Work Text:
This was not how she thought her day would go when she got up this morning. She had planned a day in, doing nothing more strenuous then turn the pages of whatever pulp fiction novella Steve had left lying around the common rooms. He might be the walking symbol of American Liberty and Justice, but the man was careless with his reading material. Although, she suspected that maybe they were planted, like literary landmines, but hadn’t made up her mind yet. He didn’t seem so casual with any of his other belonging. She shrugged, not really invested in why he’d leave books around for his fellow Avengers to find and read or ignore as they saw fit. She was just happy to indulge, but instead, her time reading had been interrupted and now here she was waking up to her blood feeling like crashing waves of fire and her skin like ice. The heat of her own circulation grazing on nerves and scraping them raw. Every joint ached with a growing throb that demanded to be present in her every movement as life returned to her body. She wanted to curl up on herself and sink into oblivion but something kept her motionless and her desire to throttle the two that brought this on spurred her to push past the desire to succumb to the darkness and force herself to embrace consciousness.
She should have realized something was amiss by the looks on their faces when they sat down in front of her earlier that day. Tony practically vibrated with discovery whereas Bruce looked sheepish and reluctant. Oh boy. She recalled thinking that very phrase as she folded a page of her slightly smutty, (oh Steve Rogers, if the public only knew of your taste in reading material), detective noir. Oh boy, followed by a wary Now what?
They started to explain something, first Tony with his incessant chatter that rambled in swooping complicated circles around how they had reached their conclusions with a few complimentary statements about Bruce thrown in, except each somehow started with and then led back to Tony’s own brilliance or deductions. She was barely paying attention because she knew at some point Bruce would interject and get to the point of what exactly they wanted from her.
Then Tony said a thing… and the color from her face drained as she snapped to attention, driving him to a stuttering silence with the shocked look and her sudden rapid shallow breathing.
Trigger scent. He said.... oh god, do they have… here? They want to expose me to…. Her mind was a rapid-fire hurricane of disbelief, fear, and rage. Bruce would never… she started to reason… but then he does strange things when Tony prompts and pushes so what if…?
Suddenly she became acutely aware of the sounds in the common room. A clink of glass as Steve stirred his coffee and the light tapping of his spoon on the edge of the mug before placing it on the countertop. But suddenly, as her skin tightened all over her body, it became the sound of beakers and scalpels and she could suddenly feel the chill of a lab, herself exposed, the center of all attention…
A small groan rumbles behind her lips. The pain of coming back to life is replaced by the constant inescapable ache of adamantium poisoning and she curses in her mind with a vehemence that does nothing to dull the pain or the bitterness of betrayal. Someone put on her ring. The groan turns into a low growl.
Her lungs catch up to her consciousness and she takes in a large involuntary breath as her body’s demand for air overriding her instinct to remain still, and a weight she barely registered on her arm lifts. Then something is touching her face, lightly, and pushes aside the hair on her forehead.
“Those two are idiots”, a low voice says, brimming with concern.
At first she is confused and disoriented. The voice continues, muttering about them meaning well but if he had known what they were planning… and his voice goes from gentle to steel and finally she opens her eyes to watch as Sergeant James "Bucky" Barnes, Howling Commando, WWII Veteran, aka The Winter Soldier, worries at the blankets that cover her, tucking them in around her more snugly.
Feeling her gaze fall on him, he looks up and says just above a whisper, “Hey there, doll. You ok?”
With a frown she asks quietly, “Did I hurt anyone?”
He offers the ghost of a smile at her concern, but he quickly says no, to assure her, then asks, “Do you remember what happened?”
“I…” she frowns, “I was ...I swear I was in the lab…” she begins, and swallows hard.
“Bruce kinda figured that was what happened,” he says, cutting her off, knowing exactly what she was saying. “He feels awful, by the way. As he should, dammit. Whatever it was…”
“Trigger scent,” she says suddenly. “Tony said they had some.”
As soon as Tony had said the words the common room melted away. Her breathing came in small gasps as a new world, a familiar world, a world she sometimes thinks is the only one she deserves, settled in around her… the sounds of medical equipment, the mutterings of another set of scientists as they prepare another ghoulish experiment. She was the perfect lab rat, after all. Always resetting to zero no matter what they subjected her too. She stood suddenly, backing away from Tony and Bruce as if she didn’t know them. But she saw them, all three of the men in the room covered in blood, lying on the floor with savage cuts that leak great pools of blood. Bruce raised his hands and stayed in his place on the couch, but Tony stood and approached her slowly. Her eyes were darting around and past him and even through him as she calculated various escape routes and casualty rates for each one. Too many, too many, too many…
Tony touched her arm and she flinched, taking another step back as she raised one fist. Only choice. He raised his hands in surrender but her eyes go wide for a moment, then narrow as her decision is made. She placed her fist against her chest, knuckles pointed inward and with a soft *snit*, the noise muffled by her own body, released her claws and impaled her own heart on the coated blades that are normally housed inside her hands.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Tony yelled as he started to move forward towards her slumping body, but from behind him Steve had already sprung over the counter and pushed past the billionaire before she hit the floor. Scooping her up as if she weighed no more than a newborn kitten, he sprinted with her in his arms to the containment room on that floor, hollering orders to FRIDAY as he ran, to gather various staff and supplies, as if he had always planned for this and had contingencies in place, which Tony figured was more than likely. Steve Rogers made “be prepared” his personal mantra. “And get Bucky up here!” he finished, as he was placing her on the bed, then reached in the drawer next to the bed to slip something on her finger.
“He was furious,” Bucky finishes with a slight snicker, and as if on cue she is suddenly aware of his disappointment filled angry voice hollering at Tony and Bruce somewhere in the building. “I don’t envy them right now…”
She whispers conspiratorially, “Angry Steve Rogers is my favorite Steve Rogers.”
He grins back, “Try growing up with that,” but continues more solemnly. “He reacts like that because you really scared him.”
She shrugs. Bucky shakes his head at her casualness. After a moment he gathers himself and continues, “Tony called your episode 'the mother of all panic attacks'.”
“Go big or go home,” she replies, and it sounds like a recital. Something she must have heard from Tony several times.
“Tony also feels horrible,” Bucky says with another slight smile.
She matches it, “Good,” she says simply. But the smile turns to a grimace as a shallow wave of pain radiates from her hips to her shoulders and she squirms slightly in response.
“Why am I wearing the ring?” she asks, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
“It was the only way to keep you medicated without your healing ability burning through the dosages faster than they could administer them,” he explains, then pauses as he takes a deep breath. The fingers of his right hand rest lightly on hers and she notices the void where the restraints prevent contact between them. “You were hurting herself.”
She shrugs again, this time the nonchalance is a cover for boiling emotions. “Nothing that’s permanent,” she points out.
Bucky tuts. “That’s not the point. “
She tuts back, mocking his concern. She tugs lightly at the restraints and looks up at him expectantly.
He shakes his head but with another small smile and she grunts in annoyance. “I’m not taking them off until after I explain what those “geniuses” were trying to tell you.”
She takes a deep breath. She can tell his attempt at casualness is a front not to worry her, which of course worries her even more.
He leans forward and places his left hand lightly on her shoulder, “They think they might be able to free you from the effects of the trigger scent.”
She inhales sharply. Yes, the words themselves must have caused her panic earlier, sprung on her with no warning.... but… to be free from it! She keeps herself as still as she can, feeling suddenly numb, the weight of her desire for what he says to be true pushing her back into the bed.
Bucky continues quietly, “But it would require… testing…”
“No!” she says and continues in a rush, “You will see who I really am!”
He straightens for a moment before he replies with un-shielded vehemence, “That is not who you are.”
She knows he needs her to accept what he says as true, for herself as well as for him. Otherwise, how could anyone, including himself, accept it about his own past? She sighs, not wanting to get into another debate with him about actions and who is responsible for what. It always ended with her feeling like she’s letting him down.
Not wanting to doesn’t stop her though.
“It’s not the same. We’re not the same,” she begins.
“Yes, it is. Neither of us was given a choice,” he responds, as he had every time they have this fight. What he doesn’t notice is how her fingers roll around the ring Steve had slid onto her hours earlier.
“I have always conceded that point, James,” he hated it when she used his first name when they argued, “but you were programmed to be a killer whereas I was raised…”
“Not by choice!” he cuts in, repeating that point. Her fingers had worked the ring off and into a new shape, and she uses the slender slice of metal as leverage on the buckles of her restraints, slowly working them loose.
He sits back slightly, exasperated. Apparently he doesn’t want to have this fight again either, or he senses something else is behind it. Just as he is about to try another approach and leans forward to speak, she sits up as much as she can with one arm still tied down and places her now free hand under his jaw in a fist, her knuckles pressed against his neck. He freezes but looks at her with such compassion she is tempted for a moment to smack him instead.
“Regardless, if I was under the influence of trigger scent right now, you’d be dead. And I’d have to live with it. I always have to live with it. With the dead by my hand, with how since I woke up and you called me ‘doll’ I had already calculated 3 ways to get out of these restraints and 17 ways to kill you. Because I can’t turn it off. Ever. It’s. Who. I. Am.”
She slowly lowers her hand and neither say anything for a while. She undoes the rest of her restraints while steadfastly not looking at him and he does nothing to stop her. But he doesn’t leave, which confuses and annoys her. Instead, he stays, just breathing calmly and waiting.
Finally she looks up, expecting to see recrimination or disappointment on his face but instead sees nothing but understanding. She sighs when what she wants to do is scream. His stubbornness is a trait she hates they have in common. She lays back down, intending on waiting him out. It’s another type of battle they’ve had before.
Down the hall Steve has finally stopped shouting but no one comes to check on them. She imagines them all sitting in the common room that had once erupted into chaos by her flashback, Tony and Bruce hunched after their chastisement, Steve glowering but once again calm, and all waiting for whatever might come next. The sun is probably setting by now, her day of relaxation gone. Just when that book was getting good too...
She sighs, giving in and hating James Barnes just a tiny bit. “Maybe the Asgardians have something,” she starts and Bucky nods, accepting the idea. “And I want Vision there…” She rattles off a list of other conditions, refusing to look at Bucky, to see his obnoxious smile of victory.
No, this was not how she thought her day would go at all.