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“What do we have here?”
Steve sighed, shoulders drooping low as he shoved his hands even further into the grey hoodie’s pocket. His eyes snapping towards his companion when he felt Bucky stiffening up next to him. The brunet’s own hoodie which was a size too small since it had been liberated from the drier at a laundromat, clung to the soldier like a second skin. Even with his head bowed and the dark blue hood up hiding his face, the captain could see ever muscle in Bucky’s body tense in preparation for an ambush.
Sliding a hand out of his pocket, Steve gently grabbed the soldier’s shoulder in a reassuring gesture. One that doubled as a foothold to pull the Winter Soldier back if he should choose to engage. Glanced back down the alleyway, Steve couldn’t resist letting out another sigh at the sight of two dark haired boys barely in their teens blocking the only exit and the captain mentally cursed himself for leading them into a dead-end in an attempt to avoid the police.
Bucky had said they were being followed and when he’d discreetly looked around, he’d spotted the cop car creeping along the streets instantly. Afraid they had been recognized, Steve had pulled them down the nearest dark entrance in a hopes to loss their tails only for the cop car to pass by without incident but they had waited to make sure the officers didn’t double back which proved to be a mistake.
“Look sons, we don’t want any trouble. We’re just passing through,” the captain did his best to ward off mugging. He really didn’t want to have to fight children, it would draw too much attention and that wasn’t something they could afford at the moment, not to mention they were children. Steve could have just handed over their wallets and be done with it; however, with SHIELD gone and the limitless fund transfers from Stark no longer available to him, he needed what little cash he had to keep under the radar.
“Passing through you say? Here on work or pleasure?” the kid on the right sneered, arms crossing over his chest causing the red jacket he wore to shift open further to reveal a Captain America’s shield with what was clearly a self-drawn giant red circle with a backslash over the top of his symbol. The sight of the t-shirt had Steve wincing and he could feel Bucky bristling under his hand.
“Kid, I don’t think you know who you’re messin’ with,” the soldier growled, his Brooklyn accent tainting his words as he shrugged off Steve’s hand and took a threatening step forward.
Neither of the boys backed down, an action that had both the super-soldiers startled. Not that they showed it, Steve remembered getting beaten up by bullies numerous times and any signs of weakness were pounced on. He wasn’t about to let a couple of muggers see him falter.
“I think we do,” the second boy snorted, drawing two pairs of blue eyes towards him as he swung his backpack off and threw it to the side. Like the other kid, he wore red in the form of a long-sleeved shirt which might have been the color of their gang. The black jeans he had on also had a hand drawn Captain America shield crossed out on the lower right pant leg, yet it was the red star crossed out on the right leg that grabbed Steve’s attention because it was the exact replica of the star on Bucky’s mechanical arm.
“Old man, I don’t think you know who you’re messin’ with,” Anti-Captain Shirt cracked his knuckles in his gloved hand, turning towards the other teen. “I call the bastard; you can have the asshole."
“Either way works for me,” No Red Star shrugged in between rolling his shoulder as a prized fighter would do before entering the ring. Steve hurried to put himself in front of Bucky and between the two teens, holding up his hands in peace.
“This doesn’t need to end in violence. You can still walk away and we won’t report any of this to the police,” the blond gave out his final warning, hoping the idle threat was enough to get them to back off.
“I’d think they’d be more incline to arrest you than listen to any thing you had to say, Cap,” Anti-Captain Shirt snarled, hazel eyes glistening in glee at the notion of him behind bars.
Steve wasn’t given the chance to even pounder how these two kids knew who he was, let alone to react before Bucky was surging passed him, swinging his right arm towards the closest teen. The captain was only partially relieved since the soldier wasn’t using his enhanced metal arm. Steve was stunned when the red long-sleeved shirt teen leap over his friend in an astonishing display of flexibility he’d only ever seen on Natasha to grab hold of Bucky’s arm in mid-air and, using his own momentum, swung. The kid land on his feet. Bucky wasn’t so lucky and ended up on his ass having been thrown off balance at the teen’s counter-attack.
Captain America cursed, noticing the change in his friend’s posture and rushed forward intending to tackle the kid out of the way. He didn’t have to hear the whirs of the mechanical arm engaging to know the Winter Soldier was now in control and the two boys were his targets. Steve wasn’t about to let the teens get hurt just because of their foolishness.
However, the kid must have seen him coming – how, Steve didn’t know, not when No Red Star’s back was turned to him – and in another move which the captain wasn’t expecting from the young teenager, he vaulted over Steve, delivering a well place kick to his back. The force behind the kick coupled with his inertia behind his initial charge had Captain America crashing to the ground. It was only years of combat training and muscle memory which had him ducking into a tumble and skidding to a stop in a crouched position instead of landing flat on his face.
Despite his nose not meeting the hard pavement of the ground, it did connect with a solid fist when he turned in time to receive a punch to the face and this time, he fell back into a bunch of trashcans. The clattering of metal and plastic echoed as if in the distance as Steve brought up his arm to whip his face. Pulling his hand away, blue eyes looked down to see blood smeared across the fabric of his hoodie before looking up to see No Red Star standing a few feet in front of him not even phased while Anti-Captain stood a few feet back. Both glaring at him.
“What did I ever do to you?” Captain America demanded, spitting a mouthful of blood to the side and keeping track of the Winter Soldier silently sneaking up behind the teens. Steve wasn’t that worried though, he saw a hint of Bucky still in those eyes and knew his best friend wouldn’t harm the kids, just knock them unconscious. He just needed to buy the soldier time. “Why are you even doing this? If you know who I am, you know you can’t win.”
“From where I’m standing? I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” No Red Star snorted as the Winter Soldier got in position behind his pal.
A smirk formed on Steve’s lips as the soldier wrapped an arm around the Anti-Captain, putting him in a sleeper hold. “Are you sure?”
The teenager followed his eyes back behind him in time witness Bucky’s bionic arm tightening around his friend’s neck. Captain America’s smile faltered when instead of struggling the other boy simply reached up with his right hand and gripped the metal around his arm. Ever so slowly, he pried the soldier’s arm away from his neck with barely any resistance. The Winter Soldier tried to compensate and take the kid out, but the dark haired teen brought his left heel down on the soft spot of Bucky’s foot and proceed to throw the large man over his shoulder.
The Winter Soldier landed hard on his back a few paces from Steve. However, blue eyes were fixated on the Anti-Captain’s right arm instead of sweeping over his friend in search of injuries. Somehow, in the small scuffle, the teen’s jacket sleeve had torn off revealing gleaming silver with a faint blue glow coming from underneath the metal plating.
“StarkTech, so much fuckin superior to that HYDRA piece of shit,” the teenager smirked, rotating his shoulder and flexing his hand in a natural movement that Bucky’s arm was incapable of doing when he saw Steve staring. “Courtesy of my mechanic, after the Fall of SHIELD took my real arm and my mother in the conflict. All because of you and fucken HYDRA, but my mechanic said not to blame you, that you were fighting the good fight and it wasn’t your fault. And I believed him, I looked up to you until you took him away from me too!
“You want to know what you did to me?” the teenager seethed, taking a step closer as the servos in his arm whirred angrily and the blue glow intensified. “You took away everything from me. My arm, my family, my fuckin life. You took it all away.”
“Harley-” No Red Star stepped forward, placing a hand on the cool metal which was quickly shrugged off as Anti-Captain – Harley, Steve’s mind correct – rounded on him.
“Don’t you Harley me, Peter, he’s the reason why your godfather’s dead. And he doesn’t care!”
“I know,” No Red Star – Peter – hissed out, “you don’t have to tell me. I’ve love to have another shot at both of them for what they did, but we’re going to be late! Do you really want to be late on account of them?”
The glare that was barely spared in the super-soldiers’ general direction was spine chilling but those brown eyes seemed to soften when they looked back over at Peter.
Taking a deep breath, Harley closed his eyes and shook his head. “No…no, I’m sorry. You’re right Pete. He deserves better than this, let’s-let’s go.”
“Yeah, come on. If we hurry, we can stop off and get you a new jacket, we don’t want to arrive looking like we’re just in a fight,” Peter gave a soft, if strain, smile as he turned his back on the Steve and Bucky to pick up his backpack and completely ignoring their existence.
“I don’t know, he’d have liked that,” Harley grinned halfheartedly, throwing his arm around the teen who let out a bark of laughter.
Bucky didn’t understand why Steve had insisted on following the two boys. He would have left them and made a strategic retreat, since the teenagers had identified them and obviously held a grudge. However, Bucky would also admit, if only to himself, that the two dark haired boys intrigued him too. The one boy – Harley, if he remembered correctly – had an arm similar to his and yet it was better, his own arm hadn’t stood a chance. Something he hadn’t thought possible.
Then there was the other boy – Peter – who clearly had some kind of training with the way he had managed to take him down and dodge the captain. He had to have a form of super-strength, he made Steve bleed with only a punch. Not that Bucky had gotten away unscratched either, Harley had crushed part of his bionic arm which hadn’t been responding right anyways. Not after Stark had ripped it off in their fight in Siberia.
The doctors in Wakanda had done their best to fix it before reattached the limb, but there was only so much the technological advance people could do. They had been isolated form the world for so long that they didn’t understand some of the mechanics of the arm. It wasn’t that the limb was inferior or superior to their creations, but – for lack of a better word – it was alien to them and they had to puzzle out how to use their tech to jerry-rig something which would allow his arm to function again.
After seeing Harley’s arm in action, and if he and Stark were on speaking terms, he definitely would have had the guy to take a look at his arm. Maybe even have him built him a new one judging by how well the teenager’s arm had performed. Although, his prosthetic did have a few more offensive features which would have taken Harley and Peter out if he had intending to seriously hurt or kill them.
Still, the Winter Soldier didn’t understand why Steve had made them change their clothing and trail after the duo. So far, they had been true to word and had stopped by a store to replace Harley’s destroyed jacket and while the teenager searched for one that fit, Peter answered a call from some named Rikki demanding to know where they were at. He’d assured Rikki they were on their way and asked if James was already there. Bucky had startled upon hearing his given name since it was so rarely spoken, but settled back down when Steve bumped his shoulder.
They ending up hooping on the subway and seated at one end of the car to watch the two teens at the other end via reflections off the glass. Neither Peter or Harley noticed them as they tinkered with something Peter had pulled out of his backpack. Instead, they spent the whole time working on whatever it was as they rode the train to the end of the line.
Bucky’s mood soon changed when the two dark haired teenagers met up with a two redheaded teenagers who were also wearing red and a small brunette wearing a golden sundress with a red satin belt outside the cemetery. Immediately, the youngest child let go of the tall teenaged girl’s hand and slotted her tiny silver fingers into Harley’s matching set. With a solemn air the group made their way into the graveyard.
Steve looked hesitant to follow, but a bump to his shoulder had the two WWII veterans shadowing the children the best they could through the mausoleum without being noticed. A difficulty which increased when they left the confines of the building and make their way out in the opened grassy plane towards a small empty patch of freshly turned soil under the lone tree in the area. The two super-soldiers hung back in the mausoleum, hidden from view and yet, due to their enhanced senses, they could hear every whispered word spoken.
There was a long stretch of silence as Peter fiddle with the item he and Harley had been fixing and the others just stood quietly around the grave.
“I don’t know how to begin or even what to say,” Harley admitted, breaking the solemn stretch of silence.
The auburn haired teenaged boy – who Bucky was assuming was either Rikki or James, but he was assuming it was the latter rather than the former because his voice hadn’t sounded like the one on the other end of the phone – snorted and shook his head. “I don’t think any of us know what to say. He always seemed so-so-”
“So invincible,” the teenaged girl on the verge of womanhood offered – and she was definitely Rikki by the sound of her voice – which had James nodding his head.
“Yeah, invincible. I don’t think any of us were prepared for this.”
“We should have been,” Harley muttered darkly, drawing the others’ attention to him. “We’re all fucken strays after all. Well, save for Pete.”
“I’m not sure if I should be insulted or not for not being included in there.”
“No, I get what he’s saying. We all had no place to go and he took us in like a box of stray kittens dumped on the side of the street during a rainstorm. But you Peter? You are-were his family, you were his godson,” Rikki muttered, rubbing her elbow. “The rest of us… the rest of us he could have turned his back on without any guilty, but he didn’t. He didn’t. He took us in.”
“I was a stray too,” Peter whispered, hanging his head low. “I had Aunt May and Uncle Ben for a while, and then only Aunt May, he didn’t have to have anything to do with me once my parents died. He was friends with my mother but never got along with dad and after they died, he was always there when I need him. He came and pulled me out of the rain too.
“After Uncle Ben died – he was in some business meeting or another in Japan – but somehow-somehow he knew and when I woke up the next day, he was sitting at my bedside in my small tacky room waiting for me. I broke down in his arms and he let me. When I was finished crying, he built me back up.”
“The mechanic likes to build, he built me and big brother’s arms after the flying ships fell from the sky and took mommy away to heaven,” the small child spoke up sadly, eying her arm which had said brother squeezing her hand tightly.
“Yeah, Sophie, he did like to build. Our mechanic is-was a builder, the dust hadn’t even settled after the Fall of SHIELD and he was already at the hospital, building our lives back from the rubble,” Harley chocked out a sound between a laugh and a sob.
Rikki placed a hand on Harley’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “He was good at that. I didn’t even know him when he came in my life like a whirlwind of words and hand gestures. I thought I was gonna go into the system when Grandmamma Barnes passed-”
If it hadn’t been for Steve’s quick action of covering his mouth, Bucky’s curse would have given away their location. As it was, it was only because of his friend holding him up that he didn’t collapse to the ground. Now that he was looking – really looking – at the auburn haired girl, he could see a lot of his sister in her features, especially in her eyes. She had Rebecca’s beautiful eyes.
“Rikki,” Peter despondently voice drew Winter Soldier’s attention back to the children as the teenager boy reached forward, wrapping what could only be Bucky’s grandniece in a hug to keep the girl from falling apart.
“He didn’t deserve this,” Rikki’s voice cracked as her hands fisted at her sides and Peter just hugged her tighter.
“No one deserved this, no one deserves to be betrayed by their friends and left to die,” the redhead teenage boy growled out. “They might not have cared about him, but he was all the family I had. He didn’t even flinch when I turned up on his doorstep asking for asylum. Just opened his door wider to let me in. Nor did he turn me over when he figured out I was one of HYDRA’s genetic experiment grown in a fucking lab. He still treated me like a human and how did I repay him? My father killed.”
“James Rogers!” Rikki broke Peter’s hold on her and took a step forward to slap the teenager across the face. “Don’t you dare say that. You might have been created from Steven Roger’s DNA but he wasn’t your father-”
Bucky’s head snapped towards Steve in time to see the color drain from his face. Judging by his face alone, this was news to the captain. He hadn’t known HYDRA had been trying to clone him with a sample of his blood. However, the Winter Soldier had heard rumors, but none of the test subjects had survived the accelerated growing process. After too many failures and without enough of the sample left to continue on with the project, HYDRA had given up, which was why Bucky hadn’t said anything to his best friend.
Maybe he should have.
Rikki was still talking when Bucky finally tuned back in. “-if anything, if anything he-” the auburn haired teenager pointed to the gravestone “-was our father. We might haven’t called him that to his face, but he was the only father we knew. The only father that was there for us and didn’t walk out-” a glance at Harley and Sophie “-or died before we could really form any memories,” a glance towards Peter before her eyes fell to her own hands. “He was our father.”
“Big sister’s right,” Sophie spoke up, detangling herself from Harley and walking forward to place a gentle kiss on the headstone. “Love you, Daddy.”
They waited until long after the group was gone before creeping out of their hiding places and towards the headstone. The small gadget that Harley and Peter had tinkered with was left on top of the headstone flush with the ground, illuminating the engraved name with a blue light in the twilight that had fallen upon them. It was a simple script with just a name and the date of birth and death. Nothing more, nothing less when it should have been so much bigger, grander and when Steve read the script, he fell to his knees with a broke sob.
Anthony Stark