Patterns
"Get up! Get up!"
Allie and Bucky woke up to Steven and Sarah jumping up and down, shaking their shoulders, and begging them to get out of bed. Bucky tried to pull a pillow over his head as Allie's eyes scrunched closed.
"Uncle Sam's coming today!" Sarah grinned as she shook Allie's shoulder once more.
"Come on, Mom!" Steven urged.
"Bother your dad," Allie mumbled and she heard Bucky groan from underneath the bit of pillow he'd gotten over his face.
"Go get ready," Bucky mumbled and Sarah and Steven perked up at one another.
"But come with us," Sarah whined.
Allie took a deep breath and opened her eyes as she looked at the two. Shaking her head slightly she pushed Sarah's hair away from her face and started to give a smile.
"You know, the sooner you go and get ready, the more time you'll have with Uncle Sam when he gets here," Allie smirked. Sarah and Steven simply looked at each other and raced for the door.
"That was sneaky," Bucky yawned as he looked up at her.
"Now we have a few minutes to ourselves," she sighed, moving herself from where she had been to be beside Bucky.
"Oh, so that was what that was for?" he grinned sleepily.
"Well, we never got to finish last night," she shrugged feeling the coolness of Bucky's vibranium arm as he gently played with the stray locks of hair that had fallen against her shoulders through the night.
"That's true," he nodded and slowly turned to look at the door. "Hang on."
In an instant, Bucky had rolled over and was quickly and quietly walking to the door. Closing it and locking it, Allie could see as a mischievous smirk found its way on his face in the early morning light. Grinning, she watched as he crawled back over to her on the bed, leaning down and kissing her.
"Maybe we can actually have a moment to ourselves, now," he grinned.
"James, the kids are awake," Allie laughed softly as his lips kissed along her cheek and down to her neck. "And I have to get breakfast ready."
"That's what quickies are for," he smirked against the crook of her neck.
"James," she warned, still laughing.
"Allison," he teased. "It's not like we never had a quickie before a mission back in the Commandos."
"We weren't risking scarring a five-year-old or three-year-old back then," she argued.
"No," he agreed. "Just your brother."
"If you're trying to get me in the mood, don't mention my brother," she scrunched her nose, Bucky laughing at her expression.
"Alright, sorry, sorry," he tried to compose himself as his lips captured hers once more.
Silence filled the room as the two played their game of kisses. For a brief moment, they thought that maybe, just maybe, they could have some form of an intimate moment before Allie left that morning. That thought was shattered with the sound of the doorbell ringing through the house. Allie debated ignoring the ring as she kissed Bucky once again. The second time it rang, she realized that ignoring it wasn't an option.
"Mommy! Daddy! Uncle Sam is here!" Sarah's voice rang.
"Did they open that goddamn door on their own?" Allie groaned.
"Only one way to find out," Bucky frowned. "I swear to God, today is the day I break those wings of his."
"I'll make sure to make the Quinjet nice and cool," she assured him as they stood up and walked to the door.
As they walked down the stairs, they could hear Sam's voice ringing in the living room as he began to play with the kids. His smile remained until he saw Allie and Bucky's frowns. Taking in their appearance, he parted from Steven and Sarah and walked over.
"Sleep well?" he asked and they simply glared at him. "Is that a no?"
"You're lucky we like you," Allie narrowed her eyes.
"Did I interrupt something?" he smirked and their glares were enough of an answer. "I don't want to know any more."
"I'm going to start breakfast," Allie sighed. "Buck, can you make sure the kids actually started to brush their teeth and get them dressed?"
"Yes ma'am," he nodded and walked off to the living room.
Allie walked over to the refrigerator, pulling out eggs and bacon, milk and butter, all the while Sam pulled out a stool at the counter. Sitting down and looking at her, Sam gave a sympathetic smile.
"You know, I do love coming over here," he shrugged.
"At six thirty in the morning?" Allie narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Okay, well, if I had my pick it would not be at six thirty in the morning," Sam agreed. "But I like coming over here."
"And why is that?"
"Good food and clearly the coolest people," he grinned.
"Awe," Allie smiled.
"Oh, I meant the kids," he smirked.
"Oh, I know," she smirked in return.
Sam leaned back slightly and looked in the direction of where Bucky had walked off with Steven and Sarah. Looking back to Allie who had started to cook, he looked at his hands that he had folded against the countertop.
"How was Stevie's first day of school?" he asked.
"From what he told us? Good," Allie smiled brightly. "He even colored those pictures on the fridge."
"How did you handle it?" he grinned.
"What? Why are you just asking about me?" she narrowed her eyes.
"Because I know you," he continued to grin. "And I remember my sister telling me about AJ and Cass's first days of school, so spill."
Allie simply continued to narrow her eyes at him before sighing and turning her attention back to cooking. Bucky made his way back to the kitchen with T.J. still asleep on his hip as he put him in his high chair.
"She cried when he got on the bus," Bucky smirked.
"Did not! I almost cried," she frowned.
"Aw," Sam teased.
"I hate you both," Allie narrowed her eyes. "James, go set the table. Samuel, go pick out a record for the morning."
"Ooo," Sam grinned at Bucky. "She pulled out our first names."
"Keep stalling and I'll pull out the full names," Allie warned.
"Don't worry, she's all bark and no bite," Bucky grinned.
"James Buchanan Barnes," Allie glared and warned again, her voice low.
"Her bark is scary though," Sam said as he quickly hopped up from his seat and walked over to the records, placing a Marvin Gaye record on. "And she does bite."
"Oh please," Bucky walked over and kissed Allie on the cheek. "I've been dealing with this since we were kids. Trust me, Steve got yelled at, too."
"Really?" Sam smirked.
"Sam, you try growing up with Steve and Bucky and being the main woman in their lives as you became adults," she rolled her eyes. "I've got plenty of stories to tell the kids how not to act because of them."
"Excuse me? I can give them plenty of stories, too," Bucky scoffed as he opened the cabinet and pulled out plates. "Remember the canal?"
"The canal was your fault," Allie quipped back quickly.
"You still followed," he shot back with a grin.
"James, you got Steve to jump in with you before I jumped," she rolled her eyes.
"You still jumped," he continued to grin.
"You had the dumb idea to begin with. It's still your fault," she shrugged.
Steven and Sarah soon skipped back into the room, both immediately fighting to try and have Sam pick them up. The family's routine carried on as it often did. The kids began to dance, dragging Sam into an open space to dance with him. Sam coaxed Bucky into joining the dancing as Allie put food on each of the plates. The moment the pan was back on a cool burner on the stove, Bucky was pulling Allie into the dancing group.
Even if it was just for a few moments before they went to eat breakfast, the adults were able to ignore the situation that Sam and Allie were going to have to go and deal with. They were able to just a have a typical breakfast. They were able to get ready for the day. They were simply able to watch as Steven grabbed his backpack for school.
"You be good for Dad, okay?" she told him as they walked out to the front porch to wait for the bus.
"I will," Steven nodded.
"And you have a good day at school," Allie had crouched down in front of him, fussing over his hair before Bucky rested a hand on her shoulder.
"I will," Steven nodded again.
The bus rolled to its stop and Allie took a deep breath. Steven gave Sam a hug first before squeezing Allie tightly. He waved to Bucky as he took off down the pathway to the bus. Allie frowned as she watched the bus pull away for the second day in a row.
"Okay," she nodded. "I'm going to actually cry this time."
"It's going to be alright," Bucky assured her. "We'll survive here, you'll get everything taken care of there."
"I know," she sighed and turned to the house. "I'll go get my bags."
When Allie had returned with her bags, Sam didn't hesitate to take them to the car he'd driven. Convincing Sarah that he needed help taking the bags, he took both her and T.J. with him to give Bucky and Allie a moment alone.
"Is it bad to say that I don't want to go? I want to stay here," she frowned.
"I know," Bucky brushed hair out Allie's face. "But you'll be back before we even know it."
"And you're sure that you'll be okay here?" she wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Of course," his hands fell to rest against her hips.
"I love you," she smiled.
"I love you, too," he kissed her.
Allie gave the kids each a kiss before kissing Bucky one last time before she and Sam left. Even as they drove off, she could still see Bucky and Sarah waving in the mirror.
Sam didn't say a word as Allie kept to herself.
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They had to wait an entire day before they were brought in for a meeting. As Allie suspected, the media had posed the suggestion that she was the one who had caught the building on fire and iced over the second. Just as they all suspected, clearing Allie's name was simple.
She was asked to help out at the scene, and as she and Sam stood in front of the iced over building early the second morning of their trip, she realized that whoever had done it had done so with purpose. The ice was thick.
Allie had walked up to and cocked her head to the side as she ran a hand along it. It was cool to the touch, even to her. It took a moment, but she walked around the entirety of the building and stopped when she hit a section that was lit by the early morning sunrise.
She had never spent much time looking at the ice she created. Even with the time that had passed and the situations she had used her powers for, she still had that same sense of dread when using them to a large extent. As she stood in front of the ice, she took notice of shapes in the ice. They were repeating along its entirety, and Allie furrowed her brow.
"Hey Sam," Allie called out. "Can you come here for a second?"
Sam jogged over to where Allie stood and looked to her in confusion. Allie simply pointed to what she had noticed in the ice in front of her. Sam followed where she silently traced, realizing what she was pointing at.
"You see a pattern in this ice, too. Right?" she asked as she looked over at him.
"Yeah," he nodded his head.
Allie tilted her head to the side and had Sam back up for just a moment. Quickly building a tower of ice from her hand, she looked at the ice that had come from her. The pattern was different.
"So is it like snowflakes or something?" Sam asked as he looked at the new pattern.
"We're about to find out," Allie sighed and created another tower of ice.
"Well, shit," Sam said as he looked at the newest tower of ice.
Allie narrowed her eyes at the two towers that she had created. The pattern was the same on each, but neither matched the pattern in the ice that was still frozen around the building. She and Sam looked at each other before she rubbed her temples. She was starting to believe that she knew what had happened.
"There's only one other thing I would need to see to know if my suspicions are right," Allie frowned. "How fast do you think we can get Wanda here?"
Sam simply grinned and offered to make the call. With Wanda on the way, the two had to find ways to keep themselves occupied. Allie decided to make a video call home to chat with Bucky while she waited.
"Well, you look like you're alive," Bucky grinned as he yawned.
"Yes, but I'm tired," Allie frowned. "How are you and the kids?"
"You know how I said I'd get them a pizza?" he started and watched as Allie nodded. "Well, I got them pizza and they told me they wanted your food instead."
"Really? You're going to lie to me about that," she laughed and rolled her eyes. "Tell me the truth."
"No, they really did say they missed your food," he assured her. "Mostly they missed your desserts, but that's still something you make."
"It's called sugar," she grinned. "Of course they missed it."
Sam walked over and waved slightly over the camera to Bucky who gave him a simple smile in response. The only light illuminating Bucky's face was a lamp beside him in their bedroom, Allie feeling slightly guilty when she realized that she must have woken him for the morning.
"Were you sleeping alright?" Allie tried to smile and Bucky shook his head in amusement.
"Same old nightmares," he grinned.
"James. Don't joke about them," she scolded.
Both Allie and Bucky continued to have nightmares of their hardships throughout the years. They'd found ways to work through them, but when something was a part of their past, a part of them, it never truly left.
The truth was that Bucky had been awake for a while when Allie had called. On a typical night when he'd wake up from one of his bad dreams, he'd simply turn himself to face Allie. She'd usually still be asleep when he'd wrap his arms around her and feel grounded once more. If she was awake from his shuffling, she'd turn to him and softly brush his hair from his face as he slowly fell asleep once more.
When Allie would have her nightmares, she found that she'd like getting out of bed and going outside. When moving outside of the city, she and Bucky had taken a page out of the Stark family's book. They moved to quiet area on the outskirts of a smaller town outside of the city. Allie liked that she could go and sit on the back porch, letting the sounds of animals and bugs chirp in the distance, breezes always blowing her hair to one side or the other.
Allie frowned at Bucky as he sighed on his side of the call. His hand went to rake through his hair and he gave a small shrug.
"I like when you're beside me better," he sighed. "But I'm fine."
"I like when I'm there, too," she smiled. "Hopefully soon."
"How is everything going right now?" he asked.
"Well, they're going," Allie sighed. "We're still figuring things out, but I really want to be back home with you."
Alarms began to sound on Bucky's side of the call, both knowing that it was the signal to wake the kids up and get them ready for the day. Giving her a grin, Bucky got himself out of bed.
"I can let you go," Allie suggested.
"Or I can keep you on the phone so you can say good morning to the kids and make fun of my cooking," he smirked.
"Laughing at it and not having to eat it?" she smirked in return. "I like the sound of that."
"Oh you be quiet," he narrowed his eyes at her.
Taking the phone with him, Allie watched as the hallway passed by on the screen. One-by-one, the kids were woken up and made their way out the door and downstairs. Allie and Bucky both held back their laughter when the kids didn't acknowledge her on the phone at all. It was when Bucky woke up T.J. and the word "Mama" was said that the elder two Barnes siblings perked up and rushed back upstairs to Bucky.
"Mom?" Steven asked.
"Hi bud," Allie grinned.
"Mom!" Sarah smiled.
Steven took the phone from Bucky as he and Sarah happily went back downstairs to tell Allie all about their night they had. Allie had to remind Steven more than once that she couldn't see their faces as he had the phone turned to the ceiling. Bucky eventually tipped the phone so that Allie could see their kids. Both Steven and Sarah launched into stories from the previous afternoon, talking over one another before they were instructed to go one at a time.
Bucky put T.J. in his high chair before walking over and starting breakfast. As nice as it was to still see them over the phone, Allie was sad that she wasn't beside them at the table. Even listening to the music through the phone wasn't the same. Watching as Bucky took the phone and pointed it in the direction of Steven so she could tell him to have a good day just wasn't the same.
Before she could fully recognize what was happening, Wanda had landed beside her, causing her to jump and almost drop her phone. Saying goodbye to a laughing Bucky, Allie turned to face her.
"Sam said you had a job for me," Wanda tilted her head softly in confusion.
"Alright, well I know how you can create things with your magic, right?" Allie asked and Wanda nodded slowly. "Follow me."
"Oh my God," Wanda's eyes widened as she took in the sight in front of her. She looked over to Allie. "What do you need me to do?"
"I need you to create a tower of ice for me," Allie bit her lip.
"A tower of ice?" Wanda asked and Allie simply nodded.
Taking a deep breath, Wanda gave Allie a nod in return and created her own tower of ice beside what Allie had created earlier. Folding her arms against her chest, Wanda stood next to Allie and looked to her what was going on. Allie simply walked up to the ice, eyes widening as she had her answer from earlier.
"Holy shit," she muttered. "Sam!"
"What is it?" Sam asked as he ran over.
"It doesn't have a pattern," she snapped her eyes to him.
"What?" Sam's eyes began to widen as well.
"There is no pattern," Allie repeated. "Whoever did that to the building has the same powers as me."
"What's going on?" Wanda asked.
"Look here," Allie instructed as she pointed to the ice on the building and the ice she had created. "There's distinct intricate patterns. Like a fingerprint. Yours is smooth. No pattern like these."
Wanda and Sam looked at one another as Allie ran a hand through her hair. She quickly grabbed her phone, taking pictures of the ice. Quickly fizzling out her towers of ice, she turned to the building. It was going to take more energy, but she took a deep breath and began to work on making the ice vanish.
But there was a blinding pain as she did so. Yelping, Sam and Wanda both took a step forward as Allie quickly stopped.
"Are you okay?" Sam asked as he held her up by one elbow and Wanda the other.
"I'm fine," she shook off the pain. Trying once more, she screamed as the blinding pain burned through her again.
"Allie, stop," Wanda warned.
"I can't make it go away," Allie realized. "I can't get rid of it."
As Sam and Wanda looked to each other and back to her, Allie began to think that she should have been keeping a list of everything that was going wrong in the past few days.
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"What is this place?" one of the agents asked as Sam landed the Quinjet in the clearing.
In front of them, the remains of the lab sat in front of them, ice sitting around it as fire flickered nearby. Wanda and Allie looked to one another before they both stood and were followed by Sam. Walking into the patch of land in front of them, Allie didn't look back as she responded.
It was the day following their discovery at the government buildings in the States. Allie had tried a third time, to no avail, to rid building of its ice, the burning still firing through her. Sam had made her stop as they decided to report back and give a full description of what they had seen.
That evening, Sam had gotten reports of the same powers being used overseas. They had taken Wanda with them in the Quinjet, the government supplying them with two agents to go overseas to the coordinates that Sam had received. It had taken the entirety of the night to make their way over, but they had finally made it to that horribly familiar area.
"Where I got my powers," she sighed. "A place I really never wanted to be back at."
"So then why are we here?" the other agent asked.
"We got word that there's fire and ice in the surrounding area. Now it's here," Sam frowned.
"Shit," Allie muttered as the boots of her suit crunched against the ground.
Sam and Wanda quickly caught up with Allie to look and see what Allie was looking at. It was ice with the same distinct pattern that the government building had had. Whoever had created the ice in the States had been there, too. And they knew about the lab.
Allie crouched down and gently brushed her fingertips along the ice. It was just as cold as the ice on the government building. She thought that it was odd to feel something as cold as it was. Even with being able to control ice, she did feel chills from time-to-time, but this felt different. IT didn't sit right with her.
As she tilted her head to look at it as the others looked around the area, her ears seemed to perk at the sound of crunching ice that came from a direction that her people weren't in. She could see Sam and Wanda looking at the flickering fire. The two agents were looking at the remains of the lab, muttering about the state of it and how they'd never known of its existence. The sound came from a direction behind her.
As she continued to observe the ice, she could see Wanda turn to the direction of the sound before her eyes widened.
"Allie!" Wanda yelled.
The ice was quick and cold. Allie had never felt anything like it and she wasn't sure if she ever wanted to feel it again.