Steve woke up to the familiar sensation of Bucky sleeping close to him, his arm around his waist. He shifted his position but Bucky shifted right along with him as if there was some need not to let him go. Steve knew years from now he might come to find this behavior irritating and tell him to stay on his side of the bed, but right now it was still new and he enjoyed the intimacy.
From somewhere a new scent wafted into the room. It wasn't the flowers of yesterday but something still familiar. "Coffee?" He rolled off the bed and stood up. Nothing about the room had changed. "Come on, Buck. Someone made breakfast."
"Coffee? Where are we? Oh yeah, in space. Coffee sounds good." He rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling. "You smell," he said. "It's almost as bad as when we were back in the war…"
Steve laughed. "I guess the honeymoon is over. I'll check out the shower. Want to join me?" As soon as he said the words, he knew he had made a mistake. Bucky was averse to nudity.
Bucky sat up, taking the time to time to give Steve an evil eye. "No thanks. Swimming in the lake together is one thing, that's different. Besides, there's not enough room in there. You go first."
Bucky was right. It was small, but the water temperature was perfect. Everything in here was real. The water was real. He let it drip off his hands to find something off about it but nothing gave it away. He finished, emerging to find Bucky had put the mattress back in place and had made the bed.
Without a word, he left the room take his turn. It wasn't long before he emerged, drying his hair.
"You look good," Steve said.
"Thanks. So do you."
"So let's see what's out there."
"You go first. I'll be out in a minute."
"Buck, come on. We've got bigger issues going on than you and your hang-ups. It's not like we're doing the walk of shame…"
"What's the walk of shame?" Bucky asked. At first, Steve thought he was joking, but a voice pinged inside his head. Bucky is not a child, but things obvious to the rest of the world are not so obvious to him. This would take getting used to. Steve adjusted his attitude.
"It's something Sam told me about. I'll meet you out there," Steve said. He made his way down to the hallway and back to the big room. There was coffee on the table and more donuts. T'Challa and Bruce were sitting down, deep in conversation, both holding cups.
"Morning Steve," Bruce said. "We took a break last night for a few hours and when we came back, this was here. I believe the donuts have all of our basic nutritional needs. It's almost a dream come true. Eat all the junk food you want and be healthy."
The sound of opening doors diverted their attention. Wanda and Peter both emerged from their rooms, Wanda looked tired but Peter as energetic as ever. Peter was wearing the black clothes that magically fit. A moment later Bucky emerged, his hair tied back. Something about seeing him stirred emotions deep inside Steve and he wished they were back at their place, in Wakanda, shutting out the world. Damn it. I'll take him any way I can get, I don't care about… He noticed Wanda looking at him curiously. His line of sight went past her to Bucky so he immediately looked away. He had no idea what emotions his face had betrayed.
"Hey, I said these clothes would fit! Wouldn't it be great if we all wore them, and then we could be like a cool night ops team!" Peter said. Bucky gave a short laugh and reached over and ruffled his hair.
"Isn't this cozy," Bucky said, joining the others. He poured himself a cup and took a drink. " I assume this is safe? Tastes all right. Bit strong. Anything new happen? Our hosts show up again?"
T'Challa and Banner exchanged a glance.
"No," T'Challa said. "But something curious happened. Along with the coffee and donuts, this was waiting for us." With a flip of the wrist, a long list of computer data appeared in the air. Long equations, interspersed with random characters. "They uploaded this to our system."
"I don't know a lot about computers, but even I can tell something's not right," Steve said. To him, it was like seeing English words interspersed with random foreign letters.
"It looks like a corrupted data stream," Peter offered as he stuffed a donut in his mouth. "Maybe the systems are incompatible but some of it got through. That's odd."
"Yes, we are trying to clean it up, to find what information is there, but it's taking time. Perhaps you would like to help us?" T'Challa said to Peter.
"Sure, whatever I can do," Peter said, his voice muffled as he stuffed a chocolate donut in his mouth.
"That makes no sense," Bucky said. "They make all this elaborate stuff, accurate down to the smallest detail, but they can't send information on the computers they replicated? This is all their tech."
Wanda wandered away from the others to a far corner of the room. She pulled a chair to her with her mind, suspended it in front of her and let it spin in mid-air.
"Bored?" Peter asked.
She smiled. "Curiosity about this material. It's malleable yet solid. "She let loose a sudden burst of energy, splitting the chair into several pieces. The bits of the chair hung in mid-air but then suddenly snapped back together. "They can make it take on the form of anything but the thing it becomes is real, not a poor duplicate" She set the chair down and walked back over to them.
"Plato," Bruce said. "The theory of forms. He believed what we see and hear is based on a permanent form that exists separately from one item. The form is perfect and doesn't really exist. Somewhere there is a real chair…"
"And Aristotle did not think so," T'Challa said gently. "I do not think earth philosophy can explain it."
"Magic," Bucky said. It was a statement of fact.
"They said they had no wizards," Bruce said.
'They're lying. Those portals, just like exactly like the one we saw…"
"But the data stream is NOT magic…" Peter began.
"I believe this material is this place's version of Vibranium," Wanda interjected into their debate. Her declaration brought the conversation to a halt as each of them considered her words.
"She might be right," Bruce said. "It makes perfect sense. Vibranium is malleable, can be reworked to suit almost every need…"
"But you can't eat Vibranium, can you?" Peter stared down at the half-eaten donut in his hand.
T'Challa gave a short laugh at Peter's discomfort. " You can, in a way. Vibranium can enrich the soil and certain plants. I can say little about it, but yes, a person can safely eat it."
"Tech, malleable materials," Steve said, ticking off their theories
"And magic," Bucky said stubbornly. I don't know why they're lying about it, but it's mixed up with all this somehow." He got up to pace around the room. "Somewhere there is a control room, and I bet there's a wizard behind the scenes messing with us."
Just as he turned to face them a portal opened in the air behind him. Steve watched in horror as something pulled him through.
"Steve," he said, the same look of confusion he had he fell from the train and when he turned to dust. He got up but before he could reach him Wanda's energy shot out, along with a long web from Peter. Peter pulled as hard as he could, bringing himself close to the edge portal himself and for a moment it looked like they might succeed when something pulled Bucky through, the portal closing behind him leaving nothing in his place but space.