Pizza
“How’d it go?” Steve asks his friend, who just stormed into the gym, already knowing the answer.
“Badly,” he answers, going straight for the punching bag next to Cap’s.
“Scale of one to ten.”
“The scale is idiotic,” Bucky grunts, starting to pummel the bag.
“What happened?”
“She calls herself ‘it,’ and when I yelled at her, she said that she’d call herself she if it’s ‘pleasing.’”
“I guess that that’s progress.”
“I’m not her owner!” Bucky exclaims, giving up on the punching bag for the moment, throwing his hands in the air.
“I’m sorry, Buck,” Cap says. “But it’ll take time, just like it took for you.”
“I know.”
“You got farther than Natasha did. You relate to her more. Maybe you could help.”
~
“She broke an x-ray machine!” Tony exclaims, trying to figure out why Barnes would want him to move the woman to the apartment floor.
“You can’t put her through tests and expect her not to break the machines!’ Bucky yells back.
“We should move her up here,” Steve says, on Bucky’s side in the argument.
“What?”
“It would be safer.”
“She tried to kill you, and me, and she injured Dr. Cho and a nurse.”
“She was mind-controlled,” Bucky says. “I got a second chance.”
“Fine! Why don’t we invite Ant-Man, too?”
“Why him?”
“He popped into my head.”
“Why not that spider kid?”
“Parker won’t leave his aunt.”
~
Bucky pauses at the door before he knocks, using his flesh hand, his thoughts on how to phrase it.
Of course he knows how it feels in hospital rooms, and the fact that this is in the Avengers Tower doesn’t change how it smells of antiseptic and reeks of that familiar experimentation.
It’s been years, but he still remembers it all, even if it is murky.
Blinking, Bucky refocuses just as the door opens.
“Sir,” she says in greeting.
“Um,” he says, ignoring the fact that she called him sir, if only to not yell again for something that he feels she needs to grow out of. “Stark has plenty of rooms upstairs, so you can sleep up there.”
“The metal man?” She asks, but it somehow sounds like a statement. “Is he the director?”
“Stevie is the captain, but Stark payed for the building.”
“Stevie.”
“Captain America. Anyway, they’re preparing a room for you upstairs.”
With a nod, it’s clear that she is done talking for the moment, so Bucky goes to his own room.
~
She was taken to the room thirty-seven minutes after Bucky came to inform her of the placement, and she has taken the last fifteen minutes examining the rooms.
A bedroom with a large bed, desk, chair, and full-length mirror, a sitting room with a loveseat and a television the size of a small door, and a bathroom with the usual necessities—toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, pads, and tampons.
She rearranged what needed to be, and eventually sat on the couch to wait.
Her first instinct when someone knocks on the door is to grab a weapon, so she grabs the best concealable one she can find—the toothbrush.
She opens the door—that is what Natasha has instructed her to do when someone knocks—seeing a man with red and yellow skin, a yellow jewel embedded in his forehead.
“Good day, madame,” he says. “I do believe that this is the first time we have met. I am called Vision.”
“Good day,” she says, nodding.
“I was chosen by the ‘short straw’ to inform you that pizza is here.”
“Pizza?”
The doctors in the lab once had a pizza night, and they ate while she was to determine who in the room had the message that she was assigned to discover. If she chose the wrong doctor, she would be placed in the electric room again.
She was eleven, and she chose correctly.
“Pizza is a dish of Italian origin consisting of a flat, round base of dough baked with a topping of tomato sauce and cheese, typically with added meat or vegetables. I believe Mr. Stark said, ‘first come, first serve.’”
“Where is the destination?”
“Follow me.”
She follows Vision—the dude floats—to the sitting area, where Bucky, Cap, Natasha, and a man she has come to know as Sam are grabbing plates and slices of pizza.
“Grab some before it’s gone,” Sam says as he passes her, on the way to his room.
“Bucky!” Natasha laughs out, swatting his hand away from her cheese sauce. “Get your own!”
“Sam already double-dipped,” Bucky complains.
“Hey,” Natasha says to the newcomer, ignoring Bucky. “Grab some fast. This stuff gets eaten quicker than Poptarts when Thor’s around.”
She heads to the kitchen island, putting two pieces of pizza on a plate—since that’s the amount the others seem to have started with—and stays standing where she is.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Vision says to the group. “Wanda is waiting for me.”
Vision floats through a wall, disappearing.
“I hate it when he does that,” Bucky mutters.
“You know he’s an android with an Infinity Stone in his head,” Sam says.
“There’s a door two feet away!”
“Don’t fight, boys,” Natasha says, smirking.
Tony walks in—through the door—looking behind him.
“Vision needs to stop going through walls unannounced,” he mumbles.
“Where’s Bruce?” Nat asks, slapping Bucky’s hand away from her food, but eventually lets in.
“In the lab,” Stark responds, grabbing two plates, putting two pieces of pizza on each one. “It was my turn to grab the sustenance.”
“I think that you guys should stop playing, and get some shut eye.”
“We’re at the verge of a scientific breakthrough! And speaking of sleep, Capsicle, Bucky Road, try not to fall asleep before nine tomorrow, since it’ll be movie night.”
Stark leaves with a smirk, all four of the other Avengers that are left in the room rolling their eyes at the nicknames.
“Does anyone know where my hood is?” A man says as he comes in, searching around. “I thought I had it when I left yesterday.”
The man catches sight of the food, immediately grabbing a slice of pizza, taking a large bite.
“Clint?” Nat asks. “You came back for your hood? Why am I not surprised?”
“It’s the warmest thing I own,” he says after he swallows, shrugging.
The man who must be Clint spots the woman who stood when he entered—but slowly sat down when she saw Bucky watching, frowning—and smiles.
“Hi! Nat told me about you. I know a little girl who would love you. A girl as strong as Cap or Bucky!”
“The Experi-” She stops, glancing at Bucky, remembering his instructions. “That’s true.”
“I’m Clint,” Clint says, holding out a hand, but retracts it when she eyes it warily. “What’s your name?”
“I do not remember my birth name.”
“Really? Maybe if you went through those cards with names on them, it might jog your memory.”
“I might try that.”
“I bet they have lists online.”
“Is there a computer nearby that I would have clearance to use?” She asks Natasha.
~
“I assume you know how to use one,” Tony says as he steps away from the laptop that is set up on her desk, having typed in the code.
She answers by typing on the laptop, bringing up a search engine, finding a website within seconds.
“Good.”