[complete!]
"𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐈, 𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐈, 𝐀𝐌𝐀𝐕𝐈"
(latin)
𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣: I came, I saw, I loved
Rebecca Cooper had never fallen in love before. She knew what it would feel like, of course, but no one had ever made her feel that way. She'd lost...
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MANY OF THEIR MISSIONS had specifically targeted Hydra forces and bases. Their ultimate goal was to wipe them off the map, and as war was, there was usually something in your way. Mainly armies of Hydra soldiers with their glowing blue guns and their black masks. Most of the time it wasn't just them seven, but multitudes of soldiers from other regiments coming to join them in their efforts.
Forward lines were pushed back successfully and bases were taken. Battles took place anywhere they were met with a challenge, from forests, to towns, to beaches, and to Hydra bases. The 107th collected all sorts of intel about Hydra and its new technology. Rebecca didn't know what half of it meant, and neither did the rest of the team. They'd wire it back to base and they'd let Howard Stark do his thing.
Hydra tanks often met them in the middle of the woods or even on their rest nights in small villages or towns. By the end of 1944 the 107th had made their way across Europe, from stakeout missions in France, carefully planned out, to messy raids on a Hydra base at the southern tip of Greece with hundreds of other soldiers.
Steve was a leader. An amazing one. He knew what he was doing, always, and he always had their goal in mind. Most of all, he protected the team. He'd put himself in danger countless times for them from battle to battle. Whether it was staying behind to guard the group's rear or going ahead to scout and see if the area was deserted or not, Steve was always the first to volunteer whenever something needed to be done. Rebecca admired him for it. Occasionally she'd volunteer to go scout ahead or lag behind—everyone would— but Steve would always talk them away from it, and he would end up going instead. He was protective like that, especially of her. Rebecca didn't mind.
Rebecca missed home, and she missed being able to sleep at night, but all she had started to want was to be with Steve. Everything else started to not matter as much as the couple fell deeper in love. It didn't matter if they got hurt, took risks, or were in danger, as long as they did it together. Some of the other guys joked around about how head over heels Steve was for Bex. Of course, he knew they were just playing with him. They were all proud to be there. And happy to be surrounded by friends.
They rang in the New Year with a single bottle of whiskey shared between all seven of the group, and got straight back to work. By January that year, they had saved half a battalion who'd been penned down behind German lines, and taken down a Hydra blockade that had been there for months. It had been the aftermath of a blizzard at the end of a very difficult winter, and it had taken them three days just to get past the primary blockade. But they won. They survived.
Rebecca went into a lot of battles thinking she wouldn't come out. There was a lot of anxiety when someone went for a stakeout or when nobody seemed to want to volunteer to guard the sleeping unit in a particularly dangerous area. There was always, always the possibility that someone was going to die. And Bex hoped it would never happen. But all of them always had to be ready for it.
[February 1945]
They'd gotten ahold of a Hydra transmitter a couple weeks back, but it never seemed to work until they got nearer to Northern Europe. There, transmissions started coming in about a train carrying equipment and a special scientist who was on a rush order to a more hidden Hydra base. It seemed as though all their bases weren't on the map that Steve and Bex had seen— and the real parts of their mission to wipe Hydra off the map were just getting started. They hypothesis was that this special scientist was Arnim Zola, right hand man to the Red Skull and scientific mastermind behind Hydra. And if it was, then he had intel that the SSR wanted, badly.
They decided they'd intercept the train when it passed through the Swiss Alps— it seemed to be the widest window of time for them to be able to get on and off safely, or, if the mission was as successful as hoped, capture the train and bring all the equipment and intel on it back to the SSR.
The seven members of their unit looked out at the rocky Alps in front of them, anxiety lingering in the air.
"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?" said Bucky, looking slightly down into the ravine below. He quickly looked back up at the mountain peaks.
"Yeah, and I threw up?" said Steve casually.
"This isn't payback, is it?"
"Now why would I do that?"
Steve looked away from the thin train tracks covered by powdered snow that lined the edge of the mountain and followed their zipline to the platform they stood on now.
"We were right," said Gabe Jones, taking control of the moment. Steve, Bucky, and Bex turned around to listen to him. "Dr. Zola's on the train," he finished. He continued pressing the speaker of the transmitter up to his ear. "Hydra dispatcher gave him permission to open up the throttle." They took a couple steps closer. "Wherever he's going, they must need him bad." He took the speaker away from his ear.
Steve and Bucky gave a quick glance to each other. Steve then stepped away to slip his helmet over his head as they heard the whistle from the oncoming train. Jaqués Dernier lowered his binoculars as the vehicle came into eyeshot, visible from where they stood.
"Let's get going, because they're moving like the devil," he said quickly.
"We only got about a 10-second window," said Steve, loud and fast, settling himself on the zipline bars. "You miss that window, we're bugs on a windshield."
"Mind the gap," joked Dernier.
"And, uh, watch out for the train coming at you," added Rebecca, securing herself onto a second pair of handlebars.
"Better get moving, bugs!" called Dugan. Steve let his feet slide off the platform and off he went, approaching the tracks as the train chugged forward toward him. Rebecca was next— she hooked on to the line and gripped the unsteady metal handlebars for dear life. The worst part was when they were right over the train, but couldn't land just yet— she could have sworn she was going to miss the window, but didn't dare shut her eyes in fear. They let go of the bars one by one and touched down onto the cold metal in the middle of that snow there in the Alps and walked further toward the front of the train. She, Bucky, Steve, and Gabe let off the zipline's handlebars and landed softly on the roof of the train, readying for the challenge ahead.
