Smoke clawed at the sky like it was trying to blot out the sun. Concrete dust hung thick in the air, clinging to the back of Bucky’s throat, mixing with the copper tang of blood and the iron taste of old rage. He moved through the wreckage like a shadow—silent, calculating, quick. This was supposed to be clean. Contain the hostile, recover the intel, evac. But it had gone sideways fast.

They always did.

He heard the scream before he saw the child—high-pitched and raw, something primal. It cut through the chaos like a knife. Instinct kicked in, brutal and absolute. He ran.

The building groaned above him, the groan of something ancient and dying. Rebar twisted in the concrete like ribs punched through skin, and the heat from the nearby explosion scorched the air.

The girl couldn’t have been more than seven. Dirt streaked her cheeks, one knee bleeding through torn leggings, wide brown eyes frozen in terror as she sat crumpled near the base of a crumbling stairwell.

A shell of a moment: she was alone, and the world was about to come down on her.

“Дерьмо.” He didn’t think. He never thought, not when it counted. Bucky vaulted the rubble, metal hand already reaching. Another blast—closer now—slammed through the foundation. The shockwave hit him like a fist to the chest, but he was already moving.

He grabbed her—too small in his arms—and curled around her, using his back and metal arm to shield her as the stairwell above gave way. Concrete cracked. Dust exploded. Chunks of wall splintered and rained down.

Pain flared in his shoulder, hot and real. A beam caught his side—he bit down on the groan. Couldn’t let her hear that. Couldn’t let her be scared.

And then it was over.

Silence crept in slowly, as if the world had forgotten how to make noise.

She was trembling in his arms. Her little hands clutched the shoulder of his tac vest like a lifeline.

He eased up, checking her over. No wounds. Shaken, yes. But alive.

He knelt, eye-level with her. “Hey. You okay?” His voice came out rougher than he meant. His vocal cords always felt like they were lined with gravel in moments like these.

She blinked at him. Looked at the wreckage around them. Looked back at him.

Then she reached up, tiny fingers brushing against the star on his metal shoulder.

“You’re… you’re a hero.”

Bucky froze.

That word. It always hit like a sucker punch. People had called him that before. Sometimes with awe, sometimes with fear, sometimes with desperation. Never like this.

She wasn’t afraid of him.

He didn’t know what to do with that.

He cleared his throat, stood, adjusting her weight in his arms. “Nah,” he muttered. “Just doing my job.”

“You saved me,” she whispered, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “That’s what heroes do.”

He didn’t answer. Just started walking toward the evac point, boots crunching on debris. She didn’t need to know the things he’d done. The names he remembered. The faces he didn’t. The nights where he woke up gasping, hands shaking, unable to look at the man in the mirror.

But right now, in this single breath of time, her words wrapped around something hollow in his chest and didn’t let go.

A hero.

He could live with that. For her, just for today.