Happy Second Saturday
I missed you all so much. This posting biweekly thing is tough. I've been pretty much useless this past week as far as writing goes with nerve pain in my hand, but I've still been thinking about this world. Gredelina and I worked out a problem I had—writing a Nat PoV—and found a way to make it work from Tony's PoV—much easier for me.
Anyway… My hand is getting back to normal so hopefully some writing will happen next week.
Enjoy the chapter xxx
Chapter Forty-Six
Steve yanked open the door to the warehouse and threw himself inside, Tony on his heels. The moment Tony entered, the air blew out of him in a rush, and a scream built on the inhale.
He had been here before, he had nightmares about this place, and the howls of pain he heard felt like they were being ripped from his own chest, though his mouth was frozen silent in horror.
Surrounding him was the aftermath of battle, the bodies of the fallen and the dust of the enemies still drifting on the air. At the center of the ruin was Bucky, and cradled in his arms was Peter.
Tony sprinted forwards, ignoring all else, and dropped down to his knees. Peter's eyes were open, and that gave Tony a momentary hope, despite Bucky's devastation rending the air. Then he took them in, the brown irises which stared into nothing, and he did scream.
"No! No, no, no, please! No! Give me my son!"
He yanked at Peter, but Bucky's grip around him was too strong. He struck out, slamming his fists into Bucky's jaw, cheek, tore at his hair, but he was immovable.
Someone dragged him back, and he struggled. Steve spoke in his ear. "It's not real, Tony! It can't be!" His voice broke. "He's not dead. It's too soon."
Tony's eyes widened, and he stared around. It looked real, felt real, but it was too soon. Peter wouldn't have taken them back already. They had not done enough. Which meant someone was doing this to him.
"In here," Natasha shouted.
Tony turned his face away from the illusion of Peter's body, refusing the possibility of it, and followed Natasha's voice through a door into a room with a bank of computers displaying the scene in the room behind.
Someone had been here recently, there were dirty coffee mugs on the desk and take-out wrappers, but they were gone now.
Natasha's fingers were flying over a keyboard, and she snapped, "Help me, Tony! I can't find a way to shut it down."
"Get back," Tony snapped, raising his right thruster.
She obeyed, and he shot a blast into the boxy hard drive. The screens went black, and he heard Steve's voice from the room behind.
"It's over, Buck. It wasn't real. Peter is fine. Look at me!"
Tony rushed back into the room and saw Bucky was still on the floor, his arms held as if he was cradling something, but the body he'd held was gone.
So was the life in Bucky's eyes.
"Buck, look at me!" Steve said urgently, touching his face, where the bruises Tony had caused were blossoming. "Peter is okay. He's alive. It wasn't real."
Tony strode forwards and hauled Bucky to his feet. Bucky's hands fell limp to his sides, and his eyes stared as blankly as the illusion of Peter's body had.
"We've got a lot of tech in here," Natasha said.
Tony glanced around and saw precisely positioned drones around the walls—the ones that had created the illusion that had horrified Tony and apparently broken Bucky.
"Gather it up," Tony said. "Call in the recovery team. I want it all."
"Got it," she said curtly.
Tony turned his attention back to Bucky, who Steve was trying to rouse with rough movements. Tony was chilled to see him like this, as he had seen it before.
In Peter.
What Bucky had seen had caused him so much pain he'd closed himself down rather than face it. Tony could relate; he'd felt the same desire as he'd seen the illusion of Peter's body. He knew it wasn't real, though. It was a twisted trick Nemesis had played on Bucky.
Because they'd screwed up.
Tony didn't know how they'd worked out Bucky was not their man anymore. Perhaps they knew he never had been. He suspected it was something from the trial, though.
Bucky had known, he'd not wanted to do it, but they'd railroaded him into it—Peter had wanted it. And now, Bucky was in some kind of inner hell if he was not lucky to have closed himself down as thoroughly as Peter had.
"Go easy, Steve," he said as Steve shook Bucky roughly. "Let's get him out of here."
Steve dropped his hands from Bucky's shoulders and brought them to tangle in his hair.
"What did they do to him?" he asked. "No, I mean, I know what they did. They tortured him, but how?"
"It's illusion tech," Tony said. "And I think I know who did it now."
"Who?" Steve asked.
"A man called Beck. He used to work for me. He had a part in creating the BARF system. He wanted to weaponize it. When I refused, he went nuts. I sacked him, had him escorted out of the building, but…." He raked a hand over his face. "He did this with something I created, Steve."
He felt horrible for what had happened to Bucky, and he was furious with himself for not thinking of Beck sooner. He was a tech genius who could have easily been the one that sourced Zemo's calls to Tony.
And he could have done worse still. He had been one of the brightest minds at Stark Industries. Tony needed to have Friday scour the system within the Tower and compound. Beck could have laid traps. As good as Friday was, he might even be capable of getting past her.
God, he could know about Bucky because he'd hacked the tower system and listened to their conversations. It was possible, though he hated to think of it. If he had, Nemesis would know everything they knew, what they were planning, and she could have seen their conversations with Mind.
Tony slapped the arc reactor on his chest and the nanites shrunk back into their housing. Hands his own again, he held Bucky's elbow and guided him towards the door.
Just like Peter, Bucky moved under his direction but with no sign of awareness. He hated the sight of him, stiff and blank, and averted his eyes to the door. Steve took the lead, opened it for them, and then hurried to the car to open the door.
Tony guided Bucky into the back seat, lifted his feet to put them inside, and then snapped on his seatbelt while Bucky's limp hands fell into his lap.
"I'll drive," he said. "You stay with him. I'll send a car for Nat. She can take care of clean up."
Steve nodded and rushed around to the other side of the car to get in beside Bucky. Tony got in behind the wheel and started the drive back to the Tower, Steve's voice as he alternately ordered and begged Bucky to come back to the soundtrack from the back seat.
Steve's panic did not ease over time. In fact, it grew as Bucky was showing no signs of coming back to them, despite Steve's demands and pleading.
They got him back to the Tower and settled him in the living room, where a horrified Pepper found them when she came to say goodnight.
Tony explained what had happened in brief sentences, not sharing the actual horror of Peter's dead body in Bucky's arms, but instilling in her the seriousness of what had happened, as if that could be in question when you looked at Bucky's blank face.
She suggested they get the med team to check him out, but Tony dismissed it, saying they had seen this before and knew what to do.
It was what they needed to do that was worrying Steve now, because, if Bucky was like Peter, they needed the right person to reach him and make him come back.
And if the right person was not Steve, there was only one person left that it could be.
Steve saw the same knowledge on Tony's face, but, like Steve, he was loath to admit it. Neither of them wanted Peter to see Bucky like this. He would be scared, worried, and he was still so young. This was not the Peter they knew best who could have handled it.
Tony squatted in front of Bucky and ground his knuckles into Bucky's sternum.
"I already tried that," Steve said. "He's not coming out of it because of pain."
"Then how do you get him back?" Pepper asked. "You said you'd seen this before, so how do you fix it?"
She sounded as distressed as she looked. Even for Tony and Steve, who had seen this before, it was a chilling sight.
Tony stood up and ran a hand through his hair. "This happened to Peter in 2023. Something… horrific happened to him, and the only way we could get him back was by letting—" He stopped, grimacing.
"By letting what?" Pepper asked. "Talk to me, Tony."
"There was someone Peter cared about in 2023," Tony said. "Someone he loved. When he heard their voice, he started coming back. We were able to bring him all the way back with Wanda, as he was fighting it."
"We don't need her this time," Steve said, voice low. "Peter will be enough."
Tony raised his face to the ceiling and squeezed his eyes closed. "He will. Damn."
"You mean bring Peter here?" Pepper asked. "Tony, he can't see Bucky like this. He'll be scared. It's not fair."
"I know," Tony said, meeting her eye. "But it's Peter we need. We can't connect to him with BARF as Bucky can't engage in the simulation while he's shut down. So it's the Peter we've got here or nothing at all."
Pepper bit her lip, eyes moving between Bucky's blank face and Tony's obvious pain.
"I hate this, too, Pepper," Steve said. "But Peter, the one we've got now and the version in 2023, would want to do this for Bucky."
She nodded stiffly but didn't speak.
"Tell me to do it, Pep," Tony said, voice choked. "Tell me it's okay. Because this is tearing me apart. I don't want to hurt my son by making him a part of this, but I can't see we've got any other choice. I've seen how this goes, I saw my kid go through it, and I know Peter would do anything to save him from what he went through."
Pepper stared at him a moment and then sighed. "It's okay, Tony. You're right—Peter would want to help him, any version from any time. So you should do it."
Tony kissed her quickly, leaned close to Bucky, and said, "I'm getting him, Bucky. He'll be here soon. We know who you need," and then rushed out of the room. They heard the elevator doors open and then slide closed as he left.
Steve bowed his head and just processed the thought of what they were about to do to Peter for a moment, then looked up and put his hand on Bucky's slack cheek. "Queens is coming, Buck. He's going to get you back. Just hang on."
Pepper walked away without a word, leaving Steve alone with his broken friend and waiting for the arrival of the person that would save him.
The knocking on the door woke Peter, and he checked the clock and saw it was near midnight. He'd not been sleeping long, indulging in a patrol without curfew as May was on the night shift. He climbed out of bed and passed through the apartment to the door as the knock came again, more urgent now.
He checked the spyhole and said a harried-looking Tony on the other side.
Worry swimming in his chest, he yanked open the door. "Mr. Stark! What's going on? Has something happened?"
Tony placed his hands on Peter's shoulders and said, "I need you. I hate that I need you for this, I'd protect you from it if I could, but I've got no choice."
Peter's throat tightened. "Is someone hurt? Is it May? Oh, god…"
"No!" Tony said roughly. "No, May is fine. I'm sorry. It's not her. And they're not hurt. Not in the way you're thinking. It's Bucky. Something's happened to him, and I think you're the only person that can fix it."
Calming slightly now he knew May was okay, Peter took a breath and said, "I'll get dressed."
Tony sagged with a sigh of relief and followed Peter inside. He dropped onto the couch, head in his hands, and Peter raced into the bedroom and yanked jeans and a hoodie over the boxers and t-shirt he'd been sleeping in. He stuffed his feet into his sneakers, not bothering with socks, and rushed back into the living room.
"I'm ready," he said.
Tony looked at him a moment, lips parted and eyes sad, and then he stood and said, "Let's go."
He led Peter down to the car, the fancy one Peter had ridden in before, and Peter climbed in and snapped on his seatbelt. Tony climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine, which roared.
They pulled away from the sidewalk, and Peter let Tony get them out of the maze of Queens before saying, "What's happened to Bucky?"
"He saw something… something awful," Tony said. "I can't… I can't talk about it. It was bad, though, worse than bad—Pete, it was horrific."
Peter swallowed hard. "But he's not hurt?"
"Well, he's got a few bruises, but they're down to me trying to wake him up. He's catatonic, Pete, completely shut down."
Peter licked his dry lips as his heart picked up its pace. "What can I do for him?" he asked.
Tony gave his head a slight shake, as if in answer to something, then said, "We just need you to talk to him. We think if he hears your voice, he'll snap out of it. We've seen it happen before with the right person."
"I'm the right person?" Peter asked, bewildered.
"You are," Tony said, no doubt in his tone. "You won't understand yet, but you will one day. This is going to be tough, Pete, I know, and I wouldn't ask if we had any other choice, but it's got to be you."
"What if it's not me?" Peter asked. "What if I do it wrong."
Tony smiled fondly. "Kid, it's you. You couldn't do it wrong if you tried. Believe me, you're the only one that can fix this."
Confused and nervous, Peter settled in his seat and watched the streets fly past as Tony drove.
When Tony got them to the Tower, he led Peter up in the elevator to where Bucky and Steve were.
He could feel the tension in Peter's shoulder from where he was guiding him, and once again, he flogged himself mentally for bringing him into this.
He could see no other solution, though. If it wasn't them that could connect with Bucky, it had to be Peter. And it made sense. It was Peter's death that Beck—the asshole—had put Bucky through, just like it had been Morgan's life at risk that Peter had seen.
They had no choice if they wanted to save Bucky from himself.
Steve was talking to Bucky quietly as they entered the living room, and when he saw Peter, his lips parted with a breath of relief which became a grimace. "Queens, I'm so sorry you've got to do this. If there was any other choice, we'd do it and keep you out of this."
Peter nodded, licking his lips as he looked at Bucky, sitting almost motionless and blank-faced on the couch.
"Uh… what do I need to do?" he asked.
"Just talk to him," Steve said. "Let him hear your voice."
Peter came deeper into the room, sat down on the couch, and said, "Uh… hello, Bucky. It's me, Peter. Tony said you saw something bad. That's happened to me, too, and it was scary. I know it was scary for you, too, but you can't stay like this. Mr. Stark and Steve are really worried about you." He took Bucky's hand. "So, can you maybe come back?"
"That's it, Pete," Tony said, sitting beside him and placing a hand on his shoulder. "Keep going like that. It doesn't matter what you say—it's just your voice he needs to hear. He needs to know you're here."
"So… uh… Oh! I did an old-school patrol tonight. There was this cat that got stuck hanging from the fire escape when its owner left a window open. I had to climb up and get it down, which it was not happy about at all. It's a good thing Mr. Stark made my suit so much stronger because it was scratching me like crazy."
"You're doing great, Queens," Steve said. "Keep going."
Peter nodded, face strained, and said, "And at school today, we got to use the new classroom—the one I blew up—for the first time. Mr. Stark's donation must have been huge because you wouldn't believe the stuff we've got in there now."
Tony nodded, staring at Bucky's face, waiting for the moment he'd come back to them. Peter was doing great, handling it, but he'd not yet found the right words to reach Bucky.
They had to hope he could.
Then Peter asked a question that made Tony gasp for him, wanting to stop him, but before he could, Bucky answered.
"What did you see that was so bad, Bucky?"
Bucky's answer came in a monotone, face devoid of expression, and it made the color drain out of Peter with a slow breath.
"I saw you die."
xXx
Bucky was sitting on a rock beside the lake outside the Tool Shed. It was dark, the stars shining above him like pinpricks of heaven creeping through. Or perhaps it was the Soul Plane he saw, the place Peter went to visit the people he loved.
Was he there now? Was he with his aunt and uncle like the stories of his time with them there he'd told Bucky about, the happy memories which had given him a contented and peaceful look on his face?
Did he know Bucky had tried to save him?
He had been stupid to think it would work, that he would be able to snap when the arm was not him. There was no connection to his soul in that metal that had been needed. Peter's soul, Peter as a person, had been worthy, but Bucky had no chance to even try.
He had failed him.
They had not done enough because they hadn't had enough time. Nemesis had sent them back, it had to be them all, before they could save him from whatever it was that they did do him.
They had not asked, all too scared of the answer, if Peter's path had changed, if the outcome was going to be his life, but Bucky had thought he would be. Peter had changed so much since the events of Homecoming night. He shone brighter, with confidence and happiness, and that had to make him worthy.
But he hadn't been.
He had died in Bucky's arms, and Bucky was never going to rid himself of the sight of Peter's blank, brown eyes as they stared into nothing.
Bucky had held him as the life left him, and that pain was never going to leave him.
Bucky knew he was not really here, by the lake. He was here because he was dead. Perhaps the pain had killed him; maybe he had killed himself but did not remember. His place in the Soul Plane would be this, but he would have Peter if he could. Perhaps Peter could not come because his place was with his aunt and uncle. He didn't have the Stones anymore, so he could not visit.
He heard something, a distant voice that sounded like Peter's, but when he jumped to his feet and looked around, he was still alone. He was imagining things. Was it possible to lose your mind when you were already dead? Was he going to suffer that forever, the phantom voice of the kid he loved taunting him?
"Peter," he moaned. "Please…"
He didn't know what he was pleading for—whether he wanted Peter to come or for his voice to go. The voice made his pain even more potent, but it also reminded him of who Peter had been—though could he ever have forgotten? Even if he was in this place for millennia, could he forget the person that had changed his life so completely and purely for the good?
He sat down again, facing away from the lake now, and stared at the building in which his life with Peter had started—where his love for him had begun.
Peter's voice came louder, clearer, and Bucky flinched. "What did you see that was so bad, Bucky?"
"I saw you die," he replied.
Out of the darkness came a shape, a human form that was blurred around the edges. "But I'm not dead. It was a dream or something, or someone tricked you. I don't know. But I'm alive, Bucky. You've just got to look at me."
The figure came closer, and its shape began to clear. Bucky stared, drinking him in as Peter's face came into focus.
He looked worried, which matched his voice as he said, "Can you see me?"
Bucky nodded. "I can."
"That's great," he said, with a huge exhale. "So, you can see I'm alive?" He looked over his shoulder and spoke to someone that wasn't there. "Is this right, Mr. Stark? Am I doing it okay?"
Bucky could hear no reply, but Peter apparently did as he nodded.
"Okay, great." He came forward to Bucky and took his right hand, and placed it on his chest. "Look, you can feel that, right? It's my heartbeat. Because I'm alive—totally alive. Whatever you saw wasn't real." His brow furrowed. "Do you feel it?"
Bucky concentrated, wanting to feel it, and then he did. Peter's racing heart pounded against his. He pressed closer, the throbbing seeming to reach into him and make his own heart pound in unison with it.
"See," Peter said, "alive."
"Is it real?" Bucky asked. "Am I alive, too?"
"Yeah, totally. You're just kinda… I think you're ill. But you're okay. We're in Mr. Stark's living room, me and you, Mr. Stark and Steve, and you need to come back because they're really worried about you. And so am I. Can you hear them? They're talking to you."
Bucky concentrated, and he thought he could hear a muffled whisper in his ear. "Come on, Buck. Queens is alive. He's right here with you. What you saw wasn't real. It was an illusion. He's alive, but you're scaring him. You've got to snap out of it."
Bucky looked at Peter. "What do I have to do?"
Peter tilted his head to the side, seeming to be listening to something Bucky couldn't hear, and then he gave his head a brisk shake and said, "I think you just have to pull yourself out of it. Mr. Stark says you've seen it before, and Wanda did it. But she's not here, so you have to do it yourself. Can you?"
Bucky licked his lips. He was scared. Here, in this place, he had Peter. This could be a dream or illusion in which he saw Peter alive.
Peter took Bucky's hands and pulled. "Come on, Bucky, come with me."
Bucky allowed Peter to pull him upright. He took a step forward, led by Peter, and then his surroundings shimmered and dimmed. He felt he was tipping forward, and then he staggered. He was in Tony's living room. Steve was at his elbow, gripping it tightly, and Tony was standing behind Peter, hand on his shoulder.
Bucky looked around, taking in the room and people with him, and then he locked eyes with Tony, who he knew would never lie to him about this, and said, "Is it real?"
Tony nodded. "Yeah, it was all an illusion. Peter's fine. Right, kid?"
"Yeah, I'm totally fine, Bucky. Really."
Bucky stared at him, taking in the younger lines of his face, the worried brown eyes and pinched brow, and he allowed himself to breathe again. It hadn't been real. Someone had tricked him. Which meant this Peter was real—he was alive, here with Bucky.
He collapsed forward onto Peter and threw his arms around him, sobs racking his and Peter's hands patting his back and cradling his head.
"It's okay, Bucky," he said. "I'm fine. You're fine. It wasn't real."
"It wasn't real," Bucky sobbed. "Thank god… it wasn't real."
So… What do you think? When I read this chapter to Gredelina1, she questioned the point of it, wondering if it was just drama for the sake of drama. If you're wondering the same thing, I can promise that this serves a purpose for the overall story.
Until next time…
Jadey xxx
