Chapter Text
When the side of the train ripped open and Bucky was thrown out with it, there was no time for Steve to think.
The wind was whipping about the open side of the train, so loud that Steve could barely hear himself above the howling as he called for Bucky to grab his hand. There was an agonisingly familiar stubborn, determined look on Bucky’s face and amongst the panic seizing Steve’s body was a single belief that nothing could actually happen here; Bucky was almost safe. A few more inches and he would have him.
But then he heard a horrible metallic sound, audible above the wind and realised a second before it happened what was about to play out. It was almost some horrible version of his life flashing before his eyes, and there was nothing he could do about it. The railing broke away from the wall of the train, and with it, Bucky fell.
Bucky’s scream, rapidly fading, was what spurred him into action. Old instincts took over: he wanted to cling to the railing himself, wanted to be afraid and stay there, but something much stronger took over. He couldn’t let Bucky die. Without pausing to consider it twice, Steve flung himself from the train after him.
No more than a second could have passed, but he had already lost sight of Bucky in the ravine. Steve landed on the steep wall just below the lip of it, managing to stop his fall by grabbing a hanging rock. He stopped and listened. He could hear the train chugging away into the distance; the others would have this. His mission, now, was something obvious. He couldn’t hear Bucky any more. The screams had stopped, and he didn’t want to think about what that could mean. He knew that the second difference in when they fell meant Bucky would be further up the ravine than Steve. There was no room for error here: he had to find him, and in the ice and snow, he likely only had one shot at this.
There were practicalities tugging at his mind that he absolutely hadn’t considered during his split-second decision: they were miles from anywhere, his radio wouldn’t work within the deep cavern of the ravine, they were probably going to both freeze to death before they could get help. But he couldn’t just abandon him to die. (If Bucky had survived the fall in the first place, a horrible voice in the back of his mind added.)
Still hanging from his handhold, Steve looked down, considering his position. There were small pieces of rock like this all the way down, from what he could see - though it was difficult in all the snow to gauge just how deep the ravine was. Methodically, he started working his way down, dropping from tiny foothold to tiny foothold, snow kicking out each time he moved, teasing a fall, threatening the small platforms giving out below his weight. Eventually, the most efficient safe way to get down the near-vertical slope was to face in to the rock face and slow each movement with four points of contact with the snow.
It took, by his estimation, twenty minutes before the slope finally levelled out and he could stand without risk. He took his compass out to get his bearings. The ravine ran north to south, and he couldn’t afford to get turned around and go in the wrong direction. The snow was incredibly disorienting. Hydra’s train had been running south, so logically, Bucky had to be somewhere north of him. He started walking.
It was oddly quiet, as if the snow and deepness of the cavern swallowed anything that might make a sound, and if the creek was flowing, it was doing so under a frozen top. At least, that was all what Steve had to believe, because the alternative: that it was so silent because he was about to stumble across his best friend’s dead body, was too much to consider. He could hear the soft crunch of his footsteps as he broke through the frozen upper crust of the snow with each step, and not much else. It was oddly hypnotic, and he suddenly understood how people died of exposure. It was peaceful and he could easily have just stopped and laid down for a while. The wind had died, or maybe it was just because they were so deep in the cavern. Distantly, he realised he was quite cold. Without moving, if he was still alive, Bucky would be colder. That thought spurred him on.
After about ten minutes of walking, he felt like he was starting to get delirious - either that, or he was beginning to get close to Bucky, because it felt like he could hear soft groans cutting through the silence. He stopped. He called out his name.
And then, distant and very strained, he heard it. “Steve…?”
It was as if his heart stopped for a second. He was alive. He was *alive*. Steve broke into a run, as fast as he could through the snow, stumbling a couple of times where a drift was too deep. There was a dark object looking out of place in the distance and sure enough, as he got closer, he realised the object was Bucky, who was laying flat on his back, surrounded by an alarming amount of blood trailing from the wall of the ravine. He must have hit it when he’d fallen. Steve crossed the final yards faster than he’d ever thought possible and sunk to his knees next to him. It was when he’d found him in Austria all over again, a mixture of relief, horror, and absolute terror that he wasn’t okay.
It took him a second to realise what was tugging his gaze to the left side of Bucky’s body, where most of the blood was staining the snow.
There was a horrible, obvious gap there.
His left arm was gone.
Something inside Steve seized up again, and wildly, his mind tried to deny what he was seeing - or rather, what he wasn’t seeing. He’d seen Bucky not half an hour ago, perfectly whole. Unable to help himself, he stared and reached out for the ragged end of the arm of his uniform. He lifted it enough to see - god - horrifically torn flesh and the end of a bone sticking out, but then Bucky screamed in absolute agony, his body twisting under him and he muttered an apology, drawing his hand back and trying to think.
An injury like that, Bucky was going to bleed out before they got anywhere.
Basic first aid training from back home started to slowly light up at the back of his head and he murmured another apology as he reached to remove Bucky’s belt to create a tourniquet. Something about the pain had clearly passed Bucky through to hysteria because he actually laughed, reached to knock Steve’s hands away with his right and said, “Not now, Rogers.”
Steve decided to ignore that, getting the belt off. “This is going to hurt,” he warned him, moving around to Bucky’s left side, kneeling in - god - his blood and wrapping the belt around the remains of his upper arm, cinching it as tight as he dared. Bucky - looking alarmingly pale - screwed his eyes shut as he pulled it. Snow was beginning to lightly fall around them. The full horror of the injury was settling over Steve’s brain. It was hard to get his head around, the idea that Bucky: so full of life, who used his hands to draw when Steve dragged him to art class, to box, to take home an awful lot of dames - was suddenly not whole. This wasn’t how this mission was supposed to go. The biggest risk was supposed to be the drop onto the train in the first place. They’d got through that just fine. They’d mostly got through the fight just fine. He wasn’t sure they’d get through this just fine.
“Gonna get you out of here,” he murmured, trying to sound a lot more confident than he felt. The blood seeping from the wound seemed to be slowing, or maybe it was the cold stopping it - or maybe Bucky was just running out of blood - whatever the reason, Steve decided to take it as a positive. He moved around to Bucky’s right, and shifted his arm under his shoulders to get him to his feet. “This is gonna hurt like hell, but we’ve got a long walk ahead of us. I’ve got you.” He took his compass out to double check he hadn’t go turned around, checked his radio far too optimistically, and started to walk.
It was slow going. Bucky’s head was down, and Steve knew by the tension in his body that he was in an immense amount of pain, even if he was moving a little stronger than Steve had really expected. The snow held them up, and where they accidentally stumbled across the frozen stream it was slippery underfoot. They had a couple of close calls where they nearly fell. Steve wasn’t sure that he’d be able to get him up again if they did.
At one point, Steve paused, sure he could hear the echo of voices further up the canyon. If they were ambushed by Hydra, they were both dead. Neither of them even had a weapon. His shield was back on the train. But after staying still for a moment and hearing nothing other than Bucky’s very laboured breathing, he decided he’d been imagining things, and kept walking.
Ten minutes later, he heard the voices again, this time louder, closer. Steve turned to look down the canyon, where they’d come from, but light snow had begun to fall and he couldn’t tell if he could see anything or if they were just shadows. What was definitely real was how Bucky’s breathing was starting to sound more shallow. He hugged his arm tighter around him. “C’mon,” he murmured, turning to continue.
He tried keeping Bucky talking, tried to keep his mind off the pain, and ended up babbling. He talked about things they’d done before the war; Bucky half heartedly added a comment every now and then, but not often. He talked about how before long the war would be over, Hydra defeated, and they would go home to a different New York: where they could have the lights on all day and night, where the papers weren’t filled with doom, where rations would be a thing of the past. Bucky stared glassily ahead of them, and so Steve moved on to detailing what they’d eat when they got home: Bucky’s mom’s spaghetti, good pizza, pancakes. He talked about a letter he’d got from Bucky’s little sister a month back complaining that Bucky never wrote home; he’d forgotten to mention it until now, and he forced a laugh that wasn’t shared.
When Steve finally gave up and fell silent, Bucky flashed him a look that seemed worryingly as if he were on the verge of giving up. The snow was getting heavier and it was settling on Bucky’s nose and eyelashes. They were losing light. Steve gave him a pained look and brushed the snow off his face.
However, in the silence, as they stopped, he heard the voices again. They sounded close, and they were shouting in a language he couldn’t instantly identify. Bucky heard them too - Steve could feel the moment he realised that people were closing in on them as he seemed to stiffen in his embrace, and he glanced behind them.
Steve knew that Bucky would be able to read his panic. Bucky, for his part, looked calm. Too calm. He turned to look at Steve, and for the first time since they’d started their hike out, his voice was steady. “Go. Leave me.”
At that, Steve just stared at him. “What?”
“You’ll move faster without me, go.”
“I’m not gonna just leave you,” Steve said, feeling something drop out from the centre of his body. The idea that Bucky could even consider Steve abandoning him was insane, completely foreign.
Bucky glanced behind them again. Steve could hear what he was hearing, of course, the crunch of snow under boots now, amplified by the steep walls. He had no idea how many of them there were, and no idea how long they’d have. Bucky glanced back at him. “It’s our only chance. Hurry up.”
For a moment, Steve was struck by the absurd thought that it would be completely typical for the two of them to die in the middle of nowhere because they were caught in a stubborn argument. Bucky stepped away from him and gave his chest a little shove, far stronger than he had any right to be given the situation. Steve just stared at him. “Are you crazy? No.”
The voices were getting closer. Too close. He could see approaching shadows now. Bucky just stared at him, looking frustrated. If there was one thing Steve had always been able to do, it was out-argue Bucky Barnes. He shook his head again. It looked like Bucky was about to open his damn mouth and say something stupid back again, but a shot rang out and Steve instinctively stepped in front of him. The bullet caught him in his right shoulder and he winced. It would heal, of course, the serum had seen to that, but in the meantime it stung like a bitch.
He looked up in time to see five, no, six, no, nine men step out of the shadows. Well, he guessed that made the odds close to even, up against him with a bullet wound and a half strength Bucky.
“Whatever you want,” Steve started, with bravado he was beginning to not feel, “I’ll give you one chance to walk away. This doesn’t have to end in a fight.”
A couple of the men laughed, at that, and one of them called something back to him in a language he didn’t recognise. It wasn’t German, at least, which meant these men weren’t Hydra. Not that it really mattered - it wasn’t like they were friendly, given they’d just shot him - but right now Steve would take ‘unfriendly but not Hydra’ any day of the week. Beside him, Bucky swayed a little on his feet. His tied-off arm was still dripping blood into the snow, slowly but surely, and Steve realised with horror that his right hand was uncovered and probably freezing.
He looked around. They were all too far away for him to safely grab for someone’s gun, and to make matters worse, all of the guns were trained on Bucky, not him. If only the shield wasn’t back on the train. “Fellas,” he offered, trying to stall, hoping at least one of them would draw close enough for him to make a move and get a weapon, “It’s pretty cold out here. Why don’t we take this somewhere more comfortable?”
It was, somehow, the right thing to say, because a couple of things happened at once: the man who had first spoken barked out what sounded like an order, and the two closest to Bucky moved in. To Steve’s surprise, Bucky reacted faster than he did and swung a wild punch in their direction, though it was obvious that the movement caused him pain and he stumbled only to be met with the butt of a rifle to the side of his face.
Steve was almost too distracted by it to notice the men closing in on his left but he turned in time to deliver an uppercut to the first man’s jaw. Another leapt at him from behind and tried wrapping something that felt like wire around his neck. Steve just managed to get his hand up to get in between the weapon and his throat, twisting to flip the man over his shoulder, landing him on his back. He ripped the wire out of his hands and tossed it away before delivering a punch to the man’s head, keeping him down. At the same time, however, someone came up behind him again - two someones, in fact, each grabbing one of his arms and hauling him off balance. He struggled to find purchase in the snow as they dragged him backwards and a third man stepped in to deliver a hard punch to his gut. He managed to twist enough to kick at him and connected, the kick sending the man stumbling back, but he couldn’t get out of the hold and barely had some to think anything else before he heard Bucky cry out behind him.
The cry leant him extra strength and he finally got his feet under him, ripping his arms from the grip of the other men and turning.
Bucky was kneeling in the snow with a man’s foot on his back and two guns pointed at his head, with another man cruelly twisting the remains of his left arm above his head. It was a horrific sight and for a second Steve felt his heart stop, unable to even move as someone raised a gun to his own temple.
Even with the language barrier, as they all stared at him expectantly, the only noise Bucky’s pained gasps for breath, Steve knew exactly what they wanted.
Slowly, he raised his hands in surrender.
-
The walk out was long, and arduous. Steve didn’t speak, the muzzle of a gun pressed into the base of his skull from behind as they marched. Bucky was ahead of him, being dragged between two men, seemingly in and out of consciousness. It appeared as if every time he passed out someone would slap him in the head until he started stumbling on his own feet again, though he barely appeared to be carrying his own weight.
They were in deep trouble, and all Steve could think was that he needed to stay present long enough to get the two of them out of there.
There was something going on here. Neither of them had been particularly injured during the fight. The end goal obviously wasn’t to kill either of them, or they would have been shot and left in the canyon. For whatever reason, whoever these people were, they’d been sent there to capture them.
He was becoming less and less convinced that this wasn’t Hydra. It had been too deliberate. The idea that it could be a coincidence that they’d been found by an entire squadron of well dressed, well equipped men in the middle of the alpine wilderness defied belief. And the only people who could possibly have known they were out there would have to have been on, or connected to, that train. Which meant, Hydra.
But Hydra were a Nazi organisation, and should, to the best of Steve’s knowledge, been speaking German.
The language they were speaking was harsher; Russian, he thought, at a guess. But it made no sense. Tenuous as the relationship was, America and Russia were allies. Germany and Russia weren’t. If they were Russian, taking two American soldiers prisoner made even less sense.
He glanced at the two men marching either side of him. Neither looked particularly chatty. “Care to tell me who you’re working for?” He offered, just in case, but was met with stony silence. That figured. “You’re going to have to tell me eventually,” he added, though even he knew it was pointless.
The walk went on for hours, and Steve had absolutely no idea how Bucky was making it.
Finally - finally, after what must have been a good five or six hours, even though nobody seemed more fatigued than when they’d started - they reached the end of the snow, and a clearing with a plane. Still, nobody spoke as they approached it, opened a door, and carried Bucky inside before shoving Steve after him. He stumbled a little but watched as Bucky was settled in a seat and a harness clipped around him, tight, too tight. The men who had been carrying him sat either side of him, holding their guns fairly loose, casual. Steve tried willing Bucky to open his eyes and grab one of them, but he seemed to be barely conscious, his head back against the wall, eyes closed.
There was a gun still pressed to Steve’s temple, and he didn’t glance anywhere but at Bucky. He could see the very shallow rise and fall of his chest. Steve wanted to reach out, wanted to grab him and tell him it was going to be okay, that he was going to get them out of here. He wasn’t someone accustomed to giving up, and he definitely wasn’t going to give up now. But the situation seemed too precarious, and so he just sat back, trying to look around them without being obvious about it.
The plane was bigger than any he’d been in; something about it seemed more advanced, and as the engines started, they sounded more powerful. He was suspicious. Their technology shouldn’t have been significantly better than the army’s. If they were Russians, if they were allies, they shouldn’t have been hoarding better technology at all. He remembered the World Fair, a few years before the war, and all the Soviet exhibits about advancements in technology that he had genuinely thought were propaganda.
The days of he and Bucky wandering around the Fair together seemed like another lifetime ago, when their biggest problems were affording Steve’s medication and Bucky’s high flying social life at the same time.
He couldn’t help his gaze returning to the gap at Bucky’s left.
Focus, he told himself. And that’s when he saw it - an officer coming out of the cockpit, leaving the pilot. And on the breast of his uniform, the Hydra logo.
They were Hydra.
Hydra weren’t just a Nazi organisation after all.
He stiffened, bracing himself for a fight, but the man simply stood at parade rest in front of him. “Captain,” he said, sounding for all the money in the world like they were two normal people just having a normal conversation, “I must admit it’s beyond my wildest expectations to have you join us.”
“I wasn’t exactly given a choice,” Steve retorted, voice even.
The man laughed. “I suppose not. Still, I’m sure that Sergeant Barnes will be glad for the company.”
Unable to quite catch the expression before it moved across his face, Steve frowned. They shouldn’t have known Bucky by name. The way the man spoke it was if *Bucky* had been their target all along, not Steve, and that made absolutely no sense.
Except.
On the train, now he thought about it, they’d separated them very deliberately. It didn’t make sense if they were separating them to target Steve: Bucky was one of the strongest guys he knew, but he wasn’t a match for the otherworldly-powered weapons of Hydra. They could as easily have captured or killed the both of them there as Steve on his own. No, they had been separating them so they could target Bucky.
“What do you want from us?” Steve tried, because it felt safer, somehow, than demanding what they wanted from Bucky. He was struck with the urge to grab him, somehow beat the hell out of everyone in the plane before either of them got killed, and jump out before they took off.
The officer looked annoyingly calm. “An opportunity for a chat, Captain. That’s all. We have quite the facility to show you. Then, of course, you’ll both be free to go, if that’s what you choose.”
Steve steadied a glare on him. “And why do I get the feeling that’s a lie?”
He simply smiled. “Because you’re used to men who need to lie to get what they want.”
Of anything, he hadn’t expected him to come out with something that basic and true. It felt like a point scored against him and Steve set his jaw, looking away. The officer returned to the cockpit as the plane took off and Steve tried taking stock of the situation. For whatever reason, Hydra wanted Bucky alive, which meant they had to get him some medical attention whenever they reached their destination. That was a good thing. They’d have a much better chance of escaping if they were both in better shape.
That brought his attention back to the sting in his shoulder from the bullet. It was likely still lodged in there. This didn’t strike him as ideal conditions to go digging around in his own flesh to get it out, but he knew it was going to be worse if his body healed around it. He didn’t have a huge amount of experience with being shot but he knew that his body healed fast. Feeling the eyes of everyone in the back of the plane trained on him, he took off both his gloves and set his jaw as he plunged two fingers into the wound, fighting to keep from screwing up his face in pain. It was clumsy and messy and his fingers were slick with blood when he finally pulled them out, but the tiny piece of metal was between them. He’d made the wound larger, inevitably, but that didn’t matter. Returning his face to impassive, he dropped the bullet on the floor. It didn’t make a sound over the engines.
“You’re such a dumbass,” Bucky murmured, and Steve’s focus snapped back to him. He thought he’d long passed out; his eyes looked closed.
After a long moment, not wanting to be overheard, Steve had an idea from back when they were kids and trying to talk without Bucky’s little sister hanging off every word. Knowing exactly how ridiculous he sounded, he slipped into Pig Latin. “Ow-hay ad-bay is-yay it-yay?”
That at least caused Bucky to open his eyes, and he almost looked like he was about to laugh. Steve watched him, worried, as he clearly translated it in his head before replying, “Urts-hay.”
“Ey-thay ant-way us-yay alive-yay,” he replied, slowly enough that Bucky would be able to follow. They want us alive.
Bucky glanced around at the men crowding the plane, and narrowed his eyes before he nodded.
“En-whay e-way et-gay o-tay ere-whay ey-thay are-yay aking-tay us-yay, e-way ill-way ake-may a-yay ove-may,” he said, sitting back. When we get to where they’re taking us, we’ll make a move. Bucky nodded, and the man beside Steve seemed to finally realise they were communicating something important and shoved his gun, hard, into Steve’s temple. Unable to quite entirely wipe the smirk from his face, Steve raised his hands a little in surrender.
There was a small smile on Bucky’s face, too, and it absolutely heartened Steve. Somehow even just pulling that small trick off made him feel more at ease in the situation, as if he had one foot on firm ground. He could get them both out of this. He just had to bide his time. Not one of his strongest suits, but for Bucky’s sake he could do it.
Something was tugging at the edge of his mind, an emotion wanting to be examined and felt: guilt for how on earth they’d ended up in this situation. Bucky had wanted to go home after being captured the first time - hell, Bucky hadn’t particularly wanted to come to war in the first place, he’d mentioned dozens of times that he would prefer to stay in New York where the lonely women were. He’d stayed out of loyalty to Steve. And now he was missing an arm, and they were captured by Hydra again.
The war had changed Bucky, too. Ever since he’d been captured he’d been different. Quiet and withdrawn where he’d always been the cocky life of the party back home, keeping to himself, at the back of the group rather than the centre. Steve knew he’d been guilty of not trying to really dig for what was going on with him. He’d just always figured they’d have time to repair whatever had happened when they got home. He still loved him more than anyone in the world, would still do anything for him. Hell, that was exactly how he’d ended up in the current situation.
He just had to get the two of them out, and they could go home and get everything back to normal. Or whatever normal looked like for them on the other side of all this.
Lost in his thoughts, Steve just concentrated on watching that Bucky continued to breathe, and let the flight go by.
-
The landing was rough and the men’s hands when they dragged Steve to his feet were rougher. Bucky seemed to startle awake when they unclipped his harness and lifted him to his feet. Steve guessed it was because of the injury, but they were clearly being more gentle with Bucky, their movements slower, less violent. They moved him out of the plane first, with Steve following after the men slapped some thick handcuffs on him. He was surprised that when he tried to subtly test their strength they held, and wondered what on earth they were made from. But as he was brought out of the plane he held his head up, refusing to let them see he was in any way concerned about the situation.
The bright white landscape immediately hurt his eyes and he closed them for a moment, opening them slowly to try and give himself time to adjust.
He had absolutely no idea where they were. The flight had gone on for what had seemed like hours; he could rule out Austria, but there hadn’t been any visual clues that he could see that might even indicate which direction they’d flown in. This could be anywhere. The landscape, as he looked around for any unique identifying characteristics, was stark to say the least, windblown and wintery, ice and snow as far as the eye could see.
It could be Russia, he supposed. He remembered reading at the Fair about their work exploring the Arctic Circle. That seemed more likely. But why would Hydra have a base here in the middle of nowhere? It didn’t seem convenient or strategically important. In all their intelligence on the organisation, he’d never heard of them having a stronghold far north enough to explain this vista.
They marched toward what looked like the only building for miles. Two guns were trained to Steve’s head and only one to Bucky’s, and he kept his eyes steady on Bucky’s back. He was the only important thing right now. Steve had to get him out of here. He could see the amount of blood that had soaked through the ragged ends of his uniform sleeve, in spite of the tourniquet. How he was still walking was an absolute miracle given everything that had happened to him. Steve nearly shook his head. Even with his serum, he didn’t think he had half of Bucky’s strength.
“Gentlemen,” the officer said, politely, as he stood aside for them and the large doors at the front of the base opened. “Welcome to Siberia.”
That answered that. They were giving too much away, Steve thought, suspiciously.
Which meant that they didn’t expect the two of them to leave here alive.
Which made absolutely no sense given the care they’d taken to keep them that way so far.
He didn’t reply as they walked inside, taking the time instead to look around. The base was lit by dim fluorescent bulbs from overhead, running down a long hallway. When the large doors closed behind them with an ominous final click, there was absolutely no natural light to be seen, and their footsteps echoed as they continued down the hall. Steve tried to take in as many details as he could, tried to memorise them for a later escape, but it wasn’t easy. The hall was featureless and long, and he counted steps in lieu of any other distinguishing features.
Two hundred and twelve steps before they came to a stop beside a door. At the tilt of the officer’s head, one of the men opened it, and Steve glanced inside. It was a cell with a cot, a toilet, a sink, and nothing else.
“Apologies that the accommodations are so basic, Captain,” the officer said pleasantly, sounding oddly genuine. “We hadn’t expected you to be joining us and it will take us some time to provide something more fitting.”
They were going to be separated. Bucky turned and gave Steve a desperate look and he took a step forward, only to be stopped by the muzzle of a gun being pressed right to his temple again, a safety clicking off. A second man held a gun to Bucky’s head as Bucky met Steve’s eyes. The implication was unsaid but perfectly obvious: if either of them moved a muscle, the other would be the one to pay the price.
“I would really prefer to do this without violence,” the officer continued. “You will stay here while we get Sergeant Barnes medical attention. That arm will soon be septic if we don’t see to it.”
Steve didn’t believe for a second that Hydra were going to bring them to an isolated base in the middle of nowhere then nurse Bucky back to health. He didn’t believe what they’d said about wanting a chat and to show them around. They were, eventually, going to kill them if they didn’t escape first. He kept a steady glare trained on the man, but the gun to Bucky’s head stayed his tongue. The gun to his own head jabbed in, hard, and the officer held a hand out toward the open door, bizarrely polite, as if he was presenting Steve with a hotel suite.
When he didn’t move, the man with the gun to Bucky’s head cocked it.
For once unable to see another option, Steve took a very reluctant step toward the room.
“No—“ Bucky said, urgent and panicked, and true to what he expected, Steve received a hard enough blow to the back of his head that he actually stumbled forward. He glanced back to see one of the men wielding some sort of metal baton.
“Think about your next move very carefully, Captain,” the officer said, the fake pleasantries long gone from his tone as he indicated the man with the gun trained on Bucky.
Bucky himself was giving him a desperate, pleading look, but there was no other option. Not without risking Bucky’s life any further. Steve would obey for now, and bide his time, and get them both out of there. “It’s okay, Buck,” he said, low and steady, keeping his eyes on Bucky’s for a long moment.
Finally, holding his head high, as if that would somehow give him some kind of dignity in this situation, Steve stepped into the cell. The door closed and locked behind him and he rushed to the tiny window, meeting Bucky’s eyes again as the men led him away. When their gaze finally broke and the group turned a corner, Steve felt his entire resolve dissolve and he leaned his forehead against the steel of the door, suddenly struggling to hold himself together.