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domarzioneLa Caduta
R; 8000 words
Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers
The fourth and final part of the Bucky-and-Steve-in-the-Past collection. I've put these at the start of the Freezer Burn series, since that's essentially abut Steve and Bucky in the present.
"How do you feel, Sergeant Barnes?"
Bucky felt like he was on fire, warm all over but pooling in his crotch, not like arousal at all but just straight heat, and he might've pissed himself.
"Sergeant Barnes, please describe how you feel," Zola repeated in his precise voice, just a warning tone to it but not anger. Not yet.
"Hot," Bucky rasped out. Or tried to, but it didn't come out right the first time and he had to repeat himself, still not quite landing the T. The injection before this one had turned him boneless and floppy and he'd hoped to sleep through the rest of the session because it was too much to open his eyes. Sometimes Zola let him, not needing to ask questions that blood draws and the fancy monitors hooked up to him couldn't answer for him. But not today.
Zola was patient, Bucky had learned the hard way, and extremely intolerant of disobedience. Failing to obey was sometimes unavoidable and Zola accepted that, but failing to attempt to obey was met with swift punishment.
"Do you feel any stronger?" Zola sounded closer, maybe standing next to the gurney, but Bucky had no desire to open his eyes to see him. He wasn't sure he would be able to if required and that would just fucking suck because he was still feeling the effects of the last time he'd been deemed difficult.
(Zola had drugs that just caused pain, incredible pain, and he'd shoot you up with them if he thought you weren't going to be useful to him that day. You'd be wheeled back to your prisoner pen to curl up and sweat out the misery and the entire pen would go without food and water for the day to give you incentive to not to do that again.)
"No," he got out, his tongue getting in the way.
He felt something at the corner of his mouth pushing in and then liquid. The baby bottle of water. He worked to swallow and, when he did, he got another squirt. It should have been embarrassing to be fed water from a bottle with a nipple on it like a newborn, but he needed the water more than he needed his dignity, at least right now.
Zola didn't ask him any more questions after the bottle went away and Bucky might've fallen asleep. The next thing he knew, he was back in his pen, on the floor with his blouse folded up under his head.
"Didn't think you were coming back this time, Sarge," Sopel said as Bucky tried to push himself to sitting and failed, landing awkwardly and hard back on his side. Sopel crouched down to move his hand out from underneath his torso, not bothering to prop him up. "You were gone for ten hours."
Bucky could only grimace and then he was out again.
Sopel and Martin woke up him at some point later because there was food and he hadn't eaten in two days. Yesterday he'd been too sick to keep anything down and the day before nobody had eaten because Zola had decided he was being uncooperative. He hadn't meant to be uncooperative, but whatever he'd been shot up with had given him a high-pitched whistle in his ears and he hadn't been able to hear anything. He'd felt even worse once he did become aware of his surroundings because Barzanian's sore throat was getting worse and the water, at least, could have helped.
Martin helped him eat, holding the bowl to his lips so he could sip at the soup and breaking up the bread into small pieces so that he could feed them to himself with only some effort. There was a chunk of meat in the soup and Bucky frowned at Martin, who didn't misinterpret the look and shrugged. There were six of them in the pen and they were supposed to rotate who got the meat and eggs that found its way into their communal pot, but Bucky had gotten meat twice this week and that meant someone else had gone without.
Bucky was the only test subject in the pen; there'd originally been three, but Smith and Kugel had disappeared and while they'd been replaced with two new prisoners from downstairs, neither Dalton nor Witkower had been dragged off yet. Either Zola or the guards or some combination had realized that mixing up the pens was the most effective prisoner management -- the healthy could keep the test subjects alive longer and then also be used as threats to ensure compliance in the lab.
Bucky was the NCOIC in their pen, which sometimes mattered and sometimes, as in the case with today's meal distribution, really didn't. Sopel was a second lieutenant, captured two weeks into his first deployment, and everyone else was a corporal or private and all of them put together didn't have Bucky's combat experience. Sopel didn't pull officer shit, but it made everyone feel a little better if he was the one organizing meals and sleep rotations and occasionally bullying Bucky into accepting care because he was the only one who could make it an order. It was a tiny taste of normal in a world where absolutely nothing else was and they clung to it tightly.
He was feeling well enough to stand woozily when it came time for the pen's daily field trip to the showers and shitters, although he accepted Witkower's help to walk there as they were paraded silently past the other pens surrounded by guards. This, too, was a privilege that could be taken away, but it rarely was because otherwise the prisoner areas would stink much more than they already did and the guards had to breathe the same air. It was easier to starve them than hose out the pens more than once a week. There was no way to get really clean in the showers with little time and less soap, but they could get clean enough, rinse out their clothes -- Bucky's were always full of sweat and sometimes puke or piss or worse -- and regain a little bit of their humanity.
Dalton, the buck private, was on laundry duty when they got back, hanging up everyone's clothes on the pen bars to dry while they sat in their damp skivvies and tried to keep each other entertained and sane. They did PT in shifts, since there wasn't the space, and gave each other the business for who still couldn't do thirty pull-ups on the upper bars. They had a deck of cards and sometimes they played word games and sometimes they talked baseball or movies or told stories about their lives before they'd enlisted. Barzanian had worked as a bartender in a nightclub in LA and he always had stories about actors and what they were really like, or at least what they drank. Dalton was from Nebraska and most of his stories involved cows. Sopel had his college years. Bucky had New York City, which only Sopel had been to before, and the World's Fair and Steve. Sometimes there were group naps, which made them all feel like babies, but being cooped up in a tiny cage was remarkably exhausting.
At night they slept in shifts, five men asleep and one man awake, and tonight Bucky insisted on taking a turn because he'd slept most of the last two days. He would sleep through the night if they let him, but he needed to do this for himself. To push himself a little as his own choice and not because of a threat to the others held over his head. Sopel very clearly debated pulling rank on him to say no, but they exchanged a look and then Sopel nodded and told Dalton that he got to sleep through the night.
The next day, Captain Prinzler from the pen two over -- this level had the pens alternating occupied and not -- was marched by on his way to Zola's lab and Bucky hated himself a little for being relieved that it wasn't his turn today.
Prinzler didn't come back that day or the next and the little core of rage and self-hatred and fear burned a little hotter in Bucky's belly, making it hard to eat. He gave his piece of sausage to Barzanian, who was losing his voice entirely, which they could joke about, but also starting to get feverish, which they could not. The guards had only one response to sick prisoners: they were taken to Zola and, more often than not, never seen again.
(This was true for lab rats as well as the control group; Bucky had gotten dragged back to Zola when he'd started throwing up and couldn't stop even after it was just dry heaves. But maybe because he was sick from what Zola had done and not from one of the bouts of disease that raced through the pens like lightning, Zola had simply given him an injection and left him on the gurney to sleep it off. When he'd woken up and been pronounced improved, he'd been frog-marched over to the lab table to be strapped down as that day's experiment.)
They hid Barzanian's fever as best they could, not wringing out their socks after they washed them so they could use them as compresses and giving him double rations of water and food, and it seemed to work. Barzanian wasn't getting better, but he wasn't getting any worse and Bucky thanked whatever demon forces watched over this place -- God certainly had lost the address -- that Zola wasn't shooting him up with anything that made it hard for him to hear or see or move or respond to questions so that his pen wasn't deprived of what little they got. He was instead shot full of things that made his heart race and his body feel alive in ways it hadn't since his capture and he could have wept from the euphoria that left him higher than the best sex.
He made the most of his alertness, actually paying attention to his surroundings as he was taken back to the pen and being engaged with the guys once he was there so that they didn't have to take care of him for once. They were amused by his energy, but also relieved and that, he suspected, would do them better than extra rest, which they all got because he knew damned well that there was no way he was going to be able to sleep tonight, so he took the entire night's watch.
The next morning Barzanian's fever spiked. He didn't know where he was -- no, that wasn't true, he knew exactly where he was. It just wasn't here. He thought he was back in LA at the Boca del Luna serving gin and tonics to Randolph Scott. Bucky, still feeling weirdly energized by whatever he'd been given by Zola yesterday, sat with Barzanian and engaged him in a long conversation about the drinking and eating habits of celebrities, using his own experiences as a waiter to keep Barzanian's attention so that he wouldn't start shouting for more clean glasses or a new crate of lemons. He got Barzanian to eat by telling him that it was an experiment by the chef because he'd heard Myrna Loy was coming in that night. The pretend act could only work for so long, though, and Barzanian was getting agitated again at just the wrong time, when the guards were coming for them to take care of the three S's. But they got him to the showers without incident and ran him under the cold water until his fingertips turned purple and he quieted, going back to their pen easily and sleeping. But he woke up in the middle of the night screaming that he was under attack by bees and nothing they could do would quiet him. Bucky and Dalton tried to hold him down, but the screaming just got louder and the guards came.
Bucky wasn't even thinking when he launched himself at the guards who were going to drag Barzanian off. He just did it, fueled by all of his fury and whatever was still in his system and he heard Sopel's barked order to stop and felt hands pulling at his arms and his body and his neck, but he couldn't stop. He'd been helpless for so long and now, in this moment, he wasn't. For everything that had been done to him by Zola, keeping five men's lives as security against his own obedience was the worst. He'd always gone along with it as best he could because what were five men's lives compared with just his own? He was their sergeant, they trusted him, and he would not let them down. He was going to die here anyway, he knew that. He was going to die screaming, in agony, begging for whatever relief death could bring and praying that Zola hadn't figured out a way to raise the dead so he could do it again tomorrow. He was going to die here, but there was no reason Barzanian should, too.
He woke up strapped down on Zola's gurney, head foggy and sore and blood in his mouth and in his left eye. And this is where it ends he said to himself.
"Not quite, Sergeant Barnes," Zola said from somewhere Bucky couldn't see him. "Tell me how you felt from the time you left here."
Zola had to ask the question a few different ways before Bucky could give him the answers he wanted. By that point, Bucky could figure out that Zola wasn't planning on killing him (intentionally, at least) today and that his attack on the guards hadn't been considered an act of disobedience but, instead, a kind of side effect.
"Did you feel aggressive or angry at all before the guards came to take away... Private Barzanian?"
Bucky couldn't help but laugh. He was a Nazi lab rat, a prisoner of war treated worse than a stray animal, and Zola was asking him if he'd been angry? Bucky sometimes had trouble remembering when he hadn't been consumed by rage, when his life had been fueled by something other than anger and fear.
"Sergeant Barnes," Zola warned.
"No," he replied, sobering. "I felt good. Really good."
The high was still there, a little, buried under the pain of the beat-down he'd gotten from the guards, but maybe making that hurt not as much as it should have. He admitted as much to Zola when asked. Zola made an interested noise, then told the guards to unbuckle him and take him to the showers to clean off -- thoroughly, with soap -- and bring him back.
Bucky scrubbed himself raw, washing his hair and between his toes and everything in between because he knew without a doubt that whatever came next was going to wipe that lingering euphoria out like a match in a snowstorm.
When it was over, he woke up back in the pen, someone's blouse folded up under his head as a pillow and another one draped over him like a blanket. When he sat up, the world spun and when he was introduced to his new pen-pal, Corporal Sowalchuk, he saw three of him.
+++
When he saw Steve standing over him in Zola's lab, he thought he was hallucinating. Earlier Zola had shot him full of something that had made him nearly buck off the gurney despite the straps, made his heart hammer, made him hyperventilate and shake and spasm like he had stepped on a live wire. Then there'd been another injection and then nothing. When he'd woken up, he'd been loopy and sluggish and he'd hoped to hell that Zola wasn't going to ask any difficult questions because he wasn't sure he could even manage his name, rank, and serial number if pressed.
Zola hadn't asked him anything, though, because he hadn't been there, although there'd been no way for Bucky to know that strapped down on the table and just lucid enough to realize that he was high as a kite. His ears rang and shadows were swimming at the corners of his vision and he knew that they weren't the orderlies, although he wasn't sure why. So when Steve appeared, Bucky had accepted it as just another way his drug-addled brain was messing with him. He'd imagined Steve before, but they'd been back in Brooklyn and not in Zola's lab.
He went along with the hallucination because there was nothing else to do while strapped down on the table, at least while Zola wasn't asking him questions or requiring him to do anything. Letting his mind wander was how he passed the time and kept his fear at bay. In the daydream, Steve, who was now taller than he was and dressed like Captain America, freed him from the table and led him through the building, which was now exploding around them. His heart was hammering again and he wondered if the sedative Zola had given him was wearing off -- in which case why was Captain America Steve still here? -- or, worse, that the sedative hadn't been strong enough to counteract whatever the first shot had been and he was going to die of an exploding heart even while skunked on the other stuff.
And then Doctor Schmidt, an occasional and fucking terrifying visitor to Zola's lab, started taunting Steve and pulled off his face to reveal a monster head underneath and Bucky was ready to wake up now, even if it meant saying goodbye to Steve again. But he didn't wake up, instead made like a tightrope walker over a crossbeam and Steve jumped forty feet through a fireball and then they were running from more explosions and, at some point, the hallucination stopped and he fell asleep again. The last words he heard before he did so were Steve's, gentle in his ear. "I got you, Buck."
He woke up as he often did, a uniform blouse pillowed under his head and another as a blanket.
"Easy there, Sarge," Sopel warned him when he started to move. "Rest easy. We're not going anywhere for a while."
He opened his eyes to see Sopel's knee two inches from his face, which wasn't that unusual, either. But when he rolled away from it, he was shocked to see trees and blue sky and he sat up in alarm, overcompensating and falling over in the other direction before he could stop himself by putting his hand down in dirt.
"It wasn't a dream?" he asked, mostly to himself because he wasn't sure how the hell he'd gotten here. Or if here was even what it looked like, Maybe he'd finally cracked up like Barzanian and Zola would put him down, too. Or chalk it up to another side effect and send him back to the pen.
He noticed that the blouse he'd been using as a blanket wasn't a blouse, it was a leather jacket. Steve had been wearing a leather jacket. But there was no Steve here, just Sopel and, on the other side of him, Martin who was lying down and maybe asleep. And a lot of other sleeping men and sitting men, some faces he recognized, but no Steve.
"I don't know what you were dreaming about, Sergeant, but if it was about Captain America showing up and breaking us all out, then no, it wasn't a dream," Sopel told him. "But I have to tell you, you are the biggest liar in the history of liars for all of your stories about your little pal Steve the artist, the one who was always getting beat up and couldn't get into the Army because he was a hundred ten pounds soaking wet. Although considering he only rescued us because he was looking for you, I suppose I can forgive you."
Bucky smiled, but he still wasn't sure all of this -- any of this -- was real. He'd seen too many things that just made no sense, very much including Steve as Captain America, and sometimes, especially right after being in Zola's lab, he wasn't sure how much he could trust his own mind anymore.
"You should go back to sleep," Sopel told him, gesturing with his chin toward where Bucky had been lying. "We're staying here until dusk and then we're going to push through the night. You are going to need your strength."
Which he didn't have right now, no need to add.
"Steve?"
Sopel gestured vaguely with his hand. "He's around, perimeter checks, setting up pickets, whatever. He said he'd be back here when he's done. Sleep, Sergeant. I'll tell him to wake you up."
Bucky didn't believe that last part for a moment, but he lay down anyway with a muttered "yes, sir" and fell asleep breathing the scent of dirt and fallen leaves and not the chemical scent of the lab or the more human odor of the pen.
He woke up to a hand on his face and he startled, dazedly trying to shake off Zola or Schmidt or whoever else was examining him.
"Buck, relax, it's me," Steve's voice penetrated the fog of his mind and he looked up and there Steve was, crouched over him, looking nothing and everything like the Steve Rogers he'd left behind in New York. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just wanted to see that cut on your forehead."
He didn't bother to lie and say that he hadn't been scared. Steve, no matter what he looked like -- and Jesus, what he looked like now! -- was always the first to call him on his baloney.
"Come on," Steve exhorted in a low voice, gesturing over his left shoulder. "We can go talk over there. It's still inside the perimeter but it's not on top of everyone else."
Bucky wasn't sure he could stand up without falling over, but Steve did and then offered him a hand and pulled him up easily and he couldn't help but laugh at this reversal of fortune. Of Steve being the big, strong one. Steve must've been thinking the same thing because he grinned at Bucky, the same doofy grin as always.
They stepped carefully past the sleeping Sopel, nodding at Martin, whose shift it now was, and headed off in the direction Steve had indicated, although Bucky needed to make a pitstop to pee once they were away from where the main of the group was resting. Steve led them far enough away for privacy but not so far that they couldn't get back easily and wouldn't be mistaken for the enemy. And then he dropped down against a massive tree truck and waited for Bucky to do the same before pulling him in to a one-armed hug, the way Bucky used to do for him when they were young. Bucky moved into it easily and eagerly, surprising himself with how desperate he was to put his burden down and let someone else worry about him for a while.
"What the hell happened, Stevie?" he asked, his forehead against Steve's neck. "What the hell happened to us?"
There was no answer, or maybe too much answer. After a long moment, Steve loosened his hold enough for Bucky to lean against the tree trunk, but he kept his arm slung around Bucky's shoulders and between that and the fact that Bucky was wearing Steve's leather jacket, it was an awful lot like a date, but it was comfortable and it was them and Bucky didn't give a fuck. Steve started to talk, telling him about what had happened after he'd gone off with the girls at the Stark Expo -- Bucky couldn't even remember their names now -- and Camp Lehigh and the secret lab in Brooklyn and Abraham Erskine, for whom he clearly felt a strong fondness and a debt of obligation.
"That's who Schmidt was talking about," Steve explained. "Schmidt monkeyed around with one of the earlier versions of the formula and turned himself into, well, that."
He shuddered and Bucky, under his arm, shuddered, too, but not entirely for seeing the freakishness of Schmidt's true face. It was because that was the moment he realized why he'd been a lab rat for Zola. So that Schmidt could have brothers and sisters. Bucky had been meant to be one of them. Like Steve maybe, but more likely like Schmidt. He was pretty sure Steve's transformation hadn't taken as long or hurt as much as what Zola had been doing to him, but he'd never say as much. This was Steve getting what he wanted for once in his life. Even if Bucky had always been glad that this was supposed to have been the one wish never to be granted, that Steve would never see the ugliness of war and be corrupted by it like he had been, well, here they were. And right now, however many miles they were from the burning rubble of the HYDRA base, Bucky was grateful for it.
Steve hugged him tight again -- Christ, he was strong -- and maybe he was talking out loud again and didn't realize it. Or maybe Steve just knew what he was thinking, which had never changed no matter how long they'd been apart. They stayed quiet for a few minutes before Steve started talking again, this time about his USO days -- "I am going to have a really long laugh about all of that once we're back home, Captain" -- and how he'd hoped to run into Bucky and then finding out that that would be impossible because Sergeant James Barnes was not only not in the 107th, but he was also classified as Missing/Captured.
"We were so close and not doing anything... I had to do something, Buck. I had to."
With his eyes closed, Bucky could ignore all of the other changes because the voice was still Steve and the tone was the same and him insisting that doing the right thing was always more important than the fact that the right thing was impossible... For a blissful moment, he wasn't in an Italian forest hiding from the Nazis. He was home.
But that moment couldn't last. Steve might not have been thinking beyond getting Bucky out of Nazi hands, but in the process he'd acquired more than a hundred other POWs, not all of whom were healthy and able to walk on their own, and they had no food or water, although they were working on that. They did have a ton of weapons, but Steve didn't want to have to fight his way to freedom all the way. There'd already been one firefight that Bucky had apparently slept through, tucked into a corner of one of the trucks with the rest of the wounded.
"If we go through the night, we should be able to be okay," Steve explained and Bucky could tell from his voice that there was a little more hope in this plan than Steve would otherwise have liked to confess to. "Agent Carter let me sneak a look at some of the intel briefings and the Germans are preparing their big defense north of where we are, so we're kind of in the squishy part between where they say their lines are and where their lines actually are. There's going to be a big US push north all across Italy, so we just have to keep pushing south until we meet 'em. The Allies were preparing to cross north of the Volturno before I left, so maybe they have already."
They talked about business then, Bucky being a relative veteran of troop movements compared to Steve, the details of what they had and how fast could they go and what they were likely to encounter as far as mounted and dismounted patrols or aerial recon or, god forbid, a bombing run or getting strafed by fighters. Steve understood some of Bucky's questions and was unable to answer many of them. He had already confessed that this had been his first combat action, that he had trained as a soldier but then been turned into a showgirl and everything he'd learned about warfare had been entirely theoretical before he'd convinced Agent Carter to ask Howard Stark to fly him behind enemy lines and do the first parachute jump since he'd gotten his Airborne qualification.
"Jesus, Steve," Bucky muttered as the enormity of what Steve had done -- for him -- sunk in.
"I know," Steve sighed, completely misinterpreting. "That's why I need you to help me cram. I can't--"
They were still sitting close enough that Bucky could elbow Steve in the ribs -- hard, which did nothing because his chest was even harder -- to stop him talking. "That's not what I meant. You're doing fine. Better than fine. Believe you me, getting this many people this far with what we've got -- and what we don't got -- is nothing short of amazing. You've got at least one field grade officer in this pack and a few captains who could pull date-of-commission rank on you and nobody is. Instead, they're asking you what to do next. So stop talking down on yourself -- the way you look now, it sounds even sillier -- and just get on with things. You have a question, you ask. I won't let you do anything too stupid, even if you're an officer now and can't help yourself."
The grin Steve game him was vintage Steve, despite the fuller face.
Eventually someone came looking for Steve -- for Captain America -- and they went back to the others. Bucky gave Steve his jacket back because the star on his chest was as good as a bullseye and Steve accepted it before heading off to discuss plans with the guys who'd been acting as sheepdogs to his shepherd. He asked Bucky to go with him, but Bucky told him he had something to do first. He went back to Martin and Sopel and asked the question he hadn't been alert enough to ask earlier.
"Witkower was killed in the escape," Sopel answered. "Dalton's back with his unit -- half of his platoon was being kept downstairs, remember. He stopped by while you were sleeping. Sowalchuk's with his buddies, too. Haven't seen him since we bedded down this morning, but he got a nasty burn on his leg from one of those blue blaster weapon things, so he's probably just resting. He'll have to ride when we get going."
There'd been a water source found while Bucky had been sleeping, a creek a couple hundred yards west that wasn't poisoned and wasn't patrolled and wasn't giving anyone the shits, but they didn't have canteens, so everyone had to go and drink there. Bucky went with Martin and Sopel and went as far downstream as the sentries would let him so he could wash away the sweat that still stunk of chemicals and fire before drinking until his belly was full and he had to pee again. Then he found Steve and was introduced to the motley crew of deputies he'd found -- a Nisei, a Brit, a Free Frenchman, a black guy, and Dum Dum Dugan, about whom Bucky had heard rumors since he'd been a private and had always suspected was just a myth but was actually standing there with his even more mythical hat on his head. He wasn't sure they'd be all that happy to see him or how they'd see him: Captain America's buddy, someone who'd been carried from the base instead of fighting, or worse, one of Zola's walking experiments? But they greeted him warmly and without open pity, telling him that he was the reason they were all free and Cap had been talking him up like he was Eisenhower and Patton rolled into one.
"You do realize he doesn't know what he's talking about, right?" Bucky asked, embarrassed.
Dugan clapped a giant paw -- his fingers were like sausages -- on Bucky's shoulder and assured him it didn't matter, that the truth never compared to the legends and that he, of all people, should know.
It took them a week, almost, to get to the Allied lines. They had to fight their way past the Germans on the third day -- a mixed blessing because it allowed them to pick up boots for the shoeless and canteens and food and medicine -- and then again on the fifth. And then they nearly got themselves blown to hell by their own side because, unsurprisingly, the US troops hadn't believed that HYDRA tanks and men carrying HYDRA weapons could be anything but trouble. Which nobody could blame them for, but after so long in captivity and then a week on the run, none of them were willing to be very understanding about the confusion. Being led by Captain America made it even worse, since everyone knew he was just an actor and who else would the Germans send to hold the false flag of this parade? But eventually they convinced the guy holding US Army-issued guns on them that they weren't the enemy -- mostly by insulting them for a few hours -- and were given a pass and allowed to proceed south into Allied territory.
On the ninth day, they arrived at Steve's destination. Bucky would've liked to have seen the chewing-out Steve got for going AWOL, but he got caught up in his own storm of paperwork and bureaucracy. The Allies didn't seem to know about the nature of the prison at all and thought it had been another labor camp, not even realizing that it had been a HYDRA facility until they'd shown up with HYDRA weapons and, it quickly became apparent, had no idea what sort of hell Zola and Schmidt had created there.
Bucky went through his interview with the goal of saying as little as possible and getting done as quickly as possible. He didn't want to end up in a psych ward somewhere or, God forbid, in whatever lab Erskine's successors had set up to make themselves siblings for Steve. He told them nothing about Zola or the experiments, just gave them the details of his capture and transport north and the names of soldiers he'd seen at the facility but who had disappeared before their rescue. He'd gotten in early enough that the interviewers didn't know where to press, so it wasn't that hard, especially when he could talk in detail about their flight through the Italian countryside. Which didn't mean that the whole experience was easy or quick. Army bureaucracy was both ridiculous and infuriating after everything he'd been through. But just when the frustration was getting to be too much, he got asked if he believed that the address listed under his next of kin was still accurate so that they could send a telegram to inform them of his recovery. Steve was his next of kin and so he said no, that no telegram was necessary but if they wanted to send a note to Colonel Phillips's tent, they were welcome to do so.
After he finished, he made his way to Steve's tent, where he'd bunked down last night, and lay down on Steve's cot. The interview had been exhausting; he hadn't had to talk so much since before he'd been captured and he'd found that he couldn't, not easily. He'd had to talk to survive -- to answer Zola's questions, to make sure his pen-mates were not getting lost in their own despair -- and now that he didn't have to anymore, he didn't want to. Steve had done most of the talking when they'd been marching south, both when it was just them and when they had to address the group as a whole, and while Bucky could see the questions in his eyes, Steve had never pressed him to say more than he wanted to. So he'd said nothing. What had happened to him in Zola's lab was over, to be put away and forgotten like the commendation he'd gotten in Tunisia because the memories just hurt too much to be revisited.
He must've fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, Steve was shaking him awake and telling him it was time for dinner.
Processing the returnees took days and drew a crowd. There were extra supplies to order -- food, cots, underwear -- and between the liberation of so many POWs and the identity of the man who'd done it, well, the brass loved a spotlight and there were generals and visiting politicians lining up to shake Steve's hand. He hated it, deeply, and Bucky felt bad for him up to a point. "This is the price you pay to get what you want. You're in the Army now, Punk, you gotta dance to the piper's tune."
"I danced plenty when I was selling war bonds," Steve muttered darkly as they watched a couple of congressmen shake hands and slap backs, treating the POWs like they'd been on a sunny Italian holiday instead of living in hell. "It's different now. I am different now. I finally understand why everyone was looking at me like gum on the soles of their shoes when I first got to Europe. I was supporting an imaginary war and they were fighting in a real one. The imaginary one is good versus evil and fight, fight, fight to the finish and I get to punch Hitler in the end."
The real war, he didn't finish, was bloody and disgusting and a fucking tragedy and involved pulling your best friend off the table of a mad Nazi scientist.
"You want to be a real war hero, then?" Bucky asked, since he didn't want to go down that road any more than Steve did. "You go dive on a grenade and sweep those politicians out of the ranks and into the CO's tent so they'll leave everyone alone."
Steve frowned, nodded, and took a deep breath before putting on his Captain America smile -- which was really nothing like his actual smile -- and calling out to the congressmen to draw their attention.
From across the quad he saw Dugan, who must've seen him send Steve off to his sacrifice, and he nodded once, then disappeared.
Bucky couldn't hide from the Intel people forever, although he'd started to hope that somehow he'd be able to. But too many of the POWs had known he was one of Zola's favorite lab rats and so eventually, he was called in again. He debated not going, but Steve, to whom he'd said nothing and to whom it still didn't matter what he'd said, begged him not to blow it off or play dumb.
"If you don't go along, they're going to ship you home on a medical chit," Steve warned him, a pleading note to his voice. They were in his tent, which was about as private as it got on in this overflowing camp. "They're doing that with some of the others. You'll wind up in a hospital and God knows when they'll let you out."
Bucky knew Steve didn't mean a hospital like the ones they'd been born in. A loony ward like St. Elizabeth's, maybe, someplace where the scientists who'd created Steve's new body could get a crack at him to see what Zola had gotten up to.
"I know you don't want to talk to anyone about it," Steve pressed on. "I wouldn't want to talk about it, either. But if you do this--"
"If I do this, they will definitely send me home on a medical chit," Bucky spat out sourly. He'd noticed his own strange behavior since they'd gotten back, his inability to be social and easy with people and happy. Steve had certainly noticed it. The Intel people, which included head shrinkers, would notice it, too.
"You were always a little off in the head," Steve replied dismissively, waving aside his protest airily before sobering. "There's talk that they're going to let me put together a team for real, to do crazy things for the good guys with actual prior sanctioning and not this after-the-fact story we all ginned up so nobody looks like a fool for letting me run off and 'America's Hero' doesn't have to face a trial for desertion."
There was no way in hell Steve was gonna get rung up for even Failure to Repair once he came back with everyone, but asses had had to be covered and so Steve's crimes had been rewritten as orders.
"If you do this, if you go talk to them and get cleared, I can formally ask you to volunteer for it," Steve went on. "I don't know if you even want to fight anymore, let alone with me when I don't know what I'm doing, but... I think whatever I end up doing, I will end up doing it better if you're with me. Like we're supposed to be. So please, Buck, don't make them chase you down."
Bucky closed his eyes. "You are impossible, you know that?"
Because Steve had to know that there was no way in hell that Bucky was going to let him wander around warzones without someone he trusted to watch his back. And Bucky had historically trusted nobody but himself.
When he opened his eyes, Steve was grinning.
"I'll go with you if you want?" he offered, but Bucky shook his head.
"No," Bucky insisted forcefully, holding up his hand. "We've never really had secrets and I probably have even fewer from you than I think I do, but this, this is gonna be one of them. I don't want you or anyone else we might end up working with hearing what I am going to have to tell them."
Steve, because he was Steve, understood why and nodded once. "It won't change anything, Buck."
Bucky rolled his eyes. "Of course it will. I don't even remember half of what they did to me, but the parts I do remember, I don't want anyone to know about because it's all they'll see. It's what I'll become. And then I'm no use to you."
He debated lying to the Intelligence team about how much he remembered and how much he'd figured out and then debated it again when he saw Agent Carter slip in and take a seat on the side like she belonged there. But in the end, he told the truth as he remembered it, which might or might not have been of any use. He hadn't known at the time what Zola's goal had been -- information flow had been a one-way street -- and if he'd never have seen Steve and then Schmidt, he'd never have figured it out on his own.
"You people don't understand," he'd told them in a weary voice. "They treated us like bugs -- they could pull off our wings just because it was something to do, not because it had a real reason. They didn't need real reasons. They didn't give us any. And when we stopped being useful or started being more trouble than we were worth, they killed us."
They asked him why he hadn't been killed and he swallowed the rage that surged up at just the implication that he'd been helping Zola, that he'd made sure he was being useful for his own gain. "It wasn't for lack of trying," was what he did say. "I survived by chance."
When it was over, they thanked him for his time and he took the dismissal and left. It was bright and sunny out and he had to squint and get his bearings. Steve wasn't around today -- he'd had to go down to Salerno to shake some more hands -- and Bucky wasn't sure if he wanted to find a different friendly face or just be by himself for a while. His decision was made for him by Sowalchuk, hobbling toward him on crutches and his leg wrapped up like a mummy.
"Sarge!" Sowalchuk called, broad smile on his face. Bucky smiled back and hoped it looked legit. "You should come to lunch. It's a pen reunion. Except for the LT, he's been in officer country since we got in."
Bucky nodded and fell in to step with Sowalchuk, who was happy to carry on the conversation all by himself. He updated Bucky on who he'd seen and what he'd seen and seemed to think that Bucky had kept Steve's identity a secret on purpose.
Martin and Dalton were already on line and they took advantage of Sowalchuk's injured status and the fact that all of them were still wearing the scrap of cloth on their left arm that indicated that they were one of the POWs to cut in and join then. The food was typical Army chow, mostly unidentifiable, questionably edible, and served with indifference. But it was still better than what they'd been getting in captivity and what they'd been able to scrounge on the flight south, so they ate it with more enthusiasm than it merited.
Sowalchuk already had his departure date; he was going to be on the convoy heading down to Salerno on Monday, along with the rest of the lightly injured who hadn't already been evacuated. Dalton and Martin had heard that they would be leaving at the end of next week, maybe Thursday. Everyone was going home, at least for a while, although some were getting their discharge papers, at least the rumor mill said. They were surprised that Bucky hadn't heard anything yet, but he shrugged and told them that the spies had to finish with him first, which they understood for the obvious reasons and the ones they'd never speak of aloud to him. They were all so happy to go home after wondering if they ever would and Bucky felt genuinely glad for them -- they had families to return to. His was off trying to convince Eisenhower to let him run suicide missions with a bunch of misfits.
He ended up leaving before anyone, packing in to a transport truck with Morita, Jones, Dernier, Falsworth, and Dugan to join Steve down at Salerno so that they could all fly to London. Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter and some other types were in jeeps, but they -- the Howling Commandos, named by Dugan for a reason only he knew -- rode in the truck with the crates and the gear. And they were fine with it, especially after Dernier pulled out a couple of flasks of brandy he'd been given by the representative of the Free French who'd come as part of the celebrity tour. It was good, Bucky thought as they made their way south with with warm burn of the alcohol in his belly. He could work with these guys. He could live with them. He might very probably die with them, but that would be determined later.
Steve's guerrilla unit wasn't a done deal yet -- the OSS was still fighting over turf -- but they were going in anticipation of it getting worked out so that they could officially volunteer for it. Falsworth, who was apparently some kind of nobleman in England, promised them a good time whether or not this happened.
It happened.
R; 8000 words
Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers
The fourth and final part of the Bucky-and-Steve-in-the-Past collection. I've put these at the start of the Freezer Burn series, since that's essentially abut Steve and Bucky in the present.
"How do you feel, Sergeant Barnes?"
Bucky felt like he was on fire, warm all over but pooling in his crotch, not like arousal at all but just straight heat, and he might've pissed himself.
"Sergeant Barnes, please describe how you feel," Zola repeated in his precise voice, just a warning tone to it but not anger. Not yet.
"Hot," Bucky rasped out. Or tried to, but it didn't come out right the first time and he had to repeat himself, still not quite landing the T. The injection before this one had turned him boneless and floppy and he'd hoped to sleep through the rest of the session because it was too much to open his eyes. Sometimes Zola let him, not needing to ask questions that blood draws and the fancy monitors hooked up to him couldn't answer for him. But not today.
Zola was patient, Bucky had learned the hard way, and extremely intolerant of disobedience. Failing to obey was sometimes unavoidable and Zola accepted that, but failing to attempt to obey was met with swift punishment.
"Do you feel any stronger?" Zola sounded closer, maybe standing next to the gurney, but Bucky had no desire to open his eyes to see him. He wasn't sure he would be able to if required and that would just fucking suck because he was still feeling the effects of the last time he'd been deemed difficult.
(Zola had drugs that just caused pain, incredible pain, and he'd shoot you up with them if he thought you weren't going to be useful to him that day. You'd be wheeled back to your prisoner pen to curl up and sweat out the misery and the entire pen would go without food and water for the day to give you incentive to not to do that again.)
"No," he got out, his tongue getting in the way.
He felt something at the corner of his mouth pushing in and then liquid. The baby bottle of water. He worked to swallow and, when he did, he got another squirt. It should have been embarrassing to be fed water from a bottle with a nipple on it like a newborn, but he needed the water more than he needed his dignity, at least right now.
Zola didn't ask him any more questions after the bottle went away and Bucky might've fallen asleep. The next thing he knew, he was back in his pen, on the floor with his blouse folded up under his head.
"Didn't think you were coming back this time, Sarge," Sopel said as Bucky tried to push himself to sitting and failed, landing awkwardly and hard back on his side. Sopel crouched down to move his hand out from underneath his torso, not bothering to prop him up. "You were gone for ten hours."
Bucky could only grimace and then he was out again.
Sopel and Martin woke up him at some point later because there was food and he hadn't eaten in two days. Yesterday he'd been too sick to keep anything down and the day before nobody had eaten because Zola had decided he was being uncooperative. He hadn't meant to be uncooperative, but whatever he'd been shot up with had given him a high-pitched whistle in his ears and he hadn't been able to hear anything. He'd felt even worse once he did become aware of his surroundings because Barzanian's sore throat was getting worse and the water, at least, could have helped.
Martin helped him eat, holding the bowl to his lips so he could sip at the soup and breaking up the bread into small pieces so that he could feed them to himself with only some effort. There was a chunk of meat in the soup and Bucky frowned at Martin, who didn't misinterpret the look and shrugged. There were six of them in the pen and they were supposed to rotate who got the meat and eggs that found its way into their communal pot, but Bucky had gotten meat twice this week and that meant someone else had gone without.
Bucky was the only test subject in the pen; there'd originally been three, but Smith and Kugel had disappeared and while they'd been replaced with two new prisoners from downstairs, neither Dalton nor Witkower had been dragged off yet. Either Zola or the guards or some combination had realized that mixing up the pens was the most effective prisoner management -- the healthy could keep the test subjects alive longer and then also be used as threats to ensure compliance in the lab.
Bucky was the NCOIC in their pen, which sometimes mattered and sometimes, as in the case with today's meal distribution, really didn't. Sopel was a second lieutenant, captured two weeks into his first deployment, and everyone else was a corporal or private and all of them put together didn't have Bucky's combat experience. Sopel didn't pull officer shit, but it made everyone feel a little better if he was the one organizing meals and sleep rotations and occasionally bullying Bucky into accepting care because he was the only one who could make it an order. It was a tiny taste of normal in a world where absolutely nothing else was and they clung to it tightly.
He was feeling well enough to stand woozily when it came time for the pen's daily field trip to the showers and shitters, although he accepted Witkower's help to walk there as they were paraded silently past the other pens surrounded by guards. This, too, was a privilege that could be taken away, but it rarely was because otherwise the prisoner areas would stink much more than they already did and the guards had to breathe the same air. It was easier to starve them than hose out the pens more than once a week. There was no way to get really clean in the showers with little time and less soap, but they could get clean enough, rinse out their clothes -- Bucky's were always full of sweat and sometimes puke or piss or worse -- and regain a little bit of their humanity.
Dalton, the buck private, was on laundry duty when they got back, hanging up everyone's clothes on the pen bars to dry while they sat in their damp skivvies and tried to keep each other entertained and sane. They did PT in shifts, since there wasn't the space, and gave each other the business for who still couldn't do thirty pull-ups on the upper bars. They had a deck of cards and sometimes they played word games and sometimes they talked baseball or movies or told stories about their lives before they'd enlisted. Barzanian had worked as a bartender in a nightclub in LA and he always had stories about actors and what they were really like, or at least what they drank. Dalton was from Nebraska and most of his stories involved cows. Sopel had his college years. Bucky had New York City, which only Sopel had been to before, and the World's Fair and Steve. Sometimes there were group naps, which made them all feel like babies, but being cooped up in a tiny cage was remarkably exhausting.
At night they slept in shifts, five men asleep and one man awake, and tonight Bucky insisted on taking a turn because he'd slept most of the last two days. He would sleep through the night if they let him, but he needed to do this for himself. To push himself a little as his own choice and not because of a threat to the others held over his head. Sopel very clearly debated pulling rank on him to say no, but they exchanged a look and then Sopel nodded and told Dalton that he got to sleep through the night.
The next day, Captain Prinzler from the pen two over -- this level had the pens alternating occupied and not -- was marched by on his way to Zola's lab and Bucky hated himself a little for being relieved that it wasn't his turn today.
Prinzler didn't come back that day or the next and the little core of rage and self-hatred and fear burned a little hotter in Bucky's belly, making it hard to eat. He gave his piece of sausage to Barzanian, who was losing his voice entirely, which they could joke about, but also starting to get feverish, which they could not. The guards had only one response to sick prisoners: they were taken to Zola and, more often than not, never seen again.
(This was true for lab rats as well as the control group; Bucky had gotten dragged back to Zola when he'd started throwing up and couldn't stop even after it was just dry heaves. But maybe because he was sick from what Zola had done and not from one of the bouts of disease that raced through the pens like lightning, Zola had simply given him an injection and left him on the gurney to sleep it off. When he'd woken up and been pronounced improved, he'd been frog-marched over to the lab table to be strapped down as that day's experiment.)
They hid Barzanian's fever as best they could, not wringing out their socks after they washed them so they could use them as compresses and giving him double rations of water and food, and it seemed to work. Barzanian wasn't getting better, but he wasn't getting any worse and Bucky thanked whatever demon forces watched over this place -- God certainly had lost the address -- that Zola wasn't shooting him up with anything that made it hard for him to hear or see or move or respond to questions so that his pen wasn't deprived of what little they got. He was instead shot full of things that made his heart race and his body feel alive in ways it hadn't since his capture and he could have wept from the euphoria that left him higher than the best sex.
He made the most of his alertness, actually paying attention to his surroundings as he was taken back to the pen and being engaged with the guys once he was there so that they didn't have to take care of him for once. They were amused by his energy, but also relieved and that, he suspected, would do them better than extra rest, which they all got because he knew damned well that there was no way he was going to be able to sleep tonight, so he took the entire night's watch.
The next morning Barzanian's fever spiked. He didn't know where he was -- no, that wasn't true, he knew exactly where he was. It just wasn't here. He thought he was back in LA at the Boca del Luna serving gin and tonics to Randolph Scott. Bucky, still feeling weirdly energized by whatever he'd been given by Zola yesterday, sat with Barzanian and engaged him in a long conversation about the drinking and eating habits of celebrities, using his own experiences as a waiter to keep Barzanian's attention so that he wouldn't start shouting for more clean glasses or a new crate of lemons. He got Barzanian to eat by telling him that it was an experiment by the chef because he'd heard Myrna Loy was coming in that night. The pretend act could only work for so long, though, and Barzanian was getting agitated again at just the wrong time, when the guards were coming for them to take care of the three S's. But they got him to the showers without incident and ran him under the cold water until his fingertips turned purple and he quieted, going back to their pen easily and sleeping. But he woke up in the middle of the night screaming that he was under attack by bees and nothing they could do would quiet him. Bucky and Dalton tried to hold him down, but the screaming just got louder and the guards came.
Bucky wasn't even thinking when he launched himself at the guards who were going to drag Barzanian off. He just did it, fueled by all of his fury and whatever was still in his system and he heard Sopel's barked order to stop and felt hands pulling at his arms and his body and his neck, but he couldn't stop. He'd been helpless for so long and now, in this moment, he wasn't. For everything that had been done to him by Zola, keeping five men's lives as security against his own obedience was the worst. He'd always gone along with it as best he could because what were five men's lives compared with just his own? He was their sergeant, they trusted him, and he would not let them down. He was going to die here anyway, he knew that. He was going to die screaming, in agony, begging for whatever relief death could bring and praying that Zola hadn't figured out a way to raise the dead so he could do it again tomorrow. He was going to die here, but there was no reason Barzanian should, too.
He woke up strapped down on Zola's gurney, head foggy and sore and blood in his mouth and in his left eye. And this is where it ends he said to himself.
"Not quite, Sergeant Barnes," Zola said from somewhere Bucky couldn't see him. "Tell me how you felt from the time you left here."
Zola had to ask the question a few different ways before Bucky could give him the answers he wanted. By that point, Bucky could figure out that Zola wasn't planning on killing him (intentionally, at least) today and that his attack on the guards hadn't been considered an act of disobedience but, instead, a kind of side effect.
"Did you feel aggressive or angry at all before the guards came to take away... Private Barzanian?"
Bucky couldn't help but laugh. He was a Nazi lab rat, a prisoner of war treated worse than a stray animal, and Zola was asking him if he'd been angry? Bucky sometimes had trouble remembering when he hadn't been consumed by rage, when his life had been fueled by something other than anger and fear.
"Sergeant Barnes," Zola warned.
"No," he replied, sobering. "I felt good. Really good."
The high was still there, a little, buried under the pain of the beat-down he'd gotten from the guards, but maybe making that hurt not as much as it should have. He admitted as much to Zola when asked. Zola made an interested noise, then told the guards to unbuckle him and take him to the showers to clean off -- thoroughly, with soap -- and bring him back.
Bucky scrubbed himself raw, washing his hair and between his toes and everything in between because he knew without a doubt that whatever came next was going to wipe that lingering euphoria out like a match in a snowstorm.
When it was over, he woke up back in the pen, someone's blouse folded up under his head as a pillow and another one draped over him like a blanket. When he sat up, the world spun and when he was introduced to his new pen-pal, Corporal Sowalchuk, he saw three of him.
+++
When he saw Steve standing over him in Zola's lab, he thought he was hallucinating. Earlier Zola had shot him full of something that had made him nearly buck off the gurney despite the straps, made his heart hammer, made him hyperventilate and shake and spasm like he had stepped on a live wire. Then there'd been another injection and then nothing. When he'd woken up, he'd been loopy and sluggish and he'd hoped to hell that Zola wasn't going to ask any difficult questions because he wasn't sure he could even manage his name, rank, and serial number if pressed.
Zola hadn't asked him anything, though, because he hadn't been there, although there'd been no way for Bucky to know that strapped down on the table and just lucid enough to realize that he was high as a kite. His ears rang and shadows were swimming at the corners of his vision and he knew that they weren't the orderlies, although he wasn't sure why. So when Steve appeared, Bucky had accepted it as just another way his drug-addled brain was messing with him. He'd imagined Steve before, but they'd been back in Brooklyn and not in Zola's lab.
He went along with the hallucination because there was nothing else to do while strapped down on the table, at least while Zola wasn't asking him questions or requiring him to do anything. Letting his mind wander was how he passed the time and kept his fear at bay. In the daydream, Steve, who was now taller than he was and dressed like Captain America, freed him from the table and led him through the building, which was now exploding around them. His heart was hammering again and he wondered if the sedative Zola had given him was wearing off -- in which case why was Captain America Steve still here? -- or, worse, that the sedative hadn't been strong enough to counteract whatever the first shot had been and he was going to die of an exploding heart even while skunked on the other stuff.
And then Doctor Schmidt, an occasional and fucking terrifying visitor to Zola's lab, started taunting Steve and pulled off his face to reveal a monster head underneath and Bucky was ready to wake up now, even if it meant saying goodbye to Steve again. But he didn't wake up, instead made like a tightrope walker over a crossbeam and Steve jumped forty feet through a fireball and then they were running from more explosions and, at some point, the hallucination stopped and he fell asleep again. The last words he heard before he did so were Steve's, gentle in his ear. "I got you, Buck."
He woke up as he often did, a uniform blouse pillowed under his head and another as a blanket.
"Easy there, Sarge," Sopel warned him when he started to move. "Rest easy. We're not going anywhere for a while."
He opened his eyes to see Sopel's knee two inches from his face, which wasn't that unusual, either. But when he rolled away from it, he was shocked to see trees and blue sky and he sat up in alarm, overcompensating and falling over in the other direction before he could stop himself by putting his hand down in dirt.
"It wasn't a dream?" he asked, mostly to himself because he wasn't sure how the hell he'd gotten here. Or if here was even what it looked like, Maybe he'd finally cracked up like Barzanian and Zola would put him down, too. Or chalk it up to another side effect and send him back to the pen.
He noticed that the blouse he'd been using as a blanket wasn't a blouse, it was a leather jacket. Steve had been wearing a leather jacket. But there was no Steve here, just Sopel and, on the other side of him, Martin who was lying down and maybe asleep. And a lot of other sleeping men and sitting men, some faces he recognized, but no Steve.
"I don't know what you were dreaming about, Sergeant, but if it was about Captain America showing up and breaking us all out, then no, it wasn't a dream," Sopel told him. "But I have to tell you, you are the biggest liar in the history of liars for all of your stories about your little pal Steve the artist, the one who was always getting beat up and couldn't get into the Army because he was a hundred ten pounds soaking wet. Although considering he only rescued us because he was looking for you, I suppose I can forgive you."
Bucky smiled, but he still wasn't sure all of this -- any of this -- was real. He'd seen too many things that just made no sense, very much including Steve as Captain America, and sometimes, especially right after being in Zola's lab, he wasn't sure how much he could trust his own mind anymore.
"You should go back to sleep," Sopel told him, gesturing with his chin toward where Bucky had been lying. "We're staying here until dusk and then we're going to push through the night. You are going to need your strength."
Which he didn't have right now, no need to add.
"Steve?"
Sopel gestured vaguely with his hand. "He's around, perimeter checks, setting up pickets, whatever. He said he'd be back here when he's done. Sleep, Sergeant. I'll tell him to wake you up."
Bucky didn't believe that last part for a moment, but he lay down anyway with a muttered "yes, sir" and fell asleep breathing the scent of dirt and fallen leaves and not the chemical scent of the lab or the more human odor of the pen.
He woke up to a hand on his face and he startled, dazedly trying to shake off Zola or Schmidt or whoever else was examining him.
"Buck, relax, it's me," Steve's voice penetrated the fog of his mind and he looked up and there Steve was, crouched over him, looking nothing and everything like the Steve Rogers he'd left behind in New York. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just wanted to see that cut on your forehead."
He didn't bother to lie and say that he hadn't been scared. Steve, no matter what he looked like -- and Jesus, what he looked like now! -- was always the first to call him on his baloney.
"Come on," Steve exhorted in a low voice, gesturing over his left shoulder. "We can go talk over there. It's still inside the perimeter but it's not on top of everyone else."
Bucky wasn't sure he could stand up without falling over, but Steve did and then offered him a hand and pulled him up easily and he couldn't help but laugh at this reversal of fortune. Of Steve being the big, strong one. Steve must've been thinking the same thing because he grinned at Bucky, the same doofy grin as always.
They stepped carefully past the sleeping Sopel, nodding at Martin, whose shift it now was, and headed off in the direction Steve had indicated, although Bucky needed to make a pitstop to pee once they were away from where the main of the group was resting. Steve led them far enough away for privacy but not so far that they couldn't get back easily and wouldn't be mistaken for the enemy. And then he dropped down against a massive tree truck and waited for Bucky to do the same before pulling him in to a one-armed hug, the way Bucky used to do for him when they were young. Bucky moved into it easily and eagerly, surprising himself with how desperate he was to put his burden down and let someone else worry about him for a while.
"What the hell happened, Stevie?" he asked, his forehead against Steve's neck. "What the hell happened to us?"
There was no answer, or maybe too much answer. After a long moment, Steve loosened his hold enough for Bucky to lean against the tree trunk, but he kept his arm slung around Bucky's shoulders and between that and the fact that Bucky was wearing Steve's leather jacket, it was an awful lot like a date, but it was comfortable and it was them and Bucky didn't give a fuck. Steve started to talk, telling him about what had happened after he'd gone off with the girls at the Stark Expo -- Bucky couldn't even remember their names now -- and Camp Lehigh and the secret lab in Brooklyn and Abraham Erskine, for whom he clearly felt a strong fondness and a debt of obligation.
"That's who Schmidt was talking about," Steve explained. "Schmidt monkeyed around with one of the earlier versions of the formula and turned himself into, well, that."
He shuddered and Bucky, under his arm, shuddered, too, but not entirely for seeing the freakishness of Schmidt's true face. It was because that was the moment he realized why he'd been a lab rat for Zola. So that Schmidt could have brothers and sisters. Bucky had been meant to be one of them. Like Steve maybe, but more likely like Schmidt. He was pretty sure Steve's transformation hadn't taken as long or hurt as much as what Zola had been doing to him, but he'd never say as much. This was Steve getting what he wanted for once in his life. Even if Bucky had always been glad that this was supposed to have been the one wish never to be granted, that Steve would never see the ugliness of war and be corrupted by it like he had been, well, here they were. And right now, however many miles they were from the burning rubble of the HYDRA base, Bucky was grateful for it.
Steve hugged him tight again -- Christ, he was strong -- and maybe he was talking out loud again and didn't realize it. Or maybe Steve just knew what he was thinking, which had never changed no matter how long they'd been apart. They stayed quiet for a few minutes before Steve started talking again, this time about his USO days -- "I am going to have a really long laugh about all of that once we're back home, Captain" -- and how he'd hoped to run into Bucky and then finding out that that would be impossible because Sergeant James Barnes was not only not in the 107th, but he was also classified as Missing/Captured.
"We were so close and not doing anything... I had to do something, Buck. I had to."
With his eyes closed, Bucky could ignore all of the other changes because the voice was still Steve and the tone was the same and him insisting that doing the right thing was always more important than the fact that the right thing was impossible... For a blissful moment, he wasn't in an Italian forest hiding from the Nazis. He was home.
But that moment couldn't last. Steve might not have been thinking beyond getting Bucky out of Nazi hands, but in the process he'd acquired more than a hundred other POWs, not all of whom were healthy and able to walk on their own, and they had no food or water, although they were working on that. They did have a ton of weapons, but Steve didn't want to have to fight his way to freedom all the way. There'd already been one firefight that Bucky had apparently slept through, tucked into a corner of one of the trucks with the rest of the wounded.
"If we go through the night, we should be able to be okay," Steve explained and Bucky could tell from his voice that there was a little more hope in this plan than Steve would otherwise have liked to confess to. "Agent Carter let me sneak a look at some of the intel briefings and the Germans are preparing their big defense north of where we are, so we're kind of in the squishy part between where they say their lines are and where their lines actually are. There's going to be a big US push north all across Italy, so we just have to keep pushing south until we meet 'em. The Allies were preparing to cross north of the Volturno before I left, so maybe they have already."
They talked about business then, Bucky being a relative veteran of troop movements compared to Steve, the details of what they had and how fast could they go and what they were likely to encounter as far as mounted and dismounted patrols or aerial recon or, god forbid, a bombing run or getting strafed by fighters. Steve understood some of Bucky's questions and was unable to answer many of them. He had already confessed that this had been his first combat action, that he had trained as a soldier but then been turned into a showgirl and everything he'd learned about warfare had been entirely theoretical before he'd convinced Agent Carter to ask Howard Stark to fly him behind enemy lines and do the first parachute jump since he'd gotten his Airborne qualification.
"Jesus, Steve," Bucky muttered as the enormity of what Steve had done -- for him -- sunk in.
"I know," Steve sighed, completely misinterpreting. "That's why I need you to help me cram. I can't--"
They were still sitting close enough that Bucky could elbow Steve in the ribs -- hard, which did nothing because his chest was even harder -- to stop him talking. "That's not what I meant. You're doing fine. Better than fine. Believe you me, getting this many people this far with what we've got -- and what we don't got -- is nothing short of amazing. You've got at least one field grade officer in this pack and a few captains who could pull date-of-commission rank on you and nobody is. Instead, they're asking you what to do next. So stop talking down on yourself -- the way you look now, it sounds even sillier -- and just get on with things. You have a question, you ask. I won't let you do anything too stupid, even if you're an officer now and can't help yourself."
The grin Steve game him was vintage Steve, despite the fuller face.
Eventually someone came looking for Steve -- for Captain America -- and they went back to the others. Bucky gave Steve his jacket back because the star on his chest was as good as a bullseye and Steve accepted it before heading off to discuss plans with the guys who'd been acting as sheepdogs to his shepherd. He asked Bucky to go with him, but Bucky told him he had something to do first. He went back to Martin and Sopel and asked the question he hadn't been alert enough to ask earlier.
"Witkower was killed in the escape," Sopel answered. "Dalton's back with his unit -- half of his platoon was being kept downstairs, remember. He stopped by while you were sleeping. Sowalchuk's with his buddies, too. Haven't seen him since we bedded down this morning, but he got a nasty burn on his leg from one of those blue blaster weapon things, so he's probably just resting. He'll have to ride when we get going."
There'd been a water source found while Bucky had been sleeping, a creek a couple hundred yards west that wasn't poisoned and wasn't patrolled and wasn't giving anyone the shits, but they didn't have canteens, so everyone had to go and drink there. Bucky went with Martin and Sopel and went as far downstream as the sentries would let him so he could wash away the sweat that still stunk of chemicals and fire before drinking until his belly was full and he had to pee again. Then he found Steve and was introduced to the motley crew of deputies he'd found -- a Nisei, a Brit, a Free Frenchman, a black guy, and Dum Dum Dugan, about whom Bucky had heard rumors since he'd been a private and had always suspected was just a myth but was actually standing there with his even more mythical hat on his head. He wasn't sure they'd be all that happy to see him or how they'd see him: Captain America's buddy, someone who'd been carried from the base instead of fighting, or worse, one of Zola's walking experiments? But they greeted him warmly and without open pity, telling him that he was the reason they were all free and Cap had been talking him up like he was Eisenhower and Patton rolled into one.
"You do realize he doesn't know what he's talking about, right?" Bucky asked, embarrassed.
Dugan clapped a giant paw -- his fingers were like sausages -- on Bucky's shoulder and assured him it didn't matter, that the truth never compared to the legends and that he, of all people, should know.
It took them a week, almost, to get to the Allied lines. They had to fight their way past the Germans on the third day -- a mixed blessing because it allowed them to pick up boots for the shoeless and canteens and food and medicine -- and then again on the fifth. And then they nearly got themselves blown to hell by their own side because, unsurprisingly, the US troops hadn't believed that HYDRA tanks and men carrying HYDRA weapons could be anything but trouble. Which nobody could blame them for, but after so long in captivity and then a week on the run, none of them were willing to be very understanding about the confusion. Being led by Captain America made it even worse, since everyone knew he was just an actor and who else would the Germans send to hold the false flag of this parade? But eventually they convinced the guy holding US Army-issued guns on them that they weren't the enemy -- mostly by insulting them for a few hours -- and were given a pass and allowed to proceed south into Allied territory.
On the ninth day, they arrived at Steve's destination. Bucky would've liked to have seen the chewing-out Steve got for going AWOL, but he got caught up in his own storm of paperwork and bureaucracy. The Allies didn't seem to know about the nature of the prison at all and thought it had been another labor camp, not even realizing that it had been a HYDRA facility until they'd shown up with HYDRA weapons and, it quickly became apparent, had no idea what sort of hell Zola and Schmidt had created there.
Bucky went through his interview with the goal of saying as little as possible and getting done as quickly as possible. He didn't want to end up in a psych ward somewhere or, God forbid, in whatever lab Erskine's successors had set up to make themselves siblings for Steve. He told them nothing about Zola or the experiments, just gave them the details of his capture and transport north and the names of soldiers he'd seen at the facility but who had disappeared before their rescue. He'd gotten in early enough that the interviewers didn't know where to press, so it wasn't that hard, especially when he could talk in detail about their flight through the Italian countryside. Which didn't mean that the whole experience was easy or quick. Army bureaucracy was both ridiculous and infuriating after everything he'd been through. But just when the frustration was getting to be too much, he got asked if he believed that the address listed under his next of kin was still accurate so that they could send a telegram to inform them of his recovery. Steve was his next of kin and so he said no, that no telegram was necessary but if they wanted to send a note to Colonel Phillips's tent, they were welcome to do so.
After he finished, he made his way to Steve's tent, where he'd bunked down last night, and lay down on Steve's cot. The interview had been exhausting; he hadn't had to talk so much since before he'd been captured and he'd found that he couldn't, not easily. He'd had to talk to survive -- to answer Zola's questions, to make sure his pen-mates were not getting lost in their own despair -- and now that he didn't have to anymore, he didn't want to. Steve had done most of the talking when they'd been marching south, both when it was just them and when they had to address the group as a whole, and while Bucky could see the questions in his eyes, Steve had never pressed him to say more than he wanted to. So he'd said nothing. What had happened to him in Zola's lab was over, to be put away and forgotten like the commendation he'd gotten in Tunisia because the memories just hurt too much to be revisited.
He must've fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, Steve was shaking him awake and telling him it was time for dinner.
Processing the returnees took days and drew a crowd. There were extra supplies to order -- food, cots, underwear -- and between the liberation of so many POWs and the identity of the man who'd done it, well, the brass loved a spotlight and there were generals and visiting politicians lining up to shake Steve's hand. He hated it, deeply, and Bucky felt bad for him up to a point. "This is the price you pay to get what you want. You're in the Army now, Punk, you gotta dance to the piper's tune."
"I danced plenty when I was selling war bonds," Steve muttered darkly as they watched a couple of congressmen shake hands and slap backs, treating the POWs like they'd been on a sunny Italian holiday instead of living in hell. "It's different now. I am different now. I finally understand why everyone was looking at me like gum on the soles of their shoes when I first got to Europe. I was supporting an imaginary war and they were fighting in a real one. The imaginary one is good versus evil and fight, fight, fight to the finish and I get to punch Hitler in the end."
The real war, he didn't finish, was bloody and disgusting and a fucking tragedy and involved pulling your best friend off the table of a mad Nazi scientist.
"You want to be a real war hero, then?" Bucky asked, since he didn't want to go down that road any more than Steve did. "You go dive on a grenade and sweep those politicians out of the ranks and into the CO's tent so they'll leave everyone alone."
Steve frowned, nodded, and took a deep breath before putting on his Captain America smile -- which was really nothing like his actual smile -- and calling out to the congressmen to draw their attention.
From across the quad he saw Dugan, who must've seen him send Steve off to his sacrifice, and he nodded once, then disappeared.
Bucky couldn't hide from the Intel people forever, although he'd started to hope that somehow he'd be able to. But too many of the POWs had known he was one of Zola's favorite lab rats and so eventually, he was called in again. He debated not going, but Steve, to whom he'd said nothing and to whom it still didn't matter what he'd said, begged him not to blow it off or play dumb.
"If you don't go along, they're going to ship you home on a medical chit," Steve warned him, a pleading note to his voice. They were in his tent, which was about as private as it got on in this overflowing camp. "They're doing that with some of the others. You'll wind up in a hospital and God knows when they'll let you out."
Bucky knew Steve didn't mean a hospital like the ones they'd been born in. A loony ward like St. Elizabeth's, maybe, someplace where the scientists who'd created Steve's new body could get a crack at him to see what Zola had gotten up to.
"I know you don't want to talk to anyone about it," Steve pressed on. "I wouldn't want to talk about it, either. But if you do this--"
"If I do this, they will definitely send me home on a medical chit," Bucky spat out sourly. He'd noticed his own strange behavior since they'd gotten back, his inability to be social and easy with people and happy. Steve had certainly noticed it. The Intel people, which included head shrinkers, would notice it, too.
"You were always a little off in the head," Steve replied dismissively, waving aside his protest airily before sobering. "There's talk that they're going to let me put together a team for real, to do crazy things for the good guys with actual prior sanctioning and not this after-the-fact story we all ginned up so nobody looks like a fool for letting me run off and 'America's Hero' doesn't have to face a trial for desertion."
There was no way in hell Steve was gonna get rung up for even Failure to Repair once he came back with everyone, but asses had had to be covered and so Steve's crimes had been rewritten as orders.
"If you do this, if you go talk to them and get cleared, I can formally ask you to volunteer for it," Steve went on. "I don't know if you even want to fight anymore, let alone with me when I don't know what I'm doing, but... I think whatever I end up doing, I will end up doing it better if you're with me. Like we're supposed to be. So please, Buck, don't make them chase you down."
Bucky closed his eyes. "You are impossible, you know that?"
Because Steve had to know that there was no way in hell that Bucky was going to let him wander around warzones without someone he trusted to watch his back. And Bucky had historically trusted nobody but himself.
When he opened his eyes, Steve was grinning.
"I'll go with you if you want?" he offered, but Bucky shook his head.
"No," Bucky insisted forcefully, holding up his hand. "We've never really had secrets and I probably have even fewer from you than I think I do, but this, this is gonna be one of them. I don't want you or anyone else we might end up working with hearing what I am going to have to tell them."
Steve, because he was Steve, understood why and nodded once. "It won't change anything, Buck."
Bucky rolled his eyes. "Of course it will. I don't even remember half of what they did to me, but the parts I do remember, I don't want anyone to know about because it's all they'll see. It's what I'll become. And then I'm no use to you."
He debated lying to the Intelligence team about how much he remembered and how much he'd figured out and then debated it again when he saw Agent Carter slip in and take a seat on the side like she belonged there. But in the end, he told the truth as he remembered it, which might or might not have been of any use. He hadn't known at the time what Zola's goal had been -- information flow had been a one-way street -- and if he'd never have seen Steve and then Schmidt, he'd never have figured it out on his own.
"You people don't understand," he'd told them in a weary voice. "They treated us like bugs -- they could pull off our wings just because it was something to do, not because it had a real reason. They didn't need real reasons. They didn't give us any. And when we stopped being useful or started being more trouble than we were worth, they killed us."
They asked him why he hadn't been killed and he swallowed the rage that surged up at just the implication that he'd been helping Zola, that he'd made sure he was being useful for his own gain. "It wasn't for lack of trying," was what he did say. "I survived by chance."
When it was over, they thanked him for his time and he took the dismissal and left. It was bright and sunny out and he had to squint and get his bearings. Steve wasn't around today -- he'd had to go down to Salerno to shake some more hands -- and Bucky wasn't sure if he wanted to find a different friendly face or just be by himself for a while. His decision was made for him by Sowalchuk, hobbling toward him on crutches and his leg wrapped up like a mummy.
"Sarge!" Sowalchuk called, broad smile on his face. Bucky smiled back and hoped it looked legit. "You should come to lunch. It's a pen reunion. Except for the LT, he's been in officer country since we got in."
Bucky nodded and fell in to step with Sowalchuk, who was happy to carry on the conversation all by himself. He updated Bucky on who he'd seen and what he'd seen and seemed to think that Bucky had kept Steve's identity a secret on purpose.
Martin and Dalton were already on line and they took advantage of Sowalchuk's injured status and the fact that all of them were still wearing the scrap of cloth on their left arm that indicated that they were one of the POWs to cut in and join then. The food was typical Army chow, mostly unidentifiable, questionably edible, and served with indifference. But it was still better than what they'd been getting in captivity and what they'd been able to scrounge on the flight south, so they ate it with more enthusiasm than it merited.
Sowalchuk already had his departure date; he was going to be on the convoy heading down to Salerno on Monday, along with the rest of the lightly injured who hadn't already been evacuated. Dalton and Martin had heard that they would be leaving at the end of next week, maybe Thursday. Everyone was going home, at least for a while, although some were getting their discharge papers, at least the rumor mill said. They were surprised that Bucky hadn't heard anything yet, but he shrugged and told them that the spies had to finish with him first, which they understood for the obvious reasons and the ones they'd never speak of aloud to him. They were all so happy to go home after wondering if they ever would and Bucky felt genuinely glad for them -- they had families to return to. His was off trying to convince Eisenhower to let him run suicide missions with a bunch of misfits.
He ended up leaving before anyone, packing in to a transport truck with Morita, Jones, Dernier, Falsworth, and Dugan to join Steve down at Salerno so that they could all fly to London. Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter and some other types were in jeeps, but they -- the Howling Commandos, named by Dugan for a reason only he knew -- rode in the truck with the crates and the gear. And they were fine with it, especially after Dernier pulled out a couple of flasks of brandy he'd been given by the representative of the Free French who'd come as part of the celebrity tour. It was good, Bucky thought as they made their way south with with warm burn of the alcohol in his belly. He could work with these guys. He could live with them. He might very probably die with them, but that would be determined later.
Steve's guerrilla unit wasn't a done deal yet -- the OSS was still fighting over turf -- but they were going in anticipation of it getting worked out so that they could officially volunteer for it. Falsworth, who was apparently some kind of nobleman in England, promised them a good time whether or not this happened.
It happened.
