In the Light Between the Lines

Bucky followed the tracks across the gray sand. The farther he traveled, the more liquid the ground underfoot became; soon, he was wading through several inches of viscous silver goo that rippled and contorted at the slightest touch. Despite the deep sense of foreboding that settled over him like a heavy, wet blanket, he continued tracking the trail, still visible but faint beneath the liquid surface, as it curved away from the little stone structure and swept on toward the sun-less, yet ever-bright, horizon.

An hour passed. Or maybe it was a minute; Bucky had lost all sense of time and direction in the endless gray expanse. He kept up a steady pace, feet striking the viscous silver liquid, spraying it behind him like a wake of melted metal. He began to notice, a little over an hour after finding the tracks, that each step felt heavier than the last. He slowed slightly, but the feeling of pressure refused to relent. It was as if some strong, invisible force was warning him back.

Gritting his teeth, he set his shoulders and continued with renewed purpose and determination. Steve would be proud. The thought brought a small smile to his face.

Just as time was beginning to fade into a single senseless blur, Bucky spotted a wall of mist ahead. He stopped, hesitating and assessing. It didn’t look dangerous, but he’d learned long ago that the most harmless appearances hid deadly motives. The mist looked calm, peaceful, drifting silently across the gray flats. But the longer he stood there, the thicker it got: it was as if it was rushing up to meet him, gathering itself into a living, moving creature of condensed air and water.

“I can’t see anything up here!” A high, child-like voice drifted out of the thickening mist. “What if I step off the stairs?”

“Then I’ll catch you.” This voice was male, smooth and attractive and confident. Bucky thought he recognized it from somewhere. Like the fading edges of an all-but-forgotten dream, lingering in the shadows of his mind. “Just keep moving forward; don’t look behind.”

“I can’t look behind,” the child replied, “without falling off the sides.”

“You knew this would be difficult,” the male voice said. “You have faced far more treacherous roads, have you not, Daughter of Thanos?”

“Call me that again,” the child snarled, “and I’ll throw you off these stairs, Son of Odin.” Bucky heard a note of something hard, polished, and precise in the tone: they weren’t a child’s words, despite the youthful voice that clad them.

The male voice rose in a mischievous, satisfied laugh. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But technically, I’m a son of Laufey, not Odin. So unless your threat was meant for my brother—in which case, by all means, pursue it—then I’m afraid it’s fallen flat.”

The girl huffed, and Bucky could almost hear her clench her fists. “I don’t care what you call yourself. Just don’t call me that again,” she repeated. And then there was silence between them for a long time.

Bucky moved cautiously toward the mist. The strange voices had come from within it, so it couldn’t be that dangerous. Right?

Right. Anyway, he was already dead. What more could this strange place do to him?

He had a sneaking, horrible suspicion that the answer to that supposedly rhetorical question was: a lot.

He reached the edge of the mist and stepped into it. It surrounded him, thick and heavy and stifling. He held his breath, moving silently through the silver cloud. Droplets of silver like the liquid beneath his feet gathered on his bare skin and stained his battered combat suit. They condensed in the joint of his metal arm and slid down to his fingers, following the neat golden grooves and lines of expert Wakandan craftsmanship.

Moving toward the place where he thought the voices had come from, Bucky eventually came across the base of a steep ascending stairway. The mist parted momentarily, and there it was: a rail-less, treacherously narrow ascent crafted of what appeared to be glass or crystal, glinting in the eternal sunset creeping through the thinning mist. Bucky paused again at the base of the stair, trying to see where it led. The mist was thicker higher up, and he couldn’t see farther than a few feet—past the fifth stair, the path was a mystery to him.

He looked down. The trail he’d been following ended just before the bottom stair. Whoever it was he’d heard up there, they were the same people he’d been following. If he wanted to reach them, to find out if they knew where he was, what had happened, or how to escape (if that was even possible) from the unending wasteland he’d woken up in, he’d have to risk climbing these stairs. Taking a deep breath, he set his booted foot on the first stair, and began to climb.

He counted one hundred and fifty-three steps before his quarry came into view ahead. He moved swift and silent, the mist surrounding him like an assassin’s hooded cloak. Crouching low, he paused, assessing.

It was, as the tracks had suggested, a young girl and a tall man of maybe thirty-some years. Bucky watched them as they paused to rest, their backs to him as they stared up into the thick, unyielding mist. He thought about calling out, then reconsidered. He had no idea who these people were, or what their purpose was. What if they were guarding these stairs? What if they were in league with Thanos, and this was a trap or trick? No, he couldn’t risk it. He’d continue following at a distance until he knew more about them.

They climbed slowly. Two hundred steps. Three hundred steps. Four hundred, five hundred, six. The man and the child moved at a slow pace, the mist impeding their steady upward climb. Bucky followed a safe distance behind, always careful to stay out of sight.

Then, around stair number six hundred and seventy, Bucky looked down to check his footing for one brief moment and looked up to find the others gone. He froze, crouching low, all his senses straining for any sign of them. Nothing. After a long, tense minute, he realized they must’ve been swallowed up in the mist. The higher they got, the thicker the clouds became, making it increasingly difficult for him to move without detection. And, apparently, it also made it easier for him to lose track of his quarry.

Bucky straightened up and started up the stairs at a much faster pace. He skipped one, two at a time, feeling the rush and sting of adrenaline as his feet slid on the violent edges and slipped over the seemingly bottomless abyss beyond. He made it up forty-some stairs before he slowed for a moment.

And that’s when they grabbed him.

The child came out of nowhere. She struck him behind the knee, flipping up from under the stairs to land behind him. Ahead, her tall male companion emerged from the mist, catching Bucky by the throat and swinging him out over the white, misty void.

“Talk,” said the child in a dangerous voice. “Who are you? Why are you following us?”

The man holding Bucky smiled, and through the parting mist, Bucky finally recognized him. In a moment of horrified clarity, Bucky realized he wasn’t a man at all. “Barnes,” said Loki of Asgard, his voice calm but his fingers deadly-tight around Bucky’s throat. “How good to finally make your acquaintance.”

The abyss yawned behind them, growing ever wider like the mouth of some enormous, ravenous beast. Peter, who could easily have outpaced it on his own, forced himself to stay with Aunt May as she struggled to keep ahead of the violent river of sand. Ned kept pace with Peter, his eyes wide with un-masked terror.

“Holy shit!” Ned yelled as a second, smaller crack opened a mere inch from where he’d stood moments before. He dodged it as it spread, leaping over a smaller offshoot of splitting lines. “We’re gonna die! We’re totally gonna die!”

“We’re gonna be fine!” Peter yelled, ignoring the frantic racing of his heart. “We’re gonna be fine, Ned!”

“Both of you, shut up!” Aunt May gasped, “and keep running!”

If it weren’t for the fact that they no longer needed to breathe, all three of them would’ve been overwhelmed and swept into the black, bottomless void immediately. As it were, they managed to stay just ahead, leaping crevasses and dodging sinkholes. The sand hissed and slid like silver snakes around their ankles, filling their shoes and sticking to their clothes. To Peter, it seemed that the harder they ran, the faster the crack grew. Eventually, unless they found some way to escape it, they would run out of time.

“This is it!” Ned screeched as he tripped over another small crack and nearly went sprawling. “I don’t wanna die… well, I don’t wanna die again!”

“We won’t!” Peter said. He was only comfortable saying this because he was pretty sure it was scientifically impossible (or at least highly improbable) for any person to die multiple times. Then again, the rules of the universe had grown fuzzy in the past couple years. Maybe death wasn’t as permanent or final as he’d once thought. (He really, really hoped it wasn’t.)

Despite their best efforts, the abyss grew too fast and wide for them to get away. The sand blew into their faces and sucked at their feet. The air grew thick with clouds of silver dust, obscuring their vision and making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.

Aunt May was the first to fall. Ned followed directly after. Peter didn’t even hesitate before turning and plunging down after them—if they were going down, he was going down with them. It wasn’t even a choice.

As they fell into the void, their screams mingling in the dusty air, Peter caught a flash of bright red high above. It swirled down toward him, twisting and contorting like a rag being wrung. And then Peter flipped over midair, the wind catching him like a kite with no string, and he could see nothing but the eternal darkness below.