#THIS REPLY IS BASICALLY SAYRE BEING SHOOK

[caphasamericasass]

The Tin Man and the Viper PART TWO

Bucky Barnes x OC

Sucky Summary: AU Post Civil War Steve Rogers returns from Wakanda with a partially repaired Bucky Barnes to the Avengers compound.  Excited to introduce his first best friend to his BFF of the 21st century (OC), he’s shocked to discover that a deep change has occurred in her from when they were last united.  Bucky’s never been one for puzzles but finds some solace in her silence in a new world that’s spinning out of their control.  

Word Count: 1.1+

Characters: Steve, Bucky, Natasha, OC

Warnings: None Yet

PART ONE

Bucky’s POV

It’s hard not to watch her spar, I’ll give her that.  Her movements are fluid and graceful—a young Natalia Romanova still learning. Romanoff is the only person she has allowed to train with her since her return.  We sat down with the iron twat my first official night with the Avengers after our run in in the kitchen.  Stark doesn’t seem concerned, but it doesn’t appear to be that whatever is happening with her is something the Avengers want to talk about aside from Steve.  I myself don’t see what the big deal is either, I mean pretty, mute, and a little neurotic to keep things interesting sounds like the about ideal dame to me.  

I can see her perfectly from the weight bench sending high kicks right over Romanoff’s head as she ducks gracefully out of Estella’s way.  Steve asked her this morning if she might want to get in the ring with us today as he bragged to her about me being a boxing champ back in the day, but she just smiled sweetly and shook her no.

Suddenly there’s a blur of flesh obstructing my view, it belongs to Steve—I’m momentarily impressed with myself for knowing that without meeting his eyes or tuning into his voice. I peel my eyes from the dueling girls somewhat reluctantly, and grunt, “whadya want, Steve?”

“Stark called a team meeting,” he replies.

“Isn’t that your job?”

Steve scoffs.  “I let him be second in command to coddle his delicate ego.  He get his knickers in a twist since he, you know,” he gestures at all the equipment surrounding us in the Tower’s gym, “pays for all this stuff.”  I nod with a sense of understanding, but I don’t recall Howard being so controlling.  Of course things always change after war.  

Steve is smirking at me and I briefly wonder if I’ve missed something.  “What?”

“Should I get the girls or would you like to do the honors?”

“Punk,” I mutter.  I stand and toss my towel into my standard army issue duffle bag with no intent on saying anything to the assassin and the mute.

Steve chuckles. “Widow! Error! Meeting in the eighty-first floor conference room in fifteen minutes!”

They pause instantly for Romanoff to respond.  “You want us to walk in there smelling like Maximoff’s running shoes?”

I look up to see Estelle crack an out of place smile and wrinkle her nose slightly.  It’s almost cute.  Almost.

“Apparently Stark has a fetish for stinky teammates.”

I’d never heard anyone address Estelle as anything aside from that, or more affectionately as Stella. “Where does that codename come from?”

“Oh, Error?  It’s short for ‘User Error’.  When Stella was brought to the attention of the Avengers, it was because she hit Stark’s radar as an alleged hacker.  Her abilities include technology and electrical energy manipulation and she wreaked havoc on the Stark Enterprise servers to use his GPS to locate missing mutants on an X-Men mission.  Normally the X-Men would avoid any interaction with the Avengers or other any government agencies for that matter, but it was an emergency and they thought with her abilities she’d be able to get in and out completely undetected.  But the truth is, at the time Stella knew about as much about computers as I do.”

“That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” I say, mostly because I don’t know a damn thing about the X-Men.  Steve mentioned them once or twice in Wakanda, but genetic mutations occurring in nature outside of Hydra reek of suspicious activity.  It’s hard for me to grasp that normal people are born this way, born like the twins.  Steve said that there’s genetic explanation to that too but it all goes right over my head. I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about.

“She grew up in the Swamps, Buck.  It’s not exactly like Silicon Valley.”  I have no idea where ‘Silicon Valley’ is, but apparently it’s not the Everglades.  We headed towards the exit of the gym after gathering our belongings whereas the girls bee lined towards the locker room. “She wasn’t incredibly computer literate outside of the basics.  She had raw ability and had just joined the X-Men to figure out how to use it.  Long story short, she basically ended up triggering all these crazy alarms that Stark had installed in his systems as emergency contingency plans for incredibly advanced hackers.  He said it should have been impossible for someone of her incompetency to bulldoze their way through the system like a digital bull in a china shop.  At first he was mad, but he called me a soon as he discovered the identity of the girl.”

“Granddaughter of a Howling Commando?  How’d the Frenchy even end up in the states anyhow?”

“You don’t happen to remember a nurse by the name of Gloria Sayre?  Tiny little thing with a nice, slow southern drawl.”

Doesn’t ring a single bell. I shake my head from right to left.

“Well after you…were no longer in action…they got together.  Funny thing is, she told him she was from New Orleans, the Paris of America,” Steve says.  He’s got a glimmer of far away nostalgia in his eyes as we step into an elevator that will take us to the eighty-first floor.  I nearly wish I was capable of remembering enough things to feel nostalgic about them, but instinct immediately screams that an unnecessary weakness and I brush my envy aside.  “But as it turned out, old Gloria lived a few cities and one state away, in the swampland of Biloxi, Mississippi.  I heard all this from Tony who said that Howard had written it in an old journal of his he started keeping at the end of the war when record keeping became an afforded luxury.  Howard had written that Jacques was livid, but by the time they reached the south Gloria was already pregnant.  Stella just about confirmed all of this when we finally met.  I was fairly adamant about getting her on the team—a descendant of Jacques, a genetic modern marvel!  Who could have imagined.”

“So does that mean that Frenchy was…well was Frenchy a mutant too then, and he never told anyone? Was that why he was so good with explosions?”  I ask, my brain beginning to run wild faster than common sense can catch up to it.  

“Of course not, Buck. You spent all that time with him in the POW cells, I think you’d remember that.”

Not likely, I think.  We step out of the elevator and begin down a maze of hallways as Steve tries reassure me that Jacques was not a freak like his offspring.

“Mutation is a gene that can be dormant if possessed.  Jacques could’ve had it and never known, or Gloria, or more likely it came from Arthur Sinclair’s line.  Stella’s father.”

“Yeah?  What’s Sinclair’s deal?” I ask as we step into the room.  The Maximoff’s, the android, Stark, and Bird Brain are already there in civilian clothes not drenched in sweat.

Steve sighs.  “That’s a whole other story.”

PART THREE