The Engineer (Bucky Barnes x OC)

Chapter 15- Oh, that's right, I actually had a decent idea

8 hours later

After sending in my report about giving Bucky lucid dreaming pills and informing Shuri that I was nearly done with the metal arm, I sat back and closed my eyes, trying to clear out my head a bit before I tinkered a bit more with the arm.

The joints and metal "muscles" were already created and set into place, and I'd taken a scan of Bucky so that I could make it so that the metal worked collectively with his real body. It wasn't like I could just put it on him, I had to make a literal arm out of metal. He had to be able to move his arm like it was an actual limb, so I had to make a skeleton of a real arm out of metal and attach the different joints and veins so that it was a human arm made out of metal. From there, I could attach it much easier. Or as easy as you could attach a metal arm to a flesh body.

Luckily, he already had the stump, so I wouldn't have to make one of those. Thank the lord.

Unfortunately, HYDRA had made it terribly complex. It was designed in a way to make the arm stay on, which is what I was looking for, but I wasn't expecting it to have different hinges and weird wiring, probably built for extreme combat and such.

Ugh. Russian HYDRA agents. So confusing.

I tilted my head back, picturing Bucky in my head, except with his hair cleaner and his eyes brighter, his mind cleared of trauma.

That was the Bucky I was helping.

Alright, enough sitting around. Time to do stuff.

I leaned forward and got back to work with marking up the places I needed to smooth out and other places that were a bit sharper than they should've been. As I worked, thoughts flowed into my head. I began to think about my mother when my phone dinged with a text from my sister.

Rosa: Hey, Nico, how's the new job?

I quickly picked up my phone and texted back.

Me: Great! How's work? How are you?

I turned on silent mode so that it wouldn't ding again and let the thoughts slide into my brain as I worked.

I wonder how Rosa's doing. She'll answer that question in a couple of minutes. I wonder how mamá is. Last I checked, she was doing just fine, but it's nice to hear from her.

I was about to call her, but then I stopped. She told me to only call her when it's an emergency because she worked all day. I slowly set my phone back down.

My mother was a serious Christian, and she believed very deeply in God. I had grown up the same way but started to become an atheist as I studied science a bit more and realized that the bible didn't exactly fit into history. Besides, as a hands-on kind of guy, it was hard to believe something existed if you couldn't see it.

But everyone was different.

I was very nervous to tell my mother about my orientation. I loved my mother very much and didn't want to sever the relationship I had with her. Besides, there were many people out there who firmly believed that being gay was a sin and that "Christ could fix it".

Look, I see where you're coming from, but you don't understand. Can you control being straight? No? Then why do you think that I can control being gay? I can't! Nobody can control who they are or how they were born. You can't pick the color of your skin or your nationality or your race or your hair color or your eye color or how attractive you are. Orientation is the same way.

I wish people would listen to me when I explained that to them.

Some people are too stubborn to believe it, though.

Funny how religion can be misleading.

That's kinda why I'm an atheist.

Then again, that's also misleading.

I guess we'll never have a pristine outlook on others, will we?

I sneezed just as Shuri walked in.

"Nice, Ron!" she said sarcastically.

"I sneezed! Oh, I'm not allowed to sneeze?" I replied, finishing the Vine.

We both laughed a bit before she continued to talk.

"I ran your plan past T'Challa. Here are your pills. You'll want to give them to Bucky later," she said, handing me a container of pills. "You'll also want to teach him about lucid nightmares and how to get out of them because he'll probably get a lot of those,"

I nodded. "Yeah, I've had one of those. It sucks. And it's terrifying,"

"Everything looks real," Shuri agreed.

"Thanks, Shuri," I smiled, examining the pills.

"It isn't a problem," she replied, exiting the room once again and leaving me to work on the arm.