Chapter Text
1944
‘Always giving me your jacket,’ the girl pants as Bucky drapes it over her after he stumbles down the steep curve of the hollow.
It’s an odd statement to make, but it’s drowned out by the greater oddity of finding a naked English speaking girl on a mountainside somewhere near the Lithuanian-Polish border. And oh yeah, the only Americans over here are there to fight Nazis, so…?
‘What are you doing here?’ Bucky says in shock, ‘You gotta get out of here, you can’t be here.’
For some reason that starts the girl laughing. Bucky’s got sisters, and he knows women, but this sort of laughter sounds closer to the type he heard out of his fellow POW’s when he told them to just hold on, keep holding on, they’d be rescued soon and it would be all right.
Of course he knew there would be no rescue. They knew it too. It’s why they laughed.
The girl curls up under his jacket, not even trying to get it between the frozen earth and her bare skin. A glint of silver catches his eye, a heavy cuff of metal worked around her wrist with a strangely delicate wire trailing back into the hillside. He reaches out to tug at it but the girl reaches up surprisingly quickly and stops his hand.
‘Don’t do that, please. I don’t belong here, remember?’
Remember?
Bucky thinks he would remember seeing something like this if it had happened before. The only holes in his memory are mere pinpricks—lost hours or minutes or seconds while they stabbed him with needles and tore him apart with pain.
He’s starting to think this girl’s got more problems than just being far away from home and in the middle of a war zone.
‘Let me take a look at it,’ he says as soothingly as he can. The cold air bites at him and he can’t imagine what it feels like to her. ‘I’ve gotta get you outta here, it isn’t safe.’
The girl shakes her head. Her eyes, which were unfocused and far-off before, had sharpened and she looks at him with startling clarity.
‘We haven’t met before, have we.’ It’s more statement than question. ‘What’s the date?’ She asks with a weary laugh.
How long have you been here lady, that you need to know the date?
‘March 12.’
‘Mm, yes, but the year?’
The year?
‘1944.’
‘’44,’ she whispers in surprise, then darts her gaze up to his face. She stares at him worriedly. ‘I should have guessed, what with—‘ here she gestures vaguely to himself, ‘that and all. I’m lucky you speak English at all, really. World war two, should have guessed,’ she says quietly to herself.
This isn’t making any sense at all to Bucky. Of course it’s the war, what else would it be? Feels like it’s been going on forever and not just the two years he’s been over here.
The girl sees the look on his face and makes a valiant effort at a meager smile. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Bucky Barnes, ma’am.’ Bucky says. No reason not to be polite, his ma’d smack him hard if he were otherwise.
Her eyes widen with shock. ‘Bucky Barnes? But—‘ she looks around frantically. ‘You can’t be here, you have to, I didn’t know! Please—‘ she cuts herself off. ‘There’s no time.’ She sits up quickly, wrapping an arm around herself as she uses the other to toss his jacket back to him.
‘Ma’am—‘
‘There’s no time.’ She insists. ‘You have to get back above the hollow, go now!’
Bucky refuses to move. ‘Hell no, I’m not leaving you here. Even if I have to give you all my clothes and carry you back to camp naked as the day I was born I won’t leave you here!’
She must believe he means it because she whimpers in frustration. ‘I only have five minutes, you understand? When time’s up I’m gone, and everything in this hollow is dead—you have to move! Please!’
Bucky doesn’t believe her. But he can almost see the ticking clock behind her eyes. Whatever’s going to happen it won’t take long and maybe once it doesn’t happen she won’t stop him from helping her. He tries to hand the jacket back to her but she throws it at his head.
‘Go!’
‘At least let me know your name?’
The girl closes her eyes and presses her lips tightly together as if pleading for patience. Bucky’s used to that look.
‘Rose. I’m Rose. Now go!’
Bucky goes. Just to the top edge of the hollow, no further. This really grates on him, you know? He might not be as much of a stand-up guy as Steve, but he’s never left a woman who needed help and if there ever was a woman who needed his help…
It’s only there, from the vantage point at the top of the hollow that Bucky notices something he didn’t have time to see before: the hollow is entirely empty. All around is thick vegetation and forest, even in the wintertime—but not there. There the ground is as sterile and empty as if it were bare rock.
Alarm jumps in his heart.
‘Hey—‘ he starts to say, but he’s interrupted by a flicker of light in the air that starts to fill the hollow, the brightness growing until he can barely see the girl–Rose. She’s staring straight at him, though, and gives him a forlorn little wave as the light crescendos into a brilliant flash that blinds him and sends him stumbling back a step.
When Bucky finally manages to clear his vision he lurches forward and clenches his jaw when he sees how the hollow is now empty. Empty of everything, just like she said. Even the imperfect edges of the hollow have been trimmed neatly into a perfect half circle centered around where she’d been.
Rose.
Bucky scrubs a hand across his face. He’d almost think he’d dreamt it if not for the way the hollow was smoking slightly in the cool air and that he was shivering from having his jacket off for so long. He shrugs it back on then finds a stick to poke at the hollow.
Nothing happens.
The stick doesn’t disintegrate or catch flame or melt into a puddle of goo. None of those options would have surprised him, this world’s become a funny place in the last few years, even to someone who used to love reading science fiction when he could get his hands on a book.
But this…
Rose.
Bucky wishes he knew what to do about this. He was due back at camp, he was just supposed to be scouting around before they all sacked out, making sure no one else was around. Well, he grimaced to himself, no one was around anymore.
Aww, to hell with caution, he thinks as he strides straight into the hollow again to stand right where Rose had been. He waits there, for what he isn’t sure, but he waits.
Waits.