Captain America vignette: We Were Soldiers
We Were Soldiers
1500 words | PG-ish | Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes
It's 1944 and the lesson Bucky has to teach Steve is that in war sometimes you have to kill good guys as well as bad guys to fight bullies.
"We can't do this."
Bucky looked over the map they'd been marking up, wondering what Steve had seen that he hadn't. They'd been working on coming up with a plan for the mission they'd been given, coming up with the details to achieve the objective (in this case, blow up a bridge in southwest Belgium) so that Steve could go back to Phillips and present it. Phillips and the others knew that Steve was getting help, that Bucky had been doing most of the heavy lifting because he'd been an NCO while Steve had been a scrawny 4F drawing propaganda posters in Brooklyn. But Bucky had been doing less and less as time had gone on; he still went to the briefing meetings with Steve as the team sergeant, but Steve was the one doing all of the talking because he understood what he was saying instead of parroting what Bucky had told him.
Steve was a terrifyingly quick learner now, getting things on the first explanation instead of needing time and more words to understand, and Bucky sometimes had a hard time adjusting. It wasn't like Steve had been stupid before, but out of the two of them, Bucky had been the sharper one and he wasn't anymore. Steve had focus now, wasn't so easily distracted that he'd lose the plot (or the lesson) halfway through and then scramble to catch up. It was a little scary, to be honest, in a way that the new body wasn't. The new body was Steve in a bigger container; the new mind... that was maybe something else.
"What do you see?" Bucky finally asked because he couldn't find whatever the problem was. The mission was shit because the objective was shit, but he thought they'd done the best they could with what they had.
"We're going to send all of George Company headfirst into a field of machine gun fire," Steve replied, pointing at the map where they knew the Germans had a fixed defensive position. "We're -- I am -- sending how many men to their deaths? Fifty? A hundred? More? For what? A bridge that we think the Nazis are using to transport tank fuel."
Bucky closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. When he opened them again, he was unsurprised by what he saw, which was Steve's familiar look of defiant outrage. Steve's face might be meatier now, but Bucky'd been looking at that expression for almost twenty years and he knew that, historically, very little good had come of it. Steve was rarely outraged by things he could control and his frustration with his powerlessness was a thing to behold. Usually from a distance, which Bucky had rarely gotten to enjoy because someone had had to drag Steve away from his target before he got himself killed. Which was how Bucky had found himself still in uniform instead of back home after the rescue of the 107th, but that was by the by.
"A bridge we think the Nazis are using to transport tank fuel and we know that they're using to move shit up north to beat back the invasion that everyone knows is coming," Bucky said, because that's what they'd been told by Carter. Who'd been told by Phillips, who'd been told by someone up at SHAEF when the order to destroy the bridge had come down. Nobody knew when or where the Allies were coming down from England, but they knew it was coming and it would be sooner than later. Maybe Normandy, maybe Pas de Calais, maybe someplace further east or west, maybe June, maybe August, maybe next week. This far down the food chain, it didn't matter because all they were supposed to know was that they had to do what they were told.
"We gotta find another way," Steve insisted with a shake of his head, and Bucky knew that what he'd just said had gone in one ear and out the other. Steve had his own moral code and his own set of priorities and had not yet figured out that that was incompatible with uniformed life. He'd been so keen to join the godamned Army when he'd never been able to follow an order he didn't like and nothing he'd done -- or been done to him -- since then had cured him of it. Sometimes Bucky wanted to step back and let Steve take the punishment that came with an insubordination charge, but he knew he never would.
"There is no other way," he replied, working to keep the impatience out of his voice because that was how things escalated. If Steve couldn't fight authority, he'd fight a more reachable target and that would be him. Injustice wasn't Steve's most common opponent; Bucky Barnes was. "We have been over this map for three days. We have the pictures Carter got for us from RAF. We have some ROE guy's report. And all of it says that there is no way we can get to that bridge without going past those guns."
Steve got up from the map table like he wanted to flee the European Theater and started pacing the room like a caged tiger.
"What if it's just us?" Steve asked after a few laps. "Dernier's blown up bigger."
Bucky did not sigh aloud. They had been over this, along with why the bridge couldn't be blown from the air, avoiding a ground presence entirely. "If it's just us, we all die," he said simply. "And we die before we get the job done."
Dernier was a master with the demolitions, but the bridge was too long, too sturdy, and too well-guarded. It was going to take half a sapper unit a couple of hours to bring the bridge down so that the Nazis couldn't rebuild it in a week or a month and that meant it would have to be cleared and held for at least that long. There was no way that this could just be a Commandos mission and Bucky thought Steve knew that.
"This is the price of a salute," he said quietly after Steve burned off some more anger with a few more laps back and forth. "This is what you pay."
Because what was really bothering Steve was that this was the first time he was knowingly sending men to their deaths. The Commandos risked death on every mission, pretty much, but they had all volunteered for the privilege and Steve, still mindful of their safety, took comfort in that. But many of their missions involved Regular Army troops and those plans had gotten men killed before, but (a) it had been their plans and (b) the dead men been casualties and not cannon fodder. This was the true cost of Steve accepting primary responsibility for mission planning and design, for becoming the commanding officer in deed as well as word.
The assault on the AAA battery was going to have a high body count. Two months ago, the Germans had fortified the position with enough ground-to-ground firepower to shred a tank because the bridge was that important and they knew that the Allies were going to try to take it. And now the SSR had been tasked with doing just that and Steve, who could lead men into battle from the front because his tactical sense had always been better than his grasp of strategy, was now standing and pointing men toward their doom while he was not there to shield them.
It wasn't like this sat easily on Bucky's shoulders, whatever percentage of the mission planning had been his. He'd been cannon fodder. He'd been sent out on missions that had seemed like pointless whims and outright stupidity. And, now that he wasn't just another warm body on the front lines, the only way he could keep his own conscience from smothering him was to make sure, to the best of his ability, that not a single life was wasted. He hadn't been propping up Captain America's strategic planning to make Steve look good; he'd been doing it to make sure nobody died because the SSR had put a guy two weeks in theater in charge of a combat unit.
"I'd have chosen a different coin," Steve said, back to Bucky.
Bucky snorted a laugh. "Of course you have," he agreed. "Most people would once they had someone's life in their hands. But this is the currency you got."
This wasn't the time to remind Steve that this was what soldiers did in war, that killing people was a primary job requirement, that you could fight bullies back home with fists and moral indignation, but not out here. Steve had been taught that lesson the hard way already and would continue to be taught that lesson because that's what war did, beating home its message long after the point had been made. Long after the point was worth making.
"Let's see what happens when you take it up to the Colonel," he offered instead. "Maybe he'll see something that'll help. Or maybe he can get us something."
Steve nodded, not believing any succor would come from above apart from Phillips telling him that he'd done the best he could.
"Yeah, maybe."
Also posted at DW.
1500 words | PG-ish | Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes
It's 1944 and the lesson Bucky has to teach Steve is that in war sometimes you have to kill good guys as well as bad guys to fight bullies.
"We can't do this."
Bucky looked over the map they'd been marking up, wondering what Steve had seen that he hadn't. They'd been working on coming up with a plan for the mission they'd been given, coming up with the details to achieve the objective (in this case, blow up a bridge in southwest Belgium) so that Steve could go back to Phillips and present it. Phillips and the others knew that Steve was getting help, that Bucky had been doing most of the heavy lifting because he'd been an NCO while Steve had been a scrawny 4F drawing propaganda posters in Brooklyn. But Bucky had been doing less and less as time had gone on; he still went to the briefing meetings with Steve as the team sergeant, but Steve was the one doing all of the talking because he understood what he was saying instead of parroting what Bucky had told him.
Steve was a terrifyingly quick learner now, getting things on the first explanation instead of needing time and more words to understand, and Bucky sometimes had a hard time adjusting. It wasn't like Steve had been stupid before, but out of the two of them, Bucky had been the sharper one and he wasn't anymore. Steve had focus now, wasn't so easily distracted that he'd lose the plot (or the lesson) halfway through and then scramble to catch up. It was a little scary, to be honest, in a way that the new body wasn't. The new body was Steve in a bigger container; the new mind... that was maybe something else.
"What do you see?" Bucky finally asked because he couldn't find whatever the problem was. The mission was shit because the objective was shit, but he thought they'd done the best they could with what they had.
"We're going to send all of George Company headfirst into a field of machine gun fire," Steve replied, pointing at the map where they knew the Germans had a fixed defensive position. "We're -- I am -- sending how many men to their deaths? Fifty? A hundred? More? For what? A bridge that we think the Nazis are using to transport tank fuel."
Bucky closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. When he opened them again, he was unsurprised by what he saw, which was Steve's familiar look of defiant outrage. Steve's face might be meatier now, but Bucky'd been looking at that expression for almost twenty years and he knew that, historically, very little good had come of it. Steve was rarely outraged by things he could control and his frustration with his powerlessness was a thing to behold. Usually from a distance, which Bucky had rarely gotten to enjoy because someone had had to drag Steve away from his target before he got himself killed. Which was how Bucky had found himself still in uniform instead of back home after the rescue of the 107th, but that was by the by.
"A bridge we think the Nazis are using to transport tank fuel and we know that they're using to move shit up north to beat back the invasion that everyone knows is coming," Bucky said, because that's what they'd been told by Carter. Who'd been told by Phillips, who'd been told by someone up at SHAEF when the order to destroy the bridge had come down. Nobody knew when or where the Allies were coming down from England, but they knew it was coming and it would be sooner than later. Maybe Normandy, maybe Pas de Calais, maybe someplace further east or west, maybe June, maybe August, maybe next week. This far down the food chain, it didn't matter because all they were supposed to know was that they had to do what they were told.
"We gotta find another way," Steve insisted with a shake of his head, and Bucky knew that what he'd just said had gone in one ear and out the other. Steve had his own moral code and his own set of priorities and had not yet figured out that that was incompatible with uniformed life. He'd been so keen to join the godamned Army when he'd never been able to follow an order he didn't like and nothing he'd done -- or been done to him -- since then had cured him of it. Sometimes Bucky wanted to step back and let Steve take the punishment that came with an insubordination charge, but he knew he never would.
"There is no other way," he replied, working to keep the impatience out of his voice because that was how things escalated. If Steve couldn't fight authority, he'd fight a more reachable target and that would be him. Injustice wasn't Steve's most common opponent; Bucky Barnes was. "We have been over this map for three days. We have the pictures Carter got for us from RAF. We have some ROE guy's report. And all of it says that there is no way we can get to that bridge without going past those guns."
Steve got up from the map table like he wanted to flee the European Theater and started pacing the room like a caged tiger.
"What if it's just us?" Steve asked after a few laps. "Dernier's blown up bigger."
Bucky did not sigh aloud. They had been over this, along with why the bridge couldn't be blown from the air, avoiding a ground presence entirely. "If it's just us, we all die," he said simply. "And we die before we get the job done."
Dernier was a master with the demolitions, but the bridge was too long, too sturdy, and too well-guarded. It was going to take half a sapper unit a couple of hours to bring the bridge down so that the Nazis couldn't rebuild it in a week or a month and that meant it would have to be cleared and held for at least that long. There was no way that this could just be a Commandos mission and Bucky thought Steve knew that.
"This is the price of a salute," he said quietly after Steve burned off some more anger with a few more laps back and forth. "This is what you pay."
Because what was really bothering Steve was that this was the first time he was knowingly sending men to their deaths. The Commandos risked death on every mission, pretty much, but they had all volunteered for the privilege and Steve, still mindful of their safety, took comfort in that. But many of their missions involved Regular Army troops and those plans had gotten men killed before, but (a) it had been their plans and (b) the dead men been casualties and not cannon fodder. This was the true cost of Steve accepting primary responsibility for mission planning and design, for becoming the commanding officer in deed as well as word.
The assault on the AAA battery was going to have a high body count. Two months ago, the Germans had fortified the position with enough ground-to-ground firepower to shred a tank because the bridge was that important and they knew that the Allies were going to try to take it. And now the SSR had been tasked with doing just that and Steve, who could lead men into battle from the front because his tactical sense had always been better than his grasp of strategy, was now standing and pointing men toward their doom while he was not there to shield them.
It wasn't like this sat easily on Bucky's shoulders, whatever percentage of the mission planning had been his. He'd been cannon fodder. He'd been sent out on missions that had seemed like pointless whims and outright stupidity. And, now that he wasn't just another warm body on the front lines, the only way he could keep his own conscience from smothering him was to make sure, to the best of his ability, that not a single life was wasted. He hadn't been propping up Captain America's strategic planning to make Steve look good; he'd been doing it to make sure nobody died because the SSR had put a guy two weeks in theater in charge of a combat unit.
"I'd have chosen a different coin," Steve said, back to Bucky.
Bucky snorted a laugh. "Of course you have," he agreed. "Most people would once they had someone's life in their hands. But this is the currency you got."
This wasn't the time to remind Steve that this was what soldiers did in war, that killing people was a primary job requirement, that you could fight bullies back home with fists and moral indignation, but not out here. Steve had been taught that lesson the hard way already and would continue to be taught that lesson because that's what war did, beating home its message long after the point had been made. Long after the point was worth making.
"Let's see what happens when you take it up to the Colonel," he offered instead. "Maybe he'll see something that'll help. Or maybe he can get us something."
Steve nodded, not believing any succor would come from above apart from Phillips telling him that he'd done the best he could.
"Yeah, maybe."
Also posted at DW.