Bucky has to admit, being in a room with Steve and Wanda and Romanov and Sam – even Stark – sharing lighthearted conversation, a bit of laughter even, it's… nice. It's a welcome respite from the last few months, from just the last few days. They don't talk about any still-encrypted files. They don't hypothesize where Lobe – or any of the others – might be. They don't question how many mutants – how many people – are still out there, still in jeopardy. And they sure as hell don't discuss what happened just before they arrived in Nunavut, nor the frightening similarities to what Tessa did to Jessup upon her return.
Instead, Sam tells them about getting trapped in snowstorm with Rhodes, stuck huddled in a tree for nearly five hours while the world whited out around them. The man at his side sat cozy in his multi-million-dollar suit, watching Friends reruns through his visor and laughing like an idiot while the Falcon – donning barely weather-appropriate attire and constantly fogged goggles – shivered and clung desperately to the branches around him, his backpack so heavy with iced-over wings that he nearly fell into the five feet of snow below.
The story causes a spark of a memory to rise in the back of Bucky's subconscious, a barely there image of thick-booted feet trudging through mounds of snow. Not in Siberia, though… no it was…
"Ardennes," Steve supplies, chuckling to himself. "We walked for hours and barely made it a quarter mile. It was miserable."
"I'll be happy never seeing snow again," Sam interjects, bitterness rolling from his tongue.
A wide, reminiscent smile spreads across Steve's face as he recalls that winter storm of '44. "We stopped to make camp and lost Dugan. Couldn't find him anywhere… and it was a total white out. We couldn't see a thing." He hangs his head low, shaking it slowly back and forth. "I thought we actually lost him. But the next morning, there he was, sitting snug in the crook of a tree, smoking a cigar, staring down at us…"
"You'll get trench foot when you thaw, boys," Bucky says, repeating the words that ring suddenly in his ears, echoing in the voice of a friend long since gone. He smiles wistfully and shakes his head. "Son of a bitch gave us all a heart attack just so he could keep his boots dry." He raises a mischievous brow and scans the rapt faces of the others in the room. "We pelted him with snowballs 'til he fell outta the tree."
Tony snorts – a sarcastic cover for the chuckle rumbling in his chest – and rises to leave. "Well, I love old Howling Commando stories just as much as the next guy…"
"You hate them," Steve intones with a teasing grin.
"But, some of us have work to do."
"Yeah," Bucky mutters, getting up as well. He twists around and cracks his back as he moves, a sure sign that the small sofa in Tessa's hospital room isn't doing him any favors. "I should get back."
Natasha tells him that she'll check in on the cat so he doesn't have to. Sam asks him to let Tessa know that he's back and he'll be by to see her first thing in the morning. And Steve just pats him on the back and reminds him to get some sleep.
And sleep? Damn, sleep does sound nice. Even if it is on that tiny, rock-hard couch.
He lets his thoughts drift as he shuffles down the hall, stopping just short of Tessa's doorway to release a massive, overwhelming yawn. But then an awful sound fills his ears, a thick, wet retching filtering out from her room. He turns the corner, rapidly blinking his bleary eyes to dispel his exhaustion. "What the hell?" he mutters with a huff before hurring over to Tessa's side.
She's bent over a small basin, one that Bruce is carefully holding just above her lap – a full arm's length away – as he leans back and tries to avoid being sick himself. Bucky gives him an admonishing glare as he drops down beside his wife, laying a hand on her back just as she lets loose with one final heave, nothing but green bile shooting out into the basin. She leans heavily back and pants as he rubs slow circles between her shoulder blades.
Bruce turns to him with a disgusted, curled lip and says simply, "Solid foods are a no-go."
Bucky reaches up and swipes an errant curl back behind her ear, takes an extra second to try and tuck it back into her unravelling braid. She swivels her face and curls desperately into the open palm of his cool metal hand, the sweltering heat of her flesh immediately setting off the temperature sensors in his fingers. "She's burning up," he barks out, tone nearly as heated as his wife's face.
"Uh," Bruce sputters, voice a bit timid, as though he's preparing for some sort of reprimand. "Yeah. Her fever spiked."
"S'not a fever," she mutters breathlessly.
Bruce raises a single questioning brow and stares at her over the rims of his glasses. "No? 102.4… that's where we were twenty minutes ago."
She pulls herself upright and scoffs loudly, making a disgusted face as she asks, "Couldn't have figured that out before feeding me green Jell-O?" Then she turns to Bucky with an almost comical frown. "You're… hot," she complains dolefully. "And you smell like pizza."
"The fever may have caused you to vomit," Bruce says with a shrug. "But it could also just be your stomach refusing solid foods."
Tessa scoots away from Bucky, just a bit, just enough to get some air between them. "Stop saying fever," she mumbles as she plucks at the neck of the newly sweaty hospital gown. "I'm not sick."
He shoves his glasses back up his nose and turns to grab the vomit-filled basin from the table. "If you say so," he singsongs before ducking quickly out of the room.
"My hormones are just… messed up. It's like a hot flash." She turns to face Bucky. "He's trying to put me through menopause."
When Bruce reappears, he's armed with a blood draw kit and a new basin, which he hands over to Bucky before shooing him from the bed. He quickly takes his seat, plopping down next to his patient. "You're not going through menopause," he drones, taking her arm and hunting for a vein. "In fact, your sex hormones are pretty much the only ones behaving normally right now."
She shoots a sly – albeit, utterly drained – smirk over the top of his head at her husband. "Hear that, babe. My sex hormones are behaving normally."
He barely even rolls his eyes in response, too focused, it seems, on pouting as he watches the needle pierce through her nearly translucent skin. "So everything else is still…" he starts, letting his words trail off as her blood easily fills the first vial.
Bruce pops off the vial and snaps on the next with practiced efficiency. "Wonky?" he finishes for him without glancing up. "Yeah. But… better."
"Really?" he questions, a hint of hope in his voice despite the intense frown painted on his face, the too-tight set to his shoulders as his arms wind tensely across his chest.
"Yep." He finishes the blood draw, extracts the needle and rises from Tessa's side. "TSH is down. Sodium's steady… for now." He shrugs. "Obviously I don't love that her temp is so elevated. But at least she's not tachy any more."
His brow furrows as he slowly lowers himself back down onto the edge of the bed. "Tachy?"
"Tachycardic," Bruce states, even as Tessa lets out a low groan. She grabs Bucky's metal hand and presses it again to her face, glaring reproachfully at her friend as she does so. He simply shrugs and further explains, "Rapid heartbeat."
"Rapid heartbeat," he repeats, forehead crinkling even further. He looks down at Tessa with a questioning – almost accusatory gaze. "When did that happen?"
"Few hours ago," Bruce answers for her. He looks over to the foot of the bed where a spent ice pack sits and nods at it. "I need to grab another pack. You'll want to keep it on her… or at least a cool compress." He points at the cloth on the small table at Bucky's side.
He twists around to pick it up – awkwardly bending to grab it with his right hand so as not to remove his left from Tessa's face. "And you didn't think to call me?" he asks as he places the compress on her forehead and gives her a small push to get her to settle back into the pillows.
"You were probably busy eating pizza anyway," she snipes, bitter envy dripping from her lips.
"It's fine," Bruce says simply. "Didn't last long. Hasn't happened since." He waves the little vials of blood in the air. "And if her levels continue to even out – and if her fever goes down – she might just be fine enough to go home. On a restricted basis."
"Hallelujah," she mocks thickly.
He sneers at her. "Some of us have better things to do than play nursemaid to you all day."
"Bullshit," she scoffs. "I know you. You have literally nothing else going on right now."
He shakes his head and sighs deeply before looking back up at Bucky. "I'll get her some more Tylenol," he mutters with a sigh. "Since she just puked up what I gave her."
"Your fault for giving me lime Jell-O," she mumbles, scooting further to the side of the bed opposite Bucky. "Seriously, babe," she almost moans while pushing away from him. "You're so hot."
He rises from the bed and grabs the chair that Bruce had been sitting in, gives the doctor a quick nod of thanks before he saunters from the room, and then pulls the seat closer to her side before dropping heavily into it and letting out an utterly exhausted-sounding sigh.
"So," she intones lightly, rolling to her side and grabbing his hand to bring it back up to her face. "What did you guys talk about in the debrief?"
A crooked smile pulls at the corner of his mouth as he tugs the compress back up her forehead. "Pretty sure you no longer have the clearance to hear about any of that," he teases.
A deep and exaggerated pout rolls over her face, bottom lip jutting dramatically. "You're just gonna make me stay here – all alone with Bruce – living in the dark, while you go off and have pizza party debriefs filled with classified intel without me?"
He shrugs. "Pizza party came later."
"You're really not going to tell me anything?" she asks, suddenly serious brow raised high as her voice takes on an almost reprimanding edge.
He huffs out a quick breath and feebly shakes his head. "We talked some about the decrypted lab reports," he offers, information pertinent to her health being all that he's willing to share. "The ones Vision got into from – I don't know – one of the sites. I'm guessing you two were going over those here?"
She nods. "How deep did you guys get?"
He shrugs. "Not very. They made it sound like this was just the tip of the iceberg."
"Yeah," she sighs, twisting onto her back and staring up at the ceiling. "They tried to replicate our M-gene research from Minsk by injecting irradiated clusters of M-gene-containing cells into volunteers." A long, low sigh flows out of her as her eyes continue to gaze up at nothing. "In some people, the cells effectively replicated. But, just like with our animal studies, the amount of MGH produced varied considerably depending on the biology of the host."
"And people died," Bucky mutters softly, trailing his metal fingertips slowly up and down her jawline.
She nods, still avoiding eye contact with him. "Some people died right away from complications… damage to the hypothalamus. Sounds like others… well, it sounds like they became physically addicted. For some people, if they couldn't get the M-gene-containing cells to take root again, they went into withdrawal and, yeah… died." Her eyes tick briefly to the side, to meet his gaze. "That's when they started dosing people with MGH."
"Which they pulled from mutants," he says, the words slipping out through tightly gritted teeth. His eyes gradually move down to her hand – her wrist – and he reaches out to absently trace along the tattooed M-122 marring her flesh there.
She rolls back over onto her side to face him and pulls in a deep, steeling breath. "To supplement MGH in persons going through withdrawal – or experiencing a decrease in powers – for whom M-gene clusters were no longer taking root… or at least not replicating fast enough to produce the necessary amount of MGH, yes… the hormone was harvested directly from X-gene carriers and given to the volunteers." She states everything thickly, matter-of-factly, with little emotion to her voice. But her eyes swim with a painful sentiment as she locks onto his gaze, stridently tugging her wrist from his grip and tucking it beneath her. "They needed to isolate MGH so they could replicate it and get a steady supply. With mutant specimens, the supply is inherently limited."
Bucky nods. "And they decided to… stimulate the hypothalamus to get as much of it as possible," he supplies, remembering Vision's breakdown of the reports. "But," he mumbles a bit, brow furrowing. "We still don't know how they did it."
"No, we do not," she drawls out with a frustrated huff.
Bucky blows out an exaggerated sigh. "Well," he croons, eager to change the subject, "seems like you're just as up to speed as the rest of us."
She stares at him for a long moment, gazing into his gray-blue eyes. "I'm glad you had a pizza party," she mutters softly, her words pulling a quick chuckle from the man before her. "I'm glad they fed you and took care of you," her reflective tone being enough for him to easily discern that she's not just talking about what their friends did for him today.
He raises a curious eyebrow at her. "You make it sound like I'm a houseplant they remembered to water."
"Oh good," she mocks. "I was hoping they watered you too." Then she reaches up and gently swipes her fingertips along his jaw, the pad of her thumb slowly stroking his heavily stubbled cheek. "Yet no one could help you shave."
He barks out another laugh before leaning forward and nuzzling into her palm. "You don't like the beard?"
She shrugs, her fingers falling away, back to her side, as she intently studies him. "It's just… different." Then, with a raised brow and a rather grave intonation, she states, "I'm a little afraid I might get rugburn."
At that, he falls back into his chair and laughs hardily. "Were you planning on sliding down my face?" he asks, smile so wide it almost aches.
Another shrug. "You do have a birthday coming up."
"I do," he says with a nod – and more than a hint of innuendo. "So do you." He leans forward again, taking hold of her hand and bringing it to his lips. He kisses each knuckle softly, never breaking eye contact. "I can't wait to get you back home," he whispers into her flesh.
A small, melancholic smile spreads across her face. "Home," she repeats wistfully. Then, with a sudden urgency, "Hey, did you take care of Eddie today?"
He stops kissing her fingers, but refuses to let her go, folding her hand tightly between both of his. "Romanov said she'd check on him."
Tessa ducks her head a bit, frown pulling at her features as she thinks about the little gray tabby waiting for her back in their apartment. "I miss him," she mutters softly. "Sometimes…" Her brow twists into a disorientated expression. "Sometimes I dreamt about him. I think."
Her eyes flicker off to the side to stare at nothing as she begins to pull on the thread of a barely there memory. "Yeah?" Bucky asks tenderly, watching as her face transforms into a thoughtful pout. "You ever dream about me?"
Immediately, she returns her gaze to his, a dark storm brewing behind her eyes. "Of course, I did," she bites out.
He nods stiffly, sorry that he ever asked, and tightens his fingers around hers.
She looks away and tries again to gather the thoughts – the memories – that are floating just beneath the surface. "We were all in bed together," she says after a moment. Then, small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, "Eddie was pouncing on my feet." Her voice fades off, and with it, her gaze. "Then…" She slowly pulls her right hand out from beneath her and looks down at her fingers with a furrowed brow. There are a handful of tiny scars littering her flesh – dozens of little nicks that came from… she honestly doesn't know where. She frowns down at them for a moment more and then proceeds to raise her hand up to her face, the pad of her index finger slowly tracing the thin scar at her temple before moving over to the tiny one near the corner of her mouth. "I woke up when he scratched me," she mutters dully. "Only… he didn't scratch me."
Bucky gently pulls her fingers away from her face, now holding tightly to both of her hands. "'Course not," he affirms with a smile. "He's a good boy."
Her eyes land on his face and lock onto his stunning, sparkling blue orbs, his delicate nose, his perfectly pouty lips. He is so beautiful, she thinks to herself. So perfect. In a low, almost desperate voice, she asks him, "How bad is it? Really. How bad do I look?"
His smile widens, tone utterly genuine when he says, "You're beautiful. Just like always."
And she can't help but grin at that, at the ease with which the obvious lie rolls off his tongue. "Liar," she accuses playfully.
"When have I ever lied to you?"
"Just now," she states matter-of-factly. Then, following a rather exaggerated huff, she laments, "This time last year, I felt so… ugly."
"Baby," he interrupts, voice low and chiding.
She locks onto his eyes and raises a brow. "We own mirrors, James. I know how I looked." He scoffs and gives her hands each a quick squeeze, but she's not at all dissuaded. "I looked like shit for months. Then I started to get better… then fucking Cal showed up…" Bucky visibly tenses – his jaw clenching and ticking to the side – at mention of her ex. "And then I tried to pull myself back together…"
Her breath catches in her chest and he sees the sudden sheen to her eyes, notes the way her demeanor shifts into that same horrible way she'd been just after the incident with Cal. Just after her family left her behind, sad and hopeless and broken. "You did pull yourself back together," he tells her, voice soft and sweet as he gently lays down her hand and reaches up to brush some hair back behind her ear. "I was so proud of you, baby. Still am."
She blinks out a single tear and smiles – warm and genuine and grateful – before sniffling a bit and rolling her eyes, doing all that she can to shove those most unwelcome feelings away. "Then…" she starts again. "Even at our wedding, when I thought I might just rock it… I ended up all puffy and… hive-y."
He chuckles as he cups the back of her head, thumb running in slow lines along her temple. "You looked perfect," he contends, single brow raised in a go ahead and try to argue with me way.
She tucks away a smile and blushes, just a bit. "I thought I'd keep getting better," she says contemplatively gazing up at him with a playful glean to her eye. "I thought – maybe – I'd get to make you another calendar."
"I could use one," he says with a nod and a suggestive wink.
She lets out a short laugh, the soft trill fading off into nothing as a contented grin settles on her face. "I guess you do still have that birthday coming up…"
He shakes his head fondly and looks at her with utterly adoring eyes. "God, I missed you."
The declaration is sweet and loving and all-together perfect, but it sparks a sort of deep, burning guilt in her gut. "I'm sorry," she murmurs sadly, eyes falling down to the bed to avoid his face. "I'm so sorry."
But he's had enough of that shit… enough of sorrow and guilt and apologies.
He tightens his fingers in her hair and tugs her closer to him, leans in and – in one swift and ardent movement – engulfs her in a heated don't say another damn word kiss. It's not the first kiss they've shared since her return, but it's definitely the longest and fiercest. And it feels so good – so damn good – and so familiar. And so…
His nose wrinkles a bit when he pulls away, tongue gliding over his teeth as his lips curl into a disgusted grimace. "That was… gross," he mutters, swallowing thickly as he leans back in his seat.
A high-pitched peal of laughter bubbles out of her. "Taste good?" she cackles.
His face pinches further as the taste of her saliva settles deeper into his mouth. "Lime Jell-O and…"
"Bile," she finishes with a snort.
He pulls himself up from the chair. "Yeah, I'm not doing that again until you brush your teeth." More giggles spill from her lips, causing a burning ache that he hasn't felt in so damn long to spark in his chest. "I'm gonna find some mouthwash," he announces, heading for the door. "You be good."
"Always," she croons just before he disappears into the hall.
The room is eerily quiet and still once he's gone, nothing but the slight, steady beep of the heart monitor and the barely there whirr of the heat whooshing through the ductwork. And Tessa realizes all at once just how little time she's had to herself over the past few days. It's no surprise really, everyone wanting to keep her close and safe after what happened. But the truth is, she's been just as desperate to have them near, just as reticent to be left alone. Alone with her thoughts. Alone with herself.
The hum is still resonating within her, a steady cadence droning constantly in her ears. She doesn't hear it as much when others are around… when Bruce mumbles about malfunctioning ion channels or Wanda catches her up on pop culture gossip. The same can be said for the odd vibration quivering through her bones. It's almost nonexistent when she's able to fill herself up instead with Bucky's loving energy or Natasha's palpable gratitude.
But now, with no one here to distract her, the hum and vibration – even after just a few short moments – are quickly becoming unbearable.
She shifts in the bed, pulling herself upright, feeling a sudden swell of energy pulsate through her. Glancing over at the heart monitor, she sees her pulse begin to quicken. This is what happened before, isn't it? The tachycardia didn't start until Bruce had left her to go check in at the lab… left her alone.
Her hands tremble – and hasn't that been happening all along as well? Hasn't she been shaking since she got here? – and she raises them up in front of her face for inspection.
For a brief moment, she's taken back… back to not all that long ago when her own hands were strangers to her. When she was convinced that they simply were not her own. When she saw them as Anna's, and saw Anna a different person altogether.
But these hands are not foreign to her at all, no matter how much she may want them to be. These hands belong to Tessa, the doctor, the scientist, the friend and Avenger. The wife. They belong to Anna, the frightened orphan, the mischievous child and driven young woman. They belong to Supernova, the powerful mutant, the X-Men crusader. The killer.
And they belong to all of the others still residing within her.
"Damnit," she murmurs to herself as she wills the shaking to stop. But it does not stop. "Fuck," she barks, her voice breaking as the anxiety continues to build.
Her breathing becomes shallow, and she can now feel the hammer of her heart as it pounds frantically against her ribcage. She contemplates having Friday call Bruce.
But… no. She can handle this. She doesn't need a sedative. It's probably just cortisol, right? Just another out-of-whack hormone trying to fuck with her.
She shuts her eyes, squeezes them tight, and blows out a long, hopefully calming, breath. But the minute she attempts to inhale another, all of the wind gets knocked from her lungs. Behind her lids, a scene plays out – a memory or a dream or a vision. There in front of her are men dressed in pure white scrubs, their faces concealed by oversized surgical masks. They mutter lightly, but she can't make out what they're saying. They look her way, but their forms and faces are too blurry to recognize.
She's hot. So damn hot. It feels like her blood is boiling, flesh melting from her bones. She's burning up inside. And all of these men are just watching her suffer. She tries to move, only to discover that she can't. She's tied down, secured to the bed by her wrists and ankles, a thick band also pulled tight across her abdomen.
She's trapped. Trapped. Trapped.
Her breaths continue to come in quick, sharp bursts, and the scene around her fades to nothing… to black. No. To a deep, dark blood-red. She thinks she hears someone calling her name. She can almost feel someone coming near. A presence moving towards her. She throws up her hands – no longer bound – and shouts, "No!" A single, simple word echoing painfully through her mind as she continues to sputter through the darkness.
No, she begs herself to believe. No, there's no one here.
But then a large hand clamps down around her bicep – cold, hard fingers curling into her and bruising her flesh – and it gives her a firm tug.
Her eyes burst open, a bright burning, pulsating red glow blowing out her normally emerald green irises. Her left hand shoots out and takes hold of the offender's arm, squeezing tight, never letting go. She looks down and sees rivulets of red flicker around her fingers, coming off of her in dangerous, sizzling tendrils. No. She knows what this is. No. She's seen this before. No. She recognizes that red.
"No!"
And just as the reverberating shout leaves her parted lips – and with it, a shot of pure energy rocking the air, causing the lights to flicker – she's hit with a quick, painful jolt of electricity, a lightening bolt to the chest. It burns through her for just a fraction of second before fizzling out, and taking with it the bright red blaze.
She looks up – eyes blown wide, but no longer glowing – and sees a familiar face standing in her doorway, giant hammer raised high. "Thor," she murmurs softly, utter bewilderment permeating her tone. Then, all at once, a rush of heated adrenaline rocks her body, causing a sharp gasp to shoot out of her along with a simply put, almost maniacal, "What the fuck?!"
I know, I know... I said there'd be Thor and then bam! just another teaser for him. I'll try to get the next chapter up ASAP so we can all say hello to that fine specimen. Also soon to come... a Christmas homecoming! Because I'm a sucker for Christmas fluff.