Note: This was written for the CapRBB on Tumblr/AO3. My artist was comedicdrama, and the art can be found on their Tumblr of the same name. The art is called "End of the Line" and there is also a masterpost for the fic and art under the name of the fic.

This fic was mostly conceived of by me but with a lot of bainstorming input by my beta, Annaelle/Cuthian. She actually did end up writing part of this fic, and on AO3 I have her listed as a co-author.

Please be warned that there is death in this. Almost everything is off-screen and none of the dead are major characters, but there is a lot of it, and there are somewhat descriptive accounts of the deaths and illness as well which may make some people upset (it certainly makes me grimace). There is also some implied suicide (nothing occurs on-screen or is described), so... please be safe.

And with that... I hope you like the fic! If you do, please fav/review! I love hearing from people. :)

"The last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world."

—Dan Wells

BUCKY

He opened his eyes to flickering darkness and a tomb-like silence.

It was like a switch had been flipped. One moment he was asleep, the next he was snapping his eyes open, awake and aware and on alert, barely any grogginess to be found.

He kept himself still, a habit ingrained into him by long missions behind enemy lines, and took stock of everything around him.

The ceiling above him was grey concrete, the walls the same, from what he could see without moving. The room was dark, the lights in the ceiling either simply off, or there was no power. From the lack of the usual hum of electricity, he was betting on the latter being true. The only light that was in the room came from the hall, it seemed, and even that was intermittent, flickering in and out for whatever reason. Perhaps a lamp. He couldn't quite tell, as he was still trying to blink away the last dregs of unconsciousness—it was far harder than he'd ever really remembered it being.

He was on a medical bed, he could tell by the feel of the mattress he was lying on, and it was the only thing that kept him from panicking, from thinking that he was in Kreischberg once more, on that cold, wet slab, from thinking that he was experiencing another nightmare. It was the only thing that kept him from believing he had never left the hell-hole.

But… perhaps a nightmare would have been better. Because he was damn sure he was awake, and he was in pain, and he had no fucking clue where he was. It would have been so much better to just sink back into sleep, and then to wake in the pre-dawn light with Steve and the other Howlies and move forward with the current mission.

If only.

He wasn't so lucky, and he was practical enough to admit it. Steve had always been the dreamer, Bucky the realist.

And the reality was that he was dizzy and aching on a medical bed, in a concrete room, and there was no power, no sound, no light, and he was pretty damn sure there were no people, either.

The place just had that feel to it.

So he needed to figure out a few things: how had he gotten here; where was here; what was he doing here; who was running this joint; how long had he been here; and where was the rest of his group? All very important questions, and he knew that he might not be able to get the answer to them all. Not right away, at least.

So… how had he gotten here?

The last thing he remembered was… was…

Oh.

A roaring noise filled his ears. The sound of wind and a rumbling train moving fast. The cold bite of wind on his hands and face and neck, for whatever reason exposed to the elements. He remembered the snow on the mountains and swirling in the air. He remembered the mission, to capture the evil mind that was Zola, in an attempt at compromising Hydra's core. Remembered that he was in the train, and they only had the one shot at him while he was in a less secure location than normal. He remembered the weapons that were fired at them, at him and Steve in particular, and their awful blue light. The color he'd grown to hate with a passion. And then… then the screeching of metal as it tore open, and the pull of the wind on him, and then… then… It all happened so quickly.

His arm, caught, Steve's hand, so close… and then pain, so much pain, and then nothing more.

It was only then that he realized the pain was still there. The pain he'd felt upon waking was calling to him, drawing his attention finally, now that he was remembering how it had happened and focusing on it. It was like it had been lying in wait for him, ready to grab a hold of him and draw him into its depths, suck him under and consume him. It was terrible in its immensity, and terrifying in that he had paid no attention to it before now. He was in shock. He had to be. Despite his cognitive awareness of his surroundings, the pain had seemed distant until just then.

Reaching with his right hand towards his shoulder, his first movement other than opening his eyes, he hoped, he prayed, he—

No.

No.

No no no no.

His fingers flinched away from the cold metal as if they'd been burned. It was a shock to his senses, expecting warm flesh and not cold, unyielding metal beneath his fingertips.

He threw himself off the bed, only for his uncoordinated and weak muscles to get his legs tangled in a sheet that he hadn't even realized had been draped over his legs. He caught himself with both hands, preventing his face from slamming into the cold concrete, but he couldn't focus on any of that. All he could see was the faint gleam of dark silver in that damn flickering light, inches away from his face. Slowly, he pushed himself up, and his arm moved with him. The arm that was attached to his shoulder. The arm that was… not his arm.

He'd lost it. He'd lost his arm. The arm that steadied his guns, the arm that helped make him the sharpest sharpshooter in the S.S.R., if not the entire Allied army. The arm that, that… the arm that was his.

Instead, he had a… a prosthetic, he supposed, his mind supplying the word as it finally settled just that little bit more, as his heart stopped pounding to the point of distraction. He moved his body until he was kneeling, sitting back on his heels—only just then realizing that they were bare of everything, including socks, and the cold was seeping into his toes, but he couldn't focus on that right now, not now—and he just sat there, staring at his hand, blinking away dark spots in his eyes as he clenched his hand slowly into a fist, then releasing it a moment later, doing it over and over again… And no matter how hard he tried, the response time of him thinking of moving his fingers was a second or two by the time his fingers actually started to move. It was… disorienting to say the least.

Horrifying, truly. He was horrified at what was replacing his arm—and he knew it was a replacement, and not just some… cover, some brace that fit over his arm. No. No, he truly had a metal arm, and it was horrifying and painful and… fuck.

He couldn't get lost in his mind like this, focusing so much on the… the… the prosthetic, and the pain that was radiating from his shoulder and into his neck and back and head; the pain that was somehow coming from his hand and elbow even though he knew that there was nothing there to cause the pain he felt. There was no flesh to feel the pain. It was… it was phantom pain—that's what the field medics had called it, he remembered, when some of his regiment had lost a limb. And he… he…

He had to focus. Focus on other things. The arm could wait. The pain could wait. At least he had an arm, whatever form it might take. He had an arm, and that meant he could hold a gun, find a pack, get some supplies, and figure out where the fuck he was, and where he had to go so he could find everyone else.

Focus. Yes, he had to focus.

One breath in. Hold it for five seconds. Let it out for six. Hold. Breathe in for four seconds. Repeat. He repeated it until he was a little calmer, feeling far less dizzy, and was slipping into the determined and crystal clear mindset that he associated with his 'Howling Commando' persona. The one that had gotten him through so much of the war already, and which narrowed his focus into crystal clear clarity when he needed it. He could do this. He could focus. He'd done it a thousand times before. What was one more mission?

Bucky pushed himself to his feet, shoving aside the feeling of the cold concrete beneath his feet, and took stock of where he was and what the situation was.

First of all, the room. It was concrete, yes, and there was a medical bed, but there were also a number of medical devices just behind the head of the bed, attached to poles or to the wall. None of them were working, obviously, and some he didn't even recognize, at least not in the gloom of the room. There was a desk against one wall, with a rolling stool tucked underneath of it, but there was nothing on the desk surface. So, nothing of use in the room.

He moved to the door, peering out at angles to make sure there was nothing lying in wait out there to surprise him, and then he finally stepped out. He was keeping his senses on alert for anything, but so far so good. Well, so far no people, so it was good in a way, bad in another.

Even with enemies surrounding him, he could have at least had a better chance at figuring out what the hell was going on. With no one around, he had to fall back on skills he'd barely used. He had been part of a team for so long that being faced with the prospect of being alone… it hurt. It hurt him, but he needed to firm his resolve and bury that hurt deep, and move on. He needed to figure out what he could do about all of this, and find a way back to his group, so he wouldn't have to feel so alone, ever again.

He needed to figure out what was going on, because information could make or break a mission. A battle. A war. But he didn't know where to start. He didn't even know what day it was. What month. He didn't know what had happened to him, what had happened to the people in this… complex. Whatever it was. All he knew was that he'd woken up on a table in some room after a crippling accident he never should have survived, and he knew that his body had to have taken in food and drink to be in as good of a shape as he was, so he couldn't have been alone for more than three days, at the most. If he could find something with a date on it, something he could set his broken internal clock to…

On the other side of the room he'd just entered, directly across the dark hall from the room where he'd woken, was a giant corkboard on the wall, a large map taking up the bulk of it, with strings and pins and pieces of paper attached to the map all over. Surrounding the large map were what looked to be newspaper clippings, notes, diagrams, photos, and smaller maps.

A war room. He'd seen enough of those in the S.S.R. to know what one looked like, and this for damn sure was one.

His gaze passed over both the large and small maps, quickly dismissing them for later perusal. They weren't what had caught his attention. No, what had drawn his sharp eye, what had brought his still-off kilter body stumbling around the conference table and to the board, was the headline of a newspaper clipping pinned on the left side of the board. It was in German, but Bucky was able to translate it well enough. The headline's words had certainly grabbed his attention in the dim light of the room despite him only being passable at German.

Over 900 million estimated dead in initial wave, Bucky read.

Gut-churning fear gripped him, and Bucky had to consciously control his breathing. He couldn't read the rest of this… this… hopefully it was a joke; a sick, terrible joke to go along with this tomb he'd woken in. Maybe this was a nightmare. Hopefully.

But Bucky knew, deep in his core, in his mind, that this was all real. He'd fought monsters during this war that he could never even have imagined in his worst nightmares, so it… it didn't shock him as much as it should have, as much as it would have a civilian, to see that headline.

He wished it would have. He wished he could live on hopes and dreams forever, denying the ugly grittiness that war brought to the world to his last breath. But he couldn't. He had to survive, and he'd learned that survival meant acknowledging the truth, however awful that truth may be.

Gathering his nerves, his courage, calming his breaths and unclenching his fists, he reached up to unpin the piece of newsprint and delicately take it into his hands so he could read the rest of the article beneath the terrifying headline.

The bombs that exploded over cities around the globe six days ago have now claimed the lives of an estimated 900 million people, of all nationalities. The group responsible, a former military branch of the government's science division called Hydra, announced its forcible separation from the regime yesterday in a broadcast that was relayed around the world.

Hydra has declined comment on their ultimate motivation or goal, but it is safe to assume the actions were not undertaken with the good of the German empire in mind. The loss of German life has devastated our proud nation as it has nations across Europe on both sides of the war. There does not appear to be a strategy behind those hit by the as of yet unidentified virus.

The virus has swept clean across all demographics and barriers, halting all hostilities.

An official truce has been called between the governments involved in the war, while we all undertake an attempt to preserve all that we can in the light of the virus' swift destruction of all societies. Many governments have already crumbled, even after only six days.

The virus appears to kill swiftly and is nearly inescapable, as we are now learning here in Dresden, and according to what reports the scientific and relief communities are pooling together around the world, the estimate of 900 million dead or near to death is as close to accurate as we will get.

There is no advice that we can offer to you, our readers, except to stay safe and to escape swiftly if you are showing no signs of infection. Stay apart from others, survive, and perhaps there will be hope of recovering our proud German nation, and our world's civilization, at some point in the future. Protect what you can. Preserve what you can.

But place yourself, your family, and the health of both high above anything else.

In this, our last and smallest edition of the Dresden Chronicle, we wish you and yours the best. May you live, may you survive, and may God have mercy on our souls and forgive us our sins.

Bucky could only stare, minute after minute, at the piece of paper he'd crumpled in his hands after the second read through. He couldn't think, couldn't string together even two words to form a thought, couldn't… couldn't…

With a gasp, Bucky smoothed out the newsprint and searched for any mentions of a date. A day, a month, a year, even, just give him some clue, something…

He dropped the paper to the ground and then scrambled around, looking frantically at every piece of paper on the board for a date, ignoring headlines and words that caught his eye, horror building in the back of his mind with every second that passed. Every minute he stood there, every—

May 20th, 1945, one paper proclaimed in the corner of his eye. He swiftly grabbed it, ripping it away from the pin rather than releasing it, and started to read. Frustrated, he realized it was in Russian, and his knowledge of that language only amounted to dates, weapons, field care, and alcohol. Enough for him to recognize the date, enough for fear to course through him, but not enough to read more than a word here and there on what looked to be a medical log based on the bare handful of words he recognized. Sedativnyye—sedated; bez soznaniya—unconscious; patsiyent—patient… koma—coma.

And the name which Zola had given him, scrawled across the top beside his serial number.

Roter Stern.

Red Star.

Cold fear coursed through his veins, but he pushed the feeling aside. No time. Maybe later. Maybe later he could give in, even if just for a little. But not now. Not for a while yet.

He threw the paper on the floor and started searching again—doing anything he could to think of nothing more than this simple, yet horrifying, task of finding some evidence of approximately how much time he had missed.

At least four months. Four months. The last he remembered, it was mid-January, and now here he was at least four months later. Maybe more.

Four months where Steve had been without him watching his six. Four months with a gap in the tight-knit group of the Howling Commandos. Four months since he'd last been awake, last had his arm—Christ—last breathed fresh air, last seen his Stevie smile, last touched—

—four months since he and Steve had kissed for the first time, just before the train, giving in to the pull and twist of their emotions, their feelings for each other, long denied even if long recognized by themselves. Four months since he'd first tasted Steve's lips on his… Four months since they'd promised to be more to each other than ever before, after the… after the war had ended. After.

Well, it seemed like the war had ended, Bucky's mind unhelpfully supplied. Just not in the way they had ever dreamed.

Nine hundred million. Almost half the world's population. He couldn't shake that knowledge, no matter how much he wished to. No matter how much he wished that nine hundred million people weren't dead because of goddamn Hydra.

And one of those could be, could—

He couldn't even think it. No. No, there was no way. His Stevie was a survivor. If Bucky had woken up like this, survived the fall he'd taken, then there was no doubt that his infinitely tougher, little shit of a… more than a friend… His ridiculous, stubborn punk. There was no way he hadn't pulled through. Steve always surmounted the odds. And whoever was with him, whoever he claimed, would be protected, too.

There was no other possible option to entertain. It was just how it was. The world would end before Steve stopped punching. Well, the world damn-well seemed to be ending, so Steve was still punching. Somewhere.

Bucky just had to find him.

What did he know? What did he need to know so that he'd be able to get out of here, find Steve, and then…? Well, they could figure that out later. His first goal was to find Steve. He of course needed to be able to plan and prepare for anything that could come at him, anything beyond the immediate… he did need to think about the future beyond finding Steve, but he also needed to work within the realm of the possible.

Like he'd said: he was a realist.

So. He knew he'd fallen from the train in the Austrian Alps during the Zola capture mission. He knew he'd somehow survived. He knew at least four months had passed. Knew he had likely spent those entire four months unconscious, or likely in a coma according to that log in Russian—or, if he had woken, he didn't remember any of it. The notes on the corkboard he'd been rooting through confirmed he was in Hydra's hands, and they could have done so much to him in those—at minimum—four months he'd been here.

They had removed the remains of his destroyed left arm and given him an entirely new one, a metal one, for example.

He was alone in this building, as far as he knew. The state of the war room itself—disheveled, slightly unorganized, a fine layer of dust starting to form on the flat surfaces, chairs pushed back haphazardly from the long conference table—spoke to that.

There were also at least nine hundred million dead, if the newspaper clipping was to be believed—and unfortunately, he did believe it, when paired with what he had seen so far, limited as it may be. But…

Bucky gathered himself and walked back into the hallway, then took a left towards what looked to be daylight further down. He needed to see. He need to know for sure. Needed to know just that little bit more…

He pushed open the double doors in the small, empty security entrance, blinking away what seemed to be late evening sunlight, and then stared.

He had seen death and destruction these last two years—maybe three or more, his mind unhelpfully supplied—as he and the 107th and the Howling Commandos had made their presence known all across the European theater of war. He had seen bombed out husks of cities, towns, and people, he had seen the muddy trenches and foxholes of the lines, he had seen dead body after dead body, killed in so many different ways but still just as dead as the next person.

He had seen all that and more, but nothing he had seen could quite prepare him for what he saw outside the doors of the building he walked out of.

No… no, there was one thing he had seen that was worse than this. One thing he wished never to see again, and had sworn to eradicate, he and the Howlies. This… this was close. But the knowledge that there were nearly a billion more people dead just like this… Christ. Maybe even more. Who knew how many people had lost their lives by now?

He wanted to turn back. He wanted to hide, to not look, to not see what had become of this town. Dresden, he assumed, but he could be wrong. It wasn't like he knew much of anything for truth at the moment.

No truth except death, the greatest mistress, lover, and leveler of them all.

Bucky stared at the remains of the town set just down the hillside from the building. Far enough away that it hadn't caught fire when the rest of the place had gone up in flames. The single- and double-story buildings were blackened and charred, as were many of the bodies he could see which littered the streets, cars, carts, sidewalks… anywhere and everywhere, there were the dead.

The burned ones were horrifyingly easier to look at than the ones who had so obviously died of only the plague that had been unleashed by Hydra. Many bodies were left untouched by the fire, obviously dumped into pits—mass graves which threatened to pull him back into memory more than anything else in view—before the town had been lit ablaze or left to accidentally go up in flames when there were too few well enough to tend to what remained. And further down, towards what looked to be a blockade along the narrow path leading towards the building he stood in front of… a pile of bodies, neither burned nor showing the later signs of the plague. They had died, trying to get up here, trying to get answers, recompense, a cure, from the ones who had caused their destruction.

Bucky would have done exactly the same.

He was sure they weren't too far off the mark, either… because what organization would create a plague that would destroy everything they wished to rule, without hope of a cure or a vaccine for those they deemed worthy?

Hydra—that was who.

But… maybe. Surely. He would have to look once he went back inside.

He wanted to look away from everything before him. He wanted to, but he knew that all death deserved the honor of acknowledgment, friend, foe, or innocent.

"Be merciful, deliver them, O Lord," Bucky mumbled under his breath, the words towards the end of the litany coming to him with an aching clarity—he had said them too often in this seemingly Godforsaken war—as he closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky. "From they anger, deliver them, O Lord. From the danger of death, deliver them, O Lord. From an ill end, deliver them, O Lord. From the pains of hell, deliver them, O Lord. From all evil, deliver them, O Lord…"

Clenching his eyes even more tightly shut, he paused, opened his eyes and took in everything, and then choked out, "Deliver me, O Lord. Deliver my friends. Deliver the one who carries my heart. I know that you are merciful. I know that you honor love above all else. I—"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. There was… there was someone, perhaps multiple someones, moving in the village. Too far away for them to see Bucky easily, but he could see them. Just enough to know that he was sure as hell not going to let his presence be known.

Turning carefully on his feet, he slipped back into the building and made his way through the hallways, the rooms, one by one, until he found what looked to be an armory. He grabbed a military pack from one of the cubbies and then began to fill it with whatever he deemed useful that was on hand: a Walther P38 and a Browning Hi-Power went into the bag, and another Browning he strapped to his thigh with a holster rig he pulled off another shelf. All three took the same 9x19mm ammo, so he would be better off with that instead of guns which took different ammo. If he lost one, he still had the ammo for the other two. He shoved the ammo inside, making sure that the boxes were wrapped in water-tight wax paper.

He pursed his lips as he glanced over the rifles. He missed his Johnson rifle but it wasn't like he had much choice with what was available to him. There were only three left in the armory and only one which had the appropriate ammo—again, the 9x19mm. So he packed more ammo away, attached a sling to the rifle, and then set it aside so that he could exchange the paper-thin clothes he was wearing for some combat fatigues—thermals, socks, pants, t-shirt, and heavy jacket… all the while desperately ignoring the simmering panic he felt every time he saw the metal of his new arm.

He wrapped a thick scarf around his neck, tying and tucking it into the jacket so it wouldn't catch his rifle sling if he needed to use it quickly later. There weren't any hats, but he grabbed another scarf and shoved it into his pack, knowing he could fashion it into a hat or mask if need be. He threw a pair of gloves in there as well, and two more pairs of socks. Finally, he tied some combat boots to his feet, and stood up.

He felt almost human again. As if he hadn't felt like it before. But it was no matter, not in the moment, at least. All that mattered was that he felt better; better able to take on the horrifying new world outside the bounds of this building. A building he had no interest in staying in any longer than he had to, no matter what was waiting for him outside.

On his way out the door, he grabbed a canteen and a number of packs of rations, filling the canteen in the sink on the other side of the room before he placed it in his pack and zipped it mostly closed.

He had what he'd need to be able to survive, at least for a little while. He was sure he could find other useful items on the road or in houses. There were plenty of people who didn't seem to be needing much anymore, harsh as that seemed. At least they could help the living.

Bucky made his way back into the war room and looked over the corkboard one more time, looking a little more closely for things that could be useful to him. Something that could tell him more about what was going on, what exact day it was… something.

There wasn't much—just various articles or reports on the war before he'd fallen from the train, and a few scattered excerpts about the plague.

There wasn't a lot on that either. It didn't surprise him, though, not really—if nearly half the world had died in the first week, it was no surprise that it would be hard for information to flow from place to place.

Nothing else proved truly useful except that he now knew he was somewhere between Dresden, Germany, and Prague.

He turned away with a growl of frustration, running his hands through his hair. That only proved to increase his frustration, as his damn hair was getting caught in the small spaces where the metal plates of his arm overlapped. He plucked the hairs out one by one with a scowl, and then reached into his pack to pull the gloves over both hands.

There. Better. But not by much—Bucky hated wearing gloves because they hindered his mobility while using his weapons. At this moment, however, he didn't think he had the ability to handle being reminded visibly of his new arm. Feeling it tugging at the rest of his body, weighing him down… hurting as much as it did… That was enough. It was more than he thought he could handle if he kept focusing on it.

So he moved towards the room he'd kept for last; the one he'd seen on his quick walk-through of the building while looking for the armory. It looked to be the building administrator's office, or at least the office of someone high up. An officer of some sort, based on the decorations and framed pictures hanging on the walls. It was a well-appointed room, and the solid wood and gleaming desk—besides that thin layer of dust that was starting to pile up everywhere—probably cost more than the rent for his parents' apartment back home.

This room, however, compared to the rest of the rooms in the place, looked untouched. The dust was a little heavier in this room, there were no partially-opened drawers, the chair was tucked soundly under the desk and the two chairs in front of it were spaced evenly—no one had knocked into them on their way out, unlike whatever rush the rest of the facility had been in.

He was pretty sure he could deduce why.

Bucky carefully made his way around the desk and opened a few drawers. Nothing much of use in the top two on the right-hand side, though in the bottom one he found a hunting knife in its sheath, which he stowed in his pack. Definitely useful. Better than a letter-opener, though he could have made do with that if need be.

On the left, however… there was just the one large drawer. It opened to reveal two red leather-bound notebooks, wrapped in a gauze-like see-through fabric. Reaching in and pulling both notebooks out, he carefully unwrapped them. There was a black, inlaid, five-pointed star on the front of each of them.

With a sense of growing dread, he opened the one on the top.

James Buchanan Barnes, U.S. Army serial number 32557038
Resident of Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S.A.

October 18th, 1943
Subject has shown clear signs of—

Bucky slammed the book shut.

No. No way was he ready for that right now. No way on God's green Earth. Or, well, whatever was left of it. The point still stood: he would read it later. He couldn't handle anything that he suspected may be in there at the moment.

But he still needed to know what was in the other notebook. Just… just in case. Of what, he wasn't entirely sure. But he needed to know, at least a little bit, whether it was more on him, Bucky… or if it was on who he suspected it might be on.

Bucky sank to the ground, ass hitting hard against the floor moments after he'd read the name on the first page.

Steven Grant Rogers, U.S. Army serial number 987654320
Resident of Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S.A.

He couldn't help it. He flipped through it, reading as much as he could stomach. It was easier, in a way, than reading what he feared was in his, because this was all information that he knew was out there publicly, or which could be found out fairly easily. It was information which the S.S.R. knew would get out there somehow or another—though he did smirk, just a little, at the fact that some of the bad information the S.S.R. had laid out like bait had been snatched right up.

But the more he read, the more he realized the information was there for something more than simple information gathering—not that he had, necessarily, expected it to be something so… innocent. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but it seemed that they were trying to reverse-engineer the serum. Well, they already knew that Hydra was doing that. But it seemed like they were going further than that, to a place that Bucky couldn't quite tell with his initial quick read-through. But there were words in there that Bucky didn't like, picked out of the pages written in Russian—once again he found himself cursing his lack of knowledge on that front—and some sort of… coded notes near the end, with a sketched diagram of the world on one of the pages, and one that was clearly the cosmic cube on another.

He didn't like it. Not at all.

That didn't mean he could ignore it, but he could, at least, ignore it for a little while longer, because he needed to leave.

He could read it on the road. On the road to London, the S.S.R., and Captain America himself.

—if there was an America, anymore, that is.

Bucky watched the flames consume the facility he'd woken in for a long time; watched the building burn down well past sunset, and then turned around to start his long trek back towards London… and hopefully to the sight of Steve, the Commandos, and Peggy alive and well, waiting for him with open arms, believing all along that he had survived and would make it home.

He would.

STEVE

Life had put Steve through his paces plenty of times before. He'd fought for his very right to exist every day of his twenty-seven years, and he'd succeeded. He'd surpassed every limitation people had tried to place on him—from living past his twenty-fifth birthday to joining the Army and being chosen for Project Rebirth.

He'd shook the mantle of showgirl that had been forced on him and showed them what he was capable of—he'd saved Bucky and the Howlies and the other prisoners of war when no one else would and could. He'd, as Colonel Phillips so eloquently put it, lit a fire under Johann Schmidt's ass and he'd refused to give up.

Even when things seemed at their bleakest.

Even when… even when he'd lost Bucky.

Losing Bucky had torn into Steve, leaving him feeling flayed open and vulnerable, unable to muster up even the barest hint of emotion beyond all-encompassing sadness. He'd been shattered, barely able to set one foot in front of the other, and he'd only made it off the train because Gabe had dragged him, kicking and screaming.

He'd kept fighting, because that was all he knew how to do, and that's what Bucky would have told him to do if he had been there, but it felt like he was empty. Steve could barely remember what he was fighting for, because while Brooklyn was still there, Steve didn't need to go back to know it wouldn't feel like home ever again without Bucky there with him.

The day the bombs had dropped was…

It had been the first time Steve had been able to feel something again, even if that feeling had been unmitigated horror. He had tried, he'd tried so hard to catch up to Schmidt's plane, but even the modified car Phillips had somehow gotten a hold off hadn't been able to accelerate fast enough, and they'd been powerless to stop it.

Sometimes Steve felt like they were just there to watch.

Even in the remote base in the Alps, they'd felt the tremors unleashed by the bombs. The very foundations of their entire society had been crushed into dust, leaving them with nothing but the ruined rubble of the very pillars of the earth.

They hadn't known what the bombs had carried, initially. They'd returned to London to regroup, to figure out their next move, but all they'd found was dust and death.

Steve wasn't even sure if they had anything left to rebuild from.

He didn't know if it was even worth the effort anymore.

So many people were dead—so many had been lost to the vicious plague that had ripped across all levels of civilisation that no one could even keep up anymore. Bodies were piled in the streets and hidden in dark corners in the back of damp, rank-smelling alleyways. The S.S.R. issued as many gas-and-toxin-filtering masks as they could, to their own and to civilians, but it wasn't enough.

Colonel Phillips had fallen ill three days after they'd returned to London.

He'd died in less than fourteen hours. The plague had eaten away at him, rendering the Colonel's strong body unrecognisable by the time the infection had run its course.

The rest of Steve's ragtag bunch of people had quarantined themselves from the rest of the S.S.R. immediately. They couldn't and wouldn't risk losing anyone else. Peggy had taken charge so naturally no one thought to question it, though even in his apathetic state, Steve had noticed some of the lesser experienced agents looking to him before they did as Peggy said.

Steve wasn't entirely sure what had happened in those first few days following Phillips' and Bucky's death. Shell shock, Peggy had told him later, kindly. Too much, too fast.

All he knew was that when he'd started truly actively thinking again, he'd found a world that was falling apart at the seams, held together only by sheer stubbornness and determination. As Peggy had taken command of the S.S.R., the Deputy Prime Minister had taken over command of the country with support of the S.S.R., and fourteen year-old Princess Margret had undergone an emergency-coronation.

The rest of Allied Europe—of the entire Eurasian continent—stumbled and fell over the next few weeks, governments collapsing, new ones rising and falling just as swiftly as the world desperately tried to cope with the devastating effects of the plague that Hydra had unleashed.

The only silver lining they'd eventually been able to uncover was that Hydra had been hit by the plague just as hard as the rest of the world. Whatever plans Schmidt had had, whatever failsafe he'd installed, it had obviously backfired and the organisation had crumbled along with society.

Whoever was left—be it a few higher-ups locked in a bunker or a fringe group intent on taking over the remains of the world—obviously had more important things to do than to continue the war.

Steve highly doubted they'd expected their own plans for world domination to be so painfully and horrifyingly successful. It was almost hilariously ironic—it would be, if it hadn't already cost half the world's population their lives, and if that number wasn't still steadily climbing.

The days following the first day in their own bunker, waiting out the initial infectious wave, fretfully watching every one of the occupants of their bunker for any symptoms, had been the worst. They'd been left with entirely too much downtime, which left Steve alone with his thoughts—which was never a good thing.

He'd lost Bucky, before they'd even gotten a chance to figure out what they could be, before Steve had been able to find the words to tell Bucky that he loved him, that he had since the day they'd met and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to stop.

He'd failed Bucky and then he'd failed the world, because he should have stopped Schmidt. He should have been faster and better and he didn't know how to deal with the guilt that swamped him every time he was handed reports on the outside world.

He remembered that, after losing Bucky, he'd been baffled that the world hadn't perished along with him, because that's what it had felt like for Steve. His entire world had crumbled when Bucky fell, and he couldn't understand why no one else had understood.

Less than three days later, the bombs had dropped and the world had crumbled.

It was almost poetic, that the world would never be the same again for anyone else either. A dark, mean corner of Steve's mind liked that no one got to just move on with their lives.

The rest of him felt disgusted with himself for even letting the thought cross his mind.

"Steve."

His head snapped up and he shook his melancholy thoughts reluctantly, because it was much easier to withdraw into himself than to face the reality of their situation. Peggy stood before him, her head twisted up in a practical bun and her face devoid of make-up, arms crossed over her chest as she frowned at him. "I've been calling for you for over ten minutes."

"Oh," Steve said simply. "I didn't hear you."

He pretended not to notice the look of concern on her face and got to his feet slowly, stretching sore and slightly disused muscles. "What's going on?"

Peggy just looked at him for a moment longer before she sighed and dropped her arms to her sides. "We were discussing the risk analysis for sending out teams," she replied steadily. "We need to look for survivors, establish protocols for where to go next, need to see if we can get in touch with any surviving members of the government…" She shook her head. "We have a lot to do, Steve, and we need you to help us do it."

"Okay," he nodded numbly, because it was easier to simply follow orders and listen to Peggy than it was to try to think all on his own right now. All that happened when he tried to think for himself was getting entirely overwhelmed by the sheer memories, by the ache that came with them, and he'd end up near-catatonic and even more of a burden.

This… being a soldier, following Peggy's orders… this was easier.

He could do this.

He followed her back to the main command center of the bunker, a little taken aback by the buzz of activity in there, before everyone froze, staring at him when he stepped inside.

Steve frowned.

He knew he hadn't exactly been vocal and present lately, but these people were looking at him like they'd never expected him to walk in at all. "What's going on?" he said cautiously, pushing past Peggy to approach Dum Dum and Gabe, who stood side by side in front of a large monitor, eyes wide and startled as they watched him approach. "Fellas?"

"Uh," Gabe said.

"Thing is," Dum Dum began, knocking his bowler hat off his head in his haste to scratch at his head. "We thought… We just got some new intel. We were just discussing on how to bring it to you."

Steve tried to glance past them at the screen, unsure what kind of information they could possibly have uncovered that made them act like he was a ticking time bomb. "Gentlemen," Peggy cut in smoothly, her accent crisp and clear as she raised an eyebrow at them. "I'm sure you're not trying to withhold critical information from a superior officer, are you?"

"No ma'am," Dum Dum replied immediately, straightening up and shooting her the sloppiest salute Steve had ever seen. "Just making sure not to compromise said superior officer."

"I'm not compromised," Steve insisted heatedly. "Whatever it is, I can handle it."

He watched as they exchanged a glanced before Gabe sighed. "Steve," he said quietly. "It's Bucky. It looks like…" He shot a quick glance around the room before he said, "It looks like he's alive."

Hours later, Steve had once again retreated to his private corner of the bunker, with the images Hydra had sent them of Bucky burned into his retinas. He felt equally nauseous and relieved, because as far as Howard had been able to tell, the images weren't doctored or faked, and the timestamps on them were real.

Steve wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse.

His heart felt like it was simultaneously trying to beat out of his chest with unbridled hope and trying to lodge itself in his throat, obstructing his breathing and making his head spin and his stomach turn. The taunting message that had been sent along with the images still made him feel sick, but it also told him that Bucky was out there, alive.

Steve's skin itched, and he needed to get out there, he needed to find Bucky and tear those bastards apart with his bare hands for daring to lay hand on what was his.

If even half of the things written in this message were true—

Steve's stomach turned sharply and he gagged, burying his face in his hands to wait out the wave of nausea. He didn't startle when he heard someone stop right beside him, and he didn't pull away when he felt Peggy's slim fingers wrap around his wrists, offering him the grounding touch he needed to draw himself from his downward spiral.

"Take a deep breath," she instructed him calmly, waiting for him to comply before she moved one hand to rub his back gently. Steve exhaled shakily, desperately trying to force the sight of Bucky laid out on a metal slab—entirely too much like he'd been in in the factory in Kreischberg—pale and unmoving, his left arm missing entirely out of his head.

He tried to forget the horror that had permeated his entire being when the second photo had shown Bucky, laid out on a different table, in a different lab, pale and sickly and covered sores. Steve had been there with Phillips every step of the way, and he remembered that stage of the plague.

He remembered the way Phillips—one of the strongest, stubbornest men Steve had ever met, including himself—had screamed and pleaded, begging for someone to get rid of his very skin, to get rid of the tension caused by the thick, putrid pus beneath his skin.

It made Steve sick to even think about it.

"Breathe, Steve," Peggy reminded him sternly, and Steve inhaled sharply in response, nearly choking on the breath before he managed to exhale with a cough.

"There, there," Peggy told him kindly. "I know this is difficult, darling, but you won't be any help to your sergeant Barnes hyperventilating in your corner." The words were said in jest, Steve knew, but he still looked up to glare at her balefully. Peggy knew how he felt—she had always known, that damned perceptive woman—and she had never hesitated to use it to get him to comply.

Of course, when she explained it, she said she only used the knowledge to make Steve "think for bloody once, the utter prat".

"I'm not letting you run off hastily without any sort of plan again like some kind of reckless fool," she said sternly, patting Steve's shoulder softly. "You know better than that. We need you, Steve." He looked up at her, struck by how human she appeared, and he wondered if he had been too blinded to see it before. She had always struck him as larger than life, somehow, beautiful and strong and entirely no-nonsense—and Lord, Steve adored her.

She was his best friend, next to Bucky, and Steve was sure he'd be lost without his two brunettes kicking his sorry arse into gear.

He was lost.

"I need to get to him," he whispered plaintively. "Peg, if they really—he won't have long."

Peggy shook her head and settled beside him, levelling him with a serious look. "Think, Steve and don't you look at me like that, I taught you that look. If they just wanted to kill him, they wouldn't have sent him photographs of his body, they would have dropped the body off on our doorstep." She tapped her index finger on his forehead a tad too roughly. "Use that brilliant brain of yours, Captain. What strategic value is there in letting us know that he's alive? Why now?"

She was right.

Steve wrinkled his nose and sighed. "I don't know, Peg. None of this makes sense. I don't even understand why Hydra… why Schmidt would unleash a plague they couldn't control."

Peggy shook her head lightly. "No, I must admit I can make heads nor tails of that particular decision myself." She shrugged delicately and tapped her fingers on her thigh. "It might simply have been Schmidt's own delusions of grandeur getting the better of him, it might be a plot that has yet to unfold…" She shook her head. "We cannot figure out the motivation of an entire organisation, Steve, much as we might want to. They don't think like you and I do, darling."

She tapped her nail on the folder she had brought with a grim smile. "This, however. This is the work of a small, isolated group of people. This, we can figure out."

Steve looked at the folder, dread and anger and frustration warring in his gut. Peggy was right, though. They had some of the best minds in the S.S.R. in their bunker, plus Howard Stark, who was entirely too fond of complementing his own intelligence.

She was right too, when she said there had to be a reason Hydra sent this to them now.

It couldn't just be to taunt him.

"You're right," he said, determination bleeding into his every word. "We can do this. But Peg," he bit his lip so hard he tasted blood for a moment before it healed over. "I'd burn the world down for him. If that's what it takes, then…" he shook his head and exhaled shakily.

He did jump when Peggy put her hand on his this time, looking up at her with shame curdling in the pit of his belly. He'd wanted to do the right thing his entire life, had been fighting to be allowed to do the right thing his entire life, but now…

Faced with… with this, the plague, the collapse of everything they'd ever known…

Steve didn't think he knew what the right thing to do was anymore.

He didn't think anyone did.

"Steve," she said kindly, softly. "If that's what it takes, we'll be right there with you."

"You know," Falsworth said when he plonked down into the seat beside Steve's, peeling an apple with the casual grace of a man who knew his way around a knife. "When I met first Barnes, I thought he was a right tosser."

Steve looked up from the map he'd been studying, the marker he'd been using to mark out the route he and the Howlies would follow to get to the base from which the message about Bucky had originated hovering just above the paper. "What?" Steve said, feeling a little baffled by the comment, unsure what had prompted Monty to spout such nonsense.

Monty grinned and shrugged, unrepentant. "There was this manky plonker in charge of the factory when we were brought there, Lohmer. He thought it'd be a marvellous idea to mix us up, put different nationalities and skin colours in the same cell. I imagine he thought it'd make us fight each other rather than them."

"Did it?" Steve raised an eyebrow at him and grinned. He knew his boys well enough by now to know that none of them would have taken well to the implication, but he also knew that all of them had a temper when they were tired and hurt.

Falsworth shrugged and quietly munched on an apple slice. "Dum Dum wasn't what one would call tactful, initially. We needed to teach him a lesson."

Steve snorted a laugh and shook his head, because yes, that sounded more like them.

"Regardless," Monty waved his hand, "Barnes. Sided with Dugan, of course, the prat. But then the next day he saw Jones being picked on and made sure they'd notice him instead. Got the snot beaten out of him, poor sod. Certainly did him no good, already weak with pneumonia."

Steve startled at that, eyes wide and confused. "Pneumonia?"

Falsworth blinked at him, lips parted, before he sighed. "Yes, to the best of his and our knowledge. He asked us not to mention it after your heroic rescue; I assumed as to avoid worrying you."

"He didn't—" Steve stammered, confusion wreaking his mind. "He wasn't sick. When I… he was weak, but not—he didn't—I've had pneumonia six times, I know what it looks like, he didn't—"

"He didn't," Monty interrupted. "We assumed they'd given him something that cured him. Kleiber had him taken to the isolation ward a day after we got rid of Lohmer, the miserable knob. First time we worked together as a team, and we did it for Barnes. He was a good man, and he would have died because of one man's cruel delusions of power if we'd done nothing."

Steve swallowed thickly. He knew that Bucky had been the glue holding the Howlies together initially—he'd been under no delusions that the Howlies were following Sergeant Barnes, not Captain America, at first. He just hadn't realised that there was far more to it than shared suffering at Hydra's hand, hadn't known that Bucky had tried to save the boys the best way he knew how even then.

He hadn't known, but he was far from surprised to learn.

"He's ours too, Steve," Falsworth said firmly, eyes boring into Steve's. "We're not letting you do this alone. If he's alive, if Hydra has him… We're getting him back. One way or another."

BUCKY

Another safe house, another message left, another one not found.

It was the fifth safe house that he'd passed by, staying just long enough to restock—if it hadn't been robbed and trashed already—and to leave a coded message specific to the Howling Commandos in the hidden compartment under the sink found in each of the houses. Each time he opened the compartment to find it empty, he lost a little bit of hope. But… only a little. He knew Steve, knew the Howling Commandos, had to have survived.

He was glad none of them were deep in the heart of towns. Most were on the outskirts of towns or part of little hamlets across the countryside.

Towns were… not so great these days.

Most of the towns he passed were either abandoned and gutted, or guarded heavily. But both shared a common element: the stench of death. No matter how clean some of the guarded towns looked, no matter how they disposed of the bodies, there was always at least a faint trace of decomposing, disease-ridden bodies in the air.

There were more abandoned towns than there were guarded ones, and the latter always varied in size. He wondered how effective the containment measures each individual town used were, and decided it depended on quite wild and unknown variables when he passed a distance away from a town of a few thousand, with heavy reinforcement and quarantine tents outside of the perimeter, and saw bodies lying in the street, dead, and the walls and towers abandoned. A few survivors stumbled around here and there, and Bucky wanted to help—he wanted so desperately to help—but knew that he couldn't. Knew that there was nothing he could do for them except make sure he got to the damn S.S.R., however many of the leadership were left, and make sure to give them the notes and journals he'd found.

They would be able to help everyone.

They had to.

Until then, he had to keep a low profile.

He'd already ran into one group of roaming… well, calling them outlaws or brigands or, or… or stagecoach robbers, even, sounded overly dramatic and romanticized. There was nothing romantic about the, well, apocalypse—and even that term sounded ridiculous and not horrifying enough to account for everything he'd seen—and Bucky was sure as fuck tired of the dramatics in his life at present.

But yes, he had run into one group of… thieves. Looters. That was a better term. Opportunists—even better. He'd run into these looting opportunists a couple days after he'd left the building he'd woken up in, having no clue they were in the same abandoned town he'd been picking through. It was the first time he had risked going into a town, looking for something to replace the rations which were starting to run dangerously close to low.

They'd tried to kill him upon sight, raising their guns to shoot before Bucky could even blink.

But instinct took over, and he'd defended himself, and he hadn't been made part of an elite military squad for nothing.

Two died, three escaped, and Bucky was even more alert than ever. He didn't enter towns again unless he had to, and he slept less than he probably should have—but he felt as sharp as ever.

Because he had a goal.

A goal he thought he wouldn't be able to complete the first time he'd run into a family of infected. He hadn't even known they were there, they were so ill, not able to move, and the stench of death was everywhere, so they had passed right under his guard. He'd opened up the country cottage in north-west Germany, and there they were.

Sick. Dying. And they knew it.

The hardest part was the look the mother was giving the young babe in her arms, knowing that death was inevitable.

That was the only time he'd lost a gun—by giving it and a single box of ammunition away in a merciful act. No matter what the priests may say about self-murder… God had mercy.

Simple as that.

Days later, the memory of the family—father, mother, baby, and the two toddlers hiding behind their father's legs—was replaced by another thought: he wasn't showing any signs of the plague. He knew that not everyone became ill, even when in contact with others, but it was… curious. Something about it was… different.

Then he remembered. Immune, the notes had said. The ones in the notebook that had been kept exclusively on him and the… experiments which had been performed on him. The notes he hadn't quite managed to get through yet, because every time he did, he felt… unclean. Violated. The knowledge that someone had put their hands on him without his consent—that many hands had done so over at least four months of unconsciousness… Yeah. No. He was strong, but the memories of Kreischberg had been too much.

But he pulled the notebook out one afternoon following his realization, while there was still plenty of daylight left, and poured through all of the information over and over again.

He was… immune, and the scientists in that facility had been trying desperately to find a cure, an antidote, a vaccine… something to save them from the plague which Zola—he shivered at the name—had created. The plague which had defied all expectations and turned on its creators.

Only Zola had known the cure, kept inside his mind, and none of the scientists at this facility had seen him since before the bombs had dropped.

And he'd finally learned what he'd been dosed with back in the labs of the factory at Kreischberg.

Super soldier serum.

Not… quite the same as what they'd given Steve. Not the original, Erskine-created, formula. But it was based off of it, off of notes which were only referenced in the notebook Bucky had on hand.

He… they'd suspected, but they'd had no way to tell for sure. All they'd known was that Bucky had come out of Kreischberg weak… and then became stronger than ever once he'd recovered. More of an appetite, able to lift heavier objects, run faster and longer, fight harder and stronger…

It was one thing to suspect, and another to know that you had been illegally experimented upon.

He glanced at his left arm, metal covered by his sleeve and glove. Well, illegally experimented upon more than once.

And it was all so very permanent.

But… he was also… grateful. In a way that would be hard to explain to others, but he was sure they'd still understand. He was grateful because said experimentation, and said unconscious stay in the Hydra facility he'd woken in… had brought about what could be the world's only saving grace.

Selfish Hydra agents who didn't want to turn to dust and bone like the rest of the world were going to be part of what turned the world around again.

Hopefully.

Bucky took a deep breath and stowed the notebook into his pack, looked at the setting sun, and then decided he'd do a little bit more walking.

It wasn't like he was going to be able to sleep anyway.

Two days later, he caught a break. He'd been able to find a military Jeep with the keys still in it—honestly, he should have paid more attention when Howard was teaching them… the lesson just hadn't stuck and he'd never had personal need of the skill before. And it had gas. Enough to last him a few hours, and he covered ground a lot more quickly.

Then he chanced upon a safe house that hadn't had its gas stash ransacked. He filled up canister after canister of it, and then he was moving.

Safe house after safe house passed by.

No messages.

Perhaps he would make it to London, and everyone would be there. But also… perhaps he would make it to London and no one would be alive.

It was his biggest fear these days, growing stronger and stronger every day, powerful enough to stave off the nightmares of Azzano and Kreischberg and the place near Dresden he'd woken up in.

But everywhere he could, he looked for information. He knew there were some lines of communication still open out there. He'd caught some frequency use on the radio in the Jeep, and on the radios in the safe houses along the way.

Most of it was rumor, but some of it… well, it was repeated often enough that there must be some truth to it.

London was still standing. Madrid. Possibly even Washington, D.C.

So he kept going. Avoiding people as best he could, and making his way quietly through, mask pulled up to cover his nose and mouth just like everyone else who'd survived was doing.

He'd figured that bit out after he'd nearly been killed twice for 'potentially endangering the community'.

So he'd learned. He'd adapted. Even if he didn't need it, the survivors didn't know that. If he could help their peace of mind, no matter who they were—they were all in the same boat these days, honestly—then he would do it.

A message. He'd found a message.

It was the eighteenth day of traveling—the third after he'd found the Jeep—and he'd found a message.

Bucky started to tear up, pressing the paper to his lips and imagining that he could feel Steve's handwriting beneath them. That he could feel the touch of Steve's fingers transferred through the ink and against his skin.

Through all the death and destruction, he'd barely shed a tear, he'd felt broken inside, like he didn't quite work right anymore… but now… now great, heaving sobs started to take hold of him, and he had to let himself go for a few minutes before he could compose himself again. He felt… well, he didn't quite know what he felt; there was so much swimming inside of him that he couldn't quite keep track of anything.

But he did feel a deep level of gratefulness as he read the coded message over and over again.

Thank you, God. Thank you.

Even if God had forsaken the whole world, everyone but he and Steve… Bucky would still be thankful, grateful, for that fact.

Looking back at the message, he read it for what felt like the sixtieth time. It was short and simple, a code phrase from the small collection the Howling Commandos had created just for them.

Steve was heading towards the cabin near Antwerp, Belgium.

He wasn't exactly sure what day it was so he couldn't tell how long ago the message had been left, but it didn't matter—now that Bucky had a trail, it was only a matter of time.

STEVE

The safe house on what the locals in Belgium called 'de Heide' hadn't been used in a long time. There was a thick layer of dust covering every surface, and any and all appliances the S.S.R. had installed when they'd built the bunker beneath the old rangers' cabin had clearly not been used since they'd been put in. The outside was even worse for wear, and it looked like there had been a fire in the area in the last few weeks, based on the dark soot that layered everything around the cabin and its outbuildings.

Lord, Steve hoped that the messages he'd been leaving at individual safe houses would be found, that he'd anticipated Bucky's movements correctly. The base the message had originated from had been destroyed, bodies layering the ground of the nearby town, according to surveillance conducted by trusted members of the German resistance—people who had risked their lives to verify the information Peggy had sent to them.

It had terrified him at first, to consider Bucky might not have made it out of that base, but that had been before they'd received a second missive that stated the resistance believed at least one person had made it out, due to clear tracks and eyewitness reports of a single man leaving the base before it burned along with what little remained of the parts of the city of Dresden closest to said base.

He'd sent the Howlies ahead to Antwerp, to liaise with those of the resistance who had survived, and to intercept Bucky should he pass through the abandoned remains of the city in search of supplies before he headed further west towards the coast.

Steve couldn't imagine anywhere else Bucky would be heading.

It was the protocol they'd established with the Howlies—in case they were separated, they should head to the nearest safe house and proceed towards HQ in London from there.

Steve had methodically been leaving messages at every safe house he remembered between Dresden and the Belgian and French coast, praying that Bucky was still himself enough to remember the key to their code, and that he would understand the messages Steve had been leaving for him.

The things Hydra had mentioned in their taunting message had more than implied they'd managed to make Bucky into the perfect soldier—one who followed orders without question and obeyed Hydra unconditionally.

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled shakily.

He believed in Bucky. Steve knew how strong Bucky was, and he refused to believe Hydra would have been able to break Bucky so damned easily. They hadn't when they held him in Kreischberg, and Steve was nearly a hundred percent certain they hadn't managed in Dresden either.

Peggy had made him promise not to go in on blind faith alone, though.

And he wasn't. He wasn't.

He hadn't just chosen this particular safe house because it was out of the way and likely entirely untouched by the virus. He and Bucky had spent a week here together, waiting out the relentless S.S. regiment that had chased them all the way from the fort in Willebroek. It had been the first time they'd spent any time together by themselves since Bucky had left for war, and by the end of the week, Steve had been even more in love with him than he had been before, and he felt almost as close to Bucky as they had been before the war.

They'd regained a part of themselves that Steve had missed, desperately.

The memories were carved into his mind, and he hoped that Bucky would remember it as fondly as he did, that he would recognize why Steve was here all by himself.

And it wasn't just because of the damn sunset—beautiful as it may be.

…which he was sharing with someone else, apparently.

He could've sworn there hadn't been anyone there a moment ago, or—damn it, the sun was lower than he remembered; how long had he been staring off into the distance, paying no mind to his surroundings, the stupid tin holding his supper dangling in his grip?

Bucky would have his hide if he knew.

Steve slowly started to twist around, still seated, keeping his hands in the same position as before. There was a man just to the side and behind him, laden with a pack, gear, and armed to the teeth.

Bucky was going to crucify him—especially if he ever found out that his dumb punk had gotten himself killed because he was thinking sappy thoughts about Bucky himself.

Bucky was… right fucking there.

Steve could hardly believe his eyes, breath drawing in on a sharp inhale, then rushing out all at once, lungs barely able to contain air anymore. He hadn't felt like this since he'd had pneumonia back in 1936.

Steve's eyes widened as his lungs tried to regain some semblance of control over themselves, and all he could do in that moment was stare.

Because his Bucky was here. His Bucky. Even hidden behind the mask—or was that a scarf?—covering the lower portion of his face, even bundled up tightly in the foreign colors of another country's army, even laden down with weaponry he'd almost exclusively seen in German hands, even with his hair grown out long and flowing around and over his ears to brush the bottom of his jawline, even in the near darkness that surrounded them… he knew. He knew.

Slowly… so slowly, Steve got to his feet.

Neither of them had said a word yet.

Steve wasn't even sure if Bucky recognized him, but he couldn't care in that moment, because hope, relief, was burgeoning within him, his heart feeling as if it were twice its normal size as it beat wildly with complete joy, his body thrumming with the barely-suppressed need to touch the man in front of him.

"Bucky," he whispered, barely holding himself still.

The other man's eyes widened.

Did he recognize him? Did he know who Steve was? Had Hydra really been able to make him forget in the bare handful of months they'd had him? Was that enough to erase a man's entire existence? What if it was?

"It's alright, Bucky," he murmured, spreading his hands, one still holding that damnable tin. But it would be too abrupt a sound if he dropped it, and he didn't dare risk spooking Bucky in this fragile moment. "It's alright," he said again. "I'm here for you. I'll get you back to the others, to the Commandos. We're all here for you—myself, Jim, Dum Dum, Monty, Gabe, Jacques—"

He stopped immediately, hands and words alike, when he heard Bucky make a choked off sound, as if he were holding something back within him, holding himself back from saying something.

Bucky was breathing more deeply than before, shoulders quaking just slightly but far more than the unnatural stillness of even a minute ago. But it was… it was something, no matter how much Steve hated to cause his friend any sort of distress.

Steve took a breath, and took a running leap off the cliff yawning before him. "Do you remember me? Do you? Do you know who I am? Do you know how long I—we've been looking for you, once we found out you were alive? Once we realized we could bring you home to us? Do you know that I would walk to the ends of the Earth—" he choked on a slightly hysterical laugh trying to make its way out, "—well, that this is the end, practically, but I walked it, and I'm here, and I would do it all over again? Do you know who I am, how much I…" No fucking holding back now, he'd promised himself he'd do this if he ever got the chance… "Do you know how much I love you, you jerk?" he whispered into the night folding down around them, the light from the fire beside them throwing shadows on the rubble around them.

Steve halted right there, trying desperately to rein in his heaving breaths and frantically beating heart, waiting, hoping—

"…Steve?"

All of the breath Steve had been holding in escaped him in a rush, like he'd been punched in the gut, but it was subsumed by the rush of euphoria and relief that nearly overtook him. His body started to quiver, and he dug the nails of his one free hand into the wrist of the other to help him stay calm, keep him from throwing himself into Bucky's arms and kissing the man all over, over and over again in his happiness, his relief, his gratitude to God for bringing him his best friend back—the man he loved. And here he was, finally hearing his voice for the first time in over five months and it… it felt so good to hear it…

"Yeah, yeah it's me, buddy. It's me, Steve Rogers. Your little punk." His voice was quivering and tears started to stream down his cheeks. He had to blink quickly so that he could see clearly, but he didn't try to stop the tears from falling.

Everything had been building up to this moment, and it had finally come. It was finally here. He was finally here, with Bucky… together.

And then Bucky was pulling the mask down around his neck, and Steve realized that there were tears trailing across Bucky's cheeks as well, more spilling from his eyes by the second, and then—and then—

"What the hell kind of reckless shit have you been up to since I've been gone, you dumb punk? Christ, Rogers, you have a team for a reason. And here you are, sitting outside, alone, and not even watching your back! I even drove up in a damn Jeep! Jesus. I could have shot you. Hell—I could have walked right up to you just like I did and stabbed you. What the fuck!" As if to emphasize the point, Bucky threw his arms into the air, an expression of fond exasperation bordering on annoyance taking over his features.

Steve couldn't help it—after a moment of stunned silence, he laughed.

He laughed so hard that his sides began to ache and he was barely able to gasp in enough air to continue laughing let alone breathe.

He somehow managed to find enough air to start off on a second round of laughter when he opened his eyes and saw Bucky looking a little nonplussed—though definitely holding back a laugh of his own, he was sure.

He just… couldn't help it. It felt like he hadn't laughed in years—before the bombs fell and the plague began to destroy the foundations his world stood on, and he knew that was only months ago and not years but it felt like it. He hadn't laughed since he'd lost Bucky, and he had dreamed of this day, of seeing Bucky again, of holding him in his arms, of kissing him, and pressing himself tightly against Bucky's body… he'd dreamed of so many things, but he had not imagined himself laughing himself breathless before any of those other possibilities.

Yet there he was.

Steve watched as Bucky opened his mouth and, before Bucky could say anything else, Steve threw himself forward and wrapped Bucky in his arms, slotting their mouths together and losing his breath in an entirely different way. A much better way.

Steve had thrown the tin of food down beside him in his haste but he hadn't even bothered with removing his gun from its sling around his body, and he certainly hadn't given Bucky any warning before he'd jumped him. The guns were in the way, clacking together between them, hindering Steve from pressing his body fully against Bucky's in the way that he'd wanted to for so long. But he didn't care. He was happy with just the hot, wet, alive and aware sensation of Bucky's lips against his, both hands coming up to thread their way into Steve's longer than usual and very dirty hair, and the knowledge that Bucky was here, with him, at last. That he was alive, and sane it seemed, after Steve had thought him dead for so long, and then a brainwashed soldier for the Hydra cause.

No, this was so much better, and he didn't care about any of the imperfections in that moment—to him everything was perfect.

Bucky groaned into his mouth, opening under the force of Steve's onslaught, but quickly took control of the kiss. He licked deep into Steve's mouth, angling their mouths for a better sensation, hands wandering all the while. Steve didn't even notice, so lost was he in the sensation, until Bucky was pulling away from him. Steve let out a small, involuntary whine, and Bucky gave him an amused and self-satisfied glance while he pulled both of their rifles from off of their bodies, dropping his own pack to the ground behind him—and then he was back on Steve again.

Steve whimpered just a little bit when he felt Bucky draw him even closer against his body. Though there were still plenty of layers—including dust and dirt and ash, oh God the ash—between them, Steve was satisfied with it… for the moment. He continued to kiss Bucky back, learning just the way Bucky liked it—and what he liked, too—as the kiss slowly died down.

Bucky pulled away just a little bit from Steve's lips, keeping the rest of their bodies in close contact, and then pressed both of their foreheads together, letting them breathe each other's air as they slowly calmed.

"I love you too, y'know?" Bucky finally whispered what felt like moments later, and then pressed a light kiss to the flesh just beneath Steve's eye. He drew back until they could catch each other's eyes in the flickering light of the fire. "It's all I could think about, ever since I woke up. How I wanted to tell you, how I needed to tell you how I felt. I couldn't believe I'd been such an idiot not to notice before, and when I did I was even more of an idiot not to tell you. I should have told you then, back in the Alps, the night before the… before—"

He choked on his words just a little, and Steve filled in gently for him. "Before the train." He deliberately did not look at Bucky's arm, which was actually there, unlike in the pictures he had seen—that would be a story for another day. When Bucky was ready to tell it.

"Yeah," Bucky said quietly, hoarsely. "That."

Silence filled the air between them, and they spent a few minutes wrapped in each other's arms, listening to the wildlife moving around them, content with not saying anything further for the moment.

Finally, Steve pulled back, cupped Bucky's face in both of his hands, and swiped his thumbs across the other man's cheeks. He gently pressed his lips to Bucky's again, but only for a few seconds, before gently drawing the man towards the fire.

Later on, as they lay tangled together on the bedrolls they'd strewn around the now-dying campfire, Steve trailed his hand up and down the metal of Bucky's… prosthesis, he'd called it. He hadn't spoken much more on the topic, but he had said something else that was rather interesting. Something about…

"So. Tell me again how we're going to save the world," Steve murmured.

"I want you here. I don't care if it's a hundred degrees and every blade of grass dies. Without you, none of that matters to me."
—Kami Garcia