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There’s a man on a rooftop across the square with a the barrel of his rifle pointed at Steve’s heart, and Bucky doesn’t think twice before putting a round through the man’s head. He racks back the slide, ejecting the casing, rams it home again, smiles.
He watches Steve lead the way through the now-empty square, watches the way his eyes catch on broken windows and shattered glass, picking up every detail, every empty room, every abandoned trinket, every crater in the streets, in the walls. Steve takes it all so personally, Bucky thinks sometimes, doesn’t even know these people in this town, but he takes all their loss and pain and fear and suffering and makes it his own. It makes Bucky’s heart hurt to think about it, how heavy the weight must be that Steve’s put on his own shoulders; Bucky can’t imagine every carrying that much, so many people’s hopes and fears and dreams, and all of it voluntary.
But then, Steve’s always been a better man than Bucky, always been the better of the two of them, and Bucky thinks that Steve can handle it, can handle the weight and the pressure and the responsibility of it all, because for as much as Steve carries the world, Bucky has always carried Steve.
Down below, Steve gestures, waving Bucky down from his high perch on lookout; the square is clear and they’re moving out. Bucky’s smiling again when he hits the ground, rife over his shoulder as he walks up to stand just that little bit too close to Steve, far enough that Steve never notices (even though everyone else always does) but close enough to feel Steve’s warmth even through their thick winter layers.
“There’s no one here,” Steve says, and Bucky wonders if anyone else catches the tight twist to his mouth when he says it. “We’re moving on to the outpost down the road. Jaques says he’s got some new toys to try out.”
There’s an edge to Steve’s grin that reminds Bucky of kitchen knives, helpful and innocent, but still so dangerous. He was hoping there’d still be people here, Bucky knows, hoping that this poor town had been left alone. From the looks of things, the destruction and the things left behind, it seems clear that Hydra had decided to take these people as forced labour. It’s one of the things about hydra that Steve hates most of all, makes him all the more determined to wipe Hydra off the map once and for all. Because Steve takes it personally, like every single person in this town had been a family member or a friend.
There’s something in Steve’s eyes in places like this, something hurt and scared and so angry, and it looks foreign on his easy, smiling face. But Bucky’s gotten used to seeing it in these empty towns, and on his face when they leave, and in his every movement when there’s bullets flying and things exploding and they’re knee-deep in Hydra goons. He wakes sometimes, in the middle of the night, with that some look on his face, his hands shaking slightly and his breath coming harsh and fast, and every time Bucky asks if he’s alright, Steve shakes his head, smiles ruefully, and says, “Nothing, Bucky, just dreams.”
It takes Bucky a long time to realise that what Steve’s dreaming about is him, strapped to a table and left for dead or worse. It takes him a lot longer to figure out that this is Steve’s way of trying to make up for all of that, as though he thinks that, if only he’d gotten into the war sooner, maybe Bucky might not have been captured. It’s bullshit, of course, and he’s tried to tell Steve that, but Steve never seems to listen, even though Bucky’s told him a million times, he doesn’t need the explosions and the bullets, the missions and the successes.
All he needs is Steve beside him, smiling, close enough to feel his heartbeat through his skin where their hands press together.