* дело №17 !

Perhaps, he might have minded once, but there was something about a couple of kids with their Avengers shirts on screaming in joy and asking for pictures that made his heart fill with warmth a bit. After another round of pictures with a no older than six-year-old set of twin boys, Steve turned back to his seat and sketch-pad, pausing at the shadow covering his spot. He dropped into his seat and placed the pad in his lap.

“Would you like a drawing?” he asked as he straightened his pencils out, only after that, looking up to see who he was talking to.

it was times like these that part of him missed bucharest. not that new york wasn’t an equally beautiful city in it’s own way, because it was, but new york was filled with ghosts of his past. people who might actually recognize him. that was why he hadn’t lingered long after pulling steve out of that river. he knew steve and that falcon guy had been looking for him. he knew nat had been helping them. the only difference was that nat had actually managed to find him. she hadn’t told steve, per his request. james wasn’t sure he was ready to face steve again. steve probably wanted his friend back. his best friend. bucky. but james wasn’t sure if he could be that person again. he wasn’t sure if he deserved that nickname.

while on a walk, he stops dead in his tracks when he spots him. легок на помине, he thinks to himself. he sighs. despite his better judgement, he heads in steve’s direction. he’d been living in the avengers compound for a few weeks now, and avoiding steve when he lived in the same huge building wasn’t always easy. he’d managed it. albeit, barely. he stops in front of steve, unsure of what to say. “no, thanks,” he answers. “hey, punk.”

it would’ve been so easy to say that there had been nothing good in her life until nick fury. natalia would’ve welcomed the thought – a quick and easy way to forget her dark past because no good had come of it. a simple solution to all her problems now. a bow on top of a package wrapped in old newspaper clippings with marmaduke comics and unfinished crosswords that the neighbor threw out. but it wasn’t really true. because out of everything – out of the black smoke and blood and dangerous nights at the bolshoi that was her life, there was james.

james, who she’d left behind. who natasha swore she’d return for. who’d been reduced to nothing but the winter soldier once she’d gone. the red room’s mistake had been allowing them the chance to fall in love – a risk they wouldn’t take again after she’d defected. the thing about the red room is that when they didn’t want to be found, they were impossible to find. even for her. it had been crazy to think she could go back for james. she wished she’d taken the whole freezer. maybe then their relationship now would’ve been less complicated and more… marmaduke.

she found him in his room, where he was most days. avoiding everyone else, which she couldn’t blame him for. not when you considered everything. people like natalia and james would always bear the weight of shame that the other avengers could never understand. whatever bad things they’d done in their past – their guilty consciences weren’t dripping with blood. they wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for things that can never be taken back.

“лучик.” she greeted him in russian – an instinct natasha couldn’t quite get past. they’d helped each other on that front – he perfected her english and she’d perfected his russian. лучик had always been her favorite nickname for him. ray of sun. the one person in her life that made her feel real. the ray of sun that illuminated natalia’s true self even in the midst of an institution that wanted nothing more than to suffocate and darken it.

natasha tapped his door softly with her knuckle, a small smile on her lips. “busy?”

for a moment, he doesn’t register the person approaching his room. lost in thought, staring off into space from where he sits on the edge of the bed. too lost to realize. he tries not to get like this, especially in a new place with so many people around, but he can’t seem to help it at this second. the tower was large and spacious, but lonely. there were people around somewhere, but they could be hard to find. not that his apartment wasn’t lonely as well, though, because he was fairly certain it could be considered such as well. he appreciated the new place, but deep down missed the comfort of the small and shitty apartment he’d gotten since returning to new york.

he’s pulled from his thoughts by none other than natalia. the one person he could stand to look at here, other than steve, but even that was difficult. with steve, he knew his best friend wanted bucky, but james wasn’t sure if he could be bucky again. wasn’t sure if he was deserving of that title. he wasn’t sure yet if bucky had survived the fall off of that train or not. but with natalia it was different. she understood him, better than anybody here, and she understood what it was like to have your past drenched in blood. though this was something james would never have wished on anyone, especially natalia, there was nothing he could do to change it. he had been apart of her training, after all. memories that were still a little fuzzy.

“лисичка,” he replies, forcing out a small smile as he looks up at her. she asks if he’s busy, and he shakes his head. he wasn’t sure how he’d come up with the nickname ‘little fox’, but it had stuck ever since she had begun calling him ‘ray of sun’. since their days in the red room. dark days made brighter with the other around. “i’m never busy. unless avoiding everybody, except perhaps you, counts as being busy.” he glances down for a moment. “there’s something i want to talk to you about,”

      Spotting a gun, Peter tossed the idea of waiting out the window and pulled his hood down pass his lips. Time to get to work.        “Yoink!” Before the thugs even knew what was happening, the gun was webbed away and stuck to the alleyway wall. “You guys should have taken up photography, you still get to shoot things that way!” 

no, his conscious was weighed down by the blood of the people the winter soldier had murdered. and now that tony knew who was to be blamed for his parent’s murder - a secret he refused to keep from someone who deserved to know the truth - he couldn’t look at him. couldn’t say he was sorry because sorry wouldn’t do anything. sorry wouldn’t bring back tony’s dead parents.

gloved hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie, which was pulled up over his head in a rather weak attempt to disguise himself, he walks down alley after alley, relieved to finally get a breath of fresh air.

he stops dead in his tracks when he sees a small figure on the ground being beat up by a group of guys. and in an instant, he’s taken back to the 40′s. taken back to all the fights he’d finished for steve so his pal, his buddy, wouldn’t get his ass completely kicked to shit. stepping forward, he grabs one of the men by the collar of their shirt, yanking them backwards before punching them in the face. he fights the three men, gaining the upper hand thanks to his extensive training in fighting and his metal arm, which packed a mean punch, until the group of them took off into the night. 

The metal that sung to him was more than enough to tempt Erik, his fingers danced in the air as he felt the urge to pull against it. He wasn’t initially sure where the source was, having found himself inside the crowd at the local fair, only to know that it was in a general direction. Outstretching his hand, he began to feel for the metal, moving closer as he did so, finally landing on a man who seemed to just want to stay hidden.

Interesting.

“You know, if you wish to stay unnoticed, the best advice is to hide in plain sight. Not in a cap and hoodie,“ he remarked, letting his hand drop against the urge of the metal radiating off of the man. “Your arm, it’s not made of bone, nor is it made of Adamentium like a certain other… person I know.“ He stated carefully, flicking his gaze down and then up towards the man’s face. “Who are you? Why are you trying to run?“ He asked, raising his brow and moving so that he could peer into the other’s face.

“how do you know about my arm?” he felt himself growing more and more hostile with every second that ticked by in a painstakingly slow manner. what the hell was going on?

“it’s made of metal. but that’s none of your business. it’s also none of your business who i am or why i’m trying to run.” he tried not to glare as he felt more and more defensive. why did he want to know? why did he care? “who are you?” he returned the question, narrowing his eyes. “why? why do you ask?”

Tony had only had brief encounters with Bucky Barnes. He knew the man as Steve’s long-time childhood friend, and further as the human weapon made by H.Y.D.R.A. known as the Winter Soldier. He also knew about the metal arm and the guy’s ultimate overall aura of sadness and confusion that seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

But other than that? Nope, Tony didn’t know a lick about him.

Which he assumed was fine, the guy seemed to be mostly mentally there now and he looked as if he needed and wanted a place to stay, and since being Steve’s friend and also carrying two adorable cats with him, Tony opened the floor below Steve’s with wide open arms for the man. “Welcome to Avenger’s Tower, hope you don’t mind the mess, we’re still cleaning up after what happened with Ultron.” He stated, looking over his shoulder at Bucky and smiling, reaching to down to pet one of his cats and grinning at how cute it was.

“If you need anything, just give F.R.I.D.A.Y. a shout, she’s here to help–she also has a map of the place for you in case you feel lost, which don’t worry buddy, it happens.“ He stood up, fixing his suit as he turned to face Bucky. “What’s your kitties names? I have one, her name is Neutron, I saved her from the streets and in a lot of ways, she’s saved me.“

and now, here he was in the presence of tony stark, and he was trying not to freak the fuck out. because he knew the winter soldier was responsible for the deaths of maria and howard stark, something he felt guilty for despite knowing the blame, realistically, should go on hydra. but instead, he took all of it on.

“black one’s named salem. orange one’s named garfield. i adopted them with the names and never came up with better ones.” he answered with a shrug of his shoulders as he set down both cats down. “i got salem in bucharest. took him with me when i came back, and then i thought he could use a friend or something.” he forced out a smile as he looked over at tony.

“i’m sorry, friday? is she another person who lives here, or...?” his brows furrow together in confusion. the more he looks at tony, the more guilty he feels.  “uh, sorry to change the subject, but there’s something i need to tell you,” he adds, gulping as his eyes fall to the floor. “and after i tell you, you can decide to kick me out or whatever and i won’t hold it against you, but i can’t stay here in good conscious without telling you this,” he pauses, now refusing to look tony in the eyes as he tries to think of how the fuck he’s gonna explain himself.

“you know i’m the winter soldier. you know i was brainwashed and tortured by hydra into becoming this mindless killer, and for the past year, i’ve been trying to remember what i did when i was under their control. what the winter soldier did. and that’s... that’s decades that i have to try to remember, but there’s one thing i remember that you aren’t gonna like, but i have to tell you. you deserve to know,” he crossed his arms over his chest, pausing again.

 “the winter soldier killed your parents.”

“You don’t understand. Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Take you out and stuff something else in? You know what it’s like to be unmade?“                                                                                                      “You know that I do…”                      

“You’re shitfaced, bub. Time t’go,” Logan couldn’t very well turn his back on a guy stumbling around the place, not when he was Captain America’s old buddy. They didn’t need to get into any of that shit right now. War haunts the back of his mind, but he’s not exactly open to talking about it; not even with a fellow vet. And, because Bucky’s history is so extensively complicated, Logan would rather not stick around for any of that heart-to-heart bullshit. He knows about the Winter Soldier and that’s probably why Bucky’s seeking something from the bottom of a liquor bottle, and being a man of vice, Logan can’t necessarily blame the kid. The difference was that Logan didn’t feel the affects of his shitty habits, cigars and alcohol don’t hurt him, even though he often wishes they did.

“Where’s home?” he grumbles, exiting the bar with a metal arm slung around his neck, his side propping up a significant amount of Bucky’s weight. “You better live fuckin’ close, or I’m leavin’ ya.” At most, he’ll get him shoved into a goddamn taxi if he didn’t think that they could reach his place in time, before Bucky collapsed and passed out or some equally dramatic shit like that occurred. Drinking buddies. This is why it’s best for Logan to drink alone, because he is surely always left with babysitting duty. 

that, combined with all the memories he was slowly piecing together from his days as the winter soldier, were reason enough to him to walk into the bar and order something to drink. tis the season. truth be told, he wasn’t sure anymore how long it’d been since he first walked in that bar, leading up to the situation he was in now. drunk and being carried off by... who was this guy, anyway? he was familiar, but bucky couldn’t place why he felt like he knew him. “184 ash street,” he slurred, a low groan escaping his lips as his metal fingers gripped the other’s shirt. he tried his best to walk with the help of the other. “who’re you? i swear... swear i remember you. recognize you. but... don’t remember,” 

During their time in traveling from planet to planet for jobs Mantis and the Guardians had learned a few things about Mantis that even she didn’t know about herself. One of those things came from a terrifying experience where Mantis almost froze to death on an ice planet. It was then discussed that she was not allowed in a climate mostly known for being cold and if she were to leave in cold weather she would have the proper layer to keep her warm. Which she did when she left the Milano, and of course she knew that when it got too late and the temperature of Terra continued to fall that she needed to head back before then.

Running around for hours in the cold was a bad thing and it started to show when she was about halfway home. Mantis actually thinks leaving the large crowds was a bad idea, she felt warmer surrounded by people no matter how paranoid she was about being discovered. Halfway home Mantis was shivering and the wind was blowing, what may have seemed to the few people walking down the street as just a cold breeze felt like a harsh ice wind that one could feel at either of Terra’s north or south pole. Eventually to escape the onslaught of the wind she ducked between to building into a trash-filled alleyway on shaking legs making it almost to the other end before falling her knees.

She was shaking drastically at this point, teeth chattering, and even though her hands were in gloves she could still feel that they were cold, so much so to going numb. There was a small voice in the back of her mind telling her to just stay and wait for the Guardians to come looking that she would be easy to find, but another was saying if she didn’t keep moving she’d just continue to freeze. Mantis tried to rise but her legs felt stiff and she didn’t manage to stand on her own.

Mantis scooted her back to the wall and pulled her legs to her torso wrapping her arms underneath her leg and keep her arms warm but buried her head in her knees. She needed to hopefully keep herself warm like this for a while, just a while before she…

he drops the plums in his backpack, thinking for a split second before he steps forward and scoops the freezing woman up in his arms. he might regret this later if it backfires on him, he thinks to himself. but in the moment he doesn’t care. she needs help, and he’d give it to her. he was just glad his apartment wasn’t very far away. approaching the building, he unlocks the front door and is more than relieved that they’re hit with a blast of warm air. a nice contrast to the cold new york streets. 

he walks down the hall, making a bee-line for his apartment. unlocking the door and going inside, kicking said door shut behind him so the cats wouldn’t get out, he puts her down on the couch. turns the heat up and begins looking frantically through his closets for anything that could warm her up. blankets, specifically. in the end, he finds three blankets and covers her up with them before taking the comforter from his own bed and covering her up with that too. by then, the cats have grown curious of the woman, sniffing her before laying on her; garfield curled up in her lap with salem right next to him. moving into the kitchen, he turns the coffee pot on and waits for it to brew. mostly for himself, but figures coffee could help her too if she wanted it.