Restart [ discontinued ]

Uncle Rhodey visited today.

You don't actually call him that- you’re old enough now where, if you started, it definitely would be less endearing and a bit weird, but nowadays it was always either Rhodey or Jimmy. Besides, it’s even weirder considering you’re technically almost 30, so there’s that. Of course, back then though, there were moments when you slipped up, much to your embarrassment and his amusement. 

You’d either be sleep-deprived or distracted most of the time. Mumbling a tired ‘Hey Uncle Rhodey’ and not noticing the grin on the faces of whoever was in the room with the two of you. It didn’t happen often- maybe once every other blue moon- but it happened nonetheless.

But despite being literal years since you’ve called him that, this was one of those moments where you just couldn’t help yourself.

“What’s up squirt? Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

(Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Fast. Oh God, why was he falling so fast?

“Uh, little,” there’s a strained grunt, “Little help here? I’m- I’m flying dead stick…!”)

“Uncle Rhodey…”

Right in front of you stood Rhodey, who grins at you with underlying concern in his eyes. He looks good, no matter how much shit you always gave him for wearing polo shirts. Definitely less aged, too… Not as tired. There’s a pep in his step you forgot he had as he moves in to give you a hug. 

(“Rhodes!” Your ears strain as your dad yells into the commlink, though that was nearly drowned out by the drum of your heart thundering in your chest. High in the sky, you take to an instant nose dive and descend.

With each pulse, Rhodey’s only falling and falling and falling, and he’s not slowing down any time soon. He doesn’t respond to your dad. Faint sounds of what may be him losing his breath make you scream out for him too.

You’re opposite of Tony as you both try and catch up with the suit. In the corner of your eyes, you see Falcon diving down too. Mother fucker.

You fall and fall, and so does Rhodey. 

The distance between you and Rhodey gets closer and closer, but so does the distance between Rhodey and the ground. It’s a race, you bitterly thought in hindsight. You vs. Tony vs. Wilson.

Only Rhodey wins first place.)

You knew it’s been years since his fall. But even then, every time you looked at Rhodey, flashes of a falling metal suit lingers in the back of your head. The pounding in your head only gets worse when Rhodey’s standing in front of you without leg braces on.

“Aw, guessed someone missed his uncle, huh?”

You know he’s just teasing you, but God did you want to tell him how absolutely true he was. 

(You ignore DAHLIA’s concerned whisper of 'elevated stress above normal parameters.’)

Wordlessly, you hug him maybe a bit tighter than you normally would. You try to find the words to reply back, something snarky (“This 'squirt' can give you the smackdown of your life, Jimmy.”), maybe even something honest (“Yeah, I did. I missed you. Fuck, I missed you so much.”). Just anything would do, but the flashes of a human-sized crater with a red suit hovering over makes you want to hurl, so you just kept your mouth shut and buried your head in his shoulder. You feel him pat your head gently.

(The thud echoes in your ears. 

You’re, what? Maybe 70 feet above him?

But yet you heard that thud as if you were dead center of the crater.

Time slows down to forever as you finally touch down and sprint over to your dad, ignoring Wilson’s approaching figure.

Tony nods at you (“Rhodes is in critical condition, ambulance ETA 5 minutes…”, says DAHLIA), but he says nothing as Wilson mutters an apology. Dad’s fuming, and quite frankly, so are you.

You stalked over to him and socked Wilson right in the jaw, gauntlet still on, and took no shame in the satisfaction you felt as you watch him get knocked back a good distance. It’s even better when he doesn’t get up.

Good. 

As much as Rhodey would admonish you for your train of thought, you’d have no trouble forgiving Wilson if he was the one lying unconscious in the crater instead.)

“Oh yeah, did I not tell you?” You let go of Rhodey but keep in close proximity to him as your dad strides in holding a StarkPad. He greets you with a kiss to the cheek, and you weakly push him away with shaking hands. You pray no one notices your short breath and sweaty palms. He chuckles and stands next to Rhodey, who’s already got an exasperated but amused smile as he looks at Tony.

“Rhodey-bear’s got military leave- what was it, 2 weeks?”

“3, actually. For a so-called genius, you sure do suck at getting information right.”

You stand there, still uncharacteristically silent as you watch them banter. They start walking but you stayed back, watching them strut out of the room as if no one else existed.

You didn’t follow them as everything around you blurred; all except for Rhodey’s legs. Legs that weren’t being supported by a pair of Stark leg prosthetic. Legs that hadn’t been completely detached of all feeling and movement from the waist down.

Legs that were still healthy.

You haphazardly leaned against the wall and tried to focus on the floor as the walls wobble around you. The pounding in your head is practically tearing your skull apart.

(The file haunts you.

You gaze at the hologram floating in front of you, and you desperately try to look elsewhere.

There are pictures of potted plants adorning the files. There’s a bunch, and none of them really correlate with one another. There’s also a series of pictures, remnants of an explosion and ashes of what used to be a pot sprinkled in there too. There are ones of humans- people you don’t recognize save for a few. And again, there’s also pictures of an explosion, black ashes covering walls with no remains next to them.

Your finger itches to reach out and open the file further, damn near desperate to do anything to rectify what happened to Rhodey. It burns in your soul, knowing that a solution was just this close to you, so damn near close, yet so far away.

You didn’t need to open this file if none of this happened. If Rhodey hadn’t been paralyzed from the fall. Rage seeps into your fingers as you grip the table painfully, knuckles white.

If only Romanoff wasn’t so prone to Roger’s baby blues and knew how to keep to aside. If only Rogers had just signed the damn Accords. If only Maximoff could just get it through her thick skull Tony only wanted to keep her safe from the public.

If only Barton just kept his head down and stayed in retirement. If only Wilson didn’t dodge, damned what’d have happened to him.

If only…

(If only you had been faster.)

A scream erupts deep within you as you swipe everything off of your table. You slam your fist into the table repeatedly, not noticing the red smearing, the searing pain, or FRIDAY and DAHLIA’s concerned voices as your wails drown the world out.

You don’t notice how Pepper abruptly shows up to your lab, disheveled in her pajamas and hugging you from behind tight. You don’t notice how she managed to bypass your blackout mode and how the glass window panes clear up again. You don’t notice the wetness seeping into your back, or the slight shake of her trembling hands.

You don’t notice how you stopped screaming and started shaking, sobbing into your mother’s shoulder as she whispered nothing short of comforting words in your ears. 

You don’t even notice Rhodey’s gaze as he arrives, unsteady in his leg braces, looking at you and Pepper with a haunted, condemned expression.)

You jolted out of your thoughts as your dad calls out to you from down the hallway. You try to steady your voice, but with each sharp intake, it’s not as easy as said.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, uh- comin’! Coming…”

Ignoring your shaking hands, you jog over to where they are, pushing and repressing those memories back deep into the corners of your mind. That’s a whole can of worms you’d be more than happy to ignore indefinitely.

Now that you think about it, it’s kind of cruel being told that your death was necessary to win a war. Out of millions and millions of possibilities, you had to be taken out of the equation for it to work.

Alone in your lab, you lay placid among your beanbag chairs. It’s been a few days since Rhodey’s come by to visit, a few days since your sudden migraine that was your flashbacks. Nothing much’s happened since then. You hung out with Rhodey, saw glimpses of the other Avengers here and there, but other than that… There wasn’t anything that was urgent in your schedule.

And that deeply unsettled you.

Things’ve been moving at too slow of a pace, and quite frankly, you’ve only got so much time before the clock ticks to zero. And in hindsight, there was a lot that you had to be prepared for.

There was Project Insight, Ultron, the Accords…

And there were the individual people themselves you had to worry about. The twins, T'Challa and T'Chaka- along with Wakanda as a whole-, Peter, Strange, Danvers…

You already feel a dull thumping on your forehead just thinking about it all, and you didn’t even mention everyone else.

Slowly getting up from your beanbag chair, you trudged to your main seat and rolled over to your tables. It’s a mess; there are papers strewn about, some having to do with starting your senior year in high school, others are of mission reports. There are even stupid little sticky note doodles while you were procrastination once; a testament to how much time you’ve got, and how much of it was spent wasted.

You pushed all of them out of the way in one sweep, uncaring if any of it fell on the floor. 

“J.A.R.V.I.S., blackout mode.”

“Of course, young sir.”

The window panels darken, and J.A.R.V.I.S.’ voice quiets. The accent lights in the corners of your lab change from a calming pale blue to a neutral white, an indicator you’ve set up within the past few days. It helps tell you which A.I. is currently in the room. You know that if J.A.R.V.I.S. knew, he wouldn't say anything to anyone else (particularly your dad) about DAHLIA, but just in case.

Eventually, you’ll introduce the two sometime. DAHLIA says she doesn’t care if she meets J.A.R.V.I.S. or not, so you pretend not to notice how much lighter her voice is every time you mention her ‘uncle’ of sorts.

“DAHLIA, you up?”

It was satisfying to watch the neutral white LED lights blink into lime green. It means ‘new beginnings’, or so DAHLIA says. It’s nice in a way- that was the same color you had assigned to her in the future, too. Only this time it was by her own virtue.

”I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t.”

You rolled your eyes.

The sass.

”You, start up a new project and title it 'Renaissance’. I think now’s the time to kick it into high gear.“

The holograms around you flicker back to life, a soft green illuminating everything in your sight. A distinct folder pops up with the right title and opens up to a blank file. You’re almost buzzing in your seat as you began creating and titling new documents.

”Sure thing, doll. Anything you want me to start beforehand?”

You pause.

There were lots of things you needed to get done first before you even thought about doing anything else. There were people to recruit, a whole nation you needed to get in contact with, and the drafts of the Accords to be written.

But, for now, you’ll start small.

“Yeah- I, uh, need you to start a global search for someone.”

She hums, and in the corner of your eyes, you see a new file pop up. There’s a rendering of the globe with millions of dots littering the countries visible to you- there are even ones around the planet as well. Cameras and available satellites, you realize.

Atta girl.

”Their name?”

A pair of blank steel blue eyes flash in your mind. Once did anger bubble in your throat when you saw them, but now only pity is what’s left in you as you recognize nothing but emptiness behind his eyes. While this was for the greater good that he was found as soon as possible, you’d be lying if you said it wasn't also for the man himself.

The sooner you get to him, the sooner he gets the proper help he deserves.

Reeling yourself back in, you promptly ignored your shaking hands and the flashes of a gleaming arm wrapping itself around your throat, eyes cold and uncaring.

”James Buchanan Barnes.”

A/N: This chapter is the final chapter of the first 'arc’, so I’ve decided. There is a high chance that this story will not be canon complicit from now on. (Also, this chapter is shorter compared to the last chapter, and not as high quality- for that, I’m relatively sorry, but not really.)

Word of warning, we might also get more Team Cap critical (as shown in this chapter), but I promise if that’s the case, I’ll try not to make it a reoccurring theme in this story. 'Resentment is corrosive, and I (live for it) hate it.’ - T.S.

I’m planning on bumping up the speed at which the story is progressing- like, fast. My plan is that the next arc (10 canon chapters, maybe some special chapters) we’ll deal with CA:TWS, AOU, and maybe CA:CW all in one go if I go with my current plans for AOU. (That also means each chapter will be significantly longer, too.) 

And as for the romance- I’ll also try to include more scenes that aren’t as subtle as hell (like the one with Steve and Thor before the last chapter). We’ll see what goes on beyond that as we progress. Feel free to leave any suggestions as to how the plot should progress (or even suggestions for the romantic scenes lol). :)