Lapis | Bucky Barnes.

XV. heart nebula

"Who's speaking?"

Keira's voice was cold as ice, her eyes focused on the phone that was lying on the table in front of her, the call on speaker. Her and Bucky were sitting on opposite sides of the table, observing the phone as if it was a medium they were using to talk to the dead.

"This is Tony Stark, who's this?" He asked for the thousandth time, since when Bucky first picked up the call, he didn't talk, instead letting Keira join in the conversation.

"I'm Bucky Barnes. The girl is Keira Jones, a SHIELD agent."

"Ex SHIELD agent."

"Bucky Barnes?! The Winter Soldier?!"

Keira raised an eyebrow, glancing up at Bucky who grimaced at the sound of his alter ego's name. It was the first thing people thought, when hearing his name, and he couldn't do anything but accept it was always going to be like that.

"We're looking for Steve Rogers. Can we talk to him?" Keira asked before Bucky could, his face already informing her he wasn't going to say nice things to Tony.

"He's, um- he's kind of busy at the moment. Can I help you? Is everything okay?"

Both their faces softened at his words, Bucky nodding at Keira to agree on revealing their location.

"We're in Tahoe City. We kind of escaped from SHIELD because of a misunderstanding."

"Oh, so it was you two! Cool escape, how the hell did you manage without superpowers?!"

Keira didn't answer, Tony speaking up the doubts that had been bothering her since she arrived there. It wasn't impossible for someone to escape from a facility as secured as any SHIELD compound was, but something told her they had received a silent help from someone quite important.

"No idea, we just did. We've been trying to get in contact with Steve for days, until we saw what happened in Helsinki." Bucky replied, scratching his stubbled chin.

"Yeah, alien invasion. Looks like it was a solo attack from a group of aliens landing on the wrong planet. Nothing to worry about."

Keira furrowed her eyebrows, finding his chill extremely out of place. "Did people die?"

The silence following Keira's question made them understand what the answer was going to be, and both sighed heavily, glancing at each other with troubled eyes.

"It's what we have to deal with. We try to protect this world from as many dangers as we can, but someone inevitably gets caught in the crossfire. It's fucking frustrating if you ask me, but that's why I constantly insult myself. At least I hate myself as much as they do."

Keira shook her head, looking down at her hands as Bucky stood up, walking towards the window and looking outside.

"This is not something you can control. You do the best you can, but you're not omnipotent. You can't decide who lives and who dies, it just happens." Keira said, not even knowing if Tony Stark was actually seeking for comfort coming from her.

"Thing is, we do. When we hear about multiple attacks, we have to decide where to go knowing that the other places will be defenseless. But that's what happens when you decide to admit publicly that you're Iron Man."

"It was really brave."

"It was really stupid and irresponsible, but oh well, it's not new for me. Where were we, by the way?!"

Keira couldn't help but scoff at the irony of the situation. Tony was a really troubled man that definitely spent too much time blaming himself for every of the world's catastrophes while hiding everything from the outside world, but she understood him. She would have probably done the same, if she were in his shoes.