A/N: Hi, welcome to my trashy fanfic. spanning at least a few chapters. I don’t have any set end goal in mind for this, so I guess I’ll just sort of go where it takes me. I promise, I have something actually planned and structured in the works, I just actually have to get around to writing it. Until then, have this short series I’ve had stuck in my head for about a month now.

A lot about the founding of SHIELD is still foggy, and I especially am no expert, so this is going to be a weird blend of headcanon combined with various fandom wiki cross references combined with me just filling in the blanks. Hopefully this hodge-podge makes sense, and I hope I’ll be able to develop it further as I continue.

Warning, this series will contain gun violence (mostly just this first chapter), and perhaps some vague mentions of abuse and later on. Nothing too graphic, of course; just be mindful when reading. (I mean, this is a kids' site; I promise I'll make this as generally acceptable as possible. Odds are that I'll be cutting out/altering parts that would normally go on my other writing sites. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Also note: life is hectic for me, and motivation and time are interchangeably nonexistent, so my update schedule is going to be crazy inconsistent. Sorry ‘bout that, but I’ll try to release new content as often as I possibly can.

Until then, happy reading~

—

- Chasing Ghosts -
Prologue

No one expected this to happen.

Well, I mean, there’s a lot that happens unexpectedly.

But really, no one expected this to happen.

It was the evening of April ninth, 1957. Just another Tuesday for the recently founded Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division station based in New York City.

Many of the agents working for the Strategic Scientific Reserve branch of the organization had already retired for the night, leaving one Peggy Carter alone with only a handful of her colleagues as they each finished up their day’s work and began packing up to head home. Peggy swept her papers back into their file, opening the drawer in her desk and replacing the folder inside before shutting and locking it, then sticking her items back into her bag and standing up from her seat.

By the time she’d sufficiently secured her workspace for the night, all of her coworkers had already vacated the office, save for Ronald Beckett. Peggy had never gone out of her way to associate with Beckett; he was too much like the other agents she’d had the pleasure of being forced to work with at the SSR before Howard invited her to join in the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D.– that is, he saw her as a woman and nothing more; a liability, an incompetent. Thus, she didn’t give him so much as a second glance as they wrapped up for the night at the same time, shutting off the lights in the office and heading out the door. Peggy slung her purse over her shoulder, setting out down the main hallway to the lobby exit. Beckett branched off and headed in the opposite direction, to the elevator. Likely to visit Doctor Miller, Peggy mused to herself. She knew the two had a more favorable relationship, a friendship born of six years working together. She hadn’t dreamed that anything would be out of the usual.

Things proved otherwise the following morning.

Apparently there had been an attack on the facility the previous night. No one would be able to tell just by looking at it; everything inside and outside was still intact. The only indication of any kind of disturbance would be the two bodies. Beckett sat slumped up against the hallway outside the lab, shirt stained red from a clean shot straight through his chest. The poor man hadn’t even had the opportunity to take his weapon out to face whoever had killed him before the deed was done.

Inside the laboratory, Doctor Miller lay splayed on the ground, a similar wound through his head. His person evidently had been searched for a tool or research of some sort or another, though the rest of his workspace remained exactly as it had been prior to the attack.

The two kills hadn’t set off any sort of alarm that night, there was no evidence left anywhere, and the fatal blows had been performed with exact precision and efficiency. Peggy knew a professional hit when she saw one, and this was perhaps the most consummate job she had seen in her career.

In fact, odds were that they never would have learned who’d carried out the assassination, were it not for the fact that Howard Stark had replaced their cameras with high quality security cameras that could capture any slight movement even in the dark on the premises not even a week before.

It was a rare day when Peggy was genuinely grateful for Howard’s absurd obsession with spending his time coming up with and constantly improving some of the most ludicrous and likely unnecessary inventions that no person in their right mind could possibly need, much less waste their time on creating. However, those rare days did still occur, and today was one of them. Even Stark’s ultramodern cameras were hardly able to pick up on the assassin; the hitman may as well have been a ghost to their previous technology.

The office was bustling with activity throughout the morning; evidently word had spread rapidly about the double assassination, and it was all anyone could talk about. Peggy kept her head low, going through her usual work and not paying much mind to her colleagues. Of course, she’d already spoken with Howard, who was willing to grant a few favors to give her the information she needed regarding the matter. He had one of his assistants working to improve the resolution of the footage so the perpetrator could actually be sufficiently identified. All they could do now was wait.

After her lunch break, Peggy returned to the workroom to find a group of her colleagues gathered at the desk next to hers and apparently fussing about the contents of a file. The file she had requested, as it turned out. She hardly had time to be angry about her coworkers rifling through what was rightfully hers, however, as she took a gander for herself.

It turned out the assassin was an average looking man, aside from his stocky build and well defined muscles that didn’t entirely seem to naturally match up with his body type. Peggy’s associates were engrossed by the killer’s left arm; it had a silvery sheen to it and was broken up into individual plates– seemingly made entirely of metal. While that in and of itself was interesting enough, it was dwarfed by what captured Peggy’s intention. She found herself staring at the man’s face in complete silence, blocking out the continual comments about the metal arm from the workers around her. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it, and yet the photo held in her hands insisted that it was true.

Of all the things Peggy had expected to see, a ghost was not one of them.

Not bad.

this is heccin gold- uh a ghOsT aaaaaa I love this and I can't wait to read more! <33

A/N: Dear goodness, this chapter was just such a pain to write. I guess the three weeks' wait for it could be a testament to that. I found myself stuck in the same place for two weeks, but eventually I was able to make my way out of my writer's block hellhole and I'm fairly satisfied with how it turned out now. There are some spots in here that still might be iffy, but I'm in no mood to go back and try to fix them. Hopefully the next chapter will be better, fingers crossed.

~~~

- Chasing Ghosts -
Chapter One

Peggy snatched the file of photos up into her hands and stomped away, ignoring the rising protests from the coworkers she had just left behind. She gripped the folder tightly in her fingers, mind reeling as she marched out of the office and down the hall with steely determination. The comments she overheard as she carried on her resolute stride only got under her skin more; apparently word was spreading fast about the metal-armed man. Not that that was completely unexpected– this was arguably the most significant event that had occurred since the start of federation.

She marched straight to Director Phillips’ office, not bothering to knock and instead barging right in. The director himself was off in Chicago, leaving his chief David Pratt in command in the meantime. Peggy had no taste for Pratt– a feeling which was very much mutual. He was much like all the other men in the office, in that he saw her more as a nuisance than an actual competent coworker. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t irritate her, though she didn’t let it truly bother her. She knew her value, and she’d prove it to everyone else soon enough.

Peggy disregarded Pratt’s complaint about her bursting into his office, cutting him off and slamming the folder down on his desk with the photos in clear view. “That is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes,” she all but hissed. The look on Pratt’s face told her very clearly that he had already seen the photos– yet, clearly, he wasn’t buying it.

“Agent Carter, please,” Pratt drawled, scorn practically radiating from him. Oh, so condescending already? Peggy would have figured that he could at least have made it through a sentence– though she couldn’t say she was surprised. “Sergeant Barnes was killed in action over a decade ago. You're insinuating that he somehow miraculously survived a four hundred foot drop off a mountain, and, what, has been living a secret life for the past twelve years with no one hearing a word about him?"

Peggy crossed her arms, fighting back a scowl. “Barnes was officially labeled missing in action,” she refuted. “His body was never found. He still could have–”

“Again,” Pratt interrupted brusquely, “He fell from a mountain. Even if by some miracle he actually didn’t immediately die on impact, he would still be stuck in the middle of nowhere, deep in enemy territory, with no resources and who knows what kind of physical condition he would be in?” He shook his head. “Do you maybe see the problem with that?“

Peggy opened her mouth to counter but Pratt cut her off before she could say anything, sighing softly and clasping his hands before turning his gaze up to her with a disdainful look in his eyes. ”Listen,“ he started, his voice low but carrying a certain stiffness to it that already made Peggy loathe what he would say next. ”I know you've had a hard time adapting to the loss of Captain Rogers, and the idea that one of your ties to him might still be alive must be overwhelming. But you can't go on coming up with crazy theories just because some random hitman just happens to look like one of his old friends–“

Peggy's blood was boiling even before he could finish his first sentence. ”Oh, my sorry grieving brain is trying to compensate, is that it?“ she snapped sharply. ”That I'm just making up ludicrous speculations–“

”Yes, Carter, ludicrous. Chasing these theories–“ he cut himself off with a derisive shake of his head. ”Carter, what you're trying to– Chasing ghosts is what you're trying to do, Carter. And I can't stand by it. Captain Rogers is dead. Barnes is dead. You can't go trying to rewrite the past just because a man in a picture looks familiar.“

Peggy stared at him with her jaw clenched, speechless in her seething. Pratt just stared back at her, cocksure in his apparently winning argument. She simply wasn't having it.

Peggy whipped around and stormed out of the office, not even bothering to reclaim the file. If Pratt needed verification that that was Barnes, then verification he would get.

~~~

”Oh, that's Barnes alright.“

Howard hardly had to take a look at the photos to confirm the identity of the subject. He lifted his eyes from the file to peer at Pratt, his expression frankly less surprised than it probably should have been. Peggy kept silent for her part, knowing full well that the chief would only take Stark's word on the matter (since at least he was respected).

Pratt himself seemed less than pleased to have been proven wrong (and for Peggy to have been proven right). ”And you're sure that's him? It could be–“

”Are you kidding? It's definitely Barnes,“ Howard cut in with finality, fingers tightening ever so slightly on the file. ”The man hung around my workspace and made so many smart remarks about my inventions that I'd know that face anywhere.“ He huffed a breath, eyebrows raised as he looked back over the photos. ”Gee, I can't believe he's alive.“

Pratt's lips pressed into a thin line, his tight expression indicating that he was trying to keep ahold of his dignity. ”So… he's alive,“ he stated, as if that wasn't the exact topic they'd been discussing for the past while. ”…How exactly is he alive–?“

Peggy sucked in a slow breath and thought back to Steve's original mission to save his friend; how they'd found out later that Barnes had come from Zola's isolation ward for his experiments. She remembered distinctly the medical examination he'd had to endure after he'd been found out, she remembered seeing all the needle tracks covering his arms when she'd gotten a glimpse.

”He was experimented on,“ she offered in a low voice. ”In 1943. Zola was trying to recreate the serum– he must've had some success,“ she realized.

”The supersoldier serum?“ Pratt inquired, brows furrowing in confusion. ”By Erskine, for Project Rebirth?“ At Peggy's confirmation, the chief only seemed to grow more flummoxed. ”But if the Axis powers managed to recreate that serum, shouldn't they have had supersoldiers in action out on the field?“

Peggy shook her head. ”No, I don't think Sergeant Barnes had a fully successful version of the serum. He certainly didn't gain the muscle mass, nor any superhuman abilities.“

”Well, I think that bit has changed now,“ Howard clued in, indicating the photos. ”I mean, just look at him." And the man had a point; the Bucky Barnes in the pictures had a muscular physique that he definitely hadn't had before, and the way that it didn't entirely line up with his natural build quite right suggested that it was forced by unnatural causes.

So, they had a new supersoldier on their hands.

A new supersoldier made up from a man who was supposed to be dead.

Howard turned to Peggy, a look of shame and regret combined with a hint of awkwardness painted on his face. “Listen, Peg,” he said quietly. “We gotta get him back. We gotta do it for Cap.”

Peggy nodded with a solemn determination. “I know. We'll do it.” She looked to Pratt, though both she and Howard knew that they'd be carrying out some sort of rescue mission for Bucky regardless of whether they had the chief's permission or not.

Fortunately, it didn't seem like it would have to come to that, as Pratt backed up with his hands held up in a placating gesture of surrender.

Peggy turned back to Howard, her resolve mirrored in the man's own expression. “Alright then, Mister Stark. Let's go chasing ghosts, shall we?”

Dude this is so awesome! aslkfjalksjflaksdf wow!

i love it aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

A/N: Happy birthday James Buchanan Barnes, you amazing fictional human.

Sorry this piece is a little on the shorter side, I was in a rush to get it done in time and writer's block is a pain as always.

That aside, enjoy.

~~~

- March Tenth -

“Go ahead, open it!”

Bucky smiled with a glint in his eye as he took the thin package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied up with twine. He pulled loose the string then carefully removed the tape from the edges of the paper and removed it, keeping it intact by habit.

Behind the wrapping lay the stack of five Popular Science magazines from recent months that had been hard to come by for the past while, the money that Bucky might’ve put towards them going to more important matters instead. But, Steve was happy to make an exception this month, using the dollar he’d managed to make selling his sketches on the street to buy something that Bucky wanted for once instead of the other way around.

Steve reveled in the wide-eyed look of shock and awe that lit up his friend's face, knowing instantly that his efforts had been worthwhile. “No way,” Bucky breathed, turning his elated gaze back up to him. “You- You really didn't have to, Stevie–”

Steve cut him off with a modest shake of his head. “It's nothing, Buck. Really.”

That was an understatement and they both knew it, but neither of them wanted to undercut the value of this moment.

Bucky clutched the magazines to his chest, grinning from ear to ear at the gift. “Thank you, Steve. I mean it. Thank you.”

~~~

Steve stood at the window in his floor at the Avengers Tower, gazing out in silence at the New York City that had changed so much since he had last known it. Gray morning light washed over the rooms, giving the space a sterile feeling and reflecting his inner gloom.

It had been just over ten months since the Battle of New York with the alien army, and only two weeks longer than that since the supersoldier had come around from being thawed from the frozen ocean. He hadn’t had much time to adapt to suddenly waking up sixty-seven years in the future to a world without a war (what with an army from outer space menacing the biggest city in America), and since then, trying to cope with his losses had kind of taken a backseat in his mind as he now faced a multitude of gains in the form of the Avengers and his new life leading them and working with S.H.I.E.L.D. This wasn’t to say, of course, that this new team replaced his old one. No, it definitely wasn’t that. The Avengers just sort of… distracted him, from everything he no longer had.

But, they couldn’t today. Nor did he really want them to, instead shutting himself up in his room to process his thoughts, to actually take the time to think about it. He didn’t entirely welcome the ache that settled deep inside him, but he didn’t really try to push it away either.

Steve knew he owed him that much. If he couldn't have saved him, the least he could do is remember him.

Even if that meant coming to terms with how much it hurt.

He drew in a shaky breath, the action absently bringing up the feeling of Bucky's hand on his back whenever he couldn't get air into his lungs quite right. He closed his eyes for a moment, almost even hearing his old friend's voice hovering over his left ear, coaching him and encouraging him through yet another asthma attack.

“–just in and out, Stevie, com’on–”

In and out. He released his breath and opened his eyes, his gaze wandering back out to the window, though he didn't really focus on the scenery before him as his head kept him busy. He remembered, after Project Rebirth, after pulling Bucky from that horrible table in that horrible factory, after eventually being able to fall back into their beat– given time– he remembered Bucky idly commenting that Steve didn't need him anymore, not now that he was better and everything was fixed.

“I'll always need you,” he'd responded, meaning every word.

I still need you, he thought, now facing a future without his friend.

Steve jolted out of his thoughts at the sound of his coffee maker alerting him to its finished job, pushing away from the wall where he leaned near the window and heading into the kitchen. The cold silence of the morning lay thick over him as he took his coffee, an empty mug clutched in his other hand.

He numbly made his way over to the table steeped in the light filtering through the window, sitting carefully down in one of the seats. He reached over and set the empty mug upside down on the space on the table opposite him with the dull clink of ceramic.

He held his own mug in his hands for a few long minutes, just letting the warmth seep into his skin as thoughts flitted through his head with the feeling of slow molasses and achy detachment and dreadful longing. Eventually he brought his cup up to his lips to take a sip, the coffee tasting almost like he had known it. Coffee nowadays was too sweet, the taste of it only yet another reminder of all the change in the world he had missed, the comments and questions on why he liked it so bitter doing nothing to help the situation.

It wasn't entirely unlike the mug sitting upside down across from him on the table.

That, however, that served as an intentional and active reminder of what he was missing. A friend who had moved on to the next life, a brother who had sacrificed himself for him, a piece of him that was no longer there.

But he would sooner rather let HYDRA come back from the dead than let himself forget his friend who had sacrificed so much for him, even up to the sacrifice of his own life. It didn't matter how much it hurt to see what he no longer had, it was so important that he keep Bucky's memory alive even though the man himself no longer could have the same treatment. Steve just hoped to God that heaven was taking good care of his friend. He hoped that his life of selflessness was giving him all that he deserved and more in death. He hoped that his friend knew how much he loved him and missed him, he hoped he knew that he was being remembered.

The mug sat upside down across from him.

Steve took another slow sip from his cup.

“…Happy birthday, Buck.”

~~~

A/N: Sorry for writing angst for a birthday, I know it's supposed to be a happy occasion. I just can't help myself :') I hope you at least enjoyed this little snippet from Steve's perspective, dramatic irony and all, I'll bet it was probably not what you were expecting.

Speaking of, Steve's birthday is also going to be angst, and its story actually is going to be paired with this one, so keep an eye out for that :eyes:

Also, Chasing Ghosts chapter 2 is in the works, I promise! It's just that with time and motivation being completely nonexistent for me, I had to ration them out so I could finish this on time. Hopefully I can have that next chapter posted within a week, though.

(For any of you unclear on the symbolism of the upside down cup– it’s a gesture of keeping the place of a loved one who has passed away, and, as such, remembering them. My writing of it was inspired by an anecdote my brother gained in his years of working at Waffle House where a pair of good and old friends would regularly come in for coffee. Unfortunately, one of them passed away, and so the next time the other came in, he took another mug and set it down upside down across from him. I actually liked writing Steve in this position, setting up the gesture himself to commemorate the loss of Bucky. It felt like something he would do.)

I love it this is wonderful- sadfsdfdsf I love the way you write about how it must've felt for Steve coming out of the ice and leaving everything behind. It's really great how you wrote about his inability to leave Bucky behind, and come to terms with his losses even if it hurt. It's a very Captain America way of thinking, and very Steve. Point is, you got the characters great and it was awesome!

A/N: Part two of my birthday angst collection for everyone’s favorite centenarians.

Happy birthday Steve, you majestic mass of patriotism and sass.

WARNING: This one contains some slightly darker themes. Still reasonably Scratch-appropriate, but please read at your own risk.

~~~

- July Fourth -

4 July, 1954

Mission: Eliminate Target

The Soldier was pulled from his cryo chamber early in the morning. Very early, apparently, as once he was dragged from the frigid metal coffin, subjected to his memory treatment in the Chair, and taken– with his head still buzzing with static and with ice still running through his veins and with nausea still swirling in his stomach– to a Prep Room (somewhere not twenty feet underground) with actual slivers of windows way up near the ceiling letting in the barest hints of natural light, the very faint glow revealed that the sun was now only barely beginning to peek over the horizon. He suppressed a shiver as he stood stiffly at attention in the Room, agents bustling around him.

Handler Genrich stepped forward, bearing a file on the details of the mission at hand. A simple elimination of a target– a William Armstrong, who'd apparently caught the attention of HYDRA Superiors with a threat large and important enough to have had the Soldier moved from Siberia to America temporarily in order to remove the threat. The Mission would be executed at night, taking advantage of the darkness and apparent noise of the occasion– whatever that meant. Handler Genrich didn't explain what he meant by that, though the Soldier was a little too distracted to have fully listened anyway.

His eyes lingered for a moment at the date written at the top of the file, in Russian like everything else.

4 июля. July 4th.

Something about that date tickled at his brain. The world seemed to warp out of focus for the briefest moment– a moment that seemed to last an unnecessarily long time. He felt like he had someone by his side, some small presence at his right side. Something… friendly.

Agent Morozov was at his right side, his kevlar vest and uniform jacket in his hands.

The Soldier snapped back into his usual sharp focus as agents shuffled around him, shaking off his malfunction as his cryo wear was exchanged for field gear and hands clasped on his vest and strapped on his jacket. Other agents went about their usual preparations for the Mission, and he was provided his ration in the meantime. Afterwards, he was led to a clandestine van and ferried off to his Mission site, sitting submissively still as the agents working with him on this assignment buckled on the weapons necessary to execute it to expected perfect efficiency. Dusk had fallen by the time they made the necessary preparations and arrived at their destination of Akron, Ohio, the atmosphere warm and murky with the summer season.

The Soldier felt like he was missing something.

Amid the preparations, during the travel here, throughout the finalizing of instructions, something was missing. He kept glancing to his right, expecting to find– …He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find.

The date (July fourth July fourth July fourth July fourth) kept cycling and recycling in his brain, just like the regular repeat of his Orders. The date was drowning out his Orders. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He knew that wasn’t supposed to happen, and yet–

He couldn’t get it out of his head.

He looked up as the agent standing in front of him repeated the instructions, looking for confirmation. The Soldier’s brain stalled for a moment, protocol slipping out of his grasp for just a second as it was overwhelmed by– …by everything else. Then his mind and programming kicked back into gear, and he was able to respond as according to standard procedure. Lucky for him, the agent taking the lead on this assignment was patient. That, for him, was a rarity.

He was escorted to a perch at the top of a building across from that which the Target lived in, cloaked by nightfall and silent as a shadow. Peering through the scope of his rifle, he spotted the man of the hour roaming around his home and pouring himself a drink. The Soldier settled back, still soundlessly observing as he waited for instructions to proceed, supposedly masked by the sounds of– of some event.

(July fourth July fourth July fourth July fourth July fourth July–)

He leaned forward in interest as he noticed the Target head towards a window and open it, leaning out and turning his eyes toward the sky. Not towards the Soldier– nowhere in his general direction in fact; he hadn’t been noticed– just towards the night sky. The Soldier had hardly a moment to ponder this, as shortly thereafter the vicinity was filled with a shrill screeching sound, followed by a rattling boom as the area was blasted with colored light coming from the heavens. Then again, and again and again.

Fireworks.

—- “Look, pal! The whole city– the whole country is doin’ all this just to celebrate you!” —-

The Soldier jerked back at the blatant, loud malfunction, fireworks blaring both in his ears and in his head. He stumbled back half a step, squeezing his eyes shut as he willed himself to function properly. His Mission, his Mission–

(—- “Very funny, Buck.” —-)

He didn’t know how much time had passed. Presently, his brain was roaring in time with the pyro in the sky. Something was missing. His sensitive ears picked up on the agents watching from the ground wondering why he hadn’t taken the shot yet.

His Mission.

Right.

He shook his head sharply as he clawed desperately at whatever shreds of his concentration he could reclaim, leaning forward to take the shot. He leveled his aim, his hands steady as he–

JULY FOURTH JULY FOURTH JULY FOURTH JULY FOURTH JULY FOURTH

His breath stuttered at the onslaught, the fireworks screaming and roaring in his ears and washing out his senses with blinding bursts of color.

SOMETHING IS MISSING, his mind shouted.

His finger pulled on the trigger.

The discharge was concealed under the bang of another dazzling explosion, the muzzle flash disguised in the vibrant light. The Target went down, collapsing back into his own apartment. Nobody saw or heard a thing.

The Soldier, dazed, slipped unnoticed back down off the building to the rendezvous point with the agents. His eyes, wide and glazed over, stared unseeingly down at the ground. The agents bumbled around him, trying to work out the situation amongst themselves. The leader asked of him directly what had happened. The Soldier was unable to provide an answer.

He was led back into the van and shuttled back to base, sitting in silence and impervious to the buzzing conversations going on around him.

(July fourth July fourth July fourth July fourth.)

~~~

The Soldier followed numbly as he was ushered back inside, his head down and his brain thrumming with interference. Distractions. Malfunctions. Whatever they are. He didn’t have the presence of mind to care much about how to classify them.

He was taken back to the Prep Room where this all started that very morning, where he had been functioning properly not 24 hours ago. He stood still as his uniform and other field gear was removed (excluding his weaponry, which had already been extracted from him upon returning to the van) detached from the low conversations spoken in hushed murmurs from agents to others around him. A nervous energy pulsated in the atmosphere, a certain tension suspended in the air and weighing heavily on everyone around.

Handler Genrich marched in, seeming sharper and more on edge than usual. He stepped over to speak with the agent who had taken the lead on the Mission, speaking in stern tones and casting hard glances over at where the Soldier stood.

The Soldier didn’t move a muscle.

The Handler turned and strode sharply to him, his flinty eyes flicking over him in severe scrutiny– trying to assess what had gone wrong. The Soldier had no more understanding of it than he did.

Then Handler Genrich stiffly demanded to know what had happened. The Soldier gave his Mission Report to the best of his ability, growing increasingly aware that his account was not up to standard. He tried his best to follow protocol, he really did, but his programming kept getting blurred out by scraps of the sound of a rough voice and fragmented images of… of someone. His normally distinctive laserlike focus was now becoming regularly derailed, his eyes darting around instead of remaining fixed on the wall behind the Handler and his face breaking down from its characteristic stony guise. Real emotion was seeping through. The Soldier knew that he was not functioning properly and the Handler would not like this, but, he– His head– The buzzing wouldn’t stop.

(July fourth July fourth July fourth.)

Handler Genrich turned and waved over a technician, prescribing a wiping treatment. The Soldier’s head and heart hammered as one. A voice, different from his own– the rough one– it seemed to scream inside him. Don’t forget me, don’t forget me. But the Handler turned back to him, ordering him to the Chair, and there was nothing he could do. He tread over to the machine, sitting stiffly down on the metal seat of the apparatus. His brain wouldn’t stop thrumming; in fact, the imminent erasure of this– this whatever it is only made the interference increase.

(July fourth July fourth July fourth.)

Attached to it were muddled impressions of some apparition. The something missing was beginning to manifest itself to him, forming a hazy depiction of someone. Someone important. The Soldier clung to whatever shreds he could.

Snatches of blond hair, bloody knuckles, a crooked smile.

The technician fired up the machine.

A snorting laugh, a wheezing breath.

The restraints clamped down on his arms.

An unflinching moral code. The stubbornness of a donkey. The temper of a raging bull.

A sinister hum vibrated all around him.

“I can get by on my own” and “I had him on the ropes” and “Til the end of the line.”

And as the headpieces whirled around to lock around his face, three words rose up inexplicably to the front of his brain.

Happy birthday, Stevie.

~~~

A/N: Woahhh serious angst alert. I hope this didn't put too big of a dampener on your Independence Day celebrations lol.

So this was inspired by a post I saw on Pinterest of a Tumblr post of a headcanon about how the Winter Soldier couldn't be activated on July 4th because he drives himself crazy knowing he's forgetting something even if he doesn't know that it's Steve's birthday. And, of course, I had to continue my set of each of our lovely Ancient Dorks having to cope with the other's birthday without them being there.

I promised this fic way back on March 10th, completely forgot about it until two days ago, and wrote this all in the time since then. So, fun.

Also, I didn’t realize that the last time I actually posted something was March Tenth. Whoops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Because of how incredibly, painfully last-minute this all was, I was fully expecting it to barely be more than half as long as what I usually write. I guess I must’ve really gotten into it, though, because I’m pretty sure this is the longest piece I’ve written here to date. And I’m actually proud of it too, which is way more than I could’ve asked for given the circumstances.

Anyway, yes, sorry for the accidental hiatus, I didn't even realize it had been that long since I'd last posted. I got caught up in more reading than writing lol. Chasing Ghosts chapter 2 is still pretty far from complete because motivation is a jerk, but I do have something new in the works that I'm happy with presently. It's canon-compliant, and fills in the gaps in the movies. So keep an eye out for that :eyes:

Also none of the names in here are supposed to be a real person, I just came up with names on the spot that I liked, so.

dude this is epic aaa

Minor spoilers for Marvel’s “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” series, obviously

Also trigger warning for caps and stuff and otherwise just very irate and overenthusiastic ranting. I really just popped off here.

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while. Ever since the sixth episode came out, at least. It actually probably started just with me watching the first episode, even.

Those of you who know me and have known me for a while probably know exactly how greatly I anticipated this show coming out. I literally counted down the months, then the weeks, then the days.

And now, before you get on me for “supposedly” hating it or whatever, know that I really did enjoy watching it. The plot was fairly great, the effects and soundtracks were absolutely amazing, and it very much did feel like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” as promised.

Now, if you know me in basically any capacity, you probably know that I love my ray of sunshine Bucky Barnes definitely more than is healthy, and that the opportunity to get six more hours of him (when previously he’d only been in a total of 45 minutes throughout 23 movies -_-) was basically the entire reason I was so hyped for this show. More specifically, I was hyped to finally, finally see the reality of this character, see how he copes with absolutely everything he’s been through (maybe even see some of what he’s been through??) and to just finally spend time with this character who’s become so incredibly important to me. And to delve into the specifics and effects of WHY he became so important to me.

Okay, Bucky is just such a massively hardcore comfort character for me. Embarrassing as it is to say, roleplaying as him and just generally keeping him on my mind is largely what got me through this (really really difficult) past year. Because I could sort of just,, unload all my problems on him, in roleplays, or headcanons, or writing, or drawing, or whatever.

So yes, I was beyond hyped to see a show that was repeatedly described as “very, very grounded” and dealing with real-world issues in full force. Specifically, the cast and writers (I’m mostly referring to Sebastian Stan) said it wasn’t going to hold back as it tackled heavy topics like mental health and racism. (Yesss!! They’re finally going into the nitty-gritty of Bucky’s trauma and getting to the bottom of how heavy that all would be!! Right?)

Imagine my disappointment when only really one of those topics was fully addressed.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love how the show came right out and tackled systematic racism in America. They didn’t pull any punches, they weren’t hiding anything. They came right out and laid down the cold bare ugly truth. And it needed to be said. The fact that we’re living in a modern world where racial profiling still is a reality and people are treated differently because of the color of their skin is disgusting and frankly demeaning to humanity as a whole. And people need to see that. Because that’s swept under the rug and kept on the down-low way too much.

So yes, I love how the writers were able to bring all of that to light (and with Anthony Mackie’s lovely talent, of course). I know a lot of people who were annoyed by how big of a topic that was on the show, but we all knew right from the start that that’s how we’d be playing this game. I wouldn’t take back any of it (with the exception of maybe that speech at the end of episode six that went on for entirely too long and was just repetitive and impractical.)

I just kinda wished they would have delivered on the second half of their promise.

Okay, as someone who’s been struggling with this a lot as of late, seeing them handle the mental health of someone who desperately, desperately needs help was really really super incredibly important to me.

So far, the MCU hasn't gone a whole lot into just the general struggles of living, especially coping with mental illness or anything of the sort, with the exception of Tony– which I absolutely love, by the way. I was beyond ecstatic when they announced that they would be diving into that in FATWS. And really, there was so, so much they could have done with it.

Now, obviously Bucky was meant to be the focus point of their whole “mental health” matter. And that was absolutely natural. And yet, AND YET, they barely got to any of the very many things that could have (and definitely would have, if they'd put any thought into it) contributed to his mental state.

Let's count it all, shall we?

The man was:
Drafted to fight in a war against his will (enough to cause PTSD alone)
Captured by the enemy and forced to work for them (enough to cause PTSD alone)
Experimented on (enough to cause PTSD alone)
Literally killed (enough to cause PTSD alone)
Essentially brought back to life and further experimented on (enough to cause PTSD alone)
Operated on against his will, WHILE AWAKE (enough to cause PTSD alone)
Tortured, abused, manipulated (yep, each still enough to cause PTSD alone)
Physically completely stripped of his identity, memories, and literal free will
And
Used as a mindless murder bot for literal decades in the service of the very organization he died fighting, all while not even himself but still having to watch his body do things he would never ever in a million years choose to do

HMM ALL OF THESE THINGS SEEM TO HAVE A COMMON DENOMINATOR, DON'T THEY

Any one of these things on its own would be enough to cause lasting PTSD in anyone. And this unlucky sap has all 13 working together against him at the same time.

And we don't even get a mention of it.

And there's so, so much that could be mentioned. As I already may have stated a few times, PTSD would factor in as a major role in his life. Yes, they've already got the nightmares and guilt from that, but there's way more that comes with it than just that. We've got panic attacks, anxiety attacks, flashbacks, dissociation, sleeplessness, general depression, just for starters.

And then there's triggers.

Dear goodness I would have KILLED to see triggers play a part in here, even just a tiny bit. And there are so many potential ones that they could have used. There's trains (his cause of death, need I remind you), the cold, gunfire/explosions/other wartime noises (though I guess they can brush over this one since those were literally forged into his new identity so they'd seem more natural than anything really), electronic noises like his Chair, needles/doctors/general medical equipment (THIS WOULD BE SUCH A MAJOR TRIGGER!!), Russian speaking, literally any one of his Winter Soldier trigger words, darkness, being restrained in any capacity, small spaces, the dark… And this is just a starter list, based on what's already been confirmed in canon. And who knows what else has been going on for those seventy years that we don't know about, that would leave literal physical and mental/emotional scars?

And it’s not just Bucky’s mental health that they could have handled. Keep in mind that they are both veterans. Both of them are going to have baggage from that. (Sam more so because he actually remembers all of it.) And keep in mind that Sam literally watched his own best friend die. So yes, they really could have gone into the nitty gritty of all that.

Because you don’t just walk away from something like that completely okay.

But what did we get? One and a half therapy sessions, a single nightmare, and one (1) half-baked conversation about how it was difficult for Bucky dealing with his guilt (and that entire conversation lasted, what, maybe five minutes? And literally the only thing really discussed was “yeah I have nightmares” “go help people and fix it”). This series is six hours long, and you can only manage to devote fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to real, meaningful discussion of mental health?

And there is more to mental health than just guilt, mind you. There's depression, there's anxiety, there's paranoia, detachment, restlessness, exhaustion, self-hate, fear, loneliness… There's so much more, much more than fifteen minutes can begin to touch on.

I don't have guilt. I don't have nightmares. But I won't hesitate to say that I am definitely struggling with mental health, and that I am fully aware of that.

All I wanted was to see them handle the fact that it's okay to not be okay. All I wanted was to see proper representation of what it's like when it's hard to be alive, so that people feeling that very same way could know that they're not alone. All I wanted was for there to be an acknowledgement that there are people struggling, that there is more going on behind the scenes in people's lives than meets the eye. All I wanted was to see even the barest reflection of myself so that I, and so many other like me, could know that I am valid, that I am seen.

I didn't get an ounce of any of that in the entire show.

Instead what I got were some passing comments about it, brushing it off and making it seem unimportant and insignificant. Like these things don't help make up who you are, and actively affect you. That they don't matter at all in the face of “the plot”. (And yet, they had plenty of time to address racism multiple times in literally every episode, and that never detracted from “the plot”??)

And here's the thing: apparently I've spent more time thinking about Bucky's past and trauma and how that would affect him in incorporating that into my perception of his character than the writers did.

I've studied PTSD (and it's more severe counterpart, C-PTSD) to no end. I've researched panic attacks and flashbacks and what they look like both on the outside to people around and on the inside to the person involved, I've spent so much time combining the inevitable fear and paranoia and depression and guilt and doubt into the monster known as debilitating mental health because I understand that, in the end, that's the greatest enemy any person can fight: their own mind.

And Bucky's the one who said “I can't trust my own mind.”

(And actually, it's because of all my research into these topics that I realized that this is something that's fun and interesting to me and that I like to do, which is what made me seriously start considering going into psychology when I grow up. Bucky's mental health is literally what helped me decide on my future. If that doesn't tell you how important that is to me, I don't know what will.)

I've done so much work to develop this character on my own into someone who could plausibly, realistically exist, having gone through everything that happened to him, only to find that my version is so drastically different than the official “real” thing simply because the writers were too ignorant and dismissive to consider the real consequences and very real toll that such a sheer amount of trauma would have on a person.

Sebastian Stan himself literally said that Bucky would have {trigger warning} k1lled himself if not for his relationship to Steve Rogers.

Steve Rogers is gone now. And, apparently, so are Those thoughts. Because that's totally something you can just wake up one day and wish away and then be perfectly fine. /s

Again, the racism aspect of the show was fully fleshed out. Because the plot and script were developed by a team of Black writers, so they could be sure that everything was appropriately and adequately represented. But I wish that they could have gotten some input from people who are struggling on the mental health side of things, maybe some war veterans and victims of abuse/other manipulation, that way they could handle that topic equally as well. But no, that was all brushed aside.

So not only was the mental health aspect cut short from the very beginning, but it was done absolutely zero justice in the end.

The end of the last episode shows Bucky quitting his therapy sessions once he's managed to follow through on Sam's advice in helping others while making amends. In summary: “I went out and helped others and so now I'm completely fixed just like that and there's nothing wrong with me anymore just because I did one thing.”

That's not how it works.

Recovering, or heck, even just coping is a process. It's not just something you can “fix” or “get over” instantly by doing something that's supposed to help. It's a cumulation of hard work, of successes, of failures, of progress and decline, of taking baby steps towards that light at the end of the tunnel down a path that's seemingly actively working against you.

A more suitable ending would be seeing Bucky being more attentive and committed to his therapy sessions, seeing him slowly get to a better and better place, but still having to work through obstacles that can tear him down because that's life.

But no. We get an ending that makes it seem like problems that are just as real as any physical problem, and just as real as problems like racism which take TIME TO CHANGE, that they are something that can just go away with a few words and a little bit of action.

And that's what gets me.

If that were true, I would have been “fixed” long ago, wouldn't I have?

I just wanted to see the matter of mental health appropriately represented and treated as seriously as any other serious topic. I wanted there to be an acknowledgement of just how crushing it can be when your own mind is actively working against you. I wanted to see the importance of the successes when you manage to beat that back for another day. I wanted to see people actually putting thought into how some people are struggling against things that aren't visible or tangible or really observable in any other sense, but are still real and just as difficult as anything else. I wanted people to recognize that, while there's a large portion of the population fighting against issues like racism and everything related to it, there are just as many people fighting problems just as non-physical but just as important. I wanted there to be an understanding that ANYONE could be struggling with this and no one could ever know.

Instead, I got a very unbalanced exchange of two very important and very real struggles that too many people face every day.

Congratulations, the show knocked down the wall hiding our society's disgusting systematic racism. But at the same time, it put one up to hide the importance and validity and prevalence of the issue of mental health.



Please don’t comment on this forum; share any reactions in the comments of this project: a rant.

A/N: An edit of an older piece. I'm happier with this now.

Sleepless in Brooklyn

Bucky awoke to a knee jabbing him in his side.

The recovering soldier opened his eyes, adapting to the darkened room almost instantly, and took a moment to take in his surroundings. He was lying in bed in the apartment he shared with Steve, the blankets twisted around the two from restless sleeping, as had become regular. The mattress felt too soft on his back, too forgiving. It was an odd thought, missing the feeling of cold stone. At least then he didn't feel like the world was being too kind to him for his acts against it.

It had been a difficult transition from the safety and warmth of Wakanda, but he was glad to be able to stay with his friend in Brooklyn. They were able to make home in the city of their childhood (which, by the way, had become far more expensive to inhabit since they were last there in 1943) thanks to Tony Stark who, after some pleading from Steve, created the Geriatric Relocation and Relief Fund. The two were less than pleased about the name, but hey, who were they to argue against having their rent paid for them? And so now here he was, some semblance of his old life being returned to him nearly 80 years later. The continuity and consistency of it was likely one of the very few things he could possibly have keeping him from falling into the hellish trap of his own mind, ridden with ghosts and demons– tormentors and victims alike, all stained red with blood. He hated the color red.

Bucky's eyes drifted across the dark bedroom smothered under the stillness of night, partly illuminated by a small nightlight on his side of the bed. (He couldn't sleep when it was completely dark. Not anymore.) The internal clock pounded into him through decades of training along with physiological alterations told him it was 2:36, a.m.

So why was he awake?

He was reminded of what had initially snapped him out of his dreamless state of unconsciousness– that was the best possible situation for him whenever he managed to close his eyes, as infrequent as that was with his lack of trust and lessened need for sleep (being an experimental supersoldier and all, along with conditioning to be able to run with complete efficiency at 76 hours without sleep)– as he felt an elbow poke him in the ribs. He didn't even need to turn his head to feel Steve shifting on the bed beside him, to hear the rustling of the blankets and the rough scraping of skin against sheets. Something that almost even caught him off-guard was the soft, whimpering whine that cut through the darkness. It was strange, really; normally he’d only heard such a sound slipping from his own mouth– it was like an out-of-body experience and yet at the same time it wasn’t, hearing that familiar sound coming from someone who wasn’t himself.

He was pulled out of his wandering thoughts as the hushed whimpering took the form of barely-whispered words, accompanied by more restless thrashing.

“Bucky no, no no, not Bucky, no no no-”

It was like some twisted chiasmus of their lives, their roles being turned on their heads for tonight. He must’ve been having a nightmare, and-

Oh, Steve.

Bucky sat partway up, watching his flailing friend with somber eyes as he kept repeating the same pitiful pleas over and over again. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if this is how Steve felt whenever they were in opposite places, having to watch Bucky struggle in his own dastardly nightmares and sickening memories, nearly crushed by the metaphorical weight of his guilt almost as if it weren’t metaphorical at all but something actually real, threatening to smother his lungs and mangle his chest.

He hoped not.

Steve deserved better.

And with that thought, he was once again brought back to the present, where his friend was curled up in front of him in imaginary agony. Bucky silently cursed himself for being so easily distracted by his own wandering thoughts, though Steve kept telling him that it wasn’t his fault; after all, he did have a lot of repressed memories that he was only now able to begin working through, now that he wasn’t having his brain scrambled like the eggs his ma used to cook on Sunday mornings every other day or so. It wasn’t his fault, the Steve inside his head reminded him.

Steve. That’s right.

He cursed himself more for getting distracted, and was determined not to let it happen again tonight. Not while Steve needed him.

More pleas came from the supersoldier, his friend (the famed Captain America, Bucky silently mused– not that the flashy title meant anything to him) twisting as he tried to prevent some scenario only able to be seen inside his own head. Buck slowly and carefully levelled himself beside him, gently nudging him in the arm. Steve only flinched back, his nightmare undeterred by the prod. Bucky hesitated, then tried again, this time shaking his shoulder until he started to stir.

“Steve,” he whispered into the darkness, gently jostling the muscled shoulder held in his careful grip. “Steve, it’s okay, it’s-”

Steve snapped awake, recoiling from the touch as he tried for a few moments to blink away the wetness in his eyes. Bucky froze, statue still aside from his bated breathing as his friend gazed at him with wide and fearful yet mournful eyes, before recognition started setting in. “…Buck?”

Bucky’s eyes softened as a small doleful smile touched his face, offering a slight nod. “I’m here, Stevie.” He once again vaguely remarked in one small corner of his fractured mind at how they had switched parts for the night; how Steve was the one subject to fictitious torment, while Bucky was the one left to reassure him. He'd heard the very words that had just billowed from his mouth innumerable times before, only with his own name and spoken in the voice that had been his comfort for as long as he could remember. His friend always knew what to say, what to do to ease Bucky's burdens seemingly in any given scenario. The man with a million answers and zero brain cells, he distantly heard his own voice echoing from some time in the past long since buried. As his thoughts wandered yet again, he was caught off-guard as his friend pressed against him. It didn’t make the feeling any less welcome, of course.

“You’re safe, pal,” Bucky murmured, forcing as much tenderness as he possibly could into the words. It was still hard for him sometimes, but he tried, and Steve always said that was all that mattered.

Steve’s hand found its way to Bucky’s metal one. He’d never had judgement for the prosthetic, and was constantly encouraging him to accept it as a part of himself. Bucky wasn’t quite ready to; even though this wasn’t the same one that had tortured and slaughtered hundreds– this one a black and gold vibranium instead of silvery titanium branded with that horrible red star– in his mind, it was still stained with the blood of innocents. His spiraling thoughts were once again interrupted as Steve tucked his head up against Buck’s neck and under his chin, just as he used to when he was small, whenever they would spend the night at one another’s house, or like they did every night ever since Bucky had painstakingly convinced him to share an apartment back in 1936. The familiarity of it was a succor for them both, he knew. Bucky’s right arm wrapped itself around Steve’s lower back in return, whether by instinct, or habit, or a bit of both.

‘’You hear me, you punk? You’re safe.”

Steve managed a small shaky laugh, his face pressed into Bucky’s chest. “…Don’t leave me, you jerk.” The words were soft and unsteady, laced with disquiet, somehow so different and yet so similar to the uncertain snigger that had preceded them.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bucky promised soberly, even as his friend burrowed deeper into his embrace. Normally, this entire interaction would go the other way around. But this was okay. Bucky didn’t mind being the one to help his friend tonight.

Steve’s fingers tightened around the metal hand gripped between them, even as Bucky curled closer around the muscled body pressed against him. Their breathing slowly fell in line one with the other’s, their troubles from earlier forgotten in their shared company.

Together, the two of them felt safer than they had in a long time.

19, 20

Wanda's 20th birthday isn't the happy occasion it should be. Why? Because Pietro is still 19.
How could she possibly have a happy birthday when she's only half a soul?

Fortunately, Clint Barton is a good dad.

February 10, 2016

Wanda woke well into the morning. She couldn’t yet puzzle out why. Her consistent hour of rising is 8 each day (which is among the earliest, considering half of the Avengers could practically be considered nocturnal animals. Emphasis on nocturnal. And on animals). Warm light from the winter day’s high sun streaked through the window to bathe and brighten the bedroom.

She rolled halfway over to squint at the bedside clock. 10:57, odd. She couldn't immediately remember the last time she'd woken up so late. Something in her ached, illogical and inconsistent given how, as it stood, she'd slept even more than usual. She rolled back to return to her original position in bed, a bed which strangely felt a bit too big all of a sudden, all over again. It had been quite a learning curve, coming to the compound and adjusting to a queen size mattress all to herself, when all her life before had been spent sharing a twin size with her twin… brother…

….Oh.

She floundered for a second for her voice, and it came out in a faint creak. “Friday, what day is it?”

“It is Wednesday, th’ tenth of February,” the home AI responded in her chipper Irish twang.
Ugh. Wanda immediately rolled back over and shoved her head under her pillow.

-

How long she stayed buried in bed, she didn't know. She didn't pick her head up to peer at her clock, and time grew hazy, lost in reveries of memories of nineteen years of life with her brother right by her side through every second of it. Time grew even hazier when miserable desolation coursed through in waves, smothering out the distant rose-tinted joy of the past and leaving an oppressive gnawing dread of the future in its wake, a future where she is doomed to endure the rest of her life as only half a pair.

And that future started now. It had been easier to ignore in the past months, because at least they’d been the same age. But now, she turned 20 and Pietro remained 19. And he would remain 19 while she turned 21, and then 22, and so on for however long she was unlucky enough to live. He was supposed to be right here beside her, turned 20 and twelve minutes, but instead he was rotting in his grave on the edge of the compound grounds where he would stay rooted in place as time continued its cruel, stubborn march for her without him.

Her head was pounding in her anguish as if a physical manifestation of her grief and desolation the likes of which hadn’t felt this strong in months. Or maybe it was due in small part to the deluge of tears she hadn’t realized had been streaming on and off from her aching eyes for the past however long. It took her a minute or two to register when the pounding she felt transitioned to an actual audible sensation, not just trapped within her own throbbing skull. Someone was banging on her door in bursts, pausing for a minute between each knocking session to wait for her to answer, before ultimately picking right back up at the racket.

Wanda clenched her jaw and clamped the pillow down over her head, squeezing her eyes shut to ignore it, ignore the world. It was miserable being in bed, but she knew that the moment she stepped out of it, the full weight of the implications of today would crash down on her and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to pick herself back up. There she stayed through several rounds of knocking, which started off polite but steadily picked up in both urgency and amplitude. It really didn't help her feel better.

“Come on, Wanda-!”

Clint. She should have realized. She flopped over and pressed the pillow further onto her face. But now that she was paying attention, even if she somehow could successfully ignore the banging at her door, the man's insistent and persistent mental presence on the other end refused to be pushed to the wayside so easily. Loosing an agitated growl between gritted teeth, Wanda sharply yanked the covers off of her and threw her legs over the side of the mattress. Another bout of knocking came and went before she could gather together enough will to actually stand.

As she anticipated, she felt abruptly heavier and more light-headed. All of a sudden, everything was real. She was no longer safe in the bliss ignorance of her bed; now she had to face the real world where she was 20 and her older twin brother was 19. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

Fortunately, irritation was a plenty good motivator to stamp those biting feelings down as she tramped for the doorway, ready to glare at Clint with the full force of everything she’s got until he caved and scampered away. She pried the door open to find the man with his fist up, poised to start knocking again probably within a half a second. He aborted the motion and instead quickly flashed an annoyingly bright smile. “Hi.”

-

Wanda finally opened the door after no less than ten minutes of knocking. Clint wasn’t a quitter, that was for sure; especially not for this. But he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been losing faith that she’d respond at all. When he laid eyes on her, he noted that she looked… pretty terrible, in just about every way that one could look pretty terrible. But he’d of course expected as much, and steadfastly held his tongue.

“Happy birthday,” he interjected without preamble, pulled the card out of his jacket and thrust it to her. Her eyes stared blankly at the offering – or, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say glared. It felt pretty awkward, standing there with his arm out for the several seconds that neither of them made a move, but to be honest Clint thrives in awkwardness. Eventually her stony eyes flicked back up to his, still rife with that incredulous irritation at the intrusion that is his presence. Alright, changing track.

“I also got one for Pietro,” he informed after her eyes had once again dropped dully to the outstretched card, as if willing for it to combust into flames or something. Abruptly at the mention of her brother, that green gaze sharpened for the first time yet today and darted up to leer back at him. “You can come with me to give it to him if you want.”

Another awkwardly extended moment ensued, with Wanda – still yet to say a single word – rooted stiff and unmoving in her doorway, her eyes fixed resolutely on his. She wavered, though; first a tremor in the hand clinging to the doorframe, a tightening in her throat and around her eyes, and the tell-tale tremble of her chin. She swallowed thickly and her eyes showed the barest hints of wetness, threatening to add to the thin sheen already on her blotchy red cheeks. Her throat and jaw worked a few times before she could quite wrangle them to make a coherent sound, and even then came out only the quietest, meekest, and most pitiful agreement. “…Okay.”

Clint nodded his acknowledgement. “It’s pretty cold out,” he noted plainly, glancing briefly over her rumpled pajamas. “You might want to change into something warmer.” Wanda hovered in the doorway a few moments longer, then dimly nodded and eventually stepped backwards into the room and slowly closed the door before her.

Technically this was an opportunity she could exploit to bail on him, to disappear back into her bed and never step foot out of it again for the rest of today as he was sure she had originally planned to do, but Clint had faith that she wouldn’t. Still, that faith began to waver as several minutes passed without her reemergence. He was just beginning to consider knocking again or straight hollering through the door for an update, when at last it slowly creaked open and Wanda hovered hesitantly in the doorway. She’d switched out her pajama shorts for some warmer sweatpants, plus a sweatshirt and a jacket or two. Clint recognized her top layer as the jacket of Pietro’s that must’ve become her favorite, given how she opted for it the most frequently – the black one with white chevron stripes down the sides of the sleeves. It was the one that he’d been wearing the first time he’d run into Clint (literally), knocking him into the snow and zipping away only to circle back, trotting as he gloated, “You didn’t see that coming?” What a smug, blasted jerk. Yeah, Clint missed him, alright.

He still held the red flowery birthday card out for Wanda, but she still made no move to accept it – or even look at it, completely blind to any indication of her own birthday in the face of the recognition of what was also Pietro’s birthday. “Can we go?” she surprised him by saying with a jarring earnestness given her previous mood, her voice hoarse but insistent. Her own card could wait; clearly this was more important to her, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Yeah okay, let’s go.”

Clint silently trailed beside Wanda as she led the way out into the brisk gray outdoors, all the way over to the far end of the compound’s grounds opposite from her bedroom. He respected her own disinclination to speak; besides, he wasn’t sure he could come up with any suitable topic of conversation during a march to a dead birthday kid’s gravesite. Kind of a tough ask.

Dead brown grass veiled in a shell of frost crunched beneath their feet, growing increasingly untamed as they approached their destination on the edge of the surrounding woods. Clint spotted the simple granite headstone a while away, sitting innocuously in a small clearing outlined by a copse of trees. It was a very nice location that Wanda had selected all those months ago, not too far from a creek that funnelled into the river. In the couple of times he’d been here, it was always peaceful – just as it was now, despite the chill and muted scenery of mid-winter.

They’d installed a bench overlooking the grave in the first month or two after the funeral after painfully witnessing Wanda simply stand before the tombstone for hours on end, rain or shine, every day for weeks. Clint wordlessly made his way over to it and sat down, ignoring the biting cold of the stone seeping through his pants and jacket back. The kid herself, however, bypassed the bench to go directly to the grave itself, her eyes gracing over the inscription.

Петро Максимов
10.2.1996 - 24.3.2015
Син, брат и херој
(Son, brother, and hero)
ת’נ’צ’ב״ה

It was a simple epitaph, engraved into the blue silk granite of the headstone with a string of Hebrew letters lining the bottom. Although it was approaching a year now, and he’d come by several times before, the dates on the tomb never failed to strike a pang within him at just how young this boy had been taken from this world every time he saw the numbers carved in stone. That kid had been gunned down, just freshly nineteen, after less than two decades of a life filled with hardship that Clint would never know. And he doubted he would ever be able to scrub himself of the guilt he felt every time he saw those dates, or heard Wanda cry, or walked out here to pay his respects.

After all, he was the reason that the lifeline had been cut so short. Pietro had given his life to save his, for reasons Clint still hadn’t come to understand, and he would never let himself live it down regardless of the kid’s good intentions or even whether or not Wanda herself had absolved him of guilt. It was his fault that the kid was in the ground right where they stood on this day, never passing teenagerhood, instead of turning 20 right beside his sister, making her laugh instead of weep.

Wanda shot him a glance out of the side of her eye, probably having picked up on his guilty spiral. Oops. It probably wasn’t fair of him to put more on her plate today of all days.

He willed his thoughts to still as he passively observed her trace her fingers over the gentle curve of the ogee top of the headstone, her hand trembling minutely and not with cold. She remained there for several moments before stepping back, standing in terse silence. Clint tried his best not to pay attention to the fine moving of her lips in soundless words, seeking to at least give her that amount of privacy.

Eventually the stillness gave way as Wanda softly went up in prayer. Clint recognized the haunting, lilting melody from the funeral. He might not understand the words, but Wanda had once briefly explained that it was a plea to God to provide the dead with rest in paradise. It was a nice sentiment that he wholly respected, even if he personally had pretty much left religion far behind.

A hush once again descended over them as the last notes died off; this far from the compound building conglomerate, the grounds were devoid of sound but for their own breaths and the far-off chitter of one or two birds braving the late winter weather. Wanda pulled a stone from her pocket and stepped forward to place it on the top of the headstone, on the opposite corner as the one she had set ten months ago.

She backed up once more and as several moments passed, Clint recognized that she had finished up what she’d set out to do and was now giving him the floor. He pushed to his feet and trod forward, extracting the second card from his own jacket. It was blue and ocean-themed, since the kid had obviously had a taste for blue color schemes, and Wanda had on one or two occasions mentioned that he had always dreamed of going to a beach somewhere but never had the chance, being trapped in a landlocked poor country. He set the card on the ground before the gravestone, propped up against the granite, and withdrew to stand beside Wanda.

He lightly slung his arm around her back, the both of them peering reverently down at the grave. A beat or two passed in stillness, before Clint gathered together some words in the softness of the moment.

“Happy birthday, Wanda. And happy birthday, Pietro.”

Welcome to another installment of devastating birthday fics Featuring a new set of red/blue themed blorbos ☆

Please pretend I posted this two and a half weeks ago. I would have also included some art to go along with this, but as you can very painfully see by my tardiness I am physically incapable of preparing anything in advance.

Some tidbits about several aspects of this piece:

• The Maximoffs in comic canon are (half) Jewish. This is something I adamantly refuse to ignore in my own rendition of the MCU, regardless of the consistent ethnic erasure in the canon.
  I use Serbian for the Sokovian language, for worldbuilding reasons I’ll delve into elsewhere.
  The Hebrew letters at the bottom of the gravestone are an abbreviation for a part of the verse 1 Samuel 25:29, translated to “May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.” This is very commonly found on Jewish headstones.
  The prayer referenced is El Maleh Rachamim, a Jewish prayer for the soul of the deceased, often recited at the funeral, anniversaries, and visits to the grave.
  Some notes about the Jewish tradition of placing rocks on graves: It’s believed to have begun as a custom of using rocks to warn priests of a nearby grave so as to prevent them from walking too close and thereby becoming ritually impure, and turned into a mourning tradition. Another theory for it is that the soul is believed to stay in the grave, so rocks are used to hold it down and keep the deceased’s spirit around loved ones for a while. It may also be a play on words, as the Hebrew word for “pebble” (tz’ror) is also the word for “bond,” as in the aforementioned scripture.
  

Thanks for reading I hope to be able to really flesh out my rendition of Wanda (and Pietro) through my fics, and do justice to where the MCU did not. The brainrot is real guys ♡

Stopppppp these are so good - you’re such a good writer. Are you on Watt pad or AO3? I’d read anything you wrote, this is so good and deserves way more attention

<3 <3 <3 <3 This is so good, I'm crying in class- (Do not pity me, I chose to continue reading.) You did great! <3 <3 <3 <3