The Song Remembered

There once was a boy named Bucky Barnes, who lived in the best city in the world. He had never been anywhere else, nor ever really wanted to be, up until a sunny morning in late April. He was walking along the sidewalk, minding his own business, when suddenly he was somewhere else, instead. 

Wherever he was, it was very dark and quiet--so dark and so quiet that if you had tried to decide whether it was more dark than it was quiet or more quiet than it was dark, you would never have been able to make up your mind without changing it again a second later.

For a minute, Bucky thought what anyone would have: That someone had left a manhole open, and he'd fallen into the sewer. But the problems with this were obvious. When he looked up, there was no light coming in from the street. When he called out for help, there was no answer. He also had the feeling that if he had been in the sewer, his voice should have made an echo; but although he had shouted at the top of his lungs, the shout seemed to fade even more quickly than a whisper would have.

And besides all that, he hadn't even felt himself fall anywhere. So he must not have, after all.

Another boy might have panicked at this point--but Bucky was not prone to worry or stress, and certainly not to panic. He was the sort of boy who took things as they came, at least up to a point. And as weird as this was, it didn't seem to be such a terrible thing. Since he hadn't fallen he wasn't hurt, since he'd just had his breakfast he was neither hungry nor thirsty, and since he was now somewhere else then no one could blame him for failing to arrive at Miss Miller's classroom (for of course he had been on his way to school before this). So instead of doing something foolish, such as crying, yelling himself hoarse, or setting off running in a random direction, he took a minute to take stock of his surroundings.

Not being able to hear anything except his own breathing or see anything at all didn't mean he couldn't explore, Bucky figured. He bent down and felt the ground he was standing on. It was no more dry than it was wet, no harder than it was soft. It wasn't concrete or dirt or asphalt or grass. For a moment, the word 'clay' came into his mind, but as it didn't seem to be much like any of the clay he'd ever seen, he soon forgot it.

He stood back up and began to shuffle forward, taking very small steps so he wouldn't trip over anything, and waving his hands in front of himself so his face wouldn't run into any walls. This was not a very satisfying way of exploring a place, for he had no idea of where he was going, and even less of whether he was going in a straight line. Later, he would think that it had been much like playing pin the tail on the donkey, without the donkey or the pin or the friends all around you, and where you couldn't take the blindfold off when the game was over.

For a while, Bucky wasn't even sure whether he had his eyes open or not. In reality, he must have been straining them all the while, for he saw the light the moment it winked into existence. One second it wasn't there, and the next it was. It looked like the flame of a candle, except that instead of being orange or yellow or even blue, it was green. It might have been a large flame very far away, or a small flame much nearer; there was no way there in the dark to tell the difference.

As soon as he saw it, Bucky headed that way. As the ground up until now had been completely flat, he was confident enough to walk briskly, though not quite confident enough to run. Before long, he had come close enough to the flame to discover that it was a small flame after all, being held aloft by a boy about his own age.

"Who goes there? Announce yourself or face the wrath of Loki," said the boy when Bucky got even closer. By now, Bucky could see that he held a knife in his other hand, which was shaking a little.

"I'm Bucky," Bucky said.

He was close enough now that when the boy raised the hand with the candle flame in it, the light glanced off Bucky's face.

The boy peered at him for a long moment, then seemed to relax. The knife disappeared, and he said, "I am Loki Odinson."

"Pleased to meet you, Loki," Bucky said, and made to shake hands, except then Loki stared at him like he was nuts and so he put his hands in his pockets instead.

"I said,  I am Loki Odinson ," Loki repeated, still staring. 

"Yeah, I got that the first time."

"I am a Prince of Asgard ."

"Never heard of it," said Bucky, who wasn't unaware of the snotty tone in Loki's voice or the nasty way he was starting to scowl, but had already figured being the only two people around was more of a consideration than whether or not Loki was kind of snobby, and so he may as well make nice. "What's it like being a prince?"

He also figured asking Loki about it would help, since he seemed to care so much and people liked talking about themselves anyway. But Loki just stared at him some more. 

"It's--all right," he said finally, looking Bucky up and down. "What's it like being a peasant?"

Bucky had no real idea what that meant, but figured he may as well go with it if he was going to get the important questions. "It's good. So, do you know how we got here?"

"Of course," Loki said, brightening, and launched into an explanation that would have been almost as surprising as the brightening if Bucky had understood it. But as it was, he didn't really get much out of it except that Loki had been doing something he shouldn't have, which he'd found out about in a book he had no business reading, which was only one of the things he'd stolen in order to figure out how to do whatever the thing was.

"Okay," Bucky said when Loki had slowed down enough for him to get a word in. "So, uh, do you know where we are?"

"I was attempting to determine that when you interrupted my meditations," Loki said, stiffly enough for Bucky to guess that that meant he didn't know, either.

"Oh. Well, how do we get back home?"

"--I'll know more once I've made my determination." Loki said this even more stiffly.

"Okay," Bucky said, though what he was thinking was that Loki sure did seem to be wound tight. "So, how are you doing that thing?"

"What thing?"

"With the fire." For as soon as he'd gotten close, Bucky had noticed that the green flame Loki was holding wasn't part of a candle, or part of anything. It was hovering above his palm, seemingly all by itself.

"This? Any child can conjure flame."

*

"You're fantastic," Loki said an hour or two later, after Bucky had done the exact steps Loki had told him to seven or eight times, only for nothing at all to happen. "I've never met anyone with such an ineptitude. Then again, I suppose I've never had a peasant at any of my lessons..."

"Thanks a lot," Bucky said, for all boys are prone to disappointment, and his at not being able to do Loki's trick was very great. "I appreciate you rubbing it in."

"That was not my intention," Loki said, stiffly again--though it seemed like a different kind of stiffly than before. "I'm certain you have other qualities." 

Really, he ought to have said he was certain Bucky had many other fine qualities. If his mother had been present, she would surely have corrected him. Fortunately, Bucky really wasn't the sort of boy to wallow for very long, especially when it had turned out that there was such a thing as real magic in the world.

"What else can you do?" he asked, guessing that if the trick with the fire wasn't supposed to be hard, that must mean Loki had something better waiting in the wings. He'd already guessed that whatever Loki had been trying to do before he'd come here must have had something to do with some kind of magic spell.

Loki brightened again, and went into another long-winded explanation of the different kinds of magic. Bucky understood some of it, but only when Loki slowed down enough to explain anything in plain English. But the parts he didn't understand didn't really matter, because Loki gave demonstrations of everything he could do (or at least, everything that could be done in the literal middle of nowhere with almost no supplies).

Loki was just showing Bucky what he meant when he talked about illusion magic when all five Lokis froze, then tilted their heads. "Do you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

The extra Lokis disappeared, and it turned out the real one had been standing several Lokis to the right of the Loki Bucky had thought for sure he was. "Surely you must feel something . I'm certain it's calling both of us."

"What is?"

"You really feel nothing?"

Bucky shook his head.

"You're even more inept than I thought," Loki said, which was the kind of statement that would have raised even Bucky's hackles if everything else that was going on hadn't been too distracting for him to get sidetracked by asking Loki who the hell he thought he was talking to, anyway.

"What is it?" Bucky asked. "You can't just say things like that without explaining."

For a second, Loki looked like he was tempted to try. Then he said, "It's a magical signature. Many magical artifacts radiate an energy, of sorts. Whatever this one is, it's very--loud."

"I can't hear anything."

"You wouldn't hear it, precisely. Not with your ears." Loki shot him a questioning look, to which Bucky shrugged. "Still no? Well, never mind. Come on."

So saying, Loki started walking. After a second, Bucky followed. "How far away do you think it is?"

"There's no telling. We might be walking for ten minutes, or ten years."

"Hopefully not that long," Bucky said. "I didn't bring anything to eat."

He'd had his lunch pail when he set out this morning, but didn't anymore. Maybe he'd dropped it in the dark without noticing, or maybe he'd dropped it in the street. Whatever had happened, his sandwich and his apple were long gone.

*

It turned out not to be ten hours. It turned out not to even be ten minutes before Loki, who'd been muttering to himself the whole time, suddenly said, "We must be nearly there." He paused, in both his steps and his words, then added, "I've never felt magic quite like this before."

"Is that good or bad?"

"It's--different," Loki hedged. "And it's--newer, I think, than the sort of magic I'm used to."

"Yeah, and?"

"I think it means this world is new as well." Loki must have seen Bucky's puzzled look, for then he added, "New, rather than deserted. Like it's an empty house no one has yet lived in."

As examples went, this one was a lot better than some of his others, in that not only did it turn out to be completely accurate, but Bucky understood it right away.

"Oh, okay," Bucky said, and spent the next few minutes of their walk toward whatever-it-was thinking about that. If a world could be like a house, then did that mean someone had built it? Were people going to move in soon? How long had it been empty for, anyway? The darkness and silence all around seemed to hold something else now. Possibilities, bigger and brighter than any Bucky had ever heard of before. Who knew what kinds of things could fill up an entire world?

That was still the feeling he was having when Loki said, "Here."

A second later, Bucky saw something, right at the edge of the light from Loki's flame. At first it could have been anything, or maybe his eyes had gotten scrambled from not seeing anything other than Loki for so long. But as they got closer, something settled, either the image of the object or the object itself, and Bucky saw that it was a table.

It was made out of stone, and had strange writing all over it, gouged into the surface in letters Bucky couldn't make out. Later, he would learn that such letters were called runes. For now, all he knew was that they weren't in English, so he couldn't read whatever they said--but somehow, he wasn't surprised when he looked over and saw that Loki was squinting at the writing and moving his lips silently, like he could.

"What's it say?" Bucky asked, what seemed like a long time after he'd wanted to; up until then he'd had the strangest feeling, like he wasn't supposed to interrupt. "Can you tell?"

"More or less," said Loki, not stiffly this time, but instead seeming very intent on the task in front of him. He proceeded to read out loud, though very slowly; he didn't stumble over the words, as an inept reader might have, but took his time with them in the way of a very good reader who has nevertheless picked up a book containing a number of previously unknown words. When he saw Bucky didn't understand any of the gibberish coming out of his mouth, he summarized: "It's meant to be a sort of protective magic. Or--preventative? It's meant to stop something from happening. Or--apply limits to it? Something along those lines. But it hasn't been activated. It needs..." he squinted at it some more, lips moving. "Oh, that's simple enough."

"What is?" Bucky asked, not yet knowing Loki well enough to hear the sly note that had come into his voice, the one that said he'd either left out quite a lot from his summary, or just happened not to mention the most important detail or two.

"Come here," Loki said. "And hold out your hand over the table. No, palm-up."

Bucky did what he was told. Later, he was never sure what he'd thought Loki had meant to do, or why he'd gone along with it without at least asking a few questions first. 

Whatever he'd thought, what Loki actually did was grab Bucky's forearm in one hand, and bring out a small, shining knife with the other. The green flame was now floating on its own, somewhere in the air above their heads, lighting up everything that was happening. 

Then, before Bucky could make sense of it, or wrap his mind around whatever Loki might be planning to do, or why there was a knife involved now, Loki had slashed quit deeply into Bucky's palm.

"Ow!" Bucky said, followed by a few exclamations that would have gotten his mouth washed out with soap, had his mother ever heard him say them. "What'd you do that for?!"

But Loki hardly seemed to be listening. He held Bucky's arm in an iron grip Bucky couldn't break no matter how hard he struggled, or how hard he hit or kicked at Loki, and watched Bucky's blood drip onto the table. Still struggling, Bucky looked, too. It seemed like there was more blood than there should have been. It shone blackly in the green light, pooling in one place and seeping into a crevice in another.

Eventually, Loki let go of him. This didn't seem to have anything to do with Bucky repeatedly hitting or kicking him; it was more like Bucky had suddenly become unimportant. Loki didn't even seem to notice as Bucky took a big step back, and then a couple more for good measure.

"Ah," Loki said, leaning over the table to squint at the runes some more. He wiped the knife on his robes, then stuck his own hand out in the air. Bucky had just figured out what he was going to do when Loki slashed across his own palm with a low, pained hiss. "Look," he muttered. 

Bucky looked at the mess on top of the table, not because he wanted to so much as because he felt like he was supposed to, which had nothing to do with Loki telling him to. It was impossible to tell whose blood was whose; it was all mixed up together by now. It made Bucky's stomach turn to think about how red it all would have been in another light. The runes swam in front of his eyes, and at first he thought he was getting light-headed, too. Then he realized he wasn't, and that the runes really were writhing and changing, right in front of his eyes. And then, just as they went still again, the stone seemed to absorb their blood, until every drop of it had disappeared. There wasn't even a stain left.

"Hmmm," Loki said. "It says you're an innocent. Whatever that means. And that I'm--that can't be right."

"What?" Bucky said, despite himself.

"It says I'm a traitor. Which makes no sense." Loki glared at the table, like maybe the runes would change shape again if he made enough of a face at them. "Is it because I stabbed Thor?"

This question didn't seem to be aimed at Bucky, and so he didn't have to figure out what the answer should be. "Who's Thor?"

"My brother," Loki said, looking annoyed.

"Do you go around stabbing everyone you know?"

"I did not stab you."

"Oh, yeah? Then what am I bleeding for?"

"You are being such an infant about it," Loki said crossly. He made like he was going to grab Bucky's arm again, and so Bucky took another big step back. He was far enough away now to get a good look at what was in front of him: A crazy magician boy from another world, and a blood-absorbing magic table, and who knew what else was going to happen if he stuck around.

No, thank you, he decided, and turned around and started walking away.

"Where are you going?" Loki called after him. "Bucky?"

Bucky just shook his head, and kept walking.

*

"Hey," Bucky said.

"You're back," Loki said. He was sitting on the edge of the table, and had been slumped over, staring at the big cut on his hand, or maybe at the nothing quality of the ground. Now he sat up straight, and smiled widely for just a second before it turned into a really fake-looking frown. "Not that I care, of course."

"Sure," Bucky said. It hadn't taken long for him to realize how much he didn't want to be in the dark alone. It had been fine before there was another option, but somehow it wasn't anymore. And anyway, the bleeding had stopped pretty quick in the end, even if his hand still hurt like the dickens. "You can't stab me again, though. I won't come back next time."

The knife was laying on the table. Bucky grabbed it and stuffed it into his pocket on his way over. Loki opened his mouth like he was going to say something about it, then shut it again. Then, when Bucky had hopped up on the table to sit next to him, he gave him a cautious, sidelong look, then said, "It was not a stabbing. It was a bleeding. There was a magical purpose to it."

"I don't care," Bucky said, though secretly he did, a little--or at least it seemed like it should matter that Loki had had a reason for it instead of slicing into him just for fun.

Either Loki figured that out, or he was just going to talk about it no matter what Bucky wanted, because he said, "It desired the blood of a traitor and an innocent so it would know the difference. Now it will."

"What does it need to know that for?" Bucky asked.

"I hardly know. This particular artifact seems somewhat reticent."

"What?"

"It is not forthcoming with its secrets."

"Maybe you should stop asking, then," Bucky said. 

*

"What's it like, having a brother?" Bucky asked, a few hours later. By then, they'd made a couple tries at more exploring--but no matter what direction they'd gone in, they hadn't found anything other than more flat nothing, and so now they were taking a break back at the table.

Loki sighed, like this was more exhausting as a subject than walking around in such an empty place could possibly be. "Tedious. I wouldn't recommend it."

"How come?"

Maybe Loki had been just waiting for a chance to go off, or maybe he hadn't. But go off was what he did. Having a brother was awful. He got all of the attention and all of the praise, none of it deserved. He never left Loki alone when he wished to be alone, and was always missing when Loki actually required him. But there was a lot of stuff around the edges of the complaining, and the stuff around the edges was what Bucky latched onto. The adventures Loki and his brother had had together; the way that when push came to shove, he always have at least one person on his side.

"That sounds swell," he said, when Loki had finished talking.

"I feel you may not have been paying attention, if that's what you think," said Loki, though he didn't sound as cross as he had when he had gotten started. Bucky guessed all the venting must have made him feel better (but did not guess how rare a thing it was, for the younger prince to have the chance to vent about his brother without secretly suspecting the vent-ee preferred him).

"All I've got is a sister," said Bucky, who had no idea he was to gain a brother in a fight in a back alley somewhere in Brooklyn, just a couple weeks into the coming summer. "And she's still little."

"What's that like?" Loki asked, a little awkwardly, the way he seemed to ask most questions, like he wasn't used to asking people about themselves, or else wasn't used to making friends.

And so Bucky got to talk for a while on the subject of sisters, and how loud they were, and how much they smelled, not to mention how much they cried, especially at night; and, when he started to feel a little disloyal, how they weren't all that bad, really, as long as they belonged to you and your parents and weren't someone else's baby a door or two down.

"That sounds dreadful," said Loki, with feeling.

"I guess."

It was then that they heard a sound, and both boys jumped nearly out of their skins. It had not been a particularly threatening sound, but of course they had gotten used to the idea of being totally alone in the world. If you have ever worn earplugs for an hour and then taken them out, you will understand how something that was actually very quiet could seem to them to be quite loud and jarring. 

"Hello?" Bucky said.

"Who goes there?" Loki demanded, bringing out another knife.

Feeling somewhat betrayed by the idea that Loki could have stabbed him again at literally any time, Bucky said, "How many of those do you have on you, anyway?"

"Three more daggers and six throwing knives," Loki said, so quickly and glibly that Bucky got the idea he was asked that question a lot, and probably never answered it honestly. "Listen."

There had been no answer from who or whatever was making the sound. As for the sound itself, it almost had to be footsteps. They weren't scraping steps, like the ones Loki must have heard when Bucky had been walking toward him. They were closer to padding steps, like when your mother tip-toes into your room long after bedtime in order to kiss your forehead and pull your blanket up under your chin.

The steps came closer, and closer still. The close they got, the more Bucky thought it must be two people, instead of one. Or maybe it wasn't a person at all.

"Does it sound like it could be some kind of animal to you?" he asked.

Loki seemed to think so. "Who knows what beast might populate such a realm? It must never have had so magnificent a meal as a son of Odin." He paused, and then added, "Or a magic-less peasant from a magic-less world. You're probably a very rare delicacy."

"It's not going to eat us." Bucky was almost entirely certain of this. He could not have said why, or explained what about the sound had given him that impression. It was just something he knew, as you know the sun will rise tomorrow (except that there is perhaps a part of you that knows the sun will someday burn out--and that if it is set to happen someday, then what is to stop it from doing so sooner? There are things that are safe and there are things that are not going to harm you right now, and though Bucky would have had difficulty expressing the distinction, his certainty nonetheless fell into the second category).

"Let's go," Loki said, hopping off the table and bringing out a smaller knife that must have been one of the throwing ones. "Perhaps we can outrun it."

"There's no way," Bucky said. They'd already heard the sound from three sides, like it was circling them. "It's got to be a lot faster than us."

Loki sighed, and leaned back against the table. "Then I suppose the plan must be to attack, and die with glory. I always enjoy that one."

A moment later, there came another sigh. It came from the fourth direction (which was to the east, though neither of them could have known it). It was strong enough to ruffle their hair and clothes, and soft enough that they almost had to strain to hear it. And after the sigh, there came a voice, almost as quiet as the sigh had been:

"Boys, boys," it said. "What are you doing here, in what is to be my land of Narnia?"

"We," Loki said. "Um."

Even in the greenness of the light, Bucky could see how pale he'd gotten, and that there was no chance he was going to be able to tell the story about the spell he'd been trying to do, back in his own world. For a second, Bucky figured it was going to be up to him to tell it. But that was only for a second, because as soon as he'd made up his mind to do it, he suddenly knew something. How he knew it, he wasn't sure. But he also knew the voice's owner was waiting. Someone had to give an answer, whether it was a good one or not.

"I don't know," Bucky said. "I don't think Loki does either. He was telling me about this spell he was trying to do before he got here, but I think maybe that was just some kind of a coincidence."

There was no answer, so he kept going, spurred on by the sudden desire to be really, truly, fully honest:

"We got blood on your table. It's gone now, though. We didn't mean to hurt anything." The voice still didn't say anything. "We're really sorry."

Now there came a laugh, deep and soft, low and loud, amused and sorrowful all at once. Then, the person he was talking to stepped into the light, which seemed brighter and yellower than it had before. Only it turned out not to be a person, exactly. It was a Lion, bigger and wilder and somehow realer than the one Bucky had once seen at the zoo.

"You would not have been permitted to do any harm," said the Lion. "In fact, you have done a great good (though you, Loki, should have taken nothing from Bucky that was not freely given)."

"--I apologize," Loki said, and though his hands were gripping his knives so tightly that his knuckles were white, it could not have been clearer that he was definitely not going to attack anything.

"It's okay," Bucky said, and found that it really was.

"It is nearly time for the first Day to begin," said the Lion, shaking his mane. "And thus past time you were returned to your own world."

"What, already?" said Loki, looking and sounding so crestfallen it would have surprised Bucky if he hadn't felt the same way from out of the blue.

"There will be other times," said the Lion, who was looking at them with an expression that was as full of sorrow as it was of joy--and that was knowing, too, as if he were seeing every great and terrible thing that had ever happened to them, or ever would. "This has been only your first visit here. Now, go--"

The word 'go' seemed to last a very long time indeed. And just as it began to fade, there seemed to be something else behind it. For a moment, Bucky thought he heard the beginning of a song, haunting and beautiful and new. But it was only for a second, and only for a note or two. Then it was gone, and he was somewhere else, standing once again in the middle of the sidewalk with his lunch pail in his hand. 

For a second, the light seemed too bright, and everything around too loud and busy. Bucky looked around, for any sign of the Lion, or the table, or even Loki, but there was nothing to see except everything he always saw on his way to school.

"Don't just stand there, kid," someone said, as people walked by him on either side.

That was enough to get Bucky moving, though it took the better part of an hour for him to blink away the memory of that other place, and to really believe he was back in Brooklyn. Luckily, he didn't have to apologize for being late to school, mostly because he turned out not to be late at all. No one else seemed to notice he'd been gone for hours, any more than the clock had moved while he was gone.

Bucky wasn't the kind of boy who spent a lot of time fretting or worrying, which is not to say that he was never the sort of boy to dwell when there was something worth dwelling on. Dwell he did, and for weeks. He wondered what that song had been, and what was happening there now. He wondered what it was they had really done when they'd bled all over the Lion's table. He wondered if Loki was back home, too, and if so, what he was doing. If he'd managed to put his stolen book back before anyone caught him, or if he'd gotten in trouble (and if he had, what kind of punishment you got for stealing, when you were a prince). If Loki had gone back to Narnia yet, and found out what kind of world it was when it had things that weren't them in it. Bucky was pretty sure, thinking back to that weird day, that the Lion had said they would go back, but he hadn't exactly said when, and he sure hadn't said which one of them would get to go back first.

At first, it was the nasty-looking scar on his left hand that reminded him it had all really happened. By the time it had finished healing, Bucky was more likely to convince himself it had all been real by pulling out Loki's knife from underneath his mattress. It didn't look or feel anything like a kitchen knife, or even a pocket knife. It was much heavier than either of those, and the blade was fatter and very sharp. There was a stone in the hilt Bucky would later learn was a real emerald. Around the emerald, there was a design, squiggly lines that could have been more runes, or could have just been decoration.

If there was anything magical about that knife, Bucky never found out what it was. And he never tried to figure out what he could get for it, even though it was obviously valuable. To him, its purpose was something else. It was proof of other worlds, and of the weird kid he'd met while he was in one.

It was the kind of silvery night you get in the winter, when the moon is full and the snow so newly finished falling that no one has yet been out with a shovel, or maybe even out at all. The snow under Bucky's boots was hard and crunchy, not at all the kind you could bend down and pack into an easy snowball. The air was so cold it hurt going in. He'd pulled the flaps on his hat down as far over his ears as he could, and shoved his hands into the gloves he usually kept in his pockets, but his ears and fingers were still numb, to say nothing of his face.

He turned so the wind would be behind him, just hoping his nose wouldn't fall off. His mom was always going off about the dangers of frostbite. If it hadn't exactly seemed too likely during the last couple of slushy weeks at home, it seemed like a much stronger possibility now.

He started walking, keeping his eyes peeled for shelter, or people, or a road, but what he really wanted was that first one. Something with four walls and a roof that would be dry on the inside. If it had a fireplace and a stack of wood in the corner, that would just be icing on the cake. Then he could warm up, and maybe get some sleep, and he wouldn't have to worry about what he needed to do next until the sun had come up.

He was so busy thinking about how nice it would be to have a fire that he must have walked right past the road. Or maybe he would have missed it either way, it was so narrow to begin with, and hidden by the same newly-fallen snow as everything else. In any case, he heard the sound from behind him instead of in front of him: other boots, crunching along.

Bucky stopped in his tracks, and listened, and looked in the direction in which he was listening. The crunching sound must have carried a way, for it was a few minutes before he saw the shadows, walking in a line. There were probably forty or fifty of them, hunched over against the wind. 

He had the feeling, right away, that something was wrong here. Who went marching through the woods on a night like this? Most of them had packs on their backs, like this was more than just a short walk. And there were little kids with them, who had to be carried, and were quickly shushed when they whined or asked a question.

The harder he looked, and the closer he got, the more sure Bucky was that they were scared, and running from something. He wondered from what. He wished he had a sword. Better yet, he wished he had a crossbow.

He hadn't decided what to do by the time one of them saw him--the second to last figure in the line, who had been looking back and forth as he walked, and occasionally turning around to see if they were being followed. He barked out something to the others who'd been walking at the back, and they all swiveled toward Bucky. There was a group of about five or so of them. They all had swords. All the swords were half-drawn by the time they had all finished turning.

Then someone, the very last person in the line, said, "Keep your peace. Do you not know a boy when you glimpse one?"

"A boy, or a spirit?" someone muttered. "Who knows what shape the Witch might take? My Queen, you cannot be certain of the risk."

Bucky had stopped in his tracks as soon as they'd seen him, knowing better than to walk up to a group of people with swords out. He tried to look harmless, which was unfortunately an endeavor which had gotten more difficult with time. When he'd been eight, all it had taken was smiling, maybe putting his hands into his pockets (as long as he wasn't in a store, where someone might think he was trying to pocket something). In the last year or two, though, things had changed. People never seemed to think he was harmless anymore, and only a little of it seemed to have much to do with him being best friends with a guy who was always looking for trouble. Girls' mothers, in particular, always seemed pretty suspicious of him these days.

But maybe the Queen wasn't a girl's mother, because she walked closed to him, just a couple steps, and lowered her hood. The moon was much bigger and brighter than the moon in Brooklyn ever was, and between it and the stars and the way all the light echoed off the snow, Bucky could easily see that she was older, with gray in her hair and very kind eyes. 

"What is your name, child?" she asked.

"Bucky Barnes, ma'am," Bucky said, and it wasn't the swordsmen that made him not even try to be cute, or charming as he said it. There was just something in the moment.

"Where are your people?" she asked. "Gone on ahead, I would hope--but surely they would not have left their son behind."

"We can't afford to send another search party behind, your majesty," said one of the swordsmen.

"Even less can we afford to leave a single of my subjects behind," she said.

"I don't have any family here," Bucky said. He wasn't sure what else he could get away with saying--it wasn't always smart to admit he was from another world. Sometimes it spooked people, and these people didn't seem like they needed to get anymore spooked. But he could at least say enough that they didn't spend time or resources they didn't have on him.

"Where might they be, then?" asked the Queen, with a piercing look.

But then someone said, "Here. I vouch for him," and another figure left the line of people who were waiting for this conversation to stop so that they could keep walking.

He came forward, and pushed his hood back, though there was no way he could have thought he needed to. It was just that he liked dramatic gestures, and flipping his hood down so everyone could see his face right as he stopped talking definitely counted as one.

"Hey, Loki," Bucky said, relieved in spite of everything.

And though there were a few more questions, there weren't any more that Bucky didn't have an answer for. A minute later, the line of people was on their way again, and Bucky was smack in the middle of it, walking next to Loki.

*

"How long have you been here?" Bucky asked, when enough other people had had short, whispered conversations that he figured them having one wouldn't make them seem too suspicious.

"Hours and hours," Loki said, which meant it had probably been half an hour tops. "I'm glad you finally made it. It's been so tedious up until now."

It still was, if by tedious he meant cold, and stressful, and with no idea of how much further they had to go. "Do you know what's going on?"

"Apparently there's a Witch. She invaded a week or two ago. She's been executing all the mortals and turning into stone all those who've attempted to help them. We're fleeing to the south--to Archenland, I think."

That was a lot more information than he usually had when he showed up fifteen minutes ahead of Bucky. Maybe he really had been here for a few hours. "So we're in Narnia?"

"Narnia proper, yes. Oh, and it's June here." Loki couldn't have seen Bucky's blank look, but maybe he intuited it, because right before Bucky would have asked, he added, "The Witch also seems to have caused winter to come early."

Bucky as an adolescent was no more prone to panic than he had been at eight, but this was all rattling news nonetheless. Worse than the dragon had been, and a whole hell of a lot worse than the pirates.

But before he could express any of this, someone in front of them said, "Shhh," just the way he'd heard them shushing the little kids before he'd been a part of the procession. So for now, Bucky shushed, and focused on putting one foot in front of the other, and on not thinking too much about everything he'd been trying not to think about, since the last time they'd been to Narnia.

*

"Any idea how close we are to the border?" Bucky asked, when it had been a while since the last time they'd been shushed.

"We were several hours away yet, when we came upon you," Loki said.

There wasn't much to say to that, and so Bucky didn't say anything. He was mostly focused on not slipping on the ground beneath his feet, which had gotten increasingly uneven. It had also gotten colder, and started to snow, which had made it even slicker underfoot than it might have been otherwise.

Then, a minute later, Loki said, "Look to your left. But carefully."

Bucky sneaked a peek over. What he saw was enough to make him suck in a breath--and a very painful one, considering how very cold it was and how he hadn't had any time at all to brace himself for it. For to the left of them, far enough away in the dark and snow that he couldn't make out exactly what they were, two or three shadows were moving. It soon became clear from the way they moved--back and forth, parallel always with the procession itself--that it wasn't just another group of people that had happened to be out tonight.

Bucky snuck a peek to the right, and beyond Loki he saw another shadow or two on the other side.

"Shit," he said. He wished again that he had a sword, or a crossbow, or a--

"Here," Loki said, and shoved something into Bucky's gloved hand. 

Bucky didn't have to ask what it was. He knew exactly what it was. His fingers wrapped around the knife's hilt, and he felt a little better. If there was going to be a fight, at least he'd have a weapon, even if he wasn't really good with most of them (after all, it wasn't like he got a whole lot of practice back home in Brooklyn).

Eventually, the others started to notice the shadows, too. Murmurs started, too many of them for any one of them to be shushed. But then the Queen spoke from the rear of the procession:

"I see you have noticed our escort. These are our friends, come at the last to defend us with their lives, should it be required of them. We shall ever owe them the greatest debt--but for this moment, we owe them our silence most of all, so that the debt will not be increased even more."

Everybody shut up then. The shadows seemed to come closer, and when they did, Bucky could see that there was a Stag, and a Leopard, and a Bull, and a Wolf. There were even a few smaller animals, such as Foxes and Hares. And when he looked up, he saw Squirrels hopping from branch to branch, and Owls occasionally swooping by.

And, one foot in front of the other, he kept walking. They all did.

*

Over the next however long, the wind got stronger, the snow got thicker, and the trail got steeper. Now there was no doubt that they were going up--and the more up they went, the slower they had to go. The footing was very slick and terrible. More than once, someone ahead or behind of them fell. More than once, whoever had fallen had to be helped up, and then everyone else went more slowly thereafter.

It seemed like it was never going to end. Some part of Bucky thought it never would. Even Loki, who claimed he wasn't at all cold, had stopped trying to have a conversation around the time the moon had disappeared and left everything that much darker (if not entirely dark, for there were still the stars to reflect off the white all around them).

Then, so gradually it took a while for anyone to notice, the night began to fade out into something much grayer, which itself began to turn into something much lighter. Bucky didn't realize any of this until he heard something else, a shocking, cheerful sound that didn't seem to belong in a winter night. It was the sound of birds singing, coming from somewhere up ahead.

For a second, it was almost enough to make a guy feel warmer--but only for a second. And when the second was over, Bucky felt colder than ever, hearing that sound when they might as well have been walking through Antarctica otherwise.

Everyone kept walking, a little faster now, slipping and sliding more than they should have been, but maybe it was hard for them to care. It was hard for Bucky to care, anyway.

His boot slid over a loose, frozen rock, and he almost went down on his ass, except that Loki grabbed his arm and yanked him closer. Bucky braced against him, just for a second and a step or two, and kept from falling.

Between the cold and the thick coats they both had on, there wasn't anything particularly weird about it. Still, Bucky thought he could feel his ears thawing under his hat, just a little, and was glad when he had his footing again and could put a few inches of distance between them.

The sun started to come up in earnest, lighting up the snow all around, leaving it sparkling almost to the point of being painful to look at.

Then there came someone else to look at. From up ahead, there was a hint of green. The closer they got to it, the more you could see that it was more woods, not too different from these other than the greenness of them. It didn't look real, and a distant part of Bucky wondered if he was really seeing it at all. 

He'd heard stories about the kind of thing that happened to you if you ended up lost in a blizzard--not the warnings he'd gotten from his mom, about how he was going to lose some extremities if he didn't put on his hat and gloves before leaving the house, but stories he'd heard from other people. When it was close to the end, you would think you were warm when you weren't; you'd strip off all your clothes and lay down in the snow and die there. The worst part of it, as far as Bucky was concerned, was that you'd never know what had happened to you.

Bucky didn't really think he was really lying somewhere, half-gone and dreaming in the snow. He was still so cold as to be numb. What's more, he had no intention whatsoever of stopping to strip. But if you have ever been in a very gloomy situation, and seen a clear end to it, then you too may have thought of a number of things that might prevent you from getting there, no matter how unlikely they truly are. This was what was happening to Bucky, who had been longing to warm up for what felt like so long that it was easier to believe the cold would never end than to let himself get his hopes up.

Then the people at the front of the procession started to cross over into the green. Then Bucky and Loki were there. Crossing the border was like stepping into a lovely heated home when you have been out doing some important task in mid-February--except that this was stepping from winter into summer, and thus lovelier than even that. There was grass beneath their feet, and the sun shone overhead, somehow much friendlier and nearer-seeming than it had been a moment ago.

Bucky and Loki turned to see the rest of the procession make it over, standing off to the side so they wouldn't be in the way. As soon as they did, the Queen turned to speak to the animals that had been escorting them. What she said, Bucky would never know, but she spoke for only a minute or two before they each inclined their heads to her, then melted back into the shadows, then disappeared.

It was around then that there came the sound of bells from behind them. The kids in the group started crying, while the adults erupted into a barrage of worried whispering, so much of it that Bucky couldn't make out what they were saying, or figure out what had set them all off.

Then the Queen said, "Do not fear. We are beyond the Witch's power now. Still, we must be moving. Onward."

*

This next walk was very short. All Bucky had the time to do during it was to start sweating underneath his coat, and decide he may as well take it off. He'd barely draped it over his arm when they broke into a clearing full of a bustling activity. There were tents erected everywhere, and people standing all around. As soon as the first person saw their group, everyone did; and then they all surged forward, and nearly everyone was crying or exclaiming. It was the sort of thing that was either very joyful (if you had found a loved one you thought lost) or very terrible (if the one you had been hoping for had not come) or very awkward (if, like Bucky and Loki, you knew no one in either group, and hadn't lost anyone).

"So, uh," Bucky said, when he and Loki had crept halfway across the clearing and had placed the tallest tent they could find between themselves and all of the emotions. "Any ideas?"

"Many," said Loki, with a barely-suppressed look of glee.

"About what we're supposed to do, I mean," Bucky said. They'd never come to Narnia to do nothing. "I don't think we need to be making anyone's life harder here."

Loki rolled his eyes, like he always did whenever Bucky objected to any of his ideas (or to the idea of Loki having ideas, which was never a good sign). "Fine. And I haven't the faintest idea."

"I don't think we can beat a Witch. Not if she can do...all that stuff."

"I agree," said Loki, so quickly that there had to be something else there that Bucky didn't know about. "Let's keep our heads down until we have the lay of the land."

Before Bucky could press him--it was never a good idea to let Loki get away with things--someone said, "Your names, if you please."

They both turned to see a bespectacled man holding a piece of parchment and a quill.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your names," the man said again, reaching up to adjust the way the glasses sat on his nose.

"Prince Loki," Loki said. "Of," which was when Bucky elbowed him, because Loki should have known better than to get into all that when they both remembered what had happened that time in Galma. "--Terenbithia."

"Welcome to Archenland, your highness," murmured the man, scribbling quite a lot down onto his parchment. 

He then turned to Bucky, but before either of them could say anything, Loki said, "And this is Bucky Barnes, my personal manservant."

Bucky rolled his eyes and elbowed him again for good measure. Maybe the man with the parchment didn't notice, though, because he'd drawn himself up, and was looking at Loki with a severe expression. "I don't know how things are done in Terenbithia," he said, "but we don't hold with slavery and such here."

"Oh, I pay him," said Loki. Bucky rolled his eyes again. "--But not very much, since he's terrible at his job."

"Is this true?" asked the man, looking at Bucky. "Don't be afraid to speak, if it isn't--you'll be protected from reprisal here."

If their positions had been reversed, Bucky knew exactly what Loki would have done. It would have been like he couldn't help himself. But as funny as it was to glimpse the momentary panic on Loki's face, and to imagine how his face would look if Bucky said no, Bucky was simply not the sort of boy to lie in order to get someone else into trouble. This went double if that someone was a friend he didn't get to see that often, and neither of them ever knew how long they'd be waiting til the next time.

"Have either of you family in Archenland, or are you expecting the same from the north?" continued the man, back to his first, businesslike manner. When they both said they didn't, he scribbled down quite a lot more on his parchment, while making little hmms and ahhs, then said, finally, in a spiel that sounded like he'd said it a hundred times already and expected to say it a few hundred more, "I'll speak to the steward, and make certain of a room for you in the palace. It should be made readied by tonight. Until then, you may go where you please in the country of Archenland--with one exception. If you should come upon a green wall in your travels (which is not so close to here, and yet boys do explore where they ought not), you are forbidden to climb it or otherwise enter the space which it protects. Is that understood?"

"Of course," Loki said, in a tone that might have sounded meek and obedient if Bucky hadn't known the gleam in his eyes by now.

"Sure," Bucky said.

And the man scuttled away. When they peeked out from behind the tent, they saw that he was headed toward the larger crowd of new arrivals, and did not seem to be looking their way at all. No one else was looking at them either. Everyone seemed to have enough to think about that wasn't them.

Still, though--

"The prince of Terenbithia? Really?" Bucky said, as they fell into step and began to walk down a well-used path that led in the direction the man had gestured when he spoke of the palace.

Loki shrugged. "The real one had evidently just arrived in Narnia when the Witch came. Hasn't been seen since, so he's unlikely to be alive at this point. It's a perfect disguise."

"Did you notice we came in with the Queen?" Bucky said. "You think she might figure out you're not him?"

"Doubtful. But even if she does, it should be easy enough to disappear among the masses."

Personally, Bucky didn't think either of them was that good at disappearing. They always seemed to get noticed, whether they kept their noses clean or not. They always stuck out, whether it was because of their clothes or the way they talked, or everything else that made them different from everyone else here. It was one thing they had in common, even if Bucky was from Brooklyn and Loki was from a world where magic was as real as it was here in Narnia.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Bucky asked a minute later.

But Loki ignored him. Instead, he went up to a girl around their age who'd just come around a twist in the path, and said, "Hello, miss. I wondered if you might help us with something." When she said she'd try--turning a little pink as she looked from Loki to Bucky and back again--he said, "We've been told to stay far from the contents of a green wall. Do you have any idea where such a thing might be, so that we don't stumble upon it unawares?"

She gave them directions, and Loki nodded along, and thanked her sweetly.

When she was gone, Loki said, "Well, that was simple enough."

"I can't believe you," Bucky said, which wasn't quite true; he'd known since the moment they'd been told it was forbidden that they'd be heading toward the green wall sooner or later. He wasn't even totally against the idea, not really. Going something they weren't supposed to seemed a lot more interesting than staying in the awkward middle of all those feelings.

Still, though, he followed Loki down one path and then another, shaking his head all the while. A couple times, Loki tried to start him speculating about what might be beyond the green wall, but Bucky just shook his head all the more.

After all, someone had to give Loki a hard time. Here in Narnia, it almost always had to be him.

*

A while later, Loki said, "You're being too quiet. What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing."

"Are you still upset about last time?"

There'd been a lot to be upset about last time, starting and ending with how Loki had refused to help with the baby, or even do any of the rowing. But it was him who'd gotten them off the ship in the first place, so it wasn't like he hadn't done anything. And it wasn't like Bucky had words for the hot feeling he'd gotten in his stomach as he'd watched Loki flirting with that girl, so he said, "Nah. I just think you're being stupid. Why do you have to try to get us in trouble all the time?"

"It's not as if there are lasting consequences," Loki said lightly. Then, when Bucky didn't agree with him, he sighed and sort of sagged and said, "You don't have to come, you know."

Bucky did know that. He knew it every time he went along with one of Loki's ideas that he probably shouldn't. If he was being honest with himself, he'd rather go along with Loki than wander around by himself. It was always more fun being with him, or at least more interesting. "Oh, come off it," he said, because the other thing he knew was when Loki was playing it up. "I'm here, okay?"

"I suppose, but it's more enjoyable for me when you have an investment," said Loki more or less earnestly.

*

It was late morning or maybe early afternoon by the time they made it there. Bucky would long since have dropped his coat somewhere along the way, had he not been aware of how distressed his mother would be if he were to show up back home without it. So instead he kept carrying it, and kept sweating, and once or twice had to stop in order to roll his long sleeves back up past his elbows. Loki, who had discarded his coat before they'd left the clearing, sighed and acted put-upon every time they had to stop.

The green wall turned out to be less of a wall and more like a hedge--except without any of the openings a hedge would have implied, and taller than anything Bucky would have wanted to try to climb over. It was also completely round, and when they walked around it, they found a gate on the other side. It was closed, and quite firmly locked. At least, it was quite firmly locked, until Loki got involved. He glanced from side to side, then waved his hand at the gate. It opened on its own with an incredible screech, which only got louder once they had ducked inside and pushed it closed again (though not quite all the way closed, for they both knew they might need to leave in a hurry).

Unlike the hills they'd been going up and down on the way there, the ground inside the wall was completely flat. In front of them, there was a pool, which was completely level with the ground. At the other end of the pool there was a tree, which was much larger than any of the trees they'd passed on the way.

"Hmm," said Loki.

"I don't feel like swimming," Bucky said, though he had the sense he would have, had they been at the edge of any other pool. There was something too solemn about this one, like it wasn't made for the kinds of pursuits two teenage boys would otherwise get up to. "Can we go back yet?"

But he didn't really mean it so much as he was trying to push Loki's buttons. For the longer they'd walked in the warmth and sunshine, the more Bucky had started to feel he was up for an adventure, the doom and dark of the day's first walk receding away from them.

"Not yet," Loki said, in a distracted way that meant he somehow hadn't noticed Bucky's improved mood, even though he'd been able to pick up on his darker one pretty easily. "This appears to be a magical artifact."

"What kind?" Bucky said, not at first sure whether Loki meant the pool or the tree or something else that was invisible to the naked eye--but then Loki stepped over to the pool and peered into the water, and that cleared that question up.

"It's a looking-glass, of sorts, I believe. Not a mirror so much as a window. I wonder what it would take to--look through it--"

And so saying, Loki was gone, lost in muttering and more peering. There was no point talking to him until he figured it out, so Bucky didn't try.

Loki kneeled in front of the pool. After a minute, realizing that it might be a while, and that his feet were aching from all the hiking of the day, Bucky followed suit. The water was so clear that you could see clean down to the bottom, and so still that you almost thought that you could put your hand through it without disturbing anything, as if it had all the qualities of air. But Bucky knew better than to mess with anything magical without having first been told he might, and so when the urge to touch became too great, he looked at Loki's reflection instead.

He'd been trying not to look for hours, but Loki wasn't paying attention to him, and there was no one else here to see. So Bucky looked, and what he saw was Loki, looking the way he always did when he was focusing instead of scheming. Bucky looked, and he tried to figure out what it was that had made his stomach twist, and that had made him feel the strangest yearning, the last time they'd been in Narnia. Loki had been in the boat across from him, sleeping; the sun had come up, and Bucky hadn't been able to look away from the way it lit his face. He hadn't been able to figure it out anytime in the last six months, either. Why had he looked for so long? Why hadn't he been able to make himself look away until Loki had started shifting around like he was about to wake up?

Bucky'd spent the six months since trying not to look too hard at any of the other boys he knew, in case he saw the same thing, in case they noticed him seeing. Now he did look, and the twisting in his stomach came back, even stronger than before. He watched the reflection of Loki's hands moving in the water--long slim fingers speaking a language Bucky would never be able to learn himself, but loved to watch or even listen to--and felt the same ache in his chest he'd felt last time.

"There," Loki said after a while--maybe a long while, because it was only then that Bucky felt how stiff his legs were beneath him, like they'd been kneeling there for much longer than a few minutes. "Do you see it?"

"I don't see anything," Bucky said, and he wasn't really lying, because there was no way Loki was asking about their reflections.

"Hmm. Perhaps it would come more easily if you were to meditate."

"Nah."

"Why not?" Loki demanded, his reflection giving Bucky that look, the one that meant he didn't appreciate Bucky busting his chops and ruining his entire thing.

"I don't feel like doing all that oohming and ahhhming," said Bucky, who had a very limited experience with meditation of any kind, but who also thought (often rightly) that if Loki had failed to explain why he wanted him to do something humiliating, chances were that it wasn't going to be worth it.

Reflection-Loki rolled his eyes. "Not that sort of meditation. Merely--calm yourself. Breathe in and out, deeply and slowly. Concentrate on nothing except your breathing and the water. Not what you see in the water, or beneath it. The water itself."

"Okay."

So Bucky did that. The breathing was easy enough--he'd done things like this before for other magic spells or rituals--but concentrating on the water was harder. Their reflections were still right there, and in the moments he managed not to focus on them, he got  tripped up by how clearly he could see the bottom of the pool.  It wasn't concrete, like the city pool; it wasn't rocky like the bottom of a stream; the thing it was most like was the sandy bottom of the ocean. Except that the water wasn't moving, the way the waves did on the ocean. Maybe the water had never moved. 

The more Bucky looked, the more he thought he could see the individual grains of the sand or mud or whatever it was, there at the bottom. And the more he looked, the more aware he became of Loki's presence beside him. He couldn't turn his head to see him. He couldn't hear him. His breathing and Loki's, maybe they were the same things. Loki was moving, somewhere, and Bucky was still, but for a long moment there seemed to be no difference.

Later, Bucky would never be sure just how it happened. The surface of the water seemed to flicker. The space between grains of sand seemed to open up, until it was big enough to walk through, or fall into. Then everything else was gone, and all there was was what there was to see.

Mostly, what there was to see was snow and ice. Everywhere, so crisp and clear that Bucky could almost feel it again: a knife's edge of cold, the kind that would keep you wanting to shiver for hours even after you were someplace warm. He shuddered violently once, and then stopped, because no matter how cold it looked, he wasn't really in it.

"How about now?" Loki asked, his voice sounding very far away.

"Yeah. I'm here," Bucky said. The longer he looked, the clearer the picture was, and wider. It was like he could see all of Narnia, every snow-covered tree and every frozen lake and slowing stream, and the harsh wind that seemed to be blowing across all of it. It was all white, and it was all still, and as beautiful as it was, it was terrible, too. "Can't hear anything, though."

"And you won't," said Loki. "It's meant for viewing only, as far as I can tell. But surely there must be something more interesting to look at."

For a second, other places flashed across Bucky's vision. A ship with billowing sails on the ocean, far out of sight of land; a bustling city street where what was blowing around was sand rather than snow; a bright and endless desert and a river winding through the middle of a jungle and the snow-covered peak of a mountain among many other taller mountains and--

"I want to see the Witch," said Loki.

All the other possibilities snapped away, leaving them with just the one thing. Snow and ice, so cold you could feel it without having to be there. What made it colder was that this time there was a person in the middle of it all. Not just a person, but a person so tall and pale and cold that Bucky thought he would have known what she was with or without Loki saying anything. Maybe he would have known what she was even before seeing what she was doing. 

As they watched, she drew herself up even taller, in front of a group of animals Bucky hadn't noticed until now--a Bull and a Leopard and a Stag and a Wolf. As the Witch raised her hand, the Bull lowered its head and stabbed the snowy ground with its front foot, and the Leopard went low to the ground with a snarl, like it was about to leap. But then the Witch's hand came down, and the Bull and the Leopard froze where they were. It was a second before Bucky realized they weren't actually frozen, that they were gray and rough now where they'd been sleek before, and that the Stag and the Wolf beside them hadn't moved since he'd started looking. They had been turned to stone, just like Loki had told him about before.

"I don't like this," Bucky said, which was the understatement of the year, or possibly of his entire life. "Let's go."

"Shhhh," Loki said. "I want to see."

Bucky didn't want to see any more, but he didn't really have the choice. His legs still seemed to be there, somewhere, but they were far behind him now, and definitely not listening closely enough to take him away from here. 

Now, looking again--he'd never stopped--he didn't even seem to be able to close his eyes--Bucky saw that those four statues weren't the only ones. Others were everywhere, littering about half of the clearing in which the Witch stood. 

Now that there was no one else threatening her, the Witch turned to the empty part of the clearing, and raised her hand again. Now Bucky saw the wand she was holding, the one she might have had in her hand all along. Wherever she waved it, stone walls began to grow where before there had been none. It was a few minutes before Bucky saw the shape of it, and knew what it was: A castle, rising above the snow. If you have ever been inside during the summer and found it to be hotter and more oppressive in the shade than it is outside in the sun, then you may understand what I mean when I tell you that the Witch's castle was the opposite of that. Looking at her house, you felt that no-one who went inside would find it any warmer or more welcoming than it was outside, no matter how great and terrible a blizzard might be raging beyond her doors.

The Witch's wand slashed through the air like a sword or a whip. Every time it moved, Bucky felt a little colder. Colder than he'd ever been at home; colder even than he'd been earlier today, during that long dark walk. He was so cold he shuddered, his teeth clashing together so violently that it was really lucky that his tongue wasn't between his teeth.

Maybe he shivered too hard next to Loki, who seemed to be completely still. Or maybe the Witch would always have stopped, so suddenly that for a moment she could have been made of stone, too. Maybe she always would have turned her head, like she was looking right at them, like her eyes were boring deep into their eyes even though she had to be miles and miles and miles away.

"Can she see us?"

"No," Loki hissed back, the both of them speaking in whispers. "She shouldn't--but perhaps she can sense the pool's magic."

He must have had the truth of it, for then the Witch said, in a voice by far colder than anything they had seen: "What unworthy eyes seek to look upon Jadis, once Empress of Charn, and now Queen of Narnia? Reveal yourself, and perhaps we will spare your life."

She didn't look or sound like she was going to spare them anything. Maybe not even a thought, by the time she was done killing them or turning them into another couple of statues for her front yard.

Bucky was just about to say so when Loki said, "Out. Now."

And Bucky felt himself being tugged on, as if from very far away. And as he was being tugged, the Witch and her castle disappeared. Instead, there were other things, flashes he wouldn't even begin to be able to sift through for another few minutes or hours. And then he was falling backward, not being tugged so much as yanked away from the pool. He fell on his back on the soft grass, and then Loki's concerned face was looking down at him.

"You are back?" he asked, eyes wild the way they got when one of his plans had gone really, really wrong. "Well, say something!"

"Give me a goddamned second and maybe I'll think about it," Bucky said.

The wild look went away, just as quick as it always did. "You're fine. As I suspected."

Bucky closed his eyes, for what felt like the first time in an hour, and then put his arm over them for good measure. Not seeing anything made it obvious how hard he was breathing--like he'd been running a marathon. And the front of his shirt was not so much damp as wet, like something had been spilled on him. After a minute or two, he sat up again, and saw that the water of the pool wasn't quite as still as it had been before--like it had been disturbed at some point, and was still settling back into itself. Loki was not quite looking at him. It was all enough to make a guy wonder just how long it had taken for him to come out of whatever trance the pool had had him in, and what Loki might have done before he'd decided to throw him like a ragdoll.

"I don't know what the hell that was, but let's never do it again," Bucky said.

"Agreed."

*

By the time they limped themselves back to the castle, it was almost dark. Considering it was also summer, that didn't say anything good about how long they must have been at the pool.

Dinner was over, but there were plenty of leftovers in the kitchen, and the cooks were more the type to call them poor things than to get suspicious about how they hadn't gotten back in time to eat with everyone else. Bucky never did figure out whether this had more to do with them having come in with the Narnian refugees, or if it specifically had to do with how rough they looked (even Loki was disheveled and exhausted-looking, with dark circles under his eyes; and Bucky always managed to be in worse shape than him, no matter what they'd been doing), though, to be honest, he also never thought about it again once they were back out in the hall with plates full of good food.

The food in Archenland is as fresh and good as the food in Narnia itself, even when slightly cold, and much of it was gone by the time Bucky and Loki had found someone to point them to their quarters, and then managed to actually find them.

"You'd think they could find something more befitting a prince than this," Loki grumbled as he licked the last crumbs off his fingers.

But the room was in fact very large and nice, with a eastward-facing window, so that you knew you would get the best of the morning sun. Across from the window there was a hearth, which might hold a hearty fire in the colder months, and across from the quite roomy bed there was a sofa nearly as wide. It was upon this they had sat to finish up their meal. 

"I'm guessing suites are in short supply right now," Bucky said, because someone had to knock Loki down off his pedestal every now and then, and it was better to do it on an as-needed basis than waiting until you had the energy. When Loki gave him a blank look, he elaborated: "I don't think they're about to give us three rooms when they have all those other people who need somewhere to sleep."

"I suppose," Loki said, which probably meant he was also too tired to argue.

And really, he must have been, because although it was getting dark enough that they were going to need a light if they were going to stay up, the next thing he did was go over to the bed and climb under the covers.

"Are you coming?" he asked. "I can procure you a flame, if you're going to stay up."

There was no reason Bucky's stomach should have twisted at the thought of laying down next to Loki, but it did anyway. 

"Don't think I can move," he said, which was kind of, sort of, halfway true, in the sense that sitting down when you had been up for most of a day can indeed make rising again a very displeasing idea. "I might just sleep here."

"You will not. You'll get cold. Mortals do."

"You could throw me a blanket."

"I could not," Loki proclaimed, and now he made a light, just a little yellow one, which lit the room up just enough for Bucky to see the intense way Loki's eyes were studying him. "If I can't have three rooms, I will have three blankets. Which I am willing to share, but not to give away."

"C'mon, Loki," Bucky said, which he knew wasn't going to get him anywhere, but was at least better than trying to explain the feeling he had.

"We are in the mountains, and you are bound to freeze if you don't cease acting bizarre. But suit yourself," Loki proclaimed, and then the light poofed out and he disappeared, into the darkness or under the blanket or both.

Sitting there on the sofa in the dark, Bucky had to admit Loki had a point. He'd sweated quite a lot on the walk to and from the pool; now he'd sat just long enough for it to begin drying on his skin, leaving him somehow even colder. It wasn't the bitter, aching cold from earlier in the day. What it was, though, was a little more lonely.

Finally, Bucky went around the bed, and climbed in next to Loki. He immediately found himself weighed down with all three of the blankets, which Loki had heaved at him, leaving himself with only the top sheet.

"Asshole," Bucky said.

"You're welcome, of course," said Loki, smugly. But it was a tired kind of smug, that came off like he'd only stayed just awake enough to get the last word.

He didn't say anything else, but was soon breathing the kind of slow, shallow breaths that let Bucky know he really was asleep and not just pretending. This left Bucky to warm up--slowly in some places, but more quickly in the parts that were under the section of the blankets Loki had been under first--and to feel more of the twisting inside, which now was more like some strange yearning. He and Loki had slept beside each other a bunch of times. They'd done it on every adventure they'd ever had that had lasted more than a day. There wasn't anything new about Loki breathing next to him, but Bucky was so much more aware of him than he had even been before that it may as well have been the first time.

At first, he thought there was no way he was going to be able to get to sleep. But then all of him was warm except for his extremities, and then slowly all of him was warm except for his feet, and then all of him was warm, and that was that.

*

When Bucky woke up, he was still warm. Too warm. He struggled out from beneath the covers, and found that the light from the window was indeed very bright. Loki was gone from the other side of the bed, but it only took glancing around the room to find him. He was reclined on the sofa, reading a thick book. It looked like (and it was) a very old one, but even though books tended to give Loki bad ideas at times, it wasn't what caught Bucky's eye. There was something about how Loki looked lying there all long and lithe and-- 

He felt the longing again, and the twisting in his stomach that had nothing to do with how badly he wanted breakfast (which was quite a lot, for he had for the past few years been eating his parents out of house and home). What would have come out of his mouth then, he never knew, because then Loki looked over at him and said:

"Do you have any idea how long you've been asleep?"

If Bucky had thought about it before, he would have assumed it was morning. But there was something wrong about that. The light coming through their window, while bright, wasn't bright enough to be morning light. It must have been close to noon, if not even later.

"I dunno, are you gonna tell me?" Bucky asked. 

It was the kind of reasoning that usually made Loki roll his eyes, which he did. "Nearly sixteen hours."

That was a long time. On the other hand, it had been the end of a Brooklyn day when Bucky had gotten here, and then they'd done everything they'd done and gone everywhere they'd gone, and then they'd had a huge dinner to make up for all of it.

"Sounds about right," he said.

Loki turned back to his book and flicked to the next page. "I suppose you'll want to eat before we go back."

"Yeah, and I'm gonna take a bath while I'm at it."

He didn't ask where Loki thought they were going back to. Loki was like a firefly when it came to magical things. The more he didn't understand it--and Bucky was completely sure now that Loki had no idea what he was doing when it came to the pool--the more he'd hover around it, getting closer and closer until someone got burned. It was always even odds who the someone would be.

But that was a conversation they could have later, after Bucky wasn't hungry or sticky or feeling like he was going to burst from how bad he'd suddenly realized he needed to piss.

*

It was a conversation they ended up having about ten minutes later. Bucky had managed to empty his bladder, and then he and Loki (who of course had tagged along, except to the toilet) were headed down to the kitchen again, when Bucky quite suddenly recalled what he'd dreamt about the night before. It had started out like a lot of his dreams did these days--shadows moving together in ways that made him feel strange to think about later, and that made his face suddenly hot at the thought that he'd had dreams like that when Loki was right there next to him. But then it had turned into something else, and it was that something that made him stop in his tracks, so suddenly that Loki (whose nose was still in that book, which he had taken from a locked chamber that had not been forbidden them only because he should not have been able to breach the lock in the first place) crashed into him and they were both sent sprawling onto the cobbled floor of the hall.

It was not really a very hard landing in the end, and it was perhaps not the fall itself that left Bucky breathless.

"Shit," he said, as they both picked themselves up and dusted themselves off. "We have to go back."

"--I was planning on it, as soon as you've finished lounging around the palace," said Loki, who had probably been lounging around for the past six or seven hours.

"No, I mean we have to go back to Narnia."

Bucky was as sure of this as anything in his life, but his certainty must not have transferred over, because Loki just stared at him.

"Why would we want to do that?" he asked, around the time he must have figured out that staring wasn't going to make Bucky back down all by itself.

"I saw something," Bucky said. "Maybe--a few things. When you were yanking me away from the pool."

"That was yesterday," Loki said, like he wasn't the kind of guy who had three grudges Bucky knew of that went back at least a century. "Why are you only bringing this up now?"

"I didn't really remember it til now," Bucky said, and there was no reason this should have been true--except that it was, even if what he really meant was that he hadn't seen it very well before. It had been a thousand visions, over the course of a second or two, each flashing by so quickly he hadn't been able to go through them at the time. There had been a mother Fox peering out of her burrow at the still-falling snow as her babies, her cubs staring with wide eyes from behind her; a trio of summer-thin Bears walking along a lakeshore, leaving footprints in the snow behind them; a Nyad reaching down as if to run her fingertips through the surface of the river, except that the river was frozen, and the Nyad slowed and slowed, and then was still, made out of ice instead of stone. Later, he'd think maybe he'd seen everything there was to see in Narnia at that moment, or at least everything that wasn't the Witch. For now, all he was thinking of the one flash that had seemed even more wrong than the rest.

Of course, none of this was the kind of conversation you could have when you might be within earshot of grownups, and they were now only a few steps away from the kitchen. There was only so long they could hiss at each other in a whisper before someone would come and see what they were up to.

"Tell you in a minute," Bucky said. And while they ducked into the kitchen, and picked out several arms' worth of food more or less at random, he thought about just how to put it to Loki. He thought about it while they walked around looking for a good private spot to talk, which turned out to be a shady spot behind the stables. He thought about it while he ate--wanting to eat slowly, to gather his thoughts even more, but feeling as if scarfing his food down was already taking more time than they had.

When he was done, he put it to Loki, clearly as he could--which could not have been very, for quite a lot of information had come into his mind all at once, and it is often difficult to know where to begin a story. But Loki seemed to get it anyway, for he nodded along, and only asked a few clarifying questions, the last of which was:

"And what did you see that is so wrong?"

"There's a girl," Bucky said. She'd been hiding in the hollow trunk of a tree, almost invisible beneath blankets and straw. Someone must have tucked her in there, nice and warm. "A little kid. I think--I think the Witch is looking for her."

He could not have said why he was so sure of this, except that he was.

"That's too bad," said Loki, sounding almost sympathetic enough for Bucky to think this might go over easier than he'd thought it would when Loki had been staring at him in disbelief.

"We have to go get her."

"No."

So much for that idea. "What do you mean, no?"

"We cannot return to Narnia."

"Why the hell not?"

"For one thing, there's the Witch. I've felt enough of her power to know I would require years (if not decades) to be able to counter her," said Loki. "For another, any mortal child who's been out there all night must surely have perished already."

"And if she didn't, she's scared, and she's cold, and no one even knows she's there but us. We have to go find her."

Bucky didn't have any evidence of that last part, but it was something he was as sure of as his own name, somehow.

"I suppose we might look for her in the pool, when we return to it," Loki said. "Then, if she yet lives--"

"That'll take too long," Bucky said, and he was just as sure of this as he'd been of the other thing, even though he was usually the first one to say they ought to look before they leaped. "We have to go now."

"We don't even know what other horrors those woods might hold. Would it not be better to go in prepared?"

Bucky opened his mouth to say that the Witch was the only really bad thing there, at least for right now. Then, because he couldn't honestly say that, or be sure he'd seen every nook and cranny of the entire country, he said, slowly, "Horrors like what?"

"Well. There might be Frost Giants, for all we know."

"I don't think they have those in Narnia," Bucky said, beginning to be well and truly annoyed now. "Anyway, I thought you said you and Thor had killed thousands of them."

"It was cold and dark enough, there at the end of our march; if there are Frost Giants in this realm at all, then surely they must be in Narnia now." There was no telling whether Loki actually believed this, or if he was just trying so hard to sell it to Bucky that neither of them would be completely sure later whether he'd believed it or not. "They have horrifying red eyes, and hands so cold the slightest touch gives a man frostbite (imagine what a blow would do!). They stand a hundred feet tall--"

"Pretty sure someone would have noticed that. We're in the mountains, remember?" Bucky said, thinking of how high the castle stood, and of the watchtowers built in around it--and refusing to think about what it meant for Loki to be that white around the eyes.

"I suppose the small ones might only be twenty feet tall," said Loki stiffly. "Or so."

"Well, if you spot any while we're there, feel free to run away." Bucky said this quite a bit more viciously than he might have if the argument had been about anything less important or less stupid.

Loki sounded even more stiff when he said, "I'm not concerned for myself, of course. But you are a mortal--"

"If you're really that worried about me, you should come. If not, you may as well go back to the pool and watch me."

So saying, Bucky made to get to his feet and go by himself.

He'd barely stood all the way up when Loki sighed and said, "If you're going to insist on this madness, I am going to insist we take a horse."

*

Bucky was terrible at horses, which is to say he was bad at making them go where he wanted them to go at the speed he wanted them to go there--and even worse at staying on them while they went. This was why, after they'd managed to liberate one without anyone seeing them, he ended up riding behind Loki, with his arms around Loki's middle.

There was no time to think about being up close and personal with Loki, or if it felt any different than it had the last time they'd ridden double. There was too much thudding and thumping for anything like that, as Loki guided the horse southward, on the trail sometimes and other times off it completely, and occasionally telling Bucky to duck his head.

"Hold on," Loki said, a few minutes later, and then they burst out into a clearing, the same one they'd arrived in before. There were people there, just like there had been yesterday. They didn't dodge them so much as Loki pointed the horse at the other end of the clearing like he expected everyone to get out of his way. And they all did, shouting at them as they thudded by. So many of them were shouting that it was hard to hear what any one of them was saying. 'You're going the wrong way,' maybe. 'Are you crazy,' probably. Maybe even, 'That's my horse.'

Then they were across the clearing, and then they could see the line between summer and winter, and as soon as they had crossed it, Bucky remembered something really important.

"I left my coat in the room," he shouted, half expecting Loki to use it as another reason they should go back. But a second after he said it, he had his coat back; and not only did he have it, but he was wearing it, too. When, a minute later, they were on a straight and level road long enough for him to dare to let go of Loki for a second, he found his pockets just as he had left them, and was able to pull on his hat and gloves as well.

Now, there was no reason whatsoever that they should have been able to know where the girl actually was. The thing was, though, that he somehow knew when they were going in the right direction, and when they needed to turn to the left, or to the right, or to alter their course just a little, and was able to guide Loki in the right direction. Loki, for his part, didn't argue about the directions themselves; maybe because he had a way of knowing that what Bucky was feeling was real, or maybe because he really was humoring him. There was no way to know, and for a while all that seemed to matter was that they were doing something. It didn't make the woods any less cold, but somehow the cold didn't seem to matter as much as it had before.

At least, it didn't until they had been riding for about twenty minutes. It was around then that Bucky said, "Wait. Stop."

Loki reined in the horse. "What is it?"

"I don't know where we're going anymore," Bucky said. "I lost it."

A minute ago, he'd had no doubts at all, had known where they were going as surely as he'd ever known anything. Now the certainty was gone, so totally he could hardly remember what it had been like to be that sure.

"Perhaps the pool's magic has faded. Or perhaps the effect is like that of a tether, and we've passed beyond its reach."

"We're not going back," Bucky said.

"Did I say we were?"

"You were thinking it. Help me come up with a better idea."

Loki was quiet for a second. Then, he said, "Do you recall anything else from your vision? Some landmark that might be visible from farther away?"

"Not really," Bucky said. There had to be dozens or hundreds of hollow trees in these woods.

"Mmm. Well, you could try meditating upon the matter again. No oohming or ahhing required. Simply breathe in, and breathe out again. Focus on nothing except your breathing, and on the tree as you saw it in the pool. Don't try to look around, or try to see anything else. Don't force it. Simply let it come if it wishes to."

"Okay," Bucky said, and tried it. 

It wasn't as easy as it had been yesterday, at the pool. The cold which hadn't seemed to matter when he was thinking about something else seemed to matter with a vengeance as soon as he closed his eyes. The thump thudding of the horse plodding through the snow didn't help, either. For a minute, the most distracting thing of all was the way his arms were still wrapped around Loki's middle (for he couldn't exactly let go, not with his eyes closed). Eventually, though, it all seemed to be in the background, behind his own breathing and far away from the sight in front of his closed eyes. For a second, he saw something, out of the corner of his eye.

"Bucky," Loki said harshly.

Everything that had receded came back in time for Bucky to hear a sort of crunching from the side. He turned his head and saw what Loki must have seen--a large, yellow shape, heading quickly toward them in the snow. It bounded up to them with wild eyes and an open mouth, and stopped just a few feet shy of their horse.

"You mustn't be here," it said, and that was when Bucky's eyes made sense of what he was seeing, and he knew it was a Lion.

(There is exactly one person anyone who knows much of anything about Narnia will think of when encountering a Talking Lion--but it could not have been clearer that this was not that Lion. For one thing, it was too small by half; and it seemed somehow younger and sillier than that other person you may have thought of.)

"You mustn't be here," it (or rather, he, for now that the Lion had come into focus, it was clear that it had a mane) said. "All Sons of Adam are meant to be across the southern border now. You must turn back, and at once."

Beneath Bucky and Loki, the horse sidled to the side, bouncing beneath them in a way Bucky knew couldn't be good. He half-expected her to start trying to throw them off. If she did, there was no way he wasn't going to fall.

It was very fortunate for them, in the next few seconds, that this particular dumb horse had been born in Archenland, raised from a foal in that part of it where she was as likely to see Talking Beasts going by her paddock as anyone else. It was even more fortunate that Loki was a very good rider indeed, even more skilled at diffusing a steed than he was at riling up everyone else. Had both of these things not been true, the horse might indeed have thrown them both and run back to her own stable; and then the rest would have turned out very differently.

As it was, though, the horse soon stopped with the bouncing, and stood very nearly as calmly as she had in the stableyard when Bucky had had to jump up three times in order to finally make it onto her back (though Loki's hands hadn't gripped the reins nearly so tightly then).

"You must turn back," the Lion said again, his head tilted at the display he'd just witnessed.

"You heard him," said Loki, who as far as Bucky could tell never heard anything anyone else said if it didn't fit in with what he wanted to do anyway.

"We're going to as soon as we find what we're looking for," Bucky said. "There's a little girl. She's somewhere around here. We have to bring her back with us."

"A girl, you say? What sort of girl? Not a Human girl, I'm certain," said the Lion, while sounding rather doubtful.

"A human, yeah. She's hidden somewhere. We're trying to get to her before the cold does. Or the Witch."

Loki's elbow met Bucky's stomach when he said that last part. And maybe it really hadn't been the best idea to mention the Witch to the first person they met in the woods--but with the way the Lion's eyes flashed, and the way he snarled, Bucky figured it was pretty clear whose side he was on.

"If there's a Human girl around here, we must find her, of course," the Lion declared, after a long moment where his head stayed tilted and you could practically see him working on the problem inside his head. 

Loki muttered, "Of course," and may very well have rolled his eyes as well. But no one paid him any attention, for Bucky and the Lion were now of a mind in this matter, intent on the puzzle before them.

"She's hiding in a tree trunk--or at least, someone was putting her inside one, when I saw her," Bucky said. "Do you know of any big hollow trees around here?"

The Lion blinked at him. "We Lions aren't much for climbing, we aren't."

Bucky thought back, to the vision, and to the meditating he'd done on it before the Lion had shown up. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd seen something, and it had been--

"Are there any houses around here? You know, like where people--I mean, where humans would live?"

"There are five houses within a mile of where we stand," said the Lion. "I know right where they all are, for I'm a Lion."

"We'd noticed," said Loki (who surely would have provided a great deal more scathing commentary, had not most of his attention remained upon convincing the horse not to change her mind on the matter of bolting).

"Do you know of any houses that could have had a fire?" Bucky asked, for what he had seen, what he was almost sure he had seen, was flames licking at the logs the house had been made of.

The Lion blinked at him again, and it seemed to slump a little where it stood, as if it had just been reminded of something awful. "There has, yes--I've been there myself, since it happened. But there can't have been a Human child there."

"Let's go find out," Bucky said.

*

Off one of the wider trails in that part of the woods was a very narrow path, which weaved in and out through the trees until it found a very small house in a very small clearing. It must once have been a lovely place, built by and for lovely people, who had liked nothing better than to spend as much time as possible in the company of their neighbors in the out-of-doors. Now, it was something else, as ugly as it must once have been beautiful. The log walls were blackened, the front window blown out and the door hanging off its hinge. Even the roof was caved in. 

All the same, they might have looked inside for any survivors if they hadn't seen the statues on one side of the yard. There were five of them. Three were shorter, frozen in motion as they must have been running away; the other two were taller, in a defensive stance with weapons in their hands, their backs to the shorter ones.

"I thought you said they were killing all the humans," Bucky said to Loki in a low voice.

"I was told they were," Loki said.

"The Witch has slain most of the Humans she's found," said the Lion. "I don't know why she turned these to stone, instead. Oh, if only I had been here to stop her."

Along their walk, they had learned that the Lion was a sort of steward of this part of the woods--that it was his job to watch over everyone who lived here, and to try to resolve smaller grievances among them, and make certain larger ones were brought to the attention of the Queen. It was a job Lions of all beasts were uniquely suited to, for even if everyone knew you weren't Aslan, everyone was still more likely to listen to you than they were to heed, say, an equally silly Bear.

"You know this family, right?" Bucky asked, dismounting from the horse. On another day, he would have been pretty proud of himself for landing on his feet instead of his ass. "How many kids did they have?"

"There were four, once," said the Lion.

Bucky glanced over at the statues again, just long enough to be sure there were still only three shorter ones. Then he turned to look on the other side of the clearing, where the tree from his vision should have been. Though there were any number of trees around, but the one he was looking for couldn't have been more obvious. It was a huge, wide thing, which must once have been a grandfather among trees in these parts. Now, most of it was gone, leaving it just a little taller than a boy in the middle of a growth spurt.

Now that they were here, there was a part of Bucky that didn't seem to want to go any farther. A part that didn't want to look, because then he'd know for sure if he'd been wrong, or even just too late.

He went anyway, stepping gingerly over this exposed root or that one as he circled the tree to find the opening. For a second, he thought maybe there wouldn't be one, that the pool hadn't shown him reality exactly, or there was a puzzle he was going to have to solve first. It wasn't like it would be the first time.

But then he saw it, a hole that didn't seem as large or as far from the ground as it had in the pool. If he hadn't known to look for it, he could have walked right by it without noticing anything. He had to crouch down to be certain it was really there, and not just a trick of the light.

Magic, he'd figure out later. Someone good must have put a spell on or around that tree to keep anyone from finding out what was in it. For now, though, he wasn't thinking about that. As soon as he was sure the opening was there, he reached in--

("There might be a serpent in there for all you know," said Loki from behind him. Bucky may have gone more slowly and gingerly than he'd thought, for Loki's breath plumed to the right and the Lion's to left, and the horse had in the meantime been very firmly tied to a tree.)

--and kept reaching in, until his gloved fingers hit something soft.

The soft thing jerked away from him, and a shriek came from inside the tree.

Bucky crouched down more, and squinted, and thought he could almost see something in there.

"Hi there," he said, in the nicest voice he could. "We're not going to hurt you. We're here to help."

He waited for a few seconds, but there wasn't anything else from inside the tree. So then he kept going, not really sure of the kind of thing he should say in this situation, but figuring maybe he could go with the same philosophy Loki did with the horse. Meaning, if the horse hadn't really cared how much Loki called it a nag if he said it in a soothing tone, maybe a little kid wouldn't care if Bucky stumbled a little, just as long as he sounded friendly while he was doing it. So he kept it up for a few minutes, talking about what had happened at school last week and what Steve had done to get himself two black eyes the other day, and the other horses he'd seen in Archenland just an hour or two ago.

Girls loved horses, for some reason--Bucky's own sister was crazy about them--and so maybe that was what did it. Whatever it was, there came a shifting from inside the tree, and then there was a whole face looking out at him.

"Hi there," Bucky said again. "I'm Bucky. What's your name?"

"Shona," the little girl said with a sniffle.

She twisted forward a little more, and then Bucky was able to reach in and pull her out the rest of the way. He picked her up, and she was about the size Becca had been when she'd been three or four, which made her a lot easier to carry now than Becca had been back then.

"Close your eyes for a minute," he said when he was done gathering her blankets up from inside the tree, and her her bundled up good and warm against the winter air.

Shona screwed her eyes tightly shut, and Bucky managed to get by the statues without her seeing them.

"It really is the Daughter of Eve," said the Lion, with a joy that was barely concealed when he said, in a tone that he probably meant to be much sterner than it was: "And now you must return to Archenland."

"I believe that was the idea," Loki said dryly.

"Yep," Bucky said.

"I will escort you to the border," said the Lion. "Let us make haste."

*

Riding three astride wasn't really the most comfortable thing, especially with the fit Loki put up about the order being Shone in front of Loki in front of Bucky. But she couldn't be between them, and if she and Bucky were both ahead of Loki, there was no way he'd be able to drive. No one was walking, and it was probably a bad idea to have a three year old ride a Lion.

So they got started probably ten minutes after they should have. Loki was pouting, and the Lion had pointed out that he was a Lion about twenty more times, and Shona had already cried because she couldn't pet the horsie's nose, and Bucky was getting really sick of everyone (and, while he wasn't the sort of boy to go out of his way to hurt the feelings of new friends he'd just met, he was not above sniping at Loki, and had done so several times). It is very likely no one was paying much attention to their surroundings, and just as likely that it would have made no difference if they had.

The Lion several feet ahead and to the right of the horse, they rounded a turn in the path (they had, perhaps foolishly, gone back the same way they'd come in), and came face to face with a giant.

At least, that was what Bucky thought at first; that was how tall the person in front of them seemed. Not a hundred feet tall, not even twenty, but tall enough that even sitting on a horse, Bucky had to look up to see her face. The Witch--for of course, that was who it was--looked exactly like she had in the pool, but somehow even colder and more terrible.

"What fools are these, who trespass in our dominion, and seek to take what is Ours?" she said, so coldly it would have made you shiver on even the hottest summer's day. "Release the Human child and perhaps we shall yet permit you to live."

"Never," said the Lion, and looking at him the Witch seemed to falter, and grew for an instant even more pale. Then she smiled, and it was a smile as cold as her speech had been.

"Never?" she said, raising her wand as the Lion leapt toward her with claws unsheathed and a great roar in his throat. "May you ponder on Never long, when I leave you to stand guard outside my house."

For of course even as the Lion leapt for her, the Witch's wand came down; and when the Lion's paws met the snow once more, he was grey and cold instead of soft and yellow. He had been turned into stone.

"Loki," Bucky said, already wondering why they hadn't run, the second the Lion had made his move. "Loki, c'mon."

"And you ," said the Witch, and now her wand was pointed at them. "It was you whose eyes watched the raising of my house. Do not think to lie; I know where I have felt such sorcery before."

"It was," Loki said in a strange, thick sort of voice, sounding not at all like himself.

"Who are you, pray tell?" the Witch asked. "I have heard tell of none like you in this world, and I will know why."

"I am prince Loki of Asgard."

The Witch laughed, a harsh, wild, somehow desperately unhappy sort of sound. "And where is this Asgard? I have never heard of such a land."

"It's not a land, exactly," said Loki, in a flat, almost bored kind of voice. "It is a realm. It is the greatest branch upon the World Tree, which stands far outside your reach."

Normally, Bucky loved to hear Loki talk about the world he'd come from. He liked to imagine what it would be like to look up from wherever you were and see the gigantic branch you'd come from stretching across the whole sky. Maybe, depending on where you were, to see the other branches, the ones that went to all those other magical countries. Now, though, he just wanted to scream. To tell Loki that they had to go, and they had to go right now. But as much as he tried, he found he couldn't say anything--that there was something stopping him from saying anything, no matter how urgently the words bunched together in his throat.

"So you have come from outside this world," said the Witch, with an even greedier look in her eyes than she'd started out with. "Perhaps you've come by way of the rings."

"Rings?" Loki said, and for just a moment seemed more animated than he had since they'd run into the Witch (for he must have spent many decades trying to find his own way into Narnia by then). "What rings?"

The Witch's demeanor changed almost as fast as she could raise her wand. "It is no matter. I can see now that you do not have them. Tell me, then, of how you have come to be here. What great, primal magic have you invoked? How much blood have you shed to come here? How many slaves have you sacrificed? Tell me ."

"I," Loki said, and seemed to falter, though that was something Bucky noticed only distantly; it was the Witch who had come to fill his vision and thoughts and everything, the same way a blizzard will, until you can see nothing but the white. "I haven't--what?"

"Do you think I cannot see you reek of the Deep Magic? Do not think to deceive me, or to have me believe that there is anything of blood magic you do not know. Do not think to tell me you do not know what I could do if I had all four."

The way she looked at Shona (who'd been loudly sobbing through all of this, in a way that was somehow so muffled that if Bucky had noticed it before, he would have thought there was another kid a mile or two away who needed help) was very nasty and very frightening. 

All four, Bucky thought, and even as he shivered, he was thinking about the three shorter statues, the ones who might stay standing in that glade forever.

"I can see you are a great sorcerer," said the Witch, and even if it was supposed to be flattery, Bucky would think later that there must have been at least enough truth in it to explain why she hadn't turned them to stone right off the bat. "I can see even more than that."

Loki's voice rang greedy and somehow flat against the great white calm. "What do you see?"

"You are the brother of the cold. You could be a master of winter. A King, ruling by my side. Together, we could bring Winter to all of this world. It need not take centuries; it need not take even years. Not if you give me the girl. Together, we could take Archenland, Calormen. We could take the Isles, and all that lies beyond. Within the year, our ice could be at the emperor's very doorstep, across a newly-still sea."

Even with his thoughts all fuzzy and white, even without being able to see Loki's face, Bucky knew something was wrong. That there was something messed up about this, even if he couldn't remember what it was anymore. There were things he needed to say, something he needed to stop, but there was a chasm, too, and no way he could think of to cross it.

"If I give you the girl," Loki said.

" Yesssss," said the Witch, and stepped forward, not holding her wand as tightly or as high as she had been a moment before.

Bucky wasn't thinking. There was no point in that. Instead, he was reaching. In his pocket, for something he had put there what must have been a thousand years ago. He pulled it out, and moving at all was like trying to walk in hip-deep snow, but no one was watching him. And then Loki's knife was in his hand, and his hand was coming down, and then Loki screamed. Everything seemed louder and brighter than it had a second ago, and somehow a thousand times more real. Bucky looked down and saw the hilt of the knife protruding from Loki's thigh.

"Loki, c'mon," Bucky said, seeing the shock on the Witch's face and knowing it couldn't last, and trying to figure out if he jumped off the horse, if it would give everyone else a chance--

But he never had to find out, because by the time he'd finished saying it, by the time the Witch had raised her wand, fifteen or sixteen other horses had popped into view. Some of them were rearing at the Witch and some of them were running away, and then the real horse beneath them was one of the ones running away, thudding and thumping at record speeds across the snow. Every time Bucky looked behind them, there were one or two fewer horses as the Witch kept waving her wand to disappear them, and then they went around a thick group of trees and couldn't see the Witch anymore. 

*

Every time he turned around, Bucky expected to see the Witch. Every time they went around a bend, he thought she would be there. But she never was. And then they could see a little sliver of green again. It got closer and closer, so much more quickly than it had the day before. And then they were in it, surrounded by it, and winter was behind them. 

The horse, no longer being urged forward, slowed, and then stopped. When Bucky slid off her back, her sides were heaving, and she was covered in a white lather. By the time Loki handed Shona down to him, they were surrounded by people, and Bucky was explaining what had happened. He never did remember exactly what he said. All he ever remembered, specifically, was what happened when he was done saying it.

"I don't know whether to knight you or whip you," said the Queen of Narnia, though perhaps not quite as severely as she might have if Shona's aunt, who was in the crowd and had yet to let her niece leave her arms, hadn't started crying in the middle of Bucky's story.

"Someone ought to take a horsewhip to both of them for what they've done to my mare," muttered the man who'd taken the horse's reins from Loki almost before he'd hit the ground, and then handed her off to a groom (who was, it must be said, rather miffed to have to spend all those minutes walking her instead of listening to Bucky's story). 

"Your Majesty," said the man with the glasses, the one who'd written down their names before. "However you choose to proceed with his punishment or lack thereof, it may be prudent for you to send an accounting of his activities to his parents."

He gestured to Loki when he said 'this one,' but the Queen just looked confused. "And who are his parents, pray tell?"

"Why, the king and queen, of course," said the man, not sounding half as sure by the end of the sentence as he did at the beginning. The following one was very nearly a question: "This is the prince of Terenbithia."

"No," the Queen said slowly. " This is the prince of Terenbithia."

She gestured at a boy about half Bucky and Loki's size (who had until the last quarter-hour been the most exciting thing to emerge from beyond the Narnian border that day, having evidently followed their trail all the way from Cair Paravel all by himself).

Bucky and Loki looked at each other.

"--Run," Loki said.

And so they did.

*

How exactly they managed to outrun all those adults, Bucky would never be sure. Maybe they'd just been too tired to chase them. For sure he and Loki had had a lot of terror to fuel their head start.

By the time they were far enough ahead to risk slowing down a little, Loki was limping.

"Shit, your leg," Bucky said. "Are you okay?"

"It would take more than a prick to fell a prince of Asgard," Loki said, but he limped more and more the farther they got, and didn't even make a show out of it.

"Where are we going, anyway? Do you even know?" Bucky asked, though by then Loki looked so tired and was obviously trying so hard that he didn't really expect an answer.

Still, though, he wasn't too surprised when, after they'd been half-trotting, half-walking for a long time, they wound up in front of a familiar gate. Somehow he hadn't noticed the green turf wall they'd been passing; the time he didn't spend looking at his feet was either spent looking behind him or watching Loki to make sure he didn't fall over. 

"I think you need to reconsider your priorities," Bucky said.

"I told you I desired to come back here. Considering we're being pursued, who knows when we might have another chance to examine it?"

Well, he had a point. And it wasn't like Bucky had a better idea.

Inside the fence, they flopped onto the ground--not by the pool, which was fully visible from outside the gate, but a few feet to the right of the gate, which wasn't. Loki stretched his left leg out, then leaned over his thigh. By the time Bucky figured out what he was going to do, he'd already done it, yanking the knife out with a pained grunt.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Bucky asked. "Do you need me to do anything?"

"No. It should heal quickly. It only hasn't yet because the blade remained."

Somehow, thinking of Loki's leg trying to knit itself around the knife didn't make Bucky feel any better. Actually, it made him feel worse. He knew he hadn't had another choice, not with whatever the Witch had been doing to them to keep them trapped there with her. He couldn't even think of something else he could have done now, with a clear head and the benefit of hindsight. But he'd hurt Loki, and there was no way he wasn't going to feel bad about it.

"Okay," he said, instead of any of the other things he could have said. After Loki had cleaned the knife off, he offered it back, and even though he didn't really want it anymore, Bucky took it.

They sat in the corner for an hour or so. Every once in a while one of them would get the idea to peek over the wall to see if anyone was coming. Each time, the other one would point out that sticking their heads above the wall meant anyone who was looking for them would have that much easier a time finding them. But mostly, they just sat there, enjoying the sun. Bucky half-dozed a couple times before a snippet of some cold nightmare woke him up again. Loki seemed to spasm awake a couple times too, like the same thing was happening for him.

When the sun finally started going down, Loki said, "It's dusk. No one will see," and headed over toward the pool.

Figuring he was probably right, and really tired of laying with his head pillowed on his rolled-up coat, Bucky followed him.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked, though personally he'd have been just as happy to do whatever it was in the morning. "You better not look for the Witch again."

"I would like to know what she meant, when she said those things of me. But no. I don't intend to turn my eyes to the Witch again. At least not tonight."

Bucky was about to say that what she'd meant was that she was weaving a spell around Loki, like a spider's web, and when he was all wrapped up in it she'd been going to take what she wanted and turn them both to stone--and that was only if she didn't outright kill them. He was about to say that, but they were at the pool now, and even though it was getting dark, they could see their reflections in the water. They seemed to be shining out from it. Bucky was there, but what he couldn't look away from was Loki. His left thigh was covered in dried blood, and his always too-long hair was lanky and constantly falling into his face. He was just as filthy as Bucky was, and there were circles under his eyes even darker than the ones he'd had before, like he hadn't slept for years--and somehow, he was still the most beautiful thing Bucky had ever seen.

Bucky was not a boy prone to panic, but for a few seconds after thinking this, he felt something very like it. Boys didn't call other boys beautiful. They sure didn't spend six months not thinking about the way their chests had hurt looking at another boy in the dawn light. If they did, if it ever happened, he'd have heard about it. He'd heard plenty of other things, when it came to girls. If there'd been anything to know about boys, he'd have heard that too, by now.

Who knew what he might have said, or done, if something else hadn't happened before he could get that far.

In the water, their reflections seemed to shimmer, although the water itself hadn't moved. Then they faded away, until they were all the way disappeared. Something else faded in, slowly but surely, so inevitable that Bucky wasn't at all surprised to see that it was a Lion. It wasn't a regular Lion like the one they had met in the woods. This was the Lion.

"Boys, boys," Aslan said. "That was very well done."

"Must we go already? I wished to have another chance at the pool," Loki complained. 

But Aslan laughed, the way he almost always seemed to laugh when Loki talked. Even Loki never seemed to feel as if it were a mocking laugh; it was too fond and too knowing for that. "You would find the pool would not work for you in the same way again, for it is not yours to command. But yes: your task is finished, and it is time you were returned home."

A few minutes ago, Bucky wouldn't have been ready to go yet, either. Now, though, he was so filled with confusion that it was all right with him.

"What question is on your mind, O Bucky Barnes?" Aslan said.

Bucky wasn't sure how to ask the question he had about Loki. He didn't have the words for whatever that was--and he wouldn't, not for years. But there were other questions, the way there always were at the end of their time in Narnia. So he pushed back the stuff about Loki, and thought about all those people, and said, "Are the Narnians going to be okay?"

"Some will settle in Archenland. Others will find the North no longer suits them, and will go to live in Calormen or other places. Only some of the youngest will live to see the end of the Witch's winter; and of those, only a few will ever visit Narnia again," said Aslan, which was a little surprising, since Bucky had figured he was about as likely to tell them to mind their own business.

"What about Shona? And the other Lion?" Bucky said, not so much because he thought he needed to, as because Aslan had paused, and sometimes seemed to like to be asked.

"The girl will be one of those who returns, nearly a hundred years from today. The Lion is even now being taken to the Witch's house, where he will remain until all are freed again."

The way he said it made Bucky think he didn't have to ask about Shona's family, because they were probably covered under 'all.' The pause that came after he said it was different than the last one. It felt final, the kind of pause that gave you the idea that question time was over. In the end, that was probably a good thing, because the answer he'd gotten was already going to be on Bucky's mind for a while. A hundred years might not sound like a long time to Loki, but it sure was to a guy like him. The horror of growing old while your family stayed the same--it was the kind of thing that could give you nightmares.

"Well, that seems to have turned out all right," Loki said philosophically. "But perhaps you can refrain from stabbing me, the next time."

Aslan's laugh was still roaring in Bucky's ears when he blinked, and found himself somewhere else. For a second, he was a little dizzy, the way he usually was in the seconds after he fell from one world into another. Then everything around him slowed down and started to make sense. He was standing just inside his family's apartment, having just come in from spending most of a Saturday trying to keep Steve from getting in trouble (or being his partner in crime, if you asked most of the grownups on their block). He'd walked through plenty of slush on his way back, so even though he wasn't very cold, he was dripping. Something smelled good from the kitchen, and he could hear Becca talking fast, the way she did when she was excited about something. It was a good smell, and, after the last couple days, a really good sound.

Bucky hung up his coat, then snuck into his room before anyone could notice he was home. He lifted up the loose floorboard under his bed, and laid the new knife on top of all the other ones. He looked at them for a minute, his heart twisting in a way he was just starting to understand and be even more afraid of. Then he went to hug Becca and get back to eating his parents out of house and home.

It was beautiful, there in the dark.

Bucky couldn't actually see anything, not even his hands in front of his face, but he still knew that much right away. And the way he knew it was because of the song, which had started a second or two after he got there. No one could have heard it without knowing it could never have been sung in any ugly place. If you had ever heard it for yourself, you might even have suspected it was the source from which all other beauty came.

Bucky had once heard the first note or two of a song like this one, during a dream he'd had when he was a kid. The dream had turned out not to be a dream after all, but he'd never thought he'd get to hear more of that song. Now he was here again, listening to it, and he knew beyond any doubt that it was all real.

That knowing would have been the best thing about it if it hadn't been for the other thing Bucky knew, which was that he wasn't listening to it by himself. He couldn't have said why he was so sure of that. There was no light to see by, and neither of them had bumped into the other, nor dared to interrupt the song. But still, there could be no doubt that Loki was there, hearing it with him, just like he had been there for those first few notes that other time.

*

The song went on for a while, though Bucky couldn't have said for exactly how long. It could have been minutes or hours or anything in-between. 

Then the song began to change, and as it did, other things started changing, too. Stars light up the sky, familiar constellations blinking into existence all around them; and if there had been any lingering doubt as to whether they were in Narnia, it was gone by the time the sun came over the horizon for the very first time.

Now that there was light to see by, everything else seemed both to happen all at once and to take forever. Hills and mountains rose to all sides. Grass grew under their feet, spreading out over everything. Trees and bushes and all manners of flowers followed, sprouting up in the high places and the low places alike. Channels cracked the earth, and water rose up within them, creating streams that led to rivers that led to lakes and--

Far to the east, the ocean filled with these and other waters, a swell so great Bucky could hear it clearly what must have been fifty or a hundred miles away from the nearest beach. The ground rumbled under his feet until it was done.

The song changed again, one last time. These notes were wilder and more unpredictable than what had come before--as if the beginning and middle of the song were related to something you had heard before, and it was only the end that was truly new. And what happened now was not something that Bucky ever could have predicted, at least not the same way you could predict that a new world will have a sun and stars, mountains and trees, rivers and oceans.

In the ground by his feet grew a little mound, and then another, and another. For a second, Bucky thought these would be more trees or shrubs, maybe--but then the first mound burst open, and something darted out of it, between his feet and away. By the time he'd turned to see where it was going (but not what it was, for it had been an extremely quick, shadowy thing, and there was quite a lot of cover by the tangled place in which they stood), and then turned back, the other mounds were breaking open, too. It didn't make sense until it did, which was when something flew out of one of the mounds, rising into the sky as a dry brown powder drifted down from its feathers. It was a bird, a sparrow, and soon it was joined by many others. Hundreds, maybe thousands, visible for miles and miles around them, even as more shadows--mice and shrews and voles and squirrels and that sort of thing, mostly--dashed for the bushes or the trees and safety.

There were a few larger mounds here or there, none very close to where they were standing. From one there came a bear; from a circle of five mounds came a wolf-pack; and here and there came deer of a few different kinds. There were mounds much smaller than the large mounds and larger than the small ones, from which emerged creatures such as badgers and possums and rabbits, and larger birds such as hawks and falcons. But the number of large and medium mounds, while not insignificant, paled in comparison to the number of smaller mounds.

Later, Bucky would decide that it all made very good sense when it came to the ecosystem. For now he watched, and was delighted; for now he listened, and felt calmer than he had in his own world in some time.

Finally, when it had been minutes or longer since the last new mound had appeared, the song finally wound down. And when it was gone, Bucky found that he didn't miss it. Or at least, he didn't regret that it had stopped, maybe because the end of the song didn't feel like an ending. It felt like a beginning. It felt like the way a really good day feels when you wake up to it...or, maybe, the way a really good place feels when it wakes up to you.

"Wow," Bucky said, when the last notes had faded all the way away, and he'd looked over to his right to find Loki exactly where he'd known he would be, before he'd even been able to check. "That was really something."

"Yes," Loki said.

Bucky hadn't realized how far he could see while the song was going on. Now, he looked around, and realized that his sight had narrowed again. He couldn't see across whole mountain ranges, all the way to the sea; now he was limited to the snow-covered peaks surrounding the valley they were in, and limited even further by the fact that a lot of the trees had gotten pretty mature over the course of the song. It brought him back down to earth. It was a feeling he didn't usually get until he'd been sent back home.

It was a feeling that made him swallow, and look out over what he could see of that valley, and come out with the news he hadn't decided he was going to share before that moment.

"So, uh," he said. "I enlisted."

"--Enlisted in what?" Loki asked.

*

"I thought you said your realm wasn't involving itself in that war," Loki said a minute later. So far, his reaction seemed pretty okay. Better, at least, than mom and Becca's crying and worrying. It was too early to say if it was better than Steve's reaction, but Bucky figured it pretty much had to be. Loki wasn't too likely to try to join up twice in the next week and end up out on his ass both times.

"We are now," Bucky said, and didn't really have the energy to get into all the ins and outs of the whole thing. Anyway, he had the idea, whenever he was trying to explain Earth politics to Loki or Loki was trying to explain Asgardian politics to him, that a lot went missing somewhere in the middle.

"And you chose to involve yourself in this." The icy tone in Loki's voice was Bucky's first clue his reaction might not be better so much as different. "You weren't conscripted. You volunteered ."

"Pretty much."

"By the Norns, why ? Have you taken a blow to the head since last we saw one another? Or have you merely become a fool in the interim? Why would you do such a thing?"

Because it had only been a matter of time before he got drafted, Bucky could have said. Because people were already starting to ask why you hadn't joined up, if you were young and able-bodied. Because he could have taken everyone else thinking he was a coward, but not if Steve had gotten around to thinking the same thing. But none of that was the real reason.

"I had to," he said, simply. "It was the right thing to do."

If Loki remembered any of the things Bucky had told him about what he'd read in the papers, the awful things happening an ocean away, he didn't say anything about it. He was too busy working up to a tear. "You cannot sit a horse. You can hardly draw a sword without fumbling it. You're lucky if your arrows come within half a mile of wherever you've aimed them. You are, in fact, hopelessly incompetent with every weapon I've ever seen you hold. You cannot run any reasonable distance without being winded. You--"

"Gee, thanks," Bucky said. "You know, you might have a hard time believing it, but I've been known to walk and breathe at the same time. Sometimes, if I really get lucky, I can even manage to hold up my half of a conversation."

Loki didn't seem impressed, nevermind chastened. "You are a mortal."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, mortals go to war and die. By the hundreds. By the thousands. You'll hardly stand a chance without me by your side."

"Aw, I'm touched," Bucky said, and even if he sort of was underneath the sarcasm, mostly what he wanted was for Loki to stop talking. Unfortunately, the thing about Loki finally going off was that it usually meant he was going to be going off for a while unless someone managed to distract him.

"What do you expect me to do the next time I arrive in this world? Do you suppose I'll wait for you even longer than usual, on the off chance you've managed to survive your puny little war? Well, I won't. You may be certain of that much."

"Aw, I'm less touched."

"I'll simply have to perform the next task, whatever it is, on my own. It may be somewhat more difficult without your slight assistance, but I'm sure I'll manage. And the glory for my deeds, when it comes, will belong to me alone."

"What glory?" Bucky asked. They'd never really gotten much of that. Even when they heard stories that sounded sort of like something that they'd been involved with, they were never mentioned in them. No one ever seemed to recognize their names, even from the times when they'd been feasted after doing whatever they'd done.

But before he could try to get Loki sidetracked into complaining about how they never arrived in Narnia to find a statue had been erected in their honor, and how insulting the lack really was, they both got sidetracked by something else.

A rustling sound came from somewhere nearby, so that they both paused to listen. Just when Bucky had decided it must have been nothing, and Loki had opened his mouth, it came again. 

About twenty feet away, there was a group of bushes that were thicker and more opaque than they had been five minutes ago. When the rustling sound came for the third time, the leaves on one of the bushes shook a little, and there was a hint of shadowy movement.

"What do you think it is?" Bucky asked in a low voice.

"Something big," Loki said.

Bucky tried to think what they'd seen pop up from the ground anywhere near here that had been as big as this looked. But he couldn't think of anything. Whatever this was, it was as big as an elk, or a bear, and all of those that he'd seen had been well to the north.

Bucky ran through the options real quick, the way you get used to doing when you end up having to make a lot of split-second decisions during adventures. Running was a bad idea, when they didn't know what they'd be running from, whether it would chase them, or even how fast it was. It was a worse idea when you also considered that they were downwind of it, so that it wouldn't matter how well they hid in the thickening underbrush if whatever-it-was had any kind of nose at all.

"Got a spare knife?" Bucky asked.

"I'm no longer certain you're capable of wielding one."

Before Bucky could argue the point, or tell him to stop being an asshole about it, Loki was gone, ducking forward into the shadows so that Bucky's choices were to either follow him, or stand in the middle of the clearing and wait to get mauled.

"Asshole," Bucky said, and followed him.

In the end, it turned out they needn't have gone to all the trouble of trying to get closer to the thing--for they'd only gone perhaps fifteen feet when something stepped out of the shadows and into the sunlight. It was just as big as its shadow had looked, and then some. It wasn't an elk or a bear or even a moose. 

As much as Bucky has seen when he'd been able to see all the way to the sea, he must have missed some things, for the creature that stood there was a Centaur. There was no doubt, from the dried earth that caked the Centaur's entire body, from his horse legs and flanks to his human-looking chest and stomach, that he must have come up just like the rest.

"Huh," Bucky said. 

He straightened up, not too worried about being charged anymore. All the Centaurs he'd ever heard of had been on the side of good, and none of the ones he'd ever heard of had been prone to random attacks.

They were still pretty intimidating, though. Bucky and Loki had had more than one hushed argument about who was going to be the one to ask a Centaur a question. Usually Bucky ended up doing it, though somehow it never made asking the next Centaur a question any less intimidating.

This time, though, there was something different. Bucky couldn't figure out what it was, at least not at first.

"Horses may like me better, but horse men seem to prefer you," said Loki, right on cue.

By now, the Centaur had seen them, and had not so much frozen as paused in place. He tilted his head to the side in a very un-Centaurlike way, and then said, in an uncertain voice that was even less like any Centaur they'd ever met, "Hello?"

"Hi there," Bucky said, and now he got what the difference was. He hadn't noticed at first because at first all there had been to notice was big . But now that he was looking, he could see that even if this Centaur was just as tall as the ones they'd met previously, he was a lot skinnier than any of them--not in a way that suggested he didn't have enough to eat, but in one that suggested he hadn't had the chance to fill out yet. His chin was smooth with no beard in sight, and although Bucky never would have noticed this part without noticing the other things first, his horse half was also more on the lanky side. This was a much younger Centaur than any they'd met before, which made sense considering how new the rest of the world was, too. "I'm Bucky, and this is Loki."

" Prince Loki," Loki corrected.

"I am," said the Centaur, and paused again. "--I believe I am the first of my kind, or one of the first. I do not yet have a name, or at least not one known to me."

As he said this, he began to somehow look more confident in what he was saying; and yet, at the same time, seemed somehow less certain. It was as if he were repeating something he had been told rather than something he knew from having experienced it firsthand.

"Nice to meet you," Bucky said, before Loki could say anything stupid. Then, because the Centaur still seemed so unsure, he said, "Can we help you with something?"

"Do you perhaps know where 'east' might be?" asked the Centaur in a rush, looking relieved. "I am to meet someone near it, by a place known as the Sea."

Bucky thought about this a second, then for another second while he figured out how to explain it to someone who had (probably) just become a person today. "East isn't really a place. It's a direction. It's the way the sun comes up every morning. Today, it came up over those mountains. If you were on the other side of the mountains, it would come up over something else, but always from that same direction. Get it?"

"I believe I do. Thank you," said the Centaur, and turned to go.

"We could come with you," Bucky said.

" Bucky ," Loki said in a low, annoyed tone, the kind he got when he didn't want to do something and didn't have any ideas for smoothly getting himself out of whatever it was (or, sometimes, because he'd taken the opposite of a shine to someone Bucky liked. That was just the kind of contrary guy he could be, especially over the last few years).

"Unless you think we'll slow you down," Bucky continued, because even if the Centaur didn't seem too confident, the fact that he was a Centaur meant he'd be a hell of a lot faster than them once he got used to his feet.

"I would welcome your company," said the Centaur solemnly. "I have not experienced such a thing as company before (though it is of course my first day)."

*

Walking through this new world might have been intimidating with any other Centaur--but this Centaur was just as new as everything else, and didn't seem to be in a hurry, so it was more of a stroll than anything else. Sometimes they'd pass a pine tree or something and the Centaur would ask them what it was, and they would tell him; other times, they wouldn't know, and the Centaur would mutter a word under his breath, as if he were the one naming the thing. And maybe he was, for later Centaurs were as much scholars and healers as they were prophets. Everyone has to start somewhere, Bucky figured.

After Bucky had failed to name a lethal-looking purple flower, Loki said, "I don't know what it's called. They have no such plant in my world (believe me, I've looked). But I do happen to know what it does." He paused for dramatic effect.

"And what does it do, pray tell?" asked the Centaur, who hadn't been around Loki long enough to be wise to his dramatic pauses yet.

"When imbibed, it grants true visions. Though only to those with a gift for prophecy, of course. Which makes it useless to us--oh, but you're a Centaur, aren't you?"

Bucky rolled his eyes. But the Centaur asked, "What do you mean?"

"You may not know this yet, but your kind are widely known for their prophetic gifts."

"Yeah, by talking to the stars," Bucky said. "Not seeing a lot of those out right now."

"That's the most common method we've heard of. It hardly means it's the only one. Wouldn't it be nice to know if there were another?"

"I do feel as if I ought to know more," the Centaur agreed.

And that was how all three of them ended up chewing on the flowers, though not until after Bucky got Loki to swear up, down, and sideways that it only looked lethal. They only tasted the petals, for Loki claimed the rest was both disgusting and useless. The texture and taste was something like clover, except more purple, somehow. It didn't make Bucky feel any different, and it was pretty obvious that Loki didn't, either. The Centaur, though, soon seemed to slow down, and to sway from side to side, not as if he might fall over, but as if he were thinking too far and deeply for anything else.

"What are you trying to do, anyway?" Bucky asked, while they kept an eye on the Centaur (and stayed a good few feet away, on the off chance he fell to one side).

Loki shrugged. "We've never had a prophecy before. I thought it was worth the attempt."

About half the other times they'd talked to Centaurs, it had been because Loki wanted to know if there was anything written in the Narnian skies about them. Stories got told up there, and he figured that if anyone was going to know about them, it would definitely be the stars. 

It did make sense, sort of. Every now and then, they'd hear a story about other people who'd come to Narnia from another world, so it wasn't like everyone who showed up here from somewhere else got forgotten. The thing that Loki never seemed to acknowledge was that those people always ended up ruling Narnia, or saving the whole country, or both. Bucky had never ruled anything, and if Loki ever did, it wasn't going to be here. So it wasn't really surprising that no one had ever heard of them, especially since they didn't use their real names half the time, or stay around long enough to really get to know anyone except each other. But still, even though Bucky never really expected much recognition, Loki seemed to be itching for it whenever the subject came up.

"Sure," Bucky said. He could have argued more about it, but there didn't really seem to be a point. The Centaur had already eaten the flowers, and it wasn't like Bucky had tried all that hard to convince him otherwise. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen.

The Centaur kept swaying. The swaying began to slow, a process so glacial that when he became completely still, you would have thought it had happened all at once unless you had been paying very close attention all the while. His eyes, which had been closed, snapped open wide. He was no less thin and gangly than he'd been a few minutes before, and no less covered in dirt, but somehow seemed much more like the kinds of Centaurs they had met before than he had before. He was majestic, and stern, and somehow you found yourself dreading whatever might come out of his mouth, because you couldn't guarantee you would like it, but you knew it would be true.

"Loki Odinson," he said. "Bucky Barnes. You wish to know what awaits you in this land of Narnia. What power, what acclaim. You desire to be told what is and will be written of you in the grandeur of our skies."

"Uh," Bucky said.

"More or less," said Loki.

"You believe that the heavens must already have learned of you, if I know of these things, if I am speaking of them to you. But it is not so. You are known neither by name nor by deed. The stars, who speak endlessly of all that must someday come to pass, have said nothing of you. You are as unseen as you are unknown, hidden from the skies by some dark or bright power.

"I do not know how or why you were brought to Narnia, or what great or evil deeds you might commit. Perhaps I will ask Aslan, when I meet him in the East."

So saying, the Centaur shook his head, the same way a horse might, and then fell silent. Then his eyes closed and his head drooped, until his chin rested on his chest. A single snore erupted from him, and it was soon apparent that he was in the middle of what was perhaps the first nap ever taken in that land.

"Charming," said Loki, looking a little pissed and a lot rattled. Whatever he'd been looking to hear, it hadn't been that.

"Good going," Bucky said. "Nice to know we might be evil. That's just great."

"Surely it would be better than to be so insignificant as to be unworthy of mention," Loki said, which went a long way to explaining why he looked pissed. Then, more thoughtfully, he said, "He knew our full names."

"So?"

"So, even if the stars know nothing about us (presuming, of course, that there's any truth to what he said), someone must."

"Centaurs don't lie," Bucky said, to whom it was so manifestly obvious that there was at least one person in Narnia who knew all about them that he didn't feel the need to comment on the rest.

"Not in latter days. Who knows about now?"

"I think if the first ever Centaur was a liar, the rest would have a different reputation," Bucky said. It was the kind of thing that might or might not have been true at home, but felt like it had to be here. Narnia was like that, making things simple that would have been much more complicated if they'd happened anywhere else.

The thing about Loki was that he wasn't simple, though, no matter how much everything around them might be. A series of emotions passed across his face, only about half of which Bucky was sure what they were. Then he said, so lightly it was anything but, "Unless the first one were a very good liar."

Bucky couldn't help it, and rolled his eyes. "Maybe you could give him lessons when he wakes back up."

*

A while later, they were still waiting for the Centaur to wake up. 

They had found the flowers by a little stream, through which ran the clearest, loveliest water Bucky had ever tasted. (Loki claimed he'd had better at home, but then again, Loki always said that, like he thought being too impressed by anything that happened outside of Asgard was beneath him.) Flies buzzed around somewhere nearby, but didn't fly over to bother them. The trees had kept growing, too slow to see it happening, but steady nonetheless; half an hour ago, Bucky had swung his legs over a branch just a foot or two off the ground, but now his knees were at around the same height as Loki's eyes.

"My father means to announce his successor next week," Loki said. He had a knife in his hands, and was gazing down at it thoughtfully. He'd been leaning against the same tree for at least twenty minutes, but hadn't fidgeted at all. Maybe it was easier to adjust yourself when you weren't sitting on the thing that kept changing on you. "He claims to be weary, no longer interested in ruling."

"Oh yeah? What do you think your chances are?"

Loki's scowl was pretty close to an answer, and not a very surprising one. For the first few years, whenever they'd met, he'd been full of talk about how he was obviously the superior choice. Then things had started to change. He'd started talking less about the kind of king he would be, and more about how awful Thor was, and how bad he'd be at the job. It definitely gave the impression that he knew the wind wasn't blowing in the direction he wanted it to.

Now, he said, "If that oaf becomes king, Asgard will be in ruins within a century. Mark my words. He's brash, and impulsive, and laughably easy to manipulate."

"Which you know because you do it all the time," said Bucky dryly. Maybe his brother was as bad as he said he was, or maybe he wasn't, but the way Loki talked, you got the impression Thor could have been the best person in the universe and Loki still wouldn't have been able to figure out anything good to say about him.

"And he always falls for it. Just last year, when we went to Alfheim--"

And Loki was off on a story, which involved a hunt for an imaginary beast, and a potion made from the spikes of a real one, and how hilarious it had been when Thor barged into someone else's wedding feast on the trail of one of Loki's illusions, waving his hammer around and causing an inter-realm incident their dad had had to smooth over.

"It wasn't even a proper glamour," Loki said. "Merely a shadow. Any imbecile would have realized it was no real creature."

"Except your drugged brother and all the screaming wedding guests," Bucky said. "Sure."

Loki made a face. "The point is that Thor is clearly unfit for rule. If he can so readily allow himself to be deceived by me, who's to say he won't allow himself to be deceived by another? Someone who wouldn't have the best interests of Asgard at heart? Clearly, the throne must go to one too clever to fall for such a ruse."

"I don't know if your dad's going to see it that way," Bucky said, partly because he knew it was normal in both their worlds for the oldest son of a king to end up the next king, but also partly because he'd met enough kings to wonder whether Loki would really be a very good one (not that he'd ever have said as much, no matter how annoying Loki's ranting got sometimes).

"I can't see why he wouldn't. He's always said we were both born to rule. What else could he have meant?"

"I have no idea," Bucky said honestly, and noticed that his feet were now at the same level as Loki's hairline. He was going to need to jump back down, either now or pretty soon. "If I were you, though, I'd try to come up with a plan B. You know, just in case it doesn't go your way."

Bucky was too busy gauging the distance from the tree branch to the ground to notice the expression that passed over Loki's face then. If he had, he would surely have figured out that Loki had already come up with a plan B, and that whatever it was, it was probably a lot nastier than what he'd gotten up to in Alfheim. As it was, the thing he noticed, once he'd gotten his feet as close to the ground as he could before letting go, was that Loki's expression looked kind of distant, like he was somewhere far away, or thinking really hard. He wasn't holding the knife anymore, either, and his hands were balled into fists. For a second, Bucky would have assumed he'd disappeared it, much the same way he'd appeared it in the first place; then light glanced off something by Loki's feet, and Bucky looked down and saw that Loki had driven the knife into the ground, nearly up to the hilt.

"Huh," Bucky said.

He might have pushed Loki on what that was about, except that then a long, loud sigh came from ten or fifteen feet away, where they'd left the Centaur. In the time he'd been asleep, little green vines had started twisting up around his ankles. They weren't thick or terribly strong vines, like the sort you might have read of in one horror story or another; they were, instead, easily shaken off, so that all the Centaur had to do was pick up his feet one by one to be freed.

"That was--very strange," he said, and looked somehow older than he had before. "I think perhaps such blooms were not intended for my kind."

"Perhaps it was a lesson best learned early," said Loki, smooth as smooth could be.

"...Perhaps," said the Centaur. "Though I find I doubt your intent on this matter."

"I'd doubt it for everything else, too," Bucky said cheerfully, because it was either rag on Loki, or dwell on the troubles they'd brought with them from their own worlds.

"Be that as it may, East I have been summoned, and Eastward I must go--and with haste. For the one who called me came to me in my sleep, and bade me come to him swiftly. There is much work to be done already, here on this first day."

"Does he want us to go with you?" Bucky asked, and didn't have to ask who 'he' was. In Narnia, you always had a sense about when people were talking about Aslan, even when they didn't say his name.

"I did not ask. He did not say," said the Centaur. "Do as you will."

So saying, he shook himself, dislodging half a birds nest from atop his head (some small, fluttering bird had mistaken the curls of his head for the top of a tree, so still had he stood as he slept), and turned to the east. Then he was gone, his hoofbeats as swift and sure-footed as if there weren't hundreds or thousands of molehills everywhere, just waiting to be tripped on. (In fact, all the holes from which the animals had emerged had by now filled back in).

"Guess he didn't need us after all," Bucky said.

"What a shame," Loki said, in a way that said it really wasn't at all.

Abruptly and surprisingly cheered by the idea of Loki being keen to get him alone, even if it didn't mean what Bucky would have liked it to mean, Bucky had to agree.

*

After a perfunctory debate about it, they decided not to follow the Centaur. There didn't seem to be any reason to bother, since he hadn't been told to bring them; but the main reason, at least for Bucky, was that that prophecy had left him a little rattled. It was one thing to hear you weren't important, but another thing to hear that you may as well not exist. It was the kind of thing that could get a guy wondering what the point of anything was, if nothing you had ever done or ever would do actually mattered. It didn't seem like the kind of thought process that was going to be helpful in the Army.

Instead, they decided, they'd go west, following the setting sun (which was, for now, not anywhere near finished with its journey from one end of the sky to the other) until it was dark enough to make camp. If something or someone else came up, they'd deal with it when it did. 

The best thing about this plan was that they wouldn't have to worry about where to get dinner, or plan in any time for it to get done. Even in the short way they'd already walked with the Centaur, they'd seen bushes and bushes full of ripened blackberries, and tree after tree weighed down with rosy, soft-looking peaches. So they wouldn't have to go fishing, which was always cold and wet, with Bucky doing all the disgusting parts and Loki doing all the criticizing; and they wouldn't have to go hunting, which was always a little nerve wracking (somehow even more so when you hadn't seen any Talking animals around than when you had), not to mention exhausting, with even more disgusting parts; and, best of all, they wouldn't have to go hungry if neither fishing nor hunting worked out.

They were just about to start out again when Bucky spotted something and said, "Would you look at that?"

"What?"

"Your knife." 

The knife Loki had driven into the ground wasn't a knife anymore, or had become something more than a knife. The hilt was three times taller than it had been before. Though it was shaped largely the same as it had been before, it had become a more bronze color--except for the leaves which had sprouted from it, which were as green as the most well-maintained lawn you've ever seen, and somehow a thousand times more natural. Bucky got the idea they were pretty lethal, too; even from feet away, seeing them in the shade of the tree in which the knife-bush had been planted, you could tell they were as sharp as the blade-root from which they'd come.

"How odd," Loki said, and crouched down next to the bush. He put out his hand, slowly but not gingerly, and ran his finger over the nearest leaf--not touching it, but feeling the air above it, with the intense expression he only seemed to have when he was intent on a (usually magical) problem. Loki tended to have emotions in flashes, but when it came to magic he was always too focused on the thing in front of him to bother worrying about what he looked like.

And what he looked like was...Bucky had figured out what he felt about Loki a long time ago. He'd figured out what he wanted, and at the same time, figured out it wasn't going to happen. It wasn't going to happen back in Brooklyn, where he could get the shit beaten out of him or even killed if he got caught with another guy; it definitely wasn't going to happen in Narnia, where losing Loki as a friend would be a hell of a lot worse than potentially getting stabbed during the process.

But no matter how firmly Bucky held to that, there were still moments, when Loki was concentrating or laughing or asleep, or being even more obnoxious than usual. Moments when Bucky's heart did a little flip in his chest, and his face got hot, and the only thing he wanted to do more than push Loki into the nearest wall and kiss him senseless, was to keep watching him for as long as the moment lasted.

This one lasted for a while before Loki said, "I see." 

He glanced at Bucky, so fast and smooth (and still so beautiful) that Bucky had to look away, because there was no way there wasn't something amazingly incriminating on his face. When he looked back, a second later, Loki was looking at him quizzically. 

Loki being curious would probably have been the kiss of death in any other situation. But he was intent on what he was doing this time, too intent to bother asking. As soon as Bucky looked back, Loki held out his hand with a flourish, as if to include the bush, and the nearby trees, and everything.

"What's up?" Bucky said, because Loki liked to be asked, and giving in to the theatrics meant they could concentrate on that.

"Do you remember what I told you about creation magic, on the day we met?" 

"Uh, not really," said Bucky, who remembered plenty about that first visit, but nothing about that (though if he'd remembered a little more, he might have recalled that Loki hadn't said much about what he'd felt back then except that it felt new).

"Well, the world was new then. Here and now, the world is new still...or new again, however it's meant to work. What I felt then was promise; what I feel now is the promise's completion."

"Yeah, and?"

"Here and now, this world is filled with creation magic. It's bursting with it. As long as it remains, anything planted in its soil will grow into a shape and purpose compatible with this world."

"Oh, yeah?" Bucky had become so interested in this that he approached the bush for himself, and crouched down beside Loki to get a better look. He traced a finger over one of the other leaves, but unlike Loki, he made the mistake of touching it, and got a hell of a paper cut for his trouble. "Well," he said, sticking his finger into his mouth for a second, then popping it back out so he could finish his thought, "no one who goes camping out here is ever gonna need to pack a razor."

Loki was giving him a weird look. He did that sometimes, but a lot more often over the last few years than he had when they were kids. It was the kind of look where you weren't quite sure if he was about to get offended or something else.

It turned out to be something else, which was good, since Bucky had a cut on his finger to suck on, and didn't need to be worrying about getting a leaf in the ribs to boot.

"--I doubt you could shave with these," said Loki. "They're not nearly stiff enough." He made a weird coughing sound to go along with the weird look from before, and stood up. "Meanwhile. We did mean to go west, did we not?"

"Sure," Bucky said, and followed Loki in that direction, a little regretful to be leaving the strange new bush behind, and even more baffled at Loki's reaction to what had really been nothing more than a dumb joke.

*

They didn't get very far very fast, for although they weren't interrupted by anything else that could talk, every now and then they had to stop for important planting reasons. Bucky didn't have much on him other than change, which seemed boring, and his apartment key, which he'd need when he got back, and a few buttons, which if he tore them off he'd have to try to sew new ones on himself unless he wanted an extra trip over to his mom's (where there would be extra crying over him in addition to all the crying he already had to look forward to between now and when he shipped off to Basic). So in the end, it was up to Loki and his bag of tricks when it came to what to experiment with.

It ended up being a pretty good selection. They didn't bother planting any more knives, but the arrow tree was amazing, with branches that broke off in the perfect shape. The candle tree didn't look like much, at least not until Loki had lit a differently-colored flame on each of the wicks, something that was really neat looking in the middle of the day, and would probably be a thousand times better at night. The potion shrub was the weirdest of all, crooked and dark but supposedly not dangerous, even though it swayed back and forth without any wind blowing on it, and occasionally puffed out green or yellow smoke.

At some point, they started going up, an incline that wasn't anywhere near as steep as Bucky would have expected. At another point, long before they'd expected to, they started going back down again; without even trying, they'd found a pass between one high mountain peak and another. When they were through it, they came out into the greenest, most beautiful valley they could ever have imagined (or at least, than Bucky could have; Loki met the sight with some muttering that was probably about how his mother's garden was better), and the most beautiful thing about it was the lake.

Bucky hadn't realized how hot and sweaty he was until he saw it. He wasn't thirsty, for there had been many cool, clear streams to drink out of throughout the day...but seeing how blue the water of the lake was, all he could think of was how much he wanted to swim in it.

"Race you," he said to Loki, and took off running down the slope leading to the lake.

He had the lead for about two seconds before Loki passed him--but Loki wasn't in the lead for too long, because the lake was bigger than it looked, and distance from them to the water's edge was shorter than expected. In just a couple minutes, they were at the edge of the water, stripping out of their clothes as quickly as possible to get in the water faster. (Bucky could have snuck a look, or maybe a few, but didn't. He knew what Loki's body looked like, and as weird as it might have sounded to anyone else, had long since gotten over any awkwardness.)

Loki was faster at everything, and so he made it into the water while Bucky was still stepping out of his pants.

"How is it?" Bucky asked.

"The water's fine," Loki said. "A little warmer than I'd prefer, but otherwise excellent."

Freezing, Bucky translated. Definitely freezing. So cold there should've been a layer of ice on top of it, no matter how warm the rest of the day was, or how bright the sun. 

He braced himself, waded in, and found the water was indeed cold enough to whoosh the breath out of a person--but not quite cold enough for him to need to get back out. After a minute, he'd adjusted to it, and found the water was as fine as Loki had said.

They swam for a while, floated lazily for a longer while, then, around the time the sun looked like it was about to start its descent, climbed back out. They lay on the grass, letting the sun dry them since Loki didn't have anything useful like a towel tucked away, and not knowing how cold it would get overnight, neither of them wanted to go to risk having to sleep in wet clothes.

When they were dry, and dressed, Bucky said, "Where do we want to set up camp?"

By the lake would have been good by him, especially since they hadn't seen anything dangerous on their way there. But it was true that they were right out in the open, which wasn't the best idea when you were on the kind of adventure they tended to end up on, and so he wasn't that surprised when Loki looked around and said, "Atop the hill, perhaps."

Hills still left you out in the open, but looking at this one again, Bucky saw what Loki had already seen: That the hill was steep enough that it would take some effort to climb, which meant they'd see anyone trying to climb it while they were awake, and almost certainly hear anyone who tried to climb it while they slept (or at least Loki would; he heard a lot better than Bucky did). 

"Works for me," he said.

So they made their way over, and climbed up. By now, the sun was on its way down, so even though the climb was hard work, and went on long enough for Bucky's shirt to start clinging to him again, it wasn't warm enough to get him wondering why they'd bothered swimming in the first place.

At the top of the hill, they turned around and looked back at the way they'd come. It was darker than it had been, dusk heading into night. A ways off, they could see a sparkling of colors, green and gold and red and orange and blue: the candle-tree, still burning somewhere in the wilderness.

*

The top of the hill was flat and wide. They set up camp in the middle, which was not nearly as unpleasant a prospect as camping could be, for not only was the grass so soft and plush that it could not have been too terribly uncomfortable to sleep on, but Loki had remembered the bedrolls. They were much thicker and plusher than the grass, and much more comfortable than any sleeping-bag you may have used, for Loki had commissioned them himself from a tailor in Vanaheim.

"Thought we lost these that time with the Harpies," Bucky said. Their whole cliff-side camp had fallen into a deep, deep gorge. He and Loki had almost fallen after them. It hadn't been one of their better adventures.

"These are new," Loki said, not sounding very interested.

Bucky was interested, though. He found himself examining the bedrolls carefully, and coming to the conclusion that they couldn't have been the same ones. They'd used the first set for weeks, and they'd been torn and stained in various places. All of which was the kind of thing you could fix with magic, but that Loki probably wouldn't have bothered with. Especially without a really obvious reason to lie about it. Still, though, the fabric felt the same, and smelled the same way the other bedrolls had, the entire time they'd used them. If Bucky had even noticed the smell the last time, he'd have thought it was a newness smell; now, he thought that maybe it was magic. A Loki smell.

Eventually, he looked up to find Loki watching him with a kind of intense expression.

"What?"

Loki smiled, one of his rare real ones, the intense expression fading away so fast it may as well have never been there at all. "It never fails to astonish me how easily fascinated you are by the most mundane of objects."

" Magic objects," Bucky said, in his own defense.

"The most boring ones imaginable." Loki made a light, and then another, pale green flames that would float above them and glow more brightly the darker it got. "You'd sniff the bedrolls for half the night before you'd remember we've had nothing for dinner."

They'd grazed on peaches and blackberries all afternoon, but then they'd spent an hour or even a few in the lake. Now that Loki mentioned it, Bucky was definitely hungry. Starving, even. 

"Got any more of those peaches?" he asked, not because he thought Loki might--Loki wasn't at all practical when it came to how they were going to eat in Narnia, which was why Bucky had had to learn about skinning rabbits and gutting fish in the first place--but because it was definitely possible that Loki could use his magic to bring some to them, instead of either of them having to go back down the hill in the dark.

"Better than that," Loki said, and with a flourish pulled out something round and shining.

It was an apple. Even in the greenness of that light, Bucky could tell that it wasn't a yellow apple, nor one so light green as to be mistaken for such in that light. No, this apple was golden, as pure and polished as if it had been made out of the real thing. 

As soon as Bucky saw it, he wanted it for himself. He wanted it so much that he knew he still would have even if he'd just stuffed himself during one of those amazing Narnian feasts.He wanted it so badly that there was nothing to do but ball his hands up, and put them behind his back, and say, "What the hell is that?"

"It's an...apple?" Loki said, with an impression of bafflement that would have been pretty convincing for anyone who hadn't known to watch for the second where his face did that thing. "Surely they have them in your world. Even if they don't, you've had them in Narnia before. I'm certain of it. Remember when we stumbled upon that overgrown orchard? You practically gorged yourself--"

"Cut the shit," said Bucky, more sure than ever that something was up.

Loki looked at him. Innocence that faded into flatness that faded into annoyance and then a serious look that might have been real. "Will you not trust me?"

"Nope."

"I wish you would."

"I just bet you do."

"If I tell you its intended result, it may not work. Thus defeating the purpose," Loki said. 

Peering at him in lighting that was greener and greener by the moment, Bucky figured he was most likely telling the truth. But that still wasn't a good reason to do it. "Which is?"

Instead of answering, Loki tossed the apple at his face. Bucky caught it, and knew right away he'd made a mistake. But it didn't seem that important, because now that the apple was right below his nose, he could smell it. It smelled better than any apple he'd ever tasted--better than anything he'd ever tasted. It fit into his hand more perfectly than any earlier apple, and was more apple-shaped than any of them. It was like the perfect idea of an apple, the one all the other got compared to (and found lacking, probably).

"Loki," he said, but he couldn't look away from the apple in his hand. "C'mon."

"Humor me in this. Please."

Loki never said please. He'd been known to say, 'Don't make me ask,' in a way that gave you the impression that he thought asking you not to make him ask counted as begging. But he never, ever said please.

In the end, maybe that was why Bucky didn't throw the apple away. He could have. Even with it there, right in front of him, he knew he could. The smell of the apple, the weight of it in his hand, they made him want, but the want didn't control him. If anyone else had wanted him to eat an apple like this, he would never even have considered it. But this was Loki. As weaselly as he could be, Bucky really did trust him. Maybe it was stupid, especially after the stupid shit that had already gone down earlier in the day. But he did.

"Okay," Bucky said. "But whatever happens, I'm holding you responsible."

"Done."

Loki passed him a little paring knife, no less fancy than any of the other souvenirs he'd given Bucky, even though this one wasn't made for sticking holes in other people.

Though he sometimes liked peeling apples, seeing how much of the skin he could get off in one long, curling piece, Bucky tucked the knife into his pocket. He brought the apple up to his mouth, and bit down. If the apple had looked like the platonic ideal of an apple, it tasted even better than that. Just the right mix of tart and sweet, and just the right amount of crunchy (for after all, there really is nothing worse than a mushy apple). By the time he took a second and third bite, he'd found that it was also juicier than any apple he'd had before, and that a trickle of that juice was running down his forearm. Maybe he should have been self-conscious about it, especially with how closely Loki was watching him eat, but instead of anything like that, he felt...

There was a warmth that spread through him, each time he swallowed a bite of the apple. Down to his stomach and fingers and toes. And he found everything seemed clearer, even though it was dark, even though he still couldn't see much outside of the circle of light from Loki's flames. For a second or two, he thought he could see every blade of grass on the hill; thought that if he'd been standing close to the edge instead of sitting across from Loki in the middle, he could have seen for miles. And he could hear better, too, hear small feet shuffling miles away, and hear the sweep of an owl's silent wings from even farther. He could feel and hear and almost even see the blood running through his veins, through Loki's. For a moment, he could almost see and hear and feel something else, the one thing that had always been beyond him no matter how much he'd tried, how much he'd practiced, how much Loki had dumbed down the theories behind magic to him--

When he was about two-thirds of the way through the apple, the feeling stopped. He was back in himself. Even the apple was just an apple, though still prettier than any other apple Bucky had ever seen. Later, he'd think maybe everything was a little clearer, maybe everything was a little louder. For now, he just looked at the apple, and wondered why, if that warm feeling had gone away, he didn't somehow feel disappointed.

"That's weird," he said.

"--What is?" Loki asked, sharply enough that Bucky suddenly remembered that he had an ulterior motive here, and still hadn't said what it was.

"It's just an apple," Bucky said. "It seemed like more than that, before. Now it's just normal."

Loki relaxed enough for it to be obvious how tense he'd been before. Maybe he had been the whole time, or maybe only when he'd thought something might have gone wrong. 

"Hmm," he said. "Finish it anyway, if you would."

In for a penny, in for a pound. Bucky finished the apple, right down to the core. He looked at it. It was identical to every other apple core he'd ever thrown away.

"Huh," he said, and wondered what would happen.

He got up, walked a few feet, then crouched down and grabbed a handful of that short, soft grass. It came up easily in his hand, and he found the soil beneath it was just as soft as everywhere they'd planted.

"What are you doing?" Loki said. "Don't do that."

Bucky ignored him and kept digging, until the hole in front of him looked like it was probably deep enough. Then he set the apple core in it, and swiped the dirt back in to cover it.

"That apple was from my mother's garden," Loki said when Bucky came back. "It is proprietary."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you gave it to me."

"Well, perhaps it won't grow. They're not meant to thrive in any other soil."

They watched for a few minutes, the light from the flames stretching just far enough for them to see the unturned earth. A few minutes should have been long enough; everything else they'd planted had started sprouting right away, even though nothing else had had seeds. 

But nothing happened.

All of a sudden, Bucky was as tired as he'd ever been in his life. Eating that apple had taken more out of him than any of the rest of the day--and it had been a very long day, in which he'd been up for half of his day, then thrown into a new world and been up since dawn, and spent most of his time since then traipsing around in the mountains. He'd been going to press Loki for more information, but now he was just too tired.

"You're gonna have to tell me what kind of apple that was tomorrow," he said, just after he crawled into his bedroll, and just before he closed his eyes. 

"Perhaps I will and perhaps I won't," said Loki, which was just typical, but Bucky wasn't awake long enough after that to argue.

*

The first thing Bucky knew was that there was the most delicious smell coming from somewhere. The second thing he knew was when he opened his eyes, and saw the tree. 

"Hey, it worked," he said.

But before he could get up and head over there to see just what kind of apple tree they'd ended up with, a strained voice said, "Don't move."

If there was one thing you learned from having adventures in another world with a friend from a third one, it was when you needed to do what that friend told you to do. From the tone in Loki's voice, this was one of those times.

"What's wrong?"

"It's watching us. And it's much too large for comfort."

"What is?"

"--You may as well sit up if you wish to see anything. But do it slowly."

Bucky did, going as slowly as he had the time they'd decided to creep into a dragon's lair to steal its treasure (Loki'd had a bullshit story he'd tried to sell Bucky on, but stealing treasure was really what it had been). Just as slowly, he looked to one side and then the other. 

Everything had changed at the top of that hill. The night before, it had been flat and empty, nothing growing on it but the thick green grass. Now they were in the middle of what could only be called a garden, which was surrounded by a wall made out of green turf. 

There were several dozen trees with them inside the wall. They were all tall and strong-looking, and somehow you could tell they were all still growing. Not far from where they'd slept, there was even a fountain, but even with the trickling of the water, the garden seemed somehow a thousand times quieter than it had been before.

As for the tree Bucky had planted, when he looked up at it, he saw that it was already loaded down with apples of its own--only these were silver, instead of gold, and the smell coming off them was subtly different.

"What the hell kind of apple was that?" Bucky said.

"Shhhh. Look up. Slowly ."

Bucky looked. There, in the highest branches of what he was already coming to think of as his tree was a bird. It was big. No, more like huge. More importantly, its beak and talons were also huge, and as sharp-looking as the most lethal knives in Loki's armory. It didn't really look like a hawk--more like an eagle, maybe, but still not any eagle Bucky had ever seen--but it was watching them like one.

"What do you think that thing eats?" Bucky hissed. 

"Creatures smaller than us, surely," Loki hissed back. "Though if it believes us a threat to its territory, it may still attack."

Bucky had seen birds snatch up rabbits that were about their size compared to this bird, comparatively speaking. The ratios seemed about right, even if he had a fairly strong feeling that they were a lot more likely to get mauled than outright eaten. "Or maybe it thinks we're lunch. Its first lunch ever. Who could pass us up?"

"And you call me the pessimist."

"Think you're too good to get eaten, huh?"

"Merely too clever."

"Why don't you clever us out of this then?"

"I am working on it ," Loki said, or, rather, hissed, the way they both had through this whole conversation, since the bird didn't seem to care if they whispered at each other, but might have decided it did care after all if they'd started raising their voices.

"Well, work faster," said Bucky. "What've you got so far?"

Of course there was always a danger in talking about your plans in Narnia when you were near anything more sentient than a rock and weren't sure whether or not it could understand you. But in this case there was also no helping it, outside of trying to remember that sign language they'd made up when they were kids (they'd kept forgetting to practice at home and eventually given up on it).

"Either we kill it, or we flee from it," Loki said.

"Why would we want to kill it?"

"If there were no guardian to be concerned with, everything in this place would be ours for the taking."

There shouldn't have been anything tempting about that, but just as Loki said it, Bucky got another whiff of those apples, stronger than before. For just a second, he could have gone along, just like he'd gone along the night before. But then he heard the wheedling tone in Loki's voice, and saw the greedy look in his eyes. It was like a slap in the face, the first shock of jumping into freezing cold water; it was the complete opposite of the way Loki had looked when he'd offered Bucky that other apple.

"Nah," said Bucky, who'd long ago grown an instinct about pushing back at Loki when he got like that, no matter what Bucky himself might have been tempted to do otherwise. "Let's get out of here."

Something passed over Loki's face. Something a lot nastier than usual, and not all that unlike the way he looked sometimes when he was talking about Thor. One difference was that this time it was aimed right at Bucky. The other difference, compared to the other flashes that came across Loki's face at times, was that this stayed there for a few seconds longer than the others usually did.

But then, just as Bucky was fixing to say that he was going, and so was Loki, and he'd drag him out if he had to, the expression on Loki's face changed. It wasn't the usual fading. This was more like a breaking. Whatever it was, though, it was gone, and left Loki standing across from Bucky (they'd both jumped to their feet due to the tenseness of it all), blinking at him and looking a little confused.

"We need to go," Bucky said again.

"--All right," Loki said, and gave his head a little shake.

*

Their escape didn't end up being anything flashy. It didn't even involve any magic. They gathered up the bedrolls , which Loki promptly disappeared, then inched toward the closest side of the wall--walking backwards sometimes and sideways at other times, so they'd see the bird the second it came out of the tree, and have that much more time to turn around and run like hell.

After what seemed like an hour, or maybe two, Bucky found out they'd made it to the wall by virtue of bumping into it, so that it pricked at him through the back of his shirt.

They looked at each other.

"Ready?" Bucky asked.

"I suppose."

They glanced back at the bird one last time. It was still sitting there, perched on a branch at the top of the tree. It was still watching them, with the same steady, unnerving yellow gaze it had watched them with the whole time. 

Together, they turned back to the wall, and started to climb. There wasn't any point in looking back now. Even if there had been, Bucky knew he needed to focus on what he was doing so he wouldn't fall down.

Loki got to the top first, like he always did, and reached down to offer Bucky his hand, which he also usually did. Together again, they swung over the top, and jumped, hitting the ground with respective oofs (Bucky's oof was louder than Loki's, and his recovery from the landing not quite as fast). Then Loki dashed down the hill, and Bucky followed at full speed. This was far more dangerous an undertaking than the climb itself had been, for the hill was steep indeed, and all it would have taken was missing one step to not have to take any more steps to get to the bottom. Bucky spent the first few seconds praying he wouldn't trip and break his ankle and a few ribs and also his neck--but then he forgot about that, and spent the rest of the way down flying. (This was likely for the best, as the more you question yourself when you're going very, very fast down a very steep slope and dare not slow down, the more likely you truly are to stumble.)

He hit the bottom of the hill just behind Loki. They passed the lake, and then they were heading up again, though on a much gentler slope this time. They kept going, Bucky pushing himself as hard as he could to try to keep up, until they reached the first trees. Then, when they were in the shadows and there were bushes to duck behind, they did, and for the first time looked back at the hill.

Between them and the top of the hill, there was nothing. No bird in the air, no bird on top of the wall, no sign that it had even thought to come after them. It was probably still sitting in that tree, though there was no way to be sure of that, since they couldn't really see anything inside the garden from this angle. 

What they could see, however, was the gate, which was very tall and even more solemn-looking, and made out of shining gold.

"Huh," Bucky said. "Was that there before?"

"--Surely not. We'd have noticed."

"Huh," Bucky said again. He got up again, just long enough to find a tree to sit back against. It was a pretty wide tree, and Loki plopped down right beside him, both of them radiating heat from their run. "We're not going back. Don't even think about it."

"I wasn't," Loki said, and when Bucky looked at him to see if that was true, Loki wasn't looking at the gate, or even at the garden at the top of the hill at all, but was grinning at Bucky. Not smiling, or any of his other pleased looks that could have signaled that he was doing something sneaky. It was just a grin, loud and surprising on his also surprisingly flushed face. 

Bucky couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Loki look like that. Maybe the time they'd outrun an entire pack of wolves (not Talking wolves, but starving ones, which might have been how they'd managed to outpace them in the first place--or maybe it had had more to do with the confusion spell Loki had had to cast a couple of times before he managed to hit them with it).

"What?" Bucky said, grinning back, partly out of adrenaline, and partly because you can't have a friend look at you like that and not look the same way back at them. "Do I have something on my face?"

"Nothing worse than the usual." Loki's grin faded, but he was still flushed and so happy looking that Bucky had another one of those moments where he couldn't help but stare. Then something else flashed over Loki's face as he looked back at the garden, a calculation so brief there was no telling what it was related to. Then he said, words tumbling out in a rush, "Certainly nothing that will frighten your fellow soldiers when you go off to war."

With a jolt, Bucky realized he hadn't even thought about that today, and not for most of yesterday, either. He'd been happy not thinking about it. Loki had seemed fine not bringing it up, too. So why was he doing it now?

Before Bucky could ask, or even get annoyed about it, Loki continued, with an expression Bucky didn't recognize, except that it seemed to be in the same family as most of his slyer ones, but somehow friendlier than most of those:

"I suppose you'll forget all about me, when you're surrounded by the warriors of your own world."

"Huh?" said Bucky, who had never for a second been in danger of forgetting the weirdest, most memorable person he'd ever known in his life. "What are you talking about? I'm not going to forget you just because I joined the Army."

"You will," Loki said, apparently not in the mood to pay attention to things like facts, or logic, or twenty years of friendship. "You'll do everything with them. You'll fight with them, drink with them, wench with them. When you return, you won't have the time or patience for anyone else you once knew."

By now Bucky's head was spinning. Loki had that result sometimes. He'd be trying to get at something, but come at it from such a weird direction that you wouldn't have a hope of following his thought process until he got to the end. "Do you really think I'm like that? Where are you getting this stuff?"

He stood up, feeling like he'd think better on his feet, and with enough distance that it would be easier to see what Loki's face was doing. But Loki got up too, and then he and his breath were right in Bucky's face, and Bucky's back was pressed into the rough bark of the tree, and Loki was still talking. "Unless, I suppose, I were to make myself memorable. Somehow. Would you like that?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You do, don't you?" Loki asked, in a way that seemed like he was talking to himself more than to Bucky. "No, I'm certain you do. It's obvious. But--don't you?"

Before Bucky could say anything, much less come close to parsing any of that, Loki had crowded him even more firmly into the tree. Then he leaned in, and pressed his lips to Bucky's, and for a second all Bucky could think was that he'd always thought Loki's lips would be sharp. But they were just as soft as anyone else's, and a little cool, and it took Bucky so long to think of how to respond that Loki was pulling away before he could respond at all.

Now that Bucky had caught up--a little--enough to figure out that whatever Loki had been going on about, this was what he'd been trying to get at--he couldn't have missed the hurt that flashed over Loki's face as he started to retreat. That expression was exactly what Bucky's chest would have done, if he'd been the one to kiss Loki, and Loki hadn't wanted it. 

And, here was the thing. Bucky had known for a long time that nothing was going to happen between them. He'd known it for years, known it for as long as he'd known he was as gone on Loki as it was probably possible to be gone on anyone. The only thing he'd been as sure of as his own feelings was that there was no point in acting on them, because there was no way Loki felt the same way.

In the end, seeing the hurt on Loki's face, Bucky didn't have any time to do anything like think, nevermind process. There wasn't anything for it, there was nothing he could do; there was only one thing he could do.

Bucky grabbed Loki by his shirt, and pulled him forward, and kissed him back.

For a second, Loki felt tense against him, but even without being in a position to see whatever expression had flashed over his face, Bucky was sure he wasn't mad, just unsure. But the tension passed as fast as the flashes usually did, and then Loki was pressed up against Bucky again, kissing him a lot less carefully than he had the first time, until they were both panting, and Bucky, at least, was already starting to get hard.

"So, when you said all that dumb shit," he said a minute later, when Loki was busy sucking on his neck. "You were just trying to get into my pants?"

"Was some part of that ambiguous?"

Pretty much all of it, Bucky thought. He'd always gotten the impression that Loki was a smooth talker, back in his own world. Bucky was decent enough, but he'd figured Loki was better. But now he knew otherwise, and that was better, because it was real, somehow.

However smooth Loki wasn't, he was a good kisser. A great kisser. And before Bucky could say anything, Loki was kissing him again, his long, lithe body pressed against him. Bucky knew what Loki's body looked like, but now he knew what it felt like, with Loki moving everything against him. One of Loki's hands was up under his shirt, rubbing against his nipple. Bucky was all the way hard now, and it would have been embarrassing, except that one of the things Loki was moving was his hips, and Bucky could feel him too, big and just as hard as Bucky was, their erections rubbing together through too many layers of clothing.

They could have kept going like that, and Bucky probably would have come. Loki was touching him, the way he'd always tried not to think about Loki touching him (for even after he'd understood what he felt toward Loki, thinking about it in this much detail had seemed like a betrayal--or worse, something Loki would see on his face the next time they met), and it didn't matter how many times he'd gotten lucky since that first time with Sally Henderson; he'd never been with Loki, and that was the part that mattered.

Then Loki's hand went to the waist of Bucky's trousers. His fingertips dipped beneath the band, stroking softly. 

"I could," he said, his breath warming Bucky's ear, and his lips tickling...and maybe he was a smooth talker after all, because for a second or two, all Bucky could see was stars.

"Yeah," Bucky said. He wasn't sure what Loki wanted to do, but it didn't matter. He'd heard some things about what two guys could get up to together, and imagined plenty of others--and even if he hadn't done any of them (at least not with another man), there wasn't a single one that he wouldn't be willing to try with Loki.

Loki unfastened the front of Bucky's trousers (his fingers worked smoothly, too, like he was getting more composed the more Bucky shook), and he sank down to the ground in front of him, pulling Bucky's trousers down as he went.

For a second, Bucky looked away, not because he wasn't dying to see this, but because if he didn't, he was going to come before Loki could even touch him. 

Maybe, if he'd closed his eyes, they could at least have finished with this part--but he kept them open, and that was how he saw the tall pale figure on the hill, and that was why he said, "What's that?"

"What's what?" Loki said, irritation clouding the greed (much nicer than most of the other greeds Bucky had seen on his face) that had been on his face before now. But he must have picked up on Bucky's alarm, because he turned around and looked. "--Oh."

By the time Bucky had gotten his pants back up, Loki was on his feet, with knives in his hands. 

Slowly, they crouched behind a bush, and watched what was going on on the hill. The figure Bucky had seen walked up to the gate, and looked at it for a minute or two. Then it started walking again, and went around the corner.

"That who I think it is?" Bucky asked. He didn't really need to; he'd have known her anywhere.

"The Witch," Loki confirmed. "But what can she be doing here?"

"Dunno." They had never managed to pick up very much Narnian history. There was never really that kind of time. Pretty often, there wasn't even much time for them to catch up with each other. But from what they had picked up in bits and pieces here and there, Bucky knew that the long winter had started a long, long time from now. Or was going to start a really long time from now. It was hundreds, maybe thousands of years away.

They moved forward, a coordinated creep they didn't even have to have a conversation about, they'd done it so many times before. Then the Witch reached out her hands to touch the wall, and then began to climb it.

"The apples," Loki said suddenly. "She shouldn't have them."

"Right. So we have to stop her."

"And die in the effort?" said Loki, and it would have been hard to say whether he was seriously objecting or not, except when Bucky glanced at his face, it was pale and solemn.

"If we could stop her now, maybe the rest wouldn't have to happen." Something in Bucky's chest began to swell with how it would be the right thing to do, maybe the only right thing to do. If he was going to go to Europe and be a part of a pain and suffering he might never know the outcome of, maybe he could go there knowing that here, in another world, some other pain and suffering had never had to happen at all.

"Or perhaps she'll kill us here and now, and our deaths will somehow cause her to commit her later deeds," said Loki.

"Yeah, but we should try. It's got to be why we're here."

"Did you somehow miss the entire magical garden we planted? Or did it simply not occur to you that that could have been our purpose this time?"

But Bucky wasn't about to get dragged into a stupid, petty argument. Besides: he knew the resigned note in Loki's voice, and knew that when push came to shove, Loki would go along.

"We should probably come up with a plan," he said.

The whispered argument on this subject had barely started when a voice said, "There is no need for that."

It wasn't the Witch's voice, not by far. It was the opposite, low and deep and powerful. If you had ever heard the song that made that world, you would have known the voice and the song must have come from the same throat. Even if he hadn't heard that voice a hundred other times, Bucky would have known that much. 

When they turned around to see who had spoken, of course it was Aslan standing there, somehow as golden in the shade as he would have been in the light. 

But they could only look for a moment, before Loki's hand brushed Bucky's arm, and they both looked back toward the garden.

"Your instincts are good, but you need not fear to turn your back to the Witch when you are with me," Aslan said. "Walk with me."

*

They walked, though to the south instead of to the east, so that they were walking parallel to the garden rather than away from it. Aslan was in the middle, with Bucky on the side closer to the garden, and Loki on the side closer to the forest.

"What are we supposed to do?" Bucky asked, some part of him having trouble with the idea that if Aslan was there, they were probably about to get sent home.

"About the Witch?" Aslan seemed to growl, a low and thoughtful sound. "You need do nothing further regarding the Witch. All will proceed as is intended. It has begun already."

"Is there anything else we're supposed to do?"

"Why do you think there should be more for you to do?" Aslan asked. If he'd been talking to Loki, Bucky would have been sure there was humor in his voice, like Aslan was enjoying him. It was harder to say when Aslan was talking to you that way, though. 

"It's just," Bucky said, and wanted to say, selfishly, that they really did need more time this time. That he needed more time here with Loki before he had to ship out. But that wasn't the most important thing, and so he swallowed it down and said, instead, "Things are going to be really bad, for a lot of people. If the Witch doesn't get stopped. And we're here, now, before she can do anything. So we could--stop her, or slow her down. We could do something that really matters."

"Everything you have ever done matters, whether it was done in your own world or in mine," Aslan said, and there was no doubt that he was being very serious and solemn now. Bucky was shocked to see his eyes were shining with tears. "But you are not wrong, O Bucky Barnes. There is much pain yet to come--here in my land of Narnia, but also in your own world. It is pain you each must bear alone, for you will live many years before you return here."

Loki made a sound, not exactly a word, not anything close to a question.

"Yes?" Aslan said, somehow very gently. "What was that?"

"Will it work?" Loki said. "The apple?"

Aslan usually seemed to be laughing when he talked to Loki, but he wasn't laughing now. "That is a very bold question--or have you yet told your friend the purpose of the apple you gave him?"

"I knew it," Bucky said, though truthfully he'd almost completely forgotten about eating the apple in the first place, considering how much had happened this morning.

"You have committed a great wrong twice over," Aslan said, still to Loki. "You stole the apple from the Lady Frigga, and you were untruthful when you offered it to Bucky."

"I didn't lie," Loki said, and it was hard to say which of them he was saying it to.

"No--but you of all people know well there is often little need to speak a lie when you wish to deceive," said Aslan.

"But did it work ?" Loki asked again, which was surprising, since he usually stopped running his mouth pretty early on when Aslan didn't approve of something he'd done.

"Such a fruit would have killed him in your own world," said Aslan. "Eaten here, it will do as you intended it to do--but not without cost. There may come a day when you wish you had never given Bucky that apple, and Bucky that he had never eaten of it." 

That gloomy thought hung there for a long second, as all sorts of questions rose up in Bucky's mind, all of them fighting for the chance to be the first one he asked. But the one he would probably have asked, if he'd had the time to find the words, would have been how much harm he'd done by planting that apple in the first place.

In the end, Loki beat him to it, not with a question but with a statement: "I won't regret it. Now, or ever."

On his face was an expression Bucky had only ever seen in passing. But this was stubborn, set in stone instead of sand, unwilling to be brushed away like pretty much every other big feeling Loki had ever had. It was defiance, in Loki's eyes and the set of his mouth and the way he was standing.

"There is no need to worry about it overmuch today," Aslan said, not seeming angry at being defied, or amused about it, or anything. He seemed sad, still. Sorrow seemed to be soaking into everything around them, so that the trees were sad and the shadows were sad and the sky might start crying any minute from now, even though there wasn't a cloud to be seen in it.

Aslan turned his head toward the garden. Bucky looked, too. Something was landing on the hill, not too far from the golden gate itself. Something big, and really oddly shaped. Then a couple parts of it slid to the ground, and Bucky saw that it wasn't some kind of weird monster, but a boy and a girl and a winged horse.

Aslan turned to Bucky. His eyes were knowing, as if he'd seen the horror that was inside Bucky, or even how most of it was part of the same old horror he felt every time he thought about what the Witch had done in Narnia, and how long it had lasted. Gently, he said, "You did no wrong by planting the tree. Yes, the Witch even now gains much strength from the fruit she has plucked off its branches--yet because she has eaten of that stolen fruit, Narnia will have a protection in place that could not have been sown otherwise. She will not be able to return to Narnia today, nor tomorrow. She will not be permitted to go back while my people, the first people, are young and unknowing, not even one of them as worldly as the Centaur you met yesterday. She will not go back until she can be survived."

"About that Centaur," Loki said.

Aslan seemed nearly to sigh, or at least let out a long, soft breath. He must have been tired or in some kind of hurry, because he didn't bother to tease Loki, or ask him what he meant, or even give a lecture on how unimportant statues really were, in the scheme of things.  "I would not worry overmuch about what the stars fail to see," he said. "They were never meant to see you, any more than you are meant to look down and see your own beating heart. I have brought you to Narnia for a purpose. Not in the service of any prophecy, but in the service of the slightest thread of hope. We will speak on this matter again, but not now."

After this, there didn't seem to be much else to say, other than the obvious question of who the kids and the horse were. But Bucky had a strong sense, from a long history of one or the other of them being told that something was none of their business, that this wasn't a question he was going to get an answer to. At least not right here and now.

But there was another question, just as obvious.

"Are you going to send us home now?" Bucky asked, because someone needed to, and sometimes you just had to grit your teeth and get on with it.

"Not yet," said Aslan. "You may have one more day--and far from here, so that there will be no need to concern yourself with the Witch. (In fact, you are finished with your work involving the Witch.)"

That was all the warning they got before Aslan lowered his head, and seemed to growl, and in the growl there was a wind, a warm breeze, gentle but firm, that swept over them. 

Bucky closed his eyes against it, and when he opened them again, he was somewhere else. There was sand beneath his feet, whiter and finer than any sand he'd ever seen. Waves lathed against the shore, a low and soothing sound that would come back to him night after night, helping to lull him to sleep in the kind of circumstances where it was surprising anybody ever got any sleep. A little ways inland there was a forest, and between the forest and the beach there was tall grass, waving slowly in that same warm, gentle breeze.

Bucky was there, and Loki was there with him, the way Loki was always with him, when they were here; the way Bucky wished he could be all the time (but so secretly and so quietly he barely recognized it as what it was most of the time--for the man tended to dwell no more than the boy had).

*

"So what was in that apple, anyway?" Bucky asked. Some part of him was surprised he hadn't asked Aslan while they'd had him, but a greater part knew, and must have known even then, that there was only one person he wanted to hear this from.

"You were the one who insisted on entering a war that would tear you apart. Since I cannot be with you, I had little other choice," Loki said, then saw whatever was on Bucky's face, and sighed dramatically. "If you insist. Long ago, my mother's apples were fed to certain warriors among our people, to make it less likely that they should fall in battle--and grant them a longer life outside of battle, as well."

So the apple would make Bucky harder to kill, and help him live longer. That seemed simple. It seemed like something he should feel pretty happy about.

"Why didn't you just tell me that?" he asked, not sure what he felt about this, if he felt anything about this.

"The apples are spelled against theft. They will do nothing for a thief, or the one who sent the thief. The only way it could have worked is if you didn't know the apple's purpose."

"Oh," Bucky said.

"So I really couldn't tell you until you had eaten it. Even then, it might not have done as I wished it to do--not all spells allow for such loopholes. My mother's spells least of all. But it seems this one did."

"Okay," Bucky said.

"'Oh'," Loki repeated. "'Okay.' Don't you have anything else to say?"

"Dunno. What do you want me to say?"

"You could start with 'thank you ever so much, Loki. You saved my foolish mortal skin. I shall owe you an enormous debt going forward.'"

For some reason, that was what made Bucky feel something. He laughed, feeling a little hysterical, and with no idea how obvious the hysteria might or might not be to Loki. "No way."

"Ungrateful," Loki muttered, and then: "You could ask questions. If you have any. I'll answer them. Fully, even."

Bucky thought about it. "Nah."

"Really? You don't want to know anything?"

The thing about it was, Bucky felt like he knew so much, almost too much. Why Loki had wanted him to eat the apple so bad; why he'd been so happy when Bucky had done it. That Loki had guessed how Bucky felt about him, because no matter how hard he'd had to try it, Loki knew him at least as well as the other way around. It was a knowledge that filled him up, with joy and sorrow and even more confusion than he would already have been dealing with anyway. He'd never planned to be here. He'd never been going to do this. And now here he was. Here they were, alone, on a beautiful shore of what he figured was probably an equally beautiful island. Here they were, and they had the rest of the day with nothing else they had to do.

In the end, Bucky wasn't really sure what he wanted to do with this gift (for there was no denying that that was what it was). But one thing he knew he didn't want to do was to interrogate Loki about details that would only mean something to the trained sorcerer Bucky wasn't.

"What do you want to do?" he said, instead of any of the other things he could have said.

Loki blinked, but recovered quickly. "We could explore. Or...the grass looks comfortable." He inched closer to Bucky, until his breath was warm on the side of Bucky's face, and his lips lightly brushed his ear again. "We could finish what we started. I was about to give you something to remember me by, before we were interrupted."

The grass really did look comfortable. Bucky could picture it, what laying down together would be like. Loki's long, lithe body pressed against him, neither of them with their clothes on. Doing all the things Bucky had heard of or just imagined (or done with people with a different configuration than Loki). They'd be able to fit so much into the rest of the day. Bucky wanted it. He wanted it even more than he'd wanted it with his back to a tree and Loki dropping on his knees.

But through all the confusion and everything that had happened in the last day, there was something he was suddenly sure he wanted more. 

He turned his head and kissed Loki again, hard, trying to fit everything he felt for him into a few seconds. Then he pulled away and said, "It's not that I don't want to. But I think I'd rather spend the rest of today with my friend." 

He peered at Loki's face, hoping he'd get what Bucky was saying, instead of any of the other possibilities. But all Loki did was kiss him again, just as fiercely as Bucky had kissed him. Then he said, "I'll have to have a raincheck on it, then."

"You got it," Bucky said, grinning partly from relief, and partly because it was always incredibly amusing to hear Loki use expressions he'd picked up from Bucky. Somehow, it was even funnier when he got the context right than when he didn't. "So, what should we do?"

But Loki was already moving away, already raising his hands to work some spell or other. Targets appeared up and down the beach. A crossbow appeared in Loki's hands, which he shoved into Bucky's as soon as he caught up.

"What," Bucky started, but Loki, suddenly businesslike, didn't even let him ask the question.

"When you report to your commander, you're to tell him you're slightly less hopeless with a crossbow than with any other weapon."

"Sure," Bucky said, his chest swelling again with everything he felt for Loki, and with the newly-examined knowledge of everything Loki must feel for him. It was enough that he figured there was no need to tell Loki there weren't likely to be any crossbows available when he got to the Army. Now couldn't be the time to clue Loki in on guns or tanks or trenches or bombs.

Besides, Bucky was actually really good with crossbows, and not only that, he enjoyed shooting them. Running drills for the rest of the day didn't exactly sound like a hardship.

And in the end, it really wasn't.

Walking, not running, he moved away from the river. Others ran past him. Some in groups, some alone. Some screaming, some not.

Maybe he should have run after all. Maybe it would have helped him blend in. But that wasn't what his training said to do. A cover in a crowded place meant slow down, take your time, be innocuous. Don't look left and don't look right and never, ever run. 

On any other mission, there would have been room for him to consider the consequences of a deviation. There would have been room to adapt the plan. But there was too much interference this time. After a few minutes, it was so fuzzy he could barely see what was in front of him, so loud he missed hearing what was going on around him for seconds at a time. Later, he'd think he could have been in the woods for as long as ten or fifteen seconds before he noticed there were trees instead of buildings, that the trickling sound coming from a few feet away was from something a whole lot smaller than the river.

There was nothing in the Soldier's training about how to navigate the wilderness. Even his remotest missions had never taken him far from a road--and he had the sense that he was now very far indeed from any road he'd been on before. He stood there, the interference fading from his sight and draining from his ears, and did not know what he should do now.

When the interference had gone, there came at last another sound. Not a forest sound, but something a lot more familiar. When it stopped, the Soldier went in the direction it had come from, boots splashing in the water of the stream.

The sound came again: the low groan of a target in pain. Not wanting to be heard. Trying not to be found. 

The stream flowed between two bushes. He passed cautiously through them. On the other side and a few yards ahead, a body lay across the stream. For a second, the Soldier might have been back at the river after all, looking at the man he knew but didn't remember, the man he'd left behind.

The picture changed. The man in the stream was paler than the other one, with darker hair--and in a lot rougher shape. His bloody hands pressed against his abdomen. The water around him was clouded, rushing away red.

The Soldier stopped. A twig snapped beneath his boot.

The man's eyes squinted open, then widened. "...Bucky? Is that you?"

Not again, the Soldier thought. Not another one.

"Who the fuck are you?" he asked.

The man in the stream laughed, then coughed. A feral smile slashed across his face. Blood splashed on his teeth, smeared around his lips. 

"That was not," he said, still laughing, or trying to, as more of the red came bubbling out, "one of your better jests."

The Soldier thought. Calculated. If the man had been a target, he would have known the mission was all but complete. He would still have needed to be cautious, since previous targets had been known to lash out one last time, but he would have known it was his choice whether to draw a weapon and finish it, or stand still and wait while it finished itself.

If the man hadn't said the name, the Soldier wouldn't have bothered to do either. The man was not a target, and so what happened to him did not have to matter. The Soldier would have been free to walk away. But the man had said the name, and it was the same name the man on the riverbank the man on the helicarrier the man on the bridge had said. He'd said the name...and wherever this place was, it was far from the river, which meant it was far from where anyone would think to look for the Soldier. There was distance. There was time. There was a chance he could get answers here, if the man who wasn't the target were to live long enough.

And so the Soldier did something he'd never done for any target, would never have dared to do. He knelt down in the stream, barely noticing the ice-cold water and knife-sharp rocks, and reached beneath his armor for the med kit.

"You called me Bucky." He sliced open the man's shirt, which was made out of leather or something like it (but still not a match for the scissors in the Soldier's kit, which could cut through any armor they sent him out in). "Why?"

The man's smile faded. For a moment, the Soldier was sure his eyes would dull, too, so that there wouldn't be the chance of any more talking. But then he smiled, sharper and wilder than before. "Not a jest, then. Yet somehow the best I've heard lately." He laughed again, and this was a sharper sound than before, too. "You've no idea how terrible some of the others have been, these last few years."

"Do you know me? You sound like you know me. From before." It was the thing the Soldier was becoming sure of. That despite everything he'd been told, there had been a before, and people who knew him from it. Who had known him as someone else. As Bucky, maybe. Whoever that was.

"Oh, yes." The man's smile turned into a leer. By now, the Soldier had bared the wound, discovered how deep it was, how wide, how impossible. The man was paler now than he had been a minute ago, the gauze the Soldier had packed the wound with already soaked through. "We know each other very well indeed."

"Tell me what you know," the Soldier said. Words he'd said a hundred times and never felt. He felt them now, a panic that rushed through his veins and beat in his chest like a trapped bird. "Be quick about it."

The man wasn't quick about it. He wasn't quick about anything. His eyes were glassy now, his breathing slowing. He was an opportunity the Soldier was losing, maybe the only opportunity he was ever going to have.

"Bucky?" the man muttered after a few seconds. His eyes had closed, but now they shuttered open again, glassy and unfocused. One of his hands shot out as if to grasp the Soldier's wrist, but did so so clumsily that for a second all he managed to do was smear red onto the Soldier's left forearm. Then his fingers tightened on the Soldier's arm, and his expression cleared, just for a moment.

"What?" the Soldier demanded.

"My mother died."

The Soldier did not know how to respond to this, and so he didn't respond.

Confusion flashed over the man's face. His hand fell back down to his side. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. Finally, he managed to add, "She wasn't my mother."

Then his eyes closed. His head lolled back. He didn't move again.

As for the Soldier, he stayed where he was, waiting.

*

The expected things didn't happen. The man's breathing had slowed, but there were no breaks in it. His pulse was sluggish, but not getting any slower.

He could not still be alive. The Soldier could not waste time wondering about it. Instead, he fell back on his training, which was for how to manage his own wounds until he reached the rendezvous point, but could be adapted. He pulled the man out of the water, finished peeling off his armor and the shirt underneath. Packed the wound, wrapped it. There was no point to any of it--the only thing that might have made a difference was to put a knife across the man's throat or a bullet in his head--but he did it anyway. He could not have said why he was bothering any more than he could have said why the panic stayed with him so much longer than it should have, a sour taste at the back of his throat and a trembling in his flesh hand that was going to give him trouble if he had to aim at anything.

By the time he finished, red was already seeping through the bandage. This was notable only because the bandage had been clean when it went on. Everything else was already covered in blood, sticky or tacky with it depending on whether it was new or old.

Out of training and ideas, the Soldier had just sat back on his haunches when a whisper and then a voice rang out from behind him:

"You, there! Stand away from that person."

The Soldier looked around, suddenly aware of how focused on the man he must have been--so much so that for the first time in memory, he'd forgotten to pay attention to his surroundings. It was an error that could not be excused, for behind him stood another man. This one had a sword in his hand, which must have been in its sheath a moment ago, the source of the whisper. He had two shadows with him, big spotted cats that left his side as soon as the Soldier looked up, circling to approach from the left and from the right.

"Reach not for your weapon, 'less you wish to be struck down before you can speak your defense," continued the king (somehow, the Soldier, who had only previously spotted any from a mile or two away through the scope of a rifle, knew right away that this must be one, even if he was taller and less bald than the ones he'd seen before).

The Soldier's training was clear when it came to getting caught, much less taken into custody: Don't. If you were compromised, eliminate the threat, complete the mission, return and report it. His training was clear, but even as his hand thought about grabbing the knife strapped to his left thigh, or the gun that should have been strapped to his right, there was something else welling up in him, wanting to be heard.

He knew what it was. It was his instinct. He'd often been warned against listening to it; silencing his instinct had been what most of his training had been for. Instinct would get him killed every time. It would endanger the little missions and the great one in its turn. Instinct was a lie, his greatest enemy, no matter what it told him about the handlers who guided him or the doctors who patched him up. Instinct was dangerous.

Instinct was what had caused him to run in the first place.

Instead of reaching for a weapon, reaching for his training, ensuring he'd be the one to win the fight, the Soldier opened his mouth and let his instinct do the talking: "My friend's hurt. Can you help him?"

"I wouldn't, Sire," said one of the cats (a Leopard, some part of the Soldier supplied), when the king's sword slowly lowered, and he made to take a step forward.

"Nor I," said the other Leopard. "This may be a trap even more insidious than that of a murderer who wishes to gain the upper hand. It may be (may have always been) a trap intended to snare no lesser prey than yourself."

"And if it is not a trap?" the king asked. "Did Aslan bid me give aid to my subjects only so long as my person cowers within the walls at Cair? No? I can see you know he did not. Fetterfoot, go and seek Tubertrapper and bring her here. Make haste."

And so one of the Leopards sped away, a shadow fading into all the other shadows, and the king stepped forward, sheathing his sword. 

With the other Leopard beside him, eyeing the Soldier with an expression suggesting it could leap upon him before he could get to his first knife, the king knelt on the man's other side and said, "How did your friend come to be injured?"

"Looks like he'd been run through," the Soldier said. "Other than that, I don't know. I wasn't there."

"Injured so grievously, and yet no likely weapon within sight." As if to confirm this theory, the king looked to the right and to the left, and craned his head to look behind the Soldier as well. Then he reached down to the man, examining him with hands much gentler than the Soldier's had been. "No sign he's been moved here from elsewhere, either. It's almost as if he's fallen from the sky itself."

There was a question in his tone, and in the way he looked at them then, from the man to the Soldier and back again.

"What?" the Soldier asked, when he got tired of being stared at, and his instinct didn't seem to be offering help. 

"Would I be right in thinking--even if you have fallen, you're clearly not Stars. You haven't the look. (And besides, I feel I would know you, were you of the heavens and thus of my own relation.) But could you have come from another world altogether?"

The Soldier hadn't thought of it like that. He hadn't stopped to wonder about where he was or how he'd come to be here, any more than he'd thought to wonder whether being in the middle of a bloody murder scene he hadn't caused might look just as suspicious as one he had.

"Maybe," he said. "I think I was far away from here before."

"If you have come here for sanctuary, you shall have it," said the king. "I can see by your face that you are in even direr need of such than your friend's state might suggest. I am King Rilian of Narnia, and I give you my word."

The Soldier hadn't thought about an alias yet. He hadn't gotten that far. Now, coming up blank, he decided he may as well go with the one people kept deciding belonged to him.

"I'm Bucky," he said, and then instinct took over, before he could even think to question it, like it had come out of his mouth any number of times before: "And this is Loki."

*

A few minutes later, the second Leopard came back with a Badger in tow. The Badger examined Loki much as Rilian had, then said, "He must be moved. Quickly, now; it's about to begin raining. My head says it's to be quite the storm."

As she spoke, she unclasped her bag and took a large, folded blanket out of it. Then, working together as smoothly as if they'd done this a hundred times before, she and Rilian spread the blanket out on the ground next to Loki, then transferred him onto it.

The Soldier, who'd moved out of the way, now found himself beckoned back. Following Rilian's lead, he reached down and took hold of one end of the blanket, just as Rilian took hold of the other end. Together, they lifted it, and started walking. Rilian led the way. It made it easier, somehow, that all the Soldier had to do was follow.

There wasn't a lot of conversation for the next ten minutes or so. That was about how long they carried Loki over largely uneven ground before they reached a small, rough-built cabin. They went inside and laid Loki down on one of the beds in the larger of the building's two rooms.

Once Rilian and the Soldier had stepped back from the bed, the Badger came forward with her bag, and began to look at Loki, opening up the bandage on his abdomen and reaching into her bag for this vial or that one.

She'd been working for a minute or two when the rain started coming down. It didn't start with a drizzle but with a real rain, right out of the gate. 

Rilian walked over to the single window and looked out at the downpour. With a glance back at Loki, the Soldier followed him, and felt the Leopards watching him as he went. 

"We've a number of such houses these days," Rilian said. Later, the Soldier would recognize the subject change for what it had been: An attempt to distract him from what was going on behind them. But the reason he'd followed Rilian in the first place was to keep an eye on what he was doing, so for now he just listened, filing the information away like he always did, during recon or otherwise. "They're intended to shelter weary travelers, should they lose their way, or be come upon by a sudden storm such as this one. They're meant for any Narnian small enough to get through the door, really, but it's largely we Men who take advantage."

That could go some way to explain why the Leopards still seemed ill at ease--somehow the Soldier knew from their body language that it wasn't so much hostility at this point as it was discomfort. They didn't like being inside (or, maybe, didn't like being inside such a small, man-made space).

Rilian sighed deeply, looked back at Loki. The Soldier looked back, too. He was lying still on the bed, stiller than he'd been during the walk, when he'd moved around a little, making pained sounds if they went over particularly uneven ground.

"Is there anything else you can do?" the Soldier blurted out. He felt like there should have been, his instinct welling up in him so fiercely that it was almost an ache behind his breastbone. "Some kind of magic, or something."

"It grieves me to say there is nothing," said Rilian. "Once, there was a treasure of Narnia I might have called for to aid your friend in his recovery--but it is in my possession no longer."

"The Cordial," the Soldier muttered when Rilian paused, and didn't have any idea what the hell that was, except that he wished it was here.

"Lost, years ago. My father sent it out with one search party or another in the early days of my captivity. I would not have had such a treasure mislaid for my sake, but no amount of inquiry has ever turned it up, nor has even the richest offer of reward returned it to my treasury. Nevertheless, your friend is in skilled hands indeed, the best in all Narnia. It is fortunate indeed that you arrived so near to her house."

After he said this, he gave the Soldier a significant look. It was the sort of look that meant he must have been expecting a response, and that the one he wanted was probably pretty specific.

But the Soldier was lost as to what the expected answer was. Only later would he realize he ought to have asked something about Loki's care, or prognosis, or anything; that what was going on behind them should have been more than a tremor in his hand, a sourness at the back of his throat, that strange but ignorable soaring in his chest.

"You talk a lot," the Soldier said, because if he was expected to say something then to say anything must be better than not to. It was only then that he remembered that people could get offended by observations, even true ones (though he could not have said where he'd remembered this from, or why it seemed to matter more that he'd said it to a king than it would have if he'd said it to anyone else).

Rilian, though, didn't seem offended. He just smiled and said lightly, "So I've been told. I'm afraid that when one has lost one's tongue for ten years, one is never much inclined to hold it thereafter."

"Did they sew it back on?" the Soldier asked, finding himself very interested in this. "Or did they get you a new one?"

This time, Rilian laughed. Then he must have seen the question had been a serious one, and grew much more sober. "I do not speak literally. For ten of the past eleven years, I was held captive by a Witch's enchantment, far (and yet not so far) from Narnia itself. Neither my thoughts nor my words were my own, save for an hour each night. Only a year ago was I was delivered of my curse and captivity at once by three brave friends." His eyes were very soft--even kind, though that was not a designation the Soldier would think to give until much later--as he went on: "I suspect you and your friend must have been delivered from your own enchantment much more recently--yesterday, perhaps, or even this morning."

The Soldier listened, but didn't understand very much of this. He wasn't sure what an enchantment was, but something--instinct, again, maybe--told him it wasn't something they had, back where he'd come from.

Before he could think of what to say, or what to ask in response, a voice came from behind them, sounding much more distant than a stride or two away:

"I have not been under an enchantment," said Loki in a croak. "Recently or otherwise."

The Soldier turned back to the bed, and found that Loki was lying there much as he had been before. His eyes were still closed, and his skin had a gray cast to it.

"Perhaps it is as you say," said Rilian, who had been brought up well enough not to contradict a guest, particularly one who has been gravely injured and is quite far from being out of the woods, without very good reason indeed. "It may be I have misread the signs. I have been told I see too much of what is not there--a queer side-effect of my own experiences, I fear." Now he tensed, but so slightly that almost no one would have noticed, and said, in the same jovial tone, "But tell me, friend Loki, now that you have awakened--is this man indeed your friend, and not he who injured you? Fear not to speak the truth. You shall be protected here."

Somewhere toward the end of all this, one of Loki's eyes winced open. "He could be both. Or perhaps neither." 

The Soldier didn't miss the look Rilian gave him, the way his hand twitched toward his weapon again. So he wasn't as trusting as he'd seemed for a minute. Suspicion wasn't a convenient quality on a target, but maybe it was a good one for a king to have. Either way, it looked like it was shaping up to be pretty inconvenient for him. 

Then Loki laughed, breaking the tension, or at least that part of the tension. "He had nothing to do with it."

"And you're certain of this?" Rilian asked. Anyone else might have been offended by the way he was pushing it, but it didn't occur to the Soldier to react.

"We're not even from the same world," said Loki, in a voice that sounded even further away than before. "He couldn't have if he'd wanted to."

"That's enough, Sire," the Badger said, as Loki's eye closed again. "We must allow the patient to rest."

Rilian nodded. "Certainly. I have heard enough, anyway--I am sorry to have doubted you, my friend, but all is not always as it would appear. I would not be fooled again, most especially not when another's life is at stake."

"It's okay," the Soldier said, a few seconds after he'd probably been expected to say something. It was harder to pinpoint the moments where he was supposed to talk when he wasn't being asked questions about whether or not he'd been seen, whether or not he'd hesitated, whether or not he'd succeeded in his mission. Conversation was going to be exhausting, if he had to do much more of it.

"My impression of you this past hour has been very good. I am glad that it may continue thus."

How much of an impression he could have made when Rilian had been doing so much of the talking, the Soldier didn't know. His training had taught him that he wasn't supposed to do anything to draw notice toward himself. He was just supposed to be there. Waiting for orders. Ready to carry them out. He wasn't supposed to move until it was time for the mission. 

But Rilian's brow was creased again, and he was staring. The Soldier had been supposed to respond to that after all. He'd waited too long. People reacted faster, when it came to this kind of talking. He needed to remember that.

"Glad to hear it," he managed, finally, letting instinct carry it again, not sure why he'd been fighting it to begin with, if he even had.

But maybe it didn't go over as well as it might have, considering the way Rilian's brow creased even more.

*

After a while, the Badger stepped away from the bed.

"I've done all I can, Sire," she said. "The rest is up to the patient."

There was something off about the way she said it. When she beckoned Rilian into the next room, the Soldier listened after them, the way he might not have if it hadn't been for how tense she'd seemed. (He didn't have to question how he knew what that body language meant; it was the same kind of stiff stillness that apparently always meant something, even if you were a different species.) He listened, and as he listened he watched Loki's still form in the bed, and filtered out as much as he could of the clattering coming down on the roof.

"I'm not certain any of this is wise, Sire," the Badger said in a low voice.

"And why is that, good Badger?" asked Rilian--not in an insulting way, as if he didn't remember or didn't care about her name, which was Tubertrapper, but respectfully (for in Narnia, one's species can double as a title just as easily as it can an insult).

"Well, he can't have survived even this long with an injury such as that," she said, barely audible beneath the hail that was now coming down on the roof. "Not if he were Human."

"Ah."

"Your Majesty knows what they say about things that look Human but aren't."

"Indeed," said Rilian, in a tone that was light yet still managed to sound like a warning--the closest comparison the Soldier had was that it was something like the voice of a handler, when you didn't know how you'd stepped wrong yet, but knew from that tone that you must have. (This was not at all fair to Rilian, of course, but the Soldier's context was still quite limited.) "I suspect I may know more about such things than any other person in Narnia. Wouldn't you agree?"

"...Yes, Sire."

"Therefore, such a concern might already have occurred to me. And might already have been found lacking as a reason not to offer aid to a fellow creature, Human or not."

"Yes, Sire." 

More softly, Rilian, who must already have regretted speaking so sharply, said, "You were not wrong to bring this to me (for after all, you could not have known that I already knew it). But let us not speak of it again unless it becomes pertinent."

"Yes, Sire."

"I thank you mightily for your service this night--and even moreso now that I know of your reservations. You may return home to your burrow, 'less you would prefer to wait here for the rain to end."

The Badger said something else, so low that the Soldier didn't manage to catch it this time. A minute later, after a low back-and-forth murmuring that really was very hard to catch thanks to how hard the rain was coming down, she came back in, packed up her bag (leaving a few half-full vials and a large stack of bandages on the low table by the doorway), and left again. A minute after that, one of the Leopards went as well, sliding through the space between where it had been sitting and the door so smoothly that even the Soldier barely clocked the movement as it went.

The other Leopard lay down just inside the door, stretched out on the bare dirt floor in such a way that no one could go in or out of the cabin without either stumbling on it or attempting to take a large, unwieldy step over it. 

There came an extended rustling sound from the other room, and then Rilian came in with several leather bags full of something. He handed one to the Soldier, who opened it to find it contained a few pieces of hard jerky and a couple pieces of even harder cheese.

"If it weren't for the storm, we might have had fresh--but I fear we would come up empty-handed and even fouler-tempered, were we to attempt a hunt in such weather," Rilian said. "There's bread, as well, but not much of it. I thought we'd do better to save it for your friend, as it's easier to soften bread than anything else."

In the bed, Loki coughed--but no blood came out this time to mess up the Badger's work--then said, in another croak, "Perhaps I don't eat bread."

"He eats bread," the Soldier said, feeling a weary annoyance that was not quite like the frustration he felt when they sent him out with a team that was slower and less competent than he, nor quite like the weariness he felt when they sent him on five or six missions in a row and he had started to feel the cracks, but that was more like some queer combination of the two. "He's just an idiot."

Loki coughed again. A laugh-cough. "I thought you didn't know me."

"Don't have to know you to know you're stupid," said the Soldier. "Stop trying to talk and go the hell to sleep."

It must have been another instinct that made him say that, when what he should have done was start with the interrogation. Loki was talking now. He knew things that the Soldier needed to know. He might be the only one who knew them, or the only one left, or maybe just the only one the Soldier would ever find. And there was no guarantee he'd still be able to talk tomorrow.

It must have been another instinct, and like the other instincts of the day, the Soldier let it stand.

The Badger had given Loki a draught of something or other before she'd gone to whisper about him to Rilian. Whatever it was, it must have chosen around then to kick in. Where Loki had seemed clearly agitated before, now his features softened, and his breathing started coming slow and steady. There was even a little color in his face again, which made no sense considering he'd lost roughly an entire massacre's worth of blood.

"We'll try the bread for tomorrow," the Soldier said, the first he'd known he intended any such thing.

"That seems more than sensible," Rilian agreed. "I've known few enough who've wished sustenance immediately upon being grievously wounded. But we ought to be certain he eats on the morrow; for whether he wishes it or nay, he must keep his strength up if he is to heal."

On that note, the Soldier reached into the bag he was holding, for a piece of jerky to chew on to keep his own strength up. And, when Rilian suggested that the Soldier could sleep in the bed next to Loki's while he himself kept watch, the Soldier didn't object. This wasn't a mission, and the king wasn't part of his team, so it wasn't the safest idea; but as soon as Rilian suggested it, the Soldier realized how exhausted he was, how close to the edge. If he'd been about to be sent on a mission, he'd have objected to it, or at least wondered why, knowing he was too slow and disjointed for the work; if he'd been in the middle of one, he'd have pushed through, then collapsed on the way back from the rendezvous point. To sleep now, in this place, was the only way he was going to be sharp enough to deal with whatever happened tomorrow.

Still, though, before he lay down, he took stock of the room, and made sure he had a clear awareness of where each weapon was on his body. And before he closed his eyes, he memorized the sounds that were safe so that even sleeping he'd know other sounds weren't, before he finally let himself go.

*

No more than two hours later, a voice said, "Friend Bucky. Will you wake?"

The Soldier's eyes snapped open to find someone new standing in front of him. Not the man on the riverbed, not the man in the stream, but a third person, saying his name--

"Dire news indeed has found us here," that person said, and the Soldier recognized him. It was Rilian, except he was paler than he'd been earlier. His voice, too, was strained, and something bright and terrible shone in his face. Behind him stood the two Leopards. On the window ledge was an Owl, panting with its wings held away from its sides. "I regret that I can stay with you no longer, but I must away."

"What happened?" The Soldier sat up, not as refreshed as he could have been, but sharper and clearer-headed than he'd been before. He started checking the location of each of his knives, adjusting straps as-needed for those that had gotten a little looser while he slept.

"There's been an attack in the night, miles from here--I know not how many deaths. The fiends have gone, but their trail will not last long in such a storm."

"Okay."

"I will leave a guard with you, if you wish, should the villain come here."

"Don't need one," the Soldier said, almost before Rilian had finished talking. This wasn't instinct, or anything like it; it was just knowing that other people were slower and less competent than he was, and even if the Leopards were faster, they didn't like him and probably wouldn't try hard enough to make up for that. "We'll be fine."

"All right," said Rilian, who might have argued if his haste had been less, but didn't because it wasn't. "Tubertrapper is to return in the morning. May your friend's rest continue until then."

Then he turned away, and the others did too. The Owl took off from the window ledge. The Leopards and Rilian went after it like three shadows. Then all that was left was Loki, lying in the bed, and the rain, pounding against the roof. It was coming down harder than it had been when the Soldier had lain down. It was darker out, too; when he went to the window, even blowing out the lamp Rilian must have lit didn't let him see for any distance beyond the cabin. All there was was the rain, and the dark.

The Soldier spared only a moment to wish he had any of his guns (they had all disappeared somewhere between the river and the stream, leaving holsters empty and straps holding nothing), especially any of the ones he had a night vision sight for. Then he set himself up in the doorway between the two rooms, where he'd have a clear line to the front and the back. Once there, he checked all his knives again, making sure they were where his hands expected them to be, and wouldn't get hung up on anything if he needed them.

The rain kept falling, a drumbeat on the roof. Every now and then, there came a white flash of lightning, followed by a boom of thunder, close enough that it shook the ground a little. But the storm must have been moving away from them, because soon the flashes of lightning were almost nothing, even though the thunder kept on coming.

Every once in a while, the Soldier moved. To stay in one place for too long was to invite stiffness, and so he'd stand up, do a few stretches, walk the length of the cabin a few times, until he was limber enough to be still again. And always, he listened, and watched for any sound or sight outside of the ordinary. But the only things he heard or saw other than the storm itself came from Loki's bed, where he whimpered in his sleep a couple times when the thunder came, and sometimes seemed to flinch when the lightning flashed.

It was a long night, made that much longer because the Soldier didn't know who or what he was looking for, or whether anything or anyone would show up. Usually, when he had to lie in wait, it was because the target's schedule was known, or the target was being lured to where he was waiting. And usually, he'd be alone inside, with his team stationed outside to update him on the target's position--but here there was Loki, and even if it hadn't been for the flinching and the whimpering, the Soldier would have been aware of him. Not like he was usually aware of anything that moved, or could move; this was the kind of awareness he would usually have reserved for a target, or a handler. A narrow, intense focus beyond all other focuses, because if you lost track of what a target was doing you could fail the mission, and if you lost track of what your handler was doing you could end up making your consequences worse than they had to be, and if you lost track of how Loki was doing he might stop doing anything at all.

Eventually, the thunder faded out. The rain, too, grew less violent, and had tapered off completely around the time the black of the night became the gray of the morning.

The Soldier went to the window and looked out. Other than the branches scattered everywhere, it looked pretty much the same as it had the day before. He stepped outside and walked around the cabin, and saw nothing worth worrying about. The ground was soft enough, at least, that he could tell no one had come near the cabin since Rilian and the Leopards had left.

He went back inside. Loki was still asleep, a sleep that had been quieter since the storm had gone away. The Soldier considered taking up his former position in the doorframe, but that didn't seem necessary now that he could both see and hear better. Instead, he sat on the other bed, not quite willing to sleep--being unconscious in the field when there was no one keeping watch would be incredibly stupid--but feeling that exhaustion from before again, like it instead of Rilian's fiend was what had been lying in wait.

*

It was only slightly lighter outside when the Soldier heard footsteps approaching the cabin. For a moment, his hand twitched for the knife; then he remembered where he knew those steps from, and relaxed.

"How is my patient this morning?" asked the Badger, not waiting for the Soldier to respond before she walked up to the bed and looked underneath Loki's bandage. "Ah. Good."

She started the dressing change. The Soldier watched from behind, wondering for the first time if he should have checked them for himself, without being told--but nothing had leaked out of the top part of the bandage overnight, and what the Badger removed wasn't soaked like the first round of gauze had been, so it must have been all right that he hadn't.

She'd just finished wrapping Loki back up, and was bringing a little potion out of her bag when the Soldier said, without knowing he meant to say it, "You shouldn't have said that about him."

"What's that, now?" she asked, looking over at him, differently than most people who were people looked at him--not with the desperate eyes of a target or the judging eyes of a handler, but like one person looking at another person.

"What you said yesterday. About Loki," the Soldier said, not even sure why he was saying it, or where it was coming from, but apparently dedicated to getting to the end of a thought that didn't even seem to be there until it came out of his mouth. "You don't know him. He might be good."

"Might be, or is?" the Badger asked, in a voice that somehow managed to be both bristly and kind. "There's a difference between the two. If you were never taught so, you ought to learn as soon as you might."

The Soldier, who would in later days do much wondering as to how much he, personally, counted as human or good, sat blankly with this as the Badger brought the potion to Loki's mouth. Loki must have been more awake than he seemed, because both managed to swallow the trickle of liquid he was given, and grumbled a little once it was down.

"Another sleeping draught," said the Badger to the Soldier. "It'll help with the pain, as well. I'll leave the rest of the bottle for tonight if he should need it. I shall be back tomorrow, of course, but I rather suspect he'll not be needing any more by then, at the rate he's healing." The Badger packed up her supplies, leaving a new stack of bandages on the table, then turned and looked at the Soldier, with an expression just as bristly and kind as her voice had been before. "I wouldn't wish any harm upon your friend. Nor would I bring it--I'm a healer, after all. If the King had forbidden me to treat him, I'd have fought tooth and nail to do it regardless. But there's trouble brewing in Narnia, and we've had more than enough of that. Why, the King just returned a year ago last Thursday! Too many things have yet to be set right again, never mind upended once more."

The Soldier took this in. This time, for whatever reason, he didn't have any trouble figuring out what kind of question to ask. "What trouble?" 

The Badger sighed. "Whispers, and whispers of whispers. Some sharing the same dark dream, though they live miles apart. Others stumbling upon the rotting corpses of dumb creatures in places where they ought not to be, with no-one able to explain why the bodies were left to be wasted. And there are rumors, coming out of Cair Paravel itself--" But here she shut her mouth, so quickly you could almost hear her teeth smash together. "But I won't repeat such things."

This wasn't an interrogation, but the Soldier had done enough of them to know which threads you followed and which you let go, and between the Badger and Loki, she was the one awake and talking to him. "What things?"

"Low gossip. The person who told me should have known better, and so I told him at the time. I am a Badger, and we are steadfast."

There were other threads the Soldier could see. The direction loyalty flowed, from handler to handled, or from king to subject. That this loyalty was undercut by something else, some other worry or suspicion, something that had been nagging at her for long enough that she'd half-blurt it out to the first stranger who gave her an opening. "It had to do with Rilian. Didn't it."

But the Badger wasn't looking at him anymore. "Stuff and nonsense, only," she said firmly, all bristle and not much else, and shuffled toward the door. "I'll return tomorrow to see to your friend. If you should need me before then, ask anyone you see for Tubertrapper, and they'll come fetch me. My neighbors in these parts are all accustomed to such." She paused in the doorway on her way out. "And, by the by--you've better ears than most Humans, it seems, but I'd try listening more and eavesdropping less, if I were you. You'll learn more that way."

For a moment, the Soldier nearly went after her. Then he remembered that she wasn't the mission. That there wasn't a mission. That if he followed her, there'd be no one to keep an eye on Loki. To make sure he didn't die before the Soldier could find out what he knew. To make sure he didn't die, period, for reasons that were starting to seem like they might not be the ones he'd thought they were.

He sat back down on the bed, and got back to waiting.

*

By that afternoon, the Soldier had done some recon, not because he'd gotten bored, but because he was getting more and more on edge knowing that he hadn't been briefed on the surrounding area. So he'd gone out a few times, no more than five minutes each and never far enough from the cabin that he wouldn't have heard it if anyone approached, and now had a sense of what was within a several hundred foot radius of the cabin. There were trees, shrubs, more trees, a large boulder with moss on the northern side, a fallen tree without any on the southern; now, if there were a fight, he'd know where he was, and how good the cover was in any direction. It didn't release all his tension, but it meant what was left was good tension. Not the kind that came from not knowing what the hell kind of territory you were in the middle of, but the kind that came from having as much information as you could expect, and being fairly certain you'd be able to handle whatever happened next. It meant he could sit back down and focus on what his body needed long enough to eat some protein.

He'd just finished the last of the jerky when a sound came from Loki's bed, not quite another cough. He looked to see Loki looking at him blearily. He licked his chapped lips, then said, low and gravelly, "I'll sleep if I desire to, and not otherwise."

"Too late," said the Soldier. "You've been down about twenty hours."

"Have I really?"

"You should still be down. They gave you a sleeping potion."

Loki, whose face was still waking up, still managed to give the Soldier a pointed look. "As if any of their potions have ever done much for me. You know that."

The Soldier looked at him. Loki looked back, so that a few moments later, it was easy to see the exact second that he remembered.

"--Or perhaps you don't. You didn't know me before." Loki sat up and leaned against the wall. He must still have been weak, because although his eyes were now alert, managing even this much left him panting, his face and neck were covered in a thin sheen of sweat. "Why didn't you know me?"

The Soldier hadn't planned out this interrogation. He hadn't had to. He'd done enough of them that he knew how it went. What he would say. How to get through the target's defenses. No matter how differently it went, it was always the same pattern. They always had intel he needed, always resisted giving it to him. No matter how differently it went at the beginning, by the time he got this far, he was the one asking the questions.

"Tell me what you know about me," he said, feeling that somehow, even though he'd asked the question, he'd already lost control of this situation.

Loki had been looking at him the whole time, but now he seemed to be looking more, somehow--or at least more carefully. And when he spoke, it was with another carefulness, one the Soldier recognized even though the terror was missing: "Bucky. What else don't you remember?"

"What do you know about me?"

"If you tell me what you know already, it will be easier for me to fill in the rest."

"You called me Bucky. Why did you call me that?"

"I called you that because it's what you're called. Don't you remember anything at all?"

There came that annoyance again, the kind that came when a mission was being difficult. Except this wasn't a mission, and it was a different kind of difficult. There was a light in Loki's eyes that said he wasn't going to be the first to give in, at least not without some sort of incentive.

"I don't know," the Solder said, giving in, because the only incentives he could go with were the kind that weren't on the table here. "It's--I don't know."

"What don't you know?" Loki moved again, leaning forward, the better to peer at the Soldier's face.

"How much there is to remember," the Soldier said. "Anything from before. There was one, right? If you know me from it. Unless you were both lying."

The more he talked, the slower it came out, the stupider it sounded. But as unsure as the Soldier was, and feeling more unsure each moment, the one thing he was almost certain of was that neither Loki nor the man from the bridge had been lying.

"No. I haven't lied," said Loki. "Not recently. Not to you. You really don't remember anything?"

"I know you're Loki. But I don't remember. How I know that. Anything else."

"You don't recall what happened to you?"

The Soldier stared at him blankly.

"Well?"

"I don't understand. What you mean, or. What you're talking about," the Soldier said, more haltingly than he'd said anything yet. It had always been a mistake to admit to not understanding; had always resulted in impatience on the part of his handler, which always, always led to something worse. If he'd had a second to really think about it, he might have had the time to flip this around again, to put himself back in the questioner spot and Loki back where he was supposed to be--but the interference from before was starting up again, not flooding his vision or his hearing this time, but crowding in behind them, making it hard to think, to decide what he should say.

Loki's brow furrowed. "Perhaps I can aid in both our comprehension. Come here."

The Soldier did, followed as Loki directed him until he was crouched by the side of the bed.

Loki raised his hand and brought it up to the Soldier's temple, not quite touching. Then he looked down and reached instead for the Soldier's metal arm. He wrapped his hand lightly around the Soldier's wrist, and lifted it toward his face to get a better look. "I don't suppose you recall what happened here, either," he said, in a tone so devoid of anything that if he had been a handler, the Soldier would have begun bracing himself for things to get very bad in the next second or two.

"It's my arm," the Soldier said, not understanding this, either, but unable not to answer.

"So it is. Didn't I tell you you had no business going to war?" Loki let go, then reached for the Soldier's temple again. "I could go into your mind to see your memories. I could make sense of them for you, to a point. Would that be all right?"

Whatever Loki wanted to do, the Soldier hadn't expected to be asked. He'd never been asked. It had never been up to him what was going to be done to him. It was that, more than understanding what Loki had said, which he didn't, and more than understanding the possible consequences, which could have been anything, that made him say, "Okay."

Loki's fingers brushed against his temple, and everything changed.

*

The first memory the Soldier had thought of was the man on the riverbank (the man on the helicarrier the man on the bridge), but Loki must not have even looked there, because what came up, flashing into his mind so vividly, like it all it had needed was one little nudge, was...

He was huddled someplace dark, and small, and cold. From outside of the cell, someone said something harshly to him in a language he knew and didn't--did know now, hadn't then, though he hadn't had to to know the words then to know anything said in that tone had to be a taunt. It was dark and cold and his shoulder hurt, it hurt so bad, and his arm was--it was--

And then it was later, and the reason he knew it was later was that, this time, he had his arm. Not the one that had gone missing, but a new one instead, a metal thing he could only sort of feel, that didn't work like the old one, that was (according to everyone who came to see him, now that he was in a cell that was brighter and larger and not at all warmer) stronger and faster and more powerful. They kept saying that, like it was something to be excited about--

Later still, and this time he didn't care about the arm, didn't care about anything. All that mattered was the task in front of him, the target. "Eliminate the target," said the handler, and it didn't matter that the target was small, and scared, didn't matter that it was begging. All that mattered was the gun in his hand and the mission in his mind. It wasn't the first one, wasn't the first time they'd given him a mission, but this time the other screaming was gone from inside of him, the resistance that had always gotten in the way those other times. He raised the pistol they'd handed him, that someone must have given him, and the target's words might as well have been interference for all the sense they made to him, and he pulled the trigger and--

Later, it was dark and cold again, not a small space this time but a huge one. He stumbled from one set of trees to the other, not knowing where he was going but going there as fast as he could--because no matter how far he went the snow was still falling, still crunching underneath his feet. He was leaving a trail and they would follow it, they would catch him, they would take him back and put him in his chair and then when they took him back out they would make him--

Later, and he didn't remember why it had seemed so important to run, why it had seemed so important not to go where they told him or do what they told him. He could do it faster and better than they could, any of their other soldiers, none of them as fast or strong as him, none of them able to get back up no matter what they got hit with, and so he went where they told him again and again, he raised his weapon again and again and again--

And sometimes he did remember, after all, but there was a little less to it each time. Each time he fought a little less on his way to the chair, because each time there was less of what had come before, there was less of him. First he lost his serial number and then he lost his name and then he lost the reasons why not, until they must have been sure it was all gone, everything else that had ever been in him--

Loki's hand jerked away, and they were back where they'd been when this had started, Loki sitting up in the bed and the Soldier crouched next to him. Everything was the same, but everything else was different, too. 

The Soldier rocked back, not looking at Loki, not looking at anything. The static was back again, the interference, so that all he could see or hear was this new knowledge of how the pieces he'd known and not known had formed together to make a picture. He'd wanted to know about before , but what he hadn't realized was that there had been an after, too. Until now there hadn't been anything other than disparate moments that fit together jaggedly: just enough for him to know his purpose, what he was for. He hadn't thought of himself as having a story. He hadn't thought of himself as having been shaped, had not imagined his existence as something that had been done to him. Something that had happened to him. For a second or two, it seemed surreal, unreal, something that hadn't happened and could never have happened. But then the feeling faded, and he was there, and the rest of the picture stayed the same.

And he was there, breathing hard, and so was Loki--who had gone so white that for a second the Soldier forgot everything else.

"Shit," he said, and pushed the blanket down and out of the way. But the bandage over Loki's abdomen was clean, not even a little red seeping through, nevermind the kind of hemorrhaging the Soldier had expected. It was still possible Loki was bleeding internally, but if he had been, he'd have been dead already. Probably.

"You wanted to know what I know about you," Loki said. "That was the purpose of the exercise, was it not?"

"I," the Soldier (but that wasn't his name, had never been his name, he had lost it early on but now he could remember losing it, remember how long and hard he'd fought to hold on to it and to himself) said. "Yeah, I guess."

It wasn't that he'd forgotten about before, or that it wasn't important. It just didn't seem like the most important thing right now. It was hard to say how important Loki thought it was, either, because he was looking past Bucky's shoulder, and sounded pretty distant, as he said, "Your name is Bucky Barnes. You live in a realm without magic and have no affinity for it yourself--on most occasions, at least. You cannot ride a horse, can barely wield a sword, and are only just passable with a crossbow. You often suggest I'm the one who gets us 'into trouble,' yet your sense of honor has reared its head on any number of (highly irritating) occasions, resulting in far more near-death experiences than you can possibly pin on me. I told you not to go to war, and you did it anyway, and now look what's happened."

"Huh," Bucky said, taking this in, not really sure what to do with it, or why a list of things he could and couldn't do didn't seem very satisfying. "I don't remember being in a war."

"That's unsurprising. I meant to go further back, to see what specific events led to your captivity, but there seemed to be no further back to go to . It's as if there were a wall (of a sort) between your past life and this one."

"That's the interference," Bucky agreed. "Like on TV."

"--Like on television, yes. And here I thought you had no magic in your world."

But Bucky barely heard this (and it must be that Loki barely knew he said it, or registered it as no more than an oddity, for he said no more about it then or later). He was thinking. He'd known Loki, and then he'd gone to war. He must have been captured at some point, and then the rest had happened. "So we were friends? Before, I mean."

"Yes. We were good friends indeed. Once, we even--but it doesn't matter."

Whatever it was, it obviously did matter to Loki; whatever it was, Bucky had too many other things to process to chase down one more thing that might or might not have been relevant. "And I'm not from around here. Wherever here is. Narnia."

"Nor am I. We've always been pulled from our separate worlds to work together here at some task or another."

"Tasks," Bucky repeated, alongside a dawning horror. "Like missions? You mean we used to come here to..."

"Not like that," Loki said. He wasn't as pale as he had been before, though he was still plenty shiny. "There's always something, but it's always something you would consider good."

"We help people?"

"Largely, yes. And the people we harm generally deserve it."

"Okay."

"Any more questions?"

Bucky felt as if he must have a thousand of them, tucked away somewhere. But he also had exactly none. He'd been so focused on the goal of interrogating Loki that it hadn't occurred to him before what, specifically, he wanted to ask about. Or maybe it was the kind of thing that would have come to him naturally at some point in the middle of a normal interrogation, one set of words and one set of thoughts leading to another, and another. But this wasn't a normal interrogation, and there was so much to think about already, so instead of anything else he could have asked, he went with, "Do animals talk back home too, and I just forgot?"

Loki stared at him.

"Oh, come on," Bucky said, another instinct breaking through, except that this felt more familiar than the others had, like pulling on a worn, faded old shirt after having worn one much more stiff and uncomfortable for a while. "You don't have to look at me like that."

Loki stared a second longer, and then smiled. "I apologize. It's simply that I can't believe you forgot your long friendship with the Elephant who lived down your street."

"What, really?" Bucky said, startled; he'd assumed the staring had meant it was a very stupid question, and that the answer to it was 'no.'

"Of course," said Loki, and launched into a story so long and involved that Bucky would have been sure it was true if it hadn't been for that stare, and the sly part of that smile, and the way his instinct told him not to believe a word of it.

*

Bullshit or not, it ended up being a good story. Listening to it released some of the tension that had been there, between them and otherwise. When Loki was done telling it, Bucky felt like some of his thoughts had sorted, or at least settled down a little bit, so that he could remember the other things that were going on now.

"I forgot to tell you," he said.

"Tell me what?"

"Why Rilian left," Bucky said.

"Ah," said Loki, with a look on his face that said that even if Bucky hadn't actually told him anything yet, something else had just become clear. "The son once thought lost. The prince whose return was (no doubt) heralded across the land. I'd hoped I'd dreamt him up."

Whatever the weird tone in his voice meant, Bucky didn't have a chance of working it out. "Yeah, well, he had to go. A messenger came and said there had been some kind of attack. So he had to get there before all the evidence got washed away."

"Naturally."

"And then the Badger came by and she said." But there Bucky stopped. He had the feeling that maybe what the Badger had said wasn't supposed to be repeated.

"What?"

"The Badger said there were rumors coming out of the castle. That there had been for a while," he said, and didn't think to wonder how he knew that that was what Cair Paravel was. It was an instinct so faint he'd have had to be looking for it to recognize it. "It sounded like it could be related, but she didn't say anything else."

"Perhaps not quite as heralded as all that, after all," Loki observed, and looked faintly pleased.

For his part, Bucky felt relieved, and somehow lighter, like the information had been a burden he hadn't realized was one until he'd shared it. He'd felt relief during mission reports before, when his handlers decided that the intel he'd come back with was satisfactory enough not to have to punish him, but it had never been exactly like this, another familiar, well-worn thing.

"Is this the kind of thing we help with when we come here?" he asked.

"It seems likely. But without even a location, I'm not certain what we can be expected to do about it right now," said Loki, so dismissively that it made Bucky wonder why telling him had been a relief. But then he looked at Bucky with eyes that widened for a second into something devastated, before narrowing into something quite a bit sharper. "You truly remember nothing about our time in Narnia?"

"No."

"Well, what about your own world? What do you remember of that?"

There was no point in thinking back. There was nothing there. There had never been anything there. If Bucky thought about it, if he looked, all he would see was the story that had been made out of the jagged pieces. Already, he didn't want to look too close at it. Already, he knew that thinking about it too much was going to get in the way (though in the way of what, the soldier who had once been the man who had once been the boy who didn't like to dwell could not have said).

"I see," Loki said, even though Bucky hadn't said anything at all. "So you've no theory, then, how you could have survived?"

"Survived what?"

"You're a mortal, or were, before. It's unimaginable that you should have been able to live through such treatment. Therefore, the question becomes how ."

"I don't know," Bucky said.

"Perhaps it will come back to you," said Loki, who was beginning to look gray again, and to sway a little, as if he might topple over.

Perhaps it is no wonder that, as troubled and as inward as Bucky was in that moment, he missed the relief, far more profound than anything he himself had yet felt, that had flashed over Loki's face when he answered.

*

The rain came back the following afternoon, alongside gales so strong it seemed surprising that such a small cabin didn't do more than shake a little. But it must have been built by people who knew what they were doing, because the roof was still on after hours of abuse.

Just as the wind finally seemed to be thinking about dying down, something else blew in. Bucky was on his feet by the time the door slammed into the wall. Then he saw who it was and relaxed again. 

"If I have startled you, I apologize," said Rilian, whose hair, though not quite as long as Bucky's or Loki's, was plastered around his head in a way that suggested he'd walked through a tornado followed by a tsunami, and whose entire bottom half, from toe to mid-thigh, was plastered with mud. "Really, I ought to have announced myself--but the skies have made such a din in Narnia these last several days that some part of me must have disbelieved you would hear me. But how fares our friend?"

"Well enough," said Loki, who had crashed hard again after their conversation the day before, and had spent roughly seventeen of the last nineteen hours asleep. He'd finally woken up for real about an hour ago. It was then that he'd finally eaten some of the bread Rilian had left for him (he hadn't let Bucky soak it in anything, but he'd eaten it in small bites, with large sips of water to get each one down). Then he'd tried to get out of bed, and only managed a few steps before he'd threatened to hit the floor and Bucky'd had to catch him.

"Your recovery has been truly inspired," said Rilian, with no sign that he was thinking about the things the Badger had said to him about why that was. "I am glad--and grieved I was unable to remain. Truly I have been a poor host."

" Truly ," said Loki shortly, with a very nasty glance at Rilian.

"How'd it go?" Bucky asked, unsure what to do about Loki, or if he should do anything, or why it seemed like Loki was suddenly his problem in a different way than he'd been a problem before--but certain down to the bone of how to ask for information.

Rilian sagged, looking abruptly much older than he had before. "The fiend left a trail, well enough. Or, well, fiends, I should say, for the trail in question diverged not far from the site. We followed the clearer trail as long as we could before it faded away. From there, we searched on and found nothing, though eyes, ears and noses covered a great deal of ground indeed. Another party followed the second trail, but did no better. We kept up the search all day and night, but by the time the sun had risen this morning, I knew we could not continue. The villains might have gone anywhere in the time we had spent already. Better to return home and regroup then to search ever onward, thinning our forces and leaving them vulnerable to attack."

"What are you going to do now?" Bucky asked. "You can't just wait for them to come back."

"No. Yet, with no known direction, any of my guard I send in search leaves some other place under-defended. Thus have I sent messengers throughout Narnia, asking strong young fighters of every kind to keep a watch--and if there are more eyes than are needed in any one place, to send the extra persons to Cair Paravel, to be assigned to where there are fewer. Then, should the fiends attack again, there will be eyes everywhere, and they're more likely to be seen--or, better still, stopped before they may harm any others."

He didn't look very happy about any of this. Bucky wouldn't have been, either. Waiting was always worse than searching; staying still was always more agonizing than moving. You were a lot more likely to end up on the defensive if you were waiting for something to react to than if you were the thing everyone else was reacting to. You--or other people, if you cared about that--were a lot more likely to get hurt.

"Though I must not stay for more than these few minutes, I found it essential to ascertain that you as my guests are of good health--and to extend an invitation. You must come to Cair, and stay there as my guests."

There was something about the way he said it that gave you an idea that he wasn't really asking so much as he was telling. At least, that was the feeling Bucky had. But it also seemed like a good idea. Loki still wasn't in great shape, and if Bucky had to fight, he knew, somehow, that he'd fight better if he wasn't the only thing standing between Loki and whatever showed up.

"It'd be safer, for sure," Bucky said, less to Rilian than to Loki. "And it'd be more comfortable than this."

"I'm comfortable enough here," Loki said, with a flat look at Rilian that could have meant anything, but that Bucky got the idea meant that there was no love lost there.

"We'll go," Bucky said, ignoring the look that got shot at him when he did. "He can't actually walk yet, though."

Rilian nodded, and said, "Then I shall leave you my own horse--and Shatterspot will accompany you, to be certain you arrive safely. But as poor as my manners must seem, I am afraid I must away; I've tarried here too long already."

So saying, he blew out the door, just like he'd blown in in the first place.

*

"We've ridden double on smaller, I suppose," Loki said doubtfully, halfway standing and halfway leaning on Bucky. He was already sweaty again just from getting out the door, radiating heat and moistness everywhere they were touching.

Bucky didn't have an opinion on how big the horse was or wasn't. But there was nothing about the horse that made his instincts scream to get on it. If Loki thought it was small for two grown men to ride at the same time, that probably made it even smaller if you took his metal arm into account. Getting Loki on it was hard enough, a process that was sort of like throwing a heavy bag of flour around, if it mattered that the flour stayed where you put it instead of sliding off the other side.

"I'm just gonna lead it," Bucky said, once Loki had one leg on each side of the horse, and was holding onto its mane.

"That may be better," said Loki, who, although still wobbly, somehow seemed less so now that he was doing a balancing act on top of an animal that had to weigh at least a thousand pounds. "She'll be less likely to bolt, in any case."

"Let me know if you need to stop," Bucky said, though he had no actual idea how he'd make the horse stop if he wanted to and it didn't. It wasn't like he could just shoot it.

According to Shatterspot the Leopard, who was lurking in the shadows and only talked when asked a question, the nearest road led straight to a bigger road, which led straight to the castle as long as they remembered to turn left instead of right at the crossroads.

Bucky wasn't sure exactly how to get the horse to turn if it didn't want to, but by the time they got to the crossroads, he had a sense of the horse, which was that it was happy to do what he wanted, just so long as what he wanted was for it to keep heading in the direction of its own stall. That turned out to be a good thing, because by the time they got close enough to the castle to see any of it, it was starting to get dark--not the gray dark of a stormy afternoon, but the gloomy dark of an evening where the clouds hid the stars and moon. Loki had stopped talking (mostly complaints about the horse, and how far the cottage had been from the first road, and how bumpy the ride was, and how slow they were going) a while ago, which meant Bucky had plenty of space to listen to everything he couldn't see. The buzzing of insects, the who-who of an owl (or an Owl) here or there, and the occasional whisper, which came with or without a gleam of someone's eyes in the darkness.

"Have you heard--"

"How dreadful--"

"Let's don't go any nearer--"

"Best get home now--"

"And don't they also say--"

"Dare not delay--"

Bucky had been in the woods before, but if he'd ever given much thought to the wilderness, he'd have thought of it as a place with fewer people, not more. But the woods near the castle were filled with voices and movement, a wilder version of a crowded street at twilight. It was sort of familiar, but even more, it was unsettling, because none of the voices he heard were anything less than unsettled themselves.

Eventually, the trees thinned out the rest of the way, leaving nothing in front of them but a wide green lawn, a bridge, and a lighted path from the bridge up to the gate of the castle. By the time they were halfway across the lawn, the whispers had all faded away; by the time Bucky was talking to the guards at the gate (who asked such pointed, jittery questions it was obvious they were either new, or had had a recent talking to about letting strangers in, even ones they'd been told to expect), he had almost forgotten about them. He had bigger things to worry about, like getting Loki off the horse again, and getting them both to their room.

"Need me to carry you?" Bucky asked.

"--Absolutely not," said Loki (who, it must be admitted, would actually have loved to be carried...but only in other, more sensual circumstances).

So it took them forever to get to their room, even though it wasn't that far from the stable...but by the time they were there, someone had started a little fire in the fireplace, and there was a hot water bottle at the foot of both beds. A platter of food had been set on top of the dresser, too, alongside another stack of bandages. Bucky didn't think they were going to need the bandages--the Badger had said they were nearly done with them when she'd come to see them in the morning--but what Loki was going to need was some sleep, and pretty much right now.

Loki sank down onto the bed as soon as they got to it, and was indeed asleep seconds after that. The ride must have taken a lot out of him.

Bucky stood there for a minute, listening, thinking. He poked his head out of the room and saw a guard at one end of the hall, and another one at the opposite end. Like the guards at the gate, they were paying attention; they looked toward him, and stayed looking, until he poked his head back in. Maybe he could still have managed some recon, or maybe not--but with everyone so on edge, it didn't seem like a good idea to go out and leave Loki by himself. If something happened, people might get in his way when he was trying to get back. There wasn't anyone here Bucky couldn't go through if he had to, but it would take extra seconds, which could be too long. He didn't remember being friends with Loki, but somehow, even though Loki had helped him all it seemed like he could, there was something older than anything else that seemed to be saying Bucky couldn't leave him behind.

*

The screaming started well after midnight. Bucky was up before he knew what he was hearing, was crouched by the side of the bed with a knife in each hand by the time it had stopped.

"What was that?" Loki asked sharply.

"Don't know."

A second later, it came again. Bucky listened, and heard no footsteps, no clashing of swords. It was just one voice, screaming in terror or pain. For a second, he felt annoyed, thinking that the sooner the voice's owner learned not to do that, the harder it would be for his handlers to read him, and the easier the treatments would become. Then he remembered he was in Narnia, and was in the midst of wondering why that seemed to matter when the voice fell silent.

"You're going to go, aren't you," Loki said. "Even though there have been murders, and I can't even get out of bed."

Bucky stared at him, not having known he meant to leave the room until Loki had said so, but even more confused by the implication. "I don't need you to protect me," he said.

"Perhaps I meant you ought to protect me ," Loki said, which made sense, and was exactly what Bucky's concern would have been the day before, or even a minute or two ago. But now there was a green flame floating in the air between them, so that Bucky could see Loki's face, and how much stronger he looked than he had anytime before, nevermind when Bucky had first found him lying in the stream.

"You can take care of yourself," he said, suddenly and wholly certain of this, though he couldn't have said why or how that should be.

"But can you ? At least take a decent blade with you, if you're going to go."

Now Loki had a knife in his hand, a jagged, wicked-looking thing. Bucky took it wordlessly by the hilt, and in so doing was washed over with a stronger sense of familiarity than he'd had since the man on the bridge had gotten into his head. He stared down at the blade, which didn't itself seem familiar. Maybe it had just been the motion, something about it. But unlike the blade itself, the more he thought about it, and tried to pinpoint exactly what it had been, the less sure he was, until all that was left was where he was and what he was doing now.

"Bucky?" Loki said, and it was hard to say if he sounded concerned or annoyed, and even harder to say which he might have meant. For the moment, Bucky's instinct, the one he was starting to listen to above everything else, seemed to have gone haywire. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. He strapped the knife to his left thigh, where he'd lost one somewhere between the fall from the helicarrier and the fall to here. "I'll be back soon."

Something flashed across Loki's face (defeat, Bucky would decide later, and maybe disappointment too), and he sighed. "Wait a moment," he said, and then something happened, some sort of flash, and he was dressed in different clothes, green and gold and flowing. And there was a cape. "If you insist on going, I insist on coming with you."

"I thought you couldn't get out of bed," Bucky said, when Loki had gotten out of bed, and was standing a whole lot steadier than he had been before, like whatever healing process had begun in the cabin had decided to rush the rest of things overnight.

"I merely wished you to consider that it might be somewhat early for us to venture out. You do understand that when we embark on our tasks here, we become that much closer to finishing them?"

"I just think we should find out what that sound was," said Bucky.

"Certainly. But if it's related to why we were brought here, then the investigation may lend itself to a conclusion. Don't you remember what happens, each and every time we're finished?"

"I don't think not going is a choice," said Bucky, who didn't remember, and might have asked about it if it hadn't been so obvious that Loki was stalling.

"It certainly is a choice."

"I don't think it's a good one."

"You would say that."

"Let's go."

*

Out in the hall, the guards were gone. That seemed stupid to Bucky, the kind of lapse he could have used if he'd been on a mission. They used it now, slipping through the hallways, Bucky walking a step ahead of Loki, Loki following close and quietly enough to be a shadow. Even if Bucky didn't know the layout of the castle, he knew the direction the sound had come from, and even if he had to backtrack, he figured it wouldn't be hard.

But he didn't have to backtrack. At some point he realized his instinct had come back, and that even if his surroundings didn't look familiar, it was possible he might have been here before (for he was starting to think the instinct might be not an impulse so much as memory, things he'd done or said so often when he was a former him that he could follow down the same path now). 

After just a few minutes, they came to a door. All the doors they'd passed in the hall had had carvings on them: animals of various kinds, and fauns and river and tree spirits and giants, and those were only the things Bucky could put a name to. Some of them depicted feasts, and others depicted battles, and in every single one of them, there had been a lion somewhere. 

This door was also carved, and there was no reason to think that what it showed, which looked to Bucky like a snowball fight, should have been more joyful than the rest. It was, though, and somehow looked newer than the other doors, as well--like they'd all been carved by the same person, but this one had been made later than the others.

All of this, Bucky took in in an instant, before opening the door. Only later would he think that it might have been better to knock, or how much he wouldn't have wanted to be walked in on, if it had been him. But it had not yet occurred to him that the screaming might not have been from torture after all--and even if any of this had crossed his mind, it would have been unlikely to change what he chose to do in the moment.

Inside of the door was a bedroom, just a little bigger than the one they'd been put in, and a lot more lived in. There was a large window running across two-thirds of the opposite wall. On the window ledge was a candle, which must have been lit very recently, for none of the wax seemed to have melted yet. By the window, looking out, stood King Rilian, shoulders so hunched even from behind that the look of misery on his face when he turned to look at them was no surprise.

"Is anyone else here?" Bucky asked. "It sounded like--"

"It sounded as though I were in the throes of my torment once again," Rilian said. "But no. It was merely a dream."

The way he'd been screaming, it didn't seem like there was anything merely about it. But before Bucky could ask, or think how to ask, or decide if it mattered enough to ask if no one was getting hurt, Loki asked, in a voice that made it sound almost like he was actually interested, "Was it a true dream? Or was it a memory?"

"Does it matter?" But it must have been a rhetorical question, because Rilian turned back to the window, and kept going: "True dream or not, the results are the same: My people believe I am mad, or, worse, still in the influence of the Witch, gone though she may be. I'll wager you met no one on your way to meet me: For the others hear me scream, and flee from Cair Paravel, or cower in some corner. And I cannot condemn them, after the other times."

"What happened the other times?" Bucky asked.

"There have been five such nights in the last few months. This is the sixth. The morning after the first four times, the corpses of beasts were found not far from here, torn into pieces--not Talking beasts, thank the Lion, but unsettling nonetheless. Then, the night before you arrived, the dream came again, and I set out with my Guard immediately afterward, the better to catch the culprit in the act."

"Where you found us, yet somehow neglected to have us arrested," Loki said.

"You did not seemed to have mutilated any one or thing, nor had either of you attempted murder of the other," Rilian said, mildly but with the same underlying thread of censure as when he'd spoken to the Badger. "I did not go out in seek of blame; and to imprison you without cause would not have been justice. Of course, had you not been with me and my guard when the attack itself occurred--! Then there would have been a greater inquiry, of that I may assure you."

"I see," said Loki, and for a second it seemed like he might leave it there, not being helpful at all. But then he seemed to straighten his shoulders, and said, in a different voice, "You dream sour dreams the night before each offense occurs. Your subjects are aware of this, and fear you may be the cause. Has it occurred to you that they may be correct?"

"It has," Rilian said, and the steel that had been in his voice was gone, where you might have expected it to stick around for a while, under questioning like that. "Yet I, too, have had witnesses with or near me at the times when the foulness must have occurred. If I question my own mind, I do not have true cause to question either my actions or my whereabouts."

"Hmm. There might still be some connection. Will you allow me to work a small casting, to see one way or the other?"

"A casting?"

"A spell, to find out if you're connected to these events or their perpetrators through magic," Loki said, and then, when Rilian blanched, added, "I assure you it won't hurt."

"I did not know you were a sorcerer," said Rilian, looking dismayed; he would have been terrible in the field, or at least the kind of field Bucky was used to. "It might have made no difference as to my actions and welcome (for clearly this is the purpose for which Aslan has sent you, no matter how humiliating it may seem)--but I did not know."

"He's good," Bucky said, somehow more sure of this, or more wanting it to be true, than he'd been before. "He's not like them at all." Then he remembered that Rilian's witch had been just one person. "Not like her, I mean."

"It will take only a few moments. I won't even have to touch you," Loki said.

Rilian looked at them, one to the other and back again, and finally nodded, curtly, and said, "All right. I must do what I must do to--and when you are finished, I will go out once more, to prevent whatever would happen tomorrow."

Loki stepped toward Rilian, then raised his hand toward Rilian's temple, not unlike the way he had with Bucky, when they'd still been in the cabin and he'd been far too weak to go anywhere--except that, just like he'd said, he didn't actually touch Rilian. For a second, nothing happened. Then there was a flash of something, so quick that it was only visible for a fraction of a second, gone so fast there was no telling what exactly it had been. Then something started to glow, first around Rilian's head, then down, all the way to his feet. The image crystallized, until it was clear that what they were looking at was two threads, each of them poison-green, wrapped around Rilian. If they'd been corporeal, even half as strong and tight as they looked, he wouldn't have been able to move.

"What is this?" Rilian cried out. "How can I have been bound again in such a way, with the Silver Chair destroyed--!"

"These are different bindings than the other must have been," said Loki. "Not meant to compel you, but to tie you to their source. I would guess it's meant to be a form of mental warfare--a way to frighten you more than you would otherwise be frightened, and to cause your allies to fear you as well."

"If that is their intent, it has worked," said Rilian. "But they will pay, and pay dearly--for, look."

They looked to where he was gesturing, and saw that both threads led away from him, and out the door.

"Do you suppose the fiends would be able to conceal this trail?" he asked Loki.

"Not unless they were to loosen their hold on you entirely," said Loki.

"Then I must go, and follow these threads where ever they may lead," said Rilian, walking over to a hook on the wall, where he'd hung his swordbelt. "I must go at once, lest they murder again. Will you come?"

Before Loki could hedge, or act reluctant, or anything, Bucky said the only thing he had to say. "Yeah. We'll go with you."

*

"There's still time for you to change your mind," said Loki in a low voice, a little while later. Rilian was ahead of them, his Leopard guards slinking through the trees to either side. They'd had horses, at first, but the threads they were following had quickly guided them into a thick part of the forest, so that they'd sent their steeds back.

"I'm not going to change my mind."

"If you truly remember nothing, I suspect you don't know."

"Know what?"

"How this works. The way it's always worked. Once we've completed our tasks, we'll be done here. It's usually fairly immediate. We'll be sent home--or, rather, back to where we were prior to our arrival. You can't possibly wish to return to HYDRA."

There was something jolting about hearing that name here. It took Bucky a second to remember that even if Loki knew that, he maybe didn't know the rest. "HYDRA doesn't have me anymore. I got away. Right before I came here." He remembered the memory of running away in the snow, knowing they'd catch him, running as hard as he could anyway. That panic was what Loki had seen, the part of the story he knew. "I'll be able to stay away this time."

There was a lot missing from this explanation, like the fact that Bucky couldn't have done it by himself, and that it was someone else (Steve?) who knew him from before who had started it happening. But they might not have time to get into all that, the same way Loki must not have had time to look for it.

"But if you were here, you wouldn't have to concern yourself with them at all. You wouldn't have to conceal yourself. There would be no need to be wary, all the rest of your life." If Loki had looked relieved for roughly half a second while Bucky wasn't looking at him, it was hard to say; now he sounded nothing but even more determined.

For a split second, Bucky almost said he wouldn't have to anyway, since HYDRA was gone. It was a thought that threw him off for a second, not interference this time but confusion, because that wasn't true, couldn't be. It wasn't even an instinct; it was just wishful thinking. As long as there were any heads at all left, he'd always have to be careful.

"Okay," he said, meaning he'd listen, not that he'd do it. "What do you think we should do?"

It must have been the question Loki was waiting for, for he went immediately into a spiel. "We should head south at full speed. Once we're past Archenland, the chances of anyone caring where we came from or what we're meant to be doing would be very slight; we would then have the time to decide at our leisure. As to where we could ultimately go, the options are endless. We could ride to Tashbaan and insinuate ourselves into the court of the Tisroc. Or we could find a harbor and sail to Terenbithia, Galma, the Seven Isles. Or, if you like, we might ride west, rather than south--I've heard little enough of what lies there, but I know for a fact that if we go far enough, we'll find a land of plenty beyond those mountains. Who better to brave such a journey than I, who am a god, and you, who may as well be?"

Bucky wasn't at all sure what to do with this speech, which was about as long as any of Rilian's. He was less sure what to do with the impassioned way Loki said it--like this was what he cared about, not any of the other things that were going on.

"I dunno," he said.

"You used to wish we might spend all our time in Narnia. That we might spend it together. Don't you remember? I'm certain you would recall it eventually, if you'd follow along with me for once."

Bucky's instinct wasn't talking. Still, if he'd never used to go along with Loki's ideas, that had to mean there was a reason. Maybe what it came down to was whether he trusted what Loki was saying more or less than the person he didn't remember being would have done.

Ahead of them, Rilian and the Leopards were further away than they'd been. They had sped up, while Bucky and Loki had slowed down. Looking at them, the tension in Rilian's shoulders and all through the Leopards bodies, Bucky remembered what they were here for. He remembered that people had died--maybe not people who looked like them, but people all the same. A lot of people had died because of him, over the years. If they stayed to help Rilian, maybe some of them would live because of him, instead.

It was the first time he'd had a thought like that. It wasn't so much that he liked it as it was that it felt right. Was right. It was the only right thing he knew of, which made it the only right thing he could do.

"We can go after we do this," he said. "Okay?"

Loki sighed, heavily. "You seem to have missed my entire point. Which was that once we're finished, we won't get a mile before we're sent back to our respective worlds."

"You do what you want. I have to do this."

Bucky sped up. For a second, Loki was left behind. Then he was there again.

"I'll be alone again in my own world soon enough," he said, sounding irked. "Why would I wish to hasten the process?"

"Maybe we should stop talking," Bucky said, not so much because he was tired of hearing Loki talk--listening to Loki was nothing at all like listening to a handler, taking in information, not knowing what would happen if you spoke when you weren't supposed to, but knowing talking back always meant something bad--but because the threads around Rilian were growing brighter and brighter, like something was about to happen.

"We're not finished with this discussion," Loki said, but he must have seen it too, because a second later, he had a knife in each hand.

They'd started walking faster,, but Rilian and the Leopards had slowed down, which meant the two of them caught up a few seconds before they would have otherwise.

"Quietly, now, and with care," murmured Rilian, and proceeded to creep through the woods so silently that he may as well have been walking over a hard floor while wearing socks instead of tromping around a forest with boots on. 

Together, Bucky and Loki followed him. The Leopards, meanwhile, faded into the shadows, so that you would only have seen them if you already knew they were there, and otherwise would have glimpsed nothing but perhaps a shadow out of the corner of your eye, and that only if you happened to turn your head at just the right moment. They crept, and crept for what seemed like the longest time, the threads guided them past one set of trees to another, with no sign of anyone ahead.

"Are we sure about this?" Bucky asked after a while, not because Loki had just complained about how tedious this was for the fifth time, but for another reason. "Shouldn't we have seen a track or something by now?"

"The threads are leading us toward their source. The distance between it and us doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the way the source took to get there." Loki sounded more cheerful than he had before, for some reason. Maybe he liked explaining things.

"I feel as if we're closer than we were, and growing closer by the step," said Rilian.

"Of course you do," Loki said, much more curtly. "You'd think so whether or not you actually felt anything. That was the entire point of giving this particular magic a visible form."

Well, maybe he just liked explaining things to Bucky. Or didn't like explaining them to Rilian.

" Shit ," Loki said, which was the second clue any of them had that something was about to happen (the first must of course have been whatever Loki had seen or heard the moment before). "Draw your weapons."

Bucky reached for a couple of his knives, at the same time Rilian's sword hissed out of its sheath. Then the threads, which hadn't done anything but exist up until now, whipped back toward them, as if they had been cut. The ends came right for Rilian's face, but though he raised his hands as if to ward them off, nothing happened except that they fizzled out before they could touch them.

"What the hell?" Bucky said.

"We've been discovered," Loki said.

"No kidding," Bucky said.

"How near are the fiends?" Rilian asked, lowering his sword, but not re-sheathing it. "Can you tell via your sorcery?"

"They must be close. And they knew we're here. Other than that..."

"I see," Rilian said. Then, in the same low voice, he said, "Fetterfoot! Shatterspot! Circle 'round, and make certain Tubertrapper and her family are well-hidden. (For we're very near the cabin where you stayed the nights before this one, and hers is the nearest burrow to both it and to where we now stand.)"

Bucky hadn't noticed that. Landmarks in the woods apparently weren't anything like landmarks in a city--meaning you were a lot less likely to see them from a block or more away, and there weren't street names to get your bearings with, either. Now, though, he thought of the Badger. It was different than thinking of the faceless, nameless people he'd thought about helping before. Mostly because along with the wanting to help, there was another feeling with it.

"I hope she's okay," he said to Loki, as they ran after Rilian, who, knowing that the people they were after knew they were here, had thrown going carefully to the wind, sheathed his sword, and was now running in the direction the threads had been leading to before.

"You would care about that," said Loki, but the way he said it made Bucky think that he wasn't as neutral about this as he'd want you to think.

Abruptly, the trees ended. They stumbled to a halt a few feet into a meadow, where the sun shone down brightly (for they had found Rilian in his room not long before dawn, and had been walking for hours); some part of Bucky supplied the thought that it would have been a great day for a picnic. Most of him, though, was focused on what was going on at the far edge of the meadow, right by a bubbling stream (the same one he'd found Loki in? Bucky wasn't sure, but if they were that close to the cabin, it seemed like it might be). The Badger was there, with a couple smaller Badgers--her kids, maybe; had someone said she had a family? None of them looked hurt, but they also weren't struggling, or trying to get away. Instead, they were just standing there, swaying. And the reason they were doing that was that there were also two snakes--huge ones, much longer than a man and as wide as one--the same poison-green as that magic thread. The snakes were swaying, too, and even though they had to know they'd been found, hadn't so much as glanced over to where the three of them had come stomping into the meadow.

Rilian drew his sword once more. "Now I understand how it was that there were no signs of a battle at the massacre site," he said in a low voice. "And more, I understand that none of this has been so meaningless as it might seem--for the Witch who kept me bound had two brothers. We dined with them once, far to the north of her own domain. Surely they have come to Narnia for no reason except to exact revenge for her slaying. But they will be in Narnia no longer, for we shall strike them down here in the heart of Narnia, just as I and my other friends struck down the Witch herself in the Underworld."

And he made to step forward.

"Wait a moment," said Loki. Around them, the air seemed to glow, green (but a different kind of green) and gold. Somehow, Bucky had the idea that the only reason they were seeing anything at all was so they'd believe Loki when he said, "Now we ought to be shielded from the hypnotic aspect of their gaze."

"Just ought to be?" Bucky asked.

"I meant are," Loki said. "Probably."

Either way, the distinction didn't change anything, or even slow anyone down. With his sword in hand, Rilian stepped further into the meadow, and said, in the same ringing tone in which he'd spoken his first words to Bucky several days before, "You, there. Foul serpents, enemies from the North! Be cowardly no more, slithering through these shadows, striking only those who may not fight back. Turn and face me! Meet me in open battle! For I am Rilian of Narnia, and it is I for whom you have come."

One of the snakes turned, wickedly fast, and came at them. The other one glanced at them, just as quick, and then glanced back at the Badger and her kids. As the first snake came closer, the other one seemed to start melting, its tail slurping up into the part of its body that was becoming legs, while the upper part of it became a trunk, which arms then started to grow out of. 

This all happened so quickly there was no more time for Rilian to make any more speeches. There wasn't even time for Bucky to say, 'You get this one, I'll get that one.' He just went the way he needed to go, and trusted that Loki would get the idea anyway.

As he stepped to the side, the first snake whizzed by him, and was met by Rilian on one side and Loki on the other; as the first blows sounded, Bucky threw two knives, one a split second after the first. As they flew, the snake-person moved, so that the first knife went wild, hitting it on the shoulder before falling into the tall grass. But the second knife landed, sinking into the snake-person's trunk, causing it to scream in pain or fear or hatred.

Bucky would have given a lot to have a rifle in his hands, or even a handgun. As he rushed toward the end of meadow, he drew his sword, which Rilian had insisted he take. It didn't feel as foreign in his hands as he'd expected it to--but if there was an instinct behind the way it felt in his hand, he couldn't tell. It felt more natural than that, like something he'd done plenty of times before and just didn't happen to remember right now.

He was nearly to the snake-person, now just a person, a pale man about his own height wearing loose, flowing clothes, when something glinted in the light. Bucky wasn't the only one with a sword, and as the snake-man lashed out with his, he was glad Rilian had made him take it, after all.

Out of the corner of his eye, movement: the Badger desperately ushering her children away, the snake-man's spell broken. No time to see where they had gone; Bucky was too busy trying not to get skewered to look. His sword and the snake-man's clashed again and again. He had to duck more than once to save his neck, and jump back a few times to keep his legs from getting slashed. He didn't remember enough to know whether or not the snake-man was good with a sword, but it was obvious that he was at least as fast and as strong as Bucky was.

One of the things people don't realize about swordfights until they are in one is that they are very taxing, even to people as strong and fast as Bucky; and the other unexpected thing about them is that you don't stay in the place where you started. So, within a period of just a few minutes, Bucky found that he was sweating, panting, tired; and that he was much closer to the center of the meadow than he'd been when he had first lunged for the snake-man. Loki was beside him now, and he had a sword too, and he and Rilian were hacking at the other snake-man, who had at some point also changed his shape.

From the right, from the direction the Badgers had gone, there came a flash of orange, followed by another. The Leopards were joining the fight. But before they had crossed half the meadow, something awful happened. The snake-man Bucky had been fighting with lunged for him, then abruptly turned toward the Leopards. Because Bucky was already stepping back, he missed the moment when he might have struck the snake-man, to keep him from hissing a few words in an insidious-sounding language as he made eye contact with first one Leopard, then the other.

The Leopards' eyes began to glow a poison green. They changed the direction of their leap, so that one of them was coming at Bucky while the other came at Loki. Bucky had less than a second to brace himself before his Leopard was on him, a hundred and twenty pounds of fur and fury. The battle was four against three now.

"Don't harm them," Rilian shouted, turning from one snake-man to another in a series of defenses and attacks that surely spoke of a lifetime of intense training. "Not unless there's no other choice!"

There was, Bucky found, another choice. He threw the Leopard off him, ten feet into the air and into the woods. As it rose from the ground, he leaned down. As it sprinted toward him, he wrapped his hand around the hilt of the sword, which he'd dropped a moment ago. As it sprang, he raised his sword, and hit the side of the Leopard's head with the flat. It fell to the ground, and struggled to rise; so Bucky hit it again the same way, hoping he wasn't hitting too hard. This time, the Leopard  stayed down, the poison seeming to flicker in and out of its eyes before they closed.

Bucky turned back to the others. Loki was just dispensing of his Leopard, not by knocking it out, but by erecting some sort of barrier around it, a cage that glimmered green all around it as it hissed and spat and rushed it, again and again, getting thrown back each time it clashed with the all-but invisible wall.

But Rilian was all the way on the other side of the meadow now, and if Bucky was tired from sword-fighting for a few minutes, Rilian's arms must have been shaking with the effort; for the snake-men were still coming at him, as strong and as fast as before. Then, in the seconds before Bucky and Loki could close the distance and make it an uneven fight the other way, one of the snake-men struck Rilian with a particularly devastating blow, so that his sword fell out of his hand; then, instead of skewering him the way someone had skewered Loki, the snake-men's swords stilled in their hands as their eyes began again to glow that poison green. They spoke low words, that same hissing sound in that same language--and when Bucky and Loki were nearly close enough to strike, Rilian turned to them, his eyes the same green as the snake-men's, as the Leopards'.

"Shit," Bucky said, stepping back just as Rilian's sword swept toward him.

As Rilian went for Bucky, the snake-men turned on Loki, no slower or weaker than they'd been at the start.

"Agreed," Loki said, in between strikes.

"What do we do?"

"Well, we could kill them. Though I can't say I--oof," (Loki had just been hit rather hard in the stomach; luckily for him, he was wearing new armor, and the blow, while terrible, had also been a glancing one) "--particularly like the idea of being a fugitive in Narnia, of all places. Which I have to imagine we would be, if we killed the king."

It was stupid to try to talk about this in the middle of a battle. Trying to talk and not die at the same time was just going to end up in getting killed faster. But it wasn't like they were going to stop getting attacked so they could talk it out.

"Follow me," Bucky said, and instead of defending against Rilian's next blow, jumped away--and turned and ran into the forest, hoping that Loki would listen to him. Then he heard footsteps just behind him, and three sets of footsteps crashing through the underbrush twenty or thirty feet back.

"What's your plan?" Loki asked, through panting breaths that said he, too, had been starting to get tired by that fight.

"Don't have one. I was hoping we could talk it out."

"What's there to talk about?"

Bucky, who wasn't actually sure, and who had just been slapped in the face by a tree branch, said, "I'm thinking."

"We haven't time to build an elaborate trap for them, and they're too fast (and, dare I say, too smart) to be caught by the same magic I caught the Leopard with. Though I suppose we might lie in wait, if we were to get far enough ahead."

Slap. Slap. Bucky was able to duck under some of the branches and hold others away from his face, but they were going too fast to avoid them all. The others were running at least as fast behind them, leaving hardly any no breathing room. "That's not what I'm thinking about."

"Then what are you considering, pray tell?"

Bucky might have kept thinking, but although there was no interference, everything still seemed scrambled. The second he thought he might be onto something, it slipped away from him again. But he had more than that kind of thinking helping him, and had all along. For a moment, and then another, he let himself stop trying. Let himself just run, next to Loki, let himself be where he was. At first it didn't seem to be working, but then it finally came, floating to the front of everything else, all the little signs he'd seen, but not known what to do with until now.

"They haven't gotten tired," he said.

"So?"

"I'm tired." Slap. "You're tired." Slap. "Rilian looked like he was about to fall down--until they got control of him."

"Yes, that seemed unfortunate to me as well."

"They haven't gotten tired at all. So what's in control of them?"

"Ah," said Loki. "You think they're enchanted."

"Don't you?" Slap. "Think about it."

Loki must have thought, and come to a conclusion, because the next thing he said, a few slaps later, was, "If they're under an enchantment, then the question becomes how to break it."

"Yeah. Any ideas?"

"It won't be difficult. There's a spell that should work for that sort of thing."

"Okay, so how much time you you need for that?"

"Mere moments, once I've begun it. You'll have to cover me."

A few seconds later, they came to a stream, maybe the same one Loki had been lying in several days before, or maybe a different one. By the stream there was a rock, as wide as they were tall and about two-thirds their height.

"Get behind it," Bucky said, and didn't waste time waiting to see if Loki did. As the others came crashing into view, he raised his sword--and then they were on him. Three of them, as fast and strong as they'd been to begin with, while he was at maybe only half his best. He fended off one blow only for another to come in, just hoping Loki would work fast.

Then something happened, but Bucky was still moving and twisting enough that it took a second for him to see it. Or maybe it took a second for the glowing to intensify. But then he saw the threads around Rilian's head were back, and this time they led straight to the snake-men...

But the snake-men also had green threads around their heads, which led under the neckline of their loose, flowing robes, until something beneath them was glowing brighter than the threads themselves. It was bright enough to give you a migraine, make you puke your guts out; and, though there was a pounding in his head, a strange, sweet static, and though his stomach was suddenly twisting around in new and painful ways, Bucky waded in. 

This part of the fight was less about hitting them with his sword than it was getting to them; and that was what the Soldier had always been the best at, getting to whoever he was after. For a second, Bucky let himself go with it, both more and less than any instinct or training; there came a thud, and then another, but they didn't stop him, the way nothing had ever stopped him if it didn't break or tear something load-bearing (and sometimes not even then). He reached the first snake-man, and grasped for the chain around his neck, and yanked it off. For a second, there was resistance, more than there should have been for those thin metal links; then he had the necklace in his hand, the broken chain dangling, and was reaching for the other. Now the others were focused less on trying to kill him and more on grasping at him, trying to get the necklace back--but there was something else, some green and gold light, that seemed to be pushing them away, making them move slower than they should have been, so that with one twisting motion Bucky had the second chain in his hand, and had yanked it away, and then he was stumbling back, away from them.

"Smash them!" Loki called from where he stood on the top of the stone, just a few steps away but sounding much further. "I can't hold them for long."

Bucky looked down at the necklaces in his hands, at the gems that might once have been emeralds, and were now something else. They'd seemed dangerous before he had them, but now that he did, they seemed...tempting. They seemed to be whispering things to him. Things that seemed true, or at least not false.

Wouldn't it be easier, if he didn't have to call the shots? If he wasn't the one who had to decide what was right or what was wrong or what he should do in response to a right or a wrong? Hadn't it always been easier to be the one who followed? He'd followed Steve, hadn't he? And that had been fine, and he'd never had to worry about whether he was doing the right thing. And after Steve he'd followed his handlers, and if he'd fought against them too, hadn't it been easier once he'd stopped? Hadn't it been easier to do what they said to do when they said to do it, without worrying about anything else?

There were reasons not to listen. Part of Bucky even knew what they were. But part of him, maybe a lot of him, was still the Soldier, and it was the Soldier who thought, now, of how tired he was. Because if it was easier not to be the person in charge of him, then that meant being the person who made his own decisions was harder--and fighting against the voice that was now inside him was, it turned out, the hardest thing of all. There was no interference this time. There was no instinct. There was just the pure, sweet poison, where even if you knew it was still poison, you still drank of it, because it was too cloying and too tempting not to.

All this happened in the course of a moment, or maybe two; then Bucky was turning, not toward the others, so he could knock them down to keep them from following him, and not toward the great wild forest, where he might run and put distance between them until he was able to figure out how to get rid of the necklaces, but toward the one the necklaces had already identified as the threat, the one that had unveiled them, had interfered with their purpose.

Bucky turned toward Loki, and pulled out a knife.

But the weight of that blade felt different in his hands than the others he had been issued--and when, startled, he looked down at it, he found that it was something completely different. The blade was jagged, and ought to have been ugly,. The blade was green, not like poison but something else; and there was another emerald in its hilt. It felt strange and awkward in his hand, and yet at the same time it, too, spoke inside of him.

"I don't understand why you're so fascinated by these blades," Loki complained, in a way that gave you the idea that he was actually pretty pleased about it. "But here's another, if you insist."

"All I said was I needed something to clean a fish with," said Bucky, who had a whole bucket full of them and a whole stomach full of nothing. Still, though, when the cleaning was done, he cleaned the knife and tucked it away, just one more for his collection.

It wasn't the sweet wheedling of the necklaces, wasn't loud and distracting like the interference, didn't come out of nowhere and tell him what he'd have done if he was Bucky like instinct. It was something better and more confusing than any of those. It was, Bucky would later realize, a memory. 

But all he realized, all he knew in that moment, was what he needed to do.

He laid the necklaces down on the ground, then brought the knife down once, twice. That was all it took to shatter the gem attached to each one.

Then, something slammed into him--or rather, three somethings slammed into him. All four of them fell to the ground, and in that moment the Soldier might have struck out, with the knife and whatever other weapon he had--but Bucky knew what had just happened, and what it should have done, and so he didn't. And then they got off him, one weight after the other, awkward and slow, and then they were all standing together, the others seeming to drag around, like they were coming up through molasses. Then they were all standing together, Bucky and Rilian the snake-men and Loki too, looking down at the necklaces, which were now just objects; for the thread of that poison had disappeared the moment the gems within them had broken.

"You guys all right?" Bucky asked, because it wasn't really clear; the others were breathing hard, and blinking, and Rilian was occasionally shaking his head, as if to shake something out of it again.

"We are well," said one of the snake-men, finally. "Can we ever thank you enough for freeing us from our enchantment?"

"No," Loki said. "Though you're welcome to try."

He was close enough to elbow, so Bucky did it, not thinking of interference or instinct or anything. 

"Don't worry about it," he said.

*

A few minutes later, the Leopards caught up with them. By then, everyone seemed awake again, and had been introduced, and they had found out that the snake men were named Altruon and Bandul. 

"You must tell me what Witch sent you here. I will send an army against her (or him, if it is instead a sorcerer), lest she send other assassins against my people," said Rilian. "Do not fear to tell me everything, for you shall have sanctuary here as long as you need or desire it."

Bandul looked at him, seeming startled. "But it was our sister who enchanted us--the one whom you accompanied to our table, some seven years past."

Rilian went pale, so white it made Bucky think of a snow-covered forest on a freezing night: quiet and still and even more deadly than something loud that moved around. "But my lady (such as she called herself then) is dead. I slew her by mine own hand, and saw her kingdom fall into pieces. I beg you, tell me you do not mean she has come to life again."

By the time he was done saying it, both snake-men were shaking their heads.

"No," said Altruon. "No. She bound these pieces to us in life, but they did not awaken until the moment of her death. Her curse was a promise, made to we, her brothers, many years ago: that we would remain free only while she enslaved others, and become entrapped by her will only when all others were freed."

"Death magic," said Loki, slowly and thoughtfully. "It's a subset of blood magic (which is the more powerful of the two here, which is unusual; it's generally the other way around). Once the castings were finished, she wouldn't have needed to do anything to activate them--except die, of course, if that were the condition set during the casting."

Everyone looked at him. Then Rilian said, sounding troubled and relieved all in one, "If her towers in the Underworld fell when I slay her, then I suppose I may believe the rest." He shook his head, then said, more confidently, "I always believed you to be villains, just as terrible as she; but now looking back I can see the threads that must already have been there, when we dined together."

"Perhaps not villains, but cowards, certainly," said Altruon, sounding bitter.

"And regardless, not responsible for any act, no matter how heinous, committed while enspelled," said Rilian firmly, like he thought anyone was about to disagree with him.

Bucky wasn't. Mostly, he was relieved it was over. It gave him time to look down at the knife he still had in his hand, and to wonder about that memory. Where (and when) it had come from. What he was supposed to do now that he had it. Why it should have made Loki of the here and now, older and paler and unhappier looking than in the memory, seem even more familiar.

"I hope you're happy," said Loki, guiding him away from the others who were still talking (and from the sounds of it, would be for a while). "We'll be gone by the day's end, I'm certain."

Bucky didn't object to being guided. As similar as their situation might have been to his own, it didn't really seem to have anything to do with him. He felt sure, somehow, that he'd done his part. That they both had. That if there was ever anyone to ask about it, they'd tell him the same thing. It was weird, to be so sure about that, when all his missions before had always involved never, ever being sure how well he'd done, or if he'd screwed the whole thing up somewhere along the way.

"We could still go," he offered. "Like you wanted to. South or west or wherever."

For a second, Loki might have considered it. Whatever the thought was, it passed over his face so quickly Bucky wouldn't have seen it at all if he hadn't been watching him. Then he shook his head. "It would serve us little purpose now. I find I don't care for flight for its own sake. We'll stay here--unless you would prefer to go, of course."

Bucky didn't really have an opinion, didn't remember enough to have an opinion about it (though he had a sense that it didn't really matter that much, because either way he and Loki would be doing whatever came next together). He meant to say so, but as they'd been talking, something had been draining out of him. The adrenaline high from the battle was turning into more of an adrenaline low. And something else was coming through. Not interference, but static just the same. It was a roaring in his ears, and a steadily increasing blackness over his field of vision.

"What's wrong?" asked Loki sharply. By now, Bucky could barely see him through the blackness. So he felt, rather than saw, Loki patting him down. And he didn't see what Loki's hands looked like when they came away wet, though later he would be able to imagine it well enough that maybe it was something that had happened sometime in their past, too. "--You're hurt."

That was what happened when you got hit with swords. It still had to be better than getting hit with bullets. But Bucky didn't have a chance to say that, either, because that was when the darkness finished spreading over everything else.

*

The first thing Bucky saw when he came to was Loki, sitting in a chair by the bed and frowning at something in the distance. He saw it for a minute or two before he must have coughed, or made some other sound, and Loki frowned down at him.

"There you are. It's about time."

"What happened?" Bucky tried to sit up, and found that while nothing had hurt before, there was plenty of hurt to go around now. "Where are we? Where are Rilian and the others?"

"As for what happened, you fainted. As for where we are, we've reversed our positions." (This must have meant that they were in the same cabin where Loki had done most of his healing up; now that he was looking around, Bucky recognized the whirls and whorls of the wood it had been made out of, which had to be unique even if there were other cabins just like it scattered throughout the whole country.) "As for where the king is, he's gone off to quell a riot or two. Not that he was of much use here."

"Okay."

"As for how long it's been, you collapsed nearly a day ago."

The way Loki said it, it sounded (and even felt) like a long time, even for someone who was used to being put on ice for years at a stretch. "Okay."

Loki leaned over, pulled down the blanket Bucky hadn't realized he was covered with, and took a look at his injuries, two deep gashes on either side of his abdomen. "You're healing more quickly than you used to, which is fortunate; you won't recall, but I've never been particularly gifted in any of the healing arts, even though they've usually been passed down to the sorcerers in my family. Even being here in Narnia never seemed to amplify such abilities. I used to wonder about that. Sometimes we'd wonder together."

"It's okay," Bucky said, missing that Loki might've been leading up to something else until later. "Wait, did you say riots?"

"Perhaps that was a strong word. I'm not certain Narnians riot, so much as express themselves loudly for days on end when their rulers do something they disapprove of. In any case, they're unhappy about Rilian's choice to pardon the two sorcerers. Apparently they're skeptical of some of the facts of the enchantment. Or at least some of them are (though others are just as naive and accepting as you'd expect)."

Bucky thought about that. What the snake-men had done, the rumors about Rilian that must have had something to do with the dreams he'd been having, the screaming he'd done at nights. No one else would have been able to see the threads Loki had made visible. No one else had been around to see how the enchantment had been broken. Even the Leopards, who had been enchanted themselves, hadn't been there, where the only witnesses had been Bucky and Loki, and Rilian himself.

"Do you think we can do anything?" he asked, mostly because he couldn't think of anything, but Loki might have information they could work with.

"No. And even if we could, I'd forbid it. We've done enough--and I won't have you injured a second time."

The idea of even a bunch of really angry Narnians going out of their way to maul him was somehow ludicrous enough to make Bucky want to laugh. He made an effort not to, though--at least as much because of how serious Loki seemed to be as anything else. 

He didn't have to make an effort not to argue. If he couldn't think of anything to do to help, and Loki couldn't either, or at least wasn't sharing, then maybe it didn't have much to do with them. Maybe they really were done.

"Okay. If you say so." Bucky didn't miss the way Loki's shoulders relaxed when he said it, and couldn't resist adding, "You sure you don't want to run away with me?"

"Another time. When you can move under your own power, perhaps."

This time Bucky did laugh, and it did hurt. "Sure thing."

He started to feel groggy, the way he never did--the way the Soldier never did, anyway. It was a familiar feeling. He must have been medicated at some time before, that he didn't remember. Had to figure that was the way it worked. "Was the Badger here?"

He wondered what she'd said about how fast he was healing, what it meant about what kind of creature he was.

"No. I patched you up myself." Whatever face Bucky made at this, Loki must have interpreted it correctly, because then he explained, "I'm not gifted in magical healing. I'm quite good when it comes to the other kind--and Asgardian medicines are much more potent than anything you'd find here. Especially for you, ever since--well, there's still no way to be certain of what caused you to be so like the Aesir, but you are."

Bucky could barely keep his eyes open, much less process all of this. What he got out of it was that Loki was taking care of him. It wasn't a terrifying thought the way it would have been a few days before. It was, in fact, almost comforting.

*

The next time he woke up, he was a lot clearer-headed. There wasn't as much of a sense of pressure on his abdomen, and only about a quarter as much pain. Loki was standing across the room, looking out the window. When Bucky sat up, he heard it and turned around, with a knife in his hands. It was the same one from the day before (which was, to Bucky, a surprising thing to realize, since it wasn't like he'd ever had specific knives before. They'd usually issued him ones that were exactly like all the others he used, so he wouldn't have even a split second of having to figure out the balance of a new blade in the field).

"Anything going on that I should know about?" he asked, not sure if Loki holding a knife meant something, or if he just liked to hold them. Bucky liked to hold them, even when he was the Soldier. He had the feeling the Soldier would have liked them even more if they'd been knives like Loki's.

"Not that I am aware of," Loki said, coming back over to the bed. He lay the knife absentmindedly on the table as he leaned over Bucky, checking his dressings yet again, with a frown that could have meant anything. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. A lot better."

Loki's hands were cold and tickly on his stomach. It was a detail he hadn't gotten in the fog from before. In either of the fogs from before. "Good. You're responding even better than I thought you would. It's almost as if you've been altered more than I knew. I mean more than I expected. From what I saw in your recent memories."

"I don't think any of them were that recent." But Bucky didn't want to think about that right now. He was too tired to think about that right now. Anyway, they were in Narnia, which meant he didn't have to think anything from his own world if he didn't want to. "Hey, you gonna let me have that back?"

Loki's smile was surprising, and lit up his entire face even if it didn't last for very long. "Of course. It's yours to keep. I have a thousand others like it, so it's not as though I'll miss it."

"Thanks," Bucky said, even though he was pretty sure nothing Loki had had been mass produced, and that anything he had that was as ornate as that knife was definitely one of a kind.

"You're quite welcome."

"Did you find out anything else about Rilian and the others?"

"Not as yet. Absolutely nothing has transpired in the last few hours."

Loki didn't say this as crossly as he might have, or as Bucky would have expected him to, without being sure why. He looked fine with it. Maybe even relieved.

"That's good," Bucky said, because whatever he'd have expected from Loki, it definitely was as far as he was concerned.

"I learned something important," Loki said a few moments later. "In the years we've been apart."

"Yeah?"

Loki looked awkward. Bucky had a feeling he didn't look that way very often. "Yes. It turns out there's a reason I never had much aptitude in certain areas, despite my supposed ancestry."

"Oh, yeah?"

"It's quite a long story," he said stiffly, and it couldn't have been more obvious that he was looking for permission to tell it.

"Shoot," Bucky said. "I'll try not to fall asleep in the middle."

Loki seemed to hesitate, then went on. The story he had to tell turned out to be a little confusing. Like he was explaining the plot of a book, except the book was part of a series Bucky hadn't read, and even though Loki knew he hadn't, he kept forgetting what Bucky didn't know. But Bucky had a feeling he wouldn't have gotten the full context of a lot of it even if Loki had stopped to explain better, and anyway, he had a stronger feeling that if Loki stopped, he might not get it all out. And Bucky wanted to hear it. He wanted to hear it pretty strongly. Maybe he even wanted to know what was going on with Loki just as much as Loki had wanted to know what had been going on with him.

"Sounds like you've been through the ringer," he said, when Loki was done talking about the miscalculation he'd made when fighting the people who'd killed his mom--how he'd thought he'd be able to do his own repairs, but had been too hurt to do much more than lie there--and then had ended up lying somewhere a lot warmer and wetter, which was when Bucky had found him, lying in that stream. "I'm sorry about your mom."

It wasn't something Bucky had thought about, not since Loki had first told him and it hadn't seemed like it was relevant. As Loki had been talking, though, he'd had the feeling, one that got stronger and stronger, that he should have said it before. That you didn't just ignore it when a friend, nevermind as close a friend as Loki seemed to be, told you something like that had happened.

"Thank you," Loki said. He'd looked determined when he'd told that part of the story, like he wanted to get through it and the only way he would was to keep going. Now he just looked tired, and, even though not much had actually changed in his face this time, quietly devastated. Between that and the other stuff that had happened to him, all of which sounded pretty big, it was no wonder he didn't look as happy as he had in the memory, when he'd also been so much younger.

"What're you going to do when you get back?" Bucky asked. Even if he hadn't understood it all, he'd gotten enough to know that Loki was as adrift as he was, and was going to be on the run in something like a similar way. The only real difference between their situations was that the people who might eventually come looking for Loki thought he was dead right now.

"I haven't decided," Loki said. "My first plan was to simply stay here, but of course you ruined it."

"Well gee, sorry I messed that up for you."

"Oh, it's not the first time. Believe me. The stories I could tell..."

"Well, then, why don't you?" Bucky asked, and found in the asking that he desperately wanted to know this, too.

"--I suppose I could," Loki said, looking startled, and then pleased. "Just let me think of something good."

"Just so long as it's not embarrassing."

"Oh, it is. Not for me, thankfully."

Loki launched into one story, and then another, and even though Bucky didn't remember any of what he was talking about, he had a good enough sense of himself and of Loki by now to have a good idea when to call bullshit. So Loki talked, and Bucky argued, until he was too tired to keep going--not the kind of tired that came out of a bottle, but the kind that happened when your body was using most of its resources to heal, and had decided you'd been awake and talking for long enough.

*

The third time Bucky woke up, Loki was asleep. Not in the other bed, but in the chair, leaning onto the bed with his head resting on his arms. His hair was askew, and only about half his face was visible. He looked different like this than he had before. Younger, more restful, maybe. Bucky wasn't sure. Even if Loki didn't quite look those other things, he did look softer, less guarded. 

After a while of looking at him, trying to figure out what, exactly, it was that was so different, Bucky got the feeling that he should stop looking. That if he kept it up, Loki was sure to wake up and catch him looking. It shouldn't have mattered, if he did or not, but he somehow knew he didn't want him to. That he'd then see or know something even Bucky didn't seem to know.

He kept looking anyway, wondering what that feeling in his chest was, the ache that wasn't coming from where he'd been hurt. He kept looking until Loki finally did stir, and looked up. He didn't look annoyed at being watched. Instead, he smiled a little, and said, "It suits you, you know."

"What?" Bucky asked, suddenly even more confused.

"Your hair," Loki said. He straightened up, stretched. "You used to wear it short before. Like a child, long after you actually were one." He paused, then added, "Though you should consider combing it. Unless, that is, you truly wish to harbor a sparrow or two within it."

That seemed like big talk for someone whose hair still had blood caked in it--but before Bucky could say so, his stomach growled, causing Loki to go in the other room to get food and water. He was a lot less nice about getting Bucky to eat that (hard, stale, and really pretty nasty) bread than Bucky had been to him, but the result in the end was the same.

A little while after that, Rilian and the others showed back up (not for the first time, but for the first time Bucky was awake for), with a lot of news, including that there was going to be a feast to celebrate them next week, and a journey to take the Witch's brothers home in the spring, and that they were invited to both.

*

The Narnian winter had been a short, mild one. It only snowed a few times, and there were rarely many clouds, so that even the colder days were crisp and sunny instead of gray and dreary. Spring came early that year, too, and it was on one of the first warm, green days (half the trees still bare, but grass and flowers beginning to grow) that Bucky decided to go for a walk.

Over the last few months, he'd started finding out that he had preferences, and was allowed to have them. He liked roasted venison, but not apples. He liked shooting crossbows, but not riding horses. Where his handlers would surely have fed him fifty apples or forced him onto the back of a horse every day for months to document his reactions, Loki didn't do anything except make a face at him for some of his preferences, and Rilian didn't seem to care at all (if he even noticed--he was polite to them, gracious in a way that made it clear how very welcome they were...but he spent most of his time with the two sorcerers from the North, and it was they who caused his face to light up the more often than anyone else; for what he had discovered in the aftermath was how good it was to have others who had been through like trials, and who could be kept as long as he wished). 

One of the preferences Bucky had learned he had was that he quite liked to go on walks in the woods. Sometimes he took the same path he'd taken many times before, and sometimes he took a new one. Sometimes he didn't see anyone, and sometimes a lot of people (almost none with just two legs) came over to talk to him the whole way. Whatever happened, and no matter how loud or how quiet it was around him on these walks, they always seemed incredibly peaceful.

Loki often came with him, and since another thing Bucky had realized was that he always liked having Loki around, he went to find him on his way out of the castle. He wasn't a hard person to locate; just like most mornings lately, he was lounging in one of the libraries, the little one with the long couch in front of the even longer east-facing window. It was morning, so the light was pouring in through the window in question; and the window was open, so you could smell the salt and hear the sounds of the waves lapping against the shore.

"Hey," Bucky said.

Loki, who had a quill in his hand and was scribbling steadily on a piece of parchment, waved absentmindedly. Just the sight of him made the ache came back--the new one that had started showing up every now and again when Bucky was watching Loki and he didn't know it.

Bucky could have asked if he was at a good stopping place. Later, he'd kind of wish he had. But the thing was, though Loki always came along if he was invited, he was getting more and more serious about whatever it was he was writing (which, when Bucky asked about it, all he'd say was that it was a play, and wasn't finished yet). If Bucky dragged him into the woods, Loki would be thinking about his play the whole time; and while it would still be a good walk in the woods, he thought maybe it was more considerate to let Loki keep doing what he was doing.

So, instead, he slipped back out, and then out the side gate and across one of the smaller bridges, and headed out on his walk. It was one of the walks where no one came over to talk to him, even though forest sounds were all around, and occasionally you could hear voices coming from somewhere nearby (though never close or distinct enough to make out what they were saying).

He took one trail he knew, and then another. He didn't take a new way, so it was strange but somehow not alarming when he came to realize--suddenly and yet not, as if some part of him had always expected something like this--that he didn't recognize anything around him. There were still trees, but they weren't the same trees. There was still the sound of water running in the distance, but it had a different cadence from before. And the voices, from people talking and birds singing and the insects just starting their buzzing, were gone.

It didn't occur to him to turn back. Later, he'd think that it would only have gotten him to the same place in the end. For now, though, he kept walking, more alert than he had been before, but no less at peace. The only time he checked for any of his weapons was when he felt to see if the knife he'd gotten from Loki was still there. He wouldn't realize until later that it must have been instinct--so quiet and natural-feeling by now that it was more obvious than ever that it was the bridge between the person he was and the person he still couldn't quite remember being--that made him check. For the moment, all he thought and felt was that it was good to know he hadn't left it behind.

The trees in that place were farther apart than the ones in the Narnian woods, and allowed him to see farther than he would have there. Not that there was much to see; woods and more woods, without any sign of a person. The sound of trickling water grew louder, and somehow he wasn't at all surprised to come to a bridge. It was wide enough that a couple people his size could have walked over it together with room to spare; it was solidly built, covered with a roof made out of the same kind of wood. With no reason not to cross, Bucky started to, and it was only when he was halfway across that he saw the cat. He never could say, later, whether it had been there when he had started crossing. But it was there now, sitting in a patch of light upon the road beyond the bridge. It wasn't a small cat, but not so large as to be unusual, either; still, the moment you saw its face, you got the idea that it knew exactly who you were, and what you were doing there. 

That made one of them, at least.

"Hey," Bucky said, feeling much more awkward than he usually did when it came to talking to animals. "Do you know where we are?"

"You have come to one of the in-between places, Bucky Barnes," said the cat, which answered the question of whether or not it knew him. "Once you finish crossing, you will find yourself back in your own world."

Upon hearing these words, Bucky felt a few things. One was a sense of truth, so strong and so sure it nearly knocked him back. Another was a sense of loss, remembering how Loki had looked on the lounge when he'd left, lit up by the sun, the kind of picture that had been more and more likely lately to make Bucky feel an ache in his chest, new and yet so familiar it must have been old indeed. But the last, and possibly the most powerful, was something else--a memory, somehow so much worse than it had been at the time, of how it had felt to be on the run, without anything like a long-term plan, without anything more than your training and the newest, rawest instinct to guide you. He still didn't have a real plan, because as much as Loki had insisted he needed to come up with one, it was hard to figure out contingencies for home when you were here instead.

"I don't think I'm ready," he said, feeling miserable about it--not the way you'd feel when you're meant to do something you really don't want to, but the way you'd feel when asked to do something you don't know how to, when the person asking is someone you desperately don't want to disappoint. "I'm sorry."

"There is no need to be sorry, Bucky Barnes," said the cat, and the way he said it, you could believe that there really wasn't. "How can you be given strength without first admitting to its absence?"

Something warm flowed into Bucky then. It didn't take much for him to know what it was, or where it had come from.

"Do I have to go?" he asked, and even though part of him thought it must be, it really wasn't the added strength that gave him the courage to ask. "I don't really want to."

"You need not go forward," said the cat. "But you may not go back."

"Okay," Bucky said, and felt ever after that there would have been no point in arguing, even if he'd thought about it (which he didn't until much later).

He stood there for a while, then leaned against the side of the bridge for another while. The cat waited with him, sitting on the other side like it didn't have a care in the world, and certainly wasn't in a hurry. Eventually, Bucky's thoughts stopped spinning around so much, and he started coming up with a plan, based on where he'd been and what he'd been doing before he'd shown up in Narnia. It wasn't much, but it was more than he'd had before. He figured it had to be better than Loki's plan for himself, the one he was always hinting at but would never say what exactly it was.

Some time after that, he decided he may as well. The second after he decided it, the cat stood up, too, and started walking. 

As ready as he was going to get, Bucky followed, all the way to the other side.

Bucky was out in front of his hut when he had the vision, or the dream, or maybe just the ghost. One second there was no one around but his goats, butting his legs and nibbling his shirt, all worked up about the bucket of feed he had in his hand. The next second, there was someone there with him. Young guy, maybe twenty or so, dressed in the kind of clothes they didn't wear on Earth anymore, if they ever had in the first place. He looked young, and determined, and just about scared to death. He also looked like someone had given him a great big wallop across the mouth pretty recently.

The guy started talking the second they saw each other. The problem was that not a word of what he said made it to Bucky.

"I can't hear you," he said, absently moving the bucket out of the reach of a particularly insistent goat, who'd gotten tired of waiting and reared up to stick his head over the lip. "Can you mime it, or something?"

The guy shook his head. He said something else, or maybe it was the same thing over again. His mouth moved slower this time, and in a more exaggerated way, giving the impression he was talking not only slower, but much more loudly. (In fact, he was shouting, just as you might have when your deaf grandfather tells you to speak up.)

Bucky was no good at reading lips--found himself so awful at it now that he was trying to know that he must never have been any good at it--and so he didn't get a lot out of this except a sense of frustration.

In the end, it didn't matter. A minute after the guy had shown up in the first place--just as he was starting to make gestures, like he'd realized on his own that miming might be the thing to try--he disappeared. 

One second he was there, the next second he was gone, and the first moment he was gone was when the tingle began. It started at the tips of Bucky's fingers and the ends of his toes. It was all he needed to get moving. He dropped the feed bucket on the ground, dodged past excited goats on his way back inside his hut. 

Between his sleeping mat and the window, there was a wooden chest, which he always left unlocked. Nestled in the top drawer was his arm, the new one the princess had made for him. Bucky snapped it on, then pulled that drawer out and reached further in. He strapped the crossbow to his back. By now the tingle had traveled up his arm and legs, all the way to the center of him, the place where things happened. He fastened the swordbelt to his waist, drew the sword to check the balance. Its blade gleamed in the morning light from the window; it might have been an Earth sword, but it was a good one, easily the equal of any blade he could remember holding before.

Last, he slung a sheathful of crossbow bolts over his shoulder. By then the tingle had become a pull. Bucky couldn't resist it, and didn't try. If he was right about what was happening, he didn't want to.

The pull continued, gaining intensity, like a rubber band that had been stretched nearly to its breaking point. Then, instead of breaking, the tension slipped away. It happened between one breath and the next. One second, the sun was still shining in through the door of his hut, full morning daylight coming in from the east. The next second, he was in the dark, somewhere else.

The blackness only seemed total for a second. That was how long it took before his eyes adjusted, and he could see that there were still trees all around him. Then something moved between one tree and another, a tall slim figure, familiar as it was expected.

"Loki?" Bucky asked, in a low voice that wasn't quite a whisper. "That you?"

The shadow stilled so much it might have been just another tree. Then it turned toward Bucky, and moved toward him, whereas before it had been moving away. "So you recall my name this time."

"Could've been a lucky guess," said Bucky. His hand had gone to the hilt of his sword while he waited, in case he was wrong. Now it fell away as a wide grin no one could see split across his face. "You been here long?"

"Mere moments. Did you also glimpse a vision, while you were still in your world?"

"Sure did."

"He had a Narnian look about him, didn't he?"

"Yep. Anyone we know?"

"--No," Loki said, after a pause. It was the same pause that still showed up during conversations with Steve sometimes, when one or both of them had gotten so comfortable they'd forgotten how much he didn't remember. "That said, I don't recall meeting any one mortal here more than once."

"Good to know," Bucky said, because if the best thing when it came to Steve was to move on, something told him that was even more true when it came to Loki. "Any idea where we are?"

The answer came, incautious and biting: "I'd have hoped you might have retained at least that much."

Bucky rolled his eyes, which was another thing that wasn't going to get him much mileage, here in the dark. "No, I mean, where we are . You know, now that we're here."

"How should I know?"

"Well, you're the one with the magic and stuff," Bucky pointed out, reasonably enough.

Loki didn't seem to agree that this was reasonable. He did a lot of grumbling instead, the gist of which seemed to be that he'd never devoted himself to the art of navigating the woods in the middle of the night, since in civilized realms one could simply open a magical doorway to go places.

"Besides," he said, at the end of all that moaning and groaning, "It was near the end of my day when I was called here. I've had a very long one, full of very annoying duties."

"Like what?" Bucky asked. As Loki had grumbled, they'd kept moving, so that by now they'd been fumbling around in the woods for a few minutes, trying to find a road or a stream or anything worth following. (Though to call it fumbling still isn't quite right; they'd each been well-trained in the art of going smoothly and quietly through territory known or unknown. Only if you had been similarly trained would you have picked up on how off-balance they truly were; otherwise, you simply never would have seen or heard them, nor had the slightest clue of their presence.)

"Well, I was headed to my fifth council meeting of the day when I was accosted by your Narnian," Loki said.

"Interesting take, considering I don't even know the guy's name. And also, he wasn't exactly solid, so I don't know how much accosting he could have been doing."

"Details, details. At any rate, I'd better not miss it. They'll do something foolish if I'm not there to talk them out of it."

"Who's they?" asked Bucky, who was very lost, but in a different way than he had been the last time; it had a sense of familiarity to it, as if Loki was always going off like this without bothering to make sure Bucky could actually follow what he was talking about.

"Thor. Heimdall. The Valkyrie, the Hulk. Any of them. All of them." A pause. "Well, perhaps not Heimdall. But any of the others. You wouldn't believe some of the terrible ideas they've had, these last few months."

Thor: now there was a name Bucky recognized. A couple of the others sounded vaguely familiar, but not in the same way. At least he knew who Thor was. "Did you guys make up? You and your brother, I mean."

"...You could say that. A great deal has happened since last we met."

"Like what?" Bucky asked, eager to hear it; whenever he thought about Narnia, a lot of what he thought of was how useless he'd been, the last time. Now he was better, though, mostly; he could help more. 

But before Loki could answer, they both saw something, in the same moment. A little pinprick of light, far off in the darkness. For a moment, Bucky almost remembered...some other point of light, maybe, or something else that had happened. But whatever the memory was, it was as elusive as all the others, and slunk out of sight as soon as he tried to pull it in closer.

"Let's go," he said, instead.

As they started that way, Loki said, "Do you require a blade?"

'Nah, I've got plenty of weapons on me,' Bucky almost said. Then he thought of the other knife, the one at the bottom of his chest at home. It had seemed too precious, somehow, to bring along. "Sure."

The shadow who was Loki passed him a knife. Bucky's fingers wrapped around the hilt, which was engraved with a design he couldn't quite picture in his mind. Maybe it was runes, spelling out the words of some spell; maybe it was some other design, with some other meaning behind it, even if it was just meant to be pretty. Whatever it was, it felt right in his hand, and felt even more right when he tucked it into one of his hiding spots.

"Ready?" Loki asked.

"Yeah."

Together, they crept toward the light.

*

The light, which was not so very far away as it had seemed at first, turned out to be a fire, around which a few people sat. Soldiers, Bucky thought, with no evidence other than the way they were sitting, not casual enough to be campers out in the wilderness.

Despite not being far, it took Bucky and Loki the better part of an hour to make their approach; for stealth is as much about quiet as it is about darkness, and as much darkness as they'd been given, sneaking through the woods means it is always possible you will tread on a brittle branch or a pile of dry leaves. If you dare make no light of your own to guide the way, the best thing is to then take every single step with the greatest care.

They were nearly close enough to hear what the people around the fire were saying to each other when another voice came out of the darkness. In the same moment, something sharp came to press against the side of Bucky's neck, just below his ear: "Halt where you stand, unless you would meet your death tonight."

Bucky halted at once, and Loki beside him, even before Bucky had the chance to grab his arm to keep him from doing anything. Even in the dark, he must have figured out what was going on on Bucky's end, for although he was tense when Bucky's hand found him, he made no move to lash out at the speaker.

"You got it," Bucky said, thinking that of course there had been a sentry, and of course he was quieter and better at skulking around in the darkness than they were. "Not going anywhere."

He glanced to his left, as best as he could. What he saw there wasn't much: a figure, shorter and slimmer than either of them, standing in an even more total patch of darkness than they were. Bucky couldn't see his weapon, but between the way it felt and the other man's posture, he was suddenly sure that it was a sword with a curved blade instead of a straight one.

"Who are you? From whence have you come?" asked the shadow.

The last time he'd been here, Bucky had opened his mouth and said Loki's name, without knowing what it meant. Now he opened his mouth and said another name, one he had a little more information about than he had then: "Aslan sent us."

The shadow took a second to say anything, his breathing suddenly harsher than it must have been before, there in the dark. "You don't serve Tashlan, then?"

You'd have had to be deaf or dead to miss the loathing in the man's voice. But whoever it was for, it must not have been for them, because the blade didn't cut into Bucky's skin.

"Who?" Loki said, at the same time Bucky opened his mouth and let his first instinct guide him again:

"We don't know who that is," he said. "We just got here." He didn't have to see the man's face to know there was some sort of battle going on there. All he had to do was pay attention to the way the blade faltered away, just for a moment, then pressed in, not enough to draw blood, but enough to show he wasn't believed, not yet. "We're here to help," he said, and it wasn't the first time he'd said it, he'd been taught to say anything he had to to get access to his targets when he'd been the Soldier; but it was the first time he could remember being in a position to say it and have it be true.

It must have been convincing. The blade drew away from his neck. As soon as it was several inches away, a different shadow blew through that space like a hurricane. The next thing anyone knew, the sword had fallen to the ground with a thud, and the shadow that was Loki was pressing something to the sentry's throat. Bucky didn't have to see what he was holding to know it must have been another knife.

"Loki," he said in a low voice (though not a whisper, for a whisper is far more likely to carry in the dark and quiet than is a low speaking voice; and it was indeed quiet, even eerily so, in those woods that night).

But before he could say anything else, like how maybe they shouldn't kill the guy before they'd asked him any questions, the figures around the fire stood up. They were close enough now to see that these were men in armor, with more curved swords hanging from their waists; they were close enough to see how quickly their hands went to the hilts of those swords.

"All is well, brothers," called the sentry, before anyone had even told him what kind of thing he ought to say. "I merely startled some dumb beast, and was startled in my turn."

Somehow, he managed to say it not like a guy who was currently being threatened by a sorcerer from another world, but like a guy who'd done something embarrassing, and was only admitting to as much as he had because what had actually happened was a whole lot worse.

It must have been the exact impression he'd given his fellow soldiers, too. One or two of them called things into the dark that Bucky didn't quite catch, but that were clearly mocking; then they sat back down, and must have gone back to talking about whatever they'd been talking about before the commotion.

"Now," said Loki in a low voice (for he also knew the danger of whispering so close to an enemy in the dark), "what shall we do with this Calormene?"

"Nothing stupid," Bucky said, not seeing through to a way to get him to stand down right this very second, and not necessarily inclined to even if he had (the sentry had attacked them first, after all). He didn't think, in that moment or later, to question Loki's assessment; that the man before them was a Calormene seemed as obvious as the color of the sky, though it wasn't something Bucky would have known he knew without someone else having known it first. To the Calormene, he said, "You're obviously familiar with the territory. Can you guide us out of here?"

"Certainly," said the man--or rather, the youth, for even in the dark Bucky had begun to get the impression that he wasn't skinny because he was built that way, but because he was too young to have really filled out yet. "Or perhaps, with your friend's blade at my throat, I would lead you into another trap; for is it not said that a cornered dog will bite any hand?"

"Let him go," Bucky advised, with no idea of whether or not Loki would do it, and knowing there wasn't a lot anyone could do about it if he didn't, other than start a commotion and bring the soldiers down on them. "Let's see what he does."

With a toss of his head that could only have meant he was rolling his eyes, Loki did (and if he spent the rest of the night hovering between Bucky and the stranger, Bucky figured it was better to pretend not to notice, even if he was a hundred percent sure he was nearly as strong as Loki now, and at least as fast).

"Lead us away, then," said Loki. "And keep in mind that I don't need to have a blade at your throat to end you."

It seemed like a ridiculous kind of threat, though more the kind that was so obvious it didn't need to be said, instead of the kind that was so ludicrous it shouldn't have been.

The man turned so that his back was to the fire, and gestured for them to follow him.

For the next several hours, no one spoke. They understood clearly enough without it. When the man crept forward, they followed him; when he halted, they halted too, and listened. Bucky soon found his mind wandering to all the questions it wasn't safe enough here to ask. They were in enemy territory when they'd been supposed to be in Narnia; but the farther they went, the more certain he got that they were in Narnia. Eventually, he figured out that he must have been becoming more and more sure of it every time he got a glimpse of the stars. They weren't constellations he recognized, but some part of him must have known them all the same.

Enemy territory, but it was in Narnia itself. Something really bad must have happened. But maybe that wasn't too surprising, considering how desperate the guy from his vision had looked. Maybe even considering there had been a vision in the first place, which seemed like the kind of thing Loki would have told him about last time, if it had ever happened before. Bucky wondered where that guy was, and what he was doing. What he needed from them. Loki had said they always had a job to do, and it didn't take a genius to get that whatever they had to do this time was going to have to do with that vision.

After a few hours, they were far enough from the campsite that they could no longer see the flicker of the campfire, and hadn't been able to for quite some time. They passed a burned-out building on a hill, which was around the time the trees disappeared, and became the stumps of trees instead: not a forest that had burned with the building, but one that had been chopped down. It was the kind of thing that wouldn't have been shocking back at home, but felt like walking into a graveyard here.

The sky started to lighten, though the change was so slight at first that no one who hadn't been squinting up at the stars this whole time would have noticed for another half hour or so. It was around then that they came to the barn, and it was in front of the barn that their guide stopped.

"If you're to go on to meet with the Narnian King, you may wish to bring some of his subjects with you," he said. "They're within the barn, tied or hobbled or both."

What kind of subjects, Bucky could have asked, but by the time he heard the first whining yawn from inside and thought to, the sentry was already wrestling with the padlock via a key he'd produced from out of his pocket. The lock seemed to be more large and unwieldy than truly difficult; the wrestling only lasted for a couple seconds before the chain fell from the door, and the sentry threw them open.

Loki produced a light, a green flame that floated a few inches above them and about a foot in front of them (this produced widened eyes from their companion, though he neither gasped nor faltered at the sight). There were stalls to either side of a narrow aisle, with a horse in all but one. It shouldn't have been shocking, horses in a barn, except that these horses, exhausted as they were and now startled as well, had something in their faces that made it terrible to see them like this. Bucky had just started to work out what that something was when the tallest of the horses, who was also the eldest, tossed its head and said, "If you've come to tell us we must now begin our work hours earlier--!"

The way its lip curled above its teeth as it spoke make it pretty clear there would be biting involved; the way it stamped its foot said there'd be some trampling too, if it had its way. But before it could say anything else, or anyone could answer, a different sound came from the large stall at the end, the only one that didn't have a horse's head sticking out of it: a whine followed by a cacophony of whines and little woofs, and "These ones smell different!" "Yes they do, yes they do, I do say they smell different!" This was followed by a heated discussion over whether it was a good smell or a bad one, especially considering there was still a Calormene smell, or at least the smell of Calormene leathers.

Somehow, Bucky wasn't at all surprised when the faces that appeared above that stall's door didn't belong to horses. They were, instead, very doggie faces, one after the other. If you have ever arrived home to see your dog jumping up to see you from the window, then falling down out of view again, only to immediately jump back up, that was exactly like this--except that these dogs had the same thing in their faces that the horses had, so that you would have known they were different even before they started talking.

"We're here to help," said Bucky, for the second time that night.

Behind him, Loki and the sentry moved among the horses, speaking in low calming voices; the occasional creaking sound and rattle of chain said everything Bucky needed to know about what they were doing. They didn't seem to need him, which was good since he'd just been hit with the knowledge, barren of memory, that he didn't know the first damned thing about horses. So, instead, he tore away the chain from across the door to the dogs' stall, then lifted the bar, and then before he could open the door it opened without him, the weight of six or seven big dogs pushing on it from the other side.

The sentry had been right that they were tied--and with big, heavy chains that made Bucky wonder how they could bear to stand up, nevermind jump high enough to put their heads over the door. If you have ever tried to remove a collar from a dog's neck while several other dogs are intent on greeting you, you may have cause to wonder how Bucky fared when there were fifteen or so of them, all of them trying to jump up to put their paws on his shoulders at the same time, while whining or barking or saying variations on "This one's not a Calormene! The nose knows!" The answer is that the first couple minutes were fraught, as the dogs kept saying, "Not a Calormene! Not not not! Welcome, friend!" while Bucky kept saying, "You guys need to settle down if you want me to get these off." But eventually one of the dogs must have actually heard him, for the excited refrain became, "Chains off! Chains off! Settle down and we'll get our chains off!" And after a minute or two of that, the meaning must have gotten through, because the dogs all sat down in much the same cacophony as they'd jumped up with in the first place.

As a result of all the hysterics, once Bucky had gotten the chains off their necks, the dogs were still more or less attached to each other, and had to be untangled one by one from the group. This would have been an easier job if they hadn't all kept getting excited and jumping around again every time Bucky got someone all the way free--but they were so doggily happy, and their happiness was so contagious, that by the time he was halfway through them he was grinning, and by the time he got the last dog loose he was doing it so hard his face hurt.

"There are no guards stationed nearby, according to him," Loki said when Bucky finally walked out of the stall, preceded by half a dozen large dogs, closing the door on nothing but piles of chains. "Superstitious, apparently. Nevertheless, they've raised such an uproar--"

"We'd better be going, yeah," Bucky agreed. He looked around to see the dogs milling with the horses--who stood there quietly and let them, instead of spooking the way the non-talking type might have. That was the nice thing about Talking horses, he figured, without being quite able to remember any of the incidents that had made this something he knew: they were a lot less likely to break themselves or other people because they'd seen a shadow and decided it was a snake. "Got it. Where are we headed now?"

In the light from Loki's flame, he could see the sentry's face. He wasn't quite as young as his frame in the dark had made Bucky think: more man than boy, but maybe not that much more. There was a purpose in his face, set there in the way it only can be when you're young and don't yet know how bad it could go for you (of if you do know, you're bold or reckless enough not to be that worried about it); but there was also a hesitation there, the sort of uncertainty you only get when you're stepping outside of where you're supposed to be, maybe for the first time. Bucky thought he might have had that look a lot in the first few days after Hydra, both in Narnia and in his own world.

But there wasn't really a lot of time to wonder about what was going on with the sentry. It didn't matter why he was helping them, right now. It only mattered that he was.

So, now, they left the barn, quickly and quietly as they could, and headed west, away from the rising sun. Some of the dogs and horses ran ahead, and some behind or to the side, and as quiet as they were all trying to be, the dogs not even woofing or shouting to each other (for they were really more silly than foolish, and it would have been foolish indeed to call out to each other in that way) it was clear right away that it was going to be better for them to hoof it than to try to be sneaky. It was like the difference between sounding like a herd of elephants tramping through the forest at full speed, and sounding like you had one or two elephants that were only covering about a mile an hour: not too stealthy in either case, but at least one way was faster.

Figuring they could get away with talking now, Bucky said, "We haven't actually introduced ourselves. I'm Bucky, and this is Loki."

"I am Emeth," said the sentry.

"Yes, very good," said Loki, sounding like he didn't care at all, and was fine if everyone knew it. "Meanwhile: What's happened here?"

"Yeah, and where are we going?" Bucky added. There hadn't been a good time to ask before, but now that they were responsible for the dogs and the horses in addition to themselves, it seemed like it would be a good thing to know.

"Our forces routed the Narnian king nearly a week past," said Emeth. "He was last seen headed west. His eagle is oft seen flying from that same direction. Many times have we tried to bring it down, but thus far it has flown high, well out of range of our arrows."

It was a good thing they didn't have rifles in Narnia, Bucky thought but didn't say. "So you guys invaded. What for? What did the Narnians ever do to you?"

"That is not for me to know, or to say," said Emeth, somewhat stiffly. He was quiet for a moment, then added, in a lower, more confused tone, "It has not been what I thought it would be."

"You thought you were coming here for glory's sake," said Loki, before Bucky could decide whether or not to ask what Emeth had thought it would be. "What you found was something infinitely more complex, not to mention...filthier."

That sounded about right. That was what war was like for a lot of people, Bucky knew. He didn't have the proof to back it up, but some part of that statement made him think of Steve more than anyone else.

"Yes," said Emeth.

*

They trudged along for hours. Long enough for the sun to get all the way up in the sky, and grow hot enough to make them all sweaty. Long enough for everyone to get hungry, and slower, and crabby. But there was no way to stop, for to feed the horses would have meant they'd have to hang out in a meadow somewhere for hours; to feed the dogs would have meant they'd have to find and bring down the same game that had made itself scarce in their wake; and to feed the people would have meant they'd have to make a fire (if they ate the dogs' meat, or tried to fish), or forage around the woods for a good long while. There was nothing for it but to keep going, and hope that Emeth was right that they'd meet up with the king at some point.

They managed to avoid most of the Calormene patrols along the way, more because Emeth knew where they were most likely to be than because anyone was managing to be that quiet. They didn't see, nor were they seen by anyone on that side, until around the time they neared the waterfall.

There was no question of what it was. It was a sound you couldn't mistake if you'd ever heard it before, and Bucky had. Where or when he had, he couldn't remember, but the instinct that had seemed to be from somewhere else had long since become a part of him: things he knew without remembering them, and no longer bothered to try and question.

The closer they came to it, the louder it got. It was still a dullish, far-away roar when one of the dogs, an older bitch with more sense than the rest, called out,

"I smell Calormenes, and Calormene horses."

"Where?" called another of the dogs, so loudly it would have surprised you, if, like Bucky, you had forgotten how tightly they had been tamping down on their natural loudness (for of course these were mostly hounds, whose idea of a hunt was that it ought to be as loud and raucous an event as possible).

"Where where where?" about half the pack agreed.

"I smell them, too," said another.

"Too too too," echoed the other half.

"To the east, the east, the east!"

"Maybe we could be quieter about it," said Bucky, though the cat seemed to be out of the bag by now.

"Quiet quiet quiet," the dogs agreed, and fell as quiet as they'd been before. Several of the more sensible dogs conferred together, then split off from the group. When they came back half an hour later, their dark eyes were very grave in their long faces.

The news was bad. There were at least fifteen mounted soldiers, headed right for them.

"They can't be for us," Bucky said, calculating: it took time to get together a force like that, not to mention that they were coming from a different direction than they'd taken with the dogs and the horses, so they couldn't have been directly followed. "Can we turn around?"

A quick conference showed that they couldn't; there were likely Calormene patrols on three sides, so that the only way out was the way they were going. They were just going to have to go there faster than anyone else, so that they could get beyond the border.

They picked up the pace, not so worried anymore about the noise they made. The only things slowing them down were Emeth, who, not being an Asgardian or a supersoldier, was slower than Bucky or Loki; and, ironically, the horses, who would have been the fastest of anyone on even, level ground, but who had to step carefully here in the woods, when there was no path to be seen and quite a lot of potential hazards, between random holes in the ground and random roots sticking out of it.

The faster they went, the louder the waterfall became, until what had been a quiet hint of a sound before was now loud enough to drown out the clinking of armor or the hoofbeats of dumb, shod beasts. 

They broke out of the forest just in time to find out how fucked they were. In front of them was a waterfall, just as frothing and huge as it had sounded, almost loud enough now to start the kind of static in Bucky's head that he hadn't had in years. It was plummeting off a cliff, a steep one--too steep by far for the horses or the dogs, even if Bucky could probably have managed it on his own. The cliff went to the left and the right, surrounding the pool in an oval that suggested that they'd actually had a cliff to either side for quite some time, and that it would take some doing to find a way out of that valley again.

Worst of all, the last time the dogs had come back, the Calormene forces had been just five minutes behind them. 

"They'll trap us here," Loki said, having come to the same conclusion with the same glance around. "Whether they mean to or not."

"Backs to the water," Bucky said, not intending to take charge, but doing it anyway, not an instinct but what he now knew was a reflex of one of the people he'd been: the Soldier instead of Bucky Barnes this time, leading another team. It was a set of skills he hadn't really thought he'd ever be using again. He'd have had a sinking feeling about that, probably, if he hadn't already been too busy having a sinking feeling that it wasn't going to be enough. They weren't outnumbered, but the dogs and horses were tired, weary from long days of work followed by a long, stressful walk. The Calormene soldiers were armored, and probably a lot fresher than they were. Still, though, they had to try. "Let's try to alternate a horse for every couple dogs--yeah, like that. We're going to try to take some of them out before they get to you. Don't rush forward until you have to."

He hopped onto a large boulder by the water's edge, and aimed his crossbow at the shadowy woods. He'd armed it with a bolt while he gave his orders, had a second one in his hand by the time his feet connected with the stone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Loki, still on the ground, pull out a few throwing knives. The horses stamped their feet; the dogs lowered their heads and looked intensely into the shadows, fur rising on their necks and backs even as a low growl rose from their throats, sounding like a hum at first, but getting a lot more dangerous as the soldiers got close enough for them to smell and hear from where they were.

Bucky didn't smell anything, but he heard them for the last minute or so before they broke into the slight clearing in front of them, filtering out the sound of the waterfall to get to it. There was the sound of hooves, treading less heavily than the Narnian horses had (for these were steeds from the south, smaller and finer-boned than sturdy northern horses, even if they were also a hell of a lot stupider); there was the jingling of armor, the sort of shifting sound even the best-made mail might make in such circumstance.

When the first horse and rider shaped shadow became visible, Bucky very nearly let loose the first crossbow bolt. But just as he was about to, a thought came out of nowhere, not an instinct or even a reflex, but a memory, old as the heft of a crossbow in his hand: 'Never aim any bow at that which you cannot see, nor at an enemy who does not yet know he is your enemy.' It wasn't a voice he recognized, which was at least enough to let him know it hadn't been one of his handlers, even if it hadn't been contradictory with everything he'd been used for as the Soldier. It was enough to make him hesitate. And everyone else must have been looking at him for their cue, because they all did, too.

The first rider halted, squinting at them from the shadows.

"Get out of here and you'll be happier for it," Bucky said, because there was no point in introducing anyone when it was obvious to both sides that they were on opposite ones.

"We won't warn you again," Loki agreed.

But the head rider, who must have been a Tarkaan by the lines on his face and the styling of his helmet and armor, merely took them in. He must have seen how ragged they were, all of them tired. He must have seen how little space there was between the forest and where they stood: not nearly enough for Bucky's crossbow to provide much advantage. There was no doubt he knew the spears his men carried would do for the horses and no few of the dogs, and that his forces numbered a good twenty men against their three.

He didn't smile, but there was a satisfaction on his face for the split second before he made a motion at the men behind him.

In the next moments, everyone exploded into motion. Bucky loosed the first crossbow bolt, then another, and a third, felling three riders from their horses, two of whom were dead before they hit the ground. There was no time to try for another, and so he dropped his crossbow, drew his sword and waded into the fight.

Around him, horses reared, and everyone tried to stay out of the way of the spears. But truly, as many riders and spears as there were, there was not very much that could be done. Even Loki's many doubles didn't seem to distract anyone; the Calormene soldiers must have had their orders, too, and pressed ever onward.

Within moments, Bucky had seen enough of the situation to know there might not be a way out of it. Still, though, he ducked past one spear and dodged another, and managed to knock a fourth rider off his horse. Then a spear-head knocked into his shoulder, a glancing blow that nonetheless hurt like a bitch.

" Shit ," he said.

"I concur," said Loki, from wherever the real Loki was.

Meanwhile, a war-cry had risen from some of the Calormenes. It seemed like a waste of breath, until another sound started, somewhere in the distance. Bucky might have known what it was, if he'd had time to think; but he didn't, in the fray.

In a matter of seconds, they lost what little ground there had been, and were standing in the water, surrounded by a semi-circle of Calormene soldiers. Between the water's edge and the forest lay bodies, both of Calormenes and of a few dogs and of several horses; but all Bucky could think of were the ones that were still with him, Loki and Emeth and the living horses and dogs, and how he had no way to save them.

"Well," said the head rider, who had managed not to get trampled, and to get back on his horse, sometime in the last minute or so. "Will you beg for your lives, or stand firm your ground? Turn thyselves over to me, and you will live to stand trial for your crimes. Do otherwise, and you will be executed where you stand."

In the distance, the sound continued. Bucky knew it now, though he didn't remember why it should have made the hairs on his arms stand up: it was the beat of drums, one that gave you a sense that something both bad and inevitable was on its way.

The drum-beat continued, but in the next moment the Calormene's war-cry became something else, something more like a scream. Something whistled through the space between the two forces, close enough that Bucky felt the movement of the air as it passed above his head. It slammed home into the Tarkaan's thigh, a feathered shaft followed by three more, almost simultaneously.

For a second, no one on either side knew what was happening. Then more arrows hit their targets, and several of the Calormenes fell from their horses. A third volley came, and a fourth, and the Calormene forces broke. Instead of concentrating on what their spears were doing, the ones still seated were trying to turn their horses around--which was not an easy matter, considering the horses whose riders had fallen were also invested in getting away, and as quickly as possible. Some of the fallen managed to rise to their feet in the fray, as one or two others struggled to pull themselves from beneath the body of a downed steed, but by then Bucky had rushed into the crowd with his sword, and Loki with his knives and the dogs with their teeth (the horses, being rather more sensible than their dumb southern counterparts, wisely waited, keeping an eye out for an opening that would let them enter the fight without tripping over a dead Calormene, or even a living one).

As with most hand-to-hand skirmishes between small forces, one of which had abruptly lost the advantage, what happened next was as nasty as it was quick, and I will spare you a close accounting thereof. It will suffice to say that the spears that had been so devastating when everyone was lined up neatly were not worth much in a close fight, when Bucky or Loki or a dog or three were able to set upon the spear's owner. The dogs, perhaps, were even worse opponents than the others, for a snarling, murderous dog is a terrifying specter, and ten or so of them, when they know how and where and when to attack to keep you from escaping their wrath, are a thousand times worse.

After a few minutes, all the commotion stopped, leaving them surrounded by dead and mostly-dead Calormenes. Not one had gotten out, though some of their horses could still be heard hoofing it away. Their side had lost three dogs and a horse in total, with a few of the others bleeding or even limping--though none of the injured seemed at a glance to be so severely hurt they couldn't move under their own power.

Bucky assessed all this in a second or two at the end of the battle, before remembering the arrows that had turned the tide. He swiveled to look in the direction they'd come from, and saw, standing at the top of the cliff, four figures, all of them holding bows.

"Won't you join us, friends?" said one of the figures, who for some reason looked really familiar, though for a second Bucky couldn't put his finger on why.

"There's our Narnian," Loki said, and then suddenly Bucky could. He wondered how long it'd been here since the man had appeared to them in their worlds. More than a day for sure. Weeks or months, probably--for although the man's beard had been carefully trimmed when he'd shown up at Bucky's hut, it had been allowed to grow out wildly since. His clothes weren't looking too fresh, either.

All this Bucky again took in in a moment, from the training he remembered or the war experience he didn't, or, maybe, from something older than either of those things. Then the drum-beat came again, or maybe had been going on for a while, so that when he noticed it again, it sounded even more awful than it had before. Or maybe it was just that it was getting louder, which meant it was getting closer.

"We must away," called the man again. "All else must wait."

"How do we get up?" Bucky called back, not seeing how they were going to get the dogs or horses all the way up there. He and Loki might have been able to do it--Bucky could see a few potential handholds, fewer and farther apart than normal humans would be likely to be able to take advantage of without some really good equipment--but climbing didn't seem like something anyone with four legs was going to be able to manage unless they were part mountain goat.

"There's a trail! Behind the waterfall!" called the Narnian king--for there was little doubt that that was who he was, anymore than there had been any doubts about Rilian, the last time.

"You'll see it when you get there! Come on, chaps!" said the second figure, followed by, "Say, Pole, where are you going?" (Though no one on the ground heard the second part, or noticed that the third of the human figures had disappeared from the top of the cliff.)

Now Bucky, Loki, Emeth, and all the dogs and horses looked with some alarm at the water. The pool into which the waterfall emptied was not at all a calm body, but a vicious one that lashed out at your ankles when you stood at its edge, and looked likely to try to drag you under if you should wade in further.

"Ugh," said Loki, but then to Bucky's surprise, if no one else's (for no one else had the bone-deep knowledge of Loki that said he was definitely the type to try to argue his way out of unpleasant tasks), he waded further in, until he was swimming toward the waterfall in strong strokes that soon had him closing in on the angriest-looking parts of the water.

The first time the back of his head disappeared beneath the surface, Bucky started to move without knowing he was doing it, and was halfway to the waterfall himself by the time he caught sight of Loki's head again. Then he didn't see anything at all for a minute, for the water really was violent enough that he'd have ended up with a lungful of water if he'd tried to look. Then he was under the spray, which would have hurt a lot more if he hadn't been the way he was now. Then he was on the other side, in a little cave, and then he'd made it to the shore or the cave floor or whatever you wanted to call it, and he could see Loki had made it there too, and better yet could hear him breathing, in and out, the same ragged kind of breaths that were coming out of Bucky.

He couldn't see much else until Loki made a light, another little green flame. Then he saw that the cave was a small one, no more than ten feet by twelve or so--and on the opposite wall, there was a tunnel, just wide enough that two men might walk abreast if they didn't mind one shoulder bumping into their companion while the other one dragged against the surface of the wall.

At another time, it would have been worth seeing where the tunnel led before anything else. But even though Bucky couldn't hear those drums in here, he knew they were still going, and that there wasn't much time to get everyone to safety. He ducked back under the spray, ready to call out that there was a tunnel back here, so he hoped everyone could swim. But it turned out there was no need to do that, because the dogs and the horses were already in the water, headed their way.

The trouble with that was something else. It had been kind of obvious that the dogs and horses hadn't been treated very well. Now it was even more obvious that they must not have been fed very well (in fact, they hadn't eaten since morning of the day before, and had thus marched all this way on empty stomachs), because where Loki and Bucky had made it through without too much trouble, the dogs and horses were clearly struggling. None were past the three-quarters point between the shore and the waterfall; some seemed to be more or less treading water, while others were barely doing that, and having trouble keeping their heads above water.

"Oh, where are you--" Loki complained as Bucky waded back in. Then he must have seen the trouble, for instead of finishing the complaint, he was wading in, too.

The next minutes were very busy, and would have been a little terrifying in places, if there had been any room for such a thing as fear. Instead, there was only triage. Who needed help the most? Who did they need to get the rest of the way first so that they could reach whoever needed help more than they did? These were the sorts of questions that had to be answered in the freezing cold, with thrashing bodies all around, and with a soft voice in your mouth (despite the fact that you were actually shouting to be heard over the water), telling whoever you were  talking to that they could do it if they stopped flailing around and kept their mind on their target instead. If they swam forward, and kept going, and they were already doing so good, so it really wasn't going to take very much more at all.

Eventually, somehow, it was over. The dogs managed it more easily than the horses, so that for the final few there was a great chorus of "yes, yes, you can do it! one hoof in front of the other and all!" from the cave behind the waterfall. More importantly, there'd been help in the form of more hands--for when the last of the horses came ashore on the floor of the cave, there were six people dripping with them, not just the three that had waded into the water first.

"Thanks for the help," said Bucky.

"It is I who must thank you, for it is you who have returned out dear friends to us," said the man who'd been the ghost or the vision, and who in fact was the king of Narnia, just as Bucky had thought--though it was a wonder he'd heard Bucky in the first place, considering the wailing the dogs were doing now that the excitement was over and they could focus on who was there with him. If the noise they had made when meeting Bucky was like the noise very friendly dogs will make when greeting a new person they have reason to be excited about, this noise was more like the sound a dog in our world might make upon seeing their master, who has been gone for a year or more.

He proceeded to greet the dogs, not unlike the way a person might greet their own pets, except that here, when he spoke to them, even the silliness was instilled with the sort of gravity that is always involved when speaking to a person who will understand your words rather than an animal who might hear mostly tone. When he was done speaking to the dogs, he spoke then to the horses, a few words for each one, to tell them all how much he'd missed them, and how glad he was to see them, and of the great sorrow that was in his heart for those who were still missing, and would not be met again in this life.

It was all very touching, and even Loki's sighing and eyerolling couldn't do much to ruin it (especially given that no one else noticed, as the boy and girl who'd come with the king were busy exclaiming over the dogs and horses as well (the girl had no shame when it came to fawning over them, the horses especially; the boy must have had a little, but was too overcome to mind making a scene--or at least, to mind it very much)). It was over within a minute or two, before everyone quieted down enough to remember the position they were in.

"We must be on our way," said the king. "But first, I would know your names."

So introductions were had. It turned out the king was named Tirian, and the boy and girl with him were named Eustace and Jill. They were names that sounded familiar to Bucky, though he couldn't place them well enough to be sure if they were something he could be expected to know, or something that had been lost back in the static.

Tirian and his friends led them up the tunnel. The dogs ran ahead, while the horses went single-file. At the end of the line were Bucky, Loki, and Emeth--though when the time came for them to follow, Emeth hung back.

"You're coming, right?" Bucky asked. "You brought us all the way here."

But what he was thinking was that Emeth had been as fierce in the fight as they had been, and the people they'd been fighting might have been friends of his. It was something you could see on his face; and the other thing you could see was the way he was steeling himself, so that what he said next came as no surprise.

"I will not be going with you," said Emeth, "I shall return to my people, to answer for my crimes."

"To die for them, you mean," said Bucky.

"Or to tell them who we are and where we've gone," Loki said, in a tone that made you think he knew because it was the kind of thing he'd do himself.

"I have betrayed every oath I ever swore," said Emeth, and even though he was young, there didn't seem to be any fear in him, even though he also wasn't denying what was sure to happen to him. There was no army in the world that did anything else to traitors. "I do not believe I was wrong, and yet there is no other true option for me. I do not regret it, yet I can go no further in my treachery."

When he was about halfway through this little speech, Bucky caught Loki's eye. When the speech ended, Loki grabbed ahold of Emeth's left arm, while Bucky got a grip on his right one.

"We can't let you do that," Bucky said, as together they frog-marched Emeth in the direction the others had gone. "Right, Loki?"

"Clearly not. For all we know, he could be a spy."

"Sure, you're on our side now, but maybe you'll change your mind."

"A double-cross."

"Maybe a double double-cross if you changed it again, but we'd be screwed by then."

"We simply can't have that," Loki finished.

By now they'd made it into the tunnel, pushing Emeth in front of them since the tunnel really was only barely wide enough for two people to walk next to each other. It went on through the darkness for a little ways, then started to wind up, though so slightly that they scarcely knew what was happening until they burst back out into the daylight again.

They must have been several hundred yards away from the cliff when they came out. Behind them roared the waterfall. To their right flowed the river that turned into the waterfall. All around them were trees, which you somehow knew weren't the talking kind, and never had been and never would be; and you had the feeling, too, that none of the animals who came from here could talk, even if talking animals sometimes came here for their own reasons. And in front of them was everyone else, looking just as cold and dripping as Bucky was. 

"I think I know you now," said Tirian, squinting at them in the suddenness of daylight. "You must be the others I saw in my vision, some weeks past."

"It was yesterday for us," said Bucky. "Or maybe last night."

"That's odd," said Eustace. "It took us days to get--say, aren't you from that night at the stable?"

This last remark was directed at Emeth, who looked a little more lost than anyone else now that he'd figured out he wasn't going to be allowed to give himself up. "I," he said. "Yes, I was there."

"What stable?" Bucky asked.

"It is a long, nasty tale," said Tirian. "And one better told and heard once we are back at camp, with our clothes and fur dry again, and our bellies full."

One look around made it obvious no one was looking forward to drip drying on the way there (though the dogs and horses were doing their best not to show unwilling in front of their king, Emeth was doing his best not to do it in front of the nominal enemy, and even the kids were doing their best to "buck up"). Then Loki waved his hand, and suddenly everyone was dry again.

"--I did not know we had a sorcerer among us," said Tirian lightly, though it came after a piercing look, which came after a startled one, both of which passed over his face so quickly even Bucky might not have noticed if he hadn't been looking right at his face, and if he hadn't remembered the way people in Narnia had been about that kind of thing the last time. "We'll speak when our bellies are full, then--and in the meantime our journey will not be nearly so unpleasant as it might have been otherwise. Thank you, friend."

"Of course, sire," said Loki, not quite smoothly enough to sound like trouble.

And then they were off.

*

The walk to the camp took several hours, and was nothing like the walk to the waterfall had been. For one thing, it was full daylight out now, and they could see where they were going. For another, they weren't so much sneaking as they were plodding. Everyone was exhausted from some combination of being starved, worked too hard, tied up too long, walking miles and miles while worrying the whole time about being caught, dangerous swimming, and grief.

Still, though, the walk wasn't entirely uneventful. They saw the occasional rabbit, and, three times, a deer darting away into the forest. A few of the rabbits ended up shot for dinner, slung over the backs of the dumb packhorses Tirian's group had brought with them. 

Bucky and Loki ended up walking together at the rear of the parade. For a while, they were as quiet as everyone else, most of whom were simply focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.

Eventually, though, Loki said, "How have you fared since the last time?"

"A lot better," Bucky said, remembering suddenly that they hadn't really known how things were going to turn out for him, last time. Loki had no way to know he'd ended up somewhere safe. Maybe that was why his stomach had seemed to clench, as soon as Loki asked the question. "How about you? You get things figured out?"

"More or less. But tell me about you."

And so Bucky did, telling Loki about how he'd gone into hiding, and then had been found by people he wouldn't have wanted to find him--but also by a friend, who'd helped get him to a safe country. He didn't really like talking about it, so he kept it short and sweet, and left out as many of the details as possible.

"That's good," said Loki, when he'd finished. "I'm glad you didn't--that you've found sanctuary, of sorts. Especially given that I didn't have the chance to give you any final advice before we went."

There was a faint note of accusation in his voice, though it would have been hard to say who it was for, or if Loki even knew for himself.

"Yeah, well, you gave me plenty of other advice," said Bucky, because Loki had, in the months they'd spent recovering, been full of that kind of thing. "What about you, though? What happened when you got back?"

He remembered the story Loki had told him. How he'd been a fugitive, and would have had a lot of things to figure out when he got back. Now, as Loki began talking, it turned out that even more had happened, starting with him impersonating his dad for a few years, and ending with his entire country burning down. Which Loki had made happen, because his brother had asked him to, but mostly because it had been the only way to save what was left of their people. And now they were all on a ship, heading for somewhere else, and just hoping they'd get a decent welcome when they got there. There was a lot to do, and Loki was responsible for enough of it to keep him complaining for long minutes after the gist of the story had been told.

"That sounds rough," Bucky said, when he finally got a chance to get a word in.

"Very," Loki said, and went on to do quite a bit more complaining, mostly about Thor and how he kept telling him to do more things (none of them half as fun as setting fires, apparently).

Bucky snuck looks at him here and there. Some of them were to gauge how Loki seemed to be doing, beneath all the complaining. The answer was that he looked both more and less tired than he had the last time. Less because he wasn't mortally wounded, or recovering from all the stuff he'd been through before he'd landed in Narnia the last time; more because he'd been dealing with the stuff he was complaining about for what sounded like a while. But beneath the tiredness, there seemed to be a satisfaction there that Bucky hadn't seen before; one that felt new, even if he couldn't prove it. It was the kind of look you get when the work you're doing is hard, but ultimately worth it. It wasn't all that different from the way Steve looked when he showed up in Wakanda for a visit.

It was, Bucky decided, a good way for Loki to look. The moment he decided was when the looks got even sneakier. Before, he'd been trying not to stare because he didn't want Loki to get mad about being scrutinized. Now, he didn't want Loki to notice the ache. The one Bucky had started feeling the last time they were in Narnia together; the one he'd thought about off and on after he'd gotten back, trying to decide what it meant. 

He'd worked out enough of the stuff inside his head to be pretty sure what it meant. This had taken some doing, since he'd never gotten all his memories back. He could remember almost everything that had happened when he was the Soldier, and a little of what had happened during the war, but almost nothing before then. Moments, sometimes, like snippets of scenes from a movie, but never enough to give a full picture. For that, he had to wait until he got a feeling about it. Not an instinct, nor quite a memory, but what he'd started to think of as a message from a him he wasn't sure existed anymore. And the feeling he was having about Loki right now might have been partly sorrow or some other pain, but the thing it was the most, that he hadn't been a hundred percent sure of before now, was longing.

*

Eventually, they arrived at a little valley surrounded by high but not impassable hilltops. On the south side of the valley was a meadow. On the west side of the meadow, there was a little camp with a handful of drab-colored (but still, somehow, beautiful and well-made, for in Narnia even those things meant to be barely seen are created as if they matter) little tents you could barely see unless you knew they were there. They must have chosen the west side of the meadow because of the little cave that was also there, which was where they all sat now, around the low-smoke campfire over which they'd roasted their dinner. By now the dogs had eaten (a doe they'd surprised on their way there, which had been slung across the back of one of the dumb horses for the rest of the journey), and were snoring in a pile at the back of the cave; and the horses had begun eating the moment they'd stepped hoof into the meadow, and were still eating now (talking horses always eat quite slowly, and even more slowly when they haven't eaten in a while; for of course they are not such fools as to eat as quickly as they would like to and thus risk colic). So everyone was full, and sated, and feeling pretty pleased with themselves (except, perhaps, for Emeth, who had been very quiet and solemn the whole time, and had only picked at the haunch of rabbit offered to him).

"Now has come the time for tales," said Tirian, though really what it felt like was the time for a good long nap, or maybe a couple of them. "I thought I would hear yours first, Bucky and Loki and Emeth; but the thought has since come to me that if you, Bucky and Loki, are from another world (and indeed I suspect you must be, for I saw you at the tail end of the vision in which I saw the Kings and Queens in their own world), then you may not know which aspects of your own stories are important, and which not."

Everyone agreed that that made sense, and so Tirian went on to tell his story. It wasn't exactly the story about an invasion that Bucky had expected (and, having been part of no few invasions as the Soldier, had expected to find as familiar as his own two hands). It was less straightforward than that, and a lot nastier too, involving the sort of deception that sounded more like it belonged in Bucky's world than it did in Narnia. The Narnians had been lied to and led to believe that Aslan wanted the trees to be killed, and the rest of them to be sold off--and even that Aslan and the Calormene god Tash were the same person. Not everyone had believed it, but enough people had been unsure that almost no one had been willing to fight when they could have easily won, in case they were wrong. And then things had turned.

"We were ready to meet our end, there at Stable Hill," said Tirian, when he'd gotten that far. "Yet, as what would have been our last stand was to begin, I swear I saw Aslan's face before me, terrible and kind; and he said to me, in a voice like a whisper or a shout, that I was to retreat to the West. I do not know how we managed it, as many Calormenes as came at us from all sides. It must have been due in no little part to the efforts of the ones you have brought back to us; for when they saw what we meant, the Dogs and the Horses placed their own bodies between us and our pursuers, not in fight but in surrender. Their sacrifice allowed our escape, where otherwise we would have died with arrows in our backs, and all Narnia would have been lost."

"It seems it hasn't yet been found," said Loki dryly. It was the kind of remark you could see people taking the wrong way, if they thought he was being a smartass. It didn't help that he definitely was being a smartass.

"We thought they might come to us, were we to go into the wilderness to raise the resistance," said Tirian, either too deep in what he was talking about or too earnest in general to take offense. "Such things have happened in Narnia's history. But though the Ape is no more, it seems his lie persists. My people for the large part remain huddled in their homes and burrows."

"A lot of little--" started Eustace, who along with Jill had mostly listened to the story, with the occasional comment or clarification. But Tirian raised his hand for quiet, and Eustace's mouth snapped shut.

"We had hoped they would come to us bit by bit, a trickle that would become greater by the day. It has not happened so. We gained our few allies in the first days. Since then our numbers have only dwindled. Some have been killed or captured; others, disheartened, have slipped away in the night. Meanwhile, the Calormene forces become greater by the day as new ships arrive from the south."

And that was where he left it. Everyone was quiet for a minute. Tirian was looking into the shadows, the ones that had started falling while he'd been talking, and had now turned into full night. Eustace was looking into the fire, which was now down to red coals, burning duller by the minute. Jill's face was wet, and her eyes were closed and so red she must have been quietly crying for a while. Emeth, like Tirian, was looking away, but the expression on his face was less bleak than it was torn. As for Loki, he looked bored--or, more accurately, like he'd prefer everything think he was bored rather than guess whatever he was really feeling; whatever it was, though, Bucky didn't have any guesses.

"Sounds like things are pretty bad," he said. "But  here's what's happened since we got here. In case it helps."

He didn't really think they'd seen or heard anything that was likely to turn the tide here. The hike from the barn to the waterfall had been through territory even more quiet as he would have expected if he'd heard Tirian's story beforehand. It had felt too quiet even at the time, and even the silence had helped them be more sure they weren't being followed, there had been something melancholy and awful underneath it, too. They hadn't heard anything other than their group and the Calormenes they'd fought. It had been like everyone in the country was holding their breath, even if Bucky hadn't been able to put his finger on it before now.

When he and Loki were done telling their story--which was much shorter out loud than it has been to read until now--nobody looked any more hopeful than they had before. Probably because they hadn't said anything that actually changed anything about Tirian's story.

"We ought not to despair," Tirian said. "This time yesterday, our friends were still in chains. Now, they are here with us. Even if there is nothing else, there is that, a freedom worth rejoicing."

No one else seemed to feel that much like rejoicing. Even Tirian didn't sound like he really believed it, so much as that he thought he ought to. But then a grumble came from the pile of sleeping dogs a few feet away. There came from that same doggy pile a sound and smell I will not describe, save to say it had everyone exiting the cave in a hurry, just in case the farter decided to go for an encore performance. Out in the field were the dark forms that were the horses, some standing and some lying down in the grass. Most of them were breathing the slow, shallow breaths of sleep. One or two were snoring, which in a talking Horse is just an alarming a sound as it is with a dumb horse, especially if you have never heard it before (everyone there must have, for none of them jumped). Beneath all this were the sounds of night insects, much the same as they are in our world, with the occasional twinkling of fireflies, near or far. 

It was enough for Bucky to feel hopeful, after all. There wasn't really a reason to. Things were still bad, just a few miles from here, on the other side of the waterfall. But hope is ever a hardy seed, happy to grow in even the rockiest ground, and to survive long after even the planter has stopped giving it water, presuming it to have died long ago. At least, Bucky's hope was like that, and seemed to be sprouting to life again inside his chest.

This was good timing, for it was then that Emeth said, in a voice that seemed to be very careful, though no one could see his face, "I have yet to tell my tale, O King."

It had seemed to everyone up until now that Emeth more or less regretted having come, and that they'd need to keep an eye on him in case he decided to make a break for it, whether it happened tonight or sometime later. But he must have been even more torn than his expression had suggested before now, wrestling with his own demons through everyone else's story.

"I will hear whatever you would say," said Tirian, though wearily (for of course he knew how florid Calormene-told stories tend to be, and that the more intricate or poorly-told ones may require a great deal of mental focus to grasp the core point).

But Emeth didn't start speaking in that age-old style. Instead, he sighed, long and low, and said, "It is, in truth, less a tale than a thing you ought to know (though I am still not sure I am right to tell you). I am not alone in chafing against this lie of Tashlan. There are others who would have gladly met your armies on the open battlefield, but who disdain the skulking cowardice of our fathers. We have oft seen your Eagle, flying above our camps, taking our count; unless its eyes are the equal of its ears, you cannot know the discontent that runs through the army of the Tisroc (may he live forever)."

"How many?" Tirian said, and though no one's features were clear in the dark, what was clear was his eagerness, his voice sharp with it just as it had been dull with inevitability before. "How many are like you?"

"Of the men I know, I've heard half or more grumbling," Emeth answered. "A quarter of those I've heard grumbling greatly. How many of those would betray their oaths, as I did--that I cannot say. But your enemy is not a force united. They do not fight for the glory of Tash, but for the greed of men."

Bucky didn't remember a lot of whatever he used to know about Calormen or its people. Still, though, that last part meant something to him. He couldn't have explained it to anyone else, but it made the hope grow even greater and brighter inside his chest.

Tirian said, "So there are cracks among our enemies. It is a good thing to know, though I cannot immediately think of how we might benefit from it. I thank you, friend Emeth."

"We are not friends, but only allies," said Emeth. "Until this farce has been ended, only."

"Whenever that is," muttered Loki, who had made a couple of stupid-sounding noises at various points, and who Bucky had elbowed a few times as a result. He elbowed him again now.

*

"Think we'll get spirited away overnight?" Bucky asked, when he and Loki were in their tent. They hadn't needed to share, there were enough tents set up that they could have each had their own, but they also hadn't needed to talk about it to know they were going to. It was one of those instincts a person could really get behind.

"I'm not certain," Loki said slowly. "Initially, I thought the rescue of the Dogs and the Horses would certainly be enough to count as our task. I'm less certain now, however."

"Not sure I know how we're going to save a whole country. Especially not if that army is as big as they think."

No one one knew exactly, but the guesstimate based on the Eagle's count was somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve to fifteen hundred. That was a lot for such a little country. It was way more than Bucky and Loki could beat back by themselves. They couldn't even have managed fifteen if Tirian and the others hadn't shown up to do some shooting.

"I have few enough ideas myself," said Loki. "Now, will you go to sleep?"

It was the first clue Bucky had had that Loki was tired, or at least the first overt clue. Or, well, tired in the way that meant sleep, at least; there was something about him that had seemed tired from the beginning, this time, weary in a way that wasn't going to be fixed by any one night's sleep.

"Okay," Bucky said. At first he wasn't sure how fast he really would get to sleep. As the Soldier, he'd been able to turn his mind off almost at will. As Bucky, he'd had trouble sleeping, the last few years. When he was on the run, he'd never felt secure enough to sleep unless he was doing it lightly enough that he could be awake in an instant if he had to. In Wakanda, he'd been safe enough that he'd started to lie awake and think. There was always too much to think about. The people he'd hurt, over the years. What Steve had given up to help him. Where Loki was, and whether or not he was okay. When he was going to remember the rest of his life, if he ever did. Even what would happen once the vacation from his consequences was over. There were so many questions, and most of the things other people could help him with didn't include the answers to any of them.

Now, lying next to Loki in a tent that was large enough for two tall men only if various parts of them were touching, he thought about other things. The feel of Loki pressed against him, which made him feel flushed and warm, at the same time it made him feel like the part of him that had been holding its breath since he got back from Narnia had finally had a chance to exhale. Whether either of them would still be here in the morning. Loki really must have thought there was more for them to do. There was no way he would have wanted Bucky to shut up and go to sleep otherwise. But Loki had been wrong about the timing of home last time. Maybe he was wrong in the other direction this time.

If old worries had been enough to keep Bucky up at home, new worries should probably have kept him up here in Narnia. He expected them to. But there was something else there, overshadowing all his other concerns, making them feel not so much small as farther away than usual. That thing was the sound of Loki's breathing, the sense of his presence Bucky somehow knew would have been there even if there had been nothing to hear, even if it had been too dark to look over and see the lump that was Loki in the dark. It was the thing he was missing all the time when he was in his own world, and it lulled him to sleep before he even had a chance to recognize it for what it was.

*

When Bucky woke up, he was still there, in the tent. It was a relief. The only thing that was more of a relief was that as soon as he realized it, he heard a familiar voice talking to someone, and knew that Loki, too, remained in Narnia.

When he ducked out of the tent, the sky was gray, but lighting up fast, the sun just about to peek over the hills they'd come over the day before. The grass all around was covered in dew. The horses were up and grazing again. Near the outskirts of the meadow was a donkey, which was grazing as well. Over by the King's tent there stood a unicorn, who Bucky now knew must have been his friend Jewel he'd talked about the night before. He was grayer and dingier than you'd have expected a unicorn to be, so that by the time you stopped thinking "holy shit, it's a unicorn," you might have felt a little bit let down. Except that you wouldn't really have had the time, because around when you noticed the dinginess of the unicorn was also when you would have noticed the moles and mice who were standing next to him. All of them were dingy looking too, and tired, for of course they had been sent out as spies and saboteurs, to help report on Calormene movements, disrupt their food stores, and try to convince some of the other Talking Animals to return with them (a task at which they had failed at for the eleventh or twelfth day running).

And over by one of the trees was Loki, who was holding a conversation with the large Eagle that had settled in its branches. When he saw Bucky, he wrapped it up and came over.

"There are now closer to fifteen hundred Calormene soldiers on Narnian soil," he said. "Judging by the three additional ships the Eagle saw unloading yet more of them yesterday afternoon."

"Great," said Bucky, which of course it wasn't, but it also wasn't like it made that much of a difference at this point when it came to how fucked they were.

"We're to have another council meeting once everyone's eaten," said Loki. "By which I mean when the Dogs are back from their hunt. I can't imagine they're concerned enough about us to hold the discussions on our account."

Bucky doubted that was true, but he also wasn't that worried about breakfast. If he'd used to like a big breakfast first thing in the morning, he didn't remember. In the meantime, big breakfasts now made him logey, and even little breakfasts as soon as he got up made him a little slower. He wouldn't want to eat until later, wouldn't need to eat until tomorrow (and even then, he could go a while without).

Loki, who must have remembered something of Bucky's food preferences from the last time, gave him a searching look for a second after saying this. It was hard to say whether he was disappointed or not, which was at least a nice change from Steve, who could never help but show it when he was surprised or upset by something that wasn't the way it used to be. "If you're not hungry, we at least have time for a walk," he added.

"Okay," Bucky said, and whatever he might have preferred to do in the mornings before he'd been the Soldier, it was good to know that Loki remembered that he'd liked walks, the last time.

There wasn't really anywhere to go, but there also wasn't any real way to get lost in that valley. They headed into the trees, and when they'd gone far enough, Loki stopped. Abruptly, his entire demeanor changed, from something fairly casual to something that wasn't at all.

He wasn't going to like whatever this was, Bucky thought. It was one of those thoughts that seemed to come from outside of him, from beyond; from the person he'd been before, who had been through less but somehow seemed to know a lot more. "What?" he asked.

"Listen," said Loki. "And think about it before you answer. Give it your true consideration."

"What?"

"We don't have to stay here. We don't have to die for this noble, hopeless cause."

"What are you talking about?"

"We can go. Right now. I can take us somewhere else."

"What, you want to go west again? I don't think going south is going to work as well this time."

"What are you--oh. No." Loki's urgency had faded, replaced with irritation at Bucky not being a mind-reader, apparently. "I mean I have within my possession an object that would take us somewhere else . Nowhere in this world. It would take us back to mine. If I'd been thinking clearly last night, I'd have brought it up then. But perhaps this is better. Your head should be clearer this morning, as well."

Bucky's head was as fuzzy as if he'd had an entire cow for breakfast, actually. It was a familiar feeling, which gave him the idea it was what Loki tended to do with people. "What object?" he asked, after working his way through all that (which wasn't a very easy task in and of itself, at least not with Loki looking at him so intently Bucky felt almost like he was within a sniper's sights).

"The Tesseract," said Loki. At Bucky's blank expression, he went on to explain what that was, which was a very dangerous, magical object that could take whoever had it anywhere in the universe they wanted to go. "All of which is to say--we can go. Back to my world. Together. But if we're going to go, it needs to be now. Before anything else can happen."

"I don't think we should leave them," said Bucky, who was as aware as Loki of how they were looking at a losing battle, but didn't think he was capable of leaving the others to lose it alone. "We can always save it as a backup plan."

"No, we cannot. Aren't you listening? This is our one chance. We can leave together, if we leave now. If we don't, there's no guarantee we'll have the time later."

"Why wouldn't we?" Bucky asked, and had a dawning suspicion, which had had the potential to have a lot of hurt behind it, that if Loki had had that thing for years, that meant there were years when he could have shown up at Bucky's doorstep, and never had. "Just use it to come to my world when we get back."

He had the feeling Loki was going to miss the hurt behind this question; had the feeling Loki missed a lot of things when he was focused on trying to get Bucky to do one thing or another. He didn't particularly want to watch Loki missing it, though, and didn't want to stomp back to camp and make it obvious, either. Instead, he looked around, his eyes easily having adjusted to the gray forest shadows, and spied a curious-looking little plant by the north-facing side of a nearby tree. Maybe it was just that he had a head full of Loki, but what it looked like to him was a knife. Not one of the knives he'd worked with as the Soldier, which had been mass-produced to be exactly the same as every other knife, but an ornamental knife, like the kind you'd see at a specialty show, or like the kind Loki had given him the last two times they'd been here. The kind he'd been in the habit of giving Bucky for a long time, if flashes of memory were anything to go by.

This was interesting enough that Bucky pushed aside the implications of the conversation in favor of crouching down by the plant, and reaching for it. Unfortunately, he reached with his right hand, so when he found out that the edge of its leaves were razor-sharp, he drew his finger back bleeding.

"Ow," he said, more out of reflex than because it hurt that much (for once you've been shot a few times, and stabbed in earnest at least once since you stopped having your memories wiped, a very shallow little slice isn't actually going to bother you much). He stuck his finger in his mouth, and found Loki staring at him.

"What?" 

"Those have traveled quite a long way," said Loki after the briefest of pauses. "We planted the first one, you know. I suppose that must have been a thousand years ago or so."

"Huh. For Narnia, or for you?" Bucky asked, because one of the other things he knew about Loki, solidly enough that he must have known it about Loki for the vast majority of his own life, was that he was old enough for Bucky's century not to sound like much at all.

"Not for me," said Loki with a brief, almost wistful smile. "I suppose we ought to head back, if you're determined not to come with me."

It wasn't the argument Bucky had expected to have. It made it seem like either Loki hadn't meant his offer, or he knew there was no point in pushing it. It was probably that second one. Bucky wanted to believe it was that second one.

They walked back much more slowly than they'd gone to begin with. The suspicion in Bucky's heart began to grow. It might have turned into something concrete enough to really weigh on him, if it hadn't been for Loki stopping again when they were just a few feet away from the meadow. There, in the shadows, where it was hard to see the exact expression in his eyes without having to squint really obviously about it, he said, "I did try to come for you. It's half the reason I returned to Asgard for the Tesseract in the first place." (It was, I suspect, very nearly the entire reason.) "Yet every time I try to go to your world, the Tesseract directed me to a place on Midgard, instead."

"Oh, yeah?" Bucky said, trying to remember which country Midgard was, and what, exactly, Loki had done to them. It was hard to keep it straight. He had a feeling keeping track of Loki's comings and goings in a world Bucky had never been to hadn't been much easier before, either. "How come?"

"And not just Midgard," Loki continued, like he hadn't heard the question, "but the same place on Midgard, every time. It would always deposit me by the same mirror-blue lake, underneath the same gnarled grandfather of a tree. Always the same lake, always the same tree. No spell I ever cast would tell me why, or deposit me even a stride away from that spot."

"Okay," Bucky said, and the relief--that Loki had thought of him, had tried and failed instead of never trying at all--was like letting out another held breath. "As long as you tried."

*

Once everyone had eaten--which did, it turned out, include everyone, which was fine since by then Bucky had been so confounded by Loki that it must have activated his digestive system--they had a war council. The Eagle, the Unicorn, and all the smaller Animals all reported what they'd seen, who they'd talked to, and the fact that absolutely none of it had changed for the better since they'd left on the last scouting mission.

When they'd finished, the Unicorn, whose name was Jewel, said, "We have seen your luck was better than ours--yet it seems our overall position has not improved."

"No," said Tirian. "The noose continues to close around our necks. Soon they will come here, and our small sanctuary will be no more." There had been little doubt of this before, as the Calormene troops had been moving further and further west over the last few weeks. There was none remaining now that they'd left so many corpses right by the great waterfall. "We have lost whatever time we might have had. We must come up with a plan to save Narnia--or to flee it."

It was the first time anyone had said anything like that around Bucky and Loki. From the looks on everyone else's faces, it couldn't have been the first time it had come up. The only person who reacted at all was Loki, who leaned forward and said, "So go west. Take your people and leave . At least that way, you'll manage to salvage something."

"We could go, and save these few who go with us," Tirian said. "But then what of those who remain behind? Can a king leave his people to be murdered and sold into slavery? If he can, should he truly be called king?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Can a king rule over ashes? Can a wise man lead a fool who'd rather stay and meet the storm? Your choice may be between saving yourselves and sure destruction. As you've already expressed to us, even Aslan has suggested a preference that isn't the latter."

"We can't leave them," said Jill, who hadn't said much up until now. "I mean, we won't. It's not their fault they're..."

"Not terribly bright," said Eustace, when Jill must have gotten stuck looking for a diplomatic way to put it.

"There's a reason it's always been us Humans who've been meant to rule over Narnia," Tirian said (this was met by a low chorus of woofs and grumbles, all along the lines of "yes, there is, there is a reason, after all"). "If I have led my people poorly enough for them to have been led so astray, that speaks much more to me than it does to them. I will not lead the retreat while any remain behind me."

"While you stay, I will not go," said Jewel, which had the sense of being another well-worn argument.

"He's told us to leave him any number of times," Jill said. "We haven't done it then, and we won't do it now."

"We won't, either," Bucky said. It wasn't so much the first time he'd had a chance to get a word in as it was the first time he'd thought it was probably a good idea to get in before Loki could.

"Wonderful," said Loki, sitting back now, with an expression that didn't look as surprised as it could have. "So you're all noble idiots. Excellent."

"Since we know what we're not going to do, now we need to figure out what we are going to do," Bucky continued, before Loki could start a fight (though his demeanor didn't seem so much like he wanted a fight as that he hadn't really expected anything else, and now meant to sulk about it). "What's our end goal? Not what we think we have to do to get it, but where exactly do we want to be when we're done?"

This was, ironically enough, a question he'd been asked in Wakanda by his therapists, a few times each. He'd never managed to have an answer to what he wanted his life to look like when things were better, or even what country he wanted to settle in permanently by the end of things. Tirian, though, thought about it, then said, "The Calormene soldiers must be removed from Narnian soil (aside from any who will swear fealty to me and enter my service). Once that great task is done, all the rest would be within our grasp."

Bucky figured rebuilding would be a lot harder than Tirian thought. You couldn't really comprehend something like that until you'd had to do it. But it also pretty clearly wasn't what they were here for, and wasn't going to happen anyway until the soldiers were gone. "Okay. So you have to get rid of them. You don't necessarily have to kill them. Scaring them off would be enough."

"I suppose," said Tirian (who it must be said had once cared a great deal about valiance in battle, and cared a great deal less about such things now). "Do you have an idea about how we might accomplish such a feat?"

Bucky didn't, yet. It was all just spit-balling. "I don't know. Do we know what scares them?"

Now everyone looked at Emeth, who, though present at the meeting, had yet to say much. Now he said, "To a man? Nothing frightens every man. Other than witches and demons. But all the Narnian witches are slain or gone, aren't they? If any of you trucked with demons, I'd have seen it before now."

It wasn't the most helpful point, but Loki had gone still enough beside Bucky that he had the sense he must be thinking. What he was thinking, though, was a mystery, and so there was nothing for Bucky to do but to go on with his own train of thought. "So if we don't know what scares them, then we probably have to look in the other direction. We don't have enough fighters, but there are still enough people" (meaning Talking Animals, of course) "in Narnia that we could chase them out if we could get them all together. So how do we do that?"

But as much as he was trying to look for a solution, and as much as that would have usually helped, nobody else looked hopeful. Everyone looked, in fact, totally dejected.

"We've tried," said Tirian, because it is sometimes the job of a king to say what everyone knows, when none of the others wish to say it. "Oh, friends, we have tried. They're too frightened. Too confused. They have by now borne down into the confusion, so that they cannot be convinced away from it. Words alone will not help us. We've yet to think of anything that could."

At this point, they probably would have ended up going in circles for a long time, growing more and more frustrated at each repeated point. Except that was when someone said, "What if there were a Sign?"

Everyone turned to look. Just outside of their circle stood a Donkey, who must have crept closer and closer quietly enough for none to notice before now (and might have crept closer and closer on other nights, and only now dared to say anything). Bucky hadn't heard him speak before, though he'd seen Jill bending over to talk to him earlier. He hadn't put two and two together before now, but there had been a Donkey in the story Tirian had told the night before. He had played a part in it that wasn't really that much different than the part Bucky had played in his own world, for a while (though maybe with a little less direct murder, on the part of the Donkey). Now, his face was very serious, even grave, as he stood in front of them.

Eustace and Jill, who knew something about Signs, glanced at each other, then at Tirian, who looked at the Donkey and said, (in a much more diplomatic tone than he felt, for it must be admitted the Donkey was no-one's favorite person--in fact, it was only because of Jill that the others tolerated him much at all. It wasn't so much that they didn't know, by now, that he wasn't to be blamed, as that the consequences of what he'd been involved in were both terrible and still going on), "What do you mean, Puzzle?"

"Well, I admit it may be silly. I really don't know.  Shift always did tell me I was foolish. But maybe there could be a Sign we could tell people about before it happened. A Sign that would mean that Aslan is Aslan and Tash is Tash. A Sign that would mean it's the right thing for them to fight the Calormenes. Maybe they would, then."

There was, for a moment, silence. Then, in a low voice, Jewel the Unicorn said, "Sire, this could work."

The good sense of the suggestion was immediately obvious to everyone else, too. What wasn't obvious was what kind of sign it could be.

"It must be something that can happen in multiple places," said Jill. "Maybe even everywhere, all at once."

"What could we do that people would see all over the country, though?" This, glumly, was Eustace, who might once have loved shooting down absurd ideas, but certainly didn't seem to care for shooting down this one. "We'd have to cause some kind of avalanche, or something."

"Perhaps in the winter we might so do," said Tirian, who looked no happier to be shooting down ideas. "Only tell me where you would expect find the snow for such a feat in May--at least on any peak near enough to Narnia to matter."

The debate continued. Though the question didn't seem one very likely to have an answer as good as anyone may have liked, everyone was eager to talk about possibilities after weeks of failing at just about everything else they'd tried to do.

"If my brother was here, he could light up the skies," said Loki, in an aside meant only for Bucky (though neither ever guessed how close he was to something that had happened to Puzzle some weeks ago, by the very waterfall they'd been cornered by the day before).

"That'd do it," Bucky agreed.

"Before you ask, yes: This is the first time I've ever even sort of wished he were here."

"We'll figure it out," said Bucky, less because he had any ideas, and more because he had the feeling they'd always figured it out before--or at least come close enough that it didn't necessarily matter if they hadn't gotten every single detail just right along the way. "Maybe you could do something. You know, with your magic."

It was an idea the others were sure to get around to eventually. They didn't have much in the way of technology, and Loki was the only one here who knew anything about magic.

"Like what? Fill the entire realm with duplicates of myself? Even if I could make so many, I doubt I'd have the power to..."

"What?"

Loki had gone very still. His expression had gone even blanker than the rest of him had gone still. It was so obvious, and so dramatic, that soon everyone had stopped speaking, and they were all looking at him.

"Friend Loki?" asked Tirian. "Is something wrong? Or perhaps right?"

"I have an idea," said Loki, "of where we might find some snow in May. Though I doubt an avalanche will be required."

Everyone waited. It got to be unbearable after the first second or two.

"He wants you to ask," said Bucky, sure enough of this enough to let out a long sigh even though he couldn't remember any of the reasons he must have had to think so. "He likes to make a big production out of things."

"And what is your idea, then?" asked someone. It could have been any of them; all Bucky could see was Loki, looking smug, like he had the answer in the palm of his hand.

As it turned out, he sort of did.

"I may have something in my bag of tricks," said Loki, and went on to explain.

*

They went over Loki's idea up, down, and sideways. Everyone agreed it would work. If they managed to tell people what was going on beforehand, they'd all believe it when they saw it. The main thing was that anyone who didn't know what was going to happen was going to be pretty scared, whether they were a Calormene or a Narnian. So their chief objective had to be to figure out how long they'd need to get the word out to as many people as possible--and as soon as possible, because the longer it took, the more people were going to die as the Calormene army spread further through the country.

"A week it is," said Tirian many hours later, after they'd been debating the merits of anywhere from three days to a month for longer than they'd been talking about all the other logistics of the thing. "We shall begin our campaign on the morrow--for although time is of the essence, still I would not have any among us go out tonight. We have been speaking and thinking too intently on this matter all to-day, so that we will be good for little else this evening; we ought to spend this night becoming well-rested, instead."

Everyone agreed about this idea, too--for when even the most eager among them looked inward, they found they were indeed exhausted. It wasn't the physical exhaustion of the day before, but something deeper. It was a tiredness of the spirit, much longer than this one day in the making, for it had been weeks since any of them had slept well. Somehow, they all knew they would sleep deeply enough tonight to make up for much of it now that they had a plan that actually stood a chance of working.

Tirian continued: "We will leave in the morning, shortly before dawn. From this moment until then, your time is your own, though all are invited to sup with the rest of us. I think to tell tales around the fire to-night: of the Narnia that was, and may well be again."

*

Everyone, of course, came back for the stories. To listen to Tirian's tales of history was well-known to be a treat, and everyone made sure to tell Bucky and Loki so; for he was as much a historian as he was a King, and had a gift for story-telling that made you feel as if even the driest series of past events were happening to real people right in front of you and in technicolor.

That must have been why it took a few of those stories for Bucky to realize something was going on with Loki. He wasn't rolling his eyes at the way neither of them were in any of the stories. He wasn't making snide remarks, either loud enough for everyone to hear or so low that only Bucky could have made out what they were. Maybe it was actually the lack of any of these responses that made Bucky, in the middle of a story about a prince's wrestling match with a bear, glance his way.

"You all right?" he asked, because Loki suddenly looked tired. The same type of soul-deep tired that everyone who'd been here for weeks had looked; the way Bucky had only gotten a glimpse of, before.

"Not really," said Loki. "I mean yes, of course. I think perhaps it's time I retired for the night."

"Okay," Bucky said, and went with him.

As they headed toward their tent, he heard a round of laughter and applause (and, of course, woofs and stamping hooves) as the story about the bear ended, and Tirian said, "And now, I will tell the tale of the Princess Nelys and her Griffens, and the help that came to them when she blew Queen Susan's horn, very long ago and far from here. Now, the princess had long wished to journey to the tall mountains of the West--"

The sound of the story had faded to a faint buzz by the time the flap of the tent had fallen closed behind them.

"You can go back, if you'd like," Loki said. "If you're dying to hear more stories of the lost realm that's right there ."

And right then was when it was pretty obvious what this was about. It had probably been pretty obvious before, too; it just took Bucky a little longer to get to places than he thought it had before. Maybe his synapses were still figuring out how to be a person, like Princess Shuri thought; maybe it was that the rest of him had gotten a little slower to make up for the way his reflexes and speed and strength had increased. Or maybe it was just that instinct and randomly knowing things didn't go as far as actually being able to remember his life before would have.

"I'm sorry," he said, thinking about the story Loki had told, of a country that was gone, burned to ashes. Thinking about what Loki's last months must have been like, on a ship carrying him and just a few others toward what might or might not be shelter. They'd had no choice but to go; they could never take Asgard back, the way King Tirian and the others were trying to take Narnia back.

"Are you?"

"Well, that's a stupid question," said Bucky, which was, somehow, enough to get a little smile out of Loki. It was dark enough by now that it wasn't so much a smile Bucky could see, so much as one he knew was there from the set of Loki's shoulders and the tilt of his head, and even the way his hair was hanging.

"Is it really?"

"What do you want me to say? 'I don't really care, I'm just an asshole'?"

"Well, it would give me an excuse to stab you."

Bucky thought Loki must have smiled a little bigger at that, but by the time he made a little green flame between them, he just looked tired and serious again. 

"Wanna talk about it?" Bucky asked, figuring Loki probably wouldn't, then that he probably would, and, finally, that either option was just as possible as the other.

"Not particularly," Loki said. He seemed to think for a moment, then added, in a way that sounded a lot less like talking about it and a lot more like telling a story, "Last week, we very nearly ran out of food aboard the Statesman ." 

Loki was a good storyteller, but in a different way than Tirian, mostly because the story was all about himself and how put-upon he was, and how everybody else annoyed the shit out of him. Still, though, it was all pretty hilarious, especially by the time he tried to sell his brother for the corpse of what sounded like a giant reindeer, but with tentacles (apparently those were the tastiest part). 

By the time he got to the end, with an un-sold Thor and a giant reindeer squid thing they'd more or less made off with and then had to find the room for, Bucky could just picture the whole thing. Loki, on the deck of a ship, the sun shining off his hair. Probably gesturing with knives. He looked a lot younger and less stressed in the picture, and didn't have those circles under his eyes, which was what clued Bucky in on thinking this particular imagining might actually be part memory. If so, it was a good one, and the warm feeling that filled his chest translated almost perfectly to the feeling he'd had in his chest ever since they'd left the gathering around the fire. The difference was that the feeling he had now was a lot more painful. Loki'd been through so much since whenever the memory must have been. He was still in the middle of going through it, even more than Bucky was back in his own world. Even here, in Narnia, he was in the middle.

"We've still got half the thing on board," Loki said. "I was sick of it after the first meal, but of course there are twenty feasts yet to go. And now I've come to Narnia to eat yet more roasted venison."

"At least it's less fishy," said Bucky. "I mean, I assume."

"I suppose so."

The painful feeling had expanded in Bucky's chest until it had become something else altogether. Something he wasn't at all sure of the status of. Had they ever talked about it? Ever acted on it? Had he ever asked Loki, and Loki had said no? Or had he asked, and Loki had said something else? Was it something they'd flirted around, or something they'd mutually agreed to just ignore? All he knew for sure was that the question must have been older than he was, in a lot of ways.

Now that the story was over, they'd both gone quiet. The silence in the tent was loaded, the buzz from outside the tent somehow both louder and quieter than it should have been. Loki seemed to be aware of it now, must have heard it or saw it, or something; he was looking at Bucky so intently it would probably have made him pretty nervous, if Bucky hadn't been so glad to see that, for right now, he didn't look so sad anymore.

Whatever might or might not have happened between them before, there was no way Loki couldn't decipher the way Bucky was looking at him now. He had to be able to see it. And if he saw it, and he wasn't turning away, then what that look meant was that he wanted to. Or maybe Bucky was just making things up inside his head, rewriting a history he didn't remember into the one he wanted to be there--because Loki was the one who'd helped him get back the memories he had, and Loki had been so patient with him, and now Loki was the one who was hurting (again), and if he felt the same way then that meant Bucky might be able to actually help--

For a second, he thought it was a sure thing, and in the next second, he was sure he was an idiot. But the funny thing was that between one second and the other, they'd gotten closer to each other, and Loki's head was turning one way, and Bucky's was turning another, and he didn't know half enough about this to be sure, and he needed to be sure if he was going to do it, because it wasn't like this was the kind of thing you could just walk back, and it wasn't like it wasn't the kind of thing that could ruin a friendship--

It wasn't instinct that made him do it, and it wasn't memory, either. It was want, along with that bone-deep ancestral desire to grab onto life in the face of death and other bullshit. And maybe it was just the belief that where there was a shadow, there had to be an object casting it; that the way Loki was looking at him meant there had to be something there. 

Whatever it was, it was Bucky who closed the distance between them. His lips brushed against Loki's, and he suddenly knew he'd made a mistake. Misread him, probably--he'd barely been a person for seventy years, so that was easy enough to do. Taken advantage of the situation, definitely. Fucked all the way up.

He drew back.

"Loki, I'm--"

But the shadow who was Loki didn't wait to hear his apology. One second, Bucky's lips could still feel where Loki's lips had been; the next second, Loki's lips were on his again. There was nothing tentative about this kiss. It was, in fact, more than a little like being kissed by a hurricane. One of Loki's hands in his hair, the other clutching at his shirt, all of Loki pressed against him, so that it was only moments before they were lying together on Bucky's sleeping roll. Then, for whatever reason, the storm passed, or seemed to; the kisses, though still far from tentative, softened--and so did Loki's grip on Bucky, and on his shirt.

They kept kissing until they were out of breath, and until Loki's long fingers were tapping on Bucky's hip (how or when his hand had gotten down there, or when Bucky's own flesh hand had gotten around the back of Loki's shirt, so that he could feel the muscles in Loki's back, he didn't know). 

Loki pulled away, just far enough to say, with his warm breath on Bucky's face, "So you do remember how it was between us."

"Not really," said Bucky, knowing he had to be honest even if Loki took it the wrong way (that he was the kind of guy to take things the wrong way wasn't really in doubt, nevermind what memories Bucky had or didn't have). "I was guessing. Or maybe more like hoping. I really wasn't sure."

"Ah." Hard to say what connotation that one syllable had; it hadn't come out flat, exactly, but what it was was neutral. Loki's face probably was, too, but he wasn't at the right angle for Bucky to see. Then he said, "I guessed, once," and kissed Bucky again.

Loki was a good kisser. How Bucky came to this conclusion was harder to figure out than the conclusion itself. He certainly couldn't remember kissing anyone, but he must have done enough of it himself to have some idea how to judge good versus bad versus new to the idea. Loki wasn't either of the second two. It was something in the way they never managed to knock their teeth together, something about how the nose smashes were few and far between, and never seemed to come as a surprise when they did happen. It probably didn't have anything to do with the growing heat, low in Bucky's stomach and spreading; he'd have gotten there at about the same time no matter what kind of kisser Loki had been. It was something about the enthusiasm Loki was doing the kissing with, caution to the wind, so that Bucky couldn't help but to respond. He didn't want to help it.

Their shirts got lost, somewhere in the middle of the kissing. Bucky would never even remember taking his off, he was so caught up in it by then--though he would remember helping Loki get his off, an annoying struggle that ended with Loki tossing it over his shoulder and pressing Bucky back to the sleeping roll to keep on kissing him. Then Loki's bare skin was against his, miles of it, and he didn't seem to mind the places Bucky's flesh hand roamed. Hell, he didn't even seem to mind the metal one, judging by the little shiver he gave when Bucky ran his left hand down the line of his back.

Loki's hands roamed, too, fingers letting go of Bucky's hair to trail down to his chest (tracing so casually over his scarred left shoulder that it was a sure bet he was a lot more focused on it than he was acting like--not that Bucky was about to bring attention to it), and then to his stomach, making Bucky's abdominal muscles jump nervously and goosebumps start rising everywhere. 

Meanwhile, something else was rising, too, and it didn't take long for Loki to notice.

"I could," he said, his breath warm against the side of Bucky's face, brushing the skin just above the waistline of Bucky's pants, the furthest down they'd been yet. "If you'd like."

"Uh," Bucky said, and what he hadn't realized, what he must not have remembered, was how hard it was to think when someone (when Loki) was this close to him. "Yeah." Maybe there was something else he should have said, but if there was, he couldn't think of it. "Yeah. If you want to."

It wasn't surprising that Loki started to undo the front of Bucky's pants then. What was surprising was that his hands were shaking. Distantly, Bucky figured there had to be something else there. Some context he was missing, and that Loki wasn't sharing. Maybe it was all the things they'd been through before they'd found each other again. Maybe it was something else. In the moment, though, what he couldn't help but focus on was that it must have meant Loki wanted him a whole lot more than he'd let on, was overcome with the totality of the things Bucky knew were there for him, too, an entire glacier underneath seemingly calm water.

There wasn't much to say about it, there in the dark (the green light having long since dwindled to a tiny speck and then to nothing at all), so Bucky kissed the hell out of Loki, instead. He kissed him so hard that for a second Loki stopped messing around with the fastening of his pants in order to hold onto his waist instead. Then, when they broke apart, his hand slipped into the front of Bucky's pants, and wrapped around what he'd found there.

It was the first time anyone else had touched him like this since he'd been the Soldier; it was almost the first time he'd been touched at all since then, too, because the times it had even occurred to him had been few and far between. He hadn't even thought of jerking himself off until about six months before Wakanda. Every single time, it had been quick. He'd been letting off steam, getting from point A to point B as fast as humanly possible. Mostly, this had meant jerking off in the shower in such a way that the showers weren't more than a minute or two longer than they would have been anyway.

The way Loki touched him was different. Slow and languorous. His hands weren't shaking now, but Bucky was wound up so tight that he thought he might have been shaking himself.

"We didn't make it quite this far, our other time," said Loki. His voice wasn't shaking, either, now that he was in control. The entire world had narrowed down to the friction between them as his hand stroked Bucky, not hard or fast enough to get him off (or wouldn't have been alone in the shower, but maybe all bets were off here), but more than enough to make him unable to think of anything else. "Do you recall how you like it?"

"Uh," Bucky said, and definitely had his wires too crossed to manage more words for a few seconds. "Not really. But this is good."

"Ah," said Loki, with a low, breathless laugh. His hand kept going in the same torturous rhythm for an endless few moments. "I suspect my mouth would be better."

How he'd gotten Bucky's pants down around mid-thigh, Bucky didn't know. He must have helped, must have angled his hips to make it easier, or even helped Loki push them down, but he didn't remember doing it. It was the kind of not remembering that could have panicked him, except for the part of him that did remember: not this, not exactly what had happened, but how it was to be so focused on what your body wanted that the way you got there was on autopilot, instinct taking you there without even informing you of what it was doing until you'd arrived. It was the good kind of forgetting, if there was one.

"Yeah," Bucky said, after another second, when what Loki was saying had penetrated the haze of lust just enough to make it flare up even more. He would have come right then and there if he hadn't put so much effort into not doing that.

"What do you say?"

Later, Bucky would figure out Loki had wanted him to say 'please.' But that wasn't really a part of his vocabulary at the moment. All that really seemed to be was, "Loki, c'mon."

"All right." Another breathless laugh gusted against Bucky's cheek. 

Loki's hand retreated, which Bucky would have protested if he hadn't been totally aware of what was about to happen next. Instead of that, he tried to get it together, to brace himself so he wouldn't come the second Loki started touching him again.

Meanwhile, Loki had moved down his body, a shadow in the dark until he wasn't: suddenly, there was another light, a little green flame, dimmer than the one they'd had before, just bright enough for them to see each other as more than shadows. Just enough for Bucky to be able to see the look on Loki's face--a greedy, eager expression that was the opposite of the grumpy weariness he'd had on display before. Then Loki smiled, and the only way that smile could be described was 'wicked.' And then he took Bucky into his mouth, and the smile was gone--though not from his eyes, which shone with the same greediness from before.

Loki was as good with his mouth as he had been at kissing, or maybe even better. Not that it would have mattered if he hadn't been. Bucky hadn't been prepared for this. He'd barely thought about sex as far as he could remember; he definitely hadn't thought about having it with Loki, nevermind the specific things they might get up to. He hadn't thought about touching Loki, or being touched in return. Getting that far had been beyond him, when he was in his own world without Loki. It would be hard to figure out why that should have been, later, when there was time to think in the first place. As for right now, it was impossible to think in the first place. Not with Loki...with his mouth...with what he was...

In his shower sessions, Bucky had always wanted to finish as soon as possible. Here, now, he wanted this to last. He wasn't sure how to make that happen. He wasn't even really capable of words, much less of telling Loki to slow down. But Loki must have gotten the idea, somewhere between Bucky's hands frantically grabbing at him, his flesh hand grasping at Loki's hair and his metal hand grabbing at his shoulder, and the sound he was making, not words but a low, shocked sound that might've had the word 'wait' written somewhere behind it.

Loki was so good at this, and part of what he was good at was keeping Bucky on the edge even when that was basically where he'd started. Every time Bucky felt himself tensing up, sure he was about to come, Loki somehow managed to settle him down just enough so that he could take him back to the edge again.

Eventually, he stopped wanting not to come, in favor of wanting to come more than he could imagine wanting anything else, in that moment.

"Loki," he managed, and Loki must have gotten the idea this time, too, somehow, because instead of bringing Bucky back down, he kept him going. To the edge, and over it, a white-hot pleasure that was almost painful, and Bucky hovered there for seconds longer than he'd thought he would, everything winding tighter and tighter, and for a moment he thought maybe he wasn't going to be able to come, that he wasn't going to be able to let go that much even here, even with Loki--but then he saw the look in Loki's eyes, an eagerness that said he, at least, had no doubt whatsoever what was about to happen. He came after all, with a groan (muffled, because even here he couldn't be entirely unaware of where they were, or that the others were going to hear them if they got too loud). Loki swallowed around him, which he hadn't expected; and when Bucky had caught his breath, he saw that he looked smug as well, which he definitely would have expected if he'd ever really thought about it before jumping into the deep end. He was also flushed, and breathing just as hard as Bucky was, even though Bucky hadn't even touched him yet.

"Hey," Bucky said, leaning up and kissing him (noticing the bitter taste of Loki's mouth, but distantly, like something that was going to be interesting to think about later, but couldn't be the most important thing right now), sliding his flesh hand into the front of Loki's trousers. Even though he'd just finished, the feel of Loki's hot, hard dick in his hand was enough to make another bolt of lust shoot through him. It was even enough to make his own dick twitch, a little, even though there was no way he was getting it up again anytime soon (or at least, he was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen. It wasn't like he'd ever tried to). "Yeah?"

"Your eloquence in this state astounds me," said Loki, which might've come off rude if he'd said it at any other time or in any other way, but seemed to have been said too fondly to bother getting offended about, here and now, in their tent, together. He kissed Bucky back, so passionately that even though he hadn't answered the question, Bucky figured it counted as approval of what he was doing.

"You've got enough of that for both of us," Bucky said, right when he was starting to feel like he had the upper hand for once. Mostly because he could string a sentence together now, and Loki...well, Loki was even more flushed now, and kind of shiny, too, and had this glazed look in his eyes that said he wasn't really seeing Bucky at the moment, anymore than Bucky had really been seeing him, there at the end. It was all because of the movement of Bucky's hand, the jacking motion he'd used on himself every once in a while (only not as quick or as rough as that had been; he'd taken a page out of Loki's book, and was going slower, keeping an eye on Loki's face to help gauge what he should be doing next). 

He kept going right up until Loki's hand wrapped around his wrist, stilling him.

"Am I not--"Bucky said, but was quieted by Loki's mouth on his, a long, steamy kiss that left no doubt that Loki still wanted to.

"I'd like to try something else." Loki's breath once again warmed the side of Bucky's face. His hand trailed down Bucky's side, around to his back, and then down his backside, sending sparks up and down Bucky's spine, and making his dick twitch even more wildly than it had before (which was enough to make him have even more questions about the likelihood of getting it up again).

"Yeah? Like what?"

Loki's lips brushed his ear. They may as well have set him on fire. "Let me have you," he said, reaching still farther down.

Bucky could have asked what he meant. He might have had to, if it hadn't been so obvious--if, as Loki said it, his finger hadn't brushed against the part of Bucky he wanted to have. It was startling, and...different, and Bucky couldn't help but shift a little, not away from Loki so much as...

"You'll like it," Loki said, in a tone that might once have started out smooth and seductive, but came out as more of a croak. He was panting harder now than he had been before, when Bucky had been touching him, or even when he'd had Bucky's dick down his throat for a while. "I swear you will."

His finger, which was slick with something where it had been dry the moment before, slipped into Bucky. Just a little, not even past the first knuckle, but Bucky still gasped, and shifted some more--again not away, but spreading his legs even more than he had before, when Loki's fingers had first brushed against that part of him.

"You'll like it," Loki said again, and Bucky didn't remember if he'd ever had a lover look at him with that kind of ragged desire before, but still he thought he must not have (and was, in that, correct). "I'll make certain of that."

Bucky already liked it. For the first few seconds, he hadn't been sure, but now that his nerve endings were done being surprised, everything was lighting up in a way that let him know this wasn't going to be a problem, whether or not it was something he'd ever thought about before, whether or not he ended up liking it as much as Loki was obviously going to. "Okay," he said.

Loki kissed him again, and as he did, his finger pushed in further, and started to stroke Bucky inside, at different angles and at different depths. At first, it was nice, but not actually nicer than Loki's lips on Bucky's lips, neck, shoulder. Then, he started to press down on a certain spot. At first, that was only a little better than it had been before. But then something started to grow, an arousal above and beyond what he'd felt before, coming from inside instead of seeming to center from his dick. Soon it was Bucky who was panting, and squirming, too, and even harder than he'd been before; and once again it was Loki who looked smug as hell about the whole thing.

"I could make you come again, just like this," he said, even hoarser than he'd been before. "But I think I'd rather--"

"Yeah," said Bucky, seeing stars at least as much at the idea of what else Loki could put in him as because of what Loki's finger was doing. "Yeah."

Loki's finger slipped out of him, but Bucky didn't have much time to worry about feeling empty, because as soon as Loki's hands were both free, he was spreading Bucky's legs even wider, and angling his hips the way he wanted them (a pair of large, fluffy pillows had appeared out of nowhere, perfect for this task; meanwhile, the rest of their clothes had flashed off them, and were currently in a pile over by the door), and then he and Bucky together were guiding his dick between Bucky's legs, and then he was pressing in, and--

God, he was big, huge, and at first it was actually painful, where nothing about his finger had been painful. But then he was still, inside Bucky, letting him get used to the way he felt, until the pain had ebbed to more of a low burn, and the arousal (and Bucky's erection) had started to come back, where it had flagged just a little in the meantime.

"Ready?" he murmured, in a tone that gave the idea that Bucky had better be, because he, Loki, had been waiting for quite long enough.

"Nope," Bucky said, not laughing so much as panting happily against Loki's shoulder. "Just gonna have to stay like this forever. Or, you know, give up and try something el--"

Loki rolled his eyes, and in the same moment pulled back out an inch or two, then pushed back in. He didn't ask any more questions. His first few thrusts were tentative, like his first few strokes had been--but then he found the angle he must have wanted, the part of Bucky that had been slow to wake up before, but was still on the edge now. The sound that came out of Bucky, a low groan, must have told him what he'd found; the way Bucky suddenly clutched at his upper arms, heedless of hurting him with his metal hand or his extra supersoldier strength, must have told him more of the same. The next time he pushed in, he brushed against the same spot, and hit it the next time, too, and the next, unerringly even as he picked up speed and started to fuck into Bucky in earnest.

There was no other word for what this was. Fucking. Bucky was being fucked. Loki was fucking him, and it was the best thing he'd ever felt. It had to be, no matter what he remembered or didn't remember. As Loki's breathing grew more and more ragged, Bucky found himself moaning more and more often, until he could hardly tell where one sound started and the next began. He was on the edge, just like he had been when Loki had gone down on him, hovering over it, climbing higher and higher in the air with the knowledge that the higher he went, the harder he was going to fall--

Except he didn't. No matter how much he wanted to, how close to the edge he got, how much Loki wasn't even trying to hold him back this time, it just wasn't happening.

"C'mon," Bucky managed between moans somewhere, to the point where he was happy to beg if that was what Loki wanted, to the point where he'd promise all sorts of things, if only he could come again. "Loki--"

Loki, who'd been biting his lip for the last couple minutes of this, reached between their bodies and wrapped his hand around Bucky's dick--

And that was all it took for Bucky to come after all, stripes of white across his stomach and chest, and all over Loki, and then Loki was moaning, too, and his thrusts were erratic, not aiming at anything in particular anymore, and then he pushed into Bucky, harder than he had before, and let out a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and a moan. For a moment, he was tense and thrumming above Bucky, before collapsing half on top of him and half to the side, and then rolling onto his back.

It took at least five minutes for them to get their breath. Maybe longer. Bucky hadn't had a workout this strenuous in any of what he remembered of his life.

The first thing out of Loki's mouth at that point was, "You should have told me you couldn't come with only internal stimulation." He rolled over on his side and looked at Bucky slyly, like the cat who'd gotten the canary. "Unless that was your first time being penetrated, of course."

There were things you remembered and didn't; and then there were the things you just knew, whether or not you had the evidence. "I've never been with another guy before," Bucky said, feeling abruptly shy about it. It seemed like a silly or even stupid feeling to be having, after what they'd just done, but his face turned hot under Loki's scrutiny anyway.

"Ah. I suppose that's forgivable, then." Loki's hand trailed through the mess on Bucky's stomach. When it trailed back up to his chest, every part of either of them was abruptly dry and clean (not even slightly sticky or tacky the way anyone would have expected). "I told you you would like it?"

"Yeah, well, you didn't exactly specify how much," said Bucky inanely, but Loki must have gotten what he meant, judging by the wicked grin that flashed across his face. But it was only there for a second, or at least only visible for a second, because a second was about how long it took for Bucky to decide he wasn't done kissing him, and to get back on that.

A few minutes later, when the light was off, and they were smushed together inside the bedroll, and Bucky was already half asleep, Loki said, " Do you regret it?"

This didn't seem to have anything to do with what they'd just done, but it was the tone of Loki's voice that clued Bucky in to what was going on here. It was the grief in it, both older and closer, somehow, than the grief Loki had for the lost country of Asgard; it sounded to Bucky like the grief that sometimes came into Steve's voice when he was talking about something from their shared past. There was something from Before here, and Loki was bringing it up now for whatever reason--and whatever it was, Bucky wasn't going to like it.

"Nah," he said glibly, deliberately misunderstanding for not anywhere near the first time, but for the first time with Loki. "I'm glad we did this. Seems like it's been coming for a while, right?"

"...Yes." Loki was quiet for a minute, not quite long enough for Bucky to start drifting off again. "Would you like me to tell you to what I was referring?"

That was more upfront than Bucky had expected Loki to be about anything important. Which this obviously was. Still, though, there was nothing about it being important, or sad, or from their past, that meant he had to agree to know about it right now. Not when things were so good here, in this tent, where they were.

"Not unless you want to tell me," he said, because even in the midst of not wanting to know, there was the knowledge that Loki might need to tell him whatever it was; that he might need to tell it more than Bucky needed not to hear it, and that if he did, then the right thing to do was to let him. Or even if it wasn't the right thing, if it was the thing Loki needed, Bucky would have to go along, because that would be better than lying here knowing he'd hurt Loki, somehow, by not wanting to know.

"...You know, I really don't."

"Okay then," said Bucky.

They lay there together, not kissing or caressing, but still somehow feeling even closer than if they had been, maybe even closer than when they'd been literally connected.

In the distance came the sound of many voices laughing, and of clapping (both the human kind and the other kind, which in this case was composed of quite a lot of stamping hooves and low, enthusiastic woofs).

"Must've been a good story," said Bucky, only now realizing that the time they'd spent together in the tent really hadn't been longer than a good-length, well-told Narnian tale.

"Must have been," Loki agreed.

A little while later, when Bucky was nearly asleep, he could have sworn he heard someone say, "I don't."

*

The next day, everyone else picked up and headed out. Tirian and the kids, the unicorn and the horses and the donkey, the dogs and the mice and the voles and the squirrels, in several different groups that headed out in several different directions. They were going back to Narnia, where they would spend the next week spreading the news about the coming Sign.

As for Bucky and Loki, they stayed in the camp in the valley. It wasn't so much that everyone else couldn't have used them as that they were the most important part of the plan. If everyone else was captured, or even killed, the land of Narnia might still make it as long as Bucky and Loki were around to do Loki's thing a week from now. If they weren't, it would be just another lie everyone had been told. They would have failed. Narnia and its neighboring county of Archenland would be the newest Calormene territories. Before too long, the only people who lived in those countries at all might be Calormenes.

So, it was down to waiting. Bucky was good at waiting. Even his years in Wakanda, spent not waiting so much as healing, hadn't taken it out of his bones: the ability to sit until something happened, or until an appointed time. Ready to jump into action if something unexpected happened, but equally ready not to, if nothing did. 

Loki was another story. He paced and muttered, and bitched and moaned, and complained about the food and other supplies they'd been left with, and criticized every single part of the plan, including the parts of it that had been his idea in the first place (not that he seemed to remember as much when he was in the middle of criticizing). And when he was done with that, he turned to Bucky and said, "You know, there's still nothing keeping us here. My offer still stands. I'd say it's even more attractive than before, considering there's no one left to watch us go, or to even guess at our destination."

"It's been half an hour since they left," Bucky said, starting to be annoyed. It took a lot, these days, all things considered, but he was getting there. "We're not going to run away together after waiting half an hour."

"Very well," said Loki. "How would you prefer we occupy ourselves in the meantime?"

"Not that I don't have a suggestion, but you'd have to be less annoying first," said Bucky.

"Oh? Why is that, pray tell?"

"Because I don't think I can get it up when you're complaining all the time."

(This was a lie, of course. Bucky had been half-hard ever since he'd realized what they could be getting up to in broad daylight with everyone else gone. But there was nothing saying he had to tell Loki that much, if telling him something else instead would make him calm the hell down.)

So that was how they occupied themselves for basically all of the next three days, at least whenever they weren't eating, or hunting fresh game or picking berries to add to the hardtack and harder cheese the others had left for them, or fishing, or cleaning their catches or kills; all of which took up quite a bit of time, but couldn't really be avoided, either.

*

They'd have occupied themselves in the same way for the whole week, except that just before dawn on the fourth day, Bucky woke up to the sound of footsteps. If they had been the footsteps of people who were trying to sneak up on him, he'd have been on his feet and out of the tent with a sword in his hand, and whoever it was wouldn't have stood a chance. As it was, they seemed like the footsteps of people trying to go fast, with enough stumbling to suggest they'd been going pell-mell through the woods for quite some time before now.

Bucky was still on his feet and out of the tent, but he didn't have his sword out. It was a good thing, too, because the footsteps belonged to the kids.

"What's wrong?" Bucky asked, at the same moment Loki (who'd followed on his heels with a knife in his hand and four or five more at the ready) asked, "What's happened?"

It was obvious something was, and that something had.

"We were found out," said Jill.

"Someone finked on us--"

"We don't know that--"

"Or else it was pure dumb luck they found us (but I still don't believe it)."

"At any rate, they captured Tirian, and had cornered most of the others near Beaversdam. We managed to slip away, but haven't any idea what's happened to everyone else."

"Taken prisoner, most like," said Eustace, with the air of a usual pessimist who had been very firmly trying to convince himself and another that the news was less than the worst it could be. "They'll have been moved by now. We don't know where."

Bucky glanced at Loki, whose face might have been doing something a moment before, but was blankly impassive now. Still, though, Bucky thought he couldn't be the only one whose heart had dropped into his stomach, hearing all that.

"It's not even the most important thing," said Jill. "Which is that we've been followed."

"They've got patrols near the waterfall--have had them ever since the battle, probably--and they saw us. If they're not behind us now, they'll be coming later, with reinforcements."

"Time to pack," said Bucky. The way forward was clear. It was the same thing they'd been supposed to do if no one came back: Find a way into Narnia, and finish their part of the plan. It was the only thing they could do that had a chance of saving anyone who was left.

In reality, there was almost nothing to pack. But after a hurried discussion, they decided it would be better if it wasn't completely obvious that this was where their camp had been. So with a wave of his hand, Loki disappeared all the tents, and all the food and other supplies stored in the cave. Then, because there wasn't much Loki could do about the grass that had been cropped down by the people who ate grass, Bucky and the kids stamped down a lot of the grass to the west side of the valley, to make it look like everyone had moved on from here and camped somewhere else. It wasn't much, but it was the best they could do.

That done, they headed out, sliding into the woods to the south, where there was a discreet little path they could follow, and that the Calormene soldiers would never find (even Bucky or Loki wouldn't have found it; it had been Jill, a day or two before they'd arrived in Narnia, who had managed to pick it out. For of course she had spent quite some time once traipsing through a part of the world that had no paths whatsoever--only the occasional road you wouldn't want to be found on--and could easily pick out the sort of path that might have been helpful to her and Eustace back then). It went further to the south for a ways, winding through the trees and underbrush, which was at some points so thick that the kids had to stoop to get beneath it, and Bucky and Loki had to crawl (Loki looked murderous, but was unable to bitch as much as he must have wanted to, considering they were currently trying to sneak). Then, when they were nearly to the edge of the valley, it twisted down around to a more easterly direction. They followed it for a while longer before it ended, far enough from the waterfall not to be able to see it, but close enough that they could hear the roar of the water as a more distant thing. From there they continued east and south, still following Jill, who among them was easily the best navigator on dry land, even if Bucky figured Loki would have been better if they'd been trying to sail somewhere on a ship.

They weren't headed in a random direction, but to somewhere very specific. Tirian and Jewel and the others had given them the directions before they'd gone. Three-quarters of what they'd talked about had been making sure Bucky and Loki knew where to go, in the event any of the people who were supposed to take them there didn't make it back. Well, Tirian hadn't, and Jewel hadn't, but the kids had been two of the chosen navigators, as well; and Jill, who, if you remember, had once neglected to remember a much shorter and more to the point series of directions, had memorized these with an intensity neither Bucky nor Loki could have matched. So there was no doubt at all of where they were going, really.

*

The problem didn't end up being how to remember the directions, but how to follow them. In one place, several hours after the waterfall was no longer audible to anyone in their group, they had to take a detour to get around a Calormene scouting party. Half an hour after that, they had to do it again. Forty five minutes after that, they had to do it yet again. Three hours after that, they were out of alternate directions, and only had a basic sense of direction left to get them there. Even that would have been fine--it wasn't like they had to be in a hurry, after all; everyone who'd been told about the Sign they were going to make had also been told they couldn't be sure when precisely it would come, but only that it would be soon--except that, a few hours and maybe a dozen more adjustments after that , Bucky and Loki both caught on to something in the same moment, and stopped and looked at each other.

"What is it?" Jill and Eustace asked together, neither having heard what both Bucky and Loki had heard, but both being adept in the art of seeing adults give each other significant looks that kids weren't supposed to catch on to.

"We've got another troop of them, coming from that way," said Bucky, gesturing to the south.

"Oh, not another one," said Jill. "I suppose we'll go--oh, no."

"We're well and truly surrounded, aren't we," said Eustace, and put his hand to the hilt of his sword. "Well, chaps, I'll hold them off while you--"

"No, you won't," said Bucky, interrupting just as Jill was pretty clearly about to jump in and insist she'd stay with him no matter what he thought about it. "You're a kid. That's not happening."

This low-voiced argument might have grown both louder and hissier, and brought them into contact with one or more groups of Calormene soldiers before they were going to be anyway--except that then, Loki said, "No need. We'll use the Tesseract."

"The what?" Eustace said, at the same time Jill said, "What's that?"

The discussion of all Loki's magical odds and ends hadn't all happened in front of the kids. They'd been busy planning what they were going to be doing in Narnia around the same time Bucky and Loki had been going over their contingency plans with Tirian--quietly and secretly, so there'd be a minimum of people to give it all away if anyone got caught.

"A magical artifact," said Loki now. "It creates portals--doors, so to speak--but is not precisely subtle about it. Perhaps even less so here in Narnia than in my own world."

"Yeah, which is why we didn't use it to send you guys into the middle of the country before," said Bucky, which was essentially the same conclusion the three of them had come to when they'd talked about this the last time. "It would've been a dead giveaway. But it doesn't seem like we've got a lot of choices now."

"No," said Loki, and instead of talking about it anymore, did something with his hand, and then was holding a big shining blue cube. There really wasn't anything subtle about it. It was too big and glowing for that; and it was radiating something that made the hairs stand up on Bucky's arms, and would have had him taking a step back if it hadn't been for all the training that had conditioned him to not move in combat situations unless he'd consciously decided to move or to let instinct or reflex move him. The others must have felt it, too, or something similar, at least; Eustace had half-drawn his sword, and Jill had half-nocked her arrow to her bow.

The Tesseract, whatever else it was, was undeniably magic. Undeniably very strong magic, that pulsed through the tiny glade they had stopped in. That pulsed beyond it, because for the first time they heard a voice louder than a low murmur, to the south and then to the east: an exclamation, and then another, and the sounds of soldiers turning toward the place where they were.

"Not a lot of time for showing off," murmured Bucky.

Loki flashed him a little smile--one of the genuine, surprising ones Bucky was starting to get fond of--and then there was a low whooshing sound, and then something else blue and glowing was opening in front of them. On the other side, there was more green, more forest; on the other side, there might be more or less enemy soldiers, more or less safety.

In front of them was the portal. Behind them, and all around, there were more sounds that meant they really, really needed to go.

Jill and Eustace looked at each other. It was the kind of look where people came to decisions without having to talk; it wasn't the kind of discussion anyone else seemed to be invited to. Then Eustace said, "Well. Ladies fir--" and then Jill said, "Don't you dare," and then Eustace said, "All right," and then they stepped through pretty much together (and if they were holding hands as they went, there was no one who was concerned enough about it to notice).

As soon as they were on the other side, Bucky glanced at Loki, waiting to see if there was a trick to this--if he'd wanted to get the kids out of the way, if he had some other trick up his sleeve to get rid of the soldiers. But all Loki did was say, "Hurry up. I'm not actually certain how long I can contain its power."

And so Bucky followed the kids through. It really was just like walking through a door, except for the part where it seemed to sizzle around you, somewhere behind your ears, and the way you felt the universe doing flips somewhere above your stomach and below your chest as you passed from being in one place to being in another. As soon as his right foot had come to rest beside his left foot on the other side, Loki was next to him. A moment later, he'd disappeared the Tesseract again.

What was left then was...silence. Not the total, terrifying silence of an occupied country, but a softer, calmer one. It was the same kind of quiet you got in a church (and for a moment, Bucky could very nearly remember having been in a church, until the next moment, when he couldn't again, yet another of the things he knew without being able to remember it). They were in a glade or clearing, deep in the woods somewhere judging by how tall and close-together the trees surrounding it were. It had the feel of a wild place, but lacked a sense of chaos, as if the honeysuckle and other blooms sprouting up from everywhere had never been planted by any hand, but had been planned regardless; a place that hadn't been tended by the hand of any man or beast, but had been tended nonetheless. And in the center of a clearing, there was a mound upon a hill, with a little doorway that faced the spot where they stood.

"This place has certainly changed," muttered Loki, an aside that seemed to be meant for Bucky in the way more and more of his asides had the last time they'd been here: like he didn't expect Bucky to remember, but wouldn't exactly mind if it turned out he did.

"I don't hear any soldiers," Bucky said. They'd known chances were low any Calormene soldiers would be nearby--invaders were apparently never too keen on being around here, which was supposed to be the most magical place in Narnia, or maybe even its heart depending on who you talked to--but it was good to have it confirmed. It wasn't just what his senses were telling him, either. It was the feel of the thing, a peacefulness he'd learned to pick up on on his walks the last time he was in Narnia. His wood-sense might not have been amazing, but he had enough of it to know that much.

"No," said Loki. "There won't be any soldiers."

The way he said it was so sure. Even if Bucky had wanted to argue, he wouldn't have been able to, because of the bone-deep sense that Loki was right.

Together, they approached the little doorway. If Bucky had thought about it, he might have been surprised that he went first, with the other following. Loki was the one who'd been here before; Jill and Eustace were the ones who knew all the stories. If Tirian had been here, he was the one who knew the whole history of Narnia, who remembered everything. Bucky only sort of knew anything about it, based on what other people had said, and the way they'd said it. He should probably have gone last. Except he didn't think of it, not until later; and even then he knew, as soon as the thought had occurred to him, that he would have been wrong to think it. That things had happened the way they were meant to, in the order they were supposed to, even if it had all been nothing more than a hope after all.

Bucky went first, and when they got through the doorway, they found a maze of corridors, halls going this way and that, with no hints about which way they were supposed to go. But although you would have expected there to be some sort of conversation or debate about it, there wasn't even any hesitation. Bucky barely knew where they were, but somehow he knew exactly where they were going. It wasn't something he felt so much as something that just was. Right here, left there, straight after that; twists and turns he'd have committed easily to memory if they'd ever been put to him, but that must never have been (at least if Loki was right about them never having been here when it was like this--which, of course, you know he was). 

And in the end, they came to the central chamber, larger than any of the others they'd come to (for of course there had been some, for what that place was most like was an ant's hive, if the ants were long gone and had left pictures of lions drawn all over the walls). In the middle of it was what they had come to find: a table made of stone, which at some point had been split in two. You knew just by looking at it that it was old, old; Bucky knew it, not with a jolt of memory but with something deeper and lower. He knew what it had looked like before it had been split; he knew, though he had never been told, that it had once had deep writing etched into it, runes which had been washed away by all the time since.

"We were here first," he said to Loki, meaning before the hill and the mound on top of the hill, and who knew what else. "Weren't we?"

"We were," said Loki, not sounding pleased or displeased, but as if he were distracted by something greater than Bucky's question--which of course he must have been, for everyone in the chamber could feel the low pulse of the magic that dwelt there. Wild and something other than wild; neither benevolent nor malevolent nor tame, but something which might be willing to ally with them for a time, if only they knew the right way to come at it.

"Are there any words we have to say?" asked Eustace.

"No," said Loki. "But we're likely to have better results if we face the east."

Why this should have been, Bucky couldn't have said--but he felt the truth of it, all the way down into his bones. Maybe all the way down into his soul, too. Wherever he felt it, it was deep, and went all the way through him in one pure, ringing note.

So they faced the east--Jill in the end was the one who determined which way that was, for she was the best woodsman of them all, and had taken in everything about their surroundings in the moments they'd stood outside the door--and then the other three turned to Loki. They were all expectant, but none moreso than Bucky.

"Before we begin--I've mentioned the other effects the artifact will have, haven't I?" Loki asked.

"Uh, no," said Bucky, who had long ago learned how to pick out the most important parts of any series of instructions, and would have caught even the most off-handed mention of side-effects.

"Well, it's very simple," said Loki, with a sideways glance at Jill and Eustace that said he wasn't at all sure how they were going to take whatever it was, actually. But the way he didn't even bother looking at Bucky said he either wasn't worried about his reaction, or was much more worried about it than anything else. Once, maybe Bucky would even have been able to tell which it was. "As you know, this is not my true form. The Casket of Ancient Winters comes from the realm of my birth; when my skin makes contact with it, it will make my heritage evident. Visually."

Bucky remembered everything Loki had told him last time: how he'd found out he was an entirely different species than he'd thought he was, and how he'd found it out at the worst possible time. More than that, though, he remembered the way people here didn't really trust anyone who looked human but wasn't; a Badger named Tubertrapper had even said it to his face, the last time. And there'd been some things people had said about the Ape who'd started all this that sounded sort of like the same thing. Because he remembered, he glanced at the kids quickly enough to see the look they shared--not exactly one of distrust, or that said they were going to do anything about it, but one that definitely meant they were going to be braced for things to go bad. But that was fine, because things still could go bad, even if it wasn't Loki who was taking them there.

"Just do it," he said, keeping more of an eye on Jill and Eustace now than he was on Loki.

The cavern filled with a blue glow, sort of like the glow from the Tesseract except for the way it wasn't like the Tesseract at all, and Loki had another blue cube in his hands. This one, though, had some metalwork around it, and handles; and it was the handles Loki held it by. In the first moment, they could all see the blue flushing up over his hands and onto his arms; in the next moment, no one was really paying attention to that anymore, because it was in the second moment that a spray of ice came out of it in a shining stream of light. First it hit the far wall, shining strangely in the light from Loki's floating flame; then it rolled toward them, crossing the floor to the table of stone before it covered that, too. It kept going until it had reached them, until it was threatening the toe of Bucky's boots, until it was covering them, the world's coldest steel toe--

And then the stream stopped, just a few moments after it had begun. The whole thing had taken much less time than it takes to read or to write down. 

"I don't understand," said Loki, who at their council meeting had said--

"I can bring winter to Narnia," said Loki. "A snow just like that of the White Witch--except this one will be anticipated beforehand, will be expected. A harbinger not of a century of darkness, but of a liberation."

There were a lot of questions after that, but the idea, once the grandstanding was over, was clear: Loki could do it, as long as he tried to do it at a place where there was plenty of magic to amplify the effect across the whole country. And this, of all things, was a Sign no one could mistake. Every Narnian and every Calormene knew the story of the Witch's winter, even if the stories they had learned were different in places.

"What's wrong?" Bucky asked, because ice wasn't snow, and a cave that was about to be dripping from the heat couldn't be called winter by any definition of the word.

"I'm uncertain. Of course I've never tried it before, but in theory--"

At that moment a very old feeling washed over Bucky, one that would have had him stopping to marvel if it hadn't been for what was going on. "I'm going to kill you," he said, which at home was the kind of thing he never said, because someone might take it seriously, and anyway nobody ever made him want to say it in the first place. "I thought you said you knew what you were doing."

"What would you have had me do? 'Oh, yes, I have a plan that may work, if the stars align to allow me to use the damned Casket in a world this far removed from the one in which it was forged?' They'd never have gone for it. We'd still be in that forsaken little valley, while all the little Narnians continued being slaughtered." There was something quite a lot wilder in Loki's face than Bucky would have expected, and it didn't have anything (or, at least, didn't have much) to do with the way his entire face was blue, his eyes gleaming red as he met Bucky's gaze. "You've usually been against that in the past, you know."

"I'm against it in the present," said Bucky, out of a lack of finding anything else that was really worth saying. "Try it again."

So Loki tried again. The effect was the same, except a little more explosive, a stream of ice hitting the ice that was already there, so that some of it splintered and went flying in a volley that would have been pretty nasty if it had gotten as far as hitting them.

"I don't understand why the effects should be limited to this space," Loki murmured. "Or why I can't seem to produce anything other than ice."

"Wow. Things must be bad if you're just admitting that out loud," said Bucky, which was something he might not have said if he'd had a chance to think about it, but was just another instinct floating in that he might as well go with.

"It makes no sense. There's enough power here that it should be no trouble at all to take it and--even you ought to be able to feel it."

Now that he'd mentioned it, Bucky could sort of feel something. It was something like the tingle from walking through that portal, except for the ways it wasn't like that at all; they were both magic, they were both under the skin, but what he was feeling now went deeper. It went all the way through him. It went all the way through the world. It went back way, way farther than memory.

A feeling settled in the chamber, as they stood there. It was a solemn, quiet feeling. No one said a word. Maybe no one could have, at least not without fighting to do it. They stood there, and whatever the others were doing or thinking, Bucky wasn't doing or thinking anything. What he was doing was more like floating, the only method that had ever worked to let him remember anything--and right now, it felt like there was something he urgently needed to remember. Except the thing was that he couldn't let it be urgent. Not even now that people's lives were on the line. Not even now that it was important to people who weren't him. He couldn't let it be important. He couldn't try to remember what it was. All he could do was stand there, and let his mind be as blank as it could be, and wait.

He waited, and he waited, and in the end, there came an answer. It wasn't a memory. It didn't even come with an explanation. But it was there, and it was right, and he was somehow more sure of it than he'd thought he'd ever be sure of anything.

"It's not ready," he said. "It's waiting for something."

"Ah," said Loki. Then he must have seen what Bucky was holding in his hand, the object he'd pulled out of where he'd had it without even realizing he was doing it. "I see. Yes, I think that would do it. But--we ought to be closer to the table, I think."

While they'd stood around thinking, things had started to melt. That was a little weird, considering how thick and hard that ice had been; ice like that wouldn't have melted quite so quickly on the hottest day of summer under a midday sun, but here, in May and in the depths of a cavern that had the sense it must have always been a little cool, the ice was almost gone already, in just the few minutes they had been waiting. 

They went up to the table. Closer, closer. Until all they had to do was reach out, and they'd be able to touch it. But touching it wasn't what they had to do.

The Casket had disappeared again, whisked into whatever magic corner Loki kept things in when he was hiding them. With it gone, Loki had melted just like the ice was in the process of melting: first his fingertips went pale, then his hands and arms, then the rest of him, in a wave that rewrote him the same way a wave will rewrite everything you might have written on a beach's sands during a low tide. 

He held his hand out, in a way that was sort of aimed for Bucky and sort of aimed for the table.

"It certainly is an opportune time for you to have remembered," he said. 

"I don't," Bucky said. "I just..."

"Ah, Loki said again. "Another aspect you simple know, without being able to say how you know it."

They'd had this conversation, and a lot of others; Loki had seemed impatient with it, even disappointed, at the time. But he'd listened, and he'd remembered, and there was something about the simple understanding that might have brought tears to Bucky's eyes, if it hadn't been for the mission. But there wasn't time for that, or for anything other than asking, "Ready?"

"Do it."

So Bucky's left hand took Loki by the wrist to steady him, and his right hand brought the knife up so that the blade bit into the meat of Loki's palm. Not hard enough to slice open tendons or anything important, more than enough to get what they needed. Blood dripped onto the surface of the table, not pooling there but winding down and down. 

Bucky switched the knife to his left hand, slashed into his own palm much more surely than he had into Loki's, though still not far enough to actually damage anything important. More blood dripped down, mixing with what was already there.

Nothing else had happened, but there was a different feel inside the chamber now. It was more expectant., even willing. 

Loki brought out the Casket again. Even as the blue wave passed back over him, Bucky had the sense that it was going to work this time--or that something different was going to happen, at least. 

It was a sense that could have lasted seconds, or could have lasted hours. It was long enough for the knife to start feeling heavy where it hadn't before, and short enough that their mingled blood hadn't trickled all the way down to the dirt floor yet.

"Now," said Loki, and that was all the warning anyone got, before the Casket turned on again (Bucky had the sense, forever after, that Loki hadn't actually activated it for himself; and, in fact, he was right, as Loki had intended to say 'Now, if this doesn't work.'). The stream was just as hard, just as bright--

And this time, it blew a hole in the wall. 

'Oh, shit,' Bucky would have said, except that in the moment before it formed itself on his lips, he was able to see. Not Loki beside him or the table in front of him, but...

Everything. He was in the chamber, still, but was somehow somewhere else too. He was everywhere else, he'd realize later. Narnia was flashing before his eyes, in a way that must have happened to him sometime before, because otherwise he never would have been able to understand what he was seeing. 

It wasn't so much that it was fast. It wasn't, really, each part of it lasting for at least five or six seconds. It was that there was so much of it. At the same time he was seeing Squirrels huddled together in a hole in a tree, he was seeing Rabbits whisper together worriedly, he was seeing a mother Fox in her den trying to explain what was happening to her children, he was seeing the animals who were coming up to a locked stable in twos and threes; and he saw what was going on inside the stable, Emeth to one side and Tirian to the other, whispering words of winter in May to everyone who came to hear it for themselves. He saw the way Narnia was leaking around the edges, Talking Animals of this stripe or that slinking north or south or west, so desperate to get away that they'd risk going into an unknown land, risk the rumors that said they might forget who and what they were in any other place. He saw, too, the Calormene invaders, and some of them were exactly what you'd expect a conquering force to be, while others had a look more like Emeth's, and when you looked into their faces, you got the feeling that even they didn't know yet what side they'd fight on, when it came down to it.

He saw all of it, and then, vision by vision, people started looking up. None of the visions showed the sky, but Bucky knew exactly what was happening even before the first flakes came into his sight. First there were just a few of them, enough that you could have said it was a fluke, a freak thing, even some sort of ash from all the other strange and awful happenings in Narnia; then almost immediately, they were coming down so hard there was no doubting what they were, or where they had come from--

Or, for him, why, and from who.

Bucky saw it, every moment someone realized what was happening, and what it meant. That it was the Sign; that it meant the whisper that had been threading through Narnia for the last few days was the truth. He saw it, again and again, on so many furred and feathered faces, not to mention some Human ones. Fear was replaced by anger, uncertainty by sureness.

In a thousand places, in ten thousand, Narnians rose where before they had cowered. And in fifty places, or perhaps a hundred, Calormene soldiers, those who were young or true-hearted enough to have been sick about the false way in which they'd taken the country, rose with them. None of the battles were anywhere near the table, but Bucky could hear them anyway, teeth and claws on leather and steel on steel. They were the background to everything, like the blood that rushes through your veins. Now, you could never expect to hear the blood rushing through your veins, except perhaps at strange, odd moments; Bucky, with all the changes that had come upon him over the past seventy years, could have heard the blood rushing through his veins if he'd tried, but never did. It was too weird. And as for this, it was another strange, odd moment--but one that was too important to look past or tune out. It mattered for him to bear witness to it. To bear witness to all of it. And so he did, taking it all in, so that someone would see it, so that someone would know it. The skirmish outside the building Tirian and Emeth and the dogs and horses were locked in, the whisperers come into the light to free them at last, after hours upon hours of fear and uncertainty; the great battle of Cair Paravel, lengthier than any other and very confused, for in the beginning the advancing forces meant to attack, but by the end just as many wanted only to board their great ships to flee home again; every small, vicious, desperate fight where one or two Narnians and one or two Calormenes happened upon each other without quite having expected to.

If Narnia was the blood rushing through his veins, then Narnia was bleeding, just like Bucky himself was from the cut in his hand--only the cuts here were deeper, and would bleed much longer, whereas the one on his hand was already closing up. But there was nothing fatal here, at least not for Narnia itself; because the more battles that were fought, and the longer it went on, the more evident it became that they were winning. There were more Narnians than there were Calormenes; and this was their own country, which they knew as well as you know the veins on the back of your hands.

They were winning, or should have been--but then Bucky, who could see everything, saw something. A shadow, heading straight toward them, from the south or from the west or from both. Before, his chest had been aching with the weight of everything; now, his heart filled with something more like dread. But before he could say anything, or even make out what it was (for some reason it looked fuzzy to him, in contrast to everything else, which was so clear he could have seen a single ant making its way down a tree all the way across the country), something else rushed toward it--a light that had come from the east, that he would later realize must have come from across the sea.

When the the shadow met the light, not far from the mound they stood under, there came a great screeching sound across all of Narnia, followed by an even greater roar. There then came the sounds of another battle, one greater than any of the others that had been fought that day. Everyone heard it, across all of Narnia--though none could ever claim to have seen it, either then or later (though there would be many theories, later, about what exactly the shadow had been. Had it been Tash? Had it perhaps even been Tashlan, a lie brought to life just as it was in the greatest danger of being extinguished? No one would ever be able to say for certain). Even Bucky didn't see it, because the battle was to his strange wide sight just as fuzzy as the shadow alone had been. All he knew was that it was happening, and that it was maybe the most important thing that had happened in all of this.

That great clash went on for an hour, or a minute, or a day--and then it was over. The shadow was vanquished. And, looking out over the rest of Narnia, the rest of it seemed to be about done, too. The Calormene soldiers who had fought against them were either dead, or were in flight toward what ships remained in anchor at Cair Paravel (for some half of them had taken sail already, some filled to capacity, others less so, but heedless of their fellows might yet be coming). That they had won was something that would come as a slower knowledge to the Narnians, but was evident to Bucky right away.

It must have been to Loki, too, because around the time that Bucky realized it, he turned off the Casket again, and put it away. The blue started to recede, more slowly than it had the last time, until it was gone.

When he looked totally like himself again, he said, "Well. That seems to have worked."

"I'll say," Bucky said.

*

There was nothing else to say. There was nothing left to do but to leave the mound again. When they got there, they found that it was dark out, the moon and the stars hidden by the trees--so it really must have been hours and hours that they'd been inside. It made sense, though, considering how stiff Bucky was, and how long it had seemed. Sometimes big things happened in the blink of an eye, but most of the time, it took a little longer.

The kids were out there (and must have been out there for a while, for Bucky's vision had cut back to them many times, standing with their backs to the door, Eustace with a sword in his hand and Jill with her bow). Even though nothing had happened in the clearing, and even though they were just kids, Bucky had the feeling that it was really good they'd been here. That if they'd been undefended, the shadow might have come faster, or might have been more motivated...or something. Because there was no way it had been headed anywhere but here, to stop them.

"It's done," Bucky said, before either of them could ask. "We did it. It's over."

Everyone agreed that this was good. Loki didn't say much at all. Maybe he felt the same way Bucky did--tired, but more sad than elated, though Bucky could not at that moment have guessed why he himself should have felt that way. They'd saved Narnia. They'd done what they'd intended to do. Maybe it was just that he'd come down from up high. Instead of seeing everything, of feeling like he was a part of everything or it a part of him, now he was just Bucky again, with a little dried blood on his hand and arm. Or maybe it was that he knew it wasn't all over, just because the fight was. That there was always fallout to things like this. Entire forests had been cut down, whole towns burned. It would be generations until anyone would be able to walk around in Narnia without seeing the scars. It was the kind of winning that was more necessary than joyful.

"What's next?" Bucky asked, less because he couldn't have figured it out if he'd tried, and more because his head was swimming and he figured someone else might be able to get to it faster.

"The king's castle," said Jill. "Cair Paravel."

"Yes, that's where we were to meet, if it all turned out the way we meant it to," said Eustace.

Everyone turned toward Loki, who was a silent shadow of his own in the dark, and still had yet to say much. "In the morning," he said. "If we're still here then."

From that, Bucky came to several conclusions, both of them correct: that Loki, having been the one to guide the magic the way he had, was even more tired than the rest of them (too tired to conjure even so much as a flame, never mind guide the Tesseract into taking them anywhere else); and that he was also reluctant for the end to come, and thought it would be more likely at Cair Paravel than it would here.

Everyone agreed that this was sensible. Someone built a fire, and someone else went around the clearing, gathering summer-sweet berries from snow-covered bushes. Eventually, someone had the thought of going back into the mound for something dry to sit on, and came back out with some rocks about the right size. They sat on these, and crowded around the fire. No one had very much to say; anyone might have suggested they retreat back into the mound to retire for the night, but although everyone was tired enough to fall asleep immediately had they done so, everyone was also too tired to think of it, nevermind put the plan into action.

How long this went on, I truly do not know, except to say that it was just after the darkest part of the night when the rest began.

The fire, already small, had faded to embers. Then the embers faded, too. The moon was high in the sky now, its light shining off of every snow-covered surface. Maybe that was why Bucky could see Him so clearly. He never did remember turning his head, but he must have. Because instead of looking across the dying fire at Jill and Eustace, or turning to the right to look at Loki, he was looking to his left, where the woods began. There, in what should have been the darkest, hardest to see place, he saw that there stood Someone. For a second, Bucky didn't know him, couldn't even have said what kind of animal he was appearing as even if he'd tried. The next second he did know him--or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he knew this Other knew him .

"Aslan," he said, and later he was pretty sure he wasn't the only one. That they'd all said it, in the same moment and in the same low voice.

"Oh, Aslan," said Jill, in a voice that wasn't much louder, but much more full of tears. "You haven't come to send us home already?"

"You mustn't," despaired Eustace, then Aslan looked at him and he seemed to think better of it. "Well, all right, but--you won't, will you?"

Aslan looked at them, so solemnly no one else dared interrupt. Then he said, in a voice that was fond and firm, but not as stern as everyone had been expecting, "You may both have returned home, without guilt or shame, knowing the good work you have done here. Because of this good work, and because you may yet make a difference, you may stay longer yet. But you must be certain--for the work will be very difficult, and must begin at once."

Jill and Eustace glanced at each other, as if to check to be certain they were each as sure as the other.

"Yes, please," said Jill, in the same moment Eustace said, "We're quite certain."

"Good," said Aslan. "Then--at once."

When he said 'good,' the kids were still there. By the time he was done with 'at once,' they were gone. Nowhere bad, Bucky figured--Aslan was good in all the stories people had told him about, and even in the ones Loki had told him, the last time; but even more than that, Bucky had the bone-deep sense that he wouldn't have done anything terrible to them. It was something more or less than an instinct, but stronger than the usual echo of memories he couldn't access.

"Come," said Aslan. "Walk with me."

It was the middle of the night, and it had been a long fucking day. There should have been a protest somewhere, from Loki if not from Bucky's own aching body. But the moment he had the thought was also the moment he realized he didn't feel all that tired or sore anymore. What he felt was more sort of quiet than anything else.

They walked for a while, Bucky on Aslan's right and Loki on his left. Strangely, they were the ones whose steps were steady and sure, and Aslan was the one whose step occasionally faltered. Other than the crunching of their boots in the snow, it was as quiet on the outside as Bucky was on the inside. Even Aslan's footsteps didn't make a sound, even though anything else his size surely would have made even more of it than their boots. The farther they walked, the quieter Bucky's mind got, even though he also grew more and more certain that there were things he was supposed to be saying, or asking.

Maybe they'd only walked for a few minutes, or maybe they'd been walking for half an hour or more, when Aslan said, "You need not fear to speak."

Maybe there had been some fear in the quiet after all, because as soon as he said it, Bucky felt a little warmer, even though it was night, and the wind was blowing in his face, and cold was floating up from the snow underneath his feet. "Did it work?" he asked. "Did we save Narnia? Are they going to be okay? Did we do what we were supposed to do?"

He wasn't unsure of it, not really. He'd seen everything that was happening in the whole country, had watched it happen for hours, if not days. But knowing what had happened already wasn't the same thing as knowing what was going to happen, going forward. Wasn't the same as knowing if something new was coming down the pipes as soon as they were gone.

Aslan laughed, a low breathy sound that was enough to say that everything was all right. More or less, at least; as much as it could be, when so much of the country was left with the scars.

"It is finished," he said then. "You have now done what I always hoped you might do for my land of Narnia. You bled upon the table and you planted the tree. You rescued innocents from death and from torment and from sorcery time and time again. Now, what might have been the end has become instead another beginning."

"We've done considerably more than that," said Loki, but he sounded distracted, like it was a complaint he was making by rote more than one he was passionate about. "And yet no one ever seems to know anything about us when we come back again. It's enough to make one wonder if we've ever really done anything."

"Must others know of your deeds for them to have been good? Must everyone know how you have helped shape my land of Narnia in order for Narnia to have been changed?"

"It would help," said Loki. "Though not as much as a warning would have." This must have been what he'd actually wanted to talk about, not only because he'd switched the subject as soon as he could, but also because his voice was suddenly filled with a fire that hadn't been there in the complaint of a moment before. "You knew. You knew what was to happen to us in our own worlds. You hinted as much, there at your world's beginning. You could have warned us."

The sun had started to come up, sometime during their walk. Or maybe it had been coming up for quite some time. Whenever it had happened, or however fast everything was turning, it resulted in the same thing: Bucky could see Aslan's face, and see that it held no real anger, as he said, softly but not exactly mildly, "And what sort of warning would you have required, O son of Odin and of Laufey?"

"You could have let me in on that little secret as well," said Loki, and his voice was mild, which had to be a bad sign.

"What lesson could I have given to you, there at the dawn, that you should not have learned for yourself well before then? No other prince of your world has ever met so many kings and queens and princes and princesses of Narnia as you have. You knew everything you ought to have known. Like so many others, you chose knowing exactly what it was you chose."

"Well, what about Bucky? What did he ever do, to deserve what happened to him? Couldn't you have--"

"I could not," Aslan said, as much to Loki as to Bucky, who was just about to jump in and say that he didn't really need Loki to worry about him. "There is a limit to what I can do in your world, to the warnings I may give. Even in my world, none may be told what is to come for them. This is in part because the future may not be truly known until it is close--moments away, or there, or past, now, with another uncertain fate now approaching. But no: Bucky deserved nothing that befell him. He deserved to live--and did, not because of any warning I could have given, but because of you, Loki."

"I'm gonna want details on that one later," Bucky said to Loki, when no one else seemed inclined to elaborate. Then he said, because as much as he didn't remember about the other times they'd been to Narnia, from everything Loki had told him, and what Aslan had said so far it had given the impression of a plan: "So all of this has been leading up to us being here, right? That other stuff we did, it was important, but someone else could have done it, if they'd had to. You needed us to be here, because no one else could do what Loki could do. But...you didn't know if it would work. You were taking a gamble."

Aslan said, "Yes. I brought you to Narnia time after time, set task after task in front of you so that you might complete it. I veiled your presence from the histories, and even from the heavens, that none other might see the intent and then work against it. Yet the outcome was never certain, as no outcome ever is until its moment is past."

"And who, exactly, does a god need to hide from?" Loki asked, like he didn't believe it, even though he must have felt the truth of what Aslan was saying all the way to his bones, the same way Bucky did: an answer to every question they'd ever thought or failed to think about why they were here to begin with.

"Ah," said Aslan. "That. Do you truly believe you are the only son who has ever defied your father? My land of Narnia was to end at this place and at this time. There was to be no evacuation, no voyage to another land so my people might rebuild there. That much, at least, could have been borne, for it is better to live than to die. But it was not to be. So I sought, not an answer, but a hope--and I found it within the two of you."

"--Then it would seem you owe us."

"Because I brought you to Narnia, Bucky has his life," said Aslan. "And because I brought you to Narnia--because you , Loki, were not aboard the Statesman when your former master passed closely by--you and half of those you journey with have yours. Be content in that." They sat with that, or rather stood with it, for a few seconds; but they were the few seconds where the grayness of dawn erupted into the brightness of the morning. "And now the time has come for you to return home."

"And?" Loki said, and the mildness from before had gotten quite a lot sharper in the meantime. If Bucky hadn't known him as well as he did, he would have heard only the warning in it, and none of the panic underneath. "No dire warnings? You may not be able to tell us the future, but you certainly didn't seem to have a problem with hinting, before. Perhaps Bucky will return to his world to find his mind is still not as much his own as it ought to be. Perhaps some other great misfortune will fall upon the Statesmen. Do you really intend for us to walk into the dark once again?"

"All creatures must walk into the dark," Aslan said. "But in every life spent grasping, there will come moments of light. One such awaits you, and very soon. But no: dark tidings are not what I bring for you today."

"What did you want to tell us?" Bucky asked, because it sounded like that was what it came down to.

"That you have done enough." It was the kind of sentiment that could have gone a few different ways; but the way you felt when He said it was as if, no matter how many mistakes or how many awful things you'd done along the way, you'd done at least one thing so right that it made everything else, if not okay, then at least forgiven. It wasn't a feeling that would last Bucky very long, all things considered--but there would come many future days, when things were bad for one reason or another, that he would look back and remember what Aslan had said, and how he had said it, and feel better. "And because you have completed every task I set before you, and completed it at least as well as I had hoped, and because your Great Task has been finished: I will not have cause to bring you to my land of Narnia again."

"What?" said Loki. He'd gone so pale it would have been enough to make Bucky wonder if he'd been hurt at some point--except the only trail in the snow that was from anything but footprints wasn't from either of them. "You can't be serious."

Loki. Bucky had to focus on Loki. The look on his face, the new tension in the way he was standing. It was either that or--he had to focus on this, right now.

"Loki. Come on." He grabbed Loki by the arm before he could do something they'd both regret, and guided him a few feet over, nevermind that Aslan didn't seem like the kind of person you just ignored so you could talk to someone else. Then, when they were in the shadows, and it somehow felt private even though there was no way Aslan couldn't hear every word they said, if he wanted to, "Put it away."

"Did you hear him? He's telling us we can't come back. As if we're children from one of Tirian's stories--"

"Put it away."

The knife which had been glittering in Loki's hand, disappeared again, into thin air or into some other hiding place, it didn't really matter. What did matter was that there was nothing Loki could do with that thing that wasn't going to make things a thousand times worse.

"It'll be okay," Bucky said, though it was starting to hit him, too, now that the idea of stabbing Aslan was hopefully off the table. A twisting in his stomach, a sinking feeling that this was it. He couldn't look at Loki. Couldn't face it. He had to look at Loki, and see that Loki knew the same thing Bucky did: that this could be the end. "You have the Tesseract. You can just use it to find me, alright?"

This didn't make Loki look any less gutted, or even any less pissed. "I never could before, remember? You were never on the other end, no matter how I tried to direct its energies. There was never anything but the lake, and the tree. I'm not even certain how I'd begin. There's nothing I haven't already tried."

"Well, you're gonna have to keep trying. It's the only choice we have," Bucky said, low and urgent. "You'll have to find another way. Like we did with the Stone Table. There's got to be a way."

"And if there isn't?"

He hadn't wanted to have to say it. It was bad enough that it was there, pulsing behind his eyes. "Then this is gonna have to be goodbye."

"Perhaps we can get a favor," said Loki, eyes dark and wild and imploring. "Perhaps Aslan would allow you to come with me. We did save Narnia, after all."

As miserable as Bucky already was, having to answer this made the misery twice or even three times as bad as it had been. "I can't," he said. "I wish I could, but I can't just disappear on Steve."

"Your friend from the old days," said Loki, flatly but not like he was about to try to talk Bucky into something else. More like he already knew, maybe had known even before he'd brought it up.

"He gave up a lot for me. Too much. I can't repay him like that." Bucky swallowed, hard. "I'm not gonna ask you to come with me. I know you can't."

It had been obvious from everything Loki had said about what was going on with his people. He had something in his world that mattered to him now, the way he hadn't the last time. Something he'd grown into, or fallen there by accident, it didn't matter which. What did matter was that it had been all over his face every time he talked about it. What did matter was that if Bucky were to ask, Loki might even say yes...but he'd regret it in the end. Bucky knew it. He couldn't help but know it.

Loki must've known it, too, or at least he didn't argue. "Perhaps we could ask to stay here longer. As we did the last time. There's still a great deal of work to be done, after all."

"Yeah, but do you really want to have to do that kind of work twice?" Bucky asked, still miserably, hating that he was saying it...but Loki wasn't going to have the patience for helping rebuild a country that wasn't even his. Bucky might've, if it was just him, but... "I don't think you're that good at pretending. And--I don't think He would let us stay if our hearts weren't in it."

The truth of this sat between them for a few moments, being awful.

"I will look for you," said Loki. "Once we've arrived at our destination, once things are settled. I can devote as much time as I desire to it then."

"Okay," said Bucky, and then thought of how awful it would be, if Loki ended up spending his entire life doing that, and never got anywhere; if he wasted all the time he had in his world on something that was never going to work. "But you've got to live a little, too, all right? You can't just...you'll have other stuff going on. You should have other stuff going on. It can't all be about me."

He half expected Loki to say something snarky, or even glib. 'As if I would,' or 'You certainly think highly of yourself.' Instead, he nodded, and said, "The same for you. You have a life now--moreso than you did the last time we met, at least. You should partake of it."

"Yeah," said Bucky, because his hut and his goats and the quiet might not have seemed like much to the person he'd used to be, but meant a lot to the person he was now. "I'll do my best."

"I shall, as well."

Their time was almost up. No one had said so. Aslan, for his part, had turned away minutes ago, as if not to listen to the things they were saying to each other. But Bucky could feel it all the same. It might have been written behind the same stars that had never known about them. It was palpable in the air, as inevitable as the risen sun. Bucky wished he could stop it, or at least slow it down, but instinct was a heavy weight inside him, all the other times they must have been sent back whether they were ready or not, and he knew he couldn't.

"Shit," Bucky said, helplessly, and finally unable to keep himself from being in tears (though he hadn't realized before then that he was holding them back in the first place). "Loki."

What they said to each other next, in the few minutes left to them, Bucky would never forget--and I would not share here even if I knew. They were words that were too precious, too private; they were meant only for the two of them.

*

All too soon, it was time to go home. 

Loki went first. He insisted on it, with a look that suggested that if Aslan tried to have a conversation, he might get stabbed after all. 

It was quick. One second, he was there, with a set expression on his face, and misery not so much flashing into his eyes as stuck there, right behind the murder. Then, he was gone. He was home on his ship, in whatever other world home was. Bucky pictured him for a second, a vision that might have been one part memory to a few parts imagination: Loki, with the wooden deck of a ship beneath his feet, and the smell of salt in his nose. Maybe the sun was coming up there, too. Maybe no one had even noticed he was gone yet. Whatever the specifics were, some part of him must be glad to be back, even if the rest of him felt the way Bucky did right now.

"Come, O Bucky Barnes," said Aslan. "Let us walk a little farther."

So he and Aslan walked together again, two instead of three. Instead of feeling blank, this time Bucky's mind and heart were so full and so empty that he still had no idea what he wanted to say.

"Take heart," said Aslan. "Things are not as dreadful as you fear. Did I not say there is a great light awaiting you? But there is one more matter on your mind, I think."

Some people say 'I think' as a euphemism. What they want you to know when they say it is that they want you to know that they know something about you. But the way Aslan said it was different. It was like he did know the something, but would allow you to decide whether or not it mattered enough to bring it up with Him. Maybe it was mostly for people who felt like they needed to save face. Bucky didn't. He had the idea that they'd have been having a much different conversation if he had. What he did need was a minute. To think, and to make sure what he said was really what he wanted to say.

"Can I ask for something?" He meant to go on, to point out that they'd done a lot for Narnia, and even if they'd already gotten stuff back in return--if they were somehow both alive because of it, that was good, but they'd also gotten to find out how it had turned out for each other, and that was at least as good if not better--none of that had been a reward, strictly speaking. It had been more of a side-effect of being here, a silver lining on a cloud that was already pretty silver a lot of the time. Only, before he could say any of it, he felt like not only didn't he have to, but that it would make anything he said afterward sound cheap, somehow.

"You may ask," said Aslan.

Maybe you will think that Bucky should have asked for he and Loki to be together. But Bucky felt, even though Aslan hadn't said anything about the rules, that there were kinds of things that were allowed, and other kinds of things that weren't. Besides, they'd already had their chance to ask to be sent back together. So there was really only one thing left.

"Could you help me to remember?" he asked. "I've got the important stuff--enough to know Loki, and Steve, and why they're important to me--but I'm still missing a lot."

"Why they're important?" asked Aslan, not exactly a reproach, but not exactly not one, either.

"I mean, why I love them," Bucky continued, his ears growing a little warm. "But I'm missing so much. And if I can't ever see Loki again--it's too much."

"Whoever said you would never see him again? No one has yet spoken of the chances of that," Aslan said, which was enough to make Bucky jerk with a shocked sort of joy--but before he could try to get into the details on this, or beg to know what he could do to make sure it happened, Aslan got them back on track. "Yes. Your memories may be returned to you. That is within my power to grant. But will you be willing to take them all, no matter how dark or terrible some may be?"

It was such a solemn question that Bucky couldn't, in that moment, think about anything else. Instead, he thought about the things he remembered, and the things he didn't; what he'd done and who he'd been, just that he knew about. And he thought, most of all, of everything he was missing and everything he didn't even know enough about to know he was missing it. Some of it had to do with Loki and a lot of it had to do with everything else, and in the end it was for himself that he said, "Yeah. I'd take everything. If there's more really bad stuff in there, I should know about it. Anyway, it can't be worse than what I already remember about being the Soldier."

"It is well said," said the Lion. He shook his mane. "It will be done. Your memories shall be returned to you soon-- soon -- SOOOOOOOON ."

As he said it, there seemed to come a warm spring breeze, blowing against Bucky's back. It lifted him into the air, so that by the time Aslan had said soon for the second time, he was above the treetops. By the end of the third soon, he was among the stars. From there, it was like he could see all of Narnia again. Not just what was happening now, but what was going to happen over the next days and years and centuries. It all passed before his eyes too quickly to make out or really remember most of the details. He saw new growth in a wide graveyard of trees; he saw that same space a what must have been hundreds of years on, filled to the bursting with wise old elders. He saw Tirian and Emeth with circles under their eyes and a deep satisfaction on their faces, working together by candlelight with a treaty with Calormen spread out between them. He saw Jill and Eustace leading some sort of expedition into the West, the baby fat gone from their cheeks, a few lines added, both of them looking grounded and happy. He even caught a glimpse of Puzzle the Donkey, fatter and with white hairs on his muzzle, loping down some sunny lane somewhere, chatting to a Squirrel which sat upon his back with a walnut in its paws.

Then it all faded, the future and Aslan's voice and the Narnia sky, and even the blanket of snow spread out over the whole country. Just a second or two after Bucky had been somewhere else, he came back into his own world, a little at a time, and in the end found himself in the same place he had begun, standing by the trunk inside his hut. He'd lost a few crossbow bolts, but other than that, he had everything he'd had when he left. The only difference was that he was a good sight grubbier, and felt like it had been a hell of a lot longer than a week since he'd been here.

He stood there for a long minute, listening to the sounds from outside, of his goats eating their own food, or trying to eat someone else's food, or objecting to someone else trying to horn in on their food. When the first goat poked its head inside the door, he took off his sword and his crossbow and set them down on the ground by the trunk. He'd need to clean them before he packed them away again, but that was going to have to be later. For how, he stood there, holding the one thing he hadn't had when he'd gone: a little, crooked knife with someone's dried blood on the blade and what looked like an emerald in the handle. It was easy to hold, felt like it would be easy to throw, and had the potential to do quite a lot of nasty damage when it went into someone. Bucky couldn't remember where any of the other knives Loki had given him had gone, outside of the one at the bottom of his trunk. This one, he held for a while, before strapping it to his calf. It wasn't like he was going to need it, at least not here in Wakanda. He also wasn't going to take any chances of losing it.

By the time he made it out to his goats, he still hadn't remembered anything. The goats had stopped tussling over their feed, and were now having the occasional dust-up over specks on the ground that might have been feed, or insects, or just pieces of dirt. Mostly, they weren't bickering too much, because they'd all managed to gorge themselves silly no matter who had stolen what from who.

It wasn't like Aslan had promised he'd get his memories back instantly. Still, Bucky was let down about it. Not remembering was going to make it that much harder to do what he'd told Loki to do, and what he'd promised to do for himself. He had a life to live. He was supposed to get back to it. There should have been some part of him that was glad to be home, just like he'd hoped there was for Loki. But wherever it was (and it really must have been there somewhere, because he truly did love Wakanda, which meant more to him than he could have imagined anywhere meaning before he'd come here), Bucky couldn't find it. After a while, he went back in his hut, and sat down on his sleeping mat, and put his head into his hands.

Bucky didn't like to dwell, and didn't know he cared for it even less now than he had when he was a boy. Dwelling wouldn't get things done. It wouldn't make his memories come back faster. It wouldn't even help Loki find him, the way Aslan had hinted was possible.

But for the rest of that day, and for the few days that followed, dwell he did, all the same.

Bucky woke up that morning and knew what he needed to do. 

He'd spent the last two weeks thinking of nothing but Loki--as he took care of his goats, as he did his other chores, as he talked to everyone he had to keep up with talking to so that none of them would be worried about or for him. 

It had been easy not to worry before now; back when there had been not so much an instinct as a bedrock foundation there, telling him he'd see Loki again, letting him compartmentalize. He must have spent his whole life compartmentalizing Narnia, so that it had come easy to him before. But now he found he couldn't anymore. He kept wondering if, and he kept wondering when. If they would meet again, because it wasn't like Aslan had said it would happen for sure. And if they did, then when that would be. Loki was at least a thousand years old; and as for Bucky, he was a hundred and one, even if he'd been frozen for a lot of that and didn't remember most of the rest. He was going to live a long, long time, according to what Princess Shuri said about his cells, and so what if it took a couple hundred years to happen? Bucky had a sense most people probably didn't of how long a century really was. If he had to wait that long...

He didn't want to wait that long. He especially didn't want to wait that long without doing something about it. Except that there was nothing he could do, because he didn't know the first thing about whatever it was he'd need to know to figure out how to get from the universe he was in to any single other universe. Never mind whether or not it would be Loki's universe he found, or how he'd even know that one way or the other when he got there. He didn't even know where to start, nevermind where to go from there. So that was what he got stuck on, in a loop that wouldn't get out of his head no matter how hard he tried to focus on other things.

Then, he woke up one day, and the answer was there. Had been in front of him the whole time, probably, except that instinct had gotten in the way again.

He must never have tried to tell anyone else about Narnia before, because it took him two whole weeks to realize that knowing a princess who was a genius and being best friends with a guy who'd been up close and personal to all kinds of weird shit might come in handy. Not telling anyone must have been another bedrock, ground he'd been standing on this whole time without ever noticing.

He woke up that morning, and in the moment between being all the way asleep and all the way awake, he figured out that the place to start was by explaining it all, and asking for their help.

First, he went out of the hut to feed his goats, who knew what time it was, and definitely wouldn't leave him alone to work if he didn't. Then, he went back inside, and pulled up the computer screen that made up his entire south wall.

"I want to dictate something," he said, thinking fleetingly that this would have been easier if he did it with a pen and a notepad; only that would have taken a lot longer than he wanted. "Then I want to send it to someone."

VERY WELL, said the computer (not out loud, but in large red text that flashed across the screen; Bucky had found early on that having it talk at him bothered him, and so he'd changed the settings the first chance he got), pulling up a text file. YOU MAY BEGIN.

No, Bucky thought, that was wrong. This shouldn't be something he wrote down, but something he said . Even if he dictated all the same things that he was going to say anyway, probably he was going to need things like his expression and tone of voice. Gestures. Maybe that'd make it easier for them to believe him.

"Actually, I want to make a video file," he said. "To send. Not live, please. I mean, it's not going to be a call."

UNDERSTOOD, said the computer, and the text file disappeared, replaced by Bucky himself. 

He looked like he'd just crawled out of bed. Worse, he looked a little crazy. Maybe a lot crazy around the eyes. He couldn't look crazy while he was doing this, and so he got up again and went and threw some water on his face, and brushed his hair, and then tied it up. Dressed in clothes he hadn't slept in, then fixed his hair again. Then sat back down on his mat, and, seeing himself on the screen again, he thought he looked...as good as he was going to get, probably. Hopefully good enough that no one was going to think he was in the middle of a psychotic break. He'd gone five years without having any kind of breakdown that didn't come out of a book; that had to be long enough for them to give him the benefit of a doubt.

"Okay," Bucky said. "Let's start now."

YOU MAY BEGIN, said the computer, and so Bucky did.

*

It was a longer story than Bucky expected it to be, considering how much of it he didn't remember. He had to explain Narnia, and then he had to explain Loki. How he'd gone back and forth between worlds ever since he was a kid; how the first thing that had happened after he'd pulled Steve out of the river was that he'd gone back again. How he hadn't even known what was happening, at first, and how he'd had to help Loki, and how Loki had then helped him. He played that up a little, how Loki had helped him, except for the part where he didn't have to play anything up, because Loki really had done just as much as Steve or Shuri had; it was just that they'd all helped with something different.

He talked and he talked, for hours. Until his throat was sort and his mouth was dry and he had to take a break and drink a long drink of water so that he could talk some more without it coming out more as a croak. He kept going until he'd explained everything he could think of and then some; until he'd shared everything that wasn't too personal to be shared with anyone who hadn't been there.

"And that's it, I guess. Anyway--I hope you guys can help. Call me back when you can," he said, and sat there for a seconds, and then stopped recording. He didn't feel relieved or even tired so much as he felt empty. Hollowed. Almost like he'd been in Narnia again, and finished one last task. Only this one hadn't been for anyone else. It had been for himself. 

He cleared his throat, sipped some more water, and said, "Don't send it now. Send it later."

OF COURSE. AT WHAT DATE AND TIME?

Bucky thought about it, and the one thing he was abruptly and sharply sure of was: not today. No matter how much he'd explained, Steve would have questions. As for Shuri, even if she believed him right off the bat, she'd probably want to run some tests. To figure out how crazy he was, and then to try to find proof of anything she could. He was up for it, or would be, by tomorrow; if there was even the slightest chance that bringing them in would help him find Loki, it would be worth it. But the way he felt right now was the way he always felt after the roughest of his therapy sessions, or after they'd finished fixing his brain; like he needed to rest first before he was going to be able to deal with even one more thing.

"Tomorrow," he said. "How about noon?"

NOTED, said the computer, and lapsed into silence, and then lapsed altogether, the screen fading until you wouldn't have known it was anything but a wall unless it were activated again.

The first thing Bucky thought of was a nap, after all that. Except suddenly, no matter how hollow he felt, he wasn't at all tired. He'd spent the last couple weeks sitting a lot more than he usually did (for of course he usually kept busy in a way that was difficult to do when he was busy being mired in dwelling). He'd been sleeping in longer than he was used to, too. 

He had, in short, been wallowing; and he found himself abruptly more sick of wallowing than he could remember having been sick of anything else. He needed to go somewhere, do something. If he'd had a car, he might have gone on a drive...and for just a second there was a flash of something, but it dipped away before he could get ahold of it, so that there was no telling if driving was ever something he'd done a lot of, or if he'd just been equating it with the train or the subway or anything he must have used in New York that they didn't have around here. He swallowed down the disappointment--no more wallowing, no matter how bright the hope was in moments when he thought something might be coming back--and decided:

He didn't have a car, so he might as well go on a hike. He'd take the goats up the mountain, to a meadow he'd found there a while back. If he started out now, he'd get there hours before dark. They'd have hours to graze and play, and he'd have that same time to watch them. It would be quiet, maybe too quiet...but with having to keep an eye on things, there would be no time for dwelling. By the time he got back, it would be dark, and he'd be tired. Not the kind of tired that came from doing too little while worrying about things he couldn't control, but the kind of tired that came from working instead of worrying. He'd be able to sleep. And tomorrow...

Tomorrow, everything would be about Loki again, but at least there'd be a purpose to it this time.

*

By himself, the walk probably would have been no longer than forty-five minutes. Having to shepherd the goats, though, it took better than three hours, maybe closer to four. Their natural walking speed was more ambling than Bucky's, which by itself would have made it slower; but they also liked to try to wander off, which didn't really help things. But Bucky didn't mind it; keeping an eye on them was good for keeping his mind empty of other things. It felt good, focusing on something that was as busy as it was simple for the first time in weeks.

Eventually, they arrived at the place Bucky had been aiming for: a meadow in a little valley. It might have reminded Bucky of the little valley he and Loki had stayed in in Narnia, except for the way it was basically nothing like it. It, too, was surrounded by hills, and covered in grass; but this being Wakanda instead of Narnia, of course everything was very different, starting with how the trees weren't packed together the way they would have been in a Narnian forest, and ending with the way everything was more golden than green.

On another day, perhaps the differences would have made Bucky homesick, if not heartsick. But he loved it here--had loved it here since the first time one of his neighbors had clued him in about it--and what he felt for the next little while was, simply, gladness. Gladness to be alive, and not on the run; gladness to be able to plop under his favorite tree and let the rest of the afternoon float on by. He'd have to stay alert, of course, but not too alert; there weren't any leopards in this area, and hardly any lions, and though there were jackals, they didn't come out until night. So all he really needed to do was make sure none of the goats wandered off where he couldn't see them. It was the kind of work he could do without having to think about, because it would take a lot of doing for any of them to get far enough away that he couldn't see them.

The afternoon passed. The sun moved across the sky, and the shadows moved with it. Eventually, it became late enough in the day that Bucky couldn't really justify staying any longer. It wasn't dusk yet, wouldn't be for another couple of hours, but it was always better to be at least halfway home by the time the sun was on its way down.

He was just getting up to dust himself off when he heard the first scream. He got up a lot faster then. By the time he was on his feet, he had Loki's knife in his hand, the only weapon he'd brought with him. Lots of good it would be against a leopard, he guessed--if that was what the scream was from. Or was it mountain lions that screamed like that? There definitely weren't any of those around here.

The scream came again, and now that Bucky was waiting for it, there was no way it was a leopard, or any other kind of cat. It could only have been from a person.

The screaming was coming from the north of the meadow, where there was a large hill. Bucky didn't really come up here to explore, so he'd never gone around it to see what was on the other side. Now he did, creeping carefully, wishing for the first time that he could have had the kind of cover here that he would have had in Narnia.

He rounded the hill with a fleet sort of caution, feeling incredibly exposed (though as it turned out, he needn't have). On the other side, he found a sort of gully, which, when followed a ways, led out into a more open space. Not another meadow. The space here was filled with water instead of grass, but might as well have been filled with the sky; for the fluffy white clouds above were reflected as perfectly off its surface as if it had been a mirror. 

It was, as you might have guessed, a lake; and on the other end of the lake was an enormous, gnarled tree, which looked as if it must have stood there since the beginning of time. Standing by the tree was a tall, long-haired person in black and green leather armor, facing away from Bucky. His hands were down by his sides, clenched into fists. He was breathing so hard Bucky could see it all the way across the lake. He must have been the source of the scream--and indeed, as Bucky watched, he screamed again, and kicked the tree. Then he kicked it a few more times. Then, since kicking trees that were practically fossilized was a great way to keep from breaking things, he let out a muffled (from that distance) curse and shook his foot.

It should have been somewhere between hilarious and alarming, probably (though not quite as alarming as worrying someone was being murdered over here had been). But Bucky wasn't amused or alarmed. He was too far away from all of it to be much of anything. From the moment he'd come around the bend to see the lake and the tree, a sort of surrealness had seemed to come over the whole picture. It was less as if he was watching this guy's tantrum, and more like he was watching himself watch it.

He picked his way around the lake, and it really was a good thing there were neither snakes nor lions in the tall grass by the water's edge, because he could have stepped on either without noticing. As it was, he didn't do well at all at avoiding the water, so that by the time he'd gone a few hundred feet, his feet were squishing inside his boots.

In the time it took for him to get there, the other guy had moved on from kicking the tree, and stabbed it a few times, instead. He'd mostly given up screaming by now, but around the time Bucky was close enough to say anything, he let out one more yell, before resting one of his closed fists against the trunk of the tree, and sort of sagging against it. For the first time, Bucky didn't feel like he was interrupting something.

"Hey," he said. It was the only thing he could think of to say. "You're going to scare my goats."

The guy seemed to freeze. Then he turned, very slowly, with an air of disbelief written across his entire body that Bucky would understand only later, when all of this managed to hit him. "--Bucky?"

Some part of Bucky must have known the screaming guy would be Loki; it must have been the reason for the surrealness, which was nothing more or less than the shock you yourself might have felt at any of your worst or best moments. 

"You're here," Bucky said, swallowing hard. It was starting to hit him now. It could hardly help hitting him. "You can't be here. How--"

"I can't be here? What are you doing here?"

Here, at least, was an answer Bucky had, even if he wasn't sure what it had to do with anything. "Uh, I live here." And, when Loki glanced around with what looked like genuine confusion: "I mean, I live a couple hours down the mountain. I just bring the goats up here sometimes."

"You can't live here," Loki complained, but had a manic sort of look on his face that seemed to indicate he was feeling much the same way Bucky was: that before either of them got to be anything like happy, they had to figure out what was actually going on. "You can't possibly--this is Midgard. If you live here, then it means you've always been--you can't have."

Bucky tried to remember what Loki had said about Midgard before. It was a different kind of strain than trying to remember his old life; there was a lot that had gone over his head in Narnia when he'd been somewhere between being the Soldier and being himself. Probably there was even more that he hadn't been enough of anything to figure out the significance of. "What's Midgard? It's a country, right? Some kind of island?"

Now Loki stared at him. "What are you talking about? Midgard is a realm."

"You said you fell off a bridge," Bucky said slowly. "And you, I don't know, washed up somewhere? And then you were sailing somewhere on a ship. And I just thought..."

He trailed off.

Loki stared at him some more. Then the manic look faded, or rather changed into something that had a brightness within it.

"A ship," he said, and gestured up, toward the sky. "A realm," he said, and spread his arms out as if to encompass everything around them. 

Now it was Bucky who was staring, and rather blankly at that. Loki might as well have been speaking another language, no matter how dramatic his poses were.

Then Loki spread his arms even further. "A world," he said. "Or a planet, I suppose. Though that does seem an even more boring way of putting it."

And then Bucky got it, and it was almost enough to drop him to the dirt. There must have been yet another bedrock instinct, now nothing more than cracking ground beneath his feet. Maybe it had even been the oldest instinct of them all (or at least of the ones related to Loki). Certainly he'd never questioned it, the assumption that Loki being from another world meant he was in another world as in Narnia instead of another world as in (for example) Jupiter. Here he must always have thought Loki was talking about oceans, when what he'd really meant was stars.

"We got that one wrong, didn't we?" Bucky managed, in something closer to a croak than his ordinary speaking voice.

"You could have saved us so much time if you'd ever told me you were from Earth," Loki said, but it was kind of hard to take seriously as a complaint, considering how much the brightness on his face had grown. It was a brightness that must have been on Bucky's face, too.

"Yeah, well, if you'd ever called it Earth instead of Midgard, we could've gotten somewhere," Bucky groused, but his complaint wasn't any more serious than Loki's had been. He couldn't have made it sound serious if he'd tried. "Never would have guessed you were a space alien."

Loki waved a hand, like this was a boring new fact instead of something that changed everything while also being the most thrilling thing Bucky had ever learned about him. "But you--you're a Midgardian. Unbelievable. Next thing you know, you'll be telling me you're from New York."

"Actually..."

"You've got to be kidding," Loki said, with a flash of something like fear in his eyes. "I thought you said you were from Brooklyn."

"Which is a part of New York," Bucky pointed out. He was curious about why New York made Loki look panicky, but at the same time, he didn't want Loki to panic. Not when he was here. Not when he'd been so worked up when he'd thought he was alone here. 

So, instead of asking, he took the last few steps toward Loki, and cradled Loki's face in his hands, and kissed the hell out of him. It was one part wanting to to a few parts reassurance--for Loki, so he'd calm down about it; for himself, to make sure that Loki was really here. It was a wanting to and a reassurance that went on for a while, until he had Loki pressed up against that tree, and they were both clutching at each other, and it would have been really easy for the kissing to turn into something more.

Gasping with want, Bucky drew back, far enough that he could see Loki's face, flushed and with the same want written all over it.

"What happened?" he asked, because something must have, and one instinct he could count on was the one that wanted to know how things had been for Loki. Especially since it had been two weeks, and so Loki's freakout couldn't have been just about him. "You seemed really upset, before."

Loki stared at him for a moment, as if he had been upset a very long time ago, and had to think to remember why exactly that had been. Then he must've found it, because he said, "I have had the worst day you can imagine. Nothing lesser than this could possible have salvaged it."

"Oh, yeah?"

They broke apart, the better for Loki to get into dramatic story-telling mode. "After we were parted, I arrived back on the Statesman. I thought, naturally, that I'd have the usual experience: that I would arrive in the same instant I had gone, so that no one would have noticed my absence. That I would then be able to--collect myself. Readjust to my surroundings without others realizing anything was amiss.

"I'd no more than arrived when my brother stormed over to me. He wished to know where I had been. What I thought I was doing, disappearing for such a length of time where even Heimdall could not see. What sort of wool I was attempting to pull over his eyes now. That sort of thing. He even tried to claim he'd known all along I had the Tesseract, and was simply ignoring it, but that he might now be forced to reconsider. No matter how I tried to distract him, or deflect, or even simply tell him it was nothing to do with him and no concern of his nor Asgard's, he would not let up."

"Shit," Bucky said, with feeling. Loki had gotten the short end of that stick, between not getting to hear what Aslan had said at the end, and getting yelled at as soon as he got back. "How long were you gone?"

"Two weeks. Apparently."

"How long did you make it before you..."

"Perhaps three or four hours," said Loki. "That's typically the longest we go between crises. He turned his back to me for a moment, and I took it. I never expected to meet you here."

Well, at least Loki hadn't had two weeks of stressing about it. Until he heard that, Bucky hadn't realized how little he hadn't wanted Loki to go through the same weeks he'd had to.

"I'm glad I was here," Bucky said. "I'm glad you're here." 

He kissed Loki again, long and deep. Pressed him back against the tree again, too. This time, when clutching hands started to turn into wandering ones, neither of them tried to stop them.

"I'm glad, as well," Loki said, when he had one leg around Bucky's waist, and Bucky was pressing into him, and there seemed to be a tremor that passed from one of them into the other and back again, and part of it was one kind of need, but the rest of it was another, deeper kind. "In fact--" as Bucky fucked into him, not slow or sweet not because he didn't like slow or sweet, but because Loki was urging him into something faster and harder and rougher with each motion, "I've never--been so glad--of anything. Never, in all my--" He cried out, a low and guttural sound that Bucky was so caught up in that he only realized he was going to come too when he was in the middle of it, pressing deep inside Loki's body, matching him sound for sound. And afterward, Loki kissed Bucky's still-clothed shoulder, then whispered into his ear, like it was a secret and not the tail end of something that had probably scared off the wildlife for miles around, "In all my life."

"Me too," Bucky said. "I mean, me neither."

"Eloquent as ever," muttered Loki, but there wasn't any bite in this complaint, either. (Really he must have only made it in order to try to mask at least a little the fondness underneath.)

Bucky kissed him again. They kept kissing for long minutes after that, hands moving under each other's shirts, or above them, holding onto the fabric, until the sensitive parts of him below the waist started to notice they were exposed to the elements. It was around that time that he noticed the change in the light, and realized how long they must have been here, together. " Shit ."

"What is it?" Loki asked, when Bucky backed up and started stepping back into the pantleg he'd been out of.

"My goats!" Bucky said, and had started hopping back the way he'd come before he'd finished saying it, or even gotten his pants pulled all the way back up, never mind gotten his boot back on.

*

"This is the most asinine endeavor I have ever been party to," said Loki. "I miss the Statesman already."

"You say that like you've done anything," said Bucky. "Instead of just complaining about everything I do."

It had started with 'locate all the goats.' Then it had been, 'get all the goats grouped together.' By then twilight had come, so that it had been nearly full dark by the time they'd been on their way. Ever since then, the goal had been 'get all the goats down a narrow mountain path in the dark without losing anyone.' Loki hadn't lifted a finger the entire time--though he had occasionally said, 'I think we have one fewer than before,' which meant they had to stop so Bucky could backtrack, or side-track, or tell Loki to learn to fucking count, depending on the specific situation.

Eventually, though, they turned off the mountain path to one that was a whole lot flatter. Not long after that, Bucky's hut (and, better yet, the goat pen) was in sight, welcome shadows in the dark. Who knew what Loki made of them, but Bucky was too tired and irritated to worry too much about it.

He got the goats locked up, filled their water trough by feel. No need to feed them again; they'd have grazed enough to last them through the night.

Loki didn't help with any of that, either, but he stayed right next to Bucky the whole time.

"This is me," Bucky said, when they were standing together outside the entrance of his hut. "So now you know where I live."

"Yes," said Loki.

"Are you sure you don't want to go back to your ship?" Bucky asked, because by now Loki had explained the Asgardians' situation more fully, with all the space context that had been missing before...and no matter how much more he'd hissed and spit about his brother, he'd still had the same thing in his voice he'd had in Narnia. The one that made you think that the things that were happening on the Statesman were the most important of Loki's long life. Being mad at his brother wasn't going to change that. "They're only a week or two until it gets here, right? That's not that long."

"Perhaps ten days. They're ten days they'll survive without me," said Loki firmly. "Unless you'd wish to come back with me, that is."

"--Maybe," Bucky said, and part of him was thrilling at the idea of getting to go to space; and another part of him was thinking that his entire life was going to change by the time they got here, because there was no way Loki's work wasn't about to become his, too (which was fine and more than fine, because not only was it work that needed doing, but some part of Bucky must always have yearned to actually be a part of Loki's real life); and yet another part of him knew he couldn't just pick up and go, not without figuring out everything he'd need to set in order here first. "Probably. But not tonight, though."

"Not tonight," Loki agreed.

Bucky ducked inside, Loki following. He flicked on the light.

"--This is where you live?" Loki said, in the appalled tone he hadn't used about the much smaller tents back in Narnia.

Bucky looked around his hut, tried to see it as Loki must have. There wasn't much to see. Sleeping pad and blanket on the floor; weapons trunk within arms' reach of the sleeping pad; stove in one corner, shower and toilet in another; not really a whole lot else.

"Believe it or not, these are actually really good accommodations," he said.

"I do not believe it."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Just for that, I'm not showing you any of the secrets yet."

"Somehow, I think I'll survive without them," said Loki drily. "I can't imagine what you did for entertainment before me."

It was pretty clear what kind of entertainment he thought he was. Luckily, Bucky was up for it.

*

"Wait a minute." 

Bucky sat bolt upright in the gray of the dawn. They'd finally dropped off to sleep an hour ago, the first time all night that either of them had been able to sleep at all without the other one starting something up again, but he was suddenly so alert that he might as well have slept the whole night through.

"Um, Loki?"

"What?" asked Loki, sounding pretty grumpy for a guy who had started at least seventy-five percent of the somethings.

"You said you tried to conquer Midgard." Before, when Bucky had thought that was a country on some other world, it still hadn't been the easiest thing to swallow. Not great, but at least not somewhere he'd ever been. Not somewhere that was real to him the way Loki was real to him. "So what you were actually saying was that you tried to take over Earth."

"--Essentially, yes."

"And when you said you tried to blow up that other realm, what you meant was that you were trying to blow up an entire planet ?"

"More or less," said Loki, and if he'd looked proud of himself, who knew what would have happened. But mostly what he looked was worried. "What does it matter? That was years ago."

"So practically yesterday, for you," said Bucky. "Wow."

"Must we really," Loki started.

"--Wait," Bucky said. Because now he remembered something else. One of the world events he'd heard about, but decided he was better off not reading up on. When he went looking for everything he'd missed, he tried to stick with the stuff that made it sound like humanity was going somewhere after all. If it sounded like the kind of thing that was going to make him think maybe he actually hadn't been the worst thing about the second half of the twentieth century, he tended to give it a pass.

"'Wait,' what?"

"The alien attack in New York a few years back--that was you ?"

"...Possibly." Now Loki just looked embarrassed, but distantly, because on top of it was a new tension that seemed to be written into every line of his body.

"Unbelievable," Bucky said. It was the kind of thing that should probably have felt surreally awful, except that what it did feel like was pieces falling into place, one after another, solid enough to make an understanding out of. "So is there anything else I should know about you?"

"Nothing that comes to mind immediately," Loki said, which Bucky couldn't help but notice left a lot of room for anything Loki was deciding not to think about at the moment. "And nothing else of such--severity."

Later, Bucky would look up the clips, and think that the sweaty, manic Loki who was in them didn't really look all that much like the one he knew so well; and he'd wonder, then, about what a king had once said to them about enchantments and the recovery thereof. For now, he said, "Okay."

"'Okay'? That's it?"

"Yeah."

"You're actually saying this doesn't matter to you?"

That wasn't it. There were things that had to matter, and these were some of them. It was just that Bucky knew he could live with it. Maybe the person he'd been before couldn't have, but the person he was now was the one who had been the Winter Soldier--and even if he hadn't had a choice, he'd still done what he'd done, and none of it could ever be erased. Neither of their hands were clean, but neither of them was going around doing that kind of thing anymore, either.

"It changes some things," Bucky said, because how could it not. "I don't think it makes much of a difference, with us."

Something seemed to drain out of Loki. He sagged back against his pillow (Bucky owned two of them, which was either the height of luxury or the height of deprivation depending on who you asked). "What sort of changes might those be?"

"Well, now we're both wanted criminals," said Bucky, though he kind of suspected they might want Loki a little more. Or a lot more. Probably that second one. He was going to have to look into this. "And I think you might've run into my best friend, Steve."

"Doubtful," Loki said. "I haven't come across any 'five foot shrimps' in my travels."

"Let me rephrase that: I think you might have run into my best friend, Captain America."

"What?! "

*

It took a while to get everything sorted out, after that. Loki seemed a lot more worked up by the Steve thing than Bucky had been about all the attempted mass murder.

"I'll put in a good word for you," Bucky said, for what must have been the fifteenth time. "It'll be okay."

Loki opened his mouth, probably about to say something about all the good that would do--

And that was when the music started. 

It was a long, carrying note you immediately knew had come from nowhere on Earth. It entered the hut through the window or through the ground or from inside the two of them. It was haunting. It was beautiful. It was a note from a song you had once heard, so achingly lovely you'd always wished you could hear it again, so true you'd carry it with you all your life. It had a meaning as clear as if someone had explained it to you for a thousand hours, instead of you having heard it for only a handful of moments.

"The horn," Loki muttered, when the note had lapsed. "The queen's horn. It's got to be."

"The what?"

"We've heard of it, but never seen it nor heard it blown. It's meant to summon help to Narnia, when needed."

"Yeah?" said Bucky, though he'd figured the part about how they were being called for himself.

The horn sounded again. This time, it really did seem to come from inward--from Bucky's fingers and toes, from his head and his stomach, from the very core of him outward. Only there was no pull this time, like there had been the last time. There was nothing inevitable here.

"This is stupid. It's not as if we can go," Loki said. "Aslan said we could never return to Narnia."

Bucky thought back, to the things Aslan had said, and the things he hadn't. "You know, I don't think he did," he said slowly. "He said he wouldn't bring us. He didn't say we couldn't go for ourselves."

"And just how would you suggest we do that?" Loki said. "If we even wanted to. Which I absolutely do not, now that you mention it. I've had quite enough of the manipulations, the--"

The horn sounded again, and somehow you knew the third time would be the last time. This time, it came from everywhere at once, and even seemed to sound from four dimensions: past and present and future, everything that was and had been and ever, ever would be. And inside Bucky, a floodgate seemed to open. It was the kind of thing that would have been far too much, if not for the music lifting him, helping to keep his head above the raging waters.

As the song faded--as much as it ever would fade, for Bucky knew, somehow, that part of it would be with him forever, now--something else happened:

His south wall turned on, all by itself.

YOU HAVE THREE INCOMING CALLS, said the flashing red text on the screen.

"What's happening now," Loki said.

But what Bucky was looking at was the time. It was 2:32pm. He and Loki must have been talking a lot longer than he'd thought; and what they'd been talking about, and the fact that Loki was even here in the first place, had been enough to make him completely forget about his original plan.

"Uh," he said, and briefly explained the recording he'd made about Loki yesterday. The one he'd sent to Steve and Shuri on a delay. The one it hadn't even occurred to him to try to cancel. Until now, anyway.

"...You were much more intelligent when I knew you in Narnia," Loki managed, a complaint that seemed to have more awe in it than anything else. "Well. I suppose you'll think we have to go to Narnia now, in order to delay the unpleasantness. To which all I have to say is, let's go back to the Statesman, inste--"

But Bucky was frowning at the screen, wondering. The first two numbers were Steve and Shuri, obviously. The third one, though, was listed as NUMBER UNKNOWN.

"Answer the third one," he said, and the screen wavered into something else: what looked like some sort of cockpit, and, right in the middle of things, a tall, blond man with an eyepatch, who had an air around him that made you know instantly that he was a king.

"Loki," he said, in a low, intense voice. "Please, brother. I just want to talk--"

The screen went dark. Bucky hadn't been the one to turn it off, but the motions you were supposed to use were always on the key in the lower left-hand corner. Loki was making one of those motions now.

"You know, I've always enjoyed Narnia," Loki said, before Bucky could ask, or even figure out what to ask about what was going on there. "What do you say?"

"Maybe we should try the Tesseract before we decide," Bucky answered, though he already knew, both that it would work, and that they were going to go.

Loki brought it out, the same blue cube as before. In front of them, a portal opened.

And through the portal, they saw a glimpse of another world, as beloved to them as the one they shared. There was a girl there, standing on a tall hill, flanked by even taller mountains with snowy peaks. She had a bloody sword in one hand and a horn in the other. To either side of her stood strange creatures easily twice her height: enormous cats with the feathered heads and talons of eagles, and wings that fanned out from their tawny sides.

It was all very like a story Bucky had heard only the first few lines of, a few weeks ago, and very far from home. 'Now, the princess had long wished to journey to the tall mountains of the west...'

"What do you think?" Loki asked.

"Let's go. It'll give us time to figure out how to handle everyone else when we get back," Bucky said, though that was really only a secondary reason for wanting to. The main reason was what it always had been: because Narnia was a part of him, and he was a part of it, nevermind what had or hadn't been written in the stars. He would always want to go back, even though he didn't need to be there to be with Loki anymore. He turned around and reached into his trunk, where his sword and crossbow and other things were still waiting. A minute later, when he was done strapping things to himself, he said, "But there's just one more thing, before we head out."

The floodgate had opened a few minutes ago, but it had taken this long for any of it to really become clear. And of the things that were clear, there was just one that he needed to address right now.

"What thing?" Loki asked.

"I remember now," said Bucky.

"...Remember what?"

"A lot," Bucky said. "Everything, I think. Loki, I remember the apple."

How it had crunched under his teeth. How the juice had flowed down his face. The way Loki had been looking at him, with that barely-disguised eagerness. How Bucky had only understood it later, and felt off-balanced by the understanding; how it had been nothing compared to the understanding he'd had later, in those in-between days when he'd been changing, and would have given anything to be able to die before he became what they wanted him to be. Even that was nothing to the understanding he had now: what Loki had meant, when he'd asked how Bucky had lived to become the Winter Soldier. What Loki had meant, when they were in the tent, and he'd asked if...

Loki, here and now, had gone pale. Pale as bone, pale as snow. He hadn't cared this much about anything else Bucky had just found about him. This, though. This must have had him scared shitless. Either of the answer, or what Bucky would think when he knew whose fault it was that he hadn't died, back then. The dread must have been with Loki for years, without Bucky ever knowing.

But as much as Bucky remembered even more of the awful things now--and Aslan's warning had been right; there was more bad in there than Bucky had really thought there would be, maybe even decades more of it than he'd imagined in his worst moments--he remembered other things, too. He had his memories back, but it wasn't the bad or even the newly-remembered ones that he found himself focusing on.

The look in Steve's eyes when he came for his visits. The swing of Bucky's new arm, so much lighter than the old one, not painful the way that other one had been. Loki, lying in the stream covered in blood, with no one else to help him. His goats, greeting him every morning. The Witch's brothers under their spell, the dogs and horses locked in the barn. Everyone's faces lighting up around the fire, as they'd talked through their plan to win back Narnia. 

Loki, in the dark and in the light, in the woods and under a mound on a hill. Loki, insulting him and kissing him and kicking the absolutely shit out of that tree. Loki, who was with Bucky here in his hut, when neither of them had ever really thought he could be. And it was because of the apple that any of it had happened, and that Bucky was here.

Loki hadn't said anything. Maybe he couldn't. He was just standing there, looking stricken.

"Loki, hey," Bucky said, and in that moment the memory he had the most clearly was something Aslan had said, though it hadn't seemed to have much to do with him at the time. "You remember what you asked me, back in our tent? After the first time?"

"Yes," said Loki, and that was all.

Bucky remembered it too, now. Remembered it more clearly than he could have before he'd understood what it meant. 'Do you regret it?' If Bucky had understood the question at the time, he would probably have said he did. That it would have been better for him not to have done any of those terrible things, even if it meant he didn't go on to do any more good ones, either. But now he thought that maybe there was a reason he hadn't been allowed to remember until now. That maybe he'd had to wait until he could see that it really was better to live than to have died.

"You said you didn't regret it," Bucky said. Then, just as firmly as Loki had said it then: "Me, neither. I wish I hadn't done all the things they made me do, when I was the Soldier. But I'm really glad I get to be here with you now."

"I--good," said Loki, who wasn't being all that eloquent himself in this particular moment. "I'm glad, as well."

"Are we going to get going or what?" Bucky asked, looking again at the view on the other side of the portal. "I think we'll have a lot more fun this time. It sounded like a pretty good story when Tirian was telling it, anyway."

"I suppose we may as well," said Loki.

They turned back toward the portal, which opened a little wider, just enough for two people to step through together.

And so then, of course, they did.

*

It really had sounded like a good story. And, in the end, it was.