"You can't just keep me cooped up here forever!" she shouts, a bit breathless as her fervid pacing stops and her still-trembling hands fall to her hips.

Bucky throws a sidelong glare at the half empty coffee pot and rolls his eyes. He knew he shouldn't have let her break back into the caffeine. What the hell was he thinking? "Would you stop?" he asks dully, pulling a sip from his own steaming mug.

"No!"

She's being dramatic. Good God, she's being dramatic. It hasn't even been a full two weeks since she returned home to them. And in that time she's battled frostbite, malnutrition, heart arrythmias, insomnia… and that's just the physical stuff. How about the flashbacks and hallucinations? The nightmares that she so desperately tries to hide from him? What about the fact that an ancient, unstoppable power resides within her and even she's not convinced she has complete control over it?

And yet… "I am losing my mind," she bemoans pitifully, fretting for the third morning in a row about her forced confinement.

"You're not the only one," he drones, turning back to the scrambled eggs on the stove. He stirs the yellow, curdled-looking food in the pan, grimacing at the thought of more eggs, and mutters under his breath, "You can barely even eat real food yet and you think you're ready to go back to work."

But she hears every word, mumbled or not. "Yeah, James," she snipes from behind him. "I think I can go back to work. I think I can go two floors down to sit in my office for a few hours. I think I can do that without, I don't know, dying."

He flips off the stove and divides the eggs between two plates, grabs the just-popped toast and lays a piece on each platter as well. Then he turns to face her – breakfast in hand – and says simply, "No."

The look on her face is one that would that send a lesser man running. Pure, unadulterated fury burns at her cheeks and the tips of her ears in a bright red blush. "Did you just tell me no?" she asks, following him with anger-filled eyes as he sets the plates atop the breakfast bar and drops into a seat to eat.

Without looking up, lip curling in something akin to disgust as he collects a forkful of eggs, he announces, "Yes."

"I cannot believe you!" she barks out, stomping her foot – hard – into the wood floor. A quick shot of pain – of pure agony – pierces through her toes and blazes up her leg. "Ow!" thunders out of her as she gingerly lifts her foot and begins a slow, unsteady hop through the kitchen. Finally steadying herself at the counter, she shakes her head in exasperation. The last two treatments in the cradle replica had almost healed the frostbite on her toes entirely. But, as Bruce had pointed out after getting back the latest round of scans, some of the soft tissue damage was too deep to reach, and only time would allow that to heal. So while she's good to walk – even if only in sneakers a size too big – running, jumping, and angrily stomping her feet are currently out of the question.

Bucky's eyes tick over to see her leaning heavily on the counter, awkwardly contorted to cradle her foot near her core. He lets out a quick sigh. "Feel better?" he asks with more than a hint of sarcasm. She shoots him a dangerous glare and he finds himself fighting off the urge to laugh, nearly choking on the heady chuckle building in his chest. He clears his throat and pulls out the stool beside him. "Come eat your breakfast."

"Is that an order?" she asks with raised brow.

"Yeah, Tessa," he deadpans, rolling his eyes once again. "I'm ordering you to eat breakfast." He drops a loud, indignant snort and turns back to his plate. "You need to grow up."

She straightens herself to her full height, still tender foot holding its own as she begins to step toward him. She opens her mouth to speak, readying herself to spew out every angry, profane thing whirring through her brain. But before she can say a single word, Friday's voice buzzes through the walls. "Dr. Sullivan, you have a visitor."

Bucky's jaw stops mid-chew – Tessa's mid-vehement rebuttal – and they both turn to look at one another, foreheads crinkled and brows closely drawn. "Here?" Bucky asks, the word bound tight with trepidation. "She has a visitor here?"

"Yes," Friday replies. "Mr. Stark is with him now. He told me that I should have you come down to the private conference room. Immediately."

Bucky's fork clatters to the plate. "Who is it?" he asks, paying no heed to Tessa's look of annoyance as his words cut off her inquiry entirely.

"A Mr. Bobby Drake," she announces.

Tessa's eyes light up, face still contorted in confusion, but also carrying an excited glow. "Bobby's here?" she asks, voice barely above a whisper. Then, leaping into action to go grab her sweater, she tells the AI, "I'll be right down."

Bucky remains seated stiffly at the breakfast bar, half-eaten pile eggs and gnawed-on toast in front of him. He doesn't move. He barely breathes. His eyes are wide, face drained of color. It isn't until Tessa whips back around him on her way out the door that he says anything at all, a faint, "Wait," falling from his lips in a hesitant tone.

She turns to him just as she reaches the front door, hand overlaying the knob. "What?" she asks. "Don't you want to talk to him? You said that you guys looked everywhere for the X-Men and couldn't find them."

He nods, expression stupefied, mouth still awkwardly agape.

"Well," she huffs out impatiently. "At least one of them is downstairs now. So… let's go." And with that she bolts out the door.

000

Bobby Drake has always been a pretty positive guy. Not necessarily jovial or cheery… at least not all the time. But even when at his worst, he's always been one to maintain hope, to fake a good mood until he can actually achieve one, to see all the glasses – even those that are nearly empty – as half full. A typically smiling, most-often positive, at least somewhat beaming ray of sunshine. That's how Tessa thinks of her dear old Iceman friend.

But that's not the man she finds sitting slumped in solemn silence with Tony once she barrels into the conference room.

Both of the men look up, somewhat startled by her entrance, and the moment her eyes meet Bobby's the small smile she'd been wearing since fleeing her apartment drops from her face. "You look terrible," she breathes out, crossing the room to be by his side.

He glances up at her, his eyes tired and red rimmed, sitting atop deep, dark circles. Thick stubble peppers his face, ragged and unkempt. And while it's clear that he's lost some weight, the sunken quality of his cheeks looks to be more the result of worry, of a concern so deep and unabating that she can feel it coming off of him like the stench of rotten meat.

He tries to smile, the small, crooked perk to his lips being the only change to his otherwise grave expression. "I look terrible?" he questions as he slowly rises to his feet. The two embrace, wrapping lean, awkward limbs around one another. He looks up over her shoulder and sees Bucky quietly enter the room, shutting the door behind him. "Mr. Stark said," he starts, pulling in a shaky breath before disentangling himself from her. He leans back a bit and lets his eyes rove over her face, down her body. She's wearing some of the clothes that Natasha and Wanda had given her for Christmas – nothing particularly nice or flattering, but garments that fit her current frame. The pants have a drawstring, tugged as tight as it can go, and the T-shirt is a child's size medium, the sleeves still oddly loose. Over the top, she dons an old cardigan, faded gray and just puffy enough to make the rest of her look terribly spindly poking out of it. "Mr. Stark said you were… you had been… missing…"

She nods, her thin fingers absently tracing along his upper arms as she continues to hold onto him out at arms' length. "They looked for you," she says, voice small and terribly concerned. "You weren't… were you there too? In Canada?"

"Canada?" he asks, brows knitting together. "No. I mean… I looked into a few places up there… looking for…" He shakes his head. "But, no."

"It was Lobe," Bucky utters as he moves towards the large conference table. One look at Tony tells him that the man had yet to share much, which he honestly can't begrudge. Stark doesn't know Bobby like he does. Hell, all he probably knows about the man is that he's a mutant who can freeze, well, anything. But Bucky does know him. Maybe not terribly well, but they'd had enough conversations – Bobby Drake being one of the easiest people to talk to that he's ever known – and enough times together during Tessa's months of sessions at the mansion that he'd gotten to know him decently well. And unlike some of the mutants at Xavier's – unlike Bucky's own wife even – Bobby was an easy one to read. And to trust.

Tessa gives a final, comforting swipe down his arms and pulls him back into his seat at the conference table, dropping into the chair next to him and scooting it as close as she can get. She glances over at Bucky, who looms nervously just across the table, and then quirks her eyes up towards Tony, who's reclined back in a chair in the corner with an anxious set to his features. "Lobe started working with the Canadian military," she says, voice clear and concise as she turns back to Bobby and locks onto his eerily aimless stare. "They're trying to give genetically normal people powers by dosing them with the mutant growth hormone."

She waits, cocks her head at him expectantly. "Oh…" he sputters once realizing that she's waiting for a reaction. "Okay."

She holds his gaze and goes on, tone soft yet strangely business-like. "I think the ultimate plan is either to somehow get mutated cells to take root in their systems so they can produce MGH on their own, or to isolate the hormone from mutant donors, replicate it in a lab, and then supply it to study participants."

Bucky slowly takes a seat himself and clears his throat from across the table. "We think they're trying to create a different kind of super soldier."

"Okay," Bobby muses again, confusion still etched across his face. His shoulders pull taut as he looks from Bucky back to Tessa. "And you were there?" he asks, face pulling into a horrified grimace. "Did he… did they…"

She nods, expression and voice both remaining stoic as she utters, "I was there. I don't know what they did exactly. I'm still…" Her gaze ticks briefly away, a look of guilt crossing her features. "I don't really remember much."

Tony leans forward in his seat, rests his elbows tensely on his knees, and says, "They experimented on her. To get the hormone. That much we know. They did it to other mutants too. A lot of them. Just bled them dry so they could keep empowering people."

Bobby's breath hitches and Tessa reaches out and gathers his hands in hers. She gives him a quick squeeze. "Where were you?" she asks, tone clipped and serious. "Where's everyone else?"

He shakes his head languidly, dropping his gaze to his lap before blinking his eyes shut entirely. "I don't… I don't know," he mutters, words tumbling out in a nervous tenor.

She rubs the pads of her thumbs lightly over the backs of his hands and asks again, "Where were you?"

He lets out a long, shuddering breath. "The Professor… he asked us to take the kids somewhere safe. Months ago." He looks up at her then, eyes swimming in unshed tears. "We all read the headlines… about the registry and other laws." His face hardens just a bit, eyes narrowing. "About the cure." Tessa twitches, an almost imperceptible flinch. But the anger quickly washes from his countenance as he continues. "He thought they'd be coming for us. He knew they would. So while he and Storm and Logan stayed behind to close up the school, he had me and Kitty and a couple of the others take the kids into hiding. The ones who didn't go back home, that is."

"That was when?" Bucky asks, thinking back to when they last went to the school, all of the kids already having been cleared out. "June?"

He nods – "About that, yeah." – and turns back to Tessa. "We split up, Peter and Jubilee took a group of kids and Kitty and I did. But… when we lost communication with Peter…" His voice cracks just the slightest bit and he swallows thickly to keep the building tears at bay. "We were supposed to check in twice a week. The plan was for the Professor to find us somewhere safe to all meet up. But before that happened, Peter and Jubilee missed their call. And then… we couldn't find Xavier. Or Storm or Logan. I went back to the school, and it was empty. They were gone. But they never contacted us. We were thinking, maybe, hopefully, the Professor got ahold of them – of the others – and they were all in a safe place, together. I knew they'd be looking for us, but… Kitty was afraid to stay where we were. It's hard to keep a low profile when traveling with twelve kids." He shrugs. "So we found a place to hole up for a while and I… I left Kitty with the kids and I… I went to look for them. Alone."

"And you didn't find them," Tony supplies from behind, not a hint of question to his voice.

Bobby shakes his head shamefully.

Bucky scoots closer to the table and lays his knotted hands atop it. He grips viciously at his fingers, fists so tight that his flesh knuckles go pure white. "And when you got back, Kitty and the kids were gone."

His head shoots up, wide eyes glaring pleadingly across the table. "Do you know something?" he asks, words hurriedly spilling over the top of one another. "I was so stupid. I… I didn't even think to come here, to find you until…" He turns back to Tessa, the desperate energy rolling off of him so thick that her stomach roils. "Did you see her? Do you remember seeing her? Or any of the kids? Wherever you were?"

She shakes her head, dumbfounded look on her face.

"She doesn't know anything," Bucky mutters, voice low and cautious. He locks onto Bobby's eyes, his own clear blue orbs steeled for what he knows he must say. "When we were looking for Tessa, we found a place," he states, words slow, tone methodical. "Up in Yukon." He pulls in a deep breath, allowing himself just the slightest pause before uttering, "We found bodies up there. Twenty-two mutants. Some children." His eyes tick away as he recalls one small face in particular. "Rosa," he breathes out. "I remember her name was Rosa."

An odd, choking sound comes out of Bobby, air catching violently in his throat. He coughs quickly and takes a moment to steady his breathing, swallowing thickly before stating, "She was with us," in a harsh, pained tone. "With Kitty. When I left."

Bucky nods, eyes still focused on the dark wood tabletop before him. "I know."

"What do you mean, you know?" Tessa bites out, words laced with equal parts vitriol and trepidation. She drops Bobby's hands and spins in her seat to face Bucky, her stare so heated he can almost feel the air around them rise a few degrees.

He looks up at her, blue eyes glistening through a haze of sorrow. Then he brings them over to connect with Bobby's once again. "She was there," he says simply. "Kitty. We found her body there."

He says nothing, doesn't so much as make a sound, nothing more than the slight click of his teeth knocking together as his jaw snaps shut. Tears blink steadily out of his eyes as his expression tightens, his head slowly nodding.

Tessa is not nearly as silent nor composed, her shock coming out in a sharp gasp followed quickly by a loud and incredulous declaration of, "Bullshit."

Her panicked gaze shifts wildly between Bobby – who seems utterly unmoored, his glassy eyes wholly unfocused – and Tony – who refuses to look up from his own hands folded neatly in his lap – then over to Bucky. And there she stops, her head tilting slightly as she looks to him for… something. For a denial, perhaps. Or maybe confirmation. Or even just reassurance. He nods – one slow, stiff nod – to assure her that what he's saying is true.

"But," she sputters, tears gathering in her own eyes. "But…"

He sighs deeply. "I'm sorry," he mutters before turning to Bobby. "I'm so sorry."

Tessa leaps up, large, wheeled chair flying back behind her and colliding hard with the wall as she does so. "How could you not tell me?!" she shouts across the table. "My… my family!"

Bobby lets out a giant, wet snort and turns to her with bitter, red-rimmed eyes. "Your family?" he intones, resentment encasing the words. "You hated her."

"I… I…" she stammers, wide eyes trained on her old friend as he slowly rises to loom in front of her.

"You were always… terrible to her."

"Bobby," Bucky bites out from across the table, a sudden dread rising in his chest. He too rises, goosebumps prickling his skin as he feels the temperature in the room drop by several degrees.

"She just wanted to be your friend," he goes on, his voice slowly fading from anger to desperation. "She only ever wanted to be… good. She's just… good," he finishes, choking on the final word.

"I know," falls from Tessa's lips in a tone so soft it's almost inaudible.

"We were supposed to be a family," he says, deepening his voice and viciously swiping at the still-falling tears. "We had no one… we only had each other."

"I know," she repeats, this time a bit louder.

"We were all she ever had. And we… we were all you had," he spits out, thrusting a single, oddly gleaming finger at her.

Tessa takes him in with an air of disaffection, a pained sigh pulling from her lungs as her eyes focus on that dangerously icy, blue finger. "I know," she says again, hanging her head in regret. Her eyes drift shut and she opens herself up to him, lets all of his sorrow and fear and grief and guilt wash over her, through her. Then she looks up at him, a bright blue light – utterly familiar to him – lining her irises. "We were a family," she mutters, stepping closer and wrapping her hands around his, the ice-cold index finger still outstretched and trembling through its terrible threat.

Behind Bobby, Tony slowly rises, eyes growing wide as he watches the pair before him. "Tessa," he warns stiffly, his eyes rapidly pinging over to an equally alarmed-looking Bucky. But instead of encouraging him to step further forward – or intervening in the chilling display himself – Bucky holds up a single, stilling hand. Stand down, it says. Let her handle this.

"I know we're family, but… you don't have to like your family," she utters with a deprecating shrug. Tiny tendrils of light spark from her fingers then and wind around his hand, slowly melting the cold blue that had begun to creep up his arm. "And I didn't like Kitty," she says, fresh tears tumbling down her cheeks. She directs the bright blue energy deeper into him, beneath his skin… deep, deep, deep into his very core. "But I loved her," she states, the words coming out choked, but the sentiment – the loving, tender, comforting energy that could only ever be associated with family or home – flowing easily from her and into Bobby's very soul.

The tendrils of light slowly flicker out as Tessa shuffles a bit closer and wraps her arms fully around her friend's shaking body. "I… I can't…" Bobby mutters and moans into her, the words thrust into her shoulder where they get doused by his tears. "I can't…"

She tightens her grip on him, a slight sway building between them. "I know," she repeats simply, fighting the urge to pull more of his energy, to suck out every last drop of his grief. It's all he has. She knows that now, holding him so close, feeling him. If she were to try and take away the grief, she'd pull every ounce of him out with it. "I know."

000

Tony agrees to put Bobby up at the compound, the fully furnished apartment they always keep at the ready for Thor suddenly empty again following the god's departure just yesterday. Tessa takes him there and gets him settled, sitting with him in solemn silence for just over an hour until he finally turns to her and mutters lamely, "I'd really rather be alone."

She gives him what he wants, obviously. She'd give him just about anything right now, do anything… if only there actually were anything at all that could be given or done to quiet his pain. But as powerful as she is, there's simply no way she can manipulate the sorrowful, guilt-ridden energy swirling inside of him right now into anything less awful.

She takes the elevator back upstairs, trying desperately the entire time to block out all of the invasive thoughts pinging in her mind. What would she be like right now? How would she be dealing if she were in Bobby's shoes? If she'd just been told that James was dead? And that the children they'd taught and loved and cared for had all died along with him? No… not died. They were all murdered. Experimented on. Tortured.

A quick flash of an all-white room floods her consciousness – blinding white walls and ceiling and men in starched scrubs tugging restraints tightly around her, cutting off the flow of blood. She shakes her head wildly, flinging away the hazy vision and with it the shudder creeping along her spine.

But it isn't just a vision, is it? That room, that table that she'd been bound to… it's a memory, real and terrible and true. And the only difference between her and Kitty Pryde right now, is that she's alive enough to resist remembering. Her brain is still functioning, still able to bury deep and hide away the trauma. Is Kitty still suffering through it all now, wherever she is? Is her energy – her soul – stuck in an endless loop of pain and fear and sorrow? As much talk as there always seems to be about death leading people to a better place, Tessa's felt enough lingering forces in her lifetime – sensed enough shards of disturbed, broken energy spun off and dispersed into the universe following the dissolution of a body – to know that not everyone rests in peace.

What was the last thing she'd said to Kitty, all those months ago? She honestly couldn't remember, but it was certainly something akin to, Don't you have a litter box to clean? Or perhaps, Why don't you go walk through a twelfth-story wall and try not to fall?

Her eyes squeeze painfully shut, the burn of fresh tears biting behind her lids. Walk through a wall. Just like that woman – who had clearly not been the scientist she and Tony were supposed to meet with in San Francisco – had done. Had she been one of Lobe's study participants? Had her powers come straight from Kitty? Had the girl she'd grown up with, fought with, both hated and loved for most of her life been killed – bled dry, as Tony had put it – just so they could get Tessa?

A repetitive ding is followed by Friday's soft voice. "Dr. Sullivan," the AI says, causing her to blink her bleary eyes open. "You've arrived at your floor."

Tessa steps out of the elevator and lingers listlessly in the hall for a handful of minutes, ruminating over what to do next. Head down the hall to find Wanda, maybe? She is feeling rather… unhinged right now. It might be good to have her friend help calm her mind, maybe sift through her thoughts enough to loose and toss out the painful, unhelpful ones. Or maybe she should sneak off to her office? James wouldn't begrudge her that, not now. And work has always helped her to focus, to give her brain something to do other than endlessly spiral. But then – right in front of her now – is her own apartment door. And as much as she isn't looking forward to seeing Bucky right now, and as much as she doesn't really want to wander right back into house arrest, she can't deny the excruciating weight resting on her shoulders. After everything that this awful morning has brought, she is truly, utterly spent.

So she chooses door number three.

Her plan is to make a beeline for the bedroom, collapse atop the thick, heavy quilt, and cry herself into a restless sleep. But the minute she enters, Bucky places himself directly in her path, halting his obvious, nervous pacing in the hallway and throwing up two desperate hands in front of her. "Please," he says, tone deep and entreating. "Just… wait."

She lets out a long, tired sigh and sidesteps him, giving up on making it to their bed and instead choosing to collapse into in a heap on the couch.

He slowly follows her, hesitantly sits down beside her, longingly stares at the side of her face as she leans heavily into the cushions and directs her gaze up toward the ceiling. "Would you look at me?" he asks simply. "Please."

"No," she mutters, a clipped and obstinate refusal.

He drops his head, shoulders folding too. "I'm sorry," he breathes out. Then, following a long, laborious sigh. "I really am, baby." He shifts on the sofa to face her, drops his hand atop her leg, fingers gently – barely – skimming the soft cotton of her pants as they draw circles along her thigh. "I didn't want to have to tell you that. And you were so sick at first… it made sense to keep you in the dark, to keep you from getting upset. But I should've told you… since then… before now. And I'm sorry."

She continues to stare up at the ceiling, a single tear blinking out of the corner of her eye as she sniffles. It takes a moment – a long moment – but as his fingers dig a little deeper, tenderly kneading at her thigh, she finally brings her own hand to rest over the top of his. "I know," she states plainly as he pivots his palm and gathers her fingers into his grasp.

"I just… I don't want you to hurt," he tells her, a wounded quality to his voice. "Especially when you're already hurting so bad."

She looks at him then, her brow furrowed in thought as she pivots her face toward him without ever raising her head from the couch cushion. "You can't keep me from hurting," she says, giving his fingers a little squeeze. She's too exhausted right now to throw up much of a block, so nearly all of his reticent energy begins free-flowing into her.

"I know," he says, biting down on his bottom lip to keep from saying more.

She feels something else drip from him then, a sort of reluctance, a painful hesitancy that's wrapped up in what she can only interpret as a sharp shock of self-loathing. "What?" she asks, sitting suddenly upright. She turns bodily to face him, stern expression taking over her face. "What is it? What else aren't you telling me?"

A choked breath escapes him and he shakes his head. "No… nothing. It's just…" He leans back and runs a single hand through his hair before roughly scrubbing at his once-again stubbled jaw. "After you left with Bobby, Stark showed me some stuff that Vision got into. He decrypted the rest of the footage. All of it. From the base up in Nunavut."

"Where I was?" she asks, her voice a mix of eagerness and apprehension. "Where I… escaped from?"

He nods. "Yeah."

"So, do we know what happened? How I got out? And… or…" She begins to trip over the words as they tumble out of her, thoughts and questions speeding around her brain a million miles a minute. "What about others… were there others there? And was there footage of the… the place… where they performed the experiments? Do we know what they did? Did you see what they did to me?" she very nearly shrieks.

He looks up and locks onto her frantic gaze, his crystalline blue eyes pale with grief and dismay. "Yeah," he says simply, nodding once more.

"Well…" she starts, unsure where to go, her depleted mind almost stuttering to a stop.

He studies her for a moment, the pale pallor to her skin, the dark circles blooming beneath her eyes. Exhaustion is etched as deeply into her face as he feels it permeating his own bones. A long, labored sigh flows out of him and he pats her leg before rising cautiously from the couch. "Go get some sleep," he tells her as he makes his way towards the kitchen. "Take a quick nap. I'll fix you some soup." He turns and leans heavily in the doorway, gazing at her as though working to commit her face and form to memory. "We'll meet with the team at four to go over everything."