"OMG. This is where we're going to live?" Ellie, masquerading as Betsy asked when she spotted the Avenger's compound at the end of the long driveway.
"I told you it was huge." Steve laughed as he pulled the Jeep Cherokee into the parking lot. "Looks like someone else missed you." As her father turned off the car, Ellie looked at the main door of the compound where Tony Stark was standing. He waved enthusiastically as they got out of the Jeep. "Go on, I'll get your bags." Steve pushed Ellie encouragingly towards the door.
"Well if it isn't little Rogers!" Tony greeted the young girl who marched over to him. He held a fist out to her which Ellie bumped. She then proceeded to match him move for move in a complicated "secret" handshake he'd shared with Betsy when she was even younger. Or at least she hoped she got it right, it had taken Ellie almost the whole summer to learn the secret handshake from Betsy. "You're getting slow in your old age." Tony teased.
"Is that a grey hair, Uncle Tony?" Ellie teased with a wink. It sounded like something Betsy would say.
"ha-ha." Tony faked a laugh. "How soon can we send her back to camp?" He teased back as Steve reached the front door.
"Sorry, Tony, she's here to stay." Steve shook his head. I wouldn't be so sure of that, Dad. Ellie thought to herself. "Bets, you wanna go inside and pick your room so Tony and I can get your stuff out of storage?"
"Okay sure." Ellie nodded. "Uncle Tony, do you wanna have a movie night later? Maybe after I do some unpacking?"
"Sure, little Rogers." Tony agreed. "You'd better go pick a good room before the rest of the team moves in tomorrow." He gave Ellie a pat on the back.
"Will do." Ellie promised before following her dad inside.
"JARVIS," Tony mumbled into his smart watch once the two Rogers were out of earshot. "Warm up the microscope, I need to run a DNA test." He carefully inspected the strand of hair he'd removed form "Betsy" when he patted her on the back.
Betsy stared out the window the entire car ride from the airport. She'd never been to California before and wanted to remember as much of it as possible before the switch back. While riding in the car Bucky noticed Eleanor was quieter than usual. She didn't even glance at her phone once. He guessed she was probably moody from having to go to with him to The Shop. He'd find a way to make it up to her somehow.
When they arrived at their destination, Betsy came to learn that the place her sister and Pop had continued to refer to as "The Shop" was actually a sizable motorcycle manufacturing plant. Betsy recognized the illuminated "Bucky's Motorcycles" sign from the photo Ellie had shown her. She couldn't wait to see what the inside looked like!
The Main Entrance of "The Shop" had clearly been designed to be customer facing. It had the same sterile white feeling that the Civilian accessible areas of the Avengers Tower had. There were chalky drop-down tiles on the ceiling. The walls were painted one of those slightly off-white shades like ivory or eggshell that helped hide the unavoidable dirt and dust that would build up over time. The floor tiles where white, which made them easy to clean with bleach.
The walls were decorated with framed professional photographs of various Motorcycle models made by Bucky's company. Mixed in among them were Framed Magazine covers or articles that featured even more Motorcycle models. Some frames magazines also featured stories about Bucky himself. Betsy was reading one these articles about her father when he called out to her.
"Ellie? Are you listening to me?" He asked.
"Hmm?" Betsy looked away from the article that she'd been engrossed in reading. It was an interview where Bucky detailed how he'd gotten into creating custom motorcycles and how he eventually turned that into a business.
"I said you can just wait for me in my office. I'm just going out to the floor to see what Sam and Javier's big emergency is." Bucky explained.
"Actually, can I come with you?" Betsy asked. She tried to think quickly about what reason Ellie would have for wanting to leave the comforts of the clean customer facing offices to go out back to what was no doubt a greasy, noisy factory. "I've been gone all summer, I want to say hey to Sam and Javier and everyone else."
"Sure." Bucky didn't seem to think that too out of the ordinary. "Plus, if they know you're with me, that might help us get out of here quicker."
Betsy followed Bucky down a hallway of offices. Thanks to Ellie, she recognized the names and titles of a lot of the people that the offices belonged to. She just hoped her sister's descriptions of them would be enough to help recognize them in person. Javier was the company's lead designer. Ellie had described him as being of average height, maybe around five foot six. He always wore his hair in a ponytail or a bun to keep it out of his face while he was working, and his fingers were always covered in paint, chalk or graphite residue.
Sam was Bucky's best friend. According to Ellie, Sam Wilson was the only person Bucky still talked to from his life on the East Coast. He helped out with the company wherever needed. Sometimes that was on Javier's design department. Sometimes it was with production, and sometimes it was just getting tools for Bucky while he tried to figure things out. He was reliable and indispensable.
Bill was the company's Head of Inventory and Production. He worked closely with the production staff to make sure that orders were completed on time, but he also worked with designers to make sure what they wanted could logistically be mass produced without compromising the integrity of the design. It seemed to Betsy, that although Ellie had said she didn't like going to The Shop, she'd learned quite a bit about how things were done and the type of work their father did.
"Kid, you remember Javier, Sam and Bill." Bucky reintroduced them to his daughter. "El wanted to come in and say hi."
"That's right. Just got back from camp this morning." Betsy nodded.
"We know," Sam laughed. "Your Dad hasn't stopped talking about you since ya left."
"Are you guys trying to replicate a nineteen hundreds Harley?" Betsy asked excitedly as she spotted the mostly assembled motorcycle behind Sam and the others.
"Nineteen seventeen, actually." Sam nodded. "The year your dad was born." He looked over at Bucky who shrugged. Neither of them remembered Ellie knowing much about motorcycles. Socializing had always been her thing.
"I can picture it." Betsy smiled. She walked over to the prototype and let her fingers dance along the shiny new handlebars. "Khaki Green with red trim. The banana seat is a nice upgrade." She commented, looking up at Javier before turning her attention back to the motorcycle again. White tires and a big LED headlight." She nodded. "Very Boss. But the gas tank's not the right shape." She look up at Javier again.
"You know what that gas tank on a nineteen seventeen Harley Davidson motorcycle looks like?" Bucky asked skeptically. Betsy bit her lip, realizing she may have let things go too far. Of course, Eleanor Barnes wouldn't know what a nineteen seventeen Harley Davidson motorcycle gas tank looked like. She had to think of a convincing white lie quickly.
"I saw one on Instagram once." She shrugged, which wasn't exactly a lie. She, Betsy, had in fact seen one on Instagram several years ago while browsing the Vintage Motorcycles hashtag. "I was making a pre-war mood board."
"The gas tank is exactly the problem." Bill nodded. "In order to accommodate the modern engine that Javi wants to use, this gas tank is the only one we have that's stock that will fit. But as Ellie so astutely pointed out the modern gas tank looks ridiculous with this antique design.
"How much more will it cost us to get a custom tank that will accommodate the engine and the aesthetic we're going for?" Bucky asked.
"It's not a matter of cost." Sam shook his head. "It's time. Changing the tank pushes the prototype two or three weeks back which could set the total production back months and that's assuming we can custom make something that works."
"Well, I'd rather release something a little late that's perfect instead of something we know has flaws." Bucky sighed. "But it's not a dictatorship here. My name might be on the side of the building, but all of your names are on this project. What do you want to do?"
As Betsy watched her father hash out a plan with his employees, she remembered what Ellie had said about why their Dads split up. Bucky had told Ellie that the Dads had ended things because they were too different. She could see his point. Back home Steve Rogers tended to deal in absolutes, either something was just and fair or it wasn't. There were no grey areas, no room for debate. But Bucky Barnes welcomed debate. He was open to being challenged.
But being different doesn't mean that you can't love each other. Betsy reminded herself. She knew that she and Ellie were two very different people, but they'd quickly learned to love each other, and the Dads could remember how much they had once loved each other too. Betsy remembered that Bucky kept a photo of Steve taped to his toolbox and wondered if she could find it.
She surveyed the space around them. They seemed to be in a private garage, far away from the actual manufacturing of the motorcycles. It must have been a garaged used exclusively for creating prototypes. The empty shells, various parts and half completed bodies around the room confirmed this theory. There were only about ten toolboxes in the garage. One of them had to be Bucky's personal one.
Bucky's favorite color was red. There was a red toolbox, larger than the others on across the room from her. Betsy watched her father carefully. He, Sam, Javier and Bill were still weighing out the pros and cons on the gas tank. None of them were paying her any attention. Betsy pulled out her phone and pretended to text as she walked around the room. It was a reasonable cover for her plan, and a very Ellie thing to do.
When she reached the red toolbox, she wasn't surprised at all to see "Bucky's Tools." written across the front in a scratchy handwriting with a permanent marker. Just under the handwritten label there was a photo. The photo had once been black and white but was now a faded yellowish in spots. There was no question the man in the photo was Steve Rogers. He was posing leaning against a wall in a very James Dean way before the actor had made it cool.
Stealing a glance again, Betsy was surprised that she'd gone undetected for so long. She knew Steve could be sentimental at times, especially when it came to family stuff. She wondered if maybe he'd written something on the back of the photo. Or maybe even Bucky had. Some sort of inscription to give the girls a clue about how to get them back together. Betsy worked carefully, peeling back the tape, she'd need it to re-stick the photo back to the toolbox when she was done. Taking great car not to rip the photo, she successfully removed it from its position. She smiled when she saw the back.
With you till the end of the line. It was only one sentence, but it was definitely written in Steve Roger's loopy cursive. Betsy committed the phrase to memory before re-positioning the photo and sticking the tape back onto the toolbox.
"What are you doing over there, Kiddo?" Bucky asked. Betsy though maybe he'd seen her messing with the photo, but he didn't make a move to come any closer. He just waved her over. "You ready to go home? We're gonna let these guys go back to work."
"Sure thing, Pop." She nodded, making her way back through the field of parts and tools scattered on the floor. With you till the end of the line.