bucky finds a damp cardboard box of kittens abandoned in the alley near their home. he brings them inside, wraps and dries them with care and uses the heat pad that soothes his shoulder to keep them warm. they take the kittens to the vet because you can tell theyre all sickly, and steve can see how this is going to end (because, after all, what is he but a stray that bucky couldnt help but take in), yet bucky insists. lovingly, he cleans them with damp cloths as if it were their mother’s tongue, and gets up every hour on the hour in the night to feed them. still, every few days like clockwork one of them dies. steve slips from their bed to find bucky in the harsh kitchen light, mourning, milk bottle forgotten and growing cold on the table. he is devastated for each one as he cries whilst cradling their little bodies, and steve cradles him. you did your best, steve tells him. in the end only one lives; her fur had been the most stubborn to clean, but now its a soft, brilliant white. when she opens her eyes they’re blue. theyre going to keep her. she likes to curl in the palm of buckys hand, purring, her body warming the metal plates. steve and his dark humour says they should call her alley, and though bucky finds it funny they compromise and call her alpine - ally for short.