pennysheets | New Avengers Tower

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New Avengers Tower

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 Stark had originally made a whole floor for each of his superhero buddies, which hadn't really been renovated at all even in the multiple years the Avengers had been toast, so now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.

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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."

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.

"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."

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."

"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."

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."

"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.

"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."

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."

"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?"

"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."

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

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."

"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.

"If you're nice to me, I'll make syrniki some morning," Yelena says with a little smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "We can arrange a grocery run this afternoon. Or just live on take-out for a few days until we have the chance to make sure we've found all the rooms in this place and take stock of what we have."

"I mean, I was already planning on being nice to you," Bucky says, tone halfway to joking, even though it's the truth, pulling a box of some generic brand sugary flakes out of the cupboard. "But now I've got real incentive. I haven't had actual syrniki since the eighties."

"The last time I made them, we were still working on freeing the rest of the Widows," Yelena says, expression going ever so slightly distant. "A treat for the little ones, so they wouldn't go stir-crazy stuck in the safehouse."

She snaps back into focus, and shrugs slightly. "But it hasn't really been that long, with the Blip, and I know the recipe like the back of my hand."

Bucky hesitates a brief moment, back to her as he collects some bowls. Little ones? There were still kids in the Red Room when Yelena busted out, however and whenever she did that? He feels a little sick that he hadn't known. He had thought the whole thing had gone down years ago, but mostly because he'd been so busy with his own shit that he hadn't thought about it for two minutes to recognize that organizations like that are difficult to take down. Hell, HYDRA still has its slimy little tentacles in a few places, he knows.

It's a brief pause, but Yelena, a spy, will at least notice it if not know why he made it. He turns back with a carefully blank expression. "You got dusted, too, huh?" He sets both bowls on the counter and goes in search of milk. This won't work nearly as well if there's no milk.

She nods slightly. "So did Alexei. So did a lot of people, I guess. You can flip a coin for each one, more or less."

There is, in fact, milk in the fridge, the hyper-pasteurized kind in a plastic bottle that comes with an expiry date that's frighteningly far out. Yelena watches him search for it, her own expression a more natural-looking neutrality that is, in fact, just as constructed.

"I started working for Valentina after I got back."

"Mm, probably not the best choice, since she apparently tried to have to killed," Bucky says, casually enough to make it clear he means it as a joke. "But then, I ran for Congress, so who am I to judge?" That was, in hindsight, probably just as stupid of a decision.

He produces the milk and some spoons, bringing them both back. "Looks like we get a real breakfast, after all."

"Well, I did try to get a job at Best Buy, but it turns out 'mind controlled assassin' does not really count as customer service experience," she replies with a little shrug, expression grave enough that it can't possibly be genuine. "A girl has to eat."

And with that, she peels away from the counter to join him at the table, for a breakfast neither of them has had to kill for.

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New Avengers Tower

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