Everything hurt. Bucky took in a rattling breath, and braced himself to sit up.
But he couldn't.
His eyes opened wide, slowly focusing on the drab drop ceiling tiles. Their edges were yellowed with age and smudged with the dust of bygone years. The harsh tang of antestics burned his nostrils as panic seized his body. He tried again to sit up and realized he was being restrained. Thick leather straps had been buckled over his chest and arms.
All he could see was medical equipment. Cybernetic prosthetics. Pain. The copper bite of blood. Black darkened the edges of his vision as panic threatened to pull him under.
"Ope," came a voice from across the room. "We've got a live one."
Bucky flung his gaze towards the woman. She was slender built, her blonde hair cut short in a style similar to how Miranda's had been. She wore a casual smirk, arms crossed over her chest. He felt a spark of recognition, but couldn't quite put a name to her face. Several figures rushed into the room at once.
"Hey Buck," Sam approached him slowly, arms out. "We've got Buck with us right?"
"Who the fuck else do you think it is," Bucky snarled. "Get this shit off of me."
"We just wanted to be sure that you weren't going to come back at murder-y on us," Bruce said, as he inspected a few of the machines around his bed. "You underwent a major procedure. We weren't sure what exactly we were digging through."
It came rushing back then. Miranda waking. Aristelle's beaten and bloodied face. His vibranium arm…
Bucky took one breath. Then two. But when he looked to his shoulder, it didn't matter what amount of preparation he gave himself he was not prepared for the silver arm. The red star.
"What?"
"Shuri's arrival is still a few days out. We weren't sure we could wait that long," Bruce explained. "Underneath their tech remained the original soviet mechanisms."
"After the battle with Iron Man at the Hydra facility in Siberia, the place was dismantled," Sam said. "They found arms there. What we assume were replacements in the event you sustained damage during a mission. Those were closer. So we next day aired the suckers here and put you under."
Bucky swallowed. He knew he was a different man. That the arm he wore did not make him who he was, but seeing that star, feeling its familiar weight left him a little breathless and uncertain.
"We didn't have a lot of options," Sam said quietly, as though he could see the downward spiral of Bucky's thoughts.
Bruce moved forward, one by one pulling loose the buckles until each one had fallen away.
"Is he mobile?"
The men beside him parted to reveal Aristelle standing in the doorway. Her clothing still bore the blood of her injuries, though her skin had long since healed. Her posture was drawn tight, back stiff, shoulder squared.
"I'm mobile." Bucky winced at screaming muscles as he flung his legs over the side of the bed. "Though I wouldn't exactly say I'm happy about it. How long was I out?"
"It's been 36 hours since the base in the mountains fell." All eyes turned to the new addition. He remembered her now. Danvers. Carol Danvers. "And we are no closer to a plan for putting this girl down."
"No one is putting anyone down," Bucky snarled. "She's under the influence of her father. This isn't her."
"Be that as it may," Carol said. "She killed 40 men on that base with little more than the flick of her wrist. I don't think that's someone you save. That's someone you stop."
Sam shifted uncomfortably where he stood at the foot of Bucky's bed.
"I don't really care what you think." Bucky eased himself off the bed and stood at his full height, forcing Carol to dip her head back to look him in the eye.
"She's right, Bucky." Aristelle said. She was leaning against the door frame, pinching the bridge of her nose. She looked exhausted. "This may come down to stopping Mor. This is going to get very ugly before it gets better. We have to be prepared to make that choice."
Pain, hot and sudden, struck deep in his chest at her betrayal. "I thought you said that you and your sister are immortal."
"Immortal. But not unkillable."
The room fell to silence as they waited for her to elaborate. Aristelle shifted her weight slightly, and closed tired eyes.
"There was an item, created during the war against our father, that can be used to sever the ties of an immortal soul. I would like to retrieve it."
Carol turned away from Bucky to face Aristelle. "Where is it? I will get it."
"It must be me," Aristelle said, opening her eyes. "And I will require the assistance of Mr. Barnes. The rest of you should focus your efforts on locating my sisters. I'm not overly confident in the ability of our skeleton crew of watchmen, your so-called sorcerers and an adolescent web shooter."
"Web shooter?" Bucky asked. "You're not serious? That kid is involved in this now?"
"We are running out of options," Sam explained. "Apparently not everyone feels the need to answer our calls."
"You can continue this discussion later," Aristelle cut in, her tone sharp and final. "Right now, soldier boy and I have somewhere to be."
Bucky was beginning to realize that the comfort of stepping through time and space was entirely dependent upon Aristelle's state of mind. Bucky stepped easily from the fold onto polished marble, and unlike the two previous occasions, his organs did not feel as though they were attempting to evacuate his body. But this transfer of bodies had been done easily. Aristelle had been relaxed and casual as she proffered the tear in the very fiber of the world that surrounded them.
A torch ignited beside them, and Aristelle reached out, touching it to a basin to their right. It lit easily, drawing the flames down a long channel that lined the side of the great hall. She breezed past him, doing the same on their opposite side. Marble glinted and glittered around them. Pillars. Statues. A single altar far down the aisle way from them.
"Is this a church?" Bucky asked.
"Church of the damned, maybe." Aristelle moved down the aisle towards the raised dias that housed the altar. "It is a temple. Built in my honor. Don't tell my sister. She still thinks she's the only one with followers."
"In your honor?" Bucky questioned. "It's very...grand."
"Yeah," Aristelle sighed. "The business of war has many men rich as sin. They consider me their lady luck."
"It's sickening, is what it is." Bucky said, climbing one step at a time up onto the altar.
A broad marble table had been erected at its center. Its surface was caked with a flaking substance that had dried black on its surface. It had oozed off its top to streak down its sides and pool on the floor. He just knew what it was.
"Desperate men make desperate grievances to an absent god." Aristelle said bitterly, noticing his attention on the aged blood. "Just because they built this place, does not mean it bears any connection to me. Nor do I care if a man sacrifices his only son in the hopes of turning the tide of some pointless war."
Bucky felt a little dizzy. His life had made a hard left turn onto foreign soil, and he wasn't sure how he would ever recover from this.
"What is it?" He asked quietly. "What are you looking for?"
Aristelle put her hands out at her sides, opening her fingers. She rolled her shoulders lightly before leaning her head back and closing her eyes. Her mouth moved, forming silent words. A chill raced across Bucky's skin as the hair raised on his arms. Her pupils evaporated to white as a small dagger materialized in her right hand. She brought it forward with unsettling grace and cut the skin on the inside of her left arm.
She pressed her hand over the wound, allowing the blood to stain her fingers red. Then she reached up and began to write. Each stroke of her finger left behind a smear of blood. And everywhere the blood touched began to glow, burning white hot against her retinas. Bucky lifted a hand, shielding his eyes as she wrote and wrote, touching her fingers to her arm every time her drawings ran dry.
"What is it we are looking for?" Bucky asked again, beginning to question if joining her had been in his best interest.
"A sword." Aristelle said, finally seeming to have reached the end of her message. "A sword forged in the blood of Mortekia the Deathless."
Bucky took in a breath. "I don't appreciate your attempt to scare me."
She glanced back over her shoulder at him, smirking like a wildcat. "Is it working?"
The slab before her, that burned with the markings of a language Bucky didn't know, shifted, causing the marble beneath their feet to shutter. It slid to the side with a great amount of scrapping that vibrated in his bones. And then it was done. And the great casym of the temple was quiet.
And then he felt it. An undeniable sensation of wrongness. Dread rose like floodwaters, threatening to pull him under and drown him in the darkness.
"It knows we are here." The tight inflection of her tone was unsettling, as if the sword itself left Aristelle feeling uneasy.
She stepped into the opening. Her foot settled on the floor, and light burst at the contact. It surged to life beneath her feet before racing through the veins of marble, lighting the space with a pale glow. There, at the center of the room, was a massive sword.
It was balanced on metal hooks that suspended it in the air several feet off the floor. Blackness radiated from it like an inverted halo. Though the sword was not terrible for how it looked, darkest black and savage, but for how it felt. Like to be in its presence was to flirt with death itself, to feel its hand on your neck as it whispered to your soul.
Come to me dear boy. Leave it all behind you. I am all that you need.
"It calls to me. Begs me to touch it." Aristelle stood beside him, her arms tightly wrapped around herself. "I will not touch it. I think...I think that it can only be you in Mor's place."
"Why will you not touch it?" His words passed through his lips as barely more than a whisper. He could not seem to look away from its savage edge.
"It was born to wrought the death of our father. To contact the sword is to separate the soul from the body. To touch it, would be to die."
"Why would we even risk it?"
"As my father and my sister are the only creatures able to clip and forge the ties of the soul to the body, their soul strands are impermeable. But this blade...Mor created it with the intent of severing that tie."
"So it's a fail safe. If we can't stop her we-we…"
"Kill her," Aristelle finished.
"I will not."
Her answering smile was sad. "She may not give you a choice. And even so, if she summons our father, This blade, Cortar, is our only desperate chance at survival."
"Why didn't you use it against him before?"
"We could never get close enough."
"And this is all under the assumption that I can even touch that sword."
"I think you can."
Bucky glanced sideways at her, pressing back against the nagging desire to go to the sword. Shutting out its voice was difficult. No matter what doors he closed on it, it was always scratching from the other side.
"Two reasons." She held up two fingers. "First. You are not all original parts. That arm has no tether to your soul." She dropped one finger. "Secondly, you slept with my sister."
Heat raged up his body, flushing his skin.
"Oh don't be coy," Aristelle threw a pointed smile at him. "You and my sister have committed one of the most intimate acts gifted to the human race. Do you truly think that she would give herself so completely to you and yet leave you unprotected? She guards her heart far closer than that. I had my suspicions. But then you survived two encounters with her in this...state and lived."
"Am I...am I now immortal?"
"I don't know." Aristelle paused, tilting her head to the side slightly before shivering. The sword's call was affecting her as well. "I can't see the binds of the soul as my sister can. But she did something. Or you would have been dead in that observation room."
Bucky remembered how it had felt when Miranda had reached out and tugged on his soul. He had not felt protected then. He had merely felt...spared.
"And if I don't take the sword?"
"I can't force you to make that decision. But you have to decide what is more important to you. The life of my sister, or the entirety of humanity."
Bucky looked toward the sword but did not move any closer.
He could hear the smile in her voice when she spoke. "Ah. So my sister has finally found what I have so desperately hoped for her. A man who would rather watch the world burn than give her up."
Bucky let out a shaky breath. Did he truly love her? He had known her for months, but the intimacy was new. He felt as though he had learned more about Miranda apart from her than with her. And yet, this thing that swelled in his chest when he thought of her, how it pressed in so hard he could barely breathe, what else could it be? Why else would her absence render such a hollow ache in his chest?
"I would be painted the villain. If I gave up the world for her."
"Loving someone is not a crime. I destroyed my life for it."
Bucky looked over at her. "There's still more to this story, isn't there? About how this all started?"
Aristelle swallowed.
"Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, she would have chosen your side? That you hadn't needed to manipulate her. To do so for all these years?"
"I couldn't risk it." Aristelle responded quietly. "Not with what was at stake."
"And what could possibly have been more important than her freedom?"
"My family…"
"Your sisters seem entirely capable of handling themselves-"
"No. Not that family." Aristelle drew in a shaky breath. "I told you before, I wasn't like her. I couldn't keep myself separate from the people on this planet. They were too joyful. Too colorful. I immersed myself in them. And I fell in love. If you had a family. Wouldn't you have done anything possible to ensure their survival?"
He thought of his own hesitations now. He thought of his own desires for children. What would he give up for those metaphorical beings? Was that even possible for him now?
"And where are they now?" Bucky asked.
"Dead." There was a sadness that clung to her features and buried itself bone deep. "I am immortal after all... Mor was smart. She never attached herself to anyone. She spared herself from the heartbreak of your temporary existence. Until you, that is."
It was so unfair. All of it. For him, after so long, to finally find happiness. And for her, she had waited an eternity for him, and now he would be her undoing.
"Taking the sword does not ensure her death," Aristelle said gently. "But if she gets her hands on it, there would be no stopping the reach of her power. We need the small amount of time this allows us to gather a plan."
Bucky closed eyes. "And you think this will work?"
Aristelle shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea. But I'm out of options."
He moved closer to the sword. Each step heightened its tug. It reached into his chest and nestled there. The desire to do as it wished consumed him. Taking a breath, he reached out his left hand. The silver glint caught him off guard once again. He was stronger than this thing. He was more than that HYDRA weapon and he would not allow this sword to dig its teeth into him. He was tired of being someone else's pawn.
He thought of Steve. He knew what he would do. The history books sang the praises of his choice in the face of this very decision. He gave his life, gave up his love, to protect the greater good. How could he do anything but the same?
Before he could change his mind, he reached out and plucked the sword from its hangers. He gasped, the mechanisms of his arms whirring widely, the plating lifting and exhausting an incredible darkness. He could feel the sword's satisfaction, how it rejoiced in his decision to claim it as his own.
"Are you alright?" Aristelle asked, not taking a step closer to him.
He could feel...something, working its way through his body. Gasping, he tightened his grip and gritted his teeth. In his peripheral vision he could see Aristelle slowly coming around to face him. He looked over at her and she gasped, taking a step back.
"Your eyes…" She whispered, her fingers pressing over her mouth.
"My...what?" He felt a little breathless and panic gripped him.
She had been wrong. He was going to die. They had failed. They had failed everyone.
Aristelle approached him slowly. "You should be dead by now."
Slowly, the sensation of the sword seemed to settle. As though it had decided its new home was sufficient. He took in a shaky breath, and transferred the sword from one hand to the other. He remembered how it had felt when Miranda had tugged at the strings binding his soul, testing their hold. He did not feel that now.
When he looked up, a smirk had settled on Aristelle's lips. "That little bitch. I knew it."
Bucky let out a breathless laugh. "I'm not sure how I feel about being gifted a sword by Mortekaia the Deathless."
"You weren't," Aristelle said, hugging herself. "Miranda gave that to you. You are her fail safe now, Bucky."