A bit of happiness at the end of the world

[worthallthis]

Bucky never thought the (second) apocalypse would become routine. And it hasn't, not really. Everything is still pretty terrible. The uncorrupted population of the Earth is, as far as they can guess, somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, and at least half of that is centered in Wakanda. The fog has only thinned in a few areas, mostly through the efforts of Kamar Taj's small army of sorcerers, and actual safe locations are few and far between. Food is often hard to come by, as planting crops is difficult when the fog might damage them at any time and hunting the fog-warped monsters requires careful cooking or cleansing spells from said sorcerers for the meat to be edible by normal humans. Unmarred animals have been rare enough that they haven't managed to breed anything but chickens, so the only food they have every day is eggs. The small groups of eldritch raiders that roam the planet aren't edible at all, not even if you're a supersoldier. Bucky would probably kill someone for a loaf of bread.

But being sent out to check on anomalous magical fluctuations, and subsequently shooting whatever comes out of them, is pretty normal now. Bucky and Peggy are the only ones on this particular mission: Banner is in the middle of a project and can't be disturbed, and Scott and Hope are on a different trek checking out something to the south. Bucky prefers to be sent out with Peggy, anyhow. They work well together, both on and off the battlefield. He might even privately admit she's managed to partly fill the hole in his heart left after bisecting Steve's zombified corpse. It will always be there, but it's more bearable these days.

They left the city a couple hours ago, on foot as this didn't wasn't far enough out to waste fuel on the jet or armored truck, and are nearing the coordinates Wong gave them, somewhere in upstate New York. There's only been a couple dog-sized bundles of tentacles to shoot, and it's mostly woodland. Probably formerly cultivated woodland rather than something truly wild, but it's wild now, with the planes of the trees reaching as much horizontally as vertically.

"Think it'll be another raiding party?" Bucky asks quietly, rifle up as they approach what used to be a lakeshore, though the lake itself appears to have mostly dried up as part of it broke open into a shimmering sinkhole.

Comments

[warsoutthere]

Peggy steps wide of a bundle of red flowers threaded through the underbrush, bringing her shield up to deflect them as they turn, barbed petals seeking body heat and the promise of blood. They're not enough of a threat to stop and deal with now, unable to lunge any further than their stalks will stretch, and they're deeply rooted enough that they'll need to be burned out if the area's ever slated for reclamation. She marks their position anyway, another datapoint to convey to their Wakandan contacts - one of their science teams has been tracking the spread of alien flora, trying to separate persistent species from random mutation.

"Probably," she replies, voice pitched equally low, gaze scanning the gaps between the trees for movement and traps both. "There's been more of them lately than anything else."

Why has been a matter of some debate in the enclave. They share no common language with the raiders, and the spaces where the fog has thinned seem as inimical to them as the fog is to typical human life. It's enough to render any attempt at communication difficult, and the one time one of the sorcerers had attempted magical contact with the mind of one of the beings...

It had taken three months for him to stop screaming when exposed to even the faintest speck of light.

[punched_hitler]

Steve had needed air. He'd needed — well, he'd needed a lot more than air, to be honest, but the only thing available had been the exterior door at the base of the stairwell, so he'd stepped through it and tried to inhale, pull something other than grief into tightening lungs and he'd gotten —

Well. He'd gotten a lot more than just air.

The door had clicked shut behind him with a strange, dull sound and vanished, along with the compound and nearly anything recognizable about the grounds it had been standing on. For a split second, he'd actually thought he'd stepped out onto an alien world, but no… no, that's the generally right shape of the treeline, if severely overgrown, and the dark blot of what had once been the lake in the distance, and the slope of the ground under he feet is right. He squints up at the sun, hand immediately shoving his phone into his pocket as he realizes he's in the right place… but maybe not the right time?

Not the right something to be sure, because everything looks and feels and smells and sounds wrong. He gets another few feet before he discovers just how wrong, when the shape he had thought was just a bush turns out to be so very much more. What looks like a tangle of thorn-covered tentacles sporting too-white flowers that yawn almost like mouths strikes out at him in a flash, and even gets a good grip on a forearm before he tears himself away with a grunt, somersaulting backwards and leaving the cuff of one sleeve of his shirt behind, shallow red slices springing up on his forearm, though they're barely a concern as he springs back up, ready this time.

But the not-a-bush seems rooted to the ground like a bush; the tentacle-vine-branches stretch and wave for a moment, like they're searching for him, then slowly recoil, like a predator resetting, ready to lie in wait again.

He stares at the thing and keeps his feet planted — this particular patch of earth seems relatively safe — and doesn't move, surveying his surroundings for a long minute. Thats when he picks up the sound of more movement, but it sounds like footfalls, not sneaking, crawling plant(?) life. And he catches the whisper-soft edge of quiet, low voices.

He can't make out more than that, but it's clear they're people. And Steve, never one to retain a single ounce of self-preservation, immediately calls, "Hello?" And then, "Be careful, there's some kind of angry plant-thing over here."

[worthallthis]

The form is humanoid. Bucky slows down at the sight. Looks entirely human, actually... that's weird. Why would an actual, uncorrupted human be in the middle of the source of a magical anomaly?

Then there's the voice. Raiders never talk. The corrupted humans do sometimes, but they always sound wrong, they can't feign being normal like that.

And that voice is--

--it sounds like--

Bucky stops entirely, his brain momentarily shorting out as he stares through the last of the foliage at a too-familiar blonde head and broad shoulders and stupid khaki pants. It can't be. He killed him. It's been a year and a half and he still has nightmares about it. Surely this is some new trick from the other side, finding some way to give supersoldiers hallucinations.

What comes out is a strangled, "Steve?"

[warsoutthere]

Peggy sucks in a sharp breath at that one strangled word. Because that voice had been familiar, etched into her memory, into her very bones, but the rest is not. It leaves her without even the scant comfort of thinking this might be a hallucination. If it was, by far the most effective trap would be letting them each see the man they individually remember.

For one brief, wild moment, she lets herself hope that the Watcher has sent help, in a moment of gratitude for the role she'd played in protecting his domain - but no. It's been more than a year, and if anyone were going to intervene, they would have done so at the beginning, before the world fell to twisted ruin.

Still likely a ploy, then. Which means it's time to take control of the situation, both to buy Bucky time to recover, and to make sure that if this is a trap, she's the one to trip it. She's heard enough of what went on in her partner's universe to be certain that if it does come to a fight, it might break him to be the one to end it.

She rolls her shoulders and strides forward, vaulting through the break of the trees, over the grasping tendrils of the vampire plant, to land a scant three feet away from the interloper.

"State your business," she says, short and clipped, but there's a hint of shock around the corners of her widened eyes, because up close, he doesn't look entirely unfamiliar. The bones of the Steve Rogers she knew are there, beneath - what had Strange called him? She can't, in this moment, seem to recall.

[punched_hitler]

The sound of his name in Bucky's voice is unmistakable; it makes Steve's heart leap into his throat as he turns toward the sound, already saying, "Buck?"

But then another figure comes into view, landing in front of him and - and he's seeing things, he reasons. He's dreaming, he's grieving, he's seeing things, because -

But if he's seeing things, then he's hearing things, too, because that's Peggy's voice, her face, if not several inches higher than expected.

He's hit by a sudden tidal wave of deja vu, of pulling the mask of the Winter Soldier and seeing Bucky. Only now, it's Peggy, carrying a shield with her country's flag and looking him directly in the eye.

He has the insane urge, for a second, to say, I thought you were smaller.

Maybe best for everyone's sake that he doesn't; what he does say, hands slightly raised in the universal gesture that he doesn't mean harm, is, "I don't think I have any. I don't know how I got here. I just walked out the door and - "

His voice can't help but shift into relieved delight. "God, it's good to see your face. Look at you." Whatever's going on, if this is Peggy, if Bucky is here, how could he have ended up anywhere better?

(Except for the part where he wonders if he didn't slip and fall down that flight of stairs and concuss himself into an early grave.)

[worthallthis]

Probably for the best, yes; Bucky might have broken then and there, hearing his own words in Steve's mouth. "You shouldn't be here," is what he says, voice hoarse. If it's really him. But Peggy's seeing him, too. You can't give two people the same hallucination, can you?

Maybe it's an illusion? Maybe the raiders have come up with some kind of illusion magic? The sorcerers can do illusions, he knows it's possible.

If it really is Steve--

--it can't be. It can't be.

"You're dead," he says after a thick swallow. "Both our universes, you died."

[warsoutthere]

Peggy doesn't relax, exactly - not that relaxed would ever be an applicable word, out here in the twisted wilderness - but she does back up half a step from high alert. He sounds right, not just voice, but tone and word choice, and - god, she wants to believe.

Which is the danger. Which is the potential trap. But if it really is Steve from another universe...

"For quite some time now," she says, in confirmation of Bucky's statement. "You'll have to forgive us for being a bit on edge. Where was this door, exactly?"

[punched_hitler]

Steve's mind catches a bit on both our universes - that's not a phrase he'd dream up, is it? And Bucky's arm looks different, he notes, though not as different as Peggy looks, obviously.

He barely registers the supposed to be dead part, really, until Peggy confirms it, too, and he has to laugh - just a little, just quietly, just for a second - because if he doesn't, thinking about the last text he got on the phone in his pocket...

Well. Nobody's dead, here and now. At least, if this is real.

He thinks this is real. He's got the already-healing scratches on his arm to prove it.

“I am notoriously bad at staying dead,” he points out; and then, to answer the question: "Just there," he says, pointing a few feet to the right, but then specifies: "Avengers Compound. Upstate New York. 2016." Because suddenly it seems important to give the year, given the way he can't stop staring at Peggy's face.

But finally he manages to tear his gaze away; it slides immediately to Bucky, he can't help it, before he glances around at the landscape. "This is still New York?" he hazards. He swears it looks familiar. It looks right, for all that it's wrong. "I don't think I've moved... exactly."

[worthallthis]

This universe didn't ever really have an Avengers compound. And Bucky doesn't remember where the one in his universe was; he only stopped in once, in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, to try and get some supplies and see if they could grab some intel. The place had been deserted, the plague not quite spread there yet... but they hadn't been able to stay for longer than a day before Iron Man found them.

Upstate New York, though, yes. "Yeah, we're still. Still technically in New York. Unless space has really folded. More than usual," Bucky answers, forcing the words out haltingly again like he hasn't in years. The shock feels like it's eaten away at all his recovery and sent him back to the stumbling, barely remembering Asset. He can't look away from Steve, either, and his face is a complex mix of stricken and hungry.

He wants this to be real. So, so badly. He doesn't really remember his arrival in this universe: he'd been hurled from the fight by zombie Wanda, hit the ground somewhere and been knocked out, and woke up practically in Peggy Carter's backyard. He can't even say if this just stepping into a new universe is a thing.

[warsoutthere]

Peggy slants a glance in Bucky's direction, concern writ clear in the set of her mouth and the furrow of her brow; even during the worst of this, when they weren't certain if they'd find another living soul in the twisted wreckage of the world, she's never heard him sound this broken.

Which leaves her to make the call - and there's only on she can make, really. If there's any chance this is really Steve, this can only go one way.

"Right," she says. "On that note, we should get moving before anyone else comes calling. I'll radio the watchtowers once we're beyond the interference."

And let them know to have someone there to meet them, with enough magic to see through illusions, and little enough sentiment that they won't hesitate to act.

[punched_hitler]

Steve inherently, innately trusts these people, because they're his people, however they look and whatever the time and place. It's the only option he has left to default to, so he does. He nods, and straightens his shoulders, and prepares to get moving in a way that says he's on high alert for threats from the landscape. Clearly it's capable of it.

Though if his gaze maybe wanders a little to drink up the sight of the two people most important to him in the entire world, well. Maybe no one can blame him.

"Lead the way," he says, partly prepared to bring up the rear but also prepared for Bucky to bring up said rear and for them to sandwich Steve in the middle. Less because he doesn't have a weapon - though he doesn't, of course - and more because he's the unknown factor here. Wherever, whenever here is, they know each other, and they know him... but they don't know him. And they're both good soldiers. Better than he could ever be.

As they get moving, though, he can't help the question that's been brimming inside him from tumbling out: "What happened here?"

[worthallthis]

Yeah, Steve is getting sandwiched. Bucky is not letting him out of his sight. He gives Peggy a brief look that tries to say he's okay, really, don't fucking look at him like that, except he is very clearly not okay.

Still, with them on the move now, he's steadier. He is always steadier on an actual mission, and now the mission has become "get Steve the hell back home".

He snorts at the question, not because it's stupid, it really isn't, but because they have been dealing with this for over a year now and it's just exhausting. "Interdimensional invasion," he says. "Some kind of magic virus, the wizards think. Warps space. And people."