Chapter 2
After the heli-carriers, the Potomac, Steve had been laid up in the hospital for five days.
Buck's gut shots had torn up his insides: ruptured his stomach, shredded his intestines.
Nothing he could remember had ever hurt so bad.
He’d learnt afterwards that his skull had been fractured in two places. Right eye socket, six ribs, cheekbone cracked. Nose broken, left ear half torn-off, shoulder and four fingers dislocated. His face had been mashed out of shape, teeth splintered, jaw knocked loose. Out of all of it, his hip had been the worst, broken nastily with the knee of the same leg pulped and out of place.
They’d said he’d fallen almost 400 feet into the river. That the impact alone would have killed an ordinary man.
He couldn’t remember hitting the water. (He couldn’t remember hitting the ice.)
He only knew what the nurses would tell him:
That he’d been septic by the time they’d rolled him into theatre.
That it’d been touch-and-go for a whole twenty-four hours.
They’d set him up in a windowless private room, complete with cut flowers and armed guard. He’d lain there in the dark, half-conscious, unable to sleep, unable to move, thinking only of Buck’s hands around his neck, of Buck’s heavy boot prints, thick in the silted river mud, inches from his face.
By the morning of the sixth day, his body had knit itself back together and they’d let him go. He’d been, as he always eventually was, new and unblemished; doggedly unmarked by all that had happened.
He’d gone straight back to his apartment like a fool, stripping the police tape from the frame of the front door.
Inside, it hadn’t looked as though anything had been moved since the night Fury’d been shot.
The whole place had smelled like outside. Daylight shone through the hole Bucky’d blasted in the exterior wall; there was a dark, rust-coloured spill on the pale carpet.
He’d looked around at the shell of the place, at his accumulation of impersonal effects: books and CDs that’d been bought for him, an enormous black television that he’d put back in its box.
When he’d stepped through to the kitchen-diner, Bucky'd been there, waiting like a ghost at the kitchen table.
He’d looked awful: ragged and exhausted like he hadn't been sleeping. Drawn and grey like he was starving to death.
Steve had hardly noticed the heavy gun out on the table between them.
Bucky’d started talking softly with his hands up: all Steve had to do was say the word, and he'd go.
But Steve had only shaken his head, unable to speak, unable to look away.
So Bucky’d kept talking.
He’d spent days trawling through all the files in Romanoff’s data dump—reports, casefiles, data logs—and found something that needed attention while HYDRA was still scrambling. Before it regrouped and closed ranks.
I could use some extra muscle, he’d rasped. It’s really a two-man gig.
And Steve had kept staring, dizzy, reeling at the sight of Buck’s body, at the sound of his voice, at the terrible, awful thinness in his face that reminded him of the War, and said OK.
Sure. Alright. OK.
* * *
Bucky crouched down next to the older kid and rolled him over onto his back. He was out cold: skin clammy, face a shock of spattered blood. His whole body was tacky with cryo-fluid: eyes red and gummy, ears clogged, hair plastered flatly to his skull. His nose was an ugly mess, obviously broken and already swelling.
He didn’t move.
Bucky sat back on his heels and eyed him warily, heart pounding thickly in his ears. The sharp chemical smell steaming off the kid’s body was making his head spin.
There was something awful about him lying there - a sort of grotesque, perverted vulnerability that was greater than the sum of his nakedness and unconsciousness.
Like a beat dog, Bucky thought.
A thing that didn’t know its own wretchedness.
He eyed the kid for a moment longer. Then he reached for his pack.
They dressed the kids in clothes they’d brought with them: heavy jackets, thermals, ski pants, boots.
When Bucky next looked up, Steve was tugging a hat down over the little kid’s head. He seemed crazily small: pale and thin-limbed. He couldn’t have been more than six years old.
When Steve lifted him up, he was limp like a ragdoll, head lolling back, arms hanging loose by his sides.
Bucky stood and hauled the older kid upright by his arms until he was holding him up against his body in a loose embrace. Then he stooped and twisted, taking the kid’s limp deadweight across his shoulders.
They retraced their steps, heading back through the narrow gullet of the tunnel until they reached the bright cut of the square door leading out to the landing pad.
The wind seemed more frenzied than before, ripping and squalling against the door in the rockface like it was trying to pry them out into the open. The force was incredible, warping and snatching at the thickness of the air. It seemed almost crazy to leave the cover of the tunnel and step out onto the exposed platform.
‘I’ll go first,’ Steve said, half-shouting over the wall of roaring sound.
Steve went up with the little kid strapped to his body, black against the black rock.
Bucky stood out on the landing pad watching them until their bodies disappeared into by the whirling snow. Then he ducked inside the mouth of the tunnel and crouched down, back against the concrete wall.
The older kid was propped up against the opposite wall, arms and legs splayed out in front of him like a dead man. His head lolled so far forward his chin was touching the front of his jacket. With the harness on, he looked like some dead kid-soldier who’d been cut out of his parachute.
He waited just less than eight minutes. Then the end of the rope jerked sharply three times and he stood, knees cracking, flush with relief.
He’d rigged them up so that when he started climbing, the kid dangled six or so feet below him. When Bucky glanced down at him, he looked like a body, head nodding forward, limbs hanging loose and heavy in their sockets.
All the way up, the wind screamed and snapped at their clothes like it wanted to sever the cord between them.
The pale light was so strange Bucky couldn’t parse the shape of the sky through the thrashing, white air. Then, suddenly, Steve was there above him, a column of strength, reaching out to haul them up over the edge.
Together they unlashed the rest of the gear from the groaning trees: two snowmobiles, a tarp, and a low, narrow sled. Bucky loaded the kids onto the sled and tied them down, covered them with the tarp. The tops of the trees were thrashing wildly, spindly crowns twisting and thrashing like live cables.
When Steve fired up the first engine, the sound was almost inaudible over the roar of the wind.
They sawed their way through the trees, skimming over the packed white ground, snow swirling madly around their bodies.
After an hour or so, the light started to change. By the time they pulled up alongside the tarp-covered truck, the wind had dropped completely.
Bucky glanced skyward, expecting at any moment to hear the whup whup of rotor blades, to feel the shearing downdraft on his face.
It was still snowing: thick, broad flakes that fell so slowly they seemed to hang in the air.
His skin prickled, heart thumping in his ears, but there was no sound, and nothing moved.
He pulled the tarp off the truck while Steve cut the kids loose. The soft crunch of their boots on the top snow seemed crazily loud in the newly-quiet world.
They drove for hours, until it got dark, then for hours after that. Mile after mile the track was the same: thick, dark pine forest on either side. Trees straight like iron bars, blasted with snow. In the dark, the world had narrowed to the yellow beam of the truck’s headlights. The world beyond was black.
Bucky flexed his hands on the wheel and glanced sideways.
Steve was asleep in the front passenger seat, cheek resting low against the stiff collar of his flak jacket.
The little kid was curled in his lap, face tucked into his chest. He was still wrapped in the blanket, almost completely covered except for a small part of his face.
Steve had slung both of his arms around him, low in lieu of a seat belt.
He glanced over his shoulder.
The older kid was lying on his side across the backseat. His eyes were closed, wrists and ankles held together awkwardly where Bucky’d cable-tied them together. Bucky’d put a line in his arm too – the IV bag was hanging from the back of Steve’s seat.
Bucky looked back out through the scratched windshield. The snow was still falling thickly, skimming up over the truck’s bonnet, flaring white in the headlights.
The next time Bucky looked over the little kid was watching him.
‘Steve,’ Bucky said quietly.
The kid shuddered at the sound of his voice.
Steve came awake almost immediately, blinking and straightening up in the seat.
‘Kid’s awake.’
Bucky passed Steve a canteen, one hand on the wheel. Steve took it and held it for the kid to drink from.
The kid was so weak he could barely lift his head. He made a tiny, hurt noise as Steve gently shifted him around.
Less than a minute later he was asleep, this time with his face turned into Steve’s neck.