Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

They move as quietly as they can, slipping through thin stands of trees and haunting the edges of fields. Fall's well begun, the sky heavy and grey with a muffling carpet of rainclouds that drink up the smoke from skirmishes and huddled towns hoping to be passed by. The fields they pass are a mire of mud and the leavings of a hurried harvest, and no matter how careful their steps under the trees, their boots schlick and scrunch through thick carpets of dead leaves.

Taking point is a mixed blessing. Steve prefers it despite the danger, trusting to his enhanced hearing, though Bucky still has the sharper eyes. He'd rather leave Bucky free to move, dropping back or slipping quietly around the others, protecting them from all sides. They'll need to make camp soon enough. Somewhere above the clouds, the sun is already setting, but he knows Bucky's keeping an eye out for a likely place. Unlike Steve, who never did learn how to play a cautious game, Bucky has a knack for defensive positions and convenient bolt holes.

He sees Bucky ghosting up on his left from the corner of his eye, and he also sees Bucky's stride hitch, a sudden stillness arresting him in place. Steve jerks up a hand, and they all freeze as one. He looks to Bucky, but Bucky's not giving him that half-annoyed, half-embarrassed look that accompanies a false alarm. Bucky's staring across the field they're skirting, brows creasing in a tiny frown.

"Scarecrow," he says, tilting his chin in the same direction without shifting his hands on his rifle. Steve peers that way, narrowing his eyes against the gloom, but it takes a moment for the slumped outline to come clear against the trees at its back.

"Thank God," Dugan mutters, relieved and not ashamed to admit it. "Thought we were going to have to take our chances with the corbies."

"Yeah, now all we have to worry about is the Germans," Morita says with a laugh.

"Pipe down, you guys," Bucky says quietly. "We're not out of the woods yet."

The others groan at the pun, but Bucky barely musters a smile. Something's eating at him, but he doesn't suggest they do a quick fade, so it's probably nothing dangerous. If it were anything to do with the Hydra factory they're hunting for, Bucky would have said so already.

If it were corbies, Bucky would already be shooting, the need for silence be damned.

Dernier takes the lead as they strike out. They're not far over Maginot Line, the Belgian border and a line of German-occupied outposts at their backs. Since they began their search two days ago for a Hydra factory hidden somewhere in these parts, they've already come across the site of one battle and two empty crosses. This will be the first scarecrow they've found, and having a fellow Frenchman make their introductions can only help.

As they draw closer, it becomes obvious the shape sagging on the cross at the edge of the field is in uniform, but it's not an Allied uniform he's wearing.

"Damn," Falsworth says, his crisp enunciation more curt than usual. "So much for a friendly face."

They ready their weapons, scanning the empty fields that stretch between islands of rain-drenched woods. The ground's more flat than not, but they've learned what surprises can lurk behind the shallowest hills, and they take things nice and slow. A rutted dirt path leads away from the field, curving around to an old farmhouse that stands dark against the leaden sky. If it turns out to be empty, they'll probably use it themselves; they clearly won't be the first, considering what the Germans have left in the field.

They're less than a dozen feet away when the scarecrow lifts his head, eyes flicking dully from man to man. The scarecrow's left eye is cornflower blue, but the right is a reddish, muddy hazel. It fits the broad depression that's reshaped the side of his skull, the wound that would have killed him if he hadn't given his death to keep his fellows safe. He can't have been here for long; they're only ten days out from the last full moon, and his mousey hair hasn't yet gone brittle and dry. Through the poorly-buttoned collar of his uniform, the upper line of the incision they made to take his heart is visible, the edges of his parted flesh dried to a bruise-dark magenta. The earth at the base of his cross is still churned at his feet where they buried his heart beneath him, the grass not yet grown over.

Blinking hard like a man waking from a stupor, the scarecrow shifts on his cross, pulling against the ropes as he lifts his chin. His gaze sharpens above a scowl, the blankness of boredom or despair vanishing in the face of bravado.

"Gabe?" Steve asks and feels a presence move up on his right.

"I got it," Gabe says, stepping out from behind Steve and slinging his rifle over his back, approaching the scarecrow with empty hands. It doesn't look good--the scarecrow's mismatched glare isn't exactly brimming over with fellow-feeling--but the covenant between the watchers and those watched over is supposed to transcend borders.

"Hello," Gabe says in English before switching to German. He sounds fluent enough, speaking without pause for thought, but Steve's no kind of judge; the extent of his own knowledge begins and ends with 'thank you' and 'good morning'. "Was ist Ihr Name?"

The scarecrow purses his lips, saying nothing. Steve rolls his neck as the muscles across his shoulders begin to pull tight. He doesn't have to know the language to know the questions Gabe will be asking. Silence is not a positive sign.

"Werden Sie heute Nacht über uns wachen?" Gabe tries again, keeping his tone patient and respectful.

The scarecrow snorts. "Ich hoffe die Krähen reißen euch in Fetzen," he snarls, his voice dry and cracked. He must've been alone for days with no tithe but the rain to wet his throat...or else his makers want them to think that. They're in occupied territory, after all.

Gabe stiffens, glancing back at Steve uncertainly. "What?" Dugan asks before Steve can find his tongue. "What'd he say?"

"I asked if he'd stand the watch tonight," Gabe says with a helpless shrug. "He said he hoped the corbies got us."

Morita and Dugan curse softly; Falsworth looks sad but unsurprised. "What about the covenant?" Bucky asks tightly, jerking his chin at the scarecrow. "Ask him about that."

"Und was ist mit dem Abkommen?" Gabe asks gamely, spreading his empty hands wider.

"Zur Hölle mit dem Abkommen!" the scarecrow says, his pale face stiff with pride. "Ich wurde hier nicht aufgehängt, um den Feind zu beschützen!"

Steve can guess what the answer is, but he asks anyway. "Well?"

Gabe shakes his head. "He says he wasn't hung here to watch over the enemy."

"Damn it," Dugan says, shifting impatiently on his feet. "We can't leave him here, Cap. Forget standing the watch; he's likely to draw a patrol down on us if he gets his way--or the corbies themselves, for spite."

"He can't do that, can he?" Morita asks, eyes darting from face to face. "Call the corbies down on us? I thought scarecrows just drove them away." Like Steve and Bucky, he's a city boy; what the three of them know of scarecrows comes from listening to the priests and the stories they've heard from the cradle.

"He doesn't need any special powers for that," Dugan says, eyeing the scarecrow warily. "He just needs to make enough noise." Glancing at the overcast sky, he heaves a sigh. "Listen, night's coming on fast. Fire would draw too much attention, but we can dig up his heart while there's still light."

"Dig up--dig up his heart?" Steve demands. He can feel the tips of his ears heat in mortification, knowing he sounds like the worst sort of rookie officer, but he can't swallow his instinctive horror in time to censor himself. The scarecrow is a sitting duck, not just tied but bound to his cross from the three nights he hung under the moon. His protective magics won't even work on them; his only defenses are meant for the corbies.

"I don't think we've got a choice," Bucky steps in calmly. "I don't blame him for his, either. If I could keep helping our boys even after I died, I'm pretty sure I'd take that deal. And he would've known the score before they ever strung him up."

I wouldn't have known, Steve nearly protests, but--those two empty crosses found in fields plowed by tank treads and mortar fire. Whether the dead men who'd hung there had been German or Allied, they're both gone now.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. "All right," he says. "How do we do this?"

Bucky claps him on the arm with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "Me and Dum Dum've got it. Think you and the others can check out that farmhouse? If we're going to be out here without backup or a blessing, that place needs to be buttoned up tight."

Steve sets his jaw, knowing damn well that he's being shuffled off to spare his feelings. "I need to know how this works."

"Nothing to it, Cap," Dugan says lightly, closing ranks with Bucky to block the scarecrow from his sight. "You just dig a little hole and hope they didn't use too strong of a box. One chop, and it's over."

A cold shiver ripples down Steve's spine at the reminder, that somewhere beneath the dirt, the dead man's heart is still beating.

"Go on, Steve," Bucky says, firm but kind. "We need a safe camp more than you need to see this. It's getting pretty dark."

"I'll take the next one," Steve warns, though he makes sure to say it like a promise. He's not going to let Bucky fight him on this; if there's something difficult that needs to be done, he means to pull his own weight.

Bucky nods once and turns his back to Dugan so Dugan can dig an entrenchment tool from Bucky's pack. Steve gathers up the rest of the Commandos with a look.

As soon as the scarecrow sees the shovel, he begins to laugh. "Schlaft schön," he says in a brittle, mocking tone, splaying the fingers of one hand in a trapped wave.

Steve glances at Gabe, but Gabe shakes his head. It was probably just an insult anyway.

The farmhouse is not only empty, it's recently been stripped of anything useful. Whatever furniture had been left behind by the owners has been broken up for firewood, and the pantry is empty of everything but cobwebs. The one small mercy is that all of the windows have been boarded over from the inside and half the doors have been nailed shut. Anything trying to get at them will find it hard to do without waking the whole house.

With the power off, it should have made for a cold, dark evening, but Dernier and Morita take a sturdy closet door off its hinges and hack it to kindling. Gabe gets a tiny blaze started in the fireplace, enough to brew coffee over, while Falsworth makes another round of the windows, muttering prayers under his breath.

The thump of two pairs of boots, one heavy, one near-silent, rattle hollowly on the porch that wraps around the house. Nerves strung tight, they all tense as the front door is pushed open, but it's only Bucky and Dugan, Dugan in the lead. Dugan has dirt caked black under his nails, mud clinging to the cuffs of his coat; Bucky's face is the still, cold mask he wears when picking off enemy sentries. Maybe he's not supposed to be able to guess which one of them finished the job, but one look at Bucky's eyes, and he knows.

He ignores it; it's all he can do. Nodding at the fireplace as Dugan stomps in, he asks, "How do we look from out--"

The snatch of raucous laughter that echoes from the trees has them scrambling for defensive positions, weapons drawn. Dugan pivots on his heel to press his back to the wall just inside the door, peering out into the gloom with his sidearm at the ready, but Bucky spins in place, rifle lifted to his shoulder. He fires in nearly the same move, holding position as Steve charges past him, unslinging the shield from his back.

Steve hesitates when his feet hit grass, straining his eyes and ears for the slightest hint of movement. It's grown dark enough already that the fields are bleeding into the trees, the trees a striped wall of shadows against the lowering clouds. He doesn't hear or see a thing.

"Buck?"

"Not sure. I saw something drop, but that doesn't mean I got it, and this isn't a great time to go get a confirmation."

Steve nods. Corbies travel in flocks anyway; finding a lone one is almost unheard of. "Everybody inside. See what you can find to keep that fire going. We won't have to worry about human patrols tonight, and if the corbies already know we're here, keeping dark isn't going to help any."

Bucky holds position until Steve climbs back on the porch, but he doesn't argue when Steve jerks his head towards the door, urging him to go in first. Steve's never actually told Bucky how grateful he is that Bucky's so willing to follow his lead. They could have done nothing but argue, but instead Bucky picks his battles, saving his stubbornness for suicidal odds and ritual desecrations.

They bar the door, pull the empty shelves out of the pantry and break those down as well. Everyone's on edge, but they settle down to cold rations as if it's any other night, sitting in a loose circle with their weapons ready to hand. The old house creaks around them, shaken by every gust of wind, and it's hard not to imagine each tiny noise as a stealthy footstep on the roof or something slinking under the boarded-up windows.

On Steve's right Bucky goes through the familiar motions of cleaning his rifle, hands methodical, mind a million miles away judging from the thoughtful blankness of his stare. It takes a sharp eye to spot a corbie in hiding. The guys call him their crowcatcher, just not where anyone else can hear. Some jokes are too morbid even for wartime.

"One of us should start carrying a knife," Bucky says out of the blue, head still bowed. The set of his jaw is mulish.

"Well," Dernier says with a nervous laugh, reaching for his boot, "if you're not feeling particular--"

Bucky waves him off without looking. "Not that kind of knife. You know what I mean."

They do. Steve clears his throat. "I dunno, Buck. We move around an awful lot."

Bucky snorts. "So did the last patrol to come through here, and they still bought themselves at least a night with that lucky bastard out there. Look, what if tonight had been the night before a full moon, and I'd gotten my noggin crunched like that kid did his? Without a runed knife, I'd be nothing but deadweight."

"I dunno, Barnes," Morita says, rubbing at his nose with a grimace. "I don't know that I could cut out your heart even if I had to. Hell, I don't know how anyone does it, even if the scarecrows do volunteer."

Steve swallows hard, his laced fingers going white at the knuckles.

"You could do it," Bucky insists. "If it was all of you or someone who was going to die anyway, you could do it. In fact, I'm giving you permission to, all right? Don't do anything stupid and sentimental. If you ever need my help, you take it," he says, grimly determined, "whether I can tell you that at the time or not. I ain't ever gonna revoke that promise."

Steve nods, biting back the words he wants to say, the arguments he wants to make. But you'd be stuck there. Anything could happen to you. I wouldn't be able to take you home. Bucky knows all that, and he's still willing.

"Same goes for me," Gabe says, meeting each of their eyes in turn. "Just like he said. You need that kind of help from me, you don't have to ask me twice."

Dugan nods sharply, sitting back on one hand and pushing up the brim of his hat. "I'm in. Same terms."

"Same terms," Morita echoes with a tiny smile, Dernier nodding emphatically on his left.

"Same."

"For me as well," Falsworth says, holding Bucky's eyes in particular. "I was taught the runes, by the way. My mother hoped I'd follow her into the priesthood rather than join the military. I can make a dagger, or I can show--show someone how it's made."

Bucky huffs a near-silent laugh at Falsworth's tact. Of course it'll be Bucky; he always takes the worst things on himself. Steve wants so badly to offer in his place, but he's the least likely of them to die, and something about that makes the very thought horrible. Like he'd be sacrificing them instead of making good on the sacrifice they're prepared to give.

"I'd appreciate--" Bucky starts to say as Steve blurts in a rush: "Me too."

Everyone stills. Bucky looks faintly sick.

"Me too," he repeats. "However it happens, if it happens, don't hold back just because some folks gave me a fancy nickname. Just do whatever you have to do to make sure you make it home."

This is another thing he's grateful for: that they only nod, even Bucky, taking him at his word.

"Well," Dugan says wryly, "now that we've covered that depressing subject...who's up for a hand of cards?"

Bucky knows what he said, that he wasn't sure whether he'd hit the corbie he'd maybe seen when he squeezed off that shot, but that's not all he knows. The glimmer of dark eyes, the faint gleam of spit on sharp teeth: they'd jumped out at him through the gloom, the way they always did, details that etched themselves into his brain, past ignoring. He'd seen, and then he'd shot. He'd watched the gallows bird fall. Then he'd played it off.

He's so damn grateful for the Commandos, for Steve who doesn't know how to be creeped out by this thing the war's brought out in him. Bucky's never had reason to wonder whether he'd be any good with a gun before this, but some days he feels like he can't miss even if he tries.

The boys of the 107th used to cluster around him like their own personal scarecrow come nightfall, but Dugan gives him holy hell if he tries to take on too many of the watches himself. It's...nice. Dumb and dangerous, but nice.

They don't find a body when they leave the old farmhouse the next morning, but there's a track where the wet leaves under the trees stick up in a long line, like a cat's fur combed backwards. They could follow those drag marks right to an ambush at the end, but they're supposed to be hunting squid, not crows. They leave the corbies alone, hoping to be left alone in turn, and head out while dawn's still painting the leftover clouds in brilliant reds and golds.

It's noon when they finally unearth the Hydra factory they've been sent to find, midafternoon when they stagger back out again, leaving a trail of explosions behind them. They're forty miles from the Maginot Line, but when they radio for extraction, Howard just comes and gets them, joking and laughing like he's got nothing better to do with his time. He ribs Dernier--in perfect French--for making him pay his laundress extra to get the smell of smoke out of his clothes, and Dernier protests he only blew the place up a little. There's no prisoners to extract this time, a fact that weighs heavy on them all.

They leave four scarecrows behind, still standing their watches. They'd been locals before Hydra moved in. They'll abide by the covenant.

A long flight's a good time for a talk, and Falsworth doesn't argue when Bucky pulls him over for a conference. Steve lets him borrow his notebook and the stub of a pencil, dances back and forth between hovering to listen and casting hangdog looks at their bent heads from halfway across the plane, dragged away again and again by their friends. Howard watches them all without saying a word. Now there's a man who knows how to keep a secret.

Howard doesn't look surprised to see him when Bucky lets himself into the workshop that night.

"Sergeant Barnes," Howard says with a quick smile that cracks the watchful mask he seems to be going for. "What can I do for America's finest?"

"Think you've got me confused with someone else," Bucky says with a quiet snort. "Taller, wears a lot of blue."

Howard's eyes flick pointedly down to Bucky's coat. Bucky laughs softly, ducking his head.

"Definitely taller," he amends, though he's no pipsqueak himself. Not like Steve used to be.

"Now you're just making short jokes," Howard accuses with a sniff. "I expected better of you, Sarge. So? Pull up a chair," he invites, gesturing at his cluttered workbench. "You can watch me build a better mousetrap. Unless this isn't a social call." It sort of kills Bucky that Howard thinks his tinkering is social, sort of embarrasses him that he's here to ask a favor, not hang around and shoot the breeze. He nearly squirms as Howard's sharp eyes flick over him, searching automatically for vulnerabilities, if only to shore them up. "So, what'll it be? Body armor? A new gun? I could modify that rifle of yours--"

"You already did," Bucky reminds him with a half-smile. "Have I thanked you for that recently?"

Howard grins, sidelong and sly. "You can always thank me again."

Bucky rolls his eyes, careful to ham it up a little. He wonders sometimes about Stark, but it's not the sort of thing you can just ask a fella. Bucky probably wouldn't be very good company anyway; he's a little too hung up on this other guy he knows. Tall, wears a lot of blue. "Thanks, Howie."

"I hate it when you call me that."

"I know," Bucky says, dancing back with a chuckle as Howard aims a swat at his shoulder. Howard huffs at him and folds his arms, but he leans his hip into his worktable and arches a brow, waiting for Bucky to come out with it. "Actually, uh...I was hoping you'd have something that could etch carbon steel," he admits, hunching a shoulder as he slips his hands into his pockets.

Howard's eyes narrow. "It's for a knife, isn't it?" His expression doesn't ease when Bucky nods. "Barnes. Tell me you didn't volunteer."

"It's not like that," Bucky protests. "It's just--if anything happens--"

"Look, I know what they call you," Howard says, the smile long gone from his face. "If they've got you buying into it--"

"I'm not--"

"I'm just saying it's a bad idea to have the knife just sitting around if you've already given them ideas."

"It ain't like that," Bucky insists stubbornly, chin jutting out. "But I'll stand up for them if I have to. We all said we would."

Howard glares for a long moment before looking away, irritably blowing a stray lock of hair from his brow. "Right," he grumbles at last. "And God help anyone who tries to keep you idiots from playing hero. I don't even know why you're worried," he adds, ignoring the fact that Bucky hasn't claimed to be any such thing. "I'm the one who's going to get a call from Rogers asking me to fly you and your heart back to Brooklyn after they string you up."

Bucky laughs. He knows he shouldn't--the betrayed look Howard gives him is proof of that--but Steve would do it, and Howard's just crazy enough to go along.

After a moment, Howard snorts as well, unfolding his arms and pushing away from the worktable as he goes to rummage through his shelves. "Well. I've got hydrochloric acid and ferric chloride, take your pick. Ever done any metalwork before?"

"Figured I could ask around."

Howard shakes his head. "I'll talk you through it. You're a complete sonofabitch, by the way; you know that, right?"

"Yeah," Bucky says to Howard's back with a tiny, grateful smile. "I know."

Howard nods. He doesn't turn around. "Just so we're clear."

Steve knows better, but he halfway hopes Bucky will drop the knife idea when they return to base. He knows the others won't bring it up again, and he tells himself it's not a bad sign when Bucky ducks out after their debriefing and doesn't stick around for a victory drink. It doesn't have to be anything ominous; Bucky hasn't been all that keen on drinking since Steve got him back from Hydra, vanishes sometimes when he used to revel in a crowd.

He doesn't see Bucky for the rest of that night, which shouldn't be unusual, except that it is. They've got Steve socked away in officers' quarters, and in theory Bucky's supposed to be bunking with the rest of the Commandos, but they're so often up planning late into the night, it's usually easier if Bucky just stays. Their arrangement is just like old times in every way: Steve never sleeps well when Bucky's gone.

He's stretching his legs to get to the mess hall, hoping to spot Bucky before someone comes up with another round of questions for them, when Bucky comes jogging up out of nowhere. He's almost too rumpled to pass muster, still in yesterday's uniform, with bruised circles under his eyes that suggest a total lack of sleep. Steve can't smell any alcohol on him, but he reeks of strange chemicals and Howard Stark's cologne.

Steve tries not to read too much into that--he'd been right there when Stark tried asking Peggy out--but Stark wouldn't be the first man to find Bucky just as stunning as Peggy in his own way. He knows Bucky goes with guys sometimes, though he pretends not to notice. Bucky's always careful not to bring trouble home, but Howard is exactly Bucky's type: compact and elegant, as beautiful as the dames Bucky can actually show off, all attitude.

He pushes the jealousy from his mind as Bucky greets him with a grin, exhausted but pleased. "Hey, Rogers. Got a sec?" he asks, still using that strange mix of familiarity and reserve he defaults to constantly, even in private, since that night at the bar when Steve asked him to stay. Steve will admit to a few private fantasies of showing off his rank to make Bucky proud--he's only human--but the reality leaves him nostalgic for the days when he was only ever Steve.

"Sure, Buck," he says, stepping into the alley beside the motor pool so they're out of the way. "What is it?"

"Got this done last night," Bucky says, pulling a sheathed trench knife from the inside pocket of his jacket, sliding the blade free and turning it a little so the metal flashes in the early morning sun. Steve is going to kill Howard, damn it. "I already sealed most of the runes--"

"Whose blood?" If he's already asked all the others, maybe Steve can tell himself Bucky's saved the best for last.

"Mine, who else? All except this one," Bucky says before Steve can finish taking a steadying breath, the better to explain in small words that it doesn't always have to be him. Bucky taps the base of the blade, right where it joins the hilt. Steve has seen rune blades before, both fancy and crude, but the runes marching down the blued steel of the M3 have a precision that's pure Bucky. As the knife itself was shaped to purpose, so are the binding marks that make it more than just a blade. "I, uh...I thought you might...I was hoping you'd seal the final rune yourself."

Steve opens his mouth, but his voice deserts him. Swallowing hard, he tries again. "What do I have to do?"

Bucky grins, swift and relieved. "Uh, nothing much. I mean, it's just blood."

Steve's pretty sure it's not just anything, but he nods and holds out his left arm, then flushes as he tries to substitute his right in a hurry, just in case.

Bucky just laughs. "Nah, c'mon. Give me the other. Always go with your instincts with magic, right?"

"Yeah, but you keep telling me I don't have the sense God gave a turnip."

"And maybe a turnip is exactly what we'll need," Bucky fires back, smirking. "Now, give."

Folding two fingers over to hold onto the sheath, Bucky takes Steve's hand, facing his palm up. Steve's ready for anything, but Bucky nails him with a here-comes-trouble grin and sets the point of his knife to the pad of Steve's ring finger, saying, "Now I know how you feel about 'til death do us part--"

"Bucky!"

"--but here's proof that it doesn't have to be that way. All for one and one for all, with this blade I thee something."

"God, Buck," Steve groans. "Do it properly, will you? Whatever it is."

Bucky drops his eyes with a quiet laugh, one corner of his mouth turning up hard. "It's just blood," he says again, turning Steve's hand back over and pressing the already-healing cut to the final rune, then swiftly dips his head. "Terminus," he murmurs, kissing the back of Steve's finger, lips warm against Steve's knuckle. "Our boundary and limit. Hold fast so that we may hold, your borders our center." He straightens quickly and takes a tiny step back, but he doesn't let go, his lopsided smile still in place. "'Til the end of the line, pal."

"Thanks for the translation," Steve manages thickly, which coaxes Bucky into a full-fledged grin.

When Bucky lets him pull his hand away, the cut's already healed.

He gets used to the weight of the knife, negligible in his hand but heavy as stone in his thoughts. He carries it strapped across his chest for easy access, not wanting anyone to--not wanting to have to search for it if the worst ever happens. Steve never looks at it directly, but he never stops looking, a hundred darting glances flicking Bucky every day, each more uncertain than the last. Bucky gets it, but he wishes Steve wouldn't do it. Someone's going to get the wrong idea, no matter how many pictures of his girl he carries in the lid of his compass.

Bucky makes sure the cameramen who follow them around pay close attention to that little tidbit, just in case. It makes a great story for the folks back home, the kind girls coo over and bother their sweethearts with. It certainly can't hurt. It's a good reminder, too, for when he needs the reminder, though he's been able to see which way the wind blows since the moment Carter walked into that bar.

They chase Hydra across Europe, blowing up factories where they can and freeing any prisoners they find. Most raids no one even takes a scratch, though that could be down to Steve rushing in every chance he gets. Bucky makes a mental note each time to thank Howard for that stupid shield. He needs to thank Howard a lot.

They're on the move constantly, and while it's not an easy life by any means, it's miles better than being an average grunt. The food's not great, but there's always plenty, and he spends more time trying out new gear for Howard than fixing what breaks. They might get dropped into the worst of the fighting, but they also get fished right back out again. The brass don't just want a sniper, a demolitions expert, a translator on the job; they want Barnes and Dernier and Jones. Sometimes it seems like they live a charmed life, and the knife on his chest feels lighter by the day.

Then he goes to climb a mountain, and it all comes rushing back.

The crunch of their boots through the snow sets his teeth on edge from the first, and it's all he can do to keep from hissing at them to stop moving. He keeps his eyes roving over the peaks and tree line, but there's nothing: no movement, no shadow out of place, no shine of hungry eyes. He can't see them, but he knows they're there, somewhere close.

"Barnes?" Morita asks quietly.

Bucky's hand twitches on his rifle, but he doesn't wave Jim silent. There's no point. They haven't been talking, and they can't move any quieter than this. If they're spotted, they're spotted. His main concern is that they're going to have to split up once they reach the summit, half their number leaving to intercept Zola's train, and none of them are as good a shot as he is. He ought to stay to protect whoever's left behind, but that's exactly why he should be one of the ones going in with Steve.

"We've got company, but they're not hunting us yet," he says in a soft undertone that barely carries to Gabe in the back. Steve's head whips around, but he doesn't ask any questions. He doesn't ask how Bucky knows.

That's convenient, because Bucky doesn't know himself. It's been a while since he's faced off against a corbie; they've been moving too fast, and war's made the bastards lazy. There's hardly any need to hunt when every skirmish leaves dead or dying men scattered, free meat for the taking. Maybe it's just that Bucky's forgotten how it feels, the near-painful tingle at the back of his neck, the cramping weightlessness in the pit of his stomach. He's tempted to pass it off as nerves, but trying to shove the awareness away makes his skin pull tight with gooseflesh.

Steve looks at each of them in turn and sets his jaw at what he sees. "We can't abort now," he says, no more than what they're already thinking. "Just be on your guard."

They don't talk until they reach the intercept point, and then it's only to exchange a few last instructions. Bucky catches Dugan's eye and gets a firm nod in turn, the others following suit. They all know how important this is.

He thinks briefly about leaving them the knife, but they're nowhere near a full moon. One more blade isn't going to make much difference if they're ambushed, no matter how it's decorated.

When he steps up to the zip line, Steve opens his mouth to protest, but he shuts it again at the last second. Between the six of them, they've made a pretty decent officer of him; Bucky reminds himself to tell Steve that when this is over, just in case it wasn't clear.

They make it onto the train without any trouble, though he's never going to give Steve any grief about throwing up on the Cyclone ever again. Sliding down a cable with the weight of two other guys bouncing the line and no support but the tight grip of his own hands isn't something he ever wants to repeat again in his life. They leave Gabe standing guard on top of the train, feeling like they lucked out when they slip into a car that turns out to be empty. There are crates of supplies stacked up against the walls, lit by the eerie blue glow all of Hydra's special toys carry with them, but they can examine the contents later. Right now only finding Zola matters.

The instant the dividing door slams shut between him and Steve, Bucky knows they're in trouble. There's no time to pry it back open; he has to spin around fast to take on the three soldiers rushing in from the next car back. The first one goes down fast, but his rifle's best used to buy him breathing room; there's no time to reload in the cramped space of the train car, so he pulls his sidearm instead.

Another soldier goes down, leaving one. Bucky doesn't know what Steve's up against, but he can hear it, the thump of discharged energy rumbling through a thick metal door and over the rattle of the train. Fear makes him sloppy--he needs to get in there--and he runs out of ammo before he realizes. It occurs to him suddenly that he might not be getting out of this one, but he's not down yet. He's got a knife in his boot and another strapped to his chest if he can just get the first hit in.

When the door comes open at his back, he almost can't believe it, but it's Steve, and he's got a spare gun, and they just might make it after all.

He keeps thinking that until a soldier in a crazy metal suit blasts Steve with a shot that sends him sprawling, tearing the shield out of his hands as he crashes hard against the wall. The energy blast the shield deflected blows out the side of the car, just peels the metal back like a sardine can. He can hear Zola yelling, "Fire again!" over the intercom. "Kill him! Now!" He's pretty sure the little bastard isn't talking about him.

He goes for the shield because it did something right just now, but he trusts to his guns. He fires off one shot, two, moving up to stand between Steve and the crazy in the suit, braced against the shot he knows is coming. He has time to think, Thank God, when he sees the idiot is aiming for the shield, not somewhere sensible like his knees, and then he's hurtling through the air, feeling like he's just been hit by a tank.

He drops the shield, hits the buckled side of the car and feels the metal give under his weight, the wind snatching at him as he's pulled out of the train entirely. Grabbing wildly for a handhold, he snags a loose railing already bent by the blast that took out the wall, feeling it sag ominously as he clings for dear life. Steve's coming. He knows it. He just needs to hang on.

"Bucky!"

Just a little bit longer.

"Hang on!" Steve yells, easing out of the car and frantically making his way closer. "Grab my hand!"

He tries. He does.

And then he falls.

Steve can't breathe. He can't even force himself to go back inside the train, not at first, even though there's nothing to see. Bucky's...somewhere behind him, lost in the mountains, and he's....

He can't be gone. He can't. Of all the ways Steve's feared to lose him, he can't have lost Bucky like this.

He finds himself thinking of that knife, that fucking knife, which he'd hated and feared and agonized over, only to have it prove utterly useless. He'd have given his own heart to keep Bucky safe, but now he's never going to have that chance.

He crawls back inside because he has nowhere else to go. He has a job to finish, men waiting on his return. He can't stop just because it suddenly feels too hard to continue.

Steve can't breathe. It's just like old times.

It's just like how things used to be before he had Bucky.

He wakes to cold, inside and out, to a shiver that's more than a shiver caressing his spine. He's on his back, staring up at the pale grey clouds, the steep walls of a canyon closing in on him. There's a river off to his right, and he's thirsty, but he knows he won't be going down there for a drink anytime soon.

He hurts. His back, his legs, everywhere. His left arm is a solid pulse of agony, and he can't feel his fingers.

He feels what's coming. That's not something he can block out.

Five tall shapes melt silently out of the slowly falling snow, dressed in fur-lined parkas. The coats hang a bit on the two females, meant for broader shoulders, but there's no mistaking the three males for soldiers. One pair look twice as old as the others, the matriarch and patriarch of the little family unit. Their teeth are blunter, worn down over the years, but their grins are twice as sharp.

He's never seen a murder of crows so close or so clear, not while they're still alive, and it makes his skin crawl to see them acting so human. They nearly look the part, with very little to give them away: the porcelain fineness of their pale skins, their teeth, the sharpness of their long nails. Their hair is long, even the men's. On three it's black as pitch, but their father's hair is platinum, and the older son is blond. They pass so effortlessly, it's easy to see how they fool so many travelers, how they creep in unnoticed when there's no one to bar the way.

"Well, well," the matriarch croons in a low, whiskey voice. "Compliments to the Swiss. It's not often dinner falls into our laps."

"They are a polite people," her daughter agrees in slightly more accented English. She's eerily beautiful, with a heart-shaped face and wide, almond eyes, and she gives Bucky the sweetest smile he's seen since he shipped out.

He can't work his left hand, so he scrabbles at his chest with his right, blinking back tears of pain. The leather-wrapped hilt of the runed knife is a comfort as he closes his fingers around it, even if it's ultimately worthless. He's never going to hold off five corbies in his condition, but at least he won't feel like he went without a fight.

The patriarch laughs. "What's this? Going to cut out your own heart, boy?"

"I'd pay to see that," the younger boy says with a short bark of amusement. "Can we keep him and see if he'll do it?"

"Ruins the flavor," his mother says with a snort, thumping the side of his head with the stiffened tips of her fingers, mindful of her nails. "Now be a good lad and skin this coney, would you? These military beasts are tough enough without freezing them first."

As the three younger corbies start forward, Bucky grips the knife harder, determined to buy his life with at least one of theirs. The older son's eyes are fixed on his blade, but just as the corbie gathers himself to rush in, a shot rings out from the trees. The corbies jump back, grating sounds of irritation scraping in their throats, but a volley of gunfire sends them running. Bucky stares after them, adrenaline flooding out of him so fast it leaves him lightheaded. How did the others find him so quickly?

Dark shapes in heavy coats sprint up to him, but he doesn't realize he doesn't know them until someone grabs his left shoulder roughly. He screams and tries to slash out with the knife, but his wrist is captured in hard hands that pry his fingers open. There's shouting, but he can't make out a single word past the ringing in his ears.

A swarthy man with a fancy insignia on his cap gets right in his face, leaning down to show him the knife. "Yours?" the man demands, smacking Bucky's cheek with his free hand when he doesn't answer. "Yours?"

He'd like to know who else it's going to belong to considering he's out here all alone, but all he can manage is a nod.

His questioner looks up at the others and jerks his head.

Bucky's out as soon as they try to lift him, drifting back only in nightmare flashes to see things he can't bring himself to think about.

He may have escaped the corbies, but he doesn't think he's among friends.

His captors speak amongst themselves in Russian, but they question him in English. They're not interested in his name, rank or serial number, but they ask him endless questions about the knife.

"This is yours?"

"Did you make it?"

"Where did you learn the runes?"

"Did anyone help you?"

They ask him over and over, keeping him awake for days and jostling his broken body. They add new wounds when they're not satisfied with how quickly he answers, when they think there might be some hint of evasion.

"Whose blood did you use?"

"Did you perform the consecration ritual fully?"

"Has it ever been used?"

He tries not to tell them anything at first, but slowly the answers come. Yes, yes, a friend, no, mine, yes, no. Yes, yes I told you, a f-f-Falsworth, no goddamn it, who else's, yes, no.

Fuck you, I told you that, it's mine, I did it, just leave me the hell alone.

He knows he's lying. What he doesn't know is if they know he's lying. But there's the terminus: the boundary he swore to uphold between what he's willing to give and what he'll die to keep. He keeps Steve's name locked tightly inside, tells himself it's a tiny matter that doesn't change anything. It's just blood, and enough of Steve's has sunk into his skin over years of Bucky patching him up that there's really no difference between them.

"This is yours?"

He nods, past speaking. He's amazed he's lived this long, but if they kill him with Steve's name unvoiced, he's won. He just doesn't know what he's winning by it in the first place.

They trade glances over his head. "Patch him up," one says, turning away and taking the knife with him.

When the doctors converge on him, he finds enough strength to scream after all.

He'd thought his days of being strapped down to an operating table were done, but life has a funny way of surprising you. The doctors stitch up his newer wounds and examine the mostly-healed ones from before, splint his bones and re-break a few so they heal straight. They take what feels like a gallon of his blood, but they don't top him up with anything new, not like Zola had. Mostly they seem content to observe and record the changes as he heals.

He heals too fast, and he's past being able to pretend differently.

The doctors rarely talk to him in any language, but there comes a day when he knows he's as healed as he's ever going to get. The stump of his left arm still aches at odd times, but the last of the stitches came out days ago, and the scar tissue is already fading from bright reddish-pink to normal skin tones. He thinks he could walk on his own if someone were to let him up, despite how long it's been since he's stood. He also thinks it's not likely he'll get that opportunity.

When the scientists finally arrive, he's drifting a little, not sleeping but lost in a fugue of non-thought. He knows no one's coming for him. Even if Steve bullies command into sending someone for his body, not finding one won't raise any uproar. There are too many corbies eating far too well these days to raise a hue and cry over one missing corpse. He thinks wistfully of that missing body sometimes; whatever his captors have in store for him, part of him would much rather not be here for it.

So, no different from last time, really.

A voice from the doorway startles him back to himself, and he blinks rapidly, stupidly surprised to still find himself in the operating room that's been repurposed as his cell. There's never any heat, and all the white he's surrounded with--the harsh, glaring lights; the cool tiles of the walls and floor; the doctors' immaculate coats--makes the place seem colder still. He tries not to shiver as two men enter the room, not wanting to look afraid. Defiance makes them try harder, but fear slows them down, lets them know they've got all the time in the world to finish breaking him.

"So this is Zola's pet project." The first man through the door is tall and lean, moves like someone familiar with a rifle despite his lab coat and tie. He's seen the type hanging around the London base a time or two: SSR agents, impossible to pigeonhole at first glance when they're not actively trying to play a part. He has the same accent as Schmidt or might be aping it on purpose. Bucky doesn't ask what their supposed Russian allies are doing with a German spy. He hasn't figured the people here for allies from the beginning. "You've had opportunity to collect whatever samples you need?"

"Of his current state, yes," says the doctor who joins him. He's an older man with a neat, greying beard, used to rapping out orders like a general, but he addresses the spy with a wary reserve. "We've been waiting for approval to move on to trials of our own serum."

The spy snorts. "When your subject is already contaminated? You know the standing orders on this one. But by all means, feel free to test to your heart's content once I'm done; I'd be interested to see if it has any effect."

"And what good do you think a corpse will do us?" the doctor scoffs.

"That is the question, isn't it?"

The doctor purses his lips, chin jerking up as disdain melts caution. "You think you can recreate an accident because you've read a few myths?"

"Mythology has treated us very well," the spy says, spreading his hands with a self-satisfied smile. "Consider the tesseract, for example."

"Indeed--but you are not Johann Schmidt," the doctor replies coldly. "Or even Zola, though I agree his methods were lacking. You're a thug with a knife, and you're going to lose us an irreplaceable asset if you persist in this foolishness."

The spy retains his smile, but his eyes go flat and dead. "I'll convey your concerns to the appropriate parties, shall I? In the meantime, we're wasting precious daylight. Get him ready. My men are already setting up outside."

The spy stalks out without looking back, leaving the doctor to glare after him with a bitter twist to his mouth. When a pair of burly orderlies edge into the room, he takes a deep breath and blows it out shortly.

Things get hazy after that.

They come at him with a round of injections he can't even struggle against, one that makes him woozy and another that burns like fire. The third cuts the strings to his limbs, and he's left lolling like a drunken doll when they finally undo the straps that hold him down. Fighting is beyond him; he's reduced to pathetic twitches of a hand and two feet that feel like they've been wrapped in wool, and the world spins around and around as they sit him upright. Off come his thin hospital scrubs, but before he can be embarrassed, they wrestle him back into his old uniform, cleaned and mended. Someone ties a dark blindfold around his head, and he nearly chokes on a breathless laugh.

"Takin' me to th'secret hideout?" he slurs. Heavy hands push him back into a sitting position as he nearly slumps face-first to the floor. "Don' worry. Won' tell th'secret knock."

One of the orderlies asks a question, but Bucky can't even make out what language it is, much less individual words. He's never been this drunk in his life--hasn't been drunk once since Steve pulled him off the last table, so maybe he's come full circle. Steve picks him up and makes him better. These schmucks come along and make him worse. It seems obvious now that he's put things into perspective.

They haul him off the table, one under each arm for support. One of them has to work harder at it, and the thought makes Bucky giggle quietly to himself, even when it earns him a smack upside the head. He can't feel his feet, but he's already gotten used to not feeling his left hand, so it doesn't bother him too much. He does wish he could see where he's going, but his plans for escape are curiously distant at the moment. He's just sick of staring at the same four walls.

He can tell the instant they step outside the facility. He hears the far-off piping of a distant bird, the crunch of snow underfoot, tastes the dampness of recent flurries on the air and the promise of more to come. Dimly he decides they must be transferring him from one building to another, but the further they walk, the louder the silence grows. The drone of a transformer becomes a faint background hum, drowned by the rush of wind and the skittering of ice pellets dragged over a dry crust of snow. It's too cold for insects and the blindfold is thick, but it's a different quality of shadow that he moves through, a deeper, velvety black that presses in on his wide-open eyes behind the cloth.

He hears the muffled crunch of other feet moving up ahead, but his brain's too foggy to assign a number. There could be three or thirty, but he likes the idea of four. Four's a good number. Four and the two carrying him, and him. Had they picked seven unconsciously back then? Maybe it was just an ingrained habit. Seven's a good number too.

"Get him up," says a voice he almost recognizes. Did he hear it recently, or was it from before? He's too busy listening to struggle as he's hoisted up, braced with his back against something hard as his arms are pulled out straight to either side. Ropes are looped under his shoulders, around his chest and ankles, one wrist. A loop settles around his neck, but not tightly enough to choke him. They wind down his arms, one length falling short and doubling up, and when the hands recede, the ropes take his weight.

A warm palm settles on his cheek, and he presses his face into it without thinking. The doctors don't touch him, not like this.

"Bucky," someone whispers into the hush that follows. The doctors don't call him that either. "Sorry, we have to be quiet. Do you know who I am?"

He wracks his brain, but-- "I...."

"Bucky, it's Steve."

Steve? That...can't be right. Steve saw him fall. Steve knows he's dead. But then...Steve would have insisted on taking him home, wouldn't he?

"Steve?" he breathes.

"Yeah. God, Bucky--I'm so sorry. I wasn't fast enough getting here, and now we've got trouble. I...I can't save you, Bucky, and there's corbies on the way."

His eyes dart behind the blindfold and he stills his breath, but the tingle at the back of his head doesn't come. "Can't feel 'em yet, so they're not close," Bucky mutters, speaking more plainly than he'd ever dared to before. The hand on his cheek tenses, and he feels bad for that. Steve's never been afraid of him before. "'S all right. You've got time to do what you need to."

"Then...you consent?"

Bucky frowns. Steve's accent's slightly off, more a lackof an accent than anything, but he's probably just all choked up. Steve's always been a soft touch with the people he cares about. "Yeah," he mumbles with his cottony tongue. "Told you I would. Don't gotta ask me twice."

"I just want to make sure."

"I c'nsent," he manages, chin drooping to his chest. "I'll follow th' covenant. Jus'...don' you do it, Steve. Get somebody else. You don't gotta live with this, y'hear?"

"All right," Steve says very softly. "Thank you."

Bucky wishes he had the strength or the courage to say more, but this is enough. He's smiling as someone unbuttons his shirt, as a firm hand curls over the rise of muscle between his shoulder and his neck, the heel of a palm pressing hard against his clavicle to steady him. As drunk as he is--no, it's got to be something else, because he's dying, right?--he barely feels the long cut that opens up along his sternum.

There's something wrong, though. He knows because people talk, and people ask that sort of thing, and every scarecrow Bucky's ever heard of says it hurts, sure, but it's warm as soon as the moonlight hits them, warm all through the three nights of the change and forever after. He's almost looking forward to that part. He's been cold for a long time.

What spills down into him from above isn't warm at all. It's freezing, like the icy flow of a dirty river, seeping into him and chilling him right down to the bone. Someone's chanting in the old tongue, a ritual he knows by heart after Falsworth's patient tutelage, and it's word perfect, so it's not that. It's not the knife either, because something in it is pulling at him like a magnet, like a broken piece that wants to slot itself back into place. Blood calling to blood. But if it's not the words and not the knife, then what--

He screams as his ribs are cracked open, and for a while that's all he knows.

It's quiet when he wakes, the utter stillness that only comes in the deep hours of the night. Now and then a faint breeze plucks at the open tails of his unbuttoned shirt, blows a hissing swirl of snow beneath his feet, but mostly the silence wraps around him like another twist of rope. Ice rimes his bones, frost prickling along his ribcage and burrowing deeper still, and though he holds his breath--and holds it, and holds it--he doesn't feel the comforting thump of his heart anymore.

When he opens his eyes, it's still black, but now he remembers the blindfold.

The effort it takes to turn his head would leave him gasping if he had any breath. The blindfold is fastened on tight--and why would Steve do that, anyway? He knows Bucky's not afraid.

It comes to him in a sick burst of dread that Steve wouldn't have blindfolded him, and now he remembers where he is.

Panic and fury give him the strength to continue, rubbing the side of his face as hard as he can against his shoulder. He doesn't know how long he's been hanging, but he knows he shouldn't be able to move around this much yet; it can't have been three nights already. He doesn't care. He has to see.

When the blindfold starts to come loose, he shakes his head wildly until he can toss the thing off him. It plops into the snow at his feet, and he wastes a few moments staring at the deep shadows at the foot of his cross. It's dark, and the lumpy blackness resolves slowly into a mess of churned earth, half-melted drifts of snow stained in a wide burst, as if he'd bled and bled and kept on bleeding. It's so dark, though. Why is it so dark?

When he tips his head up to the sky, he thinks it must be later than it seems. The moon must already have set, because the only light that reaches him is from the security spotlights that circle the fenced-in compound. It's a cloudless night, and the snow should be lit to blazing from the moon's glow, but the field he's in is a wash of charcoal on black.

He looks to the stars again, trying to remember anything that will help him map out his location, but his eyes are arrested at the inky tree line. There's a hole in the sky, almost perfectly round, the thinnest yellow sliver of a sickle wrapped around it. As cold as he is, the realization digs freezing claws into his guts. That's the moon, but it should be a hair away from full. It should be full. It should be.

Terror draws his leaden muscles tight. He can't...he can't be out here. They can't have set him out here like this. He needs to get away, as far away as he can, and he knows he'll be snuffing himself out like a candle if he gets too far from the heart beating somewhere in the ground beneath his cross, but he doesn't care. If he can drag himself far enough, it won't matter if they find him and string him back up. He'll just be another corpse.

He can't let them make a monster out of him.

His first tugs at the ropes that bind him are barely worth the name. There's no strength in his limbs, but just like before, when he lets his rage take over, it gets easier. There's barely any slack in the ropes, so he can't throw himself against them the way he'd like, but he braces his shoulders and arches his spine, pushing against the wood at his back until it groans.

The ropes pull tighter, tough as sinew, biting into his skin and pulling his clothes awry. He tries sawing his right arm against the loop wrapping his wrist, but there's no blood left in him to escape that way, and without any hands, he's not going to get very far. Sagging against his bindings, he wonders dully at the pain in his joints, his torn skin, at the fact that he can feel pain at all. Pain doesn't make sense if he's already dead.

The ache becomes an itch. The itch sharpens to pins and needles. He turns his head and stares.

He's seen Steve heal post-serum, but it's usually not this dramatic. He can't see much of anything in the gloom, but he feels it as his skin smooths over, closing painlessly over raw meat until no trace of a wound remains. When he tugs gingerly against the rope that holds him, the new skin is tender at first, but it soon toughens up. The last tug is no more than a scratchy reminder to be cautious.

He shouldn't be able to do that. With no heart and no blood inside him, he should be left to weather away, do his service under the covenant and then be free. Whatever they're doing to him, whatever they've done, it's more than a death sentence.

If there's a way out of this, he can't see it, so he thrashes, pulls, rips--but the ropes can't be ordinary, and the wood at his back barely gives for all his shaking. As the hair-thin crescent of the moon sinks behind the trees, the last of his strength ebbs with it, leaving him slumped in his bonds. It's just like it was with Zola, and if he didn't hallucinate what he heard before they drugged him, there's a reason for that.

He's in Hydra's hands again, and that means Steve will be coming. Maybe not for him, but he knows Steve, and Steve won't rest until all of Hydra has been wiped from the map. It may be too late for him, but that doesn't mean he can't still be of use one more time.

Whatever happens to him, whatever they try to make of him, he'll stand his watch and wait for his moment. Even if all he can give is intel, he'll be ready.

He doesn't sleep, but as the moon vanishes behind the horizon, awareness deserts him. He's simply gone, an absence, and he doesn't come back to himself until the sun rises at his back and climbs above the trees. The crunch of approaching footsteps makes him lift his head, and he's struck with a queasy mix of displacement and déjà vu. The last time he'd had a meeting like this, he'd been the one still on his feet.

His memory of the night before is spotty, hazed by drugs and pain and his own fucking death, but he remembers the tall, lean man walking towards him. The spy wears a heavy greatcoat instead of a lab coat this morning, the legs of his tailored pants tucked into a pair of sturdy winter boots. A few snowflakes dust his fairish hair, and his bare hands are pale and chilled as they cup a match and cigarette, smoke and breath pluming the air a moment later.

"Sergeant Barnes," the spy greets him with a smile, ambling up to stand a few prudent feet away. Not like Bucky can get at him, bound as he is, but if he could, he wouldn't mind taking down one more Hydra bastard before he's done. "I trust you had a pleasant evening."

"It was a bit dark," Bucky grates out, realizing he can still breathe just fine so long as he puts conscious effort into it.

"Yes, well, they do say ignorance is bliss. Maybe next time you'll keep the blindfold on."

Bucky narrows his eyes, his fractured recollections of Steve's presence suddenly making sense. "It was you," he says flatly. "Pretending to be Steve."

"Indeed. And as you'll find I am not Captain Rogers, I believe I fulfilled your wishes according to the terms of the covenant." His smug little smirk has Bucky seeing red, and he yanks on the ropes without thinking, deaf to the creak of wood. His killer is much more interested, eyeing him with fascination and a sickening air of pride. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you're awake. Or that you've had a busy night," he adds, stepping up to flick a few splinters of wood from Bucky's right sleeve. "Were you wondering about the ropes? Trust that we spared no expense. My superiors thought I was mad when I said I wanted you Fenrir-bound. 'He's not Captain America,' they said. But just look at you."

"Yeah, amazing," Bucky growls. "Another dead guy in a field. I don't know what you think you're gaining by this--"

"Really? A scarecrow made with his own knife with no moon to bless him? That doesn't sound familiar to you at all, Crowcatcher?" the spy drawls, arching a brow.

Bucky hadn't thought he could feel any colder, but the ice that settles in his guts proves him wrong. "'S just a name. Calling you a squid doesn't make you one, even if you are about as slimy."

"And yet you claim to sense them."

"You mean back when I wasn't dead?" Shit. Shit. That stupid nickname hasn't ever bothered him before. His friends wouldn't call him that if they were too creeped out by his weird sixth sense. It's not even honestly that strange; he's met other snipers who claim their rifles talk to them, knew a guy once who could crawl through five miles of barbed wire in the dark and never so much as snag his cuff. Everyone's got a knack for something. His is just a little creepier than most. But if other people heard the name or came to it on their own, if this asshole actually believes there's something behind it....

The spy shakes his head, taking a deep drag off his cigarette. Wonder of wonders, he turns his head when he exhales, missing a textbook opportunity to execute a classic villain move. "As I understand it, there's technically some question as to whether you're truly dead now, but I leave such matters to the philosophers. You'll be a magnificent weapon either way."

Bucky snorts. "Not your weapon." No way in hell. He'll take the same choice that kid did back in France, and no hard feelings if that means they dig up his heart again. He'd almost welcome it at this point.

"On the contrary. I believe you'll do exactly as you're told."

"Good luck with that." He curls his lip with all the disdain he can muster, but it worries him how confident the bastard sounds, like he knows something Bucky doesn't.

"Of course. I'll see you this evening, shall I?"

Bucky grits his teeth, gives one more yank at the ropes, but it's an empty threat. All he can do is watch as the spy smiles politely and saunters away.

Fenrir-bound. Fuck. Even Steve would have a hard time getting out of that, and the squid's bosses are right: he's no Captain America.

Slumping against the ropes, he shuts his eyes tight and takes a deep breath he doesn't need. Doesn't matter. It's familiar, comforting, though it pulls at the muscles in his chest in ways that aren't familiar at all. Maybe his strange new knack for healing doesn't stretch that far; maybe he's still opened up like a proper scarecrow, cracked open around the hole where his heart should be. He could nudge his shirt and jacket aside with his chin, but he's afraid to look.

He tries to welcome the exhaustion that creeps up on him, but it takes its sweet time about dragging him under. It's not fair, damn it--most scarecrows sleep away the daylight hours of their transformation--but nothing about this is traditional or right. Those Hydra assholes are all mad anyway. You can't make a crowcatcher; they're a mistake, a curse, nothing but rage and dark magic and their conjuror's bad luck. Whatever they end up making of him....

He tips his head back with his eyes still shut, knocking the back of his skull against the wood of his cross as he clenches his jaw. He doesn't want to be turned into a monster, but a crowcatcher would hardly be better. At least a monster can be put down.

"God, Steve," he rasps, stomach churning when he opens his eyes and sees no plume rising from his unheated breath. "If you were ever going to turn up for a rescue, now's the time."

There's nothing but the far-off chatter of a few hardy birds and the methodic, crunching footsteps of the guards patrolling the perimeter.

He wakes again as night falls to find he's not alone. His field is bordered by flames, a dozen fires lit in steel drums rolled out by the guards who huddle around them. They make a show of warming their gloved hands, but they laugh too loudly and spend too long peering into the dark. Whether they're here to witness or to stop him if things go wrong, they're already good and spooked. If he could get loose--

He jerks against the ropes, his right hand curling into a fist as he strains, and finds two dozen rifles trained on him in a heartbeat. Habit makes him freeze before he remembers he's already dead. Surprise makes him laugh, only he forgets to breathe first. What emerges is a dry rattle that has a few of the younger soldiers backing away, shoulders flinching up with a shudder.

Fuck, he sounds awful.

"Sergeant Barnes. Good evening."

The spy approaches on his left--of course--unrepentant in his symbolism. He's got Bucky's knife in hand, which isn't a surprise, not like the outrage Bucky feels at seeing him handle it. From the moment he consecrated it, the only person Bucky's allowed to touch it is Steve, but that...that's just him being careful, right?

"You again," Bucky scoffs, curling his lip. "Back for more, Fritz?"

"It's Agent Fritz, actually," the spy says with a pleasant smile. He seems unaffected by the insult, but something remarkably like discontent prickles the air between them. Bucky's going to ignore it, he is, but--

"That's not your name." Obviously, but--he can feel the difference, the awareness of a foundation laid out of true.

"No? What about Jürgens?" the spy offers lightly, arching a brow at Bucky's scowl. "Reimann? Neuhaus? Brecht?"

"Are we playing Rumpelstiltskin?" Bucky demands, baring his teeth. His skin is buzzing.

"Kessler." Wait. "Anton Kessler." He can feel that. "Is that better?"

He doesn't want it to be, but God, it really is.

Kessler smiles, pleased. "You're coming along very nicely, Sergeant Barnes. Most scarecrows don't come into their truthsense for weeks."

Fuck, is that what this is? He's heard of it, knows field interrogations are frowned upon to say the least, but it's never occurred to him that the scarecrow might find it as uncomfortable as the prisoner.

"At any rate, it's an important night for you, Sergeant. I hope you've taken this opportunity to make peace with yourself; after tonight, you'll be the start of something new."

"You better hope it's the end of something," Bucky promises, "because if I find a way down from here, I'm gonna take you apart."

Kessler grins. "You can try."

Kessler steps back out of reach, arms outstretched, Bucky's knife held point-down in one fist. Bucky really wants to make a crack about dramatic lighting, how Kessler must have missed his calling with the theater, but once the chanting starts, his throat closes up tightly on a wretched, gagging cough. It's not like he needs air, but as his sight grows dim, he wonders if his body knows that. Everything's swimming, the world rippling through half-seen currents that match the underwater echoes of a ritual he knows by heart. Even the fires at the edge of the field can't light the darkness closing in on him.

He can't even hear the chant anymore. He's staring at Kessler's pale, blurry face, watching his mouth move, but nothing's coming out. The air trembles, Kessler's features distorting like a mirage that disturbs only parts of him: his head, then his head and his right shoulder, then just his shoulder. It's like something's passing over him, or maybe passing between them.

Following that near-invisible shimmer with his eyes, Bucky wonders helplessly if his displaced heart is still capable of racing as his head turns slowly to the left. A translucent shadow swims through the air like a snake, but it's not alone. There's dozens more, hundreds, and the longer he stares, the more substantial they seem: a host of half-formed monsters spiraling into the air towards the hole in the sky where the moon should hang overhead.

There's something else up there. Something vast that stretches from horizon to horizon, and though he can't see it yet, the weight of its notice pins him more firmly than the enchanted ropes that bind his limbs. He doesn't think it's his imagination that it seems amused, though maybe some of that impression comes from the sharp grins of the creatures cutting lazily through the air. One drifts closer, grey eyes bright and sickeningly human in a manticore's face: all teeth. It reaches for him slowly, silvery claws caressing his cheek without cutting, but its touch burns like ice.

Get the fuck away from me, he mouths, breathless still in the grip of whatever Kessler's doing to him, whatever's making him see this. The creature's grin stretches impossibly wide, eyes sparking with delight. Pulling its eeling body in under itself, it sits up in the nest of its knotting, trifurcated tail and cups his face in both hands.

He can't scream, even as he jerks his head back, cracking his skull against the wood of his cross, so he does the next best thing. Snarling, lips pulled back from his own teeth, he wrenches his head around in the thing's grasp and snaps at its fingers, determined to give as good as he gets. The creature's laugh as it jerks away sounds like the snapping of willow twigs, a crackling burst that makes the hunter in him--no, the soldier in him--twitch in reaction.

It darts away, but the immense thing hovering over them seems closer now, the whole vault of the heavens caving inward to crush him. It's interested in him now, the weight of its unseen eyes making his skin crawl as he searches the sky for a target.

Another ripple of half-glimpsed motion shivers the air, and for a moment he thinks the spiraling drift of the shadow-creatures has reversed. It hasn't. What threads down through their ranks is darker, all of a piece: massive, snaking limbs like the arms of an octopus, and the irony would be killing him if they weren't headed his way.

When they reach him, it's a blackout, every bit of light snuffed out as the thing's suffocating presence winds around him. It pries at him, melting through his skin and coiling up in the hollow of his chest where his heart used to be, spilling into his empty veins and filling him up again. He tries to struggle, heaving against the ropes and the icy touch slithering through him, but as his cross gives an ominous crack, the ropes pull tight, lighting up in silvery runes that burn everywhere they touch.

He fights anyway as a flicker of power tickles at the base of his skull, threading under the bone before plunging deep into thought and memory. He feels curiously removed from his panic without the wild thump of his pulse to give it force, but he can't see; he can't see what it's doing, what it's doing inside him. He can feel its disdain at his fear, the way it shoves his terror away, bored, and that--that infuriates him. He didn't ask for this. He shouldn't be here, staked out in the wrong field under the wrong moon by the wrong fucking hands. He's got a right to be scared like he's got a right to be angry, and if this bastard thing doesn't like it, it can get the fuck out of his head.

Satisfaction. Pleasure. Complacency. They wash over him from the outside, flow through him from the tendrils dug deep inside his mind, and that focuses his rage to a sharp, glittering point. It wants him angry. It wants him mindless. It's going to turn him loose on the world to hunt and kill and slaughter, and it doesn't care if he sticks to corbies or starts mistaking the flock for the wolves. The only end it's concerned with is the fear he'll leave in his wake.

Wood shudders and groans as he throws himself against the searing ropes, pain lending him clarity. He's not going out like that, not giving in, because he swore a fucking oath, didn't he? This far and no further, only his own limits don't matter. Steve's his terminus, Bucky's moral compass and better angel since they were kids, and Bucky's not going to fail him, not in this.

When the darkness surrounding him grows heavier still, he pushes back, thinks of fireworks and Brooklyn summers, the flare of Dugan's smokes and Dernier's flashy explosions. When sourceless fury wells up and leaves him twisting restlessly in his bonds, he remembers Steve's righteous anger and calms. Someone has to keep their cool, and he's always been the level-headed one.

The pain's not so bad--Zola taught him worse--but he's slipping. The more he scrambles to find good things, human things, to muscle out the icy tide of violence pouring into him, the faster those things melt away. He loses the memory of his mother's kitchen, the taste of her soda bread and then her face, one right after another. The glitter of sunrise at the docks bleeds into greys, taking with it the cool, wet air of dawn when the day was still new, his body still rested, when it still felt like some mysterious change for the better might be brewing. He can't remember the sketch he bought a secondhand frame for to hang up in the bedroom--can't remember the color of the walls or whether they were papered or bare--but he remembers the drawing was Steve's.

He remembers Steve. Too thin--no, wait--too broad, tall and delicate, with a ridiculous new costume and a voice always this side of rough from a cough he hasn't shaken in all the years Bucky's known him. People give Bucky grief sometimes, ask why he doesn't mind finishing all those fights, tell him to check in at the surgeon's tent before he heads back out, but he doesn't have time for that. Slap a bandage on it and he's fine. He's fine. As long as he can still remember Steve, he's fine.

As long as--

He's--

James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. 32557038--

He's. He's slipping.

Steve.

He opens his eyes to the grey light of dawn and closes them once more.

Blink, and he blinks again, eyes stung by the noonday sun glaring off snow.

He's tired. He closes his eyes. Hears the crunch and shuffle of human feet through packed drifts. Not important.

He's cold. The sun plays hide and seek above him, never where he expects it to be.

He's freezing. He thinks at last to curl his arms across his chest, but when he goes to move, he finds he's pinned.

He opens his eyes.

Nothing looks familiar.

The sun is going down.

It drags him under with it.

When he opens his eyes, there's a man with a shovel. It's a tall man, lean, with a youngish face and fairish hair. He doesn't stand out, doesn't ring any bells, but the shovel--that's interesting. The unremarkable man--except he moves with a purpose, a contained competence that's familiar--digs around in the churned earth, chipping at chunks of dark ice and poking the shovel blade into dirt clumps, his expression a listening one.

The shovel glances off something with the dull scrape of metal on metal, and the man looks pleased. He starts to dig in earnest.

The box is battered aluminum, pale grey paint flaking away to bare darker grey beneath. Small hinges whine faintly as the top is flipped up, resisting the cold. The man looks inside. He smiles.

"Beautiful."

It's...unsettling when a cool, gloved hand reaches for him, pushing back his shirt and heavy jacket, but he's no more cold than he was already, so he doesn't complain. He watches as the man tips the box, shaking once until something peels up with a tacky sound, rolling out into his waiting palm.

He knows what he sees, but he stares anyway. That's...that's someone's heart. It's someone's heart, but it's convulsing, pulsing, beating, dry and cold. Attached to no one, it works steadily, as if it's just waiting for its owner to return.

"I believe you'll be needing this," says the unremarkable man with a smile, stepping closer and hooking three fingers behind his ribs.

He screams silently as the heart is pushed into him, filling a void he hadn't been aware of until that clenching fist of muscle is shoved home. It's impossible that anything so cold can move at all, but he can feel it flexing against the walls of his chest, struggling like it wants to escape. He wouldn't mind--he wants it out--but the hands that put it there push hard on his ribs until they shift to cage it in, come back with a golden needle and silver thread, stitching up his chest to trap the thing inside him.

"Well, well," he hears over his own breathless whine of discomfort. "I believe congratulations are in order. I didn't think you could do it, even with the serum as a crutch."

The woman picking her way carefully through the snow is wrapped in furs, her blood-red mouth a calculated distraction from her careworn face. She's small and slender, her dark hair pinned severely. She holds his eyes with a bold frankness, but her words aren't meant for him.

"Professional jealousy, my dear?" asks the unremarkable man as he ties off the thread, clipping it off with a knife that's--

That knife. It calls to him, tugs at his veins, wants to lead him somewhere. He knows it. He knows it.

"Jealous you've made a weapon you don't know how to aim? I think not."

"Ah, but if I left you nothing to do, how else would you earn your keep?"

The woman shoots the unremarkable man a poisonous look that he ignores, so she turns away with a sniff, mouth pursed. "He seems docile enough already. Not at all what the stories led me to expect. If you've erred in the ritual--"

"I haven't. But if you doubt your ability to bind him--"

"Please," the woman snaps. "It should have been obvious even to you. You made him with blood; you'll need blood to keep him. Now, is that the knife?"

The unremarkable man hands it over with a mocking smile that falls off his face when the woman grabs his wrist. She must be strong; her thin fingers dig into the man's arm, keeping him from jerking back as she cuts into his palm, chanting in a language that wakes nothing but dusty echoes of memory.

Word by word, the knife's pull changes. The sense of distance, of pressure and need, is eclipsed by an impatient beat that drowns out everything else. Obey, the knife whispers to him, tickling his ears with icy tendrils that slide deep into his skull, shoving out every other purpose. He doesn't know if it hurts or not; the sensation is too alien to pin down.

"There," the woman says at last, the corners of her mouth curled up in a tight, satisfied smile. "He'll answer to the wielder of the knife from now on, and the knife can be passed with blood. But you're certain you performed the ritual correctly? He obviously survived, but that doesn't mean he'll be what you were hoping for."

"We're arranging a test as we speak," the unremarkable man says, flexing his bleeding hand with a scowl before snatching back the knife.

"Hm. It's a pity he's already crippled." The woman stares to his left, but he doesn't understand. How is he crippled? He is the way he's always been; he remembers nothing else. "If he ever tries to exercise his true purpose, they'll tear him apart."

"On the contrary. If you're familiar with the work of Feingold--"

The woman's bark of laughter cuts him off. "The golem maker? You're consulting rabbis now? I wasn't aware Hydra had sunk so low."

He's been patient, waiting without urgency because he can feel nothing worth his alarm in the snowy field and woods that surround him, but that--that name--has him flexing against whatever holds him still. Wood creaks at his back, thin fingers of...rope? singing with tension, stray threads popping along its length. Hydra. He's supposed to...he--

"Be still!" the unremarkable man raps out, and he feels his body freeze in response. The man is rigid, the woman wide-eyed and watchful. They stink of fear, as do the men at the edges of the field, men who level rifles and slink reluctantly closer.

Their fear is puzzling. He can sense no reason for it, no--

Where are the corbies?

The unremarkable man lets out a harsh breath, hitched shoulders slowly relaxing as he asks, "Who are you?"

Who is he? That doesn't--he is himself. Who else would he be?

"Answer!"

He tries and discovers he has no air in his lungs. He breathes. "I don't understand the question."

For some reason this makes the man smile. "What is your name?"

"I don't know," he replies on another breath. Another widening of the smile. The man is nearly grinning.

"What are you?"

"I don't--" No. Wait. Something scratches at the back of his mind, a dim certainty too fragile to entirely trust. "Hunter," he says at last, unconvinced, but...it has the right weight in his thoughts.

"No," he's told almost instantly. "You are a soldier." That...feels right, has the ring of truth to it, heavier than the other. "Your codename is Winter Soldier. You will answer to that, understood?"

Codename. A name given by others, not his to accept or deny; it simply is. He nods.

"Say it."

"I will answer to 'Winter Soldier'. Understood."

The man laughs, full of triumph and giddy relief. The soldier waits: for the sound to stop, for orders, a target, for whatever a soldier waits for. He has only one real question.

Who is Hydra?