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The Stark Legacy (30)

Tony Stark's Daughter (OC) x Bucky Barnes epic slow burn

Furnace, part of Book III: Power (see previous or series)

Summary: When Tony tries to put Cloak in danger, Lil'Sam steps in, giving her father more to worry about. Later, Samantha realizes she's developed a crush on someone she shouldn't--her friend, Bucky.

Warnings for budding romantic attraction and feelings of insecurity. Mild language. Rated Teen/15+ ONLY. WC 4.2k

CHAPTER THIRTY—August-September 2039

Sam rubbed her eyes furiously. When she slept, she dreamt of staring at even more screens. It was hard to know when she really was awake and working.

Bruce usually blurted out the next question on his lengthy list for Sam to work out an answer to while he continued down the line. Today focused entirely on a problem the team had toyed with for months, but she didn’t know why it was so urgent now. No one told her what was going on…not on purpose, at least, and after months of pushing to be heard and included, to no avail, Sam’s mental investment whittled down to the size of pea. That tiny lump still kept her from sleeping well anyway.

Sam yawned while Banner mumbled something under his breath before turning to her.

“I’m sending you a mock up for a containment casing. Run diagnostics for allowing sensory control of the Space Stone, will you?”

“No prob, Bob,” Sam said flatly, nearly cross-eyed from fatigue. She adjusted a few parameters in the model before getting up to stretch. “‘Bout time for a pick-me-up, I think.”

She didn’t get the chance to leave the lab.

An alert sounded on Bruce’s console, prompting the doctor to heatedly warn someone over comms that “we aren’t ready yet.” Whoever it was didn’t listen, and after removing his glasses, Banner’s frustrated pinch of the bridge of his nose told her it was her father. By now Sam recognized this as the universal symbol for: No, Tony, please don’t. Bruce pinched his nose often.

Tony burst through the double doors, ordering the men who followed him to clear the center of the room. “The idea is to not blow up the room, but no promises,” he shrugged. He pointed to several tables. “Goes, goes, be careful with that one—”

“It’s untested, Tony.” Bruce stood, shooing a lackey away from snatching the stool he sat on.

Tony stayed facing the door. “Doesn’t matter. Time’s up and we need to see what we are up against.”

“What’s happening?” Sam’s station was pulled over to a far corner. Unsurprisingly, Tony didn’t answer her.

Tyrone walked in, wearing one of the minimal space suits used for travel to the orbiting station. Tony clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good—” Tony held on to the helmet while Ty adjusted a glove “—they’ll be in with it shortly.”

Bruce stepped forward. “If the signal just went off that a ship is outside of the solar system, we have enough time to practice this.”

“Not really,” Tony snapped, “if that’s the main ship of Annihilus, we need to know right now and keep it from getting to Earth. If it’s a scout ship, we need to keep the fleet from getting bigger.”

Sam tried to get close to Ty. “You’re teleporting to space? Have you ever done that before?”

Ty’s dark eyes lowered to fiddle with a clasp.

Tandy raced in, bright red in fury. “Like hell you’re going, Ty.”

Sam turned to Dee. “Have you ever given him enough energy for that?”

“They don’t want me to do it,” Dee choked back, “they want him to use that thing.”

A man and woman carried in a heavily armored trunk. Sam knew what lay inside.

She gripped Ty’s arm. “You can’t touch that thing,” she warned. “Even without direct contact, the radiation exchange damages homosapien tissue, particularly blood vessels.” She turned to her father. “He can’t touch that, Tony.”

“Kid, this is not a negotiation. Cloak here is an Avenger in all but name—that’s next month, right?—so he knows the risk.”

“You can’t expose him to that without testing it,” Sam insisted.

“Sit back down, or leave,” Tony spat back. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Ty interrupted. “Actually, sir, so far I’ve only used Lightforce from Dee—Dagger…sir.”

“I’ve heard you like cereal, too,” Tony added, spinning a finger to speed up the pace of the two charged with the heavy trunk.

“—and he won’t just have a radiation burn from the damn stone. He could die.” Tandy stepped between Tyrone and Tony for good measure. One good grip of Tony without his armor and Dee could have him on his ass.

“Well, I hope not,” Tony said calmly, “but he’s a big boy. Energy is energy, and he’s gonna need a boatload. Move, Black Swan.”

The agents finished the security protocols, opening the trunk to reveal a glorious flash of blue light. Tucked in lead lining sat the Space Stone, a raw ingot of power from the Big Bang itself.

Sam rounded on Tony once again. “You want the info so bad, get it yourself. But Ty isn’t doing random interstellar teleport without practice.”

Tony looked at Tyrone, reaching around Dee to hand the helmet over. “He’s got the coordinates where the ship pinged.”

“Sam, you said it yourself,” Bruce added, “if an apparatus can aid in controlling the energy—”

“We aren’t even sure it’s the right type of energy,” Sam screamed, her anger rising in time with Tandy’s.

Ty coughed for attention. “I want to help, but that distance is going to take a lot out of me. I’m not gonna drain Dee to—”

“No,” Sam and Dee screeched in unison. Fists white with rage as she glared at Tony Stark, Tandy concentrated her power towards her fingers, but before the girl could spray the room with daggers, Sam grabbed her arm, syphoning the Lightforce into herself.

The light rippled and magnified beneath her skin until a hum was audible across the whole room. “You want your recon so bad,” Sam asked, “you got it.”

Sam smacked her hand down across Tyrone’s forearm, and the two disappeared in an eerie cloud of inky thick fog.

One-hundred and four seconds later, the pair reappeared in the midst of an explosion of yelling between Tony, Bruce, and Tandy. Sam’s frozen body clanked onto the floor. Ty detached his helmet, mid-apology.

“I didn’t know she was doing it,” he murmured, shaking.

As Tony stood, terror blocking any movement he made, Bruce flung himself forward to check Samantha. Tandy moved Ty away to comfort him, watching the rest intently.

Frostbite receded as the pink returned to Sam’s skin, and in a lengthy, frightful gasp that howled through the room, she started to breath again.

Hoarse still, Sam sat up to look at Ty. “You saw it, right?”

“Yeah,” Ty breathed, “I saw them.”

“Nevermind, I fixed it now,” Sam burst at Tony while rushing away.

He followed, pissed. “Oh, you fixed it? And we’re supposed to take your teenage word for it?” The reverberation in the open Wakandan halls echoed their angry words.

Sam spun around. “Then don’t take my word for it. Take all that oh-so-precious Earth-saving time to check my math. You can help me with my homework.” He felt spit hit his neck Sam was so close. “I’d be so grateful!” She mocked him with a bow.

“You don’t think I’m doing all this for you, so you can be safe here? Pay attention, Sam, I’m afraid of what being around me would do to you.” Tony grabbed her arm, clutching the delicate connection with his daughter. “People hunt me down. They torture. They kidnap. They kill.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“I just want you to—” He heard it again. The snap. The bone under his hand collapsed, making the same hollow sound as Thanos’s fingers on Titan.

Sam’s face sank faster than her body. Her sunken cheeks, the deep grey under her flat brown eyes, the almost plastic gloss of her skin. The sickly face of his daughter morphed with a devious grin. The short hair darkened and pulled back from her face, revealing a sharp peak and crazed eyes. The nose pointed above an equally sharp goatee, and there beneath Tony, arm in his hand, kneeled Lemuel Dorcas.

The grin parted. “How’s our girl doing?”

Tony punched the sweat-soaked sheet off in the dark. Another nightmare. One of hundreds to plaque his life. At least this time Sam didn’t become Pepper, he thought. He could never shake Pepper crying while her arm hung mangled, but nowadays Dorcas crept into these dreams more frequently. He knew it wasn’t real.

The evil doctor’s lingering question echoed in Tony’s mind. Our girl. Who was Sam now? Who did she belong to?

She’d laid cold and unmoving on the lab floor, all to prove him reckless and hotheaded.

Four ships.

Not a scout, the start of a gathering. They were scanning the system. Tony’s longshot chance was to keep Satellite Station cloaking how advanced their planet was and hope the ships passed them by. Earth needed to go dark immediately.

Tony would never tell her, but Sam may actually have saved them by stopping the use of the stone; that was the exact energy signature they needed to avoid Annihilus detecting. For the first time since the Stone War, he was grateful Vision had never been restored to use the Mind Stone. Perhaps that was the only good thing to come out of its destruction in the facility explosion that killed his wife.

He could use more recon on how the ships were scanning and how much they already knew about Earth. However, after the stunt she pulled, Sam wasn’t allowed near Ty, and even if Ty teleported out there again, how long would it take to find answers? Could they even understand what he’d find?

Four hours of sleep, Tony thought, good enough. He dressed and left for the lab.

Your brain goes to strange places when you’re bored. Sam’s fresh appreciation for life without direction framed the sentiment in gaudy, bright gold in her mind. You’re so far down the rabbit hole…

She’d been banned from her “job” since teleporting. Unable to see Tandy and Tyrone while they took on further Avengers’ duties, Sam lived without interaction most days, lonelier than her basement in Wakanda. She was allowed no tech devices either, seeing as she her proficiency was known and highly suspect by Bruce and Tony.

Bucky suggested keeping a journal. He explained over another homemade lunch that he used to keep notebooks while hiding in Romania. “Helps collect my thoughts, practice what I want to say. Sometimes, when I write out my version of what happened in a confusing situation, I can see it from a different perspective,” he’d explained over tomato soup. Sam had offered her grilled cheese sandwich expertise to compliment the meal. Bucky had even let her use her hands to cook them, though she knew he thought it a little unsanitary.

In her lengthy entries in Composition books, Sam wrote directly to Missy, as if her long gone friend could respond to the new dramas of life with Tony Stark. After a while, her thoughts answered her in Missy’s monotone: flat yet sarcastic, and somehow loving, too.

Nothing distracted her from overthinking one very particular thing Sam noticed: Bucky was always around. Not everyday because he’s got shit to do. He went out of his way to get her out of her room. If Wilson were here, he would too, so would Dee and Ty. When Bucky said goodnight, he hugged her tighter than necessary. Didn’t he?

It wasn’t meant to be anything more than comforting. Right? Couldn’t be.

Sam ate like an animal and bowled like an old woman. She’d yelled at him, and she made him angry enough to yell at her. So…Can I be trusted to think this out logically? I’ve died twice this year so far.

He’d woken up to stop her and Tony from fighting…after Big Sam saw them in the atrium. Because he protects people. That’s the job. He protects everyone in the building, everyone in the world. That’s it. Bucky simply saved the day, again…and then kissed my head and smelled my hair…

You think, you don’t know that.

He taught her to cook, multiple meals now. He bowled with her. Like a date, but definitely not a date. He…

Does he smile more? Sam swore Bucky smiled more, but he’d been on other dates. He could like one of them.

But he touched her shoulder or arm when asking what she was up to or how her day was going. He wanted to talk to her. That’s stupid. He did that before, even on the ship to Wakanda, even at the wedding; I’m only noticing now that I’m bored.

And you smelled him first.

Sam sighed. Bucky’s scent was a mix of warm linen, citrus soap, and musk…paired with her daddy-issue tears smudged onto his pectoral. Sam acknowledged that was a little perverted, especially since that olfactory memory eclipsed any part of the accompanying arguments she had with Tony, a relationship that drained her entirely.

Her emptiness refilled with a wholly different feeling, an antsy excitement, an uncertainty, a deep shame. That’s not normal. Right? He’s simply a good hugger. Oh my god, just shut up!

Her brain warred with her now, as it did everyday recently. Nights were the worst. Sam could keep it together when Tony called her Sass. She could block out some of it while working but pushed aside with no other distraction…

How does anyone get anything done? Hormones are stupid.

You’re better than this. Buck up—

GODDAMMIT.

Her discomfort radiated to every cell. Sam wished to scream the tightness in her throat loose, blow apart the pressure crushing her chest with an inferno. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Sam couldn’t do it. She avoided the root of the feeling for weeks. She had a relationship with her father, albeit rocky, one of the only things she had ever truly wanted, but Tony alone wasn’t enough. Dee and Ty weren’t enough.

The guilt of wanting this, however, him in particular, it threatened to suffocate her soul for a greedy child.

Yet still, each little thought haunted her. Bucky Barnes haunted her.

Tonight in particular, her room became a stifling prison. In the open air of the grounds, in the dark, the rolling chirp of insects harped a symphony of company. At least this was a cool, breezy prison. She was still alone though, and the heat turned over and over in her gut, growing.

The steely blue halo surrounding the moon became an eye, and the dark, wispy shadows of clouds became long, soft hair. It’s not real. She could feel it between her fingers, and the heat grew. Stupid. The low bass of echoing water spoke to her gently, calling Sam from her screen-dreams to food down the hall, and the heat grew. Quit thinking. Her hand met the button of her jeans to push the blaze back, but then the cool metal slid over her fingers as a familiar military jacket.

You’ve got to be kidding.

Sam released her hand, almost crying out in frustration, instead letting a few tears fall in trade for silence.

No, she repeated. No, no, no, no. He’s not yours to want. He’s never going to be yours. Let it go now. Let this die now and move on. But how does something fed by absence, fed by nothing real or logical, die? Nothing encouraged this feeling except fantasy and hormones. Sam was smart enough to know that. Intelligence changed nothing. Intelligence killed no emotion, stifled no threatening bursts of flame. Control was a joke.

Before she could stop, the tears became soft sobs, broken by uncontrolled heaving breaths. The bugs were loud; the ringing in her ears was louder. The reverberation of warring forces inside her grew violent, the yellow hue under her skin guaranteeing an unhappy resolution. Raising her left arm in anticipation, Sam could feel something inside about to snap.

Arms wove around her chest and waist from behind, gripping her sides with a solid clutch. “I’ve got you. It’s ok,” a beloved voice sounded, “you’re alright.”

Without permission, her body melted and drained of fight. Where the hell did he come from?

Do you even care?

The void left by her sudden loss of heat was sickening. Sam’s tears flew out as the dam broke. The body so betraying her seemed to double down on its own vulnerability towards Bucky Barnes. Stupid.

Sam collapsed her weight against him, crying like a baby unable to speak.

“I’ve got you,” he repeated. Bucky slowly released her to sink to the soft grass and sat beside, face to face, his hand calmly resting on her leg.

Oh, great, watch me cry. Sam struggled to make herself quiet, but the delicious discomfort radiating across her leg slowed her progress to regain equilibrium. She was trying to smother freshly lit kindling.

“Here,” Bucky started, holding out a pair of earbuds, “I find music helps.”

Sam didn’t move. “Helps with what?”

“Sleeping,” he replied. “Nights have always been hard for me.”

Sam tried to swallow, hearing herself gulp to rid her throat of an immovable rock. She settled the headphones in without looking up.

Even with a slow, steady hum of gentle jazz, the lump remained and her tears fell. After a few bars, his hand left her thigh to wipe her cheek, and whether in relish or disbelief, Sam’s eyes closed to push the last salty drops loose. His thumb swept over her cheek one more time.

Sam felt tortured by his presence. She spat at herself internally.

That is a gross exaggeration. He actually was tortured for years, decades even, and you, little idiot girl, who hasn’t even lived for two decades, have no right.

She forced her eyes open, sniffing dramatically to move her head away. He returned to clasping his hands around his knees.

Sam braved a peek up. “Oh my god.” She raised her head entirely. “Where’s your hair?”

Bucky laughed, clean shaven and cropped. “I have that effect sometimes.” Sam kept staring. “Captain America needs to be PR ready for November. Nat’s orders.”

The ceremony was set to induct Cloak and Dagger, her best friends if she ever got to see them again, into the Avengers’ team proper. New blood. Fighters. They deserved the honor, but Sam hid her frustration. She was just as powerful, if untrained.

Whose fault is that?

Sam pulled out an earbud. Her mind went blank, staring. He was a whole different person. Sam had to take in all the new details. Pieces of his face she’d never seen in person before, the ghost of his military portraits from the 40s, like the old footage Sharon had showed her of their unit were brought to life in front of her. She fumbled for words.

“It’s not always…pain,” Sam finally admitted, eyes darting across his calm face then retreating to the shadowed tree line behind him.

Bucky nodded with a knowing look. His relaxed, pristine face made Sam more uncomfortable. He had no idea. He listened to her nonsense as if it were important, as if she was even intelligible in this blubbering state. She gulped again. Her mouth opened and closed like a gasping, stupid fish. She wiped her face with a shaky hand to break his gaze.

Oh yeah, you’re doing great. Really seductive.

With him sitting right beside her, everything overwhelmed her. The breeze became suffocating with the addition of his musk and a new element, aftershave. She just knew it was there; it was the same air that brushed across his face. The moon that so reminded her of his eyes shone down on them both, and those eyes could see it, too, could see her, too. His soft hair and rough hands were within reach, and Sam’s chest felt crunched between the 18-wheeler of her desire and the pavement of reality.

Bucky remained calm, oblivious, lazily rolling his eyes over the training field and Sam alike. He let the next song play. Sam thought he might be able to hear her pounding heart without his own cover of headphones. Instead, the intoxicating man with dark hair checked his small device and leaned back onto his own bent arms, stretching out like a feral cat beneath the moon.

She pushed the earbuds back. Sam’s arm twitched involuntarily, clenching against her shirt. You’re killing me here. What’s your next smooth line? ‘I like the way the moonlight hits your crotch?’ Oh, damn it, stop.

In her mind, she was crawling all over him in a dozen different ways, but then she caught the change in her breathing and slapped a hand violently against her mouth and nose, hard enough to feel a twinge against the nerve running to her eyes. Don’t break your own nose. He didn’t see, did he?

His face is less than four feet away. It’s safe to say he sees you.

Sam was totally unqualified to handle this. Lila had been too old to talk to her about boys. Laura had thrown in a few vague phrases about ‘the right time’ and ‘when you’re ready.’ Nat allowed herself a few crude jokes around Sam before she stopped calling or coming to visit, but not even a mild reference to sex during training. Annie had encouraged her to ‘have fun’ with Lucas because he was a ‘nice guy.’ Meanwhile, her best friend in the whole world was a computer program which could quote anatomically correct articles on the science of attraction and physical intimacy. Sam thought she might throw up just thinking about it. Tandy would know what to tell her if she were here.

You need to let this go. You need to let it die now and move on. The voice in her head was starting to sound like Missy, clinical and objective, unsympathetic.

Bucky had known her since she was a baby. His most vivid memory of her was probably still a four year old screaming at him, calling him a monster while he tried to help her.

Ungrateful, spoiled brat. That’s all you are to him. End of story. Sam had to tip her hat to the voice of Missy; she sure knew how to quash an argument. The diminishing cracks were soothing in this instance, distracting.

Sam snapped to alert when a hand broke her dead stare at her own crossed arms. Bucky looked down at her with an outstretched arm, waiting. She plucked out an earbud.

“You ready for bed?”

The hell?

Bucky half-retracted his arm, seeing her shocked face. “You don’t have to,” he corrected, “if you don’t want to.”

Oh, god, shut up! Trying to suppress a firework show under her skin,Sam repeated her imitation of a fish out of water.

“Keep the music if you want,” he added, holding out the control.

That’s not exactly what she wanted, but Sam supposed that was the less awkward of her options. Before she answered, Bucky glanced the song detail on the tiny screen of his player, taking the earbud Sam removed and putting it in his own ear with a smile.

“This is a good one,” he said, grabbing her hand to pull her off the cool ground. “You’ll like this one.” Without warning, playful Bucky pulled her close as if to dance.

His smell assaulted her, muting all thought. The linen and soap wrapped in something sweet she couldn’t place. He was right though; the smooth instrumentals were like a lullaby with the soft swaying movement in his arms.

Words sprang to life mid-song.

“I can’t believe that you’re not here with me, to have a laugh or share a tea with me…”

Sam let herself breath deeply. He smelled like grass, that was the new sweet note. She kept her face away from his chest, but he’d taken one of her hands in his, Bucky’s right hand against her waist. It was a terrible test she was bound to fail.

Her brain gave up, and the music filled her head.

“To never look into those eyes again, the sun might just as well not rise again…”

Sam looked up as the song rang out in one ear, and a falling star caught her eye. She almost thought about how romantic this all was until the fiery streak continued to approach.

The spot grew, headed straight for the compound. What the hell is that? More alarming still: it turned in the air above the trees to aim at her and Bucky on the lawn.

“Get behind me, Buck.” Sam pushed past him, stirring what she could in her arm, forcing the pressure of her anxiety forward. Fireworks might be necessary.

A silver suit landed twenty meters away. Tony? It looks too small—

Bucky tried to grab Sam’s shoulders to pull her out of the way. “Who are you? Why are you here?” He stepped to the side, a palm on Sam’s stomach, holding her back.

The surface of the humanoid suit rippled into a mimicked body and a face.

Sam’s face.

“I’m finally able to return to you,” it intoned.

Holy shit, Sam froze. “Missy?”

[Chapter 31: Miss]

[Main Masterlist; Light Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

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