"Here, let me look at it," Jack said, crouching next to Peggy's extended leg and reaching for the left ankle that was already starting to swell inside her boot.

"No, Jack, you'll just make it worse, I can already tell it's—ow!" she yelped as he touched the joint in question. He quickly pulled his hand back as she glared at him. "Sprained. Sprained but not broken."

She glanced back at the tree root she'd tripped over while they were chasing an as-yet-unidentified Leviathan operative through a dense birch forest on the Russian border. Jack, like an idiot, had stopped and come back when she fell, giving their target the opportunity to slip away.

"You should've kept after him," she said, starting to scoot over to the tree whose root had taken her down, intending to use it to haul herself up. Jack, seeing what she was doing, sighed and put his hands under her arms, standing and pulling her along with him. She wobbled on one foot, not yet willing to put any weight on her throbbing ankle, and reached for the tree trunk for support.

"And leave you here alone and injured?" he said, taking his hands off her and letting them hang at his sides, the right one fisting loosely.

"A sprained ankle is hardly life-threatening."

"I didn't know that at the time!" Her head jerked up, surprised at the vehemence in his voice. "Someone could've been behind us and thrown a knife in your back. Or God knows how Leviathan has booby-trapped this place; you could've fallen into a disguised pit. Maybe you hit a tripwire that was going to catch us both up in a net..."

"You need to quit staying for the B movie at double features."

"Point is, I wasn't going to leave you behind. Not without having some idea what had happened." His mouth twisted wryly. "I wasn't too keen on taking that guy on without backup, either."

Peggy, in an unusual turn of events, found herself quite without an answer to any of that.

Jack turned his back to her and bent down. "Climb aboard. It'll be faster than trying to hobble back."

"Absolutely not."

He stood back up and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. "How are you planning to get to the rendezvous point, then?"

"I'll walk." She took a careful step onto her bad ankle and immediately pulled her weight back off of it, tears coming to her eyes. She sucked a breath through her teeth as she concentrated on not letting them fall. The pain was quite unpleasant. It was, in fact, not unlike being stabbed repeatedly by a very angry gnome somewhere inside her ankle. She looked at the rough ground, patchy with mud and strewn with twigs and rocks. "I'll crawl."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Just get on."

Peggy knew when she was beat. When he turned and dipped down again, she grasped his shoulders and pushed off with her right foot, hoisting herself onto his back. His hands came back to support her under her thighs, and as they both shifted and wriggled so that she was in as comfortable position as possible, she heard him mutter, "Stubborn, mule-headed..."

"One more word and I shall strangle you with your rifle strap." She tightened her arms around his neck to make her point.

"How would you get back without me?"

"I would manage."

"Admit it," he said, taking the first step forward, "you need me right now."

"Go to hell, Thompson."

Where her chest pressed against his back, she both felt and heard him laugh.

Jack was surprised when Peggy climbed onto his back. Not that she'd done it—she was no fool, and practicality would always eventually win out over her pride—but that she was heavier than she looked. The smart skirts and jackets she wore, emphasizing her slender waist, disguised the muscled fighter she actually was. He could feel it, though, in the strength of her grip on his shoulders, and the tautness of her thighs under the thick black combat uniform fabric.

He'd laughed after she told him to go to hell, but it was mostly out of relief. When he'd heard her crash to the forest floor, a single cry escaping her lips, his heart had stuttered in his chest. Turning around had been automatic. He could no more have continued chasing after their quarry, leaving her to whatever had taken her down, than he could have stopped breathing. When it turned out to be just a sprained ankle, he'd had to tamp down the sigh of relief that threatened to bubble out of him.

Now, although he didn't take any joy in her being hurt, he was in a strange way glad that it had happened. It was just...Peggy was always so damn self-sufficient. She didn't need anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of Stark's butler. Jack Thompson was not used to being unnecessary.

"You all right?" he asked as Peggy shifted on his back.

"Just trying to get a little more secure," she said, squeezing her legs more tightly around his waist. He gulped.

He'd humped a lot of crap on his back during the war, but never anything quite like this. Never anything that...squirmed. Never anything whose breasts pushed very distractingly against his back every time she took a breath, or whose hair still managed to smell good even though they'd been hiking and racing through the woods for the better part of a day.

"The better question is, are you all right?"

Truthfully, he was glad it wasn't too far to the rendezvous point. "I can barely feel your dainty, ladylike presence, Carter. Could carry you all day."

She snorted in a very unladylike manner. "You can be a right arse sometimes."

"You really think it's wise to keep insulting your transportation like this?"

"Oh, forgive me. I meant to say how wonderful it is to have a big, strong man such as yourself to carry me out of this tight spot."

The best part about Peggy needing him for once was that it didn't even make her pause before she kept right on mouthing off.

"I think I liked it better when you were calling me an ass."

"How about I don't call you anything?" She rested her chin on his shoulder then. Her breath came out warm, startlingly close to his ear. "Thank you, Jack," she said softly.

He turned his head, bumping his temple ever so slightly against her forehead. "Any time."