Champagne. I need more champagne.
As if the staff had read Summer's mind, a tray of the bubbly stuff then sailed in front of her, and she snatched up a new glass just in time for the man at her side to give her a sidelong look and say, "You might want to go easy on those."
She scoffed at Bucky and took a sip before replying, "It's champagne, not Tony Stark's personal whisky stash. I'll be fine. And besides, how else am I gonna get over my nerves and actually talk to someone other than you?"
All around them, the party was alive and well with spirited chatter and all of the things that one would expect at a party at Stark Tower - glitzy dresses, designer suits, enough alcohol to knock out an entire zoo, and music for when the crowd eventually got around to dancing. In other words, it was about as far out of Summer's natural environment as she could get, and that was saying something, considering the fact that she was essentially roommates with the Avengers. But that, she could handle; this, however, was a different story.
"Well," Bucky replied quietly, his right hand softly running up her back along the open portions of her dress, "we don't have to stay."
She smiled as she swallowed another mouthful of champagne, glancing at him knowingly. "Oh no. It took me way too long to get ready for this party just to leave now and let all my hard work go to waste."
"I didn't plan on letting anything go to waste," he replied with a faint grin.
While Summer finished the flute of champagne and tried to formulate an answer, she continued to scan the room in search of people she actually recognized - it was a huge company, after all, and it looked like half of Manhattan was there - and the first face she recognized was that of Deanna, her boss. Who was apparently already drunk and stumbling over one of the IT guys from the seventeenth floor.
Another tray of champagne appeared, and this time, Summer passed. She really didn't want to look like that at any point during the night.
"I guess I'm supposed to mingle now," Summer sighed, "instead of standing here and hanging on the arm of my super hot boyfriend who nobody seems to recognize. Seriously, nobody has looked at you twice since we've gotten here."
He shrugged. "Guess I look like all the other idiots here."
She looked at him then, taking in everything about him from the perfect un-perfectness of his hair, which she noted was due for a trim, down to the faint but very present stubble along his jaw and down further to the absolute awesomeness of the white - no, ivory, apparently - suit that he was wearing tonight, in stark contrast to the dark hues he usually dressed in every day. The only thing missing was his metal hand, which she really wished he didn't have to cover up to fly under the radar at events like these. She really liked that hand. It was a shame to cover it up for anything.
"You are, by far," she smiled, feeling a bit fuzzy from all the champagne she'd just slammed, "the most disgustingly sexy idiot here. And that's saying something, since Thor's here somewhere."
He grinned but also rolled his eyes. "Again with Thor. I don't get it."
She shrugged. "He's Thor."
Bucky again shook his head, then looked around before placing his hands in his pockets and saying, "I'm gonna go get a drink. You should... mingle... or whatever... for a few minutes. I'll find you."
She could have nearly latched herself to his leg like a toddler just to keep him from leaving her there alone to fend for herself, but without a push of some kind, if she was honest, she probably wouldn't have budged. So, she let him go, albeit quite reluctantly, and then took a deep breath as she mentally urged herself to get over it and be social for once in her life.
One more tray of champagne flutes went by, and this time, she muttered "screw it" under her breath and grabbed one more before stepping out in her very, very high heels into the crowd, hoping she didn't make too big of an idiot of herself tonight.
Bucky didn't care if he could not physically get drunk or not. If he had to be here and deal with the headache of a giant room full of a bunch of jerks he didn't know, he was going to drink, and he was going to at least enjoy that part of it. Then he would go find Summer and go back to glaring at any man who happened to glance her way. He'd done so at least five times already, and she hadn't even noticed. But he expected nothing less when she looked as amazing as she looked that particular night.
After ordering the largest amount of scotch from the bar that he could in one sitting, he grabbed the glass from the bartender and then turned around to refocus on the crowd and find Summer once again. The first person he recognized upon scanning the room was Thor, who was laughing ridiculously loudly and dancing with some tiny brunette he'd never seen before, though Thor appeared to be rather familiar with her by the looks of things. She must have been the "special lady" he was so excited to be reunited with. Not particularly concerned with this, he kept sipping his drink and looking, only to realize just as he started to walk off that he'd already drank the whole thing.
Stifling a sigh, he turned around and signaled to the bartender for another, which was the exact moment that a rather short woman with long dark curls and a face with almost exaggerated features sidled up next to him at the bar and shot him a smile before ordering her own drink. Bucky only glanced at her long enough to only appear somewhat rude rather than entirely without manners, but then she started talking and ruined his plans for utter silence.
"Hellooo there," she said in a way that made it seem as if she were slightly mocking her own words, like she knew she was being ridiculous. Bucky looked at her once more, and it didn't pass his notice how she was now angling her body towards him in a way that was asking for his attention. The dark red cocktail dress she wore placed a rather massive amount of cleavage on display, but he resolutely kept his eyes up and on her face. Then she added, "You don't look like much of a corporate stiff."
He shook his head, wondering if that was a sufficient enough answer. She wasn't silent long enough to find out.
"I'm Darcy," she said. "And I just broke up with this British guy I was dating like two days ago because he turned out to be an idiot, which sucks but whatever, because now I get to come to awesome parties like this and flirt with hot random guys at bars. So yay me."
Bucky's drink finally appeared then, and after briefly considering just walking away and not caring how rude he came off, Darcy saved him the trouble and once again started talking.
"But, judging by how uncomfortable you look right now, I'm guessing you're either here with someone or extremely gay, so... I'm gonna go with gay, since usually guys who look as good as you are gay."
Just when he'd finally found the motivation to speak just to set this woman straight, Steve suddenly popped up behind Bucky and smiled as he said, "Darcy! Good to see you again."
Darcy smiled. "Hey, you too, Cap! Still looking pretty young for a geezer, I see."
"I try," Steve shrugged with a smile before looking from her to Bucky and then back again. "So, I uh, take it you've met my friend."
"Friend?" Darcy repeated, looking back and forth between Bucky and Steve. "Like friend friend or boyfriend, because if it's boyfriend, I am totally winning a bet with Jane and it's gonna be awesome."
Rolling his eyes, Bucky glanced at Steve and watched him visibly try not to sigh before replying, "Friend, Darcy. This is my best friend, Bucky."
Suddenly choking on the first sip of her drink, Darcy coughed and set the glass down, holding up a hand as she recovered. After, she said in exasperation, "Oh my God, seriously? I just hit on the freakin' Winter Soldier and asked him if he likes dudes?"
"Nice to meet you," Bucky said dryly, stopping himself from adding whoever the hell you are.
"It's typical," Darcy said, ignoring him. "Jane's over there dancing with the god of abs, and I pick literally the scariest guy in the room to flirt with. No offense."
Bucky shrugged. "None taken."
Sam wandered over to the bar then, dressed in his own best suit, which was a dark gray number, and upon approaching the group of three, he quickly focused on the girl he'd never met before and said while flashing a winning smile, "Hey there."
Drink in hand, Darcy looked up and sighed before muttering, "Not in the mood anymore," and walking off into the crowd.
Sam watched her leave and then turned back to Steve and Bucky, expression pure confusion as he asked, "Did I say something? Who was that?"
"Darcy," Steve replied. "Friend of Thor's."
Turning his head to look for her again though she was long gone, Sam said, "She's... damn."
Caring far more about more pressing matters than Sam's foiled flirting, Bucky spoke up and wondered out loud, "Why does everybody think we're gay?"
Steve shrugged, his face betraying his own confusion on the matter. Sam, however, laughed like Bucky had just cracked a particularly funny joke, until he realized both men were staring at him blankly and even more confused than they'd been a minute ago.
Smile fading slightly, Sam asked, "Seriously?" When neither Steve or Bucky said a word, Sam chuckled again and said, "Never mind then."
Then Sam left them there at the bar, possibly to go find the elusive and strange Darcy woman for a better introduction, and Steve appeared to be in deep thought while Bucky polished off his second drink.
"I don't get it," Steve finally said.
"I don't think we're supposed to get it," Bucky replied.
A moment or two of contemplative silence passed, and then Bucky announced, "I'm gonna go find Summer."
"I'll go find Nat," Steve agreed, and thus the two charmingly still-confused nonagenarians went their separate ways.
In short, mingling sucked. In the last fifteen minutes, she'd almost had vodka spilled on her by now-ragingly drunken Deanna and had been ignored by most of the relatively few fellow employees that she recognized, except, naturally, one man by the name of Jeff who was from accounting or something and had refused to leave her alone since she'd been foolish enough to be polite and talk to him.
The guy was weird, and while Summer expected a reasonable amount of glances at her chest given how out it was, he had surpassed the acceptable quota of wandering glances about ten minutes ago. He also smelled vaguely like Mexican food, and not the good kind, either - more like the kind you'd find at a sketchy gas station. He also had some mild dental issues and droopy eyes that resembled a particularly unfortunate basset hound, but she could have ignored all of that if he hadn't been so creepy.
"... So that's when I said, no, do I look like someone who could change a tire?"
Summer smiled weakly, totally lost in the story Jeff was regaling her with, and she had to focus all of her energy on not cringing horribly when he laughed. It was the worst laugh she'd ever heard. He literally had nothing going for him.
Looking around for a way out - any way out - she glanced around the room and brushed a straying curl from her face, then almost jumped out of her skin when the guy suddenly seized her hand and stretched out her arm as he began examining her palm. "What... are you do-"
"I took a palm reading class back in '06," he said. "Sorry, I do this with everyone. Oooh, it looks like your lifeline is -"
"Not your problem," a gruff voice interrupted, and before she could blink, a different and much welcome hand took her wrist and pulled her hand away from the weirdo. She looked up at Bucky as he took his place at her side and glared calm but incredibly sharp daggers at Jeff, holding her hand at his side in a way that felt a bit more possessive than it probably looked. Possibly because he was squeezing her hand way harder than he surely realized, but she could take it.
"Oh, hi," Jeff smiled, oblivious. "I didn't know you had a boyfriend, Summer."
"Yeah, shocking, right?" she joked badly, and the guy laughed a little too hard in response.
Rather than endure an awkward "gotta leave now and wash my hands because you touched them" moment, Bucky then pulled on her hand and dragged her about twenty feet away before she could so much as squeak out one syllable of a goodbye. And she was okay with that.
But still, her first comment upon getting away was, "Hey, I could have gotten rid of him myself."
"And I could have snapped his wrist in half without blinking," Bucky replied, eyes straight ahead as he continued to lead her aimlessly through the crowd.
"That might have been a little... excessive," she said quietly. "Although I'm not gonna lie, it's kind of a turn on when you want to break bones over me."
Finally, he stopped and turned towards her, and she felt a little twinge of pride in herself as she watched his eyes roam down her body for what felt like the hundredth time that night. It never got old, though.
"Do you have any idea how men look at you?" he asked, and she paused in surprise at the question.
"Um... well... in general?"
He rolled his eyes and then began, "There's a man in a black suit here with a woman and they're both wearing wedding rings. He hasn't stopped looking since we got here. I could go on because I've lost count of how many men I've had to glare at, but what I'm trying to say is - you don't have to be as nice as you are to losers like that guy back there."
The message going utterly over her head, Summer's eyes widened a little and she looked around suddenly, then turned back to Bucky and asked quietly, "That many guys are checking me out? That... is... awesome." Bucky narrowed his eyes at her, and she just laughed and said, "Well, I mean, the married ones are scumbags, but still. And don't give me that look, because you should see how girls stare at you."
"Girls don't -"
"Oh yes they do," Summer shook her head. "In fact - oomph!"
Unexpectedly, a random partygoer crashed into her from behind, and after quickly given apologies and a few laughs from the stranger, Summer looked around again and realized people were dancing now. In fact, they were standing still in the middle of quite a few dancing couples, and she quickly looked up and asked with a smile, "Want to dance instead of standing here like a couple of weirdos?"
She could see by his expression that his knee-jerk reaction was to consider balking at that, and she understood why - crowds were not his thing, and dancing in them to unfamiliar modern music played by the DJ Stark had hired probably even more so. But that instant reaction only lasted half a second before he nodded, and then he was walking them a little further away from the main crowd and pulling her close once he'd found a spot that he liked well enough.
He held out his hand to her, and she took it with a small smile, then held her breath for a minute when his disguised left hand went to the small of her back to bring her closer. She placed her free hand on his shoulder, and then they were dancing, though she instantly missed the way they danced in private as opposed to this. The swing dancing was growing on her.
"So... party's not so bad, right?" she asked, catching his eyes and giving him a smile that he partially returned while his gaze did its wandering thing again. Unlike the other guys, he had an unlimited quota of glances and, if he so chose, stares to use however he liked.
"Could be worse," he replied, hand on her back pulling her in just a little closer, so that her chest touched his. "But it could also be better."
His eyes met hers, and she wondered how after all of this time, his eye contact could still make her squirm the way that it did. "Sorry, I can't hear you when you're looking at me like you want to eat me," she quipped, instantly regretting the words as soon as they were out, because she knew exactly what he was going to say.
"I always want to do that."
She smiled and closed her eyes, prediction coming true yet again. "I walked into that one."
Rather than reply with something witty or change the subject, however, he then leaned in closer and she held her breath as he grazed his lips along her cheek before stopping at her ear, where he murmured, "What I'm really thinking about is how much I want to take you back to my room and tie you to the bed in nothing but those high heels."
Rather than squeak and possibly fall over the way that she wanted to, Summer reminded herself that breathing was a necessary thing as Bucky then pulled away to survey the level of blushing he'd accomplished. If the burning in her face and even in her ears was any indication, he might have broken his personal record.
Trying to form words and failing, she just stared at him for a moment, and then he had the gall to grin at her as he continued dancing her along. It was such a drastic change for a man who had once stared at her in slightly wide-eyed innocence and pain when she'd kissed him the very first time. Now he whispered maddeningly enticing things in her ear and relished in her frustration and instant nearly overwhelming need like the jerk he was.
"Speechless?"
Trying to gather her wits, she retooled her expression into something more defiant and shook her head. "Nope."
"Need a minute?"
She gave him a look and said quietly, "Don't start with me." Then she thought for a moment, and her brows furrowed slightly as she asked, "You want to tie me up?"
A flicker of apprehension crossed his features then, and a more cautious expression replaced his previous cocky one as he replied, "I... only if you... if it didn't... if it wasn't..."
She watched him flounder for words and grow visibly frustrated with himself as he went on, but then they were interrupted by the sudden end of the music and, unexpectedly, a round of polite applause that seemed to burst from all around them. They both looked around in momentary confusion before looking around and following everyone else's gaze to the reason for the party, Tony Stark himself, standing before the crowd in front of the DJ booth, arms out to stoke the crowd for more. Summer rolled her eyes a little and gave Bucky a smile as they separated from their previous very close positions, making a mental note to definitely get a definitive answer about the tying-up thing later.
After chiming in with her own polite applause, Summer watched as the crowd quieted eventually and their host grabbed a microphone before grinning and giving a brief but memorable speech.
"Thank you for that... passable round of applause," Tony said with a grin, getting a few laughs from the crowd. "No, really, thank you to everyone who came here tonight to help us here at Stark Industries celebrate what I, for once, honestly can't overstate the importance of. And when you've done something like successfully hook up one of the biggest, most important cities in the world on clean, renewable energy, naturally the thing to do is get dressed up and pass out drunk." Summer rolled her eyes while the crowd laughed some more, and Tony grinned, "Hey, drinking alone is never as fun as drinking with - what? A couple hundred? Five hundred? - of your closest friends and frenemies. You know who you are."
Summer glanced at Bucky while the others laughed some more, unaware if that was directed at him, but in all probability, she didn't think it was.
"Anyway, I don't want to hold up the party too long, so let me just restate that for once, I'm actually happy to have my tower filled to the rafters with people who are only here to eat my food and drink my booze, because regardless of why you came, you're celebrating something that's actually worth celebrating. And by that, I mean me. Just kidding. Sort of."
"Think he's drunk already?" Summer asked in a whisper, and Bucky just shrugged in disinterest.
"Actually, a ridiculous amount of credit goes to the fantastic staff we have here at the tower, and also to the gorgeous, brilliant, utterly irreplaceable CEO standing here to my right, Pepper Potts. She might even deserve most of the credit - more than twelve percent for sure. Don't ask, long story."
At his side, Pepper smiled gamely and shook her head at Tony's antics, and for a moment, Summer wondered how the woman could handle someone as always... on as Tony Stark seemed to be. Then she glanced at her own date and realized that answer was actually rather simple.
"So... everybody keep drinking, keep dancing, have a good time, and try not to drool too much over the thunder god in our midst. And do mind the 95-year old fossil as well. Carry on."
And with that, the crowd laughed and clapped some more, and then the music restarted and the dancing began anew. Summer turned back to Bucky and asked, "So, more dancing or more drinking? Or both? Or should I mingle more? I don't want to mingle."
He chuckled and replied, "As much as I like you when you're drunk, I think you've had enough."
She groaned in reply. "Maybe you're right. Well, boo."
Bucky took her hand then and said before getting cut off, "Come on, let's da-"
To their left, an obliviously giggling woman toting a glass of champagne unknowingly walked right into Summer's side, and rather than spilling the drink on Summer on impact, the liquid rebounded somehow and landed right on the other woman's dress. Summer froze in place as she watched it all happen, and as the woman gasped and stared open-mouthed at her dress - which was unfortunately white and not good at hiding such spills - Summer immediately started apologizing for something that had not been her fault to begin with.
"I'm so sorry!" Summer began as the woman groaned and let her head fall back in despair. "I didn't see you and, I... uh..."
Summer's brows furrowed as she looked up to find Thor behind the woman, as if he'd been there all along, and she barely heard the woman reply, "Oh, no, no, it was my fault... ugh, this just figures..."
"Jane? What has happened?" Thor asked, and Summer watched with widening eyes as "Jane" glanced back at him and answered.
"Nothing, just my usual... problems with not being a total mess when I'm in a room full of super important people," she grumbled, patting at the large spot on her dress with her hand as if that would help.
"Oh... well," Thor replied, "I see you've met my friends!"
Friends? Summer blinked a couple times and smiled as she realized Thor was talking about her, and Jane did the same as Thor stood closer to them and said, "Jane, this is Summer, and... James," he said, after a brief hesitation on what exactly to introduce Bucky as. "And this is my Jane Foster."
Summer's smile grew as Jane smiled a little dumbly too, a little flustered by the possessive introduction, and Summer chirped, "Oh! Nice to meet you! Can I help you find a towel or something?"
"No - maybe - no, I'll be fine, just... ugh," Jane shrugged at herself. "But thank you, and nice to meet you too. I should... go figure out what to do about this." Then she turned back to Thor and said, "I'll be right back."
Thor nodded as she raced off, and Summer's smile remained intact as she looked up at him and said, "You have an Earth girlfriend?"
"Yes, I do!" he smiled brightly. "She is incredible, is she not?"
Considering how awkward Jane appeared right off the bat, Summer would have to agree, because it was even more proof that there was hope for awkward girls everywhere. "Very pretty. And short."
"Indeed, even in those odd devices you Midgardian women place on your feet to appear taller," Thor replied.
Summer laughed, and as the dancing continued around them, Thor then glanced at Bucky and said, "Would you mind if I had a dance with your lady while I wait for mine?"
As Summer faced the sudden onset of cardiac arrest at that question, Bucky snapped out of his brief nearly half-asleep daze to glance at Summer and eventually nod, wordlessly telling her in a single look to calm down and not faint over it before telling her with words he was going to go fetch another drink. She nodded after him and then felt like she was suddenly twelve years old as she looked up at Thor, who grinned and wasted no time in catching her up in a friendly embrace and starting the dance.
And whoa, his arms were seriously cannons. Her hand on his shoulder felt like it was sitting on top of a human tank. Asgardian tank. Whatever.
"So, Lady Summer, how do you fare this night?" Thor asked as she continued to stare with wide eyes at his arms and his general self, as she'd never been so close before. He was dressed in black aside from his new red jacket, which was a nice nod to the cape he was fond of, and the gloriously long golden hair just tied it all together so utterly disgustingly. In a good way.
"I... uh... I'm dancing with a mythological dude who's saved the world like three times in the last couple years and looks like a Greek god - sorry, Norse god - so yeah, pretty good!" she replied, and he chuckled. "Seriously, like how am I even here?"
He grinned and said, "I agree, it is a nice place to be. I like it here. It is good to be with friends."
"I bet you have even more back home, right?" she asked, taking extra care not to trip over her own feet as they danced.
"Yes, and I do miss them," Thor nodded. "But I am enjoying getting to know your realm better. I discovered the most interesting and delicious food yesterday, Natasha said they were called 'corn dogs', though she assured me they contain no actual dogs."
Summer smiled and bit back a laugh. How could anyone anywhere ever not instantly love this man? "Corn dogs are great. Especially deep fried and fresh. Oh yeah. Hey, have you had a Big Mac yet?"
"I have! In fact, I have had several since I've been back, they are quite tasty."
"Right? Ooh, what about Starbucks? Have you been to Starbucks?"
After a few more minutes of talk revolving around Earth food and how awesome it was, Thor laughed at how passionate she was about something called a "peanut butter burger", and then said, "You know, you are very amusing. You ought to come to Asgard one day. I would love to hear what you might think of it."
Her jaw dropped and she asked with wide eyes, "Is that an invitation? Because if it is, holy crap, like... holy crap."
"I would like to take my friends one day to my home, just as I have been welcomed here," Thor replied. "So perhaps it will happen eventually."
She smiled and thought she might actually explode at the idea of such a prospect. Also, he'd just included her in his circle of friends, and that was freaking awesome. "That's awesome! How would we get there? Some super top secret spaceship?"
Thor smiled and shook his head. "No, that's what the Rainbow Bridge is for."
She blinked. "Rainbow Bridge? Like Mario Kart?"
"Like what?"
"Never mind," she shook her head. "So tell me about this Rainbow Bridge. Is it something we Earthlings can't see because we're not as advanced and awesome as you are?"
"No, no, not at all. In fact -"
Though Summer was listening raptly, a faint rumble under their feet as if from some sort of quake soon stole her attention and left Thor trailing off with a look of mild confusion on his face. Standing there at a halt, they looked at each other silently, and Summer began wonder if the rumble was something that could possibly be a big deal, that was when there was a blinding flash of light and an ear-crushing explosion that erupted from seemingly out of nowhere.
And in the split second during the sudden blast that Summer watched a great, terrible fire explode behind Thor's head and reach the ceiling almost instantly, her heart dropped and ice cold panic nearly made it stop beating, as it was suddenly Virginia all over again, just in a different setting, and from a party to a nightmare in less time than it took to take a breath.
Before she could register any of it, she was suddenly enclosed completely in the strongest pair of arms she'd ever met and was being literally propelled to safety in the corner of the room that had not just been ripped apart by a bomb. The smell of smoke instantly hit her nose as they hit the floor, and though Thor had done what he had to protect her, slamming into a wall and then the floor with a Norse god literally cocooned around her was enough to make her gasp with pain and later raise the suspicion that a few of her ribs had been bruised.
But none of that mattered at the moment; as she coughed and gripped her side, Thor rolled away from her and set her up so that she was sitting against the wall, his hands on her shoulders as he looked around them before turning back to her and asking her something that she couldn't quite hear. The explosion had been deafening - all she could hear as she blinked and tried to make sense of what had happened was the screams of others and what sounded like the building literally falling to pieces. Behind Thor, she saw the fire raging and beams falling, the very walls crumbling on the opposite side as Thor continued to yell at her to no avail.
There was only one thing she could think of, one name that she thought she simply spoke but in reality screamed over the overwhelming sound of destruction. "David - David!"
She scrambled to her feet, ignoring her shaking legs and suddenly soaring on the kind of adrenaline that made children able to lift cars off of pinned down parents. Her hearing adjusted enough so that she could hear what Thor was saying to her. "Yes, yes, everyone must get out, I must help get everyone to safety and you must follow me -"
She shook her head, pushing him out of the way - actually pushing him - and rambling, "No, no, no, there's kids downstairs and I have to get my son and -"
She looked around the mess in front of her - people running, fire climbing up the walls to her left, some people pinned under fallen pieces of the ceiling and the walls, and smoke quickly making it harder to both see and breathe - and then she started running for the door that would lead to the stairwell, only to have her arm caught by a hand that she instantly assumed was Thor's. It wasn't.
It was Steve, who was bleeding from a cut in his forehead and covered in dust as he yelled over the noise, "The kids - I'm coming with you. Cover your face."
She nodded, and from there, it was a mad race away from ground zero and to the tower's most innocent current inhabitants. And her adrenaline high, amazingly enough, allowed her to mostly keep up with Steve's speed.
Several things raced through her mind as they ran, all at warp speed and each thought as terrifying as the next. The quaking that she'd felt before could have been another bomb, one that hit somewhere lower in the building, and if that was true, there was a distinct possibility that she could not stomach the mere thought of. In addition to that, she had not seen one single sign of Bucky during the blast or the few moments afterwards before she'd begun racing to get her son out. So, while her heart was propelling her downstairs to her son without looking back once, another piece of it was still back at the top floor, hoping that Bucky was okay and that the pit of dread in her stomach was there for no reason. After all, he was more durable than the average human and had survived a lot worse in his years than random bombings. But knowing that didn't stop the worry.
The journey to the floor that held the daycare room was long and increasingly filled with smoke rising from below, confirming that there had indeed been more than one blast and taking her fears and multiplying them. Steve was a man on a mission, helping people that they came across who were trying to flee their own floors, and it felt like an eternity before they were finally where Summer needed them to be.
The lower blast had come from further down the tower, so it was mainly smoke that was the issue as Summer followed Steve into the daycare room and started wildly looking around and calling David's name as loudly as she could through the strip of fabric that Steve had torn off his own jacket for her to breathe into. The first thing they saw upon entering the main room was the two daycare workers passed out on the floor and partially buried under collapsed portions of the room's ceiling. She started yelling louder then as Steve checked for pulses on the two women, and when she rounded a corner and finally found the kids, she saw something amazing.
All ten of the kids there were fine, though they all looked terrified but relieved that somebody had come to help them, but Summer's vision locked on her five year old boy who was hugging a dark-skinned, curly-haired little girl about his size and holding his trusty Captain America shield toy in front of them both. The girl was crying but he wasn't, and when he looked up and saw that his mother had come to rescue him, he grabbed the girl's hand and tugged her along as he ran as fast as he could into Summer's arms.
And as relief washed over her in having him there with her, where he belonged, her heart swelled with pride in knowing that he was braver than she had ever thought before. She hugged him and squeezed him with all the force of a mother who had come too close to losing him one too many times, and then while telling him over and over how much she loved him, she scooped him up in one arm and the little girl in her other. When she turned around, she saw that Steve had gotten both of the daycare workers conscious and on their feet, and he turned to face her with a look of mild surprise on his face.
"Can you carry them both?" he asked, and Summer didn't hesitate a moment in her reply.
"Yes." Never mind the high heels she was still wearing and the fact that both kids combined weren't all that light of a load. She still had the adrenaline of a champion, and she was going to use it before it vanished and left her useless. "Now how do we get out?"
Before the blast, Bucky had been back at bar, drinking quietly and falling into his trusty habit of watching everything and everyone around him and looking for signs of danger. It was nothing more than a reflex, and it came as natural as breathing. What was surprising was the fact that he'd actually noticed something that caught his suspicion.
It was one of the wait staff, a man with long brown hair tied into a low ponytail, who roused Bucky's attention. Back and forth he went, serving champagne and other drinks, but he was different from the others, because he was wearing an earpiece that was visible if one knew how to look for it, and he was speaking into it rather frequently. None of the other staff wore such pieces.
Everything about the man was a red flag. But Bucky also had to wonder if he wasn't being overly paranoid. Stark Tower was pretty secure, ridiculously so now that it was housing the Avengers and a floor that was off limits for everyone except them, and he didn't mean the floor that they all lived on. Bucky knew what it was - it was the new SHIELD, though Steve didn't call it that. Bucky wasn't involved much with whatever they were doing, however, and that was by his own choice. Point was, that floor's existence meant that the whole building was surely nearly as safe as the Pentagon.
But that didn't stop the Pentagon from being hit in 2001, Bucky reminded himself. At least, that's what Summer's history books had told him.
So, he followed the man. He was subtle. The man didn't notice a thing, or at least Bucky thought so at first. He was slipping inside what looked like a harmless storage closet that he'd seen the man hovering around, but the minute that he'd opened the door and walked inside, there had been an arm around his neck in a chokehold and a needle jammed into his vein, and before he could whip around and make short work of utterly annihilating his attacker, he collapsed unconscious to the floor.
The man, who was indeed no mere waiter, stuffed him inside the closet and locked the door. Two minutes later, the bomb went off, rather close to the closet. Five minutes after that, after Bucky's metabolism burned off the tranquilizer like it was a celery stick, he awoke and found himself pinned to the floor by a fallen beam and choking on smoke.
The door was gone, but in its place was a pile of what had once been walls and was now a barricade that would have utterly trapped anyone else. Bucky, however, driven by the realization that the tower had been hit and Summer might still be inside of it, managed to get out from under the beam and stand up, then begin literally punching his way out. In moments like those, he could almost be a grateful for an arm that could crack concrete. Almost.
It took more strength than he was willing to admit, but soon he had a hole punched through that was big enough for him to climb through, and he gasped in a huge breath of better but still far too smoky air before he fell into a coughing fit that left a burn in his throat and his chest that he completely ignored. With his suit now mostly a dirty gray color along with his face, he got to his feet and looked around the wreckage of the top floor with wide eyes and a sinking sense of dread and horror. Half of the walls were gone, the fire was still raging on the parts that weren't gone, and through the giant holes in the building, he could see the blur of Thor flying about, grabbing the people that remained and carrying them to safety. After Thor came Stark in one of his suits, but he recognized nobody else in the chaos.
Summer. He had to find Summer. Either she was out, or she wasn't. And if she wasn't out, she was either buried under the rubble, or she was trying to get David out.
There was still a lot of partygoers there, many right in front of him, who needed help, and they were getting it from men who could fly, unlike Bucky. And also unlike Bucky - or at least his current state of self-perception - they were heroes who made a living out of that sort of thing. He didn't see how he could be much help to anyone stuck on that crumbling floor, and if he was being honest - and he generally always was - he didn't want to be. The person he wanted - needed - to help and get to safety was Summer, and by extension, her child. Everything else came second.
So, he ran. He ran towards the stairs and he didn't look back, but when he passed through the open door to the stairwell and found that it had caved in, he cursed mentally and then turned to find another way out before something caught his eye and made him take a closer look. Underneath the mess and under a particularly heavy looking beam, he saw dirty but distinctly strawberry-blonde hair peeking out, and he knew right away who that hair belonged to. And suddenly, he couldn't simply cut and run.
Assuming the worst, he rushed forward for a closer look, and fortunately, the beam was mostly pinning Pepper down by her legs, and the heaviest pieces of debris had hopefully missed her head and other vital parts on the way down, but she was knocked out cold. He checked for a pulse, found it relatively strong, and then set about pulling the beam off of her and getting her free of the debris.
If it had been anyone else, another face in the crowd that he didn't know and had never met, he couldn't say that he would have stopped and helped. His brain reverted back to what he knew best, which was singling out a mission and sticking to it, and at the moment, Summer was his mission. But Pepper, however unlikely, was what reminded him of who he was today, and how he was the one fully in control of what, and who, he was. And he was a man who lived every day with the regret of killing many people, some of them rather good ones, including Tony Stark's father. He could never make up for that, but now he had a chance to prove himself better, and he would not let it pass by.
Pepper remained unconscious as he pulled her up into his arms, then punched a hole through the barrier of debris before them. He looked back once, for the shortest of seconds, to debate on whether to try to get Thor or Stark's attention to take her from him. But he didn't have time for that. Instead, he ripped off a small portion of his jacket and covered Pepper's face with it, then set about his original mission once more.
Amidst blaring sirens and the hysterical sounds of the people around her, Summer stood on the sidewalk and looked up in horror as Stark Tower burned. For two explosions, they'd certainly packed a punch. Smoke was still pluming from the top floor, and there was a hole in the middle of the tower that was even more terrifying in a way, because she imagined the whole thing snapping in half any minute.
The tower was supposed to be safe. They were all supposed to be safe there. But maybe safety wasn't really a concept that applied to the Avengers, and by association, herself, any longer.
And to make it all so incredibly worse, there was not a single sign of Bucky. Thor, Tony and Steve were busy with the rescue effort. Sam was helping sort of in between, taking folks from Steve and keeping it all as orderly as possible. Jane was safe and nearby, huddling with some enormous-chested lady when she wasn't trying to help where she could, which wasn't much. Deanna was out and safe and incredibly sober. Summer had caught a glimpse of red hair and Steve's motorcycle upon getting out, and if she had to bet, Natasha was chasing a suspect, and if she was doing that, Clint was probably following.
That left Bucky as the only one in her circle unaccounted for. And one other.
Lighting up the sidewalk, Tony in full Iron Man gear hit the ground in front of her right as Steve re-emerged from the building with some more people, and Summer watched as Tony's mask went up and he shouted over the commotion, "Rogers, any sign of her yet?"
Steve looked distressed as he shook his head. "Not yet."
"We've gotten almost everybody out! She's got to be in there!"
Steve's face grew even more pained, and then Tony's mask snapped back into place and he blasted back off into the sky.
She knew who they were talking about. Pepper was as missing as Bucky was, but a lot less durable.
Steve looked at Summer for a brief second before turning and running back inside, and she took a shaky breath as she squeezed David's hand.
She had to do something. She'd lose her mind worrying if she didn't put it to some sort of task. And seeing that she was currently in charge of ten kids, one wasn't hard to find.
Still clinging to David was the little girl he'd been shielding when Summer found them. Focusing on the girl and not on the horrible fear in her head, Summer turned and knelt down in front of the girl, taking one of her small hands in her own and asking, "Are you okay? What's your name, sweetie?"
The girl looked at her shyly and then made a gesture with her hand. It took a minute for Summer's brain to process that the girl was using sign language. "Oh - you - is it your hearing?" She pointed to her own ears. "Or are you like David?"
Reading her lips, the girl pointed to her ears in reply, and Summer nodded. "Okay. Stay here with us until they find your parents, okay?"
The girl nodded, then looked at David and signed something to him, and to Summer's shock, he signed something back. His therapists back in Virginia had been trying to teach him sign language since he was two, and he never showed an interest in it. Now here he was, communicating with a child his own age, and that wasn't just a milestone - it was a freaking mountain he'd climbed.
Stunned by this, Summer felt tears well up and she kissed David's forehead before standing upright again, praying that this little girl who had apparently been teaching David to speak through his hands for awhile now would see her parents, wherever they were, survive the attack.
And while her other prayers had to wait, that one was the first one answered.
Steve's next haul produced a couple that the little girl instantly ran to with wide open arms and tears falling from her eyes. Summer clutched David tighter, overwhelmed with her own worries but immensely grateful that the girl would be all right.
Now she just had to wait to see if she was going to be all right.
It felt like an eternity, standing there and waiting and waiting, then waiting some more, nausea replacing her previous adrenaline rush and leaving her lucky just to stay upright while the picture seemed to grow more and more grim. She was so wrapped up in her dread and fear that she almost didn't hear Jane ask nobody in particular, "Who's that? Is that..."
Summer looked at Jane and then followed where the woman's eyes were going, and then she nearly collapsed in the night's second incredibly overwhelming tidal wave of relief. He looked like he'd just emerged from a particularly trying battle but he was there, Bucky was finally there, alive and leaving the destruction of the building behind him, and he wasn't alone - he was carrying someone.
"That's Pepper," Summer blurted out, looking at Jane and anyone who would listen. "He's got her! Somebody needs to tell Tony!"
And someone did, after Thor dropped five people on the ground and Summer shouted to get his attention. Thor took one look, then flew off to tell Tony, leaving Summer to once again pointlessly fight tears as she realized she'd never forget this moment of watching Bucky survive yet again, and this time carry someone else to safety that he hadn't needed to.
His eyes were locked on hers the whole time, and she couldn't look away. And she didn't care when her tears won the battle before it had even begun.
Tony flew down to the sidewalk just as Bucky was almost close enough for her to reach for. The Iron Man mask slid up again as Bucky looked away from Summer to him, quickly assuring the other man, "She's alive, she's breathing. Her ankle might be broken and I don't know if she hit her head, but she's just knocked out."
Tony was nothing short of stunned, his face showing equal parts belief and shock as he stared at Pepper, laying safely in the arms of one of the last people Tony would have ever suspected he'd ever thank for anything. But there she was, with fabric torn from Bucky's own clothes to shield her nose and mouth from the smoke, and Tony wasn't the only one staring like that. Steve had come back out as well, and he was watching from a distance, knowing full well how significant what he was watching was.
Holding out his armored arms to take her, Tony looked at Bucky with no trace of anything but pure sincerity in his eyes as he said, "Thank you."
Summer watched Bucky's jaw clench slightly as he nodded and then handed the woman over. Then the mask came back down and Tony was flying directly to the nearest hospital, and that was okay, because more help had arrived from the city and most of the building had been emptied.
Then, after the moment had faded, Bucky's gaze turned back to Summer, and she flung herself at him so fast that she actually knocked him back a few steps. He recovered quickly though, and crushed her to him with an almost bruising embrace as he said, "I looked everywhere for you, I looked in the kids' room, everywhere, I thought the worst..."
"I thought the worst too," she said before pulling back and kissing him briefly but in a way that was almost out of her control in how badly she needed to just make sure that he was there and safe. "Are you okay?"
"Of course I'm okay, are you?" he asked, pulling back a bit only look her over more thoroughly.
She nodded. "Yeah, yeah, totally fine, I -"
"And what about him?" Bucky asked, turning them slightly and then bending to look down at David, who was standing just behind Summer and didn't flinch when Bucky gently grabbed his upper arm as he looked him over just as fully as he had Summer.
"We're fine," Summer assured him, though his concern for David made her want to start crying all over again. "We are."
Bucky nodded a few seconds later, accepting her assurances, and then he said, "Stay here, don't move. I have to tell Steve something."
She nodded, wiping away a few tears that had stubbornly made their way out, and after Bucky saw this, he drew forward one more time and kissed her forehead before racing off towards Steve.
Everyone that she cared about was okay. Hopefully the others were as well. The danger was over. She could breathe again.
That also meant that her adrenaline was gone, and now she had to start wondering about what happened next.
Bucky insisted that Summer and David let paramedics check them out while he had taken a moment to relay to Steve what happened with the waiter before the blast went off. As relieved as he was that the ones he cared about most were okay, the fact that he'd come so close to potentially stopping the attack before it happened only to be so easily taken out by a needle to the neck... it was utterly maddening. This was the kind of stuff he was supposed to be good at, or maybe he wasn't. Maybe, since investigating suspicious wait staff and thwarting a bomb wasn't part of an assassin's repertoire, his uselessness shouldn't have been a surprise.
"Look, don't be so hard on yourself," Steve told him quietly. "None of us saw that coming. You couldn't have anticipated getting tranqued like that."
"But I should have," Bucky shrugged. "I knew something was off the minute I saw that guy."
"And now Clint and Nat are after him and one other suspect," Steve replied. "We're gonna catch them. They took out the whole floor. The main blast was there."
By "floor", Bucky knew Steve meant the mini-SHIELD that Tony had been funding and Steve had been running in secret. "So someone knew."
Steve sighed. "Someone always does. But look, you... did an amazing thing tonight. You should be proud."
He wasn't proud. It was rather literally the least one could do to save the life of the girlfriend of the man whose father he'd killed years ago, or at least that's all Bucky would allow himself to think. It wasn't enough for redemption. More of a down payment on a debt he had no hope of ever paying.
"Here," Steve said after a moment of silence, handing Bucky his phone. "This is the address of a safe house. Get Summer and David there. There's too many cops getting here - you don't want them asking too many questions. The rest of us will be be there later."
Bucky nodded, quickly memorizing the address and then handing the phone back. Then Steve added, "I was with Summer the whole time, when the bomb first went off. I went with her to get the kids out. You should have seen her running in those shoes with two kids up over her shoulders."
Bucky's lips quirked into a small smile. He could picture that rather clearly. She was stronger than even she thought she was, he knew that. Quietly, he replied, "Thank you. For making sure she got out."
Steve nodded, then gave his shoulder a pat. "You're welcome. Now go, before someone asks your name."
Bucky nodded, mentally repeating the address and almost asking Steve what to do about transportation before he decided not to bother. One didn't take a cab to a safe house, and Tony Stark's armory of cars were underneath a rather unstable building at the moment.
Hopefully Summer wouldn't mind him "borrowing" a stranger's car. To his surprise, she didn't, at least not that night.
After she and David were cleared by the paramedics, Bucky picked them up in his expertly stolen car, and he drove while Summer stayed in the backseat for David's sake, so that he could stay plastered to her side where he felt safest. The ride was silent for the most part, and when he looked back occasionally to glance at Summer, he found her either gazing distantly out the window or closing her eyes with her head leaning on top of David's. He could tell something was wrong, and it didn't surprise him. In fact, he wondered how many of these things she would endure before she decided enough was enough and ran for the hills.
Far outside of the city and tucked away in a place nobody would ever find it aside from those in need of it was the safe house that Steve had directed them to. Getting there, getting inside and finding a room for Summer to claim and get settled in wasn't a problem or otherwise eventful. The problem was how quiet she was, how little she said from the car into the house and then into the room. Bucky did what he could, offered to get her a drink or help her with anything she needed, but she shrugged off his offers and smiled emptily as she told him she'd just need a minute to get David squared away. So, he nodded, and left the room to go wait in the dining area. Wait for what, he didn't know.
When he heard the sounds of David crying come wafting through the hall about ten minutes after he left them, it came as no surprise. They had none of their belongings here, none of the things that calmed David down and made upsets in his routine a bit easier. Bucky had gotten used to David's eccentricities and knew this would be terrible for him, but there was no other choice.
The crying continued on, and Bucky stared at the kitchen table he was sitting in front of, arms crossed and stewing mentally on far too many things at once. Frustration with himself. Anger at who had attacked them tonight. Despair at the fact that he could do nothing to help Summer, nor help the others catch the bastards who did this. He was stuck, and alone, and he didn't like it.
He sat like this until he heard the back door of the house burst open, and he jumped up to his feet to catch a glimpse of Natasha shoving a man through a door that led to a basement. They were gone in a flash, so he quickly approached Clint who was right behind her and asked, "You get him?"
Clint nodded. "Yeah, wasn't that hard. Nat'll get him to talk. But Steve told us about the guy on the wait staff attacked you, and this guy isn't him. This one was on Stark's payroll in the IT department."
Bucky frowned at that, wanting nothing more than to hunt down everyone involved with the attack and make them suffer, but apparently he couldn't do that. He wouldn't even bother to ask in on whatever missions came next as a result of this, because he knew what the answer would be after the last time. So, he simply nodded, then watched as Clint followed Natasha down into the basement, finding himself once again alone and useless.
Restless and increasingly angry, he began wandering around the indistinct, unremarkable house, pacing when he wasn't wandering, eventually ending up back in the kitchen to go through the cabinets just to try to give himself something to do before he lost it. He found nothing but a supply of ceramic mugs that he wanted to smash on the ground until he felt better. He was so distracted that he hadn't noticed that David had stopped crying.
Eventually, and he wasn't sure how much time passes in the meantime, he ended up heading back towards the basement door on the other side of the house, unsure of why he was doing so. Maybe it was to try to listen to Natasha's interrogation, or invite himself to it, but either way, whatever would have happened did not due to him unexpectedly finding that Summer had beat him there.
She was barefoot but still in her black dress, which was rather tattered now, and her back was facing him as she stared at the door. As Bucky opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, a sudden cry of pure agony pierced the air through the door, and Summer jumped with a faint gasp.
"Summer," he said quickly, stepping forward and taking her upper arm in his hand and making her jump in surprise again at the contact. "Come here. Don't listen to that."
"But... what is that?" she asked in alarm, looking up at him with wide eyes as he dragged her away from the door and down the hallway.
"They caught one of the people who was behind the attack," he explained. "Natasha's interrogating him."
"Oh," Summer said quietly, and he stopped walking them near the door of the room she'd taken and turned to face her.
"He asleep?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Wasn't easy, but he is."
Bucky nodded, looking her over. Her hair was a mess, her face slightly grimy, and she really needed to change into something more comfortable, for her own sake. He brushed some of her hair back behind her ear and asked softly, "Are you okay?"
She shrugged, staring over his shoulder as her eyes lost focus. "Yeah. Just... I don't know. These things are harder to deal with when they're over and the adrenaline's gone, I guess."
He nodded, understanding what she meant. For the moment, as he touched her and focused his attention on her, he didn't feel quite so angry or useless anymore. He wasn't fully sure what to do with her or how to help, but he became suddenly determined to do something.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, and she shook her head rather vehemently. He then looked her over again, at the faint dust still in her hair and the dress she wore ripped in more places than it should have been, and he decided on what to insist on. He took her hand and said, "Come on."
"Where?" she asked, but he didn't answer, because they arrived at their destination about five steps later - a bathroom. "Oh."
She then followed him inside silently, and after he flipped on the light and took a brief look around to make sure what he needed was actually in there, he closed the door behind her and locked it.
Summer almost immediately slumped against the small counter in front of the shower, and she muttered, "I don't think I'm gonna be much fun."
"I'm not trying to have fun," he replied, stepping in front of her and lifting her chin with his finger. "You'll feel better once you've washed off the... fire."
"I can do it myself," she said, but with a tone weary enough to make that seem rather doubtful.
"You don't have to," he replied quietly, and she didn't argue after that.
The first thing he did was turn on the shower to get the water warming up, and then, finally feeling like he had a purpose again tonight, he turned back to the tired woman still slumped against the counter, and he motioned for her to turn so that he could undo the back of her dress. She complied, and as he brushed her hair over her shoulder to get to the dress, she said, "This is so not how I thought this night would end."
"Me either," he replied honestly, finding the parts of the dress that needed undoing and slowly working the top of it down.
"It was supposed to be super sexy and ridiculous... not... traumatic and... stupid."
With the dress down to her hips, he turned her and then instantly noticed the smattering of bruises over her left ribs. It wasn't just simple bruising - it was ugly, and his eyes widened as he demanded, "What - how did you get those?"
"Thor," she muttered. "He kind of slammed me into a wall when the bomb went off. Saved my life, but I'm pretty sure my ribs are bruised."
He gave her a look, knowing she must not have mentioned this to the paramedics, and then he examined her ribs himself to see if they felt broken or not. It wasn't wholly reliable, but he knew what to feel for, and after a few moments of gentle testing with his flesh hand, he decided they were indeed merely bruised and then said, "You've got to ice this."
"I forgot about it," she shrugged, but he didn't believe her. He knew how much it hurt to breathe with bruised ribs.
"You can't just..." he began, fully intend on scolding her for not following her own motherly advice on paying close attention to injuries, but he bit his tongue and shook his head, refocusing on getting her dress off and getting her into the shower. Now that he knew of that particular injury, he made sure to check the rest of her for others as he went, not wanting to take any chances.
Once he was satisfied that she was indeed fine, he led her to the shower, which had already filled half the small space with steam, and helped her get in first before he even had his own shirt off. He just didn't want her cold. Once she was safely under the spray of the warm water, he tossed everything he was wearing into a corner - it had been a decent suit at the start of the night, at least - and then climbed in after her.
The last time they'd been in a shower together had been just a few days before, and under much different circumstances. This was a far cry from the sort of thing they'd normally do in here, and for a moment, he just stared at her back and wondered exactly how he was supposed to comfort her and care for her in the way that he wanted. It came so easily for her when it came to him, but he'd never really gotten the chance to do something like this for her. She hadn't needed it.
Tentatively, he placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her towards him, and she took a breath as she brushed her now-wet hair back on her head and looked up at him with the same weary, almost empty expression as before. He tried not to frown, hating seeing her like this, and his hand went to her cheek and cupped it gently before moving into her hair and angling her head towards the stream of water. She closed her eyes, but he didn't think it was because she enjoyed anything about it.
He used generic, cheap shampoo that was in a basket suctioned to the walls behind him to wash her hair, which wasn't the easiest thing to do when one of your hands was made of metal. She had a lot of hair to deal with, but he managed, and he tried to ease some of the tension from her face with soft, massaging touches to her scalp with his right hand. It seemed to help, and once her hair was clean, she opened her eyes, and he realized how close they were - he was essentially cradling her to his chest, and she stared at him for a few seconds before bringing her lips to his in a kiss he wasn't expecting.
Her arms went around his neck as he kissed her in return, and his hands left her hair and went to her waist cautiously as she deepened the kiss. One of her hands made a small but tight fist in the back of his hair as she pressed herself against him, and though their hands didn't wander, the kisses didn't stop until he realized suddenly that they had begun to taste wrong. He opened his eyes and drew away slightly, then felt his heart drop a little when he saw that she was crying, and had been for awhile.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, wiping at her face and shaking her head. "I don't know why I'm crying. Everybody's okay. I shouldn't be crying."
"Summer..."
She continued to shake her head and said, "I don't want to cry. I don't want to be weak or... stupid..."
"You're not," he said seriously, hands cradling her head again as his frown deepened.
"Then why am I sobbing like an idiot?" she asked. "I'm just... I'm sick of places I live blowing up and I'm sick of David having to constantly adjust to new places and feeling like I'm the biggest failure of a mother ever because he keeps almost... almost..."
She broke down fully then, and he pulled her close and let her. He didn't like that she thought she was showing weakness by crying or otherwise falling apart, but it wasn't the first time he'd noticed that she may think along those lines on a regular basis. Maybe it was a symptom of being a mother to a child who needed a strong, stable parent even more than a typical child would, and of being the girlfriend to a man that she'd once found sitting on her old couch with a gun to his own head, back when he first met her. Any idiot could see that she thought she needed to be strong at all times, no matter what, for the sake of those complicated and sometimes difficult people she loved the most.
But she was only human. And her humanity was one of the reasons he had come so far in recovering his.
"I'm sorry," he said into her ear as he held her, his hand soothing along her back as she continued to cry. "I promised you would be safe and you weren't. I'm sorry."
She shook her head and raised it so that she could meet his gaze and said, "Don't say that. Please don't, I can't... I just can't hear you blame yourself right now. You've got to stop blaming yourself for everything."
But he could. And he probably always would. Regardless, he nodded and then pulled her back into his embrace, and they were silent for a few moments, aside from her sniffling and his occasional light kiss he'd drop on her head or neck.
"I love you," he eventually murmured against her ear, and he could feel her chest heave just a little against his with a small but present wave of fresh tears. He may have been an idiot with overwhelming and considerably crippling guilt issues, and she may have been a woman who placed higher expectations on herself than on the actual superheroes that she was personally acquainted with, and neither of them would ever be perfect or accurate in their assessments of their own selves, but that was why he refused to let her go until the tears finally stopped. He didn't care about any of that. He cared about her, and he hoped that his words and his actions showed her just a fraction of just how much he truly did.
And, to his relief, comforting her calmed the storm within himself, if only while she was in his arms.
A/N: So, finally some action here after a semi-peaceful period. I was very eager to get to this point of the story, because it opened up the door for the next phase, which I have been impatiently waiting to write for quite a while now lol. This might also somewhat mark the halfway point, but I'm not really sure how accurate that is. I've been assuming the story would end up around 30-35 chapters, but since I'm crap as competently planning such things, I'm just gonna say this is probably halfway-ish. Lol. And that there is lots of angst yet ahead. And happy stuff too. But the angstiest of angst is yet to come. ANYWAY. Thank you to you lovely, wonderful, awesome readers and reviewers and followers, you are the best and once again I thank you for sticking with me. Thank you to midnightwings96 who was incredibly helpful in helping to plot out and detail the action in this chapter, since I am utter crap when it comes to figuring out how to do that lol. I'll see you all next week! :D