A Captain America Fanfic

"…And one thing that had totally blown his mind during SHIELD training was the day they'd been marched into a room full of plastic torsos and told human beings could be saved from death even after their hearts had stopped beating." Missing scene from CACW.

Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War

Seven feet of oily water isn't enough to stop a human at terminal velocity. Steve hits the concrete bottom of the pool so hard he feels like half his ribs dislocate at once. Water rushes into his mouth and nose and eyes and he can't draw breath for what feels a lot longer than 2.5 seconds. Instinct pushes him to the surface and he gasps and chokes as the smell of burning metal and oil overcome the water in the back of his throat.

As soon as he can breathe again, as soon as he can force his burning eyes open, he's looking for Bucky. One side of the pool is smashed to all hell. Water has splashed forty feet in every direction, chunks of concrete with twisted rebar are scattered both in the pool and the area around it. It looks like a bomb went off here, too. The water is filmy with diesel and cement dust, and looming in front of him is the hulking corpse of the helicopter, its rotor still creaking over uselessly now that the blades are shattered and useless.

But no Bucky. No sign that he got out of the water, or that he even got back to the surface. With the helicopter blocking his view of one side of the area there's another option as to what happened, but Steve refuses to consider it. Concrete, like the kind on the other side of the chopper, does a really good job of stopping a human at terminal velocity. It just doesn't do it nicely.

So he looks down instead. There's a better chance he survived if he fell in the water, and a better chance Steve can help him if he's in trouble there. Ultimately, there's not a lot to see. Steve is sure the pool was crystal clear earlier today. He can smell the chemical that keeps algae from growing on the cement even through the overwhelming smell of burning diesel fuel. The bottom of the pool is also covered in chunks of helipad, along with metal pieces from the helicopter itself. His actions certainly did a number on the thing, he thinks.

What he's really interested he finds only a few feet away. A long, dark mass, shadowy under the film of debris, with a glint of silver.

Bucky's body looks unnaturally still through the choppy water, facedown on the concrete floor of the pool. Probably not dead given what Steve has seen him physically endure already today, but the wrenching feeling in Steve's heart tells him more than logic that he's in serious trouble.

Steve dives, forcing himself to keep his eyes open even through the burning. His hands hit Bucky first and he desperately pulls at his clothing to get a grip on him so to pull him to the surface. Even underwater, the man is a Bucky-shaped mass of brick. It takes all Steve's considerable strength and adrenalized state to pull him off the bottom before he runs out of air, but he's finally able to hook his arm around Bucky's torso and drag the two of them to the surface.

In the air, it's even worse. Bucky is entirely limp against Steve's body, Steve's shoulder the only thing keeping his mouth and nose above water. Steve tries to flatten out, taking all of Bucky's soaking dead weight across his chest while trying to stay afloat himself. "Buck, you gotta help me out here, buddy." He says as soon as he gets the breath to do so. There's no response and Steve has to quell the fear that rises in his throat. He realizes he can't feel Bucky breathing against his neck. It's not a surprise given he doesn't remember seeing any bubbles rising out of the water, but it kills him. He's half-expected some kind of reassurance that Bucky was alive once they'd gotten to the surface, and for the first time he realizes how much that reassurance would have meant to him. The lack of it reads like a void in his mind.

The swim to shore is pained and hurried and awkward. Steve's legs tangle in Bucky's as he tries to kick, and sometimes it takes both of his arms to hold Bucky to his chest. The going feels desperately slow. When they finally do make it to the side, Steve forces Bucky's body halfway over the lip of the pool and scrambles out of the water, barely hiding his fear as he pulls him the rest of the way out. They're both soaked and the cement dust that hangs in the air quickly turns their clothing into a sludgy mess. "Bucky." He repeats. He's just gotten Bucky back. If his friend wakes up, there's still no guarantee it will be the version he met in the apartment, let alone the one who saved his life in the Potomac. "Please." He pleads, pressing his fingers into Bucky's neck.

Before he'd begun doing fieldwork for them, SHIELD had mandated that Steve attend the training sessions like all new recruits. They'd been very apologetic about putting him through it, he remembers, as though they'd thought he'd somehow picked up material about modern espionage, the SHIELD computer systems and tazers in his days at Camp Leigh and would be bored. Even as he'd found himself actually struggling to keep up it was fantastic. Tactics were so much more effective. Less-lethal weapons existed. And one thing that had totally blown his mind was the day they'd been marched into a room full of plastic torsos and told human beings could be saved from death even after their hearts had stopped beating.

Which is his only shred of hope he has now that he isn't feeling a pulse in Bucky's neck.

He's trying not to be hesitant. Bucky's life is at stake and the instructor made it abundantly clear that seconds literally mattered where CPR is concerned. He uses another one to desperately remember that it's 30:2 and you have to pinch the nose or the air will go right out again.

Bucky's face is grey edging on blue around this mouth and his black hair is tangled and plastered across it. Steve pushes it aside. There's visible water in Bucky's mouth and Steve's pretty sure if he gives a breath its going to go into Bucky's lungs. That sounds like a bad thing and he hauls Bucky over awkwardly and a small amount drips to the concrete as his head lolls. Steve rolls him back onto his back and pinches his nose closed and his mouth open, then leans in for a breath that won't go in.

Steve tries again, just to make sure it's not mouth placement. It isn't.

He wants to tear his hair out. He'd been so impacted by the class that he'd practiced CPR alone in his room that night with a pillow. He never in a million years wanted to be in the situation where he needed to know CPR and forgot it. And now he's responsible for the fact that he can't make the first stupid breath go in.

Screw it, he's doing compressions first. Steve is strong enough to crush Bucky's chest under his hands, but he forces away the adrenalin and even though the other thing he can't remember is the depth (why doesn't he practice this every week? Every day? If Bucky lives through this he swears he'll carry the damn book around with him and study it in his free time), he tries to make it feel about the depth it was on the mannequin. Steve's intertwined fingers (that's a part he does remember) bunch up Bucky's three sodden layers of clothing with the compressions. Even though he's a big guy, Steve's bodyweight makes Bucky lurch slightly under each compression. It wasn't something the plastic mannequins did and Steve feels a little repulsed by it. Even so, he keeps going.

By the time he's reached 30, he knows what he did wrong with the breaths. He forces Bucky's head back and his jaw up this time, opening his airway. The breath goes in fine, he feels it whoosh out again, warm on his cheek and repeats the process. Then he goes back to the compressions.

He rounds compression fifteen and suddenly pulls his hands back. He's sure Bucky's mouth just opened wider of its own volition. Then came a sound like someone trying to gulp and gasp at the same time. Awkward and a little scary, Steve finds himself repulsed again, but the newfound relief overshadows it. "Bucky?" He asks urgently, shaking his shoulder. A few seconds' pause and Bucky doesn't draw another. When Steve checks his pulse, devastation crashes down on him, harder than before. There's no pulse, and Steve is wasting time again.

He starts over with the breaths. Bucky's mouth moves under his but he pretends he can't feel it as he starts the compressions again. Bucky's not breathing, there's no pulse, and Steve can't remember what they're called but he's pretty sure his instructor talked about a dying person gasping at some point. He hopes that's what this is and not some half-programmed soviet death protocol.

Its occurring to him just how tragically he's screwing this up, and how many delays he's caused. Bucky gasps again and his fingers twitch and curl inwards in a way that is entirely unlike anything they told him about in the training. Steve keeps going this time. He might have screwed it up at first, he tells himself, but if Bucky has any chance left, Steve better the hell keep it up. And after all Bucky's been through there's no way in hell Steve isn't going to pull out every freaking stop for this guy. Even if it means turning both of them in to get Bucky to a hospital. He'll do whatever needs done. He just really hopes help comes soon.

Help, unfortunately, that he hasn't actually called. He wants to say this is because there's no one in the area. He wants to say it's because his cell is waterlogged and at the bottom of the pool he just climbed out of. Both of these things are technically true, but he knows the real reason help isn't on the way is that he entirely forgot to call for it.

As he starts the compressions again, Steve spends another moment pushing back the self-pity. He desperately looks around for someone, anyone, but the area is deserted. "Help!" He shouts, hoping maybe someone was lurking behind the helicopter. It feels foolish, but he shouts it again anyway.

He gives the two breaths.

He does the thirty compressions.

Two breaths.

Thirty compressions.

Two more rounds. There's still no one there and that feels really weird to him. Shouldn't there be someone? If nothing else to check for survivors of a helicopter crash? All he can think is that maybe the UN locked the area down. That's not a happy thought.

A shadow crosses silently overhead. Steve looks up to see Sam circle and land a few meters away. "I leave you alone for-" Sam cuts off, his hand halfway to motioning to the downed helicopter. "Oh shit." He says instead, rushing over to where Steve is kneeled and settling himself down across Bucky from him. He doesn't flinch before beginning to move down Bucky's body in some kind of medical exam. "When you get to 30, move to his head and give the two breaths, I'll take over with the compressions." He orders Steve.

Steve knows there's no reason for Sam to help save Bucky. Bucky has tried to kill Sam now more times than he has Steve, and that's not a small number. There's a tightness in Sam's jaw that makes him think the former pararescueman has come to the same conclusion. "Thank you." Steve says, switching over to the breaths as Sam gets into position for the compressions.

"Don't thank me yet- your guy's still dead." He pauses, seeming to realize the words were not his most tactful just as he begins the compressions. Steve allows a few moments to pass in awkward silence. "What happened?" Sam asks.

"He was in the helicopter when it fell. I pulled him off the bottom of the pool." Steve reports.

"Is help coming?" Sam asks.

"No." Steve says, guilt rushing back. Sam doesn't chastise him for it, just pulls his phone out of his pocket in between rounds of compressions and hands it to Steve.

"Then call for it." Sam says resolutely, and the look on his face tells Steve he fully understands what that means for all of them. Steve does his two breaths and picks up the phone.

Then he stops, because Bucky is breathing. Not the gulp-gasp pseudo-breaths he was making before, but real and repeated. They're slow and look like a lot of effort. In Steve's periphery he sees Sam pull his arms away. "Bucky?" He asks again. There's still no answer, but Bucky's face relaxes and the breaths speed up and regulate. Sam pushes Bucky onto his side and scowls.

"Is he…?" Steve asks finally.

"Probably." Sam answers, and though he's trying to hide it, Steve can tell they're sharing the same sense of guarded relief.

And really, they're screwed. They're fugitives. They have a 250lb, super powered, unconscious and probably medically unstable fugitive that they need to get hidden, and quickly. Not to mention the fact that said large fugitive has a metal arm and might still be brainwashed to kill them, even after everything that has just happened.

"Thank you."