It was happening again. Bucky had woken up as normal and had taken his morning run. After coming back to the house and in the process of taking a shower - something changed. A lot had changed. Cool water rained down against his chest and then suddenly it felt more like pelting against his head, and he was much, much shorter. One look at his hands, and Bucky saw that they weren’t exactly hands any longer. No, they were paws. He was a bear. Again.
Given his shorter height and his not-human circumstances, it took some maneuvering before Bucky was able to jump up and turn off the water. His fluffy, stuffed body had soaked up a lot of water which made his form that much heavier and harder to move. Once he as out of the shower, dripping wet all over the floor, Bucky sighed and looked down at himself. This had happened once before and it had been embarrassing enough. Though, at least he missed the colorful, happy bears, right? He still seemed to feel like himself - all things considered.
Since it took him longer to get ready - and mostly dry off - Bucky was mostly sure that both of his roommates were gone for the morning. He debated whether or not he’d try hiding out for the duration but knew he at least needed to check in at the base. The last time this happened, he’d been helped out by Sarissa who had carried him the majority of the way to the base and hadn’t given him too much of a hard time. Unfortunately, though, she hadn’t been in Atlantis for some time.
Once he finally decided to make the trek to the base, a much longer trek with his short legs, he put on a small jacket that managed to appear in his room to cover up his arm that still somehow managed to look metallic. If he was going to be a bear, the anonymity wouldn’t last for too long, but it would be nice not to be spotted right away. That might last a little while, right?
When she’d woken up that morning, Robin knew something felt … off. She’d tried to ignore it at first, and had even checked herself over in the mirror to make sure nothing had physically changed, but she couldn’t see any differences. She still felt it, though, a strange desire to have a tea party. Robin couldn’t remember the last time she’d had one of those. She’d been six, maybe? And she doubted it had even been her choice.
None of the music or books in the house were satisfying her need to set out tea cups and eat tiny sandwiches, so Robin pulled on a sweatshirt and left the house in search of something, anything, that would help.
It wasn’t hard to spot the bear -- it might not have been very tall, but there weren’t very many teddy bears around. “Hey!” she called out. “You, the bear! Hold up!”
Short legs and slow moving meant that getting to the base was slow going, and Bucky had barely made it a couple blocks from the house before he heard someone calling him. Not by name exactly, but the ‘bear’ call made it fairly obvious. Part of him half-wished that he’d stayed in for the day and hidden out in his room for the duration of this… whatever it was.
With a sigh, Bucky turned around and looked at the girl who was headed his way. She wasn’t someone he immediately recognized, but there had been several new arrivals recently. It was a good chance she was part of that group.
“Hi,” he said cautiously, almost prepared for her to come at him with a bear hug or something. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Robin was breathless by the time she caught up to the bear, and she skidded to a stop at its feet. His feet? She hadn’t even known if the bear would respond until it did. Now that she was faced with a real live teddy bear that was actually talking back to her, Robin was speechless.
“Uh.” She forced a smile onto her face and shook her head to clear her mind. “Yeah, uh. I was wondering … do you want to have a tea party? I think it’d be really fun.”
At first, Bucky only stared. The thought of going to a tea party whether bear or human sounded like, well, not torture because he’d been exposed to actual torture in the past, but not something he’d ever want to sit through. On the other hand, she sounded so excited and earnest and there was a voice in the back of his mind that somehow answered against his own better judgement.
“I guess so.” He tried thinking of a valid reason to say no, but he couldn’t think of any. It wasn’t like he’d be able to lead training with his teams when he was like this. “Sure. Where are we going?” He asked and started walking with her to wherever this tea party was going to be. There were eventually going to be pictures of this, weren’t there?
As hopeful as she’d sounded when she’d asked, Robin really hadn’t expected him to say yes, so when he did, she was practically bursting with excitement. The only trouble was she hadn’t exactly thought the entire thing through. The idea had hit her suddenly, like a tidal wave. She didn’t have a tea set at her house. She wasn’t even sure if there was any tea in her house at all.
“Ummm…” Her cheeks flushed a little with embarrassment. “We have to go… get a tea set. And tea. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted. “I just really wanted tea all of a sudden.”
Somehow, Bucky wondered if teddy bears and tea parties were linked. That being a bear wasn’t the only part of Atlantis’ magic for the day. He could tell she didn’t seem quite sure why she was asking him to have tea. “I think Coffee Me Better also has a selection of teas that they serve,” he offered. He had no idea if they had tea sets or not, but it would be at least something. At the very least, they should have cups and saucers.
“Unless you wanted to get a full set at a store?” He wasn’t sure how this was supposed to work either. This wasn’t the first time he’d ever been turned into a bear, but this did happen to be the first time he’d been ask to have a tea party while being a bear. “And, um, I’m Bucky. I don’t know if…” He looked down at himself. “That was obvious or not with me being like this.”
“You mean you’re not usually a bear?” Robin joked, her eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “A Bucky bear?”
The joke was probably not that funny, so she continued quickly, “I think I want a full set. And a blanket. Or a picnic table?” Coffee Me Better was great, but it didn’t feel like a tea party should. Robin was picturing the sort of tea parties she had with her friends when they were little, all plastic cups and pretend tea that was actually just water, and a handful of “guests” that were an assortment of stuffed animals and dolls. That was what she wanted.
A Bucky Bear? Bucky wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know exactly what that meant since he felt like he was missing a punchline. “No, not usually,” he said instead but paused. “Well, actually, it’s happened before, but I’m not usually… a bear.”
For the tea party, he tried to think where they could go. “There’s a store not far.” One that probably had real tea sets and play tea sets. God, he hoped that this wasn’t going to be a play tea set. “And maybe in the park?”
“Excellent.” That sounded perfect. They could get some tea and maybe some tiny sandwiches -- no, Robin thought, they could get some scones, because it was still morning and she was in the mood for breakfast.
“So what are you if you’re not usually a bear? Is that too forward? Sorry.”
In any other situation that probably would have been a loaded question, but Bucky shrugged. “A man?” He hoped that was what she meant. “I’m one of the, um, Lieutenant Commanders,” he said, a little sheepishly. By the look of him now, though, he didn’t really look like a commander of much of anything, did he?
“Atlantis has had a thing for turning people into bears lately.” All different kinds. Being a bear wasn’t the worst to have happened during his time here, but it was definitely inconvenient.
“Ohhhhh.” Lieutenant Commander didn’t really ring a bell for Robin, but it sounded fancy and important. She knew enough about military-like organizations to know that it meant he was in some sort of leadership position. At least, usually. She wondered if he knew Steve.
The magic of Atlantis was a hell of a lot more involved than she had imagined, or expected. “Do things like this happen often?” Robin asked, her brow furrowed. It was both interesting and confusing at the same time, fun and a little scary. She didn’t like to feel out of control like that, but it seemed like they didn’t have much of a choice.
“Sometimes. Though more lately than usual.” It wasn’t often that people turned into bears multiple times each month especially when there was so much else going on too. “This has happened before, but some of it seems to be repeating. Like a lot of things lately.” Which also went along with some of the missions that were happening too.
They approached the store and even though Bucky considered waiting outside for her to get the set she wanted, he decided that standing out on the street for anyone to pass by was probably the riskier option. “What about these?” He asked and pointed a paw up to the shelf that contained the tea sets.
That wasn’t the first time she’d heard about weird things repeating themselves, but she hadn’t been around long enough for that to really make her nervous like longer-term residents might’ve been. It did make her curious, however, and as Robin reached up to pluck the tea set off the shelf, she said, “do you think it means something? That things are repeating?” Naturally suspicious, Robin had a tendency to look for things that someone who was more like Steve might not have even thought about. “Like something’s building? Or running out of ideas, running down the clock?”
He was surprised Robin came to that conclusion so quickly, but those were thoughts he’d had himself over the last month. What if the repetition meant something more? The strange occurrences, the missions. He couldn’t mention the missions ot her, but it still had to mean something more. “It’s possible. If it had been one or two repetitions then that may have been a coincidence, but nearly everything that’s happened lately, happened before. I’ve been thinking the same.”
“Makes you wonder what happens when the clock runs down, doesn’t it?” He asked her as they headed to the front of the store. What happened when the repetition stopped? “Though, around this time last year, all of us were put into an alternate reality. Maybe it’s a summer thing. These have been an extra weird couple of months.”
“Yes! Exactly!” Robin exclaimed enthusiastically. “It does make you wonder.” Already, her mind was churning, just like when she’d overheard Steve and Dustin’s secret. Now that she knew there were strange things afoot, she wanted to put the puzzle together. She was sure she could do it. She’d solved the Russians’ code in one day, after all. Maybe that was why she was here.
Were they counting down to fall? Winter? The end of the year? Summer was a strange time in Hawkins, too -- or at least this last summer had been.
The alternate reality thing hadn’t happened, though, so maybe they weren’t on the right track. Robin’s brow furrowed. There had to be a pattern; she just didn’t know enough about it. “I wish I knew more about what all had happened here. Not just because it’s confusing as hell when people reference stuff I don’t get,” Robin admitted. “I bet I could piece it together if I knew. If I could just like, write it all down in order.”
Bucky’s teddy bear brows furrowed a bit as he listened. He wondered for a moment if she had an ability to process data and lots of information or if she meant something a little more natural. “There may be some public databases available of some of the major events that have happened here. Maybe at the library or at the base - the Relations or Diplomatic offices, most likely.”
Much more detailed databases were kept under security clearance at the base, but she probably would be able to have access to what happened in the general population. The various worlds that collided with Atlantis from time to time, the big events, and any public attacks that had happened. They had information on all of their home worlds of the past, present, and future; there had to be notes kept on what had happened in Atlantis over the last nearly three years, right?
Robin tipped her head in curiosity, grinning down at Bucky as he suggested looking up public records and where to find them. It would be really useful to get access to the stuff that wasn’t open to the public, but Robin felt confident she could find a way to work around that, too. But the library was a good place to start.
“You’re the best,” she insisted, enthusiastically. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected out of her day when she’d left the house, but it was turning out to be really, really great. If she’d known tea parties were this productive, she might’ve held more of them. “I promise this is going to be the best tea party you’ve ever had.”