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|| What Took him so Long?

Summary: For a long time I’ve wanted a comfort fic dealing with Bucky’s arrival in camp and the assumption that once he got there, found his men and was relatively safe, he had a big adrenaline crash and needed a ton of loving care. So I wrote it into this world.

Note: I wrote so many of the boys for the first time this time and, well, it was fun but have mercy I’m new here

Continuity: This segment follows the events of First Night

Thanks: I owe dear @hogans-heroes a lot for helping me sort my screams about multiple different aspects of this fic and for how much depth they’ve added to my own love of these guys. Also to @ab4eva @blurredcolour and @crazymadpassionatelove

Warnings: usual universe warnings apply, 18+,additional graphic recounting of past violence and rape, descriptions of injuries from the same, angsty conversations and misplaced blame, the boys trying to give all six foot two inches of dead weight Egan a bath

“It’s Ida,” Brady’s nimble hand was deceptively strong when clutching Gale’s bicep and shaking him to wakefulness early in the morning, “she won’t fuckin’ respond but she’s bowin’ up ‘till I think her neck might snap.”

Well that got Gale tumbling out of his bunk, out from Maureen’s hold on his face, swollen thumb on his tongue. The hell had he been thinking last night? The raucous noise of his landing to his feet woke the others, Crank instantly startled at their hovering over Ida.

“What’s wrong?”

“Dunno,” Gale replied, staring down at Ida Brady who was suddenly quite still again, “when’d the jerks start?”

“About an hour ago. She didn’t move before that.” John reported and Gale was sure it was an accurate report as Brady’s eye bags suggested he’d not even slept a wink. “She’s cold but she kept seizing so I stopped holding her.”

Gale bit his lip and tried to recall how pale was deathly pale, or just, pale. He bent over her and placed his fingers against her pulse, relieved to find a strong heartbeat in her neck. Maybe too strong, but he wasn’t about to start picking apart mercies. He was trying to measure it to his watch’s third hand when she started again, neck truly so bowed beneath his fingers he understood the impression of it close to breaking. He took his hand away discomfited and by this time Crank had joined them to stare down at her but those eyelids didn’t even flutter.

“We shoulda called a doctor last night.” Crank fretted, “She wasn’t just tired, not after what she’s been through.”

What she had been through was not something that had been discussed really, and so, it had been happily tabled as a past occurrence when she came in last night and toppled into the bunk straight after showers. Now their silence on the topic seemed like the sort of lethal discretion that kills amongst “polite” societies.

“Well, let’s get one now.” Gale snapped, “Crank -find the one who sewed my cut. Vega, I think, Vargas, something like that. He’s here, in the south compound.”

“You got it major.”

As Ida quieted again, Gale tried his hand at her pulse once more. A few moments later she was writhing in her sleep again.

“Since she seizes everytime you touch her, how about ya stop touching her?” Demarco’s word of wisdom filtered in from his bunk.

Chastised, and with shared looks of alarm at their foolishness, Gale and Johnny retracted their hands to clasp behind their backs and waited in that mock parade rest until the doctor came in, dark expression on his face and a very deflated medical bag at his side.

“It’s one of the women?” he asked, shouldering between the two men.

“Yeah, our colonel.” Gale supplied before relaying in brief terms the timeline of her stay here, her symptoms, her rather obvious injuries.

“We might be dealing with a concussion,” the Doc warned upon inspecting her face, “how’d she get these?” he asked about the swollen cheek and torn temple.

Gale turned to Maureen who still sat in her bunk, quiet, oddly quiet. “I saw her get punched once, I think it was on that side. But it wasn’t so bad, the rest happened when they took her away from us.”

Doc Vega was inspecting the rest of her as he pulled the covers down, her shirt flaps up, bruises and more bruises visible and -“She’s bleeding through her pants. Is this a cycle or-?” He turned to Kendeigh expectantly and she only shook her head, making Brady turn away with a wounded noise and walk a convict’s lap around the table, breath shuttering out in rough huffs, fists shoved into his pockets. Maureen wasn’t sure how anyone expected to get on top of such emotions, much less a bother. She was sure as soon as she had energy for it, she’d start making some Germans pay, it didn’t matter which, someone needed to pay.

“With assault this severe-“ Doc Vega’s face was more than eloquent regarding his horrified assessment. “-she should be in hospital. You know that right? That’s what this is, sexual battery, and like the word suggests, it's damaging, very damaging. Not to mention infection, fever- she belongs in hospital.”

The silence was heavy except for Brady and his off kilter laps.

“If they take her, I don’t trust them to guarantee her Combatant status.” Gale’s jaw worked overtime as he stared down at the body of his friend, “German hospital might be the best thing to ever happen to her or the worst when they discharge her. She’d not want me to let them take her out of here. Not after she fought so hard to get in.”

“Then by god,” the doctor exclaimed, “take her to the camp doctor, there must be some supplies. Antibiotics at the least, aspirin perhaps. Something for the swelling, inside and out. Camp doctor has supplies, how many times do I gotta tell you guys -I don’t! Take her to him.”

“No!” John Brady spoke up urgently only to immediately appear chagrined at his slip as Gale Cleven turned a very suspicious eye on him, “I mean, sir, if we take her, the German doctor will just transfer her to hospital. He can’t see how bad she is.”

That was a valid point, Cleven had to give it to him, although he noticed Hambone’s own suspicious, cud chewing, background shuffling observation of his pilot. Every time that doctor was brought up, Brady mildly suggested that they not go to him, without fail. His mentions regarding the guy being German and illusions to his methods being foreign were wearing thin. There was a miasma of myth about the doctor that no one could actually credit for a single source and Cleven hadn’t expected Brady, sensible, steady, laconic and measured Brady, to be the one to start spinning folklore in a place like this. He had next to no patience for it.

“Brady,” he decided to have at it, “you gonna tell me why everytime I bring up medical care in this camp you act like I’m suggesting suicide?”

“Sir,” Johnny’s gentle eyes grew wide and ever more guileless, “I told you, that man isn't much good.”

“Even a trash physician who has supplies is better than a good one without.” Doc Vega pointed out as he prepared to take his leave, “I’ve done everything with what I have. There simply isn’t anything at my disposal. Packages got held up and didn’t have everything accounted for.”

“He probably takes the stuff.” Brady muttured.

“So he’s the one to go to.” Gale snapped.

“He’s not touching her.” Ida’s brother replied.

Gale pinched his nose as he watched Vega leave them, the guy’s useless little bag of nothing swinging by his side, “By not being good - do you mean a poor physician? Be clear, Damnit.”

As if sensing a penultimate conflict, the room soon cleared of everyone save Maureen who was too invested by curiosity and a healthy dose of her own suspicion.

“Sir I’ve told you, he -he operates outside his purview.”

“Son? I can’t even pretend to understand what that means.” Gale’s patience grew more lethal as it rubbed thin, “That could mean he uses leeches or he abuses his patients.”

Brady’s eyes darted back and forth from Cleven’s face to the plain beamed ceiling as if he could find his answer there. Manic and with an odd glitter easily mistaken for tears. The kid probably needed to sleep, or maybe he needed to fess up about the doctor. Either way, Gale found the whole thing more and more unsettling but also, aggravating.

“Now are you gonna tell me which is it? Or are you alright with me withholding help from dying men because Captain Brady’s too intent on staying vague?”

“He’s just odd, sir.” Brady gave a defeated huff, eyes still watery, “It’s nothing bad, I-I never said not to send them, sir. He just can’t see Ida. He can’t.”

Gale was intently watching Brady swallow hard and wrack his brain for another respectful appeal when Crack came barreling back in, the eagerness in his step reserved for only one thing these dismal days: “They’re here! There’s a new batch, bringing them in the front now, quick, there’s not a long line!”

Brady was up and darting out the room before Gale could blink, uncharacteristically excusing himself before his superior had dismissed him and leaving Ida behind, still motionless in her bunk.

“Bucky could be with them!” Brady explained as he dashed out, same old hope repeated for over a month now and Gale wondered when the guy was going to crack from one too many hits to the morale.

“Brady!” Gale called after him a beat too late, wondering who was going to stay with Ida, but after catching Maureen’s quizzical eye, Gale too bolted and left the woman in his lover’s charge, tearing out of the combine to have a word with his young Captain, fleece and cover on for a little added dignity the camp pallor had no doubt stripped him of.

The scars, too.

Brady was at the fence by the time Gale caught up, his wiry frame slipping between the surging mass of POWs come to greet and heckle the newcomers. Gale had long ago found it a dismal scene and wasn’t fond of watching after it, but Crank and Brady were too intent, and some heartsick need drove Gale to find such excuses for why he, too, always managed to be at the scene when a new batch trudged in.

And what the cat brought in today made Gale forget about everything, everything else but that tall, shuffling, bloodied mess of a man he knew was his friend. And, characterically, despite appearing half dead, Egan was asking after Cleven, like the crackers after the cheese, damn the association risks.

“John Egan! Your two o’clock!”

Like a sunbeam splintering a thundercloud, Bucky’s battered face split open in a beaming smile the second he’d registered Cleven’s own. Gale couldn’t help the effusion of bittersweet gratification at the immediate resumption of the old ways, the old sweetness between them, the nearness of a good man to help brave this hell.

“What took you so long?” he jabbed, but his friend’s face told a story Buck wasn’t sure anyone left in Stalag Luft III had the stamina to hear.

And just like that, Egan was shuffled past and into processing and it would be ages before he saw him again. When Gale turned his back and worked his way through the crowd, Brady was lingering in one of the clearings, hands clasped and a rote twirl of thumbs matching the catatonically grateful prayers on his imperceptibly moving lips. Or Gale sure hoped they were prayers, it was that or Johnny having finally cracked.

“You were right.” He gave the kid a pat on the shoulder, smiling gently at him as he seemed to come out of his relieved fog, eyes too big in that lean face and dark circles making reflective ponds below, “You were right, you said he’d make it.”

“I hoped he would.” Johnny didn’t sound like he was expecting to cash in those prayers so soon.

“I’m going to that doctor.” Gale informed him, leveling him a strong look, “I think we should get a little list for the other girls. Play it off, could be for anyone. Penicillin, sulfa, that sorta thing. Does that sorta thing cure…their sorta thing?” Cleven admittedly obfuscated towards the end, not really expecting John Brady to know what cured venereal diseases but more hoping for an opinion of solidarity, like one does when ordering a risky plate off the menu.

Major Cleven never learned whether Captain Brady thought penicillin would work or not, there was a commotion outside the main center compound’s administrative building, and then the sudden appearance of guards dragging between them a slumped figure.

A dragged body was bad in most situations, at the prison camp it was cause for more than a little ire and panic. When Gale recognized the stature of their burden, the familiar span of the shoulders, the dark mop of curls hung low, his own brisk walk turned into a full on sprint across the muddy yard, Brady at his heels full of the same enlightenment.

“The hell did you do to him?” Cleven bellowed at the reasonably perturbed guards who were already mounting a defense of their blamelessness for Egan’s unconscious state.

“Nothing!” the more fluent of the two protested, “He vas being processed, yes? And he falls over, like zat. Nothing. Did nothing. Check him, he is—“ the guard made a motion to his face signifying the battlement Gale had already noticed as Egan trudged in. Back when Egan was awake and on his own two feet. “We? Nothing!”

Gale took Egan from them like a mother being handed their child, full frontal weight of his large friend propped against him and he succeeded at little more than keeping them both from hitting the mud. He was already weaker than when he first got there and the proof was here in the staggering weight of a man he used to hold his own against. Crank and Johnny and Demarco were beside him before he can even look for assistance, expressions of compassion and anger at Egan’s plight all melding into a series of disbelieving grunts as they heaved him up between them, carrying his dead weight like a feedsack. Gale and Brady take under his arms, Crank and Benny his legs. Gale studied the completely bashed face of his friend, a seething deduction brewing as to how he came to be in such a state.

“The showers.” he directed his men as they stalled midway in the yard after having got the weight of him hoisted.

They created a stir as they went, the dire oddity of the scene drawing attention as they shuffled through camp.

“Holy shit, is that Egan?” Talullah Smith came to a sudden halt in their path.

“Move!” Gale told her. “Or get the door.”

“He even alive?” Murphy was with her, no doubt obeying Cleven’s order for no woman to be unattended around camp, and he scrambled alongside to help as they mounted the steps and passed through the door Smith held until they were in the dank and echoing, poorly tiled room. There were a few other men in here, washing clothes and dabbing at their underarms. The showers themselves were not on today, hadn’t been for days, and Gale knew the large trough sinks down the middle of the room were their best bet for a triage and an initial wash.

“Somebody get his boots off, come on.”

It was horrible, grunting, grappling work trying to keep Egan’s dead weight up as they tugged off encrusted articles of clothing one after another, cringing at the bruises each grip and pull necessarily aggravated.

“Sorry Bucky.” Demarco apologized repeatedly to the insensible man as he adjusted his grip on his ribs for Brady to pull the slate gray button up off him.

“Smith, you can go.” Cleven noticed her lingering by the door, consternation written all over her face at Egan’s state, Murphy shadowing her. It wasn’t suitable for a woman to remain for the rest of it, whatever skill she had at setting fingers was a little below the pay grade of John Egan’s injuries. “You and Murph, can go get Doc Vega. Again.”

He sent Brady a look but the boy was too busy to notice, helping pull a very discolored arm out of a Bucky’s standard issue, fleece-less jacket. “What’d the looney do with his sheepskin?” he asked.

“Gave it to, Kidd.” Brady grunted, “Right before Munster. Said you didn’t like it.”

I’ll be damned: no lucky deuce and no lucky jacket and no fighter escorts, how were they supposed to manage to stay in the sky with recklessness like that? “You sentimental sunnuvabitch,” he hissed mournfully at his friend’s flopping head as they got him stripped and the full extent of his bruises came in view, “-supposed to be the last ones up.”

If anyone else understood what he meant in his mournful rage, they didn’t heed it, and if they didn’t understand they also did not press him for his meaning.

“Let’s get him up.”

Collectively they grabbed a limb apiece again and hoisted Bucky, groaning themselves under the bare weight of him.

“What did his mother feed him?” Benny protested as they staggered, and dumped him onto the longest of the troughs, getting a weak moan of protest from their specimen at the cold and hard surface.

“Major?” Crank begged hopefully of his closed eyes as Gale worked at the pump on the faucet, the gurgle of chilled water preceding the blast.

“I’m gonna use this, lad.” Brady was informing one of the armpit washing boys down the way, swiping their washcloth with kind presumption and returning to squeeze it out under Cleven’s growing steam.

Gently as he had his sister’s scalp, Brady began to use the wet cloth to scrub and wipe at the blood dried in an ominous swirl around Bucky’s eye as Gale continued to pump.

“He’s gonna catch chill.” Demarco warned.

“Haul some buckets?” Gale asked if they were willing, the kitchen combine was not so far away with fires and tin pails.

“We’ll be back.” Benny agreed.

“Brady, go with him.” Cleven unceremoniously pried the washcloth from the boy’s hand; silent weeping was an art Gale had perfected as a child but he’d not seen it in a grown man until today, “Go.”

While they were gone Gale did his best to keep the chilled water somewhat diverted, with Crank’s help he even managed to roll Bucky on his side and probe at his blackened ribs. As is, Bucky began to shiver and when Doc Vega got there; he was none too gentle in his hurried and angry assessment.

“Fractured ribs.” he rubbed the washcloth across his face like he was sanding the deck back home, “Possible fractured orbit. Eye socket, Cleven, looks busted. Just keep him propped, hope his eye doesn’t fall back into his skull.” Gale stared back at him unblinking, there was only ever one question these days and after a beat Doc Vega answered it, “And no, don’t have anything for it.”

Brady and DeMarco had returned with their now tepid water in time to hear this. “Should we wash him?” Benny gestured hopelessly.

“Yeah, he’ll probably sleep it off. If we’re lucky. Get him clean, get him warm.”

Gale began to pump anew and Brady gently tipped his warm bucket over Egan’s clotted curls, running his fingers through to disentangle the crusted snarls. Unfortunately their irrepressible patient took the kindness for a waterboarding and began to thrash, sending a shower of cold droplets over his caregivers.

“Buck?” a wrecked voice, punctuated by chattering teeth, stalled them all. “I saw Buck, where’s Buck, I found Buck, wh-“

“Yeah, yeah Bucky, it’s me.” Gale dropped his task and crouched over him, shivering himself as the sink ledge dampened the front of his own clothes.

“Buck!” Egan begged again, arms reaching out until Gale found himself all but tipped into the sink himself, arms wound around Egan’s pale shoulders with their blooming blue mottle, “M’so goddamn cold, Buck.”

“I know, I know, I’ve got ya. I swear, I’ve got ya.” Gale squeezed him tighter, “Almost over. Gettin’ you freshened up. We’ve got ladies here now.” he joked.

John’s head rolled listlessly on Gale’s forearm and his sharp blue eyes flitted across the washroom ceiling until he caught sight of someone else dear hovering over him with another pail, “Brady, what’re you cryin’ for?” he croaked.

“You.” the kid didn’t miss a beat. “So sorry Bucky, I’m so sorry.

“Hey,” Bucky’s voice strengthened with vehemence, “s’not your fault. None of it.”

“Yeah,” Gale agreed, gently peeling a flake of blood off his ear, “that plane was going down anyway without your lucky jacket.”

Bucky somehow had the stamina and the facial expertise to look sheepish at that despite his disfigurement. “Why'd you guys put me in the sink? Animals! Get me out, too goddamn cold, get me out. Gale! Get me out.”

“Ok, ok, shh, ok.”

There was a compassionate scramble to help Bucky sit up and swing his legs over the side, the groaning and swaying of the Major a hardly promising sign for the excursion he seemed intent to make. Suddenly they were helping to prop him on his feet again, and while he was no longer the dead, unconscious weight of before, he was now six feet something of bare, slippery flesh vibrating between them all in a terrible chill. Murphy and Smith had brought blankets along with the Doc, and gratifyingly someone from their combine had proffered a t-shirt and fresh skivvies.

Crank and Brady swayed dangerously with his weight on their shoulders as Gale knelt down and made his shaking legs step into them. Bucky’s own hand arrested him standing up by placing a clumsy hand on his cheek.

“Where’d you get these?” he was thumbing at those scars Gale hadn’t managed to live down.

“Flack.” Gale maintaIned as he rose to his feet, “What the hell happened to you?“

Bucky gave him his old lopsided grin, “War, Buck.”

“Too much of this kind of war lately.” Crank pointed out unamused, wounds were one thing but what was with the abuse? It didn’t seem to stay away, even from the strongest or most esteemed of their number.

Bucky’s brow ticked in curiosity at the allusion to others but he was too drained to keep his thoughts ordered, “Marched us through a town, RAF had just paid a call. Townspeople didn’t exactly come out with flowers.”

“Holy shit.” Benny sucked his teeth in a grimace, noticing how the other men down the way paused their chores to listen in.

“They attacked you?” Cleven’s tone left little room for questioning.

Bucky gave them a wincing little smile, tilting his head in a shrug, “Yeah, guards just let them at us. I’m the only one who made it.”

“What?” Came up in a chorus, his doleful audience suddenly animated, “You mean they killed the rest?”

“One got knifed,” Bucky stared down at Brady’s work on lacing his boots, skivvies and boots, now he looked like all the other clowns here, “the others - guess they beat them, too. I heard shots. Woke up in a cart on the way to a nice, quiet little spot in the woods.”

“Jesus Christ:” Crank uttered, “Jesus Christ.”

“I’ll be ok.” Bucky muttered, scuffing his boots to see how heavy they felt, his limbs wouldn’t stop shivering and he had a sick feeling it wasn’t from cold alone.

“Yeah, you will.” Cleven’s pained eyes ordered him sternly and to swipe away that horrid crease between his brows, Egan would do anything.

“Yeah.” he agreed.

“Let’s get you a bunk.” Brady prodded, slipping back under one of his armpits, wiry shoulders having more strength in them than Bucky credited, “We’ve got a nice little sick ward going.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah; and no medical supplies.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, it’s a real well oiled machine they got here.” Benny snarked as the lot of them kept pace with Egan’s limps across to their combine -it wasn’t under discussion where he’d bunk, he would be in with them.

“What’d you name the place?” Egan asked dismally at the threshold of their combine.

“We didn’t.” Gale admitted his unimaginative oversight for the second time in twenty four hours on these same steps.

“No?” Egan slapped at the boring raw lumber and sniffed, “You let Maureen in billet in here?” he asked suddenly.

“Y-yeah.” Gale was wary and his defense at the ready, “All the women who’ve arrived so far are in this one, so we can help guard them. Yes, Maureen’s in with us.”

It was better just to say it, to head off the teasing and the suggestions and the disorder right away. Cleven smiled back at Bucky confidently, waiting for this friend to get a move on over the threshold.

“Huh, ok,” Egan made a funny little face; “then I christen you,” he went on addressing the combine itself, clearing his throat loudly to collect before spitting on the doorframe above Benny’s disgusted head, “Love Shack Number Nine.”

“Just -get your ass inside.” Gale shoved at him between his shoulders and Bucky -with Brady still tucked dutifully under a wing- entered his new home.

Gale gave him a preliminary roster of inmates in each barrack, “We’re down near the end.” and by the time they got to their own room Crank had to help support Bucky’s other side, the brief surge of energy the cold water and friendly faces had given him waning fast.

“Just so goddamn hard to breathe.” He tried to explain, wincing at the pull of his arms as they clumsily shouldered into their room.

It was empty except for Ida in her bunk and Maureen beside her who stood up fast as a lightning bolt at the sight of Egan. “Jumping Jehoshaphat, what happened to you?” She rushed him but pulled back before her usual greeting of hugs to survey the damage, suspecting a squeeze might be too cruel even by Egan’s standards.

“I’m ok, Candy.” he assured, smooth as butter as he reached for her and ran busted knuckles over the curl of her hair, “God you’re a sight for sore eyes after all these ugly bastards.”

“Really though, what happened?” she shied away from his pacifying touches, glaring at the others to start spilling the beans.

“They tried to lynch him.” Gale saw there was nothing for, she’d wheedle it out at some point and after what she’d seemingly endured, what exactly was he shielding her from? “Killed everyone else with him.”

Maureen’s worried eyes dulled sadly at this and she proceeded to hug herself, hands carefully tucked into her armpits, “Gosh, Bucky.” she mumbled.

“Hey, said I’m alright, didn’t I?” Bucky coaxed, swaying towards Maureen and laying a heavy hand on her small shoulder. It tipped him too far forward and he had to clutch at and brace himself on the bunk slat behind her head. Suddenly he was peering over her shoulder and instead of empty sheets as he expected in the lowest bunk, he found the bruised face of a superior he didn’t know had even been shot down. “What the hell happened to her?”

At the silence that followed this very simple question, Bucky swung his head round to stare the men down. It made the world rock, window blurring into the room in a nauseating sheet of white and Buck had too many eyes and all of them sad and Crank hadn’t even a face but a blob and his vision was shot to shit with spots but as no one said a word, he repeated his question in a yell that surprised even himself, “What happened to her?”

“The Gestapo kept taking them from the Dulag.” Brady’s voice was soft and thin in his ringing ears, like a child explaining the fate of a broken toy, “They even took them to a camp. A women’s prison camp.”

“Am I missing the part where any of that promises a face like that?” Bucky demanded, trying to get the goddamn window to stop whiting out his vision.

Gale’s voice was on his other side, the side without the window, he wanted to look at him but he was afraid to move his head again and for the spots to get large and everything go black one more time. “Long time before they’d recognize them as combatants, Bucky,” Gale laid a preemptively calming hand on Egan’s arm, “SS knocked them around bad.”

That’s all Gale really knew of it. Most of it had been gotten out of Smith who seemed most fit and most angry over it all. The others were skittish or tired.

“Knocked them around.” Bucky repeated bitterly, disbelieving Cleven’s moderate retelling, “Who’s them? Who else?”

“We’ve got a little over a dozen of the girls here.” Gale replied, “Brought them in a group, some downed weeks before others. Held them while figuring out what to do before they brought them here.”

“What to do?” Bucky knew he was back to yelling and the spots were getting excited from it, “Treat them like officers being a little too much to ask?”

“Like they treated you?” Demarco weighed in, if only to take the heat off his co-pilot, “Like they treated Buck?” -or maybe not.

“The fuck did they do to him?” Bucky really did try to turn his head this time and he was blindly groping for Cleven’s soft cheeks even as the spots took over his vision and his knees began to buckle. Gale grabbed him on the way down with Candy’s help, but Egan heard her exclamation of pain from it.

Steadied, with his hands back on the bunk slat, Bucky willed away the spots and stared down at Kendeigh’s supportive hands on his waist -or what shoulda been hands. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen an uglier set of paws.

“Were you with her?” he asked, gravelly and not to be ignored.

“Most of the time.” Maureen whispered back and if Gale could have cleared the room for her he would’ve.

“Then what the hell happened to her?” Bucky summoned the last bit of himself and stared down the auburn beauty of his erstwhile drinking buddy, “No really Kendeigh, answer me. I’m your superior, you don’t have recourse, you answer to me. What’re you gonna do, huh? Ask your fairy godmother colonel if you can ignore me? Huh? ‘Hey ida got a sec, Ida?’ No? Looks like her office is closed. Fucking talk to me, Candy. Start with those hands. What happened?”

“Someone stood on them.” -if Gale had to hear Maureen repeat it one more time in that monotone way he was going to start chewing through his cheek.

“Why?” Bucky always had such simple questions, it was one of his wisdoms and Maureen hated it right now, her eyes flashing and her face reddening as she ducked away from the stare of friends.

“So I’d stop fighting him.” The statement was hardly legible, her voice had gone so wispy.

“He, this ‘he’ -he knew you were an Officer?” Gale hadn’t thought to ask that, and he’d thought of so many things to ask that never made it out his throat, but Bucky did. “An army Air Force combatant?”

Maureen swallowed hard before throwing her head back, neck taut and nose flaring -Gale didn’t think he’d ever seen her more magnificent. “He knocked my cap off before it.” she answered at last, a cold hard meeting of blue eyes and Bucky stared her down, “And he laughed at the engraving on my belt buckle when he undid my pants.” There was dead silence for a beat before she went on, “They tore the wing patches off Ida’s shirt, you can see the holes there, see? Johnny’s not fixed them yet.”

Bucky slumped to a seat on Ida’s bunk, a shaky hand extending to push down the blanket and expose her shoulder, and there was a jagged tear in the standard issue, sure enough. “What’s Johnny been fixing?” he asked, voice hollow as he thumbed at Ida’s mottled skin, she was white as a ghost beneath the blue discoloration. Bucky wondered if he looked half as rough.

Johnny was then in a squat beside him, rummaging under the bunk before pulling out a pair of trousers. He tossed them into Bucky’s lap, wordlessly. Drab olive, Brady’s tidy repairs obvious due to the clashing thread, and also blood -so much goddamn blood down the inseams, meticulously scrubbed out but stained all the same and woven together by the white stitches. “You bastards let him do this?” Bucky asked the men incredulously, rage beginning to boil over and it didn’t have a single source and it certainly had no rightful outlet, “None of you can handle a fuckin’ needle? No? No, go on then, let a brother sew up this shit, let him get to think long and hard about what each fuckin’ rip means for his sister! You goddamn cowards -you haven’t even asked them! You haven’t talked about it with the girls, have you?”

“Bucky, Bucky come on now,” Gale tried reasoning with him, “they just got in. So did you. Let’s, let’s take it easy, save our mad for the ones who deserve it.”

“Oh, oh you don’t think that’s us then, Major Cleven?” Egan scoffed, “Because we didn’t do it, isn’t our fault at all?”

“It’s not!” Crank insisted behind Gale’s back, “Gonna blame Buck for your ribs, too?”

That defeated him. Bucky’s fury visibly dimmed in his eyes and Gale would have almost preferred the insulting rage over the dead helplessness that followed, it was too reminiscent of his own. “They’re safe, you’re safe.” he summarized gruffly, “Doc says sleep for both you and her.”

“Sleep.” Bucky mumbled as he looked back to Ida, trying to imagine with masochistic singleness of mind the sort of men who’d enjoy picking a strong woman like her apart -he could bring them to mind too easily. “Sure, just…sleep it off.”

“I don’t want her going to the doctor.” John Brady insisted once more like this had never been argued before in this very room.

“He no good?” was all Bucky asked.

“No sir.” Brady was emphatic and relieved to be taken at vaguest value.

“Brady’s the only one to say that,” Cleven butted in, “and he won’t specify.” Gale may have shot a glare at Ida’s brother, Bucky’s own predicament causing a double issue. “You need one, she needs one, too.”

“I-I trust my little Fox.” Bucky disagreed, although it was less impressive by both the use of a nickname and the slurring stumble that occurred right after as he attempted to get up from the bunk and pat Brady’s cheek. This small movement caused such disturbance in his fragile equilibrium that he would have nearly toppled if Cleven and Kendeigh hadn’t been at his side to catch him. “Goddamn! Goddamn, I’m dizzy as hell.” he repeated, “And cold. I don’t want a doctor, I want a blanket. And a nap.”

“Just what the doctor ordered.” Gale repeated dryly with a ghost of a grin that would have normally riled Bucky into smushing it between his fingers. He was too far away for that and Bucky was too dizzy to reach.

“M’gonna sleep for a week.” He announced.

“They’ll be in here for roll if you don’t show.” Gale begged.

“Good luck to them, moving me.” Bucky grumbled and shook a boot across the room before Brady knelt and helped with the other one. How many times had the sweet kid been shoeing him today? He should start calling him mom.

“They’ll come for her too, if she misses again.” Gale pushed, “A guard came and checked to make sure she was alive this morning.”

“They’ll just take her to the doctor.” Brady repeated hopelessly.

“No they won’t.” Bucky assured him, already fully convinced of two things Gale very much held in suspicion, and he’d been here under half an hour, “They won’t.” he repeated and, before anyone could fully credit their eyes, he appeared to use his last gasp of strength and dexterity to roll Ida Brady, none too gently, further in her bunk toward the wall before climbing in after her and sagging into the meager bedding.

“John!” Cleven had too many objections to itemize at present and all of them were tidily conveyed by use of his Christian name.

“They can’t take her from us like this, Buck.” Bucky was slurring worse than ever, now obstructed by a pillowcase and Ida’s torn head.

“She doesn’t wanna be touched.” Gale hissed urgently, side eyeing Demarco who seemed beyond caution and was now viewing this as analytically as a laboratory experiment.

“S’ok.” Bucky mumbled, “Ida always knows me.”

Gale and Johnny exchanged helpless looks, with Gale choosing to flavor his own with no small amount of accusation towards the younger man. But then, both occupants of the bunk became -and stayed- still, and no seizing episodes followed the heavy burden of Bucky’s arm over Ida’s ribs. So, with shrugs and outstretched hands of mere mortal impotency, they resigned themselves to life with Bucky in Love Shack Number Nine.

“I forgot how loud he could get.” Crank’s mutter broke the silence.

“We should get some salve at least.” Demarco observed with a nod to Bukcy’s face and Kendeigh, who had been oddly quiet and sat with legs swinging on her bunk, echoed in agreement.

“I thought maybe penicillin, too.” Gale asked the room at large.

“Why not ask for the keys to the front gate while we’re at it?” Crank snarked, “That krout sawbones never gave me shit for Murphy’s cuts, hasn’t even tended Hambone since he got out of hospital.”

“Hambone hasn’t gone to him because Brady has scared him off.” Cleven retorted, “Any of you have a better idea?”

“I could try.” Maureen spoke up, “He might -respond?- if a woman asked.”

“No.” Cleven shut that down with a sharp cut of his hand through the air, “No way in hell.”

“I’ll go sir.“ Brady’s soft assurance broke the tenseness, Gale watched the boy stoically as he rose from his place by Ida’s -and now Egan’s- bunk, and grabbed his pipe off the table, “Salve and penicillin?” he confirmed, face cocked shyly back at Cleven once more from the doorway.

“Salve and penicillin.” Cleven affirmed, “And Brady-“ he halted the boy, “-you sure about this?”

“He knows me.” Brady’s eyebrows drew together, a sudden strong expression on his face, nonplussed in a way that made Cleven feel like he was the one slow in the head, “Fixed the shoulder.” he reminded, gesticulating to the joint that had been dislocated by a poor parachute landing, no doubt caused by arguing too long and close to the ground in a spiraling plane with Major Egan. “I’ll get you the stuff, sir.”

Brady shoved his pipe in his mouth and dug his hands into his coat pockets as he walked down the drafty hallway. Conversations from the various rooms drifted to his ear, odd still to hear the high tones of female chatter amongst them. He found himself rolling his last bit of tobacco round and round in his pocket as he neared the door, he’d been saving it for a real doozy of a day; for some catastrophe that needed nicotine to wash it down, or else a holiday that deserved the special exception. Ramming his once hurt shoulder into the door to open it, Brady decided today would have to be significant enough.

The day he got salve and penicillin.

“You just chew on that thing instead of smoke it now?” The laconic humor of his bombardier startled him mid shiver, it wasn’t even that cold outside he just felt poorly and everything was getting real cold and awful as he stood rooted to their steps and eyeing the main compound.

“No, I was gettin’ ready to pack it.” He answered Hamilton, leveling him a scrutinizing look over the pipe in question, “How’ve you been keepin’ occupied?”

“This and that.” Hambone shrugged, gold teeth still glinting as he assessed Brady. “Where you headed?”

“Who says I’m headed anyplace?”

“Word is Egan’s here and half dead.” Hambone scratched at his scar, the rough sutures too late in being taken out and now causing irritation, Brady almost felt guilty for that. “And now you're out here eyeing the Pill Hut. I’d say you’re going to that doctor.”

Hambone never really got enough credit for his smarts, and Brady wished he’d stop using them only when it concerned things Johnny was already having enough trouble psyching himself up for -like radioing the tower to admit they were lost or visiting this freak in a white coat.

“They need some stuff.” He conceded.

“Gonna waste good baccy on it?” Hambone scoffed again, “Come on, I feel like a walk. Haven’t seen inside the place anyway, all your ghost stories were too spooky.” Hambone was mocking him, but he was also beginning to walk towards the hut with the plain expectation of accompanying Brady.

“Hambone-“

“With all due respect, just shut it, Captain.” Hambone gave him a look, and it was the first one today that made Brady feel seen without feeling all of two inches tall, “If I have to rub these stitches on those rough pillows one more night I’m gonna claw my face back open.”

Brady didn’t doubt he would, so in a spooked and complacent mood, pilot followed grinning bombardier down the muddy lanes to the doctor’s shack.

💋 Hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s lifeblood, please feel free to scream in comments or the inbox, I love it and wanna hear it all. Trust me, nothing is “too dumb”. Your thoughts mean the world to me.

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