Chapter Text
The metal bar struck Stark's armour with a hollow clang, reverberating up Bucky’s arm in a sharp, bone-deep hum. It was an utterly futile blow, swallowed by the suit's unyielding metal. Stark lunged, tearing the bar away, as he spun Bucky around to place him in a chokehold.
“Do you even remember them?” He hissed, voice tinged with cold fury.
“I remember all of them,” Bucky ground out, straining against the crushing arm around his throat. With a desperate move, he kicked backward, sending them both off the edge of the missile silo. Bucky felt weightless, his stomach flipping as they fell. Then, Steve launched himself at them, tackling Stark off of him.
Bucky hit the unforgiving cold concrete of the bunker hard, the impact driving the breath from his lungs. Stunned, he wheezed as he distantly heard the clamour of Stark and Steve crashing down similarly hard on the lower level.
Bucky pulled himself upright, vision swimming. His eyes caught on the glint of Steve’s shield lying nearby, having fallen onto the ledge with him. He grabbed it, fingers curling tightly around the edge. Sounds of what must’ve been the continuation of the fight between the other two men carried upwards, spurring him on to start moving. Bucky stood up, peering over the ledge. About 15 feet below him, Stark had his back towards him and Steve pinned to the ground, delivering brutal, relentless blows. There was no hesitation in the man, no mercy.
A shout of rage tore free from his throat as he jumped and brought the shield down on Stark’s back, knocking him off Steve. Before he could press the advantage further, Stark shot out a repulsor beam. He raised the shield instinctively, deflecting the beam into the ceiling. Bucky quickly deflected with the shield, deflecting the beam into the concrete ceiling, before tossing the shield to Steve. Bucky snapped back to re-engage with the other man. He took Stark’s left while Steve covered his right, fighting in tandem. Stark buckled under their combined assault, dropping to one knee.
But Steve’s next swing went high, and Stark capitalised on the opening, firing a repulsor blast into Steve’s midsection and sending him crashing into the wall. Bucky swung wildly at Stark, enraged, as he forced the man backwards blow by blow. With a surge of strength, he roughly shoved Stark against the opposite wall, pinning Stark’s helmet with his right hand while the metal one dug into the glowing Arc Reactor at his chest. Sparks flew as Stark thrashed against him, the man struggled desperately, trying to pull Bucky’s fingers out of his chest.
Bucky gritted his teeth, sensors conveying to him that the temperature in the reactor was steadily increasing. He dug his fingers in further, straining–
Then his world erupted in a blinding, overwhelmingly bright green light, swallowing everything. His eyes slammed shut and his vision burned as he staggered, blinded, his grip on Stark slipping. He tried to stumble backwards, but suddenly it was like the ground vanished beneath him, and the sensation of falling returned. Then the green light seemed to get impossibly even brighter, shining through his eyelids, until everything abruptly stopped.
Without any more notice, he was thrust into darkness.
Bucky sputtered and coughed, gasping in pain as pain lanced through his head. He frantically looked around, eyes open but unseeing as the afterimage of the green light seared into his retinas slowly faded. He heaved rapid, laboured breaths. Dimly, as he recovered from the sensory overload, he started to process his surroundings.
He was confused. It was pitch black. Was there an electrical surge in the bunker that short-circuited the lights? He was hurt and aching all over. Had he hit his head? He coughed again, trying to push himself onto his side so he could lift himself up, but what met the hand he reached out to brace against the floor wasn’t concrete, but instead something cold and slimy.
Mud?
Bucky pushed himself up to a sitting position, blinking away the final traces of the light from his vision. His serum-enhanced eyes quickly adjusted to the new low-light conditions. He blinked. It was night-time, he could tell because he was outside. Covered in cold mud. In a forest. Being rained on by a light drizzle.
From the looks of it, this wasn't the bunker.
Hell, this didn’t even look like Siberia. This forest completely lacked the thick snow he had seen outside the HYDRA bunker. He took in his surroundings. He was surrounded by trees, dead leaves and muddy puddles. t was also much warmer than the biting sub-zero of Siberia he had just been jettisoned from, the air was damp and earthy and it was clear that it was not winter. He was deeply confused.
A thought slowly crept over him, filling him with despair. A tremor ran through him. Memories of disorientation, of waking in strange places, of not knowing what horrors he had wrought, coiled in his chest.
He must’ve been triggered again. That was the most probable explanation for why he had woken up in an unfamiliar place again. Panic gripped him as a sickening sense of dread spread throughout his body, turning his mouth to ash. What had he done this time? His mind raced with fragmented possibilities, each one worse than the last.
“Steve?” He called out, voice raw and on the edge of frantic. Only silence answered.
He hesitated. “Stark?”
No response.
He managed to push himself up into a crouch, a heavy ball of anxiety and fear forming in his stomach.
A distant shout pulled him from his thoughts. Bucky froze, instincts flaring. The sound was faint, carried on the wind, distant enough that he couldn’t quite make out the words. He needed to get moving, he was exposed here, disoriented and vulnerable. He needed to find out where he was and then find his way back to Steve. Rising unsteadily, mud clung to his boots as he moved.
He couldn’t let himself ask the question of whether the person who triggered him had sent him after Steve.
He stalked cautiously toward where the noise had come from. It was then that the drizzle thickened into a steady rain, plastering his hair to his forehead. Distantly, he wished for a raincoat, wanting anything to cover up his metal arm. He scowled at the one-armed black jacket he was wearing. It reminded him too much of the leather jacket HYDRA had put him in, yet he had still put it on at the insistence of Steve’s team. He thinks it was meant to be some convoluted attempt to intimidate Stark’s faction.
Bucky scanned the trees as he walked, ensuring his footsteps were silent as he crept through the forest. He paused, straining his ears. Underneath the white-noise of the rain, he heard the faint sound of mortars exploding.
Memories slowly flooded his mind. Through the 2 years he had been on the run before Steve had found him again in Bucharest, some of his previous memories had resurfaced. Most were violent. Some were of Steve. Some were of his time with the 107th and the Howling Commandos.
Like all the wars he had undoubtedly been in, he had a dim recollection of World War II. But Bucky remembered clearly the sound of machine-gun fire, how the ground shook like an earthquake under mortar rounds, how one could never truly be dry in a foxhole, men calling out Sarg, Barnes, Bucky, or even Jimmy when they needed his attention. And the smell of rotting corpses as they were recovered to be hastily buried behind the front line.
Bucky started walking faster. He must’ve been near a battlefield; that much was clear. But he wasn’t aware of an active war that had been occurring on this level that he could use to figure out where he was.
Fuck, how long had he been under?
Unable to do anything else, he continued forward, pelted by the rain, until he came to the forest’s edge. Beyond it, he could see a few cornfields and a small town just behind them. Its architecture was old, two-storey stone buildings, cobbled streets and narrow alleys. It looked...Italian. His heart twisted painfully. He had travelled far from Siberia.
He left the forest, vaulting over the low stone wall and slinking into the nearest cornfield. He needed to find someone to talk to, needed to find out what he had done.
“Take this section, gather the rest of them in the plaza.” A man barked out in German. He instantly ducked down in the field. He frowned, German was unexpected.
He crawled forward until he reached the end of the corn field. Bucky spotted two men and stilled. They were dressed in a very familiar grey-green uniform. He recognised its distinctive colours all too well. They were in Wehrmacht uniforms.
Were these men World War II re-enactors? He’d read about their existence in the news, although why anyone would want to pretend to be on the side of Nazis eluded him. He eyed the MP-40s and the complete set of uniform insignia. This was an unsettlingly authentic re-enactment. He was suddenly feeling lost, seeing the uniform and hearing the language had thrown him. Buried memories of Bucky’s own deployment to Italy suddenly arose, unbidden. He didn’t like this at all.
He watched as the two men approached the house and banged loudly on the door.
"This is Sergeant Weber of the Wehrmacht. We are evacuating you for your own safety. Please cooperate for your own interest." They were answered with a resounding silence. The soldiers looked at each other until Weber nodded at the other man. He stepped back and kicked the door in.
He heard cries from a woman and a man mingling with the aggressive shouts of the soldiers in the house. He surged forward, a half-remembered sense of morality taking over. This didn’t seem like a re-enactment. Entering the house, he saw the two men holding pistols at two elderly civilians.
He launched at Weber, punching the man in the jaw with his metal fist. He crumpled, unconscious, as Bucky yanked the other officer’s pistol out of his hand and slammed his head into the wall with a sickening crack.
He turned to the old couple, who were pressed up against the furthest wall in terror. The woman was sobbing quietly as the man stared at Bucky, wide-eyed. He lifted a finger to his lips, hoping the gesture to keep quiet was universal. They nodded rapidly, holding each other closer.
Bucky turned back to the downed soldiers and rifled through their gear, slipping an MP-40 over his shoulder. He strapped a P38 pistol to his waist, ammo, two combat knives and three grenades. His mind was spinning, upon closer inspection, the men’s uniforms looked even more realistic, and each item he found on them was period-accurate, solidifying the implausible theory clawing at his mind.
Either this was a very authentic re-enactment, or this was the war, and by the reactions of the couple in the room, this didn’t seem like a game.
But that was impossible. The technology for time travel simply didn't exist.
He turned back to the frightened couple. “What year is it?”
He needed confirmation that this was an idiotic thought because it was. The old man opened and closed his mouth, like a fish out of water, until he stuttered out–
“1943.”