Chapter 2: Sights Set on Sin
The silence of 4 AM was a physical thing, thick and heavy as a blanket soaked in ice water. It was broken not by birds but by the jarring, electric scream of a whistle, slicing through the barracks like a shard of glass. No one needed a second blast. The groan of cots, the frantic shuffle of boots, the muted curses—it all happened in the dark, a well-rehearsed dance of dread.
Outside, the world was still a study in monochrome. Dante Marcus stood before them, a silhouette carved from the pre-dawn gloom, his breath puffing pale in the chill air. He was already sweating lightly from his own run, a dark V staining the front of his gray army t-shirt. “Good morning, ladies,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep he hadn’t allowed himself. “Welcome to another beautiful day in the United States Army. Fall in. We’re running.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a fact.
The run was five miles of pure misery, a circuit through pine barrens and over rocky hills where the only light was the pale beam of Dante’s flashlight sweeping ahead of them. Bucky’s lungs burned, his legs screamed, but the pain was a clean, simple thing. It was easier than the confusion churning in his gut. He kept his eyes on the swaying light, on the dark shape of Dante leading the pack, and tried to empty his mind of everything but the rhythm of his own footfalls.
Dawn was a raw, pink smear by the time they staggered back onto the main grounds. There was no respite. “Hydrate. Sixty seconds,” Dante barked, not even breathing hard as he watched them clutch their knees and heave. A minute later, another whistle. “Rifle range. Now.”
The rifle range at that hour was a spectral place. The sandbags were damp with dew, the wooden target frames stark against the softening sky. The air, still cold, carried the ghost of old cordite, a metallic tang that clung to the back of the throat.
“Today,” Dante announced, pacing before the line of weary men, “you learn that a weapon is an extension of your will. Your will is currently softer than my grandmother’s Sunday pudding. So we’re going to firm it up.” He began the drills: safety checks, stance, breathing. His instructions were clipped, precise, devoid of any warmth. He moved down the line, a correction here, a sharp word there.
Bucky’s turn came. He hefted the M1 Garand, its weight both familiar and alien. He assumed the position, cheek resting against the stock, eye finding the sight. The world narrowed to the circular view of the target, a pale bullseye a hundred yards away. He began to settle into his breath, the way he’d been taught.
Then the presence was there. Directly behind him. He didn’t need to see; he felt the heat first, a solid wall of it against his back, cutting through the morning chill. Then the smell—gun oil, starch, sweat, and underneath it all, something clean and sharp like pine soap.
A large, calloused hand came down on his left shoulder, another on his right bicep. Dante’s touch was impersonal, a mechanic adjusting a faulty part. He applied pressure, shifting Bucky’s stance a fraction of an inch. “Your left foot is half an inch too far forward,” Dante’s voice rumbled, not in his ear, but so damn close Bucky could feel the vibration of it through his own spine. “You’re leaning into the recoil before it happens. You’re anticipating. Don’t.”
Bucky’s breath hitched. He tried to focus on the target, but every sense was screaming about the man behind him. Dante leaned in further, his chest almost, but not quite, brushing Bucky’s back. His lips were close enough to Bucky’s ear that the next words were a hot, private whisper in the still air, yet held no intimacy, only a cold, focused intensity.
“Steady your grip, Barnes. You’re shaking like a goddamn leaf in a hurricane.” The words were low, a gritty scrape of sound. “Now focus on your front sight post. The target is a fuzzy blur. The post is crystal. That’s your world. Nothing else exists.”
But something else did exist. The heat of Dante’s body, the slight brush of his shirt against Bucky’s back, the gravelly command in his voice—it all fused into a single, terrifying pulse of awareness that shot straight to Bucky’s core. His hands, which had been steady, began to tremble visibly. The rifle’s front sight post wobbled over the bullseye.
Dante saw it. He leaned in even closer, his mouth now a hair’s breadth from Bucky’s ear. His growl was pure, undiluted frustration. “Focus, Barnes, or I’ll have you stripping and cleaning every rifle in this camp with your teeth.”
The heat that flooded Bucky’s body then had nothing to do with the rising sun. It was a wave of shame, of anger—at himself, at his body’s blatant, humiliating betrayal. He was mad. Furious. He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached, willed his hands to still. For a second, they obeyed. He squeezed the trigger.
The report was deafening in the quiet morning. The shot went wide, clipping the very edge of the target board.
A beat of silence followed the echo. Dante straightened up slowly, the heat of his body receding. He didn’t say another word to Bucky. He just took a step back, his icy blue eyes sweeping over the line of recruits as if Bucky were just another piece of faulty equipment. The dismissal in that look was worse than any shouted insult.
“Again,” Dante commanded, moving away. “All of you. From the top.”
Bucky’s ears rang. He lowered the rifle, his face burning under the grime and sweat. He risked a glance down the line. Steve was looking at him, concern etching his features. Bucky gave a minute, helpless shake of his head and turned back to his lane, his heart a drum against his ribs.
For the next hour, Dante stalked the line, his voice a lash. “You’re not painting a fucking watercolor! Squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it!” “What are you, scared of the noise? It’s a gun, it goes bang! Get used to it!” His curses were as frequent as the gunfire, a blunt percussion underscoring every failure.
It was during a lull, as men were reloading, that the low murmur came. Two lanes down, Yepez, his shoulder still clearly stiff and painful, had leaned over to Reddit. His whisper was meant to be private, a shared grievance. “My arm’s killing me. I can’t feel my damn finger.”
Reddit mumbled something back, a sympathetic grunt.
Dante’s head snapped toward the sound as if pulled by a wire. All movement on the line ceased. The only sound was the distant call of a crow.
He didn’t walk. He stalked. He stopped directly behind the two men, his shadow falling over them. “Did I,” he began, his voice dangerously quiet, “give anyone permission for a fucking tea party?”
Yepez and Reddit froze, their eyes wide.
“I believe I said,” Dante continued, the volume rising with each word, “that your weapon is your world. Was I speaking Japanese? Did my words not fucking translate?” He was shouting now, the sound raw and explosive in the open air. “You two seem to think this is a social hour. You think your little chat is more important than the man next to you learning to cover your incompetent ass?”
He took a step back, encompassing the entire line with his fury. “You all think this is individual? That one man’s mistake is his own problem?” He let out a harsh, mirthless laugh. “Wrong. It’s a unit problem. A platoon problem. A my problem. And when I have a problem, everyone gets to share in the solution.”
He pointed a tattooed finger at the dusty ground in front of the firing line. “Everyone. On the ground. Push-ups. Until I get tired of watching. And if I see one of you slow down, if I see one of you give me less than everything you’ve got, we start the count over. From zero.”
A collective groan died before it was born. Rifles were carefully set down. Forty men, Bucky and Steve among them, dropped to the hard, gravel-strewn earth and began.
The first twenty were agony. The next twenty were a blur of pain. Bucky pushed, his arms trembling, the old bruises from the day before screaming in protest. He kept his head down, gritting his teeth, focusing on the movement: down, up, down, up. He could hear Steve beside him, his breaths coming in short, pained gasps. He could hear Yepez, a soft sob of pain with each descent.
And he could hear Dante. The Colonel walked slowly among them, his boots kicking up little puffs of dust. He didn’t count aloud. He just watched, a silent, looming monument to their collective punishment. His gaze was impersonal, analytical. It swept over Bucky’s straining form, noting the tremor in his arms, the sheen of sweat on his neck, and moved on without a flicker of recognition.
Bucky pushed. And pushed. The world shrank to the gravel under his palms, the burning in his shoulders, the coppery taste of blood in his mouth from a bitten lip. He pushed past the point of pain, into a numb, hollow place where the only thing that existed was the next repetition. And through the haze of exhaustion, the shame still burned, brighter and hotter than the fire in his muscles. It was directed inward, a fury at his own weakness, at the unwelcome pull he felt toward the very source of his misery.
Above him, Dante finally spoke, his voice flat and cold. “Get up.” The words were a pardon and a sentence all at once.
The men staggered to their feet, arms hanging uselessly at their sides. Dante surveyed them, his expression unreadable. “Maybe now you understand,” he said, his voice carrying easily in the sudden quiet. “Your failure is never just your own. It’s a cancer. And I will cut it out, one way or another.”
He picked up his clipboard. “Dismissed. Chow in thirty. Don’t be late.”
The group stumbled away from the range, a broken column of dust-covered, trembling men. Bucky walked beside Steve, neither speaking. The anger in him had cooled, hardened into a cold, heavy knot in his stomach. He looked back once, just once.
Dante stood alone in the middle of the empty firing line, a silhouette against the now-bright sky. He wasn’t watching them leave. He was staring at the distant, scarred target boards, perfectly still, as if carved from the same worn wood.
He was staring at the distant, scarred target boards, perfectly still, as if carved from the same worn wood. The compound was quiet now, just the buzz of insects in the tall grass and the faint clatter of mess tins from the chow hall. Dante took a final drag from a cigarette, crushing the butt under his heel, and turned to walk back to his quarters.
He didn’t get far. A khaki-colored staff car was idling near the command hut, its paint dusty from the road. General Princeton leaned against the fender, watching him approach. “Colonel.”
“General.” Dante nodded, stopping a respectful distance away. “Something I can do for you?”
“Just observing.” Princeton pushed off the car, his eyes scanning the empty training grounds. “Your methods leave a mark, Marcus. I saw your little… convocation at the rifle range.”
Dante said nothing. He waited.
“Good.” The General’s smile was thin, appreciative. “Soft men make for hard times. Hard men make for short wars.” He glanced toward the chow hall, where a figure lingered nervously by the door. “One of yours seems to have a differing opinion, however. Wants a word.”
Yepez stood shifting his weight from foot to foot, his face pale. When the General waved him over, he walked like a man approaching a gallows. He stopped before them, snapping a brittle salute. “Sirs.”
Princeton’s demeanor was almost friendly. “At ease, son. You sought me out. You had a concern about Colonel Marcus’s training regimen.”
Yepez’s eyes darted between the two officers, wide with a trapped-animal fear. He swallowed hard. “Sir, I just… it’s very tough, Sir. For all of us.”
“I imagine it is.” Princeton’s tone was conversational. “What would you like me to do about it?”
The question hung in the humid air. Yepez blinked, wrong-footed. “I… well, Sir, maybe talk to him? Or… assign a new drill sergeant?”
Princeton nodded slowly, as if considering a profound request. He smiled again, a brief flash of teeth. “Okay.” He turned his head toward Dante. “Colonel, a word in private?”
They walked a few paces away, leaving Yepez standing alone in the baking sun. Dante could feel the kid’s terrified gaze on his back. Princeton spoke low, his voice losing all pretense of warmth. “He’s weak.”
“I know,” Dante replied, his voice flat.
“He’ll break. Or he’ll get stronger. Your job is to find out which, fast.” Princeton lit his own cigarette. “I don’t care how you do it. I care that you make soldiers who don’t get my other boys killed. Understood?”
“Perfectly.”
“Good.” The General exhaled a plume of smoke. “Now, let’s see how he handles a direct conversation. Call him over.”
Dante turned. “Yepez. Here.”
Yepez nearly jumped. He shuffled over, his salute now a shaky afterthought. General Princeton looked at him, his expression benign. “Tell the Colonel what you just told me.”
The color drained completely from Yepez’s face. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His throat worked silently. Dante just watched him, his icy blue eyes giving nothing away, no hint of the anger he’d shown on the range. The silence stretched, filled only by the dry buzz of cicadas.
“Sir,” Yepez finally squeaked, his voice cracking. “I… I said it was… tough. That maybe you were… too tough.”
Dante didn’t move. He didn’t raise his voice. When he spoke, it was with a calm, almost reasonable tone, the calmest any of them had ever heard from him. “It is tough. I am tough. That’s the job, Private.” He took a small step closer, not threatening, but closing the space so his words were for Yepez alone. “You think this is abuse? This is a fucking mercy. A kindness.”
Yepez stared, utterly confused.
“Out there,” Dante continued, his gaze steady, “in a place you can’t even imagine yet, being weak isn’t a personal problem. It’s a death sentence. For you. For the man next to you. For the brother or friend back home you swore you’d return to.” He leaned in a fraction. “You need to get your shit together. Now. Because if you don’t, you will die. Or worse, someone you give a shit about will die because you froze, or you missed, or you just weren’t good enough.”
The words landed with a different weight than his usual screamed curses. They were quiet, final, and absolutely certain. Yepez’s terrified expression shifted, the fear melting into a stunned, hollow understanding. He looked down at his own boots, covered in the same dust as Dante’s. “I understand, Sir,” he mumbled.
“Look at me,” Dante said, still calm.
Yepez forced his head up.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll… I’ll do better, Sir. I apologize.”
Dante held his gaze for a long second, then gave a single, shallow nod. He looked past Yepez to the General. Princeton’s smile was back, a ghost of approval at the corner of his mouth. “See?” the General said to no one in particular. “Communication.” He clapped Dante on the shoulder. “Carry on, Colonel.”
The General walked back to his car, leaving Dante and Yepez standing there. The private looked shattered, but a new resolve was hardening in his eyes, born from sheer terror. Dante finally broke the silence, his voice returning to its normal, dispassionate timbre. “Chow hall, Yepez. Don’t be late.”
Yepez nodded, too shaken to speak, and stumbled toward the mess. Dante watched him go, then lit another cigarette. He could feel eyes on him from the barracks windows, from the chow hall door. He didn’t care. The lesson wasn’t just for Yepez.
Inside the loud, steamy mess hall, Bucky had watched the entire scene through a grimy window. He’d seen Yepez approach the General, seen the private talk, seen the three of them confer. He saw Dante speak to Yepez without yelling, saw the kid’s shoulders slump not in defeat, but in something else—a grim acceptance.
“What’s happening?” Steve asked, sliding onto the bench beside him with a tray of lumpy mashed potatoes and gray meat.
“Don’t know,” Bucky muttered, tearing his eyes away from the window. “Yepez just talked to the General and the Colonel. Didn’t get his head bitten off, looks like.”
Steve followed his gaze as Yepez entered, looking shell-shocked but walking straight to the food line. “Huh. Maybe he’s getting soft.”
Bucky snorted, pushing his food around his plate. He remembered the heat of Dante behind him on the range, the whispered threat. That hadn’t felt soft. That felt like being burned alive from the inside out. The calm way Dante had just spoken to Yepez was somehow worse, more intimate. It meant he could control it, that fury. He could choose when to unleash it.
Dante and Princeton entered the mess hall last. A palpable hush fell over the room, conversations dropping to murmurs. He didn’t look at anyone.
He didn’t look at anyone, just got a black coffee from the urn and stood by the wall, drinking it like it was medicine. The General followed him, pouring a cup for himself. They stood in a pocket of quiet amidst the clatter of trays and low talk.
The General looked over at Dante, studying his profile. “You good, Colonel?”
Dante nodded, his eyes fixed on some middle distance beyond the recruits. “Just tryna save them from redoing my own mistakes,” he said, his voice low and rough.
The General put his hand on Dante’s shoulder, a rare, weighty gesture. “You will do the best you can with them. And you can’t save them all, Marcus. That wasn’t your fault.” Dante just nodded again, a stiff, small motion. The General’s hand fell away, and he walked out, leaving Dante alone against the wall.
Bucky watched the whole exchange from his seat, his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. He saw the set of Dante’s jaw, the way his knuckles were white where they gripped the ceramic mug. He saw the General’s brief touch, a moment of connection that seemed to cost Dante something. That wasn’t your fault. The words echoed in Bucky’s head, a puzzle piece to a man he couldn’t solve. What mistake?What fault?
The Colonel’s icy composure was back in an instant, but Bucky had seen the crack. It lasted only a second, a fracture in granite, but it changed everything. This wasn’t just a hard man. This was a haunted one.
Dante’s gaze swept the room then, and for a fraction of a heartbeat, it landed on Bucky. There was no recognition in it, no heat, just that same analytical assessment he gave to everything. But Bucky felt it like a physical touch, his breath catching in his throat. He dropped his eyes to his tray, his heart hammering against his ribs. When he looked up, Dante was already turning away, dumping the dregs of his coffee in a trash can and walking out without a backward glance.
The afternoon was land navigation. Dante spread them out in the pine scrub with a map, a compass, and coordinates for a point three miles away. “First five back get a pass on tonight’s kitchen duty,” he’d said, his voice flat. “The rest scrub pots until your fingers prune.”
Bucky took off with Steve, the two of them moving fast through the dry undergrowth. They worked well together, a silent understanding born from a lifetime of Brooklyn backstreets. For an hour, the physical effort, the puzzle of the terrain, cleared Bucky’s head. It was just trees, and dirt, and the tick of the compass needle.
They found the marker—a red flag tied to a lightning-blasted pine—and turned back, a surge of victory in their chests. They were going to be first. They had to be.
The crash came from their left. A cry of pain, sharp and cut short. Bucky and Steve shared a glance and veered toward it without a word.
Yepez was on the ground, clutching his ankle, his face twisted. Reddit knelt beside him, looking helpless. “Snagged his foot in a root,” Reddit said, his voice thin with panic. “He heard it pop.”
“Can you walk?” Steve asked, already pulling Yepez’s arm over his shoulder.
“No, god, no,” Yepez gasped, tears of pain and frustration in his eyes. “Just go. Get your time.”
Bucky looked at Steve. Kitchen duty meant blistered hands and lost sleep. It meant falling even further behind. It also meant leaving a man. Steve’s jaw was set. He gave a tiny, decisive shake of his head.
“Not happening,” Bucky said, bending down.“Up. We’re carrying you.”
It was slow, brutal work. Yepez wasn’t small, and the terrain was rough. They took turns supporting his weight, their pace reduced to a clumsy stumble. Other recruits passed them, shooting them incredulous or pitying looks. Bucky kept his eyes on the ground, ignoring the burning in his arms, the certain knowledge of what awaited them.
They were the last to stumble back into the clearing. Dante stood with his clipboard, his expression unreadable. The sun was dipping low, casting long, accusing shadows. The other recruits were already formed up, dusty and tired but finished.
Dante didn’t speak. He just watched as the three of them hobbled into the formation, Yepez leaning heavily on Bucky and Steve. The silence was worse than shouting.
Finally, he consulted his watch, then his list. “Barnes.Rogers. You are officially last.” He made a mark on his clipboard. The sound of the pen was like a gunshot. “Report to the mess sergeant after evening lecture. You’ll be his new best friends.” He paused, his eyes sliding to Yepez, who was trying and failing to stand at attention. “As for you. Infirmary. Now.”
Yepez nodded, ashamed, and began a pathetic, hopping shuffle toward the camp buildings. Dante watched him go for a moment, then turned his cold blue eyes back to Bucky and Steve. Something flickered there, too fast to name. It wasn’t approval. It wasn’t pity.
It looked like recognition.
“Dismissed,” he said, his voice low. “Get cleaned up. Lecture in one hour.”
The lecture hall was a low, stuffy room that smelled of old wood and nervous sweat. Bucky and Steve slipped into seats at the back, their hands already raw from a preliminary scouring of giant stockpots. Dante stood at the front, rolling a piece of chalk between his tattooed fingers. He didn’t use notes.
He began talking about flanking maneuvers, his voice a dry, precise instrument. He drew diagrams on the blackboard, arrows and X’s representing men and movement. It should have been dull. But it wasn’t. He spoke about terrain not as geography but as personality—a hill could be arrogant, a woodline deceitful, a river indifferent. He talked about the weight of a decision, the seconds that stretched into lifetimes between an order and its consequence.
Bucky found himself leaning forward, forgetting the ache in his shoulders, the sting in his hands. Dante’s intelligence was a sharp, clear blade, honed by experience he only hinted at. He wasn’t just teaching them to fight; he was teaching them to think like the enemy, to see the battlefield as a living, breathing thing. It was terrifying. It was brilliant.
Dante’s eyes swept the room, landing briefly on different recruits. When they passed over Bucky, they didn’t linger, but Bucky felt seen in a new way—not as a body, but as a mind being assessed.
“The goal isn’t to be brave,” Dante said, turning to erase part of a diagram. The muscles in his back shifted under his fatigues. “Bravery is a temporary condition, like a fever. It breaks. The goal is to be competent. So competent that when the fear comes, and it will, your hands know what to do without asking your heart for permission.”
He finished the lecture and set the chalk down. “Questions?”
No one spoke. The room was silent, gripped by the grim reality he’d sketched for them.
“Good. You should be too scared to ask.” He grabbed his cap from the lectern. “Dismissed. Barnes, a word.”
The order cut through the room. Steve shot Bucky a worried glance as the others filed out, their boots scraping on the wooden floor. Bucky’s mouth went dry. He stood and walked to the front, stopping a few feet from Dante, who was wiping chalk dust from his hands with a rag.
Dante didn’t look at him immediately. He finished cleaning his hands, folded the rag, and placed it neatly on the lectern. The room was empty now, just the two of them in the pool of light from a single hanging bulb.
“You and Rogers lost your time today,” Dante said, finally looking at him. His face was all angles and shadow in the weak light.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Because you helped Yepez.”
Bucky hesitated. “He couldn’t walk, Sir.”
“I have eyes, Barnes. I know what happened.” Dante took a step closer. The space between them felt charged, thinner. “You made a choice. You sacrificed a tactical advantage—a tangible reward—for a compromised asset. In the field, that’s how you get a whole squad killed.”
Bucky felt a flush of anger, hot and immediate. “He wasn’t an asset, Sir. He was a guy who fell.”
“Out there,” Dante said, his voice dropping, “he is an asset. You are an asset. Your feelings are a liability.” He searched Bucky’s face, his gaze intense, probing. “That moral compass you’re so proud of? Its needle swings on emotion. It’s unreliable. You need something stronger.”
“What’s stronger, Sir?” The question came out before Bucky could stop it, a challenge wrapped in genuine confusion.
For a long moment, Dante didn’t answer. He just looked at him, and in that look, Bucky saw the echo of the man from the mess hall, the one burdened by mistakes. “Duty,” Dante said finally, the word sounding worn and heavy. “Duty is a fixed point. It doesn’t care if you’re tired, or scared, or if you like the man next to you. You follow it. Or you fail. And failure has a cost other people pay.”
He picked up his cap and put it on, the brim throwing his eyes into shadow. “You’re a natural leader, Barnes. They look to you. That means your choices weigh more. Start making the hard ones.” He turned to leave, then paused at the door. “And for god’s sake, learn to control that tells of yours. Your hands shake when you’re angry. Or nervous. Or whatever that was on the range. A man who knows you will see that. A man who wants to kill you will see it faster.”
He was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving Bucky alone in the silent, dusty room. The words swirled in his head—duty, asset, liability. But all he could feel was the heat of Dante’s proximity, the gravelly timbre of his voice in the quiet room, and the devastating, specific knowledge that Dante had been watching his hands.