New Avengers Tower

[worthallthis]

The press meeting takes way too long. Then they're all taken to a hospital, because most of them are injured in some way. Then Mel takes them back to that stupid tower. Avengers Tower. Watchtower. New Avengers Tower. Nobody knows what they're calling it.

They get a tour, even though they're exhausted and grouchy, and even though half the tower is clearly in some state of construction and clearly not ready to be shown off. The labs are complete, hastily so, but none of them are going to be going anywhere near those. The rooftop bar is still in shambles, and none of them want to linger there. The kitchen and restaurant-like eating areas spiraled out around it seem intact, and well-stocked, at least.

They each have their own floor. Stark had originally made a whole floor for each of his superhero buddies, which hadn't really been renovated at all even in the multiple years the Avengers had been toast, so now they're the cleanest and least disturbed of the whole tower.

Bucky gets Steve's, Walker gets Thor's, Ava gets Clint's.

Yelena gets the one meant for Natasha. Of course.

And Bob gets Banner's, with its combination of calming decor and Hulk-proof walls.

Then they're left alone to "rest" with the promise that Mel and Valentina will be in touch over the next few days, which sounds more like a threat than anything else.

Comments

[worthallthis]

That would've been nice. Then they wouldn't have had to deal with the stupid impeachment trial, either. "From the look of it, I don't think it has a lot of range," Bucky offers. "It looked pretty primitive." Or perhaps he's just used to Wakandan tech. Either way: "There's some medical stuff down in the labs. We might be able to scan for it, if it's something actually in his body or brain. Though whether we can get anyone able to cut into him to get it out, I don't know."

Someone who can repel punches could probably resist a scalpel. It had felt like hitting Vision.

[musicdied]

"They had to get it inside him in the first place," Yelena notes. "Unless they put it in his head before they did...whatever it is they did to him. Which is something I would not put past Valentina."

Put a kill switch in all of her test subjects, so they could be disposed of whenever she was done with them. A security measure against any of them ever gaining some independence.

"But this assumes he'd be willing to let anyone try, if there's something still there. I can probably convince him to do the scans, but brain surgery is a much bigger ask."

[worthallthis]

Bucky hesitates, then his shoulders actually slump a little. "Yeah, okay. I get that." If anyone wanted to operate on his brain again, even to take out a potential kill switch, he'd probably tell them to go to hell. And maybe punch them, for good measure.

And then, because Bob's mental state is apparently a big deal, and if he weren't so exhausted he'd probably care on a personal level as well, he has to ask, "Have you checked in on him? Is he doing okay?"

[musicdied]

"I've checked in on him," Yelena says.

And then elaborates after a moment, "We hung out last night. He still doesn't remember what happened, or didn't. Not consciously, at least, some of his reactions make me think the memories are more repressed than actually gone. But he's okay. Not freaking out, not withdrawing. Not feeling too trapped."

[worthallthis]

"Good, okay. That's good." He casts a brief, longing gaze at the coffeemaker, as if having a cup in hand would make him feel better about all this. "Well. As the resident expert on losing memories... it might not be pretty if they come back. He's not going to have a good time of it. It might be a good idea to just. I don't know, tell him. So he knows what to expect."

True, he probably wouldn't have listened to anyone trying to list out his memories, but then, he had lost more than two days, and Bob seems a lot... different than him.

[musicdied]

Yelena nods slightly in acknowledgement. "I was actually planning to talk to him about it today, so Valentina can't ambush him, and he doesn't just...turn on the news and get blindsided by it. There is no way anyone could have recognized him, and there won't be any footage of his face, but he is not stupid. I just wanted to give him a little time in case things cleared up, and to fill in some of the blanks in what I know."

[worthallthis]

"What other holes do you need filled in? I might be able to help," Bucky offers. "Though I've still got some holes, too. I still don't know who any of you actually are-- except for Walker, and I wish I didn't know who he is, and I kind of vaguely know about the Red Guardian. By reputation." Because one of his handlers told him he was easier to manage than Alexei was, once, in a very patronizing tone. There's a little grimace on his face at the unspoken memory, but probably easy enough to chalk up to being about Walker.

[musicdied]

Yelena blinks at him for a moment, then snorts quietly. "Wow. And here I thought you just didn't give a shit. But no, mostly I want to fill in what happened between when Bob landed in the desert, and when we crashed into the lobby. If Valentina did more to him to make him go from a guy who didn't know he even had superpowers and just let Walker treat him like garbage to mopping the floor with all of us in twenty seconds flat."

Something beeps on the coffee maker, and she turns to pull two cups from the small, artsy rack next to it. "I guess this wasn't a death robot."

[worthallthis]

His expression goes confused, then abstracted, as he puts a few things together, matches up the memory of a much younger face with this one-- and then he exclaims in all apparent shock, "Wait, you're that Yelena? Little Lena, from the Red Room?"

He'll deal with the rest in a minute. He has to get over this surprise first.

[musicdied]

"What, did you think there were a dozen Black Widows all with the same name?" She doesn't turn back, looking down at the coffee pot as she pours two cups, but her tone is wry. Her gauntlets are distinctive. Her fighting style is even more so. He can't possibly have failed to pick up on what she is.

"Yes, I'm that Yelena. Which does not matter, because we have much bigger Valentina-shaped problems to deal with."

[worthallthis]

It matters to him, but he's too shocked still to really contest it right now. "I mean... yeah. We do have bigger problems, but...." He sighs, scrubs his face with both hands, even the metal one, and says wearily, "I'm just gonna have some coffee and try not to make more of an idiot of myself. After that, I can show you the security room and maybe we can fill in some more of the blanks in your intel, at least."

[musicdied]

"Maybe," she says, and turns with both coffee cups in hand, holding one out to him. "I think I'll need time with the lab computers and Ava to get some of it, at least. Unless Bob has remembered something."

[worthallthis]

He accepts the cup, and sinks onto one of the stools at the kitchen bar. "It might take him some time," he warns. "Especially if it's something he does to himself." He did a lot of research on memory loss and regain... most of it didn't really apply to him, since most people's memory loss didn't come from being repeatedly electrocuted in the face, and most people didn't have the serum, but it might apply to Bob. "He'd probably have to have some reason to want it back, some reason that why he forgot it won't matter anymore."

[musicdied]

"I'm not going to push him," Yelena says. "That's the opposite of what I want to do."

And not just because she's worried that it might trigger another void episode. It would be a shitty way to treat a friend - a shitty way to treat anyone, really.

[worthallthis]

"Good." He gives a wry little smile over his coffee mug. "I mean, I ran away from Steve Rogers for two years because I really didn't wanna be pushed into remembering shit." Among other things, admittedly, but that was definitely part of it.

He realizes that all she might know for sure is that HYDRA operated him and he trained her for a couple weeks, and adds, "I don't actually know how much you know about me and HYDRA's, uh, methods. I basically got my memory wiped every time they took me out of the ice. Then again before I went back in."

[musicdied]

She knows a bit more than that. She hadn't, however, known about the memory wipes, and she blinks at him in a moment in undisguised horror before muttering, "Well, at least Dreykov did not pick up that part."

She takes a sip of her coffee, then adds, "Do you have any other advice for how to help him? I don't think it's the same sort of thing, because he mentioned having blackouts for most of his life when we were in the vault, but I don't know any amnesia specialists."

[worthallthis]

"I've got some books stashed back in DC about, uh, traumatic memory loss," Bucky offers. "I could scrounge those up for you if you want. They'll probably be more use to you and him than they ever were to me, honestly."

He sips his coffee, then asks, "Does he want to know? Did he say anything about it last night when you checked on him?"

[musicdied]

"I do not think want is quite the right word," Yelena says with a little sigh. "He tiptoed up to the line a couple of times, but never quite crossed it. But it isn't a complete blank, I don't think - he has enough pieces to be worried about being allowed to stay with us, to know Valentina is bad news. To blame himself for some nebulous bad thing he can't remember."

[worthallthis]

Bucky considers that, then says, "A lot of that he could've picked up from how everyone was acting around him since we came out of his... memory thing. Some people aren't exactly great at hiding things they feel--" Neither of the people in this room. But literally everyone else around the poor guy. "--and there were some pretty obvious looks going on."

And he distinctly remembers seeing Bob react to those looks. ... but also to some of the places in the tower. So it's possible, and he continues, "But if there's signs he's got even impressions of what happened, that's probably a good sign." He sighs. "If it were anybody else, I'd say wait until he asks to know what happened, but I'm not sure that's a great idea with somebody who's got all that power."

[musicdied]

"There were," Yelena allows. "And he is not a stupid man. Which is another reason we can't just keep him in the dark. Even if none of us says anything, and we manage to run interference so Valentina can't use it as a weapon, it's going to be all over the news, all over the internet. And that would be a much worse way for him to find out."

[worthallthis]

"He'd have to look it up, for that to be a problem," Bucky comments dryly. "But yeah, it's possible Walker or Shostokov decides to turn on the news or something. I guess we tell him. And that means we circle back to what else you're missing from what we need to tell him."

[musicdied]

"A lot," Yelena says. "But I will settle for what happened after the vault for now, if we can dig it up. If Val was smart, the labs would be separate from the main security feeds, but this entire operation must have been thrown together in a hurry."

[worthallthis]

"Well, you're in luck, because I think a lot of that happened here," Bucky says, glad that the generally awful shit he spent last night reviewing and putting together will at least be useful to somebody. "There's no video from inside that weird trailer, but there's audio, and there's video from a couple other places around the tower that they passed through."

He finishes his coffee, and asks, "Do you want breakfast first, or surveillance videos first?"

[musicdied]

She considers for a moment, then says, "Breakfast first. I saw some cereal while I was looking for the coffee, and I think the videos will probably kill my appetite."

[worthallthis]

"Ugh, cereal." So boring and unfilling. But it's better than nothing, and Bucky has long ago learned not to be picky. Besides, the pizza from the night before is gone, he'd checked that on his way out. Clearly someone else found it while he was working.

He picks himself up to go looking for said cereal. "We're gonna have to go grocery shopping. And a lot of it. Three supersoldiers are going to go through a lot of food, all on our own." Yelena's on the small end and Ava-- he doesn't know what kind of fuel her powers run on. Bob... might be calories like them, he still isn't sure what went into him. Definitely not your typical supersoldier serum. That doesn't make you fly. Or teleport people into depression dimensions.