Archive of Our Own ^beta

Icarus was falling. He’d done this before. It was inherent in the name, wasn’t it? He was always destined to reach for something warm and then crash back to reality. He just wasn’t sure Icarus was meant to live some Sisyphean nightmare where he kept getting up and someone kept melting wings to his back and sending him back in the air. Always close enough to see an escape, always stupid enough to fly to it, always mortal enough to fall.

Icarus hit the ground and the world went black for a blissful moment. Things were broken. The wing pack for sure, spasming and shocking him as it shorted out. His ribs did more than ache and he could feel warm blood pooling under his head. He was pretty sure his arm was bent underneath his back.

The sounds of the firefight continued, muted and far away, even though he hadn’t landed that far away from it. He tried to calculate the likelihood that the handlers would come for him before it was too late. Usually, they were in no rush. But usually there was no active threat of someone else stealing the tech.

Rubble crunched under someone’s feet and Icarus tried to lift his head to see who it was. Not a handler. Not the enemy. The Winter Soldier loomed over Icarus, cold blue eyes sweeping over the sparking, mangled wings laid out on either side of the sparking, mangled man. There was a handgun locked in his human fist, angled almost towards Icarus. Or perhaps in the process of being angled away.

Icarus had seen the Soldier put many assets and agents down. One handler had said he was the one who deserved the wings. Angel of Death. Demon of Death , another had corrected.

Icarus wondered if the Soldier was here to cut the wings out of his back. Or just to finish the job the fall had started and drag his body back, usable parts to be taken later. Or to drag Icarus back as was. What happened on the way and after, happened.

Breathing hurt but Icarus tried to take in deep breaths, tried to make his chest move, as if that would convince the Soldier to spare him. The mask ensured that Icarus couldn’t tell what the Soldier was thinking, but the gun hadn’t found Icarus’ face yet.

And then the Soldier began to offer his metal hand out to Icarus. And Icarus had almost convinced his body to reach back for it before a blur of dark blue was tackling the Soldier away. They landed on the ground with several metallic screeches.

Icarus tried to sit up, but the dead weight on his back was too much for his broken ribs and the thrumming in his chest wasn’t helping him catch his breath to force himself through the pain.

“Nat, I need you to come get someone out of the way,” a breathless voice said, though Icarus couldn’t see who was speaking. He tried to activate Eagle-Eye, tried to scan whatever 270 degrees it could get at the moment. There was a man fighting the Soldier. Built as thick as the Soldier was, moving just as fast as him. He had some kind of circular weapon he was using. Or...a shield. It was a shield, but he was using it for all it was worth as an edged weapon. Icarus flinched as the fast moving edge connected with the flat side of the Soldier’s face, scoring into the skin.

Then there was a woman over him, bright red hair falling in her face as she kneeled and began trying to pry something off of him. Small, round discs appeared in her palm and some of the electricity quieted. Magnetic mini-EMPs? Had he been disabled mid-air? Had she shot him down?

He tried to fight, tried to shove her away, but she easily caught his wrists in her hand. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I’m trying to help.”

Which Icarus had never believed once in his life. The closest was one time the Soldier’s new handler had said it and the Soldier had nodded behind him and for some reason that was enough for Icarus to trust them. And that had been the last time he made that mistake.

He broke the hold around his wrists, got his hands around the woman’s neck though he couldn’t make his one arm actually listen to him when he tried to squeeze his fist shut. The woman fumbled with something and suddenly another wave of electricity shot through him. His hands fell away and she stabbed him in the neck with something that...that...something that…

__________________________

Icarus woke up in a white room. His throat had never felt so dry in his life and every part of his body felt like lead had settled between his skin and the bed. One arm was suspended in a hanging hammock and his ribs were wrapped in enough gauze that there was room between his waist and the bed beneath. Half of the world was dark.

This was not HYDRA.

There was a man sitting next to the bed, occupied with something in his hands. The man from the fight, cleaner and softer. Looking at the man now, with his real eye and not a scan, Icarus saw that the man was tall and broad, like the Soldier, like Icarus had thought. He had short, blond hair but the same kind of intense blue eyes as the Soldier. Icarus wondered if it was a side effect of the serum.

If this was not HYDRA, if Eagle Eye had been blinded, if this was the man who’d been fighting the Soldier, Icarus was in enemy hands.

“What did you do to my eye?” he rasped out.

The man didn’t jump, though he hadn’t been watching Icarus. He just let his eyes slide from an electronic pad in his hands to Icarus’s face. “We disabled it. Along with the tracking device in your back,” he said.

Despite being half blind in enemy hands, Icarus felt something release in his chest. He didn’t think the enemy would go through so much trouble trying to fix him if they wanted to kill him. And, even more than that, he didn’t want HYDRA to find him.

“Where am I?”

“You’re still in DC,” the man said. “In an old SHIELD bunker. Well, the medical wing of an old SHIELD bunker.” He turned his head just a little to the left, then sighed, “Nat…,” sighed again, and said to Icaurs, “If it was your plan to get caught, I’m being told to say, know that your guards outnumber Fort Knox right now, even if we’re running on reserves. Your window isn’t real, but I wouldn’t try using your wings, even if they were. The fall damaged them pretty severely. We’re trying to make you comfortable, but we’re not trying to get you up in the air again.”

Icarus closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. The thought of being without the wings was horrifying. He’d been without them for five minutes and managed to get captured. He remembered the weight of them in his back, remembered the feeling of the pack rending his skin and muscle and bone apart. How was he supposed to go without having them operational? They were part of his body. “What happens now?”

The man shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “That’s up to you. I think the entire organization has questions they want to ask you personally. If you’re up for talking, I think that’s gonna be most of your foreseeable future.”

Icarus shook his head. “I’m no good to you then. I don’t remember anything important.”

The man frowned and leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

“The assets are put through electro-shock therapy. Cognitive rebalance. After a mission, I don’t remember what they fed me for breakfast, much less anything else. I can’t tell you anything about them.”

Desperation and anger exploded from the man’s controlled frame at once but he reeled it in, kept himself in his seat, kept his voice even. “Who are you?” the man asked.

“They call me Icarus. I’m the asset with the wings. The eyes in the sky.”

“What do you call yourself?”

Icarus lifted the shoulder he could lift. “Nothing. They call me Icarus,” he repeated. “Some call me Eagle-Eye, but that’s the name of the prosthetic you’ve turned off.”

“I’m sorry,” the man said and sounded it, genuinely. “But we weren’t sure if it was transmitting back somewhere. We couldn’t let them see what you were seeing. And it didn’t...you were passed out but your eye was open. It was...watching without you.”

Icarus nodded. “That was a good plan on your part. They are watching. They do see what I see. They made sure of it.”

The man brought in an angry, righteous breath through his nose. “Your name is Samuel Wilson. You’re from Louisiana. You were in the Air Force. Do you remember any of that?”

Icarus shook his head. “No. But I like the sound of that. Sam. It makes sense.”

Then, suddenly, he heard the name in the Soldier’s voice, clear as day in his mind. The Soldier knew his real name. Had said it to him before. Why would the Soldier know his name? Why would he call him by his name? Still, “Sam,” he heard, reverent and quiet. “Sam,” frantic and unsure. “Sam,” breathy and lost. Over and over.

The man’s mouth quirked in a sad smile, chin dimpling with constrained tears. “You don’t remember who you are. The man with you, with the metal arm. They did the same thing to him?”

Icarus...no, Sam nodded. “He was there before me. They call him the Winter Soldier. He was the first asset.”

The man looked away, pale skin flushed and blotchy with emotion. He wiped his hand over the lower half of his face and nodded. “Okay. Okay.” He took a deep breath and nodded again. “Okay. Sam, you and me are gonna get you back on your feet and then we’re gonna get the Winter Soldier out too.”

Sam blinked slowly and then nodded. Getting the Soldier back was important. The Soldier knew things about Sam, could tell him more that Sam didn’t remember himself. “Tell me more about me,” he said.

The man smiled that watery smile and nodded. “Sure. You’re Sam Wilson. You grew up in Louisiana. Your parents owned a seafood business and your dad was a preacher. You were in the Air Force. You were part of an experimental program that sent soldiers up in the air in jetpacks with wings. You were a pararescue, which means you were the guy jumping into dangerous situations to save other people. You and your partner were shot down during a mission. MIA, assumed KIA. They found your dog tags but not your body. Which I guess makes sense now.”

Sam smiled weakly. “I...helped people?”

“And you were apparently damn good at it,” the man confirmed. “You’ve got all sorts of awards and commendations.”

The thought was nice and Sam wanted very badly to get back to being that person, though he wasn’t sure he could. He didn’t think even the wings could cover that distance. “What about me now? What did they make me?”

The man’s mouth screwed to the side. “We haven’t found many records about you. HYDRA is not as fastidious about keeping notes now as they were before the turn of the century. Makes sense, I guess. Hiding out in SHIELD’s databases didn’t do them any favors. Couldn’t keep records as clearly as they wanted.

“We did run scans before bringing you in. The pack in your back seems to be adapted from the jet pack you wore in the Air Force. It’s been attached to your body, inside and out. They’re trying to figure out if they can remove it without hurting you, but it’s difficult to tell because of the work they did on your eye, which is hardwired into your brain. At first glance, they can’t separate the two augmentations. Plus it’s wound pretty tightly into your spine.”

“How did you turn off my eye then?”

The man shifted in his seat and glanced to the fake window on the far wall. “They removed it entirely. The camera, I mean. The socket and connectors are still there, but it’s impossible for you to see or record anything.”

Sam brought his unbroken arm up to his face. There was a gauze pad over his eye, but it gave too much when he pressed down on it. There was...a hole in his face and these people had put it there and now they had him locked in this room underground.

The man reached over to pull Sam’s hand away. “Do you know if these burns happened before or after they took you?”

Sam looked at where a broad thumb was brushing over his scars. “I fell,” he said. “And I was on fire. The explosion. They shot at us and I went after him but I was on fire.”

“You’re talking about in the Air Force? The RPG that took you and your partner down.”

“Riley,” Sam said weakly. “His name was Riley.” He remembered screaming it that night.

The man nodded. “It was. It’s good you remember that. Hopefully your brain can heal over time and you’ll remember more.”

“I don’t want to remember that,” Sam breathed, images of a man he knew he cared for but now couldn’t remember flashing through his mind. All of that fire and blood. All of that shrapnel in them, on the ground when they crashed.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” the man said, holding Sam’s hand again. “You don’t have to rush into it.”

But Sam could hear the strain in his voice. Something was time sensitive. If Sam was going to start helping people again, he’d have to suffer through some things first. If Sam was going to save the Soldier, he’d have to suffer.

But really what was a little more pain in the grand scheme of things? He’d probably be dead if HYDRA had found him anyway.

Then he thought about the way the Soldier had offered his hand down to him, gun discarded. A man who killed everyone, refusing to harm him. Would HYDRA have harmed the Soldier for disobeying? He was the most useful asset. Why would they break their favorite gun? And for him? Sam figured they would’ve just skipped right to throwing Sam into whatever punishment they deemed fit.

The man beside him stiffened suddenly, hand coming up to his ear.

“That should be second nature,” Sam said. “You shouldn’t touch it.”

And a few seconds later, after some contained buzz on the other end, the man smiled. “I’ve been told that before,” he agreed. “They’ve been able to isolate some of the history of the feed from your prosthetic. Now, this is a complicated situation. Likely, everything about you, about what happened to you, what they made you do, will become public information. But I want to ask you before any of that happens, will you let us look at the feeds?”

Sam swallowed thickly and searched the man’s earnest face. “Will it help you save the Soldier?” he asked.

That earnest face fell into something even softer and that big hand was around Sam’s again. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned with it not being used to get you in trouble?”

Sam shrugged the one shoulder he could. “I’d rather get the Soldier back first. Everything else is second to that.”

The man’s hand squeezed Sam’s and then he stood. “I’ll come back when I can. Nurses and doctors may be in and out to check on you. It’s okay. They’re safe.”

Sam had picked up from the conversation that HYDRA had been hiding out in someone else’s organization, so he wasn’t so sure that they weren’t in this building now, biding their time. That was the thing about HYDRA, they just waited. They made life a miserable game of eggshells and explosions.

“What’s your name?” Sam asked before the man could step away. “I know your partner’s name is Nat. But no one said your name.”

The man looked at him with a surprised look that he schooled down quickly. “It’s Steve. Steve Rogers.”

“Steve,” Sam repeated and then nodded. The sound of the gauze scratching on the pillow under him sent static bugs scrambling through his brain. “It’s good to meet you, Steve.”

Steve smiled. “I’m glad to meet you too, Sam. Rest for now, you’ve got a long road ahead of you.”

Steve Rogers disappeared with a click of the door and Sam lasted approximately two minutes before he began to cry. Great heaving sobs that sent agony through his ribs and made his head pound. He was in pain, he was missing an eye and the wing pack was being withheld from him, he was alone, he suddenly remembered the worst day of his life in vivid detail, he thought about being dead and a family that missed him, he knew he was a good man who had done terrible things and wouldn’t that make him a bad man now? And on top of all of it, the Soldier was missing, having who knows what done to him because of Sam. And despite it all, he had to find his feet under him and keep marching forward, in pain and confused and exhausted. He had to tell people what he knew, he had to remember what he’d forgotten, he had to go back into a fight to get the Soldier back. He had to prepare for not getting the Soldier back.

His name was Sam. He lived in Louisiana. His best friend’s name was Riley. He saved people. The Winter Soldier wanted to spare him. Sam clutched his arm around his sides and cried until he fell asleep.

__________________________

Sam had never gotten a full run of the super soldier serum. He got small doses to get him through the augmentations or to make him functional again. Still, it must have lingered because the breaks in his bones healed quickly, even without mad scientists around to give him more serum.

He had seen Steve Rogers many times in the days since he’d woken up in the SHIELD bunker, but Steve had never told him anything about the data recovery they were getting from Eagle-Eye. Steve was always ready with a new book or some food, but not information. Sam supposed he couldn’t blame him. Sam probably wouldn’t give away sensitive information to the enemy prisoner either, no matter how helpful they’d been.

Finally, around the time Sam was finding himself able to put weight on his healing arm and capable of sitting up on his sore ribs, the red-headed woman, Nat, appeared in his room. They stared at each other like alley cats for a few moments before she walked closer. “Steve won’t say it, but we’re going to need you if we want to take down HYDRA,” she said in lieu of a greeting or introduction.

“I’m telling you everything I know. I’m trying to remember, but they don’t tell assets important things,” Sam insisted. The most helpful he could be was remembering those conversations agents and handlers would have in front of him as if he wasn’t capable of hearing them. But those were few and far between in his memory.

“I don’t mean information. I mean, we need you in the air. We need you fighting.”

Sam tilted his head just a little, mostly because it had begun to swim with the sudden trust the statement held. “You’d give me my wings back?”

Nat nodded. “The pack can’t be removed quickly enough to get you operational again and we can’t leave it as dead weight in your back. You’re more useful in the air anyway.”

Sam’s stomach turned over a little as echoes of past handlers’ words drifted through his brain. “I’m not your weapon,” he said. “I’ll help, because I want you to get the Soldier out, but I’m not yours to command.”

“Fair,” Nat said with a nod. “You’re not our weapon. But we do need you to do what you’ve become very good at doing.”

Sam shook his head. “No. I’m good at saving people. I’ll save him. But I’m not going to be a monster again.”

“Net gain,” Nat promised. “No unnecessary shots.”

Sam took in a deep breath and nodded. Then he looked at the woman again and let out another breath. “I’m sorry I tried to choke you the other day.”

Her mouth quirked to the side. “Don’t worry, you didn’t do a lot of damage. Seems like you did more damage to yourself falling.”

“That’s not really my fault,” Sam pointed out drily. Her mouth quirked again and she shrugged amiably.

Of all the injuries, his ribs were stubborn to heal and maybe he’d been pushing himself more than he should, but the longer they waited around for a full recovery, the longer HYDRA had to go to ground again with the Soldier. He pushed himself up on his elbows and found no objection from the woman next to him.

Sam wasn’t sure what the Soldier’s connection to the people in this bunker was, but Steve and Nat were more than willing to push the boundaries of safety and legality if it meant getting him back. Sam was used to feeling that way, but he’d been tortured and made into a monster with the man. What could they have with him that held a candle to that?

“You should know we’ve been going through the footage captured by your Eagle Eye,” Nat said.

Sam nodded and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Nat held out the slip on shoes he’d been regulated to in the medical wing. He missed his boots. “I know. Steve has told me.”

“Well, you should know that there’s not just mission files.”

Sam shrugged and tugged on the shoes. “I think everyone here has seen more of me than they want. What does it matter if you saw an extra scrub down or the muck HYDRA calls food?”

Nat’s mouth pressed together. “You don’t remember,” she said.

“An astute statement 75% of the time,” he agreed and tried to stand shakily. His ribs protested fiercely but his knees didn’t buckle under him. He moved his hand to the IV stand, rather than his bed and let out a harsh breath while his head settled from its swim.

“Your recovery is further along than 25%,” she promised, rising fluidly. “I need to find Steve. But let me walk you down the hall.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, yanking the IV stand with him. “Could you talk to someone about getting me a cane or something? Hopefully I’ll heal better if I can get up and move without someone else around.” Then he paused and grimaced a little. “I suppose that’s exactly what you don’t want me to do.”

Nat pulled open the door and then reached out to squeeze his good shoulder. “Like I said, your recovery is a lot further along than you think. Including any moral rehabilitation people were worried about.”

Sam tried to smile at her, thin and unsure, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded. “Are you going to tell Steve I just failed whatever test you put forward by mentioning those video files?”

“It just means we have to reevaluate what we thought about something. You didn’t fail anything.”

“It’d be a lot easier to believe that if an organization of spies wasn’t already worried about my moral rehabilitation .”

“Well, the government is full of hypocrisy,” Nat agreed with a grin. “Come on. Where are you headed?”

“Bathroom,” Sam said.

“Are you going to be okay to get back to your room on your own?”

“If you trust me not to climb out the window.”

“We’re underground, there’s no windows.”

“That’s smart. Keeping a man with wings underground.”

“It happens sometimes.” Nat stopped outside the bathroom door, shouldering it open for Sam. “Hey, Sam? We’ll get him. We’ll move soon,” she said.

Sam smoothed his thumb over his opposite wrist. “I hope so. I don’t think they’re going to sit still for much longer. If they move him, we’ll never see him again.” Suddenly his face pulled down. “They’ll put him on ice. Wait years before using him again. We have to move.”

Nat frowned too and nodded seriously. “I’ll tell Steve,” she said. “Let us worry about that. You focus on getting back into fighting shape.”

“My wings…” he started to ask.

Nat nodded. “We’ll get them fixed. We’ve had people pouring over the schematics and x-rays. We’ll be able to get you in the air again.”

Sam let out a long breath and didn’t even care that it made his ribs ache. “Thank you. But…why are you helping me? Steve, I get. He’s after the Soldier. And I get you have some history with him too. But not enough to help me. I tried to–”

He fell quiet as she reached out to run her fingertips over the top of the bandage over Sam’s eye. “Let’s just say I’ve got a lot more history with being unmade and made into something I didn’t deserve to be,” Nat said gently, but factually. Sam chewed on his lip and nodded. Nat let the door close between them.

__________________________

“We don’t have to put a new cybernetic eye in,” someone dressed very differently to any doctor Sam had ever seen was saying. The woman was young and short, dressed in dark tactical gear, with more screens attached to her tac-belt than weapons. “We can just put a glass eye in.”

“HYDRA used something that had…different settings,” Sam answered cautiously, eye darting over to Steve to make sure he was doing this right. “I used a glass eye, or what I thought was a glass eye, most of the time. Just to keep things even. But the cybernetic component was useful on missions. I could scan buildings and detect hostiles before we walked in.”

The young woman hummed and noted something down on the electronic pad in her hands before grabbing one hanging from a small bungee on her belt. “Okay, I think I might have a solution to that. Your privacy is a concern to us,” she added, looking at Sam seriously. 

The doctors had been almost nothing but courteous since he’d been captured. They didn’t shy away from the augmentations he had and they always explained what they were doing before they started to do it. Still, none had seemed to consider when Sam tensed with a certain word or movement. This doctor seemed to have caught all of it, though, and was carefully treading through the conversation–not scared of Sam, concerned for him.

“Even if we did give you a cybernetic eye, you would be fully in control of what was recorded and saved. But I understand if that’s too much trust to place in us. But I do have an add-on for your flight pack. It’s a drone. We were hoping to work some way to nestle it in the pack itself, but it’s still in beta. However, if you choose to use the drone, it is equipped with those kinds of cybernetic video enhancements. It can feed to your goggles and you can see what the drone is seeing. Those video features only see what the drone sees and turn off when the program is killed or the drone is off. Not connected to you at all.”

The thought was almost enough for Sam to start crying. He rubbed a knuckle over his bandaged brow bone instead, focusing on the pressure and the thought of filling the empty socket in his head. “That sounds like the best option. Plus someone else could take the drone out, right? It could help someone else?”

The young woman shrugged. “Sure, if you wanted it to. But it’s connected to your pack. It’s yours, as long as you want to help us. And maybe a little after, as long as you don’t go back to other guys.”

Sam kept the shiver that threatened to rip through him to himself. “I wouldn’t. Not unless it was to get the Soldier.”

“You won’t have to do that,” Steve said assuredly. “We’re going in as a team. No ret-con, no single man missions, no undercover work.”

Sam ignored the shivering in his sore ribs at the thought of undercover work. People kept saying that wasn’t a plan, but Sam didn’t really believe them. It was nice to make promises when things were going right. When push came to shove, other decisions got made. And he wouldn’t begrudge them that. He’d do anything if it meant getting the Soldier out. He just wished there was more of a guarantee that someone would come back to get him out.

Steve’s hand came down on Sam’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s look at what they’ve got. You might get all those bandages off your face today.”

The thought was comforting. They itched like hell and made so much noise against the stiff material of his hospital bed. It kept him up at night.

The doctor stepped away to pull over a small table full of eerily realistic eyes, cybernetic prosthetics, and something that looked horrifyingly like a squid. Or the thing from the beginning of the Matrix. The thought knocked Sam back a little. He didn’t fully understand the reference, but he’d known enough to make it. He looked over at Steve and thought about asking him right then, but decided to wait instead.

“Well, we’ve designed a few different types, to fit in with the metal reinforcements in your eye already. On the plus side, it will be the most secure fake eye in the entire history of fake eyes. On the down side, we haven’t worked on a silicone cover for the metal, so you’ll still see the augmentation for a while. We just wanted to get you comfortable as quickly as possible,” she added. “We can focus on aesthetics later.”

Sam hadn’t even considered that they could cover the metal plating in his eye socket, so he was not concerned with eventual aesthetic amendments. “Are they all the same?” he asked, gently moving away the cybernetic and squid ones.

“For the most part,” the doctor said. “A few color variations. I know you probably don’t know what color your eyes are moment to moment–pretty difficult to know without a mirror in front of you all the time–but we wanted your input. There’s also a few different connection options. Like, look at this one. It only connects in the very back. It may be a little looser, but also less obstructive to your nervous system. This one, with four connections and a back connection, will be easier to manipulate, but may cause discomfort.”

“I’m used to discomfort,” Sam said flippantly. Everything always hurt, especially since the crash.

“You don’t have to be,” the doctor said gently. “I would suggest a four connection without the very back connection. Since you’re not wanting to be able to see out of the prosthetic, that port is generally unneeded, and hopefully not aggravating it further will let the flesh of your socket heal over time.”

Sam swallowed thickly and scratched his eyebrow to hide it. “Then that’s what I’ll do,” he said, picking out the three with that kind of connection. He set aside the lighter eye and then ran his thumb over the iris of the other two. They were nearly identical. It was really just the darker striations that made the difference.

“Put those things away, Sam,” a faraway voice laughed softly in Sam’s head . He could almost feel the gentle, teasing shove on his jaw, pushing his face away from the long-ago speaker. “Man might drown in that pathetic little stare, eyes big and deep like that. ”

“This one,” he said, handing over the darker one.

“That was my favorite too,” the doctor agreed with a pleased grin. “You mind sitting in that chair for me?” she asked, gesturing to an upright chair with a light-halo around it.

Sam’s stomach revolted and his hand shot up to his mouth to avoid losing the battle against said stomach. He shook his head roughly. “Can we–” He pressed his knuckles against his lip and teeth until he tasted blood and had to swallow it. “Can we just do it here?”

Steve’s hand hovered by Sam’s side, not reaching out to touch him, but looking deeply concerned and upset. “Will you need light?” he asked the doctor.

She was frowning too, but put her body between Sam’s and the chair. “I will, Cap,” she said. “Can Steve shine his phone flashlight on your face?” she asked.

Sam nodded jerkily.

“Okay, good. Then you can stay right here. I’m probably gonna need to get a step ladder because you’re a lot taller than me, but we can manage,” she joked.

Sam sank down to his knees, head tilted up.

“Jesus,” the doctor breathed. Sam didn’t think he was supposed to hear. She stood awkwardly for a second before grabbing a rolling chair and tugging it over to sit in front of Sam. “Do you mind if I take these bandages off?”

Sam nodded and did not flinch when Steve turned the light on on his phone over Sam’s face. Steve’s other hand settled on his shoulder, rubbing a thumb over Sam’s neck, smoothing over one of the scars there.

The doctor worked efficiently. Sam barely noticed when she removed the bandages, smoothed a cool solution and maybe a cream over the join of the metal and his skin. “The connection shouldn’t hurt at all. You may feel some pressure at first and you may have a headache for a while after. You can tell me about any discomfort. And please tell me if anything hurts right now.”

Sam nodded and then stilled his head in her hand. She moved from holding his jaw to cradling the side of his head.

“Christ, Icarus–”

“It’s Sam.”

“--how do you even manage to get skimmed up in the air?”

Sam tilted his face against the Soldier’s flesh hand, battle warm, while his metal hand quickly sewed a nasty gash at Sam’s temple from a lucky, wayward shot. “You probably weren’t doing your job,” he muttered.

It would have earned retribution from anyone else on the team, but the Soldier just smoothed his thumb over Sam’s cheek, leaving it to rest just below his lower lip. Sam looked up at the Soldier to find him already looking back.

“There you go, Sam. All done. Blink a few times for me.”

Sam did blink, but not because of the order. He let out a breath he didn’t think even Steve would clock as out of place. Then he realized he really was blinking. There was an eyelid to move over the fake eye. He reached up to gently run his fingers over it.

“Yeah, it’s not very pretty,” the doctor said. “Very much so a temporary measure. When we can get the silicone cover attached, it will be a lot more natural. But you needed something to protect the eye and the socket. It’s a soft plastic, looks like metal to match the socket for now. For now, you’re still the coolest looking dude around.”

A smile had almost come to Sam’s mouth as Steve tsked, and let out a horrified, “Annah!”

“What, it’s true. He looks awesome. I should’ve been an artist. Like, yeah, traumatic origins and all, but I’m not traumatic, right?” This she directed at Sam and he shook his head a little fondly. “See? Coolest dude around.” She clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth and shot Sam a wink and a thumbs up like Steve wouldn’t be able to see it. “I’m serious, though. Tell me if anything hurts as soon as it hurts. It’ll be easier to fix things if we catch it early. And when you go to take these bastards down, take it just a little easy on that face, alright?”

“Not really up to me, but I’ll try,” Sam said, which made Annah beam at him.

“I’ll want to run some tests on your field of vision, but I’ll give you some time to adjust. How about just before dinner tonight?”

“Well, you’ll know where to find me,” Sam said.

“So cool,” Annah repeated under her breath. She gave Steve a two-finger salute before turning lazily on her heel to leave the room.

“How’s it feel?” Steve asked as the door shut behind her.

“A little weird,” Sam admitted. He reached up to gently rub at the eyelid and eye again. “Feels good not to have the bandages on, though.” He could see what Annah had meant about the pressure, though. A tension was already drilling back through his skull, like the muscles the socket connected to were already sore after only a few moments.

“That’s good. Hopefully you won’t have to wear many again.”

“Why are you all doing this for me?” Sam asked, like he’d asked Nat two days before. “Why are you equipping me without knowing what I’ll do?”

Steve raised an eyebrow and it was a terribly self-defeating look on him. “Y’know, a lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re running on fumes here. Sure, we pulled you out of a battlefield where you were, quite expertly, shooting at us. But you haven’t tried to since. Haven’t so much as glared at anyone. You were brainwashed but you seem to have come back and the person you came back to seems like a good person.”

“Yeah, but you can’t know any of that. Maybe I’m just a good actor.”

“Are you?” Steve asked.

Sam fought down a grin and shrugged. “When I need to be.”

“I’ll be honest, even if you didn’t seem like you were fully on board with us yet, even if I thought you were acting your ass off, I’d still get you on your feet again and fight next to you because there’s no way you can fake the dedication you have to Bucky. You want him safe as much as I do and that’d be enough for me.”

“That’s a lot of lives you’re betting to save him.”

“So are you.”

Sam let out a breath and then nodded. “I’d bet them all for him.”

Steve’s mouth flattened, eyes going tight. “Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that.”

__________________________

Steve had explained that they were going to drug Sam for the surgery. Surgery. That wasn’t quite right, was it? They could access the wing pack without cutting into him. Quite deliberately, on HYDRA’s part. What good was a machine that had to let incisions heal? Still, Sam wasn’t sure how else to think about it. Most people around him hadn’t realized what the wing pack was to him. It was his body . Opening it up was as akin to surgery as someone cutting into his chest to get at his heart.

Sam had been drugged plenty while HYDRA had him. He knew the groping fingers of exhaustion and heaviness as soon as they started to race through his body. HYDRA, though, had rarely fully knocked him out. They didn’t know the dosages to use to keep Sam alive but also account for his elevated serum levels.

SHIELD, apparently, was not so cautious. One moment he was heavy and lagging through thoughts that came as flits of incomprehensible nonsense as someone tried to help him lay on a hospital bed. The very next moment, not two breaths later, he was waking up in a different bed. For the first time in the week he’d been captured–saved?--his brain was quiet. There was no insistent hum buzzing between his ears. The constant burn of pain taking over his entire torso had ebbed to the same spots it usually sat, at the attachment points. His shoulders ached, but everything else felt normal. He could breathe .

Sam rubbed the heel of his palm against his forehead and tried to push himself up to his elbows. He listed violently to the side. All of the weight was wrong. For a wild moment, he thought they’d taken the wing pack out entirely.

“Hey, easy,” someone said behind him. Sam listened to them shuffle around the bed and then warm hands were on his shoulders. Steve’s face slowly slotted into Sam’s mind. “They replaced a few parts, upgraded some of your machinery and metals. It should be a lot lighter, a lot smaller too. Here–” He helped Sam sit carefully, piling pillows around Sam’s hips and waist.

Sam reached behind himself to feel along his back. Smaller was an understatement. Where the pack used to protrude off his back by several inches, it now sat snug between his shoulderblades, no more than half an inch out. Scarring and bandages covered the rest of his back.

“We don’t have time to wait for this to heal,” Sam snapped, hand falling away. “I can’t learn to use these that quickly. You were just supposed to get them operational again.”

“Sam,” Steve said carefully. “That pack was rending your spine and ribs apart. It was completely unsustainable. With the damage you got on the bridge, there was no way you’d be able to even open those wings, much less fly. The serum will do its job. You’ll be healed in time for any move we want to make.”

“I don’t have a real serum. I don’t have time . It’s already been a week. They’re going to put him away. They’re going to hide him.”

“I’m not going to let that happen. And you’re not any good to him injured or dead.”

Sam’s jaw tightened and he glared at Steve. The tentative trust they’d built between each other the past week was not effective against the terror clawing at all the newly healed spaces in his chest. “I need to get in the air. Now.”

“Not now,” Steve said. “Maybe tonight. But even that’s not gonna be ‘in the air.’ You’ll need to get used to just opening and retracting these things before you go leaping off buildings.”

Sam stared at Steve and flexed his shoulders. The wings shot out behind him. Steve did not have to know that Sam would’ve fallen over backwards if the pillows hadn’t been behind him.

The wings were so much lighter that just the swaying of Sam’s body made an air current spiral around them. The attachments weren’t as immediately noticeable, which made Sam focus more on controlling them. Unfortunately, Steve was right. Sam was going to have to work to get used to these. He folded them in neatly, leaving them half as long as normal, arching a little higher near his head.

“Fuck,” he breathed, closing his eyes but not before he saw Steve’s eyebrows go up.

“It doesn’t hurt?” Steve asked.

Sam shook his head. “Not right now. Right now it feels exactly like it should.”

“Can I?” Steve asked.

Sam blearily half-opened one eye to see Steve reaching out to his back tentatively. He nodded and closed his eyes again.

Steve’s fingers were warm, even through the bandages. He didn’t go straight for the wing pack, instead working carefully over the areas where the doctors had cut some of the old wing pack away, prodding gently and pulling a bandage back to where it belonged. Then his fingers fell to the metal case, which Sam less felt and more didn’t-feel. He could just about feel the wings like their own limbs, and he knew where the pack was attached to his spine and ribs, but the outside of the pack was completely dead to sensation. He felt the occasional pressure point when Steve pressed too firmly, but that was it. Then his fingers found the wings and Sam shivered as sensation flooded back over him.

“Why didn’t Bucky–” Steve cleared his throat. Sam had realized Bucky was the name of the Soldier. In all their time together, neither of them had ever known it. Steve could not stop calling him it. “Why didn’t he ever touch your wings?”

“He did. We ran maintenance on each other all the time,” Sam corrected. “Nothing serious, but enough to make an extraction point or finish a mission.”

“No, I mean…” Steve smoothed his hand over the plates of the wings and Sam shivered again. “Natasha’s right. You don’t remember.”

“You all keep telling me that and then not prompting me.”

“We’re not supposed to prompt you. We’re supposed to let you figure out things yourself, make your own decisions.”

“I want to know what you saw on Eagle Eye.”

Steve’s fingers curled around the top of the wings and he let out a sigh. “Yeah. I’m gonna tell you,” he decided. “You and Bucky…you and the Soldier,” he amended, as if he’d ever made a distinction before. “It seems like the two of you were…” His hand fell to the pack again, between the two wings. “Like the two of you were intimate .”

Sam frowned. “No. That’s not possible. The handlers would never have left us alone. We weren’t allowed to…” He blinked as the Soldier’s voice came back to him, his name and all those ways Sam remembered him saying it. The ghost feelings of hands on him, holding him still, keeping him warm. He thought about the way the Soldier was going to help him up on the battlefield a week ago.

There were other things. The snide comments the handlers threw at them. Cruel promises he never believed. Things he was made to forget afterwards. Memories that had made no sense and weren’t important in the retrieval of the Soldier. Had they known?

“It seems like they found out a few years ago. That’s when it seems like things escalated for the two of you. They separated you. Did…awful things to you in retaliation. I’m not surprised you don’t remember. It seems like they made sure you wouldn’t.”

Sam still blinked and then stared and then blinked some more. He could remember the Soldier’s voice, his name falling like a litany from the Soldier’s mouth. If he pretended, he could almost picture moments of prolonged contact–a hand on his hip, fingers on his jaw, a thumb swiping over a wound. But nothing more.

“I don’t– I don’t remember,” he breathed. “How could I forget that?”

“It’ll come back,” Steve said, rubbing Sam’s arm. “Faster once we get him back and you see him more often.”

“If I don’t remember him, he won’t remember me. It was always worse for him. He always had to be reminded who I was.”

Steve put his hand over Sam’s and Sam unconsciously opened his fingers under the touch. He almost didn’t recognize his own hands, without any breaks in the fingers or healing scabs and bruises over the knuckles. He’d healed every superficial injury from the fight on the bridge and before. He could almost walk on the street without earning a second glance.

But at the same time he thought as much, the wings shifted in his back, reminding him that superficial wounds didn’t make the man.

“We’re going to get him back. He’ll remember,” Steve said. Promised. It was a promise. Sam just wondered if he was really assuring Sam or himself.

“I need space to work with these. Does this bunker have a gym?”

Steve smiled tightly and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll take you there,” he said, standing and offering his hand out to Sam.

__________________________

Situation normal, all fucked up. That’s what Riley would be saying as he hovered in the air next to Sam. It was his go-to phrase. If he knocked his knee on the table heading out, if he dropped his gun instead of holstering it, if Sam flew lower than Riley was expecting. Every inconvenience was marked down as all fucked up and then he’d brag a for a few days about remedying the situation smoothly. Plus, he’d always said, it was a lot easier to comment on the Fucked-ed-ness of a situation from up high where the bullets weren’t usually aimed at them yet.

Bullets were flying everywhere now. Large projectiles from the carrier ship in the water, defensively offensive fire from the helicarriers in the air, machine gun fire from passengers in helicopters. Sam watched the chaos from several dozen feet above it all, letting the drone swoop in and out of danger to assess the situation.

Situation normal, all fucked up.

Nat was doing some diplomatic thing that Sam couldn’t get a read on. He hadn’t been briefed about that, though he understood why and didn’t hold it against anyone. Factions of SHIELD personnel and HYDRA agents engaged across the military vehicles on land, sea, and air. Steve was fighting his way across the helicarriers to do something with some computer card. Sam hadn’t been helpful when so-called Project Insight had been brought up and the discussions around it had made his head spin and ache, so he hadn’t focused in on much of it.

The Soldier had yet to make an appearance, but Sam knew he was there somewhere. Every trail of ruined machinery, maimed hostiles, and smoldering wreckage with no real source confirmed it for him.

The drone beeped a warning in Sam’s ear and he watched an explosive fly towards the ship Steve was using as a runway and launching pad to the next helicarrier. The explosive hit far enough behind that Steve was safe, but the ship would be sinking. Sam started to fly down to help with evacuation of the crew but the drone zeroed in on who had launched the explosive.

Sam’s fingers curled against his palms hard enough to draw blood. Immediately he remembered a dozen broken jaws, the bite of straps on his wrists while his fingers were snapped, a week of torture and mockery while the Soldier watched. Had to watch. This man had been standing there through it all. “Steve,” he said into his comm, fire in his veins, “Do I engage or rescue?”

“Is it an ongoing threat?” Steve asked as he jogged back the way he’d just come, staging his own evacuation.

Sam twitched closer to the handler’s location. “He will be,” he confirmed.

“Then go. I’ve got the time to get them off this fish.”

Sam flew into the window the Soldier’s handler had blown out to fire his weapon. The handler had already tucked tail and backed from open sightlines, so Sam had the element of surprise on his side as he fired towards the warm body his drone was reading in the room.

“Damn, birdie,” the handler chuckled from behind him. Sam spun and fired, but the handler had stepped aside, hiding behind a half wall. Belatedly, the drone let him know the other body was already dead. “Why’re you shooting at me, huh? We’re on the same side !” This he shouted as he lobbed a piece of concrete at Sam. It was a blind throw and Sam ducked out of the way easily. “I told them to go looking for you,” the handler added. “I was gonna rip those wings out of your back myself if I had to.”

Sam reached for a grenade in his belt, but came up empty. SHIELD, despite allowing him to fight, had not equipped him as thoroughly as he’d have liked. “Someone beat you to it,” he answered conversationally, shooting at a metal window pane so the shot would ricochet back at the handler.

It struck the concrete with enough force to knock dust loose, but apparently it missed the man. “I’ll take the upgrades too. I ain’t picky. So long as it's you. So long as I can do it in front of him.”

Sam’s teeth ground together and he shot the light out from over the handler’s hiding spot. The man cursed as glass rained over him and stood over the wall long enough to fire back at Sam. Had Sam still been HYDRA’s, if he wasn’t awake and thinking for himself, if the handler was his only mission and not saving the Soldier, Sam would’ve returned the fire, taken the split second to shoot the target straight in the head at any risk to his own body. But he wasn’t Icarus anymore. He had to save the Soldier. So he hit the floor instead, wings coming up to protect his head.

“That one got to you, huh? Always did. It was a fuckin’ miracle when we figured that shit out about you two. Pudding in our hands after that. It oughtta teach you two that you weren’t made for shit like that.”

Sam reached for a set of knives he’d been given and weighed them in his hand. They weren’t his usual fare, but he could make due. Outside the window, trying to stay out of sight, the drone relayed as much information as it could about the location and rubble of the handler’s foxhole. Sam braced himself up on his knuckles and tops of his knees before he shot forward, letting the wings carry him over the wall of concrete and then turned quickly to face the handler.

For a second, the floor and walls shook and Sam thought they’d knocked the concrete over, but then it happened again and fire bloomed upwards, several ruined suites over and then out the windows.

The handler went for Sam’s midsection while Sam was trying to understand the explosion, but Sam was quick enough to get his hands in front of himself, driving a knife into the far outer side of the handler’s waist. It wasn’t enough to do permanent damage, but it was enough to have the handler rearing back and reaching for Sam’s head instead. Sam blocked one arm, driving the knife into his meaty forearm, but the handler got his other hand on Sam’s wing, wrenching him to the side. Sam almost lost his balance but was able to jam the wing into another concrete slab to keep himself upright. He used the momentum and brace to roundhouse kick the handler in the face. The handler staggered to the side and Sam reached for his gun but didn’t find it in his thigh holster.

“Y’know, he asked about you,” the handler said, righting himself and wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, Sam’s gun clutched in his fingers. The wings curled in around Sam protectively. “Begged us to go looking. Said he’d saved you but you were hurt. Called you by your real name and everything. It took a few hundred volts for him to cut the shit. He didn’t say much after that.”

Something primal ripped through Sam’s chest and he screamed as he rushed towards the handler. He heard three shots, knew one had gone wide, felt one hit his thigh and the other somewhere in his side, but he didn’t stop until he’d tackled the handler down, wings curled around the man’s back to keep him still.

The wings HYDRA had put in him had edges sharp enough to cut a limb off, to sever arteries in the midst of a fight. The SHIELD wings were not so deadly normally, but now they were pressing up as Sam held the man down. The handler thrashed and clicked through the empty clip, tried to kick Sam’s bad thigh but couldn’t reach.

Sam was just beginning to feel the wings break flesh when the floor gave away instead. One floor, then the next, then the next. Both Sam and the handler jerked with the force of each hit as rebar and flooring and concrete and metal mesh cut at them. They came to a sudden, precarious stop on a half desiccated floor. The fire had consumed half the building and Sam could see it between the crumbling floors below him. He let go of the handler, let the wings engage and flew out the window in time for the center infrastructure to give way down into the fiery column below.

Situation normal.

“Cap, we need those helicarriers grounded now,” a gruff voice on the comms said. Sam’s drone fed him a helpful, if worrying, countdown until the launch of the Project Insight.

“I can help,” Sam said, quickly, as he adjusted course to get back to Steve’s location.

“I’m on the last ship,” Steve answered. “Ten more seconds.” Which was plenty more than the three minutes he had.

And then the shot rang out, clear as day. Clear as if Sam had been the one in front of the gun, or behind it. Silence crackled down the line.

“Steve?” Sam asked, pushing the wings faster.

“I’m…I’m fine,” Steve managed, strained and breathless. The line clicked and Sam thought he’d been cut out, until Steve’s voice came back. “It’s…It’s just us, Sam. He’s here. He’s…” Steve hissed and something groaned under his weight. 

“I’m almost there,” Sam said, bypassing the first helicarrier and then the sinking ship in the water. He wasn’t sure if he needed to deal with the Soldier or if he needed to get the card– Another shot echoed down the line and Sam heard Steve hit the metal of the ship again, heard the Soldier’s footsteps, as familiar in his head as his own heartbeat.

Sam crashed through one of the observation decks, tucking and rolling to avoid damaging the wings. He remembered, with sudden clarity, that there were bullets in him. For a second, he didn’t think he’d be able to get up. Black swam in his vision, clouded out his brain. He couldn’t find his feet to get them under him and, as he lay on his back, he could feel blood pooling in his tac gear from his side.

All fucked up.

The Soldier was here. Sam had a mission. He had an important mission. He dug his fingers in around the wound on his leg and let the pain clear the fogginess from his brain, knife sharp and acrid in his mouth and his nose. “Order through pain.” “Man, shut the hell up.” The Soldier was here. That was the only order that mattered. Steve was in trouble, secondary order.

He put his good foot under him and used the wings to push himself upright. The drone told him his vitals were bad and Sam waved it off like it would really listen to him. The wing on his left side, folded down to act as a brace for him, letting him keep weight off the shot leg. The helicarrier was unstable in the air, pitching and listing, flooring sliding away under pressure. Sam made it down the stairs, wing clanging on each step. So much for a surprise attack. On the landing, he could see Steve and the Soldier facing off on either end of a catwalk, the computer core behind Steve. Steve was bleeding bad enough that Sam could see it, even dozens of yards away as he was. The Soldier was staring at him, gun raised, but not shooting. Keeping Steve still, like his objective was only to stop Steve, not to kill him. Sam doubted that greatly. He was pretty sure he was seeing the Soldier’s own hesitation and turmoil.

There was no way for Sam to get from the landing to the catwalk by walking, but he had the wings and the flight over was really more of a hop, if his leg would just cooperate, if his side would hold up for the few seconds it’d take. He put his weight on his good leg, lifted the wing up and leapt.

The landing could’ve used some work. His left leg buckled under him and the rush of blood loss left him light headed as he tried to catch himself on the railing, holding up his other hand to the Soldier.

“Sam, move!” Steve cried behind him as a shot rang out.

When Sam got his eyes fixed on the Soldier’s face, the Soldier was already looking at him, eyes as wide as the shot had gone. “Sam,” he repeated, voice hoarse, single syllable long and slow like he was testing it out in his mouth and finding that it fit.

“Yeah,” Sam breathed, clutching at his side. “It’s me. Told you you’d remember it without me telling you one day,” he added, though he knew it was Steve’s exclamation that had put it in the Soldier’s mind.

The Soldier frowned, gun wavering for a second before it shot back up to point at Steve. Sam raised the wings, blocking any easy shot. “Steve, it’s now or never. Can you move?” he asked without looking away from the Soldier.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed tightly. “I can do it.”

“I don’t know you,” the Soldier insisted, staring at Sam. “I don’t– I don’t know–”

“Yes you do,” Sam answered. “You’ve known me for years. You trained me. We’ve saved each other’s lives more times than I can count.”

The Soldier shook his head violently. “I have a mission. Move.”

Sam shook his head back. “I can’t do that. You’re my mission, Soldier. I’m not leaving without you.”

The ship groaned under them and Steve cursed, hitting the floor again. The Soldier’s eyes scanned under Sam’s wings and Sam lowered one to block his sightlines. “Just let me take you back to the ground. I can help you. No one will hurt you again.”

“They took you,” the Soldier argued. “They took you and they should’ve killed you. Hurt you. Why are you helping them?”

“I’m not here for them,” Sam placated and took a step forward, still holding one hand out. “I’m only here for you. To make sure you’re okay and you’re safe. That’s all that matters to me.”

In the moment, Sam realized it wasn’t wholly true. Since Steve had mentioned a week ago that Sam’s military career was built on protecting and saving, that creed had come back to him. These things we do, that others may live . Still, that was background. The Soldier was first.

“They didn’t hurt me, or kill me. I’m standing right in front of you. And I won’t let them hurt you either,” he promised. “Just come down with me.”

The Soldier took half a step forward before he shook his head again. “No, you’re trying to trick me. It’s always a trick. They’ll take–”

Behind Sam, the computer whirred and powered up and Steve let out an exhausted breath. For a second, Sam thought it was over. The threat was averted. He could grab the Soldier, get to the ground, and start on the recovery process. But as the computer thrummed louder and longer, the ship began to shake and, with a horrible rending sound, the ground gave way under the catwalk, opening up to the hundred foot drop to the Potomac below.

Steve was safe on the landing around the computer core. Sam’s wings engaged before he even realized the floor was gone from under him. But the Soldier only had enough time to drop his gun and reach for Sam before he was falling with the debris into the water below.

Sam thought he heard Steve shout, but it was nothing compared to the roar of his blood and horror in his ears. Without thinking, he tucked in the wings and dove forward too.

Situation normal, all fucked up .

They had trained with the Coast Guard once. The jet packs weren’t the most conducive to water missions, hadn’t been built for that kind of stress, but it was good practice for any parajumper, jet packs or not. Sam remembered the night time training, standing in the mouth of bay doors on a huge plane, staring at the choppy, inky waters below. Riley was next to him, so warm even in the freezing air. His elbow kept jostling Sam’s as he danced from foot to foot, waiting for the jump instructions.

There were a dozen different numbers to remember. Impact speed and force at various heights, temperatures in the water, pressure on the body. Sam knew all of them. HYDRA wouldn’t have taken something so useful away. But at that moment, barreling towards the Potomac feet first, arms tucked against his chest, all he could remember was the feeling of finding Riley’s arm in the water. He couldn’t see anything else, but they’d gravitated to each other anyway. Then the pain of impact had hit, a new-bruise sore all over his body, replaced quickly with the stinging cold of the water and the power of the turbulent waves, even below the surface. But he’d kept his hand near Riley and they’d found the beacon dive-kit they’d been after before any of the Coast Guard guys had. Fly, fight, win, assholes .

There had not been bullets in him that day. Hitting the water after the Soldier was far more painful than it had been off the coast of whatever-island. For a moment, toppling through the water, he thought he’d fully crushed his leg, or maybe ripped his side clean off. With the goggles on, Sam could marginally see under the water, debris falling around him, the iridescence of oil, reflections of the flames from the chaos on the surface. So, at least, he knew he was still alive.

His head was ringing with the impact and he was disoriented after his tumbling stop. He made sure he was right ways up, with the sky above him, then he spun in a circle, searching out the Soldier’s body. The wings wouldn’t open under the water and kicking only one leg sent him into a spin he couldn’t control. His arms were aching with the effort of keeping him moving, but when he saw a glint of bright metal, he took off for it.

Sam lost his beacon for a moment, but he didn’t let himself stall in his swim over. He only had so much air to work with and the Soldier would likely have even less if he hadn’t prepared for impact. The next time he saw the Soldier, it was his other arm and Sam realized the reason he’d lost visual in the first place was because there was a huge beam parallel to the Soldier’s body, pushing him further into the river.

Sam kicked with his legs on instinct and hoped the water pressure would staunch the bleeding, at least a little bit. He grabbed the Soldier’s hand in time for another explosion surface-side and a new rain of debris. He pulled the Soldier’s body close against his and forced his legs to take them back to the surface. They weren’t that far down. It shouldn’t take him that long. The black spots dancing in his vision, growing in his vision, could hold off just a few seconds more.

The Soldier slipped in his hold. Something jarred the wound in his side. Sam lost breath gasping, swallowed water, and struggled to pull the Soldier back to his chest. If he could just reach out, surely his fingers would hit the surface, feel the summertime air. He reached up and found only water. The Soldier slipped again and when Sam sagged back to grab him, he couldn’t make himself swim up again, no matter how hard he kicked his leg.

His vision was blacking out, narrowing the surface light to just a blinking dream. Then there was an impact on the jetpack and a rush of water and the surface tension and fresh air. Sam gasped in a breath, went light headed with it, and found his limbs again a few seconds later, enough to swim to the shore, sandy and debris filled and safe. He was practically climbing along the sand, unable to get his feet under him, dragging the Soldier behind him by the chest harness. 

Above him, the drone disengaged the magnet it had attached to Sam’s pack and flew away, hopefully for help.

The Soldier was coughing too, spitting out water and blood but not moving much elsewise. Sam collapsed on his right side, leaving all those bullet wounds far from the sand. He was too close to the Soldier for anyone’s good, practically in his metal arm, but couldn’t make himself move away. He looked over at the man, face pale and oxygen deprived, painted with blood from a gash that ran the length of his forehead and across his cheek. Sam assumed it was from the debris that had been pining him in the water.

Then the metal arm came around Sam, pulling him even closer. The Soldier’s eyes half-opened and scanned over Sam quickly. “Sam,” he breathed, dropping his head back to the sand. “Your name is Sam.”

Sam collapsed against the Soldier’s side too, face hidden in his shoulder. “Yeah,” he agreed with a nod. “It is. And yours is Bucky.”

And for now, they were safe together. No one was taking that away.

Situation normal.