Chapter Text
Doombots. That’s the catchy, comic book-worthy moniker the spider-themed hero came up with. And it sticks. Sans the hot-rod red, the bots resemble Stark’s drones, but don’t run on arc reactors. They seem to prefer the fumes of pure violence and pestilence—the green-cloaked, early 1900s dystopian kind, and Bucky would know. Bucky's theory is proven wrong when he watches Steve rip out the power source of a bot from its diaphragm. He can’t be bitter about it. Steve hurriedly relays the news of the power-cores over the comms and it helps the team get the edge.
Over the tall buildings of the cityscape, Wanda’s able to stretch herself farther. Rather than crushing the entire frame of each bot, she targets their centers with blows of scarlet energy. Vision beams them where it counts in quick succession. Stark and Natasha perform rough, dirty take-downs on ground level, Stark’s suit blasters compromised in some sort of shock-pulse the bots deployed at kickoff. Thor hasn’t changed tactics; he merrily zaps and hammers the things until something happens. Sam and Rhodes are off near the Quinjet, down for the count. War Machine’s blasters were also compromised—mid-flight. It was a reenactment of the last time Rhodes’s suit went dead in the air, thankfully with better timing and less nerve damage.
Peter’s typically the non-lethal type, for which Bucky is silently grateful for.
Those webs of his are hitting on all eights, and the bots are yanked viciously into brick walls, some shattering to steel bits. Before today, Bucky never knew a robot could be crushed anaconda-style with a wrap of synthetic spiderwebs—or about the sheer air-born power of a manhole cover when thrown with eight tons of force.
The Hulk wins in the force department, though. He romps through the bots like they’re chalk action figures and he’s a toddler with a Godzilla complex. The mindless strength is unnerving to Bucky in a way that’s not chilling, but nauseating. But maybe it’s the veiny, unforgiving field of puke-green on the “mad” scientist’s enlarged body.
The sun threatens to dip under the city horizon by the time Wanda’s picked off most of them. Sam’s back in the game, and the ground team is nearly through “detailing.” They scout and pick off the remaining bots, most all already damaged.
“Think we’re ‘bout ready to dust out,” Steve announces through the comms, clapping the dirt off his palms.
“Good,” Bucky says dryly as Steve makes his way over to Bucky and his latest robo-kill. “Cause I’m ‘bout done burning powder,” Bucky laments as he reloads his last magazine into his automatic.
Steve huffs at the ground with an easy smile. “And for a tick, I was convinced you’re lousy with shells in your slacks.”
Bucky scoffs. “I am,” he mumbles with no real bite and gestures to the scattered array of steel bot remains, “Reckon I got too charitable.”
Steve chuckles.
“Didn’t we teach him better than this?” Stark jumps in on the comms. “I think we taught him better than this—Nat? Help me out here, didn’t we teach the Cap better?”
“Way better,” Nat confirms.
“Thought so. What? So your buddy’s back? That means you get to just—regress? Revert? There’s a word I’m looking for here…”
“Retrograde?” Sam supplies helpfully.
“Mmh,” Stark clicks his tongue. “Too on the nose. And it’s more an adjective than a ver—”
“Okay,” Steve smiles and lolls his head like they could see him through the comm. “Alright. Grandpa slang. I get it. But y’know, I’m—”
“Yeah, uh-huh!” Stark interrupts. “Guys, he ‘gets it.’ Now who’s gonna teach Sven Holgersson the seventy-year difference between a ‘rub-out,’ and a ‘shooting?’”
Bucky said “burning powder,” but it’s a seventy-year-old trade fact: you don’t correct a Stark.
“Oh!” Peter pipes up. “‘Holgersson?’ Like from Voltron? Wait… you mean because he—”
“You’re running out of sleeper agents to throw at him,” Nat informs.
“We’ll see,” Stark says. “And the kid got it.”
“Vis and I can’t spot any more,” comes Wanda’s raspy yet tireless voice. “We’ll meet you at the jet.”
“Roger that,” Sam replies. “Keep Rhodes cozy. He’s bent up. Tony?”
“Yeah,” Stark concedes. “Gimme a boost back, will you?”
“You got it,” Sam goes quiet as his jets power up, the smart-noise-canceling mod cutting his line.
“Nat?” Steve prompts.
“I’ll get Mr. Green,” Natasha replies.
“We’ll finish up,” says Steve. “Thor?”
Silence. Save for the cracking and rumbling of his thunder off in the distance.
“Think he took his comm out again,” Bucky tells him. “Or he fried it.”
Steve shakes his head and waves down Spider-Wonder. “Hey, Kid. It’s just us for the next two sectors.”
Peter’s chipper “alrighty” sounds on the earpieces and he makes the four-block distance in five seconds, swinging at terminal velocity. Peter keeps to building tops while Steve and Bucky scout the ground. It's getting darker and harder to spot, and the work is mind-numbing, in a necessary way. He tries replaying the image of guiding people to checkpoints by the hundreds when the battle started, but finding more bodies than survivors makes Bucky miss the jokes filtering through the comms. He couldn’t see the appeal before…
Things quiet down and they nearly pack up, until Peter drops down, his voice low and quiet. “Do you guys hear that?”
Steve and Bucky look on at the red-clad hero quizzically until Bucky too can pick out a faint crying. Peter and Bucky lock eyes to mask at the same time and scramble to locate the source. Steve is all but useless at finding the sound; he’s off in some corner of rubble, almost twenty meters away from the large slab of cement that’s masking a pained cry. Peter gets to it first and holds it up easily, and Bucky dives under. The woman is caked with blood and dust, but she’s a living, breathing, scintillating sight to see. She jumps, horrified at Bucky’s figure, until she makes a relieved sob that sounds like she’s been suddenly punched and reaches for Bucky. He grabs her mindfully, careful of the open wounds and burns on her limbs.
“Are you alright, are you hurt?” He asks the usual, but it’s soft and rhetorical, a means to placate; and the woman is understandably listless. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”
When he manages to drag her out from under the slab that Peter’s dutifully upholding, there’s a half-busted bot waiting for them, pumping lead at Steve’s shield. The woman in Bucky’s arms wails piercingly as the bot deploys the unmistakable shape of an explosive, likely the kind that already tore through this block. Steve is quick to cover the bomb with his shield, and it takes the blow, but also takes Steve to meet the wall twenty feet away. The Dreadbot starts shooting again—right at Bucky.
It’s not a choice or a matter of question. There is no trolly and lever. There is no decision. There is no Bucky. Only the mission. The goal. The civilian.
He shields her face with his metal arm and sees the sparks fly off it before he hears the tink-tink! A bullet rips into his hip, and the other one… will be the last one. He can see the barrel line up just right, the glint as lead catches air, the bead of death hurling straight for his head. It’s not in slow motion. It simply… is.
It goes dark quicker than he expected.
It hurts more than he expected too.
That glint of heavy black metal eats up his vision and the throbbing, angry blackness. Bucky feels himself blink, the glint giving way to white, and then there’s a bright field of gray surrounding a tan blob. He can hear… he hears Peter, like he’s speaking underwater. He’s muttering something about a “web solvent” and there’s a wet entity swiping at Bucky's face.
Bucky groans.
“Oh! Hey, guys! He’s awake!” Underwater Peter announces.
“Buck…” And then there’s Steve, the details of his face revealing themselves slowly, sounds becoming sharper. Steve supports Bucky’s head and stares, sky-blue eyes searching. Bucky’s on the jet. He’s alive. His head is killing him.
Bucky tries to sit up, but hisses at the shooting fire in his middle.
“Take it slow,” a calmed-down Banner instructs, warm and soft. “The bullet went right through. The stitches are setting; careful not to tear them, alright?”
The concern and doting nature of the figures surrounding him leave a bad taste in his mouth, but he grunts in assent.
Bucky sits up with the warmth of Steve’s aiding hand pressed into his back. Curiously, and maybe a tad bewildered, Bucky’s fingers find his forehead and brush on the circular imprint there. There’s a wet foam on his fingertips when he draws them back. The stuff is like soap suds.
“Modified ricochet webs,” Peter tells him softly with a faint grimace. “I shot one on your head before the bullet made contact,” he flips a small flimsy towel over in his hands. “It renders lead bullets rubber, basically,” he shifts, “but, um, you might have a concussion.”
Peter has the audacity to look sorry.
Bucky makes out the faces of the rest of the team as the fuzz fades. He catches a few acknowledging nods and worried, pressed lips.
A very bad taste indeed.
“The lady made it,” Peter jumps to the topic, shying away from Bucky’s eyes. “I got her to the checkpoint after we trashed that last bot,” he informs, shoulder gesturing to Steve.
Bucky almost nods, but the headache sways him against it. So he sighs instead.
The rest of the ride back is miserable. He’s not allowed to sleep. He wants to. Steve is on “keep awake” duty, and Bucky fantasizes about arriving back at the compound with more than one concussed super soldier in tow. He’s resigned himself to sitting back in his seat, folding his arms, and staring at the ground—near a certain bubbling red and blue superhero’s legs.
The brat is fidgeting nervously.
Nervous, sorry—as if he has any right to be. And maybe it’s the headache, but Bucky almost wants to give him something to be sorry for.