A Different Snap for @ofmarble

[worthallthis]

Bucky drops to his knees in the quiet forest in the wake of his best friend, his favorite person, turning into ash and floating away right in front of him. He runs a hand through the ashes, not the fancy new one from the Wakandans, but the old one. The one that can feel the ash is fading, too. He tries to catch some in his palm but it's gone before he can scoop it up.

"Where is he. Where did he go," he hears himself ask, his voice strange in his own ears, strained and tight, fingers digging uselessly into the loam. He's not sure if he's asking about Steve, or about Thanos, as other Avengers and Wakandans stumble through the trees towards where their leader had stood just a moment ago.

Now there's just Bucky, looking up at all of them. Banner and Rhodes with confused expressions still inside their metal suits, stern Okoye looking stricken for once, the Norse god-alien with helpless fury in every line of him, the talking raccoon who is no longer staring at his arm, and Natasha.

God, Natasha.

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[ofmarble]

It's a little surreal, to be talking about grilled cheese, of all things, when the world's come apart at the seams. But it's better by far at the moment than thinking of all the ways in which the world has come apart, and so after a moment's bemused silence, she opts to take the distraction.

"I actually didn't," she says. "Apparently my education in that area is deficient. I do know a few neat tricks for movie night popcorn, though."

[worthallthis]

"You guys had movie nights?" Bucky asks, only about half seriously. Because having movies nights probably didn't happen so much when they were on the run. And they might not happen now, either. He isn't sure who all pushed for those-- though he somehow doubts it was Steve. It doesn't seem like a thing that would even occur to him. Maybe Barton. Barton might be into movie nights.

Might have been? He's not sure if Clint Barton is one of the casualties of this mess yet.

He pulls open the fridge for the cheese and butter. Maybe feeding people won't make anything better, but it's what he can do right now.

[ofmarble]

"Now and then," Natasha says.

She watches him search through the fridge for a moment, then rocks into motion, heading to fill the kettle and put in on to boil. It's too late for more coffee, but she still feels the need for something warm, the illusion of something that could chase away the chill that's crawled into her chest cavity and made itself at home.

"Well, we had nights where someone would decide to take advantage of the entertainment system in the lounge, and anyone who was around and awake eventually filtered in. None of us were exactly great at scheduling downtime."

[worthallthis]

"I'm a little sorry I missed out. Sounds like it coulda been fun." He knows he wouldn't have been fit for company at any time they would be doing this, here at the compound, so it's all wishful thinking. But the idea is still... nice. Homey. Like these people were actually friends.

As he deftly butters up some bread, Bucky considers the tea kettle. Tea has never really been his thing, but: "Got any cocoa in this place?"

[ofmarble]

"Once we've put out enough fires to get some breathing room, we'll do a Bond marathon," she says, though right at this moment, she can't really imagine ever having breathing room again.

Still, it's a nice thought. Something small to look forward to. Even if Clint--

She still hasn't been able to reach him, can only hope he's still there to complain.

"--I don't know. I'll see what I can dig up."

[worthallthis]

"If not, no problem. Just a thought." Bucky isn't sure he can just run to the store and pick some up, at this point, himself... maybe there's delivery even out here.

He puts the sandwiches together in a pan on the stove to sizzle and melt. As he watches them, and watches her out of the corner of his eye, he hesitates a long moment before asking, "How bad is it?"

[ofmarble]

Natasha opens the cupboard she'd found the coffee in earlier, and begins sorting through the contents. It's something to do, however trivial, and right now, she welcomes that.

"Bad," she says, over her shoulder. "What we saw was just the beginning. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to who was affected - lot of people flying planes, or driving buses, or...you get the idea."

[worthallthis]

Bucky winces. "Is there... are people handling that? The aftermath of the crashes, the--" There's got to be more people dead, more injured. He doesn't know if they can do anything about it themselves, not right now, but-- he wants to. He doesn't know how long he can stay put if there really is work to do that he could do.

[ofmarble]

"Would we be here if there weren't?" she asks, the barest ghost of self-deprecating humour winding its way through her voice. She's no better at being idle than he is. If there was even a chance she could help with the immediate emergency response, she would be out there already, going until she collapsed.

But a spy isn't an EMT, isn't fire response. They'll be needed, and soon, but for the moment, they'd just get in the way, extra bodies that needed to be managed with resources already spread too thin.

Tucked away at the back of the cupboard, she finds a tub of hot cocoa, fancier than anything she'd bother with, but fit for purpose. The fleeting sense of triumph as she pulls it out is, perhaps, a bit pathetic.

[worthallthis]

"Fair point," he agrees, looking unhappy about it. He wants to help. He has no idea how. Maybe there might be some helicopters or cars or debris somewhere he could pick up for people? But who do you even go to, to offer that? How do you make sure you're deployed where you're needed?

Sad that even after four years of supposed freedom, he still doesn't quite know how to function without orders.

The cocoa is a nice distraction, though. He might feel more relieved than he should. Something nice they can share. "Hey, looks like somebody around here has a sweet tooth, after all."

[ofmarble]

"Guess so." The corners of her mouth quirk upward slightly, though it's reflex more than feeling.

"Grab me a pot? I don't think water will cut it with this stuff." She may not be much of a cook, but even she knows fancy cocoa made with milk is the superior choice. Unfortunately, she hadn't seen anything in the realm of mini marshmallows while she was searching. They'll have to make do without.

[worthallthis]

He ducks down to pull out one of the little pots he'd seen when he got out the skillet, setting it on another burner, between the teapot and the sandwich. He will not complain about the lack of marshmallows. (He's never had cocoa with marshmallows in it, he doesn't even know what he's missing.)

Then he flips said sandwich using his metal hand rather than a spatula. The vibranium is even better about it than the old titanium one, wow.

"How long did you live here?" he asks, keeping it to past events rather than current ones for now.

[ofmarble]

The kitchen's large enough that even with both of them working at the stove - her simmering milk for cocoa and him working on the sandwiches - it's companionable, rather than crowded. Or maybe that's just the memory of the bustle between missions, on the rare occasions the entire team was in residence all at once.

"I never lived here full time," she says. "But - a few years. For training exercises and back-to-back ops, mostly."

[worthallthis]

"I guess you guys must have kept busy before everything got screwed up for you, between exposing HYDRA, and dealing with those-- robot things?" he guesses. He'd caught bits of the last in the news while on the run and, well, he'd been intimately involved in the first two, hadn't he.

He knows it's his fault the Avengers wound up on the terrorist list. He just hopes the ones that are left aren't too mad about it, once they remember that, too.

[ofmarble]

"Pretty busy," she confirms. "And that's not even considering the smaller problems that sprang up. Introduce alien technology into the population, and there's always someone who wants to use it to make themselves a petty dictator."

Some of them might be angry at him, when the dust settles enough for anyone to be anything but shocked. She'll be more than willing to remind them that they all made their own choices - and that most of their positions had been chosen before he ever stepped onto the field. He might have been the catalyst, but they were always going to come to blows over the Accords.

[worthallthis]

Maybe once Tony shows up, if Tony shows up, Bucky will keep as low a profile as he can... Rhodes is really the only one left that he knows of from the "other" side who survived, and he doubts he'll see much of that guy.

Unless the spider kid is around somewhere still. That could be-- weird.

"I know HYDRA collected some," he says with a little frown. "Not sure what happened to it, but I definitely saw some. Maybe you got it all already. If not, well-- we'll have more of that to do now, I guess." There's a sick feeling in his stomach that says that if there's any HYDRA left, this would be the time for them to try and eel their way into positions of power again.

[ofmarble]

"We spent a couple of years raiding their facilities," Natasha says. She notes his expression when she glances over, and adds, "We'll cross-reference our files with what you remember when the dust has a little time to settle. If there's anything we missed, now would be a good time to rectify that."

In case there's anything left of HYDRA. And in case there are caches they left behind that might be stumbled over by other opportunists.

[worthallthis]

"Yeah. Yeah, point me at your files sometime soon and I'll work on that..." He gives a faint little laugh, taking the first sandwich from the pan and setting it on a plate, starting to build the second. "You know, me doing actual intel research... don't think anybody saw that coming."

He's not stupid, he knows he's not, and he probably could be pretty good at it, but nobody let him for so long, and then-- well, then he wasn't exactly in a position to have any intel.

[ofmarble]

"You'll need a lot of coffee," she warns. She stirs the spoon through the milk, to keep it from scalding to the bottom of the pot before it has time to heat all the way through.

"And snacks. It's not as bad as surveillance work, but stare at text and images on a screen for long enough, and it stops looking like anything real. Having something to break the monotony up a little helps."

[worthallthis]

"Or a lot of fancy cocoa," Bucky says, seeing as there's a pretty big tin of it there. "I think I might rather have surveillance work. Text on a screen is going to be a lot harder than watching a person through windows from a sniper blind."

He shakes his head and nudges the second sandwich into a better spot on the skillet. "But I'll learn. I'm gonna-- I'll be useful around here. No matter what you need me to do, I'll figure it out."

And if that sounds a little pathetic, he supposes he is a little pathetic. It's fine. He's allowed to be pathetic.

[ofmarble]

"You sound like Clint." There's no hitch to her voice on the name - she's still a Widow, still trained to play things close to her chest, and anyway, she refuses to write him off before she has proof - but for someone as versed in reading people as he is, that control itself might speak to the weight of concern that grows heavier with each hour that passes without contact. "He prefers fieldwork too. Well, preferred, before he retired. Stick him behind a desk, and he'll start lamenting spending days hiding out in a ventilation shaft."

[worthallthis]

He's learned, by now, that Clint was her direct partner, for longer than Steve ever was. He would have guessed her worry even without the careful lack of a tell. He doesn't even bother pretending that he didn't. "If we haven't heard from him, we should check in. Once it's morning wherever he's at," he offers. "I'll need to check in with some people in Wakanda, too." Though it's probably morning in Wakanda by now, he wants to give them more time to organize, get at least a partial census taken.

[ofmarble]

There's a part of her that wants to agree, but she makes herself shake her head. "I've left him a message in our backchannels, but he's pretty remote. He'll be coordinating survivors for a day or two. Can't expect a response before then unless they need evac."

She can't imagine for even a second just how hard Clint's family had been hit. She doesn't allow herself the illusion of thinking they'd be spared completely, but four people out of five? Given the odds, it will almost seem targeted, once they finally do establish contact.

"We'll clear a line for you to get through to your people in Wakanda."

[worthallthis]

You'd think he'd want to check in as much as she does, but they also aren't busy here yet. He wishes they were busy. He lets her decide, since it's not like he's talked to Clint for more than the hour or so it took them to suit up and then fight all of Steve's friends.

Instead, he flips the second sandwich over, waits until it finishes sizzling, then says, "You don't need to. I've got one of their fancy comm beads in a pocket somewhere, I just wanted to-- give them time, too." He bites the inside of his cheek, then offers, "They'll probably be in a better position than most of us, they're a small nation with only so many people to tally, and backup plans for... pretty much everything." Maybe not this, but something close enough that they can adapt it.

[ofmarble]

"Even Fury didn't have a backup plan for this," Natasha notes, and this time there is an edge of grief there, beneath the wry humour. They'd been able to confirm his death, and Maria's. If there's any comfort at all in knowing what had happened, it's a cold one indeed.