Chapter Text
“He’s coming back down.”
Ignoring the man’s comment —he was nothing more than an OXE lackey with a big mouth— Valentina scanned the cloudy night sky until she saw him again. A blur of white against the expanse of darkness, fluttering and flickering like…
Like he was on fire.
As the shooting star of pure power that had once been Robert Reynolds aimed for earth, Valentina raised her voice.
“Track him,” she barked to whoever was listening, which should’ve been everyone if they knew what was good for them. “Triangulate location, move in, and get him back here, back to us, alive.”
Resolutely ignoring the fact that she didn’t know if anyone, even people injected with the power of a thousand burning suns, could survive a fall like that, she shrugged off Mel’s hand on her shoulder and marched towards the ops truck, her makeshift headquarters in this desert wasteland. Even if Reynolds didn’t make it, she could at least study his corpse, figure out how to come back better, stronger. She’d read Reynolds’ intake file— a washed up addict from Sarasota Springs couldn’t possibly be the Sentry Project’s ceiling, it didn’t make any goddamn sense.
So, better. Stronger. The plan wasn’t just back on track, it was more lucrative than it had ever been. She spun, clapping her hands once, loud enough to make Mel flinch and look up from her ever-present tablet. God, she was a flighty, stupid little thing. Loyal, though, which was the best character trait to have in a pinch.
“Yes?” Mel asked, poised to start taking notes.
“What’s the internal temp back there?” Val jerked a thumb at the Vault, quiet and unassuming, looming over the Utah desertscape even as, inside, it burned. “Did we send in fire suppression yet?”
“Fire suppression?” Mel repeated. Again, stupid. “We set off the incinerator to destroy evidence, that’s what it’s doing—“
“Pivot, Melanie, pivot.” Val snapped her fingers as she continued to march. “I want you to start it up again, all of it. Construction in New York, the focus groups for design, the containment and termination tech. Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mel said.
“And make sure the fire suppression works,” she said. “When the internal temp of that fuckin’ furnace gets low enough, send in extraction. I want every cradle we had brought out, no matter what’s inside. Have it catalogued and presented to me as soon as possible.”
Mel stopped in her tracks, clutching her tablet to her chest. “Wait— What do you want me to look for?”
“Anything useful,” Val hissed through her teeth. “Believe me, Mel, you’ll know it when you see it.”
—
When Alexei saw the meteor streak across the desert, he was sure he was sleep deprived because, to his sleep deprived brain, it looked like the fiery ball contained the outline of a man. But, no matter how many times he scrubbed his gloved hands across his eyes, it still stayed, bright and burning behind his eyelids every time he blinked.
A long, long time ago, he’d been told meteors were dragons of death and ruin. Fiery tails, fiery breath, fiery scales running down fiery backs. Nothing but omens, harsh and dangerous. Overhead, this specific comet juddered on its path, sending smaller bits raining down as it raced through the sky.
“What the…” Alexei muttered, eyes not even close to being on the road, as he revved the limo to crawl ahead a little faster. Yelena’s life was on the line, he didn’t have time to think about meteors or men on fire or dragons or folklore. Shaking his head to dislodge the image, even as it still burned bright in the forefront of his mind, he drove on.
—
Bucky Barnes hadn’t become a member of Congress for the perks, which was good, because he was flying commercial. The only planes going to CNY in Moab, the closest airport to Mel’s phone pings, were small crafts with three seats to a row and barely any passengers. Even with the dead flight and the tiny plane, he still had to pay out his ass for bike storage, and there was no way that was going to be covered by any sort of travel stipend.
It was fine, though. He’d find what he was looking for and the impeachment committee would get him back to DC faster than fast, because if there was one thing the goddamn impeachment committee loved, it was tangible evidence. And by the time Bucky came up with his tangible evidence, enough to screw de Fontaine eight ways to hell, the return flight would already be prepped.
The whole plane rocked, and Bucky heard the pilot curse all the way from the cockpit. From his spot in the aisle, he leaned over the empty window seat and cranked up the cover. Nothing but black sky, broken up every once in a while by swathes of gray clouds and stars, bright as hell and nothing like DC.
Nothing like New York, either, for that matter.
And then, Bucky saw what the pilot did.
He loved seeing comets. Ages and ages ago, his ma thought they were good luck. Him and Steve used to climb fire escapes and stare up at smog, trying to catch a glimpse of one. It wasn’t until he was in the army, deep in Italy with nothing above him but trees and stars, that he finally saw his first— a blinding streak of white light. Blink and miss, there and gone. He’d turned and looked down, about to tell Steve to make a wish, but remembered that Steve was back home, safe and sound.
“Wish you were here, buddy,” he’d said to the sky, tongue in cheek, because who’d ever wish to be where he was?
A battle, a capture, an injection, and a bout of torture (his first, but not his last), and his wish came true. Bucky’d seen plenty of comets since then; deep in the Russian wilderness, on mission in Siberia and Newfoundland and Nevada and Italy again, for a different cause this time, laying on his back in Wakanda, once in Delacroix on Sam’s sister’s roof. He hadn’t wished on one since Steve.
Now, on a tiny plane he’d Congressman Barnes’ed his way onto, on yet another goddamn mission but with no one to blame but himself, he watched the comet trail its way across the sky. It was… Bigger than comets usually were. Had almost no tail, either.
Really, it looked more like a fireball. A fireball with a shadow in its center, a five-pronged shadow that could’ve been the outline of a…
Bucky blinked, and both the outline and the comet were out of sight, obscured by clouds.
—
“For the last time, Walker, I don’t know how it happened, just drive!”
Yelena fought the urge to slide further down in her seat as Ava glared and John muttered something under his breath as he gave the truck more gas. It was a huge, unwieldy piece of work, but he drove it like it was second nature, weaving it down the mountain with the type of skill and dexterity Yelena wasn’t sure she’d be able to pull off. The truck could take a beating, though, so she’d probably just take the next left and figure it out on the way down.
“You’re telling me he shot up into the fucking sky,” John scoffed back as Ava threw up her hands.
“You saw it, same as me!”
“I saw it, sure. Doesn’t mean I believe it.”
“Val was experimenting on him,” Yelena said. She dug in the breast pocket of her suit, unfolding the papers she stole from the Vault. Bright gold and dark blue— something called the Sentry Project. Ava snatched them and smoothed them out on the truck’s dash, flipping on a dim overhead light even as John protested.
“The power of a thousand burning suns,” she read. “Delusions of grandeur, much?”
“Are those hairstyles? None of those would look good on Bob.” John peered over Ava’s shoulder and she swatted him.
“Drive!”
“I don’t know what she did to him, just that it apparently made him bulletproof,” Yelena said, gathering up the papers again and re-folding them. Ava leaned forward, looking up through the windshield.
“And into a human meteor,” she said.
“Yes, yes, the whole shooting into the sky thing, too.”
“No,” Ava said, grabbing Yelena by the chin and yanking her down, pointing to the sky. ”Look.”
John slammed on the brakes and Yelena skidded forward, on her knees on the floor of the truck, clinging to the dash and still looking upward. They all craned their necks and followed as…
As a ball of fire, a suspiciously Bob-shaped ball of fire, streaked across the Utah sky.
“You think…” John trailed off.
“Yeah,” Ava breathed.
Yelena blinked, the brightness seared behind her eyes. “Holy shit.”
John revved the engine again and they lurched forward. “He’s heading that way—” he pointed “—and that’s where we’re going, too. If he lands—”
At that very moment, Bob landed. A mushroom cloud of sand burst into the air as the silent desert night was shattered; the noise rocked the truck first, the sonic boom of an explosion, but then the actual explosion came. Yelena braced herself as the truck flipped, skidding down the embankment as the three inside rattled around, yelling and cursing and clinging to anything they could keep a hold on.
The truck rolled onto its side, and Yelena coughed out a pained breath as Ava’s elbow dug into her stomach even harder with John on top of her.
“Get off,” she managed to grunt. John muttered something unintelligible as he kicked upwards, slamming through the driver’s side door before hauling himself out of it, reaching back in to offer Ava his hand. She took it, waving her ridiculous heeled boots in Yelena’s face as John lifted her out. He poked his head back through the wrecked door and gestured.
“C’mon,” he grunted. She lunged up, clasping his arm at the wrist, and used the window for leverage to haul herself up onto the truck’s side. For a moment they all stood there, breathing heavy and looking for Bob.
The mushroom cloud dispersed as quick as it came, blown away by the freezing nighttime desert wind that was currently cutting through Yelena’s suit, but the crater was visible. Ava pointed.
“How far d’you guys think—”
“Looks about two klicks, give or take.” John jumped down from the beached truck and Yelena followed suit, listening as Ava grumbled something under her breath about ah, yes, two klicks away, military bastard as she brought up the rear.
“We have to get to him before OXE does,” Yelena said, and that was apparently enough, because the three of them simultaneously broke into a run. Sand pounded under Yelena’s boots as she pressed on, feeling every single bump and bruise from the past forty-eight hours as her body was jolted and jostled. She was tired, she was hungry, and there was definitely sand where sand should never be —protective compression layer her ass— but she still kept up with Ava and John as they sprinted towards the crater.
“There!” Ava pointed, and they all gathered around her. There, indeed, was Bob, on his back sprawled in the middle of the dirt, a few yards deep. Mouth open, eyes shut, head knocked back. Ava tilted her head. “He’s not…”
His chest rose and fell as Ava’s question petered out. Definitely not dead, then. Yelena skidded down the crater’s embankment on her side and the other two followed; they hauled Bob to his feet even as he flopped around like any normal unconscious person would. However, unlike any other normal unconscious person who’d just flown through the sky and blown a hole in the Utah desert, Bob was uninjured. Not a cut or a scrape or a bruise on him.
His scrubs, too, were mostly intact. Shot through by a couple machine guns back at the Vault, but still covering him, for the most part. The fireball he was engulfed in apparently hadn’t touched him or his clothes, either, although he smelled vaguely like smoke as his left arm slipped and he fell all over Yelena. She pushed him upright, and pushed him again for good measure so he fell into John this time.
“Jesus.” John caught him, steadying him on his unsteady feet as well as he could. “Let’s get him back to the truck, all right? We can drive as far as we can on the gas we have, and figure out what to do when it runs out.”
“Fantastic plan,” Yelena muttered. Ava raised an eyebrow.
“None of you smelled the gasoline as we were ditching the truck?”
Two klicks behind them, the truck exploded.
The sound rocked the crater, sending sand and small dirt chunks flying. Yelena caught Bob again as John pushed him back.
“Fucking fantastic,” he said. “So… Walking?”
“Walking,” Ava responded, and together the three of them half-dragged, half-pulled Bob out of the crater. John hauled him onto his shoulders like a backpack, keeping hold on his arms as Bob’s chin rested on the top of his head and the rest of him dragged behind. It was the best they could do, given the circumstances.
As the sun rose, they kept walking. John knew of a military outpost somewhere out in the haze, so they headed that way, stumbling slowly with their newfound dead weight. A few hours in, Yelena found a crushed protein bar and a half-eaten beef stick in one of her suit pockets, and, out of the kindness of her heart, shared both with John and Ava. None of them had any water, though, and as the desert got hotter, the sweat running down Yelena’s forehead began to dry up.
“We have to figure something out,” she said through parched lips. She’d stopped licking them an hour ago; her tongue was fuzzy and dry, and it didn’t help anyway. “See any of those cactuses anywhere, Walker?”
“It’s cacti,” John grunted as he readjusted his grip on Bob. “And they wouldn’t do us any good now, anyway. They’re only full of juice like that at night.”
“Wonderful,” Ava muttered. She had her helmet on, and, not for the first time, Yelena wondered if she had some sort of air conditioning going on in there. “First person to drop dead offers up their body for sustenance, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Yelena snorted out a laugh. “Sure, you all can eat me.”
They slogged on, the sun continued to rise, and, with every step through the burning hot sand, it seemed like less and less of a joke.
—
Alexei’s vision was blurred, but he still saw her.
He’d be able to see her in a crowd of thousands. Through any obstruction, in any desert, no matter how desolate or wide. He pointed at her, yelled her name even though there wasn’t anyone else in the limo to hear, laughed louder than he had in a very, very long time.
There were others with her, too. Friends. Oh, she was doing so well.
Although, maybe the others with her weren’t. One man dragged another behind him, slowly, like he was running on fumes. Alexei could relate after nearly a full day of driving, and this new man didn’t even have the limo’s stocked bar to keep him going. The other figure, the one that had to be dragged, was wearing half a tattered shirt and matching pants and didn’t seem like much.
Although, if he was with Lena, maybe he was everything. She always was destined for big, big things.
Alexei drummed on the wheel of his limo as he pressed on the gas as hard as he could. It was time to go and get his girl. His beautiful little girl and her odd group of friends. Shining and bright and conquering the desert; maybe the best thing he’d ever seen.
—
“We’re not friends, Alexei.” Yelena crossed her arms, sliding down in the front seat of her dad’s limo. It was still weird, the thought of Alexei driving people around in the red hunk of metal. “We’re just…”
“Aquaintences,” Ava said, with Bob slumped beside her. Empty water bottles littered the floor, the minibar immediately raided after they piled into the limo. The Big Gulp that Alexei had warned them against was kicked somewhere off to the side, thankfully ignored. John scoffed from the far back.
“Disposable delinquents. Go Thunderbolts.”
Alexei gasped dramatically as Yelena tried her hardest to sink into the leather seats. She was covered in sand, the entire limo smelled like ass, and Alexei was never going to let her hear the end of this whole Thunderbolts shit. God, this whole thing was getting worse by the second.
—
“Who is he, Lena?” Alexei asked quietly, or as quietly as he could, at least. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, where Bob was taking up most of the long seat, sprawled on his back with his head nearly in Ava’s lap. She was dealing with it like a champ, though, and with minimal sneers in his direction. “Been sleeping for long time.”
“His name’s Bob,” she said. “We found him in Valentina’s incinerator, or he found us, or a mix of both, maybe.”
“He’s a Valentina project?”
“As far as I know.”
“Before he turned into a shooting star and blew up half the desert,” John offered from the far back. Alexei gaped back at Bob in the rearview mirror.
“That was him?”
“You saw him?” Ava asked.
“Ghost, every person in twenty-mile radius saw him. He lit up whole world.”
“Uh, guys?” John craned his neck to look out the back window of the limo. Far in the distance, a cloud of dust billowed, and it was hot on their tail. “I think we’ve got company.”
—
Yelena braced herself as the limo was rocked by another round of bullets. She had her own gun, but it was small and useless. Unless…
Unless she could get the driver. She took a quick look over her shoulder; John had his shield up, protecting Ava and Bob’s prone body, currently on the floor of the limo as he’d rolled off the seat at the very start of the firefight.
She slid her gun from its holster and, without any fanfare, rolled down the window and levered herself out of it, hooking her legs between the seat and door to keep her balance. She raised the gun and, breathing out slowly like she’d been taught, aimed and shot.
The entire truck, machine gun and sound barrier and all, caught on fire and flipped on its nose. Yelena’s eyes flew wide as, in the driver’s seat, Alexei whooped.
That wasn’t her. That couldn’t have possibly been her.
The smoke cleared. John yelled and it echoed through the limo.
”It’s Bucky!”
—
Taking out Valentina’s hired thugs was nothing. He cut through them like a hot knife through butter, the heft of the disc launcher familiar in his left hand. It probably wasn’t great, how little he cared about the consequences, but the smell of gunpowder and the curl of smoke and the solid thud of trucks flipping on blacktop had him damning the consequences along with everyone stupid enough to work for Val in the first place.
His targets were in the other vehicle at the head of the car chase, a limo of all ridiculous things. Three people who’d been used and abused by Val to aid and abet any number of crimes, and they’d testify against her to save their own skins, easy and painless. Val would be in jail, these two-bit criminals would have eyes on them, and Bucky could finish out his term and never think about politics ever again.
All he had to do was stop that fucking limo.
Bucky raised the disc launcher. It was almost too easy.
As he took his shot, perfect like every other shot he’d taken since 1945, a figure materialized and balanced on top of the limo’s long roof. He wore tattered rags, flapping wildly in the wind.
He raised his hand, and the disc, halfway to its target, stopped in midair. It shook, quivering in stasis, making a loud, whining noise. It hitched up an octave, cutting through the desert air, before shaking harder. The noise cut out right before the disc exploded, a curling fireball that was extinguished as fast as it came.
Behind the cloud of smoke, the figure swayed once, stumbled, and fell headfirst off the roof of the still-moving limo.