Title: Chapter 5: Hugs Not Drugs, Kids
Warning: mention recreational drugs
Summary: The ingredients for Tony Stark's purification potion are perhaps the most difficult to acquire. It's a good thing Bucky is completely comfortable committing a couple felonies in the pursuit of his magic.
Because he was brewing his potion on somewhat of a time crunch, Bucky had already prepped the ingredients the evening before. Sliced and cut and plucked, each ingredient was already imbued with magic he would normally invoke while weaving a potion itself.
He set Rebecca's copper pot on the stove and flicked the burner on. Using all natural pure mountain spring water wasn't strictly necessary for this spell, Bucky's ma had always just used purified tap water, but he figured since he still had some of the bottle left he might as well use it. Pouring two quarts of the water into the pot, Bucky adjusted the heat and turned to the neat line of ingredients on the counter.
First he dropped three dried and crushed light blue borage flowers in the pot. The petals settled to gently float on top as their color leached into the quickly heating water turning it blue. Borage was a strong blood purifier and one of two going into this potion.
Picking up one of three bowls of the second ingredient, Bucky picked up his wooden spoon and stirred in the minced garden angelica leaflets. In addition to stimulating the nervous system, it also invoked the Magic of Threes. Each angelica stem had three clusters of leaflets and each cluster was made up of three smaller clusters. Three times the power of three would be called on so it gave the potion a healthy boost in strength.
After stirring in the third bowl of angelica, the next ingredient was seven pennywort flowers, stems and all. Pennywort was tied to ailments of the organs that cleanse the body, like the kidneys and especially the liver. Bucky was invoking its magic to target any beginnings of disease and decay. Something he figured Stark could definitely use.
The fifth ingredient was specific to the needs of the recipient. Cilantro for all that it was used in food was also the plant with the magical properties to expel heavy metals from the body. Stark would need this to combat the lingering trace amounts of palladium in his body. Bucky had bunched together a fistful of cilantro and minced the wrinkly greed leaflets just as thoroughly as he had the angelica.
Going into the potion last, before Bucky set the potion to boil for a time, was a cluster of small red clover flowers. Like borage, red clover was a blood purifier, but its red color made it a little bit more. Red to invoke the energy and aggression the spell would need to fight against the pernicious blights in Tony's body. The little red flowers fluttered from Bucky's palm and were quickly pulled under and swirled with the other ingredients in the pot.
Bucky stirred the potion making sure it looked like it was supposed to, maroon and thick like a stew, chunky like one too. Wrinkling his nose, Bucky could remember the various healing potions his ma had forced on him. None of them were pleasant and this one, by the texture alone, would have tested his lack of a gag reflex.
"Good thing you're not gonna try and feed that to Stark," Becca commented from her seat at the bar working on her second cup of coffee and third cookie. "Reminds me of the time Pa caught you pants down with Suzie Baker. Ma made you drink an ills-of-love cleansing potion so you wouldn't catch anything."
Rolling his eyes, Bucky tapped his spoon on the side of the pot to knock off any clinging sticky potion and set it aside. "Suzie Baker wasn't that bad. They totally overreacted."
"Suzie Baker was a trollop," Rebecca stated around a bite of snickerdoodle. "And I'm pretty sure the only boy that didn't take a ride on that bicycle was Steve and that was probably only 'cause he caught the flue again that summer."
Huffing in exasperation, Bucky grabbed the beat up tin on the counter and flicked the lid open. "Are you still sore that Billy Thompson asked her to the Fourth of July picnic instead of you?"
"No," she protested, a haughty tilt to her head. "Billy was an idiot and I had a perfectly wonderful time at the picnic without him."
Something in her tone made Bucky pause. He looked up from digging the little baggies out of the tin and glance at her warily. "Oh, really?" he asked instantly knowing he was going to regret it.
His instincts as always were spot on because the next words out of his sister's mouth were just downright mean.
"Let's just say by the time the fireworks started I wasn't gonna be making anymore maiden's luck tokens."
"Gah! Becca! I didn't want to know that!"
Her big brother's agonized yowls made Rebecca's evil smirk widen.
"Do I even want to know who? No, don't!" Bucky shouted in panic when Rebecca actually opened her mouth to answer. "For the love of all that is holy, don't tell me!"
She snorted inelegantly laughing gleefully while Bucky tried to compartmentalize this latest trauma so he could get back to making magic.
Taking out the correct package, Bucky up-ended it over the pot. The stuff in the little plastic baggy was a gritty looking sticky, black substance. It smelled faintly of vinegar and, after jiggling the bag a little to dislodge it, plopped into the potion with an ominous grumble.
"What is that?" Rebecca inquired a disgusted grimace on her face. The potion was now roiling angrily with wetly popping bubbles.
"Black tar heroin," Bucky answered casually, watching the potion intently, stirring it roughly until it finally calmed back down into a rolling boil.
"Why are you putting that in the potion?!" Rebecca demanded, alarmed.
"The recipe calls for a sample of the 'pestilence'," he explained simply, "It'll work almost like a vaccine. The magic gets a taste of the impurity so it can recognize what it's fighting. Without it the spell will just be slightly more specific variation of a traditional cleansing spell."
Bucky picked up a second baggy the same size as the first filled with white powder. The powder sprinkled like snow down into the potion causing it to hiss and sizzle, a sweet smell almost like flowers rising from the pot.
"Let me, guess," Rebecca said deadpan. "Pure cocaine, right?"
Bucky glanced at his sister with a wry twist on his lips. "What gave it away?"
Becca just scoffed shaking her head incredulously. "If Stark really was that wild in his youth, I'm surprised he's still alive much less capable of building such an advanced machine like his metal suit."
Bucky hummed thinking of the things he'd seen in his scrying mirror. There had been some close calls. Too many for such an inherently good soul. Tony had had so many issues, so many troubles as a young man. It actually was kind of a miracle that he'd lived to his forties. Not that he wasn't still troubled, if only in different ways. The difference was that now he had a support system. A team, friends, people that care about him a whole hell of a lot.
"Wait, what's that?" Becca stretched to get a look at the sandwich bag Bucky was about to dump in the pot. "Is that- is that what I think it is?"
"Cannabis sativa?" he asked unconcerned. "Then yes, it is what you think it is." He grinned at her look of horror as he dumped the green buds in the potion.
"No!" Becca moaned. "You didn't have to use all of it."
Bucky snorted and stirred it in as potent smelling steam rose from the potion. "Don't act like the back corner of the garden is covered in plain-sight charms for no reason."
Sheepish, Becca dropped back down in her seat. "You noticed that?"
He raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her.
Rebecca sniffed defensively. "I'm a grown woman. I can enjoy a reefer cigarette now and then if I want to."
Bucky looked amused, but he grabbed the next ingredient instead of needling her some more. He couldn't really lecture her about the diversity of her garden. Between Steve generously sharing his asthma cigarettes and lighting up the Howlies for some stress relief, he didn't really have a leg to stand on.
Ignoring the indignant sound his sister made when he cracked the seal on her saved-for-a-special-occasion top shelf scotch. He tipped the fancy bottle of richly colored liquor over the pot and counted to three before he righted the bottle, twisting the cap back on.
Rebecca sighed in resignation figuring it wasn't worth complaining at that point. Instead she asked, "Where did you even get the drugs from?"
Bucky unfolded a little manila envelope, the last "pestilence", and poured silvery white palladium shavings into the potion. The metal turned it a sickly metallic rust color as he used his wooden spoon to give it the last few stirs.
"I may or may not have cornered a drug dealer, put the fear of me into him, and stole his weapons, cash, and product."
Rebecca just laughed, shaking her head indulgently, "Of course you did."
Chuckling as well, Bucky shot his sister a mischievous smirk and went about adding the final three ingredients to the complete the spell. The white-purple petals of an anemone flower (sickness of the forsaken), a yellow carnation flower (disdaining, rejecting the illness), three white pollen stigmas from black tulips (power and strength to fight the malignance).
Grey dawn was beginning to lighten the sky outside the windows. Bucky pulled his spoon from the rolling potion and turned off the burner. It was a deep, almost black burgundy with a metallic sheen and it radiated pure clean magic. It was perfect.
Rebecca followed him to the big picture window in her living room and watched him set the still warm copper pot on the sill. Bucky weighed the fist-sized hunk of shiny black obsidian in his hand and waited 'til the sun was just barely peeking above the horizon. Gently he dropped the stone in the middle of the potion and watched as the light of the sunrise made the obsidian soak up every last drop of thick, dark cleansing spell.
Sun now fully risen over the horizon, Bucky picked the black stone up with his metal fingers. It was feather light and felt soothingly cool.
"Are you sure your plan's going to work?" Rebecca inquired dubiously as she examined the stone Bucky obligingly held out to her.
"It's what Ma did for us," he answered taking the obsidian back, rolling it around in his flesh palm feeling its jagged ridges and sharp edges.
"You're still leaving quite a bit up to chance," Becca reminded him.
Shrugging, Bucky thought back his scrying and the ever so minor danger he'd seen of poisoning by well-meaning, smoothie making robots. "Fairly sure."
"Well," she sipped at her coffee and waved a permissive hand back toward the kitchen. "You know where the junk drawer is. You can find the superglue in there."
"Thanks." Bucky walked over as directed and yanked the stiff catch-all drawer open.
"Don't get caught!" his sister yelled over her shoulder as she headed to her room to finally dress for the day.
"I'll try not to," Bucky called back wryly, snatching a bent up, half squeezed tube of glue.
Looking at the rubbed out "kra- gl-e" on the wrinkled tube, Bucky hoped his plan really did work. He wasn't looking forward to making the potion all over again if it failed. It really was a pain in the ass to find a drug dealer selling the good stuff in this neighborhood.
TBC…