Chapter Text
LOCATION: HYDRA Headquarters, Switzerland
DATE: April 22nd, 1945
Everyone has their orders. It’s only a matter of time.
Steve checks his equipment with the same quiet, methodological care he’s had drilled into him by his men and finds something close to comfort in the routine.
He’s not surprised when Peggy pulls him to one side before the mission is a-go. She’s held her tongue in front of Phillips, agreeing, however reluctantly, with the course of action Steve’s proposing.
They need HYDRA stopped. They need Schmidt dead. The Colonel is smart enough to weigh the pros and cons of the mission. He knows Steve alone isn’t enough. But if Steve can do this, even at the cost of his own life, then the money, effort, and bloodshed of Project Rebirth will have meant something.
The soldier in Peggy, the pragmatist, she knows it, too.
No, her protests, her reservations, they come from his friend.
“Steve, a word?”
He wants to brush her off. Every second he delays is another second HYDRA spends poisoning the world. But he owes her everything, and this is the very least he can give her.
Still, he knows exactly what she’s going to say. Part of him even admires her courage.
“You know he’d want you to be careful,” she says.
Forget careful. Bucky always knew that sometimes careful went out the window when it came to getting the job done. He’d forgive Steve for not being careful. All he’d care about was Steve being smart.
“He’s dead,” Steve says flatly, looking at a spot above her shoulder. “What he wants doesn’t matter.”
Peggy’s made of stern stuff. She doesn’t flinch from the cold, callous way he answers. But her expression does set, shifting from something gentle and settling on something far more serious. “I know you loved him,” she says, “and I know he loved you. He loved you so much that he came to me, despite barely knowing me, and asked me to be patient with you.”
Something clenches in Steve’s throat.
He doesn’t want to hear this.
Not now. He can’t…
“He told me you were stubborn,” Peggy continues. “That you always had been. But that you were the best man he knew, and I should take care not to break your heart.”
Steve can’t breathe.
Peggy’s eyes are bright and fierce. She wraps her fingers around his wrist and holds on tight. “He wanted me to look out for you. If he no longer could.”
“Peggy, please…”
“You are going to do your job, Captain,” she whispers furiously. “You are going to end this, and then I am going to do the one thing he most wanted to do, and get you home.”
The misery tears out of Steve in a wave he cannot hold back. Tears burn eyes that are still sore from their last visit. “He’s my home.”
“Oh, darling, I know,” she whispers. She cups his cheek with her other palm and brushes the treacherous tears from his eyes. “But your men need you, Steve. They love you. I love you. And when this is done, we are going home. I will teach you how to dance, and you’ll take us all to the music hall he used to play at, and we will say our goodbyes properly, do you understand?”
“Peg-“
“I mean it. You owe it to him. You owe it to yourself. HYDRA has taken enough from you: don’t let them take anything else.” Peggy’s hands are steady where they hold him, the warmth of her palms grounding him when everything inside is trying to untether, to float away into the storm of grief and rage that’s been boiling inside him since the Alps.
Peggy Carter is a force of nature, a hurricane of certainty in a world where nothing is steady, and she’s right here, looking at him like he isn’t already halfway out the door and running toward something they both know he won’t come back from.
“You are going to end this, Steve,” she says again, softer now. “And you are going to come home.”
He swallows hard and nods, not because he agrees with her but because he doesn’t want to fight her.
She doesn’t believe him. Not entirely. But she lets him go anyway.
He turns before she can say anything else, before she can look at him with those sharp, knowing eyes and make him promise something he’s not sure he can keep.
The others are waiting. The mission is waiting.
The air is sharp and cold. The mountains loom around them, jagged and dark against the early morning sky, and the weight of the shield on his back is familiar. Comforting. It is a weapon, a defense, a symbol of everything he is meant to be.
And today, it is the lid of his coffin.
He shakes that thought from his mind as he reaches the others. Dugan and Monty stand a little apart, speaking in low voices, while Morita, Dernier, and Jones check their weapons one last time.
They glance up as he approaches, and there’s something in their eyes he doesn’t like.
He ignores it. Instead, he looks at the facility spread out below them. The last stronghold of a dying empire, the last vestiges of Schmidt’s power coiled around something ancient and unnatural.
He doesn’t care what it is.
It’s all going to burn.
“All set?” he asks, voice steady.
Dugan tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “We’re ready.”
Steve nods once. “Then let’s get this done.”
They were always going to get separated. They’re not even underestimating just how hard it is to keep up with Steve when he’s on a rampage. They know, and they’re trying anyway, but it doesn’t stop their collective horror as they all race out onto the cliffside runway and watch as the Valkyrie takes flight.
It’s only Phillips and Carter sitting together in their jeep, watching as it soars through the sky, that gives them any sense of hope.
They now know what’s on that plane. They know what’s at risk if they don’t bring it down.
Cap is on board, which means he’s going to stop it.
They just… fuck, they have to trust that saving the day isn’t going to come at a cost too high for any of them to pay.
“Fuck,” Jones breathes, watching the plane shrink in the sky.
The screech of the Jeep’s brakes as Carter and Phillips meet them back at the main entrance to the base is not enough to distract any of them from the sense of dread uncurling in their guts.
Steve’s on his own. There’s no one watching his back.
Once again, they’ve failed.
Carter vaults over the side of the vehicle and catches Dugan by the arm. “Jones, can you get us in contact with that plane?”
“Yes, ‘ma’am,” Jones says, snapping to attention and sprinting for the control room that overlooks the hanger. The rest of them follow in breathless dread.
Behind them, the troops of the SSR sweep every inch of HYDRA’s last remaining stronghold.
The bastion has fallen. Even if Schmidt somehow escapes from Steve, he has no resources, no allies, no chance of rebuilding. They’ve won.
They’ve…
None of this feels like a victory.
“Jim, on the receiver,” Jones orders, diving under the control panel at the observation bay and starting to pull out and reattach a dozen or more wires.
Morita, who, after Gabe, is the most technically minded of all of them, slides into the seat and immediately starts to attempt contact.
The rest of them, useless and just taking up space, can only pace while they wait.
“Should never’ve let him outta my sight,” Dugan mutters, furious with himself.
They’ve done everything right. Everything. So why does he feel like he’s failed?
Steve is up there. Steve is up there, and they’re not. It shouldn’t be like this.
“It’s not your fault,” Carter tells him. She’s pale as a ghost, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the windows ahead of them.
“You getting anything?” Dugan demands. His voice is rough, strained.
Jones doesn’t look up. “Hold on—hold on, I think I—”
A crackle. A burst of static. Then—
“Cap? Cap, do you read me?” Morita’s voice is steady, but there’s something desperate buried under it. “Come on, buddy, you gotta pick up.”
More static.
“Captain Rogers, what is your-“ When Morita uses that tone he’s just about ready to start shooting something. Dugan is with him every step of the way.
Then…
“Come in, this is Captain Rogers, do you read me?”
“Sonovabitch!” Dugan curses, his knees suddenly shaking. Monty claps him so hard on the back he almost stumbles. Dugan lets out a sharp breath, his entire body sagging against the railing as Steve’s voice cuts through the interference.
“Steve!” Peggy slides into the seat Morita gives over to her. “Is that you? Are you alright?”
“Schmidt’s dead,” Steve announces. He doesn’t sound nearly as relieved as he should.
“What about the plane?” Peggy asks, her expression still pinched with dread.
It’s a feeling Dugan shares. One that grows in his gut as the silence on the other end stretches just a second too long.
“That's a little bit tougher to explain.”
He says more. So does Peggy.
Dugan stops listening.
He already knows what he’s going to hear.
The control panel flickers, sparks bursting from the wires beneath, the steady thrum of the plane’s engine shifting, stuttering, failing.
Steve breathes through the weight in his chest, forcing himself to focus.
The Valkyrie is going down.
There’s nothing left to do. The bombs are still locked in their holds, their payload too dangerous to detonate in midair, too unstable to risk an uncontrolled crash. If the plane had any hope of being landed - really landed - he’d take it. If he could fight physics the way he fights everything else, if he could punch gravity into submission, he would.
He adjusts the controls anyway. He’s going to make sure the wreckage - his wreckage - doesn’t hurt anyone else. That’s all he can do now.
And he’s so, so tired.
The line to the SSR base went dead minutes ago. It’s just him. The cockpit is quiet, filled only with the crackling of failing electronics and the whine of the wind outside.
He should be afraid. He’s not. He should be fighting harder. But there’s nothing left to fight.
And that’s… that’s a relief, isn’t it? It’s not that he wants to die. It’s not like that.
It’s just… It’s easier this way.
No more bleeding from the place Bucky is supposed to be. No more silences in the dark. No more ache as he tries to lay down and can’t even bring himself to close his eyes because Bucky isn’t in his arms, safe like he’s supposed to be.
No more waiting for it to hurt less.
No more looking at Peggy and seeing the way she steels herself against the weight of his grief.
No more—
“Don’t do this, Steve.”
Steve stills.
His knuckles tighten on the stick, breath catching in his chest.
His heartbeat is hammering in his ears, louder than the screaming of the wind, louder than the wailing sirens of the dying plane, and -
No.
No, it’s not real.
Steve doesn’t turn.
The ghost of a voice lingers at his back, low and steady, edged in the same exasperated patience Bucky always had when Steve was being stupid.
“You’re not gonna find what you’re looking for in the water.”
Steve laughs, a short, broken thing, something bitter curling behind it.
Of course his mind would do this now.
Of course, in his final moments, it would give him Bucky.
“You’re not real,” Steve mutters, voice hoarse.
“I’m as real as you are.”
Nothing about Steve is real. He’s manufactured. A tool once fresh off the factory line, now redundant, its purpose served.
“Don’t make us into something we’re not,” Bucky says. “We were never gonna have forever.”
No, but they could have had more.
They could have had a life. Would’ve, if Steve weren’t such a coward.
Steve exhales, steadying the stick as best he can, guiding the Valkyrie down.
He should feel better about this. It’s the right thing to do.
No one else is going to get hurt.
No one else has to pay the price.
He’s doing what he’s supposed to do. And if doing the right thing means not having to bear another second of this emptiness, then who is he to complain?
“I don’t want forever,” Steve whispers, voice breaking. “I just wanted a day.”
The water rushes up to meet him. His fall is controlled, unlike Bucky’s.
His death is slower. That’s one comfort he takes as the cold sets in. Bucky fell, and it was over fast. He wouldn’t have suffered.
Steve waits. He can be patient.
“You really are an idiot,” Bucky’s voice sighs in the back of his head. He sounds so fond it breaks what little remains of Steve's heart.
He is. He is an idiot. Bucky's idiot. And at least he’s not alone anymore.
LOCATION: Bratislava, Czechoslovakia
DATE: April 22nd, 1945
In a bunker on the outskirts of the city, lost in a place that was once the frontier of conflict on the Austria/Slovak border and buried so deep the sun never has a chance to warm its thick concrete walls, a prisoner hangs beneath an endless deluge of cold, metallic tasting water.
The shackle around his right wrist keeps him upright, his knees raised an inch from the ground and his shins scraping back and forward against wet stone as the pressure makes him sway from side to side.
He can’t rise to his feet, or move in any significant way at all.
His body is broken, he’s told. Pelvis and ribs shattered, both legs fractured, his head cracked open like an eggshell. He’s only hanging by one wrist because the other…
He can’t turn his head to get a better look at the place where it’s supposed to be. His neck is broken as well, they tell him.
The water is for his benefit. He has a fever. It rushes down in a relentless stream, beating against his skull, pouring down the curve of his back, running into his mouth and down his throat until he chokes on it, sputters, coughs, and it starts all over again.
The weight on his wrist is unbearable, metal biting deep into swollen skin. His right arm is the only thing keeping him from crumpling to the ground, and it is stretched so taut that he imagines the bones might start to pull apart at the seams. He wonders if that’s what happened to the left one. If it just… came off and left only a mangle of blood and bone behind.
He can’t remember.
There are gaps where memories should be. Holes punched through the fabric of his mind, leaking everything that might have mattered once. He reaches for something - anything - but every time he gets close, it unravels in his hands like rotted thread.
He knows there is pain. It is not something he can forget. Too hot and too cold, a shock of numbness and the blaze of fire.
It’s written into him, etched into every nerve, soaking into the marrow of his bones. Pain and cold and the smell of blood and his own burning flesh.
He doesn’t know how long he has been here.
The days, the hours, the seconds, all bleed into each other, indistinguishable. The only thing that changes is the presence of the men who come to inspect him, their voices bleeding through the haze.
They do not speak to him.
They speak around him.
He is something to be discussed, examined, but not acknowledged.
A transaction waiting to happen.
They tell him he is healing. That it should be impossible, that he should be dead, that he was dead. They tell him he was right, that someone did change him. That he’s a miracle, and a paycheck, and a chance for redemption.
He doesn’t understand.
They bring him back from the dead with fire and steel and cold water. They know him, but he doesn’t know them. He doesn’t even know how own name.
That is worse, somehow, than the pain.
Pain is a constant. Predictable. Pain is something he can rely on.
It does not ask questions. It does not expect answers.
Sometimes, when the world bleeds at the edges, he thinks he feels a hand cup his cheek. It’s a startling contrast to the razor slice of the water, so he tries to lean into it, chasing that warmth. When he’s finally able to lift his head enough to see who is touching him, they tell him he’s good.
The man who talks to him the most has pale eyes as blue as his dreams of the sky. He’s handsome, well built, and a ripple across the surface of his battered mind tells him he should know this face.
He doesn’t, but he thinks he should.
The water is for his benefit, they say.
It keeps him clean.
It keeps him from burning alive in his own fever.
It keeps him awake.
He does not want to be awake.
There is nothing here but pain.
And the hands.
They are not always cruel.
Some are sharp and clinical, rough fingers pressing into bruised skin, forcing his mouth open to check if his teeth are still intact. Others are impatient, dragging at what remains of his clothes, cutting away fabric soaked in blood and filth.
And then there is the hand that cups his face.
Different.
Gentler.
When it comes, he does not flinch.
“He come for you,” the man with the gentle hands tells him. “You mustn’t die. You’re worth more alive.”
He can’t speak. His jaw still doesn’t work right. His broken lungs curl air around a semi-formed word. It crawls up his throat and gets stuck.
“This… this break his heart. It break my heart. Keep fighting. He come for you.”
He doesn’t know who is supposed to come for him, or why, but the words feel right as he repeats them over in his scrambled mind. Yes. Someone is coming for him. Someone promised.
“You must do as told,” the voice continues. “Have no way to protect you. Demoted. Shamed. Your Captain’s doing. You must be good, da? It not like last time. No one here hurt you.”
Last time… he can’t think of a last time. There’s only this time. There’s nothing before.
He’s not sure what this is if not hurt and decides he doesn’t want to find out.
LOCATION: Kraków, Poland
DATE: April 23rd, 1945
A day, a week, a year later, they turn off the water and pull him up to his feet. He has no strength to stand, but they make pleased sounds at his state before forcing him into a crate so small he has to tuck his knees to his chest and lay very still. It’s dark, and he’s not sure there’s enough air to breathe. The voice with the gentle hands tells him to be still and quiet, but once the box starts to rock back and forth with movement, he screams and tries to kick his way free.
A day, a week, a year later, he’s tipped out into the middle of a large warehouse and set upon by a dozen hands. None of them are the gentle ones.
They wrench his right arm behind his back, bones grating painfully, and bind his wrist to a rope that loops around his throat. He has to hold himself still just to stop the makeshift collar from choking him. They shackle his ankles. Wrap a blindfold around his head and shove him to his feet.
Immediately, his legs give way. Nothing works. Just trying is an unimaginable agony.
If this is not hurt…
He finds a kindness in the next hands that touch him. They’re not the gentle hands, no, they pinch and grope, but they hold him upright, let him balance his weight against them and not his shattered body.
They’re singing. Celebrating. He doesn’t…. he doesn’t understand.
The world is noise.
Laughter, roaring and wet, thick with vodka and smoke. Boots stamp against the concrete, the rhythm chaotic, an uncoordinated parody of a dance. The press of bodies around him is suffocating, hot and leering, the stink of sweat and filth and cheap liquor thick in the air.
Hands. Grabbing, shoving, pulling.
Lifting his dead weight when his legs crumple, throwing him from one set of arms to another.
His head lolls, every limb limp, body swaying like a marionette on strings. Every jolt, every shift, sends new waves of agony rolling through him, but it is distant, blurred at the edges.
They laugh when his legs fail again, when he is dropped to his knees, the rope around his throat pulling tight. He chokes, vision going starry, spots dancing across the blackness of his blindfold.
Someone hauls him upright.
Someone else shoves a bottle against his lips, its sharp rim splitting the raw skin there. Vodka, warm and bitter, spills into his mouth, burning like fire down his ruined throat. He coughs, gags, but they do not let up. A rough palm smacks his cheek in reprimand, and the bottle is forced against his lips again.
“Drink.”
He doesn’t want to.
Doesn’t know if he can.
Doesn’t know if he has a choice.
He swallows, once, twice, choking on the burn. His head spins, the alcohol spreading fast through his battered system.
The laughter swells again, a fever pitch of cruel delight. Someone grips his jaw, fingers pressing bruises into his skin, and wrenches his head up. His struggles are pitiful, but he thinks it’s important that he still tries.
They pour the vodka over the bloodied place where his left arm should be and the world whites out in time with his screams.
Blindfolded, helpless, he cannot see them, but he feels them.
Close.
Too close.
Breath stinking of liquor and meat, of sweat and smoke.
Someone shoves him.
He stumbles, and someone else catches him, spins him, shoves him again.
Back and forth.
A sick game.
A mockery of a dance.
The rope around his throat tightens with every motion, tightening, loosening, tightening, loosening, each step a gamble of whether the next will strangle him.
He’s thrown down with enough force that the blindfold slips away. Through the blurred shapes above him, he can see the crackling of a bonfire and the figure that dances in the flames.
He thinks for a second that they’re burning someone alive, that maybe he’s next, but as his vision clears, he can see that it’s a puppet. A handmade figure draped in a familiar fabric. Red. white. Blue. Stars and stripes.
A word crawls out of his throat without any conscious thought. “St…St….eve…”
And then… then the gentle hands are back.
There’s a body on his, thumbs against his windpipe, and fingers curled over the rope. They clamp down tight, squeezing, robbing him of what little breath he’s able to cling to.
The gentle hands want him dead, and he… oh, he’s grateful. He wants that, too. Wants to join the figure in the flames, but this is good enough. He sobs, tears streaming down his face as the fabric catches light and flames engulf the writhing figure.
“Forgive me,” the gentle hands say, his voice close and clear above the holler of celebration around them. “This only mercy I can give.”
There is pain, and then there is this: the slow, measured collapse of his windpipe, the way his body seizes on instinct, struggling for air even as his mind floods with relief.
This is not cruel, not like the others.
The men around him laugh, sing, swig vodka straight from the bottle, their voices hoarse with victory.
And yet…
And yet, in this moment, with the hands at his throat and the rope biting into his raw skin, there is something softer here. Something different.
A mercy. A promise of ending.
It is not fast. It is not tender. But it is the only kindness he has been offered.
So he lets go. Stops fighting. Sinks into it.
The world edges darker, the firelight growing dimmer, flickering in and out.
Somewhere beyond the fog in his skull, something cleaves.
It is not his body. That has long since shattered. It is not his breath, though it will not come. It is something else.
A tether. A thread. A name that once meant something, now tumbling soundlessly into the void.
St—
But before he can disappear completely, the hands at his throat loosen.
He gasps, a ragged, broken thing, and the world slams back into focus.
His body, betrayed by instinct, claws for air, burning and rattling in his lungs.
His throat hurts. His heart still beats. The flames still burn. The puppet still writhes, its painted face curling in the heat, blue turning black.
And the gentle hands are gone.
A voice, sharp and cutting, barks something in Russian.
The laughter falters. The room stills. And suddenly, he is nobody’s plaything.
He retches, body convulsing, throat still closing around nothing.
Voices above him. Arguing.
Something hard strikes his ribs, a boot, an order - then silence.
More hands lift him, tugging the blindfold back into place. They’re not playing now. There is no game.
The lid of the box scrapes open before he’s stuffed back inside, and it closes with a click, locks snapping in place.
It won’t open again for a long, long time.
LOCATION: London, England
DATE: May 8th, 1945
The war is over. That’s what they keep telling him.
The streets of London are alive. People flood the roads, spilling out of pubs and homes, singing, dancing, kissing strangers. Music and laughter echo through the city, bonfires burn on street corners, and even the sky feels different - open, unburdened, free from the ever-present threat of the next attack.
The war is over. Just not for them. Not for the Howling Commandos, who find themselves back where it all started.
Dugan shifts in his chair, rolling the glass between his hands, watching the amber liquid catch in the dim candlelight. The pub they call their own has been bombed twice and wears its scars proudly. The owners have cleaned up as best they can, pulled in furniture from every willing donation, and are putting on a party folks will remember for the rest of their lives. The familiar is filled with people celebrating, toasting the end of a nightmare, but their table is quiet.
They sit at the back, tucked into the same booth they claimed as their own the first night Steve pulled them together, before they became a unit, before they became something more.
Brothers. Family. A legend in their own right.
Dugan lifts his head and glances around the table. Morita is nursing his drink, eyes dark under the brim of his cap. Jones has barely touched his, fingers toying with the rim of the glass, his mouth set in a thin line. Dernier sits stiffly beside him, his usual lazy smirk absent. Even Monty, who has always been the calm one, is barely holding himself together.
It’s wrong, all of it.
“Christ,” Dugan mutters, rubbing a hand over his face. “Shouldn’t feel this way, should it?”
They won. They won. HYDRA is finished. Schmidt is dead. The bastards who took so much from them are gone.
And yet…
He looks at the two empty chairs across from him and swallows hard.
Gone.
Just… gone.
Morita exhales sharply, shaking his head. “Feels like a joke, huh?”
“Ain’t funny,” Jones mutters.
“No,” Morita agrees. “It ain’t.”
But the world doesn’t stop. The world celebrates.
Steve is gone, and the people of London are dancing in the streets.
Bucky is dead, and someone outside is setting off fireworks.
They don't even have bodies to bury. Attempts to recover both of them have failed.
Dugan clenches his jaw. “Doesn’t seem fair.”
Jones scoffs. “Nothing about any of this has been fair.”
For a long moment, none of them speak. The laughter, the music, the cheers of the city press in around them, distant, hollow. The war is over, but the fight isn’t done. The ghosts still linger. None of them know what they’re supposed to do next. All their hopes and dreams of what might come after are millstones around their neck now that after is today.
Dugan doesn’t know how to be anything other than what he is right now. What future is there in that?
Monty clears his throat, his voice steady, certain, the same way it’s always been, keeping them together one last time. He’s in charge now. They will accept no other.
“We should drink to them.”
Dugan’s throat tightens. “Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “Yeah, we should.”
Jones is the first to lift his glass. “To Captain America.” He pauses and shakes his head. “To Steve.”
Morita follows. “To Bucky.”
Dernier nods. “To the finest men we ever knew.”
Dugan swallows hard and lifts his own glass. The words catch in his throat, too much, too heavy, but he forces them out.
“To the ones who didn’t make it home.”
THE END
EPILOGUE
LOCATION: Camp Leigh, New Jersey
DATE: December 15th, 1946
Dum Dum Dugan does not knock. He storms through the halls of the newly established SHIELD facility with one mission in mind and a temper hot enough to start another war.
It’s a good job none of the other fellas have arrived yet. SHIELD is barely weeks old and won’t survive its infancy at the rate it’s going.
The grunts he passes don’t stop him. They don’t dare. They scatter like leaves caught in a storm, stepping aside as he charges forward, boots pounding against the polished floors. The office building in the shadow of his old barracks at Camp Leigh is half a step up from the underground tunnels of London’s War Office. They have windows. A more civilized setting for a more civilized time.
Civilized his ass.
He doesn’t care about protocol. He doesn’t give a fuck about clearance, ranks, or the new world order.
The only thing he gives a fuck about, literally the only thing he has any space for in his life, is justice.
And right now, there’s a very ugly rumor making the rounds that someone in this goddamn upstart agency is trying to wipe Arnim fucking Zola’s slate clean.
Not on his fucking watch.
The door to the freshly appointed Director Carter’s office slams open so hard it nearly bounces off its hinges.
Peggy doesn’t even flinch.
She’s behind her desk, papers stacked high, a steaming cup of tea untouched beside her. Her hair is pinned up neatly, her uniform crisp, and her expression as sharp as ever, but there’s something in her eyes, something only he and the others might recognize.
She’s tired. More than that. She’s weary.
She’s also too damn important and too high-ranking for any of that to manifest itself in the form of sympathy.
Dugan throws his hat onto her desk with enough force to send papers flying.
“Tell me it’s not true.”
Peggy exhales slowly, setting down her pen with excruciating care. “Good afternoon to you, too, Timothy.”
“Don’t,” he growls. “Don’t play that game with me. Tell me it’s not true.”
She meets his gaze head-on. “What, exactly, am I supposed to be denying?”
“Zola.” The name tastes like poison in his mouth. “Tell me that bastard isn’t getting a pardon. Tell me he’s not getting a lab and a paycheck while the rest of us are still burying the people he butchered.”
Silence. A slow, measured breath from Peggy.
Dugan’s stomach turns to ice. “Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
She looks resigned. “Sit down, Dum Dum.” He’s Dum Dum now. A petty part of him wants to tell her that only person allowed to call him that is dead, and Arnim fucking Zola is to blame.
He’s not quite that cruel. Not yet.
“Like hell I will.”
Peggy rubs her temples, closing her eyes for half a second - half a second too long. She’s trying to find the right words, the right excuse, and it makes him want to punch a hole through the goddamn wall.
“We don’t have a choice,” she says finally. “SHIELD needs-”
“I don’t give a fuck what SHIELD needs.” He doesn’t yell, but he might as well have. “You think Steve would’ve wanted this?” he asks, voice low, dangerous. “You think Bucky would have? Would you be bringing that rat bastard into the fold if they were alive? Would you be making Bucky work with the man who fucking tortured him?”
Peggy flinches. It’s small, almost imperceptible, but he sees it.
“This isn’t about what Steve or Bucky would have wanted,” she says, voice quieter now. “Zola has a degree of expertise we can’t afford to lose.”
Dugan stares at her. A degree of expertise. One he honed tormenting a man Dugan would’ve died for in a heartbeat.
He can see the war behind her eyes - the war between the woman who loved Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, and the Director of SHIELD, the person who has to make the calls no one else will make.
Dugan shakes his head, bitter and furious. “I knew things would get ugly in peacetime,” he mutters. “I just didn’t think you’d be the one bending us all over to get fucked by that piece of shit.”
Something in her breaks at that. “I hate this,” she says, voice sharp with grief. “I hate it more than you can possibly imagine. But if we don’t take what he knows, someone else will. The Soviets, the remnants of HYDRA…”
“Then let ‘em have it,” Dugan snaps. “Better the devil you don’t know than the one you do.”
“That’s not how the world works.”
“Well, maybe it should be!”
Peggy exhales, her fingers pressing into the desk. “Dugan,” she says, “what do you want me to do?”
“Turn him over to the goddamn Nuremberg trials,” he spits. “Let the world see him for what he is.”
“Howard-“
“Fuck Howard!” Dugan roars, hoping his voice carries right the way through the wall and that Howard Stark can hear every word.
Peggy shakes her head, looking away.
And that’s all the answer he needs.
Dugan laughs, a bitter, hollow thing. He grabs his hat off the desk and shoves it back on his head.
“Guess we really did lose the war,” he mutters.
“Dugan…”
“No.” He levels her with a glare. “You listen to me, Carter. You keep him on a leash, you make whatever bullshit deal you think you have to, but don’t you dare ever expect me to stand in the same goddamn room as that monster. Not now. Not ever. I see him, I’m ripping out his fucking spine.”
He turns on his heel and storms out, shoving the door open so hard it nearly comes off the hinges.
SHIELD can have Zola.
They can have their compromises and their bullshit.
But the Howling Commandos?
They’ll never forgive.
And they sure as hell won’t forget.