"What happened to you?" Bucky questioned as he did his best to keep up with Steve-

Wow. He never thought that someday he'd be struggling to keep up with his weak, asthmatic friend. Yes, he'd been changed in an unnatural way, but still. Bucky was shocked that Steve was even here in the first place, let alone completely ripped. 

"I joined the army," Steve stated simply and they continued their trek down the hall.

"Did it hurt?" He couldn't help it; Bucky was always so used to looking out for Steve, making sure that he was alright and helping Angie fix him up when he wasn't. By this point, asking the man if he was okay was second nature.

"A little," Steve answered honestly.

"Is it permanent?"

"So fa-"

Before Captain America could finish his sentence, the floor began to shake like an earthquake as loud explosions were heard at the end of the hallway where the doors opened up to the large bomb-facility of the base. Just as the duo had barreled through the double-doors and stepped onto the metal platform over-looking the large room, two more large bursts of energy shook the entire building as more and more bombs began to detonate. The lights that hung lazily from the ceiling had gone out, but they wouldn't need them; the entire floor of the facility was aflame, menacingly lit up like an entrance to Hell.

Steve glanced around the elevated platform for a way of escape, his eyes caught sight of a metal staircase only a few feet away, and he bolted in that direction with Bucky tagging along. Once they reached the highest level of metal scaffolding, they were met with a truly terrible sight.

"Captain America!" Schmidt called out from across the walkway connecting their platform to his. Standing beside him, carrying a tin container handed to him by the German official himself, was the same suspicious-looking man Steve had seen before finding Bucky. "How exciting! I am a great fan of your films." Schmidt stepped out onto the walkway with a taunting gleam in his eye. Not wanting to seem like he was backing down in any sort of way, Steve stepped onto the metal walkway as well, strolling towards Schmidt just as casually. "So, doctor Erskine managed it after all. Not exactly an improvement, but still, impressive."

As soon as the Hydra leader had gotten close enough, Steve didn't hesitate to quickly wind his arm back and punch Schmidt right in the jaw, just as he'd done to that fake Hitler during every one of his old shows, though this time the super-soldier actually made contact with the man's face. Schmidt took a shocked step back and pressed his gloved hand to his cheek.

"You got no idea," Steve growled.

As the officer looked up from the ground, his hand still pressed against his cheek, Steve and Bucky noticed something disturbing. The skin beneath the man's eye had pulled from the muscle tissue on his face, revealing a rim of red below Schmidt's eye socket.

"Haven't I?"

Steve saw the blow coming, but he didn't expect just how much force was built behind it when he lifted up his metal shield and saw the fist-shaped mark left in the surface by the German standing across from him. As quick as he could, Steve grabbed the pistol holstered at his side and was about to fire at his enemy when Schmidt knocked the weapon from his hand, sending the gun over the edge of the walkway and into the fiery inferno below.

"You've got spirit, Captain, I'll give you that," The scientist on Schmidt's side quickly pulled a long metal lever next to the platform and the walkway suddenly began to split in two, retracting in opposite directions that pulled the quarreling men away from each other. "But I'd be doing your friend a disservice if I didn't brag about the fact that she is much more of a scientific breakthrough than you could ever dream to be. In a matter of days, she has been given abilities similar to those of a god."

"Sucks that she's on our side, doesn't it?" Bucky yelled in an angry roar. The rage within him hadn't disappeared since the last time they'd seen each other, since the last time he'd seen the damage that bastard had done to Evangeline. If he hadn't been tortured as well, Bucky knew for a fact that he would've jumped the gap between them and tore Schmidt's ugly face off. 

Schmidt smirked a maniacal smirk and a wave of unease suddenly rolled over both Steve and the sergeant. 

"No matter what lies Erskine told you, I was his greatest success!" 

The two Americans watched in a mixture of confusion and terror as the Hydra leader gripped the skin at his neck and slowly began to pull it away from his body. In a string of jerky motions, Schmidt tore what appeared to have been a mask from his face and showed the red, disgusting layer of muscle now exposed for the world to see. His nose was gone and his facial features were impossible to decipher now that he had no cheeks or lips. If they hadn't seen him with the mask on before this huge reveal, they never would've guessed that this decaying face belonged to Johann Schmidt.

"You don't have one of those, do you?" Buck muttered under his breath, eyes wide and never leaving the red skull across the way.

"You are delusional, Captain," With a flick of his hand, the officer threw his mask over the edge of the scaffolding's railing and into the burning abyss beneath them. "You pretend to be a simple soldier but in reality, you are just afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind. Unlike you and your pretty little friend, I embrace it proudly, without fear!" Schmidt and the other man began to walk to the left, towards an elevator Steve and Bucky hadn't noticed before, leading to somewhere else in the base.

"Then how come you're running?" Steve yelled back.

Schmidt didn't reply, just smiled and pressed the elevator button, causing the doors to slide shut. Another chain of explosions followed as the Germans disappeared, making the metal beneath their feet shake once again and reminding Steve that they still needed a way out of this mess. 

"Up there!" Bucky pointed towards the ceiling above them and Steve saw a rusty beam of iron leading towards another set of doors, another way out. Climbing another set of stairs, the soldiers made their way up to the next level of scaffolding and eyed the unstable beam for a moment before Steve nudged Bucky to go first. Though the sergeant still felt extremely weak from the torment he'd faced throughout his stay at the German camp, he kept a straight face and did his best to carefully walk across the narrow beam.

The distance from one side of the scaffolding to the other looked much closer from the lower level than it did where they stood now. The iron beam was much less stable than what they'd originally assumed and with the constant explosions occurring less than twenty feet beneath them, it caused the makeshift bridge to wiggle and wobble with every uneasy step Bucky took. By the time he was half-way to the other side, the iron had began to slip from its position, jolting and threatening to fall before the sergeant could make it across.

Once Buck was three-fourths of the way across, he knew he'd run out of time. The beam was shaking too much and slipping to fast. Just before the flimsy piece of metal could collapse under his feet, Bucky took a deep breath and leaped as far as he could, grabbing onto the metal railing on the other side and pulling himself over onto solid ground.

The beam fell from the scaffolding and landed unforgivably on the floor of the facility below, sending sparks and flames in all directions.  

Bucky suddenly found it hard to breathe, and he knew it wasn't because of the smoke slowly building up inside the experimental base. Frantically, the man began to look around the area in hopes of finding something, anything, that he could use to help get his friend across. 

"There has to be a rope! A ladder, or something!"

"Go! Get out of here!" Steve insisted, but Bucky wasn't about to budge. Not when they'd spent the last twenty years of their lives together, growing up and becoming men with no other family but each other and Evangeline. 

"No! Not without you!"

It killed him inside to say it, knowing that if neither one of them could get out, Angie would be left all alone. But Bucky also knew that if she had been in his place, she would've done the same thing. The three of them were family, and leaving family behind no matter what situation was inconceivable. In the long run, she'd understand. Yes, she was probably going to be angry and heart-broken at first, but she was a smart woman. She knew how their hearts worked.

At the sound of that, Steve frantically began to think, to brainstorm. If Bucky wasn't going to leave without him, then there was no way in Hell he was going to make Evangeline live out the rest of her years by herself. For her sake and Bucky's, he was going to find a way across.

But there was nothing left, nothing to help him get to the other side. Just a gap in...the railing...

With the gears turning in his head, Steve bent the broken bars of the metal railing outwards, making the gap a little bigger and giving himself a little more room. With only seconds to spare, he took a few steps back, took a deep breath, and said a quick prayer in his mind.

Steve Rogers sprinted as fast as he could, then jumped.