Bucky grinds the butt of his cigarette into the ground. He hadn’t even wanted the damn thing anyway.The soil is half-thawed, that level of muck where your boots would slide in the mud but any attempt to dig would be met with ice. They were somewhere just east of the latest Hydra base to fall to Steve’s crazy plans carried out by a bunch of misfits. He had managed to get a moment to himself as soon as they were far enough from the smoking wreckage to avoid getting caught.
This last one had been a bad one. Human experimentation was apparently thething to do at the moment.
There were no shortage of test subjects.
The last batch were all dead when they got there. Men, women, fuck- even kids.
There were a bunch of jackets, long separated from their owners. Each had a long stream of numbers, and just below that, a mark. A few had black triangles emblazoned with the letter A, Arbeitsscheuer. They might have actually stood a better chance if they had stayed in a labor camp. That was a sick thought. A pair in red- going from the position these were from POWs that might have found alive if they had gotten here sooner.
The pink triangle was already barely hanging on to the striped fabric below it. If anyone noticed him tearing it free of those last few threads, they didn’t say anything.
He lights another cigarette. He doesn’t want it. He just wishes it would give him something.
"Come on, Buck. We have to get moving." Steve’s voice was as gentle as it always was. He knew that more had gone down in Zola’s lab but he never pushed. And days like today, when it became really clear that a metal table could be a death sentence, you could see the relief in his eyes right along the guilt that he had for feeling it.
The pink scrap of fabric burns against his palm. “I need to tell you something.”
"Yeah?" He looks back through the trees towards where everyone else was already waiting.
"In another world, it could have been me."
Steve gulps, nods. “I know.”
Thing was, he didn’t know. Bucky stands up from the dry tree roots he had been sitting on and holds up the torn triangle. “Not because of the war. Because of this.”
Steve just gets that look to him, like back in school when he didn’t get a math problem. “But what about all them dames?”
"I like them just fine, too." The smile felt fake, too wide for his face. But it was true. He had never faked interest in any of the ladies he’d spent an evening with.
Steve was quiet for what felt like an eternity before he asked, “You can’t leave anyone for me, can you?”
"What?"
"When we get back home. It was bad enough you kept tricking all the girls into falling for your ugly mug, now you’re going to be romancing all the Joes, too?" The cocked eyebrow and the smile on his face made it easier to breathe again.
He took a drag from his cigarette and let their shoulders bump as they walked in step. “You say that like you ever stood a chance in the first place.”