April 1, 2016
One year, eight months in Akureyri, Iceland
Bucky idly thumbed the power button on his cell phone as the fishing boat pulled into harbor. The burner phone chirped in Bucky's back pocket as the phone finally found reception again, signaling a missed call. That's odd, he thought as he flipped open what Alice called the 'hella outdated' device, she knows I don't keep it on when the boat's out.
A bolt of electricity shot through his spine as his eyes flashed across the screen.
(1) Missed call from: Doll
(0) Voicemail
Bucky stepped aside, out of the way of the crane coming to haul up the catch, as he hit return call. It didn't even ring. An unsympathetic and robotic voice informed him, 'The number you have dialed is not available, please-' He snapped the phone shut and jogged across the deck.
"Gunnar," he called to the ship's captain as he slid into the ship's curved doorway. "I need to go - it's an emergency."
The burly captain raised a skeptical brow, but didn't take his eyes off the controls. "Can't even wait until after offload? That's hours lost, you know."
"I know. It's an emergency," Bucky repeated.
Something in his voice made the captain turn and look, and then double-take. "Alright," he agreed after a long look at Bucky's rapidly panicking expression. "Take the truck." He tossed Bucky as set of keys from the cupholder on his right. The beat-up vehicle, painted with the same colors of the fishing vessel Kvasir's Song, could have been Gunnar's second wife after the ship.
Bucky had never once been trusted with those keys as he was, quoting the Captain's words exactly, a 'shifty motherfucker.' He'd never offered a word of kindness and Bucky had never asked for it. But something in Bucky's frightened face alarmed him to the point where, for the first time, he gave a helping hand.
Bucky didn't need to be told twice. He caught the keys, turned and used his left arm to vault over the side of the ship directly onto the docks instead of losing time backtracking to the ramp. The blue and white truck started smoothly, even though the exterior looked as though it hadn't been started in years. It kicked up gravel as Bucky roughly forced it into gear and peeled out of the stone parking lot on the edge of the docks.
The truck would cut down his travel time from nearly two hours down to ten minutes. Ten minutes if he followed the posted speed limits, that is. That left Bucky with the world's longest seven minutes to think too hard and too long about why on God's green Earth Alice wasn't picking up her phone.
For good measure, he tried again only to be reminded by some robotic female that Alice's phone number was not available, and to go fuck himself for trying. He threw it against the passenger door in his frustration and it vanished into the footwell.
Alice didn't go anywhere without her phone; it was the one habit he'd managed to drill into her through constant reminder. She'd forget her pistol or she'd forget a coat, but she always had her phone.
His panic was upsettingly dotted by visions of Alice in the morning, cooking breakfast without shoes on, or Alice in the evening, blinking slowly as she fought sleep but snuggled deeper into the crook of his arm. The other visions he tried to shake off looked like blood and made the cold steering wheel in his hands feel too familiar.
It's nothing, it has to be nothing, Bucky tried to redirect his thoughts. She dropped her phone in the bay on her way back from town. The phone glitched out and made a call on its own, then the battery died. All of the reasons he could come up with were almost too reasonable, but also too normal to match up with his type of luck thus far.
Gunnar's truck took a traffic circle on two wheels as Bucky yanked the steering wheel violently and suddenly to the right rather than decelerate at all. The truck ripped up the long lane that led to the little red cabin, spitting gravel up like bullets against the truck's undercarriage. Bucky shoved it into park but didn't bother turning the engine off as he jumped out of the cab.
He stopped in his tracks as soon as he came around the side of the truck and got his first good look at his home.
Bucky and Alice both were creatures of habit, and depending upon the season Bucky could almost count on finding the cabin in a specific configuration when he came home from the shipyard. Alice liked to leave the windows open when the weather was nice, and sometimes even when it wasn't quite warm enough to leave windows open. The curtains would wave and flap in the breeze, like soft and beckoning hands, waving him up the lane.
Today, though, the cabin's windows were all shut, and a corner of the white curtains had gotten caught between the panels, leaving it fluttering in the wind. The front door was open, but all the lights were out, leaving the maw of his home looking more like a giant animal that wanted to eat him alive. Clear as the never-ending Icelandic summer days, he knew: this is a trap.
She's dead, fear hissed, she has to be. If the enemy was at the gate, if they'd infiltrated their home in search of their lost asset, Alice would have stopped at nothing short of scorched earth to protect him. An open door, beckoning his return, meant that Alice was absolutely dead.
His rage built slowly, rather than the tidal wave of ferocity he'd grown accustomed to experiencing as the Soldier. It expanded his senses so he could see the deep and unfamiliar tracks leading up to the door, so he could see a faint spray of blood on the white curtains, so he could smell the burned-down fire in their hearth. Alice wasn't a fighter; she wouldn't have stood a chance.
But, hope whispered, she always comes back. She'd never been gone forever, and if he ran now he'd be leaving her to what would certainly be an unending cycle of torture and regeneration. She would want him to, probably; but he hoped, he hoped, that she knew he wouldn't. It was completely out of the question.
Bucky drew his pistol and flicked off the safety. It took barely a half-second to confirm the weapon was loaded from the weight alone, and another half to ensure a round was waiting in the chamber.
"How'd you find me?" he asked as he stepped into the cabin. He blinked to adjust to the change in lighting and raised his arm to block as a large metal shield was thrown his way. It ricocheted off his arm, then the wall, then back to a white-cloaked figure that stepped out of the shadows to catch it,
A deep voice drawled from behind a skull mask under a white hood, "Ya really shouldn't steal rare firearms – especially when they take unusual ammunition."
His white cape billowed in the cold wind rushing in through the open door, rippling over Alice's fallen form on the floor. The intruder twirled a sword lazily in one hand, flicking away some of Alice's blood from the blade. "Spunky one, she was. Wouldn't give you up, no matter what; that's real hard to find these days!"
Neck, cut open down to the bone. How long had she been down? How quickly could she regenerate? The intruder wouldn't be standing over her body if she knew she could regenerate. What if this was the one time she wouldn't?
Her eyes, still open, stared in blank horror at the ceiling. Her limbs splayed unnaturally at uncomfortable angles and one if her hands looked very broken. Blood had dried around her mouth and throat, and it felt like steel on his hands to look at her, smelled like sulfur and gunpowder. Rage, the monster that lived beneath his heart, struck out in fury and kicked his heart into overdrive. Vengeance, it demanded.
Momentarily distracted, Bucky had to leap to his right as the blade swung towards him and the metal glanced off his arm with a metallic screech.
"You must'a pissed HYDRA off pretty good, buddy," the intruder remarked as he pursued, forcing Bucky to retreat backwards through the cabin, taking blow after blow to his metal arm. "The Hub ain't some cheap back-alley killers."
Bucky emptied the magazine of the pistol in his hand, but his shots glanced off the hefty shield the intruder carried. The rage boiling in his stomach did him few favors on improving his aim. "You shouldn't have come," Bucky warned with a snarling threat.
"Why not? Who better to send than the best?" He threw the heavy shield and Bucky ducked, allowing the shield to ricochet harmlessly over his head and around the kitchen in a way that seemed eerily familiar.
The assailant swung a sword down with swift force. Bucky caught the blade against his arm yet again, but let it slide down his arm until it caught between two of the moving plates. He twisted his arm forcefully after the catch and the sword twisted out of his assailant's hands, spinning violently across the room to lodge itself into a thick support beam. "Get the fuck out of my house."
"That's funny!" The laugh coming through the mask sounded muffled. "She said the same thing!" He gestured over his shoulder to Alice's dead body.
Rage, a beast growing large in his body until it filled his skin to the brim, took over his brain and launched him across the room, determined to kill this man with his bare hands. This skull-faced, white-cloaked, sword-wielding psychopath in combat blues had broken into his house and killed his girl and had the audacity to joke about it.
Rage threw off his timing, and even though he was able to seize the shield and rip it from the assailant's grasp, Bucky took a swift kick to the gut, then a hit to the face as he doubled over from the first.
Bucky heaved his shoulder into the assailant's chest, throwing him back to pin him against the wall, one hand at his throat and the other holding down his dominant hand. "What's your mission?" he asked, and no part of his tone suggested answering was optional.
"Sanction and extract, Asset," he replied jovially, like the whole exercise was just a game. A sharp snap forward cracked the mask against Bucky's face, and he reflexively let go as he stumbled backwards.
A fuzzy light filled his view as his brain tried to correct from the sudden jarring impact. Bucky grabbed at a sharp object as it poked into his side, throwing it in the direction of the darkly chuckling voice. The fuzz cleared from his eyes right as his opponent caught the lamp he'd thrown and tossed it lazily aside.
The lamp landed in a pool of oil, spreading out from the reservoir by the back wall as it lazily leaked out from a stray bullet hole near the base. The metal scratched against itself, sparking, and caught the leading edge of the oil.
The intruder pulled his sword from the thick wood of the doorframe and twirled it again, testing the weight as if it might have changed before lunging to strike.
Bucky tried to catch a blow again between the plates of his arm, but the second time didn't go exactly as planned. "Can't fool me twice, Bucko; I don't work like that!" His opponent laughed as Bucky's failed attempt lost him a protective panel on his arm, and the exposed wires sparked dangerously, sending jolts of electricity humming through his body at unpredictable intervals.
Bucky broke away, rolling backwards and across the open space of the floor, narrowly missing a downward slash of the sword that tore up a section of the floor. The gap between them allowed Bucky to retrieve a hidden knife underneath couch cushions, and he twirled it between his fingers, contemplating throwing it but deciding to keep it in hand in case he lost the use of his arm.
The intruder tilted his head to one side, observing. "Wanna see a neat trick?" the intruder asked, sheathing his sword and pulling a short knife from a sheath at the small of his back. "C'mon - come at me."
Bucky shifted in his defensive stance, uncertain about whatever trap was being laid for him. A nervous tic, possibly a detrimental one, he twirled the knife again.
His opponent shifted in an identical fashion, watching intently. Not just a step-for-step match, but in the careful roll of a shoulder to put his stronger arm forward and an identical knife twirl. She same kick-off with the little finger and tuck of the thumb. Identical.
He learns too fast, Bucky thought rapidly. So, the more we fight, the more he learns.
But Bucky needed to stall for time. He needed to give Alice time to heal and wake up, to throw off the assailant and reassure him that this wasn't the one time she wouldn't heal. He risked a brief glance, but couldn't tell if she was breathing yet.
Before he could come up with a better strategy, the assailant charged again. Leading with a kick and a sharp jab of the knife, Bucky was forced back, blocking with his left. The exposed wires took a direct hit and he cried out as a violent jolt of electricity tried to sear a path straight through his brain.
The assailant grabbed him by the throat and threw him to the floor, digging a knee into his back as he pinned him down. "So, d'you get the message yet?" Bucky's opponent asked.
"What message?" Bucky ground out, his face nearly one with the floorboards as the assailant pushed it down harder.
Bucky's face slid across the floor as it was turned forcefully to look across the cabin. "Your lady-friend is just the first of - what the fuck?!"
He'd turned Bucky's head to look at Alice's corpse, but in doing so had noticed she wasn't there any more. Instead, her bloodied and still mostly-mangled body had moved across the room and stood atop the punctured oil tank. "Surprise, chucklefuck," Alice's voice rasped, her throat still stitching back together.
When the heat pump outside had finally failed in the middle of winter, the local handyman had installed an oil heat system instead, insisting on placing the large oil tank inside to protect it from the harsh weather. Bucky strongly suspected the eight-something year-old man simply wanted Alice's company during the installation, and working indoors purely helped him reach that goal.
Now, Alice stood over the tank he'd punctured with a ricochet bullet, oil spreading over the floor with a small flame flickering at the leading edge. Relatively harmless unless the flame worked its way back into the tank, which would take a while. However, Alice stood over the tank holding a large glass of water.
A bit of water from the glass sloshed over the rim and spat little steaming fireballs in the spreading lake of oil. "Hands off my fella," Alice threatened.
Whatever warning against throwing water on an oil fire he had been preparing, Alice's outdated threat threw the assailant for a loop. "What are you, eighty?" he asked.
She smirked. "Told you I'd kill you." The muscles in her arm flexed as she hurled ice-cold water towards the little flickering flame and in the same instant, the assailant instantly let go of Bucky and hurled himself through the nearest window, shattering glass in his desperate bid to escape.
He had good reason.
In a reaction near-instantaneous to the human eye, the water sank to the bottom of the fire and, due to the intense heat, vaporized into steam. That steam expanded by more than a thousand times its original size, pushing the fire upwards, oxygenating the oil and the fire at a far fiercer rate than before.
In the space of a reactionary turn to protect his skin, Alice's half of the cabin exploded into flames in a flash of light that would have blinded him had he not.
"Alice!" he roared desperately. Bucky didn't try to follow his attacker, but blinked furiously against the heat and billowing smoke as he searched for Alice.
"Here," came a muffled cry. A hand appeared from behind the sofa that had just started to catch fire. Bucky seized the offered hand and pulled, hard, as the oil tank started to groan and whistle with heat. The front door roared with open flames, but the escape hatch leading to the greenhouse remained a viable exit.
Once only a joke, Bucky silently thanked God for Alice's odd impulses as they ducked through the panel to safety. He caught Alice as she fell into a roll, and pushed her to standing before following in a quick exit.
Only a few steps clear of the cabin, the oil tank finally surrendered to fire and the building pressure within. The explosion cracked like a bomb through the air and knocked both of them off their feet. Bucky tried to cover as much of Alice as he could with his body to protect her.
Bucky felt the pressure change in his chest as the wave cut through the house, blowing out the windows and setting off every car alarm within earshot. Keeping his arms wrapped around Alice's head, he lifted his head gingerly to check if the coast was clear before allowing her to sit up.
She moved unsteadily, reaching out a hand for balance. Bucky grabbed it to help her stand as words of reassurance died in his mouth.
"I'm okay," Alice reassured instantly at seeing his expression. Burnt, battered, and bloodied, she looked far from okay. Half of the right side of her face glittered with blisters and scorched skin, flaring and falling away as her mutation worked to repair the damage. Her sweater hung smoking off the right shoulder, revealing more blisters crawling down her neck and down her arm. The tank fireball she'd made, no doubt.
He seized her in a fierce embrace, cradling her head against his shoulder and pressing his cheek to the top of her head. Even through the smell of singed hair and burnt fabric, she still smelled faintly like herself.
One.
She returned the tight embrace, scrunching the back of his sweater tightly in her hands. The weight of her, pressed as tight as she could manage, grounded his fervently insistent heart. Blessed are you, Lord God… he could breathe again.
Two.
"So," Alice coughed, the motion loosening the grip she had around his waist, "how was work?"
The off-color comment threw him back into motion. He drew back, holding her shoulders and staring at her mostly-healed face with dismay.
"Have you lost your mind!?" He took her left - unburnt - hand in his and pulled her towards the truck. The windows had all blown out but it still seemed to be running, the engine thrumming away just as he'd left it.
"You could've blown up the whole house instantly - killed all three of us!"
"Nah," she coughed, clearing something from her chest, "I was pretty sure it would just blow me up, and he'd run. And I was - ow!"
Bucky let go of her hand as she cried out, the electricity arcing through his arm zapping her hand. "Sorry," he mumbled.
Alice gave him a heartbreakingly sympathetic look. "I'm alright - are you? That looks painful."
Bucky's arm twitched at the mention, but he forced it to cooperate long enough to open the truck door for Alice and close it behind her. She watched him with concern as he moved around the truck to the driver's side, trying to both watch her and look out for the vanished assailant.
The truck's engine groaned as he shifted, but that was likely nothing new. He could feel Alice's eyes, searching his face for answers she didn't need to ask the questions to obtain. He usually ignores it and hoped she focused on something else, but at that moment he reveled in it; evidence that she lived again.
She turned her attention to the road, rapidly eaten up under the trucks tires, and pushed her palms into her eyes, sighing deeply. "Well, Plan A didn't go so great, and Plan B is over now… is it time for Plan C?"
"What's Plan C?" Bucky asked, merging onto the highway.
"Plan C is actually Plan A, just with a lot more guilt." Alice sighed harder. "Do you have your burner? The dude broke mine."
"Footwell… somewhere." Alice went hunting at his direction, and sat up victoriously holding the lost phone. She punched in a number from memory, but hesitated for a second before completing the dial. "What's wrong?" Bucky asked, glancing away only briefly from the winding road.
"It's silly, but…" Alice tapped her thumbnail against the screen anxiously. "What if they won't help us? What if they're angry with me?" she admitted the fear.
"Why would they be?"
"I found you but I didn't tell them - what if they think I lied? What if they think I abandoned them? What if-"
Bucky snorted. "Steve might have an excess of stupid sometimes, but he's not that dense."
"I hope you're right." Alice let her head tip back to rest against the seat. "Well, here goes nothing."
April 1, 2016
Upstate New York
Mid-afternoon in upstate New York barely pierced the thick windows of the Avengers compound, but the music within nearly rattled the thick glass windows. Sam Wilson bobbed his head and foot to the heavy bass of a song as he worked on disassembling his exo-pack. It had been acting up a little, not taking corners quite so well, and he wasn't inclined to keep smacking into walls at 110 mph.
Well engrossed in the business of mechanics, the sudden lurch from bluetooth-connected music to the sirens of his phone's ringtones also projected at the same volume was beyond distracting. Sam jumped and swore sharply as his screwdriver slipped and skittered across the steel of the exo-pack.
He shook his hand to clear the unpleasant buzzing sensation as he yelled skyward, unnecessarily, at Stark's AI. "FRIDAY, turn it down!"
"Sure; should I answer the phone, too?" The AI asked over the swiftly lowered volume.
"Who's calling?" he asked even as he reached for his phone.
Unknown caller, his phone read.
"It's originating in Reykjavik," FRIDAY informed him.
Sam ignored the call. "Scammers are really branching out," he mused, tossing the phone back onto the counter. He'd barely had the time to think about where he'd lost the screwdriver when the phone rang again.
"Reykjavik again," FRIDAY commented.
"You mind your own business," Sam snapped. He ignored the call again, but didn't set the phone down. He stared at the screen, glared at it, almost.
His phone chirped with a text message.
Pick up the phone.
"Have you ever heard of a scammer calling and texting?" Sam idly asked the AI. Before it could answer, his phone rang for a third time. "Nevermind," he muttered. He tapped the green icon and held the phone to his ear. "Listen, buddy; please scam somebody else I am not in the-"
"About damn time, Sam; It's Alice."
He stopped dead in his tracks. "Al?" The voice sounded right, but it had been so long he almost couldn't be certain.
A tinny laugh filtered through a bad connection. "Yeah, it's me. I don't have long; I need your help."
Sam dropped what he was doing and turned on a dime, leaving the workshop without a second thought. "Where are you?" he barked. "Are you okay?"
A brief pause, a hesitation he didn't like at all, then - "Iceland." He noticed she didn't answer the second question.
Sam turned a corner and his walking stride turned into a light jog. "Is the – is Barnes with you?" There was a longer pause, and Sam feared for a moment that the connection might have dropped out. "Alice?" He didn't want to risk taking the phone away from his ear for even a second to check the screen, or even to ask FRIDAY.
The phone crackled, like someone had covered the phone's microphones. "Still here – Bucky is with me, yeah. Listen, I don't know if I've got any favors left but... we need to get out of Iceland. And I mean right now."
He took off across the compound. "I've got you – what's the nearest airport?"
"Keflavik is the only international airport – it's a five hour drive from us." He could hear the faint murmur of a deeper voice, but couldn't make out the exact words. "Make that four hours if the weather holds off."
"Can you stay on the phone, Al?" Sam grabbed at a corner as he tried to take it at a dead run, missed it, and slammed his shoulder into the opposite wall. He hissed in pain but didn't slow down. .
Alice sighed defeatedly through the line and his stomach churned. "I don't think that's a good idea."
Sam nearly tripped over his own feet as he jogged up a set of stairs. "Okay – call me when you're thirty out from Keflavik. I'll have something waiting for you."
"Sam," Alice breathed a deep sigh, "thank you."
"You stay safe," he ordered. "Or I'm gonna be real disappointed in your effort, Lieutenant."
She chuckled, and it sounded so damn familiar it hurt. "We will."
She hung up just as Sam launched himself through the wide doorway into the compound kitchen.
Steve Rogers looked up from his newspaper, startled at the sudden entry. Sam had no end of jokes about the world's oldest soldier reading the newspaper every afternoon, but Sam always knew where to find him at three in the afternoon. "Everything okay, Sam?"
Sam took a deep gulp of air to catch his breath. "You'll never guess who just called me from Iceland."
End of Act II: Remembrance
A/N: Don't try to use water to put out grease/oil fires. Youtube that shit - it's spectacular.
To beat y'all to a question- caller ID locations are based on the origin location of the phone number - essentially where you bought it. There are only two mobile phone stores on the island of Iceland, and they're both in Reykjavik.
Act 3 got re-structured, and I'm happier I think with the overall themes I'm going for. The outline alone is 5 pages long, and there's going to be a lot of subtext. I want it to be one of those things where you can go back and reread and notice something different every time.
And it is officially official, following an intestinal biopsy I truly do have Celiac Disease. Yay for manufacturing defects! Much love to everyone who's checked in on me and my health between chapters. Y'all the real MVP.
this is posted tonight from my phone again so be kind regarding typos and format errors.
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