fifty.
Bucky only wasted 15 minutes after Peter's hour was up, and that time was spent gathering weapons and calling Steve to go with him. The little dot had been frozen on the map for too long now. Something had to be more than wrong.
He told Steve the address that was on the screen, but Steve wouldn't make it there before he would. Bucky was on his way down the stairs as he talked to Steve on the phone. He was going to raise all kinds of hell if he got there and saw something other than Peter.
Bucky hung up the phone when he reached the bottom level, boots kicking up dust as he marched to his bike. He swung a leg over it and slammed the kick-starter. He spun out of the driveway, kicking up all kinds of rocks and dirt into the air as he did so.
He'd been doing pretty good about the whole not-killing thing, and as much as he loved that boy, if he had to kill for him, he was going to be pissed.
Despite being able to weave his bike between cars and drive it up sidewalks, Bucky had a feeling that Steve wasn't very far behind him. Bucky swore that if that Wade guy had anything to do with this, he was going to kill him as many times as it took to get the point across that he wasn't the guy to be fucked with.
Bucky followed Friday's directions to the letter, slowing his bike down as he approached the place that Peter was supposed to be in. He stopped the bike. Friday insisted that this was where the signal was coming from.
Bucky dismounted the bike and walked around a little bit, gun drawn and ready to fire... Until he noticed something blinking on the ground. He raced over to it, only to discover that it was Peter's watch.
Bucky cursed as he crouched to grab it, but he was quick to notice the blood on the ground less than three steps away from where the watch was laying. Something bad happened here, and he needed to know what.
A car pulled up next to his bike and he quickly aimed the gun at it. Steve emerged from inside, hands raised. Bucky lowered his weapon and held up the watch.
"Somebody took Peter." He called as he approached Steve. He handed the watch over to his lover and watched as Steve brought up Friday. He asked the AI if there was any footage of what happened, and she brought up a hologram of the last 30 seconds of recording before Peter's pulse disappeared from the reader.
It showed Wade, and it showed a group of guys they didn't recognize grabbing Peter. They heard a familiar voice on the recording, but the camera didn't catch who it was, so there was no way to be totally sure. There was one thing they knew for sure though.
Peter had been taken by HYDRA. And they'd do whatever it took to get him back.
The first step of whatever it took, was finding Tony and showing him the footage. He, understandably, freaked as he set up the algorithms on his computer. The program was set up to scan every possible surveillance system for Peter's face. That meant ATM's, traffic cams, parking lot security cameras, the lot. He ran what faces of the suited men he could make out through every database he could get into.
He was having the van tracked and froze all of Peter's bank cards so his money couldn't be stolen... Though with something like this, it wasn't really about the money anyways. They'd taken Peter for a reason. What that reason was, nobody knew, but they'd all be damned if they couldn't find out.
The whole base was on high-alert while Peter was missing. Every single one of those S.H.I.E.L.D. agents bustling about in the hallways knew just how protective the Supers were of the young boy. Peter, being the youngest of them all, was special. He was meant to be protected at all costs.
All of those agents also knew what could happen to them if they were found out as traitors, so none of them so much as dared.
While Peter was being searched for, Natalia and Bucky never stopped training. They were pushing themselves harder than before. They were willing to do more damage than before. They'd do whatever it took for their little boy.
As for Steve, he trained too, just less. Most of Steve's time was either spent in a parental panic or out searching with a team for any traces of Peter. But it was nothing but useless. They weren't even sure if he was in the country anymore, let alone the same state.
It was agony. There was no sign of Deadpool either. They all knew that wherever he was, Peter would be. But there was so sign of him anywhere. Not one.
What none of them knew was that the answer was sitting right beneath their noses.
Despite Peter missing, and all of the chaos, right now all Steve wanted was some normality. He wanted to make breakfast for his lovers and watch television with them. He wanted Nat to laugh at him while he tried for the umpteenth time to figure out the coffee machine. He wanted to cuddle and kiss them and tell them everything would be fine.
But he couldn't. He couldn't tell them that everything was fine because it wasn't. Their boy was missing and the whole base could feel it. They could feel the overwhelming panic and emptiness. Tony hadn't slept in days. Neither had Bucky. Nobody had, really.
Everyone was a mess, wondering what'd become of their boy. If he was even alive... That was the one thought nobody wanted to discuss out loud. An idea none of them were willing to entertain.
Bucky had the same nightmare when he did happen to sleep. That they'd found the boy, just not in the way they'd hoped.
In his nightmares, they'd found him as a partially decomposing corpse, laying in a pool of his own crusted blood. And right next to him, always next to him, was that asshole in tights. Somehow Bucky knew that Wade wasn't the real cause for Peter's disappearance. If that bullshit mission to capture the mercenary was anything to go by anyway.
Bucky was a soldier. He knew what diversions looked like, and he knew damn good and well that that's exactly what that was. A diversion. The mission was meant to throw them off of something... What exactly, was the real question. It'd been months and he still was no closer to finding out the answer.
Bucky looked to the clock from where he sat on the floor of Peter's bedroom. It'd been exactly one week, three days, four hours and 12 minutes since Peter disappeared. Bucky knew what the new statistics were. He'd read them all over and over. He knew how the chances of finding a child under regular circumstances decreased with every hour that went by. He knew that if Peter had been taken by Hydra, their chances decreased twice as fast.
So why was he sitting here, in the boy's room, doing nothing? He was hoping that being here would give him some answers. Some kind of insight into what was happening. He was hoping that the silence would clear his mind, but so far it wasn't happening. If anything, the silence was making everything worse.
It was deafening, and heavy, weighing on him like an elephant on his chest. And it hurt. And he longed for the child that filled this space. The child that filled part of the emptiness inside of him. He knew that this child could never fully fill the space of two, but with one at least it would hurt less.
He just wanted to bring the boy back. He wanted his laughter to fill in the silence around them. He wanted the boy's smile to dull the ache in his chest. He wanted to teach the boy more. The boy who had so much to live for. He had so much ahead of him, and Bucky would be damned if Peter didn't get to see it.
He hit his head back against the wall and furrowed his brows. It sounded hollow, empty. He looked up to the wall above him and stood. He knocked on the wall very gently, listening very closely. He moved the framed picture of Peter and May where it hung on the wall and saw the square cut into it. He dug the edge of his knife into it and popped the panel out. Inside were two very thick manilla folders.
Their fronts were very simple, just two names in Peter's handwriting. He opened one and inside were printed files, photos, reports... These were Peter's birth parents. C.I.A. agents. These were the two people that made Peter afraid that the people in his life now might leave him at any given time. That they'd leave him somewhere and never return. These were the two that left him in May's care all those years ago.
He looked back into the hollow, seeing that there were more than just these files there. Inside Bucky could see clear as day the first knife he ever gave Peter, his first Spider-Man suit, a small Lego man that looked like Darth Vader, a bottle of his old web-fluid formula, a negative pregnancy test inside of a ziplock bag, one of Wade's masks, a photo of Peter's Aunt May and Uncle Ben, Peter's birth certificate, two old dirty pairs of dog tags that once belonged to him and Steve, one of Nat's guns tucked safely into it's holster, a book of baby names, and one of the oldest models of Tony's arc reactor.
It was like a nest, a shrine more like, to the past. Bucky returned the folders to their place and spotted one last thing. A folded piece of loose leaf paper. Carefully he removed it from its place and began to read Peter's scribbled writing.
'Hey, future me. I don't know when you'll see this... If you'll ever see this. I don't know if I'm writing this for you or for me. Maybe it's for me, because maybe you're a corpse. But congratulations if you're not. That means we survived, and if you're really here reading this then only you know what it is we've survived. I can only imagine what we've been through. But if we did make it, then it means we either escaped, our family managed to find us, or Wade really isn't the bad guy in our story.
I didn't think that he would be, after everything. But a guy like Wade is sure to keep us on our toes. If Wade is the one that saved us from whatever happened, but you still suspect him, I want you to try and remember the night on the bridge after we snuck out to go marauding. When he was there with us and we didn't have a care in the world. When we knew were safe.
I know we've been through a lot while I'm here writing this for you... I'm sure by the time you're reading this you've been through more...
Future me, if you're not the one reading this... I can only assume the worst has happened to us and whoever found this is in the middle of clearing out our belongings... If that's true, then I'm sorry. To future me, and to whoever is reading this letter now. I knew what I was getting into when I left to find Aunt May... If you didn't find me, then I hope you at least found her. I hope she's safe.
If this letter is found by anyone else before I'm found, then please return this to where you found it... If you're reading this after, then please let it make its rounds so I still get my chance to say goodbye.
To Nat, for being my only real mother figure. For stepping up and taking her place when nobody else would. For caring for me like your own child, even when I was misbehaving. I love you.
To Steve, for being one of my fathers. For teaching me what the world was like before my time. For being so caring, even when I wasn't. I love you.
To Tony, for being another one of my fathers, and for taking me in in the first place. Without you, I'm sure I would've died long before this letter is found by all of you. I owe you so much, even in death. I love you.
To Wade. For teaching me so much about myself. For teaching me that the person I wanted to be wasn't the wrong person. For teaching me so much about love and life in the short time we had together. I love you more than I can say.
And to Bucky, for teaching me everything about weapons that I know. The things you've taught me may have been the difference between life and death for me. And you're reading this because I didn't make it, don't blame yourself. For being the one that I think found this letter. Because you know what they say. I love you.
Peter B. Parker-Rogers-Romanoff-Barnes-Stark'