Avengers: Endgame Fix-It fic

[cashew]

So uh, I'm writing like, two fics simultaneously. And trying to edit my NaNoWriMo project, which is, at the moment - *counts* - 135k words long.

o((⊙﹏⊙))o.

Ahahah, what am I doing.

Anyway, for tanithryudo, I hope this distracts you from life.

Title: Nowhere Past Morning

Part: 1

Fandom: MCU, Captain America Movies

Pairing: Starbuck

Rating: Currently G

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Bucky stared down his scope as he waited for Sam's signal for the all clear. In his ear piece, Friday's soothing voice updated him on the latest changes in wind speed and other calculations. One of the perks of working for the government again was the unlimited access to proprietary AI. It all felt too much like those dime pulp novels Bucky liked to read back before the war.

Stark had left his property rights, including Friday's IP, to Pepper's discretion. Unlike her S.O., Pepper didn't resent the Avengers, or Bucky, for what happened after the... Well, Bucky didn't have words for it, but the younger Avengers called it the Snappening. This lead to that and somehow the New Avengers, aka Captain America and his sidekick, were allowed to "borrow" Friday's frankly scary amount of computational power for their Avenging business.

Which is how Bucky ended up with the dulcet tones of Friday's program updating him real time with calibrations against the local wind speed and Sam's shifting position as he infiltrated the newly discovered Hydra nest. Using the Stark proprietary satellite data, Friday asked if Sergeant Barnes cared to adjust his sight 0.5 millimeters to the left. Bucky shifted his aim as Friday ordered. He had no illusions about who was calling the shots on this op and marveled once more at his luck. For some reason, T'Challa still felt residual guilt over chasing down his father's not-murderer based on planted evidence and was willing to pull on royal favors to help Bucky mod his rifle such that it could connect to Friday's central command.

In other words, T'Challa begged Shuri for help and his genius little sister graciously accepted the call. And that's how Bucky hooked up with the best of Stark's technology. Now, he could experience the joys of carrying out his sniper duties without needing a spotting partner — a luxury not afforded to them during the war.

Bucky pulled out of his reverie and refocused his attention to the present. He peered into the scope to track Sam's movement as he made his way through the Hydra compound. The newest Captain America needed him to keep an eye out for Hydra's ambush, not daydream about the not-so-good ol' days. They didn't need a repeat of Minsk again.

"Yo, Barnes, you with me?" Sam called over the channel, sensing Bucky's distraction from his prolonged silence.

"Yeah, I'm with you," Bucky answered as he shifted his limbs. Tension built up from holding the same belly-down position for the past hour. After a visual check of the Hydra nest from his elevated position, he added, "All clear."

"You think the intel's reliable?" Sam questioned as he moved into the building and began clearing the floor. It wasn't too difficult given the building's abandoned state, but one could never been too careful when stepping into Hydra grounds.

Once the floor was cleared, Sam said, "We've been hitting nothing but empty."

"You saying you don't trust Barton?" Bucky asked.

It was a genuine question. Sam worked with the New Avengers for longer than Bucky had and knew the team's quirks better. Where Bucky had spent two years in cryo, Sam had been running all over the world with the New Avenger members taking down super villain cells until Thanos arrived and threw everything into disarray. Bucky would believe anything Sam told him, although he tried be less obvious about it. Being a World War II veteran or a former Soviet assassin earned you no leeway from Sam's teasing.

In return, Sam kept the teasing focused on Winter Soldier's shortcomings instead.

"Naw, I trust Hawkeye's super spy intel gathering abilities. It's just..."

Sam trailed off as something out of the scope's field caught his attention. Bucky perked up as Sam asked, "Hey Barnes, you ready for some action?"

"Roger."

Refocusing the scope, Bucky took a look at the thing that had Sam's interest. It was a bland, metal door. There wasn't anything particularly odd about it save for its fresh appearance that contrasted starkly against the weathered hallway walls.

Sam held the shield in front of him in anticipation of an ambush and readied himself to kick down the door. Bucky aimed for the space over Sam's shoulder, adjusting his grip according to Friday's instructions. In the next breath, Sam kicked the door down and Bucky heard the ringing of bullets clashing against the vibranium through his earpiece.

The first goon was easy enough. Bucky took aim and brought him down with prejudice. Anyone who shot at Captain America was obviously a bad guy.

As the goon fell, Sam charged into the room, Redwing deployed off his back in a fancy loop-de-loop. Bucky rolled his eyes at the unnecessary flair typical of Air Force and focused on taking out the hostiles in the room. Even with Friday calculating the bullet trajectories, it was still a difficult enough task that it required Bucky's full attention. Between the small windows and staggered doorways, Bucky could only feed Friday a rough estimate of the triangulated locations of the goons in the room. Then he had to wait for Sam to come into view before letting his shots fly on the faith of Stark's supercomputer. Thankfully, Sam was experienced and considerate enough to keep himself visible to his sniping partner for the majority of the fight, unlike a certain punk from Brooklyn that Bucky had worked with in the before times. It meant that Bucky needn't wait long to take his shots and, between him, Sam, and Redwing, the roomful of hostiles were dispatched smoothly.

"Clear," Sam called after a minute of blessed silence.

Signal received, Bucky dismantled his rifle with practiced ease and rushed to meet Sam at the now no longer threatening place of interest. As he hustled toward the ex-Hydra compound, Bucky asked, "Any signs of evil Nazis?"

"Other than the shooty men in goggled masks? Nope," Sam quipped. "No signs of pilfered space jewelry here either."

"They're called Infinity Stones."

"I know that."

"The one we're looking for is called the Space Stone."

"Get your ass down here."

"Roger Captain."

"Tell me you said that to Rogers at some point."

"I didn't..."

"But someone did."

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"Move your ass, Bucky."

Bucky picked up his pace at the order and huffed, "I really thought we were done with them after Grimace the Mad."

"How do you know about Grimace?"

"I read the internet."

"Now I know you're just playing up the 'I'm a World War II veteran' bit."

"Speaking of the war—"

"Wasn't, but go ahead."

"—why are we chasing after this stone—"

"How is this part of the war?"

"That's what the Howling Commandos chased after during the war. While the rest of the army was occupying beaches, we were running after a glowing stone behind Axis lines," Bucky explained as he finally arrived at the foot of the building. Taking the steps two at a time, he continued, "Anyway, I was saying, what was the point of returning those stones back in time if that allowed Hydra to get their hands on it again?"

"Something something stability of timeline. I don't know, ask Banner if you're so curious," Sam said.

Bucky could pick up sounds of Sam rustling around in the room as he banged on surfaces to, presumably, see if there was a hidden alcove or something, because Hydra was old fashioned like that.

"You'd think after nearly 80 years that Nazis would've learned to stop using abandoned buildings in the middle of nowhere as a hideout," Bucky complained as he arrived at the top of the stairs. Without pausing for breath, he made his way toward Sam.

There were less bodies in the room than Bucky anticipated. Kicking the corpses out of the way, Bucky joined up with Sam and they proceeded to search high and low for signs of a glowing magical stone. When they found nothing except some empty filing cabinets and broken machinery, Sam kicked a dilapidated machine over in frustration. The knobs on the machine fell upon impact and the casing cracked as it toppled to the ground. Behind the now toppled machine was a clean span of plaster, the paint still bright against the bleached surroundings.

"I'm gonna say there's a hidden door there," Sam said as he pointed at the fresh paint.

Bucky nodded and pulled out a submachine gun without a word.

"Super trooper, you wanna give me a hand?"

Ignoring the pun, Bucky stepped in front of the rectangle of exposed wall. Then he punched through the paint and concrete, shoving his metal fist clean through. Spreading his metal hand, Bucky felt around for a latch or lever, once again marveling at Wakandan technology. The metal finger tips sent detailed signals to his brain about the surface of the wall while it avoided pain signals when he put his fist through it.

After a fruitless search, Bucky pulled his hand back to pummel the wall until the hole crumbled enough for a grown man to walk through. The floor on the other side of the hole immediately gave way to a descending staircase.

"Down?" Sam asked.

"Down," Bucky agreed.

Together, they made their way down the concrete steps. Above them, Redwing lit up a search light that illuminated their way as they proceeded down the stairs into dank, stuffy darkness. It wasn't long before they arrived at the bottom of the stairs which lead to a sealed chamber. Redwing attached itself to the ceiling and shined its search light downward, lighting up the room in a dim red glow.

Bucky felt a shiver of familiar unease and tensed to alertness. Beside him, Sam also took up a defensive position.

"What is it?" Sam asked in a whisper as he shuffled in front of Bucky, putting himself between Bucky and the rest of the room. He held the shield up in anticipation of an attack.

"Dunno, something feels familiar, but in a wrong way," Bucky answered as he felt the muscles in his back tense instinctively. Something about the room's layout was tickling at a lost memory, like a loose tooth that wiggled but refused to fall out.

The same instinct that made Bucky tense up drove him forward. The room was a storage unit of some sort, row upon row of filing cabinets stretched from wall to wall. A nondescript cabinet caught his attention and Bucky moved to open it. Dust flew up from the disturbance and Bucky, still guided by unclear memory, extracted a folder and flipped through its yellowed pages.

He was greeted by a faded picture of a familiar object.

"Tesseract," Bucky muttered as he pulled the photograph from the folder and showed Sam his discovery.

"Nothing that we don't already know, right?" Sam asked as he examined the material.

"These files are dated to 1972," Bucky said. "Steve said he returned the Space Stone to SHIELD at Camp Lehigh in 1970. So why does Hydra still have research documents of the Tesseract after it was returned to SHIELD?"

"Well, I mean, SHIELD was still Hydra's home base, right?"

"But if Steve went back in time..." Bucky trailed off as he remembered Banner's explanation that nothing Steve did in the past would alter the present they experienced now, because time was always experienced linearly. There were diagrams and jargon, but the gist of it was that whatever Bucky experienced isn't and can't be changed. Shaking his head clear of the convoluted explanations, Bucky continued, "In our timeline, Fury had control of the Tesseract since they picked it up from the ocean, right?"

"Yeah?"

"And his cat ate it in the nineties..."

"Right," Sam said as he rolled his eyes, recalling the crazy story involving Captain Danvers. "I get what you're saying, this shit's weird. Let's get a team in here and take it back to base so the science nerds can get a look."

Nodding, Bucky gingerly replaced the files back into the cabinet for the recovery team. Then they tracked back up the stairs and into fresh air. Together, they leaned against the intact parts of the wall as they waited for the help to arrive.

"So, you think we'll get anything useful out of this?" Sam asked.

"You're asking the wrong person, buddy," Bucky said with a grimace. "With my luck, we'll end up with two Space Stones."

"Yeah, let's hope this doesn't come to that."

Comments

[tanithryudo]

Oh god, time travel hijinks. My brain is retro-pre-actively hurting. :p

So, like, I've been mostly out of touch with the MCU timeline since the complexity of their timeline exploded... This is...post-Endgame of some kind?

[cashew]

LOL, it won't contain too much time travel other than as a plot point. You can rest knowing the story's plot is going to be linear.

The setting is post-Endgame and canonically only includes movies from Endgame and earlier canon. Also movie only, so none of the TV shows will be acknowledged. (Also, Agent Carter second season was weird...)