The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2014-11-19 16:14:00 |
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Current music: | Fall Out Boy - Centuries |
Entry tags: | bucky barnes, maria hill, marvel, multi-parter, natasha romanov, novel, r-rated, sharon carter, steve rogers, tony stark, yuuo, yuuo: marvel |
[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: So typing 'James' for Bucky is very weird. I keep forgetting that's his real name. Also, I am so not sorry for my jab at Papa John's.
Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 9
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 3793
Summary: "I'm sorry, Steve," Sharon said, although she didn't look as sorry as Bucky thought she should've been at that particular moment.
"I'm sorry, Steve," Sharon said, although she didn't look as sorry as Bucky thought she should've been at that particular moment. "I couldn't tell you what job I was on. But I wasn't lying about being on assignment."
A woman lying to Steve was a capital offense, in Bucky's mind. Especially from one who was not-dating him.
But at least Steve had a good eye for attractive women. Bucky taught him well.
Steve took a deep breath. "And how long have you been assigned to watch out for me this time?"
"Since the beginning," she said. "We have agents watching Sam Wilson, too. We even managed to track down Romanov. She was kind of annoyed."
"You cheated," Natasha said. "You had Homeland help you."
Sharon smiled. "You need someone to watch your back while you're watching everyone else's, Romanov." The smile disappeared. "After Hydra and SHIELD went down, the CIA started datamining those files that Agent Romanov uploaded. We weren't terribly surprised to discover that there are plenty of other bases and agents out there, and given your track record for annoying them, we knew you'd need help staying safe. But, we also know that the best protectors are the ones nobody knows about, so we couldn't approach you directly. Again, I am so sorry, I wasn't trying to lie to you."
Steve looked like he wanted to say more, to question her on more personal matters, but Bucky knew he wasn't likely to do that, so he wasn't surprised when Steve stared down at the floor, lips moving slightly as he counted to five, an old habit he had when he was avoiding certain topics, then looked back up at the monitor. "How'd you know about Bucky?"
"We didn't," Sharon said. "At least, not at first. We had no idea he existed until he showed up in your company. Honestly? He scared the hell out of us. We don't like unknowns when it comes to protecting our charges."
When Steve looked at Bucky, Bucky shook his head. "I'm not sorry."
"You never are," Steve said, then looked back at Sharon. "So how'd you know to be watching for the news to help Natasha get us out?"
Sharon pointed down at Natasha, mouthing the words 'her fault,' then gave Natasha a far too innocent smile when Natasha flipped her off. "When the name Winter Soldier became public, we started trying to cross-reference it with any known information in the community, and only got some ghost stories from over decades. We figured it must've been a borrowed name. Since he was obviously your friend and keeping up with you in your job, we decided keeping him safe would be a good idea. Then the news broke that he was Barnes, and the theory of his name being borrowed blew out of the water and sank the battleship. It was too much of a coincidence that a decades old super soldier would be taking the name of a decades old master assassin without being connected. I contacted Romanov, and asked her to come get you. I knew you'd trust her more than you would me, once you found out what my job was."
Steve sighed. "Sharon, that's not-"
"Besides, we had no safe place to take you," Sharon said, cutting him off. "Romanov did. That frees us up to try to run damage control."
"And how are you going to do that?" Bucky asked, finally saying something relevant to the conversation. He'd been content to let Steve deal with his not-sweetheart; her focus had been more on him to begin with, and Bucky had become a secondary mission, but now the topic was on him, and damn right he'd say something.
Sharon looked over at him, and Bucky couldn't tell what exactly her reaction to him was. He'd been an unknown to her in her mission, and Bucky knew how it felt to deal with that. And he was a boogeyman in her profession. Her internal reaction could've been anything, and he doubted he would've been surprised by any of it.
"Our first move?" she said. "To try to contain how much gets out, and discredit what does. The only evidence against you is old rumors and a handful of blurry photographs. Those will be the hardest to deal with, as they all have your arm featured pretty prominently."
"Don't bother," Bucky said. "You'll be lying to discredit them. Don't put Steve in a position where he has to lie like that. He's terrible at it."
One corner of her lips quirked up. "I know." Bucky appreciated the obvious affection in that tone. Her smile disappeared. "It would help us a lot if you'd tell us what you know about these assassinations and how you're still around and can do the things you do."
Bucky looked down at the ground, feeling all eyes on him and it made him uncomfortable. Finally, he looked back up at her. "Too many people know as it is. Find something else."
"Sergeant Barnes, it doesn't mat-"
"I'm not 'Sergeant' anything," he snapped. "I'm not military anymore."
She took his interruption with grace. "Well, right now, you are, and you're AWOL and wanted for potential crimes against the state. That discharge hadn't gone through yet. You've got the whole country looking for you, and we're the only ones keeping you safe right now. I suggest you try to cooperate." She paused. "For Steve's sake."
His ire had been rankled, until she pulled out the only weapon that would ever work against him: Steve. Do it for Steve. Do anything for Steve, anything to keep him safe. He clenched his teeth, his jaw starting to ache. He didn't want that information in anyone's hands, and he couldn't see how it wouldn't somehow become public if he turned it in to the government to pull his ass out of the fire. And he still didn't feel he could count on anyone to keep the government from trying to turn him into a lab rat- more than he'd already been -to figure out what Hydra did so they could replicate it. They'd left Steve mostly alone, but how much of that was because he was a national hero and they couldn't get away with shadowy experimentation? If Bucky's information became public, if the various jobs he'd done for Hydra got out, he doubted anyone in the public would even give a rat's damn ass if he disappeared somewhere into the system.
It was probably an irrational fear, he was too much in the public's eye, and Captain America's friend and partner, but he couldn't help the fear that he'd disappear again. That he'd find himself locked in a lab again until everything he knew was gone. He'd been through that once, he wouldn't go through it again.
"What got out so far?" he finally asked, not quite surrendering to her point, but getting there.
"The 1967 murder of Eva Volkov, the leader of an underground resistance in communist Soviet Union, which led to the 1968 riots in Moscow. Left 192 people dead, and tightened the Soviet Union's legistlation against such groups, leading to several hundred more deaths across the Union. And the 1991 deaths of Howard and Maria Stark. We're not sure how that connects, that was ruled an engineering failure."
Bucky looked away, glancing briefly at Steve, then Natasha. Neither looked surprised that the Starks were associated to him. "Guns aren't the only way to kill people," he said, trying to flatten his voice into an unaffected attitude. "How'd that one come out?"
Sharon looked vaguely surprised, where the other two hadn't been. "We don't know," she confessed. "When Volkov's case broke, we assumed it was released by intelligence agents in the Russian community. You really were responsible for the Starks' deaths?" Bucky didn't answer, didn't even twitch a muscle on his face to give her a non-verbal answer. It was answer enough. "Who hired you?"
"I wasn't hired," Bucky said, a bit evasively.
Sharon didn't seem deterred by Bucky's complete lack of cooperation. "Then who was behind it? Why was it done?"
"I don't know why it was done." He couldn't tell if it was disgustingly easy to slip back into that old skin of showing and even having no emotion, or if it was draining everything he had in him to do it.
Sharon seemed to be doing her best to hold onto a professional face, but it was clear that she was getting frustrated. "You don't know? You didn't ask questions before you took the job?"
"There were a lot of things I didn't question."
She took a deep breath. "Mister Barnes, who were you working for?"
Before Bucky had to regress any further, Steve, mercifully, stepped in. "Let it go, Sharon, it's not important right now."
"Steve, we need this informa-"
"Sharon," Steve interrupted. "We'll find another way." He took a deep breath, looking at Bucky. "If Howard and Maria's deaths came out, Tony would know about it."
Bucky felt his insides frost over. Tony wasn't always the most forgiving person; he'd dismissed Bucky's crimes due to the brainwashing with ease, but now it was personal. Something deep inside him told him that he might've just lost Tony's- and by proxy, Pepper's- friendship. That left him no one but Steve again. He was just getting used to the idea of having friends, he didn't want to lose that.
In the three seconds it'd taken for that fear to manifest itself in an icy lump in his gut, Sharon had spoken up. "Speaking of Tony Stark, he's been trying to contact you on your laptop pretty much nonstop since the news hit."
Bucky looked at the ground. "I'll take care of it later, just ignore it."
Sharon nodded once. "All right." Then she took a breath and Bucky braced himself for a question he didn't want. "Mister Barnes-"
"Call me James," he interrupted. "It'd be safer to not go by any recognizable name right now."
"You're going to spend the next forever thinking you're in trouble," Steve said.
"I am in trouble," Bucky said. "Better than someone hearing you call me 'Bucky' and them connecting the dots. I'd prefer a stable hiding place than running all over the country. Romanov's car has shitty shocks. If I have to take another eighteen hour trip in it, I'm going to be a giant bruise."
Natasha looked offended. "Don't make fun of my car, or I'll dump you in the ditch and make you walk."
Bucky snorted. "It'd be preferable." He looked back up at the monitor to Sharon. "You were saying something."
Sharon glanced over at Steve before focusing her attention back on Bucky. "I know he told me to drop it, but I'm going to ask one more time: who were you working for?"
"You already know," Bucky answered. He looked at Natasha. "I'm going to clean your kitchen for you. Feel free to keep up the girl talk." He walked away, taking himself out of camera range.
"You have a funny definition of girl talk," Natasha called after him.
Steve sighed. "And to think, he used to be good with women."
Bucky studied the dishes in the sink, and the plate sitting on the counter with dried and completely disgusting food on it. It'd been sitting there about a week, and it looked dead. Toast that probably would be like eating cardboard, a bit of dried-solid butter around it, and some scrambled eggs with penicillin growing on them. Bucky stared at it like he'd stare at a squished rabbit on the side of the road. It was completely repulsive, and he didn't want to touch it, lest he get flesh-eating gunk on him, but it wouldn't clean itself.
"Keep us posted, Carter," Natasha said behind him and Bucky hunted for a trash can to scrape the old food into.
"I will," Sharon said. Bucky glanced back just in time to see her face disappear, to be replaced by the Homeland Security sigil again.
Steve looked at him. "Bucky, you hate doing dishes."
"I also hate antibiotics growing on them, and it's James, now," Bucky pointed out, dumping the food into the trash he found on the other side of the counter. "Besides, I didn't want to deal with your girl anymore."
Natasha got up and walked over to him, holding her hand out. "I'll do the kitchen. I have to take stock of what I have to feed you guys anyway. You go sit down."
Bucky didn't hand over the plate. "Are you going to actually call me anything besides 'hey you'?"
She raised one eyebrow. "Well, right now, I'm calling you 'James'. I wasn't sure what you'd be comfortable with being called before."
"Very considerate of you." He knew he didn't sound it, but he was grateful for that. He wasn't sure he liked her enough to let her call him 'Bucky', but his first name set his teeth on edge, and being called by his last name alone made him feel like he was back in boot camp.
But not being addressed by name at all was equally annoying as any of her other options. He hadn't really given her much choice in the matter.
They argued a minute about who'd do the dishes, until Bucky managed to twist her arm into focusing more on getting dinner than worrying about the dishes. After inspecting the state of her fridge and freezer (and dumping an almost full gallon of milk down the sink), she grabbed her phone and ordered delivery. Pizza, it seemed, was their only choice at that time of night, or even at all, as Natasha said that nobody but pizza places delivered.
"I thought this was a college town," Bucky said, drying the last of the dishes. There hadn't been enough to warrant using the dishwasher. "Why is pizza the only delivery option, and why is there only one place that's still open?"
Natasha put her phone down on the desk and swiveled in her chair to look at him. "Because most of the businesses in delivery distance of the campus are bars, or non-franchise restaurants that aren't big enough to offer delivery," she said. "And aside from Wal-Mart and the occasional Walgreens, this town shuts down by midnight. Lincoln tries to be both a major college city and a small town at the same time. It has mixed results."
"Sounds annoying," Bucky said, poking around in the cupboards for where she kept her plates.
"Second cupboard over from the sink," she said. "Above the dishwasher." He followed her directions, putting the plate away and turning to face her, leaning back against the counter. "And yes, it's annoying, but only sometimes. I don't usually eat so late." She paused. "And I usually have food in the fridge to cook."
"So delivery it is," Steve said with a note of resignation in his voice. He'd never cared for pizza much. "Please tell me the restaurant is at least decent?"
Natasha turned her head to look at him. "It's Papa John's, so no."
Steve looked like a small child told to eat his brussel sprouts. "This town can't offer better?"
She tilted her head back against her chair, swiveling slightly in it. "Well, there's Pizza Hut, Godfather's, Valentino's, Domino's, DaVinci's, a few local places like Big Sal's and Piezano's, but again, places within delivery distance that are still open. It's past ten, most of those places are closed."
"You know a lot of pizza places and when they close for someone who usually cooks," Steve said.
She chuckled. "I've been here a bit over a year, I made a point of learning this information in case it was needed. Just because I usually don't get delivery doesn't mean it hasn't happened." She grabbed her purse off the floor by the desk and dug around in it, finally tossing a wallet on the desk. "I'm going to go shower. The cash for the pizza's in there. Give the driver a ten dollar tip, make up for having to work on Thanksgiving."
"How long did they say it'd take?" Steve asked, frowning and sounding confused.
"About twenty minutes," she said, standing up.
Steve gave her an incredulous look. "That's a long shower, Natasha."
"Not that it's your business," she said, sounding amused, "but shaving takes more time than just washing up."
Bucky raised an eyebrow. "It takes you that damn long to shave your legs?"
Natasha flashed him one of those smiles that he loved/hated. "Girls can shave more than just their legs, you know."
He stared at her. She didn't just imply- she did. She actually did. "That's a thought that's going to stay with me," he said, not sure if he felt violated or turned on. Maybe both.
"As long as it gives you sweet dreams, James," she said, heading for the hall. "There's bedding in the closet here, feel free to make the bed while I'm using up the hot water."
Bucky waited until she'd disappeared behind one door, then reappeared in a robe and disappeared into the other room, before he looked at Steve. "I think I hate her," he said.
Steve snorted, choking down a laugh. "No, you don't. Just be glad she hasn't made you kiss her and pretend to be engaged to her."
Bucky raised an eyebrow. "When did this happen?"
"When the STRIKE team was looking for us," Steve said. "We were at the mall, using the computer station to try to read the files on Project Insight. Apparently, public displays of affection make people uncomfortable." He had a long-suffering look on his face.
"And you just feel so unfortunate to have to kiss the most attractive spy in the business," Bucky said dryly, not buying it.
Steve shrugged, although Bucky noted with amusement that he was turning red. "I prefer to be dating a woman before I kiss her," he said. "But, she wasn't bad. She didn't think the same of me, though."
Bucky laughed. "You haven't had enough practice, then."
Steve scowled. "Don't you start. You do not need practice."
"The hell you don't," Bucky said. "I taught you better than that." He pushed away from the counter. "Pull out the bed, I'll get the bedding. I don't want to have to mess around with it after dinner."
Steve got up off the couch and pulled off the cushions, dumping them in the corner on top of their bag with the weapons and uniforms. Bucky waited until he'd pulled the fold-out couch out, judging the size to grab linen that would hopefully fit. It looked like a standard double. He inspected the shelves in the closet, pulling out a couple sheets, and decided they'd fit. He grabbed a blanket to go over the top sheet; the apartment was cold, still slowly heating up with the furnace on. And if Natasha was anything like them, she'd be turning the thermostat down overnight, which meant a sheet was going to be far from sufficient.
"Here," he said, tossing the bedding on the bed. "Think you'll want anything warmer?"
Steve grabbed the blanket, feeling the underside. "You get cold easier than I do," he said. "This would be enough for me, I think."
"It'll be good enough, then," Bucky said, walking over to help Steve make the bed.
The food showed up about ten minutes later, and like Natasha had predicted, she was still in the shower when the buzzer rang. God, she was taking a long shower. She hadn't taken that long back in DC. It idly occurred to him that she'd probably been skipping shaving while in DC, and hair took more time to shave when it got furry.
Steve had located some paper plates and both he and Bucky were on their second round of food when she finally emerged from the bathroom, steam following her. "Your food's cold," Steve said.
She paused between the bathroom and her bedroom. "I'm not surprised," she said. "I hope you saved some."
Bucky grunted. "Believe me, no matter how hungry I am, I'm not interested in eating that much crap food."
"Told you it was bad," she said, then went into her bedroom, closing her door behind her.
Bucky looked at Steve. "She's good at the 'told you so' thing, isn't she?"
Steve nodded slowly. "She revels in it."
Natasha must've been tired, because she barely said a word as she got food, didn't bother with conversation after, either. Bucky wasn't really up for talking with her, or even with Steve, and Steve knew when to follow the group desire for quiet.
Natasha gathered up their plates after they were done and threw them out, put the leftover pizza in the fridge, and yawned. "I'm going to go to bed, "she said. "I recommend you two do the same. We have to get food tomorrow, and downtown's going to be a mess. It's an afternoon game, which means we can expect a lot of traffic and pedestrians all day, and I need to be back in time for kick off." She smiled tiredly. "Clint would be very stern with me if I missed it."
They bid each other good night, and Steve and Bucky took turns changing into night clothes in the bathroom- which was still very muggy from Natasha's shower -then turned out the light and crawled into bed. There was a bit of squabbling as they tried to occupy the same space in the middle- the bed wasn't actually quite as big as the double they'd shared at the hotel, and with both of them being on the broad side, there wasn't much room for both of them.
Once they were settled, Bucky tried to sleep, wanted to sleep, and while his body was exhausted and completely ready for sleep, as usual, his mind didn't want to cooperate. All he could think was that he'd disappear again, become a laboratory experiment. That nobody would find him, and few would even care to. Including Tony, and Pepper, both of whom were probably lost to him now.
"What's the matter?" Steve said, turning slightly against Bucky.
Bucky glanced back over his shoulder at Steve. "Nothing," he said. "Why?"
"Because you're being a heat seeking missile over there. You're crowding me."
Bucky took in a deep breath and shoved his thoughts back down into that black little corner where they belonged before they spewed out where Steve could see them. "I'm just cold," he said. "And you're a goddamn furnace."
Steve sighed, turning back over. "Just don't kick me out of the bed," he said.
"I promise nothing."