Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I'm just saying. The longer you put it off, the weirder it gets," says Steven under his breath.

Nobody in the crowded bus looks twice at him. He's wearing a tiny little Stark headset, and for once it's actually on -- just running a playlist of this nice instrumental Egyptian music Layla recommended, instead of a phone call.

"It's never been a good time," protests Marc inside their head. "Last meeting, we were so zoned-out I could barely put two words together, let alone major personal revelations. The one before that, we were surrounded by Avengers, they didn't even get close enough to say hi. The one before that, we were a little preoccupied with Wilson nearly bleeding out..."

"You know you don't have to wait for a mission, right? And you have blanket clearance from Jake and me, up front. You can just call up your friends and say, 'eyyy, let's all grab a barbecue with some brewskis and watch some football on the tee-vee,' and then let things get personal during the commercials."

Internally, Marc does a theatrical cringe. "Good lord, never try an American accent on your own again."

That's when the playlist gets interrupted by a text-message ping. Not the default one, and not their Layla one, but the other "answer this person as soon as humanly possible" tone they've assigned to a handful of numbers.

Frenchie. Jen Walters. Aurora and/or Jeanne-Marie Beaubier. Sam and...speak of the devil, this one's from Bucky.

Barnes
Planning a mission, wanted to invite you. Is now a good time to call?

Steven types Yes, and, when it rings, nudges Marc to the front. He shifts the grocery bags on his arms. "Spector."

"Hi, Marc. It's Bucky," says Barnes helpfully. "Are you someplace you can talk?"

"Public bus," says Marc. "Heading home. Earbuds in, though. What's going on?"

"Bus. Okay. Are you sitting down?"

"...no free seats."

"I can call back."

"Barnes, I am twenty minutes out," says Marc sharply. "If you don't fill me in, I will spend every one of those minutes building up imaginary emergency missions in my head, okay? Ridiculous ones. I'm talking cartoonish levels of imaginary trauma. Just talk to me."

"Okay -- fair," says Barnes. "So there's this artifact the alt-right conspiracy circles have gotten their teeth in lately. The CIA isn't convinced it's magic or produced by ancient aliens, but they've been tracking..."

Steven does a little zoning-out of his own as the briefing goes on. The artifact isn't Egyptian. Or Wakandan, or New Asgardian, or any of the other bits of terrestrial history Steven takes a personal interest in (usually after meeting immortals who might have played a starring role in it). Besides: he's seen real ancient-alien tech, from Thor's hammer to Shang-Chi's rings! He's not well impressed by whatever random objects the internet has fixated on this week...

Marc stops breathing.

Steven falls into the body before it can escalate to a full-on panic attack.

He sways in place, vision fogging, nearly losing the milk. A couple of pudding cups make a leap from their bag, rolling off between the shoes of other passengers and disappearing forever. He stretches over a shoulder and a backpack to ring for a stop -- 

"...don't know exactly when. If they're going for maximum trauma, they'll attack in the middle of a service. If they really just want to steal it, and they're being at all smart about this, they'll come in under -- well -- cover of night..."

Steven pulls off the headset, shakes it for a second, then pops it back on. "Hi. Me now, sorry," he stammers. "Marc's having one of those moments where he can't really talk."

"Oh! Hi," says Bucky. Not mad, not overtly suspicious, but definitely concerned. "Didn't know you were with him."

"Grocery shopping," says Steven breezily. "I let him go it alone, he forgets half my vegan stuff, every time. Can you catch me up, please? What did you tell him?"

"...I mean, first I told him he should sit down."

"Fair. Hold on a mo'."

Steven wriggles toward the door. Not actually their stop. Oh well. It'll have to do.

It's a short walk home from here, and a nice day for walking on, but he finds the nearest bench and sits heavily on it. If the yogurt goes off in the sunshine, so be it.

"I'm sitting," he reports. "Marc is, reluctantly, sitting too. Catch me up?"

Bucky gives Steven an abridged version of the report he was half-listening to. A pretty sculpted terracotta mini-shrine that some spinoff of QAnon thinks has superpowers, but is probably just an extra-antique display case. Not archaeologically significant enough to be claimed by a museum, not exotic enough to be auctioned off for millions. It's just on display in the collection of...an ordinary synagogue.

Steven doesn't recognize the name. Or the address. He pokes Marc for an explanation, but all he gets is cold, numb fear.

"I don't know why that's significant," he says out loud. "Spell it out?"

"Marc hasn't told you?"

"Marc has this chronic condition where he doesn't tell people things," says Steven. Joking, but also not joking. "I have a guess. I don't want to be wrong."

"The rabbi there is Elias Spector."

That was Steven's guess, yeah.

"Listen, we have a great team of specialists on this...and also, John Walker," says Bucky. "Long story. Point is, me and Sam don't expect it to go bad because we don't have enough Moon Knights in the group, okay? We just figured we should offer him the choice to come. Or send a friend."

"Good! That was good figuring! Not the sort of thing we would've wanted to find out about after the fact," says Steven. He might be babbling. He's shaken, okay. "I think this is really more of a..."

...Screw it. Marc might not be ready to spill about the body-sharing situation, but Steven is so bloody tired of code names.

"Look -- my name's Steven, okay? With a V. And Dark Mode, his name's Jake," he says in a rush. "This is probably a mission that calls for putting Jake in the suit. That's my guess. Not a guarantee. We'll have to have a team meeting about it."

"Understood," says Bucky. "Good to know you, Steven."

"Same to you -- Bucky."

Feels weird to say it for the first time, but Bucky answers like they've been on first-name terms for years. "Marc knows he could call me that too, right?"

"Marc," says Steven archly, "has his very best friend, a man he's known for a decade and a half, men who have pulled each other out of enough life-or-death situations that they've lost count, listed in our phone as Duchamp. Don't know if I've ever in my life heard him say the name Jean-Paul out loud. He knows, but you're in for a long wait."

"Hang on, that's the guy he calls Frenchie, right?" protests Bucky. "That's a nickname. Bucky's a nickname. It's not like I invited him to call me James, or anything crazy like that."

Steven is pretty sure that doesn't add up. "Have you ever in your life been called James by anyone who wasn't a teacher, or your mum when she was mad at you?"

"Yes!"

A pause.

"...Steve, when he was mad at me."

It gets Steven laughing. Even with Marc's paralyzing indecision sitting like a lump of ice in his stomach. It's nice.

"So, listen -- this isn't a wizard operation or a personal favor, which means I can't offer bespoke portal services," continues Bucky. "But if you don't have your own way to get here, I can get up to two of you covered as 'special consultants'."

"Two? Oh, that's good. One Moon Knight plus Layla." Steven hesitates. "...Maybe. Her outfit doesn't have a mask. And I can't imagine we want Rabbi Spector getting a look at her in full Avatar mode..."

He puts a hand over the earpiece, covering the part with the microphone in it. Not actually trying to block the sound, just mimicking what normal people do.

"Marc, love? Have they ever met?"

It's simple enough that Marc can manage an answer. "He's seen her."

...That's a normal amount of time for a response, right? A whole other physically-present person would've nodded by now? Steven is suddenly worried he doesn't have enough out-loud conversations. "At the wedding?" he guesses.

"Wasn't invited to the wedding."

Ooh.

"Look, if we get one person to fight and the other just shows up as their emotional support, that's fine. I won't itemize it in the budget if you don't," says Bucky. "Just let me know what names to book the travel under, and someone will handle the flights, hotels, everything."

"This is the kind of operation that has budgets?" echoes Steven. "And travel agents? Sounds awfully...legitimate."

"In theory, management is completely hands-off about the actual operation. But we have management, yeah."

Steven makes a face. "Look, I'll just say it -- we can afford a couple last-minute plane tickets, a lot better than we can afford having the CIA looking over our completely legitimate travel documents."

"Ah," says Bucky. "I'd love to say you don't have to worry, but...this is Val we're talking about."

"When would we need to show up?" asks Steven, already with his travel app open. Gosh, they have so many bonus miles heaped up from the worldwide Fist-ing adventures, they might get this trip free anyway. "Flight's, uh...eight and a half hours. So if we board one, we'd be able to give you at least that much advance notice."

Bucky gives him a time, and with some quick finagling, Steven works out they have a good fourteen hours to flail about it before making any decisions. At least Layla's in London this week, so no extra logistics there: she can flail with them in person, then they'll leave or stay together.

"All right. We'll talk it over, and one of us will text you an update at...some point?" Steven pauses. "Marc's giving me a thumbs-up. We are committing to 'some point'."

"Thanks. To both of you," says Bucky. "Uh. Can I ask -- something personal? You don't have to answer."

It's Steven's turn to clam up.

What if Bucky just comes out and asks do you have a dissociative disorder? Save them a lot of trouble, wouldn't it?

He digs through the grocery bags for a soda -- clear up his dry throat, and a boost to their blood sugar right now can't hurt. "Sure," he says, cracking it open. "Go for it."

"The not-talking episodes. Do you know if those are just a trauma thing? Or has Marc checked on it being...anything else?"

Oh. He's hinting at their other non-typical brain issue. Steven doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

"Don't," thinks Marc, definitely not relieved. "We haven't even confirmed if that's a thing, we don't -- just leave it alone, okay?"

"It might be something else, we are checking into it, nothing's confirmed yet," says Steven stubbornly. (It's his brain too, all right? And he wants to talk about it. This is compromising.) "And he's cross at me for saying that much, really values his privacy over here, so if anything is confirmed, he probably won't tell you. But, speaking only for myself -- I do appreciate that you're asking because you care."

☽︎

Three and a half hours later, in the middle of shield training with Sam (literal shield training, not whatever Yelena means when she raises her eyebrows and says "ah yes, you are shield training"), Bucky gets a text.

Marc
Flights booked, J will meet you on site, L will be on call nearby

After we get through this, you want to grab lunch?

S says to clarify I mean with everyone

You bring Sam, I bring the whole polycule

Bucky
Sounds great! 👍👍👍👍👍

Sam picks up his own phone, skims the group chat...rolls his eyes theatrically in Bucky's direction, and starts typing.

Sam
omg why did we teach him about emojis

Bucky
You say "we" like it wasn't all your nephews, curious 🤔

Marc
Wait hang on are you literally Uncle Sam??

Hi this is Steven I stole Marc's phone

Bucky
Hi Steven! 👍👍👍yes he is 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

☽︎

They do one final pre-mission debrief in the back of a nondescript van, a short walk from the synagogue building: Sam, Bucky, a few of Sam's people, and a few of Val's people.

(It was Val's op in the first place, and she's graciously allowing Bucky to run it, as long as the team includes her hand-picked guys. So they have to work with John Walker, but at least Sam got to bring Torres.)

A video feed from Redwing surveys the area. Sam expects them to have advance warning when Dark Mode Moon Knight -- whose wallet name is apparently Jake -- shows up.

He didn't expect it to be in the form of Jake dropping out of the sky from above Redwing's cruising altitude, matching pace with the little drone, and waving at the camera.

"What's the moon guy doing here?" asks Walker, as Sam cues Redwing to project a wireframe hologram of their location, and Jake soars down toward them.

(The cape is perfectly shaped. Bright white, too, even when it's late in the evening and too cloudy to be reflecting real moonlight. Strange must be so mad that somebody's finally beating him at his cape game.)

"He's on a divine mission to help us," says Sam, in the same moment as Bucky says, "Mysterious moon things."

Walker's eye twitches. "If it's classified, you can just say so."

"Uh," says an analyst on loan from SWORD -- who might literally be Egyptian, though Sam is drawing a blank on her name, he keeps thinking of her as Middle Eastern Darcy Lewis. "Isn't that literally what the Moon Knights do? Show up on Avengers-level missions with no warning, carry out mysterious divine orders that usually help, then leave?"

"Yeah, basically," says Bucky. To Walker, he adds, "You can let Val know she's not getting any of them. A cranky moon god has dibs."

"I'm not reporting everything that happens here to Val -- to Director de Fontaine," complains Walker, when the bickering gets cut short by a knock on the door.

They let Dark Mode in, and do a quick round of introductions. He nods seriously for most of them, but when it gets to Walker's turn, he tilts his head at Sam and Bucky and says, "What's Dishonorable Discharge doin' here?"

Walker grits his teeth. "Other Than Honorable, thank you."

"Same difference."

"It is absolutely not--"

"It means 'dishonorable, but the brass can't handle the PR nightmare of actually admittin' it'."

"If you had any respect for the US military--"

"I was in the US military," says Jake breezily, "so no, I don't."

Everyone does a double-take.

"What, didn't figure that out yet?" asks Jake, to Sam and Bucky again. "That's right, Couples' Therapy, semper fuckin' fi. Better go back through all your databases, see if you can find me this time."

Sam allows himself one (1) heavy sigh before stepping in. "All right, everybody take it down a notch. Walker, Moon Knight's clearly got his own issues with the military -- you're not gonna fix them with one argument, so don't rise to it. Moon Knight, Walker is a guy who's done some bad things in his life and is working on a redemption arc -- so unless Khonshu gave you a divine mandate to kick him out, can you trust our call in giving him the chance?"

"Please say Khonshu gave you a divine mandate," adds Bucky. "Seriously. Please."

Sam steps on Bucky's foot. "He's kidding."

Dark Mode gives them a flat glare. Even more so than with how much his mask is always a flat glare. "You trust him?"

"Far as Buck can throw him," says Sam.

"Ohh!" realizes the SWORD analyst under her breath. "Because that's actually pretty far."

"This is your op, Captain," says Walker stiffly. "You want me to put up with this guy, I will. You want me out, I'm out. You make the calls -- I'm just following orders."

Dark Mode winces. "He say things like that a lot?"

Bucky sighs. "You learn to tune him out."

☽︎

The synagogue is an unassuming two-story building, overshadowed by the red-brick apartment blocks on either side. Big leafy trees line the street, which is terrible for lines-of-sight, though it's probably great for the environment. And the property values.

Jake watches from a menacing crouch on the highest flat roof. It's not that high. He wishes he had a skyscraper.

"You remember any of this?" he murmurs. (After triple-checking that his mic is off, obviously.)

"Sort of," thinks Steven. Precious, attentive Steven, a steadying presence at the back of Jake's consciousness, who didn't even scold him for picking a fight with Knockoff Captain America back there. "I saw a street like this in the Duat -- Marc's memory of the house. Felt a lot more closed-off, though. Buildings all packed together. Not so many little side streets and back alleys."

Jake remembers side streets. Gaps between buildings. Spaces under fences, even. His mental map of the synagogue is like that too, full of hidden stairwells and emergency exits and the storage closet with a busted lock. "Sounds like that was, whatsit. A feelings metaphor."

"Could be."

To Jake's relief, Steven doesn't make any reference to how they could fly over in person and double-check.

"I remember this building, I think. Those big floor-to-ceiling windows in front, I remember being on the other side of them. And...some of the rooms inside, I think, with books and things? No special religious feelings about it, though. Maybe I'm mixing it up with the library."

"No surprise you remember the library," says Jake dryly. "I don't even know what kind of windows that place had. Just know it's one block past the convenience store that didn't look at fake IDs too hard."

"Ooh, Jake. Did we drink?"

"Nah. Well, can't speak for Marc, maybe he did. I smoked."

In their head, Steven sighs. "Thank goodness for magic healing."

"We could swing by the library." Jake gestures down the block. "It's a short bike ride thataway -- gotta be an even shorter flight. Could slice a lock off a window, even. Then you can tell me if they still keep the good books in the same spots."

"...Are you quipping, or do you really want to?"

(Yes. No. Jake doesn't know.)

"Jake, precioso...I love you so much," thinks Steven softly. "I love that you offered to come here so Marc wouldn't have to. And if you need to peace the fuck out of here and go hide in the stacks for a while, I will love you in the stacks."

A subtle mental shift, and it's like he's taking a knee in front of Jake, gathering Jake's face in both hands.

"Marc will understand. Marc's cool Avenger friends will understand -- especially after we come clean about the headmates thing. Layla will more than understand! Gosh, Layla would love to help us break into a library."

Jake takes a ragged breath. "I..."

This is when their comm lights up (Jake only turned the mic off, the speaker part is still on), and Walker's voice says, "Two unknowns approaching from the west. I'm going in."

☽︎

Fortunately for everyone involved, Walker goes for restraint rather than smashing, so he hasn't done too much damage by the time Bucky snaps, "Let him up!"

"We don't know who this is, he was sneaking into--"

"Oh my god, he doesn't have to sneak, he's the rabbi!"

Walker lets the poor guy go. His companion darts in to help him up, while Bucky gets check-ins from the other team members. (Their SWORD analyst confirms there's no sketchy magic readings so far. Sam and Torres agree nothing looks off from the air. Jake doesn't comment, but Bucky can see him on a roof across the street, standing guard.)

"Sorry about the confusion," says Bucky at last, subtly edging his way between Walker and the two locals. "Rabbi Spector, right?"

"Wow, you've done your homework," says Elias Spector, accepting a handshake. He seems purely, innocently flattered. "It's an honor to meet you, Sergeant Barnes."

Up close, Bucky can see the resemblance. The rabbi has Marc's hair (just more grey, and less severely slicked-down), Marc's skin tone, Marc's chin. His overall look is a lot softer -- jawline rounder and not set with tension, outfit built around big square glasses and a cardigan. Bearing's a little anxious...but no more than you'd expect after a run-in with Walker.

Whatever caused the family rift between him and Marc, it's probably not that he's some kind of secret supervillain mastermind.

"And your friend is...?"

Rabbi Spector steps away to put a hand on the other man's back. "Rubén Davila is one of my best students. I absolutely vouch for him."

Rubén is much younger than the rabbi, even a bit younger than Marc, with a sharp chin and sharp cheekbones and narrowed eyes behind his sharp little glasses. (Which, again: totally a fair response to having your greying teacher get tackled by an overenthusiastic supersoldier with a chip on his super-shoulder.) "This isn't the first time we've had to deal with...threats. Why do we only rate Avengers-level protection now?"

What a perfectly reasonable question that is kicking Bucky directly in the Jewish-guilt shins.

"Picked up chatter that said there might be something metahuman involved in this one," says Walker, actually semi-helpful. "I understand you want to help, but you should consider going home. It would be safer."

Rubén crosses his arms. "Our homes don't have bulletproof windows, so, it sounds like the only thing we'd be safer from is you."

Walker does a confused double-take, looking from Rubén to the unassuming stone building. "This place has bulletproof windows?"

"Among other security measures," says Rabbi Spector mildly. "Please, ah...Captain...?"

"Agent," says Bucky, keeping it neutral. (Walker has been given enough grief about his lost rank for tonight. Needling him about it any harder isn't going to help anyone.)

"Of course. Agent. We would rather be here. If it's all the same to you."

There's a little more back-and-forth, but ultimately they end up escorting Spector and his student inside, closing the door behind them and giving it a firm shake to make sure it locked.

"We are sure that guy was the rabbi?" asks Walker under his breath, as he and Bucky return to the cover of their stakeout positions. "I mean...he didn't look Jewish."

A chorus of groans on their headsets, punctuated with a full "oh, come on" from the SWORD analyst.

☽︎

A full quarter hour goes by without any new activity at all.

"You don't think Dad blew the stakeout for the rest of us, do you?" frets Steven.

Under the mask, Jake makes a face. "Who?"

Internally, Steven winces. "...Marc's dad."

He's been practicing the family talk, in therapy, and a little bit with Layla. The phrase "Marc's mum" rolls right off the tongue -- she was so obviously different from the mum Steven remembers. "Marc's dad" is usually the same way. But.

"From a hundred feet off, in shadow, only hearing him secondhand on Bucky's microphone, he does sound like my dad. That's all," he thinks at Jake. "I'm not getting my hopes up. I won't expect anything from him. Promise."

"You better not," hisses Jake. "We're a goddamn superhero, we don't need or want anything from bueno-para-nada in there--"

"Folks, we're starting to pick up magic readings," reports the SWORD analyst on the comms. "Supposed to call them something else, cosmic energy blah blah blah, you get it, it's magic. Seeing anything sketchy out there?"

"Building's still dark," says Bucky.

"Nothing obvious on Redwing's visuals," agrees Sam. "Where should we be looking?"

"Uh...readings are coming in from three directions," says the guy in the van with her (one of Sam's Air Force buddies, Joaquín something). "We have other drones triangulating now."

"...but I have a feeling I know what we're looking at," adds the analyst, crisp and urgent. "These are thanergetic spikes consistent with necromantic activity. Repeat, necromantic activity."

Ohhh no. It is officially Steven's turn to be paralyzingly afraid.

"What?" thinks Jake, not familiar with the word. "Steven, talk to me. What the hell is she saying?"

"Plain English for the jarheads, please?" prompts Walker on the comm, and they can't even be mad at him about it.

"It means, look alive, people," translates Sam. "We've got zombies."

Chapter Text

Questions, intel, and orders are flying back and forth on the comm. Someone's trying to talk to Jake -- he catches the words Moon Knight in there -- but he can't focus enough to hear why.

"Callin' backup, dame un momento," he snaps into the mic, before switching it off, dropping it onto the flat rooftop beside him for good measure, and hissing, "Steven! How do I pray?"

He's already crouching. Easy enough to drop to his knees. That's a good start, right?

"How should I know?" panics Steven. "I don't remember any of the religion stuff! I'll recognize a phrase when you or Marc say them, but I--"

"To Khonshu, idiota! How do I pray to Khonshu?"

...and you know what, thank genetics or evolution or whatever the hell else that they're autistic, because Steven immediately starts spinning out a list of Khonshu's fancy titles.

Jake repeats them. Completely earnest, no sarcasm, no sass. Even with the epithets and invocations that make Khonshu's ego sound about as big as the night sky he's supposed to be lord of...

"Peace, my Avatar," intones Khonshu. "You must be quite distressed, to summon me so politely."

He's wearing the fancier version of his outfit. Not the weathered mummy-wrappings and shredded robes, but a long tunic of silky white fabric, with a neckpiece and other gold accents that look like they just got polished. Prayers must be good for his health.

Jake's distressed, all right. He doesn't even have a snappy comeback. "The team thinks someone's raisin' zombies."

The old god raises his beak, like a dog scenting the air. "Hm. So they are."

"From cemeteries around here."

"Yes. I cannot tell the exact location of the summoner, but the range of their effect is...limited."

Well, that doesn't help, Jake is worried about the nearest one. "Khonshu -- please, you've gotta tell me -- is Marc's mom--?"

He can feel Steven buzzing with questions, and tries to shove some answers at him. The grandparents didn't live in the city, they aren't buried here. The little brother has been in the ground for decades, he's more of a skeleton than Khonshu by now, and Jake barely knows what he looks like. Only ever saw him in pictures.

But Wendy's grave is six blocks from the synagogue, and Jake would know Wendy anywhere.

"If she were among them," says Khonshu thoughtfully, "would that be better, or worse?"

Jake slams his fist into the concrete rooftop, hard enough to bruise. "Worse!"

She's supposed to be gone. They're supposed to be safe. He wasn't supposed to ever have to see her again.

If she's here -- even if it's not really her, just some sick wizard's spell puppeting her body around -- Jake is going to stay conscious just long enough to make sure Steven gets out of here (over Layla's shoulders like a sack of potatoes if necessary), and then he's going to dissociate into next week.

"...I did not order you to come here."

"I know!" yells Jake. "This was our dumb idea, I get it -- Khonshu, Embracer, Pathfinder, Defender, please--"

A large, heavy hand rests on their head. Somehow it comes with a full-body sense of pressure -- maybe that's the embracer aspect finally kicking in -- that takes the edge off, just a little.

"Hush, Jake Lockley," intones Khonshu. "She is not here. She will not trouble you again. I will confirm it."

☽︎

"Cap, you got a flyer approaching, from the west, coming in fast," says Torres in Sam's ear. "Can't get an ID."

"It's okay, she's friendly," cuts in -- wait, Marc? "Works for an underworld goddess, she'll have zombie ideas."

"Wait, is this the Scarlet Scarab?" asks the SWORD analyst. "Our intel says she works for a goddess of motherhood. Can't we get Anubis or Osiris?"

"Outta luck, chica," snaps -- right, that's Jake. Sounds eerily like Marc when he's not being snarky, is all. "Perrito got himself locked in a rock a few centuries back, and Momito hasn't got a new Avatar since his last one got garrotted by a psycho with a giantess kink. Hippo's the best we got! Deal."

Sure enough, as Sam circles over the largest of the nearby cemeteries, he spots the golden glint of Layla's wings. "Got eyes on the Scarab," he reports, sending Redwing in her direction. "I'll get her a mic, loop her in."

"You brought an extra headset?" asks Jake, all suspicion.

"I always bring extras. Never know who's gonna show up to these things. ...Also, got eyes on bodies coming out of the dirt."

Bucky curses in (what Sam thinks is) Russian. "How many?"

Two, four, six..."At least a dozen, new one every couple seconds."

"Fast zombies, or normal zombies?" asks Walker.

"Normal. So far." Which doesn't mean they can't slow-and-steady their way to a win. "Torres, send that heads-up to local authorities, get the public some Avengers-emergency stay-inside alerts. Buck, any way we can cut this off at the source, or do I just have to start shield-bashing?"

"Is it a Jewish cemetery, or is that one of the other ones?"

Sam sees a bunch of crosses, but also, he's not sure how that helps. "Why?"

"We have a whole thing about not damaging dead bodies!"

"Not the time for hangups, manco!" cuts in Jake. "Pikuach fuckin' nefesh, capisce?"

(Sam has enough Spanish-for-veterans to recognize the snarky nickname for "one-armed", but has no idea about the rest. If it's even Spanish?)

"Jewish cemetery is the one to the west of the synagogue," adds the SWORD analyst.

"Great," says Bucky. "I'll take that one. Walker, head east. Sam, bash away. Moon Knight, stay on the synagogue, in case this is all a big distraction--"

This is when Layla swoops in. One of her elaborate ceremonial swords is already out...

Instead of slicing anything, the blade glows gold. She swipes it at a shambling corpse in a dirt-caked black suit, and sends a blast of what looks like pure water sluicing over him.

He drops.

"Scarab's doing a thing," reports Sam. He holds up the extra headset, and she matches pace with him to grab it. "Care to share with the class?"

"I can purify the zombies, which breaks the hold of whoever's raising them," says Layla briskly. "But they're being raised en masse, and this is a one-at-a-time kind of fix."

"Do we know if their souls are being disturbed?" asks Bucky.

Layla lands on top of a mausoleum -- which makes a heck of an image, two colorless marble angels flanking her vivid gold-and-scarlet glory -- and does another purifying splash. "Taweret says no. Their bodies are being animated independently. Like -- golems, if anything."

Sam lands next to her and eyeballs a trajectory, then throws the shield. It knocks over two zombies, goes wild, and embeds itself in a tree trunk. "How much like them? Like, maybe our necromancer is Jewish, that much?"

"Maybe the neo-Nazis stole some kind of golem artifact, and they're using it for zombies?" offers Walker, over the thumps of zombie-fighting on the other end of the line. "Or the wizard is a Jewish person they kidnapped, and are forcing to work for them?"

"I mean," says Bucky. "It's not like that wouldn't be on-brand."

☽︎

There's a lot of yelling and coordinating going on in Jake's earpiece, but it goes hazy whenever Steven tries to focus on the details.

Walker isn't responding, Sam's flying over to back him up? No, Walker's fine, but Bucky's getting overrun? Layla's finishing up in the bigger cemetery, or she's going to help Bucky, or she's going somewhere else but she needs directions when she didn't need directions to the Jewish cemetery because of course she looked that up ahead of time because that's where--

Steven wants to go help. But he doesn't know where to start. And he doesn't think Jake would agree to leave their post anyway...

"Triangulated the magic signature," reports the SWORD analyst in their ear. "It's within fifty feet of the synagogue, maybe to the--"

A dark van pulls up to the curb and parks. Four guys jump out. All wearing dark clothes, and bandanas, and a deeply unnecessary amount of firearms.

"Eyes on four hostiles!" reports Jake, already in the air (and okay, good job he wasn't taking strategy tips from Steven after all). "Zombies were a distraction, guessing one of these is our evil wizard, I'm going in!"

"Stand by, I'm on my way," says Bucky in their ear--

He's drowned out by the pop-pop-pop of close-range gunfire--

Jake doesn't even try to dodge! But not a single shot hits! These bozos must've spent all their money on ammo, and none of it on learning to aim--

A sweep of his leg, one guy gets a boot to the skull, the next one gets clipped while he's veering back--

Deafening gunfire, and this time they hit--

.

.

.

.

"He's moving." A voice from a long way off. "Hell of a lot of blood, but--"

Jake is sitting up, or trying to. His chest and stomach are a mass of stabbing pains. The pavement around him is tacky with fluids, dotted with bits of something squishy.

"They went. In." He wheezes on a laugh. "Guess what they said."

"What?" asks Bucky -- and Steven is listening too, because if this fight had any sections that were funny, he missed them.

Jake's spasming with laughter, choking on it, actively re-injuring the body almost as fast as the suit can heal it -- but he can't hold it in. "Told me to -- go back where I came from."

Steven desperately wants to tap out...but he's getting buffeted with waves of overflow fury and pain, not the physical pain either, and he can't leave Jake to shoulder that alone, he can't. 

"Fits the profile," mutters Bucky. "Sam, his comm looks like a lost cause, drop him a spare when you get here. I'll go in after the hostiles. Moon Knight, stay down."

"Nah. 'Mfine! I'm--"

Jake dry-heaves a couple times, then spits up a couple of bullets, along with a mouthful of blood. (The cowl over his face splits just enough to let it all out, then seals up again.)

"Fine. See? Doesn't matter! Already -- over it. Over all of it."

"Uh-huh. Stay down anyway."

"Jake, we're not good for this," agrees Steven in their head. "Jake, Jake, please..."

Jake shoves him away. "Don't take orders from you."

Bucky does something to his own earpiece, then says, "What happens if I call Layla and tell her you're not fine?"

"You play dirty, manco," hisses Jake. (Pretty rich insult to be throwing around, when one of his shoulders is dislocated and he hasn't gotten around to popping it back in.) "This why Rogers didn't give you the shield?"

Bucky snorts. "Seriously? If anything, Sam's too good for it. Steve Rogers was the dirtiest little cheater this side of the Mississippi."

.

.

.

.

--they're still outside, how long has it been?

And when did they start fighting zombies?

A resounding CLANGCLANGCLANG as the shield pinballs around, ricocheting off two buildings and denting a parked car, knocking flat a half-dozen shambling bodies before bouncing back to Sam overhead.

"Stay on them!" he yells. To Jake? Unclear. "Best way to help is not letting another wave of them catch up with us!"

Probably not to Jake.

Not that Jake's listening -- he's not even fighting like a Moon Knight anymore, no crescent darts or super-strength or strategic flying -- he's just knockdown brawling like they're in a pre-Khonshu street fight--

It's working okay, though? As far as Steven can tell?

He gets smacked in the face with a wave of helpless anger, and tries to buoy Jake with a counter-wave of you're strong you're good you're not alone you've got this--

There's another presence with them--

(--not Marc, thank whatever gods are listening--)

It's the calm, simple, nearly emotionless headmate that's just Moon Knight with nobody inside, close to the surface, on standby, so yeah that's probably a great sign--

.

.

.

.

"What do you mean, they didn't break in?"

Sam at the synagogue door. A collage of blurry, groaning figures on the ground around them. A stiff, heavy, twitching weight over Jake's shoulders...

"But it's locked now -- right, no, of course, you closed it to keep the zombies out."

...They are piling dead bodies in a dumpster. Okay. Cool. The bloody things never stay down long before they start moving again, got to seal them up somewhere, and better a dumpster than some poor local's car! This is fine! This is fine...

"Can you sneak up without them clocking you? Or am I busting the door down?"

...there's a numerical keypad on the main door, not just a physical lock. Steven can't even see it -- Jake is all the way around the corner of the building now -- but his phantom fingers twitch with the muscle memory of entering a code...

"Buck, please, do not take on these guys alone. Not even if they're wearing shirts with cartoons on them."

"Jake," thinks Steven. Everything feels foggy and slow. "Can we let them in?"

"Let Cap break it."

"Code might've changed, but if there's a chance it hasn't -- you could say Marc told you the --"

Inside their head, Jake practically snarls. "Let. Him. Break it."

Something goes smash --

.

.

.

.

More bloody zombies --

More gunfire --

Steven can't make any sense of the sound this time, until Jake takes to the air and soars away from the synagogue -- oh, this is some nutter in a nearby flat leaning out his window to fire at the street, because apparently everyone in this stupid awful country has spare firearms coming out their stupid awful ears --

Any of the dead bodies that get hit, they don't give a damn, because why would they? A couple windows get hit, and immediately shatter. A car alarm starts screeching --

-- and then Jake is on top of the guy, forcing his arms down so hard it nearly drags the rest of him out the window. He's yelling something, the first part drowned out by the racket of the gun emptying itself into the dirt of the lawn: "--to open fire in a residential fucking area you absolute piece of--"

-- then it breaks into Spanish that Steven can't understand, but he pretty well gets the gist --

.

.

.

.

...they're inside?

In a hallway?

Not just that, in the second blandest hallway Steven's ever seen. (Topped only by the blank white hospital halls from when he was dead.) Off-white ceilings with recessed lights, beige tiled floors marred with trails of something that desperately needs to be mopped, plain brick walls with the occasional plain wood door.

They're pressed against one of the walls. Holding so still, so perfectly frozen, that for a moment Steven is convinced their Knight has stepped in. But when he tries to take the body, it's still Jake holding him back.

It's eerily silent. They never did get that replacement for their shot-to-pieces comm. No voices in their ear.

An ominous groan from around the corner.

"Jake," presses Steven. "Jake, love, what are we waiting for?"

Jake says nothing. Under the mask, Steven can feel their face spreading in a feral grin.

Bits of memory are flaking back to Steven again -- he can't picture what's behind any of these doors, but somehow he knows what they are. This one's a stairwell. That one, a loo. Round the corner, a storage closet.

...and from farther down in that direction, a muffled "¡Atrás! ¡No se acerquen!"

"Jake, no."

"Let him know what it's like." Their voice is hoarse from all the shouting, barely louder than the zombie groans.

"No. No. Absolutely not."

"Let him know how it feels," hisses Jake, "when you realize someone is coming to hurt you, and nobody is coming to fucking help you."

"You don't want to help him? Fair!" yells Steven in their head. "Completely fair! Give me the body, and I will. This isn't going to make anything better!"

"You sure? I'm feelin' better already."

"Oh, I'm sure it'll be really bloody satisfying in the moment!" wails Steven. "Bit of revenge, bit of karmic justice, it'll be amazing for a minute. Maybe an hour. Maybe all night! But you know what happens next, Jake! We'll wake up tomorrow and you won't be any happier than you are now, and I won't be any happier than I am now, and we'll be spending the next year trying to keep Marc from putting a crescent dart through our neck!"

Their eyes ache. Their face is wet.

"It's not worth it. Precioso, mi vida, listen to me, I swear to you, it is Not. Bloody. Worth it!"

-- and then Steven has the body, thank fuck.

He bolts down the hall so fast, he might as well have finally learned to fly.

Chapter Text

That's...a zombie.

Right out of a George Romero movie. Black dress, waxy skin, sunken features. Staggering into his office.

He's holding the only weapon-adjacent thing he could reach (a ceramic mug, not even very heavy now that he's gotten prone to dropping things)...he can't imagine throwing it very far with his hands restrained...and even if he knocked out this one, it sounds like it brought friends.

(Not a face he recognizes -- but if there are lots of others, he's been holding services in this district for twenty years, he doesn't like his odds...)

"S-stay back!" he orders. To no effect. He tries again in Spanish; that doesn't work any better.

Is this how he's going to go? Zip-tied to the radiator in his own office, defending himself with a mug captioned How Does Moses Make Coffee?

Dammit, he should've taken one more shot at reaching out to --

There's a flash of white in the hallway, and the thump of a body getting tackled.

A second zombie is leaning through the door. Seems like there's only three, because the man in white -- Moon Knight? Sergeant Barnes mentioned they had one of those -- gets to that one next. Drags it into the hall, makes something go snap, then drop-kicks it aside and scrambles in to get the one now looming over Elias.

The others aren't actually incapacitated -- there's a moment when it looks like they've all regrouped, and Moon Knight is surrounded -- but he flails at them hard enough to get them out of the way, ducks back into the office, and slams the door shut.

One precariously-placed book topples slowly off a shelf and lands with a flop on the carpet.

The noise gives Moon Knight a start...then he's looking slowly around the whole office. The walls lined with shelves of books and binders; the desk heaped with papers and supplies. The mix of old and new tech (his computer has one of those Stark Industries holo-displays for extra screen space, but they still haven't upgraded the office from corded phones). The embarrassing amount of colorful post-its, with notes that Elias is going to write down somewhere more permanent any day now.

Is he looking for something specific? Is he just judging? The blank white mask makes it hard to tell. Either way, Elias tries to apologize for the mess...

...still in Spanish, which Moon Knight interrupts: "No habla español, Rabino."

With the perfect accent of a native Spanish speaker.

So. That's odd. But Elias switches to English without arguing. "It's not usually this much of a mess," he says. "Rubén tore it apart. I -- I don't really know what he was looking for. The artifact everyone seemed so excited about is displayed downstairs, it was never in here."

"Rubén?" echoes Moon Knight, now sounding British. (And...familiar? He can't be from one of the BBC dramas Elias watches sometimes, can he?) "Fellow who was with you earlier? The one you 'absolutely vouched for'?"

"Yes." Elias rattles the zip-tie against the radiator pipe. "You see how well that turned out."

It seems to register to Moon Knight for the first time that Elias isn't just sitting on the carpet for his health. "Bloody hell, he must've let them in," he mutters to himself -- then adds, "What are the chances you had information in here about raising and controlling corpse golems?"

Elias opens and closes his mouth several times in a row. "I -- not that I know of?"

"But...?"

"But...some of these texts are obscure, and not well understood...some of them he's read more closely, and more recently, than I have..." Elias grimaces. "And he always was a gifted student."

(He keeps trying to raise good boys. How does it keep going wrong?)

"Right. Of course." Moon Knight takes a deep breath. "Just -- just give me a second, yeah?"

Elias does.

The outfit...the simple modern suit, swap the mask for a kippah and it would be perfectly respectable at shul, only supernatural touch is how eerily pristine the white fabric is after a night's worth of wrestling with dead bodies...ripples and changes, to something caped and armored and old.

Old as a wind-blasted tomb in the desert. Old as a salt-dried scroll in a cliffside cave.

Were his eyes glowing like that before?

There's a moment when he seems...hesitant. Frowning down at Elias (the mouth is covered, but you can tell from the eyes), almost confused about why they're here, or what to do with him.

Slowly, one gloved hand draws a moon-shaped blade from a panel in his chestpiece.

The business suit ripples back into place. Moon Knight twitches a couple times, shaking off whatever-that-was, then steps around the desk and crouches in front of Elias. "Hands," he says, so briskly that Elias automatically holds them out palms-up, the way the boys used to so he could check that they'd washed up before dinner.

His grip on the handle of the mug wavers. Moon Knight takes it away, sets it on the desktop, then uses the golden blade to slice the stiff plastic off Elias' wrists.

"I'll go out quick. Seems the undead don't understand door handles, so I'll shut it before any of them get in, then you'll be safe in here," he says, stepping back. "Please don't try to leave. I'll have someone come fetch you once we've sorted this all out."

"Thank you." Elias gets up -- slowly, leaning heavily on the radiator. He hasn't even been sitting in one place that long, but he's stiff in joints he doesn't remember having. At least it's still warm enough outside that the heat didn't come on. "I wouldn't go out and get in your way, especially not if -- if there are more of -- I'll stay right here."

The zombies are shuffling aimlessly in the hall when Moon Knight opens the door. They turn toward the light and the movement.

The office door is closed before any of them can step toward it.

Is that the end of it...?

Moon Knight's voice again, muffled through the wood: "She's not here."

Elias blinks. "W-who?"

"The person you're afraid to see as a zombie," says the other man, soft and urgent, foreign and strangely familiar. "She's not here."

"What? How--? How do you know?"

"Because I asked about it with my god, and he bloody well answered."

Elias goes to the door.

He rests his hand on the wood.

He promised he wouldn't open it -- but...

He calls a name. One he hasn't said out loud in...too long.

Either the man outside is pretending not to hear it, or he's already gone.

Chapter Text

"Is the light more of a glimmer, or more of a shimmer?"

"Uh -- no idea," says Bucky, circling around the clay model. "What's the difference?"

The model shrine is about the size of the box his toaster came in, open on one side to hold a couple of braided candles, and has all the fine craftsmanship of a third-grade art project. (Which is probably an unkind thing to think about a sculpture that predates all modern industry.) The candles are flickering, but that doesn't apply to the eerie blue luminescence that surrounds the whole object.

"Ah...sorry, Taweret's voice is Arabic for me, I'm not sure how to explain it in English," says Layla in his earpiece.

"What did she say in Arabic?" asks their SWORD analyst -- the one Sam keeps calling Middle Eastern Darcy Lewis. Bucky's not sure if the Arabic she speaks is the same version as Layla's; he already knows it's not the same as the one HYDRA programmed into him. But they launch into a fast-paced conversation, so it must be close enough.

"You will never understand!" cackles Rubén Davila -- now wearing a floor-length robe that is full-on Klan-shaped but dyed a garish red, and embracing the mad ranting of a full-blown supervillain phase. "The mystic wisdom of angel and seraph is not for the likes of--"

Sam looks up from unloading another rifle. "Man, get over yourself."

They're all in the synagogue basement -- a big all-purpose space with long folding tables stacked against one wall, and a small kitchen off to the side. It looks like it hasn't been renovated since before Steve went in the ice....but is probably going to need a makeover now that it's been through a full-on shootout.

The whitewashed mortar walls are pockmarked with bullet holes. Half the cheap metal-framed chairs are dented or dinged, at least one nearly sliced in half by the shield. A couple of the overhead fluorescents are shattered, occasionally dropping sparks onto the linoleum tiles below.

All four intruders, plus Rubén, are restrained -- they brought their own zip-ties, which made it surprisingly convenient, once Sam and Bucky got through their badly-aimed guns. A couple of them are leaking various fluids too.

Credit where it's due: at least Rubén has more guts than the rest of his little friends. He's the only one still yelling. Still loudly, angrily convinced that he's going to turn this around.

He's yelling at Sam now, something about scourging the sinful and cleansing the ignorant and blah blah blah. Layla's trying to give them an update, and Bucky isn't getting a word. "Sorry, say again, I can't hear you over Party City Żagiew--"

The kitchen door swings open.

"Good news, Scarab," reports Bucky into the mic. "We've got Moon Knight."

Jake walks in. No looming, no cape-swooshing, none of the usual Moon Knight dramatics, just a normal walk.

One of the zip-tied alt-righters -- the one who, under his ominous black jacket, is wearing a Pepe T-shirt -- shrieks anyway. "You're dead! We shot you! We shot you so much!"

"Yeah, you did," says Jake hoarsely. He's done something to reset the suit; last time Bucky saw it he was covered in bloodstains, now they're all clean. "Sometimes you even hit me. Is that a cartoon?"

Pepe Shirt doesn't answer, so Sam fills in. "Sure is."

Jake turns to the next guy. The one still sitting in an acrid-smelling puddle. "Did he...?"

"Sure did."

"Seriously? Por dios, this absolute fuckin' clown-shoes amateur hour!" cackles Jake. "Thought you could just roll into an op with more ammo than brain cells? This the best the master race has to offer, a bunch of wannabe militia cosplayers? Fuck, I've probably killed more brown people in an afternoon than you bunch of pants-pissing posers have in your whole lives!"

...right, US military.

The third alt-righter is unconscious, but the fourth one croaks, "When the real Captain America comes back--"

Jake cuts off the restrained prisoner with a roundhouse kick to the face.

"I'm only giving you one of those -- so, good choice," says Bucky. He steps aside and gestures to Rubén's little setup. "Listen, the Scarab says this thing is our zombie generator -- you know how to disable it? Preferably without breaking it?"

The clay model shrine is a genuine ancient relic, bubbled in a supernatural shimmer and/or glimmer. Poor thing has been plopped on a cheap card table with a bunch of modern junk. A box of spare candles. A handful of ballpoint pens. A three-ring binder, open to one of several pages flagged with post-it notes.

"Maybe." Jake comes over to join him. "Why without breaking it? Somethin' we need it for?"

"Arrogant philistines!" yells Rubén. "You will never snuff out the mystic spark divine!"

"Just principle," admits Bucky. "Our stuff gets broken enough as-is."

"I got it," reports Layla, in English again. "Give him a comm, I can walk him through it."

Sam produces another spare comm. Jake doesn't fully put it on, just holds it against his face, then follows directions to rest his other gloved hand on the shield of blue light. It crackles under his touch like something electrified.

Layla recites a sort of chant, and Jake repeats after her like he's fluent, though Bucky can't pick out a single word. Not English, not Spanish or Hebrew, and if it's more Arabic, there's no overlap at all with the kind he sort-of knows.

Probably something he wouldn't recognize. It's not like HYDRA stocked their pet assassin's brain with ancient Egyptian.

"Zombies are losing steam out here," reports Walker on the comm. "Whatever you're doing, keep it up."

☽︎

The Department of Damage Control has a name that sounds like an ominously Orwellian euphemism...but they have a small army of workers who aren't squeamish about re-burying bodies, and they brought their own hazmat suits. Sam decides to worry about their motives some other night.

Across the street from the synagogue, Jake watches.

Not on a rooftop anymore, just standing on the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb, leaning against a tree. All his manic fury from the zombie-fighting sequence has drained away.

Best-case scenario, that's because he's pulled himself together and recovered a little.

Sam isn't putting money on the best-case scenario.

There's an ambulance too. First, to patch up the bad guys and make sure they're healthy enough to go to jail. Second, to check on Rabbi Spector. Bucky leads him out of the building once they've cleared out all the bodies, and keeps an eye on him while the medics make sure he's healthy enough to go home.

The rabbi sits on the tailgate of the ambulance. Shock blanket over his shoulders. Blood-pressure cuff around one arm.

He looks about ten years older than he did at the start of the evening. Finding out your best student was going full alt-right Qultist necromancer behind your back will do that, huh.

Sam doesn't hear what the medic says as she reads the gauge and undoes the cuff, but it sounds encouraging. She steps aside to put it away...and the rabbi sits up straighter, attention suddenly fixed on the caped-and-armored figure across the street.

Jake doesn't move.

Voice raised, Rabbi Spector calls:

"...Steven?"

The suit -- flips. From Dark Mode over to Reform.

Not weird by itself. Happens with both Marc and Jake when a mission runs too long, when they've worked themselves too hard. Sam and Bucky still kinda think of the business suit as low-power mode, even though all three Moon Knights tell them off when they call it that out loud.

But wow, if Sam hadn't known about that, he would've sworn the suit flipped because it heard Reform Moon Knight's wallet name.

So, wait -- what is this? Did Jake say something to give away he's close with Marc, and Rabbi Spector is guessing he might be Marc's boyfriend? Or did the rabbi already have some idea about his son's superhero life, and connect the dots from there? Is he supposed to know about Marc's superhero life? Is he even supposed to know Steven's name?

...okay, Sam's pretty sure he knows the answer to that last one.

"Think you're getting your urban legends mixed up, Rabbi," he says, sidling over to the back of the ambulance. Voice loud enough to carry across the street, hopefully not so loud it comes off suspicious. "The rumor is that Steve is on the Moon, not that he got a new costume and rebranded as a moon guy."

"...Of course." Elias Spector turns to him with a sheepish half-smile. "My mistake, Captain. Excuse me."

He tries to look back at Moon Knight, then does a double-take. Sam follows his gaze -- yep, no surprise, Jake's gone.

Bucky looks so worried.

Sam claps him on the shoulder, and jerks a nod at the empty grass in a way that means I've got this. Go get him.

Out loud, he says, "Walker feels pretty bad about tackling you earlier. Is it all right if he makes up for it by escorting you home?"

☽︎

On any normal night, Bucky wouldn't have a hope in hell of catching up with one of the flight-capable superheroes who wanted to make a quick exit.

Tonight, Jake's armor keeps "downgrading" to the non-flying version. Sometimes in midair. It forces him to stay low, so his landings only crash into rooftops instead of through them, and makes his progress unsteady enough that Bucky catches up within a few blocks.

They're next to an open-air mall -- department store, movie theater, Shake Shack. This late at night it's deserted, but it must get busy enough by day to rate the two-story parking garage. Bucky parkours up the side (there's a staircase, obviously, but where's the fun in that) to the open-air top level, where he finds Jake across from him: feet planted between two of the faded yellow paint lines, leaning on the safety railing that sticks out of the chest-high cement wall.

He's in the business suit for now. Bucky takes a few steps toward him...then stops, not wanting to make him feel cornered.

"Moon Knight," he says out loud.

Then, "Jake."

The armor flips back to Dark Mode. "Fucking what."

Bucky holds up both hands. "C'mon, man. I know we don't understand what you're going through...but you don't have to go it alone."

Jake snorts. "You think?"

"Sam covered for you back there, didn't he? We both did. We've got your back."

No answer.

"Look, if we're doing it wrong somehow...wouldn't be surprised, we don't even know what the hell we're covering for...just tell us how to do better."

"You don't know?" echoes Jake bitterly. "Don't even have the tiniest little idea?"

"...I mean, we know Marc is estranged from his dad," offers Bucky. "So it's probably something to do with that. But we don't know why."

The armor flips to the business suit. Then back. All in grim silence.

Okay, fine, Bucky will just keep talking. "I don't think it's a huge reach to guess that you do know. And you're not happy about it. And having to be around him is making it worse. Whatever it is, it's bad enough that Marc doesn't want the rabbi talking to his wife. I'm not clear if the guy's even supposed to know about his boyfriend. Or his...uh, you."

(Friend? Partner? Brother-in-arms? Bucky would use that last one if he was sure Jake's connection with Marc went back to the Marines -- but it's still only a half-formed suspicion.)

The next line is quiet enough, Bucky almost misses it: "You wanna?"

"...sorry?"

Either Khonshu is hanging around to invisibly heighten the drama, or the Moon Knights just have an affinity for this sort of thing: a cloud front rolls in front of the moon, and the night gets that much darker.

"Do you want to get clear?" repeats Jake. "On what Rabbi Spector is supposed to know. About Steven. About me."

Oh, that gives Bucky a long pause.

There's a dangerous edge to Jake's voice. This is some kind of test. And Bucky doesn't know him well enough to guess if he wants the Marc answer (no, I value your privacy), or the Steven answer (yes, I'm asking because I care).

What he finally goes with is, "Does Marc...want us to know?"

That's the wrong answer. "What are you asking me for?" yells Jake, voice cracking. "I'm not Marc!"

"I--"

"I mean--" He smacks the safety rail in frustration. It rings down the whole length of the metal. "Do I sound like fuckin' Marc?"

Okay, Bucky clamps his mouth shut for that one, because the truth ("yeah, kinda") is so clearly not the right answer.

Jake springs into the air without waiting for an answer at all --

This time, when the suit flips, he's a couple stories above the roof and on the wrong side of the wall -- Bucky sprints, but he's not that fast, he --

-- Sam swoops in, the new Captain America flight suit nearly-silent on its approach, and catches him. With an awkward grabby hold around the torso, it hikes up Jake's shirt and suit-jacket to bare a couple inches of stomach, then the Dark Mode armor is back and Sam has a faceful of bunched-up cape.

"Rabbi's on his way home," says Sam quietly, setting Jake in the cement parking space next to Bucky. "Scarab's on her way here. We good?"

Jake elbows himself out of Sam's grip. (Sam backs off, powering the flight suit down and retracting the wings.) "Nothin' but personal goddamn questions tonight."

Bucky takes a couple steps back too, beckoning for a clearly-baffled Sam to join him. "You know you can ask us personal questions too, right?"

"Sure I can," hisses Jake, using the wall to haul himself back to his feet.

"I'm serious!"

"You really wanna risk it?"

"Go ahead!" exclaims Bucky, arms open. "Do your worst!"

And oh boy, does Jake take him up on it: "Did you fuck all the Captains America, or did you just want to?"

Bucky sucks in a sharp breath.

"All right, it's time to be done here," says Sam, putting a hand on his shoulder. "C'mon, Buck, let's go."

"It's -- fine," says Bucky, through gritted teeth. "He's -- he's just. Making a point."

"Yeah, I got that," says Sam crisply. "And if you keep going with this, you're gonna keep making points until you're both bleeding out from all the stab wounds. Maybe one day we circle back and have a big emotional opening-up about this stuff! But it'll be because we all feel safe and comfortable about it, not because you two stumbled into an Invasive Personal Questions contest and are both too damn stubborn to back out."

Bucky takes several deep breaths. (He's pretty sure he can hear Jake doing the same.)

Then he lets Sam pull him toward the stairwell.

At the doorway he stops and turns back, just for a moment. Jake hasn't tried to fly again; he's just watching them go, holding the crescent cape in front of him, like he'll want another layer of defense if they come back.

"You asked before why Steve gave Sam the shield!" calls Bucky across the empty cement. "That! That was why."

☽︎

He's been in the hotel shower for about thirty seconds -- not nearly long enough to wash off the layers of zombie grit -- when Sam opens the bathroom door. "Babe, your arm just pinged."

Bucky perks up right away. "Bring it in!"

He doesn't go through the hassle of reattaching the prosthetic. Sam just puts it on the faux-marble hotel counter, and Bucky, a towel wrapped around his waist, taps in the security code to read his texts.

Marc
Hi, are you two still up for that group lunch?

This is Steven typing btw

Bucky
We are, but there's no rush. I don't know how much Jake told you about tonight, but it seemed like he might need a break from us

Marc
Do you need a break from him?

Lunch is a package deal, it's all of us or none

He'll be okay with it when he's had a rest

Also fit for normal conversation again when he's had a rest

He's resting now

Sleeping, really

😴

Having weird dreams

Bucky
Sounds like maybe you need some sleep too

Marc
Probably

Sick of putting this off though

Lot of things we want to tell you

I mean in person

Bucky
If you're sure

Just tell us where & when

Marc
🌎: NYC

⏱️: how fast can you get to NYC?

Chapter Text

"Lunch" turns into "dinner" turns into "what if you just eat first, and then meet us on top of a building somewhere?"

Which is how Sam and Bucky end up on the rooftop patio of the Metropolitan.

(They don't fly, or parkour up the side of the building, or anything else dramatic. They go in the normal way: charming one of the night guards to let "Captain America's friends" come up for "a quiet after-hours visit so we can avoid the press.")

It's a big stone-tiled plaza, abstract modern-art installation in the center, benches and a wall of perfectly squared-off hedges around the sides. The view over top of them is stunning. Right on the edge of Central Park, so it's surrounded by trees and greenery, with a photogenic skyline in the distance no matter what direction you look.

Layla is standing by one of the far walls, armor off, watching the door. One of the Moon Knights is with her, pacing, in Steven's favorite version of the suit. Bucky scans for the other two, but doesn't see them -- not on the benches, or around any of the corners, or behind the weird sculpture (a twelve-foot thicket of black metal loops and whorls, suspending a half-dozen colorful crystal boulders).

They head over. Layla nods in greeting. The Moon Knight barely looks up.

"Steven?" guesses Bucky, based on the amount of nervous fidgeting in the pacing.

"Yes!" pants Steven. Oddly breathless, for a guy with magic healing. "Good job, yes, that's me. Hi."

"Did the other guys back out...?" asks Sam.

"Nope! No. That's not it. No."

"Give him a minute," puts in Layla. "He's trying to get his thoughts in order, and it might take a bit."

Bucky and Sam fall silent. Steven keeps pacing.

"You remember how you figured out," he says at last, "that all three Moon Knights had the same suit?"

"Sure." Bucky shares a glance with Sam, who nods. "After the mission in Vegas, I think."

"Right," says Steven.

He stops cold. The mask over his head whisks away.

"It's also the same body," says Marc Steven Marc ???!?!. "Surprise!"

That's--

But--

What?

"The others are here -- they're listening -- but please don't ask them to come out," continues Steven, gesturing at his/their head with manic shakiness and intense eyes. (Marc's eyes, Steven's gestures, Steven's voice which was always Marc's voice with a different accent--) "Not right now. Not in general, really, but especially not now. I am -- and I do realize how incongruous this is about to sound -- I'm the headmate who feels the most calm and well-adjusted right now!"

"They're not delusional, they're not possessed, and I promise they're not screwing with you," adds Layla, calm and unsurprised. "This is just how they are."

"Yes! Thank you, love. What she said," agrees Steven, vibrating with conviction. "We are different people. Got our own souls and everything. If you really really must confirm it, you can call up Doctor Strange and have him pop us out of the body one by one -- only, again, not right now! -- we are not in any shape to be separated just now."

"No need to confirm it! We believe you," says Sam quickly. "This explains so much."

Bucky gives him a startled look. "It does?"

Sam's eyebrows go up. "Buck. Take a minute and think over...everything we ever thought was weird about these guys."

Bucky does.

The overlap in fighting styles. The polite stonewalling on bringing the whole polycule over for dinner. The way Bucky and Sam never found associates of Marc who seemed likely to be the other Moon Knights, just Marc's "aliases." (One of them was even a Steven! Didn't seem notable! It's such a common name -- Bucky sees it everywhere.)

The way occasional Avengers have straight-up asked if one Moon Knight was a different one doing a voice. And Layla was firm about them being different people. But when Marc was having a bad time, she shut down Bucky's suggestion to "get the others" for backup.

The way they would swap on missions, if that wasn't just sneaking off to hand over the suit, but pulling a full Mrs. Doubtfire (yeah, he understands that reference) every time they had to trade places...

"Oh my god, this explains so much."

"This is really, truly not how we planned on rolling it out to you," says Steven miserably. "But we also didn't want to leave you stewing over...I don't know. I don't know! Whatever you thought we were up to yesterday."

"We?" echoes Bucky. "Were you...all there, too?"

"No. Not all." Steven goes back to pacing. Stray curls fall in his face. (Is his hair longer than Marc's?...no, that doesn't make any sense, does it.) "Think of the body like a car, yeah? Tonight I'm in the driver's seat -- the others are watching from the row behind me. Last night Jake was driving. I was riding shotgun, helping him navigate, ready to grab the wheel if I had to. Marc was asleep in the back. We had the partition up -- it's a fancy limo, this metaphorical car of ours -- he didn't hear a thing."

"The suit," realizes Sam. "When it shapeshifts...that's always one of you 'grabbing the wheel', isn't it?"

And Bucky snaps his fingers (the normal ones, it makes a distracting screech if he tries with the metal ones) as he works it out: "You're not low-power mode. You're rescue mode."

"Hah!" Steven claps his hands, jabbing both pointer fingers triumphantly at Bucky. "You get it!" He turns to Layla, beaming: "He gets it!"

Layla's serious expression breaks into a warm smile. "He sure does."

Feeling like he's on a roll, Bucky adds, "And failsafe mode really is a guy named Gus?"

"...oh my days, that's right, you've met Gus."

Steven disappears the white gloves, the better to knead his forehead with bare fingertips. He looks like he's fighting off three headaches at once.

"That's -- look, that's a whole other -- this is not a good time to get into all that. You are still a couple Friendship Levels below where we talk about that. Ask something else."

"I've got one." All of a sudden, Sam is using his serious support-group voice. "And, listen, we don't need any details, okay? Just...are we going to regret being so polite with the rabbi?"

Steven misses a step...stares at Sam for a moment...then points a wobbly finger at him. "You. You know a little something about this."

"Little something is right," admits Sam. "We touched on other dissociative disorders when I was reading up on PTSD. Never dug too deep into this one, because I didn't work with anyone who had it. Or, I guess I should say...didn't work with anyone who told me they had it."

"Good catch," says Steven thinly. "You would be...surprised, and quite awfully depressed...to know how many of us are out there."

He paces in silence for a while. Long enough that Bucky tries to do a wordless check-in with Sam, and then, better, with Layla, on whether this is still a thought-ordering pause...

In a rush, Steven says, "Elias Spector was not the abuser, he was the enabler."

Oh.

Ohhh.

"The abuser is in the ground," adds Steven, voice pitching higher every time he hits a word extra-hard, "and we weren't supposed to have to worry that she might not stay there!"

He lets out a shriek of pure frustration...

Stalks off through the metal sculpture (the lower half of it is mostly archways)...

Collapses in a corner with his back to both walls, and buries his head in his arms.

Gracefully, almost silently, Layla sidles up to Bucky and Sam.

"She did. Stay in the ground," she says under her breath. "Khonshu told the guys he'd make sure of it, and pulled some kind of strings."

Bucky blinks. "He can do that?"

"...Usually, no. He's been out of commission since." Layla blows out a sharp sigh. "Earlier this year, he sent the guys on a mission rough enough that I think he actually felt bad about it? So lately he's going above-and-beyond to make it up to them. Taweret swears he'll be fine, he's just 'sleeping it off'."

Sam gives Layla a cautious look. "How about you? Will you be fine?"

"Me? Of course."

"You know it's okay to not be."

"Thanks, Doc," says Layla dryly. "This polycule works best if we're not all freaking out at the same time. When it's my turn, they'll look out for me. Right now it's not my turn."

Bucky leaves Sam to do the final assessment of Layla's okay-ness, and makes his own way through the sculpture toward Steven.

He telegraphs his approach, scuffing his boots on the stone tiles and bumping his vibranium arm against one of the branching metal loops, and finally sits. Against the wall, a couple feet from Steven's corner.

"Hey," he says softly. "Tell us what you need."

No answer. Doesn't sound like Steven is full-on crying, but his breath is ragged and his shoulders are shaking.

"You want us to prompt you with more questions? We can do that. Just want to vent a while? Go for it. Want to table any more explaining for another day? Totally fine -- we've already had more than enough reveals to chew on for a while," says Bucky. "You want to go ahead and have a full-on screaming breakdown? Also fine. Kinda sounds to me like you've earned it."

He makes himself stop there. Gotta leave the pause.

Steven picks up his head and rests it sideways on his arms, eyes darting up and down as he gives Bucky a once-over.

Then his gaze turns vague and glassy.

(It hits Bucky that it's not just Steven's own thoughts he has to organize. Mysterious moon telepathy, hah! Must be easy to be "telepathic" when you're all in the same head.)

"We...would like to take questions," he says slowly. "We -- Marc really likes you, you know that? And Jake -- he's so tired of having to mask in front of you. We want to be transparent about this. We don't want you to feel like you're being tricked or lied to. ...Anymore."

"I don't feel lied to."

Steven squints at him. "You have been, though. Like -- a lot."

Bucky holds up his arm -- the vibranium one, currently fully-covered, the way it is most times he's out of the house. "Every once in a while I hang out with people who don't recognize me, and sometimes they get curious about the glove."

He peels it off. Flexes his prosthetic fingers. The gold detailing on the dark metal gleams in the moonlight. 

"You know what I tell them?"

"...what?"

"That this arm has bad circulation."

It gets a little giggle out of Steven. (Good lord, it's cute. It is really disorienting to see that much cuteness on Marc's scowly face.)

"You get enough of a traumatic backstory, of course you won't always get into it with just anyone. Especially when the details are so wild that lots of people wouldn't believe it if you tried. So you did a little misdirection...you hid some things, you told a few cover stories...I get that. And I don't feel lied to."

After another of those long pauses, Steven says, "You would've been good with it, you know."

Maybe his thoughts are slipping out-of-order after all. "What?"

"I'm not saying better than Sam. I'm just saying -- if something had happened to him? Or if he wasn't around in the first place...? You would've done a fine job with the shield."

☽︎

Sam settles in next to Bucky, Layla sits against the other wall in front of Steven, and Steven holds Layla's hand while he stammers his way through some answers.

The Moon Knights make an effort to keep one guy consistently in the driver's seat for each mission...but whichever one Sam and Bucky knew they were working with, the other two were usually, secretly, at his back. Watching, listening, keeping each other company. Ready to take over in an emergency.

When it's not an emergency, they're pretty good at coordinating who goes where. The ones who aren't driving can even go "inside", and fully detach from what's going on in the outside world. Steven makes "inside" sound more elaborate than just the passenger compartment of a metaphorical limo, but doesn't get into details.

He does call their level of control "good luck for us, or things could've got incredibly awkward for the polycule."

A handful of other people in the costumed-vigilante community know the truth. Yelena figured them out eventually; she works with so many fellow survivors of the Black Widow program, she knows what a dissociative disorder looks like. Wanda clocked them on sight, because, well, she's Wanda.

Duchamp, the best friend, knows. Layla has probably known it the longest. Although, as Steven puts it, "not as long as you might think she reasonably had the right to know."

"To be fair," adds Layla, "the guys haven't always been this coordinated. Back when I met Marc, none of them were talking to each other. Jake didn't know me well enough to trust me. Steven full-on didn't know I existed. Marc...didn't think it was the sort of thing he was allowed to talk about, whether he trusted me or not."

Their memories from the pre-coordination years are patchy and unreliable. And it only gets sketchier as you go back in time. But they all have at least some memory of being a child (children?). Of the home their body physically grew up in.

Of Elias Spector.

"Marc's dad." Steven fiddles with Layla's hand the way Marc (?) habitually does with small objects, eyes lost in a thousand-yard stare. "Not Jake's. Not mine. Jake never thought of himself as having parents at all...and I certainly don't think of these two as brothers..."

Thank all the available gods for that, right? Speaking of things that could get awkward for the polycule.

"But I haven't seen him in real life for years? Maybe decades. I didn't know how he'd compare to -- I didn't know what I would think. And then I saw him up close...and oh my days, that's not my dad? But I can see all the bits I took from him to make my dad. I--"

Layla interrupts with a hiss of pain, and tugs her hand away from his increasingly-rough kneading. "Enough of this, dear."

"Right!" Steven lets her go, blinking rapidly. Not out-of-control. Just disoriented. "Sorry."

Wordlessly, Bucky offers his hand.

Steven takes it without really looking, and immediately starts running his fingers along the subtle joins in the metal.

Is it helping? The next line that bursts out of him seems completely off-topic: "How does Moses make coffee?"

Sam gives the standard response: "I don't know. How?"

"I don't know either! The rabbi had a mug that said that, but there wasn't a punchline, so--"

"We can look it up," offers Layla, reaching for a phone.

"Don't bother. This one's old enough, I remember it from before the war." Bucky sits up straighter, and announces, with deep gravitas: "Hebrews it."

It takes a few seconds to sink in, then Steven slumps. "Oh nooo."

"Oh yes."

"See, there you go -- my dad loved stupid jokes like that!" groans Steven. "And my dad had hair like his. And my dad's bookshelves were an awful mess, just like his. All that, and yet -- he's not my dad? The dad I remember doesn't exist! There's just -- him!"

Their one exchange post-battle flashes across Bucky's mind. Rabbi Spector in the shock blanket, a Moon Knight in the shadows.

Sam's head must be in the same place: "But he remembers you existing."

"Apparently!" Steven's pitch is starting to creep up again. His hands are pinching and squeezing; it would be bone-grinding if the vibranium had bones. "Apparently he's just happy to call me Steven now!"

Bucky does a double-take. The suit hasn't changed. Are there extra people for all three versions? "Isn't that your name?"

"Yes! It is!" yells Steven. "And the last any of us knew, Elias Spector thought Steven Grant was a cute little game his son liked to play! Or, worst case, some kind of delusion that Marc had to be hospitalized and medicated for until I went away! And, gosh, that'll fix everything, no need to bother getting your vulnerable child somewhere safe -- and now, what -- he thinks he just gets to talk to me? Like after all that, all of a sudden he thinks I'm a person? Where the hell does he get off?"

He cuts off, breath heaving.

Long enough that even Layla has to confirm: "Rhetorical question?"

"That is a rhetorical question!" Prying his fingers away from Bucky's hand, Steven drags them through his curls. "Yes, we have thought of about eight different stops he could've gotten off at. And we have no idea which one is most likely. And if this is how much of a mess we are after talking to him for two bloody minutes, we're not about to invite him to a full-length conversation to clear things up!"

"Hold on," says Bucky. "You talked to him? When?"

"You were -- in the basement. Beating up the Moron Squad." He's breathing normally again, like the sheer misery is weighing him down. "He was cornered in his office. Jake was...not ready to see him. Swapped in, threw a few zombies out. Tried not to say anything suspicious, but...he was afraid she'd be with them. I had to say something! Made out like it was mysterious moon knowledge -- I guess that didn't take."

After exchanging a look with Sam, Bucky says, carefully, "Is there...anything we can do?"

Steven blinks at him several times. "Like -- what?"

Bucky shrugs. "Stop by the rabbi's house, pretend it's a standard Avengers post-zombie wellness check, and try to figure out what he thought was going on?"

Steven gives him a long, inscrutable stare...then bursts out giggling.

"Do not! No. Oh my days. Absolutely do not do that," he says, in between laughing so hard that tears roll down his cheeks. "But you are amazing for offering."

He does the raising-a-hand-for-silence thing again...

"No, shush, it is and you know it," he tells one of the voices in his head. "Gosh, imagine if -- just a few years ago! -- someone told you that one day, Captain America and the Winter Soldier would be casually offering to interrogate your dad."

"Hey now," protests Sam. "He didn't say interrogate."

"Friendly conversation!" agrees Bucky. "Maybe a bit of cross-examination. At worst, a brisk debrief. At worst!"

"Please do not make friendly conversation with him, then." Steven wipes his eyes with the edge of one supernaturally-white sleeve. "If we're not ready to sit down with him in person, we're not ready to secondhand-analyze whatever he could say to you, either."

He sobers, face falling.

"And Jake would just as soon not hear anything from him, ever. So. Bit of a lose-lose-lose situation, here."

Layla touches his knee. "You know you don't need anything from him, chéri."

"Yeah." Steven gives her a watery smile. "Jake was on me about that too."

A hand. A pause. Bit of sniffling from Steven, polite waiting from the others.

"Um. Marc wants to swap in for a minute. That all right with everyone?"

A general murmur of agreement.

Steven's eyes glaze over. He starts blinking too fast, like he's trying to get a speck of dust out of his eye. The suit doesn't change, though...

"Might take a minute," he says, flat and distant. "Talk amongst yourselves. Feel free to talk about him -- that might help."

"I think we can manage that," says Layla. "Would you gentlemen like to hear about some of the things Marc told me before I ever found out about the guys...?"

She's almost twenty items deep into the list -- which ranges from "I have superpowers from my service to an Egyptian moon god" to "I do" -- when the transformation finally kicks in.

Not the instant flip it usually does in the field. The golden chestplate appears first, then a mass of bandages like ribbons flow out of it, spiraling their way down his arms and legs before tightening into place. They leave his face uncovered; the last piece to appear is the cape, unrolling from his shoulders like a curtain dropping.

His gaze darts up to Sam and Bucky, making eye contact with each of them before falling again. "Hi."

"Hey, man," says Sam.

Bucky nods. "Hi, Marc."

"So." Marc is in the slow, spaced-out mode Bucky's only seen...once, maybe twice? Who knows how often it happens; it's just hidden unless he can't, or won't, let someone in better shape take the wheel. "Now you know."

"Now we know," echoes Bucky.

He's just close enough for Marc to put a hand on his arm, feeling around for a couple seconds until it has a grip on Bucky's shoulder.

(Distantly, Bucky notices Sam already had a supportive hand on his back. No idea how long it's been there.)

Bucky fully expects a reinforcement of the don't go chatting up Rabbi Spector request.

What he gets instead is: "Listen, don't -- don't be mad at Jake. Okay? Please."

...well, that's complicated.

Bucky settles for a noncommittal "Mmhmm?"

"I wasn't ready. To tell you," says Marc slowly. "I'm not good. At telling people. Layla knows."

Layla gives a silent nod of confirmation.

"They promised they'd cover for me. Steven. And Jake. They always do." Marc picks up a little steam as he warms to the topic. "Didn't always know it...but it's on the memory board now. We compare notes. Work things out. Pretty sure Steven covered a lot of school. Then, Jake -- the Marines. Lot of that we shared, but...he doesn't have drowning trauma, so...water exercises? All him."

"Good of him," says Sam, and means it.

Marc takes a deep breath. He holds up the mummy-wrapped hand that isn't hanging on to Bucky. "Steven says to clarify...that I cover for him sometimes. And for Jake. And them for each other." He draws a wobbly circle in the air with two fingers. "It's like this."

"They're a team," fills in Layla.

Marc switches to an open-palmed gesture at his wife. "What she said."

"We've seen some of that, right?" asks Bucky. The way "Marc" switched to Dark Mode when he had to go through a tunnel, then got unusually quippy for the rest of the mission... "Jake covering for you, specifically."

"Yeah." Another furtive bit of eye contact. "Sometimes Steven, but." That's it, Marc's riveted by his boots again. "He can't do the accent. So mostly Jake."

The hand still on Bucky's shoulder grips tighter.

"I trust him. I trust him with -- everything. Trust him to give a...fair impression. Trust him with Steven. Trusted him to run this mission. And to -- not give us up, while I was asleep. So he couldn't let the suit down. Couldn't get into -- feelings. You would've caught on. How he's not just...secondhand mad. We also shared the -- the post-drowning trauma. You would've noticed."

By now the dots basically connect themselves, but Sam does them all the favor of saying it out loud: "Buck here was being too nice and supportive about things Jake promised he wouldn't talk about, so he fell back on just getting meaner until we dropped it."

"Yeah," Marc half-says, half-breathes.

And Bucky, who's been almost at this point for the past three minutes anyway, puts his flesh-and-blood hand over Marc's and squeezes. "I won't be mad at Jake. Promise."

Marc's eyes fall closed again. He lets out a sigh of relief. "Thanks...Barnes."

The mummy-suit spirals gently back to Steven's version.

(There's a long moment when it's mostly Steven, but the glove under Bucky's hand is still Marc's. Which...probably answers some "how the polycule works" questions that he was tactful enough to keep to himself, huh.)

"Still not getting 'Bucky', I guess," says Steven, exhausted but fond. "Check back in...mmm, three to five years."

"Eh, that's fine," says Bucky. "I've got...patience."

(Steve did a whole canned PSA about patience. One night when Bucky was missing him particularly hard, Sam found the full playlist of them on Youtube. They watched it together, start to finish, and laughed themselves sick.)

In the soft stillness that follows, Layla checks her watch -- an actual watch, not even a digital one, silver hands and numbers luminous in the moonlight. "Check-in, chéri. How are you doing? You did promise we'd leave before you burned out."

"Yeah. We did do, yeah," admits Steven.

Sam and Bucky both reassure him that he's revealed more than enough for one conversation. They could probably use a break too. (Sam makes a casual reference to background reading. Possibly this means he's about to assign Bucky some homework. He's lucky he's cute.)

Steven summons the mask over his head for a moment, then sits up straighter and lets the whole suit melt away into street clothes. It clears up his red eyes and tear-streaked face on its way out.

"Right!" he says faintly. "Um. Before we crash for the night, though. Would one of you mind..."

He fumbles in his reappeared messenger bag, surfacing with a phone, and gestures at the metal-and-crystal abstract sculpture.

"...getting some photos of me and Layla in front of this? Or -- inside it, even! Gosh, how artistic would that be."

Sam is already pulling his own phone out of his pocket. "Only if you take a few of us."

As they all get to their feet, Steven adds: "Marc wants me to clarify that I said arrrr-tistic," dragging out the sharp R that usually melts in his accent, "not au-tistic...although, um? Apparently? I have been cleared to tell you that we are the other one, too."

☽︎

Marc,

I'm not sending this email to pressure you for a reply. I just wanted to say that I love you, and I miss you.

There was an Avengers fight in the neighborhood last night (it's over now, everyone is safe, you can probably find all the details in the news if you like). I didn't get hurt, but it was pretty tense for a while, so it got me thinking about the regrets I would have if something happened to me.

And what I would regret most is not telling you that I love you and I miss you. Which I do. That's all.

Dad

☽︎

Bucky
Should I change the name I have for you in my contact list, or is that too much of a risk?

Not that any normal person would be able to hack my contacts, but we don't fight normal people

Sam
you know who we fight

Bucky
Don't say it

Still not a thing

Marc
Layla has this number as "Whoever Has Marc's Phone"

Bucky
Brilliant! 🧠🧠 Changing mine now 📱📱📱

Sam
you're still not using emojis right

Bucky
This is how the hip young kids use them 💪💪💪

Excuse me I mean 🦾🦾🦾🦾🦾🦾

Sam 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
it is absolutely not

Bucky
Oh don't act like you're the expert, Gen X, it's not like you grew up with them

Sam 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
never should've taught you about generation nicknames either

and don't go off about my age, you're old enough to be my grandpa

wait

nope

forget I said that

makes things too weird

Whoever Has Marc's Phone
Time in stasis doesn't count!! -S

Bucky
THANK you ✌️✌️✌️

Whoever Has Marc's Phone
What do we fight that's "not a thing"?

-M

Sam 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
let me put it in a way Buck will understand

🤖👽🧙

 

☽︎

Elias,

This is Marc's wife. He's seen your message.

He doesn't want to have a conversation about it right now, but he said if you're interested, it's all right for me to send you some photos.

Layla El-Faouly