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Bucky was aware of Steve’s thing with dramatic elevator rides. He personally attached very little importance to the anti-climatic ambiance created by tasteless generic tunes right before he engaged in a cool fight. If there was a target on the sixth floor and Bucky was four-stories off-mark, he wasn’t about to waste time and energy running up and down several flights of stairs.
Steve would. Steve would have probably already broken the elevator on his way to crash right through at least three floors, probably after playing Tarzan with the steel cables in the machinery.
“Barnes, where the hell are you?”
Of course, Steve’s theatrics had set an example for a lot of his Avenger Church followers. Sam didn’t see the purpose of elevators beyond kickass photoshoots either.
“Riding the elevator up to your floor,” Parker answered dutifully before Bucky could. “Karen says his ETA is twelve seconds, so you’re probably clear to leave it to him now.”
“He’s taking an elevator ride?” Sam demanded incredulously, and Bucky sighed. The metal doors slid open with a hum and a buoyant ping. “I’m over here playing whack-a-mole twenty-to-one, and he’s chilling in an-”
Sam was wrong, he wasn’t up against twenty people. Bucky’s mental math counted nineteen. The holographic shield Stark had made for him bounced right by Bucky’s foot, and the count went down by one. The window behind Captain America shattered, and then there were seventeen.
Whose idea was it, Bucky wondered, to send an understaffed team to handle this?
(“Debrief.”
Romanoff’s nails, clicking on the conference table, were weirdly loud for how short she wore them. There was a bored laziness to the way she was flicking through the mission files, spinning and manipulating Stark’s holograms with practiced ease. Sam, who seemed far less patient than she was at the moment, flicked a paper-straw in her direction, as if to tell her to get on with it.
Parker shifted in his seat. He was wearing his suit. Bucky tried to think of a reason why, and all he could come up with was the coolness factor. “That sounds super official. Does it make it less cool if I admit how cool it is that I’m here right now?” He was not given a response.
The Avengers now did their business in the comfort of an old SHIELD safe-house Stark had purchased and furnished for this express purpose. It was supposed to be temporary – Bucky didn’t have a clue what permanent would look like, but that was between Romanoff and their – apparently ever-present – billionaire benefactor. In the meantime, Bucky showed up to the AC-equipped living room when he was summoned, and listened to Romanoff order everyone around.
Her leadership style was very different from Steve’s – for a start, Steve had never been able to make Bucky show up anywhere.
“After his incident with Parker a few weeks ago,” Romanoff began, launching right into it, “Tony asked me to see what I could find out about the guys who took them. All I had to go on was SHIELD’s extensive background check on them, meaning I had to do most of the legwork myself.”
“Say we skip the boring parts, then,” Bucky suggested, and it earned him a glower.
“Your target will be a warehouse complex-”
Parker, who was far too excitable and didn’t know when to keep quiet, interrupted her. “’Your target’? Who’s-”
“I’m gonna keep talking now, and you’re gonna wait ‘til the end to tell me whether your question’s been answered.”
Spider-Man was undeterred. “You called it a target. That’s not usually the way I think about things.”
Romanoff stared at him. “I’ve got their main lair,” she tried again, slower and punctuating every syllable with a sound insult to Parker’s intelligence. The kid just nodded brightly in return. Bucky wondered if he was pulling her leg. “The three of you are gonna put a wrecking ball through it.”
“Not- literally. Right?”
She didn’t answer that either. “Parker’s going because this is his mess-”
Parker, who was clearly far snappier with his mask on, harrumphed. “I got kidnapped by them, how does that make it my mess? You’re not showing me a lot of empathy, for all you know, it could’ve left me with some nasty lifelong trauma.”
“Hero-worshiping Tony is gonna leave you with some lifelong trauma,” Romanoff countered, lips tugging up like she was starting to like him. “Barnes is going because I’d like to see him put to use at some point –” Bucky said nothing – “and Sam’s going because I’d actually like to see this mission successfully completed.”
“You want me to babysit,” Sam translated. She shrugged in return. “This is great. Can’t think of a single one or two retired-superhero-shaped reasons I wouldn’t wanna do that.”
Parker cleared his throat. “I feel patronized, but I’m not gonna mention it.”
“What’s this kidnapping ring called again?”
Natasha arched a brow at Sam. “They’re not a kidnapping ring. I have no idea why they wanted to kidnap Tony, and I suspect neither did they, from the way they went about it. Do you think their name will prove relevant to dismantling their operation?”
“…No.”
“Alright then, so, let’s call them the Snatchers and be done w-”
She was abruptly interrupted by Parker slamming both hands on the table. “I knew you read Harry Potter.”
Romanoff grimaced, as though realizing her mistake. “I forgot who was in the room for a second there.”
Bucky and Sam snickered. She gave them both a deadly glare. “One more thing. They’re clearly doing some sort of chemical experimentation – Bruce said their deliveries were full of supplies for that purpose. We don’t know what the experiments are, what they’re experimenting on, or what they’re experimenting with, so be careful. Don’t chug the test tubes, no matter how pretty the colors are.”)
Bucky couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for why there were so many trained guns-for-hire in what was clearly an office space. On the bright side, the room was acting as, essentially, an obstacle course, which gave Bucky the advantage – he shoved a desk forward and knocked the legs out from under a hostile who was wearing a ponytail and a semi-automatic.
“Piss off, Wilson,” Bucky grumbled, dodging a well-aimed shot and grabbing the gun off her hands. He trapped her boots under the heavy desk for good measure. “Some of us don’t have jetpacks. Go help the kid outside before he catches all the flies.”
Sam showed his appreciation for his words by offering him a single, specific finger, and then jumped out the window.
The comm. crackled with Parker intervening in protest. “Never said I needed help-”
“No, that’s me that said that.”
“I just want to state, for the record, I technically have Avenger seniority over you.”
“And I want to state, for the record, I have seniority over your great-grandfather. We done conversing?”
Apparently, they were, though Bucky couldn’t tell whether that was because Parker had become offended or distracted. He saw, through the open window, two of the security drones he and Sam were subduing outside converge on the kid. They’d box him in if he weren’t so good with trajectories, and nimble as all hell – he swung up and away, right as Sam descended on his position.
He launched the shield and Parker’s webbing caught it on the rebound, ostensibly to correct its angle – he slammed it through one of the hovering androids. It disintegrated on impact; Sam flew back into its path to catch his boomerang. They didn’t bother with a choreography for the second one, because Sam just shot it out of the sky with some sort of shoulder gizmo that Stark must have been truly bored to create.
Bucky turned back to his own situation, relishing the momentary quiet. Parker ruined it quickly.
“You guys wanna do a singalong?” Neither Bucky nor Sam dignified that with a response, which he took as an invitation to keep talking. “I was thinking, ‘The Boys are Back’ from High School Musical?”
“Oh my god,” Sam moaned.
“No, you’re right,” the kid acquiesced, morose and commiserate, “Sargent Barnes doesn’t have Zac Efron’s range.”
“Why are you having fun? Why is he having fun?”
Because you’re enabling him, Bucky wanted to snap back, but held his tongue to avoid enabling either of them. He’d managed to disband and otherwise incapacitate all but one of his assigned band of Snatchers, in the time it took Sam and Parker to get the situation outside under control; at least, he hoped their bickering meant they had it under control.
“We can’t let them have the data!” someone shouted behind Bucky. He turned around to dispatch of him, shoving away the gun he’d just disabled, and froze. That guy hadn’t been bothering him too much; in retrospect, that should have raised some red flag. He was scrambling away from a desk all the way over on the other side of the room, and in his hand, Bucky caught the colorful glint of a lighter.
There was a click and it was thrown on the floor. Bucky swore under his breath. Someone around these parts was clearly suicidal; he – or one of his buddies – had, from the looks of it, covered the floor in gas during the fight. The fire flared in a flash, covering distance faster than most of the hostile crew could escape it.
Bucky immediately picked up a nearby chair, throwing it through the window right behind him. He used his foot to push away the few pieces of glass that didn’t follow the chair, and held a sleeve against his mouth to avoid coughing.
“They’re- destroying files,” he said slowly, eyes watering as they roamed over all the hard-drives; he quickly declared them lost causes. The fire had cut off his access to the stairs or the elevator already – Bucky turned to the window, and then right back around at the woman he’d left trapped. He lifted the desk and she bolted on unsteady ankles, skirting around the danger in a dread rush. “Panic.”
“That’s interesting,” Sam said slowly, “we might wanna find out why.”
“Uh-huh,” Bucky muttered, taking up a sprint. “Which one of you airborne monkeys can make yourself useful in the next twelve seconds?”
Sam was quick on the uptake. “If you exit through another damn window, Barnes, I swear to holy-”
Bucky crashed out of a sixth-story window before he could finish his threat.
“Do I have to do everything around here?” the kid complained, just as Bucky felt Spider-Man’s webbing latch onto his metal arm. The wind whizzing through his ears was louder than the rush of blood pounding against his temples. “Or does it just feel that way because I’m better at it than you are?”
“Just because Stark is off the team, doesn’t mean you have to turn into him.”
“If I don’t do it, it's certainly not gonna be one of you, is it?”
Sam sighed aggressively and didn’t answer. “By the way, did you catch him, or is Steve gonna kill me painfully because he made best friends with a suicidal moron?”
“Got him,” Parker confirmed, alarmingly tugging on his own web as if to make sure. “Y'know, I think this is just because he took it to heart when you ribbed him over taking that elevator. Now he’s got an elevator complex. He's trying other ways to exit skyscrapers.”
“That'd be way more convincing if this wasn’t a stunt he pulled regularly.”
Bucky heard the kid sniff over the comms. “Is that- smoke? Did you jump out the window because there was a fire?”
“Yes.”
There was a disconcerting silence following Bucky’s one-worded answer. “You- didn’t think that was worth mentioning?” Parker asked hesitatingly.
Bucky picked at the webbing, finding it surprisingly sturdy, and answered in a bored tone of voice. “Would you have gotten there any faster if I was yelling ‘fire’ while also free-falling out the window?”
“Guess we’ll never know.”
The kid finally got close enough to the ground to safely dislodge Bucky. Sam was hovering overhead, checking for any strays. Parker attached a web to a lamp post nearby, swinging back and forth leisurely.
“I don’t wanna be the buzzkill,” he said, upside down, and let his mask retreat, “but that was the closest chance we had to get those files before they ran off with them, and now they’re burning.”
Bucky scuffed the ground with a twitchy foot. “No other computer clusters around that the voice in your head can see?”
“She's called Karen-”
Sam decided to nip that one in the bud. “Not to point out the obvious here, but we've cleared out every warehouse.”
“Not quite.”
Bucky's head snapped up to give Spider-Man a long-distance side-eye. He was wearing the mask again; even as Bucky watched, Parker jumped off his perch and latched onto the wall of the closest building, crawling up to the roof. “What'd you find, Spidey?”
“Karen says the first structure we cleared has an underground level none of us checked.”
“Didn’t see any sign of an entrance to a lower floor.” Sam sounded like he was frowning. “Nat's plans didn’t show one either.”
“Karen has sharper eyes. I'll check it out.”
“Karen doesn’t have eyes.”
“You’re hurting her feelings.”
“She doesn’t have those either.” Bucky filed that away for later.
“I forget, isn’t there something urgent we’re supposed to be doing right now?” Bucky asked impatiently, starting in the direction of the warehouse Parker had mentioned.
“I mean, my Spanish homework is only due next Wednesday.”
“Fire in the hole!” Parker yelled, and Bucky was swung inside the building housing the kid’s secret basement, this time via an eighth-story window. The sound of glass shattering wasn’t subtle, but thankfully, there was a roaring fire going on several stories down to keep the attention of anyone they didn’t want to meet.
This warehouse was the first one they’d hit because it was the largest. It had been cleared of anything relevant by the time they’d broken in, or so they’d thought. Just like warehouse three, which had just sprouted a fire that waylaid Sam on his way to them, flames were steadily consuming floor after floor in this one.
Parker’s idea to get in hadn’t been the most brilliant thing Bucky had ever heard.
(“What’s your plan?”
“Get in from the top, not the bottom.”
“Pretty sure the point is to get to the bottom.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”)
Bucky didn’t dislike swinging around like dangling luggage, but it felt less embarrassing when Sam wasn’t watching. He’d shrugged and allowed Parker to latch one web onto his arm, and the other to the building, several stories up.
The kid crawled in through the window after him, and Bucky head-slapped him when the mask retreated. “To clarify, that was for the stupid one-liner.”
Sam seemed to decide his intervention was required, in Bucky’s earpiece. “I swear to god, Parker, does Stark sort resumés by how much nonsense comes out of a person’s mouth in the interview?”
The kid was grinning when he replied. “What’d you mean interview, you guys had to apply for this? Wait, are you getting paid? Should I join a union?”
“If I wasn’t getting paid, I’d be putting up with the two of you for free,” Bucky muttered. “That'd be really stupid of me, wouldn’t it?”
“There’s one person in this group chat on Stark’s will, and it’s definitely not me,” Sam complained, ignoring him, “but you’re talking about getting paid for your circus act?”
“Woah, you’re on Mr. Stark’s will, Sargent Barnes?” Parker exclaimed, opening the door to peek into the stairwell – he jerked back at the cloud of smoke that instantly greeted him.
“Kid,” Bucky sighed, following him, “shut up.”
Parker huffed at him. “Wow, okay, well, next time I’m letting you pancake yourself on the pavement.”
“Fire’s spreading,” Bucky noted, the smell of smoke getting stronger.
“Don’t say that with so much alarm,” Sam snapped. “Get out.”
“Karen can’t probe into- the level down there, what we came here for,” Parker explained, poking his head out the window to see how many floors were affected by the flames so far. “The basement. Most likely explanation for that is that it’s surrounded by concrete.”
“Great. So instead of frying, you figure you go downstairs and roast?”
“We won’t roast. Probably.”
Bucky exchanged a look with Parker. There was a moment of hesitation and then an identical pair of nods. “In and out.”
“Either of you die, I’m gonna be a no-show at the funeral,” Sam declared, resigned to the situation. “Don’t turn off the comms.”
Bucky didn’t think he’d passed out, precisely. It felt like he suffered some extreme disorientation for several seconds, and couldn’t keep track of his surroundings or his own movements. It wasn’t exactly a sensation he was unfamiliar with, which was probably why it so easily triggered some aggressive fight-or-flight mechanism of his.
It would have been a problem, were he in the company of anyone but Parker.
“Easy,” the kid gasped, grabbing a crushing hold of both his arms. “Whoa, you’ve been eating your greens.”
“I’ve been- what?” Bucky hissed, awareness catching up to his actions. He jerked back, and Parker let him after a second of hesitation. His pulse was roaring dangerously high. “What the hell, kid?”
“I was just trying to lighten the mood, you looked a little stressed,” he replied, light and defensive. “Relax, I know you’re super trained, but I’m super resilient. Also, your heartbeat is super irregular, take a deep breath.”
Bucky looked around. The floor felt cold under him, so they must have gotten away from the fire somehow. The only light source was the lamp overhead, casting shadows over unchanging gray walls; to his right, there was a floor-to-ceiling collection of tiny, blinking LED bulbs, probably attached to computer drives or something to that effect. There was no door, but there was clearly more room around the corner, to his left, some sort of long hallway. Parker’s mask was off, and his hair was covered in some fresh soot that hadn’t been there before.
And Bucky had no idea where he was.
“I passed out,” he concluded, slow and reluctant.
“Yup,” Parker said, popping the word. “You remember what happened?”
Bucky remembered brief flashes. A spider crawling down the side of a building, Bucky hitching a ride. Playing chicken against the flames, shattering yet another window. And then, when it got hard to breathe, hard to see-
“The floor collapsed?” Bucky guessed, frowning.
“Not- exactly. I don’t think fire does that to concrete.”
“Does that to things holding up the concrete.”
“Sure, but then there’s the fact that, if you’ll direct your attention to the ceiling above us, there is no giant Peter-and-Bucky-shaped hole.”
Bucky’s head snapped upwards. The ceiling was intact – if he didn’t know better, he’d say it was solid concrete all the way through. “We crashed down from up there?”
“Yeah. And I’m- d’you think maybe someone wanted us to?”
Bucky looked back down at the kid, who had, for some reason, put his mask back on. “To end up here? With all their data?” He gestured at the flashing blue lights.
Parker shrugged, clearly as lost as Bucky was. “We didn’t crash through the ceiling,” he insisted, frowning. “I know we didn’t. Something opened under us.”
“Why would-”
“I dunno, bad guys are weird?”
Anxiety started crawling up Bucky’s fingers, down his throat, headed straight for his heart. “How long have I been out?”
“Like, fifteen minutes? It was scary. I think you inhaled a little too much smoke, and then you cracked your head. I caught you, but-” Parker seemed to hesitate briefly, and an image of a puppy’s falling ears came to mind in Bucky’s head. “I wasn’t- fast enough. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he replied automatically, trying not to focus on the blood pounding in his temple. There was a moment of awkwardness. The kid was still staring at him, but the mask thankfully covered whatever expression he was emoting. “Happens.”
Parker stared harder. “I- no.”
“I’m fine.”
“You use that word a lot.”
Bucky gestured vaguely at the hard drives, hoping the kid would take a hint. “Computer stuff. Go do your thing.”
Parker fidgeted and wandered over to inspect them, checking around and then carefully tugging at one. “You know, I’m starting to think being an Avenger is kind of dangerous.”
Weirdly enough, focusing on the kid’s chatter seemed to stabilize Bucky’s breathing. “No shit. You have irresponsible parents.”
The computer came free in Parker’s hands, and he let out a triumphant ah-hah! “Told you it wouldn’t explode.”
Bucky’s eye twitched. “What’re you doing?”
“Karen’s gonna scan these for me.”
“What’d you think she’ll find?”
Parker shrugged. Now that he’d critically analyzed one drive to apparently make sure it wouldn’t kill him, the rest didn’t seem to need so much attention. He glued a tiny button-shaped device to the wall, and left Karen to it. “Tony wants the formula for the compound they used to knock me out,” the kid explained. “I figure it should be here, right? We couldn’t get it from anywhere else. If I can get it off their system-”
“Since when do drugs work on you? Aren’t you the equivalent of five Captain America clones packed into the body of a prepubescent little shit?”
“I got concussed, too. Concussion KO-ed one Captain America, the drugs clobbered down the other four. I suspect they might've used something they were working on for enhanced people like me.”
“Romanoff said something about chemical experimentation.”
“Yeah.”
Parker jumped on the wall, and crawled up to the ceiling like the creepy spider-mutant that he was. He started rapping his knuckles on the concrete, as though he was testing its strength. Bucky’s anxiety mutated into nervous energy. Restlessly, he crossed his arms and wandered over to the drives the kid was scanning, watching the LED’s wink out one at a time.
Parker made a startled, huffing noise. Bucky whirled around. “You figure out a way to get out of here?”
“No, but Karen’s figured out what their shtick is,” the kid called back, gracefully dropping down on the tips of his toes. “It’s boring. They’re trying to churn out some evil, enhanced bad guys. It’s this season’s trendiest masterplan, apparently.”
Parker had landed directly under the light, and it made the scratch running the length of his jaw jump out like neon lettering – a giant sign screaming ‘you fucked up’. There was some feeling of personal control fading and slipping away fast; the start of an endless spiral Bucky couldn’t afford to step into right then. His skin felt prickly and sweaty, and Bucky wanted to crawl out of it.
Parker was still talking.
“Explains the kidnapping, I guess. They obviously needed someone with- y’know, the brain skills, who also had a good enough connection to Spider-Man.”
Bucky caught on to his train of thought quickly, letting the normal part of his brain take over his mouth. “So they kidnap a billionaire? With a ton of bodyguards? Iron Man?”
“He doesn’t wear the suit anymore, and you’d be surprised at Tony’s complete lack of bodyguards,” Parker muttered. “If your only choices are Tony Stark or the Hulk-”
“Yeah, okay. But if they didn’t know you’re Spider-Man, the drugs they used to knock you out-”
Parker shrugged and cut him off. “They didn’t need to know I’m Spider-Man. They just needed to know I was hanging out with Tony Stark. Maybe they disliked me on principle. Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they wanted a test subject. Either way, good chance they used their own stuff instead of something that might leave a paper trail.”
“That almost makes them sound- competent.”
“Yeah, I think it's out of character too, but what can you do?”
“What else is down here along with that data?” Bucky asked gruffly, looking around them.
Parker tilted his head. “What’d you mean?”
If I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it. Stark called back to that quote all the time, one part mockery, nine parts fondness. Following Steve and his words had always been, for Bucky, the best way to find a shred of light in the darkness.
Bucky’s skin still itched. He gestured to what he expected to be a hallway around the corner, shadowed on the other of the room. “We should finish what we came here to do.”
“You mean, like- before we got locked in what could, for all intents and purposes, turn out to be our coffin?” Parker was nonplussed.
Bucky grimaced. “Were you this dramatic when Stark was the one trapped with you?”
“You think Tony’s dramatics left any room for mine?”
“What’s the plan, Parker?” Bucky asked impatiently, sensing Parker’s reluctance. There was some feverish, single-minded focus calming his nerves right then, and he needed the kid on board.
“Wait here for Sa- Mr. Wilson,” he replied immediately. “What’s yours?”
“We could make ourselves useful and clear the place without waiting around for backup.”
“I don’t think that's such a good idea,” Parker countered in one, sounding wary. “We don’t have much to go on, and Karen’s cut off from-”
“The other option is to stand around, stare at the wall, and hope someone comes running in.”
“You probably have a concussion, and- Look, it's not like we'll be wasting that much time, Sam knows where we were going-”
“I’m getting a move on,” Bucky cut him off firmly, tying his hair in a ponytail – at this point, it felt filthy with sweat, blood, soot, and whatever else had made its way there that day. “Stay here.”
“God, why are you acting like fifteen-year-old me?”
He gave the kid a blank look. “I thought you were ten.”
Parker scowled, and Bucky realized he’d made a grave argumentative misstep. “We’re not moving.”
Bucky poked a finger into his chest. “You've got two choices – you either sit and wait, or you come with me to dangerous parts unknown.”
The kid huffed out obnoxiously and started in the direction of the hallway. “Fine.”
Bucky blinked and stared after him. “You were supposed to choose option one.”
Parker rolled his eyes and turned the corner. Bucky stole a glance at the hard drives, watching the last LED deactivate, and followed. By the time he laid eyes on the kid, Parker had crawled up to the ceiling – and then vanished around yet another corner.
“Uh,” he heard, echoing against the walls, “I think- I think this is a maze.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I think we’re in a maze.”
Bucky stopped walking. He was faced by solid wall; one hallway to his right, another to his left. He followed Parker’s voice, turning left, and found him still knocking around on the ceiling, testing several different spots. “Can’t find the- trapdoor, whatever that was-” he was muttering.
Bucky looked at him, and then past him. The ceiling lights accompanied them through every step they took, but the soft whirring sounds of working CPU’s had long since vanished. He turned around and for a second felt a little out-of-sorts with the unchanging nature of the world around him – there was no sense of direction to be had in this place.
Bucky’s skin still itched. “It’s not a maze.”
“Look,” Parker said, dropping to the floor and pointing ahead, “turn that corner, three more hallways you can venture into. Forward, left, right. Bet if we’d gone right, before –” the kid pointed behind them – “we’d have had even more freedom of choice. I mean, don’t get me wrong, as imprisonment goes, this is as permissive as it gets, but I also don’t see why this kind of store-brand drug-dealing operation would need so many- hallways. Why anyone would need so many hallways. So, logically, maze.”
“Yeah, that’s the ace,” Bucky muttered. “No one needs so many hallways, ergo, maze.”
“That’s what I just said!”
“I know, I was there.”
Bucky strode forward and Parker scrambled after him. Sure enough, now he could either continue forward, or turn left.
“Sargent Barnes,” the kid insisted, “it’s a maze.”
“It’s not a maze.”
It was definitely a maze.
“This is the stupidest way to be in danger,” Bucky muttered, staring around at the unmoving walls, empty space, and complete lack of looming threat. “Am I even supposed to be pumping adrenaline right now?”
“I guess so. Mazes work really well for horror movies, and that one chapter in Goblet of Fire was creepy. Though, I will say, this is- the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen a villa- criminal do,” the kid noted, looking around at their unchanging landscape.
“That probably means they're about to become your arch-nemesis.”
They pressed forward cautiously. The risk of getting lost didn’t hold much weight when held up against the fact that they were officially, honest-to-god running around in a maze. The whole point of mazes was finding the exit (if there even was one); so getting lost seemed like step one. For his part, Parker seemed more amused and curious than alarmed – he walked on his own two feet as often as he crawled around the tunnels, up and down and sideways. He wouldn’t stop talking, either. It briefly occurred to Bucky that he didn’t know much about the length of the teenage attention span.
Parker gasped delightedly, just as Bucky had started to gain repetition-induced confidence in his march. He’d stopped and crouched, perched on the balls of his feet. “Sargent Barnes, it’s that huge dent in the corner, from before! I thought I’d never see you again,” the kid said morosely to the wall.
“I figured you’d lose your sanity quickly, but not –” Bucky checked his watch – “seven minutes in.”
Parker straightened. “My point is we've been walking in circles.”
“Yeah, caught that. Thanks.”
“I wish Morgan was here. Morgan would have called that dent Wilson, and we'd be having tons of fun recreating scenes from Cast Away.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were bored.”
“It's not your fault. Well, it's a little bit your fault.”
Bucky clicked his tongue. “Say goodbye to Wilson.”
His metal hand grabbed onto the kid's arm and Parker let himself be dragged away, fingers feebly scratching and clinging to the wall. “Wilson,” he cried. “Wilson, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Wilson!”
Parker’s lack of visible panic was making it easier to think, for some reason. The prickly urge in Bucky’s spine hadn’t gone anywhere, telling him to keep moving even if he wasn’t entirely sure what he was moving toward. If you start running, they’ll never let you stop, Steve would say, but Steve wasn’t there and Bucky had started running long ago. Every doctor and every wannabe doctor would tell him to keep busy, and he wasn’t sure that’s what he was doing; but Steve wouldn’t have sat still either, so Bucky figured he was on the right path, doing whatever was expected of him.
The kid was oblivious to Bucky’s mental gymnastics, and the lighthearted way he was handling their situation was grounding him in confusing ways, which Bucky didn’t have the wherewithal to parse. He was trapped in a maze; he could make all the twists and turns he wanted, and he’d still be inexorably locked with Parker in a closed space. It should feel more claustrophobic. Bucky couldn’t put distance between this situation and himself; loud-mouthed company made it impossible for him to get trapped inside his own head in some metaphorically maze-like way.
“Hurray,” Parker cheered, several wrong turns later, “our first dead end. I was worried we wouldn’t get the full maze experience.”
Bucky made an executive decision, and tried to punch through the concrete. He left a metallic fist-shaped imprint instead. Parker sported a conspicuously neutral expression when he cleared his throat.
“May I?”
“Bite me.”
Parker took that as permission. He jumped to the ceiling, held on with the tips of his fingers, and kicked out with both feet against the wall. It crashed like a domino, making Bucky cough and take several steps back at the dust and debris. There was an ominous rumbling sound above them that seemed to alarm the kid.
He landed and looked at Bucky. “How come we didn’t think of that before?”
Bucky pursed his lips and didn’t answer. “We could keep going in a straight line, if you can just knock out every wall in our way.”
Parker snapped his fingers and ignored him obtrusively. The rumbling stopped. “I remember why. We don’t know how big this thing is-”
“How big could it possibly be?”
“I don’t like the brute-force approach, Tony says it's for peasants.”
“Am I gonna have to slap you?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the sensible one?”
“No, but you are clearly supposed to be the overthinker.”
Parker huffed at that like it was ridiculous. “For all we know, these –” he smacked the wall – “are the only thing keeping the ceiling from caving in on top of our heads. Same goes for punching up. We should be careful how many of them we knock down. I’m just saying, if we get buried alive, I’m totally ditching you to go have a panic attack.”
“If we don’t try it-”
“I did try it, in my head. Didn’t work.”
“Do you have an answer for everything?”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, silence. Try it sometime.”
“I did once, and Tony drove me to the hospital. May thinks it’s the funniest thing.”
Bucky had no idea why he let that distract him. “… Stark drove you to the hospital because you were silent?”
“Yeah, I also had a fever of a hundred and four. Still cannot get over the fact that the first symptom he noticed was how quiet I was.”
“I can’t get over the fact he noticed before you did.”
“So now that I’ve successfully changed the subject, do I win our argument?”
Bucky frowned, returning to reality. The problem, he decided, was that he was having far too much fun bickering with the kid. He sighed. “Fine. No indoors demolition.” Parker’s tense shoulders deflated instantly. “I feel like I should be the babysitter here, not the other way around,” he muttered.
There was another rumble, this one louder. The kid paused and stared at the ceiling again. “Okay, so – don’t panic or anything, but I’m pretty sure the ceiling’s about to partially collapse.”
Bucky had barely spun around before Parker shoved him away, hard. The world fell apart around him in a deafening hurricane, and Bucky rolled with the punches until he was out of the danger radius. His elbows felt bruised and raw when his eyesight finally fixed itself, right side up. He blinked in shock for three seconds, before jumping to his feet on unsteady knees.
The dust hadn’t so much settled as slowed, still tainting the air in a flurry of dirt, grime and whatever else. He nudged a piece of varnished wood – flooring or furniture – and looked up; there was an uneven hole in the sky, not very big, displaying jagged edges mostly obscured by the part of the building that had fallen through.
The kid was nowhere to be found. Bucky scanned the scattered junk. “Parker. Are you under that pile of dirt?”
“No, of course not, that would be traumatic. I’m under this one.” There was a grunt and he crawled out from directly under the middle of the rubble, where it was piled highest. He shrugged off a huge block of concrete like a spider shrugging off twenty times its body weight, plus three thousand kilograms.
Bucky helped him up – Parker opened his mouth again before he was even fully upright. “I’m good,” he gasped, poking at what appeared to be a particularly sore spot on his forearm. “Bruises will probably have faded by the time May starts fussing. Good thing this place is sturdy enough that we probably only caused a giant crater on the ground floor.”
The kid was bruised, and scraped, and in generally worse shape than he had been, five minutes previous. He was also, clearly, about as clear-headed as he’d ever be. His suit, gleaming red and blue against his thin, teenaged frame, was immaculate – a clear contrast to his face, so mated with grime that it was almost unrecognizable.
And Bucky suddenly remembered why he’d wanted to crawl out of his skin. He let go of the kid’s arm like he’d been burned. “Yeah, that was my main concern, for sure,” he said, lips moving without his say-so.
“So, now we know,” the kid said, distractedly scrutinizing the pile of rubble. “Whatever black market contractors these guys hired to build the weird part of their evil lair – absolutely terrible. I might have to leave a couple scathing online reviews. I do a mean suburban mom impression.”
“You really don’t.”
“I feel so prescient,” Parker continued brightly, still willfully ignoring Bucky’s state of mind. He was absent-mindedly rubbing at his arm, walking around the caved-in floor to inspect the damage. “Totally called it. Is this how Tony feels all the time?”
One of Bucky’s blood vessels popped, he was pretty sure. His mouth started working in tandem with his brain again. “Can you please,” he said, and it sounded strangled, “please not die in any way that can be directly traced back to me?”
The kid squinted at him. “Phew, for a second there, I thought you were about to show concern for my safety and general well-being.”
“I'm showing concern for mine. Stark's already tried to kill me once.”
Parker stumbled on nothing and spun around to stare. “He what now?”
Bucky screwed up his face, momentarily sidetracked. “I didn’t say that.”
“I have excellent hearing. Means I can hear you talking from where you’re standing three feet away.”
“We had a problem. We no longer have a problem. Ask him about it sometime.”
“You said ‘he tried to kill me’, not ‘we got into a fight’.”
“Only fair, I killed his parents first.”
“You what now?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Wait, wait, wait – is that why Tony and Captain Rogers didn’t speak to each other for two years?”
“Yes, my name is on the papers under ‘grounds for separation'. And yes, to answer your next question, your A-team did break up because of me.”
There was a long, tense silence. “That wasn’t at all gonna be my next question,” Parker said softly. “You blame yourself for-”
“I think you were right,” Bucky cut him off tersely, feeling like he needed to lock himself up imminently, alone and with no chatty conversational partner, “we should’ve just stayed put and waited for Sam.”
“Let’s circle back for a second, I’m not ready to change the subject-”
Bucky started walking again, mostly as a way to interrupt him. Parker followed. The wreckage littered their path for dozens of steps ahead – more dust and dirt than anything, after a while, but spread out to remind them of the extent of the damage.
The walls, so far a haven of quiet and temporary nuisance, now felt oppressive. Parker was no longer a comforting presence – Bucky could only think about how he'd been using a sixteen-year-old as a crutch and a distraction. He had no business relying on him like that. Sometimes, it felt like all he was doing was jumping from distraction from distraction, studiously avoiding looking past them – and, clearly, that only ended with the ceiling caving in.
His blood pressure was rising again.
“I shouldn’t be here.” It slipped out without Bucky quite being aware of it.
To his credit, Parker seemed to catch on very quickly, this time. “Are you kidding? The mission’s been going so well-”
“Is that sarcasm?”
“No, it really has been going-”
“Apart from the bit where we got trapped in some maze-”
“Out of the three of us, you have been, statistically, the most valuable player in this party, Karen says so-”
“Are you using internet lingo again?”
“No one got hurt-”
“You did.”
“This is your first mission back-”
“Technically my first mission ever, I’m not counting that giant battle-”
“It hasn’t been easy for everyone coming back from the dead, I get it, I was gone too.”
Bucky corrected his assumption – the kid hadn’t caught on fully, he was still off-base. “Easy for you to say,” he said anyway, because it was easier for him to play it up, “your life wasn’t already a mess before you died.”
“Man, we could stand around comparing problems all day-”
“Or we couldn’t. Don’t call me man.”
“I came back to a five-year-old firecracker calling me her big brother,” Parker offered, ignoring him. “I hadn't even gotten over calling Tony Mr. Stark. It’s a strange time for everyone.”
“She calls me Uncle, and do you remember what I told you about her ancestors, five minutes ago?”
“Yeah, don’t say it again.”
“Wouldn’t want this chat to take a darker turn-”
“I feel like we’re getting lost in conversational topics.”
“Get a compass.”
“But I’m so good at orientation, it-”
“I swear to god, Parker, if you make another joke about men never asking for directions-”
The kid’s mouth snapped shut. Bucky glared for good measure. Parker took a few seconds, Bucky assumed, to gather his thoughts, during which they took another two left turns. “I don’t know what happened between you and Tony,” he said carefully. “I’m sure it involves very difficult- stuff-”
“Forget Iron Man, you’re the next Shakespeare-”
Parker was undeterred. “If that’s what this is about-”
“It’s not.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He hesitated. “You know, I’m kind of- I’m as new on the team as you are.”
Bucky scoffed. “You’re Stark’s golden boy.”
“You’re Captain Rogers’ golden- something.” Parker peeked at Bucky’s face and seemed to resign himself to the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere with this conversation. He turned back to his familiar wisecracking ways instead. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask about that, and this feels like the perfect opportunity-” Parker began, and Bucky immediately placed a hand over the kid’s mouth.
“I am begging you,” he said, very seriously, “to shut the hell up.”
Parker tried to mumble something under his fingers, and licked his palm when he was unsuccessful. Bucky’s eye twitched and his hand dropped instantly. “That’s better. No, it’s just, the two of you are so-”
“I used to be an assassin in the sixties. I don’t know if you know what that means, but I promise, the hippies weren’t known for their restraint. You keep talking, I’m gonna end up using more violent methods to shut you up.”
Instead of fear and alarm, Parker was eyeing him with a high degree of suspicion. “Did you kill JFK?”
Bucky returned that with his resting murderous expression and threw a handful of debris at his head. For some reason, he was breathing a little easier again.
The next dead end finally made the kid stop, frown, and stomp his foot in mounting frustration. Bucky chewed on his cheek and focused on the point where the wall met the floor, deep in the shadows. “What now?” he asked.
“Well, let's see,” Parker replied, faux-thoughtfully, “Our options are wall, wall, wall, or backtrack. Last time, our options were wall, forward, right, or backtrack. So, I was thinking, follow the brightest star until we run into three wise men?”
Bucky closed his eyes for a short second and opened them back up. “We took a right. Let’s go back and try the new right.”
Parker saluted him. “Aye aye.”
Walking was what people did in mazes. Bucky was an aimless wanderer, now – his life was the concrete walls and the epilepsy-inducing lighting overhead. The vague, unspoken idea was that if they just kept walking, they’d get to the end, or they’d run into someone – one of the Snatchers – and something would change. Even if via a fight.
The more cold, familiar halls they walked, the more it felt like walking the overtrodden thought patterns of Bucky’s mind. Parker had briefly convinced him of the lighthearted approach to stressful situations, but now he’d been pointedly reminded why that wasn’t Bucky’s usual approach. The kid made everything seem uncomplicated, a weird brand of confidence coming from his way of dealing with problems as they came up, instead of suffering in advance.
So Bucky had done what he’d always done – he’d started following the obstinate, loud-mouthed little guy, and it had felt comfortable. The kid was the only thing in his vicinity Bucky couldn’t predict – it was harder to go down a dark, familiar spiral if he kept forcing Bucky to take detours. It was easier, with him around – he was better at navigating mazes than Bucky was at navigating his own head, and it never felt like a burden to let him take charge.
Except Parker wasn’t Steve, and sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t be allowed to take point on anything. Bucky was the adult – an adult so buried in his own head that he was shedding all his responsibilities on a too-eager teenager, but an adult nonetheless. He had needed the reminder.
And still, the kid never shut up.
“Remember earlier,” he said, very carefully, after three minutes of silent progress, “when I was trying to be nice and helpful, and you threatened me with bodily harm?”
“Yes.”
“Okay- right, glad to have confirmation that that happened,” Parker stammered awkwardly, thrown for just a second. Unfortunately, he got right back on track. “Can I try being helpful again?”
“No.”
“You do realize I’m only going to get more annoying the longer this goes on?”
“Yes.”
“So, shouldn’t you be more cooperative, y’know, as damage control?”
“No.”
“What’re you gonna do if I don’t ask you a yes-or-no question?”
“Same thing I’m doing now – pray that you either shut up eventually or that a huge hole opens up under you.”
The kid frowned like his puppy had been accused of being anything short of a good boy, and Bucky turned away so he wouldn’t feel like he needed to apologize or something.
“You’re grumpy,” Parker accused.
“Yeah, it’s not a character flaw, it’s a character feature.”
“You’re grumpier than you were fifteen minutes ago,” Parker elaborated.
“Can you go bother the dent in the wall again?”
“See? Grumpier.”
“And you care because?”
“It’s a way to score savior-complex points. Haven’t hit my quota for today.”
Bucky’s face screwed up, partly in astonishment, partly in amusement. “Are you, perchance, an asthmatic kid born in nineteen-twenty-one Brooklyn with a death wish and a rusty spoon in your mouth?”
“Cool, Wikipedia says Captain Rogers was born in nineteen-eighteen,” Parker said, fascinated. “I have insider knowledge now.”
“He lied on his enlistment forms.”
“Awesome.”
“Stay in school, kid.”
“They make us watch his rule of law PSA in AP Government.”
“Yeah, a lot of things turned out stupid in this century. People most of all. Left.”
Parker obligingly turned left again, right on Bucky’s tail. The sense of disappointment, upon being met with more gray maze, was inexplicable. It was the lack of change, he supposed – again and again, they kept making an active choice to turn a corner, to choose a path; and again and again, the choice proved meaningless. It was the last thing his head needed right then.
But then there was Parker.
“Sargent Barnes,” the kid called, peering up at Bucky with an eerily focused expression on his face, “how come you didn’t tell Mr. Wilson and I about the fire before you jumped out that window?”
Bucky stared at him. “Why are you bringing this up out of nowhere? And how the hell are you still ruminating on that one?”
“Subtlety wasn’t working, and I felt like we needed something to talk about-”
“You’ve been acting subtle? That was you acting subtle?”
Parker ignored him. “Also, I have a very persistent personality.”
“The word is stubborn.”
“How come you didn’t tell us about the fire?” the kid repeated.
“That’s the third time you’ve asked me that question.”
“Is it gonna be the third time I fail to get an answer?”
“Left.”
“Dead end.”
Bucky groaned, stopping in his tracks. Parker sat down against the wall. “What’re you doing?”
“Pretending to be tired.”
Bucky ran a hand through his hair. “Right,” he grabbed at the kid’s arm and tugged; naturally, he didn’t budge an inch. “I’m not sitting down for a heart-to-heart.”
Parker looked hurt. “You’d leave me behind?”
“Are you five?”
“No.” He stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry.
Bucky had crossed the hallway and turned two corners before Parker caught up to him again, crawling on the ceiling above. “Y’know, it’d be real easy to get separated in this place.”
“Here’s hoping.”
The kid landed beside him. “This is gonna be another dead end, I can hear it,” he warned, with none of his usual bluster.
Bucky sighed and did a one-eighty. Maybe it was because Parker went another five minutes without opening his mouth; maybe he was feeling a little guilty for making the kid brood; maybe it was because Bucky’s anxiety was reaching a fever-pitch; maybe it was because his bladder, stomach and feet were sounding the sinking-ship alarm – but he broke the silence for the first time in this annoying adventure. “You figure Steve and Stark would’ve found a way to get out of here by now?”
Parker practically jumped out of his skin. And then he seemed to process Bucky’s words. His brows knitted together. “Why’d you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Frame everything you do- Weird, pointless comparisons. Who do you think is expecting something from you?”
Bucky stared. “What does that even mean?”
“You keep saying stuff like, ‘Steve would do this’, or ‘Steve wouldn’t think this is the right thing to do’-”
“Or ‘Steve would do something stupid if he were here right now’-”
“I don’t think Captain Rogers thinks like that. You probably shouldn’t, either.”
“It’s easier to think about what he’d do than it is to remember what I’d do,” Bucky said calmly.
Parker did the worst thing he could think of, and exactly what he’d expecting – he sported pity in his eyes. And then he didn’t offer any pity at all. “I’m sure it feels easier. Doesn’t mean it is, not for long.”
That stumped Bucky. “What are you, a shrink?”
Parker threw his hands in the air, and the energy was back. Bucky had no idea why that made him feel better – he had no idea why the kid was so insistent on making him feel better, either. That worked for him. “Remember when we met?”
“No, pretty inconsequential day-”
“You know why I was there?”
“‘Cause Stark was desperate?”
The kid started gesticulating through his explanation, pointing at his own chest. “Mr. Stark made this suit for me, had it ready when I landed in Germany. I used to try really hard to be just like him,” he confessed, entirely unnecessarily, in Bucky’s opinion. “And then I was stripped of all the crutches I’d been using- and it was like – I hadn’t thought about how much stuff was left- how much stuff I had left, without the expectations. Especially without the expectations.”
“Kid – I’m not-”
“I know it’s not the same, I know- I don’t think I’d understand- your position,” he said hastily. “But this part – this I get. It’s not that out there. Earlier, I was trying to say – there was a time I didn’t feel I should be on the team either,” Parker revealed. Bucky paused and arched a brow at him. “That I wasn’t ready.”
Bucky wrestled with himself before opening his mouth. “What’d you do about it?”
“I told Tony I didn’t feel like I should be on the team, that I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t join.”
“Right,” Bucky sighed, because that was no new insight.
“But I don’t think that’s what you should do.”
His eyes snapped up to meet the kid’s earnest ones. “Why not?”
“Because, I- My feelings weren’t coming from a place of- inadequacy, or self-worth. I was just- inexperienced, and I know I’m inexperienced. Sometimes, I still feel that way, and I need you guys to- help Spider-Man be the best version of himself.” Parker cleared his throat. “That’s not the case for you.”
“You don’t think I’m a liability?”
He shrugged. “I think we’re all liabilities. Pretty sure that’s half the point.”
“Very reassuring.”
“You should stay on the team,” he repeated. “Or you shouldn’t. Either way, do whatever you think is best for you. If- if you want my opinion, I think you did great today.”
The kid made everything seem uncomplicated, a weird brand of confidence coming from his way of dealing with problems as they came up, instead of suffering in advance.
That was pretty alright.
“You’re pretty impressive for an insect,” Bucky reciprocated reluctantly.
“Arachnid,” Parker huffed, crossing his arms indignantly. “I’m only any good at this because I can count on you guys being there to back me up. I’m only confident because I know if I need help, I can call Tony and he'll always pick up.”
“You don’t think it's important to be able to rely on yourself?”
Parker shifted uncomfortably. “Sure. But I’ve got time. This is working for me so far.”
“Well, for me-”
“Being able to rely on yourself doesn’t mean doing the lone-wolf thing,” he interrupted. “That’s stupid. We both need to find a balance. It's harder to fight alone,” he concluded, shrugging. “But we don’t have to. I don’t think we're meant to.”
Bucky’s head was reeling a little. Mostly wrapping around the fact that all this insight was coming from a teenager. “I- thanks.”
But the kid had stopped paying attention. “Damn. Another dead end.” His head tilted. “You notice how we keep going left, and we keep running into dead ends? Like, way more than before.”
“So?”
“And I think –” he pressed his ear against the cold concrete – “I think I hear something. I’m pretty sure – we're circling the leftmost boundary of the maze.”
Bucky looked at him, and then at the solid wall ahead. “Knock that down,” he ordered, and Parker took a few steps back.
“Be prepared to run, this time, and not- y’know, stand around talking.”
“You’re at least half responsible for that one-”
Spider-Man sprinted, leapt, and crashed through the wall.
Sam found them wrapping up the last of the Snatchers in a neat little bow, in some sort of control room they’d set up just outside the maze. They were just Science Guys – faced with a super-soldier and a spider-mutant, crashing through the lab wall, they merely put their hands up and tried to stop shaking. Parker’s demolition efforts hadn’t even made anything collapse, this time, so Bucky didn’t really get the fear.
Parker seemed to be employing a great deal of effort not to instinctively reassure them.
Once they’d finished collecting samples of their chemical bakery to Parker’s satisfaction, the kid’s head had snapped up. He was wearing the mask again, but Bucky could picture his eyes widening.
“Bucky, watch out!”
In the short time Bucky had known him, he’d learned to trust Peter Parker’s warnings. He rolled to the side on instinct, and the door crashed open right where he’d been standing. He stared at Captain America, who was frowning down at him like it was Bucky’s fault he’d nearly given him yet another concussion.
“Bucky, watch out,” Sam said in a monotone, echoing Parker several seconds too late. Bucky glared up at him. “Why were you standing in front of the door?”
“You ever hear of knocking?”
“Don’t tell Steve.”
“That was like one octave away from ‘don’t tell dad’,” the kid commented, still rummaging around cabinets, probably checking whether Dr. Banner would want them to bring back anything else.
“Where the hell have you been?” Sam demanded, apparently done with their theatrics. “Your trackers went dead.”
Bucky hummed. “We got lost.”
“You know what's worse than putting up with Steve's panicked nagging? Putting up with Steve and Stark's panicked nagging. You've been gone for four hours.”
“We took several wrong turns,” Parker added helpfully.
Sam crossed his arms. “Screw the both of you. And pick up your damn phones so mom and dad will stop blowing up mine.” His eyes landed on the webbed-up lab-coats. “The enhanced people in this posse get to take care of prisoner transport, by the way,” he added.
“We’re a posse?” Parker beamed. One of the scientists openly stared at him, mouth duct-taped shut.
“We’re certainly not a boyband,” Bucky argued.
“I dunno,” the kid said thoughtfully, “I used to be in the school band. And the Avengers at least had Agent Romanoff, Ms. Maximoff.”
“I’m through associating with you.”
“But we’re in the same posse.”
“Not anymore.”
Sam was staring between the two of them. “I don’t like this new dynamic.”
Bucky shoved the cardboard box they’d filled with multicolored test-tubes and strange-looking instruments into his arms. “The kid and I are taking the elevator.”