Chapter Text
"One final thing, James," spoke Zemo.
Geez. What could there possibly be left to say, Bucky wondered. With his pistol dormant at his side once again, he clicked the safety back on and watched Zemo slip his hand into the breast pocket of his fancy fur-ruffed duster.
The Dora Milaje at his sides tensed, gripping their spears, but Bucky didn't so much as blink. The Dora were clearly prepared for Zemo to draw a weapon, to try and fight his way out of captivity and make a run for it. But that wasn't where Zemo's mind was, and Bucky knew it.
The family of the Sokovia Memorial gazed into the distance as Zemo retrieved a small object from his pocket and held it out for Bucky to see.
Despite never having handled one himself, Bucky knew what it was right away: a Poké Ball. An Ultra Ball, at that. Not your basic red and white, but sleek yellow and black.
He eyed it with a frown.
"Please," said Zemo, "hold on to this for me."
It took those words for Bucky to realize that Zemo was giving the Ultra Ball to him. Not just showing it to him, but extending it to him. Waiting for him to take it.
He blinked now.
"It would mean a great deal to me," Zemo said, "to know it is safe."
"Zemo," Bucky managed, but that was all. He couldn't... No. He didn't want to deal with a Pokémon. For so many reasons—most of which he'd had to list for Dr. Raynor when she'd suggested training one might be good for him.
"It was my childhood Pokémon. My first. And it was to be my son's first, when he turned ten."
Zemo said it the way he said everything: with a demented sort of serenity, a cool distance that proclaimed he considered himself above the situation. Any situation. Even the world's deadliest assassin pointing a gun directly at his forehead, finger on the trigger...
Yet Bucky heard something else in his voice. Some heaviness. Regret, maybe. Or finality.
"As I did with many of my surviving belongings, I stored her away before enacting my plans for the Avengers," Zemo explained. "When we visited my unit in Berlin, I spied her amongst my things. I'm not sure why, but I brought her along. What I was thinking at that moment, I can't explain. Perhaps I just wanted to see her one last time."
"You should've left it where it'd be safe," Bucky said, his voice gravel in the tight pipe of his throat.
"Yes," agreed Zemo, with a slight smile. "I can't take her with me any further. If it's what you wish to do, you could return her to my unit. Where she'll be safe, as you said." He nodded once, encouraging. "Please, James. There is no one I trust more to see her to safety."
Stilted, Bucky reached for the Ultra Ball. He took it with excessive gingerness from where it sat in Zemo's upturned palm. It was small in his vibranium grasp. Oddly, it almost matched his mechanical digits. Both the sphere and his fingers were an obsidian paired with yellow gold, and very shiny.
As if reading his mind, Zemo said, "Ah. It looks made to be there in your hand. A comforting thought for me."
For Bucky it was the opposite. In fact, the statement felt so overly intimate it was disquieting. Bucky tightened his jaw, but didn't have time to do anything other than that. The Dora Milaje had run out of patience. They swept forward, took Zemo by either elbow, and jostled him along towards their craft.
Bucky said nothing, and Zemo only nodded at him once, firmly, as he shuffled away. Bucky managed a nod in return.
Gun in one hand and Ultra Ball in the other, he turned and watched Zemo head calmly to his fate: imprisonment in a specially-built supermax leagues under the surface of the ocean. There would be no easy escape from this prison. Even if he broke free of his cell, a feat far more difficult in such a facility than it had been in Berlin, the depths of the Atlantic were an inescapable barrier. And its location meant it was nigh impossible to visit.
It was unlikely he and Zemo would ever see each other again.
*
Bucky considered leaving the Ultra Ball, with Zemo's Pokémon still within, at the feet of the family depicted in the Memorial. There it could sit amongst the few scattered flowers and framed photos left as tribute. There it might weather and fade, like the trinkets. Or someone might find it and take it home.
But he couldn't do that. He couldn't risk an innocent Pokémon falling into the hands of someone who might not properly care for it. That went pretty explicitly against Zemo's request that Bucky keep the Pokémon safe.
Stomach and feet both heavy, Bucky slipped the Ultra Ball into his jacket pocket and took it with him.
He was uncomfortable, carrying it around so casually, like any random kid with a backpack trundling along a route, hoping to spot some movement in the long grass. Pokémon weren't inanimate objects. It was a creature there in his pocket, caged. An enslaved one. It had been forced to battle, or made to serve humans by doing some other task it wasn't meant to do.
It made Bucky sick.
Once upon a time he had been wholly indifferent to Pokémon, as indifferent to the few you could occasionally spot on the streets of Brooklyn as he had been to, say, cars or street lamps. Nothing too exciting about flocks of Pidgeys, after all.
Bucky had worked alongside many different types of Pokémon as the Winter Soldier. They'd become as typical a sight for him as any soldier, any weapon. HYDRA's strike teams had kept Houndours, sleek guard dog-esque Pokémon which they trained to patrol. A couple of Raichu had powered the chair that wiped the Soldier's memory. Singing Jigglypuffs had occasionally been brought in to subdue the agitated Soldier into a stupor—but they'd had to be powerful, so their songs didn't always work. Still, Jigglypuffs set Bucky's teeth on edge to this day.
Bucky had accepted the Pokémon working for HYDRA along with everything else about HYDRA, ignoring them unless they were in his way. If they interfered with important operations, it annoyed the Soldier. If the Soldier had ever felt any urge to approach one, to pet one, Bucky did not remember it. He suspected he had been trained to not interact with the Pokémon. And that was just fine with him.
The U.S. Army had used the occasional Pokémon too. Not in warfare, as that was a crime only Nazis would commit, but as entertainment. Popplio juggling acts had been almost as popular at USO shows as chorus girls and comedians. You could still catch big Popplio acts in places like Vegas and Amsterdam, Bucky was aware, but they were whole different rackets now.
Because Pokémon were everywhere these days.
Sure, back in the 40s you'd see a few kids running around with Bulbasaurs or Squirtles, and the occasional battle would break out and get busted up by beat cops. Most major cities had starting leagues, and boasted one or two big-name trainers who'd make the papers on occasion. But battling Pokémon was nowhere near as big and beloved a pastime as, say, baseball or boxing. At least, that's how it'd been in the States.
Nowadays Bucky saw Pokémon everywhere on a daily basis: Skitties curled around the shoulders of shop girls. Chanceys bobbing in café windows, wearing aprons and frilly caps, as if that would actually entice people to get a cup of coffee there. At Halloween there had been a Pumpkaboo parade in Bucky's neighborhood. A few months before this whole Flagsmashers thing, Bucky had gotten a flyer in the mail for a sleep therapy place that offered co-sleep sessions with Snorlaxes.
They were like pets now, if not modern beasts of burden put to work for their humans. So many of them had dumb smiles and empty eyes, looking happy just to be involved.
And there were more Pokémon than ever. Not just a couple hundred, as had been the known number in Bucky's day, but several hundreds more. He didn't recognize most of them, or know their names. There were ones that looked more like desserts than animals. Ones that were cybernetic, that looked like household appliances. Clint Barton had mentioned one that looked like a floating pair of samurai swords.
Bucky wanted no part of it. He wasn't anti-Pokémon, exactly. 'Course not. But he couldn't shake the feeling that most of these Pokémon didn't belong in cities, folded into human society. They belonged out in the wild with flocks of their own kind, not kept in stasis, trapped in tiny Christmas ornament-looking cages and ignored for days, weeks, years at a time. They shouldn't be forced to do the bidding of careless masters. They shouldn't be made to fight each other. Pokémon battling becoming a beloved national pastime while he was in the freezer was fucked up.
The whole idea made him almost physically ill. So, no, he would not fucking become a trainer, doc. No fucking thanks.
"You don't have to train them for battle," Raynor had said. "Most Pokémon owners don't battle nowadays. They have Pokémon for companionship. Comfort. Emotional support and regulation. That could be excellent for you, James. There are even Pokémon that have the innate ability to influence brainwaves—"
"No," Bucky had snapped. "I'm not getting a fucking Jigglypuff. Or any kind of psychic-type. Fuck that!"
"How about another type? Normal? Maybe grass?"
"No."
"Not even a Bounsweet?"
"The fuck is a Bounsweet."
"A grass-type that's practically one step up from a house plant."
"Well, that's reductive."
"You're not gonna let me show you the studies," Raynor sighed.
"No. 'Cause the last thing I want is a Pokémon," Bucky had insisted, grim and determined. "I don't want one of any type. I don't wanna train one for any purpose. Ever."
His stance had not changed one iota. Just because he had taken the Ultra Ball home with him instead of abandoning it back in Zemo's Berlin storage facility with his antique automobiles and the unsavory family heirlooms stashed away in the trunks of said automobiles... That didn't mean he was going to keep the Ball, or the Pokémon inside the Ball. Bucky just had to figure out a safer place to stash it. He and Sam had broken into the storage unit pretty easily. It wouldn't take a genius to do it a second time.
Bucky deposited the black and yellow Ball on his mostly empty IKEA dresser. For the time being, the safest place for it was with him.
*
Every day Bucky laid eyes on the Ultra Ball and cursed Zemo.
What was he supposed to do with this thing?
He considered a few options.
For instance, hiding the Ball away where no one would ever find it. But that would be cruel to the Pokémon within. He'd read on Wikipedia (and actual encyclopedias in the library and trainer manuals and Poké Ball manufacturer websites) that Pokémon were virtually unaware of being kept in stasis inside Poké Balls. Balls centuries and even millennia old had been found and opened, with their captured inhabitants perhaps a little dehydrated but otherwise ready to spring into battle. But Bucky did not like the idea of purposefully subjecting whatever Pokémon was inside that Ultra Ball to such a fate. He knew how it was to come out of cryostasis, always at the whim of a master who was a stranger to him, to do the bidding of those who were holding him hostage. He would not subject another living being to the same.
Bucky thought of storing it where someone safe, someone kind, might find it. But he couldn't think of anyone trustworthy enough. The only person he trusted to take care of a living thing was Sarah Wilson. Maybe she had a nook in her house or her shed where an Ultra Ball could lie undisturbed by Cass and AJ. But this seemed a temporary solution at best. And Bucky had no idea what was in the Ball. If it was a goddamn Onix, it might destroy half her house if the Ball accidentally popped open.
He thought of giving Zemo the middle finger from afar and surrendering the Ultra Ball to the nearest Pokémon Center. Let someone else deal with it. Someone with some actual training.
But he couldn't bring himself to do any of those things.
Every day he ignored his curiosity: What kind of Pokémon was sitting on his dresser next to his comb and his iPhone's lightning cable?
What kind of Pokémon would Zemo own?
Not the Zemo he knew, with his pompous bloviating and a half crazy, half suicidal gleam in his eye, but... a ten-year-old Zemo. He'd been born into aristocracy, but still, he had been a child when he'd received this Pokémon. That was why he'd saved it these many years, and had picked it up when he saw the Ball, despite it now being illegal for him to have a Pokémon partner: It was his childhood companion. He was emotionally attached to it, to this day.
Surely it wasn't an Onix.
Or maybe it was. Bucky knew nearly nothing about Zemo's parents. Maybe they were the sort of people who thought Onix made a great starter for a little kid.
Bucky found himself thinking about it a lot. On the way to therapy he'd glimpsed a cheery Charmander galumphing after a kid on the sidewalk and wondered if Zemo'd had a popular starter like that, or something more rare and exotic for a first Pokémon. He'd pass by a store with a Pokémon at work there and picture that Pokémon following at Zemo's impatient feet, being gestured to hurry up.
People did sometimes have a Pokémon that really seemed to suit them perfectly. The waitress Bucky had dated (...like, for the length of one game of Battleship) had one that looked like a perpetually floating cherry blossom, replete with pink petals. It had smelled just like sakura. Zemo had served tea that smelled like sakura too. Maybe Zemo liked cherry blossom tea now because he'd had a cherry blossom Pokémon as a child.
Or maybe Zemo had one of those Pokémon that looked like a cinnamon roll or a whipped cream-piled slice of strawberry shortcake. The man did like his desserts. Bucky was sure if there was a Pokémon that resembled a cube of sugar-encrusted turkish delight, it would pop out of that Ultra Ball smelling like roses and babbling its name, which was probably something cutesy like Turkylite.
No. That was stupid. Anyway, it was Zemo's son who had liked turkish delight.
Zemo's son, who had not made it to ten years old, and had never inherited the Ultra Ball sitting on Bucky's dresser.
A grass-type, Bucky began to think. That was a great starter for a little kid. One step up from a house plant...
Two weeks of thoughts like this was all Bucky could endure before he began to seriously consider just opening the Poké Ball. Just to sate his curiosity about what Pokémon he was even holding onto for Zemo. Then he'd know. And he'd throw the Ball and catch the thing, and seal it away again, before it could even look back at him. He'd never caught a Pokémon before, but had confidence in his speed and aim.
It wouldn't be a big deal. It would take five seconds, probably... If that...
The urge presented itself numerous times, and each time, Bucky mentally swatted it away. Until, that is, one sunny afternoon, when he could no longer be distracted by ESPN and went wandering from room to room. The Ball, sitting as always on his empty dresser top, was caught in a beam of light, the black and yellow shell at least as shiny as his vibranium arm.
And, as Bucky stared at it, it moved.
No. No, it didn't. There was no way the Ball had actually moved. It was only a trick of the light; a mote passing over Bucky's eye. Something outside his window had moved, and the shiny ball had reflected it. Something like that.
Bucky looked at it sitting there, as perfectly still as ever, the creature inside not at all aware of Bucky's presence in the doorway.
Slowly he prowled forward, his pulse rabbiting away in his throat, and before he could talk himself out of what he was doing, he pressed his thumb to the front of the Ball. The waiting button gave a smooth click. The Ball swelled in size. The top flew open.
Light, prismatic as an aurora, shimmered as it filled Bucky's vision.
For a moment he was rendered blind. He heard a gentle noise, something like a bleat or a coo. His eyes fought to focus on the creature he'd been so curious about as it leapt from the Ball and drifted, as if on a glimmering cloud, onto his nearby bed. Its paws (of which there were four) didn't even disturb his neatly made counterpane as it landed, giving the impression it weighed next to nothing.
As the light faded, Bucky saw a white creature so exquisite, it hardly computed. It looked like a... not that Bucky was an expert. But to him, it resembled a Vulpix. But rather than ruddy red fur, it was white as the Siberian winter. Its eyes were like smooth round sapphires, gleaming deeply, and its nose was a frozen blue-green. Like Vulpix, it had a magnificent tail—tails, really—of multiple plumes, white and fluffy, and sparkling like fresh snow in the sun.
It was exotic, Bucky thought, and shivered as a puff of arctic cold hit him. The Pokémon had yawned, and crystals of precipitation had blustered from its open yawp.
As Bucky stood there, totally distracted by the alluring creature, it blinked and looked around.
Quite gracefully, cottony white tail fanning, it jumped off Bucky's bed. It made almost no noise against the wood floor when it landed, and was silent as a snowdrift as it padded along, its nose quivering. It seemed to be sniffing its new environment. Its nose led it across the room, all the way to Bucky's closet, where it stopped.
"Vul?" it let out in a breathy tone, inquiring.
For all the world, it sounded to Bucky like a curious toddler.
Once his startled wonderment at the innocent coo began to recede, Bucky realized it was waiting there by the closet, blinking up at him.
Somehow he knew it wasn't asking who he was, but rather, asking where its master was. Maybe it thought Zemo was behind the closed door.
"He's not here," Bucky was forced to say.
He didn't expect to be understood. Not really. But the Pokémon turned on the spot and let out a gentle whine.
"Sorry," Bucky said, feeling guilty. "I know he wishes he could be here. See you."
"Vul... Vulpix, Vul?"
Was it... asking Bucky a question? Or was it just asking for Zemo some more? Some trainers could understand their Pokémon. But Bucky wasn't a trainer. He shook his head.
"Sorry," he repeated. "I don't know what you want. We should... I should..."
I should put you back in the Ball now.
Everything within Bucky lurched like he was falling. What the hell had he been thinking, letting the Pokémon out? He couldn't so much as reach for the Ultra Ball now, let alone throw it. Not when looking this beautiful thing in its gem-like eyes. They were fathomless, but at the same time, there was so much intelligence in them. There was just no way he could put this living, breathing creature back in stasis and just keep it there forever.
He gulped heavily.
What was he going to do, then? Let the Pokémon roam free until it eventually slipped out the window and down the fire escape to become a stray on the streets of Brooklyn?
God, even for all his thinking, he had not thought this through.
*
Bucky really had adapted to living in the next century: his most pressing instinct, other than to deck himself, was to go to Google.
found a pokemon
This search resulted in pages titled things like "BROOKLYN BATTLE LEAGUE TRAINER SIGNUPS!" and "10 Tips For Catching Stubborn Pokémon."
Bucky tried again. found pokemon not mine
Results: Chelsea Pokémon Center: report lost Pokémon... NYPD Report Lost and Stolen Pokémon... Queens PokéShelter... Help! I Lost My Pokemon! in r/PokeHelp. Hello Reddit, I hope you can help me. My Smoliv has been missing for the last 3 hours. We just lost a battle and now he's not in his ball. Is it possible he ran away?... r/RescuedPokemon... Whose Pokémon is this? in r/BrooklynTrainers...
Bucky tried for a third time: inherited pokemon what do i do
Results: TeddiursaLuvr's Guide to Taking on an Inherited Pokémon.
Okay. Despite the website's name, this link sounded like it had the advice Bucky needed. While the white Vulpix sniffed around the perimeter of Bucky's bedroom, Bucky's eyes tore through the article.
Inheriting a deceased loved one's Pokémon can be a complex—
Yadda, yadda. Zemo wasn't dead, and he was decidedly not a loved one.
Often these Pokémon serve as reminders—
C'mon. He didn't need the grief spiel.
Step 1: Research your new Pokémon. Use a Pokédex (there are several to choose from in the App Store) or head to your local Pokémon Center and sign up for a consultation with an expert. The more you know about your Pokémon, the easier it will be to care for them.
A Pokédex. Sure. Alright. That wouldn't help in the long term. And he definitely wouldn't be using it to scan every Pokémon he came across. But it made sense to educate himself on the creature gracefully sneezing ice particles into the dust bunny it'd found under Bucky's bed.
Bucky went to the App Store. Before too long he'd downloaded the most popular Pokédex app and—
Great. He had to sign up. Trainer's e-mail address... Fuck him. He was not a trainer! Just because he wanted to look up information about a Pokémon...!
Finally, after confirming his email address, the app opened his phone camera and said out loud, "Carefully scan your Pokémon."
Bucky aimed his phone at the Vulpix, making sure to say, "Sorry 'bout this." Its eyes were mournful. Bucky told it lamely, "I hate getting my picture taken, too."
"Vulpix," chirped the app, displaying a picture of several frolicking together, "Alolan form. It looks like snow come to life, and expels air colder than -58 degrees Fahrenheit. These ice-type Pokémon live in packs in the snowy mountains and defend themselves with their icy breath. Before they eat their prey, they freeze it."
"You come from the Alolan mountains?" Bucky asked the creature, easily envisioning snow-covered mountains. He'd seen his fair share.
"Vullll," it trilled.
"How'd you get somewhere like Sokovia?" he wondered aloud, as if the Vulpix could answer him. But: "I guess they had mountains there. Bet you didn't get to live on one, though. Bet you lived in a castle, or a manor, or something like that. Or just in your ball."
"Pix, Vul."
"... And not with your pack."
A sad coo.
"Okay," said Bucky slowly. Okay. Maybe... maybe he could take it back to Alola, set it free in the snow caps of the mountains. Return it from whence it'd been taken, so it could live with its own kind. He didn't relish the thought, either of the journey or the destination. He'd endured enough cold, seen enough snowy terrain to last several lifetimes. Bucky had been trained over decades to handle extreme cold like the kind in which the Alolan Vulpix thrived. But that didn't mean he was keen to experience it again.
But, he supposed, who better to take this little fella all the way to the snowy top of a mountain?
Plus, it wasn't like he was doing anything but going to therapy and staring, like a machine expressly built to stare, through shop windows at people with Pokémon partners at work beside them.
This conclusion tentatively reached, Bucky returned to TeddiursaLuvr.com.
Step 2: Catch your new Pokémon!
"No," said Bucky out loud. "No, no, no, no."