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You were itching for a change. You had been cooped up in the compound for far too long after your last mission. You had broken your wrist on your last outing and had gotten shot. You had only just been cleared. It hadn’t been your fault, but Barnes would argue otherwise.You and Bucky Barnes didn’t hate each other, but you weren’t friends. You worked well together in the field, all things considered. It was why the two of you were constantly paired together.
He had been livid after your last mission. The silence on the way back to the compound had spoken volumes. The two of you had brought Peter Parker out into the field for what was supposed to be a training mission, a low level one that was supposed to have minimal danger. The key words there were supposed to . Things had gone south the second the three of you entered the building.
Your wrist had ended up broken after you pushed Peter to the ground when you dove in front of him. The lone operative you had yet to find had taken aim at the teenager. You took the shot for him and Barnes took out the operative. Unlike Barnes and Peter, you didn’t have a healing factor. The shot had been dangerously close to striking something vital, but hadn’t. Barnes had been able to stitch you up on the quinjet and gave you the silent treatment all the while.
It hadn’t been until later that night that the two of you got into it. Words had flown recklessly, and you were both dangerously close to crossing the point of no return with them. Steve had had to intervene to get the two of you to calm down.
You found yourself sitting by the window, watching the snow fall outside. You had made yourself a cup of hot chocolate, fully intending to enjoy the day off from training. Even with your injury, you had still been responsible to train, doing what you could without agitating your wrist. You had finally been cleared to return to full active duty that morning, six weeks after the mission that had ended in disaster.
You groaned when FRIDAY told you your presence was required in one of the conference rooms. So much for a relaxing Saturday morning.
The mission briefing devolved quickly into an argument between you and Barnes. The two of you were put as the point people on the mission, and you had different views on how to handle it. You preferred the guns blazing approach. Loud and brash was your style when dealing with the kind of people the mission involved. You had read enough of the brief to know what you were dealing with. You never cared for the nitty gritty details, something that annoyed Barnes to no end.
“All I’m saying is we storm the place, take out the bad guys and call it a day. Intelligence says there’s only about a dozen or so in the building. It’s a cake walk,” you said, tossing the folder down on the table. Bucky’s expression hardened as he glared at you. You refused to back down.
“Chaos and bloodshed are not a solution. Not every plan has to end with blood on your hands,” Bucky snapped, his hands hitting the table. You recoiled. You had never seen him have this reaction before. He’d been annoyed before, sometimes a little angry, but he never looked as angry as he did in that moment. You knew he was right, but you couldn’t bring yourself to give an inch of ground.
“Then what do you propose, oh Great One. You’ve never been one to be a pacifist before,” you replied. He glared at you. You refused to shrink back under the intensity of his gaze.
“Did you even read the mission brief fully, Agent? There are children there. No older than Parker. Do you really want that on your hands?” he challenged. He knew you hadn’t read the full brief. You snatched the folder off the table, feeling the blood rush from your face as you saw what you had missed. A sick feeling made itself at home in the pit of your stomach.
“Okay. We nix the guns blazing approach. But that doesn’t guarantee they won’t hurt them, or worse, use them as human shields against us,” you replied, sitting down in an empty chair, shoulders slumped. You saw his expression soften but ignored it. Now was not the time to get distracted by Barnes. You couldn’t believe you missed that detail. A sick feeling settled in your stomach.
“We have to do this carefully. If we use the tech to our advantage, we can infiltrate without arousing suspicion,” Natasha offered. You nodded. You ran a hand over your face in frustration before you collected your thoughts, your mind moving a mile a minute as you looked over the maps FRIDAY was projecting.
“We don’t have many options. Scott, how do you feel about some recon?” you asked. Scott was your best option. You didn’t want to risk anything going wrong. Not now that you knew there were children involved. Scott was good at moving around undetected.
“I can do that,” he said. You glanced around the room. It was only you, Natasha, Bucky, and Scott in the room. Peter was missing. A frown settled on your face. Parker was supposed to be there. He had been there when you walked in but was no longer there. The four of you and Peter were the only ones at the compound. The others were on other missions and this one had come in urgently. You knew it had been on the radar for a while, but something had changed in the situation that triggered an immediate need for action.
“Wait...where is Parker?” you asked. It dawned on the others that the teen was no longer in the room. You got your answer when seconds later he all but crashed through the door.
“Sorry, sorry, Ned called. He’s stuck in Metuchen,” Peter said. Something was off about his tone. All eyes were on him, waiting for some sort of explanation.
“Where?” Scott asked, confused. You knew where that was. Your mind was racing to put the pieces together as you took in Peter’s tense body language, the nervousness he held. You glanced at the map in front of you, the pieces coming together, before you asked the question you already knew the answer to.
“Is he in Jersey?” you asked, brow furrowed. You knew in your gut that the kid had done something he shouldn’t have. Metuchen was where the building was you were looking to infiltrate.You saw the moment Bucky realized what you had already pieced together.
“Peter...why is Ned in Jersey?” Bucky asked. Peter went wide eyed.
“I...well...you see...I have some new prototypes and well...you have to be in close proximity to operate them,” Peter said.
“Peter, please tell me Ned isn’t near that building,” Natasha said.
“I could tell you that...but it’d be a lie,” Peter said, his voice trailing off. You took a deep breath before meeting Bucky’s eyes. The two of you shared a look, only breaking eye contact when Bucky spoke.
“Wheels up in five. There’s a landing zone we can use not far from where they are,” Bucky said. No one made a move.
“Let’s go people. We don’t have all day. Scott, you’re first in, get us a visual on the kids and Ned if you can,” you said.
“I didn’t say they caught him,” Peter said. You stared him down. Even if he wasn’t still nervous, a by-product of his age and his experience in the field, you knew his tells. Aside from Tony, you were one of his primary mentors. Whether it was fighting tactics or help with his history homework, Peter came to you for a lot of things. He had become your little brother in a way.
“They caught Ned but they didn’t take his phone,” Peter admitted. A tense silence gripped the room. There was a new sense of urgency.
“At least it seems like they’re incompetant,” Scott replied, trying to bring some levity to the situation.
“Or they want to draw us in. We need to be cautious,” Natasha said. You knew that Natasha had a point. As sloppy as they had been, there was always the risk that it was a trap.
“We don’t know what they have. They could still figure it out, still disable any tech we use somehow. We need to be prepared for anything,” Bucky replied, glancing over at you. Everyone stood, ready to head to the jet.
“FRIDAY, get a location on Ned’s phone. Peter, you need to tell us everything you know,” you said as you began walking out of the room and toward the hangar.
It didn’t take long for the five of you to reach the landing zone you had designated. It wasn’t a far walk. Peter’s newest invention was a miniaturized drone. You had reviewed the footage with Bucky and Natasha en route to the landing zone. You had to admit, you had an advantage going in with the footage.
“What are you thinking?” Natasha asked.
“We still send Scott in first. Before Ned was taken, seems like the perimeter was insecure. It doesn’t seem like they were waiting for us, and it seems like they were surprised to find Ned,” you said.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not a trap. Comms stay open. There’s a drainage pipe that leads right into the grounds. We use that as our entry point. Chaos and Parker will use their abilities to get in. Scott, you’re flying,” Bucky said.
“Wait for your call?” you asked.
“As soon as I call it you go,” Bucky replied. Your powers allowed you to phase through objects. You likened it to Danny Phantom. You had a heightened healing factor and super strength that came with it. Your other main power involved controlling the elements around you. There was a reason they called you Chaos.
“Catch you on the other side,” you said as you and Peter split off. It was another ten minutes before Bucky and Natasha reached the entry point from the drainage pipe. Scott had made his way deep into the facility. You were headed right for the children and Ned. You knew there were others spread throughout the building but your priority was getting the innocent ones to safety. Natasha and Bucky would handle taking out others on their way to meet you and Peter.
“Howdy gentlemen,” you said as you curled your hand, focusing on the task at hand. You and Peter made quick work of taking down those in your way without alerting them to your presence. It was a key to succeeding. You had read more of the file than Bucky gave you credit for. While you had missed the information on the children being held currently, you knew they were brutal when they thought someone was on to them.
“I have eyes on Ned. I don’t think they figured out he was surveilling them,” Scott’s voice came. You and Peter had entered another room, ensuring it was cleared. You saw a stack of folders and nodded your head toward them.
“What’s this say?” Peter asked.
“It says they’re dead men walking. I thought the last of them were wiped off the earth,” you said your voice low.
“Who are they, Chaos?” he asked.
“The reason I am the way I am. Hydra weren’t the only ones interested in recreating the serum that made Captain America. They thought children were the key. I should have known it wouldn’t be the end,” you said. It was personal, now. You tore your way through the building as your comms buzzed in your ear. By the time you reached the room where the captives were being held, you could feel the energy crackling around you. You and Peter breached the door. He made quick work of webbing the two men standing guard inside the room as you checked on the children and Ned. You broke the lock on a cabinet, finding a stash of blankets, enough for each of them, if they shared.
“What happened?” Natasha asked as she and Bucky rounded the corner and entered the room.
“We’ll talk at the debrief. I’ve already gotten in contact with the compound. Dr. Cho is waiting for us with the entire medical staff on standby. FRIDAY will run facial recognition when we get to the jet. There’s a team enroute to secure the rest of the building and take anything we may be interested in,” you said. You were on autopilot.
It wasn’t until late that night that the five of you gathered in the meeting room to debrief. You were still on edge.
“What the hell happened there? I thought we agreed to limit the bloodshed as much as possible. You want to tell me why Abrams is telling me there was a trail of destruction in your wake?” Bucky asked.
“Because it’s the same organization that did this to me. The same organization that stole my childhood to try to re-create Steve. I’ll admit, I lost control. But you would have too, Barnes,” you said.
“I didn’t realize,” he started to say before you cut him off.
“Neither did I. I thought we wiped them out years ago. Turns out we were wrong. We just drove them deeper underground instead,” you said. The rest of the debrief was uneventful. Your reports were due in forty-eight hours, though you knew yours would be done by morning. You hated dwelling on things.
You found yourself making a cup of hot chocolate, extra marshmallows and whipped cream, before heading to the balcony that was just off of the Avengers living area. It was a post mission routine, one that helped you get out of the headspace that came with missions. The night had a slight chill to it, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You heard the door slide open a short time later. You could tell by the footsteps who it was.
“Thought I’d find you out here. You did good today,” Bucky said, sitting down in the seat beside you.
“I thought you said chaos and bloodshed were not a solution?” you asked, lowering your voice to mimic him. He cracked a smile before laughing with you joining in.
“It wasn’t. Not for entering the building. Chaos and bloodshed have a time and a place,” he replied. The two of you sat in a comfortable silence as you sipped on your hot chocolate, looking up at the sky. You were scanning the night sky for any constellations you could identify.
“What’s on your mind?” Bucky asked. You glanced over at him.
“You ever think about how in the grand scheme of things, we’re just specks of dust floating through space? There’s worlds out there we know nothing about. And in a second, that can just disappear and the universe just moves on,” you said.
“Where’s this coming from?” he asked. You sighed.
“How much do you know about how I came to join the team?” you asked him. You weren’t sure you had ever talked to him about it. The relationship between the two of you was frosty, sometimes cordial, sometimes filled with angst and anger. You couldn’t recall ever having a heart to heart with him.
“I know this group we took out today had a role in you becoming who you are,” he said.
“They told my parents they could fix me. I was sick when I was a kid...not sick, more of a medical mystery. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. MRIs, x-rays, blood tests. They ran the gamut of tests and nothing came of it. Until Dr. Westerly. Dr. Westerly came a long, had this test she could run. She told my parents the condition I had had no name but I was a perfect candidate for a clinical trial. They were desperate. It took my parents a month to realize something was wrong. I was injected with something that gave me powers. When Westerly caught on that they were suspecting something, she took me and fled. Six months. She had me for six months, running tests. SHIELD found me and brought me home. More specifically, Fury,” you explained.
“How known was this to SHIELD?” he asked.
“Not very. My father and Fury are old friends. Fury trusted very few with my rescue. Clint was on the team that got me out. Fury oversaw my training covertly because the man has never been trusting, not really. You have to earn it, it’s not just given,” you replied.
You didn’t want to get into the details and Bucky wasn’t about to pry. You didn’t jump when his hand covered yours. Soon enough you moved closer to him, his arm moving to be around your shoulder.
“There’s Orion,” Bucky said, gesturing toward the sky.
“That’s always been one of my favorites,” you replied. The two of you sat comfortably for a while, pointing out constellations and other stars. You couldn’t recall every sitting and just talking to him. Under the moonlight, he looked almost ethereal. You’d be lying if you said you never found him attractive. You didn’t see him giving you the same look when you’d look away.
You weren’t sure when it happened, but you drifted off beside him, cuddled into his side. You woke up, still outside beside him, with a thick blanket strewn across the two of you, a note attached by your hand in Natasha’s writing. You smiled as you read it, before nestling back into Bucky’s side. You’d address the elephant in the room later, content to sleep beside him as the sun rose over the horizon.