Elevated

Nora had a big problem.

She had more than one, actually. She considered them, like she might data points at the lab, and ranked them in order of severity. Right at the top, was the whole being kidnapped thing. That wasn’t great. It was the issue from which every other problem on the list stemmed.

She’d left the tower that evening and jumped in a cab, like she did every evening. The cab made it three and a half blocks, then turned the wrong direction. Nora had been confused first, and then afraid. The cab driver who she was pretty sure at that point was not a cab driver, pulled off the main road into an alley. She was pulled from the cab, had a bag tossed over her head, and then was shoved into the back of a huge SUV.

She tried for a little while to make note of turns, bumps, and noises, then gave up having decided that even if she remembered it all, it probably wouldn’t be very helpful. She sat very still and was glad she’d left Luna at home.

After what must have been a few hours and felt even longer, Nora was pulled from the back of the cab and dragged across a gravel lot and into a building. She wasn’t sure, even with her eyes now uncovered, what exactly the building had been. Some sort of warehouse or factory maybe. The room she was in had bare concrete with cabinets and counters around the edge and stainless steel tables in the middle. It was all covered in lab equipment that was neither new nor nice.

Nora considered again, her list of problems. She was pretty sure that her jaw was bruised, that was bad, and hurt, but ranked very low. Above it was the fact that the head goon was demanding she recreate some of the lab’s research, or he’d kill her.

Well, that wasn’t happening, Nora thought. A little because she felt strongly about intellectual property theft and a little because her jaw hurt and she was feeling contrary, but mostly because they wanted her to open up an Einstein-Rosen bridge. They obviously thought she was Darcy. The whole thing was frustratingly stupid, because even if they’d grabbed the right person, Darcy couldn’t have done it either.

It put Nora in a bit of an awkward spot. She was confident that the superheroes she’d made friends with weren’t going to leave her in some warehouse to die. They would, at some point, know something was wrong and come looking for her. She just wasn’t sure how long that was going to take, and she didn’t want to get murdered before they found her. She was going to have to make something up. Do some work and pretend she knew how to do what they were asking, until someone came to get her.

It was a good thing that she’d spent time in Jane’s lab. She didn’t know nearly enough to accomplish anything, and definitely not to make a bridge that she was pretty sure could only be done from Asgard, but she knew enough to fake it.

She started crunching numbers on the board, recreating one of Jane’s equations she was pretty sure calculated temporal shifts but couldn’t remember enough of that it would actually do anything. When the man watching her asked, she told him that she needed to calculate the bridge to their location. He believed her, which she thought was pretty stupid, and gave her their coordinates. The information would be great to have if she could send it anywhere, but he kept watching her and none of the equipment had any sort of radio or wifi connectivity.

She wondered for half a second in the middle of her equation, why she wasn’t freaking out just a little bit more. She was scared, and the hand she wrote on the board with was shaking, but she wasn’t panicking. Almost as quickly as she posed the question, she knew the answer. Bucky would come find her. Or Sam or Steve or Bruce. Tony too, though she wondered if he would be as mouthy while he did it as he was in the lab. She thought she could probably do without that.

She hoped they would hurry. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been stuck there already, but it was definitely too long.

It was a Wednesday. Or had been when she’d left the tower. It was possible that nobody would notice until she failed to show up in the lab on Thursday morning. Bruce would know her not showing up was strange and try to call. It could be sooner, she reasoned, if someone tried to get in touch with her before then, or Luna annoyed the neighbours suitably. Neither of those felt likely.

So, Thursday morning. Bruce would arrive in the lab at ten, and hopefully by eleven know something strange was happening. How long would it take, she wondered, for them to realize the cab didn’t take her home? Not long, she thought, there were cameras at the tower that looked straight onto the street where she’d gotten into the vehicle. Of course, they’d switched cars quickly. It wasn’t as easy as just tracking the cab.

How capable were these goons? Nora glanced at the man in the corner of the lab. He didn’t look all that special, tall and muscular but not in a way that stood out after one had spent time with superheroes. Their plan was stupid, and they’d kidnapped the wrong person, but they had seemed efficient when they were shoving her into the back of an SUV. They clearly weren’t as incompetent as Clint’s rival gang. She wanted to think she’d be found soon but knew it could be days at the other end.

Or she could be killed. That was possible.

She shook her head and took a deep breath, trying to steady her hands. She hoped that Bruce would come find her. The Hulk didn’t seem like the best choice for a rescue mission, but she wanted the goon in the corner to have as bad a day as she was.

It was like being underwater. He was in control. He knew where he was, and who. Everything was just a little off kilter.

He’d thought once that he didn’t know how to fight with the ferocity of the soldier anymore. He was wrong. He could feel the pull of it, just under his skin. He could do it all. Fight and kill, burn cities, topple empires. All the things he’d done when he hadn’t known himself. He could do it because he knew who he was now. He was a person who would do anything to get Nora home safe.

There had been, for a moment, panic. One long minute when he realized something was wrong. They were only called to eighty-seven for missions. It was a big space, full of screens and weapons and endless streams of information. Bruce was usually nervous in the space, not comfortable with it the way the rest of them were, but the look on his face was something else. Something that poured ice-water into Bucky’s veins and reminded him of having his mind pulled apart.

Tony was already looking at footage from the cameras at the front of the tower, and then half a dozen others that must have been from traffic lights and businesses, talking the whole time to Natasha and Clint who had both beaten him there. Steve had a hand on Bruce’s shoulder and turned to look at Bucky where he had frozen in the doorway. It was enough. He knew.

The mask slid on. It filtered everything in shades of gray. He couldn’t, he knew, find her faster than Tony and Natasha. Tony had obviously hacked several security feeds that he shouldn’t have access to and FRIDAY was following the threads. He just needed to be ready when they had her. He walked straight to the back of the room and the cabinet that stored his gear.

Bucky didn’t like hurting people. He hadn’t killed anyone since he came back and he had thought he might never again. But he knew, the way he knew his name, that someone was going to die for this.

“Bucky,” Steve’s voice was hard as he pulled on his jacket, “You need to let us handle this.”

He pulled the three nearly identical knives from the cabinet and slid them each into their homes on his chest, “No.”

“Buck, you can’t- What’s your plan?” Steve knew. He obviously recognized the difference between his friend and the man who’d tried to kill him on a bridge in DC.

It was a stupid fucking question Bucky thought, but he answered it anyways, “Get Nora.” He pulled his gun from the shelf and checked it, then slid in a clip and holstered it at his leg. He didn’t need it. Didn’t need the knives either.

Steve slammed his hand into the cabinet, metal buckling under his hand the way it usually did for Bucky, “How? What are you going to do with these guys?”

That was a stupid fucking question too. He knew the answer. Bucky said it anyways, “Kill ‘em.”

“No.” Steve barked, “You’re not. You’re going to stay here and wait.”

Bucky was aware, even before he turned and squared himself against Steve, that Clint and Natasha were both watching him. He didn’t spare them a thought and met Steve’s eyes instead. He was upset. Devastated that Bucky hadn’t just slipped but completely fallen away, back into a person he wasn’t supposed to be. “Stop me.”

“I got her,” Tony announced, already moving towards the steps that lead up to the hangar.

He and Steve stayed locked together for a second longer. He thought Steve might really try to stop him. But when he turned and stalked towards the jet, his friend let him go.

He stood on the jet and watched the footage Tony had stolen from somewhere of the concrete building. He counted the doors and windows and exits on the blueprint. And the team watched him. He could feel the edge of their nerves. They must have been thinking that all the dangerous ferocity meant the soldier was there, at the edge of things, likely to take him back and make him their enemy.

It was difficult to remember, that he’d been a killer before the fall. He’d been a sniper, after all. He’d signed up for it, taken a rifle in his hands, and killed dozens because he knew they were hurting people. He didn’t wear it the way the soldier had on missions, because those weren’t personal. When he left for a mission, he wasn’t angry. The anger made him dangerous.

He could remember the first time he’d felt it. He’d been sixteen. The boys name had been Rick, or Rich maybe? He’d been hassling Becca on her walk home which would have been enough, but then he’d broken Steve’s collarbone when he stepped in. The entire thing was awful and then it was worse because Bucky went and found him. He’d never told Steve. That the broken teeth and arm and collarbone the next time they saw Rich had been him. That the arm had been an accident, but the collarbone hadn’t.

It was a piece of why letting the soldier go had been so hard. Steve liked to say it wasn’t him, but it was a little bit. He hadn’t chosen to do the things he did, but he’d always been capable of it. He was ashamed of that, usually. But not today.

Tony set down the jet a few blocks away on the roof of another warehouse. Steve was saying something about going in quiet, but he wasn’t really listening. He followed the edge of the roof until he found a platform and dropped to it, then the street below. He could hear Steve swearing as he followed. Clint and Natasha didn’t. They would know to loop around the other side of the building. They would make the best move, tactically, even as Steve threw off the balance of the plan by chasing Bucky.

There were two exits on the ground floor, but Bucky didn’t take them. He scaled the side of the building instead and slipped through a large half-open window onto a catwalk. It ringed the whole open east side of the building. The floor below was strewn with vats and mostly disassembled conveyors. He could see four of the twelve men that were supposed to be occupying the building.

Steve followed as he crossed towards the wall on the west side. The door to the office spaces was latched but he slipped the edge of a knife under it and popped it free. He waited half a second to be sure that nobody had heard, then slipped through. The fifth man on the other side, was facing the wrong way. In two quick steps Bucky had an arm around his neck.

“Buck.” Steve hissed.

He ignored it, held the man until he went limp, then lowered him to the floor. He followed the hallway. They opened three more doors, all to empty offices, and wound their way further into the building.

The sixth man was not facing the wrong way. He saw Bucky and opened his mouth to shout. Bucky threw the knife in his hand, burying it into the man’s shoulder and cutting off the sound, then took two huge strides and slammed his fist into the man’s nose. He crumpled. Steve made a strange kind of sound Bucky didn’t recognize. He ignored that too.

Something below their feet exploded. The entire building rattled and Bucky swore. Clint and Natasha wouldn’t be incompetent enough to set the building on fire so obviously whoever they were dealing with was. He pulled the gun from its holster and ran, throwing open doors on his way past. Tony was yelling into the comms and so was Steve. It didn’t matter. He kicked open the door to the stairwell and fired a shot at the man on the landing. Then he hopped the rail and dropped directly to the first floor. The man crashed down the steps behind him.

The first floor was already clogged with smoke that curled and hung against the ceiling. He set his feet towards the source, knocking open doors as he went but sure that Nora wouldn’t be behind any of them.

“Got her,” Natasha’s voice was like music in his ear. She sounded the way she always did, sure and smooth, “Exiting the south side.”

He cut his feet directly south, crossing through two doors and shooting someone on the way. He smashed out a window with his metal hand and hauled himself through onto the pavement outside. Smoke curled out after him, thick and black. There was another man at the corner of the building and he raised his gun but lowered it again when an arrow hit the man’s chest and sent him toppling over. He shot a glance back at the building, sparing half a thought for how he’d managed to lose Steve, before shattering glass caught his attention and he ran for the broken window.

He reached it in time to catch Nora by the hips and lower her to the ground. He wished she would’ve waited a second, she’d obviously caught her hand on a piece of glass that had stuck to the pane and left a streak of blood behind her. “Nora,” The panic he hadn’t been feeling came back as her legs buckled and he caught her, letting her slide to the ground and moving so he could see her face. Natasha dropped out of the window behind him.

Nora coughed and tried to haul in the relatively fresh air outside the building. There was a bruise, already black, on her jaw. Her clothes were covered in grime from the fire, or the building and her pants were ripped at one knee. Her sweater was singed and clung to her burnt forearm on her left side. Obviously, whatever had exploded Nora had been standing near enough to be caught in it.

He regretted, immediately and horribly, not breaking the man’s neck in the hallway.

“Bucky?” She moved to rub her eyes and he caught her injured hand automatically in his left, “I can’t believe it. I broke another lab.”

Oh. Nora had blown something up. He wondered why but she was starting to shake, huge tears welling up in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. Shock, he thought, dropping her hand in favour of hooking his arms under her legs and behind her back to pick her up. He glanced at Natasha, who nodded, and started back towards the jet, “S’okay,” he said, “I’ve got you.”

“Did someone check on Luna?” Her voice was shaky, her face pressed right against his jacket.

“Darcy. She’s okay.”

“Oh, good.” She was quiet for a second, then, “You cut your hair. I like it.”