Chapter Text
“Can we just…” June paused and looked down at her hands, folded and clenched tightly in her lap. They were hidden from her interviewer by the edge of the conference table, but she hoped there was no one spying on her white knuckles from some hidden camera. “It’s so stuffy in here. Maybe we could go somewhere else?”
They were sitting in a long, thin room – empty but for table, rolling chairs, and a drop down projection system that the last user hadn’t bothered to put away. The man sitting on the opposite side of what she considered a sort of war zone looked pointedly past her to the set of wide open windows. They let in New York City wind and smog, calls from the street below, and the far away wails of taxis, and they’d been opened at her request only an hour ago. Because, as she’d said: stuffy.
His second glance, equally and precisely pointed, took in the heavy Stark Industries sweatshirt that had been given to her nearly thirty minutes earlier when it had looked like she was going to shiver off of her chair from the cutting NYC wind.
Phil Coulson, Director, SHIELD agent, Man in Black, Jackbooted Thug, whatever you wanted to call him, had been particularly accommodating to her so far, but she had a feeling that was his general modus operandi. Lure you in with acquiescence, with charming and pleasant and helpful direction, until he had enough information and time to help you fall over whatever cliff you were heading towards.
Maybe it was the long pane of frosted glass that paralleled the whole room and made it feel all too much like a police interrogation. Maybe it was the possibility of an untold number of watchers behind that shield, making her feel exposed and unhappily vulnerable. Maybe she just felt more comfortable exposing the tender parts of her past in bustling restaurants full of patrons. Hadn’t there been something in The Great Gatsby about how large parties were so much more intimate than the small ones?
“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
Phil stood up, a sigh weaving its way out of his mouth, and took a moment to tug at and straighten the suit jacket he wore. He looked contemplative and June wondered if she’d finally overstepped her SHIELD issued welcome. That was not an eventuality she had yet prepared herself for - that nice agent from before, the one that drove her over from the hotel room she was staying, or rather, held at, had made it seem like she might be welcome or encouraged to stay for awhile longer.
Would her job at the diner still be available by the time she got back to it? The answer was not one she cared to ponder for too long right then.
The Jackbooted Thug in question was scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck in a gesture that stuck out as an uncharacteristic and put upon gesture, like an attempt to convince her that he really was human. “You’re absolutely right, Ms. Westlake. Maybe we can find somewhere more comfortable to have our little chat.”
June suspected that there was no such thing as a ‘little chat’ when you were facing the Director of SHIELD. Or of what was left of it.
“If you’ll come with me, I think I know of a good place.” He’d come around the table, and was holding a hand out to her in invitation. June took it, and pushed back the thought that his hand felt nothing like Buck’s, with calluses in all the wrong places.
Buck, whom June hadn’t seen since the incident, three days prior. After hearing him calling her name, back in Stark’s hospital complex, he’d disappeared for all intents and purposes. That moment seemed ten years ago and a world away, she thought, stepping around half-pushed in chairs. It felt obvious, when staring Captain America in the eye and gripping her bed sheets until her fingers ached, that Buck would come for her - but the calls had silenced almost as soon as they’d started, and he hadn’t come for her yet.
‘Another person to be abandoned by.’ The thought had haunted her the past few nights, and the longer he stayed away, the harder it was to deny the truth of it. In those old apartments, it had seemed like there wouldn’t be anything that could separate them for long, like there was an understanding, a mutuality between them that would keep them connected no matter what happened. Buck would come for her. He would.
But he hadn’t. At least not yet. ‘Maybe never.’
If Director Coulson knew anything about Buck, and he probably did because well - Director - he said nothing, even as he lead her out of the boardroom with a polite hand on her elbow and a comment about feeling hungry for coffee and waffles.
They’d barely exited the room when, of all the people she least expected to see, Iron Man showed up. Tony Stark popped, enthusiastically and charismatically, out of the tiny observation room directly next to the conference room. The casual observer might not have noticed that he quietly gestured for others in the observation room to ‘stay back,’ but June did and it made her feel even more self-conscious of her time being ‘interviewed.’ Dressed in expensive sweatpants and one of those sweat-wicking athletic shirts, it all seemed so casual as he fell into step on her other side, but the situation was clearly anything but.
“I’m starving, and waffles sound A. Mazing.” He looked friendly enough, a self-serving grin on his face as he slung an arm around her neck. June had the feeling that his friendly half-hug was a signal that he was very definitely not going to be letting Coulson just walk off with her.
The Director stopped dead while Stark kept going, because that had very definitely been his exact plan. He had a polite but firm hand on her elbow and used it to haul her back towards him. “Mr. Stark, I’m afraid that we’re going to have to continue this conversation in private.”
“I fully agree.”
“Private, as in, only myself and Ms. Westlake.”
“I fully do not agree.”
“Mr. Stark-” Coulson began, polite and insistent. But it was not much of a match for the intensity that blazed from the core of Anthony Stark.
“No.” Tony stepped closer, and the open amiability of his face melted away. “No, Coulson, no more secrets. This whole thing affects my team. It affects me, and Pep, and everyone in this building. And while Captain Spangle Ass is downstairs playing at memory lane, I’m going to be around to hear this whole mess out. I don’t push you often,” The government agent opposite him snorted, “But I’m pushing you now.”
Some evaluating glances were traded before Coulson sighed, beginning to relent. “I don’t think that’s wise.”
“Do I look like I give a damn about what’s wise?”
“Of course, you two are here.”
June looked between the two people leaning against the diner counter – one a sandy haired man with bandages on his jawline and a bright purple hearing aid in, the other a red haired, snakelike woman who watched June with a gaze that reminded her of imminent peril, of having to watch her steps too closely for comfort. Neither one of them were familiar, but both of them had clearly been waiting for her party, such as it was.
Of any of them, Coulson seemed the most put out, though in only a moment he sighed, appearing resigned. The black clad SHIELD agents that had tracked them down the street and into the diner twitched not a muscle, while Mr. Stark, Tony now because he’d already corrected her twice in five minutes, smirked and nudged her with a hip. June didn’t know if he meant for her to do something or to know who these people even were, but instead she held her tongue and crossed her arms more firmly over her stomach.
“We want a story.” The man said to the Director, the playful words belied by the way he stared directly at June. The woman didn’t add to his announcement, but her smooth, foggy eyes echoed the sentiment.
Director Coulson had a way of saying, “Let’s find a seat, shall we?” that sounded a lot like, ‘Why the hell not.’ A courteous hand at the small of her back and an outstretched arm allowed him to guide her into exactly the booth he wanted without looking anything but exceedingly polite.
June didn’t know if he knew where she’d worked before and had chosen this place as a reminder, or if it had just been an unexpected coincidence. The booths were all clothed in dull red vinyl, the tabletops an old cream formica. The menu was written out on chalkboards nailed to stained wooden overhands, the prices all covered over and re-written one or twenty times in the last sixty years. The floor was scratched and foot-worn with red and white linoleum tile, and the air was filled with the sounds of knives on plates and big band music.
There was a waitress standing next to their table in jeans and a t-shirt, an apron stamped with the diner logo. She looked bored, she looked tired –she held out some laminated menus and promised to come back with water for five.
The blonde man pulled a chair over from another table so he could flank the endcap while June scooted into the far back corner. Coulson’s eyes drilled into June, unassumingly intense and firmly expectant in a way that made it clear that there was no way out. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t bow out, couldn’t take a pass. And if he hadn’t pinned her down with a gaze that felt like an anvil on her chest, Tony Stark slinging himself into the seat next to her at the table and casually leaving one hand on the table while he leaned back against the seat blocked any and every exit.
“This place does a great veggie ‘wich with sprouts and hummus, if you’d believe it.” Director Coulson was saying, exactly when June had expected him to demand a story from her. “I know Duane and Jo’s doesn’t look like the kind of place, but it is.”
June nodded, feeling how the menu was getting slippery with nerves and clammy palms. She sat rigid, pressed into the corner by the back window, half blinded by the sunlight coming in from the front, and wished to god that she was at work and not at the mercy of these strangers. ‘Maybe,’ June decided some minutes later. ‘Maybe making me wait for them to order and go through this whole routine is some kind of test or psychological torture. Maybe they think it’ll break me into spilling it all.’
It probably would, actually, because waiting for Tony Stark to decide if he really wanted to order six of the fourteen available sandwiches and whether or not it would be too much trouble to drag another table over to theirs was near interminable. If she had to wait for him to eat all of that before things got down to brass tacks again, she’d probably scream.
“Alright June Westlake, I think we have some time hear you now.” She snapped her head up at the sound of not Coulson’s voice, but the woman’s. “Why don’t you start by telling us how you met James Buchanan Barnes.”
She needed a huge breath to force the words out finally. “At work. It was while I was working as a waitress.”
“At Gil’s Diner.” Blonde man stated. He was watching her lips closely enough despite the hearing aid.
June nodded. “Yes, he came in during my early swing shift one morning. I thought he was a veteran just home from the war.” Immediately, she felt Tony’s watching her from the side, close enough to feel body heat and intensity and a swirl of emotion she had no context for. “He seemed lonely, and sad.”
They asked her if she’d told anyone about the man she’d met. “No, I don’t know anyone to tell.”
Where was her family? “Back home, in Nevada.”
When had she last talked to them? “Years ago.”
Where they in any way connected to Hydra? “No, not to the best of my knowledge.”
Had he done anything that had frightened her? “No, he didn’t.”
They didn’t need to know about that hand on her wrist.
How had she-
Director Coulson interrupted the other agents with a hand gesture that, while friendly enough, was decisive. “Ms. Westlake, I think we’d all like to hear your story from the beginning, in your own words. Tell us how you ended up in New York, and how you came to know Sergeant Barnes.”
“Director Agent,” Tony had a French fry half way to his mouth, but was letting it dangle. “I think we’ll need to make room for one more.”
June looked up and out to the front of the diner, and wondered immediately why she hadn’t felt his presence earlier.
Buck stood just inside the doorway, his flesh hand braced against the nearest booth seat, his mechanized hand hidden just out of sight behind one hip. He looked, in a word, horrible. Paler than usual, with fatigue evident in his face as if he’d run a constant marathon for near a week. It was a relief at first, that he was studying the others at the crowded table with her, but then their eyes met and a balm began to wash over her.
To the side, she sensed that the sudden appearance was less welcome than she might have considered it. Tony was back to eating, slurping down a soda and sweeping up piles of ketchup and BBQ sauce with his fries – it was all an act though – he was so much the study of relaxation and indifference that it could not possibly have been genuine. June knew little enough about the Howling Commandos and the old Sergeant Barnes, but she knew the basic facts as any other who had taken high school history would.
She remembered belatedly that Buck – or James or Bucky – had worked with Tony’s father, Howard, during the war; and Tony’s reaction made it clear, at least to her, that there was an issue buried deep, one she wasn’t privy to.
“Glad you’re well enough to join us, Sergeant Barnes.” Coulson was volunteering as the official welcome wagon, it seemed, and June distinctly remembered some guards talking a few days back about the Director’s collection of Howling Commandos trading cards. “Why don’t you take a seat?”
Buck didn’t say anything – he moved silently and efficiently to stand in front of Tony and waited – for a seat – it seemed. After a moment of awkwardness, Tony’s shoulders tightened. “Are you friggin kidding me.”
He set his burger down and stood up out of his seat in a way that pointedly forced Buck to step back, then moved out of the way with a sarcastic sweep of his arm. The others watched the exchange intently, perhaps looking for signs of impending violence, but said nothing. Still moving silently while the rest of burger joint continued on obliviously, Buck slid into the bench seat next to June, settling in so close that his hip brushed her thigh, and promptly turned his back to her.
June shrugged as far back into the corner as she could, faced the broad expanse of Buck’s back, and tried to tamp down on feeling hurt and slighted for the briefest moment. It was the open comprehension on the face of the sandy haired man across the table that clued her in. Buck had cornered her so that he faced any possible attack head on – her back was to the wall, there was a window to her right, and he had placed himself between her and any other access points.
In response, she shifted one hand beneath the table where the others couldn’t see, curling two fingers through the closest belt loop on his jeans. If he felt her movement, he gave no indication but for turning his head back toward her the smallest fraction of an inch. A beat later, his flesh hand moved to cup her knee under the table, his touch so light and hesitant that it almost wasn’t there.
“Well Sergeant Barnes, we were just about to hear from Ms. Westlake on how she came to join you and by proxy, us. Ms. Westlake, let’s start from the beginning, shall we?”
Everyone saw the involuntary shiver that June fought, clearly uncomfortable about her past but compelled by the sheer power of the government agents sitting across from her. No one saw how two of her fingers peeked over the edge of Buck’s jeans and pressed against the small of his back, for support.
Upon returning to the tower some time later, Buck expected to be promptly deposited back inside what some of the scientists had fondly called the ‘boot,’ and instead found himself – thoroughly chaperoned, of course – in a lower level common area full of expensive couches and a well-stocked bar station used for guests and liaisons.
June sat across from him, arms folded across her stomach, looking faintly sick and as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. Colonel Rhodes sat to the left with a healthy glass of lager, and Samuel Wilson, the Falcon, was to her right and casually thumbing through an Us Weekly. Buck suspected that as the most usual appearing of all the Avengers and associates, they’d been picked to flank her as if to lend a sense of normalcy and comfort. Although the warrior Thor, the ever-injured Agent Barton, and one Dr. Banner sat in the room with them, they’d all given the frazzled woman a generous amount of space.
Captain America, well, Stevie, who was perched at the very edge of a lounge chair, spent the first fifteen minutes or so describing the adjacent suite of rooms that were being allocated to Buck so that they could be close to each other.
The prospect of being near to Stevie again made Buck’s stomach hurt. Made his head hurt. Made the gears in his arm shift and whirr furiously. The memories and thoughts and past life in his head had been rent and burnt away till they were almost unrecognizable, and Buck feared how much disappointment he would bring to the Captain’s life when he failed time and again to remember a time long past.
The longer Stevie talked about his new space and accommodations, the more Buck found himself staring across the coffee table at June. He had a place to exist, to maybe live. Where would she live? What would she do? She couldn’t go back to that diner and tiny, broken apartment, could she?
“Buck?” The questioning tone snapped him out of his thoughts. “Did you hear me?” Steve’s face was painfully earnest even as he tried desperately to hide how much he wanted. The very thought of trying to live up to those expectations set his teeth on edge – he was done molding himself to the expectations of others, even when they were only trying to do what was best for him.
“Bathroom?” He stood up suddenly, looking for a way out, for a moment of quiet where there weren’t so many people watching him so intently.
A ceiling panel above them lit up expectantly, and the soft, British voice of Tony Stark’s AI filtered through the speakers. “I can show you the fastest route to the nearest single occupancy restroom, if you’re ready, Sergeant Barnes.”
Everyone stopped to look at Steve, as if he might suddenly need the bathroom too and would volunteer to come with. But perhaps the Captain was more self-aware of the pressure he was putting on his childhood friend than previously assumed, and was trying to give the other man more space. “Please. I’ll wait here for you.”
“If you’ll follow me.” JARVIS was the AI’s name, and as he spoke a series of lit ceiling panels began to travel down the nearest hallway.
JARVIS took him past several offices and secured sections in what was probably the most heavily fortified area of the building. Most of it was unremarkable, all sleek slate gray with dark carpeting that transitioned to dark stone once they reached a section with locked lab areas on either side. Less likely to spread contaminants and easier to identify oncoming footsteps.
“Do you think that was really the entire story?” Tony Stark, sounding dubious, who had disappeared shortly after they had returned to the tower.
“I think that was the entire story as she knew it.” Natalia Romanova’s voice was low and throaty, coming from behind a half-closed lab door. Buck stopped short of the entrance while JARVIS’ guiding lights kept moving without him.
The door opened onto a small, open ante-chamber where someone could de-vest themselves of anything they didn’t want to risk in a fire – a low, curved wall that opened into the larger lab and a couple of fire resistant cubbies that were currently empty. Buck crouched below the level of the wall on a floor mat that said, ‘Was there an explosion in here or are you just smokin’?’
“Oh come on. The girl gets sucked into one of those drug fueled power groups led by a man who hides her away, isolates her entire family and fucks her up for years, leaving her to perish – fucking perish for god’s sake – on the side of a freeway in the middle of nowhere with nothing, and you’re telling me you honestly believe that she has somehow managed to come out of this not a supervillain with a tragic backstory? I call bull.”
“The woman is a victim.” Natalia said sharply, and Buck knew Tony had struck a nerve whether he cared to or not.
“I remember when SHIELD had to deal with that group.” Tony pressed on, and Buck looked around the low wall to see that they were facing several projected screens full of newspaper articles and government records, and more importantly, away from him. “They didn’t find a damn bit of infrastructure behind the whole thing to support it – nothing. Someone had to have been supplying them with money to keep them going all that time. Had to.”
“You’re telling me you honestly believe that woman in there supplied the money? I call bull.” Natalia purposefully mimicked Stark’s earlier speech.
Two opposing documents were drawn to the front of the screens. One of them was a missing persons report, several years old and stamped in red with the word, ‘ARCHIVE’ in the top left corner. The other was a newspaper interview with the Governor Westlake of Nevada entitled, ‘Anniversary of a Missing Child: John Westlake shares his story.’ “No, but I think her family did. The question is whether or not she knew.” Tony paused a moment, as if waiting for the woman next to him to ask for clarification. When she didn’t, he pushed on anyway. “Look. Look at this: in the original missing persons report that we are technically not allowed to look but hello, I’m a Stark. Anyway, John Westlake clearly states in the report that he has no idea where his daughter is or where she has been taken. He says the same thing over and over again immediately following the abduction whenever possible and to whoever – whomever? – would listen.”
Buck scanned the documents as Natalia did, reading over and over the regurgitated reports about a broken back door and signs of a struggle. Appearing dissatisfied with the info as he was, she waved a hand at Tony to continue.
“But see here, this interview was published three years later and in one section, Westlake mentions that he has combed the entire Seattle area with no luck, he can’t find her. The reporter didn’t notice or was just crap and no one paid any attention to how he was suddenly naming a specific area.”
“The police files indicated nothing about Seattle.” Buck didn’t question how Natalia had already gone over all of the police files, and neither did Tony.
“Exactly!” Tony pulled up several more documents and began scanning them for a particular section. “Exactly.” When he didn’t find what he was looking for right away, he rubbed a hand over his distinctive facial hair. “JARVIS, what was my point again?”
The AI’s voice sounded distinctly put out. “I believe you are referring, sir, to the fact that the group in question was based out of Tacoma, Washington.”
Buck could hear Tony repeating himself as he slipped back out of the lab and into the hallway. Without JARVIS to lead him to his intended destination, he turned back toward the common area and needed no help finding his way back. June was where he had left her, as was Steve he noticed, and both of them watched him circle the back end of the room to take a seat at the bar behind the couches. June’s head was perfectly in his line of sight, and as Steve came over to sit next to him as de facto chaperone, Buck wondered what, exactly, the waitress had been sold for.