LAST CHAPTER
Chapter Quote:
“You’re late.”
~Peggy Carter, Captain America: The First Avenger
___________________________________________
Chapter 17
Bucky
Two years later…
“Don’t you say it! Don’t you dare say it!” Sam warned.
“On your left!” Steve said, blasting past Falcon. Simultaneously I said, “On your right!”
“Come on!” Sam groaned, trying to pick up the pace to catch up with us. It didn’t work out so well and by the time Steve and I reached my apartment, Sam was about a mile behind us. We decided to wait for him. It took about seven minutes for him to round the corner. He came to a stop in front of us, bracing himself on his knees and breathing heavily.
“Need a medic?” Steve asked.
“I still need that new pair of lungs,” Sam puffed out. Steve clapped him on the back.
“Come on, Annabeth has breakfast ready for us,” I said. We trudged into the building and up the stairs. We could smell breakfast before we entered the apartment. Annabeth was moving around the kitchen, cleaning and watching Elizabeth out of the corner of her eye and making sure she didn’t throw any cereal. Then again, Bryn had inherited my stubbornness (or possibly Annabeth’s because we’re both extremely stubborn). When my wife saw us come in, she grinned and said, “You’re late.”
“Got held back,” I joked, glancing over at Sam who made a face at me. Steve picked up my daughter. She adored him, laughing the second she was in his arms. I walked over to Annabeth, giving her a kiss.
“We need to hurry up. I told Natasha we’d be at her place in two hours and between your sweatiness and you needing to eat, and my need to eat, shower, dress, and dress Bryn, we are very short on time. Chop chop!” She urged.
I laughed, giving her a feather-light poke in the stomach. “Stop stressing. It’s not good for the baby.”
“I was more stressed than this with Bryn and she turned out fine,” Annabeth remarked, staring in amusement as our daughter pretended to punch Steve in the face who acted out his part.
“Still don’t want to risk it. I’ll dress Bryn. You do whatever you need to.”
“You’re the best,” she said, kissing me on the cheek before gulping down an entire pancake in two minutes flat. My wife was impressive like that.
I let Steve and Sam take showers before me. They’d spent the night so all their stuff was here and they could dress easily. I used the guest shower while Annabeth used ours. After I’d gotten dressed, I tried to pick an appropriate outfit for Bryn but my fashion taste was not the best when it came to babies. Thankfully my wife came to the rescue. The five of us left right on time and headed to Natasha’s house. We were getting together for an update from a guy named Nick Fury on his mission overseas. I’d never met him, only tried to kill him once or twice. Possibly thrice… I don’t remember.
Annabeth pulled up to Natasha’s apartment and we filed out. Annabeth led the way, knocking politely on the door. The Black Widow opened it; she wore a black dress with dark blue lines running through it, reminding me of an outfit she wore fighting the robot Ultron (I’d seen pictures). She greeted us with a smile and let us in. A man in a black trench coat and an eye patch rounded the corner. Approaching me, he held his hand out for me. I shook it.
“Nick Fury,” he said.
“James Barnes, but you can call me Bucky.”
Fury stared at me, sizing me up. “So, you’re the Winter Soldier.”
“I was sir.”
“A lot of people thought you were a myth,” he remarked.
Before I could stop myself, I went, “Well they were myth-staken.” Steve snorted. Annabeth punched me in the arm but she was grinning. “Anyway, that whole Winter Soldier thing, not my scene anymore.”
“Would you want to give the name a new reputation?”
I gave him a curious look. “What type?”
“Maybe as an Avenger?”
“Sir, that’s a great offer, but I have relapses. I don’t know what would happen or what I would cause if I was in battle and had one.”
“You’ve had one in the last two years. You’ve gotten a handle on it and part of the problem is you denying it. You have a power not many do Sergeant Barnes. You should use it for good.”
“What about my family? I can’t leave them. If I get involved, they’ll be in danger.”
“They’ll always be in danger, and not just because of you. Annabeth has a fair share of enemies simply because she worked for Hydra. She can also defend herself if need be. You, Steve, Sam, Natasha, you’ve all been training her. I’ve already talked to her. She said she would stay with Pepper or Jane. As I recall, they’ve all formed a friendship.”
“I’ll talk to her,” I said, knowing nothing else would satisfy him. I walked away. Making my way over to Annabeth, I found her talking to Jane Foster, the scientist Thor was dating. When Jane saw me, she smiled and managed to excuse herself from the conversation.
“Hey you,” I said, giving my wife a kiss on the cheek.
“Hey yourself. You okay?”
“Fury’s trying to get me to be an Avenger,” I mumbled. “I’m not leaving you and Bryn and I’m not risking fighting and having a relapse and possibly injuring people on my side.”
She turned around. “Bryn and I would be fine. Besides, I’ve seen the way you look when Steve goes on missions. You want to get back in the life. You died fighting a war. You’ve fought in another one for seventy years. You’re still in the mindset. Steve would be there if anything went wrong. If you had a relapse, which I don’t think you would, he would be there to bring you out of it.”
“But I’d leave you unguarded.”
“First off, I can take care of myself. Second, I wouldn’t stay by myself. I’d go stay with Pepper or Jane.”
“So you want me to do this?”
“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to, but I also want to see you doing something that makes you happy. I know you love me, and I know you love our daughter and our future son, but you’re going stir-crazy being home all the time.”
“People still see me as the Winter Soldier. They’re terrified of me,” I pointed out.
“So give the Winter Soldier a new reputation,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “You have an amazing set of skills, and maybe if you allow yourself to use them, let yourself be the Winter Soldier again, you’d embrace that new Winter Soldier mindset and then maybe you wouldn’t have to worry about relapses. Does that make sense?”
“I… I guess.” At that moment, Fury called us all into a circle. Thor was holding Bryn now and my daughter kept pulling at his hair but he let her. He turned to Jane and remarked, “This baby. I like it.”
Horror passed over her face as she said, “Thor. NO.”
The Asgardian grinned devilishly before handing my daughter to me. She squealed in delight and rested her head in the crook of my neck.
“All right, listen up,” Fury began. “In this room are the best of the best in this world, the people most qualified to save the earth if we have an alien invasion again.”
“Or a mental, eight foot robot,” Hawkeye added. Tony Stark glared at him.
“That too. I have a new mission for you. It involves dealing with an enemy that has decided to hide in the shadows, biding their time until they can resurface and aim for world domination again. Captain, Sergeant Barnes, Mrs. Barnes, Natasha, Wilson, you’ve dealt with this enemy more recently, saving one of your own from their clutches.”
“Hydra,” Annabeth stated.
Fury nodded and continued. “We need to take them out systematically. Destroy their bases and take their technology out of their hands. We may not like Hydra, but they have technology that would be beneficial should we ever have an alien invasion because as we’ve learned, they have superior weaponry compared to us. You do not have to join this mission if you do not wish, but I can’t do this alone.”
“I’m in,” Steve agreed. “But we’re using the weapons we confiscate strictly against enemies with firepower equal to it.”
“Sounds like it’ll be fun. I’m in,” Natasha said.
“Count me in,” Hawkeye added.
“Someone has to make sure Legolas here doesn’t die jumping off a building since he has a tendency to do that so add me in the group,” Stark said, earning a glare from the archer.
“We’ll take turns saving him,” Sam laughed.
“I will destroy the group that have caused my friends so much pain. I, Thor of Asgard, wish to be included.”
“Let’s see how they fight against a Hulk,” Banner commented.
“I know Hydra inside and out. Any code, any information, I can break it or read it. Count me in,” Annabeth declared.
“I can help!” Jane jumped in.
“I can provide everything you need. You can stay at the tower,” Pepper offered.
Fury nodded. He looked at me. “What about you Barnes?”
Everyone’s eyes turned to me. I took a deep breath. “So when do we start?”
Nick simply answered, “We just did.”
___________________________________________
Hope you enjoyed the story! Not sure if I’m going to write a sequel or not so for now it’s just this one. Thank you to everyone who reviewed and favorited and add this to story alert! Y’all were my inspiration to keep writing :) Oh, and thank you to the users on tumblr (I can’t find you) who gave me the idea for the ‘myth-staken’ and ‘This baby. I like it’ jokes!
Love,
Wisegirl502