Important note: Due to the nature of this story, there are multiple trigger warnings for this. Be warned.
#Angst but Happy ending #Abortion attempt #Torture #Brainwashing #Kidnapping #No one dies in the end
This.. is probably my best work for the last 2 years... And I understand if you don't read it because of the triggers, but I want you to know I love the ending! So even if you don't read the rest (because of the trigger warnings), just read the last paragraph! Haha But it won't be as sweet though.
Thank you all my beta readers! 3 Love you guys.
"Steve! Steve!" Skye held onto Steve, she felt the blood seeping onto her suit. "Steve!" Her fingers dug into his wound, pulling the bullet out. "Bucky!" She lifted her head, searching. Bucky was in pursuit of the shooter. He would get him. She knew he would, but it wouldn't save Steve.
She looked up and saw the grey eyes that she can never forget.
Compliance will be rewarded.
The voice echoed in her mind. She screamed as she watched herself shoot Steve in the stomach.
"No no no no." She gasped, allowing Natasha to pull her away, to arrest her. "Please no no." She felt Steve dying, his blue eyes catching hers, full of confusion and regret. Watching her and fading, holding hers till the last moment.
"Steve! Steve!"
There was a void. The void where Steve once resided in the bond. The bond that was meant to have three people now only had two.
Anger, rage, anguish.
Skye allowed herself to be pushed into the cell that would not hold her if she wanted to escape, she allowed herself to be put under guard because she didn't care.
She killed Steve.
Bucky was outside her cell. His eyes dark, emotions fighting to surface from his blank face. Confusion, fear, grief, Skye felt it all without him even speaking. There was nothing she could say to repair this situation, nothing she wanted to say to fix it.
Her hands still stained with Steve's blood reminded her of what she had done. She killed her own soulmate. Why? She doesn't know why. The wretched memories replays in her mind, bringing frustrated tears to her eyes. She clenched her jaw, carrying the weight of many words she wanted to say.
"Bucky-" she started.
Despite her word spoken so quietly, it felt like she had swung an axe at him. He flinched, running his hands through his messy hair. He tore the mask off, falling heavily onto the chair that had been vacated by the guard.
"Why?" He threw the mask at the floor, anger cracking through his blank face. "Why did you shoot him?" He gripped his temples with his fists, leaning forward onto his knees. "Why did you kill Steve?"
Tears streamed down her face. "I don't know-" she whispered, staring at the guilty hands. "I watched myself shoot him. I screamed and screamed for someone to stop me but no one heard me."
She pinched the bridge of her nose, desperate to stop the crying, desperate to school her stammering breath. Her excuse sounded flimsy even to her.
He stood to leave, she moved forward, catching his hand in hers. "Bucky. W-What's going to happen to me now?"
"I don't know." He tugged his hand out of hers and left, never looking back.
The cars outside the apartment rumbled. The train four block down rattled the windows as it passed through. He heard the cry of the siren, letting the buzz of the city wash over him. The lights of the buildings looked like the sparkling glitter from that dress Skye once wore on a date night.
He clasped his head between his hands. His heart hurt so much that it felt like a burning, gaping hole in his chest. Bucky let out a cry of rage, sending the lamp flying into the wall. He sank to his knees, uncaring for the blurry vision or the stream of warm liquid down his face.
Bucky, what are you doing sitting in the darkness?
His head spun up so fast that he might have gotten whiplash. Not Steve. That was just the memory of his voice. He's still - gone. Gone because she shot him. He should be angry but all he felt was this gaunt emptiness that gnawed at him. The couch where they had bickered over, the bed that really was custom-made for them. Bucky turned his face to his palms and scrubbed them fiercely.
Skye wouldn't have shot Steve. It was not the matter of them just being soulmates, Skye was kind. She was fiercely protective of the ones she loved and she loved them. There was no doubt in him. She is their everything just like they are her everything.
But it was undisputably Skye. There was a whole street full of people who saw her shoot him. He sunk into the chair with a heavy sigh.
I watched myself shoot him. I screamed and screamed for someone to stop me but no one heard me.
Her words struck a chord in him. He remembered being the Winter Soldier and try as he might have, Bucky had never truly explained how it felt like. The memory of it sank in the recesses of his mind where he refused to acknowledge it existed.
He slammed Steve against the wall. "I waited for you Steve! I waited 70 years for you but you never came!" The truth that he hid so far beneath his facade burnt through his teeth like acid. "Where were you? Did you leave my body behind?" There was the hot feeling in his eyes as his lungs struggled to bring his breathing under control.
"I screamed for you, Steve. I prayed every day that you'd come for me. I waited and waited until I forgot who I was. And even then I knew I was waiting for someone then but who was it? I didn't know." He released Steve like he was filth and turned away from him.
Bucky saw himself in the mirror. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, his hair was badly trimmed by himself. The only one he trusted to cut his hair was Skye and she had been on a mission for a month.
Talk to him and let Steve know what he was really thinking. Trust Steve, she told him. Because if you can't even trust your soulmate...
"I watched myself kill people over and over again but nothing I said or did could stop myself," he whispered to the thick silence, fingers clawing his hands as though trying to scrub blood off his hands. "A monster…"
Steve's arms banded around his shoulders, his body shaking as he pressed his wet face into Bucky's shoulder blade. "I'm sorry Bucky. I'm sorry," he reiterated. They both knew that there were no words that Steve could say to Bucky to make it better; not the words of comfort or the words of apologies. "I really tried. I stole a plane to find you when they refused to let me search for you, they were waiting for me. Knew I would do it. I wanted to bring your body home at least-" his voice was tight as if he had to strain to get it to work.
They were both shaking in every limb. "I prayed to God if there was anything I could do, any slightest possibility to get you back, I'd do it. If it meant giving up myself, I- I would have done it-" Steve shook his head. "I should have tried harder. I should have done more. I- I…"
Trust his soulmate. Bucky thumbed his temples. The pending judgement of Skye and the death of Steve weighed on him but he had to figure what really happened before he did anything else. Taking a deep breath, Bucky hoisted himself out of the chair and out of the door, he would beg Stark to help him if that was what it took.
Save Skye first. Then mourn for Steve.
She was crying. She didn't mean to talk softly, she wasn't doing it on purpose.
"Kid, you will listen to everything I say and obey me because why?" The lady stood over her where she was chained to in the middle of the large basement.
"Compliance will be rewarded." Skye replied immediately.
The lady nodded with satisfaction and unlocked her collar. "Good. Now shall we get those cookies?"
The bitter taste of bile whelmed her mouth as the memories begin to flood her mind. The memories she didn't remember having.
"Mrs Brody?" Skye looked at her questioningly.
The lady held her tight, almost crushing her. "Remember Mary Sue Poots. You'll forget everything until the time is right. And then you comply to your orders."
She trembled as she is released from the tight grasp. Turning back several times, she finally got into the car and watched the woman that she had tried calling Mom diminish into the distance.
"The little traitor's gone," was the first thing Stark told him when he arrived at the Tower. On the screens played the surveillance of the prison cells.
A guard walked up and said something to her, she spun around, shattering the wall behind her and got into a black SUV that had been waiting two blocks away.
"Just like I thought she would." Stark continued. "Fleeing into the night. What was she? AIM? Hydra?" Stark sneered, his fingers flying across the keyboard, searching across the many different surveillance cameras. "Was she even your soulmate, or was she faking the whole shit?"
Bucky clenched his jaws, searching the room for someone who didn't share Stark's opinion. They all studied the documents that Maria had supplied. Had all that Skye had done for the team been destroyed by this? "Do we have someone that can read lips?" He growled. Why had she fled? She knew she was innocent, it only made her look guilty if she was running.
"Like knowing what their conversation was is going to change a damn thing, Tin-man. She's a fucking traitor. She shot Spangles, fled in the middle of the night. That's guilty written all over the little bitch. I'm really damn tired of betrayal, Barnes."
Bucky snapped pulling Stark up by his collar. "Call her that again and I-"
"Compliance will be rewarded." Barton said, interrupting on what would have ended someone in the hospital.
He stiffened at Barton's reply, turning slowly towards him to ascertain the conviction of his words. Barton's eyebrows hitched up as he took in Bucky's expression. "Why?"
"Hydra used to say that to me to force me to do their bidding." His words hung heavily in the stillness and silence that followed, his grip loosening as Stark tugged himself out.
"So she's Hydra? Why am I not surprised." Stark laughed as he read the notice JARVIS had opened over the screen. "The license plate for that is a shell corp for Hydra too!"
Bucky growled and slammed a fist into the table. "She- is- not- Hydra! She was brainwashed."
"Brainwashed." He deadpanned. "Look, Tin-man. We totally get what you're trying to say, but she shot Steve. Your soulmate. No soulmate would shoot their own soulmates. She's obviously faking the whole thing."
No matter what the others said, the Skye that he and Steve loved would never have willingly hurt either of them. "Our soulmate. We were bonded. You can't fake that."
Stark frowned at his words and struggled with himself before finally replying, "Fine. But I'm not helping you find the little traitor."
Skye woke up strapped on a lab table with only a paperly patient dress covering her, her hands and legs were spread out and bound with heavy leather straps. A doctor and a woman in black stood by the door conversing quietly to each other. There was something oddly familiar about the woman. Her thick black hair that was roped into a thick plait that hung heavily down her back and the stance she held herself in, the hands. Skye would never forget the hands as the woman gesticulated, still deep in conversation with the doctor.
Mrs Brody had the prettiest hands. Skye loved to watch her roll the dough out and cut it to make mini-pies. Skye loved mini-pies though it might have been influenced by Mrs Brody's son - Dimitri. Dimitri taught her computer science once he found out she had an innate talent for it and Skye would do anything to be accepted.
"Good, you're awake." The doctor beamed. He picked up the clipboard that had been hanging on the side. "Six weeks along. This is even better than we expected."
Six weeks? Skye stared fearfully at the doctor, then at the woman who stepped up beside him and handed him a syringe filled with a yellow liquid.
"We expected to use you as bait, but this-!" She shuddered as his finger caressed her abdomen. "- this is far better! The children of either the Winter Soldier or Captain America in here. How fantastic! Twins! The things we could do with them!"
"This will help catapult Project Jaeger into the final stages." The woman looked pleased as she watched the doctor inject the yellow liquid into her abdomen.
Pregnant? Skye felt her breath shutter heavily in her chest, knocking her limp in a giddy stupor. "Please-" She begged, hands fighting the leather straps. "Please no-" Her powers, they weren't working. Why weren't they working? Her throat was rasping for air, sobbing as she struggled to free herself. "No. Please. Don't!"
She had to protect her babies, their babies, Steve's and Bucky's legacies. Skye tasted the blood in her mouth, feeling the jagged edge on her lip where she had bitten down in hysteria. She closed her eyes, banishing the image of the doctor and his multiple syringes, pushing away the pinches as he loaded the strange liquid into her womb.
Steve mouthed up the slope of her inner thighs, inching higher and higher then pausing to suckle her bud. Skye smothered the small gasp, clenching tightly on Bucky's arm. On the stage not many metres from their table, Pepper was giving a speech. Thank god for long speeches. Bruce eyed her with a strange look in his eyes as Skye struggled to pretend that she was not getting eaten out in a middle of a public annual dinner ball.
"That's a good girl."
Skye turned her head, the most recent memory of Steve no longer helping to distract her from reality. The beating of her heart thumped loudly in her ears.
The grey ceiling with the dingy lights, the green tiled floor. She struggled to remain sane in the building tide of hysteria. The doctor with a crooked nose, the woman that looks like Mrs Brody.
She was saying something that she wasn't sure exactly what. Rambling away as though it'd help. A red, searing pain punched through her body, gripping her like a vice. Sucking in short, shallow breaths, Skye felt her heart slow and the fight in her began to dissipate.
"That's a good girl," the doctor crooned and placed his cool hand on her forehead. "We'll make a mother out of you."
Oh god. Steve- Bucky- Someone, anyone. Please. Save me.
"Skye? Skye? Wake up!" She woke up gasping, her sweaty hair plastered to the sides of her face. Steve pulled her into his embrace, Bucky joining in, penning her between their two bodies.
"You're safe now," Bucky comforted, pressing a soft kiss, running his warm hand down her back, driving the memory away. "Safe."
She didn't need to tell them anything, they knew that she dreamt of her last mission. The last mission that went into a total shitstorm. She clung onto her two soulmates, taking reprieve in their solid presences. The love they sent anchored her and holding onto the present.
"I love you two." She said this, knowing that they could feel her love that words could not succinctly express.
She was in a luxuriously decorated room when she woke up. A luxuriously decorated room, but still a cell. Running a hand down her face, Skye slumped against the headboard, her other hand instinctively rubbing her womb.
"I'll protect you…" she whispered to the fetuses growing inside her. She would keep their babies safe even if it killed her. She had to.
Her body trembled and she shook the tears away. Safe, like her soulmates had kept her.
Four weeks after Skye had been taken, snow began to fall. Autumn was officially over, not that Bucky really cared for the seasons. The only thing he cared about was that daylight was now far shorter than he liked it to be. There was an icy wind cutting through the woods, seemingly tearing any warmth tucked in their jackets into shreds. The feeble sun was doing not much good here, where its interspersed rays were more tenuous than anything else. Large flakes of snow sailed closer from the ashen skies, drifting with an almost contemptuous laze.
He hated the snow and the cold; it reminded him too much of the cryo. It was Skye's overly enthusiastic enthusiasm for winter that eventually won him over. Bucky had been hard-pressed to deny that Skye's hot spicy cider and cinnamon rolls tasted extra good after they came in from the snow or feeling the warm press of his soulmates' bodies beneath the blanket at night.
"Sir, the snow is coming in too heavily, we'll need to wait it out."
Bucky swore rapidly in English, then in Russian. Four weeks and still no closer to finding her. Surely the whole point of kidnapping her had been to bait him in. Bucky didn't care if it was a trap, he just wanted her safe, even if it meant giving up his freedom.
He waved Stark's minions away, pressing on even when they called him back. He wasn't going to stall just because of a little snow. Somewhere in a cell, a base, Skye was waiting for him, and who knew what they were doing to her. They were Hydra.
He was awake. Why was he awake? He screamed and screamed begging for them to stop, begging for them to kill him. His arm. What were they doing to his arm?
Steve! Where are you Steve? Save me!
The pain slammed hard and fast, blasting against his brain with each wave. His mouth was opened, throat straining to scream but there was no sound. There was no sounds left to alleviate it, no lucid thoughts except the echoing word that he clutched tightly.
Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve
Then the pain peaked and shot past what he could humanly feel and everything drowned out.
There was nothing they would stop at, nothing. Until Skye was out of their grasp, she would never be safe. "Skye! I'll find you!" He shouted into the wind. Never stopping, even if it took him years.
She should have guessed it earlier. No one was going to come for her. He had abandoned her. No, she was not surprised. Everyone abandoned her in the end after all. The only one she could rely on had always been herself.
Skye rubbed the growing belly. Eighteen weeks. She was eighteen weeks along. Steve and Bucky's children. How was she going to protect her babies from Hydra, if she couldn't even protect her soulmate from herself?
There was no escaping the facility. She had tried every trick in the book that May and Natasha had taught her. Every trick in the book didn't include how to counter conditioning and brainwashing. She palmed her eyes, refusing to cry anymore. The door to her cell was unlocked, but she couldn't open it because they didn't allow her to. She couldn't use her powers because they didn't allow her to. The ludicrousness of the whole situation was not lost on her.
Where was she going to go if she ever escaped? Bucky wouldn't want her. The Avengers wouldn't want her; Shield wouldn't want her. Hell, she killed Steve. She didn't deserve to live. She killed her own soulmate. She would only escape to be hunted down and recaptured by Hydra and if she couldn't even break from their conditioning, they would only need to ask to make her return.
Skye eyed the scissors that they had left there for her to make baby clothes. She wasn't allowed to kill herself... but they didn't say anything about the babies.
She shivered, clenching her throat against a whimper. Could she really kill her own babies? Steve and Bucky's?
She gripped the scissors, taking a deep breath, and forcing her mind to utter blankness.
To protect. I love you. I love you both. Forgive me.
She heard herself screaming. She heard the guards screaming. She heard the nurses screaming and knew she had succeeded.
Bucky was exhausted. He had been searching for her for three months. Three long months. Apart from Natasha and Barton, he had not gotten much cooperation from the other Avengers. He understood their aloofness, he really did especially for Stark. There was no evidence that Skye hadn't been a sleeper agent; but Bucky knew Skye sincerely loved them. The times when she had gone beyond the call of duty to ensure their safety, the times when she had placed herself in danger to bring them home. She was their soulmate, for fuck's sake!
A soulmate that shot her own soulmate.
He clasped his hands, staring blankly at the wall.
"Barnes." The lyrical rasp called him as she entered the dark room.
"Natasha." He nodded as she slid onto the upturned coffee table before him. There was a strange light in her eyes, like she was suppressing something. News?
She tilted her head towards the door and he stood, mouth dry in anticipation of what she might have to tell him. Her stance was stiff, but not terse, which was good because whatever she had wasn't bad. Not that anything could get worse. Bucky bit back that inner commentary; he didn't need to tempt fate, there were so many things that could make the bad even worse. As it was, he already felt like he was waiting for some metaphorical executioner's blade.
Natasha pressed the medical level button in the elevator and a small leap of hope lit up in Bucky. Was it possible that they had retrieved Skye? He used to be able to feel her in the back of his mind but ever since she was kidnapped by Hydra, his mind was quiet. There wasn't the soft rambling from Skye as she typed furiously on the keyboard or the subconscious physics calculations from Steve as he measured the amount of strength and angle when he threw and caught the shield. All his life he had heard soulmates killed themselves when their soulmates died. Bucky never understood how anyone could have given so easily up on life. Now he knew. It was not the despair from losing their soulmates that killed them, it was the slow numbing silence. Granted that Bucky was mentally stronger than most people now, especially with all that he had gone through, but even now the silence was beginning to get to him. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't realize that they had arrived until Natasha gently squeezed his shoulder.
"I'll wait here," she told him in Russian that only served to make him more anxious contrary to what her intentions had been. He casted a semi-desperate look at her as she pushed him through the door and closed it behind him.
The person on the bed was not the one whom he had expected. His blond hair was lambent in the feeble winter sun that trickled in through the half drawn curtains, his face was haggard in a way that Bucky only remembered seeing before the serum but he was alive.
Steve was alive.
Bucky opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to put his thoughts into words but nothing fitted the emotions that ran through him. He took a half step, staggering onto the bed. Hands gripping his biceps, he finally muttered with hot eyes, "You're alive."
"Till the end of the line Bucky." He gave a soft oof as Bucky enveloped him in a tight hug. "Couldn't let you take all the stupid."
Bucky rappelled down the hole. The air was warm and almost sweet. Winter had come and gone. A whole season without Skye, and now, almost two. Frustration and the need to strangle something had been funnelled into destroying Hydra bases, regardless of whether there was intel that Skye was held there. Now with Steve back onboard and pushing the Avengers and Shield, the search for Skye had been moved to first priority.
"She was scared, Stark!" Steve growled at the man. "This whole entire conversation is ridiculous. You brought me back to life only to condemn my soulmate-"
"Our soulmate-"
"-To death, either from Hydra or Shield?"
"We're not Shield," Stark objected. "In case you forgot, we're Avengers and we're just being pragmatic. I believe I'm speaking on behalf of the team."
"Well fuck you." Steve slammed his palms onto the table, the Avengers with the exception of Bucky and Natasha flinched. "If this is the Avengers then clearly you've sold out." Steve pulled himself up, his words cold as steel as he continued on. "That's the whole reason why you were so onboard the superpowered registration act. It's all you all over again."
Tony pulled himself up though not quite the reaction that Steve had achieved. "Are we going through this again-"
"Calm down," Barton placed a hand on each shoulder. "Tony, stop acting a hardass. We all know you had been busy assisting the science team in making sure Steve didn't die and searching all surveillance for any possible intel." He turned to Steve who looked puzzled at what Barton had said. "Steve, remember Tony is emotionally stunted. He communicates in snark."
Bucky shook his head and tugged Steve back into the chair. "He's right. Despite Stark's 'objections' all the men and search parties had come from him. I- I didn't even know that he was trying to revive you. I should have stuck around-"
Steve was beside him as they advanced down the hallway like a vengeful god. His face was hard, cold, lips pressed thinly together with only the last vestige of his self-control held back by the first real possibility of Skye being in this facility.
Bucky had gone down this road many times since the beginning of the search seven months ago. The promise of 'real possibility' in the facility had worn off after the ninth time or so. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had already begun to accept the real possibility of Skye being dead. And while he didn't think he would ever actually stop searching for her, Bucky knew that at a certain point of time, searching for Skye wasn't going to be the first most important thing - not when they were superheroes.
Steve threw the shield as Bucky ducked, firing two shots into the guard. Barely glancing, Bucky continued his momentum, slashing a knife across the other guard's throat then flinging it at the guard that had pulled his rifle up to shoot Steve.
"The scientists are getting away," Stark's voice came over the comms. Bucky broke into a run, leaving the mopping up to Steve without so much as a glance. Hoisting himself two flights of stairs down, feet barely grazing the steps before he stood before the quailing scientists.
He didn't bother asking questions. Slamming his rifle at the first scientist then the second. His metal plates shifting and whirling as he grabbed the last scientist by the throat and lifted him.
"Where is Skye?" He demanded, the rest of his usual interrogation evaporating on his tongue as his gaze swept to the back of the room. Bucky released the scientist, hand pressing on the comms. "Steve-" his voice wavered, his thoughts tumbled away; a frisson of fear and hope ran down his spine as he took a shaky step towards the back of the room.
"Bucky?" Steve repeated insistently.
"I found her, Steve," he whispered. "I found her."
The girl in the glass cylinder was their soulmate, belly large with what seemed to be a baby. Oh God. She was pregnant.
Bucky stared at her in horror. It was all his fault. He had found her too late. What had they done to her? His fist was crashing into and through the cylinder, webs splintering from his point of contact. She lay in his arms, hair clinging to her wet skin, so much more frailer that he ever remembered her being. He swallowed his heart back into his chest, willing her to wake, to fill the silence with her loud rambling.
"Skye?"
Bucky looked at up at shadow that fell onto him, catching Steve's blue eyes. "I should have tried harder." A dry sob shot out from his chest, but it was muffled as Steve pulled the three of them closer.
She coughed, expelling water into Bucky's warm chest. Bucky and Steve braced her, Steve rubbed soothing circles on her back. "I missed you Steve. Don't leave me again," she muttered.
Bucky hooked an arm under her knees, gently supporting her back with his other arm. She was a lot heavier than he remembered her to be, not that it mattered to his super soldier strength, the only thing that ran through his mind was oh God, I should have made it sooner. He feared for what else they might have done to her, feared what she might remember. Remembering had always been more difficult for him.
"What did they do to you?" he asked when they were finally on the plane.
Now more conscious, Skye lifted her head, her eyebrows frowning. "You're still here. You should have been gone by now."
"Sweetheart, we're not leaving you in there." Steve cupped her face, kissing lightly on her temple. "We did our best."
Her quivering hands clenched gripped Steve's large hands. "You're real," hoarsely whispering and repeating, she palmed her mouth, covering the trembling lips, tears following down in a steady stream. "You're real. I'm not dreaming."
"We're real," they said in unison.
She hugged them fiercely, no further words required.
Her two soulmates hadn't left her side since she had been confined to the medbay. Steve had been frustrated at Natasha's insistence on Skye being guarded and confined at all times.
"It's SOP, Steve," Bucky said placatingly. "They need to protect their people as well."
Honestly, Skye had no interest in leaving the medbay. The looks of the doctors and nurses and the armed guards that stood by her door reminded her of Hydra. But at least it was better than being looked at like a traitor.
So far, she'd been here just a couple of days. She'd been allowed to sleep when she needed and they made sure she had plenty to eat. She had expected the medical exam and tests and secretly, she was grateful, it gave her an idea of what Hydra had done to her and her babies. She'd been briefly debriefed by Natasha and she had been told she would need counseling sessions, plus physical therapy to exercise her body after the confinement.
She woke sometimes from a half-remembered nightmare gasping, unable to remember clearly of what she had dreamt of when her soulmates asked her. Sometimes she feared she would wake up back in the room or worse, buckled to the lab table. Those were her worse fears and she was glad that her soulmates obliged her by never leaving her completely alone even when she had to shower.
Not only that, the yellow fluid had bothered her and by that extension, she now had an odd fear of the colour yellow. Just the sight of any yellow fluid had sent her into an anxiety attack that took both Bucky and Steve to calm her down and bring her out of it.
Bruce wiped his glasses down as he handed them the sheet of medical report. "The good news is that no, they hadn't accelerated her pregnancy growth. They're actually twins, hence the size. She's twenty-eight weeks along so by timelines, they're most definitely your offspring. The DNA report also confirms that one of them is Rogers' and one of them is Barnes'."
"They didn't-" Steve faltered, exchanging looks with Bucky, their sombre looks saying what they had feared to voice.
She scrubbed the tears from her eyes at their relieved laughter, letting them wrap themselves around her, hands spraying out on her large belly.
"No. She was already pregnant before she-" Bruce cleared his throat, looking down at the other reports he was holding. "We did the tests on what they might have injected into her during her… captivity… and it appears they were injecting a serum of some kind that has properties similar to Erskine's serum and overall Doctor Simmons and Doctor Cho, and me, are of agreement that what Hydra might have attempted to do was to complete their version with the babies. But on top of that..." He fiddled with his glasses again, then his shirt. "It seems to have some side-effects."
Any relief they felt dissipated at his words. Skye gripped tighter onto her soulmates' shirts, feeling the knot in her throat as she waited with bated breath for his next words.
"You asked me awhile ago if either of you two would ever age," Bruce motioned with his finger. "You were afraid you two would be still young when Skye grew older."
"Is there a purpose of bringing that up?"
"Ah-" Bruce held up a folder. "It appears that because of the exposure to the serum injected into the womb, the mother, Skye, has absorbed it and because of that the telomerase are now longer and along with that, there's a reverse of molecular and structural functionality. We did a sampling of Skye's blood and found with a genome-wide microarray analysis of heterochronic parabionts that all related transcriptional changes are now also reversed. Also the dendritic spine density in the matured neurons have increased and the synaptic plasticity-"
"English please," Steve said, cutting off Bruce in what seemed to be turning into a lengthy rant.
"Right." Bruce tapped the folder, as though trying to organize his thoughts before saying, "basically, as a side effect, she's a super soldier now.. So that means..."
"She ages like us now," Bucky breathed.
"Well without the vita rays it's not rapidly activated but in time…" Bruce trailed off realizing that the trio was no longer paying attention to him. "I'm… just going to go."
Steve pressed a kiss on Skye's temple, holding her as tightly as he could without hurting her. Bucky caressed her swollen belly, blinking tears back when he turned to gaze at his two soulmates, his adam's apple bobbing. "We're okay."
He cupped their faces, kissing them ever so gently on their lips. "We're okay."
They burst out laughing, leaning against each other, taking comfort from each other's warmth.
"Steve!" Bucky gasped, staring at his hand on Skye's belly. He gazed at Skye then Steve in wonder. "I felt them kick!"
"Sweetheart, go to bed," Steve rubbed her face lightly before taking the book and the twins from her arms. "I'll put them to bed." He told her when Skye mumbled. She shuffled half awake, hand sliding into Bucky's and allowed Bucky to lead her away.
Steve rubbed his nose in the twins belly as he tucked them into bed and they giggled, pushing him away. "Stop it daddy! It tickles!" The blond girl groused half-heartedly and leaned into his embrace.
Pursing his lips at the book that Skye was reading to the twins, he blinked at the twins. "Adventures of Captain America and Bucky Barnes? Why are you reading this?"
"Sadie wanted to!" The brown haired boy pouted. "I wanted Iron Man…"
"But you always want Iron Man," Sadie whined.
"Jamie, what did I tell you about Iron Man?" Steve raised an expectant eyebrow.
"Stay away from him…"
"And?"
"If we cannot avoid him, tell him that there are little people around and he can't be a bad adult."
Steve nodded. "Good." Smiling, he half laid beside them, draping his arm across the blankets. "Did Daddy ever tell you about the time when Mummy and Papa got angry at the bad bad man?"
They stared at him wide-eyed. "No! Tell us!"
"Well… It all begun with Mummy finding a magical stick and Papa thought might it belong to Prince Thor..."
-The end-
A/N: I love you guys! Your reviews make me so happy! :) So thank you for reviewing, following and favouriting this! Nothing beats reading your reviews after I post up the chapter.
I also forgot to put the line breaks in.. saw Charlemagne Gryffis' note on it. Oops.. XD