The World Keeps Changing

Chapter 28

That evening, a gargantuan arrangement of flowers arrived, a mix of 2 dozen yellow roses with huge white daisies and a note that said: "Sorry, beauty. My hypocrisy knows no bounds." As I was setting them out on the table a little package fell out. It was huckleberry flavored candy. I couldn't suppress my smile any more. I sent Steve a text. "You're not a hypocrite, you just sound like one," quoting the next line. "But you still owe me a talk."

I also decided to test my assumption by doing a test of a couple of Asgardian dishes Thor had described for me and I was trying to recreate for him using Midgardian ingredients. A brown stew of lamb and vegetables with warm spices like ginger and nutmeg that I served with fat, hearty potato dumplings. I had discovered Asgardian food had a lot of similarities to Scandinavian cuisine, unsurprisingly, but skewed heavily toward what would be considered holiday or special occasion fare here on Midgard. Though that may have been more a reflection of Thor's royalty, rather than Asgard in general.

The next day there was a note on the counter in an elegant script reading simply, "A reasonable offering". If I wasn't pretty damn sure of who Thor's guest/snake was before, I certainly knew now, my rage flaring anew with the certainty. I lit a fire on the back patio that night and burned the note while Bucky held me tight.

Then, it stopped. Food stopped disappearing altogether. I even tried a couple of other Asgardian dishes. Bucky and I enjoyed them by ourselves.

Days later, it was Seoul in the news. We'd been at the compound nearly two weeks. My bruises had basically healed, just fading yellow and green was left of the worst, and Bucky's enforcement of my physiotherapy as well as a rest regimen (a.k.a regularly keeping me incapable of standing courtesy of his fingers and/or mouth) had my leg feeling better than it had in a year. We watched the footage of Steve, Clint, and another man and woman we had never seen before evacuating a train. Bucky wanted to go back to the Tower, find some way to help the team.

"Okay."

He just looked at me. "Okay?"

"What do you expect me to say, Bucky?" I said, looking up from my glass of wine in the commons kitchen where I had been putting away dinner. We'd taken to using more of the compound than just my quarters over the last few days and were in the commons as often as not. "I certainly can't stop you. I don't even know that I should. I have faith in the team to do what they need to do. If I thought I could help rather than be a liability, I'd probably want to go, too." I went to put my glass in the sink. "I don't want you to. Gods know I never want anyone to put themselves in harm's way." I turned around and leaned back against the counter, hugging myself. "But, you promised me you'd always come back when you could. That's all I can ask."

He followed me to the sink and stepped close, his hands rubbing up and down my forearms reassuringly. "What do you want, Cookie?"

"I want what every person destined to wait wants, Buck. I want all my people home and safe. I want all the people I love here where I can take care of them. I don't want to be left alone to worry."

He kissed my forehead. "Okay."

"Okay?"

He nodded. "Steve and Natalia wanted me to stay, make sure you stayed safe, and I shouldn't run off just because I have the notion I could help."

I looked thoughtfully up at him for a minute. "We should talk about that sometime."

He blinked, immediately lost.

"About you and Steve."

He eyed me warily.

I did wonder about Buck and Steve, and Buck and Nat for that matter, but it wasn't my business what he remembered. "Did you two talk about that before it happened? Potentially both you and Steve being with me, I mean."