Title: Thank You for Smoking

Pairing: Bucky Barnes, Rebecca Barnes

Series: Witch Bucky

Rating: PG

Genre: Canon Divergence Post-CAWS

Warning: BAMF Bucky, magic, protective Bucky, siblings

Summary: Bucky was used to weaving magic with unusual objects, but this is pretty unusual even for him. Then again Banner and the Hulk had an unusual problem.

Prequel: Let's Get Down to Business


"Remind me again why you felt the need to steal my crochet hooks and my good wool yarn."

The corner of Bucky's lips twitched and he rolled his eyes at his sister. "I didn't steal them. I'm borrowing them."

Rebecca raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. "Right. That's why I come back from bingo to find you've broken into my apartment again and making a mess of my crafts box."

"It's not a mess!" he protested. "It's perfectly organized."

"Barely controlled chaos is what you mean." Rebecca sipped at her tea and came around behind the rocking chair Bucky was sitting in to peer over his shoulder.

Nimble flesh and metal fingers glided and looped and pulled the thin strands of yarn into an intricate pattern. Over and over again in one long chord, Bucky's hands moved through the motions with smooth practiced ease, as if his skills hadn't had a chance to atrophy over the last seventy years.

"Hmm, yellow and violet. For clear thinking and reflection?" she asked, watching her brother work his magic, almost entranced. He'd always been better at this type of magic than her. She could guess, from the other materials he had scattered around her living room that he was making enchanted jewelry. Detailed work. Intricate, delicate, and finicky. For such a big guy it had always amazed her how Bucky could create such beautiful, elegant pieces of magic.

"Violet for spirituality and self-awareness as well," Bucky added, not bothered by his sister watching him work. He remembered she used to love watching him and he used to love the time spent together.

Violet was also, in the combination of elements he was weaving together, representative of a sensitive, compassionate, intuitive soul; as well as an introvert. When he thought of Bruce Banner and all he knew and learned about the man, this fit him perfectly.

"There's something about the blue," Rebecca murmured, squinting at the yarn trying to sift through the feelings she was sensing in the magic. Trust, calm, peace, but also…

"Suppression of appetite."

A shiver went up her spine, Bucky's words revealing exactly what she'd been trying to interpret. Suppression of appetite. An appetite for violence and destruction.

"That is a very unusual invocation," she said.

"This is a very unusual circumstance," Bucky replied wryly.

Rebecca would say so, weaving a spell for the Hulk was bound to be all kinds of unusual.

They were quiet for a time after that. Bucky using his sister's crochet needles with deft movements and Rebecca amusing herself with trying to parse out where exactly her brother was going with his spell.

Brown (honesty, stability, building a solid foundation) and black (control of power, acknowledgment of a barrier) were intertwined with the other three colors in a combination that should have been ugly. Instead, Rebecca thought it was soothing to look at, beautiful in its own way.

Tapping her weathered but loved wedding band against her bright yellow mug, she watched Bucky loop, swoop, and pull the colorful array into a long cord of repeating Romanian transformation knots. The thing was an interesting combination of Romanian practicality and Native American whimsy. If anyone else had tried this, she was sure it would have blown up in their face, probably literally, but for Bucky it worked. It shouldn't work, but somehow he saw the way and made the impossible possible.

Their ma had always said there was something special about Bucky and the way he worked his magic. The way he was able to combine, marry, and intertwine supposedly incompatible magic from completely different cultures to create something functional, harmonious, even beautiful.

Even as a young man barely finished with training, Rebecca knew her brother was probably the most powerful witch, magically and in ingenuity, she was ever likely to meet.

Bucky tied a sturdy oak button carved with the Native American symbol for soul on one end of the finished cord and knotted the other end into a loop.

He set it aside and picked up the next element to his spell.

"Now the cord I get," Rebecca commented, her voice amused, "but you're going to have to explain the cigarette lighter to me."

Bucky snorted and glanced over his shoulder at her. "What? You mean you can't tell just by lookin'?"

Rebecca flicked his ear in retaliation and eyed the weathered car cigarette lighter doubtfully. The little symbol of a smoking cigarette on the black plastic knob was half worn away and the metal along the tube was dotted with tarnish spots and hints of rust. It looked at least thirty years old and a hard lived thirty at that.

"Let me guess," she drawled ignoring his pout as he rubbed his stinging ear, "You scrounged that out of an '80s Oldsmobile didn't you?"

"An '86 Supra, actually," he replied with a mulish sniff.

"We had one of those," Rebecca offered lightly. "Sexy car. Tried to take it camping once. The kids had to sit on top of the suitcases in the backseat 'cause the trunk was the size of a matchbox."

Bucky chuckled and refocused on his task. Picking up the metallic silver fine point permanent marker he pulled the cap with his teeth and started tracing a tiny ring of mixed Romanian and Native American runes around the short metal tube. The Romanian runes represented harmony, duality, and acceptance. Only one Native American symbol was part of the pattern; the symbol for a whole self, made so by body, mind, and soul.

Mumbling around the cap held in his teeth, Bucky explained why exactly a 1980s car cigarette lighter was essential to Bruce and Hulk's charm.

"It calls upon heat and fire, passion, and Hulk is an explosively passionate being. The nickel in the nichrome heating coil will help drain away Bruce's depression, his fear and anger. And the iron in it will nurture the Will to Live inside him."

Rebecca made an agreeing sound, able to follow along with her brother's logic, though she had to ask, "But why an '86 Supra?"

Bucky couldn't help the smile that curved crookedly around the pen cap as he thought about what had called him to that particular car.

"Its first owners had twins. Boy-girl twins. Born from the same womb, of the same love. Bonded by blood and love and companionship. And yet two very different, very individual souls."

"Ah." The missing piece of the puzzle, Rebecca thought as she watched Bucky's steady hand guiding the marker's tip with elegant strokes. Twins were special. Held their own kind of magic by just being what they were. Boy-girl fraternal twins being the rarest of all were therefore just a little bit more.

The duality of their nature fit perfectly into the spell Bucky was weaving.

Rebecca watched the rest of her brother's work in silence basking in the familiarity of the moment and the comfort of feeling Bucky's magic flowing gently around them.

Fifteen minutes later, Bucky was finally done. He held up the finished product for Rebecca to see.

The colorful cord was woven tight and seamless, the wooden button fit in the corresponding loop nicely. The cigarette lighter, covered with rings and rings of delicate silver runes, was hanging from the chord by sturdy wire wrapped securely around its black knob.

The necklace positively vibrated with the complex interwoven magic of two different peoples. Rebecca sucked in a sharp breath as she studied the spell closely trying to pick out all the incompatible and conflicting elements Bucky would have had to compensate for.

It was a work of art, a product of genius. Still crazy most definitely, but undeniably sheer genius.

"Looks good, Jamie," she finally concluded, trying not to let on just how much in awe of him she was. Even with an extra seventy years of experience, Bucky still found ways to amaze her.

"Now," she continued, distracting from her nearly ninety years of still undimmed hero-worship, "how are you going to get that around the neck of one of the most volatile and paranoid men in the world?"

Bucky stared at her blankly for a long second. "Uh…"

"Eloquent," Rebecca replied.


TBC…