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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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not me low-key crying at your comment 🤡🤡

thank you so much!!!! this might just be the kick in the ass i needed to get back to writing 🙏🏻

summary: steve is acting weird. avoiding you, being snippy and mean, leaving the room when you enter. all you want is your boyfriend back, but all he wants is to pretend you don't exist. when he's almost hurt on a mission, you do what you're made to do.

word count: 11k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, powered!reader, insecure!reader

warnings: steve is mean to the reader in the beginning, heavy angst, hurt/comfort, canon-level violence, brief ptsd symptoms, slight description of blood, brief mention of racism in the '30s & '40s

brief mentions of: reader's parents being toxic, homelessness, past accidents, ableism in the past & present

note: this one hurt me lmfao. idk why this went the way it did but i'm not mad at it // also i am a queer, trans, disabled american. i have fundamental disagreements with things that marvel/the mcu as it stands for and some of the more nuanced things that you might not notice unless you're looking for it. this will take place in my writing because i cannot separate myself from the lens in which i consume/create content.

title credit: lil nas x

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Falling in love with Steve Rogers went against every instinct you had. You knew that he was going to hurt you from the first moment your lips touched his. Sure - he’s clever, righteous, courteous… You can’t forget he’s also drop-dead gorgeous because every trashy gossip magazine in a three-state radius of New York doesn’t let you forget. Neither does the sight of him waking up in your bed every morning. (Well, actually, maybe that would remind you if he was still fucking doing that.)

But lately, you’ve had to rely on the fucking tabloids to catch a glimpse of your super-hero boyfriend. The university class you had picked up on a whim at the end of the summer - Life & Times of the ‘30s and ‘40s - avoids any mention of Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos. Not that your classmates do because, Christ on a bike, those magazines manage to catch pictures of you and Steve in moments that you don’t even remember. Plus, you’re an Avenger too. It’s bound to catch some attention when you waltz into a college classroom.

You’re sure if you were an undergrad trying to fill a gen-ed requirement and were sitting next to someone who could kill you without blinking but also dating Captain Rogers you’d be a little distracted too. You try not to blame your classmates too much, but they do make it hard to concentrate with their -really dating Captain America?- and -wonder if I could get an autograph- whispers. None of that matters because you’re learning, really studying, in between missions and missing Steve and believing that maybe the gossip reporters are right.

Maybe he’s forgotten about you.

You grit your teeth and push the thought away. It does you no good right now, while you’re training with Peter. He’s working his way up to bona fide missions and, because you’re the only one on the team who has experience with real-life teenagers outside of saving their lives, it’s up to you to get him to the level that he needs to be. Plus, the mission where he’s going to get his gills wet is just you, Tony, Steve, Nat, and Bucky. You’d much rather be the one to train him because you won’t traumatize him.

Right now, though, you’re just kicking his ass to try and get rid of some of the tension in your body. You feel a little bad about it, but when you started as his mentor you told him point-blank that you’d never go easy on him. That meant if you were having a bad day he either needed to up his game or he’d have a bad day too. It appears he’s taken that to heart as he struggles to dodge the hits you’re throwing his way. He lunges out of the way when you try to land a right hook but practically walks into the leg sweep that sends him crashing to the ground.

“Awe,” Peter groans, letting his guard down. You take the momentary lapse of focus to grab him by the collar of the hoodie he’s wearing and haul him to his feet, jerking one fist back to cold-clock him but he beats you to it. You hear the sound of your nose cracking before you feel it but then the pain rushes you all at once. You’ve had worse but coming from Peter, the move surprises you. You don’t yell out but he does when you push him away from you and call the fight off. Peter practically yelps your name, hands up by his head as he watches you bend at the waist, both hands over where your nose is absolutely gushing blood. “I am so sorry, I just reacted-!”

“It’s fine, Pete,” You shake your head and stand straight again, the blood beginning to leak through your fingers, “Just go get me a towel, okay?” Peter practically trips over his feet to get something for your nose and as you track him on his way into the locker rooms, you see Steve, Bucky, and Nat. The latter are looking your way, eyebrows raised like they’re asking you if you’re okay. Steve hasn’t even broken stride in his conversation so you wave them off with a bloody hand. Peter’s back in a flash, pressing a wet towel into your grasp and snapping you out of your self-pity party. “It was a good hit,” You compliment as you wipe your face off, “I just wasn’t expecting it. Prob’ly wouldn't have landed it if I had.”

He wrings his hands, shifting from foot to foot. “I’m sorry-”

“It’s a good thing, Peter, means you’re getting better.” You deadpan, checking to see if your nose has stopped bleeding yet, “I don’t think you actually broke it, but I’ll go down to medical to check later.” You do your best to clean up your hands with the wet towel, but it’s so soaked with your blood that it mostly just smears it around. You grimace and shake your head. “Well, I should go now before our sparring match ends up looking like I murdered you.”

“I’ll go with,” He offers, “I’m the one who broke your nose.” You let Peter walk you down to medical even though you were originally going to refuse. Perhaps petty, but it was the way that Steve didn’t even look your way as you left that made you let the teenager walk you the two floors to where you’d be able to clean yourself up. He hums in the elevator and you know that he wants to ask you something - it’s the way he holds his mouth when he’s prying for information or keeping a secret that tips you off. Finally, just before the elevator opens, you sigh and turn to him.

“What, Peter?” He grins but then it falls when he has to skitter after you down the hall. Maybe that’s why it falls - the question he asks next nearly sends you to your ass.

“Is everything okay with you and Captain Rogers?” He easily catches up to you when you stop in your tracks, ignoring that you’re still bleeding a little bit down your face and you might be dripping blood everywhere from where it’s run down your arms.

“What?” You do your best to look confused like everything is fine, but Peter is perceptive. He may fumble around and be pretty awkward, but those are really just teenager things that he’ll hopefully outgrow. You should have known that when someone caught onto how bad things are on your end, it would be Peter. (You wonder if Nat or Bucky has brought it up with Steve, considering he’s spent more time with them in the past week than he’s seen you in the past month.) “We’re fine.” Your words are stilted as you begin walking to the medical wing much faster than before.

“I just thought I’d ask, well, because I’ve sort of noticed… Something just seems off, you know? Like, you two used to spend a lot of time together, and maybe it’s the recon mission coming up, but I was just thinking that you two really barely look at each other even when you’re in the same -”

“Peter!” You say his name much louder than either of you expected and both of you jump. “Peter,” You say softer, looking at the glass door to the medical wing instead of him, “Just leave it, okay? It’s nothing you have to worry about, kid.” Peter ducks around to open the door, forcing you to look at him. “He’s just focused on his stuff and I’m focused on getting you whipped into shape for this mission. We only have two days.” Once you’re inside and surrounded by the medical crew Tony keeps on staff, he thankfully drops it. You love Peter, you do, but it’s a lot like having a little brother. You can only love them so much before you want to fucking strangle them. Eventually, as the doctor checks to make sure he hasn’t broken your nose, you have to order him away to go study or something. “I’ll join you later,” You promise him as the doctor prods at your tender flesh, “I have an essay due soon.”

That’s another thing that’s been bugging you that Peter surely picked up on. Nearly everybody knew you were taking a course at the local community college, but nobody knew what it was about. You’d wanted to keep it a secret until you told Steve, but the day you had registered he’d flown out for a two-week mission without telling you or saying goodbye. After that, you decided it didn’t really matter if anyone knew what class you were taking, and keeping it a secret sort of spiraled from there. If they wanted to know they could look it up. Maybe it was petty, but you just wanted the class to be over and done with so you could forget that you really only picked it up so you relate to your boyfriend more.

If you can even call Steve your boyfriend anymore. You’re not so sure where you stand and, honestly, you’re really close to giving up on the relationship as a whole but you can’t do that. Before you were dating, you were friends, and Steve… He never gave up on you. Not once. How could you repay him by giving up on your relationship? The one that you thought was The One? Even if it hurts, even if you’re unsure more than sure these days, how could you? Somewhere, though, you know you deserve better. You don’t deserve the sinking, dark feeling that lingers in your gut for most of your days now or the way that you second-guess every move you make - even in the field. It’s dangerous but you can’t do anything to fix it.

You’re too scared. You know that eventually, it will happen, he’ll break up with you, but you’d like to put that day off for as long as possible. To relish in the love he once had for you, how pure and powerful it was. You’re sure that you’ll never experience anything like that again.

Hell, you might never fall in love again.

Those thoughts don’t do anything to help you, though, so you try not to have them. You get clearance from the doctor and get cleaned up as much as you can without taking a full body shower. The idea to go back to your room and take one crosses your mind but you know that Steve’s probably done training, probably heading back for his own shower, and you don’t want to open that can of worms. Instead, you go to the common room and drop into the couch between Peter and Tony. They’re talking about something something science something something, but you pull your stack of books and notebooks out from the shelf underneath the coffee table and continue outlining your essay from where you left off. The assignment was focused on how the end of WW1 changed American life and then how life changed leading up to and during WW2 but that had hit a little too close to home for you, so you’re writing about the racial tension and overall racism of the times. Tony and Peter keep talking over your back and then you hear footsteps heading toward the common room.

You barely look up when they enter - Nat and Bucky - because it’s fine. It’s normal. They’re just two of Steve’s best friends, that’s all, nothing to be jumpy about. You don’t even register that emotional pain that hits when you realize that, yeah, you’re not one of his best friends anymore. You doubt you’re even considered a friend in his book.

You groan and lean back into the couch, bringing your study materials with you. Peter glances over, skimming over your page and a half of shorthand, and gags. “Jesus, can you write like a normal person?”

“Oh, sorry,” You say lazily, not looking up as you continue to scribble in your incomprehensible code, “I do forget that some of us had privacy at home.” You lift your lips just a little bit to let Peter know you’re kidding, looking up at him through your lashes as you slouch next to him. He looks red in the face. “Besides, once you have to start doing mission reports you’ll be begging me to learn my shorthand and use my stenography machine.”

“I keep telling you that I can update that ol’ thing,” Tony draws your attention. For the first time, you realize that Nat and Bucky are on the loveseat looking at you expectantly. Steve is standing in the corner over their shoulder reading a book from the bookshelf in front of him. His back is tense and he looks like he’s not reading, just listening. You force your eyes back to Tony on your right and shake your head.

“No, because then you’d know my shorthand and it makes me too happy to see you spend hours trying to decipher it.” His eyes wander to your essay again, trying to find any patterns that he can use to figure out what the hell you’re writing on anything ever. He’s opening his mouth to make a smart-ass remark that will no doubt lift some of the weight off of your shoulders when another voice speaks up.

“Wow,” Steve doesn’t even look at you even as he says your name sardonically, “Way to be a team player.” Your mind comes to a screeching halt, trying to figure out what the fuck he’s playing at. Even Bucky and Nat look surprised at the cold way he spoke to you, Tony and Peter both gasping from your side. You can’t say anything, throat tight and burning with tears as you stare at your boyfriend with raised eyebrows. What do you say to that? How do you respond? You know it wasn’t a joke because he’s not laughing, not smiling, not even looking up from that fucking book in his hands. You can’t tell if you’re more hurt or embarrassed, but either way, you don’t want to stick around for someone to get the nerve to say something.

Instead of replying, you slam your textbooks shut and bundle everything into your arms. You doubt Steve even notices that you’re making such a hasty retreat but if he does, he doesn’t say a fucking thing. You feel like you’re in high school - practically running through an empty hallway with your notebooks and textbooks pressed to your chest, trying not to cry. It’s ridiculous. You’re a trained assassin, you’re an Avenger, you are strong and powerful and yet… And yet. You’ve given so much of your heart and soul to Steve Rogers that he can knock you down eight pegs without even trying. Without even looking at you. You can’t wait to go on this fucking recon mission, where you can put all of your focus on making sure Peter is doing okay and gathering the intel. Where you can stop thinking about how easily Steve Rogers seems to be pushing you to the side.

You spend the next two days writing your essay, ignoring almost everyone, and working on your essay. On the day of the recon mission, you’re running out the door for your eight a.m lecture, printed essay in hand, and reminding Tony that he promised to pick you up on campus after class for the mission.

You’re lucky that you went, too. You hadn’t counted on the professor making everyone stand up and tell the class the subject of their essays - didn’t realize that it would be twenty-five percent of the grade on the paper. You’ll never understand college professors and the weird shit they do, but the class is informative and entertaining. He goes around the room, starting on the opposite side of you, so you’ll be last. Great.

Several students did their papers on the propaganda of the time, one student was brave and did her essay on the ethical dilemma of the super-soldier serum and eugenics, and most of the other students focused on pop culture and how it changed. When your professor looks at you it’s almost like he’s expecting you to have done nothing but fawn over Steve and Bucky, considering you know them personally. He looks surprised when you clear your throat, stand and say: “I focused on the casual and institutional racism that faced non-white Americans at the time.” You almost preen when he looks impressed and then the shame fills you. It’s just… You want Steve to be proud of you. You want him to congratulate you on going back to school, even if it’s just for one class. You want him to be happy and surprised that he was the inspiration for taking the class.

Though, lately, the class has been more for you than for him. You like learning new things, pushing the boundaries of assignments, making people uncomfortable with the truth of the times you’re studying as told to you by two people who lived it. It’s nice. Normal.

Everyone needs a little bit of normal.

But, honestly, normal is fucking boring. By the time your class is over and you’re handing in your essay it’s like ants are crawling over your skin. A combination of nerves from the upcoming mission, a head full of fog from whatever is happening with Steve, and a little bit of fear at the thought of taking Peter into the field has you bolting for the door the moment your essay is taken from you. You’d worn your tac-suit underneath a pair of baggy sweats and a loose hoodie, so you don’t even bother slowing down as you head toward the car that Tony has waiting for you. He’s in the front seat, grinning at you from underneath his aviators and Peter is driving.

You slip into the backseat without thinking or looking at who’s there, tossing your bag in the back and peeling your hoodie off. “God, Tone, we’re goin’ to die before we even get to the mission with Petey driving.” You toss your hoodie back to join your bag and finally see who’s sitting next to you.

Of course, it’s Steve. He’s looking at you - but not really. He’s looking through you, like he can’t stand that you’re both crammed in the backseat of Tony’s electric car. His gaze catches you and holds you in place. Everything around you goes cold and fuzzy, making you miss Peter’s indignant complaining that he has his license so he should be able to drive… And then Steve scoffs and looks out his window, ignoring you. It stings but you have a job to do. You make some witty retort back to Peter, but it falls flat as you struggle out of your sweats. This is what life is, you think. Relationships aren’t meant to be forever - you learned that at a young age.

Until your accident at fifteen, you had watched your parents run out of helium, their relationship expanding and cooling in arguments, in days spent not talking, in trips to your grandparents without the other, in passive-aggressive computer searches for divorce attorneys left open for anyone to see. Then, after you were trapped between those machines - after you spent hour after agonizing hour with electricity pressing between your atoms, being torn apart and rebuilt as a young god - after that day you watched them expand against each other before the neutron core of their relationship collapsed on itself and the resulting supernova sent you to the streets. But then Fury found you. Then Tony, then Nat, then Steve.

Your parents exploded out from each other and the shockwaves ruined your life. At least now, your relationship with Steve is ending silently. There’s no explosion, no collapse, no rapid expansion to take over your cosmos. Your relationship with Steve is simply approaching the event horizon, where it will hang in the air until one of you takes the final step and you both become frozen, two collapsing objects on opposite sides of the universe. Maybe that’s what you already are. You feel so far away from him in the back of Tony’s car - like he’s eons and light-years away from you - and you feel so cold. Frozen, down to the bone. It makes you stiff in your replies to Tony and Peter, slow on the uptake when the car pulls up to the quinjet, nearing stasis and unable to respond when Nat asks if you’re okay.

Finally, you turn to look at her, nodding. “Fine,” You clear your throat, “Been a rough day.” You do your best to smile at her, but your face feels heavy. Your chest feels cold and tight, making you worry about your performance on the upcoming mission. When Peter shakes his head next to you, discreetly telling Nat not to press, you’re focused on Steve and the electricity humming in the most base part of your body.

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. You turn away and force yourself to smile, throwing a weak and numb arm over Peter’s shoulders. “Are you ready for this, Pete?” You jostle him back and forth, leading him toward the sitting area behind the cockpit. “Gonna get your ass kicked?”

“Please,” He shoves you off, nervously laughing, “Not with the skills you’ve taught me.” He mimics throwing webs, making hissing noises under his breath, and you bark out a laugh, shaking your head.

“You’re payin’ my medical bills when I have to save your ass, Spidey.” You shake your head and strap in next to the wall, Peter taking the seat to your right. Tony, from the aisle across from you, points a thick finger your way.

“You don’t pay medical bills anymore,” He waggles his finger, “So you’ll just have to make him do your homework for a week.”

“Mister Stark!”

“He’ll have to earn shorthand to do your essays,” Nat chimes in from between Bucky and Steve, who are both doing their best to not look at you - or anyone really. “You willing to share that with him?”

You lean back in your seat and jab at Peter with your elbow. “Hell no, so I guess Spider-Boy better do his best.” The arachnid in question grumbles, crossing his arms and slouching in his seat.

“No pressure, right?” He complains, “Not like I’m already nervous or anything.”

“You’ll do fine, kid,” Bucky pipes up, drawing your eyes back to Steve, “It’s goin’ to be a cakewalk.”

“Don’t jinx it, Barnes,” You warn half-heartedly, tucking in on yourself, “We need this to be easy.” From the look on his face - everyone’s face, really - you know that they heard you loud and clear when you were really saying I need this to be easy.

After an uneasy laugh from Bucky, a claustrophobic silence settles over you all as the jet begins to take off. You’re in for an hour ride and plan to spend it going over battle plans with Peter when harsh whispering catches your ear. It’s Bucky and Steve nearly crushing Nat between them until she gets up and sits across from Peter, rolling her eyes. Still, you try your best to run him through the actions you both had planned - the names, the setups you needed to execute them, everything. If something happens to Peter, you’ll never forgive yourself.

And then, cutting through your soft promptings to Peter and his equally soft replies, Bucky’s voice. “Leave it, Steve. Until after this mission.” Even Tony looks up from his tablet, curiosity piqued. Their faces are both red, set hard and angry at each other and your stomach drops. What the hell is going on that Steve ‘Till The End Of The Line Rogers is fighting with Bucky You And Me, Pal Barnes? You must shift, or lean too far into Steve’s eyesight, because for the first time in what feels like years he is looking directly at you - and seeing you, too. It makes your pulse jump and, almost instinctively, you want to reach out and ground yourself on the rubber of the seat underneath you.

You don’t get the chance, though, because Steve speaks. “No, why should I? This is clearly affecting the team.” He’s still looking - glaring - at you like you’ve done something wrong. “What’s the point of waiting? I’ve been waiting to talk about this.”

“Bo, I don’t think this is the time,” Bucky looks over his shoulder at you, then, and you know what’s coming. You know that it’s time, that Steve is about to break up with you in front of your teammates. Your friends. Your family. You steel yourself for the anguish you’re about to feel and then jerk your chin out, hardening your resolve.

“Buck, it’s fine. If Steve wants to address something, he can.”

Natasha says your name, a low warning over the hum of the quinjet. “I think he should wait.”

“Well, I’m not goin’ to wait!” Steve unbuckles himself and stands, “I have tried waiting, and look at where that has gotten me.” He puts his hands on his hips and puffs out a breath. You unbuckle and stand, too, unsure of where this is going. “You need to,” He holds one hand out, pointing at you while his voice shakes. You notice his hand is shaking, too, but fractionally. If you didn’t know Steve as well as you do you may have never noticed it. “You need to get it together.”

“I need to get it together?” You question, eyebrows nearly hitting the ceiling with how fast they shoot up. You’re not totally sure you’ve heard him right because what do you have to get together? The broken shards of your relationship? The information and research for your final paper? The awful way you’ve let yourself be treated for what seems like forever?

“You heard me,” Steve says, at the same time Bucky leans his head back and groans deep in his chest. “What? Someone had to say it.”

“We should wait for this,” Nat speaks up again, but lifelessly. She knows now that you and Steve are both on the warpath, neither of you are going to stop. (That’s also why the two of you work together as a couple so well. Very rarely are you both so worked up about something that you can’t back down, so the other is always there to meet you halfway and get you back to earth.)

“No, no, no,” You say, near hysterically, “No, he wants to do this now? Before a mission? Instead of the fuckin’ weeks we had to hash whatever crawled up his ass and died out? Be my guest. He’s already dragged everyone into this by treating me like a pariah.” You’re not sneering, but your teeth are gritted so tightly together you can hear them scraping and feel a tension headache beginning to bloom in your temples. Bucky looks… Almost incredulous at your statement. Like putting the blame on Steve is a dick move or something.

“Oh, so I’m the bad guy here?” Steve is curling his lip, glaring at you. There’s something behind his eyes, but he’s buried it so deep that you can’t reach it and figure out what it is. “I’m the bad guy, right. Right, right, right.” He scoffs, shakes his head, and then he’s running his fingers through his hair like he really can’t believe what you’re saying to him.

“Well, what else am I supposed to think?” You throw your hands out to the side and let them slap back down on your thighs. “You ignore me, you make me feel like shit, you talk down to me like I’m some insignificant foot soldier. How else am I supposed to take that, Steve?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe ask me what’s wrong? Maybe ask me why I’m acting like this, instead of ignoring all of your problems like a child?” He mirrors your moments, but the sound his hands make when they hit the outside of his suit is more powerful than yours. Fueled by anger, you think. Anger and whatever the hell was in the serum Erskine pumped into Steve.

“Ask you?” You repeat, near-hysterical, “Ask you? Oh yeah, let me get right on that. Hey, Mister Rogers? Mister Captain America? Mister Ignores-His-Partner-For-God-Knows-Why? Hey, just why are you doin’ that?” You’re surprised that you’ve said something so snotty, but you don’t back down. (Steve looks surprised, too, and Bucky has stood up next to his friend like he’s about to start berating you as well. At least he looks more cautious about it, like he’s not totally sure that this fight should be happening.)

The more surprising part of your fight is how fast it’s shut down. Tony and Nat stand at the same time and exchange a glance like they’ve surprised each other. “That’s enough,” Tony starts.

Nat cuts him off. “I don’t care if you fight this one out instead of talking, but if you do it before this recon mission you two are going to blow it. Do you understand me?” She looks dangerous, the sharp edge of a knife spiraling through the air. You force yourself to look away from her, from Tony, from Bucky, from Steve. She’s right. You know she’s right - especially on this mission. Peter is there, going to be in real danger even though there’s not supposed to be one Hydra agent in a four-mile radius. You have to clear your mind and focus on protecting him.

Steve seems to think the same thing because he stands down. When you watch him collapse in on himself, Bucky’s arms around his shoulders, into the little quinjet seats your everything aches. Heart, lungs, eyes - everything. Even though you don’t know what’s going on, what could have possibly happened to make your relationship sink this quickly and out of the blue, you still love him. He’s still The One for you. You still want to be the one to comfort him and make him feel whole when he’s struggling.

But you can’t. You can’t and it kills you.

The heat of battle makes a lot of things fade into the background. Important things like why the fuck are there Hydra agents here? and Steve is going to break up with you when you get back on the jet and Tony swore on the fucking limited edition AC/DC vintage tour poster he has in his office that this would be an easy in/easy out information mission. None of that matters, though, because you’re in deep shit. There are seventeen of them, all primed to the teeth with weapons made to take your team down permanently.

You’re practically glued to Peter, calling out commands and plans for him to initiate. It’s when all of your plans fall through that you take a hit from a heavy fist on purpose, hitting the ground hard. “Plan F, Spidey, Plan F!” You cover the instruction with a groan and then you’re back on your feet, working your way toward him.

“Plan F?” Tony says, somewhere above you in his suit. Your comms crackle ominously as another heat-seeking grenade is launched, interfering with the radio waves your tech relies on. You don’t worry about it, because you know Tony is on it. He’s your eyes in the sky.

Peter is the one who answers his question, watching your close hand-to-hand tilt out of your favor briefly. “Plan Fuck It, Mister Stark.” He grunts as he webs up a Hydra agent, jerking him away from where he was about to slip a knife up and under Natasha’s kevlar. You finally drop the guy in front of you, ignoring Steve’s disappointed Language! and toss one of your knives toward Nat for her to use. Tony is still laughing in your ear, wheezing as he drops down and snags the rifle from one of the snipers and then takes back off.

What your little protégé failed to mention about Plan F is that it’s not just chaos, but controlled chaos. You let loose, letting a soft current cover every inch of your skin as Peter switches to his conductive webbing and takes special care to not web any of his allies. Except for you - if you’re in the way and he catches you in a web it doesn’t matter because you’re you, alive with electricity that drops the men that get caught in the web, too. You rip out of the webs and turn the current off when one of your teammates gets too close.

More Hydra agents are pouring out of the woods, topping out their numbers around twenty-five. That’s twenty-five too many in your opinion, especially when you can see Peter getting tired, his anxiety spiking, his moves having more and more hesitation behind them. You need to get this over with quickly, but you don’t have the options to do that. Steve, Bucky, and Nat are really the heavy-hitters - you, Pete, and Tony are the only ones without serums despite all of your individual abilities. Desperately you reach out for a web that’s still connected to Peter’s arms, pulling him out of the way of a baton that’s about to come down on the back of his neck.

The baton the agent is wielding glints in the coming dusk, freezing you as Peter scrambles past you with a quick apology. You’ve seen that before - seen it, felt it, know it like the back of your hand. There’s no way that you could ever forget that weapon. The man stumbles when his hit doesn’t connect but then rights himself and searches for a new target.

A long, black baton that splits into two prongs at the end is heavy in his hand. Electricity crackles between the bulbs at the end, flashing in the setting sun and your memories. The man only has one, but if it was hooked up to a machine, spinning. If there were four, five, six. If you were pinned between them, screaming in the pain as they rewrote your DNA… You’ve only felt it once, but you’ll never forget it.

And now, you’ll taste it again. On purpose this time. The man holding the stun baton is going for Steve’s back - his strong back, the one that protects people, the one that holds the weight of the world, the one that lays in your bed, the one you see whipping out of rooms as you’re entering just so that he doesn’t have to look at you - and you can’t let that happen. It only takes ten amps to kill a regular human, but you know those things are cranked up to twenty minimum. You don’t want to see how many amps of current it will take to stop Steve’s heart. You’re between the baton and Steve before you can think about what you’re doing or what comes next, the hard bulbs settling unyielding into your side and cranking out maximum power for maximum damage as soon as the current is connected and able to flow from one bulb to the other.

The pain hits you and your throat catches on it. It burns through your body, setting everything on fire - your chest hurts as your heart protests the electrons and then your powers kick in, sweeping them into your very atoms and cells. You’re a live wire now, ears humming and body thrumming with power you’ve only dreamed of. It hurts, and it burns, and you feel tears rising in your eyes because you’re back there - back begging for death or for life or for God and god at the same time - but then it’s over. The man sees that you’re not seizing up, not dropping dead in front of him, and he takes three steps back.

It’s not far enough.

You’ve only felt like this once before - right after you were unhooked from the machine that changed your life and brought you to your new family. You remember how you looked when you were put in front of a mirror with all of the pent up electricity circling your body - how your eyes were filled to the brim and dripping with bright and blue electricity, the way it was jumping across your body, how you didn’t need to breathe because your body was fully saturated with pure, unadulterated power. You wonder if you look like that now and assume you do because you can see the bright blue reflecting in the terrified eyes of the Hydra agent.

Your suit, unlike everyone else’s, is not grounded. It’s metal, metal, metal. You’re made to conduct, born for it, and the earth beneath you comes alive with bright white as you release all of the energy, the power, surges down and out. You’re practiced. You can reach out and feel the synapses and neurons of every human being in the clearing, know exactly where your teammates are standing, and know exactly how to target everything but them and the pitiful amount of electricity their brains carry. You grin, something truly feral and unhinged, and you can see the fear in the Hydra agent. Then, you let go.

You know that everyone is going to be pissed. (Maybe not everyone.) You’re not built for this, not made to take down nearly twenty fucking people at once. As you let go, you feel what they feel. The seizing muscles, the stopping of their hearts, the inside of their bodies crisping against their bones. At that moment, that delicious moment, you see the universe.

You become God. You become everything - your mother and your father and God and god and anyone else who’s watching your life from the ether. You become the judge, jury, and executioner of souls that you don’t know from Adam. You become lightning, and thunder, and exposed nerves of the cosmos at the same time. The world bends to your will and you relish in it, taking that power in your fist and wielding it to protect the man you’ll love for the rest of your life and the family that you’ve made. You will stop at nothing to end this, even if it means turning yourself inside out to do it.

You damn near do turn yourself inside out too, but that doesn’t matter, does it? The blood spilling from your ears, nose, and eyes feels like heaven. It’s hot, and thick, and it’s proof of the power that your body holds. You’re a temple and a sanctuary, a war-room and a bunker, a field of flowers and a sun-dry desert. It does not matter if Steve doesn’t love you at that moment, because you are love and hate wrapped into one package. You are everything and nothing, spread thin at the beginning and the end of time.

And then none of that is true. You are just… You. Standing in a clearing, surrounded by twenty-something dead Hydra agents and your terrified, terrified family. It hurts to breathe and you can taste blood in your mouth, but that’s an afterthought. Steve is still standing behind you, but he is alive. That is what matters.

This is what love is, you think.

Pain and pleasure.

Even if he leaves you, you will always love him.

Pain and pleasure.

You’re weak at the knees when he finally turns to see you - and you’re a sight. Struggling to stand, fingertips blackened with soot but not burnt, blood pouring from your nose, ears, eyes… You look like death, but you feel like life. Someone says something behind you - Peter, maybe? Or maybe Tony, in your comms? - but you don’t hear it. Everything tunnels out, your weak knees finally collapsing as you keel backward.

Steve bears down upon you almost immediately. You’re halfway to unconsciousness when he wraps you up in his arms, keeping you from falling in with the pile of bodies around you. He’s saying your name, harsh and soft and then in a voice like he’s ordering you to wake up. You loll about as he drops you down onto a patch of clear grass, hands searching your body for wounds. When he skims over your side, where the baton has burnt through your suit and your flesh, you surge back toward being able to have cohesive thoughts. The pain brings you back, hands wrapping around Steve’s arm and calling out his name. “Steve! Fuck, that hurts!”

“Honey,” He breathes, “Fuck, we have to get you back to the jet.” His jaw ticks, hair dirty and loose from its normal style. “Why’d you do that?” Steve doesn’t wait for an answer from you, ordering Peter to web something up to carry you over your protests.

“I’m fine,” You argue, only slurring slightly, “I feel fine.” But you’re going to let Nat and Bucky load you up on the webbed stretcher anyway because it’s the first time Steve has cared for you in a long time. You want to relish in this moment, the way that he didn't say your name but called you honey.

Well, and because Natasha slides a thumb across her neck over Steve’s shoulder in a silent threat.

You groan when Bucky accidentally grabs your calf where there is an absolutely awful stab wound, but you wave off his apology. “How could you have known?” To be honest, you hadn’t even known it was there until his Vibranium hand was slipping against it and sending shockwaves of pain through you. Peter is next to you the whole time that you’re being carried back to the jet - Tony staying back to begin scanning the bodies of the Hydra agents for the information you need and any other information they may be carrying. The poor kid is nearly at a breakdown, so you reach out to him and shake his arm when his fingers twine with yours. “Chill out, kid, I don’t know how you got it into your head that this is your fault, but it sure isn’t.” He sniffles, but hands back with Steve as Bucky and Nat get you situated in the small medical room of the jet. They transfer you and then make to leave, only Bucky hesitating near the door.

“Stevie’s goin’ to be here soon and… I don’t know what made you do what you did but you have’t explain it to him. He’s bendin’ over backwards to figure it out, and we don’t have’a clue. Came out’a nowhere.” He looks at you for another moment before shaking his head and stepping out of the room. Your head is spinning, partially from what Bucky just said and partially from the pain and stimulus of electricity. You wait there, then, because this is it. This is the event horizon. You wait there, eyes closed, until you hear footsteps approach the med room, and then the door slowly opens. Steve says your name, holding all the finality and weight of an atomic bomb. You don’t open your eyes until he swings a chair next to the stretcher and lays a hand on your calf.

“You don’t have to do this,” You finally say, pushing yourself up onto your elbows to watch him. “I know that you don’t want to.” Steve only scoffs and begins to wash the stab wound using a packet of soap and a water bottle. You say his name twice before he looks at you, something between hate and hurt curdling into a glaze over his eyes that stops you in your tracks.

“Just let me do this. It is the least that you can do.” His words are painful and stilted, like it’s taking force to push them past his teeth. You lay back down and close your eyes, content to just feel the pain of Steve beginning to stitch you up and then dress the wound before you feel the pain of Steve leaving you like you knew he always would. (Falling in love with Steve Rogers went against every instinct you had. You knew that he was going to hurt you from the first moment your lips touched his.)

When he’s done he sits back and puts his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He heaves a heavy sigh and then shakes it off, “I’ll dress your burn, and then we’ll talk.” And normally, yes, you would agree but this is too important. You want to get it over with so you can lick your wounds metaphorically and dress them literally - and then you want to go home, you want to pack your bags, and you want to disappear and remake your life somewhere else.

Some far-off place where everyone you know won’t take one look at your face and know that you’re still painfully, deeply in love with Steve Rogers, end of your semester be damned. Family you’ve made be damned. You can’t sit around and be in love with him like a neon sign on a dark highway while it’s painfully clear that he hasn’t had a sign on his highway in a long time.

So instead of agreeing, you swing your legs over the stretcher and swallow your flinch when the burn pulls tight. Steve opens his mouth to argue but you give him a tight-lipped shake of your head and his jaw snaps shut. “No,” You say, voice not giving in to the emotion swirling in your chest. “I have let this go on long enough.”

It’s the wrong thing to say because Steve fucking scoffs again and looks away from you. “One day was long enough.” He says, cutting straight to your core. Okay, ouch. You take a deep breath and shake your head to try and bite back the tears that are inevitably rising in your eyes. If one day was long enough for him to realize he doesn’t want to be with you, why did he let it go on for nearly a full year? Why did he spend so long leading you on, pulling you by a thread before garroting your heart with it? What was the point?

“If you want to leave me, just say that,” You reply harshly, standing and wobbling away from him. He just watches you go, watches the way you struggle past the lead weights your muscles have become, the way you’re starting to feel the stab wound on your leg, the way the skin on your burn is beginning to blister and only just now losing its heat. He just watches you, where the Steve that loved you once upon a time might have helped. You turn your back on him, hands on your hips so that you can hide the way that you’re crying and your hands are shaking.

“If I want to leave you? If?” He says. You hear the scrape of his chair as he stands, “I think after what you’ve done, it’s not an if, sweetheart.” The way he says it tastes like iron. Steve never calls you sweetheart like he never calls you by your name. It’s always honey, lover, dovie. You don’t turn to face him because you’re struggling to keep yourself above water. “I spent so long thinkin’, wonderin’, askin’ myself - God damnit, will you look at me?” You turn slowly, not because you’ve never heard Steve speak like that but because his voice is desperate and raw. When you turn, you’re not sure what to expect. Maybe him, standing in front of you, broad-shouldered and disappointed like in those PSA’s he had to film once. Maybe he’d be angry, hands clenched at his sides and eyes narrowed like he gets in meetings when he doesn’t agree with something but he’s out-voted. But you never expect to see him crying, lip wobbling, folded in on himself like a young boy instead of the strong, invincible man you’ve come to love.

He looks so different.

It hits you, then, that you’re not looking at Steve Rogers. Not really. He's not Steve Rogers, not Captain America, not even Captain Rogers. You see him as he was - before America spat it’s untruths all over him and injected him with a serum that changed who he was, is, will be. He’s not the able-bodied man that you know, not strong and unreachable, not the heartthrob that overshadows the team during press events. He’s not America’s Darling, not really. Not where it counts.

You’re looking at Stevie Rogers. Stevie Rogers who, for all intents and purposes, was supposed to die before he made it out of toddlerhood or soon thereafter. Stevie Rogers who the doctors said wasn’t supposed to survive. Stevie Rogers who grew up sickly, rattling painful breaths and never playing ball with the neighborhood boys. Who couldn’t walk until middle school when he got his braces off. Who never had a partner because Bucky, strong and handsome and tall Bucky, was always deemed the better option. Who believed in his country so much that he tried to sneak into the second world war, subjected himself to a painful medical procedure so that he could change his very DNA to be what the world wanted him to be.

Captain Steve Rogers. Captain America. Strong, blond, patriotic, resilient.

You’re sure that if men don’t want to go to therapy now, in the modern age, they certainly didn’t want to go in the ‘40s. So where did that leave Steve, your Steve, standing in front of you and looking small, and broken, and sad, and alone? Did they expect him to take his new, taller, working body and run with it? Did they not think about how he would lose a part of himself in the process? How did they expect him to go from disabled to abled without some disconnect?

You think about the You That You Were Before and the You That You Are Now, and how you lost a part of yourself when the accident gave you your powers and how you’d lose yourself if someone figured out a way to take them away. You Before formed your identity around being normal - living in a shitty home with shitty parents, sure, but normal - and You Now form your identity around your powers, your team, your job, your love. If you lost those things, what did you have left? Who would you be?

When Steve lost his identity and became everything that America wanted everyone to think that America was, what did he have left? Sure, he could tell himself that he represents America - strong and patriotic and just - but it must have conflicted with everything he knew about himself before that. You know that disabled people now know that American society is unjust, unfit for them with abled people not willing to make room to allow them to thrive. You can only imagine what it was really like for Steve in the ‘20s and ‘30s and ‘40s. What he had to do just to survive. (Medical experimentation, you remind yourself. Did they know it wouldn’t kill him? Did they know his body wouldn’t rip itself apart with the new sinewy muscle they were packing on? Did they care? Or was he just a body they saw as broken? A project to fix? To turn him into something more like them and call it patriotism?)

You shake your head at him, still filled with despair, and try to figure out what he’s talking about. “Stevie,” You start, pet name easily replacing what you had been calling him because it’s not fair to shoe-horn him into a body that doesn’t feel like his own. You wonder if he still expects the bone-grinding pain that he used to tell you would happen when it rains. He raises a hand, a strong and family hand, shaking his head.

“I just need to know why I wasn’t enough for you,” Steve looks sad, slouching in on himself like he’s expecting to get his ass handed to him in another alleyway and hope Bucky is there to save him. “I need to know why you wouldn’t just break up with me if you wanted to see other people so badly.” You suck in a shocked breath because, okay, that’s not what you were expecting. Between that and the paradigm shift you’ve had on how Steve must view his identity, body, and self, you’re stunned. Steve continues like he doesn’t even register that you look shocked and pale and now you’re crying because he thinks you’re cheating on him? “And I get it. I get it. You have no idea how much I understand. If I were you, I wouldn’t want me either, okay?”

You cut him off there because what the actual God damn fuck is he talking about? “No, Stevie, I’m not cheating on you.” You shake your head again and this, your statement, lights a fire in him. He still looks like Stevie rather than Steve, but there’s anger there. You imagine that’s what it might have looked like moments before he got himself in trouble back before he was serumed. “I’m not.”

“Oh, yeah?” He challenges, jaw ticking and chin jerking up, “Oh, yeah? You can’t lie to me. I know, okay? The act is up, it’s over, I know, okay? You can stop pretending.”

“Steve, I do not fucking know what you’re talking about but I”m not cheating on you!” You raise your voice, not really angry but more out of necessity. You need to get it out of his head that he is anything less than everything you want - that you could possibly love anyone more than you love him.

“I wanted to clarify something for you,” Steve says like he’s reading an old script from when he was just a beefy, red/white/blue stage prop for the American military, “I am excited to meet with you, but there are some rules. Do not talk about Captain Steve Rogers. I don’t want to hear about him,” As he continues to recite something that has clearly hurt him, you go lax. You know exactly what’s happened - your fists unclench, your jaw drops a little bit, and it feels like someone has gutted you, “I think it is wise to keep work and pleasure separate, and it’s a rule I will enforce heavily. I look forward to seeing you again.” He’s sneering at the end, tears falling down his ruddy cheeks.

“Steve,” You try again, but he cuts you off.

“Am I just work for you?” His voice is shaking more than you thought possible, and so are his hands. You’ve never seen Steve so off-kilter, so thrown, and it breaks your heart that yes, technically, you’re the cause of this. Before this, before this horrible misunderstanding, your relationship with Steve was the paragon of trust so neither of you cared if the other read emails or texts. You remember the email - the email from your fucking college professor - because it had made you so angry that he’d referred to your relationship with Steve as something as simple and base as just pleasure - like you could even put words to the galaxy of a relationship you had with Steve - that you’d gone to the gym to work off some of that irritation. You hadn’t wanted to take it out on anyone accidentally. When you came back from the gym, Steve was gone on that two-week mission that he’d left on without saying goodbye.

Oh, God. You feel sick to your stomach as the paradigm of the way that Steve’s been treating you shifts violently to the left. You have to physically hold yourself up and try to speak past the lump in your throat. Steve looks… Brokenly smug. Like he knows he’s right, but he’d rather gnaw his own legs off than be right.

“No,” You croak, “No, Steve, you’ve got it all wrong.” You want to reach for him, but it feels like the room is closing in on you. You’re second-guessing everything now - especially what you’ve just said. How many people said the exact same thing to him pre-serum because they said something meant for Bucky to him? How many times did he hear that when he was getting a new diagnosis, hoping for the best? How many times had his own mother said it to him when he told her something someone had said, fresh-faced and not yet used to the way that abled people sometimes treated disabled people? You think you might be sick. “That email was from my professor, Steve. I’m not cheating on you, I’d never.” He laughs darkly and sits back down in his chair, head in his hands again. You try to gather the strength to move toward him when you see his shoulders shaking, a telltale sign that he’s crying.

“A professor,” He says with a watery laugh, “Right.”

Finally, you realize that he needs you, needs to know you love him, that you’d do anything for him. You can iron out the kinks later - figure out why he didn’t want to come to talk to you past the original hurt, why he treated you so coldly, why he didn’t trust that you wouldn’t do this to him - but now, you need to show him that you’re here. That you choose him. That you’ll always choose him.

You make your way to him and set a shaking hand on his shoulder. For a brief second you think he’s going to shake you off but then Steve’s hand shoots up and latches onto where your hand is resting, dipping his head to press against your arm. “Stevie, please,” You say, unsure of what you’re asking him to do, “I picked up a class, just one, and it’s… I picked it up for you, it’s about the ‘30s and ‘40s and…” He looks up at you and he looks so broken - face ruddy and wet with tears, lip wobbling, chest heaving as he tries to not sob. His brows are knit and he looks confused, “I just wanted to be able to understand you better. You had to leave so much of yourself at the door when you joined the Avengers, had to leave so much of yourself in the ice… In Erskine’s lab… Stevie, I just wanted you to be able to be you when you’re with me. I wanted to know the you that you were before you became Captain America.” Your voice is shaking, knees knocking together, and honestly? You feel like you might blackout.

“What?” He rasps, “What?”

“He sent that email because too many kids signed up for his class thinking that they’d be able to look at pictures of you and Buck for a semester. Emailed me directly because he knows we’re…” You choke on your words, shaking your head because you’re not even sure there’s a we anymore, “Because he knows I’m on the team. Didn’t want me walking in and making his class about just a few years in the ‘30s and ‘40s rather than the culture of the time.” You don’t know how else to explain it to him, but Steve isn’t saying anything - practically isn’t moving or breathing- so you continue to try and explain what’s really happening as best as you can, “And - and that email made me so angry because he singled me out, didn’t email anyone else about it, and I left to try and work some of that out; I didn’t want to take it out on you, or let it spoil - let it spoil… But when I came back from the gym, you were gone. You were gone for two weeks and I didn’t know why.” You’re crying harder now and pretty sure that within the next sixty seconds you’re going to collapse if you don’t sit down.

Steve shakes his head, still looking like he doesn’t understand. “What?” He says for a third time, “A class? A college class?”

“I just wanted to feel closer to you,” You confess, “Just wanted to understand a fraction of your life without making you do the heavy liftin’ and teachin’ me. Shouldn’t have’t do that,” You’re sobbing, barely biting out your words as you realize that something you’ve done to strengthen your relationship with Steve has destroyed it, “Shouldn’t have to explain a whole different time just to feel loved, Stevie. Should be able to be with someone who understands without you havin’ to explain.” You’re not sure you can say Peggy’s name out loud, and you hope he understands what you’re saying without making you actually say it, “Should’a been able to have love with someone who knew, and I know I’m nothin’ compared to what you should’a had, but I want to be. I want to be in the same ballpark instead’a watchin’ from the stands.” You wipe your face with your free hand and look away from Steve when he stands in front of you. You don’t want to see the look on his face - what he’s thinking about what you’ve said.

He says your name and you glance at him, but his expression stops him in your tracks. Where Steve looked broken and hurt and fuming with anger to hide the anguish, now he looks stricken. You shake your head, “No, no. I didn’t say that to make you feel guilty-”

“You think that I care about whether or not you can understand the ‘40s?” He cuts you off, hands moving to curl around your biceps, “You think that I care whether or not you can relate to a time in history when you weren’t even thought of?”

“Of course I love you. I love you more than anything in this world, but you shouldn’t have to not care, Steve,” You argue, shaking your head, “That’s what I’m trying to say. You should be with someone who understands without explanation. I just wanted to give that to you - didn’t know that this would happen.”

“I should be with someone who loves me,” He argues back, “If you love me, that’s all that matters. My past be damned.”

“But your past is you!” You try to pull away from Steve, but he anchors you there. You’re dizzy from being so close to him after this long, but also because of how many different twists this situation has taken. You can barely keep up with how bad your communication with Steve has become - barely keep up with how you need to fix it, or how to fix it. “Your past is you,” You repeat when you realize that Steve isn’t going to let you go. “And you shouldn’t have to give that up so that someone will love you.”

“But you love me,” He says desperately, ducking his head so that he’s nearly nose to nose with you, “You love me, right?”

“More than anything,” You say, closing your eyes and relishing in the feeling of being so close to Steve, “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I don’t care about what anyone else thinks, or anyone else. I’ll even stop goin’ to class if you want me to - Steve, I just can’t do this anymore. Can’t do this thing where you don’t talk to me about what’s botherin’ you.” You’re choking up, barely whispering, but you know he hears you. YOu can feel his warm breath on your face, “Nearly fuckin’ killed me.”

“I thought it was goin’ to be easier,” He breathes, nose bumping yours, “When you eventually decided to leave me for him. Thought I was savin’ myself some trouble.” You can practically taste his tears as they fall again, “Buck and Nat tried to tell me that you weren’t - that you wouldn’t - but I just couldn’t believe them.”

When you open your eyes, his are closed. This close to him you can see the soft freckles that are blooming over his eyelids, his soft eyelashes kissing his cheekbones. You can feel him breathing, feel him nearly pressed against you in a way that feels hauntingly nostalgic and terrifyingly fleeting; like you’ll be able to feel his warmth for years to come, but he’s about to disappear. “That’s okay,” You finally whisper, “It’s okay that you didn’t believe them. That you thought what you thought. It’s okay.” He shakes his head against yours, opening his mouth to protest, but you refuse to let him feel guilty about feeling this way - you have plenty of time to sit him down and talk to him candidly about the way he acted because of these feelings, anyway. “If I would have been in your place I’m not sure I would have believed them.”

“I treated you so badly…” He shifts and wraps his arms around you. It’s almost immediate - you relax into his arms and wind yours around his waist, keeping him pulled against you as he presses his face into your neck and you press your cheek against his chest. “So awfully.”

“We’ll talk about that, okay? But later. Right now you just need to know that I love you, Steve. I love you more than I can tell you - more than I can express.” You want to kiss him, but you can’t. Can’t kiss him, you need to wait for him to kiss you, for him to close that gap and show you that he still loves you like you love him. “We’ll have to have a talk, a long and hard conversation about this, Stevie, but for now… For now, I’m just content to be with you, okay? MIssed you so much.”

He sighs, nose pressing against yours again. “Missed you too, dovie. Missed you more than I can even say,” His voice breaks as his lips brush yours. Your relationship is not without its flaws and problems - Steve’s actions when he thought you were cheating on him are proof of that and, well, the fact that you didn’t realize what was happening, why it was happening, or a large part of your boyfriend’s psychological makeup having an impact on your relationship while it went unknown by you… There is a lot of work for the two of you to do, a lot of work to do, a lot of communication to be done… But you’d do it all for Steve, over and over again.

When he presses forward and presses his lips gently to yours, you know that he’ll do it all for you, over and over again, too.

#imaginearyparties #thank you for your reblog!!!!#reblog #from outside the nest #comments

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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i changed my name! i don't go by eli anymore, and talisman is my name. (nicknames are allowed!)

nightowlelias -> talontarget

why? i changed my name. i use talisman now and the new url isn't talon target but tal on target BUT also talon target works because i love birds.

#new on the blog

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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Hi, how r u hun?

I'm in love with Dark in Here, I can't wait for the next chapter!! How often will you update it?

I wonder if the reader will become close friends with Pietro and get Bucky a little jealous 🤭

Ahhhh thank you!!! I'm so glad that people like DIH 🥹♥️ I'm not sure when I'll update because I write some every day, but only 200 or so words. Plus I'm moving across the state soon, so everything is sort of on hold until I'm moved and then unpacked 😅

Also, Reader's relationship with Pietro is definitely going to be plot-heavy but I'm not sure that Bucky is going to be the jealous one 👀

#dark in here #ask #anonymous #hooting #ask the owl

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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Omg!! I just reread « tell me which one is worse, living or dying first » and I’m crying so hard!! The ANGST and the feels!! It was perfect! Thank you for this masterpiece of a fic!🙏❤️💕

oh my gosh thank you!!!!! i didn't realize until i started writing that fic that im a BEAST at doing angst, probably even better than i can do fluff 🥹😅 im so glad you liked it ♥️🍓

#anonymous #ask the owl #hooting

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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summary: you never learn to tell the difference between

the probable projections and the best parts of the dream

it's time to fight. it's time to prove that you're useful. the team finds out what you think of your cell and your situation. wanda's brother comes home and you visit.

word count: 8.1k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, enhanced!reader, traumatized!reader

warnings: typical violence for cannon, ptsd symptoms, panic attacks, lapse of reality, descriptions of war/death/blood/violent acts, self-loathing

note: this is the part four of an ongoing series, find the series masterlist here. i think i got all of the tw/cw, but if i missed something please send an ask!

title & summary credit: the mountain goats

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

You dodge Steve for the better part of two minutes, keeping an eye on his updated fighting style. You’d studied him furiously under your time with the Handlers but he’s had years of experience since that. You haven’t. His endurance is almost as good as yours so by the time you’re starting to feel the burn in your legs from the rapid-fire movement you know he’s feeling it, too. There’s still one thing left to decide before you take the offense.

Just which incorporeal thread are you going to tug on to fight him? Instinct says fire because Steve doesn’t have a long-range attack, not really. The fire will keep him at bay and do damage, which will win you the fight. But fire is angry and hard to control, which doesn’t match Steve’s new fighting style at all. Every movement he makes, every point-turn to try and get you on the ground or off balance, is a brilliant strategy that you know he’s coming up with on the fly. The serum did a lot for Steve physically, but you heard the rumors from the Handlers. He’s always been whip-smart, a little irrational and irresponsible, and a hell of a good strategist. Those things knockout using air and water, too. Air is too unpredictable, even when you’re the one in charge. Water is too much give and take for the way that he’s moving.

Steve fights like he’s a brick wall with legs. He uses his shield to try and batter you to the side and uses his legs and feet like they’re steel rods connected to his torso to anchor him low to the ground to keep him agile. It makes you grit your teeth because earth is stubborn. It’s hard to move unless you’re grounded and with Steve’s speed, it’s hard to keep more than one foot on the ground at a time. He knows he’s pushing your buttons, too, because the whole time he’s on the offense and you’re dodging backward and sideways out of his way he’s fucking grinning.

Typically that would set you off, but it’s easy to remember what this is for, especially now that you’re in the swing of things. They want to see what you can do so they can see how useful you are to them. They want to measure your power, yes, but also your control. Earth is all about control, and so is Captain Steve Rogers. (At least, what you know of him from the Before and what little you’ve gleaned of him in the After.)

When you take a turn for the offense it takes Steve by surprise. Instead of dodging away from his fist you take it on the chin and let it knock you back. He pauses just for a moment but that’s all you need - letting the momentum spin you and working with the topsy-turvy way that the hit makes your head spin, you come from back with a heel to his chin. Behind you, where the others are observing, you hear someone groan. Steve’s eyes go foggy just for a second because you’d put your back into the kick and it gives you just enough time to take measured steps backward out of his melee range.

A deep breath while he recovers, grounding your bare feet into the bare dirt you’re standing on. You extend yourself into the earth and tug the strings up through the soles of your feet like a ball-jointed doll. You are thrumming with the heartbeat of the world underneath you by the time Steve finally raises his head less than half a second later. His eyes widen as he watches your eyes flicker, a deep forest green taking over the entirety of your sclera for a fraction of a second before your eyes are back to normal. “Yeah, good job,” He praises.

Because you’re jacked into the ground beneath you and everything on or in it, you know what Steve’s going to do just after he does. He rears back and slings the shield at you like a frisbee but you’re ready. Sure, it’s an adamantium shield but adamantium is still metal. It’s still mined from the earth and perfected from its raw form. It’s still a string you can tug on, a limb you have that nobody else does.

He gapes when you catch the shield in your hand and bend it like a paper plate, tossing it to the side. You’re tired of playing games, tired of being a prisoner, just plain tired. It had been a realization when you’d let yourself go completely into the earth: the others were watching you fight Steve which means each fight after this one is going to get harder and harder. Not just because you’ll be tired, but because they’ll have seen your fighting style. There’s no doubt that Bucky, Natasha, and Tony are impeccable fighters. Steve, as a Captain, wouldn’t let them fight you if they weren’t skilled. So, logically, the faster you get each fight over with the less they know and the more stamina you save for the next fight.

The shield clangs against a rock and your crack your neck, still standing vaguely relaxed except for your grounded stance. Steve’s muscles coiling echoes through your mind through the soles of your feet but you’re done fighting him. It was fun dodging and ducking around Captain America, but now you just want to get this over with and get back to your cell so that you can continue to pay the penance of your failure. Before Steve can take a step you’re sliding your dominant foot forward, feeling the heartbeat and flow beneath it, and pulling your hands up like you’re a puppeteer.

The ground in front of him rumbles for a split second, not long enough for him to do anything, and then Steve is encased in a cave of rock four feet thick. There are shouts behind you but then everyone hears his fists strike his cage one, two, three times and they calm down. You’re not a monster, not in the way that they think you are. You’d left him room enough to crouch and, apparently, throw a few punches. Your blood is still thrumming five minutes later when Tony finally calls the match, Steve unable to figure out how to get out of the rock cage.

He’s flushed, chest heaving when he’s revealed with just the wave of one of your hands, the earth shifting back to where it rests naturally. “My shield!”

“Oh,” You start, already forgotten that you’d bent it out of place. Bucky’s holding it, mouth slightly agape as he turns it over in his hands, “I can fix it.”

“How can you fix that?” Sam has joined Bucky in gaping at the ruined shield. “It’s a piece of history, y’know.” You know he’s trying to joke with you and break the tension, but you won’t be relaxed until you figure out who you’re fighting next and how.

“I’m a piece of history,” You mumble, taking the shield from Bucky as Steve joins the three of you. Maybe it was a little mean to bend it in half like that, but he threw it at your face. You frown as you work the shield open, ratcheting your arms and focusing on the bonds of the metal. Everything has a natural state and you’re just able to bend those states to your will - basic physics says that everything wants to go back to that natural state though, so once you’re done the shield is as good as new.

“Oh, geez,” Steve breathes as you hand it back to him, “It doesn’t even look like you bent it.”

“See?” You glance at Sam and shrug, “Everything’s jake. Wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think that I couldn’t fix it.”

“You could have killed him,” Natasha finally parts from where she, Wanda, Bruce, and Tony had been discussing something in a tight group, “But you didn’t.”

“Why would I kill him?” You frown, crossing your arms over your chest, “You’ve brought me out here to run tests. I’m goin’ to do the tests the same way that I would if I was with the Handlers.” An eerie silence falls around your group, Steve and Bucky sharing an unreadable look with Natasha and Sam. “You’ve already given me a much better chance of winnin’, too, because you’re letting me outside.”

“Letting you?” Bucky repeats, eyebrows pulled tight over his eyes. He looks confused, which is confusing to you. “What d’you mean?” You frown and look away from the heavy glances they’re sending your way.

“Well, I can’t exactly walk out here by myself.”

“You can,” Sam is the first to speak, “You literally can.”

“Wait,” Steve shifts his weight and puts a hand up, his voice drawing your attention up, “Do you think you can’t go anywhere without one of us?” Over his shoulder, the slow-dawning horror begins creeping up Bucky’s face.

“That’s exactly what you think. Y-You’re allowed to leave your room without one’a us. You’re not trapped here.” He wraps his right hand around Steve’s wrist, drawing the blond’s attention, “Did we not make that clear? This whole time-” He chokes on his words and you look to Sam and Natasha for some sort of explanation. Natasha’s face is soft with compassion - or pity, maybe. They look about the same to you.

“You have pretty much free reign of the compound,” She shakes her head and then pushes some of her fiery hair out of her face, “Your room isn’t a cell.” A visceral uncomfortable feeling rises in your stomach and chest. They’re catching you off guard and it’s… It’s awful. This was easy when Bucky brought you out here - it was familiar. But now they’re trying to tell you that you’re not in a cell? That you’re not just another lab rat? You take a deep breath and swallow hard.

“It is,” You shake your head, frowning, “It’s a very nice cell, though. I - you don’t - there’s no need to pretend here,” You take your time to look at the people around you. They all look horrified, but in different ways. “I know what I am and I know what you guys are. I’m in your custody and you’re my Handlers. I give you information and you give me good food and good exercise, and Bruce gets to study me. I get it, you don’t have to pretend this is anything but that.” You shrug. “It’s better here than it was Underground.” The silence is unsettling. You can hear the soft conversation from the other group of people outside and then the thrumming life of birds and insects in the grass and trees. You’re uncomfortable under their gazes, especially the look Bucky and Steve give you. They’re like mirrors of each other: clenched jaws, low eyebrows, bobbing throats. They’re upset about something - maybe it’s because you’d finally said it out loud. Everybody knows that you’re technically their prisoner, but maybe it’s saying it out loud that has upset them. Your hands begin to shake when you think about the fact that you might’ve upset them, especially with how brightly they’d been looking at you while you fixed Steve’s shield.

Like a Godsend, Bruce calls your name and gives you an excuse to push past the super-soldiers to join his group instead. He looks up brightly from the rectangle in his hand that’s called a tablet and is just like a laptop except small with no keys to type with. He’s using a pen on the screen but you don’t see an inkwell. “What a brilliant fight,” He gushes, looking up at you for just a fraction of a second over his glasses. Bruce is almost always frazzled like this when you’ve done something that he thinks is particularly spectacular. “I want you to spar with Natasha next. Does that sound good?”

“Of course,” You nod, crossing your arms over your chest. How could you say no?

“I hope Bucky explained this to you, but we prefer it if you try to limit your abilities to one element per combatant.” He mumbles something under his breath that you don’t understand, but that’s pretty common, and then snaps the case on his tablet closed. Bruce gives you a bright grin and you smile weakly back. “And you can tap out at any time if you want. I know you have a high endurance but I imagine this is taxing, regardless.”

“Being outside helps,” You shift, “It makes me stronger to have… Connections. To everything.” It’s hard to tell Bruce that because it’s also telling him that if you lose control or they want to hurt you that they can just cut off access to one of the elements. But it’s also easy because Bruce is incredibly fascinated with everything about you. He’s nice, and it’s nice to have a scientist that doesn’t poke you with a cattle prod if you have an attitude or collapse exhausted. (He also doesn’t work you to exhaustion and gives you breaks. It’s nice.)

“Of course,” Bruce nods like he’s known that, and maybe he has. His mind works incredibly fast for someone who’s not enhanced. In fact, Bruce might be the smartest person that you know.

Tony is also very smart from what you’ve seen. Everyone on the team is wildly intelligent but all in different ways. There’s no doubt that they’re going to adapt after every match and make it harder for you to win. Still, you’re confident in your ability to come out of this set of tests not only impressing the Avengers, but winning each match. Bruce observes you for a second, muttering under his breath, and then takes a step around you. “Nat! We’ll have you go next, okay?” She looks unimpressed from her spot in the huddle but nods in affirmation.

“We’ll see how you fare against me,” She moves toward you as Bruce moves away. You take measured steps backward to put more space between Natasha and the others so that you don’t hurt them once you gauge what to use against her. She matches your steps forward in a casual gait, mimicking how you’d stayed light on your feet against Steve. You don’t have the upper hand in this fight, though, because you have no idea how Natasha fights. She’s not wearing any visible weaponry but you can sense the knives she has hidden on her person. Will she throw them? Will she try to get into melee with you?

You switch gears when Natasha lunges at you, unsheathing a knife from a holster under her arm. Instead of falling back or dodging to the sides, you meet her halfway and follow the arc of her slash just a few seconds faster than she moves. While she stumbles forward, taken off guard by your bold move you fall forward into a roll behind her and pop to your feet in a defensive position. You both fight like that for a few minutes and finally, it clicks in your head: she’s a dancer. Steve is a brick wall of force and Natasha is a dancer. The wind shifts cold and then warm around you as you pull on the air, rebuffing her next attack with a gust that knocks her off balance and her feet until she’s skidding in the dirt.

“Dirty, dirty tricks, darling,” She says from a crouch but she’s grinning. It’s all teeth, feral and hungry for more combat. You bare your teeth at her in the same way, snarling low in your throat. “You’re fun when you give up the ghost and play.” She leaps, then, and you rock up onto your toes. It’s easier to get the air around you to behave when you’re mobile, stepping lightly, dancing around Natasha as she tries to swipe at you. Natasha is a bullet, all red hair and teeth, but she’s still graceful. She barely touches the ground as you two spin around each other. It just takes one moment of lost focus for her to land a strike on you.

The pain is hot against your side as she slashes upward in an arc over your ribs. It bursts behind your eyes in a flash of scorching blood and torn fabric. Natasha hesitates, clearly not expecting to land such a devastating hit and you use that to your advantage. The pain is a lot, yes, but you barely flinch. Compared to the others that the Handlers would make you fight, this is nothing.

The pain is nothing.

Natasha grunts when you spin again, bringing the current of the air with your open palms. It slams against her with gale force that’s strong enough to lift her off of her feet and slam her back-first into the ground, the knife falling from her limp grasp. You back off, listening to her gasp for breath and make sure you hadn’t accidentally broken a rib into her lungs. Also, you wait for the cattle prod, the cuffs, the pain to come because you messed up. It wasn’t supposed to be that strong, wasn’t supposed to do that damage, wasn’t supposed to fling her ten feet into the air and then flatten her on the ground.

You tense your body, close your eyes, and you wait. It seems to take years for the footsteps to cross over to you, but you wait. You can pick out who’s walking by the sound, now, after so much time listening at your door for who’s coming to pick you up. Sam, Tony, and Bruce pass you in favor of helping Natasha up - or asking her questions, in Bruce’s case. Steve and Bucky stop behind you, perhaps watching the way your elbows press into your sides as you make shaking fists or the way that your shoulders slowly rise to meet your earlobes. Maybe they’re not looking at any of that, maybe they’re looking at the fractalling burn patterns on the ground beneath you as you fight for control over your fear, or the ice that’s starting to curl up over your biceps and encase your skin in swirling, intricate patterns. When one of them finally lays his hand on your shoulder you flinch so sharply that the ice breaks and falls to the ground, fire burning out as you retreat back into your head.

“I’m sorry,” You hear yourself saying, “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“You didn’t hurt her,” Steve’s hand stays on your shoulder as he walks around to be in your line of sight, “See? Nat’s fine.” She is, getting up and grinning and everything, but it’s so hard to process that. Even the sunlight of the day outside is starting to look like an industrial ceiling with dank, broken pipes that leak when the snow melts too much or when the Handlers on the surface use too much water too quickly. Even Steve’s voice, sturdy and calm with an unshaken power, doesn’t sound much like him. You can hear a Handler, feel their warm breath over your face as they leer closer and closer with their teeth bared and a sick smile and heavy hands that touch much too much and -

“Hey!” Bucky knocks Steve’s hand off of your shoulder and drops his vibranium hand on the opposite shoulder. It rattles you physically and mentally, drawing your wandering and slow-moving eyes to his. “Listen to me,” Steve is there, over Bucky’s shoulder, “You are outside with us. Nobody here is mad at you, nobody here is going to punish you. This is what we wanted you to do. Do you understand?” His voice is strong, cutting through the mildew smell that had begun to choke you, pulling the threads of your mind back to the protective shell of you versus You. But Bucky doesn’t seem to want to let that happen.

“I… I understand.” You finally reply, trying a small smile as you look between Steve and Bucky. “I think I understand.”

The news jumps on the mysterious painting almost as soon as it’s noticed. It’s off in an alleyway not frequented often, but frequented enough. First, it starts as a picture on Instagram. Found some rad graffiti. Wonder what it means. Then it’s a local picture spot for a week or two.

Finally, the owner of the bistro notices and calls his boss. He’s not stupid, not by a long shot, and he knows what Serdste means. He’s heard the stories passed down from his family members - men who’ve been in the business of blood money for far longer than he has. He’s a generation or two removed from Russian as his first language, but he still speaks it enough at the old folk's home to know what’s coming next.

His boss must call their contact in the NYPD because the next day he’s sitting on his couch listening to his old lady chatter on the phone and watching the footage from the helicopter he heard earlier that day.

The footage is hard to make out unless you know what you’re looking for. It appears to be innocuous graffiti - a bit large and sort of an eyesore - and it’s just a heart on fire. Anatomically correct, a little off-putting to think about, but a concept that he knows the local youths will, and have been, going crazy for. It was the writing that had made him pick up the phone the first time he'd seen it. In haphazard scrawl across the main expanse of the heart is angry, dripping, black ink.

Сердце

Живет на

И снова поднимется.

Or:

Serdtse

Zhivet na

I snova podnimetsya.

Or:

The Heart

Lives on

And will rise again.

You take a break after your fight with Natasha. She comes over after Bucky has you do some breathing exercises with Steve at your side and claps you on the back. “That was a good hit. Very strong. I haven’t had someone down me that quickly since I was a teenager.” Her words hold some weight that you’re not sure you understand in the way that others understand but still, you know. She had asked you about the Red Room - it must be something like the Underground. You wonder how many people she’s had to kill and how many of their names she remembers.

You remember them all.

You’re getting worked up about everything again when Bruce comes over to lay his hand gently on your bicep. “Maybe we should continue another day. I shouldn’t have suggested so many tests in one day like this.”

“I’m sorry,” You reflexively reply, “I know I can do more tests. We don’t have to wait.”

“We’re not mad at you,” Natasha points out, “We’re worried about you.”

You blink and then look back at Steve and Bucky - the people that, despite how they treated you when they first found out who you are, you trust the most. Bucky smiles weakly at you - which he’s been doing since you calmed down during the breathing exercises - but Steve nods. “It’s true. None of us knew how you felt about your room.”

Cell, you want to say. It’s fine, you want to say.

But you don’t.

He reaches out for your elbow and you try to swallow down your gasp, but he and Bucky at the very minimum hear you. "Why don't we have a movie night tonight?"

"A movie night?"

"We'll pick out a movie and make snacks. You can wear comfy clothes and we'll show you a movie that you've never seen before." Steve shrugs, "Buck and I spent a long time catching up and we're still not there. We've all missed a lot of media."

"I think we should start with the Wizard Of Oz," Bucky cuts in before you can respond, "And then Star Wars." He grins and then knocks his knuckles gently against Steve's elbow, "Those blew my mind.”

"That's surprising," Steve says, “Because you and I have been livin’ sci-fi for the past seventy years.”

“I wouldn’t say living it,” Tony drawls before you can ask what sci-fi is, “Considering how much you spent on ice and how much he spent as the Fist.” The casual, blase way that Tony mentions The Fist of Hydra raises your hackles. Your jaw clicks shut audibly and a sour feeling rises in your stomach. It’s nothing but a sickly sweet reminder of what you’d done - rather, what you’d failed to do. The one good thing you’d tried to do and you couldn’t even do that right.

It’s why you’re not mad about the cell, or the training, or the tests. If that’s what you have to do to be useful, to be helpful, to be good… Then you’ll do it. You’ll take your punishment with a neutral face because, fuck, if you’d just made it out of that ice field with the files then maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe you would have died and not come back to live a bastardized, second life among the ones you’ve failed the most.

By the time the blood is done rushing through your ears and you’ve calmed down a little, you realize that Wanda is watching you closely. Everyone else is heading back toward the doors but she’s there, standing next to Steve, and watching you. She hadn’t approached you or talked to you much since you had your… Lapse of judgment about Helen Cho. It didn’t make you mad - sadder than anything else - and you understood how hesitant she might be. It’s hard to have your thoughts and memories; you can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to be assaulted with them with little to no warning. There’s no malice in her eyes now, though, and not even a little bit of pity.

“My brother is coming back tonight,” She says abruptly, cutting Steve off. The three of you are the only ones left outside, and Steve had been explaining something that was going in one ear and out the other. “I think you two would get along.” Steve glances between the two of you like he’d just realized that Wanda hasn’t left yet, like she was invisible. Maybe she’d been wanting to fly under his radar, just able to watch you. “Would you like to meet him?”

You blink slowly and glance at Steve as if you’re asking permission. He holds up his hands and smiles a little bit, “I’m not your keeper, you can make your own decisions.”

“Pietro is nice,” Wanda nods, fidgeting with her fingers, “And you remind me of him sometimes. I think it would be a good friendship to have, especially after finding out what exactly you think of your situation.”

“I, personally, think Pietro would be the best kind of bad influence,” Steve’s smile is blinding as he nudges Wanda with his elbow, but there’s also something hiding behind it that you don’t understand. “Maybe he’ll get you out of your room more often.”

“Does Bucky like him?” You ask before you can stop yourself, “I don’t want to make… Anyone mad.” Wanda cocks her head, dark hair falling over her shoulders. She tsks once and then, when she speaks, her accent is thicker than it was before.

“Lyuba mayn, Bucky is going to be grumpy no matter who you’re spending time with. If he had his way he would keep you to himself - and Steve.” She giggles and cuts a sideways glance at Steve’s quickly reddening face. “Still, he will be tired after his mission, but he eats dinner with me in our room after. It’s easier to keep our kitchen kosher instead of trying to have our own utensils in the team’s kitchen. Would you like to join us for dinner?" She reaches for your hand but hesitates - you can practically see your memories flashing in her eyes. "Pietro and I will join the others for the movie, of course."

"I don't know Wan… I think we could all use some rest after that." Steve worries his lip between his teeth, glancing between you and the brunette still reaching out for you.

"What's more restful than breaking bread with friends?" She slaps her hand on her thigh and turns to Steve with fiery eyes. "Besides, the two of you aren't the only ones who can understand the trauma there." They hold eye contact in a way that makes your hackles rise because they're clearly communicating in a way that teammates do and it's obviously about you. You grind your teeth, fists flexing at your sides. Wanda smirks and breaks eye contact with Steve in favor of taking a step toward you. "What do you say?"

"Does he know what I've done?"

Finally, the pity rolls over Wanda's expression and you can see Steve tense up, jaw hard as he glances away. "Of course he does, lyuba mayn. He's the one that told me to invite you to dinner so that he could meet you. We are not so innocent either." You let her take your hand, focusing your eyes on the glint of silver resting against her sternum to ground yourself.

"I… Will go, if it's allowed." Your skin burns where Wanda is touching you, but the fire travels down your spine under Steve's gaze. He's inspecting you - that's the only word for the way he's looking at you. Does he not trust you? Should you decline, eat dinner with the team so you can scurry back to your cell after? You look back towards Wanda, "Or, maybe, I could just…"

"Ignore Steve," She throws a smug look over her shoulder at him and you watch a blush rise over his skin from underneath his suit. "He and Bucky just want to be your friend so badly because they feel like they will be the best at it."

You blink dumbly at her for only a second. Your friend? That hadn't even crossed your mind. Steve huffs out a sign, hands low on his hips as he cranes his neck away from the two of you. "Wanda…"

"We do have the most in common," You frown, "The three of us are all enhanced, we've all had scuffs with Hydra, and we've all fought in a war nobody else fought in." Wanda grins slyly when you shrug.

"All of the more reason for us to steal you away and become your friends as well."

You shower before heading to Wanda and Pietro's apartment and choose the biggest sweater you currently own. It doubles as something to keep you warm as your body tries to recoup from the afternoon and also as a form of protection. The fabric draping over your shoulders and torso hides the bulk of your body and the sleeves are so large you can hold a ball of fabric in your fists with some still left over. It's nice to dig your fingernails into when you get overwhelmed or nervous - plus its fire-resistant and water-wicking. Natasha had explained both of them to you and you'd asked for most of your wardrobe to be made in those fabrics.

You're chewing gently on the cuff when Wanda comes to your room to get you, still smiling and bouncing slightly on her feet. "He's home!" She reaches out and tugs on one of your sleeves, "Pietro is very excited to meet you."

"I'm excited to meet him," You say because that's what people say, "Where has he been?"

"Undercover," She tugs on your sleeve once but then leaves you to walk next to her, "He prefers to stay out of the media, despite how he acts around here. People know my face and most of the other’s faces… But Piet has done very well in keeping a low profile, as they say." There’s more of a bounce in her step as she takes you to where she lives with her twin brother. After you parted ways before your shower, Steve mentioned that Pietro is a ‘good kid’ but also that he’s quick to act and a little short of thought. It makes you nervous, but weirdly enough the good kind of nervous. Everyone else is so… Soft around you and, for someone who spent a lot of time in militant training or around military folk… Soft feels an awful lot like you’re not only delicate, but pathetic too. You don’t blame them because in some regards you are delicate, fragile, and other synonyms for broken. But in some regards, you’ll never be able to put yourself back together stronger if you’re never allowed to break.

Wanda turns to smile at you just before she lets you into her apartment. “Don’t be nervous, really, he’ll love you.”

“If you say so, Wanda.” You shrug, crossing your arms over your chest. Squeezing the cuffs of your sweater helps ground you and prevents your nails from biting deep into the meat of your palms. Just before she fully pushes the door open, Wanda tracks something just above your head.

“You don’t have to meet him, y’know. We’ll be just fine doing introductions at the next dinner.” When you shake your head she telegraphs her movements until she’s flapping her hands around your shoulders. “Could have fooled me that you’re ready to meet him. There’s smoke coming from your collar.” The heat had been building around your ribs and stomach, but you’d brushed it off as hesitancy or maybe even fear. When she points out the smoke you realize that you’re actually feeling a fire fueled by that fear curling around your midsection protectively. In a blink you extinguish it, thankful that Natasha had sprung for the fire-resistant clothing. Wanda turns away from you and flounces into the apartment as you pinch the fabric of your sweater between your fingers and fan it out, hoping to get rid of the smoke altogether. It clings to you like the campfires you used to make when you were sent out of the Underground. By the time you follow Wanda in and close the door behind you, she’s already in the kitchen chattering with someone in another language.

It’s something with Slavic roots but it sounds like plenty of Germanic borrowed words. You can’t even begin to grasp what country it’s from, let alone decipher what they’re saying. Wanda gestures to you just as you come around the corner, saying something with your name mixed in the middle of it. For being twins, Pietro and Wanda only look vaguely related. They both have high cheekbones set on their round faces, both have sharp brown eyes. Pietro’s dyed his hair blond instead of Wanda’s dark brown hair, but it’s clearly grown out an inch or two to be shaggy around his ears. He looks relaxed, but you can see that underneath that facade he’s tense in his casual, lounging clothes. Pietro steps forward and extends a hand to you, speaking in a thick accent. “It is nice to meet you finally. I can finally put a face to the lyuba mayn my sister tells me about.” His hand is strong, agitated or maybe threatened by your presence in his sister’s life. If you were him, though, you’d be agitated by your presence too.

“I can’t say I’ve heard a lot about you,” He drops your hand and steps back to the counter, resting his hips against it and crossing his arms. Wanda sits on the counter grinning happily and swinging her feet. “But that’s understandable when you’ve been on a mission.”

“Ah,” Pietro nods and relaxes a fraction, “Yes. After my sister and I were… Acquired by and invited to join the Avengers, I’ve been doing work in Sokovia to quell the unrest there.” He sighs before gesturing to the stove to his right. “I’ve made kreplach for dinner if you’re joining us. They’re almost done cooking, I just have to make sure that they don’t stick.”

You blink, following his hand to the stove where there’s a pot of water boiling softly. “You’ve been doing work in… Sokovia?”

Wanda’s eyes widen and she laughs, light and carefree. “Oh, yes. Sokovia is a relatively small and new country. Perhaps past your time above ground.”

“You’ve never heard of Sokovia?” Pietro seems overly confused as he turns to prod at the food in the water with a wooden spoon, “Strange. We have been in the news a lot for the past ten to fifteen years. The team heads there a lot now because there is a lot of Burning Staff activity. I’m sure you’ll see it soon.”

“But not any of the good parts,” Wanda complains, seemingly falling into the role of sister faster than you thought, “Only the shitty parts with shitty people.” You can sense Pietro rolling his eyes. “Did you not read the file I sent you?” Your hackles raise at the thought that your file is being sent around, but you understand why it is. You wonder how much information is inside of it and how much they left out.

Pietro scoffs and turns off the stove. “No, I did not read the file. If malen’kaya lapa wants me to know, I will be told.” You know those words and shuffle. The Maximoff twins are very liberal with their nicknames - first Wanda labels you my love before she uses your name and now her brother is calling you little paw. “It’s basic respect, Walentya.”

Before you can stop yourself, you take a step forward to watch Pietro scoop the kreplach equally into three bowls. “Walentya?” You ask, finally smelling the broth as he pours it over the pasta, “What does that mean?”

Pietro only glances at Wanda over his shoulder and she sighs. “Walentya is my name. I chose Wanda when I came to America.” You’d heard of people doing that - mostly the refugees during the war so that they would be safe in America more than if they kept their birth names. Wanda doing that is a little confusing because you assumed that she’s safe here, with her friends, more than anywhere else.

“Oh. So you chose Pietro when she chose Wanda?”

He laughs, bright and happy, the final dregs of tension wisping away from his shoulders. Pietro digs around in a cutlery drawer at the same time he pulls three glasses down from a cupboard. “No, no. I would rather sit on a tack than call myself something like Peter.” He turns back around to hand you an empty glass, his nose wrinkled. “I tried to convince Walentya not to change her name, but she's not one to… How is it said?" He looks to his sister, rubbing his chin with squinting eyes as he searches for the translation. "Ah, she is not one to be led by the nose."

“I feel… More comfortable with an Americanized name. Pietro has always been better at fitting in,” Wanda cuts in to explain, “He is louder and more boisterous.”

“You seem to fit in just fine,” You frown as you accept the large bowl of kreplach, the serving bowl warm against your frigid palms. It’s just enough to remind you that you can’t lose control, not here, even though you’re so nervous. “The team likes you.”

“The team likes you too,” She volleys back, swinging her dark hair over her shoulder to move from the kitchen and into the dining room, “But you’re unfortunately convinced that your room is a cell and that we’re your Handlers.” Pietro’s steps, to his credit, only stutter a little bit. He sits across from you while Wanda takes the head of the table and doesn’t do a very good job of keeping his surprise off of his face. His eyebrows have crept up to hide underneath the shaggy bangs that hover just above his eyes. You pointedly ignore the way that the Maximoff twins are looking at you in favor of eating your kreplach. “See, Pietro, you two are alike!”

“You think that anyone who comes to this place the way that we did is like me,” He grumbles around a mouthful of food, “Besides, malen’kaya lapa is a tad too shy to be anything like me.” You chew slowly as Pietro’s eyes darken, twitching between your slouched form and Wanda’s blase, casual eating. His face darkens to what seems like an unnatural degree for a man you’ve only just met. “How did you come here, malen’kiy dukh? I would like to know.”

Little Ghost. That’s more fitting for you than Little Paw. He watches you as he eats - he must be enhanced like Wanda because he’s eating the same amount of kreplach that you and his sister are without blinking. You take a long sip of water to put off answering but there’s only so much that you can do to procrastinate. “I… Was found.” You finally decide to start at the beginning of your new life, not your old one. “I was found in the ice where Captain Rogers was found because I froze myself there, trying to escape from the Underground and my Handlers with the Program that they executed on me. I was trying to save Sergeant Barnes from going through the same thing.”

“I am sorry,” Pietro says quietly, “You did not make it?”

Setting your fork down you shake your head. Your stomach is rolling now, lights flashing at the corners of your eyes in warning because your heart is racing too. It feels like the room is spinning around you. “I am here now because I am very powerful,” It feels like a sin to admit it, “And I know a lot about the Underground - things the Avengers need to know.” You swallow thickly and try to smile, but it’s weak at best. “Now I’m stuck here in this time that is very confusing with the weight of everything I’ve done on my back.” Wanda, surprising you, reaches out and touches your forearm with lithe fingers to comfort you without overwhelming you. Pietro sighs and nods but then he sets his fork down and leans back, seeming to chew on his words before he speaks.

“I understand,” His voice is lower and accent thicker than before, “More than you know. Steve and Bucky maybe more than I,” He gestures lackadaisical;y with his hands and then shrugs, “But it is not a race, yes? Before we were here and the people you see sitting in front of you, Walentya and I were in Sokovia and desperate. Our parents were killed in a bombing.”

You frown, crossing your arms and digging your thumbs into the seams of your cuffs to ground yourself. It takes everything in you not to lose control but it’s becoming harder and harder not to burst into flames or start a cyclone like the one in the interrogation room. “I’m sorry.” Wanda smiles but doesn’t say anything more.

“We have done our healing,” He nods, “It still hurts, but it will always hurt. The bombing was carried out by the United States. For three days we looked at a dud shell in our apartment with Tony Stark’s name on it.” Your breath catches in your throat. You’d known, of course, of the things that Tony’s father had been involved in. For Christ’s sake - Howard had bought you from the Handlers just to shove you face-first into a war that you hadn’t even known about. Then, when your usefulness was up, he gave you back. But Tony? The worst you’d seen from him is the vitriolic hate that he has for you.

The hate you see every single time that you catch your reflection in the mirror. “Why are you here?” You finally ask, throat raw and quiet, “If Tony Stark killed your parents?”

“Tony did not do it,” Wanda finally cuts in, shaking her head, “Not in the way that you are thinking. Tony used to make weapons and sell them to the military. They were used in the bombing of Sokovia meant to destabilize our government in order for the CIA to input a newer, more American-friendly leader.”

“We took that,” Pietro picks the story up and carries it like he’s reading Wanda’s mind, “And we internalized it.” He touches his fingertips to his sternum, finally looking away from you. “We were some of the faces of the biggest riots in the country. It was not until later that we learned they were Hydra driven. Speak about being lead by the nose, huh?” He chuckles wryly. You haven’t been told a lot about Hydra, but they sound just like the Handlers. Bucky mostly shies away from conversations about Hydra, either changing the subject or leaving the room altogether. “We did a lot of things for our country. Things I do not regret.”

“And neither do I.”

Pietro continues after a deep sigh. “We were used as tools for years. A man approached us, wanted us to help usurp the soldiers in our country from the US. It was an occupation - my feelings on that have not changed. We went with them; I was ready to die for Sokovia and I convinced Walentya to come with me, to lay down her life.” His voice gets tight, but Pietro pushes on. It’s like he’s confessing his sins more than telling a story. You feel like you’re looking in a mirror, at a person broken down to their raw components of every single thing that they regret doing and every single thing they’d do all over again, consequences be damned. “We were taken and changed. The Avengers call it enhanced, but I have only changed for good a little bit. Now I am fighting on a side I know is at least genuine. Being in America is… Hard. The US does a lot of things I do not agree with. But I do more good here than in my home country, which is still rife with crumbling infrastructure and corrupt politics.”

The silence hangs heavy over the three of you. “Have you… Ever killed someone?” The twins laugh, looking at each other like neither of them expected you to actually ask. But you need to know. There are a lot of similarities between Pietro, Wanda, and you. You need to know that, maybe, when they wash their hands or take a shower sometimes they see the slick blood on their palms and finger pads. Sometimes they can’t wash it off because it’s not really there, but it is - just soaked into the skin so deep it won’t come out.

“Of course, we have,” Wanda says softly, “For Sokovia, for Hydra, and now for the Avengers.”

“It is never easy,” Pietro says, eyes softening. He goes from looking troubled to looking at you exactly like Wanda looks at you. “Taking a life. I regret every single one. But sometimes there are not choices. Between my sister’s life and the life of a stranger… Well, there’s no competition.”

“And I will always choose Pietro. Over everyone, even my friends here.” Wanda pats your arm, “We try to lower the casualties of missions as much as possible, with tranquilizer bullets instead of lethal rounds, but you must know that in war death is inevitable, no?”

“Of course I know,” You reply without thinking, “Fighting in wars is what I was made for - living like this is still foreign to me.” The twins sigh at the same time, Pietro picking up his fork again.

“Eat your kreplach, malen’kiy dukh. We will become friends before we share any more secrets, yes?”

You’re washing your hands just before bed when it happens again. You stifle your scream and stumble backward into the wall, clutching your hands at your sides as you watch the spout drip thick, viscous blood. It’s not real. It’s not real! It can’t be real. Blood doesn’t come from plumbing, water does. It can’t be blood. You clench your eyes shut, trying to breathe over the jackrabbiting of your heart in your chest and the burning in your lungs and throat. It’s not blood, it’s not blood.

You nearly jump out of your skin when someone knocks on your door this late at night in the middle of your panic. Instead the water - water! Not blood! - coming from the spout evaporates as the temperature spikes around you and the shower door rattles angrily with a strong gust of wind. Breathing heavily, you answer your door on shaky knees. It’s Steve, face grim with his phone in his hand.

“We need you in the debrief room. There’s been… Activity relating to you lately. We don’t know what it means and we can’t find it in your notes.”

the fragments that stick with you

the ones you really feel

those parts aren't real

#dark in here #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers/reader #steve rogers x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes/reader #bucky barnes imagine #stucky x reader #stucky/reader #mcu imagine #marvel imagine

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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I definitely get a little too deep w this story 😵‍💫 honestly, I spent half an hour today alone researching 1 (one) idiom common in Russia only for the character speaking it to translate it to English before it's said (although this character will probably drop more idioms in their languages tbh) so

summary: be flexible, be unreplaceable

in a world of heavy footprints, be untraceable

you’re activated. bucky, steve, and tony each have regrets. someone stalks the city at night. your cell is very nice, and so is bruce. his tests are easy and he’s amiable to be around. bucky watches from the sidelines until he’s at your door, telling you about the next test.

word count: 5.1k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, enhanced!reader, traumatized!reader

warnings: self-loathing, brief descriptions of torture, mentions of imprisonment, lapse of reality, paranoia, brief mentions of forced food/water restriction, flashbacks, ptsd, trauma responses

note: this is the part three of an ongoing series, find the series masterlist here. also sorry this is kind of a filler chapter? i can’t put everything i want in it without it being too long and cutting it off makes it short. sorry!

title & summary credit: the mountain goats

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Steve takes a deep breath, inching closer and closer. He’s not registering as a threat to you but your eyes are still flickering between his looming frame and the visibly frightened woman. At the same time that he says your name, low and calm, Bucky says your name in a tone that’s achingly familiar. You hazard a glance over your shoulder and see him shielding Wanda, Tony, and Bruce much the way that Steve is shielding the woman who had been wearing the jacket. His face is hard, lined with stress, and his jaw moves like he’s chewing his next words carefully. Your gaze slides back to Steve, furniture and faces leaving trails like you’d only ever experienced when they first injected you with the serum.

Keep reading

#new on the blog #reblog #comments #from outside the nest #locke writes #dark in here

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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rb and badly explain ur wip in the tags

#kidnapped child turned science experiment is cryogenically frozen by own powers and then has to work through decades of trauma #just to find love and happiness and home #dark in here

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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you get it!!!!!! god i'm so glad someone picked up on the "steve wanted the serum with everything in his mind body and soul" vs "bucky didn't want this, didn't want to become this, lost himself to the serum" that i'm trying to put down in this story!!!!!

summary: be flexible, be unreplaceable

in a world of heavy footprints, be untraceable

word count: 5.1k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, enhanced!reader, traumatized!reader

warnings: self-loathing, brief descriptions of torture, mentions of imprisonment, lapse of reality, paranoia, brief mentions of forced food/water restriction, flashbacks, ptsd, trauma responses

title & summary credit: the mountain goats

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Keep reading

#locke writes #reblog #from outside the nest #reblogs

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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not me introducing another character into dark in here just to spite the russo brothers 😎 also not me coming up with another heartbreaking b-plot that is going to hurt so good

#dark in here #hooting #owl hoots

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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i know im struggling to update dark in here regularly but listen....... i did just get another idea for a long story

#dark in here #personal #yes it is based on the teen titans sue me

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

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omfkshksgh thank you so much!! every single time i get put on a fic rec list it makes me literally soooo happy (and inspires me to sit down and write some more lmfao)

i'm so glad you liked my writing enough to put it on here <3

NOVEMBER FIC RECS! — @dracosluvbot's fic recs

fics that i’ve been reading and obsessing with over the month of november

this is extremely important and i take this very seriously out of respect for the community. please do remember to read the rules for the respective blogs before interacting with or reading them.

F: fluff A: angst S: smut

𖥻 - series /multi part

BUCKY BARNES

F: seven-thirty by @nacho-bucky 𖥻 apart from the fleeting hellos, your first real interaction with 4B is when he's knocking on your door with a crying blonde in his arms.

F + A: hearts of steel by @invisibleanonymousmonsters 𖥻 being a princess, it is your duty to serve your kingdom and seek its best interests. there is no room nor time for a princess to love, nor is it proper for her to be in love with her knight.

F + A: for love by @moonbeambucky 𖥻 you are willing to do anything and everything for love. royal duties be damned.

F + A: my eyes by @invisibleanonymousmonsters 𖥻 golden boy captain steve rogers is a good man, a great man even. this doesn’t make bucky feel any less guilty for harbouring deep feelings for the captain’s girl.

F + A: three hundred by @adrinktostopyourthirst bucky's always been there for you as a friend, but what if you need him there for you in other ways

A: one step at a time by @tmpestuous you’re hurt after a difficult mission and nobody seems to know where you are. bucky is determined to find you, to find his love.

F: lumby and bunny by @sweetdreamsbuck 𖥻 lumberjack bucky is a big grump with a soft spot for his darling bunny

F: astrophile by @all1e23 𖥻 orion, or ori, as you had gotten to know her was by far your most adorable bookshop regular. when she has deemed you her very best friend, you get to know her firefighting father a little better.

F + A: swallow by @all1e23 𖥻 you're back in town for good, sparking chatters around the mc. truths are revealed and feelings that had always been there bubble.

F: cuddles & cocoa + part 2 by @sparklefics bucky felt like he didn't deserve you, not when you were a walking ray of sunshine.

F + A: we're fools by @achillieus 𖥻 you met bucky barnes on your first day of school while asking for directions. then again, at book club. and again, at debate club. he pushes your buttons and you push his back.

F + A: invisible string by @oitommothetease 𖥻 upon meeting the man who owned your building for the first time, he humiliated and declined your job interview. when he relents and finally gives you said job, you become his greatest weakness

F + A: better by @captainscanadian 𖥻 dr. james barnes grew up in an affluential neighbourhood with his dear family and friends. the same couldn't be said for you.

F: pick up & delivery by @sweetascanbee winnie barnes has been trying to pitch her usc braniac of a son to you for a while now and you’ve always narrowly dodged her advances. you are horrifically surprised one day when you get a delivery from her pizza shop.

F: café cream by @wonderlandmind4 𖥻 you were enjoying your daily coffee when bucky barnes came crashing through a window and landing in front of you, leaving a coffee spillage massacre. it seems almost habitual that every other encounter with him ends up with toppled coffee.

F + A: safe with me by @bitsandbobsandstuff 𖥻 you should've known better that investigating hydra would put a target on your back, that it would lead to a 100 year old super soldier breathing down your neck at all times.

F + A: sore spot by @kinanabinks bucky's offhand comment hurts you more than he thought it would. luckily, he's there to comfort you.

F + A: someone’s calling my name (and it sounds like you) by @mellowsaturns bucky is bleeding out on the quinjet floor as he professes he love to you, not knowing that you’re really there.

F + A: love at first grade by @buckysimp101 𖥻 to the media, you were a cold and cunning businesswoman. to anyone who had ever seen you interact with your daughter would see just how much of a loving mother you were. mr barnes, avery's teacher, seems to be one of the lucky ones who got the chance to.

F: winter canvas by @sebbytrash 𖥻 your professor tasked you and the rest of your class to draw a portrait of a stranger. great, because finding someone and having to ask if you could draw them was an easy feat. the cute jock you run into seems to solve all your problems though.

F + A: redcove harvest by @iwillbeinmynest 𖥻 james barnes had returned home for good after his last tour. he spots a flier requesting a farmhand for hire and decides to take up the job.

F: hearts and crafts by @world-of-aus it's valentine's day and love is in the air. well, as much as love can be in the air of a grade school classroom.

F: shop class by @marvel-fanfic-writer-8675 𖥻 mr. barnes is the workshop teacher and you teach culinary arts. your students are tired of the blatant pining, deciding to take matters into their own hands.

A + S: steel blue by @rassvetsky bucky gave up on you and your relationship, never giving you the chance or choice to fight for the two of you.

F: once upon a time + far, far away by @navybrat817 a glasses-clad and gorgeous beauty is your knight in shining...cardigan? as he saves you from an awful drunk on the subway.

F + A: two sides of the same coin by @anonymityisfunwriter 𖥻 you had spent your entire life in captivity, never seeing a wink of the outside world. sam wilson had been tasked to assimilate you back into society, and eventually become an avenger. bucky barnes is known to be a grump, appropriate for his age, and yet he has a soft spot for you.

F + A: under oath by @ugh-supersoldiers 𖥻 the state tries james barnes for his crimes as the winter soldier. thankfully, he has new york's best lawyer on his defense.

F + A: summer plans by @notimetoblog 𖥻 you and your best friend bucky come together to plan a summer holiday to the grand canyon. when bucky meets who he deems as the one, it threatens to come between not only those plans but your friendship with him.

F + A: the slip up by @justkending 𖥻 7 years ago, a one night stand gave you your greatest gift. aurora was your angel, excited to begin the first day of second grade which proved to be an eventful one for the both of you.

F + A: not me by @simsadventures 𖥻 your marriage with bucky had only ever felt miserable. when you've finally had enough, truths unfold and long-term secrets were revealed.

F + A: the diner by @bolontiku 𖥻 just six months ago, max had been left to your care. struggling between two jobs and raising a child could not be easy till james, a nice police officer, came along.

STEVE ROGERS + CHRIS EVANS

F + A: out of left field by @time-for-a-lullaby 𖥻 chris had been photographed sniffing snow in a compromising position. what else better to save his public image than to get into a fake relationship with one of the city’s most eligible bachelorette.

F: a swarm of butterflies by @marvelouslycaptivating 𖥻 from your first meeting, to your first date, and even today, steve never stops feeling butterflies in his belly when he’s with you.

F: his new partner by @star-spangled-steve 𖥻 yours and steve’s meet-cute was unconventional. you were screaming for your life while hanging off a while. luckily, captain america was there to save the day.

F: life is short so make it sweet by @sweater-daddiesdumbdork 𖥻 curtis was the one who had gave you and your 8th grade class a tour around his workplace. you run into him in a bar a while later, a relationship sprouting between the both of you.

F: bake off by @kaunis-sielu 𖥻 to rival against the largely popular stark bakery, you and clint team up with star spangled bakery to save both of your businesses.

F + A: you, always you by @imaginedreamwrite 𖥻 a decade can past and steve will always be the one you love. especially since he was a part of the most important thing in your life.

F: teacher, teacher by @kaunis-sielu 𖥻 mr rogers is in his first year of teaching, you, along with the rest of the faculty staff warmly welcome him to the school

A: the other woman by @epiphany-of-a-madwoman your relationship with steve means nothing in comparison to peggy carter.

A: everything he wanted by @navstuffs steve finally has everything he had ever wanted but it’s no longer what he ever wants.

F + A: can i call you her name? + no, you can't call me her name by @cherryblossom-heart captain america is the man you met, but steven rogers was the man you fell in love with. he, however, can’t say the same.

F + S: ethereal by @oh-my-damn 𖥻 steve rogers was the human emodiment of a golden retriever. who wouldn't fall for the charming and handsome avenger?

F + A: where would we be without the distance? by @nightowlwriting steve rogers does not like you one bit. he thinks you’re incompetent and a danger to him and his team.

SYVERSON

F: famous last words by @its--fandom--darling 𖥻 you meet sy in a bar on your birthday and the both of you have an instant connection

AARON HOTCHNER

F + A: how far we've come by @14buddy22 𖥻 you met the hotchner duo while vacationing in florida with your own three children. when you realise that you and aaron have more in common than you think, you and him teach each other how to move on.

#eightyfive911 #dracosluvbot #reblog #from outside the nest #fic recs

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

Note

I know it’s been a while since your Elliot stabler fanfic “could have been me” but it would be nice if we got a part 2 or a new fanfic of Elliot stabler

hello! i know you (hopefully) didn't mean it this way, but this ask comes off as a little bit rude :/

also, i don't think i'll be doing a part 2 to "could have been me" because my intention writing that fic was to write a fic with a happy ending that didn't involve romance or reconciliation.

i write based on requests and, if i don't have any request, based on what i want to write. i have a few requests lined up for when i finish dark in here slash when i get stuck in such a rut with the plot (which we all know is going to happen) that i write something else to get my writing motor running. if you want to send in a stabler request you're more than welcome to! just know it might not be out any time soon as i do currently have 3 requests in my inbox right now :)

#anonymous #ask the owl #ask #asks #new on the blog

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

Text

Spotify wrapped has come out, so you know what that means

While I write the next chapter of Dark In Here, send me a number and a character and I'll write a little song-based drabble (:

(and if I don't get any we have to pretend this post has never happened)

#new on the blog #dark in here #writing

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nightowlwriting · 1 year

Text

summary: be flexible, be unreplaceable

in a world of heavy footprints, be untraceable

you're activated. bucky, steve, and tony each have regrets. someone stalks the city at night. your cell is very nice, and so is bruce. his tests are easy and he's amiable to be around. bucky watches from the sidelines until he's at your door, telling you about the next test.

word count: 5.1k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, enhanced!reader, traumatized!reader

warnings: self-loathing, brief descriptions of torture, mentions of imprisonment, lapse of reality, paranoia, brief mentions of forced food/water restriction, flashbacks, ptsd, trauma responses

note: this is the part three of an ongoing series, find the series masterlist here. also sorry this is kind of a filler chapter? i can't put everything i want in it without it being too long and cutting it off makes it short. sorry!

title & summary credit: the mountain goats

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Steve takes a deep breath, inching closer and closer. He's not registering as a threat to you but your eyes are still flickering between his looming frame and the visibly frightened woman. At the same time that he says your name, low and calm, Bucky says your name in a tone that's achingly familiar. You hazard a glance over your shoulder and see him shielding Wanda, Tony, and Bruce much the way that Steve is shielding the woman who had been wearing the jacket. His face is hard, lined with stress, and his jaw moves like he’s chewing his next words carefully. Your gaze slides back to Steve, furniture and faces leaving trails like you’d only ever experienced when they first injected you with the serum.

Time is getting weird, and it probably has something to do with the way your chest is heaving or how thin the oxygen is around you because of the dancing flames on your arms. Your heart is still racing in your chest and now it’s almost starting to ache. How long has it been since the woman - Helen - walked off the elevator? How long had you and Wanda been in your memories? Natasha has moved from the doorway to standing at your flank, finger still on the trigger.

Steve is looking over your shoulder now, heartbreak on his face. You watch his head shift left and then right, minuscule movement that’s telegraphing something to someone behind you. Conflict crosses his face and then he looks back to you and the dying fire dancing across your skin. The expression looks wrong on Steve’s face and he shakes his head at you, hands lowering slowly but surely. “I’m sorry.” His voice is low and strangled and the fire on your body surges. What does that mean? The heat in your stomach, anger and resentment and revenge, fuels the oxygen suck weighing your shoulders down.

Seconds later, Steve’s mouth not even shut into a thin line yet, Bucky speaks up again. “Serdtse,” His voice is low and sharp, cutting through the air between you like a knife. It slides between your ribs and cuts into your lungs. The fire goes out even before he continues, “Potushit ogon.” Your hands shake worse than your knees as a high buzzing begins in the back of your mind. Eyes locked on Steve, you’re far, far away in a microsecond. The words are familiar but it’s in Bucky’s voice. For a brief second, you see him, laying bloodied and barely alive on the metal table. You hear the plans for the Program, for a new test to see if they could meld metal to flesh, you feel his blood flexing underneath your power. Gasping shallow breaths, the room spins around you. Steve smiles, small and sad, and approaches you faster - but not fast. Just faster than before. Bucky gives another order, “Uspokoit’sya.”

Steve wraps his long fingers around the wrist shaking in front of you as the weight of the order presses you down. Your breathing slows even though your mind is spinning out at thousands of miles per hour, and your stance relaxes. Steve smiles again, his other hand smoothing over your shoulder. “Helen is a friend,” He says, ducking his head so that he can keep eye contact with you as he says your name, “We just have to make sure that you’re healthy.”

For what? For battle? You know about the tests that doctors run - stress tests, blood pressure, cognitive tests. You know that they run all of that and more, sometimes through the excruciating pain of electricity in places that it shouldn’t be. Still, you can’t freak out because your mind is still stuck between this place is not that place, these people are not those people and uspokoit’sya. It leaves you in a strange fugue state that makes you incredibly malleable for Steve to steer you toward a chair. Your mind struggles to protect itself and it’s like you’re watching what’s happening through a dirty window - there, but not. Steve doesn’t seem to notice.

Once he has you sat in the chair, everyone else moves. Bruce and Tony escort Wanda out the door, holding her up as she sags under her body weight. Or, maybe, the weight of your memories. Natasha lowers her gun but doesn’t take her finger off the trigger, even as Bucky works his way around to face you in an arc until he’s standing next to her. There’s a small trickle of blood over his forehead, following the slant of his eyebrow around his eye. It’s probably already healed, you think blithely as you watch Steve present your arm to Helen. She’s talking to you but her voice isn’t anything but a hum of syllables and incoherent sounds. She takes a lot of blood, more than a normal human could stand having drained at once, but you don’t even flinch.

You’re waiting for your next order. There has to be more - Bucky had activated you. They were going to use you for something, right? Maybe they’d just wanted you docile for the tests, or maybe they were going to trick you into agreeing to what Wanda had seen you in your mind. It doesn’t matter because your thoughts come and go like an even breeze. You barely remember them once they’re gone, despite being very quick-witted usually. They’re an afterthought to you - they have to be if you want to survive. If you rely on your own thoughts they will punish you when you tell them no. If you fall away, watch your life trapped in your own body as if You is different from the you that your body is, it hurts much less. So you let Helen run her tests and take her blood; you answer her questions in a flat and quiet voice. Almost fully opposite of you, the You inside of your body is screaming. Every answer burns like fire as it comes out of your body; every test, blood draw, and reflex check is a reminder of what you and You actually are. Sure, you can look like a person and act like a person and even fucking think and feel and love and cry like a person but nobody in those jackets sees you (or You, for that matter) as a person.

You are an experiment. A tool. A weapon. An asset.

You are Serdtse.

You are the Heart, the beginning, the end, the middle, the catalyst, the deterrent. You are all of these things in one and Bucky must see it.

He has made his way from being all of those things, but he must see it in you. He watches you as Helen continues for another hour, two, three - you’re not sure. There’s no time where You are and it’s hard enough to watch everything happening, let alone know how long you’ve been stuck inside of your own body like this. The weight of your title doesn’t even seem to impact his shoulders, or the way he sends Natasha away with the strangle tile she’d dropped. When Steve escorts Helen back to the elevator, Bucky approaches less cautiously than his friend had. He says a name but you stare blankly back at him. Inside, behind the glass, You scream. That’s Your name, that’s who You are. He’s saying Your name and You desperately want to react but you can’t, you won’t. Bucky sighs and finally the weight settles over him.

Through a frown, he says, “Serdtse, poydem.”

“Gde?” Your voice is hollow and Bucky flinches.

“V svoyu komnatu. Tebe nuzhno pospat’ seychas.”

You nod but it feels heavy. On numb legs you stand, eyes rolling toward Bucky as he watches you, analyzing how you’re reacting - or not reacting because you’re still stuck, trapped, reliving your life in brief flashes and phantom pains. The phrase they always expected falls out of your mouth before you can stop it and, for a moment, you’re afraid you’re going to vomit. “Ya ponimayu.” He turns to lead you to your room and you follow, gait strong and flawless. It’s unlike any way that you’ve carried your body since you’ve unthawed and if you had more control, if you were closer to the surface of the fugue state, you might clench your jaw and crack your neck to relieve the stress compressing your spine. As it is, you just follow Bucky’s broad back to your room and follow your orders, laying back down in your bedding and falling asleep before you can become You again.

When Bucky gets back to the apartment he shares with Steve, the first thing he does is empty his dinner into the toilet. The second thing he does is get into the shower fully clothed, turning the water as hot as Friday will let him. The third is cry.

The city skyline is dark, a storm having just passed over the heart of New York. The rolling of thunder still echoes from where the cluster of clouds has moved on, but the figure clad in all black, shapeless clothing doesn’t care. As long as the storm doesn’t come back for seconds, everything will fall into place today.

They’re on a mission.

They have to find the perfect place - it has to be perfect. If it’s not perfect there’s a good chance they’ll lose their life. There’s a good chance their family will die, too. The video had gone viral. The headlines had conspired that it was a movie shoot.

But they know better. Their bosses know better. The day after the video was posted, the plan was in place. It just has to be perfect.

Every alley that they pass is inspected, but those are too hidden. The parks are too filled with people walking dogs or gathering after the raucous storm in the fresh post-rain smell. The figure huffs, pulling a dark hood tighter to obscure their face from security cameras or appearing in the background of smartphone photographs.

Grinding their teeth, they search well into the night. Finally, finally, they find it. Hidden enough to be discovered long after they’re gone, but in plain enough sight that it will be discovered.

The paint runs like blood and the artist disappears like a ghost.

Steve presses his forehead against the elevator doors after he sends Helen off. There’s a bad feeling growing like a parasite in his spine. He’s almost afraid to go back to his apartment, to see what’s happening to Bucky now, but he has to. He wants to, more importantly.

When he said I’m with you ‘till the end of the line what he really meant was I love you, I have always and will always love you, and I will be here through everything.

Tony sits on his balcony, an untouched glass of whiskey in his right hand. Every so often, he smells it. He does not take a drink, but his throat stings like he does. The skin around his arc reactor burns. It’s a phantom ache. He knows that.

You’re a phantom ache to him, too.

If he closes his eyes, he can still feel the heat of the fire on your skin pressing against his face. If he closes his eyes, he wonders if that’s what it feels like to die.

If he closes his eyes, he wonders if that’s the last thing his parents felt.

Tony doesn’t close his eyes. Instead, he pours the whiskey over the balcony, thinking about every Yahrzeit he’s missed, every kaddish.

A storm rolls in.

When you wake up the next morning you feel like shit. There’s residual heaviness in your head, a fog you can’t break through. There’s also shame. When Natasha comes to get you, laptop and gun in hand, you straighten your shoulders and decide that you’re going to be the best fucking prisoner these people have ever had. You pick out your clothes on the laptop, keeping an eye out for what Natasha likes, and then you go for more blood tests.

It continues like that for the next month. Sometimes Steve comes to get you in the mornings, sometimes it’s Natasha. It’s never Bucky, never Wanda, never Tony. It makes bile rise in your throat but you press on. You have to.

When Bruce comes to get you in the mornings, it means he’s running tests, too. You remember these tests from your time with the Handlers so it’s easy. It’s like breathing. Sometimes the Avengers - though you’d learned that they don’t really call themselves that anymore - come to watch. Bruce doesn’t make you run mazes, but he hooks new tech up to you and monitors your reactions to running at a flat-out sprint for as fast and as long as possible, or jogging for as long as you can stand the boredom that comes with your endurance. He told you once everything that he monitors like it matters to you, or you’re going to do anything with that information. You know your place - you’re nothing more than a shiny new lab rat, another super-soldier with a serum that they can study. Still, there’s something about the look on Bucky’s face when he’s watching you deadlift or catch softballs barehanded from a machine that pitches them to you at superhuman speeds. It reminds you of you when you were watching him die.

But you’re not dying. You’re getting stronger throughout the tests. The Handlers ran tests, sure, but they never kept you fed well enough to gain any muscle. The Avengers give you three protein shakes a day, still unbearably sweet, and after a few weeks you end up eating breakfasts and lunches of solid foods with just a shake for dinner. You bulk up, but not visibly. It’s just noticeable on your tests and it becomes another variable that Bruce measures. He’s the nicest of the bunch - the most prone to trust you. Maybe it’s naivete, maybe it’s because there’s something lurking under the surface that you can see. He’s repressing something and you wonder if, like you, he’ll explode one day.

You also take to writing in the month since you nearly lit poor Helen on fire. It’s easy enough to request a pen and journal from The Voice That Lives In Your Ceiling, something that’s never really explained to you. Every night after your tests are done and you’ve drank your dinner shake, you find yourself at the desk in your cell writing. You’ve filled four journals with just what you remember from your childhood so far, and there’s still so much more information that you have left to give. The finished journals are all in a pile next to where you sleep, new crisp journals appearing outside your door after you add another thick, written in journal to the pile. You’re not sure who’s buying them for you, but you figure they’ll be repaid tenfold when they get their hands on everything you know.

The Handlers were never worried about what they said to you, or around you, because they thought they had your undying loyalty. They programmed you with a near-perfect memory which, now, is both a blessing and a curse. Their plans, their thoughts, their names - you write them all down because you can remember them.

But that means you can remember what those people became. The monsters that humans can turn into when corrupted by greed, or power, or the ideologies that led to the second war.

It also means you can remember being outside, no matter how much you don’t want to. Asking to go outside seems like it’s breaking some unspoken rule about what you can and can’t have, so you don’t even risk it. You just think about asking; remembering the sun on your face, the ground beneath your feet. You just look longingly out the window when it rains or when the stars come out.

Nobody notices.

Still, they are eons nicer than the Handlers. You learn about them over mealtimes when they all come together to laugh, catch up, and break bread. You’re only there because Steve makes sure to come to get you so that you can eat with them. Sometimes, he drags you into the conversations like he wants to get to know you.

(“What about your favorite book? It has to be one that Buck and I have actually read.” Steve says one day when the rain has lulled you into a small appetite. You’re already done with lunch, listening to the team describe the bare-bones plots of their favorite novels. His direct question startles you so badly a heat you can feel crawling up your neck.

“Yeah,” Wanda says, still not able to look you full in the eyes after what she’d seen in your head, “I’m sure yours are more interesting than ours.” You blink slowly, trying to think about the ten or eleven books you’d read in your life.

“Oh,” You say to fill the silence, shifting awkwardly when you realize that even Bucky is watching, waiting for your answer, “There was a book I stole when I was out once,” You cough awkwardly when you realize what you’ve revealed, “It was in Paris - in the late thirties. Just a few years, uh, before I was frozen.” Not a few years ago - decades. Lifetimes. “The Handlers weren’t too keen when they found it, but it was a good book. Nightwood was the title, but I’m not sure of the author. Djuana? Something.”

“Djuna Barnes,” Bucky says, “My cousin. I remember hearin’ Ma talk about the book when it came out in ‘36. She didn’t like how it talked about different groups like they weren’t all people, and I have to agree. Really sent the neighborhood into a tizzy when she published that, but she was a good journalist in Greenwich ‘fore she went off to travel.” He shares a fond look with Steve, “Gave us our first smokes too - nearly killed Stevie with his lungs back then.” You don’t understand the look on his face.

“It’s a good book,” You offer, wilting under the unreadable look on everyone’s faces, “I read almost the entire thing before it was taken away from me. I didn’t appreciate how she played into stereotypes, either, though.”

“What was your favorite quote?” Bucky leans forward, commanding the conversation as he watches you think. “What?” “From the book - your favorite quote.”

You think, running back the parts of the book you’d read over and over in your head. There were a few lines that had stayed with you, sure, but only one that had brought you to tears when you first read it in the moonlight at the Underground. “But death is intimacy walking backward. We are crazed with grief when she, who once permitted us, leaves to us the only recollection.” Bucky leans back, satisfied.

“We have to get you some new books.” Tony cuts in, grumbling into his coffee cup and never looking at you. The next day there is a stack of books in front of your door when Bruce comes to get you for breakfast and testing. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, and a thick book with all seven books in a series called The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis. You have a sneaking suspicion that Tony sent them, but don’t know why.)

Exactly a month after you’ve woken up from the ice is the second time that Bucky Barnes shows up at your door to fetch you. He knocks as they all do, but then he opens the door before you can even stand from your makeshift studying nook. “Today is goin’ to be different,” He says. Something about the way his voice is flat and grave makes your stomach twist. “We need to see how powerful you are.” You turn to look at him but he won’t look at you. “I don’t know - did they ever make you fight other people?”

“Sometimes,” You answer, but your voice doesn’t sound like yours. It sounds like theirs- every person you fought, every person you killed. Thankfully, it does not sound like Bucky’s. “I don’t have to kill anyone, do I?”

“No!” He looks at you now, pale. So he knows, then. That part of the Program wasn’t written down anywhere except in the notes you stole, but it was always the Handler’s favorite part. They loved to take bets but it was a lost cause and mostly for fun. You never lost. “No,” Bucky repeats, calmer, “We just want to see how much you can manipulate. You’ll be fighting us.”

In your shock, you nearly forget to breathe. Fighting them - fighting the Avengers… Even the Handlers didn't fight you themselves. There are so many things that can go wrong; they know that based on the fact that Bucky has been sent to collect you. He watches you go stock still, chest barely rising with your breath, and wrings his hands. "How hard do I have to fight?" You finally ask, standing from your cramped position over a notebook.

"Just hard enough to not lose," He holds your door for you, "I… I had to do the same thing after I was pardoned. They only had me fight Stevie and Tony, though." You follow three steps behind Bucky as he leads you toward the training gym, "We're goin' to have you switch it up for each person because I don't think anyone could handle takin' you on with all four elements, y'know?"

"Right." You clip off the word before it's fully out of your mouth. You know that nobody could - you're not sure you'd survive that experiment.

"So the plan is one-on-one, one element per combatant." Bucky explains everything tactically, lips pressed into a hard line between each sentence, "It's up to you how you fight and what you fight with. This is a test of your cognitive capabilities when it comes to fighting - and how you strategize."

"And how dangerous I am."

He sighs, "It's not really about that, but it is being measured today." For a brief second his hand ghosts over your elbow before lightly tugging, like a warning he was going to touch you. "We're not goin' to the gym today."

You look blankly at the doors to the gym you're in nearly every day. "Where are we going?"

Bucky furrows his eyebrows, frowning lightly. "Outside, where else?" You hesitate, seeing the door at the end of the hallway. Once you pass that threshold you're not sure what will happen to you. You'll fight, sure, but after? When they see the extent of your power? What will they do to you? "Is everything okay?"

"I just… Haven't been outside in a long time." You finally muster up, "I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to take me out there.” He looks back and forth between you and the door before he takes the few steps to the metal and pushes it open.

“C’mon,” He jerks his head toward the yard - you can feel the breeze pushing past you and the smell of the freshly mowed grass makes your bones sing. You want to be outside so badly it aches, but you know that once you get a taste of that equilibrium, that freedom, it’ll be just that more bitter to go back to you cell. “I won’t let anythin’ happen to you.” Maybe Bucky doesn’t really know why you’re standing with your knees locked, fingernails digging into your palms but maybe he does. Either way, he’s giving you an out to pretend that you’re scared and not already thinking of what you’re losing before you get it.

You follow Bucky outside. The sunshine on your skin makes your breath catch and then your bare feet hit the grass and everything is whole again. The feeling of being perfectly balanced within your body and everything you can do with it sits heavy, but light, on your chest. Your toes spread and your eyes close without your permission - Bucky chuckles softly, barely heard over the wind, when your head tilts and seeks out the sunshine. “It’s been so long,” You whisper back even though he hadn’t really asked a question, voice clogged and choking on emotions you don’t dare let show on your face, “It feels so good.”

“We’ll have to get you outside more often,” Steve’s voice scares you because you hadn’t heard him leave the compound and you’d been so focused on how being outside makes you feel inside that you hadn’t been paying attention to the outside. Your eyes snap open and instinctually you hike your shoulders to your ears. For a second you’d forgotten who you are, what you are; that’s a surprisingly big feat when Bucky is around and he’d been appointed your de facto Handler. (Or, at least, that’s what you assumed when he kept showing up to every test with Steve and Bruce. Plus, he’d been sent to get you today, when there was a higher chance that you’d react poorly.) “Woah, hey, it’s okay,” He’s dressed in a familiar suit and holding his hands up to appease you. Bucky looks concerned, his left hand flexing as he warms his arm up. “I know these few weeks have been a lot, but we’re almost to the end, okay?”

You nod robotically, “Of course,” It’s hard to hold eye contact with either of them, so you settle on watching how their shoulders brush against each other as they stand, “I’m almost done writing down everything I know.” You’ve been working on that for a while and of course they know, but it’s the first time any of you have mentioned it out loud.

“That’s really amazing,” Steve says earnestly. It’s hard not to believe him when his voice is so sure and full, but you have to remember who you are. You have to remember who you’re not. “Well,” He claps once and then looks back at Bucky, sharing nonverbal communication that you’re not equipped to understand, and then back to you, “The others are waiting for you. I’m sure that Tony wants to go first.” He telegraphs his movements so that it’s not a shock when he claps you on the shoulder. You let Steve lead you toward the others - they’re standing in a group on the other side of a large field watching the three of you. Bucky takes up the rear and you try to ignore the tingling down your spine at having such a formidable opponent behind you.

By the time you make it to where Sam, Tony, Natasha, Bruce, and Wanda are standing you've already figured out the situation. Automatically you know that you’re not going to be facing off against Wanda or Sam - they're dressed far too comfortably. Bruce is wearing what he always does when he’s observing you which is what he wears all of the time: a nice button up shirt and slacks. You can feel incredibly compressed metal around Tony’s wrists and Natasha is in her tactical suit. Cutting a glance to Bucky lets you know that you missed his tactical suit as well. You immediately begin to strategize even though Tony is definitely speaking to you about what this is for - none of that matters because you understand. They either want to know what you can do so that they can control you better or that want to turn you around and use your powers for themselves.

Bucky knocks you out of it by tapping his fingers against the back of your hand as he passes. “You’ll be fine,” He whispers without really moving his lips or speaking up. The only reason you can hear him is because you’re teeming with serum, “Just show us what you can do, okay?”

He follows the others about forty yards away, leaving you and Steve standing next to each other. Steve says something that you can’t hear over the blood rushing in your ears and then moves to stand across from you maybe ten or so feet away. When you finally meet his eyes he gives you that same smile that he gave you when he was trying to calm you down in the dining area so long ago.

Pity. Uncertainty. Maybe a little bit of fear.

It makes your stomach turn.

Instead of saying anything to Steve you just bounce on the balls of your feet and shake out your hands. “I’m ready,” You announce, trying to keep the shake out of your voice but raising it enough that everyone can hear you. Immediately Steve shifts his center of gravity backward and schools his expression. If you weren’t who you are and you didn’t have the training you do, it would be scary how quickly he could go from open and friendly to locked down and determined. There’s a flicker of confusion on his face when you don’t move, instead opting to let your natural senses take a backseat to your supernatural senses. His face swims behind a fog but you can feel his heartbeat picking up with adrenaline, his muscles coiling as he gets ready to move, his lungs expanding and compressing as he breathes.

Once again, you’re stuck with how easily you could kill Captain Steve Rogers. Every instinct that was shocked, beat, burned into you tells you to - you’re made to kill him, and Bucky, and anyone who gets in your way. But you don’t want to kill him, you don’t even want to hurt him. In fact, you’d be perfectly content if they let you stay in your cell for the rest of your damn life and put food through a doggy door. You begin to float away, waiting on orders, but you can’t. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. You have to stay tethered to your body, fight the Avengers, and prove that you’re worth it.

(Worth what?)

Bucky’s voice comes back to you in wavy echoes. What had he told you? You’d asked him - something, God you’d asked something - and he’d said… Just hard enough not to lose. What had you asked?

Steve’s muscles tense again and it gives you barely a second for your question to tumble through your mind before you have to do something.

How hard do I have to fight?

Just hard enough not to lose.

Steve, with the shield on his back, kicks up dirt as he sprints toward you. It’s easy to dodge left out of the way and avoid the sweeping leg he tries to take you out with. Everything snaps back into place and then you’re using your natural senses and supernatural senses in tandem, in equilibrium, in synchronicity. It’s been so, so long - like stretching a muscle after they’d kept you in a room that was too cramped for too long. It feels exhilarating.

The adrenaline must show on your face because Steve whirls to attack again and stops, cocking his head. You watch him as he watches you and then he’s grinning. “There you are,” He rumbles, looking almost feral, “There’s the fire you woke up with.”

live once, you get to pay twice

keep your nose clean, keep your wheels nice

Potushit ogon - put the fire out

Uspokoit’sya - calm down

Poydem - let’s go

Gde - where

V svoyu komnatu. Tebe nuzhno pospat’ seychas - to your room. you need to sleep now

Ya ponimayu - i understand

#dark in here #series reblog

95 notes · View notes

nightowlwriting · 1 year

Text

summary: can't trust anybody

even the tough ones crack

train up a swordsman

to stab you in the back

i na-na-na-na-know this much is true

i'm gonna leave a mark on you

tony comes to talk to you - at you, rather. steve and bucky talk some stuff out. the team decides what to do with you. you find an unlikely friend, maybe, in wanda. she dives a little too far into your mind on fire.

word count: 8.3k (again, somehow)

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, enhanced!reader, traumatized!reader

warnings: couple arguments, trauma, aggression towards reader, allusions to antisemitism and historical violence against the jewish community, self-loathing, brief descriptions of torture, mentions of imprisonment, lapse of reality, paranoia, brief mentions of forced food/water restriction, flashbacks, ptsd, trauma responses

note: this is the part two of an ongoing series, find the series masterlist here.

title & summary credit: the mountain goats

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Steve doesn't give Bucky a lot of time to cool off before he rounds on him, confused and seething. "What the hell was that?" He props his hands on his hips, trying not to sound too much like a disappointed dad instead of a partner.

"Why did you take me in there, Steve?" Bucky responds, leaning wearily against a filing cabinet in the meeting room. "What was the point?" He looks bone tired, all of the fight gone after hearing your chest-rattling sobs behind him when he left the cell. Bucky's like that, though: a few minutes of white-hot rage burning out quickly to whatever emotion was the kindling for the fire. That's not how Steve works.

He was calm when Bucky was yelling, the support system to keep everything in check but he doesn't need to be that anymore. The anger consumes him and, yeah, Steve knows it's really because he had been scared to see Bucky lose it like that. Scared, hurt, and confused at the whole situation with you. He doesn't remember you, not really, but there's something about your eyes that tickles a part of his brain he prefers not to think about. "The point?" He's shaking, hands clenched at his sides as the fire licks up his ribs and consumes him, "The point was to get more information!"

"Why me?" Bucky shoots back, some spark coming back, "Why would you take me in there knowing what Hydra did to me? You have it on paper, now! You don't need me to get information!"

"Maybe I shouldn't have taken you in there," Steve agrees with a nod of his head, "But I didn't force you. I didn't drag you in kicking and fuckin' screaming."

"You might as well have!" Bucky throws his hands up - they're shaking too - and he looks away from Steve to try and hide the glossy sheen on his eyes or the way his bottom lip trembles. That kills some of the fire in Steve and suffocates some of the anger. "What makes you think I would want to go in there? Why would I want to face one of the people who did this to me?"

"That person didn't do this to you." Steve's resolve is rock solid and it makes Bucky look up in surprise. "That person isn't Hydra and it's not fair to put that on someone like us." Steve's still pissed, sure, but he's also a stellar tactician. Being angry is going to get him absolutely nowhere except in a fight with Bucky - and then everyone will be miserable. "There are currently three people in the world who have experienced what we have. Two of them are in this room. The last is in that cell. Don't you understand?"

"I don't want to understand," Bucky turns away from Steve's steel gaze. "I don't need to. I need to stay as far away from that shit as possible." Steve's fire goes out, then, and he carefully lets his hands slide over Bucky's shoulders after he sighs, pulling him back until they're slotted chest to back. "I just want to be good."

"You are good, baby," Steve whispers, tucking his chin over Bucky's shoulder, "So good, the best. This doesn't change that. If anyone is to blame for this - it's me." That's the crux of the issue, out in the world. Steve's stomach feels heavy, like it has since he made the realization in the interrogation room. "If the timeline is right, if I'm right, that jet wasn't Hydra. That jet was me. If I hadn't…" Steve's choked up, then, clinging to Bucky like he wants to put him back together again, to turn back time. "You're so good, so, so good. I don't deserve you, baby, I don’t."

Bucky knows better than to argue with Steve when he gets like this - just like Steve knows he’s going to get nowhere yelling. Instead, they hold each other in the silence of their room until Friday calls them to a conference room for a meeting.

You’re left alone in the room until your breath evens out and the tension leeches from your body. Your mind is still spinning out of control but you’re no longer out of touch and without a hold on your powers. The door is locked but it doesn’t matter anymore. You have no will to escape because there’s nothing but a whole new world to escape - plus the guilt on your back makes it physically hard to drag yourself off the floor. You’re not sure what to do after that, so you end up standing in the middle of the room listlessly, like an abandoned ship on a tumultuous ocean.

The only reaction from you when the door opens is to turn your head and see who’s coming to talk to you now. It’s the man that looks like Howard - you have to assume it’s Tony Stark. The dots connect in your head and some more lucid part of your mind whispers to your consciousness: Anthony Stark, Howard’s son. He has to be, if what Sergeant Barnes said is true. “You look like him,” You finally say, voice raw and defeated, “But now that I’m lookin’ at you, really lookin', I can see that you’re not him.” He doesn't reply and something inside of you, the part of you that's still stunted in childhood and yearning for any sort of connection, makes you keep talking. "You have his nose and jaw - but your Mom's eyes. I never met Maria in person, but Howard kept a picture of her on his desk." Tony sits down hard in the chair that Steve had once been in. He temples his hands but still doesn't speak. You can't stand the silence, or his prolonged eye contact, so you look away. "They're dead, aren't they?"

"Long time."

The grief is almost overtaking - it would be if you weren't already so overwhelmed. How did this happen? Just days ago you were running, clutching the lifeline of the Program. It's only been days. Days.

And now everyone you knew, everyone you trusted, is dead.

The thought almost makes your knees give out but you can't, you won't be weak anymore. You'll wait until you're alone, until you're in whatever cell they want to put you in, and then you'll feel. Just like at the Underground, just like your normal routine. For everyone else, it's been decades, apparently, but for you, it's only been hours. The mask slips over your face too easily, hardening your eyes and clenching your jaw. It straightens your shoulders and changes your stance. You were taken and molded into the perfect soldier and from your new, subtle body language it's easy to see that.

"How?"

"I used to blame Barnes, but it seems like I just didn't have all of the information." Tony's face is just as cold as yours when you turn around. He looks just like his father, now, all frozen, calculating gaze and pursed lips. It makes your chest ache. "Turns out there was a chance, not a big one mind you, that someone else could have prevented this from happening." The sneer is minuscule but you see it. You see everything. It's not hard to put two and two together - the Handlers ran the program on Sergeant Barnes. He was enhanced, molded into a weapon - maybe even a better one than you. They used him to take out one of the biggest threats to the Underground. Howard Stark. Maria must have just been collateral damage.

You want to tell Tony that you did your best, but it doesn't matter. Your best wasn't good enough. Nothing really matters now - there's nothing you can say to Tony to take away the pain he's feeling at the loss of his parents. Vaguely, you remember having parents once. You remember loving them. You remember losing them. So you don't say anything to him. Clearly, he's come in here to see you and get things off of his chest so you'll let him.

The lack of response seems to set him off. Tony stands and gets into your space, chest heaving. "Barnes was right about one thing: your best wasn't near good enough. It was just fuckin’ pathetic." He laughs but it's dark, heavy with everything he's feeling. You can already tell that Tony wears most of his emotions on his face, unlike Howard who was always stoic and cold. You watch him leave, see the tension in his back. Guilt chokes you until your vision swims. It takes several minutes but you let yourself sink to the ground again, sitting on your knees and pressing your palms to the cold linoleum.

You can't feel the earth here, spirited away into hallways of wood and metal and electricity. It's always made you feel off kilter - to have access to everything but one. Like four new, invisible limbs - you're tied to the elements, and being without one makes you feel off balance. Now you're searching for it but it's locked off from you, too far away.

Your stomach turns again because it's just how the Handlers want you - unwell, unknowing, unbalanced with one more limb cut off at the base. This place isn't any different, is it? These people? Will they withhold water until you're dying, weak and frail and begging? Will they keep the heat off in the winter, leaving you to shiver against the cold concrete floor of your cell? Will they suspend you so that you can't feel the ground beneath your feet? Leave you swaying and shivering and feeling the vibration of wrong wrong wrong in your muscles? Fuck, you'd really gone out of the pan and into the fire, hadn't you? You still search, looking for that balance your body and mind crave but it's too far away. You're on the third floor.

A few minutes later you're surprised to realize that the strange choking sound is coming from you. You're not crying, not really because the Handlers quelled that right quick when you were a kid. It's more like you're choking on everything happening, everything inside of you that's not supposed to be there. The worst part about it is that you know there are at least three people on the other side of the fucking mirror just watching. Listening. Probably taking notes to add to a shiny, new dossier on you in the shiny, new modern fucking world.

Another person comes in, but you don't care anymore. They could kill you now and it wouldn't matter. You startle when a hand lands on your shoulder and you turn to see a woman crouching next to you with a small smile on her face. She looks young, but carries the weight that the soldiers you met had. The weight you probably hold.

"Hello," She smiles sweetly, "I'm Wanda."

"Wanda," You repeat. You want to give her your name but you're struck, again, with the fact that you don't know who you are here - who you're supposed to be here. She seems to pluck the hesitation from the air around you and instead fishes your tags out from your jumpsuit. She looks at them and takes the information in: your name, your rank, the blank lines here your religion, and your blood type should be. Wanda says that name, your name, and it sends a shock through your system.

"Is this what you'd like to be called?" She asks sweetly, sweeping some of her dark hair behind her ear. "We can call you this if you want." When you slowly nod, she beams, settling back until she's sitting crisscrossed next to you. "I'll make sure to let them know."

You're about to ask who she's going to let know when Wanda shifts, light reflecting off of the silver necklace she's wearing. The sight sends a shiver down your spine because she can't - they'll kill her. Doesn't she know? You reach out and take Wanda's wrist, "Ath tesreyk lhestetr. Revtes, tesa hhevtesh." You whisper in Hebrew, urgently. You have to hide. Run, get out. The chances that the people behind the mirror know Hebrew are slim. Wanda's eyes widen and she glances at your hand on her and then back to your eyes.

"What do you mean?" You cover her Star of David pendant and shuffle closer, already feeling protective. At least this is something you can do and know that you can do.

"They'll kill you if they see this," You drop your voice and duck your head toward Wanda - there are still two people behind the glass watching you, "Please, you have to tuck it into your shirt at least." Her heartbeat is calm, even with your hand pressed to her collarbones. She's not afraid, not even a little bit. Your heart, in contrast, is beating so fast it's making you dizzy. "Ana."

Please.

Wanda lays her hand over yours, eyes softening and head tilting, "Oh, lyuba mayn. That's not - it's a different time now. I'm safe here. I don't have to hide." She squeezes your hand, "Perhaps still dangerous, yes, but here? With the Avengers? I don't have to worry." She smiles again, "You're safe here, too."

"Not safe," You shake your head, leaving your hand snug under Wanda's, "I don't think I've been safe a day in my life." The necklace under your palm reminds you of the time you've come from - the time you feel like you're still in because it's only been a few hours for Christ's sake - and the everything that was happening. The people that built you up and everything they did to you. Had they kept looking for you after all of this time? Did you become a legend? Serdtse, lost in the blisteringly cold ice fields? Serdtse, escaped with the Program? Serdtse, the traitor?

Hell, you're proud to be a traitor. Stealing the Program and running away might be the bravest thing you've done in your entire life - even if it wasn't enough. Even if you can't apologize enough to Sergeant Barnes, to Tony Stark, to Captain Rogers, to yourself… For failing. The bravest thing you've ever done is also your biggest failure. The irony isn't lost on you, even as Wanda helps you to your feet. "We have a room set up for you if you want to get some sleep."

"I'm not sure I want to get any more sleep than I already have." It's not meant to be a joke, but Wanda laughs anyway. Her smile is bright and she shakes her head at you.

"Just as funny as Bucky, lyuba mayn. He makes jokes like that too." She takes your hand in hers so that you have no choice but to follow her to the door. The power surges in the atmosphere around you and it takes your breath away - with just a wave of her fingers the locks on the door unlatch and she pulls you through it. Tony Stark is there with another woman - imposing despite the fact that you have half a foot on her and the sharpest eyes you've ever seen. Her gaze puts you on edge and suddenly, despite what you've told Wanda, you do want to go to sleep. You're exhausted to the bone.

This new woman steps forward and extends a hand. "Natasha Romanoff. Have you heard of the Black Widow Project?" She gets straight to the point it seems.

Shaking her hand, you frown. "No, never. Is that… Were you?" Her silence is the only answer you need. There are a lot of people here like you - the end products of Projects that had no business existing. Even Tony must be one because you've never met anyone with metal in their chest like that. "I'm… I’m sorry." You say after the silence holds on for just a little too long.

"You didn't do it to me." Tony scoffs behind Natasha and turns back to the window to the cell, arms crossed over his chest and jaw clenched. "I'll show you to your room with Wanda. No offense, but you're on thin ice with most of the people here." She breezes from the room and Wanda, still holding your hand, tugs you to follow.

The meeting room is tense. It’s full of most of the Initiative except for Sam and Clint, who are both out on visits to their respective families. Steve and Tony head the conversation, once again on opposite sides. Really, it’s like trying to get Bucky pardoned all over again. It feels like deja vu, except Steve isn’t fighting so many of his friends this time. Mainly just Tony - even Bucky is begrudgingly on his side. Tony is standing with his back to the room and Steve knows it’s because he’s struggling with the concept that his parent’s assassination could have been avoided. Steve feels bad, sure, but he can’t blame you just like he can’t blame Bucky. What’s the new thing they’re teaching in self-defense classes? If you’re getting mugged, just give up your wallet. That’s exactly what you and Bucky had been doing under Hydra.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Tony says for what feels like the twelfth time, “The Initiative can’t keep taking in God damn strays because you feel bad, Rogers.” Bucky sighs from where he’s sitting, probably deciding to skip that particular fight.

“It’s not because I feel bad,” Steve shakes his head, looking to anyone for help. Bucky has effectively shut down, not that he blames his partner for doing that, but even Natasha and Wanda aren't saying anything to defend you. They’d both treated you nicely, too, and told Steve that they were on board with bringing you onto the team - or at least into the fold so that you weren’t just thrown into the modern world with no help. He knows how bad it feels, how confusing everything is. Bucky does too, to a lesser extent. He’d gotten some memories back after his time in Wakanda so the new world isn’t completely foreign to him. Not like it had been to Steve. “It’s because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Come on, you can’t really believe that.” Tony turns and Steve can tell that he knows it’s true. He knows it’s true, but he doesn’t want it to be. “Can’t even call it Hydra, keep callin’ it some bullshit like the Underground. How do we know this isn’t a plant, huh?” Tony postures, crossing his arms and trying to appear bigger than he actually is. It doesn’t work because Steve has a foot on him and at least a buck fifty. “Some plan to take us own from the inside? Some Burning Staff lackey getting frozen in hope we’d be the ones to thaw them out?”

“I don’t think anyone is that good of an actor, Tony. You saw that wind just as well as Buck and I felt it.” Steve leans heavily against the table, looking for anyone to join the fight with him. Natasha and Wanda sit next to each other, watching but not saying anything. Bruce has his head down like he’s praying, but Steve knows he’s really assembling a comprehensive pro and con list about you in his head. Nobody else will even sniff in Steve’s direction, afraid of drawing the Captain’s ire. “Besides, you heard what Wanda said. Would a Hydra agent really try to warn her about wearin’ her Star of David publicly? Or be so worried about the paperwork and plans? It’s all legit, Tony. You know that as well as I do.” He takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself. To Steve… It feels like he’s fighting for himself as much as fighting for you. Fighting for Bucky and Wanda, too. “We were both there when Friday said it all checked out. There’s even information there that we don’t have.” Steve knows he’s winning when Tony looks away again. “But now we have it - and you know exactly why we have it now.”

“It’s still a threat.” Tony says finally, “Friday can only do so much to track around this place. Eventually, we’re going to have to see how deep the programming goes.” Everyone notices when Bucky bristles hard but nobody mentions it. Steve’s thankful because that comment is going to spark some nightmares tonight. If he knows Bucky, and he does, they’ll be awake most of the night together, shivering despite their apartment being an even seventy degrees.

“I’m sure that will be fine,” Steve says carefully, watching his partner from the corner of his eye, “We’ll eventually have to figure out the breadth of the power and serum, too. I don’t disagree with you there, Tony. I just think you’re blamin’ all the wrong people when it comes to things that have happened to you. We all are.” He can’t help but look at Bucky, then. He turns away after a moment because the shame on Bucky’s face is too much to handle right now. Steve will deal with that later tonight, when they’re safe in bed. Hopefully, before the nightmares come to take them both under their respective ice. “It’s been decades for all of us. All of us except the person who sought me out to try and prevent half of the shit we’ve been through from happenin’.”

“How, pray tell, is that our problem?!” Tony explodes, throwing his hands up, “We’re not the ones that sealed ourselves under the ice for that long! Why do we have to clean up a mess we didn’t make?”

“Can it, Stark.” Natasha finally speaks, standing up. “Our job is to clean up messes we don’t make - or have you forgotten all of the times we’ve bailed you out?”

Tony rounds on her, fury in his brown eyes. “Oh, don’t even start on that, sister. How many of your messes have we cleaned up?”

“Natasha is perfectly capable of cleaning up her own messes.” Bucky stands too, eyes icy as he defends her. “Everyone in this room knows it. She’s half the reason we’re still standin’ and not buried under rubble somewhere. You should probably get your head out of your ass and realize that.”

“Oh, fucking blow me, C-3PO.” Tony fires back immediately. Steve stands to his full height, ready to jump in if he sees Bucky getting too overwhelmed - but he won’t take this chance to parlay with Tony away since he very rarely sees his boyfriend stand up for himself. “We all saw the meltdown you had in there. You were ten seconds away from ending your pardon with a snapped neck.”

“Tony…”

“My breakdown doesn’t give you an excuse to act like a prick,” Bucky says after a deep breath, “I hate it as much as you do, trust me, but what else are we going to do? Seriously, fuckin’ think about it for a second, man. Even Steve had a shadow for the first three months after he was unthawed.” When Bucky glances at him, uncertain about dragging him back into the throw of the argument, Steve smiles softly. That’s exactly the point he was trying to get, but he probably wouldn’t have said it nearly as well. Tony chews on his words, finally thinking about what has to happen.

“I think,” Wanda chimes in, all young naivete where it matters and hardened warrior where it counts, “That between everyone on this team that’s enhanced or has advanced tools, we can keep the agents in the compound safe and help our new friend acclimate to the modern world. After that, we give the choice: go, live life and possibly end up taken by Hydra again or work with us. Fight with us.” She shrugs like it was the easiest thing in the world to come up with, “I’m sure that once Hydra realizes that - what did the file say? Serdste? - once they realize Serdste is alive and well they will not stop until they get their weapon back. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my time here, it’s that we don’t treat people as weapons. Doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to feel that, Tzfoni?” She tilts her head innocently and Steve can’t stop the wry smile that curls up his face at her innocent tone.

He’d asked Wanda why she called Tony that on occasion, because it wasn’t always that she used it - and it seems to get under Tony’s skin. She’d explained that it was old, Hebrew slang that her brother used a lot: tzfoni had a literal translation, sure, but she used it to mean a snobby, rich person. Steve had laughed until his face was red when he imagined someone as sweet as Wanda purposefully getting on Tony’s nerves like that. Now it’s the perfect punctuation to a gotcha sentence. He watches his friend’s entire body twitch at the nickname but Steve knows he’s already giving up. There’s too much opposition with too many good points to keep arguing.

Tony wants to pretend he’s hard logic and fine lines, but Steve knows better. Iron Man might be all of those things but Tony is Iron Man in the same way that Steve is Captain America. Not always, not fully. The lines are blurry, but they’re faint. They’re there. It’s enough to remind them of who they really are, underneath all of the machismo and posturing they have to do as the two biggest names on the team. Maybe that’s why Steve doesn’t walk away - he and Tony are just too much alike, two lines running parallel to each other. He knows he’s won the argument when Tony sighs and drops into a seat, head falling into his hands. “How are we supposed to do this?”

“Well, Stevie and I have plenty of experience bein’ the fish outta water,” Bucky sits back down, looking put out at the fact that he’s admitting what Steve has been thinking: putting the two of them on your case is probably the best thing to do. “Besides, clearly there’s already a connection to Steve there. You, too, if you hadn’t shown your ass like that.” Tony scoffs and when he looks away, Steve can see the tears glossing over his eyes.

“We can only move on,” He finally cuts back in, “And prove that we can be trusted to help. I’m sure Wanda’s already seen as an ally, too. That’s good. We can use that.”

Wanda frowns and plays with her pendant, “I’m not sure I want to use that, Steve. I don’t want to misuse any trust that I have. It feels wrong.”

“You can be the Hydra agent’s friend. Nobody here is stopping you, little witch,” Tony grumbles, standing and making his way to the door, “I’m the only one with a clear fuckin’ head, it seems. See if I care what goes on - just make sure you do the fuckin’ paperwork.”

You stand in the room Wanda and Natasha have shown you to for a little too long. They’d told you that they’d be back with dinner and something called a laptop - so that you could pick out clothes to wear that weren’t your coveralls - but you weren’t holding your breath on seeing them again. You’d given the Avengers, that was what Wanda had called them, all of your information. Now you’re functionally useless to them.

Still, the cell is nicer than you’re used to. It’s an open-concept cell except for the bathroom - with a door and everything - and there’s a large bed pushed into the far corner. The room has a couch, too, and a small kitchenette and… A strange screen that, once you decided to look around more, is hooked directly into the wall. It almost seems like it should be a television set, but everything you remember about the few times you’ve seen those… Those are huge, built into wooden cabinets with tiny screens. This doesn’t seem anything like that. Besides, even if it was a television set, why would you have one in your cell? It makes your skin crawl to have these amenities when not even fourteen hours ago you were sitting curled up in the corner of a leaking, dank, concrete box.

No - not fourteen hours ago.

Years.

Decades.

A lifetime.

The thought makes you sweat and, shit, maybe you are more tired than you originally thought. Normally you’re pretty good at regulating your internal temperature just by virtue of your abilities, but now you’re sweating bullets. It’s not even that hot in the cell, maybe an even seventy degrees, but you feel like you’re baking alive. It takes a few minutes of pacing before you finally decide to strip off the top half of your coveralls, tying them around your waist with the sleeves. Your white undershirt is already soaking through with your sweat and - well, maybe it’s because you’re nervous? Because you’d lost control in the other cell?

You still can’t feel the earth and it’s driving you insane. You’d spent such a brief amount of time in perfect balance during your escapes and you yearn for that. You want to feel the sun on your face, the grass underneath your feet, the breeze, the humidity. It feels like you’re about to cry: the burning in your throat, the tightening in your chest, the shaking of your hands. But you can’t cry - even if the Avengers are different than the Handlers, you know they’re watching you somehow. The Handlers used to put someone in the cell next to yours and they’d have to look through a drill hole every half an hour to make sure that you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t have been. You’d killed that guard easily - without even stepping toward the hole you weren’t supposed to know about. So, yeah, you’re sure the Avengers are watching you. Why wouldn’t they be?

You don’t cry. Instead, you lace your fingers behind your head and stretch your back, taking deep and measured breaths. After a few moments you finally physically relax in the hopes that you’ll mentally relax, too. Instead of crawling into the bed, you tug the bedding from the mattress and find the corner where the frame meets the wall. You make something like a nest so that you can sleep sitting up, leaning into the crevice the bed being against the wall makes.

It’s still softer than you’re used to, but somehow you manage to find a fitful sleep. It lasts for what feels like a few hours, but you still wake up panicked and panting. The room around you hasn’t changed, save for the sun beginning to go down and leaving the room darkening slightly every few minutes. You stay completely still until you’re sure that you haven’t been blasted several decades into the future again. Nothing in the room has decayed, or become decrepit as you’d expect after another time jump. The only thing that’s different is the ice slowly creeping out from where your hands are planted on the floor. You can see your breath when you exhale.

When your door begins to open, you shrink back into the enclave you’ve made, hiding from sight. “Christ,” Someone grumbles - it doesn’t take you long to recognize the timber and vocal fry of Sergeant Barnes, “It’s freezing in here.” He looks around for a second, but his eyes find you almost immediately. “That ‘cause of you?”

But you don’t speak. The last time you’d seen him he’d been near feral with rage. He looks calm, now, but you know that sort of calm. There are still turbulent emotions just under the surface there and, honestly, you’d seen that one too many times on the Handlers. You know that if you say something wrong, anything wrong, it might just give him the excuse he’s looking for. Instead of speaking you opt for a nod, curling your hands into fists until your nails are pressing painfully against your palms. Now that you’ve had some sleep it’s easier to control your internal temperature, so you bring it up until you’re ambiently heating the room. You’re sure that Sergeant Barnes doesn’t like the cold. He sighs when he takes a step forward and you don’t move, hands coming up to rest on his hips. “Look, I know it’s late but you gotta eat dinner. Can’t just starve yourself out in here.”

“Dinner?” You’re starving, but you get breakfast - and it’s usually a protein shake given to you in your cell. You only get real food if you’re being sent out into the field. “I don’t - you don’t have to give me dinner.”

Sergeant Barnes looks at you so deeply that it makes you uncomfortable. It makes you want to crawl out of your skin, actually. Instead of doing anything like that you stand up, still pressed into the corner between the bed and the wall. “Of course we’re goin’ to feed you dinner, we’re not animals.” He finally grumbles, “We’ll feed you breakfast and lunch, too. Come on.” Sergeant Barnes jerks his head toward your door and then turns his back on you. You wonder if it’s a test or not, but you don’t want to find out so you follow him. He leads you down the hallway even though you’re always five steps behind him - getting close to him doesn’t seem like a good idea.

He disappears through an open doorway but you linger. A million scenarios hit you all at once and it freezes you to the spot. He wasn't escorting you like the Handlers do but you have the unwavering sense that you're being watched at every moment. It makes your skin crawl and your shoulders shift until you're shrugging in on yourself, left shaking in an empty hallway.

And then Captain Rogers calls your name. He appeared around the corner searching for you and then grinned when he spotted you. “There you are! I thought Bucky had left you in your room.” He jerks his head behind him, where you can hear the idle chatter of several people. You recognize some of the voices - Natasha, Wanda, Tony - but others are completely unfamiliar. As if Captain Rogers can taste your hesitation in the air, he takes a soft step forward. “Listen, I know you’re scared. Just one dinner, and then we can sit down with everyone and talk about what’s next.”

“Why am I not eating in my room?” You ask, doing your best not to crane your neck to try and see around his broad frame, “Surely I can’t get into any trouble there.” He cocks his head but then a small smile breaks over his face again. “What?”

“We want you to eat with us. Wanda even saved you a seat. I can have your food delivered to your room if you want…” Steve laughs when you shake your head, fingers flexing into the fabric bunched around your waist. He turns to lead you back into the dining area but then stops and turns back to you with a grimace. “Listen, I know that you know me as Captain Rogers but I haven’t heard the end of it from the others. Think you could call me Steve?”

Owlishly, you blink. “Call you by your first name?” You ask incredulously, “I - no. That’s wrong. You deserve the respect of being addressed by your title.”

“I’m not really Captain Rogers here,” He leans forward to lower his voice, but you flinch away instinctually, “I’m just Steve here. Please, it’s much more respectful to use my name - and Bucky’s for that matter.” You follow his broad back into the dining room where a lot of people are waiting for you. Sergeant Barnes - Bucky - has already gotten his food and is tucked into a corner, eating sullenly and silently. You don’t miss the fact that he eyes you warily as you follow Steve into the room, as if you’re going to burn them all with one swoop of your arm.

You could, too, if you really wanted to. But that’s the key thing - you don’t want to. That’s why you hadn’t turned on Howard like the Handlers thought you would. The things they did to you turned you into a perfect soldier for them, but it also gave you a will that wasn’t easily broken. It’s why when you saw Sergeant Barnes brought in, about to be put through all of the same things you’d gone through, that you’d escaped. If you were anyone but you, it probably wouldn’t have been possible. But you’d sacrificed everything to do that and couldn’t even manage to do it right.

Wanda skips toward you with a smile on her face, casual clothes replacing the battle-ready outfit she had been wearing earlier in the day. “Did you have a good nap?” You nod and wring your hands in your uniform. She frowns and plucks at the tied-up sleeves, “I tried to convince Tasha to let me wake you so that we could get you some new clothes, but she said no. I’m sure we have something that you like here at the Compound, but if not we can order it in.”

“I’ve learned in my life,” Natasha pauses dramatically to take a drink of her wine, “That you do not wake up a sleeping supersoldier. Especially after they’ve just been unthawed.” She smiles, then, and waves her fingers at you from her place between a scowling Tony and a man who is looking at you like he wants to peel you apart and see how you’re made. If you hadn’t grown up around men like that, it might have made you uncomfortable. You smile at them, but it’s more of a grimace.

“I wouldn’t have been angry,” You finally say, trying to break the awkward silence that had settled, “I didn’t sleep that long I don’t think.” She tugs you by your wrist to the table where more food than you’ve seen in your life is stacked up. It makes sense - the amount of calories just regular agents would need to intake to keep their form is probably more than a civilian, but they’re also feeding people who are enhanced with other powers or with serums. People like you require more calories than normal to keep running - and you more than that. Before the serum, you were able to eat at least double the other subjects because of how your body burned calories using your extra limbs but after? You’ve been chronically hungry since that first shot.

Still, the amount of food makes you sick to your stomach. The saliva in your mouth sours because you’re not sure you can eat any of it, let alone keep it down. It's been a few months since you’ve had any amount of solid food because they reserved that for the days before fieldwork. It always took two days before you would stop heaving after taking a bite but then once the mission was done it was back to protein shakes. You try to keep the look off of your face, but Sergeant Barnes - fuck, Bucky - manages to catch it. He sighs and then gives a meaningful look to Steve, who’d moved to hover around his friend. Wanda sits you down just as Steve disappears through a side door but you barely notice; she’d sat you down face-to-face with Tony Stark. He’s staring at you, eyes red-rimmed but so faint it looks like he hasn’t been crying for a long time, but that he’d cried hard when it was happening. You want to squirm under his gaze, but instead, you just take a deep, grounding breath.

He takes a sip of what is either a clear soda or water and then sets his glass down hard just as Steve comes back into the room. “We should kill you.” It’s a statement, a belief, and you find yourself almost agreeing because of the resolve that he says it with.

“Tony!” The man on Wanda’s other side says.

“Stark!” Steve grumbles at the same time. He has a milkshake glass in his hand, complete with a dark blue straw. Your stomach turns at the thought of the chalky protein drink but it has to be better than trying to eat solid food.

“I’m right,” Tony huffs, leaning back in his seat.

“No,” The man two seats down says, leveling Tony with what you would call an annoyed brother’s gaze, “You’re rude and sulking. Cut it out.” He leans around Wanda and extends a hand, “I’m Bruce Banner.” You blink at his hand for a moment before you realize he wants you to shake it. It’s the first time in a long time that someone had initiated respectful contact with you - Wanda dragging you around by your wrist made you feel like a petulant child more than anything else. Your hand visibly tremors as you set it in his. “I have to say, your case is fascinating. I’ve been through the notes you brought us four or five times.”

Steve finally unfreezes and sets the milkshake glass down in front of you. “Bruce, come on. Remember we talked about time to breathe?” He sits down on your other side and tries to smile reassuringly at you. “Try to ignore Tony. He’ll eventually come to terms with it. Bucky lives here, after all.”

“And I’m the one that actually killed them,” Bucky chimes in, still eating his dinner. He’s eating some sort of soup-noodle dish and you can’t see it on the table anywhere. He must have made it himself. Tentatively, while watching as Tony whips around to point a threatening finger at Bucky, you sip at the drink in front of you. You’re prepared for the fact that it’s going to taste terrible but then the slush hits your tongue and your eyebrows shoot up. It’s sweet - overly so. Swallowing the first mouthful you reel back, blinking. Wanda giggles, serving herself a hefty portion of the food in front of her. You’re not sure you’ve had something this sweet in your life - even the sweets in your k-rations in the war weren’t as potent as this. It floods your mouth and makes it water. Steve laughs when he realizes what the problem is. “Oh, my god.” You say, wiping your mouth on the back of your hand, “How do you guys still have teeth?”

Bucky laughs too but it’s just a short burst of gunfire-like laughter. “I told you we should’a hit up the Smithsonian for some’a those rations, Stevie.” He fills his mouth again, cocking an eyebrow at you, “Don’t let him kid you - I’ve seen the video of the first time he had one’a those after bein’ unfroze. his reaction was worse.” You smile softly and then cut your eyes to the drink.

“This can’t be the same thing the Handlers make me drink,” You say slowly, “Which I guess is a good thing.”

“It’s just a lot,” Wanda supplies, digging into her own food. She looks expectantly at Steve when he props his elbows on the table.

“We can get you something else if you can’t…” He looks genuinely worried and you frown. You don’t want him to be worried about you because you’d seen Steve worried far too much out on the field with him. You didn’t want him to worry about anything after the life that he’s lived. You realize you’ve been staring when a thought startles you - how is he alive?

“No, it’s fine,” You take another drink and try to hide your grimace behind a smile. Even Bruce laughs at your pathetic attempt to make him feel better. After you manage to swallow you lick your lips, apprehension rising in you. “Not to be rude, Cap - Steve - but how exactly are you alive? Not that you wouldn’t be alive naturally, but you… Haven’t really aged.” A new thought dawns on you and it comes out of your mouth before you can stop it. Wanda’s laughing before you can even form the first word. “Oh, does the serum stop aging?” Panic rises in your chest at the thought - you don’t want to live forever.

“No! No, it doesn’t stop aging!” He squashes that thought before it can gain any more traction. Steve sets a gentle hand on your shoulder, telegraphing his movements so you don’t go on the defensive, “It’s… Complicated. I promise we’re goin’ to answer all of your questions - don’t think I forgot about what I said when I found you. We just have to get through some red tape first. There’s some paperwork we have to fill out; you’re not technically a citizen, you don’t have a social security card, you don’t have any official paperwork that says you’re alive.” He sighs, “And we have to get a medical baseline if you’re goin’ to live here - which, I, uh, highly suggest you do.” His hand falls from your shoulder.

The phrase hits you wrong but instead of lashing out, you take another deep breath and nod. Instead of replying you turn back to your protein shake, hellbent on finishing it even through its sickly sweet flavor. Tony catches your eye again and holds contact for three heartbeats before he gets up and moves to a different seat, leaving Bucky more in your sight than before. He’s watching you suffer through the drink with rapt eyes, like it makes him happy to watch you try to convince Steve that it’s fine, really, you don’t need anything else because you’re used to protein shakes… Even if the ones you’re used to are chalkier. Maybe he was enjoying it.

By the time you’re finishing the drink, Natasha has left the room in search of a tape measure so that she can figure out what size of clothing you wear. She says she’ll come back with whatever the hell a laptop is - nobody has explained that to you yet - and as soon as she’s out of the door, Bruce calls your attention. “I’ve arranged for a friend to come down and check you out,” He misses the way you seize up in fear, trying to keep your ass in your seat, “Nothing to worry about, of course, just routine when a new person moves into the Compound.” Bruce seems to ponder you for a moment and if he were a supersoldier like you he’d be able to hear your heart jackrabbiting in your chest. “I supposed, at this point, it’s also routine when a person is unfrozen from a cryosleep - no matter how they found themselves in it.” His smile is wry but you have a feeling that’s genuine for the man. He seems a little reserved; more reserved than even you are.

It’s the next few moments that you don’t really remember. They blur together in adrenaline and panic but you know the basics, like how you’d remember a dream you’d had as a child. Steve stands to retrieve someone from the elevator and when they come back your emotions choke you like a tarry smoke, swirling and pulsing and alive in your body. You don’t even see the woman’s face that’s with Steve - it’s blurry like a censored photo. But her jacket. You see her jacket.

You recognize her jacket.

It snaps something inside of you. A master of multitasking, when you stand so hard that your chair rocks backward, Bucky is jerked away from the woman by his arm. It’s metal, a beacon in the room to your other senses. He shouts but you’re already taking up the defensive, slotting your body between this new woman and Bucky - also Tony, Bruce, and Wanda by happenstance. The next second you feel rage ignite within you because how dare they come for him? How dare they weasel their way into the good graces of the people who gave you food and shelter and let you out of your room to eat? The thought that they’re working with Steve and the rest doesn’t even cross your mind at that moment because everything is heat and fire and anger and revenge.

The flames start at your fingertips like matchsticks and lick up your arms until you have one arm behind you, keeping the others safe and one arm held out like a torch, ready to attack. That’s when you come back to yourself, looking at this woman without a face and Steve’s shock. Natasha swings around the doorway and drops something, drawing a gun from her waistband. Doesn’t matter - bullets are metal.

The grief and pain surge to the forefront of your mind without permission and then Wanda screams. You can feel her in your head, prying and digging and trying to figure out what you’re doing. She shifts through your memories, taking your conscious mind into the not-so-distant past. Like photographic slides, she brings every memory of those coats to the front of your mind.

Pain. Blood. Tests. Maze. Running. Falling. Shocks. Maze. Running. Blood. Blades. Pain. Darkness. Blood. Needles. Begging, pleading, please, God, make it stop! I’ll do anything, please! I don’t want to run anymore! I don’t want to kill! No more mazes, please, I can’t run anymore! No, I’ll be good, please, not the chair!

Steve takes a step forward and you realize Wanda is still screaming, pulling words from your memories and making them real now. The fire crawls unbidden over the arch of your shoulders but doesn’t burn your skin or clothes. “Wan? What’s wrong?”

From behind you, no doubt nursing a sore on his head, Bucky speaks up sounding just as panicked as you feel. “The coat, Steve, the white lab coat!” His voice sounds strangled over Wanda’s screams but you can’t process what he’s saying. “Helen, take the coat off!” The woman pulls the coat off but it’s too late - those fucking coats have haunted you since you can remember. They won’t take you back, they won’t take Bucky back. They certainly won’t take anyone else on your watch, not if you can help it.

The first time you tried to protect someone from living your life, you had failed.

But this time? You’ll succeed or die trying.

make peace with your family

you walk softly on this earth

i'm gonna leave a mark on you

#dark in here #series reblog

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