CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT—April 2039
Natasha's composure faltered during training; Sam had never seen anything like it before. The gorgeous, deadly redhead jumped straight to slapping Sam across the face instead of a momentary stance for both to prepare. Punches flew, and Sam knew the goal was to inflict maximum humiliation. Each blow accentuated Sam's ineptitude. This continued for forty minutes until a water break. Nat wouldn't meet her eye. They began again.
"You're not even improving," Nat grunted after a kick. "Do you listen to me? Are you trying at all?" Her fists sliced through the air, landing exactly where she intended every time.
Without the chance to reply, Sam fought to stay upright.
The Russian kept coming, viciously complete in shaming Sam until her hand went up.
Sam's bright orange arm ended an inch from Natasha's nose, a vivid white spot in the center of her palm. She was sure her opponent felt the radiating heat.
"Why is it so bad if I don't want to hurt you?" Sam panted.
Nat stood up straight. "You'll learn. Defense isn't about being passive." When the light drained out of Sam's arm, she slapped it away with a sigh. "I need a drink."
Encouraged by Nat's self-medicating and her own rebellious teenage spirit, Sam stole three bottles of liquor from the wet bar usually reserved for holiday gatherings, one for each Dee, Ty, and herself. Tyrone made the suggestion to celebrate her new training in part because hand-to-hand combat with Romanoff went so poorly. Nat whooped her, and if she still felt that sort of thing, Sam's backside would be stinging from hitting the mat.
Now, for fun, Tandy and Tyrone sat sprawled on Sam's beat up comforter, leaning against the wall with their own bottles of Johnnie Walker and Don Julio. Sam had chosen a lovely bourbon, a brand she'd never seen before, and enjoyed the melting of anxiety while unwinding with friends. Over years of holiday visits, she tracked the level of liquid inside, and Tony had not touched this bottle in that whole time.
Tandy won their race with Big Sam that morning, so she chose their evening activity: face masks. Dee loves the girly things in life. Ty and Samantha found it difficult to speak with the drying plaster thick and unyielding, slowly squeezing them after several minutes. They took turns looking as stupid as possible while pouring a swig into their mouths. The joke, however, soured when Tandy accidental tipped out more tequila than intended, the excess splashing up her nose. The girl's sputtering gag was terrible; her spews of profanity in protest of her friends' laughter were worse.
Tandy fumed, leaving to wash her own creamy mask off in her own bathroom. Ty and Sam stayed where they were, him flopped on Sam's bed and Sam spread across the floor, crumbling like statues forgotten in a tomb.
"Do you think this is how Medusa's victims felt?" Ty's voice pitched higher, unable to project his deep tones without moving his lips.
Sam touched her cracked cheeks. "Medusa is a mythical figure, not historical, so—"
"Don't be such a stick in the mud," he mocked while raising a thumbs up. No laughing with the masks.
"Mud's a desert now, for sure." Sam paused for his little snort of acceptance, continuing, "but if someone did have the power to turn you to stone with a look…yeah, this would be phase one."
"I'm gonna go chisel this off," Ty proclaimed as he got up to leave, "and check on Dee. Pray she doesn't stab me."
Sam saluted his retreat, tilting her nearly empty bottle to inspect the color in her fake window's moon glow. Irregularities glistened in the light, but they weren't in the liquid. The base of the glass was etched. Sam lifted the bottle higher to read.
Thank you for not fainting.
Love, Pep.
December 6th, 2021
Sam's mouth went as dry as waking in the infirmary. She drank half of the present Pepper gave Tony to commemorate her own birth. Sam had unwittingly gulped down one of her father's remaining gifts from his late wife. She dropped her jaw in horror, the pull of dry clay holding her skin tight. Sam shifted, still staring through the bottle when—
"Sam?"
In a single heartbeat, her gut plummeted to Sub-Basement E. Tony Stark stood in her bedroom doorway, a smile quickly distorting into shock.
"Did you…" Only the helmet was retracted from the suit. He remained a massive and bulky presence, mechanically approaching closer to her bed.
"This—" Tony grabbed the bottle from her hand, sighing through a faint tremble of his lip. He shut his eyes to collect his thoughts. "Do you know what I've been through to get here? And you're—" He couldn't get the words out.
He didn't have to; Sam knew in that instant how Medusa's victims felt. Her insides sucked out through a hole in her soul. Disappointment, anger, resentment, recognition, exhaustion, blame, resignation, all flashed and faded into the fine lines around his dark eyes. Tony looked broken and beaten. Sam couldn't imagine what her face betrayed.
He turned and walked out with the bottle, saying nothing more.
Worse than Sam had ever imagined, her reunion with her father after successfully turning herself into Avenger material consisted of destroying something precious to him, underage drinking, and looking like a flippant child playing with makeup in her filthy room, alone. The embarrassment pushed its way through her empty middle, accentuating her cotton mouth, shoving all the water it could displace out of her eyes. She ran to the bathroom to drown out the sound of her wild sobs with the running tap, splashing the uncomfortable mask off her face. She scrubbed harder and harder to chip it off, convincing herself it hurt, that the mask caused the tears, though she felt nothing.
She curled up on the bathroom floor when her legs finally failed her. On the cold, hard floor, her mind taunted Sam with the statistical possibilities that it would be okay…or it wouldn't.
Sam caught him at the not-so-white tables in the atrium early, too early, when the sky outside was still inky blue.
Tony sipped at a massive glass of green juice. Seeing it made her palms clammy. She was four again, unable to hold a glass without breaking it. A different kind of green monster. Overnight, he dyed his hair back to brown, a rich, medium chestnut, wiping out his gray from the last months. No salt and…
Sam clunked two mugs of coffee down at his table harder than she intended. Her heart fluttered. No words came out of her though she tried, shaking her head before rushing back to the kitchen for cream. As she returned, burnt mahogany eyes followed her path, one brow raised.
"Hungover?" He didn't wait for a reply. "I'm not allowed caffeine yet," he corrected, tilting the wheatgrass sludge in her direction.
By Tony's nonchalant, deliberate swig of his own glass, Sam disgust was evident. She'd had her fair share of supplemental, liquid food; never again. "Bruce told me. It's decaf."
"Ol' ticker's not the same without its car battery." Her father smiled off at the window to a joke she did not understand. What car battery? His electromagnet was a palladium and badassium arc reactor…
The sky beyond the window broke into the yellowing haze of dawn. Since Sam had not slept the night before, this didn't count as 'waking' early. Bucky would call that 'splitting hairs.' In fact, she lied to Tony: Bruce didn't tell her anything. Sam hacked the feed of Tony's exam by the doctor, read his recovery recommendations, then watched the security feed of her father returning the special bourbon to its exact spot down at the wet bar. Total, Tony had been in his room for four and a half hours, part of which was spent primping his hair, apparently. Sleeping: not a Stark family strength.
This time, however, watching felt far more personal. This happened in realtime just out of reach, right there in the building, and it was Sam who'd screwed up. All the little speeches she practiced in her head vanished from memory, the newly vacated space analyzing every twitch of his eyes or pulse of his neck. Sam didn't know how to do this, make someone forgive her, make them proud of her. She proved she could handle this life. Right?
Desparate to fill the lingering silence, she settled for the first thing that popped into her brain.
"Watch," she asked, tipping cream into her cup. Tony turned. "That first color, when milk hits and sinks just below the surface, that's your eye color." The contents churned themselves to a shade lighter, hypnotizing him. She tipped another splash into the volume. "And that's mine." Sam paused and looked up at him with one corner of her mouth shyly cocked in a smile. "I always wanted to show you that."
Tony lowered his shoulders slightly, a wave of emotions pushing him away again. Sam sensed his questions.
"There're a lot of photos and videos of you online, so I'm used to your face," she trailed off. She trembled when her hands left the cup and struggled to keep her words from offending him.
"I'm—" he cut himself off, covering his mouth with his hand. Finally he pointed towards the tree line. "That blue just above the tops, those trees by the road," his voice caught, "that's your mother's eye color."
Sam didn't move; she blinked, the small, joking smile dying completely, leaving disappointment. "Pep—" he stopped, the name a searing brand on his tongue, "she and I…this was our coffee spot when one of us couldn't sleep. Mostly me, and you…baby you." Tony extended his arm, bouncing a finger up and down on the table, his thoughts at war. "We've done this before. One time I put my drink in a bottle so you would take yours. You fussed sometimes, as babies do." He sniffed, watching the sun. Then the whisper, "what did you do, Sam?" Though his words came out soft, his frown spoke a sanctimonious outrage of its own. He reached forward to touch her hand.
Her body twitched in shock, a bubble of familiarity burst. For one brief moment, Sam believed she and her father wanted the same thing.
"I can fix this," Tony said. "It shouldn't take long. I mean, I cured your mom of this before. Days, weeks tops."
With every word, her disgust grew more apparent, and Sam removed her hand from beneath Tony's. She rose from her chair. "I'm not diseased. I don't need you to fix me," she spat, "I formulated this. I designed it to be used."
"Extremis is dangerous. He was using you to hurt me." Tony jumped up, too, the chair scraping the concrete.
The thud of a bird rang against the window near them.
"Who used me? I'm not a pawn. I'm actually better now than I was."
Weak and outraged, Tony puffed his chest out. "Doctor Dorcas, the one who poisoned you."
"Nobody poisoned me! The only thing Doctor Lem did was hand me a vial." Sam shoved her finger against her chest. "I researched and tested for months—I saved people—and you don't get to undo this. I'm not yours to fix anymore. You gave me away."
"I was protecting you—"
Another bird dove at the window, but the bang only startled Tony for a second. Sam remained unfazed.
"Protecting me from whom? You?"
"Yes," Tony yelled. "This is a dangerous job. People try to kill me all the time."
"What do you want then," she spat back, "a thank you?" Sam's face turned to stone, her indignation matching his. "Bang up job. Thank you for abandoning me, Ton—"
"Okay!" Bucky rounded the corner sharply, dressed in sweats and a tank top, pulling headphones out of his ears. "Everybody calm down."
Her father pivoted, too weak to jump at the intruder. "You," Tony huffed, "is this your version of protecting her?"
"I don't need his protection," Sam griped.
"You obviously do." But Tony rounded back to Bucky. "Couldn't wait for someone qualified to build you another arm, huh? Had to ask a child?"
Sam lunged with a glowing arm coiled behind her, but Bucky jumped between them first. "I haven't been a child for years. You have no idea—"
Tony brandished an accusatory finger over the Bucky's shoulder. "No, you have no idea what I have done to—"
"Stop," Bucky cried, pushing against Sam's momentum, facing Tony. "I did what I had to, Tony, now back off."
Tony sprang forward to within an inch of Bucky's face. "Yeah? You had to? Who ordered a hit on my family this ti—" but he couldn't finish the thought. Tony's demeanor cooled as if ice water had been shot through his veins.
Sam stepped away from Bucky. Bucky remained solidly between them.
"I'm tired," Tony announced, eyes dark and thoughtful. Black coffee, this time. Yet again, he walked away.
Sam's anger drained out to reveal an emptiness she was not prepared for. After all the possibilities running like plays in her mind, she thought she would be so overwhelmed with emotions. She had gotten two things: the color of her mom's eyes, and her father thought of her as a dumbass kid. Still, there was nothing, only emptiness. Tony wanted to undo her life's work, to strip Sam of her uniqueness; she felt nothing. Tony thought she couldn't handle herself, even though he left her alone in the first place; she felt nothing. Tony knew where she got the virus but wouldn't ask how she'd manipulated and changed it; the void inside remained cold.
The window seams stretched the first shadows of the day across the concrete floor. Another shadow caught her attention. Sam Wilson, in his running gear, stood watch from outside on the field, birds at his feet. He pressed a hand against the window, brow furrowed in concern, but his focus wasn't on her. Samantha turned back to Bucky, who waved Wilson on, flashing an exhausted thumbs up. Wilson jogged off.
Bucky wiped his face, rubbing his eyes, and mussing his grubby hair. "Ok," he sighed, "well, good morning, I guess."
"Is this what you consider a good morning?" Sam automatically quipped, mumbling, "I'm never waking up before noon again."
Bucky yawned, looking back up to her returned blank stare. "Hey, come on," he comforted, "let's get breakfast." He came over to wrap an arm around her shoulders, gently tugging her towards the kitchen.
She turned her head to look over their shoulders at the still steaming coffees on the lonely table. How could it have gone so wrong? Sam planned to wow Tony with her accomplishments, her peace offerings, her humor, but when push came to shove, she snapped right back into the bitterness of her childhood. Her cheeks were chilly; the air conditioning rolled over tears falling unnoticed.
Bucky pulled her into a hug, and Sam felt guilty that her wet face was being cleaned by his shirt. She let herself stand limp in his arms. "It's okay," he whispered, "he's just…" He tucked her beneath his chin.
Sam nuzzled into his chest, irritated by everyone constantly making excuses for Tony Stark. "An asshole," she replied, loud enough to be heard and for the vibration to be felt against his sternum. Although, I just called you an asshole two days ago…whoops, sorry, Buck.
By the shifts in his neck above her forehead, Bucky nodded, agreeing then planted a firm, quick kiss on top of Sam's head. "Food," he ordered, releasing Sam and shoving her towards the next room.
He made pancakes.
Sam, greatly impressed with this show of skill, watched in fascination as Bucky pulled his hair back before cracking a few eggs to get started. He worked in quiet mostly, whisking, holding his hand just above the skillet to feel the temperature. Sam noticed him use his right hand. Force of habit, presumably. It was the only one he could feel with for most of his life after all.
He drizzled batter from the whisk directly onto the heat. Laura uses a measuring cup, then she complains about more dishes. Sam watched him flip the first batch. Bucky methodically added one cake at a time to each plate, back and forth, all equal. He looked perfectly content.
"They weren't going to let me handle explosive ordinance or weaponry at thirteen—" he planted a bottle of syrup between them "—so I helped in the mess mostly. Not a lot of variety to the menu, but that was '38 for you."
"One hundred years ago…"
"Hundred and one," Bucky corrected, dressing his breakfast. He tested his stack, pleased. "Still damn fine flapjacks." Sam gave him a confused look with judgmental eyebrows. "Hot cakes?" he tried.
"Pancakes?"
He shrugged. "You don't like them?"
"It's not that. Mama Barton would be awed. I was only good at one-to-two ingredient recipes: eggs, roast veggies, grilled cheese sandwiches. Since those are also my favorites, I saw no reason to learn more. That's not as impressive."
"No fancy meal you know to wow someone?"
"Am I not impressive on my own?" Sam smirked. "No, I didn't expect company…ever." Her face lowered, fork pushing a bite around. She had added only a tiny dollop of syrup, so the plate beneath was too dry for the fluffy texture to move. It just toppled over, mimicking the sag of Sam's shoulders while she got lost in thought.
Bucky sighed. "I went on a date," he confessed.
Sam snapped up. "What? Last night?"
"Just drinks. Sharon set it up. Melanie. Archive preservation at a museum in the city."
"Ahh, original historic document preservation or maintaining certificates of authentici—never mind." She considered Bucky for another beat. When he didn't offer any more, Sam probed, "so it went well?"
Bucky laughed over his syrup-soaked meal. "For a sitcom, sure. I drank her under the table by accident. The price for a super metabolism I suppose. Had to help her home. Poor thing was blitzed in three cosmos. All while paparazzi hovering at the front entrance."
"This big around, was she?" Sam held her pinky out, lifting another bite on her fork. She finished chewing before adding, "I take it there was no spark."
"I think she was nervous. Guys with cameras at the door, ya know? At least the conversation was not about a massive cybernetic arm, so…I'll take it as a win." They ate. After Bucky swallowed his last morsel, he braved the next part. "I had no idea he was coming home. I wouldn't have…been out if I knew."
Sam was barely two-thirds done with her food, and she contemplated excusing herself. Fatigue oozed into every part of her, slowly, heavier than her dying adrenaline. She wanted to know one more thing. "Did they ever fight? Did they yell at each other like that, or is it just because of me?"
Bucky set his chin on his interlaced hands to think, a strand of hair knocked loose to fall in front of his eyes. "I heard of a few times. And god knows, Tony loves to pick a fight, mostly when he already knows he'll win. From what I know, Pepper gave back as good as Tony."
It was comforting to hear, but Sam feared her voice would be ignored regardless. Tony had more experience getting his way than Sam. Without help, she couldn't win. "Please don't let him change me," she whispered. "I don't need to be cured."
Bucky took his arms off of the table, contemplative, an inscrutable expression. "Did you get any sleep?"
Not an answer. Sam shook her head and took another bite. He's like Ty's Magic 8 Ball. Ask Again Later.
"Finish up, and I'll tell Wilson you're not running this morning, but I'm guessing he won't be surprised. Go to bed. Deal?" Bucky rinsed his plate and headed out.
On her way back to her room, Sam spotted the two cold coffees at the table by the window. She left them.
Badassium: really what Tony tried to patent as the name of his new element. Makes me giggle every time.