It’s Gabe who finds him.
The wind is whipping through the traincar, a huge hole ripped into the metal making the walls shake with it as the train speeds through the mountains.
His part of the mission had gone better than expected, he’d found just what he needed to find. He’s almost giddy to show his captain what he’d got his hands on, he knows how much good it’s gonna do for the war. He stops in the doorway the second he sees him, though, his heart suddenly in his boots.
Steve is sitting dangerously close to the edge, staring out at the whiteness but looking for all the world like he isn’t seeing any of it. There’s vomit on his uniform, and Gabe knows before Steve even notices he’s there.
He doesn’t have to ask what happened, it’s written clear as day on the man’s face.
“Cap,” he calls as he steps further into the car, the door sliding shut behind him. His voice surprises him when it cracks.
Steve doesn’t look up, doesn’t even move when Gabe walks up to him, tugs lightly on his arm.
“Cap, come on,” he urges, and he’s not sure if his voice is soft for the other man’s benefit or his own. “We gotta get out of here.”
He tugs at him again, harder this time, and it’s only then that Steve even acknowledges his presence. The look in his eyes is almost enough to knock Gabe back a few steps. “He just — I — I couldn’t — “
Gabe can barely hear him over the wind, but the stammered words are enough to confirm what Gabe knew the second he saw his captain. For a moment, he sees his team member’s cocky, delighted grin as he’d pushed off of the ground and toward the train, just before Gabe followed. He hears him laughing on the way down. His brain conjures up what his scream must’ve sounded like as he fell before he can stop the thought in its tracks. “I know,” he manages over the wind. “I know. But we’ve really gotta go.”
He can’t help but think his voice is only working because it has to, because if he can’t get them both out of here now they’ve only got a few minutes or they’ll both be dead as — as —
Gabe shuts that thought down quickly, somehow manages to get his captain to his feet. He staggers as the man puts so much of his weight onto him, but he says nothing.
Steve is whiter than he’d ever seen, and from the look on his face, Gabe is almost certain that if he weren’t here, Steve would sit here shivering until someone came to kill him. He doubts the man would care if they did.
Gabe’s just glad he’s standing at all.
He only remembers the shield when he sees it out of the corner of his eye. It’s scuffed up and bloody, and he doesn’t want to know why, just kicks it up with his foot and hands it to Steve.
Somehow, thankfully, the man has enough awareness to take his shield, hook it on his back as the two stumble wordlessly out of the car.
Neither one of them looks back as the door slides shut behind them, abruptly cutting off the screaming of the wind. Steve’s breath shudders in the sudden silence, a pained gasp making its way out of him as he shifts his weight back onto his own feet, crumpling to his knees for just a moment. They hit the ground hard and he buries his face into the crook of his elbow, squeezes his eyes shut and makes that horrible gasping noise again.
He’s standing again a moment later, this time on his own. His shoulders sag a little more than usual as he trudges forward, his feet stumbling over themselves like he’s forgotten how to walk with this body.
Gabe follows closely as they make their way toward the back of the train, and neither of them says anything.
There’s nothing to say.
They somehow manage their way off the train and down the mountain — one mile, then two, then three — until they’re nearing the spot they’re supposed to meet the other men. Probably an hour has passed as they trudge their way through the wind and the snow, the only sounds passing between them Steve’s occasional shudders for breath.
Gabe is unable to stop wondering if this terrible wind he’s hunkering down against was enough to blow Bucky into the rocky cliff face of the mountain as he fell, or if he was allowed the small mercy of a quick plunge, painless until he hit the bottom. (At least that way, it would be faster, he supposes before he can stop the thought.)
He doesn’t want to know what Steve is thinking about. He has that look in his eye again that says he isn’t seeing what’s in front of him, but instead seeing something much worse.
Gabe is trying to think of what he might be able to say to pull the man out of that place when, suddenly, they can see their team in the distance.
Steve seems slightly to come back to himself then, and they quicken their pace instinctually at the thought of friendly faces and a fire to warm their hands over.
The men must be too focused on hearing the outcome of the mission to take in the looks on the faces of the men in front of them.
“Well, boys? How’d it go?” Falsworth asks with a grin, and Gabe can’t help but think this is so much worse than the way he’d walked into that traincar and known immediately. They still think their friend is alive.
When neither of them responds, Morita raises his eyebrows. “Did we get him?”
Steve looks to him for an answer, and it’s only then that Gabe realizes he hadn’t even reported to his captain on the state of the mission. Steve is still staring at him with that look in his eyes, haunted and strangely flat. It takes him a moment to find his voice, to pull it somewhere out of where it’d lodged itself in his throat.
“Yeah,” he tells the men, and he sounds almost normal. “Yeah, we got him.”
There’s another silence, and this time it’s deafening. It feels like even the wind has died down, is waiting for something to happen.
This is the last moment, he realizes. Their last few seconds of peace. For their sake, Gabe wishes they had longer.
It’s Dum-Dum who finally speaks up, his voice shattering the quiet, and Gabe knows his wish was in vain. “Hey, where’s Barnes? He make his way back to camp already?”
This time it’s Gabe who looks to Steve to speak, only to see the man open his mouth and struggle to make any sound at all come out. For the first time all day, Gabe can see the captain’s eyes begin to go red as he tries again to say something. It’s like it’s only now hitting him that he has to say it out loud — like the shock of watching his best friend fall from a train is wearing off, and he’s finally realizing what Gabe has known from the second he laid eyes on Steve: Bucky Barnes is dead.
“Barnes didn’t make it,” Gabe chokes out, and Steve sags with the words. They hang in the air for a moment, before —
“What do you mean, he didn’t make it?” Monty’s angry all of a sudden, turning away from the captain and taking a step toward Gabe. If he took one look at Steve’s face, Gabe knows, the truth would be undeniable. (He doesn’t blame Monty for trying to deny it.) “It was a simple mission. He didn’t make it off the train? He still on his way here? Where is he?”
Dernier steps forward and gently puts his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Monty,” he says quietly, and Gabe can see that he was wrong originally, when he had assumed none of the men knew. Dernier was older than all of them, had been fighting longer. Dernier had lost more men than any of them, had probably known just by the way Gabe and Steve had walked alone through the snow. “Barnes isn’t coming,” he tells him gently. His accent is thick, but it doesn’t matter.
He could’ve said it in French, and they would’ve understood him. They can see it in Steve’s face now, Gabe knows, can feel it in the heavy silence and the way it feels colder in this moment than it has all winter. This is where Bucky would’ve cracked a joke, Gabe can tell they’re all thinking, would’ve grinned at the men — his friends — and made them forget about the chill in the air with a grin and a sunny story about back home.
So this is what it’s like, the cruel part of his mind supplies. This is a world without Bucky Barnes: quiet and cold.