Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

October 1943, Azzano, Italy

Night has long since fallen but the battlefield burns as brightly as day. Flames leap skyward, grasping at the stars, whose cold light could not possibly rival the hellfire raining down the European Front. The earth trembles under the weight of mortar shells and frantic, retreating footsteps. The air tastes sour of burning fuel. 

Bucky sprints through the madness, boots pounding against scorched soil—corpses littering the ground like grotesque epigraphs—and he doesn’t dare look down. A mine detonates behind him, the force knocking him off balance. He stumbles—once—twice— but he doesn’t stop, running until he trips and dives into a shallow foxhole.

He hits the dirt hard. 

He feels it deep within his bones, his skull. The explosion that follows sends a terrible wave of heat and debris over him, clogging his throat with ash and dust until his lungs heave for breath. Another soldier isn’t so lucky—a flash of fire and shrapnel cuts him down, splitting his face in two. He hadn’t even been that far from him, only a few steps behind, perhaps if Bucky had reached out his hand, dragged him forward…But there is no space for grief here. He realised that within his first week—when his commander was blown to bits right beside him, showering his freshly pressed uniform in blood. The stains never did come out. 

Static hums in his ears, even as he presses his head to his knees, shielding his face from debris. The noise blends and swims into a nauseating cacophony of sharp gunfire, the deep-throated booms of mortar fire and desperate shouts of soldiers calling out orders—praying, asking for their ma’s, cursing a sailor’s worth of profanities.

Dugan drops in beside him, grinning widely despite the soot streaking his face and the blood smeared across his sleeve. He has that wild gleam in his eyes—the one they all get after too long spent on the front lines. “Hell of a fireworks show out there!” Dugan yells, clutching his rifle like it’s somebody’s sweetheart. Bucky tries to laugh at the old memory—no one in the infantry bought Dugan’s stories about his so-called “maidens”—they figured he was already married to that damn rifle. The man talks about it like it’s an actual woman, hell, even calls it she, as if that’ll make it shoot straighter.

Bucky still can’t hear, wiping the rest of the soot from his eyes. He’s barely able to make out the shape of Dugan’s words before replying: “Not sure I’d call this a party,” his gravelly voice deaf to his own ears. He peers over the rim of the trench. Flames twist in the distance, illuminating the carcass of what had once been a forest. Shapes dart through the haze—friends, enemies—it’s impossible to tell. He raises his rifle, finger hovering over the trigger, but the target is gone before he can fire. His head spins, but the ringing finally fades. 

“There’s got to be at least five mortar companies out there!” Dugan hollers. 

Jones crashes into the foxhole next, scrambling with the bulky radio pack strapped to his back. “Good news and bad news,” he pants, coughing against the acrid air. 

“Get ahold of B Company!” Bucky snaps immediately, steadying his grip on his Springfield. “Tell them we need cover!” He watches as another soldier falls at the hands of Wehrmacht gunfire, and he pulses with a tempered stream of indignation. His ribs tremble, and he can’t tell if it’s him or the reverberations upending the earth. 

“Well, that’s the bad news,” Jones grimaces, hauling the radio forward. Smoke curls from its shattered casing.“Thing’s fried! No calling for backup.”

Dugan curses. “Then what the hell’s the good news?”

“I’m still breathing, aren’t I?” and Jones offers him a crooked grin, despite it all.

“Don’t fuckin’ jinx it, Jimmy.”

Bucky wipes the sweat from his brow. He lines up his rifle and pulls the trigger. His hands remain steady even as the ground quakes—because they have to. Because he can’t afford to slip. “We’re sitting ducks without reinforcements!”

“About to be dead ducks,” Dugan adds unhelpfully. 

Bucky doesn’t answer. He knows Dugan’s jokes are his way of keeping sane, but they’re not very timely. He risks another glance over the edge of the foxhole, spotting a cluster of Wehrmacht soldiers advancing through the growing smell of death. His pulse quickens, but each pull of his trigger remains sharp and precise, even as adrenaline pounds through his veins and turns everything dizzy. He feels a brief sense of satisfaction as the soldiers drop, remorsefully so, but he doesn’t have any time to feel the guilt of his crimes as he cocks his gun to the left to take out two more, a bullet whizzing just past his shoulder. 

It isn’t nearly enough. Their efforts grow more and more pointless and he’s painfully aware of this—for every German he shoots, two more seem to take their place, another head replacing the last. There’s an endless stream of Nazis gaining proximity, they’re vastly outmanned and completely cut off. And Bucky thinks, for perhaps the hundredth time since his deployment, that this is it for him. His luck has finally run out. 

His next thought is Steve’s gonna kill me if I die here. It’s a reassuring thought—all things considered. To think of Steve one last time, to imagine his face before the bullets tear through him and erode that beautiful smile forever. 

Bucky turns around at Dugan’s behind you! just in time to fire a round into the chest of an advancing soldier. Dugan and Jones join in, their rifles rattling as they spray bullets across the field. Another mortar round detonates too close for comfort, and Bucky ducks, feeling the scrape of metal against his jaw. Dugan’s bowler hat goes flying, and he curses as he snatches it back, slamming it onto his head with a muttered, aggravated insult. 

“They’re closing in,” Jones says sharply, raising his Thompson. “Get ready.”

Bucky’s first round hits true, the soldier crumpling instantly. The second drops another. The third—a misfire—sparks against rock. The enemy keeps advancing. He fires, he slips, he fires again, until his round is empty and he’s slammed back against the dirt. Bucky’s never been particularly religious—his ma had to drag him to church, tooth and nail, every damn Sunday, and even then, the only reason he ever went was because of Steve. Still, he says a short prayer, all that he remembers from those tedious sermons. He prays that Steve will at least have a body, but doubts it. 

And just as he’d gotten to the deliver us from evil, sinking into bleak resignation, a crackling blue light streaks across the battlefield, obliterating enemy soldiers like lightning from some otherworldly storm. Bucky freezes, his rifle slack in his hands as he watches the soldiers vaporise, their bodies disintegrating into nothing. No skeleton, no blood, no smoke—nothing. 

“What the hell is that?” Dugan mutters, his grin finally slipping.

Jones stares, wide-eyed. “Not ours, that’s for damn sure.”

Bucky’s hope flares for a moment. A grace from God? Had He really heard his pathetic prayer? So maybe scrawny old Steve will have to wait a couple more years before chewing him out on his untimely death. 

Unfortunately, Bucky’s instincts tells him otherwise. 

The source of the light rumbles into view—a German tank, larger and more menacing than anything he’s witnessed on the front lines. Its headlights pierce the smoke, the barrel of its cannon glowing faintly with residual energy, roaring like thunder. 

Another dozen Nazis erupt into white light and then—nothing. Nothing except the terrifying sound of electricity that echoes in their eardrums. The gunfire seems to pale in comparison. 

“That looks…new,” Dugan comments off-handily. The three of them stare, frozen, bewildered, mouths slightly agape—curiosity laced with caution. It looms over them, massive and unyielding, like some mechanical predator toying with its prey before the kill. It grinds to a stiff halt, its barrel angling straight at their faces and…certainly not an ally after all. 

“Shit.” Bucky’s instincts kick in, mind hardly catching up to his limbs as he yanks Dugan and Jones by their uniforms, bracing himself as he follows quickly behind. 

The tank fires.

The blast carves the spot they’d been standing, shrapnel raining down as the shockwave hurls them forward. The ground shudders beneath him as Bucky hits the ground, the breath knocked straight out of him, landing badly on his left knee. He struggles to his feet and continues to run, ears ringing, muscles screaming in arduous protest. He spares the briefest glance back at the scalding crater and curses himself for getting distracted. But damn it if he hasn’t always been fascinated by the futuristic. He’d been practically head-over-heels at Stark’s Expo just three months ago, even when the hovercar fell flat on its ass. And not just because of the machine— because he’d gotten to spend his last day before getting shipped out with his best guy beside him. And it had felt, for once, like there was hope for the future. 

Now, that hope feels like some cruel joke. 

The tech here isn’t dazzling. The world isn’t advancing; it’s tearing itself to pieces. 

It’s strange how different things were just a few months ago. He misses it—those moments of wonder, that brief spark of optimism. He misses Steve. And that’s a good thing perhaps. Maybe it’s the only thing keeping him moving. 

Bucky pulls Jones to his feet, who mutters unsteadily:

“That’s not normal,”

Bucky grits his teeth, tasting iron from where his teeth had clipped his tongue. “No kidding.”

They don’t have time to marvel or question. The blue light doesn’t come again—at least not yet. The tank rolls forward, unperturbed, its cannon swivelling towards its next target. But it’s not solely the tank that unnerves Bucky. 

Shadows emerge from the fog—soldiers clad in dark uniforms, faces obscured by bulbous helmets and goggled visors that catch the firelight, making their eyes glow orange. Like wasps. 

An insignia stands out on their collars and sleeves—a tentacled beast with a skull head. Their weapons are sleek and unfamiliar, humming with an energy that makes Bucky’s stomach twist. Large, brutal-looking contraptions he doesn’t want to get acquainted with. Bucky has a few choice of words about their choice in fashion—none of it complimentary—but there’s no time for wit. He keeps running along the line of the trench, the others just in front, too afraid to stop, dragging their legs forward with nothing but fumes and adrenaline. He doesn’t look back this time.

It’s only when they near the forest’s edge, its canopy roaring with fire, that Bucky realises why they stopped firing. 

And why they’re royally, irreversibly fucked.

Surrounding them and enclosing the perimeter is a legion of those bug-eyed soldiers, cleaning the rest of the battlefield, prodding through the wreckage and finishing off stragglers. Dugan slows ahead of them, faltering as the sheer number of soldiers becomes clear—an onslaught of men and machinery, double the size of the Italian front. The figures corral the rest of them up like cattle, butting them with slender batons, alien in design, some pulsing with that same blue light. One jab is all it takes to force compliance, it seems.

They’re pushed past armoured cars and half-tracks, stacked and sardined into lines of cargo, pressed up against shoulders, until he can feel the hitch of wet lungs. The closeness feels like a tomb—like being buried alive. 

When a goggled man prods him to get back in line, Bucky snaps—a wire setting off in his mind—and shoves back, getting one solid punch in before a long pulse of electricity shoots through his veins. 

Pain floods his body, muscles locking as the current crackles through him. He bites back a scream, glaring instead at the masked soldier, refusing to give the him an inch of satisfaction. The soldier raises his baton once more, and this time it lands squarely between his ribs. Bucky groans as the sparks renew, frying his nerves for several, painful seconds, before finally settling into a shivering ache. It leaves him staggering behind, but still standing. 

“Jimmy,” Dugan hisses, his tone harsh as he fixes Bucky with a stern look. That look. The looks that says sit your ass down before you get yourself killed. It’s a frequently recurring look Bucky gets from a variety of people. The main one being Steve. Though honestly, Bucky sent a fair share of those looks towards the little punk too, when he’d bite off more than he could chew. 

Around them, murmurs of Allied soldiers clash with the more discombobulated sounds of German, barking orders, strained and urgent. Somewhere in the distance, the heavy clank of the mega tank’s tracks echoes as it recedes, leaving behind a hollow silence that feels almost worse than the explosions, somehow. The reverb of closing metal doors and whirring machines lingers in the air, and it sounds less like a retreat and more like a warning. 

Jones slips forward, moving unnoticed through the uneasy shuffle of men. He tugs on Bucky’s sleeve. “They’re taking us to some sort of weapons facility—in Austria,” he whispers hurriedly, looking around cautiously before turning his gaze back onto him. 

Bucky raises an eyebrow. 

“What? You thought the radio was all I was good for? Communications expert here.”

“That’s…really convenient.” Bucky signals for Dugan to stall a bit so they can catch up to him. The Germans start pushing a couple of soldiers behind them. The ones too injured to keep up, they shoot. “What else did they say?”

Jones thinks a bit. “Not much. They’re angry..it seems..with the Third Reich. Want to be separate. Or already are. They’re not Nazis, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.”

“Anything not-Nazi is a good thing,” Dugan fires back quietly, staying a couple paces in front.

Jones shrugs his shoulders. “With that type of power, I don’t know man. Somethin’ ain’t right.”

“Why are they taking us to a weapons facility?”

“Work,” Jones replies quickly. “Labour. Camps. I didn’t catch everything. They’re taking us prisoner.”

“No shit,” Dugan retorts. “They just decided to line us up all nice and pretty to send us home, of course we’re being taken fucking prisoner!” 

Bucky shushes them as a German soldier walks pass, eyeing them slowly before carrying on towards the front. It’s his turn to give them both the look. 

“Austria’s a long ways away, it’ll take days to get there on foot,” Bucky says. “And with wounded men...” He trails off, and they both get the implication.

There’s a pregnant silence before Dugan speaks up. “We stick together.” He gives them both pointed stares, one meant to be encouraging this time, but it’s a little weak around the edges. 

Nonetheless, Bucky nods his head. 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but the sun is well in the sky now, dull and cold against swelling clouds. The weather offers no warmth, no mercy. They’ve been walking without rest since they left the battlefield and his legs are starting to feel like the old lime jellos he used to save up for Steve’s birthday. Weak, wobbly, barely holding form. But still standing. 

It’s a luxury, really.

So many others have fallen behind, their bodies plastered into the stale mud, long forgotten by the march. Bucky doesn’t let himself look too long. At least their families won’t have to see their faces.

He tries to help. Lending an arm or two for other soldiers to grasp, hauling half-conscious men forward when their legs give out. But eventually, they fall too. His chest tightens, breath coming out sharp and choppy. A faint wheeze scrapes its way up taut his throat, and he swallows it down. His knee is killing him too, but he doesn’t check it. Won’t. It’s not like he can do a damn thing about it anyway. 

Jones keeps feeding him information. It helps him stay awake as the fatigue sets in, keeps his mind occupied—something to focus on other than how much his feet hurt, how the cold has begun to bruise his fingers. 

So far all they’ve gotten are insults. A couple of slurs that once would’ve lit a fire under Bucky, made him bare his teeth and throw hands at the nearest adversary. Now, he’s too exhausted to muster the energy. Jones is wearing thin too, but he masks it well. 

“You need a shoulder, Sarge?” Jones asks him, glancing at his poorly concealed limp. Bucky sends a visceral glare his way, and Jones can only huff in amusement. “I was just askin’, Christ. No need to get so offended.” 

“Go help someone who needs it,” Bucky replies stubbornly, picking up the pace. It only makes the pain worse, sharp and hot in his knee. He grits his teeth through it. 

“Stop moving away, I’ve got somethin,” Jones calls out—not a whisper, but low enough. 

Bucky doesn’t stop, but he slows down just enough for Jones to catch up. 

“What is it?”

Jones leans in slightly. “A name. Or at least, I think so.” 

Bucky signals for him to continue. This time, Jone’s voice does drop to a whisper:

“Hydra.” 

Bucky repeats it under his breath, turning the word over in his mind. It stirs something distant—library trips with his sisters, flipping through old mythology books, the sea-serpent with too many heads. Now that he thinks about it, the insignia stitched into their captors’ uniforms reminds him of just that. “Never heard of ‘em.”

“They’re new,” Jones mutters. “Or not new, but officially a separate force, like I figured. They’ll destroy anyone who ain’t them, to put it bluntly. Or at least, they’ll try.” He’s trying to be uplifting, but they both know that whatever the hell Hydra is, there isn’t going to be much resistance against a weapon like that.

“They’re careful with what they say. I’m not gettin’ much more than that.”

Bucky nods. “What you’ve got is more than enough.”

A soldier stumbles in front of him, falling to his knees. It almost trips him up, but he side-steps, tugging Jones along with him. A German—Hydra—soldier goes to probe the fallen soldier, growing frustrated as he refuses to move. He raises his gun, pushing it against the soldier’s temple, his voice loud and jarring. He’s going to shoot. 

In one quick motion, Bucky pivots back, grabs the man under the arm, and hauls him upright. He’s conscious, at least, but not completely there—head swaying disjointedly from side to side. He’d been bleeding at one point, a deep stain covers half his beige uniform, though the patch is dry now. The Hydra soldier hesitates before lowering his weapon, barks something at Bucky’s face and then kicks at the limp soldier’s legs. Bucky clenches his jaw. Doesn’t react. Doesn’t give the bastard an excuse to pull the trigger. He just tightens his grip, making sure the soldier stays upright. 

The guy is young. Younger than him, maybe. Blonde, sunken brown eyes—and something about him reminds Bucky of Steve. 

He mutters something incoherent that, by the tone, Bucky guesses is a ‘thank you.’ He tells the guy to hold on, that they’re almost there, even if it’s a lie. Even if there is nowhere worth reaching. 

The crows begin to feast on rotting corpses. 

An hour or two later, the rain starts.

The mud turns thick, sloppy, clinging to his boots with every step, pulling his already lagging footsteps. The blonde boy still clutches onto him, slipping in and out of consciousness, his weight growing heavier with each passing moment. Bucky practically drags him now, his own body protesting as his knee threatens to give. 

His clothes are soaked through, the cold Autumn chill seeping into his bones, damp and unforgiving. It only aggravates the tremble slowly consuming his body. His muscles ache and stiffen, but there’s no stopping, no reprieve. Just the unrelenting march forward.

By the time the sun begins to set, more soldiers have fallen. Their faces, mottled with mud and rain, stare blankly at the sky. He feels bad that it’s a relief—that the thick sludge obscures their features, spares him from remembering them. They mark the trail like breadcrumbs in an old fairy tale, ones he used to read, long ago. He hopes that the witch finds them instead.  

He keeps a steady mantra in his head, keeps him moving with one singular thought: Make it. Just make it. For Steve. He can’t let some lousy letter in the mail be the thing that breaks the guy’s heart.   

Bucky thinks about him a lot as he trudges forward, dragging the barely conscious solider with increasing difficulty. He wonders what Steve’s doing—if he’s sketching in the apartment, nursing a bruise from another alleyway fight, or holed up in bed, coughing through another fever as they gradually descend into winter. He hopes he’s warm, that he’s eating enough. He hopes he isn’t trying to enlist again. 

Steve’s a fighter. Always has been. And even if he’s sick, even if life keeps knocking him down, he won’t stop doing what he does best. The thought reassures Bucky, keeps him from worrying too much—because worry takes energy, and he doesn’t have much of that left. 

When the man stirs beside him next, he gets a name. 

“..’M name’s…Charlie,” he says raggedly, wincing at the drag of his legs. He tries to catch his footing, and Bucky eases off a bit, letting him find his balance. He trips before finally standing on shaky legs. “Charlie O’Sulliv..an” he forces out, accent thick. British? Irish?

Bucky exhales a short laugh. “That’s ‘bout the most English name I’ve ever heard.”

Charlie huffs weakly, nodding with a grimace. “Well s’true.. What’s yours?”

“James,” Bucky says, then offers a small smile. “But call me Bucky.”

Charlie squints up at him. “And you..make fun..of my nam..e”? He coughs out something close to a laugh, wheezing all the way through it. “What type of n-name is that?”

Bucky huffs in amusement, ignoring the way it makes his own lungs rattle.Bucky gives him a short glance, stifling a smile. “How old are you Charlie?”

His words slur but are less shaky and disconnected than before: “Twenny, you?” 

Jesus. just a kid. “Twenty-six. You got somebody at home you’re fightin’ for?” If only to keep them talking.
“Well, first and foremost, I’m fightin’ for my country,” he responds half-assed, and Bucky barely stops himself from snorting. “And so that my little brotha can have a normal life. So he doesn’t have to fight when he comes of age.”
Bucky nods his head thoughtfully. “How old is he?”

“Fourteen.” 

There’s a lull, the scuttle of trudging feet and quiet murmurs filling the space. Bucky thinks Charlie must’ve passed out again until:

“You got someone you’re fightin’ for?” He waggles his eyebrows. “A lady?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Got three little sisters. Workin’ hard, hopefully not gettin’ into too much trouble while I’m gone.” Despite the exhaustion, he smiles. Becca, the oldest, is probably taking charge of the chores, flirting with guys he’ll have to knock out when he gets back. Lily, still young but learning to take care of herself. And Carolyn, the troublemaker—smart as hell and always causing a ruckus.

“And a best guy,” Bucky adds after a pause. “Got the soul of a thousand lions. Greatest guy I’ve ever known.” 

Charlie hums knowingly. “So, no lady?”

Bucky scoffs. “Fuck off.”

Charlie laughs, weak but genuine. Bucky holds onto that sound. 

“Them four are all I need to keep me going out here,” he says eventually. 

And his ma, he thinks. He wonders if his Pa would be proud of him—if he’d think Bucky had done right by the Barnes name, for following in his footsteps. If he’d say he was honourable. If he’d say anything at all. Bucky’s starting to understand that far away look in his Pa’s eyes now, the silences that plagued him after his tour in France. He’d been angry, before. 

Now he feels hollow.

Like the space between gunfire. Like the pause before an impact, before the moment of breaking.

Or—

Now he feels like he finally understands.

Or—

Now he feels nothing at all.

Because maybe that’s the trick. Maybe you survive by becoming empty, by letting the cold settle in your chest, by stopping the wanting, the hoping. Because the hope makes you weak, doesn't it?  

“They’re damn lucky to have a guy like you around,” Charlie murmurs softly, resting his cheek against his shoulder. 

He falls back unconscious. 

The wind picks up. It’s cold. Not just skin-deep, but something worse—seeping past muscle and marrow, settling in his soul like rot. His breath stutters in awkward bursts, a tickle clawing at his throat until he has to clear it every few steps. Charlie’s dead weight drags at his shoulder, slowing him down, his body trembling when Bucky’s own breaths hiccup into rough coughs. 

His knee is failing them. Every few paces, it falters, a sharp, sickening hitch that throws his balance off. Hydra soldiers have prodded him more than once now, the electricity mercifully off, but the message is clear: Move or be left behind.

Bucky doesn’t want to fall behind. 

He repeats it in his head, clinging to his mantra: Can’t fall behind. Can’t fall behind. Can’t fall behind. 

For Steve. Do it for Steve. 

He tightens his grip around Charlie’s limp form, heaving him higher onto his shoulder. Every nerve in his body is on fire, every inhale more shallow and ragged than the last, but he doesn’t stop. 

It feels like he’s been walking forever. 

The air is no longer damp. Dry now. It feels sharp and terrible against his throat, like breathing fire. His chest aches, the tickle from before now an unbearably scratch that burrows deep. It feels like needle pricks—like the ones he used to get helping his mother sew blankets in the winter for his sisters and Steve. Only now, the slip-ups aren’t on his fingertips. They’re inside him, needling through his trachea, sinking into the belly of his lungs to puncture each breath.

Dugan notices him staggering and offers to take Charlie. Bucky brushes him off. 

A couple hours later, Dugan tries again. Bucky swears him out before he can get more than two words out. 

His Can’t fall behind’s become Can’t leave him’s and Don’t wanna leave him’s. 

He’s not sure if he’s still talking about Charlie or if his delirious mind has started confusing him for a smaller, skinnier Brooklyn punk. 

His mind swims between past and present, eyes burning with exhaustion, his gut weighed down by the cruel grip of hunger. His muscles lock up from the sheer demand of movement, straining and shivering. He’s had to piss for well over a day now. And he’s so, so thirsty. He almost prays for the rain again, despite the cold—just so he can tip his head back and gulp down mouthfuls of it. Anything to ease bite in his throat, the stone in his stomach, the way his tongue sticks dryly to the roof of his mouth.

Charlie’s grip on his shoulder and wrist is tight. Too tight and stiff and cold. 

The next time Dugan comes to him, Bucky refuses for a different reason

He’s afraid. 

Don’t wanna leave him. Don’t wanna leave him alone. 

Night falls, and the sun rises again. 

It snows.

Bucky catches as many snowflakes as he can, tongue out, desperate. The ice burns, but it soothes some of the dryness—if only for a moment. When it stops, he’s even thirstier. 

They must be close, now. They have to be. 

Almost seventy soldiers have died in the last two days—from injuries, exhaustion, or the brutal cold. Some from all three. Bucky feels just about dead himself. 

When the sun begins to set on the third day, the break comes without warning. The Hydra soldiers slow, murmuring among themselves as they begin setting up camp. 

Jones tells him that they’re letting them rest. They’re not happy about how many prisoners they’ve lost—it’s wasteful, apparently. Dead men don’t work. Jones says it like a joke, but the grimness in his tone betrays him.

Bucky doesn’t really care. He just wants to piss and sleep. 

He kneels beside Charlie, shaking his shoulder. “Hey,” he mutters, voice hoarse.

Charlie doesn’t stir.

Bucky shakes him again. Harder. 

The realisation creeps in before it hits all at once. His stomach seizes, bile rising in his throat. Slowly, he pries Charlie’s fingers from his wrist, a deep bruise already blooming where they’d clutched too tightly. 

His skin is cold. 

Bucky doesn’t know when it must’ve happened. 

If only minutes after their conversation—hours—or a full night had passed. 

It doesn’t matter now.

Bucky buries him under heaps of fallen snow. Finds a branch and a stone. It’s pathetic, but it’s all he can do. Charlie deserves more than a sloppy burial. He feels hollow as he traces his name in the snow, mutters his half-baked prayer. He changes the words, just in case Charlie wasn’t Christian. He doubts it, but still—he wants it to be right. 

When he returns to the fire, Dugan doesn’t say anything. 

They simply huddle together, for comfort more than warmth. 

Bucky grips his chest beneath his uniform. He suddenly misses the too-tight grip of the other boy. So he squeezes harder.  

Chapter Text

October 1943, Kreischberg, Austria

120 km. 3 days. 210—211 dead. 

They march into Kreischberg at dusk, where the mountains rise black and jagged against the evening sky, peaks swallowed by rolling clouds. The air bites sharper here, bitter with the scent of pine and something colder, metallic, like rusted iron in the back of his throat. Bucky tastes it when he swallows, feels it settle between his teeth like old blood. 

Their boots drag through slush-stitched dirt, a mix of mud and ice. Each step chafes against raw blisters, bursting under the damp press of his socks, spreading a fresh sting through numbed skin. The camp looms ahead—concrete and steel, its perimeter strangled by barbed wire, curling high overhead like the ribcage of some ancient, dead beast. 

Fitting.

Towers punctuate the outskirts, spotlights sweeping across the yard, casting shadows across gaunt faces. Beyond the gates, squat, brutalist buildings hum with the low, ceaseless churn of machines. The entire place breathes with electricity—not just in the fences, but in the air itself, an unnatural charge that makes the hairs stand at the back of his neck. Like the beating of a slow, mechanical heart, pit pit pit until it flatlines. 

He steals a glance at Jones beside him, his face drawn, eyes darting over their surroundings, no doubt listening for any stray comments. Dugan’s jaw is locked, fingers white-knuckled around the strap of his tattered uniform. He’s silent for once—no wisecracks now. The others—they’re all the same. Hollow-eyed. Shivering. The tips of their fingers and noses turning all the wrong colours. 

The HYDRA soldiers herd them like livestock funnelled for slaughter. 

Someone collapses up ahead, sinking into the mud with a choked wheeze. There’s a muffled curse, then the distinct, mechanical hum of one of those batons. The strike lands with a nauseating crack, and the fallen soldier spasms, body seizing against the dirt. 

Bucky clenches his teeth as the rest of the line keeps moving.

No one stops. 

They’re separated into groups, shoved into what looks like a processing station. Bucky’s infantry is crammed into a steel-walled room, the air thick with the stink of sweat and damp wool. A single bulb swings overhead. Somewhere, a radio crackles with the swelling strains of Tristan und Isolde. The music drifts in and out, warped by static, but Bucky recognises it anyway—Liebestod, the kind of haunting, slow-burn tragedy that leaves you feeling like you’d cried yourself to sleep. 

He only knows it because his first girlfriend was a soprano for the Brooklyn Opera House. He remembers sitting in the last row, feet aching in too-tight shoes, watching her stand beneath the stage lights and belt out the kind of high, shivering notes that made people weep. He never liked Wagner that much—Steve called him a bully, a damn antisemite unworthy of the opera house girls—but she loved him, so Bucky listened.

The memory feels like it belongs to someone else now.

Here, in this place, he’s reminded of the German’s pride. Their obsession with precision—with sharp, beautiful things. Music, architecture, machinery. He doesn’t understand it, how they can listen to the same music and still commit the atrocities he’s seen. How they can play Wagner and hum along, let Liebestod swell like a funeral hymn, while men starve in the next room over. 

He doesn’t understand how beauty and cruelty can exist in the same breath. 

At the front of the room there’s a desk, and behind it stands a man—tall, sharp-featured, with cold, disinterested eyes. Not a soldier. A bureaucrat. He barely glances up from the ledger he’s flipping through. 

“Name. Rank. Serial number.”

The man at the front of the line hesitates. He doesn’t even get a chance to answer before a guard slams a rifle butt into his stomach. He folds in on himself with a breathless gasp, knees cracking against the concrete. 

“Name. Rank. Serial number.”

The process repeats. Some spit their answers out fast. Others hesitate and get punished for it, gasping through bloodied lips. 

When it’s Bucky’s turn, he doesn’t flinch:

“Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038.”

The man scribbles it down and moves on. No questions. No interrogation. 

Bucky frowns. POW camps process soldiers for intelligence. They’re still soldiers, even as captives. 

Across the room, Jones meets his gaze uneasily.  

“They’re not asking questions,” he mutters lowly. 

Bucky nods stiffly. “Yeah. That’s what worries me.”

The first thing Bucky learns about the labour camp is that men don’t last long here.

They’re assigned to weapons assembly—lugging crates, moving machinery, fitting together pieces of tech that shouldn’t exist—even where Stark’s concerned. It’s not standard German weaponry. It hums when it shouldn’t. Some parts are cool to the touch, even fresh off the line, while others sting with residual energy. The whole place reeks of burning metal and ozone and human waste.

The work is gruelling, but that’s not what kills men. It’s the cold, the starvation, the exhaustion that turns bodies into brittle things, waiting to snap. 

The ones who collapse are taken away. They don’t come back.

And then there are the beatings.

Bucky’s seen plenty of cruel officers before, but none quite like Lohmer. The man doesn’t just enforce discipline—he enjoys it. He’s built like a boulder, broad and thick-necked, with flat, pitiless eyes and an ugly snarl. He patrols the floor like a wolf, sniffing out weakness, waiting for an excuse. When he finds one, he’s quick about it. A crack across the jaw. A boot to the ribs. That damned baton. 

Bucky takes his first hit on the second day.

There’s a kid—a private, maybe twenty, barely a hundred pounds soaking wet. He stumbles under the weight of a crate, fingers slipping, and the whole things tips. 

The crash is deafening.

Lohmer is on him before the dust settles, barking something sharp in German, baton already raised. 

And Bucky moves without thinking.

He yanks the kid back before the blow can land. It slams across his shoulder, sending a white-hot crack of pain down his spine. He clenches his teeth until his molars ache.

Lohmer sneers at him. 

“You want to take his punishment, American?” His accent is thick, but his English is clear enough. “Fine.”

The second blow is worse.

The third drives him to a knee. His bad one.

The fourth doesn’t come. Someone mutters in German, and Lohmer chuckles. The baton clicks off.

“Get up,” he orders.

Bucky does. 

He swallows the pain, doesn’t let Lohmer see it, even as his knees shake. 

The kid doesn’t thank him. Just stares like Bucky’s something between a ghost and a fool.

And he already knows, with sick certainty, that Lohmer won’t be the worst of it. 

Bucky meets Dernier and Morita in the cramped, sour-smelling barracks, where prisoners huddle together for what little warmth they can steal, sacrificing clean air for comfort. They aren’t from the 107th—Dernier’s Free French, Morita’s a private from the 442nd—but war makes quick work of formalities. 

Dernier is lean, all sharp eyes and sharper wit, with a heavy accent that Jones’ parses through easily. He’s been here longer than most. Long enough to know which guards can be bribed with cigarettes and which will beat you just for breathing wrong. Long enough to have been put on corpse duty. 

“Bodies burn worse than they do on the battlefield,” he tells them one night, voice flat.

No one asks him to elaborate, but he does anyway. Maybe to purge it from his own mind. Maybe to make sure they all understand what kind of place they’re in. He talks about the ones who die too fast—merciful, he says—others, too slow. A pitiful way to go. The ones they take apart before they’re even cold. “Eyes, teeth, tongues, fingers,” he lists off like he’s counting cards. But it’s the last part that makes the air in the barracks tighten. 

“Some, they do it before.”

Morita, who’d been sharpening a scrap of metal against the wall, stops mid-motion “Before what?”

Dernier just looks at him.

A heavy silence follows. 

Morita lets out a slow breath, then goes back to sharpening. “Sick fucks,” he mutters under his breath. 

No one argues. 

Bucky doesn’t sleep much that night. 

Bucky’s first real sign that he’s getting worse isn’t the coughing—that started days ago. It’s not the fever either, though that’s been creeping under his skin, curdling his blood into something rancid. 

It’s when he tries to stand one morning and the world tilts. 

He catches himself on the nearest bunk, swallowing a curse and the urge to gag. Dernier, who’d been tying strips of cloth together into makeshift rope—Bucky doesn’t ask where he got them—glances up.

“Tu tombes, Barnes?” he asks. You falling, Barnes?

Bucky exhales sharply through his nose. “Not a chance.”

Dernier hums like he doesn’t believe him. He goes back to his knots, but Bucky can feel his gaze boring holes into his back. 

The work doesn’t help. It’s the same brutal routine—shovelling, carrying, assembling, dismantling. But every breath comes heavier, like his ribs are wrapped in iron bands. The cold doesn’t bite anymore; which should concern him, but he can only feel relief as the numbness latches onto his limbs.

By midday, his hands won’t stop shaking. 

“Hey, you good?” Jones mutters as they stack crates together. 

Bucky blinks at him. 

Jones frowns. “You’re sweating,” he points out, jerking his chin toward Bucky’s damp collar. 

“’S hot in here,” Bucky lies, even as his breath condensates against the freezing warehouse air. 

Jones doesn’t buy it. “Right.” But he lets it go.

That night, Bucky wakes up gasping. 

The barracks are dark, filled with the shifting murmurs of men in uneasy sleep. The air feels thicker, somehow, or maybe it’s because his chest feels full of wet cement. He wheezes, mouth parted, sucking in air that doesn’t feel like it’s quite reaching his lungs. His ribs seize, his body curls inward as a violent cough racks through him, shaking him so hard his vision blurs. 

For a second, he isn’t there.

It’s the Ardennes this time. The forest is thick, tangled with skeletal trees. The snow swallows boots to the ankle, muffling the sound, leaving behind perfect, incriminating trails that must be erased. Every few meters, someone turns back to sweep them away. A pointless effort, in the end. The next snowfall will bury them, just as it will bury the bodies.

Because there are bodies. Everything is white, save for the bodies.

Limbs twisted in impossible ways, uniforms frozen stiff. Skin turned the colour of bad meat, lips cracked open, agape, screaming upon deaf ears. Blood darkens the snow in wide, ugly stains, and the sight makes something coil, sick and familiar, in his stomach.

His breath smokes in the air like gunfire.

They’d been advancing under the cover of nightfall when the shells started. He remembers the whistling—high and sharp, before the first explosion slammed into the earth, sending trees toppling like matchsticks. Burning pine, the choking stench of sulphur and blood. Someone screamed. He thinks it was him. 

The first shot took out Gibson, a clean hit to the temple. Bucky remembers hitting the ground, rolling behind a fallen tree, frost bleeding into his tattered gloves as he crawled toward the nearest figure. Wilkes. Face-down, arms bent all the wrong ways, motionless. He reached for him, grabbed his shoulder, pulled—

Wilkes’ head lolled backward, and there was nothing beneath the helmet but charred flesh, two pearly eyes staring, frozenly, towards the sky. 

Perhaps it's the fever that drags him deeper. He’s running now, rifle gripped tight, boots slipping on ice. Shouts splinter through the trees—German voices. Muzzle flashes bloom in the dark. He turns—sees Parker go down before he can warn him. He remember the blood on his hands, the coppery tang of it thick on his tongue as he pressed his palm to Parker’s stomach, trying to hold his insides where they belonged. Parker was nineteen. Had a sister back home. Just a sister. Bucky had promised to write her if anything ever happened. Don’t die on me, private.

It's one of the hardest letters he's written. 

Can’t reach him. Can’t—

A hand lands on his shoulder. 

Bucky flinches so hard it sends another cough ripping through him. The Ardennes dissolves. The barracks return in a cold blur of dark shapes and shallow breathing. 

“Shh,” a voice soothes. The Frenchman. “You were dreaming.”

Dernier. 

Frenchie.

He presses something into Bucky’s palm. A scrap of cloth, damp and cool. 

“Stole water,” Dernier says simply. “From the kitchens.”

Bucky swipes it over his face, wiping the sweat from his forehead, the back of his neck. It feels like a balm against his fever. “Thanks,” he slurs.

Dernier shifts so he’s leaning against the bunk, arms crossed. “You don’t last long in this place if you get sick,” he says quietly.

Bucky knows. He’s seen it. 

“Jones is finding something,” Dernier adds. “Tea leaves. Smuggled from a guard.”

Bucky huffs out a weary, humourless laugh. “Tea’s not gonna fix this, pal.”

Dernier shrugs. “Maybe not. But it will make you look better.” He meets Bucky’s gaze. “They take the weak ones first.”

That sobers him up quick. 

Bucky gets worse.

He tries to keep his head down, to move when the rest move, to keep the rasp out of his throat when he talks—though he barely speaks anymore. He starts swallowing the coughs before they come, the phlegm before it rises, but it’s not enough. 

The fever burns behind his eyes, turning the world thin and stretched, like old film reels running too hot in a projector. Too bright in places, flickering black in others. Faces blur, sounds warp, the factory narrows into something distant and unreal. Indistinguishable, sometimes, from his dreams. 

By the third day, he’s barely keeping upright. His limbs are slow to follow commands, lagging behind his thoughts. The nausea hits him at the worst moments—bile rising mid-step, dry heaving before he can even get a bite of bread in. 

Still, Dugan shares his portions with him.

“When you can stomach it,” he’d say, pressing the extra ration into Bucky’s palm, pretending like he’s not already halfway gone. 

He won’t stop shaking. 

It starts in his fingers, an irritating tremor, but by morning roll call, it’s spread. His arms. His legs. His jaw. His ribs rattle with it. His teeth chatter so hard he worries they’ll crack, that he’ll bite straight through his own tongue, choke on it and drown from the inside out.

And on the fourth day, he staggers at the wrong time. 

It’s during routine inspection. The wind is biting, the sky bruised and heavy with snow. The guards pace, eyes scanning, boots crunching over ice-packed dirt. 

His vision tilts, grey static hissing at the edges.

His knees buckle. 

One of them steps forward, baton in hand, and Bucky braces for it.

Except Morita moves first. 

He stumbles, full-bodied, knocking into Bucky just enough to force him upright. 

“Bastard stepped on my foot,” Morita grumbles, loud enough for the guards to hear. “Watch it, Barnes.”

The guard glares but doesn’t press it—at least it’s not Lohmer. He keeps moving, tapping his baton against his palm, slow and methodical, like he’s deciding who to whittle next. 

Bucky exhales slowly, glancing at Morita. He goes to say something. 

“Don’t mention it,” Morita mutters, still facing forward. 

Bucky works through the delirium, by the grace of God, but even He is a far away thought. Sweat soaks into his uniform—locking the shivers that wrack his body whenever the factory doors swing open and let in a blast of frozen air. He’s barely holding it together, can’t so much as shift his weight onto his left leg.

By the fifth day, he can’t get up.

He knows it before he even tries. His body doesn’t listen, muscles seized with aching stiffness. He hears movement around him—boots scraping against stone, men murmuring, the familiar clink clink of chains. The usual roll call, the usual routine. He just has to move. Get up. Get up.

He tries.

The effort rips something loose in his chest. A deep, shuddering cough he can’t hold back. Pain burst across his ribs. The air turns sharp around him, boots stopping, a shadow falling over his curled form.

“Sarge—” Jones hisses from somewhere close.

Bucky’s barely opened his eyes, bleary and disorientated, when an open-palm slap snaps his head sideways, hard enough to spring stars. The world lurches, sounds turning muffled and distant, like the crackling radio he and Steve used to eavesdrop on through the walls of their tenement—before they finally scraped up enough cash to buy their own. 

Steve was obsessed with the damn thing—always hunched over it, hanging onto every word about the war, like knowing more would change anything.

Another hit. A boot to the back of his knee. He whimpers, pain lancing up his leg. Someone laughs. 

Lohmer doesn’t stop. 

Bucky curls in on himself as the blows keep coming—baton cracking across his ribs, the sharp sting of a leather belt against his cheek. He clenches his jaw, wheezing through the pain, against the instinct to cry out. But it builds, like a cavity that’s been left to rot, until a broken sound wrenches from his throat—part gasp, part snarl, barely human.

The other prisoners keep working.

They don’t stop. Don’t even look.

Except for four.

Bucky barely makes it to his cot before his legs give out. 

Dernier kneels beside him, expression unreadable as he soaks a sock in the drinking bucket and presses it against Bucky’s split lip. 

“Ça suffit,” he says, voice tight. Enough.

Bucky breathes shallowly through his nose, swallowing the blood pooling at the back of his throat.

“Not like we can do much about it.”

Dernier doesn’t answer. He just keeps pressing the damp cloth against Bucky’s bruised cheek. And when Bucky finally starts to drift, half-conscious and aching, he hears Dernier mutter something under his breath.

“We will.”

Bucky doesn’t know which one of them did it. He doesn’t ask. But he has his bets. 

It happens during a supply transfer—a routine check-up on one of the weapons caches. A crate falls from a second-story ledge, landing squarely on Lohmer, a hundred pounds of steel splattering him flat, just like his ugly, beady eyes.  

No one moves.

Then, guards scramble. Someone shouts orders in German. Prisoners flinch back as rifles are drawn, but no one confesses.

Bucky forces himself to stay upright, fingers curled tight around his own wrist to keep from swaying.

He turns his head just enough to catch Dernier’s eye.

The Frenchman doesn’t smile. Doesn’t nod.

But his grip tightens around the wrench in his hand, just for a moment. 

An accident.

The guards are furious. They interrogate, threaten, drag men from their cells and beat them bloody, but still, no one talks. No one even looks guilty.

Bucky watches the blood being scrubbed from the factory floor, streaking dark into the cracks of the concrete like it belongs there. Like it’s always been there.

He can’t help the small smile of satisfaction that splits his chipped lip. 

They do end up paying for it, after all. 

The guards don’t know who to punish, so they punish everyone. 

Rations are cut.

At first, it’s just hunger. A gnawing, hollow thing in their stomachs, twisting sharp, turning mean. But hunger is never just hunger. It turns to exhaustion, to dizziness, to pains that don’t fade. The cold burrows deeper, the days feel longer. 

Bucky barely has the strength to stand most days. The fever has only grown, and now hunger gnaws at him, making the edges of the world even blurrier. The trembling worsens.

Then comes the fights.

Dugan, lightheaded and mean-tempered, mutters something about the French not putting up enough of a fight when the Germans rolled into Paris.

Dernier swings first.

It’s fast, ugly, brutal. A hard, knuckle-bone blow across Dugan’s jaw. No hesitation. Dugan stumbles, spits blood onto the dirty concrete floor, then comes back swinging. 

Bucky doesn’t have it in him to break it up, but Morita and Jones wade in, pulling them apart before it turns into something worse. Before it turns into another excuse for the guards to get involved. 

Afterward, Dernier crouches next to Bucky’s cot, dabbing at his black eye with a scrap of cloth.

“Americans are insufferable,” he mutters.

Bucky, half-delirious, wheezes out something that almost sounds like a laugh. “You picked the fight, pal.”

Dernier shrugs, indifferent. “I am French. I have to defend my country’s honour.”

Bucky snorts, coughing so hard his ribs burn.

A beat of silence. Then Dernier sighs, quieter now.

“It was worth it.”

Bucky swallows hard. 

Yeah.

It was.

Bucky finds that men hold on to whatever they can here.

They’re back in the barracks after another fourteen-hour shift, wrists raw from carrying crates, bodies drained from hunger. The exhaustion settles into their limbs, into the spaces between each breath, into the way they move—slow, mechanical, a few steps shy of collapse.

Bucky sits with his back to the wall, counting the ribs pressing against his own skin, trying to stop the way his vision swims and his thoughts turns gauzy. He can feel his mind slipping, the same way it used to when he’d get a fever that burnt too hot, one he’d most certainly gotten from Steve, mumbling sorry’s to his ma for bringing home pneumonia. 

Still, Jones nudges his good knee. 

“You got someone back home?”

Bucky exhales. It’s the kind of question men like to chew on out here, something to take their minds off, well everything. He can picture him, clear as day—golden hair catching the light from their bay window, bright, stubborn blue eyes, always too damn small for the fights he threw himself into. With the biggest heart he’s ever seen.  

“Yeah.” He doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t want to. Even out here, miles away, being a fairy will get you in all kinds of trouble. You need all the friends you can get in a place like this—can’t afford to make more enemies than you already have.

His voice is hoarse from breathing in the stink of the cell all day, but he manages: “What about you?”

Jones gives him a tired grin. “Etta.”

Dugan, overhearing, scoffs. “We’re talkin’ women now? What is this, a sleepover?”

“You got someone besides that damn rifle of yours, Dum-Dum?”

Dugan laughs. “Shut the fuck up, Jones.” Little puffs of fog trail his words: “But if I get outta here, I’ll find someone real pretty and make up for lost time.”

Morita, who’s been quiet, shifts. “Yeah, well, I got a girl.”

Jones snorts. “You tellin’ me Jim Morita’s got a lady?”

Morita rolls his eyes. “Her name’s Kimiko. I’m gonna marry her when I get back.” He says it like a fact, something already set in stone, and maybe that’s how you have to talk about the future here. 

Dugan laughs, shaking his head. “If we get outta here, I’m gettin’ so drunk I won’t be able to see straight. And first rounds on me!”

Dernier finally speaks up, no longer bitter from Dugan’s outburst. “If I get out, I will never look at a wrench again, I swear it.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “You say that now.”

“You think I lie?”

“I think,” Bucky mutters, rolling his head against the wall, “that if I ever see Dum-Dum’s rifle again after this, I’ll be sick.”

“You’re already sick, you goddamn bastard.”

“Say it louder, why don’t you?” Jones hisses. 

If.

The word sits between them like a loaded gun.

They all hear it. No one says anything. 

The barracks door creaks open, and they all look up as another figure is shoved inside, stumbling a step before catching himself.

He’s tall, broad-shouldered but leaner than he should be, like the rest of them. His uniform is dirty, sleeves rolled to the elbows, but there’s still an air of formality about him—something straight-backed and round-eyed, like he hasn’t quite let go of the officer’s bearing. His hair is a little longer than the standard cut, dirty blond curls pushed back from his forehead.

“Bloody hell,” he mutters under his breath, shaking off the shove like a dog waiting to snap its teeth. 

Bucky studies him as he moves to the empty space near the opposite wall. His accent’s clipped, British. Probably an officer, then.

“New guy?” Dugan asks, squinting at him.

“Been here a few weeks,” the man answers, voice dry. “Different block. They’re rearranging the furniture, I suppose.”

“Guess you got upgraded,” Jones mutters.

Falsworth—because of course that’s his goddamn name, Major James Montgomery Falsworth. British Intelligence. What is left of His Majesty's 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade. He lets out a sharp breath that could be a laugh. “Yes, well, the amenities leave something to be desired.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll get used to it,” Morita says back. “Or you won’t.”

Falsworth’s gaze drifts over the lot of them, calculating but not unkind. “So, what do they call you?”

Introductions go quick.

“Jones.”

“Morita.”

Morita jerks a thumb toward Dernier. “That one’s Frenchie.”

“Va te faire foutre.” Go fuck yourself.

“Dugan.” He smirks. “Most people call me Dum-Dum, though.”

Falsworth nods, then turns to Bucky.

There’s something different in the way he looks at him. Not just cataloging, but knowing. Bucky sees the flicker of recognition in his eyes—the way they catch on the damp sheen of sweat, the unsteady shift of his frame, the way he sways slightly even as he forces himself to stay upright. He knows what happens to the sick. He's probably seen it. 

Bucky exhales. “Barnes.” His voice scrapes like sandpaper against his raw throat.

Falsworth tilts his head, studying him in a way that makes Bucky feel stripped to the bone.

Bucky snorts softly. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

Falsworth doesn’t comment. Just gives the smallest incline of his head, like he’s filed the information away.

And for the first time in days, maybe weeks, the air in the barracks feels just a little less heavy.

It’s not often they have the energy to talk at night. Most of the time, sleep is the only mercy the camp offers. But tonight, something shifts. Maybe because Falsworth is new, or because Bucky looks like death warmed over and no one wants to acknowledge it outright.

So, they talk.

Dugan starts it. “Alright, best meal you ever had. Go.”

“Seriously?”

“To know a man, is to know his stomach.”

“Well, it’s not a goddamn turnip, that’s for sure,” Jones mutters.

Dernier snickers. “The Americans and their bad food. My father made cassoulet in winter—beans, pork, duck, garlic. A meal that could bring you back from the dead.”

Morita hums. “There’s a bakery back home. Kyoto-style pastries, real delicate. My mom took me and my sisters there before school. We’d split a chestnut roll.”

Dugan rolls his eyes. “Come on, a damn pastry? That’s not a meal.”

Morita shoots him a look. “What would you know? You’ve never had one.”

Jones chuckles. “For me, it’s fried catfish. My ma made it better than anyone in Georgia. Hush puppies on the side, sweet tea. I’d kill a man for some cornbread right now.”

Bucky, head tipped back against the wall, exhales. “Tomato soup,” he mutters softly.

Dugan barks a laugh. “That’s worse than the pastry.”

Bucky shakes his head, too tired to argue. “Steve’s ma used to make it. When I got sick, she’d sit me at the kitchen table with a warm bowl of soup and tell me I’d live.” He sighs. “Dunno. Just always tasted like home.”

The words hang between them for a moment, heavy with something none of them want to touch. It’s the first time he’s mentioned Steve, he realises late. 

Dugan stretches his arms out and changes the subject. “Alright, next question—worst officer you ever had.”

Jones snorts. “Oh, I got a list.”

Morita smirks. “You got time?”

Dernier waves a hand. “No, no. Better question. Who here has had their heart broken?”

A few groans go up.

Bucky, barely upright, huffs a tired laugh. “Not me.”

Dernier tilts his head at him. “No?”

Bucky shrugs. “No one’s ever held onto me long enough to break it.

Morita whistles. “That’s bleak.”

Falsworth smirks. “I don’t know, Sergeant. You’ve got the look of a man with a story.”

Bucky waves him off, not in the mood to play this game.

But Dugan—Dugan picks up on something, something in the way Bucky doesn’t meet their eyes, and goes, “You’re tellin’ me Barnes never had some pretty dame back home? Handsome guy like you?’

Bucky exhales. “Sure. I had someone.”

Dugan grins, leaning forward. “What was she like?”

Bucky doesn’t answer right away. His throat’s too raw, his ribs too sore, and he doesn’t like the way Dugan’s watching him. 

Dernier, eyes still on Bucky, answers instead. “Or maybe not a she.”

Dugan blinks. “The hell does that mean?”

Dernier sighs. “It means what it means.”

Dugan shifts, uncomfortable now. “Come on, that ain’t—”

“Not what? Not normal? Not right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Non, but you thought it.”

Dugan scoffs, exhaling through his nose. “Listen, I don’t give a damn what some fancy Frenchman thinks, but where I come from, men don’t—”

Dernier scoffs right back, folding his arms. “Yes, yes, I know. Americans and their fragile masculinity.”

Dugan grits his teeth. “It ain’t about that.”

“No?” Dernier tilts his head. “So what is it about?”

Dugan doesn’t have to answer. 

And that’s when Dernier deals the final blow. “In France, l’amour c’est l’amour” Love is love.

The words hang there for a long moment, heavy between them. 

They don’t need Jones to translate. 

Bucky doesn’t say a word. Closes his eyes—feigns sleep. 

He’s not sure if he’s grateful or resentful that Dernier said something.

But either way, it’s been said.

And for once, he doesn’t feel like he’s the only one carrying it.

Morita draws the conversation away. “I had a guy who liked to remind me every day I shouldn’t be in the Army.”

Bucky frowns. “Why?”

Morita snorts, shakes his head. “You serious?”

Bucky knows. Of course he does. But still, he listens.

“442nd was all guys like me,” Morita says. “Japanese-American. The Army made a whole unit just for us so we wouldn’t ‘pose a threat’ to the other soldiers.” His voice turns flat. “My folks are back in California. Can’t say for sure, but… I doubt they’re still living at home.”

No one speaks. They all know about the camps. The relocation orders. It’s not their fault Pearl Harbour happened, but that didn’t stop the government from rounding up families like Morita’s. Didn’t stop the newspapers from printing yellow peril fear-mongering, from painting every Japanese-American as traitors. 

Morita stares at the floor, jaw tight. “Haven’t heard from them.”

No one presses.

It’s not like letters get through out here. Not like he’d know if they were safe. If they were locked behind barbed wire like here, in the desert, but trapped all the same. 

The silence stretches long and thin. 

Finally, Jones says, “They got you fighting for a country that locked up your family.”

Morita exhales, “Yep.” He shrugs. “Still my country.”

Jones nods at that. “White folks love an excuse.”

Dugan, still feeling raw from their last conversation, scoffs. “C’mon, not all of us—”

Jones levels him with a look. “Enough of you.”

Dugan grumbles, but this time, he shuts up faster.

Bucky glances at Morita, at the muscle ticking in his jaw.

“Your folks tough?” he rasps.

Morita swallows, nods. “Yeah.”

“Then they’re still standing,” Bucky says, hoping it lands right.

Morita finally looks up. A beat passes, then he nods. 

And just like that, the conversation shifts.

They move on, but the weight of it lingers. 

“Isolated my unit too,” Jones shares. “Didn’t matter how many Krauts I put down, still got side-eyed at camp. They’d cut our rations. Make fun of our noses, lips, stuff like that. Not too different from what the Nazis would say. One of ‘em tried to call me ‘nigger’ in the middle of a fight. You know what happened?”

Morita grins. “You knocked his ass out?”

Jones smirks. “Damn right.”

Dugan exhales through his nose. “Hell, I ain’t saying it’s right, but it ain’t exactly a surprise.”

Jones gives him a dry look. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Just saying—it’s war. People—”

Morita cuts in, sharp, “It’s war, so what? You think that’s an excuse?”

Dugan scowls. “I think people say things they don’t mean when they’re scared. It’s not like I—”

“You do,” Dernier says flatly. “Maybe not in the same way, but you do.”

Dugan bristles. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Dernier cocks his head. “Oh, I don’t know—maybe the way you get uncomfortable when men talk about things that don’t fit your narrow little world.”

Dugan opens his mouth, then shuts it. He glares at the ground like it’s personally offended him. “Some folks don’t take kindly to changes, that’s all. You can’t change people’s minds overnight.”

Dernier’s voice is dry. “Ah, yes. Racists need time. The poor things.”

Morita snickers, but Jones just eyes Dugan, something wary in his gaze.

Bucky, sick and half out of it, still finds enough strength to kick Dugan’s boot with his own. “Think before you talk, Dum-Dum.”

Dugan exhales through his nose. “Yeah, yeah, alright.”

It’s Morita who breaks the tension. “In France, love is love, right?” he asks, glancing at Dernier with a knowing smirk.

Dernier shrugs, smiling just faintly. “Bien sûr.” Of course. 

Bucky watches the exchange, feels the weight of it settle in his chest. Feels somewhat less alone. 

Dugan shakes his head. “Shit,” he mutters.

Dernier raises a brow. “That an apology?”

Dugan exhales hard. “I’ll work on it.”

“Good,” Dernier says easily. Then, after a pause, “You’re still an insufferable bastard, though.”

Dugan snorts. “Yeah, well. That ain’t changing.”

The air lightens, just a little.

It’s hard to say when Falsworth starts feeling less like a stranger and more like one of them.

Maybe it’s the first time he cracks a joke at Dugan’s expense, mimicking his accent with an exaggerated drawl that earns a round of tired chuckles.

Maybe it’s the night he sits down across from Dernier, takes one look at the wrench in his hands, and mutters, “Hell of a tool. I’d have used acid.”

Dernier looks up sharply. “Acid?”

Falsworth leans back, arms crossed. “Sure. The right mix’ll eat through a lock, rust a hinge, or—if you know what you’re doing—disable a firearm.” He nods at the wrench. “And it wouldn’t have left a crate-sized mess.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then Morita whistles low. “Damn. You’re a sneaky bastard, huh?”

Falsworth smirks. “I prefer ‘resourceful.’”

They start listening to him after that.

He talks about the Maquis—the French resistance fighters he worked with before he was captured. About the time he spent crawling through enemy lines, slipping into places he had no right to be. The others ask him questions, and for the first time in days, conversation comes easy.

Even Bucky, fever-flushed and half-propped against the wall, finds himself watching Falsworth with something close to interest.

“You ever pick a lock?” Jones asks.

Falsworth scoffs. “Course I have.”

“Blindfolded?”

Falsworth tilts his head. “Once. But I was drunk at the time.”

That earns a laugh.

It’s brief. But it’s something.

Dugan eyes him, a little more appraising now. “So, if we ever had to, say… get into someplace we weren’t supposed to be…”

Falsworth shrugs, all nonchalance. “Wouldn’t be my first time.”

The idea lingers between them.

Bucky watches him, even with blurred vision, and thinks: Maybe we should’ve met sooner.

Bucky’s hands shake so badly that Jones has to help him lace his boots that morning.

Dernier watches, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Morita’s sharpening his scrap of metal again, shoulders tense, like he’s forcing himself to focus on anything but the way Bucky’s breath rattles.

Dugan crouches beside him, frowning. “You gotta eat.” He pushes a crust of bread into Bucky’s palm.

Bucky barely has the strength to swallow, let alone chew. But he takes it. Forces himself to tear off a piece and hold it under his tongue like it might dissolve there.

“I’ll be fine,” he mutters, voice thick with fever.

No one believes him.

“Jones tried to bribe a guard,” Morita says after a beat, voice quiet.

Bucky blinks. “For what?”

Jones doesn’t look at him. “Some quinine. Anything to break the fever.”

Bucky exhales a slow, wheezing laugh. “What’d the bastard ask for?”

Dernier’s voice is grim. “A night with his wife.”

That kills the humour fast.

The silence stretches, heavy and stifling.

“Guess that’s a no, then,” Bucky murmurs.

Jones’ jaw tightens. “We’ll find another way.”

“We won’t,” Dernier says flatly.

It’s not cruel. It’s just the truth.

Bucky closes his eyes. He’s so tired.

They all are.

“You should’ve let me fall,” he rasps.

Morita swears under his breath. “Don’t start with that bullshit.”

“I mean it,” Bucky says. “Sooner or later, they’re gonna notice, and when they do—”

“We’ll handle it,” Jones cuts in.

Bucky huffs. “How?”

No one has an answer.

Dugan swears and stands up, pacing to the other side of the barracks like he can walk off his frustration.

They all know what happens when a prisoner gets too weak to work. They’ve seen it. Dragged out by the arms. Hauled away in the middle of the night.

No one comes back.

Bucky coughs—deep and gut-wrenching, a wet, awful sound that makes Dernier flinch

It takes a long time for the fit to pass.

When he finally stops, sweat cold on his skin, Jones is watching him.

“We should do something,” he says quietly.

Dernier doesn’t move. “Like what?”

Jones shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

But they all know.

The only thing worse than being taken is waiting for it to happen.

...

..

32557038.

32557038.

32557038.

The numbers cycle through his head in time with his syncopated pulse. He grips his wrist tight, pressing his thumb into the bone like he can pin himself in place, like he can stay tethered here—here, here, here—instead of slipping into the fog curling at the edges of his mind. When it doesn’t work, he presses the chain of his dog tags into his palm until the edges bite, until it’s something real.

“Barnes, shut it,” someone hisses.

He doesn’t.

His breath rasps against his ribs, tight and shallow, a rough counterpoint to the numbers he mouths between gasps. The shivers won’t stop, and neither will the heat sinking its claws into his spine, puncturing his lungs. He can barely swallow. Can barely think.

“Christ, Sarge—”

The voices around him blur. Someone crouches at his side, shaking his shoulder, but Bucky barely registers it. The pressure of a hand, the scrape of a rough palm against his sweat-slick skin—it all folds together, indistinct, melting into the fever that hugs him and drags him down.

He thinks—Steve?

The thought is sudden, raw. He barely even means it, but for half a second, he could swear he’s back in Brooklyn. Back in their tiny apartment, the radiator clanking against the walls, steam curling from a mug of tea pressed into his hands.

’S just the flu, Buck. You’ll be alright.

The warmth of Steve’s hand against his forehead—small, calloused fingers pressing between his brows like they could smooth away the fever. Bucky protesting half-heartedly—worried that he’ll pass on whatever he has back to Steve. His ribs would ache, his breaths would catch, but it was different. Less weight, less drowning. 

Then someone moves—too quick, too rough—and Steve is gone. The room jolts back into place. Cold, damp air. The smell of rust and body odour. And Jones isn’t Steve. Jones is looking at him with something serious in his eyes, something Bucky doesn’t quite understand. 

Somewhere in the background, Dugan mutters a curse. Dernier exhales sharply through his nose.

They don’t sound angry. Just tired.

The same kind of tired Bucky had seen in their eyes when they’d hauled him off the floor after Lohmer’s baton cracked across his ribs for the third time. The same tired that had settled in when the guards started withholding their rations—punishment for an “accident” that left Lohmer’s  insides smeared across the concrete. The same tired they’d worn the night Bucky staggered into their bunk, shaking so badly he couldn’t hold a spoon steady, and Dugan wordlessly shoved his half of dinner into Bucky’s hands.

They know it too, he supposes—that this is his fault.

The result of his stubbornness. Of his inability to keep his mouth shut, or his instinct to stand tall when he should’ve ducked. To take the hit when he should’ve let it land on someone else.

They tried. But there’s no point in hiding it anymore.

His number runs through his mind again, tangled with the sound of his own breathing—harsh and wet.

32557038.

32557038.

…

32557038.

They know what comes next.

On your feet.

Rough hands grab at him, hauling him up by the back of his uniform. His knees buckle instantly. He hopes—fleetingly, deliriously—that the others get a communal nap without him. That they appreciate the extra share of stew they’ll get now that he’s out of the way. That the pneumonia will finish him quickly, rather than whatever’s waiting for him past that door.

A fresh wave of nausea crests over him. He doesn’t even have time to brace before he’s vomiting, splattering thick bile onto the guard’s boots.

The first hit is immediate. A rifle stock to the stomach.

He chokes on air, retching again, collapsing halfway out of the barracks door. His vision tunnels, grey and white, blood pounding in his ears.

Get up, American scum!

A hand grips his hair and yanks him forward. His scalp burns. Instinct kicks in—he swings, slow and clumsy, fingers just barely closing around a wrist.

Someone breaks his fingers.

He doesn’t know how many—just that the pain is instant, blinding, like white fire bursting through brush. He gasps, curling inward, hacking out something thick from his lungs.

“You Kraut fuckers!”

Dugan’s voice, from the next cage over. There’s the sound of a struggle—flesh hitting metal bars, boots scraping against the floor—but no one else moves. No one dares.

Bucky forces himself to look up. He fights against the grip of his guards, cursing through gritted teeth, until they drive a prod into his ribs. The charge sparks through his body, sending him crumpling, writhing on the cold concrete.

The guards march him out. Bucky loses track of time, of distance. They take him through a maze of corridors—turns that he tries to keep count of but loses almost instantly. At some point, the smooth factory walls turn to exposed brick. The temperature drops. His head lolls forward, breaths coming thin. 

He barely registers the voices.

Why does he even want these? They’re better off with a bullet to the brain. 

Doctor Zola says that they have their uses—weak as they are. Better than a dead subject.

The name cuts through the haze. 

Zola.

The words are too fast for his broken German, but he catches enough. 

Doctor. Experimentation. 

Uses.

Uses.

They’re not taking him out to be shot. Not yet.

His stomach turns again. His legs keep moving, but it’s not of his own doing. He’s being carried. Dragged. Hauled toward something worse.

He feels his fingers twitch, pulsing with broken nerves, curling tight around his dog tags.

32557038.

32557039.

The numbers stutter. His lips form the shape of the wrong number, and for the first time, he doesn’t correct it. He tries to hold on to something—anything—Steve—his ma—his pa—but even they start to slip away. 

His mind unspools, drowned in static and white noise. Vision filled with tiny black spots.

He blinks sluggishly.

His dog tags slip from his fingers. 

Chapter Text

October 1943, Kreischberg, Austria...somewhere far below

The room stinks of antiseptic. Not the kind found in army med tents—sterile, clean, astringent—but something sickly, cloying. It clings to the back of his throat, tangling with the copper tang of heaved blood and sick. 

Bucky is dumped onto a gurney, knees buckling as they let him drop. The momentum sends a fresh wave of nausea curling through his stomach, but there’s nothing left to bring up. Just bile and acid burning up his throat.

He tries to push himself up, but his fingers—some of them broken, all of them bruised—barely curl into the fabric beneath him. His muscles won’t listen, legs dead weight, arms too sluggish to fight. The fever drags at him, thick and drowning.

Somewhere in the haze, voices murmur in rapid German.

Weak. Fevered. Might not last.

The Doctor will decide.

Prepare the others.

The others.

Bucky turns his head, breath rattling in his throat.

That’s when he sees them. Lined up against the wall in rusted chairs, bound by thick leather restraints, are bodies. Men. Some of them breathing, some not. Some still moving, twitching like faulty machinery. Their heads are shaved in jagged patches, skin taut over hollowed-out cheekbones, eyes either glassy with fever or missing entirely.

Bucky’s stomach clenches. Dernier was right.

He was right. 

The closest one is missing his tongue. His lips part in a garbled, wet breath, and Bucky catches a glimpse of the ruin inside—just a dark, gaping hole where something living used to be.

Beyond him, another man is strapped down tighter than the others, wires threaded beneath his skin, the metal clamps on his head biting deep enough to leave red weeping lines along his scalp. His chest barely rises. A low, rhythmic beeping echoes from somewhere behind him.

Bucky realises, distantly, that the ones still breathing are worse off.

The guards move around the room methodically, shifting bodies, tightening restraints, preparing the next round of whatever the fuck happens here.

He swallows hard.

A door hisses open. The men straighten.

Then comes him.

Doctor Arnim Zola, he’ll later learn, moves like a man who thrives in the underbelly. 

His lab coat is crisp, despite the filth around him, glasses gleaming in the flickering fluorescents. He holds a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other, and his gaze skims over the bodies in front of him like they’re nothing but inventory.

Bucky knows immediately—there is no mercy in this man.

Zola stops beside him, jotting something down. His gaze flicks over Bucky’s injuries with clinical disinterest, pausing briefly at his swollen fingers, disjointed from where the guard had snapped them.

“Fascinating,” he murmurs in English. 

Then he taps his pen against the clipboard, as if deciding something. Strap him down.

The order is given, and hands descend. Bucky thrashes as best he can, but his body is too weak, Too sluggish to resist. Leather bites into his arms, his legs, his chest. The cold of the gurney seeps through the remnants of his uniform, burning against the fever still feasting on his insides. 

Someone grips his jaw, forcing his mouth open. Something hard is shoved between his teeth—a bite guard, thick and unyielding. A strap tightens behind his head.

He breathes hard through his nose, limbs trembling as his body fights against itself. The others in the room barely react. The ones that still can.

Let us begin.

The first thing Bucky learns about the underground lab is that men don’t scream for long.

Not when their tongues are gone.

Not when their vocal cords are severed.

Not when they learn it only makes the pain worse.

There are no windows here. No clocks, no sun, no moon—just the endless hum of flickering fluorescents and the cold bite of metal against his skin. The only way Bucky marks time now is by the tests.

The straps tighten. The needle slides in. And the world changes.

Sometimes it burns—fire racing through his veins, eating him from the inside out. Other times, it’s ice—cold enough to freeze him solid, cold enough to carve him open like he’s made of glass.

The first injection is the worst.

Bucky’s body seizes before he even registers the pain. His spine arches off the table, every nerve igniting at once, wrong, wrong, wrong. The restraints bite into his arms, his chest, his legs, but he barely feels them. Every muscle locks tight. His heart pounds, too fast, too hard. He thinks it’s going to explode.

Then—nothing.

For a long time, there’s only darkness.

Then—

You with me, Buck?

A voice. Familiar. A beacon in the cold.

His breath shudders out of him. He blinks up at a face haloed in golden light, blue eyes clear and sharp.

“Steve,” he breathes. His own voice barely reaches his ears.

Steve crouches beside him, brows furrowed in worry. He looks like he did back home—thin, pale, eyes too big for his face. A scrawny kid from Brooklyn in a newsboy cap.

Bucky exhales sharply, something between a laugh and a sob. He tries to reach for him, but his arms won’t move.

“Steve, buddy, you gotta get me outta here.”

Steve tilts his head. His gaze flicks downward, expression twisting.

Bucky follows his eyes.

His arms—his hands—they’re gone.

No. No, that’s not right. He can feel them. Can’t he?

Bucky’s throat locks up. He wrenches his gaze back up to Steve. But the boy in front of him isn’t Steve anymore. His face is blurred, shifting, something hollow-eyed and stretched.

Bucky—

His voice distorts, crumbling into static—

—And then the pain returns.

Bucky jerks awake with a ragged gasp.

He’s still strapped to the table. The air smells of sweat and chemicals. A deep ache settles in his limbs.

The doctor is there.

“Ah. You are awake.”

Zola looks pleased.

Bucky breathes hard through his nose, blinking against the blur in his vision. His body is wrung out, like the sock Dernier beaded against his forehead, wracked with tremors he can’t control.

Someone else—one of the assistants, maybe—presses a cold stethoscope against his chest. Another lifts his eyelid, shining a bright light straight into his skull. It’s blinding. The voices around him are clipped, efficient. Barely acknowledging him as human.

Increased tolerance to serum application—fascinating.

Still conscious after the second round.

The fever is stabilising. Perhaps—

Bucky swallows. He’s too weak to lift his head, but his lips part.“W—” His voice cracks, useless. His throat feels ripped open.

Zola glances down at him, curious.

Bucky’s tongue feels thick, clumsy in his mouth. “Where…” His breath shudders. “Where’s… my unit?”

Zola raises a brow. Then he sighs, like he’s mildly inconvenienced. “American.”

One of the assistants mutters something in German.

Zola clicks his pen against the clipboard, jots something down.

“Continue the tests” he says in English. 

Bucky barely has time to brace before the next needle slides in.

This time, he doesn’t scream.

He stops counting the time. Frankly, because he can’t. He tried, at first. Carving lines into the wall until his nails bled. 

But the tests blend together. Ice. Fire. Ice. Fire.

He watches his veins turn dark beneath his skin, thick and roiling with something that shouldn’t be there. Something that feels like viscous tar, like poison. He shivers, sweats, seizes up against the straps that keep him pinned to the table.

They poke. They prod. They take blood, take tissue, force his body through more than it can take—again, and again, and again.

At some point, they stop asking questions.

Not that they ever asked much to begin with.

“Name.”

“Rank.”

“Serial number.”

They already know. They don’t care. They only ask to see how long he’ll keep answering.

But the more they break him, the harder it gets.

His tongue grows thick in his mouth. His breath rattles, his ribs strain against the weight of oxygen. 

The first time he doesn’t answer fast enough, they electrocute him.

The first time he doesn’t answer at all, they cut something out of him.

Not a body part. No, not yet. Just a sliver of something—skin, tissue, muscle—peeled away, examined, recorded in a clipboard he’ll never see.

“You are quite resilient.” Zola sounds almost delighted.

Bucky slumps against the table, panting. He tastes iron. He doesn’t remember when he bit his tongue, but it’s thick in his mouth again, pooling between his teeth.

“One more time.”

Zola leans in. His breath smells of that damn antiseptic.

“Name?”

Bucky blinks sluggishly.

His chest shudders. His throat bobs.

Then, his lips part.

“3… 2… 5…”

The numbers slip out, automatic.

They are the only thing that tethers him. That reminds him he’s real. 

“Ah. Good.”

Zola straightens, satisfied.

Bucky closes his eyes.

He sees Steve again.

This time, he’s taller. Broader. Sunlight glints off the golden crest on his chest, the dimples of his cheeks. 

Bucky grins, weak. “Well, shit. You did make it, huh?”

Steve smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

You gotta get up, Buck, he says.

Bucky swallows. The air is thick, buzzing with something he can’t place. The walls around them shift, flickering, cycling between the barracks, the streets of Brooklyn, the bowels of the lab.

He clenches his fists—tries to, at least.

His fingers don’t move.

“I can’t,” he breathes, panic hitching. 

You have to, Steve insists. They’re coming.

Bucky frowns, shaking his head. “Who?”

A shadow looms behind Steve.

Bucky tries to call out—to warn him—but Steve only tilts his head.

It’s okay, Buck, he says, voice almost gentle. It’s already done.

Bucky’s stomach lurches.

The shadow reaches for him.

And this time, he finds that he doesn’t want to wake up.

When he comes to, the first thing he registers is that his knee no longer hurts. Nor do his fingers. 

The cell is small, cold. The walls are stone, damp with something that seeps into his bones, and the air tastes like metal instead of antiseptic. There’s a drain in the center of the floor, rust-streaked, and a cot shoved against the farthest wall, barely more than metal posts with a thin, scratchy blanket.

There is one window.

It’s small, high above his head. A slit carved into the concrete, just wide enough to let in a slice of pale daylight. When the sun shifts just right, it spills a thin beam across the cell, landing somewhere near his feet. He tracks its movement like it’s a lifeline. 

It could’ve been days. Weeks. Months. 

He wouldn’t know.

He’s not sure he remembers a time where he wasn’t here.

The only thing that tells him time is still moving are the tests.

They come for him in cycles—though he doesn’t know if they last hours or days apart.

The guards haul him from the cell, down the endless corridor, into the lab where Zola waits. The table. The straps. The injections. The burn of metal against flesh, the endless sting of needles piercing his skin.

Zola watches him like he’s something intriguing. Something worth documenting.

The serum is taking hold.

Healing properties appear stable, but the scarring is remarkable—

Increase dosage. Let’s see how far we can push it.

Bucky stops answering their questions.

So they stop asking them.

Bucky starts fighting back.

He doesn’t know when it starts, only that the anger has been simmering under his skin since the first time they strapped him to that table. The first time they jammed a needle in his arm and watched as it burned him alive. 

The rage grows, tangled in his ribs, between his joints. Coiled, ringed anger. With jagged teeth and an iron jaw. Blood dripping down its tongue, a dark, viscous syrup. Anger hasn’t clung to him like this before. Sharp-taloned, clasped tightly around his clavicle. It used to be ephemeral. Soft and tender. Noncommittal. He feels it in his breath. in each synapse, in each pulse, in the blood rush down his veins. It is present and fierce and deep-rooted.

Anger is not scarlet nor maroon, he realises. It is black. Like him. Dark and elegant and a bitter thing, really.

And now, now—he uses it.

It starts with the guards.

They come to take him to the lab, and Bucky doesn’t move.

Get up, one of them orders in German, sharp and clipped.

Bucky stares at them.

They reach for him.

And Bucky swings.

His knuckles connect with flesh, sending one sprawling. Another lunges—he gets his hands on them too, wrenching them down, teeth bared.

The fight doesn't last long. They never do. 

He’s always outnumbered, and he’s weak—so weak—but he doesn’t care. He fights like a dog with its teeth locked down, like something feral, something wild. He gets beaten bloody, dragged down, held under boot and baton, but he keeps fighting, keeps thrashing, keeps biting and clawing and snarling like he means it.

Until one day—

“Stop.”

Zola’s voice.

The guards freeze mid-motion, one of them gripping Bucky’s arm so hard he thinks the bone might snap. His head lolls, blood dripping from his split lip. 

Zola steps forward, peering down at him with something close to amusement.

“You are not to damage the subject,” he says smoothly. 

Bucky barely suppresses a bark of laughter.

Subject.

The guards hesitate, but they obey.

They drop him.

Bucky slumps onto the cold stone floor, sagging beneath his bones.

Zola crouches down, just close enough that Bucky can see the glint of his glasses, the way the fluorescent light always reflects off them, hiding his eyes.

“You are becoming something new, Sergeant Barnes,” he muses.

Bucky exhales through his nose, slow and deliberate.

Then, smiling just faintly, he spits blood right onto Zola’s pristine white coat.

Zola sighs.

Increase the restraints next time.

At night, in the shelter of darkness, Bucky tests himself.

His body heals.

He doesn’t know how fast, but fast enough.

He proves it the first time he slashes a jagged piece of the bed frame across his forearm, watching with detached fascination as the wound knits itself back together.

It doesn’t heal clean. The poison they’ve filled his veins with fixes the damage, but the scars stay.

He tries again.

The skin is raised, thick and ridged, ugly lines of half-formed tissue. It doesn’t erase what happened.

It only makes him functional.

The body remembers. It keeps score. 

His mind…

He’s not sure.

The first time he wakes up and doesn’t remember his own name, he screams.

He dreams of Brooklyn.

Sometimes, it’s the docks. The ferries. The smell of salt in the air.

Sometimes, it’s Steve, leaning against the fire escape with a cigarette between his fingers—Bucky’s cigarette, the one he’d snatch and let burn so he wouldn’t keep filling his lungs with poison—poison. poison. poison. They’d talk about all the things they’d do once they got out of that neighbourhood, out of that life.

Sometimes, it’s the war.

The Ardennes. Azzano. The bodies.

The men who died before they even hit the ground.

And sometimes—

Bucky—

His mother’s voice. Soft and warm, like honey. 

Bucky, sweetheart, what happened to your hands?

He looks down.

Blood.

And jerks awake.

The room is dark. The stone walls are still there, the slit of a window still showing the faint glow of moonlight.

His hands tremble in his lap.

He swallows hard.

32557038.

32557039.

32557040.

The numbers start to lose their meaning.

He presses his palm against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his own heart, proof that he’s still here. But for how much longer—

He doesn’t know.

They strap him down again.

Not to the table this time.

The restraints are heavier, metal instead of leather. He fights, but it doesn’t matter. It never matters. Still, he fights. 

They wheel him into another part of the lab—a different room, a different horror.

The machine looks like something out of a nightmare.

It’s large, metallic, a cylindrical chamber with tubes and wires snaking out from its sides. It reminds him of an iron lung, those old contraptions meant to keep polio patients breathing. But this one—it doesn’t look like it’s meant to save him. 

It hums with electricity. A heat that makes his blood boil until it bubbles. The air fills with ozone and sulphur.

They force him inside. The metal is ice-cold against his skin, and as soon as he’s locked in place, the top half of the cylinder closes around him with a deafening hiss. His arms are pinned. His chest is compressed. Only his head remains free, exposed to the harsh overhead light.

He can’t move. He can barely breathe. He thrashes in panic—he never did well with enclosed spaces. Becca used to tease him about it.

Increase the voltage, Zola orders.

Somewhere, a switch flips.

The first pulse of energy hits like fire.

It crawls through his nerves, burning a path through his body, lighting up every receptor like a flare in a fog-laden sky. His muscles seize, his spine arches, and a scream tears from his throat, raw and jagged.

His body thrashes against the restraints, but they don’t give. He doesn’t know how long it lasts—it feels like an eternity. 

Then it stops.

Bucky slumps, gasping for breath. The air feels thick, foreign, like his lungs forgot how to use it. His head pounds, the inside of his skull pulsing with aftershocks.

Increase it, Zola says again.

The switch flips.

The second wave is worse.

Pain erupts inside him again, flooding every nerve ending, setting his veins alight. It blinds him, the white-hot burn that swallows everything else. His memories splinter, break apart, then come back together like some broken mosaic that’s had all its pieces mixed up in the wrong order.

Names. Faces. His mother’s voice. Steve’s laughter. A Brooklyn street on a summer evening.

When the machine powers down again, Bucky sags in the restraints, vision blurring at the edges. His mouth is open, but no sound comes out. His throat is raw. His body twitches, residual tremors jumping along his skin. Don’t grab the blanket too fast, Buck.

“Sergeant Barnes."

Zola’s voice. 

Bucky blinks sluggishly. The act feels foreign. Heavy. It doesn’t belong to him.

“How do you feel?’

His lips part.

He doesn’t have an answer.

He doesn’t know.

There’s a long pause. Zola makes a note. The guards unstrap him, drag him from the machine, his limbs limp and useless.

They take him back to the cell.

Forgetting. Remembering. Breaking.

He stares at the wall for a long time.

His body hurts. His mind… feels wrong. Like something was pried open inside his skull, something vital stripped away and replaced with cotton. His blood feels thicker, his bones feel denser. He feels…different. 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there before the memories start bleeding back in.

It’s slow, disjointed.

A name. Bucky Barnes.

A face. Steve. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Too small for every fight he ever picked.

A city. Brooklyn. Brick walls. Fire escapes. The smell of fresh bread from the shop down the street.

More.

His mother. His father. The war. The boys in his unit. Dugan and Jones and Morita and—the taste of blood in his mouth.

He remembers.

And then—

He cries.

It’s not quiet or controlled. It’s ugly, violent sobbing that tears out of his chest, shaking his entire body. His forehead presses against the stone wall, his fingers claw at the fabric of his uniform, like he can hold himself together if he just grips tight enough. 

The sounds don’t feel like his.

He hasn’t cried in years. Not when he left home. Not when he saw his commander’s brains splattered all over his shoes. Not even when they threw him into this hell.

But now—

Now, it won’t stop.

His hands curl around the dog tags at his throat.

32557038.

32557038.

32557038.

He remembers.

He wishes he didn’t.

The cell walls don’t change. The light through the window rises and falls, casting long shadows that stretch like fingers across the floor. Time warps, bends, slips through his grasp like water.

He’s taken. Strapped down. Injected. Cut open. Stitched up.

Then he’s dragged back to his cell, half-conscious, only to be taken again.

But today—today is different.

They don’t take him to the machine that looks like a coffin.

They take him somewhere worse.

The air is cold, even colder than usual. Not just from the stone walls, but something deeper, something that seeps into his bones and stays there. The scent hits first—chemical, rot, something acrid and sharp.

Then he sees bodies. 

Not just a few. Dozens.

Lined up on metal tables, eyes open and glassy, staring at nothing. Some are missing pieces—tongues, teeth, hands—while others look whole, untouched, as if they just stopped.

His stomach lurches.

“Some, they do it before.”

Bucky’s breath comes short and ragged. He grips his own wrist, digging his nails into his skin, trying to anchor himself.

Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.

But he does.

And he recognises them.

He knows them.

The man on the table nearest to him—his name was Blake. An American. Not from Bucky’s unit, but they’d spoken once, days (weeks?) ago. He’d had a kid. Had mentioned it once, in passing, voice cracked with something like longing.

His mouth is open now, a frozen gasp, but his tongue is gone. His stomach, cut clean open.

Bucky swallows hard.

The next table. Langley. British. He used to hum under his breath, old songs from home. 

We'll meet again

Don’t know where, don’t know when. 

But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day. 

His arms are missing, sawed off just above the elbow. The wounds are clean. Precise.

A choked sound claws up Bucky’s throat, but he swallows it down.

They keep walking.

Zola is speaking—something about progress, viable subjects, cellular resilience—but Bucky doesn’t hear him. Not really. All he hears is his own heartbeat pounding behind his eyes, all he sees is the next table—

And the next.

And the next.

Men who had names. Had voices. Had lives.

And now—

Now, they are nothing. Stripped of their features. Left to rot in a prison that feels more like a tomb. 

Bucky feels something twist deep inside him. Something cold, something dark. It slithers into his gut, digs its claws into his ribs, buries itself there.

Anger.

No—

Something worse.

Something bigger than anger. Bigger than grief. A hunger, gnawing and insatiable, pulsing through his veins.

He clenches his fists. His nails bite into his palms.

The door slams shut behind them, and Bucky is shoved forward.

The tests continue.

He doesn’t sleep anymore.

The fever has dulled, but something else is taking its place. His body aches, but not the way it used to. Not the kind of pain that means he’s dying.

The kind that means he’s changing.

He feels stronger.

Not healthy. Not whole.

Wrong.

His muscles coil too tight, his bones feel too thick under his skin. The hunger never goes away. He can barely stomach the rations they toss him, but when he does eat, it does nothing to satiate the gnawing, bottomless ache in his gut.

And he’s angry.

All the time.

At Zola. At the guards. At himself.

At the fact that he’s still here.

One night, he sits on the floor of his cell, back against the wall, his fingers flexing, curling and uncurling against the stone. He stares at them, at his knuckles—bruised, split, healing too fast. His once broken fingers, no longer splinted. 

The anger builds.

He exhales slowly, clenches his jaw—

And punches the wall.

Pain erupts up his arm. There’s a sickening crack as his knuckles break. But—

But the wall cracks too.

A small dent, a fracture in the stone, but real. Real. Right? 

Bucky breathes hard, staring at it. Blood trickles from his split knuckles, and he watches as the wounds seal shut, leaving behind only jagged, pinkish scars and mottled bruises. Real. 

His breath shakes.

“What the fuck did they do to me?”

He presses his forehead against his knees.

He doesn’t want to know.

It’s worse at night.

The silence stretches too long. The walls feel closer.

Some nights, he hears the others. Not the guards. Not the doctors.

The subjects.

The ones that scream in their cells. The ones that don’t scream anymore.

Sometimes, he wonders which one he’ll be.

The moonlight filters through the high window. He stares at it, at the cold silver glow, the sliver of the outside world he barely remembers.

He thinks of Steve.

Of their apartment. Of their radio. Of Brooklyn in the summertime, warm pavement underfoot, the sound of people laughing in the streets.

He wonders if Steve thinks he’s dead. He hopes so. Death would be better than this. And Bucky finds he doesn’t want him to know—doesn’t want Steve to ever know about this. 

He exhales slowly, flexes his fingers, looks at his hands—hands that don’t quite feel like his anymore.

He slides one into his waistband.

Pulls out the piece of glass he stole days ago.

He turns it over in his palm. Presses the tip against his forearm.

The skin splits, easy. Blood beads up, trails down.

It stings.

But not enough.

Not enough to undo what’s happening.

Not enough to stop it.

It heals too fast.

His hands shake. His chest heaves. The world tilts.

He chokes back a sound—something broken, something desperate—and hurls the glass across the cell. It shatters against the wall.

Bucky buries his face in his hands.

He doesn’t sleep that night, either.

But in the morning, when they come for him again, he walks out of the cell on his own.

And for the first time since they took him, he feels awake. 

They take him to a new room.

Not the machine room. Not the morgue.

This one is different. Bigger.

It smells of sweat, gunpowder, old blood. Rancid sick. There are chains hanging from the ceiling, steel hooks glinting under the harsh overhead light. A drain in the center of the floor. Something has died here before.

The guards shove him forward. He staggers but doesn’t fall. The fever’s burned away most of the weakness, but his limbs still feel heavy, too heavy. Like he doesn’t know what to do with all the weight. 

He’s not restrained this time. That’s how he knows it’s not a procedure.

Across from him, a man waits.

Not a guard. Not a scientist. Another prisoner.

He’s young. Maybe eighteen, twenty at most. He’s gaunt, sharp-cheeked, eyes hollow with hunger. His hands are shaking. Bucky sees it, even from a distance.

The door locks behind them.

Then Zola’s voice crackles over the speakers.

“Kill him.”

Bucky doesn’t move.

The prisoner’s breath is uneven, chest heaving. He looks at Bucky, then past him, then at the guards stationed at the walls.

“Fight or be disposed of,” Zola instructs again, patient. Expectant.

Bucky’s stomach coils.

The guards shift, reaching for something—batons, maybe guns, maybe worse.

The boy makes the first move.

It’s clumsy, desperate. A swing that Bucky barely has to sidestep. He grips the boy’s wrist, forces it down, but the kid panics—lashes out with his other hand, nails clawing against Bucky’s face.

The pain is sharp, ice-hot. He reacts on instinct.

His elbow slams into the boy’s ribs. Hard.

There’s a crunch.

The kid stumbles back, gasping.

Zola hums over the speakers, making a note.

Faster reaction time.

The guards don’t interfere.

This is what they want.

The boy lunges again. Sloppier. Desperate.

And something inside Bucky snaps.

The next hit is harder.

A fist to the gut. A knee to the ribs.

The boy folds.

Bucky grabs the front of his uniform, forces him up. He doesn’t think, doesn’t hesitate. He’s moving too fast, too precise, body acting on its own. The anger rages inside him, roars like a forest fire. 

His hand curls around the boy’s throat.

“Finish it,” Zola commands.

The boy claws at Bucky’s arm.

His eyes are wide. Terrified. Lips turning blue. 

And something about that stops Bucky cold.

This is just a kid.

Just some poor bastard who doesn’t deserve this.

Just like him.

His grip loosens.

The boy sucks in a breath—

—Then a gunshot rings out.

Bucky flinches.

The boy doesn’t. He can’t.

His body goes limp, collapsing against Bucky’s chest, deadweight in his arms.

A perfect, clean bullet between his eyes.

Bucky stares, his pulse hammering against his skull, his breath coming sharp and shallow.

The guards lower their rifles.

Zola sighs. “Non-compliant.”

The speaker cuts off.

The door unlocks.

Then haul him back to his cell. 

Bucky fights.

He doesn’t mean to this time.

His body reacts.

A guard grips his wrist. He twists, wrenches free, knocks the man back hard enough that something cracks.

Then the others close in.

They hit him.

They outnumber him.

They drag him to a chair.

He knows this chair.

He’s been in it before. He’s sure of it. 

It’s steel, heavy, bolted to the ground. Metal restraints curl around his wrists, ankles, throat.

A bite of cold against his scalp.

Electrodes.

He’s panting, his body taut, vibrating with the remnants of a fight he barely remembers.

“You are difficult, Sergeant Barnes.”

Zola.

Bucky grits his teeth, glaring at the ceiling. His ribs ache. His knuckles sting, still split from punching a guard.

“But we will fix that.”

A switch flips.

Pain floods his skull.

He jerks, back arching, body convulsing.

His breath locks. His vision whites out.

It hurts it hurts it hurts—

He tries to remember his name.

It’s gone.

He tries to remember Steve.

Gone.

He tries to remember anything.

But all that’s left is pain. Static. 

It’s fire, it’s ice, it’s something worse, something that digs into his mind like talons and rips it apart piece by piece.

And then—

Silence.

The pain vanishes.

He gasps, sucking in air, body limp against leather.

His chest heaves.

A voice filters through the static.

“Who are you?”

His mouth is dry. His thoughts are scattered.

His throat moves. A sound. A number.

“32557038.”

A pause.

Then:

“Good.”

They break him.

Not all at once.

It happens slowly. Deliberately.

Shock. Pain. Darkness. Voices that tell him who he is, who he’s supposed to be.

He doesn’t answer at first.

Then he does.

He doesn’t think at first.

Then he doesn’t need to.

He’s just a body. A subject.

The electricity incinerates through everything, not like the radiation—no, the radiation multiplied things, it made his cells expand, his eyes pulse and widen and water. It made his blood thick. 

The chair. The chair makes everything quiet. 

His cell is quiet.

The window lets in the light.

The scars on his arms don’t fade.

He stares at the wall.

And waits for the next test. 

Hoping, dearly, desperately, that it’ll be the one that kills him. 

“You are special, Sergeant Barnes.” Zola’s voice fills the room, smooth and measured, tinged with something almost warm.

Bucky stares straight ahead.

The chair is cold beneath him, as it always is, he thinks. He doesn’t remember. The metal cuffs bite into his wrists, his ankles, his throat. The last time he was here, they stripped him bare, left him to shake and shiver while electricity crawled through his skull.

“Most men would have died by now.”

Zola moves into view, hands behind his back, posture relaxed. “But you? You are stronger. You heal. You endure.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. His jaw clenches, a muscle twitching at the edge of his cheek.

Zola smiles.

“And yet, you are so stubborn. So… unwilling to accept the truth of your condition.”

He leans forward slightly, peering at Bucky like he’s some sort of mutating bacteria under a microscope.

“What do you think will happen, Sergeant?” he asks, almost conversationally. “Do you think Captain Rogers will come for you? That your unit will charge in and tear this facility apart?”

Something flickers behind Bucky’s eyes. Steve. Captain? 

The memory barely lasts a second before Zola reaches for the switch.

The pain comes sharp, slicing through his thoughts like the scalpels beside him.

He jerks, vision flaring, a scream scraping his throat but not escaping. His body seizes against the restraints, every nerve burning.

Then it stops.

He slumps, head lolling forward, breath rattling in his chest. Sweat drip from his hair, into his eyes. 

“You do not need to suffer, Sergeant.”

Zola sounds gentle. Like a father trying to correct a wayward son.

“I can take it all away. The pain. The memories. You need only to let go.”

Bucky blinks sluggishly. His breath comes too slow, too heavy. He can’t tell if he’s still in his body or drifting above it.

“You are already beginning to forget, aren’t you?” Zola says softly. “It will be easier soon.”

Bucky tries to hold on.

But there’s so little left.

They throw someone into his cell.

Bucky stirs from where he’s curled against the wall, body sore, ribs aching from the last session. His head is stuffed with cotton, limbs still sluggish with whatever sedative they injected him with.

The figure groans.

He’s barely more than a heap of bloodied cloth, one arm twisted wrong. The smell of burnt flesh lingers.

Bucky forces himself upright.

The prisoner stirs, flinching violently, like he expects another hit.

For a moment, neither of them move.

Then, hoarse and barely there, the man mutters, “Don’t—don’t let them take you, man.”

American. Bucky’s throat tightens.

He shifts, pressing himself against the wall. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t reach out.

Because what’s the point?

The man’s as good as dead.

They all are.

The guards come.

No orders. No warnings.

They drag him from his cell, hands wrenched behind his back, a cloth forced between his teeth.

Bucky doesn’t fight. Not really. It’s half-assed at best. 

They shove him onto a slab, metal digging into his shoulder blades.

Then the water comes.

Cold and endless.

Pouring over his face, through the fabric, flooding his nose, his mouth.

Drowning.

His body reacts before his mind can stop it. He jerks, gasping for air that isn’t there. His lungs scream, his throat burns, fighting against the leather straps. 

The guards hold him down.

The water keeps coming.

He thrashes harder, his body overriding whatever logic remains. His fingers claw against his restraints. He feels something break.

Then—finally—it stops.

Bucky sputters, choking, retching against the cold slab.

A boot presses against his chest, pinning him down.

He’d snapped his wrists trying to spring free. 

“Two minutes and forty seconds," Zola says, irritated. "You can last longer than that, surely?"

They do it again.

And again.

The beatings don’t stop. Even after Zola’s comment. Or, maybe he ordered this. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Not after the water. Not after the chair.

They take him in shifts.

Sometimes it’s with fists. Sometimes with batons.

Once, they shackle his wrists to a beam and let him hang there, ribs caving under their blows, skin splitting open.

Zola stops them once. “Not too much damage,” he instructs. “He is still useful.” But then he’ll let them whip lesions into his skin, recording the speed they stitch closed. 

That night, Bucky lays in his cell, staring at the ceiling, his ribs too bruised to take a deep breath.

He wonders what it would take to finally die.

Then, they take away everything.

No tests.

No beatings.

No screams from down the hall.

No little window of daylight. 

Just silence. Darkness. 

At first, Bucky thinks it’s a trick. They want him to lower his guard.

But the days stretch on.

He doesn’t know how long.

His sense of time fractures.

His body mends itself, but the scars remain.

The hunger deepens.

He starts whispering to himself.

Numbers.

Names.

Steve.

The silence, he finds, is worse than the beatings. 

He runs his fingers over the raised tissue of his own scars. He grips the chain of his dog tags, pressing the metal into his palm, needing something—anything—to feel.

The next time they come for him, he doesn’t flinch.

He doesn’t care.

What more could they take? 

Bucky isn’t alone anymore. 

They threw another man in the cell days ago—weeks, maybe. Not the American. He must’ve died. Bucky feels relief, then jealousy. Bitter and scorned and guilty.  

The guy hasn’t told him his name. Maybe he doesn’t remember. Maybe he doesn’t care.

He’s smaller than Bucky, thinner, with a gaunt face, platinum hair, and hollowed-out eyes that burn fever-bright when the light from the tiny, barred window catches them. His hands twitch, clenching into fists and then flexing open, over and over. Sometimes he scratches at his skin, muttering under his breath.

Bucky watches him from his cot, half-slumped against the wall. His own body is heavy, aching, but there’s something in his veins now—something simmering, crackling. He can feel it. The poison spreading through his nerves like tar.

The other guy—he’s not handling it as well.

He’s always moving. Pacing, scratching, rubbing at his arms like he’s trying to peel something away. When Bucky talks, sometimes he answers. Other times, he just stares.

Still, Bucky keeps trying.

He needs to. Needs something—anything—to hold onto.

“Where were you before this?” Bucky rasps one night, voice raw from disuse.

The man doesn’t answer at first. Just keeps rubbing at the inside of his wrist, like he’s trying to scratch his veins out. Then, hoarse and barely there: “Italy.” Accented with something he must’ve known once upon a time, but the memory now escapes him. 

Bucky exhales slowly, shifting against the wall. “Yeah? Me too. Azzano.”

The man snorts, a humourless, brittle sound. “Shit show.”

Bucky lets out a breath that might be a laugh. “Yeah.”

Silence stretches between them.

After a while, the man mutters, “I can feel it. Under my skin. Like it’s crawling.” His fingers dig into his arm. His nails break the skin.

Bucky frowns. “Don’t scratch. You’ll make it worse.”

The man shakes his head, voice thick with something between rage and panic. “It won’t stop. It won’t fucking stop.”

Bucky doesn’t have an answer for that.

He wakes to a weight on his chest, something pressing against his throat—hard.

He gasps, instinct kicking in, hands scrabbling against the crushing force. He doesn’t understand—not at first—not until his vision clears and he sees the man on top of him, knees digging into his ribs, hands wrapped around his neck.

His mouth moves soundlessly, breath ragged, fevered. His eyes burn, unfocused, lips peeling back from his teeth like an animal.

Bucky chokes, twisting, stars bursting behind his eyelids. He bucks, tries to throw him off, but the guy holds on with a grip that’s too strong for his size.

There’s a snap—a shift—

And Bucky flips him, slamming him onto his back.

They struggle, Bucky’s heart hammering, his lungs heaving for air. He coughs out spit and blood. 

Then, just as suddenly as it started—the fight drains out of the man. His hands fall away from Bucky’s throat. His chest rises and falls, too fast, eyes darting around like he’s only just realised what he’s done.

Bucky stays on top of him, breathing hard, hands shaking.

Neither of them move.

Neither of them say a word.

Finally, Bucky pushes himself off and collapses against the cot.

The man shifts, curling onto his side, hands twitching against the floor.

They don’t talk about it.

He doesn’t apologise. 

Bucky doesn’t ask why.

Because it doesn’t matter. Because he gets it.

Because in this place, with nothing but pain and silence, Bucky will take any companionship he can get.

Even this.

They strip him down.

Cold hands, gloved fingers, pressing, prodding, pulling.

Bucky stares at the ceiling, breath steady, teeth clenched. The metal table beneath him is freezing, as always, biting into the feverish heat of his skin. He has a fever again? But only rage simmers beneath his bones, into his marrow. His wrists are strapped down, but he doesn’t fight. He’s learned that the struggling only makes it worse. It won’t make it stop. 

They measure him.

Every inch of his body, mapped and recorded.

Height. Wingspan. Chest circumference.

They poke at his ribs, counting them out loud in clipped, clinical German. His hips. His legs. The muscle-to-fat ratio, which, at this point, is practically nonexistent.

Then lower.

Bucky doesn’t react. He can’t. 

The scientist—some faceless bastard in a white coat—tilts his head, scrawls something in his notes. They mutter to each other in German. He only catches half of it. Words like efficiency and viability.

A hand, too firm, presses against his pelvis.

Bucky feels his breath go tight in his chest.

One of them, the assistant, is wearing thick glasses, something clinical in his gaze. He leans over, tugging on a pair of fresh gloves. Snaps them on. The sound is sharp, final.

“This one is healthy,” the scientist remarks, not to Bucky, but about him. In English all the same. 

Not a person. A specimen.

Bucky swallows against the bile rising in his throat.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. He…isn’t there. 

They violate him.

They take what they need. Extract what they want.

Bucky keeps his breathing even, his jaw locked, his mind somewhere else. He’s distantly aware of his own retched, empty moans. Crying softly under his breath. Chanting his number. 

He’s back in Brooklyn.

A warm summer night.

A stoop under his back.

A radio playing somewhere down the street.

He’s not here.

Not on this table. Not under their hands.

His body doesn’t belong to him anymore. Perhaps it never did.

By the time they’re done, the notes are taken, the samples recorded, he feels hollowed out.

A shell of something. Not a man. No. Not a man. 

They don’t even look at him when they pull the sheet back over his lower half, when they undo the straps and haul him upright.

He keeps his head down. His mouth shut.

But inside, something splinters.

Bucky gets a name. 

The man is quiet, curled in the corner of their cell, a shadow against the cold stone walls. When the guards shove Bucky inside, still shaking from the last test, the man barely acknowledges him.

Time passes. Endlessly. 

Bucky loses track of everything too easily now, slipping in and out of fevered half-sleep, his body fighting to keep up with whatever the hell they’re doing to him. But eventually, the man speaks. Perhaps he takes pity on him. Perhaps he knows what they did. Perhaps they did it to him too. 

“Where are you from?” His voice is hoarse, dry.

Bucky exhales slowly, tilting his head against the wall. “Brooklyn.”

The man hums. “Figures. You got that look.”

Bucky smirks, exhausted. “What look?”

“Like you don’t know how to shut up.”

Despite himself, Bucky laughs—rough and short-lived and real.

After that, they talk. Not much, but enough. Enough to keep the worst of the silence at bay.

The man—his name is Nikolai, he finally admits—is from Stalingrad. He was captured months ago. Or maybe longer. He doesn’t know anymore. “Time stops existing here,” he says. “It turns to dust in your hands.”

He doesn’t talk about his family, though Bucky can tell there’s one. Maybe a wife. Maybe kids. But the way Nikolai avoids certain topics makes it clear—they’re likely gone by now. 

So they talk about stupid shit instead.

Food. To know a man is to know his stomach. The voice feels so distant—he can’t remember who said it. 

Bucky tells him about the corner diner on 10th where Steve used to scrape together change for a shared plate of eggs and toast. He talks about his ma’s stew, the way she used to hum under her breath while she cooked.

Nikolai listens, eyes hooded. He tells Bucky about his baba’s bread, the way she used to braid it on Sundays, the smell of it filling the whole flat.

The first time they laugh together, it’s over something stupid—something about the guards, how one of them has a face like a smashed potato.

Bucky doesn’t realise how much he’s missed laughing until it happens.

For the first time since he entered the lab, he doesn’t feel so alone.

He doesn’t feel like just an experiment.

He doesn’t talk about his unit, which tells Bucky everything he needs to know.

But Nikolai does talk about his wife this time.

“Lena,” he murmurs one evening. He’s staring at the single window in their cell, at the slice of grey sky beyond the iron bars. “She braided her hair every morning. Even when there wasn’t enough bread. Even when the bombers came.”

Bucky swallows. “She sounds strong.”

“She was.”

There’s a weight to his voice. A quiet certainty. Bucky doesn’t ask if she made it. Some things, you don’t need to say out loud.

But one night, out of nowhere, Nikolai does.

“I don’t know if my boys lived,” he admits, voice barely above a whisper.

Bucky turns his head, watching him in the dark.

Nikolai’s hands rest limply in his lap, fingers twitching like he’s counting something that isn’t there. “I had two sons,” he says. “Yasha and Petya. Ten and eight.” He swallows, jaw clenching. “I think about them more than Lena, sometimes. And that makes me feel like a bastard.”

“It doesn’t,” Bucky rasps.

“They were just kids.” His voice is raw. “What kind of war does that to kids?”

Bucky has no answer.

They sit in silence for a long time.

They develop a routine—if it can be called that.

Every time one of them gets dragged out for a test, the other one bets on whether or not they’ll come back with all their fingers.

“Two,” Nikolai mutters one night, voice thick with exhaustion, his face half-buried in his sleeve.

Bucky raises a brow. “What?”

“You’ll lose two fingers next.”

Bucky scoffs. “Oh, fuck you, pal.”

Nikolai smirks. “What? You don’t think so?”

“I think if I lose any more body parts, I’ll start charging rent.”

Nikolai huffs a quiet laugh.

They don’t joke about the tests themselves. Not really. But this—this they can joke about.

One night, after a particularly brutal round of shocks, Bucky lies on the cold stone floor, still shaking, and mutters, “I should’ve been a dentist.”

Nikolai, staring up at the ceiling, says, “You’d have been shit at it.”

Bucky snorts. “How the hell would you know?”

“You got bad hands.”

Bucky lifts one, flexing his bruised, half-broken fingers. “Fair point.”

Nikolai starts deteriorating before Bucky does.

The itching gets worse. 

At first, it’s just his arms. Then his neck. Then his ribs.

Then, one night, Bucky wakes to the sound of scratching.

He sits up, blinking the sleep from his eyes, and sees Nikolai hunched over, nails digging into his own forearm.

Bucky frowns. “Hey.”

Nikolai doesn’t respond.

“Hey.”

Bucky grabs his wrist.

Nikolai jerks like he’s been burned. His breathing is wrong—too fast, too shallow.

“I can’t—” he mutters. “I can’t get it out.”

Bucky doesn’t ask what.

Instead, he lets go of Nikolai’s wrist and reaches for the damp scrap of cloth they use to clean up after their beatings. He presses it against Nikolai’s arm, watches the red smear across his pale skin.

“C’mon,” Bucky mutters. “You’re gonna tear yourself apart.”

Nikolai swallows thickly. His shoulders shake. “Maybe I should.”

Bucky clenches his jaw.

He doesn’t know what to say to that.

But after a long pause, Nikolai exhales, rough and shaky, and mutters, “I should’ve been a doctor.”

Bucky huffs. “You’d have been shit at that too.”

Nikolai lets out something close to a laugh.

The night before it happens, they talk about home.

“When I get out of here,” Bucky says, voice quiet in the dark, “I’m gonna take the longest goddamn bath of my life.”

Nikolai smirks. “I’ll drink enough vodka to make me forget this place exists.”

Bucky smiles faintly. “You’ll drink enough vodka to get me drunk.”

Nikolai chuckles.

They don’t say if anymore.

Just when.

And then, in the dead of night, Nikolai seizes.

Bucky wakes to the sound of gasping.

He scrambles up, still groggy, still dizzy from the fresh venom in his veins, but—Nikolai.

His body locks up. His back arches violently, his hands claw at the air, his lips turn blue.

Bucky doesn’t know what to do. There’s nothing to do.

He grips Nikolai’s shoulders, tries to hold him still, to keep him from bashing his skull against the stone floor, but it’s not enough. His muscles spasm, his teeth clench so tight Bucky swears they’re going to crack. Foam bubbles down his jaw. 

Bucky calls his name.

Calls it again.

And again.

By the time the door slams open, by the time the guards come stomping in, Nikolai is already gone.

Bucky is still holding him when they rip him away. 

They don’t say anything. They don’t even look at Nikolai. Just grab him by the arms, drag him out like a piece of furniture.

Like he never mattered at all.

The door slams shut.

The room is silent.

The warmth on Bucky’s hands fades too fast.

And then, finally, he breaks again.

His breath shudders. His vision swims.

A sob wrenches from his throat, and he curls in on himself, shaking, arms wrapped around his chest, like he can stop the ache splitting him apart from the inside out.

He wants Steve.

More than anything, he wants Steve.

Wants his voice, his stubborn-ass hope, his hands gripping Bucky’s shoulders and telling him it’s okay, I got you, I got you.

But Steve isn’t here.

He’s never going to be here.

And Bucky—he’s never getting out.

He wishes he’d never made it out of Azzano in the first place.

Time is gone again. 

The hours stretch and snap and stretch again, unraveling like thread from a frayed seam. Some days last forever. Others disappear before he can blink.

But the pain remains.

The tests do not stop.

The needles. The iron lung. The chair. The restraints biting into his wrists and ankles, holding him in place while they run current through his bones. The wires attached to his scalp, to his temples, measuring something, though Bucky doesn’t know what anymore. They ask questions, sometimes, but not often. They already know what he is.

“Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038.”

That’s all he has left.

Steve’s name is in his mouth like old prayers, like battle hymns. A grounding weight in a mind that won’t stop unraveling.

But even that is slipping.

The serum burns.

A cold fire, slow and seeping, burrowing into his veins like frostbite from the inside out. It spreads through his limbs, into his marrow, sinking in the hollows of his ribs. It is agony. It is evil, twisting into something wrong.

He vomits.

He seizes.

He dreams.

He hallucinates Steve.

Bucky exhales, slow and careful. His body doesn’t hurt, not here, not yet. His head is resting on something solid, something warm, and fingers—calloused, familiar fingers—card through his hair.

Steve.

Bucky closes his eyes. He lets himself stay like this for just a little longer.

You got yourself in trouble again, Steve murmurs. His voice is fond, laced with quiet laughter.

Bucky huffs. “Yeah, well. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Steve doesn’t answer.

When Bucky cracks his eyes open, Steve is looking at him with something solemn, something sad.

Bucky frowns. “What’s wrong?”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

And then, just like that—he’s gone.

Bucky gasps awake, body convulsing, the weight of the restraints cutting into his skin. The chair is cold against his back, the air reeks of antiseptic and metal, and the scientists are still watching, still waiting.

“Barnes.”

He blinks sluggishly, trying to focus, but his vision is white static, his blood burning.

“Barnes.”

A hand grips his chin, forces his head up. His skull lolls, vision tilting.

Zola.

His face swims into focus, round and sharp at once, glasses gleaming under that fluorescent light. He’s saying something. Something about progress. Something about success.

Bucky doesn’t hear him.

All he hears is Steve’s voice.

The chair again. The electrodes. The bite of steel against skin.

“Hold him still.”

They want to see how much he can take.

He screams this time.

Not words. Just sound.

Back in his cell, he rocks forward, fingers digging into the stone floor, sweat-drenched hair clinging to his forehead. He mutters his number like a warding spell.

32557038.

His throat burns. His vision dances between light and dark. His fingers twitch, a ghost of a fist clenching and unclenching, clenching and unclenching. He itches. 

32557038.

It used to mean something.

Didn’t it?

“I don’t want to do this.”

Then don’t.

“You know I can’t.”

A hand on his shoulder. A voice he should recognise but doesn’t.

Bucky closes his eyes.

He is cold. He is burning. He is both at once.

Steve.

Pain.

His number.

325…

570..

3..

8.

They take his boots. His socks.

Bucky lies strapped down, bare feet exposed to the bitter chill of the lab. His breath stutters against the iron bite of his restraint, escaping in thin, misty puffs. The metal has worn his wrists raw and his fever burns moles-hot now, but his body feels like ice, like winter has found a home in him. 

The scalpel hovers. 

He digs his nails into his palms until he bleeds. 

32557038. 32557038. 32557038.

Zola tilts his head, thoughtful. “Did you know,” he muses, “the soles of the feet contain thousands of nerve endings? A most delicate place.”

Bucky exhales through his nose, clenches his jaw tight.

The first cut is slow.

He bites down—his entire body shakes with it, nerves screaming, bright, inescapable agony lancing through him like lightning striking dry bone. 

The scalpel carves deep, peeling flesh from flesh.

His breath hitches, high and thin, eyes squeezed shut.

Don’t scream.

“Your body resists beautifully,” Zola murmurs, “healing even as I work. Fascinating. I wonder—if I take enough, will you still remember pain?”

Bucky jerks against the straps.

The pain is a living, breathing thing—gnawing its way up his legs. He thinks, wildly, distantly, so many nerve endings. So many.

His breath punches out in a choked, wet gasp.

Don’t scream.

Zola hums to himself, wiping blood from his hands with a crisp white cloth. He gestures, and another guard moves in.

“Now,” he says pleasantly, “let’s see how far we can push it.”

The next incision cuts deep into Bucky’s ribs.

He does scream then.

When they throw him back into his cell, Bucky collapses, hugging into himself. His body is torn open. He feels it—his ribs knitting together, his flesh sealing and scarring in terrible jagged lines. But he’s still raw, still aching, still hungry.

God, the hunger.

It burns deep, something primal and aching, coiled tight in his gut like a starvation that doesn’t end.

The rations arrive. He devours them, ignores the water. Don’t trust it. Don’t trust any other fluids. 

Not like the food is any better. Maggots writhing through mouldy bread, meat turned gray and slick with rot—he doesn’t care. His stomach clenches around the food like it might disappear, and he shoves more into his mouth, swallowing before he can think, before he can taste.

He eats everything.

And he’s still hungry.

A rat scuttles near his foot.

It’s the same one that’s been gnawing at his bloody toes at night, the one he’s kicked away, the one that always comes back.

It pauses, black eyes shining in the dark.

Bucky moves before he can stop himself.

His hands catch fur, fingers digging in. The rat squeals, twisting violently, but Bucky’s teeth are already closing in—

He bites down. Crunch.

The bones splinter. Blood bursts over his tongue, warm and thick, sliding down his throat.

His stomach clenches.

He drops it, shoving himself back against the wall, hands twisting in his hair, breath coming too fast.

His mouth is wet.

His lips, his chin, dripping.

He gags, throws it all up. 

The hunger breathes. Expands from his stomach into his lungs. 

He wraps his arms around his head, caving in on himself. His breath shudders, turning to a whisper

“What is wrong with me?”

“What is wrong with me?”

His chest heaves.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?”

Again. And again.

He presses his forehead against his knees, trying to hold himself together, trying to drown out the taste of blood lingering on his tongue.

Bucky does not speak.

Not because they took his tongue, like the prisoners in the morgue from a hundred years ago—the ones who curled in a darkened corner, strapped to the wall, and never spoke again. No, Bucky still has a tongue. He could speak, but he won’t. He doesn’t want to hear the voice of a man who survived when others didn’t. There’s no one to speak to anyways. 

His brain feels too big, like an overripe fruit waiting to burst. 

The hunger gets worse. 

He is Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038. Subject #86. And he is never getting out of here.

His pa had fought in the Great War.

He came back different.

Bucky had been too young to understand then, but now—now he knows what that hollow look in his pa’s eyes meant. The nights he spent staring at nothing. The sudden explosions of rage, the flinches at loud noises, the way he’d go quiet when someone mentioned the trenches.

He remembers his ma yelling at him after he smashed a plate in the kitchen. He’d been jumpy all night, James— and Bucky, defensive, defending him—It was an accident!

His pa had waved it off. Smiled, ruffled his hair. But later, Bucky woke up to the sound of pacing. His pa, moving back and forth in the dark, hands shaking.

He never spoke about the war. But sometimes, when the nights stretched long and the whiskey bottle ran low, he’d mutter.

They said it would be over by Christmas.

The mud was worse than the gas.

It’s not the dead ones that haunt you, Buck. It’s the ones you left behind.

Bucky hadn’t understood then.

He does now.

He wonders if his pa had felt it too—the way grief becomes a physical thing, something that lives inside you. The way it carves out space between your ribs and settles there, a weight that never quite fades.

Bucky presses his fingers into his ribs, as if he could dig it out.

It doesn’t work.

He is Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038. Subject #86. He repeats it in his head as they strap him down again. 

Zola still measures him after every session. He has determined the…serum, which is what he’s heard them call it, has attached itself to Bucky, fused into him at a molecular level. It is why he heals so fast, why his body resists infection, why his fever never truly breaks. The iron lung has forced the serum deeper, accelerating what should take months, years, into days.

“It is fascinating,” Zola murmurs, charting another measurement of his wrist circumference. “But we must refine it. The others in the ‘Vitalität Trial’ were… unfortunate.”

Unfortunate.

Bucky knows what that means. Knows that Nikolai was an accident, that he wasn’t meant to last as long as he did. Zola was furious when he found out—furious that they wasted a viable subject, that they hadn’t been paying attention, before he could squeeze the last bit of use from him.

Now Bucky is the only one left.

To ensure that changes, they bring in two new prisoners. Private Campbell and Private Parker.

They are fresh. Wide-eyed.

They do not yet know what it means to be here.

“He gave me a bunch of shots, but that was it—” Campbell mutters.

“Like medicine?”

“I don’t know, they strapped me down, but apart from that it wasn’t… it wasn’t that bad.”

Bucky starts laughing. A raw, jagged sound that claws its way out of his throat. He can’t stop. They look at him like he’s insane.

They aren’t wrong. 

Zola adjusts the dosage.

The serum is mixed, strengthened. They add a second one, green instead of yellow, or was it red? blue? pink? and Zola watches eagerly as it’s fed through the tubing into Bucky’s veins.

Bucky feels it immediately.

Like a nest of hornets in his bloodstream. Swarming, stabbing, whispering their secrets of heaven and hell.

It is burning and freezing at once, a paradox of sensations slicing through him like knives. His breath shudders. His heartbeat thrums like a war drum in his chest.

Zola leans in, watching. “Describe the sensation.”

Bucky grits his teeth. The words won’t come.

Zola gestures. A guard strikes him across the face.

“Describe the sensation, Subject.”

Bucky chokes on his own breath. The fever presses heavy against his skull. “It’s—” His voice is hoarse. “It’s too much.”

The burning doesn’t stop. He feels it moving inside him, changing him. It’s worse than the machines. Worse than the scalpels. Worse than—

“Do you feel strong?” Zola asks. “Do you feel angry?”

The anger. A flickering ember in the pit of his stomach.

He remembers Nikolai. The way his body seized beneath Bucky’s helpless fingers. The way his breath hiccuped before it stopped. The way the guards dragged him away like garbage, like a failed experiment.

His teeth grind together.

Yes. He is angry.

Bucky does not return to his cell the same.

The serum lingers. The heat and cold battle in his bones. His hunger worsens.

The idea of faces becomes a faraway concept when he can’t see his own. When he can’t see his cellmates, the other prisoners, or even the guards—just the sleek, black goggles reflecting nothing back at him. He supposes that’s the point. Strip them of their features, their humanity. Reduce them to shadows and orders, to hands that hold scalpels and fists that break bones. The only face he sees regularly is Zola’s, and soon, it becomes the only one he recognises.

Faces are just as foreign as time now.

He doesn’t bother carving lines in the walls to mark the days when he can’t see them. When there’s no one else to tell him when he’s missed a few. He once spent an hour obsessing over the extra five lines, the ones he had scratched into the wall, swearing up and down because he didn’t remember making them at all. Then, not long after, he forgot that he forgot. But Bucky’s fingers were always bloody by morning. 

Only darkness. Only lab-time, which he spends more and more cycles in. Sometimes three times in one rotation—he knows because Zola is still wearing the same tie.

On that same day, Zola takes note of his dark, pigmented urine and taps his cheeks—side to side, side to side—making his head rock on his neck like a broken doll. He watches him closely, tilting his chin up, forcing Bucky’s glassy, bloodshot eyes open.

“You are disoriented,” Zola remarks, “but not because of my drugs.”

His fingers pad against Bucky’s face, against the flaky patches of skin where the beard he barely grows has started to itch like fire. His scalp burns from scratching.

“Dehydration,” Zola says with a tut. “You are neglecting your water.”

You drug the water, Bucky thinks blearily. Or at least, I think you do.

Zola doesn’t wait for him to answer. He simply presses his gloved fingers against Bucky’s stomach and mutters something in German before the familiar sting of a scalpel presses in.

“Another tube,” Zola announces as Bucky’s head lolls to the side.

Bucky laughs—or tries to. It comes out more like a crack of air. “Oh, like I don’t already have enough,” he croaks. “Thanks so much.”

Zola doesn’t respond to the sarcasm. He simply slides the tube deeper, pressing down like he’s fitting a piece into a machine. “This one goes directly to the organ,” he muses. “We will find another route if you refuse to use the one God has given you.”

Bucky huffs another breathless laugh. What the hell do you know about God?

He doesn’t get an answer, but he’s not sure he expected one. Instead, Zola starts flooding his stomach with water. Too much. It sloshes inside him, cold and disgusting. Bucky twists, gagging, but it stays. It lingers through the night, pumping and refilling, over and over.

He wants to fight it, but when he wakes up the next morning, his head is clearer. The fevered dizziness has ebbed just enough for him to sit up without the whole world tilting.

The first time, he doesn’t even know what they’ve done to him.

They strap him to the table like always, insert the IVs, push the needles into his spine, his arms, his thighs. The bite of them is familiar. Routine. His body doesn’t flinch anymore. Doesn’t react to the cold press of steel against his skin or the way the tubing pulls and stretches when he shifts.

Zola watches with sharp, clinical interest, but today, he isn’t speaking to Bucky.

Instead, he mutters to the assistant at his side, clicking his tongue in thought.

“Now we test disease resistance,” he says smoothly. “We have seen what his body can withstand—electrocution, dissection, deprivation—but now we see what it rejects. What it fights.”

Bucky tenses.

He’s heard whispers of this before.

What they’ve done to the other prisoners.

What they’ve injected them with. 

The bodies that didn’t last long enough to be carried away.

He tries to speak, but his tongue is thick in his mouth. The familiar sting of sedatives is already dulling the edges of his thoughts, turning them sluggish.

Zola moves closer, looming over him, pressing a hand against his jaw, tilting his head just slightly to the side.

“You are an anomaly, Sergeant Barnes,” he says conversationally, like they’re having a pleasant chat over coffee. “We must understand why.”

The needle sinks into his neck.

The fever comes back.

It crawls into his spine, settles deep in his bones, burning slow, stretching his limbs taut. His muscles spasm against the restraints, seizing violently, his back arching until he swears his vertebrae might snap.

The weakness spreads.

His legs go numb.

He tries to move them, tries to shift his foot, to curl his freshly severed toes—nothing.

Panic seizes his chest, worse than the fever, worse than the burning, worse than the nausea that’s clawing its way up his throat.

No, no, no, no—

He can hear Zola dictating something to his assistant, voice pleased, almost giddy.

“Note the paralysis beginning in the lower extremities,” he says. “But the immune system is already responding. Faster than anticipated.”

Bucky grits his teeth, shuddering through it, through the fire in his veins, through the fear.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts.

Could be hours. Could be days. Time. So fickle. 

But eventually, feeling returns to his legs. Slowly, painfully.

His hands clench into fists.

Zola smiles.

This one is slower.

The sores come first. Small, then widening, raw and weeping, drawing over his lips, the inside of his mouth, the crook of his elbow, the joints of his fingers.

The rash spreads.

Red, inflamed, mottled across his skin. Blisters that broil open with pus. 

He understands why Nikolai couldn’t stop itching now. 

Zola studies it with interest, pressing gloved fingers against the lesions, tilting Bucky’s head from side to side, watching as the disease blossoms across him.

His body fights it. Tries to burn it out.

The fever spikes again.

He sweats through the cot, through the thin fabric of his uniform. He shivers and burns at the same time, shaking so hard his teeth clatter against each other. His throat is raw from coughing, from swallowing bile, from whispering numbers against the swell of his tongue—

32557038. 32557038. 32557038.

He clings to it.

The rash fades within days.

Zola is delighted.

This one nearly kills him.

The moment they inject it, he feels it settle.

It plants itself deep in his lungs, burrowing, rotting him from the inside out. The cough wracks his ribs, tears at his throat, spilling blood across the metal table, staining his lips red. It’s worse than the pneumonia. 

He can’t breathe.

His lungs constrict, ribs locking in place, every inhale a desperate, gasping thing, sharp and shallow and useless.

Drowning.

That’s what it feels like.

Like the water and the cloth. That happened didn’t it?

Like he’s at the bottom of the river, lungs filling with water, kicking, thrashing, but never breaking the surface.

For the first time, Zola almost looks disappointed.

“Interesting,” he murmurs. “His body is losing this battle.”

Bucky doesn’t care.

Doesn’t care about the results, doesn’t care about the tests, doesn’t care about the next phase of trials.

He just wants it to end.

But then, something shifts.

The serum claws its way back to the surface, latches onto his organs, fixes what’s broken.

It forces the disease out.

Purges it.

Painfully. Violently.

He coughs so hard he nearly blacks out. Blood dribbles down his chin, staining his collar. His vision blurs, turns white at the edges.

But he survives.

Again.

Always.

Zola watches the whole thing, smiling down at him, fascinated. “You are remarkable,” he says. “I wonder what else we can do.”

Bucky lets his head fall back against the table.

He closes his eyes.

Please. Just kill me. 

Bucky learns, over and over again, what it means to forget.

He’s staring down at a tray of food—if it can even be called that—some watery broth, bread that could break a tooth, and a pile of mushy peas he’s arranged into a smiley face.

His stomach twists violently. His throat closes up.

He doesn’t know why.

It’s just peas. 

He doesn’t know why he made them into that face. Eat your veggies, Lily. 

But the sight of them makes something inside him curdle and wither, makes the hair at the back of his neck stand on end, makes his hands shake like he’s got a bullet lodged in his gut.

He looks away, but the nausea lingers.

Then, there’s the chair.

Sometimes, Bucky comes back to himself and he isn’t strapped to the table in the lab. Instead, he’s sitting in the chair, arms secured, head forced back, throat exposed. The metal digging into his skull hurts, but it’s a distant thing, secondary to the wetness on his face, to the burn in his lungs, to the rag stuffed between his teeth.

And his throat—his throat is pulsing.

His body spasms, convulses, his chest stutters on air it’s not getting—

Then he blinks, and he’s back in his cell.

Back on the table.

Back somewhere, but never quite there.

It takes time, but he pieces it together.

Zola uses the machine, the one that looks like an iron lung,  he reminds himself—polio, did they give him polio? It clamps down around his sides, fills him up with static, like radiation—eroding his biology, attaching it to the serum. Then the chair, the electrodes, the side of his face, sending volts of electricity sparking through his brain, leaving his limbs twitching long after it’s over.

They only ask him small things.

“What was the picture I showed you?”

“What kind of animal was it?”

“What kind of gun?”

The questions get more specific.

Bucky stares at them, swaying where he sits, vision edged with spots.

His throat is raw. His wrists ache where the restraints have bitten into his skin. His mind feels like it’s been wrung out, squeezed until it’s empty. So, nothing out of the ordinary. 

What was on the picture?

What was it?

A dog. No, a cat. Or a bird? An elephant?

No, he’s never seen an elephant before.

The truth knots itself up inside him, twisted and tangled.

He starts laughing mid-procedure, knowing he’s done this before, knowing he’s lied before. Again and again and again. 

They don’t seem to care.

They just want answers.

And so, he gives them.

“A donkey,” he says, when he knows it was a tree.

“Alexander Hamilton,” he mutters, even though he remembers a tank.

“Your ugly fucking face,” even though he knows, with perfect clarity, that it was just a banana.

The assistant writes it down. Takes him at his word.

But Zola—Zola knows him better than that.

He rips the results from the clipboard and the next time Bucky wakes up, there are too many pinching staples in his body. His tube-port is gone. His throat is dry, too dry.

And his body—his body aches.

He understands why Subject #86 ate the rat.

Understands how hunger makes men into things they don’t recognise.

A swing to the cheek.

“I have to defend my country’s honour.”

Zola watches him from across the room, hands clasped neatly behind his back.

Bucky sways on his feet, unsteady, shaking. “I’ll eat,” he rasps. “I’ll drink.”

The words barely make it out.

“I will. I promise. I’ll eat now, anything you give me, just please don’t—”

Don’t starve me again. 

But the sentence never finishes.

Because Zola just smiles.

And he knows that there’s no mercy left in the world.

Bucky realises, belatedly that he is Subject #86

He thinks of The Hobbit. 

He remembers holding the book in his hands, the spine creased from use, pages dog-eared where he’d left off. He remembers sitting on the edge of Steve’s bed, balancing a chipped mug of broth in one hand while the other flipped through Tolkien’s words.

Steve had been sick again that winter—that bad winter—the one where his lungs had rattled like loose change in his chest. Bucky could feel the fever burning off him from across the room.

“Read to me,” Steve had rasped, breath thin and weak, barely managing to lift his head from the pillow. 

Bucky had rolled his eyes, because of course it had to be The Hobbit. He knew then that Steve didn’t even like it, but he also knew that Steve knew it was Bucky’s favourite. So he kept shoving it at him, no matter how many times he said it was for kids. Secretly, Bucky knew Steve liked it, if only to hear him read aloud. 

So, Bucky would read it. 

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” he’d begun, voice low, steady, keeping time with the rise and fall of Steve’s shallow breaths.

Now, in the cell, in the dark, in the hole in the ground where he lives, he thinks about that. 

He thinks about Steve, curled up under threadbare blankets, pale as death, fingers gripping the sheets with the kind of determination that only Steve could muster, even when he was one bad night away from never waking up.

He thinks about the way he had read for hours, just to keep Steve here, just to keep him from slipping into the fever’s grip and never coming back.

And he wonders if someone will read to him.

Now, when he’s the one trapped under fever, when his blood feels like molten lead, when the hunger ravishes him like an animal gnawing its own limbs to escape.

He wonders if anyone will say his name the way Steve used to, like it mattered. If anyone will sit by his side and tell him to hold on just a little longer.

But there’s no one. 

Just the hum of the lab, the electric whine of the machines, the sound of his own ragged breathing.

No one is coming. Save for Zola. 

And Steve—who never liked The Hobbit—who used to say it was too slow, too boring, too full of dwarves talking in circles—that same Steve, Bucky imagines his voice, fumbling over all the words, squinting in annoyance at all the difficult pronunciations. Bucky closes his eyes, presses his forehead to the cold stone wall, and mutters,

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Because maybe if he says it enough times, he’ll still be Bucky Barnes.

What, where, when is he?

His head lolls to the side, heavy like it’s full of sand. His blood cells swell, pupils dilated until  they’re black and beady, like an insect’s. His chemistry has changed again. 

He breathes, slow. He listens.

What, where, when is he?

The machine hums, steady and constant, like it has been for years. His hands twitch against the straps holding him down, fingers grasping weakly, his bones full of static.

Something drips. Slow. Steady.

A voice speaks.

“Describe the sensation.”

Zola.

His fingers flex again, a spark of something sharp and electric, but the energy doesn’t reach the rest of him. The serum is still running its course—he can feel it settling in, bleeding through all his organs. 

“Sergeant Barnes,” Zola prompts, like a teacher calling on a slow student. “Describe the sensation.”

He tries to speak. His voice scrapes out, raw and broken. “Bucky,” he slurs, eyes rolling back, fluttering between consciousness. “My name’s Bucky.”

Zola makes a soft, considering noise. “Not today, I think.”

Then the machine whirs to life again.

It slams into his bloodstream. He feels the machine vibrate beneath him, the metal restraints rattling with the force of it. The pain isn’t sharp—it’s deep, it’s hot, it’s…numb. 

He tries to remember the last time he was in a real bed. A real chair. Not strapped in, not held down.

He tries to remember where he is.

“Describe the sensation,” Zola repeats.

The words come out between gasps. “Hot. Cold. Everything.” His jaw locks, teeth grinding against the mouth guard. “I— I can feel—”

My insides melting. 

The next pulse takes the words from him.

The machine tilts back slightly, shifting just enough that the room moves. He can’t tell if it’s the machine or his own body shaking apart.

“Tell me what you remember.”

Bucky blinks, hard, but the world doesn’t settle. It’s wrong—the walls feel too far, the ceiling too low. His brain scrambles for something solid, something real.

A memory flickers, distant and distorted.

A bed, blankets thin but warm, the weight of a book in his hands. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

A breath hitches in his chest, half-sob, half-laugh. He remembers this. Steve. Steve had been sick, curled up under those blankets, looking so damn small. “Steve,” he rasps, forcing his head up. “Where—”

The machine pulses again.

The memory shatters.

He chokes on a scream, pain splitting through his skull, burning away everything. His fingers twitch, curl, claw against the table. The straps hold.

Zola watches, expression carefully neutral.

“Again,” he instructs his assistant.

Bucky doesn’t have the energy to brace before the current surges through him again, splitting his cells in two. 

What.

Where.

When.

Is he?

He’s drowning in light.

He can’t remember how to swim.

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Sometimes, on the come-downs—which are worse than the radiation, depending on the day—he wants the chair.

The first time he’d woken up from it, drool sticky at the corner of his mouth, Zola had been leaning over him, tapping notes into his ledger with careful, deliberate strokes.

“You do not know where you are, do you?”

Bucky had blinked at him, vision swimming, tongue thick and useless in his mouth. He’d been strapped down, cold metal pressing against the back of his skull, his limbs loose and uncooperative. The words had ping-ponged around his brain, failing to sink in.

Zola had smiled then, something smug and pleased, like a scientist watching a particularly stubborn hypothesis finally prove correct. “Good,” he’d said. “Again.”

Now, Bucky waits for the chair. Not because he likes it—God, no—but because it’s a mercy.

It means he’ll either forget the day’s work or pass out so he doesn’t have to feel it.

The serum makes him remember too much. The pain lingers in ways it shouldn’t, his body healing before the agony can fade. There are no open-wounds to justify the aches, only pink lines, no bruises though, but burns, a night spent being flayed open. Even when it heals over, all ugly and gross and wrong, the pain stays, lingering like a phantom limb.

The chair fixes that.

It takes away the memories of what they do to him. Of what they make him do.

The first time he came back to himself with his hands wrapped around someone’s throat—fingers digging into flesh, arms locked tight—he’d gasped so hard he nearly choked on air.

The second time, it took longer to stop.

Now, he doesn’t know how many times it’s happened.

But when he feels the edges of his mind cracking, when he wakes up in his cell and finds blood under his nails that isn’t his, he starts hoping for the chair. For the light. For the electricity to burn away whatever he knows but doesn’t remember.

Zola doesn’t always give it to him.

Sometimes, he wants Bucky to keep the memories.

“Progress,” he muses, flipping through his notes, glancing at the blood smeared across Bucky’s fingers. “Do you remember this one?”

Bucky looks at the mess on his hands, the dark, rusted streaks against his skin. His stomach lurches.

He wants to say no.

But Zola doesn’t let him forget.

Not this time.

The room is large, cluttered with old cabinets, tables, and shattered chairs—junk left to rot. It looks like a storage unit, abandoned and looted, save for the cameras mounted high in the corners, the thick iron bars that keep him in. He doesn’t know what they expect him to do in here. At first.

But the hornets in his skull hum with the serum, crawling through his veins, burning under his skin, and he wants to move.

He feels like a bull in a china shop, even though he’s not two thousand pounds of muscle and rage—just flesh and bone, just a man whose body doesn’t feel like his own anymore. He rolls his shoulders, shifts his weight, tests the way the serum settles into his joints. His limbs feel weightless, like his bones are filled with air, like he could jump and keep going. Like he could snap something in half.

One of the guards barks something in clipped German. He doesn’t bother listening.

His eyes catch on the threshold of the door—deep rust stains embedded in the concrete, jagged handprints smeared across the bars. The Germans scrub the floors, but it never quite comes out.

He wonders who died here. How they died. 

And why the stains look like German blood.

The thought pleases him.

Something cracks in his skull—hornets buzzing, a hot vibration through his ribs. His hands flex at his sides. The energy coils, tight, unbearable.

And then he moves.

The first cabinet shatters under his grip, wood splintering apart like it was made of paper. The force sends a table skidding into the wall, knocking over a chair that snaps in half on impact. He’s grinning, breath coming sharp, exhilaration thrumming through him. His knuckles split on the next one, but the wounds heal almost as fast as they break. He keeps going.

Three cabinets. Six pallets. A desk. A clock—he hurls it without thinking, and it crashes against the observation window, leaving a spiderweb of cracks in the glass.

There’s movement beyond it.

Good.

He wants them to see.

He’s still wound tight when they shoot him.

The dart slams into his thigh, and for a moment, it’s nothing—he yanks it free, throwing it aside—but then the sedative floods his bloodstream, something stronger than before, dulling the sharp edges of his thoughts. His body goes heavy. The room tilts.

He doesn’t remember hitting the floor.

Light, too bright. Buzzing, too loud. Mouth, dry. Muscles, locked.

The last thing he remembers is the broken clock. Had that been real? The second hand frozen between ticks, time stopped in the moment before it shattered against Zola’s lab. Time is nothing but the whine of electricity, the pulse of something cold in his veins.

“Turn it down, you motherfucker!” The words slur out of him, thick, slow.

The hornets are still there, buzzing behind his temples, behind his ribs, and God, they’re loud. He opens his mouth, convinced they’ll come pouring out, a black swarm of vengeance, an Egyptian plague—they’ll eat Zola first, strip him down to his skeleton, leave nothing but his stupid spectacles and the coat he wears like armour.

Bucky gags, dry heaving.

Zola watches, unimpressed, and pours water past his lips.

He forgets the plague. Forgets the hornets.

Gulps it down until it stops.

He keeps his mouth open, waiting for more, like some kind of baby bird, but Zola slots the mouthguard between his teeth instead. Clicks it into place.

“You are responding well to the new dosage,” Zola hums, pushing the machine over his head, adjusting the restraints under his jaw. He tightens the blue light piece over Bucky’s left eye, down along his forehead and ear. “This is good, ja?”

Bucky’s breath comes short. He hates the light. He doesn’t like any light anymore, not after the dark, not after the cell where time dripped away, where he forgot his own face.

The machine hums.

The current pulses.

His spine snaps straight, folding underneath the weight of his limbs. 

Then—

Then the hornets are inside.

They pour in through the cracks in his skull, burrowing deep, tunnelling into his brain, into his thoughts, digging their little nests inside the soft, raw parts of him.

Wasps lay their eggs in living creatures.

He remembers reading that, once.

How they sting and paralyse their prey, how they plant their young inside—deep inside—where they can hatch and feast.

The machine hums.

The hornets feed.

Zola leans in, eyes bright, fascinated. He hums under his breath, making notes in that little book of his. “Yes. You are responding even faster than expected.”

Bucky whines.

He doesn’t mean to. The noise just slips out, raw and wet, something instinctual clawing its way up his throat. He’s a dog backed into a corner. A body going rigid under an electric prod.

Zola pats his cheek, like he’s something fragile.

“This is progress, Sergeant. You are becoming something greater.”

We are improving you.

The words don’t register.

His muscles twitch, spasming under the electric current, and Bucky clenches his fists, fingers curling so tight his nails bite into his palms. The light pierces deeper, into his retina, into his skull, God, it’s in his skull—

He thinks of those wasps. Bug-eyed soldiers on a battlefield littered with corpses. Crows. 

Zola leans close, peering into his face with an expression of fascination.

The world whites out.

It’s an easy day today—just needles, just measurements. No iron lung, no electricity snaring his skull, no taste of blood at the back of his throat.

He can’t be bothered with Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038 today.

So he asks, “Are you ready to pump me full of shit again?”

Zola doesn’t look up. He hums, distracted, still writing.

Bucky repeats himself—louder this time, because Zola’s ears seem to only work when they want to.

“Not yet,” Zola finally answers, dipping his pen into the ink pot beside his notes. His voice is light, almost thoughtful. “I am still encountering the same problem; I need at least two viable subjects so I don’t waste one of them if it has the same effect.”

Waste.

Just things he can burn through and discard if they don’t do what he wants them to.

Bucky’s arms itch. “Shame,” he says casually, flexing his fingers against the leather straps. “Would have been fun to watch one of those monsters rip themselves off the table to squash you like a grape. Swiisshh.” He makes the sound effect for good measure, smirking up at the ceiling.

Zola’s pen stops.

The room stills.

Bucky feels it—the shift. Feels Zola’s eyes settle on him, just under his chin, like he’s considering something.

Across the lab, the assistant drops something. A scalpel, maybe.

Then the scribbling starts up again.

“You know, Sergeant,” Zola muses, “most of my subjects don’t talk as much as you.”

Bucky grins. “Most of your subjects keep dying.”

Zola harrumphs, amused. “Yes, Sergeant. But not you.”

Campbell is still alive.

Bucky had his suspicions—no one’s come back to his cell in weeks, no fresh blood to take Nikolai’s place—but now, seeing him, he knows.

They pass each other in the corridor, both collared, both half-dragged by the guards. Bucky’s got a dart in his neck, his body still sluggish from the sedative, but his mind is sharp enough to register the way Campbell stares.

Pupils blown. Teeth grit. Straining against the men holding him back until the veins in his neck look like they’ll burst.

Bucky stares back, and Christ, he’s big.

Not big like a soldier who’s been eating well, who’s been training. Big like something else—the way Nikolai had started to look before he seized and melted from the inside out. Bulked out, broad in the shoulders, his uniform straining at the seams.

Zola isn’t failing with all his subjects, after all.

Bucky wants to ask why—why Campbell is swelling with muscle, why the serum seems to be working faster on him than it ever did on him. 

He doesn’t need to ask.

He knows.

The serums fight inside his body—hot and cold, two forces battling for dominance, keeping him suspended between burning and freezing. He’s not swelling because he wasn’t built for one serum alone.

But he’s stronger. Faster. Last cycle, he’d dented an iron bar with his bare hands.

That’s enough.

Zola must’ve figured it out, too—because now, instead of measuring him, he’s drawing vials of blood.

Vial after vial after vial.

And Bucky watches from the table, grinning through the sting of the needle. “Something wrong, Doc?” he drawls, voice thick with something almost satisfied. “Not getting the results you wanted?”

Zola doesn’t answer. 

Just keeps staring into his microscope.

It’s almost funny, the way they keep underestimating him.

They think the darts will keep him down.

They think the collar will keep him docile.

They think the straps and the bars and the beatings will make him compliant.

But they don’t.

Sometimes they do. Most of the time they do. 

But today, they don’t. 

The sedative clings to his blood, but he fights it. Swims through it. He’s been under too many times to let it take him completely now. Resistance. Tolerance. 

They march him down the corridor, dragging him between them, but his feet move just enough to keep up. Not limp. Not weak.

They don’t bother with the pole this time.

A mistake.

The moment comes like a gift.

One of them adjusts his grip. Shifts just enough. Leaves just enough space.

Bucky moves. Fast. Faster than they expect. Than he expects. 

He yanks one guard forward, slamming his head into the steel wall hard enough to crack bone. Blood spatters against concrete. Brains. Commander. He twists, throwing an elbow into another’s throat, catching him mid-shout.

Gunfire erupts. A warning shot.

Bucky doesn’t flinch.

He grabs the pistol off the stunned guard, grips it tight, drives the muzzle into his gut and pulls the trigger. The shot echoes like thunder.

The guard gasps, choking on blood. Falls.

Bucky is panting, shaking, grinning, heart roaring in his ears. He turns, swinging the gun to the others.

A dozen barrels lift in response.

They won’t hesitate this time.

Good.

Fucking do it.

“I dare you,” he spits, voice raw. “Fucking cowards! Fucking Krauts!” His hands tremble with rage, with need, with the desperate, writhing ache in his chest. “You wanna put down the dog? Do it! FUCKING DO IT!”

The guards tense, fingers tightening on triggers.

For a second, Bucky thinks—hopes—that this is it. That he finally gets to go. They’ll grant him the mercy he’s been denied over and over again. He’s overextended his usefulness. He stares at the gun in his hands—or maybe he can grant this wish himself. 

Zola steps in. “Lower your weapons,” he orders. He’s angry. 

They obey instantly.

Bucky snarls, furious, desperate, but the gun slips from his fingers automatically. He obeys, because somewhere, deep inside, it’s been trained within him to follow Zola’s commands. Maybe before all this. His very first day in training—listen to orders. Perhaps they'd always wanted to breed compliance. 

A needle drives into his neck.

His body crumples before he even feels it. A heavier sedative this time. One that turns his bones into jelly—lime, lime. 

The last thing he hears is Zola’s voice, amused and indulgent, like speaking to a stubborn child. “You do not get to decide when this ends, Sergeant.”

And then—

Black.

Bucky doesn’t recognise the voice at first.

It’s hoarse, rough—like it’s been dragged across gravel. “Barnes, isn’t it?” the man croaks.

Bucky turns his head, blinking sluggishly at the muscled figure across from him. The uniform is rotting off his frame, sleeves hanging loose, but his body is swollen in ways that don’t look natural.

The guy smirks, but it’s sharp and humourless. “At least, that’s what your tags said. I looked. Sergeant Barnes—I didn’t know you were a Sergeant when you were in the cell with us.”

Bucky stares. He doesn’t recognise him.

The guy doesn’t look surprised. “It’s Campbell.”

Campbell.

Right.

“We were in—”

“No, I know,” Bucky cuts in, frowning as the pieces start to come together. His mind is sluggish, but it’s there, under all the buzzing. “I just didn’t recognise you.”

Campbell grimaces, glancing down at himself. “Yeah, I know,” he mutters. “I don’t exactly look like I used to—some would say it’s an improvement, but—”

His hands clench into big fists, knuckles going white.

“—but nothing that sick bastard does is an improvement.” His voice cracks into something raw, something unhinged. “God!”

The word bursts out of him like a shot, echoing in the empty chamber.

Bucky watches warily. The red at the inside of Campbell’s elbow, the way his pupils are blown wide.

Why is he in here with him?

Bucky glances down at his own arms, but it’s hard to tell with the ports Zola put in to stop his veins from collapsing. The residue isn’t there—at least, not in the way it usually is.

The serum is getting thicker.

Campbell snarls. “I think Parker is dead.” His voice is low, steady now. “He hasn’t come back to the cell in ages.”

Parker. Parker. He knew a Parker once, didn’t he? Nineteen. Red against snow. Burned by shells. 

Bucky glances up, checking the rest of his usual injection sites. “He is.”

“How the fuck would you know?”

Bucky doesn’t look at him. Just swats absently at the air near his ear, where something invisible buzzes, persistent and sharp.

“I saw him.”

Campbell scoffs, but the sound is bitter. “Surprised you’re talking to me now,” he says, stepping over the remains of a broken table. “As far as you were concerned, we could fuck off and go to hell before. What’s changed now, huh?”

“Nothing,” Bucky snaps, turning in a slow circle.

He doesn’t trust the quiet. He doesn’t trust the hornets—they’re crawling under his skin, buzzing just beneath his eyes. Buzz, buzz, buzz. 

Campbell scoffs again, shaking his head. “Fuck off, you coward,” he mutters. “You never cared about us.”

Bucky’s fingers twitch.

Why would I?

He shoves the thought down. His hands are already shaking with the rising energy. He’s never been alone with anyone when he’s hopped up like this before—not unless he was tied down.

He exhales sharply. “Gave you that chance to run, didn’t I? Got all their guns on me. Not my fault you screwed it up.”

Campbell freezes. “Screwed it up?” he repeats, his voice low and dangerous.

Then he moves.

A drawer flies through the air—Bucky barely ducks in time. His pulse spikes, blood fizzing with narcotic energy.

Campbell’s shaking now, his fists clenched so tight they look like they might split open.“You didn’t do that to let us escape,” he spits. “You did it to get them to shoot you. I heard you, you pathetic coward—what kind of soldier are—”

The tannoy crackles to life.

“Soldiers! If you would!”

Zola’s voice.

Bucky’s stomach twists.

“My experiment does not require your egos or petty arguments—that is the only warning I’ll give you. Now, I am going to give you a series of tests under the same conditions to measure and compare your results—”

Bucky stops listening.

Who is this fucking guy?

He snarls, rips metal with his bare hands, and hurls it at the reinforced glass of the observation deck. The glass splinters on impact.

Zola falters for only a second.

“I have given you both identical dosages—”

Bucky doesn’t hear the rest.

Campbell screams and tackles him clear across the room.

Zola’s voice cuts off.

Campbell’s weight crushes him, fingers clawing at his leg as he flips him onto his back. Spittle flies as he snarls in Bucky’s face.

“You never cared!” Campbell roars, his voice feral.

The concrete cracks under his fist as he slams it beside Bucky’s ear.

“You never cared!”

Another hit—Bucky kicks out, kneeing him in the side to throw his swing wide. It barely works.

Campbell’s hands find his throat. And presses. 

His vision whites out.

Nikolai. Seizures. 

Drowning, drowning, drowning. 

There is no sound. No anything.

You can’t breathe you can’t breathe—

He’s gonna kill you he’s gonna kill you—

Bucky panics.

Not like this.

Not like this.

His left arm snaps up—he punches. It’s the wrong angle. Campbell barely grunts.

Bucky shifts tactics—chops the side of his hand into Campbell’s throat.

Campbell chokes. His grip loosens.

It’s enough.

Bucky scrabbles for traction, fingers grasping at anything—his hand catches on a table leg, and he snaps it clean off.

He swings.

It cracks across Campbell’s head. Splinters.

Campbell screams.

His grip slackens entirely, and Bucky gasps—he hadn’t realised how close he was to blacking out.

Campbell sways.

There’s a wooden shard buried deep in his left eye socket.

The hornets scream.

Show him.

Show him what pain is.

Bucky moves, instincts razor-sharp, adrenaline ripping through his veins, overpowering, amplified by the serum. He climbs Campbell, gets his hands on either side of his head, ready to snap his neck—

Campbell flips him before he can finish it.

Bucky slams into a cabinet, his breath punching out of him.

“You’re dead! You’re dead!” Campbell screams.

He’s blind in one eye, blood dripping down his face, but he charges like a wild animal.

Bucky dodges—kicks out at the last second. His foot connects with Campbell’s knee, and—

It dislocates.

Campbell goes down.

The tannoy crackles—Zola is shouting orders. Guards are coming.

Bucky moves. He smashes another chair over Campbell’s back, keeping him down.

Campbell grabs at him.

Bucky panics.

They grapple.

They struggle.

Campbell’s fingers scrabble for his eyes—Bucky grasps blindly, rips the metal leg of the chair clean off. 

And stabs it into Campell’s chest.

The metal punches through clean, sharp, deep.

Campbell’s good eye widens.

His body jerks.

Then—

He chokes.

Blood bubbles at his lips, pouring down his throat. His limbs go slack.

Bucky stares down at him. And his high snaps.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit—

Bucky scrambles on top of him, hands shaking, trying to stop it.

“Shit, shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He rambles.

Campbell coughs. Gasps.

Then—

His eye glazes over.

He’s gone.

He’s so young.

The guards shoot Bucky with three darts.

He slumps sideways off Campbell’s body.

Darkness takes him.

It’s a relief. 

It turns out—they weren’t supposed to kill each other.

Zola is furious. The kind of quiet, simmering rage that vibrates in the air, his fingers twitching around his clipboard. Bucky has seen this before—the same ire that flashed when the guards had raised their guns at him. The same way Zola clenched his jaw when Nikolai collapsed from organ failure.

He’s only got himself to blame, really.

What the hell did you think was gonna happen, Doc?

Bucky doesn’t say it, of course. His tongue feels swollen in his mouth, as always, thick with the come-down, his body sluggish and heavy, the rest of the sedatives draining from his body. 

They’ve strapped him down with more than leather this time. Bolted his hands to the table. He feels where his skin tries to heal around them, tightening until they rip open all over again, dousing the table crimson. The guards take a razor to his face, scraping away the ragged beard he’d grown in the dark. The blade bites at his skin more often than not, thin cuts blooming across his jaw, his throat. He lets them.

Then it’s the showers.

Stripped down to nothing, hosed off like an animal. Cleansing the blood and sick off his body. He claws at his trousers when they go to rip them off him—he can do it himself—but a sharp punch to the stomach knocks the fight out of him. He curls in on himself as he falls, panting against the wet tiles.

He slips something under his tongue.

Green and red.

When they haul him back to his feet, one of them sneers.

How the hell did this one survive out of the two of them?

Bucky would like to know that himself.

They shove him into another set of fatigues—someone else’s, he realises. They don’t smell like him. The fit is wrong, looser at the waist, tight at the wrists. The fabric is stiff, not yet molded to his shape. It’s only later, when he’s curled in the blackness of his cell, that he spits the dog tags into his palm.

Campbell’s.

He holds them in his mouth like a secret, a phantom weight behind his teeth. He lets them scrape against his molars before swallowing them back down, just for a little longer.

They take him back to the room. The one with broken cabinets. The broken clock. The broken chair. 

For the last time.

The floor is still ruined—splintered wood, shattered glass, tables overturned. Blood stains the concrete, some old, some fresh.

Zola stands behind a line of four guards, tapping his pen against his palm.

He gestures toward the mess. “What happened here, Sergeant?”

Bucky stares, his left eye red and watering. He twitches, trying to swat at his ear—there’s a buzzing, relentless and sharp—but the guard holding his arms behind his back keeps him still.

The collar pole jerks.

Bucky barely registers it.

Zola sighs. “What happened here, Sergeant?”

Bucky looks at the stain again.

Red over brown.

A voice that isn’t his own rings in his head, You never cared!

He mumbles something.

“Speak up,” Zola presses. “I can’t hear you, Sergeant.”

Bucky swallows thickly.

“Someone died.” His voice comes out slurred, slow.

“Someone died,” Zola affirms, nodding. “Do you know who?”

Bucky shakes his head.

No.

More subjects come. More cellmates.

Bucky doesn’t learn their names.

They don’t last long.

They cry. They beg. Some try to fight. Some go silent, curling up in the corner, rocking themselves to sleep with prayers that won’t be answered.

And then they die.

Over and over, Bucky survives them.

He knows it must be the resilience trial. The first experiments. When Zola turned his immune system into a machine, something relentless, something that doesn’t break.

But it feels like a different life.

Like years ago, instead of months.

Like maybe his childhood was some fantastical dream, a trick of his mind—a different Barnes, from a different world. One where his father was strong, his best friend was swell, his sisters were bratty but full of life.

Maybe he was born on the table.

Maybe he’s supposed to die on it, too.

The relief it would be, to just die. 

It’s a simple thing. A brief comment, clipped and efficient, like an afterthought.

“Sergeant Barnes. I’m proud of you.”

And it shouldn’t matter.

It shouldn’t mean anything.

Not when it comes from Zola. Not when it’s said in the same tone he uses to note down numbers, to record test results, to comment on the weather. Not when it’s him.

But something deep inside Bucky twists at the words. Something raw and ugly and starving. It curls around the syllables, soaks them up like a desert taking in rain.

It makes him feel better.

And that’s the worst part.

He hates himself for it.

Hates that his body relaxes—just a fraction—at the validation. That his muscles ease, that the static in his brain dulls, just a little.

Hates that it feels good.

Because it shouldn’t.

He’s a soldier. A prisoner. A subject.

Subject #86. 

And Zola is his captor. His tormentor.

The reason he can’t die.

He shouldn’t want his approval. Shouldn’t crave it, even in some sick, twisted part of himself that he doesn’t want to name. 

But he does.

And that shame—that disgust—is worse than anything they’ve done to him.

Worse than the needles. Worse than the iron lung. Worse than the green, blue, yellow—whatever fucking colour it is—serum burning through his veins like acid.

Worse than the chair. The dark. 

Because it means something in him is breaking.

No—has already broken.

He clenches his jaw so tight his teeth creak. They heal over just as quickly. 

He doesn’t respond.

Doesn’t look at Zola.

But the words linger—too heavy to ignore.

“I’m proud of you.”

Like he’s something to be proud of.

And God help him—somewhere deep, in the quietest, most desperate part of himself—he wants to hear it again.

He doesn’t leave the table much anymore.

The cell—the rat gnawing at his toes, the scratched tally marks in the wall—feels like a distant memory. Something that belonged to a different man, just like the opera houses and the giggling of three little girls, and in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

This table is his home now. The straps around his wrists, the tubes in his veins. They carry him from room to room, never unstrapping him unless they need to measure him, weigh him, open him up and see what’s inside. His stomach has staples in it. His intestines feel ravished by worms. 

Zola’s been skipping steps, growing impatient. His notes have become shorter, his voice sharper. He keeps rushing, trying to condense months of suffering into weeks, days.

And it keeps killing them.

The last one died an hour ago.

Bucky watched.

Watched Zola rage over the corpse like a petulant child, kicking at the table, shouting at his assistants, pacing like a man on borrowed time.

He knows something is coming. Bucky heard the guards talking—his German is better now, sharpened by necessity. He pretends to be unconscious, waits for the guards to mutter near his door—Obergruppenführer—and Zola is anxious, which is new. 

The name means nothing to Bucky.

Neither does the man who just died.

He didn’t learn his name. Didn’t care to.

No point.

They always die.

And the—

The—

The machine clicks, resetting.

Blue light flares. Hornets scream. 

They’re eating it all away, all that makes him human. 

Zola watches. His hands tremble today. He botches stitches on the poor bastard strapped down just across from Bucky, a sandy-haired solider who has been here for maybe—days? weeks? months?—not long enough. The man is screaming, but Bucky barely listens. His own head is too full of old words

Community, Identity, Stability

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

Over the main entrance the words…

Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.

Jim said that bees won't sting idiots, but I didn't believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn't sting me.

Sting. Sting. Sting. 

The bees. The wasps—the hornets . 

The soldier chokes mid-scream. Stops. Bucky rolls his head toward the sound, blinking slowly, dazed. The body is still. Mouth agape, face gnarled open, but the chest doesn’t rise anymore. Zola makes a noise of utter frustration, something too human for the monster Bucky knows him to be. He rips off his gloves, smears his forehead with blood as he drags a hand down his face. His assistant steps back, wary, as Zola swears, kicking the table leg hard enough to rattle instruments. The guards shift in discomfort. No one likes to see the doctor lose control.

He doesn’t bother to cut this one open. Doesn’t study what went wrong. Just snaps his fingers at the guards.

Throw him in the furnace. 

The body is gone before Bucky’s brain catches up.

Bucky doesn’t know when he became the last one.

It must’ve happened gradually—one by one, the other subjects vanishing from their cells, from the tables, from the screams that echoed through the halls. At some point, the morgue filled up. Then the furnace did, too.

He wonders if…what was his name? He worked corpse duty. 

Frenchie.

He wonders if he’s been waiting for him to turn up. If he mistook some other poor soldier as him, with his eyes and tongue and teeth ripped out. Dissolved of all recognition. 

It’s a fleeting thought—one soon absorbed by the buzzing and static and the fire in his chest that burns with every breath. 

Now, it’s just him.

Zola’s only success. His favourite.

It’s not an honor. It’s a goddamn curse.

“Tell me what you remember, Sergeant.”

Bucky’s fingers twitch against the restraints. He tries to blink, but his left eye won’t close against the light. I can’t see, I can’t see—did they take my eye—? fuck, did they take out my—

But it’s just his muscles, they’ve locked up again. 

The opera houses.

The grand ceilings.

The sound of an orchestra tuning—Steve’s too-loud whisper, What’s the point of all the fiddling? Can’t they just start playing?

Bucky exhales, it’s not a breath but a rasp. Shredded raw. “Go fuck yourself.”

Zola sighs, feigning disappointment. “Now, now, Sergeant. There is no need for hostility.”

The current spikes.

Bucky jerks, his skull rattling against the table, feels it all the way through his teeth. He swallows a groan. The pain is a tide pulling him under, devouring him whole, and the hornets—God, they’re in his spine now, crawling, burrowing, scratching against his vertebrae like they’re trying to crack through the bone. So that they can feast upon every single part of him. Sparing nothing. Those greedy fucking hornets.

His body vibrates against the table, tension bleeding into the metal restraints. The bolts bleeding around his wrists. He doesn’t know if he’s shivering or seizing.

Opera houses.

His mother’s perfume.

Steve’s small hand in his.

The memories flicker, shuddering between static and clarity, there and gone before he can hold onto them.

Zola leans over him, expression unreadable.

“And what about Colonel Romanov?”

Who? Who? 

Bucky’s whole body locks up again.

Static.

Nikolai? Laughing, rolling his eyes. “You are not invincible.” A scoff, teasing. “Yet.”

Three fingers.

Then, only one. 

Foam and blood.

A body hitting the ground like a sack of grain.

His mouth moves before he can stop it. “I don’t know.” The lie scrapes against his throat like broken glass.

Zola hums. He believes it this time. Nonetheless: “Gut. Again.”

The machine whines, and the hornets settle deeper into his skull.

Noise. Sticks in his skull, trying to tunnel in and stay there forever. 

Lips move but words don’t make sense, don’t fit together. They’re chewed-up, spat-out, half-things

“…numb…”

“…too loud..”

“…stop, stop, stopstopstopstopstop…”

Please, stop. Please, please, please. I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll be good. 

The blue light pulses.

Who’s speaking?

Who?

Who?

The hum of the machine rises, spirals, splits apart.

Barnes.

Sergeant.

No, no, no.

Steve—?

—forgot something—

—forgot—

—forgot—

His throat seizes up. The hornets drill deeper.

Something touches his face. Fingers, pressing into his jaw. Holding him still.

A voice, thick with warmth, false, too sweet, like syrup dripping from a spoon. “Good boy.”

His stomach twists.

Teeth flash in the dark. A grin.

Zola.

He breathes a little easier.

And doesn’t remember why he hates that so much. 

He is always on the table now.

The cell—the rat chewing at his toes, the scratched tally marks, the stink of damp stone—he misses it, and then forgets, and then misses it again. It belonged to Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038. Not Subject #86. Not him.

The guards cut his hair, hacking off chunks of greasy, tangled strands. The scraps itch his skin. He wonders, absently, if they’ll burn this too. If Zola will keep his bones when he dies, will mount them in the lab like the others.

He doesn’t eat anymore.

It makes Zola nervous. His golden boy, his greatest success, his proof of concept, wilting in front of him. Bucky sees the worry in his face, the crease in his brow, even when he prods at Bucky’s ribs and they’re till meaty. His stomach wastes away, but it’s full, not hollow—he’s starving and yet he doesn’t thin. He’s a monster. But even monsters need food. Need the energy for the serum to take hold, to heal. They stick a tube down his nose, into his stomach. He gags around it at first, heaving up sloppy paste. They shove it back down. Force him to swallow his own bile. Then it becomes normal. Like everything else down here. His bones get thicker, his muscles spasm, then harden. His blood turns sour. 

“We must be sure,” Zola murmurs, pulling off Bucky’s shoes.

Bucky watches through the haze as Zola slices into the soles of his feet, from heel to toe. The scalpel glides with precision, careful, calculating. He contemplates a toe but decides against it. The guards take out cigarettes, press them to Bucky’s hip. He doesn’t flinch. Can barely muster the energy to. 

They catalogue it. The burns take longer than the scalpel to scar over. They make adjustments, they try again. The burns look like bruises now. 

They wrap him in dirty bandages. “We don’t want the rats getting at them again.”

Bucky barely breathes. Tastes the blood, the little tiny rodent bones. Gnawing, gnawing on his big toe. 

Zola gives him a shot—the kind that makes the stars explode behind his eyelids—and another, a serum, thicker, darker than before. Slowing down his heart, filling his body up with tar. 

When Zola steps back, his gloves are sticky with blood.

The Obergruppenführer is here, Doctor.

Zola sighs, peeling off his gloves. “Ah yes, I better go see to him then.”

Bucky watches him leave. His vision swims. The world narrows to the ceiling beams above his head, to the endless hum of the machine still running behind him, to the blood cooling on his skin, the terrible whine of the cameras in the corner. He hears everything these days. Even the ants in the walls. The scratches of bloodied fingernails. But mostly, it’s the buzzing. 

He blinks. 

Zola’s gone. 

He doesn’t know if that means he’s won. Or if he’s just the last loose end left to tie up.

Then he’s gone. 

32557038

3255703

325570

32557

3255

325

32

3.

When he comes back to himself, he’s shaking. There’s so much noise. Loud crashes and booms, shouting, metal clanging against metal, boots pounding against concrete, the frantic scrape of chairs dragging back from desks as figures scatter, shouting. 

The researchers flee. Racing towards the snow. Outside. He forgot there was an outside. 

They abandon him to the table, still pumping poison into his veins, heart going pit pit pit, like a clock winding down. 

Somewhere in the blur of it all, he feels himself mumbling, lips moving without his permission. It’s automatic, like breathing. He remembers his name. His rank. His serial number. It spills like a plea—he remembers. 

“Barnes. Sergeant. 3-2-5—”

A voice. Too close.

He flinches, breath catching as hands—hands—settle on his shoulders. They press firm, grounding, anchoring him to something that shouldn’t exist. Something that isn’t the machine, or the needle, or the steel table under his spine. He panics, thrashing out, trying to heave his limbs from tightened leather, the metal bolts pinning his palms and wrists to metal. 

Like he’s been goddamn crucified. 

Then, suddenly he stills. 

It’s pointless. 

“Bucky.”

The voice cracks on his name.

“It’s me. It’s Steve.”

He keeps chanting, barely aware of his own voice, barely aware of the way his body shakes. 

“3-2-5-5-7—”

“Bucky, hey—” A hand shifts to his jaw, cupping his face, tilting it up—too gentle, too real.

He blinks, and the world swims.

A face above him, cut from golden light, framed in the glow of a halo—too bright, too bright, too bright—

“I’m getting you out of here.”

Oh. His breath catches in his throat. His pulse slows.

Relief. 

It’s over.

Death has finally claimed him.

And Steve’s—

Stevie’s come to send him off. 

Chapter Text

November 1943, Geneva, Switzerland 

The news spread fast—HYDRA has wiped out the 107th Infantry Regiment at Azzano. And they’re not looking for survivors. Because there are no survivors. The moment Steve hears it, the world narrows to a single, ringing silence. His mind goes foggy, panic seizing his limbs. It doesn’t feel real. 

And then, part of it sinks. A stone of pure dread lancing down his throat, making his gut clench. 

He sprints through the camp, shoving past stunned soldiers, barely registering the sneers or curses thrown his way. His heart hammers. Someone grabs his arm, maybe trying to slow him down, but he wrenches free and keeps running. 

He burst into Colonel Phillips’ tent without so much as an announcement. The air inside is thick with cigar smoke, the stale scent clinging to the walls as he rolls it around his tongue, puffs out a cloud of tobacco right into Steve’s face. Before the serum, that would’ve sent him into a coughing fit, gasping for his inhaler. Now, it just pisses him off. 

“Respectfully, what the fuck?” A beat. “Sir,” he adds, with mocking grace.

Phillips doesn’t even look surprised. Just tired, like he’s about to placate a child. 

This isn’t a battle to him. Just another casualty report. Another day in the war. It happens all the time, Bucky’s unit is no different. He watches Steve with something that isn’t quite sympathy, but isn’t cold indifference either. More like the kind of resignation that only comes from years of making impossible decision. The kind that weigh on a man long after the war is over. 

“Sergeant James Barnes,” he says finally, unprompted. “Status unknown. Likely K.I.A.”

Unknown. Likely. But not confirmed dead. Not confirmed anything. 

It’s enough. 

“He’s alive,” Steve says, with all the conviction in his body. 

It’s a slim chance. But a chance nonetheless. And Steve knows it. Like he knows which way is up and that the sky is blue and how to say grace before each meal. 

He hasn’t heard from Bucky in weeks. Too long. Long enough for the silence to twist into something ugly, gnawing at the back of his mind. But Bucky’s always been the one pulling Steve out of trouble—isn’t it about time he returns the favour? He can’t die before then. He can’t. The days stretched on, the letters stopped coming. And still, he knows. 

Phillips doesn’t flinch. “Rogers—”

“Don’t,” Steve snaps. “You don’t know.”

For a long moment, neither of them speak again. The air gets denser, but not because of the smoke. The only sound belongs to the faint crackle of the cigar burning low. 

Then, Phillips sighs. He puts it out. Runs a tired hand over his face. “Look, Rogers. I get it. You want to believe he made it. Hell, I hope he made it. But we lost over two hundred men in Azzano. There’s no way of knowing who got out and who didn’t.”

“You haven’t even tried to know.” Steve’s voice shakes. It’s not grief—you can’t grieve someone when they’re still alive. He’s alive. “You’re just leaving them there.” Leaving him there. “To die.”

Steve can tell Phillips patience is running thin, but he doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t snap back. “You think I enjoy this?” He gestures at the stacks of reports littering his desk, casualty lists long enough to stretch a mile. “Every time we send men into enemy territory, I have to calculate whether it’s worth more lives. I can’trisk hundreds of soldiers for a rescue mission that, statically, won’t succeed.” 

Steve’s jaw clenches. “I’m not asking for hundreds. Just me.”

Phillips exhales, eyes flicking over Steve like he’s trying to decide if there’s anything he can say to make him understand. “You go in there alone,” he says lowly, “you’re not coming back either.”

Steve doesn’t blink. “Then I don’t come back.”

It’s not like he’ll be sacrificing anything, prancing around like a circus monkey all day. 

Phillips studies him for a long moment. Then, finally, he leans back in his chair, shaking his head. It’s not an agreement, and they both know that that won’t stop Steve anyway. “You’re a goddamn fool, Rogers.”

Steve squares his shoulders. “I’m done being your chorus boy.”

Then—“And that’s Captain Rogers”—

Before he turns and walks out.

Steve doesn’t stop moving. His legs are running faster than his mind, which is still a first. Something he’s hardly gotten used to yet. He needs to focus, come up with a plan. A way in. 

“That went well.”

He turns sharply. Agent Carter stands near a supply crate, arms crossed, watching him with something between amusement and understanding. 

“You knew?” he asks, suddenly betrayed. 

“I know you,” she corrects. “And I know you’re not going to let this go.”

“I can’t.”

Peggy studies him, her gaze steady, assessing. Then she nods toward a nearby supply tent. “Come with me.”

Inside, the dim lantern casts long shadows over crates of stolen HYDRA weaponry. Peggy moves without hesitation, cracking one open and pulling out his shield. She turns, pressing it firmly into his hands.

“If you’re going to do this,” she says, voice even, “do it right.”

Steve swallows hard. “Thank you.”

Peggy straightens, glancing toward the exit. “I have one more favour to call in.”

The hum of the plane’s engines does little to settle Steve’s nerves. He grips the edge of his seat, eyes fixed ahead, though his mind is already miles away—thirty miles, to be exact. Behind enemy lines. 

Howard Stark adjusts the controls, exuding the effortless confidence of a man who’s never doubted his own genius. Beside him, Peggy sits poised, watching Steve with that unreadable gaze of hers. 

“You look like you’re ‘bout to be sick, Cap,” Stark comments. “If you puke in my plane, I’m dropping you early.”

Steve exhales sharply through his nose. “Not gonna puke.”

Peggy tilts her head. “You sure? You’ve got that look.”

Steve rubs a hand over his face. His stomach is in knots. And sure, sue him, he’s never been on a plane before. But it’s not the flight that makes him feel sick, or even the mission. It’s Bucky. The thought of what he might find—what he might not find. He forces it down.

Peggy must know it. Of course she does, she’s trained to be observant. “Hemeans a great deal to you.”

Something about the way she says it—soft, assured, without the slightest trace of a question—makes Steve’s breath hitch. His grip tightens on his shield. He forces himself to look ahead, to keep his expression even. But Peggy isn’t fooled. 

“You know,” she continues lightly. “I always did wonder why a man like Sergeant Barnes never seemed to have a girl waiting on him back home. Or why you never mentioned any, either.”

Steve swallows. His mouth goes dry. “Peggy—”

She offers him the barest hint of a smile. “Don’t worry, Steve. You don’t have to say anything.” A beat. “Just bring him home.”

From the cockpit, Stark grins, yelling over the heavy drone of the engines. “You do realise this is a terrible plan, right?”

Steve straps his shield to his back. “Yeah.”

Stark shakes his head, muttering something about reckless soldiers and terrible ideas, but he doesn’t turn the plane around.

Before any of them can respond anymore, the plane jerks violently—rapid gunfire, a flare of orange light painting the windows black. Stark curses, gripping the controls. “Alright, Cap, this is your stop!”

Steve moves toward the hatch. Peggy follows, more serious now. “Be safe.”

Stave glances at her, then the ground rushing far below. “I’ll try.”

Peggy nods once, then places a hand on his shoulder, steady and firm. When she lets go, it feels like something’s slipped through her fingers before she’s ready to lose it. Steve can tell this isn’t an easy decision for her, and he appreciates it all the more because of it. “Good luck, Steve.”

Before he can second-guess it, he steps out into the night. 

November 1943, Kreischberg, Austria

Steve hits the ground running. The wind rushes past his ears as he rolls into the dirt, boots digging in for traction. He barely stops to get his bearings—he knows exactly where he’s going. 

A HYDRA convoy rumbles in the distance. 

He hunches low, stalking through the brush until the lead truck slows just enough for him to launch himself onto the side. He swings up, grip tightening on the metal frame, and hauls himself into the cargo hold. 

Two guards inside. 

They don’t even have time to react before Steve drives a fist into the first one’s jaw, knocking him out cold. The second reaches for his weapon, but Steve slams him against the wall, yanking the rifle away before tossing him down in a heap. The truck keeps moving, unaware. 

When they finally reach the fortress, Steve tenses, presses himself against the interior. He listens as the truck slows at the gate, an approaching guard barking something in German. Footsteps crunch on gravel. 

The tarp lifts. Steve’s shield immediately slams into the HYDRA soldier’s face. He crumples. Steve catches him before he can hit the ground, lowering him gently, then slips out and into the shadows before the other guards can notice. 

So far, so good. 

He moves quickly, skirting along the perimeter, using the noise of moving machinery and barking orders to mask his approach. A guard rounds the corner—Steve knocks him out cold before he can even reach for his gun. He keeps going. 

Inside, the facility hums with something…unnatural. The faint blue glow of HYDRA’s stolen Tesseract pulses from the very walls, beckoning him forward. Steve hesitates for a moment. Keeps moving. 

Then, finally, he finds them. 

Rows of metal-barred cells stretch along the hall. Prisoners—dozens of them, bruised and battered—snap their heads up at the sound of approaching footsteps. Steve moves to the closest lock, fingers clutching around the bars.

A man with a thick moustache steps forward. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

Steve slams the lock open with a single strike of his shield. “I’m Captain America.”

Silence.

Then, someone laughs—short, disbelieving.

“Well, Captain,” the man says, rubbing his wrists as he steps free. “You got a plan, or was this a one-way trip?”

Steve ignores him, his eyes scanning the cell. His chest is tight. Too many faces, too much movement. None of them the one he’s looking for.

Bucky isn’t here.

His pulse kicks up, something frantic rising in his throat. He turns, searching the mass of soldiers for a familiar face. “Where’s Sergeant Barnes?” His voice comes out sharper than intended, tight with urgency. “Was he with you?”

The moment stretches too long. No one answers right away.

Then, one of the soldiers steps forward, his face grim. He doesn’t quite meet Steve’s eyes. 

“They took him.” Southern accent—reminds him of the old kid from North Carolina at his school who’d bring cobbler and barbecue for lunch. 

Steve’s stomach drops. “Where?”

Another pause.

The moustached man shakes his head. “No one comes back from where they take you.”

Steve’s vision tunnels. His breath feels too short, his fingers tightening involuntarily around his shield strap.

They think he’s dead.

But they don’t know.

Steve knows.

He swallows against the lump in his throat, jaw set. “Which way?”

The man hesitates, then jerks his head toward a corridor deeper in the fortress. “Labs. Down that way.”

It’s all Steve needs to hear. “Can you fight?”

A few grim chuckles ripple through the crowd.

“Hell yeah, we can fight,” the Japanese-American answers, stepping up beside the other two. 

“Oh yeah,” chimes in South. “ I’ve knocked out Adolf Hitler over two hundred times.”

Steve nods, stifles a laugh. “Good. Get out fast and give 'em hell. I'll meet you guys in the clearing with anybody else I find.”

With Bucky, goes unsaid. 

He turns without another word, shoving past the others, his heart hammering as he moves. Bucky’s here. He knows it. He knows. 

And Steve isn’t leaving without him.

He weaves through the labyrinthine corridors of the HYDRA base. The sounds of gunfire and shouting are distant, muffled by the thick walls, but he trusts the others are still fighting their wait out. He doesn’t stop, ripping doors upon doors off their hinges. A grimy cell, another that smells of urine and blood, another and another—and nothing. Not even HYDRA soldiers. It sets him on edge. 

Then—movement ahead.

A hunched figure hurries through a doorway, lab coat billowing behind him. Steve barely catches a glimpse of thick-rimmed glasses before he disappears down another corridor, clutching a bundle of documents like his life depends on it. It likely does. 

Steve could chase him. Could drag him back and demand to know where Bucky is. But the door Zola just came from is still ajar, and something in his gut twists. 

He steps inside.

The air is stale. Chemical. Rancid, like curdled milk. Dim light flickers from an overhead lamp, casting erratic shadows along the steel walls. And there—at the center of the room—is Bucky.

Nailed to a table. 

Steve’s breath stutters. His hands shake.

Bucky is deathly still, secured by thick leather restraints at his wrists and ankles, iron nails piercing straight through his hands and feet. There’s a sickly sheen of seat over his too-pale skin, bruises blooming along his jaw and arms. His dog tags hang loosely against his collarbone, a stark contrast to the HYDRA insignia stamped into the machinery surrounding him. 

They’ve been experimenting on him, he realises starkly. 

Steve forces himself to move. He doesn’t have time to fall apart—Bucky needs him, there’s a whole legion of escaped prisoners who need him. But the closer he gets, the more details he takes in—needles discarded in a tray, metal bite guards, blood, so much blood, leftover documents scattered across the room, detailing so much that he can’t even begin to process it. Some of them have names, numbers, medical jargon he barely understands. Some have…pictures. 

Next to the papers, rolls of camera film glint under the dim light. Evidence.

Steve swipes them, shoving them into his belt before reaching for the restraints. He doesn’t even know where to begin. Who does something like this?

“Buck,” he breathes. His fingers tremble as he unfastens the first strap, then the next. Start with the easy stuff first, Rogers. “Come on, pal. You with me?”

Bucky stirs. 

His brow furrows slightly, lips parting, a quiet sound escaping—hoarse disoriented.

“3-2-5-5-7—”

“Bucky, hey—” Steve cradles his jaw, cups his face, rubs a gentle thumb on his cheekbone. “It’s me, Steve.”

His eyes crack open, blinking up sluggishly. “…Stevie?” His voice is barely above a whisper. 

Steve lets out something between a laugh and a breath of relief. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”

Bucky’s gaze drifts, unfocused. He blinks, his expression flickering through confusion, disbelief, relief—then something oddly amused. Mostly disoriented. “You’re…so tall,” he murmurs. 

Steve laughs, a wet, broken sound, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. Get him out first, have a break down later. “Yeah, well. Had a lot of milk.”

The last restraint comes free. Steve winces. “I gotta take these out.”

Bucky travels Steve’s gaze to his wrists, angry and red and mottled over. The nails look like holes, etched into his skin. “Right. Yeah. Okay.”

Steve swallows hard, steeling himself more than Bucky seems to be. 

How many times have they done this to him?

The sight of him—mangled like this, torn apart and put back together, bleeding from his hands and eyes and head. Something inside Steve cracks open, but he doesn’t have time for it to bleed too. 

Carefully, he grips Bucky’s wrist, finger ghosting over bruised skin. “On three, alright?”

Bucky huffs, barely a laugh, weak and rasping. “You’re still counting?”

“Always.” Steve exhales. “One—“

He yanks the nail free before he gets to two. 

Bucky jerks, sucking in a sharp breath, but he doesn’t scream. His entire body locks up, muscles seizing in pain, but his jaw stays clenched tight. His eyes go foggy for a moment. 

Steve grits his teeth. “Sorry. I had to.”

Bucky lets out a slow, shuddering breath. “Jesus, Rogers,” he mutters, dazed.

Steve moves to the next one. “You’re doing great, Buck,” he murmurs. “Almost done.”

The footsteps grow louder, the shouting more urgent. He needs to hurry up. 

The next one comes out cleaner, a slick, awful sound filling the room. Then the next. And the next. 

By the time Steve pulls the last nail from his foot, Bucky’s shaking like a leaf, sweat-damp hair sticking to his forehead. They cut it. They shaved his face too. Why? Bucky slumps forward, too weak to hold himself up. Steve catches him, grips his shoulders. Bucky’s head droops forward, eyes barely staying open. 

“Hey, I got you,” Steve whispers. “You with me?”

Bucky licks his lips, nodding faintly. “Yeah,” he rasps. “Take me to the pearly gates already, punk.”

Steve laughs, makes little of it. He cradles the back of Bucky’s head, brings him in close. They don’t have time, and yet there’s still time for this. He wonders when the last time Bucky felt a kind touch in this hellhole, and hugs tighter. 

Bucky’s fingers twitch, then lift—slow, hesitant, like he’s afraid of what he might find. His hand brushes Steve’s cheek, fingertips ghosting over his skin, then up, tracing the short-cropped hair at his temple. 

Steve barely breathes.

Bucky exhales, a shaky thing that almost isn’t there. His hand lingers, trembling. “…You real?” His voice is rough, delirious and thick. Like it’s wading through syrup. 

Steve’s throat goes tight. He catches Bucky’s wrist, pressing his palm against his own cheek, careful of his wounds. His eyes burn, and damn it, he can’t stop the tear that slips free.

“‘Course I’m real,” he chokes out. “I’m getting you out.”

Bucky blinks at him like he’s trying to memorise every detail of his face. His lips part, like he wants to say something—but whatever it is, it never comes. He just nods, barely, and lets Steve hold onto him.

Steve swallows hard, gripping Bucky’s arm a little tighter. “Think you can walk?”

Bucky breathes out sharply—a clearer laugh. “Does it…look like I can walk?”

Steve huffs, lips twitching despite himself. Even still, Bucky can crack a joke. “Alright, dumb question.” He ducks, throwing Bucky’s arm over his shoulder. “Let’s get you out of here.”

The hallway outside is chaos—sirens blaring, the glow of fire flickering against metal walls. Steve presses himself against the doorframe, scanning the area, watches a squad of soldiers run to the other side of the building. He steps out.

“Hold on,” he mutters, before hoisting Bucky up into a fireman’s carry.

Bucky groans in protest, weakly batting at his back. “Put me down, you jackass.”

Steve smiles, despite everything. “Faster this way.”

He pushes forward, moving fast. The prisoners should be outside by now. He follows the escape route in his head, the map Peggy had slipped into his hand and which he had memorised only hours later. His muscles burn under Bucky’s weight but he doesn’t falter.

They turn a corner and nearly crash into Moustache and South. Damn, Steve really needs to get their names. 

“Cap!” Moustache’s face lights up in relief before his eyes land on Bucky. His expression twists. “Jesus. You found him.”

Steve nods sharply. 

“We took out the guards at the main entrance,” South says. “Got the rest of the prisoners out. Now we gotta reach the watchtowers before they gun us all down out there.” He doesn’t look at Bucky, doesn’t ask if he’s alive. It’s better to assume. 

“Frenchie and and our favourite Tommy are on their way to steal a tank.”

What? 

Steve adjusts his grip, doesn’t have time to make sense of their words. “Then let’s move.”

They push forward, weaving through the wreckage of the base. The closer they get to the exit, the heavier Bucky feels against Steve’s back.

“Still with me, Buck?” he asks, shifting him slightly.

Bucky hums against his shoulder. “M’not dead?”

Steve grits his teeth, ignores the way it sounds like a question. “Yeah, Buck. Let’s keep it that way.”

The chaos works in their favour. Flames lick at the rafters, burning oil and scorched flesh makes its own layer of thick air, obscuring most of their movements. The further they go, the more bodies they pass—HYDRA soldiers—either unconscious or…burning. Burning alive. Some still groan, scream, twitching in pain, while others have long gone still. Steve steps over them without hesitation, trying to find a way through that hasn’t erupted into fire. 

He can hear the distant hum of something loud outside, its engine revving. 

His arms burn, but he doesn’t let go. “South, can you give us cover?”

The man laughs, but he’s already raising a Thompson. “South, really?”

“What? Not like there was time to catch a name.”

“Jones,” he smirks.

“Dugan,” Moustache adds unprompted. 

“Right, Jones, cover our sixth. Dugan, make sure no one shoots Bucky.”

“Feels like I got the harder of the two,” Dugan grumbles, but he’s already raising a stolen HYDRA gun. 

They find the spiral metal staircase of the first tower, climbing it two steps at a time. The HYDRA solider still stationed at the top doesn’t even have a chance. He’s slammed into the railing by Steve’s shield, sending him tumbling down and down and down, until splat. 

Jones, right behind him, grabs the second guard and throws him into the floorboards. A gunshot rings out. 

Steve crouches at the railing, scanning the battlefield. A massive explosion rips through the east wing. The second watchtower goes up in flames. A large group of prisoners sprint towards the treeline, a trail of wheeled HYDRA halftracks following them. But no, not enemies. They load up soldiers too injured to walk, speed away whilst firing bloody murder towards the base. 

Dugan lets out a sharp laugh. “Frenchie came through!”

“Never doubted ‘im,” Jones grins. 

With the second watchtower down, their jobs just became a whole lot easier. “We need to push through before they regroup!” Steve orders. 

But they already hear several footsteps stomping up the stairs, and they sound angry. 

Steve spins, raising up his shield. He glances towards the shield-sized hole. Shoots the rest of them a knowing look.

“Oh, come on,” Dugan groans, but he doesn’t hesitate. Using his gun, he smashes at the rest of the glass and stone, getting out a good super solider-sized hole. 

Gunfire begins to echo along the stairwell. A bullet pings off vibranium. Jones returns fire. 

Another explosion. From outside. The tank shoots bright blue light towards the barracks, and Steve watches, in both awe and horror, how the HYDRA soldiers vaporise into nothing. 

More prisoners break through, climbing over barbed wire, jumping onto moving halftracks. 

“Alright,” Steve breathes, tightening his grip on Bucky. Time for phase two. 

He stares down at the thirty-foot drop, finds the pallets protruding from the tower, a slow, albeit painful, descent that hopefully won’t break any of their bones. Then, at the bottom, he spots a stack of supply crates—washed uniforms, bedding, something that might soften the rest of the fall from the tower’s pallets. It’s their best shot. 

Jones makes a cross over his chest, looking up towards the sky. “God, help me, this Captain is fuckin’ nuts.”

Steve barely laughs. “I’ll go first.” He reluctantly hands Bucky over to them, supporting his head as it lolls uncomfortably forward. “Almost there,” Steve mutters. “Just a little longer, pal.”

Bucky shifts against their grip, a low, incoherent mumble escaping his lips. His body is limp, slumping heavier by the second. He’s slipping again. Steve can feel it in the way Bucky’s fingers barely hold on, how his breath comes too slow, too shallow.

“Drop him down after my order. I’ll catch him.”

There’s no doubt in his voice. 

Dugan nods. 

The rapid stomps increase. More HYDRA soldiers, replacing the last ones. 

He adjusts his grip on his shield, steps up onto the ledge, and jumps. 

For a breathless moment, the world is nothing but weightlessness and the distant thunder of battle. Then—the first impact. 

Steve crashes down onto the pallet shield-up, he doesn’t want to break the damn support-beams, but the wood splinters underneath his weight anyway. The rest of the stone holds. Steve winces.

“Clear!” he shouts. “Drop him!”

Dugan and Jones exchange a look, then a shrug.

Jones is the first to move, adjusting Bucky’s dead weight. “You better catch him, Rogers, or I’m haunting your ass from the grave.”

Steve grits his teeth. “Just do it.”

They drop Bucky over the ledge.

His heart pounds, rushes through his ears, pulses in his throat. 

The impact knocks the wind out of him. Bucky’s weight slams into his arms, but Steve takes the full brunt of the fall, twisting so that Bucky lands on top of him instead of the other way around.

Bucky groans, sluggishly rolling off him. Steve doubts he’s aware enough to even register what just happened. 

Jones is next. He lands with a grunt, tucking into a rough roll. 

Dugan follows, not nearly as graceful, crashing down and cursing loudly. 

More bullets tear through the air above them. HYDRA’s not letting them go that easy. 

But, Steve has a shield made of invulnerable, space metal—so quite frankly, fuck them. 

They make their descent, following the same pattern, until they’re landing into the supply crate with muffled groans. The impact rattles through Steve’s bones, so he can only imagine what it must be like for the non-super-soldier-ified, but they both get up quickly, so hopefully no severe injuries. 

Bucky groans, coughing weakly. “Stevie, I think I’m gonna—”

“Don’t throw up,” Steve pleads. 

Dugan and Jones roll out and into the dirt, weapons raised. 

Jones peeks out from behind the cover of the tower’s wall. “Okay, we’ve got about thirty seconds before HYDRA figures out where we’ve landed.”

Steve glances up at the shattered windows. Someone is staring down at them. Johann Schmidt, his mind supplies immediately. The flames cast sickly shadows over his unnatural skin, half of it human, half peeled open like an onion. It reveals bloody, bony cheekbones, a hole where his nose should be. Soldiers in goggled masks line behind him, but they don’t shoot. He’s ordered them not to—why? His features contort as he pulls off the remains of his human mask, the horrifying face of the Obergruppenführer. 

What the fuck?

Steve shudders. 

Dugan sees him and recoils. “What in the holy fuckin’ hell—”

“That ain’t human,” Jones mutters under his breath. 

Dugan shivers, looks away. Steels himself. “Where the hell’s our damn ride?”

A deafening boom answer him. 

From across the courtyard, the HYDRA tank explodes through the rubble, rolling forward like a mechanical beast. 

A man with weasely features, one hand on the wheel, waves wildly. “Get in!”

Jones grins. “About fucking time, Frenchie.”

They bolt toward the tank. Dugan and Jones grip Bucky’s arms, hoisting him between them whilst Steve covers. A fresh volley of shots slices through the smoke, forcing Steve to duck low. Another man inside the tank fires a few rounds in retaliation, taking out straggling soldiers, covering where he’s exposed. 

The tank keeps rolling forward, coming to a jarring halt just feet away from Steve. The hatch on top pops open. A man in a stolen HYDRA uniform leans out, grinning wide. “Oi, Captain America, I presume?”

Steve’s eyes narrow.

The man salutes him lazily, still smirking. He’s got a moustache, British accent, and doesn’t seem to care that he just obliterated an army of HYDRA soldiers. “James Montgomery Falsworth, at your service.”

Another soldier climbs out beside him. This one is younger, with a sharp jaw and a gleam of amusement in his eyes. He dusts himself off and nods. “Jim Morita,” he cocks his head, “Dernier’s driving.”

“Great, we’re all fucking acquainted, now let us inside the fucking tank!” Dugan yells. 

Falsworth huffs a smile. He and Morita reach out their hands to bring Bucky in first. Their muscles shake under his weight, dropping him unceremoniously onto the metal floor, causing him to moan in pain.

Steve sends over a death glare. 

“Sorry, sorry!”

Jones and Dugan hoist themselves in, Steve last, as he covers the final round of bullets. Falsworth vaults back inside the tank, locks the latch shut, already manning the cannon. 

They sprint forward. 

In front of him, Falsworth whoops from the passenger seat. “Now this is a bloody rescue mission!”

Steve slumps against the tank in relief. It’s not over yet, but the hard part is—he hopes. 

The turret of the tank swings behind them, firing a round straight into the metal foundation. The tower crumples like a house of cards. The HYDRA soldiers don’t even have time to react before their own artillery blows them to hell. But Steve knows that Schmidt is already gone, by then. 

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Dugan mutters. 

Steve doesn’t respond. He kneels, gently shifting Bucky off his back. He shivers violently, eyes fluttering open, showing only the whites of his eyes. His gaze finally focuses on him, pupils dilated, opaque and feverish. “Steve,” he rasps. His voice is dry and cracked, an awful, scratchy sound—like metal against chalkboard. “Tell me—tell me it’s real.”

Steve’s throat tightens. He cups Bucky’s face. “It’s real, Buck. I promise.”

Bucky just stares. Like he’s trying to convince himself of it, trying to pull himself out of whatever hell HYDRA left him in. 

Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s, just for a moment. 

Then, the tank fires again. It reverberates all through the metal, sending Bucky’s eyes rolling up once more. 

Dugan yells, “We’re outta time! We gotta move faster!”

“Putain, qu'est-ce que tu crois que je fais!” What the fuck do you think I’m doing?

“Well, took your French ass long enough!”

“Oh, pardon, did you want us to arrive quicker? Because I would love to see you drive one of these shits.”

Morita shrugs. “We could’ve gone faster.”

“Would you shut—”

The tank rocks forward, a blast hitting against the trunk. The metal dents, but it holds. 

He sees HYDRA forces in full retreat as the flames spread, the facility crumbling behind them. The last truck barely makes it out as fire blooms in the rearview mirror, the entire HYDRA fortress engulfed in an earth-shaking explosion. 

“And there goes the dynamite,” Falsworth grins. 

“You sneaky, fuckin’ bastard,” Jones laughs, like it’s some kind of inside joke. 

Steve turns back once. He watches the fire ravage everything—the prison, the laboratories—all the awful rooms that nearly took Bucky from him. 

And then, finally, he lets himself breathe. 

“You did it, Cap,” Morita says, half-laughing. “Helluva show.”

Steve swallows, glancing at Bucky, still pale and feverish beside him. 

“Not yet,” he says quietly. “We get them home first. Then it’s done.”

The convoy continues into the night. 

The truck jostles over uneven ground, each bump sending a fresh wave of pain through Bucky’s already battered body. The cold air bites at his exposed skin, but it barely registers. His fingers twitch against his knees—he counts his fingers—one, two, hah three, fuck you—curled so tightly his knuckles go white. He keeps staring at his hands. At his wrists. The holes that cut through his bones. 

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. 

The others must notice, but no one knows what to do. 

Dugan, usually the first to crack a joke, watches him warily from across the truck bed, just as quiet, fingers drumming against his knee. Jones keeps his distance. Morita keeps glancing over, like he’s waiting for the right moment to say something. Dernier and Falsworth have the excuse of the road, keeping their eyes distracted. 

But Bucky just sits there, still as stone. He can feel the lesions on his feet, ripped open and bloody after stepping on them before they could properly heal. The buzzing in his ears won’t stop.

Steve shifts beside him. “You need anything?”

Bucky blinks, then shakes his head. It’s barely a movement, just enough to register. Steve doesn’t push.

Minutes pass. Then—

“Steve,” Bucky says, his throat bobbing, barely a whisper. “Is this real?” he repeats. It’s all he’s said since they exited the prison. 

Steve turns fully, giving him his full attention. It’s a stab to the chest every time he hears it.  “Yeah, Buck. It’s real.”

Bucky’s hands tighten in his lap. His breath shudders out. “Prove it.”

Steve doesn’t hesitate. He reaches out, takes Bucky’s hand, and presses it against his own chest. Right over his heart. “Feel that?” he says softly.

Bucky’s fingers twitch. He presses harder, like he’s expecting something to disappear. Then his gaze drags upward, meeting Steve’s eyes.

“…It’s real,” Steve repeats, squeezing his hand.

Bucky swallows. He nods, barely.

But then, something shifts.

He flinches away, suddenly ripping his hand back. His breathing speeds up. His muscles go rigid. His gaze flickers wildly between the men in the truck, chest rising and falling too fast.

“You’re safe,” Steve reassures quickly, instinctively.

Bucky doesn’t respond. His jaw clenches.

Too many people. Too many eyes on him.

They’re watching. Observing. Evaluating. Waiting.

He doesn’t want them to touch him. Doesn’t want their pity.

His stomach twists. He’s hungry. Starving. But he doesn’t ask. What if they don’t let me eat? What if they take it away just to see what happens?

The fear gnaws at his ribs—like the rat. He clenches his fists so hard his nails dig into his palms. The memory of it lurks in his bones. He wishes for the chair—to forget. 

And then, just as quickly—

A hand on his shoulder. Warm. Solid. Real. 

Steve. 

“Breathe, Buck,” Steve murmurs, barely above the hum of the truck’s engine. “You’re here. You’re safe.” He sighs, stroking his cheek. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

Safe. The world feels foreign. 

Bucky swallows hard. He doesn’t believe it. 

The convoy slows as they pull into a clearing, deep enough in the trees and far away enough to stay hidden. The wind is cold, crisp with the bite of an early winter, but after the hellish heat of fire and burning metal, it’s a welcome relief. 

Steve climbs down first, scanning the area before turning back to the truck bed. “Alright, headcount,” he calls, voice steady, commanding. 

The men shuffle out, slow-moving, exhaustion written in every moment. They’re quiet, subdued, the adrenaline of battle finally wearing off. A few soldiers move between them—they used to be medics—checking wounds, tightening bandages. 

They consolidate their rations. 

Bucky barely moves. 

“Come on, Buck.” Steve hops up, reaching for him, but Bucky hesitates. He stares blankly at the floor, fingers twitching, pressing repeatedly into the hole in his wrist. Steve stops him, holds his hand softly. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re only stopping for a bit. How about some fresh air?”

That seems to break something. Bucky nods faintly and lets Steve help him down. His legs shake beneath him, but he doesn’t fall. 

Dugan slaps the tank. “We’ll be here for an hour. Refuel, check wounds, eat. And for the love of God, if anyone sees a Kraut within twenty miles, shoot ‘em first, ask later.”

A few tired chuckles follow. 

Steve wraps a thick jacket around Bucky’s shoulders, then drapes a blanket over it. 

Still, he shakes. 

“Here,” Jones says, pressing a pack of biscuits and a bottle of water in Bucky’s hands. 

Food. 

His stomach clenches on instinct. 

Biscuits. Water. 

Bucky stares at them. His fingers tighten around the canteen before he even realises he’s holding it. The instinct takes over before the thought does, moving fast, always fast. 

The biscuits crumble between his fingers as he shoves them into his mouth in frantic, unsteady bites, not even tasting it. Throat working quickly—swallowing dry. The need to eat outweighs everything else. 

Steve sees it happen before Bucky does. “Hey—Buck, slow down—”

But Bucky jerks away. They’re going to take it away. 

Too fast. Too much. 

His stomach revolts immediately. Nausea claws up his throat, twisting sharp and violent. 

No, no, no—

He gags. Then retches. Barely turns away in time before he’s emptying what little he ate onto the frozen dirt. 

The sound is ugly, sharp, violent.

The others recoil slightly, not out of disgust, but out of uncertainty. Concern. 

Bucky coughs hard, ribs seizing, eyes squeezing shut as sweat slicks his forehead. His breathing comes in uneven shallow, hiccups. And he’s shaking so hard. He still feels it—the feeling of empty hunger ravishing his insides. The instinct to eat fast, before they take it away again. Before they pump him full of drugs and paste, make him swallow his own sick. 

Steve’s there in an instant, wrapping the blanket tighter around Bucky’s shoulders. “Easy,” he soothes, rubbing circles between Bucky’s shoulder blades. “Breathe. Just breathe. It’s okay.”

It isn’t okay. 

Steve strokes his hair, fingers carding through the shorter strands, whispering quiet reassurances. It reminds Bucky of something familiar, something he tries to claw from the back of his mind and fails. He leans into it anyways, just barely. Exhaustion weighs on him heavily. 

No one says a word.

The fire crackles in the center of their makeshift camp, embers drifting lazily into the cold, foggy air. Steve scrounges up the radio Peggy gave him, but it must’ve broken during the fight. All that comes from it is static. 

Steve sits near the edge of the circle, exhaustion settling deep. Across from him, Dugan leans back against a crate, hands behind his head. “So,” he drawls, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar. Where’d he even get that? “How much longer we got ’til they find out we stole half their goddamn arsenal?”

Morita smirks, adjusting his rifle. “If we’re lucky? A few more hours. If we’re not?” He shrugs. 

Jones, who’s fiddling with the radio, lets out a short laugh. “Well, let’s hope Lady Luck’s still on our side.”

Steve tilts his head toward the sound. “That working?

“Almost got it, Cap.” Jones twists a dial, wincing at the sharp burst of white noise before Peggy’s voice cuts through—firm, urgent, like she’s been saying it for hours. 

“Captain Rogers, report.”

A weight lifts from Steve’s chest. He reaches for the receiver. “We’re clear. We got them out.”

Silence. Then—

“…Thank God.” A shaky breath. The faintest hint of relief, controlled but present. “And Sergeant Barnes?”

Steve glances to his right. 

Bucky sits just outside the firelight, wrapped in his borrowed layers, staring at nothing. His fingers twitch, why do they keep twitching? This time, it’s against the hem of his sleeve, the movement restless, compulsive. His lips move soundlessly, as if repeating something over and over under his breath. 

Steve swallows. Turns back to the radio. “He’s alive.”

More silence. 

Then, softer—“Good.”

Morita lowers the volume, letting them breathe for a moment. 

Dugan shifts, rubbing his hands together. “We made it out, fellas,” he announces, as if saying it out loud might make it feel more real.

Jones scoffs. “Barely.”

Dugan taps his knuckles against Jones’ shoulder. “Hey, a win’s a win.”

A few of the other men chuckle, shaking with quiet laughter. It’s tired.

For a second, Steve allows himself to feel it. Part of the relief, the impossible weight of it all. They’ve done it. He saved him. He’d gotten there in time. 

He catches movement from the corner of his eye. 

The firelight flickers across Bucky’s face, pupils blown wide, lost in something only he can see, hands digging into the dirt until his fingers turn blue. 

Steve’s stomach twists. 

The laughter fades in the background. 

He shifts closer, careful and slow. He holds Bucky’s hand softly, drags it away from where he’s carved a hole in the frozen ground—how’d he even—?

Doesn’t matter. 

“Bucky?”

No response. 

Steve exhales through his nose. Doesn’t push. Just sits there, close enough to anchor him back. 

After several moments, Bucky blinks. His gaze snaps to Steve, sharp and hazy all at once. He frowns, as if seeing him for the first time. 

“…Stevie?”

Steve forces a small smile. “Yeah, Buck. I’m here.”

Bucky’s throat bobs. His hands tighten, then loosen. “About time, you bastard.”

A laugh punches out of him. “Yeah,” he says, gripping Bucky’s hand just a little tighter. “Took my sweet time, huh?”

Bucky blinks again, like he’s still catching up. His fingers twitch in Steve’s grasp, flexing slightly, like he’s testing if it’s real. Then, he squeezes his hand back. 

Steve doesn’t pull away. Just lets him hold on.

Across the fire, the rest of the men shift, trying to act casual, like they’re not all keeping a wary eye on them. Dugan grunts, stretching his arms over his head. “We gonna talk about how Cap threw himself out a goddamn window back there? Or are we just gonna pretend that was a normal thing to do?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think any of this has been normal.”

Steve shoots them both a look. “Would you rather I had taken the stairs?”

“Yes,” Jones deadpans. 

They laugh again. Bucky doesn’t. But the rest do. And when Steve looks over, he can see the small twitch of his lips. They need this. They all need this. 

Bucky’s grip tightens again, pulling Steve’s attention back. His expression has shifted, something more uncertain settling over his face, like he’s trying to get his words in order before he speaks. He looks down at his hands—Steve follows his gaze. There’s dirt caked under his nails, fresh bruises along his knuckles. His hands shake. 

Steve keeps his own steady. “You need anything?”

Bucky’s mouth presses into a thin line. His gaze flickers toward the others, then back to Steve. “Water,” he mutters.

Steve nods. Small steps.

Dugan tosses over a canteen without a word. Steve cracks the cap, hands it off. Bucky hesitates, just a second, then takes it. His fingers are stiff, uncoordinated. He lifts it to his lips, drinks too fast, chokes. Steve’s hand is on his back, steadies the canteen, pats him through the coughing fit.

Bucky curses, voice hoarse, rubbing at his throat. “Shit.”

Steve huffs. “Easy.”

Bucky glares at the canteen like it’s personally betrayed him. Then, after a pause, takes another sip—slower this time. It stays down. 

Jones nudges Dugan with his elbow. “Told you he’d live.”

Dugan grumbles. “Wasn’t worried.”

“Liar,” Morita chimes in.

“Shut up.”

Bucky groans, blinking—once, twice—he’s there, then he isn’t. “We made it?” he finally wheezes.

Steve exhales a long breath, a little shaken, mostly relieved. At least he isn’t asking if Steve’s real anymore. “Yeah, pal. We made it.”

One of the guys slams the hatch shut as the tank lurches forward once more, dragging them away from the forest. 

Steve doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky. Not for a second. 

“How you holding up, Sarge?” Dugan calls from the front. It’s his turn to ride passenger seat. 

Bucky makes a noise that might be a laugh. It’s hoarse and raw and hardly a pleasant sound but it’s lucid. “I just got crucified in a Nazi lab,” he mutters. “I’ve been better.”

Steve clenches his jaw. His grip tightens, just slightly.

Dernier glances over his shoulder, giving Bucky a once-over. “Heureusement qu'on t'a sorti” he says, voice tinged with something between relief and disbelief. Lucky we got you out. “Gave me une crise cardiaque.” Heart attack. He sounds like he’s going to cry. 

Bucky shifts, eyes darting toward Steve before looking away. He swallows, voice quieter. “Yeah. Me too.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. He just pulls him in a little closer, keeps his hand pressed against Bucky’s back.

Suddenly, Steve understands the shakes. Corroborates them with the way his veins look bruised and swollen, littered with red injection sites. 

They’d drugged him. HYDRA pumped him full of something, if all those tubes and needles in the lab were anything to go by—probably to keep him compliant, to keep him from fighting back. And now it’s leaving his system, ripping through him like the scarlet fever that almost keeled Steve over as a kid. 

“Buck,” Steve murmurs, for about the hundredth time. “You with me?”

Bucky swallows, his gaze unfocused. His fingers twitch against his thigh, restless. Itching. Like his body doesn’t know what to do without something keeping it in check. “Yeah,” he says, but it’s thin, almost breathless. “Just cold.”

Steve doesn’t buy it.

Neither does Dugan, who’s been watching from across the truck. He leans forward, offering his jacket with a grunt, even though he’s already covered in Steve’s and a blanket already. “Here. You look like hell.”

Bucky doesn’t have the energy to laugh anymore, but his shoulders shake slightly in amusement. “Feel like it too.” Steve takes the jacket, drapes it over for him, but it doesn’t stop the way his hands shake.

Jones watches him carefully, then reaches into his pack, pulling out a bar of chocolate. 

Where the fuck did he get that?’

He tosses it over. “Eat something. Slowly,” he adds pointedly. “Helps with the shakes.”

Bucky catches it on reflex, blinking at it like he barely remembers what food is. But after a second, he tears into it, chewing slowly, as requested. 

Steve smiles at the way his eye’s widen slightly. The way he lets out a long, shaky exhale. 

Morita stretches out his legs with a groan. “So, Sarge,” he starts, casual. “Heard you took about six guards barehanded before they got the jump on you.”

Bucky snorts. “Seven.”

“Bullshit,” Dugan says immediately. 

“Calling me a liar?”

Dugan smirks. “I’m calling you concussed.”

Bucky shakes his head, a ghost of a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. And just like that, the tension eases, the space between them filling with the kind of quiet camaraderie only men who have survived hell together can understand.

Steve watches, something warm settling in his chest.

Bucky isn’t okay. No, far from it. But he’s here. And he’s talking, eating, breathing.

He’s alive. 

Bucky shakes. His whole body won’t stop shaking.

His shoulders twitch with every bump of the truck, like he’s bracing for impact. His jaw locks. His teeth chatter.

And then, he mutters.

At first, it’s too quiet to hear. Just his lips moving, barely-there sounds slipping past them.

Then, it gets worse.

Numbers.

A series of numbers, over and over, under his breath. 3-2-5-5-7-

Then, it shifts. A different string. One that means nothing to them, but seemingly everything to him.

86, 86, 86, 86. 

He’s not here. He’s somewhere else. He’s back there. 

Steve leans in. “Buck?” His voice is gentle. Careful.

Bucky flinches. Hard. His hands jerk up, covering his ears like he’s trying to block something out, like Steve’s voice is too loud.

Then he starts rocking.

A slow, uneven motion, his body following the rhythm of his own whispered words. Repeating. Counting. Shaking.

No one says anything.

But they wince.

Jones shifts uncomfortably, looking away. Morita presses his lips into a thin line, glancing between Steve and Dugan, like someone needs to do something, but none of them know what. No one knows what.

Steve does.

He doesn’t hesitate this time. He moves slow, pressing a steady hand to Bucky’s back, rubbing firm, grounding circles. He doesn’t stop.

“Hey,” Steve murmurs. “It’s okay. I got you.”

Bucky keeps rocking. Keeps muttering.

The truck hits a bump. He jerks. His breath catches, and suddenly—his whole body tenses, tight as a bowstring. His hands snap up, gripping his own hair, his chest heaving. His lips part—

No sound comes out.

His throat works, but nothing happens.

Steve recognises it immediately. He can’t breathe.

“Bucky,” Steve says, voice urgent now. “Look at me.”

Bucky doesn’t.

He keeps staring past him. Wide-eyed. Frozen.

Steve cups his face, turning him gently. “Buck. Hey. Breathe with me, okay?” He presses his forehead to his.“I’m here,” he murmurs. “You’re safe. Just breathe.”

Bucky’s breath shudders. His hands clench harder in his hair before loosening.

He presses Bucky’s hand over his heart.

Bucky focuses on it. Feels it. The steadiness of Steve’s breaths. The way his blood circulates.  

And slowly, slowly—his breathing evens out.

His muscles unlock.

The shaking doesn’t stop. But it slows.

Steve pulls back just enough to meet his eyes.

Bucky blinks. His throat bobs. Then, his voice—so small, so raw, barely above a whisper—“…Steve?”

Steve nods. “Yeah, Buck. It’s me.”

Bucky stares at him.

Then—hesitant, uncertain—he reaches out.

His fingers brush over Steve’s jaw. His cheek. His hair.

Steve lets him. Lets him take his time.

And then—a tear slips down Steve’s cheek.

His throat is tight. His voice wavers. He doesn’t care. “Sorry for taking so long,” he repeats. 

Bucky lets out a huff. He’s back again. “Shut up.”

They’re almost home.

November 1943, Geneva, Switzerland 

By the time they reach camp, the news has already spread.

HYDRA’s prisoners—rescued. Almost 400 of them—386. HYDRA’s base—reduced to rubble.

And Captain America—real, not just some act in a star-spangled suit. Not just a circus monkey. 

The moment they roll into camp, soldiers flood the area, cheers rising into the night air. The energy is electric, men clapping each other on the back, whooping in victory.

Steve barely hears any of it.

His only focus is getting Bucky off the tank. He jumps down first, arms raised. “Come on, I got you.”

Bucky hesitates. Not because he doubts Steve—never Steve—but because his body feels foreign, aching in ways he can’t even begin to describe. His muscles scream as he swings a leg over the edge, but before he can protest, Steve’s already steadying him, catching his weight effortlessly.

Bucky exhales, leaning into him. “You really are tall,” he mutters.

Steve chuckles, something warm tugging at his chest. “You said that already.”

“Well, it’s weird.”

“Yeah, well, get used to it.”

A sharp whistle cuts through the noise. Colonel Phillips.

Steve straightens, bracing himself, holding Bucky tighter. Instead of a reprimand, the Colonel just surveys him with that same tired look—gruff, unreadable, but not entirely unkind. His gaze shifts to Bucky, takes in the way he’s leaning against Steve, the bruises, the exhaustion carved into his face.

“You sure know how to make an entrance, Captain,” Phillips says, sighing. There’s a rare, albeit tiny, almost indistinguishable, smile on his face. “And how to make my job harder.”

Steve lifts his chin. “Some of these men need medical attention,” he replies tightly. “And I’d like to surrender myself for disciplinary action.”

Phillips raises a brow. “That won’t be necessary.”

Bucky huffs a quiet laugh beside him. “Told you,” he mutters.

Steve frowns. “You told me nothing.”

“Well, I thought it, dipshit.”

Phillips shakes his head, muttering under his breath as he turns on his heel. “Get him to the med tent before he falls over.”

Steve doesn’t need to be told twice.

Bucky stumbles. Steve keeps him upright. 

The med tent is a blur of movement—doctors, nurses, stretchers being hauled in and out, soldiers groaning in pain or murmuring in exhausted relief. The warm scent of antiseptic and sweat clings to the air. It makes Bucky flinch. 

Steve keeps his grip firm as he helps Bucky inside, manoeuvring past a few nurses already tending to the worst of the wounded.

“Over here!” A medic gestures, clearing a cot in the corner.

Bucky sits down heavily, exhaling like he’s been holding his breath for miles. His body sags into the thin mattress, the fight finally leaking out of him. 

Steve crouches beside him, one hand braced on Bucky’s knee. “You good?”

Bucky doesn’t answer right away. He stares ahead, blinking slow, sluggish, like his mind’s still catching up to where they are. His fingers twitch, then flex, resting on his thighs. Then his dog tags. “Yeah,” he mutters eventually. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Steve doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t press—not yet.

The medic steps in, checking vitals, muttering under his breath at the state of Bucky’s wrists, his feet, the back of his head. Steve hears words like dehydration, malnourished, signs of prolonged stress.

Bucky winces when they prod at his ribs, a quiet, involuntary sound. Steve’s fists clench.

“All due respect, Captain,” the medic says, adjusting his glasses. “You should get checked out too.”

“I’m fine,” Steve says automatically, not looking away from Bucky.

The medic sighs but doesn’t argue. “He needs rest. And food. Slow, small meals, or he’ll just bring it back up. It’s gonna take time to get his strength back.” He gestures to a set of fresh bandages, antiseptics, a metal tray full of supplies. “I’ll be back to dress the wounds, but I gotta check on the others first.”

Steve nods, already reaching for the supplies. “I got it.”

The medic hesitates, glances at Bucky, then at Steve. Something flickers in his eyes—understanding, maybe. He just nods, mutters, “Don’t let him push it,” before moving on to the next patient.

Steve exhales, rolling up his sleeves. “Alright, Buck,” he says, as gently as he can. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Bucky doesn’t resist. He lets Steve work, lets him press a damp cloth to his face, wipe away the grime and dried blood. Lets him roll up his sleeves, dabbing carefully at the bruises, the needle marks, the raw skin around his wrists. He flinches now and then but doesn’t complain. Even when the alcohol burns. 

Steve moves slow, methodical, each touch careful.

“You’re hovering,” Bucky mutters eventually.

Steve huffs a quiet laugh. “Not hovering. Just taking my time.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches, but the exhaustion pulls it down before it can form anything close to a smile.

Steve moves to his hands, unrolling fresh bandages. “These hurt?”

Bucky shakes his head, then pauses. “Maybe a little.”

Steve snorts. “That’s what I thought.”

But the amusement is short-lived when he takes in the rest of the marks on his body—the scars. 

Steve’s breath hitches. He knew—of course he knew—but seeing it up close, in the warm glow of the med tent, makes it real in a way he hadn’t been ready for. The bruises mottled across Bucky’s ribs, the healing lacerations all along his arms, his abdomen, brutal stitches, jagged, staples embedded beneath skin that had grown over.

He swallows hard. Forces himself to keep steady. He has to be steady.

Bucky, for his part, doesn’t seem to notice the way Steve’s hands still for a fraction of a second. He just watches him, wary, guarded, but not pulling away.

Steve moves to the holes in his wrists. They’re red, inflamed, scabbed over but deep. He feels sick looking at them. Doesn’t even register how unnatural it is that they’ve scabbed already. He grips the bandages a little tighter. “I’m gonna wrap these, alright?” His voice is calm. Steady.

Bucky nods.

Steve works carefully, looping the bandage around his wrist, pressing just enough to secure it without hurting him. Bucky watches him with an odd sort of concentration, like he’s trying to map every movement in his head, to memorise it.

It’s quiet. Not comfortable, exactly, but not unbearable either.

Then—soft, barely above a whisper—Bucky says, “how bad is it?”

Steve stills.

His eyes flicker up to meet Bucky’s. There’s something raw there, something uncertain, something Steve has never seen before.

He knows what he’s asking. Not just about the wounds. About him. About what they did to him.

Steve exhales, finishing the last wrap, then sets Bucky’s hand down carefully on his lap. “You’re here,” he says. “That’s what matters.”

Bucky’s jaw tightens. He looks away. “That bad, huh?”

Steve frowns. “Buck—”

Bucky shakes his head. “Don’t lie to me, Stevie.” His voice is quiet. Tired.

Steve runs a hand over his face. He wants to tell him that he’s okay, that everything is fine, that they got out and it’s over and none of it matters now. But it wouldn’t be true. And Bucky doesn’t need pretty words. He never did.

So instead, he says, “You survived.”

Bucky looks back at him.

You survived.

Silence stretches between them, filled with the distant murmurs of the tent, the crackling fire outside, the wind rustling the canvas. Then, finally, Bucky nods. Just once.

Steve doesn’t push. Just squeezes Bucky’s hand, solid and warm, and moves onto his feet. 

He tries not to wince. He fails. 

With the worst finally wrapped, he leans back, surveying his work. “There,” he says. “Better?”

Bucky stares at his hands like he doesn’t quite recognise them. Wiggles his toes. Then, slowly, he nods again. 

Steve watches him for a long moment, then clasps a hand on his shoulder. “You should rest.”

Bucky exhales, rubbing at his temple. “Yeah.”

But Steve doesn’t move. And neither does Bucky.

Instead, they just sit there, in the dim glow of the med tent, the wails of men far, far away. 

For the first time in months, they are together.

Bucky doesn’t move when the medic comes back. But as soon as the man reaches for him, he stiffens.

“Alright, Sergeant, we’re just gonna check—”

“No.”

The word is sharp. Sudden.

The medic blinks. “I just need to—”

“No.” Bucky’s voice is low, but firm. His hands tighten on the cot’s thin blanket. “No needles. No tests.”

The medic hesitates, glancing toward Steve, but Bucky’s already shrinking back, shoulders coiled like a spring.

“Sergeant, I need to make sure—”

“You don’t need to do anything,” Bucky snaps, eyes flashing. “I’m fine.”

The tension in the room thickens. The other soldiers, the ones still conscious, fall quiet. Even the medic—who, up until now, had been moving with the detached efficiency of someone who’d done this a hundred times before—seems to hesitate. Then, he lifts his hands in a show of peace—“You’ve been through a lot. I get it. But you need medical attention—”

“No.”

It’s the angriest Bucky’s sounded since Austria. 

Steve steps in before things can spiral further. “Hey, Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t look at him. His fingers dig into the blanket, knuckles white. 

Steve swallows. “They just wanna help.”

Bucky’s head shakes, barely perceptible. “No tests.”

Steve can see it happening in real time—the way his body tenses, the way his eyes dart around like he’s searching for an escape.

Steve presses a hand to his arm gently. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” he says. “But I need you to breathe for me, alright?”

Bucky’s jaw tightens. “I don’t—I don’t want them touching me.” His voice wavers at the edges, barely noticeable unless one knew him. Steve knows him. 

“I know,” Steve murmurs. “I know, Buck.”

The medic shifts awkwardly. “Captain, I really do need to at least—”

Steve cuts him a sharp look. “Not right now.”

The medic nods, backing off, but Bucky doesn’t relax. It wasn’t a no. And Steve knows that Bucky hadn’t overlooked that. 

Steve just—he doesn’t want to lie to him. 

Bucky’s still too stiff, still caught in some loop in his head. Steve doesn’t let go. He squeezes his arm lightly. “You’re not there anymore,” he says, steady and sure. “You’re here. With me. No tests. No needles.”

The medic exhales, like there’s something weighing down his breath, then nods. “Check on him every two hours. He’s got a concussion. And make sure he drinks his fluids.” His voice is gentler now, understanding the battle isn’t worth fighting. He sets down a tray of bandages and wipes—a canteen of water—and moves on to another patient.

For a long moment, Bucky doesn’t move. His shoulders stay taut, breath still uneven.

Steve waits.

Then, finally, Bucky exhales. He rubs at his face, fingers twitching against his temple.

“…They always took blood first,” he mutters, so quietly Steve almost doesn’t catch it. “Always.”

Steve’s jaw tightens.

He reaches for a clean cloth, dips it in water, wrings it out. Then, slowly, carefully, he lifts it toward the back of Bucky’s neck. “This okay?”

Bucky stares at the cloth for a beat, then, reluctantly, nods.

There’s still grime, even after the third pass. The fourth. He cards through his hair, getting out most of the grease and dust. Bucky flinches at first, muscles coiling, but Steve keeps his touch light, slow, giving him time to pull away if he wants to.

He doesn’t.

“I won’t let them touch you,” Steve murmurs. “Not unless you say so.”

Bucky’s throat bobs. His gaze flickers to Steve’s, searching. Then, slowly, he nods.

Steve keeps going, quiet and steady, trying to ground them both in something tangible.

This—this he can do. 

Chapter Text

November 1943, Geneva, Switzerland 

The Geneva facility isn’t a hospital, but it isn’t quite a home either. It’s a pit stop, a way-station for soldiers caught between battlefields. A place to recover, rearm, and wait for the next mission.

The building itself is cleaner than anything Bucky’s seen in months—sterile hallways, polished floors, the faint smell of disinfectant that still makes his stomach clench. It’s nothing like the camps or the battlefield. No mud or blood or screaming. 

There are other soldiers here. Some fresh, waiting to be deployed. Some old, bearing the weight of several battles. A few give him wary glances, but most don’t pay him any mind. It’s better that way.

When he’s escorted inside, the staff give him space. No one pushes him to talk. No one pries.

Steve walks beside him the whole way, even when the officer leading them stops at a door.

“Here’s your room, Sergeant Barnes,” the man says, a clipboard tucked under his arm. His tone is neutral, professional. “You’ll be staying here until further notice. If you need anything, just ask.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. Just steps inside, eyes sweeping the space.

It’s small but clean. A proper bed. A desk. A small dresser. A window—large—that lets in soft afternoon light, the alps stretching in the distance. The first real privacy he’s had since he deployed.

He stares at the bed for a long time. The sheets are crisp, neatly folded. Too neat.

“Buck?” Steve says gently.

Bucky exhales, slow and measured. “It’s fine.”

He drops his duffel in the corner—they gave him a new set of fatigues, a Springfield, unloaded, strapped to the front. His dog tags clink against his chest as he sits on the bed. The mattress gives a little under his weight, soft in a way that feels wrong.

Steve hesitates. Bucky can feel him hovering, even if he’s not looking.

“I’m right next door,” Steve finally says. “If you need anything.”

Bucky doesn’t respond.

After a moment, Steve sighs. The door clicks shut behind him.

Bucky stays sitting for a long time, staring at the window.

He’s here. He’s safe.

So why does he still feel like he’s waiting for the next order?

Bucky doesn’t remember the last time he had a real bath. 

Even back in Brooklyn, it was never anything fancy—just a shared bathroom in a too-small apartment, pipes rattling when Ma Barnes ran the sink at the same time. He used to complain about that, used to swear that one day he’d have a place with a tub big enough to stretch out in. Then he and Steve moved in together and were stuck with just a shower, its water pressure barely strong enough to wash the soap out of their hair.

Steve had laughed when Bucky grumbled about it. Told him he’d get all pruny and wrinkled like an old man if he ever did, so it was a good thing really. 

“Hell, we should be grateful we even got hot water,” Steve had said once, scrubbing at his arms. “Some folks still ain’t got a pot to piss in since the crash.”

Bucky had grinned, throwing water at him. “Yeah, well, I still want a tub.”

Now, all thoughts of bathing have meant something else.

Buckets of ice-cold water thrown over his head. A hose that power washed him from the inside out. The goddamn antiseptic that flooded his nostrils every time they touched him, wiped him down. 

He misses a real bath. With warm water. Soap that doesn’t sting. Steam that isn’t suffocating.

“When I get out of here, I’m gonna take the longest goddamn bath of my life.”

The voice echoes like an afterthought, sharp and unwanted. Bucky flinches, sees pale blond hair, a flicker of movement, can’t breathe, Lena, Lena—

His breath seizes, heart spiking. He backs himself against the wall, tiles biting into his skin. No, no, stop—

A soft knock. 

“Buck?”

Steve.

Bucky swallows hard. He presses into his wrist—one, two—one, two. His voice feels trapped in his throat. He forces something out anyway. “Yeah.”

There’s hesitation. Steve knows better than to push, but he doesn’t leave either. “You need anything?”

Bucky huffs in annoyance. That’s all he asks these days—do you need anything? Like there’s something tangible that Steve can give him that’ll fix this. And maybe there is. Maybe Bucky should say help me, tell me what to do, make it stop. But instead, it just aggravates him—like an itch. 

What does Steve expect him to say? What does he expect him to need? A blanket? A warm meal? A goddamn hug? 

There’s nothing Steve can give him that will change the fact that he doesn’t feel real. No amount of talking—no amount of reliving. Nothing will change the fact that he doesn’t know how to exist outside of that room, those machines, that cold, cold steel table. 

He looks at the dirt under his fingernails for a long time, the bruises along his wrists, and shakes his head—though Steve can’t see him. “I’m fine.” 

It comes up clipped and pursed. Like he always sounds when someone’s pulled a nerve. 

Another pause. Then, “Alright. I’ll be right outside.”

Bucky inhales deeply, jaw ticking. 

The door stays closed. 

He lets out the breath slowly, reaches up, and tugs off his shirt. It sticks to his skin, dried sweat and grime and blood and all kinds of filth making it harder than it should be. He goes slow, then undoes his pants, trying not to flinch when he pulls down his underwear. Socks, shoes. His feet feel raw and sore against the cold tiles. 

He doesn’t look in the mirror. 

The water is still warm when he finally forces himself in.

His breath stutters at the heat—it feels too much at first, overwhelming, like a fresh burn. All of his skin sings and throbs. He grips the sides of the tub, heart pounding. 

It burns, please it burns—

But then, after a few seconds, the tension starts to unravel. 

For months, Bucky hasn’t known warmth. And now, it’s bliss. 

He sinks lower, lets the water cover his shoulders. His fingers twitch, so he forces himself to grab the soap. Hesitates. Then works it over his arms, down his chest, scrubbing hard until his skin is pink and raw. He’s taking off a layer of himself, and maybe that’s what he wants. 

He just wants to be clean. 

He slows his movements, presses his palm against his sternum. His heart beats steady beneath his ribs. 

He closes his eyes. 

Feel that. That’s real.

The holes in his hands have puckered up into gnarly scar tissue, though even his unnatural healing hasn’t mended the bones fully yet. He’ll have to cover them up—he doesn’t want anyone to catch on that he’s…changed. They’ll put him into more labs, more tests—

His pulse spikes.

He grips his wrist—one, two—until the skin snaps and there’s a bead of blood where he dug too hard into the scab. 

Get it together, Barnes. 

He flexes his fingers underwater, testing their strength. Let’s the blood diffuse into the water.

He exhales, slow and shaky, sinking deeper into the heat. 

Let’s his skin get all wrinkly and pruny, like an old man’s.

He washes and rinses and washes and rinses until the water goes clear. 

He tries not to think about the anger or the hunger. The buzzing.

The fact that he still waits for someone to take it all away. 

He submerges his head. 

He tries to be normal. 

The mess hall is loud.

Not battlefield-loud, like the sharp crack of gunfire or swell of overhead bombs. But it’s the kind of constant noise that comes from too many people in one place. The scrape of metal trays, the thrum of conversation, burst of laughter—normal sounds, ordinary sounds. 

Bucky finds that he hates it.

He doesn’t mean to, but the second he steps inside, his shoulders go tight, and something cold spreads in his gut. The smell of food hangs thick in the air, but all he can think of is ration bars and cold soup. Maggots in the meat, rats—

He clenches his jaw. Forces the bile down. 

Then Steve is in front of him, pressing a tray into his hands. “Come on,” he says, quietly. “Let’s eat.”

Bucky exhales sharply through his nose but follows.

They settle at a long wooden table, the benches slightly uneven. Already seated is Dugan, Jones, Morita, Dernier and Falsworth. They act normal, like this isn’t a big deal—just another meal. 

Someone cracks a joke, laughter ripples through the group. Bucky doesn’t catch the words, but he feels the way the tension in Steve’s shoulders eases. 

Bucky keeps his head down. Stares at the tray in front of him. The food is better than what he had back at camp—mashed potatoes, green beans, something that’s supposed to be chicken—but his stomach clenches anyways. 

He forces himself to take a bite. The texture is off, too rich, like a layer of grease on his tongue. But it’s food—he’s hungry, so why has his appetite shrunk? He chews slowly, like he has to remember how, so that he doesn’t puke everywhere and ruin the pleasant reunion. 

At some point, he realises the table has gone quiet. 

Dugan elbows Morita in the ribs. “Go on, ask him.”

Morita scowls, rubbing his side. “You ask him, you’re the loudmouth.”

Dugan grins and turns to Bucky. “So, Sarge—”

Bucky tenses immediately.

Dugan notices, but doesn’t mention it. Instead, he leans back, easygoing. “You ever gonna tell us how you got your nickname? ‘Bucky’? Because I’ve got money on it being something embarrassing.”

A small flicker of something like concession tugs at Bucky’s chest. He grips his fork a little tighter.

Falsworth smirks. “I assumed it was a girl.”

Jones hums. “See, I thought it was one of those Brooklyn things.”

Steve exhales a quiet laugh. “It’s short for Buchanan. It’s his middle name.”

Dugan groans. “Well, that’s boring as hell.”

“Hah. You owe me ten bucks.”

“I don’t owe you shit, Morita.”

Steve shrugs. “That’s what he told me, anyway.”

Bucky huffs, just barely. He rolls a green bean across the plate before popping it into his mouth. “Yeah, like ‘Dum-Dum’ is such a better name.” His voice comes out rough, rasped from disuse. But it’s amused—dryly amused. 

The table pauses.

Then—Dugan slams a hand against the wood. “Ha! He speaks!”

A few of the men laugh. It’s not at him, not in a cruel way, just surprised. Relieved. 

Bucky shakes his head, but it’s not as tense as before. He pokes at his food again. The lump in his stomach has eased slightly. Not gone, but… different.

Steve catches his eye. Doesn’t say anything, just offers a small smile.

Bucky exhales.

He takes another bite.

Bucky sits in a small, nondescript office, the kind that feels like a repurposed storage room. The chair beneath him is stiff, too upright, designed to make you sit proper. Don’t slouch, James. It’s bad manners. A man in uniform sits across from him, flipping through a file with Bucky’s name on it.

“Sergeant Barnes.” His voice is calm, even. Bucky tries not to sweat at the sight of him. He used to be good with strangers—now, not so much. “We’re conducting standard wellness checks for all recently recovered prisoners. This won’t take long.”

Bucky nods, settling his hands in his lap. He keeps them loose, natural—normal. He can do normal.

“Any difficulty sleeping?”

“No, sir.”

“Any headaches? Trouble concentrating?”

“Nope.”

“Nightmares?”

Bucky forces a small, casual shrug. “Sometimes, but nothing bad.”

“Flashbacks? Panic episodes?”

Bucky tilts his head, giving a half-smirk. “Nope. Just ready to get back out there.”

The doctor scribbles something down. “Do you feel different in any way? Detached, irritable, anything like that?”

Bucky breathes evenly, meeting his gaze without flinching. “Nope.” He even throws in a small chuckle. “Like I said—just ready to go back to work.”

It’s so easy to lie.

Because it is normal, right? The way his hands shake when he wakes up. Or counts his fingers, again and again, just to make sure they're still there. Hearing things when it’s quiet. Hunger that never goes away, the itch in his spine, the hollow in his chest that won’t fill, no matter how much he eats, no matter how hard he tries. 

That’s just what happens. That’s war. His pa showed him that. 

He can do normal.

He is normal.

The doctor nods, satisfied, signing off on the paper. “Alright, Sergeant. You’re cleared for duty. Dismissed.”

Bucky stands, shakes his hand, and walks out like nothing ever happened.

The medical wing of the Geneva base smells too clean. He stands stiff by the door, arms crossed, jaw clenched, while Steve speaks to the medic in hushed tones. After a terse exchange, Steve returns to his side. 

“Just a check-up, Buck.” Steve’s voice is already gentle, but Bucky can hear the strain beneath it. “That’s all. Just to make sure everything’s healing right.”

Bucky shakes his head once. “No.”

Steve exhales sharply, rubbing a hand over his face. “Bucky—”

“I said no.” Bucky backs up, hands forming fists. His skin is already crawling at the thought of it. Hornets, buzz, buzz, buzzing. He can feel the phantom touch of cold fingers, the surge of something thick replacing his blood. “You said I wouldn’t have to if I said no. I’m saying no.”

The medic hesitates, eyes flicking between them. Steve turns back to Bucky, stepping forward like he’s about to reach for him, but Bucky flinches. Steve freezes, shoulders dropping.

“Okay, Buck, okay.” He sighs, voice quiet now. “I just want you to be okay,”

Bucky swallows. “I am.” It’s a lie. They both know it.

Steve watches him carefully, then sighs. He takes a step back, nodding once. “Okay.”

Bucky exhales.

Okay. 

The barracks are quiet this time of night. The moon hangs low in the sky, a dull sliver of silver, caught somewhere between dusk and dawn. The world feels suspended in that liminal space—half-asleep, waiting.

Bucky walks the perimeter, boots scuffing against the gravel, hands buried in the pockets of his borrowed uniform. The fabric is stiff, unfamiliar, another dead soldier’s sleeves. But at least it smells like laundry. 

He’s tired, exhausted, down to his bones, but sleep doesn’t come easy. Every time he closes his eyes, he’s back in that chair, the dreadful iron lung or the cells where time lost all meaning. So he walks instead. Circles the barracks once, twice, three times, waiting for his mind to slow down. It never does. 

He doesn’t expect to run into anyone else. Maybe a few stragglers in the courtyard or mess hall, cradling lukewarm coffee before the morning rush. But when he rounds the next corner, Agent Carter is there, standing near the fence line, arms crossed, gaze fixed on the distant mountains. Bucky knows better—she’s waiting. 

For him. 

He stops a few paces away, already wary. Steve sent her, didn’t he? Betrayal flares in his chest—then, anger. It’s always anger. 

“Sergeant Barnes.” Her voice is smooth, professional. She finally glances over to him, extending out her hand—“I’ve heard great things about you. Mind if we talk?”

Bucky doesn’t accept her hand. Doesn’t move at all. “And if I did mind?”

She draws it back, unperturbed. “Then you have full agency to ignore me and walk away.” There’s no challenge in her tone, no baiting. She studies him before adding, “But, I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

Bucky watches her carefully. He could refuse. Could turn around and leave. Apparently. But something about the way she’s watching him—calm, patient, assessing—makes him pause. 

A long moment of silence stretches between them. There’s always long silences with him these days. 

She takes it as permission to continue. “I received the recovered documents from the HYDRA facility.” Her voice remains steady, betraying nothing. “It wasn’t much, but there were some files into what they were doing to their prisoners. What they were doing to you.”

Bucky flinches, looking away. He presses into his wrist—one, two—one, two. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I understand,” she replies, unshaken. “I haven’t gone through everything yet. But what I have seen…concerns me.”

His breath locks in his throat. He glances at her sidelong, trying to gauge how much she’s figured out. His heart races. He feels sick and exposed, like when they flayed open his chest to see how many times they could break his ribs. Does she know about that too?

Carter’s expression remains unreadable and controlled. No pity. No revulsion. Just quiet scrutiny—a perfect poker face. “I won’t say anything,” she continues, voice softer now. “Not to Steve. Not to anyone.”

That sets him off. He turns sharply, eyes flashing. “Steve put you up to this, didn’t he? I can’t believe him—”

“No.” She cuts through his anger like one might defuse a bomb. “I came on my own volition.”

Bucky falters. 

“As I said, I saw the files” she continues evenly. “I saw only a fraction of what they did. And I think you deserve to know, even if you don’t want to.” There’s no condescension, no overplayed sympathy in her voice. “But more than that—I think you need to be checked, Sergeant.”

Bucky shakes his head, breath coming short. He feels boxed in even in the open air. The files. What do they say? How much does she know? What the fuck did she see? 

He doesn’t want anyone to know. He feels filthy, violated, like he’s sinking, down, down, down—

Please—stop. 

“I don’t need a goddamn doctor,” he grits out.

Carter watches him carefully. Then, after a beat, she says, “Then you won’t see a doctor.”

He stills.

She waits, letting that dissolve before adding, “But I know someone else you can see.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “Who?”

“Howard Stark.”

Now, that makes him pause.

Carter catches the flicker of recognition, the shift in his expression. Her voice lowers slightly. “He’s been studying HYDRA’s technology. He may be able to tell you more—help you understand what happened to you. No doctors, just Stark.”

Bucky exhales, shoulders slumping slightly. He remembers Stark’s name from before the war, from the Expo, from all those science-fiction-dreams-turned-reality. Howard Stark, the closest thing to magic in the modern age.

It’s the first time in weeks that something like interest sparks behind his eyes.

“Just Stark?” he asks, cautious.

“Just Stark.” She confirms.

He looks down at his hands, at the thick, angry scars across his wrists, the several others that litter his body that he refuses to acknowledge. He swallows.

Then, finally—“Alright.”

The bags under Bucky’s eyes are deep enough to sink a man. 

It hasn’t even been a full week since they got to Geneva, but he looks like he’s been marching across Europe without stopping. And he knows because he’s actually done it. His skin has grown sallow, movements a little too slow, a little too stiff, like a machine running on borrowed fuel. When he sits, he slouches. When he stands, he sways just a little. And maybe it’s subtle, but not to Steve. 

Not to his friends, either. 

“You look tired,” Dugan comments over breakfast, watching Bucky stir his coffee without drinking it. It’s not really a dig, more a matter-of-fact observation. Dugan doesn’t brush things off forever. 

Jones raises a brow. “Yeah, when’s the last time you got a full night’s rest?”

“Gotta make use of the beds, man. It’s like sleeping on a cloud.”

“Eeh, I think they are a bit too soft,” Dernier says.

“You just like to argue with me, you French bastard.”

They all quiet eventually—give him space to respond. 

Bucky doesn’t look up. “M’fine.”

Morita hums noncommittally. “You sure? Because I don’t think I’ve seen you blink in five minutes.”

Bucky exhales sharply through his nose. He’s irritated these days—he’s tired, he’s hungry, and he’s irritated. “You boys always this chatty in the morning?”

“Only when one of us looks like they’re about to drop dead in their eggs,” Dugan retorts. 

Bucky finally takes a sip of his coffee, if only to hide the tick in his jaw. He doesn’t want to be angry. That’s the problem really, he doesn’t want to be at all. The bitterness tastes like fuel, keeps him tethered, but does little to ebb the exhaustion blurring his vision. The tingling in his fingertips, the way his head throbs and throbs and throbs. His hands don’t shake when he sets the cup down, which is about the best he can hope for these days. 

Steve, sitting across from him, watches in silence. Steve, though—Steve knows how to pick his battles. And this one, Bucky knows he’s not letting go. 

Bucky keeps his gaze on his food, half-eaten, moving his fork around just to make it look like he’s doing something. 

“Buck,” he finally says, quiet enough that it doesn’t carry. 

“Steve.”

Steve tilts his head, considering him. He doesn’t press, not yet, just lets the silence stretch between them. Those damn fucking silences. He isn’t fragile. But Bucky knows that look. Knows it like he knows how to reload a rifle in five seconds flat, or how to tell the difference between a mortar shell and artillery fire just from the sound.

Jones clears his throat, standing. “Alright, ladies, let’s leave the lovebirds to it.” It’s a joke, but it comes out a little flat. He pats Bucky’s shoulder once in passing. 

The rest follow suit, murmuring their goodbyes, tossing Steve a few knowing looks. 

Bucky stiffens as they go. He doesn’t want to be observed, to be perceived and treated like…like he’s something that needs to be coddled. He’s not some fragile thing, he’s not, he’s—he’s not some broken bird Steve has to nurse back to health.

It’s just the two of them now. 

Steve leans forward, forearms resting on the table. “You’re not sleeping.”

Bucky finally meets his gaze. “I told you. I’m fine.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that this morning.”

“And I’ll say it a third time if it gets you to drop it.”

Steve exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Bucky—”

“Don’t, Steve,” Bucky cuts in, sharper than he means to be. He pushes his tray forward, appetite long gone. “I don’t need you hovering over me.”

“I just want to help.” And he says it so soft, like a kicked-puppy, all round eyes and wobbly lips and Bucky hates it—hates himself, hates that he just…can’t. 

He clenches his jaw, gripping his knee under the table. He doesn’t want to snap at Steve, not really. But the thought of lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the moment sleep finally takes him—only to wake up gasping, clawing at his own skin—

There’s nothing Steve can do. Nothing anyone can do.

So he stands, chair scraping against the floor. “Then help by leaving it alone.”

Steve watches him go silently. 

Bucky hates how much he makes them all worry. 

He tries to sleep, just once. 

Bucky lies down, stares at the ceiling. Everything is so, so quiet. It makes the buzzing louder, fills up his ears, thinks it might pop out of his eyes. So he closes them, folds his hands over his stomach—like a corpse in a casket would. 

The bed beneath him is soft. The air is warm, even comfortable, but it still feels wrong. He shifts, turns onto his side. Then his other side. His body aches. The mattress gives too easily under his weight, unlike the hard-packed dirt and cold floors he spent months curled up on, the steel table that burned and froze in equal measure. 

The stillness is unbearable. 

In Azzano, it was never still. He constantly evaded death, and when he wasn’t sniping down a Kraut, he was scanning the perimeter, keeping watch, always on alert, always waiting for a shell to drop. In Austria, the wind carried the sound of the machinery, the clink of metal against metal, the muffled cries from other cells, even. The rhythmic tick, tick, tick of something he could never see. His own heartbeat, too loud in his ears. 

He squeezes his eyes shut. It’s so quiet that it’s loud. Like when they shoved him into a box without light to see how long he lasted deprived of all senses. 

He clenches his jaw, tries to focus on breathing slow, deep. In, out. In, out. Just like he’d taught Steve after an asthma attack. 

It only makes him lightheaded. 

His skin itches. He shifts again, flexes his fingers. Nothing feels right or real. 

His heart pounds too hard against his ribs, his pulse ticks in his wrists, his throat, his skull. It’s all wrong.

His stomach twists with hunger. 

The barracks are safe. He knows that. He’s surrounded by allies, by his men, by Steve. He’s just next door, for fuck’s sake. There’s no reason to feel like this. No reason at all.

He’s so tired. He could fade away, just a little bit, just to clear away some of the fog. Make the guys less concerned. 

But when he tries, the weight of the walls press in again. Until he feels caged, like those too-small rooms, the ones with the straps and the iron lung and the voices whispering numbers into his ear. 32557—

He grits his teeth, forces his fists to unclench.

No.

Not there.

The wooden beams above him are not steel. The warmth is not a fever. The air is not recycled through vents he can’t see.

And yet—

He gets up from the bed, upheaves all the blankets and sheets and pillows, rolls to the ground so he can bury his face into the cold floorboards. Maybe it is too soft, like Dernier said, maybe he can just lie here, and it’ll all be alright—

His heartbeat stutters, then picks up—faster, faster.

The barracks are safe. But he still waits for the door to creak open, for a bootstep against the floor, for someone to come in and—

He bolts upright.

His hands are shaking. His shirt sticks to his skin, damp with sweat he’d hardly realised until now. He rubs his fingers against the inside of his wrist. The holes have filled in by now, an ugly, mutilated red. He presses hard—one, two, one, two—tries to push the feeling down..

It doesn’t work.

The barracks are safe.

The wood is cool beneath his heels. He focuses on that, on the solidness of it, the realness.

Deep breaths. Slow. Even.

It’s fine. He’s fine.

But he doesn’t lie back down.

Instead, he stands. Slips his boots on. Pulls his jacket over his shoulders.

And he walks.

Bucky is so goddamn tired, but sleep isn’t coming for him tonight. He doesn't think it'll ever come for him again. 

But, strangely, it doesn’t bother him. The dreams are worse than the exhaustion, after all. 

He must’ve passed out one night, because he wakes up screaming. 

It’s immediate—violent—his body jolting upright before he even knows what’s up and what’s down. His chest heaves, breath sawing in and out, hands fisting the sheets so hard his knuckles crack. He can still feel it—the burn of ice water, the diseases that tore through him like the Egyptian plague, counting and muttering and counting and—he’d killed someone, hadn’t he? Multiple someones. 

The room is dark and unfamiliar. It shifts—like a rollercoaster before it drops—as he gasps for air. He’s not there. He’s not there. But the scent of antiseptic clogs his throat, and the walls feel too close, the ground too soft, the heat of his own body too much—

Bootsteps.

Bucky flinches, instinct snapping like a live wire, his fingers curling into claws, ready to—

“Bucky—hey, hey—”

A familiar voice. Steady and soft like honeysuckle 

Steve.

Bucky barely registers it before hands—warm, real hands—are gripping his shoulders, steadying him. His heart slams against his ribs. He snarls, jerks back, but Steve doesn’t let go.

“It’s me, Buck,” he murmurs, voice thick with something Bucky doesn’t have the strength to name. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”

Bucky shakes his head, still trying to claw his way out of whatever half-formed hell his mind’s caught in. A fly stuck in dark, curdled amber. His body thrums with leftover adrenaline, muscles wound so tight they throb. He can’t breathe. He still can’t—

“I got you,” Steve says again, quieter this time. His grip tightens—not restraining, but solid enough to tether. “I got you.”

Bucky gasps, trembling against him, his body screaming to fight even as his mind pleads for rest. But Steve is warm, the press of his hands steady, a lighthouse in a raging storm.

Slowly, the fight bleeds out of him.

His limbs go slack first, the tension unraveling in jagged, uneven bursts. Then he slumps forward, forehead pressing against Steve’s shoulder, still shaking, still catching up to reality. His breath shudders out of him.

Steve doesn’t say anything else. Just holds him.

Bucky doesn’t cry. He just stops.

Not asleep. Not awake.

Caught in limbo—between dusk and dawn.

They don’t pester him about sleeping again.

Bucky doesn’t talk about his time in Austria. Not even his time since he deployed. 

Steve knows him well enough to understand why. He’s never been good at sharing what bothers him—never liked people fussing over him, never liked admitting when something hurt. As a kid, he’d scrape his knees raw, bloody his knuckles in alleyway fights, and still shrug it off with a grin, telling Steve it didn’t hurt, that he barely felt it. Even in his letters, all he talked about was weather, the shit food, the funny bastard in his unit who snored loud enough to shake the bunks. He made it sound like some grand adventure, like a summer spent away at camp. He never wanted to be seen as weak. And maybe it started as pride, the big older brother, the one who’ll carry the legacy of the Barnes name. But now? Now, it’s something else entirely.  

So Steve doesn’t press.

Or, he tries not to press. 

But it’s difficult—not knowing, not understanding what’s running through Bucky’s head when he stares at his hands too long, rubbing at his wrists, his gaze somewhere far, far away. When he flinches at shadows, at the scrape of a chair, at the clink of metal against porcelain in the mess hall. Or stops eating halfway through meals, staring down at his tray like the food’s suddenly turned to ash in his mouth.

Steve doesn’t know what they did to him. He only knows the aftermath.

And Bucky won’t tell him.

Some days, it feels like he’s talking to a ghost, like the man sitting across from him, walking beside him, isn’t really there. There’s pieces of him—fragments of the Bucky Steve grew up with, his sharp humour, his goddamn stubbornness—but some things are just… missing. Torn out. Replaced with silence.

Steve can handle silence. But this kind—it’s unnerving.

He watches. Waits. Looks for any sign that Bucky might want to talk, might be ready to let him in. But he never does.

And Steve doesn’t want to push—not when Bucky’s just barely holding himself together.

But the weight of not knowing sits heavy on his chest.

It’s hard to help someone when you don’t know what’s killing them.

Agent Carter keeps her word. No doctors. No checkups. Just Stark.

The man himself is waiting when they arrive—coat draped over his shoulders, a cigarette burning low between two fingers, sleeves rolled up like he’s been at this for hours. Maybe he has. A cluttered desk sprawls behind him, scattered with paper and blueprints and mechanical sketches. 

When he sees them, he exhales a long stream of smoke. “Sergeant Barnes,” he greets. His eyes flicker to Carter. “Peggy.”

Bucky barely acknowledges him. He keeps his hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders drawn tight. The sight makes Stark’s smirk dim slightly, but not entirely. He gestures to the chair in front of him. “Have a seat, kid.”

Bucky doesn’t move.

Carter sighs. “Howard.”

“Alright, alright, I get it.” Stark waves a hand. “No coddling. No bedside manner. Let’s get to it, then.” He grabs a folder from the desk, flips it open. Bucky catches a glimpse of the files inside—pages and pages of meticulous, too-clean handwriting. Sharp, clinical. A foreign language of procedures, tests, numbers. The inked stamp of a HYDRA insignia on the top left corner.

Nausea nestles deep in his gut. 

Stark glances up, watches him carefully. “I haven’t gone through everything yet,” he says, voice oddly neutral. “But from what I have pieced together… HYDRA wasn’t just experimenting on their soldiers. They were trying to make something else.” He flips a page, lets the words linger. “Something new.”

Bucky exhales sharply through his nose. His fingers twitch in his pockets. Those were the words Zola used. 

Carter, standing beside him, tilts her head. “Elaborate.”

Stark gestures to one of the sketches—a human figure, anatomical breakdowns littering the margins. It’s rudimentary, a scientist’s rough draft, but the details are clear enough: reinforced skeletal structure, tissue regeneration trials, electrical impulse tests—pain thresholds.

“They were testing something,” Stark continues. “Something big. Like—Erskine level big. I’ve seen some of the technology they left behind—it’s decades ahead of what we have. They were doing things to the human body that shouldn’t be possible. And Barnes—” he hesitates, then turns another page.

A new document. More words, more diagrams.

And Bucky’s name. Stamped at the top.

“—you were their proof of concept.”

Bucky doesn’t breathe, afraid that if he tries, it’ll shatter his ribs all over again. 

He knew. Somewhere, in the back of his fragmented mind, he always knew. But to be told—

His name. Right there. On their paper.

Stark watches, waiting for some kind of reaction. Carter is silent beside him.

Bucky’s hands are shaking. He clenches them into fists.

“You don’t have to look,” Carter says gently, even though it had been her suggestion in the first place. 

But he does.

Because she was right. It’s his name.

And he needs to know.

The pages cannot possibly capture everything, but they capture enough. His name is everywhere—stamped, cataloged, analysed in such precise, sterile notation. He’s a subject. 

Subject #86—the one that survived. 

He shouldn’t be surprised. He isn’t surprised. And yet, seeing it all laid out, so cold and clinical—it makes him want to tear the pages apart with his teeth. Burn them, scatter the ashes, let the wind carry them somewhere far, far away.

Instead, he clenches his fists so tightly his nails bite into the thick scars on his palms.

Stark watches him from the other side of the desk, waiting. He doesn’t rush him. Just smokes his cigarette, lets the silence whittle.

Bucky exhales sharply through his nose. Flips a page. “You recognise any of this?” His voice is rough.

Stark glances at the document, exhales. “Bits and pieces. Some of this is beyond even me, and we don’t even have the full picture. But the way they manipulated the human body—” He shakes his head. “They were playing God. And they were good at it.”

Bucky forces himself to breathe. He drags a finger down the margins of a particularly dense page—notes on neurological conditioning, cognitive rewiring, all with half-baked translations on the side. His gut twists. He doesn’t read further. “What does it mean?”

Stark sighs, leans forward. “It means they were trying to turn you into something superhuman. Maybe something unkillable.” He taps the paper. “This here? That’s tissue regeneration. And this?” He points to another section, covered in notations that reminds Bucky of his pa’s old blueprints—when he still worked the shipyards, drawing up reinforced hulls and plating. But this is hardly armour for a vessel, it’s a blueprint of a person. A weapon. A step-by-step process on how to build something more machine than man. “Looks like they were testing neuroplasticity. Seeing how much they could rewrite before you snapped.”

Rewrite.

The word sinks like that damn scalpel between his toes.

“They didn’t succeed,” Bucky mutters hoarsely. “I’m still me.”

Stark hesitates. “Yeah.” He flicks ash into a tray. “But they sure as hell got close.”

Bucky swallows hard. Keeps flipping. The pages feel heavier and heavier. Some of the words blur. His name appears over and over, stamped across medical reports, progress logs, experiment results.

He was theirs.

For however long, for however many weeks, months, he was theirs to test, to poke, to break apart and put back together into a puzzle missing half its pieces.

His stomach rolls.

“You okay, kid?”

Bucky doesn’t answer. Just exhales slowly, presses the heel of his hand to his temple. “What do I do with this?” he asks. “What the hell am I supposed to do with any of this?”

Stark leans back in his chair. “I don’t know,” he admits.

That makes something ugly twist inside Bucky’s chest. He wants a better answer than that. He wants guidance. A plan. Orders.

“Look,” Stark continues. “I can try to figure out what they did to you. But I need something to work with. A sample, a test—”

Bucky tenses. His mouth goes dry. “No,” he says immediately. “No tests.”

Stark holds up a hand. “Easy, easy. I meant vitals, Barnes. Maybe some blood. No straps, no scalpels.” He hesitates. “But I get it if that’s not an option.”

It isn’t.

But—

Bucky grips the edges of the folder so tight it crinkles under his fingers. 

He wants to know. More than he doesn’t want to accept it, more than the fear marinating deep in his stomach.

He glances at Stark, jaw clenched. Forces the words out before he can stop himself.

“…What kind of samples?”

Bucky doesn’t want to sleep.

And Steve’s not an idiot—especially after the other night. 

He knows if he pushes he’ll only piss Bucky off. Like the many times he already has, clearly. 

So, one night, he pulls a book from his duffel and follows Bucky to his room. 

Bucky barely acknowledges him, sits down at the edge of the bed, looks at the wilted cover for a long time. Steve waits. Until Bucky finally exhales, rubbing a hand down his face. “Didn’t know you were still carrying that thing around.”

Steve shifts, suddenly self-conscious. He doesn’t know why. Maybe because Bucky’s right—he didn’t bring much with him to war. The sketchbook, sure. The few letters that had made it through. Why carry around a book that he doesn’t even like?

“…I guess I needed something that reminded me of you,” Steve admits softly. The words feel strange in his mouth, a little too open, too honest—so much has changed—but he doesn’t take them back.

Bucky looks away, scratches his wrists. It’s an invitation, however quiet and hesitant. 

Steve takes it. 

He settles in, finds the first page, and starts reading. 

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Bucky inhales sharply, squeezes his eyes shut, but doesn’t tell him to stop.

Steve keeps going.

“Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

There’s a pause, long and slow.

Then, a quiet huff. “Damn hobbits have it good.”

Steve glances up, surprised. Bucky still isn’t looking at him, but there’s another piece of him that’s familiar, that isn’t the ghost—the relaxed set of his mouth he’d always get after returning from the docks and had an armchair waiting for him. Not quite a smile, but pleasant all the same. 

Steve exhales. The knot in his chest loosens slightly “Yeah, they do.”

He keeps reading.

It takes a while for the words to settle into a rhythm. He stumbles over half of them—grumbles when he loses track of where Bilbo is and has to flip back to the damn map just to get his bearings “God, this thing is confusing. How is this a children’s book?”

A faint, amused noise from the other side of the bed. 

Far over the misty mountains cold

To dungeons deep and caverns old

We must away ere break of day

To seek the pale enchanted gold.

“Okay, that line isn’t so bad,” Steve concedes. 

Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.

Then, quietly—“See? he’s like you.”

Steve blinks. Looks up. 

Bucky’s head rests on the pillow, eyes drooped onto Steve’s frame, backlit by the lamplight. He looks sleepy, a good kind of sleepy—the look he’d give when Steve buried his face against his neck, curled together in the too-small bed that always smelled of home.  

And then, like it’s nothing, Bucky huffs another breath of laughter. 

Steve laughs too, properly. “Oh, like you’re any better.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches. His voice is just a murmur now, but it holds the teasing lilt he’d get after every one of his charming, exasperated sighs. “Never said I was.”

Steve smiles, shakes his head, and keeps reading.

Slowly, Bucky drifts off. 

The room is cold. Something sharp presses into his skull. Numbers chant endlessly through the dark, filling up the freezing air, soon swallowed by the low electric hum—the heartbeat of steel. 

Bucky gasps for air, but it doesn’t reach his lungs. 

Wake up. 

But it doesn’t feel like a dream—it’s the only thing that feels real, actually. And it makes something hiccup in Bucky’s chest. The crippling terror that he’d never left, that Geneva had all been a figment of his imagination. A fever-dream, a mirage born from delirium. 

There’s the flash of Zola’s glasses. The smell of antiseptic. The sharp snap of leather against his skin. 

No—no, no, no—

The ice-hot burn of his blood going sour. 

He chokes. Spits out blood, all green and black and unnatural with the poison coursing through his veins. He keeps coughing, keeps choking, until he’s heaved up all his organs, all the rotten, twisted things they forced into him. And still, he’ll never be clean of it. 

The hum deepens, turning into something alive—buzzing, a distorted voice, inhuman and hollow.

Again.

Hands on him—gripping, restraining, prying him open like a machine that needs fixing. A drill biting into the base of his skull, twisting, twisting, trying to get inside—

Bucky screams.

And then—

Bucky, wake up. 

Soft, warm. Tearing through just briefly, swimming between Zola’s predatory grin and orange lamplight. 

I’m here. 

He jerks upright with a gasp, sucking in air like he’s breaking the surface of a deep, dark ocean. 

He’s not in the lab. His breath doesn’t come out all foggy, his skin isn’t pricked by goosebumps. There’s cream walls and the smell of graphite and Steve. Bucky swallows, chest still heaving, throat unbearably raw as he tries to reorient himself. 

When he glances up, Steve is still there. Still sitting on the edge of the bed. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “You’re okay. You’re here.”

Bucky’s breath stutters, ribs aching from the force of it. His skin is clammy, he’s sweat through all the damn sheet and his pulse pounds against his wrists, beneath the thick, black artery that twitches against his neck. 

Steve doesn’t move. Doesn’t press. He presses a firm hand on Bucky’s shoulder, pushes him back onto the pillow gently. 

After a moment, he reaches for the book on the nightstand—the same book. The one that somehow, inexplicably, always seems to be there when he needs it.

Steve flips through the pages, finds his place.

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

His voice is steady. He slides his hand down to Bucky’s palm. Not forcing, not grabbing. Just there. 

Bucky exhales slowly. Feels his fingers thaw, just enough to squeeze Steve’s hand properly. 

He stares at the ceiling. Counts Steve’s pulse through his skin. Breathes. 

He doesn’t close his eyes for a long time. 

Steve keeps reading. 

The room is small, the kind that feels even smaller when you know what you’re about to see. The projector hums low, flickering against the wall. Peggy and Howard don’t sit. They stand, arms crossed, shoulders stiff. 

A drink would be good—something to keep their hands occupied—but Peggy doesn’t drink on the job and Howard, for once, doesn’t have a witty excuse to reach for the flask in his coat.

He presses play.

The grainy black-and-white film jitters to life. The footage doesn’t have any sound attached, and at the start, there’s nothing but a blinking white bar at the bottom of the screen marking the timestamp.

It rolls and rolls until—

German soldiers fill the room, goggled, clad in some industrial-heavy armour. HYDRA insignias plaster all over the uniforms and weapons—now that they look at it, all over the machinery too. 

Stark scoffs under his breath. “Well, they were certainly anal about copyright.”

Neither of them laughs.

The footage continues. There’s a metal chair bolted to the ground. Straps at the arms, the legs, the chest. 

They heave someone forward, long, dark strands covering their face. 

Even with the grainy quality, she can see how wrong the man looks. Posture too stiff, shoulders locked and muscles trembling. One of the soldiers pulls back his hair, forcing his face up to the camera. It’s Barnes—with blown, unfocused pupils. A bruise blooms across his cheekbone, blood leaking from his temple. His chest rises and falls too fast, but he doesn’t struggle or fight. He stares blankly at the camera, like it’s not there. 

Peggy doesn’t blink. 

Another man steps into the frame. Dr. Armin Zola, clipboard in hand, murmuring something to the technician beside him. The technical nods, flicks a switch. 

Wires. Electrodes. A helmet lowered onto Barnes' heads, straps tightening beneath his chin. 

The film jumps, a hard cut. Either intentional or damaged during the rescue. 

But Barnes is different now. 

Same chair, same restrains. But his body is slack, head tilted forward, lips parted into large, sweeping gasps. 

A doctor peels one of his eyes open with gloved fingers, checks the dilation. Another presses two fingers to his throat. 

Then—words. They can’t make it out, so Stark enhances the image, tries to follow the movements of their words. 

“What they sayin’ Peggy?”

She squints, trying to make sense of the soundless, impersonal German. 

SUBJECT 86: COMPLIANCE TEST—PHASE ONE.

“Yeesh.”

Peggy doesn’t have a comment.

The footage flickers. Another cut. 

This time, the chair is empty. 

Barnes stands. Or rather, he’s standing because he was told to. His movements are unnatural, mechanical. He sways slightly but doesn’t collapse. 

Two HYDRA soldiers step in with another prisoner.

The boy—because that’s what he is, really—looks feral, snapping his teeth, foaming at the mouth. He thrashes against their grip, spitting what must be curses. There’s something extremely off about him. The jerky, erratic movements, the veins darkening beneath his skin. He shakes like an engine being revved. 

Howard swallows. 

Zola steps forward, calm as ever. He gives a simple order. 

Barnes moves. 

It’s not a fight. Because that would imply resistance, and it’s not even close. 

The prisoner lunges, but Barnes catches him with ease. Spins him, twists his arm back at an unnatural angle. There’s a flash of a knife—no, a scalpel, something small and sharp and glinting in the light—and then—

Peggy looks away. 

Howard doesn’t. He watches the whole thing, jaw clenched unbearably tight, pinching the inside of his palm. He’s seen his fair share of death—he’s worked on the kind of weapons that turn men into smears of red and bone dust. But what he’s seeing isn’t war or even strategy. It’s an experiment. A test. A descent into madness. 

The film cuts out abruptly, leaving the room in darkness. The only sound is the faint whir of the projector winding down. 

Peggy releases a slow, measured breath. Forces herself to lift her chin. “We’re not showing him this.”

Howard exhales like a deflated balloon. “No arguments here, Peg.”

They stand there for a long moment, neither of them speaking. 

Then, quietly—almost too quietly—Peggy asks, “Do you think he remembers?”

Howard doesn’t answer right away. He glances at the dark screen, at the flickering dust motes in the light of the lamp.

“…I don’t know.”

Neither of them move to restart the film.

Some things, they decide, are better left buried.

Chapter Text

December 1943, Geneva, Switzerland 

They keep adding weight, testing the limits of his strength—if there even is one.

First, a standard military-issue barbell, just to get a baseline. Then, one loaded with 100 pounds—roughly the weight of a fully equipped soldier. When that proves effortless, they double it. Then triple it. They keep adding plates, stacking them until they reach the heaviest military gear they have on hand—1.8 tons of steel plating, salvaged from a wrecked half-track.

The weight drags at first, pulls Bucky’s arms downward—but then something shifts. A flicker of instinct. The strain disappears. His muscles adjust, compensating before his mind even caches up. The bar comes up like it weighs nothing.

Stark clicks his pen, glancing at the notes he’s made. “You do realise you just benched a Jeep, right?”

Bucky drops the weight indifferently, letting it thud against the floor with a metallic clang. He wipes his hands on his pants, flexing his fingers. His palms sting from gripping the bar, which pinched his scar tissue. But that’s about the worst of it. The weight itself was remarkably easy. 

Too easy.

How his body just…adapted. Like it was trained to.  

And maybe it had been. Bucky doesn’t remember. 

“Guess I don’t need help carrying ammo anymore,” he responds dryly. 

Carter’s gaze sharpens. There’s something else there—something quiet, unreadable, no doubt convenient in her espionage work. But Bucky knows worry when he sees it.

“Alright,” Stark interrupts, too casual. He twirls the pen between his fingers, looking between the two of them.  “Let’s wrap up the strength tests before we break something important.”

Bucky sighs, flexes his fingers again. 

He should feel exhausted. 

But he doesn’t.

They move to Stark’s private runway—because, of course that’s just something normal he has in his back pocket.

The sunrise spills over the wide stretch of pavement, turning the frost-lined edges gold. It’s quiet in the alps. The snow dampens the sounds of his boots scuffing against the ground, the low idle of the Jeep, even the soft breath of wind that carries through the valley. It’s like the whole world is wrapped in cotton.

And it’s nice. Almost normal. It reminds him of Brooklyn mornings, when he’d run to work before the streets got too crowded, before Steve had to pull on extra layers just to stay warm.

Bucky breathes in the cold air. Lets it settle, holds onto that feeling for just a second longer—before the reality of why they’re here pulls him back.

Carter and Stark sit perched in the car, Stark fiddling with his stopwatch, Carter adjusting her gloves. 

Bucky raises a brow. “This seems a bit unprofessional.”

Stark snorts. “Yeah? Well, it’s short notice and we’re fresh out of superhuman-speed training manuals. Left ‘em all back in New Jersey.” 

Bucky considers that, nods. “Fair.”

Stark leans out of the Jeep, tapping the side. “Alright, Barnes, let’s see what you can do.”

Bucky rolls his shoulders, plants his feet. He watches as Carter shifts the car into a slow roll.

He takes off slow, idling forward at a casual pace.

Then a jog. Then a run. A sprint. 

Wind howls past his ears, tearing through his hair, snapping at his skin. The car keeps rolling forward, Stark keeping a close eye on his pace. 

Then he picks up speed. 

And keeps picking up speed.

The engine revs.

30mph and Bucky keeps pace. 

They push it faster—40mph, and he’s still with them. 

Stark whistles. “Not bad.”

45mph. His breath comes sharper, but he’s still keeping up. 

50mph. 

And there it is—his limit. 

Something inside him warns against pushing further. His muscles don’t ache—but his bones do. The kind that says stop now or break. He grits his teeth, tries to push through it—

But the Jeep pulls ahead.

He watches it move past him, kicking up dust, until he finally slows, lets the momentum ease him back down.

The moment he stops, he braces his hands on his knees, breathing in deeply. His pulse pounds against his ribs, but not frantically. His legs burn, but it’s not exhaustion—not in the way he understands it. He should be gasping, aching—but he isn’t.

Stark checks the stopwatch, blinks. He looks at Carter, then back at the numbers. “Well,” he exhales, shaking his head. “You might not need a Jeep either.”

Bucky stares at the ground. It didn’t feel that fast—just…hollow, save for the shiver that still lingers in his bones. Like something had been taken from him, not given.

He exhales through his nose, straightening. 

Carter studies him carefully. 

He ignores it. 

“Alright,” Stark claps his hands together, forcing some levity back into his voice. “Who’s up for breakfast?”

The warehouse Stark has now repurposed (seriously, how many secret facilities does one man need?) is lined with sandbags, old crates, and reinforced panels that are supposed to withstand explosive rounds. 

Bucky breathes, closes his eyes, tries not to think about the broken clock and the—

No. 

He opens them. The targets stand before him—military-grade, dense material meant to simulate human resistance. Some are stationary, some rigged to move unpredictably on one of Stark’s new contraptions. 

They aren’t people. They aren’t people. He repeats it in his head until it holds.

Stark gestures at the first dummy. Clicks his pen. “Alright, Barnes. Let’s start easy. Just enough force to knock ‘em down.”

Bucky rolls his shoulders, shaking out his wrists. He moves forward.

He barely taps the first dummy and it flies across the room. 

The second one snaps in half. 

The third? He steps in, swings—and it crumples like tin under his fist. 

The metal frame embedded in the wall groans as it settles. 

Bucky stares down at his hands, flexes his fingers like they aren’t his own.

It wasn’t supposed to be that easy.

Stark clears his throat, breaking the silence. “Well. Good news? You could punch a guy clean through the ribs. Bad news? You might actually punch a guy clean through the ribs.”

Carter doesn’t laugh.

Bucky takes a breath, forces his shoulders to square, not shake.

“Again,” Stark says, flipping a page in his notes.

Bucky winces and…something inside him clicks. He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t think. 

He throws another punch—deliberate this time. 

The metal stand crashes into the wall, denting the reinforced steel, making it cave in on itself. 

More silence. 

Stark slowly turns his head. “Right. I’ll bill that to the Army.”

Carter still doesn’t laugh. 

Instead, she crosses her arms, tilts her head, eyes narrowing just slightly. Not fear. But calculation. She’s filed away what she’s seen. Deciding what to do with it. 

And Bucky hates it.

Because he knows that look.

It’s the same one Zola used to wear.

The last thing that Stark needs is a blood sample. 

And Bucky knew this. Agreed to it. But now, with the moment finally here—rubber band biting into his skin, the smell of the alcohol wipe stinging his lungs—his entire body revolts. He wants to rip his own damn arm off and run. 

He doesn’t like needles anymore. Doesn’t like being held down. And yeah, for good fucking reason. 

But they’ve tested everything else already—strength, endurance, reaction time. They know how fast Bucky can move, how much weight he can lift, how easily he can snap bone and steel alike. But what they don’t know is why.

And Bucky wants to know why too. 

“Alright, Barnes,” Stark says, rolling up his sleeves. “Just want to get a look at your cells, see what’s going on under the hood. You might be carrying some top-secret HYDRA surprises in there, and I’d rather not find out the hard way.”

Bucky stays quiet.

Carter watches from the corner, arms crossed. 

She hasn’t left since they started. Bucky isn’t sure if she’s here as backup or insurance.

He sits on the edge of the table, tries not to pick at his wrists. “So what, you just want a vial?”

Stark grimaces, shaking out his hands. “Couple, actually. But let’s start slow.”

He moves to grab the needle.

Bucky breathes out, tries to make it even. It’s fine. It’s just blood. 

The needle glints under the overhead light.

Bucky’s breath catches—blood, blood on my hands—

—The floor—

—My mouth, bubbling up at the edges, choking—

Stark turns back. “Alright, just give me your—”

Bucky jerks back on instinct, body locking up.

Stark pauses. “…Okay. Let’s try that again.”

Bucky exhales sharply, unclenching his fist in frustration. “Just—get it over with,” he grits out. 

Stark nods. He steps forward, presses two fingers to the crook of Bucky’s arm, searching for the vein.

Bucky’s throat closes.

His skin prickles like it’s been peeled back, the touch burning through layers of memory. He’s back on that damn table, wrists nailed down, head held in place.

“Try to stay still,” Stark instructs. 

It triggers the voice in his skull, sterile and clinical—

Hold still.

Pressure at his arm. A cold swipe of antiseptic.

Hold still.

A needle piercing skin. A machine whirring to life.

Hold still. Subject 86.

Bucky flinches. It’s the first time he has in all their tests. 

It’s barely a twitch, but Stark catches it. His hands still, the needle barely breaking skin. 

“Barnes—”

Bucky forces himself to breathe. Forces himself to stay.

His pulse pounds at his wrist.

Another breath. He flexes his fingers. “I’m fine.”

Stark doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t push. He just presses the needle in—

Something snaps. That live-wire in his head—it snaps. 

Bucky doesn’t remember moving.

Stark is reaching forward—and then, Bucky has him by the throat.

There’s a crash, the sound of equipment scattering across the table. 

Stark stumbles back, choking, fingers scrambling at Bucky’s wrist.

“Barnes—”

Bucky’s grip tightens.

His heartbeat is too loud. His vision has tunnelled. There’s something thrashing inside him, something clawing to the surface, demanding he finish it—

“BARNES.”

A gun cocks.

Bucky blinks.

Carter stands a few feet away, pistol trained directly at him.

His stomach lurches forward, and the fog clears.

His hand is wrapped around Stark’s throat, pressing just hard enough to turn his knuckles white, and Stark’s face has grown all tight and purple. His hands scrabble at Bucky’s arm, but he keeps his fingers away from Bucky’s wrist, away from where his pulse thunders, away from the ugly, raw scars—

Bucky rips his hand away like he’s been burned.

Stark stumbles forward, coughing, rubbing his throat. “Jesus—”

Carter doesn’t lower her gun.

Bucky’s breath heaves. His shoulders shake. The world is spinning too fast, the walls too small, the air too thick—it’s happening again.

He takes a step back. Then another.

And then—he bolts

Shoves past them, nearly slamming into the doorframe. 

He doesn’t know where he’s going—he just needs out.

Needs air.

He needs to be anywhere but there.

Bucky shoves open the nearest exit and stumbles into the cold night air. His hands find the railing of the stairwell, gripping tight enough to pinch and tear—to stop the world from spinning, to erase Stark’s wide-eyed stare and the way Carter’s hand hovered over the trigger.

The nausea rises fast, until he’s hurling up his dinner onto the pavement. The force of it wrenches through his body. There’s something sour in his lungs. Rotten in his blood—his blood. 

They wanted to take it, to see what was inside him. 

And it should’ve been nothing. It shouldn’t have existed in the first place. 

It should’ve been the blood of a dead man's. 

Bucky takes in shuddering breaths, spitting out strands of saliva as another wave claws its way up his throat. The world reduces to its faulty axis, until it shrinks down to one singular question, rattling inside his skull—why am I still here?

“Jesus, Buck—”

He whirls around, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  

Steve.

Of course. Of fucking course, it’s Steve.

Steve, whose face pinches with concern, hair all mussed, like he’s been running a hand through it all day, brows furrowed, eyes exhausted—has he even slept? 

And Steve’s looking at him, taking him in, and he—Bucky is such a goddamn mess. 

“What’s going on? Where have you been?” Steve takes a step forward, slow and careful. When Bucky doesn’t shove him away, he sweeps the sweat from his bangs, rubs his back in soft circles. 

Bucky hurls again, coughing over the railing, shivering and gasping and—he doesn’t deserve Steve’s compassion. Not when—he could’ve killed—

—he has killed—

“Easy, easy,” Steve murmurs.

With nothing left to heave, Bucky drags his hands down his face. He can feel them shaking. Goddamn it. 

“It’s nothing,” he mutters. “I just—I-I needed air.”

Steve doesn’t buy it. 

Of course, he doesn’t fucking buy it you’re throwing up all over the damn place. 

“Bucky—”

“Please, Steve.” His voice cracks. “I said it’s nothing, please.”

Steve continues rubbing his back.  “You were gone for hours, I thought—” he cuts himself off quickly. “It doesn’t matter. Are you o—What happened?” 

He says it so gently, with so much care and patience. 

And for the first time since they pulled him out of that hellhole, Bucky breaks. 

“I—I can’t keep doing this, Steve. Fuck, I can’t keep running around flailing and—choking—and—and-” he gestures vaguely at himself, at this whole pathetic wreckage he’s become. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this. I should’ve never survived—”

Steve’s frown deepens.  “Bucky—”

“I mean it.” His voice is desperate now. “I should’ve died in Azzano. I should’ve died from pneumonia on that goddamn death march. I should’ve—” His breath stumbles. “I should’ve died on that table, Steve.”

The words shatter something in the air.

And Bucky can’t stop now. It’s all pouring out—like a wound split open, something festering beneath his skin finally forcing its way out. “Why me, Steve? Why did I make it out, huh? Why the hell did I survive? What the hell makes me so special? What makes me deserve to be here when they’re all—”

He swallows hard, his throat stuttering. He’s not crying, but there’s something hysterical in his voice, wrecked and uneven, chest convulsing, retching up dry, aching sobs that scrape his ribs and burn his lungs. 

And Bucky wants to cry—he’d rather cry, than whatever the hell is coming out of him right now. This half-formed panic and humiliation that won’t rest, that won’t ebb, that won’t come out. 

He wants to cry, and he can’t. So he chokes over his own breath, hyperventilating, static filling his vision because he’s just so—so—

Steve grips his shoulders. Not cautious this time—firm. “You’re spiralling, Buck. Stay with me.” he says, and there’s an edge to it. Not anger. Not even pity. It’s his own damn determination rearing its head to tell Bucky off and—he’s not worthy of any of it. 

Bucky lets out a shaky breath, drags his hand through his hair. He’s trembling, fuck, he’s still trembling—he can’t even hold himself together. 

“Look at me,” Steve says. He turns Bucky’s face over in his hands, rubs his cheekbones. Swipes where tears should’ve been. “Breathe. Breathe.” He mirrors the motions until Bucky can cling onto it himself, taking in large, frantic gasps. “I don’t care what HYDRA made you believe. I don’t care what you think you deserve. You’re here. With me. And that’s not a mistake.”

“You don’t get it, Steve—”

“No, you don’t get it,” Steve interrupts. His eyes are burning too now, fresh tears in his baby blue eyes. “You think I didn’t want to be in your place? You think I wouldn’t have traded anything to get you out of there instead? It should’ve been me, not you.”

Bucky swallows hard. His whole body feels like it’s teetering down a fatal chasm, but he listens. 

Steve doesn’t stop. 

“I don’t know why you survived. I don’t know why they did this to you. Why anyone would do this to someone. But I know you’re here. And I’m so grateful for it. Every goddamn day.” His voice shakes. “When I found you, Buck—you don’t know what you looked like. You were barely there. You could’ve died, you were so close to it, and I wouldn’t have even been able to—” he swallows something down. “I took so long, wasted time, parading for all those USO shows when you needed me. And I wasn’t there.” Steve’s shoulders shake as he cries. “So no, Buck. It’s not on you. It could never be on you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. He feels Steve’s tears slipping into his hair, down the back of his shoulder, making his neck damp. But it’s warm against the cold night air. 

And then—Bucky lets go. 

Not completely. Not all at once.

But something inside him unspools slowly like a piece of thread.

He sags forward, forehead pressing against Steve’s collarbone, hands gripping the fabric of his jacket. His body shakes, but he breathes. 

And when Steve’s arms come around him, pulling him in tight, Bucky chokes— a sound caught between a sob and a breathless exhale—like he’s been holding it in for too long and doesn’t know how to let it out. He presses his face deeper into the crook of Steve’s shoulder, breath hitched and uneven. He doesn’t sob—he still can’t sob—but the stone sinking down his stomach stills. Just enough to let him breathe without sputtering over it.

Steve doesn’t rush him. 

Doesn’t tell him it’s okay or that it’s over, because they both know it’s not.

He holds him.

And for the first time since Azzano, since Austria, since everything—Bucky lets himself be held.

Bucky isn’t sure what he expected when Carter asked to have a word with him. Maybe a lecture, an official reprimand—dishonourable discharge— maybe even Stark still rubbing his damn throat and shooting him a glare from the corner. He’d nearly strangled the man, after all.

So, he squares his shoulders, steels himself for whatever’s coming. 

He’s ready to face the consequences. In fact, he finds that he wants them. Anything to alleviate the guilt eating at his insides. 

But Carter doesn’t look angry.

She folds her arms. “We shouldn’t have pushed you into it,” she says, her voice even. “It was… careless of me, Sergeant. And I’m sorry.”

Bucky blinks.

For a moment, he just stands there, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But there’s no reprimand, no clipped orders or threats about how he’s a danger to himself and others. Just Carter, standing in front of him, looking him straight in the eye, offering something he hadn’t even considered getting: an apology.

Bucky shifts his weight. His throat works around words he’s not sure how to form. “I—I didn’t mean to—I just—” He swallows, looking away. “I don’t know what happened.”

Carter nods. “I do.”

That makes him look up again.

“You spent months in enemy hands, Sergeant Barnes. You were tortured, experimented on, stripped of your agency. We don’t know the full extent of what they did to you, but we should have realised that trying to give you orders—commands—even in a controlled setting, was a mistake.”

Bucky clenches his jaw—and he’s…confused? “I don’t understand.”

“We asked for your strength, your speed, your blood. You said yes—but you’ve been conditioned to say yes, even for things that you don’t want to do. Even when you shouldn’t have to. Maybe you were okay with it. Maybe you only thought you were. Either way, I should’ve known better. I should have noticed your response sooner and stopped it from escalating.” She sighs, and it’s the first time Bucky’s heard her so…honest. Readable. “I should have never pulled my gun on you. But I did. And for that, I am sorry.”

He doesn’t know what to do with this—her apology. With the fact that she’s standing here and admitting fault like it matters. 

It doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make the shame go away or erase the feeling of Stark’s throat beneath his grip. Nor does it even pull him out of the pit he’s been drowning in.

But Carter means it.

And Bucky’s shoulders loosen, just a fraction. He doesn’t know what to say—what he’s supposed to say—so he nods again, more certain this time.

Carter watches him, searching for something in his expression. If she finds it, she doesn’t say. Instead, she steps back, hands still folded neatly in front of her. “I know you’re afraid of being a threat.”

Bucky looks away—damn, she’s good at that. 

“And I won’t lie to you, you could be—” she continues. “And that is a problem. But it’s also something I can help you through.”

His gaze snaps back to her, startled. 

“I don’t mean tests.” She exhales, shaking her head. “I mean learning how to control your body. Understand it. You’re stronger than you’ve ever been, but that doesn’t mean you have to be afraid of yourself. Steve’s proof of that.”

Bucky swallows around his dry throat. 

He doesn’t know how to believe that. Doesn’t know if he can.

Carter’s voice softens. “It’s your body, Sergeant. Not theirs. It’s time you take it back.”

Bucky’s fingers twitch at his sides, nails pressing into the scars at his wrists.

Take it back.

He’s spent so long feeling like he doesn’t belong in his own skin, like he’s been twisted into something unnatural and wrong. The idea that he could reclaim any part of himself—it feels impossible.

But Carter doesn’t strike him as someone who deals in impossibilities. 

She nods toward the door. “Take the night,” she says. “No more tests. Just rest.”

Bucky stands there for a beat longer, searching her expression for any sign of doubt, or pity, or anything that might make him feel smaller.

He doesn’t find it.

So he nods, just once, and walks out the door.

Bucky leans against the window of their shared barracks—a living room, really, where soldiers on his floor gather when they don’t want to be alone but can’t bring themselves to sleep. He rolls a cigarette between his fingers but doesn’t light it. He isn’t sure why. Maybe he just wants something to do with his hands. Steve would chew him out if he smoked it—but maybe he’s allowed that agency these days too. 

Dernier sits across from him, sharpening a knife with lazy efficiency, the rhythmic scrape of steel on stone filling the silence. The rest of the camp has settled for the night, but neither of them seems inclined to go to bed. 

“You and Cap,” Dernier says eventually. “You have known each other a long time.”

Bucky huffs out a tired laugh. He plays with the lighter, flicking it open, then closed. On. Off. On. Off. “That obvious?”

Dernier smirks. “Non, non, it is very subtle. You only look at him like he hung les étoiles.”

Bucky freezes for half a second before forcing himself to scoff. “Yeah, well. He’s got the shield now, doesn’t he? Makes sense. His determined ass would probably find a way.”

Dernier makes a face, unimpressed. He flips the knife in his grip, testing the balance. “Oui, but you looked at him like that before the war. Before he was Captain America, non?” 

Bucky stares down at the cigarette in his hands, running his thumb along the paper. “You a mind-reader or something?”

Dernier laughs. “Just a man who is, how you say—perceptive, about these things.”

Bucky suddenly remembers their conversation from Austria.

Dernier watches him, perhaps remembering the same conversation, then shrugs. “Love is love, mon ami. Even if the world does not have the words for it yet.”

Bucky glances up, sighs. “You clocked me even back then, huh?”

Dernier grins at his expression. “Quoi? You think you’re the only one?” He gestures vaguely. “The world is big, Barnes. More complicated than the rules they tell us to follow. We do not live forever, the war reminds us of this too often. Do not live your life in regret.”

Bucky rubs the cigarette between his lips, wetting the butt of the paper. “I…we..” he smiles softly. “Don’t worry. We don’t have any regrets.”

“Ah, so you two..?”

Bucky exhales. “Not exactly.”

Dernier raises a brow, waiting.

Bucky rolls the cigarette between his fingers again, sighing through his nose. “It’s just—” He stops. Tries again. “We never had to say it. Not really. We just… knew. We’d…find comfort in each other.” He looks up, ignoring the warmth creeping up his neck.

Dernier hums, flipping the knife again. “And now?”

Bucky swallows. “Now we’re here.” He gestures vaguely, encompassing the war, the barracks, everything they’ve been thrown into. “There’s not a lot of room for anything else. We’re a long ways from Brooklyn and those days seem…distant now.”

Dernier considers him for a moment, then tilts his head. “Is that truly what you believe, or is that what you tell yourself?”

Bucky clenches his jaw, taps the cigarette against the windowsill. He doesn’t answer.

Dernier leans back against the couch, stretching his legs out. “You say you have no regrets, Barnes. So don’t let fear make a liar out of you.”

“Jesus. You always like handing out wisdom before bed?”

“Only when I have an audience.”

Bucky huffs—On. Off. On—“Steve and I—nothing between us was ever complicated. Before the war.” Off.

Dernier says nothing, just waits. 

Bucky hesitates. “It was simple. He’d get into trouble, I’d get into worse trouble trying to back him up. I’d patch him, get him a meal, he’d tell me he could take care of himself, and I’d ignore it. The apartment was small, the heating was shit. So we shared a lot of things—beds, showers, warmth…That’s just how it was.” He lets out a short breath, almost a laugh, but there’s no real humour in it. “And now…I don’t know what we are.”

Dernier hums, thoughtful. “War changes many things.”

Bucky nods, staring at the cigarette. “It changed him. He’s bigger, stronger, got the whole world looking to him now. And me…” He stops, jaw tight. Me, I’m still trying to remember who—or what—the hell I even am.

Dernier watches him for a long moment before flicking his knife closed with a quiet snick. “And yet, he still looks at you like you are the only thing worth noticing.”

Bucky scoffs. “No he doesn’t.”

Dernier grins, tapping a finger to his temple. “Ah, but I told you, mon ami—I am perceptive.”

Bucky rubs his thumb over the cigarette again, then sets it down on the windowsill. His fingers twitch but he doesn’t press them into his wrists. “He deserves more than this mess,” he mutters, barely audible. 

Dernier raises a brow. “Perhaps he does. But let me ask you—who are you to decide that for him?”

Bucky’s throat works around something thick and unspoken.

Dernier stands, stretching with a quiet groan. “The world is ugly right now, Barnes. If you have something—someone—that makes it a little less so, don’t waste time thinking about all the reasons you shouldn’t. Just hold onto it.”

He claps Bucky’s shoulder once, firm, before heading toward his room, leaving him alone with his thoughts. 

Bucky picks up the cigarette again. Rolls it between his fingers.

He doesn’t light it.

Bucky doesn’t want to be in Stark’s lab.

He still feels guilty, and sitting under the harsh fluorescent light across from Stark—whose neck is wrapped in bandages—doesn’t help. Honestly, he doesn’t want to hear any more of Stark’s science-talk either—to be reminded of how wrong his body feels. But this was always the goal. And Stark had made some offhand comment about “not liking mysteries,” and Bucky kind of owes him one.

So now he’s here, sitting stiffly at the workbench while Stark flips through his notes.

Carter stands nearby, arms crossed, watching. Always watching. 

But it doesn’t unnerve him as much as before. 

Stark clears his throat. “Alright, so. I went through the um, few drops of blood I managed to get, ran some tests, and—well, long story short? You’ve got something nasty running through your veins, Barnes.”

Bucky exhales sharply. “Great. Real specific.” I already fucking knew that, he doesn’t say. 

“I mean it’s bad science,” Stark continues, ignoring him. “HYDRA took a good formula and—” he waves a hand, “—poured motor oil into it. Best I can tell, it’s a fractured, reverse-engineered version of Erskine’s serum. A bastardisation, really. Unstable, reactive, but built for brute strength. It’s like they were trying to refine it but never quite got there.”

Bucky clenches his fists. “So what’s it doing to me?”

Stark taps his notes with his pen.“Well, for starters, your body adjusts to stressors way too fast. Most people build strength over time. You? Your muscles just…decide they can do things. You were struggling with the half-track for about two seconds before your body figured it out.”

Bucky swallows through his clenched jaw. 

“Your metabolism is off the charts,” Stark continues. “Explains why you’re always hungry.”

Bucky raises a brow. “Noticed that, did you?”

“Yeah, real subtle, eating like a damn bear coming out of hibernation when you think no one’s looking. Great thing I have access to the cameras.”

Carter shoots Stark a look. He waves her off.

“Basically, your body adapts too quickly. It reacts rather than regulates. Same thing with your speed. It’s not about endurance or energy—it’s that your body doesn’t know how to stop. It’s why you kept up with the Jeep—your body knew when to quit, but you didn’t.”

Bucky swallows again.

Carter tilts her head. “And the side effects?”

Stark flips a page. “Spikes in aggression. Emotional detachment. Your pain receptors are dulled—probably deliberately. You can endure much more than the average person. You heal fast, but it prioritises speed over aesthetic.” 

Bucky grips the edge of the seat. “And my mind?”

Stark hesitates, which never means anything good. He scratches behind his ear, sighs. “Your cognitive function is intact, but there’s—let’s call it a ‘conditioned response.’ You react first, rationalise later. Especially given certain triggers or…instructions.” He doesn’t elaborate. “You’ve got all the markers of extreme psychological stress, but I don’t need a microscope to tell you that.”

Bucky exhales through his nose. He presses his fingers into his palm—one, two—the tension of skin against skin. He can feel that. That’s real. “So what?” His voice is sharp. “You saying I’m some kind of ticking time bomb?”

Stark shifts, but Carter doesn’t look fazed.

“No,” Stark says, surprisingly even. “I’m saying HYDRA built you like one. But that doesn’t mean you have to go off.”

That sits in the air for a while.

Bucky looks down at his hands. At the dark, swollen veins under his skin, the ones Stark just called bastardised and unstable. He thinks about his hands around Stark’s throat.

Unstable.

His chest tightens. “So what now?”

Carter finally steps forward. “You learn,” she says, repeating herself from their earlier conversation.

Like it’s that easy. 

Bucky scoffs. “Yeah? Learn what? How not to snap next time someone breathes wrong around me?”

“How to control it, Barnes,” she replies knowingly. 

Bucky blinks. His fingers twitch, so he digs his nails deeper.

Carter watches him carefully. “I’m not saying it’s fair. Or that it’s easy. But if you don’t want to be a threat, then you need to learn how not to be.”

“And how the hell do I do that?”

Carter doesn’t hesitate. “You train. You desensitise.”

Stark leans back in his chair, rubbing his temple. “See, this is where I check out. I build and test the weapons, I don’t teach people how to live with them.”

Bucky grits his teeth. “That supposed to make me feel better?”

Stark gestures at him with his pen. “Point is, you don’t need a scientist for this. You need someone who knows how to train people with enhanced abilities.”

Carter nods. “Like I told you, I can help.”

Bucky looks at her distrustfully. 

“I’ve worked with people like you before,” she continues. “Not exactly like you, of course. But I’ve trained spies, soldiers, people who have been put through hell and expected to come out the other side in one piece. I helped train Steve.” Her gaze sharpens. “I don’t believe you’re a lost cause, Barnes. But you do need to decide what you want to be. Whether you want to be the one in control.”

Bucky stares at her.

Something about it doesn’t really feel like a choice. 

He shifts in his chair. “And if I say no?”

Stark and Carter exchange glances.

“Then, unfortunately, we can’t keep this between ourselves anymore,” Carter says—not one to sugarcoat. 

Stark sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, Barnes, this is bigger than just keeping it a secret. We’re talking national security. People are gonna start asking questions if you keep showing signs of enhancement. And if you can’t control them, we can’t just wait for you to snap and lose it. Both for yourself and for the people around you.”

“And what?” he lashes out. “You two get to decide what happens next?”

Carter sighs. “We don’t want to reveal the truth, Barnes. Don’t make us.”

Bucky scoffs. “So you just expect me to let you play gatekeeper with my life? I don’t listen to what you say and you dangle that threat in my face?”

“No one is trying to threaten you,” Carter responds sharply. “But if people learn what HYDRA did to you—what they made you into—if you give them reason to believe that you’re somehow different…” She hesitates this time. “You also know what they’ll do.”

Bucky’s breath locks in his throat. 

Of course he knows.

They won’t be as understanding as she is. 

Stark leans against the table, watching him. “We need to know you’re stable, Barnes. That you can reject these impulses.”

Bucky bristles. “I’m fine. Just—just give me some time.” He can figure it out, fuck—he just got out of that hellhole, how can they expect him—

He looks at Stark’s bandaged throat and winces. 

“Unfortunately,” Carter says, “we don’t have time.”

No tests. Just talking. 

The first step in his training. 

As if that’s somehow easier in this scenario. 

Carter doesn’t make him sit on any metal tables or chairs. It’s relatively comfortable, actually, creased leather and worn-in cushions. A room that’s quiet, secluded, away from prying eyes, sunlight streaming through the window.

There are no needles, no weights, no measurements. 

Just Carter and the silence stretching between them.

Bucky should feel grateful. This is better than the alternative—than getting caught—but his gut twists restlessly. 

He doesn’t relax. 

“Let’s go through what you remember,” she says finally. “We only received a handful of documents and—we just need to fill in some blanks.”

Bucky breathes in deeply. Holds it. Nods. 

Fine.

He can do that.

She starts easy. 

Routine questions. What he ate, how often. The layout of the facility. The guards—how many, what shifts, any names he remembers. 

It’s all fact-based, things she probably already knows. 

He answers, listing what little he can, what his mind will let him recall without shutting down completely. 

He doesn’t mention the rat. The solitude. He doesn’t talk about Nikolai. 

But eventually, she starts asking the realquestions. 

“What about pain?” 

Her voice is even. 

Bucky hesitates, pulse kicking up.  “I don’t feel it the same,” he mutters. “Doesn’t mean I don’t feel it at all.”

Cater tilts her head. “Other changes? Sensory shifts?”

He shrugs, restless. “Everything was… heightened. I guess.” He gestures vaguely, throat tight. “Sound. Smell. Pressure. I got used to it.”

“Have there been any—impulses? Urges, since then?”

Bucky blinks. “What?” he asks flatly.

She holds his gaze. “Have you ever felt the urge to hurt yourself or others without provocation?” A pause. “Without orders?”

Bucky’s jaw tightens. “You mean like when I tried to strangle Stark?”

Carter doesn’t flinch. “I just want to know what you remember,” she reiterates. “Things that can help me better understand your behaviour.”

Bucky stands up. Too fast. A gut-wrenching flash of anger fills his stomach. “You want to know what I remember?” His voice is brittle. “I remember the table. I remember the restraints digging into my damn wrists. I remember the machines. I remember screaming, and nobody listening. I don’t—I can’t remember anything else.”

Carter takes in a deep breath. “Alright,” she says calmly. “Let’s move on.”

He sits back down. 

She asks him about his sleep. 

“Did they ever interrogate you?”

Bucky frowns. “Interrogate me?”

Cater nods. “Ask questions. Try to get information out of you. About the war, about us.”

Bucky blinks. Something cold slithers down his spine.

His fingers curl into his palm. “What are you asking?”

“You know what I’m asking.”

He digs into the scars. “You think I talked?”

Carter’s gaze doesn’t waver.  “Did you?”

“You think I sat there and told them all about Steve?” His voice comes out sharp and defensive. “Told them tactics? Strategy? What the hell we were doing?” He lets out a bitter laugh. “You think I gave them intel?”

Carter keeps her voice steady. “I have to ask.”

Bucky shakes his head, laughter turning hollow. “You have to ask,” he repeats with a shuddering breath. “You think I sat there and—I don’t know, traded secrets for food? For medicine? That they dragged me into a room and asked real nice, and I just—”

His throat closes. 

He tries not to think of fingers down his waist, the hitch in his throat as he pleaded for mercy. 

Because they didn’t ask.

They didn’t even care what he had to say.

Bucky grips the edge of the chair, shifting upright. “You want to know what I told them?” His voice is quiet now, deadly calm. “Nothing. Because they didn’t care what I had to say. Didn’t need it. They took what they wanted.” And they wanted everything. Bucky scoffs under his breath, shaking his head. “I would’ve said it too, you know,”  and the admission feels like splintering glass. “If they’d asked. Anything to have made it stop. I wish they did ask. But they didn’t.”

He sinks back into the chair, jaw set.

“Does that answer your question?”

She keeps asking. Prodding at the edges of memories he’s not sure are even his.

How long did the tests last? What did the serum feel like? 

Forever. Like ice and fire and rot in my veins. 

The words drift through the room like the dust in the sunbeam, weightless and suffocating all at once.

Do you remember the changes afterwards? Any anger? Hysteria? 

Yes? All I felt was change. I haven’t felt like myself in a long time. 

How many times did they put you in the chair. 

How many times did they pump you with radiation?

His pulse kicks up.

How is he even supposed to remember that? 

Do you remember anything they told you? What they said? 

His breath stutters. 

Because the truth is, he doesn’t.

Not all of it.

Some things are black holes—gaping, endless. Others are burned into the backs of his eyelids, seared into his bones like old scars that never set right. 

He can remember Zola’s tone, the clipped, rough German, the way he pet his head and stabbed him with holes—but no, he doesn’t remember the words he used to justify it. 

And then, the question that makes him snap: Do you remember killing anyone? 

Bucky’s heart skyrockets, panic spiking with it. “What?”

Carter keeps her voice neutral. “Did they make you hurt or kill anyone during your time there? Other prisoners? Soldiers?” 

Bucky drags a hand through his hair, eyes darting helplessly. He remembers the blood, the—the broken clock. 

What was his name? It started with a ‘C.’

Bucky flinches, forces himself to steady his breaths. “They made me do things. I don’t remember what. But I never wanted to do them. I wouldn’t have done them. I wouldn’t.” He stares at his hands, at the way they shake. They flicker between ivory skin and callouses drenched in crimson. He clenches them. “I wouldn’t.”

Carter’s silence is unreadable. 

And Bucky sees it—feels it, deep in his chest.

She doesn’t believe him.

Not fully.

Maybe she doesn’t even know what to believe.

But she must see something monstrous in him, something rotten, and it only confirms his greatest fears. 

That she isn’t wrong. 

He turns away, breathing hard.

They took everything. Every choice. Every piece of him. And now she’s here, asking him to hand it over to her instead? Like he even could? “You say my body’s not theirs, my mind isn’t theirs” he says loudly—a sick, twisted croak in his voice. “But it’s not yours either.”

Carter exhales, the first sign of something cracking in her carefully controlled exterior. But when she speaks, her voice is still firm. “You’re right, Sergeant. It’s not.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that.

Doesn’t know how to sit here, in the aftermath of what just came out of his mouth, in the weight of his own breath pressing against his ribs.

Carter watches him carefully, waiting. Then—“Alright, that’s enough for today.” 

Bucky stands up, shoves the chair back, and walks out.

No tests. Just talking. 

Training, she said. Desensitisation. 

Somehow, it hurts more than the needles.

Bucky doesn’t know how to start.

He’s spent the past few days avoiding this. Not Steve—just the conversation. Because saying it aloud makes it real, and he’s not sure he’s ready for that.

But Steve notices. He’s been watching Bucky closely—not in a way that suffocates, but in a way that waits. Gives him space, but not so much that Bucky feels like he’s slipping through the cracks. And Bucky appreciates it—but he’s started to feel a bit selfish about it too. This is Steve, his best-friend-more-than-friend, and he’s shutting him out. And…it hurts. 

Not just him—Steve, too. Bucky can see it in the way Steve holds himself back, hesitating before asking how he is, before reaching out, before closing the distance that used to be nothing between them. Like he’s afraid of pushing too hard, waiting for permission.

And Bucky hates that he’s made Steve doubt where they stand. That the weight in his own chest keeps him from bridging the gap first. 

But more than anything—more than guilt, more than fear—he misses him.

Steve leans back against the couch, arms crossed. “Alright,” he says. “You finally gonna tell me where you’ve been the last few days?”

Bucky exhales, dragging a hand down his face. “…Been training,” he starts.

Steve straightens slightly, like he hadn't really expected an answer. “Training?”

Bucky nods. Rolls his shoulders like the words are stiff in his mouth. “Desensitisation, Agent Carter calls it.”

The moment hangs.

Steve doesn’t react immediately—and that’s almost worse.

Bucky forces himself to look at him. It’s easier to face a fight than silence with Steve. “She—” He exhales, shakes his head. “She’s making me control it. My impulses, my reactions. My anger, and stuff. Making me—” He stops himself. Swallows hard. Don’t make it sound like a goddamn punishment.

Steve’s brows knit together. He’s not angry, not yet—he’s thinking. “…What does that mean?”

Bucky shrugs. Barely anything. Everything. “Means I don’t get to ignore it.”

And Steve requires no further explanation. His lips press together, and he nods, slow and deliberate. “That why you’ve been keeping your distance?”

Bucky shifts his weight. He doesn’t answer, but he knows Steve doesn’t need him to.

Steve watches him for a second longer. Then: “…Do you think it’s helping?”

Bucky shrugs. He doesn’t know how to answer that. “I don’t know. Maybe? Eventually?” He sighs. “I just don’t wanna be so afraid anymore.”

It’s the first time he’s admitted it out loud.

It hangs there, open like an unstitched wound. He half-expects Steve to jump in with some kind of reassurance, something stubborn and steadfast and just so Steve.

But he doesn’t.

Steve just watches him for a beat. Then he sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair before letting it drop to his side. “…Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “I get that.”

And something about the way he says it, quiet, understanding, absolved of all pity—makes Bucky let out a deep breath of relief. 

Steve smiles at him softly. “You know, I spent a lot of time being afraid before the serum.”

Bucky frowns, caught off guard. “You?”

Steve lets out a short, humourless laugh. “Yeah, me.” He gestures vaguely. “Maybe not in the same way, but—” he exhales through his nose. “I used to be afraid of everything. Afraid of people pushing me around, afraid of losing fights, afraid of being left behind. And then I got big, and suddenly none of it was supposed to scare me anymore. But it still did.”

Bucky stares at him. He’s never heard Steve say this. He’s thrown himself into so many fights, good fights, for reasonable causes, even when he was swinging at men twice his size. When Bucky looked at him, wiping the blood from his nose like it didn’t matter, standing taller than anyone despite being the smallest guy in the room—all he ever saw was fearlessness. That’s all Bucky still sees. “Never seemed like it, punk.”

Steve laughs, something relieved in his expression. “I was terrified. Every damn time. I’m still terrified—that I’ll lose this fight, the war, or won’t be good enough to lead it, or that I’ll fail to save you.” He sighs, glances at him. “No one ever tells you that fear doesn’t just…disappear. They just expect you to move on. To know how to handle it.” He shakes his head. “Like getting older or stronger means you stop being afraid. Like growing into something bigger makes the fear smaller.”

Bucky swallows hard. He gets it. 

Because the fear never stopped. Not when he fought, not when he got sick, not when HYDRA put him back together into something unrecognisable.

Not even now.

Bucky’s been terrified since he got here, since he got to Geneva, since he was deployed, really, with nothing but his Springfield and a unit he’s long-since outlived. Maybe even before then too. 

Bucky looks up at him. “So what do you do?”

Steve meets his gaze. “You feel it.”

Bucky huffs out something like a laugh. “That supposed to help?”

“Yeah," Steve smiles faintly. "Because if you feel it, it means you’re still you.”

Bucky doesn’t have an answer for that. But something frozen thaws within him. This ache that he’s lost so much of himself, that he doesn’t know who he is and what’s left.

But, maybe he hasn’t lost everything. 

Maybe, deep down, a part of him is still human.

“So, we’re just supposed to live with it?”

Steve watches him carefully. “Yeah.”

“Damn.”

Steve laughs. “But we get to live with it together, jerk.”

Bucky lets out a small, real smile. “And that makes it easier?”

“No,” he replies with a lopsided grin. "Just less lonely.”

And—God help him—Bucky believes him.

Silence stretches between them—but it’s not the ones that have plagued them for weeks. It’s a comfortable pause, one that isn’t demanding, just offering. A space to breathe.

Steve shifts, leaning forward slightly, elbows on his knees. “Is there anything I can do to help? With, what was it you said, the desensitisation training?”

Bucky looks up, caught off guard by the simplicity of the question.

No you’ll get through this. No I know you’re strong enough. Not even one of those you need anything?—which is different. 

Just: Let me help. 

It knocks that thawed, frozen door loose in Bucky’s chest. Because Steve’s not looking at him like he’s fragile, or broken, or something that needs fixing, like he’d always feared. 

He’s just looking at him. Meeting him where he is.

And suddenly, Bucky knows exactly what he wants.

He steps forward, cups Steve’s face between his hands, and kisses him. 

Chapter Text

There’s a moment, a breath of a moment really, where Bucky thinks maybe he shouldn’t do this.

If this is crossing some invisible line they’ve never had to define. 

It’s not like it’s the first time they’ve kissed——drunk in alleyways, hidden beneath the covers, a brief press of lips when the world was too cold and they were too stubborn to admit they needed warmth—but it is the first time they’ve kissed since Bucky deployed, since Steve got bigger and Bucky got ripped open and stitched back together.

And yet, Steve is right there. Looking at him like nothing’s changed and this is something they can still have. 

And Bucky quickly realises that he wants to keep kissing him. 

It’s the first real choice he’s made in a long time.

Steve exhales against his lips—soft and surprised, probably wearing one of his endearing, doe-eyed expressions. Bucky can’t tell; his own eyes are squeezed shut, like if he lets the moment settle too much, it’ll slip away.

His hands tighten around Steve’s face, thumbs brushing over the sharp lines of his jaw. His skin is warm, solid beneath his touch—so familiar and real. Bucky’s heartbeat stumbles, then takes off—faster than it ever did chasing that damn Jeep.

Steve makes another sound, something caught between a breath and a sigh, and Bucky’s pulse hiccups, goosebumps racing along his arms. Steve grabs the ends of Bucky’s elbows, draws him in closer. 

And Steve’s kisses were always fierce and tender, even when he was small. 

His fingers pull into the fabric of Bucky’s shirt, meeting him halfway. He leans in, pressing back with something equal parts gentle and certain, and the feeling melts into Bucky’s limbs. Not like when his insides were burning, no, but like beeswax—melting after being warmed by familiar hands, softening to the gentle shape of their palms. 

Bucky laughs and sighs into the kiss, breathless, like some tremendous weight has been freed from his lungs and he can only gasp at the sheer relief of it. 

And God, when was the last time Bucky had something that wasn’t taken from him? 

Something that was his to keep, to hold onto and to have. 

Steve tilts Bucky’s chin with his thumb, deepening the kiss slightly. He spreads his other hand over Bucky’s side, like he’s relearning each dimple, tracing over old maps of a familiar place.  

Bucky shivers, feels the touch deep in his chest—where he’d forgotten that gentleness existed— where everything soft had been scraped away and replaced with some awful, crystallised ache. 

But Steve’s touch is so visceral, something that doesn’t crack or shatter under the pressure of his armour. He reminds Bucky that softness isn’t something lost forever, that maybe he can still be shaped by something other than violence. 

“God, I missed you.” Steve bursts out, unable to hold it back anymore. “I’ve missed you so damn much.”

Bucky exhales a shuddering breath, something catching in his throat. He presses his forehead against Steve’s, holding onto him like he can hold onto the words, tuck them somewhere safe inside his ribs instead of all that dreadful poison. Steve says it like it’s inevitable. 

“I know,” Bucky replies roughly. His fingers curl around the back of Steve’s neck, holding him close. “I know, Stevie. I missed you too.” He kisses him again, letting it linger before exhaling—“I missed you everyday.”

“It’s been a long, long time,” Steve whispers with a teasing lilt.

Bucky snorts. Kisses him once, then twice. Then kisses him once again. 

Steve grins, eyes crinkling at the edges. “Remember when we first heard that on the radio?”

“How could I forget? You kissed me senseless that night.”

Steve laughs, breath warm against his lips. “That so? Pretty sure you were the one who grabbed me first.”

Bucky hums, tilting his head like he’s considering it. “Maybe. But you sure didn’t complain.”

Steve shakes his head.“Nope.” A hand settles on Bucky’s waist, tentative at first, then more sure once Bucky grabs it, keeping his touch there. “Still not complaining.”

“Good.” And because it feels so damn natural, Bucky kisses him again—just a press of lips, familiar and easy, like muscle memory. Something even HYDRA couldn’t strip from him. 

Steve sighs softly against the kiss. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “But we made it, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, Buck. We did.”

Steve brushes a thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone, tracing absentminded circles into his skin.

Bucky’s eyes flutter shut for a second. It’s so simple, so good, that it almost hurts. He lets out another shuddering breath. “Didn’t think I’d get this back,” he admits quietly. 

He can feel Steve’s heart skip. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologising, punk. It’s not your fault.” He tugs Steve closer by the collar. “You’re what brought me back.”

Steve sags, like he’d been holding onto something heavy too. His hand tightens where it rests against Bucky’s hip. “You brought yourself back.”

He huffs a laugh. “Yeah? Didn’t feel like it. Pretty sure I didn’t fireman carry my ass outta there.”

Steve shakes his head. “You did, Buck. You fought your way back.” His fingers ghost along the ridges of Bucky’s spine, pressing gently. “I just—I just made sure you had somewhere to land.”

Bucky swallows hard. He wants to argue, tell Steve that he doesn’t get it, that without him, Bucky might have never crawled his way out of that darkness.

But Steve isn’t asking for thanks. He never has.

So Bucky kisses him once, then twice. Then kisses him once again.

Steve’s caught in daze afterwards. He sits in the mess hall, arms crossed, eyes unfocused. He nods at all the right moments, offers the occasional hum of agreement, but his mind is certainly elsewhere—on Bucky’s lips to be exact, the way his body sagged into him, the peach flush of his cheeks when they pulled away. 

Steve clears his throat subtly, taking a slow drink of water to distract himself.

“Alright, what’s with you?” Jones finally asks, narrowing his eyes. “You look like you just got hit over the head.”

“Dreamy,” Morita supplies unhelpfully.

“Or,” Dum Dum adds with a grin, “like he got clocked real good by someone meaner than him.

Dernier, the bastard, smirks.

“Haven’t fully woken up yet,” Steve lies through his teeth. God forgive him, but it’s for a just cause this time. The preservation of dignity, at the very least. 

Jones and Morita exchange a glance. 

Dum Dum frowns, narrowing his eyes at Steve like he’s trying to puzzle something out. “You sure? ‘Cause you kinda got the same look as Morita when he got that letter from his girl last week.”

Morita immediately smacks him on the shoulder. “The hell, man—”

“You do seem a bit distracted,” Falsworth muses. “Like you’ve been walking around all dazed since…” He trails off, thoughtful. Then his eyes widen slightly. “Oh.”

Steve shifts again.

Morita notices too. “No way.” He leans forward, squinting. “Did something happen? Did you get a letter? He totally got a letter.”

Dernier lets out the softest chuckle, shaking his head as he exhales a slow drag of his cigarette. “C’est rien de tout,” he murmurs with amusement. It’s nothing at all. 

Steve shoots him a sharp look. Dernier only smirks wider.

Dum Dum’s brows furrow. “Wait, wait—so something did happen?”

“Nothing happened,” Steve says too quickly. 

“You sure about that, Cap?”

Steve glares. “I’m sure.” But the tips of his ears are already growing red. 

Jones hums, unconvinced.

Falsworth takes a bite of his food, a smug lilt in his voice. “He’s protesting an awful lot, isn’t he?”

Morita crosses his arms, tapping his foot against the floor, assessing him with one of those looks that says I don’t believe a damn word coming out of your mouth.

Steve sighs, rubbing a hand down his face. “'Cause there's nothing to find out.”

“Uh-huh."

Jones and Falsworth exchange glances, then burst out laughing. 

Dernier looks entirely too pleased with himself.

Meanwhile…

Somewhere across the camp, Bucky—completely oblivious to the absolute field day the rest of the guys are having—lounges back in his seat. He runs a thumb absently over his lower lip, smirking to himself.

Because he knows exactly why Steve looks so damn flustered.

Bucky sits in the chair again.

It’s the same room, the same leather cushions, golden light still filtering through the window—but he winces this time. Something about the brightness is too much today. 

Carter doesn’t start with facts this time.

She pries directly into the spaces between them. The fractures. 

And Bucky knows, even before she opens her file, that this is going to be worse.

She starts slow.

“There are pieces missing,” she says simply, flipping through redacted HYDRA files. “In your memory. In the records we recovered, too.” She glances up. “Does that bother you?”

Bucky flexes his fingers against his knee. “What do you think?”

Carter nods, as if she expected that answer. She sets the file down. “Tell me about the memories that don’t make sense.”

Bucky takes in a deep breath. Steels his jaw.

The images slip between his fingers like water, sounds that don’t belong to any face, except Zola’s, the flickers of sensation that seizes his body before he can place them.

He swallows. “I don’t know what’s real,” he admits finally. “Some things feel like nightmares. Some things—” He hesitates. “Some things shouldn’t be real.”

Carter watches him carefully. “Like what?”

He winces—there’s a thousand things he could say. A thousand images, sensations, shattered pieces of time that claw at the edges of his mind.

He exhales sharply through his nose. “I remember water,” he mutters. “More than I should.”

Carter tilts her head slightly. “Water?”

Bucky presses a thumb into his wrist. He doesn’t need to elaborate. She’s smart. She’ll piece it together.

But she doesn’t let him off easy.

“Were they punishing you?” she asks plainly.

His lungs clench. He forces himself to breathe through it. “No,” he mutters. Though, he’d argue that everything they did was punishment. “They were trying to see what I could survive.”

Carter watches him carefully. She doesn’t move, doesn’t make another comment—but she doesn’t look away, either.

Bucky swallows. “It wasn’t just drowning.” The words scrape his throat. “It was—deliberate.” He squeezes his eyes shut briefly before opening them. “Holding me under. Just long enough. Over and over. Until my lungs locked up and my brain started—” He hears the slosh of his breath against the wet rag, choking and choking—He cuts himself off, breathing in deeply, trying to distance himself from the cold prong in his lungs. 

Carter’s expression doesn’t shift, but something sharp passes through her eyes. “You were trained to hold your breath,” she murmurs. “To suppress your body’s panic response.”

Bucky snorts bitterly. “Seems that way.”

There’s a pause. A space for him to say more.

And he almost brings up the isolation.

The desperation that clung to his throat as he begged for anything at all, even if it meant more pain. 

Instead he swallows past the knot in his throat. “They pumped me full of things,” he mutters. “Diseases. Plagues, maybe. I don’t—I don’t know what.”

Carter’s brows knit together, but she doesn’t look surprised.

Bucky exhales. “I’d get sick, violently sick. Fever high enough to fry my brain, shaking so hard my teeth cracked and healed over.” His pulse picks up. He digs into his skin. “But I wouldn’t die.”

Carter presses her lips together, flipping through the file. “Your blood work corroborates that,” she says evenly. “Elevated white blood cell count. Signs of repeated infection—ones your body fought off unnaturally fast.”

Bucky lets out a hollow laugh. “Guess I can’t really get sick anymore.” He tries to think of it as an upside, but it falls flat. 

Carter’s gaze flicks up. “They likely induced a cytokine storm,” she explains. “Flooded your system with infection until it turned against itself, breaking down your cells and letting the serum rebuild them stronger. This would’ve kill the average person. ” She pauses for a second, before: “Do you remember the first time it happened?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No.” A pause. “Maybe. I remember burning. Feeling like I was boiling from the inside out.” She waits for him to continue. Bucky clenches his jaw, sighs through his teeth. “I was sick before they took me, pneumonia or something. It’s why I was picked in the first place. Whatever they did to me first…it healed me.”

That catches her attention. “They only took sick prisoners?” 

Bucky shrugs. “Seemed that way.”

She notes something down. 

After a moment: “Stark observed an overactive immune response but attributed it to residual effects of the serum. But if you were already sick when they took you—” her face perks, considering the implications. “That may have been what made certain enhancements, like healing, take so effectively.” 

She flips through another file, and Bucky can see the pieces clicking into place. “The serum didn’t work in a vacuum—it worked because you were sick. Rogers was at the peak of human resilience despite his ailments—his body adapted gradually. Yours had to adapt instantly. The serum hijacked your immune response, forced your body to fight back before the pneumonia could kill you.”

She taps a line of text. “That would explain the heightened immune activity we still see. Your body was trained to adapt to threats immediately—because that’s the only way it survived. And it never stopped.”

Bucky sighs irritatedly. “And why do we care about this?”

Carter exhales. But she’s patient with him. “It’s possible your body still considers more things a threat than it should. That could explain the night sweats, the stress responses—even how quickly you recover from injuries. Your system never shuts off.” She writes another thing down. “Must be exhausting,” she mutters, more to herself that time. 

Something twists in Bucky’s gut. He thinks of the ones who coughed themselves to death in the barracks before anyone could remember their names. The things HYDRA took—eyes, teeth, tongues, to study their cells—so that by the time they got to his, they wouldn’t swell and burst. 

He licks over a canine to confirm it’s still there. “So what, I survived because I was already dying?”

She puts her pen down. “You survived because your body was already fighting a war. The serum just ensured you never stopped.” She meets his gaze. “This is a good thing, Barnes. It means we’ve found a common thread in HYDRA’s serum—something predictable in an otherwise unpredictable process.”

And Bucky wonders if there’s a line in her notes—some cold, clinical assessment of his body—that deems his suffering useful. 

She shows him one of the files. 

The paper is yellowed at the edges, stamped with the remnants of water damage, but the text is still clear enough. German script, Carter’s red-inked translations, all woven between crude anatomical sketches and ink-stained figures. A few words have been redacted, but Bucky finds there’s still too much information left. 

He stares at it. The stamp of HYDRA’s insignia, swimming between bright light and the slice of the scalpel through his skin.

“Does any of this look familiar?” Carter asks. 

His gaze drifts over the notes, over sharp lettering that seems too neat for what he remembers. And maybe he doesn’t remember—not fully—but something lurches in his stomach, sick and sour, because his body recognises the words before his mind does.

Subject placed under caloric restriction for seven days. Observed metabolic adaptation, but decreased regenerative capabilities. Response deemed exceptional.

His stomach flinches with the memory, the ghost of an ache—hunger so deep it gnawed at his ribs, left him lightheaded and slow, too weak to fight when they came for him. The rat in the cell, sharp-eyed and well-fed. The way it watched him while he starved.

Gnawed at his big toe. 

Its sickening crunch when he—

He swallows tightly. Forces himself to keep reading.

Patient suffered convulsions following third sequence. Neural load exceeded threshold. Fatality rate remains high.

The ink blurs for a second. Someone had seized. Had died. I don’t know if my boys lived. 

He registers Carter’s voice, but suddenly, it’s very far away—wading underwater.

His gaze lands on another note. Short. Unremarkable in its phrasing.

Reproductive sample extracted for future trials. Viability pending.

The room tilts. His pulse kicks with the live wire that stutters in his brain. Some deep, involuntary panic unfurls in his chest—shame, rage, a sick, curdling horror. 

His breath stumbles.

He doesn’t remember.

He doesn’t remember.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, presses his fingers deep into his wrists. Until it draws blood. He can feel the bile rising in his throat, the cold press of something he doesn’t want to name. 

Carter is watching him. He doesn’t need to look up to know that. “Barnes” she says, like she’s been saying it for awhile. It parts through the water like a gasp of air. “Can you open your eyes for me?”

Bucky shakes his head. His breath comes out too shallow, too quick. 

“Alright,” Carter says calmly. “How about breathing? Can you follow my breaths?”

Bucky tries, gasping out handfuls of air. They’re ragged and uneven, but he tries.

“Good,” Carter says softly. “Keep going.”

Bucky’s hands are still shaking. His wrists sting, warm and wet, but his breath starts to even out slowly. 

“We can stop for today,” Carter offers.

Bucky forces his hands to his thighs, presses down, grips the fabric of his pants instead of his skin. His eyes snap open—wild with panic.

“No,” he mutters, still catching his breath. He shakes his head again, blinking hard as his vision realigns. “Just… give me a minute.”

Carter doesn’t argue.

Bucky knows that if he stops now, he’ll never start again.

Carter watches him for a long moment, her gaze flicking—just briefly—to his hands. His fists, clenched so tight his knuckles have gone white. His wrists have several, bloody crescents oozing from them.  

Then, her voice steadies. “Barnes.”

He doesn’t look at her.

“You’re digging into your wrists again.”

Bucky breathes out his nose. Forces his hands to unclench. His fingers twitch against his palms, a phantom pressure still pressing deep into the scars. “What, you been counting?”

Carter regards him neutrally. “Does it help?” she asks instead. 

He lets out a bitter breath. “What do you think?”

She nods, like she expected that answer. “It’s grounding,” she observes. “Something tangible. A sensation you can control.”

Bucky swallows. She reads him so easily. 

“And when you don’t?” she continues, voice even. “When the memories hit you all at once—when you don’t have something to hold onto—what happens then?”

Bucky grits his teeth. He doesn’t answer.

Panic. Disorientation. His mind spitting and spiralling, drowning him in flashes of bloody fingers and worms and the tap tap of Zola’s footsteps. Until his mind flees his body in any attempt to make it stop. 

“Barnes.” Carter’s voice is firmer now. “I’m not asking to interrogate you. But you need to recognise what you’re doing.”

His fingers curl into his skin again.

She doesn’t stop him. Just watches.

“You survived by finding control wherever you could,” she says. “Even if it meant hurting yourself. But you don’t have to survive like that anymore.”

Bucky exhales, dragging a hand down his face. He’s tired. He’s so goddamn tired.

Carter waits.

She’s right. 

But all he can think about is the way his nails fit into the grooves of his skin so comfortably. 

His body remembers the pressure—aches with it

And now, in some sick, cruel way, he needs it more than anything else these days. 

Carter shifts the conversation to some of the easier documents—not easy, exactly, but things Bucky can get through without spiralling. He forces himself to focus, to answer and acknowledge without letting the horror take over. 

It’s just data points on a page, he says to himself. 

Subject #86 displayed heightened metabolic activity, burning through caloric intake at an increased rate. Muscle regeneration remained above baseline, with fibres repairing at 3.7 times the standard rate. 

Bucky exhales slowly, forces himself to stay present. Another line. 

Reflex adaptation progressed as expected. Subject demonstrated resistance to sedatives, requiring adjusted dosages to induce unconsciousness. 

He remembers the way his tongue swelled to the roof his mouth every time he woke up from sedation. The sluggish blur of his vision, the numbness in his toes and fingers. None of it is new—he’s lived in this body long enough to know—but it’s awful, seeing the other side. The point of view of his captors. How they—they justified it. 

Subject exhibited full recovery from induced hypothermia within 23 minutes. 

He focuses on that—on the impersonal language, the sterile observations that don’t tell the full story. Maybe then he can pretend they're someone else’s memories, not his. 

Subject maintained cardiovascular efficiency during forced exertion. 

Yeah, well, they never really let me stop, did they? 

But these notes don’t steal the air from his lungs. He can manage these. He gets through them. It’s not seamless, but he gets through them.

And when they finally close the file for the day, exhaustion crashes into him like a freight train.

Carter watches him for a moment before nodding, something firm yet careful in her expression. “You did good today, Barnes.”

Bucky scoffs lightly, shaking his head. He tries to ignore the sick feeling in his chest—the one that accompanies her praise. “Yeah? Doesn’t feel like it.”

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she reminds him.

Bucky huffs. “I thought you said we didn’t have time.”

Carter tilts her head, considering. “We don’t,” she acknowledges. “But forcing you to break won’t make you heal faster. That’s why it’s important we start early.”

Bucky looks up, closes his eyes. “Feels like breaking either way.”

She nods. “Maybe. But today, you put some of those pieces back together.” She sets down her pen, rubs out the tension in her fingers. “That’s something to celebrate, Barnes.”

Bucky rubs a hand over his face. He feels like he just swam through molasses. 

But as he gets up, stretching the stiffness from his limbs, he realises the stone in his stomach has lightened a little. 

The deck of cards is worn, shuffling smoothly between Jones’ fingers as he deals.

“Alright, boys,” he says, grinning as he flicks the last card on the table. “Time to see who’s got the worst luck tonight.”

The game they settle on is Brag—an old English card game that Falsworth insists is superior to poker. It’s a three-card game, fast-paced, easy to pick up, and easy to cheat at if you’ve got a quick hand.

“Used to play this back in school,” Falsworth says. “Though we played with real stakes, not just pride.”

Dum Dum leans in. “What kind of stakes?”

Falsworth smirks. “Money, favours, occasionally someone’s dignity.”

Jones grins. “So, what? We throwing down dollars? Dares?”

“How about dibs on something?” Morita suggests, tapping his cards on the table. “Like, I don’t know—first pick on dessert?”  The mess hall always runs out before everyone gets a chance.

Dum Dum perks up. “Now that’s high stakes.”

Falsworth hums. “Could always bet real stakes.” He looks at Steve, entirely too amused. “Your shield, perhaps?”

Steve, who’d been chewing around a protein bar, nearly chokes. “Absolutely not.”

The table erupts in laughter.

“Relax, Cap,” Jones teases. “No one here’s got the arms to even lift that thing.”

“Yeah,” Dum Dum adds. “But imagine strutting around camp with it on your back. Now that would be something.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m not betting my shield.”

Morita grins. “Alright, alright—dibs on dessert then?”

“Fine,” Steve sighs, picking up his cards. “Dessert.”

Bucky chimes in. “You’re awfully protective of that thing, Stevie.”

Steve glares at him. “And you’re awfully smug for someone who hasn’t won yet.”

Bucky smirks, tapping the side of his cards. “Oh so you agree I’ll win?”

And with that, the betting begins.

Dum Dum peeks at his hand and immediately groans. “Absolute garbage. I’m out.” He tosses his cards onto the table with dramatic disappointment.

Jones smirks, setting his cards down with confidence. “I’ll raise.”

Steve hesitates, narrowing his eyes. “You’re bluffing.”

Jones shrugs. “Maybe.”

Steve glances at Bucky, who’s unreadable, flipping a card between his fingers. His poker face has only improved since the war, and Steve tries not to think about all the reasons why. 

Bucky meets his gaze, smirks slightly. “What do you think, Stevie?”

Steve looks at his own hand—a modest but unimpressive pair. He exhales and stays in. “Call.”

Dernier chuckles, watching the interplay. “Your tell is obvious, Cap.”

Steve blinks. “Tell?”

Falsworth grins. “Your ears.”

Steve immediately slaps a hand over his very red ears. “What?!”

The table erupts in laughter.

Bucky’s been playing quiet, leaning back, watching. Calculating as ever. And then—he raises.

“Alright, Buck, let’s see what you got,” Morita challenges.

Bucky hums, tilting his head. “Are you sure about that?”

Morita eyes him. “I think you’re full of it.”

Bucky leans in, voice low. “Do you?”

A beat.

Morita exhales sharply and folds.

Dum Dum stares between them. “I hate when he does that.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Don’t say that. It’ll only encourage him.”

Jones groans, throwing his cards down. “I swear to God, Barnes, if you bluffed again—”

Bucky, very smugly, lays his cards down.

A mediocre hand.

The table groans.

Dernier smirks, taking another drag of his cigarette. “Bien joué.” Well played.

Steve shakes his head, but there’s amusement in his expression. “At least try to look less smug.”

Bucky grins, shrugging. “It’s called Brag, isn’t it?”

By the end of the game, Jones is grumbling, Dum Dum is swearing revenge, Steve has lost twice because of his ears, and Bucky has somehow won dibs on dessert for the rest of the week.

Oh, and Morita has to make Falsworth’s bed for a week. 

“Hey, you didn’t say there were punishments,” Morita protests, pointing an accusatory finger at Falsworth. 

Falsworth, entirely unbothered, takes a slow sip of his drink—something dark and definitely contraband this far up in the mountains. “Didn’t say there weren’t either. Loser’s honour.”

Jones snorts. Dum Dum claps Morita on the back, grinning. “Better learn how to fold a proper corner, pal.”

“Can’t believe you didn’t even beat Cap,”  Jones adds.

“Hey!”

“He kept folding!” Morita exclaims.

Steve crosses his arms. “It’s called strategy.”

“It’s called losing,” Bucky says with a smirk.

Falsworth chuckles, looking at Bucky seriously. “Remind me never to play against you for real stakes.”

Dum Dum gestures at the cards, exasperated. “He did play for real stakes. He’s got dibs on dessert for the whole damn week!”

Jones groans. “We should’ve made the bet retroactive.”

“Alright, alright, last round? Winner take’s all?” Morita suggests.

“You just want to take the victory from me,” Bucky drawls, leaning back in his chair. “And get out of bed-making duty.”

“Damn right. You cheater.”

“I did not cheat.”

“Liar.”

Bucky shrugs. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Steve glares at him. “If you so much as gloat—”

Bucky smirks. Slow and lazy. He reaches over, snatches Steve’s protein bar from his mouth, and takes a fat bite out of it. “Consider it an early reward.”

Steve exhales through his nose. “You are so—”

  “Charming?” Bucky supplies, grinning around the bite. And some of the shine has returned to his eyes. 

Dum Dum snorts. “I was gonna say insufferable, but sure.” But he seems relieved. 

Falsworth, with all the wisdom of a man who has betted too much, simply says, “Fine. New game. Winner takes half. ”

And just like that, the night moves on. 

“Alright, since Barnes keeps wiping the floor with us, how about something quicker? Knockout Whist.”

Steve raises a brow. “Didn’t take you for a Whist guy.”

Jones smirks. “You spend enough time around British soldiers, you start pickin’ things up. Besides, it’s fast. And I’m winning this time.” He shoots a competitive look at Bucky. 

Dum Dum perks up, cracking his knuckles. “Fast, huh? That’s more my speed.”

Falsworth snorts. “Speed won’t save you if you don’t know how to play.”

“Please, it’s Whist, not rocket science. You play tricks, highest card wins, last man standing takes it all.” Jones starts shuffling again. “Simple.”

Dernier exhales smoke, watching with amusement. “Simple is how fools lose their money.”

“Damn, Frenchie, you make everything sound so dramatic.”

Dernier shrugs. “Because it usually is.”

Jones finishes dealing the cards. “Alright, let’s see who survives, then.”

The first few rounds go fast. Dum Dum, overconfident, overplays his trump card too soon. Falsworth outmanoeuvres Morita with a calculated bid, leaving him swearing under his breath. Dernier plays quiet, observant, and makes it just far enough before Jones wipes him out.

Steve—who’d gotten eliminated immediately—tries to focus on the game, but Bucky can see his eyes flicker toward him now and then. Towards his lips. He’s still distracted, evidently. And has long abandoned any interests in winning. 

Bucky bites back a smile, nudges his foot against Steve’s under the table. 

Steve glances at him softly, then presses back. 

And then it’s Bucky against the last of them. 

Jones is the biggest threat—he plays bold, betting high, trying to force Bucky into an overplay. But Bucky doesn’t bite. He keeps his head down, plays conservatively, lets Jones think he’s on the backfoot. Let’s him think he’s won.

Until Bucky lays down a play that wipes him clean.

Jones lets out a strangled noise. “Are you serious? That was a damn trap.”

“Oh,” Bucky drawls, “you just now figuring that out?”

Falsworth groans. “I knew you were sandbagging.”

“This is rigged,” Dum Dum complains. 

Morita laughs. “We’re switching to something with dice next time. I’m done with his mind games.”

“You’re just mad you lost twice.”

“Shut it, Tommy!”

Jones whistles low, glancing over at him. “How the hell did you pull that one off?”

Bucky smirks, leaning back, tapping his remaining cards against the table. “It’s called strategy.” And too much time spent on the frontlines, with only a flickering lantern and half-numb fingers to breathe a little warmth back into your lungs.

Steve scoffs. “Oh, so now you’re strategic?”

“Tough break, Rogers.”

Steve narrows his eyes. “Don’t you start.” 

But he’s looking at him like Bucky’s got stars in his damn eyes.  

The way Bucky’s knee stays pressed against Steve’s doesn’t go unnoticed.

And when Dernier leans back, packing up the rest of the cards, his smirk lingers a little too long. 

The camp has quieted by the time Steve and Bucky slip away. They don’t go far—just enough to be alone, tucked away in a quiet corner of the barracks where the light from the lanterns casts everything in warm honey.

Bucky leans against the wall, head tilted back, exhaling slowly. Steve watches him, waiting—because there’s something in the set of Bucky’s shoulders, in the way his mouth purses slightly—one of his tells—that means he has something on his mind.

When he doesn’t say anything, Steve smiles, offering an easy way in. “Tired?” he asks. 

Bucky nods. “Exhausted.”

“Was it the card games? You know you can no to the guys. To me too, if you don’t feel up to something.”

Bucky waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know, punk. I’m glad I stayed, it’s just—the training kinda leaves me wiped I guess.”

“What exactly is Pegg—Agent Carter making you do?”

Bucky raises a brow. He sighs. “Exposure.” He hesitates, rubbing a hand over his face. He tries to grind down the string of words circling his mind, the bright flash of Zola’ glasses. “I have to…she—we go through..” His breath shudders. “Fuck.” He flinches slightly. “I-it’s hard to get all the words out in the right order.” 

Steve softens. “Take you time.”

Bucky breathes. Swallows. Let’s his heartbeat recede. “She shows me things—” he says after awhile. “Files…Reports. Words I don’t wanna know but already do.” His hands twitch, but he presses them against his thighs, avoiding his wrists. “I have to sit with it. Let it settle. Let it not control me.” His throat bobs. “I barely get through it half the time.” 

Steve tilts his head slightly. “So, what I’m hearing is that you get through it at least half the time.

Bucky laughs, a soft, fragile sound that eases some of Steve’s frown. “You ignoring the way I said barely?”

Steve chuckles. “Like the way I’d barely win fights when I was a kid? And needed you to swoop in before I got my ass handed to me?”

“Before? Stevie, you were usually already on the ground by the time I got there.”

Steve laughs, and his is bright and easy. Like sunlight piercing through clouds. “Details.”

Bucky smiles. “But, you’d still win them…”

“We’d win them.”

It’s a quiet truth that neither of them needs to elaborate. They’ve always fought best together instead of apart. Bucky hears the offer in Steve’s voice. The way he allows Bucky to make the decision on his own. 

Sometimes, Bucky would rather have orders, direction—it’s easier—something he’s grown used to, even before his time with HYDRA. But then sometimes, he’s unbelievably grateful that he’s…allowed these choices now. 

Bucky rubs the bridge of his nose, trying to relieve the ache of exhaustion beneath his eyes.  “It feels like an uphill battle,” he murmurs. “I thought everything would be better once I was out…that I’d be relieved and happy and…fuck I don’t know, normal…” He closes his eyes for a beat. His voice is quieter when he speaks again. “And it is, in some ways. But, God,” he sighs. “Reliving it is worse than actually living it, sometimes.”

Steve shifts closer, bringing a palm up to his cheek. “I know you have to face some of this alone,” he starts, brushing his skin. “But I’m here. Whenever you need me. If you do. I’m here this time.”

Bucky tilts his gaze, watching him. And there it is again—the quiet offer, the space to choose. 

It’s still sinking in, the idea that he’s not alone anymore. But it is sinking. That’s something. 

Bucky rubs his thumb absently over Steve’s hand, the one that’s still cradling his face. Then he exhales, shaking off some of the weight. “So,” he says, lighter now. “You still gonna read to me, or what?”

An invitation.  

It’s another decision he’s making. 

That’s something too.

Steve’s lips twitch into a smile. “Oh yeah, I’ve been dying to find out if that little guy makes it to the mountain.”

Bucky snorts. “I thought you didn’t like it.”

“Eh, it’s growing on me.”

Bucky laughs, nudges Steve’s shoulder with his own, a small, grateful thing. Then—so quiet, like he almost doesn’t want to ask—“Will you stay the night?”

Steve doesn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

Bucky sleeps, curled on his side, facing Steve.

His breathing is deep, steady, and for the first time in a long, long time, he looks peaceful. 

Steve should be sleeping too, but alas, he isn’t. 

There’s too much on his mind—most of it pertaining to Bucky. Tonight was the most he’d seen him laugh since they arrived, eyes sharp and bright, that damn smirk playing at his lips like when they were kids and and he’d just pulled one over on some poor bastard in a game of dice behind the corner store. He joked and smiled and it looked genuine, not the way he often forces his grins and well-tempered half-chuckles.

Eventually, though, all thoughts come back to the kiss. 

Steve had spent half the night distracted, mind catching on the shape of Bucky’s hands on him, the warmth of his breath, that little hitch in his throat as he leaned up to keep him in place. Steve had wanted to keep going. Had wanted to stay right there, holding him like he was something to be kept. So that Bucky wouldn’t slip through his fingers.

Because that’s how it always felt like, hadn't it? Even before the war. Bucky was his flagship and yet always the one on the verge of being lost. Getting swept by some beautiful dame, hauled off to help his ma with dinner after a long shift at the docks, dragged home to keep his sisters in line because he was the eldest and that’s just what you did.

And Steve—Steve was always left watching him go, hoping he’d come back soon.

Then, the war started.

And Steve realised he’d spent so much time watching and hoping instead of acting. 

He exhales softly, shakes his head.

Not tonight.

Tonight, Bucky is here. 

The thought is barely formed before he notices Bucky shift, his breaths coming shallow, the beginnings of whatever nightmare clawing its way up to the surface. 

Steve sits up so that he can grab The Hobbit from the bedside table, already thinking about where they left off, but when he goes to move, Bucky clings to his waist, buries his face into Steve’s arm.  

Steve smiles softly, whispering against his ear. “Hey. Not going anywhere.”

Bucky mumbles something incoherent, his grip tightening around him like Steve’s a buoy in a waterspout. A shaky sigh escapes him, then a sudden, startled breath—like something’s yanked him under. His body tenses, a quiet whimper caught between his teeth.

Then, finally, his eyes snap open.

Bucky’s chest rises and falls unevenly. It takes a second for his gaze to focus, for the storm clouds to clear. 

Steve shifts closer, careful not to startle him. He presses a warm hand against Bucky’s back. The words come easily. “We’re in Geneva. In your bedroom. It’s Friday and,” he checks his watch. “About two in the morning.” 

He continues listing observations, cream walls, moonlight spilling over the blanket, the woosh woosh of the wind. My hand, warm, on your skin. 

And finally, with a sharp exhale, Buck mutters: “Fuck.” Voice hoarse with sleep. 

“Same dream?”

A nod. His hands flex, then still. He inhales and exhales and Steve feels the way his lungs stutter underneath his palm. “Different parts. Same place.”

Steve waits.

After a long moment, Bucky shakes his head, trying to brush it off. “Go back to sleep, Stevie. I’m fine.”

“Was already awake.”

“‘Course you were,” Bucky says, offering a tired smile. “Gonna get worse eye bags than me at this point.”

“Hm..don't think that's possible, Buck. I've had black eyes lighter than your under-eye circles.”

Bucky lets out a tired chuckle. Sighs. “Seriously. No need to keep watch,” he hums sleepily. “I’ll still be here in the morning.”

But Steve has spent too long watching him slip through his fingers. 

Too long fearing that if he so much as looks away, he’ll be gone.

So—

Steve tentatively skims his hand, hovering over Bucky’s stomach. “…this okay?”

Bucky hesitates. His throat bobs, and his fingers tighten in the fabric of his shirt. 

Then, quietly: “Yeah. More than okay.”

Steve settles in without another word, stretching out beside him. He presses Bucky close to his chest, nestling his chin into the crook of Bucky’s shoulder—like he used to do to Steve when they were younger.  

Bucky’s body begins to relax against the mattress again.

“Try to sleep,” Steve murmurs.

“You too, punk.”

Steve sighs. 

He finds Bucky’s pulse. Presses his palm over it.

And when Bucky wraps his hand over Steve’s, keeping it close—Steve finally closes his eyes.

They fall asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

Chapter Text

December 1943, Geneva, Switzerland 

The next part of his training means reverting back to basics. Which includes sparring, apparently. 

Sparring had once been second nature to Bucky—a collection of solid reflexes and muscle memory built through practice, hauling Steve out of fights and wrestling Lily into her school uniform (which proved to be the hardest feat out of all of them). 

But recently, it feels like wading through mud. Not because he’s slow. 

No—rather because he isn’t.

It’s like experiencing the world in slow motion, forced to dial himself down to match it. Like everything around him is too fragile—or maybe, like he isn’t fragile enough.

His body moves before his mind does. Before the thought even forms, before the moment even exists—he already knows how to end it.

On the battlefield, that would’ve been every commander’s wet dream. A soldier who can predict, execute, and kill before the enemy even understands what’s happening.

But when you’ve been enhanced by Nazi scientists—when you’re strong enough to snap bone and tear through bodies—

That kind of instinct gets people killed. 

And not the people you want killed.

He refuses to let himself succumb to it. That thing HYDRA built into him, buried in his bones and muscles and the space between thought and action. 

He yearns for control over his own body again. 

So Carter doesn’t hesitate. She never does, it’s just not her nature. Even now, knowing what he’s capable of, knowing how unstable his reactions still are:

She lunges.

Bucky moves. Not to attack, but to deflect.

A step back. Another. Control.

She presses forward, crisp footwork and steady strikes keeping him engaged.

What are you thinking, Barnes?

Her voice cuts through the noise of adrenaline.

Bucky exhales through his nose, rolls his shoulders. What is he thinking?

She isn’t really trying to kill you. Relax. Keep your mind clear. 

He doesn’t answer. But Carter doesn’t expect him to.

She keeps talking—sharp, precise questions meant to keep him here, keep him in this fight and not the ones that often plague his mind.

What’s your next move? Where’s your center of gravity? What’s in your peripherals?

He answers with movement. Keeps his stance loose, keeps his hands from curling into fists. Focuses on the hum of the fans and the scuffle of their feet against the mat. 

Inhale. Exhale.

The goal is simple. Block, but don’t hit.

Easy. In theory.

Until she gets closer. 

His breath goes sharp when she aims for his face, every nerve in his body tensing with anticipation. His mind hums with that familiar static, buzz buzz buzz, drowning out the fan, until all he can hear is the whisper of instinct telling him to finish it. 

His hands twitch at his sides. The reaction is already there, already moving through him.

But he doesn’t follow through. 

He avoids her punch by raising his elbows, absorbing the impact. The urge still simmers under his skin, like the boils that used to keep him up at night, scratching and scratching until his knuckles bled. 

“Pull your punches,” Carter reminds him evenly. “Even when you block.”

Bucky exhales, forces his shoulders to loosen again. Forces his grip to relax.

She moves again. This time, he reacts not with force, but with patience.

Deflect.

Block.

Move.

Her foot snaps out while she asks him for another observation, catching him off guard. A low kick, not hard, but enough to send him stumbling. 

Something flares in his chest. Not fear, not pain. Just—that pure, cruel instinct crawling up his throat like bile. 

His body coils tightly. He can feel it, the way his muscles know what to do before his mind can catch up. The pull of each fibre, the potential of every nerve as he gathers his momentum.

But then—

Again.

Carter’s voice cuts through the static in clipped German.

His breath locks. 

He slumps forward. Breathes. 

It’s the only order they agreed on beforehand—the only one she’s allowed to use. Said sharply enough that it’ll snap him out of whatever haze is about to take over.

Because that’s what certain phrases did to him now—trigger him into emergency shutdown mode. Render him helpless for a few, short seconds that feel like an eternity. 

Carter doesn’t abuse it.

And he’d rather obey the order than rip her damn arm off.

But still—it’s unnerving.

How quickly his muscles obey before he can argue. How the command bypasses his mind entirely and lands straight into whatever HYDRA left behind.

He blinks. The fight fades. 

But for a split second, he catches the flash of Zola’s glasses. The memory slams into him. The crude helmet lowering over his head. The way they made him compliant.

The pressure in his chest seizes. 

He hates how easy it is, how something so simplecan override his will.

But it works.

He shakes his head. Exhales. Nods.

Again.

He can try again. 

More importantly—

He wants to. 

When Carter finally calls the sparring session, she doesn’t give him time to breathe. Training never stops. Because control is never guaranteed.

So his next task involves his trusty Springfield. It makes him feel better. At least, at first. 

The weight is familiar—like a handshake from an old friend. The wood grain presses against his palm, the weight balanced against his shoulder—it’s a piece of himself that doesn’t feel stolen. 

Because it’s the only thing in his hands that doesn’t feel like a part of him and rather an extension of him, the him before Austria. 

Bucky sits cross-legged on the range, rifle balanced with care. The barrel is steady, resting against the crook of his shoulder. The wood is cool beneath his fingers, smooth from years of wear, polished by habit and history of soldiers now long deceased. 

He focuses on those familiar sensations, basks in them for a few moments. Let’s it settle into his bones. 

It’s just like before, he tells himself. Before Azzano and HYDRA, when his body was very first repurposed to defend the Allied forces. Just another solider in Camp Perry, Ohio, learning how to keep his breaths steady, how to adjust for wind and distance and fire between heartbeats to keep the shot clean.

Discipline is not the same as control. That’s what Carter had said. 

He exhales slowly. Lines up the sight. 

Sniping is never just about pulling a trigger.

It’s about reading the air. Watching the way the wind cuts through leaves. Gauging the distance by how sound carries. Knowing, instinctively, the split-second when a target is most vulnerable.

It’s patience and control. It’s the one thing he used to be good at.

He concentrates on the rhythm of his routine. Same number of blinks each time. Same number of breaths. That was always his rule: Consistency. One. Two. Don’t let it stutter, don’t let it get erratic. That’s good. It’s all automatic, the motions slipping into place like gears in a clock—clock, clock-

No, stop it. Not like that

He doesn’t need to squeeze. The gun will listen to him. The gun has always listened. 

Well, except for—

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. 

Carter stands behind him, arms crossed. “One pound.”

Bucky adjusts his grip. 

The trigger on this rifle requires three pounds of pressure to fire—but Carter has instructed him to break it down into fractions.

One pound. Touch. Barely grazing the trigger, like brushing against silk.

Two pounds. Pressure. The promise of force.

Three pounds. Execution. A clean shot through the skull, the chest, the throat—

(Vienna. 430 yards. A German officer between two unidentified soldiers.   He breathed once. Let go. They never even heard the shot.)

His grip tightens for half a second. He forces himself to ease it.

He inhales again, steady. Keeps his finger at one pound.

No tension. No anticipation.

Carter steps closer, voice level. “Now hold it. Feel the weight. If you let yourself slip—”

His muscles twitch.

His finger nearly flexes, more out of annoyance at her commentary. Usually when he snipes there isn’t someone chatting into his damn ear.  

The twitch feels small, barely there, but it sends a sharp spike of adrenaline through his chest. His mind lurches forward—ready to pull, ready to fire—

(Cracked pavement this time. Something wet on the floor. The muzzle pressed against the base of a skull. American. Not his choice. Not his rifle. The order given in German—)

But he catches it in time.

He steadies his breathing. Then, his grip. 

Carter nods. “Again.”

He flinches. But she says it in English this time. 

He does it again. And again. And again.

Every time, the goal isn’t to fire—it’s to stop himself from firing.

To remind himself that he isn’t a weapon.

Or rather, that he isn’t HYDRA’s weapon anymore. 

Carter really doesn’t make it easy.

When he’s not in the training room, he’s in that damn leather chair.

The one where she makes him talk. Recounting the fractured horrors his mind would rather leave buried. It’s exhausting. More than the actual physical training he endures most times. 

But in some ways, it’s working. His dreams have gotten better—he still has them, but he doesn’t wake up screaming anymore, which Steve has told him is a good thing. 

Bucky can’t help but think he’s just getting used to them now. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the visions will never disappear, but at least he can get acclimated to them. 

Something about that unnerves him too. 

Carter pushes him, tests him, forces him to exist in the space between instinct and control.

His rifle isn’t a comfort anymore—it’s a test.

She makes him shoot in uncomfortable conditions—

After sprinting drills.

After combat practice.

After being shoved, shaken, tested. After talking. 

His body burns with exhaustion, lungs raw from gasping for breath and bearing his soul. 

But still, he holds the rifle. Because that’s the point.

A soldier doesn’t get to be comfortable. 

And that’s what he’s decided he’ll be. 

So, he refuses to get comfortable. 

Sometimes, she barks commands at him, which are the hardest to handle. 

Slower. Steady. Breathe.

Sharp orders, clipped and precise—all English. Each one makes his pulse spike, makes sweat gather at the nape of his neck.

She’s trying to simulate the chaos of battle. Trying to make sure he doesn’t snap under pressure.

“Take the shot.”

His breath hitches.

The order punches through his ribs, lands like a bullet between his lungs.

This one he isn’t supposed to obey. 

His body reacts. Hands twitch. Shoulders tense.

The old instinct rears up—

It would be so easy.

But—

He forces himself back to one pound.

Steady. In control.

He’s capable of making that decision. 

One evening, Carter lays a single glass marble on a crate 1,000 yards away, lined along Stark’s private runway.

A sniper’s nightmare. 

A perfect, near-invisible target against the vast stretch of open air and tarmac. 

Bucky watches the marble catch the last sliver of fading light. A spec of glass in the distance, so small and fragile. 

So easy to break. 

“I want you to fire,” she says, nodding toward the rifle in his hands. “But I want you to stop at two pounds.”

Bucky stares at her.

She isn’t asking him to take the shot. She’s asking him to get right up to the edge—to walk the line between control and instinct—and then stop himself.

His hands twitch again. His breath shudders.

He’s always been good at following through. His commander used to praise him on it. 

He lines up the sight.

One pound. Touch. The whisper of his finger against the trigger. 

Two pounds. Pressure.

He exhales, staring down the barrel at the marble. The part of him that has been trained to execute feels the weight of it—the unbearable temptation to just pull the trigger. It would take less than a second to shatter it right down the middle.

(Vienna. A treetop. 800 yards. His breath a steady inhale, fogging up from the cold. His hands as still as death. The officer walked into his crosshairs. One pound. Two pounds. Three.) 

But he doesn’t fire. He holds it.

His finger hovers at the breaking point, his entire body straining against the instinct to complete the motion.

The marble gleams back at him, waiting.

He exhales.

And then, slowly, carefully, deliberately—he eases his finger off the trigger.

The rifle doesn’t fire.

Carter smiles, just slightly. “There,” she says. “That’s control.”

Bucky lets the rifle rest against his knee. His hands shake a little from the adrenaline, the exertion to remain still, but it eases quickly.

For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like a loaded gun waiting to go off.

Steve finds him sitting on a supply crate near the barracks, hands wrapped around a tin mug of tea gone cold.

The night is quiet except for the distant hum of engines and the occasional clatter of boots on gravel. Most of the boys are winding down, smoking in small circles, passing around a dented deck of cards around the fire.

Steve sits next to him, close enough that their shoulders bump.

“I have something for you,” he says, reaching into his jacket pocket.

Bucky lifts a brow, taking a slow sip from his mug. He’s in one of his moods, as the guys’ have coined, where he gets that quiet, distant look in his eye that makes them all steer clear until it passes. Except for Steve, though. He doesn't. He's practically allergic to the idea, actually. But still, he’s careful.

Bucky tries to meet him halfway, but his voice comes out quasi-flat. “It better not be a damn lecture.”

Steve huffs a laugh, rolling his eyes. Then, he pulls out a bundle of envelopes—some crisp, some creased with travel, the edges worn soft from handling.

Bucky pauses.

His name is written in careful script.

Rebecca Barnes. Becca.

Steve hesitates for half a second, then presses the letters into his hands. “They’ve been coming in for months,” he says, voice softer now. “Thought you’d wanna see them.”

Bucky doesn’t move.

He just stares at them like they're liable to explode. 

Steve shifts, quiet. “Your ma’s worried.”

Bucky scoffs before he can help it. “‘Course she is,” he mutters, thumbing the edge of the top envelope. “Even when I was back home, she’d worry herself sick over every damn thing. If I so much as sneezed, she’d have me wrapped in a blanket and forcing soup down my throat before I could argue.”

Steve smiles, but there’s something tired and knowing in his eyes. Dammit, Steve.  “They miss you.”

Bucky swallows. His thumb brushes over Becca’s handwriting, the careful curve of the letters, the ink pressed deep from how hard she must have pushed her pen.

He doesn’t know if he can handle reading them. 

But he’d be an asshole, really, if he didn’t. 

Steve gives him his privacy, retreating a few steps away. 

And after a few minutes, Bucky finally exhales and pulls out the first letter.

James,

I don’t even know where to begin. Ma keeps fussing that I shouldn’t worry you too much, but that’s just her way of saying she’s worried out of her mind. She won’t say it out loud, but she hasn’t been sleeping right since the news of [REDACTED]. She keeps herself busy at the diner, but she hesitates before opening the mail every morning. She’s bracing for bad news, but I know you made it out, didn’t you Buck?

[THIS SECTION HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE MILITARY CENSOR]

Lily made you something—she keeps saying it’s a good luck charm. Carolyn helped her wrap it up nice so it wouldn’t get ruined in the post. We hope it gets to you safe.

I think [REDACTED] so [REDACTED]. We'll be okay.

Write back, will you? Even if it’s just a few words. Ma just wants to know you’re alive. I do too.

Love,

Becca

The charm is small, light—stitched into a simple star shape—no bigger than a matchbook, really. Made with the softness of a child’s careful hands.

It smells faintly of home, though he can’t tell if that’s real or imagined. The fabric is soft from being handled so much, the stitching pressed and smoothed, like Carolyn had done her best to keep it perfect before sending it off.

It’s stuffed with something soft—cotton, maybe, or a scrap of one of ma’s old dresses. 

Lily’s good luck charm.

Bucky huffs out a quiet breath, shaking his head. She always had a thing for superstitions. Always making him tuck a penny into his boot before leaving for school, insisting he avoid sidewalk cracks, that he kiss her on the forehead before heading out, “for luck.”

He doesn’t believe in luck anymore.

But still—he keeps the charm in his pocket.

James,

Ma says I shouldn’t start every letter by telling you how much she worries, so I won’t. But you should know that she does. She’s been fussing with the radio every night, turning the dial like she’ll somehow find a station [REDACTED] that tells her you’re alright 

Lily got you something again. She wanted to send a whole box of cookies, but ma put a stop to that real quick—said it’d be crumbs by the time it got there. Really it’s because we had to swap sugar rations with Mrs. Romano for a bit of flour—ma’s determined to make Christmas pudding this winter, war be damned.

Instead, she let her pack you some peppermints—figured you could slip ‘em in your pocket.

[THIS SECTION HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE MILITARY CENSOR]

You better write back. Even if it’s just a single damn word. We just need to know you’re still breathing.

Please. 

Love,

Becca

My James,

I keep thinking about how you used to run up the stairs three at a time, how I had to chase you with a wooden spoon just to get you to sit still long enough for supper. You always were restless, even as a boy.

Be good, James. Be safe. I pray for you every night. When you come home, I’ll make you stew. Your favourite. Just like when you were little.

With all my love,

Ma

Dear Bucky,

Lily’s helping me write because I’m only up to ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ in school. 

But guess what? I’m THIS BIG now! (Ma says not to draw on letters, but I wanted to show you how tall I got, so pretend there’s a picture here.)

Lily says I should tell you I can spell my name all by myself now too. CAROLYN. See? Did it.

We miss you. Come home soon.

Love, Lily & Carolyn

Bucky laughs, sharp and quiet, shaking his head.

It’s messy—the letters a little too big, the ‘O’ slightly tilted, the ‘Y’ written backwards. He can hear her voice in his head, all smug and determined.

He smiles. 

Steve perks up from the edge of the fire, leaning back to look at him. “Something good?”

Bucky flips the page, showing Lily’s ‘invisible drawing’—a paragraph with a gap in the middle, two little lines that mark: 3ft 7 inch. 

Steve chuckles. “You think she actually measured herself using the page?”

“No doubt.”

They both lapse into silence again.

The letters sit heavy in his lap like syrup.

Bucky exhales. “I should’ve written back sooner.”

Steve shrugs. “You still can.”

Bucky hesitates. Then, after a long moment, he reaches for a pen.

Becca,

Tell Ma to stop worrying—if she keeps it up, she’ll get more grey hairs, and I know how much she hates that. You stop worrying too—I know you, and I know you’re keeping the family afloat. Take time for yourself too. And if any boys are giving you trouble, know that the Atlantic Ocean won’t save them.

Tell Lily I got her gift. I’m wearing it. And the peppermints? They made it just fine. If she asks, I’ll say they make me shoot straighter.

Tell Carolyn I’m proud of her. All of you. I know it isn’t easy. 

I'm being moved to [REDACTED] from [REDACTED] soon. I can’t say when or where, but I’ll be fine.

I’ll write again when I can.

James

He lingers for a second before sealing it—like there’s something else he should say. But the words don’t come.

The last envelope is tougher to open than the others. The handwriting on the front is neat, stiff and careful. 

His pa wasn’t a man of letters. He wasn’t a man of many words, actually.

Not because he didn’t care, but because he’d always spoken differently—with his hands, his work, the firm clasp on Bucky’s shoulder when words failed him.

And yet, here it is.

The paper smells faintly of tobacco and grease, like it’s been sitting on the kitchen table for a while, waiting for the right moment to be sent. The ink is smudged in places and mostly redacted, but it eases the tight grip that still pierces his heart like barbed wire.

J ames,

Your mother and sisters have already written more than I ever could. They’ll tell you what’s worth knowing—who’s doing what, what’s changed, what hasn’t. So I’ll keep this short.

The docks are getting colder. O’Malley’s still there, still talking my ear off, says he remembers when you used to hang around with Steve, getting underfoot. Says he always figured you’d end up on the front lines. I told him you did. That you'd be in [REDACTED]  by now. 

Your mother worries. You know that already. Becca says she’s fine, but she’s got that same look your ma gets when she’s pretending something doesn’t hurt. Carolyn and Lily keep asking when you’ll be back.

So do I. 

[THIS SECTION HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE MILITARY CENSOR]

I won’t tell you to be careful. I won’t tell you to be brave. I’ll just say this:

Come home whole, son.

Pa

Bucky swallows, folds the letter carefully. He tucks it into his pocket with the good luck charm.

The last time they saw each other, his pa shook his hand instead of hugging him. 

That was his way. A firm grip, a small nod. Come back. Make it home. Make us proud.

Bucky clenches his jaw, stares down at the paper.

Maybe he can’t come back whole anymore. 

But he’s still alive. 

That’s more than most get out here.

He slips a spent bullet casing inside the envelope, engraved with his initials: J.B.B.

His father will understand.

Steve takes the letter when he’s done without a word.

When Bucky leans back against the crate and stares up at the night sky, he wonders if his family will see the same constellations back home. 

Control. 

That’s what this all is, right? 

But when Steve walked up, pressing that bundle of letters into his chest, it reminded Bucky that control isn’t just about a steady hand—it’s about knowing when to hold on. 

And when to let go.

Bucky narrows his eyes, arms crossed as he watches Steve fuss. Again. This time, over bandages on Bucky’s hand from where his knuckle split the other day during training. He doesn’t want to tell Steve that it’ll heal over by the end of the day. 

“You’re worse than my ma, you know that?” Bucky mutters, shaking his head. But there’s amusement in his voice. 

Steve barely looks up from what he’s doing. “Yeah, well, someone’s gotta look after you.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky scoffs. “And who’s lookin’ after you, huh?”

Steve pauses, opening his mouth to protest. But nothing comes out. 

“That’s what I thought,” Bucky huffs. “How much have you been eating? Hm? Agent Carter told me you need at least 11,000 calories a day just to keep from wasting away.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “I’m fine—”

“And sleep?” Bucky presses. “Or—or stress? Because between the war, the guys, and whatever the hell you’re doin’ when I’m not around—which I bet is just more worryin’—I bet you haven’t taken a breath in days.”

Steve sighs, rubbing his temple. “Buck, it’s not the same—”

“No, no, I get it,” Bucky cuts him off with mock understanding. “You’re Captain America. You don’t need food or sleep. Runs on pure stubbornness and Uncle Sam’s good faith.”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “Are you done?”

“Yeah, not so good when it’s the other way around, huh?"

Steve glares at him. 

Bucky grins. “Don’t be a hypocrite,” he says. “Tell you what—I’ll stop mother henning when you do.”

Steve exhales sharply, but there’s a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He shakes his head. “Okay, Buck.”

The bar is loud, filled with the hum of conversation, the occasional burst of laughter, and the clink of glass against wood. The kind of place where no one asks questions—where the soldiers sit shoulder to shoulder, burning through their rationed cigarettes and drinking whatever cheap whiskey the bartender’s willing to pour.

Dum Dum slaps a fresh bottle down onto the table between them, grinning widely.

“I said I’d treat you all to a drink, didn’t I?”

A few cheers go up, hands reaching for glasses, the promise of one last night to take the edge off before they’re back in the thick of it. Jones shakes his head but takes a pour, muttering something about cheap liquor and Dum Dum’s bad decisions. 

Bucky leans back in his seat, watching as the bottle makes its rounds. Despite everything— what’s been done to him, what he’s become—he still likes the warmth of cold whiskey burning down his throat. It’s not the kind of burn he used to chase in Brooklyn speakeasies, or when he stole his father’s flask for the first (and last) time and coughed so hard he threw up. But it’s close enough.

He takes a sip, lets it settle in his chest. He doesn’t get drunk anymore. Not really. But he still pretends for Steve and the rest of the guys.

The glass pauses in his hand as he catches Steve watching him, a furrow in his brow like he’s trying to figure something out. He’s always trying to figure something out. Bucky doesn’t understand how he doesn’t get exhausted. 

Bucky grins, tossing him the bottle. “Don’t look at me like that, Rogers. Drink.”

Steve snorts. “You know it won’t get me drunk.” But he takes a swig anyways, coughing after the first sip. 

“Jesus,” he wheezes. “Dum Dum, what the hell is this?”

Dum Dum raises his own glass. “The finest boot polish this side of Europe has to offer.”

The table erupts into laughter, and for a moment, it’s easy to pretend. 

Easy to forget that in only a week, they’ll be back in uniform. 

He doesn’t know when it starts, but soon, the laughter carries on without him, blending into the din of the bar and warping into something distant, stretched thin at the edges. 

The room becomes too loud, too hot. Every flicker of movement in his peripheral—whether it be Dum Dum’s hand slamming down on the table in a boisterous gesture or some stranger shifting too fast in his seat—it all makes his blood boil over. 

Bucky swallows against the growing tightness in his chest, the warmth of whiskey doing nothing to loosen it. His fingers twitch briefly against the rim of his glass. And then, he exhales through his nose, forces a smirk, and pushes back from the table. 

He knows where this is going. 

“Think I need some fresh air,” he mutters, rolling his shoulders like he’s shaking off the buzz.

Buzz, buzz—He refrains from wincing. 

Dum Dum smirks, leaning back. “Can’t handle your liquor, Barnes?”

Morita grins. “Lightweight.”

Bucky snorts, flipping them all off. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”

The teasing rolls off his back easily. Better they think he can’t hold his liquor than the truth—that his mind still thinks he’s trapped in Austria.

He steps outside into the misty air, shoving his hands into his pockets.

The quiet hits him all at once. No shouting or laughter mingling with the static magnifying in his head. Just the distant rumble of a passing truck, the muffled sounds of the base—generators, the crunch of gravel, the distant murmur of men swapping stories. 

Everything keeps…moving.  

But the war doesn’t stop. Not for the people on the frontlines, nor for the ones already gone.

And certainly not for him.

No, the world keeps moving, and he just…can’t seem to catch up. 

He presses his back against the brick wall and breathes. 

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

He closes his eyes, counts all the little black spots beneath his eyelids.

The tension doesn’t ease.

His fingers twitch with another phantom trigger. The whiskey in his stomach turns to something sharp, something acrid. His mind lurches—

The fucking buzzing—can it just stop . 

The sound of metal restraints locking into place.

A voice slinking through his brain, slicing through his tissue. 

I’m proud of you. 

He clenches his jaw, squeezes his eyes shut. Not there. Here. He’s here. 

He lists observations—the crunch of snowfall under his boots, the big round glow of the moon—when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s—

But his pulse is still too fast, his throat swallowing dryly around a gag that isn’t there. A wet cloth that has long been wrung out. His body just doesn’t know the difference yet.

The door creaks open.

Bucky flinches on instinct, hand twitching toward his hip, where a gun might be, before he registers the familiar shape in the doorway.

Steve watches him carefully, lips pressed into a firm line.

Bucky sighs. “Don’t say it.”

Steve leans against the wall beside him, arms crossed. “Didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.” Bucky huffs, tilting his head back against the brick.

Steve doesn’t argue.

For a moment, they just stand there, letting the silence of the night air settle. 

Then, quietly—“You’re still pretending.”

Bucky swallows. Shifts his weight. “What?”

Steve looks over at him, gaze steady. “Back there. The whiskey. The way you smiled. You’re pretending.”

Bucky forces out a chuckle, but it doesn’t quite land. “What, you want me to start cryin’ into my drink? Get all sentimental?”

Steve doesn’t smile.

Bucky sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “Steve—”

“You don’t have to, you know?”

Bucky lowers his hand, jaw tightening. “Don’t have to what?”

“Pretend.”

Bucky scoffs. “Yeah? And what should I be doing instead, huh? Look miserable? Ruin the whole night? Hell, Steve, I bet half those guys think I’m already passed out in the alley.”

Steve’s quiet for another long moment.

Then: “You were always good at holding your liquor.”

Bucky breathes out slowly. Lets his breath curl into clouds. Watchers it dissipate into the wind. 

Steve shifts, staring ahead. “It doesn’t make you weak, you know? When…when whatever’s in your mind takes over.”

Bucky forces a breath through his teeth. “Yeah? You think you know me so well, huh?”

Steve doesn’t flinch. “Yeah.”

Bucky presses his palms against his eyes, digs his fingers into his hair. He stays like that for a long moment, just breathing. He wants to tell Steve he doesn’t know a damn thing. That this—this thing inside him, this brokenness that won’t ever really mend—isn’t something Steve could ever understand. But it wouldn’t be true either. Because Steve does know him. And he’s trying to understand. Steve probably understands it better than he does. 

Eventually, Bucky lets his hands drop. “Jesus, Steve,” he mutters hoarsely. “You gonna let a guy spiral in peace or what?”

Steve smiles, just a little. “Never have before. Why would I start now?”

Bucky snorts, shaking his head.

They stand there a little longer.

And then, finally, Bucky speaks. “You were right.”

Steve glances over.

“I was pretending.” Bucky exhales, running a hand through his hair. “But I had to.”

Steve doesn’t argue. Doesn’t ask him to elaborate. He just nods. “Yeah.”

A beat of silence.

Then, Steve sighs, pushing off the wall. “C’mon. You can pretend a little longer. Just until the bottle runs out.”

Bucky lets out a breath of laughter, rubbing the back of his neck. “You buying the next round?”

“Pretty sure Dugan said it was on him.”

Bucky rolls his eyes but follows him back inside. “Man’s gonna regret that real quick.”

Sometimes, it’s better to pretend than to do nothing at all. 

Later, after a few rounds and some half-hearted attempts at cards, which Bucky doesn’t partake in (much to the guys’ relief), Steve digs into his pocket and pulls something out. He presses it into Bucky’s hand under the table. 

A Hershey’s bar. “Traded a couple smokes for it,” Steve says casually. “Figured you might want a taste of home.”

Bucky hesitates. It’s just chocolate. A small, ordinary thing, wrapped in foil and paper. They used to split these back in Brooklyn. Back when they’d pool their money, take turns breaking off pieces until there was nothing left but melted chocolate on their fingers and the sound of streetcars rattling in the distance.

Bucky exhales, then picks up the bar. Tears it open. Snaps it in half without thinking, passing the other piece back to Steve.

Steve blinks at it, then huffs a small laugh, shaking his head. “Some things don’t change, huh?”

Bucky forces a smirk, chewing slowly.

The chocolate is grainier than he remembers. Too sweet and artificial. It doesn’t taste like home anymore.

Brooklyn was streetlights and laughter, sugar melting on his tongue while Steve sat beside him on the stoop, grinning through a busted lip. Brooklyn was flickering neon signs, the hum of Benny Goodman spilling out from a passing radio.

Brooklyn was—

Bucky swallows.

Brooklyn isn’t here.

He glances at Steve. The light catches his cheekbones, the curve of his mouth, makes him look precious—like some rare jewel glinting in the sun. He’s different—bigger now, broader, like the world’s weight finally settled into his shoulders—but it didn’t gift him that shine. He’s always had it.

Maybe the chocolate doesn’t taste like home anymore.

But Steve beside him, shining like the goddamn midday sun, like they’re still two kids sitting on the stoop—

This feels like home.

Steve finds him in the barracks later, seated on his cot, hands busy maintaining his rifle with methodical precision.

The bolt is already removed, resting beside him on a neatly folded rag. His fingers move with a quiet, familiar efficiency, working the cleaning rod through the barrel in smooth strokes.

Swipe, twist, pull.

It's more of a ritual, really. 

Bucky checks the chamber next, running his thumb along the edges, feeling for anything out of place. Then the magazine—emptying, inspecting, reloading with the same practiced ease he’s had since Basic. 

He doesn’t have to think about it. That’s the best part. It's something that, ironically, won't hurt him or those around him, even when he tinkers on autopilot.

The rag is already dark with oil and carbon residue by the time he moves on to the trigger assembly. He disassembles it without looking, setting each piece aside in careful order. Not a single wasted movement. Not a single pause.

His mind still stutters and stalls, but his hands don't. He'll keep going until his thoughts follow suit. 

He exhales slowly. The tension in his shoulders eases.

This is something he can control.

Steve watches from the doorway for a moment, he's not subtle, before clearing his throat. “I’ve been thinking.”

Bucky doesn’t look up. “That’s dangerous.”

Steve huffs, but his lips twitch. He sits on beside him, the mattress sinking beneath his weight. His forearms rest on his knees. For a while, he doesn’t speak—like he’s still coming up with the words. 

Bucky finally stills his hands. “Spit it out, Stevie.”

Steve sighs— “I’m putting together a team.”

That gets Bucky’s attention. His head tilts, lips parting slightly before pressing back into a firm line. “…A team?”

“The Commandos.” Steve keeps his voice steady. “Strategic operations. High clearance. Hand-picked. We’ll be working together to take out Hydra strongholds. I already talked to the guys.”

Bucky’s shoulders go stiff. “The guys,” he repeats. 

Steve nods once.

Bucky lets out a breath. He rubs at the back of his neck, trying not to sound as betrayed as he feels. “And I guess you weren’t gonna tell me?”

Steve hesitates. “I was going to tell you. I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

“Sure.” Bucky scoffs. “After you’d already made the call.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?”

There’s something raw in Bucky’s voice. He’s not raising it, but he doesn’t need to.

Steve sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “Buck—”

“I get it.” Bucky cuts him off, shaking his head. Because he’d rather say the words than hear them from Steve’s mouth. “You don’t trust me. Not after everything.”

Steve’s eyes snap up. “You know that's not it.”

Bucky lets out a humourless laugh. “Then what? You worried I’ll lose control? Because Carter says I’m getting better. Says I’ve been regaining control. That’s what this whole damn training is for, right?” 

Steve shakes his head. “I’m not worried about your control.” His voice goes quiet. “I just—you know you don’t have to go back out there, don’t you? Carter can pull strings, let you go home, you could see your ma, Becca—”

Bucky winces. “Stop.” Because of course, he wants that. Of course, the thought of stepping off a train in Brooklyn, walking up the familiar steps to his ma’s apartment, hearing Becca yell his name while Carolyn grabs at his boots and Lily leaps into his arms—of course he wants that—

But those memories hurt in ways he still can’t describe.

Because that’s not his reality anymore. He isn’t James Barnes, the reliable older brother, the smooth-talking kid from Brooklyn who had a future beyond war. I could've been an engineer, huh? An author. A dentist-

That life belongs to someone else now, someone who never stepped foot in Azzano. Who never set foot in Europe at all. He’s built for the frontlines now. And wherever Steve goes, he'll follow. 

“The hell are you doing? Saying shit like that?”

Steve flinches. “I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to come. That I’d never ask that of you.”

Bucky stares at him like he’s lost his mind. “And let you run straight into the fire without me? Not a single fucking chance.”

Steve riles up quickly, the rare flicker of frustration pulsing behind his eyes. “I can handle myself.”

Bucky lets out a humourless laugh. “Yeah? That what you told me back in Brooklyn? Right before I had to drag your ass out of yet another alleyway fight?”

“That’s different,” Steve grits out.

“No, it’s not,” Bucky snaps. He steps forward, crowding into Steve’s space. “You think just ‘cause you can throw a punch now, I’m supposed to sit back and let you get yourself killed?”

Steve shakes his head with pursed lips. “I’m not asking you to sit back, Buck—”

“Then what the hell are you asking me?” His voice is rough and worn. He clenches his jaw as adrenaline hums beneath his skin. 

Breathe. Breathe. 

When he speaks again, his voice comes out more controlled. “You tell me I don’t have to go, that you’d never ask me to—but you don’t get it, do you?” His breath shudders, but his eyes stay locked on Steve’s. “I want to go. I need to go. Because I—” His throat tightens, but he forces the words out anyway. “Because I already lost myself once, and the only thing that pulled me out of that hellhole was you.”

Steve’s expression falters. “Buck—”

Bucky shakes his head. “I’m not gonna let you fight this war alone. You can’t ask me to do that.”

Steve runs a hand through his hair, looking away, frustration bleeding into something much softer. “I just don’t wanna lose you again.”

Bucky pauses. His throat constricts over a laugh or a cry or both perhaps. “…You don't think that’s selfish? You ever stop and think that maybe I don’t want to lose you either?”

Steve falters—lips parting like he wants to argue—

But Bucky sighs sharply. He won’t let him off that easy. “Christ, Steve. HYDRA...they messed me up real bad, sure. And for a long time, I didn’t think there was anything left worth salvaging. But you helped me see otherwise.” He looks away, pressing his tongue to the inside of his cheek. “You’re my best guy, Steve. You always have been. And I ain’t letting you do this without me. It's my decision, right? I'm allowed those now, right? So I'm going with you."

Steve meets his gaze, searching for any trace of doubt. 

And is Bucky terrified of going back out there? God, yes. 

But he’s more terrified of what will happen if he doesn’t. 

Finally, Steve sighs, leaning back slightly. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Bucky smirks softly, returning to his rifle. “You really shouldn’t.”

And maybe a selfish part of Steve is relieved by Bucky’s answer. 

Steve resents that part of himself. 

The part of him that needs Bucky to stay, even when he knows he shouldn't. 

Chapter Text

December 1943, Geneva, Switzerland 

Bucky stands at ease, back straight, hands clasped loosely behind him. The sharp scent of ink and old paper lingers in the air, mixing with the faintest trace of perfume—something crisp, clean, not too sweet. 

He’s never been in Carter’s office, but he still isn’t surprised by its appearance. The office is as precise as the woman herself. The books on the shelves stand in rigid rows, the desk meticulously arranged—only necessary files and a single, half-full cup of tea cooling near her elbow. There’s no clutter, no misplaced papers.

Except for the one she just pushed across the desk toward him.

A formal recommendation.

One that states, in plain, efficient language, that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is unfit for active duty.

Bucky looks up at her incredulously. “You’re not serious.”

Carter levels him with a look. “I’m afraid I am.”

He forces himself to stay still. To not react. He doesn’t trust what his body might do if he lets it move on its own. “I’ve passed every control test you’ve thrown at me. I answered all your damn questions to the best of my ability. I bared my soul—”

“You’re not ready,” she says, point-blank. And—she’s lying. It’s the first time he’s ever been able to read her. 

Bucky squares his shoulders. “I’m getting there.”

“Getting there isn’t the same as being ready.”

He clenches his jaw. “Agent Carter—”

“I know why you want to do this.” Her voice softens, just slightly. “And I respect it. But throwing yourself back into combat before you’ve stabilised could put you at risk.”

Bucky grits his teeth, biting back a retort.

She leans forward, folding her hands atop her desk. “This isn’t about your control, Sergeant. It’s about your state of mind.”

Bucky huffs a humourless laugh. “That’s what you’re worried about? Half the soldiers out there have their own ghosts haunting them, and they’re still on the front lines. Excuse me, but that’s bullshit and you know it.”

Carter sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You have nothing to prove, Barnes.”

His stomach turns. “That what you think this is then?” He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Did Steve put you up to this?”

“This isn’t about Steve.”

“Then what is it about?”

She doesn’t answer right away. It makes something go cold inside him, clashing with the foaming anger beneath his skin.

Bucky shakes his head, taking a step forward. “You think I want to go back out there because I have something to prove?"

“I think,” she says evenly, “that you believe you have nowhere else to go.”

Bucky clenches his jaw.

She’s right, but that’s not the point. That’s not all he is, nor all he believes. 

He breathes, forcing himself to calm down. It’s just another test, right? It has to be. “I’m not some broken shell of a man trying to run back into the fire just because I don’t know what else to do.” His voice hardens, steel in every syllable. “I am what I am now, and you know that the war needs soldiers that can fight. All the ones they can get.” 

Carter watches him carefully, searching his expression for something unspoken.

But Bucky doesn’t want to be analysed anymore. “You know I can help. I know HYDRA better than anyone else. I was their guinea pig for months. I’m familiar with their weapons, the layouts of their strongholds. I know Zola’s face.” He suppresses a wince. “I can use that.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But I can.” He looks away, forcing himself to breathe. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. 

“I know what’s at stake,” Bucky presses on. “I know I’m not—perfect. But I also know what’s out there. What HYDRA’s doing. What they did to me.” He pauses, steadying himself against the wall. “I didn’t ask for this body but now I have to live in it. And I’ve been given a chance to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else. I’m not gonna waste it.”

Carter studies him, and for a long moment, Bucky isn’t sure if she’s going to argue or just shoot him on principle.

Then, finally, she sighs. She rubs her temples like she’s regretting every life decision that led to this conversation. “Fine.” 

Bucky blinks. “Fine?”

She fixes him with a pointed look. “Fine. But only because I know what you’re capable of.” She exhales through her nose. “And because Steve vouched for you.”

He did?

Bucky swallows. “…Understood.”

Carter sighs, under her breath this time: “Don’t make me regret it, Barnes.”

For an officer, she has a terrible habit of breaking the rules. 

The room is packed shoulder to shoulder with soldiers, the scent of tobacco and sweat hanging in the stale air. The hum of the projector crackles against the grainy reel as it flickers to life, casting moving images against the makeshift screen at the front of the hall.

Bucky slouches slightly in his seat, arms crossed over his chest as the film rolls on. Another morale-boosting masterpiece. 

The footage is all too familiar: bold orchestral music swelling, crisp narration in that perfect radio announcer cadence. Our boys on the front!—cue shots of fresh-faced soldiers laughing, slinging arms around each other, waving at the camera. Fighting the good fight for freedom and democracy!—cut to tanks rolling through sunlit fields, fighter planes slicing through blue skies. Victory is inevitable!

Bucky chews on the inside of his cheek.

The footage shifts to combat scenes—staged, obviously. Too clean and polished. A soldier raises his rifle, fires, the enemy falls in a neat heap. Not a drop of blood or scream or bodies twitching on the ground as they gasp out their last breath. Just the gleam of brass buttons and a clean battlefield. Devoid of all the real filth of war. 

Beside him, Jones scoffs under her breath.

“I take it you’re enjoying the show,” Bucky murmurs dryly. 

“Oh, what gave it away?” he deadpans. “Nothing like sanitised warfare to boost morale.”

Bucky huffs a quiet laugh.

On screen, a smiling soldier—with a helmet that sits too perfectly on his head—tips his chin toward the camera. Remember, boys, every bullet counts! Let’s give those Krauts a taste of real American steel! Like they don’t have trenches to crawl through or friends that are already six feet under.

A few cheers go up from the audience, men whistling, slapping each other on the backs, but it’s mostly because of the bottles and cigarettes being passed between them. The rest of them—most of them—just watch with blank faces, too tired and numb to pretend anymore.

“Christ,” Bucky mutters, rubbing a hand down his face.

“Hell, I must’ve missed the part where we all got hot chow every night,” Morita quips, watching as the camera cuts to soldiers merrily spooning stew into their mouths, fresh bread on their trays. 

“And clean uniforms,” Jones adds. “What a luxury.”

“This is what you Americans watch?” Dernier asks with a concerned look of disgust. 

“Bloody hell.”

Morita rolls his eyes. “Hey, we don’t like it either.”

“They don’t want to see the reality,” Steve finally says. He doesn’t smile, just watches. “They want heroes.”

The camera pans across the “battlefield,” a backdrop of staged rubble where victorious American soldiers march forward with their bayonets gleaming. The narrator’s voice swells with triumph. We’re turning the tide! With every strong, fearless soldier, we bring the world one step closer to peace!

“Yeah,” Bucky mutters, “Guess not.”

He still hears the shells. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget them. Trenches filled with bodies, the copper-stink of blood and stench of decay. A nineteen-year-old kid gasping for air as he grips at a wound too deep to fix, fingers slick dark and wet. The sounds of a man sobbing into the dirt, begging for his mother.

Bucky shifts in his seat.

Steve slinks a hand towards him, one brow raised in that concerned, assessing way of his. “You alright?”

Bucky blinks. Swallows. Forces himself back into the present. He squeezes Steve’s hand back. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Just—” He shakes his head. “Hell of a thing to see before going back out there, is all.”

Morita exhales sharply. “They’re not making these for us.”

“No shit,” Dugan snorts. 

“It’s for the folks back home,” Steve says, and there’s some guilt in his voice. Right, he used to do those USO shows, right? God, Bucky feels like an idiot. “The ones knitting scarves and buying war bonds. They need to believe there’s a purpose to all of this.” 

Dum Dum huffs. “Yeah? And what about us?”

Steve presses his lips into a thin line. “We don’t get the luxury of pretty stories.”

Bucky lets his head tip back against the chair, closing his eyes briefly. The static in his chest thrums. He squeezes Steve’s hand harder. 

On screen, the soldiers are still smiling and waving.

He keeps his eyes closed until the reel runs out.

It ends with a triumphant burst of music, the words VICTORY IS NEAR! emblazoned across the screen. A smattering of applause rises from the room, some men cheering, likely because it’s over, others simply filing out as if they hadn’t just been subjected to twenty minutes of half-truths.

Bucky stands, rolling his shoulders. “So much for morale.”

Steve is drawing him.

Bucky notices it in quiet moments—when his head isn’t so full of cotton and he’s able to catch the soft scratch of pencil against paper. 

He doesn’t say anything at first. Just watches from the corner of his eye as Steve hunches over that damn sketchbook, brows furrowed in concentration, fingers smudged with graphite.

Eventually, curiosity wins out.

Bucky shifts, stretching his legs out where he’s sprawled on the couch, arms crossed over his chest. “Y’know, if you wanted to stare at me that bad, you could’ve just asked.”

Steve startles, his hand jerking slightly. He blinks up at Bucky, then huffs a small, sheepish laugh. “You gonna hold still or keep running your mouth?”

Bucky smirks. “Not my fault I make a great subject.”

Steve shakes his head fondly before returning to his work. Bucky lets him be, lets the silence settle again. Only so he can admire the adorable purse of Steve’s lips every time he looks down at the paper. 

After a while, Steve closes the sketchbook with a quiet thud and sets the pencil down. He hesitates for half a second, then, without a word, passes it over.

Bucky blinks. “You want me to see?”

Steve shrugs, looking uncharacteristically shy. “Figured you might as well.”

That alone makes Bucky pause. Steve’s always been protective over his drawings—ever since they were kids, sketching on scraps of paper in the back of classrooms, or sneaking into the museum to study paintings up close. He never used to show his work until it was finished.

Bucky glances at him once more before flipping it open.

The first page is him.

And so is the next.

And the one after that.

Bucky stills.

Some are quick, rough sketches—his profile caught in half-shadow, the way his hair falls into his eyes, the slight crook of his grin when he actually used to let himself smile. Others are more detailed, drawn with painstaking care—the stretch of his shoulders beneath his uniform, his hands curled loosely around a tin cup, his body mid-motion like Steve had been trying to capture every way he moves.

He flips through, fingers tracing the edges of the pages, the familiar lines of Steve’s signature, pressed deep into the paper like he wanted it to last. 

“You—” His voice comes out rough. He clears his throat, tries again. “You been drawing me this whole time?”

Steve rubs the back of his neck, looking somewhere past Bucky’s shoulder. His ears instantly turn red. “Uh.” He clears his throat. “Yeah. I mean—yeah," then, softly, "didn’t want to forget.” 

And Bucky wonders if Steve had spent all this time fearing he’d never see him again too.

He swallows. He flips another page, and his chest tightens at what he finds—Steve must’ve drawn it from memory. A softer moment, one Bucky barely remembers, but Steve must have. The two of them sitting side by side on the stoop, Bucky’s head tipped back in laughter, eyes crinkled, loose and carefree. His shoulders shake with whatever joke he must’ve cracked, the easy kind, the kind that used to roll off his tongue like second nature.

But it’s not him that catches his breath—it’s the way Steve drew himself. Not laughing. Just watching. With the fondest expression on his face, quiet and awed, like he was memorising the moment even back then.

Bucky stares at it for a long time, tracing the faint pencil strokes of Steve’s own expression. “Jesus,” Bucky mutters, shaking his head. “You’re a sap.”

Steve smirks. “You’re the one getting emotional over a couple sketches.”

“Shut up.” He stares at the page a moment longer, a deep sense of affection making a nest in his heart.

ed

Bucky flips back to the fresh sketch, the one Steve had just started. It’s him, right now—lounging on the couch, arms crossed, watching Steve with that half-smirk he doesn’t even realise he’s making. It’s stupidly good.

Bucky tilts his head. “Think you got my nose wrong.”

Steve raises a brow. “Your nose is fine.”

Bucky hums, pretending to scrutinise the page. “I dunno. Kinda looks like a guy I used to know—James Barnes, real handsome fella.”

Steve rolls his eyes, plucking the sketchbook from his hands. “Alright, wiseass.”

Bucky just grins, shifting back into the pillows. “Don’t stop on my account.”

Steve shakes his head but picks up the pencil anyway.

Bucky watches him work, watches the way his hands move, steady and sure. The ways his lips purse again and his eyebrows furrow, the dust of pink on his cheek.  

When Steve starts another sketch that night, Bucky offers him a real smile to draw. 

It starts slow. Gentle.

The way he and Steve always sought each other.

A lingering kiss goodnight, a promise of sanctuary before they deploy and can’t steal precious moments like these.

But Bucky doesn’t have the same patience as Steve. His hands thread through Steve’s blonde hair, tugging him closer, nails scratching lightly at the base of his skull. Steve exhales, a quiet, shuddering sigh, his hands finding their way around Bucky’s waist. He brushes slow, soothing lines up his side, fingertips ghosting over the rough patches of scar tissues, the bump where a rib healed wrong. “Does this hurt?” he murmurs softly, thumbs rubbing small, gentle circles

Bucky shivers. “Doesn’t bother me anymore.” 

Which isn’t a no, but he’s already chasing Steve’s lips, pulling him down with him as he falls back onto the bed. Bucky covers Steve’s hand with his own, and it’s a strange, beautiful thing, to feel your own heartbeat through someone else’s fingers. 

“I missed this,” Bucky whispers, kissing him again. “I missed you.” God, he missed him so much. There was a time, an endless amount of time it seemed, where Bucky had given up on the idea of seeing him again. Feeling helpless and lost—stolen—a ghost inside his own skin. 

Steve hums against his lips, pressing closer. “I’m here,” he murmurs, like he knows exactly where Bucky’s mind has started to drift. His hands slide around his back, mapping his spine with careful reverence. “And you’re with me.”

Bucky tilts his head back, exhausted and relieved and tender all at once, like he’s finally risen for air and can’t quite get it all inside his lungs. Relearning how to breathe and exist in a body that’s…his again. 

Steve’s lips find the side of his throat slowly, pressing kisses into the places Bucky still flinches when he catches them in  the mirror. His pulse thrums beneath Steve’s mouth, and for a fleeting, sick thought, Bucky wonders if Steve notices the way his blood runs black now. If he can smell the poison buried inside him, just beneath the surface. He winces at the thought. 

Steve pauses, pressing his forehead against Bucky’s, breath warm between them. “Alright?”

Bucky swallows. He should be fine. He wants to be fine. He is fine. There’s something impossibly fragile in his chest, nestled just underneath the cleft of his heart, and he doesn’t want it to shatter. “Please, don’t stop.”

Steve’s breath catches, but he doesn’t question it. He offers a simple smile before returning to his skin, tickling the shell of his ear with each exhale. “Anything,” he whispers, lips brushing just beneath his jaw. “Anything you want, Buck. You only have to ask.”

And it makes him swim with want, this desire to have Steve’s touch on his skin, a kindness he still hasn’t acclimated to but so desperately wants. Something warm and whole, a gentle caress from someone he knows won’t hurt him. And it’s an aching realisation, an aching want, like pressing on a sore bruise. Because he’s been starving for it. 

There was a time too when affection wasn’t something rare or distant. When love was easy—like when his ma kissed him on the cheek or Becca ruffled his hair, slicking it back for a date or cutting it short when they didn’t have enough money for the barbershop. Arms wrapped around him on a rainy day, laughter pressed into his shoulder, warmth that lasted him through winter when the heater wheezed and coughed its way through frozen pipes.

He was loved. He knew love.

And maybe that’s why he never really recovered from its sudden withdrawal.

That he became…unsalvageable. Or at least, he’d assumed. 

But now he feels this sensation that isn’t obligation or compliance or—usefulness. 

Just the simple, precious weight of someone who chooses to hold him. 

Bucky slips his hand under Steve’s shirt, tracing shapes into his back, each little indent of his spine. It used to be all bent, like a spring, coiling into all the wrong places. And it used to give Steve such a hard time. Perhaps that’s where he learned gentleness, because he had to—and because of that, Steve understands. He understands pain, more than most—sickness and strife. He knows how frustrating it is to be a prisoner in your own body. 

Bucky’s hand stills between Steve’s shoulder blades. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there either,” he whispers softly. “When that scientist pumped you full of whatever the hell was in that serum.”

Steve’s breath hitches slightly, but he doesn’t pull away. “You were there,” He nestles into the crook of Bucky’s shoulder, kissing down his arm. “I could hear your voice in my head the whole time—telling me all the reasons it was a bad idea.

Bucky laughs softly. “Yeah? Bet they were damn good ones, too.”

Steve’s lips ghost over the inside of his wrist, pressing warmth into places that had gone cold long ago. “Infuriatingly good,” he murmurs, kissing over his pulse point, where scar tissue peels open like a rotten apple. “Kept me from doing a lot of stupid things.”

Bucky huffs, tilting his head back against the pillow. “Didn’t stop you from jumping on that grenade, though.”

Steve grins against his skin. “Now who told you that?”

“So it’s true?” Bucky huffs exasperatedly. “Jesus, how did you survive without me?”

“Still asking myself that same question.”

They share a smile. 

And Steve knows him, knows what he likes and needs. 

Bucky lets Steve’s mouth wander lower, lingering at another pulse point, as if to remind them both that he’s alive. His breath stutters when Steve sucks lightly, just enough to make him feel it, to make a small, helpless sound escape his lips.

It’s intoxicating—the weight of Steve on top of him, the deliberate press of his hips against his, ones that haven’t felt like his own in a long time. The way Steve sighs and groans into his skin, like the very act of cherishing it has him all hot and bothered. Bucky returns the favour by digging his fingers into Steve’s hair. 

And for a while, it’s good. Better than good. Consuming in a way that leaves no room for anything else—no memories, no echoes of the past. Just this. Just Steve and his wonderful, wonderful hands.  

Bucky doesn’t know when he becomes the face of Zola’s assistant. Maybe when Steve’s hand dipped lower, brushing over his stomach, tracing the sharp lines of his hip. It felt so good and then it had felt so wrong. An ugly, clawing thing that sunk its teeth into his skin and wouldn’t let go. 

And the moment shatters.

It’s not Steve’s fault—of course, it’s not. He knows that. But his body clearly doesn’t. His body remembers something else entirely—cold, sterile, viable. 

Bucky jerks back before he can stop himself, winded like he’s been punched.  

Steve freezes, hands retreating instantly. “Buck?” His voice is gentle, but Bucky can’t hear it over the rush of blood in his ears.

He presses a hand over his mouth, squeezes his eyes shut. His pulse is too fast, his skin burning too hot in some places, too cold in others, where the glove pinched his skin, ignoring all his cries for mercy. He feels the sick and hollow realisation deep in his gut and stifles a whimper under his palm with his teeth. The memory no longer distant but inescapable. A deplorable truth that makes his eyes sting. 

Steve shifts beside him, careful—so, so careful—not to touch. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “You’re okay.”

“I’m not,” Bucky grits out. His hands bunch into fists against the sheets, nails digging into his wrists. “I wanted to. I want to.” His breath shudders, fraying at the edges as he gasps out a frustrated half-sob.

“Hey, hey, breathe. Breathe.” And Steve’s already wiping the lone tear that makes its way down his cheek. 

“Please, don’t stop, I—I haven’t felt this good in so long please, Stevie.”

“Bucky, I’m not going to do this if it hurts you.” Steve’s voice is gentle yet firm, hand lingering near Bucky’s cheek, close enough to wipe away another tear if it falls. But not touching anymore. 

And every part of Bucky sings with desperation, the ache to feel him again. “It’s not you—I know it’s not you,” he rasps. Frustration boils under his skin, and he wants to scream until he chokes.  “It’s them—it’s what they did to me. And I—” he stops, swallowing hard. His eyes burn—and he doesn’t have the strength to tell Steve what really happened in that lab. “I want to want this. I do want this. But my body—” he presses the heel of his palm against his temple, voice dropping into something inconsolable. “It won’t let me. I don’t want them to have this. They took so much from me, Steve. I don’t want this to be theirs, too.”

Steve exhales slowly. Then, carefully, he shifts, settling beside Bucky, close but not crowding. “Buck,” he murmurs, “you don’t have to fight for this. Not with me.” He watches Bucky’s fingers tremble, turning white where they grip his skin. “Needing time doesn’t mean they win. It doesn’t mean they took this from you.”

Bucky scoffs, shaking his head. “That’s exactly what it means. That or I’m just…broken.”

Steve shakes his head. He reaches out, hesitates, then rests a steady hand against Bucky’s wrist. Bucky sighs in relief, too grateful for the contact to notice he’d been digging into his skin again. “It just means it takes time,” he sighs sadly. “And I’ll be right here. However long it takes.” 

And Steve’s always been the patient one between the two of them. 

Bucky stares at him. The shatter of glass in his chest bruises his heart, tears into it with thousands of tiny, brittle fragments. He doesn’t know how to handle it, doesn’t know if he can. He exhales, shaky and uneven, eyes darting somewhere past Steve’s shoulder, searching for an answer he knows isn’t there. “I just…” His throat tightens, and he has to swallow hard to keep his voice from breaking. He presses his fingers into Steve’s hand. “I don’t remember the last time someone touched me like this. Just—to touch me. Not to take something.”

Steve winces, but he stays quiet, lets him find the words.

“I used to have so much of it,” Bucky admits hoarsely. “I never even thought about it, y’know? Becca fussing over my hair. Carolyn climbing all over me when she was little. Holding Lily’s hand on the way to school. Even you—” He lets out a breathy, watery laugh, shaking his head. “Always gettin’ in my space, hangin’ off me like some stray cat. I used to have so much of it, I never even realised how much I needed it.”

He looks down, watches how Steve’s thumb moves slow and steady against his wrist.

“And then, one day—just like that—it was gone. Like I didn’t exist as a person anymore, just a—a thing to be used. And after a while, I stopped expecting it. Stopped thinking about it at all.” He clenches his jaw to stop another string of hot tears. “And now? Now, I get a little of it back, and it just—it messes me up. Makes me feel like I’m coming apart at the fucking seams all over again.”

“You’re not coming apart,” Steve murmurs. “You’re just…learning how to feel again.”

Bucky sighs harshly. “Yeah, well. Feels like hell.”

Steve pauses for a moment. Then, “Tell you what—How about we start small?”

Bucky huffs out something that might be a laugh, but it’s dry and tired. “Small?”

“Yeah.” Steve squeezes his hand. “You don’t have to rush or force it all at once. We just take it one step at a time.”

Bucky stares down at their joined hands, watches the way Steve’s thumb keeps moving, tracing meaningful patterns into his skin. The warmth of it makes his chest ache. “Where do we start? How do I even know where to start?”

“We start with this,” he says simply, rubbing a slow deliberate circle against the crescents in his skin. “With what feels safe.” Steve kisses his wrist, his knuckles, over the scars Bucky got when he punched through stone for the first time. “You call the shots.”

Bucky exhales, the panic in his chest easing slightly. “And if I don’t know?” His voice is softer now, almost small. “If I don’t know until it’s too late?”

“Then we stop. No questions, no pressure.” His lips brush over Bucky’s knuckles again, a soft, fleeting press of warmth. “You don’t owe me anything, Buck.”

Bucky shuts his eyes, and he knows he sounds childish but he doesn’t care. “How long is that supposed to take? I don’t want to wait I just want you. Why—” he heaves in a sharp breath. “Why can’t I have this?”

Steve’s expression softens, but there’s something fierce behind his eyes too—that damn, iron-will determination. “You do have this,” he says. “You have me. That hasn’t changed.” 

Bucky lets out a bitter, frustrated sound. “But it’s not the same. I want to just—to be normal again. To touch you and have you touch me without my mind turning it into something else.”

“I know,” Steve whispers, pressing a kiss to his temple. “I know.”

Bucky turns his head, burying his face in Steve’s shoulder. He chokes over a sob. “I don’t know how to do this.”

Steve offers him a smile, even though he can’t see it. “Good thing you don’t have to figure it out alone then.”

Bucky lets out a wet laugh. “Yeah? You volunteering to hold my hand through it?” His voice is thick, wry, but the joke lands soft, a lifeline more than anything, because Steve is holding his hand, and it does make him feel better.

Steve squeezes his fingers gently. “Always.”

He sniffs. “Guess you’ve always been a stubborn bastard.”

Steve grins against his hair. “Takes one to know one.”

“Oh real mature.”

And maybe, if they take it one step at a time, one day it won’t hurt so much anymore. 

Bucky tightens the strap on his pack, fingers moving with practiced ease. Checking, double-checking. It keeps his hands busy, gives him something to focus on besides the weight of leaving sanctuary in Geneva. He runs through the motions mechanically—adjusting the fit, testing the weight, smoothing out the wrinkles in his uniform. It’s muscle memory and that’s a comfort now, after his training.

He glances around the tarmac, where the others are gearing up. Dugan grumbles nearby about some rookie tripping over his own damn feet. Jones savours one last cigarette before the long flight. Morita jots something down—probably another letter home, half of which will get blacked out by the censors anyway. Dernier and Falsworth check their gear, murmuring to each other in low tones. Dernier adjusts the strap of his rifle, giving it a practiced tug, while Falsworth secures the last of their supplies. They don’t need to speak much; they’ve done this enough times to fall into an easy rhythm.

In fact, it’s all so normal, so routine. Like this isn’t the last sliver of quiet before they land in hell.

Bucky exhales slowly, tightening the straps once more, just for good measure. 

And then there’s Steve.

Bucky finds him a few feet away, standing by the transport, arms crossed, jaw set, surveying everything with that sharp, careful gaze of his. He's always had the eyes of a leader. 

Bucky steps beside him, bumping their shoulders lightly. “You got that look.”

Steve glances at him. “What look?”

“The one where you’re thinkin’ too hard. Like you got the whole damn world on your shoulders.”

Steve huffs a soft laugh but doesn’t deny it.

Bucky watches him for a beat, watches the way his hands flex at his sides, restless. He gets it. He does. They’re walking into something they might not come back from. But Steve isn’t afraid of that. It’s never been about that.

It’s about the weight of command. The lives in his hands. Knowing that no matter how much he tries, he won’t be able to protect everyone.

Steve’s never feared dying. But he does fear failing. Carrying guilt on his shoulders. And right now, Bucky can see it plain as day. “Hey, don’t start planning our eulogy just yet,” he says lightly. “Kinda ruins the mood.”

Steve exhales, a smirk tugging at his lips, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He stares straight ahead for a moment, watching as the others load up, before speaking. “It’s different this time,” he says finally.

Bucky tilts his head. “How so?”

Steve exhales, glancing at him. “You’re coming with me.”

Bucky swallows. There’s something heavy in the words. The last time they left like this, he hadn’t come back. Not really. But now, here he is. He’s here. They're both here. 

A slow, wry smirk tugs at his lips. “Yeah, yeah. I know, you'd be lost without me.”

Steve shakes his head, but his expression softens. “I mean it.”

Bucky rolls his shoulders, trying to chase away the nerves coiling in his gut. “Try not to be such a worrywart. I know you have my back. And we have yours."

“We?” Steve repeats, arching a brow.

Bucky grins, easy and familiar. “Yeah. You think I’m the only one keeping an eye on your reckless ass?” He jerks his chin toward the rest of the squad, who are gathered by the plane now, making their final checks. “They’d follow you through hell and back, Rogers. Hell, they already have.” 

Steve glances at them, at the way Dugan and Morita are going back and forth over some last-minute adjustment—Dugan muttering about how Morita always double-checks his straps like a damn overbearing mother hen, while Morita fires back that at least he’ll be the one who doesn’t break his neck on the drop.

And just for a second, some of the weight in Steve’s shoulders eases.

Carter’s voice cuts through the din before he can reply. 

“Well, I suppose this is it, then.”

They both turn to see her standing with her hands clasped neatly behind her back, ever the perfect picture of composed authority. But there’s something else, too—something in the way her gaze flickers over them both, measuring, weighing—she’s nervous, in her own subtle way. 

Steve straightens instinctively, always the good soldier, but Bucky—Bucky just smirks, tipping his head. “Didn’t think you’d come see us off, Agent Carter.”

She gives him a look, unimpressed but not unkind. “You make it sound like I expect you to fail, Sergeant Barnes.”

Bucky shrugs. “I dunno, you did chew me out the other day. Might’ve gotten the impression you weren’t my biggest fan.”

Carter sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And yet, here you are. I expect you to return in one piece, Sergeant. I wouldn’t have let you go otherwise.”

Steve glances between them, amusement flickering in his eyes. “That sounds dangerously close to concern.”

Carter exhales sharply, shaking her head before fixing them both with a pointed look. “Just don’t make me regret it.” Then, after a pause, she shifts slightly, her posture relaxing a fraction. Her gaze settles on Bucky. “And…we’ve been through enough together by now, Sergeant. You can call me Peggy."

Bucky blinks.

So does Steve.

A beat of silence stretches between them before, in perfect synchronisation, the rest of the guys—who had, up until this moment, been preoccupied with loading gear and pretending not to eavesdrop—turn to stare.

Jones straightens from where he’s been securing a crate, mouth slightly open like he misheard something. Dugan, halfway through stuffing his pipe, looks up with an expression of sheer, unfiltered outrage. Morita makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, and Dernier murmurs something incredulous in rapid French. 

Bucky, meanwhile, smirks. “Well, well, well,” he drawls, tilting his head at her. “Guess I grew on you, huh?”

Carter—Peggy—raises a single, immaculate brow. “Don’t push your luck, Barnes.”

But Bucky knows a dismissal when he hears one. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He gives her a lazy salute. “And, if we’re exchanging first names now, you can call me Bucky.”

Beside him, Steve is looking at him like he’s just committed some sort of war crime. 

Ironically, he probably has. 

Bucky grins, throwing an arm over his shoulder as they turn back toward the waiting plane. “Relax, Rogers,” he mutters, low enough for only Steve to hear. “I’ve only got the hots for you.”

Steve turns red, exhaling sharply. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Take care of each other," she says, this time directed at all of them. 

Her expression doesn’t change, but something shifts in her eyes. Then, just as quickly, it’s gone. She lifts her chin. “And good luck, Captain.”

Steve offers a small, firm smile, still pink around the ears. “See you soon, Peggy.”

She nods, then turns on her heel, disappearing into the crowd of officers barking last-minute orders.

Bucky watches her go, then nudges Steve with his elbow. “I think she likes me.”

Behind them, the rest of the guys are still making increasingly disgruntled noises of protest.

“I don’t believe it,” Dugan mutters. “How the hell does he—”

“C’est injuste,” Dernier grumbles. It’s unfair. 

Bucky snickers under his breath. “Y’know, this war’s not all bad.”

“Alright, you sorry bastards, let’s move! I don’t got all day!” Stark’s voice carries over the commotion, and just like that, the moment is gone, swept up in the forward momentum of war. 

Bucky slings his rifle over his shoulder, casting one last glance at Steve.

And then—they’re off.

Chapter Text

December 1943, East of Oradour-sur-Glane, France

The snow is deep enough to slow them down, crunching softly beneath their boots as they weave through the trees. It's a sound Bucky doesn’t mind—better the crisp, natural hush of winter than the sharp crack of gunfire. But snowy forests haven’t been peaceful for a long time. Not since the Ardennes. And certainly not since he was just another soldier freezing in the trenches, boots soaked through, fingers stiff and useless around his rifle.

He tightens his grip on the strap of his rifle, rolling his shoulders against the cold. They’re close now. Peggy’s map had marked multiple potential HYDRA strongholds, the nearest just east of Oradour-sur-Glane. Stark had gotten them as far as he could, dropping them off just a few miles out. 

Now, the last stretch is on foot.

Already, the air feels different. Denser. Like the land itself knows what waits for them.

They’ve been walking for hours, long enough that the ache is settling into their legs and their toes are going numb. The forest feels endless, stretching on in every direction, every tree identical to the last. The kind of terrain that could make a man feel lost even with a compass.

Behind him, the guys moves in steady formation, barely making a sound—except for Dugan, who mutters under his breath, “If I wanted to freeze my ass off, I would’ve stayed in Brooklyn.”

“You think Brooklyn’s cold?” Bucky huffs. “Try walking through the Ardennes. You ain’t seen cold till you got frost on your damn eyelashes.”

“Putain, don’t remind me,” Dernier mutters, adjusting the straps on his pack.

“Can’t we fight a war somewhere warm for once?" Dugan grumbles.

“Yes, Dugan,” Falsworth deadpans. “I’m sure the Reich is just dying to relocate somewhere tropical for your comfort.”

Bucky lets out a quiet laugh, watching Steve shake his head, a familiar, crooked smirk on his lips. He’s walking a few steps ahead, scanning the trees with a gaze that’s always been too damn serious for someone so good-hearted.

Bucky doesn’t miss the way Steve rubs his hands together, though. The serum helps, sure, but he still gets cold. He’s not immune to the winter. The sight of it pulls at something instinctual in Bucky’s chest. He reaches into his coat pocket, pulls out his spare pair of gloves, and presses them into Steve’s hands.

Steve blinks down at them. “Buck—”

“Don’t argue.” Bucky nudges them closer. “Just take ‘em.”

Steve hesitates for half a second before sighing and tugging them on. They’re a little small on him—which is strange because Bucky’s hands were always broader—but he doesn’t complain.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, but he lets himself watch for a second longer. Watches as Steve flexes his fingers and as a bit of tension leaves his shoulders. 

It’s the smallest thing, but it makes the noose loosen in Bucky’s chest.

They press on.

They’ve been trekking long enough that conversation has died down, subsiding into the rhythm of marching—one boot in front of the other, breaths puffing out into the cold.

Ahead of them, the path is uneven, winding between thick clusters of trees, bare branches stretching toward the sky like tall, tall sentries. Snow has settled in thick layers, untouched except for the trails of rabbits and birds. It makes the forest eerily quiet.

Bucky clicks his tongue softly, shifting his rifle. “Dernier, combien de temps encore?” How much longer?

Dernier, walking a few steps ahead, glances over his shoulder. “Environ cinq heures, peut-être plus. Si nous gardons ce rythme.” About five hours, maybe more. If we keep this pace. 

But it's already getting dark.

Steve nods, adjusting his shield. “Good, we’ll hold steady. Camp when night falls and then regroup in the morning.”

“Not bad, Rogers,” Bucky teases. “Peggy teach you that?”

Steve shoots him a look but doesn’t deny it. “Picked up a little.”

Bucky grins. “Should’ve learned from me. I got all the best phrases.”

“That so?” Steve asks, narrowing his eyes.

“Sure,” Bucky says lazily. “Had this girl back home—French family, real sweetheart. Taught me all the good stuff.”

Steve groans. “Jesus, I remember her.”

“Aw, you jealous?”

“No, Buck, I was mortified. You barely knew what you were saying half the time.”

Dernier, who has clearly had enough of their nonsense, lets out a long-suffering sigh. “You Americans and your French.”

“You love us, Frenchie," Jones says, nudging him. "Besides, I can keep up.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Jones scoffs. “I’m a translator, you know?”

“Non, vraiment?” No, really?

“Comment tu ne le sais pas? Après tout ce temps passé ensemble?” How do you not know that? After all this time together?

“Putain.” Damn. 

“Ok, some of us don’t speak baguette,” Dugan huffs from behind. “Could use some English.”

“Or, you could try learning the language of love, non?”

Dugan huffs, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Only thing I need to know is ‘merci’ and where to get a drink.”

“That’s because you have the vocabulary of a drunk raccoon,” Falsworth mutters.

Morita snickers. “Hey, I know a couple of words.”

Dernier raises a brow. "Oh? Like what?”

Morita shrugs. "Whatever you yell when you’re pissed off.”

Dernier sighs again.

“Better than Dugan,” Falsworth offers. “At least you’ve expanded beyond ‘bonjour.’”

Bucky chuckles under his breath. It’s strange to think about the past now. It had been a summer night in Brooklyn, warm air thick with the scent of the Hudson and cheap perfume when he’d met Eloise. Outside a little café downtown, all dark curls and sharp wit, a French girl who had ended up in New York by some twist of fate. He doesn’t remember much, just the lilt of her voice, the way she rolled her r’s and smirked when she corrected his pronunciation.

She had taught him how to say the things a young man in Brooklyn would want to say—Tu as de beaux yeux, j’ai envie de t’embrasser, the sort of thing he’d murmur with a grin, all charm and confidence. But she had also taught him how to be kind in another language.

"Fais attention," she had said softly, after Pearl Harbour, when America officially joined the war. “Promets-moi." 

Be careful. Promise me. 

The words stick with him now, half a world away, trudging through the snow toward a battlefield. It’s funny, though—the things you carry with you. Because even back then, with all his flirting and easy smiles, it was never really about the girls. Not entirely, anyway.

Sure, he liked their company, the way they laughed at his jokes, the warmth of an arm linked through his, but that wasn’t what made his pulse stutter. Because he remembers how Steve would watch him, arms crossed, trying so hard to look unimpressed whenever Bucky charmed his way through a conversation. The way his jaw would tick when Bucky turned his attention back to him, as if Steve wasn’t the only one Bucky ever wanted to look at like that. He was always the one that got his heart hammering like a damn hummingbird. 

Bucky swallows hard, blinking away the bite of the memory. He watches Steve now, just a few steps ahead, scanning the tree line with that sharp, careful gaze of his. Promets-moi.

He exhales, rubbing a gloved hand over his jaw. He’s never kept that promise. 

The wind shifts, curling through the trees, colder now, carrying the scent of damp earth and something distant and faintly acrid. The sun has started to dip lower too, casting long shadows between the trunks, stretching thin and skeletal over the snow.

They’re getting close.

Bucky grips his rifle a little tighter.

He hopes they find Oradour-sur-Glane before the enemy finds them first.

The first sign of civilisation is a distant column of smoke, curling thin and pale against the overcast sky. Then, the shapes of stone houses, tucked between the trees like the war had forgotten them.

Except, it hadn’t.

Bucky spots movement in the distance—a lone figure, wrapped in tattered wool, darting quickly into the shadows. They stop, hands drifting toward their weapons.

“Easy,” Steve murmurs. “Could be a civilian.”

Or it could be a scout. But Steve was always the optimist. 

They continue in slow, cautious steps, approaching the nearby village from the outskirts. One of the many that circle the perimeter of Oradour-sur-Glane.  A German flag hangs limply over one of the doorways. A few uniforms move near what looks like a supply post. The people here—if they’re still here—aren’t free. 

And then, a face in the window.

A woman, pale and thin, peering out from behind old curtains. Her eyes are wide with fear.

And Bucky knows what she’s expecting. Soldiers like the ones who have already torn through here. More boots and guns and hands taking what they want.

But then she sees Steve.

She sees the star on his chest, the men behind him, all in American fatigues, and something in her expression shifts—not quite relief, but something akin.

Bucky’s seen this before.

The moment people realise they’ve stumbled across good ones.

The moment stretches. No one moves or breathes.

Then Steve steps forward.

He lifts a hand—a universal gesture of peace—but doesn’t lower his shield. They aren’t naive.

“Nous ne sommes pas ici pour vous faire du mal," Dernier says softly. We’re not here to hurt you.

The woman in the window hesitates, then disappears from sight.

“They’re afraid," Falsworth murmurs. "Wouldn’t you be?”

Bucky tightens his grip on his rifle. Yeah, he would. 

The sharp bark of German commands—closer than he’d like—interrupts their quiet offering. 

Bucky’s head snaps toward the sound. Just beyond the farthest building, past the hanging laundry lines and crumbling walls, nine, maybe ten Nazi soldiers stand by the supply post, rifles slung casually over their shoulders. They haven’t spotted them yet. But they will.

“Shit,” Dugan mutters, shifting on his feet.

Bucky’s already moving. He works best at a distance, unseen, covering their six. He needs a vantage point.

His eyes flick over the buildings, mapping the fastest way up. There—a balcony with an old metal fire escape clinging to the stone like a rusted spine. He scales it quickly, boots light against the railing. From here, he can see the whole street. The soldiers are still talking, still laughing. Bucky presses the rifle stock against his shoulder, inhales slow and deep.

ba-dum, ba-dum

He centres his sights on the first one. The biggest threat. The one carrying the MP40.

Through the scope, he sees the man turn toward the village, expression darkening as he catches sight of Steve. He starts yelling orders—fuck.

Bucky exhales. ba-dum, ba—fires—dum.

The first soldier crumples and it sends the others into panic, scrambling for cover. One dives behind a crate, another grabs his radio, likely calling for backup. 

Bucky doesn’t give him the chance.

Two more shots, clean and precise. 

From the street, Steve moves. The Commandos surge forward with military efficiency, using the chaos to their advantage. 

A gunfight breaks out. 

Morita ducks behind an overturned cart, firing quick bursts to keep the enemy suppressed. Jones takes out a runner before he can disappear behind the buildings. Steve charges ahead, shield raised. A bullet pings off the metal with a sharp ring. It pisses the last guy off enough to make him reckless. 

That’s all Bucky needs. 

One last shot.

The final soldier falls.

And then—silence. 

Bucky keeps his eye on the scope for a moment longer, scanning, watching. 

Making sure.

Then he exhales, lowering the rifle.

On the ground, the villagers are frozen. The woman in the window has stepped fully outside now, a trembling hand over her mouth. Others emerge from doorways, from hiding places tucked between alleyways and basements, eyes wide with cautious disbelief.

They don’t know whether to celebrate.

The people here don’t trust miracles. They have learned that kindness is a currency rarely spent in war.

Steve lowers his shield, stepping into the center of the street. He looks at them, then at the fallen soldiers. And then he says, "C’est fini.”

It’s over.

The woman from the window steps forward first. Her shawl is frayed at the edges, her face gaunt from hardship, but her back is straight. She carries herself with dignity even in the ruins of occupation.

She looks at Steve. At his shield.

And then she whispers, in a voice hoarse from grief, "Un ange.” An angel.

Steve hesitates, getting all stiff in the shoulders. Like he doesn’t know what to do with that. Bucky suppresses a smirk—he never knew how to take a compliment. 

Before Steve can respond, she reaches for his hands—dirty and calloused—and presses them between hers, her grip firm despite her frail frame.

“Merci," she says. "Merci, mon ange.” Thank you, thank you my angel. 

Steve opens his mouth, maybe to correct her, to insist that he is not divine, but he catches the look in her eyes and doesn’t. Instead, he says softly, "De rien, madame.” You’re welcome.

Relief, slow and tentative, like the hiss of a deflating balloon, spreads through the crowd. Bucky, watching from above, finally lets himself breathe. And just like that, the rest of the village moves. 

A man steps forward, taking Morita’s hands in his own and shaking them fervently, then Falsworth’s. A grandmother cups Dugan’s bearded face between her hands, muttering a prayer as she presses a kiss to his forehead. Jones laughs as children crowd him, touching his uniform, eyes wide with wonder. One of them sobs, and a mother scoops them up into her arms. An elderly woman presses something into Dernier’s palms and kisses it. 

Bucky watches from his perch above, the remnants of a smile still on his lips.

Then a voice calls out—wary, exhausted. “Il y a des blessés,” There are injured.

Immediately, Dernier’s head snaps toward the voice. “Où?” Where?

A man gestures toward a row of buildings—likely the makeshift prison where the Germans kept anyone they deemed useful.

Steve is already moving.

Bucky descends from his post, slinging his rifle over his shoulder as he lands back in the snow.

The others follow.

Inside the small, dimly lit room, the scent of blood thickens the air. 

They were too late to prevent this part.

Bucky breathes through his teeth, tries not to think about the copper tang in his mouth or the sting of it in his nose. Blinks away the image of his blunt fingernails carving into stone. 

There are three of them.

One is barely more than a kid, maybe sixteen. He’s got a nasty gash down his arm, still bleeding sluggishly. Another, an older man, clutches his ribs, breathing shallowly. The third—a woman, maybe in her early forties—has a bruised face and swollen lip.

Steve doesn’t waste another moment. He kneels beside the first, tears a strip of fabric from his own sleeve and presses it against the boy’s wound. His voice is low and steady. And Bucky feels reassured from it too. “Ça va aller," Steve tells him. It’s going to be okay.

The boy stares at him for a long moment, then nods.

Bucky watches as the village women bring what little supplies they have—rags, bits of linen, a chipped ceramic bowl filled with water. Falsworth helps a young girl tear more cloth into strips. Morita sits beside the older man, adjusting his posture to help his breathing.

They aren’t doctors.

But they know how to patch wounds.

Steve checks the woman’s bruise carefully, without prying, a silent promise that a soldier will never lay another hand on her again.

And when the adrenaline finally wears off, when the villagers realise they are truly free—the first real smiles break across their faces.

And that’s when the wine comes out.

A young man—not much older than Bucky—pulls a dusty bottle from the cupboard, grinning.

“You drink?" he asks in a heavy accent, waving it at them.

Jones laughs, clapping him on the shoulder. "Do we drink?”

“No,” Steve says with narrowed eyes.

“C’mon Cap, it’s almost Christmas.”

Steve shoots Morita a hard look.

“And it’s cold,” Jones adds. “It’ll warm us up.”

Steve sighs. “One drink. Then, sleep. We have a busy day in the morning.”

The liberated drink in celebration, in mourning, in relief. The wine is cheap and sour, but it tastes like retribution. Someone pulls out an old fiddle, the music rising over the ruins. A woman starts humming along, swaying slightly where she sits, and then, to Bucky’s mild surprise, Dernier joins in, low and quiet at first, before his voice lifts in song. Others pick it up, an old tune, something familiar and older than war—when France was free. 

Le temps des cerises, Bucky realises, as the melody weaves through the gathered crowd. 

...

Quand nous chanterons le temps des cerises When we sing the time of cherries,

Et gai rossignol et merle moqueur And the gay nightingales and mockingbirds,

Seront tous en fête Will all be celebrating

Les belles auront la folie en tête The beautiful will have madness in their heads

Et les amoureux du soleil au coeur And the lovers, the sun in their heart

Quand nous chanterons le temps des cerises When we sing the time of cherries

Sifflera bien mieux le merle moqueur… The mockingbirds will whistle far better…

...

He’s heard this song before—hell, he remembers it.

It was years ago, drifting from a small, dimly lit bar on the Lower East Side, tucked between tenement buildings where immigrants gathered after long shifts at the docks or garment factories. A place that smelled like cigar smoke and cheap whiskey, where the floors were sticky and the bartop was always damp from condensation. The jukebox had more French songs than English, because the owner—some old man from Marseille—refused to let America make him forget where he came from.

Bucky had lingered outside that night, hands stuffed in his pockets, listening as the melody wound its way through the hum of the city. A song of love and loss and longing for better days. Back then, he hadn’t thought much of it, just hummed along as he waited for Steve to show up.

Now, standing in the middle of war, the same tune rising over the ruins, it feels luminous.

Morita nudges Bucky with his elbow. “What’s it about?”

He watches as voices rise together, rough and raw but deeply felt. The boy who’d offered them wine leans against the doorway, eyes closed as he sings, as if he’s somewhere else. A girl barely in her teens rests her head against her mother’s shoulder, mouthing the words under her breath.

Bucky hesitates, glancing at Dernier, who sings like he’s lived it. “It’s a love song,” Bucky says finally. “But not just that. It’s about… remembering sweetness. Even when everything’s bitter.”

The sigh of relief is audible once the last note fades, like a breath finally let loose. And then, like the breaking of dawn after the longest night, the music livens.

It spreads—someone claps a rhythm against their knee, another taps their boot against the cracked stone floor. A little girl laughs, twirling in circles, the hem of her too-big coat flaring out like a dancer’s skirt. A man stomps his foot in time with the beat, then lifts his wife’s hand, spinning her once, twice, before she swats at him playfully, laughing despite the shadows still lingering in her eyes. 

Jones grins and pokes Dernier. “C’mon, Frenchie. You sing, but can you dance?”

Dernier scoffs, setting his drink down with exaggerated care. “You insult me,” he says, standing. “Watch and learn, mon ami.”

And with that, he steps into the clearing, hand extended toward a woman nearby—older, lines of exhaustion on her face, but warmth in her gaze. She hesitates, then, with a quiet smile, takes his hand.

Steve, still watching, exhales. His fingers drum absently against the side of his knee, in time with the music. 

Bucky leans in. “You wanna join ‘em, Rogers?”

Steve huffs a laugh, shaking his head. “Not unless you want your toes crushed.”

Bucky smirks. “You ain’t that bad.”

Steve tilts his head. “You asking me to dance, Buck?”

“Maybe,” Bucky says playfully, but something in his chest aches, too.

Steve just shakes his head again, but the corner of his mouth tilts upward. He nudges Bucky’s shoulder lightly, as if to say Not here, not now. But someday.

Bucky nods, lets himself believe in that someday just a little.

The music plays on.

The glow of the fire swims in the wine of his tin cup. Bucky tips his head back and drinks, lets the heat imbue his chest and diffuse the ache. Beside him, Dugan is already half a bottle in (the one drink rule went out the window almost instantly), gesturing animatedly as he tells some wild story about a bar fight back home. Morita and Jones listen with matching grins, taking turns passing a flask between them. Even Falsworth looks like he’s enjoying himself, dancing with two French girls, twirling them in graceful circles. 

And Steve—

Bucky finds him half-smiling at something an older woman is saying to him. Her gnarled hands pat his cheek, eyes crinkling at the edges as she murmurs something too soft for Bucky to hear. Then she lifts her gaze toward the sky, makes a small sign of the cross, and presses a kiss to Steve’s forehead.

An angel, she calls him, and Bucky smiles, because how could Steve be anything else?

The music rises again, filling the cracks in the night. 

Even in occupied territory, there are moments where there are no orders or marching or the sound of shells raining down like thunder. Where there is laughter and love and music. 

Those moments are worth holding onto. 

The road to Oradour-sur-Glane is unnaturally still. Quiet, yes—but that’s to be expected after the air raids—ironically, the Allies’ doing, as they try to sever the occupation’s grip. But also still. Emptiness, stretched taut across the horizon. Bucky keeps his rifle close, boots pressing softly into frostbitten dirt. The stillness is more unsettling than the quiet—it’s absolute and expectant. Like the whole world is holding its breath. Waiting. 

The commune emerges through the remains of the forest—stone solemn buildings, their windows hollowed-out, doors gaping like the jaws of an emaciated beast. The streets are empty, save for the remnants of what once was. A rusted bicycle against a charred wall. A sewing machine, half-buried in snow, left behind like someone had meant to return for it but never did.

Everything appears abandoned. And yet, Bucky knows better.

“Jesus,” Jones mutters, exhaling a sharp breath. “Hell of a place.”

“It’s a graveyard,” Morita murmurs.

Steve surveys the area, bringing his finger up to his lips. “No one makes a sound,” he whispers. “We’re not alone here.”

Bucky adjusts his rifle strap, scanning the rooftops, the alleyways. Always observing. He spots movement in the far distance—a shadow slipping between buildings, barely visible against the snowfall.

There’s a lot more Nazis hanging about here.

He catches Steve’s eye and nods toward the movement. Steve’s expression sharpens, already calculating. No words are needed. They fall into formation, moving with careful, deliberate steps.

The village is occupied. And now, so are they.

They weave through the ruins, keeping low. If the map is right, then HYDRA’s stronghold isn’t too far. But the closer they get, the more charged the air feels. 

There’s something wrong about this place.

Bucky’s been through more occupied towns than he can count, spent way too much time as HYDRA's prisoner. But Oradour-sur-Glane is different. The air hums with electricity, an unnatural charge that makes his skin crawl. It’s the same feeling he had when he first arrived at the camp—only tenfold. He swears he smells ozone. Static. Something burning just beneath the surface of the world. His fingers twitch around his rifle as unease beads down his throat. 

He flinches at a sound, turning sharply, scanning the snow-covered streets for anymore movement. He swore he’d heard that lingering shadow.

But—there’s nothing.

The feeling doesn’t leave.

At first glance, the stronghold looks abandoned—just another bombed-out building, carved out and gutted like a fish. But Bucky doesn’t trust what his eyes see. He takes a slow breath through his nose. 

There it is again. The sharp tang of ozone, the scent of scorched metal. He glances at Steve, tilting his chin toward the door.

“What is it?” 

Bucky taps his nose. “Something’s off.”

“The map says it’s a few buildings over.”

“I don’t care what the map says. There’s something in there.”

Steve studies him for a moment, then nods. Steve’s always trusted his instincts. “Alright,” he murmurs. He motions to the others with a small hand signal.

They approach the building carefully. The windows are shattered, glass glittering like ice in the snow. Inside, it’s dark. The kind that swallows sound, makes the walls feel closer than they are.

Dust floats in the air, disturbed only by their footsteps. The place looks like a library, or what used to be a library—bookshelves lining the walls, old wooden desks scattered throughout—some still holding open books, their pages yellowed and curling at the edges. A few chairs remain upright, others lie toppled, legs snapped like broken bones—the chair broke, he snapped it clean off, why did he snap it? 

A metal spike to the chest.

Bucky shakes his head to clear the thought. The windows let in thin beams of pale winter light, illuminating a skeletal wreck of charred beams jutting toward the sky. The whole place smells of damp wood and time left behind, but also something—sharp. He sniffs—There it is again. The sting of ozone. Beneath it, something more familiar—oil, machinery. A smell he knows all too well from HYDRA’s labs.

Dugan kicks a pile of rubble. “Don’t think there’s anything in here.”

“Shut up,” he snaps. His voice is quiet, and he feels bad for the sharpness of it, for letting it slip. He doesn’t know why, but he can feel the anger again, simmering low, a spoon of embers waiting for kindling. He inhales deeply, unclenches his fists, tries to channel out the burn in his nostrils. His head tilts slightly, listening. “There’s something. I don’t know what it is.”

Jones frowns. “Like what?”

“Don’t you smell it?” Bucky’s voice is edged with urgency, doubt creeping in at the edges—

Is he crazy?

“Smell what?”

“That fucking ozone,” Bucky grits out. “Or whatever it is. Smoke. Like a firecracker’s gone off." He glances at Steve, tilting his chin. “Tell me you smell that.”

Steve furrows his brow. “I mean—it might be a little smoky. But not surprising, considering this place was shelled.”

But Bucky’s eyes flick to the corners, the shadows between the shelves.

His gut is screaming at him.

“Something’s wrong,” he mutters.

Dugan shifts uneasily beside him. “Well, this place is giving me the heebie-jeebies. If the stronghold isn’t here, I say we get the fuck out before we find something we don’t want to.”

Steve tenses beside him, following Bucky’s gaze to the far end of the room. “What do you see?”

Bucky steps forward slowly. “Not see,” he murmurs. “Feel.”

The others exchange wary glances, but Steve doesn’t question it.

Bucky moves toward the nearest bookshelf, reaching out to run his gloved fingers along the dusty wood. The shelves are lined with books, but not in any way that makes sense. His eyes flick over the spines, cataloging titles. Mein Kampf. He sneers, pushing past it. A few French novels—Les Misérables, Germinal, La Condition Humaine—classics that the Nazis would’ve burned, yet here they are, shoved haphazardly among German texts, like an afterthought. Or a replacement.

Because soon Bucky realises the books aren’t just scattered—they’re deliberate.

A code.

Bucky tilts his head, following the pattern. French. German. French. German. And then—one title sticks out: Électricité et Magnétisme an old physics book, it seems, at first glance. But when he runs his hand along the spine, he feels the faintest hum, barely there, vibrating beneath his fingertips.  

He freezes.

Bucky exhales slowly, barely above a whisper. “This whole damn place is rigged.”

“Shit.”

“What?” Steve asks, immediately on alert.

Bucky steps back, pointing toward the base of the shelf. “This isn’t just a library. It’s wired. There’s something here.”

Steve follows his gaze, brows drawing together. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t see anything, Sarge.”

Bucky ignores them, kneels down and sweeps a careful hand along the floor beneath the shelf. His gloved fingers trace over cold metal—running thin and sharp behind the wood, disappearing into the wall. He feels a sting and flinches, removing his thumb. “I’m sure.” He straightens. “Not only is this the stronghold, I don’t think it’s abandoned. They left something behind.” He closes his eyes. Maybe even someone.

The others shift uneasily, hands drifting toward their weapons.

Steve moves closer, peering at the shelf. “Can you disarm it?” He asks to Dernier

Dernier wobbles his hand uncertainly. “Not without knowing what it is connected to.”

Morita exhales sharply. “So what are we looking at? A trap? A trigger?”

“Could be both.” Bucky rolls his shoulders, scanning the room again. “Whatever it is, it's still live.”

Jones swears under his breath, already taking a cautious step back. “So, best case scenario, we leave this creepy-ass library before something explodes?"

Bucky’s fingers press against another book—Technische Physik, a German technical manual. This one doesn’t hum, but the pattern still feels deliberate. Like there’s something buried behind it. He exhales.

“We need to figure out what it's powering.”

“Or who it's powering,” Falsworth mutters.

No one needs to say it, but they’re all thinking the same thing.

HYDRA never just leaves things behind.

Bucky steps back, nodding toward the base of the shelf. “Dernier.”

Dernier’s already moving, sliding his pack from his shoulders as he kneels beside the wires. He pulls out a small, well-worn leather pouch, unfolding it with careful precision. Inside is a collection of tools—thin pliers, wire cutters, a small voltmeter, a glass ampoule filled with liquid, and a few other things Bucky doesn’t recognise.

Steve crouches beside him. “Can you disarm it?”

Dernier tilts his head, considering. He feels along the line of the wires, not touching, just finding where it coils. “Oui.” He gestures toward the shelf, taking off his gloves. “It is not just an explosive. It is also mechanical. An electrical pulse, peut être, to open something.”

Bucky glances at Steve. “Could be a door. Or a cage.”

Steve’s jaw tightens. “Either way, we need it open.”

Dernier nods once, pulling out the ampoule. He snaps the glass carefully, dabbing a bit of the liquid onto a section of the wire. The metal fizzes slightly, reacting to whatever chemical compound he’s using. He waits, watching the reaction, before pulling out a slim tool with a hooked end.

He works quickly but cautiously, with the hands of a man who’s handled his fair share of explosives—and has no intention of becoming one with them. He traces the path of the wires, finds where they connect to the bookshelf again, and follows the mechanism hidden inside the wood. He mutters under his breath in French, something about stubborn German engineering, before finally selecting a pair of fine-tipped pliers.

The others watch in tense silence.

With a steady hand, he grips a section of the wire—one thinner than the others, buried deeper in the wall. He cuts it cleanly.

Nothing happens.

“Did you—” Morita starts, but Dernier lifts a single finger, silencing him.

Then, he reaches into the mechanism and twists something.

A soft hiss fills the room.

All of them freeze.

A moment later, there’s a quiet click, then another, and then the bookshelf trembles—dust shaking loose as invisible gears unwind.

And then, slowly, the shelf begins to move. A hidden door peels open.

Dernier exhales, wiping his hands on his trousers before tucking his tools away. He grins, gesturing grandly toward the opening. “Et voilà.” 

Morita lets out a low whistle. “Remind me to buy you a drink after this.”

Jones nudges him. “Buy him two.”

But Steve isn’t smiling. His gaze is fixed on the dark passageway revealed behind the bookshelf.

Because whatever this was meant to keep locked away is waiting for them in the dark.

The ladder creaks beneath their boots. It smells damp—cold stone, old wood, rust and metal. That damn ozone. 

Blood.

Bucky grips his rifle tightly as he descends.

At the bottom, the room yawns open before them, bathed in a dim, unnatural glow. It’s bigger than Bucky expected, but not like the HYDRA lab he remembers. This is something older. Rougher. It doesn’t have the sterile, astringent feel of Zola’s laboratories—it looks like something repurposed, built out of necessity rather than design.

And in the center of it all—

A chair. 

It sits there, hulking in the middle of the room, metal gleaming dully under the weak light. Thick leather straps hang loose from the armrests, peeled with age. Wires spill from the base like veins, disappearing into the walls.

Bucky stops dead.

His stomach twists violently.

He knows that chair. He’s been in that chair. 

Not this one specifically, but it hardly matters. The design is the same. The shape. The straps. The reinforced bolts meant to hold a struggling body in place. The burn marks on the armrests, where flesh had seared against hot metal.

He can still feel it along his spine, the phantom bite of current tearing through his nerves.

The others move past him, stepping cautiously into the room. Steve stops beside him, looking at him sharply. “Bucky—?”

“I’m fine,” Bucky mutters, clipped. He isn’t, not really, but he forces himself to move. To keep looking.

Because this isn’t the same kind of lab. This isn’t where they made him.

There’s an old metal table against the far wall, littered with tattered documents, some half-burned, others smeared with something dark and viscous. Blood, Bucky realises. Old blood. That’s gone black and syrupy with age. 

Jones moves toward them first, flipping through the pages, frowning. “This doesn’t look like a testing facility.”

Bucky forces himself forward, scanning the walls. There are deep gouges in the concrete, like someone had tried to claw their way out. Streaks of rust—no, blood—no, rust, Bucky tells himself—trail along the floor.

He exhales sharply.

This wasn’t an experiment site.

It was a torture chamber.

Which for HYDRA, don’t seem to be mutually exclusive. 

“It’s a fucking execution room,” Morita mutters.

“No,” Bucky says, voice hollow. “Not execution.”

The silence stretches.

Falsworth’s gaze darkens. “Then what?”

Bucky swallows. “Conversion.”

Understanding dawns across their faces like a shadow. 

Steve moves toward the chair, reaching out as if to touch it—then hesitates. His fingers ball into a fist at his side. “What is this…?”

Bucky swallows hard, his throat dry. “An electric chair.” His voice is hoarse and strained, like sandpaper. “HYDRA would use it.”

“Use it for what?” Jones asks warily.

“To break people.” Bucky says it simply, numbly, moving onto the next item of interest. He rifles through some documents, all of it blurred with wet stains and crude German. 

Jones exhales roughly, shaking his head. “Christ.”

There are many ways HYDRA breaks people, but perhaps this is the most effective. He knows that better than anyone. The thought of what had happened in this room—of who had been strapped into that chair, screaming, begging—makes him feel feverish and sick. Like milk curdling under a sweltering heat. 

“So what the hell do we do about it?” Dugan asks. 

Bucky doesn’t hesitate. “We burn it.”

The others nod. No argument.

They make quick work of it. Jones and Morita start gathering anything flammable, stacking papers, cloth, anything that will catch. Dernier pulls out a small tin of kerosene from his pack, tossing it over the pile.

Bucky moves to the chair, staring at it one last time. He doesn’t want to touch it. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near it, really. But he does, because he has to.

Because this machine is never going to be used again.

He grips the frame, steadying himself, and pushes—knocking it onto its side with a sharp clatter. Dust and rust scatter across the floor. The sound echoes in the chamber like the crack of a rifle.

“Light it up,” he mutters.

Steve strikes a match. The flame catches, eating away at the old documents, the broken straps. It spreads quickly, licking up the chair’s frame, curling around the wires, turning them to ash.

Bucky watches as the fire consumes it all, as the smoke curls thick and black toward the ceiling. His fingers twitch at his sides. He tells himself it’s just the heat, but he doesn’t move.

Steve watches too. He stands close, shoulder brushing against Bucky’s silently. A steady presence, like he always is. “You okay?”

Bucky exhales slowly.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Smoke has made it to the top as they emerge from the basement. The fire is spreading fast—licking up the walls, devouring wooden beams. Bucky coughs, blinking through the stinging haze, rifle raised as he scans the doorway. 

He hears the unmistakable click of a safety being switched off. 

We’re not alone. 

Shadows move against the flames, figures blocking the exit. The bark of German orders cuts through the crackling fire, and suddenly, everything snaps into motion. 

“Company,” Bucky mutters, barely a second before the first shot rings out.

Steve raises his shield, already moving forward. The room erupts in gunfire, bullets ricocheting off stone and steel. Dugan curses, diving for cover, while Jones and Morita return fire, forcing the enemy to scatter. Bucky drops low, swinging his rifle up and squeezing the trigger. One shot, two—both hit their mark, and a soldier crumples near the stairwell. 

The smoke thickens, tightening around them like a noose. The heat clogs his throat.

They don’t have much time.

“Move!” Steve shouts, knocking a Nazi clean off his feet. “We need to get out of here now!”

Bucky grits his teeth, ducks behind an overturned desk, and reloads. His hands move on instinct, muscle memory overriding the chaos, the scent of burning paper, the way the fire twists the shadows into something monstrous. Another shot—another body hits the ground.

They fight their way through, step by step, gunfire drowning out the roar of the flames. The building groans under the strain of its own destruction, timbers cracking, ceiling sagging. 

A beam crashes down, blocking part of their escape.

“Other way!” Falsworth yells.

Bucky pivots, covering Steve as he drives forward. He’s dimly aware of Dernier grabbing Jones by the collar, hauling him toward the nearest exit. The fire is nearly on them now, a wall of heat licking at their backs.

Another shot, another breath, another body falling into the embers.

And then—finally—they break through.

The night air is a slap to the face, sharp and cold after the inferno. They stumble into the open, gasping and coughing, smoke clinging to their skin. The building behind them groans one last time before collapsing in on itself, sending up a firestorm into the dark sky.

Silence, except for their ragged breaths.

Dugan shoves his hair back, shoulders heaving. “Well,” he rasps, spitting out soot. “That was fun.”

Jones lets out a wheezing laugh. “Next time, maybe we let the Nazis burn before we go in?”

Steve shoots him a dry look but doesn’t argue. He glances over them all, counting heads, checking for injuries. Then, with a final look at the smouldering wreckage, he exhales.

“Let’s move.”

And just like that, they disappear into the night, leaving the fire to consume what’s left of HYDRA’s secrets.

Bucky flexes his fingers absently as they move, shoving his hands deeper into his coat. The tips are blackened, seared from where the electricity bit into his skin. It still tingles—static crawling under his nails.

He doesn’t say anything. It’ll heal soon enough.

The others are too caught up in their own scrapes and bruises or the exhaustion dragging their limbs. Steve keeps glancing back at them, at him, but Bucky schools his face into something easy. Casual.

He really is fine. His fingers have been through much worse.

They trek through the ruins, leaving the fire and smoke behind. They move quickly, because it was no subtle exit. It won’t be long before someone comes looking. 

Bucky keeps his head on a swivel, scanning the remains of buildings, the alleys shrouded in shadow. The village is dead, but the enemy isn’t. 

“They’ll be on our tail soon,” Morita mutters, reloading as they move.

“No shit,” Dugan grumbles. “We left a hell of a calling card.”

“Had to,” Steve says simply, gaze sharp as he surveys their path ahead. “No turning back now.”

Bucky clenches his jaw, flexes his fingers inside his coat. He catches the faint scent of burning flesh—his own, probably. He shoves the thought away, pushes forward.

Besides, in his pockets, no one can see the way his hands shake. 

They stick to the narrowest streets, slipping through alleys littered with bodies, some with bullets in their legs, burns all along their withered skin. The fire still rages behind them, thick black smoke unfurling into the sky like a goddamn beacon. They really aren’t subtle. Bucky grips his rifle tight, his fingers smarting with every shift of his grip, but he doesn’t let it slow him down. 

“We need to make for the treeline,” Steve murmurs, barely glancing back. His voice is measured but Bucky knows him well enough to hear the tension beneath it. “Once we hit the forest, we’ll have the cover we need.”

They move in staggered formation, covering each other as they slip past the last of the ruined buildings. The smell of blood and smoke and ozone still clings to the back of Bucky’s throat, but he ignores it, scanning and scanning and scanning. 

The moment they breach the treeline, it feels like they can finally breathe. The cold air is sharp and fresh. They move quickly, weaving through branches, using the pines as cover. 

“We should keep moving for another mile or so,” Steve says. “Put real distance between us and that stronghold.”

The others nod, no arguments. They’re still on high alert, but there’s an unmistakable shift in their movements—looser—like they’ve made it out clean.

Bucky doesn’t believe in clean getaways.

His fingers tighten around the rifle strap.

They walk for another five minutes. Ten.

No signs of movement. No sound beyond the whisper of wind through the trees.

And that’s what does it.