bemused sort of expression on his face, and said, "Did you fuck around with Lorraine?"

"What?" he immediately said.

"You heard me."

"Why are you asking that?"

Gabe nudged Dugan with a shoulder. "Dum Dum wants to ask her out if we ever get back to base."

"Oh, yeah, you should," Barnes said. "You two could have a lot of fun together."

All of them watched Dugan squint suspiciously at Barnes. "I don't like the way you said that."

Barnes shrugged and gestured to Jim. "Maybe Jim can get her on the radio for you, and you guys can arrange something. Let me know how it goes." He pointed to Cap and continued smoothly, "We gonna go meet Carter's team?"

Cap nodded. "Can we get the handy-talkie?" he asked Monty.

The little device was passed around to Barnes. An ingrained habit had Jim switching on the receiver for the little radio on his uniform.

"We'll go meet her team and then signal to you guys when we're ready for you to approach," Cap said. "Hang tight until then."

There was an assenting murmur of "yes, sir" before Cap and Barnes were sneaking off in the direction of the meeting location.

"That wasn't conclusive at all," Dugan pouted. "Monty, what do you think?"

There was a moment of indecision on the captain's face when Peggy asked who he wanted to send in the scouting party. It wasn't hard to imagine what caused it. The squad had been in the field for a relatively short period of time, but the pressure of those hours had been immense.

Monty still hadn't come all the way back to himself since he almost drowned after their plane had been shot down. The major needed a few quiet minutes to get the last of the seawater out of his boots and change his socks. Jim Morita thought he was hiding the pain in his ankle well enough for no one to notice the limp. (Seemed like that particular hurt from Prague would not be so easily forgotten.) The emotion of returning to his homeland was still in Frenchie's eyes. It had to be overwhelming and wearing on him. Dum Dum was sagging around the shoulders in a way that he usually didn't; the energy of the big man usually never ran this low. Then again, he was one of the guys that took the best care of himself in terms of food and rest. Neither of those things did they have in spades at the moment. Sarge was getting that shaky, far-away look to him. The guy needed to sleep if they wanted to avoid an incident soon.

Considering how he felt right now and the shape of the rest of the team, Gabe caught his CO's eye and waved his hand.

The captain nodded in acknowledgement. "I'll send Jones," he told Peggy.

Captain Rogers couldn't send himself, which Gabe knew his CO would do if it were an option. He had already told the team on the walk to this meeting place that Peggy was going to take over the recon part of the mission. Cap was going to organise the rest of them and distribute their weapons and munitions as best they could. Peggy only had about nine other soldiers with her. It had raised Gabe's spirits a bit when he recognised two of them as former members of the 92^nd. His old unit and the 107^th had been absorbed by the S.S.R. and put to good use, it seemed.

Gabe began undoing most of his bandoliers and unwinding the belts of machine gun ammunition from around his neck. Good thing about running recon was that he didn't have to carry all of the gear for it. As useful as the 42 could be, it was really heavy. His sidearm would be plenty for the objective of this mission.

The agent smiled at him. "Alright. Want to come with me, Private?" she asked. "I'll brief you and the scouts from my team." To the captain she said, "I'll see you in a bit then."

"Right," he said. Then he came over to offer Gabe a hand up, which was accepted. "See you when you get back."

Once he was on his feet again, he said, "Yes, sir, thank you."

The captain held onto Gabe's hand a beat longer and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Stay safe out there, Gabe."

There was a lot to read in those gestures, Gabe thought. Captain America was certainly an interesting CO.

"You, too," he said. "Back in a flash."

"I'm counting on that."

Five minutes later, Gabe was gathered around Peggy with three other people from her team. She introduced them and then held up a very familiar map of the Cotentin Peninsula. She pointed out their location and the current frontline of the forces on the beach. A smaller hand-drawn map was pulled to the front. It showed their location, a symbol that Gabe guessed indicated a fortress or building, a causeway, and a grid of what he assumed were those godforsaken hedges that seemed to be all over this part of France. What was wrong with putting up a normal fence?

"Our job, gentlemen, is to scout this building. It's an estate that's been converted to a defensive stronghold. All we know for certain is that they have good heavy range weapons. They're smashing tanks and ships at the beaches from here. Until the other airborne units are able to open up the causeways, the infantries and tanks are sitting ducks for these guns. We need to find out what they have at this estate. How much heavy artillery, their anti-aircraft capabilities. We'll be approaching from the back garden that faces the beaches. Find out what they have and report back. Ideally, this is only going to take an hour. We'll be able to organise an assault on the estate based on our recon today. Got it?"

Gabe nodded with the rest of his team. Was a bit strange to be in a group like this. It could have been a scouting party from before. Before Krausberg and getting cut off from resources. It wasn't entirely like being back with the 92^nd, for obvious reasons. Guess it went to show how quickly a person could get used to something. They hadn't even gone anywhere yet, but Gabe was already starting to miss his usual team.

Peggy was a different sort of leader than Captain America was. It was hard to pin down exactly what it was about her that made things feel different, though. Gabe pondered it while he followed her lead along hedgerows and gnarled treelines. At first, he thought it might have been confidence. Peggy clearly came from a more traditional military background than Cap did. So it was possible that she knew (and used) the regular military playbook more than he did. But when Gabe thought back to all the things he'd done on Captain America's squad, he decided that it definitely wasn't confidence that was the difference. They both had it in spades, albeit different kinds. Peggy's was in her knowledge and strategy. Cap's was more about physical ability.

Which wasn't to suggest that Cap lacked a strategic mind. He just tended to strategize without taking full advantage of the other men on his team. Too much pressure to achieve too many tasks on himself.

Gabe refused to believe that Peggy's sex was what made the major difference, so he thought about it further as Peggy split the team up into a group of two that would inspect the hedgerow that lined the left side of the estate and a separate group of three that would go right. Since Gabe was assigned to be in Peggy's group going right, it was easy to keep thinking about this – even when she abruptly signalled Gabe and their third member to get down when they nearly walked right into a machine gun nest.

Good camouflaging, he thought to himself.

The nest faced inward toward the back of the estate, which was interesting. Gabe noted it down on the hand-drawn map Peggy had given him. Gave her a thumbs up when he was done. She nodded and led them around the machine gun nest.

The right-side hedgerow was close to a causeway. So close that it made Gabe a little bit nervous. If any trucks went down that road, the three of them would be clearly visible in the clearing behind the treeline that made up the back border of the estate. Gabe drew an approximate line on the map to represent the causeway. When it came time to assault this location, they'd have to take out that machine gun nest right away. If only so that they could use the cover of the treeline.

It didn't get any better once they made it to the start of the right-side hedgerow because of another machine gun nest that was dug in there. The third member of their scouting team was in the lead then, and he inched back to them to report that there was a shallow trench system along the line of the hedge. They hadn't been able to see it because they had thought it was the hedge.

Gabe invented his own symbol to represent the trench system as they sneaked past the second nest. Not far behind that machine gun nest was the turret of a heavy artillery gun. It was easy enough to see even if the team of Germans there hadn't decided to fire off a shell at that very moment. Peggy nodded to Gabe as he marked down the location. They saw a second long barrel across the lawn on the left-side hedgerow.

Gabe handed off the map to the third man of their team to take the lead. Clutching their shared pair of binoculars, Gabe took his time creeping along the hedgerow. There were a few snatches of German conversation as he went by. Their voices sounded creaky and aged. This place might be defended by a team of grandfathers. It reminded Gabe of the team in the pillbox on the beach that they'd first come on after the crash. He wasn't sure if it was better that they were old instead of just a bunch of teenagers fresh from Hitler Youth.

Regardless, Gabe added each voice and flared helmet he could see to the headcount of hostiles he was keeping.

He was just about level with the howitzer when he wedged himself into the hedge to scan the area with the binoculars. He saw that the hedge ended soon; they had nearly reached the front of the estate. Another machine gun nest was at the front of the hedge. There was nothing else obvious. The trench went all the way to a door in the back of the estate. For the sake of being thorough, Gabe scanned the building while he was this close.

It was a good thing that he did: In the upper window on the left side of the building, Gabe saw the tell-tale barrel of a long-range rifle. Gewehr 98, if he had to guess. A wry part of him thought that Sarge could probably shoot this guy without a scope from the meeting spot that their scouting party had just left. Howard Stark had made sure to impress upon all of them just how superior his equipment was when compared to typical German scopes and optics.  Gabe didn't doubt that Stark's wares were better, but he had seen Sarge make some amazing shots with just a M1. Hell, the unmodified Johnson rifle made some remarkable hits when the scope had been cracked. Not to mention the one shot on base in Italy that Sarge made in a crowded base with his Colt.

A good scope did not make a sniper.

Watching the building for a few minutes that felt excruciatingly long and tense didn't reveal much. Gabe saw a few movements inside the building, but it was impossible to tell if he was seeing the same person move past different windows. The sniper and the barrel of his rifle never moved.

There was some sort of sandbagged instalment outside on the left side of the estate building. Gabe couldn't tell what it was from his vantage point, and looking with the binoculars didn't reveal anything. It just looked like a mound of bags. There was no visible slot for the barrel of a weapon. Could have been for mortars, but it was hard to imagine any tube that could reach the beach from that position. Could have been a mortar team to defend the estate in case anyone came to take their position; that was what Gabe thought the very first machine gun nest was for.

Hopefully the other team that had gone down the left hedgerow would be able to tell what the sandbag defence was for. Gabe took a deep breath and made his way painfully slowly back down the hedge toward Peggy and the third man. Peggy held the hand-drawn map out to him, and Gabe marked down everything he'd seen. Pointed to the symbol he'd made for the sandbags and shrugged at Peggy. She nodded and indicated the circle and crosshairs Gabe had put on the box that represented the main building.

"Sharpshooter," Gabe mouthed to her.

A hard line appeared on Peggy's mouth. She folded up the map and led the way back again. It took longer than they'd planned to get back to the meeting spot with the team that had gone left. They had to go through the clearing behind the first machine gun nest that they'd found, and there was a cluster of trucks running down the causeway. They had to flatten themselves into the high grasses and hold their breath. Two more shells from the heavy guns at the estate raced over their heads while they were stuck there, hiding.

The other team was waiting for them. They handed over another handmade map to Peggy. She took it and folded it over quickly. Now wasn't the best place to consolidate their copies. On their way back to the rest of the squad, Gabe realised that the difference in Peggy's leadership and Cap's was in experience. Peggy was more used to typical military tactics and attitudes, and she accepted that people would be lost along the way. Every time that they went out to the field, she knew there would eventually be a cost to all of this. The bill would become due for Peggy. That was the difference. Cap hadn't lost anyone directly under his command yet. It was unacceptable to him, Gabe knew. Since there were only seven of them on the team, perhaps it seemed more realistic to him for all of them to make it through to the end.

Peggy knew casualties were inevitable. Just like Gabe and the rest of the guys knew. They knew it because they had all experienced it. All of them had lost someone relatively close to them in their companies before now. They'd all lived through that reality already. They knew better than to let themselves think that it couldn't happen again. Cap hadn't lived anything like that. God willing, he never would. But as the team was coming back into view, Gabe couldn't make himself actually believe that.

The plan was to pester Barnes into admitting that he'd slept with Private Lorraine, but the moment that Dugan had sat down in the grass after bidding Jones good luck with recon, he fell asleep. He didn't realise it at first, that he'd fallen asleep. It was Monty shaking his shoulder, looking all put upon and sour, telling him that Jonesy was back that woke him.

"The fuck you talkin' about? He just left!" Dugan spat out.

Monty frowned at him. "I suppose the passage of time is relative. You've been asleep."

"What? No." Never mind that he was feeling the crabbiness he usually did whenever he'd been abruptly woken up. "I don't feel like I've slept at all."

"Agent Carter is efficient."

Dugan made an indignant sound. Yeah, Peggy was pretty efficient, wasn't she? Too bad that her team wasn't just as efficient. They had even less supplies and material than they had.

"Where's Gabe at then?" Dugan said. There was a bit of an undignified struggle as he tried to sit up. "Shut up," he cut out at Jim, who was snorting under his breath at him.

"Still with Carter and Captain Rogers," said Monty. "They were consolidating their intelligence. I'm sure there will be a briefing soon."

"Everyone come back OK?" was his next automatic question.

Monty nodded. "Haven't heard anything to the contrary."

"Good."

"Hmm."

"Cap and Peggy take Jimmy with 'em?"

Frenchie nodded.

Jim added, "Told Monty to stay here and rest."

Dugan hummed. "Good choice."

"Funny that no one wants the input of a drowned man," Monty said dryly.

"It's probably for the best, man," Jim grumbled.

Dugan's canteen was an interesting enough distraction for a few minutes. The damn thing was nearly empty now. They needed to resupply. And sleep. Dum Dum wasn't sure how long they would be eating out of cans; it used to be the worst part about being on the offensive. No time to set up an efficient field kitchen. Look at him and his problems now!

Dugan cleared his throat and capped his canteen. "Were you guys just messing with me about Jimmy and Lorraine?"

Monty groaned and Jim was laughing again.

"In denial?" Jim said.

Dugan shook his head. "It's not denial! He would have told me! Or I would have heard about it. I talk, you know! Word gets around Great Dunmow like wildfire. None of you can deny that."

Frenchie was flicking through a German ration kit they'd taken from the comms tower on the beach. "Maybe they're both very discreet."

"No one on that base is discreet. Everyone is so happy to talk about everything." Dugan waved his hands around and said, "Which doesn't make sense since they do so much sketchy shit there!"

Monty said, "Yes, well, they don't have to keep secrets from each other. Just from other divisions."

"That just seems worse," Jim said.

Which was true. And it made their secret about Jimmy's seizures and the pills seem like a joke. Word was definitely going to get out. Maybe it wouldn't if they spent most of their time in the field, where none of those gossipy privates could eavesdrop on them. (Never mind that they'd run out of pills before long.) Because all those broads on base surely weren't just filing paperwork or operating the switchboards. They were whatever Peggy was. Agents. Spies. Capable of getting up to no good with the best of them.

Maybe Lorraine was a spy.

"Think about it, though. Everyone knows everything on that base. It's the only reason Cap and Peggy aren't official."

Frenchie and Monty exchanged a look.

"What," Dugan asked with trepidation. "What else don't I know?"

Frenchie laughed. "It's nothing. Now we are just teasing you."

"You assholes better be. If they're fuckin' engaged and no one told me, I'm going to be very upset."

Monty shook his head. "It's only friendly, as far as I've heard."

"Isn't it possible that they actually are just friends?" asked Jim.

The guys really got a good laugh out of that one. Grins were still lingering on their faces when Barnes came to collect them.

Before he could get a word out, Dugan said, "Just tell me straight if you've had sex with Lorraine."

Barnes shook his head and went to give Jim a hand up. "I'm not talking about this right now. C'mon, we have a briefing." He didn't wait for Jim to say anything once he was standing; just put himself in position to support Jim's side with the once-crushed ankle. Dugan heard him saying, "I owe you a few hours of being a crutch," as they walked away.

Dugan scrambled to his feet and pulled up Monty. They and Frenchie followed to the cluster of other soldiers gathered around Captain Rogers and Peggy.

Peggy went first. She handed out three copies of a map that someone had drawn on the blank pages of a field manual; probably once belonged to one of the soldiers on her team. Peggy described their target and the defences that they'd observed. She told them about the four machine gun nests (two on the right side, one of the left, and one in the back treeline), three heavy artillery guns that were their primary targets, at least one sniper in the main building, and another sandbag structure that was most likely for close proximity defences.

After that Cap stepped forward to say, "We're attacking in three phases."

Team 1 was the smallest group, and they were starting the assault. Peggy was Team 1 leader, and she got Jim and Monty on her team. They'd be taking out the machine gun nest in the back treeline. That needed to be cleared in order for Team 3 (Cap's team that included Gabe and Dugan) to get across to the right-side hedgerow. While Team 1 started the assault, Team 2 would start on the left side defences. Barnes was leading that team, and they wouldn't start until he took out the sniper. Team 1 was supposed to draw the sniper's attention and get him to give away his position (if he had moved since the recon team got back).

Dugan hoped he was a shit sniper and didn't hit anyone. Or that the idiot just hadn't moved so that Barnes could take him out all nice and easy. If this map was to be trusted, it would be an easy shot no matter which window the hostile sniper set up in. At this range, Jimmy would be shooting fish in a barrel.

Frenchie was assigned to Team 2 in case they needed to get creative taking out whatever was behind the sandbag defence. That guy really was the best one to have in case of something surprising. He just went right along with whatever he found. There was nothing that Frenchie could stumble upon that he didn't know how to neutralise.

Once they had all had a chance to ask questions and talk about weapons availability, they were released to prepare. They had less than two hours. The guys lingered together as Peggy's team dispersed to collect their shit. Captain Rogers went with them to introduce himself better to the men on Peggy's team that would be on Team 3 with him.

Dugan stretched his legs out and said, "So we deciding who gets to take first round of Stark's stimulants or what?"

"I was thinking the same," Monty said.

"I have no interest in that," Frenchie said quickly. "Don't worry about me."

Dugan nodded. They had all heard his opinions when they had first been told to pack the tablets somewhere waterproof and secure. The tablets weren't to be stored in the leg bag, and they were under a pretty stern order to not let them be claimed by any hostiles. The order sort of reminded Dugan of the ol' cyanide trick that HYDRA liked to pull.

"And Jimmy is out for sure," Dugan said.

"I think Jim and Monty are shoo-ins to take 'em," said Gabe. "They're dead on their feet. They need help the most to get through this."

Dugan nodded his agreement.

"And you," Gabe said.

"Me?" said Dugan.

"Yeah. You're completely gassed. Monty and Jim are in Peggy's team, and they're keeping their distance during most of this. You're in the worst shape of the guys that'll be in the close-combat assault teams."

Dugan shot back at Jones, "What about you? You're wiped, too. You've done everything that we have while carrying a machine gun. And you just did a scouting op none of us had to."

Gabe shrugged. "If I take one too, that would only leave Barnes and Jacques, and they're in the same assault team."

"So?"

Monty turned and called, "Agent Carter, can we get your input on something?"

Peggy made an amused but still curious face. Approaching them, she said, "You can ask."

Jim said, "How fucked are Stark's stims? Should we even be considering taking these things?"

She made a complicated face. "They are certainly effective at keeping soldiers alert," she said carefully.

"Yeah, but are we fucked?" Jim insisted.

It broke a grin on her face. "You're not the first people to take these stimulants, if that's what you're worried about. They were developed and tested on several different groups. Rest assured that whatever you've heard about German pilot's salt, Howard's version of it was much better tolerated. But they are essentially the same drug when you get down to the main chemistry." She directed a sharp look at Barnes. "You should not even consider it."

"No kidding," Sarge deadpanned back. "Already gave my share to Dum Dum."

"How long does it take to kick in?" Dugan asked.

Peggy shrugged. "If you're going to take it, I would recommend you do it now. It does take a bit for you to feel the effects."

They turned back to face each other.

"I'm skipping this round," Gabe resolved. "I can handle this op before I'm going to tap out."

"That's fine," Barnes said. "Then you're in the first group that sleeps after this."

The group nodded in agreement. The sober ones would sleep first. Who knew how long it would take to come down from this shit? Dugan, Monty, and Jim stood in a circle with the white tablets in their palms. They threw the tablets back, clinked their canteens together. Dugan used the last swallow of water in his canteen to wash it down.

It was a little exhilarating, taking a pill that he knew nothing about. Dugan had heard all sorts of horror stories about the stuff the Germans gave their men during the beginning of the war. It was how they were able to overrun entire countries so fast. True, those soldiers were driven into the ground by taking those tablets day after day until their objective was won. He'd heard they could stay alert for hours. A single pill was more effective than three cups of actual, real coffee (not the fake brown piss Dugan used to get back with the 107^th). Never mind that some of the guys became too alert. Paranoia was a possibility. Those soldiers became uncharacteristically violent, doing things they never would have even thought about when not under the influence.

Dugan's stomach did a little flop at the thought of attacking his friends. At least Rogers would be able to stop him.

"No going back now, boys," he said.

They shared nervous smiles.

The most immediate consequence of Howard's stims? The guys were talking a lot.  Jones was doing his best to keep Dugan from blurting out the most random things. The frequent shushing wasn't really helping them get into position for this assault. Steve sincerely hoped that Peggy wasn't having this same issue with the guys in her squad. Morita and Monty were both in pretty rough shape. Steve wouldn't be surprised to hear that either of them had decided now was the time to take the stim.

He wasn't so sure anyone else had, besides Dugan.

Steve had Team 3 lying prone in the grasses behind the treeline that the first machine gun nest was dug in. Peggy had already taken her team up to them. The assault would begin any moment.

"Almost sounds like the wind is whistling here," Dugan said in a stage whisper. "Do you hear the whistle? I've never heard something like that before. Weird."

"You gotta shut up, Dum Dum," Steve heard Jones say in an actual whisper.

Steve shook his head but stopped himself from saying anything. Pretty soon they'd be making all kinds of noise. If they could just hold out for two more minutes, that would be great. He swung his head in the direction of Team 2. If he didn't already know where Bucky was set up, Steve wouldn't have been able to find him. They'd improvised a ghillie suit of the long grasses from the field for him and the barrel of the rifle. From the look of things, he'd already set up the Johnson on a bipod and was ready. There wasn't any motion coming from the barely-there indentation in the grasses, so it looked like Bucky had eyes on target.

"Jesus Christ, is this just how life is for Captain America?"

Bang-bang-bang-bang!

The German 42s: Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

And then Bucky: Crack!  

Dugan: "God damn!"

From this distance, Steve was able to see something slide from an upper window of the estate. It didn't try to break its own fall into the back garden. Steve watched where he thought Bucky was. He counted his heart beats: Slow, steady, controlled. Things were going as they should.

A grenade detonated somewhere near Team 1 and the first machine gun. Bucky was up and running at a crouch toward his team in the left hedgerow. A beat later two explosions in quick succession.

Steve rose and took off into the treeline. Team 3 followed with at least one boisterous Boston-accented voice yelling, "Wahoo!"

A grenade that sounded like an Ally make detonated very close to Team 1's machine gun nest as Steve took Team 3 past. He was able to lock eyes with Monty, who gave him a euphoric grin. The machine gun on the left side hedgerow had already been taken out by the time Steve got Team 2 to their first nest. The left side's gun had been captured and was firing back toward the sandbag structure. Bucky must have led the team up to the long-range gun by then.

Unhooking the shield from his arm, Steve heaved it toward the barrel of the right-side machine gun. The barrel deformed from the impact, and it ricocheted into the face of the gun's main operator. The soldier feeding the belts had dropped down in the shallow trench just barely quick enough to avoid a split skull of his own.

Steve caught the shield at the same time that a volley of gunshots started from behind him. Team 3 lit that nest up. Steve stepped down into the trench, bringing down the edge of the shield on the head of the one body that tried to move. A team of two of his men would be stopping here to raid this nest of its supplies.

Without pausing, Steve ran down the trench toward the right side's heavy gun. By now the back garden was filled with shouting in both English and German. The rattle and pop of small arms and automatic weapons were constant.

Jones threw a German potato masher into the nest around the big gun. Steve adjusted his pace so that he dropped into their little defensive set-up right after the detonation. The bullets from side arms clanged off of his shield as he put his full strength behind a punch to the chest of a German soldier. Spinning, he put the shield up to the head of the next hostile and punched the inner side of the shield. If he wanted to dwell on it, he would have felt the way the skull yielded to the force of his fist. He threw a kick out to the third man. It made contact on his hip. The hostile staggered forward but a cluster of three bullets from Jones caught him in the chest. He fell.

"Thanks," Steve said. His breath just now beginning to pick up from the adrenaline.

"Glad I could help," Jones smiled.

"Eat shit, sour fucking Krauts!" came Dugan's voice. He was running down the trench behind Jones with two of Dernier's sticky bombs in his hands, the fuses already smoking.

Instinctively, Steve began to crouch; Jones was doing the same. But then Dugan slowed and threw the things at the heavy gun. One stuck near the middle of the barrel, but the second bomb missed. It sailed wide of the barrel. With a wet thump, it stuck itself to a pile of shells.

Fuck.

Steve turned, grabbed Jones and Dugan, jumped out of the trench and burst through the dense hedgerow. They landed in a heap with Steve on top. He tried to cover as much of their bodies with the shield as he could as the sticky bombs exploded. It was deafening. The bombs themselves were close, but the shells for the heavy gun went, too. Steve's blood felt like lightning in his veins, thin and quick. Was this the pure fear and adrenaline that enlisted men always talked about? When you could do nothing but cower until it was over?

"WAHOOOOO!"

As the smoke cleared, Steve lowered the shield and looked around. The hedge was on fire. Through the Captain America-shaped hole he'd punched through the hedge, Steve could see the artillery gun was certainly out of commission now. The barrel was blown off, completely shredded in the middle. It was still smoking. The whole nest was completely destroyed.

"OK?" Steve asked Jones a little breathlessly.

Jones was nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

"Good."

Dugan had already squirmed out from the bottom of the pile, and he was sitting up with a huge grin on his face. He looked elated when he caught Steve's eye.

"Didja see that? Fuck!" the corporal said.

They all scrambled to their feet, checking their equilibrium and starting to feel their fingers and toes again.

"Uh, Cap," said Jones.

"Huh?"

"You, uh, got a little something…" Jones trailed off gesturing to Steve's leg.

"Oh," Steve said. Two pieces of metal debris had wedged themselves into his thigh. A third must have also made contact but didn't get stuck, if the nearby gash meant anything. He hadn't felt a thing. He still didn't, not really. "Think I’m fine."

"Here," Jones said anyway. He had a bandage out already and was crouching to get a look at the wounds. "Not too deep, I don't think."

"Can you just pull them out?" Steve said. "We have to keep moving."

"Not sure. I don't want to pull anything out if it's blocking a major vessel…"

Steve gripped one of the pieces and yanked it out of his leg. Now he felt the pain. It burned.

"OK," Jones said. "You want me to get the second one or what?"

"Go ahead."

The second piece came out much gentler. Jones dumped a few sulfa packets on the gashes and then covered the whole thing with a bandage. Pressure was firm but not constricting. It was already starting to saturate.

"Can you walk on that?" Jones asked doubtfully.

"Sure," Steve said. He forced himself to walk normally and get back on the combat side of the hedgerow.

A much more controlled detonation came from the left side of the garden. Team 2 had eliminated the second artillery gun. A lot less fanfare than Steve's side had done.

"I'll take lead!" Dugan said. He didn't wait for anyone to disagree, just went charging ahead with his Thompson ready to go.

Steve drew his sidearm and followed with Jones brining up the rear. Dugan was quick. He moved a lot lighter than Steve remembered him moving. And he swung the Thompson up to spray rounds into hostiles hiding in the trench system with ease. He hardly paused. Their presence didn't seem to stop him or surprise him.

When the three of them came up to the last machine gun at the front of the estate, Dugan was still leading. He was quick with two shots to take out the main gunner. Steve moved to shield him when the belt-feeder took over operation of the gun. The shield deflected the 42's rounds at an angle toward the main building. It gave Jones an opening to toss their last grenade into the nest. Steve moved the three of them away as the detonation overcame the rattling of automatic fire.

Steve's ears popped.

"Let's get this thing going," Dugan said after jumping down into the nest on top of the bodies. He took up the 42 and started to re-arrange it on another side of the nest. Jones went down to help.

Steve was about to follow when a new sound entered the fray: A fwooosh of fire. Literal fire.

"Holy shit!" Dugan shouted.

"They have a flamethrower in there?" Jones said incredulously.

"A fire cannon, more like," Steve said.

That was no mere flamethrower. It was huge. No way that could have been mounted on any one man's back. The massive sandbag tower had blasted a hole in its own defences to spit fire into the left side hedgerow.

The large artillery gun behind the sandbagged fire cannon burst apart at the base of the barrel. Mere heartbeats later, one of theirs went sprinting out into the middle of the garden. The fire cannon ignited and chased them across the grass. When he was more than halfway across the garden, Steve recognised the runner as Bucky. Should have known sooner with the grass hanging off of his jacket. Turning to face the fire cannon square, Bucky levelled a sidearm and cracked off just one round at the cannon. Then he turned to run.

Enhanced hearing heard a gentle snick.

And then the whole area went up in a massive, quickly-spreading fireball. Steve was up and out of the nest without needing to think about it. He met Bucky a few metres from the right-side hedgerow – cripes, he was moving fast – and put the shield up to defend against the heat and flames that were reaching for them. Bucky couldn't stop himself; he crashed right into the dense hedgerow. Comically, he bounced off of it. Steve hooked his non-shield arm around one of Bucky's and slung him about three metres into the machine gun nest. Not a second later, Steve was dropping down in the nest, too. Shield up.

The rush of heat was suffocating. It had to have burnt all of the oxygen out of the air. But it was over almost as quickly as it came.

"Incredible shot, Sarge, really." Dugan was the first one to start talking, of course.

There was a lot of gasping for breath and groans.

Bucky panted, "Thanks. One of my better ones. Frenchie's idea though." Steve felt a tap on his shoulder. "Thanks for tossing me like a ragdoll, Steve. Really did a number on my dignity right then."

"You could do with a little humbling, Sarge," Dugan laughed. Pretty impressive he could do that considering he was stuck at the bottom of their pile of soldiers again.

"You can get off me now. I gotta get back to my squad." Bucky was already trying to extract himself.

The four of them untangled themselves from the cramped machine gun nest.

"See you in a bit," Bucky said, already jogging back across the garden to the left side hedgerow.

At the same time, Peggy was approaching with the back end of Team 2 and her own team.

"Alright?" she said.

"Yeah, we're fine," Steve reported. "How'd you guys do?"

"Well. Maybe two wounded. Nothing fatal, it looks like."

That was a relief. Morita and Monty were waving contently from behind Peggy.

"All the guns have been neutralised," Steve said dully. "They had a massive flamethrower."

The look on Peggy's face would have been hilarious if the adrenaline weren't wearing off and the wound in Steve's leg wasn't starting to make itself known.

Peggy said, "I saw. Quite the weapon. Howard and Colonel Phillips will be looking forward to hearing about it. It'll be the first we've seen of such a thing."

"Might not want to put the fuel line so close next time," Dugan laughed. "Very susceptible to blowing up from just one gunshot."

"Every weapon has its weaknesses," she told him.

"Hey, we'll go clear out the building, OK?" Morita said. He was walking more or less normally. No more limping.

Steve narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"Me and Monty got it."

"Gabe and I are coming," Dugan volunteered.

The word to stop them was on the tip of Steve's tongue, but he didn't. See, he told Peggy with a tilt of his head and a raised eyebrow. I'm capable of learning.

I see, her own expression replied. Well done, you.

Steve's eyes rolled on their own accord.

"What happened to your leg?" she asked.

"Debris from an explosion. I think it's already healing."

"Come on, sit down. I'll check. You're already bleeding through."

They went back down the trench system a little way to escape any active fights that might come from the main building.

Peggy was saying after they'd sat down and removed the soiled bandage, "You typically heal outside first. And your blood with replenish itself relatively quickly, if you're well fed and hydrated. The muscle should take care of itself in a few days. I'm afraid it will still hurt."

After she cleaned and retied a new, clean bandage to his leg, she said, "I know you won't exactly be able to rest it given the circumstances, but try. Something like this shouldn't stop you, but that doesn’t mean you can't let yourself recover."

Steve couldn't help smiling at her. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

They regrouped then. There was no one left alive at the estate. No Germans anyway. Peggy took Steve's report while they sat waiting for the others to finish clearing the building. Then she got a report from Bucky with the rest of Steve's team sitting with them. Their 'victory cigarette' tradition was carried on once more. The whole time Bucky was making annoyed faces at Steve's wound; he got cranky when morphine was refused. Steve's metabolism was beyond the help of regular old morphine, but that fact didn't assuage Bucky one bit.

They collected whatever useful weapons and supplies they could find. Canteens were refilled. Aid kits were taken off of the German bodies. Steve agreed to stay with Peggy's unit and report to the beach. At the very least, they could get a proper resupply there. The guys could sleep for a while. Steve could maybe give his leg wound a chance to heal up quicker. They could radio Phillips from there and get some intelligence. They could at least check in with him and report that they were way outside their mission parameters.

So that was what they did.

The walk to the beach wasn't too long, but it felt it for Steve. Especially when he knew what sort of strain his team was under. It felt irresponsible, having them be on and alert like this still. Monty and Dugan were up at the front of the column running point on the march to the beach. They said they weren't tired. Weren't hungry, didn't need any water. Bucky and Morita were right behind them. Morita wasn't limping anymore, but Bucky was walking at his side like a crutch anyway. Dernier and Jones were lagging behind them, half asleep even as they marched.

None of them complained, but Steve didn't like it. They wouldn't have complained even if they were all at their wit's ends. It bolstered Steve, made him feel proud even. But still. He wanted nothing more than for them to all sleep and recover.

When they reported to the beach, Steve claimed an unused canvas tent. Dugan and Monty put it up while everyone else sat around shouting unhelpful advice. Once they were all tucked away inside the tent, Steve went to find Peggy and radio Phillips. On the one hand, the colonel wasn't too furious with Steve for deliberately going in the opposite direction of his mission. In fact, he seemed to think this was convenient.

"Change of plan," his crackly voice said over the radio. "You take your men and link up with the VIII Army Corps right away. You're going to go claim us a deep-water port at Cherbourg, Captain. There should be someone on the beach that can put you in touch with the Major General."

"I'd be happy to, sir," Steve told the radio, "in at least two days."

"You don't decide that, Rogers."

"The men are exhausted. They need to sleep and resupply."

"You have one night. Men are dying out here, Rogers. You fought so hard to be in the field. Time to live up to the advertisement. Your men will be fine. They know how to take care of themselves. Move out for the front line to Cherbourg tomorrow."

The sympathy in Peggy's eyes told him that it had been decided. One night. It wasn't nearly enough.

Chapter Text

Dugan didn't quite understand why everyone else was so tired and moody. Well, maybe he did. He understood why. But he did not share the feeling. Things didn't look so doom-and-gloom to him. Not right now. He didn't deflate or sag his shoulders after Rogers informed them that they'd only be staying with the Army regiments on the beach for the night. They had to move out for Cherbourg by mid-morning tomorrow.

It did suck, but Dugan didn't think they needed to look so sad about it. They'd manage. They had always managed so far. Nothing had stopped them yet. Besides, they had known it would be rough after the landings. The brass hadn't been too sure how long they'd be in the field after the invasion. They'd been told to expect hard times. Hell, that was literally what Stark's stims were for.

"I think we're in trouble," Gabe said after the captain had left them alone to digest the news of their one night of rest.

Frenchie was nodding solemnly.

Sarge was rubbing his eyes like he was the most put-upon person on the planet. Dugan nudged him with an elbow. "Stop being so dramatic, Jimmy. We'll figure it out."

"We've managed to do that every time so far," Jim said. He was frowning in an amused sort of way at his boot, trying to figure out how to untie it.

Dugan grinned and pointed to the radioman. "Exactly what I was thinking."

But Sarge was still shaking his head. Dugan's stimulated hearing heard him mutter, "Powerful stuff you guys are on."

"Just establish a new rotating sleep schedule," Monty suggested. "It'll work itself out in a few days."

Frenchie sat up and took over undoing Jim Morita's bootlaces for him. He damn near almost unlaced the whole thing to get it off. The sock was a little less difficult – but, whew! The smell. Three-day old sea salted foot.

"Holy fuck, that's a ham!" Dugan's voice boomed. The words seemed to already be spoken before he had properly thought them.

Jim's ankle was fucking huge. And it was all sorts of colours that it probably shouldn't have been. For some reason, Jim was cracking up about it.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Dugan asked. There was a smile in his words; Jim's laughter was infecting him. Dugan didn't mean to be laughing at his teammate – nay, friend – when he was so obviously wounded.

"Jesus," Barnes breathed.

"Yeah, a little," Jim answered. "I mean, it used to. Not bothering me too much anymore."

One of Monty's fingers poked at the swollen flesh. "Morbid," he decided.

"That is the leg that was crushed in Prague?" Frenchie asked in the way that meant he already knew what the answer was. He took up the main space in front of Jim's leg. He flexed it this way and that gingerly. "Pain?"

Jim was shaking his head. "Nah, I just said it doesn't hurt anymore."

Barnes scrubbed his hands up and down his face. Made his hair stand up weird in the front. Dirt, sweat, and French sand apparently made for stronger styling grease than Brylcreem.  He made his duck face at Jim. "You don't get up from this spot until they tell us it's time to move out."

"Huh?" Jim said. "No, Sarge, really. It's fine. I don't feel it."

"I don't care." He crouched down beside Frenchie and watched him bend and manipulate Jim's ankle.

Dugan felt himself staring in fascination. The colours were mesmerising. The way they went from flesh-tone all the way to a bluish-violet at the ankle and then softening to an urgent pink at the toes. How come everyone's nails sat so differently in the skin? Dugan thought about all the fingers and toes that he had seen in his lifetime. They never looked the same. The way everyone's nails sat in the flesh seemed wrong compared to his own. Once, when he was running a job for his Uncle Micky, before the war, Dugan had plucked all the fingernails out of a man's left hand. He wondered if it would have been possible to plant those nails back into the flesh the way that looked right to him.

"OK," Barnes said. He was standing up. Dugan's focus narrowed back to the present. "Gabe, Frenchie, Jim: you're all staying here and resting. Give it maybe six hours to sleep. More if we can swing it."

"Maybe just four," Frenchie said.

But their sergeant wasn't having it. "I want you guys to have as much of a normal night as we can get. Monty, you're going to go find their supplies and replenish our weapons. Steve should already be over there to claim something good for us. We're not taking this German shit with us to Cherbourg. British, American, I don't care. We need rifles, ammunition, grenades, anything. If you can get a mortar tube, we'll take it. Don't be picky, but get something better than what we've got."

Monty nodded. Dugan hoped that he remembered all that. It had been hard for him to keep up with.

"You're with me, Dum Dum," Barnes said. "We're getting food, water, and med kits."

Food was easy enough to remember.

"Yes, sir," he said with enthusiasm as he lumbered to his feet and tossed the canteens into a bag. Too much energy was swirling inside him. It had been kind of difficult to just sit there in the tent. What a relief to be out. He followed his sergeant happily, boots sinking in the soft ground.

"Think they have a kitchen?" Dugan said.

"Unlikely," Barnes said. "But maybe."

"Something hot would be awesome." His stomach hadn't been on speaking terms with his thoughts lately. There wasn't the familiar grumble of hunger inside of Dugan when they were in the field. He supposed talking about eating was more of a habit than anything based on his metabolic needs. "And a good drink…"

Barnes gave him a weird look over his shoulder. "You're not exactly in a position to be drinking anything but water right now."

"Huh? Why? Whaddaya mea—oh! Right, the stims. See, I forgot I took 'em. Gotta be worn off by now."

Sarge snorted. "They haven't."

Dugan laughed and jogged a few steps to walk beside his sergeant. "Really? It's hard to tell."

"I'm sure."

"Weird. I've never not been able to tell when I'm not sober. I feel perfectly fine. I feel good."

"And that isn't a dead giveaway?"

Dugan playfully shoved Barnes's shoulder and laughed. "Aw, don't be such a drag, Sarge. It's not all bad. We still got each other. Fuck, we're Cap's gang. We're his howling commandos! We're gonna go down in fucking history as heroes, Sarge. You got that to look forward to, being a legend."

"What does being a legend get me?" Barnes adjusted their path so that they were now walking on the sands of the beach and heading in the direction of several pallets of canvas-covered supplies. There were a bunch of regular shmegular GI's buzzing around the pallets.

In the fading light, it was a lot harder to see all the swaths of sand that had been stained red; spills on a delicate rug. You couldn't see the strips of uniform or innards mixed into the sand. Didn't see the piles of the dead, the alarming size of it. The number of them. The blankets pulled over faces that had been lucky enough to not have been blown off.

"What doesn't being a legend get you?" Dugan crowed. "Any and all the women you could want, first of all. Free meals for life, probably. I don't know, a fancy fucking car? It gets you all the bullshit Cap's got."

Barnes lit a cigarette and blew the smoke straight up. "Wow. What a life."

"What, you already got all that?" Dugan laughed. "What else could you want, if not all that shit? A time machine?" He laughed again and stumbled when he stepped into a soft, sandy hole. "A machine to erase Krausberg from your memory? Ha! Maybe Howard fuckin' Stark can work on that next! Imagine how messed up people like the ones in charge of the S.S.R. could use something like that."

Sarge stopped abruptly. Dugan didn't notice at first and had kept walking a few steps. He turned back when he realised. The glow of the end of his cigarette gave away his location in the dimming light.

"What? You alright?" said Dugan. "Was that a shitty thing to say? Sorry, Jimmy, I know that you don't like talkin' about all that." He went back for his sergeant and slung an arm around him. Pulled him along so they were back on track for the supply area. "Hey, sorry I brought it up. Forget I said anything."

"It's fine." Sarge took a drag on his cigarette all desperate-like.

It probably wasn't, but it would be. Dugan knew it would. It would work out in the end. It always did. It had so far. What good was it to dwell on the bad shit? It was over.

Dugan shook Barnes's shoulder. "Right, of course. You're well on your way." He smiled because he could really feel that it was fine. "I’m glad you're here, Jimmy. I mean, you're different from when we met. But I still like ya. You're tough in a nice way. If that makes sense. You're good people, Jimmy, even after all the bullshit. You don't let it make you all fuckin' mean and sour."

"There's still time for that," Barnes mumbled.

Dugan laughed. "Yeah, I guess so. But I can't see it happening to you. At McCoy, you were just so fuckin' nice. It was so annoying. I didn't get you at first. Couldn't figure out your angle for being so kind to people you didn't know and why the fuck you were wasting your weekend passes staying on base teaching me to read when you could have been off fuckin' any dame in town."

"Life's more than fuckin' dames you've never met, Dum Dum."

He threw his head back and barked, "That's exactly what I mean! Who the fuck says that? God, I thought you were so fucking stupid when I met you, Jimmy. What a stupid idiot! You spent so much time helping our useless asses only to get nothing in return. I just didn't get it. Nobody did stuff like that where I come from without wanting something in return. Without wanting you to be in their debt. I didn't trust your stupid ass for the longest time."

"I remember."

"And it turned out that you were just a goddamn good person!"

Barnes's shoulders shrugged under Dugan's arm. "That's one point of view."

"Ya know, I got annoyed because I thought people were taking advantage of you. Once I stopped thinking you were pulling an act to fuck me over."

"That so?"

More laughter bubbled up out of Dugan. He felt like some broad confessing jealousy to her sleazy boyfriend. "Yeah, ha. Or maybe I just wanted something to defend. You know, my past being what it was. You were all nice and dumb, but you're my superior at the same time. Instinct to bully people for you kicked in."

"You're not a bully, Dum Dum," Barnes said through a puff of smoke. "You're just…"

"Protective?"

Sarge smiled out the side of his face in an unhappy way. "I don't need protecting."

"I'll believe that when the Red Skull and Arnim fucking Zola are dead and their bodies burned and salted."

Sarge went a little rigid and then walked out from under Dugan's arm. They'd reached the pallets of supplies anyway. It was distraction enough. They had all the good rations. Dugan was picky about which ones he took. The GIs running the supplies were a little stingy about it, but, between Dugan and Sarge, they had some leverage. They were even able to swing a handful of chocolate bars and extra cigarettes by telling some bullshitted stories about teaming with Captain America.

Dugan mouthed the word "legend" to Barnes while this exchanged happened, and he shook his head while fighting a smile.

They left the supply dump with directions on the best place to fill up canteens. Turned out that it was the same place as where they would get refilled aid kits. The Army has set up an aid station in some of the captured German defensive positions. Pretty smart considering that artillery had been raining down on them until recently.

Sarge's jaw clenched and his posture was all stiff while they were at the aid station. Dugan went inside to refill the canteens while Barnes stayed out back to get what they needed from the excess supply crates. Neither of them even needed to say anything. They just did it; he knew that being in an aid station was still hell for Barnes. Dugan wasn't going to make the guy ask.

Being among all the moaning and dying soldiers didn't bother Dugan that much, though. That was the funny thing. Sure, it smelled like death and there weren't enough arms and legs and eyeballs for the number of bodies in there. There was crying, moaning. Some bedpans hadn't been dumped yet. But it didn't sting as hard as it used to for Dugan. Usually being in a field aid station like this made him quiet and unsure of himself. He never knew what to say. And he could all too easily picture his friends and teammates in the places of these dying, miserable bastards. (The memory of Barnes on one of those cots after Krausberg – how he looked picked over with nothing left to offer, alternating between overwhelming anxiety and profound exhaustion – was all too easy to remember.)

Dugan felt protected from the misery of the aid station now though. Impervious. Maybe he was becoming jaded. Used to it.

Whatever the reason, he wasn't upset that he wasn't upset by death and dying. Made getting along with filling up the canteens that much easier.

They brought everything back to their tent, sharing a cigarette the whole way. Frenchie and Gabe were stone cold asleep when they got back. Rogers and Monty were nowhere to be found. Jim was still awake. There was a look of relief on his face when Dugan and Barnes entered.

"Christ, I'm glad you're back," he said.

Barnes made his disapproving duck face and gestured severely to the two guys that were asleep.

Waving a dismissive hand, Jim said, "Believe me, they're both completely out. I won't wake them up. Been bored as shit just waiting here."

"Can't sleep?" Dugan said.

"No. Obviously. Stims aren't any joke. Fuck, we should just take half tablets next time."

Barnes threw down the supplies he was carrying and tossed Jim a B-unit from one of the Type C rations they'd taken. Not great, but at least it wasn't that cheese in a tube that the German rations had. American rations weren't always good, but they were at least familiar. A guy knew when to expect something awful with the homeland's food. He could read the labels.

Barnes said, "Eat that and see if it calms you down any."

"I doubt it."

"Do it anyway."

Jim obliged, but he grumbled about having Stark make them something that could counteract the stims. Dugan thought that it might not be a bad idea.

A M-unit was pressed into Dugan's hands by Barnes. "Same goes for you. Eat to see if it helps."

"Not hungry."

"Did I ask you if you were hungry?" Barnes said. "Just do it."

He got up and left the tent. Automatically, Dugan followed. Jim threw complaints at them as they left. Didn't want to be left by himself. Too bad. Dugan followed his sergeant down the muddied path from their tent to the spot where stone and grass turned into sand. They both sat. Dugan worked his M-unit opened and Barnes lit another cigarette.

Dugan held up the can after they'd sat in silence for a little while. Sounds of the ocean were a little unnerving if you listened too long. "Want some?"

Barnes shook his head. "No," he said softly. "Thank you."

Waves unfurled between them.

"Rogers said you don't eat when you're worried about something."

A sneer crested Barnes's face for a second. "Yeah? When did he say that?"

"Prague," Dugan said. He ate from the tin. Mmm, American canned meat.

"Prague," Barnes repeated, nodding his head slowly.

"Are you worried about something?"

Good God, the look Barnes gave Dugan just then. It sat there, frozen on his face for a few moments before it completely broke, busted up by both of them laughing their asses off.

When he had enough air to speak, Dugan panted, "OK, that was a stupid question."

They talked shit like the old days – the 107^th days – for a long time. Dugan ate his way through almost an entire C-ration: breakfast, dinner, and supper. It was funny that the more that he ate, the more he realised that he was really, very hungry. It started a chain reaction, eating that M-unit. As the hunger came on, so too did the heaviness in his limbs. Barnes chain-smoked for a little while before cutting himself off and drinking water instead. With a little cajoling, Dugan got him to eat the crackers out of the ration kit.

"Nearly time," Barnes said after consulting a watch.

"Shift change already?" By now, Dugan could feel the sleepiness. He could feel that he'd overrun his usual tolerance by a mile. By several miles. Those Keep Up with Cap pills really did work. But, fuck, they came at a cost. If the recovery time from one of those pills was going to be too much, it might not even be worth taking them, Dugan thought.

Barnes stood up shook the sand off his trousers. He offered a hand up to Dugan, who accepted.

"Hey," Dugan said once he'd regained his footing. "Take one of yours."

Barnes made a face.

"C'mon, you gotta make sure you actually sleep during the one good night that we've got. Who knows when the next one will be?"

"Yeah. Alright." So he fished out one of the tablets that Peggy had stolen for him – already broken into halves – and was about to swallow it down with a swig from the canteen.

Seizing the opportunity, Dugan said, "So, you and Lorraine?"

Barnes rolled his eyes. He was saved from having to respond; a voice cut through the air: "How long are you trying to stay up?" The captain's voice, loud and clear, from much too close.

Sarge looked like he just shat a brick. Panic in his eyes when they met Dugan's. The two of them turned in the captain's direction. He was approaching with Monty at his side; the major was making his own unique face at them. A step behind Rogers's field of view, Monty was mouthing: Stim! He thinks it's a stimulant!

Quick as a whip, Barnes said casually, "About to find out. And how long do you plan on staying awake?"

Barnes turned and slapped Dugan on the shoulder, gesturing to the path back to the tent. That was his cue to go, he guessed. Monty caught his eye and tipped his head in the same direction.

"Go get some sleep," Barnes said to the two of them. "I'll be right there."

So Dugan did what his sergeant said. But not before asking with just a look, You good? Gonna be able to handle this?

The set of Sarge's mouth and the angle of his chin confirmed, I got this.

Dugan knew that Sergeant and Captain watched him and Monty walk back to the tent. His hearing was his own again though. He couldn't hear what the two of them were murmuring to each other. Nestled down among his fellows, Dugan meant to wait up for his sergeant. But as soon as he let his head settle down, he was asleep.

It was hot and humid in this part of the country. Not ideal in Jacques's opinion. A persistent buzz of insects escorted them through the fields of tall grasses and wildflowers, edges marked by hedges or dense lines of trees. From one point of view, it might have been a very pretty and serene setting. One simply had to look out for landmines; it made tip-toeing through the tulips a little more tense.

Jacques had an eye for this sort of thing though. He knew what to look out for. Was familiar with the methods and techniques of the Wehrmacht. They were smart about a lot of things, but they were not without faults. True, the little wooden mines could evade the metal detectors. But Jacques knew what the camouflage over them looked like. Steve had Jacques run point with a group of GIs and help identify the traps. Jim Morita radioed the locations back to the nearest Army captain. Or Tim and Gabriel marked up a map to send back to the Army commanders.

It was nice to have the company of such a large group of soldiers on their walk across the peninsula. Just the seven of them couldn't clear this large of an area and capture a port city the size of Cherbourg. While they weren't formally attached to any of the Army Divisions, they were more than willing to work with them along the way. Like pointing out to them where landmines were so they could secure and defend hard-won ground like Carentan. 

"Be nice if we didn't always have to be at the front," Gabriel said a day into their mission. He looked longingly toward the rumble of Sherman tanks behind them. "We could use a ride."

They could. Never mind that those tanks were mostly useless so far. They got stuck in the hedgerows.

Jim was getting a rotten deal. Every step must have been pain for him. Jacques, Gabriel, and the sergeant had collaborated on a sort of brace for Jim's ankle. It had stiff supports on either side held together with adjustable leather straps. It fit inside the radioman's boot as long as his ankle wasn't already too swollen to fit.

Steve had suggested taking a partial dose of morphine to help with the discomfort. Jim had refused though. Jacques was sure he didn't want to feel that he was slowing the team down any more than he had to. Morphine might have been relatively safer to take than the military stimulants, but the two options had opposite effects in terms of vigilance. Privately, Jacques thought that the captain would have welcomed any excuse to allow the team to move slowly.

(Everyone was very impressed with how quickly Captain America's flesh wound had seemed to have healed. It did not slow his step at all during their hedge battles.)

For the first three days, they did move rather slowly. It was slow going anyway with the landmines and the stubborn pockets of resistance. The Germans in this area liked to spring up out of the hedges and fields. So slow the team may have been moving, but it was not leisurely. Alertness was required at all times. Anxious sweat clung to their field clothes. It dripped down the lines of their spines. The tension wore on them. After marching through scenic fields where one wrong could step could part a soul from its body, they dug out foxholes with entrenching tools lifted from men who'd perished on the beach. Settled in to these damp spaces, packed closely together. They took turns sleeping in four-hour shifts that hardly ever reached four hours. Enemy contact was usually had. Or nearby fighting woke them. Or a mosquito bite on the ass itched too much.  

More stimulants were taken.

Jacques always refused. He'd seen first-hand the influence of those types of substances. Saw it a lifetime ago, when this was still his country. When the Wehrmacht first invaded, they took their little pills. They got incredible energy and focus. They forgot the consequences of what they were doing. They forgot their humanity for hours at a time. They didn't remember what they'd done after. Or maybe they did, and that was why they always needed to take another pill and another and another. More, until their focus could sharpen no more – it cracked under the increasing demand. They saw ghosts, became monsters. They saw only one escape, and often they took it.

It was a dangerous game, taking drugs provided by the military. Jacques preferred not to gamble. He was not a real soldier, after all. He had motivations that would not be tamped out by the mundane cruelty of war.

But he was careful not to pass judgement on his teammates. Jacques did not think less of them. Did not think them weak for needing help keeping up. For needing a few hours with blinders on to get through. This wasn't a flaw of theirs. Jacques understood. The others did not have the same experiences of this war, nor did they have the same needs to keep going in it. They hadn't seen what Jacques had seen. They hadn't lived what Barnes had lived. Their bodies did not function as Captain America's body functioned.

And that did not make them less-than. It made them human. As a fellow human, Jacques accepted that the best he could do was not let the others forget their humanity while they did what they needed to get through this.

Navigating through the mined wildflower fields didn't always end with a nice relaxing house full of welcoming French citizens. There was almost always a small town or village with dug-in Axis defences. If they wanted to sleep in something other than a hole in the ground, they had to fight for it. A day of bloody and relentless house-to-house battle ensued. Squads of regular Army soldiers were put under Captain Rogers's command for these assaults. The difference in training and preparedness was striking between these soldiers and Jacques's own specialty team.

The constant explosive concussions, the pop of rifles, shouting, screaming (which was not the same thing as shouting), running on blistered feet inside slippery boots, and taking cover behind what remained of the felled bakery's façade. Hands automatically reaching for weapons whenever an unanticipated sound reached them. Poking heads up over stones, ducking when machine gun fire locked on the tiniest of targets. Patching up the bloody wounds of a soldier who was hardly old enough to be called a man, a soldier whose only common language with Jacques was fear. The gasping for breath. The new sweat soaking into the clothing that had already been drenched the day before. Dirt, ashes, another's blood – all of it embedded under his fingernails. Nothing but stagnant water, salty canned food, and insect bites to put them all to bed. With all the adrenaline burned out of their bodies by then, sleep came easily.

Even for the stimulated ones. (But it didn't stay for long.)

Some of the kids under Steve's command died during these house-to-house assaults. James – Falsworth or Barnes – usually spoke comfortingly to him about it when the fighting died down. All of them could see how the captain struggled with it. Could see the resignation in his posture when a general or major transferred him command of one of their companies. If he complained, Jacques never heard it. It was more likely that the captain took it as a challenge to not let anyone die the next time.

They walked. They sweated. Their feet blistered. Their socks rubbed down to naught but a few brave threads. Mines detonated, spitting grasses and damp earth into their faces if they were lucky. Blood and gore if they were unlucky enough to be standing near another person. They smoked. They walked some more. They ate from cans, passing back and forth those which one liked least but another tolerated. They let each other doze on their shoulders. They ran through crumbling villages, dodging machine gun fire and popping grenades. They fled from toppled buildings. Stormed the remains.

They gathered the identities of their dead. They looted the supplies of the enemies. Shaking down corpses was coming easy to Tim. He took watches and rings off of a few Wehrmacht bodies that were still drawing shallow breath. One hostile had his innards in his lap but found the will to watch Tim pull the gold wedding band off of a comrade and spit out a curse.

Tim shot him at point blank range between the eyes.

"They're just kids," Gabriel said one evening after they'd forced the Germans out of a village.

Jacques looked at the youth clinging to the cheeks of the deceased soldier at Gabriel's feet.

"Or they are elderly," Jacques told him.

Soft, wounded eyes met Jacques's.

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Their main fight is on the other front. The men of fighting age and health are sent to face the Red Army."

Gabriel didn't take the stimulants as much as the others. He said that it made his heart ache. In two days, when they came up on the next town that needed to be liberated, Jacques saw Gabriel take his half tablet of stimulant. At various times during their approach to this town, Jim, Tim, and Falsworth took some as well.

The captain led the assault on this new town, as always. It was the largest one that they'd come across to date. Tim and Jacques went with him down the main strip of town. Jacques tossed grenades and TNT into places with the most chaotic potential. It was just as well that his role would take more time to complete. He wasn't able to keep the captain's pace. Tim couldn't either, but he moved incredibly fast for a man of his size. He was able to keep up that intensity for most of the assault.

There was a sticky bit where Jacques and Falsworth were attempting to disable a heavy gun when an enemy mortar detonated nearby. Steve was there in a moment, deflecting the worst of it with his shield. Shrapnel didn't claim any of them this time. But machine gun fire had followed the mortar, chasing them back behind the nearest shelter. The captain took a few grazes and one good through-and-through to the lower leg.

"Shall we dress that?" Falsworth asked.

"Not now," was the response. No concern or pain evident in the captain's voice. The more familiar rattle of a Browning started up then. "Let's keep moving."

Steve vaulted over their stone wall shelter to continue the assault under friendly cover. Jacques and Falsworth followed, but they didn't get far. Sergeant Barnes and Gabriel were coming down the lane that intersected with the still-active heavy gun. It struck Jacques for perhaps the twentieth time how hard it was to believe that Barnes didn't participate in the stimulant-taking. He was faster than Gabriel. He was several metres ahead already, and the lead was growing as they approach the gun.

Barnes let the M1 fall away from his hands in favour of his Colt once he got close. Steve unhooked his shield from his arm and lofted it to Barnes in one fluid motion. Barnes caught it and turned to deflect the same enemy machine gun fire that had just chased Jacques and Falsworth away from the heavy gun and toward a window on the second storey of a nearby building. At the same time, their captain had launched himself into the fireteam manning the heavy gun. The team was neutralised in short order.

A body slid from that upper window. The shield zinged back toward the captain, who used it to deform the barrel of the heavy gun. Barnes kept running down a different lane. When Gabriel was passing Jacques and Falsworth – both of them standing a bit foolishly in the open with their mouths slightly open – he caught their eyes and shrugged.

"Wahoo?" he shouted.

Wahoo, indeed.

A team of GIs finally caught up with them.

"Let's take the mill," Steve said.

And so on.

After the fighting, Jacques dressed the captain's wounds. It had already started to heal by the time it was cleaned up. Super-human abilities did not include pain tolerance it seemed. It may not pain him for as long as it would anyone else, but it did still cause pain. The seven of them crowded together in the ground floor of a building that once housed a café. The machines were no longer functioning but, miraculously, the scent of coffee lingered in the walls.

It was quiet as the others were coming down off of the stimulants. The hangover from such prolonged hyperfocus left them looking undead. Jacques helped Barnes cajole them into eating; that usually helped them sleep and remind them that their bodies had basic needs that could not be neglected. Jacques tried to read from a book that he'd found on a collapsed bookshelf in the upper apartment, but he was distracted by a conversation Captain and Sergeant seemed to be having exclusively with gestures and exaggerated facial expressions. Barnes mouthed words along with the gestures. Steve didn't.

They knew a sign language. How hadn't Jacques noticed before now?

His English wasn't good enough to be able to read Barnes's lips. But one didn't really need to know the words to understand that it was friendly, familiar talk. They smiled as they signed, tried to mute laughter. Eyes rolled; shoulders shrugged dramatically. They shook their heads in response to what the other signed affectionately. The end of the conversation was also easy to understand. The captain flipped Barnes the bird and let himself drop flat on to his back with a dull fwump.

Jacques felt his eyebrows climb up his forehead and an amused smile tug at the corners of his lips. He looked over to Barnes, who was smirking and looking rather satisfied to have won that chess match.

After several minutes of silence, during which the captain's breathing evened out to something at rest, Barnes said lowly, "Go ahead and sleep, Frenchie. I'll take watch."

"I think it's your night," he replied. Inclined his head and tossed a pointed gaze at the pocket that housed the sergeant's medication.

Usually, if they were spending time in some place that would be easily defended, Barnes was bullied into taking his pill and sleeping. Never mind that the pill wasn't being taken at anything close to regular intervals. The captain thinking that Barnes was taking Stark's stimulant was proving to be a very convenient cover story nevertheless. Made the measures required to convince Barnes to take it easier to manage. And they didn't have to hide as much. Jacques and the rest didn't correct their commanding officer's assumption of which white pills anyone one person was taking. Nor did they say anything about how Barnes's performance in the field lately absolutely looked like he was taking the stimulant.

Shaking his head, Barnes said, "I'm feeling good. Really. You need it more than I do right now."

Jacques did. But it didn't make him feel any better to accept.

They got word the next morning that Cherbourg had been isolated. The east-side suburb Montebourg had surrendered. They were given instruction to head to the south-west side of the city where they needed more support. They bid good-bye to the GI division they'd been working with at the town and set off, just the seven of them.

A few field battles with German OPs resisted their progress. Tim was running point each time they made contact. The stims had worked wonders on his accuracy. He took out a team of five Germans on his own. Even Steve was raising his brows at the performance.

Tim gathered more wrist watches. Jim distributed the reclaimed cigarettes.

Barnes told Falsworth to take point, and the captain nodded his agreement to the order. For the rest of the march, Jacques tried not to listen to sergeant and corporal bicker with each other.

Gabriel and Falsworth found a farmhouse a little bit off of their path by tracking a German supply truck.

"Looks like no more than twelve hostiles," Gabriel said.

Steve nodded and was holding back a grin. "Sounds like we can handle that."

"Shit, that's no problem. Especially now that we don't have half the Fourth Division slowing us down," Tim said dismissively while scratching at an insect bite on his jaw.

It was a fairly easy job for them. Despite the chronic lack of adequate sleep, fresh food, and general hygiene, the seven of them were a well-oiled machine. Some instinct had bonded them together, a trust that didn't need to be tended. The team went in with full aggression. More than half of the Germans were neutralised before they realised that there was a family living in the farmhouse still: A mother and two small children.

Jim called out a window in the house to Jacques that the family was hiding inside, and the word spread through the rest of the team. They did everything they could to spare the house and direct fire away from the civilians. Adapt and overcome achieved.

After all the Germans were killed, Gabriel and Barnes moved the bodies to a place where they would not be seen from the windows of the house. Along with Steve, Jacques spoke to the mother. She kept a small child in her arms, and one maybe six years of age clung to her skirt.

"They've been living here for several months," the mother told them.

Jacques translated for the captain as she spoke.

"My husband was taken. They thought he was helping the resistance. I don't know if he was. He never spoke to me about it, if he did. I—they—The Germans have been threatening me, saying that my husband will be killed if I do not tend to them. Take care of them, feed them." Tears welled in her eyes the whole time, but she did not allow them to fall.

"Do you need anything from us?" the captain asked in passable French. "What can we do to help you?"

Jacques re-asked the questions with corrected grammar for the mother.

She smiled. "I am well. They brought supplies here for me to better tend to them. I am just relieved to be rid of them, if only for a night. I just want my children to sleep without fear."

Something heavy in another room sounded as if it had been thrown over. A familiar rhythm of steps pounded the floor. It interrupted the woman's reply. Made both Steve and Jacques step away to investigate. Tim was upsetting all the furniture in the next room. He knocked over photographs on tables and scattered figures and decorations above the fireplace.

"Dum Dum, what the fuck are you doing?" Jim was saying in a harsh, low voice. He limped from the door and up to the corporal. "Knock it the fuck off."

"C'mon," he said, paying no mind to Jim, "gotta be something of value in this dump." He kicked a table a metre across the room. "Fuckin' French peasant house."

"Dugan," Steve said in a commanding voice. "Stop it."

Tim finally looked up. A smart retort looked to be ready on his lips, but it froze when he made eye contact with the captain. Jacques saw when Tim noticed the woman and her children peaking out from the doorway to the next room. Humanity was not yet lost to him.

Tim coughed and cleared his throat. "Oh. Ma'am, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I, uh. I've been…I apologise."

Steve gave Tim a severe look. He turned back to the woman with the child. "I'm very sorry about him. It won't happen again. We're not here to do things like that to you or your home."

Jacques translated. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the shame blossom on Tim's face. He was already beginning to straighten the things he'd disrupted. Jim helped, muttering to Tim, "What the fuck, man."

The mother, miraculously, offered to let them stay the night in her house. The captain offered her payment that she refused. Instead, they insisted that she take a few of the cans of their C-rations. Gabriel offered a pack of cigarettes. Steve and Jim helped the mother prepare a meal. An actual meal made from food that hadn't come from a can.

They would never be able to repay this woman.

Falsworth and Gabriel stayed in the kitchen to entertain the baby while the others chopped and cooked. Feeling that the kitchen was becoming a bit crowded, Jacques went outside to smoke with Barnes. Tim was out there working on the German supply truck, trying to get it back in working order. He said it was dangerous to smoke over an automobile engine.

"We could really use a lift," he was saying. "Might be time to ease off on the stims."

Barnes scoffed around a drag on his cigarette. "What makes you say that?"

"Shut up, Jimmy. I feel like the world's biggest ass. Don't know what the fuck got into me, tearin' up that poor lady's house. It's right good of her to let us stay after that."

"I wouldn't have invited you to stay," Barnes agreed.

"How bad was it, Frenchie?" Tim's face peered at him from the depths of the truck's bonnet. "How big of a fuck up was that in French?"

Jacques made a face as he thought about it. "No way around it being very rude."

Tim heaved a sigh of disappointment in himself.

"But I think my people like to be offended," Jacques said.

Barnes laughed to himself.

"You're loving this," Tim accused.

"What's not to love?" the sergeant said. "I don't think it's funny that you tried to destroy some civilian's home. But something is funny."

A rogue piece of scrap metal flung out of the truck's bonnet and bounced off Barnes's shoulder.

"I think it's time for you to go to bed now," Tim grumbled.

After the first fresh cooked meal that they'd had several weeks, the team congregated in the room that Tim had attempted to overturn. A fire crackled in the hearth. They were laughing about things and still trying to get the mother to accept their thanks and apologies when the older child slid out from her mother's side and approached Barnes.

"Hi," he greeted in a cheerful tone.

She smiled just a little bit and stared at him.

"Do you need something?" he said with less certainty.

Then she started to speak in nervous, quick French, fingers winding in her hair. Her cheeks grew flushed.

"Uh," Barnes said when the child stopped speaking. He gave Jacques a look that clearly requested help.

Allowing himself a few moments to laugh, Jacques told him, "She says that you look like her father, and she hasn't seen him in a long time. He used to do her hair in a braid before she went to bed. She wants to know if you'll braid it for her."

"Oh! Shit, yeah. Sure." Barnes faced the girl and asked, "How'd he do it? How do you want it tied off?"

The girl smiled nervously. Jacques asked her the questions in his mother tongue and then relayed her answers in English.

"She doesn't have anything to tie it off. Her father used to have a silk ribbon. The Germans took it."

Tim and Steve were watching the exchange from the table where they were having a game of cards. Both looked amused.

"Right," said Barnes. "Hang on."

He dug through one of the pouches on his webbing until he pulled out two fraying strips of parachute silk that they had packed for use when the proper bandages inevitably ran out. Barnes gave one strip to the girl and explained to her what it was. Asked her if it was OK if he used it to tie off the braid.

After Jacques interpreted, the girl bit her bottom lip but nodded enthusiastically to Barnes. She turned, sat down, and played with the strip of parachute silk. Barnes wiped his hands self-consciously on his field jacket. It was a futile gesture. Soiled hands wiped on an even more soiled article of clothing didn't solve much.

"OK. Been a while since anyone's asked me to do this," Barnes said mostly to himself.

"I'm surprised you can do it at all," Tim said while making a futile attempt to peek at the captain's hand.

To Tim, Barnes said, "I had a sister, didn't I?"

Why the past tense? Jacques wondered.

"That tension is weak stuff, Sarge."

"Shut up, Gabe. I know the theory, but my skills aren't anywhere near that good." To the girl, he asked, "Is this too loose?"

She was shaking her head without needing Jacques's help to understand. 

"Aren't mommas supposed to do their daughters' hair and things like that?" Jim asked. He was laid out on a sofa with his wounded ankle elevated.

Barnes shrugged and pulled more of the girl's hair into the plait. "Sister asked me to do it one day, so I did."

"I believe you said that no sister of yours was going to go walking around like she didn't own a comb," Steve said from the card table.

When the braid was done and fastened, Barnes offered the girl a chocolate bar. She didn't need any help figuring out what it was. The mother said that the children had never had chocolate before.

"Laying it on too thick, mate," Falsworth said.

Barnes shrugged.

That evening, for the first time, Jacques felt like he was in France again.

Chapter Text

The team ended up leaving the truck with the French woman, which Falsworth thought was a shame. They could have used some transportation assistance at this point. At the very least, Jim Morita needed it. It was plain to the men that he was far beyond his natural limit and that Howard Stark's stimulants were the only thing that allowed him to cover any ground at all. That couldn't last for much longer. Falsworth knew that the stims came at a cost. The recovery time, after a man came down from the inflated focus and energy, was immense. He knew because he'd felt it, too.

There were more reasons why Falsworth was becoming more and more hesitant to take his allotted tablet ration. More than just the physical toll, it was starting to strain Falsworth's mind. He thought he was experiencing interactions with soldiers that he knew to be long passed. He heard the voices of men he used to command where it was actually Dernier or Jones who was speaking. More than once he thought he saw the ghosts of those men at Barnes's shoulder. Phantoms stared solemnly at Falsworth from behind Captain Rogers.

They'd been warned that there could be side effects such as these. Stark had said that he'd found ways to minimise them, counteract the worst of it. Wasn't feeling very truthful now that they'd been in the field so long. Taking these omens for what Falsworth thought they were, he resolved to ween himself down from the stimulants.

As they marched the next morning toward the south-west side of Cherbourg, Dugan struggled with the same dilemma.

"I wouldn't have done none of that if it weren't for these," he told Sergeant Barnes.

Barnes, who by now walked very heavily, responded, "So don't take 'em."

"Not that easy."

"Sure it is," said Dernier.

"It's not," Dugan insisted. "Look at Jim. That guy can't just stop."

Morita threw an annoyed look over his shoulder at the corporal. "I'm not scaring the fuck out of innocent kids and civilians."

Jones made an agreeable face.

"Not my fault you can't control yourself," Morita added.

"Maybe it's like drinking," Barnes said. "True self comes out. And you're the only one of us that's an asshole on the inside."

Dugan scoffed. "Right. And you're some kind of saint."

"Never said I was. Just that I'm not an asshole."

"Jimmy, I'm gonna shoot straight with you here—"

"That'll be a first."

"—I don't think I'd be able to keep up with shit without those fuckin' pills right now. I'm wrecked."

Falsworth watched the sergeant's shoulders sag even more than they already were. Command was bad, but non-commissioned officers had it worse when you looked at it from a certain angle.  On the receiving end of the enlisted men's complaints with no power to do anything about it.

"Yeah, alright," Barnes said. "Let's just get to Cherbourg. I'll talk to him then."

So they kept hoofing it.

They were received by Allies near Valognes. The town was in an interesting state of preservation and destruction. The worst of the damage had crippled stone buildings, their rubble clogging up streets. Any wooden scraps had been collected and presumably burned for cooking fuel or warmth. Passages just wide enough for small jeeps or military vehicles had been cleared in the streets, but a majority of the debris remained right where it had fallen. Other sections of the town were pristine. It appeared to have never been touched by war. Striking, especially when the next block over was ravaged.

The seven of them crossed a bridge wired for demolition (a just-in-case measure, Falsworth was sure) and claimed the two remaining walls of what appeared to have been a shop for themselves. It offered shelter and patches of sunlight perfect for falling asleep in. They team dropped bags, set down rifles, unclipped belts weighed down with shaving kits, canteens, and personal items, undid bandoliers of spare clips, shed webbing, unbuttoned muddy and sweat-stained field jackets, dropped rucksacks heavy with canned rations. Jones and Barnes undid Morita's boot and loosened his ankle brace. They left him comfortable against their stacked gear, discarded leg bags serving as a bolster for the wounded ankle.

Hastily, cigarettes were lit and passed around.

Rogers asked Falsworth to accompany him to the sitrep with the local Allied commander and put Barnes in command of the rest of the team. A short walk deeper into the undamaged part of the town, they stood in a building that shook dust onto their shoulders every time nearby guns fired and shells detonated. They were shown maps and handed scraps of recorded radio messages. Valognes had been taken with virtually no resistance. Germans had retreated to the greater defences deeper in Cherbourg. They explained where the holes were in the German defences, where the greatest reinforcements were. They told them where the current lines were and where they expected the lines to be by the end of the night.

Three main lines of defence for the Germans, and they weren't even connected. They could be outflanked. It was estimated there were 21,000 troops left to defend the port city, regiments and teams cobbled together from outfits that had been the overrun and forced to retreat from elsewhere on the peninsula. The Allies had cut off the city from virtually all methods of ground and sea reinforcement or resupply. All that remained was an airfield. Intercepted communications said that the Germans had been ordered to hold the port at all costs. No small thing to ask, and all the major leaders inside the walls would know it.

The east side defences had already fallen with the capture of Montebourg. The beachheads from the invasion secured everything behind that front. Now the south was collapsed with the capture of Valognes, the flooded valley of the Douve an added layer of security. The western coast of the peninsula had been reached by Allied ships. There would be no reinforcements for the Germans via water.

Blessedly, unbelievably, it all sounded like good news.

Perhaps they wouldn't be needed at all, Falsworth mused. Perhaps he and boys could finally rest. He couldn't help but remember being in command. The thoughts flooded him when they were marching to this place. The ghosts of his old inferiors were a constant reminder of that. But, if Falsworth had been in command, he would have told his superiors in no uncertain terms that his battalion was in need of relief.

The thought was tempered when the Allied commander kept talking. Perhaps the biggest challenge they would face was the Fort du Roule: A fortress set atop a hill near the coast of the city. The Germans were dug in hard there. Tunnels dug into the hill beneath the fortress housed heavy weapons and ammunition. Guns could be fired seaward to fend off naval support or they could be adjusted and used to defend land-side. Pillboxes, machine gun embankments, a few Czech hedgehogs, barbed wire – the fortress was well defended.

The commander said that that was where they were going to need Captain America most. If they didn't take the fort, they didn't secure Cherbourg. They would transfer command of several companies over to Captain Rogers to lead them up the hill. It was be bloody, no doubt. They'd suffer major casualties. Taking such a well-guarded site that had the high ground would be a massive assignment. Falsworth did not envy the captain command of that.

"They're folding like a house of cards, Captain, but they're not hopeless" the commander finally told Captain Rogers. "We're going to give 'em the option to surrender tomorrow. I want you out there with me when we do it. Your presence alone is convincing." He did not look so happy to be admitting it.

Captain Rogers gave the commander a sceptical look. "What's the catch? What aren't you telling me?"

The commander made a wry face at being caught. "We want to send a few small teams into the city ahead of all of this. While we give Gerry the option to surrender, we want some of ours on the inside. They'll help us get in, in the event that the option to surrender is declined."

The captain did not look amused. Falsworth knew where this was going.

The commander realised that the captain was going to make him ask. If Rogers was thinking the commander was thinking what Falsworth thought the commander was thinking, then it would have been the captain's idea if he spoke it aloud. He would not be the one to suggest it.

"It'll be a lot easier to get a surrender if their highest leadership were removed from the equation. Make the lower-level commanders scramble to reply to the order to surrender." The commander was frowning hard. His tone was demanding the captain meet him halfway.

Rogers did not.

The commander sighed with more than a little irritation. "Intel says you have an accomplished sniper on your team. We could use his abilities with this. If they surrender, we're avoiding a whole lot of casualties. Taking the fort becomes a non-issue. The massacre that's sure to happen there can be avoided." 

Falsworth was impressed with Rogers's control. He did not show the reflexive hostility that Falsworth expected such a request to elicit. Rogers looked away from the commander and met Falsworth's eyes. In that gaze, Falsworth realised how well he had come to know Rogers. He wasn't sure he could say that he understood the full spectrum of emotions a man was feeling by just a look before now. With one brief moment of eye contact, Falsworth knew what it was to be Rogers: First and foremost, worry for Barnes being sent ahead without proper support; guilt at the prospect of not letting the team rest; the appeal of their objective being won without further casualties; hurt at the memory of the young soldiers that had died under his command on the march to get here.

Did the lives of the many outweigh the risk of death for the few?

Rogers's shoulders sagged by a few minute degrees. "When are the stealth groups moving out?"

The commander hid a smile. "As soon as possible."

Rogers shook his head. "Then it'll be after I talk to my sniper. He needs rest."

The smile dropped off the commander's face then. "With all due respect, Captain, this is active combat. People's lives. You can't stop the war for one man. The infantry is going to be fatigued. If we waited for them to get over it, wars would never end."

"With all due respect to you," Rogers bit out, "I'm not sending my sniper behind enemy lines when he can hardly keep his eyes open. You won't get what you want, and I won't get him back."

The commander sneered. He cast around for something to use as a rebuttal; Falsworth ended up being that thing. "What do you think then, Major? Lost more than a few of our field leaders. We could use your experience out there."

Falsworth pitched an eyebrow. "I actually report to Captain Rogers, sir. I defer to his judgement."

"Go talk to your sniper then," the commander snapped. "Dismissed."

Rogers had already turned to go. Falsworth tipped the commander a sort of salute. This man was American. Falsworth wasn't sure if he owed him proper military acknowledgement. He hurried to catch up to Rogers.

"I take it you're not enthusiastic about this plan," Falsworth said.

Rogers scoffed. "No, I'm not."

"You don't think Barnes can manage it?"

"I know Bucky can do it," the captain said in an almost acidic voice. "That's the problem. They know it, too."

Falsworth frowned. "What's to talk about then?"

"I know Bucky can do it, but I'm not prepared to deal with what it's going to cost. You've all been in the field too long. Phillips and people like that guy are pushing you too hard. There are only six of you guys, and I'm not about to sacrifice anyone."

"Other divisions have been in the field just as long as we have."

"Not at the front. And they get replacements when they're driven too hard."

Falsworth couldn't refute that truth. So he nodded.

"I'm not blind," Rogers said. "I know he's on his last legs." He shook his head. "I've been asking too much of him. And now this crock of absolute shit idea. Sniping assignments are hard on his nerves. Takes a lot out of him. You know that. He's not going to admit it, but he's just not up to it right now."

Falsworth wholly agreed with that statement, but, out of fear of the captain asking him to give specific reasons why, he chose not to say that. Instead: "Perhaps it's best that you just let him decide."

"That's the annoying part. I already know that he's going to agree to it."

"Then why agonise over it?"

"Because I have a bad feeling about it. And he's going to get pissed off at me when I try to talk him out of it."

Falsworth could only imagine what Rogers would do if things went pear-shaped – as they were wont to do – with Barnes separated from the rest of the team. Cherbourg would be razed anew until the sergeant was found. God be with anyone in the vicinity if Rogers found him in anything less than his current condition (which was already pretty bad, but beside the point Falsworth was trying to make).

"Who are you sending with him?" Falsworth asked. "Since it can't be you."

Rogers huffed. "Haven't thought that far. Stuck on the part where I don't want anyone to go."

"I'm his scout," he reminded the captain.

"Yeah, well." But there was no follow up.

They found the rest of the team holed up in their reclaimed rubble. It was quiet, Falsworth noted. For them. Too weary for chatter and shit-talking. Even the ones who were stimulated.

"Aw, shit, boys, here they come." Morita tried to muster the enthusiasm to greet them in the typical fashion. It was only a little bit too flat. "Why the long faces?"

Rogers sighed and tried not to look frustrated. It didn't work. "Bucky, come with me?"

"Sure."

Rogers gave Barnes a hand up and said to Falsworth, "Brief the rest?"

"Yes, sir."

"What gives?" Jones asked once Rogers and Barnes had walked off in the direction that Falsworth had just come from.

Falsworth folded himself to sit among his fellows. "Got a map?"

Now was really not the best time for a sniping assignment. Bucky was plain tired. Lately, he hadn't been able to sleep at all without the stupid pill. Even when he took it, it didn't always work. It was getting so bad that he was taking two halves. He'd lie there waiting and waiting for it to start working like it had at Great Dunmow but nothing would happen. Instead, that awful spacey feeling would come over him, where it felt like his consciousness was hovering just outside the confines of his body. Nothing he could do would make it come back inside. It was like he was watching himself from the outside.

If he wasn't careful about feigning sleep, the guys would notice him lying awake when they went to get the next person up for watch. Jim had already noticed – he was probably the first one.

"Startin' to look like Prague out here," the radioman had muttered darkly when he finally caught Bucky in the act.

It was starting to show, and Bucky knew it. The spacey-ness he could keep a lid on, but the lack of sleep was harder. He was getting clumsy and weak, falling to the back of the column every time they marched somewhere. The straps of all of his packs were feeling heavier, digging into his shoulders and sides uncomfortably. It was damn near impossible to hold his measly M1 steady. At this point, he wasn't too sure that he could hit the broad side of a barn at half the distance he was being asked to snipe from right now. He'd get knocked on his ass by the recoil of the Johnson if he tried to fire it in this condition.

Not that Bucky was going to tell Steve that.

"Yeah, OK," he said automatically after Steve had told him what the commander had suggested. "That's fine."

"Bucky."

"It makes sense."

"Bucky."

"Am I gonna have a scout?"

"Bucky."

"When do I have to be ready?"

"Bucky." Steve's giant hands gripped Bucky's shoulders with firm pressure.

"Huh?" He finally brought himself to took Steve in the eye. Maybe his knees were shaking. He needed a cigarette.

"Bucky, you can say no," Steve said sternly.

"Ha," Bucky said through a dry and scratchy throat. He had to swallow deliberately before he could speak again. "He wasn't asking, Steve. That's how command works."

But Steve was shaking his big, dumb head. "He doesn't give you orders, Buck."

Words deserted him. His brain was an empty alley, wind tossing loose sheets of newspaper around.

"I'm not going to ask you to do this if you're not up to it. These kinds of missions tear you up at the best of times."

He blinked. Shook his head. Shrugged out of Steve's hold and took a step back. "I'm up to it."

"Don't give me that bullshit," Steve said. The look on his face when he said it made the protective instinct in Bucky's gut stir. It almost looked like it hurt Steve to say it. "You need a break. All of you guys need a break. I should have put my foot down two weeks ago. Please, Bucky, give me a reason to tell this guy to come up with something else."

"You don't mean it, Steve." His hands were searching for his cigarettes without command. He made them stop. Steve noticed. Damnit. "A surrender is huge. If all I gotta do is take out just one commander over there, and Cherbourg can be captured without any more bloodshed, it's worth it."

"It doesn't have to be you."

"This sort of job is literally why I'm here. What the S.S.R. trained me for."

"You're here because I asked you to be," Steve said.

Christ, Bucky was too tired to have anyone looking at him with that much fucking pity. "You're right. I take orders from you, Captain. I've told you I'm up to it. If you don't want me to go, just say so."

"Come on, Buck. You're forcing me to pull rank!"

He really needed a cigarette right now.

Steve made a frustrated sound. "You can't be pissed with me for worrying about your lack of self-preservation."

"Sure, I can. I'm doing it right now. Figure I owe you for all the times you did exactly that to me for twenty years."

"Bucky."

"I'm telling you that I'm fine. I can do my fucking duties. Am I going or not, sir?"

It was hard not to flinch at the looks Steve gave him. It was harder to stop himself from apologising. Why'd he feel like he'd just done something horribly wrong? Bucky's hands curled into fists and clenched for a few seconds before he let them relax again. He made no effort to hide any of it from Steve. A truce.

Steve nodded in a resigned sort of way. "OK."

"OK?"

"If you say you can do this one, then I'm not going to stop you."

Something inside Bucky's chest unclenched.

But Steve wasn't done: "But you can't stand there and deny that you're a wreck."

He was sure his jaw hit the concrete. "Excuse me?"

"You can do this job if you're really, actually up for it. After this, whether they surrender or not, you and I are going to talk and get some things straight."

God, that sounded threatening. But after could mean anything. After Bucky could deal with later. So he agreed.

But he felt obligated to lighten the tension that he'd created by being difficult about the job. "I take it this means I'll get a scout?"

They were walking back toward the rest of the guys.

Steve laughed and said, "I'm definitely not going to send you behind enemy lines without one of our own to watch your back."

That didn't sound like the same thing as a scout.

"Should I start packing now?"

"Nope."

"Why'd you say it like that? Aren't they on a tight schedule here?"

Steve shrugged in a way that meant that he didn't care rather than that he didn't know. "No one's going anywhere until you sleep for a minimum of two hours."

Bucky felt his face fold into a scowl. The kind of scowl that Steve had always described as a duck face. "Right."

It was simple really. Once you got down to it. Jimmy was Dugan's kid brother, so it was on Dugan to go with him. If the others made apprehensive faces about it, Dugan didn't notice. None of them were as quick to volunteer for this as him. Rogers had to be a visible threat to the Krauts. Monty would obviously have to fill in for one of the dead Allied commanders in case the surrender was rejected. Frenchie wasn't exactly known for his stealth and subtlety. Jim couldn't even fucking walk anymore. That only left Gabe, but Dugan had already called the spot.

Rogers gave them a whole crock about where to rendezvous after the mission, that they had to come back to the Allied side of the frontlines as soon as they knew whether the surrender was going to be accepted. The handie-talkie didn't have enough range and security for them to be able to contact Jim. If they got trapped or surrounded if the Krauts didn't surrender, then they were supposed to hunker down and hide. They weren't to fight their way out or leave just as sneakily as they got in. Captain America said he was going to make a beeline for them if the Germans didn't surrender. 

"Don't even need to worry about that, Cap," Dugan told him. "Jimmy'll get this guy, and they'll surrender. Be stupid not to."

"These guys aren't really known for being the most intelligent," Jim replied.

"Just be careful," Rogers said. "Get in and get out."

In no time, Dugan was walking in his sergeant's footsteps in the twilight. There was a second group of guys from the Fourth Division also sneaking behind the front, too, but they were on their own squad. Cap had seemed suspicious of them.

"Feels kinda like Prague, doesn't it?" Dugan asked as they moved at a glacial pace deeper into the city proper.

"Why's everyone keep saying that?" Barnes mumbled.

"Probably because it feels just like Prague."

"Well, it's not."

The irritation in his voice made Dugan smile. God, this was what he had been missing all those years when he'd been hoping for a sibling. Little cousins were all well and good, but it wasn't the same. Dugan wished his Uncle Micky had gone down to wherever-the-fuck-New-York-City and stolen this guy when Dugan was still a kid so he could have grown up with him.

He didn't even really realise that he said so aloud: "I wish my uncle had kidnapped you."

"What?" Barnes stopped abruptly and turned to face him.

He cracked a grin. "What, did I word that funny?"

He was shaking his head. "That's…Dum Dum, what the fuck."

They restarted their forward progress at what felt like a crawl.

"My family coulda raised you as our own. You woulda fit right in. Every family has about ten Jameses running around in them anyway. You woulda been my real brother then."

"How would I be your brother if your uncle kidnapped me?"

Dugan shook his head. "Uncle Micky knew how much I wanted a sibling. He woulda let you be my brother."

"Like a pet?"

"No, not like a pet, Jimmy! You woulda liked living with us. We were a good time. Always there for each other no matter what. On top of the whole city. No one woulda just left you to take care of someone as sick as you say Rogers used to be. The grandmas and aunts and old lady cousins woulda been doing that so you could just be a kid."

They were both forced down behind a wall as a German patrol appeared at the other end of the street. Barnes gave him a severe look to stop him from speaking more. Dugan was only a little bit ashamed that he actually needed the reminder. His brain was stuck on the kidnapping-little-Jimmy idea.

Barnes decided to take them on a detour rather than wait for the patrol to pass.

"Perfect," Dugan said once they were in the clear again. "Don't you think that would have been awesome?"

"Being kidnapped? No. I think that would scare the fucking shit out of me."

"Aw, you'd get over it." Dugan playfully shoved Barnes's shoulder. It sent him stumbling into the street.

"Christ," he cut out as he scurried back into the shelter of the night.

Dugan was just trying not to laugh. He bit down on his hand. "Sorry. Anyway, I keep forgetting that most kids grow up in little fantasylands. They weren't killing people at fourteen."

"Can't say I was doing that, but I wouldn't say I grew up in a fantasy," Barnes said absently as he leaned around the edge of another building.

"What, didja get raped down on the docks you used to work on?"

Barnes stared at Dugan with a horrified look on his face. "You really need to stop talking. What the fuck."

He kept on: "Maybe you didn't get a perfect score on an exam one time?" Dugan pitched his voice into a cracking, pubescent imitation, "Aw shucks, Ma, I only graduated second in the class! My perfect marks weren't good enough because someone else did extra credit when I busy becoming the State Boxing Champion!"

They scurried to the next sector. Dugan's hand automatically shot out to catch the back of his sergeant's field jacket when he tripped over some rubble. They kept moving.

Watching for patrols, Barnes breathed, "I'm flattered you think I was so highly ranked in class."

"I have no doubt you were."

"It was Catholic school, Dum Dum."

"What's that supposed to mean? You can read Latin? I'm not fucking surprised."

Jimmy shook his head and tried to kill the conversation. But something in Dugan wasn't content with silence, even when they were supposed to be being sneaky and not drawing any attention to themselves.

"Say what you want, Jimmy, but there's no way some egghead-scholar, boxing champ stallion like you had that hard of a time."

"Did you just call me a horse?"

"Fuck yes, I called you a stallion. The kind they use for breeding."

That earned Dugan a laugh from his sergeant. Warmth unfurled from his chest.

Jimmy glanced back at him with the suggestion of a grin and said, "Shut up, Dum Dum."

Dugan did not.

"Back to the point. You would have really liked being my little brother and living with my family. Aside from the murderer at fourteen bit. We've already agreed that being a genius and a boxer and a stallion was great for you. And I'm saying living with me would have been even better than that."

"You're saying taking me away from all that and my family and friends was going to be good for me?"

"Well, yeah, because then you'd get me."

He spent the whole time it took for them to get into the city trying to convince Barnes of this. It was pretty difficult. Not least of all because the guy kept interrupting the best points and telling Dugan to shut up.

Eventually, he really did have to shut up while they scouted a few different buildings that would have been tall enough to give Barnes the vantage point he needed. It was annoying to go through trying to confirm an entire building was clear of Krauts. They might get nearly all the way through checking a place that looked promising, only to find a cluster of the fuckers on the roof. With the captain's order not to engage in any combat unless absolutely necessary, they were forced to move on to the next place.

The place they ended up settling on was mostly rubble. Uncomfortable. They set up in a mostly northern facing crack in the wall. Barnes assembled the Johnson at an all-time worst speed.

"You good?" Dugan asked when his sergeant fumbled with the telescopic sight for the third time.

"Fine," he said. A fourth fumble, and then it was fixed.

Worry tried to reach for Dugan, but the impenetrable wall of confidence cast by the Keep Up with Cap pill held strong.

"Get the map," Barnes said. "Let's clock some landmarks. Get this over with."

This was the first time Dugan had done this sort of thing. Formally. Usually this was Monty's job. Hell, Dugan was holding Monty's binoculars as he double-checked the distances Barnes called out on the landmarks they'd been told to look out for. The German garrison commander was suspected to be in one of three well-defended positions. Two of the possibilities were no sweat for Barnes and the Johnson. The third would have been a stretch, but it wasn't outside of Barnes's ability. Dugan knew it wasn't.

After the map bit, things got downright boring. Being behind enemy lines should have been more exciting that that. Dugan wanted to go for a walk, talk more – anything. His sergeant kept shushing him every time he tried to start a conversation, and he wouldn't respond after Dugan ignored the shushing. He wasn't even allowed to smoke a damn cigarette in case the smoke or the glow gave away their position. He just had to sit there while Jimmy stared through the scope of the rifle for hours. Sometimes he thought that the kid just went to sleep with his face stuck to the scope. He wouldn't move – didn't even look like he breathed – for several minutes at a time.

"There are three snipers out there," Barnes said lowly around daybreak. His voice was hoarse.

"What!" Finally, something to talk about. Something to do!

Putting down the rifle and sitting up, Barnes pulled the map toward himself and started to mark positions. He double checked distances himself. He mumbled to himself, drawing triangles between his markings on the map, adding approximate numbers over the lines that connected them.

"I think the commander's in this one," he announced after a few moments, pointing to the building that was furthest away from their current position.

Of course.

"Be ready to run."

"What!"

Barnes was back at the Johnson. He took two deep breaths and then squeezed the trigger on the exhale of the second breath.

That familiar crack.

"God damnit!"

Dugan flapped his hands. "What!"

"I fucking missed."

"You missed!"

"Run."

They fled their building and skidded into the street. No one noticed them at first. Which was nice. No panic and running like kids playing at being robbers. They tried to avoid patrols as they headed in the direction of the front. One of the German snipers was tracking them.

Crack.

Unfamiliar.

After the space of a heartbeat, again: Crack.

They kept going. Didn't look back. Barnes shoved him into the burnt-out doorway of a shop. It was pure luck that no one was inside. Not even some poor, stupid French people that were left behind by the rest of their neighbours.

"Close," Dugan breathed out with a smile. He turned to Barnes with another smartass comment ready to go, but he swallowed it down.

Barnes had his jaw clenched, breathing heavily. He smacked his head against the wall behind them. One hand gripped the opposite shoulder, red seeping out underneath.

"Oh, fuck. OK. He gotcha. Let me see," Dugan said. He was flustered, unsure. He was the worst of all of them at first aid.

"Stop," Barnes bit out between clenched teeth. "Just gimme a minute."

"Jimmy, just shut up and let me see."

"Don't touch it, Dum Dum, fuck." Fingers convulsed over the wound. "It went all the way through. I'm fine."

"Well, I wouldn’t say you're fine. Let me fuckin' bandage it at least, you big baby."

"Not secure here."

Dugan frowned. "Your legs still work, don't they? Let's go find somewhere to nest, and I'll patch you up."

He slung the Johnson over his shoulder and pulled up his wounded sergeant. In the time it took them to find the next safe place (difficult; more patrols were out now that they knew someone was there that wasn't supposed to be), Dugan got an eyeful of one half of Barnes's wound. Dugan had seen enough combat to know that the exit wound was usually worse. This bullet had entered from the back.

They came up with shelter after a little bit of wandering and a few close calls. There wasn't much of a fight on Barnes's part when it came time to dress the wound. Field jacket came off easily enough, if requiring help to get the one arm off was considered easy. Dugan was out of practice with first aid, he realised. Mighty good of his sergeant to talk him through the steps he needed to take to clean, disinfect, and bandage.

A syrette of morphine was adamantly refused.

"Stubborn ass," Dugan accused.

"I'll never get this done if I'm shot up with morphine," Barnes said. Sweat as building on his forehead.

"What?" he spluttered. "We're still trying to take this guy out?"

"Why wouldn't we?"

"Well, I mean." Dugan gestured to the bandage he'd just fastened across his sergeant's chest. "That, for one."

"I can still shoot."

He grumbled, "You're gonna get me in so much trouble with Rogers."  

If the hand that pushed the hair off of Barnes's forehead was shaking, Dugan didn't say anything about it.

"He'll get over it."

Dugan didn't need any help figuring out how to do up the buttons of Barnes's shirt or stuffing him back into his field jacket.

"Get the map," Barnes panted when he was dressed again. He was curled over just the slightest bit, the arm on the wounded side was tucked close to his chest. "Give me my rifle. Still time to get another shot at this."

"You're sure you're up for that?"

"Yes. Do it, Corporal."

"OK, OK. Don't get crabby with me. Just know that I haven't forgotten about our agreement about who was going to get shot next."

An insufferable amount of time later, Dugan asked, "Should we go look for a closer vantage point?" The prospect of a walk was damn appealing.

A thoughtful expression crossed Barnes's face. "Might be worth it to get a better view. See if there are more defences closer to the building he's in. I can't see the surroundings of that one so well from here."

"But?"

"But it means we gotta move through these fuckers in the day light."

Dugan nodded. "Don't exactly have time to find another building that's Kraut-free. Won't be many places available the closer we get to the commander's place."

"Right."

"I've got an idea."

Barnes gave him a doubtful look. "Do I want to hear this?"

"Course you do. You stay here. They have to have asked for surrender already. Cap's gotta be in full view. I'll use the distraction to scout out these places." Dugan circled four buildings that progressively got closer to their suspected target. "I'll get somewhere you can see me and let you know if you're good to advance."

"And if I don't see you?"

"Then obviously I'm coming back here because all the other places suck."

It was a matter of waiting out the uncertainty on his sergeant's face.

"You've been a fucking idiot on these stims. I don't want to send you out there on your own like this. You'll do something fucking stupid."

Dugan rolled his eyes. "Jimmy, c'mon. Those times were just messing around. I was doing it on purpose. Trying to lighten up all of you guys that are all such heavy fucking downers. I know that now isn't the time to do something funny."

"For the record, none of the other times were funny."

Jimmy musta been tired and really feeling his wound, because Dugan was able to convince him to agree to the plan. They made caterpillar-like progress through the city. Dugan went first, scouting until he determined if the next building on their list was safe for them to hole up in. If it was, he waved Barnes forward. Moving was slower, more careful than it was when they were first coming into town. Barnes kept reminding Dugan of the snipers that they knew where defending this area. He was jumpy. Kept listening hard for the German sniper to take another shot.

It took a few minutes to scout the new area, add anything worth adding to the map, and then moving on again. Actually, it took a lot of minutes. They were running too far behind schedule. The sun was coming down again. The German leader should have been taken out by now. They could have already declined the surrender. The two of them were scrambling a bit by then. Both of them were getting clumsy and slow when they dashed between cover and avoided German patrols (which were everywhere).

Crouched in an upper window of a warehouse, Dugan looked back to the building he'd just left. He gave the all-clear signal. Saw a shadow in the old window shifting. Time slowed down during this part, where Dugan couldn't do anything but wait for Jimmy to catch up. He was getting slower with every bit of ground they covered. Several times he nearly lost his feet. Dugan felt it all gnawing on his nerves even when he tried to hide it. It felt like hanging on the end of a rope, watching the strands fray before his eyes.

Barnes set himself up on the balcony of the mostly-standing warehouse with the Johnson pointed at the building they thought the commander was in.

"I can see enough of the windows from here. We can make this work," he told Dugan.

"You sure you don't want to try one more, Jimmy? C'mon, you know that place to the east has better sightlines. You cannot see in the windows from here." But there wasn't much hope in Dugan's voice. He didn't want to go another block, even though the sightlines were better.

This mission was stupid, and they should have gone back hours ago when Barnes was first wounded.

The sergeant was shaking his head obstinately, sweat sliding freely down his face by now. Didn't even try to hide the distress anymore. "No time. I can make this work."

"Doesn't matter how much time we have if you never get the right angle."

But Barnes wouldn't let him win this fight. The shot never lined up. When they heard the Allied assault on the city start, it was official mission failure. Barnes threw down the Johnson in frustration and put his head in his hands. Dugan had flinched out of the away, afraid of accidental discharge.

"Fuck," the sergeant said. He said it again, louder: "Fuck."

"Not your fault," Dugan said.

The hand Dugan put on his sergeant's shoulder was violently shrugged off. "Don't tou-…" Barnes trailed off. Finally looked up from his hands. Took a deep breath. "Sorry."

"Nothin' to be sorry for."

He put his head in hand again. Rubbed at his temple.

After giving him a few moments to mope, Dugan said, "You good? 'Cause you look like shit."

Jimmy didn't pick his head up or look at him. An artillery shell crashed into a nearby building. Debris knocked off the walls of the warehouse and shook them where they sat.

"I was supposed to be able to do this," Jimmy said miserably. "They were supposed to surrender. I was supposed to get them to surrender."

"No guarantee that it was going to work even if we found the guy," Dugan reminded him.

One of Barnes's hands reached for his wounded shoulder but clenched before it got there, aborting whatever he was about to do. "Steve's never gonna let me forget this. I've never fucked up this bad before."

Something outside the warehouse detonated. The street stones were thrown into the air like confetti.

"First time for everything." Dugan watched smoke darken his view. "Speaking of that guy, are we just gonna sit here and wait for him to come get us?"

Barnes took another deep breath. "No," he said heavily. Took up the Johnson from where he'd thrown it. "Might as well take out the other snipers. At least."

"I think we should hunker down, let the other guys handle this one."

"We're not damsels in distress."

"Speak for yourself, Jimmy."

A quiet little laugh at that. "I'll get us out of this myself then."

Dugan clasped his hands under his chin and said sarcastically, "My hero! Seriously, will you take some goddamn morphine and just let Cap dig us out of this one? I'm hurting just looking at you."

"I'm fine."

"Uh huh."

Distant machine gun fire started up. The sound of it seemed friendly. Close enough to hear but still far off. Barnes turned away from him and was setting up the Johnson on its bipod. He laid behind the rifle in an awkward sort of way, trying not to put pressure on the wounded shoulder.

Heaving a massive sigh, Dugan complained, "Well, what am I supposed to do then?"

"Look pretty."

Dugan scoffed. "Seriously."

"Why don't you find a place for us to run to after I give away our position in about ten minutes?"

Grumbling about the suggestion, Dugan ultimately decided that it was better than nothing. He wandered away from the balcony and headed out in search of a new vantage point to scout their next shelter from. Gonna be a lot easier to move now that a battle had started. But also harder to avoid all the gunfire.

The whine of aircraft engines distracted Dugan from searching out abandoned-looking buildings. They were German planes. Anyone who'd been in the field knew the difference. Supplies were dumped as the planes went overhead. Some items looked loose, not properly bound like the typical supply crates. They bounced off roofs and streets. A few Germans emerged from their hiding places to pick up the loose items and the larger, more-recognisable supply crates. Hard to tell from so far away, but Dugan thought that the faces of Germans looked annoyed, incredulous at the smaller packages. Once they went back to take cover – Allied mortars and artillery creeping ever closer – Dugan picked up his Thompson and headed down to the street. His curiosity was piqued.

The nearest available package was just far enough in the street that all shelter would have to be abandoned. Dugan didn't need to consider it for long. He stepped out into the open to pick one up. There was some sort of German decoration inside the package. He thought it was called an Iron Cross, but he couldn't remember for sure. There was a letter inside that was written in what he presumed to be German.

Who the fuck drops decorations on a city about to be attacked? This thought was followed immediately by: Was it worth anything? His eyes scanned the street to see if there were any more of the packages.

Crack – the bad kind.

But the familiar crack answered immediately.

It felt like something bit Dugan. Bit hard. He went down.

Chapter Text

They had never seen the captain this frustrated. He'd been pacing effectively since Dum Dum and Barnes had left. Didn't seem to be too comfortable with the arrangements. Gabe knew that it should have been him to go with Sarge. Dum Dum had never been acting dumber than he had been lately. He'd been on a constant intake of the Keep Up with Cap pills – Dum Dum's phrase, not Gabe's – since the group had agreed to start taking them. Far more than any of the rest of them. His supply had to be nearly depleted by now.

Gabe was sure he wasn't the only one who had barely been able to hold back from telling Captain Rogers that Dum Dum would be more of a hinderance to Sarge than a help. Might as well have sent the guy behind enemy lines to shoot the German commander while also babysitting a rowdy toddler. Who knew though? Maybe Rogers had realised that and sent Dum Dum with on purpose. Maybe it would have forced Sarge to be more cautious.

Privately, Gabe was just as worried as Captain Rogers about their teammates. It had seemed bad when they didn't hear from the other Allied officers that there had been confirmed death of the German commander before the order to surrender.

And then they didn't hear anything after the surrender was offered.

And then the surrender was declined.

Still no sign of either of them.

They would have heard something if they'd been killed or captured, wouldn't they? The Germans could have used them as leverage. Captain Rogers would definitely negotiate for them. To hell with anyone else and the brass.

"We should plan what we're going to do tomorrow," Monty said carefully.

Rogers whirled around to face him. "We're going to go find Bucky and Dugan."

"I don't believe it's that easy."

"Seems easy enough to me." He paced; his thoughts were easy to read on his face: Why in the world did I let them do this?

"Captain," Monty said diplomatically, "we do not know their condition."

Not the right thing to say, Gabe thought.

The eyes nearly bugged out of Rogers's head.

Monty hurried to add, "What I mean to say is that we do not know that they require aid. All we know is that the surrender has been rejected. They could be lying low, like you told them. They could have been side-tracked, found their way blocked by the enemy preparing their defences. They could be on their way back to Allied lines at this very minute. Yes, or they may require assisted extraction. The best way to deliver them from this predicament is to capture the city as quickly as we can. Easier to find them in a captured city than a hostile one." 

"I can't just go about the normal assault plan and forget about them," Rogers said stubbornly. "We have artillery and naval support that could bring a building down on them." His eyes lingered hesitantly in Jim's direction.

The look didn't go unnoticed.

"They're more resourceful than that, Cap," Jim said softly.

Dernier was nodding his head in agreement.

Rogers looked at all of them. Maybe he found comfort in the sentiments. Gabe added, "I wouldn't count them out yet. Two of them put their heads together, they can usually find a solution to any problem. Even if it's, uh, unconventional."  

Captain Rogers shook his head again even though his face was fighting a smile. "I can't not look for them. I just can't."

Monty knew how command worked though. He wasn't done. "What is the plan? The one the local commander came up with? What would you be doing if Barnes and Dugan were here?"

Rogers said immediately, "Leading the south side offensive to reach the fortress. Jones is with me."

"Then do that." Monty spoke quickly and loudly so that Rogers couldn't interrupt: "I'm to lead a battalion in the second wave to relieve your men after the initial assault. I can look for them during the first wave. If I'm not back, Dernier can lead in my stead."

Dernier looked taken aback but didn't contradict Monty.

"The sooner the fortress is taken, Captain, the sooner any organised resistance will fall. It will be easier for us to find them and for them to find us in that case. They aren't stupid; we all agree on that. Annoying, yes, and stubborn. But not stupid. They know about the fortress. They know you're meant to be leading the attack on it. Captain, they will know where to find you. And if they're not fit for combat, then you'll provide the best distraction for them to run the other way."

Actual pain was in Rogers's expression. This wasn't easy for him to consider. Gabe didn't blame the guy. He had disobeyed a direct order by a colonel on his very first time on a military base and had ended up being commended for it. He saved Barnes once by doing whatever the hell he wanted. It wasn't really a surprise that he wanted to go ahead and do that same thing now.

It took some convincing, but Monty ended up talking sense into him. It was a team effort, getting Rogers to accept that he should stay the course. For the first day of the attack, anyway. There were no promises about what he'd do if Barnes and Dugan didn't show up tomorrow.

Before sending the guys on the second-wave teams to sleep, Rogers had something to say: "You're all done with these stimulants. I'm not asking. Get rid of them. It's not worth it. It hasn't done any of you any good. As soon as this is over, I'm telling Colonel Phillips to remove it from the supply list."

Gabe didn't really want to fight him on that point. Not having the stimulants might make this particular battle difficult, but they were joining forces with whole other Allied divisions. It wasn't just the seven – five – of them taking on a whole battalion of HYDRA. There were a lot of other guys out there just as willing and able to take the weight.

"That's fair," Gabe said.

The eye contact he made with Rogers felt significant for some reason.

Rogers nodded. His jaw stopped clenching so much and he said, "And you're staying back, Morita. Sit this one out."

"What."

Dernier patted Jim on the shoulder. "You cannot even walk. Take this time to rest. It's for the best."

It looked like shame was on Jim's face. "You can't leave me behind."

"It's not leaving you behind. I've let you carry on like this in the field for too long. I'm not doing it anymore," Rogers said. "Stay behind the front lines. I'd rather have you healthy for HYDRA missions, where there are things that only you can do. There are thousands of other guys out there right now that can fight this battle, but none of them can decode HYDRA radio transmissions and contact the S.S.R. in the same minute. When the other two finally show up, they're coming straight back here, too. I want you to make damn sure they don't leave. They're not going back to the front either."  

Jim clenched his jaw and looked down. He nodded a few times and didn't look up. "OK. Yeah, OK. You're probably right."

Dernier kept an arm around Jim's shoulders.

Rogers stared at all of them with a heavy gaze. "I'm sorry that I let it get to this point. I shouldn't have let any of you be driven this hard for so long. It won't happen again. I'm not going to let anyone get pushed so hard that they need stimulants indefinitely. I'm not going to make anyone march across active battlefields while sleep deprived with destroyed ankles. That's on me. I'm sorry. And I promise all of you that I'm going to do better."

No one spoke immediately after that. It felt like a moment where Dugan should have been the one to talk next. His absence was almost tangible, his face in a thought bubble above all of their heads.

But Dernier stepped up: "Wahoo!"

Jim looked up at him with a lopsided grin. "Really?"

Dernier gripped the back of Jim's neck and gently rocked him side to side. "Wahoo!"

The chorus wasn't as big as it should have been, but it still felt good. Made Gabe feel a little less heavy, and the worried furrow between the captain's brows lightened up a little bit.

It sounded like Cousin Colleen was screaming. It was shrill; it pierced Dugan's eardrums like a knife. Fear struck his heart at the sound. Something that made Colleen sound like that couldn't be good. Urgency surged through him, but he couldn't find himself. Couldn't move.

"Hmmbh," he grunted.

The world was steeped in gelatine. The air was thick to breathe and thicker to see through. Felt like the time one of the Macdonoughs had shot out the tires of Uncle Micky's car that Dugan had been driving. They'd crashed, and it had felt like the whole world had begun to thicken.

Colleen was shrieking again. It pulled his focus off the crash. Horrified, petrifying screams. Dugan struggled to do something, anything about it.

"Tim!" she screamed.

Somewhere, a gun was firing. But it wasn't nearly as loud or scary as the sound of Colleen screaming like that. It was too easy to ignore the guttural shouts and popping guns.

"Tim, I can't believe it!"

"Huh?" Something wet tickled his eyebrow.

"How could you? Tim, how could you?"

He turned his head side to side to try to find his cousin. It was impossible to tell which direction her voice was coming from through the shimmering atmosphere. Why couldn’t he move? Had he been hit again? Why was he stuck on the ground like this?

"'leen?" he slurred.

"I can't believe it! Why did you kill him, Tim! He's my husband! You killed Peter!"

Well, yeah, 'cause he was beatin' her. Peter was beatin' Colleen at home, in front of their two little kids – Dugan's godchildren. He tried to explain this to her, to Colleen. It was in her best interest. Didn't she see that she didn't need to be putting up with that from some chickenshit like Peter? He couldn't let that carry on after he'd realised it was happening. That was his cousin, his family that chickenshit Peter was laying hands on.

"That was my husband! You killed my children's father! You're a monster, Tim. We're supposed to be family! Peter, too!"

The ground shook beneath Dugan. It smelled like gunpowder and burning things. So much rumbling and smacking of automatic weapons. The tack-tack-tack of the Tommy guns – or were they? He had to focus. Had to make Colleen understand.

If he was family, why was he treatin' you like that? Dugan tried to ask. But he couldn't get the thoughts connected to his mouth.

"It wasn't your place, Tim. That was between me and Peter. You shoulda stayed out of it. How could you betray your family like that? What did we do that was so horrible to you?"

A new voice was approaching. "This true, Timmy? Did you kill Peter?"

That was Uncle Micky. What was he doing here? Wait – where was here?

The ground shook again. Something was cracking overhead, deliberate and methodical. Was Uncle Micky interrogating someone? Cracking fingers?

"Timmy, you gotta be honest. Didja kill Peter?"

Maybe Uncle Micky arranged for Dugan to crash this time. He'd sabotaged his own automobile so that Tim would crash, be helpless to escape the line of questioning. Uncle Micky knew how big and strong Dugan was. He knew that he'd never be able to best him in a fight.

Not that Dugan had ever wanted to fight his uncle.

It didn't even occur to him to lie. Dugan tried to say yes. Yes, of course. He'd killed Peter and made it look like he hadn't. Dugan wasn't sorry for killing his cousin's husband, his godchildren's father. Peter was a right fucker who had it coming the second he laid a hand on Colleen.

"I can't believe it, Tim! Why'd it have to be Peter!"

"So that's why you enlisted, was it? Knew you were a traitor and a liar. Ran away instead of facing me. Couldn't own up to what you'd done." Uncle Micky was coming closer. He was reaching for the silver revolver that Dugan knew he kept with him at all times.

Again, the ground rumbled. Automatic gunfire was a lot closer now. It was no Tommy gun. Dugan was starting to see dirty stones beneath him. He felt a paper package in one of his hands. Other indistinct shouting floated over his head. Foreign, he realised. That was German.

Nothing was adding up.

"We all gotta face the consequences eventually, Timmy. You forced my hand," Uncle Micky's voice said. The revolver glinted.

Dugan found his arms and his strength. He rolled off of his belly with a groan of pain and unholstered his side arm in one motion. Muscles still loose and jelly-like, he shot at his uncle until the clip emptied. The recoil made his aim shit, but if just one—

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me right now!"

Dugan's arm fell. "Jimmy?"

The air melted into something transparent. A blob to the left of where Uncle Micky used to be resolved into the shape of his sergeant clutching one of his thighs.

"Dum Dum, you idiot! You shot me!"

The fact that this battle was exactly like one of the hundreds of war games Bucky had set up back in Great Dunmow when the team had just been transferred to the S.S.R. was not lost on Steve. It helped. With a whole battalion at his command, it was easy to move through the defences. Harder to live through later, he was starting to realise. It was all house-to-house fighting. And there were major drawbacks of this battalion of men not being as well-trained as Steve's hand-picked team. They were slower and hesitated. They weren't able to tamp down their fear when it was time for the offense to get aggressive.

The fact that Steve knew how to command a situation like this worked against him, too; there was too much mental space for him to worry about Bucky and Dugan. It distracted him. It was persistent worry. Niggling and irritating the back of his mind. It made Steve push himself that much harder. He ran until the lactic acid flooded his muscles. And then he used the annoying burn of it to whip the shield even faster. His punches were harder. Kicks less restrained.

He ran right through a German machine gun nest, grabbed the muzzle of the gun with his gloved hand, and ripped it clean out of the embankment. Smashed it on the ground. He killed the three-man team in as many seconds.

Worry made him brutal. Worry made him a little more reckless, made him rush to be done with this assault so that he could find his men. It took some effort to not forget the others that were looking to him to lead them. As much as Steve feared for his own, he couldn't put these younger, less experienced soldiers at risk. Couldn't cut a hot streak of carnage through these Germans to reach Bucky and Dugan, leaving the others in the lurch behind him. So he did his best to cover for them. He took up a position if a man went down. He made sure the medics had clear routes to pull the wounded back.

He didn't flinch when mortars disappeared people and landmarks indiscriminately. Didn't waver when the ground erupted, launching debris that rained back down, burning, upon them. No shrapnel slowed him, no bullet enough to block his course. No defence the Germans could think up would be enough to stop him.

Steve caught a German potato masher that was headed for a group of privates behind him that were bringing up a 37 mm gun. He threw it back at the soldier who'd originally launched it; the body jumped apart. He kept it up. Whatever it took.

What the fuck what the fuck what the literal fucking fuck. Bucky could have kicked Dum Dum in his fucking head with the leg he'd just been shot in. Unnatural warmth was already spreading through his thigh. Instead of punting Dum Dum into the Atlantic, Bucky hobbled the last few steps to the corporal, gripped his stupid vest, hauled him up (biting hard on his tongue to keep from screaming at the pain in his shoulder and now in his leg), and made a clumsy rush to the nearest solid wall to put between themselves and the Germans.

This fucking idiot just made getting out of here so much more difficult.

Bucky panted, "I need you to be able to walk. Where'd you get hit?" Dum Dum didn't look like he was all there, so Bucky shook him. "Answer me."

"Jimmy?" That blood trickling down his temple better be from smacking a stone on the way down after he got shot and not the actual gunshot wound.

"Where the fuck did you get hit!"

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, getting shot hurt. His leg was burning so much that it was enough to forget about his shoulder. His chest felt hollow; his panting breath wasn't enough to fill him up. His heartbeat had moved into his skull. Tremors shook him everywhere. The air around him felt like it was getting warm and expanding, creating room – not now! Bucky clamped a hand over the leg wound. Pain kept his consciousness inside his body.

Dum Dum squinted at him and wasted a few seconds being confused. Shells detonated close enough to kick up thick dust and smoke. Bucky closed his eyes against the stinging it induced.

"Hate tuh say this, but I think I got shot in thuh ass," Dum Dum huffed.

"The ass."

"Right in the ass. Yeah."

A shout of hysterical laughter jumped out of Bucky's mouth. "Dum Dum, I need you to be able to walk on your shot-up ass because I cannot carry you out of here. Even before you shot me in the leg."

"S'rry 'bout thah." He smiled drunkenly at Bucky. "Don't tell Cap."

"If we live long enough to see him again, I'll think about it."

"What's the plan, Sarge?"

What was the plan? Thoughts clumping together like milk going sour, Bucky tried to form a coherent plan. Christ, but this hurt. Something inside was begging him to just…go somewhere else and let whatever was going to happen to happen. Get it over with while he didn't have to be present for it. Nothing had burned through him like this since—

"Hey," Dum Dum's voice cut in. The undercurrent of urgency rattled Bucky's higher functions.

"Huh?"

"Don't do that right now." Dum Dum gripped Bucky's neck, and it almost felt like it was happening to someone else. "Need ya right here with me, Jimmy."

I know!

"We gotta get somewhere with better coverage. Patch up the worst of this." Waves of heat rolled up into the core of him from his leg. "Fuck, I don't know. Contact the rest of the team. Make a run for it. Or they make a run for us."

"OK. That's a plan." Dum Dum was clenching his teeth. He hummed in the back of his throat as he braced himself to move.

"Back to the first building we scouted," Bucky decided. "Save your ammunition. Don't shoot unless we have to."

"Yes, sir."

They waited for a break in the artillery. Bucky bit down and pushed himself up, helped Dum Dum the rest of the way to his feet, and headed for the nearest block. It was excruciating having Dum Dum's weight hanging off of his arm. Burning leg threatened to buckle with every step. Friendly bombs were shattering reality around them. Hostile guns answered. The smell of it all. Smoke was clouding the air now. It was a lot. He couldn’t focus on all of it at the same time.

Bucky collapsed in the alley just one block from where they'd started. Would have walked right out of his own body if Dum Dum hadn't fallen on him. A guttural scream escaped before he could swallow it down.

"You're alright, you're fine," Dum Dum muttered repeatedly. His weight disappeared. A groan as he sat up. "C'mon, we're almost there. Can't crash here. Not yet."

Bucky throttled the next scream back to just a gasp when Dum Dum pulled him up by both shoulders. An overlay of stars and a creepy little fuck with glasses clouded his vision.

"Sorry, keep forgetting," said Dum Dum's voice from another galaxy.

Bucky grit out, "I'm glad you're able to."

"You can gimme all the shit in the world for this after we get outta here."

This time it was Dum Dum who had Bucky's useless weight hanging off of him for a block. They made it another half-block before a toppling building cut them off. They skittered a few clumsy steps backwards to avoid the falling stone. Lucky that the neighbouring building was still intact; it was the only thing to stop them from collapsing in a heap again. They had to go around the infant ruins.  

Sometimes it was Bucky who leaned completely on Dum Dum. Other times, he found his feet and let Dum Dum rest on him. More often than not they had to lean into each other at the same time, some bizarre three-legged race with mortars and collapsing buildings chasing them. The pain and heat and sound of Dum Dum's breath in his ear was the only thing that kept him in the present. Quitting wasn't an option when someone was counting on you to get them out. Bucky had never known he could go so far when he was running on naught but fumes. Years could have elapsed during the time it took to get back to their first building. The one that Bucky had fucking missed his shot from and fucked them all over.

All of his senses went white when he threw Dum Dum up the inclined pile of debris and onto the second storey of the building. At least the corporal had the presence of mind to grab Bucky's good arm to pull him up after him. Both of them scuttled like crabs until there was a solid wall behind them, chests heaving for dusty breath.

"This might be the worst I've ever felt," Dum Dum panted.

"I can think of at least one other time that I've felt worse."

What started as a hard exhalation through Dum Dum's nose broke up into gut-busting laughs. "Shut the fuck up, Jimmy. Ha!"

The sound of the laughter helped something heavy move off of Bucky's heart. Like he didn't have to run uphill anymore, even though he was still running. The last of the white faded from his vision.

"OK. Wound. Let's see."

Dum Dum frowned but shed his belt with all of its supply pouches. Once it was off, he pulled out his meagre aid kit and bandages. Tossed it into Bucky's lap, already knowing neither of them could catch anything at the moment.

Dum Dum muttered darkly as he worked at the waistband of his trousers, "You're gonna love this. I know how long you've been waiting for an excuse to stare at my bare ass."

"Want me to look away?" Bucky tried for a light, teasing tone. "Spare your modesty?"

"Shut up."

But once Dum Dum's wounded moon was on full display, Bucky had to sit back from him because he was laughing too hard. It made his ribs sore and his stomach cramp, but he couldn’t stop. Lightheaded and a little dizzy, he couldn’t reign in the hysteria until he leaned onto his own wounded shoulder.

"Wow, way to make a guy feel comfortable. What, is it just a massive hole now?"

Dum Dum heckled him for a few minutes until he could calm down enough to steady his hands. The breath still shivered inside him, a grin shook his face, but Bucky was able to mostly control himself.

"Sorry," he said. Cleared his throat. "Sorry."

"What's so funny about my ass?"

"Nothing. Just that it's connected to the rest of you."

"Hmrph."

A grin threatened to start another round of laughter. Bucky breathed through it. "It's just that you literally got shot straight through the ass."

"I can feel it."

"No, I mean, this thing – this one bullet – went in one of your ass cheeks, out the other side of that same ass cheek, into the next one, and out again. You have four holes in your ass from a single shot. It was a fucking golden shot. I wish I had done it." Laughter overtook him again. Thankfully, it only lasted a few seconds.

It really wasn't that funny, but the laughter really did feel like it was outside of Bucky's control now. He had to bite his lip when he dumped the sulfa packets onto all four wounds.

"Fuckin' powder in my ass crack," Dum Dum said.

"How am I supposed to bandage this shit?" Bucky wondered aloud. "You need a goddamn diaper."

"I ought to break wind in your face right now."

"If I tape the little bandages on, I practically have to put my hand up your ass crack."

"I thought we were friends, Jimmy. I'd stick my hand up your ass."

"You'd also shoot me in the leg."

"Aren't you over that yet?"

"Not enough to be spreading your ass cheeks with my bare hands."

"What, you need a proposal first?"

Bucky's chest spasmed against a laugh. "I haven't exactly been saving anything for marriage, but this is too much."

Bucky taped small bandages on and then made the most hilarious contraption with two of the larger ones. It looked like a goddamn brassiere on Dum Dum's backside. By the time everything was tied and secured, Bucky's face hurt from smiling so much. When he thought about it, Bucky decided that there wasn't really anyone else he'd rather be stuck in this situation with than Dum Dum.

Steve was never this good of a sport about being unwell.

When things were done and fully dressed, Bucky asked, "Morphine?"

"Don't think that's such a good idea. Pretty sure the KUP pill is still going. Probably shouldn't mix 'em. Besides, we gotta look at your leg."

Tension gathered inside Bucky. He'd almost forgotten about it. "I can get it myself."

"Two heads are better than one."

"OK, HYDRA."

"Good one, Jimmy. C'mon. Stick that leg out."

The limb in question was drawn closer to Bucky's body without conscious thought. Bending his knee made the fire woosh up his thigh. "You can't even sit."

Dum Dum pushed himself up, grimacing from the pain the whole time, and turned to face Bucky. That serious face was the worst. He reached out a hand to put on Bucky's shoulder, but he aborted the motion. Reached for Bucky's other side.

"This was cute and all when we were with the team and we had everything we needed on base. But we're on the wrong side of the front getting bombed. Gotta take care of this now, Sarge."

Adrenaline spiked in his blood, but Bucky felt himself nod his head and acquiesce. Gingerly, he straightened his leg out. The muscles were getting stiff already. Heat pulsed from the wound. The bloodstain on his trouser leg made him scowl.

"Only one hole," Dum Dum said frowning.

In other words, there was a bullet still in there. If God was good, it would still be in one piece.

"You gonna lose the trousers or are we cutting them?"

It was a team effort to get the damned things off the one leg. Warm, slick blood was leaking steadily from the wound with every movement. Bucky had to grip his knee on either side to get the leg to lie flat. Took work to convince his fingers to let go, lean back, and give Dum Dum access.

"Gonna be able to handle this?" Dum Dum asked with trepidation.

Bucky nodded even though he didn't think he'd ever been less prepared to handle this. His thigh twitched with the effort to keep his leg straight. Letting his head fall away from it, Bucky closed his eyes. There was the brief pressure on his neck and jaw of Dum Dum's hand, then nothing at all. Nerves grew taut with expectation.

At the moment Dum Dum's hand touched the flesh around the wound, a German-accented voice was speaking directly into Bucky's skull: "Sergeant Barnes."

"Gah," he gasped. Eyes opened in terror. He was still in Cherbourg.

Dum Dum was tapping his face. "I barely touched you."

"Sorry."

A look of uncertainty watched Bucky carefully. Dum Dum turned his attention back to the wound. Bucky tolerated a few moments of probing to the wound before reality flipped like a switch. Thick straps materialised across his chest, his hips, his legs. A bit sprouted between his teeth. Paralytic flooded his blood, a hand scraping his insides through a new incision. A dream; the escape with an indestructible version of Steve was just a fantasy he'd created as relief from this. He had been here the whole time.

"Welcome back, Sergeant."

It was inevitable.

Bucky went somewhere else.

The second wave was moving in to relieve those who had done the initial assault. At their brief exchange of command, Rogers had an unfamiliar medic at his side and no less than four obvious wounds.

"The others?" were the first words out of his mouth.

Falsworth kept a stiff upper lip and shook his head in the negative. "Nothing."

Frustration, worry. Impatience. Annoyance. Falsworth hoped the captain would still be here when it came time to relieve the second wave.

Frenchie, standing at Falsworth's side, shook his head. "Not good."

They headed off into the jumble of houses that they were to destroy in pursuit of Germans, more than three hundred men at their sides.

Bucky came back when he heard Dum Dum calling him.

"Jesus fucking Christ, I thought I had killed you."

Everything felt just as unnaturally hot and painful as it had when he'd left. Only difference was that it was dark outside now.

He croaked, "What happened?"

"Careful," Dum Dum warned, "bullet's still in your leg. I was too fucking scared to take it out after you started freaking out."

Bucky's face folded. "What'd I do?"

Their building shook. The shelling hadn't stopped then.

"Let's just say that I don't ever want to hear you say that you don't have seizures again." Dum Dum looked away from him and shook his head. "Never felt so fucking useless in my entire life. Had no idea what to do for you."

"Hmm." His tongue was sticking to the inside of his mouth. "Water?"

"Yeah." He looked relieved to be asked to do something he knew how to do. A canteen was passed over.

Bucky opened it with his good side and drank more than he knew he should have. With the canteen in front of his face, he could make any expression he wanted while he let himself feel the bandage Dugan had put on his leg. A different kind of burn told him that a decent attempt at extracting the bullet had been made and a better attempt at cleaning. Sulfa would have been mostly useless with the bullet still in there…

"Save some for the rest of us," Dum Dum said. He took the canteen away.

"Thanks for putting my trousers back on," he said a little hollowly, "and not just leaving me there in my underpants."

Dum Dum's smile was unhappy. "Didn't want anyone asking questions about what I was doing with your undressed dead body."

"We gotta get out of here."

"No shit. Listen, Jimmy, I did a little bit of recon while you were having your nap. There's a group of Germans in the next building. They have a radio."

The words were processed at a quarter of their regular speed. Bucky puzzled over their meaning for nearly a whole minute. "What would we do with that?"

"Get an SOS to Jim, you idiot." But the teasing in his voice was heavy with something else.

Bucky straightened his back against the wall and pulled the wounded leg up to his chest. It burned worse than ever. His quadriceps screamed, stiffness protesting every degree of knee flexion. "How many?"

Dum Dum shook his head. "Doesn't matter. You're staying here."

"You're not going by yourself."

"Watch me."

"Corporal."

"Don't corporal me, Jimmy. You just had a fucking seizure and passed out for hours right in front of me. You are so far from fit for command, it's not even funny."

A hard, defensive part of him snapped, "I was hoping you'd forgive me for that. You see, someone was digging in my fresh open wound with their bare hands while I was completely aware. Again. That sort of thing tends to overwhelm a person."

It worked: Dum Dum looked scolded. "I'll be sure to punch your lights out beforehand next time."

Bucky forced himself to soften his face. "I'd appreciate that. You're right. We need to contact the team. But I don't think you should go by yourself."

"It's pretty straightforward. You can't walk, can't shoot. You're deadweight."

"Thanks."

Dum Dum gave him a big fat fake smile.

Bucky heaved as big of a sigh as he could manage without tweaking his shoulder. It was really always going to come down to this, wasn't it? Inevitable. Like a lot of things were inevitable.

"Dum Dum."

The corporal looked at him with apprehension. "What?"

"Dum Dum." Bucky inclined his head toward him.

"What?"

Was he being dense on purpose?

"Dum Dum, give me the stims."

Guess it was the corporal's turn to laugh hysterically. Bucky didn't appreciate it.

"Ha!" Dum Dum barked after outright laughing at him. "Yeah fuckin' right. No way. No way. Especially not after what I just witnessed."

"They're my ration. Give them to me."

"No."

"That's an order—"

"Fuck off with that. This is beyond command. As your best friend looking out for you while you're fucked in the head, I'm saying no."

Bucky didn't know where to start with that comment. "Stop being fucking stupid. Give me the stims."

"No!"

"Do you want to get out of this alive?"

"Do you?" Genuine anger was on Dum Dum's face. "Oh, stop it with the duck face. I'm not going to give you the shovel to dig your own grave."

A few beats passed where Bucky gathered all of his strength and nerve. Then he threw caution to the wind and lunged at his corporal. "Give me the stims, Dum Dum!"

Dum Dum fell backward onto his wounded ass from the force of the attack. "Fuck," he ground out between clenched teeth. "No! Get off me, Jimmy!"

They grappled inelegantly for access to the pocket where they both knew the stims were. Bucky nearly had the upper hand when Dum Dum dug his fingers into the wound on Bucky's shoulder.

Straps. A tube forced down his oesophagus. Lightning across his skull.

"Fuck," he screamed. Recoiled away from Dum Dum. "Don't do that!"

"You forced me to!"

Nothing to do then but feel miserable and hold back the alternate reality that was trying to flood his senses.

"Give me your Colt, Jimmy." Dum Dum held his hand out.

"Why?"

"Because I'm outta ammo. Give me your gun. I'm going to get the radio."

Forced himself to focus on inhaling and exhaling with even rhythm. "You spent all your ammo shooting me in the leg?"

"None of this has to be so difficult." He heard Dum Dum moving around somewhere behind him. But then: "Sorry about this."

"Sorry about wha—"

A needle pricked his good leg. The lab flickered into existence just for a few blinks before ceding to Dum Dum and Cherbourg. Dumbfounded, Bucky stared.

"You didn't," he breathed.

Dum Dum smiled without shame and held up the spent morphine syrette. "You'll feel better in a bit."

"You idiot."

"You gonna give me your Colt, or am I gonna have to take it after you pass out?"

He took it after Bucky passed out.

Jim limped as quickly as he could through the camp. Not to be an ass, but it was kind of convenient that Cap had gotten shot no less than three times and took some serious-looking shrapnel wounds during the first wave of the assault on the outer limits of Cherbourg. It slowed him down on his boneheaded plan to singlehandedly find and evacuate Dugan and Barnes. He listened to reason from Jones, who said that Cap wouldn't be in any shape to help the other two, supposing they needed aid, if he was wounded himself.

The wounds apparently healed so fast that the bullets and debris got stuck inside him. Wild. The medics were ripping metal out of him after cutting open semi-healed flesh. While Cap had nothing to dull the pain. Said something about being able to handle the pain all day. Regular morphine wasn't good enough for a super solider.

Absolutely wild.

"Cap!" Jim shouted once he was in the vicinity of the aid station. That super-human hearing better work to his advantage right now. He may have been crushed to have been left out of the battle for Cherbourg, but Jim couldn't disagree with Cap that his ankle would make him a liability at the moment.

Also, this.

"Cap! Captain Rogers!" he yelled.

"Yeah, here!" he finally answered. "Morita!"

Jim walked in the direction of a waving arm. Cap met him more than halfway.

"What is it?" he said.

Wordlessly, Jim took his headset off and held it out toward the captain. The wire wasn't exactly long. Wasn't meant for someone with a head on a different body to be able to wear comfortably. Cap had to lean over Jim all awkward-like and press the headset to his ears. His face contracted.

"Is that…?"

Jim laughed. "Your theme song? Yeah. Dum Dum Dugan singing your theme song for all the war to hear."

"The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan" was booming through the radio. Anyone would have been able to hear it, Allied or Axis.

"That is Dugan," Cap said incredulously.

"Yeah," Jim breathed. "Crazy bastard."

"They're still alive."

Well, they only had proof that Dugan was still alive. Crazy Mick was singing for the world to hear. No way Jim was going to burst the captain's bubble and tell 'em that they had no proof that his best friend wasn't dead.

"Can you contact them?" Cap said.

"No way to respond that won't be broadcast to everyone."

"You can't tell where it's coming from?"

"Not with the stuff we have here."

Cap made a thoughtful face. "Where's Jones? We need to see how much progress we've made on the route that they took into the city."

Jim slowed his pace. "What? You have to keep pressing toward the fort on that hill. This shouldn't change the plan. If this means that they're doing fine, then we stay the course. Our front will receive them soon enough. Or we take the hill and are free to contact them on the radio."

A constipated look came over the captain.

Jim said, "You can't be everywhere, Cap. I'll let you know when they make it back, if you're not here. Or I'll contact the handie-talkie on the secure channel to let you know they're back. Monty has it for now."

"Damnit," Cap muttered.

Footsteps were echoing in the hallway outside. Voices chattered back and forth: Tense. It made no difference to try to dissuade them, but Bucky rolled his head in their direction. His vision wobbled. Instead of a brick wall with ghoulish light, he saw dawn approaching through a massive hole in the wall. If there was no door, how were there voices in the hallway?

He strained his neck to look further, but he felt fuzzy and cut off from his body. Again? Still? No, this was different. There was no response because of something beyond simple exhaustion. Beyond the static of the paralytic. This wasn't something that set him on pins and needles. This was a warm sort of feeling.

His head clunked against the headrest.

No, wait. That wasn't the headrest. The headrest didn't clunk.

There was a hole in the wall where the exit should have been. The headrest was gone from the table. Was this the table?

Bucky gathered as much tension as he could and tested how far he could roll onto his side. Heat and pain tried to assault him, but something held it back. Like cotton in his ears, but for pain.

Still, the discomfort made him groan and fall onto his back again. That hurt, too.

The voices paused outside in the dawn. They started again in a curious way. The sound of climbing. He waited. Watched. Two soldiers appeared in the hole. They climbed up into the hole from below. Curiosity was writ on both of their faces.

What was going on here?

One approached, and Bucky saw that his uniform was all wrong. All wrong. From the flare at the bottom of the helmet, he knew.

Where—?

Cherbourg.

Wounded.

Morphine.

Dum Dum.

"Uh," Bucky said. He scrambled to sit up and scoot away from the two Germans. When he reached for his sidearm, there was only an empty holster. He cursed Dum Dum silently.

The second German – the one that hadn't approached quite as close – said something that made the other pause. Bucky knew that he was usually able to follow most German conversation. But his brain felt like soup inside his head. He couldn't focus or follow along. He could only sweat and strain into the wall behind him, hoping that he'd be able to phase through it like some sort of science-fiction creature.

The second German shot the first. Bucky turned his face away but felt blood splatter his face. The body collapsed across Bucky's legs. Cherbourg disintegrated and was replaced by a soundproof chamber with a dead medic on the floor. At the door, that little doctor was watching him. Sending in another and another and it was up to Bucky whether or not those men ate a bullet.

The weight on his legs was dragged off. It took the prison cell with it, bringing Bucky abruptly back to Cherbourg. The second German threw his comrade off to the side and squatted down beside him. His heels rose off the floor when he crouched; Bucky found himself fixated on it.

The other was saying something in hushed German. The morphine – it had to be the morphine – was bogging down Bucky's mind too much for him to listen. He heard "Zola" for certain. "Schmidt" too. More than once. He heard the German say "Barnes."

"Get away from me," Bucky croaked. There was a little quiver in his voice that made him sound pathetic and scared.

The German said something in a cheerful sort of way. He reached for Bucky's wounded leg, but Bucky shuffled away along the wall.

"Don't touch me."

Holding up his hands and actually smiling, the German said, pointing at Bucky, "Sie sind Barnes?"

"Don't."

"Herr Zola sucht nach Ihnen."

This was a child, Bucky realised. This was a boy. He could see it in the patchy beard and softness of the jaw.

"Get away."

The soldier leaned back away from him, thank God. He dug for something at the collar of his uniform. What was a Wehrmacht soldier doing talking about fucking Zola?

The soldier found what he was looking for and held out a pin bearing the HYDRA insignia. Proud smile on his face. Bucky felt acutely sick.

"Get away from me!"

He spoke in rapid German, looking confused. Gripped Bucky's shoulder to try to stop him from escaping. "Nein," he said. "Nein. Heil HYDRA!"

"Yeah, I got it, you're a spy. I'm not!" Bucky broke the child's grip and scooted away.

Then, Dum Dum's voice: "Back off, asshole."

Bang!

The kid slumped forward; head split open.

Dum Dum hurried up to Bucky and pulled him up. "Time to go, Sarge. This pill is wearing off, and I'm not trying to escape this shit while fully feeling this wound."

"I hate you," Bucky breathed. "I hate you, and I'm going to kill you. You fuckin' drugged me and left me defenceless in enemy territory."

"Quit complaining and move."

"He was fucking HYDRA! He was in my fucking face screaming about Zola, and I couldn't do a damn thing!"

"I thought you said you aren't a damsel in distress. C'mon, the front's close."

Midday on 23 June: Jim got eyes on Dum Dum and Barnes. The 9th Infantry had received them as they pushed deeper into the city. They sent a message via radio to Jim, said they were having them sent back on a jeep with a small load of casualties. The guy on the other end said both of them required aid.

Jim passed this along to Cap's radioman at the front. Two bucks said that he came screaming back to camp before Monty's team came to relieve him at the scheduled time.

By the time Jim made it to the field hospital – which was a generous thing to call what was actually set up – he only had to wait about two minutes. Barnes jumped off the jeep before it had come to full stop and promptly fell on his ass. He struggled to his feet as Dum Dum was removed from the back on a litter. Barnes followed the medics that were carrying it to the entrance of the field hospital before he stopped.

Like a fucking vampire waiting to be invited inside.

Jim caught up to him. "You good?"

Barnes jumped and nearly fell over again. "Jeez. It's just you. Fuck. I'm so happy to see you."

Jim nodded to the field hospital with a half-hearted expression. "Do you need to be in there?"

Swallowing deliberately, Barnes said, "No, I'm not that bad."

Of course not.

"Come on," Jim said, leading him to another building down the street from the improvised hospital. "You look like you need to sit down."  

When they settled at a table in a captured apartment, Barnes made a noise like Jim's fat uncle used to make any time he got up or down from his chair. The sergeant rubbed his eyes, which were looking a little red and glassy.

"What happened?" Jim asked. "Sure you don't need the aid station?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Dum Dum stuck me with morphine. Still feeling it."

"And why did he stick you with morphine?" Jim felt like he was talking to Will back when their age gap had seemed a lot more significant, and their parents had expected Jim to be responsible for his little brother.

Barnes sneered and huffed out a humourless laugh. "Because he shot me. Don't worry. We dressed it in the field."

Unhooking the canteen he had packed just for his teammates' return, Jim slid it across the table to Barnes. "Tell me about it."

After a few hours debriefing and, honestly, joking about Dum Dum's wounds, Jim convinced Barnes to lie down in the bedroom of the apartment. He was out like a light as soon as he was horizontal. Gabe was on the way to keep watch for what remained of his shift away from the frontline battle, so Jim lit a cigarette and waited.

"About time," Gabe said when he found Jim and Barnes in the bedroom. "I was starting to think they'd never show up."

"Well, they did," Jim said. He nodded to the door that Gabe had just come through. "Talk out there. Don't want to wake him."

"What happened?" Gabe said once they settled down elsewhere. "Where's Dum Dum?"

"At the aid station. He got wounded." Jim grinned on half of his face. "Took a single bullet to the ass. Four holes."

"You're kidding."

"That's what Sarge said."

"He OK?"

"Was good enough to walk up to the 9th mostly under his own power. Sarge is good at first aid. I'm sure he patched him up good enough in the field."

Jim re-told to Gabe everything that Barnes had just told him. About missing the shot on the German commander during the surrender window. About Dum Dum being a huge moron and wandering out into the street once the battle started to pick up an Iron Cross that the Luftwaffe had dropped. How he got blasted through both cheeks for it and then shot Barnes in the leg when he went to pull his dumbass off the road. About how there might be HYDRA moles within the Wehrmacht.

"Captain's not gonna be happy to hear that," Gabe said. "Dum Dum really commit friendly fire?"

Jim nodded, fighting a bitter smile. "Guy can't handle his stims. Just as well that Cap banned 'em from the team."

Gabe nodded in agreement. "Think he'll still have a fit over it?"

"Oh, please," Jim said, raising his eyebrows and rolling his eyes. "Definitely. He'll take one look at that" – he nodded in the direction of the room Barnes was sleeping in – "and crucify Stark for making them. Or Phillips for adding them to our supplies. He'll try to hold it back, but he'll be pissed with Dum Dum, too."

Shrugging, Gabe said, "Not his fault, kind of. He was taking pills that we'd been told to consume."

"Yeah," Jim agreed. "Still."

After a cigarette with Gabe, Jim headed across the street to the field hospital. Didn't take too many questions to find Dugan. He was lying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows. All suggestion of pants were gone, but his wounds were covered. Thank God.

"Hey!" he said jovially. "It's Jim."

"How's it going, Dum Dum?"

"Been better, gotta say."

"I heard about your ass."

He pulled a face. "Heard about it? You can just look at it! Anyone can!"

Jim laughed but ended up soberly asking, "You good?"

"I reckon so. Docs told me that it was pretty shallow. Didn't tear up anything vital too much. Still only have one asshole. Hurts like a sonofabitch though. They're gettin' me on the good stuff."

"Aren't you done with all stuff by now? Good and the bad?"

Dum Dum laughed. "It was an accident! Christ, he's never gonna let that go. I'm gonna have to let him shoot me if we're ever gonna be even again."

"Hope it doesn't come to that."

"Where is Jimmy anyway? I thought he'd be here somewhere."

Jim made a face. "You know he hates aid stations."

"Wouldn't think he'd have a choice to get the bullet out."

"What bullet? Out of where?" Jim had a creeping sensation in his gut.

Dum Dum's face mirrored the feeling. "The one in his leg. I couldn’t get it out, because he kept losing it every time I touched it."

Jim felt like an idiot. Or like he'd been deliberately deceived. "He said you guys had dressed it in the field. I had assumed that to mean it was all good."  

The corporal shook his head slowly. "That idiot."

"Anything else he didn't tell us?"

"I don't know," Dum Dum mumbled caustically. "Did he leave out the bit where a sniper shot him through the shoulder? Must have missed his heart or some important vessel by millimeters."

Jim's face froze.

"Oh, he did leave that out?"

Guess they'd all been underestimating how fucking sneaky this guy was getting.  

"Fuck," Jim said. "I shoulda talked to you first."

"Yeah," Dum Dum laughed without humour.

"Hand over your stims, man," Jim said while pinching the bridge of his nose. "Cap's orders. We're all off of 'em."

Heaving a huge sigh, Dum Dum said, "I guess I can't argue with that. I fucked up big time."

"Several times," Jim couldn't help himself from adding.

"Toss me the vest."

Jim did.

"Think Cap'll have my head?" he asked as he dug though the pockets of the vest.

"Eventually. I don't think you're exactly high on the list. And looking this pathetic in the field hospital might work in your favour."

Dum Dum laughed. "Yeah, gotta be hard to yell at a guy when you gotta stare at the four holes in his exposed ass while you do it."

Just the thought of it cracked up Jim. "Yeah, I'd like to see that."

"Can't believe I did that, though. Is four holes worth a single German decoration? I don't even know if those are good ones – Jesus fucking Christ, I do not believe that sneaking, lying sonofabitch!"

"Shush!" Jim shouted in alarm. "What the fuck? Be quiet."

Dum Dum spluttered, "This fu—I can't believe. He—damn it."

"What? Spit it out."

"Jimmy took the fucking stims." Dum Dum shook his vest in frustration. "They're not here."

Holy shit, this was probably a mistake.

Bucky flagged down a truck. "You going to the fort?" he shouted.

"Which one?"

"Roule."

"Get in."

He did.

Chapter Text

OK, either Gabe was more tired, hungry, dehydrated – everything deprived – than he thought he was, or Barnes had given them the slip. For a full minute, he stood in the doorway to the bedroom he could have sworn the sergeant had been sleeping in. But. There was no sergeant. The bed sort of looked slept in, but the shape of the bedding could have been normal. Maybe a team of Germans had been here the day before, and this was just how they'd left it.

Maybe Gabe had imagined that Jim and Barnes had been sitting in here. Maybe he'd dreamed it. Maybe he was still asleep. (But gosh darn, did he wish he were asleep right now.)

Maybe the sniper rifle casually leaning in the corner was a coincidence.

"Sarge?" he called just in case.

No reply.

"Um." Gabe scratched his head with genuine uncertainty. "Bucky?"

Still nothing.

Worth a shot anyway. Sometimes he responded quicker to the diminutive name.

Feeling a bit foolish, Gabe went to check under the bed. Sarge wasn't under there. Sitting back on his heels, Gabe looked around. There was a spot of blood on the bedding. Looked relatively fresh. Mostly dried but still red. It was probably real, that Jim and Barnes were sitting in here. Rather, they had been here.

Shaking his head, Gabe got back onto his feet. No matter what, he should probably tell the others. Jim had definitely said that he was going to check on Dugan at the field hospital. There was no doubt of that memory. But he searched the rest of the apartment high and low, calling Barnes's name, in case he'd wandered to the toilet or God knew where else.

Then he went across the road to the field hospital. Wasn't too difficult to find Jim and Dugan, so Gabe didn't have to endure so many questioning and sometimes hostile looks.  The two of them seemed pretty upset before Gabe even got there and gave them the bad news.

"What happened?" Gabe said by way of greeting. He really had to avert his eyes from Dugan to avoid an inappropriate bout of laughter.

Jim gave him a tight smile. "We were just talking about how our gold-standard sergeant lied about having a bullet stuck in his leg, declined to mention that he had a second wound in his shoulder, and then lifted Dum Dum's stims."

Oh. Well, that was a lot to take in.

Gabe said blankly, "I saw blood on the bed."

"Not surprised," Dugan muttered.

"And I didn't see – what'd you call him? Our gold-standard sergeant – in his bed."

"What do you mean?" Jim's eyes were sharp.

"Um, Barnes is gone," Gabe said lamely.

Dugan shuffled on his elbows until he had the leverage to twist a few degrees to face Gabe. "What do you mean, gone?"

Gabe had to bite his lip.

"What!"

"Sorry. Hard to talk to you all serious when you look like this." He gestured to the bandages and general lack of pants.

"Jonesy, seriously? Even you? Right now?" Dugan sighed in exasperation.

"Sorry. I heard about it, but now that I’m seeing it…" Gabe trailed off. Put a hand over his mouth and looked away for a moment. "Sorry," he said, turning back. "I'm good now. I swear."

Dugan gave him a doubtful look. "You sure? I realise that this is hilarious, but it sounds like we've got an actual problem that needs to be talked through."

A proper crack up rolled through Gabe then. It didn't help at all that Jim kept making those faces behind Dugan's back.

"I'm so sorry, man," Gabe squeaked out before he started to laugh properly. The more he tried to contain it, the harder it was to draw back.

It got Jim going, too. The other people gave them dirty looks. That was enough to help Gabe reel himself in. It was really in horribly poor taste to be laughing in a field hospital where people were actively dying and muttering "momma" with their last breaths. He sighed out a shaky breath.

"OK. Yeah. Like I was saying, Barnes is gone. The bed was empty. Nothing but a speck of blood and the Johnson were in there."

"How long ago?" Jim asked.

Gabe shrugged. "Dunno. I came straight over here when I couldn't find him."

"The HYDRA moles," Dugan said. "One of them took him."

Jim's eyebrows drew together doubtfully. "Huh? Jones would have seen someone come in, don't you think?"

Gabe nodded. "Unless there was another way in."

"I don't think anyone would be able to get through that window with an unwilling captive without being detected," Jim said.

"If he took the stims," Dugan said, "who knows what dumbass decisions he made on his own? Shit, look at the things I was doing."

"And he's probably still got the morphine in him," said Jim. "Hasn't been sleeping or eating for weeks. Got a bullet in him that's probably already infected. That's a recipe for a massive goddamn idiot."

"Where would he be going?" Gabe wondered aloud. "I mean, if anyone saw him, would they be able to tell that he wasn't all there?"

"No," Dugan said. "I mean, he got it past Jim that he had two wounds just a few hours ago! Nothing against you, Fresno, this guy is being a downright rat bastard. Nothing you could have done. If he can trick any one of us, none of these idiots are gonna be smart enough to realise that he needs to be herded like a rogue calf."

Gabe made a face. "What? Are you a cowboy now?"

A loose smile was on Dugan's face. "No. I don't know. I'm not all here at the moment. Wounded. Tired. Hungry. Still a little buzzed."

"What are the chances that he's still here?" Jim said. "I mean, behind the front? Not in the active combat zones."

Gabe blurted, "Probably zero."

Dugan nodded in agreement.

Jim dropped his face into his hands and groaned. When he looked up, he said, "What time is it? We gotta tell Cap."

What. The. Hell.

The restraint it took for Steve to not lash out at his team was astounding. Yeah, yeah, he knew that it wasn't their fault. They weren't responsible for Bucky being an entire idiot and wandering off to wherever the hell he had wandered off to. Yes, Steve had asked Morita to make sure that Dugan and Bucky wouldn't leave the relative safety of the back of the column. But Morita was currently running on half the normal amount of mobility. Steve didn't blame him. He didn't. Hell, Steve would probably have done the same thing; leaving Bucky to rest while he went to check on Dugan.

(No, he absolutely would not have done that.)

It was no one's fault that this had happened except for Bucky.

But goddamn Steve really wanted to wring his neck just then.

"You alright?" Morita asked hesitantly after having delivered the news in person.

Steve breathed deeply like he was fending off an asthma attack. Calm and controlled. "Yep, just fine."

"You don't look like it. Look like you need to punch something." A little nervous laugh. "Warn me if I gotta clear outta here for my own good."

They were standing in the apartment that Morita said he'd left Bucky in. The sniper rifle and the spot of blood had been showed to him.

"You don't know where he went?" Steve asked for probably the sixth time.

"Nope."

"He could have gone back to the front."

"It's a possibility."

"While wounded."

"Uh huh."

Steve closed his eyes hard and pinched the bridge of his nose. Tried to remember to keep breathing to stay calm. He needed to think right now. There was a battle still going on. Dugan was back, relatively safe. Steve presently had half of the problems he'd had yesterday.

So why didn't he feel like it?

"Two wounds," Steve said aloud. "One that still has a bullet in it." A bullet that Dugan, of all people, put there. "Tripping on morphine. And maybe – probably – the stims, too."

"Yeah." Morita bobbed his head. "Hard to believe he's not on the stims, Cap, he was beat when I talked to him. He wouldn't have made it five metres without some help. We've all seen the things that Dum Dum has done lately because of those things. Well, and the rest of us, too, sometimes. Our judgement was pretty skewed on that stuff. But you could forget about the pain and bad shit for a while."

It wasn't as if that was something Steve could forget. But he didn't let this reflect poorly on his team. It wasn't one of their weaknesses. They'd been given the drugs by superiors that should have had their safety and best interest at the front of every decision. They'd taken drugs they had been told were helpful and worth the risk of side effects, and Steve had let an environment be created where they needed to take them.

Didn't mean that all of this still didn't suck, though.

"And now we think there are HYDRA spies in the German forces here."

"Yes." Morita nodded his head once, kept his chin tilted down.

Steve had a theory already, but he didn't want to say it out loud. Didn't want the others to confirm it, offer any supporting evidence.

"Is Dugan still up? I need to talk to him."

"Yeah, of course. Follow me."

A lot of effort went into reigning in Steve's thoughts on the walk to the field hospital. It was a curse to know Bucky so well sometimes. A bizarre part of him hoped the drugs had clouded his friend's reasoning enough to have him choose to do something much less stupid than what Steve was imagining.

Morita went up to Dugan's cot without pausing and shook the corporal awake. At first, Steve was taken aback by the sight of him. Could this actually be the first time that he'd seen one of his men in a field hospital? Formally? Besides Bucky isolated and miserable after Krausberg, Steve struggled to remember something like this. The wreckage of the team after Prague was the first thing that came to mind.

Felt as if they'd been a team for a lot longer than seven or eight months. It felt like it had been years that they'd been working together. In that time, they'd been able to tend to each other's wounds. The aid station at Great Dunmow may have boosted them and restored them, but there was never anything that they couldn't stop the bleeding on, so to speak, in the field. Nothing life-threatening. Nothing that couldn't be healed by resting in Barracks 14 as opposed to the base's aid station.

And, OK, maybe Dugan's wounds weren't life-threatening. But they could have been. He could have bled out if he and Bucky hadn't had enough supplies in their aid kits, if he kept running and moving while wounded like that. He could have gotten an infection. But he had been bandaged, and this field hospital was mitigating the likelihood of infection.

All of this just for Steve to feel it like a punch to the gut. He did not like the look of one of his guys in a field hospital. But that wasn't going to stop him from bodily carrying Bucky in here and holding him down, if that's what it took, once he got eyes on his sergeant again.

"Hey, Cap," Dugan greeted him in a weary voice.

Steve nodded. "How're you holding up?"

Shrug. "You know. Starting to feel the ache now."

God, the effort it took Steve to keep his eyes on Dugan's face and his expression neutral. A part of Steve that he would never admit existed wished sorely to have been there when Bucky first bandaged these wounds. It wasn't funny. It wasn't funny. But the cleaning of it had to have been.

"I know, it's hilarious," Dugan said. "Get your giggles out now."

Steve mentally shook himself and tried to get the smile out of his cheeks. "Sorry. Are you getting everything you need?"

Dugan grunted as he adjusted the way he was leaning on his elbows to face Steve more squarely. "Yeah, I thought I'd give the stuff a break. Actually feel myself for a few hours, you know?"

"Alright. As soon as you need something, let me know. No point in being any more miserable than you have to be."

"Yes, Captain."

Morita dragged over two seats that had clearly been reclaimed from someone's living room.

"Thanks," Steve told him. Arranging the chair in a place that Dugan didn't have to strain to see, Steve said, "What happened? Why would he leave?"

"Beats me, Cap, I thought we were both relieved just to make it back to friendly territory. He was only standing because the morphine was blocking the worst of it."

"He didn't say anything to you about going back out there? Going somewhere else? Looking for something?"

"No, nothing. He was only talking about getting me to an aid station and then putting himself down for the nap of a lifetime."

Morita said bitterly, "Notice that he never said anything about getting that bullet out?"

"At the time, no, I hadn't noticed." Dugan shook his head. "He was being pretty defensive of it. Protective. Wouldn't let anyone too near. I don't blame him. I tried getting the bullet out once – it's pretty deep and in two or three pieces, I think – and he lost it."

Steve's brows drew together. "Lost it?"

"Uh." Dugan adjusted how he was laying and winced. "Yeah. He'd, you know, start kicking and swinging at me. Kind of struggling? I don't know how to describe it. Eventually worked himself into passing out. Fuck, I should have just kept going and got the bullet out while he was out of it. I was too scared; you all know I'm the worst at first aid. I thought he'd keep moving, and I'd nick one of the important blood vessels. Make him bleed out." Dugan ran his hands down his face. "Shoulda tried."

"Hindsight," Morita said. He clapped a hand on Dugan's calf. "Don't beat yourself up about it. You're not a medic or a doctor. Not up to you to be extracting bullets."

"Wouldn't have been an issue if I hadn't shot him in the first place."

A little smile cracked Morita's face. "Now that one I do not have a comeback for."

Steve said, "There's nothing we can do about it now, so there's no point agonising over it."

Dugan accepted this with a nod but didn't look comforted.

"Tell me about the HYDRA spy," Steve said.

In the end, he was pretty sure he knew where all of this was going. Generously speaking, it was a plan. A stupid, dumbass plan. But still. They could reasonably say that Bucky hadn't simply gone off for a walk. At least, Steve knew. As soon as he'd heard that the young HYDRA spy hadn't seemed to know why Bucky was wanted by his superiors, Steve knew that Bucky would have tried to exploit that fact. Being wanted alive was something Bucky would want to use to his advantage. Which maybe Steve would have talked about if Bucky weren't wounded in two places – three if you counted the entrance and exit wounds in his shoulder as two separate wounds – sleep deprived, hungry, and drugged.

"I mean, Cap, Barnes can be a major fucking idiot. No question about that," Morita said with a frown. "But you really think he'd go get himself caught on purpose without telling anyone?"

"Absolutely," Steve said. "He knows that we'll figure it out. And he's going to look us in the eye when this is all over and say that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."

"And give us some crock of shit about how he was minimising the amount of collateral damage by going in by himself," Dugan said.

Steve nodded. "That, too."

The sun was breaking over the horizon; they could see it from the field hospital windows. Steve sighed. Now he had to make a decision.

"Get Phillips on the radio," Steve told Morita. "Or whoever you can get at S.S.R. Tell them about the HYDRA spy."

Morita nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Gonna tell 'em about Jimmy?"

Steve met the corporal's eye. "We're not going to speculate to the brass."

What the ever-loving fuck had everyone else even been talking about? Bucky sat on the truck and felt his wounds pulsing and aching with every little crack this stupid truck hit. Was the driver blind? Was he even trying to have a smooth ride?

Fuck.

These stims didn't work. He ought to have been feeling something by now. The morphine definitely felt like it was wearing down, based on the rise in pain. But there was nothing else. He didn't feel euphoric or energetic the way the other guys had on the march across the peninsula. Were the tablets affected by weather? Did they degrade over time? There were no memories of Stark warning them of that. Bucky just felt tired and sore and hungry and like his consciousness was trying to escape his body and like he was making the biggest, stupidest fucking decision of his life. But he couldn't just tell this shit-ass driver to go ahead and turn around because he had changed him mind about this.

Which really only left him with one option. First, he ground his fist into his wounded thigh to wake himself up. Then he fought back visions of the laboratory. Then Bucky shook out two tablets from the stim packet and tossed them back. He'd left his canteen somewhere in the apartment with Jim, so he dry swallowed. Nearly choked.

He hoped that wasn't a mistake.

The truck dropped them off just behind the front. Bucky followed the team he'd hitched a ride with for a little while. Fought a bit in the streets. It felt easy, the street fights. He didn't feel too worried about it. Even though his stride was a little slower and weird from the bullet still in his goddamn leg. Shouldering the M1 hurt less and less the more he got used to the jolt of the discharge. Discomfort could be expected and braced for.

Maybe it was the security and comfort of fighting with a proper regiment again. Maybe it was that he'd become desensitised to warfare. Maybe it was because he'd already been behind the lines of these enemies and known that they were, generally, short on all forms of ammunition.

Maybe it was the stims working after all.

He lost the rest of 'em when a building bloomed in the centre of the street. They'd all scattered in different directions. Bucky scattered forward, automatic and unafraid. He let any hostiles that he came across take the first shot. They never got a hit on him, and he dropped them in one. It was methodical, the progress he made. Almost required no thinking. It felt good. Felt right. It felt like relief. Like riding a bike.

Bucky lost himself in it, didn't fight the separateness that swept him up and away. The relentless bombardment from the fighter-bombers overhead and artillery behind were drumbeats for him to march to, waiting for breaks in the fire to make the most progress. It wasn't until after he took cover from a mortar in a crater behind a decorative column by a bridge that he came back to himself. The sun had made remarkable progress in its daily trail, but he couldn't bring himself to be concerned about the unaccounted-for time in his head. And, who knew, maybe that was the first sign that something wasn't right. He didn't wonder who he had fought to get where he was, how far ahead of the Allied front he was. The growing damp, red stain on his thigh didn't seem like anything to worry about. The weight of soaked fabric on his shoulder didn't even register. There wasn't anyone else around but a German soldier that could not have been much older than Jim Morita. He stood above the crater Bucky had sheltered in, Mauser pointed at his heart. Hesitating.

They watched each other. Bucky set down the M1. Pulled out his Colt and dropped it, too. Then he raised his hands.

"Hail HYDRA," he said.

The Mauser rifle was lowered. The soldier looked wary. He approached slowly, never quite lowering the rifle all the way. Bucky wasn't concerned. He kept his hands raised. This would work.

The soldier was less than a metre away when something deep cramped in Bucky's shoulder that defied the buffer of the drugs. Krausberg and the lab surged forward. The arm dropped as the table's restraint captured it once more. But before it got past Bucky's head, the German in Cherbourg, startled, stocked him in the face with the Mauser. It booted Bucky's thoughts clear out of his head. Out of Cherbourg. Into nothingness.

But his body didn't falter.

It seemed a Sisyphean task at first, Jacques thought, the capturing of this fortress. The blood it would cost – that it was already costing. How many lives would they throw against its cliffs before they gained any ground? It was hard to think about. Harder to ignore. Once the Fort du Roule fell, then the rest of the defences in Cherbourg would surely fall with it. It was symbolic that way, Jacques thought. Symbols can mean a great deal to people. For better or worse.

There was another refused surrender before the assault properly started.

First the bomber planes had made their passes, dropping mostly futile munitions on the fortress. It was well defended by geography. The years the invaders had had to fortify these natural defences had been put to good use. Jacques, in the first wave with Falsworth, saw this first-hand. The small arms fire seemed to be raining directly down on them. It was everywhere. It was constant. It was rain.

All that occurred to Jacques was that these defenders had been told to do so to the death.

Their support had to be very careful now. Fort du Roule was close to the port installations. Capturing the port and controlling the bay was the whole purpose of pursuing Cherbourg in the first place. They could not ruin their own prize in the taking of it. If the support of the U.S. Navy was to be had, they had to take out the seaward defences of the fort. To do that, they had to progress up the mountain to at least the first ring of pillboxes.

Gravity worked against them. The thick, endless brambles of barbed wire halted them. Enemy machine gun fire prevented them from approaching directly to remove the barbed wire.

It took all of them, condensing and combining their forces, to make any progress. Jacques led a crew with Bangalore mines as close as they dared to get to the barbed wire while the combined power of all the friendly machine guns and mortars provided covering fire. Together, they blew holes through the wire. It took more than one team more than one attempt to get enough big holes in the wire for the infantry to advance.

That relentless raincloud of small arms fire greeted them on the other side. And so on.

Bucky could not be convinced that he was anywhere other than Krausberg and its sensory deprivation chamber. He couldn't say how he got there or where he'd been before he was there. It was a certain knowing that he couldn't explain. Nowhere else ever made him feel so overstimulated and completely cut off from his body at the same time like that cell did. There was no concept of time or reason there. Maybe that was actually more comforting than he was willing to admit.

That certainty started to dissolve when everything started to shake. It was hard to tell the difference at first. Bucky's breath was echoing in his chest and off the walls just like it did in that chamber. There might have been more light in this place though. More light being any kind of relief from…not darkness exactly, but nothingness. This chamber seemed cold, too. The deprivation chamber could get cold, of course, but it was usually nothing. Not cold nor warm. Almost imperceptible. This place was definitely cold.

Unforgiving concrete seemed to be surrounding him. It felt strange though. Different. As if it were muffling something. Or as if it were under great pressure from outside. It was only the indistinct voices from very, very far away that convinced him that he wasn't in Krausberg's soundproof, sense-proof cell after all. Absolutely nothing could be heard when he was in there.

That, and the way the whole place shook when something massive exploded again. It was loud but somehow faraway.

So he was not in the cell in Krausberg. Had to be Cherbourg, then. Right? That's where he had been before…before what? The sludge in Bucky's memory resisted him digging for facts and truth, but he found it: Before he'd purposely surrendered to a HYDRA spy in the Wehrmacht's ranks.

Bucky blinked and turned in place; he absently noted that he was standing up, as if he'd been in the middle of doing something when the deprivation cell decided to turn back into Cherbourg. He couldn't fathom what that could have been. He had no thoughts or memories in his head of what he'd been doing before he started doubting he was still in the deprivation cell.

Pressure built in his face as he turned, but he ignored it. Didn't stop to consider what it meant. Shoulder and thigh reminded him that he was still wounded, but the pain felt far enough away to not be a concern. The rapid-fire ache in his chest was a little bit harder to ignore. His vision felt uncomfortably sharp, and he could see split knuckles and bruises on his hands in the dark. They ached when he opened and closed his fists.

Had he been in a fight?

What the hell had happened after he surrendered? Bucky remembered the cramp in his shoulder, the stock end of a Mauser meeting his face. After that? Nothing. Bucky stretched his fingers out. They shook and ached. Blood and cracked flesh was packed down on the knuckles.  Evidence suggested that he had been doing something in all that time.  

Those distant-sounding voices didn't sound so distant anymore. The scent of salt and damp could be detected on the air.

Maybe those stims worked after all, and he'd taken too much. Made himself blackout.

Bucky walked in the direction of the voices. A door stopped him at one end. Seemed like an airtight seal. The door only opened from one side, and it looked like that side wasn't the one that Bucky was on. Wooden crates were stacked all around him. There were stamps on their outsides in German. All weapon or sea related, he decided. Seal material, lubricants. Made sense. They were in an Axis-held port city (if he was in Cherbourg).

Why had they put him in a weapons locker? What the hell sort of bunker was he in?

Everything shook.

Something massive revved up just beyond the sealed door. Bucky spun in place trying to find a source for any of it. He walked the entire length of the room, shoving crates out of the way at random to see if any vents or access points were being hidden. There weren't any. Two more times he did this before whatever was revving began to wind down. The seal around the door hissed and began to open outward. Bucky stood back to make way.

Over all the racket, he picked up on the sound of one of those godforsaken blue-light guns powering up. Krausberg threatened to return, but Cherbourg proved stronger. Three soldiers on the other side. HYDRA uniforms. One approached. The other two guarded his back. Bucky took one involuntary step back from the one that was approaching. He was speaking German, and Bucky couldn't decide if he was speaking to him or not. Instead, he realised he was already tensing for what he was about to do.

The lead soldier approached, stopped. Continued speaking. One of the others said something back. The third laughed. First spoke again, gesturing at Bucky's wounds. Zola was mentioned in the reply from the second one. And then gears shifted in Bucky's head. Thoughts vanished, separated violently from himself.

Only action.

Bucky's hand pushed the barrel of the Cube gun up and away. Knee driven up to the soldier's solar plexus. Heel of his other hand smashing up into the nose of the soldier. Spun him around. Bucky hooked an arm around the hostile's neck and forced him to walk forward toward the other two. A shot from one of the guards went through Bucky's human shield. Luckily, neither Bucky nor his shield were vapourised, but a hole was burned through the shield's abdomen. The wound cauterised itself as soon as the bolt of energy was through. Bucky got off two head shots and released the shield's body.

It crumpled.

Bucky left the weapons locker curiously and cautiously. He heard shouting above his location: German, up and to the left. It didn't make him panic. He had plenty of time to line up the shot and put two more down. One shot each.

Then he got time to look around. Walls were made of stone. The cuts and carvings looked young. But he'd never be able to say what had been used to carve out this cavern. It didn't have any of the hallmarks of the usual tools that carved passages through rock. The ceilings were high. Air was damp and salty, just like he'd detected in the locker. Water had pooled in low spots on the ground. There were a few other doors off the bottom of the cavern where he stood. They were much smaller, but all had the same air- and water-tight look to them. A metal staircase led up to a second level with a glass-fronted room. The two men he'd just killed were lying in a heap outside that room.

Most of the chamber was dominated by a real life fucking moonpool.

Holy shit.

He was underwater.

Bucky stared at the moonpool in awe. This couldn't be real. Couldn't be. And yet four beacons sat on each corner of the moonpool's edge. Docking equipment and machinery that could only be for securing aquatic vehicles were mounted several metres above the surface. Everything had the same toxic blue glow coming from them that all of this fucking Cube technology had. A faint haze of blue stretched across the surface of the moonpool inside the boundary created by the beacons. Cautiously, he approached but stayed well back from the boundary. It didn't make any noise. No mechanical buzzing or whirling.

Howard fucking Stark, come and see this! Bucky thought.

He couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was...well, it wasn't cool because it was fucking HYDRA's. But it was so fucking cool.

Footsteps echoed miles above him. Bucky kept staring at the moonpool, amazed, and only turned to the observation room to deliver another three head shots when he needed to. The pile in that doorway was going to get big, a part of him thought.

How much HYDRA could be in this underwater bunker?

Nothing to do but find out, Bucky decided. He sure as shit wasn't about to jump in that moonpool. No matter how fucking cool it was, he had no idea how deep underwater this place was. Not trying to be crushed or frozen. There didn't appear to be any vehicles here. All the docking equipment was empty and still. Maybe one had left when he'd heard all that revving in the weapons locker. Unless the HYDRA soldiers here had been dropped off on some sort of personnel carrier, there had to be another way out of this bunker.

Logic said to move upward, through that observation and control room. As he found the staircase that led to the upper deck, static built in Bucky's head. But it was comforting. It didn't feel threatening like all those other times his consciousness tried to leave his body. He wasn't afraid of this. He could clear a bunker on his own – probably.

This was something that could be as easy as breathing if he let it be.

He let his mind shut off and his body get to work.

If it hadn't been for the intelligence report that Peggy gave him on the radio, Steve wasn't so sure that he'd be where he was right now. Right before he'd left, damn near an entire day ago now, to assault Fort du Roule, she told him that scouts had spotted Bucky being transported to the seaside part of the fort, near the base of the mountain. Peggy hadn't been more specific than that. Just "transported." Not "carried" or "marched." Not "forced." Not "dragged." Not "skipping."

Steve was sure she'd done that on purpose. He was relieved that she didn't ask any follow up questions. Something like, did Steve know that Bucky was currently in the enemy's custody? 

But it got him here, clinging to the side of the mountain, where they had wanted him to be all along. He worked with the 79th Division to inch their way up the cliffs over hours. Not even Captain America could make this much easier. He could be an effective distraction while the others tried to blast through the barbed wire and disable the guns. Dernier and Monty were leading an assault on the seaside of the fort already. Taking out the heavy guns on that side would open things up for the naval bombardment.

They could really use that support at the moment.

It felt like the fire never stopped. Steve kept his head down, shielding as many troopers as he could while the relentless machine gun fire pinned them down behind some barely-there fold in the mountainside. Did they have endless ammunition? Steve felt like he was never going to forget the sound of it. He'd be 99 years old and still hearing the persistent tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. They had to wait for the belts to run out or the barrels to overheat before Steve got up and led the charge up. They'd make it a few steps before a gun from another location started in on them, covering while the main pillbox they were assaulting could fix their issues.

Their ground-down patience was eventually rewarded. Once they were within range, grenades preceded their breach of the pillbox. Steve was the first one through. He disabled the machine gun and the heavier calibre gun that had been pushed deeper into the box; they must have run out of ammunition for it. Members of the 79th flooded in right behind him and neutralised the hostiles that hadn't been taken out by the grenades.

Finally, they had an in to the interior of the fort. After a day and a half of fighting. Steve didn't want to think about the blood cost just to get inside. This particular pillbox was at the lowest elevation. Worked in their favour. No one could sneak up on them from below. They were to work up and clear out all the tunnels.

"Let's go. Stay close. Stay alert," Steve told his team of strangers.

He looked forward to finding out where exactly HYDRA fit into this fortress that was apparently manned by the remnants of decimated Wehrmacht outfits. He looked forward to finding out where they kept prisoners.

The Cube gun was spent. Bucky didn't know if it was broken or if it had a limited amount of energy that it had run out of. It was hard to care. Once it stopped working, it fell from his shaking hands. Couldn't remember how many hostiles he'd killed. Didn't know how long he'd been down there. No way of remembering what route he'd taken from the moonpool room to get to wherever he was now. He just knew he was now following an upward-sloping passage. Endless stairs. Endless.

He could feel his leg now. And his shoulder. And his face. And that weird, painful urgency in his chest was worse. The air felt thin sometimes. He kept wiping the excess sweat from his hands onto his trousers, forgetting about the blood-wet spot already there. The separated feeling swept over him more than once as he climbed the stairs. It wasn't feeling so comforting anymore. Now it felt like a threat, something he feared he wouldn't be able to reign in. Krausberg came for him when the wounded leg buckled, paralysing him with fear. Whenever he tuned back in to Cherbourg, he was still climbing these fucking stairs.

Hadn't seen any HYDRA for a long time now. Maybe. Time had lost meaning a long ago. He had no idea how long ago he'd left Jim and Gabe in the apartment.

He leaned heavily on the wall and took the stairs one at a time. He didn't see the end of it until he was already there. At the top of the stairs…there was a ladder up a narrow shaft. No end in sight.

"You're fucking joking."

Bucky climbed. His mind went white from the demand on his arm and leg. Didn't know how he did it. One rung at a time, he made himself keep moving. Sometimes Krausberg surged forward. It pushed and pulled Cherbourg like a tide. No matter where his head went, his body still climbed. The shaft was rocked by bombs exploding outside. Dust and small rocks would shower down on him. He wished the shaft would just collapse on him already.

What a dumb fucking idea this had been. This wasn't worth seeing a moonpool.

He climbed.

Gabe sat heavily on the top of the fort. The Browning clattered on the concrete beside him. His arms shook from the weight of it. There were puckered burn marks on his hands and forearms. The burning in his legs told him that it would be a good long while before he recovered from this. A massive headache was growing behind his eyes. Bombs still exploded inside his skull, irrespective of the battle having just been won.

Effectively, three days of constant combat. No one in Gabe's group had taken any prisoners or seen anyone attempt to surrender. He had a strange feeling that they may have claimed the fort by killing every last defender. They hadn't found any obvious signs of HYDRA or a holding area for prisoners.

Soldiers were whooping, waving to the ships out in the bay.

Gabe didn't know what to feel besides exhaustion.

It was hypnotising. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. It rattled inside of Bucky. Maybe it echoed in the shaft. It was hard to be sure of anything when his senses were cranked up like this. It helped to keep his eyes closed. There was only so much input he could handle at the moment. Visuals that shined and wavered along the edges weren't helpful right now. Probably not the smartest idea when he was just barely hanging off of a ladder with half of his limbs functioning as they should. The point of no return felt so fragile, so dangerously close. Were his senses still on high?

Couldn't tell. He couldn't tell.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Climb.

For the next second. The next five minutes, hours, for the rest of his life. There was only breathing. Until there was his head cracking against a ceiling. This ceiling had a handle. Bucky barely managed to grip that handle while maintaining his balance on the ladder. It took everything – absolutely everything – he had to push up and over on the handle. A hatch opened up. Sunlight poured over him. Blinded him – or it would have if he'd open his eyes more than a sliver. Bucky crawled up and into it.

At least he was above ground now. But one look around told him he was in another fucking weapons locker. It was a joke. He crawled to a wall, sat back. Went back to breathing, closing his eyes. It was nice when all he had to do was feel the warmth of the sun and breathe in the dusty smell of this stupid fucking locker. He let these few things consume him, overflow all other senses.

So he didn't hear the approaching footfalls. Didn't realise there was anyone looming over him until a voice said, "Barnes? Bucky Barnes?"

A hand shook him by the shoulder, something sharp assaulted his sense of smell, and he came gasping back. The vision of some stranger's mug was overwhelming. Breath stuttered in his chest as he struggled to lean away. The person didn't pursue him, just let him scoot pathetically along the wall. At a distance, he blinked until the face resolved into something reasonable. There were actually three faces. (And the sun seemed lower.)

He surprised himself when he recognised the closest face. "Rowe?"

The guy smiled wide. "Yeah! It's been years, man. What are the odds?"

Bucky blinked. It really was Buster Rowe, one of several big oafs from the old neighbourhood who had bullied Steve when they were kids. Bucky's brain struggled to make sense of what he was doing in a HYDRA-occupied French weapons cache when he belonged firmly in Bucky's memories of Brooklyn. This was the last thing he needed. Something deep in his chest ached. The surprise of recognising someone was already wearing off. A cool exhaustion was settling over him again.

He let his chin fall to his chest and mumbled, "Pretty unbelievable."

Rowe's hand snuck into Bucky's wavering vision. He felt the warmth of Rowe's hands on either side of his neck.

"Shit." He felt Rowe say it more than he heard it because of a strange rushing that surged into his ears from the inside. Rowe turned and said something presumably to the others. The only bit that registered to Bucky was "medic."

"No," he said immediately. Tried to sit up straighter. It made the aches everywhere worse. His heart felt like a feeble hummingbird inside his chest. "Don't do that. Is Steve – uh, Captain America out there?"

Wherever the fuck out there was.

Rowe nodded. "Yeah. We saw him on our way up here. He's hard to miss."

"Can you get him?" Bucky said around a wince. "He's my CO. Probably having kittens right now."

One of the others tapped Rowe on the shoulder. "We'll get 'em," he said.

"Kay. We'll be right here," Rowe answered. In a voice that Bucky didn't think he would have heard under normal circumstances, Rowe added, "Tell him to hurry. I'll do what I can in the meantime." 

Their footfalls made the whole tunnel vibrate. Bucky didn't know why Rowe wasn't concerned about it. Felt like the walls were liable to cave in. Bury them alive. Might not be the worst thing. Bucky went back to concentrating on his breathing despite the ache and effort of it.

"Gee, things sure have changed," Rowe said.

Bucky's focus zoomed back to Rowe so quickly that he felt the nauseating stir of vertigo.

"Especially for little Stevie Rogers," the other was saying.

"Yeah," Bucky said. He swallowed around dryness in his throat. "Sure have."

Rowe put a hand on Bucky's shoulder that he leaned away from. It left after a few seconds.

"Never would have seen that coming. But he always was a tough sonofabitch," Rowe carried on.

Bucky said, "Still is."

But he thought, He's worse.

"More things change, the more they stay the same, huh? You two are still inseparable, I see."

The next breath was particularly resistant to leaving him. "Separated right now," he managed.

Rowe's laugh made the tunnel sound muffled and filled with radio static. "Can't argue with that."

After a few moments to collect himself and get the aches under control, Bucky found it in himself to pick up his head and actually look Rowe in the eye. Well, he tried to do that. His line of sight got tripped up on the white armband with a red cross on it before he got there. Painful tension wound up inside of him, disrupting his breath.

"Medic, huh?" he managed to get through his constricting throat. Everything in him was screaming to escape. Bucky wished he could convince his muscles to actually do it.

Rowe grinned. "Yeah." Nodded. "Yeah, that really threw me at first. Signed up ready to kill some Nazis or Japanese. Showed up at camp frothing at the mouth to get a gun and get started. Next thing I knew, they're tapping me on the shoulder telling me I'm gonna do the opposite. No killin' for me. I've got to save lives."

"Honourable."

"Took some getting used to. On the beaches? God, it was awful. All those guys callin' out for us. No way we could get to all of 'em. I hate having to choose." Something weighed heavily on his expression. "Don't think I'll ever live to forget that."

"Sounds rough."

Rowe wasn't looking at him anymore, thank God. "Yeah."

As an uncomfortable silence settled between them, Bucky let himself wilt into the wall again. Where the hell was Steve?

But then Rowe was at it again: "What about you? What have you been up to?"

"You know. This."

"You don't say? You always were one of those whiz kids. I was green as grass with envy of you for that. Shoulda known you'd do something special."

"I guess," he said on an exhale.

A hand settled on his good leg, and he tensed.

Rowe said, "You ever settle down? You were always with a different broad every night back home."

"Nope."

"Always thought you and Dolores would have made it work."

"Never did."

Steve, what the fuck? How pissed are you with me that you're taking this long?

"What about your sister? How's Rebecca?"

"Married."

The hand on his leg moved to his arm. Fussed with the buttons on his field jacket. "Too bad. I always carried a bit of a flame for her."

All the sounds, feelings, sights, smells – all of it went away as something innate and ancient flared up in protest to that. It must have shown on his face.

Rowe was laughing. "What, she never took no guff from anyone. Not to mention that she was a total knockout."

Bucky seized this mental clarity while he still had it. "Look, I appreciate that you're trying to keep me awake, but I really am not up to hearing you talk about my sister like this."

Heavy footsteps. Familiar.

"Bucky!" Steve called.

Finally. Thank God. The nerve of this guy.

The ominous presence of Rowe was replaced with Steve's much more familiar one. More than half the tension in Bucky's chest was relieved. The more space between himself and that red cross, the better. Dully, he registered Monty and Gabe filling in the open spaces around him. Rowe's two companions had returned, too. Steve was doing a lot of the same things Rowe had been doing: manipulating Bucky's head like his neck didn't work anymore (it mostly didn't), poking at his shoulder, hovering over his leg, hopelessly pushing lank hair off his forehead, trying to see the fucking future in his eyes or some damn shit. It was just as overwhelming, making him feel shaky and on the verge of something.

"You're cold as ice," Steve muttered. Louder: "The hell is the matter with you?"

Bucky found it in the depths of himself to smile. "Where do I start?"

Monty and Gabe subdued their grins. Good men.

"H-HYDRA stuff," Bucky stuttered. "Below. A whole bunch. Moonpool. Should get it secured."

Steve's head jerked up from staring at Bucky's wounded leg. His face looked confused. Annoyed. "I’m about fifty thousand times more concerned about getting you off this mountain right now than I am about anything HYDRA has going on."

Mountain?

Even in this condition, Bucky could feel the lecture building up in Steve. At the same time, it occurred to him that it was much more fun to be the reckless one in their friendship. He hardly ever got to be the one making messes in their childhood. He always was cleaning up after everyone else. Taking care, making amends, avenging. It was much easier to fuck stuff up instead.

Bucky said, "You remember our old pal, Buster Rowe? From the old neighbourhood?"

Diversion: Successful.

"Buster Rowe, the guy who cheated at your boxing match?" Steve said, face contracting in distaste.

"The very same," Bucky confirmed. Gestured as best he could with his good arm at their company.

Rowe looked embarrassed even through the haze in Bucky's vision. (When had it started to dim like that?) "Hoping you all would have forgotten about that."

Steve turned his death stare away from Bucky and focussed it on his old bully instead. "I haven't," he deadpanned.

That wasn't what Bucky wanted. He willed all his power to his good leg and kicked Steve in the calf. Rowe and Steve turned to him.

"Water under the bridge," Bucky said in his best attempt at a dismissive tone. May have been ruined a bit by the wave of achiness.

Gabe stepped forward and lowered himself to one knee. "How bad, Sarge? And don't lie to us after what you've just put everyone through. We've all been worried sick."

The ache kept building to outright hurt inside his chest. "Bad," he decided.

Goddamn Steve was already working at the buttons of his field jacket and peeling it back from his shoulder. Bucky bit back a groan and closed his eyes in a vain hope to turn down the sensation.

"Hang in there," Steve was muttering the whole time he manipulated Bucky's arm out of the jacket.

It didn't get any better once the jacket was off though. It got cold. The fingers on his wounded side were starting to shiver. He could feel Steve picking at his shirt where it had become saturated with blood and stuck to the wound. Someone from the back of the audience passed up a field knife. Bucky could tell that Steve was trying to be gentle as he cut off the entire sleeve and half of the breast of the shirt. Supposed he should have been grateful that Steve hadn't just ripped the whole thing off.

It left him feeling shaky and even more jittery once they pulled off the fabric and old bandage in one quick motion. It felt as if it had been fused to his flesh before they tore it out. Fresh blood was beading up there now. Dizziness crept in.

Someone said calmly but urgently, "Lay him on his back."

Could have been a lot worse if it hadn't been Monty who was suddenly sitting there, guiding him until he was lying down. But that position just made the panic and shakiness surge. Bucky felt sickeningly vulnerable like this.

"How's it look?" Monty said from miles away.

"Like shit," Steve said. "Like it hasn't been left to heal or rest for a second since it happened. Everything's just shredded."

Gabe said, "The other side?"

Too many hands rolled him to one side and felt at the wound on the opposite side. Bucky shivered.

"That side's not nearly as bad."

They laid him back down. Monty inched closer. Bucky must have lost a few moments, because they went from settling him on his back again to holding a lot of pressure on a bandage over the shoulder wound. What the hell? He hadn't even blinked!

Bucky clenched his jaw tight but couldn't stop the groan that clawed through his throat anyway. What happened to cleaning? Disinfecting? He forgot how to breathe. His heart was running too fast. The tunnel phased back and forth with the laser mounted above the table in Krausberg. His stomach was going to knot itself up so tight it would tear.

"Bucky. Bucky, hey. Breathe," Steve commanded. "Come on. Eyes open. Look at me. Breathe."

He did as many of those things as he could. Was easy enough to find Steve hovering over him, slapping his face.

"Cut it out," he said thickly. A shiver shook through him from scalp to toes.

"Do stupid things, get stupid prizes," Steve said. "And running off like this was the stupidest thing you've ever done."

It gummed up Bucky's brain watching Steve tie off the bandages across his chest. What a bizarre visual. Blearily, he switched to watching Monty retrieve his field jacket and spread it over Bucky's upper body as if it were a blanket after the bandages were secure. Steve held pressure on both sides of the shoulder wound through the jacket, and, Jesus fuck, did that hurt. It didn't feel any warmer with the jacket, but he didn't fight either Steve or Monty as they tucked it tighter around him. Not until they were already done and he realised his arms were caught. Restrained. The laser and radiation shields appeared mounted to the top of the tunnel.

Steve said, "Jones, check his leg."

Anxious wobbling in Bucky's stomach made him strain to sit up and reach defensively for the leg in question. "Don't." His good hand escaped the field jacket.

Steve caught it and stopped him from sitting up any more than the five degrees he'd managed by increasing the pressure he was holding on his shoulder. "Just try to relax, Buck. We'll get you out of here really soon."

"No." Everything went watery. "Steve, I don't know what I'll do if you touch it."

"What do you mean?"

He shook his head, but that didn't help the words form. "I don't know. Fuck. Please. Don't touch it."  

Gabe leaned in. "We're just gonna look, alright? Gotta know what sort of help you need. No one's gonna touch it when you're already in so much pain, OK? I promise someone'll knock you out for that. It's looking like you're going into a bit of shock though, Sarge, so we gotta at least take a look."

"Shock?"

Everyone was nodding, even Rowe and his companions. What the fuck were they even still doing here?

Bucky's breath caught. "Hasn't been bleeding that much though."

Monty said, "Carrying on with untreated wounds as if they aren't wounded for five days straight will add up to a fair amount of blood loss quicker than you'd expect."

"Five days?"

Steve was nodding. "Yeah. You and Dugan were gone for two. And then three days of fighting to take the fort."

The fort? And Steve said they were on a mountain? Holy shit, had Bucky walked from somewhere under the bay to the top of Fort du Roule? No wonder it was so fucking long.

Bucky shivered. Five entire days? Only five days? Three of them mostly unaccounted for with HYDRA? He was going to be sick.

He tried to cover his leg, defend it, hide it. But Steve was still gripping his good hand. "I don't know what'll happen," Bucky told him.

Steve didn't get it. So he said, "It's alright. Nothing is going to happen. Jones is just going to look."

Bucky's head dropped back to the concrete ground. The noise it made had Steve wishing they'd done something to cushion it. Another tremble shook Bucky's entire body. Steve held down more pressure on the shoulder bandage. Nodding to Jones to go ahead, Steve tried not to calculate how much blood Bucky had probably lost by now. He was cold and breathing in just the top of his chest. The pulse in the hand caught in Steve's grasp was quick, shallow.

The knife cut through the leg of Bucky's trouser above the bloodstain easily. Jones pulled the leg down below the knee. Every last bit of flesh it revealed was both red and swollen and pale-looking at the same time. It trembled. Jones carefully undid the soiled bandage. His hands moved slowly but deliberately. Bucky hissed and tried to jerk away. Steve and Monty held him still as gently as they could.

Jaw shaking, Bucky said, "Fuck. Stop."

"Nearly done, Sarge," Jones said calmly.

"Stop."

Jones paused and glanced up. Steve nodded. They waited it out while Bucky breathed through whatever he needed to breathe through.

One finger tapped on the shoulder bandage to get Bucky's attention. "OK?"

Bucky nodded. "Yeah, just go. Hurry up."

Nodding, Jones went back to work. Another rough moment when the bottom layers of the bandage were stuck to the wound. Bucky's hand tightened like a vice, and they gave him another minute to work through it.

When Jones finally lifted the last of the bandage off, he looked up with a tight smile. "It's infected alright."

Steve looked, felt his stomach drop, and then glared as hard as he could at Bucky.

"That's weird," Bucky said in a breathless little voice.

And it actually made Steve laugh. "I am so angry with you," he made sure to say. Just so Bucky knew that he wouldn't get out of this so easily.  

"I'll be damned," that idiot Rowe said. He shouldered Jones out of the way and stared.

Steve felt tension instantly build in Bucky. His hand clamped down on Steve's wrist again. In one look, they had a conversation.

Calm down. I've got this under control.

You better have.

Relax. You have got to relax.

Do not let this clown touch me.

I won't.

"Get away," Bucky said.

Steve took his hand off the shoulder bandage and put it out to Rowe's chest. It stopped him with his hands just hovering over Bucky's leg wound. Rowe looked up with his mouth hanging open. His eyes slid from the wound to Steve and back.

"How old did you say this wound is?" he asked.

"I didn't," Steve said.

"Fuck. Get away." Bucky tried to roll out from under Rowe's hands.

"Don't move," Steve and Monty both said.

Steve went to hold Bucky back – mistake. As soon as he'd looked away from Rowe, the idiot went to immobilise the wounded leg. Bucky screamed and then a switch flipped in him. Bucky's good leg wound up, boot planted itself on Rowe's chest, and pushed. The guy went flying into the opposite wall and collapsed in a heap. Bucky didn't stop there though. He twisted away from Monty. He rolled to his feet – Steve felt a tug on his uniform as Bucky stepped past him. He backpedalled until he ran into a crate of munitions.

Steve, Monty, Jones, Rowe, and the two other members of the 79th found themselves on the wrong side of Steve's sidearm.

"Get back," Bucky said. The arm holding the sidearm was steady as Steve had ever seen it. The leg holding him up, however? Not half as steady. The look in his eye was a little concerning, too.

"Bucky, stop." Steve put his hands up and took a telegraphed step closer to him. "You're going to hurt yourself."

The gun moved specifically to Steve. "Don't," Bucky warned.

Jones said softly, "C'mon, Sarge, it's just us. See? Me, Monty, and Rogers. We're not gonna mess with your wound anymore, alright? You gotta sit down. Come on. You look ridiculous standing there with only one leg on your trousers."

"What in the world is he on?" Rowe asked. He spat a mouthful of blood.

Irritated, Steve snapped, "Shut up."

"It's gonna kill 'em," Rowe argued. "He's gotta lie down and get that bullet out. Sober up. Before he does something he's going to regret."

"Wouldn't approach—" Monty started to say as Rowe shouldered past Steve.

Bang!

Bucky shot the ground centimetres from Rowe's boot. It went from the ground to level with Rowe's chest in a smooth, controlled motion. Dust and small chips of concrete jumped into the air. A deformed bullet tinkled somewhere behind them.

"Stay away from me."

Steve heard the fear in Bucky's voice. He saw his friend's eyes flicker from scared to confused. From confused to desperate. Saw the tension leave his wrist, eyes considering the sidearm from a different perspective.

"No," Steve said without thinking. He dashed forward, deflected the defensive shot from Bucky with the shield, and locked his hand around the wrist holding the gun. Drove it up and twisted until it fell from Bucky's grip.

It only made Bucky more upset. He turned, unsteady on his leg, to free himself. They grappled, Steve trying to simply contain his friend, stop him from fighting. Steve held tight, but the way Bucky twisted and lunged was surprising. It was strong. He struggled fiercely to get away. It took more force to hold Bucky still than Steve had ever used on a non-hostile before. He was afraid that he was hurting Bucky, but he feared what hurt Bucky would do to himself if he let go more.

Monty and Jones crept closer, but Steve told them to stay back.

Bucky threw the elbow on his wounded side into Steve's stomach, and it hurt.

"Let me go!"

A conversation he'd had with Bucky in Great Dunmow during those first weeks of the team being formed replayed itself in Steve's memory. About how the S.S.R. hadn't tested the limits of Steve's new body. They hadn't recalibrated him for his new strength, and Bucky had insisted that they do it.

You have to know what's enough, and you have to know when enough isn't enough, Bucky had said then.

God, how Steve hated himself now. Hated that he caught Bucky's neck between his arms and used just the right amount of pressure to reduce the blood flow to his brain just barely enough. Bucky's struggling grew weak. His legs gave, both of them. Then all of him went completely slack. Steve lowered him to the ground. Monty and Jones were already there.

"Just get the bullet out now," Steve said dully. He kept his arms around Bucky's neck.

"Get a transport," Rowe told the two from the 79th.

Then Rowe edged up beside Jones and offered supplies from his bag. They worked on the wound together. They had to cut into healthy and partially healed flesh. Little forceps pulled out three slick bullet fragments: one large, two small. They muttered about antibiotics. Sprinkled the sulfa packets anyway. Pressed a large compression bandage over the wound and tied it down tight.

When he felt Bucky's pulse change during all of this, Steve tensed. At the first sign of Bucky coming around, he put the pressure back on. Steve hated it. Hated himself for doing it. Hated Bucky for saying that it was something he'd need to know. Hated that Bucky had shown him. Hated that Bucky was right. Hated that this was why Bucky had wanted him to know how to blood choke someone all along.

The 79th came back with a litter and said they had transportation down the mountain. Monty and Jones loaded Bucky and told the 79th guys that they would take it from here. Steve walked alongside them, keeping a hand on Bucky's pulse and a close watch on his face for signs of him coming around. As Jones and Monty got him on the jeep and bullied the driver out, Rowe called out to him.

"Rogers," he said. "Captain, I mean."

Steve paused and turned. "Yeah?"

"They probably don't have any of his blood type at the aid station. But there were decent supplies of plasma. Don't let them tell you they don't have any of the 500 cc bottles, because they do. If they keep refusing, do not leave without at least two of the 250s. He'll need it."

"Thanks," Steve said. Surprised himself with how much he meant it.

Rowe jerked his chin up. "Your guys know how to administer it? I have a feeling you're not going to bring him to the field hospital for long."

Steve shook his head. "We're good. Guys on my squad were trained to set up transfusions."

"OK," Rowe said. Nodded.

"Thanks again. For…you know. Finding him. Sorry about what happened after that."

Rowe shrugged. "Yeah, well. I owed him. And you."

Steve nodded. "Take it easy, Rowe."

"Yes, sir. See you around, Captain America."

Chapter Text

Steve kept a firm grip on Bucky while Monty navigated the path down the fort's side. The roads – if they could be called roads – were currently cluttered with personnel, debris from the battle, huge holes from bombs, other transport vehicles. The litter was roped down on the hood of the jeep, and part of Steve feared speed, gravity, and one wrong move by Monty would knock Bucky right off. Last thing he needed was to dump Bucky off the truck and run him over.

Steve would never hear the end of it.

Impatience and worry gnawed on his nerves. For a moment he considered jumping off the jeep and personally throwing every last man, truck, and object out of their way. But. He didn’t. Too afraid of Bucky falling off the litter. He didn't trust anyone else to hold him. Not even Monty or Jones. Not after whatever had happened in the tunnels with his sidearm.

They were inching around a disabled German truck when Bucky started coming around. His bruised and cut face grimaced and his head rolled back and forth. Steve stopped him from drawing up the wounded leg by putting a hand on his shin, well away from the bandage. The skin was cold and clammy.

"Easy, Buck," he said.

Bucky groaned in response and ran the hand on his unwounded side through his hair. Kept it tangled there near the back. "What the fuck."

Steve took that to mean that Bucky had snapped out of whatever had come over him when Rowe had grabbed his leg. Which relieved more than half of the stress Steve felt in his chest. Now wasn't really a good time to have to forcefully calm Bucky down. It was bad enough dealing with just his wounds. God, Steve hoped the rest could be explained away by the stims and not eating or sleeping properly. Not so sure he was really convinced of that, but he hoped.

Bucky squirmed on the litter. His unwounded leg bent at the knee. Something popped in his hip. Steve hated the thought that flitted across his mind: Bucky was trying to feel if there were any restraints on him.

Resetting his grip on Bucky as they headed down a steep section of the path, Steve said, "Try not to move so much."

"Yeah, I'll do that." The hand in his hair slid down to cover his eyes for a moment before continuing on to settle over the shoulder bandage. He pressed down on it a few times. It gave Steve an excellent view of the blood and split flesh across Bucky’s knuckles. He’d hope the colour had been from dirt, but it seemed, in this light, that it was at least partially bruises. Not a debrief that he was looking forward to having. 

Steve gently swatted the hand away from the bandage. "Don't mess with it."

At least he's responding , Steve told himself. He hadn't overdone it with the blood chokes. A hot and heavy feeling in his stomach roiled every time he thought of it. He's mostly calm, and he's responding. That's good. That's enough.

They were going to have a very long and uncomfortable conversation about this later.

Maybe Steve was getting better at this. Better at leading, better at being the one in charge. Better at being the one to take care. The awkwardness of being on the other side of this wounded-versus-carer relationship was still there, but Steve found it so much easier to ignore now compared to Prague. And Novara. And after Krausberg. God, it was so much easier than after Krausberg. Steve was less unsure of what to do, what was needed of him. Maybe all it took was being pushed beyond his breaking point five times for him to figure out how to take care of his friends. Maybe seeing all his men effortlessly take care of each other was example enough. Just do what they did. Just do what Bucky had been doing his whole life, and to hell with how strange it felt. Who had time to worry about feeling awkward when someone needed you to be there?

Closing his eyes and rolling his head toward the road, Bucky swallowed deliberately. "Gonna be sick."

"No, you're not," Steve said quickly. Perhaps he spoke too soon about being better at caring; panic trilled inside him.

Jones said, "How you gonna be sick when you haven't eaten anything in a whole damn week? What, you been at a buffet these last three days?"

"Couldn't tell ya," Bucky mumbled in a strained voice.

That made Steve frown. "Stop talking, just try to relax."

Jones tapped Steve on the shoulder and handed a paper card with a bloodstained string to him.

"What's this?"

"Emergency medical tag," Jones said. "It fell off his jacket back in the tunnels when you took it off to get at his shoulder. Looks like the medic back there gave him morphine and penicillin. He's probably feeling sick because the drugs are working; nothing to worry about too much. Your friend back there said we should keep checking the leg and giving more if we can get it. The penicillin, I mean. Said sulfa won't help much, but we put it on there anyway when we bandaged it."

The tag said as much. Listed both the morphine and penicillin, dosages of each, and where they'd been administered. Steve was grateful for that, he had to admit. If they got Bucky back behind the line and found needle marks on him that they hadn't expected, Steve would have had a meltdown. At the bottom of the tag in Rowe's pencil handwriting: SHOCK – BLOOD/PLASMA! Below that: INFECTION – MODERATE.

Steve's brows drew down. "He knew it was infected before we got there and took the bandages off?"

Jones shrugged.

"One doesn't exactly need to see the wound to make a reasonable diagnosis," Monty said.

"Maybe," Steve muttered, annoyed. "We do know how to give transfusions, don't we?"

Jones nodded. "Yeah. Sarge and Jim were best at it. But everyone successfully started one back at Great Dunmow. Even Dum Dum."

Shame at not remembering that particular lesson felt sticky in Steve's gut. If it were just him out here, he'd never be able to give the help Bucky needed. Would have had to accept help from the likes of Buster Rowe. God only knew how they were going to get Bucky to sit for a transfusion. He couldn't even really tolerate giving blood samples at Great Dunmow. The whole catastrophe after Prague was evidence enough. If the vague memory Steve had of their first aid training served, a transfusion was going to take a lot longer than drawing a little vial of blood.

"We don't have any plasma in our gear though," Jones was saying. "Have to hope one of the other outfits is feeling generous."

They're not going to have a choice , Steve thought. He was surprised by the aggressiveness of his own thought. 

Monty was smiling when he said, "I'm sure they'll be more than willing to offer supplies to one of Captain America's men."

"Steve," Bucky said. His head rolled in their direction. Eyes roved around a bit before they settled in and focussed.

Steve sat forward and put a hand on Bucky's shin again. "Yeah?"

"You gotta get the HYDRA stuff secure. It was down…down at the bottom of the tallest ladder in the world and then at the bottom of the longest staircase in the world. Can't let anyone get a hold of that shit. None of these regular guys should go down there." Bucky was trying to pick his head up without much success.