Chapter Text
Be near me now, My tormenter, my love, be near me— At this hour when night comes down, When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets, When it comes with cries of lamentation, with laughter with songs; Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.
Be Near Me - Faiz Ahmed Faiz
February 11th 1945
Bucky is scraping the heel of his boot on a root, cursing quietly to himself when she appears.
The hair on the back of his neck prickles as air around him becomes charged with some unseen energy, and he hears distant cursing and a shout. He straightens, already moving towards the sound of the commotion, when he feels a sharp burning over his ribs. Bucky curses again, staggering in surprise at the pain, and he pauses on the edge of camp to ruck up the edge of his shirt. He stares, shocked.
“What the fuck,” he breathes, half in wonder, the other in horror.
Scrawled across his ribs are words, written in a dark, bloody red like a freshly formed blood-blister. Hesitantly, he brushes over the words with a shaking finger and flinches as it irritates the sensitive, tender skin.
Words? Really? In his goddamn twenties?
A faint sense of dread settles in the pit of his stomach; they’ll be a goddamn babe for half of his life- if he even manages to live through this war. He feels ill at the thought, bile rising up into his throat, and hurriedly, he pushes his shirt back down, glancing around himself to check that no one saw, but everyone’s attention is focussed on where Steve had been, hovering around Carter’s tent like a damn lovesick loon. He hurries over to the tent and tries not to pay attention to the way his shirt brushes against his mark with every movement. God, how does anyone think with these things on their skin?
“Miss?” Bucky hears Steve ask. “Miss, are you alright?”
Bucky shoulders his way through the crowd of gathered men, taking in with surprise the sight of Steve crouching over a young woman. “Captain Rogers?” she slurs, bewilderment lacing her voice. She looks dazed and disorientated, like she’s hit her head on something. “Wht’re y’dwan ‘ere?” She squints up at him, even as her head lists to the side, and Steve cradles her cheek gently.
“Ma’am?” he asks again, but the woman is already gone, eyes slipping closed as her body falls slack. For one horrifying moment, Bucky thinks she might be dead, but he catches the slight rise of her chest and he breathes out a sigh of relief.
“Where the fuck did she come from?” he asks. Dum Dum, towering beside him, merely shrugs.
“She fell outta the sky,” he rumbles, looking just as confused as the rest of them. “Almost fell on Dernier.”
“Someone get me Sawyer!” Steve snaps as he pats down the woman for injuries. She doesn’t look hurt to Bucky, but then again he never ended up getting trained for that kind of thing, for all that he seemed to have plenty of experience patching Steve up back before the war.
Sawyer shoulders his way through the circle of men, scowling at the lot of them. “Would you give us some fucking space?” he snaps, and most of the men back off, wandering back to their tents now that the interesting thing seems to have happened. Bucky remains behind with Dugan, and they watch as Sawyer checks her pulse and gently tips her head to the side, checking her for injuries.
“Is it me,” Dum Dum says suddenly, and Bucky spares him a cursory glance. “Or is she dressed real strange?”
Bucky blinks, and stares back down at the woman. Steve and Sawyer are lifting her body into a stretcher someone had the foresight to fetch for them. Now that he mentions it though, Bucky can’t stop looking; she is dressed up mighty strange, in brightly patterned tights and a grey wool sweater several times too big for her, leaves and twigs stuck in the material like she’s gone for a roll through the woods. Her hair is long and loose, and the dark strands catch in her mouth as she’s jostled by the men’s movements. Her canvas shoes are scuffed and filthy, but the bright blue stands out all the same.
“Real weird,” he confirms. They watch as she’s taken into Sawyer’s tent, reluctant to follow them in and crowd the tent, which is small enough as it is without Steve and Dum Dum having to compete for space in there. Steve emerges not much later, but he hovers outside the tent, staring at the ground with a thoughtful expression on his face. Bucky wanders over to him.
“Well?” he asks. Steve glances up in surprise.
“Sawyer thinks she’ll be alright,” he says. His hand slips into his pocket, and he pulls out a thin, flat rectangle of dark glass. “She had this in her- uh- brassiere.” He pinks at the statement and Bucky smirks, taking the device off him.
“Weird thing for a dame to have on her, doncha think?”
“Well you’d be the expert on things dames keep in their bras, Buck.”
“Ha!” Buck says mirthlessly. He turns the device over curiously. It’s made of some kind of glass and metal composite, and he runs a finger over the small, thin buttons on its side. “What do you reckon would happen if I pressed this?” he murmurs. Steve makes a soft sound of alarm, but Bucky is already depressing the button.
The glass side lights up, and both of them start in surprise. A photograph of two women smiles up at them, wearing sunglasses. What looks like a digital clock is superimposed over the dark of their sunglasses. The photograph is in bright, clear colour, and he lets out a low whistle of appreciation. “That don’t look like no photograph I’ve ever seen,” he says. Steve hums.
“That’s- amazing,” he breathes, hunching over the thing to study it. “Look at the colours in that Bucky! And the sharpness! That’s incredible!”
“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. Suddenly, the image darkens, before going completely black.
“What?’ Steve says in alarm. He grabs at Bucky’s wrist, as though reluctant to touch the thing. “What happened to the photo?”
“Well I don’t bloody know Steve,” Bucky says irritably, though he’s just as shocked by the picture’s disappearance. “Hang on, would ya?” Experimentally, he depresses the button on the side again, and lo and behold, the picture returns. “Holy hell,” he breathes in surprise. “What do you reckon it is?”
“Dunno,” Steve murmurs. He rubs at a smear of oil on the glass with his thumb, and the picture slides upwards to reveal some kind of… well. Bucky doesn’t really know what it is, but there are little nine little white dots in a square, with the words ‘Please input your fingerprint or draw a pattern’ above it.
“What did you do?” Bucky snaps.
“I don’t know!” Steve growls back. “I just touched it!” To prove his point, he taps on one of the dots, and it turns red. They stare in surprise as the words ‘forgot password?’ pop up beneath the grid.
“I think Stark needs to see this,” Bucky says. Steve nods vehemently and plucks the device from his grip. “In the meantime I think we’d best err on the side of caution. There’s no telling where this came from; she could be Hydra, for all we know.”
Steve hums. He rubs a finger over the curved metal backing thoughtfully. “She sounded American.”
“She also knew your name,” Bucky points out. “You ever met her before?”
“No,” Steve sighs. “Never.”
That’s what I thought.” Hard to forget a face like hers. He nods towards the tent she’s being kept in. “I’d best tell Sawyer to make sure she’s secured. The last thing we want is some enemy dame running riot.”
“Sure,” Steve nods. His mouth pulls back in a grimace. “But try and be kind, alright? There’s always the possibility that she’s innocent.”
“Please,” Bucky smirks at his best friend. “When have I ever not been sweet to a dame? Women love me.”
Steve rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Now that right there- that’s what I’m afraid of.”
“You catch more flies with honey, Steve-o.”
“She ain’t a fly- she’s a woman. A real, flesh and blood woman who we know nothing about. Don’t forget that.”
Bucky flips Steve the bird, but he just laughs and does it back as he walks away. “Damn punk,” Bucky grumbles to himself, before he turns back to the tent.
The girl stays unconscious for several hours. Long enough to get Sawyer antsy about it, and Steve has popped his head in more than once to enquire if she’s still breathing.
“Shouldn’t be out for so long, Barnes,” Sawyer says as he paces the confines of the tent. He’s a tall, nervous man with a shit bedside manner and a habit of breaking pens and pencils as he thinks, but on the whole Bucky doesn’t mind him.
Bucky watches the woman- he doesn’t know if she’s sleeping or just unconscious. The handcuff around her right wrist looks alien and out-of-place, but Bucky can’t help but feel a little safer for it, though it clearly gives Sawyer the creeps, given how many times he glances over at it. “It ain’t right. Ain’t natural.”
Bucky slouches further back onto the crate he sits on. The woman is unnaturally still- nothing to prove she’s alive but the steady rise and fall of her chest and the flush of colour on her cheeks. “She’ll be fine,” Bucky sighs for the umpteenth time. He stands, groaning as he stretches tired muscles, and he nudges lightly at Sawyer’s shoulder. “You’ve been watching her for ages. I’ll take over. Go take a break. Win back that chocolate you lost to Dugan,” he orders. Sawyer grins at him, but he looks relieved.
“Sure thing, Sarge,” he smiles ruefully. “Doubt I’ll get the chocolate back though. You know what he’s like when it comes to cards.”
Bucky sighs and shakes his head. They’ve all fallen victim to Dugan’s suspiciously fortuitous luck when it comes to gambling. Even him. He sits back down on the old crate and nods towards the tent opening. Needing no further prompting, Sawyer leaves with a wry grin and a half-hearted salute. Smartass.
Bucky sighs into the silence of the tent and leans back on his hands to stare up at the canvas ceiling. It’s been patched up in places, a victim of some firefight or another no doubt. His ribs itch again, and his hand rises up to scratch them without thought. Bucky sucks in a sharp breath; his mark- fuck, he’d almost forgotten all about it! Curiosity burning in his chest, he glances about the tent surreptitiously, but the woman makes no sign of waking, and he doubts anyone’s going to come in for the next ten minutes or so. He lifts up the edge of his shirt, twisting awkwardly to see his words.
They’re just as stark as he remembers, like bloody cuts upon his skin, out of place but not wholly unwelcome, now that he’s had time to warm to them. He runs a finger over them again and shivers at the slight swelling of the skin. The writing is rounded, inelegant, but with its own charm, he supposes. Part of him wants to jump for joy, run through the camp like he’s gone soft in the head. He’s always wanted marks- always wanted to know that he truly belongs to someone. But as the years passed and his skin remained as blank as ever, he resigned himself to being one of the unlucky few. When he got drafted, Bucky had taken it in with a resigned kind of acceptance, certain he’d die in this godforsaken war.
But now? His words feel like a promise. He’ll get out of this hellhole- he will- and with any luck he’ll get to keep those looks of his, if his words are anything to go by.
Then again…
“What the hell is LARPing?”
On the stretcher, the woman twitches, and Bucky shoves his shirt down quick smart. He watches ruefully as she twitches again, her smooth face contorting into a grimace, before she breathes in sharply and tries to sit up, only to be caught by the arm cuffed to the frame.
“Jesus fuck!” the woman hisses as she flops back down onto the stretcher. Bucky’s eyes widen at the expletive- Christ, but he hasn’t heard words like that from a dame since his ma caught him stealing from Mrs Connolly two doors down. The woman, apparently, is not finished, glaring venomously up at the tent ceiling all the while. “Jane, I swear to Thor, if you manage to fix whatever clusterfuck your machine has gotten me into, I will wring your skinny fucking neck. And I do not care what you Actual God golden retriever of a boyfriend looks like, so help me I will leave you for dead in your lab, surrounded by the carnage of your stupid fucking machines. Just give the interpolator a whack, Darcy. Just fix it with some duck-tape, Darcy. It’s fine, Darcy. I do it all the time, d-”
Unable to help himself, Bucky coughs, trying to hold back his laughter, and the woman breaks off abruptly. Her face turns a bright pink and she shifts on the stretcher to stare at him with wild eyes. Bucky bites at the inside of his cheek, trying not to grin because damn, but the dame’s got a wicked mouth on her, and the angry way she’d been spitting out those words like a curse had been fascinating to watch.
She takes him in with an assessing stare, her gaze flitting over him warily. Bucky doesn’t mind; he’s had his fair share of staring too- she’s more than easy on the eyes, by his reckoning, and the sharpness of her gaze is more than endearing; he’s always had a thing for plucky women.
Coming to some sort of conclusion about him, she breathes out heavily. “Well fuck,” she says, voice slightly nasal and distinctly American, “please tell me I’ve just stumbled into an impromptu LARPing event in Central Park. What’s the date, Mister Handsome Army Dude?”
Bucky stiffens, heart stopping in his chest.
No.
No.
He clenches his jaw. It can’t be her- surely not. She’s too old- his marks aren’t even five hours old yet- it can’t be her! Desperately, he searches her face, searching for something- anything. Any sign of duplicity, but the woman only seems to cringe at his stare out of embarrassment.
“You have no idea what “LARPing is, do you?” she says tiredly. Bucky’s stare remains fixed. She rubs at her face with her free hand. “I am so, so screwed, aren’t I? Go on then, let’s rip off the proverbial Band-Aid; what’s the date?”
“Well,” Bucky finds himself saying, almost against his will, “it’s currently the eleventh, but with the way you’re running your mouth, it’ll be the twelfth in no time. But somethin’ tells me that’s not quite what you’re askin’.”
Her mouth falls open in undisguised shock, eyes growing wide. She sits up awkwardly on the stretcher, still lost for words. “I- but- you’re-”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, swallowing thickly. “But forgive me if I’m not jumpin’ for joy.”
How did she manage it? he wonders. How did she manage to make herself his soulmate? What has Hydra been doing?
“See,” he carries on, he leans forward, forearms resting on his knees. “I’ve been blank for a long time.” Bucky is proud of himself when he doesn’t stumble over the ‘b’ word; it’s always been a point of shame, something to hide behind a suave smile and charming words. “And then the funniest thing happened about five hours ago. Right around the time you fell outta the sky. Can you guess what it was?”
The woman’s brows furrow, and there’s a horrifyingly vulnerable look in her eyes that fills Bucky with a burning fury that he studiously hides behind a blank face. “Your soulmark turned up,” she rasps.
Bucky leans back on the crate, the pole supporting the tent a hard and rigid line down his back. How dare they. How dare they? Soulmates are sacred. How dare they sully it like this? The sour taste of bile rises in the back of his throat, but he smiles at the woman, a cold and lifeless thing that feels alien on his face.
“My soulmark turned up. Outta the blue. And ya know, just as the burnin’ feeling starts up, here you come, fallin’ out of the sky and almost squashin’ Dernier. But I figure, sure. Could just be a coincidence, that. Though it’s mighty fuckin’ weird you just turning up like that, and you seemed to know Steve ta boot- even though he swears he’s never met you in his life, and I’m inclined to believe him there, ‘cause you seem pretty damn hard to f-”
“Steve’s here?” the woman interrupts him, eyes lighting up. “Steve Rogers? I didn’t just hallucinate him?”
Bucky’s eyes narrow. “See now, that’s exactly the kind of ‘coincidence’ that I’m disinclined to trust. ‘Cause doll, this thing right here?” He motions between the two of them and her eyes follow the movement. “This seems right up Hydra’s alley.”
The woman (Darcy, is that her name?) blanches. “Hydra…” she breathes, eyes wide. “Holy shit, you’re Bucky Barnes.”
Bucky’s stomach flops. He stands and prowls over to her stretcher, looming above her as he fights to reign in his fury. “You shouldn’t know my name, doll,” he says coldly. “If you think knowing my name is meant to charm me, then you got another thing fucking coming.”
The woman- Darcy- stares up at him with that goddamn vulnerable look on her face, and Bucky watches with a detached kind of horror as she begins to tear up and cry. She curls back into the stretcher as broken sobs tear out of her, and something in him blanches, appalled at his behaviour. He’s never made a woman cry before; not since Becca was twelve and he said something thoughtless about her hair. Doubt creeps into his mind, cold and insidious. He wonders if she’s even Hydra- what if they made her do this? What if she’s got a family somewhere, and they’ve been threatened? It’s just like Hydra to try that. He knows nothing about this woman- only that she dresses strange, she keeps oddly futuristic pieces of technology in her underthings and she’s said his brand new words.
He sighs.
“Look,” he says, voice tight. “Whatever Hydra threatened you with, we can protect you from. You don’t gotta pretend you’re my soulmate-” she flinches at the s-word, and he falls silent. Darcy shakes her head violently and she breathes in shakily, obviously trying to compose herself.
“That’s not why I’m c-crying,” she stutters, and Bucky watches as she tugs up the sleeve of her sweater on her cuffed arm and unravels the carefully wrapped bandage on her wrist.
He catches sight of the familiar words ‘the eleventh’ and ‘the twelfth in no time’ and his chest tightens as he recognises the handwriting on her mark; the sight of it engraved into his very being. He’d know the loopy scrawl of those e’s and the precise strikes of those t’s anywhere. He glances up at her face, but there’s still not a single hint of deceit there, only an honest grief and fear.
“Hydra couldn’t manage that,” he rasps, staring back down at her soulmark. The red is brighter than his, like freshly spilled blood. “Those’re my words- my first words to you. No way they could have predicted that.”
“No.” she says emphatically. Her hand rattles in the metal handcuff and she looks away. “This is wrong. This is so, so wrong! You’re meant to be from my time!”
Bucky latches onto her words, desperate for some kind of explanation. “What are you sayin’?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it. Bucky gets the distinct impression that she doesn’t really know what to say, and his suspicion surges its ugly head. “This isn’t my time.”
Bucky thinks carefully about what she’s saying. Belatedly, he remembers that old book Steve’s ma used to love- that old science fiction novel[1] with Weena and the Morlocks and a dying Earth. He recalls loving the book as a teenager, and wonders what ended up happening to it. He pokes at the side of his cheek with his tongue. It sound ridiculous, but… well, what part of his life recently hasn’t been so?
“You sayin’ you’re a… time traveller?”
Relief floods Darcy’s face and she nods. “I can’t prove it,” she says softly.
Bucky sighs. “Stranger things have happened, I suppose” Stark needs to see her, he decides. He’s the only guy around who might be able to make sense of any of this.
Reluctantly, he draws out his pistol, gritting his teeth at the way she flinches at the sight of it, but he keeps it drawn and aimed at her when he kneels on the ground beside her. “Don’t go giving me any trouble, sweetheart.”
Darcy nods slowly, and Bucky unlocks the cuff connected to the cot and snaps it back into place over her free wrist. He tries not to notice how warm and soft her skin is beneath his grimy fingers. Even dishevelled, with dirt and leaves still sticking in her hair and tear tracks and smudged eye-makeup drying on her cheeks, he is acutely aware of how unclean he is in comparison to her.
“Where are we going?” she asks as they stand. Tentatively, he rests a guiding hand on her shoulder. The wool of her sweater is impossibly silken beneath his fingers and the threads catch on his calluses.
“To people who can actually decide if this is above my pay grade or not.”
“Stark and Carter?”
Bucky squeezes her shoulder reflexively, ill-at-ease with her abundance of knowledge. He wonders what any of them do to end up in the history books, then decides he doesn’t really want to know. “You need to stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
Bucky isn’t sure if she genuinely doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or if she’s just being facetious. “Sayin’ things like you know everything about us. S’queer.”
She pinks and stares down at the ground. “Sorry,” she murmurs. Bucky squeezes her shoulder again, and together they walk out of the tent. He watches as she blinks at the sudden change in lighting, and stoically ignores the curious looks thrown their way. He keeps his back straight at tall as they walk through camp, glaring at the men when their gazes lingers a little too long on Darcy; it’s been weeks since many of them have seen another woman besides Carter, but that doesn’t mean they should be looking at this one like that. Certainly not his soulmate. Time-traveller or not.
Steve meets them outside Stark’s tent, and he doesn’t miss the way his eyes fall on her handcuffs and the words that lie beneath them. He frowns.
“Buck-” he says warningly.
“Not a word, Rogers,” Bucky growls. “Not a fucking word.” Steve’s eyes narrow at him dangerously, but he lets it go. Bucky’s sure he’ll get a hiding later, but can’t find it in himself to care. “Is Stark in there?”
He nods. “With Agent Carter. She say anything?”
Bucky glances off to the side, where a couple of the men are hovering by another tent, watching the three of them curiously. He holsters his pistol “Inside,” he says flatly, and he guides Darcy past Steve and into the tent.
Stark’s tent is as messy as always, every spare area of space covered with plans for weapons and machines that boggles Bucky’s mind and makes the child inside him giddy with excitement. Agent Carter straightens at their entrance, the only sign of surprise at their entrance a faint tightening of the lips. Bucky glances around the large space, but Stark is nowhere to be seen.
“Stark?” he barks. “You in here? I gotta conundrum for you to puzzle over.”
He hears a faint curse, and Stark pops his head up from beneath a table. “Barnes? Didn’t know you even knew big words like that.”
“Fuck off, Stark,” he says, voice emotionless, but inwardly, Bucky seethes. One of these days, he’s going to clock Stark in the face. He can’t stand the man’s wanton disregard for anyone who isn’t Steve or Carter, like the rest of them are barely worth the acknowledgment. “Darcy here says she’s a time traveller.”
Stark’s eyes widen, and he straightens, looking intrigued. Bucky wonders if Steve’s given him that device of hers yet. “Is that so.”
“S’what she’s claiming.”
Stark manoeuvres around the tables, stalking towards them with an almost predatory grace. His gaze turns intense, fixed on Darcy, who shifts uncomfortably at the attention. “What time are you from, Darcy?”
She bites down on her plush lower lip, looking almost shy. “March 29th, 2013.”
Bucky sucks in a sharp breath of shock. That far? Truly?
“2013?” Steve echoes, disbelief lacing his voice.
“Astounding,” Stark breathes.
“Bull. Shit,” Bucky says. His thoughts race, and despair fills him again. He’s struck by the sudden and crippling certainly that he will never be able to keep this woman.
Darcy glances between the three of them. Her handcuffs clink lightly as she worries her hands. “I don’t- I don’t know how I got here. I was just fixing a machine for Jane- my boss- and then poof, here I am in 1944.”
Bucky is too preoccupied to mention that she’s a year off. He wonders what it’s like to lose a soulmate you only just met.
“My,” Stark says. That fascinated, almost greedy look in his eyes is yet to leave. “There’s so many questions to ask! So much to learn! I suppose the question we’d all like an answer to should go first. Do we win the war?”
Darcy purses her lips, but she stays silent. Bucky wonders what kind of chaos she could create if she decided to give him an answer. All those science fiction books never prepared him for this.
Stark huffs at her silence and his hands twitch agitatedly. “Well come on girl! Do we?”
Darcy says nothing. Stark sighs.
“Okay then. Loaded question, I suppose. How about an easier one; is this our last war?”
The woman closes her eyes. She looks torn, clearly distressed, but Stark is too caught up in his head to notice, and Bucky tries to steel himself; this is in essence an interrogation, he reasons. They must to know if her claims are legitimate or not. Not every question they ask is going to be an easy one.
Stark however, seems to grow more agitated the longer the silence goes on. He starts asking more oblique questions. What happens to Stark Industries? What about flying cars? Life expectancies? Through it all Darcy remains mute, and Bucky clenches his jaw as his questions become more pointed and personal. A strange, protective fury grows within him as the man grows more direct and audacious. Bucky is moments away from ripping him a new one- what does he even want to know the future for anyway?- when the air around them grows charged with energy- like standing in proximity to one of those Hydra weapons when they go off- and a brilliant, shining portal creates itself from nothing right beside Darcy.
“Oh thank God,” Bucky hears her say. He watches, as though in slow motion, as she twists to look at him, an anguished look on her beautiful face. “I’m sorry,” she says, voice quiet. Bucky’s eyes widen in horrific realisation.
No, he thinks. No!
She’s going to leave him- so soon- too soon! She lunges towards the portal, and Bucky watches, as though from outside his own body, as he leaps after her, his arm shooting out and grabbing her wrist, fingers wrapping around her blood red marks like a shackle. Darcy cries out, startled, and she twists to look at him, eyes wide with shock and fear as their joint momentum makes her trip backwards.
Her eyes stay locked on his even as they fall together, straight through the shimmering portal that stinks of magic and science alike.
May 3rd 2013
Bucky’s world dissolves into a searing light that burns like the fires of hell. He’s certain that he’d been holding onto something, but all he knows is the feeling of his body being made and unmade over and over and over, the agony of existence etched into his very soul. He thinks that maybe he’s screaming, but the sound is strange and it echoes, rattling in his teeth and vibrating into his bones. He can’t think- can’t breathe- feels nothing but the inferno around him, and he wonders if this is what dying feels like.
Distantly, he thinks he hears someone scream his name, and Bucky turns blindly towards the sound, and then he’s falling hard onto a hard surface that punches the breath out of him. He gasps desperately for air, eyes wide as he clutches at his throat like a dying man. The ceiling above him is strange- too high and bright to be Stark’s tent. On edge, Bucky rolls over, levering himself painfully up onto all fours even as he tries to get his breath back. He glances to the side, taking in the ring of feet, standing about a yard away, and he stiffens at the unfamiliar men and women staring down at him. Most look as shocked as he feels.
He opens his mouth to ask something, but he hears a faint groan and Bucky remembers with sudden clarity what he’s just done.
Fuck.
FUCK!
“Darcy?” he gasps, and he turns his head to stare at her. She lies sprawled on the ground, an arm covering her face from view.
“Oh God,” she whimpers. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
He flinches, and the men and women behind him seem to break out of their shock.
“Darce?” A woman cries- she wears jeans that seem too tight to be practical and a shirt that looks too big to be hers. “Are you okay?” She moves as though about to run over to them, but a hand on her shoulder by the huge blonde man beside her stops her in her tracks. He is watching Bucky with an intensity that is disconcerting, and he swallows uneasily, sitting back on his haunches. What fucking mess has he gotten himself into this time? And damn it all but he didn’t even need Steve’s idiot help to manage.
Took all the stupid with him indeed.
Darcy groans again, and Bucky glances back at her, concerned. She doesn’t look injured, but who’s to say beneath that huge bloody sweater of hers anyway. Darcy levers herself up into a sitting position, looking wrung out and tired. Her hair is even worse than before.
“I’m good. Thanks for the pickup.” Her gaze falls on Bucky and her eyes widen with horror. She scrabbles back from him and he hates- hates- the look on her face, like he’s done something monstrous to her. “Oh fuck,” she breathes. “Oh no nonono! What have you done?”
He stares back at her, the reality of his situation bearing down on him and rendering him mute. He doesn’t half know himself.
“Well if the new guy is anything to go by,” a man drawls from their group of onlookers, “I’d say you’ve brought along a stow-away. What gives Lewis? I thought I made it very clear what I feel about groupies.”
Darcy’s eye’s narrow, and Bucky follows her line of sight to a middle-aged man standing behind a desk covered in technology far beyond anything Bucky has ever encountered before; of all the people in the room, he looks the least affected by this whole thing. He is startlingly familiar. “Stark?”
The man’s brows rise and he tilts his head, glancing between the two of them shrewdly. Now that Bucky can get a better look at him, he realises that it’s not Howard, though the resemblance is striking, as is the way his eyes widen fractionally in realisation.
The man who is not Howard lets out a low whistle. “Jesus,” he says, and he moves around the bench easily to draw closer to them. “I read Carter’s notes, but she never mentioned anything about this. The Boy Wonder, really?”
Bucky grits his teeth. One of these days, he’s going to shoot one of these science types if they keep speaking over him like he’s not there. On shaking limbs, he pushes himself up onto his feet, feeling overwrought and breathless, like he’s run ‘round the block two dozen times. “You know who I am?”
“Know who you are?” the man scoffs. “Buddy, everyone knows who you are.”
“Actually,” says the tall blonde man, voice low and serious. “You are wrong, Stark. I for one, do not know the identity of this man.”
Bucky blinks. So he is a Stark- if he’s in 2013, then that must make him Howard’s son. Possibly his grandson. Stark makes an irritated sound, but the black man standing on the other side of the blond man beats him to the big reveal, his eyes wide, face awed.
“What Stark’s trying to say, big guy,” he says, gaze not straying from Bucky, “is our new visitor is none other than the best friend of the first Captain America, Bucky Barnes.”
[1] Bucky is in fact thinking of The Time Traveller, by HG Wells