Chapter 37

Reader wish list: One banged-up Steve. Tended to by Bernice. Check...

(With a tiny bit of intrigue added to advance the plot)

Thanks for reading!

X

Chapter 37

Smoke filled the air, the frames of shattered farmhouses little more than skeletons clawing out of the earth. Two tanks clattered behind them as they got their first glimpse of the village they'd spent the last four days shelling. They'd liberated many villages, the cure for Nazi occupation often being nearly as bad as the disease, but usually the locals had enough common sense to flee the advancing Allied forces, understanding their houses could be rebuilt, but to stay while armies clashed was suicide. This village, however, had not cleared out. The scent of cooked meat drew their eyes to the bodies piled high in the village square, a half-hearted bonfire lit to erase the evidence. A warning. A warning that Herr Kleiser had a policy of total surrender. Or annihilation.

"What happened here?" Dum Dum Dugan asked, his green bowler hat perched precariously on top of his flack helmet, nearly matching the coloring of his face. He pointed to the pile of bodies. "Did –we- cause all these deaths?"

"I don't think so, Sir," Gabriel Jones said, the unit's only African American member. "That doesn't look like no damage from bullets."

A brigade of soldiers lined up and drew buckets from the well, passing it in a line until the half-hearted funeral pyre had been extinguished. Steve went down on one knee to lead a moment of silence as he said a prayer for those they'd been too late to save. Some of the murdered were children, although if rumors of atrocities against the gypsies and the Jews filtering out of Germany were true, this should be no surprise. He pulled out his handkerchief and held it over his mouth to filter out the stench. Some had bullet wounds, but most bore no sign of injury except looks of pure horror, as though whatever they had seen was far more horrible than being on the wrong end of a stray Allied mortar.

"What's wrong with their faces?" Bucky asked. "They've got ... some kind of holes drilled into their skulls?"

The looked which passed between them was haunted. Bucky ... had come close. A nervous laugh rippled through the Allied troops even though none of them found this funny. Memory of the –last- village they'd taken back from Herr Kleiser, and the terrified villagers who'd rushed out to greet them, tugged at Steve's memory. Their stories had been so bizarre the brass had labeled the entire village shell-shocked and stuffed their witness reports into some top-secret file, never to be seen again.

"Shape shifters," Steve said. "They said they were shape shifters."

A cool cloth touched his forehead, wiping clean his injuries. He recognized her scent. The scent of Lux soap, a soap he had thought they no longer manufactured. He fought his way through the fog that made him too weak to even lift his own head.

"Bernice," he whispered.

"Shhhh..." she shushed. "Just go back to sleep. I need to tend these wounds so they don't become infected."

At some point she must have removed his armor, because cool air touched his chest where only a sheet covered him now.

"I had to come..."

"I know," Bernice said. Soft lips brushed his. "I love you too."

Too weak to give her anything but a smile, he drifted back to sleep.

X

"Bucky," Steve cried out. "What have they done to you?" He felt his pulse, afraid for a moment he was too late. It was erratic, but Bucky was alive.

"Steve," Bucky groaned, his dark eyes fluttering open, no sign of the cocky best friend and soldier Steve had grown up idealizing. His eyes slid shut for a moment, as though he might not make it, but then they opened and recognized Steve was not a hallucination. Not just some comforting thought his imagination had conjured up to help him endure the pain.

"I've come to get you out of here," Steve said. He tugged at the straps binding Bucky to the table like a sacrificial pig, the crude array of syringes recognizable as a much more primitive version of Doctor Erskine's machine. There had been rumors of the Nazi's committing atrocities against the civilian population, but this was the first time any of them had seen evidence of the strange experiments Red Skull and his army of scientists were committing first hand. There were holes injected into every inch of Bucky's body, but it appeared his attack on Red Skull's stronghold had interrupted the –real- atrocity the scientists had been about to commit. The drill-press which was aimed right at Bucky's head.

"Go," Bucky whispered, barely able to stand. "Go help the others."

"Like hell," Steve said. Shouting and explosions rocked the facility from outside the fortress. The freed 101st Airborne. Fighting their –own- way out. "They can take care of themselves. I came here to get you."

He looked past the torture table to the map pinned upon the wall, concentric rings of fortresses emanating out of a single central fortress just outside of Berlin. The military had never valued his eidetic memory. Even Doctor Erskine had labeled it a useless curiosity. The skill of an artist, not the soldier they needed. He memorized the location of the other fortresses, the pattern of expanding rings where –future- fortresses were planned to someday be built. Africa. Asia. The South Pacific. And rings beyond that. South America. Antartica. The American southwest. And a tiny little string of islands just east of Australia...

An invasion plan...

Arguing. But it wasn't an angry argument. More like heated banter. Bernice's voice ... and another female. Hadn't Bernice mentioned she had a roommate? Yes. He'd met her once. Asian girl. Black hair with red stripes. He vaguely recalled she'd been here when he'd stumbled in last night. Had it been last night? He couldn't tell. It felt as though he'd been asleep for days. Daylight slipped in through cracks in the venetian blinds, so it was morning.

His hand slipped down to feel for injuries and paused as he realized not only had she removed his armor, but stripped him down to his boxer shorts. Color rose to his cheeks as he realized he was in Bernice's bed. He remembered telling her that he loved her, but everything after that was fuzzy. Had they...?

He tried to sit up, causing his stomach to lurch. He closed his eyes and lay still until the bed stopped spinning. No. He didn't think so. Not in this condition. Every square inch of his body hurt. Part of him was disappointed whatever spell had compelled him to come here and blurt out what was in his heart had not shoved him headlong into the intimacy he wished to explore. He was determined to wait until certain she could handle the dark side of his line of work. Nights such as last night, when he got sent into battles where he could be killed, or disappeared for days at a time, could doom their love. He had promised Peggy he would shield her as best he could.

Who the hell was he kidding? Perhaps she could handle breaking things off, having survived betrayal once before, but he wouldn't. After Peggy had died he'd crawled into a shell and refused to speak. If that was how he'd reacted to losing Peggy, an ephemeral love, never consummated, never spoken, then what would happen if Bernice said 'no thank you' and handed back his heart? In his line of work, distraction got you killed.

The arguing continued, but it seemed more along the lines of why hadn't Bernice told her best friend who she'd been dating instead of anger that he'd shown up at their door. He should go. But the bed was so much more comfortable than the no-frills twin-long he'd picked up for the tiny efficiency flat he'd carved out of the office of the old gym. And the sheets smelled of her. Lux soap. An old-fashioned, no-frills kind of soap that, even after seventy years, was still around. That part of Bernice which idealized her grandmother was just enough to act as a bridge as he stretched his hand across time, balanced on a tightrope above the chasm that threatened to engulf him, cheering him on as he cautiously made his way to the other side.

Besides, even if the room did stop spinning long enough for him to sit up, he didn't want to leave...

He drifted back to sleep, the sound of the two females bantering back and forth more beautiful to his ears than the brassy sound of a 1940's dance band, cheerful in its audaciousness.

X

"I don't –get- it!" Peggy exclaimed, pacing back and forth in front of the enormous map of Europe, staring at the pins Steve had placed from memory. "These locations don't add up."

Her eyes came up to look at him and frowned, her lips pursing in disapproval. Ever since she'd walked in on him and that brazen file clerk locked in a kiss, she'd refused to speak to him, challenging every single theory he postulated for the strange behavior of Red Skull and his Nazi collaborators. Red Skull was predictable. He wanted world domination and he'd pull whatever strings were necessary to achieve that goal. Including betraying Hitler. But the actions of the Schutzstaffel, the Nazi SS, did not fit into the battle plans of –either- faction, as though they had their –own- agenda that had nothing to do with Red Skull or the Third Reich.

"Perhaps Captain Rogers was mistaken?" General Dwight Eisenhower said. "He did, after all, only see this map once."

"I don't know about that," General George Patton said, chomping on his cigar. "The boy seems pretty sharp to me. Don't matter to –me- what these fortresses are for. Only that every base we've gone after had those strange-looking weapons. What did you call them again?"

"Ray guns," Peggy snapped, giving Old Blood and Guts a look that communicated it mattered to –her- why these locations had been chosen. "But some of these locations don't make –sense- from a logistical standpoint! It takes a lot of resources to build bases this big, and the Third Reich is too thinly stretched to spare them unless there's a –reason- to spare them. Either Steve was wrong. Or something else is going on here that we're not aware of."

Her eyes met his, sitting quietly in the corner, doodling in his sketchbook. She was clueless, really, how he felt about her. Or perhaps she knew? Was that why she'd been so angry when she'd seen him lip locked with the file clerk? Not that he'd initiated the behavior. He'd done everything he could to avoid it except cluck like a chicken and fly up to the top shelf of the bunker, squawking for help. All his life he'd dreamed of being the one sought after, and now that he finally had the good looks to get dames to give him the time of day, the only woman he wanted –still- wouldn't speak to him.

He shot her a smile, hoping to quell her anger. She was beautiful, the way her dark eyes flashed, lips parting as though she wished to say something, and then suppressed it. His pencil captured the tiny softening of her expression. She was a proud woman, Peggy Carter, and he wished to capture her as he saw her in this moment. Standing in front of a map of Europe. Surrounded by generals. –Her- calling all the shots.

She turned her back to him, dismissing him with a shrug. Peggy didn't like things that didn't add up. Never had. It was the missing puzzle pieces that always came around and bit you in the backside, she liked to say. The generals had not added the larger ring of future bases he'd described to their map, deeming facilities that did not yet exist as being irrelevant to their battle plans now. He sketched them into his picture of Peggy. Perhaps it would help her make sense of things once she was speaking to him again? At the very least, it would give him an excuse to give her the picture without getting his head bit off.

"Mmmm?"

The sleepy voice drew him back to the much more pleasant dream he'd been having about the goddess spooned into the length of his torso. He snuggled closer, not wanting to wake up in case she really was a dream. She felt warm and substantial in a way his longing for Peggy Carter had never been. Real. He had no recollection of how she'd gotten here, but here she was.

"Hey, sweetheart," he whispered, kissing her ear. It was nighttime again, but there was enough light streaming through the blinds from the streetlight outside that he could make out her face, peaceful as though she didn't have a care in the world.

She wore a silky little slip of a thing, the kind of nightgown a gal might wear on her wedding night, so shimmery and translucent it was more seductive than if she'd worn nothing at all. He pushed back the hair that had fallen across her neck, relishing her little mewl of protest as he disturbed her sleep. She snuggled closer, her backside brushing against places no woman had ever touched. It was a good thing he was too battered and bruised to act on the impulse, or by morning they'd be paying a quick trip to the preachers to make things legal. He wanted to take things slow. To get to know her first before he took that last step which, in his mind, would mean forever.

He ran his hand down her hip, his rough skin snagging on the silky nothingness. What would it be like to wake up next to her every morning? It was what he wanted. It was what he had always wanted back when he'd still been free to pursue it, back when no woman would give him the time of day. Now that he carried the weight of the world upon his shoulders, would Bernice be strong enough to bear the burden with him?

Peggy had loved her quiet husband. Not just because he'd resembled him before they'd turned him into something else, but because the man had been strong enough to carry the burden of being married to a secret agent. He hopedBernice was strong, not as her grandmother had been, but like this grandfather she had never met. He looked at her delicate features with fresh eyes, searching not for echoes of his first love, but the quiet, strong man he hoped lived within Bernice's genes. What features had she inherited from him? The rounded jaw? Her cute little nose? Her dainty ears? He caressed her ribcage, close to her small, pert breasts. William Miller had been tall and thin. Perhaps that was where Bernice had inherited her swan-like neck? It was the one aspect of her that was truly hers. A symbol of quiet strength, the way a mute swan appeared fragile until you got clobbered with its wings.

Damn, he was tired! Wincing as burned flesh brushed the sheets, he pulled her close and whispered that he loved her, noting the smile which graced her lips at his tender words, and drifted back to sleep.

X

The backpack full of explosives weighed heavily upon his back as he ran through the woods, slipping around to the back of the village so he could lay charges before the rest of the 101st Airborne came in, guns blazing, to take out the Schutzstaffel and their second-in-command, Herr Klaiser. The devil himself, some would say. Or at least that was what the French called him. Those few who'd survived. Steve had mopped up one village too many after the bastard had moved through, only traumatized villagers with crazy tales of atrocities left in Nazi commanders wake.

A German soldier stood next to a tree, taking a leak. Ambush and kill him? Or delay long enough for the man to finish nature's call and go back about his business? None the wiser a squadron of raiders was slipping through the woods on either side of him, explosives and other booby traps loaded into backpacks to prevent Herr Klaiser from slipping out the rear as the bastard had done every other village they'd tracked him to. The German was easy prey, but Steve had never been especially anxious to kill Germans, even though they were the enemy. He killed when shot at, and not until.

The clock ticked as the German pulled a cigarette out of his jacket. Steve glanced at his watch, anxious to get to his drop point. Late. The soldier was going to make him late. As Steve weighed the ethics of snapping the soldiers neck in cold blood versus the risk to his men by waiting, the German moved off, headed back to the village from which he'd come. A slacker, Steve was certain. One of the many German soldiers who fought not by choice, but because if they –didn't- fight, the Nazi's would pack up his family and send them off to a concentration camp along with the Jewish population. Or so it was rumored. With the Allied lines advancing through Europe a little more every day, it was only a matter of time before Steve saw first-hand what the bastards had been up to.

He hurried to the drop point, a group of buildings at the edge of the village that, if properly detonated, would prevent the Nazi's from using the road out of here. He heard a shriek from deeper within the village, the words not in French or German, but English. His heart racing, he slipped into the heart of the village just in time to see one of his men get picked up by the throat as though he weighed nothing at all. The Nazi soldier was taller than the others, the Danziger Totenkopf clearly visible on the visor of his hat. One of the officers. A high-ranking one, by the number of bars on his uniform, but the rest of the insignia was unfamiliar. Not the regular rank and file.

The Nazi officer turned, dangling the American soldier from his hand as though he were an afterthought. Those eyes. For so long as Steve lived, he would never forget his first look into the eyes of Herr Kleiser, so cold and blue it was as though he stared into the eyes of a spider.

"You're late," Herr Kleiser said in perfect Boston-accented English. "You're always too late. Or hadn't you noticed that, Captain America?"

"I'm sorry, Sir," the soldier choked out as Herr Kleiser's loosened the fingers wrapped around the man's neck just enough to let him speak. Kawalski. Steve recalled the private's name was Kawalski.

"Don't hurt him!" Steve shouted, his hands held out in front of him to show he meant no harm. "It's me you want. I'll order the others to leave!"

"You're not in charge, little man," Herr Kleiser laughed. With a twist of his wrist, he snapped Kawalski's neck as casually as though he rolled a blade of grass between his forefinger and thumb. He threw the soldier to the ground, the man's body twitching even though Steve knew from the sickening crunch the man was already dead.

"Bastard!" Steve shouted.

Herr Kleiser pulled a pistol and shot Steve right in the heart. Steve fell backwards, grunting in pain as he gave a silent prayer of thanks to Howard Stark for giving him bullet proof armor. The armor stopped the bullet from piercing his skin, but it –still- felt as though somebody had just pounded him in the chest with a baseball bat. Gasping for breath until his lungs finally got the idea they were supposed to –breathe-, he stumbled to his feet and unstrapped his shield from his back, made of some meteor alloy nobody had ever encountered before. Herr Kleiser was already instituting his escape, nearly all the way to the other side of the village square. Steve lined up the shot and aimed his shield straight at Herr Kleiser's head. The shield floated across the square like a Frisbee, knocking Herr Kleiser forward and, he would swear to God until the day he died, cleaving the man's head right off the bastard's neck.

The German soldiers surrounding Herr Kleiser froze, not certain what to do. Steve shot at them, alerting the rest of the 101st Airborne the timeframe for detonation had just been moved up. All around him men erupted out of trenches and from behind bushes, where the French Underground had been helping them line up the offensive to take the Nazi bastard down. Explosions erupted from backpacks strategically placed around the village, blasting cottages to smithereens and littering the road with so much debris the Germans had little hope of escape.

His attention was drawn to the pile of rubble where Herr Kleiser's body had fallen. A visage rose from within the flames, black smoke obscuring Steve's view just enough to not be able to make out the figure who stood in its midst. Hair stood up on the back of Steve's neck as he realized he couldn't see the man's face. In fact, he couldn't see the man's head at all! An illusion caused by the smoke and tears streaking out of Steve's eyes?

The figure raised one hand and snapped its fingers. Steve couldn't say –why- he suddenly felt a sense of horror, but whatever was causing it, he could feel the sensation deep within his bones. Another explosive detonated in the purgatory where the figure stood, obscuring Steve's view. All around him, German soldiers stopped what they were doing and dropped dead. Not one of them had a mark from enemy fire. When Steve looked back, the figure was gone.

"What the hell just happened?" Bucky asked, running up to where Steve stood, his shield dangling from one hand.

"They all just dropped dead!" Dum Dum Dugan said.

"I ain't never seen nothing like it," Gabriel Jones said. "And I've seen a lot of weird stuff." He pointed to the dead German soldiers. "It was like ... voodoo or something."

He searched the rubble where he'd seen Herr Kleiser fall, but they found nothing. Nothing at all. The smell of smoke filled his nostrils. It smelled like...

Toast?

Light streamed through the venetian blinds. The door opened and Bernice glided in, the odor of coffee and burnt toast wafting in behind her as she carried a makeshift tray into the room. Steve forced himself to become fully conscious, noting his injuries didn't seem as severe as they had before, his souped-up metabolism helping him heal far faster than any ordinary human. He'd wallowed long enough in his beloved's bed. It was time to let the poor girl go about her business before he wore out his welcome.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Bernice said, sitting down at the edge of the bed with a smile that would melt an iceberg. "Are you going to wake up today?"

"How long have I been out?" Steve asked, struggling to disentangle himself from the blankets and sit up. The room still spun from the thwack on the side of his head, but only a little.

"Three days," Bernice said. "I was really worried about you. But Mr. Fury said to just let you sleep it off and you'd probably heal all on your own. For a while there you were beginning to scare me. I think you might have been delirious."

Shapeshifters...

If his recollections from the recent battle were accurate, and he was by no means sure that they were, the tales told to him by the French villagers had been real. Whatever that thing was he'd battled, he was certain he'd cut it in half. Just as he'd been certain he'd taken off Herr Kleiser's head, and then the bastard had stood up in the flames and snapped his fingers, causing all the German soldiers to drop dead. In light of what they now knew about the Chitauri, Natasha was right about one thing. The thing he'd battled on the Triskelion hadn't been human. His alien friend had tried to warn him when it had drawn pictures of a slug with dozens of pincher-like arms that he feared something was coming for him. He needed to get back there and interrogate the creature before it ended up dead, too.

"You spoke to Nick Fury?" Steve asked.

"He came by," Bernice said. "As well as Doctor Banner. They ... um ... explained ... uh..."

She looked at the place where his arm had suffered third degree burns, now almost completely healed. By the end of the week, there wouldn't even be a scar. Already the scars had faded from his face. They sat in silence a long moment, her hand small and warm in his larger one.

"I just heal faster than most people," Steve said. "That's all. I can be hurt as badly as any other guy."

Bernice glanced up, her cheeks flaming red. Steve wondered what else she'd seen. Or how much he had babbled in his sleep. She fluffed a pillow and placed it behind his back. He realized the sheet had slid down, exposing his chest. Bernice did not stare at him as Peggy had done, but averted her eyes, glancing at him through veiled lashes. Three days. They had spent the last three days intertwined in each other's arms, an intimate position usually reserved for husband and wife. Was that why she felt awkward?

"It's ... uh ... kinda burnt," Bernice said, pointing to six not-too-charred slices of toast. "Mr. Fury said you were going to be ravenous when you finally woke up. I'm ... um ... not that good of a cook. I'll go make ... uh ..."

"Stay?" Steve pleaded, capturing her before she could escape. Her nervous energy reminded him of one of those little Australian herding dogs. Him being the sheep that needed to be corralled. She glanced back at the doorway, then at him, torn between whatever duty she felt compelled to finish and her desire to stay.

"Okay," Bernice said. "It would be cruel and unusual punishment to burn your toast and then expect you to eat it without me being forced to eat it with you. It's ... um ... kinda cold."

She crawled up beside him and stuck her feet under the covers, cold little piggies that begged to be warmed by his larger frame. They each grabbed a triangle of toast, black crumbs littering her sheets as they crunched in silence, taking turns smearing each other's toast with orange marmalade and sharing swigs of coffee until the last slice had been devoured. She had been right. He was ravenous.

"I feel like I'm in that movie," Bernice said. "Nacho Libre. It's about a priest and a nun who don't want to break their vow of chastity. So one night they eat toast together. It's about as close to ... uh ... you know..."

Steve pulled her into his arms, devouring her lips and kissing her senseless until he was finally forced to come up for air. She gave up squirming after the first thirty seconds, melting into his arms.

"I can assure you I have taken no such vow," Steve said, nibbling down her neck until she squealed with laughter. He pulled her tight, avoiding pulling her too close so she wouldn't feel the evidence of his baser urges pressing against her thigh. She snuggled into his arms, her head resting upon his chest as she listened to his heart beat. She then asked the question he knew she feared to ask, her voice fearful and small.

"Did you mean what you said?"

"Yes," Steve said. "I did." He kissed her, her touch against his bare chest causing him to growl. "Here I was getting shot at and beaten up by aliens, and all I could think of was that I hadn't had a chance to tell you that I love you."

Bernice held his face between her hands, her dark eyes scrutinizing his features.

"You lost weight while you were asleep." She caressed his cheek. "I can see the resemblance now to the pictures my grandmother had of you. They didn't change you at all."

"I came out of the ice unscathed," Steve said.

"No," Bernice said softly. "I was talking about the machine. They didn't change you when they put you into that machine. I realized when you came here three nights ago that that was the man I fell in love with."

A lump rose in his throat. Ever since they'd turned him into a super-soldier, he'd always felt as though the body women lusted after belonged to someone else. Was stolen. That it was forbidden to use for anything except the mission because it wasn't his. Bernice was the only woman to ever look beyond the super-soldier and see the thin little asthmatic who still resided within. Not even Peggy had –seen- him for who he really was until he'd been dead and gone

"Come here," he said. They snuggled until the smoke alarm went off and there was a series of small explosions.

"Your eggs!" Bernice exclaimed, jumping out of bed and running out into the kitchen. She grabbed a fire extinguisher to put out the pan which had caught on fire after the water boiled out, causing the hard-boiled eggs to explode. The entire apartment reeked of sulfur and smoke.

Steve lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes, relishing the sound of Bernice bustling about the kitchen. Her cries of dismay as she fretted about his ruined breakfast. The reek of sulfur that, now that he got a good whiff of his own body odor having not showered in three days, was probably an improvement. The strangled chirp of the smoke detector as she gave up trying to silence it and finally ripped out the batteries. If this was what it meant to live a normal life, he would take it. Oh, God, would he take it!

X

Note: The dream sequence about rescuing Bucky Barnes was taken straight out of the Avengers movie. The dream sequence about the soldier Herr Kleiser killed and then Steve lodging his shield into the creature and wondering why it didn't die came from Ultimate Avengers, although I didn't include the rest of that episode as it doesn't fit in with my plot.

I've had readers point out they think it odd Bernice can't cook. Point A – Bernice isn't perfect ... I have to give her SOME flaws. Point B – my BFF is a superwoman mega-successful business owner who likes to entertain ... and whose cooking we all dread. Everybody I know makes it a point to stop at the Burger King strategically located near her house both before and after all dinner invitations and to BYOB food. Point C – keep reading. You'll see why I painted Bernice with this flaw in a few more chapters.

Drop me a review if you have a chance. Reviews make me happy!