What purpose in these deeds? Oh fox confessor, please
Who married me to these orphaned blues?
Neko Case – The Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
The rising sun gilded the fox’s silhouette, turning it from orange-red to bright gold. Pepper, for once not dressed as if for a board meeting, was standing with her back to the common kitchen, looking out of the full-length windows, her vixen daemon at her side.
Bucky stopped in the hallway, his hand going automatically to comfort the hyena, who had stopped uneasily. They were usually the only ones up here at dawn on the weekends, and Lobo didn’t like surprises. Let’s go, the hyena projected, with all the tense anxiety of an unsocialized creature. Before she spots us.
Bucky had seen Pepper around since the incident with Tony. She made him nervous, pushed him to retreating into the shadows as she walked briskly through the hallways with her entourage. If there was anyone that could be called a civilian here, it was this woman, with her sleek business look and neatly pinned back hair and perfect office makeup. She was the least likely to be a threat. But perhaps that was why he did not want her to see him – because she seemed so normal, and he was anything but normal.
Before he could turn back, Pepper spoke, still facing away from them. “Good morning.” When Bucky failed to untangle his tongue and return the greeting like a normal human being, she turned to face him and went on, as though this was normal: “There’s coffee if you want some.”
Bucky hesitated briefly. He flicked an uneasy measuring glance at Pepper. She was standing there waiting for him. There was no way to extricate himself from this scene without making it unbearably awkward. He moved towards the kitchen to fix himself coffee, fiddling unnecessarily with everything to cover up the silence. While he was occupied, Pepper followed him into the kitchen area. He darted a glance at her, keeping her in his peripheral vision. He didn’t like it when people moved around when he had his back turned, and he didn’t like it when people came too close to him, and she was hovering at the edges of her personal space.
“I realize we haven’t been properly introduced,” she said, lightly, but deliberate enough that he had to speak to her, according to the rituals of introduction. “I’m Pepper Potts.”
Bucky contemplated her outstretched hand for just a shade too long before his conditioning kicked into gear. The asset had needed to pass as human before, and under the layers of those broken years, once he had been human. He shook her hand, and as stupid as that was, because of course she knew, spoke his name. “Bucky Barnes.”
“Nice to meet you, Bucky,” she said, too warm to be mocking.
Her gentle tone startled him into meeting her perceptive eyes. He didn’t try to smile. She knew what he was. She’d seen enough to know he wasn’t always himself. “Are you sure?” he asked, somewhat incoherently. The comment wasn’t thought through. He suspected something in him needed to see her loose her composure.
He paused, reordered the words. “I hurt your friends.”
Pepper did not appear perturbed as she gazed back at him over the rim of her mug. When she spoke, it was matter of fact. “I know. And I’m not sure. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. We all are. For Steve’s sake.”
Her words were followed by a tense silence that she let stand deliberately, he knew, because he’d seen enough of her press conferences to know she was good at calculating her words, orchestrating the press, feeding them lines when the tension stretched, keeping them hanging and silent on her dramatic pauses.
For Steve’s sake.
He’d bristled when Pepper said Steve’s name. He realized this at the same time as he understood, with a lurch of self-disgust, that there was more than one reason for his nervousness around Pepper. She reminded him of Peggy. A beautiful woman who could put that green boy he’d been in his rightful place with one cutting direct look. A self-confident woman who was somehow whole in a way that he had not been then and would never be now. He’d seen Pepper during the press conferences, standing behind the podium, amidst the flashes of cameras and the shouts of journalists. She was all poise and composure, like Peggy had been, and he had envied her – as he had envied Peggy - that self-possession.
Now that he was putting Bucky back together from jagged fragments, he had to re encounter his twisted jealousies. He remembered Steve’s eyes on Peggy alight with admiration and shy worship. He remembered looking away, embarrassed, not knowing where to turn. Because he had been a coward and not let Steve know how he really felt, and now it was too late.
There had been good days amidst the darkness and violence of war. He remembered Waverly, Peggy’s squirrel daemon, scampering madly around them, and Arden watching from above and Lobo lounging at their feet; happy in a way he had never been before. But before, back then, he’d always known that when he did not know where to look, he could always turn to Steve. And then he returned from the first darkness to find that his friend had become an invincible hero enamored by his first love, binding himself to duty and what must be done. And after the second darkness, decades of darkness, he had emerged to find a weary leader of heroes who had no one to love, who was hesitant and careful and wanted to call him by the name of a scared boy he had left behind.
“I’m not the man he knew anymore,” Bucky said. “Steve can’t…” He stopped because he didn’t know the word he wanted to say.
“He can’t vouch for you?” Pepper inclined her head. “That doesn’t mean he can’t believe in you.”
That wasn’t saying much. Steve believed in everyone. It was why Bucky had realized he needed to be protected. It wasn’t about his size. Even when he was skinny and small, Steve had been scrappy and tough and more than able to stand up for himself. It was his heart that made him soft.
Bucky was about to grab his coffee and beat a hasty retreat when Pepper’s fox daemon padded toward the hyena and tried to make friends, inching closer, her ears alert, one paw lifted in midair, cautious. Lobo snarled viciously at her, and she scuttled back to her human to be soothed.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky said, quickly, hauling the hyena back by the scruff, tension running through him.
There was a pause as Pepper gathered the fox to her, comforting her. “It’s alright,” she said finally, in a measured tone. “I understand.”
Bucky tightened his grip on the hyena enough that the daemon yelped in pain. The soldier was there, just there, seeking to batten down every wayward thought. Make it quiet. Make it go away.
Pepper was looking at the hyena carefully. “What’s his name?” At attempt to distract. She knew his name as well as she knew Bucky’s. It was in all the books about Captain America, all the documentaries, the museums, all the trappings out of which this world had made Steve Rogers a living legend.
Bucky pulled back again sharply at the scruff of the hyena’s neck to cage it behind his legs, uncomfortable as usual at having someone looking at the misshapen creature that was the reflection of his spirit. “Lobo.”
“You named your daemon wolf.” The words lined up without the rising intonation of a question but there was curiosity in her eyes.
He didn’t offer the response she sought immediately. He remembered the young boy that was Bucky curled in an armchair with that book in his lap, patting the rat that had perched on his shoulder, knowing that one day his little ratty sewer daemon would change and be strong and brave like Lobo.
Because Pepper did not push, Bucky found it less difficult to explain. “It’s from Lobo the King of Currumpaw.” He wondered if Pepper knew about that book. Was it too old? He’d thought it was old back then, how old must it be for her? The sweet relief that thrilled through him when he saw recognition spark in her eyes took him aback. She had read what he had read. What Bucky had read. It was real.
“I remember crying when the hunters killed the white wolf,” Pepper said, softly. “Lobo’s mate. Bianca.” She did not say that Lobo was the name of a brave and intelligent wolf and his daemon was no wolf but a cowardly ugly hyena.
Little Bucky with his cowlick and his brash face had wanted a big wolf for his daemon, intelligent and loyal and strong and impressive. Instead, his daemon had began life flitting between small contemptible forms that fit in his pocket – rats and bats and frogs – and when it had grown in size, had settled on the form of the most despised of beasts. But once wolves had been beasts to exterminate. And a fox was not much better, he found himself thinking. Foxes too were thought of as vermin.
“A fox is a wolf who sends flowers,” Pepper said, with a half-smile. She was too close to reading his mind. Foxes were cunning. That was their thing. The vixen was staring at him, head tilted, as though she could see past his lies.
“What’s her name?” Bucky asked. His turn to distract.
“Sienna,” Pepper said, glancing at her daemon, giving a wry smile. She tugged on a lock of her hair. “I hated this as a child. The children used to taunt me and I’d come home and cry into my daemon’s fur. I think that was why Sienna decided to have the same affliction. She was a red panda before, but I think that was too cute by half for what I became.”
The fox's fur was more orange than red, like Pepper’s hair, more like the promise of dawn than the bloody drama of the setting sun. “Your hair is like the sunrise,” Bucky said, and then realized what he had said and stopped sharply.
She looked startled. “Oh. Thank you.” There was the faintest flush to her cheeks. It was too direct, not what a man said to a woman he’d just met officially. Especially not a man like him.
He tried to make reparations, awkwardly. “Why don’t… why didn’t you like it?” Still too blunt. Decades since he had made small talk. The voice in his head yammered that he should shut his goddamn mouth, but he saw that Pepper’s lips had turned up into a soft smile. She had sat down at the kitchen table, turning her mug in her hands. “I was an insecure child.”
Bucky waited, because this time the silence was a gentle lull and the spell of her voice would be cast again to lure him into her story.
“My mother was blonde and beautiful. She wanted me to be her little golden pretty girl. But I was freckled and my hair clashed with the pink frilly dresses she wanted me to wear. She told me she did not know where my red hair came from. Nobody in her family had red hair she said. And then I found out she was a bottle blonde and Rossi in Italian meant red.”
"Capelli Rossi, o tutto foco o tutto mosci," Bucky murmured.
Pepper looked surprised, then slowly she smiled softly at him. “Yes.”
“Didn’t know our resident assassin spoke Italian.” Bucky jerked round to the source of the drawl from the doorway. Tony. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Liadan, perched on his shoulder, was agitated. There was volatility to Stark’s movements, the spark of something dangerous just waiting to be sparked into action. Bucky looked at him warily.
“Red hair, all fire or all softness. Which is Pepper, Soldier?” Tony asked, moving into the kitchen, light tone belying his strange mood. Bucky knew better than to answer. He shook his head, bit the inside of his cheek. Tony had called him soldier.
“Stop it, Tony,” Pepper said.
Bucky had guessed there was something a little too deliberate about the way Bucky and Pepper kept just missing speaking to each other. He’d suspected Tony wouldn’t be too pleased if Bucky got too close to her. But he hadn’t gotten too close. This was not about that. He knew there was danger here, that the aftermath of what was between them was far from over.
Tony walked forward, and Bucky backed up automatically, Lobo’s claws skittering on the tiles as he moved fast to find a place to hide. “Well?” There was a mocking challenge there now. “You want to ask her if the carpet matches the drapes, soldier boy?”
Bucky stared at him, brows furrowing in confusion. What carpet?
“Tony. Look at him,” Pepper said softly. “Can’t you see?”
Tony saw whatever it was she wanted him to see, and an indecipherable look flickered across his face. He moved too suddenly, and Bucky flinched, tucking his head down and turning away slightly. When nothing struck him, he raised his eyes cautiously, realizing that it must have been a reaction test, and at that the solider took over because the soldier knew about tests and knew that he had failed this one. He’d not stood still.
“Sorry sir,” the soldier said, apologizing in a monotone that knew sorry was never enough. He needed to prove he could hold still for punishment. The soldier sought missions and obedience, and this man could give him orders. He had the tone for command.
There was a beat of dense silence as Tony stared at him. “What are you apologizing for, Winter?” His voice was curiously flat.
“Moving, sir,” the soldier said. “It will not happen again.” It was so easy to be obedient.
Tony drew in a breath. “Do you remember?” he asked, bluntly, not at all like the man he had first met who was so clever with his masks.
The soldier blinked slowly.
“Tell me,” Tony demanded. His eyes. There was something about those dark intelligent eyes, and the need filling them. Remember me, remember me…
He was a target.
The soldier lunged for a weapon, but he hadn’t even managed to fully close his hand around the knife handle before his metal arm flared into crippling pain. He dropped to the floor, the knife still clutched in his hand, hearing the hyena do his high-pitched scream and then the silent open mouthed howl that had replaced sound when they taught him not to make a sound. The soldier curled around himself. There were running footsteps, and more people around him.
There were raised voices and then there was a boot on his wrist that pressed down hard. A familiar voice commanded: “Let it go. Drop the knife now.”
Steve. He was once a target too.
Bucky released the knife. It clattered on the tiles. Steve picked it up quickly, threw it to someone else, and hauled Bucky up to his knees sharply. Bucky went were he was pulled, not fighting the grip pinning his hands, the alarmed, wary faces around him blurring. Lobo hovered at his side, uncertain whether to attack or submit, his training urging him to one, his instinct to another.
“Buck?” Steve said, and the question was both wary and concerned - even now, even after this. Arden flapped down to settle on Lobo’s back, and that calmed him from bristling and stalking to an uneasy stillness, scenting the air, ears alert. We should run, Lobo told him. Leave. Now.
“I promised I wouldn’t run,” Bucky said to the daemon, to Steve, voice raw, not hiding anything.
Steve’s grip tightened. “Are you breaking your promise?”
“No,” Bucky said. “I won’t run. But you should tell me to go.” He twisted, got to his feet, looked at Steve with everything he could not say, and something shivered between them, almost visible in the air itself, and in the relieved hush, they forgot that they had an audience. Steve’s eyes said too much. He was not used to subterfuge.
“Oh,” Pepper said, softly, and that was all she said, but it was enough. Steve did not look away from him, but they both felt the change in atmosphere, the realization of what they were to each other. A murmur moved through the group. “Huh,” Clint said, but in a kind of considering voice, as though it cleared up something. Only Natasha looked unsurprised, the faintest smile curved her lips, her lynx giving a raspy bark of approval. Only the Black Widow could smile at a time like this, Bucky thought, though he appreciated her silent support, wished he could acknowledge it.
Steve looked around and frowned forbiddingly, daring his team to make a derogatory remark, the protectiveness emanating from him tangible.
Stark moved, abortive and jerky. “Sweet,” he said, raising a passable sneer. Bucky knew his heart wasn’t even half in the taunt. The emotion rolling off him was sorrow, not anger. Pepper put her hand gently on Stark’s shoulder, and, surprisingly, he didn’t shrug it away, seemed almost to lean into her touch. “Say it,” he demanded, looking straight at Bucky, the desperation still there, a dangerous vulnerability worn too openly.
Bucky said it, immediately. “I killed your parents.” He faced Stark, saw the nightmare that had woken him up last night in his mind’s eye, the empty-eyed soldier killing a man with Stark’s eyes, killing a man who had once called him friend.
“Why?” Stark asked, the eternal question, reduced to that complaint of the orphaned and the hurting against God, destiny, fate.
“I don’t know,” Bucky said, making his voice level, battening down emotion. “I killed them because Hydra told me to kill them. I didn’t hesitate.” Stark’s fist tightened. No one moved. “It was quick. That’s all I can tell you,” Bucky said.
Stark took a breath that faltered in the middle. “I knew,” he said, forcing the words out. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
Bucky bowed his head. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. He felt, suddenly, as though he was back where he had begun, waiting for a verdict on what would be done with him, waiting for Fury and his silent shadow to stalk into the room, waiting for the officious-looking desk jockey who, it had turned out, was much more than a paper-pusher. The atmosphere was sharp enough to lacerate, tension spun tight through every battle-ready body. The solider was desperate to take over, edging into his mind to make everything cold and distant and painfully sharp. Bucky consciously eased the tension in his locked up muscles, told himself he was safe here, but he was all too aware of that presence in his mind that told him to stop being pathetic, to act like the weapon he was. Lobo bristled with unease.
“Do you want me to leave?” Bucky said, into the expansive silence, a question directed at them all, but keeping his gaze on Stark all the while.
Stark did not answer. It was Pepper who saw it, the way Steve stood straighter, moved closer, understood what it implied. “You wouldn’t be leaving alone,” she said.
Bucky, startled, looked at Steve, who inclined his head. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” Steve said, a simple statement of fact. And just like that, everyone else faded into the background. All that mattered was Steve turning his question back upon him, soft and without challenge: “Do you want to leave?”
The question, the tone, changed everything. Steve was not throwing him out, was not abandoning him. He was asking if he wanted to go on a journey with him. Bucky wanted. But he knew what he would be doing if he forced Steve away from his team. He started to shake his head. They needed their Captain.
“You’d come back,” Stark said, rustily. He paused a moment before adding, without a grudging tone, only an expectant one: “Both of you.”
“It might be a good idea,” said Natasah, looking at Steve, gauging how he felt about all this with those keen miss-nothing eyes.
“Of course it’s a good idea,” said Stark, brusquely. “I only have good ideas.” He dug in his pocket and threw something to Steve, who caught it, looked at it, and then actually allowed himself a slow smile.
“Howard would have been proud of you, Tony,” Steve told his old friend’s son, with the sincerity only he was capable of, and Stark – Tony – made a flapping waving gesture that could have meant anything. Bucky knew the discomfort that was there was not only because, arrogant as he seemed, the man could not take a compliment, it was because there were still secrets between them, still the soldier’s remembered screams in Stark’s mind, the soldier’s murders on Bucky’s conscience.
“Thank you,” Bucky said, looking straight at Stark. Tony gave him a quick nod, then turned away. It would take time. The man was good at those brushing off gestures, but some things could not be brushed off. Despite what people said, forgiveness had nothing to do with forgetting, and Bucky would not ask for either. For now, this was enough.
“Do you remember Howard’s car?” Steve asked, as the others began to disperse, slowly, giving them the space they needed. He uncurled his hand to show a car key with a key ring, a tiny replica of Howard’s hovering red car that had amazed them for a few spellbound seconds.
Feeling slightly disoriented after the sudden change in mood, Bucky nodded. “I remember.” He had seen the photographs, vaguely linked them with heady excitement, two pretty girls with laughter in their shining eyes and ready smiles. But most of all he remembered a skinny young man with his ambitions destroyed, the dejected set of his narrow shoulders and how Bucky had wanted to hug him close, wanted to forget the disapproval of the passersby and reel him in and make him dance, make him smile…like he was smiling now, quick and sudden, with the excitement of the boy he had been, a mischevious half-grin.
“So. Want to go on a roadtrip?”