Title: Blood Searching Near and Far
Series: Witch Bucky
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Alternate Canon, Canon Divergence
Warning: Not Ultron Compliant, Not Civil War Compliant, Divergent Post-CAWS, magic, Bucky Recovering, Bucky Remembers, Long Lost Relatives
Summary: Bucky's magic along with his memory, was flowing unimpeded inside him once more, he once again completely himself. With his newfound freedom came a long list of things he needed to do, but there was one thing he wanted to do. The first thing he wanted in seventy years, was to find out if he was the last of his kind. The last of the Barnes witches.
A/N: Bucky's stealth spell was rewritten from the Robert Frost poem "The Secret Sits". Bucky's scrying spell was rewritten from the song "When You Wish Upon a Star" from Pinoccio (1940).
Bucky left the clearing on steadier feet. He'd planted the potted plants and fertilized the ground with the remaining dregs of the potion. They would flourish all the way through the next winter and into the next spring, he knew. It was his way of giving back to the earth magic that gave more than was traditional for a self-beneficial spell.
Once he was redressed, sweat dried gritty on his skin, Bucky packed up the rest of his supplies and made the trek back through the wood and back toward his bolt hole. He ate the second plum on the walk and when the flesh was gone and the pit was buried where he'd finished it, his mind was less chaotic and the minute trembling in his hands had disappeared.
Back in his bolt hole, Bucky dropped his spell weaving tools on the rickety kitchen table, collapsed on the rickety cot, and passed out from one blink to the next.
The next morning, Bucky woke knowing that he had to move. He couldn't aimlessly ghost through the country working solely off of instinct. His mind was healed as much as it was going to be and there were things he had to do. Things that have waited seventy years.
First things first, however, was to pack up what little of a life he had amassed in the whole week he'd been in that bolt hole and get the hell out of Dodge. Now that he knew who he was, the sheer horrific enormity of what had been done to him, and what he was made to do, he knew exactly what he needed to do next.
Now that he knew what that soul deep instinctual feeling was, Bucky let it guide him once more and he found himself at an antique store. It led him to the very back of the store to a disorganized pile of old suitcases and traveling trunks. Okay, then, he thought to himself and shrugged. He was still getting used to the unimpeded feeling of his magic flowing in him, but he remembered when to listen just fine.
He started digging through the pile picking up and discarding cases and trunks and old luggage, all hard and heavier than they had any right to be. He didn't realize he'd drawn an audience until the hesitant young shop assistant spoke from a presumed safe distance back from him and the mess he was making.
"Um, sir? Is there something I can help you with?"
Bucky, since he was the most feared assassin this side of the Cold War, didn't jump. He just glanced over his shoulder.
"Nah, thanks." He paused and grinned lifting a trunk that was actually older than him. It was built to last with solid brass hinges and buckles, thick supple leather straps and handles, and was positively covered in turn of the century travel stamps. Leaning close to the weathered, well-traveled trunk, Bucky pressed his ear to the lid and smiled. "I think I found what I'm looking for."
The trunk resonated with the tiniest flicker of Romanian magic. This piece had carried its owner's belongings on a journey to see the land where his family, his traditions, and his magic were from.
"Oh," the young girl said, blinking around at the mess of displaced luggage spread out across the back of the shop. "Okay, I guess I'll just ring that up for you."
After stacking the antique luggage back into its precarious mountain, Bucky shelled out seventy-five Hydra liberated dollars and carted the ridiculously heavy solid wood travel trunk down the street back toward his bolt hole.
He packed all his magic things in the trunk, packed his Soldier things in a thick duffle, and disappeared from the bolt hole leaving not a single trace behind. Even the shaved hair piled on the grungy tile floor in the bathroom had been swept up, stored in a zip-lock bag, and stashed away in his trunk along with the rest of his burgeoning witch's kitchen.
Stealing an '80s Buick and driving the utterly unremarkable and untraceable car all the way up the coast, straight into Brooklyn was an exercise in ease. As in it was possibly one of the easiest things he'd ever had to do since he'd fallen off a train in Austria.
In a move of either idiocy or brilliance, Hydra had acquired a safe house in Bucky's old neighborhood. Filled with the working class poor, immigrants from all corners, and bursting at the seams with queers. He and Stevie sure had an eclectic street education while growing up.
Locational irony aside, the safe house was an old walk-up studio apartment, wide open space with literally only one door; a twenty year-old porcelain toilet the only thing behind said door. There was a naked claw foot tub with a handheld shower head off the tiny kitchen area, a two burner stove, a farmhouse sink almost big enough to bathe in, and massive curtainless windows. It was a sniper's dream and an assassin's nightmare.
Bucky stood just inside the doorway with his duffle over one shoulder and his trunk filled with magic held in both hands like it weighed nothing. He looked around the space. It had a good feel to it, the natural light was pleasant, it had all the basic amenities, there was plenty of space for him to grow his collection, and the danger of any unwanted voyeurs was easy enough to take care of.
He shrugged and dropped his luggage by the door on the original, solid wood floors, then turned to go get rid of the car.
Getting the apartment satisfactorily inhabitable for a wanted, hunted assassin was a mildly monotonous process. He was working spells and making talismans that he'd made almost a hundred times before in the mud and trenches of European battlefields. Seventy years ago the ingredients required to weave those spell had been harder to come by, but Bucky could work the spells in his sleep.
He had the apartment protected by dinner time.
The apartment became invisible with talismans made from old green glass soda bottles bought at an antique store frequented by people who thought dressing like cheap imitation throwbacks was cool. He broke the green glass bottles and wrapped three of the biggest pieces of glass in knotted locks of his shaved hair he'd picked up from the bathroom floor.
The hair wrapped glass then had steel wire pilfered from a discarded electrical cord Bucky had picked up off the street twisted around them in an intricate Romanian knot for hiding one from view. He strung the simple yet effective talismans with sturdy twine and hung them up on both sides of the massive windows and above the front door.
Next he made the talismans that would prevent any human intending to harm him or capture him from entering his home.
He went to a florist and bought a hanging basket of bright purple bougainvillea. While the flower itself is meant to be used in welcoming spells the two inch long thorns are decidedly unwelcoming. He cut off the sharpest thorn he could find on the plant and promptly pricked his flesh thumb on the point. Holding the punctured pad of his thumb on the thorn, Bucky didn't pull it away until the entire thorn was dripping in his blood. The blood soaked in and turned the dark green thorn to dark red.
Wrapping his thumb in a haphazardly folded tissue, Bucky grabbed the big sliver of wood he'd shaved off the doorjamb with his knife and bound it around the thorn together with another steel wire twisted in the Romanian knot for repelling negative and harmful forces. He twisted and knotted the wire 'til it was at a length good for hanging. The talisman for barring entry of ill-intentioned humans was nailed above the door right next to the talisman to hide the entire apartment from view of others.
After that came the talisman to keep others out with prejudice. And by other, Bucky meant monsters, spirits, and any other entities not human. There wasn't usually that much risk of an attack of the supernatural kind in the middle of Brooklyn, but Bucky hadn't lived through World War II and seventy years of near suicide missions by not being paranoid.
It was very similar to the anti-human talisman. A blood soaked thorn and steel wire twisted in a Romanian repelling knot, but instead of a cut of wood from the home's entrance he had to use a piece of wrought iron.
Unfortunately, the quickest and closest place with an abundance of the iron his magic demanded was around the garden behind the old Catholic church. Sarah and Steve had attended that church and Bucky'd had a cordial understanding with the magic on that hallowed ground.
It had been near a century but it still recognized Bucky and with a bit of quiet conversation magic to magic the Christian powers permeating the earth grudgingly gave him permission to take a small piece of its wrought iron gate.
Bucky was thankful and promised to, when the opportunity presented itself, help one of the church's parishioners. Whether by magic or mundane ways didn't matter; a lot of magic was about fair trade and helping a Christian to the best of his ability would be adequate recompense.
In addition to the piece of iron, the only other ingredient, the talisman needed was a whisker of a cat. In many cultures' magics cats were guardians and protectors and warders against supernatural forces. So, Bucky bought a tin of tuna and hunted around the neighborhood for two hours before he finally found a wizened alley cat.
Predictably cats had a close relationship with the magics of the earth and in its way the calico feline gave Bucky permission to take one of its whiskers. Or maybe it was too distracted shoving its face in the open can of tuna to really care when he plucked on long white whiskery from its cheek.
Either way, Bucky finished off his talisman with more steel wire twisted in repelling knots and hung up with others above the door.
Though each talisman was simple putting relatively little exertion on his magic, making five of them in less than a day after hours in the car not a week after weaving a spell strong enough to break through seventy years of brainwashing and electro-torture induced amnesia, Bucky was fucking exhausted. He stayed awake long enough to unroll his sleeping bag before he face planted on it and passed out for the next eighteen hours.
Bucky spent the next two days after that getting the lay of the land. Exploring the changes of the neighborhood, of the city, and catching up on current events. Of course that's when he finally learned the full story of how Steve made it into the 21st century. It wasn't a pleasant tale and Bucky spent the next twenty minutes sick to his stomach imagining his heart's brother willingly plunging to his own death.
Once he'd gotten the taste of vomit out of his mouth, he went about digging up the dirty details on Steve's teammates. Which there were many and varied dirty details to dig up. Of course the Black Widow's, Natalia's, intelligence purge helped immensely with that. What he couldn't find in the SHIELD/Hydra files he found through freshly remembered Hydra only and Soviet intel caches.
For such a technologically advanced science-Nazi organization they were really terrible about bolstering the security on their old supposedly defunct intelligence servers. The Winter Soldier was an expert technological infiltrator, but still he shouldn't have been able to hack into Hydra servers with the rudimentary laptop he bought a big box store and the wifi he was stealing from the café across the street. It was actually kinda embarrassing that they'd been able to hold him captive for the last seventy years when he'd been able to empty the funds from a third of their secret untraceable accounts in a matter of hours.
Really for all that they'd been able to infiltrate arguably the most secret of secret organizations and still couldn't protect their money from internet theft was kind of pitiful. They should be ashamed.
It took forty-eight hours before Bucky was satisfied that his newly purloined monetary funds were sufficiently secured and he'd dredged up every little tiny bit of detail on Steve's teammates he could.
Then it was time for him to do what he'd been dreading since he regained his mind. It was time for Bucky to find his family.
Of course before he did that, he had to make sure there was no way anyone could follow him back to whatever remaining family he found.
The spell to hide him from sight, from searching eyes and pursuing feet, was more involved than the relatively simple talismans he'd made for the apartment. If he wanted the spell to last a good long while, he'd have to augment the standard version, personalize it a fair amount.
It wouldn't be a problem. Being untraceable was what the Winter Soldier did; staying hidden was what a sniper did. Bucky was already halfway there.
The only ingredients he had to go out and get was an ash grey candle from the yoga/zen/hippy/incense shop a block away, and a small potted thorn-apple bush. He set up his tools and ingredients on the cool wood floor in front of the large windows in the main room.
Pulling out the tin of black camo paint he kept with the other parts of his Winter Soldier uniform, he scraped the thick pasty paint into his copper pot with his flesh finger. It plopped into the pot ungracefully and sat misshapenly at the bottom like black putty.
Tossing the empty tin carelessly over his shoulder, Bucky lit the grey candle sitting bare on the floor between his copper pot and mortar and pestle. He ground a shard of green glass between his metal fingers letting the glittering granules fall into the mortar. A sharply toothed thorn-apple leaf was next. He cut it from the stem with his combat knife and used both hands to shred it messily into the mortar.
Everything in a spell is important, even the way ingredients are prepared. The thorn-apple leaf had to be shredded because the concealment spell he was crafting had an element of flexibility to it. The final product needed to react to different kinds of attacks in different ways. Letting the leaf rip apart in a natural way would give it adaptability as opposed to strict precise slicing and cutting which translated to rigidity in a spell.
Green glass and thorn-apple leaf added, it was time for the smoking wick of a grey candle. The wick had to be cut from the candle while still burning so Bucky clinched the blackened string with a pair of tweezers and sliced a quarter inch length of burning wick free. It held its flame long enough for him to drop it into the mortar where it snuffed out into thinly curling smoke. Grey like a shadow the candle had to be and the smoke ephemeral and impossible to catch.
Bucky ground and pounded it all together with the pestle until it was a grainy unappetizing dark green paste. He scrapped the paste over the chunky black camo paint and got off the floor taking the pot and its contents to the kitchen.
The burner was lit to medium heat and Bucky watched the mixture melt. He stirred it slowly with his wooden spoon letting it blend and liquefy until all there was in the pot was a viscus black potion. The pot was moved off the fire and Bucky grabbed one of his brand new freshly purified mason jars. He poured the black potion into the jar, scrapping every last bit off the bottom of the pot.
Bucky set the uncovered jar off to the side to cool and went about cleaning and purifying his spell crafting tools. By the time he was finished the potion was room temperature and had solidified back into the familiar consistency of tactical face paint.
Since there was no special preparation he had to do before putting it on, Bucky just coated his flesh fingertips in black paint. He swiped a solid thick stripe from one temple over his nose to the other, coating his eyelids and under eyes along the way. The spell he had to chant was simple, no flare required.
"They glance around in their search and suppose,
While my secret hides in the middle and knows."
The paint hummed on his skin, warming like the sun on his face then it sank in and disappeared beneath the surface. It took a moment for the magic to settle, but when Bucky felt it calm, he knew not a single trace of black was visible on him.
He smirked, satisfied with his work and screwed the lid on the jar setting it against the wall on the counter with the other tiny collection of potions and tinctures he had accrued so far.
His smirk faded quickly however, because now that he was hidden from all and a sundry, untraceable by mundane or magical means, there was no more reason to put off searching for his family members. If there were any left.
The next morning the sun was bright, large fluffy clouds hung in the sky, and Prospect Park was filled with families, joggers, and old people out for a stroll. Bucky felt a little out of place, but he knew no one would pay any attention to him by virtue of his concealment spell. At least as long as he did nothing to draw attention to himself.
He wasn't sitting in the park out in the heat wearing long sleeves and one glove because he liked the outdoors, however. He was there to gather an ingredient.
It took a while but after about forty-five minutes of just sitting there on a bench with a piece of salted pretzel held between his fingers temptingly he finally got a nibble. One regal looking fat pigeon waddled up, sunlight playing off his iridescent black feathers. The bird stopped in front of Bucky, eyed him up and down appraisingly, eyed the salty offering held between two gloved fingers and decided to deign to accept.
Bucky caught the bird in his flesh hand when it fluttered up into his lap chasing the bit of pretzel. With the pigeon suitably occupied with the offering, Bucky took his trade in the deal and plucked a long grey-black iridescent feather from the bird's wing. The creature squawked indignantly but couldn't protest too much since it'd already gotten its reward. It just flapped away and took its pretzel with it.
Leaning back, Bucky twirled the feather between his fingers examining it. Satisfied with his acquisition, he picked up the rest of his giant pretzel and leisurely finished it in the bright sunlit park.
Since he didn't have any furniture, Bucky spread out a large paper map of the United States on the floor. The scrying spell he was going to use to find his family was a simple but powerful one. He just needed a feather, or another part of a creature with extraordinary navigational abilities. In this case, he decided on a pigeon feather because homing pigeons are known for their unerring sense of direction and they were in overabundance in the city.
A map, a feather, and some blood was all the spell needed. He could have just used water, or milk, or some other liquid, but he was searching out persons with witch blood. The extra kick would be helpful.
He dipped the tip of the feather in the small pool of blood welling up in the sliced palm of his flesh hand. The feather soaked up the blood and with a smooth twirl of his left hand Bucky painted a Romanian rune for searching on the center of the map. He chanted the short spell and waited.
"Magic searching near and far,
Makes no difference where they are.
Blood kin found as my desire
Shall lead me true."
The blood symbol on the map trembled, pooled, and flowed across the States to settle in a large bead over New York state.
Hurriedly, Bucky tossed aside that map and spread out the paper map of New York he'd bought. He painted the symbol on the center of that map and chanted the spell again.
"Magic searching near and far,
Makes no difference where they are.
Blood kin found as my desire
Shall lead me true."
The blood stopped over New York City and Bucky spread out the map of the city he had waiting next to him.
"Magic searching near and far,
Makes no difference where they are.
Blood kin found as my desire
Shall lead me true."
His breath hitched when he watched the blood glide and settle gently over a spot on the map in Brooklyn not all that far from the purloined Hydra safe house he was sitting in right at that moment. It took him a long minute of just breathing staring at the dot of blood on the map, before he finally reached over and grabbed up his laptop. He googled and found out the address his scrying spell had lead him to was a nice, wonderfully reviewed retirement home.
Throat tight, Bucky tried to tell himself this was nothing unexpected. Of course anyone he knew would at least be in their eighties, if not nineties. It wasn't like he was just going to show up and find them just as young and vibrant as before he went off to war. Everyone he knew as Bucky Barnes was long dead. It was a miracle there was even someone for his spell to find. There was no use being anything other than thankful.
Because his mother would roll in her grave if he left a mess of magical things on his floor, Bucky took the time to tidy up. He wiped the maps free of the mercury-like beads of blood and folded them up nice and neat. He gently blotted the blood from the pigeon feather until it was a clean grey again then dropped it into the antique green glass bottle he had sitting on the windowsill in his little kitchen.
There was nothing left to deter him from finding out who his spell had lead him to so he snagged his light jacket off the hook, slipped his left glove on, made sure he was as armed as he could get dressed as a civilian and left the apartment.
The retirement home looked nicer in person than it had on the website. Apparently it was pretty exclusive, a put on a waiting list for years type of place, 'cause it was housed a repurposed mansion. If it wasn't for his ingrained stealth and his stealth notice-me-not spell, he would have had a hard time getting past the front desk. The administrator behind the antique wooden desk looked like she ruled with an iron fist and the security guard was ex-military judging by his rigid posture and watching eyes.
Bucky slipped past them without so much as a pleasant nod and followed the gentle pull of like calling to like out the back into the garden.
The sunshine out in the backyard was somehow brighter. It seemed to sparkle off the green growing things and the brightly colored blooms growing in no prearranged order. The sound of harmless bugs enjoying the garden was a pleasant music on its own and the elderly men and women sitting on the benches and lounge chairs scattered around appeared to be enjoying the happy atmosphere.
There was one woman kneeling toward the back of the garden that caught Bucky's eye. She was shielded from the sun with a wide brimmed floppy sunhat and her simple dress had a bright happy floral print to it that matched the garden around her. Her hands were covered in well-worn gardening gloves and the tools spread out next to her looked old and cared for. In the cloth lined basket at her side, she had gathered precise trimmings of mountain tobacco, valerian, elderberry, and foxglove.
An eclectic collection, Bucky thought. A second look at the good sized garden the woman was working in revealed that a good many of the plants growing there had no business thriving this far out of their seasons, or this far away from their native lands.
His heart gave a painful squeeze and Bucky tried to swallow around his tight throat. Like calls to like and he let his feet carry him the last few yards 'til he cast a shadow over the woman's work.
An annoyed tsk escaped her as she sat back on her heels and glanced up at whoever dared to interrupt her gardening. "Young man, you're in my light. Kindly step back and go look for your grandparent somewhere else."
Bucky couldn't speak. He could just stare down into the creased, aged face of his baby sister. Even at eighty-six years old, she was still beautiful and the spitting image of their ma. Her dark brown hair was now pure white and held away from her face in a long braid. Her cornflower blue eyes, though, were just as clear and sharp as the last time Bucky had seen her hugging him, crying into his shoulder moments before he boarded the boat to ship out.
It took another annoyed sound from her for him to realize the sun was at his back and all she could see of him was an unkempt looming silhouette.
"Young man, it's rude to ignore someone when they're talking to you."
Words left his mouth before he could check them. "You never had a problem with being rude before, little sis."
Rebecca Barnes Proctor jerked her head back up at the young man standing still as stone over her. She hadn't heard that voice in over seventy years. No one had ever had the right to call her little anything in just as long.
With a suddenly trembling hand, Rebecca tried to shield her eyes from the sun, to get a better look at the man with the voice of a ghost in front of her. "The only person allowed to call me that died a long time ago and I don't appreciate being mocked."
Bucky couldn't hold back the grin. Her scowl hadn't lost a single ounce of its ferocity and the disapproving tone of her voice was just like their mama's.
In a shift so graceful it was like watching a jungle cat move, the man with her brother's voice crouched before her and finally she could see his face. There couldn't have been more than five years written across his face in trials and tribulations, but Rebecca looked into this man's familiar grey-blue eyes and read near a century of life in them. He had the face of her most beloved brother, the eyes of a war weary soldier, the build of a warrior, and the hair of a-
"Good lord! What on earth did you do to your hair, Jamie Barnes?"
Rebecca blushed, flustered by her own outburst. Bucky just threw his head back and laughed.
"Quit your laughing, James Barnes," Rebecca scolded, smacking Bucky in the shoulder with a dirty garden glove. "You're dead for seventy years and then you just appear in my garden with a half-assed shaved head and a week's worth of whiskers on your face. Forget that our ma would have fainted at the sight of you alive and not a decade older, she's probably rolling in her grave just from the shabby look of you."
Bucky, for his part, hadn't laughed this hard in almost a century. Instead of responding to any of the angry scolding from his baby sister, he cupped her soft wrinkled cheeks in his palms and smacked a gleeful kiss on her mouth. The stream of words from Rebecca's mouth halted in shock and she just blinked wide indignant eyes at him.
"Becca, you have no idea how much I have missed you," he said grinning through the tears suddenly welling up in his eyes.
Rebecca's breath hitched and she smacked her older brother's mysteriously solid left shoulder again. "Probably about as much as I've missed you, you big jerk."
They smiled at each other so wide and bright it was painful to see. Then tears started streaming down Rebecca's cheeks to match Bucky's and she lunged at her brother grabbing him in a surprisingly strong hug.
Bucky wrapped his sister up in his arms ever conscious of his strength. At first she felt just as hale and healthy as she always had, but as he rubbed his hand up and down her hitching back and pressed his face into the crook of her neck he could feel just how fragile and delicate she had become.
She was crying then, no longer smiling or laughing, and Bucky just squeezed his own eyes tight and held her as close as he could.
"You left me, Jamie. I missed you. Please, don't go away again. I needed you and you weren't there."
"I'm here now, Becca. I'm sorry I left. I'm not going anywhere again, promise. I missed you."
They stayed like that, murmuring tearfully to each other and wrapped up together in an embrace that was over seventy years in coming. The only reason they let go was because Rebecca was not a little girl anymore and if she stayed knelt on the ground for much longer she wouldn't be able to move for the rest of the afternoon.
In what seemed like another breath of time they were in Rebecca's apartment. Bucky sat in her kitchen with a towel around his shoulders and what was left of his hair at the mercy of his little sister's whims.
"Oh, Bucky," Rebecca sighed despondent. "What did those bastards do to you?"
The feeling of her cool, gentle fingers stroking over the invisible scars around his skull was soothing. His eyes had fluttered closed at the first touch and he cherished the light tingle of her magic gliding over his.
She skimmed over a place on the back of his head, in the hollow where his skull met his spine. Pausing, she hissed angrily.
"I'm going to kill them," she growled pressing in and feeling around the knot of scarring in his magic, soul, and aura. "I'm gonna rip them all to shreds."
Bucky quirked a smile and reached back to grab her ageing hand in his giving her a gentle reassuring squeeze. "It's alright, little sis," he said with love in his voice, "they're all dead, and if they aren't they will be soon."
She sniffed angrily, but went back to trying to salvage the hack job he'd done on his hair. "Damn right, they will be. If you don't, I will. Now, you know there's a reason Pa took you to the barber every month, right?"
"Yeah, yeah." Bucky rolled his eyes, but took the warmth he felt at this little sister's protectiveness and buried it deep inside next to the other few good things he'd begun hoarding. "Just see what you can do with it."
Rebecca huffed, but brandished her scissors like Bucky would a knife. "Hold still and tell me everything." She took the first of many snips and Bucky's abused hair started fluttering down around his shoulders to the floor.
He knew an order when he heard one and so he told her everything.
The 107th, the torture at Azzano, the Howling Commandos, falling from the train, and all the blood and pain and suffering after that; he didn't leave anything out.
She would have known if he did and he knew she could handle it. Rebecca Barnes had been a force to be reckoned with when she was a snot nosed brat. Now she was a great-grandmother. She had survived the turbulent upheaval of the twentieth century, and the truly interesting turning of the twenty-first. Plus she was their mother's daughter. There wasn't much that would faze her, and listening to her big brother recount the last horrifying seventy years of his existence wasn't going to break her. What it would do was make her incandescently enraged.
So enraged that her scissors were glowing white hot with the overflow of her anger.
"Damn it, Becca!" Bucky cursed and nearly jumped out of his seat when the scorching hot scissors skimmed his ear. Rebecca had a deceptively strong grip on his shoulder and held him down.
"Stop squirming and I wouldn't have snipped you!"
"You didn't snip me!" Bucky protested indignantly. "You almost burned my damn ear off! Watch your magic, Rebecca!"
Looking down at the glowing metal in her hand and the bright red patch on her brother's ear, she cursed and dropped the scissors on the counter.
"Sorry, Jamie," Rebecca huffed and sighed, still agitated. She fished around in a drawer and came up with an abused tube of burn cream. "I swear this hasn't happened since my Jimmy ran off with his little girlfriend and got married without telling us."
Bucky let her slather his poor ear with cream even though it would have healed on its own in a few more minutes.
Considering the near empty state of the tube it seemed she never grew out of the habit of burning herself while she was cooking. Spells or dinner, it didn't matter, get Rebecca around an open flame and inevitably she'd burn herself or something else. It never failed.
"Wait. Your Jimmy?" Bucky tried to crane his head around and look at his sister, but she just grabbed his neck and snapped his head back forward again.
"My youngest," Rebecca explained with a sigh of fond exasperation. "I swear that boy. And you know he didn't even stay married to her. Just long enough to have two kids then she was out of there with half his money and the damn house. Bitch."
Bucky couldn't stop his excited smile. "You named your son after me?"
She scowled at the back of his head and viciously yanked on a chunk of his hair.
"Don't get smug about it. That boy was responsible for a good half of my grey hairs by himself," she grumbled, but it was ruined by the familiar sound of amusement in her voice as she shoved his head down. Bucky grinned down at his lap as she continued trimming.
"Sounds like my kinda kid."
Rebecca's eye roll was actually audible.
"Yeah, he sure got into trouble like you did. Him and his sisters. A real pains in my ass the three of them." Bucky didn't believe her for a moment. There was too much love in her voice.
She was running a comb through his hair getting the last few fly-aways trimmed when Bucky said, "Tell me about them."
There was a minute catch in her smooth movements, but she started talking, her voice strong and still full of love.
"My oldest, Ashley, is some kind of fancy lawyer in Manhattan. Don't ask me what kind, she's explained it to me at least six times and I still for the life of me couldn't tell you."
"Jimmy's my little bleeding heart. He's a damn social worker. Yeah, I said the same thing! Apparently it's a 'calling'."
"Shelby, now that girl gave us some problems growing up. Turns out she was just alternative lifestyle and didn't want to tell us or something silly like that. She's married now, adopted four darlings with her wife. Not a bad daughter-in-law, tell you the truth."
Bucky listened to the anecdotes and the stories and the obligatory fond bemoaning, but one question was burning in him.
"Are any of them gifted?"
Rebecca, long since finished doctoring up Bucky's hair, had just started water for tea and opened a tin of cookies at the dining table.
"Robert, my dear husband, didn't have an ounce of affinity in him, but all three of our kids got the gift," she explained, pouring a familiarly aromatic tea into the i#1 Grandma/i mug set in front of Bucky. It was a blend their mother taught them to make, for mental and emotional clarity and serenity.
"Ashley and her husband never wanted to have kids. But Shelby's, even being adopted, her two boys had enough of a touch of it to teach them. Surprisingly enough, her two girls: not an ounce of magic between them. Just like my dear Robert."
Bucky sipped at his tea and munched on his cookie. The deep sense of comfort and family he hadn't had since 1942 settled into him. It was like the layers and years of anguish were falling away from him with every breath. Even looking at his little sister, physically older than him and frail and gray, her voice aged, he felt overwhelmingly at home.
"And Jimmy's kids?"
"Well," Rebecca huffed with nostalgic exasperation, "they were both soaking in it, like we do. But the thing of it was, they could learn and use the Romanian magic, but it never took to them like it should them being blood and all. Figured their mother's blood might have a heavier influence, so we tried finding them a witch to teach them African magic."
Bucky frowned around a third cookie, confused.
"On account of them being half black," she explained before Bucky could ask. "Their mother was black. Think that's why Jimmy ran away with her. It was the '60s after all. Thought we'd mind. I mean, sure we minded. That she was a bitch, not that she was black. The little idiot. "
Bucky hummed, his lips quirking up with amusement. "So you got them a teacher?"
Rebecca scoffed and poured herself more tea. "No. It took us a damn year of banging our heads against a wall to figure it out. Turns out the African magic was even less accepting than the Romanian magic. We finally did some research into their heritage and found out their great-grandfather was a white Frenchman of all things."
Her lingering incredulity brought bright laughter to Bucky's eyes.
"So they learned." He grinned, chuckling and ducked when his sister tried to swat at him for it.
"Yes, finally," she huffed again, but Bucky could see the pride in the wrinkles around her smiling blue eyes. "Took to the French magic like ducks to water. They even each spent a year in France before college to learn from the local practitioners there."
"You're proud of them," Bucky observed with a smile.
Rebecca grinned, "Damn right I am. Them and Shelby's kids, I'm damn proud. And their kids, my great-grandkids, are just as good too. They even all have a little more Romanian touch in them than their parents." She pointed to a photo of herself surrounded by an eclectic group of young kids and teenagers, her great-grandchildren.
All of them were smiling and happy and beautiful. This was his family Bucky realized as he studied the many photos scattered along the walls and end tables and mantelpiece. Rebecca and her husband and their kids and their spouses, and their kids and their spouses and their kids.
"They're beautiful, Becca," he breathed feeling his throat tightened and his eyes burn. "You have a beautiful family."
She smiled softly, and reached across the table to grab onto his cool metal hand, squeezing hard. "They're your family now too, Jamie."
He squeezed back gently. The pressure sensors in his hand were rudimentary, USSR tech, but they were sensitive enough that he wouldn't crush her fingers.
"It's dangerous, Rebecca," he said, staring down at their fingers threaded together, metal and flesh. "Hydra is still after me. They're exposed and limping now, but they're still very much alive."
That just garnered him a derisive snort. "You're not the first to give me this speech, Bucky."
Frowning, he glanced up at her in question. She shrugged with a wry quirk to her lips.
"Steve tracked me down when he first came back," she said watching his eyes widen. "He's come to all our family reunions and holidays the past couple years. And he came and saw me after he got out of the hospital."
Bucky felt his heart lurch. "He told you."
"No, he didn't tell me anything. Which don't think he won't be getting an earful about next time I see him," she scowled in consternation. "You'd think the first thing you tell a person is that their long lost brother is alive and well after seventy-some-odd years of thinking he was dead."
Bucky snorted, but tension still simmered below the surface. Was Steve watching Rebecca incase Bucky might try and make contact? Bucky knew his concealment and stealth spell was rock solid, but he couldn't shake the paranoia.
"Steve didn't tell me you were alive. He told me Hydra was still operating and that I might be in danger." She paused thoughtfully. "Now that I think about it that is strange. What would Hydra want with me?"
"It's not Hydra he was actually worried about." Bucky sighed and rubbed a hand through his much improved hair, just long and neat enough to slick back on top, but still shaved to the scalp on the sides. "I wasn't human when it all went down. I wasn't anything more than a programmed tool. A string of words and I would have carved out my own heart on their say so. Killing any and all of my remaining family wouldn't have even caused a moment of hesitation."
"But you fixed that," she protested. "You told me. Almost first thing you did was let the magic guide you and you healed yourself."
"Yes," Bucky assured her. "You felt it for yourself. There isn't any of their hold left over me, but, Rebecca, they made me do terrible things. It wouldn't be a stretch for Steve to worry about your safety."
"Steve knows you're a witch, though. He should know you wouldn't just be able to walk around wounded in your soul like that. That your magic would urge you to heal yourself once you were free," she insisted, confused how Steve wouldn't automatically think of that.
"Yeah, he knows about magic, but he doesn't know it," Bucky reminded her. "He doesn't feel it, hear it, speak to it. That it's a changing, mercurial, living force doesn't mean anything to him. You gotta remember, Becca, he's a Follower of Christ. They usually don't even believe in magic much less understand what it means or how it works."
Rebecca huffed in frustration, but had to concede that he was right. Even though she had over half a century of healthy, normal life experiences on him, her big brother could still school her in some of the ways of the world.
"Fine. But he still should have told me." She scowled petulantly at her cookie before drowning it in her tea.
Bucky snorted, but realized that this time with his sister was almost up. If Steve was watching her, even with his spell, he'd already been there too long.
"Don't worry," his sister's voice interrupted his serious thoughts. "I may be old, but I'm not slow. I have wards and talismans up. No one's watching the building or my apartment. Steve doesn't know you're here," she said wryly.
His tense shoulders lowered. The knowledge that Rebecca's protections were backing up his gave him some relief.
"Thanks."
"Why are you hiding from your best friend, exactly?" she asked, with an eyebrow raised.
Bucky wrinkled his nose in annoyance. Their mother used to use that look on him too. "I'm not ready to see Steve, yet." He grimaced. "Last time we saw each other, we didn't part on good terms."
"'Good terms' like you shot him three times and almost let him drown 'good terms'?" Her eyebrow stayed where it was, but her eyes glinted mischievously.
He scowled. "I thought you said he didn't tell you anything."
"He didn't," Rebecca deadpanned, standing up to take their mugs to the kitchen. "I saw it on the news."
"Right." Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Now bring those cookies back in here and make yourself useful," Rebecca called from the kitchen. Bucky stood up and did as she told him with a small smile on his lips.
"You remember that potion Ma used to make for Mr. Sanderson down the block?" Wiping her hands off on a dishtowel, Rebecca turned to her brother.
Nodding, Bucky finished putting the cookies away in the cabinet watching his sister warily.
"Good," she said taking out one of her copper pots and a mortar and pestle dropping them on the countertop in front of him. "Louis from two doors down has been stepping out with my girlfriend Hester on the third floor, but he can't make time with her on account of old age and his blood pressure medication won't let him take any of those little blue pills."
Bucky nodded along hesitantly dread already pooling in his gut.
"So, because I'm good girlfriends with Hester, I told Louis I'd make him something that'll get the blood flowing, so-to-speak, without giving him a heart attack. But my arthritis has been acting up and I was going to wait until Ashley visited me on Wednesday to ask her, but since you're already here…" she trailed off expectantly and Bucky slumped.
"You want me to brew a making-love spell so your friends can have sex," he summed up in defeat.
"Would you?" Rebecca smiled at him sweetly, her eyes glinting with laughter. "That would be such a big help. Thank you, big brother, you're the best. Here let me get the ingredients for you, then I'll just get out of your way."
"Yeah," Bucky shook his head, a wry smile curving at his lips. "No problem."
Standing in his ninety year old little sister's kitchen, watching her flutter around him pulling out utensils and ingredients to make a magic aphrodisiac, Bucky couldn't help but laugh to himself, feeling his heart swell up with genuine happiness. His life was a nightmare, but in that moment he was happy and content.
He also noticed that Rebecca's hands, for being stiff and arthritic, were pretty damn nimble unwrapping little Hersey Kisses to nibble on while she watched him make magic in her kitchen.
End.