Chapter Text
Bucky would never understand the appeal of these places – he didn’t before Natasha was killed, but after seeing the backrooms and watching the misery and squalor Prudence kept the prostitutes in, Bucky was certain he’d never step foot in one again. By the Outsider, all he wanted was to get his little Empress back and get out of this wretched place.
Speaking of which…
“Don’t you have other people to torture?” Bucky demanded, with an irritable glance at the narrow figure standing next to him while he crouched on the roof. “Other people you can bother? People who are less busy than me?”
“But that’s exactly why I follow you,” the Outsider drawled. “I’m bored and you’re the most interesting person alive.”
Huh. From a lord or lady visiting him at the Empress’s court, that would almost sound like a line, but the Outsider delivered it baldly – the statement of a basic fact rather than anything to do with pedestrian flattery.
Everything about the…man? God? Everything about the Outsider was unnatural. His eyes were slick dark pools like an otter’s, black and shiny – almost as though they were filled with oil and not eyes at all. His pale hair, straw-blond, should shine in the early afternoon sun, but it never did. Last night, his dark suit should’ve left him blanketed in shadows, his slight form swallowed by the darkness of the stormy night. But he seemed to stand in a static gray light at all times, almost as though this world never touched him, no matter where he was. His voice was too deep, too rich and resinous for his slender physical body, but it was emotionless and level in a way no human spoke, with a vibration of something beneath each of his syllables that made Bucky’s hindbrain whine unhappily at the uncanny dissonance.
“I’m really not,” Bucky said flatly. The mark at the back of his left hand glowed as he aimed his spell at a white ledge high up on the building. He’d gotten used to the accompanying rush of air in his ears – mostly. And he was no longer at all surprised to find the Outsider still standing next to him. Like a bad fucking penny. “I can’t be that interesting, I only have two goals – rescue Wanda and don’t fall off of anything else.”
“Hm, yes.” His smile was closed-lipped, concealing the rows of razorblade teeth Bucky knows are sitting in his mouth. He was oddly reluctant to show them in his presence, though Bucky was starting to suspect that was for maximum effect when the Outsider decided he really wanted to reveal them. “Yes, most people find that spell…tricky to get a handle on.”
“I thought you said my powers were unique?” Bucky wasn't that interested in the answer, at this point he expected half of the things that come from the Outsider’s mouth were a lie. After visiting the office of the Overseer, it would be foolish to believe that he really was the root of all evil, but he was still an ancient and powerful being with no reason to tell Bucky the truth. It was just that the flow of conversation felt more natural than being watched in eerie silence.
“Oh, they are. But each of you will always manifest some variation of a short-range teleportation spell.”
“Blink,” Bucky murmured absently, subconsciously flexing the fingers of his left hand.
“If that’s what you’d like to call it,” the Outsider said, dismissive.
The interior of The Cat was dim and hazy. Why did people think that dark and musty equaled romantic? Bucky thought it just felt suffocating. The Outsider lapsed back into silence – it became a kind of alarm for Bucky. While he doubted the demon god had his best interests in mind, he never talked while Bucky was…working.
Killing the Pendleton twins was easy – the blade Peter made for him cut through flesh and bone like a dream, but he really couldn't think about ten year old boys making murder weapons right then. Stopping the prostitutes before they can scream without killing them was harder, but doable.
He ended up pacing in the Ivory Room, Morgan’s headless corpse bleeding onto the carpet. Mindlessly, he picked up the prostitute and dumped her onto the more comfortable bed. Coretta. Her name is Coretta , Natasha’s voice murmured, the heart of his beloved Empress pulsing against his palm. The bastard daughter of a baron from Gristol. Her mother was his scullery maid. The baron said he loved her. He lied.
“What are you doing?” the Outsider asked, bringing Bucky out of his strange trance. The carpet squished below his boots, the plush fibers soaked with blood.
“I can’t…I can’t go get her,” he muttered. Oddly enough, Bucky found that the smell of it was nearly unnoticeable to his nose. When you spend so much time surrounded by the stench of blood and filth, it starts to become a part of your daily experience. Ordinary.
“The little empress? But she’s the real reason you came,” the Outsider said, cocking his head. The dark god seemed genuinely puzzled by a lot of the things Bucky did. “You told me yourself Prudence’s journal said they’re holding the girl in the staff apartments. The attic.”
“I’m…I’m covered in blood, Outsider, and I’m not…my mind is not the way it once was.” That was a kinder way to put it. Kinder than ‘ I believe they pulled my brains out my nose at the torture chamber in Coldridge Prison, and half of it’s still lying there on the floor ’. He touched the gruesome death mask over his face. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”
There was a very long silence then, as Bucky stared out at the sluggish Wrenhaven River from the balcony, mucky and filled with reeds and weeds this far inland, his arms and legs dangling through the bars, useless as a ragdoll. Far below on the streets, the guardsmen talked to each other and changed posts. The afternoon sun was bright and cheerful, but Bucky didn’t feel it. Part of him wondered if the Outsider got bored and wandered off.
Finally, when he did speak, it was still with that distance echo in his tone. “They keep telling her that you’re dead, but she doesn’t believe them. She didn’t see you die, not like her mother, and so the lie is difficult for her to accept and she clings to the belief that you’ll come to get her. She tries smuggling notes out of the building. Sometimes, she even succeeds. There are two bottles floating through the river, with written notes asking for you to come back for her.”
The statement was dispassionate, emotionless, the way the Outsider said everything. But it was exactly what Bucky needed to hoist himself up and begin Blinking himself up to the nearest ledge.
He and a city guard startled each other on top of the roof but a sleep dart to his side took care of that quickly. He didn’t need to look behind him to know that the Outsider was still there.
“…thank you,” Bucky said quietly. He wouldn’t pretend to understand his actions or motivations, because Bucky had just enough sense left to know that would only lead to a swift descent into madness, but the Outsider could’ve easily left him there, breaking to pieces on the balcony in a helpless daze until someone walked in on that gruesome display he’d left of Morgan.
As expected, he received no reply for his expression of gratitude.
Bucky wanted to ask for more details – is she well? Have they hurt her? – but that seemed…wasteful, perhaps, when he didn’t know how long he would have the cursed god’s ear and he would be able to see for himself in a few moments.
The windows of the attic were open, which felt careless to him, but then again, there was no reason for anyone inside to expect that one could teleport onto the rooftops around the neighborhood.
His fearless little empress quickly stood when Bucky walked into the room, Wanda’s back straight and her tiny voice commanding, clenching her small fists. Her cream colored dress, new and pretty the day her mother was murdered, was now a dull gray thing, frayed at the hem and half an inch too short. There was still a dark stain of Natasha’s blood on the sleeve and near the collar. Pierce had been holding the future empress for six months and hadn’t bothered to find her any new clothes, never mind clothing befitting her title.
“Who are you? And why are you wearing that mask?” He ripped the hateful thing from his face, taking in the sight of his young charge for the first time in months, and she screamed “BUCKY!”
All the doubts that had haunted him left him in an instant. Even spattered with blood, haggard and gray from months spent in pain and starvation, Wanda didn’t hesitate for a moment, running straight into his arms and clinging to him desperately, sobbing into his neck. “They told me you were dead!” she cried, breaking his heart all over again with her tears. “Like-like mother! I didn’t-I didn’t believe them…”
“I’m here, I’m here now,” he whispered, hefting her up as he stood. She was and always would be his burden to willingly bear, and the day he could no longer carry her anymore would either be the day she sat on the throne by herself or the day they put him into the ground. “Shhh, everything’s alright. Bucky’s here.”
“We-we can finally leave!” she hiccupped, hands twisting into his leather coat. “I tried, Bucky, I tried to leave! I had a plan, and I almost got away twice.”
He kissed her cheeks, pulling off his bloody gloves to wipe her face with clean hands. “That’s my clever girl. What was your plan?”
She explained about the special door, the back entrance leading to the Distillery District proper on the basement level. “My lady, that was a fantastic plan,” Bucky whispered, listening for anyone in the back stairwell. From the corner of his eye, the black shape of the Outsider still lingered. “Here’s what we shall do: you are going to go down this staircase, quiet as a mouse. You aren’t going to be able to see me, but I’ll be watching you the whole time. If someone sees you, give up with being quiet and run to the back entrance as fast as you can. Don’t worry that they’ll catch you, I won’t let them. Just keep running. Got it?”
Wanda nodded, lower lip trembling. Putting her down made his heart physically hurt, but it would be less conspicuous to let her walk around by herself, and if they got caught, Bucky didn’t want to risk some idiot guardsman trying to shoot him and hitting her instead by accident. She looked a bit curious about the mask as he put it back over his face, but didn’t ask him anything questions about it, yet.
As they descend the staircase, Wanda expertly creeped down and avoided the creaking steps. Bucky waited until she was out of hearing range and murmured “Can she see you, too?”
Without bothering to lower his voice, the Outsider said “No.” Then, after a moment of hesitation, added “To see me with her conscious self, to catch any glimpse of the Void at her age would likely have…undesirable side effects.”
An understatement, to say the least. Bucky made a mental note to never ask how , precisely, he knew that.
Either Bucky’s caution was misplaced, or they were very lucky – no one stopped them from leaving, though there was a heart-pounding moment as he descended the last stair where he realized that the door to the ladies bathing area was open and two women were inside. Another judicious use of Blink let him slip past the doorway without them noticing, and Wanda was small enough to slide along the wall and straight out the back door.
“We did it! We did it!” she cheered, throwing a last glare at the looming shadow of the Golden Cat. Pointing to the door at the end of the alley, she said “Let’s go!”
Her tug on the handle rattled the door in its frame, but the wood didn’t budge. “Oh. Oh, no,” she whispered. Staring up at Bucky, Wanda found herself unsettled by the way the mask seemed to grin at her with its mouth of leather and wire, the way she couldn’t see Bucky’s real eyes beyond its lenses, but she swallowed bravely and said, “Prudence…that old hag Prudence must’ve locked it after the last time I tried to get away. I don’t know where she keeps the key.”
Patting her hair soothingly, she was relieved to hear his voice was nearly the same. Bucky said “I’ve stolen a key from her office. Let’s try it and see if that works.”
It did, and Wanda nearly vibrated with her excitement as the tumblers lifted when suddenly, the Outsider murmured next to Bucky’s ear “You’ll want to avoid the Weepers, Bucky. You can fight them off with force, but she can’t.”
Blood freezing through his veins, Bucky caught Wanda by the shoulder before she could run ahead. “I have a very, very important job for you to do,” he said somberly, crouching so that she could stare into the dead eyes of the lenses. She was small and pale and frightened, but he wasn’t worried now that he had her. If she was by his side, he could fix any ill. “We’re going to have one of those adventures you’ve always wanted.”
“We are?” Wanda asked brightly, with such complete trust that it was more painful than any stab wound. The master torturer in Coldridge couldn’t touch that kind of agony.
Cupping her face, he rubbed a thumb along her cheek. She would be as beautiful as Natasha in ten years. Hopefully as fierce, too. “We are. I need you to climb onto my back and hold on really, really tightly, my lady.” Without looking at the Outsider, he quietly said “Tell me if they hear us.”
He expected his plea to fall upon deaf ears, but the Outsider simply said “Yes.”
“Who, Bucky? Who heard us?”
“Never mind about that yet, my lady. Climb on.”
Bucky spent several minutes with Wanda, tense and overly alert as he shifted around with her on his back, making sure that he could still reach everything he needed and swing his sword without trouble, adjusting her arms so that she was holding onto the straps at the front of his jacket rather than grabbing him around the neck. He could tell she was curious about what they were doing, but didn’t explain himself until he was satisfied she wouldn’t easily fall. “We’re going to have to…fly, a little bit. Kind of.”
“Fly?” she asked eagerly. “Are we going to climb on the buildings the way you showed me at the palace?”
“Even better,” he said, tapping Wanda’s toes in her faded silk slippers. “We’re going to use magic .”
“How?”
He lifted his left hand with the strange black starburst-like mark over his tendons. “Remember what we talked about with Mommy?” he whispered, squeezing her little fingers with his other hand. “Sometimes there are secrets that we can only talk about with each other?”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “This is like that? A secret just for us?”
“Just for us,” he vowed, glancing at the Outsider, watching them with his typical neutral expression. “We’re going to practice flying a couple of times. I’m going to count to three and when I start counting, I need you to breathe out, okay? Your lungs need to be empty when I say ‘go’, Wanda.”
It was a lesson he’d had to learn the hard way, nearly vomiting up his breakfast several times in the yard of the Hound Pits before the Outsider hinted that he’d feel less like he was dying if he wasn’t trying to breathe in just as he executed the spell.
Finally, he said “Are you ready, my lady?”
“Yes, Bucky.”
“Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent!”
“Are you a thousand percent sure?”
“Yes!”
“Okay.” He aimed the Blink across the alley. “One…” Her breath fanned out across the nape of his neck, ruffling his hair. “Two…” Her fingers tightened in his jacket, hanging on the way he instructed. “Three…go!”
Wanda’s whole body jerked violently against his back, but she hung on the way he taught her, and a loud gasp burst out of her lungs when Bucky’s feet hit the cobblestones on the other side of the alley. “Bu-Bucky…”
“Are you okay?” he said urgently. “Wanda?”
“Let’s do-do it again!” she gasped, bouncing eagerly as she caught her breath.
“Alright, just wait a moment.” The other hard lesson he’d had to learn was about Blinking too many times in a short period. Two fast Blinks were manageable – he’d even worked himself up to three if he really had to. But four would have him stumbling around like a drunk at tavern closing time, both ears ringing, his nose dripping blood, his vision so blurry he’d nearly walked off a ledge. The blue potion Peter cooked up was the only thing that made his world stop spinning, and it wasn’t an experience he was eager to recreate.
After two more tries in the alley, Bucky felt she was ready for them to keep moving. “You’re going to be scared, and that’s okay. But no matter what happens, you can’t let go, my lady.”
Very quietly, she said “I won’t, Bucky. I promise.”
In retrospect, he should’ve reminded her to be quiet.
“What are those people doing, crawling in the street?”
Several Weepers quickly looked up to stare at them and Wanda gave a terrified little yelp at their gray, wasted faces. “One-two-three-GO!”
This time, she muffled a scream of fear into his shoulder as she realized they were now three stories above the street, her shaking hands gripping his jacket with white knuckles. “B-Bu-Bu…”
Balanced in the middle of the pipe, Bucky said “Hold still, just try to hold still. We’re safe up here. They can’t see us, and even if they could, there’s no way they’d manage to hurt us from down there.”
The Outsider’s presence beside him was almost a given now, nearly unnoticeable.
“What-what was wrong with those people?” Wanda asked, looking down over his shoulder at the Weepers below them, now gazing around in confusion.
“Those were Weepers, my lady. They’ve become very ill with the plague.”
“Mommy tried to help them,” she recalled, laying her cheek on his back. “She didn’t want them killed, because they’re sick and not criminals.”
“That’s right, my lady,” he agreed softly, chest tight. “They’ve done nothing wrong, they’re just not in their right minds. Her Majesty the Empress was a wise woman. And one day, you’ll be like her.”
Next to him, the Outsider cocked his head, an unreadable expression on his features. Bucky firmly ignored him.
The way to the river was mostly clear after bypassing the Weepers, nothing he couldn’t handle by Blinking over the balconies and rooftops, far above the eyes of any guardsmen or Overseers.
Wanda became so accustomed to the action that he no longer needed to count for her, instead she exhaled as soon as he raised his empty left hand toward his target and by the time he closed his fist, her lungs were empty, filling with a giddy little giggle every time they landed.
He let her down when Happy was within sight, leading her down to the riverbank through the long rushes. “That was amazing!” she gushed, clinging to his hand. “Can we do that again, Bucky?”
“Probably not today, but yes, we can.” Gently squeezing her fingers with his left hand, he said “Remember, my lady. It’s our secret.”
Wanda looked proud to be entrusted with such an important thing. “Yes, Bucky.”
Happy looked thrilled to see them, eager to get the boat moving. As they pushed away from the bank, the Outsider vanished into black smoke on the shore.
All the way back to the Hound Pits, Wanda chattered at him, leaning into his side. Bucky held her against his side, her small heart beating against him, imprinting the reason for his existence back into his very bones.
Already his mind felt clearer with her there, her voice in his ear and her tiny hand in his. As they watched the half-ruined city from the safety of the river, Bucky pressed a kiss into her hair and knew that with his young Empress at his side, everything would eventually be well again.