Red Star ✴️ Bucky Barnes X Reader

24: The Final Hours

It was weird eating what might be your last meal. Especially when it's oatmeal and raisins.

The trio were sitting in the floor of Steve's room, eating breakfast together in the early hours of the night. Over the next 10 hours, the group was going to be making their final preparations before heading to the Raft.

Bucky was trying to shake off the nerves with some humor, which Steve mirrored well. Bowman was quiet and pensive, but she showed no fear. She felt like she should be scared. Why am I not scared?

A knock came to the door, with Shuri coming in soon after. She held up a hair trimmer.

"You ready, Bowman?"

Bowman sat her bowl on the tile floor, getting up to follow Shuri.

"About as ready as I'll ever be."

--- 8 HOURS 3 MINUTES ---

Steve, Bucky, and T'Challa sat around the drawing room table as they went over the final details of the plan. Just as they were getting into the thick of it, the door opened.

Shuri walked in with Bowman, who was sporting a very different haircut. Her hair had been cut short on the sides with a slightly longer top, mimicking the look of Helmut Zemo.

"Nice hair." Bucky smirked.

Bowman merely nodded. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere.

"With everyone here, let's discuss the plan." Steve stated.

T'Challa nodded, taking charge of the room. He brought up a holographic model of the raft with some areas highlighted in red.

"We're bringing two helicopters. One is for us, the other is to carry all the other Avengers. The second will be hiding in the cloud line."

Zooming in on the model, T'Challa began highlighting certain rooms.

"Shuri will head to cameras. Once she's got the system down, we'll knock out the Raft guards walking with us, then split up.  Bucky and Bowman--"

T'Challa highlighted six different points around the perimeter of the ship.

"These are the fault points of the Raft. Your goal is to make it look like the ship is sinking without actually sinking it."

"How do we do that?" Bucky inquired.

"Using this..." Shuri smirked, pulling a small item from her tactical bag. It was roughly the size of a ruler, but Bowman knew exactly what it was. Shuri slid it across the table to Bowman's chair. She caught it instantly.

Bucky just scrunched his eyebrows. "What is that?"

Bowman smiled, her fingers tracing over the cold, dark metal. With the flick of the synthetic string, the piece unfolded into a recurved bow complete with six expanding arrows.

"So you want me to shoot the access points?"

"They're thin gaps in the piping." T'Challa responded. "Very hard to get through, and pretty deep. It might have been possible for us to simply have Bucky stick his metal arm in and attach the devices, but we decided not to take any chances."