Title: Chapter 4: You Couldn't Drag Me Away

Summary: The bonds of sibling love transcends the most insurmountable of obstacles and weathers the most vicious of storms. Rebecca is more than willing to remind her brother of that as many times as it takes to sink into his thick skull.

Since it was probably better to only sneak back into Avengers Tower once, Bucky decided to cook up Stark's purifying potion as well and plant it and the virility-renewal spell at the same time.

Like the renewal spell, Bucky had to get creative with the delivery system for the purifying spell. It had to be ingested. He wouldn't be able to sneak it in any other way. Tony was going to have to drink it.

Luckily for him his chosen method of delivery wasn't one he'd actually had to invent himself. Generally speaking most health potions don't taste all that great. So when he or Rebecca got sick as children and refused to drink the nasty stuff, Winifred Barnes would change the last step of the spell weaving. Instead of grinding the various required healing stones to a fine dust and adding that directly into the potion, the stones are added to the potion whole and they would soak it up like a sponge.

And, of course, in order to weave the adapted spell Bucky was going to have to get up at an ungodly hour in the morning, cook the potion, and drop the stone in as the sun was just rising above the horizon.

The windows in Rebecca's living room faced East, whereas Bucky's Hydra apartment faced full West. So he was once again camping out on her floral couch trying to catch a couple hours of sleep before his internal alarm was set to go off and he'd have start weaving the magic.

Those couple of hours were not restful.

He dreamed of sighting down his rifle scope at a target having dinner with her family. Doing a dead drop into a South American jungle in the middle of the night to slit an honest politician's throat. Feeling frost and ice as it climbed up his throat just before he finally lost consciousness. His metal first slamming into the side of a car speeding down a deserted mountain road.

The sound of a bone saw close to his ear as he struggled futilely against the restraints pinning him face down a rusty operating table.

Suddenly Bucky was no longer lying on the couch, rigid and unbreathing like a corpse. Searing pain against his chest shocked him awake.

He came awake with a desperate gasp like coming up from water. His eyes had already been open gazing dead at a thousand yards, but with consciousness the sight before them actually registered.

Rebecca was beneath him. Her mouth was open in a desperate bid for air because his metal hand had her throat in a strangle hold. Her cornflower blue eyes were wide, shocked and panicked as she stared up at him.

Then he realized it was her hands, glowing white hot, and shoved hard against his chest that were burning straight through his shirt to his skin.

He was off her so fast it was like he was blasted across the living room. His back hit the couch with enough force it rocked on its legs then slammed back to the floor with a loud bang.

Both siblings were gasping desperately for breath. Bucky watched his sister roll onto her side coughing and clutching her throat. The smell of burning cotton clogged his nose. His shirt was still smoking, orange embers shaped likes hands slowly died to a blackened charred outline against the light blue fabric.

Oh God, he thought, his heart pounding painfully against his ribs. He'd almost strangled his little sister. It was pure reflex. He hadn't even known what he was doing. She'd probably sensed his distress through the nurture charms she had set around the apartment and tried to comfort him. His right shoulder tingled faintly and he realized Rebecca had probably touched him there, trying to shake him awake.

"'M sorry," he whispered, his voice barely making it past the knot in his chest. "God, I'm so sorry, Becca."

"No," she rasped taking her hands away from throat she pushed herself into a sitting position. "Don't-"

"I almost killed you," Bucky cut in, dazed, still staring at her in horror.

"No," Rebecca rasped again, incongruously calm, "You didn't."

"I had my hand wrapped around your throat. I was strangling you," he exclaimed, loud and shocky in the quiet of the dark. "If you hadn't burned me I would have snapped your neck without even realizing it!"

"Exactly!" she burst out. "You didn't snap my neck. I stopped you. I hit you with my magic and burned the shit out of your chest."

Bucky growled, suddenly furious. With himself? With her? Both. "You shouldn't have had to do that in the first place!"

"You think this is the first time this has happened to me?" Rebecca demanded, unaffected by his anger. "You think you have the market cornered on attacking someone in your sleep?"

That brought him up short, surprised. He frowned. "What are you-?"

"Robert," Rebecca cut him off this time. "Robert almost snapped my arm once. When we were first married. I tried to wake him from a nightmare and he had my arm twisted before I could blink."

Taking a deep breath, steadying more by the moment, Rebecca took advantage of Bucky's stunned silence to continue.

"He was a soldier too," she explained. "On Okinawa, during the Battle of Okinawa. He came home just as scarred as every soldier lucky enough to come home at all."

"Becca…" He didn't know what to say. Bucky watched his sister as she looked toward a framed photo of her husband in his neat uniform posing proudly in front of the American flag.

"You're not the first battle weary man to accidentally hurt his loved ones during a nightmare. And you won't be the last," she said, not without compassion but brooking no argument.

"I learned not to touch Robert when he had a nightmare. I never wanted to see that awful look of horror on his face ever again," Rebecca looked back at her brother with apologetic, self-recriminating eyes. "I should have remembered that, should have realized you still have plenty of healing to do. I put that awful look on your face and for that I'm sorry."

"No," Bucky murmured, his voice deepened with emotions this time, not fear. "Don't apologize. It's my fault. I should have warned you. That I have nightmares, that I'm dangerous. Even when I'm asleep."

Cautious, Rebecca's lips curved into a hopeful smile. "How 'bout we're both idiots and we just leave it at that." Her smile widened and humor came back to her eyes. "I'll shout at you to wake up from across the room and you'll let me make you a nightmare trap."

It wasn't that easy, Bucky knew. He was dangerous and this incident was just a brutal reminder of that. He knew he should leave. Run away from his stubborn, loving sister with shitty self-preservation instincts and protect her from the killer he'd become.

But Rebecca was still sitting on the floor, her throat beginning to bruise, looking at him with bright eyes, the corners wrinkling with her grin. He could feel her love and forgiveness trickling out to him. She was projecting a whole tangle of sweet, endearing emotions at him unrepentantly employing a trick she'd used on him a million times to get her way.

He should leave. To keep her safe, to protect her from the danger that followed him. But he was selfish. God forgive him, but he wanted to stay with her so bad.

"As long as you don't put any birch in the trap. Pretty sure a vision quest is the last thing I need right now." Bucky shoved down all his guilt and self-hatred and just basked in the sight of his little sister's happy smile.

Getting to her feet with more grace than her age would imply, Rebecca straightened her house robe still grinning at him. "Deal," she agreed triumphantly and beckoned him with an imperious wave of her hand. "Now, come on in the kitchen. We need to put some salve on those burns. Super healing or not, magic burns are a bitch."

Bucky heaved himself off the couch and followed. When he came up next to Rebecca she was elbow deep in a pantry searching for her newest batch of burn salve. He reached to the shelf above her head and pulled down a tin of bruise balm.

Silently he held it out to her, sorrowful apology in his eyes. Rebecca just glanced at him with a kind gaze and took the tin without a word.

A thirty year old reused mason jar filled with home brewed magical burn salve grasped in one hand and the tin of bruise balm in the other Rebecca ushered her brother toward the kitchen table impatiently.

"Hurry up, let's get you slathered up. It's almost time for you to start your potion if you want to make the sunrise."

Rebecca had ripped his ruined shirt over his head before he could protest and started smearing the hand shaped burns on his chest in thick, cooling cream. Bucky had to wait until she was satisfied, before she let him gently, so gently, rub a soothing layer of balm on the rapidly purpling bruises around her throat.

Then she put the matter to rest with utter finality, returning to the comfortable routine of heckling her brother about his choice of spells.

Bucky threw on another shirt and some jeans, but Rebecca just sat down at her kitchen bar with a hot cup of coffee. She settled in, content to watch her brother weave the magic that would cleanse the lingering palladium poisoning and hard partying toxins from Tony Stark's body.

TBC...