Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
LOCATION: Bavaria
DATE: March 11th 1944
Bucky’ll give HYDRA props for one thing: they sure have a sense of the dramatic. Neuschwanstein Castle is one hell of a step up from the refinery in Austria.
“Is that a Rodin?” Tim Dugan’s stage whisper echoes in the unfinished chamber they’re hauled into in chains. The statue in question is just one of nearly two dozen crates, boxes and canvases stacked against the wall. It’s a poorly kept secret that the Nazis have been using the castle to hide their stolen collection of art. Slightly more well-kept is the truth that below the floors packed with priceless loot is a far more sinister operation.
“I don’t think so?” Jim Morita is bleeding all over an expensive-looking rug. He’s tied off the bullet wound that’s scored a decent gouge out of his thigh, but the loss of blood leaves him pale and shaky. Bucky watches the red stain grow and knows they’re running out of time before he’s past the point of help.
None of them are doing great. Morita’s not the only one who has taken a bullet – Dugan’s ear is mangled, and Gabe Jones has a bloody shoulder to go along with what looks like a nasty concussion. He still looks better than James ‘Monty’ Falsworth, who is bleeding from both ears, and Jacques Dernier, who sports a vicious burn all up one arm. The explosion caught them all off guard. It caught Steve…
“Ask Rogers,” Bucky says. “He’s the art snob.” He stops watching his team bleed and focuses his attention on the HYDRA goons holding them all at gunpoint. They’re waiting for something. Or, more likely, someone. Bucky is almost certain he knows who.
They did come here on the trail of Arnim Zola, after all.
The cuffs around his wrists are too tight to slip, even if he dislocates both thumbs. He’s willing to give it a go anyway, but he’s pretty sure he broke something important when the explosion hit, and he can’t feel his fingers.
Two HYDRA goons step aside to confer with a scout who hurries into the chamber. Bucky’s German is damn near fluent now. They’re still looking for Steve. They think he might be dead. He did take the full impact of the blast. He fucking threw himself between them, shield raised and—
Dugan shifts on his knees, his shoulder bumping Bucky’s.
No. Steve’s fine. Yesterday, he jumped out of a plane without a fucking parachute. He’s fine.
One of HYDRA’s ranking officers, a man Bucky recognizes from Carter’s briefing as Claus Bauer, steps forward to address them. “The Howling Commandos. Your reputation precedes you. Welcome to Neuschwanstein Castle.”
Dugan spits a mouth full of blood at his feet in response. Bucky speaks up before anyone can retaliate. “Great hospitality you fellas got here.”
Bauer follows his gaze around the unfurnished room. “Ah, yes. You’ll have to forgive us. Construction and, indeed, furnishing of this fine palace was never quite finished. Few believe us when we tell them this. They see castle, they think comfort. We don’t even have plumbing on all the floors.”
“They don’t even have plumbing,” Dugan shakes his head in mockery.
Bauer ignores him. “You came here looking for HYDRA. Congratulations, you have found us. We had hoped to entertain Captain Rogers, but alas, it appears he unfortunately went, ah, how do you Americans say it? Kaboom?”
A week ago, Bucky garrotted a man to death with barbed wire from a fence. He has cuts in the palms of his hands, healing fast but still pink and tender. He imagines himself repeating the process with Bauer and allows himself a grim smile.
“So then… who to speak to?”
Monty clears his throat, blinking rapidly as he tries to focus. “Ah, that would be me.”
In any other unit, Monty would be in charge, not Steve. Falsworth is a lieutenant, a rank earned, not bestowed.
Those ranks mean very little to them. Steve did a handful of days in Basic before shooting up with Super Serum and literally throwing himself headfirst into the war. They’ve all got more experience than he does. But Steve is Captain America, and the world needs to see him in charge. It doesn’t matter that he seeks their thoughts and experiences with humility. It means nothing.
So yes, technically, Monty has the rank. He might be bleeding from his brain for all they know, but he has the rank.
But in reality, Steve only has one second in command, and everyone knows it.
“You’re wasting your time with them,” he says, ignoring the tension that tightens Dugan’s arm against his. He can feel their eyes on him, and guess what they’re all thinking. He knew most of them before Austria. Some better than others, but well enough. They see the change in ways even Steve can’t. Steve blames the whole war for how Bucky is now, but the rest of the Commandos know better. They saw him in the trenches. They know that this, the way he is, is HYDRA’s doing.
They’re not wrong. They’re not wrong and… and he knows what’s coming next. He’s been waiting for it ever since Steve saved him from the lab.
He swallows back the fear clawing at his throat. “Tell Zola. The only person he needs to speak to is me.”
LOCATION: London
DATE: October 19th 1943
Steve Rogers is too big to fit under the bed and have his panic attack in peace. The serum has fixed his body up good, but his brain is slow on the uptake.
His new and improved lungs merrily continue to inflate, his heart beats strongly in his chest, and far from combining to make him immune to the kinds of panic that often kicks in during an asthma attack, all that happens is he accidentally breaks a bunch of furniture as his body and mind wage war against ingrained habits, and he ends up flat on his face – or ass – while everything settles back down.
A polite rap on his dressing room door tells him he’s on stage in five minutes.
That’s swell. He’s fine. Absolutely fine. He just needs to remember how to breathe, how to stand, and where he put his shield.
“Everything okay in there, Captain?” The muffled voice of Quentin Kenworthy, the USO’s European tour manager, is as polite as it can be, given the circumstances. Tonight is their last night on friendly soil. Tomorrow, Steve and the girls are shipping out to Italy. By all accounts, it is a logistical nightmare.
Steve is still not sure how he feels about it. It’s certainly not how he imagined going to war.
There’s value in what he’s doing; he knows there is, but he has no idea how he’s going to face the real heroes of the war. Especially not now he can fight, but isn’t.
“Yes! Yeah!” Panic recedes quickly. His heart is so much more resilient now. The ache he can feel is only a phantom. “I’ll be right out.”
One more show. Then Italy. Then the war.
And maybe, if he’s lucky, word of the 107th. It’s been months since he heard from Bucky. He’s tried writing, but communication is slow and unreliable, and if his letters are making it through to their recipient, it’s not like Steve can put the SSR down as a return address. If Bucky writes back, he has no way of knowing.
He takes a breath and squares his shoulders. After years of only ever seeing the top of his head in most mirrors, he has to crouch a little now to make sure he’s presentable. The mirror is slightly askew on the wall. When he tries to straighten it, he manages not to knock the entire thing down. His strength, unlike his heart, is getting easier to control.
The door swings open with a minute left before curtain. He fixes on his best smile and tries not to show his nerves. Quentin, visibly relieved to see his star still functional,
“Let’s do this!”
LOCATION: REDACTED
DATE: REDACTED
“Fuck my head. Fuck the Italians and fuck my head.” Dugan compounds his migraine by awkwardly bouncing off someone’s elbow and colliding sideways into a metal pole. “Fuck!”
A strong hand hauls him up by the shoulder and holds him steady. That hand and the elbow he bumped into belong to the Sarge. If Dugan looks half as bad as Barnes, then it’s no wonder it feels like his brain is leaking outta his ears.
“Don’t think you can blame the Italians for this one, pal.” Barnes waits until Dugan manages to sit without wobbling before removing his hand. Even in the poor light, Dugan can see he’s got a couple of broken fingers, and his wrist is almost black with bruising.
Dugan stares at his own hands. There’s two sets of them until he blinks the world back into focus. All fingers are present and accounted for. He checks his legs next. The last thing he remembers is being down a foxhole with Barnes, someone hollering in his ear, and the blinding light of an explosion.
Yep. Both legs. He wiggles his toes to be sure.
“Fuck,” he says, struggling to find any other word to accurately convey how epically pissed he is with their situation. Oh, he’s happy to be alive, tap dancing over the moon on that front, but still, present conditions leave much to be—“Where are we?”
He, Barnes, and what looks – and smells – like half the 107th are crammed into the back of a truck. Most seem about as thrilled as Dugan is. Some are still unconscious.
There’s blood trickling from Barnes’s ear and down his neck. “My best guess? North. Ish.”
That’s helpful. There are not a huge number of places they can go other than the ‘north’. Not without getting wet feet, at least.
“How long we been in here?”
Barnes cocks his head and scans the bodies pressed tightly together in the van. “Day, maybe. Thought your lazy ass was dead.”
Dugan winces. “Just wishing it.”
On Barnes’s far side, Dugan spots the familiar face of the radio tec they’d been assigned before the fight. Jones? Another of the Sarge’s recruits. The 107th have taken a battering, first in Africa and now in Italy, and they’re past the point of giving a fuck about bureaucracy. Jones is a young African American kid, and Jim Morita, another of their new additions, is Asian American. Jones is about the only guy who can make the tin-can radio they got issued work, and Moritas has literally been holding fella’s guts together on the battlefield as one of the few trained medics not to be immediately picked off by enemy sharpshooters. The Brass can yell until they’re blue in the face about integrated units for all Dugan cares, he’s just relieved to see the kid in one piece.
“Don’t suppose you could call us a ride?” Dugan asks hopefully.
“Aliens blue up my radio,” Jones replies in a monotone. He doesn’t look too upset about the aliens part, but that might also be the head injury he’s sporting.
Barnes claps him on the knee, false cheer stretched across his unsaved face. “There’s gonna be a pigeon around somewhere here we can commandeer.”
“We sure it was aliens?” Morita pokes Jones in the arm until he can give him a concussion check.
“Shit was glowing.” Dugan remembers that much, at least.
“Nazi aliens,” Barnes shakes his head. “Sounds like a bad comic book.”
“Are aliens really our first guess? Turn your head. No, other way – other other way,” Morita angles Jones’s face from side to side, palms firm on his neck. “Want me to use smaller words?”
“Alright Doctor Bedside Manner,” Barnes cuts in before Jones can scowl at him and compound what is no doubt a brutal headache. “Go easy on the kid, yeah.”
“I’m twenty-six,” Jones grouses, which makes him an infant compared to Dugan and the same age as the Sarge. The complaint makes Barnes laugh, then wince, a hand curling protectively around his ribs.
It’s Dugan’s turn for some prodding. “Show me,” he demands.
“I’ll pass.”
Barnes is a stubborn little shit. It’s the first thing anyone learns about him. He also grew up working the docks and has a mouth on him that proves it. The long and creative string of curses he fires at Dugan end with a “motherfucker!” and his shirt hitched up under his armpits. Dugan gently presses against a violent bruise that stretches across his ribcage and winces.
Well, shit. There’s little chance Barnes doesn’t have a broken rib or three.
“Looks painful,” he says, aiming for sympathy and landing closer to smugness.
“When people fucking poke it, yeah, no fucking shit.”
“I’ll get to you in a second, Sarge,” Morita promises.
Barnes bats Dugan’s hand away and scowls at him. “No need. I got Florence fucking Nightingale on hand here.”
“You’re welcome,” Dugan says. He helps pull Barnes’s shirt down again and tries not to fuss. He’s been with the Sarge since Basic. He likes the kid, and he sure as shit respects him, and yeah, so he’s prone to hovering awkwardly when his people are hurt and he can’t fix the problem with a fist or a gun.
Some of the hostility in Barnes’s gaze softens at the gesture. He leans back as best he can and lays his head against the wall of the truck. With a tap of his boot against Dugan’s, he tags over the watch.
“Get some sleep, Jimmy,” Dugan suggests.
“Fuck off,” is Barnes’s response. He does, however, close his eyes. Dugan will take that as a win.
One look around them, and he knows what Barnes must’ve known from the start. Most of the men around them are kids, barely out of their teens. The rest are like Dugan. Career infantry. Low ranking.
There are no officers with them. Barnes is all they've got. No matter Dugan's feelings on the matter, they are, on paper at least, the Sarge's responsibility.
And knowing Barnes? It’s gonna land him in a whole world of trouble once they get where they’re going.