blog in progress @fleurbies - Tumblr Blog

the hare (part i.) - stucky x reader

(50's) howling commando!bucky barnes x reader x howling commando!steve rogers

summary. you've built yourself and your cat a solitary life far away from civilization. you lived off of hunting, two trips to the nearest store per year. that was how you preferred it.. just silence, solitary, peace, quiet. you never thought this would be so rudely invaded by log stealing soldiers with a colourful shield, a broken leg and the story of a lifetime. 28k words.

cw. EXTREMELY SLOWBURN. actual isolation. like insane. depression. grief, mentions of character's entire family dying. killing of a hare and trout (also guts them. very brief and not detailed). alpine almost dying :( hare/hunter dynamics. smut. eventually. reader is a bit of a voyeur and has quite the vivid imagination! secret gay sex. umm masturbation against a door?? while we're at it, grinding against a door. voyeurism. masturbation. fantasizing. men kissing hell yeah!!! pet names (hare, doll. babydoll). not too much smut in this but the next part is ALL smut. MINORS DNI.

a/n. some of the scenes in this are from a bucky x reader fic i wrote awhile ago and i just kinda added steve... so lol. more plot than smut tbh. i always try to challenge myself with every new fic i write and dear lord was this a challenge alright. this literally takes place in one single location. ONE FUCKING LOCATION. all fucking words. also i consulted an actual hunter and fisher for this (everyone say thank u cole even tho i didn't take his advice and just kept the story as it is cuz i got lazy). still some inaccuracies since i wasn't up for studying 1950s slang and sentence structures so and this fic was supposed to be modern day till i decided i wanted it to be in the 50s (i tried my best to remove traces and mentions of his vibranium arm but incase i left anything out lol😭). this got so repetitive in the smut part but erin and i decided that repetition is part of the story!!!! this fic kicked me in the butt everyday i was writing it. lowkey gave up on this dawg.. lowkey.... crashing out...... not proofread.

dt. @wildflowersandvibranium happy 1k AND happy birthday (soon!!!). @54nboo because this is YOUR REQUEST. @superbassbuck for giving my the best cop!bucky material 😋. @houseofhyde because i'm IN LOVE with manchild!bucky, and for @firingstars because i gained motivation to write steve just for u 🫣

taglist. @demiebarnes @kararchives @1dluver13xx @devililithh @iownguns @loki-licious-945ad @ruexj283 @henrywinterreincarnate @biggestfangirl @buckybuckybuckysstuff @mrsalexstan @pretty-girl-rock-3 @riot-sounds @ambervanth @hiraethmae @btwbaureidrc @overwintering-soldier @fluorjscent @sweetserendipity65 @icwallittrashmagic @user27386 @buckysbaker @kittieboo @pixviee @moonyxxbarnes @herejustforbuckybarnes @rhythmnobleus @barnesonly @avgdestitute @buckyspup

masterlist | next part (in progress)

read at your own discretion. i am not responsible for your media consumption.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the alarm screams at 5:00 am.

your hand slaps it silent before the second beep. darkness presses against the single window. alpine is already on your chest, purring like a tiny engine.

"hungry, ghost?" your voice speaks in the silence. it hangs in the small bedroom. she butts her head against your chin.

you swing your legs out, bare feet hitting the cold plank floor. alpine leaps down, leading the way to the kitchen. you follow, pulling on the thick wool socks always left beside the bed.

the house groans softly around you, timbers contracting in the deep cold. it's always cold. the kind that seeps into your bones and lives there.

the kitchen is one room over. small. it's a propane stove, a chipped sink fed by a pump handle you prime twice daily, a single cupboard. you pump the handle. once. twice. cold water splashes into the kettle. you then set it on the stove. click-click-click whoosh – the blue flame springs to life.

alpine weaves figure-eights around your ankles, chirping softly.

"patience, mountain," you murmur, scooping coarse kibble into her chipped blue bowl. she attacks it instantly, the crunching sound loud in the silence. you watch the kettle, waiting for the first sigh of steam.

outside, the world is utterly still. there is no wind. just the immense, sleeping weight of the snow and the mountains buried beneath it. endless fucking mountains. pine trees, black sentinels against the white, stands motionless.

your breath plumes, as you pour boiling water over the coarse grounds in the french press. the smell is bitter, earthy.

you carry the press and your mug to the main room. the only room, really. bookshelves line every available wall space. floor to ceiling. but they hold only one hundred books. wuthering heights. anna karenina. crime and punishment. the iliad. tales of mystery and imagination. call of the wild. you know them like the scars on your skin. the spines, smooth in different places, form a familiar mosaic.

you sink into the armchair by the black iron stove – cold now, banked overnight. alpine, finished with breakfast, leaps onto the armrest, then into your lap like a ball of warmth. you pull the thick wool blanket over both of you.

the silence is a physical thing. broken only by alpine's purr and the faint ticking of the old mantel clock above the empty fireplace.

you read. wuthering heights today. the same copy you read yesterday. cathy's wildness against the moors feels different here, surrounded by your own desolate peaks. heathcliff's fury echoes in the vast silence outside. alpine shifts, tucking her nose under her tail.

"reckon he'd last a winter out here, that one?" you ask the cat, barely disturbing the quiet. alpine opens her blue eyes, regards you sleepily, closes it again. "too much fire. burns out fast in the deep cold." you turn the page. the paper feels brittle. you read until the grey light strengthens, seeping through the window, turning the snow outside from black to a deep blue.

6:30 am. you bank the fire in the stove properly, coaxing flames from the embers. you dress methodically: thermal layers, thick flannel shirt, canvas trousers, two pairs of socks, the battered boots lined with felt. the sheepskin coat, heavy as a carcass. scarf wrapped high. hat pulled low. mittens. alpine watches from the warm hollow in the armchair.

"keep the fire, ghost," you tell him, pulling the blanket snug around him. she blinks slowly. acknowledged.

opening the door is like cracking a seal on a tomb. cold air, almost as sharp as shattered glass, hits your face.

the world is blinding white, silent except for the squeak-crunch of your boots on packed snow. you walk the perimeter to check the woodpile stacked high against the lee side of the house. you run a mittened hand over the propane tanks, brushing off the latest dusting. you gaze up the slope behind the house, towards the ragged line of pines climbing the impossible mountainside.

north. where you found her, a scrap of white screaming against the white, four miles up that treacherous slope. you don't walk that far anymore. just a half-mile loop. down to the frozen creek, a black scar under its thick ice blanket, then back.

the silence out here is profound. absolute. no birdsong. no distant traffic. it's really just the sound of your own breath in the scarf, and the crunch-crunch-crunch of your boots. somedays it feels like the mountains are watching, like indifferent giants cloaked in snow and pine. you scan the tree line automatically. it's a habit. leftover. yet you see nothing but stillness. you talk to the emptiness sometimes, but today, you're quiet.

now back inside, alpine greets you at the door, around your legs, leaving white hairs on the dark wool of your trousers. you shed the outer layers in the warmth of the cabin. the stove radiates heat now. you make oatmeal. with a pinch of salt. and you eat it standing at the sink, looking out the window at the white world. alpine sits on the counter, watching the spoon travel from bowl to mouth.

"boring, isn't it?" you say. she flicks an ear. "better than rations. better than..." you trail off, scraping the last sticky bits from the bowl. you wash it immediately, dry it, put it away. you have only one bowl, one spoon, one mug so dishes are rarely a problem.

9:00 am. more reading. crime and punishment this time. raskolnikov's fevered guilt feels claustrophobic. the weight of his secret presses down. you understand the weight. you glance at the small tv perched on a crate in the corner. dark screen. you only turn it on at noon. strictly. but you're only so lucky some days considering where you live.

alpine stretches, claws catching in the blanket. she jumps down, stalks to the window, and stares intently at nothing. or everything. the vast white nothing.

"see the snow queen?" you ask her. she doesn't twitch. "just the wind in the pines, ghost. just the wind." there is no wind. there never is.

noon. the screen flickers to life. it's a documentary. grainy, transmitted from somewhere impossibly far away. you watch the images flicker: crowded streets, angry faces, smoke rising over shapes that might be buildings. the words wash over you – "escalation," "talks stalled," "humanitarian crisis." the volume is low. just loud enough to hear the cadence, the tension in the anchor's voice.

you watch the faces of soldiers. young. scared. determined. blank. you don't search for familiar features. anymore. you know. your brother, broad-shouldered and laughing, teaching you to skip stones on the frozen pond behind the old house. gone. your twin, quieter, his face a mirror of your own but softer, vanishing into smoke. gone. your father, his hands rough from work, smelling of oil and pipe tobacco, folded neatly into a flag. gone. all gone. the money they left, the money that bought this silence, this snow, these endless fucking mountains, sits heavy.

alpine leaps onto the arm of the chair, watching the flickering screen with wide eyes. you reach out, burying your fingers in her thick fur. she leans into the touch, purring again.

"just noise, mountain," you whisper, "just noise from far away." she butts his head against your wrist. the news moves to weather. a smiling man points at a map showing sunshine somewhere in the world. you turn it off. the silence rushes back in, chasing you. it's deeper now, more complete after the intrusion.

then lunch. cheese. hard bread. an apple. shared with alpine, just a tiny piece of cheese, carefully nibbled. it's eaten at the small table by the window as you watch the light shift on the snow. the sun is weak, barely cresting the southern peaks.

afternoon. the iliad. hector's doomed courage. achilles' terrible grief. the clash of bronze. it feels ancient, fitting against the backdrop of the mountains outside. the words are smooth, like a riverbed in your mind. you read aloud sometimes, just to hear the sound of a human voice, even if it's only yours. for alpine, who sleeps curled on the rug by the stove, a white comma against the dark wood.

"'...and the dust rose up from the plain...'" your voice is low, rough. "'...under the feet of men and horses...'" you pause. the silence here is different. "quieter here, hmm, ghost? no chariots." you turn the page. the grief of priam feels closer than the cold grief locked inside your own chest.

3:00 pm is reserved for wood chopping outside. you feel the axe biting into the seasoned pine everyday. it's a solid thunk, followed by a satisfying split. you stack the pieces neatly. the exertion pushes warmth into your limbs. alpine watches from the window ledge inside.

"keeping me honest?" you call out, swinging the axe again. thunk. she just stares. you work until your shoulders burn and sweat dampens your shirt beneath the layers. until the stack for tomorrow is high and tight.

inside, you stoke the fire after washing your face and hands in the icy water from the pump. you watch your reflection in the chipped mirror above the sink. your pale face. your eyes that look older than the mountains. your hair is darker here with no sun. the face of the mother you never knew? your father? the brothers? you turn away.

and dusk comes early. 4:30 pm and the blue shadows deepen, swallowing the cabin. you light the kerosene lamp. it's soft and yellow glow pushes back the dark outside. the mountains become black cut-outs against a bruised sky. stars begin to prick through.

for dinner is canned stew, heated on the stove. you eat it slowly and methodically. alpine gets the tiniest shreds of meat. you wash the single pot, the single bowl, the single spoon then dry them and put them away.

for evening reading. jane eyre. jane's quiet fortitude with rochester's gloom and how the moors feel almost cozy compared to your mountains. you read until your eyes blur. alpine is back in your lap, purring.

9:00 pm is the final check. the door is bolted twice. the window latches are secured. fire banked carefully in the stove – enough embers to last the night, not enough to risk. the kerosene lamp is turned down low, and you stand in the center of the room. the hundred books watch from the walls, silent guardians from insanity. the mountains press close outside the thin walls. the tv screen is a dark eye watching you.

you pick up alpine. she drapes herself over your shoulder. you carry her to the cold bedroom, undressing quickly in the freezing air before sliding under the thick layers of quilts. alpine burrows down beside you, finding her spot against your side.

you lie in the absolute darkness, listening to the silence. it feels deeper than sleep, listening to alpine's breathing. you listen to the vast, frozen emptiness outside. the silence after the guns. the silence of the snow. the silence of being the only one left.

"just mountains, ghost," you whisper into the fur behind his ear. "just snow. just trees. just you. just me." the weight of the mountains presses down. the weight of the silence. the weight of the hundred identical stories on the shelves, whispering of other lives, other griefs, other loves, far away in time and space. you close your eyes. "just... here." the endless fucking mountains feels like its hold their breath.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the kiss lands on cold fur between alpine's ears. he leans into it, purring against your lips. "keep the fire, ghost," you murmur into his fur. "won't be long." he blinks, blue eyes holding yours, then turns to reclaim the warm hollow on the armchair. you pull the blanket snug around him. it's a ritual as ingrained as breathing.

thick wool socks, stiff canvas trousers layered over thermals, flannel shirt buttoned tight, the sheepskin coat heavy as fallen timber. the scarf is wounded high, burying your chin, hat pulled low with your ears tucked. mittens – a thick leather. you check the buckles on the snowshoes leaning by the door. the rucksack is already heavy: coiled fishing line, hooks, the small knife, a handful of dried apple slices, the rifle slung over your shoulder, metal biting cold through the coat fabric.

opening the door is stepping into a frozen lung. the world is a monochrome engraving: white snow, black pines, grey sky pressing low. endless fucking mountains. you strap the snowshoes on, the bindings stiff with cold. the first step out, swallowed almost instantly by the vastness.

"just the creek, ghost," you say to the empty doorway. alpine watches from the window, a pale smudge against the dark interior. you turn south. the trail is a memory under fresh powder, a faint depression only you know. snowshoes sink, lift, sink, lift. crunch-squeak. crunch-squeak. rhythm against the silence. your breath turns into condensation like white flags torn away by a breeze you can't feel on your skin.

the pines crowd closer, bowing under the weight of snow. they whisper secrets to the frozen ground. you see tracks: the delicate lace of a snowshoe hare, the stride of a fox. life, hidden. you pause, scanning the monochrome. the rifle feels heavier. not today. today is for the dark water under the ice.

the creek appears suddenly, a black serpent twisting through the white. you find the spot – a bend where the current runs deeper. you clear the snow with a mittened hand, which reveals the ice. you take the small hatchet from the pack. the first strike is a crack, unnervingly loud, shattering the silence. ice chips fly. strike. strike. strike.

the exertion warms your core despite the air clawing at your exposed cheeks. a hole opens, black water welling up.

you kneel on the folded burlap sack with your mittens off now, fingers instantly screaming in the air. you fumble with the line, the hook, baiting it with a shred of dried venison from last month's hunt. your hands move stiffly. the cold is a thief, stealing dexterity. the baited hook then disappears into the black water. you watch the hole like a dark mirror. your reflection is blurred, fractured by the ice – like a smudge under fur, eyes dark hollows. the water below holds nothing. infinite black. waiting.

"come on, shadows," you whisper, breath frosting the ice rim. "show yourselves." minutes stretch, like elastic and frozen. the cold seeps up through your knees, into your bones. the mountains are watching. like always. the pines shake and you think of alpine, warm by the stove. the fire needing tending. won't be long, you said. the line remains slack. the black water refuses its secrets.

deep down. a swirl of something paler than the dark. you tense, fingers numb on the line. wait. wait. a pull. then a tug.

you jerk the line, setting the hook. it's a fight, brief and desperate one, transmitted up the thin cord. you haul, hand over frozen hand. silver flashes in the black hole. a trout, pulled gasping into the white air. its gills flare, a red against the black and white surrounding you.

you club it once, then the thrashing stops. it lies still on the snow. you gut it swiftly with the sharp knife, the steam rising from its entrails vanishing instantly in the cold. blood melts a tiny crimson star into the snow. you wrap it in burlap and stow it in the pack. the cold metal of the hook is rebaited, dropped back into the waiting dark.

silence descends again. the hole stares up like a dead eye. nothing else bites. the cold is winning, gnawing past the layers. you pull the line out and pack the gear. the fish is a cold weight against your back. not enough. not nearly enough.

you stand, stamping feeling back into your feet with the rifle's weight on your back. you turn west, towards the higher slopes where the hare tracks had crisscrossed earlier. the snow is deeper here and untracked. you move slower, eyes scanning the undersides of pine boughs, the edges where deep snow met wind-scoured rock. every shadow is potential. every drift could hide life. the silence feels crushing. it presses on your eardrums. your own heartbeat is loud in the stillness and it's the only music you hear.

then, movement. a white against white. a snowshoe hare, frozen mid-hop beneath a laden pine branch. perfect camouflage betrayed by the liquid dark of its eye.

you freeze. the rifle comes up, stock cold against your cheek even through the scarf. the world narrows to the notch of the sight, the trembling white shape. its sides heave. it smells you. it knows.

"just hunger, ghost," you whisper. your finger finds the trigger. it's cold metal. the hare's eye is wide, black, terrified. like the trout's. you push it down anyway. the sharp crack of the rifle shatters the world. a single, violent punctuation mark in the endless sentence of silence. the echo caroms off the mountains, fading slowly.

you walk to the spot. the hare is a soft heap, white fur already staining crimson where the small caliber hole leaks life onto the snow. you pick it up. still warm. its weight is negligible, yet it's heavy in your hands.

you gut it efficiently, and your hands feel the heat of its body. you add it to the burlap sack with the fish. blood seeping through.

the walk back feels longer and the pack is heavier. the rifle a dead weight against you. the silence rushes back in, but it feels different now. the crunch-squeak of your snowshoes is the only sound. it's almost like the pines remember the shot. you see the cabin finally, a small, dark smudge against it all. smoke curls thinly from the chimney. alpine.

you unstrap the snowshoes by the door, leaning them against the logs. you stamp the snow from your boots before you push the door open. warmth, and smelling of woodsmoke and the cat, envelops you. alpine is there around your legs, sniffing the pack, chirping a high, questioning sound.

"told you, mountain," you say, unwinding the scarf, pulling off the hat. your hair is damp with sweat at the temples, instantly cold. you take off the outer layers. alpine leaps onto the table, watching as you unpack the burlap sack. the trout, silver, stiff, dead, and the hare, white fur matted with frozen blood.

"dinner," you say, holding up the fish. alpine sniffs it, then licks a drop of melted frost. you stroke her head. "and you, greedy ghost, get the liver."

you start the work – scaling the fish, skinning the hare. your hands move automatically, warmed by the stove, by the cat pressing against your thigh as you stand at the sink. the blood rinses away. the silence inside is different.

later, the fish sizzles in the pan. the hare haunch hangs near the stove to cure. alpine gnaws contentedly on the raw liver in her bowl. you eat the fish, not all of it, watching the twilight deepen outside. the black water, the trembling hare, the shot – they settle into the quiet ritual. stored. like the wood. like the grief.

you wash the single plate. alpine jumps into your lap as you sink into the armchair. you bury your face in her fur, breathing in the warmth, the life, the scent of home. the mountains are black hulks against the star-strewn sky. silent again. silent.

"just mountains, ghost," you murmur, your voice rough. he purrs, a deep vibration against your chest. "just snow." you close your eyes.

the cold of the creek hole, the shock of the rifle's report, the warmth of the blood on snow – they are all just part of the silence you bought. the silence you keep. alpine's purr is the only answer you need.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

sleep is a deep and black lake. you float just beneath its surface with alpine being a warm weight on your chest, rising and falling with your breath. her purr is the only sound in your universe, against the vast silence of the mountains, the snow, the endless fucking night.

then – CRACK!

not a branch snapping under snow. not the settling groan of timber you know like your own heartbeat. this is loud. like a giant bone breaking. or a thick pane of ice shattering under weight.

you jolt upright as soon as you realize it's outside the dream. alpine launches off your chest with a startled yowl, vanishing into the dark bedroom's deeper shadows. your heart swims back and forth against your ribs like a trapped animal. the silence slams back down, but it feels wrong this time. it presses on your eardrums and you strain, listening until your temples ache.

nothing.

nothing but the rush of your own blood. nothing but the absence of alpine's purr.

"ghost?" your whisper is sandpaper on stone. too loud in the dark. no answer, no brush of fur against your leg. just that terrible, listening silence. nothing ever makes noise like that. not out here. the occasional thump was alpine, knocking a book off the shelf, batting a pinecone across the floor. but you fixed that. the books are secured. the floor is cleared. nothing for her to disturb. and alpine... alpine was on you. she didn't make that sound.

you swing your legs out. the floor bites your bare feet, still shocking to this day. you fumble for the matches on the crate beside the bed. the scrape of the match head is loud. the flare of light is blinding. you touch it to the kerosene lamp's wick. yellow light blooms, pushing back the dark in a circle. it throws monstrous, leaping shadows up the log walls. alpine is crouched under the bed, reflecting the lamplight like chips of frozen sky. terrified.

"easy, mountain," but your own voice trembles. you pull on the thick socks, then the heavy coat over your nightshirt, not bothering with buttons. the cold seeps in instantly. and the rifle leaning in the corner. you grab it right away. you pump a round into the chamber. the metallic snick-snick is a violent intrusion you never wanted in your home.

you lift the lamp, casting long, dancing fingers of shadow. you step into the main room. the hundred books watch in anticipation. the black eye of the tv stares right at you, waiting. the fire in the stove is banked low, a dull orange glow behind the iron.

you move towards the front door. your bare feet, even in socks, make the old floorboards groan. a sound you know intimately, a sound as much a part of the cabin as the logs themselves.

but tonight... tonight the groan seems deeper. more accusing. like the house itself is protesting your movement. you freeze and listen. nothing but the pulse in your body, echoing. you force your feet forward.

creak.

a board near the bookshelf. one that never creaks. your breath catches. you swing the lamp wildly. light leaps across crime and punishment, wuthering heights, the armchair. still nothing. alpine has followed you like a silent white shadow on the ground with her ears flat. she doesn't weave around your legs. she stalks, tense like she understands what had happened.

you unbolt the front door. the iron latch clunks too loudly. you ease the door open. frigid air slices in, sharp as a knife. you hold the lamp high, peering out.

the porch is a stage of untouched snow, blue-white under the moonlight filtering through the clouds. beyond the railing, the world is a void. mountains, sleeping under their snow blankets. pine trees, black sentinels. endless, silent fucking snow. no movement. no dark shape fleeing. no footprints marring the pristine expanse leading up to the porch steps. nothing.

you step out, just one step onto the planks. the cold bites instantly. you scan left, right. the woodpile. the propane tanks. the path south you walked this afternoon. nothing.

alpine presses against your ankle, unheard but felt through your leg. not at the vastness. not at the mountains. at the dark. close.

"see anything, ghost?" you whisper. she just stares, rigid, towards the side of the house. towards the shed.

you retreat inside, bolt the door twice. you move to the small window beside the door, wiping frost with your sleeve, and peer out again. alpine is at your feet, staring fixedly at the back door now.

your blood runs colder than the creek ice. you cross the room with the lamp held high. the floorboards still creak beneath you with each sound tuanting you in the silence. creak. groan. you flinch at your own noise. the back door is bolted too. that one never opens. the small window beside it is fogged. you wipe it clear and stare out into the darkness behind the cabin. the slope rises steeply towards the black wall of pines. the shed is a darker lump against the snow, maybe thirty paces away, tucked against the tree line. you see its shape, the snow drifted against its side. see nothing moving near it.

but alpine is rigid as a silent snarl bares tiny white teeth. she's staring directly at the shed. not at the door. at the wall facing away from the house. the side you can't see.

you press your face closer to the cold glass, cupping your hands around your eyes to block the lamplight's reflection. you stare until your eyes water. just the shed. just snow. just the looming trees.

"bird?" you murmur, unconvinced. "eagle? dropped something?" an eagle wouldn't make a sound like that crack. not at night. and the silence now... it's not the peaceful silence of before. it's violated.

alpine lets out a strangled chirp. not fear, but a warning.

you step back from the window. the lamplight feels suddenly feeble and pathetic. you check every window again. north side. east side. the small, high one in the bedroom. nothing. just the endless white, the endless black, the mountains neverending.

you bank the stove, adding a log more for light, for false comfort. the flames lick hungrily. you sit on the edge of the armchair, rifle across your knees. alpine doesn't jump up. she remains on the floor, like a tense white statue, facing the back wall, facing the direction of the shed. her ears twitch, swiveling like radar dishes catching frequencies you can't hear.

minutes crawl by. the clock ticks. you strain until your head aches, listening for... anything. another crack. a scrape. a footstep in the snow. but there's only the house settling, the fire, and alpine's silent vigilance aimed at the wall behind which lies the shed... and the deep, unseen snowdrifts beside it.

you tell yourself it was a tree. a dead pine, overloaded, finally succumbing. the sound echoing strangely in the cold air. you tell yourself the ice on the creek shifted. you tell yourself you imagined alpine's terror, projecting your own jumpiness onto her.

"just the wind, ghost," you whisper. "just the mountains settling."

but alpine doesn't relax. she stares at the wall. and somewhere, in the snow-muffled darkness behind the shed, untouched by the kerosene lamp's yellow eye, the packed snow holds the perfect impressions of large, heavy boots. impressions leading right up to the shed wall... and stopping. waiting.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

your hand slaps it silent. darkness presses in.

but your chest is cold. empty. alpine isn't there. the warm weight, the purring engine against your ribs – gone. wrongness shoots through you before your eyes even adjust.

you push up on your elbows. the gloom reveals her. not a s ssmudge on the blankets. she's sitting upright by the closed bedroom door. her ears are pricked forward. she's not looking at you, but staring fixedly at the door, at the crack beneath it leading to the main room.

to the back wall. to the shed.

"ghost?" your voice cracks. "what is it?"

she doesn't turn, not even the flick an ear. all she does is stares. the cold of the empty bed seeps deeper. you swing your legs out, feet hitting the planks.

alpine doesn't react. she doesn't weave around your ankles as you pull on socks. you follow her line of sight to the door. nothing. just the dark crack.

in the kitchen, you pump water for the kettle, she stays by the bedroom door. you call her. "breakfast, mountain." usually she'd be twining around your legs, chirping. now, she walks silently into the kitchen, but her movements are stiff. she eats the kibble you pour, crunching, but her head is slightly turned, one ear perpetually swivelled back towards the main room. towards the back.

you try to read by the stove. jane eyre. 'there was no possibility of taking a walk that day...' the irony tastes familiar. you can't focus. alpine isn't curled on the rug. she's perched on the arm of the chair beside you, but not relaxing into you.

she stares past the bookshelves, past the tv, at the back wall. her tail twitches. you stroke her back. the muscles beneath the fur are hard as stone. she doesn't lean in or doesn't purr. but just tolerates the touch.

"just spooked, ghost," you say, trying to convince yourself. "that noise last night. rattled us both." the words sound hollow, swallowed by the silence she radiates. the mountains outside feel darker, like they're pressing against the thin walls.

at noon, the tv flickers. the anchor talks of distant fires. but you see nothing. the grainy images blur. alpine ignores it completely. she's back on the floor now, directly facing the back wall, maybe three feet from it. sitting upright, tail wrapped tight around her paws. utterly motionless except for the minute tremors running through her, visible only in the slight quiver of her whiskers. her blue eyes are wide, pupils dilated.

lunch is cold trout. you force down a few bites. you offer alpine a flake. she sniffs it, licks it once, then ignores it. her focus is predatory, but not hunting. more like waiting, guarding. it's not peace.

3:00 pm. the axe feels heavy in your hand before you even lift it. bundling up is a relief. alpine doesn't move from her post by the back wall as you pull on layers. she tracks you with her eyes with a slow swivel of her head, but her body remains oriented towards the unseen threat.

you step outside, trying to shed the cabin's claustrophobia. you crunch towards the woodpile beneath the bedroom window. axe raised. you need logs. for tonight, for tomorrow. you look at the pile and your arm drops. the axe thuds softly into the snow.

yesterday, a solid fortress of split pine reaching almost to the sill. now, it's a gutted ruin. a gaping cavity torn from its heart, logs ripped from the middle and top. the snow beneath is churned, packed into ugly, hard patches. not your bootprints. not alpine's delicate tracks. something heavier. bigger.

your eyes sweep the yard. snow stretches towards the trees, towards the shed. untouched. no trail leading away. but here... your eyes lock onto the snow immediately around the ravaged pile. disturbed. scuffed. a path of compressed snow winding... around the corner of the cabin. towards the back. towards the shed.

your heart stops dead. fear flooding your veins, colder than the creek hole. you turn, following the subtle, damning trail in the snow. not deep prints, but a clear path. you take one step around the corner. then another, peering into the space behind the cabin, behind the shed.

there. partially hidden by the shed's bulk and the deep drift piled against its far side, but starkly visible in the flat grey light: footprints.

huge. deep. sunk into the snow with weight. blunt shape of heavy boot treads. unmistakably human. they lead in a straight line from the direction of the woodpile... right up to the back wall of the shed... and stop. vanished. pressed into the rough wood like a ghost.

a gasp rips from your throat. you stumble back, panic flaring. your snowshoes catch. you wrench your foot, trying to regain balance, but your heel plunges sideways off the packed path into deep powder.

it swallows your leg to the knee. you pitch forward with a cry, the axe flies from your grasp. cold snow explodes into your face, down your collar, invading through your layers. you scramble, kicking as snow fills your boots and your sleeves.

alpine is a hysterial blur at the window. her paws slam against the glass, like she's screaming a desperate scream you can feel in your bones.

terror lends strength. you wrench your buried leg free, scramble onto hands and knees, then launch yourself upright. you don't look for the axe. you don't look back at the footprints. all you can do is run. blind panic fuels you.

you crash through the back door, ice-cold snow melting instantly on the floorboards. fumbling with the inner bolt, your fingers numb and clumsy through the cold seeping through, fueled by the panic.

alpine darts between your legs like a bolt of lightning, vanishing into the shadows. you ignore her. tunnel vision. the locked closet. beside the cold fireplace.

your hands shake violently. the key scrapes, misses, scrapes again, then finally turns. the door swings open. inside, wrapped in oily cloth: the shotgun. the stopper of close things. you grab it. shells in the tin. you fumble, almost drop one, force two into the breech. the clack-clack of closing it. alpine is gone, under the bed, deep under where she's safe.

no coat. no boots. thermal shirt, trousers, wet socks. the cold throws itself at you like a punch as you step back outside, leaving the door gaping wide, but you don't feel it. adrenaline screams, a torrent drowning everything – cold, fear, thought. the shotgun is an extension of your terror.

you round the cabin corner, abandoning the path, cutting through the deep snow beside it. socks instantly soaked, freezing. but you don't care. you move with predator silence now, placing each foot with exaggerated care on the packed snow near the shed, avoiding the churned area near the woodpile. the disturbed snow. the footprints. they scream at you. the shed looms, dark wood against white drift. the footprints end at its back wall. no exit.

you stop eight paces from the shed's side door. breath saws in your lungs, pluming frantic white clouds. the mountains are impassive watchers. the pines are silent sentinels. the world holds its breath. the only sound is the blood in your ears.

you raise the shotgun. it feels heavier now that you're not pointing at a hare. the twin barrels stare down the door like the eyes of doom.

your finger curls around the front trigger. you take one step. then another. the packed snow whispers faintly under your sodden sock. you stand before the door. warped planks. rusty iron latch. no lock.

you stare at the grain. imagine the breathing on the other side. the stolen wood, shattered silence, alpine's primal terror – it crushes you. suffocating. the unseen presence is a physical pressure against your skin.

you lift the barrels, leveling them dead center at the door's heart. and suddenly, you don't see the latch. you see the hare.

that perfect flash of white against white yesterday. frozen beneath the pine. the liquid dark of its eye staring down your rifle sight. wide. terrified. understanding. the plea before the crack. you saw the knowledge there. you saw the trout, too, thrashing, gasping in the alien air above the black hole, gills flaring a desperately. you were the end of their silence. the shatterer of their world. the invader.

now, standing here, sock soaked in snow, the shotgun's weight monstrous in your shaking hands under the mountains and snow ... you finally understand.

you are the hare now. staring down the dark muzzle of the unknown. the silence isn't yours anymore. it belongs to whatever breathed that crack into the night, whatever stole your wood, whatever pressed itself against this rough wood and vanished. you are the trout pulled gasping from the deep, dark water.

a tremor runs through you, deeper than the cold. violent, uncontrollable, like the hare's final convulsion. your finger hovers over the trigger. you could fire. blast the darkness into splinters. but the pleading in that hare's eye... it's yours now. reflected back from the black void behind the door.

with your left hand, trembling so violently it feels like it might shake itself from your wrist, you reach out. not to shove. not to force entry like a conqueror. you reach out like someone seeking... something else. permission? mercy?

your fingertips brush the cold, rough iron latch. it feels like creek ice. like the frozen entrails of the hare. you hesitate. you don't flip it. you don't shove. instead, your knuckles, stiff with cold and terror, rap softly.

knock. knock.

the sound is absurdly small. delicate. swallowed instantly by the immense, frozen silence of the mountains. it hangs there like a fragile punctuation mark in a sentence written in dread. you didn't command entry. you announced yourself. like prey signaling the predator.

for a heartbeat, nothing. just the cold seeping up through your wet socks, gnawing at your bones.

then, with a slow, silent movement that seems to vibrate up from the frozen earth itself, the shed door swings inward, opening to you.

not darkness. light. weak, grey winter light filtering through cracks in the roof. and a man.

blond. impossibly broad shoulders hunched under the low rafters, making the space feel even smaller. face pale beneath, etched with an exhaustion so deep it looks carved, and pure shock. and he's holding... something. huge. absurdly round. red, white, and blue like some obscene carnival target plucked from a nightmare and shoved into her grim reality. he's braced, half-crouched, that impossible disc held up like a wall between him and the twin black eyes of your shotgun barrels.

your own shock freezes the breath in your lungs. human. a man. huge. holding... what? the hare's terror surges back. your finger, welded to the trigger, locked onto the ridiculous red-and-white center of that... shield? it had to be.

"what the hell," your voice comes out raw, far too loud in the quiet of your shed, "is that?" you jerk the shotgun muzzle, the movement telegraphing your disbelief at the object.

he flinches, not from the gun, and blinks. his blue eyes, startlingly clear despite the exhaustion, scan you – the thin thermal shirt plastered to your skin with melting snow, the soaked socks dark against the snow, the wild tangle of hair escaping your braid, the absolute, trembling fury and bone-deep terror burning in your eyes, radiating from the shotgun. his mouth opens. "i– it's... it's a shield. ma'am. please–"

"why? why are you here? why my wood? why the goddamn noise last night?" the questions tumble. the barrels don't waver. alpine's silence and startleness in the night, your violated sanctuary, your stolen logs – it all funnels into a rage focused on this intruder and his impossible toy. "this is my land! my shed!"

he swallows hard, the muscles in his jaw jumping. "we needed... shelter.. and heat. just for the night. the storm... we got turned around. we didn't mean–"

a groan cuts him off, wrenching itself from the shadows behind him. your eyes snap past his massive frame, past the colourful shield, is movement. on the dirty floor, buried under a pile of your split pine logs stacked like a crude barricade, lies another figure.

brown hair plastered to a forehead with feverish sweat. face turned away, pale as the snow outside. one arm is visible, trapped under rough blankets that look suspiciously like the burlap sack you used for hauling fish. but it's the legs... both are there, twisted unnaturally under the blanket. one boot is missing, revealing a filthy, blood-crusted sock. the blanket over the other leg is stained a deep, ominous rust-brown, concentrated around the thigh. the fabric is stiff and frozen in places. the smell hits you then, beneath the woodsmoke and damp wool: old blood, infection, and the unwashed bodies pushed to the brink.

the blonde man shifts, trying to angle his broad shoulders to block your view. your shotgun follows his movement, the barrels tracking with precision.

"don't," you hiss. "don't you fucking move an inch." you take a half-step sideways, socks crunching on frozen dirt as you crane your neck. the figure on the floor stirs again, shuddering. the head turns slowly, agonizingly.

dark eyes, clouded with pain and fever, meet yours. hazy and unfocused then with a dawning horror that mirrors the dread coiling in your own gut.. he takes in the scene: the wild woman framed in the doorway, soaked and trembling, the double barrels facing his general direction, pointed at the blonde man... and indirectly, a threat towards him. he looks down to his own ruined leg, the dark stain, then snaps back to your face. shame crosses the exhaustion before hardening into a defense, like a cornered wolf assessing an unpredictable hunter. he doesn't speak, but watches.

the blonde man sees him stir, sees the fear and pain etched into his face. "b– easy," he says, half-turning, with a worry that borders on desperation. the shield dips slightly. "it's okay... just stay still..."

"it's not okay!" you snarl. the shotgun faces back to centre mass on the blonde giant. the movement makes the man on the floor flinch, a hiss of pain escaping him as his leg moves. "nothing about this is okay! you broke into my shed! you stole my goddamn wood! you scared my cat half to death last night!" the words pour out, accusations honed by years of solitude and the shattering terror of the unknown crashing into her world. "who the hell are you? what are you doing here? in the middle of fucking nowhere?"

the sheer absurdity – a mountain of a man holding a star-spangled shield and a feverish soldier holed up in her woodshed, surrounded by endless fucking mountains and snow – crashes against the reality of the gun in your frozen hands. the cold finally registers on your skin, the echo of alpine's silent scream still etched into your skull.

the blonde man straightens slightly. he meets your eyes, the shock replaced now by a desperate, almost painful earnestness. "ma'am, please. listen. we're... we're just trying to get home. he's hurt. bad. we got separated... lost in the storm days ago. it was whiteout. we saw the shed... it was empty... we just needed out of the wind. out of the killing cold." his eyes dart back to the man on the floor, then lock onto yours, pleading. "we took the wood to keep him from freezing. we didn't touch the house. we didn't mean to frighten you or... or your cat. please. lower the gun. he needs... he needs help we can't give him out here. we don't want any trouble. we just need... a chance."

the man on the floor – 'b' – watches you. he licks his dry, cracked lips. his voice, when it finally comes, is weaker than the wind through the pines. "steve... stop. just... stop." he shifts slightly, his eyes fix on you. "she's got every damn right. every right." there's no pleading in his eyes, just an acceptance. a soldier's resignation.

"do what you gotta do, ma'am. end it clean. but him..." he nods faintly, painfully, towards the blonde, steve. "...he hasn't done nothing but try to keep my worthless hide breathing. fault's all mine. took a stupid fall... got us lost..." he trails off, a cough forming his chest.

they wait. steve with his ridiculous shield still raised, and a face with a mask of anguish for his friend. 'b' on the floor, staring at you, waiting for the thunder.

the cold from your soaked socks is a agony now, creeping up your calves, gnawing at your bones. the shotgun, that extension of your rage, suddenly feels absurd. like his stupid shield. the resigned look in the dark-haired man's eyes, the raw desperation in the blonde giant's... it clashes violently with the image of the terrified hare. you are not the hunter here. not truly.

with a grunt that's more exhaustion than concession, you lower the barrel. not all the way. just enough they're no longer pointed dead center at the blonde's chest, but angled down towards the dirt floor near his feet. your finger stays on the trigger. trust is a luxury buried deeper than the permafrost.

"your feet," the blonde – steve – blurts out with a bizarre mix of relief and concern. "you're soaked. you'll freeze."

"shut up," you snap. your teeth are starting to chatter. you shift your weight, the frozen mud crunching under your sock. "just... shut up." your gaze flicks back to the shield, that ridiculous disc of red, white, and blue gleaming dully in the grey light.

"and that," you jerk your chin at it with scorn. "what is that? some kinda... target? you stick out like a goddamn sore thumb out here. black trees. white snow. grey sky. then you. red, white, blue." you shake your head, dismissively.

"stupid. downright stupid. like waving a flag saying 'here i am, shoot me!'." the absurdity of it, in the face of everything, almost makes a hysterical laugh bubble up. but you choke it down.

steve looks momentarily nonplussed. he shifts, glancing down at the shield as if seeing it for the first time. "it... it works," he mutters, almost defensively, lowering it another inch. "it.. deflects bullets."

"lucky you," you retort. your eyes slide past him, locking onto the man on the floor – 'b'. he's watching you, but the resignation has been joined by curiosity. the grim set of his jaw hasn't lessened. the smell of old blood and sickness is still the incense in the confined space.

"you," you say. your tone is harsh and demanding. "what happened? how'd you end up half-dead in my woodshed?"

he takes a breath, wincing as it jars his body. steve shifts anxiously, wanting to help, held in place by your wary stance and the still-present shotgun. 'b' clears his throat.

"mission," he rasps. "went... sideways." he pauses, gathering strength. "deep recon. behind... lines." another pause. cough that racks his frame comes out of him, making him gasp.

steve takes half a step forward, hand outstretched.

"don't!" you warn sharply, the shotgun muzzle twitching up.

steve freezes. 'b' waves a weak, dismissive hand.

"fine. just... peachy. extraction point... was compromised. an' ambush with heavy fire. we... scattered." his eyes look to steve, a shared pain passing between them. "got separated. three days ago? four?" he shakes his head slightly, the movement costs him. "lost count. whiteout hit. like walkin' through milk. couldn't even see your own hand."

you listen. behind the lines. ambush. extraction. words from the newspapers. words from the war that took your brothers, your father. words that belonged over there. not here. not in your mountains.

"he found me," 'b' continues, nodding faintly towards steve. "day after... maybe. after the fall." his hand drifts towards his leg, hovering over the dark stain on the blanket, but he doesn't touch it.

"ridge. ice under the snow. gave way. dropped... twenty feet? onto rocks. an' leg... snapped. think's the femur." he says it flatly, matter-of-factly. "bad. bled... a lot. cold... slowed it. maybe. steve... carried me. since then. through that damn... milk." he gestures vaguely towards the door, towards the white endless world outside.

"ate snow. last real food... was.. rations... days ago." he stops, sweat beading anew on his forehead despite the chill. the silence returns, now with his story. days lost in a blizzard. a broken leg. carried by this giant. living on snow.

"captain america," steve adds quietly, almost reluctantly. but his eyes were still fixed on his friend's suffering face. "that's... that's who who i..." he trails off, gesturing at the shield still held loosely at his side.

you stare at him. "captain what? what kinda made-up horseshit name is that? some kinda... comic book?" the absurdity of their story piles higher. a shield. a captain america. a broken soldier named 'b' with a the.. leg. hiding in your firewood shed. it feels like the world has tilted off its axis.

"not made up," steve says with his tired eyes. "it's.. real. he... he sent us. to find..." he stops himself, glancing at 'b', then back at you. "it doesn't matter now. the mission's bust. we just need to get him out. get him to a doctor. before..." he doesn't finish. the smell of infection, the glaze in 'b's eyes, the unnatural angle hinted at beneath the blanket – they spoke volumes to you.

you look at bucky – the sweat on his brow, the way his teeth dig into his lower lip to keep from crying out – and suddenly, you're not seeing him. you're seeing your brothers. the older one, broad-shouldered like steve, who taught you how to skip stones on the frozen pond behind the old house. the twin, whose face mirrored yours but softer, who laughed when you shoved snow down his collar. your father, with his rough hands and pipe smoke scent. they died in the war. that's all you knew. died in the war. no details. no letters. just three folded flags and a silence so heavy it choked you alive and sent you here.

but now, staring at bucky's leg, at the fever burning through him, you see it. the way it might have been for them. maybe your older brother went down like steve would have – fighting, stubborn, too damn loyal to leave anyone behind. maybe your twin fell like bucky – a wrong step, a slip on ice. maybe your father bled out slow in some frozen trench, his hands clutching dirt instead of his pipe.

you don't know. you'll never know.

but this – the blood, the pain, the desperate scramble to survive – this could have been them. your throat tightens. you turn away before steve can see it, before bucky can notice the way your hands shake.

you don't look at his face. you can't. not when all you see is your brothers. not when all you smell is the same rot that might have taken them, too. the war didn't just take them. it took the way they died. it took the truth. it left you with nothing but ghosts and questions.

and now, in your woodshed, with two broken soldiers and a cat who shouldn't be alive, the war is here. and you can't look away.

"doctor," you repeat. the closest town, the dusty cluster with the general store... thirty miles? more? through mountains buried under snow deeper than a man is tall.

the rutted dirt road is impassable until spring. maybe april. maybe may. it's january. the impossibility of it crashes down, colder than the water from the pump.

your gaze travels from steve's earnest, desperate face to 'b's pain-etched features, then down to your own frozen feet.

the hare's terror is gone, replaced by a wave of helplessness, almost as suffocating as the silence had been. the endless fucking mountains suddenly feel like prison walls, collapsing in on you.

a long sigh escapes you. it feels like giving up. like surrendering the precious, hard-won silence you paid for in grief and isolation. you lower the shotgun, the muzzle now pointed firmly at the dirt floor. your finger stays on the trigger. old habits. older fears.

"doctor," you repeat, the word flat, final. "nearest one's thirty miles down the valley.. maybe more. road's buried. deeper than you are tall and it's been since november." your eyes, ever traitorous, lingering on the brown-haired man – 'b' – on the floor. the unnatural stillness of his leg beneath the blanket. the fever-bright on his skin. the infection clings to him. "won't see a plow till.. ever." the hopelessness of it settles like another layer of snow. "he won't last a week out here. probably not three days."

steve's face tightens. 'b' just closes his eyes for a second, a confirmation of what he already knew.

"names," you demand, cutting through the despair. not a request, but an order. your feet are blocks of ice, the cold agony cutting through the adrenaline. "both of you. now."

the blonde meets your gaze. "steve rogers, ma'am." his voice is quiet.

the man on the floor opens his eyes. pain-filled. "bucky barnes," he says.

you give a single nod. no pleasantries. no introductions of your own. not yet. maybe not ever.

"right." you shift your weight, wincing as the frozen mud grinds under your sock. "truck's in here." you jerk your chin towards the shadows behind bucky's makeshift log barricade. "back corner, but it won't run in this. engine'd freeze solid before we cleared the first drift. it's useless to try." you state it flatly. another dead end.

steve's shoulders slump almost imperceptibly. bucky lets out a breath that's half-sigh, half-giving-up.

"all i can do," you continue, "is patch him up. maybe. studied nursing. for a bit. before..." the 'before' hangs heavy – before the war took everything, before the mountains swallowed you whole. "before i dropped out. know enough to clean a wound. set a bone. maybe slow the rot."

you look directly at bucky barnes. "your leg's bad. femur's broke, you said?" he gives a painful nod. "probably gangrene settin' in. i.. can smell it. fever's high." the way you speak is clinical and almost detached, like a defense against the enormity of what you're considering. "we gotta get it cleaned, and splinted proper. see how bad it really is. but need light and you need heat, and water that ain't frozen snow just melting in your mouth."

you look back at steve rogers. his eyes are filled with desperate hope now. "can you...?"

"yeah, yeah, i can try. but not here. freezing to death while we do it." you gesture with the shotgun towards bucky. "carry him. to the house. careful. jostle that leg and he'll pass out or scream the place down. and my cat's jumpy enough." you pause, your eyes magnetized to the shield still held loosely at steve's side. that absurd liability. "and give me that stupid target."

steve blinks. "my shield?"

"yes, your shield," you snap. "brightest damn thing in five hundred miles. you carried it all this way? through snow? no wonder you got spotted and lost!" you hold out your free hand, the shotgun still angled down but ready in your right. "give it. now. i'm not having that beacon sitting in my house."

he hesitates for only a second, protectiveness crossing his face. then, practicality wins. or maybe it's the authority in your voice, the look in your eye or the shotgun still very much present. he carefully lowers it, scraping against the dirt floor. he pushes it towards you with his foot.

you holster the shotgun over your shoulder with ease and bend as the cold bites deeper into your legs. your fingers close around the edge of the shield. it's shockingly light. the painted surface feels alien under your touch. you grunt, heaving it up. it's cumbersome. you tuck it under your arm like an oversized platter, the red, white, and blue glaring against your worn thermal shirt and the grimy shed walls.

"alright, captain america.. boy," you say with sarcasm. "pick up your friend. carefully. follow me. don't touch anything. don't look at anything. just walk." you turn, and step back out into the cold, leaving the shed door open behind you.

you don't look back, trusting steve's desperation to make him obey. the snow under your sock is loud. the shield feels like a brand, marking you, connecting you to a world you fled from. the mountains watch you again, questioning, as you lead the remnants of someone else's war towards the sanctuary of your silent, book-lined cabin.

alpine is waiting. and the real work – the bloody, terrifying work of trying to keep bucky barnes alive – is about to begin.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

hours later. the cabin smells of antiseptic, old blood, and the woodsmoke.

bucky barnes lies on your couch with a mountain range of wool blankets swallowing his frame. his face is still pale, sweat-damp hair stuck to his forehead, but the fever-glaze in his eyes has receded slightly. his leg, now grotesquely splinted with sturdy pine branches you'd split yourself and padded with sheets, rests elevated on a stack of your precious, dwindling firewood logs. the crude bandages, which are really strips of boiled sheet, are already stained a dark rust where the deep thigh wound weeps.

you'd cleaned it as best you could, probing with fingers in the lamplight, feeling the ends of the broken femur beneath the swollen and angry flesh. you'd poured your precious whiskey over it – the good stuff, saved for emergencies colder than this – making him hiss and curse through teeth. no morphine. just grit. and your hands.

steve rogers sits in your armchair. your chair. the one alpine always claims. the one by the stove where you read. it makes your teeth itch, seeing his frame filling it, his head resting back against the worn fabric. exhaustion radiates off him like heat from the stove.

alpine, a tense white on the highest bookshelf, watches him with blue eyes. a continuous hiss vibrates from her whenever he shifts.

but bucky? she'd hissed initially, a puffball of fury when steve carried him in, dripping snow and blood. but now, she occasionally flicks a glance his way, just observation. like he's part of the furniture. broken furniture.

his shield is stuffed unceremoniously behind the woodstove, leaning against the log wall. the red, white, and blue peeks out, garish against the dark wood. you think the house takes it as an insult to the quiet gloom.

you're standing by the sink, washing your hands for the tenth time in water, scrubbing bucky's blood from under your nails. the adrenaline crash has left you hollow.

your feet are finally warm in dry socks and boots, but the cold has made a home in your bones. you turn, leaning back against the counter with your arms crossed. you look from steve, slumped in your chair, to bucky on the couch, to the offensive shield.

"so," your voice cuts the silence. "what's the deal with the... getup?" you jerk your chin towards the shield. "that stupid target. and captain america. heard the name. whispers. posters in the nearby towns, maybe. some kinda... singing soldier?" it's skepticism bordering on contempt. "looks like a recruiting poster threw up on a trash can lid."

steve opens his eyes. they're bloodshot, but alert. he doesn't bristle at the insult. just looks weary. "it wasn't singing," he says. "well, it was. mostly. at first."

he rubs a hand over his face. "captain america... it started as... well, yeah. propaganda. uso tours. sell war bonds. wear the flag. smile for the cameras." bitterness crosses his face. "felt about as useful as a screen door on a submarine."

bucky lets out a pained snort from the couch. "told ya you looked ridiculous."

"shut up, buck," steve mutters. he looks back at you. "they... they gave me something. an experiment. serum. made me..." he gestures at his own bulk, a contrast to the exhausted man in the chair. "...this. stronger. faster. heals quicker. supposed to be the first of many. super soldiers." he says the words flatly, like he still doesn't quite believe them.

"serum?" your disbelief drips from your words. "made you big? sounds like dubious science fiction." you push off the counter, taking a step closer. "so you're... what? a science project in pajamas?"

"the shield's vibranium," bucky says from the couch, saving steve from answering. "rarest metal on earth. absorbs kinetic energy. vibrations. bullets bounce off. punches..." he winces, shifting slightly. "...don't feel 'em much. howard stark made it."

"stark? the rich fella? plays with airplanes?" you'd seen the name in papers. eccentric. wealthy. something 'bout flying cars. "so he makes fancy, colourful frisbees for government experiments now?" you shake your head. it just keeps piling higher. "and you," you point at steve. "you went from selling bonds to... what? running missions behind lines? with him?" you nod towards bucky.

steve's jaw tightens. "bucky's the best sniper the 107th ever had. saved my skin more times than i can count. long before... this." he gestures at himself again. "the bond tour... it was a mask and.. a joke. hydra was real, dangerous. they needed someone... expendable, maybe. someone who could get into places and hit hard. they gave me a real mission. bucky was already over there. we... reconnected." a look passes between them, deep and unspoken. years of history. shared trenches and playgrounds.

"hydra?" you frown. "like the myth? many-headed snake?"

"like nazis on nightmare fuel," bucky says darkly, closing his eyes. "worse tech. worse ideas. aimed at everyone."

"our mission," steve continues. "intel pointed to a hidden hydra research facility. way up here. mountains offered cover. isolation. we parachuted in a week ago. found it. or... it found us." his hands clench on the arms of your chair.

"bucky got separated covering our retreat after the intel grab. then the storm hit. whiteout like nothing i've ever seen. spent two days searching grids... nothing. found him.. barely remember when. half-buried. leg..." he trails off, looking at bucky's splinted form, the anguish on his face. "got turned around trying to find the extraction point. then.. we saw the smoke from your chimney last night and barely made it to the shed before the blizzard closed in again. the noise..." he looks back at you, apologetic. "i was trying to move a log quietly and slipped, dropped it. and i think i scared your cat. i'm sorry."

you absorb it. the serum. the shield. hydra. nazi nightmares in your mountains. a sniper falling off a ridge. a super-soldier carrying his friend through a storm, guided by the thin curl of smoke from your chimney.

it's insane. bigger than the war you knew, the war that took your brothers, your father. a war fought with impossible men and mythical metals.

"expendable," you repeat steve's word.

you look at bucky barnes, pale with near-death and broken on your couch. at steve rogers, the propaganda poster boy turned weapon, sitting in your chair. you look at the stupid, colourful shield peeking out from behind the stove. then you look up at alpine, still perched high, still hissing softly at steve.

"alpine doesn't like you," you state, matter-of-fact. "she likes broken things. quiet things." you nod towards bucky. "she tolerates him. you?" you meet steve's tired blue eyes. "you're loud. even when you're not talking. too much colour. too much... of everything." you push away from the counter, walking towards the stove. you don't look at them. "the blizzard's still howling. he isn't going anywhere. that leg's a mess and the infection's deep. changing those bandages is gonna be ugly. you," you point at steve, "can sleep on the floor. far corner. away from my cat. and in the morning..."

you sigh. "...in the morning, we figure out how the hell you two science projects are gonna get out of my valley without dying, or bringing whatever nightmare you're running from to my damn doorstep." you grab the kettle, the familiar ritual offering anchor in the surreal storm. "now shut up. both of you. i need tea."

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the cabin is a pocket of warmth swallowed by the frozen dark.

you've shed the day's grime and tension in a basin of water, pulling on an oversized t-shirt that smells faintly of detergent and cat, then wrapping yourself in the thick wool robe cinched tight. alpine twists around your ankles as you walk barefoot from the bedroom into the main room, your silent ghost mirroring your steps.

your kerosene lamp casts a light in the dark, stretching and shrinking like nervous creatures. bucky is a still mound under the mountain of blankets on the couch, breaths punctuated by hitches. asleep, or unconscious – hard to tell.

steve is settling himself onto the carpet near the cold fireplace, trying to fold his impossible frame into something resembling comfort. he looks absurdly large on your floor, like a bear trying to nest in a rabbit hole. he glances up as you enter.

"pillow?" you ask. it's not really an offer. more like an inventory. like checking a trap line.

steve shakes his head, attempting a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "no, ma'am. i'm fine. floor's... fine."

you just look at him with a flat stare that travels from his shoulders cramping awkwardly to his boots still caked with snowmelt, then back to his face. it's the same look you give alpine when she tries to pretend she hasn't knocked the tin cup off the counter. silent yet implacable disbelief. the hare wouldn't have believed the fox claiming it meant no harm either.

he shifts under your gaze, uncomfortable prey under scrutiny. "...actually," he amends, "a pillow would... uh... be appreciated. thank you."

you give a nod. "right." you turn, the robe whispering against your legs like wind through dry grass, and head for the small storage closet tucked beside the back door.

alpine follows, a ghost at your heels. inside, it smells of dust, the scent of things stored away, forgotten. you push past spare sacks of flour, a rope thicker than your wrist, the locked box with the shotgun shells cold to the touch. on the top shelf: one small, flat pillow covered in faded blue ticking, and a neatly folded stack – three thin towels, and one slightly larger. you take the pillow and the blanket. the towels stay. they're for drying fish, or blood, not for super-soldiers. not for creatures who crash into your solitude.

you walk back, and thrust the pillow at steve. "the good one's under bucky's head," you state. "i figured he needed it more. the leg's a mess." you don't look at bucky as you say it, remembering the hare's broken stillness on the snow.

steve takes the pillow, his fingers brushing yours briefly. they're surprisingly warm. unlike the hare's frozen fur. "thank you," he says, the sincerity grating against your carefully constructed detachment. "really. for... everything."

"don't thank me yet. infection's deep." like the cold settling into the hare before you ended it. you unfold the blanket, and drop it beside him on the carpet. it looks pathetically small next to him, inadequate against the mountain cold. "here."

he picks it up, unfolds it with careful hands, treating it like something precious. "this is... kind. you didn't have to—"

"it gets cold," you cut him off yet your voice sharper than intended. you gesture vaguely towards the black iron stove, banked low for the night, its faint glow a dying ember in the dark. "fire's low. can't stoke it more without waking the dead... or him." you nod towards bucky. "only light you get is what's left in the stove." you lift the kerosene lamp. "i take this with me." you need its light, its small circle of known things.

steve looks at the faint orange glow visible through the stove's isinglass window, like a tiny, trapped sun. "we don't need light," he says quickly, pulling the thin blanket over his legs, trying to make himself smaller and less intrusive. "the embers are warmth enough. more than we've had in days. we'll be fine."

you stare at him. he's trying to be considerate. it's irritating. like the hare trembling, trying not to provoke.

"fine isn't the point," you snap. "it gets cold. bone cold. before dawn. like the creek ice. that blanket's thin. embers die." you shift your weight. alpine sits nearby, washing a paw, her blue eyes fixed on steve with suspicion. "you shiver, you make noise. noise wakes him." you jerk your chin towards bucky again. "wakes me. wakes the cat. nobody sleeps then." it's practical. clinical. the only way you know how to frame concern – as a problem of logistics, of noise in the silence you bought. "the stove's there. the heat's there. use it. or don't. freeze. see if i care." you turn to go.

"ma'am?" his voice stops you, softer. like he's speaking to the hare before the shot.

you pause, half-turned. "what?"

"your name. you never told us your name."

you stiffen. names are... personal. like opening a door you welded shut long ago. like naming the hare before you pulled the trigger – it makes it real, gives it power. you've been 'ma'am' or 'hey you' or just a presence, a force of the mountain like the wind or the snow, since they crashed into your world.

"doesn't matter," you say finally a dismissal. "get some sleep. if you can. changing those bandages tomorrow won't be pretty." the image of the hare's wound flashes unwanted. you take a step towards the sanctuary of the bedroom door.

"alpine's a good name," steve offers into the quiet that follows, gentle, cutting through your harshness. "for a cat."

you stop again. you look down at the small white ghost now twining around your ankles. "yeah," you sat, more to the cat than to him. "she is." you take another step, the pull of your own bed. "don't let the fire die all the way out," you add. "and try not to die of cold on my floor. it'd be a hassle to move you in the morning." the practical threat, softened now by the image of alpine.

before he can answer, before he can offer another kindness that might thaw something dangerous, you slip into the bedroom, closing the door softly but firmly behind you, a barrier against the world.

the click of the latch is loud in the sudden privacy. alpine leaps onto the quilted surface in one fluid motion, circling once, twice, before settling into her indented spot near your pillow.

you shed the robe, letting it pool on the floor, the wool heavy. you slide under the cold quilts, the linen smelling faintly of lavender and older, something like your brothers' absence. you pull them high, up to your chin.

listening.

beyond the thin door: the settling sigh of steve shifting on the floor, the rustle of the thin blanket. the faint, almost ghostly crackle of the embers clinging to life in the stove.

human sounds. alien sounds. the sounds of the wounded hare in your shed, the sounds of the hunter guarding it. they fill the spaces your solitude used to occupy.

you close your eyes tightly, trying to find the perfect silence that was yours alone just yesterday, the silence where only alpine's purr and the empty world outside existed. but it's gone, fractured, invaded.

alpine's purr starts up again. a small, warm ghost in the dark. the only constant. the only thing you named. you press closer to her, seeking her warmth, her silence, as the ghosts of war and hares and broken soldiers breathe just beyond your door.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

there's a place four miles north. a place where the mountains are steeper, and untouched by anything but the wind's cruel sculpting. you were tracking the snowshoe hare prints here.

the world was different here: white, deep, grey. silence, broke only by the sound of your snowshoes and the thuds of your own heart.

then, a shape. tucked against the trunk of a pine. it looks like another pile of wind-drifted snow. you almost passed it by, scanning for movement, for the tell-tale flicker of life. just a patch of snow, just a dead branch, just a frozen rabbit, maybe, claimed by the cold days before.

but something snagged your eyes towards it, and you stopped. squinted against the glare. nothing moved——just the sigh of wind through pine needles high above. you took another step, ready to dismiss it.

then—a twitch. so small. so fragile. not wind. life. clinging by a thread thinner than spider silk. not a rabbit. it's too big and it's the wrong shape.

you lurched forward, abandoning your path and plunging through knee-deep snow, the cold instantly bleeding through layers, clawing into your skin and bones. you reached the shape. dropped to your knees, mittens ripped off and your skin screamed in the instant freeze.

you dug, bare hands plunging into the ice. the snow burned, then went numb. you scooped handfuls, throwing them aside, the world circled in on the white shape. fur. thick with ice. frozen in places. long fur. white. a cat. impossibly, a cat. just buried, and fucking discarded in snow. left to become part of the mountain's bones.

she was utterly still like a sculpture carved from ice sent to death. you scraped the packed snow from her face. ribs sharp as knives under, visible even beneath the clumped fur. her eyes—startlingly blue—were open, unseeing, coated in a frost. no breath stirred the ice clinging to her nostrils.

dead. she had to be dead. dumped by someone passing through, or wandered too far and succumbed. the desolate loneliness of it—a small life extinguished in this vast, indifferent nowhere—hit you. a sob tore from your throat in the silence.

"you're a ghost," you whispered. "already gone. just a ghost." it echoed your own buried heart. you were talking to the mountain. to the cold. to yourself.

but as you spoke, as you gathered the frozen, stiff little body, intending only to carry her out of the snow, to bury her properly ... she moved.

a tremor. a shudder that ran through her entire frozen frame. then, the lowest, most desperate sound you'd ever heard. not a cry. a sigh. a whisper of air forced from lungs that had no right to still hold it. a meow so weak it was less sound than vibration against you.

like a ghost returning, defying the grave.

you gasped. you ripped your coat open, and shoved the frozen cat against the bare skin of your chest, over your heart. the shock of cold was brutal, but you had barely felt it.

you held her close, wrapping layers tight, trapping your body heat around her tiny form. "no," you breathed. "no, you don't. not yet."

the walk back was agonizing and fear-filled. your hands, bare and burning then numb, held the coat closed.

the wind howled quietly, mocking your struggle. you talked to her, nonsense words, pleas, threats against the cold. "stay. stay, ghost. you hear me? stay." you were begging the mountain, begging the universe, begging the part of yourself that felt just as buried.

you burst into the cabin, ripping off your outer layers. the cat fell into your hands, still freezing and limp. you grabbed the blanket from your bedroom—the one your mother knit in shades of green and brown before she died at your birth, and wrapped the frozen cat in it, cocooning her, burying her in warmth and memory.

you stoked the stove, throwing on logs until the iron glowed red. you warmed milk in a pot, the smallest scraps of rabbit stew from your own dinner. you sat on the floor by the stove, the bundled cat in your lap, and waited, watched.

hours had passed. the cabin grew hot. you dripped warm milk onto her lips. massaged her stiff limbs through the blanket, feeling her bones. her breathing was so shallow it vanished for stretches. you didn't sleep. you watched her. she stared through you, with vacant eyes, lost in whatever frozen purgatory she'd been pulled from.

then, like dawn breaking over the peaks, life seeped back. a blink. she looked up at you, with a unsettling confusion. like you were the apparition. like she was the ghost encountering another ghost in this lonely cabin. she didn't meow or purr. just... existed, silently, watching you.

for days, she drifted in and out. she'd appear in a doorway, watching you with those blue eyes, then just vanish silently. she slipped under the bed, disappearing for hours, leaving you wondering if you'd imagined her, if she'd finally faded back into the snow. she ate the warm milk, the tiny scraps with no sound, no play, just absolute survival.

you started calling her ghost. a joke, but mostly out of desperation as well. "you haunting me now?" you'd ask when she'd materialize beside your chair. "where'd you disappear to, ghost?" when she'd vanish under your furniture.

the name wasn't chosen; it settled on her, like the snow that had tried to claim her. because alpine was a ghost. a creature that had crossed over and come back. a survivor sculpted from ice, a testament to life clinging where none should remain. a thing the world tried to bury, but couldn't quite extinguish.

just like you.

you, buried in grief after the war took your father, your brothers – the laughing older one, the quiet twin whose face mirrored your own – leaving only an emptiness more colossal than these mountains.

you, buried in isolation, using the last of their money to buy this cabin, this silence, this exile you called home. you, a ghost haunting your own life, drifting through the routines, speaking only to the cat who mirrored your silence.

so when she finally curls against your ribs at night, weeks later, the first rumble of a purr vibrates against your skin – a sound as fragile as the first meltwater trickle – you whisper it into the dark, into the soft fur: "goodnight, ghost." and she presses closer.

you are both still here. still real. two ghosts haunting the same mountain, reminding each other they breathe, they feel, they endure. even when the world tries its damnedest to bury you.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the alarm screams. darkness presses in. but the silence... it's fractured, invaded by bucky's breathing from the couch, sighs of steve asleep on the floor near the stove.

alpine's weight is on your chest, purring against the unfamiliar sounds. you lie still for a moment, listening to the intrusion. the routine, the sacred silence you built log by log, book by book, shattered all at once.

you slide out, avoiding alpine. the plank floor bites your bare feet, the shock is a grounding ritual. shower. brief, the water lukewarm from the tank heated by yesterday's stove. you dress methodically: thermal layer, thick flannel shirt, heavy trousers, two pairs of socks. the sheepskin coat waits. alpine watches from the bed, eyes gleaming in the gloom.

pumping water for the kettle feels wrong. the rhythmic squeak-thud too loud in the hush that's no longer yours. you set the water to boil, the flame whooshing to life. instead of the usual quiet contemplation at the window, you reach for anna karenina. you need the guidance of words, of a distant yet controlled tragedy. you carry the book and the french press to your chair.

steve is a dark pile on the floor, the thin blanket pulled up to his chin, looking impossibly large and vulnerable. bucky is a still shape on the couch.

you sink into your chair, pulling the wool blanket over your lap. alpine jumps up, settling into the hollow beside you. you pour the boiling water over the grounds, the bitter, earthy smell a small comfort. you open the book. 'all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' the words blur. you stare at the page, not reading, listening instead to the foreign symphony of sleep in your cabin. the silence you bought is gone, replaced by the breath of wounded men.

you force yourself to read. page after page. anna's turmoil feels distant, compared to the reality in your living room. the grey light strengthens slowly, creeping through the window, turning the snow outside from black to deep blue. you finish the coffee. you close the book. routine demands movement. but not the usual. not today.

you stand. alpine stretches, arching her back. you pad silently across the room, stopping beside steve's sleeping form. for a moment, you just look at him. the absurdity of him, the soldier, curled on your floor. then, with ungentle force, you nudge his booted foot with the toe of your own boot.

he jolts awake, eyes snapping open, like a soldier's reflex. he stares up at you, still disoriented, blinking.

"up," you say, cutting through his remnants of sleep. "sun's thinking about it. time you earned your keep."

he pushes himself up on one elbow, rubbing his face. "ma'am? What—"

"food," you interrupt. "you and sleeping beauty over there"—you jerk your head towards bucky—"ate through what i hunted for the week. trout. hare. gone." the image of the hare flashes unwanted. her. the one you understood. the one whose place you now occupied. "cupboard's bare. i need meat. today."

steve sits up fully, the thin blanket pooling around his waist. he runs a hand through his blond hair. "right. hunting. okay."

you tilt your head at him. the earnestness, the city-boy bulk forced and crammed into your wilderness. "d'you know how to hunt?" you ask.

he hesitates. then nods, too quickly. "yeah. sure. i know how."

you raise one eyebrow. the same look you gave him about the pillow. the look that sees through fox-claims. "do you," you state, not ask. "or do you just think you know? read about it in a book? listened to some old timer spin yarns back in the city?"

steve flushes slightly. "i.. i understand the principles. tracking. stalking. marksmanship. i'm an excellent shot."

"marksmanship," the word tastes useless. "out here, it's not just pulling a trigger. it's knowing the wind, the snow. knowing where the hare hides, not where you think it should be." you take a step closer, looking down at him. "how does a soldier, running missions behind lines, not know how to hunt his own supper?"

he looks away, towards bucky. "bucky... bucky usually handled that. the hunting, trapping. he... he had the patience and the eye for it." the hunter, you think. the one who, even broken on your couch, held the knowledge, the instinct. the one who could look down a scope and understand the hare's final moment. unlike you, who only understood it when you became the hare yourself.

"well, bucky's handling anything but fever dreams right now," you say bluntly. "so the hunter's down. means the..." you pause, the word prey sticking in your throat. "...means the rest of us gotta step up. you learn, and you gotta do it fast. that's how you survive out here. not with principles but with practice, cold fingers and an empty stomach to motivate you." you turn towards the bedroom. "get up. get dressed. i'll find you layers."

you head to your storage closet again, alpine leaping onto the counter to watch the proceedings with detached interest. you rummage past the flour sacks. you pull out the biggest flannel shirt you own – dark green, worn thin at the elbows, dwarfing you but likely straining on steve. then another, a red check. then a thick, cable-knit sweater your older brother left behind years ago, smelling faintly of his memories. three layers. it might fit him across the shoulders. you grab thick trousers, several sizes too big, held up with suspenders you fish out of a drawer. then, the socks: three pairs of your thickest wool hiking socks. mittens – large. a knitted hat. a deep green scarf.

you dump the pile unceremoniously on the floor near steve, who is now standing, looking overwhelmed. "put those on. over whatever you got. layers trap heat. lose heat, you lose fingers. toes. leg." you point to bucky, still asleep. "take his jacket. better windbreak than whatever thin thing you got under that fancy suit." steve's uniform jacket looks inadequate against mountain cold.

steve stares at the pile, then at bucky's jacket draped over the armchair. "his jacket? but—"

"he's not using it," you cut him off. "and leather's tough. sheds wind and snow. better than cloth. just.. take it." practicality over sentiment. survival over comfort.

steve nods, swallowing. he starts pulling on the layers over his undershirt and pants. the flannels are tight across his chest and shoulders, the sweater stretches ominously. the trousers, high with the suspenders, look comically baggy below the knee. he pulls on the socks – one pair, then another, then the third, making his boots feel suddenly very tight. the mittens swallow his hands. the hat pulls down over his ears. the scarf you wrap around his neck yourself, tucks firmly into the collar of bucky's leather jacket, which he shrugs on over everything. he looks like a child bundled by an overzealous mother, or a mountain made of mismatched wool and leather.

alpine watches from the counter, her head tilted. she gives a soft, almost imperceptible mrrp? as if questioning the sanity of the spectacle.

"rifle's by the door," you say, pulling on your own sheepskin coat, hat, scarf, mittens. your familiar armor. "same one i used on the hare. it knows how to bite, but treat it gentle. sights are true." you pick up your own rifle, the heavier one. "i'll show you the lay of the land, where the creek bends, where the hare like to hide under the pines." you look him up and down, the bundled giant filling your small space.

"try not to fall over. and for god's sake, try not to shoot your own foot off. hauling two of you back here would be a real pain in my ass." you grab the doorknob. "ready or not, rogers. the mountain doesn't wait." you leave the warmth, the wounded hunter, and the ghost cat behind. the hare's territory awaits.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the snow under your boots is the only sound for the first hundred yards.

steve walks beside you, clumsy in his borrowed bulk. the rifle slung over his shoulder looks too small in his mittened hand. alpine's absence feels strange; usually she'd be a silent shadow at your heels on the perimeter check, not curled beside a wounded soldier.

steve breaks the silence, his voice muffled by the scarf you'd wound tightly around his neck and lower face. "bucky..." he starts. "he'll be okay? alone back there?"

you scan the tree line ahead. "told you. he won't be alone."

"but..." steve persists. "what if something happens? what if he... needs something? or..." he trails off. "what if someone finds him? takes him?"

you stop and turn slowly to face him. the absurdity of it, in this empty silence, cracks through your usual detachment. "who?" you ask, incredulous. "who exactly is gonna find him, rogers? the snow queen? the abominable snowman? maybe a lost battalion of yetis decided to march through my valley this morning?" you gesture broadly at the encircling mountains, the endless fucking pines, the untouched snow stretching in every direction.

"look around. there's nothing. no one. for miles. only things moving out here are us, barely even the wind, and whatever we're hoping to shoot for breakfast."

steve shift. his eyes, the only part of his face visible above the scarf, are troubled. "you didn't sense us," he points out. the words land like stones in the snow. "not at first. we were in your shed and.. took your wood. and scared your cat."

he's right. you hadn't sensed them. not until the crack, not until the terror, not until you became the hare staring down the barrel.

the mountain's silence, your sanctuary, had been violated, and you'd been oblivious. the confidence you'd just projected feels suddenly false.

you turn away, resuming your walk, pushing through the snow with more force than before. "i sensed you," you mutter, defensive. "eventually. alpine sensed you first. she always knows." you think of her posture, the fixed stare at the shed wall. the hunter recognizing the presence of other hunters, even wounded ones.

"and bucky... he's a hunter too, isn't he? even laid up. he'll know. he'll sense it if anything.. unusual comes near." you don't look back at steve. you can't. the admission tears off your pride bit by bit.

he catches up. now it's the silence between two people aware of each other's proximity, their steps syncing then falling apart. you feel the weight of his gaze on your profile, even through your layers.

"still," he says after a moment, closer. "it's a risk. leaving him."

"life's a risk," you snap back, the tension climbs tighter in your gut, manifesting as irritation. "freezing to death because we got no food is a bigger one. infection killing him 'cause he's weak from hunger is a bigger one. you wanna stand guard over him all day, fine. starve. see how long that lasts." you kick at a drift, sending a spray of snow into the air.

he doesn't answer immediately. you feel him move closer. his shoulder brushes yours as you navigate a deeper patch of snow. the contact is muffled by layers, but it sends an unwelcomed spark through you. you flinch away.

"you're right," he concedes, almost intimate. "about the food. about... learning." he adjusts the rifle strap on his shoulder. "show me. where the hare hides."

you stop near a bend in the frozen creek, black scar beneath its dusting of snow. you point towards a cluster of pines clinging to a rocky outcrop a hundred yards away, their branches weighed down, creating dark, sheltered pockets beneath.

"there," you say. "the south-facing slope. it catches the sun abd wind scours the snow thinner near the rocks. they dig burrows under the low branches for shelter and warmth. 's a vantage point." you think of the hare you shot, frozen beneath just such a pine. its dark eye. understanding its end.

"you move slow. downwind." you demonstrate, turning your face slightly. "feel it? coming from the west now. so you circle..." you point with your mittened hand, tracing an arc away from the pines.

"approach from the east. quiet with every step and listen. watch the snow under the branches. look for tracks going in. look for..." you hesitate, searching for the words to describe the subtle signs, the intuition born of solitude and necessity. "...look for the silence where there shouldn't be silence.... like a held breath."

steve watches you intently, absorbing not just the words but the way you stand, the way your eyes scan that radiates from you when you talk about the mountains and the hunt. it's a different from the fury and fear of yesterday.

"like a held breath," he repeats softly, his gaze shifting from the pines back to your face. it lingers there as the cold has nipped the tip of your nose red, a strand of dark hair has escaped your hat. he seems... fascinated. "you make it sound instinctive."

"it is," you say, meeting his eyes for a beat too long. the blue is startlingly clear in the morning light, but there's a speck of green in the inner pupils. now it's not just the tension of survival, or the lingering friction of intrusion. something.. hotter. more dangerous than the cold. it seeps into your belly.. unfamiliar, unsettling, intruding.

you break the gaze first, looking back towards the pines. "or you starve. now shut up. and follow." you start moving again, forcing your legs to carry you away from his presence, towards the waiting pines and the ghosts of hares past.

downwind of the pines, as you instructed. the cold mines through your layers, digging for your skin and bones, but the focus is a different, a taut wire strung between you and steve. the tension from the walk hasn't dissipated; it's condensed by the hunt. you signal him to stop fifty yards from the rocky outcrop.

"there," you point, not directly at the cluster, but at a subtle disturbance beneath the lowest, snow-laden boughs. a slight depression, almost invisible unless you knew to look. the hint of a shape tucked deep. "see it? under the spruce. right side."

steve squints, following your line. he nods and unslings the rifle. the action is clumsy and obviously unfamiliar. he fumbles with the bolt, his mittens make the work difficult. he finally chambers a round, unnervingly loud. he raises the rifle, settling the stock against his shoulder, burying his face against the cold wood to peer down the sights.

you watch him. not the pines. him. the city boy crammed into borrowed wilderness clothes that obviously don't fit him, the soldier who carries stars and stripes on his back but hesitates with a hunting rifle in his hands. it's suffocating to watch. seconds tick by. the hare remains still. a perfect shot. waiting.

steve doesn't move. the rifle barrel wavers. his finger rests on the trigger guard, not the trigger itself.

"steve," you whisper, sharp. "take the shot."

he shifts, adjusting his grip. the barrel steadies, then shifts again. he shudders but it's not the cold. it's hesitation.

the image flashes: bucky on your couch, leg shattered, eyes filled with pain and resignation. "do what you gotta do, ma'am." bucky, the hunter, accepting the shot. steve, the protector, frozen before it.

"i..." steve's voice is muffled. "i can't... get a clear..."

frustration slices through you. not just at the missed opportunity, but at the echo. the mirror. he hesitated. just like he hesitated when bucky told you to end it in the shed. bucky, ready for the finality. steve, holding back. and you? you were the hare then, trembling before the unknown. now, steve is the trembling hunter.

"goddammit, rogers," you hiss, the words tearing free. "it's just a hare. food. not a man." the hypocrisy tastes bitter. you know it's never just a hare.

the hare twitches. sensing the tension, it starts to shift, to melt back deeper into the shadows under the boughs. the moment is slipping away.

instinct takes over. pure, unthinking necessity. you move like the wind itself – silently. you close the small distance between you and steve. your mittened hand closes over his on the rifle stock. your other hand covers his on the forestock, your body pressing close against his side for leverage, your cheek almost brushing his shoulder as you sight down the barrel over his arm.

"hold it," you command. you ignore the beat of your own heart, his scent of sweat invading your senses.

you find the dark shape adjusting in the shadow and see that dark eye. understanding. waiting. just like you understood in the shed. just like the hare understood.

your finger slides over his, finding the curve of the trigger beneath the mitten. you don't hesitate. you pull.

CRACK!

the sound shatters the silence, echoing off the pines, rolling across the snow. the rifle kicks hard against your grip. under the spruce, the dark shape falls violently, then lies still. a puff of snow settles around it, falling from the branches.

the echo fades slowly. you remain pressed against steve. feeling the shock vibrating through his muscles. the intimacy of the kill, the shared violence, the sudden closeness – it stays there.

you push yourself away, breaking the contact. the cold slams into you where his warmth had been. you lower the rifle. you don't look at steve. you look at the hare. a small life ended. necessity. survival. you walk towards it.

steve stands frozen, the rifle hanging loosely in his hands. he stares at the spot where the hare fell, then down at his own hands, then at your retreating back.

his voice, when it comes, is stripped bare. "i... i couldn't..." he swallows. "i saw its eye."

you stop by the hare. small. perfect. white fur already stained with blood where the bullet found its mark. you pick it up. the dark eye is already clouding.

you remember bucky's words in your shed. do what you gotta do. bucky, the hunter, understood the necessity. steve, the soldier built for war, hesitated before the small yet essential kill.

"bucky would have pulled the trigger," you say, not turning around. you tuck the hare into your game bag. "first time. clean." you finally look back at him.

his face is pale above the scarf. his blue eyes, tumult of emotions – shock, shame, confusion, maybe even a flicker of the heat that had sparked between you.

"out here," you continue, "hesitation gets you killed. or gets someone else killed. remember that, captain." you turn and start walking back towards the path, leaving him standing alone in the snow, the shot and your touch clinging to the silence.

the hare is heavy in your bag. but the lesson, heavier.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the cabin door opens. bucky is propped higher on the couch with a precarious stack of worn pillows behind his back.

alpine is purring, sprawled across his chest, her head tucked firmly under his chin. one of bucky's hands rests gently on her back, moving as they slowly stroke her fur. it's a picture of incongruous peace: the soldier and the feral mountain cat finding a solace in stillness.

alpine's head snaps up as the door opens. her eyes lock onto steve, the intruder filling the doorway. the deep purr cuts off instantly, replaced by a warning growl. her ears flatten tight against her skull, her body tenses into a coiled spring atop bucky, and she bares her tiny, needle teeth in a hiss directed solely at the blond giant. she doesn't move from her perch on bucky's chest, but her gaze is pure hostility.

bucky winces slightly as alpine tenses. "hey, pal," he says. "bring back the bacon? or... rabbit, i guess?" his eyes assess, despite the pain, flicks past steve to you, to bag slung at your hip.

you stomp the packed snow from your boots, shedding layers. you avoid steve's eyes entirely, focusing on the task, the ritual. "hare," you state as you pull the small body from the bag. you carry it to the sink, the body small and vulnerable in your grip.

bucky's eyes track the hare, a hunter's appraisal. "nice shot. clean?" he asks casually, almost conversational, yet underneath lies the assessment of a sniper checking windage and drop, the ingrained habit of measuring death's efficiency.

you push the handle of the iron water pump, the initial squeak-thud makes alpine flinch, though her glare never pulls from steve.

the water gushes out, splattering into the sink basin. alpine's hiss subsides to a continuous grumble deep in her chest, but her focus remains locked on steve, who's awkwardly shedding his own mountain of borrowed layers near the door, looking large and out of place.

you don't look at bucky as you answer. "eventually." you jerk your chin towards steve. the man flinches as if struck. "he saw its eye and couldn't pull the trigger. froze solid."

a chuckle escapes buck and it ends in a wince as it tugged at damaged muscles. he shakes his head, his fingers resuming their pet on alpine's back. she relaxes.

"course he did," bucky says, the exasperation in his voice is layered over the pain and. he looks directly at steve, who's staring fixedly at the rough-hewn floorboards, shame fuming off him. "steve rogers couldn't hurt a fly if you paid him in apple pie. not unless it was wearing a hydra uniform and pointing a gun at an orphanage." the words are teasing by decades of friendship, but the core of truth beneath them is hard and cold as the mountain granite outside.

steve finally looks up. "buck—" he starts.

"it's just meat, rogers," you cut him off. the knife slides from its sheath in the drawer. you lay the hare on the surface, the small body sacrificial under the lamp's flickering glow. "fur. bone. blood. same as the trout in the creek i sit beside for hours, waiting. same as the doe i tracked through the blizzard last month." the blade flashes, parting the white fur from the dark muscle beneath.

"war," you continue, spat out like a piece of gristle, "is no different. strip away the flags, the speeches, the shiny medals? at the end of it all?" you peel back the fur, revealing the deep, glistening red muscle, white bone of the skull. "it's killing. plain. simple. ugly."

you sever the head with a single, decisive thunk. alpine twitches on bucky's chest. a low growl escapee her as her purr cuts off, her senses suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of fresh blood. you gut the hare efficiently, the entrails spilling into the sink, steaming near the drafty window.

"the hare eats the grass," you say. you work without looking up, the knife an extension of your will. "the cat eats the hare." you nod towards alpine, who's now watching your bloody hands with. her hostility is momentarily overridden by the scent of fresh kill.

"we eat the hare. or the cat starves. or we starve." you rinse the carcass under the stream, the water swirling down the drain. "chain's simple. brutal and inevitable. no room for..." you pause, finally lifting your gaze, your eyes locking onto steve's troubled ones, then to bucky's watchful stare.

"...hesitation." you let the word hang. "hesitation out here?" you gesture with the bloodied knife towards the window. "means you freeze to death waiting for a sign. means the infection," you point the blade tip towards bucky's bandaged leg, "wins. it crawls up your leg, and into your blood, then burns you out from the inside. it means the mountain swallows you whole, buries you under ten feet of snow, like it tried to bury her." you nod again towards alpine.

"she only clawed her way out 'cause she fought. silent. desperate. teeth and claws and no goddamn hesitation." you wrap the cleaned carcass in brown paper. "you learn to pull the trigger, rogers. on the hare. on the man in the enemy uniform. whatever the order calls it that day." you place the wrapped parcel on the counter with care.

"or you become the ghost buried in the snow. just another frozen shape the spring thaw reveals." you turn away, picking up a stained rag, wiping the blood from your hands. "now stoke the fire. we need it hot. now." the cabin smells the raw, inescapable truth of survival.

steve moves numbly towards the cast-iron stove, dark eye seeming to follow him. bucky watches you, his hand still a steady weight on alpine. the silence returns, unspoken with the understanding of the bloody chain they're all irrevocably bound to, link by link.

alpine's purr starts, softer this time. a tiny white ghost nestled against a hunter, both survivors in a world that demands blood as the price of breath.

you finish wiping your hands, the water in the basin pink.

the meal will be shared. the fire will warm their bones. but the lesson, like the stain on the snow outside, like the scent of iron clinging to the air, lingers.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the cramped bathroom is lit by a single candle stuck to the edge of the sink. you're leaning over it, scrubbing your teeth.

alpine perches like a silent sphinx on the counter beside the candle, eyes fixed unblinking on the doorway. the water from the pump earlier still feels cold on your skin.

a shadow falls across the threshold. steve pads into view, barefoot on the plank floor. he's wearing borrowed, too-small pants, his shoulders almost drowning the frame. he stops just outside, wringing his hands.

alpine's ears twitch back. you don't stop brushing. you meet his eyes in the mirror above the sink.

his expression is full of shame, apology, a desperate need to make things right with his own discomfort.

you turn your head, spit a stream of white foam into the sink. you straighten, wiping your mouth with the back of your wrist, before turning fully to face him, leaning back against the sink's edge.

alpine's rumble gets louder, a silent hiss escapes her teeth, aimed solely at steve.

"alpine doesn't scare easy," you sat. "but you barging in like a startled moose earlier sure as hell did. froze up worse than you did over the hare." you cross your arms. "shouldn't have brought you out there. knew you weren't ready for the kill."

steve flinches, eyes dropping to the floorboards. "i know. i'm... i'm sorry. for hesitating. for... intruding. for scaring her." he risks a glance at alpine, who responds with another hiss, her tail lashing against the counter. "i panicked.. and saw its eye, just... looking. i couldn't do it. i shouldn't have come."

"damn right you shouldn't have," you say, the words still hard with the cold practicality that keeps you alive. you gesture vaguely towards the window. "but seeing as how the pass is buried under ten feet of fresh snow since sundown, looks like you're stuck. here. with me. with her." you nod towards alpine, whose glare hasn't wavered. "and with him," you add, tilting your head towards the main room where bucky is likely asleep. "so you better learn fast. hesitation out here gets more than just you killed."

steve nods miserably. "i will. i swear. i'll do better." he looks up, his blue eyes pleasing. "i can do this. i just... it's different. out here. so final. so... personal."

you watch him. this giant, this symbol, this soldier, looking small and lost in your bathroom doorway, dwarfed by the weight of your judgment and your cat's undisguised belligerence. the candlelight softens the lines on his face, highlighting the genuine remorse, and determination beneath the shame.

alpine's low growl vibrates against your arm where it rests on the counter. you see the way her fur is still puffed, the way her pupils are wide black in the blue, mirroring your own initial fury. but beneath the anger, you see the caution, the fear – the same fear that drove her hiss at the door opening earlier. a fear born of protecting what's hers.

a long breath escapes you, easing the tension in your body. "it gets easier," you start, "the pull. the sight. that doesn't mean it feels good. it just means you don't freeze." you look down at your hands, then back up at him. "i wasn't always like this, you know.. wasn't always... this."

steve's head tilts, surprise, maybe understanding, crossed his face. the tiniest smile touches his lips – fragile and hopeful. "how..." he starts, cautious not to provoke another hiss from alpine. "...how did you end up here? out here alone? it's... silent. how do you stand it? not go..." he trails off, searching for the word.

you chuckle, startling alpine slightly. she stops growling, her ears pricking forwar. her attention shifts from steve to your face, noticing the shift.

"go insane?" you finish for him. you meet his eyes again. "oh, i did. my first winter? i thought the silence would crush my skull. i thought the wind was talking to me. i thought the shadows in the trees were... things." you push off the sink, picking up the rag to wipe the last traces of toothpaste.

"i went a little feral myself. i talked to the cat. i talked to the fire. sometimes screamed at the blizzard." you glance at alpine, who is watching you intently. "but the quiet... it grows on you. becomes a thing you breathe. and the thrill..." you look back at steve. "...the hunt. the stalk. the perfect shot in the perfect stillness... it's cleaner than anything else i ever knew. pure. necessary. like breathing." you toss the rag aside.

"it settles. eventually. and it becomes part of the landscape. like the rocks. like the snow." you give alpine a gentle scratch behind her ear. she leans into it.

"now get some sleep, rogers. dawn comes early. and the mountain don't care if you're sorry." you blow out the candle, plunging the small bathroom into near darkness.

alpine hops down silently, leaving steve standing in the dark with your confession – "oh, i did."

there's just the quiet understanding between two people who have both, in their own ways, learned what it means to be buried, and what it takes to claw their way back out.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the predawn light is a grey wash seeping through the window when you wake. the cabin holds the resonant quiet of a snow-buried world, broken only by the soft sounds of dying embers in the stove and... a distant pop... pop... pop... muffled by the thick log walls and the layers of snow piled against them. you lie still for a moment, listening. gunfire. spaced. practice.

steve's already outside, you guess.

you rise silently. the cold pricks your exposed face like needles. thermal leggings, wool socks, trousers, layers of shirts pulled on, still warm from your body and carrying the scent of smoke from the fire and alpine's fur.

your movements are quiet, barely disturbing the stillness, born of countless solitary mornings.. alpine is a pale smudge curled on the foot of your bed. one blue eye cracks open to watch you, like a silent sentinel in the gloom, before sliding shut again, content in the warmth-depression you left behind.

you pad into the main room, bucky's awake. he's managed to prop himself higher against the couch's arm, the precarious pillow stack reformed into a more stable throne.

he's shirtless somehow. the firelight you'd banked low before sleep casts shadows across his chest and abdomen, showing the bandages wrapped tightly around his ribs. the blanket is pooled around his hips, revealing the cut of his iliac crest above the waistband of pants that fit him too well.

he's staring towards the window, his head tilted slightly, listening intently to the steady pop... pop... pop... outside. a smile plays on his lips – pride, amusement, maybe nostalgia for the sound.

he hears your soft footfall on the floorboards, and turns his head. his eyes find you instantly. the smile widens, becomes something more intimate, despite the shadows of pain and fatigue still clinging to their depths.

"mornin'," he rasps, a vibration that seems to travel through the cold air and settle low in your own chest. "sounds like someone's trying real hard to impress the teacher before class starts." he nods towards the window, the pops continuing. "been at it since first light, i reckon. determined bastard."

you move towards the stove, kneeling, you open the iron door, welcoming the wave of heat against your face. you add a few small, dry sticks of pine, coaxing the embers back to life with careful pokes from the iron. orange tongues of flame lick hungrily at the new fuel, flickering light that across your hands and up your arms.

"determined to waste ammunition, maybe," you mutter. you glance back at him over your shoulder, taking in the way the firelight gilds the skin at the hollow of his throat. the overwhelming presence of him, even injured and propped on your couch...

"how's the leg?" you ask, as you close the stove door with a soft clang. "infection flaring? feels hot?"

he shifts slightly, testing the weight on his injured thigh. "stiff," he admits. "hurts like a bitch when i move it wrong. like a rusty gear grinding." he rolls his shoulder, it makes the muscles in his chest and arm ripple under the firelight.

"but the heat's gone down. it feels... cleaner under the wrappings. less like it's trying to rot off." the unspoken history – pain far beyond a simple mountain injury, the specter of limbs and ice. "can't gonna be chopping wood alongside him anytime soon, though." he gestures vaguely towards the door, towards the pop-pop-pop.

you dip the small pot into the water. setting it on the stove's hot surface, it hisses, steam begins to curl almost immediately. "need anything?" you ask, turning fully to face him, leaning your hip against the counter. you cross your arms, seemingly casual posture that feels defensive under his regard.

you keep your tone detached: "water? more blankets? painkiller mash? another log on the fire?" but your eyes hold his, acknowledging the current that flows beneath the mundane questions.

bucky watches you. he lets his eyes travel slowly down your body, taking in the practical bulk of your layered clothes, the boots laced tight, the way your crossed arms emphasize the line of your shoulders beneath the flannel. his look is an appraisal.

it makes your pulse kick against your ribs for no reason and you suddenly feel conscious of your body. "just need you to go easy on him out there," he says.

it's not just about steve. it's about you. about the hunter's focus, the edge you carry that both draws him in and makes something primal in him cagey.

"he's trying. harder than he's had to try at anything since..." he trails about the unspoken since the ice, since the war. his eyes linger on your mouth. "and... maybe come back in one piece?" he adds, and it feels more intimate. "saves me the trouble of hobbling out there through three feet of snow to drag your frozen ass back."

you push off the counter, taking one step closer to the couch, stopping just beyond easy reach, but the proximity is definitely... something .

the space between you is smaller now. you can smell the smoke clinging to him, the scent of his skin beneath, the underlying scent of healing flesh and old blood.

"worried about me, barnes?" you ask. "thought you were the one laid up." you look at his bandaged leg, then back up to meet his eyes.

bucky's smile deepens, turning predatory. he doesn't look away. "let's just say i've gotten used to the view," he hums. his eyes sweeps over you again, like a physical caress, lingering on your neck. it's the only skin visible on you.

"and the company. this mountain's got enough ghosts. wouldn't want it claiming the only interesting one just yet." he shifts again, adjusting his position. the blanket slips a bit down his hips, revealing more of the v line leading into the pants. his hand rests loosely on his injured thigh, fingers splayed. "

now go," he says. "teach the punk how to shoot something besides his own damn foot. before he scares off every hare within five miles with that racket." the dismissal has an undercurrent of possessiveness threading through it.

you look at him for beat longer, – the shared understanding of survival carved in solitude and violence, that odd feeling of a pull that simmers just beneath the surface of bandages, harsh words, and borrowed clothes. the pop-pop-pop outside feels like it's counting the seconds of this suspended tension.

"try not to aggravate it," you say finally, the instruction feeling like a concession, a recess. "rest. keep the fire fed." you turn, breaking the eye contact, but the awareness of him stays there, pulling you under. you grab your thick parka from the peg by the door, pulling it on. you shove your hands into the mittens.

as you grasp the latch of the cabin door, you hear his chuckle behind you, dangerous in the sudden swirl of cold air that rushes in as you pull the door open.

"no promises, doll," he calls after you. the endearment slips out, wrapping around you like smoke as you step out into the biting dawn.

the door thuds shut behind you, sealing bucky and the heat of the fire and his voice inside. the cold slams into you, but the heat he ignited within you burns, stationary inside your gut.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

you lean against the porch post, arms crossed over the thick wool of your parka. watching.

steve rogers stands thirty paces out, a bundled silhouette against the consuming white, looking less like a mountain and more like a shaggy, displaced bear attempting surgery.

he's swallowed by the layers you'd given him, bucky's leather jacket straining at the seams over his shoulders.

he raises the rifle – your rifle. his stance is... painfully and fundamentally wrong. feet too close together, barely wider than his hips, weight pitched precariously forward onto the balls of his feet like he expects the gun to throw his body back, shoulders hunched defensively high. he's not aiming with intent to shoot but bracing for impact. he squints down the sights.

POP.

the shot screams wide. impossibly high and left. the echo ricochets off the dense pines, before fading into the hungry silence.

he flinches, a full-body recoil that's like a pure startled animal, head snapping back as if the rifle's kick surprises him anew each time. he lowers it, staring at the unscarred wood of the stump with a look of profound personal betrayal.

chambering another round, he raises the rifle in that same awkward stance. same misplaced concentration furrowing his brow beneath the wool cap pulled low.

POP.

another miss. this time the bullet kicks up a pathetic geyser of snow a good two feet in front of the stump, mocking his effort.

you chuckle at him, unbidden, a puff of vapor swirling like your irritation in the cold air. it's almost... endearingly absurd. this giant, this legend, this captain america, rendered helpless by the simple, brutal physics of wilderness survival.

he whips around at the sound, finding you leaning on the porch. guilt and frustration are the only visible part of his face.

"adjust your stance, rogers," you call out. "feet shoulder-width apart. dominant foot back half a step. lean your weight into it, for christ sake. you're fighting the damn rifle like it's biting you. work with it, not against it."

he nods, almost desperate, like a drowning man offered a rope. he shuffles his boots clumsily in the deep snow, trying to mimic your instructions. he looks like a newborn foal discovering gravity – all gangly limbs and precarious balance. awkward. endearing. infuriatingly inefficient.

he raises the rifle again, yet it still looks off. every enhanced super-soldier muscle is tight, visibly filled with nervous tension.

"goddammit," you huff under your breath. pushing off the porch post, the snow crumbles loudly beneath your footsteps as you stalk towards him. "you're gonna scare off every living thing within five miles with that racket."

you stop directly behind him. too close. dangerously close. the heat pouring off his massive form hits you like opening a blast furnace door. he freezes completely, the rifle held out in front of him. he's like a statue carved from anxiety.

"relax," you command, the word vibrating right beside his ear. he gulps audibly, shoulders tightening further.

"you're strung tighter than a bowstring about to snap. the rifle isn't your enemy out here. it's your partner." you step even closer, unavoidably, against the layers covering his back. "here."

you reach around him. your hands find his, one covering his enormous hand on the rifle, the other sliding over his left hand gripping the forestock. he jolts at the contact, a full-body flinch that transmits through your own body. his hands are enormous, even encased in mittens, dwarfing yours, but you cover them, guiding with pressure.

you press your entire body against his back, using your weight and leverage to shift him. it's like trying to reposition a granite monument swaddled in quilts.

"feet," you instruct, nudging his right boot firmly back half a step with your toe, then kicking his left boot wider apart in the snow.

"there. plant them. feel the ground under you. own it. like roots." your left hand slides up his left arm, seeking the muscle of his upper arm beneath.

it feels like sculpted iron beneath the padding. you press firmly, pushing his shoulder down and back. "drop this shoulder. you're hunching like you expect the sky to fall. let it settle." your other hand slides down his right arm, pulling it tighter into the cradle of his body, aligning the wood stock perfectly against his shoulder.

"tuck the butt in. snug it right here." your knuckles brush his chest through the layers. "make it part of you. an extension of your arm."

you're pressed against his back now, from the curve of his shoulders down to his hips. your chin is level with his shoulder blade. you have to rise onto your toes, stretching up, to see properly down the sights over his arm.

your breath feathers out against the tiny strip of exposed skin at the nape of his neck. he shivers. it's not from the cold. you can feel the beats of his heart where your chest is pressed against his back.

it hammers against your sternum in syncopation with the drumming against your own body. the size of him, and the unexpected, deeply intimate act of guiding this lethal instrument in his hands. overwhelming.

"stop... wasting... ammunition," your lips is perilously close to the fabric covering his shoulder. your voice is lower and huskier. it's lower than you intended. "breathe. slow. deep. in. hold it and feel it fill you... down to your toes... now out." you exhale slowly, hitting the skin of his neck, the only exposed patch.

you feel him try to mirror you, body pressing back against you, then slowly deflating. "feel the rhythm. your own heartbeat. the wind on your cheek. the cold in your lungs. then... only then... the trigger. it's not a jerk. it's a thought."

he tries. his grip on the rifle shifts now a more controlled hold. he's listening. not just to your words, but to the feel of your body against his, the pressure of your hands guiding his. he's surrendering to the guidance, melting into your presence.

"see the target?" your cheek now almost rests against his upper arm as you both look down the long barrel. the crude circle on the stump seems impossibly far and intimately close, the only thing in the frozen world.

"not the wood grain. not the snow around it. the center. the exact point you want the bullet to kiss. imagine it flying true. nothing else exists. just you. the rifle. the point. the mountain. the silence. that's all there is. let everything else fall away."

he takes another breath. you feel the expansion of his ribs against you, the heat shares where your bodies connect from shoulder to hip. his finger finds the trigger. there's no tremor now, no hesitation.

"now," you breathe. the word comes out warm, intimate ghosting across his neck.

CRACK.

you both watch, frozen in that impossibly close press of bodies, suspended in the silence, as a splinter of wood flies from the very center of the circle on the stump.

a perfect hit.

absolute silence. deeper than before. then, a disbelieving laugh bursts from steve fogs the air. "i... i hit it! dead center! i hit it!"

you step back, releasing your hold on him and the rifle as if scalded. the air rushes back violently into the space where your bodies had been fused, shocking your system, leaving a chill and a hollow ache. you shove your hands deep into your pockets.

"barely nicked the bullseye," you say, a claw back towards detached practicality, towards the familiar armour of the hunter. "don't let it swell your head, rogers. consistency's the trick. one shot ain't a pattern."

but he's already turning towards you, the rifle forgotten on his hand. his face is red, not just from the cold now, but from the exertion, the success, the... closeness.

his blue eyes are impossibly bright, fixed on you. there's pure, boyish wonder there and beneath it, heat that mirrors the tension still sizzling in the inches of frozen air separating you.

it's focused solely on you. the hunter who stepped into the wolf's space and showed it the way.

"i hit it," he repeats, softer this time. it's awed, a statement of hard-won accomplishment that resonates deeper than the shot itself. he takes a step towards you, closing the small distance you'd created. "because of you."

you hold his gaze, trapped in the blue, the vast, indifferent snowy silence pressing in from all sides. the perfect shot still rings in your ears, or perhaps it's just the pounding of your own heart.

the solitary hunter taught the lost soldier. the mountain hare stood behind the super-soldier wolf and showed it where to bite clean.

the ancient peaks watch you, eternal witnesses in the frozen space between two souls who suddenly understand the fragile heat they've ignited in each other beneath the endless grey sky.

the lesson was survival, but the aftermath feels like standing on the precipice of something far more dangerous.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the cabin door opens. you follow steve in, stomping snow off your boots. the familiar scents – woodsmoke, pine resin, bucky's blend of sweat and healing skin – hit you after the sterile bite of outside.

bucky's exactly where you left him. propped on the couch throne, shirtless, firelight painting gold on skin, bandages white.

but he's not looking at the flames. his head is turned towards the window you just entered through, a smirk already carved onto his lips before he even fully turns it towards you both. alpine's absence from his chest, leaves the stage clear.

"hey, doll," bucky says. the word isn't just warm. it's lead poured directly into your veins. intimate. possessive.

it doesn't just land between your thighs; it's a seismic shift low in your belly, a heat that blooms outward, scorching, foreign after years of frozen solitude. it has nothing to do with the stove's warmth. everything to do with the dark promise in his eyes.

you feel it instantly. a clench deep inside, a pulsing ache. your inner muscles tighten, reflexive and traitorous spasm. instinctively, subtly, your thighs press together hard, seeking friction, trying to contain the sudden pulse of blood demanding release. your fingers curl into tight fists inside your mittens.

bucky's eyes – those hunter's eyes, sharp as the knife you gut hares with – don't miss it. they drop, just for a second, to where your trousers strain over the press of your thighs.

pure, predatory awareness flares in the dark depths before his eyes lift back up, back to your face. he saw. he knows. acknowledgment of your body's betrayal.

steve, shedding his outer layers by the door, freezes mid-motion. his head snaps towards bucky, brows crashing together over the bridge of his nose. confusion wars and bewildered possessiveness.

"doll?" he repeats. the word sounds strange, clumsy on steve's tongue, alien compared to bucky's.

he looks back between bucky's face and your frozen stance, still bundled like an arctic explorer, cheeks undoubtedly blushing beyond what the cold could explain.

it's a live wire strung taut between the three of you with unspoken currents – the raw intimacy of the shooting, bucky's devastating endearment, your body's humiliatingly public response, steve'sconflicted awareness.

"gonna... head to the bathroom," you blurt. the words are too high. you avoid both sets of eyes – bucky's, steve's – focusing on the snow melting in dirty puddles on your floorboards.

"real quick." you don't wait. you bolt. snow sheds from your clothes like a miniature avalanche as you cross the space, practically slamming the bathroom door shut behind you. you lean your back against the wood, pressing into it as if it could absorb the tremor.

the bathroom feels like diving into an ice cave after standing too close to a blast furnace. the residual warmth is instantly swallowed by the invasive chill leaching through the logs. the scents shift too – lye soap, tiles, wood – replacing the complex, living smells of the main room. but the cold outside is a feather compared to the inferno inside you.

you sag against the door, palms flat against the wood as if bracing against an invisible tide. the sensations are overwhelming, paralyzing.

the heat of steve's broad back pressed flush against your front, the wall of muscle yielding just enough under your guiding hands... the perfect alignment, the breath, the kick of the rifle transmitted through both your bodies as one... the shot echoing like a shared heartbeat. and over it all, binding it, igniting it: bucky's voice, intimate, wrapping around you – "doll."

it echoes in your blood, like a lit match tossed into bone-dry tinder deep in your core. a fresh, scalding wave of heat erupts, a clench so intense it makes your knees threaten to buckle. you lock them violently, pressing your thighs together with bruising force.

the fabric of your trousers provides maddeningly little friction against the swollen, aching pulse beneath. a choke rips from your throat, muffled instantly by the arm you throw across your mouth.

"fuck," you gasp against your own sleeve. the layers – the parka, the sweaters, the flannel shirt – suddenly feel like a suffocating straitjacket.

sweat beads instantly on your upper lip. it trickles between your breasts, soaking the collar of your shirt beneath the layers. it's not exertion sweat. it's pure, desperate arousal, a flood in your body, starved for years in the mountain's. one that doesn't know how to contain. it's a territory unexplored since before the war took everything, before the silence became your only companion.

your need is primal, and absolutely overwhelming. rational thought drowns in the sensory storm.

fingers fumble desperately at the awkward toggles of your parka. it resists, and you curse in response, yanking hard.

finally, it gives, and you shove the heavy garment off your shoulders, letting it slump to the floorboards. the sudden rush of cooler air on your arms is instantly swallowed by the deeper inferno raging lower down.

next, the cable-knit sweater. you grab the hem, hauling it up over your head. the knit catches on your ears, pulling strands of hair painfully. you don't care. it joins the parka. the thermal shirt beneath is already soaked through, clinging transparently, outlining the hard points of your nipples even through your bra, peaked tight against the damp fabric. you see them in the sliver of mirror above the sink – dark buds demanding attention.

you don't pause. fingers moving now attack the small plastic buttons of the thermal shirt. one pops off, pinging against the sink and vanishing onto the floor. irrelevant.

you rip the shirt open, buttons scattering like shrapnel, and tear it off, flinging it aside. the air bites your bare torso, raising instant gooseflesh, but the relief is a cruel illusion. the heat is deep, demanding, radiating from your core, seeping through every pore.

"come on, come on," you hiss, desperation sharpening your voice. finally, the prong gives. you yank the belt free, letting it clatter to the floor like a discarded weapon.

the button of your heavy canvas trousers is next, then the stiff zipper. you shove them down over your hips, along with the thermal leggings beneath, kicking them off with your still-booted feet in a tangled, damp heap. the rough floorboards sting the soles of your feet through your socks, a sensation barely registered.

you stand braced against the door in just your socks, plain cotton underwear damp and breathing like you've sprinted miles through deep snow.

sweat glistens on your collarbones, pools in the hollow between your breasts, traces a path down the tense valley of your spine. your skin feels hypersensitive, every nerve ending screaming. your underwear is soaked, pasted against the swollen, throbbing heat between your legs. the ache is a physical presence of pulsing knot. pure, unfulfilled need.

you press your forehead hard against the wood of the door, eyes squeezed shut, trying to find control.

years of solitude, of being the ghost, the watchful hare, the practical hunter... they offered no preparation for this onslaught. this felt like stepping onto a battlefield naked.

but then, cutting through your breathing, the low murmur of voices penetrates the wood.

steve's voice, bewildered: "doll? what the hell was that, buck? 'doll'? since when?"

bucky's reply, "told you. habit. it slips out. she didn't seem to mind it 'til you walked in lookin' like you'd seen a ghost and she lit up like a pinball machine. somethin' happen out there besides the shot, stevie? looked... awful cozy. real close there, huh. pressed right up."

steve's flustered response floods back – the memory of her body against his, her breath on his neck, guiding his hands. "she was correcting my stance," he insists, defensive. "i couldn't hit the damn stump. she showed me how." he's avoiding bucky's stare, you can feel it through the door.

"showed you how to breathe, didn't she?" bucky's voice drops to a conspiratorial tone. "felt her hands on you? guiding you? pressing in?" you can almost see him leaning forward. "felt her chest against your back when she showed you how to hold that rifle just right? snug against your shoulder? right where it kicks?" another pause, letting the implication sink in. "bet she knew exactly where to put her hands. where to lean. how to make you feel it."

the heat in steve's face must be volcanic. "it was necessary," he grates out, though the sensations bucky describes are terrifyingly accurate, amplified now by memory.

"necessary? maybe. effective? hell yes. one shot. perfect. after she got you all settled in nice and tight." bucky's head turns towards the bathroom door. you feel his attention even through the wood.

"heard her little gasp when she stepped back, too. like she'd been shocked. or finally let go of one." a grenade rolled into the silence. "she's wound tighter than a garrote wire in a blizzard, steve. years out here alone... sharpens certain... appetites. makes the quiet real loud sometimes. makes small things... big."

inside the bathroom, pressed against the door, drenched in shame and desperate arousal, you hear every damn word. bucky's voice, describing exactly what you'd felt, what you'd done... acknowledging the heat, naming it appetites... it's gasoline on the bonfire inside you. he sees you. the hunter sees the hare trembling in its hiding place.

a desperate whimper escapes your lips, no longer muffled. your hands fly to your breasts, cupping the heavy weight, fingers roughly brushing, then pinching the hardened nipples through your bra. pleasure-pain arcs straight to your core. your hips jerk forward involuntarily, grinding the aching heat of your cunt against the wood of the door. the pressure is insufficient

you rock against it, shameless now, fueled by bucky's words and the memory of steve's solidity against you. your thighs are slick with sweat and your own arousal, your underwear soaked through. one hand snakes down, fingers slipping beneath the waistband, seeking the source of the torturous pressure.

you find the slick, swollen flesh. your folds are drenched, sensitive.

a choke tears from your throat as your middle finger finds your clit. you circle it, hard, fast, your finger dragging against the hypersensitive button while the door provides crucial counter-pressure as you grind your hips forward.

outside, bucky's voice continues, a seductive taunt aimed straight at the barrier separating you. "...bet she feels it right now, steve," he hums. "all that focus, all that control she wears... wound up so goddamn tight... finally finding a release valve. probably pressed right up against that door, listenin' to every word... feelin' every damn thing we're sayin'..."

you are. oh god, you are.

the hunter narrating the hare's pulse.

your fingers work faster, plunging two deep inside your aching cunt now alongside the circling of your clit. the stretch burns, the friction is torture. the wood bites into your bare shoulder, your hip, your forehead as you writhe against it, lost in the perfect storm of sensation and sound, of being seen and known in your most desperate vulnerability.

bucky's voice, describing your unraveling, steve's breathing just feet away – it's too much, too intense, too alive after the long silence. that knot inside your stomach, years of isolation, builds impossibly tighter, tighter...

"...wonder what sounds she's making in there," bucky muses, his voice dropping. "bet they're real pretty. real... desperate."

a sob escapes you, harmonizing with the wet, slap of your skin against the wood and the sounds of your own fingers plunging deep.

the orgasm crashes over you with terrifying speed and violence. your body arches off the door in silence, every muscle locking, then shattering. blinding ecstasy explodes in your core, radiating outwards in scorching waves.

you slump forward, forehead pressed hard to the wood, slick with sweat, gasping for air that feels thin, cold.

silence. blessed, terrifying silence inside the bathroom.

you shattered against the door.

the ghost, the hare, the hunter... unmade by a single word and the years of silence it broke. the territory you hadn't stepped into? you'd just been violently, beautifully thrown across its threshold.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the cabin's silence tonight isn't the vast, empty embrace of the mountains. all you can think of is bucky's voice saying the word, "doll," the press of steve's back against your chest, and the shattering release you'd wrung from yourself against the bathroom door.

you lie rigid in your bed, a statue carved from want. the familiar quilts, which is usually a comforting weight to you, feels suffocating.

you've shed everything but your bra and panties – feeling absurd, like gossamer against the wildfire storming inside you. alpine is a weight near your feet, contentment oblivious to the shift within you.

sleep is a lie. your body thrums, still sparking with the aftershocks of that violent, stolen climax. your mind, feverish, replays the day on a sensual, imagined loop you've come up with:

the press of steve's back against your front, muscle yielding under your guiding hands... the inhale, the stillness at the bottom of the breath, the sharp crack of the rifle kicking through both your bodies as one... the wonder in his bright, ocean eyes when he hit the target. because of you.

bucky's shit eating grin from the couch throne... shirtless, firelight painting him gold, mapping the scars on his chest and shoulders... the leaden warmth of "doll" poured directly into your veins, the predatory awareness in his fathomless eyes as they saw the traitorous clench of your body, the instinctive press of your thighs...

"looked real close. real... hands-on." "felt the tension rolling off her... like she needed to get away. fast."

a wave of heat takes over you. it starts a pulsing ache between your legs that echoes the drumbeat of your heart. foreign is what it is. years of solitude, of being the hare, the practical and solitary hunter, offer no defense against this resurgence. innocence, long buried under grief and survival, feels ripped away, leaving raw, uncharted territory with desperate need.

minutes bleed into an eternity.

you lie perfectly still, listening to the silence of the cabin. your skin feels sensitive, every brush of the sheet against your arm, every shift of the quilts over your legs, sending shocks skittering across your nerves.

the press of steve's back. bucky's gaze, pinning you to the bed even in his absence. the scent of your own arousal from the earlier climax.

the ache deepens, becoming a hollow throb. it's deeper than before, gnawing emptiness that paralles the vastness outside the walls.

shame flickers, a cold drowned by the rising tide of need. you tried. you spent yourself against the door, wrung out and trembling. but it wasn't enough. it just opened the floodgates wider, exposed a deeper, hungrier cavern within.

slowly, almost against your will, your hand moves. not with the urgency like before, but with a slowness born of bone-deep exhaustion and desire.

it slips beneath your panties, fingers encountering the heat trapped there. a soft sigh escapes you. the fabric is soaked through again, clinging to sensitive flesh.

your fingers trace the outer folds, slick, wet. you circle the nub of your clit. pleasure lances through the fog of exhaustion, startling in its intensity.

you press harder, experimentally, grinding the heel of your palm against yourself through the barrier. a moan vibrates in your throat, swallowed instantly. your hips lift minutely off the mattress, seeking the pressure.

the images flood back, unbidden, more potent than before, drenched in the scent of your own need and the lingering echoes of their presence:

not your fingers. but his. the imagined shock of his knuckles tracing the inside of your thigh, skin catching on flesh. his right hand – large, infinitely sure – slides into your panties, pushing it aside.

"there you are, doll," his voice is a dark caress. "still soaked for us. dripping just thinking about it, ain't ya?" his fingers find your entrance. not gentle. but demanding. one thick finger plunges deep, curling, searching, stretching you with an intimate knowledge.

"found it," a hunter locating his mark in the dark. "that sweet spot. feels you clenchin' already, beggin' for it." a second finger joins the first, stretching you further, a delicious burn that makes your own fingers mimic the motion inside your aching heat.

"that's it. take it. take what you need." his thumb finds your clit. "show me how bad you still want it."

then hesitant hands engulfs you. hesitant as the finger on that trigger earlier, replaces yours at your throat, his thumb pressing gently against the pulse fluttering wildly like a startled hare's heart beneath your jaw.

"steady," steve's voice. "just breathe. we got you." his other hand finds your breast, palming the weight through your bra, his thumb slides over your hardened nipple.

the sensation is amplified by the fabric, making your hips arch against your own hand, seeking the depth of bucky's fingers while steve chokes you and plays with your tits.

"god... so soft. so perfect." steve's voice is filled with discovery. his head lowers, mouth replacing his hand on your breast.

you feel the wetness of his tongue through the barrier, suckling your nipple deep, his teeth grazing lightly yet possessively. a moan tears from your lips, muffled into the pillow.

"so sweet. taste you... smell you... everywhere." steve's mouth moves lower, towards the apex of your thighs where bucky's hand works...

the ultimate possession. above you, as bucky's imagined fingers work their devastation inside you and steve's mouth claims your breast, moving lower... they lean into each other.

bucky's head tilting, steve's blond one meeting him halfway.

a slow, deep kiss, full of shared history, shared understanding, shared possession of you.

their lips move together, tongues sliding, a silent, wet conversation conducted over your exposed body. you hear the groan bucky makes as steve's tongue delves into his mouth, feel the answering rumble in steve's chest pressed near your side.

it's the ultimate intimacy: them pleasuring each other as they pleasure you. the soldier and the hunter, united in unraveling the hare, their kiss sealing the pact. "mine..." bucky breathes against steve's lips, his fingers curling deep, hitting that spot that makes your back come silently off the bed. "...ours," steve says back, his intention clear in the fantasy's descent.

your own fingers become actors in the renewed fantasy. two plunge deep inside your aching cunt, desperate, mimicking bucky's claiming thrusts with increasing urgency.

your thumb grinds hard circles on your clit, mirroring his pressure. your hips lift higher off the bed, seeking the impossible depth, arching your breast towards steve's mouth, your core towards bucky's imagined invasion. the hand not buried between your legs twists in the thin sheet.

"fuck... bucky... steve... please..." the words are sobs, torn into the pillow. alpine stirs slightly at your feet, her purr faltering for a second.

the fantasy intensifies, merging with the pace of your touch, blurring the line between imagination and desperate reality.

bucky's fingers curl relentlessly inside you, scissoring slightly, stretching you obscenely wide for the thickness you crave. "gonna make you take it all, doll. gonna make you scream our names into the mountains. nobody'll hear you."

steve's mouth leaves your breast, lower, breath ghosting over your belly, lower still... his hands spread your thighs wider, and his tongue finds your clit alongside bucky's hand.

"let go," steve instructs against your skin with desire. "show us. show us how good we make you feel."

then steve pulls his lips off of your clit. you whine ar the ache. their kiss deepens above you, bucky groaning into steve's mouth as he feels you spasm around his thrusting fingers. "fuck, steve... she's close... feel how tight she gets... clenching like a fist around me..."

steve's lips are back on you, mumbling as he licks you through it. "so hot... so wet... never tasted anything like it... gonna make her come on my tongue..."

it comes in a wave. not the like localized violence of the bathroom, nor the deep, rolling thunder of the first climax in bed. this is annihilation. a supernova erupting in the core of your being, shattering every nerve ending, every coherent thought.

pleasure, utterly consuming, floods every cell, radiating out from your core in waves that feel like they might tear you apart.

your cunt convulses around your buried fingers, your back arches impossibly high off the bed, a silent scream locked behind teeth that's buried in your bottom lip.

your hips grind against your own hand, seeking something only fantasy provides while lost in a maelstrom of sensation.

you collapse back onto the bed, gasping with tears still leaking. your hand falls away from your core.

the vivid images shatter, fading like smoke. bucky's possession, steve's awed murmur ("never tasted anything like it"), the pressure of their hands, their mouths, their claiming kiss. the scent of your own arousal: an undeniable confession saturating the quiet cabin.

you lie there, trembling long after the physical tremors subside, exhausted thud that seems to shake the frame of the bed. alpine's purr resumes.

the mountain's vast silence presses against the cabin again.

but inside, the quiet is forever changed. saturated with your shattered sense of control, the imprint of their touch, the scent of sex and spent desire, and the understanding: the solitary hare has been seen, tracked, and claimed, not once, but twice in the depths of the night. the hunters are no longer merely circling the den; they've breached its deepest sanctuary.

she lies conquered, innocence incinerated, territory overrun, lost in a silence now deafening with the promise of shared, desperate, consuming heat.

the line between prey and something else, something claimed and irrevocably changed, has not just blurred; it has dissolved into this aftermath.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the deep, dreamless void of exhaustion is shattered not by sound, but by weight. a weight settling squarely on your chest. alpine. her small paws knead the thin fabric of your sleep shirt, claws pricking faintly through to your skin, dragging you back from oblivion.

you blink, groggy, disoriented, surfacing from the profound depths of sleep into the cabin's moonlit silence.

then you hear it.

a thud... thud... thud... muffled, but distinct.

not the lean bite of the axe on wood. this is softer, heavier. resonant. it pulses through the floorboards beneath your mattress, a vibration felt in your bones before it fully registers in your ears.

it's coming from the main room. specifically, it sounds like... something solid hitting the log wall beside the couch. hard. it's accompanied by a creak – the protesting of old timber under sustained strain.

you freeze. alpine's purr vibrates against your sternum. you hold your breath, straining your ears against the suffocating silence. it's filled with tension you've never known in your solitary fortress.

silence. then the thud... thud... thud... resumes. slower this time. deeper. a steady percussion against the quiet night.

it's punctuated by... something else. a sound. not quite a word. a bitten-off grunt. masculine. strained.

"mmph..." barely audible, cut off instantly. the sound is abruptly muffled, cut short, as if smothered by a large hand.

then a whisper, urgent, with suppressed force and a possessiveness that curls your toes: "quiet. gotta be quiet. walls are thin. she'll hear."

the thudding pauses. a shuffling sound. fabric rustling, like bodies scrambling against wool blankets.

another voice, deep, rough, breathless: "tryin'... fuck... bucky— your hand—"

the thudding starts again. it's faster and harder now, driven by a urgency. the wall creaks. thudthudthud... like a heartbeat given a physical form.

alpine's ears swivel flat back against her skull, her purr turning into silence. she stares towards the closed bedroom door, sensing energy radiating from the other room – of men starved for touch, for release, for connection after years of war and ice.

you lie still. every nerve ending is alight. the sheet feels like sandpaper against your skin. the sensations from your own desperate, solitary release earlier – fingers pressed between thighs, the muffled gasp into your pillow – flare back to life with vividness.

your cheeks burn. your thighs press together tightly, seeking unconscious friction against the traitorous ache stirring low in your belly. again. you bite down hard on your lower lip, an anchor against the tide of... what? horror? fascination? a dark, unfamiliar curiosity?

the whispers come again, barely audible over the thudding and the rustle of fabric:

"buck—" thin, muffled again – a hand clamped over a mouth? "ungh..."

"i know... fuck, i know... just... hold on... tighter..." the deeper voice wit angry need. a command. "like that... yeah..."

"harder—" a gasp, desperate, escaping the grip for a second. "please—!"

"told you... shut... up... christ..." a command hissed, desperate intensity that borders on violence. "gonna wake her... gonna..." the sentence dissolves into another choke.

the thudding escalates.

it's not just against the wall anymore; it sounds like the whole heavy couch is slamming into the logs, like a heavy pounding that shakes the small cabin's frame.

thud. thud. thud.

the pace is driven by a hunger that feels feral. alpine lets out a tiny, distressed mrrp! and burrows her head completely under your chin, trembling violently against your throat.

the sounds – wetter, slicker, the slap of skin on skin barely disguised beneath the thudding and the blanket, punctuated by muffled gasps and animalistic groans swallowed against fabric or flesh.

minutes stretch.

an agonizing eternity measured in the brutality.

sweat along your hairline, between your breasts, slicking your palms. the harsh panting, the scrape of skin, the wet sounds you can identify now, sounds that send fresh waves of heat flooding your system, tightening your nipples, making the ache between your thighs sharpen.

your hips lift minutely off the mattress, seeking anything, as you rub your thighs together.

the force of their coupling, the need of it, is a violation of your sanctuary that simultaneously fascinates and ignites you.

you are the ghost, unseen, unheard, yet drowning in the sensory overload of their desperate passion. deprived. all of you. you of human touch for years, them of peace, of safety, of the right to love openly in a world that would call it sin.

the isolation that was your shield now becomes your prison, forcing you to witness this intimacy that feels both terrifying and magnetically alluring.

then, a change. a groan. long, low, drawn-out, ripped from someone's chest. not pain. something deeper, final, a sound of surrender or shattering release, impossible to fully muffle this time.

"ahhhh... christ... buck... can't—!"

the thudding stutters. slows. uneven. thud... a gasp... thud... pushed beyond its limit.

a cry instantly cut off – definitely a hand clamped hard over a mouth. followed by a exhale that sounds suspiciously broken, escaping the confinement.

"steve... oh god... steve..." the name, breathed like a prayer, saturated with ecstasy and agony.

silence crashes down.

alpine's frightened breathing against your neck, and, faintly from the other room. men trying to reclaim the air, trying to reassemble themselves. the creak of the abused couch as heavy weight shifts. a sigh that seems to come from the depths of the earth. the rustle of fabric – a blanket pulled up? a body turning away? a soft, wet sound that might be a kiss, or a tear being brushed away.

you remain paralyzed. your core's heat hasn't subsided; it's demanding, shameful, intertwined with the shock of intrusion, the sense of being an unwilling voyeur in your own home.

the images your mind conjures – bucky's bare back in firelight, steve's massive frame moving with desperation, the wall shuddering under impact, a large hand silencing a cry – are seared into your consciousness.

the whispered commands, the pleas, the raw, animal sounds... they poison the silence you once owned.

alpine slowly uncurls from under your chin, peering towards the door again, ears twitching. she looks back at you, seeming to ask the question burning in your own frozen, throbbing mind: what have we just witnessed?

and beneath it all, under the shock, the unwanted, arousal still pulsing between your own legs, a thought slithers, colder than the mountain night: they forgot you were here. forgotten, like a ghost in your own sanctuary, forced to eavesdrop on the desperate, hidden passion of two soldiers clinging to each other in the dark, their love a furtive, pounding rhythm against the wall that separates you.

the silence aches, filled only by their breathing from the other side of the door and the deafening roar of your own conflicted blood, a roar that whispers of loneliness, of deprivation, and of a hunger suddenly, terrifyingly awakened.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

sleep is a traitor. it dances beyond reach, a will-o'-the-wisp in the dark. it's perpetually almost yours but dissolving the moment you grasp for it. it's taunted by the thrum of alpine on the mattress beneath you.

a metronome counting the seconds, and the echoes that refuse to fade: bucky's voice, steve's protests. your skin feels too tight, like a poorly fitted suit, filled with restless energy that has nowhere to go but inward, growing tighter and tighter.

the images blaze behind your closed lids, and worst of all, the memory of your own desperation against the bathroom door, the wood a poor substitute, a shameful attempt to smother the wildfire bucky's voice had started.

3:17 am glows faintly, a green accusation on the battered alarm clock's face. the numbers blur. you can't lie here anymore. the silence isn't quiet; it screams with the echoes of their voices, the imagined sounds, the frantic beat of your own traitorous heart.

you throw back the blankets. alpine stirs, blinking her eyes. "shh, ghost," you murmur. you pad silently across the floorboards towards the bathroom door, the only sanctuary for your gear.

the hallway is a canyon of pitch black. every creak of the settling logs is a betrayal. you slip inside the bathroom, shutting the door with care. no light. you don't need it. you know this space like every splinter, every cold nailhead underfoot.

in the absolute dark, you stand for a suspended moment, shivering not just from cold, clad only in panties and bra. the silence here is profound, a vacuum amplifying the heat between your legs, like a treacherous furnace banked but not extinguished.

your fingers brush, involuntarily, over the fabric clinging to your core. you wrench your hand away as if burned. focus. hunt. that's what you do. it's your compass, the immutable law of this frozen world.

you pull on the long johns, the scratchy fabric dragging against your skin. then heavy canvas trousers, stiff with cold, buckling around your waist. a thermal shirt follows, then the flannel. each layer is a shield, a barrier against the cold outside, against the treacherous memories clawing inside, against the heat in your stomach like a sleeping serpent. you lace your boots with cold fingers . shrug into your thickest wool sweater, then the heavy canvas parka, its weight settles on your shoulders, yet feeling alien tonight over the warmth beneath. mittens. wool hat.

the cold gear feels like a disguise over the woman beneath, a contradiction you carry with you as you open the bathroom door and step back into the silence of the hallway.

you pause, a shadow among shadows. the main room is a pool of darkness, lit only by the dying orange in the stove's belly.

your eyes, adjusted to the dark, pick out shapes. bucky is sprawled on the couch, his throne. shirtless. the blanket has slipped down to his waist, revealing his chest and abdomen, the. one arm is flung over his head, the other rests on his stomach.

it's a raw display of strength and vulnerability. a confusing mix of awe and a want. alpine is now curled into the hollow near bucky's hip on the couch.

you move like a ghost, a wisp gliding across the floor. alpine lifts her head as you near the couch. you crouch, reaching out, she bumps her head against it with a purr deep in her chest.

you lean down, a lingering kiss to the soft fur between her ears – pine, and snow. she's an anchor in the churning storm of your own emotions. "keep watch, ghost," you whisper. a plea for the solitude you crave.

straightening, the ache in your core is a dull throb, you move towards the door. your rifle leans against the log wall nearby. you lift it, like an extension of your purpose. the door latch clicks softly, as you ease it open.

a slice of the star-studded night air slices in, smelling of ice and infinite distance. you slip through the opening, pulling the door shut behind you with care, sealing yourself out into the night.

the cold outside is absolutely breathtaking. it bites through the layers instantly, a welcomed shock to the system after the cabin's heat and your own inner furnace.

it scours your skin, burns your lungs. the world is a dome of black velvet with a million diamond stars, the snow glowing with an internal blue luminescence. you take a deep breath, scouring your lungs clean, or so you hope.

focus. be the hunter.

you move with the ingrained silence of years on the packed snow near the cabin before striking out into the deeper, virgin snow, angling towards the high, windswept ridge where the snowshoe hares browse the tender bark of young saplings in the predawn grey.

your senses, by necessity, are hyper-alert: the whisper of wind sifting through pine boughs, the creak of a burdened branch, the almost imaginary ozone of the stars.

your body falls into the your routine, the hunter's glide – efficient, economical, silent as falling snow, watching every step and breath.

but beneath the efficiency, something fundamental is... off. there's a a distraction rooted deep in your core. the ache between your legs hasn't vanished; the cold has merely numbed it, pushed it deeper, made it a constant beneath the frost. and your mind... your traitorous, starved mind... it's a runaway sled careening back down the slope towards the warmth of the cabin. towards the two shirtless forms sprawled in sleep.

did bucky stir when you pressed your lips to alpine's head? did he feel your gaze tracing the lines of his chest, the bandages, his shoulder?

what would his skin feel like under your bare palm, not guiding a rifle, but tracing the map of scars – old battles and new pain – exploring the hard planes of muscle?

the image of steve's back... what would it feel like pressed flush against your front now, without the layers of wool and canvas, without the rifle between you?

the remembered heat... the size and strength contained in that sleeping form...

you shake your head violently, a spray of snow dusting from your hat like shaken diamonds.

focus. on. the. hunt.

the command is demanding in your mind. you scan the slopes, the deep blue beneath the tree lines, the outlines of junipers clawing at the sky. there. a movement. near a cluster of low junipers huddled like conspirators against the ridge.

you freeze instantly, melting into the deeper shadow cast by a gnarled pine, its trunk wide enough to swallow you whole. slowly, you raise the rifle, settling the the stock against your cheekbone.

your finger, encased in your mitten, finds the trigger. wait. wait for the perfect moment.

the hare steps cautiously into a patch of moonlight, clean silhouette against the snow. perfect.

but the thoughts are vipers, insidious.

what were they doing? after you fled to the bathroom... after you... rubbed yourself against the door, listening to them dissect your touch, your effect... did the conversation continue? did bucky lean closer whispering more explicit guesses about where your hands had lingered on steve? did steve, flustered but unable to deny the truth, admit... anything?

could the low thuds you'd imagined earlier through the floorboards... were they real? muffled impacts from the cabin floor? bodies shifting together?

who was riding who? was bucky on top, leveraging his strength even with the injured leg braced awkwardly?

or was steve... god, the unchecked power of him pinning bucky down? how did bucky's injured leg even fit into that desperate tangle? did they groan? low sounds torn from throats? whisper names, curses, encouragements? was it a sudden collision of need?

or a devastating exploration? did bucky gasp steve's name? or did that possession shape the word 'doll' again, but this time aimed at the blond soldier?

the images flood, vivid, stealing your focus, making your grip on the rifle stock tighten. the cold metal of the barrel feels suddenly.. off against your cheek.

you see bucky's eyes fixed on steve's face above him. you see the flex of steve's back. you hear the low, choked sounds... are they gasps of discomfort from bucky's leg? or gasps of pleasure?

instinctively, you shift your weight, pressing your thighs together firmly, relieving friction of canvas against canvas. an involuntary gasp escapes your lips.

now. the hare is there. motionless for a heartbeat, nibbling.

perfect.

a clean, easy, necessary shot. your finger tightens on the trigger. the breath cycle starts, automatically: in... deep, filling your lungs... hold... the world narrows to the sight picture... out... slow, controlled release...

but your mind is still trapped in the cabin. tangled in the imagination.

who was making that choked sound? what did bucky's hand look like gripping steve's hip? did steve's head fall back, exposing his throat?

you squeeze the trigger.

CRACK.

the shot explodes, a violent rip in the fabric of the silent night. the sound crashes against the mountains, echoing back in waves.

but it's wrong. rushed. panicked. sloppy. you see the puff of snow erupt violently a good foot behind and slightly left of the hare.

the hare doesn't startle,or bolt in panic.

it simply... vanishes.

one second it's a dark shape, ears twitching. the next heartbeat, it's gone. completely. as if it had never been anything but a trick of your distracted mind. swallowed whole by the silent, indifferent mountain. erased.

you stand frozen, rifle still raised, welded to you, the shot ringing in your ears, then fading, deeper, colder. the space where the hare stood is empty. untouched. a mocking void.

you missed. you. never miss a shot like that. not when you are the hunter, focused, merged with the mountain'. it's unthinkable. a fundamental tear in the fabric of your being.

but you weren't the hunter. not tonight. you were the hare. distracted. trembling. senses overwhelmed, caught frozen in the open not by a predator's gaze, but by the heat, the sounds, the touch of the cabin miles away.

you forgot the hare. you forgot the simple chain. you forgot the mountain's single, immutable law: absolute focus, or vanish.

just like the hare, you vanished into the labyrinth of your own distraction, your own desperate yearning.

and now, standing alone in the silence, the missed shot and the emptiness where life should lie heavy in your numb hands, you realize with certainty that you've disappeared too. vanished into the night, chasing warmth and sound and intimacy, leaving behind only the cold scent of gunpowder hanging in the air and your failure.

the hunter became the prey, and the prey simply... ceased to be.

──★ 🐇˙🧷 ̟ 🐈‍⬛ !!

the walk back is a gauntlet. the empty bag slaps against your hip with each step, like it's a mocking you. the cold has seeped deep, past the layers, into your bones, but it's nothing compared to the shame in your chest.

idiot. weak. pathetic.

the words hammer against the inside of your skull, relentless as the axe blows steve had delivered days ago.

you replay the moment – the hare, the perfect stillness before the shot... and then the cascade of images: bucky's bare chest, steve's back, the press of him against you, bucky's voice whispering doll, the imagined sounds, the friction against the door....

how? how could you? you never miss. never. the rule was absolute. focus or starve. focus or freeze. focus or die. you were the mountain itself. now? you were... nothing. a ghost who'd missed her own haunting. the hare vanishing wasn't luck; it was condemnation. you vanished. your discipline evaporated like your breath in the air.

stupid girl. letting them get under your skin. letting soldiers, men, tangled in their own wars, make you forget who you are. what you are. the isolation you'd worn, the solitude that was your strength, shattered by their mere presence. their maleness, their history, their proximity... it had been a poison, a slow-acting toxin that finally paralyzed your hunter's instinct when it mattered most.

steve and bucky.

the names are curses in your mind.

the devastating intimacy of that single word... doll. they were the spark and the tinder. they were the distraction that cost you the kill. that cost you your certainty.

dawn bleeds into the sky. the cabin comes into view, smoke curling from the chimney, with a promise of warmth that now feels like a trap. the sight fuels the cold fury in you rather than the hunger.

no more.

they have to go. today. now. bucky's leg be damned. steve's efforts be damned. their war, their history, their... everything be damned. they are a luxury you cannot afford. a distraction you cannot survive. they are the reason you walked back empty-handed, your stomach already clenching with the gnawing void of failure.

you picture it: throwing open the door. the single, flat command: "out." no explanations. no arguments.

bucky might protest. steve would look stricken, those eyes wide with confusion and hurt.

let them. let bucky limp. let steve carry him. the mountain would test them, as it tested you. as it just tested you and found you wanting because of them.

you reach the porch, stomping the snow from your boots. your hand rests on the latch. the warmth from inside seeps through the wood.

inside, they are probably stirring. bucky, shirtless, on that stupid throne. steve, stretching his body on the floor. alpine, blinking sleepily.

the image is momentarily seared onto your mind – a tableau of unwanted intimacy, the source of your unraveling and failure.

you take a deep breaths. the emptiness of the bag is a testament to your failure. their fault. all of it.

the plan solidifies: get in. feed alpine the last of the dried fish. stoke the fire one last time for them, a final, bitter courtesy. then, the words: "pack what's yours. you're leaving. today."

no room for hesitation. not this time. you'd hesitated out there, lost in fantasies of them, and the hare vanished.

you wouldn't hesitate now. you pull the latch. the door opens.

time to hunt different prey. time to reclaim your mountain. time to make them disappear, just like the hare.

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