Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The day ended with a building on fire. Whether or not Kore had been the one who had set that fire couldn’t be proven and she’d see you court long before an admission would pass her lips. 

In the privacy of her own mind, however, she could admit that the day had gotten away from her and, in the chaos, one or two Molotovs might have slipped from her now frail fingers. 

Kore could also admit that the taste of flames in the air was sweet and the fire behind her warmed her to the bones better than any iron stove in the middle of winter. 

How did she get to this point? Well, it all started when she woke up as Steven Fucking Rogers. AKA Captain America. 

Specifically, pre-serum Steven Rogers. 

Kore had woken several months ago to burning lungs that felt like they could never draw in air and a heart on fire. Her chest had felt like a thousand pounds were on it and her body burned with the sickly feel of fever. Moving hurt, breathing hurt, even thinking hurt. She could only moan out weakly. She couldn’t see clearly, but someone was with her. That someone stood up and pressed a cold glass to her lips. Some words were murmured to her, but she couldn’t hear it past the blood pounding in her ears. Chugging down the water, she let out a weak sound of protest once it was taken away. A hand pressed to her forehead, gently pushing her back down until she laid her head flat once more. A blissfully cold rag was placed on her forehead. Kore focused on the cold until she drifted off. 

It had to have been days that she laid there, sick and feverish. She could hear the mumblings of people around her but couldn’t hear exactly what was being said. Kore was given water regularly and was shuffled to the bathroom whenever she was able to wave the person helping her down. She thankfully had enough energy to mumble ‘gotta pee’ which spared her from any accidents. 

It was on the fourth day that her fever broke and she woke up, sore and sluggish, but now aware of her surroundings. 

The place was dingy to say the least. Kore’s mind jumped from theory to theory on how the hell she had gotten from her modest home to what appeared to be a debilitated crack house. The walls were faded brick, and the floor was a mucky gray wood that had seen better days. There was an archaic room heater chugging along in the corner that looked like something her grandparent would have. The bed she was in was thin, the wires bed frame creaky and rusted. Thankfully, the blankets she had on were thick and well made, even lovingly by the looks of the embroidery. 

Kore slowly moved, groaning lowly in her throat at the aches in her body. It was when she sat up, and pulled her legs over the side of the bed, that she realized a very shocking fact. 

This was not her body. 

For one, no tits. Which was wack. Her body was small and lean, nothing like how she looked before. Flat chest, skinny arms and wrists, thin legs and no hips to speak of. She would have thought she had somehow deaged to be prepubescent if it hadn’t been for the dick now sitting between her legs, which was very obvious through the threadbare boxer shorts she was wearing. 

“What the fuck.” she said out loud, her voice coming out in a low, male tenor. 

“Oh Man, if your Mama heard you now, Stevie.” a Man’s voice was heard. Kore looked up to see a very handsome man. An absurdly handsome man. With a very defined jawline and short brown hair, and blue eyes sparkled with mischief. 

“She ain’t here now, is she?” Kore said without thinking, but rolled with it. She hitched an eyebrow up at the man. He held up his hands in mock surrender. 

“Damn, put a kibosh on the sass there, Stevie. I always forget how cranky you get when you’re sick.” he said, grinning. His Brooklyn accent drawled out, thick and heavy. Kore grunted at him, staring him dead in the eyes. She was looking for something, anything to give her clues on what was going on. The man’s smile slowly disappeared as he looked back. 

“You lookin’ at me like a stranger there, Stevie,” he said sadly. Kore said nothing, causing him to sigh loudly, a hand raking through his hair. “Doc said somethin’ like this could happen. The Doc said it was rheumatic fever, and that it touches the brain an’ all. Your fever got so bad the Doc said it wouldn’t be a surprise if you lost some things in the process.” he looked down. “Jus’ never thought it’d be me,” he whispered. Kore felt like shit. 

“I’m sorry.” she gave softly, meaning it. He looked up, his eyes shining. 

“Nah there, it ain’t your fault. You can’t control when you get sick.” He moved to the far corner of the room where a chair sat. “I guess I should start, then. So you ain’t freakin' out over me.” 

“That’d be nice, thanks.” She replied, feeling awkward all of the sudden. She had to go along with the whole ‘amnesiatic person’ shtick until she figured out what the hell was going on. She didn’t remember what she had been doing before she got sick, just a lot of blurry images of her home and that was it. 

“My name is James Buchannan Barnes.” The man said. And her thoughts screeched to a stop. 

She knew that name. More importantly she knew that name in relation to the name he was calling her . Kore, with much trepidation, looked back down at her small form and put those names in place. 

She was in Steve Rogers body, pre-serum. 

She was in Captain Fucking America!!

Her brain refused to compute, her eyes going wide as she looked back up at -holy fuck- Bucky FUCKING Barns. Barnes who was looking at her with a hopeful glint, seeing her reaction to his name. 

“Stevie? Do you remember?” 

Well, shit . 

“T-till the end of the line?” she asked hesitantly. Barnes broke out in a huge grin at that.

“Yeah, bud, till the end of the line.” He said jovially. “What can you remember?” Kore rubbed her hands together, wondering how she could play this while internally freaking out. 

“Um, my name is Steven Grant Rogers,” she said slowly, looking up at him for confirmation. Barnes nodded encouragingly. “You’re Bucky. My mom died and I came to live with you. We’re friends.” 

“Yes! That’s all true, what else?”

Kore opened and closed her mouth a few times like a fish, not knowing what to say. James' smile flattened a bit, turning more sad. 

“It’s ok Stevie. It’ll come back in time.” he said softly once more. Kore nodded, shifting where she sat. 

She was in Captain America’s body. With Captain America’s best friend Bucky Barns helping her out. Who thought she was amnesiatic. All of this really fucking sucked. 

And that was the theme for the next few days. Kore would get up after sleeping for a long time and James would be there to help her, feed her and get her to the bathroom. Her legs were weak; she tripped around like a newborn foal. Thankfully they had a tub, and she didn’t need his help getting washed. She slowly regained strength while James taught her what was going on around them. 

It was January 1942. Sarah Rogers was the name of Steve’s mother. James was the oldest of 4, two died while his youngest sister, Rebecca, lived with his mother. James had a job at the dock and Steve had a job at a small grocery store as a bag boy. He had been let go, unfortunately, since he was sick for a few weeks and missed the work. There was no FMLA to protect Steve’s job, which Kore thought was shit. 

The whole culture both in and out of the workforce was very different now than the 2020’s from which Kore came. Thankfully, she had the amnesia thing to back herself on and James filled her in on the ins and outs whenever she had a question. 

James was pretty awesome, to tell the truth. The dude had a charm to him that drew people in, Kore included. He was a mother hen to the extreme and always asked how she was doing and what she needed. It was very sweet and Kore would be lying if she said she wasn’t soaking up every bit.

After she could finally stand for long periods of time without getting dizzy, Kore insisted on finding a job. Like hell she was going to mooch off this man the whole time she was here. The thought of being financially dependent on someone else made her skin crawl. She found a job at a newspaper stand that boasted first hand news reports from the war. She was quick at the sale: learning how to spin Steve’s face to be appropriately bashful and sweet to the ladies, or quick and excited for the men. She thanked whatever higher power that her business courses from college helped her here, as well as her time in customer service. Her little stand became even more popular after she started bringing some wrapped baked goods she made herself. They were cheap things, little molasses cookies that people snapped up for a quick bite before work. She kept all the extra earnings. 

World War 2 was going on. Which was… yikes. Kore was NOT good at history, and knew jack shit about ww2. She knew the US was in the war now and that Pearl Harbor happened last year. She also knew that rationing started this March. 

Kore knew that shit was about to get even worse, especially with the food. So she urged James to buy food with a long shelf life. He looked at her very confused, but indulged her. She used all her extra cash to buy canned everything. Millk, vegetables, fruit, lard, meat and oils. She canned and bottled everything she could to a frantic degree, bought coffee and sugar in bulk, dried meat and fish into jerky that she wrapped tightly in plastic and heat sealed with a hot knife. Their pantry was bursting by the time the first ration call came out.

James stopped giving her confused looks after that. 

Kore also had the foresight to stock up on cheap whisky, bandages and medicine. Cost a pretty penny, but she knew how hard it was going to come by within the next year. 

The tense atmosphere filled the tiny apartment they lived in as March turned into September. Sugar and coffee were too expensive to afford, meat was starting to get up there as well. The two rationed their preserves, taking coffee a bit too bitter and soup a bit too thin. Kore made her cheap molasses cookies and sold them for a good price. Their income was steady and her and James were doing well despite all the shit happening around them. 

Kore and James' relationship was going strong. Apparently, her ‘give them hell’ attitude fits Steve’s like a glove. She was callus, rude to assholes, took absolutely no shit, swore and talked nasty. But she also was sweet to their neighbors, helping Mrs Mason down the street with her groceries and rescued animals out of dumpsters. James didn’t see the difference. He fit next to her like a puzzle piece: bickering with her in good nature, helping out when assholes got too ‘hands on’, he’d help her bake her little cookies and would make her coffees in the morning. He was stupidly sweet to her and Kore felt her heart melting like hot butter. 

She could see why Steve Rogers would do anything for Bucky Barnes. 

That was a problem for her. For one, she was a woman, stuck in the body of a man. The 1940s were not very hospitable to trans people, and Kore often went through mind-shattering bouts of dysphoria. She hid them from James, not wanting to alarm him. But it was bad. She often wanted to claw her own skin off, would stare at herself in the mirror and despair over the masculin features. She refused, absolutely refused, to touch the penis attached to her body. She sat to pee (she had not gotten the hang of standing to piss, didn’t see the need to), washed without looking, and closed her eyes when dressing. 

She wasn’t able to do anything. And it fucking sucked. She couldn’t find support groups or places for LGBTQA, she knew Stonewall would happen in 1968 but that was decades from now. The place wouldn’t even be open until the mid 60’s. 

Her attraction to James was growing. But, unfortunately, other things grew as well when she thought about those fucking arms of his and she hated that. So she tried to not think about him sexually at all to prevent it. Which was very hard. Kore was by no means celibate in her former life. She wanted to rip those damn shirts off him and make some moves but her growing dysphoria put her off very badly. 

Her body wasn’t her own. She was too short, too scrawny and reedy. She was weaker than she’d ever been, her wrists thin and fragile from sickness. Her legs could barely carry her 50 yards in a run, her lungs would wheeze and burn from the effort seconds in. Her face was wrong, her body was wrong, her voice, her fingers, her shoulders-

Everything, just… everything. 

So she pushed it down, packed it hard deep into her soul until it was solid and motionless. 

Pushing all those pent up bad feelings from everything wasn’t healthy. And probably could explain in part why things happened the way they did. 

James, and a whole lot of other people, got fired from the docks, their final paychecks withheld. It was shady as shit, completely illegal, and, from her numerous calls and visits to the police and other law know-hows, they were going to get away with it. She was laughed out the door when she went to confront the owners directly, their sneers and insults lit a fire in her body that clouded her mind with smoke and ash until she could think of nothing else.

The dock house fucked over a lot of hard working men, who needed that pay to survive. One paycheck meant the difference between food and a roof, or the streets. And there were a lot of people who were going to be on the streets after that. 

It wasn’t completely surprising that someone went a little… unhinged after finding out. There were plenty of suspects. But no one was pointing fingers at the tiny asthmatic with big doe-eyes and thin wrists. 

The cheap whisky she had stocked had been stuffed in an old newspaper satchel, dirty rags stuffed in her back pockets and some matches behind her ears. She wore dark clothes and a cap, dipping through back alleys until she reached the shitty warehouse by the docks. The place was empty, the job was easy. 

The warehouse burned like a straw house as she ran away, unabided safety regulations made the place more flammable than expected. Another reason she added to the list that she made to justify grand arson to herself. 

Kore ran back home with fire in her lungs and burn marks on her fingers, the hardened, packed feeling inside her melting a bit with the heat.

It was intoxicating. 

In the morning, she’d be shaken awake by a furious James, who’d shake the morning paper under her nose and ask stupid questions that he knew the answers to.

“They were nothin’ but a pack of layabouts, James. Those crumbs ain’t worth squat and neither was that damn warehouse. They let every person go so they could not only keep all those ration tickets, but the hard earned money you made, too.”

“God Dammit Steve! Have you flipped your damn wing?! A fire?!” yelled James, flapping the paper onto the bed next to her. 

“Don’t you go snappin’ your cap at me! We both know those fat-heads deserved it! They were in cahoots with half the law-men. They would have gotten away with it and passed the buck to some poor schmuck in a matter of time!” she said loudly, huffind back at him. He shook his head, seeming to deflate. 

“How are you goin’ ‘round causing trouble like this, Stevie? I know you ain’t got a fat-head so why go do something like this? You know what’ll happen if you’re caught?” he asked softly. 

“I won't, though, James.” she replied, just as soft. “They were bullies, and they would have gone on hurting more people. Maybe it was a little extreme, but so is messin’ with a starvin’ mans’ only source of food.” 

“We ain’t starvin’, Stevie.”

“We ain’t, can you say the same for those other men you work with?” James was quiet for a moment before huffing out a sigh. 

“Don’t be doin’ something stupid like that again, you hear?” he said, shaking a finger at her as he picked the paper up again. 

Kore smiled up at him, “Sure thing, James.” 

Chapter Text

The warehouse fire had been reported, investigated, then dismissed after they found out the breaches in safety regulations. The place was looked into, and when they found out about the pay being withheld they were sued out the asses for it. James got his last paycheck, plus interest. 

“Don’t go getting a fat head on me now, Stevie.” he said to her, counting out the bills. He gave her a look, more playful than reprimanding and she was sure to give him her best innocent look. 

They continued on, March turned to April, then June. Before they knew it, summer was in full swing. 

Kore had jumped up at the end of March, using dried seeds she had saved from her ‘canning craze’ to begin a small garden on every windowsill in their apartment. She germinated tomatoes, squash, zucchini and strawberries. She hyper fixated on her tiny garden, swearing up and down it’d come in handy later on. James was indulgent, looking after her with a fond smile as she doted on her plants. He even brought her back a little thing of fertilizer and a packet of flower seeds one day, which almost made Kore tear up from the thought alone. He had ruffled up her hair and told her to ‘stick to it.’ 

He was so sweet it made her heart ache. 

She tried not to feel like shit when he’d go out for the night, on some date or to a dance hall to pick a new one up. He was a free agent, and she had no claim to his free time. She’d look up every time he came home and cluck out a one liner about him striking out or striking home. More often than not, it was a home run. She ignored that, packing it down within her as she packed down the dirt to her tiny window garden. 

James' relationships never lasted too long, and a part of her felt horrible for liking that. He’d always tell her it ‘just wasn’t a good fit’ or something similar. Kore didn’t question it, just gave him a crooked smile and said ‘maybe the next one, Buck.’

James got a new job at a factory making car parts for jeeps that would be shipped overseas to help the war effort. It was dirty and unsafe, but good pay. She made him promise to wear a rag over his mouth to keep the dust from his lungs, even going so far to (poorly) stitch him a mask to wear. He had taken it with a queer smile she couldn’t read the full of, and promised to wear it every day. 

Her newspaper stand was still selling hot, the owner loved her since she brought in more customers than the other stands due to her cookies. She experimented, making quick bread using peanut butter, which was a hit. The people coming and going seemed to appreciate the variety. 

Kore was able to save up and buy James a pair of sturdy work boots and gloves, which she gave to him since she had forgotten his birthday in March (which he only just told her about, damn him). 

He had been shocked by the items, “These are some quality boots, Steve. How much were these?”

She waved him off, “Aint matter none, James. Your safety is worth all the clams in the world. And you better take them now before I have somethin’ to say.” she huffed, pushing the boots and gloves further into his hands.

James had laughed and accepted them, shaking his head and commenting on her fiery personality. 

“Should just wind you up and point you at them Nazis, Stevie. They’d be done for in a month.” 

Kore grinned, thinking about the whole ‘Captain America’ thing. 

“You have no idea.” she laughed. 

James was drafted right as her flowers bloomed and tomatoes started to bear fruit late June. It was a horrible day. 

Kore couldn’t stop him, but she wanted to. She wanted to pull him into their apartment and bar the doors and windows, curl him up into the blankets and never let him go. But she wouldn’t, couldn’t hold him back. 

So she enlists as well. Sitting through the physical exam she tries her best to put her best foot forward. She is denied, as expected, her asthma alone getting her rejected. James consoles her after. 

“Gotta hold down the fort here, Stevie. I need this place standin’ when I get back.” he said softly, a hand on her shoulder. 

“How am I supposed to keep this goin’, James?” she said hopelessly. 

“Well I’ll be sendin’ back my pay-”

“That’s not what I mean James!” she huffed, standing up. She moved to pace along the floor, hands karting through her hair. “What if you get hurt? What if you don’t come back, James? I need you! I can’t do this shit without you!” she was becoming frantic, her breathing coming irregular. 

“Stevie Stevie Stevie!” James called to her, standing up and placing both hands on her shoulders. “Calm down now before you send yourself into a fit.” he squeezed her shoulders, pulling her back down to sit. 

“I can’t do this alone,” she said meekly, feeling strung out. 

“You’re going to be ok, Steve. I know you will. And I’ll be back before you know it. This is just training.” he rubbed her back, pressing her into him so her head rested in the crook of his neck. “It’s going to be ok.”

James shipped out to the army boot camp a few weeks later, his pockets filled with cookies and dried flowers. 

Kore puttered around the apartment, trying to keep herself busy. She harvested her garden late summer and jarred the excess. She traded mason jars of zucchini and tomatoes for apples and pears from someone a few buildings down. She made an apple pie and jam preserves. Kore shared her food with the neighbors, Mrs R next door had three kids while her husband was drafted, a few cans of squash and a bag of rice went a long way to keeping her kids’ bellies full. 

She began to work out; every day she’d wake up and do all the exercise she could until her lungs screamed and her body ached. Leg lifts on all sides, crunches, jumping jacks, pushups, anything she could do on her own. It was hard to put on weight in this body, she was pretty sure Steve had some sort of Malabsorption syndrome where his body couldn’t get enough nutrition from food. It made her lethargic at best most days. 

It didn’t stop her from trying, and slowly, very veerryy slowly, she saw improvement. Her stamina increased, and her body began to fill out a bit better. 

This prompted her to try and enlist again, in a different area. She lied a bit on her enlistment form. She wouldn’t have been able to enlist at this location otherwise. Had she used her own address, they would have sent her to the place nearer to her home. The one she’d already been turned away from. 

Unfortunately, even with her health improvements, she was rejected once again. Kore raged silently in her home, drawing furiously over a blank white paper. 

She was glad her love for drawing came through in Steve Roger’s body. Her eye for art hadn’t changed, but she did have to relearn some of the techniques that came from muscle memory. Her style was very different from Steve’s, something that James had commented on a few times; he had explained it away with the amnesia. 

Kore had looked through Steve’s old images, his attention to detail was very nice. She could see him becoming an even better artist through time, especially if he kept with the shading style he was using. His style was a lot more realistic than Kore's, which was more angular and nonrepresentational in a way. She started attempting a more realistic style a while back, but she was shit with a pencil when it came to that style. It wasn’t until James had brought home a package of charcoal that her realism began to improve more and more. 

Maybe it was due to the fact that charcoal was more forgiving than lead: easier to push around, fade and darken with little effort. She was able to draw the shadows and gradients with a smudge of her fingers, and grasp the flickers of light with a swipe of an eraser. Kore was by no means good in the beginning, showing off her drawings to James and bemoaning the awkward lines she had mushed up or spaced too far apart. James had been kind to her even then, encouraging her to keep going, keep practicing. He had bought her more paper, more charcoal and erasers. 

Their apartment was covered in her drawings, all pinned up by a determined James over the months. 

“Need to liven’ the place up, Stevie.” he had said to her then, a few tacks pinched between the corner of his lips as he lifted her newest sketch up to the wall.

He was so sweet and kind, and Kore missed him with an ache that reached down to her bones. 

She sketched him then, charcoal staining her fingers and smudged along the bridge of her nose where she had absentmindedly wiped. There was a picture of him propped up on the table in front of her that she used as a reference. Her practice over the past months seemed to be paying off: the face was well proportioned, the eyes were the correct shape and space apart, and the shading was coming along very well. Kore took extra care to get every part right, the ache in her bones coming out and immortalizing itself on paper. 

It took her two days to finish the drawing, and when it was finished, she pinned it up in her room where she could look at it. 

God she missed him. 

Kore wrote to James twice a week. She traded some canned veggies for some paper and envelopes from a crafty handed lady a few doors down. The pages were rough edged and made from plant fibers she could feel when rubbing her hands over them. They went perfectly with the dried flowers she stuffed them with. 

All of her letters were long, detailing her days and the news around her. She’d gossip about the neighbors like an old bitty with Mrs R as they sat on Sunday evenings, so Kore always had the latest scoop on the neighborhood dish. 

Sometimes, when all her news ran dry, she’d write him stories. She liked to think she was a dab hand at writing, even if her spelling left much to be desired. Kore would write to James, chapter by chapter, a story of two lovers. 

It was a surprisingly complex story. An angel named Jebediah came to Earth to guard a human soul and he ended up falling in love. But humans were short lived and the human died, only to be reborn. The story followed the angel, who in turned followed the human from life-to-life, falling for each part of them. And, even though the human didn’t remember Jebediah, they fell for him in every life. 

Kore knew she was laying it on pretty thick, but she couldn’t help it. The inspiration struck and her fingers couldn’t say no. She even bought a second hand typewriter to speed it along, even if the pages were covered with cross marks and penned additives. Kore made copies of all the chapters she sent by adding carbon paper between two sheets of paper and loading it into the typewriter. 

James loved her letters, or at least he wrote that he did. He told her about his training and guys that he worked with. He complained about the food and how it was no match for her seasoned cooking. The mush they got didn’t even have salt most of the time, let alone the spiced and peppered meals she made. She preened at that. Mrs R had taught her a lot about cooking on top of what she already knew. Mrs R had a taste for spice and flair in food that had Kore's mouth watering at the thought of it. She gladly parted with her hoarded spices when Mrs R invited her for dinner, which was often. Between the cheek pats and being called ‘baby,’ Kore was convinced that her neighbor had adopted her at this point. 

Unfortunately, Mrs R rarely went outside of the complex’s walls. Kore didn’t blame her; segregation and the Jim Crow laws were still in full swing in the 40s, and this side of town was cheap but dangerous to live in. Kore often found herself volunteering to go out and get things for Mrs R and her kids, so that her oldest, a 17 year old boy named Dennis, didn’t have to go out past dark. It boiled Kore, down to the soul, when she saw racist shit going on. She felt a heat growing behind her teeth, a burning fire that threatened to spew out and burn the world around her to hell every time she saw it happen. 

Kore stepped in when she could and got beat up a lot. She spat and snapped her teeth at dolled up women and men twice her size, spewing insults and vitriol until she was red in the face. 

Every situation was different, and a part of her questioned if she was making things better or worse for the people of color around her. Did she have the right to intrude? They were allowed to defend themselves so was it her place to interfere? She knew her white skin shielded her from the backlash that someone with colored skin would get, and if someone was getting violent, she didn’t hesitate to jump in. But her mind still wondered, in a swirl of anxiety, that her help only made things worse for others later, or gave the assholes reason to come back when before they would have moved on. 

She voiced her thoughts to Mrs R, who patted her on the cheek after patching her up from a fight. 

“You can’t go around worrying about things outa your control, baby. Tyin’ yourself in knots over how the world works will only stress you into an early grave. Best do what you can, when you can, an’ trust others to handle themselves when you ain’t there.” she said firmly. “We been dealin’ with these problems long before you got here, an we be dealin’ with them long after you gone.” 

Corvin sucked air through her teeth, leaning her head into Mrs R’s side. 

“It ain’t right.” she said softly. “One day the world won’t be like this. And I hope to see it.” 

Mrs R placed a hand on the top of her head, patting it softly. 

“Me too, baby, me too.” 

Over time, the letters Kore wrote got more responses. They would come in about four days after hers were sent out. Which was surprising but she wasn’t going to question the efficiency of snail mail when it gave her results. She’d stuff her letters with dried flowers and little baggies of dried spices. James would send back seeds from local flowers and doodled pictures of him and his new crew. He also loved her story, and would ask a million questions about the characters and their lives, motives, etc. She was happy to indulge without giving the story away too much. 

One day a letter came in the spring, James was coming home. It would be brief, only a visit, before he was shipped overseas. Kore was ecstatic to see him again, cleaning up the house and baking his favorite foods. 

She also tried to enlist again, and got denied once again. Kore would never admit to pouting the whole way home. 

The day he returned was amazing, she waited at the train station, eagerly looking around at the faces of each man in uniform. Her mouth broke out in a large, delighted grin when the clean-shaven face of James Barns came into view. 

“James!” she yelled out, waving her hands in the air frantically. Spotting her, James' face grew a grin to match her own. Dashing over to her, they embraced in a fierce hug, James lifting her smaller form off the ground. The ache of missing him fell away from Kore's bones and was replaced with euphoria.

“ Fuck , I’ve missed you.” she hissed, tears in her eyes. 

James huffed out a laugh, his breath tickling her ear. “Same here, Stevie.” 

The next few days were like a dream. Kore often woke up on the couch, curled into Jame’s side where the two of them had fallen asleep. They talked almost non-stop about everything and anything, filling the space with their voices and laughter. She took him over to Mrs R, who greeted James like a long lost son. 

“I’ve been hearin’ so much about you through our boy Steve here, I've known you for awhile now even if we ain’t seen each other.” she said, patting James on the head just like she did with Kore. 

James had blushed a pretty red shade at her words, “All good things I hope, Ma’am.”

“Only good things,” she said, giving the younger man a wink. Kore laughed at the scared look James tossed her way. She poured in some spices to the stew Mrs R and her were making, sucking in a deep whiff of the aromas that waifed off. The stew was served and the 6 of them (all three of Mrs R’s kids were there) ate around the table, trading stories and jokes. 

James had let out a loud, deep groan of appreciation when he took the first bite of the stew. And if she refused to get up from the table for a while? It was completely unrelated. 

The two left late at night, James lagging behind to talk to Mrs R about something she needed fixed the next day. 

She placed a bowl of left overs in their little icebox for later before moving around the apartment, clearing up anything left out. She turned as she heard the door open and close to see James, looking at her with a peculiar expression. 

“What's the matter, James?” she asked.

“Nothin’ nothin’...” he said, waving her concerns off. He shook his head, as if to shake away a particular thought. “Jus’ somethin’ Mrs R said got me thinkin’ is all.”

“Nothin’ crazy I hope?”

“Nah, jus’ pointed out somethin’ to me. No big thing.” he smiled at her. It was a small, but meaningful smile, one that lifted his eyes and lit up his face like a warm candle in a dark cave. 

“Ok then,” she replied, finishing tossing some things away. “I’ma hit the hay then, that stew got me sleepy.” she clapped him on the shoulder, her hand lingering a tad too long to feel the muscle underneath. 

“Night Stevie,” 

Later that night, Kore was woken by a moment at the side of the bed. She let out a tired grunt, her hand waving outwards as the blanket was lifted off of her. 

“It’s just me,” she heard James whisper into the room, barely audible over the creaking and groaning pipes in the walls. 

“James,” she grumbled, still half asleep. The bed dipped, and he slid into bed next to her, his arms wrapping around her smaller, frailer body. She was pulled in, her head coming to rest on a broad chest. 

“Go back to sleep, now.” he hummed, voice as light and soft as air. She was too tired to think much of it, warm and content in his arms. She could hear his tad-too-fast heartbeat from where her ear pressed into his chest, the thrum lulling her down into a peaceful sleep. 

They didn’t speak of it the next day, or when it kept happening. Each night, James would sneak into her bed and they’d fall asleep curled into one another. Kore was almost exclusively the little spoon, and she didn’t mind. The chance to hold him, to feel his life humming away under her fingers, was worth everything in the world to her. She never felt more content, more full, than in those moments of peace. Every morning, when the light would trickle into the room and across their bed, she’d lay there, wide awake, staring at his face in the dawn's light trying to commit it to memory. Her eyes would trace the lines of his eyebrows, down his nose and lips, curling around his chin and up to his cheekbones and hair. He looked divine in those moments, gorgeous in a way only gods could be. In those moments she’d feel her eyes tear up and her throat constrict, the novelty of her being here, with her James, hitting her all at once. She could write poems, songs and stories about the feelings he gave her and none of it would capture the true depth of her emotions. 

So she’d continue to stare well into the morning until his eyes would blearily blink open and his gaze would match hers. 

Many things were spoken then, with not a word uttered. 

One of them would eventually break the spell, getting up to start the day, and the other would quietly follow. Coffee and breakfast would be made and their conversation would pick up on some random topic. But never the one that hung so heavily on their minds. 

On the last day of James' stay, they went to Stark Expo. 

And Kore finally got to join the Army. 

Chapter Text

First day of bootcamp went about as expected. Which was bad. So so bad.

Honestly, it wasn’t her fault. The amount of dick measuring, chest puffing and moronic ass talking made her feel dumber by proximity. She was losing brain cells just by standing close to these overcompensating neanderthals. The testosterone in the air was clogging her airways and making her asthma flare up. 

Peggy Carter was an amazing woman, and she seemed to like Kore well enough. Maybe it was because she didn’t stare, drooling at her boobs within the first 5 seconds of meeting her like the others did. And she didn’t move her arms in a ‘casual’ way that ‘unintentionally’ flexed her arms. Not that she had much to flex, but still. 

When Carter decked the shit out of Hodge, she became Kore’s hero. 

Kore fought down a laugh, biting the inside of her cheeks and looking down at her paperwork so that no one would see. The quick, sly smirk that Carter sent her way said she was unsuccessful. 

Colonel Phillips was a hardass, but Kore’s respect grew for the man over time. He was a hardass, for good reasons, but he wasn’t cruel or egotistical about his power. He was someone that knew the weight he held in his hands and respected it. 

The other dudes were fucking dicks.

“You should eat a thesaurus, maybe you’ll shit out better insults.” 

“The hell you say to me, Rogers?”

“Get your ears checked by the physician, that ain’t my job.” 

She got beat up a lot, treated like shit on the field by the men and supervisors alike. But she stuck it through. Kore knew the road she was headed down and wasn’t going to let a couple of douchebags in her way. 

Kore could feel it, late at night. A deep ache in her gut at the thought of what was to come. She was surprisingly ready for it. One would think she’d have half a mind to turn tail and run, but she didn’t think it, not even for a second. 

The journey that awaited her, the people she would meet. She thirsted for it like a dying man would. The thought of going forth, being able to be amazing and helping people in the process? Didn’t everyone crave to be special? Didn’t everyone want to change and save the world for the better? And here she was, given the chance to do all of that, to be special and amazing, and she was latching on with both hands. 

She still wrote to James twice a week, his replies came more delayed now that he was overseas but that was ok, she just dated hers and when she replied to his she’d mention the date on his so they wouldn’t get mixed. 

Kore continued writing her story to him, about Jebadiah and the human. Who slowly began to remember him over the lifetimes as their soul began to react to his presence. She wrote them as swashbuckling pirates who attacked slave traders in the 1800s who turned the ships over the freed people and taught them to sail. They, overtime, gained an armada of ships and crews who were dedicated to the same cause. They fought sea monsters and corrupt governments, until the human died in that lifetime from a final battle with their biggest antagonist. 

One thing she couldn’t help doing in her writing was keeping the human’s gender ambiguous, only using they/them pronouns and neutral names. But she did write that, with every lifetime, the human was a different race and gender. It was a way to help her identify with the character, so she could write more passionately. 

James was invested in the story, begging for more chapters with each letter. She would smile to herself whenever he asked. 

Her other freetime was spent reading. Books on strategy, battle planning, leadership and more. Kore asked questions to higher ups, talked about strategy and got different views on everything she could. She wanted to know everything she could to be the best Captain America she could be. 

Kore’s resealice paid off. She was selected to become the first Super Soldier. 

Her heart hammered in her chest the whole time on the way to the facility. Hands wringing together, Carter asked her questions about her life. She couldn’t help but to speak passionately about James, about their little apartment (that was now no longer theirs, she gave up the lease and gave everything to Mrs R for safe keeping). She spoke about her plants and how James had given her her first flower seeds and how they grew big and beautiful. 

A part of Kore wondered if Carter would have a thing for her, even though she was not really Steve and Kore had not shown her any interest. She resolved herself to let her down easy if it ever came to it. 

The injection hurt like a fucking bitch. But she stuck it out, thinking of how awesome things were to come. With plenty of bad to balance it out of course. 

She came out of that pod dizzy and disoriented. And buff as shit. 

“Holy mackerel… somebody stuck me in the taffy-puller.” she said, gazing over everyone’s heads for once.

The room stared back at her like she’d just crawled out of the Hudson. Carter arched a brow, lips twitching, while Phillips looked like he’d bitten a lemon whole.

“How ya feelin’, Rogers?” the Doc asked, clipboard trembling in his hands.

Kore flexed her fingers, staring down at them like they didn’t belong. They were big, thick-knuckled, veined up like a prizefighter’s. She curled them into fists and back again, testing the weight. “Like somebody swapped me out with a Mack truck. Not bad, just… new.”

Every sound, every flicker of light, was sharper now, stabbing into her like pins. She could hear the tick of Phillips’ wristwatch, the scratch of Carter’s pen, even the ragged breath of one of the scientists who was about to keel over from nerves. And her teeth ached — not like a cavity, but like they’d shifted in her jaw, sharper, heavier. She clamped her mouth shut before anyone could notice.

Later, after the whole running around New York debacle, she stood in the bathroom attached to her boarding room and looked at her new form. The muscles, the height and stature she now stood at was… discomforting. She knew what she’d look like after of course, but the dysphoria shot through her mind at the sight of it, making her want to vomit and cry at the same time. Her hands, which she held in front of her face, didn’t feel like her own. It was like she was piloting a suit that housed her in the center but wasn’t her. 

At the end of the day, all the reflections in her room were covered in sheets. 

The showbiz thing was kind of fun if she was honest. Kore knew this was necessary for her image to grow, for the whole ‘Captain America’ persona to gain traction and political sway. She was laying the land for her future to thrive, even if it was a little debasing now. She sold bonds, signed autographs, starred in short films, comics and more. She smooched and kissed up to big-wigs and high rollers, gaining more support for her work and the war effort. 

Her letters from James kept coming in. She was getting one every week, but they were backdated anywhere from one week to a month. It was hard to keep their correspondence straight sometimes, but she valued every letter and kept them all in a waterproof lockbox she kept on her person or close by. 

The show girls were a fucking riot. They were a little wary around her at first, the group of them were practically living on top of one another as they moved state-to-state for their shows. Kore made clear that she ‘had someone’ back home off the bat. One girl, who had fucking brass balls, stripped her uniform in the backroom before Kore could leave. Kore nonchalantly put her things in her locker without looking over and headed out, as if blind to the bare skin around her. This was, apparently, a test, which she passed with flying colors. The next day the girls were acting a lot more open and brazen around her, and Kore was having a fucking blast after that. 

Most could curse better than any man she’d ever met and had her roaring with laughter after every show. They smoked, spit and rolled their eyes in the most unlady-like fashion. The lewd jokes they cracked even made her blush. 

Kore walked onto the stage after the girl’s show to a sea of very unimpressed faces. The troop of men had been fighting this war on the front lines and she didn’t blame them for sneering at a man who had ‘gotten the slip’ on the draft. 

Pulling her cowl back, she grunted in the mic, forgoing the showman script. 

“Goddamn, I think if they made these pants any tighter, my balls would go back up in me.” There was a smattering of laughter as she picked at her pants. “Can a man be castrated with leather alone?” She did a squat motion, which made more laughter from the men. 

“Anyway, I know you’ve all had a rough go of it lately, and the last thing you want is some John flappin’ his gums to you about a war you’ve been neck deep in for awhile now. So I’ll keep this short and sweet so we can call the gal’s back out. We all know you’re here to see them, not a man in tights. Tho fellas, i gotta say, my ass has never looked better.” She turned a bit to the side and gave the crowd a firm nod. The laughter was more genuine and loud this time. She turned back to facing them.

“What you’re doing, the fighting, the suffering, it sucks and I wouldn’t wish it on you. We all want to live in a world where our worst day is a bit of rain and no milk in the fridge. But instead all you got in the bullet in your barrel and the guy coverin’ your back.” she spoke earnestly, she knew she wouldn’t win their hearts with just a pretty speech, but it didn’t hurt. 

“What you’re doing is paving a way for our families back home to live that peaceful life when we cannot. As much as we wish we could, we can’t talk this enemy down with words. This road to peace isn’t paved with passiveness. It is paved with the blood of good, hardworking men and women who shouldn’t have to be here. But, after the horrible choices of others, they felt the courage to stand up and try and make the world right again. 

“It's not right that you have to do this, it will never be right that people should die for the bad choices of others.  But thank you for having that courage to help, to hurt, to suffer and bleed so others can be at peace. Thank you.” She stood back from the mic and walked off the stage, feeling her heart pumping in her ears and throat like thunder. She went a little deeper with that speech than intended, but the faces of the men staring back at her with pain and brittleness in their eyes shook her. 

This was real. These people were real, not just some fantasy in a comic book or movie. They had lives and families outside of this storyline and she had been toying on whether or not their lives were worth her knowledge of what was to come. She was playing God and it was not right. 

Kore took a deep breath and continued walking. 

Captain America rained down on the Hydra base like hell fire, bringing with her a vengeance and anger that would be quoted in the history books as ‘ferocious and lethal.’ 

Something vicious arched its way through her body when she saw the Hydra symbol, something very close to the feeling that had filled her the day she had heard James had been fired from the dock's job. 

Every punch was strong enough to shatter bone, every kick enough to stop a man’s heart. She felt feral and vicious as she tore through them with her inhuman strength, wailing like a banshee as she threw her makeshift shield. 

“Fucking Nazi BASTARDS!!” She screamed, spit flying from her mouth. “Die you fucking pigs!” 

She really hated Nazis.

One man jumped at her, and she punched him as hard as she could, teeth bared, letting loose her strength in a manner she hadn’t dared to yet. It felt good. The man’s body flew away, folded in half from the force, his pulverized body held together by his suit, his internal organs and bones more like soup. 

She really hated Nazis.  

 Her heart, brain and body fired on all cylinders, adrenaline pulsing in her body and bringing her a full-body euphoria so blissful it compared to completion. She was made for this. 

James James James, repeated in her head like a mantra, rabid with anger, high off hormones. 

When she found him strapped to that table… 

God she thought she knew what pain felt like. It was like getting dunked in cold water to sober up, chilling her to the bone and bringing things back into sharp relief. 

“James,” hissed out of her lips like a plea, she raced over and ripped the buckles off. He was mumbling, his words slurred together. She shook his shoulders slightly to get him to come to, his dazed eyes focusing on her a little better. 

“It's me, it's Steve,” she whispered, leaning close, a hair trigger away from burrowing into his side and never, ever being separate. Her pulse was still quick under her skin and more illicit thoughts of James threatened her mind before she batted them away in disgust. 

“Steve?” his eyes focused more, zeroing in on her eyes and softening. She pulled him to stand. 

“Let's get the hell out of here,” she said, steading him. He looked her up and down, blinking slowly and squinting. 

“I thought you were smaller.” He mumbled, patting her arm as if to assure she was real. 

“Long-ass story I'm sure you'll love to hear later.” she said with a grin and began to usher him out. She hauled James out of the room, but not before eyeing the map of the other hydra bases, memorizing it with her now enhanced memory. 

The confrontation with Schmit went very similarly as it had in the movie, the gloating in all. Kore found herself watching him closely, her gaze unblinking and unwavering. 

He tilted his head, almost amused at her predatory gaze. “You should z’ank me. You and I are zhe same, you know. The serum doesn’t just make you ztronger, it unmaskz you. Showz zhe world what you really are.” 

“What I am is about to grind you between its teeth.” she seethed through clenched jaws, her eyes flickering in the light. Schmidt’s laugh was cold, echoing over the burning steel as he raised his weapon. The factory groaned and cracked around them, embers falling like stars.

The ceiling above them gave way with a thunderous crack. Schmidt stepped back, retreating into the inferno, while Kore braced herself against the storm of falling debris. By the time the dust cleared, he was gone. 

Kore fought not to hold onto James on their walk back to base. Her gaze burned a hole in his jacket, she was sure, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was staring right back up at her. 

“Holy shit, Stevie.” 

“You tellin’ me.” 

He jabbed at her arm, then her bicep, pressing harder until he had his whole weight leaned into her. “Christ almighty… you’re built like a brick shithouse.”

Kore threw her head back and laughed, the sound bouncing off the trees. “Big step up from that scrawny mug you dragged outta a Brooklyn alley, huh?”

James’ laugh softened into something quieter, more serious. His eyes cut up at her, sharp and searching. “I never thought that way, you know. Tell me you didn’t go under the knife with that rattlin’ around in your noggin, Stevie.”

She slung an arm across his shoulders anyway, tugging him in close like she was lettin’ him in on a secret. “Well, lemme tell ya. There’s this sap I know -- dumb as a box of hammers, no two cents to rub together in that thick skull of his.”

James barked a laugh, trying to shove her off, but she tightened her grip.

“So I says to myself, ‘Hell, I better sign up with the big boys, ‘cause if I don’t, this lug’ll trip over his own two feet an’ croak in the gutter.’” She gave his shoulder a shake, smirking.

James snorted, rolling his eyes, but his grin lingered. “You’re a real wiseacre, Rogers.”

“Yeah, but I’m your wiseacre,” she shot back, her smirk cutting through the smoke still clinging to the air.

That night around the fire, she told James of how she had packed up the apartment, filled her bag then given Mrs R the rest of the food and asked her to look after their belongings till they returned. She told him about her little garden and how she handed out plants to different neighbors and how she’d given her notice to the newsstand along with instructions on making some of her ration cookies. She told him about bootcamp and the Program, how the needles were longer than her fingers and burned like hell. 

She showed him her sketches in her journal, along with her writings and ideas for the next part of her story. James' eyes were haunted, but with every joke and story, they seemed to lighten. His fingers dug into her pant leg under the table, grounding himself and sending her heart racing.

Later that night, holed up in their tent, James curled against her and gave her a soft look. 

“Thank you, ya know? For comin’” he murmured into her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him, for once the big spoon. His fingers traced over her chest, along her arms and down her side, committing her new body to memory. She fought not to move under his wandering hands.

His touch was careful, almost reverent, the way a man might map a coastline he’d only ever seen from afar. Each brush of his fingertips left fire in their wake, and she clenched her jaw, willing herself to stay still. This wasn’t her body, not really. The muscles, the breadth of her chest, the sheer bulk of her arms -- they all felt wrong, like armor welded to her skin. Every place he traced was another reminder.

And yet, it was James. James, whose breath ghosted warm against her collarbone, whose weight pressed against her side like an anchor in a storm. James, whose presence made every jagged edge of her new form ache less, even as it burned her alive inside. She hated the body he explored, but she loved the way his hands lingered, as though it didn’t matter to him.

Her throat tightened, eyes stinging. The part of her that wanted to crawl out of her own skin warred with the part that wanted to melt into him, let him carve her into memory and keep her safe there forever. She breathed deep, steadying herself, forcing the two halves together until they coexisted in uneasy truce.

James shifted closer, tucking himself against her chest as though it was the most natural thing in the world. She tightened her arms around him, burying her face in his hair, inhaling the familiar scent of smoke, sweat, and the faintest trace of soap.

“Til the end of the line, Buck.” He huffed a laugh against her shoulder, fingers curled against hers where they pressed between them. 

“Of course Stevie, till the end of the line.” 

Chapter Text

Kore got in trouble. Of course she did, she didn’t expect anything else. She deliberately went against orders and put others at risk. 

She was punished by being placed under Colonel Phillips direct mentorship. 

Huh. 

“You wise-cracking, Brooklyn dog ain't got even fuzz between your ears, but goddamnit Rogers! You brought back several hundred hot blooded American POWs and dealt enough damage to make even the devil Hitler himself's asshole pucker. Now what the hell am I supposed to do with you?” The Colonel paced back and forth, spit flying from his mouth as he struggled not to say anything even hinting a compliment, “Can’t Court Marshal you, I'll have a goddamn riot! Cant commend you because then any of these dumbass John, James, and Jones might get into their sorry head to try to repeat that performance! And none of them are juiced up on some crazy doc cocktail!” 

“Point me at Nazi’s sir.” she cut into his spit-inducing rant. 

“What was that Soldier!” he barked at her. She stood straighter at attention, looking dead ahead as Colonel Phillips continued to pace back and forth. 

Carter and Stark were standing on the side, both trying to not look amused. 

Phillips stopped mid-stride and swung around, his finger stabbing the air like a bayonet. “You don’t get to sass me, Rogers! You got one helluva mouth on you, and if you weren’t the size of a barn now I’d wash it out with lye myself!”

“Yes, sir,” Kore said smoothly, though the twitch at the corner of her mouth gave her away.

Phillips narrowed his eyes, muttering something about “Brooklyn mutts” and “wiseacres,” before finally dragging a hand down his face. “Fine. You want Nazis? You’ll get Nazis. But you’re doin’ it my way, with my men, and if you so much as blink sideways without my order, I’ll have you scrubbin’ latrines till you keel over.”

Kore snapped off a salute. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

From the sidelines, Stark leaned toward Carter, voice pitched just low enough to almost-not carry. “You know, I think I’m startin’ to like this one. Has a certain… panache.”

Carter gave him a sharp look, though her lips twitched at the edges. “He’s going to be the death of us all, Howard.”

Phillips clapped his hands, startling everyone. “Alright, knock it off, you two. Stark, you’re gonna give Rogers the toys he needs. Carter, you keep him from turning every briefing into a comedy routine. God help us.” He turned back to Kore, his gaze hard but, for once, not without pride. “Congratulations, Rogers. You just got yourself a goddamn unit. Don’t screw it up.”

Kore’s brows rose. “A unit, sir?”

“That’s right,” Phillips growled. “Your own bunch of crackpots. Since you seem so good at wrangling trouble, let’s see how you do with a whole squad of it.”

Kore’s smirk spread slow and sharp. “Guess you really do know how to keep a gul busy, Colonel.” she winked.

“Outta my sight, Rogers!!” he bellowed, but there was the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before he turned away

The Howling Commandos were a goddamn hoot. She remembered them from the Hydra raid-- half-dead, half-pissed, but mean enough to spit in the devil’s eye. Now they were hers. Poor saps.

First up was Dum Dum Dugan, bowler hat and mustache like he’d stepped out of a vaudeville act. The man tipped his hat at her, chewing on a cigar stub like it owed him money.

“Captain,” he said with a drawl.

“Nice lid,” Kore shot back. “You borrow that off a circus strongman?”

He grinned, puffing smoke. “Oo, man’s got jokes. I like it.”

Then there was Gabe Jones, cool as ice with his trumpet case slung over one shoulder. His smile was easy, but his eyes missed nothin’.

“Pleasure to meet you proper, Cap,” he said.

Kore gave him a nod. “Finally, someone with manners. You’re gonna make the rest of these mugs look bad.”

“Don’t I always,” he replied, smooth as butter.

Jim Morita stood next, cleaning his weapon with a focus that screamed he didn’t give a damn about introductions.

“You the one who pulled us out?” he asked without looking up.

“That’s me,” Kore said.

He glanced up at her new frame, one brow cocked. “Huh. You looked smaller in the smoke.”

“Yeah, well, smoke’s slimming,” she quipped. Morita snorted, the corner of his mouth twitching like he was fighting a smile.

James Montgomery Falsworth looked like he’d stepped out of a storybook, Union Jack stitched proud on his gear. Proper, stiff, British as all hell.

“Captain,” he said, bowing his head like she was royalty.

Kore raised a brow. “Do I curtsy back, or we savin’ that for Christmas?”

Dugan howled with laughter. Falsworth only straightened his vest. “I see humor is your weapon of choice.”

“Second only to this shield,” she said, giving it a spin on her arm. Howard had given it to her just an hour previous, after long hours arguing over a map about what she had seen in the Hydra base. Colonel Phillips had grilled her for every detail and Kore had answered him word for word, even after he began to re-ask questions, but reworded to slip her up. It finally ended after she sassed him about liking her company. 

Jacques Dernier lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke through his nose, unimpressed with the whole circus. His French accent curled thick around his words. “You Americans… always so loud.”

“Yeah? And you frogs are always so gloomy,” Kore shot back. “Stick with me, I’ll teach ya how to smile without breakin’ your face.”

Jacques muttered something very French and very rude. She smirked.

Last was Pinkerton, the wiry little guy who always looked like he hadn’t slept in a week but was still somehow vibrating with energy.

“You’re taller than I pictured,” he blurted.

“Yeah, happens when they stretch ya like taffy and feed ya’ nothing but corn and cigarettes," she said, deadpan. His eyes went wide, then he cracked up like she’d told the best joke in the world.

Kore looked them over, a mismatched set if she ever saw one. Smokers, gamblers, wiseguys, and one stuck-up Brit. Her grin spread slow, feral, sharp.

“Alright, boys,” she said, planting the shield on the ground with a clang. “Looks like you’re my merry band of assholes. Stick with me, and we’ll raise enough hell to make Hitler wet the bed. I got plans to get all up and nasty in his business, give him a real bad time now!” 

“Hell yeah!” Dugan barked, slapping his thigh. The rest murmured their agreement, some with smirks, some with cautious nods.

Yeah. They’d do just fine.

Kore remembered watching Inglourious Basterds on a busted TV once -- popcorn, cigarette smoke, and that sort of gleeful, ridiculous revenge fantasy. The memory flicked through her head now, stupid and small, as she yanked a knife off the floor and cut into a man who smelled like oil and wet wool. Movies made it tidy: a dramatic close-up, a swell of music, a freeze frame for the credits. Real life spit in the face of all that.

For one thing, it smelled. Not just gunpowder and cordite -- a whole chorus of odors crowded the car: sweat baking in the heat, diesel and grease, the sour tang of fear, and under it all the blunt, metallic copper of blood. That copper taste hung in the air like a promise. It hit differently than the clean, antiseptic scent you get in a cinema seat after a matinee; it was immediate and wrong and somehow intimate.

And the noise. Jesus. No soundstage could ever fake that. Movies got the notes right -- the crack, the thump, the distant howl -- but they couldn’t catch the way the world rearranged itself when a man died beside you. The room didn’t just get quieter; it shifted. Breaths spat and stuttered, the rhythm broke, and the very pressure of the air seemed to change, like someone had opened a door in your chest and let the wind out. It scraped something loose inside you, sloughing off bits of softness you didn’t know you had. You listened and learned how much losing a man takes from you, little by little.

Kore… thrived in it. That’s the only blunt, ugly truth she would have admitted to herself. The serum changed something, sharpened everything --sight, hearing, smell, and more-- until the world was a set of edges and signals. She could hear someone moving before they thought to move; she could smell the sweat of lying, see the micro-muscles of a hand that planned to strike. The displacement of air told her the shape of limbs before they unfolded. It was like wearing a new pair of senses, all high-definition and wired to a muscle that wanted to close and finish.

She was deadly with a gun, quick and accurate, but there was something about close work she preferred. Hand-to-hand was quieter, meaner, and personal. A gun announced you to the world; a knife, a choke, a snap of a joint-- those were confessions. You could tell a man, in the small space between a strike and his fall, what kind of man he was by how he breathed when his life left him. Kore learned to read that breath. She learned the angles that stopped a heart without making a noise nobody could ignore.

And there was the other thing... 

When she closed and struck, a low hum threaded through her bones, and something primed like a predator’s throat. It was a clean, dangerous ecstasy that tasted wrong under the grief. Her molars ached sometimes after a fight, an odd, phantom pressure as if her teeth remembered a shape they’d never had to use. 

Maybe she should be scared by how easy it was to kill a man her mind labeled a Nazi. Maybe she should be scared by how she didn’t hesitate to crush the neck of the driver with one hand, or how she pulled the knife out of the cooling body next to her and stabbed it into the passenger’s head. 

Kore exited the car quickly, her job done. She nodded to Dum Dum, who was looking out while she dispatched the car. The others were ahead already, taking their points around the Hydra base. 

She could feel eyes on the back of her neck. She turned and flashed the ‘All good’ handsign to James, who sat up on the ridge with his sniper rifle. 

The air outside was colder, sharper, a relief after the suffocating stench of the train car. Kore dragged her sleeve across her mouth, smearing sweat and blood in one swipe, and felt the serum still humming in her veins. They had been quiet so far, quiet enough that the crickets still chirped through the night. 

They hit the outer patrol quickly and quietly. Two guards slumped into the dirt before either could raise an alarm, the grass already darkening beneath them. Kore dragged one out of the searchlight’s path, movements automatic, precise. Her brain was smooth and cool, she felt more alive out here, hunting the next man, than she ever did back in Brooklyn. 

From above, one sharp crack rang out. James. His bullet punched through a helmet, dropping a Hydra bastard clean. Kore smiled thinly, pulse kicking hard. Good shot. 

Kore motioned forward with two fingers, and the Commandos flowed out of the brush like water finding cracks in stone. Morita and Gabe swept left, their silhouettes low and tight against the fencing. Dernier melted into shadow, cigarette snuffed, knife already in hand. Falsworth moved like a chess piece--methodical, deliberate--while Dugan lumbered behind with a grin that promised trouble. Pinkerton twitched at her flank, jittery but quick, like a live wire waiting to snap.

The base crouched below them, all sharp edges and floodlights, a beast of steel and concrete. Generators hummed, the sound thrumming through the ground into her bones. The red of Hydra’s insignia glared from the walls, smug, hateful. Her teeth itched, molars aching in a strange way that made her want to rip and tear. 

They made their way inside the base, shadows slipping down corridors where steel groaned and boots echoed too loud. The Commandos moved like smoke, spreading to corners, sweeping each hall with the efficiency of men who’d done this dance too many times before. Kore stayed at the front, her senses burning hot and clear. She could feel hearts beating before she rounded a corner, smell the sour tang of fear when she was still halls away.

One guard stepped into their path, jaw already dropping for a shout. Kore’s shield snapped across his face before a sound could leave him, teeth scattering like dice on the concrete. She caught his body before it fell, dragging him into the dark with an ease that made even Dugan’s grin falter.

They cleared one level, then another, moving downward through the bowels of the base. The deeper they went, the worse the air grew--damp, metallic, thrumming with the beat of the generators and the whispers of Hydra machinery. Every so often, a straggler slipped the net, boots pounding down a hall. Kore didn’t chase. She didn’t need to.

From above, her enhanced hearing could make out the sharp, singular report of James’ rifle, distant but sure as a heartbeat. Each crack was the full stop at the end of some bastard’s sentence. 

He had her back. He always did.

They finally cleared the base, signaling to higher ups before getting the crackly green-light back in their radios. Clear to sweep. 

The Commandos spread out, their banter low and sharp, the kind of chatter men used to keep their hands from shaking. Papers were stuffed into bags, maps rolled, machinery stripped of anything that might give away Hydra’s next move. Kore moved with them, shoulders still buzzing from the fight, the scent of blood stubborn in her nose.

James joined them at last, rifle slung across his back, boots crunching on scattered glass and debris. He looked pale under the smudges of soot, but steady, eyes finding hers across the wreckage. She gave him a little chin-tilt, the kind of wordless greeting that meant you good? He gave it back, a flicker of a grin before peeling off to help Morita pry open a desk.

That was when Dernier called out, his French accent thick around the words. “Capitaine! Here.”

They converged on him, finding him crouched in front of a hulking slab of steel set flush into the far wall. Not a door so much as a vault, round and bolted, with the Hydra insignia painted stark red across the metal. The air around it was colder, the floor dustless, as if even time hadn’t dared to scrape it.

“Son of a…” Dugan muttered, running his thumb along the seam. “What the hell’re they keepin’ in here, their lunch money?”

“Bigger than that,” Falsworth said grimly, tracing the paint with his gloved hand. “Hydra doesn’t waste iron like this unless it’s something they’d bleed to protect.”

Kore stepped forward, planting her palm against the steel. It thrummed faintly, like a heart hidden behind a ribcage. Her jaw ached again, teeth pressing tight. Something was in there. Something Hydra didn’t want them touching.

“Guess we’re about to find out,” she said, eyes narrowing.

The hatch was a goddamn vault door -- thick as a coffin lid, wheel the size of a wagon rim, bolts larger than her not inconsiderable biceps. The rest of the squad were already shifting their weight, hands on rifles, eyes on her. Dum Dum’s cigar ember winked like a little sternum of light. Pinkerton’s fingers drummed a nervous beat on his thigh.

“No charges,” someone muttered.

Kore stepped up. The metal tasted cold through her gloves. She wrapped both hands around the wheel and felt the hum under her skin tighten, muscle and bone answering like a chorus. For a beat she simply held it, listening to the night: the low thrum of the generators, the distant hiss of the floodlights, the small, incredulous breathing of the men behind her.

She turned.

At first the wheel didn’t so much as twitch. Metal groaned in complaint, a long deep sound that felt like the air itself was protesting. Kore drew in a breath, braced her feet, and hauled again. Tendons stood out in her wrists, cords of muscle rippled along her forearms, and something primal uncoiled in her chest. The world narrowed to the burn in her shoulders and the iron under her palms.

With a sound like a ship’s keel being sheared, the bolts gave. It wasn’t a crack or a snap so much as a tearing --thick, ugly metal yielding and the lockbar sliding like a slug. The wheel spun under her hands as if greased by thunder and the hatch shuddered free of its cradle.

For a moment there was only the echo of that metal scream. Then Dum Dum’s whistle cut the night --a low, astonished note. “Jesus H. Roosevelt…” he breathed.

Falsworth’s voice was thin and startled: “Good God.”

Pinkerton actually laughed, a short, disbelieving bark, and even Jacques cursed under his breath in French. The men didn’t move forward right away; they stood there with their mouths half-open, watching the door like it had performed a trick.

Kore wiped her palms on her trousers, the skin of her hands prickling as if they’d been under a furnace. She glanced at the stunned faces around her and let a grin slip out --sharp, a little wild.

“After you,” she said, voice flat. The hatch yawed open, heavy and final, and the dark inside breathed out.

The vault wasn’t a vault so much as a warren. Corridors split and twisted like veins, rooms piled atop rooms, each lined with Hydra’s ugly stamp. The Commandos spread out in pairs, combing for intel, smashing radios, setting charges.

Kore ended up with James, deeper in the guts of the place, past a stairwell that smelled of rust and mildew. They moved quietly, backs to walls, breath shallow. Then--click.

The sound was sharp, small, but Kore knew it too well. 

Booby trap.

Her body moved before her mind did--shield up, hand slamming into James’ chest, hurling him back just as the tripwire sang and fire ripped down the corridor. Shrapnel sparked across the shield, burning a hot line up her arm. They hit the far wall hard, James pinned between it and Kore’s body, heat licking their skin, the blast echoing in their bones. 

Then silence; no sound but their rough, ragged breathing and the ringing in their ears from the explosion.

Kore’s body caged James’, one arm against the wall by his head, the other clutching the shield braced at her side. His breath rushed up hot against her throat, quick and shallow, and she realized she had her leg between his, holding him up and off the floor on one thigh. 

Even then, he was short enough she had to look down. 

“Stevie-” James' voice cracked. His eyes were wide, pupils blown to the point Kore could barely see the ring of brown around it. Her body burned against his, pulse in her throat and mind hazy with the scent of him, the proximity of him.

James’ hand had fisted in the front of her uniform, knuckles white. His chest rose against hers, every heartbeat shoving against her ribs like it belonged there. The air between them burned, thick and electric, and Kore felt her pulse throb in places she’d long ignored. Her jaw ached. Her teeth hurt. She wanted--God, she didn’t even know what she wanted. To sink. To tear. To kiss. To— “-you’re eyes..”

Kore’s mind was slow to catch up, brow furrowing as she pulled back slightly. She jerked her head toward the shattered glass in the door opposite. For a second, nothing. Then the ruined light above swayed on its cord, shadow sweeping across her face.

Her reflection blinked back at her, eyes glowing faint gold in the dark.

Her breath caught. She dropped James as though burned, stepping back fast. His voice chased her, sharp, worried, but she couldn’t--wouldn’t--hear it. The heat in her blood was too loud.

She shoved through the door at the end of the hall, slamming it shut behind her. A lavatory. White tile cracked and filthy, a mirror hanging crooked over a rusted sink. Her hands shook as she grabbed her cheek and yanked it back, exposing what she had been willfully ignoring.

Not just her eyes. Her side teeth, all the way up to her k9s, were longer now, sharp, catching the dull light like an animal’s.

The breath left her in a rasp. She braced both hands on the sink, head bowed, the warped glass throwing back a stranger’s snarl. For a heartbeat, something in her thrilled at it, hunger curling low and molten.

Kore slammed her fist into the porcelain, shattering it down the middle. The echo cracked through the bunker like a gunshot.

She lifted her head again, staring at the ruin in the mirror, her reflection broken into jagged shards. It dawned on her just how much of herself she had lost and continued to lose. 

Once Kore… then Steve Rogers… now this. 

She bit back a hysterical laugh. 

Who was she? 

Her eyes glint in the light, reflecting gold and green. 

What was she? 

“Cap! We found somethin’!” a voice barked, cutting through her spiral like a blade.

Her head snapped up. In an instant she was moving, shoving the bathroom door open and stalking back down the hall, all the way into the back past the traps. By the time she reached the others, her face was carved into stone, every crack sealed shut.

“What is it?” she demanded, her voice sharp enough to slice.

The Commandos shifted, parting to let her through. They stood clustered around a round table bristling with cords and steel, the glow of its heart washing their faces pale.

Blue. Pure, searing blue.

It was the Tesseract. 

Chapter Text

Kore didn’t know what finding the Tesseract meant for the timeline. She didn’t know what would come next--if she’d derailed the whole damn story or if she was just riding the rails until the crash. In the end, it didn’t matter. She handed the glowing cube off to Stark and threw herself back into the only thing that made sense: cracking Hydra bases like walnuts and setting fire to whatever squirmed inside.

She was good at that.

The Commandos fell into rhythm fast. Morita and Gabe cut down guards with ruthless precision, Dernier planted charges in places that would cripple supply lines for weeks, Falsworth kept their movements disciplined, and Dugan cackled through the smoke like he’d been born in it. James was the eye above them all, his rifle sharp and steady, picking off stragglers before they even knew they’d been spotted. And Kore--well, Kore was the hammer. The Devil’s hand.

Word traveled. The deeper they pushed into occupied territory, the faster the whispers grew. Prisoners spat the name like it would ward her off, soldiers screamed it as warning before she crashed through their lines. Der Teufel. The Devil. A shielded monster who could tear a man apart with her bare hands. Eyes that glowed like coals in the dark. Strength that didn’t belong to anything human.

She’d laugh if it didn’t fit so damn well.

James didn’t call her that, of course. He didn’t call her anything different, didn’t say a word at all. But Kore could read him like she’d always been able to--better now, with her senses sharpened to razors. She caught the subtle ways his body shifted around her: the way his spine straightened when she moved too close, the way his eyes flicked to her hands, her knees, the tilt of her head like he was cataloguing the danger of her. She could feel him tracking her without even meaning to.

It stung. More than she wanted to admit.

She came out here for him. For James. She’d walked straight into this madness, let a serum burn through her veins, let the world rewrite her body--all for him. To keep him safe, to bring him home. And now… he looked at her like a wolf looks at fire. Respectful, wary, never sure if it’ll warm him or burn him to ash.

It wasn’t his fault. She knew that. She was bigger than him now, stronger, faster, fiercer. Everything between them had flipped on its head. The quiet protection he’d always slipped around her in Brooklyn--the way he’d shield her from bar fights and sneers, the way he’d walk curbside--gone. She was the shield now. The teeth. The one who stood between him and every bullet in the world.

He didn’t quite know what to do with that. Hell, she didn’t either.

She didn’t want things to change. Not like this. But the war didn’t care what she wanted.

So she swallowed it down. She locked her jaw, set her shoulders, and carried on. Every base they cracked became another pyre in her growing legend. Every body she left behind carved the name deeper. Der Teufel and Captain America hand and hand.

The man with the shield. The Devil with glowing eyes.

But in the quiet, when the gunpowder cleared and the fires died low, Kore felt the weight of James’ gaze lingering on her back. And she wanted--God, she wanted--to turn, to see him looking at her the way he used to. Like she was just Stevie, just his. 

So she set out to remind him. 

It started with her leaving him extra snacks, she was always being plied with goodies from grateful civilians and soldiers. She’d slip sweets into his bags,  hide packages of peanuts under his pillow, and slide jerky in his pockets before missions. James’ frame, which had thinned as the war progressed, began to fill out, satisfying something deep in her chest. 

She sketched him things to pass the time on long missions, pilfering paper from desks and overturned offices. For lack of pen or pencil, Kore would often dip her fingers into the ashes of the wreckage around her, using it as a morbid substitute for charcoal. 

Kore would map out the faces of her companions on dirty paper, tracing the lines of their features with blackened fingers. Her heightened senses made things easier, like the images were already on the paper, just waiting for her to bring them to life. She remembered with crystal clarity the faces of everyone she met, could recall the small scar just above Dugan's eye, the small burns on Dernier’s hands, the sunspot just behind Gabe’s ear. 

Everything was carved into her mind like taking a chisel to stone. 

James most of all.

She could sketch him from memory in the pitch dark, every line of his face burned into her bones: the slope of his nose, the crease by his mouth when he laughed, the way his hair curled damp at the nape of his neck. The freckles across his shoulders that he’d always brushed off as “nothing” but she’d secretly counted, again and again, like tally marks of proof that he was real and hers.

Now her sketches of him were almost compulsive. In quiet stretches of time, she’d drag her fingers across the paper, soot-stained and shaking, drawing him until her hands cramped. The others teased her about it but none of them saw how carefully she folded each page, how she tucked them away with his letters like they were relics.

She was trying to remind him. Remind him of her, of them.

But James wasn’t stupid. He knew. He had to. He felt the sweets tucked into his pack. He found the jerky hidden in his coat, the peanuts rattling under his pillow. He never said a word, but the corner of his mouth would twitch when he bit down on a candy bar mid-march, or when his hand slipped into his pocket and came up with food he hadn’t packed. Sometimes she caught him looking at her across the fire, the wrappers glittering in the dirt between them, and her chest burned with the memory of simpler nights back home--flowers on the windowsill, split sandwiches on the rooftop, his head heavy against her shoulder.

But then the firelight would catch on her eyes, throwing back the gold and green, and he’d look away.

And she couldn’t blame him.

By day she was the Devil with the shield, a nightmare the enemy cursed under their breath. By night she was a creature folded in on herself, a predator forcing itself smaller for the comfort of all others, ash-stained fingers sketching the face of a man who wasn’t sure what to make of her anymore.

Kore kept on, though. She had to. Because maybe, if she gave him enough, reminded him enough, he’d look at her again and see Stevie--not the monster with glowing eyes.

The raids came fast now, one after another. Hydra barely had time to patch their holes before Kore and her men tore them wider. She was tireless. Relentless. A thing out of nightmares. And yet, it wasn’t the bodies or the fire or the wreckage that left her trembling when she lay down at night. It was James.

James with his careful silences and sidelong glances. James with the way he laughed softer when it was just them, when the Commandos’ noise had died down and the night pressed close. James with his steady hands, cleaning his rifle while Kore’s senses itched and burned from the phantom smell of his skin.

She told herself she could bear it, that she could bury the ache. But the serum had sharpened everything. Hunger sat behind her teeth, low and insistent. She could hear the thrum of James’s heart when he stood too close, the subtle catch in his breath when her shadow fell over his. It drove her half-mad, how sweet he smelled even through smoke and dirt and blood.

It was worse when she watched him sleep. He didn’t know, couldn’t know. She’d patrol the edges of their camp at night and her eyes would drift to him like a magnet: James curled in a blanket, lips parted, lashes fluttering against his cheek. His pulse flickering delicately at the hollow of his throat. Every primal part of her whispered closer. Every shred of who she’d been screamed stay away.

The tension only grew. Little things stoked it higher: his knee brushing hers under a mess table and lingering too long, the soft rasp of his voice in her ear when he muttered “good job” after a clean kill, the way his gaze would dart to her mouth before flicking away. Each moment left her strung taut, teeth aching, skin unbelievablely hot.

It was in the marches, when the Commandos strung themselves across a road, boots crunching snow or dust, rifles heavy in their hands. James always drifted near her, not close enough to brush shoulders but close enough that Kore could feel him, the pull of his body like gravity. He’d tilt his head when he thought she wasn’t looking, eyes dragging over the way her hands flexed on the shield strap or the way her jaw worked when she smelled danger before anyone else.

It was in the barracks, too. She’d be patching gear, sleeves rolled, soot blackening her knuckles, when James would pass by and pause just a second too long. His mouth would open, like he had something to say, then shut again. He’d mutter “thanks” when he found a candy bar in his bag, but he never looked at her when he said it.

Every almost made her ache.

Kore tried to bleed the want out on the battlefield. She tore Hydra men down with bare hands, shattered their weapons against walls, ripped through walls and made herself every inch the Devil they whispered about. But even there, James followed. She’d catch sight of him out of the corner of her eye, steady and solid, rifle cradled against his shoulder. His gaze tracked her in those moments too--not afraid, not exactly, but measuring. Weighing what she’d become.

She told herself it was nothing. Just James being James. Just her being hungry for something she’d never get back. But her body betrayed her. Her teeth ached when his pulse quickened nearby. Her senses sharpened when his voice cut through the din, low and steady, always finding her ear first.

It was months of this. A weird game of reluctant but inevitable cat and mouse. Crushing Hydra bases down to blazes of hell fire in vain a courting display. 

Battle made sense--blood and smoke and the hum of the serum in her bones. Out there, she was a weapon, sharp and clean and terrible. Out there, she could pretend this body was just a tool, just a shell. But when the fighting stopped, when the adrenaline burned off, the silence always brought it roaring back: the weight of herself.

The wrongness.

Every inch of her was bigger, broader, harder. Thick wrists, heavy shoulders, chest like a slab of armor she asked for but didn’t want. She caught sight of herself in glass or water sometimes--the square jawline, intense eyes and heavy brows, the thick muscles and straight frame.

She covered her reflections when she could. Looked at her hands only when she had to. Tried to forget the rasp of her voice, the deep, masculine voice, every time she opened her mouth. 

The serum had made her strong. It had also made her restless.

It wasn’t just the constant hum of her nerves, senses sharpened until she could hear every damn heartbeat in a room. It was the other thing--the heat that crawled under her skin when she was still too long, the ache low in her belly that made her grind her teeth raw. Her labido, she realized quickly, had been juiced up right along with her muscles. And with her body like… this, every spike of need felt like a betrayal.

She couldn’t fix it. Couldn’t burn it out. Couldn’t touch herself without gagging at the feel of her own skin, her own wrong shape.

So it came out sideways.

The first time she growled, Dungan had been reaching between her and James for his carton of cigarettes, his hand brushing by James and invading their space. The sound she had let out had come from deep within her chest, rolling it's way out of her throat like crank of a devil engine. It vibrated the air around them and she could see how every hair on the man's arms had stood in end. 

She didn't know how she looked then, but it would be accounted later in Dernier’s private journal: 

‘He loomed over him, as if a bear standing on its hind legs. The fire reflected in his eyes, as if lit within by the flames of Hell itself. A terrible noise rose from him, like the grinding of bone against bone. He looked ready to kill should our man step an inch closer. A beast who had imprinted upon a mortal man. Heed my Brothers and Sisters, fear the day we lose Barns. It may be our end…’ 

The others never spoke of it outright, but after that, they gave Cap space when he snapped. They called it one of his “pissy fits” in the barracks, laughing it off, but there was no mistaking the way their eyes tracked her when the growl bled too close to the surface. Dum Dum would crack a joke to ease the air, Morita would roll his eyes, but everyone knew better than to push her when the tension set in her jaw.

Kore always apologized, biting back shame and trying to smother it with humor, but the cycle repeated itself. Every outburst left her raw. Every reminder that the serum had heightened everything--her strength, her hunger, even the things she wished she could bury--gnawed at her insides. She carried it like a second weapon, one she couldn’t aim or control.

She felt unhinged, one step away from snapping completely. 

Kore tasted blood in her sleep.

And then the train happened. 

(AN: have some art, im trying to learn how to draw pretty-boy faces: 

Chapter Text

 Snow spit sideways in the wind, biting skin even through layers of wool. The train thundered along the mountainside like a steel beast, smoke billowing from its lungs, sparks spilling in its wake.

“Board fast, board quiet,” Phillips’ voice still echoed in Kore’s head. And if you can’t do it quiet, then make damn sure you do it fast.

The Commandos clung to the ridgeline until the timing was right. Then they leapt. Steel groaned under boots as they slammed onto the roof, Kore hitting first with the shield braced, absorbing the impact. 

James landed beside her, rifle slung tight, his breath ghosting white in the frigid air. He glanced at her once--sharp, grounding--before his eyes swept the length of the train. 

Behind them, Dugan cursed about the wind, Dernier muttered in French, Morita and Gabe checked their gear to make sure none had been lost over the side. The squad spread like shadows across the roof, rifles angled forward, knees bent against the sway.

Kore moved point. Her fingers curled tight on the shield strap, teeth aching, the cold sharpening her senses to a knife’s edge. Every wheel-clack echoed through her skull, every gust of coal smoke scraped her lungs raw.

A hatch loomed ahead, rim rimed with frost. Kore crouched and signaled. The Commandos froze, eyes on her. She slid the shield into position, grabbed the handle, and wrenched it open.

Heat rushed out, thick with oil and iron. Shouts rose up inside--Hydra soldiers, already alerted. So much for quiet.

“Fast it is,” Kore muttered, and dropped through the hatch. 

Anxiety had her hitting harder, moving faster. Anger leaked into every movement, making her movements chaotic and borderline frantic. 

Kore knew this train. 

She knew what she stood to lose. 

She wasn’t going to let it happen. 

Kore would die before James fell into Hydra’s hands. Fuck the timeline, fuck the future. She’d run in blind, derail the whole plan. Her choice could cost them the fight with Thanos; but she’d weigh the damnation of half the universe over and over again, and still choose James every time. 

Kore knew this made her a bad person, no better than the Cap from before who’d let his friends rot for the sake of one James Buchanan Barnes. 

It was hard to care. 

James would look at her, his eyes soft and she could never imagine him harmed. He was too good, amazing in too many ways, undeserving of life’s challenges but willing to face them for the good of others. Kore admired him, wanted to be like him. She knew she was losing it and James was her anchor, and thus she would do anything to keep him safe and happy.

Kore would burn the world down to watch the flames sparkle in his eyes. 

The corridor was a hot, narrow throat of iron and smoke. Men shouted, boots thundered, and the whole car pitched like a living thing struggling to throw them off. Kore moved like she’d swallowed a fuse--fast, reckless, all teeth and intent. The Commandos fanned out behind her, rifles slinging, knives flashing. She tore through the first door and barreled into a mess of uniforms.

Hydra men smelled like machine oil and cheap tobacco. They wore the faces of men half-damned to Hell and Kore didn’t hesitate to send them the rest of the way. 

Kore’s shield met bone and leather with a sound like a bell being split--an iron bop that sent one bastard crashing into his bunk and another spinning into the ceiling light. She didn’t bother to think. There wasn’t time. There was only motion and the hum under her skin that made her skin buzz like an angry wasp. 

James was a current at her shoulder, voice clipped directions, rifle sharp and calm. He cut down a man trying to press a latch; the shot was clean, surgical. Gabe and Morita kept a rhythm of death around them, folding enemies into neat, blood-stained heaps. Dernier danced with a knife like it was an insult he was even here. Dugan laughed in the dark, a mad, delighted sound, then gave a savage curse when a man tried to tackle him. 

Between the anxiety and rage she could admit loved this, lived for this. Her brain was smooth, her body euphoric. It was sweetened by the heat of her men at her back, leaving her able to point herself in one direction and carve a bloody path. They worked well together after all these months, the boys knowing when to step in and when to step the fuck back. 

The narrow space of the train made fighting in a pack harder. Sparks hissed down as bullets skidded off pipes. Kore led the way, shield raised, every hit barely rattling down her arm and only fueling her battle rage. The serum thrummed in her blood, sharpening the chaos into something almost navigable- heartbeats echoing ahead, the tang of sweat and cordite thick in the air. She barreled through another steel door, shoulder first, and the Commandos poured in behind her like smoke.

They entered a storage car, and everything stopped for half a breath.

Instead of crates of weapons, this room was different. Rows of Hydra machines crouched against the walls: odd, humming devices with too many wires, some half-finished, others glowing faint blue. And on the center table, anchored with clamps and floodlights, lay a spread of schematics.

Kore knew those shapes.

She knew those stars. 

Lines curving into arcs, intersecting like a spider’s web. Notes scribbled in German, energy signatures written in symbols that weren’t entirely human. The sight hit her gut with cold recognition. A door. A window to the stars. She’d seen this before--years ahead, in another story. The portal over Manhattan.

A drawing of a blue cube sat in the center of it all.

Her chest tightened, teeth grinding.

“Cap?” Dugan’s voice cut the silence. He prodded one of the machines with the end of his rifle. “What the hell is this junk?”

“Not junk,” Falsworth muttered grimly. “This looks like… planning.”

Kore snatched the papers off the table, ignoring their protests. The diagrams burned in her hands, too familiar, too wrong. She folded them rough, shoving them inside her jacket. “Later,” she said. Her voice was sharp enough to cut. “We will deal with it later.” Her tone brokered no argument.

And then the door at the far end blew open.

Hydra soldiers poured in, rifles spitting bullets in every direction. The Commandos scattered for cover. Kore went forward, shield braced, rage boiling under her skin. They fought their way down car after car, the train rocking harder with every passing minute. James was at her shoulder, firing steady bursts, his breath tight and fast in the close air.

They were so close. Close to being done, with this mission passing by as nothing but an anxiety riddled memory. She kept James within grabbing distance, every breath coming out sharper, shallower, the closer they got to the front of the train. 

They were at the front, just one car away from the damn engine when the inevitable happened. 

The wall in front of them exploded, charges set to go off that she had missed in her distracted state. The whole car rocked on his rails, and Kore was blasted into the wall while James had been blasted backwards. The car tilted hard as it hit a bend, throwing them sideways once again and James slammed into a rail, barely catching himself. Kore turned, reaching for him--

--and then the floor buckled. 

“JAMES!” 

He fell. 

She jumped. 

Chapter Text

Kore felt the ice on her cheeks around her mask,  seeping into her suit from the area around her neck where the suit wasn’t as flush. It helped her mind stay clear as she plummeted. 

Time slowed, and James fell just below her, his arm outstretched to her, his eyes and mouth wide in horror. 

240 meters. 787 feet. 

She clenched her arms and legs together and sharpened her dive, catching up to James and wrapping her arms around him firmly. 

100 meters. 328 feet.

She pulled out the shield and held it around James' back, bracing her arms in a circle around him so she would take the impact but not crush him in the process. 

30 meters. 98 feet.

She tucked his head in, tucked her own in, and braced.

10 meters. 32-

Kore woke up freezing and in tremendous pain. She couldn't help the yowl of agony she let loose, pain blinding every sense and clouding every thought. She gasped and heaved, chest not taking in proper air, and the wet gurgle of blood bubbled up her throat, tainting her mouth with the taste of copper. 

Her eyes blinked open, squinting against the bright and harsh white that surrounded her. Red stained her vision and the snow around her and she looked around wildly for the source of her pain. 

The large rock piercing her chest could be it. 

Kore gasped in pain, reaching forward with her left arm only to stop in shock seeing her arm bent in the wrong direction. 

“Aw fuck.” she heaved, flopping her arm back down. Her mind slowly pieced itself back together. It appeared she had landed on her back amongst some jagged rocks, one having pierced her through the right side of her mid-chest. She shifted slightly, noting that, other than her arm, her other limbs were in better shape. 

Panting, Kore noted that the pain in her body slowly began to focus to her chest and arm, enough so that she dared another look at her arm. She lifted the limb back up, unable to see the true extent of the damage due to her body armor and the immense amount of blood all over the limb. 

But, within one moment and the next, her limb straightened itself. CRACK! Kore howled as the limb righted itself, gasped as she felt the skin, muscle, and bone knit itself back together. 

“OW! What the FUCK!” she screamed. 

Her chest began to itch, and Kore looked down to see the mangled flesh slowly regrow around the edges. Struggling to understand, but not wanting a fucking rock in her chest, Kore heaved herself into a sitting position. 

It was as if a huge pressure was removed from her chest, and suddenly it became a lot easier to breathe. 

“Holy shit.” she muttered, watching as fresh, pink flesh covered naked muscle and bone until nothing but healthy skin remained. She stood and looked back, noting the large amount of blood and other mushy flesh matter all around where she had lain. Kore looked down at her chest, then her arm, then back to the mess on the ground. 

Wait.

“JAMES!” she screamed and began to look around in a panic. 

She spotted a body half-buried in the snow, face pale against the white. His arm twisted under him at a sick angle, blood fanning from his temple where it had struck something. The wind blew sharply over his still body, tossing strands of dark hair across his forehead. He looked like a doll someone had dropped and forgotten. 

She screamed his name again and raced over, digging him out of the drift and laying him across her lap. His lips were blue. She could hear his heartbeat, slow and faint in his throat. 

“Oh thank god,” she sobbed, curling her body around him in an attempt to warm him. 

She had little time to gauge his wounds, only to note that the bleeding was controlled. She needed to find them shelter. The icy winds licked across her bare flesh, snow slanted sideways and peppered them in icy flecks of cold. The ravine they had fallen in was deep, the wind tunneling through the gorge and ripping away any heat that she could gather. 

James would die in this. 

Hauling him into her arms, Kore spotted her shield buried under him and pulled it free, noting in distaste the blood on the edge, no doubt where James had bumped his noggin. She held him in one arm and used the shield to brace against the wind, hopefully creating a small pocket of heat for James between her and it. 

The ravine stretched jaggedly around them, a scar through the mountains. She scanned the ridges: ice, rock, no clear way up. Wind knifed through the gorge, funneled cruel and sharp. They couldn’t stay exposed. Not with night falling. Not with James this cold.

Kore shifted him higher in her arms, tucking his broken arm close to his chest to keep it from jostling. Step by step, she forced herself through the drifts. Every crunch of snow under her boots echoed in the silence.

A shallow overhang of rock appeared a little further down. She nearly cried with relief. She ducked into the hollow, setting James down gently, brushing snow off his face with clumsy, numb fingers. His lips were still blue, his eyelids fluttering.

“Stay with me, Jamie. You hear me?” she whispered, voice low and rough. “You ain’t allowed to check out yet.”

The overhang blocked the worst of the wind but did nothing for the cold. Kore tore off her outer coat and wrapped it around him, ignoring the bite of the air against her own skin. She ripped strips of fabric from her undershirt and the straightest stick she could find to bind his arm, setting the fracture as best she could. He stirred when the bone shifted, a low moan leaving his throat. His eyes cracked open, glazed with pain, focusing weakly on her.

“Stevie…?” The word was slurred, barely audible.

“Yeah, it’s me,” she said quickly, pressing her forehead against his. “I got you. You’re gonna be fine.”

His lashes fluttered once, twice, before his eyes closed again. Panic surged hot in her gut, but his chest rose and fell--slow, steady. Alive.

She worked fast, gathering brush and splintered wood from the ravine floor, snapping it apart with her bare hands until she had enough for a small fire. The matchbook in her belt pouch was damp, but the serum kept her hands steady, even when her body shook. She struck again and again until the spark caught, the tiny flame licking up into a fragile warmth.

She pulled James close to the fire, wrapping herself around him like a second skin, shielding him from the drafts that slithered through the cracks in the stone. Every few minutes, she checked his pulse, brushed the snowmelt from his hair, whispered his name. She’d scent along the crown of his head, attempting to comfort herself with the smoky-sweet smell. 

The storm raged through the night, and Kore didn’t close her eyes once. 

When dawn finally cracked over the ravine, the wind had died to a low whine. The sky was a c hard, pale blue, the snow blinding in the light. Kore extinguished the fire, slung James over her shoulder, and started moving.

They had to get out of the gorge. She climbed with one hand and both legs, boots scraping on ice, shield digging into her back, James groaning every time her grip shifted. It took hours, her muscles burning, until finally she hauled them both over the lip and collapsed in the snow, gasping, lungs raw.

James stirred again. His eyes opened, unfocused, but found her face.

“You’re… freezing,” he whispered.

Kore laughed hoarsely, pressing her forehead to his. “So are you, dumbass.” She adjusted the coat tighter around him. “Thinkin’ you can be rid of me? As if.”

His mouth twitched like he wanted to smile, then his eyes slipped shut again.

The days that followed blurred into a brutal rhythm. Kore carried James when she could, dragged him on the shield like a sled when she couldn’t. She stole food from abandoned farmhouses, choking down stale bread and thin potatoes while pressing the softest pieces past James’ lips when he woke enough to chew. She caught snow in her hands to melt against his tongue, and begged him to swallow even when he was barely conscious. He developed a fever the first day, and it had yet to break. The glazed, fevered look in his eyes made her want to scream and punch things, to go out, find a Nazi and skin it. 

They were deep in occupied France, which meant they were behind enemy lines. They skirted patrols by inches, her advanced senses saving them often. Once, Kore was forced to press him into the mud beneath a hedgerow, her body covering his as boots crunched by on the road above. She could smell the leather of the soldiers’ belts, the grease on their rifles. James’ breath trembled against her collarbone, and she didn’t dare move until the last echo faded.

Nights were worse. The cold gnawed at her bones, and James’ shivers rattled through her chest where she cradled him. More than once, she thought she’d lose him--his pulse weak, his skin clammy, words slurred nonsense when he tried to speak. She whispered every story she knew, every memory of Brooklyn, every stupid joke she could think of, just to tether him.

“Remember Coney Island? The hot dog stand where you tried to beat that sailor in an eating contest?” Her voice cracked in the dark. “You threw up behind the pier. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

Sometimes, when his eyes opened, they were sharp enough to catch hers. And then he’d slip again, into silence. 

By the third night, Kore knew she couldn’t keep going. James’ fever burned hotter, his breaths rasping shallow and uneven against her chest. She could feel him fading with every step she dragged through the snow. His weight in her arms was lighter than it should’ve been--he was wasting away before her eyes.

She needed shelter. Real shelter. Food, a bed, medicine--something more than stolen crusts and her body heat. 

The outline of a farmhouse appeared in the distance, half-hidden behind the corpses of skeletal trees. Smoke bled from the chimney in a thin ribbon, too steady to be abandoned. Kore froze, crouched low in the snow, heart hammering. It could be Germans. It could be a collaborator. But if she kept on like this, James was already dead.

She shifted him higher in her arms, jaw set. She’d take the risk.

The farmhouse door creaked under her fist. When it opened, a man stood there, lantern in hand, face hard-lined with suspicion. A woman appeared behind him, older, with gray hair coiled under a scarf. Their French came sharp, wary. Kore’s own French was fractured, but she caught the words--soldier, German, leave.

She pulled James forward into the lamplight. His head lolled against her shoulder, pale and fever-slick, his uniform stained dark with blood.

“American,” Kore rasped, switching to English and praying they understood. “Captain America. He’s dying.”

The man’s eyes flicked to the shield strapped across her back, and for the first time, recognition sparked. He swore under his breath. The woman gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

They hesitated only a moment before stepping aside.

The farmhouse smelled of hay, woodsmoke, and stew. It was the warmest air Kore had breathed in days. She laid James down on a narrow bed in the corner, her hands shaking as she stripped off his soaked coat and boots. The woman bustled close, pressing the back of her hand to James’ fevered forehead, muttering rapid French. Kore understood only fragments: malade… infection… pauvre garçon.

The man brought water, a clean cloth, and a bottle of clear liquor sharp enough to sting Kore’s eyes. They worked together--cleaning the wound on James’ temple, redressing his broken arm, forcing him to swallow spoonfuls of broth while his head lolled weakly. Every time he stirred or groaned, Kore’s chest clenched a little.

When the worst of it was done, the woman pressed Kore into a chair by the hearth. She tried to wave it off, but her body betrayed her, legs trembling until she dropped hard into the seat. Heat soaked into her bones, almost painful after so long in the cold. She stripped off her gloves and stared at her hands, still blood-stained, still shaking.

She hadn’t slept since before the train. 

From the bed, James shifted. His eyes cracked open, glassy but aware. They found her immediately.

“Stevie…” His voice was hoarse, but there was a ghost of a smile on his lips.

Kore swallowed hard, her throat thick. She leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees, and whispered back, “Yeah. I’m here. You just rest now. You’re safe.”

He drifted again, his breathing softer, steadier.

Two and then three days passed in the farmhouse. Kore helped with chores to repay the family’s kindness--splitting wood, hauling water, whatever needed doing. At night she sat at James’ bedside, dozing in the chair, starting awake at every shift of his breathing. Slowly, the fever broke. His color returned. His hand, when it found hers, had strength again.

The fourth day Germans attacked. 

They must have been tracking them, or she slipped up somewhere. But she wasn't going to let them leave to tell others. 

The sound of cars approaching had her on alert, which then alerted the family. 

“Germans,” she hissed, sending her and the small family of 5 into a panic. 

“Soldats,” hissed Étienne, the father, face already pale as he peaked out the window to see the cars cresting a hill some distance away, her advanced hearing allowing them some extra seconds. 

His wife, Claire, clutched their youngest boy--René--tight against her skirts. Their older son, Julien, pulled his little sister Colette behind him, his jaw tight but trembling.

They all knew what this meant.

James was too weak to move. Kore helped Claire and Julien lift the loose floorboards by the hearth. She lowered James into the dark crawlspace, then followed herself, curling around him like a shield as Julien pulled the planks back into place.

“Pas un mot,” Étienne whispered fiercely. His eyes caught Kore’s for a heartbeat before the boards were pressed back into place and secured. 

The boots thundered across the floorboards. Harsh voices barked questions in German. Kore caught the edge of it--Amerikaner? Captain? 

Étienne’s voice was calm, firm. He denied everything from what she could discern with her limited German. Said no soldiers had come, that his farm had nothing, no one.

The crack of a rifle butt against the wall rattled dust down into Kore’s hair. James’s heavy breath rang in her ears, his eyes wide and worried. 

More shouting. Then silence.

Then Étienne cried out. The sound cut off sharp, final. Claire screamed and the sharp smell of copper filled the air. 

The floor exploded before she had time to register it, her movements exploding upwards in a feral rage as the scent of one of hers turned sour and deathly. A bellow left her mouth as she leapt on the first man, wood still flying around her like shrapnel. She wrapped one large hand around his neck and snapped it, already moving to the other before the chips had time to hit the floor. This one she slammed in the sternum, shattering it and pulverizing the organs behind it. 

At this point the other soldiers began to open fire.

The first bullets punched into her chest, her ribs, her side. Kore staggered with the impact, the air torn out of her lungs--then straightened. The holes wept red for only a moment before spitting the lead back out, the rounds clattering to the floorboards like dropped coins. Flesh knitted together in grotesque speed, pink and raw one instant, smooth and unbroken the next.

The Germans froze. Their rifles trembled.

Kore bared her teeth in something too sharp to be a smile. “Yeah, it's like that.”

She hit them like a storm. Shield-first, she bowled through two men, their bones crunching as they slammed into the far wall. A third tried to backpedal, screaming, only for Kore’s hand to close on his coat and fling him bodily through the window in a rain of glass. His scream cut off when he hit the frozen ground outside with a sound like a sack of wet sticks.

Claire was still screaming. Julien had thrown himself over her and the younger children, shielding their faces from the horror unfolding in their home.

Kore didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Bullets tore into her again, snapping her head back, staggering her a step. She roared, blood bubbling at her lips, then spat the coppery taste onto the floor and surged forward again. Her shield edge split one man’s jaw in half, another she crushed against the stove until the iron collapsed under the force.

One soldier turned and bolted for the door. Kore followed, blood-soaked and grinning, her boots pounding after him. He scrambled into the truck, engine grinding to life. Kore caught the bumper with both hands, heels gouging trenches in the frozen dirt.

“Nein! NEIN!” the soldier screamed, fumbling for the gearshift.

Kore heaved.

With a guttural snarl, she wrenched upward. The truck screeched as it tilted, metal shrieking in protest, before slamming over onto its roof with an earsplitting crash. Flames licked from the engine, black smoke curling into the gray sky.

Silence fell again. The farmhouse stank of cordite, blood, and smoke.

Kore stood in the wreckage, chest rising and falling, eyes glowing faint gold-green in the firelight. Her barrowed clothes were torn and soaked in blood--most of it not hers. The family stared at her from behind the hearth, wide-eyed and white-faced. Claire clutched her children so tight their knuckles went pale. Julien’s lips moved in a whisper of prayer.

Kore moved quickly. 

The wreckage wasn’t hard to handle with her strength, she picked up the mass of it and threw it in a deep pond close by. The Germans she buried in a pit, their bodies like rag-dolls as he hauled them over the side. 

Étienne had been killed by the soldiers. His family mourned deeply, keeping quietly to themselves as Kore ran around cleaning up evidence and packing her and James' things. There wasn't much she could do to hide the bullet holes, but she boarded up the window and quickly cleared out the smashed stove, coming back with extra firewood now that they would be cooking over the fire. 

She was almost done, sun having long set, when Clair approached her. 

Kore had pilfered some German uniforms, what pieces she could. Nothing could fit her, of course, but James could. It could come in handy, even if only to keep the cold out. 

There was a creak of wood and the smell of sage behind her, and Kore turned to see Claire. The woman’s face was pale, streaked with dirt and tears, but her eyes were steady now. Her shawl was wrapped tight around her shoulders, Colette’s small hand still clutching the hem, hiding behind her mother’s skirts.

For a long moment, neither spoke. The fire popped behind them. Somewhere outside, a night-bird called once and fell silent.

Finally, Claire said, her voice low and hoarse, “Mon mari est mort pour vous.” My husband died for you.

Kore swallowed hard, her jaw flexing. She wanted to explain, to apologize, but what words could possibly fill that kind of hole? Her mouth opened, but nothing came out except a rough rasp: “I’m sorry.”

Claire’s eyes flicked to the uniforms in Kore’s hands, then back to her blood-smeared face. “Vous êtes… un démon.” A demon.

Kore flinched.

But Claire stepped closer. Not enough to close the distance entirely, but enough that Kore could see the raw, wet grief brimming in her eyes. “Un démon… qui protège.”

Her hand trembled as she reached out, pressing a bundle into Kore’s chest: a loaf of coarse bread and dried meat wrapped in cloth, and a small pouch of dried herbs. “Pour la route,” Claire said. For the road. Her gaze burned, fierce despite the tears. “Prenez soin de lui. De votre frère.”

Kore’s throat closed around a dozen truths she couldn’t reveal--the real weight of James in her arms, the truth of who she was under the uniform. All she could do was nod, clutching the bundle like it was heavier than steel.

They set out that night, James under his own power, his arm in a sling and bundled in a German uniform. Kore held the bulk of their supplies, hiding her shield under the blankets. She shed most of her armor the day they arrived at the farm, but now she had a patchwork of dead men’s uniforms. The red cuff on her arm burned and itched like an allergic reaction. 

They continued to travel at night and hide during the day, dodging Nazis and Hydra, who were on the lookout for them. 

During the day, they would find a place to hole-up in, be it a barn, outcrop of trees, or hole in the ground. She’d light a small fire, stripping the bark off the wood to lessen the smoke. There would be snow melting in a small aluminum can soon, with her grinding up the herbal mixture into a poultice that she liberally applied twice a day to James’ arm, much to his grumbling. Despite her efforts, James' left arm began to appear blueish-green, with dark purple creeping up his fingers. 

“I can’t feel my arm, Stevie,” he’d whisper, curled up tight under her chin, his body burning a line against her front that she forcibly ignored. 

“With my stipend, I’ll buy ya’ a new one,” she joked, but it fell flat. Her voice didn’t carry the weight it used to, the words brittle and thin. James huffed a weak laugh against her collar, but it was only for her sake.

Kore kissed his hairline without thinking, then froze, her lips pressed to the sweat-slick strands. She hadn’t meant to. But he didn’t stir, didn’t comment, just sagged heavier against her chest. She took advantage of the moment, closing her eyes in bliss as she inhaled his scent. Smoky-sweet, leather and gun oil… the sticky sweetness of decay. 

Her stomach turned at that last note, the creeping rot that clung to his skin no matter how carefully she washed him down with melted snow. She told herself it was the wound, the fever, the days in the cold. But her sharpened senses knew better. Something inside his arm was dying, inch by inch.

She pressed her mouth to his temple again, harder this time, as if she could breathe life back into him by force.

The nights bled together. Marching, hiding, coaxing him through every step. James staggered beside her when he could walk, carried in her arms when he could not. 

Kore remembered the maps with crystal clarity, and she used that knowledge to get them to the ally lines within a few days. 

They broke through the brushline, spotting the Allied aid station like a beacon amongst the grey and white landscape. 

She hauled ass to the station, shedding the Nazi uniforms off their bodies as she went. Kore shouted for a medic, drawing attention to her and James. It was like an ant-hive turned over, with people shouting and hands on her shoulders pulling her this way and that down random halls until she had to scream at the men turning her in circles. 

“I swear to FUCKING GOD, if you dont show me to the nearest triage i'ma loose my GODAMN MARBELS!” she screeched, her voice booming down the hall. “Now, unless you want your nose making an intimate acquaintanceship with my fucking knee GET OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY!” Spit flew from her mouth as she raged, teeth aching. The men scurried out of her way, calling directions to her back as she stomped in the direction the antiseptic smell came strongest. 

Gangrene was a bitch of an infection. 

James lost the arm. 

Kore stood before Colonel Phillips, her back straight but expression hard. The papers she had recovered from the train lay out on the desk between them. 

“The hell am I looking at here, Rogers?”

“The end of the world if we ain’t careful." she said back, tone low and serious. 

“And what makes you say that?” the Colonel asks sceptically, tossing down the paper he had been holding onto the desk. “Looks like a bunch of scribbles out of a German child’s fantasy book, don't tell me you believe that Hydra could summon this-” he picked up a note pad that lay next to the schematics, one containing notes on what was on the pages. “-Elder?” 

“I know they can. If they get their hands on the cube.” She watched the smallest of flinches pass on the Colonel's face. 

“What happened?” she asked, feeling dread. 

The other man heaved a long sigh, hands braced on the edge of the desk. “You weren’t here so you didn’t hear; we lost the cube last week. Hydra had a mole, blew up the whole damn lab on his way out.” Kore’s face contorted, eyebrows pitching down at a sharp angle. 

“Then we don't have time to waste. We don't know how much they've been able t’ build, my guess is they’re near done if they felt desperate enough t’ steal the cube from under our nose.” 

Colonel Phillips gave him a long, hard look, the look of a man being asked to jump off a steep cliff for the promise of water at the bottom. But he was no fool, and he knew Kore wasn’t either. 

He gave a slow nod. “We got the German doc, got him to spill the beans on Hydra’s final location. You ready?” 

Kore’s eyes hardened, but she grinned, baring her teeth at the man. 

“Just need to suit up.” 

James’ room smelled of antiseptic and starch. Too clean. Too foreign. Kore lingered at the door a moment before slipping inside, her steps unnaturally quiet for boots on tile. He lay propped up in the cot, bandages neat and white where his left arm should’ve been. His skin was still pale, but color had crept back into his lips, into his cheeks. He looked alive again, and it nearly broke her in half.

Her chest ached at the sight of him. She wanted to crawl into his skin, to fuse herself so tightly against him that nothing--no war, no Hydra, no call of death--could pry them apart. The memory of his limp body in the snow haunted her, and now every nurse who laid a hand on him since felt like an intruder. Kore had to curl her fists tight at her sides to keep from snarling at the thought of anyone else touching him, tending him. James was hers. He’d always been hers.

The room was mercifully empty. Just the steady hiss of the radiator, the faint rustle of snow outside. James didn’t look at her at first. He sat quietly, his eyes tracing the bandages, his jaw clenched hard enough that she worried he’d crack a tooth. Kore stayed by the wall, fighting the urge to pace, to bare her teeth at shadows.

But he was alive. Not half dead in a ravine, waiting to be found by Hydra. He would live, grow old... find happiness. James wouldn't be the shell Hydra made him, and for that she was grateful. Even now, even when she...

Finally, his voice cut through the stillness, soft and raw.

“You’re suited up.”

Her throat went dry. “Yeah.”

His gaze lifted, heavy and dark. “You're going after Schmidt.”

“Yeah.” 

The silence was long and heavy, Kore felt a lump in the back of her throat as the weight of everything settled in. She knew what she was walking into, she knew what was going to happen. 

This would be the last time she laid eyes on James Buchanan Barnes. 

Kore’s eyes stung and she fought to swallow. 

“Stevie?” James’ voice called, and she blinked rapidly to dispel the tears there. 

“It’s gonna be ok, Buck.” she said, her voice rough and hoarse. James’ eyes narrowed, she rarely called him anything but James. She didn’t care for the nickname. 

“That’s horseshit and you know it, Steve.” James deadpanned. “Why you acting like this is it, huh? What do you know that I don't, Stevie?” 

What he didn’t know is that she was going in the ice and he was going to live a long and happy life. Hydra didn’t have him, he didn’t die and activate the latent serum, he would live. She made sure of it. 

“Nothin’ you wouldn’t yell at me for.” she chuckled humorlessly. 

James shifted until he sat at the edge of the bed, his right hand braced on the frame, his left sleeve pinned and empty. He looked unsteady, pale, but his eyes cut into her sharp as ever.

“You’re hiding something from me, Steve.” His voice was rough, tired, but steady. “I can see it all over your face. You ain’t plannin’ on comin’ back.”

Kore clenched her jaw but didn’t answer, her heart burning in her chest. 

“Christ, Stevie.” James breathed out, looking up at her with the most sorrowful eyes she had ever seen. 

“James…” she whispered, “I-i gotta-”

“I know,” James cut her off, his coming up to cover his eyes. “I'm bettin' a whole lotta people will die if you dong, I just... i just need a minuet. Not every day your best friend marches off to his death.”

“I do it pretty often, actually.” she joked, feeling hollow, her insides being gouged with every erratic breath coming from James. 

“Yeah, but normally I'm there, keeping your sorry excuse of a 6.” his voice trembled and he went to stand, stumbling as he did. Kore caught him without thinking, pulling him in close and cradling him in her arms. She could feel the tremors in his body, how his fingers dug into her bicep, fingernails biting the flesh. 

“God, don't do this to me, Steve.” James begged, not pulling his face out from where she had tucked in under her chin, his ragged breath ghosting along her neck. She could feel spots of moisture gathering on her skin, the smell of salt clinging to her nose. 

“Hydra has a plan to destroy America, they have the cube and they are planning on dropping it and a whole lot more on the capital. If I don't go, millions will die.” 

James groaned in despair into her neck, nodding his head. “I know, I know.” he whispered faintly. Kore couldn't help it, the tears spilled, covering her cheeks and clogging her sinuses. She clung to him, breathed him in, committing the line of his body against her to memory, something to recall when she reemerged. Because she would, and James would be gone. Old, grey, passed. She will tear down Hydra to make it so, bleed every body dry and burn every building to do so. 

James would live. 

He had to. 

Kore pressed her forehead to his, her breath ragged, her words a rasp from somewhere raw and bleeding.

“Live, James. Live a long, bright life and let the memory of me rot. Forget the thing you dragged outta Brooklyn--the monster that learned how sweet your blood smells and can’t stop wantin’ it. Forget the Devil that wears your best friend’s face.” 

Her lips trembled against his temple as she whispered, almost reverent, almost a curse:

“Forget me, James… you don’t gotta’ be scared anymore.” 

James moved backwards, untangling himself from her grasp to look up at her with a wide-eyed stare. 

“Ya think I'm scared of ya?” he asked, his Brooklyn accent stronger than ever in his incredulously. 

Kore refused to meet his eyes. 

“Stevie… no.” James said, his voice full of heartbreak. “No no. That's not- Stevie I dont-” his words stuttered like he didn't know how to complete the sentence. 

A hand rested on her chin and gently turned it to face him. 

“Steve,” James pleaded, his eyes wide and glossy. “I'm not. I'm not scared of ya.” 

Kore fought not to scoff, even now she could feel how James tensed against her. A frustrated sound came from the other and his hand shook her chin to force her eyes up once again.  

“I ain't scared.” He emphasized. His eyes were so intense… 

Kore gasped out loud as James pressed against her front, pushing her against the wall. She could have stopped it, James was hardly a stiff breeze compared to her now, but he had taken her by surprise. 

“James?” She questioned, her voice a hoarse whisper. He pressed against her hard, bringing them nose to nose. She could feel the expanse of his chest, his heartbeat thumping against hers as if trying to reach for the other. 

Kore breathed in James, her inhales matching his exhales, the taste of his air sweet on her tongue. His eyes were half wild, half scared as he stared at her.

“J-james?” she asked again, taking a moment to swallow the spit that had accumulated in her mouth at James’s scent. 

One moment, there was nothing but the shared breath and heartbeat between them, the next James was kissing her. 

Chapstick. She remembered him putting it on every night before bed and when he woke up back in their little apartment in Brooklyn. A small tin can with a pop-off lid that smelled like beeswax. He got it off one of the neighbors who made it herself after a store-bought one gave him hives. James had been over the moon with the stuff and often traded for a few tins a month. 

He must have some left. 

Kore groaned into his soft lips, her whole body lighting on fire like a can of kerosene given a match. Both of her arms tightened around him, pulling him even more flush with her.

James gasped and kicked out to the side, his socked foot catching the door and slamming it shut. His hand reached up to tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck, twining around the outgrown strands there and using them to yank her down harder. 

She let out a deeper groan, one that rolled into a growl that rumbled through her chest, the sound all base and low, rattling one’s bones in way that woke instinct: be it to fight, to take flight, or to fuck. 

James let out a noise that made her small hair stand on end, an aching pulse moving down her body. 

God he tasted so good, like his scent magnified by a hundred, a smoky-sweet taste that she was instantly addicted to. 

James came up for air, gasping. “God Stevie, you have no idea. No idea how much things have been rattlin’ around in my head. Ya’ come in lookin’ like one of them romance novels and able to lift goddamn cars over your head. A man’s heart can only take so much ya’ know?” he said in a rush, breathless. Kore grinned ferally and leaned forward, kissing his smoky-sweet lips in between gasps. 

“Aw fuck,” James heaved. 

Kore’s mind was on fire, smoke clouding her brain as heat licked down every limb. She licked into his mouth, chasing the taste of him. Her hands moved everywhere, touching him in ways she only dreamed of. She memorized the line of his ribs, the curve of his side, the firmness of his ass. She sought skin, fingers dipping under the hem of his shirt in search of flesh. 

James gasped again, “God! Your hands are cold.” he grumbled, making her chuckle. Kore wrapped her hand around his hip and walked him backwards until his knees hit the bed, sending him falling back, with her moving to her knees at the edge. 

She wanted him, so so badly she wanted him. Just this once. She'd be happy with just this once before she was gone. She could feel the heat radiating from her body and the tightness growing below, a growing ache and awareness that threatened to throw an ice bucket on her fire. 

Kore refused to lose this. 

She couldn’t let him touch her, but she could touch him. 

James was wearing hospital linens, the pants loose and easy to remove. She praised the universe for James' penchant for going commando. Kore didn’t hesitate to wrap her fingers around the base of his cock and lick a hot, wet stripe up the bottom. 

“Oh my god!” James yelled, slapping his hand over his mouth in an effort not to draw attention from passerby. His head thunked against the bed sheets. 

His taste down here was musky, salty, and all smoky-sweet. It fogged her brain in a way indescribable, like her mind went limp while her body continued crazed. His cock weeped, and her tongue licked out to gather it, circling the throbbing head as it began to emerge from its foreskin. Her hand began to stroke his cock in even pulls, her lips closing over the head and beginning to bob and suck in earnest. 

James trembled above her, hand clasped tightly over his mouth to muffle his groans and curses. His knees opened more, allowing her closer and a better angle to go deeper. His hips tilted up, rocking up in time with her bobs as if he wanted nothing more than to fuck up and into her wet mouth. 

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck-” she could hear him breathe against his palm. She took him down to the root all at once, the adrenaline and fire in her brain bypassing her gag reflex. His back bowed off the bed and Kore took him further, moving her head side-to-side to work his cock in deeper. She felt her throat seize against the intrusion once, twice, before settling down. 

Kore adjusted, throat still full of cock, until James’ thighs rested on her forearms and her hands cradled his hips, allowing her to bring him slightly off the side of the bed. This also allowed her to move James’ hips up and down, fucking his cock down her throat. 

“AH FUCK STEVE OH FUCK!” James howled, his hand shooting up to stabilize himself on the bedsheet, the fabric bunched up in his hand. The edge of the bed dipped with James’ body as she moved him up to meet her downward bob, picking up intensity and speed. His heels dug into her back

The lights in the room had been off, making the dim light of the evening coming through light up her eyes as she marveled at the ecstasy over James’ face. 

He was beautiful, evening glow carving a line of light down his body, highlighting the dips of his abdomen where his shirt rode up and the dewy reflection off his sweaty brow. His eyes burned holes into hers as she sucked him down and held it there, allowing a deep growl to exit her chest. 

James' eyes rolled up and he shuddered, knees clamping closed around her shoulders for a moment before releasing. He was getting close, his cock growing even harder in her mouth, his heart rate and breath elevating to pounding drums in her ears. 

His mouth dropped open in a desperate attempt at more air, every breath exiting more labored than the last. 

“Fuck fuuuck, Steve!” God she loved how loud he was. 

“Steve! Oh fuck! Oh FUCKING CHRIST!” He wailed as she continued her hard and fast pace, desperation and lust fueling every thrust. His eyes were scrunched shut, his brow so furrowed, and his mouth dropped open in a raw emotion she’d have worried he was in agony, if not for the way he writhed in her hold. 

James cock pulsed hard, his heels digging hard points in her back as he came. His eyes snapped open in a surprised expression before rolling back, mouth dropping open further as he pulled his hips up and as close to her as he could. Kore obliged, her nose crushed against his skin as she rocked that last inch in and out. Spit leaked out from between her lips, leaving a slick slide all down his cock and balls. The wet sounds that were made as she pushed herself down onto his cock as hard as she could without breaking him were loud and erotic.

James let out a harsh gargling sound, as if his lungs had forgotten how to breathe, his body taunt taunt taunt until it released. 

Kore held him in her mouth for a moment longer, mournful that the taste of his spent was already far down her throat. She pulled off with a wet pop, huffing in the stale antiseptic air as his spit-slicked cock softened between them. 

James looked dazed above her, body heaving breaths as he stared up at the ceiling with glazed eyes, which earned a chuckle from her. She pulled his pants up as he flopped around, swatting his hands away as they tried to tiredly reciprocate. 

“I wanted you,” she hushed his wounded look, “you’re sick as a dog still and I can see that took it out of ya’. Rest now, I'll stay till you fall asleep.” She adjusted him onto the bed and curled up behind him, throwing her arm across his body to share warmth. 

“May I never sleep again,” James whispered, his eyes already falling closed. “Till the end of the line, Stevie?” 

He was asleep before she could answer. She leaned down and kissed his temple, nosing along his ear after in a vain attempt to comfort herself. 

“Yeah James, I love you, too.”