I Am

Thin wisps of steam swirled upwards from Bucky’s coffee. He snatched a sip and grimaced. Hot.

Coffee was one of the few things the Emporium had in great supply. They gave out fresh mugs every morning, passing them around the stale storage closets and cramped shop floors. There was an aspect of luxury to it, of course; keeping the homesick and fearful refugees from clawing at the walls. But the subtext escaped no one. Their powers were dangerous, even for adults that had lived with them all their lives. If a sleep- and caffeine-deprived mutant lost focus for a moment, and someone was hurt…

Well, Bucky reflected as he tried another sip. At least I get coffee.

The Emporium’s population had accepted him with an unexpected degree of grace. Bucky had nothing against mutants (he’d had his fill of xenophobia in what he remembered of the Cold War, and the class struggles of the Great Depression had been a real eye-opener) but he’d figured a group that fought prejudice every waking moment would be a little more hostile. In fairness, he had been the subject of some rather pointed stares and curious whispers - but nothing more. Word of his arrival through the Last Door had spread fast.

That arrival had been quite the topic of conversation. Wanda estimated thirty mutants lived in the Emporium, and it seemed every one of them wanted to hear his account first hand. Even conveniently “forgetting” the turmoil that had led him to its grasp, describing the feelings of acute vertigo and nausea grew a tad repetitive after the half-dozenth telling.

Far more interesting was seeing the mutants’ abilities, abilities that stretched his imagination and understanding of human biology. He met a man with no mouth whose fingers seeped ink. A man who had to sit in a special chair so he wouldn’t crush his four lupine tails. A woman who could reach out her hand and touch reflections in mirrors. The CIA would kill for agents like this, Bucky mused, as he watched a two-dimensional man squeeze under a door. Then he realised they probably had. He didn’t like thinking about that now.

But Bucky hadn’t left his friends to study the captivating world of mutant biology. All this was but a distraction from his true purpose - a purpose that seemed to be progressing agonisingly slowly.

Doctor “Stephen” Strange, Wanda had called him (was it an honorific? An epithet? A codename? Bucky still wasn’t completely sure). According to her, this mythical sorcerer could explain to him the cryptic message the dream had tried to send. Wanda had promised to send word to this Doctor, requesting his presence at the Emporium. Bucky had winkled that promise out of her the day after his arrival; he had waited for three days since, with no news, his patience wearing thinner with every passing moment until he felt bowstring-taut. Between the Sisyphean torment of his time healing at the hospital, and now the thrilling experience of mingling with mutants until Strange picked up the spirit-phone, the realisation was slowly dawning that Bucky really, really didn’t like waiting.

And I’m tired of it. He tried a final sip of his coffee, relishing the heat stabbing at his tongue and slipping down his throat, and abandoned the still-steaming mug. 

Walking through the Emporium of Wonders was an unusual, almost supernatural experience. The walls were decorated in a floral wallpaper that reminded Bucky uncomfortably of a retirement home. His military boots clopped against the hard wooden floors, the friction stirring up a whiff of varnish and oak. They spoke of libraries and churches, of ancient secrets and hidden knowledge. The smells were not unpleasant. 

When Wanda had told him that thirty mutants were hiding out at the Emporium, Bucky had chalked up her words as prideful exaggeration or overworked exhaustion. Every passing hour made him less sure. The archaic building seemed to defy his every attempt to map it; every time he would be certain he had it right, and then he would find another false wall, or discover that another doorway had been blocked off. 

He had asked Wanda about it - as well as pointing out how inconvenient it was for a survivors’ shelter - and a smile had risen in answer. “It is as big as we need it to be,” she had replied enigmatically (faintly reminding Bucky of some old British TV show). Then she had pointed a slender finger at a still-life portrait of a bowl of fruit, and pushed open a door next to it to reveal the kitchen. Each doorway, it seemed, had its own painting. “Those will guide you,” she had concluded, as if that answered every question. Since then, Bucky had - reluctantly - given up his attempts at mental maps, and simply followed the wall-hung directions.

At the end of the hallway, a grey-haired man sat resplendent in a throne, rendered in oil and pigment in an extravagant portrait. Two children sat on his lap with not a hint of a smile between them. Bucky strode towards it with purpose. The thick wood muffled the harsh sound of his knuckles. 

“One moment.” Wanda’s voice, marred by distraction, pierced the dusty air. The bodywarmer’s collar chafed at his throat, and he fiddled with it as he waited. 

Finally, the door swung open. A ‘customer-service’ polite smile decorated her features. “James. Ah-” She raised a hand in apology. “Bucky,” she corrected herself. “How are you?”

“M’ fine. What’s with the hold-up?”

A crack of confusion formed in her mask of politeness. “Hold-up?”

“Strange. You heard from him?”

Wanda’s gaze fell. The smile vanished, replaced by pained chagrin. The look alone spoke volumes. “Ah. That.” She stepped back from the doorway, and gestured inside. “Please, come in.”

The faintest sigh of irritation escaped Bucky’s nostrils. Fine. 

Soft carpet gave way under Bucky’s boot as he stepped into the office. Wanda had pegged it in a single word when she had given him the tour: quaint. He could have crossed it in five paces. A wardrobe packed full of red clothing of a dozen styles sat to his right; on his left, a towering oaken bookcase stood sentinel, packed with books on witchcraft. A sturdy wooden desk sat in the middle of the room, attended by a carven chair with a leather-cushioned seat. The moonlight cast its baleful glare through two windows on the back wall, almost - but not completely - swallowed by the artificial light of the ceiling bulb.

Wanda eased herself into the seat with a practiced ease. Bucky leaned back against the wall, arms folded, allowing his face to show the first hints of impatience. 

“Stephen…” she began. Slowly. Hesitantly. As though the very words were poison. “Doctor Strange’s astral form - his soul, if you will - has been trapped in the mirror dimension. Reaching him is proving… difficult. With a little more time-”

“How do we get him out?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have the knowledge I need. I’ve combed every page of my bookshelf, I’ve crafted hexes and spells, I’ve consulted with oth–” 

She cut herself off. For but a fraction of a second, the shadow of guilt flickered over her face as she swallowed her words. Then she met Bucky’s gaze once again.

“The point is, I don’t know how to reach him. Or rescue him. I doubt even he knows, or he would have left by now.”

Don’t scream, Bucky willed himself. It won’t solve anything. “Then how do we find out?” he demanded.

“His home,” Wanda replied simply. “The Sanctum Sanctorum has the greatest collection of magical lore and esoterica in existence. One of its tomes must be on the mirror dimension. But the Sanctorum is on the other side of Manhattan. And the streets aren’t safe.”

Not a problem. “Give me the address. I’ll–” 

“No.”

The simple denial came too quickly, too urgently. Backed by too much conviction and certainty. 

Every nerve in Bucky’s body began to activate, sirens blaring a song of combat through his synapses. He felt his back depart from the wall. “Why not?” he replied. He forced his voice to remain steady. 

Too late, Wanda realised she had slipped. “The Sanctorum is reclusive. Isolationist,” she replied. The words dripped with improvisation. “For you to enter would be–”

“Worse than their best sorcerer being locked away while New York burns? If I can’t go, why don’t you?” A better question occurred to him. “Why haven’t you been yet?”

“Someone needs to run the Emporium. To keep the mutants inside safe.” Was that a hint of defensiveness in her voice? Of defiance in her eyes?

“And no one else can do that for a few hours? Mirrors girl seemed nice. Friendly. Let her run the place while you’re out.”

The straws Wanda had clutched so desperately were slipping from her hand, one by one. The defiance was fading, replaced with naked desperation. Why? She should be helping me here. Bucky banked it for later consideration as her gaze turned to the window, her mind deep in thought.

“All right,” she relented, her voice heavy with resignation. “17A Bleecker Street. The corner of Bleecker Street and Fenno Place. Greenwich Village.”

Greenwich, Bleecker and Fenno. Greenwich, Bleecker and Fenno. “And what am I looking for?”

Wanda’s mouth opened - and closed, as she considered. “I have no idea,” she confessed after a moment. “The Sanctum must hold hundreds of tomes. Many in old tongues, many more in dead ones. Any of them could hold an answer.” She steepled her fingers and bowed her head as if in prayer. 

Bucky settled back and waited for her to reach the obvious answer. She didn’t disappoint. “I’ll come,” she concluded. 

Finally. Like pulling teeth. “How long will you need?”

“A day.” The answer came too quickly, no hesitation, no consideration. “I’ll need time to pick the volumes we need to bring. To revise some spells of warding. To pack some clothes-”

Bucky was out of patience. “We’re crossing Manhattan, not the Pacific,” he spat. “I’m leaving in ten minutes. Come or don’t.” He showed Wanda his heels, leaving her with her objections.

For all her posturing and protesting, Maximoff was good to her word. Ten minutes after Bucky took his leave from her office, the soldier and the sorceress stood side-by-side on a scuffed welcome mat, the brisk midnight air flowing through the open doorway. Its bite promised destinies as yet unfulfilled, grudges as yet unsettled.

Wanda seemed preoccupied. Bucky’s eyes flicked to her hands, and his brain lit up in surprise at the scarlet glow that emanated from her fingertips. He watched, awestruck, as she sketched some kind of rune in the air in front of her with practiced ease. The light seemed to burn and scorch. The afterimages it left in Bucky’s vision seemed somehow tangible, as if he could reach out and grasp them. A faint smell of charred hair assaulted his nose from everywhere and nowhere. It set his skin to crawling.

Wanda breathed a sigh of satisfaction through the unpleasant sensation of his ears popping. “There.” A faint hint of pride coloured her voice; the pride of the sculptor shaving off a final curl, and stepping back to admire their masterpiece. She flexed her fingers, as if to ensure they still worked. 

Bucky’s curiosity tickled at him. “What did you do?” he probed, blinking away the afterimages and willing away the smell. Nothing looked different - but you didn’t have to tell the former Winter Soldier that appearances could be deceiving.

“Sketched us out of reality,” she answered with a smile. “It’ll let us cross New York unharmed and unbothered.”

Bucky briefly considered how ‘sketching someone out of reality’ might work, and firmly decided he didn’t want to know.

The journey across Manhattan was as uneventful as it was unnerving. A week spent combing the borough’s streets and back alleys had desensitised him to the grisly urban  scenery, but its undead vermin still frayed his nerves like worn guitar strings. The would-be rescuers skirted around them as they travelled. They both spoke little, their eyes constantly scanning their surroundings, even through Wanda’s supernatural veil. Bucky didn’t know the details of being ‘sketched out of reality’, but he wasn’t eager to push its limits. 

Their corporeal absence did, however, offer the unique opportunity to see the creatures in their natural habitat. He watched, sickened, as a twisted and wizened vampire pounced on a bigger one as it feasted, the piteous creature’s desperate hunger driving it to attack one of its own. They skirted around a heap of drained corpses, attended by flies and vampires and gutter creatures alike in a foul harmony. He felt the urge to retch as a vampire tore into an animal carcass on the roadside, vile sounds spurting from its mouth as it ripped off chunks of spoiled meat.

But other sights raised questions, uncomfortable questions that Bucky buried as soon as they raised their heads. The would-be rescuers passed a house that buzzed with an unearthly cacophony. A quick glance through the window revealed that its vampiric denizen had collected radios, phones, and other speaker-equipped devices, and was listening to them play, glassy-eyed in its absorption. Barely six feet from them, a shorter vampire passed them, dragging something behind it by a long leather strap. Bucky’s eyes widened as he recognised it as a torn and beaten teddy bear.

These brief insights into the vampiric mind made Bucky uneasy, for reasons he couldn’t quite place. So don’t, he told himself. Eyes forward.

Two streets away, they saw it. 

Despite its neighbours dwarfing it, the Sanctum Sanctorum cast the longest shadow over Bleecker Street. It seemed some bizarre crossbreed of Victorian mansion and history museum, with a pinch of wealth and a dash of pretension for taste. Four chimneys thrust skywards from the corners of its fern-green roof, giving the building a vintage, almost antique look. Windows blanketed the brick-and-stone walls. The large circular one in the middle of the roof caught Bucky’s eye, and his heart leapt into his mouth.

“That’s it,” he muttered. “That’s the pattern on the amulet. From my dream.”

“It seems you two have a lot to talk about.” A half-smile had made its way onto Wanda’s face. But there was something more there. Fear? What could she be afraid of?

His ears popped once more as Bucky mounted the stone steps. Beside him, Wanda’s shoes clicked against the hard surface. He raised a finger. “Back in reality?” he asked. 

Wanda nodded. “My spells don’t work around the Sanctorum,” she explained. “It is… insulated.” Bucky nodded as though he understood how magical insulation could work.

A simple wooden door with a worn bronze doorknob barred their path. Four metal fingers turned the handle as Bucky slammed his shoulder against the wood, expecting to feel the stiff resistance of a lock.

‘What are you–” Wanda began. The rest of her words were lost in the thud as the door flew open, the shriek of hinges straining against the force, and the rush of air as he staggered through the doorway.

Something clicked in Bucky’s head as he sailed forward. In high school, his history teacher had dragged him around a museum in a vain effort to inspire his interest in the subject. The Sanctorum almost seemed to be that same museum, leaping eagerly from his memory and painting his surroundings in its visage. Polished wood-panelled floors gave the building a sense of formality, blending nicely with the circular oak walls. Portraits hung in each wall segment, illuminated by ornate lamps on carved pedestals and subtle light fixtures. A magnificent staircase sprouted from the middle of the room, eclipsing them all, wide enough for three people to climb abreast. It practically wept age and grandiosity.

Two men stood at the base of the staircase. One wore a simple grey t-shirt and blue jacket, complimenting a pair of worn denim jeans. A head of salt-and-pepper hair and a goatee of the same completed his look of general mediocrity. His eyebrows had risen in amused surprise. Bucky dismissed him out of hand. 

The second was far more… distinctive. A brazen cloak swathed his torso in a deep red, its long cape tumbling to graze his ankles. Elaborate patterns danced along the fabric in gold thread. It parted at his chest like curtains, revealing the glimmer of body armour. Simple black trousers guarded his legs with built-in kneepads, with boots of a dark mustard tone ending his legs in an ominous note. A ruby gazed like a feline eye from a pauldron clasped onto his right shoulder. Apprehension had balled his black-gloved fingers into fists beneath their gilded plating, and in his right hand he clasped a baroque golden staff, crested with a black carving of a bat. From a clasp on his belt dangled a great leather-bound tome, its very pages sagging with secrets. In the ominous shadow of his crimson hood was nestled a golden mask, a single aurelian tear trickling from its left socket.

Bucky steadied himself. “Who are you?” he demanded the gold-and-red figure, his hand hovering above the holster on his belt. 

“That is no concern of yours,” the man replied. His voice was oddly monotonous, his words absent of rhythm and inflection, buoyed along only by a simple American accent and a hint of disdain.

“Oh, come now, Warlock,” replied his companion through a half-smile. His voice had everything the other’s lacked; an almost musical undertone to his cadence, his appeasement the conciliatory words of a practiced rhetorician. “We are all here for the same reason. Let us not be at one another’s throats.” His gaze flew over Bucky’s shoulder, his smile growing. Maximoff had stepped into the Sanctum. Reverence lit up her face in silent wonderment. “Wanda,” he greeted her. “It is good to see you here once again. You know you are always welcome here.”

“You as well, Stephen,” she replied. “I fear things are worse than I knew.” 

Stephen. Bucky’s mind scrambled to grapple the implications of that word. Stephen Strange. “You’re Strange? Doctor Strange?”

“I am,” the sorcerer replied. “Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. And you must be James. Adam Warlock and I were just discussing your arrival. I didn’t expect it to be quite so… magnificent.”

He’s here. “I thought you were trapped. In the Mirror Dimension.”

“I am,” he replied once more, as if his imprisonment in a parallel dimension was but an idle conversation topic. “The Stephen Strange that stands before you now is but a projection. A shadow on the wall of reality. It lets me attend to certain matters, even in my absence.”

He can communicate with us. Bucky’s eyes found Wanda’s. To her credit, she didn’t flinch.

She lied to me. “You said–” Bucky began. The sting of betrayal hardened his accusation.

Now her gaze fell, weighed down by the burden of humiliation and shame. “I know,” she interrupted him. Her voice was guilt and defeat.

His jaw worked. I might’ve never heard from him. If I didn’t push her… “Why?” he finally demanded.

Wanda opened her mouth to speak. She never did.

“What Wanda said, or did not say, is irrelevant now,” Strange cut in. “You have a great deal to learn today, James, and not much time to learn it. Wanda, will you show Adam the Mystical Library? I believe the Persian translation of Zarathustra’s works will be to your liking.”

Wanda nodded, her relief palpable. “You are a philosopher, then, Mr. Warlock?” she inquired. Adam’s reply, monotonous and flat as ever, was lost to Bucky’s ears through the sound of their boots clicking against the polished floors.

“If you would follow me, James,” Strange stated as he mounted the staircase. Stated; there was no room for argument. Bucky scrambled to keep up as the sorcerer climbed without a single look back.

The sorcerer was silent for a moment. Then he asked: ‘I would assume your service as an assassin has left you little time to study quantum philosophy.”

The heck am I supposed to say to that? Bucky wondered. He settled for a simple “Right,” and continued climbing.

A moment more. Bucky could practically hear Strange considering as his shoes flattened strands of carpet. Then: “Imagine something, for a moment. Imagine I were to put a cat in a box.”

Oh. “Like that Austrian guy? Schrodinger?”

Strange stopped mid-stride. He turned to Bucky, his eyebrow arched in a faint expression of surprise. “You know about Schrodinger’s cat?” he remarked, his voice coloured with tinges of disbelief.

“I’m an assassin that got frozen for a few decades. I don’t live under a rock.” Some part of him felt faintly insulted by Strange’s insinuation.

“And the many-worlds interpretation?”

Bucky racked his brains. “Something about… everything that could have happened, did happen in an alternate universe or whatever?”

Strange’s finger ran over the fork of his goatee. The strands of silver stood out of the black like soldiers on parade. “That makes this much easier,” he replied in a voice of pleasant surprise. They resumed their journey up the last few steps. 

A grand sight greeted Bucky as they crested the rise. In front of him was row after row of glass cabinets of various shapes and sizes. Each proudly displayed an artefact. A mirror; a cauldron; a cloak; an iron maiden. Despite himself, his eyes drank in the sight. How old are these things? he found himself wondering. 

“This way,” Strange prompted him. The sorcerer had paid the trophy room no more heed than a common broom cupboard, and started down the hall to the right. After a final look, Bucky followed. 

“The matter of universes is one of great importance,” Strange assured him. “This… Eternal Night… is but a symptom of a wider concern. An entanglement of the temporal flow. Dracula is a parasite, a scavenger - but one empowered by this entanglement.”

Strange stopped outside a wooden door. Stamped onto it was a steel nameplate, with repeating patterns of ivy coiled around the edges. STUDY, it read.

“Would you mind?” Strange extended his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “The perils of an incorporeal form.”

Bucky swung the door open. The room inside was remarkably similar to Wanda’s, with the noticeable exception of many, many more bookshelves. Guess she really likes it here, Bucky reflected.

Strange strode through the door, and stood behind the desk as he continued. “New York has become a…” Strange battled for the right words. “...a melting pot for certain faces. Certain prominent figures have been - or will be - brought here.

“Adam Warlock is one such figure. He is the avatar of life, a being with a mystical level of magical power. It is only natural he would appear to oppose Dracula.”

Wait, wait. “You said Dracula was empowered by the time tangling. But now it’s bringing people who’ll oppose him?”

A grimace plagued the sorcerer’s face. “Dracula’s empowerment was not by the entanglement as such, but by its architect. Semantics. Powerful forces are at work, James, and - with all due respect - opposing them is beyond your scope. It is enough that you kill Dracula, and end his opportunistic blight upon New York.”

Fine by me. “Who else’s invited?”

“I believe you have some hints about that already.” Strange’s knowing grin was frustratingly arrogant. “Would you care to tell me about your dream?”

Bucky unfolded his sheet of paper once more.

A raven carved of emerald sat on a god's corpse, its head cloaked by Death's hood.

“I assume Steve Rogers has told you about his fellow Avenger, the Asgardian god of thunder?” Strange inquired. “His brother Loki has executed a series of ploys to try and seize Asgard’s throne for himself. But lately he contacted something that made him reconsider his perspective. His kingdom is in dire straits now.”

“How am I gonna get to Asgard?” Bucky questioned.

“A certain man in New York has been working on a device that may help,” Strange replied enigmatically.

Bucky had no taste for mysteries. “Who?”

That knowing smile again. “Tony Stark,” the Sorcerer Supreme replied.

Oh, hell. Bucky swallowed a groan. 

“Tell him to set his spectrometer to record at 23.42 yottahertz, and to oscillate at 15,” Strange explained carefully. “He will listen. And if he is still too stubborn, tell him you know about Mercy.”

Bucky grabbed a pen - ballpoint, black, his brain registered uselessly - and scribbled them down. “Got it. Can we get back to the dream?”

“Of course.”

A lonely howl echoed across a city's skyline, and the midnight moon was split asunder at its echoes.

“James Howlett,” Strange replied with a faint hint of nostalgia. “Your old comrade. I have seen him travelling the streets of New York, fighting wherever and whatever he can. Perhaps you can mentor him through his self-destructive tendencies.”

“I heard a wolf’s howl,” Bucky interjected, “Not a wolverine’s. They’re two different animals.”

“I suppose you also thought you were going to find a god-killing raven?” Strange’s tone cut.

An island screamed as a thousand cuts appeared on its body, and from them soared a thousand pink butterflies.

“Krakoa. Max Eisenhardt - or Magneto - made it a home for mutants after the destruction of Genosha.” Strange’s lips pursed. “I assume you do not need me to tell you why it would be dying in such a dream?”

“It’s under attack,” Bucky replied. Strange inclined his head in agreement. “And the butterflies,” he continued, “is that Sai? Psylocke?”

“Yes - but not the one you know.” The Sorcerer Supreme stroked his beard once more as he continued, “The Sai you knew was snatched from her own timeline. The one you will meet is from another - perhaps this one. She will likely have no memory of who you are. Be careful.” 

The memory of Sai blitzing across a dismal HYDRA hallway and killing four people in the blink of an eye returned to him unbidden. Don’t have to tell me, he reflected.

A circus of freaks sat in a stone tent, their ringmaster bathed in blood.

“An unkind portrayal of Wanda, but one that is not inaccurate,” Strange admitted. “Though I suppose you already knew this one.”

A grand red cloak encompassed the cosmos, and in its folds the stars were joined by golden lines.

“I believe the lines symbolise life, and its presence across the universe,” Strange stated simply. “Fortunately, Adam Warlock is already here, and I have convinced him to join you - at least for now. The two of us had a great deal of time to talk. But it is up to you to convince him to stay.”

“And the red cape?” Bucky found himself wondering.

A sardonic hook caught in Strange’s eyebrow. He spoke a word Bucky didn’t understand, and a grand red cloak unfurled from his shoulders. Its upturned collar brushed his ears as it unfurled. The sorcerer’s hand gave a grandiose flick, and the fabric rose and fluttered, as though a sudden gust of wind had caught it.

“Right.” 

The cloak disappeared once more. One final line remained in his notes.

From all these scenes extended strings, and to his horror, Bucky found that the strings had replaced his own fingers.

The silence stood unbroken for several seconds as Strange looked up at him. Finally, he opened his mouth. His tone was different now. Pensive. “Do you know the story of how I lost my hands?" he inquired.

"No." Don’t really care. But he listened either way.

"I was a neurosurgeon, a long time ago," Strange began. "I was good. Very good." A rueful smile came over him. "One day, after a successful operation, I was invited to a cocktail party. I'd been to a few in my time, and I knew the rules. I shook the right hands, laughed at the right jokes. I drank, but no more than I could handle. I left that party feeling good." The smile faded. "Then, barely twenty minutes later, a pickup truck flipped the divider as I was driving home. Smashed my car into the mud.

"They operated on me, of course, and they did remarkably. But at the time, I couldn't hear the reassurances. I couldn't hear them tell me how lucky I was to be alive. A few choice words were echoing in my head, drowning out everything else. Severe nerve damage. Loss of motor control. Unfixable damage."

Strange's head turned to the window. His face had turned solemn as he reflected on the lowest point of his life. Bucky found himself oddly captivated in the story.

"I couldn't have that, of course. So I tried everything. Experimental surgeries. Faith healers. More scams than I could count. I sold everything. I burned through my account like a wildfire. And at the end of it all, I found myself in Kamar-Taj, where I learned my place in the multiverse."

Strange's eyes left the window. They found Bucky's, and in them was pity. He steepled his fingers.

"I used magic to heal my body. But there is no spell to bring back the dead, James. My story ends with change. Yours must, as well."

Bucky's face hardened. Venom boiled inside him. "You think you understand me," he spat. The words came tumbling out. "You lost your fingers. It's not the same. You never heard him laugh. Saw the regret when he went too far. He saved me from HYDRA. He helped me get back at them, and..."

I knew you'd come back to me. Clint grinned again, that idiot's perfect smile.

Across the room, two sorcerers watched him with sympathy. Bucky knuckled moisture from his eyes, and they drifted back together. That terrible line of white-hot pain had reignited itself, and was burning its malevolence once more. “Are we done here?” he demanded.

Strange studied him for a moment. “There are clothes in the next room ready for you,” he informed Bucky softly. “They’re a gift. Dispose of the vampires in them, and consider us even. And James?”

Bucky stopped in the doorway. He didn’t turn. He didn’t care.

"You have a long journey ahead of you," Strange told him. "And you cannot take it trapped within your own mind."

His boots clomped against the carpet as he stormed out without another word.

Bucky didn’t want Strange’s clothes. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to go back into the study and introduce his smug ‘Sorcerer Supreme’ face to his fist, and never mind the ‘incorporeal form’. But he won’t care, will he?He’s got bigger problems than me. The ‘temporal flow’. Powerful forces. Fine. Fuck you, then.

More tears were coming. He lifted a sleeve to wipe them away, and his eyes wrinkled at the odour that assaulted his nose. Eurgh. Like a possum crawled into a bin on a rainy day and died. The fabric was a canvas of stains and rips. Didn’t even know a bodywarmer like this COULD rip.

His eyes drifted to the open door next to the study. Next room, huh.

Wanda and Adam returned to the main hall right on time to see the belle of the ball emerge, still tugging at his new clothes as they worked themselves into creases he didn’t even know he had. The sweat-stained black t-shirt had been replaced by a neat red waistcoat, the pocket-covered techwear trousers by grey dress trousers, joined together by a black belt with a gold clasp. Over it all sat a long black coat with a soft red interior and silver highlights on the edge. It practically radiated warmth. The beaten scrap of black cloth that Bucky had called a bandana was gone; an elegant piece of black cloth was now draped around his neck, with a golden handle to allow for easy movement. Its left sleeve was missing - removed at the seam to allow for a more unique arm. 

It wasn’t Bucky’s usual fashion, but it would do. 

He ignored Wanda as he descended the stairs; he met Adam Warlock’s gaze instead. That mask, he lamented, makes it impossible to get a read on him. He stopped in front of that inscrutable face. 

“Strange told me you’re called Adam Warlock,” Bucky began.

“I am. Wanda Maximoff told me your name is Bucky Barnes,” Adam returned.

Bucky nodded. “You with me?”

“For now.”

That was good enough for him. “C’mon,” he announced. “We’re done here.”

The cold night air stabbed at his lungs as he left the Sanctum Sanctorum. He had never felt a pain so sweet.

He never looked back.