After seeing Angie in her current state, Steve's hopes for finding Bucky were beginning to diminish. If Hydra was willing to torture a woman, there was no guessing what they'd done to Buck, if they'd even kept the sergeant alive for this long.

Once Steve had taken Evangeline out of the laboratory building, he'd given her sleeping body over to a group of American soldiers just about to leave with a truck they'd stolen from the cluster of German vehicles only a few yards away. One of the young men, Henry, immediately exclaimed to the Captain that he knew 'Angel' personally, that they were good friends and promised that he and his buddies would get the woman back to their camp as fast as the truck's engine would allow. With Steve still wanting to go back for one last look around for his old friend, he carefully set Angie's sleeping body in the back of the truck with the young men before kissing her forehead one last time and stepping down from the back of the vehicle, then sprinted back to Azzano's experimental facilities.

All it took was a strong kick and the door he'd used as an exit became an entrance, then clattered shut behind him as he ran throughout the building, slowing down only when he'd turned a corner and saw a short, dark figure in a hat standing at the end of the hallway. Though it was obvious that he knew something that he didn't want Steve to know, Captain America had a more important priority on his mind- find Bucky and get him the hell out of there. He'd worry about suspicious Hydra activity later.

Upon entering the room the strange man had left in a hurry, Steve felt his heart stutter when his eyes fell to the limp body of Bucky Barnes, strapped and laying back on an examination table. Only when he heard the man mumbling beneath his breath did Steve sprint over to his friend's side, now alert and ready to drag him out of the building with the knowledge that Bucky still had a chance at survival.

"Bucky," Steve began once he'd reached the side of the examination table and looked down at the slightly bruised face of his best friend. The sergeant's eyes were unfocused and his words were slurred, but he was alive and that was all that mattered to Steve. Using his newly-given strength to rip the black leather straps keeping his friend down, Steve quickly tore them off and put his hands on Bucky's shoulders. "Buck, hey, it's me. Bucky, it's me."

It took a minute, but Bucky's eyes began to dilate and focus on the man before them, and the gears in his mind that had once been nothing but mush began to turn once again, comprehending what exactly was happening.

"Steve..." Bucky said with an exhausted, relieved grin. Steve hauled his friend off the examination table and set the bleary sergeant's feet back on the ground, both soldiers beginning to eye each other. Steve didn't hesitate to search for any possible injuries done to Buck, and Bucky raised an eyebrow at the sight of the new muscles that had miraculously appeared on his best friend. "I thought you were smaller."

"And I thought you were dead," Steve replied with a slight smile, before glancing around the room in search of anything that might help him carry the soldier out of the room. For a moment, his eyes found a map hanging on the wall with five different points marked, but his attention was brought back to his friend when Bucky suddenly grabbed his shoulder with a beyond-worried look in his eyes.

"Steve, they took Angie. They hurt her bad. We gotta get her out of here. We gotta get her out of here now," The sergeant began to frantically speak. Not once in his life had Steve seen his friend so scared, so panicked as Bucky was then. "She can't last much longer like this."

"Don't worry, she's safe," As soon as his words left his mouth, Bucky's desperation began to fade from his features and the sergeant's shoulders suddenly sagged down, as if he wasn't holding an enormously heavy load on them anymore. "Some of the other escaped soldiers took her back to camp, she's going to be okay."

"Thank God," Bucky ran a free hand through his scalp and he bit his lower lip to keep it from quivering. His blue eyes became distant, his chest began to rise and fall with the deep breaths he was taking to try and calm himself down, and Steve knew he was reliving the horrors he'd seen and heard during his time as a Hydra prisoner. "It was horrible, Steve. She screamed for so damn long and I...I couldn't do anything to help her."

"The only way we can help her now is if we get the hell out of here."

As sorry as he felt for Buck and Evangeline, Steve was well aware of the fact that Bucky needed to be at the top of his game if he wanted to get out of the base alive. There was a time and a place for grieving, but this most definitely wasn't it. The sergeant got the hint, pulled himself together, and walked out of the lab by his best friend's side.

**********

Evangeline woke to the sound of people shouting and gunshots echoing throughout the night. Her eyes flickered open and the ground beneath her jolted with every second that went by. At first, she was scared and immediately began to wonder if Steve rescuing her had all been a dream. But upon further investigation, she easily came to the conclusion that she was laying in the back of a truck, holding a young man's hand. It wasn't Steve and it wasn't Bucky, but it was the third best option.

"Henry?" She whispered, but began to cough violently as her ripped vocal cords began to ache in protest. She wasn't surprised; after screaming for three days straight, there was definitely going to be some severe damage. The American soldier looked down at the sound of her ragged voice and gave her a nervous, yet slightly reassuring smile.

"Hey Angel," he started in the dark. The truck jolted again, tossing the both of them in the air for a second before falling back down onto the hard truck floor. "Good to see that you made it in one piece."

"What's happening?" The woman asked and ignored the pain flaring inside of her throat. The truck jolted again and thee gunfire continued outside the metal tin-can's covering. Henry glanced through the opening in the back of the vehicle with scared eyes, but she could tell he was trying his best to remain calm.

"We're on our way back to camp-"

Before he could continue, a loud boom filled the air as if they'd been sitting next to a grenade and in a split second, the truck was on its side. The woman and the young man fell through the air like rocks in a can and slammed against the roof of the metal covering as the truck rolled into the ditch next to the road. Her temple smashed against the hard surface and black dots appeared in the corners of her eyes, but she hadn't fallen unconscious- unlike Henry.

The soldier lay in a heap beside her, his arm bent at an awkward angle and a river of blood running down his forehead. He was a mess, but the steady rise and fall of his chest relaxed Angie with the knowledge that he was still breathing. At least, for the moment.

"Get out!" A frightened voice screamed from the front of the vehicle. "It's gonna blow!"

It was then that she smelled the spilled gasoline and heard the sparks of ripped wires in the front of the truck. The engine. The engine was going to explode.

She hadn't regained her strength that she'd lost during her time as a science experiment, but Evangeline didn't let that stop her from slinging Henry's good arm around her shoulders and dragging the unconscious man from the wreckage. Enough good people had died at the hands of the Germans- she wasn't about to let another go. Not under her watch.

If she'd waited a second longer, neither one of them would've survived the explosion that erupted behind them only a few yards away. As the truck burst into flames and sent shrapnel in all directions, Angie managed to quickly pull the lifeless man into the ditch on the other side of the road. Using it for cover, not one piece of metal found a place lodged in their bodies.

Little did she know that the exploding truck wouldn't be the last thing to stand in her way of getting herself and Henry back to camp.