The Torn Soldier: The Untold Story

You Should've Known Better.

1 year later

Bucky was declared dead.
Steve went into the ice.
And Peggy... she was struck with a broken heart.

She never did get that dance.

Karolina came back from her station in the war to all of her friends simply gone, as if they never existed.

She stepped into their old apartment and saw how a layer of dust covered almost everything. She looked at the books on the tables, the newspapers crumbled up on the floor, and how there was no trace of Peggy anymore.

Kar placed her bag near the door as she closed it. She found a note on the table and opened it to see Peggy's handwriting. "I hope this gets to you, it means you're safe and alive. A lot has changed over the past year. I'm sorry I never got the chance to write to you as much as I did. See you soon. The apartment is all yours."

Kar looked up as tears glossed over her eyes. She lost. She lost everything.

For the next year, she never gave up looking for Bucky. She also never gave up on trying to find ways to locate Steve. Howard came back after every search but eventually stopped looking. He sat at his desk and tried to find a scientific explanation for the tesseract. Karolina paced in front of him, rambling ways to try and find them. He soon put his pencil down and looked up at her. "Karolina, they aren't coming back." He saw her sit down at her old desk near his surrounded by papers and different trials of all different kinds of experiments.

Karolina stayed silent, pulling out another map looking for the path of the train Bucky fell off of to pinpoint where he could be.

"They are not- "

"Yes, they are! They are coming back!" She looked up to see his eyes filled with compassion, and yet he was tired. He had tried with her but it got to the point where he saw he couldn't resist the truth that was staring at them in the face.

She stood up and rolled the map up in her hands. "I lost them, and no matter how many times I read their letters or look at old pictures..." She looked down and swallowed, trying to push down the emotions that got caught up in her throat. It was no use. She took in a deep breath. "It's not over." Kar picked up the keys to one of the hummers and looked back at Howard. "I will stay here for years if that's what it takes. They deserve to be helped... to be found." She leaned on the wall and put her forehead against the cold of the stone. Forcing her eyes closed to not let any tears fall, she was tired too. She dropped the map. The thud of it, although light, seemed to echo across the empty hall.

"Kar." He got up and rushed over, he placed a hand on her shoulder stepping closer. It broke his heart to see her like this. She was always the strongest of them all. Karolina stepped back and leaned on Howard as they embraced each other.

Peggy had still not reached out to Karolina, pushing herself into work. Her desk sat in the empty corner of where they all worked together. Oh, what she would do to go back to that time. Every laugh felt like it would never end, every smile so bright. Now it all came down to this.

Karolina had found the path to the train and ended up walking most of it since the trains stopped going that specific route to avoid avalanches. She had gotten a hit on Steve, too. She just needed to know where the plane was headed, which meant an awkward yet much needed encounter with her former roommate.

She followed what was left of the old train tracks and ended up in the cave, trying not to sob as she almost wanted to give up entirely. There was no way anyone could have survived that fall. Maybe Howard was right all along. She should've believed him, now instead she found herself in the dead cold inside a cave where the wind whistled along.