milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Go. Go! Take this journal and write down everything you can remember. It will help, I promise you."

"Princess--"

"Do not argue. Find somewhere quiet, where you won't be bothered."

"The kids aren't a bother."

"They are also not quiet."

* * * * * * *

It's been a long time since he's been here, enough that if pressed he couldn't actually say how long. He hadn't exactly meant to come, either, but he'd been thinking about finding somewhere out of the way when he walked out of Shuri's lab, and there's no question that Milliways fits that description better than anywhere else.

About ten minutes later, Bucky Barnes is settled in at one of the quieter booths in the back, the journal open in front of him. (A close observer might notice that each page is subtly embossed with the logo of the Wakandan Design Group.)

He's holding a pen in his right hand and tapping it against the blank page. From time to time he sets down the pen and picks up the cup of coffee waiting beside him instead. A swallow or two later, he repeats the process, swapping cup for pen.

His left hand is immaterial to the whole process, as it's entirely absent. A series of gauze bandages are barely visible under the collar of his shirt, and his left sleeve is neatly pinned shut over where his arm used to be.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"They yell a lot. Bleat, I mean. Wag their stubby tails when they're happy, like a dog would. Climb things. They're pretty funny."

"I've only ever really seen goats at the zoo. And in videos on YouTube - they like to climb on stuff it seems." Now he has a mental image of goats climbing all over Bucky and that's pretty damned funny.

"They really do," Bucky tells him. "They climb everything they can."

"I mean - climbing is pretty fun." Says the guy who can climb pretty much anything he wants.

He chuckles, just a little.

"You should know."

A little nod. "Climbed the Washington Monument once. That was scary." That thing is tall and in the middle of a big open space.

"Why'd you do that? Because it was there?"

"Funny, but no. The school decathalon team was stuck in the elevator after a chitauri energy core had a bad day and messed some stuff up." He's leaving out the part where he and Ned had been carrying it around. Shhhhh.

"Had to spidey-up and climb the outside to get in to rescue them. It's a long fall from the top of the elevator shaft." Which he also knew from personal experience - but he did manage to web the side so he didn't crash into the floor at the bottom. Physics is a bitch and he would've had a really really bad day.

By the time Peter finishes his story, Bucky's eyebrows have nearly hit his hairline.

"School trips have gotten a lot more interesting since I was a kid."

"It wasn't supposed to be that interesting. We went for the decathalon. And I may have skipped over to Baltimore to see what this unsavory guy was up to and gotten locked in one of the Dept of Damage Control facilities." Maybe. Might have.

Probably.

Definitely. That definitely happened.

Bucky's looking amused again.

"You 'may have,' huh?"

He smirks. "You're not supposed to call me out like that."

A shrug. "He was selling weapons he'd collected from when that big Chitauri fight happened. He had some crew of his retrofitting them to work somehow. Then they made it worse by trying to steal more tech from the Avengers."

He looks absolutely unrepentant, but sobers when Peter explains what the guy had been up to.

"There's a lot of that going around," he mutters, thinking of Steve and Natasha and Wilson's current targets. "Although trying to steal from the Avengers is pretty stupid."

Edited 2021-03-11 19:45 (UTC)

"Right? And - well, the plane ended up crashing at Coney Island... somehow not hitting most of the park there... it landed on the shore in the sand. I dunno what Mr. Stark was able to salvage. Probably a lot? His stuff is usually pretty robust."

He didn't hang around for the aftermath - that was all on Happy and Mr. Stark.

"Coney Island?" he exclaims, dismayed. "Fuck. At least it hit the sand."

He takes a swallow of coffee to wash the bad taste of that idea away, then adds,

"I'm sure he figured out something."

"I mean, I dunno if you've ever tried to steer a crashing plane from the outside - even with lots of strength and highly tensile webbing - but, they're a bit unwieldy." He shrugs. "I missed most of the stuff. I think that one swing ride took a hit. But they probably put it back up the next week." He doesn't know - he was busy crashing a plane and trying not to die.

A nod about Tony - "He probably did. I got a sort-of apology from Happy and then Mr. Stark invited me to join the Avengers." And now they're back around to the beginning.

Bucky gives him a sharp look.

"So when you say the plane 'ended up crashing,' you mean you kept them from getting away with the stolen tech and managed to keep Coney Island mostly intact in the bargain," he summarizes.

"Nice work."

A bite at his lip as he ponders that summary. "Uh - kinda? I guess?"

A grin. "Thanks." And he might grumble something about adults listening to him when he'd told them about this whole thing it wouldn't have gone down that way.

"Well, hopefully they've learned to listen to you now."

They'll likely have plenty of opportunity.

"Yeah. Hopefully."

They haven't. At least, not to the point they'll let him participate in anything. For the moment, he's not super mad about that. He'll see what happens with the next bad guy that comes calling.