"How many are we talking about?"
A silence sat over the room. Solemn, quiet. Grieving.
Steve Rodgers ran a hand over his mouth.
"Trillions," He answered, looking up at the holographic faces that sat before him. "An amount prior to unheard of."
"And on your end?" Agent Haze shifted in her seat, her eyes empty behind thickly-rimmed glasses. "The Avengers Initiative was designed to prevent something like this from ever happening. Now that it has, it is our responsibility to keep track of how many super-beings are still inhabiting this planet, just in case somebody decides to take it onto themselves to act up."
"Vision died." Natasha answered for Steve, her voice numb and cracking. "King T'Challa of Wakanda. Peter Parker. Stephen Strange. Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff, Nick Fury, Maria Hill. Scott Lang. Tony Stark. And your sister. August Haze. All of them, dead. Gone. Is that what you wanted to know?"
"Where is Thor?" This time, it was the new Vice-President who piped up.
"He's taking some time." Natasha answered again. "He doesn't want to be harassed by bureaucrats from a planet he's not even from. He's here, but he's spending this time with his son."
"And James Buchanan Barnes? The assassin?"
"Bucky is grieving," Steve found his voice. "He doesn't want to be bothered."
"I'm not sure I'm comfortable letting a renowned Hydra ex-assassin sit idly by in some corner of the world unchecked."
"He lost his wife." His voice was hollow. "He lost his pregnant wife. He just wants to be left alone, to tend to his farm and live in peace. Figure out how to live again. All due respect, Mr. Vice-President, but if you want to drag him out of his grieving process just for some false sense of security, you're going to have to go through me."
The memory came to him in flashes as he spoke. Bucky, taking off through the Wakandan country side, ignoring Steve's cries for him to stop. Reaching the clearing, Steve hot on his heels. Collapsing in front of the manor, sobbing so hard that he could barely breathe.
The days that followed. Steve half-sleeping in a chair in the corner of the bedroom. Bucky waking up every other hour, screaming at the top of his lungs, tears rolling down his face from the nightmares. Steve holding him until he fell back asleep.
Bucky had found the pregnancy test in the bathroom trash just a few days later. He had said nothing, just quietly held it, curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor. He had slept there that night, Steve staying awake on the floor beside him, always alert and prepared to soothe the nightmares.
It had only been two weeks since the devastation had occurred. The only reason that Steve was in New York rather than at his best friends side was for this briefing. He would not have come, but a Dora woman - Anume, she had called herself - who had been Augusts closest friend had agreed to keep an eye on Bucky.
The VP frowned at his response.
"Somebody has to-"
"Mr. Vice-President," Agent Haze interrupted. "We are all filling roles that we are not used to right now. There is no need to drag Mr. Barnes into this when he is doing nothing wrong by electing to be alone."
But the Vice-President was not dropping this. He crossed his arms, sitting back in his chair.
"Either I get an update on Barnes, or I send a couple hundred national guardsmen to check on him for me."
Agent Haze sighed deeply.
"I'll go myself, with Captain Rogers as an escort. He's my brother-in-law, it is best that I go anyways. Does that work for you?"
YOU ARE READING
SURVIVE ➤ BUCKY BARNES
Fanfiction"i think of you-" "think of me?" August had never identified as a hero. She had never chosen to do what she did. Spending her entire life as a pawn in somebody else's wretched game. She was whatever they made her - a hero, a...
