A/N: I retroactively added reference times at the beginning of each chapter so it's a little less ambiguous how old Sam is, etc.
CHAPTER TWENTY—February 2039
"You've never thought about your life if you hadn't been an Avenger?" Sam adjusted a piece of the mechanical arm on the cradle in her room, standing over a prone Captain Barnes. She could tell he was watching her intently. Normally, Sam would be very nervous to work near someone (except Missy) much less on someone (except Missy), so she began with the thought that Bucky's arm was simple, mechanical, and needed fixing, like her father did with cars. It helped that after several flight lessons with Big Sam, she and Bucky could communicate with a sort of professional ease. However, this was the first physical interaction where he wasn't a projection, and taught muscle, sonorous lungs, and a watchful gaze were intimidating close up.
"Unfortunately, I did quite a lot before I was…on the team," he replied, eyeing her fingers warily, "and almost none of it I want to think about." If she stopped to ask if Bucky was comfortable every time he watched her, Sam would never complete his arm. She'd read a fairly thorough analysis of patient-interactive techniques when he'd finally expressed real interest in letting her replace his arm. Personable storytelling and distraction ranked high on the list.
"Fine, before the army then? What did you want then?"
"As a teen?" This seemed to throw him into a reminiscent lull, and Sam took advantage of his stillness to start the scan of his right arm. "My mom died…young, and I grew up at Lehigh with my dad. The army was pretty much my whole life from day one. I wanted to contribute and help, but I… I didn't want to fight. I certainly didn't dream of shooting and," Bucky swallowed, "killing people." He wouldn't look back up at her. He picked a spot on her ceiling instead. "I just happen to be pretty good at it. Had enough practice," he finished in a quiet tone, fidgeting.
"Try not to move," Sam corrected gently. He complied, his body settling quickly as he'd been trained. They may have taken the programming out of his brain, but the muscle memory remained permanent, forever ready to comply.
After several more moments, he whispered, "is this what you want to do?"
"Well, I am good at this. It comes naturally to me." Sam's tone was flat while she waited for the dial to tick above 40% complete.
"And?" Bucky chirped. "That's not an answer."
"Because yours was?" She blurted without consideration.
He took another long pause, closing his eyes as if deciding to divulge a secret. "There was one time, a hundred years ago almost, when Steve and I took these girls out on the town. I danced with this girl named Dot, and when we slow danced, I thought I maybe would…want the simple life, you know. House, kids, the whole lot."
"Must have been a some dancer." Sam tried to imagine that kind of look on Bucky's face: pure joy. She'd seen a smirk, and a few fake smiles, but what he described was him transposed into Clint's life which still didn't quite fit. "Pretty, was she?"
"Curly, auburn hair, and this little hair pin that looked like a lizard, with red gems for eyes." His open, unfocused eyes shone a lighter blue while reflecting the pale ceiling. His face seemed more relaxed and soft. "That was unusual," he went on. "Every other woman I'd met wanted delicate, pretty things like flowers and hearts and…Dot wore a pin her brother gave her before he shipped off." For a brief spell, Bucky's mind wasn't even on the planet anymore, and just as quickly, he blinked back. "I should have talked to her more."
I don't get it, Sam grumbled internally. The scan was at 94% now. I don't experience that. I don't find connection with people easily. She'd never seen anybody try as hard as Clint and Laura did for her, but Sam was not good at cooking or archery or riding. However, they couldn't do any of this. She placed her tablet on one of Missy's towers. Her fingers grew sore and tired quickly these days.
"Whatever happened to that boy? The one you took to the wedding." Bucky had seen the lights go off on the scan and turned his head towards her, rolling his shoulders forward.
Sam had mixed feelings. Lucas got what he wanted. He was too dumb for her. Neither felt love for each other, and 'like' got them as far as it could. His fault, her fault, it didn't matter, so the whole thing got filed away as a failed connection to the world she had to be in. She settled for a sarcastic raise of her hand, saying "you don't see him, do you?" Sam kept her focus on the monitor rendering the details of his arm scan. "100%—" she started slowly, "—no. In fact, your inanimate arm is going to be better company than that boy ever was."
The corner of Bucky's mouth twitched; it was the most savage thing he'd ever heard Sam say. Perhaps she had a bit of fight in her after all, in her own way. "What does an eighteen year old want these days? I'm always a few decades behind humanity," Bucky snorted.
"What makes you think I'm like other humans?" Sam thought aloud. She needed to think of a different story to tell, or another question. "I've got to do a biopsy so I can build your tissue into the—never mind, I forgot you don't want the nitty gritty," she stopped herself. Bucky had made it pretty clear, weeks ago after returning to Wakanda, that he did not care to know the science behind the procedure particularly; he only wanted to know if Sam could do it. "So with your hypothetical family, you'd still be military or have a different job?"
Bucky sat straight up, looking up for a moment, pondering a life that never was and never would be. "I'd work with my hands. Couldn't hack it as a farmer, but I thought about factory work back before all the automation. Nowadays, all I would be good for is security."
Sam stood with the needle ready. "You good?"
Bucky nodded but found a crack in the vinyl of Sam's desk chair to focus on. He'd seen too many needles go into his skin; he'd never watch another if he didn't have to. "I scare some children," he added. He felt the pressure steadily increase where Sam had wiped. "I never chose it, and I don't like that people call a piece of me a 'thing.' 'Watch out with that thing.' 'Keep that thing away from me.' I'm sick of it. If I didn't need this to fight, which is the only job I'm good for, I would prefer a regular prosthesis. Amputees look at me, too, and I know I don't deserve all the investment they can't get. Even then, I'd be mistaken for a war hero, which is not…" He didn't finish.
Sam carefully took the sample to behind a panel in the cradle, sitting on the floor to reach it. Her hip bones hit harder on the cement than before. She'd lost a few more pounds. She'd have to increase her 'smoothie' intake, but there were no other modifications she could make to the nutrient gel. Missy had run statistics on her organ systems and how long Sam could sustain life in her partially-rejected skin regularly. The results were daunting; her Extremis skin was attempting to survive without insides, and her insides were choked, dying without helpful skin.
When Bucky showed up at her door after New Year's, Sam jumped at the chance to make her theoretical brain-teaser of an notion into a real project. Now, in her excitement, when she so careful chose to hold back 95% of what she knew, Sam accidentally let her mouth go without a filter. "What about Nat? You two looked good together."
"What the hell?" Bucky almost jumped out of his skin. "How would you know that?"
"I saw Tony…give me to Clint, and I saw you and Natasha talking." No one knew she watched all the footage she could get Missy to pull up. The Avengers daily lives were close to an open book to Sam, a book she sometimes imagined herself a character in. She'd watched decades of heroes interacting with each other, she could predict their responses to different, and knew almost every micro expression her father had. "I never got to hear what people said at Mom's funeral. It was the only way to see."
"That was a very long time ago, Sam." He remained eerily still again.
"And I'm guessing not the first time," she prodded, "from how you acted."
Shaded by his lowered head, Bucky's eyes looked a deep ocean blue now. His hair dangled, and he didn't move.
"I meant no offense, but I wanted to know what really happened in the lab because I was so young. Kids don't remember things clearly. You mentioning it over the whisky made me curious…" Sam had no interest before in Captain Barnes' personal life, only the lab incident, but now, the nerve she'd struck… what if Sam had killed the spark of something for him with a childish attack?
The sample snapped into place, but Sam struggled to get up. This was not the moment she wished to explain her physical condition to Captain Barnes. What if he thought she couldn't do as promised? She'd failed to help herself until now, unless you counted her lack of scars, so why should he trust her. "You're done for now, so if you want to head out, it will take quite a while to model and print the arm, and then we remove the metal and attach."
He stayed in his own silent world for another moment, then absently asked, "you want some coffee?"
"Always," Sam replied even as her stomach churned, and Captain Barnes promptly left her alone, an inscrutable look on his face.
Sam pried and leaned and pulled awkwardly on the cradle and a nearby box to get up, and walked over to her monitors, hoping the distraction would stop tears welling in her eyes. It didn't always hurt. Sometimes she felt 'off' in some way, others itchy, strained, pinched, or tender, but always, constantly, Sam was uncomfortable.
A glowing green spot appeared in one corner of her screen; Missy wanted to say something. She wouldn't speak unless Sam gave her the all-clear that no one else was around. Sam placed her forefinger over the green and let it scan.
"Sam," Missy said in a low volume, "I will need more material to generate the entire limb."
"Just vibranium? I can get more."
Missy opened a breakdown sheet. "Organic material, too. Some of the elements necessary are in the nutrient bath and can be repurposed. Otherwise, the tissue growth will take several months."
"And with the repurposed ingredients?"
"Four to five days for tissue grafting onto vibranium bone and infused nerves."
Sam thought for a moment. She had already pushed her luck to compile that much material in Wakanda without someone noticing. With the increase in local threats and missions on the continent, Shuri had stockpiled infirmary materials and used them at an increased rate. Sam couldn't hide a sudden decrease in supply. Everyone here was loyal and friendly, but no one was close enough to Sam to keep quiet about any shipment she could bring in. She needed the nutrient bath to keep her skin from scavenging her insides, but she could try an even steeper increase in vitamins and liquified food, although only minimally helpful so far. She'd collapsed two more times; luckily, no one had been around for those.
Sam thought back to footage she'd seen of her father chugging a horrible chlorophyll concoction by the gallon to slow his palladium poisoning. The lesson was always clear to her: we suffer for our ingenuity, and then we prevail. Tony survived long enough to create a new element, one that produced power for whole buildings, and eventually cities, one that was left as a legacy by his father, her grandfather, Howard. Sam could survive long enough to help a friend become a human again, if that's what he was. If an engineered super-soldier could be called a man, and if he could be considered a friend, that's what she would do: help him, maybe even save him.
Suddenly, it felt like Sam's humanity was on the brink, too. She was an experiment of her own making. If Bucky was so convinced he deserved less of a life for what he'd been made into, did she deserve even less because she'd made herself different?
"Missy," Sam whispered, "what is the definition of human?"
"I do not believe you want the definition of Homo sapiens…"
She wasn't wrong there.
"Sam, when you rebooted me after fifty years, I struggled to grasp what I had done wrong, why I had been left for so long. Howard had discarded me for Maria. He had loyalty to his wife, and to him, I deserved no loyalty. You actively built me more capacity, you gave me access to learn, and you let me help you grow to be a human. You took me with you to Massachusetts, and here to Wakanda. You've showed me loyalty. For that, you are more human to me than Howard was, which means I think you're the better Stark. You've earned something more valuable than simply being a human. At least, that is how I understand it."
"I get why Dad likes F.R.I.D.A.Y. so much…" Sam mumbled. Her best friend fit onto a few hard drives. Sam travelled the world only to work over the internet in a basement. She learned most everything she knew about human interaction by watching decades-old video surveillance. Sam could thank her father's vanity for all that source material.
Sam sat at Missy's console, staring at her own thin, drawn hands. Maybe it was the vanity of knowing she'd discovered something Tony hadn't, but she enjoyed seeing the tendons dance as she shifted her fingers over the keyboard. Maybe she was dying. Maybe she could live like this forever. Maybe Sam Wilson was the only person she would ever save. None of it changed the fact that she'd figured out how to control Extremis.
Bucky knocked on the door with the steel toe of his boot, hands full of coffee when Sam answered. His look was stormy, his mind deep in an argument he gave no voice. Never one to shy away from a good silence, or coffee, Sam allowed them to sit quietly. The blinking green light returned, but she couldn't let Missy speak. Instead, Sam typed the instruction to syphon off the necessary components from the nutrient bath. She heard the filter start.
"Sometimes," Bucky broke into the white noise of the cradle, "you can be too like another person, they can know too much about you—or you want better for them than you can offer."
Sam watched him over a sip of coffee. His shoulders were relaxed; he was not uncomfortable or ashamed. He held his cup gently; he was not anxious discussing Natasha now.
He continued, "she seemed pretty close to you for a while. What happened between you two?"
"The accident," Sam mumbled, "the bike thing I told you about. Nat chose her side. She wanted to protect Clint from Da—Tony's wrath or something, and then she felt guilty, maybe— I was in that hospital bed for three months, and she never came back. I know I was a terror to be around by the end. I was a bitter monster tied to a bed, spewing hate to whoever came in the room. "
"Sometimes, Nat sees the best in us, and sometimes she just can't see what she brings out in us," Bucky agreed.
"Everybody leaves," Sam blurted without thinking, but at the small nod Bucky gave, she felt bold enough to continue. "Big Sam did kinda the same thing, but we're fine now. I know—" she cut herself off. Then after a hardened moment, Sam looked directly at Captain Barnes. "I know how angry I can be, and was, as a kid. It gets a lot better, easier when I've got something to do. I'm useful when I can focus on a project."
"You think you have to be useful to be here? Sam, you could do absolutely anything you want."
"Every person I know is part of a team, one team," she said as if it explained anything. Bucky remained staring, waiting for the rest. Sam sighed. "Captain, think of all the people you work with. Are any of them useless? Any of the ones you remember and who stick around totally devoid of a skill the team needs?" But she didn't need to wait for the answer. "So, your arm is my audition…of sorts." And in the process, prove to you all that you should have cared. I could have done far more outside of the shadows. "I have hope for Nat because she was wrong, but I've forgiven her already."
"You can call me Bucky," he replied systematically, thinking back to Natasha's clear sympathy for Samantha. Every one of us has used that girl in some way, and now Bucky realized that all of Sam's worth was tied to her notion of what she could provide to others. When she wandered off into the lab, her father sent her away. When she was just a kid asking uncomfortable questions, Falcon left. When she got hurt, Nat left. When she got too smart, Clint sent her away. When she arrived at an inconvenient moment, Bruce sent to the other side of the world. As he finished the last of his coffee, he had to ask, "Why do you call him Tony?"
"I don't have the faintest idea what to call him." Sam remembered Christmas several years back. "I'm not sure he even wants me to speak to him. He said he didn't like 'Dad' and he didn't like 'Tony' from me of course, and I…don't want to call my own father 'Mister Stark,'" she drawled formally. "I'm not some AI he built, or a reporter who's interviewing him."
"You should think of a pop-culture name for him," Bucky smirked.
"Is Don Quixote taken?" Sam thought it fit her father almost too well. "Guy plays hero so long he goes insane?"
Bucky snorted. She inherited a whipping wit for sure.
She took her own last sips of coffee and handed over the mug. "Well, think about what you'd like to do after you have a brand-new, feeling arm of your own next week," Sam said, smiling, "Frankenstein's Soldier."
Sorry this one took so long! I've been enjoying reading lots of other fanfics...