Lady Liberty |1| The Liberty Saga (An MCU Fanfiction)

Chapter Seven: The Howling Commandos

It was just over a week later that the Howling Commandos—Dugan, Morita, Jones, Falsworth, Dernier, Barnes, Fischer and Rogers—were deployed on their first mission. With the benefit of a little training behind them, it was a roaring success—and from there, the missions just kept coming. As the months passed, they made their way across Europe, taking down the Hydra bases Steve had located on his map one by one until none remained.

Even then, the missions didn't stop. Intelligence would come via Colonel Phillips and Peggy Carter at the SSR, and the Howling Commandos would leap into action, capturing influential Hydra scientists, intercepting supply runs, infiltrating enemy camps... And all the while, the eight of them grew ever closer, with camaraderie rising higher with every successful mission completed.

There were, of course, bad days, too. One memorable occasion had been when they had infiltrated the Polish weapons factory. This one had been a much cleaner job than some of their others—which essentially meant that some of the walls were still standing by the end of it, and they had time to go through the rubble for survivors, to find the remaining prisoners of war, and to identify who of Hydra had gone down with the compound.

Including, in this particular case, Bernhard and Liesl Fischer.

As the team swept the site for survivors, it was Falsworth who caught up with Elke initially, finding her crouched in the rubble by the dead man's body. "Ah, Ellie, there you are." Then he took in the hollow, blank look on her face and hesitated. "Someone you knew?"

The man's uniform was unmistakable, marking him out as not just a member of Hydra, but as a leader. But by now each of the Commandos was at least vaguely aware of Elke's past, as well as her abilities which were somehow earthly and unearthly all at once. It was the sort of thing they talked about sometimes, when the campfire got low and the stars began to shine in the night sky above them.

When it was dark enough that no one should see the tears fall.

For a long time, Elke was silent, just staring at the dead man's face as though she were trying to commit every wrinkle to her memory. Just as Falsworth thought to ask again, she seemed to come back to herself, straightening to her feet. "He is my father," she explained, without emotion.

Falsworth closed his eyes briefly. "Bloody hell."

A huff of almost amusement passed her lips. "Ja. We should keep looking. My mother will be around here somewhere. They were inseparable."

And as she continued on through the wreckage of the compound, Falsworth couldn't help but think that there was at least one thing she had inherited from her parents.

Liesl Fischer, meanwhile, was found about half an hour later in the ruins of the medical wing. The Polish factory's equivalent of the isolation ward, Bucky supposed, although there had been no sign of men being experimented on in this compound. Perhaps once they had started to destroy the factories, the experiments had ceased... or perhaps they had simply been moved elsewhere.

There was still worryingly little intelligence on the location of the final base, the place to which the mechanical parts they had been forced to build were transported. He couldn't help but worry that every day they came no closer to finding it, more soldiers, more innocent men were being put through the horrors he didn't even admit to himself.

It was sickening to think of. And worse, how many of those they killed were just like Elke? Kids raised in the ideology of hatred, surrounded by it until they knew nothing else? How many of those he killed were little more than victims themselves?

A flash of lightness in the midst of the grey rubble caught his eye, and he hastened over to find the body of a blonde woman lying still. He was by no means a medical expert, but even he could determine the cause of death in this case. She must have fallen on the steel rebar for it to have impaled her like that. She was a Hydra scientist, that much was clear from her uniform, but even so he felt a small spark of relief on her behalf. At least it had been quick.