InsaneJournal

[Bucky Barnes; R] Uncivil War: Chapter 3
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: So this went way off base. The whole knocking down a wall thing was not intended. Ah well.
Title: Uncivil War- Chapter 3: It Makes Me-
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 4985
Summary: "Problems already?" Tony's voice over the comm said.


everyone's looking at me
i'm running around in circles
a quiet desperation's building higher
i've got to remember this is just a game
-30 Seconds To Mars

"Problems already?" Tony's voice over the comm said. "You've been there less than a day."

Bucky glanced back at the others, Sharon at the computer station, Bruce at his medical station, and once again, Maria and Steve hovering over his back. After seeing how fast that paint had decided to flake off after a power flicker, Bucky had evacuated everyone to the quinjet.

"Well, there's a few, but the big one is we're not sure if the place is gonna burn down around our ears or not," Bucky said.

"What?" Tony asked in a sharp snap, not angry but severely confused.

Bucky took in a deep breath. "There's a scorch mark on the wall by a fuse box in the basement," he said. "It'd been mostly hidden by paint when I first checked out the room this morning, but we had a power flicker a bit ago, and when I went back down, all the paint on it had flaked off. Bruce checked the arc reactor, and I checked the fuses, there doesn't look like there's a problem except that it looks like something flash fried on the wall there."

"Oh, that." Tony's voice was way too calm for what Bucky just told him. "I don't know why the paint did such a poor job at covering it, but there'd been a fire at that place that caused it to shut down. That's when I snapped it up- the building was good, the damage was mostly superficial, and the price was low. They thought it was an electrical fire, but when my crew went in to fix the place up, the wiring was fine. I personally inspected everything when we hooked up the arc reactor. I can vouch for its safety."

"And the paint all flaking off within a day of the power being in use here?" Bucky couldn't believe how cavalier Tony was treating this.

"A little weird," Tony admitted. "I'll come out and take a look when we take your stuff to you, if it'd make you feel better. But you're an engineer, you could do it just fine."

"Tony, I design weapons and medicines, I'm not an electrician," Bucky protested, elbow on the console, forehead in his hand. "Not every scientist and engineer out there is as good as you to multitask everything. Believe it or not, I'm not a genius here."

Tony sighed in a melodramatic manner that was completely unnecessary. "I know that, but you're damn smart. Was the wall hot when you found that mark?"

"No."

"No sparking in the room or tripped fuses?"

"No." Bucky felt irritated. Tony was talking down to him and he didn't like it.

"Then you have nothing to worry about. That spot's leftover from the fire, the paint wasn't adhering to it. It's weird that it was so abrupt, but you and Bruce know that arc reactor, I know you know how it hooks up, you guys can check it out. If there's something wrong, I'll make sure it gets fixed or find a new place to send you."

Despite Bucky's best efforts to interrupt because Tony was very suddenly making him- and the others, from the looks on their faces -feel like scared children running to a parent that was ready to shove them into a corner with a toy and told to amuse themselves, Tony kept right on going. "But seriously, Bucky, I just dumped Hydra information that is going to endanger Israel about three hours ago and I'm already getting hit by the media and government agents. Unless you find it's a life or death situation over there, I can't do anything."

Tony took a deep breath, and Bucky slumped in his seat to accept more logic pointing out how silly he was being. "Now. If you and Bruce find that there is a problem, I will shove the world aside to get you guys either out of there, or the problem fixed if it's above your pay grade. I promise. I didn't send you guys out there to abandon you."

"Well, that's nice to hear," Bucky muttered, feeling very put out and a bit like he failed his team by not being a proper leader and being proactive instead of reactive.

"If you thought otherwise, you hurt my feelings," Tony said. "What else was there?"

Sharon came to Bucky's rescue so he could sulk for a minute. "I found two rooms off the lounge. The watch tower and another room across the hall are both locked up. The room across the hall has a keypad code and the one up to the watch tower was a keypad and hand print lock."

"So was the building out back," Maria said. "What's in those places and how can we get access?"

"Oh those." There was that completely unaffected attitude again. But, then, as Tony had said, he had a lot on his plate all of a sudden. A few bumps in the school was probably the least of his worries. "The back building's a training room, like the floor here in the Tower. The watch tower is nothing but computers, surveillance for the grounds, access to other Avengers' locations or future locations, and all the old school data that I saved just in case. That other room's where our uniforms are stored when we're there. I'll send Junior the keypad codes for those, and have a program stick sent out for you to add your hand prints into the keys at the building and the computer room. That should get to you in within the next day or so. Bruce, did you have a list of medical stuff for me?"

"I do," Bruce said. "I'll upload it to Junior, if Sharon will trade me places so I can get to the computer station."

"Sure," she said, getting up and moving to take his spot at the medical station.

Bruce pulled his phone he'd made his list on out of his pocket and started uploading the file onto Junior's computers. "It should be incoming within a few seconds," Bruce said. "It wasn't too sparse in there, but there's a few things I'd like just in case."

"JARVIS says it's incoming," Tony said. "While that makes its way to me, was there any other thing I didn't foresee us needing?"

Bucky looked around at the others, all of them shaking their heads. He sat up and leaned on the console. "No, we're good. I had to throw out some of the so-called food you had here because it'd expired, and the lack of spices is appalling, but as soon as we can get Sharon properly disguised, she's taking some money into town and getting stuff for us."

Tony made a rude noise. "Leave it to the cook to bitch about the kitchen."

"The doctor's bitching about the doctor's office," Bucky pointed out.

"Yeah, and you can do something about your kitchen yourself," Tony said, volleying the point back to Bucky. "Bruce has to actually get things from me to help him."

"Asshole."

"Which is your way of saying I'm right. Thank you. Now, JARVIS has Bruce's list, your stuff will be there soon, I will talk to you another time. I have to get on the phone with the president now."

The line disconnected.

Bucky sighed, folding his arms on the console and pillowing his face on his arms. "So I feel like a dumbass. I dragged us out here like a bunch of kids who can't take care of things ourselves."

Steve patted his flesh shoulder. "Don't be so hard on yourself," he said. "We all agreed it was the thing to do. None of us thought to dig into the wiring ourselves."

"Honestly?" Maria said, crouching down next to Bucky, just inside his vision. "I think we all just wanted an excuse to go home. None of us want to be here, a potential problem with this place came up and we immediately went for the option that stood a chance at getting us out of here."

Silence fell over the group, her words sinking in. She was right, she was exactly right. Bucky had wanted the problem to be a problem. And once he'd sat up and looked at his teammates, he realized they had too.

Bruce was the first to break the silence. "So the question now is, do we make Steve and the girls stay here while you and I work, or take the chance of letting them back in the building?"

"They can come back in," Bucky said. "They might be able to help. If we're gonna look at the wiring behind that spot, we're gonna have to tear down some wall. And checking for exposed wires isn't hard. We'll make it family game day."

"If we're gonna dig into that wall, we're gonna need a sledge hammer and to be careful with it," Maria said. "Do we have one of those?"

"No idea," Bucky said. "Might be one in the grounds building. Steve, will you go check for that? Bruce, I'm leaving the arc reactor to you. I know you checked it once already, but we should cover our bases." He turned the chair around to see both Sharon and Maria- who had stood back up -a bit better to address them. "Sharon, Maria, there's a lot of exposed cables above the hallway in the utilities section of the basement. There's step ladders and regular ladders down there if you need them, get up into those cables and look for any place the insulation is failing or there's obviously exposed wires. When Steve comes back with the sledge hammer, assuming we have one, I'll take it to the wall, he and I will work on the wires behind that wall."

"And if we don't have one?" Maria asked.

Bucky sighed. "I guess I could punch the wall a few times. Really don't care to punch down a wall, though. That seems tedious. We'll get Sharon disguised and send her to town prematurely to get one."

Sharon's eyebrows raised. "A sledge hammer? Where would I go to get one of those?"

"A Home Depot or some place similar," Bucky said. "They're necessary for certain home renovations. Like knocking down walls."

"You got it, Chief." Sharon drew in a breath. "So I suppose we get to work. Glad we had naps before this came up."

Bucky glanced at Steve, who Bucky was sure hadn't napped at all. But he said nothing; it was nobody else's business. "Yeah," he said in agreement. "Come on, let's get to work."

With a thank you to Junior for humoring their communication request, they left the quinjet. Bruce decided to follow them back to the building before splitting down the path to the former stable houses, rather than tromp around the trees until he found it. Steve took the shortcut through the house to get to the grounds building rather than go all the way around the building.

Probably smart.

"Go on ahead," Bucky told the girls once they were in and Steve was back out. "I'm gonna find something better than this t-shirt to work in." He glanced down at his Winter Soldier shirt. "As dumb as it is, Steve gave it to me, I don't want to work in it."

Maria raised one eyebrow with a suggestive smile. "A tank top, perhaps?"

"Dear, there's children present."

Sharon gave him a glare. "A child who protected your dumb ass without even knowing who you were for months."

Bucky patted her shoulder. "Just go help Maria, I'll be right back down."

His reason for wanting to go upstairs wasn't as much to change his shirt, as much as find a new hiding place for the project files that Steve had snooped into. He'd worry about rearranging the page and pictures into proper order later.

Once in his room, he went to his dresser and pulled out a tank top that he'd brought on the off chance he had to do some heavy lifting work, just like he was about to do. While he changed shirts, he thought about where he could hide the files. Under the mattress on his side seemed obvious, but the chance of everything getting bent from his weight on them stopped that idea from being a good one. And Steve had proven he was willing to get into Bucky's suitcase.

Nosy jackass.

He tucked it into a desk drawer for the moment. It wasn't ideal, but he lacked other options.

Reasonably certain that Steve wouldn't go looking until after Bucky'd had a chance to organize the files and find a better hiding place for them, Bucky hurried down the stairs and back into the basement.

"How's the search going?" he asked the girls as he passed them.

They were both up on step ladders, halfway down the hall. "Nothing so far," Maria said, feeling along a cable. "No tears in this one either. Oh!" She glanced down at Bucky. "Steve's waiting for you. We have a sledge hammer."

"Good. Thank you." Bucky headed into the fuse box room where the burn was and where Steve was waiting with a sledge hammer, just as promised. Bucky held his hand out for it. "I'm better dressed for the dirty work."

Steve handed it over. "Not gonna hit anyone with it, are you?" he asked in a quiet- and Bucky thought cruel -accusation. He heard the unspoken reference to the Soldier.

Bucky yanked it away with his metal hand. "Don't be ridiculous," he snapped just as quietly. "We're not gonna do this, are we? At least try remembering more than that lab room before you start getting pissy at me for keeping him around. And don't think I had a choice on that anyway."

Steve sighed, standing back away from the wall. "I thought you said you had gotten better," he said, the venom gone and why had it been there in the first place, damnit, Steve. But while his tone had calmed, he sounded hurt. Fuck you, Rogers, you fucked this one up. "I remember being allowed to think that."

Ignoring Steve for a second while Bucky inspected the mark, knocking on the concrete with the wooden end of the hammer for signs of where the cement might've been the weakest from the heat that caused that mark. "I never said he was gone," he finally said. "I just said I was more me."

He looked back at Steve. "I also recall telling you that he loves you just as much as I do. That's the problem, after what they did to you, I can't trust him enough to not cut down a teammate to get to you if he thinks you need him." He glanced towards the door to the hallway. "But this really isn't the place for this argument."

Steve glanced around the doorway into the hall. "Anything, ladies?"

"No," came Sharon's voice, floating from further down the hall. "Everything looks good through here. What about other places where there's wiring? We're not gonna knock out every wall in the building to look at the wiring, are we?"

"We shouldn't have to," Steve said, then glanced back in at Bucky for further answer.

Bucky shook his head. "If we can't find anything down here or at the arc reactor, we'll have to just stick around and wait to see if it gets out of hand. The occasional light flicker, assuming these wires and the reactor are fine, isn't a big deal. Speaking of, though." He turned on his comm. "Bruce, how's the reactor look?"

"It looks fine so far," Bruce said. "But I'm giving it a complete engineering check up. There's some parts of this I don't understand, I might have to make note of those parts and if you don't find anything inside, I'll chance contacting Tony again to ask about those and their status."

"Good idea." Bucky took proper hold of the sledge hammer, putting his left arm as the power arm and his right arm as the steadying one. "Let's see what's behind this wall. Steve, once I get a hole, wanna help me yank out pieces so we're not throwing hammers at wires?"

Steve stepped back fully into the room, out of the way to the opposite side. "Ready and waiting."

Bucky wound up the hammer, and with the whining screech of computers in his arm forced to give all their power, he threw his strength into one good swing. The thick metal head of the hammer hit the concrete wall with enough force to shatter through concrete that crumbled around the hammer head, leaving behind a hole big enough to crawl through.

He pulled back the sledge hammer and looked at the hole, then at Steve. "I think we can yank away parts from here. What do you think?"

Steve walked over and stuck his hands in the hole and yanked back against the wall where it was weak. A big chunk of cement hit the ground. "I think we're making a lot of dust," he said, stepping back and coughing. He looked at Bucky. "Changing shirts probably would've been a good idea."

Bucky glanced down at his tank top, already turning white from the dust. "Your shirt's fine, I just didn't want to ruin the one you got me that I was wearing."

His statement actually got a small smile from Steve, a smile that quickly turned into a guilty look. "I'm sorry," he said, voice low again. "I was just upset. I don't like the idea of that happening to my best friend. You'd feel the same."

"I know," Bucky said, reaching his metal hand into the hole on the opposite side from Steve and yanked out a big chunk. "It was just a rude awakening." He looked at Steve. "Now, we work, no more of this. This can wait. The potential safety of the team can't."

"You're the boss," Steve said, gripping another part of the wall and pulling. Another large section came out and landed on the floor at their feet. He stepped back and eyed the wall. "Okay, I think we got all of that mark. Let's move the concrete, get in at those wires."

Bucky used the hammer end of his sledge hammer to shove the big pieces of broken concrete into the corner nearest them, farthest from the fuse box. He set down the hammer, leaning it against the wall. "Lemme at it."

He and Steve traded places, Bucky taking up most of the space to examine the wires. Steve did his best to look as well, but Bucky was almost fully in his way. Bucky ran his metal fingers along the various cables, expecting shocks that he hoped his arm could handle.

Sigh. Maybe Bruce could look at it. Hopefully Tony would be coming with their stuff. If his arm malfunctioned, he'd have to.

Because Bucky liked being worked on.

"I'm not getting any shocks," he said.

Steve thunked his head softly on the edge of the hole. "Bucky, you will short out your arm doing that."

"No I won't," Bucky protested. "It handled Natasha's widow bites fine. Just have to break the source of the shock from my arm and it's fine."

"Bucky."

Bucky looked down at Steve, who'd crouched to start inspecting wires further down from where Bucky was looking. "Yeah?"

"Don't be stupid, please. Nobody here can fix your arm if it goes dead."

"We'll ask Tony to come in with our stuff," Bucky replied, going back to his inspection. Having felt no shocks, he started feeling around with his flesh hand for damage to the cables insulating the wires. "You know he will. And you or Maria can cook in the meantime. I don't like the idea of losing use of my arm, but I know we can fix it. It's a small price to pay to make sure this place isn't gonna burn down and kill us all."

"Mighty leader, throwing himself into the path of a bullet to get the others out." Steve sounded exasperated.

"I do not wanna hear that from you. You're the one that flung himself on a damn grenade in basic."

Steve didn't react to that in a way that suggested a lack of memory of it, so Bucky assumed Steve knew what he was talking about. "You were like this before the Army," Steve said. "I don't remember that too clearly, remember? But I do remember the shenanigans you led your brother and I into when we were younger."

That made Bucky smile. "Yeah, but we had fun." He leaned back away from the wall. "Okay, I'm not finding anything that makes me think something's wrong. No shocks, nothing's hot, no tears in insulation cables, nothing."

"Not down here, either," Steve said.

Bucky went around the room, checking the fuse boxes. Nothing had been tripped or blown. "This is weird. Bruce?"

"Still working, still finding nothing wrong."

"Hey, Bucky!" Maria called from the hall.

Ah, results. He looked around the corner of the doorway. "What is it?"

Maria- half down her ladder -and Sharon stared at him. "I thought you called me," Maria said.

Bucky slowly shook his head, wondering what the hell. "No, I heard you call me."

"I heard you too," Sharon said.

Bucky ducked back into the room. "Steve, you heard Maria call my name, right?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah, loud and clear."

Weird. Weird weird weird. "Okay, so we're all hearing things." He looked down the hall again. "If you're done, we're done in here, let's go upstairs and start testing all the lights." And pretend that whatever just happened hadn't actually happened, because it was a bit spooky and Bucky was already getting creeped out by the place with the wiring thing going on.

Bucky and Steve headed upstairs, leaving the girls to put away the step ladders. They'd offered to take care of that and got told that there was no need, they were full grown women, they could handle step ladders, stop being old fashioned.

Yes, ma'am.

"Okay, we have the AC running," Bucky said. "And the appliances in the kitchen work, so they're plugged in. Those three electronic locks have been on this whole time. I guess we start turning on lights and see if any blow anything."

The split up, and Bucky told the girls to do the same. The women were directed to the front wings while Steve and Bucky took the back ones. They'd meet up in the middle.

"Okay, the arc reactor looks clear," Bruce said in the comm. "What's going on in there?"

"Right now, we're just flicking on lights," Bucky said. "Seeing if anything blows. So far, nothing."

"Mm. Then I think I'll hold off on contacting Tony again about the reactor. If nothing else, Junior might have how it works stored in her memory banks, I'll go back to talk to her later."

"Come on inside and have fun helping," Bucky said, turning on the hallway light to the third floor of the boys' dorm, where the five of them were staying. None of the rooms went out when he tried those.

Well what the fuck.

"Steve, how's the other side?" Please say it's normal. Bucky would rather deal with a false alarm than an actual problem.

"Nothing's going out. There's one room that's missing a lightbulb, but other than that, it's clear over here."

"I'm inside," Bruce announced. "I'll take the middle rooms." Which amounted to the atrium, the doctor's office, and the lounge upstairs. That was fine, they'd all end up back around the same time at that point.

Not one damn light blew out. Not one. The only problem light turned out to be that missing lightbulb.

Once back in the central part of the building with the others, Bucky rested his hands in his face a second. "I don't believe this. Paint doesn't just melt like that."

"But we can't find anything wrong," Maria said. "It's an oddity, but I think it's one that can be dismissed, however creepy it might be."

Bucky sighed, lifting his head and looking around. Several of the cats were gathered nearby, almost like a pride of lions encircling prey. Stop that, cats. "Well, I guess we just work on Sharon's hair, like we were going to before. We've done everything we can, it's the only other thing I can think to do. Everything else is in Tony's hands."

"It's also lunch time," Maria pointed out. "I can put together some cold cuts, nothing fancy. They won't take long to eat and we can immediately do the cut and dye afterwards."

"We wouldn't have to go anywhere, either," Sharon said. "The cafeteria isn't carpeted, it'd be easier to clean hair clippings off of, and it won't stain if dye drips or something. I'll go get the dye." She paused. "Just to clarify, we really are doing this this time?"

Oh Sharon. She had a point, they kept saying they'd do it and it'd get put off. "Barring an emergency, yes. Steve, go get the scissors. You left them on your dresser."

While those two went back to their rooms, Maria, Bucky, and Bruce headed to the cafeteria. The men sat down at a table, Maria continuing on into the kitchen. Bucky folded his arms on the table and rested his face on them. "This is a stupidly long day and I hate it here."

"It has been," Bruce said. "Just wait until the rest of our stuff gets here. We're gonna have fun fitting our entire apartments into those rooms."

Bucky looked up. "Well, there's the work room, and the lounge, Steve's art stuff can go there, for example. There's lots of room in this place. We'll just have to stop thinking of those dorms as if they were individual apartments. They're just bedrooms in a bigger place." He sighed. "Not that I don't miss my apartment."

"I miss mine," Bruce said. He looked Bucky over. "You should go wash your hands and face before lunch. You're a mess from work."

Bucky looked at himself. "Yeah, I should've changed before coming here. Eh, don't care. I'll just go wash up."

Steve and Sharon both returned while Bucky was in the kitchen, washing his hands and face.

"Do I look presentable, dear?" he asked Maria, fully expecting a smartass answer to match his smartass tone.

"Tolerable," Maria replied, handing him two plates with sandwiches. Both sandwiches were on the larger side. She set a bag of Doritos on one. "There. Those are for you and Steve."

"You're a wonderful woman, Maria," Bucky said. "Steve may or may not thank you for remembering his Doritos. It depends on if he remembers that they're his."

Maria's expression turned sympathetic and she put a hand on his arm before reaching for two more plates with more reasonably sized sandwiches. "Go on, I have this."

Bucky didn't argue, just took the two plates through the swinging door of the kitchen out to the table where the other three were sitting. Off to the side of where Sharon was sitting was the scissors, a folded piece of paper, and a box of brown hair dye. Man, it was gonna be weird, seeing her as a brunette.

Steve took the bag off his plate once it was set in front of him and studied it. "So this is my modern food vice, huh?" He looked at Bucky. "Why do I get the feeling that yours was stupid?"

Bucky jabbed his finger in Steve's direction. "Don't make fun of my Christmas tree cakes. I don't make fun of your stupid Doritos. Shut up and eat."

Maria joined them with Sharon and Bruce's plates, then disappeared back into the kitchen to get her own. Around them, the cats had joined with a chorus of hungry meows and begging purrs. There was never going to be such a thing as a meal in peace in that place.

Cali zeroed in on Bucky, sitting at his feet and tapping his leg occasionally. "No, Cali, you don't get any," he told her. "I don't have enough to share with everyone and I don't want you getting a complex."

The cat ignored him, tired of waiting for him to indulge her, and jumped up on the table between him and Steve. "Oh no you don't," Bucky said, grabbing her quickly with one arm, his sandwich held a safe distance away with his other hand. He moved his arm to drop her back on the floor, when a cold sensation zipped up his arm and Cali fell through his arm.

No, that was impossible.

A tiny thought started forming in his head. "Steve, keep Cali from following me and protect the rest of my food," he said, pulling out a small bit of the deli ham from his sandwich. "I want to test something."

Of course, if he was right and Cali had slipped through his arm, Steve may not be able to keep her from following him. So he pointed at Cali sternly. "Stay. Stay good and you get some."

"Bucky, where are you going?" Maria asked as Bucky got up with the ham in hand.

"Testing something." He didn't elaborate, heading out of the cafeteria. He closed the heavy doors that cut it off from the rest of the building, took five steps away from the doors, then crouched. "Okay, Cali, come get it!" he called into the room.

Part of him expected what came next, the rest of him was scared shitless as she appeared, dashing through the door and up to his hand. She snagged the meat from his frozen fingers.

No wonder the cats weren't setting off Sharon's allergies.

They weren't fucking real.