Summary: More adventures ensue and some theories are tested.
Notes: Guys. Life is insane. Seriously. I have to apologize-again. I have no excuse, really, other than work being a total brute. We're implementing some changes and the public reaction has been so-so, and being one of a few to answer phones has made it a little on the crazy side, so much so that I get home, stare at the TV, then go to bed. Your comments on the last chapter were amazing. And with all this going on, I meant to reply to each of you personally. You know how it is. You check your email at your desk, smile, and figure that it's probably best you reply later, at home. Then something crops up. You think of it when you're half asleep. Tomorrow, then, first thing. Then the next day, and onward, until here we are, over a month later, and I feel like an ass. Thank you. For every comment and review. They are all wonderful, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten back sooner. Again. I adore that there are at least a handful of you out there that actually enjoy my fangirl ramblings, and seriously, if you have ideas or just want to chat, hit me up. I'd love to do a oneshot series with these two lovebirds. But. Rare weekend to myself, I am finally posting and getting back to you all. We're almost there, guys, the ending is in sight and I'm really hoping to narrow down the window between postings now, because I've got the finishing ideas in my head, I just need to type them all out, and in the correct order. That, and I've got an awesome idea for a Halloween fic I'd like to try, and then maybe add a couple little editions to my Dog and His Detective series. Anyway. This one is low on action and high on angst, I hope you're all okay with that. Oh, and a tiny bit of smut in this one, too, fair warning, I know you all HATE that. Wink. Let me know how you all like. I love you all! Chapter title taken from the song by Paramore, it works perfectly, go give it a listen. And I, unfortunately, do not own Marvel.
((()))
Guilt flickered somewhere in Tony's stomach, but he slapped it harshly back down again as he threw the switch in the cockpit, scowling at the instrument panel.
"We're reading your position, Stark," came Maria Hill's voice over the com from back home.
Tony ignored her.
Not speaking, Steve came in with the luggage, Bucky's blue and black carryon and Darcy's rolling white leather case clacking along behind him up the ramp.
Tony got up, met him at the back and took the handle of Darcy's bag out of Steve's grip, carefully sliding it shut and lifting it into the compartment.
"Tony…" Steve started, then stopped. This had been going on for the past nearly two weeks. They'd spent every effort trying to strip the beach house of all evidence there'd been a struggle, packing up things, taking samples, salvaging any furniture that wasn't somehow completely ruined, taking pictures, trying to piece together what had happened with the information Natasha had already provided. She hadn't made further contact, and Steve's calls had gone unanswered. Tony quietly obsessed over security footage, anything to try and track his old nemesis.
And he retreated into himself little by little with each passing day.
Now he was silent, his face a stony mask.
For a long moment, Steve stood there, feeling a bit lost, worry for Darcy and Bucky—but primarily Darcy—warring in his gut with his homesickness for Natasha.
He hated this, he hated everything about it.
They were all supposed to be a team. Things like this weren't supposed to happen. They were all supposed to be safe all the time, armored specifically for fighting things like this, interwoven with each other, getting along seamlessly.
But that wasn't human nature. He knew that. Steve was a lot of things, but naïve wasn't really one of them, despite the air he knew gave off.
It certainly wasn't the nature of people like these, people with extraordinary talent and ability, people who'd come up with chips on their shoulders and complexes like monoliths.
Maybe he was naïve.
Sighing, he stowed Bucky's things in the compartment beside Darcy's and shut the cabinet.
"Finished the hard sweep," Clint Barton spoke from behind him, halfway up the ramp, tapping away at a tablet in his hand and frowning. Sam came up behind him, frowning in concentration.
Steve nodded. Even Clint and Sam had come out for this, right away, practically volunteered, only serving to confirm to Steve that they each had a soft spot for Darcy, at the very least. You could never be sure of things with Clint; that was how he was: quietly understanding, silently supportive. If anyone was in a position to understand someone as complicated as Bucky had become, after all, it was Clint Barton.
He stood there, all in his black tactical gear, gun strapped into his thigh holster, gesturing to another agent on the ground. "No, batten down the hatches, no one's getting in here. It's been days of this, this is our final run." The agent nodded. Clint snapped his fingers, stopping him before he began away. "And make sure you make contact with the staff. Two women—names are in the dossier—make sure they know not to come around, but make sure you confirm all threats have been neutralized. FYI, you might find 'em in a state. Sam, could you help him out with that?
Sam nodded and silently followed the agent, gesturing to him.
Clint turned back to study Tony, who was busily stowing something else, his back to them. "Finished with the basics, Stark. You want us to do one more sweep for wetworks?"
"Is that really necessary?"
Everyone paused, eyes snapping to the speaker on the control panel, where Hill's voice came through, the line still open.
Tony, eyes sliding shut in just the barest sign of pressure, clenched his jaw, and moved on. "Yeah, Barton. The carpet in particular. One more time."
Clint nodded. "Got it."
"I mean, I just wonder if we're putting all our resources on this," Hill continued, oblivious as usual. "Surely the Winter Soldier doesn't take an entire tac team—"
"Already walking away, Hill," Clint called, his voice just a little bit too hard to be called friendly. "You're breaking up."
A pause.
Steve tried again. "Tony—"
"I'm just saying, we have an entire file on a terrorist in Cuba that we really should look into," Hill began again. "There's evidence he may have some Chitauri technolo—"
Patience snapping, Tony went over to the cockpit silently, and slapped his palm down on the disconnect button, severing contact with home base. "Unbelievable," he muttered under his breath, leaning there for a moment, head bowed.
Third time was a charm.
"Tony…I'm sorry," Steve muttered, again. He'd lost count how many times he'd said it. "Again."
There was silence for a long moment.
"I know," Tony murmured, surprisingly vulnerable sounding. "I know, Rogers."
"I—"
"You were just doing your thing, your…greater good thing…And your wife is out there, for Christ's sake. I know, alright? I get it. I'm over it."
Awkward at this speech and unsure how to process it, Steve just blinked and nodded.
"We should've had contact by now," Stark said, looking up at him, finally making eye contact. "Shouldn't we have had contact by now?"
Steve sighed, pulling a hand through his hair and down his face tiredly. He hadn't slept in—God, how long had it been since he'd slept? Too long, if Tony's face was any indication. The inventor's eyes were red, his pallor pale and haggard, his normally meticulously trimmed goatee in need of a shave. "You know how Bucky is. He knows how to lay low. He knows how to disappear, he's a—"
"Ghost, yeah, I know," Tony snapped. "He's a fucking poltergeist." He slumped, boneless, down into the pilot's chair. "Aldrich Killian. You want a ghost, there you go."
Steve followed him and threw himself into the co-pilot's seat. "Yeah. I know."
Tony shook his head. "This is my fault."
Steve smirked. "Don't start that. Darcy hears you, she'll cream you in the face. She's constantly threatening to sock Buck and I in the head, with our so-called, 'Masochistic tendencies toward self-loathing'."
Tony snorted, but it was empty and humorless. "This was my idea, Rogers. They had it all worked out and I butted in, like I usually do, blundering around—"
"Tony, they would've tracked them down no matter where they went. I'm sure there was some sort of intel getting passed around. They just had to wait for their in. They would've had it either way."
"And Short Stack's still not a hundred percent—"
"She's tough. You know that."
"But I killed Killian, Rogers! Pep and I—he was supposed to stay dead!" he snapped. "That was my fault, too—I was a colossal asshole to the guy and it drove him crazy and now here we are! He's not dead and he's turning his crazy on my girl!" He slammed his fist against the dash and the screen flickered.
Steve sighed. "…This is hitting you twice as hard because you didn't expect it," he murmured. "That's what's going on here, isn't it?"
Tony stared at him, face open.
"You never expected her, did you? You never expected her to…do this to you?"
Melting under the pressure, Tony slumped over, elbows on knees and face in his hands. "God damn it, Rogers."
Watching him sadly, Steve didn't know what else to say. There was nothing else to say. So he set his hand on the inventor's shoulder. "Yeah. I know, Tony. I know."
((()))
"God damn it, Barnes…"
"Just try and lie still…"
Darcy hissed in pain, squirming under just the lightest touch of Bucky's human hand. "Mmm…" she hummed, her brows drawn together in discomfort.
"What did you say it looked like?" he asked, his fingers feathering over the nasty red hive-like pattern on her belly, like little caterpillars of electrical current had burrowed through her skin and then exited like lightning strikes in various places.
She bit her lip against the sharply aching sensation. "Like a cop's nightstick. It was all black."
He nodded. Definitely a copy of one of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team's fun little toys. Frowning as he leaned over her, he studied the wound. The edges were open and weeping, the skin beneath raw, angry, and pink. It looked vaguely like it wasn't finished just yet. He clucked his tongue. "Can you sit up?"
She held out her hands, wincing.
He took them and hauled her up.
She flinched against the movement, but managed it.
He didn't ask her to twist, but instead went around to the head of the bed and knelt behind her, studying the similar wound along her skin, but bit off the gasp before it could escape.
It was clear that the electrified prod hadn't been applied to her back for as long a time as it had her belly, but it was also clear that it hadn't been necessary.
The wound was similar, yes, red and raw.
But beneath her skin, her veins were dark, a purple blue-black spider web, slowly branching all along her torso as he watched. Her spine was visible through her skin, and when he went around her again, he found her front was rapidly following suit, the pattern spreading upward from her scar, outlining her ribcage and her sternum, the mechanisms pulsing with each thrum of her heart. Icy fear lancing through him, he swallowed and managed to push his voice smooth and unconcerned as he went around her again to hide his face. "How do you feel?"
"Awful," she croaked, leaning on one arm.
Obviously, Killian had wielded his toy in order to facilitate whatever change was going on in her, perhaps to speed it along under the assumption that sometimes the process needed help or didn't work.
Clearly, something was working in her. Was the serum fighting off the Extremis, or vice-versa? Or were they—he swallowed—finding a way to work together?
He pulled a hand down his face, his heart racing, that old feeling returning. He'd felt it so many times before, always staring Pierce in the face, or his handlers before him, always in response to some barked order in Russian, or the sound of that machine…Blind panic. Icy fear, the sort of fear that paralyzed you. Utter and complete helplessness, rapidly followed by despairing acceptance.
"You're too quiet, Jamie," came her soft voice then, a little calmer. "What's the damage?"
He cringed. Lie, and she would know; she'd hear it in his voice. The tells he'd worked so hard to avoid shown through with her and her only. "Um…I'm not…sure."
With effort, she stood, waving off his offer of help and hobbled weakly into the bathroom of their motel room. This one was the nicest and cleanest one yet. It had taken him only a few minutes to reach the road earlier, Darcy unconscious in his arms. The walk back down the highway to the exit point, and the roundabout hadn't taken particularly long either, though he'd gotten a few strange looks and one offer of help that he'd calmly rebuffed, his gun hand twitching toward his weapon all the while.
Finally, a truck stop type of place had appeared over the hill and he'd had a devil of a time getting the clerk in the office to calm down when he lied that his wife had merely fallen ill and that an ambulance was the last thing they needed. He just considered himself lucky no one had questioned the aspect of whether or not she was really his wife.
She'd woken not long after in a haze of confusion and pain and it had taken her a good half hour to calm down enough for him to peel off her t-shirt and get a good look at the damage.
She gasped now as she stared at her reflection, her fingers tracing the air over the wound shakily. "What the…fuck…?"
Bucky followed her in, eyeing her swaying form with trepidation.
But she only continued to stare, wide-eyed, arms folded to hold up the hem of her beach t-shirt, her shorts low on her flared hips. When she turned to take in her back, she let out a squawk of surprise and her mouth dropped open. "All this from a cattle prod?!"
He sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I…don't think that was the intention."
Her face contorted with nervous terror. "I don't wanna be a creepy, fire briquette super soldier, Jamie. I don't wanna end up on Tony's table, Jamie, I know how hard that was for Pepper, Jamie! I DON'T WANNA BLOW UP ALL OVER THE SIDE OF SOME BUILDING AND LEAVE A FUCKING NUCLEAR SHADOW THERE!" Her voice rose higher and higher before breaking entirely.
He raised his hands toward her in an empty effort to calm her. "I—I know. I know, Darcy. I know."
Breathless, she turned back to the mirror to stare at herself in the glass, her eyes wide. "What the fuck is happening to me?!"
He let out a long, shaking breath, but when he spoke, his voice wobbled rebelliously. "I…I don't know, Darce." He cleared his throat and swallowed it down.
She spun to look at him, her eyes wide as saucers, and he knew she could see the anguish there that he couldn't manage to stuff out of sight.
"I don't know."
They stood there, facing each other, Darcy's eyes round and fearful as she stared up into his anxious face. She always talked about how he always seemed to know what to say. He always argued that most of the time he felt like he was feeling his way along in the dark, blindly tracing walls with his fingertips. This time, it couldn't have been truer. He didn't have any words for this. And what was worse, he couldn't even offer her physical comfort, couldn't even wrap her in his arms and offer warmth and stability, when the mere act of brushing her skin caused her such severe pain. He stuffed his hands in his pockets for something to do with them. So he said the only thing that came to mind. "…I…I'm…" He struggled. "I'm…I'm here, Darcy. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
Her eyes lingered on his for a long moment, like she'd heard it before and wasn't sure she believed him.
And his heart broke. "I would never have given you a vow I had no intention of keeping. I'm here."
"Don't leave me," she whispered, so quietly, her hushed words would never have been audible to a normal person, her face a mask of fear and shock.
So he slid closer to her and leaned forward to tip his forehead into hers. "I won't," he whispered. "I won't."
((()))
Changes followed after that. Real changes.
They followed rapidly, like a line of dominoes, neatly set up and stacked beside each other in a neat, cute little spiral pattern, twisting tighter and tighter inward until there was nowhere left to tip.
The first few nights she woke from night terrors so vivid it took Bucky an hour to calm her. The pain in her body ratcheted up, up, up, until she was crying from the intensity of it, and it happened at strange, incomprehensible intervals, and at no warning whatsoever, dropping off to nothing just as quickly.
The dark shadows of her veins faded to nothing and her skin grew entirely opaque once more, but the pain lingered like a rash, her skin tight and hot, a mere brush of fingertips an awful caress of agony.
Her temperature fluctuated, too much to be considered normal, and she'd shiver in the motel room bath, even with the water scalding hot. Bucky found her there one afternoon after going out for supplies and immediately dragged her out, despite her protests, for fear of her causing permanent damage. A quick, hot shower for him was one thing, but for her to cook herself in it was another. Conversely, she'd have to throw all her covers off in the middle of the night, covered in slick sweat and desperate for him to pin her down.
He gently—painfully—refused.
He fretted that something was legitimately wrong with her, that this was something else entirely and he began pondering how he could steal her into an ER, terrified he was assuming the wrong thing.
But when she started breaking things accidentally, he knew.
He felt it, in his bones.
The remote, when she threw it at him in a moment of relaxed flirtation, shattered as it bounced off his back much too hard and hit the floor.
The mirrored bathroom medicine cabinet on the wall came off one hinge when she pulled it open.
She struggled against him during a nightmare one night and left a bruise—very shallow and pale—but a bruise nonetheless.
This went on for nearly a week, when—just as Bucky was putting together plans for getting them back on the road—they inexplicably stopped altogether.
She yanked on the bathroom doorknob and nothing happened.
She punched him in the shoulder and, though it felt much more solid than it ever had before, it left no bruise under his skin. Her body was visibly tighter than it had been this time, more so than after her initial reaction to the HYDRA serum. Her belly firmed, her hips sloughed off the outer layer of curves, her thighs weren't as thick as before. She was still his vintage pinup girl, but slightly more on the 'appeared capable of doing damage' side than before.
The pain washed away, as though down the drain during a shower.
The temperature flashes eased and disappeared.
She stared at herself in the mirror, frowning as he packed behind her, taking stock of all the small things they'd left lying about and neatly arranging them back in the small duffel he'd used to replace the backpack, which had come out of their backwoods adventure a little worse for wear.
"What the actual fuck?" she scolded at her reflection. "I mean, seriously—how is this my life?"
Bucky snorted.
"Jesus Christ, you know something's wonky when the fact that I married a super soldier assassin from World War fucking Two is the least strange thing that's happened in the past six months."
"Not as wonky as the fact that you don't regret it," he muttered under his breath.
But she heard him, and turned to narrow her eyes at him. "What was that, Jamie dear?"
He shrugged, widening his eyes innocently. "Oh, nothing."
She fixed him with a sharp look. "That's what I thought." She sighed. "Leaving again?"
He nodded, turning to sit down on the end of the bed, letting it bounce underneath his momentum. "We can't stop. We've already lingered too long here. How you feel?"
She meandered across the room, turning her back on the mirror. "Different."
He nodded. "Different, how, exactly?"
She scrunched up her eyebrows. "I'm…not su—"
"This is the hard part, yeah," he interrupted her, nodding again. "Try and put it to words."
She chewed on her lip, reaching him and crawling into his lap, straddling him on the end of the bed and wrapping her arms around his neck. "Unbreakable."
He nodded. "And?"
"Strong and fast. Powerful."
"Anything else?"
She kissed him, hard, pressing herself as tightly as she could against him, delving into his mouth with her tongue, daring him.
"Mm…" he hummed, his arms tightening around her, his hands sliding up her back, then running back down again.
She broke away to take a breath. "You're not gonna argue?"
His eyes were dark, his pupils blown, devouring his blue irises completely as he stretched up to kiss her again. "Hm-mm."
She smiled against his mouth, slanting her lips across his at such a sharp angle his scruff caught her teeth.
He slid those hands down, and down again, still further until they were wrapped around her ass, and he pressed her into him, urging her to grind down against him.
A low moan vibrated in her throat, a pleased purr as she slid her hands down his chest, searching out the hem of his t-shirt.
His fingers slid beneath the bottom of hers and up her back, catching up softly on her scars. As he traced the new edges of it, a rapid, hot sensation shattered through her, outward from her core, tightening everything so severely she cried out, breaking away from his mouth.
He pulled back, looking at her with those dark eyes. "What?"
But she only shook her head. "Nothing." She pressed more firmly against him, pushing on his chest, pulling his t-shirt over his head as he fell back on the bed, smiling.
Laughing, they clawed the covers on the bed back again and slipped off what remained of their clothing.
"We got this part of the honeymoon right, at least," he murmured as they tangled together, her thighs draped over his hips.
She sighed, trailing a path of kisses along his shoulder. "Nearly right."
He cocked his head. "What do you mean?"
She looked down at him with impatient hunger as she slid to straddle his hips. "Don't be so gentle with me this time," she whispered.
He frowned, clearly confused. "Darcy…" The callused pads of his human right hand trailed along the scarring tissue at her back again.
She gasped, biting her lip.
He zeroed in on her reaction and a brow slowly rose as he put the pieces together. "Ah. Another little side effect, hm?"
Making a noise of annoyance, she slid herself down around him, her body arching stiffly as he filled her.
He smiled, so relaxed, in no rush.
But she wanted a rush; she wanted a mad dash; she wanted him to forget himself for just a few stolen moments and feel the heady pressure of blind need. She struck a palm to his chest. "I'm serious. I promise I'll cry foul if it's too much. I wanna test the edges of this…thing…" She knew it was a weak argument.
But he didn't laugh. He just frowned at her, the wheels in his head turning, always turning, they never stopped turning, the poor bastard.
He sat up, calmly and deliberately, moving slowly. Very gently, he moved her off of him entirely, lifting her off his lap. He spent a long, long moment just looking at her with those dark, hungry eyes. The message in them hadn't changed. Finally he reached out to gather the hair off her shoulders and neck and wrapped the tail around his hand before letting it drop over her shoulder and sweep in a curtain down her back.
And he kissed her.
It wasn't a gentle kiss; it spoke volumes as to what he'd been holding tight in the reins.
She gasped, but the action was stifled against his mouth.
And just like that, she was flipped beneath him, barely any warning before he slid smoothly along her calf, between her legs and into her in one fluid motion, nothing violent, but not particularly easy either.
She gave a sound of surprise that was somewhere between a gasp and a shout, but that was lost, too, as he kissed her again.
She wasn't really sure what she'd been expecting, but whatever it was, this was more—much more.
He was intense.
Much more intense than she'd ever known him to be in bed before, but in a good way, a deep sort of desperate way, his affection perfectly telegraphed in every move he made.
He wasn't particularly gentle; nor was he violently rough. He certainly didn't wait for her to catch up, and his hips kept time with her heartbeat, slowly easing into the rapid rhythm of his until they were breathing the same breath at the same junction.
One problem: the angle was wrong. Totally wrong.
She gripped his arms, her right slip sliding down the vibranium, which had warmed against her skin. She still couldn't figure how it kept such a separate temperature from the rest of him if it was so connected as to obey the commands of his nerves, but that hardly mattered now.
The whole event lasted much longer than she expected it to, although looking back, should she have been surprised, sleeping with a super solider who was designed to go, go, go like the fucking Energizer Bunny?
"Jamie," she panted, unable to keep from clawing at his back.
He responded with a kiss, his human hand wrapping tightly around the back of her knee and drawing it more tightly up, over his hip, as if he knew. He probably did.
She gasped, the sound echoing in the room as the angle lit her up like a flare.
He murmured something low, something not in English, his mouth trailing a deliberate line along her shoulder and up her throat, just almost…
She hummed a low moan as his lips closed over her pulse and sucked, sharpening the tightness in her core so hard that it became painful.
He growled at this apparently preferred response and slowed his rhythm just barely, drawing it out, his hand sliding up to clasp her hip tight—it would've been too tight had she not just been shot up with some unknowable solution that had strengthened her anatomy.
She mewled against his mouth as he moved to kiss her, the angle turning until he was settled right there, right there, right where she needed him, and a few places that she was pretty sure hadn't ever been found before, and oh God, don't move, that's the spot, right there, right fucking there—
She gasped.
So did he.
A desperate cry escaped her throat at the intensity of the orgasm, the tightness uncoiling so slowly she thought for a second she might scream.
He positively snarled against her throat, increasing the pounding rhythm of his hips, once, twice, three times—
He tensed.
She knew she looked like the awful cover of some romance novel, but the arcing of her back and her neck along the pillow was something involuntary that she couldn't control.
The world shrank down to a fine point, a vacuum seal surrounding only them, right there, in a little pocket world that existed only for him, and her, and his body, and this feeling, this desperate something that was so full of sensation it was impossible to name, some intersection of lust and love and need and want, and trust and promise—
"Oh, fuck," she gasped, consciously removing her nails from his shoulder blades. "Jesus Christ."
He kissed a trail down her throat and gently extricated himself, sliding down her body until he was right where he'd been the last time they'd managed an interlude in an actual bed. He was breathing harder than she'd ever heard him breathe before, the super soldier capable of running circles around most people, and he pressed his face against the dewy skin of her belly, his mouth threateningly close to that sensitive new scar tissue. "Are you alright?" he rasped, his voice hoarse.
She snorted, running her fingers through her hair and combing the damp strands off her shoulders and away. "Alright? You felt all that, right?"
He smiled. It was a tired smile, which was something he didn't often look: tired. He was designed not to get tired, specifically. It always made her feel strangely sad when he finally succumbed to his exhaustion.
The ruins of his mind and his memory.
She reached out to run her fingers over his features. "That the best you got, Soldier Boy?"
He surprised her and laughed, a brow chinking up. "Give me five and we'll find out."
((()))
Dreams came to her. No, not dreams…
"So, Stark, if you want to, uh, have that part ready for tomorrow, that would be awesome," Jane said, leafing through design sketches in the middle of the room. "Since you stole my clerk and all," she teased, winking at Darcy.
She stared up from her work station. "Hey! I stopped by just this morning! I asked if you needed me to handle anything from in here, remember?!"
Jane grinned, setting the papers down on Tony's desk. "I'm joking, Darcy."
"Yeah, if you wanna blame anybody for Grand Theft, he's sitting right here," Tony piped up, clicking his mouse and adjusting the 3-D view of the design he was working on. "This what you had in mind?"
Jane went around the inventor's desk and leaned over his shoulder. "Yeah. Oh, wow, that's perfect!"
Tony grinned. "Yeah, imagine all the time you wasted, hot gluing all your little doodads together all those years."
Jane rolled her eyes. "I didn't hot glue them." She ambled across the room and set a few more sheets of paper on the corner of her former intern's desk. "Would you be able to find time to run some of these simulations for me and just print off the numbers at some point today?"
"Hey!" Stark grunted, continuing the game. "That's my Administrative Specialist and she makes way more than some Clerk Typist, so take your damn dirty paws off her!"
Darcy snorted. "Enough with the Planet of the Apes references! I can probably squeeze them in, sure."
Jane nodded. "That would be awesome. Ian was surprisingly useful when he was arou…" She drifted off, her expression going blank on Darcy's workspace.
Darcy blinked, watching her with her eyebrows raised. "What?"
Tony clucked his tongue. "Here we go."
Jane blinked.
Darcy began sifting through the paperwork on her desk. "What? Did you mess up an equation or something? You know I can't read this shit, it looks like Ancient Egyptian Coptic to me—"
"What's on your hand?"
Darcy paused, still blinking, only halfway through the Starbucks Doubleshot she'd grabbed that morning, and one for Tony, on her brisk walk to the corner coffee house, hanging onto Bucky's offered elbow, and tucking her cold hand against his warmth. "What do you mean?"
"Here we go-o," Tony repeated, sing-song. It didn't sound as cheerful as a sing-song usually did.
"Is that, um…a ring?"
Now Darcy froze, heart sprinting ahead in her chest, and curled the fingers of her left hand against her palm, far, far too late, and much too uselessly. The engagement ring on her finger suddenly felt just as heavy as three carats ought to.
Jane's mouth tightened and she got her voice under her this time. "Darcy, is that a ring on your hand?"
For a long moment there was icy silence, only broken by the soft sound of the 3-D printer working in the corner, behind its glass case. Darcy's cheeks flared, then paled, her expression sifting first through guilt, then embarrassment, then finally settling on calm, if a little, tiny bit defiant. Her voice came out even and natural. "Yes."
"Good girl," Tony quietly said from his desk.
Darcy looked over at him. "The game's up."
He nodded very sharply, not looking up from his monitor, but his glasses didn't hide the sympathy in his eyes. "It most certainly is, Short Stack."
Jane scoffed, turning to give him a haughty glance. "You've got to be kidding me."
Darcy reached up to run a hand tiredly down her face and grabbed her coffee with the other. "No, Jane. No one is kidding. Now, I've got a shit ton of work to do, and Tony's only gonna do more today. So do you mind?"
Jane stared, eyes wide. "Mind?! Of course I mind! Darcy, of course I mind, are you kidding me right no—"
"You already said that," Stark spoke up, clearly taking a side in the argument.
Jane stared at them both separately for a moment, stricken silent. "I don't believe this," she finally said, what seemed like mostly to herself.
"Don't believe what—that someone might love your weird intern?"
"Nothing that hard to believe, what with your advanced degree, there, Foster," Tony backed her up.
Jane ignored him. "You're engaged?"
Darcy took a deep, deep breath. "That's usually what a ring signifies when it's placed on the left ring finger—they call it the Ring Finger, for fuck's sake."
"To Bucky? You're engaged to Bucky?"
"Well, I certainly didn't have mind-blowing sex with Thor last night," Darcy replied flippantly.
Jane flinched.
Tony chuckled from across the room.
For another moment, Jane opened and closed her mouth once, twice, three times.
Darcy sighed. "Why don't you just say what you wanna say so then I can nod, like I usually do, and say something snarky in reply, and then you can leave and we can all get on with this long-ass morning and I can get my work done in as much peace and quiet as Stark will let me have?" she suggested.
"Probably won't be much. I'm stripping Drone 13 again," Tony piped up.
Darcy slumped. "Not again! God, that thing is shit. Did you use recycled parts on that one or what?"
Tony shrugged. "There are always ghosts in the machine," he snickered.
Darcy grinned. "Should watch that tonight! I, Robot, our place—you bringing the pizza?!"
Jane flapped her arms. "Are we seriously all going to pretend this conversation isn't happening right now?" she snapped.
"There is no conversation to have, Jane-y. Your twenty-eight-year-old former intern said 'yes' to her boyfriend's proposal last night and then slept really, really well—not that this coffee is helping with this awful morning…"
Jane sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Bucky proposed."
Darcy rolled her eyes. "Again—yes. On both knees, it was seriously romantic, and you know I hate that shit."
"Bucky proposed and you accepted. Marriage? That was explicitly stated?"
Tony cocked his head. "Did it need to be? I feel like that's implied…?"
"You're going to marry him? You're going to marry a former Soviet assassin who's probably still brainwashed on some level and is almost certainly dangerous to you on many others and capable of killing you with one hand, the other tied behind his back? You're marrying him?"
Darcy leaned forward and let her forehead hit the cool counter of her steel desk. "Yes, Jane. Yes to it all. So, we've established that there will be a wedding taking place sometime in the future. Are we moving on yet?"
Jane shrugged. "I just can't believe you'd be that stupid. I guess I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it."
"We never would've guessed," Tony drawled.
"If you keep calling me stupid we're gonna have a problem. I did not work my ass off for a Master's in Poli-Sci so you could call me stupid. Also, later, when Jamie finally gets outta me what's wrong and I have to tell him, you're gonna have a problem with him, too."
"Don't forget me," Tony interjected grimly. "She's already got a problem with me."
"Jamie has never once hurt me." She said it with as much hard insistence as she could manage. "Seriously—never. Not once. Not even that time a few months ago when I snuck up on him when he had a monster migraine and he grabbed me around the throat."
Jane squawked. "He grabbed you around the—"
"And immediately let me go! And apologized profusely all night and fretted that he'd done some sort of damage and just about broke up with me so it couldn't happen again and I told him to shut the fuck up!"
Jane visibly fumed.
"Never, Jane. Not once has he hurt me. I trust him with my life. If he was going to lose his shit and shank me, it was going to happen the first few nights we spent together—and it was certainly, logically going to happen during sex, I mean, just think about it—and not only did I survive with all my limbs intact, but if it'll shut you up, I'll tell you that I had the best orgasm I have ever had in my entire life on top of it! So can we PLEASE move on?!"
Jane pounced. "So that's what this is about? The danger? The sex?"
Groaning again, Darcy let her head thunk back down on her desk. "Ugh, I give up."
"You're two steps from being kicked outta my lab, Foster," Tony threatened, his voice dipping a shade lower than he usually used.
"I just don't understand the appeal here for you. Is it about the rebellion?"
Darcy snorted. "What am I—sixteen?"
"Then what?"
"What about this is so hard, Jane-y? Seriously. This happened organically, just like any other relationship on the face of the fucking earth. I said 'hi'. He said 'stay away from me, I'll only hurt you'. I told him that was a load of crap. He laughed. I laughed. We had a conversation. Then we had another conversation. I was the only conversation he got for a while, which is all sorts of fucked up, but we'll shelve that for later."
Jane sighed.
"I flirted. He resisted. I flirted harder. He folded and asked me out. We went out. Then we went out again. Then we were chased across Manhattan on New Year's Eve by Russian hitmen. Then I moved in. Then he proposed. Pretty straightforward."
"Except for the fact that he's still a Soviet assassin," Jane added.
Darcy stood, body posture tightening in a clear signal that she'd had enough. "Jane. I'm marrying him. Get that through your thick astrophysicist head, the easy way or the hard way, it doesn't matter to me. If you're gonna go all Jacob Black on me, you should know that the answer is still the same: if you make me choose, it'll be him. Any more questions?"
Jane squared off, crossing her arms over her chest. "Yeah, just one. Who are you leaving your things to in your will?"
Darcy crossed the room, widened the door to the lab and glared. "Fuck. You."
Jane stared, face open in shock.
"Now get out."
The memory folded in on itself in the deep dark of the room, and Darcy came to just enough to feel Jamie shifting down the bed, his head landing on her belly, his soft hair soothing a path across her hip, and his arms sliding around her narrow waist.
Then she was pulled back under into another remnant…
"I'm at your door," Natasha's voice spoke into Darcy's Starkphone.
Darcy, laughing, crossed to the door to their suite and pulled it open, revealing the Black Widow there in the hallway, in black leggings, a Def Leppard t-shirt, a black leather Ike jacket, ankle boots, and her own phone pressed to her ear.
Grinning, they both hung up at the same time and Natasha came all the way in.
Darcy shut the door behind her. "The vodka is still in the freezer if you wanna get started."
Natasha waved a hand. "We've got time. Right?"
"Jamie's downstairs. Clint and Sam wanted some extra sparring time and he's the only other unbreakable partner they can share if Steve's not around."
Natasha smirked. "Yeah, he and Hill shouldn't be long. They just wanted to check the lead on some S.T.R.I.K.E. team stragglers. They got some new intel out of Rumlow last week."
Darcy nodded. "I heard scuttlebutt, yeah."
Natasha threw herself down on the couch and slid off her boots. "Well? Let me see the damage."
Blushing, Darcy sat down next to her and held out her left hand.
Natasha took it up in both of hers and held it up, studying it as it caught the light from the sunset blazing in the floor to ceiling windows. The diamond sparkled like it was part of a jewelry commercial. She whistled low. "Steve would say, 'he done good'."
Darcy snorted. "Jane thought it looked ridiculous."
Natasha gave her a wry look. "Foster would think so."
Darcy took her hand back, settling into the couch gingerly.
Natasha narrowed her eyes and studied her. "Foster. Something's bothering you. You have it out again?"
Darcy sighed, getting up again restlessly to cross to the kitchen. "Of course. She came to the lab this morning to bug Tony, but no matter how he tried to keep her distracted, she still noticed it. Flipped her fucking lid." She pulled open the fridge and selected a pink moscato.
"You think this is just jealousy?"
Darcy sighed and shook her head as she pulled out a stem-less wine glass and filled it halfway. "You mean with Thor being Thor?"
Natasha got up and followed her, filling another glass before putting the bottle away for her. "Well, yeah. I mean, Thor isn't about to propose something as serious as marriage, is he?"
Darcy shrugged. "Odin hates mortals. Thinks we're sheep, apparently. Or goats—whatever. Either way, Thor's gotta go home at some point, and I doubt he'd be allowed to take Jane with him a second time."
"Ergo…" Natasha nodded and went back to the couch.
Darcy huffed. "I dunno, Nat. This seems different—almost like it's personal."
Natasha shrugged. "Has Bucky ever been—"
Darcy snorted. "You know him. Unless things are serious shit, his bark is way worse than his bite."
Natasha smirked. "Yeah, and he likes to wield that bark if someone pisses him off enough."
"But that's just it—he's so tired, he's almost mellow. He's stupid quiet, it takes a shit ton to piss him off that much."
Natasha sighed. "So. Where does that leave us?"
Darcy stretched out on the couch, balancing her glass on her belly and tucking her head against the corner of the arm rest. "Fuck all if I know. Jamie would tell me not to worry about it. He doesn't like me fighting his battles for him, talks like he's okay with people treating him like a monster."
Natasha sipped from her glass. "Oh, this is good."
"Right?"
"You think he's feeding you a line?"
Darcy sighed again. "…No. For being…him…he's shit at lying to me, and he's usually brutally honest. He seems…genuinely okay with people disliking or distrusting him. Says he can't blame them or guarantee that he wouldn't do the same if things were switched around."
"Well. He's had a lot of therapy."
Darcy snorted, once, then twice. "Maybe I need the therapy."
Natasha chuckled. "Yeah, super soldiers will do that to a girl."
"It's weird. She went from weird scientist, to friend, to mother, like, in the space of two years. She was subtle at first. Then she was less subtle. Then she just exploded on me about it all with Bucky standing right there. Thor scolded her and everything, but she persists, like he's gonna shank me in my sleep! If he was gonna do that, the time for it is long past."
Natasha nodded. "I remember that, yeah. You ever have any doubts about that?"
"Not for a minute. He has never scared me, not once, nor has he ever hurt me, not even unintentionally."
A brow chinked up and the corner of the spy's mouth curled just so. "Not even during…?"
Darcy felt her cheeks warm. "Not even then." She couldn't stop her own smirk from appearing. "And I've told him that, you know, I won't break. He holds back. Sometimes I wish he wouldn't."
The Black Widow's smirk had become a full, wide grin. "Well. It is Valentine's Day, coming up. Maybe he just needs…a little incentive…?"
Darcy snorted again. "Oh, please. It's not like I can get him drunk, Tash."
She laughed. "Nah. If it makes you feel any better, if I want that, I have to chase it with Steve—and even then it's a fifty-fifty shot."
"I think he's a little terrified he'll, like…lose control of…the other guy. He's so sure he'll hurt me either way."
Natasha took a sip from her wine. "He might. Steve might. I've given up arguing. It just makes him anxious."
Darcy sighed. "If only I was as unbreakable as you."
Natasha snorted. "Probably still wouldn't change his mind. Although, apparently his mind has been changed on more than a few things lately."
Darcy blushed again, looking down at her hand. "Much to the consternation of a few people."
"Steve was shocked the other day when he told me what Bucky had said."
Darcy looked up, eyes sharp. "What do you mean—said what?"
Another sip of wine. "Just that he was thinking of asking you. Steve was beside himself about it."
"Why?"
She shrugged demurely. "Not sure. I don't think Bucky really talks to him that much yet. He said he mentioned it off the cuff and seemed a little cagey about it, but when Steve pressed him, it seemed serious."
The door beeped and opened to reveal the man in question.
"Speak of the devil…" Natasha said.
Bucky glanced up as he came in, shouldering his bag onto the floor just inside the door. "Interrupting girl talk?" He winked.
Darcy smiled. "Yeah. Get out."
He chuckled. "I will, actually. Stevie's back, wants to get a drink." He crossed into the apartment and bent over the back of the couch to kiss Darcy on the cheek. "Hey, babe."
"Hey." She blushed. "How'd Steve manage to corral you to a bar?"
He leaned on the back of the furniture. "He didn't. He went out for a six pack. I'm not going out now, it'll be packed with idiots."
Natasha snorted.
He smiled at her. "Natalia," he greeted as he turned for the kitchen.
"Yasha," she returned.
It was a little joking thing they did, calling each other by their Russian titles in oblique reference to their shared close call in Odessa—and DC—not to mention the country they had in common.
He pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge and proceeded to drink half of it in one go.
"They wear you out, there, Soldier Boy?" Darcy teased.
He laughed and winked again. "Yeah, dunno how I'm gonna make it upstairs. Might need help." But his expression narrowed as he looked at her, hard. "What's wrong?"
Darcy flinched and tried to hide behind a large gulp of wine.
A tiny little smirk appeared at the corner of Bucky's mouth. "Uh-huh. Right. Jane give you a hard time?" He jutted his chin toward the rock on her hand.
Darcy slumped, giving up. "It's impossible to lie to you."
He grinned. "Then we're even. Check your body language—it's a dead giveaway for someone like me."
She cocked her head. "I feel like there's a Loki joke in there somewhere—'There are no men like me'."
Natasha snorted again. "Guy needs to get laid."
"Don't let her get under your skin," Bucky said over them in a gently commanding tone. "It's not worth it and it won't work. And I don't want to come between you."
Natasha shrugged. "Too late."
"It's her problem, not yours," Darcy snapped at this. "I won't listen to her talk to me like a child and call you crazy."
But Bucky shrugged, easy and slightly bemused. "I am a little crazy."
Darcy rolled her eyes. "No, what you are, is a disturbed post-traumatic amnesiac," she insisted. "Huge difference."
Bucky snorted. "To her, there is no difference." He put the water bottle back in the fridge and went for his bag. "Darcy. How many times…? You don't need to defend me—there's startlingly little to defend."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Is that HYDRA I hear coming out of your mouth? Because it sounds like HYDRA."
He passed them, heading for the back hall. "I'm just trying to keep it in perspective. Don't let this drive a wedge between you and Jane. It is what it is." He disappeared down the hall.
Darcy glared at Natasha's bemused expression. "She's the one doing the wedging!" she shouted her rebuttal.
He laughed, the sound echoing as he came back down the hall, pulling on a fresh v-neck t-shirt. "Well, stand your ground, then."
"If she makes me choose, she won't like my answer, that's all I'm saying."
He frowned, but didn't argue what that statement really said about them. "Then I guess that's score one for convictions and true love, hm?" He stopped again at the back of the couch, pulling his phone out of his back pocket. He tapped it to check for messages and slid it back into his pocket.
Darcy sighed. "Yes. It is."
He winked again and leaned over to kiss her other cheek. "You haven't changed your mind about that, have ya?"
She glared, snatching her hand into her lap. "No. It's mine—too late, no backsies."
He winked. "Love you. Have fun. Stay outta trouble, don't get drunk. You told me to remind you of that, remember."
She nodded. "I do." She pulled a face. "And I do."
He chuckled as he moved for the door. "Carry on. As you were."
"Love you too!" she called half a beat too late.
The door shut.
Darcy sighed. "See what I mean?"
The dream faded into a sepia tone and merged with the early not-light that was slowly seeping into the motel room beneath the cheap curtains.
She shifted, frowning as consciousness spread slowly through her.
Bucky was stirring, his mouth running soft lines on her midriff before landing on the jutting bone of her left hip.
"Mm…" she groaned groggily, burying her fingers in his soft hair.
"Sorry," he whispered. "Didn't mean to wake you."
But it didn't matter. Somewhere in the haze of her dream and their position curled around each other, her blood was warm and pulsing in her veins and she shifted, opening herself to him. "You didn't…"
He slid up her body, his mouth landing on her sternum. "It's early."
She wound her arms around his neck, smiling sleepily at his obvious physical response to her invitation.
His mouth finally found hers and he slanted his lips across hers.
She laughed softly as they slipped together, easy and relaxed. "My favorite."
It was easy and slow, and they did something they didn't usually do—they talked. It was a pointless conversation, really, but he told her about the four days she'd been trapped and what he'd done out on the beach to try and get her back. He didn't press her to add anything from her side of the ordeal. She told him about the strange flashbacks and dreams that had plagued her during her torture and testing, that she'd heard him speaking to her once or twice. Something about that bothered him, even though she told him it had made it easier.
They tossed around plans for their continued trek across the States and discussed getting Tony a gift to try and soften what they knew would be his self-blame.
They took a shower and got further distracted, Darcy clenching her jaw shut to keep quiet as she braced herself on the slick shower tiles. If anything, she seemed even more sensitive now, after what seemed to be her further transformation. Everything was amplified and Bucky smiled, teasing her that he would take advantage of it while he could and she should too. She pointed out that the whole thing was ironic—they hadn't needed to improve on their physical chemistry to begin with. It had always been there, intense, and complete, some invisible thread pulling them together, always. How else could it all be explained? After all, she'd never had a lover before who so thoroughly satisfied her, again and again.
She dismissed it as he turned her around to start again, the two of them facing each other and his hand supporting the small of her back, as a direct result of love and a deep, warm trust.
Later, they laughed as the water ran cold, hurrying to rinse and dress.
And just like that, they were in a hot-wired Ford Mustang, swinging back out onto Route 66 with Bon Jovi on too loud to hear each other talk.
An hour later, she gestured toward a huge sign off the shoulder of the highway. "Ooh! Take this exit! Take this exit!"
He frowned, but flicked on the blinker. "Why?"
She was practically bouncing in the passenger seat. "Because this is supposed to be a fucking honeymoon, damn it, and we're taking a detour!"
((()))
"…Listen, I know, and I don't want to push, okay? Tony, I don't. But I just want to know if you're coming up for dinner."
Tony sighed, wincing and rubbing his eyes as he adjusted the phone against his ear. "Pep, I…"
"…Okay. It's okay."
He felt that old friend, guilt, nipping at his heels and glanced up at Steve, sitting in the corner of the lab, futzing with his own phone and frowning worriedly. "I—"
"Baby, I wasn't lying. It's okay. I get it. I understand. When you get like this, it's best to just let you do your thing. Go ahead. Let it swallow you up. It's the only thing that'll appease you right now. I'll be here to put you back together again later."
He rubbed at the back of his stiff neck. "I don't mean to—"
"Tony," Pepper repeated, stopping him again. "Really. I'm serious. It's okay. Work out the problem and then come up to bed, okay?"
Her voice was so soft and warm. He wanted to go up there right now and lie down in her arms and let the sound of it cocoon him, enfold him beneath her skin there, where he could be content.
He squeezed his eyes shut. "You're the best wife a guy like me could have, Ms. Potts."
Pepper laughed softly. "I know." And she disconnected the call.
He set the phone down on the steel lab table and stared at the screen. His chest felt hollowed out. "Goddamnit," he muttered.
"SHIT!"
Steve and Tony both jumped, lunging up out of their chairs with surprised glances at each other, and rushed through to the adjoining room.
Bruce was sitting at his lab table, staring down at the slide on his microscope tray with open shock, his mouth parted.
"Banner?" Steve asked warily as they hovered in the doorway.
"How the fuck did I miss that? I shouldn't have missed that, that's such an amateur mistake," Bruce was saying, what seemed like mostly to himself.
Tony was brave enough to approach, though it looked like Bruce was in no danger of Hulking out. "What's up, Brucie?"
"His blood type," he said weakly, only sparing them a glance before he went back to studying the slide on the viewing table.
"What?" Steve asked.
Bruce sighed, sitting back again. "I know why Darcy was having her episodes." He shook his head, looking ashamed. "So obvious."
Tony slapped him gently on the back. "Come on, man. Get it together, use your words."
Steve thought he heard just the barest hint of desperation in the inventor's voice.
Bruce stood, leaving the station clear. "What do you see, Tony?"
Giving the scientist a weird look, Tony sat down on the stool to get a good vantage point and peered into the oculus. "Looks like blood cells, Bruce. Why?"
"Anything else?"
Tony sighed, going back to the slide. "Looks like B-negative antigens. Again—why?"
Bruce sighed too, pulling a hand down his tired face. "That's Bucky's blood."
"And…?"
"Darcy is type A—A-positive, to be exact."
Tony and Steve both blinked at each other.
"Okay, can you translate?" Tony asked, an eyebrow chinking up. "I can recognize the basics, but I'm not that kinda scientist."
Steve nodded.
Bruce threw himself down into another chair, tugging his hands through his already mussed hair. "You guys don't understand. James Barnes was the first of his kind—the only, as it turns out, really."
Steve cocked his head. "The first super soldier?"
Bruce nodded. "The first of his kind, yes. Steve, you're completely different. You've got the only version of the original serum, and even though what Bucky was injected with ended up being nearly identical in formulation, the mode of use and the linkages and the bare-bones work completely differently. Yes, it adheres the same, yes, you're both enhanced, yes, you're nearly equal in strength, but where you are Patient Zero for Erskine, so Bucky was Patient Zero for Zola, and though the two of you are evenly matched, what followed after Bucky's initial transformation took an immediate left turn. Something about that serum allows for an extra state, a separate state if you will."
Steve nodded slowly. "You mean it has some element that makes its patients predisposed to—"
"Brainwashing, mind-control, mental manipulation, yes. Hence, the other soldiers he's told us about all apparently acted as though they had no moral set—they were reduced to a zero sum and they were a blank slate. All their learned behavior—morality, honesty, kindness—"
"The understanding that you shouldn't kill the person standing next to you—" Tony interjected.
Bruce gestured. "Yes. All those things were things that the serum pushed out of the way."
"So what makes Darcy different?" Steve posited.
Bruce shrugged. "I don't know. They've clearly been tweaking it over the years, and besides—it's a predisposition in the correct environment, not a catch-all side-effect. Getting stuck doesn't make you suddenly act like a machine."
"So what's all this got to do with Darcy's episodes?" Tony asked, finally, trying to move it along.
Bruce sighed again, leaning his elbows on the lab table. "I was getting desperate, I mean, major drawing at straws, guys. I remembered I still had some of his initial intake samples on ice, so I went and got one out of cold store and drew it up. I thought I'd break it down, start at the very beginning, that if I drilled all the way down to the bedrock, something might jump out at me. And I realized it's so obvious, I can't believe I missed it—it's really an undergrad mistake." He shook his head again, clucking his tongue.
Tony threw his hands in the air. "What, Bruce?! Out with it, already!"
He took a breath. "Bucky is B-negative. HYDRA's notes were wrong. Darcy is A-positive."
They all looked at each other.
"And?!" Steve insisted.
"So the only remaining samples of Zola's serum were derived from their only successful integration, Patient Zero: Bucky! That serum contained antigens from his blood."
For a moment, they all stared at each other.
Tony sat down hard again on the stool. "Huh," he finally said, face open in vaguely bewildered surprise.
Steve leaned on the counter and pulled a hand down his face. "Would someone elaborate, please, for the blockheaded soldier in the room?"
Tony frowned down at the offending slide on the microscope. "Darcy was exhibiting signs of a transfusion reaction and we all missed it."
"What's a transfusion reaction?"
Tony reached up and scratched at the back of his neck restlessly. "Well, you know how you're at the mercy of your blood type when it comes to transfusions, unless you're one of the universal groups?"
Steve nodded. "I have a working understanding of it, yeah. Type O, Type AB, I get it."
"If you're given the wrong Type, it can have serious ramifications."
Steve's face went dark and grave. "What type of ramifications?"
Bruce sighed again. "The type of ramifications that mean the only reason she's still alive is the serum in her blood."
Steve gave him a look. "I thought it was killing her?"
Tony let his head flop back against the chair. "That too."
Steve hitched his hip against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. "So the thing that's killing her is the same thing that's keeping her alive?"
Tony clucked his tongue. "Pretty much."
There was silence for a long few minutes.
Finally, Steve shifted his weight and said, "…Well, if things were that grave, Bucky would've found a way to be back by now."
Tony shrugged. "We don't know that—"
"We do," Steve interrupted, nodding.
Tony sighed. "Rogers, we don't know what kind of state either one of them is in—"
"Tony." Steve stuck out a hand, shutting it down. "I know how you feel about Darcy. But I know Buck. If things were that hopeless, he'd have moved heaven and earth to get her back here by now. I know Bucky. That's how he feels about Darcy. I know I would do the same for Natasha. If she was in that much danger, I'd kill anyone in my way. I know you'd do it for Pepper."
They spent a long moment looking at each other.
"So where does that put us?" Tony finally asked, turning to Bruce.
The doctor sighed. "Well, we have no way of knowing what happened to her in Hawaii. If Aldrich Killian is involved—"
"He may have developed an advancement in his own serum, right Tony?" Steve posited.
Tony pulled a hand down his face again. "Extremis was extremely volatile, it was unstable—that was the problem with it. When it worked, it was…" He got lost for a moment in the bar fight he'd had with that…woman. "It was formidable."
Steve took a seat in their little line. "So we know he was working with Lukin, though, right? He got in the back door, and I have to assume he hoped to utilize their version of Erskine's serum. Maybe he hoped to use it as a template? To merge the two?"
The thought dropped out of his mouth as casual speculation, but as soon as it did, everything stopped as they realized what he'd said.
They all stared at each other.
Steve blinked. "Well. What do we do?"
