Jane Buchanan Barnes

She was trying not to do the whole worried staring thing while she watched her eat, but it was hard to tear her eyes off Bucky. The time apart had been bad enough, Stevie sending her frequent letters and drawings and having no idea if she was even receiving them after a while. Then believing she might be dead, and finding her in a state of having been starved, tortured, and experimented on. It had sent her natural protectiveness into overdrive, and it was like now she had an excess of the feeling with nowhere to channel it. She certainly wasn't going to smother Bucky with it. Maybe. Probably. Okay, still on the fence about that one.

She was still reassuring herself that her best friend was really alive and safe. The fact that she was skin and bones wasn't helping with that. She licked her lips, suddenly finding it much easier to stare at the floor than it was to face that piercing stare. Stevie had known this talk was coming, and she wasn't even surprised that Bucky would fix on it first thing, ahead of her own needs or trauma. She was actively trying not to fidget under her scrutiny, her body suddenly feeling too large and awkward, as it often had since the serum.

"I wanted to tell you, Buck. But I couldn't exactly put it all into a letter. That night at the expo…" She launched into the story of trying to enlist and meeting Erskine, the chance he'd given her. There are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is a woman. She glossed over the bullying at basic training and the pain of the procedure, lingering a moment on Erskine's death in her grief. She still mourned him, this man who'd seen the potential in her and given her a chance. She skimmed over the months with the USO tour as well, ending with Peggy's arrival and getting to Austria.

"…And here we are." Then there was silence while she waited for her reaction. Stevie knew full well that she'd been reckless, not just once but a number of times. She'd been trying not to think what her ma or Bucky would have said about it, but it wasn't like she'd have asked permission even if they'd been there. Once she set her mind on something, there was no shaking her, and Stevie had always intended to join Bucky on the warfront if it were possible. She couldn't even lie and say she was sorry.

Bucky listened hard as Stevie spoke, and she only realized that she was gaping open-mouthed at her when a glob of oatmeal fell from her stationary spoon, landing in her lap with a soft plop.

She didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, this was Stevie, and of course she’d jumped at the chance to be able to join the fight against fascism. She wouldn’t have been the woman Bucky knew and loved if she’d turned the opportunity down. But on the other hand…

It sounded an awful lot like Stevie had volunteered to be someone’s lab rat.

Bucky knew a thing or two about being made into a lab rat. She’d been on burial detail in the factory sometimes, dealing with the bodies of the soldiers killed by the work or by the guards, and, worse, the bodies that had come back from the little doctor’s laboratory – if they could even still be called bodies after everything he’d done to them.

Then she’d been taken into the same laboratory herself, to be drugged and tortured and cut open alive. She’d lain strapped down on that gurney and prayed to God and the Virgin Mary and every saint she knew for a swift death. But instead of death, God had sent her Stevie.

She was still staring at her friend with wide eyes, and now she put her spoon down. “Jesus. Tell me this Erskine fella at least made sure his serum wouldn’t kill you ‘fore he tried blowin’ you up like Conan the Goddamn Barbarian,” she finally said. “And that it wouldn’t make you all–” She broke off and mimed pulling her face from her chin up over her scalp.

“That– That happened, right? I wasn’t seein’ things?” she asked, needing confirmation. “’Cause I saw a lotta things that I don’t think were real, ‘fore you showed up. Wasn’t sure you were real, at first.”

He chuckled, the sound bitter and a little raw. "There's nothin' you can do to me worse than what's already been done, sweetheart." He wasn't afraid of dying. In a way, Brock felt, he'd already died when the Triskelion fell. Everything worth living for had gone down with it. He was on borrowed time now. He knew she could torture him properly, that whatever time he had left could be a lot rougher than it was, but again, it was just a holdover before death. Things were a lot simpler with the end in sight.

"Fuck HYDRA. Left me for dead, didn't they? Was your side pulled me out." It was a guess, his gaze on her face gauging her reaction. He didn't peg her for HYDRA either, but something felt… not right about her being SHIELD or whatever they called themselves now. She certainly wasn't an Avenger, and there just weren't that many powered people running around out there unaccounted for. He knew the Winter Soldier was in the wind. He might put it together eventually, if he stopped having his head knocked upside the wall.

His eyes narrowed, but he didn't elaborate further at the mention of Cap. He could and did blame the Avengers for his current state, but not enough to do anything about it. He'd consider that lesson learned. They were too powerful and too well protected to go after in his current state, whereas HYDRA was scattered and weak and made for a better target. "Better kill me. You ain't gonna get another shot."

"Not my people."

The words were out before Jane could stop them, and as much as she hadn't meant to say them, the fact was that they were true. SHIELD wasn't her people. In fact, she didn't have much love for SHIELD at all, despite the fact that both Steve and Natasha had worked for them and some of their agents had helped bring down Project Insight. She was glad those helicarriers had ended in the river, but not just because HYDRA had been planning to hijack them. Project Insight had been evil from the beginning, and it had been SHIELD who had come up with the idea in the first place. Jane knew full well that they had only balked at the idea of one organization having the power of life and death over billions when they had realized that it wouldn't be their hands on the switch.

But Jane, like Steve, didn't care whose hands were on the switch. She objected to the fact that the switch existed at all.

In a move that might surprise her captive, Jane let go of him and stepped back. "Pretty sure I can find you again if I need to," she said coolly. After all, she hadn't spent seventy years as one of the world's top assassins and covert agents for nothing. Rumlow could run if he wanted to, but no target had ever successfully hidden from the Winter Soldier.

"If you're after HYDRA, then I got no quarrel with you," she continued. "But if you even look at Cap or any of his people, you're dead. Got it?"

Perhaps a spark of mischief was echoing through the decades from the woman she had once been, the old Bucky Barnes, because at this moment, Jane thought that letting Rumlow loose on HYDRA had the potential to be entertaining as well as useful. She'd keep tabs on him, and as long as he wasn't hurting innocents, she'd let him be -- for now. But once he'd done as much damage as he could? Then Jane would come back for him.

my heart wanted something tender

can u believe……bucky barnes and natasha romanoff found each others humanity in a place designed specifically to strip them of it. can u believe they managed to find each other again and again across decades and decades and loved each other time and time again, in different situations, as different people. can u fucking believe that shit.

Managing a tower full of wildly different personalities was always going to be a challenge, with or without the former Winter Soldier joining their ranks. Though he'd never said as much, Rhodey preferred to have her there. Steve was better when she was around, and Toni was better when Steve was good, and his life was much easier when Toni was happy. It was an adjustment for everyone, but he thought it was a good one, and when it got to be too much, everyone had their own floors to retreat to.

He'd spent enough time around Natasha to recognize when something was up with her, but they weren't close enough for him to get involved without being asked. The only person in the tower he didn't trust to handle their own shit was Toni, and Rhodey still gave her a lot of room to work things out on her own before he barged into her lab and carried her out for a warm meal and a decent night's sleep. Sometimes Steve beat him to it these days.

He returned the nod, on his way to poke around the fridge for a late lunch. He typically spent the mornings in the gym or training, and it ran a little long today. He and Clint may have gotten distracted playing target practice with his new explosive arrows. Rhodey may have been the target. There were a couple of minor burns on his arms where an old suit had finally had enough of their shit. He always looked like the responsible one until he didn't. "Good to see you, Sarge. Not too shabby. How are you doing?"

"Not a sergeant anymore," Bucky said, her tone light. "I been discharged, me." And hadn't that been a relief; Bucky had had enough of being in the army a long time ago. These days she took orders from Steve and no one else, and as Steve only ever gave orders that were necessary, that suited Bucky just fine.

Would Rhodey have noticed Natasha's bad mood? Bucky didn’t know. She knew that Nat trusted everyone in the Tower, just like Steve trusted them, but she didn’t know how well Rhodey could read the Black Widow. Natasha was good at hiding her emotions, and Bucky had only seen it because she knew Natasha as well as she knew herself most days. They had a history together, and she could read Natasha’s moods the same way she could read the alphabet.

She kneaded the last of the flour into the dough and then covered the bowl with a towel before putting it aside. The dough needed to rise for at least an hour before she could actually start forming the dumplings. Then she walked over to the sink to wash the dough from her hands, taking advantage of the nail brush in the drawer to scrub the finger joints of her prosthesis, which had collected a buildup of flour and stray dough. That was one disadvantage to the thing. Sure, she could hold hot objects and punch through walls, but the joints of her flesh-and-blood hand never clogged up when she was cooking.

After drying her hands, she sat down at the kitchen counter and said, "Late lunch? I didn't see you at breakfast this morning."

Clark was fairly used to seeing Bucky handling weapons, but the sheer amount of them laid out on the table was... mildly concerning. He tried to consider the best way to broach the subject as he walked over to the fridge for the mentioned orange juice. "You, uh... going through your whole collection?" he finally asked, returning to the table with a glass.

"Somethin' like that, I guess," Bucky said, pouring out a measure of whiskey for herself. "Just needed to do somethin' I know how to do. Right now there's...a lot that I dunno how to do."

Like be Bucky Barnes in the absence of Steve Rogers.

Of course, while that was an answer, it wasn't the whole answer. The other, unspoken reason was that, if she was going to pursue Tony Stark, she needed to be certain that all her gear was in working order. But she wasn't going to say that to Clark. He would certainly disapprove of her plans and try to stop her, and she couldn't have that.

Steve had mixed feelings about the apartment. It was far too big for one person, and he occasionally felt like a ghost rattling around in there. What did he need with an entire extra bedroom? He hardly ever had guests, and he didn't draw or paint enough these days to necessitate a studio or an office. It was also just… in the wrong burrough. He hadn't been able to stomach moving back to Brooklyn without Bucky, but anything else felt wrong. It was a stupid issue, one he'd brought on himself, but given how little time he spent there lately, it wasn't a priority.

His gaze lingered on the whiskey for a moment before he moved to pour himself a glass. If she wanted to pretend this was an ordinary social call, he could try, although pretending wasn't really one of Steve's strengths. "The most state of the art security system on the market might slow you down, but it wouldn't stop you," he pointed out, raising an eyebrow. It was typical Rogers reasoning that if a fancy security system wouldn't keep out anyone who really wanted to get in, then he might as well not bother with anything more than a deadbolt.

Oh. Not a social call at all then. He wasn't expecting an apology right out of the gate either. He took a drink to buy himself a moment to process all of that, but really… it wasn't necessary. It made sense if you understood a thing about Bucky Barnes, and he thought he did, even after all this time. He set the glass on the counter, his gaze soft. "There's nothing to forgive, Buck. You did what you had to do. I'm glad you're here." He pulled out one of the chairs at the counter and took a seat, not so close as to crowd her. "Are you okay?"

"I'm...better than I was," Bucky said. Then, shooting him a wry half-smile, she added, “I’m glad I’m here, too. Glad you’re here. I know I pulled you outta that damn river, but I spent the first couple days worried you wouldn’t make it. Worried that even then, it was too late.”

She’d had nightmares about that day for months, dreams where Steve bled out on the helicarrier, or where she jumped after him but couldn’t find him in the river, or where she pulled him out of the water only to find that he had drowned. There had always been a moment of panic when she woke, before her brain caught up with itself and she remembered that Steve had survived.

Part of her wanted to apologize for hurting him, but she had a hunch that he’d respond by telling that it wasn’t her fault. That he didn’t blame her. That she hadn’t been in control of herself. And those were all things that she didn’t want to hear. She might have been brainwashed, but she’d still done it. She’d stabbed him, put a bullet in him, beaten him almost to unconsciousness. Maybe she hadn’t had a choice, but it was her hands that had done the deed, her mind that had stored the memory in vivid detail.

In some ways, it was like being pulled out of that factory all over again and realizing that Steve would never understand what had happened, because he’d never experienced anything like it.

Not his fault. Just the way things were.

It wasn't like HYDRA handed out a welcome manual to their new recruits. But, still, Brock thought he knew who he'd been working for. He could see why they targeted military black ops, people who were used to following orders and didn't mind blurring a few lines when it came to ethics. People like him. He wasn't sure how much he'd ever bought the ideology--he wasn't really the sort of person who believed in things, outside of the chain of command--but there was a certain attractiveness to the way they did things. Order, power, pain, those were things that made sense to him. The perceived straightforwardness appealed to him.

But of course it wasn't. HYDRA lied just as well to its own as it did to the rest of the world, and he realized far too late that he was just another expendable weapon in the arsenal, easily discarded when it no longer served a purpose. Shit, Rumlow had more respect for his own gun than HYDRA had for him. It wasn't like he could go back to life before. Aside from being a wanted criminal, he was in no shape to return to the SEALS. They'd taken everything. He didn't expect to live long on this revenge tour, but he didn't much care anymore.

He gritted his teeth as his hand was caught in a vice grip, the knife slipping from his fingers. His eyes widened slightly, not from the pain but from the realization that she was more than human strong. Though he felt the snap of finger bones, pain shooting through his hand and up his arm like fire, he didn't make a sound. Pain was all relative at this point. It would take a lot more to break him. The second blow against the wall temporarily stunned him, and he was no position to fight it when she ripped the mask off. He smiled through panting breaths, more a baring of teeth than anything.

There was no recognition there, or else she was very good at hiding it-- or he was more dazed than he realized. He winced as his head hit the wall again. Oblivion was sounding like the attractive option right now. "If you're gonna torture for intel, don't start with a blow to the head," he snarled. His name wasn't relevant; if she'd witnessed the shot, he was a criminal either way. "Brock Rumlow. What are you?"

The name pinged something in Jane's memory. Rumlow... Rumlow... She'd read it in the paper, hadn't she? In the news coverage following the collapse of the Triskelion. She was sure she had. Which meant her gut assumption was correct -- he was ex-HYDRA. Ex-HYDRA and, if his actions tonight were any indication, ex-HYDRA with a grudge.

She could kill him right now; he didn't seem to be in any shape for a fight, and there was already a whiff of the coppery tang of blood in their air near him, suggesting open injuries. But she had to admit, too, that she was a little curious. How deep in the organization had he been? What other skills did he have? Might it be worth leaving him alive for now, waiting while he targeted as much of HYDRA as he wanted to, and then coming back to kill him later, after he'd done HYDRA more serious damage? Which of those two options would hurt HYDRA the most?

"You think this is torture?" she said. "This is just a friendly interrogation. Trust me, if I was torturing you, you'd know." Studying his face more closely in the dim light, she added, "And never you mind what I am. You're HYDRA, aren't you? Or you were. Looks like Cap and his allies did a number on you."

That was the other angle she needed to consider -- did this asshole have a grudge against Steve and Natasha and their winged friend? If Jane let him go loose, would he only target HYDRA, or would he also turn his sights on people Jane cared about?

Clark did not do well just waiting on the sidelines. He stopped a robbery in the meantime -- taking even more care than usual to ensure no one was hurt, and leaving them for law enforcement to find and deal with. Anything else would get him accused of brutality. Then it was back to the skies, flying in large aimless circles over Chicago -- the Kryptonian equivalent of pacing anxiously.

"Knowing Luthor, he'll have a lot more than just cameras in there," Clark warned, despite Bucky more than likely knowing this, and having more experience with this sort of infiltration than he ever would. "We're dealing with one of the most intelligent men in the world. Don't underestimate him."

"Not gonna," Bucky reassured her friend. "If I was the underestimatin' type, I'd've been dead a long time ago."

You didn't get to be one of the world's top assassins and covert agents by being careless and slapdash. Every move had to be planned, every angle considered, every possibility weighed and assessed with both speed and accuracy.

Bucky activated the camera disrupter, donned her night vision goggles, and peered out into the corridor. A web of crisscrossing lasers was now visible, but they weren't so densely packed that Bucky didn't think she'd be able to get through. So, moving slowly and carefully, she ventured out of the elevator shaft and into the hall.

"No. You're Steve Roger's best friend. I assumed you'd never give up and become incredibly self righteous and annoying about it." Tony screwed up his face and put on a high and mighty voice he obviously meant to be Cap's as he quoted: "When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world: No, YOU move." The line--which Steve had somehow pulled out of his ass at their last press conference, ignoring all of the careful notes and cards Tony had prepared for him--had been going around the press cycle for weeks now and had gone viral on TikTok. Tony had even seen it printed on notebooks and t-shirts.

Yet, despite his teasing, Tony's expression remained good natured as he smiled lightly and he rolled his chair back from his desk. He stood up, stretched, and turned to Bucky. "All I'm saying is that whatever you're up to, I probably have a machine that can do it faster and safer. Asking for help won't kill you, you know. So let's try it: Tony, I need help."

'Oh, c'mon," Bucky said, "even you gotta admit that that was a great line." Which was, at least to Bucky, no surprise -- Steve had a gift for great lines, for coming up with something meaningful and moving on the spot. He'd used that talent to great effect during the war, and now that the war was over he was still using it to inspire people to do better. That was one of the qualities that made him so effective as Captain America, as a symbol of hope and justice.

She leaned back against the nearest worktable, though she took care not to dislodge anything, and admitted, "I do need help. I just dunno that your machines are suited to the job. No offense meant, of course," she added hurriedly, "but I just think this might be a people job, not a robot job."

The problem was this -- She had agreed to help Tony track down Colonel Kulikov, the man who had ordered Howard and Maria Stark's deaths. She knew that if they found him and pursued a trial, she would also end up going to trial. And that was fine, she'd accepted it, but if she was going to go to trial, she wanted everything the Soviets and HYDRA had done to be put out in the open. After all, if she was going to let them lock her up, she could at least take the organizations that had used and abused her down with her.

To do that, she would need to retrieve a certain box from its hiding place near the coast of the Laptev Sea. But the trouble with that plan was that she was still under SHIELD-ordered house arrest, unable to leave the Tower.

Clark gave her a small attempt at a smile before making his way back to the kitchen. He could heat up the meal with his heat vision, of course, but the extra baking time would give them a chance to talk -- for however much talking she was willing to do.

Once the dish was tucked away into the oven, Clark went back to find her, taking note of everything out of place in the apartment. "I can help you clean, if you want. I know it's... harder to keep up with that sort of thing when... you're grieving."

"Naw, no need," Bucky said. "I'll just clear the table. I can get to the rest later. It'll gimme somethin' to do." She gave a not-very-amused laugh and said, "That's the reason it's all out in the first place -- I needed somethin' to do with my hands."

Carefully, she sheathed her various knives and then moved her accumulated weapons from the kitchen table to the coffee table. Then, sitting down, she said. "You can help yourself to a drink. I think I still got some orange juice in the fridge. Otherwise it's tap water or whiskey."

She was right. Of course she was. Their first meeting had been when she'd tried to kill him, after all -- and he couldn't even fathom holding that against her. It went both ways. But knowing that and internalizing it were very different beasts.

"I can bring some food," he finally replied. It was probably hard to cook while recovering. "And, uh... I wasn't kidding. I really am terrible at Mario Kart."

"Good!" Bucky said, laughing. "Means I'll finally have found somethin' I can kick your ass at. 'Sides, it's hard to play Mario Kart and not laugh, and it sounds like you could use a good laugh."

Maybe, too, if Clark had some fun and a chance to relax, he'd stop raking himself over the coals, too. And if he stopped doing that, he'd probably be better able to focus on coming up with strategies to combat Loki in the future.

I have made many mistakes this week.

"What?" Tony didn't even look at the door as Bucky walked in. "Let me guess: the updates on your arm misfired and blew up a hospital. The children's ward, specifically." He hoped he was being sarcastic, but the moment the words left his lips, the unbidden fear came rushing in: what if he had messed up that badly? What if the improvements he'd promised Bucky would make her life easier had done the opposite? What if people had gotten hurt? What if it was all his fault?

Just like everything else.

He stood, hovering over a computer monitor, which showed a map with thousands of glowing lights upon every inch. Some flickered, more went out. Good. He pointed to one of his employees, sitting at a computer nearby. "Sector 12, shut it down."

It sufficed to say the newest product from Stark Industries--a VR system that was meant to be 'good innocent fun' before it was hacked by one of the many super villains after Tony's head--was not going well. That his stocks had also plummeted that morning, and his personal life was in shambles, all added up to a very-bad-not-so-good-day, and Tony was just waiting for the other, other, shoe to drop.

"That was a joke," he added over his shoulder, speaking to Bucky again. "Tell me it was a joke."

"It was a joke," Bucky said, trying her best to keep her tone reassuring. "Nothing's blown up, at least as far as I know, and definitely not my arm -- I mean, geez, Tony, as if you'd wire somethin' into my body that would blow up! Have a little more respect for your own skills."

Tony's wildly oscillating highs and lows when it came to his own creations still baffled Bucky. Sure, sometimes things didn't go the way he planned -- the current VR emergency being a case in point -- but that was generally due to outside interference, not some flaw inherent in the invention. And when it came to things that would actually be attached to a live human being, Tony was incredibly thorough and exacting. The likelihood of her new prosthesis exploding without a bomb being strapped to it was, in Bucky's mind, about as close to nil as made no difference.

Approaching Tony's seat and peering over his shoulder at the screen in front of him, she asked, "How's damage control goin'? Anythin' I can do to help?"

Granted, given that she was not even remotely on Tony's level when it came to technology, the only help she was really qualified to give would be to track the asshole hacker down and punch him in the face. How helpful that would be was anyone's guess, but at least it would be satisfying.

Excellent. She really was as good as they said -- and she damn well should be, considering the effort that had been put into shaping her. Tal watched from his perch as she made her way down the corridor, noting any obstacles along her path.

She'd almost made it to the door when a movement caught his attention. "The door on your left. Someone's about to come out."

The speed and silence with which Jane reached up, dislodged a ceiling tile, pulled herself up into the resulting cavity, and shifted the tile almost back into place, leaving just enough of a crack that she could see and hear, would have impressed just about any observer -- except, perhaps, Morgan Edge, Jane thought. The man was, after all, one smug son of a bitch, with superhuman powers to boot.

On the other hand, she told herself, she didn't actually need him to respect her, as long as he upheld his side of their bargain. So she remained scrunched up in the ceiling in silence, until her path was looked and sounded clear again. Then she slid from her hiding space and approached the door behind which -- according to Morgan Edge -- this mysterious device lay.

He let out a low whistle, impressed. He didn't think he could make that shot, with a handgun, with a living hostage in the picture. But now he was a little curious to try, sans the hostage bit. It sounded like a challenge, and he did love to put his skills to the test.

A shadow passed over his expression, his tone going darker. "A lot's changed in New York City." Kingpin had seen to that. If she hadn't learned that yet, she would soon, assuming she planned to stay for any length of time. He spread corruption with everything he touched. Castle knew Daredevil would always be fighting back against Fisk, but he was just one man, however extraordinary. Besides, their …methods differed a bit. Frank considered his own more effective, if not quite as noble.

He'd never bothered with a mask. There was no one in his life he needed to protect from what he did, and he hadn't given a shit about his personal safety since all this started. The way he saw it, he was on borrowed time already, a living ghost left to carry out vengeance and not much else. That she'd let him see her face too wasn't exactly a surprise. He was far more culpable than she was for the mess on the street.

He frowned slightly at the sound, not expecting them so close so fast. "New York's finest ain't exactly runnin' my fan club," he acknowledged with a little huff of a laugh. He weighed the options and then stepped toward the open grate. "Promise not to cramp your style."

Jane had to admit, she wasn't thrilled that she was being followed by a stranger. But she waited anyway for him to climb down before she replaced the drain's grate. It wouldn't feel right, leaving him behind to face the cops by himself. Besides, while the Winter Soldier hadn't been allowed to have any sort of moral code, Jane could, and would.

She took a few yards' worth of silent steps before unclipping her flashlight from her belt and flicking it on. No point in giving their position away by the glow of a shining a lightbulb, after all. Similarly, she didn't speak until they were farther along the pipe, where the water was a few inches deeper and where, as long as they kept their voices down, the echoes wouldn't carry up to the street.

"I been away from the city a while," she said noncommittally. "You always spend your nights terrorizin' hooligans? Not that I'm complainin'," she added. "I hate to think what those dickheads would've done to the people in that building if you hadn't come along. Seems like the gangs are takin' over."

New York's finest ain't exactly runnin' my fan club, he'd said. Well, that didn't surprise her. Police everywhere tended to look askance at vigilantism, and there was no reason the NYPD would be any different -- especially given how intensely militarized they seemed in comparison to the cops of Jane's youth. Besides, doubtless they wouldn't be a fan of Jane, either, if they ever discovered who she was. She was in the business of wiping out HYDRA, tearing them up by the roots and burning what was left to ash, and her efforts so far had involved assassinating a handful of HYDRA agents who'd been embedded in the NYPD. And cops famously didn't take it well when one of their own was killed.