Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pepper doesn’t often regret the improbable circumstances and choices that brought her, Tony, and Jim to the SGC and then to Atlantis. Usually, all it takes for her to feel smug about her life choices is the memory of all the pitying and patronizing looks she used to get when she told people she had both a PhD in Art History and an MBA. Are you planning to work in a museum? people used to ask. Or open an art gallery? All while not so subtly implying that none of that was real work and that of course she was going to be a trophy wife and a stay at home mother soon enough. Because that had to be what Tony Stark, heir to Stark Industries, saw in her, right? Never mind that she’d handled all the non-R&D parts of Tony’s work as head of Stark Industries R&D, never mind that she was the one who’d pushed the transition from weapons manufacturing to green energy and consumer electronics through with the board and shareholders and the press. 

Well, Pepper Potts wasn’t just eye candy then and she’s not a goddamn trophy wife now, she’s an intergalactic explorer, and usually, she takes vicious pride in that fact.

Right now, though, she’d definitely prefer to be at some charity gala fielding patronizing small talk. Because right now, she has that creeping dread that all Atlantis Gate teams know to pay careful attention to: there are different cultural norms across all galaxies, of course, some of them very disturbing to us, but ultimately harmless. Still, sometimes you just know when everything’s about to go to shit, Dr. Jackson told them during their training seminars. Trust your instincts. They’ll save your life out there.

This is supposed to be a standard, mutually beneficial trading mission, with long-established, friendly trading partners. Atlantis has a standing appointment with the Alarans: AR-23 comes out to Alara so Tony can perform maintenance and repairs on the complex life support system that renders the Alarans’ domed cities habitable and protected from the Wraith, and in return, the Alarans provide Atlantis with the materials necessary to repair control crystals and Atlantean circuitry. Pepper brokered this arrangement as one of AR-23’s first offworld missions last year, and Dr. McKay nearly wept with gratitude when Happy and Jim walked through the Gate pushing crates of the crystals and spools of fine wiring.

And sure, the Alarans are in fact as friendly as they usually are. But the Alarans have some other off-world visitors too, and they’re giving Pepper a bad feeling.

“We know these guys, sir?” Happy asks Jim, nodding at the six men in dark clothes who are milling around near the Gate. Jim shakes his head, and eyes the other visitors warily.

“Arran, I hope we’re not imposing at a bad time. We didn’t know you’d be entertaining another delegation…?” says Pepper, keeping her tone gracious rather than offended or alarmed.

“Ah, we did not know either!” Minister Arran tells Pepper, with a somewhat strained smile. “But the Hydrans have brought some intriguing goods to trade, and our allies on Texarnatus have vouched for them. Our own arrangement will, of course, proceed as usual.”

And it does proceed as usual for most of the double-sunned afternoon, apart from the Alarans’ hasty accommodation of more guests than expected. Arran directs them to the entry dome’s stately courtyard, just as he usually does, where the impressive stone trade building rises up behind them. It’s a multistory building that looks kind of like a Gothic church, and even knowing that it’s specifically meant to impress visitors with Alara’s wealth, Pepper still feels a flutter of awe every time she sees it. Nothing too disastrous can have happened since their last visit here if the trade building is still standing tall, shining with its slight silvery lustre. And there probably hasn’t been a war if the trade building’s thick, heavy double doors remain closed and whole.

She nudges Tony, who’s already engrossed in his readings on the dome.

“All the readings normal?” she asks. She has to nudge Tony again, with the pointiest part of her elbow this time, before he looks up and answers her.

“Huh? Yeah, great. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Just—you know, just checking.”

Tony lowers his sunglasses and squints at her, then squints over at the Hydrans. “Hope they’re not here to poach our deal with Arran.”

“I’m not worried about that. I’d just give Arran better terms. Be careful in there?”

Tony takes her hand and presses a quick kiss to it. “Always, honey.”

“If you’re not worried about that, what are you worried about?” Jim asks quietly. Pepper just tilts her head towards the Hydrans in answer, and Jim nods. “Yeah. Me too.”

The courtyard’s trade table is laid out as abundantly as it usually is, with food and drink for the traders, and examples of Alara’s wares. But where by now Pepper and her team would usually have been invited inside the trade building, away from the bright light of Alara’s two suns, Arran is instead directing additional chairs to be brought out to the courtyard.

Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, maybe Arran just doesn’t want to have to entertain two separate delegations at once. Maybe he doesn’t want to slight the Hydrans by keeping them outside while Pepper and the others are allowed in, or vice versa. Maybe. Or maybe it’s a tightening of security. When she shoots a quick glance at Jim, she sees his lips pressed together in a thin line, his eyes searching out potential exit strategies.

“You know I love your drinks, Arran, but gimme a cup of that sweet stuff to go, and let me at your systems. Everything’s been working fine, I hope? Adjustments to the radiation filters working out?”

“I am but a humble trader, Mr. Stark, I only know that the domes remain strong, and our air and light steady,” says Arran with a bow. “But of course you are eager to check on your work. Yes, yes, go ahead. Tharis will take you through.”

Tony and Happy follow Tharis into the trade building, and hopefully, down into the underground tunnel that will take them to the interior domes.

The entry dome is the only dome that surrounds the planet’s only Stargate, and usually the only dome accessible to visitors. There’s one well-guarded underground tunnel that connects this entry dome to the rest of Alara, accessible only through the trade building’s basement, as far as they can tell. It’s an automatic bottleneck for any hostile forces or Wraith that might come through the Gate. Outside the domes, the radiation from Alara’s two suns is enough to kill most non-native life forms during Alara’s long 47-hour days. It’s a security set up that Jim nods approvingly at every time they visit, even as it makes him nervous about Tony and Happy being in a separate dome for so much of their visits.

Arran’s staff quietly brings out more seating and refreshments. There are two taps to the comms nestled in her ear: Tony or Happy’s all’s well signal. No need to sprint to the Gate just yet, then. Pepper and Jim sit with Arran and the Hydrans, ready to walk the delicate tightrope between diplomacy and intelligence gathering.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever run into your people before...I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Pepper says to one of the Hydrans.

“I am called Karpov. And we Hydrans are a small people, scattered across the worlds.”

“Your planet was culled?” Jim asks, all grave sympathy.

“Ah, no. Rendered uninhabitable by cosmic calamity. Our planet’s star began expanding, and we were forced to flee.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Pepper, but Karpov smiles thinly and waves his hand.

“It was a generation ago. We have grieved. And you? You are...Lanteans, I believe? You have made quite a stir in your short time here, I’ve heard. You are...refugees from a distant system?” For just a second, there’s a predatory glint in Karpov’s eyes.

Jim just smiles and gives him the practiced, simplified answer. “Some of us, yeah. But we first came here as explorers, looking for answers about our ancestors.”

“And have you found those answers?” asks one of the other Hydrans, a greedy edge to his voice.

“Some of them. We’re learning a hell of a lot of other things too.”

“We’re scholars, mostly,” adds Pepper. “Here to do research and pursue knowledge.”

It’s not untrue, even if it’s not the whole truth. Pepper is, technically, on Atlantis to research Ancient art and how its influence has or hasn’t spread across the cultures of Pegasus and the Milky Way. Tony’s here to work on zero point energy and the city itself, and Jim’s here to design new spaceships. But no one on Atlantis has only one job or specialty, not even the ostensible military grunts like Happy. Pepper’s other specialty happens to be trading, because business is business, in the Milky Way Galaxy or any other. And Tony and Rhodey make a hell of a fighter pilot team, in just about any form of space-worthy vehicle.

“Rather warrior-like scholars!” jokes Arran. “For which we are grateful, of course. The Wraith will be defeated yet!”

They all make what passes for small talk in the Pegasus Galaxy, and the Hydrans ask about trading for the Alarans’ light-reflective cloth, a shimmering form of silk that stays cool even under the dome-refracted light of two suns. The negotiations and news exchanges go back and forth for some time, until Alara’s red sun dips low in the sky.

It should make Pepper feel better when Arran invites them all inside the trade building to “refresh themselves.” It should make her feel better to see the crates of crystal and thick spools of wiring waiting on a wheeled pallet, proof that Alara will honor their trade agreement. And it should make her feel better still to be invited to the interior dome for dinner. But the Hydrans are invited too, and Pepper’s still feeling that flutter of dread.

“We will dine in the garden today, the better to appreciate Elder Sun’s sinking!” says Arran when they emerge above ground.

“That would be lovely,” Pepper says, and she even mostly means it. The interplay of colors from the red sun setting while the white sun is still in the sky is strange and gorgeous, casting shadows in unexpected places.

“Your planet is blessed to have two suns,” murmurs one of the Hydrans.

“We do believe so!”

Jim hails Tony on the comms. “Tones? You done yet? It’s dinner time.”

“Yeah, we’re on our way out right now. I hope they have those purple Brussels sprout looking things, do they have them? Or that weird pink cheese? I love that weird pink cheese.”

“Cheese should not be pink—” objects Happy, and then they’re off, and Pepper lets the comms chatter become soothing white noise.

She only relaxes when she sees Tony and Happy, and then relaxes a little more when Tony plops down next to her at the long dinner table.

“We good?” he asks as he kisses her on the cheek, and she nods. So what if the Hydrans inexplicably creep her out. The mission’s going just fine.

The dinner goes just fine too, until, right before the cheeses are brought out for the Alaran version of dessert, Karpov stands up from the table.

“I just wanted to say a few words to our esteemed hosts and their guests.”

“Oh no, is it speech time, I hate speech time—” Tony says into her ear.

“I know you hate speech time, Tony, you say it literally every time there’s a—”

Happy kicks Tony under the table judging by the way Tony jumps, and glares at both of them. They shut up.

“This galaxy is in dire need of order. People used to know what proper order meant. They did not resist the inevitable. They understood their place in the system, in the hierarchy. They understood what they were meant to be.”

Pepper elbows both Tony and Jim. “This! This is why I thought they were creepy!”

She can’t see it, but she knows both Jim and Happy’s hands are inching towards their sidearms under the table. She and Tony go tense, ready to take cover or to run. When Karpov pulls some small device out from under his clothes, Jim and Happy both bring their guns up. The Hydrans pull out weapons too, and Arran screams some incoherent denial.

After a quick, furious exchange of glares and hand squeezes that can’t have taken longer than a couple seconds, Tony and Pepper decide not to run just yet and instead crouch down so they have some cover from the table.

“Drop it,” orders Jim.

“Only through culling is there order! Hydra remembers! Hydra will bring order!”

“Fuck, they’re Wraith worshippers!” hisses Tony.

“Whatever the hell that is, drop it, or we will shoot!”

“You’re too late,” sneers Karpov, and Pepper thinks he’s about to the press the button when—

There’s a sound like a firework going off and Karpov drops in a spray of blood. So, not a firework, definitely not a firework, but a gunshot. Then what feels like less than a second later, more gunshots and another Hydran falls, then another, and it’s not Jim or Happy doing the shooting.

“Get under the table!” shouts Happy, and Pepper and Tony belatedly comply, but the shots, if that’s what they are, have already stopped. It’s all happened so fast, the surge of adrenaline hasn’t even quite hit Pepper yet.

“Did he activate that device? Rhodey, let me up, I have to see if he turned on that beacon—”

Pepper yanks Tony back down under the table. “Tony! Do you want to get shot?”

“Arran, were those shots from your people? Arran? Arran! Hey, you’re fine, you’re okay, get it together, man. Were those from your people?” Pepper hears Jim ask.

Arran babbles something, and maybe Jim shakes him or slaps him, because he finally gets some coherent words out. “No! No, that was not us! I didn’t know—we didn’t know—Wraith worshippers, oh Elder and Younger Sun, are the Wraith coming?! Have these vile men summoned them?”

“It’s clear, Colonel, I don’t see anyone anywhere those shots could have come from,” Happy reports.

“Life signs?”

“Hard to say, sir, can’t tell if it’s just the Alarans or not.”

Tony breaks free of Pepper’s grip and crawls out past the other side of the table, already reaching for the device or beacon or whatever it is, and Pepper lunges after him to drag him back under the table, because for god’s sake, there’s some kind of sniper shooting people, and their Gate team training was very clear about what civilians are supposed to do in shootouts. And that wasstay put and let us grunts handle it.

“Oh for the love of—” says Happy, and yanks them both to their feet. Jim tosses the beacon to Tony.

“It’s not on,” says Jim, then pats down the rest of the bodies for any other beacons. “Someone did us a favor, looks like. Arran, have the tunnel to the entry dome closed off—”

“Don’t. Please.” The voice comes from behind them, and it’s so quiet and rough, it barely rises over the general chaos of shocked Alarans.

Happy and Jim throw themselves in front of Tony and Pepper, guns up. Even Tony belatedly fumbles for his sidearm, and gets it pointed mostly steadily at the man who’s appeared from seemingly nowhere.

“Don’t what?” asks Jim.

“Don’t close off the tunnel. Unless you want the Wraith here anyway. I need to get to the Stargate and get off this world.”

The man’s quiet voice is at odds with the rest of him: he’s tall and leanly muscled, with dark hair that’s falling out of a short ponytail. Handsome too, Pepper can’t help but note, with strong and lovely features that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Baroque sculpture. If she’d walked past him on the street back on Earth, he’d have earned a second glance from her. He’s wearing the kind of dark leather clothing that’s common in Pegasus, and that doesn’t give too much away about whatever world he comes from. There’s a modestly sized pack hanging from his shoulder, too, but more concerning is the large rifle hanging across his torso from a strap, even if he’s not reaching for it. He’s keeping his hands empty and open, and one of them is...armored? It’s all metal, from what Pepper can see of it. Maybe it’s a prosthetic, or a weird glove.

Empty-handed or not, the man still looks dangerous, his face set in blank and hard lines, his body held in the careful stillness of a predator lying in wait. And yet, the creeping disquiet Pepper felt with the Hydrans is gone. In the still-bright light of Alara’s white sun, the man’s eyes are the same shade of gray-blue as Atlantis’s spires in full sunlight, and if she focuses on them, the man doesn’t seem dangerous at all. Just tired, and scared.

“You knew these guys were Wraith worshippers?” asks Tony.

“Yes.”

“You one of them?” asks Jim.

The man’s eyes flash with anger. “No.”

“So you, what, just took these guys out to be nice or something? Not that we don’t appreciate it, I for one very much enjoy remaining uneaten—” Pepper pinches Tony and he shuts up.

“The Hydrans did this to my people,” he says, nodding towards the beacon. “To me. So yes. I take them out when I can. You need to let me go, or—or the Wraith will come. Please.”

Each word costs him dearly judging by the halting way he speaks, and though he’s standing entirely still, his body is as tense as a wire stretched too taut, close to snapping. Pepper doesn’t understand. He’s just killed the Hydrans for almost bringing the Wraith down on Alara, why would he summon the Wraith himself?

“You’re a runner,” says Tony, lowering his gun, and Arran gasps.

“Yes. So let me run.”

Oh. He’s like Ronon Dex: some unfortunate soul from a culled planet, implanted with a tracker chip and picked by the Wraith to be food that fights back. Sport for the Wraith, hell for the runner, left to run for their life and to potentially endanger every inhabited planet they step foot on. Every Gate team gets that briefing, on what to do if you encounter a runner. You probably won’t ever run into one. The Wraith are too busy trying to stay alive now to bother playing that kind of game any more, Ronon had told them. But here’s a runner, right in front of them.

Pepper eyes the man, trying to guess his age. Maybe he’s one of the rare runners from before the Wraith started losing the war. He’s dirty and tired, an almost painful sharpness to his cheekbones that suggests he’s not just lean, but rather underweight despite his height and bulk, but if she looks past that...he’s definitely no older than thirty. Late twenties, she guesses, give or take a couple years. If he’d become a runner back during the Wraith’s peak, he couldn’t have been much older than Ronon had been when he’d become a runner.

Jim and Happy don’t quite lower their weapons, but they do stop pointing them at the runner, and Pepper takes that as her cue to step forward. Now’s the time for negotiation, not a fight.

Tony raises his gun again, and hisses at her, “Pep, honey, what are you doing?” She pushes his gun down and ignores him.

“We can help you. Hi. My name’s Pepper. What’s yours?”

He shakes his head, short and sharp. “Ma’am, you don’t have time for this. Please, you need to let me go.”

He’s polite, Pepper notes with a pang. All those pleases and calling her ma’am. Someone had raised him right, once upon a time, or maybe it’s just that he isn’t far removed from a more gentle upbringing. She gives him her warmest smile, and his expression softens, just a little.

“Well, let’s walk and talk then. Arran, to the entry dome, please?” She heads towards the tunnel that leads back to the trade building, walking fast and not looking back. It’s a classic trick for getting people to follow you, and just like usual, it works. Jim catches up to her for a second.

“If he doesn’t agree to let us help him by the time we get to the Gate…” he murmurs.

He doesn’t need to finish the thought. If the runner doesn’t agree, then they’re following Atlantis’s standard uncooperative runner protocol: stun the runner, take them to the beta site, and get a medical team there to remove the tracker.

Pepper nods at Jim, and he nods back. Jim will give her some time to try this her way, at least. Now if Tony could just keep his chatter to a minimum….Jim signals to Happy to take their six as he takes point.

Pepper would really prefer to avoid stunning the runner to take the tracker out without his consent or knowledge. The poor man’s probably had a rough enough time of it already, and it wouldn’t exactly build trust. She turns and smiles at him again as he falls in step with her and Tony. Arran is clearly eager to get them all off his planet, because he runs ahead to open the tunnel, waving frantically at his staff.

“Touch her, and I end you,” Tony says to the runner.

The runner just blinks, baffled. “I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

“Oh, now you’re making with the big Bambi eyes. It’s not fooling me, I just saw you shoot half a dozen guys in the head. You were this close to shooting us in the head.”

The slightest flicker of a satisfied smirk lifts the runner’s mouth, then it’s gone. “I’m a good shot. I wasn’t aiming at you.”

Pepper elbows Tony and gives him the let me handle this look. She used to use it in boardrooms and ballrooms, smoothing over Tony’s...Tony-ness to keep business deals and social interactions on track. She’s still using that look for the same reason, only now it’s on alien planets, and sometimes lives are on the line. Usually, she considers that an improvement. Tony frowns at her, but he nods. He’ll follow her lead for now.

“Now, where were we? You were going to tell me your name…?”

She counts eleven steps before he answers. “Bucky.”

“Really?” asks Tony. “That doesn’t sound like a people name.” Pepper sighs. That didn’t last long.

“Tony, shut up, that’s rude. Don’t mind him, Bucky, he’s like this with everyone. So that’s Tony, my husband, and the man up ahead is Jim—”

“Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes to you,” Tony says.

“And Sergeant Hogan is behind us. We call him Happy.”

“Hey,” says Happy. “My real name’s Harold. For the record.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, but when Pepper glances at him, he nods to show he’s listening.  

“First off, thank you for shooting those Hydrans before they could call the Wraith. My team appreciates it, and I’m sure the Alarans do as well. I’d like to help you the way you helped us. We’re from Atlantis. Have you heard of it?”

“...the city of the Ancestors?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Five steps’ worth of silence. Then Bucky says, “Your people have been fighting the Wraith.”

Tony answers Bucky before Pepper can. “Yeah, and we’ve been kicking their asses. Hey, so, I can’t help but notice that you’ve got a super cool robot arm there, buddy.”

Bucky frowns. “My name is Bucky.”

“Right, I know that, buddy is—you know, the stupid Gate translation matrix just doesn’t—”

“We have been fighting the Wraith, but that’s not all we do,” says Pepper, before Tony can start on his long rant about the nonsensical Gate translation matrix. “We’re scholars, explorers, mostly. And we try to help people, when we can. We’ve helped other runners. Like Ronon Dex, of Sateda, have you heard of him?” Bucky’s silent for six steps, and they’re halfway through the tunnel by now, so Pepper doesn’t have that much time to spare. “Well, anyway, we helped him and now he’s Lantean. We’ve helped other runners too.”

“How.”

Tony jumps in again, helpfully this time. “You’ve got a tracker, probably implanted close to your spine. That’s how the Wraith find you. We can get it out, and send you on your merry way, and then you’ll only have the usual chance of being eaten by space vampires! Or you could, you know, come with us to Atlantis. So I can get a closer look at your super cool robot arm. I’m an engineer, a mechanic, really, and I bet I can—”

“That’s—surgery. You’d need to do surgery to get the tracker out.”

“Yeah. Like I said, we’ve done it before. Well, not me-we, but Atlantis-we. The doctors can do it.”

“Fast enough so the Wraith don’t come?” asks Bucky.

“Yes,” says Pepper, putting all her certainty into it. They’re almost back at the trade building now.

“I’d have to go to your city,” says Bucky, almost to himself, and shakes his head. “No. It’s not safe.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up. “Uh, our doctors are pretty great, and I don’t know what kind of tech you’re used to, Robocop, but what we’ve got will blow your mind. It’s as safe as it gets.”

“It’s not safe for you. For your city. If the Wraith come, or the Hydrans—no. Thank you, but no.”

Not just polite, but brave too, and thoughtful, even in an undoubtedly terrible situation. He’s willing to give up his freedom for their safety. Pepper wants to keep him. From the way Tony’s mouth has gone all sad, she thinks maybe Tony’s thinking about keeping him too. They’re at the trade building’s thick double doors now, and Arran is turning the crank to open them. Not much time left now. Maybe she’s not doing so bad though: Pepper sees that the tense, on-alert stiffness of Jim’s shoulders has relaxed a little. He turns to look at Bucky.

“Hey. Kid, I appreciate that you want to keep us safe. You’ve probably already saved a lot of lives today. But we know what we’re doing. We’ve got a protocol for this. You won’t be endangering a whole populated planet.”

Bucky shakes his head and crosses his arms tight across his chest. He looks, suddenly, much smaller. His face has gone horribly blank, a deliberate and effortful wiping of expression.  

“The Hydrans—did things. To me. I’m not—” he stops, apparently unable to say more.

Pepper only just stops herself from reaching out to him. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. We won’t—we won’t do anything to hurt you, I promise. Not on purpose anyway, I suppose taking the tracker out might hurt, I don’t know, but we want to help you. We can help you. And then you can go back to your people—”

“My people are gone.”

“Right. I’m sorry. You can...your people’s allies, maybe? Or any other family you might have on other worlds…” Pepper tries.

Bucky closes his eyes tight and shakes his head. The big double doors of the trade building finally open with a groaning creak, and Bucky rushes out into the entry dome. The Gate’s in view, and it’s only a few minutes’ walk to it from here.

Pepper jogs to catch up to Bucky again. “If there’s—anyone else, I don’t remember,” he says, and keeps heading for the Gate.

“Alright. That’s okay. You can stay in Atlantis. Just like Ronon Dex did,” says Pepper.

“Yeah, I know General Sheppard would like to hear about these Hydrans,” adds Jim. “We’ve run into other Wraith worshippers before, but not these guys. If they’re out there getting worlds culled, hurting people, we’d like to spread the word, try to stop them. Help you take them out, you know? And you can always leave, after. We’re not gonna imprison you.”

“You don’t have to do this on your own, Bucky,” Pepper tells Bucky.

A raw sound escapes Bucky’s throat, and there’s too much agony in it to call it a laugh, but it’s close. He stops in his tracks and sways, bringing a hand to his head. Jim and Pepper both frown and step closer. Was he injured earlier and they didn’t notice?

“I think I said that to someone once,” Bucky says faintly. He blinks and focuses on them. “What’s the protocol.”

“What?”

“The protocol. You said you had one for this.”

Pumping her fist in triumph is probably rude, so instead Pepper just grabs Tony’s arm and squeezes.

“Yeah, we’ve got a protocol,” says Jim. “We’ll take you to our beta site, which is on an uninhabited planet.”

“An uninhabited planet with a weird magnetosphere that messes with signals in and out. Your tracker won’t be so easy to track there,” adds Tony.

“Right. Then we’ll contact our people on Atlantis, tell them we’ve got a runner who needs a tracker taken out. One of the doctors will come through the Gate to the beta site, and they’ll get you all set up for the surgery. We get the tracker out, destroy it, and take you back to Atlantis’s infirmary to recover. From there, you talk to General Sheppard and Governor Emmagan or Woolsey, and so long as they agree—and they probably will—you can stay in Atlantis. Or you can leave! Go to one of our allies, or hell, a totally uninhabited planet. Anything.”

“One of us will stay with you the whole time, if you want,” Pepper offers.

Bucky takes in a deep careful breath, then he nods. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

They take their trade goods and use the Alaran Stargate to go to one of Atlantis’s beta sites, then dial through to Atlantis and radio them from there. Jim calls it in with Tony as Bucky paces the area around the beta site’s Gate, looking for threats with the easy grace of a natural predator. Happy does his own more sedate sweep behind him, one eye on his life signs detector. Pepper just stays close and tries not to find the silence of a wholly uninhabited planet eerie, and looks up at the sky.

It’s almost always the sky that gives away these alien planets as truly alien; most of the human habitable planets look more or less familiar, to the point where Pepper can almost forget she’s not on Earth. Forests, plains, mountains: there’s enough variety in those just on Earth that even the Pegasus Galaxy doesn’t have so much new to offer there, apart from some novel plants and rock formations with odd color combinations. But when it comes to the sky, there’s often no mistaking that for Earth. Sometimes there are multiple moons or multiple suns, stars that are visible during the day, rings surrounding the planet, skies colored red or lavender or green...here on this beta site, the sky is perpetually full of northern lights: washes of green and purple rippling across even the pale daytime sky. The mountainous, wooded valley that holds the Stargate could easily be mistaken for Earth, but not that sky.

“No large life signs but ours, Colonel,” Happy reports.

“Someone’s been here,” says Bucky in a low voice. He’s kneeling to inspect something on the grassy ground. “Sometime in the last week.”

“We’ve got a regular Aragorn here, huh?” says Tony, and Bucky looks up at him in confusion, because of course he was born in the wrong galaxy for that reference to land.

“Tony, stop making impenetrable pop culture references to aliens, it’s rude.”

“I mean, simmer down, mighty tracker, AR-3 stopped by on a supply run a few days ago. Beta-5 has been freshly stocked with rations and medical supplies, lucky us.”

“Pipe down, all of you, I’m calling Atlantis,” orders Jim. “Atlantis, this is AR-23, do you copy?”

“Atlantis copies. What’s your status, AR-23? We read the Gate signal for Beta-5, please confirm.”

“Confirmed. AR-23 is uninjured and we have the Alaran trade goods. No Wraith presence on Alara or Beta-5. But we’re initiating runner protocol, request a medical team to Beta-5 for tracker extraction on one adult male, healthy and no other injuries.” Jim glances at Bucky’s arm. “Uh, other than that he’s an amputee with a prosthetic arm, that is,” he adds.

“Runner protocol confirmed, gimme a sec...okay, looks like Dr. Cho’s on call so she’ll get her team together and be out there within the hour. Please proceed to the Beta-5 site and we’ll get Dr. Cho and a jumper out to you. Go ahead and roll the trade goods on through now if you can.”

Jim sends Pepper a quick questioning look and tips his head very slightly towards the Gate: do you wanna go through too? But Pepper shakes her head. She’s the one who helped convince Bucky to do this, she’s not about to leave him now. Tony makes a face at her for it but doesn’t otherwise object, and Happy goes ahead and sends the wheeled crate through the rippling, luminous wormhole.

“Package received,” reports Atlantis. “We’ll radio when Dr. Cho comes through with her team.”

The Gate disengages with its usual whooshing noise. Bucky keeps his eyes on it, as if just waiting for it to activate again and disgorge Hydrans or Wraith.

“Alright, let’s get some PT in, team,” orders Jim. “If we make it in fifteen, I’ll show you where the beta site chocolate stash is hidden! Come on!”

Tony whines, but he jogs along with the rest of them. Bucky keeps running ahead, only to be called back by Jim.

“Hey, stay in sight please, don’t want you getting lost.”

“Sorry,” mutters Bucky, looking briefly abashed. “Not used to going this slow.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Nothing to run from here, though, alright?”

Bucky nods and slows his pace down, falling in beside Pepper.

Pepper does her best to keep her expression relaxed and open, nothing to worry about here, they do this all the time, Bucky’s going to be just fine.

It’s pretty hard, though. Because they don’t do this all the time, and the moment they get to the beta site, Bucky’s effortfully blank expression falters and leaves a young man with the most ludicrously effective big blue puppy dog eyes Pepper has ever seen. Pepper’s not the most nurturing person in the world, but even she just wants to bundle the poor guy up in a blanket with some hot chocolate. At least Tony keeps things from descending into tense silence by keeping up a steady stream of chatter about the beta site, the planet’s magnetosphere, the further shielding effects of the mineral composition of the planet’s ruins, had Bucky noticed the lights in the sky, etc. Jim breaks in occasionally to tell Bucky about the beta site, how it’s not much, but it’s not too far from the Gate and how it will have everything they need. Who knows how much of it is really landing with Bucky, but at least it seems to be keeping him from freaking out.

Pepper stays mostly quiet, the better to save her breath for their run. They get to the beta site in fourteen minutes, which ought to please Jim. On first glance, the Beta-5 site is just a crumbling, forbiddingly dark ruined building, the mossy remnants of some grand temple, half its walls missing. But when Jim disengages the hologram, the dark and damp stone flickers out to be replaced by a spacious, enormous interior, lit through open skylights in its ceiling. 

“A hologram,” Tony explains to a frowning Bucky. “A kind of illusion. There’s a forcefield engaged too, to keep any animals out.”

Jim disengages that too, and they step inside the building, Happy sweeping the darker corners with his flashlight to check for any unwelcome surprises.

This beta site is more barebones than most of the others, chosen as it was for its ability to scramble tracking and appear abandoned and uninhabited. The ruined building is big enough to accommodate a Puddle Jumper, but is otherwise sparsely stocked: some crates of supplies, a few folded up cots and tents, carefully packed away ammo. There’s a small battery-powered generator though, so even if it’s not on par with the Atlantis infirmary’s operating theater, Dr. Cho will at least have enough light to operate. Given the perils of the Pegasus Galaxy, she’s surely done more with less, Pepper tells herself. By now, Tony’s rambling has moved on to assuring them that Atlantis has got the tracker removal operation down pat.

“The first time an Atlantis Gate team removed a runner’s tracker, it was basically out in the open, some real Civil War bite down on a belt business, and we are doing a lot better than that by now! And hey, I got my heart operated on in a cave once, and I’m doing just fine!”

The team collectively flinches. Yeah, that would be part of why Pepper’s not a fan of this whole situation. Bucky looks between them, wide-eyed.

“Hey, let’s get some things ready for Dr. Cho and her team,” says Jim, breaking the sudden tense silence, and they all busy themselves with setting their packs down and setting things up for Dr. Cho’s arrival.

Pepper takes the time to smile at Bucky, in what she hopes is a breezy, reassuring way. “Don’t worry about it,” she tells him. “It’s a bit of a long story, maybe we’ll tell you when you’re not about to be operated on.”

“I’m okay with never telling him the story,” mutters Happy, casting a disapproving and worried sort of look over at Tony.

Thankfully, Dr. Cho radios then to let them know her team has just arrived through the Gate. Good. Pepper’s not up for a round of Tony being performatively Totally Okay about that time he got a little bit blown up and got shrapnel in his heart and almost died, while she and everyone else pretend to believe him.

“I hear something,” says Bucky as soon as Jim’s off the radio, and almost before any of them can tell him not to worry, the jumper is flying up to the beta site with a quiet, deep hum.

Bucky startles when it comes into view—Puddle Jumpers fly faster than seems safe for something flying so low to the ground—but he doesn’t otherwise seem too shocked to see it. Pepper shares a look with Tony at that: either he came from a pretty advanced society, or he’s traveled through one as a runner, or maybe even been on a similar ship. Tony’s eyes get that bright, keen look that means he’s dying to interrogate Bucky about that and his prosthetic arm. Pepper gives him a not the time eyebrow and head shake, and he pouts briefly, but point to Pepper, because he doesn’t launch into an ill-timed barrage of questions.

Instead, Tony just nods at the jumper and says, “We call them Puddle Jumpers. Dumb name, blame General Sheppard, but they go through the Gate, and the wormhole’s event horizon does look like water, so I guess it makes sense. They can fly in the air, in space, and even under water.”

Bucky’s eyes are wide and wondering as he takes in the Puddle Jumper. “It’s amazing,” he murmurs.

“Yeah, it is. Seen anything like it before?” asks Tony, and Bucky lifts one shoulder in an uncertain gesture as he shakes his head.

Pepper makes a mental note to reward Tony for the truly monumental patience he’s displaying right now by accepting that answer and not overwhelming Bucky with more questions. Dr. Cho’s going to have enough questions for Bucky, and Pepper can only hope he’ll be willing and able to answer them, or this will be even more difficult.

The jumper parks carefully in the cave, and soon enough Dr. Cho and a nurse are coming out, Tony already rushing into the jumper to help unload the surgery and scanning equipment, talking a mile a minute. Pepper smiles as she watches him; the runner protocol may be a first for their team, but of course Tony’s done the reading. He probably knows it just as well as if he’d developed the protocol himself. For all that he puts on a facade of flippancy and blithe effortlessness, Pepper knows how deeply diligent and thoughtful he is about his work, all the more so now that it can have immediate life or death consequences.

“That’s Dr. Cho and Nurse Grijalva,” Pepper tells Bucky, who’s watching all the activity anxiously, arms crossed protectively over his chest. With the breadth of his chest and muscular arms, the pose would have been threatening if not for his tense, hunched shoulders. As it is, he manages to look small, and very alone. Pepper risks stepping closer to him. “They’ll be removing the tracker.”

“And I’ll be doing the scanning and imaging to make sure they’ll be able to find it,” says Tony, coming out with the equipment.

Dr. Cho and Nurse Grijalva make their introductions to Bucky, and Bucky’s polite enough to them, though he doesn’t say much. He uncrosses his arms with obvious effort. The way he’s wringing his hands gives his nerves away anyway. Still, he answers Dr. Cho’s questions about his health, even if he does it haltingly, with long pauses as he considers his words, and he shakes his head when he doesn’t know the answers. Some of his gaps in knowledge are distinctly concerning.

“You don’t know how long you’ve been a runner?” asks Dr. Cho.

“I don’t know how long the Hydrans had me,” answers Bucky, his voice soft and tense.

“Did you get noticeably older, get taller, anything like that?” asks Tony with a frown.

He’s running the scanner already and peering closely at its readout. Pepper wants to go see what he’s looking at so intently, but she stays at Bucky’s side, having by now eased close enough for comfort but not so close she crowds him.

“I don’t know—I’m not sure.”

“How can you not know?” asks Tony, genuinely baffled, and totally not seeing Jim’s subtle drop it expression.

“I—my memory, it—I told you, they did things. To me.”

This doesn’t clarify things much, for any of them, but it’s admittedly not the most relevant thing right now, so Dr. Cho moves things along.

“Did these Hydrans give you that prosthetic?” asks Dr. Cho.

Bucky nods. “I do remember losing my arm. Or—losing most of it. During the culling. Crushed, under rubble. Then—” He shakes his head again, his expression going tight and miserable.

“Alright, that’s okay,” soothes Dr. Cho. “Tony, do you have a read on the tracker?”

“Yeah, and it’s a very good news, maybe bad news situation? How much do you know about that left arm of yours?”

“Not much,” admits Bucky. “It’s strong, not as sensitive as my right, but good enough. The Hydrans gave it to me to make me a better match for the Wraith. They thought—they thought to make the Wraith strong, runners had to be strong. Had to be good fighters. A—a proper sacrifice, some of them said. But the arm, it’s not their tech. Scavenged from some other world, I think.”

“Hmm. Helping natural selection along?” mutters Tony. “Twisted, but it makes its own sort of sense, at least if you’re a nut job cultist type.”

“Hope you’ll be willing to tell us more about these Hydrans when you’re free of the tracker, Bucky,” says Jim, and Bucky nods.

“The good news and the maybe bad news?” prompts Pepper.

“Right. So, good news: the tracker’s embedded near your lower spine.”

“That is good news,” says Dr. Cho as she examines the scanner’s display. “It’s far less dangerous to remove there than if it were closer to the brainstem and vertebral arteries, which we’ve seen in some runners.” She looks up and indicates those locations with taps of her fingers to her own neck.

“The maybe bad news is that instead of the tracker, that arm of yours plugs in up there instead. Without knowing basically anything about your prosthetic, I can’t say how it will react to us taking the tracker out, or if it will. I’d prefer to disable your prosthetic, take it off, just to be safe, but...that’s clearly not happening with how it’s integrated into your nervous system. Have you got any pain with that arm, any times when you’ve lost consciousness and weren’t sure why?”

“Some pain, from the weight, and where it meets my skin,” answers Bucky after some consideration. “Nothing else.”

“Okay, maybe there’s nothing to worry about. That arm definitely isn’t Wraith tech anyway, so I think we can use the tracker disabling pulse without any damage to your arm.”

“The tracker’s not enmeshed with your nerves, or embedded too deep. We’ve had far harder extractions than this.” Dr. Cho looks up from the scanner display and smiles at Bucky. “We’ll have you free in no time. Now, let me just inform you of the risks of this procedure. Our people have a practice called informed consent, where I tell you everything I intend to do, so you can tell me if that’s acceptable or not, alright?”

Bucky nods and listens closely as Dr. Cho outlines the risks and parameters of the surgery: how it could possibly lead to paralysis or nerve damage, how Bucky might have adverse reactions to the anesthesia and antibiotics. Once she’s finished, Bucky indicates that he’s still willing to go through with it. But he requests local anesthesia only.

“Nothing that will knock me out, please,” he says, soft-voiced but steely.

Dr. Cho doesn’t seem surprised. “That’s safest, actually,” she tells Pepper, apparently catching the frown on her face. “I didn’t bring an anesthesiologist along, you know, and it’s risky doing full anesthesia when we don’t have a full workup on him. There might be differences in biology. An epidural is for the best.”

Nurse Grijalva gets Bucky situated on the gurney Tony had rolled out of the jumper, narrating everything he’s doing the entire time in an easy, kind way that doesn’t draw attention to itself. Even so, Bucky’s trembling as he takes off his jacket and shirt and hops up to lay down on his stomach on the gurney. Pepper’s glad Bucky’s back is turned towards her and that he can’t see her face when she gets her first look at the terrible scarring all along his left side where it meets his prosthetic. The scars are pink and shiny, like they haven’t entirely healed, and they radiate out from where the metal of his arm meets the rest of his shoulder and back. Tony makes a not particularly well-stifled noise that’s somewhere between outraged and sympathetic.

“Maybe we can help you with some of this scarring back on Atlantis,” murmurs Dr. Cho as Nurse Grijalva sets up the portable vitals monitors. “It can’t be comfortable.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

“Pep, I know you love Grey’s Anatomy, but this is gonna be a whole different thing. You can go wait with Happy,” says Tony, nodding towards the open wall of the building where Happy’s on watch with the Puddle Jumper pilot.

“I’m staying. If that’s okay with you, Bucky.”

Bucky just nods, so Pepper pulls up a chair and unfolds it by the gurney, right by Bucky’s head so she can’t see anything of what Dr. Cho and Tony are doing. She takes his hand, the right one, and it’s clammy and trembling just like the rest of him. He doesn’t pull his hand away though, and instead he matches her steady grip, and starts to breathe deep and even, like he’s counting it out.

“You’re doing great, Bucky,” says Dr. Cho. “I’m going to inject you with the epidural now, alright?”

Bucky flinches as the needle goes in, but he doesn’t make a sound. Once Dr. Cho establishes that the epidural has worked, Pepper figures it’s time to distract him. Distracting Tony just enough to keep him from getting weird about the unfortunate confluence of cave-like atmosphere + surgery will be a bonus. Pepper is multitasking.

“So! Tell me about where you’re from, Bucky.” 

Nurse Grijalva grimaces, and right. Bucky is from a planet that got destroyed by space vampires, probably, plus he’s already said his memory’s patchy. Good going there, Pepper. It’s fine, it’s fine, she can walk this particular faux pas back. 

“How about I start, tell you a little bit about where I’m from, where we’re from. We call our planet Earth, and there are a lot of people there, like a lot, and I lived in one of Earth’s biggest, most famous cities for years…”

She rambles on about New York and then Malibu, and then about how she and Tony had ended up on Atlantis: how Tony had been kidnapped by people who wanted him to build them weapons that would get them access to the Stargate that was hidden away in NORAD (that’s when the surgery in cave thing happened by the way, it’s going way better for you so far! interjects Tony); how Tony had escaped by building the Iron Man armor and how Jim had found him, how the SGC had tried to recruit them thereafter, how Pepper herself had been brought in on the secret after she walked in on some decidedly alien technology in Tony’s workshop. 

She’s leaving a lot out: all their fraught wrangling with the SGC, all their attempts to keep the Iron Man armor secret lest it turn into just another weapon people used Tony for, the negotiations back and forth across galaxies that led to their ultimate decision to take a pseudo-sabbatical from SI and come to Atlantis. Pepper just distills it all down to and then we came to Atlantis.

She has no idea how much of this makes any sense to Bucky, who hasn’t got a frame of reference for any of it even if she’s keeping things vague and broad, but Bucky’s eyes are focused on hers and he does seem to be listening.

Pepper risks a quick glance up at Tony, and his eyes smile at her over the surgical mask he’d put on for the procedure, so things must be going okay.

So Pepper tells Bucky the rest of the story, how they she, Tony, Jim, and Happy had ended up on Atlantis, galaxies away from their home.

“I thought Tony’s dad would be furious about us leaving the company for some secret government work in a classified location with limited communication, but it turned out he was proud instead,” says Pepper, still fairly confused about it over a year later.

Tony snorts and rolls his eyes. “He thinks it’s my chance to be a real man, live up to the Stark legacy and all. He used up all his, you know, insane rage on Obie and the whole double-dealing weapons and arranging to have me kidnapped thing.”

Tony’s flippancy does nothing to prevent the brief, awkward silence that falls then. They’ve all talked that whole situation to death already, and while Pepper maintains that it had all turned out well in the end—apparently all Howard and Tony needed to reconcile after years of a fractious relationship was a common enemy to unite against, who knew—she knows Tony’s still sore about the whole thing. Sore enough to run to a whole other galaxy for some space from his father.

 “Anyway,” she says, ending the silence, “being a space explorer is way more interesting than helping run even a Fortune 500 company—”

“Or even being head of R&D at said company—”

“Or being stationed in the ass end of nowhere fighting terrorists—”

“And it’s not like anyone on Earth other than Tony’s parents even knows we’re out here!”

“That’s insane, by the way,” says Jim, because he will never let this particular long-standing argument go. “I know JARVIS is great and all, but I cannot believe he’s basically running things while you two are out here gallivanting in space—”

“It’s fine! He was getting bored, he loves pretending to be us with SI and the R&D department—”

“And we just have to go back to Earth every couple months, make our appearances at some meetings, and it all works out! It’s fine!” says Pepper. “It’s just like working remotely, really.”

“Totally efficient! You know Dad doesn’t have a problem with it.”

“Uh huh. Working remotely in another galaxy. And Howard doesn’t have a problem with it because Howard is—”

Pepper cuts Jim off before they go through round 18,943 of All Starks Make Bad Decisions.

“So anyway, we’re all pretty happy to be here! It feels like we can do something that really matters, you know?”

Bucky probably does not know, Pepper realizes. All he’s been able to focus on is survival, probably, and to him it must seem insane to leave a safe planet that’s free of the Wraith to come to Atlantis.

But a tiny smile lifts the corner of Bucky’s mouth, so maybe he does know, and he says, “Yeah.”

Pepper beams back at him, unreasonably pleased. “Plus, I actually get to use my Art History degree!”

“You’re an artist?” asks Bucky. He’s gone pale now, discomfort obvious in the lines around his mouth and eyes, but he’s clearly trying to find something else to focus on, so Pepper obliges him.

“No, I’m a historian of art. I study it, and what it can tell us about cultures and people. Are you an artist?”

“No, but—” Bucky stops, sucks in a gasping breath.

“Bucky, please don’t move,” says Dr. Cho, her voice only betraying a little strain.

Bucky’s heart rate spikes on the monitor, his grip on Pepper’s hand turning painful. He lets go before Pepper can cry out, and grabs onto the metal bar at the side of the gurney, hard enough to crumple and bend it. Which is definitely not a thing your standard human can do.

“What’s wrong, is the epidural wearing off? Bucky, do you feel any pain?” asks Pepper.

Bucky nods and closes his eyes tight as his breath comes faster and faster.

“There’s no way it should have worn off so fast…” says Dr. Cho. “Raul, get another dose ready, I need just a little longer before closing him back up. Bucky, you’re doing so well, I’m so sorry the anesthetic is wearing off so quickly. Hang in there, alright? We’re injecting some more right now.”

“Hey, we got the tracker!” says Tony, and drops the bloody thing right into Bucky’s left hand, which opens automatically for it. Bucky crushes it easily, and Tony cheers. “You are officially no longer a runner, Buckaroo!”  

Whether it’s thanks to the removal of the tracker, or the second epidural kicking in, either way, Bucky relaxes, and Pepper fits her hand over where Bucky’s still gripping the gurney’s frame.

“You were going to tell me something about art,” she says.

“My—Steve was an artist. I remember that,” he says, low and desperate, like a plea.

“What kind of artist?”

“Paper. Anything he could put on paper, or canvas, I’d trade whatever I could to get him the best colors and—”

Bucky’s voice breaks off, whether from the pain of the memory or the pain of whatever Dr. Cho’s doing, Pepper can’t tell.

“What kinds of things did he paint?”

Bucky’s heart rate starts ticking up again on the monitor. “Me,” says Bucky after a long pause. “Brooklyn. And our—”

Again he breaks off, only this time he squeezes his eyes shut and a few tears leak out. Oh god, Pepper is fucking this up. She should have picked something more neutral to ask about, but she has no idea what.

“Wait, what? Did you just say Brooklyn?” demands Tony.

“That’s where I’m from,” says Bucky, somewhat hazily.

“Uh…” Tony and Jim exchange a baffled glance.

“That’s...weird. We have a Brooklyn too, on Earth,” says Pepper.

Though now that she says it, she can hear a difference in the way she and Tony say it, and the way Bucky had. He’d sounded more like he was saying Brook Lynn. It might be a quirk of the Gate translation matrix, which can take a creative approach to translation of proper nouns, to the frustration of Atlantis’ linguists. God only knew what Pegasus natives heard when Lanteans referenced Earth. Maybe they heard it as “Dirt” in their own languages.

“Then yours is the only Brook Lynn left,” says Bucky. “My people are gone. I remember that much.”

“Maybe not all of them,” offers Tony. “Ronon Dex found some Satedans on other worlds. Some Brook...Lynn refugees might have made it out too.”

For Bucky’s sake, Pepper hopes so. Bucky won’t let himself hope, judging by the despair she sees wash over his pale and clammy face. His breathing’s coming fast again, and the monitors are making warning noises about his vitals.

“Dr. Cho, are you almost done? I think he’s starting to feel it again,” says Pepper.

Dr. Cho swears. “You’re burning through these drugs way, way too fast for your height and weight,” she frets.

“Told you...Hydrans...did something…” says Bucky in a weak and strained voice.

“Yeah, looks like they did.” Jim comes closer, and nods at the bent frame of the gurney. “No one with standard human strength should be able to do that. These things are made of steel. You can’t give him more anesthetic?”

Dr. Cho shakes her head. “I won’t risk it, not without knowing why he’s burning through it so fast. Alright Bucky, we’re stitching you back up right now, be brave for me just for a bit longer. Raul, Colonel Rhodes, keep him still for me please.”

Pepper starts stroking Bucky’s sweat-damp hair when Jim and Nurse Grijalva hold Bucky down. Bucky turns his face into the gurney’s thin pillow, to hide his expression or to muffle any sound he makes, Pepper’s not sure which. Pepper can hear a few strangled, agonized cries from him anyway.

“Helen—” warns Tony, tense, as he watches Jim and Grijalva strain to keep Bucky still.

“I know, I know, but I can’t leave his back muscles shredded back here, I’m almost done…”

Pepper very deliberately avoids looking at anything going on at Helen’s end of the cot. She just starts murmuring whatever nonsense crosses her head to Bucky, about what Atlantis is like and her favorite alien foods that they serve in the mess and how it’s almost time for the first harvest of the season on the mainland, until Bucky finally passes out from the pain, and his tense and straining muscles go lax. Not much longer after that, Dr. Cho finishes stitching him back up and puts Bucky on a saline drip.

Only then does Pepper realize how tense her entire body has been. The tension in her shoulders unwinds rapidly and she flops back into her chair, heart pounding far faster than it had during their jog to the beta site. She does her breathing exercises, the ones she used to do to avoid stabbing various asshole businessmen with one of her stiletto heels and now does to deal with the assorted panics of being an intergalactic explorer, and hopes no one notices that her hands are shaking.

“He gonna be okay?” asks Jim.

Dr. Cho sighs and strips her gloves off, nodding. “No involvement of the spinal cord, thankfully. He didn’t lose too much blood, but I wish I felt comfortable enough to give him a transfusion. If he can take four times the standard epidural dose and burn through all of it that fast though…he clearly doesn’t have standard physiology. I’m not willing to try a transfusion, not without more detailed scans and test results in Atlantis. I’m just giving him our usual broad-spectrum antibiotic tailored for Pegasus for now.”

“Is it safe to move him?” Pepper asks.

“The faster we get him to Atlantis, the better.”

So Happy and Nurse Grijalva roll Bucky’s gurney carefully into the jumper as the rest of them pack up the beta site. If, before they set up about packing up, Tony happens to come over to her to give her a quick hug, and if that happens to still the lingering adrenaline-rush tremors in her hands, no one mentions it.

“We really gotta find out more about the Hydrans,” says Jim.

“Yeah, I wanna know what the hell they did to that poor kid. That prosthetic was grafted onto him with some real Dr. Frankenstein level mad and bad science,” Tony says grimly. “And the stuff he said about not even knowing how long the Hydrans had him? That’s kinda worrying.”

“It could just be trauma,” suggests Pepper. “He lost his arm in the culling, maybe he got a head injury too.”

Tony grimaces at her as if to apologize for what he’s about to say.

“Maybe. Or it could be because he was cocooned on a Wraith ship for who knows how long, or held in stasis by these Hydrans. That would mean his information could be years, decades out of date, and we could end up knowing just as little about these Wraith-worshipping assholes as we already did.”

Jim sighs, and rubs at his face. “Fuck. Okay, no use speculating until he can tell us more. And maybe there’ll be something in the mission database about the Hydrans.” Jim looks at Pepper. “You did good, Pepper. Thanks for helping keep Bucky calm.”

“Of course. I promised him someone would stay with him. One of us should stay with him on Atlantis too. We’ll be the only familiar faces there, and I’m sure everything will be so new and stressful for him…”

Just thinking about abandoning Bucky after all this makes Pepper feel sick to her stomach with apprehension and guilt. 

“I’m sticking close to that guy until we figure out what the deal is with that prosthetic. It’s not Ancient, but it’s some kind of advanced with the way it’s integrated into his nervous system…”

Jim throws his arms around both Pepper and Tony’s shoulders and directs them towards the jumper. “Uh huh. Atlantis and debrief first, then we can get back to our poor stray.”

They get back to Atlantis without incident, which is good, because the mission thus far has had more than enough incident for Pepper. Pepper tells Tony as much, and he just grins at her.

“I know, isn’t it great?”

“Tony!”

“What? Not that I don’t love a good, boring trading mission, but it’s been, like, forever since we got to do anything seriously exciting—”

“I thought two missions ago when we accidentally activated an Ancient drone and had to swim for the Stargate was more than exciting enough,” says Happy.

Exciting mission or not, they get the all-clear from Medical quickly enough, and before any of them can head back to their quarters or anywhere else, General Sheppard and Governor Emmagan summon them for a debriefing. Pepper knows why, and she knows they aren’t in trouble or anything, knows there’s no reason for the twist and flutter of nerves in her stomach. And yet there’s a small part of her that’s always expecting to be summoned by Governor Woolsey or Emmagan, to be told sternly and solemnly that there’s been a mistake and she shouldn’t be here at all, it’s time to go back to Earth. That, Pepper tells herself firmly, is not going to happen.

It’s just that AR-23’s trade and aid missions aren’t usually the kind that require immediate post-mission debriefings, much less debriefings with one of the Governors and General Sheppard. But finding a runner is always cause for getting one of the Governors involved, or at least Tony thinks it is, and Jim must have already relayed the possibility of information on a new, potentially technologically advanced threat in the form of these mysterious Wraith-worshipping Hydrans to General Sheppard.

Pepper doesn’t, strictly speaking, need to be at this debriefing, and she almost stays with Bucky, to be a familiar face in case he regains consciousness. There’s a brief team huddle to this effect, which only leads to her curiosity and desire to make sure Bucky has an advocate of some sort winning out instead, so Happy’s nominated to stay with a still unconscious Bucky in the Infirmary, in case he does wake up.

When they get to the command conference room, General Sheppard greets them with a “Congrats,” and slides an oversized handmade card to them across the briefing table.

It reads IT’S A BOY! in what’s probably whiteboard marker, with a sloppy drawing of some lopsided blue balloons and a cake. Pepper would have preferred an actual cake, but she takes the card anyway.

“You’re a real Atlantis recon team now! You’ve brought home a stray!” says Sheppard.

Governor Emmagan smiles indulgently at General Sheppard, who’s grinning at them in a distinctly paternal way that Pepper just knows is going to lead to Tony doing something dumb and pointlessly confrontational. (Thanks, Howard Stark.)

“Can we keep him, pa? We’ll take real good care of him!” says Tony earnestly.

Before Sheppard can answer, Jim steers the debriefing back towards a semblance of professionalism.

“Sir, I’d like to request Bucky be allowed to stay on Atlantis at least until he recovers from his surgery, and preferably until he provides us with intelligence on this new faction of Wraith worshippers.”

“And I’d like to request Bucky be allowed to stay as long as he wants,” adds Pepper. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“All runners have a place here,” says Governor Emmagan with a gracious nod. “If he wishes, and if he isn’t deemed a danger to the City, we can offer him refuge. In the City itself, or on the mainland settlements. Now, tell us of your mission.”

Jim relays the bulk of the report, with inevitable asides and digressions from Tony and the occasional clarification from Pepper. For all that it had felt like a lot had happened, when distilled down to a verbal report, it takes all of fifteen minutes to cover the events of the mission. They’d been on Alara for less than six hours, most of it entirely routine until that last, frantic hour, and then they’d been on Beta-5 for another four hours or so. It only feels like it must have been a week to Pepper.

She doesn’t let it show, of course. She just takes a sip of her water and presents the calm and pleasant demeanor she’d honed right around the second time she’d had to fend off what had felt like every single SI department head, executive officer, and shareholder who wanted a piece of Tony at the SI board meetings.

Once Jim wraps up, Governor Emmagan and General Sheppard provide their own briefing on what intel they’d managed to pull together since Jim first called the runner protocol in.

“Brook Lynn was culled about three or four years ago, near as we can tell. AR-12 heard about it at the last Nowhere Market day, and we confirmed when we sent a team out to do the standard check for any survivors not long after that. So, shitty luck for this poor guy, but he’s probably one of the last batch of runners the Wraith bothered with,” says Sheppard.

“Were there any survivors?” asks Tony. “And what was their tech level? Because Bucky was real comfortable with that rifle of his, and he didn’t scream about the jumper being the devil’s handiwork or anything. Also: did I mention his robot arm. Because it’s not some Mad Max or steampunky hook hand, it is a beautiful work of—”

“Tony,” Jim and Pepper say in unison, and Tony ostentatiously shuts his mouth.

“Somewhere between Sateda and the Genii maybe,” says Governor Emmagan. “They were a fairly private people, and I suspect they hid the extent of their technology. They certainly fought back against the Wraith, but…”

“They didn’t hide their tech well enough, as it turns out,” adds General Sheppard, and Governor Emmagan winces and nods.

“Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left of Brook Lynn. They were made an example of just like Sateda, and the Wraith were only beginning to become desperate then. They had Hive ships and darts enough at the time to destroy nearly all of the habitable parts of the planet, and culled what amounts to the entire population. For some time, there have been rumors that it was not mere bad luck, that Brook Lynn was betrayed. Neither we nor our allies have had any firm intelligence to confirm or deny that either way as of yet,” says Emmagan.

“Bucky said the Hydrans called the Wraith down on his people. I think he’s made it his business to make sure they don’t do it to anyone else. If he, or we, hadn’t been on Alara today…” Jim shakes his head. “Their domes wouldn’t have held out if the assault started from the inside.”

“And then Rodney would have been real sad about his control crystal supply line being disrupted.”

Tony waves a dismissive hand. “Forget about the control crystals, like I said before I was silenced, Bucky’s got a robot arm. A highly advanced robot arm. And he said the Hydrans ‘did stuff’ to him. I don’t think he’s your standard issue human, I think—”

Before Tony can finish, Dr. Cho radios them. “Bucky’s regained consciousness and he’s asking to speak with Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes. Also, I have his preliminary scans back and they’re pretty…interesting? Confusing?”

“Let him know Rhodes is coming, and that Teyla and I are tagging along too,” says General Sheppard, already leaving the conference room. The rest of them follow. “Along with the rest of AR-23, I guess,” he adds, and makes no move to stop them.

When they get to the infirmary, Bucky’s sitting up, wan but alert. His eyes widen when he sees all of them, and Pepper winces. Yeah, this is probably a lot for a man who’s almost certainly done his best to avoid populated areas for the better part of four years. Tony notices too, and when Pepper gives him the let me handle this eyebrows, he peels off to go confer with Dr. Cho for a bit, probably about Bucky’s robot arm.

“Sorry,” Pepper tells Bucky, and insinuates herself at Bucky’s bedside into the space Happy has vacated for her as he melts away to join Tony. “I know this must be overwhelming for you. How are you feeling, we can all come back later if you want?”

She fluffs the pillow behind him, for lack of anything better to do, which seems to relax Bucky a little. He shakes his head, and his throat moves as he swallows.

“I’m fine, thank you,” he says, and glances warily at Sheppard and Emmagan.

“This is Governor Emmagan and General Sheppard, they’re two of the leaders of Atlantis,” Jim tells him. “I figured we could save some time and bring them right to you, since anything you tell me, I’ll be telling them anyway. But hey, you can take some time to recover, alright? You don’t have to tell us everything right away.”

“But you should definitely tell us some things right away,” adds Sheppard. “Like whether we or any of our allies are about to be attacked by Wraith and/or Wraith worshippers.”

“And whether I’m dangerous or not,” says Bucky. He’s eyeing Sheppard like he knows Sheppard himself is dangerous too, though with his usual messy hair and casual posture, he doesn’t especially look it.

“That too,” says Sheppard easily. “Are you?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky looks down at his hands. He’s wringing them uneasily, and his metal fingers catch the bright lights of the infirmary. “I don’t know everything the Hydrans did to me, if...” he trails off, and Pepper subtly nudges the cup of water on his bedside table towards him. He takes a sip, but doesn’t say anything further. 

Just as Tony turns and opens his mouth to say something that’s almost certainly going to be some variety of insensitive, Dr. Cho rejoins them with a professionally soothing smile. 

“I can answer that. You’re free of any pathogens, trackers, or any other nasty surprises, as far as we can determine.”

“And no secret bombs in your robot arm, yay!” adds Tony, and brandishes his tablet with what Pepper presumes is the scan showing said lack of secret bombs.

“But your surgical incision looks like it’s been healing for days, not a couple hours, and there are some other anomalies in your test results. Is that a standard rate of healing for you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” says Bucky, frowning down at the bedsheets and his hands.

“Yeah, that’s probably not surprising,” says Dr. Cho. “How long have you had problems with your memory?”

“That sounds like a trick question,” mutters Tony as he pokes away at something on his tablet. “If you have problems with your memory, would you remember…?” Tony looks up, squints into the middle distance.

“Tony! Not the time!” hisses Pepper. She’s kind of wondering the same thing though.

“The Hydrans...they had a—machine. Like a chair, with—they put something on my head and everything hurt. And when I woke up, I didn’t—everything was gone. I couldn’t even remember my own name.”

“Can you tell us what you remember now?” asks Governor Emmagan.

Bucky nods, though he still doesn’t look up. “Brook Lynn was culled. I was on watch when—I saw the darts coming. Sounded the alarm, managed to take a few of them out, before—before. I don’t—things are hazy, after that.”

Bucky stops, swallowing hard. They can all guess what happened after that. They’ve seen the ruined aftermath on enough planets.

“It’s okay. Take your time,” says Jim.

“Next thing I remember is running. And then—Hydrans found me.” 

“When did you realize they were Wraith worshippers?” asks Sheppard.

“I told them I was a runner, I told them they should let me go before the Wraith found all of us, but they didn’t. They just started saying things like ‘only culling brings order’ and ‘runners make the Wraith strong.’”

“Yes, we’ve been hearing more of that sort of talk from Wraith worshippers lately,” says Emmagan grimly.

Sheppard grimaces and says, “Gotta say, it’s not a welcome change. I preferred the dumbass Wraith worshippers who were basically just the useless edgy goths of Pegasus. What else do you remember?”

“Needles, pain. And—the chair.”

Bucky’s voice is a painful sounding, low rasp by now, which doesn’t suggest happy things about how often he’s been able to speak to other people during his time as a runner. 

“That’s the device that...took your memories?” asks Sheppard, and Bucky nods.

“It wore off, or—I don’t know. I remember things now,” he says, barely above a whisper, and falls silent.

“We took some brain scans,” says Dr. Cho. “There’s evidence that there was targeted damage to the portions of Bucky’s brain responsible for memory. Specifically episodic memory. Trauma from your average brain injury would never be so precise. It was deliberate. I don’t even want to think about what else someone could do with technology like that. It’s little better than a lobotomy.”

“Why would they even do that though?” asks Pepper.

“To make a perfect runner,” says Bucky, his voice stronger now, tight with rage or disgust, Pepper can’t tell which. “Empty of everything but the need to run. And they did—other things. To me. To make me a more worthy opponent for the Wraith. To make the Wraith stronger if they caught me and ate me, I guess.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s…awful,” says Sheppard. “Didn’t think the whole runner thing could get any worse, but there it is. A way to make it worse.”

He’s maintaining his easy, conversational tone, but his eyes are cold and furious, and when he looks at Governor Emmagan, they both seem to come to some impenetrable decision without exchanging a word. Pepper doesn’t know them well enough to know if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing. 

“It makes its own kind of sense…sort of. Competition, natural selection, whatever.” Tony has that clipped and precise tone that most people mistake for Tony being annoyed, but Pepper knows better. This is Tony’s thin disguise for genuine outrage.

Dr. Cho takes a calming breath and attempts a smile. “As Bucky himself has demonstrated, a lot of the damage has healed, and it’s continuing to heal! Which is actually quite remarkable. Usually the brain reroutes around damage, but in this case, there’s evidence it’s actually healing, slowly but surely.”

Bucky nods in agreement, and though he’s clearly trying to keep his expression blank and calm, a terrible grief ripples across his face anyway, like a disturbance on a mirror-calm lake. It’s as if a stone has been thrown in the still water of him. The stone of his grief sinks quickly, hidden again where the rest of them can’t see, and his face is clear and composed again.

“So there is hope that all of his memories will return, that is very good news,” says Governor Emmagan, and aims all her considerable warmth at Bucky. 

“And good job not getting eaten or caught!” adds Sheppard.

Governor Emmagan very briefly closes her eyes as Sheppard’s smile morphs from encouraging grin to grimace. Bucky just looks up at them with wide eyes. Pepper really can’t tell if they’re making a good impression or a bad one at this point.

Before anyone else can say anything insensitive and/or awkward, Pepper asks, “Is there anything more that can be done to help?”

“I’d like to get more of a handle on Bucky’s physiology before I make any more in-depth treatment recommendations. For now, I’m prescribing rest and food, some topical treatments for the scarring along his prosthetic, and I’ll be keeping an eye on that incision site.”

“And you understand Dr. Cho’s treatment plan?” Governor Emmagan asks Bucky. “It’s alright to admit if you don’t, or to ask any questions. We are unfamiliar with each other’s ways, after all, and there is no shame in learning more about each other.”

Bucky bites his lip in an uncertain kind of way, and his eyes dart around as if looking for an exit.

“I only wanted to make sure you knew, about the Hydrans. About what they can do, and if they could follow me here. If it’s not safe, I can go, I should go—” he says, and he starts to stir as if he really is intending to just get up and leave.

“No one can follow you here,” says Tony with the kind of arrogant, easy confidence that drives half the science department insane. “We’ve got a shield on our Stargate that only comes down with the right codes, and the city itself is cloaked and shielded.”

“And if a Hydran is already here?” demands Bucky. 

“We may not have dealt with these Hydrans before, but we have dealt with Wraith worshippers, and we are careful about who we allow into our city, and onto the mainland settlements.”

“Plus, and I’m sure you’ve noticed, there aren’t as many Wraith around nowadays,” adds General Sheppard, with a lazy, predatory kind of smile.

“And if we have got any Hydrans lurking around, who better than to help us spot them but you?” says Jim.

This seems to make an impression on Bucky, because his frown turns more thoughtful than worried.

“Do you know any Gate addresses associated with the Hydrans?” asks Governor Emmagan. “We can check our records, see if anyone associated with those addresses has ever passed through.”

Bucky shakes his head. “They don’t have a set Gate address. They have ships. Not their own, scavenged. Most of their tech is scavenged. What they used on me, this arm…it wasn’t theirs. I thought maybe—they made me like the Wraith? There were others taken, and none of them survived but I—did they—”

“No,” says Dr. Cho. “No Wraith DNA. Whatever they did, it was not that. I’m afraid I can’t give you more information without knowing what’s standard for your people, Bucky. You do, however, have a strong expression of the ATA gene. That’s the characteristic that allows people to use the Ancients’—the Ancestors’—technology. I can’t determine if that was imparted via gene therapy, or if you were born with it. If the Hydrans did that…”

“That’s a problem,” finishes General Sheppard. 

“The Hydrans never had anything of the Ancestors’ that I remember. But I think I’ve…?” 

Bucky’s gaze goes distant and inward, as if he’s listening. It’s an abstracted expression that Pepper sees fairly often on the faces of people trying to use Ancient technology, at least when they’re trying to do anything more complex than operating the doors. He shakes his head, apparently unable to to pin down the memory.

“Well, you work on healing up like Dr. Cho says, and you can tell us whatever more you can, let’s say, next week?”

This earns General Sheppard a blank look. “I’m not familiar with your standard units of time measurement, sir,” he says, and Pepper sees Tony hide a smile behind his tablet. She looks down and away to avoid catching his mirth.

Pepper just likes Bucky more now after that little comment; there was a finely calibrated, perfectly bland, implied you idiot at the end there, and she’s delivered enough of that kind of tastefully implied barb to plenty of terrible bosses and supervisors over the years to recognize it. It’s more proof that Bucky hasn’t been broken by his terrible experiences. Pepper doubts someone who’s irreparably traumatized would have that level of courteously deniable sass.

 “Fair point. You’d think I’d have learned by now,” says Sheppard easily, and Tony steps in to show Bucky his tablet.

“Lucky for us, human circadian rhythms are pretty standard across the galaxies. If this represents your waking period, and this your sleeping period, that’s what we’d consider a day. Seven of those makes a week. Totally arbitrary, I know, I’ve been lobbying to ditch it, what do weeks and months matter when we’re on another planet, in a new galaxy, but it makes our paperwork impossible otherwise, so here we are, a galaxy away and still chained to the arbitrary calendar system of an unremarkable planet that’s hundreds of millions of light years away. And seconds and minutes and hours! Sure the second’s based on an atomic process, but if I tell you it’s nine billion oscillations of the cesium atom, what do you care—”

Happy just puts his hand over Tony’s mouth. “We’ll get you a watch,” he tells Bucky wryly.

Jim sighs as Bucky blinks bemusedly. “Yeah, don’t worry, whatever you’re feeling right now is how everyone feels when they deal with Tony. We’ll leave you a tablet with some informational recordings about Atlantis and us Earthlings and Lanteans, alright?”

“There’s a very thorough orientation package,” Pepper assures Bucky. “And you can ask me or the others any questions.”

“Thank you,” says Bucky, and finally, his face has relaxed enough to show the barest suggestion of a smile around his eyes. 

After a few more questions from Jim and Sheppard, like when was the last time Bucky saw or was on a Hydran ship and a request for the last Gate addresses he’d been to, when the pauses between Bucky’s words get longer and longer, Dr. Cho shoos them all out of the infirmary to let him rest. Pepper leaves Bucky with a wave and a promise to eat breakfast with him the next morning.

Once they’re in the hallway, General Sheppard and Governor Emmagan stop them before they can all head to their quarters.

“I’ll have security keep an eye on him, standard protocol and all, but you’re the ones who brought him home, kids. I expect you to make him feel welcome.” Sheppard pauses, tilts his head. “And make sure he’s not going to kill us all or betray us to the Wraith or steal all the nice silverware and what have you.”

“John,” chides Governor Emmagan gently. “I think he can be trusted. Ronon ought to speak to him, get his measure, but your team has done well, Colonel Rhodes.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

As General Sheppard ambles away, he calls out, “That’s your allowance for strays for the year though! Don’t turn into AR-10, they bring someone home just about every damn mission!”

“We’re not going to turn into AR-10,” says Tony, affronted. “AR-10 brought that murderous talking raccoon to Atlantis! That thing had a machine gun! And maybe rabies, I don’t know.”

“The talking tree’s nice though,” says Happy.

“How can you tell?” asks Jim. “He only says ‘I am Groot’! Even with the translation matrix!”

“Yeah, you know, I think the Gate translation mechanism thinks Groot’s actually, you know, a plant, not a person, which, if you think about it, is a really fascinating loophole for the—”

“He’s got different tones, you know? Like Mandarin,” insists Happy.

“Oh, Groot’s lovely, when he sees me, he always gives me the flowers he grows!”

“Honey, I keep telling you, you shouldn’t take those, god knows what it means in sentient talking tree culture—”

“Yeah, Groot’s gonna make you his entwife, Pepper, maybe you shouldn’t take strange flowers from strange trees…”

When they finally make it back to their quarters, the day catches up to Pepper, with the same giddy exhaustion as when she and Tony had hit three different continents in two days on assorted Stark Industries business trips. Only now, they’ve been on three different planets in the last 24 hours, got in the middle of a firefight, rescued a refugee runner, and had a debriefing with their bosses. 

Even accounting for the threats to their lives, Pepper knows which one she prefers.

Tony’s got his second wind, so he’s the one who chivvies them through their end of the day, post-mission routine, keeping up his usual stream-of-consciousness patter. Pepper knows when to let it wash over her and when to pay attention, and tonight’s a night for the former. Tony’s just thinking aloud, talking to fill their otherwise weary, wired silence. He’s taking her jacket off for her when the silly congratulations card falls from one of her pockets. Tony picks it up and sets it on their small dresser table.

“You really wanna keep our stray, don’t you?”

“He’s a grown man, Tony, not a lost puppy, or a child.”

They each start the somewhat involved process of emptying their pockets. Tony’s always got an entire toolkit’s worth of stuff in there, and Pepper tends to put anything in her pockets that she would have stuck in her purse back on Earth. The dresser starts filling up with pliers and chapstick and protein bars.

“Yeah, yeah, but you want to keep him. Is it because he’s hot? Because I get that, he’s got a whole male model who’s on a wilderness survival retreat kind of look going, and it’s really working for him. I just figured, you’ve already got a harem of handsome hunks—”

God, one planet thinks Pepper’s married to her entire team, one, and now she’ll never hear the end of the harem jokes.

“Tony! I don’t want to keep him just because he’s eye candy. I mean, we already live in the same city as Ronon Dex. I am set on that score.”

Tony snorts. “Thanks babe, you know that does wonders for my self-esteem.”

“He’s just so tall…” teases Pepper, and laughs when Tony puts on an exaggerated pout.

“Seriously though, you want to keep him?”

Pepper does. She knows why, too, but it’s not entirely something she wants to examine too much. Tony might know why already anyway.

“He doesn’t have anyone,” says Pepper quietly as she takes off her watch. “This entire galaxy, and he doesn’t have anyone.”

“Universe is full of tragedies like that, Pep. Why’s this one got you all worked up?” Tony asks, gently. 

People don’t often credit Tony Stark with gentleness, but Pepper knows he’s got it in spades. For her, for his bots, for the vulnerable and scared. She can never hold out long against Tony’s forthright tenderness, but she’s damned well going to try tonight.

“Well, he saved our lives for one thing,” says Pepper tartly as she changes into her pajamas.

“Maybe saved our lives,” says Tony, and Pepper gives him a look once she pulls her shirt over her head. “Probably saved our lives,” he amends.

“And he’s so polite. All these awful things happening to him, and even with how scared and tired and hurt he has to be, and he’s still polite, he’s still trying so hard to help people.”

This hits home with Tony. They brush their teeth in silence, and Pepper watches Tony think. She never gets tired of it, how she can practically see the constant motion of his mind, how the intensity of his eyes belies the frequent flippancy of his words. 

“He could kill us all in our sleep, we don’t actually know him,” Tony says now, but it’s lacking in conviction.

“You don’t really think that.”

They go to their bed and pull the covers back together. It’s not exactly the king-sized bed they used to have in Malibu, or at the New York penthouse, but Pepper had bartered and negotiated her way up to a proper queen-sized bed and used one of her precious intergalactic shipping allotments for nice sheets, so it’s almost as good.

“No. Just—you know, I looked it up, Atlantis’ stats for runners? Apart from Ronon Dex and one lady on the mainland, they all leave. They don’t feel safe staying in one place, or they can’t stand being around people again. So I’m just saying—don’t get attached.”

“I won’t,” Pepper says, and slides under the cool, soft covers. “I just think we should show him some kindness, you know? Give him a reason to stay.” Because she knows Tony, she offers him some incentive. “And then you can poke away at his robot arm as much as you want if he lets you.”

Tony pulls her close for a long, sweet goodnight kiss and Pepper can feel him smiling through it. “Very subtle,” he says, then turns the lights off with a thought. “He kept us—he kept you, from maybe getting eaten by space vampires today. I’m more than okay with being nice to him.”

Tony falls asleep in minutes for once, probably tired out from the day’s assorted adrenaline rushes, so Pepper’s left to stew in her thoughts alone. Telling Bucky about the weird, at all points unexpected journey that’s brought her to Atlantis with Tony and Jim and Happy has put her in an odd mood, something between nostalgia and gratitude and grief.

She doubts the jumbled story she’d told Bucky while Dr. Cho got the Wraith tracker out of him had made much sense to him. But in telling it, she realized how far she’s come from the workaholic, desperately independent by necessity person she’d once been.

Once upon a time, her only ambition had been to make it. To grab every opportunity, to climb and climb and climb whenever she found a toe hold, no matter how precarious, because what other choice did she have? No one was throwing a rope down to her. No one was waiting at the bottom with a safety net. Virginia Pepper Potts was alone in the world, with nothing but a nearly forgotten life insurance payout from her dead mom, a beater of a car, and a handful of classmates who liked her okay but who thought she was quiet and intense and always working.

It’s how she ended up overeducated—why choose between passion and practicality if she could convince someone to let her have both? It’s how she ended up at Stark Industries. And it’s how she ended up as Tony Stark’s executive assistant, having vastly oversold a minor in accounting and a couple years’ experience as a PA/bookkeeper to the director of an arts foundation, oversold them enough to get a job at SI’s accounting department.

Where one day, Tony had found her when he was trying to dodge his dad haranguing him to hire and keep an executive assistant for once.

I think she’ll do, Tony had said, clearly picking her more or less at random. You’re bored here in accounting, aren’t you? You look bored. I’m not boring. 

Pepper had been bored. And she’d had Tony’s latest R&D quarterly budget open, and at that moment, even Tony Stark’s attempt to needle Howard Stark had seemed like a sound enough handhold to try for on her endless climb towards a ledge worth resting on.

I’m sure you’re not, Mr. Stark. But you do need an executive assistant who can do simple math in Excel. You dropped an entire column off your R&D budget.

Howard had laughed and Tony had beamed, his whole face creasing up in delight, and Pepper doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but looking back on it now…that smile had been it for her. That interview had led to a job, and that job to a friendship, and that friendship to a relationship, and that relationship to a whole lot of worry and terror and love and absolutely no boredom, and eventually, to a marriage and another way more exciting job. 

So by all measures, Pepper has made it. She has a great marriage, an amazing job in literal outer space, and she’s filthy rich, not that it matters in said outer space. 

But Pepper knows why she’d made the desperate, reckless climb to get here. And she remembers what it had felt like to look down at the void waiting for her if she didn’t make it. She remembers what it had felt like to barely even recognize the hand stretching down towards her to help her onto a safe summit, because she’d gone for so damn long without.

Of course, being a small-town orphan girl with no prospects is a far cry from being a tortured, bereaved man on the run from space vampires and their cultists. 

It’s just that Pepper’s been a stray too. She’s always strived not to look it, because that attracts the wrong kind of attention when you look the way Pepper does. But before Tony, and Jim, and Happy, Pepper hadn’t had anyone, not really. Now that she does have people and a place, she finds herself wanting to spread the feeling, to pull more people up onto this thrilling, beautiful ledge at the edge of the galaxy. Bucky seems like the kind of person who could really use it: a hand up, a place to rest.

Pepper can do that now, she thinks. She’s strong enough.

Jim apparently considered General Sheppard’s directive to make Bucky feel welcome an outright order, because the next morning, all of AR-23 has a rota of welcoming duties waiting in their intranet inboxes. Pepper’s calendar also helpfully has breakfast with Bucky on it. She rolls her eyes. As if she’d have forgotten. Jim must be feeling especially team leader-y if he’s micromanaging so much. She takes Tony with her to the infirmary, smuggling a couple of the nicer breakfast pastries from the mess to sneak to Bucky.

“How is he?” Pepper asks Dr. Cho on their way in to see him.

“Fine,” says Dr. Cho, sounding somewhat baffled. “I mean, totally fine. All healed up and everything, apart from the brain damage and being underweight for his height and build. I got worried he was spiking a fever for a little bit, but it turns out he just runs hot. I’m keeping him here for one more day, just out of an abundance of caution, but I think I’ll discharge him tomorrow.”

When they reach Bucky’s little curtained off section of the infirmary, they find him sitting up and looking at something on the tablet they’d left with him yesterday, his brow furrowed in what’s either concentration or consternation.

“Good morning, Bucky, have you eaten yet? I brought you some things from the mess,” says Pepper. “Infirmary food is healthy, but, you know, not super exciting.”

Tony immediately gets up in Bucky’s personal space to peer over his shoulder at the tablet.

“Oooh, the Don’t Touch That educational video, that’s an important one,” says Tony, before he notices how utterly still Bucky’s gone. “Right. Personal space. Sorry.” He steps back a respectable distance.

Bucky relaxes and offers them a belated, low-voiced, “Good morning,” before taking the offered pastries gingerly. “Thank you.”

“Dr. Cho gave us the good news, she said you’ll be cleared to leave the infirmary tomorrow,” says Pepper between bites of her gooja berry tart.

“Then we can show you around Atlantis!”

Tony and Pepper carry on the conversation in that vein as Bucky nibbles at his breakfast pastry haul and listens intently. Pepper can’t tell if his silence is just how he is, if he’s just worn out from all the speaking he did yesterday, or if he’s too wary to speak more. Maybe he’s just unaccustomed to talking, given how he’s spent the last few years. Her only basis for comparison is Ronon Dex, and she hasn’t exactly had occasion to speak to him much. She sees him speaking to others often enough though, and for all that he can cut an intimidating figure as he stalks through the halls of Atlantis, he also has a ready, merry smile that crinkles his eyes sweetly. Maybe it will be the same with Bucky, some day.

Bucky does contribute to the conversation eventually. Just a few brief questions, but Pepper figures that’s progress.

“Where will I be kep—I mean, where will I be staying?”

“In the city’s residential quarters, though I don’t know which one, Tony, do you—”

“We’ll get you quarters near the rest of the team, of course,” says Tony breezily. “Ocean views all around, can’t beat that. Unless you’re afraid of water. Are you afraid of water?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Do you all live together? I remember—you said you were married.”

“Tony and I are married, yes,” Pepper says before Tony can make any dumb jokes that will just confuse Bucky. “But the whole team doesn’t live together together though, just near each other on the South East Pier, that’s where one of the residential districts is.”

“It’s not the Tower, but it’ll do,” adds Tony.

“Oh. I thought you two and Colonel Rhodes were married?”

“Rhodey’s refused all my proposals!” says Tony, in a tone of exaggerated heartbreak, and okay, there’s the dumb joke. Well, sort of joke. Tony has definitely proposed to Jim, just not entirely seriously, but Pepper elbows him anyway.

“Ignore him, Bucky. Tony, don’t confuse him—” Pepper turns back to Bucky and smiles. It’s a common enough misconception in the Pegasus Galaxy, to assume the standard four-person Gate team is married in various configurations. She knows that her and Tony actually being married doesn’t help clear things up any in AR-23’s case. “No, just Tony and me. We’re all friends, obviously, practically family, but only Tony and I are actually married.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, or—”

“No offense taken, are you kidding me? Rhodey’s a catch. Three people though, that how they do it on Brook Lynn?” asks Tony.

Bucky looks down at his hands and nods, then he brushes his fingers over each of his bare wrists. His hair is loose and falls to cover his face, so Pepper can’t see his expression. Pepper doesn’t have to see it though. She just knows.

“Oh Bucky. I’m so sorry.”

“I didn’t remember, for a long time,” he says, so softly she can barely hear him. 

“If there’s anything you need to do, to grieve them, we’d be honored to help,” she says.

Bucky lifts his hands to show his bare wrists. “This is all,” he says, and it doesn’t take an anthropologist to guess that among his people, if his partners had been alive, his wrists would have been adorned with something. Bracelets, maybe, or some sort of leather cuff. Just knowing that makes his bare wrists seem very thin and vulnerable, even the delicately armored metal one. Pepper’s own fingers twitch with the need to worry at her wedding ring, or to fiddle with the necklace Tony gave her. 

“Or you can talk about them, if you need to,” Pepper offers.

“Thank you, but I don’t, I can’t—” Bucky clenches his shaking hands into fists.

“It’s okay,” says Tony, awkward but gentle. “You don’t have to.”

They sit in silence for a long, long moment. When Bucky lifts his head, his face is as clear and calm as the ocean around Atlantis on a windless day. But his eyes are so unfathomably sad. Pepper thinks he’s maybe the most alone person she’s ever met. When she looks at Tony, he has his I’m going to fix this look on his face. 

When they leave the infirmary, Tony pulls her close, and Pepper just has to stop right there in the hallway and let him hold her.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that I’m going to fix this look on your face,” she says into Tony’s hair. “You can’t fix the fact that Bucky’s lost his partners.”

“I know,” says Tony after he pulls her head down for a kiss.

“And you can’t start trying to marry him off to anyone either,” adds Pepper, then after another kiss, considers. “Not for at least six months anyway.”

“Copy that, Ms. Potts. I was just thinking—how would you feel about a new team member? If he doesn’t turn out to be secretly evil or totally crazy or anything like that, that is. And if our military overlords clear it.”

“I’d feel pretty good about that. Especially if he goes with you on all those missions you won’t let me come along for.”

Pepper’s gotten the same combat training every civilian on Atlantis has, but that doesn’t mean Sheppard or Emmagan will clear her to go out on more dangerous missions with the rest of her team. Her presence on off-world missions is strictly diplomatic and trade oriented, and when there’s no diplomacy or trading required, she’s benched. It’s standard protocol for all the mixed military and civilian teams, a condition of her even being allowed on Atlantis at all, and Pepper doesn’t usually begrudge it. It’s not as if she’d be anything but a liability on the missions that demand Tony and Jim’s engineering and fighter pilot skills. Still, she’d feel better about their fourth on those missions if it were someone who was properly part of their team rather than a Marine rotating in as additional security, and even more so if it was someone as familiar with the threats and dangers of the Pegasus Galaxy as Bucky likely is.

“Then we’ll be like the cool kids! We’ll have an ex-runner on our team.”

“Finally, we’ll be able to sit at the cool kids’ table,” says Pepper wryly.

When Bucky’s released from the infirmary the next day, he’s whisked off for a So You’re a Refugee in Atlantis session with a couple Lantean social workers. Pepper checks in with him when he’s waiting for Kanaan in the infirmary, and she tries to ease his obvious nerves about the whole thing. He’s standing, rather pointedly Pepper thinks, next to a wheelchair some nurse had apparently thought he might need, what with having recently undergone surgery and all. He has a glower on his face that would be intimidating, if not for how he’s wrapped his arms tightly around himself. Between that, the scrub shirt and BDU pants he’s wearing, he looks mismatched and displaced, and very lost. Pepper’s heart does a funny squeezing and flopping kind of thing, somewhere between the awww of seeing a bedraggled puppy and the sense of resolve she gets from seeing a person she can help.

She hopes the puppy thing doesn’t show on her face, and smiles at Bucky. 

“It’s nothing to worry about, seriously. We do this with all new residents. You know, back when our people first got to the city, everyone was way too busy trying to stay alive to bother with this kind of thing, it was all a mess. Now we take the time to get people situated properly, make sure they’re alright.”

Dr. Biro snorts as she walks by. “We showed new arrivals to an empty room to sleep in, and told them where the mess hall was and left them to it, and they were grateful! And if you drowned in a flooded out section of the city or touched the wrong bit of Ancient technology, well then, tough luck!”

“So obviously things have improved,” Pepper says to Bucky with a now slightly strained smile. 

Some of the old timers are…a lot. The more stories Pepper hears, the more grateful she is that she and Tony are here on Atlantis now that it’s a reasonably stable independent city, instead of a hard scrabble expedition lurching from disaster to disaster.

“I’ll…do my best not to drown,” says Bucky. He’s eyeing Dr. Biro warily, as if she might be about to leave him to fend for himself in an empty room that may or may not flood. “And the videos on the tablet were very clear about not touching…things.”

Dr. Biro squints at him. “You’re a runner, you’re tough. You’ll do fine,” she says, gruff but not unkind, before walking away.

“Anyway, Tony and I will show you to your quarters when you’re done, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

By now Bucky’s glower has shifted into an anxious frown, which Pepper figures is about the best she can hope for, given the circumstances. She tries not to feel too much like she’s leaving her kid on the first day of college or something, and leaves Bucky with a cheery smile and wave.

Pepper’s day is packed with meetings: a social sciences meeting that devolves into the usual intellectual slap fight between the anthropologists and the historians, then a trade teams meeting to go over the month’s scheduled trading trips and any new trade requests that have come in. She has just enough to time to have a quick lunch with Tony in his lab while he keeps an eye on the power consumption of some city system upgrade or another, and then she’s off for another meeting, this one with the city recreational committee for planning the harvest festival that’s a couple months away.

By early evening, Pepper’s more than ready for dinner and a foot rub from Tony. Still, when her personal comms channel chimes, she’s thrilled to hear Bucky’s tentative voice.

“I’m, um, done with Kanaan and Lara for the day?”

“And they got you set up on the comms system! Perfect. Tony and I will meet you at the transporter by the mess hall, do you know where it is?”

Bucky says that he does, so Pepper drags Tony out of his lab to go meet him, even though Tony protests the whole way there.

“Pep! I’m trying to miniaturize a ZPM here!”

“You can go back to the lab after we show Bucky his new quarters. Anyway, you need to show him all the ATA activated stuff, I know you always love that.”

Tony’s aggrieved scowl disappears. “I do love that,” he admits.

Amid the bustle around the transporter, Pepper almost doesn’t spot Bucky. He’s got his pack on one shoulder and he’s back in his own clothes, worn but clean and sturdy leathers that are the norm among Pegasus travelers, and not out of place on Atlantis residents from either galaxy. Bucky’s already blending in among the other Lanteans, save for the shining glint of his bare metal hand. 

“So how was orientation day, Buckaroo?” asks Tony. Bucky narrows his eyes at Tony for the nickname.

“My full name is Buchanan,” he says. “Is Bucky short for…Buckaroo among your people?” His tone is bland and polite, and Pepper suppresses a smile. Either Bucky’s a fast study, or he’s a natural at derailing Tony.

“No, it’s—there’s this thing, Buckaroo Banzai, it’s—you know what. Never mind. Buchanan, huh?”

Bucky nods as they step into the transport. Before any of them can tap on the map to take them to the Southeast Pier, the transporter has already activated.

“Oh no, don’t tell me this thing’s on the fritz,” says Pepper, but before Tony can even answer her, the transporter doors open, and they’re at the Southeast Pier, where their living quarters are located.

“Huh,” says Tony, glancing back and forth between the door and the transporter map none of them had even had a chance to touch. “Were you thinking about where you wanted to go?” Tony asks Bucky, and Bucky nods.

“Lara said I’d been assigned quarters near the Southeast Pier?”

“And that is where we are!” Tony steps out of the transporter with a dramatic flourish of his arm. “Almost to your new home sweet home!”

The Southeast Pier has a mix of apartments and studios, stretched out along one starfish-like arm of the city. It’s quieter out here than in the more dormitory-style Atrium that houses most of the city’s rotating population of military and visiting scientists and workers, or in the Tower where the bulk of the city’s activity is concentrated. 

Tony grumbles about not having quarters in the Tower sometimes; Tony and Pepper have a small suite of rooms towards the end of the pier. It’s a far cry from their Manhattan penthouse; there’s no preferential treatment for the heir of Stark Industries and his wife here, and money’s no consideration on Atlantis, so they were assigned living quarters just like every other new arrival. They get a full apartment thanks to being married, but that’s it for special treatment. Pepper doesn’t mind; what the apartment lacks in space, it more than makes up for with the sweeping view of the glittering, alien ocean that surrounds the city. It reminds her, a little, of the Malibu house.

Bucky, being on his own, has been assigned to what amounts to a studio apartment, recently vacated by a chemist who moved in with her girlfriend in an apartment one corridor over.

“We’re just at the end of the hall, we can show you our place later,” Pepper tells him, as they enter Bucky’s room. She gives him a moment to look around, a swift and assessing stare she’s used to from Jim and Happy. When he’s finished, she continues, “So, it’s got the basic furnishings, and the little kitchen is stocked with some shelf-stable staples and rations for when you don’t want to go to the mess hall…”

Pepper trails off when she notices Bucky just standing in the middle of the room, head cocked, staring into the middle distance. His pack falls off his shoulder, and he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Bucky?” prompts Pepper, a little worried. He gives a small, startled jerk and turns to her.

“Yes, sorry. I’m listening.”

“All the apartment’s appliances talking to you?” asks Tony. “It can be a lot when you’re not used to, you know, turning things on and off with your mind. Let me just give you the run down on the amenities and how not to break anything—” 

Before Tony can finish, the lights in the apartment flare on in a brief, bright flash, then shift to a warm, golden glow reminiscent of an old incandescent bulb. A holographic display pops up in front of Bucky, one that looks a lot like the HUD in the Puddle Jumpers. Bucky peers at the display and, before Tony or Pepper can say anything, he taps a cautious finger on one of the holograms. The apartment’s wide windows go dark. He taps again, and they return to being clear and unshaded.

“That’s—what? I didn’t know the apartments had those. Why didn’t I know the apartments had controls like the jumpers do!”

Tony cranes around Bucky’s tall form to glare at the display as if its existence is a personal offense to him, and Pepper joins them so she can get a look at the holographic display from the right side around. Pepper’s Ancient is good enough by now that she can read most of it: there’s a little section in the upper left with the current ambient temperature, the weather outside, and the temperature of the ocean, and on the upper right there’s a clock set to the correct time. The rest of the display is taken up with standard household controls for things like the window opacity and door security, and some other things she doesn’t recognize.

In rapid succession, the windows open, something in the kitchenette goes ding, and the sound of running water is audible from the direction of the bathroom. New information pops up on the display: something water bath, tea ready and…something about a welcome manual available for download? Bucky just blinks, evidently bemused, while she and Tony gape at the display. Pepper’s really not proud of how her first thought is oh my god, this apartment is haunted by a very helpful Ancient ghost.

“What did you just do?” asks Tony.

“Nothing! I just thought—I thought that I’d maybe like a bath soon, and something warm to drink, and some fresh air, but I didn’t mean to—” Bucky casts a wondering look around the apartment. “Thank you?” he says into the air.

Tony sputters and starts trying to fiddle with the display. It flashes red warningly: unauthorized user, access denied.

“I have sysadmin privileges for the entire city!” As if in response, the display flashes: override required for access to residential data. “Huh. That’s—okay, I get that. Didn’t realize the city had such strict privacy controls, but okay. I’m gonna have to go dig through the mainframe code, call McKay…Bucky, don’t…do anything weird,” Tony orders, then he wanders out, already hailing someone on his comms. 

Pepper sighs and rolls her eyes. She’s definitely not going to see him again before the small hours of the night. She turns her attention back to Bucky, who’s examining the holographic display with intense interest.

“So, I guess your apartment made you some tea,” she says, pointing at the notification. “I wouldn’t recommend actually drinking it? The tea leaves are probably….tens of thousands of years old, so.”

“A little bit stale,” says Bucky dryly. 

“Just a little.”

“Think the bath is safe?” he asks, and in answer, the screen advises that the bath has reached optimum temperature. “Guess so.”

“Wait, you can read that?”

The Stargates’ universal translation effect is incredibly helpful, though thinking about it too hard just makes Pepper’s head hurt. Happy had nearly driven their SGC orientation liaison crazy with all his questions about it, until the poor woman had snapped and said you don’t need to know how it works, just that it does! Everyone who’s stepped through a Stargate is mutually intelligible to each other, alright? Don’t overthink it! The babel fish effect doesn’t extend to written language though, so if Bucky can read the display, it’s his own skill, not a gift of the Stargate.

Bucky frowns at her. “Yes? We learned the language of the Ancestors in school.”

“Well, that will make a lot of things easier,” says Pepper, relieved. “You’ll be able to read that welcome manual your apartment has helpfully provided for you, for one. We didn’t get a welcome manual,” adds Pepper, frowning vaguely in the general direction of the apartment’s ceiling. 

Maybe it has something to do with the strength of the ATA gene. Pepper’s ATA gene therapy was only middling successful, and Tony tends to treat all Atlantis technology just like he treats JARVIS: he uses verbal commands. She hasn’t ever seen the city’s systems be so immediately accommodating. Whatever, it’s for the science and city systems department to figure out.

She extracts a promise from Bucky to read his manual and contact her or the team if he has any questions or problems, then she leaves Bucky to his bath and heads back to her own apartment. She walks straight into her own bathroom, and surveys what she’d thought was just an especially spacious shower cubicle. She thinks very firmly and clearly bath, please. For a long moment, nothing happens, then a pleasant ding sounds, and the clear shower cubicle walls retract, like a car window rolling down, until they stop at hip height. The tap turns on and begins to fill the newly formed bath with steaming water.

“Huh,” says Pepper. “Thank you?”

Tony comes back home just as Pepper’s about to set her book on the nightstand and go to sleep. She eyes him and tries to judge whether there’s anything she ought to be worried about: his hair’s in wild disarray, but he grins easily at her, so the city’s not about to sink into the sea or anything.

“So, what’s the verdict?” Tony snorts and kicks off his shoes.

“Get this: the city’s got hospitality subroutines,” he says, already stripping out of his work clothes and into pajamas. 

“Well, that’s nice. Why haven’t we run into them before?” Tony joins her on the bed and finally gives her a hello kiss.

“In the bad old days, when the city barely had enough power to keep the shields up, McKay went through all the city’s systems and turned off every single non-essential subroutine that was drawing power. Mostly that meant shutting off power to all the uninhabited parts of the city, turning off nonessential systems that weren’t in use, that kind of thing.”

“It’s been at least a couple years since Atlantis has even had to worry about power supply, hasn’t it? And they’ve got your arc reactors now, surely there’s more than enough power for the essentials and the extras!”

“Exactly! That’s what I said! We don’t have to choose between keeping the shield up and keeping the hallway lights on these days, I keep telling McKay we’re producing surplus power now, we can be a little bolder—anyway, the hospitality subroutines. Can’t tell when they got turned back on again, could be that the city’s own mainframe has caught up and has been turning things back on now that there’s enough power. Bucky might have been the first one to trip the displays, being a new arrival with a strong ATA expression and all. City systems probably registered the rest of us as longstanding residents who don’t need welcome manuals. Sheppard’s testing things out now just to make sure nothing’s dangerous, and I’m gonna have to write a damned memo.”

“Well, I’m glad the subroutines are back on. We have a bath, did you know?”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. I went into the bathroom, thought bath please very hard, and the shower walls retracted down to form a nice tub.”

“Hmm, well done, Ms. Potts. Could this tub fit two?”

Pepper cocks her head and pretends to consider it. “I think we would need to test that hypothesis.”

“You’re right, you’re very right, we are a scientific enterprise here, we should absolutely go test that out. What’s the experimental design?”

Pepper slides out from under the covers and guides Tony to the bathroom. “Well, first we should have the proper gear—or, lack of gear, I should say…” She starts to unbutton her pajama top. 

“Yes, good idea, great start. We’ll need the bath too, of course. Atlantis, hot tub, please.” 

Tony kicks off his pants, and by the time they’re in the bathroom, the shower cubicle is already coming down to form a tub just like it did earlier. The tap turns on without any further input, and Tony grins, takes off the rest of their clothes.

They get a little distracted from their very important science then, making some valuable personal and qualitative observations, until the tap turns back off and the tub is full of gently steaming water. Pepper leans down to test the water with her hand, casting a look that she hopes is sexy and coy back over her shoulder at Tony. 

“Come on in, water’s just fine,” she says, and steps into the tub.

Tony joins her, and it turns out that yes, the tub can fit two. “A successful experiment,” says Tony between kisses, and Pepper gasps at the slide of their wet skin when he fits himself closer to her. The lights dim to a candlelight kind of glow, transforming the bathroom into a warm, amber cocoon.

“Did you do that?” Pepper asks Tony, and he shakes his head.

“I thought you did that.”

“Ugh, whatever, come here…”

Bucky welcoming duties fall to the rest of the team for the next few days, and Pepper tries not to get too anxious about just what they all get up to. She’d rather they not get in trouble or drive Bucky to flee the planet entirely, and she can imagine both scenarios all too easily, between Jim and Tony’s…everything, and Happy’s occasionally intense enthusiasm for what he likes to call his Starfleet life. Thankfully, nothing goes too wrong after Bucky spends the better part of his second full day out of the infirmary getting a tour of Atlantis from Happy, which she knows because Happy sends the team copious updates, selfies included. Pepper’s tablet chimes all day long with said updates. Sometimes Pepper thinks the thing Happy misses most about Earth, apart from all his stuffy British costume dramas, is social media. 

I didn’t realize your twitter addiction was this bad, happy, Tony texts to the team group chat.

Team text is my twitter now, Mr. Stark, Happy responds. We’re visiting the greenhouse next!!!

Please make sure Bucky knows about the city’s emergency protocols too, I don’t want him getting sucked into space on accident if we need to fly the city, sends Jim. 

Roger that, sir.

This buys them a blessed hour of team chat silence, until Happy manages to wrangle a ride on a Puddle Jumper for a short trip to the mainland, in case Bucky ends up wanting to stay there instead of in the city. They return in time for team dinner, bearing fresh flatbread from the mainland’s communal kitchen no less, and Pepper’s gratified to see that everyone is whole and, if not happy, at least reasonably content.

“How’d you like the mainland?” Jim asks Bucky once they’ve all set their trays down.

“It’s nice,” says Bucky, with the somewhat dubious tone of a person who knows he should think it’s nice, and even does, but doesn’t particularly understand the appeal in general. Pepper recognizes a fellow city person’s inherent distrust of the bucolic countryside. “Too quiet,” he adds.

“Yeah, it’s farm life out there,” says Tony with a wave of his fork. “Not my thing either. There’s a really nice beach though.”

Bucky nods, then gives them a slight one-shouldered shrug. “I like the city better.” 

His eyes flick upwards along with a tug of his lips that might turn into a smile, as if bringing Atlantis herself into the conversation.

“Me too,” says Pepper. “Us city folk don’t do well in the countryside. It’s really best appreciated from a distance, in my opinion.”

“Harvest week comes for us all,” says Jim, and Pepper wrinkles her nose at him as he grins.

“Everyone in the city has to do at least a few shifts’ worth of work during the harvests on the mainland,” Happy explains to Bucky. “I like it, makes me feel like an actual settler, you know?”

“Oh yeah, it’s a real Oregon Trail out here. Only instead of dying of dysentery, it’s space vampires,” says Tony, and Pepper gives him a swift kick under the table that makes him yelp.

“You know what Bucky, feel free to make your own incomprehensible to us cultural references. Fair’s fair, and maybe then Tony will finally learn the intergalactic cultural sensitivity lesson—” starts Pepper, and ignores Happy’s groan and Jim’s laugh.

Bucky just ducks his head down and tucks into his food, but Pepper’s pretty sure it’s a smile that’s making the corners of his eyes crease up just enough to notice.

The next day, Ronon Dex fetches Bucky at breakfast before any of them can whisk Bucky away on any further tours, and he doesn’t return Bucky to the somewhat anxious bosom of AR-23 until dinner time. Both men come back looking red-eyed, which isn’t exactly a surprise given the tragedies they have in common, and Bucky doesn’t say a word during dinner. It feels like a setback. Pepper tries to take heart in how Bucky still stays for team dinner instead of retreating to his apartment. Of course, then he spends most of the next day in his apartment.

“Is this a setback? It feels like a setback,” she frets to Jim when he joins her for lunch.

“Or it’s just the totally natural result of being overstimulated,” says Jim. “Give Bucky a break, Pepper, the guy’s spent most of the past few years avoiding people. He probably needs time to adjust.”

“You’re being very relaxed and laid back for a man who sent around a detailed schedule for keeping an eye on our stray. Reminding me to have breakfast with him, really?”

“What?”

“What, what? You sent me a calendar reminder to have breakfast with Bucky the day after he came back with us, like I told him I would, and which I did not need a reminder for. As if I have ever missed a meeting, really, Jim.”

Jim looks up from his toba root stew and frowns. “I didn’t send you a reminder about breakfast.”

“But…”

“I sent out the schedule for the week, yeah, but nothing about breakfast. C’mon, Pep, like I’d micromanage you of all people. You’re the most organized person I’ve ever met.”

“Huh. Then where’d the reminder come from? It wasn’t Tony.”

Jim shrugs. “Maybe you set it and forgot it. Anyway, don’t worry about Bucky, I checked in with him this morning and he said he wanted to spend the day reading up on Atlantis. Lara and Kanaan set him up with some memos and manuals and stuff written in Ancient, he’s got food, he’s fine.”

Jim’s proven right. The rest of the week before Bucky’s meeting with General Sheppard passes quietly, with Bucky spending at least a few hours a day with one of the team: at the gym with Happy and Jim, in Pepper’s office, in the lab or hangar with Tony and Jim. He’s still quiet and doesn’t talk much, though in all fairness, that could just be because she and the others are an exceptionally chatty bunch.

Pepper figures she should just be forthright and ask him.

“Are you quiet because you can’t get a word in edgewise, or because you’re just quiet? Because if it’s the former, we can try to do better about that.”

For the first time, Bucky smiles at her: it’s small and mostly in the way his eyes crease up, but it’s a real, actual smile, and it feels like a victory.

“Not used to talking so much anymore, I guess. Not getting a word in edgewise though...that’s familiar. I grew up with three little sisters.”

Pepper laughs. “I’m not sure I want to know if we’re better or worse.”

“So, you definitely do not have to worry about Bucky being kicked out of Atlantis or anything,” says Tony as he flops dramatically down on their bed, nearly dislodging the laptop sitting beside her. He kicks off his shoes and makes no other move towards getting ready to turn in for the night.

Pepper gives him a half-fond, half-exasperated look. If he were still a bachelor, she has no doubt that he’d fall asleep right here, still in his wrinkled science department uniform. It’s been a long day for both of them, apparently; Pepper’s was spent in assorted conference rooms going over a few new trade contracts and the post-harvest trade wishlist with Governors Emmagan and Woolsey and the trade teams, and she still has some more reading and redlines to go over tonight if she wants to get her recommendations out tomorrow. Judging by the faint briny smell lingering around Tony, he’s spent his day dealing with the city’s water systems, or maybe out on one of the power stations on the piers.

“I haven’t been worried he’ll get kicked out,” she tells Tony, and it’s mostly the truth. Mid-week she’d shifted over to worrying that he’d just leave on his own. “How was his meeting with Jim and General Sheppard though?” She frowns down at her tablet and checks her messages; nothing. “I should go check on him, do we need to go check on him? Did it go okay?”

She assumes it mostly went okay, given the lack of chatter and/or panic in the team chat. She sets her tablet down beside her laptop and gives Tony her full attention.

Which is of course Tony’s cue to draw out the anticipation. He stretches with the lazy thoroughness of a cat, and winces as his neck lets out a series of cracks. Pepper can guess how he’d spent most of his day then: bent over the guts of some city system or another, or over a lab bench. She pokes him sharply with her foot before he can get started on a mini-yoga routine, and he grins at her.

“It went better than okay. Rhodey wants to keep him, and he may have to fight Sheppard for him, not to mention me and the entire science department.”

“Not that I don’t think he’s a perfectly lovely if terribly traumatized young man, but why’s he suddenly the most popular girl in school?”

“Because his report on How I Spent My Summer Vacation slash My Terrible Horrible Very Bad No Good Time on the Run from Space Vampires and Their Cultists included highlights like that time he blew up said cultists’ space ships, that time he stole a Wraith dart and sabotaged it and had it blow up once it was back in its hive, that time he saved Emerex from a culling, and just, like, his general campaign of terror and effective guerrilla warfare against these Hydrans.”

“Wow,” says Pepper faintly. She has to do some mental rearranging to reconcile all that with the man who spent most of yesterday quietly helping her tag Ancient artwork in the database and keeping her well-supplied with tea and water. “Jim and the general are taking his word for it?”

“Get this,” says Tony, sitting up and leaning in towards her as if about to share a juicy secret. “Turns out we’ve actually heard of Bucky already, just not by his name. He’s the guy assorted Pegasus Galaxy denizens have been calling the Winter Soldier.”

Now that is some hot gossip. Over the past year and change that Pepper’s been on assorted trade and aid missions across Pegasus, she’s heard that name pop up during a few galactic gossip sessions. A squadron of Wraith darts descended on Volvaxa but the Winter Soldier shot them down from the sky. The Golthegii fled from Gate to Gate in their ships, trying to stay ahead of the Wraith, and only the Winter Soldier saved them. Wraith worshippers came through this very market at the last turning, and we would have all been culled if not for the Winter Soldier! 

Pepper had dutifully included the stories in her reports, but having seen and heard how stories about Lanteans themselves got distorted and amplified and turned into tall tales, she hadn’t thought much of the stories of the Winter Soldier.

“Huh. I’d honestly thought he was a folk hero or myth or something. Next you’ll be telling me the Nomad and the Widows are real too.” 

“Who knows, but Sheppard’s had Ronon Dex and some of the other teams asking around about the Winter Soldier for a while, apparently.”

“I know we first met him when he shot a bunch of creepy cultists in front of us, but he just seems so sweet and quiet, you know?”

Tony snorts and gives her a quick kiss on the nose. “Pep, honey, you’ve gotta be less of a soft touch for a pair of very big, sad eyes. I’ll remind you that he looked pretty damned scary when we first saw him.”

“Hmm, I suppose so. He’s still AR-23’s official stray though, right? Because he’s actually genuinely helpful in the artifacts lab. His Ancient’s better than mine, he actually studied it in school. Not too many people in either galaxy with that on their resume.”

They’d worked out a nice little workflow where he dictated translations to her, actually. Pepper would be thrilled to have him assigned as her permanent assistant, though she suspects that’s off the table if he’s as good in the field as the Winter Soldier’s reputation suggests.

“Don’t hog him, I have dibs on the next Take Your Stray to Work Day,” says Tony, then curls up next to her to peer at her tablet. “Ugh, contracts. Didn’t we come to this galaxy to get away from contracts?”

Pepper runs her fingers through Tony’s messy hair and smiles. “Maybe you did. I still like contracts just fine. Especially when the contracts mean we get that nice ice flower wine in exchange for all the salt we have just lying around.”

“Oooh, ice flower wine. The harvest festival is gonna be a real party then.”

“I don’t think the science department needs ice flower wine to throw a real party. Or are we forgetting about that vile moonshine from the last Eureka! party?”

“Zelenka really knows how to run a still,” says Tony with hushed wonder. “So hey, Jim and I want to keep our new surprise superhero the Swashbuckler, have him be our fifth if Sheppard and the Governors clear it. Your vote, yea or nay?”

“Swashbuckler? Really? The Winter Soldier sounds way cooler.”

“This one has his name in it though! Get it? Swashbuckler? Eh? Eh?” Tony waggles his eyebrows in that ridiculous way that never fails to make her laugh. 

“Oh I get it, it’s just dumb. Maybe don’t call him that one to his face. Or any other time.”

“No one appreciates my nickname genius! So, yea or nay to Bucky on the team? I figure we’ve got dibs so there’s a good chance Sheppard will clear him to join us.”

“Yes, of course. I got him to Atlantis, didn’t I? But only if it’s what Bucky wants!”

“This is a job offer, not a pressgang, c’mon Pep.” Tony shifts her laptop and tosses her tablet on the bed, then relocates himself into her lap like the world’s most demanding cat and pulls her in for a kiss. Pepper is far from opposed to this, and turns one kiss into two, then three. It’s been a long time since their morning make-out, okay? “And anyway, he already said yes.”

Chapter Text

Pepper makes the best hires.

So okay, Bucky’s not a hire, per se. He’s a refugee runner who Pepper coaxed into coming to Atlantis with them, and now he’s kind of, sort of, AR-23’s responsibility and/or tentative team member. In nearly every conceivable way, this is nothing like Pepper’s brutally efficient overhaul of the SI PR team, or how she’d lured the best director possible to the Maria Stark Foundation, or that time she’d recruited the top names in green energy for SI’s new sustainable tech division. 

But it’s also kind of exactly like that. Because if AR-23 had traveled the Pegasus Galaxy soliciting resumes for an addition to their team, Bucky’s would have been at the top of the pile. Tony tells Rhodey so when they’re in the hangar tinkering with their pet spaceship project.

“Tones, the man is a traumatized refugee who’s lost an arm, some memories, and his entire planet.”

Tony winces. “Yeah, and his husband and wife.”

“Wait, shit, really?”

“Yeah. He told Pepper and me when he was in the infirmary.”

“Jesus Christ. The poor guy. My point stands though, Tony: he’s not your latest R&D hotshot or whatever. He’s a refugee who we can help.”

“Of course he is, and I’m honestly really glad we can help him, that we’ve already helped him. Just, tragic backstory aside, you can’t tell me he’s not a good get, honey bear.”

Rhodey gives him one of his prim, quelling glares over the crystal array they’re working on. Tony sticks his tongue out at him, and Rhodey, predictably, rolls his eyes.

“He’s fucking scary good on the shooting range,” admits Rhodey. “Says he used to man one of the defense towers in Brook Lynn, to shoot down Wraith and some huge monster bird things that were native to his planet.”

“Ha, see!”

Rhodey pokes carefully at the crystal array and glares down at it.

“Okay, what the hell, that control crystal is not gonna play nice with this connector, what the hell kind of kludge is this?”

“It’s fine, it’ll work!”

“Uh, okay, sure. You go ahead and turn it on, let me just go get the fire extinguisher now—”

“We are not gonna need the fire extinguisher! These things don’t even spark up that much when they blow—” Tony’s interrupted by a loud crackling noise.

They do, in fact, end up needing the fire extinguisher. Whoops.

Just a teeny bit though, it isn’t even a proper fire, just a couple crystals fizzling out, seriously, Rhodey had to roll with that better by now.

“So hey, where’s the team headed next, fearless leader?” asks Tony when the totally small, not a big deal fire is fully put out. Rhodey sighs, long and loud, but he does answer.

“You know we’re scheduled for that thing on Forax in a couple weeks, their not-rice harvest is coming in and—”

“Yeah, yeah, we gotta check on their wells and their equipment, I know. But come on, nothing else? Sheppard doesn’t want to get a move on looking for these Hydra assholes?”

“For someone who allegedly came here to work on zero point energy and a city that’s a spaceship, you sure are into living out your Star Trek, Starfleet away team dreams.”

Tony feels Called Out, ouch. “Aww, baby, don’t tell me you’re calling me a redshirt, I am at least a Geordi!”

“Wow, aiming real high there, huh?” teases Rhodey. “I’m out here trying to live that Ben Sisko life. And come on, Geordi spent like all his time in the engine room—”

Tony’s on a mission here, he’s not gonna let Rhodey derail him with Round 4820481 of the Star Trek debates that had first started in Rhodey’s MIT dorm room lo these many years ago.

“Seriously, are we on this Hydra business or is that getting passed off to another team?”

“What’s got you so gung ho about this, anyway?”

“We’ve been on boring trade missions for the last two months. You can’t tell me you haven’t been itching for a change.”

Rhodey presses his lips together. “We’re not here for interesting missions, Tones. We’re here for research and spaceships and laying low. And seriously, if a super advanced alien city in another galaxy isn’t interesting enough for you, then nothing is.”

Tony nods, and looks right at Rhodey, serious and steady.

“We can do more.” That’s what it comes down to, always. Yinsen’s last words: don’t waste it. Don’t waste your life. “We should do more. I mean, look at Bucky: a runner and still finding ways to fuck with the Wraith and the Hydrans, and help people, help us.” 

“Okay, well, you are not allowed to use Bucky as a guilt two-by-four, holy shit. That’s cruel and unusual.”

“Yeah, no, I know, that was pretty uncalled for. The point stands though.”

Rhodey sighs, which means he’s giving in.

“Sheppard wants to give it a few weeks, let Bucky settle in and let us get a better read on him. We’ll do some training, take him along on Forax, see how it goes. Tentatively though…Bucky told us about an old orbital base the Hydrans might be squatting in. Said he’d wanted to take it out, but didn’t want to risk it without having an exit strategy that wasn’t hard vacuum and explosive decompression. Sheppard asked me to put together some possible approaches.”

“Oooh, now that sounds fun,” says Tony, because fuck yeah, orbital base. 

Sounds like a great excuse to take the Iron Man armor along with them too. It’s only spaceworthy for six hours or less, but that’s more than enough time for a quick look see around an orbital base of dubious structural integrity.

“Before we do any of that though, I want you to give that robot arm of Bucky’s a real close look. I don’t want any nasty surprises with it in the field, like that it’s secretly some new kinda alien parasite or something.”

“No orders needed there, dear team leader, it would be my pleasure to get up close and personal with that beautiful cyborg arm.”

Because Tony’s not a total insensitive monster, at least not anymore, he knows that it’s on him to make sure he’s not recreating Bucky’s previous terrible alien abduction experiences with the Wraith and/or Hydrans. They’re all aliens to each other out here, more or less, but Lanteans and/or Terrans ought to be the friendlier sort. Tony’s got no desire to be some other planet’s equivalent of a probe-happy Roswell gray. (Though it turns out that those guys are perfectly nice even if they never wear clothes.) On a scale of the alien from Alien to Captain Picard, Tony’s definitely trying to fall on the Captain Picard end of the spectrum. Pepper likes to rib the rest of the team for treating working on Atlantis like living out their Star Trek LARPing dreams, even though she definitely knows what the Prime Directive is, and she’s absolutely aware that they break the damn thing all over the place. Just like the real Starfleet, Happy usually says mistily. But really, Tony figures a person can do a hell of lot worse than Starfleet when it comes to personal guidelines for intergalactic exploration.

He can’t tell Bucky all that though. He is aware that all the pop culture references don’t exactly translate, thanks Pepper and the entire soft sciences department of Atlantis. But he can, hopefully, adequately convey that he just wants a look at Bucky’s very intriguing robot arm, and that he doesn’t want to re-traumatize the poor guy or do any particularly mad science on him, even if he is wondering just what the deal is with his possible superpowers. So when the time comes for an arm examination session, he settles on taking Bucky to one of Atlantis’s airiest engineering labs near Tony and Rhodey’s hangar, close enough to one of the pier power stations that the sea breeze is always faintly detectable. That should steer sufficiently clear of both of their traumatic issues, right? Right.

With his plan more or less in place, Tony heads over to the Southeast Pier and knocks on Bucky’s door. Almost before he’s finished knocking, he hears the sound of a soft and pleasant bell chiming. Tony squints at the door. Do the apartments have doorbells? Or is it an automatic someone’s-at-the-door thing. Before he can poke around in the door’s control panel, the door opens to reveal Bucky, looking particularly sad and/or grumpy cat-like today. Pepper claims she’s seen Bucky smile, but Tony’s a pics or it didn’t happen kind of guy. They should really work on getting Bucky to lighten up a little, thinks Tony. For team morale if nothing else.

“Turn that frown upside down, you’re coming to the lab with me to do science today!”

This does not cause even the slightest upside-downing of Bucky’s frown. “What does doing science with you involve?” asks Bucky with distinct suspiciousness, which, rude.

Tony’s rep can’t have reached Bucky after less than two weeks on Atlantis. He’s only set a few things on fire on Atlantis! And really, the city’s fire suppression system is top notch, there aren’t even any scorch marks. Sure, okay, his tests with the Iron Man armor’s repulsers have led to more than a few dunks in the ocean surrounding Atlantis, but a little salt water bath never hurt anybody. The point is, Bucky’s got no reason to be looking at Tony with quite this level of wariness.

“In this case, doing science involves getting an up close and personal look at your robot arm. Rhodey wants to make absolutely sure nothing in there can hurt you or any of us before you head out on a mission with us.”

Bucky crosses his arms tightly, as if to protect both himself and said robot arm.

“I thought you already did look. You said it was fine.”

“That I did, and so it was. But I’d like more detailed scans to confirm that, and to go over anything you can tell me about what you know about it, what it feels like. Maybe we could get some improvements in its functioning. You could probably use a tune-up.”

Bucky’s frown eases up a fraction. “If you have the tools, I can do it myself.”

He uncrosses his arms and rolls his shoulder, making all the plates of his left arm ripple in a distressingly sexy mechanical wave. God, that arm is a beautiful piece of machinery. Tony hopes Bucky won’t be offended when he’ll inevitably say as much at some point today. Bucky flexes his elbow and there’s a slight stutter in the motion. He definitely needs a tune-up.

“Yeah, of course. You can show me your metal arm, I’ll show you my Iron Man armor…” Tony wheedles.

“Your what?”

Bucky isn’t quite as impressed by the Iron Man armor as Tony feels he should be.

The Iron Man suit is in Rhodey and Tony’s hangar, along with their in-progress spaceship project and all the other stuff they tinker with that’s too big to fit in the other labs. It’s a huge space, and under the city’s waterline, so it had only been rendered usable once the city had enough power to pump out the old flooded areas and get shielding and life support functional again down here. Bucky seems more impressed and fascinated by the hangar’s clear view out into the ocean surrounding them than he is by anything in the hangar itself.

“If the city was in spaceship mode right now, that view would be a lot more interesting,” says Tony, because the novelty of seeing the occasional fish swim by has long since worn off for him. “Also, there is a literal spaceship in progress right over there! And my highly advanced suit of armor!”

Tony gestures towards where the Iron Man armor is standing, and keys off the bio-locked forcefield surrounding it. If this were his lab at home, Tony would definitely be cueing some appropriate music at this point, to give this occasion the context it deserves. He figures the greatness of AC/DC would be lost on Bucky though, so he just thinks at the hangar’s lights until they obligingly provide an appropriately bright and dramatic spotlight on the armor.

Bucky gives him a Look, and wow, he’s learned that one from Rhodey and Pep real fast. Admittedly, said Look is somewhat scarier coming from him—something about his grumpy eyebrow situation probably—but otherwise it’s mostly the same mix of exasperation, amusement, patience, and annoyance Tony’s used to seeing from his team.  

“Red and gold?” Bucky says, with a level of judginess that Tony hasn’t ever heard from him before, and that’s including the time they’d all watched Rhodey put hot sauce on his pancakes.

“What’s wrong with red and gold?” demands Tony. “It’s a classy, classic color combo!”

“It’s not that stealthy is all. Not on most planets, anyway.”

“Friday, enable Stealth Mode.”

The armor disappears, the same way the Puddle Jumpers do when they’re in stealth mode. Back on Earth, the armor’s stealth mode had been less in the way of literal invisibility and more invisible to radar and scanners, but here on Atlantis, Tony has blended his tech and the Ancients’ to apply the jumpers’ stealth tech to the suit.

“Just like the Puddle Jumpers,” murmurs Bucky, and now he looks slightly impressed. It passes quickly though, and he looks at Tony with one slightly challenging eyebrow raised. “Not much use being invisible if you can still hear the armor clanking around though.”

“Did I mention it flies? Friday, disable Stealth Mode, and engage repulsers at 2%.”

“You got it, Boss,” she says, and the repulsers engage just enough to make the suit hover half a foot off the ground.

Bucky startles, looking around for the source of Friday’s voice. “Whose voice was that?”

“Oh, that’s Friday. An artificial intelligence I built to help me run the Iron Man armor. I use JARVIS back on Earth, but since Atlantis has her own systems in the city that probably wouldn’t play nicely with a whole new AI, I didn’t bring JARVIS along with us. He’s got, like, three huge buildings and a company to run back on Earth, if he only had the Iron Man armor and a server to rattle around in, he’d go Skynet on us out of sheer boredom.”

Bucky frowns thoughtfully. “An artificial intelligence…like the city?”

“Sort of! It’s complicated. We—that is, us Earthlings—probably aren’t working off the same model of artificial intelligence as the Ancients were. We tend to model ours on us, or I know I do. My AIs can reason, they can communicate. They have a sort of personality that emerges after they’ve learned enough. The city’s more like a big, interconnected mass of very complex programs and networks.”

Bucky hums dubiously, like he doesn’t entirely believe Tony.

“And the city can’t learn?”

Tony opens his mouth to say no, not really, it’s not that kind of network or AI, but—huh. The shape and shadow of an idea starts to form in the back of Tony’s mind, fed by half-remembered data points and his constant mental graph of city systems’ power usage.

“Actually, that’s a very good question. Friday, put a pin in that, I’m gonna want to come back to it later. Thanks, Bucky. That’s a hypothesis worth looking into. See, we’re doing science already! Science really just comes down to asking the right questions, most of the time.”

That earns Tony what he swears is a tiny smile from Bucky. Or maybe he’s just thinking about smiling. A pre-smile. It’s a 50% reduction of the grumpy eyebrow situation, anyway, so Tony considers it a success. Tony’s gonna do it, dammit, he’s gonna make this guy smile, or laugh, and achieve some team morale building. And bragging rights. But the team morale is definitely more important, probably.

“Okay, I showed you mine, now you show me yours. Engineering lab’s a floor up from here.”

They head to the nearest transporter, which takes them upstairs without any additional input from Tony. Tony frowns at the untouched transporter map. It’s not a bug, exactly, to be taken where you need to go without using the map, but if it happens city-wide, with everyone, it could turn into a problem, like when an elevator takes its car calls out of sequence. But maybe it’s just a strong ATA expression thing.

“Are the transporters always like this with you?” he asks Bucky, who’s just murmured an unnecessary, if polite, thanks to the transporter.

“Like what?”

“Most of us have to use the transport map to tell the transporters where to go.”

“Oh. I never do that. They just always take me where I need to go.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Whatever, good job with your ATA gene, I guess,” says Tony, but he’s already mentally filing away this particular pattern as something to look into later. “Anyway, here’s the lab,” he says once the door slides open, just a little faster than usual.

This is the lab Tony likes to use when he’s feeling especially homesick for Earth, and for Malibu. The briny breeze off the ocean reminds him of home, even if the lab itself is practically the opposite of Tony’s basement lab in Malibu. It doesn’t have any of his bots, for one thing, plus it has ludicrously high ceilings and enormous windows that turn the room golden when the sun starts to inch back down towards the horizon. If the city were in spaceflight mode, this lab would be a prime spot for space observation, and judging by the wide array of scanners lying dormant, that’s exactly what it was used for once. Tony just uses this lab to tinker with things that might or might not end up in his and Rhodey’s prototype spaceship. He doesn’t think it looks like a workshop of horrors, but he keeps a close eye on Bucky just in case he thinks it does.

Bucky’s looking around with cautious curiosity, so Tony figures he’s fine, and heads over to a cleared workbench to prep it for robot arm fun times.

“What do you use the Iron Man armor for anyway? You didn’t have it on Alara…”

“Alara was strictly a trade and diplomacy mission, didn’t need it there.”

Not that Tony wouldn’t prefer to always have the suit on hand, but he’s aware that sometimes the risks outweigh the benefits. And he’s had enough of his weapons falling into the wrong hands, thanks. 

“So when do you need it?”

“Search and rescue, any potentially dangerous exploration, combat missions, any time we need a lot of firepower plus high maneuverability…” Destroying my own weapons of mass destruction…well, on Earth anyway. That’s not relevant here on Atlantis though, thankfully. “Alright, c’mon, pull up a seat and stick that beautiful piece of engineering on the table here, and let’s get a look inside you.” Tony pauses. “That sounds weird. Inside your arm, I mean. Your robot arm.”

Bucky joins him at the workbench and takes a seat on one of the lab stools. He stretches his left arm out, and does an odd twisting and jerking motion with his wrist and shoulder. The metal plates retract smoothly, half of them up towards his shoulder, the other half down towards his wrist, revealing the servos and circuits inside his arm.

The innards of the prosthetic are familiar from the scans Helen and Tony had already taken, so Tony just goes through component by component, confirming that they all do what they’re supposed to do as best as he can tell. The only thing he spots that’s out of place is a poorly lubed elbow joint, so he fixes that up, and tightens up some other connections while he’s at it.

It’s only when Bucky says softly, “There’s another servo up behind the elbow,” that Tony realizes he’s been babbling and narrating the whole thing to Bucky the entire time. He cranes his neck and peers under Bucky’s elbow.

“So there is! Ha, bet you can’t fix this one easily on your own.”

“No,” admits Bucky.

“And that’s why you need a mechanic like me.”

Some more lube and a few tweaks to a couple circuits back there, and Bucky’s elbow joint is as good as new.

“I thought you were an engineer.”

“Sure. But when it comes down to it, when it’s just me and the tech, I’m really just a mechanic,” says Tony with a shrug. “Alright, let’s get a look at your hand. I’m guessing there are some real delicate receptors in there? How’s your sense of touch compare to your right hand?”

They spend a long, painstakingly careful couple hours going over the dense, nerve-like circuits concentrated in Bucky’s prosthetic hand. The complexity is staggering, exponentially ahead of any prosthetic technology they have on Earth, and Tony tells Bucky as much. 

“This could help so many people, I mean, look at it, it’s way better than a hook hand.” Bucky seems ambivalent, his eyebrows returning back to sad and/or grumpy cat territory. “Is it...not better than a hook hand?”

Bucky’s silent for a long, long moment, his jaw tight and his eyes distant.

“When they put it on me—” He stops, almost like the words are choking him. Everything about him has suddenly closed off, caught in a black box of a memory that he doesn’t seem inclined to open. Eventually, he says, “You shouldn’t do that to anyone else.”

There’s an entire nightmarish hell tucked inside those quiet words. Tony’s brain works too damn fast. It takes in the complexity of these artificial nerves, the melding of organic and mechanic up near Bucky’s shoulder, the scars Tony had seen during Bucky’s surgery, Bucky’s resistance to anesthetics, and presents Tony with a full-color, 360-degree horror show of just how installing this prosthetic must have gone. 

Significantly fucking worse than when Yinsen had operated on him in an Afghan cave, Tony’s guessing. Yinsen, after all, had managed to keep Tony under almost the entire time.

Yinsen. The grief shocks Tony, as it does every time. Yinsen would have known how to handle this. This part needs a doctor, not a mechanic. This part needs Yinsen’s serene and relentless honesty, his gentleness. But it’s just Tony here, and he’s going to have to do his best.

“Whatever they did to you, that wouldn’t ever happen here,” Tony tells Bucky, with all the sincerity and certainty he can bring to bear. “I’m not hurting you, am I? This shouldn’t hurt.”

Bucky shakes his head, so Tony keeps going. He finishes checking over the prosthetic’s hand, and then has Bucky take off his shirt so Tony can check over where the prosthetic meets his shoulder. There’s a red star on the metal of the shoulder, which Tony doubts Bucky put there, given the awkward positioning for anyone trying to paint it on themselves; either the Hydrans put it there, or it had been there when they scavenged the tech. Other than that, there’s nothing out of place that Tony can see. No booby traps, no extra trackers, no components about to break down or explode.

So that’s his mechanic duties over with. And maybe he’s not a doctor, but he is a genius, so surely he can make an attempt to help with the squishy organic parts. Or at least take some notes that he can give to someone else so they can help with the squishy organic parts.

Because the scarring around where the prosthetic meets Bucky’s skin is vicious. Tony had been no fan of his own old arc reactor scars, deep and ugly as they’d been, but Yinsen and the SGC doctors after him had done the best work they could, under the circumstances. The scars had been clean and surgical, apart from the ones from the shrapnel, and by now the worst of them have healed up thanks to some plastic surgery and skin grafts. 

Bucky’s scars though…they still look painful, as if they’re new, though Tony knows they aren’t. He peers closely, trying to see if there’s any way to ease the brutal transition from skin to metal—with a graft, maybe, or a silicone cover over some of the metal—then he sees four parallel lines radiating out from the shoulder socket. Weird, were those from surgery…? Tony tilts his head to look at them from another angle.

No. They were from a hand. From fingers. Bucky himself, probably, clawing at what had almost certainly first felt like a foreign thing hanging off his body, a painful violation.

Tony had done it too, with the arc reactor. Yinsen used to have to hold his hands some nights, clasp them in his to keep Tony from scratching and clawing away at the terrible, unfamiliar weight of the arc reactor in and on his chest.

Shhh, shhh, Tony, no, jaanam, don’t touch that. It is helping you.

It hurts, I can’t—I can’t breathe. Get it off, get it out—

I know, I know, but it’s keeping you alive. It’s only the weight making you feel like you can’t breathe. Here, breathe with me, in and out, slow…

“Tony. Tony?”

Tony shakes himself free of this unwelcome detour down memory lane, and looks up at Bucky. Shit. Bucky’s gone white and wide-eyed, and there’s a faint tremor running through him. Tony snatches his hand back from where he’d been probing along the seam of metal and skin for who knows how long while he’d been going down a bad feelings spiral. He feels sweat trickle down behind his suddenly cold neck. 

So, seems like they’re both doing great with their respective traumas.

“Yeah, sorry. Sorry, just—lost in my thoughts. Is this, am I hurting you? Does this hurt? Shit, I should have—”

“No. I—no. I’m just, I don’t—”

Bucky’s breathing has gone fast and unsteady, and apparently the one thing that will stop one of Tony’s own freakouts is someone else’s, because his own heart rate steadies. He gives Bucky his shirt and jacket back, and steps back to let him put them back on and give him some space.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, I get it. Uh, bad memories or whatever, right? Me too.”

Bucky almost certainly doesn’t need to know the details. He doesn’t need to know about the Trust, and how they’d staged a terrorist attack to kidnap him during the Jericho demo, with Obie’s blessing. He doesn’t need to know about the things the Trust had wanted Tony to do and to build, and he doesn’t need to know about Yinsen and the shrapnel and the arc reactor, and how he’d helped Tony build the Iron Man armor out of scraps of Stark tech and alien tech in a dark cave in Afghanistan. 

But Tony doesn’t know what the hell Bucky does need to know to make any of this better. Yinsen would have known.

“Are you done?” asks Bucky, his voice worryingly thin.

“Yeah,” says Tony and takes a slow step towards Bucky. Bucky flinches, and almost faster than Tony can see, he’s on the other side of the workbench. Tony takes a step back. “Yeah, but—”

Too late. Bucky’s out of the engineering lab and into the transporter before Tony can catch up with him. He steps into the transporter after Bucky, hoping to follow him and—Tony doesn’t even know what, make sure he’s okay? Apologize some more? Make him talk about it? Fuck, Tony hopes Bucky isn’t about to leave Atlantis entirely.

“Take me to where Bucky just went,” Tony tries, but the transporter stays quiet, the map glowing patiently. “Oh, now you want me to use the map. I bet Bucky didn’t have to. Fine, I’ve got other ways.”

He pulls out his tablet and checks the city’s security feeds, cycling through the most likely places Bucky could be, and comes up empty on each one. Of course Bucky knows how to disappear. He’s a damned runner. Tony taps his stylus against the edge of his tablet and considers his next course of action. Bucky’s probably fine. Tony always is, after his...whatevers. Panic attacks, freakouts, flashbacks, whatever the psychobabble word of the day was. And maybe Bucky wants to be alone.

Tony settles on sending Bucky a message: sorry again. can you please check in with one of the team when you’re feeling up to it? At least, he hopes that’s what his message says. Tony’s Ancient is really more focused on the technical terminology side than the conversational. Whatever, Bucky will probably get the gist. 

He gets a response back a few minutes later when he’s back in his lab, and it loosens all the coiled tight tension in his neck that Tony hadn’t even realized was there. 

Whoever taught you the language of the Ancestors did a very poor job, is Bucky’s response, in what even Tony can recognize is impeccably formal Ancient, more the stuff of the prim official pronouncements still visible all over Atlantis’s systems than the scattered research notes of long-dead Ancients that Tony’s used to looking at. 

Tony figures that means it’s okay to comm him. “So you’re okay, right? I haven’t permanently traumatized you?”

“I’m okay. Sorry,” says Bucky, quiet but clear. Tony heaves a sigh of relief.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” says Tony, and wonders what the hell Yinsen would say right about now. Something that was somehow simultaneously kind and funny and sharp, probably. Tony hasn’t got the knack. All he’s got is the strong urge to say walk it off, kiddo, you’ll be fine, which, thanks, Dad.

“Am I cleared?”

“Huh?”

“For going on a mission.”

“Oh! Uh, probably? We’ll finish up the paperwork, see what the General says. It’ll probably take a few days at least. Rhodey will let you know.”

Bucky signs off with a thank you, and Tony sags in relief. That could’ve gone better, but it could’ve gone worse too. He comms Rhodey next.

“Hey, come to the hangar, I’ve got good news.”

“Is this I found the stash of good coffee level good news, or Eureka, I’ve invented something even better than zero point energy level good news? Because if it’s closer to the good coffee end of the spectrum, I’m busy.”

“It’s definitely between those two, yeah, come to the hangar,” he tells Rhodey, and then cuts the comm.

When Rhodey shows up, Tony’s got a 3D hologram of Bucky’s arm up and rotating slowly over one of the workbenches.

“Ta da!” he says, complete with jazz hands. “Our new cyborg friend is all clear for going out on missions.”

“Yeah?” Rhodey examines the hologram, exploding the diagram into its component parts with one sweep of his hand. “Did you find anything?”

“Nope. Gave him a tune-up and sent him on his way. We had a great team bonding session, I showed him the Iron Man armor, he was impressed...ish, and he only ran away a little bit at the very end, but it’s fine, he’s fine, I checked in with him and he was sassing me about my shitty Ancient language skills, so I figure—” 

Rhodey, thankfully, does not focus on the Bucky running away part, but then, the part he does zero in on isn’t exactly better.

“Wait, did you tell Bucky that the Iron Man suit is like, a secret?”

Shit. “Uh. No?”

Rhodey groans and puts his head in his hands. “We’re so bad at this, Tones. We’re so, so bad at this.”

Tony can’t immediately deny this. They are bad at keeping the suit secret. Tony’s already had to resort to “accidentally” blowing it up once, and he figures he’s only got one more freebie accidental explosion before uncomfortable questions are asked. But hey, the first time had worked out okay! Eventually. He did get a trip to another galaxy out of it, in a roundabout way.

“Okay, yeah, no, but it’s fine! Because we’re on Atlantis, and the whole point of being here is—”

“That no one on Earth finds out you still have the goddamn Iron Man armor!”

“Exactly! No one on Earth!” Tony gestures out the hangar window to the underwater view, where an enormous, hot pink flappy fish thing is floating serenely past. “We are not on Earth!”

Rhodey just stares at Tony. “There’s another platoon of Marines rotating in next month. Marines from Earth. Are we not even trying anymore? Is that it? You’re gonna get kidnapped again. You’re gonna get kidnapped, and creepy Earth first supremacists or genocidal maniacs or secret government agencies are gonna make you build them Iron Man suits and weapons—”

“I’m not gonna get kidnapped again! Anyway, General O’Neill definitely already knows about the suit anyway, and he hasn’t kidnapped me!”

Rhodey crosses his arms, unmoved.

“Yeah, instead of kidnapping you, he basically arranged for you to get sent to another galaxy. O’Neill sends everyone inconvenient to Atlantis. I’m pretty sure he figures that either we go native and stay a whole galaxy away, or we get eaten by space vampires, and either way we’re not his problem anymore.”

“Yes, and we just need to continue not being his problem. His whole thing is wanting plausible deniability about the Iron Man armor’s continued existence. We’ve still got that, it’s always listed as ‘EVA suit’ or ‘protective gear’ in all our reports.”

“That’s not gonna work forever.”

“It doesn’t have to work forever. Just long enough for the whole Trust situation to die down.”

Rhodey groans and scrubs at his hair with his hands, pacing.

“This whole situation is ridiculous. Have I mentioned that? Because it is, it’s ridiculous,” says Rhodey. 

Tony can’t deny that. His world had stopped making sense from the second his convoy got blown up in Afghanistan, and sometimes he even misses that simplicity, the immediacy of his goals in that cave: stay alive, escape, fuck up some bad guys. The Iron Man armor had been Tony—and Yinsen’s— last, desperate hope then. After, it had been Tony’s way to try to fix what his own wayward weapons had broken. Aliens and alien tech getting involved…that had complicated things. 

“Well, yeah,” Tony says. “But it hasn’t gotten any more ridiculous. And hey, Sheppard’s got our back! He’s not gonna snitch on us.”

“Sheppard thinks the suit is, and I quote, ‘cute’ and ‘kinda useful,’ and then just asks me how the new spaceship is coming along.”

“God, that man does not have a proper appreciation for—”

“That man lives on a whole ass city that’s also a spaceship that he can control with his mind.”

Tony considers that for a moment, and wonders whether he could make the Iron Man armor ATA activated. Hmm. Something to consider.

“Yeah, that’s fair. Soooo, are we heading out on a mission soon?”

Rhodey sighs. “You have to tell Bucky what the deal is with the Iron Man armor first. And I still need to get some training time in with him, give him the rundown on our protocols and all that before Sheppard will clear him for off-world missions. So, two, three weeks from now, we’ll have a go for a mission.”

Surprise surprise, Tony can’t sleep that night. Pepper’s snoring adorably away and waves are lapping gently against the Southeast Pier, only just audible here in their apartment, and despite this audio recipe for restful sleepy times, Tony’s wide awake.

He just can’t stop thinking about Yinsen. He can’t stop thinking about the cave. 

A phantom weight presses down on his chest, the memory of the arc reactor. It’s gone now, of course, and so is the shrapnel. One of the benefits of the SGC swooping in after Tony had escaped the terrorists he hadn’t known were allied with the Trust. He’s luckier than Bucky that way: he’s not carrying the weight of what’s been done to him. Well, Tony’s luckier than Bucky in basically all the ways, actually. 

Yinsen should have been here. Yinsen would have known what to do to help Bucky today. Yinsen knew what it was like to have lost everything, and he’d have had the right words of wisdom or comfort for someone like Bucky. But only Tony had made it out of that cave, and he’d stumbled out of it into a new world, a new universe, bigger and stranger and crueler and kinder than he’d ever imagined. All Tony could do, all he can do, is try to keep up, try to make Yinsen’s sacrifice and his own life matter.

Yinsen had probably figured that would involve, like, not making weapons anymore and doing more philanthropy and saving the world via green energy, etc. And okay, Tony had done all that at first. It just so happened that after Obie’s whole villainous monologue and murder attempts, Tony basically got disappeared into Cheyenne Mountain and read into the wildest Top Secret program imaginable. Learning about aliens and intergalactic travel, great. Learning that, actually, it hadn’t just been your average garden variety terrorists who’d captured him and Yinsen in Afghanistan, it had been terrorists bankrolled by the Trust, not so great. 

Everything had been simple, in the cave: build the arc reactor, build the armor, fight his way out with Yinsen. And even after that, Tony’d had a clarity of purpose that was better than any high he’d ever had: stop building weapons, get rid of the ones that were already out there, build something instead of destroying. Even Howard had been on board with that, eventually.

Not much is that simple anymore. Not now that he’s caught in a bordering on comical web of lies in an attempt to keep the Iron Man armor from becoming just another weapon he’s let loose to wreak havoc in the world, in the universe. 

You could destroy it for good, you know, Pepper had said, after the first time he’d done just that. 

Too many alarm bells had gone off for him when the SGC had first read him in, and he hadn’t been particularly willing to cooperate with anyone, even the self-proclaimed good guys. Plus, the whole super long debriefing in a mountain thing had been uncomfortably close to the whole prisoner in a cave thing, and fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice...so Tony had lied. He’d tripped the Mark 3 suit’s dead man switch, swallowed his pride, and told everyone at the SGC that the Iron Man armor had been alien tech the Trust had asked him to work on, and that oh no, too bad, so sad, Tony had “accidentally” blown it up. Alien tech, so unstable, especially when you were just a genius human trying to use it for the first time.

The SGC had believed him, mostly, and let him go to think about our offer, Mr. Stark, we think you could contribute a lot to the defense of Earth, and Tony had gone straight home to start building the Mark 4 Iron Man suit.

I’m just—I’m not done yet, Pep. 

He’d ended up taking out as much of the Trust as he could, until he, Pepper and Rhodey had gotten the offer/strong suggestion that they should go to Atlantis, and still. He wasn’t quite done with Iron Man yet. He could still do more. And wasn’t that what Yinsen had wanted him to do?

Not with another weapon, Tony, comes the whisper of Yinsen’s memory. It’s more than that, Tony would tell him. Then why do you have to keep it a secret? 

Tony isn’t looking forward to explaining all this to Bucky. Maybe he’ll make a powerpoint presentation.

He doesn’t end up needing a powerpoint presentation. He manages to tell Bucky the whole sorry tale on the way back to his lab the next day. Bucky had come by their apartment to ask Tony if he could show him how to work the scanners and holographic displays so that he’d be able to do his own arm maintenance, and Tony had seized on the opportunity to multitask.

“So, technically, the Iron Man armor is a secret. Just wanted to, uh, tell you that, before you’re officially on the team with us.”

Bucky looks at the Iron Man armor, then looks around at the handful of scientists and techs milling around the lab, then looks at Tony. He raises an eloquent eyebrow.

“Not on Atlantis, so much,” Tony clarifies. “But, uh, on our home planet.”

“Why?”

“Because it can be a dangerous weapon. And I’ve learned my lesson about letting other people use my dangerous weapons. It doesn’t go well,” he says, and okay, wow, his own bitterness surprises him there. Guess he’s not entirely over the whole surprise! Your dad’s bestie sold your weapons on the sly to terrorists both international and interplanetary! thing. “Anyway, Atlantis has learned that lesson too. Hell, the city first decided to break off and become independent when Earth tried to keep it in the Milky Way Galaxy—our home galaxy—as a weapon. The city’s a spaceship too, you know. One with some pretty big guns.”

Bucky nods. “I know. I got a whole safety lecture about that.” He cocks his head and looks at Tony with unsettlingly intense consideration. “Why build a weapon if you know you won’t want people to use it?”

“What is this, a therapy session? I’m just giving you the heads up, okay? We operate on a strict don’t ask, don’t tell policy when it comes to the Iron Man armor on Atlantis. No one asks me to use it, technically, and I don’t tell anyone about it. Get it?”

“Whatever,” says Bucky with a shrug.

Tony squints at Bucky, who blinks back at him. He can’t tell if Bucky’s taking this sufficiently seriously or not. His eyebrows are doing their usual grumpy cat-lite thing. It’s probably fine. Bucky doesn’t even talk all that much anyway, right? Right. This is fine.

“Okay, come here, let me show you the scanner…”

“Hey, so, heads up,” says Rhodey on his daily visit to Tony’s lab. “Bucky’s cleared to go on missions with us. We’re headed to Forax next week, for the usual equipment maintenance thing.” 

Necessary, but not the most thrilling thing on their mission roster. Tony will have to make his own fun.

“Fine,” he tells Rhodey. “But first! We have to throw Bucky a party! A welcome to the team party!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Really don’t think he’s a parties kind of guy, Tones.”

“Just a little party!” says Tony, holding his thumb and index finger a minuscule length apart.

“You have never thrown a ‘little party’ in your entire life. No.”

“Okay, how about this: I’ll check in with Sad Terminator, clear it with him, and then we’ll have a party, for team morale—” 

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“So I’ll put you down as a yes?”

Rhodey rolls his eyes, but he smiles too, which Tony figures is as good as an RSVP.

Unfortunately, Bucky ends up being a no for the party. Being almost-neighbors means that Tony can catch him on his way out of his apartment. No matter what Pepper says, that doesn’t count as an ambush, and really, can a party invitation ever really be an ambush? Tony thinks not. 

And yet, Bucky’s response to a perfectly pleasant party proposal is, “No thank you,” and alright, he’s polite, Tony will give him that. 

“Okay, but the party is for you. A welcome party, if you will. Because you are now on the team. Hooray?”

“Hooray,” confirms Bucky, deadpan. At least, Tony thinks he’s being deadpan? It’s honestly hard to tell.

Still no smile from Bucky though. Tony’s gonna manage it some time. 

“So that’s a go on the party?” he tries, and gets a probably amused eye crinkle out of Bucky.

“Thank you, but I’d rather not.” Bucky heads for the transporter, whose doors are already opening for him. “See you next week.”

“Fine, but fyi, you’re ruining team morale!” Tony calls out to him.

Their mission on Forax is, predictably, entirely uneventful. Tony knows some teams relish this kind of easy mission, especially the Lantean old timers, which, fair enough. They’ve had more than their fair share of excitement already. Once you’ve done a few rounds with space vampires, Tony figures you’re owed some undemanding milk runs. Tony just thinks they’re boring, and no matter what Happy says, that’s not jinxing it. 

But whatever, Tony’s just here to play mechanic for this mission and fulfill Atlantis’s end of their bargain with Forax: farming equipment maintenance and repairs in exchange for a cut of the crop. The rest of the team gets to schmooze and look pretty, basically, which makes it an ideal low-stress test run for a first mission with Bucky.

Boring or not, it’s not a bad half-day’s work, at least; a few hours of Tony’s time, and they get ten pallets’ worth of Foraxian not-rice. It’s a whole different scale than the kind of work Tony did back on Earth, smaller and yet more satisfying, more honest. Instead of any more zeroes being added to his and SI’s net worths, he sees concrete results: crops harvested, mouths fed, another few seasons’ worth of stability for the people of Forax and their swampy homeworld. There’s a satisfaction in that, and a soothing security. Farm equipment and infrastructure repairs mean no shrapnel, no collateral damage.

“Good trade,” notes Bucky on their way back to the gate. 

Tony’s pretty sure it’s the first thing he’s said all mission. Apart from that, he seems to have done just fine on his first mission, and he’s relaxed and watchful now in his guard position at Tony’s flank.

“Yes, it is a good trade, isn’t it?” says Pepper, and she swaps places with Tony so that she can go over just how good a trade it is as Bucky listens intently.

“So what’s the next mission, sweet cheeks?” Tony asks Rhodey. “Tell me it’ll be more fun than this.”

“Uh huh, fun. That’s definitely the reason we travel the galaxy. Next up is Dirarchys,” says Rhodey, turning to shoot Tony a wide grin that’s got Tony feeling distinctly suspicious. “Picked it for you especially, Tones!”

Tony sucks in an exaggerated gasp of excitement. “Do they have technological marvels?”

“Maybe! Mostly though they’re giving us wool for our salt.”

Tony makes a fart noise. “Boring. Do I need to come along for that? I don’t think I need to come along for that.”

“It’s gonna be a team-building milk run, so yes, you do need to come along. Also, there might be some cool Ancient tech that Sheppard and Emmagan want some intel on.”

Seven times out of ten, this particular carrot on a stick doesn’t work out. Of the remaining three times, one time ends in disaster and the other two times are of mild to moderate interest. And yet, the promise of cool Ancient or alien tech has every single Lantean scientist trotting along after that carrot, every time, Tony included.

Dirarchys does not have technological marvels.

Dirarchys is incredibly boring. Pepper makes a great trade, like she always does, but the alleged Ancient tech Atlantis had heard rumor of is just some ruins, overgrown and abandoned on the outskirts of Dirarchys’s biggest town. 

Tony’s briefly interested in the weird acoustics of the place; either the landscape or the ruins form a sort of bowl that makes sound bounce around weirdly. A bowl, a bowl…maybe it’s an old satellite dish! But no: after just a few minutes of looking around, Bucky proves his usefulness and identifies the ruins as the remains of an Ancient outdoor theater. 

“How can you tell?” demands Tony.

Bucky brushes some moss away from a set of stairs, and points out the Ancient writing that runs all along each stair, just as it does in Atlantis’s Gate Room. The stairs aren’t lit up anymore, but the writing is still legible enough once the moss is cleared away.

“‘Here we sing and laugh and cry,’” reads Bucky, and concludes, “Theater.”

Well, alright, the acoustics make sense now, at least. Pepper makes interested noises, but Tony would have preferred a satellite, even a broken one.

“How gratifying to have the mystery solved,” says their guide, Lixana. “We had thought the Ancestors came here to purge themselves of unseemly emotions, but—theater. Well. I suppose they cannot have been good at everything.”

“What do you mean?” asks Pepper.

That’s when the presence of the team’s ATA genes presumably activates a holographic performance. Unless the Ancients were into some real in media res storytelling, the play or whatever it is starts in the middle, like they’ve pressed play on a long-paused movie. The light of the holograms is dim, washed out by the bright sunshine and maybe by the lack of power, but wow. Those acoustics. Every word of the audio is more than clear. Unfortunately. 

Lixana watches on, grim and long-suffering, as AR-23 collectively gapes at the, wow, public access television, soap opera level performance happening in front of them. 

Rhodey squints. “This is…bad, right? Like, even accounting for alien cultures and it being recorded millennia ago?”

“As you can see,” says Lixana, gesturing around the empty hills surrounding them, and the plant-choked and abandoned state of the amphitheater. “This is not Dirarchys’s most sought after attraction. So yes. It is, shall we say, universally bad.”

Pepper—Tony’s sweet, polite, and optimistic Pepper—opens her mouth to offer what Tony knows will be the best compliment she can muster under the circumstances, either to assure Lixana that no, really, Dirarchys is a jewel of the Pegasus galaxy, or to pointlessly praise the exceptionally terrible performances of actors who have been dead for literal millennia. Except that’s when the fake crying starts, and also the kind of face journeys that look like the actors have been told to change their expression between wildly varying emotions once every second, which has a sort of uncanny valley, horror movie effect. 

“So, are people murdered here very often?” asks Happy, conversationally. “Or do they maybe die like seven days later, killed by the angry ghosts of these guys?”

“This isn’t anything like The Ring, come on,” says Rhodey, but then one of the hologram actors starts flailing, like one of those wiggly air puppet things in front of car washes, which is maybe supposed to indicate emotional distress? Instead it just has a vague air of J-horror, thanks to the faint and flickering quality of the holograms.

They all watch in horrified fascination for another minute.  

“Maybe—” starts Tony, then stops when a loud wail of “But I love you, Maxis!” bounces unsettlingly around the amphitheater. “Maybe it’s an experiment in computer-generated theater. A failed experiment.”

“Maybe this is the Ancient equivalent of off, off-Broadway.” A hologram actor drops to his knees and shouts whhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. “Off, off, off, off-Broadway,” amends Pepper.

The holograms start singing. Bucky practically jumps out of his own skin and claps his hands over his ears, his eyes wide with horror, but by now, Tony’s looped around past horror into a sort of fascination. It’s just so bad. 

“Everyone with an ATA gene, start thinking OFF really, really hard,” says Happy urgently.

“I’m trying,” says Pepper, and plugs her own ears.

Lixana has evidently come prepared, because she fishes a couple ear plug looking things out of her pocket and sticks them in her ears. 

“Once activated, the…performance…does not stop. And I assure you. The sound travels. We have tried to locate the source, or the machinery, to disable it, but we have not succeeded.”

The singing goes beyond just out of tune and into atonal. Maybe if you added a beat…? Though hey, this thing has apparently been running for millennia, so the badness is the least interesting thing about it. The actual interesting thing: where’s the power source? Solar? No; Tony looks around at the overgrown remains of the amphitheater, the moss and the vines and plants crawling over everything. Any solar panels would have been covered up long, long ago. He’s already scanned for the telltale energy signature of a ZPM, so not that…he does another, deeper scan. The terrible “music” fades into the background for him.

Not for anyone else, apparently. Rhodey and Happy are poking around looking for any power source, hands over their ears, while Pepper tries spitballing how to turn it off with Bucky. When the “singing” shows no sign of stopping, Bucky lets out a curse that the Gate translation matrix declines to translate, and stalks towards the holograms, murder in every step. Before Rhodey or any of the rest of them can stop him, he unslings his rifle, and shoots at a distant niche of the ruins. The holograms blink out. One more shot, lower now, and there’s blessed silence but for the crack of the rifle.

For a second, Rhodey looks like he’s going to tell Bucky off for it. Tony preempts him by applauding, and Pepper, Happy, and Lixana join in until Rhodey claps too.

“Bravo!” Tony tells Bucky, who’s done a swift 180 from looking murderous to looking vaguely shy. “How’d you know where to shoot?”

“Most likely point of origin for the light projection of the holograms,” says Bucky, and Tony’s about to ask him how he pinpointed the source of the sound too when his ground scans hit pay dirt, so to speak.

Geothermal energy, of course. With the underground infrastructure that’s already there, it wouldn’t be too hard to repurpose it for something more useful to Dirarchys than a venue for the Ancients’ art school dropouts…he flips his tablet over to show Pepper and Rhodey.

Lixana takes her ear plugs out with a sigh of deep relief. “Thank you,” she says. “The people of Dirarchys owe you a great debt.”

Pepper smiles, and Tony gets that flutter: that watching Pepper work a room thrill, the familiar anticipation of knowing she’s about to crush it in a boardroom or at the negotiating table. 

“We’re happy to help. How about we schedule another meeting with Maester Parvet so that we can discuss other ways we can help? That old performance had a power source that’s still available and that your people can put to better use…”

Tony can’t help it: he throws Pepper a kiss, and for just a second, he gets Pepper’s secret smile in response, the one that he knows is just for him, sly and conspiratorial and sparkling. Then she gets back to work and so does he. 

Some things don’t change, no matter what galaxy they’re in.

Sheppard and Emmagan make approving noises about their two milk run missions, and once Bucky passes a few rounds of training for space missions and Puddle Jumper piloting with flying colors, they clear AR-23 for a recon mission to the possible orbital HYDRA base Bucky had identified.

“Sure hope this doesn’t turn into a sci fi horror movie of a mission,” says Happy as they all suit up in the locker room.

Pepper had pretty much said the same thing that morning. Creepy abandoned space stations? No thank you. Then she’d smiled and kissed him and said, Don’t die!

“How did you plan on getting up here on your own anyway?” Rhodey asks Bucky as he flies the jumper through the space gate.

Bucky shrugs. “Stow away on a HYDRA ship when it was planet-side on a supply run.”

“Huh. Okay, not the worst plan,” says Tony. “Scans aren’t showing any life signs on the station.”

Rhodey, being the cautious sort, does a slow circuit of the entire station, checking for any nasty surprises or structural failures. They don’t find any, but there’s one more layer of security precautions to take once they dock: they send a couple drones in to test for any pathogens and to see if life support’s up. Only once those come back clear too do they all board the space station, Tony in his Iron Man armor, the rest of the team in regular Atlantis-issued EVA suits.

Tony takes point, and it only takes walking a few steps into the space station to realize that basic life support is the only real thing this space station has going for it. The place has the feel of an abandoned warehouse, less homey than even the midnight train station vibe of the Midway Station that links Pegasus to the Milky Way.

“Is this the Hydrans’ usual design aesthetic, or has this place been gutted?” asks Tony.

“It’s been gutted.” Bucky gestures towards some scrapes and scratches on the floor and along the walls. “Someone else got here first.”

“You sure the Hydrans didn’t just move out?” Rhodey asks.

Happy’s got his gun up like the Predator’s about to run out of one of the dim hallways. “You sure they weren’t eaten by a space monster even more terrifying than the Wraith?”

Bucky shakes his head. “If Hydrans have to abandon a base, they blow it on their way out, so that no one else can scavenge from it.”

“Ugh, we’re gonna find a bunch of dead bodies and an ominous message, aren’t we,” says Tony.

They don’t. They do, however, find one dead body and a bunch of Wraith-oriented booby traps in the space station’s control room. The dead body might also be an ominous message, come to think of it. There’s something emphatic about the knife left in the guy’s chest, and about the fact that there’s only one dead body in this entire, otherwise empty space station.

Interfacing with the space station systems is a pain from inside the Iron Man armor, so he puts the suit in standby scan and guard mode, and steps out of it to approach the bank of monitors and inputs clustered at one end of the control room. He’d be shit out of luck in figuring out any of the controls or displays, given that they’re in an alien alphabet, but thankfully, this is one of those scenarios that Atlantis has run into hundreds of times before, and he can stand on the shoulders of giants and/or Rodney McKay. He hooks his tablet up to the most likely looking port in the nearest control panel, and lets the alien tech interface program run. Even if the program can’t make a successful interface with the space station, he’ll at least be able to pull all the available data and take it back to Atlantis.

The rest of the team pokes around the body and the control room looking for any other clues about what happened here, and Tony’s about to join them when the program pings. So Atlantis has run into this kind of tech before, that’s helpful. The interface is only a third of the way finished populating with legible-to-Tony results, but he’s already seen what systems he’s interested in and dives in.

“I’m in,” he says out loud, because that never gets old, and ignores Rhodey’s exasperated groan.

“You’ve been saying that every single time you’ve done even a little bit of hacking since MIT, are you not over it by now?”

“Nope!” Once Tony’s gotten a good look at the space stations’s logs and diagnostics, he lets out a low whistle. “So someone definitely got here before us, and they weren’t messing around.”

Happy returns from his close examination of the body. “Not all that long before us, either. That body’s only a week or so old, I’d guess.”

“Are we in any immediate danger?” asks Rhodey, and Tony shakes his head, points at his tablet’s display.

“If we were gonna get caught in these booby traps, it would have already happened. No, this is all targeted towards Wraith ships only. See here?” He pulls up a realtime display of the ship’s power system. “The space station’s rigged to act like an enormous car bomb, basically, only the trigger is the presence of a Wraith ship. It’s pretty clever, actually, it’s keyed to the Wraith ships’ specific power signature, so random looky-loos like us won’t get blown up, plus there aren’t any explosives necessary, just overloading the station’s own power source.”

Tony hands the tablet over the Rhodey and lets him take a closer look. His eyebrows go up in admiration. “You’re right, this is pretty clever.” Rhodey looks over at Bucky and gives the tablet back to Tony. “This your kind of work, Bucky? Or do you know anyone else who’s looking to take out these Hydrans?”

Bucky shakes his head. “I’m no hacker. I’d have gone with timed explosives, or using the weapons of whatever ship I stowed away on.”

“Very improvisational,” notes Tony, and Bucky shrugs. 

“As for anyone else, plenty of worlds want nothing to do with Hydrans, but they just chase ‘em out, or send out word that they need help getting rid of them. They wouldn’t go after Hydrans themselves. Most folks aren’t willing to take the risk.” 

“Most worlds can’t afford to either, in tech or in people,” concludes Rhodey, and Bucky nods.

“Let’s see if this station has any security or video feeds, maybe we’ve got our very own space horror movie to watch.”

Tony does some digging through the space station’s systems until he finds the security feeds. They’re not the most helpful things ever: the cameras are apparently only located in the cargo bay, the docking area, the control room, and a few other places that are probably critical to the space station’s functioning, but that are far from providing full coverage of the station’s rooms and halls, and there’s no audio to boot. Tony scrubs back to the earliest the feeds will go, and sees nothing of real interest: just people milling around, working and living. 

“These the Hydrans?” murmurs Rhodey, and Bucky nods, pointing to a barely visible red symbol on the shoulders of the station crew’s shirts and jackets.

“Yes, that’s their symbol.”

Tony scrubs forward through all the boring stuff, the people walking around, doing whatever evil Wraith worshippers do when not actively Wraith worshipping, until there’s some action on the docking area’s feed. He slows the playback speed back down to normal as the docking bay’s airlock opens to admit something, another spaceship. The camera’s angle and the layout of the docking bay make it impossible to see much of the ship itself, but Tony can tell it’s smallish, maybe a little bigger than a Puddle Jumper. 

There’s a perfect view of the ship’s hold as it opens though, so they can all clearly see the Hydrans dragging struggling and injured people out of the docked ship and onto the space station. 

“Okay, they don’t look happy to be there,” says Happy.

They really don’t. One of them manages to break free from her Hydran captor, but before she can run back onto the ship, a Hydran knocks her down viciously and drags her back into the space station. These people weren’t brought to the space station willingly, that’s clear enough. As they watch more captives being dragged from the ship, Tony can somehow feel Bucky going absolutely still behind him, and the sensation reminds Tony uncomfortably of wildlife documentaries where some innocent gazelle is about to be taken down by a lion. Even knowing he’s not the gazelle in this scenario doesn’t stop the hair from rising on the back of his neck.  

 He scrubs forward on the feed past more boring stuff, until a Wraith hive ship docks at the space station. The same captives from earlier, now struggling even more against Hydrans who are brutally restraining them, are thrown towards the open maw of the Wraith ship.

“What the fuck,” whispers Happy.

“Jesus, what is this, a takeout restaurant for Wraith?” Rhodey demands, horrified.

“More like a drive-thru, really,” says Tony grimly, and they watch in disgust as the Hydrans bow and genuflect like creepy cultists. “There’ve been fewer cullings now that we’ve taken so many hive ships out. I’m starting to think that this is how the Wraith are getting some of their food instead.”

Bucky’s voice is terrifyingly flat when he says, “Yes. No risk to the Wraith this way.”

After the captives are transferred—shit, no, fed, be fucking honest about it, Stark—to the Wraith, there’s little activity of interest on the feed for a while. Tony will download the data to go over more closely later, but for now he scrubs forward again until another small shipload of terrified people come into the docking bay. This time they aren’t dragged away by the Hydrans though. No, three of the captives burst into violence, taking out the Hydrans with brutal and swift efficiency. All three are wearing hoods or scarves over their heads and faces, so there’s no way to ID them. Two of them have slim, curvaceous builds that suggest they’re women. The other one has a broad-shouldered, powerful build, so it’s probably a man.

One of the women disappears out of range of the camera, heading for what Tony assumes is the small ship’s cockpit, while the other two clearly comfort and reassure the captives. It seems like they indicate to the captives that they should stay on the ship, because the woman returns from the cockpit and locks up the ship, and then the three fighters make their way into the space station.

Tony jumps from feed to feed to follow their progress. The three fighters are like a roving, vicious ballet of violence. They take out every Hydran they see, the women with what looks like just their bare hands and knives or maybe short staves, the man with a large frisbee-looking thing that he tosses around with force, and that returns to him like a boomerang just in time for him to take cover behind it when Hydrans start shooting. Maybe it’s a shield? The guy’s doing pretty well with such a primitive weapon, all things considered.

“What is that?” wonders Rhodey as he leans in to squint at it.

“A shield, I think,” says Bucky, and Tony hums in agreement.

They keep watching the feed as the three fight their way to the control room, where, after what looks like a brief argument or conversation, they kill the guy whose body AR-23 had just found. One of the women accesses the control console next, and sets up what Tony figures is the self-destruct hack, the other two standing guard as she works. 

“No guns, it looks like, but they know how to handle advanced tech? That’s interesting,” comments Rhodey.

The woman finishes her hack fast, and then the three fighters do what amounts to the same sweep Tony and the team just did, only they gut the ship of everything that looks useful along the way, and transfer their haul to the small ship. The bodies they deal with somewhere off camera. Since there aren’t any remains except for control room guy, they must have spaced the rest of the Hydrans, or used whatever waste disposal the space station had. Eventually the fighters return to the docked ship, take off, and then they’re gone. 

“So, you think those three were here to be heroes, or were they just here for a smash and grab?” asks Rhodey.

“Smash and grab means stealing,” Happy tells Bucky, presumably in response to Bucky’s puzzled look. 

“They wouldn’t have bothered to set the trap for the Wraith if so,” says Bucky, which is a good point.

Tony lets the back and forth on just what the three rescuers’ true purpose here really was subside into background noise. He’s busy scrubbing rapidly through the rest of the camera feeds’ footage up to AR-23 arriving, just in case they’ve missed anything, but there’s nothing else. He rewinds back to some of the clearest views of the three fighters, and tries some computer, enhance bullshit, but alas, that never works the way TV thinks it should. The resolution isn’t high enough for anything but a grainier image. All Tony gets for his trouble is a glimpse of one woman’s brown hair before she pulls her hood back up.

He checks the translated timestamps next and guesses the whole raid took about two hours. Efficient. Maybe these three have done this before. If there’s anything else to be gleaned from these security feeds, they’ll have to do it back on Atlantis. Tony starts the download of all of the station’s video feeds and logs. He lifts the code for the Wraith booby trap too while he’s at it, and tinkers with it along the way to refine the trap’s trigger further. It’s a rather brutal hack, but it’s elegant in its own way.

Tony tunes back into the conversation happening behind him. Apparently, Happy’s convinced this whole thing was entirely opportunistic for these three.

“What, that didn’t look like a rescue to you?” asks Tony.

“It was a rescue, sure, but even thieves aren’t gonna leave innocent people to be takeout chow for Wraith,” rebuts Rhodey.

Tony replays some of the fight. On the screen, one of the women—the taller one—levels a beautiful haymaker to drop a Hydran, and they all make a collective sound of appreciation. 

“She’s a brawler.” Happy’s smiling with approval, looking like he might as well be the woman’s pleased boxing coach, as Bucky leans in close over Tony’s shoulder.

“Can you replay that, please?”

“Slo-mo replay coming right up.” Tony cues it up. It really is a hell of a punch. Why it’s enough to make Bucky practically vibrate with tension behind him, Tony doesn’t know. He squirms around to peer at Bucky, who’s staring at the screen with a deep furrow on his forehead. “What’s up, buttercup?"

“There’s something familiar…” he says, as if to himself, then shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you can take a closer look back on Atlantis, see if something clicks,” says Rhodey, moving to clap Bucky on the shoulder before clearly thinking better of it. “Maybe this was a rescue mission, maybe it wasn’t. No way to tell just based on this. Let’s get the intel back to Atlantis, see if anyone’s got a lead on those captives or their maybe-rescuers. They could be good allies or sources of intel.”

During their post-mission debriefing, Sheppard agrees with Rhodey: he takes one look at the video and says, “I want to know who these guys—and gals—are. Are they targeting Hydrans and Wraith worshippers specifically, or was this just a fluke?”

“Nothing in the surveillance footage to answer that, sir,” says Rhodey.

“I handed the data we pulled from the station over to the linguists to take a look at, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing super interesting there. The Hydrans were basically operating this place like a drive-thru for Wraith,” adds Tony.

“Bucky, you have any insights?” asks Sheppard.

“Nothing specific,” says Bucky, that same frown on his face as when he’d first looked at the footage. “Seems like they were really familiar with how the Hydrans operate.”

Sheppard leans back and squints up at the holographic still of the three maybe-rescuers, maybe-thieves that’s hovering over the conference room table.

“Hmm. I really want to nip this Hydran Wraith worshipper business in the bud. The Wraith are on the retreat, I don’t need these assholes acting as their food supply line and fucking that up. If these three know how to hit the Hydrans where it hurts, I want to talk to them.” He points his tablet stylus lazily in the general direction of the three hooded figures on the hologram. “Write it up, circulate a memo. See what you can find on them. If you get any good leads, I’ll authorize missions to follow up on ‘em.”

Tony perks up. That sounds like the kind of mission that the Iron Man armor could come in handy for.

So Rhodey writes up a memo and the video gets sent around to all the active Gate teams to see if anyone has any leads. Mostly this just leads to a reply-all clusterfuck where everyone decides to fill up Tony and Rhodey’s inboxes with their reaction gifs and baseless speculation, until a few laconic words from Sheppard get everyone to shut up and take it seriously, and then they get actually helpful leads, like what mission reports to check for intel on recent Wraith cullings and hiveship movements.

Tony’s sifting through the data looking for anything that isn’t noise when his inbox pings and Gupta from AR-7 suggests, Ask AR-18, they’ve run into a ton of refugees lately.

AR-18 is, supposedly, one of the SAR and combat support teams, but every time Tony hears about them, it’s because they’ve gotten involved in some weird shit offworld. Tony’s not sure how a simple search and rescue aid mission after a rockslide on Galama turned into overthrowing a domesticated livestock crime ring, but AR-18 had managed it. That’s just the kind of luck AR-18 has. Unfortunately, talking to AR-18 has to wait a couple days until they’re back from their latest mission, so Tony backburners the whole thing in favor of checking on the power consumption and city-wide impacts of all the new “hospitality” subroutines Atlantis is running. 

When AR-18 do get back, Tony spots them in the mess hall and figures now’s as good a time as any to ask them about the thieves and/or possible rescuers. Plus, who knows when any of them will check their damn inboxes next. So Tony interrupts Rhodey’s contemplation of what flavor of pudding he wants for dessert and drags him along for his friendly ambush on AR-18.

“AR-18! Just who I wanted to see!”

“Can’t this wait,” groans Wilson. “If this is about the wings, they’re fine, we’re fine, they didn’t get a scratch on them—” he starts, before his eyes land on Rhodey and he straightens up into an approximation of being at attention. “Uh, sir.”

“Maybe it should wait,” says Tony, eyeing the clump of—is that slime?—clinging to one of Wilson’s ears. Tony gestures towards his own ear. “You’ve got a little…biohazard there.” Wilson wipes frantically at his ear with a napkin.

“At ease, Master Sergeant,” says Rhodey. “Just hoped you guys could take a quick look at this video, Gupta suggested you might have a lead for us.”

Wilson and his team peer diligently enough at the video Tony plays on his tablet, though they don’t let the video interrupt their chow time. Riley’s determinedly shoveling mashed toba root into his mouth, while Barton and Bishop doctor theirs with assorted condiments that probably shouldn’t go on toba root. The second that one of the mysterious maybe-rescuers on the video whips out that weird round shield thing, AR-18 all stop eating.

Barton exclaims something that’s muffled by the food still in his mouth and Bishop elbows him.

Riley, whose mouth isn’t full, says, “Holy shit, it’s the Nomad and the Widows!”

“That really sounds way more like a band name than a trio of Wraith killers,” mutters Bishop.

“Really? The Nomad and the Widows? I thought they were an urban legend. Wait, no, a…space legend? Or a mixed rural, urban, multi-planet legend…” Tony trails off and frowns. 

There’s got to be an actual term for it. Whatever, he’s not soft sciences, he doesn’t know.

“How can you tell this is them?” asks Rhodey.

“That shield.” Wilson rewinds the video and points to said round shield. “We haven’t seen it in action, but we’ve run into a few groups of refugees who say the Nomad and the Widows saved them from Wraith, and they all mention the shield. Wasn’t sure I believed ‘em, to be honest, since they said they were busted out of a hive ship, and I’m not sure three people can manage a prison break of an entire hive ship.”

“But all the people who’ve run into them or been saved by them mention that shield. Seems like a pretty consistent detail, and they describe it down to how it’s painted. So I say they’re real,” says Riley, cutting a look over at Wilson that suggests this has been a long-running team debate. “People talk a lot of bullshit about the Widows though,” he adds.

Bishop rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it’s a whole lot of romantic nonsense about women as beautiful as goddesses and almost as deadly, that kinda shit.”

“Aww, you’re as beautiful as a goddess too, Katie,” says Barton.

“I will stab you with this fork, Hawkeye,” retorts Bishop.

Rhodey ignores the brief scuffle that ensues and asks, “Huh. But you think the stories could be legit?”

“There’s always some truth in legends, isn’t there?” says Wilson with a shrug. “We’ll keep an eye out, ask around some more. We’ll let you know if we get any solid leads.”

“Have you seen Bucky around lately? Rhodey and me wanted his input on our quest to find the elusive Nomad and the Widows.”

Pepper squints at his reflection in the bathroom mirror as she finishes putting her hair into a sleek chignon. Tony doesn’t know how her hair always looks perfect, but it does, and seemingly with very little effort. It’s downright magical. He eyeballs his own disheveled hair, ponders making an attempt at fixing it, and decides nah. All of Tony’s grooming effort went into his beard this morning, it’s gonna have to do.

“I thought he’s spent the last couple days in the lab with you. He hasn’t come to the mess for lunch or dinner, and neither did you, so I thought…” Pepper trails off, frowning.

Tony shakes his head.

“I ate in the lab, but he hasn’t been with me. And I checked with Rhodey and Happy already.”

He tries hailing Bucky on comms, but he only gets the polite do not disturb chime. If there were a city-wide emergency, or if Bucky were classified as essential personnel, he could override that, but that’s overkill if the guy’s just off brooding somewhere. Which, honestly, is probably what he’s doing. He’s got a lot to brood about.

“He’s not answering his comms. I’ll send him a message, I guess?”

Pepper’s eyes go wide. “Oh no. We’ve lost him. Did he leave? Or is he literally lost somewhere? It’s probably bad if we lost our new teammate already, isn’t it? Oh no, it’s bad, this is bad, we’re a terrible Gate team.”

So, Tony’s guessing more proactive measures than a message are required. Tony tugs Pepper away from the bathroom vanity for a calming hug.

“We are not a terrible Gate team, and we didn’t lose him,” soothes Tony. “We’re just…temporarily unable to locate him. Don’t worry about it Pep, I’ll track him down. He’s probably just holed up in his room or something, getting some alone time in.”

She hums dubiously. “Do you need help looking for him? I can—well, I’ve got that harvest festival meeting with the Athosians on the mainland, but maybe if I—”

“No, no, I’m good, I’ve got the run of city systems, remember? Finding him will be a piece of cake. You head to the mainland. By the time you get back, Bucky will be totally un-lost, promise.”

Two hours later, Tony is beginning to think pieces of cake are not easy at all, even when, theoretically, you have access to all of the cakes, or the bakery. Or the people eating the cake? Honestly, he’s lost track of this metaphor. The point is, he can’t find Bucky.

Because he has common sense in addition to being a genius, he’d started his search by checking Bucky’s quarters. After his knocking went unanswered, the security and privacy protocols wouldn’t let him in. He’d nearly turned to hacking past the locks when the little display by the door finally informed him that Bucky was not in residence at the moment. Maybe it was just his mediocre Ancient, but the tone of the message had felt distinctly snippy.

Tony checks some other likely locations next: the gym, the greenhouse, the piers, the rec room, the library, the armory, the hangars…but no joy there either. Well, now he’s starting to wonder if this is a legit security issue. He’s not exactly ready to call a search party yet though. This could still be a cross-cultural misunderstanding about the acceptability of going radio silent without giving anyone a heads up, or hell, maybe Bucky had even managed to get lost in the city somehow.

So he heads to his lab and accesses some of the city’s camera feeds from his terminal to track Bucky down, but all he finds is footage from yesterday, when Bucky had, apparently, received a thorough tour of the greenhouse judging by how long he was in there before coming back out into the camera’s line of sight. There’s less coverage in the zones of the city dedicated to ostensibly private living quarters, a gesture towards both privacy and work-life balance now that Atlantis is more of a city than a military outpost, which means that from there, all Tony can glean from the cameras is that Bucky had headed back to his quarters last night, then left them again this morning for destinations untracked by Lantean security feeds.

This, Tony reflects, ought to take some of the urgency out of finding Bucky. If he was fine yesterday, as the footage showed, then he’s probably fine today, and the only issue here is that Bucky needs to let someone on his damn team know when he wants to go radio silent for brooding time. But hell, Tony really does need to talk to Bucky, and now he’s curious. Where the hell is their stray, and what’s he doing there? And is he being deliberately—nay, suspiciously—stealthy about it?

Atlantis, it seems, is uninterested in telling Tony.

There are multiple ways to ping the location of any Lantean; this is both for safety and security, on and off-world. Everyone’s comms units provide location data, just like a cell phone would on Earth, and Gate teams have subcutaneous trackers on top of that. (For obvious even to Tony sensitivity reasons though, Bucky doesn’t have one of those, at least not yet.) On top of that, city systems has passive tracking, a city-wide version of the life signs detectors they take out into the field, which isn’t detailed enough to ID Lanteans by name, but does at least provide a general map of how many people are where, useful for spotting anyone wandering around where they shouldn’t be, or when there’s a dangerous city malfunction or a threat running loose.

But all these tracking options have come up empty for finding Bucky. The city systems terminal informs him politely that no location data for Bucky is available at this time, and the passive tracking only shows Tony that just about every Lantean is where you’d expect them to be: in the hubs of the living quarters, in or around the Tower, in labs and in barracks. If this is a security breach, if Bucky’s a danger to Atlantis, then it’s pretty damned concerning that he’s so thoroughly off the radar. Tony gets more aggressive with city systems, starts digging deeper.

He gets twenty minutes into trying to get city systems to marry together the code for tracking by comms with the passive citywide tracking, while simultaneously trying to turn a jumper drone into a non-exploding tracker keyed to a specific comms unit, while also contemplating whether he should just go old school and use the city’s intercom to goddamn page Bucky, when a notification window interrupts him.

No security breaches detected, it chides. Then his attempts at putting together a more useful—and okay, yes, more invasive, but he only needs it for this one thing and then he’ll dump the code—tracking system disappear, to be replaced with a map of Atlantis and a helpful blue dot labeled Bucky. 

That’s weird, thinks Tony. He’s never gotten that kind of notification before, and he’s sure as hell never had his work with Atlantis’s code interrupted like that. If someone’s reactivated some heretofore unknown Lantean equivalent of Microsoft’s Clippy monstrosity, McKay is gonna have a damned aneurysm.

But hey, at least he’s found Bucky.

The dot labelled Bucky is located on the opposite end of the city, in one of the quadrants that hasn’t yet been opened up for use by Lanteans. It’s not an area that’s been flagged as actively unsafe or structurally unsound, and there’s not even anything potentially sensitive out there. The oldest maps of the city identify it as just another quadrant of long-abandoned living quarters. But it is way the hell out there on the nearly diametrically opposite radial arm of the city, as if Bucky had wanted to be as far away from other people as possible.

“How the hell do you even get there?” Tony wonders out loud, but before he can query his terminal for a map of transporter locations, the nearest transporter to Bucky’s location is also outlined in blue. Huh. Okay. “Thanks, I guess.”

These hospitality subroutines are getting kind of creepy, even if they are useful.

When he gets to Bucky’s supposed location, he learns that Bucky’s not helpfully located at ground level on the pier, perhaps brooding handsomely there while looking out upon the calm ocean surrounding Atlantis. No, he’s way the hell up in a tower, one without a transporter or elevator, like he’s some kind of cyborg Rapunzel. Which, what the fuck, why does Tony have to hoof it upstairs like a plebe? This is a highly advanced alien city, and yet, here Tony is, huffing his way upstairs and feeling every single percentage point decrease of his post-shrapnel compromised lung function.

Tony takes a breather outside the door sealing off the tower’s top floor from the stairwell, because it’s not a good look to flop inside gasping like a landed fish, and what if Bucky is up to something up here? What he could possibly be doing out here, Tony doesn’t know, but he’s not ruling out the possibility of nefarious misdeeds. Once he’s slowed his breathing down, and mopped up some of the sweat he’s worked up—clearly he needs to be doing more time on the treadmill, this is tragic—he knocks on the door and thinks open sesame.  

He sees Bucky first, sitting on the floor with his head resting on his drawn-up knees drawn up and there’s a split second where he sees a complicated, stricken expression on Bucky’s face. But when he steps through the doorway, he practically forgets about Bucky and loses his breath all over again. Because the inside of this tower is like stepping inside a kaleidoscope, or maybe like being suspended in stained glass. Multi-hued, jewel-toned light fills the high-ceilinged room, but it’s not from any holograms or lights: it’s from light streaming through intricate honeycombs of colored glass set into the walls. Actually, the whole of the hexagonal room’s walls are made up of the colored glass, each honeycomb tile in a different color. The effect is somehow simultaneously trippy and harmonious, and so intricately constructed that where the streams of different color light cross or overlap, even the new colors that form are lovely.

“Holy shit,” whispers Tony.

“Tony?” asks Bucky, and Tony’s attention finally snaps to him as Bucky rises from where he’d been sitting on the floor.

He’s pretty clearly not up to anything nefarious, so that’s a relief. Pepper would have been so upset if he turned out to be a secret saboteur. Less of a relief is the expression on his face: his big sad eyes are rimmed with red, his mouth downturned. Even the joyful play of jeweled light across his face does nothing to leaven the pain on it. So okay, maybe he wasn’t so much brooding up here as he was grieving.

“You okay, buddy? We haven’t seen much of you the past few days, then none of us could find you, and we were starting to get worried. Lantean cultural tip: you maybe wanna give people a heads up before you go radio silent, otherwise they think something’s really wrong.”

“Oh. Sorry. I just—wanted some time alone,” says Bucky. 

He wraps his arms around himself and sniffs. Something in Tony’s general heart region goes twang, or maybe that’s a shrapnel removal side effect, he can’t tell. Is this a hugging situation? It feels like it’s maybe a hugging situation. It’s just that Bucky’s giving off strong no touching vibes. So, words. Tony’s gonna have to try supportive and/or distracting words.

“That’s okay. Hell of a place to have some alone time, huh? This is pretty amazing.”

Tony does a full circuit of the room and examines the honeycombed glass walls. The cool glass glows softly when he brushes a hand across it. When he looks up, he gets full-on goosebumps of awe. The tower’s high, cathedral like ceiling stretches up into shadow, and the interplay of multicolored light and soft shadowed dark in such an enormous space is both wondrous and vertiginous.

“Yeah,” says Bucky softly. “It’s really beautiful up here.”

“What’s it for?” wonders Tony.

A hologram with a couple paragraphs of Ancient text pops up between him and Bucky. The Ancient equivalent of the artist’s statement, maybe.

“Art, and meditation. Did your people not know about this room?”

Tony shakes his head. “This area’s listed as residential, we probably cleared it as safe years ago then didn’t come back. It’s pretty far away from the labs and control tower. Better to conserve resources to keep things clustered together, you know?”

They contemplate the room in silence for a few minutes, and Tony gets why it would be used for meditation. Hell, maybe Ancients ascended in this room. Even Tony’s always churning mind goes a little calm when he contemplates the way light moves in here. Not calm enough though. Tony doesn’t do so great with silence.

“So…were you meditating up here or what?” he blurts out, and Bucky hunches up into himself some more, so great job there, Stark.

Still, he answers. “Remembering,” says Bucky softly, and Tony doesn’t know what to do about that. The poor guy’s only remembering—re-remembering?—what he’s already lost. Loss upon loss, an exponential function: both the fact of his grief and the knowledge that it had been taken from him. Pepper would know what to say, probably, and Yinsen sure as hell would have. Tony’s got nothing. 

“Right. Um, I’ll leave you to it? Unless you want company. Which you don’t, obviously, otherwise you wouldn’t be way the hell out here, sorry, I’m not—or maybe you want to talk about it?”

It’s the literal least Tony can do, and he guesses it’s enough because Bucky’s shoulders relax and so does his face. He smiles, small and close-mouthed, and still sad, but hey! A smile!

“It’s okay. I was going to leave soon. I just—on Brook Lynn, I did long shifts on the watchtowers. I was missing it, is all.”

“Being up high, or being alone?” Tony asks, and Bucky shrugs, mouth downturned.

“Wasn’t always alone on watch.”

If Bucky’s in a sharing mood, Tony’s going to take advantage of it. “What was it like? Brook Lynn, I mean.”

“I lived in the City. It wasn’t…hidden, exactly, but it was far from the Stargate, right up at the foot of the mountains, where the river came down. We didn’t much encourage visitors, not to the City anyway.”

“That’s where all your tech was,” guesses Tony, and Bucky nods.

“Yeah. We didn’t have anything like Atlantis, not that worked anyway. But weapons, power, some things the Ancestors left behind…we had those. Enough to attract dangerous attention. So any offworld visitors stayed in the forests. There were a few small villages there, and in the valley.”

“Sounds nice. Sounds smart, really.”

“It kept us safe,” says Bucky with a grim twist of his mouth. “Until it didn’t. Watchtowers were enough to keep the reaper birds away, but the Wraith…my rifle didn’t do much good against their darts. I managed take a few out, it just wasn’t enough. I was just trying to buy time for people to get out, or hide, but…” Bucky’s face twists with guilt and pain.

“You did everything you could, Bucky,” Tony tells him, because it’s true, even if it is inadequate. “I’m—I’m sorry for your loss.”

Bucky nods, his hair falling to cover his face. “Thanks,” he murmurs, then looks back up, attempting a small, pained smile that’s somehow more emotionally compromising than the big eyes of sadness. “Sorry to worry you and Pepper.”

“We were only a little worried,” says Tony, and follows Bucky out of the room. When they get to the staircase’s landing, Tony glares at the corkscrew stairs stretching down below them. Ugh. At least going down will be easier than coming up. “Though hey, remind me to check your comm unit, I think it might be on the fritz. They’re supposed to give your location in case of emergency, but it took me forever to get a ping on it today.”

“Sure,” says Bucky, seemingly unbothered, and they descend for a while in comfortable silence.

“Hey, so how’d you find this place?”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s not exactly on the tour, I don’t think anyone else has even been here. So how’d you know to come here?”

Bucky looks back up at him as he goes down the stairs, and his eyes are guileless and a little confused, like he’s not even sure why Tony’s asking.

“I asked Atlantis,” he says, like it’s obvious.

Back in his lab, Tony tries to pull up the code he’d worked on earlier in the day. The tracking and drone code could be repurposed into something useful, he’s sure, and there’s got to be a tracking option for when someone doesn’t have their comms on them or turned on. But all his code is gone without a trace. As far as his terminal’s concerned, none of this morning’s search for Bucky had even happened.

“What the hell?” he mutters. “Where’s my work?” He runs some queries and searches his files, but there’s nothing. “C’mon, c’mon, where is it, I needed that code…”

The Lantean Clippy notification box pops up again. Redundant, it says. And in violation of established privacy protocols. Override from command required.

That makes Tony sit back in his chair in surprise. “Huh. That’s new. You’re not usually so chatty,” he says, but there’s no answer.

Over the next couple weeks, Tony gets other answers from Lantean Clippy. He should stop calling it Lantean Clippy, really, because it’s actually useful. In fact, it’s almost like working with JARVIS; Tony’s never gotten the hang of not talking out loud while he works, and even on Atlantis where he doesn’t have JARVIS to listen and snark back at him, he still rambles. But where his lab-mates ignore him, his terminal seems to be listening. 

If he wonders, idly, what the most power-efficient and useful section of the city to open up next would be, he gets an answer. He gets an answer and then some: a neatly coded map of the city. If he’s working on his and Rhodey’s spaceship specs and wondering if Atlantis’s propulsion system is worth scaling down for use in a smaller ship, he gets an answer then too: a side-by-side comparison of power requirements and thruster outputs.

Is this just an advanced, Ancient version of the likes of Siri, or a JARVIS with less personality? Is this like the hospitality subroutines, a non-essential feature toggled back on again now that there’s enough power and computing resources to support it? Or is it like what Bucky had suggested weeks ago, Atlantis learning the way Tony’s AIs can learn? Tony’s not sure yet, but he does know that he’s not the only one getting the help either, though admittedly, he’s the only one getting such pointed, specific help. He’s also the one getting the credit.

Did you upgrade something in the database backend, or do something to up the labs’ computing power? I and others are getting much improved results in our calculations and searches, emails Zelenka. Tony tells him he hasn’t done anything, but that it’s probably thanks to easing off some of the power-saving throttles in city systems. That seems like the most likely explanation, anyway.

Then the Anthro/Linguistics department sends out a Science Department-wide email blast: THANK YOU to whoever finally fixed the indexing for non-Ancient and Terran language queries!!! Finally, results in minutes instead of hours! The archivists and DBAs say it wasn’t them, and McKay sends out a tetchy response about how now that we won’t all DIE if Engineering and Command don’t get all of the limited computing and power resources of the city, yes, you’re going to see improvements. Thank Stark’s arc reactors. Of course, the moment power’s in short supply, all you soft sciences are still first on the chopping block, sorry not sorry.

Maybe Tony should accept the thanks and not look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s a reasonable hypothesis, after all. It’s just that Tony thinks he has a better one.

“Pep, I think Atlantis is sentient,” Tony whispers. 

He rolls over and stares at the lump of blankets that is Pepper. Here he is, in bed at a reasonable hour with his lovely wife all warm and sleepy beside him, and all Tony can think of is his latest hypothesis and how he could even test it. He wants to go back to his lab so bad, but Pepper’s got a rule: Tony has to go to bed at a reasonable hour at least two nights out of every seven to prevent what Pepper calls his sleep deprivation bad decisions. This isn’t a sleep deprivation bad decision though. At least, he doesn’t think it is. He pokes Pepper.

“Pep, you awake? I said, I think Atlantis is sentient.”

“Hmm?” The lump wriggles a little, which means Pepper’s listening.

“Or maybe becoming sentient? I can’t tell. But just—something’s different, right? In the city’s responses to us? Because I feel like something’s different.“

“The baths are nice,” says Pepper sleepily. “And the coffee making itself, I like that too.”

Tony frowns. “I thought you were doing that.”

“Nope. Hospitality subroutines. ‘S nice.”

“If the city’s sentient, you’d think it’d be doing more than making us coffee and giving us research assists and sending Bucky to nice places.”

Pepper makes a simultaneously soothing and dubious noise. “Is this like that time you thought JARVIS was about to go Skynet on us but he was actually just running a code update you’d forgotten about?”

“No!” says Tony automatically, then he thinks about it. He had done an overhaul on city systems to make the best use of the no longer scarce power supply, and that could mean all kinds of computing resources are newly available for things that weren’t considered high priority enough before… “Maybe.”

There’s a vague, I told you so hum from Pepper, then she’s out like a light.

Tony would have dropped it, he really would have, because he has enough on his plate and the whole more available power for more helpful systems coming online thing seems like a totally reasonable, uncontroversial hypothesis. It’s certainly the one McKay and the rest of the science department are operating under. Tony would have adopted that hypothesis and dropped his sentient Atlantis theory too, if not for the accident in the Jumper Bay.

He’s tinkering with the cockpit of his and Rhodey’s spaceship project when an alert comes up on the HUD: Iron Man needed in the Jumper Bay immediately. Weird. If there’s an emergency, the protocol is to hail by comms, and this alert isn’t flagged as coming from the Control Tower or even the jumper bay itself…

On the way to suiting up, Tony comms Rhodey. “Hey, is something going on in the Jumper Bay?”

“What? Nothing but some scheduled jumper repairs as far as I know, why?”

“Can you check? I just got an alert that Iron Man’s needed there ASAP. I’m headed over there right now.” 

Tony’s suited up and at the Jumper Bay in two minutes, and when he gets there, he sees why Iron Man’s needed. The garage jack holding one of the jumpers up for repairs has failed, trapping a couple of techs underneath it, and everyone’s scrambling to try to get either the jumper or the jack back up before the techs are entirely crushed. Weirdly enough, Bucky arrives only a few seconds after Tony.

“The jack just gave way, like, a minute ago. The alert klaxon went off, but we didn’t know what the hell for, then the jack failed,” reports one of the techs to Tony before turning back to his crowd of techs and pilots. “Can we get that jumper in the air, is it flight ready?”

“No, not yet, they didn’t manage to finish the repairs before the jack failed,” says one of the pilots, and dismay and alarm ripples through the jumper bay. 

“Alright. Option B then. A med team will be here in a couple minutes. In the meantime, we gotta get a winch set up with the other jumpers, Sanders, get Jumper 5 ready—”

“No need,” says Tony, then eyes Bucky speculatively. “You here to help? Are you superpowered enough to grab one side of the jumper and lift it up with me?”

Bucky tilts his head and squints consideringly at the jumper, then shrugs. “Worth a try.”

“Alright, techs, you get another jumper ready with the winch, in the meantime, Bucky and I will try to lift the jumper up enough for whoever’s stuck under there to get free.”

As he and Bucky position themselves to get a decent grip on the jumper, the med team arrives. Tony’s done enough search and rescue in the armor by now to know that he should be able to lift the jumper up, if only for a few seconds. Hopefully that’s long enough to get the techs free.

“You got a decent grip?” he calls out to Bucky, and gets an affirmative. “Med team, you ready to squeeze under there and grab the techs? Yes? Okay, on three…one, two, three!”

Between the two of them, they manage to heft the jumper up about a foot off the ground, and the med team frees the techs, who thankfully haven’t turned into pancakes since the lowered jack still gave them some clearance between the jumper and the floor. They’re pulled free looking dazed and battered, but not actively dying, and then he and Bucky can drop the jumper before any of the Iron Man armor’s servos give up the ghost. There’s a brief smattering of applause, then handshakes and thank yous all around. A job well done, Tony thinks, disaster averted. 

“We’re lucky you happened to stop by, Stark,” says the head tech.

“Wait, you’re not the one who sent me the message?”

The tech shakes his head, confused. “No, none of us had time to comm anyone before you got here.”

“Huh. Must’ve been a coincidence or something,” says Tony, unconvincingly, before looking for Bucky. He’d gotten here at nearly the same time as Tony. Had he gotten a message too?

Bucky’s clearly about to slink away before anyone else can offer him more enthusiastic handshakes or shoulder pats, so Tony clanks on over to him to cut off his escape.

“Hey Bionic Man, you good? Didn’t throw out your back with that bit of heroism did you?”

“I’m fine.” Bucky swings and stretches his metal arm to demonstrate.

“Awesome. So, hey, how’d you know to come here? Did someone comm you, were you just passing by...?”

Bucky shakes his head. “The city told me. I got a message saying I was needed in the Jumper Bay.”

“Atlantis told you,” Tony repeats, and Bucky looks at him like he’s the crazy one here for some reason.

“Yeah, of course. Isn’t that how you got here too?”

“Yeah, yeah, just—it’s not how these things usually go, is all,” says Tony, deliberately vague. “Well, good job, thanks for the help, see you later!” he adds, not at all suspiciously, he’s sure, before engaging the repulsers and going full-speed back to his lab.

Maybe it’s just a new, more proactive city alert system, Tony thinks, as he steps out of the Iron Man armor. But then he checks the security footage in the Jumper Bay, and the timestamps, and compares them to when he’d gotten the alert.

The jack had failed a full 11 seconds after Tony’d gotten the message, when he was already on the way to the jumper bay. 11 seconds isn’t that much time, to a human. Clearly, it hadn’t been enough time for everyone in the Jumper Bay to do much more than wonder what the hell the mystery klaxon was blaring for. To a computer though, it might as well have been hours. If Atlantis had known the jack was about to fail, it had more than enough time to try alerting the techs first, then to move on to a failsafe plan of alerting Tony and Bucky as the people most likely to be able to help the techs trapped under the jumper.

Tony wouldn’t be batting an eye if Chuck in the Control Tower had done all of that. But Chuck hadn’t, and as far as can Tony tell, nothing like today’s alerts is currently in Atlantis’ emergency protocols. All of those still require routing through Control or Command after the warning or alert is generated, apart from the ones for pathogen detection, structural failures, or loss of atmosphere. No, this is something new. This, maybe, is evidence that Atlantis is learning, on its own: making connections between problems and the Lanteans best equipped to solve them.

When Tony rambles about it during lunch in the mess with Happy, Happy listens intently. Then he nods and says, “So what I’m getting here is that Atlantis is haunted.”

“Okay, do we not live in enough of a space horror movie already, or are you just going to keep coming up with new space horror possibilities here?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s obviously a friendly ghost,” says Happy.

“Oh, of course, I’m being ridiculous. Sure, Atlantis is haunted by a friendly ghost. That’s definitely a more probable theory than Atlantis developing sentience.”

Happy shrugs and spoons another mouthful of chili into his mouth. “Well, can you prove either of them?”

“We’ll see,” says Tony, and then he spends most of the next week trying to prove his theory.

McKay doesn’t believe him, but after a week, Tony’s sure: Atlantis is sentient. And okay, listen, Tony gets that McKay knows Atlantis inside and out. The guy pretty much single-handedly kept the expedition alive in the early years, pulled engineering miracles out of his ass, out of the air, and sometimes, out of alternate goddamn universes. McKay knows the guts of Atlantis, and he’s earned that knowledge with blood, sweat, and tears.

But.

But McKay’s not a robotics guy. McKay’s got three PhDs, and if there was a PhD in Ancient technology, he’d have that too, but he’s not a robotics guy. He’s not an AI guy. Code’s just another formula to him, a language, and because he’s not an AI guy like Tony is, he doesn’t see AI as the building blocks of consciousness the way Tony does.

Getting him to do so is…a work in progress. It doesn’t help that McKay’s a pretty hard guy to catch one-on-one. He’s head of the entire science department and he still goes out on missions, and between the two duties, Tony barely ever sees the guy.

Is for the best, Zelenka always says in dire tones. You are lucky he is mellowing in his old age and lets you work on city systems without constantly yelling at you over your shoulder.

I had nanny controls on all my work here for two entire months.

Yes, as I said. He has mellowed.

Tony kind of wishes McKay was still literally and figuratively looking over his shoulder, at least then Tony could talk to him. Instead they exchange intranet email messages of varying levels of vitriol,  before the messages break down into math and diagrams, but McKay’s been pointedly ignoring any and all messages and memos and proposals vis a vis Atlantis’s sentience. Tony suspects his messages are being filtered.

That leaves Tony with in-person nagging. He’s not, strictly speaking, proud of lying in wait for McKay in the corridors of the science department, but he’s not not proud either. Lying in wait for an ambush was how Tony had first gotten Howard to sign off on the arc reactor project, and look where that had gotten him! To the Pegasus Galaxy to be part of the next best thing to Starfleet, that’s where.

“For the last time, Stark, we only call the city a she because the stupid Marines treat it like a ship. Atlantis is not sentient. That’s, you know, the kind of thing we’d have noticed sometime in the past fifteen years.”

McKay tries to step past Tony but Tony blocks him.

“Right. I’m not saying the city’s always been sentient. I’m saying it’s—she’s—developed sentience. Like how a neural network learns.”

McKay rolls his eyes. “No neural networks have developed sentience. They can barely correctly ID a photo of a dog as a dog, you think they could develop a consciousness? No. Stop wasting my time, I have very important things to do.”

Tony doubts that. McKay’s got a floppy hat on and a stripe of white sunblock on his nose: he’s about to visit the mainland. Supposedly to check on the generators there, but actually to play with Governor Emmagan’s kids and gossip with the Athosians and retirees. Tony summons up his patience: honey, vinegar, blah blah blah, he knows the deal here, he has learned some things from watching Pepper sweetly swindle people into trade deals and corporate mergers.

“No, I mean that like a neural network, the city has learned. She’s very old, and she’s got a very big dataset, and you all showing up gave her a newer dataset, and the expedition interacted with her and talked in her and fixed her, and I think—”

“Learning doesn’t equate to consciousness,” McKay interrupts with a withering glare. “Just because the city doesn’t fall apart when you’re in charge of city systems doesn’t mean you’re an expert. Write it up, bring me some proof, and maybe then we’ll talk. Maybe get the city to pass a Turing test.”

“I’m not sure the Turing test would be valid for an alien artificial intelligence, actually,” says Tony as politely as he can manage. “Which is a fascinating question all on its own, really, and if you’d just—anyway, I sent you the email about the thing in the Jumper Bay. That was weird, right?”

McKay flaps his hands dismissively. “Whatever! Write it up! Prove it’s not just thanks to more available power and the hospitality subroutines being back online, because that’s my bet. It’s way more likely than Atlantis having developed sentience. And don’t let the city explode while I’m gone!”

Fine, thinks Tony. I will write it up! Just as soon as he gets, you know, actual evidence beyond some suspicious interactions with what’s possibly the Lantean version of Clippy, or beyond his trawling through security footage and watching assorted expedition members who have the ATA gene. Tony’s learned plenty that way, enough to be relatively certain he’s right, but he’s aware he’ll come across as a peeping Tom if he tries to sell his theory via security footage of assorted ATA-positive Lanteans.

What he needs is an example. Something clear and irrefutable, the city actively doing something for itself or for its residents that can’t be explained by overzealous hospitality protocols. 

Tony goes over his options. Atlantis responds to Sheppard like an eager-to-please dog, and to McKay and Tony himself with a kind of brisk efficiency, and for all the other ATA gene carriers, Atlantis wavers somewhere in between the two, more or less sluggish depending on the strength of the markers in their blood and their ability to control technology with their brain. Lately though, Atlantis’s responsiveness has been speeding up, for people with and without the ATA gene, like the city’s paying more attention to all its residents. Tony crunches the numbers on the responsiveness metrics, and the uptick is statistically significant, if small.

It’s something, but it’s probably not enough to convince McKay.

The city’s interactions with Bucky though...there might be something there. Bucky, after all, had told Tony, blithely and without any awareness that it was strange or notable, that he’d just asked Atlantis where he could go to be high up and alone, and gotten an answer sending him to what might be the most beautiful spot in the city. If anyone else is having similar interactions with the city, they haven’t said anything. Hell, maybe they haven’t noticed. It doesn’t seem like Bucky has.

He doesn’t seem to have noticed that it’s like Atlantis is holding him carefully in her cupped palms, as if he were an injured baby bird. Bucky’s path through the city is smoothed in ways that most Lanteans don’t even notice, but Tony spends a lot of time elbow-deep in Atlantis’s networked brains and pulsing zero-point-energy heart, and he sees it: the slight, very slight, upticks in power expenditure in Bucky’s vicinity, the processing power devoted to monitoring Bucky’s life signs. And because he notices that, he starts to notice the same sort of small surge around other Lanteans: the old guard who have been here for over a decade now, whether they have the ATA gene or not, Governors Woolsey and Emmagan, children, a handful of other especially critical staff members like Tony himself, and a few people that Atlantis maybe just likes for her own reasons, like the chefs and some of the other Pegasus refugees.

Tony doesn’t think Atlantis is about to go HAL 9000 on any of them. Some of the attention is strictly practical, after all, easily explained as the city’s algorithms learning to anticipate requests and associate certain actions with certain reactions. And some of it really is just the hospitality subroutines kicking in, now that the city has power to spare for niceties like dimmable lights and bathtubs. 

But the more time Tony’s spent with Bucky, the more he’s sure the city’s focus on Bucky is distinctly tender: warmer climate control, gentler lighting that’s shifted away from the blue end of the spectrum and towards something more golden, more quiet alerts to keep from startling him. Tony knows none of that is at Bucky’s own request, because Bucky is as scrupulously polite to the city itself as he is to the people in it. He is, for god’s sake, the literal only person who thanks the doors and transporters nearly every single time. If he knew everything that the city’s been doing for him, he’d be thanking her left and right. Shit, maybe Tony should be thanking the city more often.

“You wouldn’t want to just tell me if you’re sentient or not, would you?” he asks his city systems terminal. There’s no answer. Tony sighs. “Worth a shot. Sometimes I really miss JARVIS.”

“What, you miss your own AI sassing you non-stop?”

Tony jumps and spins his chair around. “Rhodey! Fuck, sweet cheeks, honey bear, don’t give me a heart attack like that, I’m operating at a disadvantage on the healthy heart front as it is. What’s up?”

“I’m here to ask you that. Happy’s been going on about Atlantis being haunted and you’ve been holed up in here basically all week. What are you even working on?”

“We really should not have let Happy use movies as ‘research’ before we came to Atlantis.”

“Yeah, probably.” Rhodey comes over to peer around Tony’s workspace. “Seriously, what are you up to, I’ve barely seen you all week and Pepper says you’re in full discovery mode.”

“I am! I absolutely am. I think—no, I’m 87% sure—that Atlantis is sentient, but McKay doesn’t believe me, and the city is not being helpful and just telling me, hey, I definitely pass the Turing test, I’m super sentient, so I have to, you know, find proof and McKay said I should write it up—”

“Okay, no more coffee for you, Tones.”

“I haven’t been drinking coffee! Dr. Cho said I had to cut back so that I quote unquote don’t have a stroke. I have been drinking tea. Soothing, healthy, boring tea.”

Rhodey picks up his mug and sniffs at it suspiciously. “Yeah, no, so maybe it’s not coffee, but it is the tea from Alvarit, which has just as much caffeine.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“You know, that makes sense. I thought it was just the placebo effect, but now that I think of it, the way everything is just, very slightly, vibrating, is very indicative of—”

“Hmm, okay, so when you dry out or come down, whichever, we’ve got a mission. We’ve got a lead on the Nomad and the Widows thanks to some intel from AR-5.”

“What’s the lead?”

“AR-5 went to Brigatia, and the Brigatians had just come back from the Roaming Bazaar, where they’d talked to the Hurgles about whether cullings were slowing down or not, and the Hurgles said yeah, because of the Nomad and the Widows, who helped the Ebumotes stay hidden from a Wraith dart and a Hydran raiding party.”

Tony needs about five more hours of sleep to follow that twisted path. “That’s AR-5’s intel?”

“Uh huh.”

“Sounds more like the interplanetary grapevine of dubious accuracy to me,” says Tony, and inches back towards his city systems terminal. Rhodey grabs the back of his shirt before he can escape, and starts herding him out of the lab.

“We’re going to Ebumota. We’ve got the best relationship with them since Pepper brokered that deal between them and the Pythians. We go, make nice, ask some questions about the possibly heroic Nomad and Widows, and make sure there’s no Wraith or Hydrans lurking around.”

“Not really seeing why you need me on this mission,” tries Tony, which makes Rhodey give him the crossed arms of disappointment and danger, plus the raised eyebrows of really?

 “How about this: if you still think your Atlantis is sentient theory is valid after at least 12 hours of sleep and an offworld mission, then we’ll talk.”

“My theory will still seem totally valid then!”

“I’m sure it will,” says Rhodey, and puts an arm around Tony’s shoulders. “Now come on, we’re scheduled to head out tomorrow at 1400 hours, so if you get your ass in bed now, you can get at least a solid ten hours before then.”

Tony allows himself to be led. If he can just swing by the lab before the mission tomorrow, and spend some time during the mission grilling Bucky on his interactions with Atlantis, then maybe he won’t actually end up too far behind on the Atlantis is sentient project…

Chapter Text

Sam is aware of the rep his team has, okay? AR-18 is a search and rescue and combat support gate team, which means, definitionally, that they usually show up after the shit has hit the fan. That’s why Sam maintains that it’s never their fault when shit gets weird on their missions. The shit was already weird, okay? That’s why AR-18 gets called in at all. Admittedly, sometimes things get a little…complicated after they show up. Sometimes Barton or Bishop live up to their shared codename’s namesake, and their keen eyes spot something worth looking into. Sometimes Sam or Riley try out a strategy or problem solve with unpredictable results. And sometimes totally unpredictable, definitely-not-AR-18’s-fault shit just happens, because this is the Pegasus Galaxy.

Mostly though, Sam’s sure it’s not his team with the weird luck. No, that’s all on the teams whose asses they pull out of the fire. Case in point: their current mission.

AR-5 was on Thobira to escort a couple geologists and get some cool rock samples, a mission which really should have been as dull as rock collecting sounds. And yet, AR-5 has missed three check-ins, and, in the absence of any distress signals or other markers of disaster, three’s the magic number. Miss one check-in, well, it could just be bad luck or bad timing, or equipment failure. Miss two check-ins, and still: Command’s not real worried yet, it could still be innocuous—bad weather, a ceremony that went too long, needing to lay low for a bit until some danger has passed. But miss three check-ins? Well, that’s when Sam’s team gets called in to haul some Lantean asses out of whatever clusterfuck they’ve undoubtedly embroiled themselves in.

What kind of clusterfuck AR-5 can possibly have landed themselves in when their mission was to look at some interesting rocks on a sleepy planet with reasonably friendly natives, Sam doesn’t know. If shit gets weird on this mission, Sam maintains that it’s definitely gonna be AR-5’s fault.

“I swear, if AR-5 just lost track of the damn time and didn’t notice their comms signal is out…” grumbles Riley as they all poke around the gate looking for clues to AR-5’s status.

“Then Woo’s gonna owe us his entire chocolate stash,” says Sam, and keeps looking around. “Bishop, keep trying to get them on the radio.”

“Yes sir.”

After just fifteen minutes on Thobira, Sam has the feeling this is going to be one of those missions that makes everyone on Atlantis shake their head and go you guys always end up with the weird shit. It’s nothing obvious so far, just a feeling, and Sam’s learned to trust those, even when nothing’s obviously wrong. Maybe especially when nothing’s obviously wrong. And right now, nothing’s obviously wrong, apart from how they haven’t been able to raise AR-5 on comms. AR-5’s trackers are cutting in and out too, like there’s some sort of interference.

“Man, what good is it microchipping all of us if it doesn’t even work right,” mutters Sam as he squints at his life signs detector. Even their own life signs are flickering on the display.

“Gonna have to put posters up,” jokes Barton. “Have you seen this team of nerds? House-trained,  loves rocks, answers to AR-5.”

Sam lets them joke; for all that Barton often sounds like a dumbass, he’s called Hawkeye for a reason. Not much gets past his keen eyes. It’s just too bad there doesn’t seem to be anything to see so far. There’s no sign of AR-5 near the gate, and no sign of any obvious catastrophes either, which just makes Sam more sure this is going to turn into one of the weird missions, one of the my life turned into a bad sci fi movie while I wasn’t paying attention kind of missions, like that time with the slime fish, or when they had to rescue AR-3 from the planet with the mud pit prisons.  Those are not Sam’s favorite kind of missions. 

No, Sam’s favorite SAR missions, apart from the ones that are just more embarrassing than life-threatening for the team they’re rescuing, are the ones where it’s immediately obvious what’s up: flooding, bad weather, natural disaster, the sound of distant gunfire. At least then the appropriate course of action is immediately obvious, the same way it used to be back in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

This isn’t one of those missions. There are no visible clues to AR-5’s status, no indications of disaster. There’s nothing but the sound of the wind through the grass. He checks in with Riley, and the look on Riley’s face tells him he’s not the only who’s got a bad feeling about this. Riley lets his grim unease show for just a moment, the equivalent of a nonverbal yeah, me too, before he shifts back to his usual expression of good-natured ease. 

“Still no answer from AR-5 on comms, on any channel,” reports Bishop.

Barton sighs as he surveys their surroundings. “Not seeing any flares either. AR-5 couldn’t make it easy for us?”

“Course not. Maybe they fell into a cave or something. This planet has a ton of caves, doesn’t it?” says Riley. He and Barton turn their attention to the ground as if there’s a cave entrance hiding in the grass.

“If we’re lucky, they’re just stuck in some long-ass ritual or something,” says Sam, even though he’s pretty sure they’re not going to be that lucky. “Bishop, check in with Atlantis, let them know what’s up. Barton, Riley, keep your eyes peeled. Let’s see what Redwing has to tell us.”

While Bishop dials the gate to radio Atlantis, Sam sends his Redwing drone out for an initial sweep and keeps an eye on the data it collects: so far, nothing’s screaming impending disaster. No weird energy readings, and the Thobiran village nestled in a hillside fifteen klicks away has the expected number and concentration of life signs, or at least it does when the signal doesn’t flicker in and out.

“Redwing’s not showing me anything obviously wrong,” reports Sam to his team. “Getting that same interference though. Bishop, your transmission to Atlantis go through?”

“Yes sir, no problems on either end. Whatever the interference is, it must be more localized. I let Atlantis know about it though, in case it interferes with our next check-ins.”

“Gotta kick it analog style then. Hawkeyes, what do your elf eyes see?” asks Riley, like a fucking nerd. At Sam’s deadpan glare, he says, “Oh, come on, this place totally looks like Middle Earth!”

“You mean New Zealand?” asks Bishop, rolling her eyes, before she makes like Legolas and scans the horizon and surroundings for any new clues about what might be keeping AR-5 from answering their comms.

“My elf eyes don’t see shit, not from down here,” says Barton. “Be right back.”

Barton scrambles up a hill like some kind of mountain goat, and Sam takes the opportunity to really take in Thobira. He concludes that Riley’s not entirely wrong about the Middle Earth thing. The Stargate is located in a little valley between two hills, and they’re surrounded by a rolling landscape of grassy hills and rocky outcroppings that wouldn’t have been out of place in the second Lord of the Rings movie. The violet-tinged sky reminds him that they’re not on any sort of Earth though, as does the color of the grasses that ripple in the wind: there’s an unearthly mauve-ish tint to the green and yellow grasses that surround them. And now that he looks closer, he sees that the rocks and boulders that jut out from the hills have a weird sparkle and sheen to them. Probably why AR-5 was out here in the first place. Sam just hopes the rocks aren’t radioactive.

After a minute and some muffled, distant cursing, Barton reports, “Still don’t see any flares, but there’s what looks like cooking fire smoke coming from the village! And there’s a gnarly looking storm on the horizon, and it looks real big. We might have to start worrying about that in a few hours.”

Maybe that’s the source of the interference, and the reason it’s so localized. Sam adds it to his mental tally of weird shit. Whether it’s the source of the interference or not, he doesn’t want to still be here when that storm hits.

“Alright. Get back down here, Barton, we’ll head for the village, see what we can find out from there. Hopefully this is just one of those times there’s a weird ritual AR-5 couldn’t get out of, and we can be in and out before that storm hits.”

Sam really doubts that’s how this is going to go down, and so does Riley, whose eyebrows are raised to a decidedly skeptical height. They both keep their mouths shut about it though: no point in getting Barton and Bishop worked up.

He sends Redwing out to do a wider sweep, then takes point and sets a steady jogging pace in the direction of the Thobiran village. The rest of his team falls in line in their standard diamond formation: Sam taking point, Riley on their six, with Barton and Bishop with their weapons at the ready at 9 and 3.

“Your optimism is really cute, Sammy. Who wants to bet AR-5 got their asses tossed in prison or something for offending the natives,” says Riley, keeping his tone light.

As far as Sam and Riley are concerned, that’s still a best-case scenario. Tossed in prison would mean AR-5 are still alive.

“They’re here for rocks, what can they possibly have done?” says Bishop, and Sam winces. This may be Bishop’s first real deployment, but she ought to know better than to say jinx-worthy shit like that.

Sam’s relatively new to the SGC and to Atlantis, and even he’s heard enough stories about missions gone wrong to know even the most innocuous mission can go horribly awry. Things are way better now than they were when the SGC’s gate teams first started wandering more or less cluelessly around the Milky Way galaxy, or when Atlantis was a one-way expedition. They know what kinds of things are out there now, enough that part of Sam’s SGC training had been a three-inch thick manual called So You Want to Travel Through the Stargate: What to Expect When You’re an Intergalactic Explorer and How Not to Die, Be Eaten, or Be Taken as a Host by the Go’auld. There are probably at least five examples of a boring rock-collecting mission going FUBAR on the books already. They’ll find out soon enough if this is going to be one of them.

“Thobirans might not take kindly to having their rocks stolen? I don’t know,” says Riley.

Bishop’s clearly not convinced, because she says, “Nah. I’m with Wilson, it’s something to do with the villagers.”

“Maybe the rocks are the Thobirans,” calls out Clint. “That’s my theory.”

Two years ago, Sam would’ve called that nonsense, because two years ago, the weirdest thing about Sam’s military career was that he flew around with wings and a jetpack. Not anymore. Now, rock people sounds like a downright tame possibility. He checks Redwing’s life signs detector, just in case: still nothing but the flickering life signs of his team and the village.

“Life signs detector says the rocks are not people,” says Sam.

“But are they calibrated for detecting rock people—”

The team throws the usual bullshit back and forth, a steady patter of dumb nonsense that belies their sharp eyes and ready weapons. They don’t spot anything other than some birds and rabbit-looking things though, and the hump to the Thobiran village stays quiet and easy. There’s a subtle trail from the Stargate to the village, little more than a goat track, but the terrain’s not too bad, and it’d be a halfway decent hike in better circumstances.

Along the way, Barton confirms that there are signs of AR-5’s passing, and no indication that anyone else followed them to the village from the gate. Whatever went wrong for AR-5, it didn’t go wrong on the way to the village, and it didn’t follow them there, not from the gate anyway. When they get close to the Thobiran village, Sam stops them at a tumbled pile of jagged boulders and signals for silence.

The Thobiran village itself is tucked up close against a hillside—like hobbit holes! Riley claims—and its rocky outcroppings. From high enough up, like, say, from a Wraith dart, it would be hard to see the village, camouflaged as it is by the rocks and hills. The grassy thatch on the roofs of the freestanding buildings contributes to the camouflage too, making the round houses look like small hills. Even from their vantage point a few hundred yards away, it’s hard to see any activity. And yet, smoke is puffing out of some of the buildings’ chimneys, and through his binoculars Sam can see signs of life: washing hung out to dry and domesticated animals in pens, and a few people walking around. No sign of AR-5 though, and the village does seem oddly quiet given that it’s still light out.

“Well, I can’t see anything obviously wrong,” says Sam and lowers his binoculars. “Let’s see if Redwing spots anything.”

Redwing’s equipped with scanners and cameras that should be able to provide a better picture of what’s going on in the village, even if he keeps Redwing circling high above as if it were a real hawk in search of a meal rather than the highly advanced drone that it is. The team takes shelter behind the boulders while they wait for Redwing’s data.

“You smell that?” whispers Barton. The team duly takes a collective, vigorous sniff of the Thobiran air. Sam mostly just smells grass and dirt. Maybe a faint whiff of damp, if he really focuses. “That storm’s gonna roll in by nightfall, Sarge.”

“You’re such a country boy,” says Bishop, equal parts teasing and impressed.

Sam would tease too, but smelling a storm is exactly the kind of farm boy, Army Ranger shit Barton’s on the team for. He’s willing to take Barton’s word for it. 

Riley squints up at the sky towards the Thobiran sun, then looks at his watch, then looks back at the sky. “And when, exactly, is nightfall on this fine planet? Because my watch says it’s 2600 hours and yet it’s still light out.” 

That’s the cue for the rest of the team to rag on Riley for his perpetual inability to roll with the assorted weird day-night cycles of alien planets. Sam grins and leaves them to it while he pulls down his goggles to check Redwing’s data. Right now, no matter what their watches say, the sun’s closer to the horizon than not, but that’s no guarantee on an alien planet that might have more than one sun, or moons bright enough to light up the night to near-daytime. Thankfully, Redwing’s loaded up with what data Atlantis has on Thobira and its solar system, and is equipped to run the numbers so no one has to construct a sundial to figure it out the old-fashioned way.

“How many times do I gotta tell you, Riley? Time’s an illusion. Redwing says sunset’s in about four hours though,” says Sam, and toggles his goggles’ data display off. “And it was about a two-hour hump to get here. So fingers crossed that we can extract AR-5 in less than three hours and then outrun that storm.”

“Yeah, that’s almost definitely not gonna happen,” says an unfamiliar voice. As one, the team turns towards the voice, weapons up. There’s a hooded woman with a pale face standing a few yards away, and her hands are raised and empty. “Okay, in retrospect, that sounded like way more of a threat than I meant it to. Hi,” she adds, and waggles the fingers of her right hand in a wave.

“Why’s it not gonna happen?” asks Sam.

“Because the Hydrans have taken that village hostage.”

Sam keeps his gun trained on her, and his eyes on her calm and lovely face. “No offense, ma’am, but we’re not gonna take your word for it. Bishop, try to hail AR-5 on comms again.”

“Still no answer, sir.”

There’s a ping from Redwing. Sam tilts his head a fraction, and Riley steps forward to cover the woman while Sam checks on the results of Redwing’s recon. The good news is he’s finally got confirmation that all the members of AR-5 are alive and well: Redwing’s correlated their intermittent tracker signals to life signs present in the village. But the bad news is the woman is right, the village has been taken hostage. Redwing sends back images of armed men scattered throughout the village, some of them maintaining a perimeter around it.

“Yeah, okay. I’m seeing what might be a hostage situation. What else have you got?” he asks her.   

“Their ship is parked behind that big hill over there,” says the woman, pointing southwest towards a hill that’s maybe half a klick away from their current position. “They came here to spread the good word about how the Thobirans should be thrilled and honored that they’re about to get eaten by the Wraith. The Thobirans were, understandably, not thrilled, and now they’re basically being held captive by the Hydrans.”

Sam hears Riley suck in a sharp, surprised breath. “The Wraith are on the way? How do you know?”

“Because I just hacked into the Hydran ship’s system. The Hydrans sent out a signal: food’s ready, basically. Might take a day or two, maybe less, for the Wraith to arrive. I could show you…?” she offers, and moves her hands slowly towards the pack on her back.

“Uh uh, hands where I can see them,” orders Sam, and she shrugs and complies.

“The Hydrans are here to keep the cattle from spooking, so to speak. Make things nice and easy for the Wraith,” she continues.

Riley and Barton both snort in unison. “Weak,” says Riley. “The Wraith can’t even catch their own damn food anymore. How the mighty space vampires have fallen.”

Another shrug. “A culling’s a culling. I’m just here to make sure the Thobirans are safe, and that the Hydrans are…not.”

Sounds reasonable enough, but Sam’s still not gonna lower his weapon. “Why should we believe you?” he asks her, and she cocks her head and smiles, small and sly.

“I’ve heard of you, Lanteans. The chosen of the Ancestors, some people say. Have you heard of me? I’m one of the Widows.”

Sam pulls his goggles back up and exchanges a long look with Riley, because yeah, they’ve heard of her. They just hadn’t been sure she was real. 

“As in, the Nomad and the Widows?” asks Riley. 

“Yes, that’s right.”

Well that’s interesting. If she is who she says she is, General Sheppard’s real interested in talking to her and her accomplices, and so’s Sam for that matter. If even half of the stories about the Nomad and the Widows are half-true, there are a lot of people who owe those three their lives. They’re sure as hell not enemies of Atlantis, anyway, if only by the enemy of my enemy is my friend metric. Sam lowers his weapon, and sees his team do the same in his peripheral vision.

“Yeah, we’ve heard of you,” he says. “Not sure how many of the stories are true, but we have heard of you. I’m Master Sergeant Sam Wilson, of Atlantis. This is my team, Staff Sergeant Ryan Riley, and Corporals Kate Bishop and Clint Barton.”

The woman nods in greeting, and relaxes enough to lower her arms.

“Nice to finally meet some Lanteans. My name’s Natasha.”  

“If you’re really one of the Widows, where’s Nomad and the other Widow?” asks Bishop.

“Here,” calls out a deep voice, and a man and another woman emerge from the shadow of a nearby large boulder to join Natasha. 

The Nomad almost lives up to the larger-than-life stories told about him: he’s a tall, broad-shouldered white man who walks with authority, and he’s got a face that wouldn’t be out of place on a cover for one of those manly magazines for dudes who hunt or lumberjack or whatever. It’s something about the beard and the general Brawny paper towel man vibe he’s got going, though there’s an edge there in the stern lines of his face that makes him seem more dangerous than wholesome. While he’s not obviously armed, his hands held loose and empty at his sides, Sam can see the rounded edges of what he assumes is the Nomad’s fabled shield peeking up over his shoulders. 

The other Widow is a white woman who looks to be about the same age as Natasha. Her hair’s in a no-nonsense braid, and she’s wearing the same kind of dark and form-fitting leathers that Natasha and Nomad are, but in contrast to the practicality of the rest of her appearance, her striking face is made up with care. There’s something of the pin-up girl in her red lips and sharp eyeliner, as if she’s stepped off of a plane’s nose art. Only with her, Sam has the unavoidable impression of war paint rather than a pin-up bombshell’s makeup.

“I understand you’re here to rescue some of your people,” says the Nomad. “We can help you with that.”

“We should get to shelter first, though,” suggests the Widow, and jerks her head in the general direction of the storm Barton had mentioned. “We can’t rescue anyone until that storm passes.”

“Or we can call for backup, free the hostages, and be out of here before it even starts raining,” counters Riley. He looks at Sam with raised eyebrows: you believe them? Sam lifts his shoulder a fraction of an inch. Maybe.

Nomad either ignores their exchange or doesn’t notice it, and shakes his head. “There are nearly 300 people in that village, and at least three dozen Hydrans holding them hostage. You think you can get your backup here to neutralize all of them in time, without any collateral damage, before that storm hits?”

“And it isn’t the rain you have to worry about. It’s the lightning,” adds Natasha. “I think you’ll find that your communications devices are about to stop working, if they haven’t already. The power that storm’s carrying is going to scramble all signals.”

Sam nods to Bishop, a silent order for her to check. After a moment, she reports, “The interference is already getting worse.”

Riley takes a step closer to him, and so do Barton and Bishop: team huddle time. 

“Comms or no comms, we could still give it a shot, Sammy. I’d rather be on my way out of here with AR-5 when that storm hits. Otherwise who the hell knows how long we’ll be stuck here.” 

Sam shakes his head. “Forget our comms, we could deal with that. My issue is that it might not be safe to gate out until the storm passes, not when there’s a risk of a lightning strike to the Stargate or the dialing device,” Sam tells Riley. 

He’s read those mission reports, and he knows Riley has too. A lightning strike to the Gate or to the dialing device while the wormhole’s engaged could have disastrous consequences. Sam’s not willing to risk it, not if he’s got to keep the Gate open for long enough to get hundreds of people through it before the Wraith come. 

“That’s if she’s right and that storm is that bad. And what are the odds of the Gate getting struck anyway?”

Sam looks pointedly around the landscape of low hills, devoid of trees or tall buildings, then looks back at Riley. “What else is it gonna hit?”

“I’m with Wilson on this one,” says Barton. “I really don’t like the look of that storm. I told you, it’s huge, and who knows what the hell kind of storm it is: hail, tornados, hurricane, or, fuck, rain of frogs, we don’t know.”

“Ew, frogs, gross,” mutters Bishop.

 “Ry, it’s too tight a timeline. It’d be fine if it was just AR-5 we were rescuing, but this is a whole village held hostage, at risk of imminent culling.”

Riley sighs and brings a hand up to tug at his hair. “This is gonna be one of those missions, isn’t it. One of the weird, overly complicated ones with a rain of frogs.”

Sam really hopes there’s not gonna be a rain of frogs, or any other biblical plague kind of bullshit. A normal storm is gonna be complication enough at this point.

“Looks like.”

“Fine,” Riley says, then turns back towards the Nomad and the Widows. “What’s your plan then?”

“Wait out the storm, draw some of the Hydrans back to their ship, and take out the rest of the Hydrans still in the village,” says Nomad.

Well, it’s not the worst plan Sam’s ever heard. It could use some work, for sure. Riley’s making the eyebrows of concern though, so clearly he thinks it needs more than just some work, and Barton’s looking pretty skeptical too.

“And when the Wraith come?” he asks.

The Widow shrugs, and bares her teeth in a wolfish grin. “We take them out too.”

Okay, yeah, no, this is a bad plan. Sam searches for a polite way to respond to that madness. “Ma’am, I’m not sure that’s possible, given our numbers and available weapons.”

Nomad looks vaguely amused, his stance relaxed and unworried, like seven people with guns and projectile weapons can totally take on dozens of armed Wraith worshippers and who knows how many Wraith, all while rescuing hundreds of innocent civilians. 

“We won’t exactly be going up against a hive ship,” he says. “The Wraith aren’t risking those anymore, not if they can help it. They’ll only send a few darts, and we can handle those.”

Sam exchanges a dubious glance with Riley. He really can’t tell if this is insane hubris or not. Riley bites his lower lip like he’s starting to consider it though, and the look in his eyes tells Sam he’s coming up with a new, undoubtedly equally terrible plan. 

“We’ve got our wing packs,” Riley says in a low voice, then waggles his eyebrows. “If these guys draw fire down on the ground, we can make an air assault on the darts.”

“That’s crazy,” hisses Sam, automatically. 

But then he thinks about it. Sure the EXO Falcon wings haven’t got the speed of a Wraith dart, but in a planetary atmosphere, the darts aren’t exactly at their top speed anyway. They’ll be strafing low and slow, the better to cull humans. If he and Riley aim for the darts’ weak points and stay out of their range of fire...it’s doable, maybe.

Barton decides to chip in with his own insanity. “Me and Katie can shoot a dart out of the sky, easy. We’ve got these new arrows Stark gave us and—”

This is why AR-18 has the rep it does, Sam realizes as Barton and Bishop ramble about exploding arrows. They can turn a simple extraction mission into a seven-person, ground-to-air battle with Wraith darts. The part of Sam’s brain that’s saying hell yeah, that sounds awesome is way out-cheering the part that’s saying seems bad, man.

“Yeah, okay,” says Sam. “But we’re calling for our backup the second our comms are back online.”

The Widow smiles again, more delighted than predatory this time. 

“I think we’ll get along quite well. You can call me Peggy, and this is Steve.” A sharp gust of wind whips past them, strong enough to make all of them but Nomad—Steve—stagger. “Now, shall we get to shelter before that storm arrives, or did you want to attempt to set up a tent in this soon-to-be frightful weather?”

The Nomad and the Widows’ shelter is a couple klicks away, but a few minutes into their walk there, even that begins to feel too far. For all that the storm’s still huge and distant on the horizon, the wind has raced ahead of it to gust viciously over the hills, and it batters them as they stagger against it.

“Tornado weather,” declares Barton grimly, and Christ, that’s all they need. If this mission turns into their own personal version of Twister, Sam’s gonna be pissed.

“Almost there!” shouts Steve encouragingly over the whistle of the wind, so they grab hold of each other’s tac vests and march on.

After what feels like forever, but which is actually less than half an hour, they stumble on an especially boulder-strewn hill, where there’s a nearly-hidden cave with a tight, narrow entrance. Natasha and Peggy slip through the entrance easily, and so does Bishop once she takes her pack off, but it’s a tight fit for the rest of them. Thankfully the cave itself is roomy enough to fit all seven of them, even if it is going to be a somewhat snug fit. 

“Watch your step in here,” says Peggy as she steps carefully towards the side of cave where there’s already a neat grouping of packs and bedrolls. “The cave floor is somewhat uneven.”

A couple lanterns provide just enough light to see by, so they don’t have to feel their way past the slight dips and rises of the cave’s rough floor. Only Barton nearly trips on their way to the other side of the cave, where they all divest themselves of their heavy packs in silent relief. Sam sets his gun down too, and the rest of his team follows his lead, a gesture that’s not missed by the Nomad and the Widows.

Riley whistles, and the sound reverbs a little. “Nice digs.”

As if in agreement, an ominously loud and long roll of thunder fills the cave. Just when Sam thinks it should stop, it starts again, like an unceasing aerial bombardment. It’s just a storm, he tells himself, as gooseflesh rises on his arms. He still nearly flinches at one particularly explosive boom. Natasha lowers her hood, revealing bright, fox-red hair, and tilts her head as if to listen for something in the sound, until the thunder finally rumbles to a finish.

“Yeah, we got in here just in time.” 

“Thanks for this. We’d have been shit out of luck if we’d tried to put up our tents in that weather,” Sam says. 

The rest of his team echoes his thanks, and Steve smiles, small but genuine, as he lifts the shield from his back and sets it down against the cave wall, where it gleams dully in the lantern light. 

“You’re welcome. We’re happy to help,” he tells them, with disarming earnestness.

Sam eyes the shield with interest: it’s round and metal, the metal painted with alternating concentric circles of faded red and blue, and a star in the middle like a target. He wonders if the pattern has any particular significance, and if he can ask without offending Steve. Before he can formulate any questions though, Riley asks about the cave. 

“This cave wouldn’t happen to conveniently link up to the Thobiran village, would it?” 

Both Riley and Bishop are peering around the rough walls of the cave, and Riley starts doing a slow circuit of the cave’s confines. The cave’s walls have the same sparkling sheen as some of the boulders dotting the landscape outside, and there are seams of some other mineral or rock that striate the cave walls. Sam doesn’t see any passages to a wider cave system, though there is a distinct if slight downward slope to the cave floor.

“There’s a small passage down there,” says Natasha, pointing towards the back of the cave. “No idea where it goes, but it’s way too tight for any of us.”

Sam whips his head around to Barton to stop what he knows is coming, but he’s too late. “That’s what she said,” says Barton in a stage whisper, and the rest of AR-18 groans. Steve, Natasha, and Peggy just look politely confused.

Sam sighs. He’s not about to engage in this particular bit of cultural exchange. “Ignore him, you don’t want to know. So, who wants some food? Food, anyone?”

They manage to set up a decent little campsite in the cave, and while they’re not willing to risk the smoke of a campfire, Riley does crack some glowsticks for more light. Between that and the lanterns, they’ve got a cozy enough set up, and even being packed in relatively close together isn’t so bad, if only for the warmth. The storm’s started up in earnest by now, and its howling winds are whistling fiercely past the cave’s entrance. The sound forms an eerie counterpart to the constantly rolling and booming thunder. 

Riley, being the kind of dumbass white boy who stands outside in the middle of a hurricane, pokes his head out of the cave before Sam can stop him. When he comes back in, he looks like he’s just gotten a swirlie in a high-powered toilet.

“It’s wild out there! Hope the Thobiran village holds up in this weather.”

Sam makes a disgusted noise and chucks an MRE at him. “Ri-ri, you dumbass, that coulda been acid rain for all you know. We should probably set up some sandbags or something at the entrance so the cave doesn’t flood.”

“We haven’t exactly got any sand…” says Bishop as she looks around the cave for any likely options.

Barton hops up off of the big boulder he’s been sitting on. “Hey, this should do.” He bends down to try to shift it. 

Trying to lift it gets him nowhere, and so does pushing it. Bishop sighs and joins him, and they both try to lift it together, but the boulder still doesn’t budge. Not surprising, given it’s nearly half as tall as they are and who knows how heavy. They give up on trying to lift it and try pushing it into a roll instead.

“Maybe with a lever,” grunts Bishop as she keeps shoving at the unmoving boulder, which is when Sam steps in. If he lets them keep going, soon enough explosives are somehow going to get involved.

“Don’t throw your backs out, come on. Maybe if we sacrifice one of our packs, we can manage a makeshift…”

“Not necessary,” says Steve. “I’ve got this.”

Barton and Bishop give him identical dubious looks. “Yeah? It’s really heavy. Like, I can deadlift 300 easy, but this thing isn’t budging,” says Barton.

Steve maintains his bland politeness, though Sam thinks he detects a tick of annoyance in the tightening of his jaw. 

“I don’t know what that means. I just know I can lift that. Excuse me.”

Barton and Bishop step aside, but not too far. “Uh, alright.” 

Sam hopes this isn’t some bullshit macho dominance move on Steve’s part, because if so, things are probably going to get awkward and tense when it inevitably fails. Though maybe it won’t fail. Natasha’s not even paying attention, busy with lighting more lanterns, and Peggy just glances over and away quickly, like there’s nothing remarkable about Steve lifting a boulder that heavy.

“Put some gloves on, darling, you don’t want to tear up your hands,” she says, and he beams a quick smile at her. It makes him look startlingly boyish, and Sam wonders how old he really is. The beard and his general stern vibe make him seem older, but now Sam thinks Steve might even be younger than he is. Younger than thirty, maybe? It’s hard to say.

Once Steve has put gloves on, he squats, gropes around for a good grip, then lifts. He raises the boulder clean off the ground with nothing more than a slight grunt of effort, and walks it carefully up to the cave’s entrance, where he sets it down gently.

Sam’s mouth drops open and so does Barton’s. “What the fuck. How…?”

“Did you and Bishop lose all your muscles or what?” asks Riley.

Bishop stops gaping at Steve and glares at Riley. “We did not! That thing had to be 500 pounds at least! How the hell…?”

“I’m pretty strong,” says Steve with a bland smile. Fuck, he’s not even really red in the face.

Sam goes up towards the cave entrance to test the boulder’s weight. Bishop’s right, it’s gotta be at least 500 pounds, almost certainly more. There’s no way he could move this thing. 

“Uh, that’s not ‘pretty strong,’ that’s some superhuman, superhero bullshit.”

He exchanges a what the fuck look with Riley, and he’s already wondering how the hell to put this in his mission report. He eyes Steve’s muscles: yeah, the guy’s buff, but not that buff. Were folks just stronger on on his planet? Or is Steve not entirely human? Most Pegasus natives are more or less genetically human, thanks to the Ancients, but who knows what the hell kind of tinkering they did. So...are you 100% standard human? It’s not the kind of thing you can just up and ask an alien, shared genetic heritage or not.

Steve takes his gloves back off and shakes his hands out, the only real sign that lifting that boulder took any special effort. “Don’t understand that reference.”

To Sam’s surprise, a sharp tension fills the cave, like the moment after the opening volley of a sudden argument, dangerous and fraught. Peggy and Natasha fix Sam and his team with suspicious looks, and Peggy especially looks like she’d happily leap across the room and tear any of their throats out, given sufficient provocation. Steve’s broad shoulders are squared, as if for a fight. 

It’s not an unfamiliar kind of moment, just the tipping point in every potentially disastrous encounter with new people in the Pegasus Galaxy: the moment where both sides wonder if they can trust each other at all, or if things are going to end in violence. It’s not Sam’s favorite thing ever. He’s no diplomat, or any kind of first contact specialist. He’s not sure what just set them off—their shock at Steve’s strength? A badly timed cultural reference?—and he’s not sure what these three might consider the wrong thing to say, or do.

It’s Riley who breaks the tension, as easy and carefree as if this were any other round of team bullshitting.

“That’s a shame, you’ve got a damn superhero name already, Nomad.” He sits down on the cave floor and opens up his MRE.

Barton’s already brushed off his earlier shock, and he joins Riley. “True, and it’s way cooler than, like, Batman or Superman.”

“Hey, Superman is a classic name, it’s short and it’s descriptive. He’s a man, he’s super, that’s it,” says Sam, then holds up two MREs. “Bishop, you want chicken pesto or chili and mac?”

“Chili and mac please.”

Sam figures—he hopes—that you can’t go wrong with breaking bread together. Or at least by showing that you’re willing to break bread together. His dad always used to say you can solve just about any problem over a good meal. And hell, even if you don’t solve it, at least you’ve had a good meal! He’s proven right again as Steve’s shoulders lose their tension and he folds himself down to sit on the ground.

“These superheroes...are they gods among your people?” asks Peggy, taking a seat beside Steve. Natasha joins them, passing out packets of their own food.

Sam shakes his head. “Nah, just stories. Fiction, you know? For fun, and to teach kids stuff. With great power comes great responsibility, that kinda thing.”

“Good lesson,” says Steve with a wry curve to the words, as he looks meaningfully at Peggy. She hums in vague agreement.   

His teammates, bless them, know the drill from there and they keep up a steady flow of light chatter as their three new friends keep watchful eyes on them. This particular strategy is, admittedly, more suitable for putting scared refugees at ease than solidifying an alliance. Even so, it seems to be working here too, if not for imparting normalcy, then at least for reducing the wary suspicion in Natasha’s eyes, and for deflecting the nearly predatory focus of Steve and Peggy. Eventually they relax enough to do more than pick at their own food, and they all share intel over dinner as the storm rages.

“So we’re here because our people missed their check-ins. How’d you guys know to come to Thobira? Just passing through or what?” asks Sam. 

“One of the Thobirans managed to get offworld soon after the Hydrans arrived. She got to a friendly planet that got a hold of us,” explains Steve. “She didn’t mention your people though. They must have arrived after the Hydrans did.”

Sam frowns, tries to work out the timeline. AR-5 hadn’t immediately started missing their check-ins. They’d been scheduled for a two-day mission, and it took until the second day for them to stop responding to Atlantis. But if they hadn’t clocked the Hydrans, and if they hadn’t headed into the village right away…

“AR-5 might not have noticed anything was wrong at first.”

“How many of them are there?” asks Natasha.

“Just five,” says Sam. “And two of them are geologists, not fighters.”

“So they wouldn’t have risked an assault or escape on their own,” concludes Peggy.

Riley winces and nods. “Yeah, not with those odds. They probably figured it was safest to wait for Atlantis to send a team after them. And if I know Woo, he’s trying to negotiate with these Hydrans.”

Steve snorts. “There’s not really any negotiating with Hydrans. They’re zealots, Wraith worshippers. Have your people not encountered them before?”

Sam considers playing dumb for a second, before he decides to go with the truth. After all, it’s not as if Atlantis knows all that much about these Hydrans. Sheppard wants to know more, and if Sam can get these three to Atlantis, or at least get them to share what they know, it’ll be to everyone’s benefit.

“Just once, and it was fairly recently. One of our trade teams ran into them when they nearly called the Wraith down on Alara. A runner took them out before they could though, told our team what was up. We got his tracker out and brought him back to Atlantis. Most of what we know about the Hydrans comes from him.”

Sam has only met the poor guy briefly, in passing. Sometimes literally in passing: they both like early morning runs, apparently, and Bucky ends up lapping him more mornings than not. Given that he used to be a runner whose life depended on outrunning space vampires, Sam tries not to get too down about that. And sure, it was annoying that Bucky somehow always got the transporter to take him where he wanted to go before Sam, and sure, he’d taken the last chocolate pudding in the mess twice when Sam had been looking forward to his chocolate pudding all day, but whatever, Sam could be magnanimous. After all, it wasn’t exactly like a strong ATA gene and some pudding were adequate karmic balance for the guy having lost an arm, his planet, and his family.

“You might’ve heard of him, actually, he’s got a cool superhero name like you three do,” adds Barton. “The Winter Soldier?”

Steve, Peggy, and Natasha exchange an unreadable look. “We’ve heard of him,” says Natasha. Her tone’s too neutral for Sam to judge whether that’s a good or bad thing. “He’s gotten to the Hydrans before us a few times.”

“I’ve wondered why he’s never stuck around, or tried to get in contact with us,” murmurs Steve. “But if he’s a runner…”

“Yeah, runners aren’t big on staying in one place,” says Riley with a grimace. “His planet got culled too, maybe you know if any of his people made it out? Shit, I don’t remember what planet he’s from, Sammy, do you—”

Sam mentally rummages around for the knowledge and comes up empty. “Damn, no, sorry. I don’t. I know I read that report too…Bishop, Barton?” he asks, but they shake their heads too. “Aww, it’ll come to us eventually. Or you can meet him yourselves. So hey, what’s your beef with the Hydrans anyway?”

Peggy raises a disbelieving eyebrow that’s mirrored by her companions. “I think it’s fairly obvious. We prefer not being sold out to the Wraith to be eaten.”

“Yeah, yeah, everyone prefers that,” says Riley, waving a dismissive hand. “But most people aren’t actively going after the Hydrans and the Wraith all on their own. You three are. Why?” 

 Natasha just shrugs. “Escaped a Hive ship. Seemed like the thing to do, after that.”

That really doesn’t seem like the whole story, but okay. Sam’s not going to push, and Riley seems to think that’s a perfectly acceptable reason. They all look to Steve and Peggy next.

“The Hydrans called the Wraith down on our people,” says Steve, his voice flat.

“Not many of us escaped,” adds Peggy. 

The words are matter-of-fact, delivered evenly, but her eyes are bright. Sam’s seen the aftermath of enough cullings to know the horror she’s eliding.

“I’m sorry,” says Sam, knowing it’s inadequate, and he’s echoed by the rest of his team.

Steve nods and looks down at his food. “What happened to Brook Lynn...we don’t want it to happen anywhere else.” 

AR-18 collectively startles at the familiar name, before they realize it’s probably a quirk of Gate translation. For a few moments, only the wind and the thunder speak. 

“Long way from that to blowing up hive ships on your own,” remarks Riley. 

It’s maybe not the most emotionally sensitive thing he could say, but Sam has to admit Riley’s staying on-mission. When Steve, Peggy, and Natasha don’t offer anything in response to this observation but expressions of faint, bitter triumph, Sam pushes further.

“So tell us about this Hydran ship. Natasha, you said you hacked it?”

Natasha glances at Steve, and he nods. “I did,” she confirms. “Just before I ran into you four. Looks like it used to be one of the Travelers’ ships. I pulled all the data and specs I could, shouldn’t take me too long to come up with some exploits.” 

Which means she’s probably the one who set up the Wraith trap on the Hydran space station AR-23 went to a couple months back. And that she’s from a pretty technologically advanced society, which is the kind of thing Atlantis finds real interesting. 

“Our original plan, before the storm became an issue, was for Natasha to sabotage the ship,” says Steve. “Then she’d mount a more obvious attack on the ship after that, flashy enough to draw some of the Hydrans back to it, which would leave Peggy and me to pick off the Hydrans in the village. We hoped that after we picked enough of them off, that it would drive them back to their ship and off the planet.”

“At which point the ship would…?” Sam prompted.

“Explode,” says Natasha.

“Nice,” say Barton and Bishop in unison, and Natasha almost smiles.

“And then we would either get the Thobirans deep into their cave system, or get them off-world, until the Wraith left,” finishes Peggy. “This storm complicates all of that, obviously. The Thobiran woman who escaped told us it was their storm season, but she didn’t tell us it would be quite this bad.”

Riley settles back on his elbows with a thoughtful expression.

“Three of you against three dozen Hydrans though...that seems plenty complicated already.”

Sam and the rest of his team murmur in agreement. Even accounting for the advantages of surprise and guerrilla warfare style tactics, it seems like long odds.

“It wouldn’t be our first time,” Steve says, and he says it so steadily that Sam’s inclined to believe him. 

There’s no arrogance in his tone, just certainty. And yeah, that could be the dangerous, give-no-fucks calm of a man who’s lost everything and doesn’t much mind losing more. Or it could just be the truth. Sam remembers the video AR-23 had pulled from that space station, the swift and efficient way these three had taken out all the Hydrans in it. Sam’s inclined to believe Steve. When he looks over at Riley, his mouth is tipped upwards into his why-the-hell-not smile. 

God, that smile’s gotten Sam in a lot of trouble over the years, from EXO-Falcon training to Afghanistan to a whole new fucking galaxy. The giddier, wilder version of that smile is what had sent them both to the SGC, and then on to Atlantis. That’s a pretty good track record, close calls aside. He smiles back at Riley.

“Well, alright then. Now you’ve got us too, and we’re pretty badass. So what’s the new plan?”

They take a couple hours to hash it out before turning in for what sleep they can get through the sound of the storm still raging outside. Sam’s on the middle watch, and takes up his station by the narrow cave entrance. He stays just far back enough behind the boulder Steve put there to avoid being soaked through by the rain, but close enough to see a sliver of the dark sky, which looks alarmingly hellish. The lightning that illuminates the clouds every few seconds isn’t the familiar searing white or blue of Earth or New Lantea; instead it’s tinted red, and each time the lightning flashes, it reveals dark and swirling clouds. There’s probably an interesting and exciting scientific reason for that; Sam just thinks it’s creepy as fuck.

Midway through his watch, his radio crackles on: Atlantis, dialing Thobira and trying to check in with AR-23. Sam gets nothing but static, but he diligently taps out a message in Morse code anyway, abbreviating as much as he can. All OK, weather conditions bad, Gate operation not advised. Hydrans present, possible Wraith. Extraction in progress, expect return in 36H if conditions improve. He repeats for as long as the connection stays open, and hopes at least some of it gets through.

The rest of his shift on watch is blessedly boring, and he lets himself drift into an almost meditative emptiness as he takes in the view outside the cave. When that threatens to send him to sleep, he goes over the plan to extract AR-5, mentally poking at its weak spots and making contingency plans. It feels like it’s just five minutes later that Riley crouches down beside him to start his own shift on watch. 

“Hey,” whispers Riley. “Storm letting up any?”

“Less rain, maybe,” Sam answers. “Got in touch with Atlantis, or at least I hope I did. The interference was pretty bad. If they radio in again, stick with Morse code.”

“Copy that,” says Riley, then he climbs up over the boulder to stick his head outside, like a dog sticking its head out of a moving car, the dumbfuck. Sam curses and hauls him back down by the back of his pants before he gets his apparently empty head struck by lightning. “What? It helped wake me up!” he says, wet-faced and grinning.

“One day, it’s gonna be acid rain and your face is gonna melt off, Ri-ri.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, go get some sleep, Sammy. Long day tomorrow. Literally, what the fuck is this planet’s day-night cycle.”

Sam leaves Riley to his shift on watch, and gets a couple hours of fitful sleep before they’re all awake again and peering out into the storm that’s barely abated. The lightning flashes high up above them, constant and malevolent and red, while the thunder drums in accompaniment. Every animal instinct in Sam says to take cover. Still, he keeps watching, tries to count the gap between lightning and thunder. It’s useless. They’re both so constant that they’re near simultaneous. One by one, they give up on storm-watching and return to the interior of the cave.

Steve paces as much as he can in the small space, and it’s oddly nerve-racking, like the rest of them are stuck in a restless lion’s zoo enclosure. 

“Storm or no storm, we’ve gotta make our move. We can’t afford to wait days for this storm to pass. It might even be better, the chaos can help cover our tracks.”

“You want to go out in that?” Sam shakes his head. “No way.”

“Days? Since when could this storm last for days?” demands Bishop.

“Since it’s Thobira’s storm season,” says Natasha. “Steve’s right, we might as well start picking off Hydrans. The weather gives us as much of an advantage as a disadvantage.”

Sam and Riley share an incredulous look. There’s crazy, and then there’s crazy. This is the latter.

“And if the Wraith come? Me and Riley can’t fly in this. We’ll all be sitting ducks for Wraith darts.”

Sam looks to Peggy. Maybe she has more sense than her teammates. She’s certainly looking more thoughtful.

“I’m not so sure Wraith darts could even fly in this, actually. Most of the lightning isn’t striking the ground, it’s all in the clouds. Their darts have enough organic components that multiple lightning strikes would be a problem for them.”

Sam sighs and considers it. Yeah, he’s feeling antsy, almost as antsy as Steve apparently is. He wants AR-5 back and the Thobirans free, and to get off this damn planet. But he doesn’t want to take unnecessary risks either, and going out in that storm feels like a wildly unnecessary risk. It’s an all or nothing kind of gambit, and Sam’s not really a gambling kind of man.

“If Atlantis got my message through the interference, I told them to give us 36 hours—32 now—to extract AR-5.”

“So we’re guaranteed back up by then. Why not just wait it out? The Hydrans probably aren’t hurting anyone, right?” asks Barton.

“No, they’ll save that for the Wraith,” admits Steve. “But if we wait too long and stay holed up in this cave, we risk being too late to save anyone. We should be proactive.”

“We should at least take care of the Hydrans’ ship. I have the exploits ready, I just need to go plant the triggers,” says Natasha.

Riley nods. “We should do some recon in the village too, maybe see if we can’t get in touch with AR-5, give them a heads up about our plan. Nomad’s right, Sam, we sit around waiting and we might lose any chance we have of getting everyone out alive. We can’t evacuate anyone in this storm, but maybe we can get a decent start on taking out the Hydrans.”

Sam surveys his team, and their new allies. Seven people to rescue an entire village: it’s a big ask. There’s a lot that could go wrong, no matter what they do. But Sam is Pararescue, and he always returns to its motto when he’s having doubts about how to handle a mission: these things we do, that others may live. Sam’s pulled people out of firefights, out of terrorist compounds, and on one memorable occasion, he’d flown right into a helicopter, while it was in a tailspin, to rescue its passengers. Is he really gonna let a little storm stop him now, when it’s a whole village on the line?

Hell no.

“Alright. Let’s do this. But some of us ought to stay here in case shit goes sideways.”

This is the plan, such as it is: Barton will go to the Hydrans’ ship with Natasha, while Sam joins Steve for some recon and possibly some mayhem, if they get the opportunity, at the Thobiran village. Peggy, Riley, and Bishop will stay at the cave to act as backup or as a fallback plan, whichever becomes necessary. The plan is simple, it’s clear, and it’ll almost certainly go immediately awry, but whatever. Sam’s good at improvising.

“Your team really don’t have to risk themselves, we can do this on our own,” offers Steve.

“Well, we’re here, and you don’t have to get by on your own,” says Sam, which makes Steve’s previously open expression shut down into clenched jaw blankness with alarming rapidity. Has Sam just made what every team euphemistically calls a diplomatic miscalculation or unknown cultural faux pas? He tries to walk it back. “Uh, it’s not an insult to your skills or anything, it’s just about safety in numbers, you know?”

Steve’s jaw keeps doing that clenching thing. Dude’s gonna end up with some cracked teeth at this rate. He only relaxes when Peggy reaches out to squeeze his arm. After some inscrutable eye contact between them, he sighs and his face finally relaxes a little, though the harsh blank tension is still there.

“We’re used to splitting up and working alone, is all,” he says, as if Sam will suddenly change his mind and let Steve go launch a one-man assault on dozens of Hydrans.

“Hmm, yeah, no. We basically consider the buddy system non-negotiable.”

Sam directs that at Natasha, who’s spent the last couple minutes sidling towards the cave exit as if she’ll be able to sneak out without them noticing.

“Fine,” says Natasha, and eyes Barton. “But if you can’t keep up, I’m not waiting for you.”

And with that she hefts up her pack full of what Sam presumes is spaceship sabotage equipment, and clambers up over the boulder at the cave’s entrance, and out of the cave. Barton rushes to catch up with her.

Sam leaves Riley and Bishop with orders to stay put and wait for backup from Atlantis if they don’t return in six hours. He doesn’t know what orders Steve leaves with Peggy, or if he leaves any at all. If they say anything to each other as Peggy helps him strap on his weapons and shield, Sam doesn’t hear it. Instead he sees them kiss, deep and familiar, before he looks away to give them their privacy. Maybe the Widow’s not so widowed after all.

“Do try to avoid doing anything too idiotic, darling. I will be very put out if I have to rescue you again,” Peggy tells Steve, and Sam turns back towards them to see Peggy pulling Steve’s hood up for him. Steve smiles down at her, love turning him young and sweet.

“Yes, ma’am,” he tells her with one last kiss, before he pulls on goggles and joins Sam by the cave’s entrance. “You ready?”

“Yup. You sure you want to go out in that storm with a giant piece of metal on your back?”

Sam’s leaving his wings here, both to spare himself the weight and to avoid getting turned into a Sam kabob if lightning strikes the wings. Surely Steve knows his metal frisbee of a shield is an even bigger risk.

But Steve just says, “Don’t worry, it’s not conductive,” and hefts himself easily over the boulder and into the storm.

“You better be real sure about that,” Sam mutters. He lowers his own goggles and follows Steve out into the howling storm.

It’s a miserable slog to the Thobiran village. The rain isn’t too heavy, but the still biting wind sends it lashing every which way, until Sam’s sure he’ll never be warm and dry again. The thunder and lightning are worryingly continuous too, unlike anything Sam’s ever experienced on Earth or any other planet until now. Peggy was right though; most of it seems to be cloud-to-cloud, and Sam has the faint impression that however bad it is down here, there’s a whole different, worse storm raging up higher in the atmosphere. Maybe it’s like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, an enormous and undying storm raging high up in the planet’s skies.

Storm or no storm, Steve sets a brisk pace for the village, even breaking into a run when the terrain is flat enough, apparently unfazed by the terrible conditions. It’s Sam who demands they stop and hunker down a few times to take shelter behind whatever windbreak is available when the gusts and stinging rain get especially strong. Sam’s not a small guy, but he’s feeling like a Weather Channel reporter in the middle of a hurricane out here, while Steve’s merrily skipping along like all he can feel is a stiff breeze.

“How are you not getting blown around by this?” demands Sam, and Steve’s eyes look huge behind his goggles as he blinks in surprise to see Sam staggering in the gale.

“Is the wind that strong?”

“Yeah! Yeah it is!”

“Oh,” says Steve, and shrugs. “Guess I just don’t feel it.”

Sam wants to be more annoyed by that, but the glint of discomfort in Steve’s eyes just makes him curious instead. What’s up with this guy that he can lift a boulder and get through a storm like this without so much as stumbling?

He turns that over in his head until they get to the village with just over five hours left on Sam’s mission clock. Plenty of time for a look around and a safe retreat back to base. Though maybe no time to indulge in some mayhem, thinks Sam as he surveys the village. Between Sam’s infrared goggles and his life signs detector, he determines that no one’s guarding the perimeter given the miserable weather. The Hydrans are tucked safe and dry in the village’s own buildings, probably terrorizing frightened Thobirans in their own homes and halls. Sam’s not seeing any way to get at any of the Hydrans without giving themselves away, and tells Steve so.

“So, what now?” asks Sam. “There’s no one to pick off, not from here. We can sneak around and look for any signs of AR-5 I guess—”

“We go knock on some doors,” says Steve, and strides into the village, bold as brass. Sam scrambles after him.

“What? No, what are you doing, are you crazy?”

Sam tries to tackle Steve, but Steve’s already halfway to the door of the nearest building and Sam’s too damn late to reach him. The crazy bastard does, in fact, knock on the door.

“Shelter, shelter, can you offer some shelter from the storm for a poor traveler?” calls out Steve, head tipped towards the door like he’s listening to the people inside.

Sam, of course, can’t hear shit what with the storm, but maybe Steve can from closer to the house. With his free hand, he’s already pulling his shield off his back, and the moment the door eases open a fraction, he surges forward, shield held in front of him. By the time Sam’s rushed in after him, gun up, Steve’s already inside, catching his shield on the rebound of a throw Sam hadn’t even seen him make. There are three dudes groaning on the floor, and a huddle of frightened Thobirans along the back of the house.

“Are you the Lanteans?” calls out one of the Thobirans. “Captain Woo said you would be coming.”

Steve disarms and secures the Hydrans while Sam approaches the Thobirans. “Yeah, hi, I’m Master Sergeant Wilson, this is—” Sam’s not introducing a guy as the Nomad, fuck that. “Steve. Are you all okay? Do you know where Captain Woo and the others are?”

The Thobiran who’d first spoken steps forward, a man with wide-set brown eyes and a mop of unruly brown hair.

“We are unhurt, but the Hydrans, they have summoned the Wraith—”

“We know, we’ll handle that. Not even Wraith darts are making it through this storm though, so let’s deal with the Hydrans first, alright? What’s your name?”

“Aarek. Your people, the Hydrans have two of the them under close guard, but the others had time to disguise themselves among our people. They are all well, as far as I am aware. Roughed up a little, perhaps, but that is all.”

Sam and Steve get all the intel they can out of the frightened Thobirans, who confirm much of what their own recon has already shown: that there are some three dozen Hydrans in the village, that the Hydrans haven’t killed anyone, but that they have called the Wraith, and that the storm scrambles communication signals.

“You get storms like this often here?” asks Steve.

Aarek nods. “Yes, during the season of the winds, we have many small storms. But this is the Great Storm. It passes twice every turning of the year. We told your people of it, Sergeant Wilson, but they believed they would complete their work and leave before it arrived.”

Shit. They would have too; AR-5 had been due back the day after they missed their first check-in. If all had gone well, they’d have beat the storm and been back in Atlantis.

“If it comes every year, how long does it last? Does the storm have an eye, a period of calm?” asks Sam.

“About three days. And no, there is no calm. It rages the full three days. The rain will lessen, but the winds and lightning will only grow stronger until it passes.”

“Well, that’s not good,” says Steve.

“On the plus side, no Wraith darts until it passes. If this storm is what I think it is, no one’s making it past the upper atmosphere much less flying in this.”

Because a storm that passes like clockwork once a year? That sounds an awful lot like the enormous storm that is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, and that thing’s huge and turbulent, centuries old. The scientists back on Atlantis would probably be real interested in how a storm like that could exist on a planet like this. Sam’s just interested in how it impacts his mission.

“Are Sergeant Wilson’s people nearby, do you know?”

“The disguised ones are just three houses over. The others are under guard elsewhere, I do not know where,” says Aarek.

“Alright, what I’m thinking is: we tell AR-5 what’s up, then we had back for the cave before the storm gets even worse. We make a full assault as soon as it clears tomorrow. That’ll be the third day, storm should pass by then, and we’ll have backup from Atlantis on the way.”

Steve frowns. “We’re here now, though, and we still have the element of surprise. If we go building to building, get your people free and armed, we could take care of the Hydrans now, we could finish this.”

And people tell Sam his team’s plans are crazy. 

“I don’t know what superhuman shit you have going on, but I really doubt me and my people could do that without significant casualties. And me alone?” Sam shakes his head. “I’m good, Steve, but I’m not that good. We’d still be fighting the weather on top of fighting the Hydrans, without backup, and without a nearby fallback position. You and the Widows might be vigilante commandos or whatever, but my team? We’re search and rescue. Our priority is the safety of all these people, not revenge.”

Steve’s jaw works, his whole face settling into craggy and stubborn lines. “This isn’t just about revenge for me,” he says in a forbiddingly dark voice. Sam’s about to call bullshit on that, in a diplomatic way of course, but before he can, Steve drops some of the doom and gloom. “What’s your plan then?”

Sam swallows down his sigh of relief. Steve’s not past reason then. “We can keep these three in here tied up and gagged and we’ll still have the element of surprise when we come back. Even if we did take all the Hydrans out on our own, we’d still have the evac to deal with. We’ve gotta wait out the storm, man. When the storm passes, or lightens up, then we can go back to the original plan.”

Sam really hopes Steve sees the sense in this, because god knows Sam’s unlikely to be able to stop this possibly super-powered guy if he decides he does want to make a one-man raid and rescue attempt. Thankfully, Steve nods, and even gives Sam a wry, apologetic grimace.

“Patience isn’t my strong suit, can you tell? Alright. Let’s find your people, then head back.” Steve turns to the Thobirans, who have been watching and listening anxiously. “We will come back for all of you, okay? That’s a promise. The Hydrans and the Wraith will not have you.”

They leave the Thobirans with instructions to sit tight and wait for the storm to pass, and to spread the word to be prepared for an evacuation if they can. Before they leave, they make sure the Hydrans are fully secured, bound and gagged. Aarek assures them the Thobirans will be able to keep the other Hydrans from realizing what’s happened.

“Their communications devices do not work in this storm, and it is doubtful they will risk the storm outside. It frightens them. We will keep them hidden here until your return.” 

To Sam’s relief, Steve’s not unduly harsh with the Hydrans as he secures them. When Steve spots Sam watching him, he raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t worry, I’m not killing defenseless prisoners.” 

“Good. I want to take at least some of them back to Atlantis. General Sheppard’s gonna have questions for them.”

Steve pulls the same schtick to get inside the building that’s housing most of AR-5, and it works just as well as the first time. Better, even. Steve is really, scary fast. Sam thought it was flashes of lightning fucking with his vision at first, but no, Steve really does take out the Hydrans between one blink and the next. It’s downright superhuman. There are only two Hydrans on guard in this house, and before Sam can even raise his gun, Steve has them on the ground with a toss of his shield and a punch. 

What the fuck, thinks Sam. He has really got to ask Steve how the hell he does that.

Once the Hydrans are down, Lieutenant Paxton reveals himself from behind a huddle of Thobirans. He’s dressed in the same drapey robes as they are, and behind him are AR-5’s two geologist charges, wide-eyed and relieved, and Sam’s happy to see, unharmed.

“Everyone okay, anyone need medical attention?” asks Sam.

“We’re good, nothing worse than some bruises,” says Paxton and gives Sam a quick, backslapping hug. “Sure am glad to see you sir. I was getting pretty close to trying some commando shit and hoping for the best.”

Sam claps him on the shoulder. “No need. Just hang tight. Keep your nerds safe—” Said nerds object, but Sam ignores them. “And wait for the storm to pass. We’ll get the real show on the road then, alright?”

“Yes sir.”   

Once the two Hydrans are secured, Steve and Sam head back out into the storm. The wind batters at Sam with practically physical force, and it’s a struggle to stay on his feet. He really hopes Riley and Natasha got back to the cave before the wind got this bad.

“Hold on to me!” shouts Steve, and Sam does him one better. He pulls out a length of bungee cord  from one of his pockets and clips himself to the shield harness on Steve’s back. 

They put their heads down against the wild wind, and stagger back towards the cave. Steve’s bulk acts as just enough of a windbreak to keep Sam on his feet, but the journey is still brutal. It feels like it takes every single one of his muscles just to stay upright, much less to move forward, and the world narrows to the wind and his labored steps. One more step, and another, and another, each one a victory. By the end, Steve’s practically pulling Sam along, and when they finally reach the cave nearly two hours later, they both practically fall inside it. The comparative silence of the cave is almost numbing in its suddenness.

“You two okay?” asks Barton as he, Bishop, and Peggy help them both into the cave’s interior. Sam needs the help; the muscles of his legs are as weak and wobbly as if he’s just run two marathons.

He groans and wrestles his goggles off. “You’re my favorite,” he tells Bishop when she heaves his pack off for him, and she grins and sticks her tongue out at Barton. “And yeah, we’re okay. Just beaten up by that storm, holy shit. Are Riley and Natasha back?” 

“Here,” says Riley, and when Sam looks, he’s sprawled on his bedroll, raising one arm. “We made it, barely.”

There are red lines on his face from where his goggles had dug into his skin, and his hair’s still plastered to his head from the rain, so Sam figures he hasn’t been back long. He looks about as exhausted as Sam feels, but at least he’s uninjured. Natasha seems a little better off than Riley, since she’s at least sitting up, even if she is wrapped up tight in one of the shiny emergency blankets.    

“We planted the triggers, left a few other nasty surprises,” she says. “They’re ready to be triggered as soon as this storm’s over.”

“And you two, how did your mission go?” asks Peggy. 

She’s pulled a towel or cloth from somewhere and she’s vigorously drying Steve’s hair, which Steve suffers with an expression somewhere between pleased and embarrassed. He looks like nothing so much as a sopping wet golden retriever, and about as dangerous, even though Sam knows better. 

“Fine,” Steve answers, and when Peggy gives him a narrow-eyed look, he adds, “Really, it was fine, I’m fine, just tired. It was pretty rough going in that storm.” 

Peggy shifts her sharp-eyed stare to Sam, and he has to resist the impulse to come to attention. “Sergeant Wilson, is that right?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am. No problems, no injuries.” 

Sam kind of wonders what Peggy would make of Steve’s let’s launch a two-man assault and take out all the Hydrans, since we’re already here plan, but narcing on the guy probably isn’t the best way to build trust. Steve shoots Sam a grateful look, and pulls Peggy into a loose embrace.

“You really don’t have to worry so much anymore, Peggy. I’m not that small guy you first met. I’m a lot tougher now.”

Peggy snorts. “You were plenty tough then, too,” she says, then lowers her voice. Sam busies himself with stripping off some of his wet gear, while still taking care to keep half an ear on their conversation. “Gift of the Ancestors or not, Steve, I still worry. I don’t want to lose you too, especially not to your own idiocy.”

“You won’t. I promise.”

Gift of the Ancestors, huh? He’s not the only one that noticed that comment; Bishop had evidently been shamelessly eavesdropping too, because she waggles her dark eyebrows meaningfully at Sam. He widens his eyes in a silent I know! Sam has really got to get these three to Atlantis for a debrief.

Once everyone’s been updated on the status of their mission and the plan for tomorrow, there’s not much to do but eat, rest up, and wait. And, apparently, pump each other for intel, like they’re playing round after round of truth or dare, and picking truth every time. 

They’re all tucked up close together in the confines of the cave, either sprawled out in the general vicinity of their bedrolls (Riley and Barton) or curled up near each other for the body heat (everyone else). It’s cozy enough, and Sam’s exhausted enough, that he has to struggle not to fall asleep. Focus, Wilson. This is part of the mission too. 

“Your people really live in the City of the Ancestors?” asks Natasha in a politely skeptical tone.

He thinks she must be expecting more of a run around, because she blinks in surprise when Sam says, “Yup, we sure do! We’d love it if you came to visit.”

Steve shares a surprised and dubious look with Peggy, then raises an eyebrow. “We didn’t get the impression your people welcomed strangers.”

“Aww, we’re not strangers now, are we? Not after you invited us into your nice cave,” says Barton. “Let us return the favor. I mean, by inviting you to our super cool city, not our cave. Not that this cave isn’t cool! It’s definitely a lifesaver. It’s just that Atlantis is—”

Bishop reaches over and puts her hand over Barton’s mouth, and Barton sighs. “Sorry, I’ll shut up now,” he says, muffled, from behind her hand.

Sam nudges Riley with his knee. It’s time to extend an actual invitation to Atlantis to these three, but they’ve got to keep a light touch with it.

“Seriously though. You’re welcome to come back to Atlantis with us, we’re not, like, gonna ditch you after you’ve helped us out so much on this op.”

“And like I said the other day, we’d appreciate getting more intel on these Hydrans. Our people knew about the Wraith worshippers kicking around, but we’d never really heard of any as organized as the Hydrans. You’d be doing us a hell of a favor if you came with us to Atlantis and briefed our leaders.” 

Shit, he hopes he’s not pushing too hard. Steve, Peggy, and Natasha are listening politely enough, but Sam can’t quite get a good read on them. Honestly, they might just be humoring them. If they are, Peggy’s at least being nice about it. She smiles at Sam and Riley with what Sam thinks is genuine warmth. 

“That’s very kind of you, perhaps we will. I understand that your people are not originally from the City of the Ancestors, is that right?”

“Nah, we’re from Earth, different galaxy,” says Riley, and they talk in generalities about that for a few minutes, enough that Steve and Peggy becoming willing to open up and offer some information of their own about their culled planet of Brook Lynn. 

“Funny coincidence, Earth has a Brooklyn too!” says Barton, then he frowns. “Or maybe it’s not a coincidence. Maybe it’s like the thing with Egypt and the Go’auld. Were a bunch of people from Brooklyn abducted by aliens? Manhattan, the Bronx, any of that ring a bell? Are they your neighbors? Do you have legends of a land called Man-hatt-an—”

Bishop puts her hand over Barton’s mouth again.

“No,” says Steve, almost smiling. “No legends like that. Brook Lynn was just—our home. The City was bigger than most, I guess, and not really hidden, but not easy to get to either.” 

“Far from the Stargate,” adds Peggy quietly. “That helped keep us safe from the Wraith for a few generations. There were the raptor birds, of course, but better them than the Wraith. And then the Hydrans came, in a spaceship. We thought they just needed help, repairs, so our people took them in, offered them hospitality, but then—you can guess what happened then.”

Yeah. It’s pretty clear what must have happened. Something like what’s happening to the Thobirans right now, probably.

Steve and Peggy fall quiet then, understandably enough, so Sam turns to Natasha hoping for a distracting change of subject. She’s stayed mostly silent and watchful this entire time, still wrapped up in her emergency blanket, her eyes heavy-lidded like she’s sleepy. Sam’s pretty sure that’s an act. The few questions she’d asked them had been as sharp and pointed as a knife, the kind that went in so fast and clean, you didn’t feel the bite until too late. Sam turns to her with a determinedly friendly smile.

“You never said what planet you’re from, Natasha.” 

Natasha’s unmoved. Her eyes narrow to slits and she burrows deeper into her blanket as if she’s about to go to sleep right then and there. 

“No, I didn’t,” she says, and does not volunteer any further information.

Well alright then. Fair enough. In all likelihood, it’s not as if any of them would even know what the hell planet she was talking about if she did tell them. And there’s every chance her planet is gone, one way or another. Pegasus is horrifying like that. Still, Sam’s just trying to make conversation here. He used to think he was great at small talk, but apparently he should have appended an asterisk to that particular skill: great at small talk* (skill only valid on Earth).

He communicates to Bishop through a series of eyebrow waggles that he’s tapping out and it’s her turn to attempt to make this whole situation less awkward, which is his prerogative as team leader dammit. Bishop’s mouth thins into a disapproving straight line, but she squares her shoulders like a champ and wades in.

“So what’s the deal with the whole ‘Nomad and the Widows’ mythos?” she asks. “Because let me tell you, Barton and me have been trying to make ‘the Falcons and Hawks’ happen for us, and no one is picking up what we’re putting down. You’ve gotta share your Pegasus Galaxy branding tips with the rest of us.”

“No one’s picking up ‘the Falcons and Hawks’ because it’s dumb, Bishop,” says Riley.

“It’s not dumb!” protests Barton. “You two are from the Falcon program, Katie and me are Hawkeyes, it just makes sense!”

Steve watches this exchange with a slight curve of his lips that suggests he finds it more amusing than annoying, but when he speaks, there’s an undercurrent of bitterness in his voice.

“I go from planet to planet, don’t stay in one place. Nomad seems pretty self-explanatory to me.”

Natasha’s apparently willing to answer this question unlike the others. She gestures towards her hair, an eye-catching shade of red even in the dim light of the cave.

“I cover my hair, usually. With a veil, or a hood. That’s a sign of mourning on a lot of planets, so.” Natasha shrugs. “I get called Widow a lot.”

Though she’s answered one question, Sam can’t help but notice that Natasha hasn’t said one way or another whether she actually is a widow or not. He’s honestly getting more and more impressed with how damn cagey she is.

When they look to Peggy for her explanation, she bares her teeth at them in an expression too mirthless to be called a smile. “I’m called Widow by some because I am a widow.” She lifts her left hand, which is bare of any rings or bracelets, unlike her right. “Once over, but. Still a widow.”

“Oh. Um, I’m sorry,” says Bishop.

“Once over?” asks Barton, and Bishop elbows him. “What? I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean!”

Steve takes Peggy’s hand, and her expression softens. “It’s alright. I know every planet’s ways are different. On ours, marriage is between three people. Steve and I are married, but—we’re widowed once over.” Steve and Peggy lift their linked hands, the gesture showing Steve’s own bare right wrist. Like Peggy, his other wrist is circled by a braided bracelet. “We lost our third in the culling of our planet.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss. For your losses,” says Sam inadequately.

“Maybe people ought to just call us the Three Widows,” is all Steve says, with a little smile that might have passed for wry if not for how damned grim it was. He brings Peggy’s hand up to press a kiss to her knuckles. “I’m just grateful we still have each other.”

Peggy smiles back at Steve, and for a moment, something tender and sharp seems to pass between them. The movement of their free hands catches Sam’s attention for a fleeting second, that part of him that’s always alert to the possibility of a weapon being pulled startling; but no, there are no sudden knives or guns. There’s just Peggy’s fingers twitching, and Steve’s free hand clenching into a fist. The negative space of their lost spouse. In that one abortive movement, Sam feels the echo of their grief, as if he’s heard the faint boom of a very distant explosion. Or maybe that’s just the ceaseless thunder.

Riley, never comfortable with silence, makes an attempt to change the subject via cultural exchange. 

“Three people in a marriage, huh? Our people generally stick with two.”

Sam stares at Riley and telepathically wills him not to make any goddamned insensitive comments about Steve and Peggy’s marriage being ‘normal’ by that metric. Sorry about your dead spouse but we think one husband and/or wife is enough for anyone, am I right? Jesus, Sam would like to get these three to Atlantis for a mutually beneficial debrief, not be ditched for being the most insensitive aliens in the whole damn galaxy. Lanteans have a weird enough galactic rep as it is.

Thankfully, Riley doesn’t say anything further, and Steve and Peggy just get the polite look on their faces that every galactic traveller gets used to: the ‘what a quaint and horrifying custom’ look, helpful for everything from ‘you do what now with gourds’ to ‘that is certainly a funerary practice!’ It’s always humbling to realize that they’re all just about equal recipients and bearers of that particular expression out here in the Pegasus Galaxy.

“Of course, Atlantis respects all cultural practices between consenting adults,” Sam says awkwardly, and Bishop looks right at him like he’s the goddamn camera in The Office instead of her superior officer. He ignores her and does his best to look welcoming and understanding of their new alien friends.

It works at least a little, because Peggy offers, “Head, heart, and hands,” apparently not taking Riley’s comment amiss and choosing to engage in some cultural exchange of her own. The phrase has the cadence and rhythm of ritual to it, like ’til death do us part.’ “That’s why a marriage was between three, with our people.”

Steve’s looking down at his and Peggy’s bare wrists, both of them still gripping each other’s hands. “He was our heart,” he says, in a quiet and ragged voice that makes Sam’s throat tighten in sympathy. 

“Though he always said he didn’t know why, since he was the only one of us with any sense, and how clearly he ought to have been the head…” Peggy’s face goes soft with the memory for a fleeting moment, before her expression fractures and turns stern again, her jaw clenching. “But he was our heart.”

There’s no answer to that but the furious and mournful roar of the wind outside. A prayer takes shape in Sam’s mind, reflexive and vague, even though he’s not much of a believer anymore. He hopes Brook Lynn’s dead have found a peace that clearly hasn’t reached these two yet.

By the time the storm has finally lessened in intensity, it’s still full dark and they have 18 hours left until potential backup arrives from Atlantis. Sam’s not about to wait, not when daylight and clearer skies mean that the tied up Hydrans in the village could be discovered, or that the Wraith could come at any moment. It’s time to put their plan in motion while they still have some element of surprise.

“Bishop, are comms back up yet?” asks Sam.

“Eh, in and out, sir. Same kind of interference we had before the storm.”

“Alright, we’ll do without. If Atlantis radios, do your best to give them a sitrep. Natasha, can you trigger the traps you set up on the Hydran ship yet?”

Natasha frowns down at a small, tablet-like device. “I’m hitting the same interference. Looks like I’ll have to get closer to the ship.”

“Take Barton with you. Trigger your traps, make some noise, then get back to the village. Everyone else know what you’re doing?” A chorus of yes and yes sir. Sam looks at Steve and Peggy. Any softness he’d seen in them last night is gone now. Only deadly, single-minded focus remains. Sam’s not entirely sure that’s a good thing. “I have to know, what are your rules of engagement here?” he asks them.

Steve’s brow furrows in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, me and my people, we’re not out here for revenge, or even for justice. That’s not our job. We’re here to save some innocent people. That’s our one priority. Is it yours? Or is this just about killing Hydrans for you?”

Peggy doesn’t seem visibly offended by the question, but Steve kind of does, judging by the jaw clenching happening. Dude’s gonna crack a tooth he does so much manly, repressing jaw clenching.

“I told you before, this isn’t just about revenge for me, for us. Saving the Thobirans is our priority too. We can leave the Hydrans for the Wraith, if they come.”

Peggy smiles, a wolfish thing. “The Wraith aren’t picky. When their promised meal isn’t available, they’ll feed on the Hydrans if that’s who they find when they arrive.”

“Poetic justice, huh?” says Riley, and raises his eyebrows at Sam. “I’m not opposed.”

Sam studies Steve and Peggy for just a little longer, looking for any sign of a tell or a lie; the last thing he needs on this mission is for a couple of wild cards to go off half-cocked on a quest for vengeance. If they’re lying though, Sam can’t tell. He’ll just have to trust them.

“Yeah, okay, Wraith food it is, it’s only fair. But if any of you can take a Hydran or two prisoner, I’m sure General Sheppard would appreciate the chance to ask them some questions. The priority is getting AR-5 out and getting the Thobirans evacuated though. Nothing crazy, no heroics: just get everyone out of here before the Wraith show. Got it?” Another chorus of agreement. “Alright. Let’s move out.”

Natasha and Barton head for the Hydran ship, and the rest of them march double-time towards the village. The rain is now just a stinging drizzle, and while the wind is still whipping around with force, it’s no longer a battle to stay upright in it. Sam’s glad of the still-flashing lightning at least; without it, the night’s darkness would be total. As it is, the lightning gives the still-cloudy sky a sullen red glow that provides enough light to see by, even if it is incredibly ominous. He tries not take it as an omen for how the rest of the mission will go.

The jogging pace Sam and Riley are setting is as fast as Sam’s willing to go in the conditions, but Steve’s obviously chafing at it, running ahead every so often then falling back, like an energetic dog trying to keep pace with its slower humans.

“Is he always like this?” Sam asks Peggy. She sighs with exaggerated annoyance, but she’s still smiling at her husband.

“This particular habit is somewhat new, actually. But yes, he’s never been all that patient.”

“You’re none too patient either,” retorts Steve as he jogs back towards them with a good-natured roll of his eyes, and for a moment it seems like Steve and Peggy will trip merrily into some comfortable, old marrieds bickering.

Instead, there’s a palpable stutter and gap in the conversation, as both of them almost say something, before pain spasms across their faces and they fall silent, everything about them turning hard and predatory again. Their empty space making itself known, so palpable and jagged it makes even Sam hurt. He has some directionless urge to fix it, the emotional equivalent of show me where it hurts, where’s the injury, let me—but he’s way too late for that here. This is no bleeding wound; it’s just the scarred over absence that’s left. The mood turns grim, heavy, like the sky’s weighing down on them.

Sam turns his head to look at Riley, and finds Riley already looking at him. Sam can read him, easy, same as always, because Riley’s a language he learned real quick: this is shit fucking sad, Sammy, but god, I’m glad it isn’t us. It better not ever be us.

It almost had been, once. And yeah, losing a wingman’s not exactly the same thing as losing a spouse. Sam can imagine it all too well though, the same scarred absence, the same unbalanced orbit, thrown adrift without a pair’s center of gravity.

It won’t, Sam tells Riley, with a look and a shoulder bump. You’re stuck with me.  

The village is dark and quiet when they arrive. Sam takes point and knocks quietly on the door of the house where they’d last seen Paxton, tapping in the shave and a haircut, two bits rhythm, then he waits, gun at the ready. After half a minute that feels like longer, Paxton opens the door.

“Is it go time?” he whispers.

“You know it. Any trouble?” asks Sam, and Paxton shakes his head.

“All quiet, apart from this fucking storm that is. We spread the word as much as we could, the Thobirans know to get out of the way and take cover when you go in.”

“Good. Stay here for now, I’m gonna send people your way. Be ready for an evac, alright? I want AR-5 to get the Thobirans to the stargate, we’ll cover the evacuation.”

Paxton nods, and Sam signals for his team to follow him. They creep silently towards the building where the other members of AR-5 are being held, and this time, Steve’s the one to knock on the door. He copies Sam’s knock, which is hopefully enough warning for AR-5, because about two seconds later, Steve kicks the door open and charges in, and the rest of them follow.

Sam hopes to god that everyone who’s not taking cover in here is a Hydran, because Steve and Peggy explode into violence against everyone else. Sam sees the flash of the shield flying in the corner of his eye, then he and Riley are too busy to spare any attention to Steve and Peggy.

The first moment of a fight is always when Sam is most acutely aware: fight or flight is a thing for a reason. There’s always that fraction of a second when Sam feels like it could go either way. Half a heartbeat of a moment when the adrenaline rushing through him might push and pull him into flight, into running.

It never really does. Sam loves flying, real flight, but when it’s lives on the line? Sam picks fight, every time.

The four Hydrans who scramble to mount an attack outnumber Sam and Riley, but it doesn’t matter. Sam and Riley still have the advantage of surprise. A quick spray of shots, center mass, and Sam takes out two Hydrans before they can even raise their weapons. Beside him, Riley dodges the blue flash of some kind of energy weapon or stunner. Two precise shots and one arrow later, the other two Hydrans go down. The whole thing is over in minutes. Groans and whimpers fill the air, a counterpoint to the heavy pounding of Sam’s heart. One Hydran surges back up, but before Sam or Riley can even get their guns back up, an arrow thunks into his chest, and he falls back.

Sam does a rapid headcount: Steve and Peggy, their color high but otherwise unruffled and uninjured; him and Riley, okay, of course; Bishop, by the door with an arrow nocked, ready to catch anyone trying to make a break for it; the rest of AR-5 and half a dozen other hostages, battered and bound along the building’s back wall; and eight Hydrans, on the ground in various states of distress. A good start. Here’s to hoping it’ll be this easy to take out the rest of the Hydrans too.

Sam and Riley approach the bound captives.

“Hey Captain Woo, how’re you doing?” asks Riley.

Captain Woo beams at them, relief writ large across his friendly face. His hands are chained up, and he’s got a hell of a shiner, but he looks alright apart from that, and Lieutenant Sanchez looks to be in about the same shape as Woo. Sam and Riley exchange relieved grins; at least this isn’t the kind of bad mission where they arrive too late to help anyone. Now to get everyone off Thobira safe and sound.

“Nicely done!” says Woo. “Now, what’s the plan? Who are these two? Also, can someone get me out of these chains, I think that guy over there has the key...”

“You remember those stories we’ve been hearing about the Nomad and the Widows?” Woo and Sanchez nod. “Yeah, meet the Nomad and one of the Widows.”

There’s a brief round of polite introductions and providing of sitreps while Sam and Riley rummage around the Hydrans’ pockets in search of any keys that could unlock the chains holding the hostages. Worst comes to worst, they can probably rig something up to melt the lengths of chain and give them some freedom of movement...

While Sam and Riley are still patting down Hydrans, Steve goes over to Woo.

“Hold out your arms, please, and put the chain on the floor. I’m going to use my shield to break the chain, alright? Turn your head away.” 

Woo just looks at Sam. This guy legit? Sam nods. Steve lifts up the shield then brings its edge down on the length of chain stretched on the floor. With a sound somewhere between a bell being struck and a hammer hitting an anvil, the chain shatters apart.

“The key would suffice, dear,” notes Peggy. Her arms are crossed, and she’s raising an eyebrow at her husband.

“This is faster,” says Steve, and moves down the line of captives, breaking chains as he goes.

Riley gives up on frisking dudes in search of the key. “Yeah, okay, sure. We’ll get the manacles off all of you on Atlantis, okay?”

Woo and Sanchez stand up to stretch, both of them moving in that ginger way that people do when they’ve stiffened up.

“So what’s the plan from here, Sergeant Wilson?” asks Woo. “Have you found Paxton and the others already?”

“Yeah, they’re fine, waiting for you two. As for the plan, I need AR-5 to direct the evacuation and get all the Thobirans to the gate. Start sending people towards the gate as soon as you rendezvous with the rest of your team, and cover their retreat. We’ll handle the Hydrans and getting the rest of the Thobirans free. That sound good to you, sir?”

Woo technically outranks him, being a commissioned officer and all, and he could theoretically decide this plan is bullshit and that he’d rather ditch the Thobirans and get the hell out of Dodge. Sam and Riley could find a way to make it work anyway, but Sam would really rather not have to. Thankfully, Woo defers to Sam with a brisk nod.

“Sounds good. Any chance of backup on the way?”

“Comms still aren’t working reliably, so can’t be sure. Hopefully we’ve got backup coming from Atlantis in 16 hours if we can’t get off-world. If nothing else goes horribly wrong though, we should be back on Atlantis way before then, or at least off Thobira. We can’t know when the Wraith will get here.”

Woo nods as he and Sanchez grab the Hydrans’ discarded weapons. “Got it. We’ll keep everyone moving fast, get them to the Alpha Site ASAP.” He looks to Steve and Peggy. “I hope you and your colleagues will be joining us? Atlantis would sure appreciate a full briefing on Hydrans and how they’re helping the Wraith.”

“We will. The more people who know to look out for Hydrans, the better,” says Peggy.

With that settled, Woo and Sanchez shepherd the Thobirans outside, and Sam turns back to his team.

“Everyone ready for round two? Let’s go.”

The Hydrans are spread thinly across the rest of the village, guarding buildings of scared Thobirans in ones and twos. They clear five buildings with no trouble before the shit hits the fan. The remaining two dozen or so Hydrans finally catch on that they’re under attack on two fronts: in the village, and on their ship. They swarm out of the village, and only three of them peel away at a run towards their ship, passing Natasha and Barton on the way. The remaining Hydrans are shouting some nonsense about the natural order and cleansing cullings, blah blah blah; Sam doesn’t give a shit. All zealotry is basically interchangeable. He’s more interested in covering the Thobirans’ retreat, and in what Natasha and Barton have to report.

He lays down a spray of suppressive fire and dodges some weird energy blasts from the Hydrans. “Barton, report! Did you two get to the ship?”

“Good news, bad news! The ship’s taken care of, but—”

“The Wraith are almost here, according to the ship’s scanners,” says Natasha. “We need to get off Thobira now!”

Sam looks at the crowd of Thobirans emerging from their homes, way too close to the fight for Sam’s peace of mind. This could too easily turn into a massacre, and that’s without the Wraith involved. 

Steve throws his shield in a wide arc that knocks down four Hydrans in one go. “I’ll draw the Hydrans away from the Thobirans! Everyone else, focus on getting the Thobirans out!”

“Just you?” demands Sam. “Hell no. Riley, time for an aerial assault, we’ll herd the Hydrans away from the Thobirans and be ready for the Wraith darts when they come. Barton, Bishop, cover the retreat!” 

For a brief second, Sam thinks he sees wonder on Steve’s face as Sam’s wings fold out of his EXO-Falcon pack, but then he engages the jets and he’s too busy flying and fighting to spare a thought for anything else.

Sam and Riley swoop and dive above the Hydrans, keeping them away from the escaping Thobirans. The wings aren’t exactly meant to facilitate offensive maneuvers like this; for one thing, Sam’s fully aware that they’re fully exposed up here, with no cover and no aircraft to protect them. Sam and Riley have trained for this though, and they twist and roll out of the way of the Hydrans’ fire, shooting back at them from above, or even swooping down close to kick and divebomb. 

They lose themselves in the hunter’s rhythm of it, attacking and harrying and dodging, until the Thobirans are clear, and then the call goes out, echoed by everyone: “Wraith incoming!”

“Run for the gate!” Sam shouts. “Move move move!”

Chaos erupts, Thobirans screaming and running, Hydrans shouting and trying to stop the Thobirans. That, Sam thinks grimly, is gonna have to be a problem for the people on the ground. Because he and Riley are about to do something real dumb. The kind of transcendently dumb, crazy plan that if it doesn’t succeed, will have everyone shaking their heads at their funerals, whispering about so brave, but honestly, they knew that was never going to work, right? Two guys with wings against six Wraith darts? What a waste. But if it does succeed...well, he and Riley will probably never have to barter anything for booze ever again. They’ll be goddamn legends. And, most importantly of all, all their charges will escape from the Wraith.

Step one of the plan: they put on a burst of speed and fly straight towards the darts, shooting as they go. 

There are only six darts; a small food run for the Wraith, but Sam and Riley are going head to head with them with nothing to shield them from energy weapons that can take out Puddle Jumpers. Yeah, Sam’s aware of how crazy this is. Sam is fully, painfully, thrillingly aware. The literal only way this is gonna work is if the Wraith are entirely unprepared for it, and so far, it seems like they are. The darts are firing on them like they’re just small Puddle Jumpers and that’s exactly what Sam and Riley had hoped for. Because they’re not Puddle Jumpers, they’re Falcons, light and agile in ways no spaceship in atmosphere can be.

He can do this. They can do this. He’s an EXO-Falcon, Ryan Riley is his wingman, and they can both do this. Sam’s head goes light and clean, clear, like the dogfight in front of him is a fire that burns out everything else. 

Up, down, left, right, left, down—he and Riley dodge pulse after pulse of the darts’ energy weapons, zigging and zagging to make themselves tough targets. A couple of the blasts get close enough for Sam to feel their searing heat, and he’s sure his wings are getting scorched. They’re holding up though, and Sam’s body is reacting practically before his mind even registers it, the wings responding like they’re part of his body too. Sam would almost call it fun if it weren’t a distressingly real life version of Galaga, one where he’s only got one life, not three. The first points go to Sam and Riley, as their heavy fire brings down one dart. Through the rush of wind in his ears, he thinks he hears Riley whoop in triumph. 

When he dips down low to avoid more energy blasts, Sam sees another dart crash in his peripheral vision—Barton or Bishop’s exploding arrows, maybe—and then it’s time for him and Riley to implement the next part of their crazy plan, the part that might just end up with them getting fried by energy weapons. 

Sam pulls back up so he’s nearly level with the darts again, and so does Riley. The remaining four Wraith darts stay on course. They aren’t backing out of this game of chicken, they’re still headed straight for Sam and Riley, and they’re still shooting. Good.

At the last possible moment before he and Riley get incinerated by the energy weapons, they pull up, over the darts, and drop a couple explosive presents on top of them. The shockwave of the grenades exploding sends Sam and Riley tumbling in the air, and for long, dizzying moments, Sam’s not sure which way is up and which is down. When he steadies, he sees the wreckage of two darts on the ground, and the remaining two darts are peeling away. Their food just became way too much trouble, apparently.

But Riley, where’s Riley, fuck Sam wishes their comms were back up, did Riley go down, did one of the darts get him with a transport beam—

“Woooooooooo, holy shit!!!” shouts Riley as he zooms past Sam. “Did you fucking see that?!” he demands, as he loops back around, grinning wildly.

“Yeah Riley, I was there!”

“It worked! I told you it would, didn’t I tell you!”

Sam laughs, a bubble of giddy hysteria and triumph rising up inside him. He doesn’t have time to indulge it just yet: they’ve still got people to help. He banks back towards the crowd of Thobirans, all of them running in orderly enough fashion for the gate. He spots Steve directing the flow of people, his shield up as if to ward off potential attacks from the Hydrans.

“Yeah, yeah, come on, we gotta get off this planet before the Wraith come back.”

They run triage at the Alpha site, and call Atlantis with the good news, and from there Sam’s happy to make a quick report and hand over the reins to a superior officer. Someone else can handle getting the Thobirans settled in some temporary housing while Thobira’s cleared as safe. Sam’s busy with the empty, jittering aftermath of an adrenaline crash. He wants a hot shower and a hot meal, followed by at least a day’s worth of sleep.

Not yet though. He’s still got people to check on. His team’s fine, nothing a few bandages and ice packs won’t cure, and Riley’s still riding the high of achieving the near impossible—Sam figures he’s got about two hours before he just falls asleep on the nearest available flat surface—so Sam surveys the Alpha site for their new friends the Nomad and the Widows.

He spots them over by the edge of the forest, well away from the main crowd of people, sitting with their backs up against the tall trees that loom over the tents of the Alpha site. Sam heads over towards them in a sort of shuffling jog that he hopes looks relaxed instead of pained. He doesn’t sit; he doesn’t think he’d be able to get back up again if he did. Flying’s way more of a core workout than most people expect. He’s gonna be paying for today’s aerial acrobatics for a few days, and Sam wants to maintain his Falcon mystique, which is not going to happen if anyone hears the old man groans that’ll come out of his mouth if he utilizes his core or lower back in any way.

“You are very lucky to still be alive,” says Natasha. She’s curled up, cat-like, beside a tree trunk, with her hood up and a sparkle in her eyes. Yeah, she’s impressed, Sam can tell.

Steve and Peggy just grin up at him. “You and Riley were amazing. The way you two flew…” Steve shakes his head in wonder.

“Honestly, when we saw there were six Wraith darts, we were fairly certain you weren’t going to make it,” adds Peggy, and okay, the lack of faith there is slightly hurtful. Fair though. They had been really outnumbered.

Wildly impressive and improbable victory or not, Sam just shrugs and plays it cool. Or, he tries to play it cool anyway. He’s probably not that successful given the shit-eating smile on his face.

“Yeah, we’re pretty great. Your shield thing’s cool too,” he says, then he notices Steve’s burned shirt, and the makeshift, bloody bandage underneath it. “Shit, you’re hurt, have you been to the medics? You gotta get to the medics, they’re just over—”

“It’s fine,” says Steve, waving Sam off. “It’s nothing, really, I heal fast. We’re all fine, only a little banged up.”

“He really will be fine,” adds Peggy. A couple livid bruises color her cheeks, but she doesn’t seem too concerned, so Sam figures both she and Steve really are okay.

“If you say so. I hope you’ll let the doctors in the infirmary make sure of that though. That is, if you’re still coming back to Atlantis with us.”

The three of them exchange a long look. “And if we said no?” asks Natasha.

“Well, I’d be sad about it, but you’re free to go wherever you want. The Gate’s not under guard or anything.”

“We’ll come, speak to your leaders,” says Steve, and heaves himself up with a wince. He offers his hands to Peggy and Natasha and helps them up.

Peggy pats Sam’s shoulder as she passes him. “But we won’t be staying.”

“Of course. Then Steve’d have to find a new superhero name.”

There’s nothing but logistics and supplies left to deal with, so Colonel Lorne gives AR-18 the go-ahead to return to Atlantis, along with Steve, Peggy, and Natasha.

“We’ve got it from here. You’ve all had an eventful enough mission already,” says Colonel Lorne, shaking his head. “Your missions, Wilson. Ever consider doing things the straightforward way instead of the crazy way?”

“We’re lateral thinkers, sir. We come up with creative and bold solutions to complex problems under adverse conditions,” says Riley.

Lorne laughs. “Yeah, yeah, put it in your report,” he says, and sends them through the Gate with a grin.

When they step through the wormhole and into the Gateroom, they’re greeted with cheers and applause, and Sam knows without looking that Bishop and Barton are bowing elaborately behind him. General Sheppard and Governor Emmagan are already descending the stairs to meet them. That’s not exactly uncommon, given AR-18’s status as an SAR team; Command’s often waiting anxiously for them to bring injured or endangered Lanteans back home. But usually, there’s a full medical team waiting too, and usually, Sheppard and Emmagan aren’t smiling with quite this much relief.

“Welcome home,” says General Sheppard, sticking his hands in his pockets. “We were starting to get worried.”

Sam and Riley are Air Force, so they’re basically obligated to adopt Sheppard’s casual approach, smile breezily, and pretend like the mission was easy. Can’t let the Marines start thinking they’ve got a monopoly on all the hero shit.

“The conditions were a little rough, sir. I’m just glad enough of our message got through.” Sam half-turns towards Steve, Peggy, and Natasha, ready to introduce them. “We wouldn’t have made it without the Nomad and the Widows though.”

Sheppard’s smile stays friendly but his eyes get sharp and assessing, while Governor Emmagan smiles warmly at their guests.

“We are very glad to meet you, and Atlantis thanks you for your help restoring our people to us. Please accept our hospitality for as long as you wish to stay with us.”

There’s a round of introductions and pleasantries after that, the usual diplomatic song and dance. His team’s work is done though, and he’s about to suggest heading for the infirmary for the sake of Steve’s injury if nothing else, when the light show starts. It’s not like anything Sam’s ever seen on Atlantis; the usual gentle glow of the lights in the Gateroom has turned multicolored. Sam would assume it’s some emergency protocol, only the lights aren’t a warning red or an alarming bright white; they’re in gentler, more rainbow-like hues, like the Gateroom has a party time, dance floor setting that no one’s managed to trip yet. God, Sam hopes it’s a party time setting and not some fresh disaster. Though what that disaster could possibly be, Sam has no idea.

Riley looks at the pulsing and rippling lights of the control room with equal parts wonder and worry, his hands drifting towards his gun.

“Uh, not that I don’t think we deserve some congratulatory fireworks for this mission, but this is new, right? New and weird?”

Sam nods, and tries to ready himself to run the hell out of here. He bites back a groan when just shifting his weight forwards makes his muscles scream in protest. Motherfucker, he needs a bath and a fistful of ibuprofen, not this weird pretty lights bullshit. Okay, find your second wind, Wilson, he tells himself, and gets ready to jog slowly out of here.

He’s about to order his team to do the same, only to see that Bishop and Barton aren’t nearly worried enough about the mysterious lights.

“This is so cool,” says Bishop.

“Did we get high and not notice?” asks Barton as he squints up at the lights. “I hate when that happens. If I’m gonna get high, I wanna at least know about it so I can enjoy it—”

“You’re not high.” Sheppard frowns, turns in a circle to take in the pseudo-disco ball action painting the walls bright shades of purple and pink and blue. “Huh. Maybe it’s the hospitality subroutines…?” He raises a hand to his comms. “Rodney, Stark, can you come to the Control—”

Before Sheppard can even finish, Stark runs in, wild-haired and wild-eyed. “This is not a hospitality subroutine! What kind of hospitality subroutine would that even be, a rave every time new people come through the gate, no, it’s Atlantis, and if anyone had read my memo—”

Restrained chaos ensues as everyone tries to figure out if they’re in the midst of an emergency or not. If it is an emergency, it’s one of the weirder ones. Sam’s heard horror stories about the kind of shit the expedition ran into when they first got here, and ‘pretty lights’ seem a hell of a lot less alarming than energy monsters or exploding tumors. Really, as long as the city’s not about to explode, Sam’s close to calling this someone else’s problem and making a strategic retreat to the infirmary.

“This…isn’t how things usually go,” Sam tells Steve.

Steve doesn’t seem to mind; he’s looking around at the lights and the Gateroom in wide-eyed delight, an expression mirrored by Peggy. Even Natasha’s looking a little starry-eyed.

“It’s beautiful,” whispers Steve. “Can you hear it?”

“Hear what?” asks Sam.

“The city is singing.”

Sam does not hear the city singing, and neither does Natasha judging by the sharp look she throws Steve’s way. Steve doesn’t notice; he and Peggy are rapt, holding hands and staring at the city like they’re sightseeing honeymooners. Sure it’s sweet and all, but this is the Pegasus Galaxy, so it’s just as likely this is about to turn into some fresh alien horror show instead of a beautiful Hallmark moment.

Just when Sam’s starting to worry that this is going to turn into some weird hypnotized by the pretty lights situation, Bucky shows up, running into the Gateroom with the floor under his feet lit up like his own personal yellow brick road. Stark’s still busy gesticulating wildly at Sheppard, pointing at something on his tablet, and Emmagan’s gone up to the Control Consoles to consult with the techs, so it’s them who Bucky looks to for an explanation.

“Atlantis told me to come to the Gateroom, is everything okay?”

That gets Stark’s attention. Before Sam or Riley can answer Bucky, Stark’s head whips around and he fixes Bucky with an intense and avid look that Sam knows means someone’s about to get dragged off to a lab or to a powerpoint presentation.

“Excuse me, Atlantis told you?” demands Stark. “Like the time in the Jumper Bay?”

Yeah, okay, they don’t need to be here. Sam turns with every intention of gently extracting his team and his new friends, but he stops cold when he sees the look on Steve’s face.

Steve’s gone as pale as paper, his eyes huge with a terrible combination of hope and agony.

“Bucky?” he says.

No one else has said Bucky’s name yet, so that must mean… “Oh hey, do you two know each other…?”

Sam thinks they must know each other, but Bucky’s looking at Steve with wonder and confusion that’s fast turning into pained disbelief, until he looks at Peggy. And then Bucky—well, Sam looks away, then. Sam barely knows the guy, and that was just the emotional equivalent of seeing him bare-ass naked or something. The look on Bucky’s face just then had been as clear as glass, every single emotion writ large across it, and Sam knows that’s not for him to see.

“Brook Lynn!” exclaims Barton with a snap of his fingers. “That’s where Bucky’s from! I just remembered! He’s from Brook Lynn, just like you two!”

Shit, Barton’s right. As he says the words, the memory snaps into place for Sam too. How the hell had he forgotten? (Okay, he knows how: he skims memos if their subject line isn’t some variation on HOW TO AVOID A TERRIBLE DEATH.) The faint memory of one of the many welcome so-and-so to Atlantis memos clogging his inbox rises up: Bucky’s from Brook Lynn, just like Steve and Peggy. And judging by this whole emotional scene happening right now, they all know each other. 

They don’t just know each other as acquaintances or neighbors or something, Sam’s guessing, because Bucky says, “Peggy?” in a small and hurt voice that makes Steve and Peggy jerk towards him, as if Bucky’s tugging on some physical chain that binds them.

If there is some tie between them, apparently Bucky’s not feeling so sure of it. He flinches back from Steve and Peggy, his chest rising and falling way too fast; the poor guy’s probably a few seconds away from hyperventilating. Sam’s thinking now’s about the time for everyone else in the Gateroom to make themselves scarce or give these three privacy or something, given that Steve and Peggy aren’t doing much better than Bucky is; they’re both clutching blindly at each other’s hands, their eyes fixed on Bucky with heartbreaking hope.

No one else in the Gateroom seems willing to leave though. Stark’s watching with wide eyes, hovering near Bucky, which, fair enough, they’re team. And Sheppard and Emmagan are keeping a wary and cautiously pleased eye on the scene, apparently wanting to see how this plays out, while Natasha is, to all intents and purposes, on watch for her otherwise occupied teammates. None of that seems to matter to Steve, Bucky, and Peggy; they’ve only got eyes for each other.  

“Steve, tell me, are you—do you see him or have I just gone mad?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I see him. I don’t, how—Buck, is it really you?”

Bucky nods and finally steps closer towards them, slow like he’s testing the solidity of the ground beneath his feet. His eyes have gone Disney cartoon huge, full of disbelieving hope. When he’s only a couple feet away, he stops abruptly and just stares at Steve and Peggy. That’s about when Sam’s patience for this whole scenario snaps. If this is going to be a glorious, emotional reunion, they had better get a fucking move on with it. Sam really wants a shower and a nap.

“So, uh, do you three know each other?” Riley elbows him, hard. “What?”

“You are ruining the moment!” hisses Riley.

Sam is not ruining the moment. Bucky, Peggy, and Steve don’t seem to have even noticed he said anything at all.

Peggy holds her free hand out to Bucky. It’s shaking, just a little. “Sweetheart,” she says, her voice full of tenderness and tears, and oh. Sam gets it. They know each other alright. Holy shit.

After a few long seconds, the space of one deep breath, Bucky reaches out and takes Peggy’s hand with his prosthetic one. It is, apparently, the only proof either of them need that this is really happening, because finally, finally, joy is overtaking the disbelief on all of their faces. Peggy pulls Bucky towards her and Steve, gently and slowly, like she doesn’t want him to spook.

“I thought you were dead?” says Bucky, still staring.

Peggy laughs, or maybe she sobs, the sound could be either. “You thought we were—we thought you were. We saw your watchtower fall—” she says, and Bucky talks over her in one frantic rush.

“There was nothing left. They took me, after, to be a runner—I went back to Brook Lynn, as soon as—as soon as the Hydrans let me go, as soon as I remembered, and there was nothing left, I thought—” Bucky turns to look at Steve, even more wide-eyed now. “Steve?”

It’s the most words Sam’s ever heard Bucky say in one stretch.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.” Steve’s holding himself still through what’s probably heroic effort, and even so, he’s practically shaking with the force of not reaching for Bucky. 

“Steve,” says Bucky again, as if he’s testing it out. He steps closer and runs a trembling hand over Steve’s beard, down his neck and to his shoulder, his brow furrowed in wonder and confusion. Steve practically vibrates under the touch. “I thought you were smaller. What happened?”

Steve laughs, and tears run down his face. “Ran into one of the Ancestors. I’ve got a hell of a story to tell you, Buck.”

Bucky’s eyes take in all of Steve with surprise and something like disbelief. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Seems like you have quite a story to tell too,” says Peggy with shaky gentleness as she glances at Bucky’s robot arm. Bucky just nods, squeezing her hand carefully.

“We missed you so bad. I missed you so bad. Just—Buck, come here, please, I need—” 

The rest of the words are lost as he reels Bucky in for a hug that turns into a kiss, the kind of deep and desperate kiss Sam’s only seen in the movies. Steve and Bucky proceed to give each other the most intense and clingy damn hug Sam’s ever seen. Can they even breathe if they’re holding each other that tight?

“Okay, so, that is his husband, right? And that’s his wife?” asks Sheppard in a stage whisper. He’s shifting from foot to foot in a decidedly awkward way, eyes darting around for an escape route. Sam can relate. They’ve all stood around here way too long to make a graceful retreat possible. Plus, everyone still has to go get cleared by the infirmary.

When Steve and Bucky briefly come up for air, Sam thinks maybe they can move this along, but then Peggy yanks Bucky down into another kiss, and Steve just sort of wraps both of his enormous arms around them. 

Riley sniffs. “This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen. Sammy, isn’t this the most romantic shit you have ever witnessed in real life?”

Barton and Bishop both whisper yes, and okay, yup, his whole team is crying or trying not to cry. Sam sighs and looks back over at the happy throuple. Now there’s a whole three-person hug and make-out session happening, which honestly seems logistically difficult. They seem to be making it work though. If Sam had any doubts or questions about this being a three-person marriage with all parties equally into each other, they’re gone now.

“Yeah, it’s real romantic. Just, could they wrap it up, because we’ve all got shit to do—” Riley punches him in the shoulder. “Ry! What the fuck!”

“They’re reuniting after years apart and losing their whole planet—”

“Hmm, no, I’d also like to stop standing around,” says Natasha. Her voice is deadpan, but her eyes are shining, so she’s definitely more affected than her words let on. Still, she’s the one who whistles, short and sharp, making Steve and Peggy startle. “I’m really happy for all of you—nice to meet you, Bucky—but I think our hosts would prefer we move this to a different venue?”

Governor Emmagan beams broadly, her own eyes sparkling. 

“It is an honor and a gift to see such a joyous reunion. Bucky, I am so happy for you.”

 Bucky smiles back at her, and okay, wow. That maybe makes Sam feel some kind of way. Turns out, when Bucky’s not, like, mourning his whole planet and his spouses, he’s got a hell of a smile, bright and dazzling as the play of sunshine on the ocean. Sam can admit, objectively, that it’s a pretty sight. It’s a sight that gets exponentially prettier when Steve and Peggy mirror Bucky’s beaming smile. Stark seems especially dazzled and surprised by the sight. 

“But yes,” Teyla continues, “it is our custom to have all guests cleared by the infirmary. After that, you will of course be free to have time alone together.”

“Con...gratulations?” says Sheppard, squinting into the middle distance. “Is that the appropriate thing to—yeah, I think it is.” He smiles at the three reunited lovebirds, and it’s not his usual wry or ironic smirk; instead it’s something kinder and more genuine that reaches his eyes. “Congratulations!”

A brief smattering of applause ripples through the Gateroom.

“Okay, yes very beautiful, very touching, Bucky, I’m very happy for you, but did we all just forget about the weird rainbow lights situation?” demands Stark.

Shit, they have. Sam looks up to find that the colors have intensified, flashing in happy and bright jewel tones, and somewhere, on the edge of his hearing, there’s a sound: something high and sweet, like a flute or a crystal glass. The lights ripple up and down and around the Gateroom a few more times, something about the speed and motion suggesting playfulness rather than oncoming disaster, and then they’re gone.

Sheppard’s smile has deepened, his head tipped back as if to bask in that faint singing sound, and Sam hears a few people laugh in delight.

“You know, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Sheppard says.

The infirmary is in its usual state of post-mission, controlled chaos, so Sam triages himself and lets the head nurse know they can see him last. He’s mildly singed and sore, and maybe has some pulled muscles, but unless Thobira’s left him with some other unpleasant souvenir like an alien death plague, he figures he’s otherwise fine. Getting cleared is just a formality. He leaves his team to find their own quiet corners of the infirmary, and settles himself on an out of the way bed and waits. Waiting turns to napping, and he startles awake to a nurse chucking a bottle of pills at him. He only just manages to catch it before it rolls off of him and the bed, and even that motion is enough to have the muscles of his back and core screaming in displeasure.

“Ugh, what,” he groans.

“You’re cleared, free to go, stop taking up a bed and go sleep in your quarters. Drink some water, take those muscle relaxants, and you’re off anything but desk duty for at least a week.”

Sam’s got no complaint with those orders. He sketches a lazy salute in Nurse Jacobs’ general direction and gets up properly. A post-it flutters down off his forehead, and he catches it before it can hit the ground. EVERYONE CLEARED, DEBRIEF SCHEDULED FOR TOMORROW AT 14:00, IF I SEE YOU BEFORE THEN I’M GONNA SIT ON YOU UNTIL YOU GO TO SLEEP, SAMMY -RIRI. Riley had also made his best effort at drawing some emojis: a series of hearts and deformed thumbs ups. What an idiot, Sam thinks, grinning, and sticks the post-it in his pocket.  

On his way out of the infirmary, Sam stops to check on Natasha, Steve, and Peggy. Natasha’s curled up in an infirmary bed, seemingly asleep. She’s not hooked up to any IVs or monitors though, so probably they’re just letting her rest here until quarters can be arranged for her. He leaves her be and moves on in search of her teammates. 

Steve, Peggy, and Bucky have apparently colonized a whole corner of the infirmary. When he peeks behind the privacy curtain, he sees that they’ve managed to push two beds together to form a larger bed capable of holding all three of them. They’re probably only getting away with that sleepover shit on account of the medical staff trying to be culturally sensitive, and the whole touching reunion thing. And maybe because separating them would take some real effort, given how much clinging is happening.

Only Bucky is awake, sandwiched in between Steve and Peggy, who’ve both thrown their arms around him and who appear to be hanging onto him for dear life. Bucky doesn’t seem to mind. He’s got an arm around each of them, and he has a kind of glow going, a practically visible aura of relief and joy that makes him look young. Are his eyes twinkling? Sam used to think that was a bullshit expression, but Bucky’s eyes are doing something that looks an awful lot like twinkling.

“Hey,” whispers Sam. “Everyone okay?”

Bucky smiles at him, big enough to make his ridiculous twinkling eyes crinkle up. “Yeah. Dr. Cho just wanted to keep Steve for a few hours to make sure he reacted okay to some medicine she gave him. Antibiotics, I think? For that burn on his side, though it’s already healing up. Me and Pegs didn’t want to leave him, and then they both fell asleep, so…”

“Yeah, none of you big on being separated right now, huh?”

“No,” murmurs Bucky, pressing a couple tender kisses to the tops of Steve and Peggy’s heads.

Sam’s heart does a thing, a thing it has previously only done at the end of the sappy romantic movies his sisters make him watch. He clears his throat a little. The lump there is definitely just because he needs some water. 

“Hey, congratulations, man. I’m really happy for you, for all of you. Steve and Peggy, they talked about you a little, said you were the heart of your, uh, trio.”

“Head, heart, and hands,” says Bucky. “Though you know, my ma always said I was gonna be in for a wild ride with these two if I was gonna be the heart in this marriage.” 

Huh, so that’s not just a saying, or part of their vows; they’re roles. The anthropologists are gonna be interested in that. Sam’s a nosy bastard, so he’s kind of interested too. Whatever, he’ll grill Steve about it later. 

“Yeah? I can see that, these two are pretty crazy out in the field. Don’t tell me Steve’s the head here, the fool almost tried to take on dozens of Hydrans on his own.”

Bucky goes on a whole hilarious face journey at that: his eyebrows go up in disbelief, come back down to beleaguered acceptance, and then he smiles a little with what might be fond exasperation, before finally settling on a brief flash of soppy adoration that he hides with another kiss to Steve’s hair. It’s a hell of a change from the broody and grim-faced guy Sam had seen before, and it makes Sam wonder just how different Steve and Peggy will be too, without the weight of some of their grief. As it is, Sam has the feeling he’s getting a look at the guy Bucky used to be, before he lost everything and became a runner, and he’s a guy Sam wouldn’t mind being friends with. Even if he outruns Sam and takes the last pudding cups. 

“Yeah, no, this idiot is not the head, are you kidding me? That would be Peggy.”

Sam nods like of course he knew that, though he supposes he kind of had. “Your man’s real good at punching, so I guess that makes sense. Not really what I’d think about first with your whole head, heart, and hands thing, but...” he says 

Bucky grins, bright and blinding, and stifles a laugh. Peggy shifts and murmurs in her sleep and Bucky idly strokes her hair until she goes still again. 

“Maybe not, but that was actually Steve’s reasoning,” whispers Bucky and Sam stifles a laugh of his own. “Meant I did a lotta punching too.”

“I’m glad you three found each other again. What are the odds, you know?”

Slim to impossible, Sam’s guessing, and maybe that’s why he’s lingering here in the infirmary. Most of Sam’s missions, both back on Earth and here on Atlantis, tend to go alright. He and Riley save more people than they lose, even if all too often, those saves come at a cost, either to them or the people they’re saving. A win like this one though? Bad guys defeated, a whole village saved, no real casualties, and a family reunited after inconceivable tragedy? That shit’s rare enough that Sam wants to bask in it for a while. 

“I’m the luckiest man in the galaxy,” says Bucky with a dopey smile, before he sobers and turns earnest and serious instead. “Thank you. For helping them, and bringing them back here. I know you didn’t really know anything about us, but still. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Sam tells him, and he leaves the infirmary with a smile, and if not a spring in his step, then at least a cheerful kind of pained shuffle. It’s nice to see a happily ever after, for once. The Pegasus Galaxy doesn’t have so many of those.

On the way to the transporter, he runs into Bucky’s team, who appear to be bringing a party with them. Dr. Potts is carrying a small cake, while Hogan’s got a big bouquet of flowers. Stark and Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes have even managed to find balloons from god knows where. Maybe from the materials lab, judging by the balloons’ oddly utilitarian and drab colors. Olive green and gunmetal gray aren’t really the usual kind of party balloon colors.

Colonel Rhodes greets him with a smile. “Master Sergeant Wilson! Good work on Thobira. Crazy, but good.”

Sam will take that compliment. He figures he’s gonna be hearing a lot of it. 

“Thank you, sir. I’m guessing you guys are headed to see Bucky?” 

“Yeah, these are a congratulations on no longer being a widower cake and balloons,” says Stark. “That wouldn’t fit on the cake, but that’s what it is. We put that on the card though, right?”

“Welcome to Atlantis and congrats is what did fit on the cake, thankfully,” says Dr. Potts with a fondly exasperated look at her husband. “I feel like that’s more sensitive to the situation.”

Hogan frowns over at Stark. “‘Congrats, you’re not a widower anymore,’ is not what I wrote in this card, Tony, no.”

“Okay, well, Steve and Peggy are asleep in there and Bucky’s stuck in the middle of the cuddle pile, so you might want to postpone any celebrations.”

At the word celebrations, Stark gasps and clutches at Rhodes and Potts. “A party! This demands an actual, genuine party! Bucky can’t say no to this one, it’ll be like his second wedding!” Stark turns to him. “Wilson, you know Bucky’s husband and wife, what do you think their thoughts would be on a party-slash-second-wedding--”

“You’re really gonna have to ask them about that, Stark,” says Sam and power walks as fast as he can for the transporter before he gets roped into party and/or wedding planning.

When he gets to the transporter, he’s about to bring up the city map in the transporter like he always does—thinking a location at the transporter is a skill for those with a stronger ATA gene than Sam’s gene-therapy provided ATA—but before he can even bring up the map, the transporter has already taken him to the transporter closest to his quarters. Or at least, it looks like it has, which is weird. He peers out into the Atrium corridor, then pokes his head back into the transporter. The lighting, he notes, has a distinctly cheerful hue, a little like the light show in the Gateroom earlier.

“Uh, thanks?” he says into the air, and feels kind of stupid for it. But the lights flare bright and warm for a moment, as if the city’s heard him, and when he gets to his quarters, the windows are already dimmed into night mode, one cracked open to let in the cool sea breeze and the sound of the waves.

The hospitality subroutines are getting really considerate, thinks Sam as he downs a couple of the muscle relaxants with a glass of water that’s somehow already waiting for him in his kitchen. A man could really get used to this kind of treatment. He kicks off his boots and before he can think any more about the lights or his weirdly thoughtful quarters, he’s asleep, lulled by the gentle sound of the waves lapping against Atlantis far below.

Chapter Text

Before, in Brook Lynn: 

“Peggy? What are you doing up here, is something wrong, is Steve—”

Peggy stepped into the small, round room at the top of the watchtower, and found herself a little breathless again, and not from the climb. The watchtower really was…very high up, Peggy was realizing. Not even climbing all those stairs had quite prepared her for the dizzying view from the top of the tower. She took in the evenly-spaced, low and wide windows that circled the entire circumference of the tower, broken up in intervals by the solid stone wall. Each window revealed a swathe of land and sky and mountain, and far below—too far below, really—was Brook Lynn and its City. 

“Nothing’s wrong, Steve’s fine,” she told Bucky. “I brought you tea.”

Bucky didn’t move from his position at the watchtower’s north window, his eyes darting only briefly towards her before returning to look through the scope of his rifle. She set the insulated bottle on the deep shelf of the window beside his rifle’s tripod. Peggy didn’t take offense at Bucky keeping his eyes on the sky outside: he was meant to be on watch, and he took his duties seriously. A moment of inattention could be the difference between life and death for their people, or between a culling and an escape.

“Thank you,” he said with some confusion, and reached for the bottle. 

Peggy pulled her own insulated bottle of hot tea from her bag, and sat on the floor beside Bucky to drink it. She winced at the chill of the bare stones; she would have to remember to bring a blanket or cushion next time. Bucky had a small stool to sit on, but it was the only real furniture in the room. It wasn’t as if the watch-keepers were accustomed to having guests up here. The round room at the top of the tower was mostly unfurnished and unadorned, empty save for a cabinet full of ammo and supplies, the bells hanging heavy and silent from the ceiling. The crystalline shard of the beacon light sat in the center of the room, raised up on a plinth, and Peggy could feel the distant hum that meant it was ready to be activated in the back of her mind.

“Your watch has been boring so far, I hope.”

“Spotted a couple reaper birds, but they were real far off, nothing to worry about.” Bucky opened up his bottle of tea and took a sip, and sighed in pleasure. “Not that I don’t appreciate having something warm to drink, but it’s a long and hard climb just to deliver some tea. What brings you up here?”

It was a downright brutal climb up the stairs to the tower, actually; she’d set a slow pace and she’d still had to rest and spend a good minute catching her breath when she was near the top. She hadn’t wanted to come in gasping and red-faced, and only partly out of vanity; if Bucky had thought she was in a rush, he’d have been even more worried than he already was. So she’d taken her time and come in as casually as if she’d just taken a leisurely walk across the town square instead of climbing all the way up the dizzying height of the watchtower. Peggy certainly had a new appreciation for Bucky’s fortitude in making the climb up to the tower four days out of every eightday now. And a new understanding of just why he filled out his trousers so nicely.

“I wanted to spend time with you,” she told him. That was surprising enough to make him turn from his scope for a moment, brow creased with surprise. “If I’m too much of a distraction, I’ll go. But I checked with Phillips, he said it was alright so long as I didn’t distract you.”

“You’re not distracting me. My eyes can do their job just fine, talking or no talking. But, uh, why do you want to spend time with me?”

With me alone was what he left unsaid. Since Steve had returned from militia training, bringing Peggy back with him, Bucky had welcomed her into their lives. The joy on his face had not been a lie when he’d first seen her. Finally found our third, huh? Told you it would happen, Bucky had said, reeling Steve in for a long and sweet kiss, and her for a somewhat more restrained and polite clasping of hands. His beaming smile had certainly seemed sincere, but since then, Peggy had only spent time with Steve alone, or all three of them together.

That wouldn’t do, not if they were going to make a real go of this.

“A marriage is between three people, Bucky. I want Steve, and Steve wants me and you. I think the math is clear from there, isn’t it?”

“The geometry is too,” said Bucky, and she could hear the smile in his voice, rich and warm. “A triangle’s base only needs two vertices for stability.”

Bucky wasn’t wrong. Plenty of happy marriages had just such a geometry, and Steve, bless him, truly lived up to being a proper pair of Hands given how he was ready and willing to go ahead and get married now. Bucky’s it for me, Peggy, and you are too. And you and Bucky like each other. Why wait any longer? 

You may have a very obvious type, darling, but I think the rest of us ought to take a little more care before donning our bracelets.

That’s why you’re gonna be the Head, huh?

Just so.  

“We can do better than just stability,” she told Bucky, and watched the lines of his back and shoulders carefully. Words lied, but bodies didn’t.

Bucky held himself straight-backed, but not tense, his shoulders loose and level as he kept his hands on his rifle. 

“It’s enough for me that you see Steve, Peggy. I mean really see him. No one else does, you know? They all think he’s too small and sickly, but you know—”

“I do,” said Peggy fiercely. 

It was the rest of Brook Lynn’s loss that they didn’t know. Steve’s lungs may have been weak, and his frame thin and small, but he had courage and conviction enough for a man four times his size. He wanted more and better for Brook Lynn, for the galaxy, than to cower and hide out of fear of the Wraith, and so did Peggy.

“It’s enough,” Bucky said again. “Steve loves you, I love him, and we get along just fine, I think. Ancestors know Steve’s impatient enough as it is, and Steve and me, we’ve been waiting on our third for a while. We can just get on with it, now you’re finally here.” A quick flash of a white grin. “No need to court me too, not more than you already are.”

Steve had always said Bucky was a pragmatic sort of man. Peggy found that admirable, usually. It was just rather quelling when one heard it from the man who would be the Heart of one’s marriage. Not exactly like the old courting tales, thought Peggy wryly. 

“And if I want to court you? Steve loves you, very much. I think that means I could too.” She looked up at Bucky’s profile: his eyes were still steady through his rifle scope, but his mouth had taken on an uncertain tilt. “If you’d truly rather I not, only say the word. We could get along tolerably well as a perfectly stable triangle, as you said. I just think that’s rather dull, don’t you? We could have more.”

She had known and loved Steve, on his own, for just himself, when he’d come to the garrison to train with the militia despite everyone telling him he shouldn’t, or that he couldn’t. She’d watched him prove them wrong. This one, she’d thought. This one is for me, and me for him, and if the Ancestors are even the slightest bit kind, there’ll be a third for us out there somewhere. When Steve had told her about Bucky, Peggy had felt the perfect inevitability of a lock opening for its key, a door opening onto a new and whole future. Head, Heart, and Hands, finally.

You’ll love him, Peggy, and he’ll love you. He’s the best man I know. You’ll see. That is, if—I’m not making any assumptions about us, only, me and Buck, we’re already a pair, and—

Once Steve had stopped stammering and hitting every possible awkward bump on the road of that particular conversation, he’d eventually told her more about Bucky, and she’d come to know him through Steve: through letters and anecdotes and the sheer, immoveable certainty of Steve’s love for him. If she hadn’t liked what she’d learned of him through Steve, she wouldn’t have let things get this far at all. But she had, and finally seeing Steve and Bucky together had been like stepping back to see the whole of a mural rather than only a part, and she thought, maybe, she could see room for herself there too.

Of course, maybe Bucky saw it differently. He’d loved Steve for far longer than she had, after all, and maybe he’d hoped for a different sort of Head for their trio. She didn’t know if the deliberate distance he was maintaining was for Steve and Peggy’s sake, or out of his own preference. Even now, he wasn’t giving anything away. For all that he was a good-natured, friendly sort, he was damnably hard to read when he put his mind to it.

“We could have more, huh? Alright,” said Bucky eventually, his voice low and soft. Peggy let out a long and quiet breath of relief, and Bucky flicked a sly look over at her. “You can pick an easier way to court me though, you know. I know it’s not easy coming all the way up here.” A blast of icy wind blew through the tower window and they both shivered. Bucky pulled up the collar of his blue coat with a grimace. “It’s not so easy staying, either.”

“Consider this my feat of strength to win our Heart, then.”

That earned her a laugh, sweeter by far than any peal from the heavy bells hanging from the watchtower’s ceiling.

“Very old-fashioned,” Bucky teased, and she spotted the delighted crinkle of his eyes in the brief flash of his glance towards her. “What is it the old stories say, a feat of cunning to win your Hands? What won Steve over then?”

“Ah, now that, we were distinctly modern about. Did a feat of strength for Steve too.”

“Oh yeah? What was it?”

“Punched an arsehole in basic training who was doubting Steve’s and my abilities.”

Bucky laughed again, the bright sound echoing off the bells of the watchtower, then he shot her a quick warm look, his eyes sparkling with mirth. Peggy’s heart gave a pleased sort of flutter, and she smiled back at him. This was going to work, she thought.

“Sure we shouldn’t all swap roles around? Because I’m getting the impression I’m going to be in for a wild ride with a Head and Hands like you two.”

“Oh, you know we’ll be worth it, darling,” she told him, then got up, wincing as her knees throbbed warningly. She was absolutely going to have bring something proper to sit on tomorrow. “I won’t distract you any more then. Have a good watch.” Before she could second guess herself, she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Same time tomorrow?”

Bucky stared at her with wide eyes, a pretty flush overtaking his cheeks. “Um. Sure. Yes. See you tomorrow.”

“So? How’d it go?” asked Steve when she returned to his and Bucky’s small flat near the City’s center.

The sight of Steve’s fair head bent over a sketchbook at the kitchen table chased away all the lingering chill of the wind-whipped walk back here, and Steve’s smile when he greeted her added its own warmth. 

“Quite well, I think,” she said, and joined him at the small table. “I’ll woo the gentleman fair yet, just you wait. How was the meeting with the Council?”

Steve grimaced. “They said they’ll think about maybe approving a small team to go off-world to gather some intelligence on the Wraith. Don’t have much hope of that happening though. Most of them seem to think we’ll all be culled the moment we attract any attention, from anyone.”

“Well, Sateda,” said Peggy, for news of Sateda’s fall had reached even comparatively isolated Brook Lynn. Steve looked up from his sketchbook with his eyes blazing.

“We can’t cower and wait to be culled. The Wraith will come, no matter what, and we oughta be doing more than just keeping watch for them. At least Sateda fought back.” Steve visibly pulled himself back from the well-worn argument, shaking his head; he knew she agreed with him. “Never mind. Are we finally getting married?”

She laughed and lifted her bare wrists. “Do you see bracelets on these wrists yet, Steven? You’ve a rather flattering idea of how quickly I can manage to win over your Heart.”

“I just don’t know why we’re deciding to do things the old-fashioned way now,” grumped Steve, setting his pencil down and stretching. “Buck and me have been living together for years now, you might as well move in too and make this a whole household. And it’s not as if I courted you.”

“Oh? And here I thought that mission spying on the Genii was you courting,” she teased, and was rewarded with Steve flushing.

“Sure, consider it my feat of skill to win our Head,” he shot back, and she grinned and leaned across the table to kiss him. 

She thought about Steve’s proposal as she did. The idea of just skipping the formalities and forming a household certainly had its appeal. For propriety’s sake, Peggy was still staying in a boarding house the militia was putting her up in, but in actuality, she only went back there to sleep for the night, and she spent all the rest of her time working with Phillips, or here at Steve and Bucky’s flat. But if she was to be the Head of a marriage, it was her responsibility to do this right, to do this thoughtfully and carefully. She pulled away from Steve with some regret.

“Bucky and I deserve to get to know each other just as you and I did, before all of us go any further. After all, what if he absolutely hates the way I chew my food? And what if I simply can’t stand his jokes?”

Steve sighed, but he was smiling as he leaned back over the table to give her another kiss. “You don’t need to climb all the way up the watchtower every few days to get the answers to those questions, you know.  There are plenty of other ways to get to know him. You could just, I don’t know...take some walks along the mountain paths? Or, uh, go dancing, or maybe flower picking…?”

This apparently exhausted Steve’s knowledge of traditional courting activities, which perhaps explained a considerable amount about just why Steve and Bucky hadn’t found a third before her.

“Ah, so that’s how you and Bucky courted each other,” she said, all innocence, and he gave her a light kick under the table.

“Buck and me never needed to court, we’ve just...always been like this, more or less. Not really sure we’re courting kind of guys, if you haven’t noticed.”

And there it was again, that certainty. Steve was a slightly built man, thin and wiry, but he never looked more strong and immovable than in moments like this, as if the bedrock of his and Bucky’s love was what kept him standing firm in all the fights he picked and for the battles he sought.

“Well, I’m a courting sort, or at least I am for this. Let me do this my way, please?”

“As if I could stop you.”

So Peggy climbed up and up and up the watchtower. Not for every single one of Bucky’s watchtower shifts, and never for his entire shift; she didn’t always have the time, and some days the wind whipped wet and cold through the mountain passes that surrounded Brook Lynn. Those days Bucky told her not to come—no use in you suffering through this awful weather with me, feat of strength or not—and he’d come back miserably chilled, face red and wind-bitten. She and Steve would wrap him up in blankets and drape themselves over and around him in front of the flat’s tiny fireplace until they all warmed up.

Miserable weather aside, those were very good nights.

For those watchtower shifts she did pass with Bucky, she mostly just kept him company. Sometimes with bottles of hot tea, sometimes with books she read to him. Sometimes she’d relay messages from Steve, doodles sketched out on scraps of thin paper. Most often, though, they passed the time with easy conversation.

Peggy told Bucky about growing up in Brook Lynn’s outer forests, safe under the towering trees’ canopies, and Bucky told her about growing up in and living in the City, tucked up against the mountains and the wild river that became Brook Lynn’s brook down in the forests and valley. She told him about the militia and its work keeping Brook Lynn safe from the dangers of the galaxy, and he told her about being a watchkeeper. They swapped some stories about their families, and many more stories about Steve, to Peggy’s delight. 

Shift by shift, Peggy learned that Bucky was different up here, high above the City when it was just the two of them: he was quieter, listening more than he spoke, and he was more deliberate, more thoughtful, less likely to deflect with a good-natured grin. A careful distance she hadn’t even noticed was there before began to disappear. Bucky, she belatedly realized, was more guarded than his friendly demeanor suggested, and more patient. She could see why this work suited him for reasons beyond just his keen eyesight and facility with the Ancestors’ technology.

Peggy wondered though: did he think she was different up here too? She thought maybe he did. Because back on the solid ground of the City below, that distance crept back in. 

Steve wasn’t too concerned. “He just wants to give us time together,” he said. “He figures it’s only fair, since me and him have had years already.”

“Hmm, maybe. Well, it’s all the reason for me to continue my courting efforts.”

“If you say so.”

She supposed they’d been lucky that it took nine watch shifts until they were both forcefully reminded of the reason why Bucky was on watch at all.  

“Did you hear, Jacques is proposing new expeditions into the mountains again, he and Monty are certain there are valuable caches of the Ancestors’ technology up there.”

Bucky snorted. “Jacques just wants an excuse to blow some new holes into the mountains while he looks for ‘em. I like a good explosion as much anybody—” Bucky stopped talking with such abruptness that for one wild instant, Peggy thought she’d lost her hearing.

“Bucky? What is it?”

“Can you look out the other windows for me, please? Do you see any of the other towers’ beacons flashing?”

Peggy looked. Bucky was assigned to the northern, mountain-facing quadrant for today’s shift, leaving the other windows unobstructed by his rifle. Even in the still-bright late afternoon light, the flash of the beacon lights would have been visible, but she didn’t see any telltale blue-white glow.

“No, none. Have you seen something?” She got up from her seat on the stone floor beside his stool. She was tempted to ask for a look through his scope, or crane around him for a look out the north-facing window, though she knew now was absolutely not the time.

Bucky just hummed a vague affirmative, not moving from his position behind his rifle’s scope.

“Flock of reaper birds, at least ten,” Bucky said after a moment, calm as anything.

Peggy’s stomach dropped with sudden alarm. Ten? Usually they only approached populated areas in twos or threes. Ten of those enormous, hungry raptors could do a great deal of damage to the City in their search for food.

Bucky pulled back from his scope, his expression disconcertingly even given he’d just spotted a flock of ten reaper birds, and went to the beacon light to place his hand on it. It flashed into life, settling into a pulsating pattern that would be seen and understood across the six watch towers that guarded the City, then passed on further into the forest and valley. He waited to watch one full repetition of the acknowledgment of his beacon’s message, then he returned to his position behind the rifle, though he glanced through the other windows every few moments too.

“Shouldn’t we ring the bells?”

Bucky shook his head. “Not until I get confirmation from one of the other towers. I might be wrong, after all.”

He wasn’t wrong. Two of the other beacons that she could see flashed. Incoming.

“There it is,” murmured Bucky, and returned his full attention to his rifle. “Can you ring the bells for me, please?”

He could surely do it himself, was meant to do it himself in fact—the bells’ pulley cords could be reached from Bucky’s position if he stretched—but Peggy appreciated the chance to do something other than wait. 

This wasn’t the militia’s duty, generally speaking; they left the watchtowers to the watchkeepers, whose keen sight and facility with the Ancestors’ technology made them best suited to the work. She knew the broad strokes of the watchkeepers’ protocols from her training though, and she followed them exactly now. Ring for a count of one hundred, then stop and let the smaller temple bell towers take over. She pulled on the cord for the biggest bell, and the rich and deep ringing filled the watchtower as the sound bloomed outward into the City. Peggy could feel the sound as an almost physical force, as if she’d been struck and was ringing just as the bell was.

Even after she stopped, and the last peal of the bell rung out, it felt as if the sound lingered in some other, deeper way, its memory filling up her ears and making the air in the tower shiver.

“Is there anything else you need me to do?” she asked, too loud in the strange not-silence.

Bucky said there wasn’t, of course. Watchkeepers were meant to work alone. Still, she had to do something, so she fetched additional ammunition from the cabinet, in case Bucky needed it. That done, she briefly considered running down the watchtower steps and joining the on-duty militia in getting people to safety, but no—by the time she’d fetched her own uniform and rifle, she’d be more of a hindrance than a help. There was nothing to do but wait. So Peggy waited, and watched Bucky instead.

He didn’t fidget, and his breathing stayed even and slow, so it was a shock when he pulled the trigger of his rifle. The crack of the shot was louder than ice breaking on the river, and then Bucky made a minute adjustment in his aim, and shot again, and again. Peggy counted six shots, then Bucky let out one long, controlled breath, and took his finger from the trigger.

He waited, and after the space of a few more deep and slow breaths, he was apparently satisfied. Bucky put his hand on the beacon light again, and a pattern flashed out, more complex than Peggy’s limited knowledge of the beacon signals could decipher.

“That’s it? It’s over?” she asked, as Bucky reloaded his rifle and nodded.

“I got five of ‘em, the other towers got the rest. At least I’m pretty sure they did.” He glanced back through the east-facing window, towards the other watchtower, and watched the beacon flash. “Yeah, we’re good. Can you ring the all clear, please?”

The all clear bells were lighter and smaller, and they rang high and sweet to signal safety. She tugged on their pulleys, her hands shaking with the sudden absence of fear and battle-readiness.

When the last joyful peals of the bells finished echoing, she slumped back down on her cushion beside Bucky, suddenly exhausted by the near-miss. Ridiculous, she told herself. She hadn’t even done anything. Meanwhile Bucky was, somehow, still as steady as the mountains rising up over their watchtower. He’d resumed his post as if nothing had happened, face betraying nothing but his usual on-watch, intent concentration.

So this was the steady core of him, thought Peggy, the anchor that held Steve’s unshakeable certainty. This was what she hadn’t seen in Bucky before, the strength beneath his easy charm and ready smile. She was almost grateful for the danger that had allowed her to see it.

“Well, that was very impressive,” she said, and Bucky laughed. “I thought I was meant to be the ones performing a feat of strength here.”

“Not sure this counts as a feat of strength, but thank you.”

“I’m the one who ought to be thanking you, you just helped save the City from a flock of reaper birds.”

Bucky just shrugged. “It’s my duty. You and Steve are doing the same, down on the ground.”

The silence that followed was comfortable, after the earlier excitement, and despite the discomfort of being tucked up against the cool stone wall of the tower, Peggy found herself growing drowsy. If she fell asleep, that would be alright, she thought with the fuzziness of encroaching sleep. Bucky was on watch. She slipped into a light doze and woke when she felt Bucky shift beside her. If she’d dozed, it hadn’t been for long. The sun was at just the right late afternoon angle to fill the whole of the watchtower with a warm amber glow, and she could hear someone coming up the tower stairs. Whoever it was gave them a cheerful and slightly breathless greeting as she approached the top of the staircase, and Peggy and Bucky both turned to greet her. Peggy didn’t recognize the sharp-faced blond woman, but Bucky seemed to, since he met her with a lazy salute and a grin.

“Commander says ‘good job,’ and that you’re relieved for the rest of this shift, Buchanan.” The new watchkeeper nodded at Peggy in greeting. “Ma’am.”

Bucky sighed in relief, weariness abruptly showing in the slump of his shoulders. “Thanks, Lorraine. Hope you have a less eventful watch than I did.”

Lorraine snorted as she adjusted the rifle and its scope. “Kill count of five while a beautiful woman watches?” Lorraine gave Peggy a thorough and appreciative stare, but Peggy didn’t give her the satisfaction of a blush. “I’ll take that kind of eventful, and gladly. You’re a lucky man, Buchanan.”

“Oh, he is,” said Peggy, at the same time as Bucky said, “Don’t I know it.” They exchanged a grin as they packed up their few things, and then left the watchtower to Lorraine.

The tower staircase was too narrow to comfortably descend side by side, so Bucky descended first, Peggy just behind him. After a few steps, Bucky looked back at her, something warm and wanting in the breezy day blue of his eyes, and held his hand out behind him. He smiled up at her, boyish and shy, and with a curl of his lips that was a little wry about that shyness. She smiled back, and took his cool hand in hers. 

It came suddenly, like the wind pushing aside clouds to reveal the bright gold of the sun before covering it up again, but as they descended the tower together, it came all the same, just as it had when she’d watched Steve square his jaw and demand to train with the militia: understanding, and the flaring first spark of what she knew would become a much bigger flame. She’d found the truth of Bucky, just as she had with Steve during his militia training, and the truth of Bucky was both that man up in the watchtower who could keep such patient watch and protect his people with calm certainty, and this man here, who’d asked for the comfort of holding her hand.

When they reached the bottom and emerged outside into the sunset glow of early evening, it was as if Bucky shed the weight of his responsibility as watchkeeper abruptly and wholly, turning weary and giddy as he spun towards her and tugged her into an embrace, like they were about to dance. But when he had her, he just held her tight, and slumped into her arms, one brief tremor running through him, before he was straight-backed again and stepping away from her.

Now that won’t do at all, she thought.

She didn’t let him get far. She pulled him down into a kiss, a proper one on the lips. Their first. And oh, but Bucky’s patience was on full, maddening display here too, as he kissed her back sweetly with luxurious, careful slowness, deepening it so gradually that she scarcely noticed she was gasping for air by the time he pulled back.

The she heard Steve laugh and before she could even look away from Bucky to see where in the world Steve had come from, he was crashing into them, throwing his arms around them both. Steve pushed up to press an enthusiastic, sloppy kiss onto her mouth, then did the same for Bucky, and soon they were all laughing and kissing, as one perfect whole.

Now, in Atlantis:

It feels strange, to be the one on watch instead of Bucky.

Peggy knows she’s not on watch, not really. She, Steve, and Bucky are safe in Bucky’s quarters in the City of the Ancestors. In the back of her mind, she can sense, faintly, Atlantis itself: its patient and diffuse attention, the very distant impression of a large and alien mind humming busily away. Atlantis will tell us if anything’s wrong, Bucky had said, and Peggy believes him. There’s a locked door between them and the rest of Atlantis too, a shield between Atlantis and the sky, and a closely guarded Stargate.

This is, Peggy realizes, the safest she has been in a very, very long time. Ever, maybe. And yet she can’t quite let go of the urge to stay on watch, to guard Steve and Bucky’s rest. This isn’t one of Brook Lynn’s high and lonely watchtowers, nor is it some hastily pitched camp on one new world or another. And yet, here she is, awake in bed, Steve and Bucky asleep beside her. Bucky is beside her, real and warm, alive. Changed, yes, harder and more careworn, sadder, but still alive: their beating Heart, back between her and Steve where he belongs.

She can’t quite believe it, not yet. 

The desolation of such near total loss left one with odd comforts. On the long nights at Steve’s side, when Peggy had missed Bucky’s warmth most keenly, she had been left with one terrible hope, the only consolation she could conceive of: that Bucky’s death had been quick, that he had not had time to be afraid. That he had been suspended in the serenity of his perfect focus, as he’d aimed to destroy the Wraith that would destroy them. If he had died like that, maybe that was alright, she’d told herself. She’d never told Steve that. She doubts he would have found the comfort in it that she had.

It doesn’t matter now, anyway. She doesn’t need the grim comfort when they have Bucky himself back.

He’s back, having endured something both far worse and far better than a quick death, and her joy keeps lagging behind her grief, a grief for both what had and hadn’t happened. She has to just—just keep looking at Bucky, at the reality of him, until her relief and joy catch up with her again. There is that ridiculous dimple on his chin, there are the new lines on his face, and there are the very faint freckles sprinkled across the bridge of his nose, only visible from this close up. She can look her fill right now, instead of relying on a fading memory, or on Steve’s sketches. She can keep watch as Steve and Bucky sleep, exhausted after recounting what had happened to them after Brook Lynn’s culling. 

They’d spent the whole day after leaving the infirmary just talking, telling each other what had happened since their separation. That had been...difficult. For all of them, but maybe especially for Steve, who’d looked more and more furious and shattered with every word Bucky had fought to get out. She knows Steve is blaming himself, the idiot, as if any of them could have possibly known Bucky had survived, let alone that he’d ended up a runner. She’ll have to knock some sense into Steve about that eventually. For now, she’ll let Steve assuage his guilt with some coddling that Bucky sorely needs. Even if It had gotten easier for Bucky to talk as he went on, he’d still ended the night sounding painfully hoarse and raw, a state of affairs that had led Steve to ply Bucky with tea and blankets, to Bucky’s bemusement. 

Sorry, he’d whispered. Not used to talking so much anymore. You don’t have to—

Yeah, I do, Steve had said, a stubborn look on his face more suited to an approaching fistfight than to tucking a blanket around Bucky’s shoulders.

Which was when Peggy had decided they ought to give up on words for the rest of the night, and they’d all climbed into Bucky’s bed to hold each other instead. Steve’s still holding onto Bucky now, tucked up tight behind him, one arm keeping Bucky close. Bucky’s new metal arm gleams softly in the dim light where it’s resting on her side, inescapable proof of the time that’s passed and the suffering he’s endured. It’s beautiful, nonetheless, sleek and intricate. She runs a wondering, curious finger over the plates of his forearm, and they shift and shiver under her touch.

Bucky stirs, his eyes fluttering open.

“Sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

She pushes his long hair away from his face—another change, not unwelcome—and watches, rapt, as his expression shifts from the aching disbelief of fearing he was waking to a dream, to the wonder and relief of knowing this is real. Peggy’s familiar with the feeling. It’s what she’d felt when she woke earlier. She can’t help but kiss him, and he returns the brief kiss sleepily.

“Is it morning?” he mumbles.

“No, darling, you can go back to sleep.”

He hums and laces his fingers with Steve’s where his hand is resting against Bucky’s chest, pressed there as if to feel the proof of Bucky’s heartbeat. Peggy smiles to see it, though the smile falters a little at the sight of their bare wrists. She’ll have to find new bracelets for them somewhere.

“What’s keeping you up?” asks Bucky, opening his eyes again. 

“Convincing myself this is real,” confesses Peggy. “And thinking.”

“About?”

“You,” she says, because there’s no use lying about it. 

Instead of the faint flush and flirty smile she expects to get from Bucky at that, Bucky’s eyes go wide and stricken before he looks away from her. 

“You don’t have to—I’m happy you’re both okay, that you’re both back. But you don’t have to—stay. With me. If you don’t want. I figure, maybe you’ve had Natasha as your third, or maybe you want to…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peggy hisses. “She’s a teammate, and a very good friend, but she’s not our Heart. Do you see another bracelet on our wrists?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, but—I’m not the man you married,” he says, low and rough, before briefly closing his eyes in pain. “I don’t even know how long it’s been since we—and there are things I still don’t remember—”

“You’ve said a lot of dumb shit, Buck, but that wins the prize for the dumbest fucking thing you’ve ever said,” says Steve, awake now. He hooks his chin over Bucky’s shoulder and tightens his hold on him. “It doesn’t matter how long it’s been, or if you’ve forgotten some things. It never will. I love you, and I’m not going anywhere. Neither is Peggy.”

“We can take time, if that’s what you need,” says Peggy, and ignores Steve glaring furiously at her over Bucky’s head. One of them has to be sensible about this, and that’s her job. “There is nothing wrong with you needing some time. But if you think we don’t want you, or that we don’t love you, well. That is absolute nonsense.”

Despite herself, her voice breaks. Because it’s absolute nonsense. Because despite practically doubling in size after the gift of the Ancestors, Steve has been a shadow of himself since losing Bucky. Because maybe a triangle was stable with only two vertices, but without that third one, this triangle wasn’t a triangle at all, it was just a line floating around in space, with no aim but killing Wraith and Hydrans. Because Peggy has missed Bucky, terribly, has missed who she and Steve are with him.

“Okay,” says Bucky, and rests his forehead against hers.

“I’ve changed too,” says Steve. “If it’s me you don’t want—”

Bucky’s eyes go wide and he flips around abruptly to face Steve. 

“No. You’re still you, I don’t care what you look like.” He takes Steve’s hands in his. “These haven’t changed.” He flicks Steve’s forehead with his fingers. “You having fight for brains hasn’t changed either. Wilson told me you wanted to take on dozens of Hydrans on your own, you know. And saying yes to some strange Ancestor who offered to give you a mysterious gift? Who does that?”

“It turned out fine! And I coulda handled those Hydrans,” grumbles Steve, and Peggy laughs.

“Fight for brains is exactly right,” she says, then slides in close behind Bucky.

“I dunno, I think I’m overdue for performing a feat of strength to win our Heart.”

“I can think of better things to do.” She presses a kiss to the back of Bucky’s neck, and feels him shiver, hears the hitch in his breath. “That is, if you’re amenable.”

She lifts herself up onto one elbow to get a proper look at Bucky’s face, and sees that he and Steve are kissing, gentler than is their usual wont. Reverent, almost, a grateful prayer in each tender exchange of kisses. It’s the next best thing to kissing them herself, watching the lovely downward sleep of their thick lashes, the way a flush slowly builds on their cheeks and lips. She gives herself a good long moment to appreciate the sight and the way it kindles heat in her.

When Steve and Bucky stop kissing for a moment, pulling away from each other with matching sweet sighs, Steve holds Bucky’s gaze.

“It’s okay if you’re not ready for this right now, Buck. I know I look different, and maybe you need some time to get used to it, to get used to us again—”

“And maybe you’re just not in the mood,” adds Peggy.

“But if you want—”

“I want,” says Bucky, ragged and low in a way that goes straight to Peggy’s cunt. “You can’t know how much I want, I’ve—it’s been so fucking long, and I—”

She bets it has. She and Steve have had each other, but Bucky hasn’t had anybody. It’s past time to rectify that. Peggy leans down and kisses the hinge of Bucky’s jaw as Steve kisses him, and she both feels and hears Steve and Bucky moan.

“Tell us how you want us,” she murmurs, right into Bucky’s ear.

Bucky’s eyes are dark and almost dazed with the offer, but then he looks at Steve and his gaze sharpens, abruptly focused and clear with the sort of intensity that always tempts Peggy into squirming and flushing when it’s aimed at her. 

“I want to see you,” Bucky says to Steve. ”What’s different, what isn’t. I want to see.”

“Yeah,” breathes out Steve, wide-eyed under Bucky’s hungry scrutiny, already wriggling under the covers and fumbling to remove the shirt he’d worn to bed. “Yeah, that’s—please.”

“I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” Peggy tells Bucky. “There are some quite exciting side effects of the gift of the Ancestors.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Well, Steve’s a little bit insatiable now. Maybe the two of us together can tire him out properly.”

Steve flushes violently red, and it spreads down his chest, making Bucky laugh. “Aww, so that hasn’t changed.”

There’s some rather undignified flailing around then as Steve gets all his clothes off and Bucky throws the covers off of him. There’s really only barely enough room for the three of them on Bucky’s bed, so there’s some awkward shuffling around until Bucky growls in frustration and just straddles Steve, sitting back on his heels to examine all of him. Peggy scoots in close enough to run her hand through Steve’s hair, and to look up at Bucky’s face. She wants to see every reaction he has, wants to see his lovely clear eyes show every bit of wonder and want. Steve’s hips jerk up against Bucky, clearly seeking friction, even as his darkening eyes stare up at Bucky self-consciously.

“Ah ah, not yet,” Peggy murmurs with a warning tug on Steve’s hair, and watches Bucky make the same wondering and avid examination of Steve just as she had, after Erskine’s gift had left Steve so changed.

First, Bucky leans down and cups Steve’s face in his now mismatched hands. “Not all that much different here, apart from the beard,” concludes Bucky, then tilts his head. “Only, did your head get bigger?”

It’s enough to make Steve roll his eyes and relax a little, losing some self-consciousness, and Bucky grins at him. He moves on to Steve’s shoulder’s next, spanning the broad width of them with an appreciative hum, before settling on Steve’s really quite impressive bosom. He hates it when she calls it that, but honestly, it’s the best word for the pleasant handful that Steve’s chest has become.

“I’m quite fond of that particular new addition,” Peggy tells Bucky, and Steve goes even more red. Oh, this is going to be very fun. “You should touch his nipples.”

Bucky does, rubbing curious thumbs over them, and Steve arches up against him with a gasp. “Wow,” says Bucky.

“Yes, I think they’re even more sensitive now than they were.”

“They are,” confirms Steve. “Can you please—more—” 

Bucky hums obligingly, and with sweetly intent concentration, keeps circling Steve’s nipples with his thumbs, pressing harder, then pinching, and paying careful attention to each of Steve’s responses. Peggy’s own breasts feel suddenly tight and sensitive, hungry for touch. She wonders what Bucky’s metal hand will feel like on her own nipples. Quite compelling, judging by Steve’s reaction. He’s gone open-mouthed and gasping, squirming under Bucky, and Peggy has to kiss him, catching his moans in her mouth. 

“You’re getting really hard just from this,” she hears Bucky remark, equal parts thoughtful and awed. “Simmer down, I got other stuff I want to do.”

And that’s so utterly, thoroughly Bucky that Peggy laughs and sits up to kiss him. When she feels the shape of his smile under her lips, her joy grows big and bright enough to finally wholly outshine her grief. This is hers again, finally. How had she ever taken it for granted?

When they pull apart, Bucky yelps. “Ow, Steve! What was that for?”

“That was a real pretty sight and all, but can you get on with it, I’m dying here.”

“Unlikely,” says Peggy, and pinches Steve back, which rather backfires, because he just moans and shudders, clearly too oversensitive all over just now for even the sharp bite of pain to be anything but pleasurable. Normally she’d follow up on that, to mutually enjoyable results, but they have other plans tonight.

Bucky returns his attention to Steve with a grin. “Yeah, yeah, okay.” He lays his right hand over Steve’s heart, and Peggy knows what he’s testing now. She smoothes a hand down Bucky’s back, presses a kiss to his shoulder.

“His heart and lungs are better,” she tells him. 

“No more trouble breathing,” confirms Steve. “No more dizzy spells, no getting sick all the time…”

Bucky frowns thoughtfully, looks at both her and Steve with concern. “Is it permanent?”

“So far,” says Steve, and Bucky lets out a long, relieved breath. He moves his attention next to Steve’s abdomen, and the strongly outlined muscles there. All his injuries from the fight on Thobira are already gone but for a faint patch of new pink skin. Steve shakes with laughter at the light touch of Bucky’s hands. 

“Aww, still ticklish?” asks Bucky with a mischievous grin.

“He is,” says Peggy at the same time as Steve says, “No!”

“Hm, we’ll test that later,” Bucky says, then scoots down to get a good look at Steve’s hardening cock. 

At this, Steve’s throws a hand over his eyes and groans. “Bucky, can you not—”

“Not what? This is a part of your anatomy I’m very interested in. And that I’ve missed a lot.”

“Real romantic there, Buck,” gripes Steve and she and Bucky both laugh.

“Hmm. It’s bigger, right? Pegs, is it—”

“I am going to die—” exclaims Steve and Peggy ignores him. Steve might protest, but his cock is clearly very interested in the attention.

“It is! In a proportionate sort of way, I think,” she says, and Bucky tilts his head as if to consider that before nodding. 

“Aww, don’t be embarrassed, Steve. I liked your dick just fine before too.” He slides gracefully down Steve’s body, and with a smile that’s equal parts wicked and sweet, he bends down and brings his mouth to Steve’s now hard cock to press a few light kisses to the soft and sensitive skin there. Peggy has to stifle a gasp, her cunt throbbing at the sight, and Steve trembles all over with the effort of keeping still.

“Bucky, please—”

Bucky straightens again, sitting back up. “Not yet. Turn over, please.”

Steve grumbles and groans, but he submits to more awkward repositioning until he’s lying on his front, arms stretched up to grip the headboard. He’s making restless little movements of his hips, and when he turns his head towards Peggy, she sees that he’s flushed and glassy-eyed. 

“Patience, darling,” she tells him, and kisses him long and deep, with a little bite at the end to drive her point home. 

Meanwhile Bucky’s straddled Steve again, and he’s tracing a finger down the now straight line of Steve’s spine. She sees Steve close his eyes tight, pain and adoration warring on his face—he too is probably still warring with a no longer necessary grief, memory and reality clashing. Because it’s Bucky, flesh and blood and alive, who’s lavishing such tender attention on Steve’s broad back and smoothing a hand down to the tempting dip of his lower spine, Bucky who’s real and here, not just a beloved, mourned memory.

“Can you get on with it already?” demands Steve.

“Get on with what?” asks Bucky, then stretches up over Steve to press a slow, careful line of kisses down the length of his spine. 

All the tension in Steve’s muscles melts away, and Peggy’s eyes prickle with tears at the sight. It’s been a long time since she’s seen that, seen Steve truly loose and easy. She lets herself enjoy the sight before she decides it’s time to speed things up, thinks Peggy. She sits up, runs a hand through Bucky’s hair and pets the soft, thick strands. She really does like his longer hair.

“How do you want him, Bucky?” she asks. “Just hands? Your mouth on him, his mouth on you? I assure you, Steve has very much missed both.”

“I have. I really, really—”

“Hush, Steve,” she chides, reach down to put the fingers of her other hand over his lips. He nips at them lightly, but she stays focused on Bucky, who’s looking flushed now, his mouth parted, eyes on Steve. “Do you want to fuck him? I can open him up for you, you can watch. Take your time, touch yourself, while he watches you. Or do you want me to do you so Steve can watch, and then—” She grips Bucky’s hair a little harder, tugs his head back so his feverish focus is on her. That earns her a desperate, bitten back moan, and she goes almost breathless at the idea that’s just occurred to her. She leans closer to Bucky, so their lips are almost touching. “You can fuck me, and then Steve will fuck you, after, and you’ll remember that we’re yours, properly.”

“Yes,” says Bucky against her lips. “Yes, yes, yes,” he chants, and she lets him go with what’s she’s aware is rough abruptness. A plan is all well and good but they need some supplies.

“Let me—fetch some things, then—take off your clothes, distract yourselves...” she babbles, and rushes into the other room where she’s left her pack.

The Lantean doctor in the infirmary had taken her aside as they were being cleared to leave, and she’d pressed a small, full bag into Peggy’s hands. We’re all so happy for the three of you, the doctor had said with a blush high up on her pale cheeks. I figure these will come in handy, for your, you know, marital relations? I can, um, go over them with you, if you need— Peggy had peeked into the bag and flushed wildly. Ah. Thank you. But we’re quite familiar with contraceptives. Though these are…very nice? The doctor had looked relieved. Oh good. Well…have fun then!

She fetches the bag now, and a couple things of her own, then hurries back to the bedroom, where Bucky’s now as naked as Steve is, and stretched out on the bed, one careful hand on Steve’s cheek as they kiss, not gentle anymore, but deep and long. Peggy tosses the bag onto the small table by the bed and takes off her own clothes, scarcely able to take her eyes off the incomparably lovely sight of her two husbands, of a height now, both of them broad and strong. She’d have them in any shape, really, but she can’t deny that these particular shapes are very pleasing. 

She slides in behind Bucky, and he startles a little before she kisses his temple. “Shh, stay there—or, no, lie on your front please,” she tells him. “Steve, how are you doing?”

Steve props himself up on one elbow and watches her and Bucky with shining, love-drunk eyes. “I’m good,” he says, his voice a deep rumble.

Impatient though he might be for this, it’s been a long time for Bucky, so she intends to take it as slow as he needs. She pours some oil onto her hands, and starts by lightly massaging Bucky’s back first in an effort to get him properly relaxed. He’s grown broader, since Brook Lynn, his back more strongly muscled. His everything is more muscled, really, if still leaner than Steve. Bucky’s not just more muscled though, he’s more scarred too. The metal of his left arm meets the flesh of his shoulder in abrupt, somewhat brutal fashion, pink and white scars radiating out from it, and she has to swallow past a lump in her throat. How much had it hurt him?

“This doesn’t hurt, does it, darling?” she asks as she touches the alternately raised and pitted scars.

“No,” whispers Bucky. “Sorry, I know it’s not—not the kinda thing you want to see—”

Steve leans down to shut him up with a kiss. “It doesn’t matter,” says Steve fiercely. “We only care if it hurts you. Does it hurt? The arm, or the scars?”

Bucky shakes his head and hides his face in the crook of his arm. “Not really. Not anymore. It itches, I guess, the scars are finally healing up more. Dr. Cho gave me something for it.”

“We’ll put some on later,” promises Steve.

“Sexy,” mutters Bucky, and Peggy snorts and slaps lightly at his ass.

“Hush you, and let us take care of you. Tell me if it hurts, or if you need me to stop.”

She uses a liberal amount of the oil—getting the oil was an indulgence, given her and Steve’s current nomadic lifestyle, but one they’ve put to good use—and slides a finger inside Bucky. He gasps, but before she can ask if he’s okay, he breathes out again in one long sigh, relaxing. Steve’s murmuring praise and encouragements as Peggy works Bucky open slowly. He’s as tight as she’d expected, so she pays careful attention to his body to make sure she’s not going too fast. She ends up being too solicitous apparently, because Bucky lifts his head to demand more, and faster.

“If you’re sure.”

She flicks a look over at Steve, who has a better view of Bucky’s face. He nods in confirmation before leaning in to kiss Bucky. She recognizes that kiss: it’s the pliant, yielding one Bucky only gives up when he’s properly relaxed, so she speeds up her efforts as they keep trading kisses, adding fingers and going deeper, until she hits that perfect spot and he cries out, the sound muffled by Steve’s mouth on his. She feels him seize around her fingers once. When Steve pulls away from him, Bucky’s breathing hard and fast. Almost ready, she thinks, and keeps going. Steve just watches her avidly, his stare as good as a touch, and then he takes himself in hand, giving himself a few slow strokes. That surprises a short moan out of her, the sight of Steve’s hand on his own hard cock, precome already forming. She stops fingering Bucky, and Bucky makes a small needy sound that finds an echo in Steve. They’re always so incredibly attuned to each other in moments like this, she thinks, like the strings of a harp vibrating in harmony.

“Pace yourself,” she warns Steve, with a grin she knows is sharp, because it won’t do if Steve goes off too early and disappoints Bucky. Steve would be ready to go again soon enough, but still. She turns her attention back to Bucky. “Turn over, dear, and we can get this properly started.”

He does, movements loose and lax, and the slack pleasure on his flushed face sets her arousal aflame, to say nothing of his cock with its familiar thickness, hard and ready for her.

“Can I maybe convince you to switch around the order of your excellent plan?” asks Bucky, as he shifts a little on the bed. He gives her a beseeching look, and she has to admit that’s a very fetching sight what with his kiss-swollen lips and big eyes.

She bites her lip and considers, eyes Bucky’s erection. She very much wants to feel him, right now, hyperaware as she is of the wetness of her arousal, of her cunt pounding with its own pulse of need. But…then she remembers one of the other little indulgences she and Steve had picked up at a market. Well, that she had picked up. For all that she’d tried to convince him such objects were perfectly common and accepted in plenty of societies in the galaxy, he’d balked hilariously at the thought of actually bargaining for and purchasing one.  

“I have a better idea,” she says, and fetches the sleek plug, made of some smooth stone or metal substance. It’s not too large, only meant for one person unlike the larger and double-ended toys so much of the rest of the galaxy favors. This one has a rounded cone sort of shape with a flared base for easy handling, and as she and Steve have had pleasant occasion to test out, it’s an excellent way to fill Steve up and push him to new heights of release when he fucks her.

“Oh,” Steve says when he sees it. “Yeah, that’s a really good idea.”

“What is it?” asks Bucky, giving it a dubious look. Steve leans in close and whispers in Bucky’s ear, as if propriety is a thing he has to worry about when they’re all naked together. “Oh. Okay, yeah, that’s—please.”

She positions him to her liking, then orders, “Tell me if it hurts or if you don’t like it,” before sliding it in. “How’s that feel?”

Bucky lets out a long and trembling sigh. “Good, really good—you use this with Steve?”

“I told you, he’s rather insatiable now.”

“Peggy! It’s not—you’re making me sound like some kinda lecher—it was basically just like second puberty—”

She and Bucky both laugh, though Bucky’s laugh ends on a breathy kind of moan as the movement presumably jostles the plug inside him. “Oh, I remember puberty with you, Steve, and it didn’t involve anything like this,” says Bucky as he lies on his back and reaches for Peggy. 

Peggy allows herself to be pulled in for a deep and slow kiss, humming happily into Bucky’s warm mouth at the long-missed familiarity of it, the way it contrasts with the newness of Bucky’s cool metal palm gentle on her cheek. His hands roam carefully over her body as he kisses her, mapping her with devoted attention, and when he reaches her hips, thumbs resting lightly on the edges of her hip bones, she shivers with pleasure.

“Not that this isn’t the best thing I’ve seen in a real long time, but you two have got to hurry this up, or I’m not gonna last,” says Steve.

“Well? Shall we hurry this up?” she asks Bucky, and he nods, kisses her again.

She fumbles on the table beside Bucky’s bed and grabs one of the condoms from the little bag, and rips it open. The Lanteans have many marvels, but honestly, this one is rocketing right up to the top of her list right now. 

“Did Dr. Cho give those to you?” demands Bucky once he sees the little packet.

“Yes, she was very thoughtful.”

Bucky throws an arm over his eyes and lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “I’m never gonna be able to look her in the eye again.”

“Too bad, these are far nicer than the ones we used to have to use, you’ll have to get used to it.” She slides the thin skin of the condom onto Bucky, straddles him, and guides him inside her in one swift and smooth motion. The moan she lets out as he sinks into her is entirely involuntary.

“You feel so good,” she says, and just rests there for a moment with him buried deep into her. She loves this first moment, always, the almost aching stretch of it, the fullness.

“Yeah,” Bucky rasps out, looking up at her with some intense feeling caught between wonder and pain, and then he puts his hands on her waist, on her breasts, and starts to move his hips. 

It takes them a few mismatched thrusts before they find their rhythm and settle into the steady pace that apparently Bucky still prefers, and then Peggy loses herself to the perfect fullness, to Steve’s deep-voiced murmurs of encouragement and praise, to the absolute focus of Bucky’s eyes on her. He’s quiet, at first, making no sound apart from his heavy breaths, but she can tell when their movement makes the plug in Bucky’s ass hit that sweet spot inside of him because that wrests a surprised and ragged moan from him.

She rides him harder, eager to hear more and chasing the perfect angle. Only when she finds it does she start to bring a hand to her clit, but before she can, Steve slides close and takes hold of her hand instead.

“Let me,” he says, and circles her clit with his finger in the exact maddening way she loves.

Time slides away from her then, and control does too, melting hot and bright into this moment of pure, singing sensation where she feels the truth of what they are: head and heart and hands, bound together into a greater and more perfect whole than they could ever be apart. She comes with the insistent, rough press of Steve’s fingers, and she clenches around Bucky again and again, riding him harder and faster through her orgasm, until she almost can’t bear it, and until he comes too.

She almost doesn’t want to pull off, but she flops onto her back beside Bucky, her chest heaving with fast breaths that want to turn into giddy and thrilled laughter.

“Steve,” she hears Bucky say, his voice beautifully wrecked. “Steve Steve Steve, you gotta, come on—” and when she turns to look, she sees Steve nearly wild with need. Bucky or Steve, she doesn’t know who, has tossed aside the plug and the condom—clean up is for later, she supposes—and they’re both moving together with clumsy desperation.

In their peculiar nonverbal way, they quickly work out how they want each other, Bucky wrapping his long legs around Steve’s waist, Steve bracing himself over Bucky, until he shifts back for an instant to take Bucky’s hands and lace their fingers together, pinning Bucky to the bed. She doesn’t have quite the right angle to see, but she knows Steve has slid inside Bucky from the simultaneous cry they both let out.

Steve doesn’t move at first, he just stares down at Bucky, wide-eyed and wrecked with some mix of happiness and want and pain. 

Bucky must see the pain, because he swallows hard, and says, “Steve. Steve, I’m right here. I’m—I’m back, and I’m sorry it took so long—”

“You don’t have a single thing to be sorry for, sweetheart," says Steve, and then he moves, thrusting into Bucky at the same moment he takes Bucky’s mouth in a kiss.

This is for the both of them to work out, one way or another. This is for Steve and Bucky to make a start on letting go of a grief they no longer need, to drive it out with pure physical reality.

Here the gift of the Ancestors proves itself again, as Steve fucks Bucky harder than he ever could before, with driving snaps of his hips that have Bucky crying out. Steve starts to ease up, but Bucky tightens his legs’ grip on Steve. 

“No,” he chokes out. “Keep going—harder—I want—I need—”

So Steve keeps going, hard and fast, and she might have thought it a brutal fuck, if not for Steve and Bucky’s interlaced fingers, their unwavering eye contact, the way they’re straining towards each other as if even this isn’t close enough. This, Peggy learned not long after marrying them, is just their way with each other, rough and gentle in equal measure, neither of them holding back from the other even the smallest portion of their love or want or tenderness, both of them reckless and wild with it. She’s glad that hasn’t changed. After Steve comes with a shout, and when he collapses on top of Bucky, Bucky’s arms wrapping around him automatically, Bucky jerks with a couple spasming shudders. Has he come again, so soon? 

Peggy moves in close now, and does her best to hold and soothe both of them, until Steve flops off to Bucky’s other side, reaching one ludicrously muscled arm across Bucky to hold both of them as best he can. 

“Everyone alright?” asks Peggy.

“Sticky,” Bucky says hoarsely. 

“Sweaty,” adds Steve.

She slaps at both of them lightly. “You know what I meant.”

Bucky lets out a shaky, long breath, then he kisses Steve and her. “I’m fine. I’m—” he laughs, and Peggy watches the creases form at the corners of his eyes, proof of his genuine joy. “I’m better than I’ve ever been.”

“Yeah,” says Steve, burying his face in Bucky’s hair. “Me too.”

“Good,” Peggy whispers, her voice too thick with happy tears to manage anything louder, and she thinks she can hear, very faintly, the same sweet crystalline tone singing in the distance that they’d first heard in Atlantis’s Gateroom.

Later, when it’s actually morning and they’re all fully clothed again, Bucky’s telling her and Steve about his Lantean teammates when a chime sounds out in the room.

“It’s the door,” Bucky says in answer to her questioning look, and she gets up to open it, Bucky following behind her.

When she opens the door, she’s greeted by Natasha, who’s holding a small box in her hands. Her lips are curved into her usual small and mysterious smile, but she’s letting her eyes shine with her genuine happiness, and Peggy can’t help but beam back at her.

“Hi,” says Natasha, and steps inside. “Just so you know, your long-lost husband’s teammates are planning quite the party for you three tonight. Hope you’ve got a nice dress hidden in your pack somewhere. Though if you don’t, I can probably get you a dress.”

“From where?” asks Bucky, faintly bewildered, and Peggy and Natasha grin at each other. Natasha’s been introduced to Bucky already, but he has yet to get a real glimpse of Natasha’s many and varied skills.

“Same place I got you these,” Natasha says, and gives the wooden box to Peggy. Steve joins them and peers curiously at the box. “Well? Open it.”

Steve opens the box with the sort of caution one of Natasha’s more explosive presents would merit, so it’s something of a surprise when he reveals three coils of shimmering, finely wrought chain instead, each in a different color: silver, blue, and red, just like Steve’s shield.

“Oh,” says Peggy, reverent.

“For your bracelets,” Natasha explains. “New ones, I mean.” She reaches out to take Peggy’s hand and give it a squeeze. “You’re not a widow anymore, Widow.”

“How did you…?” Steve begins to ask, and Natasha just shrugs. Natasha can always find what they need: information and food and weapons and new friends, and now, wedding bracelets.

Peggy hugs her, long and tight. “Thank you,” she whispers into Natasha’s ear. 

“I’m really happy for you,” Natasha whispers back, then she releases Peggy to hug Steve too. 

Bucky runs a finger over one of the chains, a tremulous smile on his face. Peggy bumps his shoulder with hers, lacing their fingers together. 

“So what do you say, dear Heart? Will you marry us again?”

Bucky’s smile grows. “Yes. Of course, yes.”

It’s not like the first time. There’s no special ceremony, no family members singing songs, no elder blessing their bracelets. This time is just for them. They sit in Bucky’s quarters together, and braid the three chains, weaving the silver, blue, and red together tight and strong. Each of them braid two bracelets each, and it’s Steve of course whose clever hands fashion the clasps.

They do the next part just the same as the first time though, because this is the part that makes it real, makes it true. Peggy fastens one of the two bracelets she braided onto Steve’s wrist, and the other onto Bucky’s, and Steve and Bucky do the same for her, and for each other, until they’ve all given each other one bracelet for each wrist. It’s a simple thing, really. Both the formation of a circle, a thing with no beginning and no end, and of a triangle, the stable base from which so many things are built. Head, Heart, and Hands.

“Do we need to make the Promises again?” wonders Bucky.

Peggy’s about to come up with some breezy excuse not to, because she’s not about to admit that she’s forgotten the words—in her defense, the Promises are in a particularly antiquated form of the language of the Ancestors, and they’re rather lengthy too. So of course Steve has to go and say something devastatingly romantic.

Steve takes Bucky’s hand, smiling down at their no longer bare wrists. “Why would we? You’ve helped us keep every single one, Buck.”

And well. There’s nothing to do for that but kiss each other, and each kiss is a promise in itself, deep and abiding.

When she, Steve, and Bucky arrive at the promised party, they’re greeted by both cheers and a ripple of happy, multi-colored lights all along Atlantis’s walls. There are a couple dozen people scattered throughout the room, with more arriving every moment, some of them carrying trays of food or bottles of drinks. Natasha waves at them from where she’s standing with Governor Emmagan, and Peggy spots Sam Wilson and his team too, all of them fussing with something or another at a table laden with beverages. Music fills the air, something alien, but pretty and bright, just like the lights.

There aren’t so many people here, and yet Peggy is still a little overwhelmed, part of her straining to catch every half-heard snatch of conversation, to take in every new face and evaluate it for a threat. Natasha’s at ease though, so everything is probably fine, and Peggy lets the waves of laughter and conversation pass over her as Bucky guides her and Steve through the crowd.

“Hey, who’s in charge of the music?” she hears someone ask, and someone else answers, “Atlantis is, apparently. You’re welcome to try and change it, but looks like she’s got her own ideas about what appropriate party music is—”

“Rodney, relax, have a drink, the City’s fine—”

A man’s strident and almost panicked voice cuts across the din of party noise. “The City is sentient! How am I supposed to relax! Atlantis has developed sentience, she’s like a beautiful, perfect, terrifyingly powerful baby—”

“Who loves us and who’s figuring things out just fine, seriously, we’re fine, it’s fine—”

They’re waylaid then by a group of people all offering their congratulations and welcomes, who press drinks into their hands, and when they break through that knot of happy revelers, they finally reach Bucky’s teammates, the ones who’d visited them in the infirmary.

“The happily reunited throuple arrive at last!” says the man with a carefully maintained beard—Tony, Peggy remembers, Bucky’s teammate Tony, who helps him with his arm. 

He blinks in surprise when Bucky smiles at him. “Thank you, Tony, this is amazing,” he says, and she and Steve echo his thanks. For some reason, this seems to take Tony aback. 

“Oh! Uh, you’re welcome! Pepper helped, obviously—”

“Not really, actually,” she cuts in with a kind and amused smile. “Tony’s been dying to throw a party for months now, he’s just been waiting on an occasion. I’m a little concerned that he hoarded the alcohol for this, actually.”

Tony snorts. “That’s called party planning in the Pegasus Galaxy, Pep.”

Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes rolls his eyes at his teammate, then gives them a smile. “We’re really happy for you three, seriously. And Governor Emmagan will tell you officially, but all three of you—and Natasha—are welcome to stay here, if you want.”

“Even if that does mean you gotta change your name, Nomad, sir,” says Sergeant Hogan. “And I guess you too, ma’am.”

“I’m more than happy to drop my unfortunate title, I assure you,” she tells him.

“I don’t know, I think I can keep mine, still. No one else out there needs to know I’ve settled down.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose. “Nomad’s such a dumb name though, Steve,” he mutters, and Steve just kisses the side of his head. 

“What, you wanna pick a new one and spread it around the galaxy? Be my guest, Buck.” He smiles at Sergeant Hogan. “Thank you, though, to all of you. For helping Bucky when he needed it.”

“He helped us first,” says Rhodes. “Saved our lives, even. We were happy to help him back. And we’re happy to welcome you all here. Not so often we get to see a happy ending like this out here, y’know?” 

“I know,” murmurs Bucky, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. The long-missed return of that idle, reflexive affection makes Peggy’s eyes briefly warm with the heat of happy tears. This is no happy ending, she thinks. It’s a new, happy beginning.

Tony leans in and peers up at Bucky more closely. “Huh. So this is what you look like when you’re happy, huh?”

Steve throws an arm around Bucky’s shoulder, while Peggy snakes an arm around his waist, and Bucky tugs them both closer, like they’ve turned into a human version of their braided bracelets.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and she sees his smile widen as she looks up at him. “Yeah, it is.”