Chapter 7
(November 2024)
Bucky entered the top floor of the building. It was one of those open-plan offices, a honeycomb of cubicles for the worker bees of whatever company used to be there. There was an uncanny fluorescent quality to the lighting and the loud hum of an old air conditioning unit.
Bucky led with his gun out in front of his face as he crept through the office, weaving around cubicles like a cat on the retro carpet. After turning a few corners, he walked into what looked to be the bullpen of the floor, an open space with a few fax machines, a wall of mailboxes with faded labels, and a young woman, zip-tied to a swivel chair.
Bucky’s eyes widened in recognition and then fear as he took in Lena’s slumped over form. He rushed to her side, lowering his gun to the floor and kneeling beside her. He gently tilted her head up to check her pulse below her jaw.
He breathed a short-lived sigh of relief at the thrumming of a heartbeat below his fingers. Slowly, Lena’s eyes fluttered open at his touch. Behind a strip of duct tape covering her mouth, she tried to say ‘Bucky?’ but it came out a rough and muffled ‘hmm-mmh?’
Bucky still understood her. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said in a low, quiet voice. He pulled a butterfly knife out of his jacket and flipped it open. Lena had zip-ties strapping her by the wrists to either arm rest and binding her ankles together. Signs of struggle were present in the thin lines of blood caked where the ties dug unto the soft under-skin of her wrists. Bucky swallowed his rage and carefully slipped the blade underneath the plastic, cutting it off.
Lena watched with big eyes as he made quick work of the other wrist and then her ankles. He set the knife down by her feet before reaching back up to touch her face, just as he had before. “I’m sorry,” he said, and without warning ripped off the duct tape on her mouth.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, “Mother- fuck- Bucky!”
Bucky almost chuckled at the expletive. “I said sorry,” he muttered as he rolled the tape into a little ball and tried to shoot it into a trashcan across the office.
“Bucky!” Lena exclaimed.
At the sudden panicked tone in her voice, Bucky didn’t hesitate to swiftly pick up his gun and turn around. The barrel of the firearm was held steadily and trained in-front of his face, his body shielding Lena’s.
Standing on the opposite side of the hall were two men, one in a lab coat and the other in an expensive looking suit.
“Sergeant Barnes,” the Suit greeted him with a grin. “How good of you to come.”
Bucky glared back at him over the barrel of his gun.
“I see you came alone.” The nefarious pair took another step closer, and then another. “Your cooperation will make everything that much easier.”
“What makes you think I would ever cooperate with you?” Bucky itched his finger over the trigger of his gun.
“Oh I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Lab Coat laughed.
“Why not?” Bucky’s eyes shifted between the two men.
The Suit moved his gaze over Bucky’s shoulder toward Lena. He kept his eyes on her as he responded to Bucky, “I see you have freed Miss Coen from her restraints”–he shifted back to looking at Bucky, a manic excitement alight in his eyes–“but, you missed a spot.”
Bucky schooled his features as his heart rate elevated.
“You see,” Lab Coat said, “we have inserted a tracker into her arm.”
“Like a dog!” The Suit clapped his hands together and laughed.
“Yes,” lab coat agreed, “but it does more than tell us where she is.” He fished a remote from his coat pocket. “If I press this button”–he hovered his thumb over it–“it self-destructs.”
Bucky heard Lena gasp in horror behind him.
“Now we’ve never used this technology in this way before,” the Suit explained, “but best case scenario she loses an arm.” He continued, “Though, she doesn’t have the super-soldier serum like you, so it's a coin toss on whether or not she even survives that.” He crossed his arms. “Worst case scenario, she’s entirely blown to smithereens and takes another chunk out of you. But either way, we get what we want.
“So either you drop your weapon and come with us willingly,” the Suit offered, “or…”
Lab Coat held up the remote and wiggled it around in front of his face like a fourth-grader at show and tell.
Without breaking eye contact, Bucky exhaled slowly through his nostrils, rage seeping out of every pore, but he lowered his gun to the ground.
“Excellent choice!” the Suit exclaimed.
Bucky looked back at Lena once, saw the fear in her eyes, the tears damp her cheeks. “You’ll be alright,” he said in a low voice before turning back towards the two men.
The three of them walked away from Lena and toward the elevators. Bucky’s super-hearing picked up what he thought were the muffled cries of Lena, and he clenched his jaw. There was no way to tell her that he’ll be ok. No way to comfort her with the knowledge that there was a whole rescue team, including two other Avengers, circling the perimeter, waiting for his signal. She didn’t know that as soon as he could safely get that remote off of Lab Coat without risking it being activated, a whole swarm of people would be rushing the building to take these men into custody.
The three were almost at the elevator, when suddenly Lena shouted, “Bucky!”
The super-soldier turned his head in alarm to find Lena standing with both arms raised. With his super-sight, he could see that in one hand, she was holding his butterfly knife, covered in blood. In the other, she was holding a small device between two bloodied fingers like a pistachio. On that same arm was a small but deep gash, freely bleeding.
With all of her might, Lena threw the small device across the building in the opposite direction.
Before the other two men could fully comprehend what just happened, Bucky shouted into his earpiece, “SAM, NOW!”
Not a moment later, both Sam and Torres crashed in through the tall windows. They made their way to Bucky’s side, while outside the window, choppers could be heard overhead as well as sirens down below.
“The building is surrounded,” Sam said.
Lab Coat and the Suit backed up against the wall to cower.
Bucky placed a hand to Sam’s shoulder before he turned away from the scene and made his way over to where Lena was. She was slumped in the chair again, cradling her now wounded arm, which hadn’t stopped bleeding. Lena looked down at Bucky through heavy eyelids as he knelt beside her again.
Bucky picked up the bloodied butterfly knife and used it to cut a strip of fabric about an inch thich from the hem of his shirt. He then used it to make a make-shift tourniquet above the puncture wound on Lena’s arm.
Bucky looked worrying at the amount of blood now soaking the chair, forming a small puddle on the carpet below.
He turned his head. “Sam!” he called over his shoulder, “I need to get her to a medic, yesterday.”
Bucky watched as Sam exchanged a few quick words with Torres before opening his wings and flying across the floor. He landed a few feet in front of them, and ran the rest of the way.
“Torres says he’s got it from here,” Sam explained as he wrapped Lena’s good arm over his shoulder. “There’s an air ambulance hovering just above us,” he said as he slid an arm under her knees. “I’m going to fly her up to it, and then come get you”–he hoisted Lena up–“then you and I are going to follow it to the hospital.”
“I can still hear you,” Lena joked with a weak scoff, “you don’t have to talk like I’m not here.” Bucky took a moment to brush the hair from Lena’s face and she watched on with wide eyes at the sudden tender display. “See you there?” she croaked.
Bucky nodded back.
“You ready?” Sam asked her.
Lena tried to nod. “As I’ll ever be.”
And then Sam took off, flying out of the open window he broke to get in, and up towards the chopper.
Bucky held his butterfly knife out in front of him. He’s seen it covered in blood before, but the sight contextualized by the knowledge that it was Lena’s blood coating the blade, Lena’s blood smudged and tacky on his hands, made a wave of nausea crash over him.
He folded the knife back up and shoved it back in its holder, just so that he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
Suddenly, he heard Sam land behind him.
“She’s secure with the paramedics,” Sam said. “I let the suit do a quick scan, and aside from the obvious wound and blood loss, the only other thing wrong with her was severe dehydration, but all of that can be patched up.”
Bucky nodded and turned around to face the other man.
“She’s going to be alright,” Sam ensured.
Bucky stepped into his space and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. Sam held him in kind.
“You ready?” Sam asked.
“No,” Bucky replied. A moment later, his feet parted ways with the ground.
----
The first thing Lena was aware of was the sound of a faint beeping. For a moment, in her confusion, she thought it was her smoke alarm on the fritz again. Then again, maybe it wasn’t on the fritz, and she had left something in the oven. Lena’s eyes snapped open in sudden panic, and immediately shut at the assaulting overhead lights. Even through her confused haze, she knew this was definitely not her apartment.
Slowly she cracked open her eyes, squinting at her sterile surroundings, and groaned at the throbbing feeling behind her temples.
“Lena?” a soft voice called to her.
Lena felt a weight drop to her left. She opened her eyes fully and turned toward the voice next to her. Sitting in a chair was Bucky. No, sitting in a hospital chair was Bucky. Memories suddenly poured down in a deluge. She remembered the archives, being held captive, and most of all, she remembered being saved.
“Bucky.” A frail smile curled over her lips. “My hero,” she croaked.
Abruptly Bucky stood up from his chair, not unlike the way he had when they first met, only this time, instead of moving closer to Lena, as she expected him to, he turned and stalked toward the door.
“Bucky?” She gaped after him, but it did nothing to stop his retreat.
“Jamie!” she exclaimed when he reached the threshold to her room, “Wait!”
He stopped in the doorway, the old nickname having stalled his movement, but his back remaining toward her.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
He remained silent.
“Don’t do this,” she pleaded. “Don’t leave.”
Bucky turned slightly to the side so that she could see his profile. He placed a hand on the doorjamb, as if it were propping him up. When he glanced over at Lena in the hospital bed, curly hair fanned over the pillow, and big eyes pleading back at him, for a moment it wasn’t Lena at all. For just a moment, it was Rebecca, tucked away in her bed, a mess of curls spilling over her pillow and big, pleading eyes begging him to read her just one more bedtime story.
Bucky shook his head. Rebbeca was gone, and he almost sent Lena to the same fate.
“It’s not safe for you to be around me,” he finally said.
“Bullshit!” Lena shouted, which dissolved into a cough.
“None of this would have happened to you if it weren’t for me,” Bucky pressed on, shooting her a pointed look as she hacked out a lung. As the coughing continued, he moved from the doorway to pick up the cup of water from the side table and hold it out in front of her, its straw bent before her lips.
Lena took a grateful sip and cleared her throat. “How do you figure that?” she asked.
Bucky placed the cup back on the table. “The Power Broker has always wanted my blood to recreate the super-soldier serum, and he used you as bait to get to me,” he explained as if it were obvious.
“Bucky.” Lena sighed. “Sit down.”
Bucky nearly pouted as he shuffled back into the chair.
“Bucky–” Lena turned to him. “Jamie,” she said forcefully, “this wasn’t your fault. You weren’t the reason I was taken.”
“Lena–”
“It was my own fault,” Lena admitted. “My relation to you was just incidental.”
Bucky’s brow knitted together in confusion. “I don’t understand.” He shook his head. “What are you saying?”
Lena sighed. “I get bored at the archives sometimes,” she admitted. “Every now and then, when I’ve had a few consecutive slow days, I’ll come up with a little research project for myself. It helps keep me familiarized with the archive systems and can be fun depending on the subject matter.”
Bucky stared at her incredulously.
“Anyway,” she said, “after Senator Stivak was found dead, I had a slow week at the office. I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts, and something about the situation didn’t sit right with me.”
“Podcasts?” Bucky asked.
“Just stick with me here.” Lena patted his arm. “The situation didn’t sit right with me, so I decided my research project of the week would be digging into Stivak’s life—who he knew, what shady connections he had.
“Soon enough, Stivak’s death was rumoured to have been an assassinnation, not random at all. By then, I was already in too deep. The more I searched, the more I uncovered, and what was supposed to just be a week of morbid curiosity, became months of deep and secretive research.”
Bucky listened on in rapt attention.
“There was no clear pattern at first, but after a while, a name kept popping up: Curtis Jackson, one of Stivak’s major donors.” Lena picked at the bedsheets. “Things started to get a little hairy when I began shifting my focus from Stivak to Jackson. I was following breadcrumbs between Jackson’s corporate doings and things like offshore accounts in Madripoor, sketchy figures on his payroll like scientist Dr. Karl Malus, and underground superhero fight clubs.
“It was clear that the guy had a fixation with power. Wealthy enough to buy the world, which he might have done with the amount of politicians in his pocket, and still insatiable.
“It was his ties to so many members of the GRC that led to the correlation with the mysterious Power Broker, and from there, I was able to connect the dots.”
“You unmasked the Power Broker?” Bucky asked in disbelief.
“What, like it's hard?” Lena laughed/coughed. At Bucky’s enduring confusion she continued, “Remind me to show you Legally Blonde at some point.”
“I’ve seen the movie,” Bucky replied, “It's pretty good. I’m more so hung up on you unmasking one of the most elusive crime bosses to ever exist.”
Lena’s lips twitched. “Well, somehow Jackson found out what I knew, which is why he had the archives held-up.
“You see,” she said intently, squeezing Bucky’s arm, “I got myself into this mess all on my own. I would have ended up where I did with or without you. Only, instead of holding me hostage and allowing you a chance to save me by trying to use me as bait, they would have just killed me”–Bucky flinched at the image and the matter-of-fact-ness to her tone–“put a bullet in my head and left my corpse in an alleyway as a coverup like they did with Senator Stivak.”
“Please,” Bucky pleaded, “I don’t want to think about that.”
“Sorry.” Lena frowned. “What I mean to say is, if it weren’t for you, I’d be dead. Jamie,” she said, bringing her hand up from his arm to his cheek, steadying his gaze so that he could not escape her own, “you saved me.”
Bucky exhaled through his nose, grabbed her hand from his face and brought it down onto the bed without letting go. He looked down at their hands and his lips tightened into a thin line. “What you did was reckless and stupid,” he admonished.
Lena looked down at their hands as well, shame blushed on her cheeks.
“But...” Bucky sighed, shaking his head. “It was also kind of incredible.” He huffed a laugh.
A smile curled onto Lena’s face, brighter than the sterile lights of the hospital room.
“Lena,” Bucky started, “I don’t know how to be in your life. I don’t know what to be for you, what to say or how to act.”
“Just be there,” Lena replied. “Know me,” she practically begged, “and stay.”
Bucky nodded. “I think I can do that.”
“And in return, I’ll do the same for you.” Lena smiled.
For the first time in days, Bucky smiled back, a soft and easy thing. “Deal.”