Archive of Our Own

“Well, Mr. Wilson, you undoubtedly have a very impressive resume,” the museum Head of Security said. He was an ancient man but wore it well, bright blue eyes that shone with mirth, and broad as he was weathered. On one hand, Sam could completely understand how shoulders like that made for a good head of security. On the other, the guy must’ve been pushing ninety. Eighty at the youngest.

“Thank you, sir,” Sam said, and did not mention that the application had been very specific about qualifications. Anyone who had half a shot at this job would’ve had an impressive resume. “I tried the civilian life, but I just don’t think it’s for me right now.”

Grant Stevens nodded agreeably as he continued to flip through Sam’s list of accolades and awards. “I know what you mean. I think you’ll find this job will suit your needs, if not your expectations well.”

Sam knew better than to assume that a statement like that meant he’d gotten the job. The guy was just being friendly, or speaking in hypotheticals. Hypothetically, this would be a great job for Sam. Hypothetically, the VA was supposed to have been a great job for him. And it was. Sam adored his time with other vets, helping people, shooting the shit, lending a guiding hand. It was just that… Well, that was terribly domestic. He’d just spent more than a decade overseas, most of that time wearing experimental EXO-skeleton wings to fly into enemy territory and rescue people. Fly into storms and rescue people. Fly into the sky and just…be something more than human for a few minutes.

He knew he couldn’t go back into active duty yet. After what had happened with him and Riley, he was just happy to pass the psych evals to get out of the hospital. He knew he wasn’t likely to pass an eval for combat any time soon. Hell, if anyone watched him sleep, they’d never let him near the wings again.

But this? A night security position at a very fancy private museum? This he could do. There was just enough adrenaline involved to keep him on his toes–he was, admittedly, marginally afraid of the dark, especially alone, and there had been a handful of bad actors attempting to get into the building in the past several years apparently–but very little actual threat. Sam didn’t quite understand the laundry list of qualifications the position demanded, but he chalked it up to a crazy rich person protecting their investments.

And, yeah, the crazy rich person was definitely paying for all of those qualifications. Even if Sam was full time at the VA, he still wouldn’t be making half of what this position was offering. And there was a bonus every six months.

This was all thanks to the Stark Foundation. Sam couldn’t remember if Howard Stark was still alive or if his son, Tony, had taken over the enterprise–though he was pretty certain crazy rich people didn’t actually run the museum. They had staff for that. The Stark Foundation had created the museum in 1954, shortly after Howard Stark settled back down in America after his various war efforts. The Starks were old-old money and had amassed a collection worth displaying over the years, plus all the tech and memorabilia Howard brought back from Europe. That was this museum.

It had two wings–history and science-and-technology. The history wing was full of artifacts and displays created by generations of Starks who were either the kind of people to do the exploring and pillaging and robbing or the kind of people who’d pay for what was explored, pillaged, and robbed. Howard had filled out sparser collections throughout the years quite well, in a supposedly more ethical way. The science and technology wing was almost entirely populated by Howard and Tony. Sam knew that if Tony hadn’t taken over the museum, he had certainly left quite a mark on Stark Technologies, even if the company hadn’t actually passed on to him yet.

In between the two was the display that Sam couldn’t explain an origin for. It wasn’t as grand as a typical museum’s might be, only four skeletons all together, but supposedly almost every bone was authentic and part of the same body. The T-rex, pterodactyl, triceratops, and brachiosaurus displays bridged the wings, leading people from history to science quite literally. Sam had just about fallen over the first time he’d seen them. He’d always had that reaction to dinosaurs. Well, most history displays. The enormity of time and solid proof that something had come before was always a warm wash of overwhelming confusion and gratitude. But there was something about the Stark dinosaurs that felt even bigger. Like the brachiosaurus was about to swivel its huge head down at him and stare right back.

“Do you want to start tonight?” Stevens asked.

Sam’s eyes snapped away from the photo of the brachiosaurus tacked behind Grant’s desk to the guard’s face. “What?” he asked.

“Well, the position is vacant and I’ve done my time on the night shift. I’m quite tired of having to cover it. I like you, Sam. And I’d like it if you'd join our team. Sooner, rather than later. Come on, let me give you a tour before you make a decision.”

There wasn’t much of a decision to be made. Sam wanted the job and there was nothing keeping him from starting right then. Except that he hadn’t brought dinner. And he’d also told Sarah he’d watch the boys over the weekend. He probably couldn’t ask for time off after his first full night.

Still, they’d figure it out. “A tour sounds great. I’ve been around the museum before, but I always like looking at it again.”

“You’d be surprised at how quickly exhibits change here,” Stevens said. He shakily pushed himself to his feet and slotted a flashlight in his belt. “So, the first thing you’ll wanna know is that there’s a switchboard down here that controls every light in the place. Everything’s labeled, room by room, so you ain’t gotta flip them all. It gets a little creepy here alone, though, so I recommend using it.”

Sam nodded seriously, though he wasn’t sure it warranted a serious nod. Stevens flipped all the switches and then ambled out of the guard’s room. “The foyer, you know this area. It has our dinosaur skeletons. Off to the left is the historical wing and off to the right is the scientific wing. There are several emergency exits in both wings, but they are locked at all times. If the crash bar is pushed, the lock disengages and the alarm sounds throughout the entire museum. There is also an alarm panel in the office so you can know exactly which door it was that tripped the system. The only real entrance and exit is this one here, the back door in the office, and a back door in the museum staff office suite.”

Sam stared at the dinosaur skeletons as they passed, always filled with a childish glee and wonder while looking at them. He still couldn’t fathom how tall they were. Stevens didn’t pay them any attention as he led Sam into the historical wing. He walked all the way to the furthest room before speaking again. “So, it starts off with ancient civilizations. Greek and Egyptian, then Roman and East Asian. A few Viking artifacts. Supposedly something from Wakanda.”

Sam looked at the miniature figures crowded around scale models of pantheons and pyramids and rivers and battlefields. As a kid, he’d wanted nothing more than to play with the plastic figurines. Making the Huns battle the Vikings had been a go-to daydream. And what would Greek philosophers say to Roman politicians? And could he spring load a sarcophagus to send a mummy shrieking into his sister’s face? He’d grown up a little since then, learned a little too. Mostly now, seeing rows and rows of people stuck in their own historical moment, unable to escape, he just felt sad with the weight of history again.

“Wakanda isn’t real,” he scoffed finally. It was a romantic fantasy like Atlantis. The intricately carved snarling mask in the display case was likely from an equivalent society in space and time, wrongly attributed by a foolish white man trying to make a name for his adventures at the detriment to African history and story.

Stevens swiped his thumb over his nose, looked at Sam, then looked away. “Since everything is from the Stark family collection, our displays are possibly not quite as impressive as some other museums, but almost everything is authentic. Very few modern repairs or plaster completions. The Stark Museum actually has one of the most varied collections of historical clothing. That’s why we have so many mannequin displays around. Supposedly, keeping clothes on mannequins isn’t best practice, but our curators keep a close eye on it and nothing has ever seemed to go terribly awry. I suppose there was that time– Ah, I’m just jabbering on. You’ll get all your own stories to tell.”

Stevens led them into another room. “This begins the war displays. They’re always moving things from history to science from these displays–there’s a military display in the science wing too–so don’t be too freaked out if you come in and things aren’t as dusty as usual. Like the ancient civilizations, volume comes and goes between wars. The Starks were not in America during the Revolutionary War, so all artifacts are second hand. The Civil War collection is slightly more full. The World War II display is, of course, world renowned here. Howard Stark cultivated a very impressive spread throughout his life. He kept everything. Including plenty he shouldn’t have.”

Sam stopped in front of the Howling Commandos display. Usually, all the members had a mannequin set up with their costumes on display, but since the Captain America costume had been lost somehow earlier this year, only the one complete costume remained out. The rest were either projected or locked in a glass case. The James “Bucky” Barnes mannequin smirked out across the rest of the room, looking more like a dashing hero on the cover of a romance novel than a tragic war figure. Barnes’ outfit was complete because he’d vanished in the middle of a fight and left his rucksack behind, not having taken it into battle.

Sam had had a minor crush on the guy half his life, mostly because the actor who played him in the Oscar-bait movie that came out when he was thirteen was fine as hell and the movie highly suggested Barnes had been gay. There was something about staring up at this mannequin, with its face so eerily similar to the photograph in the display below, that made Sam’s chest ache until he couldn’t breathe.

Beside him, Stevens was staring up at the mannequin too, looking a little misty eyed. So Sam didn’t feel too weird. “Uh, Howard knew them right? The Commandos and Captain America?”

Stevens nodded without looking away. “He did. Supposedly, he helped fly Rogers into enemy territory to save the 107th in the first place. But that’s never been publicly confirmed.”

“Right, that movie said that and it caused all sorts of controversy.” Sam nodded and hugged his arms around his ribs until he turned away entirely. “Gotta say, I was never a war history guy. I like everything else.”

“All of history is a war. And usually several wars in a trenchcoat,” Stevens objected, following after Sam around the room to the next hallway crossover.

Sam tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Sure, but that’s not what I was interested in reading about.”

Stevens held his hands up with a laugh. “That's fair. I suppose if I hadn’t lived through so much of it, I might not be as interested either.”

He continued to guide them through the history wing. Things tapered off around the Vietnam and Korean War, the Civil Rights movement, the 60s in general, because artifacts later than that tended to end up in the science wing, Stevens explained.

“Hey, what’s down here?” Sam asked, rapping his knuckles on a grand door about halfway between the two wings.

“Oh, that’s an unopened wing dedicated to the unexplainable,” Stevens said. “The Starks have been fighting with alphabet organizations for years and years to get permission to showcase the artifacts, but they keep getting tied up in legislation and lawsuits. I think we might have the most robust Legal and PR teams out of all the museums.”

The older guard dug out a key from the multitude on his belt and shoved open the door. It was cool and drafty and dim. Sam glanced up at the ceiling and along the walls. There were sconces for lights, but none of them were on, save for a few display cases.

“I thought you said the front desk operated all the lights in the building,” Sam said as Stevens meandered around the dark room.

“I couldn’t tell you the last time these lights were changed. I’m sure they’re all burnt out at this point. This space is mostly used for storage now,” Stevens said, lifting the corner of an anti-flooding drapery to prove his point.

Sam came around a corner and almost shrieked when he was suddenly eye-to-eye with a cat. It took him a second to realize it wasn’t alive or about to attack him. To keep his illusion of cool, he reached out to pet the animal’s orange and yellow striations. “What’s so unexplainable about a cat?” he asked.

Stevens looked back at him and set down a black and purple ball that was glowing faintly along the intricate carvings that adorned it. “Oh, that’s not just a cat,” he said. “That cat was found in the wreckage of a secret US Air Force test ship.”

“Okay, so a cat wandered into wreckage. And?”

“No,” Stevens said, “the cat was in the ship that the Air Force jet collided with. And the ship was from out of the atmosphere.”

Sam frowned. “Are you talking about the Danvers crash? She was brought down by falling space shuttle debris. Not a spaceship.” That shit had been on a million safety tests he’d had to take during his Air Force career.

Stevens again brushed his thumb along the side of his nose. “There’s a whole display dedicated to her in the science wing. She was impressive.”

Sam petted his fingers over the cat’s head again and said a silent apology that it had been taxidermied and had to sit in a dusty closet in a museum for no good reason. “She was really cool. Her work opened the door for programs like mine. I wish I’d have gotten to meet her.”

Stevens hummed and turned away, traveling further back into the room. Sam tailed after, trying to place everything in the room in his mind. “How do you keep all this stuff straight?” he asked finally. “How am I supposed to notice if anything’s been tampered with?”

“Oh, you get used to it,” Stevens said. “The important stuff is locked away. Those are the easiest to keep an eye on. Check all the displays first. Then you’ll start to get favorite artifacts—like your cat. Then you just fill in the blanks.”

Sam rapped his knuckles on an empty display case. “How long did it take you to notice this one was gone?”

Stevens frowned. “That one was a special case. It was stolen years ago. Stark Sr. had just won a case to display it temporarily when Norway, of all countries, picked a fight with him over ownership rights. It disappeared shortly afterwards, before the fight had even really started.”

“What was it?” Sam asked. “Alien debris that had landed in Norway while a Stark happened to be poking around?”

“Close,” Stevens laughed. “It was an artifact that Stark Sr. called the Tesseract. He found it in the Arctic sea, near the Steve Rogers wreckage. I’m not actually sure why Norway wanted it so badly,” he admitted. “The whole thing was over as soon as it began.”

Sam stared at the empty container before blowing out a breath. “You get robbed a lot.”

Stevens laughed. “Well, hopefully with a guy like you around, that’ll stop happening. Come on, let’s head to the science wing.”

Stevens led the way out of the room, expertly avoiding towering piles of supplies and information sheets in plastic protectors. Even with the door having been open this whole time, the museum was warmer than the room had been. Stevens shut the door and was just locking it back down when something clattered behind them. Sam whirled around, shining his flashlight across the floor, though it was useless now that they were back in the lit halls of the museum.

Stevens looked more bemused than concerned. “Speaking of unexplainable curiosities,” he said, stepping forward and sliding his flashlight back into the holster on his hip. A breath later, he was spinning around, probably too spryly for such an old man, and blowing raspberries against a squirming child’s cheek as he clutched her in his arms. “How did you get in today, Mo?” he asked.

The girl scrunched up her nose. “It’s Morgan,” she corrected seriously. She was young, somewhere between Sam’s nephews' ages, with dark hair and an outfit made for sneaking around, all dark, athletic clothes and soft shoes. “Someone propped open the emergency door in the gift shop,” she added. “I snuck in while they were taking out the trash.”

Stevens adopted a very stern look that Sam thought was all for show. “I’m going to have to call your dad. He’s probably running all over the museum looking for you.”

Morgan shook her head. “No, he’s at a gala. My babysitter is probably running all over the house looking for me.”

Sam snorted and then tried to cover it up with a cough, though he wasn’t sure he succeeded. Stevens looked over at him, like remembering he had been leading a professional tour before the interruption.

“Sam, this is Morgan Stark, Tony’s daughter. She is the bane of the security of the museum.”

Sam’s eyebrows went up. “Tony Stark has a daughter?”

“For eight years,” Morgan agreed. And, yeah, Sam could hear her father in her voice. She was cute and well-composed for a child who had snuck into a museum and been caught by the security team. Her arms were looped around Stevens’ neck possessively, but adoringly. “Can I ride home with you, Uncle Steve?” she asked. “You can ask my dad what the gala was like.”

“Your dad will tell me all about the gala on his own,” Stevens said with an equally adoring smile. “But I can definitely drive you home. Why don’t you go hang out at the front desk while I finish showing Sam around?”

Morgan nodded and squirmed her way out of Steve’s hold. Before she left, she held out her hand to Sam. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Sam,” she said. “I promise I won’t cause problems on purpose for you.”

Stevens snorted in disbelief but Sam took her hand and shook it. “It’s a promise,” he agreed. “A heads up would be nice.”

She beamed up at him before skipping back in the direction of the foyer. Sam and Steve both watched her disappear around the corner before they continued on as well.

“Should she really have the run of the museum like that?” Sam finally asked.

“The kid is like an octopus,” Steve said. “She gets into wherever she wants. But her promises are serious. She’s only being mischievous because she knew I was here. Speaking of, I need to text Tony.”

“You have Tony Stark’s number?” Sam asked and then forced himself to breathe through his surprise so his eyes didn’t bug.

“I was close with Howard,” he said as if that was any less surprising. “Besides, you’ll need it too. The Starks are very hands-on with the museum. Tony’s partner is the director of it, in fact.”

Nepotism, Sam thought. He stepped into the science wing as Stevens hung back to continue texting with one finger like the old man he was. Sam was tech-y in his own right. He liked watching the EXO engineers work, liked to be able to take care of his own gear, liked to fiddle with clocks or computers or TVs. He had been very adept at unscrambling channels when he was a teenager, thank you.

Still, sometimes science went over his head. In his AP Biology class, they’d had an entire unit on micro-biology and Sam had never felt so lost in his entire life. Staring at the tall info-graphics scattered around the room detailing a million different scientific achievements was giving him the same kind of light-headedness. If history was overwhelming in the best way, science was overwhelming in the worst. He skipped past the displays celebrating various Stark created (or funded) cures and advancements until he came up to the technology section.

Like Stevens had suggested, a lot of the tech was military based, though there was plenty detailing Howard Stark’s early career, including a slightly demolished car that had levitated for, apparently, 1.3 seconds in 1941, just days before Barnes had been shipped out. Sam knew that because that scene had been in the Oscar-bait movie. He’d almost kissed Rogers that night, in the movie. Sam had maybe watched it a few hundred times, just to see Barnes’ mouth part as his eyes drifted down to his friend’s mouth, listen to the husky way his breath rasped in his throat, watch the ripple of muscle over his arms braced against the wall by Rogers’ head, imagine the feel of his own mouth on Barnes’ sweat slick neck.

“The floating car,” Stevens laughed, just about sending Sam out of his skin. “I was there for this, y’know? One second in the air, but none of us were complaining. It was amazing.”

Sam rubbed at his arm to hide the guilty swooping of his stomach and warming of his skin. “I can imagine. It’s not like we’ve seen any commercial success like that since.”

“Don’t you fly, Sam?” Stevens asked with a happy, amused grin on his face.

Sam ducked his head, his own happy grin coming to his face. “I’m not commercial, sadly,” he pointed out.

“Tony did partner with the military more immediately than his father did. There wasn’t a lot of time for either of them to consider commercial applications of what they were doing from World War II onward.”

Sam scratched at his elbow to banish the last remaining images of white tanktops under dark suspenders. “The environmental work Stark’s been doing has been good though,” he pointed out, just to say something as he crossed to the next display.

This one he knew well. In fact, he was pretty certain this model was the one used in photos for his Air Force tests. This was Danvers’ space-craft, the doomed mission that ended her life and the program for decades. “I didn’t know Stark was involved in the Danvers mission,” Sam said.

“He funded it. I don’t think either Howard or Tony were ever boots on the ground involved. Same for the Rambeau jet.” He gestured to the next model over. The Rambeau missions were more successful. Sam wasn’t a jet pilot, so he wasn’t as up to date on the specifics of her missions but he knew they involved speed. Maria Rambeau: the fastest woman alive.

Next to each model was a doll, which both bore a striking resemblance to the pilots. “Those are the most anatomically accurate figures in the museum,” Stevens said. “They are completely to scale and even weigh to scale, along with the crafts. These models can be used to calculate anything about the flights with stunning precision.”

“No small cat to add to the equation?” Sam joked, which earned him a small frown from Stevens, though it didn’t seem particularly serious.

There were weapons in various stages of creation, mock-ups of Captain America’s shield, interactive programs that detailed Tony Stark’s green initiative works. Nothing quite as cool as a fully to-scale model of pioneers in the Air Force, as far as Sam was concerned. That was, until they came to the last room of the science wing and a ruined spaceship sat in the middle of the floor. The walls were covered with information about the craft, about the fight that brought it down, about what scientists had scooped out of the insides and what Starks had been able to do with that new technology.

“This is from the Battle of New York,” Sam said, resisting the urge to reach out and touch a charred side of the craft. “I had no idea there was a ship on display anywhere in the world. I thought it was all hidden in Area 51.”

“Tony got his hands on it. Has an in with Iron Man apparently,” Stevens said levelly, cool blue eyes scanning over the ship. “It hasn’t had an official debut yet, but we’ve let a few groups in to see it. Mostly college students doing research.”

Sam had been overseas during the attack. It had been a lot of pacing back and forth, warming up a carrier to bring troops back stateside for help and then powering the planes back down when some time schedule was rejected. The National Guard could handle it. There were weirdos in spandex on the scene. No one in their unit was any more capable of dealing with this threat than the boots on the ground.

The battle had stoked inter-division rivalry even more, but it also gave everyone something to gossip about as soon as they were all together again. Everyone wanted to know what had happened and what it was like and were there really aliens? The EXO-Falcon program had been the coolest thing for a few years, but it was quickly eclipsed by aliens. Sam couldn’t even be mad about it.

Since then, all units–especially pararescue units–were trained and equipped for the unimaginable. But no other aliens had followed. To listen to the National Guard tell it, it was all their doing. Baddest motherfuckers in the galaxy, they always boasted until someone accidentally knocked a beer into their lap to shut them up.

Still, it was pretty damn cool to see the ship.

“It’s not a playground,” Stevens warned, like he could actually see the gleam in Sam’s eyes. He scratched idly over his forearm and glanced at the far wall. “But once you’re here alone…well, no one’s watching you.”

Sam grinned at the older man and collapsed his hands behind his back. “I’m a professional, sir. I’ll keep my hands to myself.” Mostly.

They wound their way back out of the science wing and past the majestic dinosaurs. Morgan was spinning in the desk chair fast enough to make her hair fly in a circle around her face.

“Well, I think that’s everything, Sam,” Stevens said as they came up to the desk. He put a hand on the chair to stop the spinning and Morgan also stopped with an umph. “Do you have any questions? Concerns? Are you ready to accept the position?”

There really wasn’t another answer. Sam held out his hand and let Stevens shake it. “Yes, sir. I think this’ll be a good fit for me.”

“I think you’ll be good for the museum too,” Stevens said with a smile that took several decades off his face. “There’s a manual in the lock-drawer here, in case anything odd happens. My number is in there as well, but please don’t call. I’m going on a very long vacation.”

Sam laughed and held a hand against his chest. “I will keep the panicked calls to a minimum, I promise,” he said.

Stevens bundled Morgan up in his arms, tossing her from arm to arm as she squirmed and tried to kick her way free. “I have to get this pill home before her dad starts to worry.”

“I bet he still doesn’t know,” Morgan said, upside down now and clinging onto Stevens’ forearm. “That babysitter isn’t gonna call him. She wants to get hired again.”

“I bet she doesn’t,” Stevens argued. “It’s gonna be me babysitting for three more months until your dad can find someone who hasn’t heard about your escapades.”

Sam shook his head and moved behind the desk as Stevens walked off with Morgan. The front door echoed behind them, along with the click of a lock that was deafening in the suddenly still, silent museum. He settled into his chair and took stock of the desk around him then realized he still didn’t have dinner. Or even a book.

Tomorrow, he told himself. It would be better tomorrow.

_______________________________

Sam did remember to bring his dinner the next night. He met the daytime shift on their way out, exchanged numbers and pleasantries with them, and then waited for tour guides and curators to drift away before he made a loop of the building and secured the exits. The night before had been remarkably boring. He’d killed his phone playing Solitaire all night, which is why he’d picked up a cheap charging cord to keep in the office going forward. He also brought in a stack of dollar store sci-fi books. Sci-fi wasn’t his favorite genre, but the only options were sci-fi and romance, so the aliens won. 

He’d lost seven games, but won five, when he heard the first noises. At first, he chalked it up to a leaky AC that he wasn’t used to. The water dripping was just routine enough to fade into the background, tickling at his brain between cards until he realized something was out of place. With a frown, he glanced around the foyer, scanned the flashlight around for a puddle, but found nothing.

He considered the manual that was supposed to be in the drawer with Stevens’ number on it, but he also had the building manager’s number and he was probably a better call for a leak anyway. So Sam flicked on a couple of the lights and grabbed his phone off the charger and went off in search of the leak.

He circled past the three dinosaurs, but found no leak near the front doors. He walked the wall near the history section, but heard no leak. It wasn’t until he came up to the water fountain by the ‘unexplainable closet’ that he realized what the issue was. He wrested a piece of…something that was jammed into the push-bar of the water fountain free and then scuffed his boot through the water that had pooled on the floor under it. Well, at least the storage closet was right there.

Sam shook his shoe mostly dry as he dug out the right key from the mess on his hip. He let himself into the unexplainable room and was pleased to find that he didn’t need to get his flashlight back out because one of the artifacts was glowing. In the center display case, a blue cube was shining brightly enough to illuminate the whole room. Sam didn’t remember seeing it last night, but he didn’t really care, since he found the mop with the light and grabbed it without managing to scare the shit out of himself with the weird cat on the shelf.

Still, he found himself frozen in terror when he turned around. The mop shook in his hand roughly enough to rattle a metal fasten at the bottom of the mop.

In front of Sam, a brachiosaurus swung its giant head, as if it were foraging in the rafters of the museum.

This wasn’t real. Come on, Sam, think. If you were going to fuck with Sarah, how would you pull this off? Sam reached out a trembling hand to search for wires or string connected to the dinosaur's bones. His fingers came to rest on a huge femur and Sam realized what he’d pulled out of the water fountain. It was bone. It was… This wasn’t real.

Up above him, with a creaking noise, the dinosaur craned its neck down, down, down, until its head was near enough to Sam’s to make him quake all over again. Sam reached up, still searching for puppet strings.

“You’re not real,” he told the dinosaur. “I’m asleep at the front desk. That gas station sandwich made me sick.”

The dinosaur, which had no eyes and no vocal cords, seemed to roll its eyes and huff out a sound before turning away from Sam and lumbering off. Sam stared after it for a second before his legs wheeled under him and he hightailed it back to the front desk.

He immediately wished he had not done that. All four dinosaurs were missing off their pedestals. Well, missing was not quite right. Sam could see them. The pterodactyl was hanging upside down off a crossbeam of the ceiling. The triceratops was rubbing its crest on the velvet ropes at the door and the T-Rex… Sam thought about ducking under the desk to hide. There was a T-Rex roaming the museum, gnawing on Sam’s desk chair. As it worked at the chair, very large teeth were falling out of its mouth. Sam watched them and wondered if this was some terrible metaphor. Like sand through an hourglass, so are the teeth of the dinosaur about to eat him.

The Brachiosaurus made a reappearance right then, swinging its long neck into the T-Rex’s head. The T-Rex, also without eyes, turned to glare at the other dinosaur. Sam could see the expression clear as day. They were glowering at each other. The T-Rex dropped the chair with a clatter and… Well, it didn't really bare its teeth. It’s teeth were already bare. But it was displeased.

“Hey, hey, no!” Sam shouted suddenly. The last thing he needed was for two skeletons to demolish themselves. What would even happen then? Would the individual bones keep bouncing around? What was even really happening right now? The dinosaurs swiveled their heads down to him. “Do not hit each other!” Jeez, was he with his nephews? Alright, if this was just baby-sitting—and why his mental break was manifesting as babysitting dinosaurs, he’d interrogate later—he could handle that. “You can’t chew on chairs, it’s bad for you. And you can’t get mad at them, you’re not their keeper, alright?” he told first the T-Rex, then the Brachiosaurus. “Just...behave for a few minutes. I have to…” Go see if the rest of the museum was part of this nightmare?

With his flashlight in his belt again—though what help it was going to be was inconsequential probably—Sam turned for the history wing. He only got a few steps into the room before fire erupted up his leg. Literally. He squawked and shook his leg, tamping out the flames with the metal doorframe next to him.

Below him, swarming on the floor, were a thousand little figurines. Sam squinted down at them and got a catapult-boulder the size of a pebble in his eye for his trouble. For some reason, still, when he stumbled back he tried his hardest to avoid stepping on any of the plastic people.

“Who even are you?” he asked.

“Les miserables!”  a tiny voice called up at him.

“Et c’est ma faute?” Sam asked back. Then the unfathomable happened—other than the figurines having come to life in the first place—because the revolting French crowd cheered, turned away from Sam, and charged off for some other fight. Charged may have been dramatic. They didn’t move very quickly, on account of being not more than an inch tall. But they at least left Sam alone as he gingerly stepped over them and traveled further into the wing.

Everything was all wrong. Animals stalked behind glass cases, mannequins had disappeared from their podiums. The fake Wakanda mask was yawning and bouncing around the room, looking for a dark spot. Everywhere Sam tried to step, there were mini-figures waging war with each other.

Sam stopped after almost stepping on a collection of Huns rounding up horses and put his hands out his face. “This isn’t happening,” he said to himself. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. Wake up, Sam. Just wake up. You know this is a dream. You’re sitting at the desk. Someone’s going to catch you. Wake up.”

Sam sat with the darkness for a second and then blinked hard and dropped his hands. Chaos still abounded. A chariot ran over his foot and a big cat yowled somewhere. Sam hadn’t even really noticed animal figures on the tour. There was just the one, near the fake Wakanda mask. It was a—

Sam hit the ground hard and threw his arms over his head to protect his face from the shadow that had materialized on his chest. It was huge and heavy, paws the size of Sam’s pecs digging into his chest with just the weight of gravity. Razor teeth gleamed in the overhead lighting and a long, wide pink tongue lolled from its huge mouth, scratched over Sam’s forearms until its broad nose nudged under them to get at his face.

It was licking him?

Sam tentatively lowered his arms from his face and the impossibly large panther seized on the opportunity to lick a broad stripe up Sam’s cheek. It was disgusting but also comforting in its familiarity. Its tongue felt just like Figaro’s.

“Tuna for dinner?” a voice asked from somewhere above Sam’s head. He tried to crane his neck back, but he was trapped between the floor and the cat, so he didn’t have much room to work with. He mostly found dark boots and blue pants. “She likes fish.”

Gently, carefully, Sam pushed at the panther’s chest, moving it back enough that he could sit up and look around. As with everything this evening, he wished he hadn’t. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. This was the final proof that this was all in his head.

Bucky Barnes was leaning against an empty display that Sam was pretty sure used to house something to do with a trebuchet. How a trebuchet got up and walked away, he couldn’t guess. Bucky Barnes looked exactly like he had in way too many of Sam’s teenage dreams. That’s all this was. A dream, brought on by staring at the statue yesterday.

Sam had thought, not seriously, about what he’d say to Barnes if he ever got the chance. Something suave and witty, something that would make Barnes laugh and let him know Sam was smart. So he said, “It was an egg salad sandwich.”

Barnes’ nose scrunched up. “Well, that’s new. People still make those things?” He pushed himself off of the display and came over to Sam’s side, rubbing the panther’s head until she hauled herself off of Sam’s chest and wound around Bucky’s legs instead. “Where’s Steve?”

“Steve Rogers?” Sam asked with a sinking feeling in his stomach. “I-I-I don’t know,” he settled on.

Bucky looked surprised at the answer. “He didn’t bring you in here?” he asked.

“No?” Sam said. “I work here.”

“Yeah, I assume he hired you. He works here.”

And, as if Sam’s night could get any weirder, he found himself trying to logic out exactly what Barnes might be thinking. Did he think it was 194-something? Was he confusing this with his real life? Had Steve Rogers made a drop by the museum at some other point? And, off of that question, did this happen often, things coming to life? And if it did, why wouldn’t Stevens have mentioned it last night? In fact, why didn’t any of this happen last night?

Then he remembered the artifact in the closet. It hadn’t been there last night. The abandoned wing had been dark, but it was lit up well enough for Sam to ignore his flashlight this evening. That box was new. It was in the unexplainable wing. Maybe it was magical? Because that was the only explanation right? Aside from Sam having a terrible break, it was possible this was all really happening because of a glowing blue box that had mysteriously reappeared in the closet.

Who had put it there? And how long— Oh, shit, how long had it been since it was there?

“What year do you think it is?” Sam tried cautiously.

Barnes rolled his eyes and offered his forearm down to the panther to gnaw on. “I hate that question,” he said. “It’s 1995, isn’t it?”

Sam’s eyebrows went up. Bucky Barnes hadn’t been awake since 1995. Almost twenty years. “No,” Sam said softly. “It’s 2015.”

Barnes frowned and then burst out laughing. “2015 isn’t a real year. What a weird string of numbers to put together.”

Sam pulled out his phone and flicked to a date and time screen before turning it so Bucky could see it. Again, the man frowned. It put a crease down the middle of his forehead, dragged his eyebrows down like little slashes. “What the hell is that? Some kind of computer? Why is it so small and clear?”

“Oh my God?” Sam said. And, yeah, how soon he could forget what life was like in the 90s. Cell phones definitely didn’t look like this. Hell, his dad only had a pager in the 90s. “It’s 2015. This is a phone.”

“Bullshit,” Barnes said. Then, “Really?” His lips puckered and his eyes got wide and, holy shit, Sam’s heart was going to stop. “So Steve’s not here? And everything’s different again?”

Sam swallowed thickly and nodded. He definitely did not trust his voice.

“It’s been two decades,” Barnes repeated. Then he looked up at Sam. “You don’t know how to take care of this place, do you?”

“I thought I just had to watch an alarm panel,” Sam pointed out drily. Dry he could do. Dry had little room to squeeze his heart.

“Well, so long as you left the third wing alone, it’ll be fine. We clean up after ourselves. Mostly.” He grimaced as he looked around. “Though, if it’s been twenty years, they might be rowdier than usual.”

“The third wing?” Sam asked.

“The Magic wing,” Barnes said, as if that explained anything at all. “We can get everyone else in order, but trying to get that stuff back into that room is impossible. But if you didn’t know about it, you probably didn’t open the door.”

Sam had, in fact, opened the door. For the mop. And...well, no, he hadn’t exactly shut it behind himself when faced with a Jurassic threat. He took a deep breath and Barnes was already groaning. “It’s a storage closet! I had bigger problems!”

“We need to go find everything that’s supposed to be in there. If we don’t get back to our proper places—hell, especially if we get outside—by sunrise, we die. And when those things suddenly stop existing, all of their magic explodes with them.”

“This all sounds like a story I would tell my nephews to convince them to clean their room,” Sam said, covering his face again.

“Well, now it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. By the way, I’m Bucky,” he greeted and offered out the hand the panther wasn’t currently chewing on.

“Sam. Sam Wilson,” Sam responded tiredly.

“While we’re hunting shit down, you can tell me what’s happened between 1995 and 2015.”

Sam wasn’t sure he could. That was a lot to tackle in one night, while also hunting down apparently magical artifacts that could move around for no good reason. “Uh, every band you love is broken up,” he said.

Bucky tsked in the back of his throat as he extricated his arm from the panther and started a brisk soldier’s march to the door. “I like forties music,” he waved-off with a shrug. “Not into the whole boyband thing.”

Sam followed after Bucky, and at least all the displays seemed to move to avoid him so the trip out was much faster than the trip in. He stared at a group of Spartan soldiers carrying some long-robed, long-bearded man. Sam reached to bunch a hand in the back of Bucky’s jacket.

“Should we stop them?” he asked.

Bucky looked back and shrugged. “They can’t actually kill each other and they’re plastic, so they don’t feel pain. Besides, they usually wear themselves out before they get too far into any scheme. It’s tough being little.”

Sam shook his head and let Bucky lead them out of the history wing. The foyer had turned into a zoo, almost literally. All the animals congregated in the front. How had Sam just ignored all of them?

“Is that a…”

“A bear? Yeah. He’s one of the ones we need to get back into the Magic Wing.”

“A bear is magic?” Sam asked dubiously.

“Don’t believe me?” Bucky asked in a cocksure way with a raised brow that had Sam’s stomach doing all sorts of swoopy things. “Mikhail!” he called, turning his attention back to the bear.

The bear stopped reading a very large book–where had it even gotten that?--and looked for Bucky. When it found him, it tossed the book aside with a crash and waved a very, very, very large paw. Surely all of these animals couldn’t be to size.

“Sergeant Barnes!” the bear called back. “It’s so good to see you! It feels like an age since we spoke.”

Sam stared, wide eyed. His hand fell from Bucky’s coat when his feet stopped moving. Bucky didn’t seem to mind.

“I didn’t know you could read, you old oaf.”

“I’m looking at the pictures!” the bear chortled back. Roared back? The bear was talking. Which, like, why shouldn’t that happen tonight? Was this normal behavior for the bear before it became a display at the museum? Was this only happening because apparently everything in this museum was alive? The panther hadn’t spoken.

“Major Ursus was a Soviet experiment with mutant genetics,” Bucky explained. It took Sam a few seconds to realize he must’ve been talking to Sam again.

“Mutants?” Sam asked. “Like, bear hybrids?”

“No, human, like homo Superior.”

“Like…gay icons?” Sam asked.

Bucky dissolved into laughter while the bear bristled up to at least twice its already considerable size. “No, no,” Bucky said, waving his hand until he caught Sam’s arm. “Homo Superior is the species name of mutant humans. The next form of human evolution. People born with various abilities. Mikhail here is obviously a bear. It’s not usually so obvious for most mutants. You’ve probably met your fair share of them.”

“And now you live in the museum?” Sam asked, appalled to realize he was addressing the talking bear.

“Me, yes. I am a facsimile of the real thing. An attempt at a clone by your government. My namesake attempted to destroy me and I was lost for many years. Somehow I ended up here, where I woke up, as if I were Ursa Major himself.”

Sam’s head hurt.

“Major, you know you’ve got to be back in the wing by sunrise,” Bucky cut in. The bear nodded. “How’s your new nook working out for you?”

“It is quiet and secluded. There is a chair, but I worry about discovery if I were to allow myself to stay in the chair all day.”

“That’s fair,” Bucky said. “Besides, if they ever decide to open that wing, you know they’ll bust your limbs up to get you in the position they want.”

The bear bared its teeth in a snarl. “I hate having to stand in their pose.”

“I know, man,” Bucky agreed. “Imagine being one of the ones people get to see all day.”

“There are no plans to open that wing,” Sam said suddenly, cutting his glance to the bear. There had been a few dozen names thrown out in the past three minutes, so he wasn’t sure what to call it. “And wherever you were standing, I didn’t see you last night or this morning. I think it’s safe for you to sit in the chair.”

The bear let out a low, rumbling noise and then nodded. “That is acceptable. You are the night guard?” he asked. Sam nodded. “Will you find out more about my namesake? What is he doing? I know time must have passed. The museum is different and you are not Steve. So, please, tell me what I’m doing in the world.”

“I can try,” Sam said. But he’d only just found out mutants apparently existed and he’d certainly never heard of a bear-man before, so he wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to wrangle out of thin air, but he’d try.

“Come on, Sam,” Bucky said, curling his fingers around Sam’s elbow again. “We should take stock of what’s still in the wing.” He gave a lazy salute to the bear with instructions to shut the door behind him when he came back into the wing.

Where the third wing had been cold and silent and still every other time Sam had gone into it, now it was warm and suffocatingly vibrant. Every sensation in the air was overwhelming and hot. It prickled across his skin, swirled in his throat, stung his eyes. He brought the heels of his hands to his eyes and Bucky put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s the magic,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Are you?” Sam asked.

“I’m wax,” Bucky said. “It just feels like my armpits are melting.”

Sam snorted and pulled the door behind them. Not quite all the way shut, but close enough not to let anything else out. In the center of the room, the blue box still sat in its display case, spinning slightly.

“The Tesseract,” Bucky explained while they both circled the display opposite ways. “That’s what brings all of us to life each night. It’s the most powerful artifact in the world. I don’t understand why it didn’t work for twenty years.”

“It wasn’t here,” Sam said, meeting up with Bucky on the back end of the display. He’d almost expected there to be some giveaway that this was all fake on the backside. But the cube was exactly the same all around. “I was in this wing last night. This box was empty. Someone put it back between me leaving last night and coming in this evening.”

Bucky did his cute little frown and brow furrow thing. “Then someone must’ve stolen it in the first place. Why would they take it for twenty years and then return it? If someone had found it, that’d have made news, y’know. Someone who would know something. But to just appear again… You’re sure Steve didn’t say anything to you?”

“Listen, man, I’m telling you I don’t know Steve Rogers. I got this job from Grant Stevens. The night guard before me re-enlisted in the military or something, I think. I didn’t know him either.”

Bucky stared at him, unimpressed. “Grant Stevens?” he asked.

“That’s his name,” Sam confirmed, now feeling irritated that this had become an interrogation.

“Steve’s name is Steven Grant Rogers. Grant Stevens was a name we used to get into bars that we weren’t supposed to be in.”

Sam opened and closed his mouth a few times. “That fact never made it into the movies about you. Even so, that must just be a weird coincidence. Steve’s never been found. They found the plane, but not him.”

Bucky stepped forward then, putting his hands on Sam’s shoulders. “I’m telling you, my best friend worked in this museum. I saw him every night for decades. If it was a hot, older guy named Grant Stevens who gave you this job, that was Steve.”

“I spent hours with Steve Rogers?” Sam said a little numbly. Why not? This job was already so clearly cursed.

Bucky did something with his eyes that was almost a roll, but not quite enthusiastic enough. “Clearly he didn’t make much of an impression,” he said dryly before wandering off to the far back corner of the wing.

Sam watched the darkness trail after him. It didn’t quite obscure him, but it shadowed him enough to let Sam pretend this wasn’t really happening. Then again, maybe he should just get to accepting it. He could find a solution quicker that way. This was real and needed to be solved. He was good at solving problems.

The room looked exactly the same as it did the night before, save for the glowing magic box. Sam had taken Stevens’—Steve’s?—advice to heart quickly. He’d scouted out the room and tried to place as many of the artifacts as possible in his mind. 

“There’s something missing from this thing,” Sam called out, unsure where Bucky had meandered to. The thing in question looked more like a torture device now that it was bare. “There’d been, like, a coat or something on it.” The bare bones of the display was a multi-armed fancy coat rack, designed to spread out the coat as much as possible.

“It’s a cloak and it’s an asshole,” Bucky called back. He seemed even further away.

Sam turned to work his way down the other side of the wall. “Ah,” he said, not jumping this time when he saw the cat. “You’re right where I left you.” The orange cat was curled up on the same podium it had been on the night before. Despite napping in the glow of the cube, it lifted its head lazily and blinked slowly at Sam when he reached over to pet it. Sam smoothed his thumb down the flat of the cat’s nose and the cat pushed its face into his touch. Sam laughed. “Yeah, that’s the good spot, right? Fig likes that one too.”

“Oh my God, don’t touch that,” Bucky snapped, reaching over to snag Sam’s wrist away before Sam even realized he’d appeared again.

“What? Why not? Why is everyone so weird about this cat? He’s fine,” Sam asked in exasperation. As if proving his point, the cat stood and walked in a circle before lying back down, facing away from them now. Bucky seemed to hold his breath the whole time.

“That is a cat,” Sam reiterated.

“It’s a monster. It’ll eat you in one bite. I’ve seen it swallow a whole display case once.”

Sam stared at him, boggled and disbelieving. “It’s a cat!”

Bucky just shook his head and walked away slowly, keeping one eye on the cat. “It’s best that that thing is still in here. We’ll have to make sure to keep the door shut. Watch our feet when we drag other things back in.”

Sam looked back at the cat, who was now grooming its tail. It was a cat. “Does it matter where everything is at daybreak? Or does it just have to be in the museum?” he asked.

Bucky shrugged. “I guess it just has to be in the museum. Most things will start putting themselves back. It’s just a pain in the ass to try’n drag some stuff back to its spot once daybreak comes.”

Sam frowned and jogged a few steps to catch up to Bucky. “Wait, you go back to artifacts in the morning?”

Bucky shot him a grin which Sam thought was supposed to be teasing, but just looked sad. “The magic is a nighttime only thing. Much like my parents. We all go back to wax and bone in the morning.”

“Do you remember anything from the day?” Sam asked.

Bucky shook his head and came up short on an empty wall with what looked like a guitar holder. “No. That’s why I didn’t know time had passed. There’s supposed to be a trident here,” he said.

Sam stared at the wall and tried to rationalize that in his brain. Obviously it was true. There were no stories from the 90s about a museum come to life. Everyone who toured the museum came during the day. Of course everything was normal then and had to be normal now.

“Hey, don't look so sullen,” Bucky said suddenly. “We’ll all be back tomorrow night. Besides, now you know we aren’t throwing any parties without you.” Bucky squeezed Sam’s shoulder and kept onto his circle of the wing. “As far as I can tell, it’s only a few things. We should be able to find them. You think the figurines are a nuisance, at least that’s all in-fighting. These magical artifacts are always up to mischief all over the place. But they won’t hide away from you. You’re their number one target.”

“There’s a possessed trident coming after me?” Sam asked with a building adrenaline he hadn’t felt in more than a year. It was the kind of feeling that should’ve been fear but definitely wasn’t.

“I kept telling Steve we should just give the thing back. It’s our fault it’s here anyway. We brought it surface-side. I wonder what happened to the old shark who it belongs to that it’s still here.”

Sam couldn’t begin to guess. Nor could he guess why it was Captain America and Bucky Barnes’ fault that there was a deep sea trident in a museum. He was learning to pick his battles, though, and that was not one that was going to win his attention.

“We should head out to the science wing. See if we can find some of these other artifacts.”

Bucky nodded. He shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the cloak’s display. “It’ll piss the cloak off,” Bucky explained when he caught Sam staring.

But Sam wasn’t staring at the display. He was much more focused on the pull of a thin white shirt over Bucky’s shoulders, the suspenders that curved along the cut of his waist, the tight fit of his blue pants. He looked real. Like Sam could just reach out and… There was no warm pulse under Bucky’s thin shirt. His body was solid, like touching ribs, but nothing was thrumming under the skin.

Bucky tracked Sam’s hand from his side up to Sam’s chest and then to his face. “No heartbeat, huh?” he asked, gently guiding Sam’s hand to the middle of his chest where, indeed, no heart beat. “It’s not so bad. You get used to it. Nice not to have to breathe when you’re in storage.”

Sam took a deep breath and dropped his hand. “Like they ever put you in storage,” he said, to steady himself. “We should go.”

They made sure to close the door behind them and Sam made a mental note to buy some kind of a kiddie gate for the future. He wasn’t sure if a trident or cloak could open doors on its own, but he figured it’d be best to leave it open enough for something to fly through but not walk through. The bear could probably step over a gate.

“So you used to help Steve with all of this, back in the day?” Sam asked when the silence got to be too revealing. Not revealing of them, but revealing of all the impossible sounds around them. Battle cries in languages he didn’t know. Snarling animal sounds. Hissing gas and mechanics.

That probably wasn’t good.

“It’ll settle down the longer you’re here,” Bucky assured. “It wasn’t always a free for all. But, yeah, when they got rowdy, Steve and I worked on getting everyone back where they belonged. Tony would help sometimes.”

“Tony Stark knows this happens?” Sam asked. He wondered if maybe it was Tony who had taken the Tesseract. Though, from what Sam knew of the billionaire heir, he wasn’t a cautious man. He was not likely to play something like that close to the chest, wasn’t likely to decide a museum that didn’t come to life was preferable to one which did.

“Oh, sure,” Bucky said with a nod. “He’s been sneaking into the museum overnight since he was, like, fourteen. Almost gave Steve a heart attack the first time we found him.”

Sam gave a small laugh at that. “You know, his daughter did the same thing to me last night.”

Bucky turned to him with wide eyes. “Tony has a daughter?”

Sam’s heart softened in his chest. “Yeah. And I bet you’ll meet her pretty soon. She sneaks in too. I told her to give me a heads up, but I don’t think she’ll listen.”

The wax figure’s whole body seemed to relax in happiness as he bit his lip and continued into the science wing. Sam tried to imagine losing two decades worth of time and coming back into a completely different world. Even just being overseas was disorienting and that wasn’t really lost time. It was just that sometimes he came back and had a nephew.

Immediately upon walking into the science wing, Sam and Bucky had to duck to avoid a rocket careening at their heads. Despite the aerial feats of various models, the science wing was slightly more subdued than the history wing. There were fewer…capable-of-being-alive displays here. Aircraft models swooped around the room, narrowly avoiding each other and leaving the air slightly singed with gas and fire. A few mini-figurines wandered around, but they were all part of gawking crowds in their displays, not violence hungry armies, like in history. Dozens of butterflies and moths fluttered around the room, which instantly put Sam at ease. The most unsettling thing was a flight suit walking around with no body in it at all.

A few creatures from the history wing had wandered over as well, but they were much more well behaved than their counterparts who had stayed back. A marble statue stared at a TV showing the process of gamma radiation poisoning. A painting sat and chatted with a pilot figurine. A stone doll ran in circles around a medical skeleton’s feet while the skeleton, much like the dinosaurs, managed to look bemused without any facial features.

It would all be too perfect, if not for the screaming match happening on the far side of the room.

“Who is that?” Bucky asked with a frown.

And, yeah, that made sense. If the Tesseract had been taken in ‘95, Bucky would’ve never met those figurines. Sam just didn’t know why they were fighting. In all the stories that were passed down through the Air Force, Danvers and Rambeau were dual-icons, working at the same time and making equally amazing contributions not only for the Air Force but women in general. Nothing had suggested they were friends, necessarily. Danvers had gone a more space-y route and Rambeau was firmly in the fighter jet category, but they were in basics at the same time. They would’ve spent a lot of time together, had similar goals and dreams.

Right now, they were arguing about who had the more dangerous job.

“Uh, they’re two Air Force pilots from the 90s,” Sam said and quickly relayed the information he knew about them and the fact that they and their ships were fully to-scale models that were used to calculate risks and needs before a mission. “Danvers, the blonde one, is assumed dead. Her ship crashed from orbit. Rambeau retired shortly after. It’s up in the air if the Air Force quietly scrapped the program or had funding pulled or what. I had kind of assumed she’d quit because of Danvers’ death, but that’s not looking likely.”

“To say the least,” Bucky agreed and cringed as Danvers yelled something about, “We were all fast!”

“Oh, right,” Rambeau said with so much sarcasm in her voice, Sam wondered where she was storing it in her tiny Barbie-sized body. “You’re so much worse off ‘cause you’re presumed dead. They never found a body, Danvers! You’re probably still up on the Space Station or something and forgot to put the parking brake on the ship!”

Sam was just about to step over to separate them when something else flew towards his face. He hollered an objection, but the red material wrapped around his face tightly, blocking off not only his sight but his air too. It was worse when something else bracketed his neck and knocked him back against the wall, forcing air from his lungs and sweeping him off his feet.

“Bucky!” he gasped out as his hands found a staff of some sort connected to the thing around his neck.

He felt someone tug at it, wobbling it against Sam’s skin. “Jesus,” Bucky breathed. He was pretty sure Bucky braced a boot against the wall by Sam’s hip before he gave a firmer pull. “Get out, you bastard. You’re being very poorly behaved. Here I was, thinking it was Namor who had the bad attitude, but clearly you do too.”

For some reason, that seemed to work and the thing came out of the wall and away from Sam’s neck. Sam yanked at the material around his face, peeling it away enough to get a sliver of sight back and uncover his nose.

“You too,” Bucky said, gesturing to the other artifact. “I know you have an attitude, but you’re supposed to help people. Not torment the man keeping you safe.”

The material moved in such a way that Sam thought it might’ve been scoffing or rolling eyes it didn’t have.

“Off. Off now. Come here.” Bucky held his arm out and the material slowly reached out for his wrist before winding itself around Bucky’s forearm. Now Sam could see it was the red cloak. Bucky slightly shook his arm, looking at his new sleeve with mild distaste. The trident in his other hand was vibrating and Sam felt like it was looking right at him.

“You know, you’ll stop existing if I let you get your way,” Sam said levelly to it. “If you got outside, you’d just explode into nothing. I’m not here to hurt you or bother you. I’m here to help you. Yeah, I get it. Maybe you don’t belong here, but this is where you are for now. And maybe you don’t want to be locked up in that wing all the time, but behavior like this is why you can’t just come out. This is the best that we have right now. So let me take care of you until we can figure something else out.”

Sam halfway expected the trident to stick out a tongue at him, the way Cass would when he thought Sam wasn’t looking. Unfortunately for Cass, that move was genetically inherited from his mother, so Sam, with decades of experience, always knew. And he was pretty confident that, spiritually, the trident was sticking out its tongue.

 Bucky gave Sam a fond kind of look that made Sam’s stomach turn over in nervous knots. He nodded and then turned to head back for the magic wing. Something shining on the podium behind him caught Sam’s eye and he picked it up with a frown.

“Hey, should this be out here?” he asked, holding up a shimmering white opal scale.

Bucky cocked his head to the side a little bit and came back over. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen that before. What do you think it is?”

“It’s a scale. But not like one I’ve ever seen,” Sam said. “I mean, look how big this is.” He held his hand flat against the back of the scale and it still stretched higher than his fingers.

“Stories of dragons are found in all regions, though they are particularly prevalent in Eastern folklore. A likely cause of the myths is ancient peoples unearthing dinosaur skeletons and attempting to explain the size of the beasts,”  a TV said. Sam was pretty certain it had just been talking about the excavation that unearthed the Valkyrie crash. The screen flickered to a different program. “In the legends of Ta Lo, there is a story of a Chinese dragon, the Great Protector, who helps the mystical village imprison a soul-consuming monster called the Dweller-In-Darkness.” Another static change. “In 1999, a group of college students reportedly found a way into the mythical Ta Lo entirely by accident after becoming lost in a bamboo jungle on a hiking trip. The student’s path could not be recreated.” Another change. “The Stark Foundation funded research into the search for Ta Lo and any mythical creatures that may exist, spurned on by the failed expeditions of the late 90s and early 00s. The idea was less to prove the existence of magic and more to identify any new species and possibly create a rehabilitation program. It was the same division of Stark Foundation that searched for Atlantis and Wakanda in the 60s and 80s respectively. As with the previous attempts at finding lost civilizations, the search for Ta Lo was unsuccessful, bringing back only one, as yet, unidentified specimen–a reptilian scale.”

The TV flickered back to underwater footage of the Valkyrie wreck. Sam and Bucky looked to the scale in Sam’s hands. It was beautiful, and large, but there was not much else to it. Unlike seemingly everything else in this museum, it didn’t thrum with energy and it didn't seem keen to get itself out of the door. It would make Sam worry for its origin’s sake, but Bucky Barnes was dead and his wax figure was up and walking around. Maybe scales were like flakes of skin. Then again, it had gotten out of the room somehow, so really who was Sam to start guessing about magic?

“A dragon,” Bucky eventually said.

“I wish, I wish, with all my heart, to fly with dragons in a land apart,” Sam added drily.

Bucky’s eyes were intense on the scale for a few seconds before he looked up at Sam. “Was that supposed to do something?”

Sam rolled his eyes and dropped his arms, holding onto the scale firmly, but gently. “No, it’s from this old cartoon me and my sister used to watch. Let’s get these things put up.”

Only half of the podiums in the magic wing were labeled. There definitely wasn’t one for dragon scale. So Sam found a short edged box with soft foam and settled the scale into that. Bucky got the trident and cloak hung back up and made sure both of them were secure before coming back to the front with Sam.

“Who’s Namor?” Sam asked while they took an inventory of the room.

“He’s an Atlantean prince,” Bucky answered, casual as anything. “Steve and I knew him in the war. They found the Trident of Neptune when they found the Valkyrie wreckage. Namor had tried to get in to Steve, but even he couldn’t break the door. Which is kind of impossible to believe. You’ll understand if you ever meet him.”

“Atlantean?” Sam asked dubiously. “That TV just said the foundation failed to find proof of Atlantis.”

“They did, on that expedition. Besides, I don’t think anyone really knows what they have. I think it’s been chalked up to some weird Nazi bullshit, since it was on the Valkyrie.” Bucky picked up another short box and frowned as he looked at an indent on the foam. “There’s something missing from here.”

Sam groaned to himself. “What about the cloak? What’s the story with that?”

“I’m not sure. It’s magic all the way through. I don’t remember when it was brought in. Sometimes I think it predates me and sometimes I think it’s brand new.” He came back to Sam, several paces off. “Please stay away from the Flerken.”

Sam glanced down to find he’d drifted next to the cat again. “You’re gonna get me in trouble,” he told it. “Fig’s gonna smell you on me and lose his shit.” He petted the cat’s head again, just to irritate Bucky before stepping towards the door. “Let’s go find your other—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence because suddenly the entire room crackled with energy and…and…and space just opened up right behind the Tesseract.

“Is it supposed to do that?” Sam asked, arms half curled around his head.

Bucky’s eyes, glowing with the energy around them, narrowed. “No,” he said gravely.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” He looked at the Tesseract and then back at Bucky. “Should we try to–” If the Tesseract disappeared again, Bucky would disappear along with it. The panther would go back to being stuffed. The bear-man wouldn’t finish his book. Danvers and Rambeau would be mid-fight eternally. Sam would have to pick every Roman from the Mongols and every Greek from the French and every soldier from scholars.

“Don’t,” Bucky said quickly, grabbing Sam’s wrist. “We don’t know what’ll happen if we touch it. It’s behind glass for a reason.”

So instead, they watched the energy crackle and spark, inky blackness like a night sky beyond the rip in space behind it. Then a man stepped out of the rip. He was tall and thin, dressed oddly. Not so much that his clothes were necessarily odd–not for a history museum at any rate, not when Sam was standing next to Mr. 40s Personified. But the helmet was definitely odd. It gleamed golden and was mostly high arcing horns, curling back towards the man’s head. Blue energy jumped between his long fingers, matching the sunken blue of his eyes, ringed in exhaustion bruises.

“What the fuck are you?” Bucky eloquently asked.

The man’s eyes snapped over to him, lips drawing back in a sneer. “I will not converse with a doll,” he snarled before his dead gaze found Sam again. “I am Loki, of Asgard–”

“Asgard?” Sam asked with a frown. “Where in the hell is that?”

Loki-of-Asgard seemed to come up short. “Are you not the current wielder of the Tesseract?” he asked.

Sam shrugged one shoulder. “Apparently. It’s been quietly dumped in my lap within the last six hours,” he admitted.

“So you don’t know anything of its power?”

“It brought this museum to life?” Sam ventured.

The man’s lips pulled back from teeth again, this time to curl into a terrible smile. “Then I will unburden you, human.” He reached for the display case and it melted away under his touch. Not like he was made of acid, but as if he willed it to not be in his way. He’d almost grabbed the Tesseract when a familiar blur of material snagged his wrist and jerked the man entirely away, into a wall of carpet rolls. He hit the wall hard enough to knock his weird helmet askew.

While Loki struggled to yank his arm free, Sam and Bucky both moved to put themselves between the Tesseract and the intruder. Sam thought about pulling his taser free, but he wasn’t sure how much use it would be on a man who could open portals and remove display cases through force of will.

“Have you been taking other artifacts?” Sam asked. “Are you the one who took the Captain America suit?”

The horned man looked back at Sam balefully, though it was wiped from his face as the cloak jerked him around again. “No, you puny creature. I have no desire to steal mundane, human things. I am simply trying to take back what is rightfully mine.”

“What makes this yours?” Bucky asked.

Loki sneered at him again but answered, “It calls to me. We are the same. Our powers.”

“What kind of Kindergarten rationale– Just because you want something doesn’t make it yours,” Sam snapped. This job really was just like babysitting. “Now, I don’t know the first thing about you or your powers or that thing and its powers, but I’m telling you, you better leave the way you came, all quiet and fast like. And stay out of this museum. I’m getting paid enough to deal with academic sabotage, not intergalactic sabotage.”

Loki snarled and got himself to his feet, shooting the cloak with a bolt of magic that had it quickly whipping away and cowering back. “I will not negotiate with humans! Move,” he ordered and waved his hand. It sent both Sam and Bucky flying backwards in the shelves on either wall. Sam’s vision swam as he held a hand over the knot on the back of his head. By the time he got his feet under him again, Loki was closing his fingers around the cube.

Then the worst noise Sam had ever heard in his life–like a thousand people screaming from a pit all at once–tore through the air and a tangle of tentacles shot out, ensnaring the Tesseract and drawing it back. Bleary eyed, Sam tried to follow the trajectory of the tentacles. They led back to the orange cat’s mouth. He saw well enough to see them and the cube disappear down the cat’s throat, its unhinged jaw settling back into place. It hissed fiercely at Loki, then turned to settle back into its nap.

“What the Hel?” Loki asked, which was enough to convince Sam, who had been doing so well for so many hours, that this was a dream all over again.

Sam looked over at Bucky, who was staring wide eyed at him already. He brought up his hand to his chest, his cheek, his hair before he nodded at Sam. The Tesseract, though now possibly being digested by the eldritch horror inside of the cat, still wielded magic over the museum.

Loki, seeming to come to some similar conclusion, snarled again and dramatically flailed his long coattails around. “I’ll be back,” he swore as a portal opened again. “I will find some way to flay that demon open and I will take what is mine.” And with that, he stepped back into the portal and disappeared, leaving only an acrid, burnt smell in the air.

Sam and Bucky sat in silence for a few seconds, staring at the light-imprint of the portal, watching flickering embers burn away on the dust.

“What the hell was that?” Sam finally asked.

“I have no damn idea,” Bucky admitted. “I thought a man who could take his face off was weird.”

“You know a guy who can take off his face?” Sam panted. They looked over at each other, pinched and pained expressions on their faces, and then burst out laughing in exasperation. “No, seriously,” Sam repeated. “What was that? The cat?”

“I told you,” Bucky said. “Cold blooded monster.” He pushed himself upright, smoothing his hand over his hair until it laid kind of flat again. He hobbled over to Sam and offered a hand down. “I think he took out a chunk of my side. Could you check for me?”

Sam let himself be hauled up and then untucked Bucky’s shirt from his pants. Indeed, there was a section of his side that was carved away. Most of the wax was bunched up higher, around his ribs. Sam sucked on his teeth. “Does it hurt?” he asked. He traced his fingers along Bucky’s side gently. The rest of his skin felt smooth and even. No other degs. He let his fingers linger on Bucky’s hip for just a split second.

Bucky shook his head. “No, I just feel off balance. Could you…” He gestured in a downwards motion.

Sam smoothed his hand over the excess wax and molded it back against Bucky’s side as well as he could. He should’ve taken that pottery class Sarah gifted him. “Uh, hopefully it’ll be fine once you…you know, in the morning…”

Bucky nodded, moving his hand along his side. “Yeah, it’ll work itself out.” He tucked in his shirt again. “It’s almost sunrise again. We need to get as many artifacts back where they belong as possible.”

“We also need to figure out a game plan for when that weirdo shows back up,” Sam said. “Did you recognize that name? Loki, of Asgard?”

Bucky shook his head. “No, not really. I think it’s a Norwegian name, though. Vikings and shit.”

“Steve said there was contention with Norway about displaying the Tesseract back in the 90s,” Sam thought aloud. “But, to the best of my knowledge, Norway has not mastered time-space manipulation.”

Bucky grunted and put the cloak back up where it belonged again, shrugging on his own jacket. “Twenty years is a long time to sit and wait. Why didn’t he go after it wherever it was?”

“Maybe he’s had it this whole time and lost it?”

“Someone stole the Tesseract from a guy like that and just silently, immediately, donated it back to the museum that had it two decades ago?”

He had a point. Without knowing where the Tesseract was this whole time, it was near impossible to answer anything about it. “Maybe our horned friend didn’t have it. Maybe he couldn’t trace it until it was in the museum again. Maybe whoever had it, wasn’t using it. Energy like that gives off signals. With the right frequency or whatever, someone could trace it while it’s in use,” Sam suggested.

“So whoever took it didn’t use it at all? Just…what? Kept it safe?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do know that the Tesseract may be safe for now, but it’s got to…” He cringed a little. “It’s got to come out sometime. And Loki isn’t gonna sit back and wait for the opportune moment for two decades again. We need to be ready. We’re gonna need to call in extra help here. Someone with knowledge of myths and history and science.”

“Do you know someone like that?” Bucky asked. “Just ask Steve.”

Sam shook his head. “We don’t need Steve’s help. Besides, he said he was disappearing to an island. We can do this on our own.”

Bucky held up his hands. “Sure. You’re the night guard. You tell me what to do.”

Sam glanced over at him and grinned. “I like the sound of that, Barnes. Let’s get everyone back to their places.”

_______________________________

Sam spent the two hours between sunrise and the morning shift dragging artifacts and displays around the museum. He knew the mini-figurines were definitely mixed up because he’d gone cross-eyed no less than four times while trying to separate them out. Thank God the dinosaurs and the bear man had put themselves back in their own spots. Sam had had to reassemble a few model planes and ships with a smashed hull or snapped wing. He was pretty certain he’d gotten all the statues and paintings back to the eras they belonged in and he’d pried a sudoku book from the inanimate jaws of the panther without tearing any of the pages.

All in all, he was pretty proud of the way the museum looked by the time the morning shift came in and he was able to drag himself back out the door. He did not, at any point, pause in front of the Bucky Barnes statue to stare at it. He still wasn’t convinced that Barnes couldn’t see him like this. The most he did was ensure the plastic-y wax had solidified properly on his side again.

It felt like an impossibly short time between his head hitting his pillow that morning and then him trudging back through the doors to the museum that night. Though, maybe it was the balls of energy around his legs that were sapping all of his residual strength.

“Was it super spooky to be in the museum at night?” Cass asked.

“Did the dinosaurs scare you?” AJ followed up.

“Did you think any of the statues were people?”

“Did you try to talk to someone who wasn’t there?”

“Are we allowed to touch things now?”

“Slow down, slow down,” Sam called. “It’s a little bit different after hours, you’ll see.” And when the kids threw their bags towards the front desk and began to run around the lobby, Sam jogged to catch up. “Hey! Come on, there’s still people leaving. You can run off all your energy in an hour or so. For now, let’s just settle in the office and eat.”

There were general mutters of dissent, but the boys settled down and followed after Sam, grabbing their bags on the way. Sam nodded at the other guards as they began their last patrols of the night. AJ managed to beg a lollipop from the stash at the desk. No one bothered Sam about having kids tailing after him, which Sam was thankful for. He’d seen plenty of the same guys come in in the morning with their kids to wait for the bus under supervision. Hopefully everyone figured Sam was just watching the little rascals until someone came to pick them up.

Dinner was, blessedly, a quiet thing. Sam had picked the boys up straight from school and he knew what they could do to Sarah’s kitchen when they got home, so he let them pick out bigger meals at the fast food joint down the road. They were wolfing the food down like they’d never eaten–Sam kind of missed those days–and Sam got some time to flip through a history book that Cass had asked him to hold when it wouldn’t fit in his bag.

Their easy silence was broken by the automatic locks ringing through the building, along with the warning chirp of the alarm system activating. “Alright,” Sam said, setting the book aside. “That sound means you can’t leave the building at all. Not without me first, alright?”

Cass and AJ nodded and pushed away their milkshakes. “Can we see the museum now?” Cass asked.

“We need to run by the gift shop first,” Sam said. “But then we can explore all you want.”

With cheers, the boys clambered off their seats and to the office door. Beyond, the museum was quiet and still. The sun hadn’t quite set, which was the timing Sam was hoping for. He corralled the boys towards the gift shop and dug out the key for the door. He didn’t step inside though. A few seconds later, Morgan Stark crept from her hiding spot.

“Uncle Sam!” AJ gasped. “Someone got locked in with us!”

Sam laughed and tousled his nephew’s hair. “Nah, I knew she was here. That’s why I said we had to check here first.” He held his hand out to Morgan and she glanced around the museum warily before taking it and stepping aside so Sam could lock the door behind her again.

“You told me to stay away,” Morgan accused. “I thought this was a trap.”

“And yet you came anyway,” Sam pointed out. He tugged on one of her pigtails and turned so he was more or less facing all three of the kids. “Morgan, this is Cass and AJ, my nephews. Nephews, this is Morgan Stark. Her dad owns the museum.”

“No way!” AJ gasped with wide eyes. “Does he own everything in here?”

“No,” Morgan said. “That’s all sorts of people.”

“Well what about the–” Morgan was saved from having to account for every artifact in the museum by the triceratops ambling by, shaking its crested head as it headed for a patch of moonlight streaming in through the front windows. All three kids were silent for about five seconds before two of them shrieked–one in excitement, one in fear–and Cass said something like “Oh, yes way!” and they all darted after the triceratops to pet its crest and count its vertebrae.

Sam did not jump when he felt a body come up behind him as he watched the kids. “Please tell me that’s not your rescue plan.”

“Hey, you’ve never met a kid with a special interest. I bet Cass could still tell you every bone on that dinosaur and he hasn’t even really been into dinosaurs for a few years now. They’re not just kids, they’re the target audience, right? Everything in this museum is kind of, inadvertently maybe, tailored to a child’s wonder and excitement. They’re all super smart and they’re gonna be a lot better at digesting the crazy shit that’s going down than I or even you are.”

Bucky grunted and tilted his head to the side. “I said I’d follow your lead, night guard.”

Sam hummed. “You did say that, didn’t you?” He whistled and then waved the kids over when he had their attention. “Hey, guys, this is Bucky–”

“Barnes!” Cass finished with a wide grin. “You were one of the Howling Commandos with Gabe Jones and Captain America!”

Bucky smiled and nodded. “I was. Gabe would so rub it in Steve’s face if he knew you said his name before Steve’s.”

“How is this happening?” Morgan asked, finally broaching the subject Sam was waiting for. “This has never happened before. My dad didn’t say anything about upgrading the displays.”

Bucky’s eyes fell on her and, again, his whole being softened. “You’re Tony’s daughter,” he said quietly.

“My name’s Morgan,” she agreed. “Grandpa says I’m a lot like you, which drives Dad nuts, but Uncle Steve agrees.”

“Uncle Steve?” Bucky asked and Sam could hear the way it was choked in the back of his throat.

“Yeah. He’s a friend of my dad’s, not his real brother. But he’s been around since before my dad went to college, he said. So he’s Uncle Steve to me.”

Bucky nodded and glanced away. “That’s cool,” he said. He cleared his throat and refocused. “Sam, tell them why this is happening.”

“Me? It’s happening to you,” Sam objected. But he continued, “There is an artifact here called the Tesseract. It’s a–”

“It’s a cube of unexplainable cosmic power,” Morgan interrupted. 

“It was found near the wreckage of the Valkyrie, but not publicly acknowledged until the mid-90s,” Cass agreed with a nod.

“It might house an infinity stone, but that’s impossible to prove without total destruction,” AJ finished with a wide grin, clearly pleased to have kept up with the other kids. “Supposedly, anyway. Infinity stones are just a theory to string a bunch of myths together.”

Sam and Bucky blinked at them. “Yeah…” Sam eventually said slowly. He was going to say it was a weird box. “That’s exactly what we were gonna say. Uh, so you have the downlow on it already. Glad we’re on the same page.  Anyway, so this Tesseract was recently returned to the museum by an unknown person, which then triggered an animation of everything in the museum.”

As if to prove his point, the anatomical skeleton strolled by, on its way to the history section. Sam wondered if it had contemporary friends over there.

“It used to do the same thing back in the 80s and 90s when it was here last,” Bucky continued. “When it was stolen, we all stayed inanimate. But now that it’s back…” He gestured around.

“Wicked,” Cass breathed. 

“Sam knows who you all are, but I don’t. Give me a roll-call here. Why did Sam bring you around?”

“Sam calls me a history nerd,” Cass said. “I’m really good at remembering things with dates.”

“I’m a science kid,” Morgan said proudly.

“And I like mythology!” AJ finished. “Which Uncle Sam never knows anything about.”

“I know plenty about mythology,” Sam scoffed. “Zeus and Persephone and stuff.”

AJ looked at him unimpressed. “There’s more to mythology than that.”

“Okay, so we all have the displays covered. Everyone knows something about something. Great. I can work with that.”

Then Cass gasped and jumped back a little. “Uncle Sam!”

Sam looked down to find the panther winding around his legs, nudging her large head against his knee. “Hello, beautiful,” he greeted, squatting down to scratch her ears. “Come on, Cass. You can pet her, it’s alright. Now, I want all three of you to be careful interacting with any of the displays and artifacts. Everything can be dangerous, just like people, right? But I always want you to trust them and yourselves here. Because we’re gonna need your help to protect everything you see.”

AJ came over before his brother did, smoothing small hands down the panther’s back. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Yesterday, someone came to steal the Tesseract again,” Sam explained. “He was mean and powerful and he really wants that box. But if we all work together, Bucky and I think we can find a way to protect the box and the museum.”

“Was it the same man who stole the Captain America uniform ages ago?” Morgan asked.

“No,” Bucky grumbled. “We asked. His name is Loki, of Asgard.”

AJ gasped and jumped to his feet. “The god?!” he shouted.

“The god?” Sam asked with raised eyebrows.

AJ let out a long suffering sigh that was too old for his little body. “In Norse mythology, Loki is the brother of Thor, sons of Odin. He’s a trickster god: good at magic and very smart. But there is no infinity stone in the Norse myths, so I don’t know why he’d want the Tesseract.”

“That would also mean that Loki is real,” Morgan argued. “He isn’t part of the museum displays. He couldn’t have just come to life last night.”

“But if there’s already a magic space box, why couldn’t there be magic myth men?” AJ argued back.

“Because the Tesseract is fueled by science, not magic.”

“Historically, magic and science have been the same things with different names,” Cass pointed out.

“Kiddo 3 is right,” Bucky said.

“AJ,” Sam corrected.

“There’s enough magic in this museum, and in my journals, that I’m less concerned with how a god got involved and more concerned with why and how we can stop it,” he continued.

“Can we see the Tesseract?” Morgan asked.

“Uh, not really,” Sam answered. “Last night, when Loki was trying to steal it, another thing in the magic wing ate it.”

“Ate it?!” AJ basically wailed in distress.

“There’s a magic wing?!” Cass asked. “What’s in that? More Tesseracts? Is there a werewolf? Or bigfoot? Are there real voodoo heads? Is there a witch locked up in there?”

Sam put his palm on Cass’ forehead, which always irritated him into silence. “No, there’s nothing like that in there. It’s mostly normal artifacts with magical backgrounds.”

Cass gave him a sullen pre-teen look. “So they’re magic but not magic magic?” he asked dubiously.

Sam sighed. “I just meant that they’re not really dangerous except at night. It’s not like they’re flying around during the day.”

“There’s something that flies in there? Like, all by itself?” AJ asked.

Sam shot an exhausted look at Bucky who shrugged. “Come on. Let’s go check it out. But we have to get in the door very quickly so nothing scurries out.”

The kids shot back to the foyer before coming up short. Morgan seemed to gesture towards the unused wing, but she looked unsure. Sam didn’t blame her. She probably only knew it as a storage closet.

“This is part of what I was telling you is dangerous about coming here at night,” Sam explained as he unlocked the door. “Keep your hands to yourself and don’t go wandering off. Stay by Bucky or me.”

He waited for all three kids to look at him and nod before he pulled the door open and ushered them all in. He was just clicking the door shut when a booming voice called out, “Night Guard! Thank you for putting my book in my lap! I forgot it outside last night!”

The bear-man, Mikhail, came lumbering from the back of the wing. Instantly, all three kids pressed closer to Sam’s legs or ducked behind them. “Ah,” Mikhail said. “Fresh meat.”

Bucky swatted his arm. “Behave. This is the next generation of academics, don’t you know?”

“I’m sorry, Major,” Sam sighed. “I didn’t get a chance to look up your namesake today. You would not believe what happened after we finished talking to you last night.”

“I think you could try me and I’d believe a lot of things,” Mikhail objected lightly. “That is okay, Night Guard. I am not going anywhere and his status does not change anything for me. I was just curious.”

“I will figure it out,” Sam added. The bear-man scared him, but it seemed to be a small thing he could do to put the creature at ease.

“I appreciate that. I will leave you and your cubs to your explorations. I will be in my chair if you need something heavy lifted.”

“Who was that?” Cass asked in a whisper.

“No one you would know,” Sam whispered back.

“So where’s the Tesseract?” Morgan asked.

Sam gestured over to the thing that was not a cat. “That ate it.”

“The cat ate the Tesseract?” Cass asked. “How big is this box?”

“It’s not a cat,” Sam assured.

The kid’s stared at it and Sam realized exactly what their response was going to be. He was going to hear his own words. “It’s a cat,” Cass insisted.

“That looks like a cat,” AJ agreed. “Is he smelly, like yours?”

“Figaro is not smelly!” Sam defended.

“So, if the cat ate the very small Tesseract, what’s the problem?” Cass asked. “Loki can’t get it.”

“What goes in, must come out,” Morgan said, which elicited giggles from the boys and Bucky. Sam glared at him without real heat behind it. It was tough to remember to be the adult in the room when kids were having harmless fun.

“Poor cat,” AJ cooed, reaching to pet it. Sam snatched his hand back.

“Don’t touch,” he repeated.

Cass was still staring at the not-cat. What had Bucky called it earlier last night? A flabbergast. A flubber. A flailing. “What if we did a bait and switch?” Cass asked. “What if we found another orange cat and let Loki have that one?”

“Because this isn’t just an orange cat,” Bucky sighed, pushing himself off of a shelf unit. “There’s no way to force it to show you, but this animal is an alien called a Flerken. It very much so looks like a cat, but it isn’t a cat. As soon as Loki tries to get the Tesseract, he’ll know he’s been duped.” On cue, the Flerken stretched all its paws out, butt going into the air to flick its tail around before it settled back into its spot.

“Besides, people don’t trick Loki,” AJ said. “He tricks people. That’s his whole thing.”

“So what if we trap him instead?” Morgan suggested. “I mean, look at these display cases. These are designed to hold magical artifacts. If they can contain the power of the Tesseract, to an extent, then they can probably hold a magical man until someone else could come collect him.”

“That would only work if there was a dampener on them,” Bucky said. “Loki was able to open portals, step through them like he was leaving his apartment for the day. He’d likely be able to do that within a display case.”

“Besides, who would come collect a god?” Cass asked.

“Thor,” AJ answered instantly. “Thor and Loki were always either cleaning up after each other or bailing each other out of tight spots.”

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Sam muttered to Bucky.

“Here’s hoping they keep each other sooner rather than later,” Bucky muttered back.

“What about the other artifacts?” Morgan said. “Could any of those be used to either trap him or keep him away?”

Sam and Bucky looked at each other and then both shrugged. “The Cloak of Levitation tried. It was stronger than him for a moment, but Loki used a spell on it to make it let go of him,” Bucky said.

“And a lot of things in here are weapons. It’d be a gamble to put him in proximity to something he may be able to wield,” Sam added.

“Yeah, but what if he didn’t have to be in proximity of it? And what if it wasn’t only one thing?” Morgan asked.

AJ was watching Morgan intently and he started nodding. “What if we could create some kind of… Cass, what’s the word from that demon show?”

“A pentagram?” Cass guessed.

AJ nodded again. “What if we could build a kind of magical pentagram to keep him in one place. Or a summoning circle. Put enough magical items to fight him around it to keep him trapped.”

“We could set it up around a display case to keep him physically contained too,” Morgan agreed.

“How in the world are we going to create a magical pentagram?” Sam baited.

Cass had apparently joined the bandwagon. “The same way any pentagram is constructed. Cultures all over the world and across time have tried to use binding spells for one reason or another–to keep things in or out, to summon entities, to create a holy space. Pentagrams, runes on fence posts, marks over the door, buried religious artifacts. We just happen to have a room full of magic to work with. It’ll be like free-handing legos. We’ll create a Batman/Superman hybrid that’s too powerful to beat.”

“Who are you kids?” Bucky asked in awe.

“Smart ones,” Morgan answered. “Do you know what all is in here?”

“No, but I think I know some place where we can find out,” Sam said.

They worked for hours, carefully examining each artifact in the room and trying not to wake the ones that were resting. When they found something that no one could identify, they carried it out to the science wing and stood in front of the Valkyrie TV, which always had a fully informed answer.

“This vial of blood contains DNA infected with Extremis. Project Extremis was–”

“In 1947, shortly after rumors of his involvement in World War II, a hunt was put together to find Dracula in the Eastern European countryside. This stake is the only–” 

“It is believed in some circles that certain Egyptian gods take avatars to continue an Earthly mission. This hood is believed to be part of–”

“The Book of the Damned is supposedly lost to time, but these transcribed pages detail–”

By the time that Sam and Bucky had cataloged everything there was to catalog, the kids had fallen asleep in a puddle. The Cloak of Levitation had freed itself to act as a blanket over them. Sam rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes and leaned back against the Tesseract’s empty podium.

“Does any of this sound like it’s going to remove a god’s powers?” he asked.

“Hell if I know,” Bucky yawned, leaning against Sam’s shoulder. “Maybe that helmet thing from the mutant professor. It’s already an intentional power dampener. If we could reroute that ability outwards instead of inwards…”

Sam nodded and closed his eyes. He was just getting used to the feeling of Bucky’s weight against his side when he remembered he had a job to do. “I should do rounds,” he said. “Make sure no one's being quartered in the figurines.”

“Yeah, good luck getting the superglue off your fingers after trying to fix one of those tiny bastards,” Bucky laughed softly. “How about them?” he asked with a nod towards the kids. “Are they good to stay here?”

The cloak tucked in closer to the kids and Sam nodded. “I think they’ll be fine.” He pushed himself to his feet and offered his hand down to Bucky to haul him up as well. Bucky wiped off his clothes while Sam navigated around the kids to pull the door open. He almost stepped on two dolls right outside the door, laying face down. As it was, he had to yank Bucky forward a step while he danced out of the way too.

“This isn’t Toy Story, y’know,” he said to the figures on the ground. “I know you’re awake.”

Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau pushed themselves up and then crossed their arms in identical stances. “The cat’s name is Goose,” Maria said.

“And did you ever consider coming to the experts on weird space things while dealing with a weird space thing?” Carol added.

“If you need someone to protect the Tesseract, our ships will get it done.”

Sam wasn’t sure if he preferred this version of the pilots or the version that had bickered all last night. He might appreciate this one more if the weight of their combined might wasn’t being direct at him. “What are you two talking about?” he asked.

“And it’s rude to eavesdrop,” Bucky added.

The women glanced between them before moving to climb up a display case so they were more level with Sam and Bucky. For a moment, they jostled each other out of the way, each trying to be more front and center before Carol won. “The Tesseract is a cosmic cube. It’s made of cosmic energy. It came from space. I’ve spent too much time in space, with aliens, with the Flerken. I can tell you exactly what Loki wants with it.”

“Your kid is real smart,” Maria cut in, pushing Carol back so she could step forward. “But he couldn’t possibly know that the mythic figures he’s talking about are coming from another planet entirely.”

“Norse mythology is based on aliens?” Sam asked.

“Or aliens based themselves on Norse mythology,” Maria said with a shrug. “Either way, the other kid was right too. Science and magic are completely linked in these worlds. The energy in the Tesseract is absolutely cosmic and tangible. But it can also fuel intangible magic. Loki wants the cube to supplement his own powers.”

Sam was pretty certain they were just making up words now but he settled back on his heels. “And you two come into this plan where?”

“You need a way to keep the cube away from Loki when he reappears, right?” Carol asked. “You’ve got the two fastest pilots in the galaxy in front of you right now.”

“Let us have the Tesseract, attach it to my jet, and we can keep it away from Loki,” Maria explained. “I can fly anything anywhere and keep out of anyone’s reach. And Carol is good with cosmic energies. She can help control the cube while you all handle Loki.”

“Plus, Goose already knows us and likes us. We can keep an eye on him until the cube is spit back up,” Carol pointed out.

“Why?” Bucky finally asked.

“Because this is our home,” Carol said softly, fingers tangling in front of her stomach in a touchingly human gesture.

“She drives me nuts, but I don’t want to exist in some place where I can’t talk to her every night,” Maria agreed. “And you could ask any other thing in this building and they’d be willing to help too.”

Sam glanced over at Bucky and found the man already looking at him. With a deep breath, he nodded. “Alright. That might be able to work. We could…we could use the whole museum to keep Loki contained. So long as this Thor character really does show up to get his brother, we just have to hide the Tesseract and distract him in the meantime.”

“We’ll still need the power dampener,” Bucky pointed out, chewing on the side of his thumb. “Might be difficult to keep him subdued if he has the run of the museum.”

“So we won't let him have the run of the museum,” Sam said. “If we get enough support from the displays, we could keep corralling him to narrower and narrower locations.”

“Back him into a corner. Literally,” Bucky agreed.

“Okay, but what happens if Loki comes back during the day?” Maria asked.

“I don’t think he will. He seemed to have some understanding of the magic happening here,” Sam said slowly, working through the possibilities as he was speaking. “He knew Bucky wasn’t human, so maybe he realizes what the Tesseract does to the displays here. And if you all suddenly become more alive at night but not during the day, maybe it’s impossible to get the Tesseract away from Goose during the day as well.”

Bucky hummed, tilted his head to the side in acknowledgement. “So he’ll probably come back overnight, when we have a bunch of surprises on our side.”

“No guarantee we’ll figure out how to make anyone fight.”

“Have you met the figurines?”

Sam tilted his head now. That alone would probably be enough to tackle any bad guy of any size and power proportion. “There’s so much rage stored in those little things.”

“Well, that’s what they were built for,” Bucky pointed out. All four of them jumped when an alarm rang on Sam’s phone.

“Shit,” he breathed, pulling it free to turn the alarm off. “Hour and half ‘til sunrise. We have to get everyone back where they belong. Wake the kids back up.”

“An hour and a half, huh?” Bucky asked with a sad slant to his mouth. “Well, we better not waste it.”

“You two should make sure your ships still work the way you think they do,” Sam told Maria and Carol.

Carol scoffed. “As if that wasn’t the first thing I did as soon as I could feel my fingers again.”

“The way I remember it, the first thing you did was–”

Carol elbowed Maria’s arm. “Alright, maybe it was the second.”

Sam shook his head and nudged Bucky towards the history wing. “We’ll check back in tomorrow.”

“Hey, the least you can do is help us down,” Maria called as Sam started to step away. With a slight laugh, Sam held out his hand and let the pilots step onto it, lowering them onto the floor. They had run back into the science wing before Sam had stood back up.

“Do you think that’s actually gonna work?” Bucky asked. “Just…cat-and-mousing him? Horse-and-carrot?”

Sam shrugged. “I have no idea. And it’s putting a lot on this other brother to show up. Sure, maybe we can keep the Tesseract away from him for a few hours, but what if the rescue never comes?”

“Why can’t we just keep having the Flerken swallow it?” Bucky asked.

“You think you can make that cat do anything at all?”

Bucky sucked on his teeth. “You know, if I’d known we’d immediately be dropped in the middle of a cosmic fight, I might’ve stayed asleep. Might’ve let the Panther slime you to death.”

Sam laughed and shook his head. “I bet she would’ve too. She’s so tactile. Did you hear her scratching at the door earlier?”

“I thought she was gonna claw herself right in. A team up between her and Goose would be something else.” Bucky pushed his hand through his hair and surveyed the history wing. It was not as rambunctious as it had been the night before, but Sam was still going to have his work cut out if he didn’t get all the dioramas to put themselves back in order.

“Well, maybe that’s exactly the team up we need when Loki shows back up,” he suggested as he started to shoo Mongols and Romans away from each other. He put up a small plastic shield in front of the French display to keep the figurines contained and they shouted something up at him that sounded like ‘traitor.’

“I suppose it’d be in bad intergalactic manners to let Goose swallow him,” Bucky hummed, helping a few paintings hop back onto the walls.

“Would be the surest way to get the brother here, probably. In the case that we couldn’t just hand him over.”

“Maybe he’s used to it. Maybe the brother’s had to free his god-of-mischief brother from all sorts of prisons and angry peoples.”

“Still bad manners,” Sam agreed. He put the Wakanda mask back in its case and scratched behind the panther’s ears. “Hey, if Norse mythology is real and we have a trident from Atlantis and Carol Danvers has been to space and brought an alien cat back with her, do you think Wakanda is real?”

Bucky turned from maneuvering a statue into the correct pose. “I dunno. I had never heard of it until those artifacts were brought in. Supposedly it’s a vibranium rich region and Steve’s shield is pure vibranium, so there must be an accessible deposit somewhere. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be Wakanda.”

Sam scratched the panther’s jaw and then traced his fingers over the mask. “It would be really cool if it was real. Atlantis, Wakanda, Ta Lo, Asgard. All these ideal societies.”

Bucky snorted and came over to stand next to Sam, leaning against his side comfortably. “Trust me, if Atlantis produced Namor, it’s not an ideal society. There are assholes everywhere.”

Sam snorted and dropped his arm over Bucky’s shoulders. “Yeah, you’re right. The stories are still just stories. But you’ve lived up to the hype so far,” he added with a grin.

Bucky grinned at him too, knocking their foreheads together. “I’m glad I can compare to that movie you like so much.”

“What movie?” Sam asked.

“Cass was telling me that you watch a movie about me and Steve all the time.”

“It’s not all the time. It’s a good movie. Whatever.”

Bucky hugged his arm around Sam’s side tighter when Sam tried to push away and laughed at Sam’s embarrassment. “No, no, I can’t blame you. I’d watch a movie about me all the time too. I’m an interesting guy.”

“You’re not that interesting,” Sam argued. “It’s less for you and more for the actor anyway.”

“Uh-huh,” Bucky agreed sarcastically. He tugged Sam towards the Howling Commandos display and only let go of him, reluctantly, when he had to step onto the platform. “Same time tomorrow?” he joked as he adjusted his coat and smoothed his hair.

“It’s a date,” Sam promised.

“Hey, this is all gonna work,” Bucky said suddenly, seriously. He reached out to brush his thumb over Sam’s cheek. “I believe in you. And those kids are smarter than me and you and combined, probably, so if we don’t figure it out, they definitely will.”

Sam leaned into Bucky’s touch, letting his eyes fall shut. “I hope you’re right.”

“I’m always right.” And when Sam felt Bucky’s fingers fall away, he didn’t open his eyes. Not until the air got dusty again and the energy settled all at once. When he did look up, Bcky was staring ahead, hands to himself.

Sam adjusted the slope of Bucky’s thigh holster and then headed back for the magic wing.

_______________________________

“Mutant powers are science, not magic,” Morgan explained patiently as she moved the helmet flashcard Sam and Bucky had made back out of the line up. Watching the kids try to build a magic dampener was a lot like watching someone try to rig a tarot set. “Things that will impede mutant powers affect genetics or something.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Cass argued. “Genetics give mutants their powers, but that doesn’t mean their powers are, like, manifested through genetics.”

“I can confirm,” Mikhail bellowed without turning around in his seat. “Most powers are contained without genetic alteration. We’d just be boring homo Sapiens then, every time someone wanted to fight us.”

“And we’re not really using the helmet for its specific powers. We’re using it for its…its…oh, what does Mom call it?” AJ asked Cass.

“Generational memory?”

“Generational memory! It’s in the spirit of the idea.”

Sam shook his head fondly, listening to them say phrases he wouldn’t have thought to string together in a million years. Did Sarah really talk about generational memory with the boys? Or were they just really good at hiding around corners and listening in when they shouldn’t be? How much had they picked up from Sam himself?

“We should also focus on the physicality of magic,” Cass said. “Uncle Sam said that Loki used his hands to zap the cloak. What if we used the cloak to tie his hands back this time?”

The Cloak of Levitation raised its two far corners to its collar, like it was hiding its face.

“It’s okay!” AJ soothed and petted a hand down the side of the cloak. “I know it’s scary. I don’t like doing things after I get hurt either. When I fell off my bike, I never wanted to try again, but Cass kept making me and now I can ride all the way to school!”

“Besides, you’ll be surrounded by a bunch of other artifacts distracting him too,” Morgan added. “He’ll be too overwhelmed to do anything to you.”

“Hopefully he’ll be focused on us,” Bucky pointed out. “If me and Sam can hold his attention, the rest of the plan should go smoothly.”

“How do we get the helmet on him?” Cass asked.

“Leave that to me and Bucky,” Sam said quickly. “I don’t want any of you anywhere near him, okay?”

The kids grumbled but agreed. “I think we should hide whatever this is,” AJ said, holding up the card for something just called the Orb. “It has a lot of power too and we shouldn’t let him see it.”

“Good thinking, kiddo,” Bucky said and plucked the Orb from its box. “Major, do you wanna swallow this one?”

The bear-man scoffed from the back of the room. “I could just hold this god down until help arrives,” he pointed out. “None of this planning needs to happen.”

“You’re too real. There’s no telling what he could do to you. You should stay away from him too.”

Mikhail huffed out an irritated breath and noisily turned the page in his book. “I am a creature of war and you will not let me join the fight. The only fight that will befall this prison of mine.”

“Tell you what, when we need someone to come save the day, we’ll call you,” Bucky promised. He turned his attention back to the kids. “For now, let’s just count on me and Sam for taking care of getting Loki all tied up. What else do you have?”

“The trident would be dangerous during the day, but while it’s sentient, I think we can let it work for us,” Cass explained. “I don’t know how important that helmet is for him, but if we could use the trident to get it off, maybe it’ll slow him down.”

Sam nodded, even as he said, “Let’s not rely on that.”

“His helmet doesn’t give him powers in the myths,” AJ confirmed. “It’s just a status symbol. Like a crown.”

Cass screwed his mouth to the side, so Sam added, “But it’s a good idea. If we need to pin him down, that trident would definitely tangle with those horns.”

“Too bad there’s not an oceanography section of this museum. The trident commands the might of the sea,” Bucky lamented as he chewed on the side of his thumb.

“But there are water fountains,” Sam pointed out. “Do you think water would be a magic dampener?”

Bucky shrugged. “Maybe. Nobody found the Tesseract the whole time it was under the ocean with the Valkyrie.”

“If we trapped him in a case, we could put water in it. Not, like, drown him!” Morgan assured quickly. “Just enough to stop the magic.”

Goose stretched on his post and jumped down to the floor, which was more movement from it than Sam had seen since it attacked Loki. Everyone was quiet as they watched him.

“Uh, maybe someone should go get Carol and Maria,” Sam suggested.

“Wait,” all three kids said at the same time, engrossed in the cat’s every movement.

“You guys really don’t want to see this,” Sam warned. Cass waved him off frantically.

Goose walked circles around all three kids, nosing into their arms and hands until he got pets and could move on. He wound his way through Bucky’s legs, the way the panther had earlier in the week. There must be something about those pants. Finally, Goose came over to Sam and pawed at his thigh for a second before hopping up into his lap.

Sam held his breath. Then the cat started to wretch and before Sam could jump up and fling it away from him, Goose vomited tentacles and slime and the Tesseract right into his lap.

“Oh come on!” he shouted, voice high pitched and distressed while he watched the tentacles writhe against his legs and stomach. Goose seemed to be in no hurry to pull them all back into his mouth either. Sam couldn’t make himself push the Flerken away, not while images of those tentacles grabbing his wrist and slowly swallowing him whole danced in his mind.

When he looked at his audience, all three kids had crept forward, eyes wide as plates as they stared at Goose, who was trying to groom himself through the tentacles. Bucky was a smidge impossibly green and looked as distressed as Sam felt. Goose rubbed the side of his face against Sam’s chest and finally, finally sucked all of his tentacles back into his mouth. He hopped off of Sam’s lap as easy as he’d gotten onto it and perched himself back on his shelf.

The Tesseract was warm against Sam’s thigh, though whether that was from being inside of a Flerken’s stomach, or whatever, for two days or from its own energy, Sam would never know. “Someone should really go get Maria and Carol,” he repeated tightly. All of the kids scrambled out of the door.

Cautiously, with an eye on the Flerken, Bucky made his way over to Sam. “Do you feel like you’re losing your legs to acid?” he asked.

“Y’know, I mighta started screaming as soon as the kids were gone if that was the case,” Sam admitted. He gagged a little as he worked his way up the wall to stand. “It’s just warm and disgusting. I feel like a disgusting bug just exploded on me.”

Bucky’s nose scrunched. “I can probably find you some pants from the Howlies’ display.”

“Would I rather wear a dead man’s clothes or my alien vomit clothes? Hmmm.”

Bucky elbowed Sam’s side, still keeping his distance. “I’d take the dead man’s clothes, honestly.”

Honestly, Sam might too, if this was any other night. But now they were working against the clock with only a half formed plan. Helmet. Cloak. Trident. Legions of displays outside vying for a fight too. What could go wrong?

The air crackled like it had a few nights ago and now Bucky did step closer to Sam, angling himself between Sam and the slowly ripping portal. The door opened then and Sam quickly snagged the Tesseract from the floor and turned to get it attached to the jet. Cass, AJ, and Morgan stumbled through the door and Sam found Carol and Maria in their arms, but no spaceships.

“Guys!” Sam hissed.

“They were heavy!” Cass defended. His eyes lit on the portal right then and he took an involuntary step back.

“You couldn’t have flown it over?” Sam asked Carol.

“Listen, just give it to Goose and we’ll get him over to our ships,” Maria said, waving her hand to the Flerken, who was back on his feet, hissing at the portal.

“Shit, fine,” Sam sighed in defeat, turning to offer the Tesseract back to the cat. “Do not swallow it this time,” he ordered.

“Gentle mouth,” Carol called.

Goose knocked the Tesseract from Sam’s hand, jumped down to pick it up with his impossible mouth and then waited for Carol and Maria to climb on his back before taking off out the open door. Sam hoped they didn’t live to regret that.

“You three, get outside. Stay away from weapons, even if they’re tiny. If you see a dude with horns, hide.” Sam didn’t have time to interrogate the conspiratorial glances the kids sent each other as they backed away from the door. He’d been hoping to have enough time to lock them in the guard’s office, but the portal was opening and all he could do was shoo them out of the magic wing.

When the door closed behind them, Sam looked to Bucky and, as always, found him looking back. “I’ll go to the back,” he said. “You distract him up here. I’ll get the helmet.”

Bucky nodded and Sam was just stepping away when fingers closed around his wrist. “Hey,” Bucky said softly, eyes intense on Sam’s face. “Just in case we lose the Tesseract tonight…” And then he leaned in and kissed Sam gently, but firmly. Sam’s hands came up to Bucky’s face, fingertips barely brushing over his skin, too afraid to crush this moment under his hands. When Sam pressed in closer, Bucky pulled back, resting his forehead on Sam’s as electricity sparked in the air. Probably not because of them, but relevant nonetheless.

Sam’s fingers were still on Bucky’s jaw, Sam’s breath ghosting over his parted lips. “You taste like wax.”

Bucky raised his shoulders lightly. “I have a better reason than most.” Sam felt his face furrow slightly, rocking his head down for another quick press of lips on lips. “I just want to remember what this feels like.”

“We better not lose the Tesseract,” Sam muttered before he forced himself to step away. He crossed to the back of the wing before he looked back at Bucky, who was standing resolutely in front of the portal, with eyes the kept darting back. When he caught Sam’s gaze, he nodded and grounded himself, staring ahead.

Sam carefully dug out the helmet and held it in his hands, feeling like he was 14 and trying out for the high school football team again. Keep it tucked close, eyes on the prize, sure movements.

Loki stepped out of the portal, ducking to accommodate his horns, which might’ve been bigger than they were last time. Compensating much, Sam wondered.

“Compensating much?” Bucky asked, waving his hand over his head. And, oh shit, there was no way for Sam to get the dampener on Loki’s head without getting the horns off.

“Ah, the toy who wants to be a real boy,” Loki sighed. “I knew your human companion would run off. They always do. Skittish creatures. Unreliable.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Bucky argued lightly. “Everything I know I learned from humans.”

Loki rested a hand on the podium of the Tesseract. “I know that monster you have locked in here must’ve given the Cube back up. Where have you put it?”

Bucky shrugged. “I don’t know. Punted the thing away as soon as I saw those tentacles again.”

Loki sneered and took a step forward. Sam calculated the likelihood that he could knock the horns off and slam the helmet down in the same instance, but came up with a number far too low for his liking. Then he remembered Cass’ idea. The trident. It was too close to Loki’s periphery for him to make a run for it himself but maybe, if it was paying attention…

Sam held out his hand and immediately, the trident flew towards him silently.

“That was hot,” Bucky complimented. Sam used Loki’s moment of confusion, a tick of his head to the side, to throw the trident forward. It corrected the half inch it needed to spear around the horns and knock them to the ground. Then Sam leapt forward and slammed the helmet down over Loki’s head, hanging onto his back wildly as Loki reached for him.

It was not Loki who eventually tore Sam away, but a paw at his back, and Sam was replaced by Mikhail, who pinned Loki’s arms down with one brawny arm and held the helmet down with the other paw.

“Go!” Mikhail roared. “Protect the Tesseract!”

Sam clambered away from the struggling duo and the cloak flew by him in the other direction, tying complicated knots around Loki’s body. Sam grabbed Bucky’s wrist and Bucky grabbed the horned helmet and trident before they both dashed out the door and into the lobby. Sam couldn’t find the kids, nor did he see Maria and Carol’s ship anywhere.

“Shit,” he gasped, leaning back against the wall. “They could be anywhere.”

“Good,” Bucky said. “If we can’t find them, it’ll be harder for him to too.”

Then the whole building shook as something whirred to life, filling the air with smoke and noise. “Now what?” Sam groaned.

_______________________________

Maria and Carol had had everything under control by the time they got out of the magic wing. Goose hadn’t even eaten the Tesseract yet and neither of them had fallen off of his back. It was the science wing where things got choppy.

“Goose, we’re heading over there for that display. See the jet with the idling engine?” Maria said, tugging on a tuft of fur in an attempt to make the Flerken turn. But Goose kept bounding straight on, past the displays about health initiatives. Past the displays about Green Energy. Past their display.

“Goose!” Carol scolded, but they were already in the far back of the science wing, the one that had been dark and dusty all week. Maybe dusty wasn’t the right word. It smelt like the end of a battle. The smell that lingered on a jet for days after a rough flight. And as Goose wove his way through half-filled information walls, Carol saw why.

There was some kind of ship in the middle of the floor, though it was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It was huge, even damaged. It seemed more like a battering ram than a fighter jet. Which meant it was quite unlike anything she or Maria had ever flown.

“This one of yours, space-girl?” Maria asked as Goose slowed down and walked around the ship.

Carol shook her head. “Not one of mine. This must be something brand new.”

“Well, shit,” Maria said and Carol had to agree. Goose found whatever he was looking for and climbed steps into the hold of the ship. The inside was little better off than the outside.

“This was a battalion transport,” Carol guessed. “Look how much room there is here.”

“Look at how much of it is missing. What kind of war are we fighting now?”

They climbed off of the Flerken’s back and followed it to the cockpit of the ship. Even being much smaller than the ship was designed for, Carol quickly realized it was going to be near impossible to fly.

“Uh, yeah, I’d say this is a brand new war,” she agreed with Maria. She stretched to run her hand over the incomprehensible alphabet that labeled the control board. Maria was also studying it intently. “I think aliens finally invaded, but not any I’d dealt with.”

“It’s still just a ship,” Maria said determinedly. “I can figure this out.”

“Ri, even if you could hit all the right buttons in the right order, this ship is never gonna fly. Half of the tail end is missing.”

“Sure, during the day it wouldn’t fly. But right now?” Maria smoothed her hands over the control board. “Good evening, baby. How are you feeling?”

From somewhere unseen, something like exhaust puffed out and the whole ship seemed to sag.

“I know. You’ve been neglected, haven’t you? Rich people,” she lamented. “Let’s see what we can do for each other. Come on, beautiful, start for me.” And when she flipped a bunch of switches, the ship really did roar to life, like it was showing off. Carol rolled her eyes with crossed arms, though she was terribly fond. “There you are. Let’s get you back into working shape.”

She turned to Carol. “I need you to operate the control board. I’ll focus on steering us.”

“This is never going to work. We’re going to destroy the entire building. We should just hide out in here.”

“Is Carol Danvers running away from a fight?” Maria asked tauntingly. “Do you think you can’t beat some weirdo with bad fashion? I can’t believe they let you go to space. Maybe it should’ve been a man.”

Carol’s jaw tightened and her eyes hardened. “I’m not running away from any fight,” she said. “And I’m not scared of your ship. I just think this is a bad idea. But if you’re so sure.” She pulled a piece of metal further out of place so she could stand on it in front of the control board. “Let’s get this thing up in the air.”

Maria darted over to her as the ship geared up. She punched Carol in the arm. “One for good luck.”

Carol tapped her back twice. “And two to win.”

Maria grinned, all adrenaline and confidence. “Higher, further, faster.”

“Always,” Carol said and punched a green button.

_______________________________

“Is the display case set up?” Morgan asked.

Cass nodded. “I opened both doors, so Uncle Sam or Bucky can run right through it and close them after. I tried to waterproof it, but I couldn’t get into any of the offices or closets, so all I had was duct tape.”

“And we’ve blocked off all the paths,” AJ added. “Loki will only have one way to follow the spaceship with the Tesseract.”

“I haven’t seen it yet,” Morgan said with a frown. When the building shook and some engine whined in the air around them, she groaned.

“Uh, I think the plan just changed,” Cass said. “Now what?”

AJ’s eyes traced past the two older kids and he grinned. “Well, if he won’t chase something into the display case, maybe he’ll run into it,” he suggested, before running back into the foyer. He skidded to a halt in front of the Triceratops and clambered onto its back, settling behind its crest. Cass let out a whoop and scaled the T-Rex skeleton and Morgan got on the Brachiosaurus. The Pterodactyl swooped low, circling around them.

“You’ve got an important job too,” AJ said “When Loki comes out of the door, you need to scare him towards the history wing. We’ll be right behind you to finish chasing him in.”

The Pterodactyl nodded, clacking bones together, before swooping around to hover near the door to the magic wing. Below it, Sam and Bucky yelped and scurried away. As if they didn’t know that the dinosaurs were totally harmless. AJ rubbed the back of the Triceratops' crest.

“Why are you three up there?” Sam hissed as he ran over.

“The pilot ladies haven’t shown up and whatever they’ve decided to fly isn’t going to make Loki chase after it,” AJ explained. “So we’re going to chase him.”

“You’re all terrifying,” Bucky breathed in admiration.

“Thanks!” Morgan chirped.

“It’s okay, Uncle Sam,” Cass said with a confident grin. “You and Bucky should go wait in the history wing. Someone will need to close the doors. And you’ve got the trident! Have you controlled water with it?”

Sam looked at the trident in his hand and then at Bucky, who shrugged. “No time like the present,” he pointed out.

Sam turned to face the water fountain and focused on making it run. Instead, the entire thing burst off of the wall and water began swirling in the air immediately.

“Woah, woah, woah!” several voices exclaimed. Sam tried to focus on not flooding the entire museum and the water slowly disappeared back into the now visible pipe in the wall.

“In a minute,” Sam told the trident. “All of that can be useful in a second.”

The door to the magic wing flew open then and Mikhail went sailing through the air into the foyer. He got up, looking like he was ready to finish the fight, but Cass and the T-Rex put themselves in the middle of it, swiping Loki’s legs out from under him. It sent a bolt of wild magic sailing through the air and Sam watched in horror as it connected with Bucky’s midsection. Bucky’s hands shakily came to his stomach, hiding the damage as he staggered back a step. Sam quickly ducked into his side, letting Bucky put his weight against Sam.

The helmet was still on Loki’s head, maybe even pounded into place by Mikhail, but the cloak was only wrapped around one wrist. With the free hand, Loki was weakly trying to conjure any more magic. From the ground, he stared up at the dinosaur skeletons. “What is this place?” he asked in a wheezing breath.

“You should’ve done your research before coming back for round two,” Sam called, stumbling back into the history wing with Bucky at his side. With a few feet of distance between them and the fight, Sam pried Bucky’s hands away from his stomach. The jacket was burned away in a wide circle, the edges still simmering. Bucky’s stomach was also just a straight-through hole, viscera dripping in the heat.

“Oh my God,” Sam breathed, hands hovering uselessly.

Bucky’s hands came to Sam’s wrists. They were warm and slick with heat too, but his face was easy when Sam looked up at him. “I’m wax. I’ll be fine. It doesn’t hurt, remember?” He pushed his forehead against Sam’s for a second, long enough for Sam to convince himself Bucky was okay and get his breathing under control. Then Bucky pulled away and nodded back at the foyer.

Loki unsteadily got to his feet and seemed to check in with himself before turning for the science wing. The Triceratops blocked his way and then dropped its head and charged him with horns facing forward. Loki danced back and then kept stumbling back as the Pterodactyl began to swoop down towards him as well, snapping its large beak in his face. The T-Rex followed, jaw open and ready to catch any escape attempts. The Brachiosaurus brought up the rear, long neck and tail both swiveling in a constant vigil.

In the history wing, Loki immediately tried to veer off course, but the panther was there to stop him, snarling and swiping at him as she herded him along the way they wanted. At every new turn, there was a statue with a clothes-line arm, a legion of figurines pissed off about a superstitious turn of events in a battle, an empty faced clothing model with a bat or a machete.

“What is happening?!” Loki demanded, stumbling back as the cloak caught his other wrist again. “What are you doing?!”

“Listen, man, you aren’t the only one who knows how special that Tesseract is. And it just so happens, it’s already chosen us. And it’s a lot more powerful than you,” Bucky consoled from inside the display case, hand still over his midsection.

Loki bared his teeth and dove after Bucky, who stepped aside and shut the back door at the same time Sam slammed the front door shut.

“Okay,” Sam said to the trident, “Now’s the time for all that water.” And it came pouring in, racing through the winding track they’d just taken and through the top of the display case.

“What is this?” Loki demanded.

“It’s a display case,” Sam said casually.

“They really suck. I think this one might actually be mine,” Bucky added, coming around the front of the case to stand next to Sam. “Make this easy for us. How long until your brother comes to take you away?”

Loki scoffed. “My brother doesn’t know where I am. While the Tesseract is hiding in your museum, it’s indiscoverable to typical means of cosmic tracking. I don’t know what it is about this building, but it silences all external magic. Even if my brother was looking for me, he’d never be able to find me.”

“How did you find the Tesseract then?” Sam demanded, watching the water rise to Loki’s mid-thigh. Around the display case, the figurine armies crept closer, all outfitted for war and ready for a fight. Behind Bucky and Sam, the dinosaurs and kids watched warily, in rapt attention.

“I followed the silence. Wherever it had been, the signals were being corrupted. There was too much energy in one spot. I couldn’t isolate it. But as soon as it was back in this bizarre building, I could follow the silence.”

“That makes no sense,” Bucky said.

“And the fact that minds such as yours do not understand it is exactly why my brother will never find me here. As you have said, my power pales in comparison to this cube and you’ve silenced me even further with your games. I believe the water is quite high enough now.”

“I want it over your mouth,” Sam ground out.

Bucky turned slightly to speak directly into Sam’s ear. “He’s blabbering, but he’s giving us a lot to work with,” he pointed out.

“He’s probably just lying,” Sam whispered back.

“But at least he seems distracted.”

Their conversation, and the retort Loki was about to offer, was cut off by the building shaking again. A few seconds later, the flight suit and Mikhail came running into the history wing.

“The ship–” Mikhail panted. The flight suit gestured furiously next to him. “They just took the crashed ship out of the museum and into the sky.”

Sam was so fired. Still, he turned back to Loki. “Well,” he said. “I suppose your brother’s about to figure out where the Tesseract is.”

Loki thrashed momentarily in the water, splashing it from his shoulders to his face, but couldn’t free himself of the cloak wrapped around his hands. “Do you think you will be allowed to keep it once others know where it is?” he asked finally, spitting water from his lips. “Do you think you can protect it from your own government? You should have let me have it.”

“I don’t know what the future holds for the Tesseract,” Sam admitted. Very likely, there could be another slew of suites against the museum to apprehend it for someone else. But for now, the Tesseract was, more or less, staying where it was. “But it seems like it really wants to be here. And it seems like everything in this museum wants it here too. I’m pretty happy with those odds.”

“Humans,” Loki spat. “Always so sentimental for no reason.”

Sam shrugged. “It’s a feature, not a flaw.”

With another crash, Bucky cringed and glanced down the hall, as if he could see the science wing. “I think they landed again.”

Only a few seconds later, three figures, who were definitely not Carol and Maria, came striding through the door.

“Oh, no way!” Cass cried and there was a distinct thump as he landed on the floor from a fall of some height off of the dinosaur. “Iron Man, Captain America!”

“Thor!” AJ added, having to wait for the Triceratops to lower him to the floor before running over. The stern look on the heroes’ faces eased slightly. Thor passed his hand over AJ’s curls.

“Let me deal with my brother and I will give you a proper introduction,” he said with a voice like rumbling thunder.

Sam stared at Captain America. Even if this week had felt like a year, he knew it had only  been a few days. And yet he could barely recognize the man in front of him. Gone was the large, but seemingly frail man who had given Sam a tour and a flashlight. Now he was middle-aged, hair silvered but thick, muscles full under smooth skin. His bright blue eyes were less sunken and he held himself with upright ease.

Bucky’s fingers twitched against the back of Sam’s hand but he made no move to get closer to his friend.

Iron Man was wearing his full suit, including the face mask. He stood with his arms crossed, one leg cocked slightly in a stance that emitted pure irritation. He still surprised Sam by saying, “Morgan H. Stark, I specifically told you to stay away from the museum.” And Sam knew that voice.

Morgan clung to the Brachiosaurus’ neck and shook her head. “It was an emergency,” she said. “The world was in danger.”

“Now who taught her that?” Steve asked with a grin, looking over to… It was Tony Stark. It had to be. Sam’s boss was Iron Man.

“Proper introductions later,” Thor repeated before stepping forward to glower at his brother. “Loki, what did you do this time?”

Loki shrugged, holding up his bound hands as if they testified to his innocence.

“If I open this door, will the water pour out?” Thor asked Sam. Loki rolled his eyes in the case.

“Let me just…” Sam thrust the trident forward again and the water spiraled out of the case the same way it had poured in. It followed the same path, making room for Steve and Tony now, and back to the water fountain.

“Neptune’s Trident!” Thor said with admiration. Sam wasn’t sure if it was an exclamation or if he recognized the object. “And you wield it so easily?”

“I think it’s letting me wield it,” Sam admitted sheepishly.

“That is the relationship between all magic and its user,” Thor explained. He dropped his hammer to the floor by Sam’s feet. “For instance, I have carried that hammer across the realms to come here today, but you will not be able to lift it.”

“Uh, that might not be a question you want answered, Thor,” Steve called out warily.

Sam glanced over at Steve and then back at Thor with a furrow in his brow. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

AJ skipped over. “Whosoever holds this hammer, be they worthy, shall possess the power of Thor!” he recited. “Wielding the hammer comes with godly responsibilities, so not everyone can pick it up.”

“The small one is correct,” Thor laughed.

Sam frowned and grabbed the handle of the hammer and lifted it from the ground. He stared at it with expected acceptance and handed it over to Thor. “I think your spell might be broken.”

Thor stared at the hammer as well before stepping back and thrusting it in Iron Man’s hand. Iron Man stumbled back a step, hands up to refuse it. “Absolutely not. I broke my foot last time you tried that.”

“Then remove your feet from its path this time,” Thor insisted.

“I told you,” Steve interrupted. “He’s the perfect guy for the job.”

“That’s just how this museum is,” Sam insisted. “Things don’t make sense here.”

“It makes perfect sense,” Bucky cut in quickly. “You’re worthy of wielding his weird little toy.”

“It is not a toy,” Thor bristled.

“Guys, the bad guy”! Morgan called.

Everyone turned to look at Loki, who raised his eyebrows. “Yes, hello again. Brother, will you be blasting back off to space with me in tow soon or should I settle in?”

Thor scowled with the might of storms and pried open the display case. “I will return to discuss the ramifications of his actions,” he swore, holding his brother tightly. He peeled off the helmet from Loki’s head and shooed away the cloak before snapping his own mythic bindings on Loki’s wrists.

“Oh, uh, he dropped this earlier,” Bucky said, snagging the horned helmet from behind him and handing it over. “I don’t want him coming back for them.”

Thor took the helmet and saluted Bucky with it. “Thank you, inanimate-but-currently-animate friend. Stark,” he said with a nod to the door.

Stark and Thor, with Loki, headed back for the science wing, presumably because there was a hole in the roof there. Steve was left with Sam and Bucky. Morgan glanced between the three of them and said, “Maybe we should go put the dinosaurs back in the foyer.”

Cass and AJ looked dejected, but from a few furious nods of her head towards the adults, they followed her lead and vacated the room.

Steve spoke first. “Hey, Sam. Hey, Buck.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky said. Which is exactly what Sam was going to say. “It’s been twenty years.”

Steve flinched like it was an accusation. “That’s not Steve’s fault,” Sam assured, still quick to defend the other man. “The Tesseract went missing.”

Steve shook his head. “It didn’t. I knew where it was the whole time. I’m the one who took it.”

The words seemed to be exactly what Bucky was waiting to hear. He sagged back against a display case and slid down into a crouch. “Why?”

“Because what we were doing wasn’t sustainable, Buck. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t the 40s anymore. The more time I spent with you, the less I tried to live in the real world. I slept here most days. It had to stop.”

“There were so many other things in the museum. There are friends, long standing arguments, games, inventions. A whole world that you just…ended because…because you didn’t want to talk to me?”

“The Tesseract is dangerous,” Steve insisted. “Just keeping it in my possession almost killed me. Sam’ll tell you. I looked ready to keel over when he met me. It would’ve been dangerous to leave it here with all of you, let you all take power and energy from it. Who knows what would’ve happened if any of it had gotten out in the real world.”

“So why bring it back?” Sam asked. “Why put me in this position and then bring all the danger back? Why let me… Shit, Steve, I made friends with these artifacts and displays. If you were so scared of losing yourself to this fantasy, why did you throw me into the fire?”

“I thought it was safer. We’ve been working on proofing the Unexplainable Wing. There’s so much else that’s magical in there. We thought it would contain the Tesseract’s power. And I knew you were stronger than me anyway. Pragmatic.”

Sam thought of the horror that had coursed through his veins at seeing Bucky hurt, melted through. “I wouldn’t say pragmatic.”

Steve cringed again. “I’m sorry, Sam. I should’ve just told you. I just really hoped it wouldn’t be the same again. I did tell you there was a manual in the desk drawer.”

Sam frowned and then groaned. “I was a little preoccupied!”

“It was the dinosaurs first, huh? It’s always the dinosaurs.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Bucky demanded. “Why didn’t you give me a warning?”

Steve sighed. “Would it have made a difference? You’re not really him. You’re a doll. And for twenty years, you were just a doll.”

“Steve!” Sam scolded. But before he could really lay into him, the alarm on his phone went off. Bucky grimaced and got to his feet. “Shit, okay…” Sam turned to face the figurines who seemed slightly confused by the turn of events. “I really need you guys to work with me tonight. Please just go back where you belong without a fight. Steve, can you get the paintings set back up? Buck, let’s go see what Carol and Maria did.”

“Carol and Maria–the scaled way down sized models–were the ones driving that ship?” Steve asked, just near the border of hysterical.

“It wasn’t part of the plan,” Bucky said drily, pushing past Steve on his way out. Sam stared after him with an aching chest.

“I’ll be back,” he told Steve and then hurried after Bucky. “Buck! Buck!” he called, gently snagging Bucky’s elbow so he didn’t pull his hand away from his midsection, though he wasn’t sure how much good it was doing. “Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.

“Loki was right. Someone is going to come take the Tesseract. And maybe Steve’s right too. Maybe it is dangerous. A dangerous object, but dangerous to live in a fantasy too,” Bucky bit out.

“This isn’t a fantasy. You’re real. I’m talking to you right now.”

Bucky moved his hand to show off the molten mess his stomach had become. “I don’t feel very real.”

Sam grabbed his wrist and made Bucky face him. “You feel real to me.”

With a sad smile, Bucky brought his hand up to Sam’s face, stroking his thumb over Sam’s cheek. “Eventually I won’t.”

Before Sam could argue, a triumphant cry echoed through the air, followed by the kids’ voices cheering too. He shook his head and tugged Bucky with him into the science wing without further words. He wasn’t sure he had any more ready.

The building was demolished. The roof was completely ruined and most of the walls were half standing. Sam would be feeling nothing but horror at the sight if it wasn’t for the fact that Maria, Carol, Mikhail, Morgan, AJ, and Cass were all standing on the outside of the alien ship, dusty and soot stained but beaming. Goose paced up and down one of the wings.

“What happened?” Sam asked as he climbed over rubble.

“Goose knew what to do,” Carol said with a shrug. “We were just following his instincts.”

“I didn’t mean to send us straight into the air,” Maria admitted. “But it’s difficult to navigate when you can’t see out the window or read any of the commands.”

“But the landing was great!” Carol pointed out. She pushed her hair out of her face and looked at Maria.

“Careful, that almost sounds like a compliment, space-girl,” Maria teased. Carol leaned in to kiss her fiercely and Sam shook his head in exasperation.

“Why didn’t I see that coming?” he asked no one in particular.

“What are we gonna do about this building?” Bucky asked, turning in a slow circle as he surveyed the damage.

Goose jumped off the ship and came over, dropping the Tesseract at Sam’s feet. Sam grimaced at the saliva all over it but picked it up. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked. He struck a pose, holding it out in front of him in what was supposed to be a strong stance but probably was making his nephews snicker behind him. “Come on, show me what you’ve got, cosmic cube.”

And slowly, the rubble began to lift around them. Everyone had to stumble back to avoid losing the ground under their feet. Bricks and cinder block and wiring and piping all slotted back together along the walls with roof tiles following after. Even the spaceship lost a few scorch marks and dings. Displays and information walls aligned and lit up again.

As soon as it was all done, the Tesseract fell heavy in his hand and Sam had to drop it on the floor to avoid wrenching his shoulder out of its socket.

“Now that’s the kind of cleaning service I need,” Iron Man called from the door. Steve was beside him as well and Thor was behind both of them, looking a little tired and travel weary. Sam couldn’t blame him. Intergalactic travel with a god of mischief couldn’t be easy.

“The perfect man for the job,” Steve repeated fondly.

“Now about those introductions,” Thor greeted with a wide smile, swooping AJ into a hug.

Sam looked at Bucky and, just this once, found him looking away. He touched Bucky’s arm but Bucky tugged it away and, instead, focused on setting up displays again.

A paw came down on Sam’s shoulder and Sam glanced up at Mikhail. “He will come around,” the bear-man said somberly, but surely.

“I don’t know if we’ll have the time for that,” he admitted. Then he jolted slightly. “By the way, your namesake is working on a new team of soldier-spies. He’s working with someone called the Red Guardian.”

“That old sweat bag?” Mikhail scoffed “How the mighty fall.”

“He’s okay. Seems healthy, from what I could read. Still playing whatever side he wants.”

Mikhail smiled. “Good. Makes the stories interesting.” He squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “Thank you, Night Guard. It will be easier to remain here knowing one of us is having fun.”

Sam nodded and slipped out from under his hold. He found Bucky out in the foyer, leaning against the front desk so he could stare at the moon outside the door. “When they take me in to fix me, or while they’re finding a new model for me, don’t let them decide to stick me in storage,” he said as Sam came up to lean against the desk next to him.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Sam promised. “Even if I have to drag you out of the archives myself.”

Bucky tilted his face back in the moonlight and in a deep breath, as if he needed to. “I think when they come sniffing, you should give them the Tesseract. The government or whatever.”

“Why?” Sam asked, brow furrowing, stomach knotting and going cold.

“Because it shouldn’t just be sitting out here. Others will want it, will try to take it. It’s best if it’s somewhere safe.”

“Mostly it sounds like you’re getting cold feet,” Sam accused softly.

Bucky shrugged. “Maybe a little bit of that too. But you heard what Loki said, you know it yourself. This place is magic all on its own. It’ll find some other way to bring us to life. If the  Tesseract is a threat, I don’t want it near you. Or those rascals,” he added, gesturing to Cass, AJ, and Morgan where they were playing an incomprehensible game with the heroes.

“I’ll figure something out, Buck,” Sam promised fiercely. He grabbed Bucky’s hand and held it tightly against his chest. “If they take the Tesseract, I’ll find something else that speaks to the magic of this museum and all of you.”

Bucky gave him that same sad smile. “I know you will. Can I… Just one more time.” When Sam nodded, he leaned in to kiss Sam again, holding the side of his face with one hand.

“You taste like burnt wax now,” Sam breathed.

Bucky laughed softly and pressed his forehead against Sam’s, brushing their noses together softly. “I need to go get back on my podium,” he said. “Even if they’re just gonna take me down in the morning.”

“Yeah, the curators are definitely gonna be pissed at me for ruining this jacket,” Sam laughed, smoothing a hand over the singed edge of the hole.

“Let me go, Sam,” Bucky breathed quietly, pushing Sam’s hand away, though his own stayed on Sam’s cheek for as long as his arm span allowed it as he backed away. Sam watched him until he disappeared into the history wing.

As he stood there, steadying his breathing, the sun rose through the windows.

_______________________________

It had been an unassuming man in a plain suit who had come to request the Tesseract the next day. He and Tony Stark had locked themselves in the Stark Office, which Sam didn’t even know existed, to hash out conditions. Or just to be difficult, if Sam was getting to know Stark correctly at all. By the time Sam’s shift started, the Tesseract was gone. Still, as dusk ebbed out of the museum and night flowed in, he held his breath and watched the dinosaurs for any sense of movement.

For the whole night, there was none.

The rest of the week was a flurry of activity. For the most part, the museum had basically shut down. All the displays and artifacts needed to be accounted for and checked over. Sam hadn’t heard the full story Stark had fed the employees, but Stark was close at hand to handle any questions that arose. Sam was definitely not allowed to say anything to the curators, even though they kept bribing him with food.

On top of a complete inventory, everybody and their brother had something to say about an artifact that had suddenly blipped on their radar again. Sam wasn’t sure if it was the spaceship blasting into space from the museum’s back wing–a publicity stunt accomplished with drones and projections, Stark had assured everyone who had seen and videoed it–or if the momentary burst of energy from the Tesseract had allowed a moment of clarity for all the other artifacts to their owners, but suddenly everyone seemed to realize that that thing they’d misplaced was right here in this little museum.

Magic, Sam had learned, called to its users. He could still feel it sometimes, even without the Tesseract around to awaken any of the artifacts. He found himself stalling outside of the magic wing, imagining the weight of the trident in his hand or wishing he could wear the cloak for just a second when the AC kicked on. He wanted to check on Goose. But he never did. The door remained locked until someone else appeared and demanded their things back.

“Mr. Stark,” a PR person called, hurrying in the direction Stark had just left Sam’s desk. “The prince of Wakanda is going to be here momentarily. He says we have Wakandan artifacts.”

Sam’s eyebrows raised as he walked past them, heading for the history wing to monitor the replacement of the displays. This week it had been the Howling Commandos. The James Barnes outfit was on display, but the realistic wax model had been replaced by a blank faced cloth one. The jacket was still badly damaged, but he supposed people might assume it had arrived like that, if they didn’t know any better.

Making sure there were no nosy curators around, Sam reached out to trace the singed edge again.

“Don’t worry about it too much,” a voice said and made Sam jump, almost knocking the lighter model over in his haste to jerk his arm back.

He turned and found a handsome man walking over to him. He was tall and well built, wearing a hoodie in the dead of summer. Long hair curled out from the collar of his hood. When he pulled the hat down, Sam’s breath caught in his chest.

“That’s not even the original jacket. It’s just the most recognizable thing I ever wore,” Bucky Barnes said. But that was impossible. It wasn’t night and the model hadn’t been fixed and the Tesseract wasn’t here.

“I was wearing my coat when I fell off the train, y’know. It’s why I know that’s a fake. Mine was probably burned in a fire pit in a subterranean Soviet bunker. It’s a shame. I spent good money on that thing. Then again, I suppose it was fucked from the fall anyway.”

Sam blinked at the man. “How are you standing here?” he asked.

“I ask myself the same thing every morning with my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth,” Bucky agreed. He looked tired, more haggard and harder than the version Sam had gotten to know. “But it’s a long story. I could tell you over dinner, if you wanted. I’ve heard I’m fond of you.”

Sam frowned and crossed his arms. “Do you even know my name?”

“I could call you angel,” Bucky suggested. “I’ve seen your wings.” And when Sam clearly looked unimpressed, Bucky rolled his eyes. “Your name is Sam Wilson. Pararescue turned night guard. Affinity for magic. Bigger affinity for flying. You like fried fish. I know a great place. Let me take you to dinner.”

Sam looked around for Steve, but he hadn’t seen the other man since the day after the fight, unless Steve was ducking into Stark’s office. He wondered if Steve knew about this man.

“Are you real?” Sam asked.

“If you’re asking if I’m a dream…” Bucky danced out of the swat Sam had been aiming at him. “I’m really real. I survived falling off the train because of a super soldier serum I got while a POW. I’ve heard you like the movie, you know when I’m talking about.” He avoided another swat and put his hands on Sam’s shoulders. With a start, Sam realized one of his hands was metal. “Sam, let me explain everything to you. Then we can go from there. But it’s the least I can do after everything…” He gestured to the display behind them. “Besides, you might end up liking me again.”

“I didn’t like you before,” Sam scoffed. “Just the–”

“Just the actor. I know, I know.” Bucky grinned, still looking tired but suddenly filled with the same boyish enthusiasm Sam had gotten to know.

“I doubt you actually know a good fried fish place,” Sam said, pushing Bucky’s hands off of his shoulder. “But I’m willing to give it a try.”

Bucky beamed at him. “If you don’t like it, you can take me to your favorite place later.”

Sam snorted and shook his head as he walked back to the front with Bucky. If the James Barnes display quietly celebrated…well, no one saw it happen.