His Soulmate | Bucky Barnes ✔

Chapter Fourty Five

We were scattered across the living room, everyone's eyes darting from one person to another.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Tony asked, his voice quiet as he began taking single steps to the door.

"It's the only way." Steve murmured, his hand itching up his side as he met my eyes. Instinctively, I took a step away, trying to shield my body from him. But it was too late.

Steve darted forward, and screaming a war cry I'd never heard before, his hand caught my shoulder. I had failed to escape. His resounding shout of "Tag!" echoed through the room, and with that, everyone split.

I was It.

Left alone in the living room, I spun around slowly. All I'd wanted was the last chocolate bar in the cupboard and somehow events had escalated to a children's game played by a group of trained adults with my pudding taken as the main prize.

The rules were complicated, but played often enough by the others that it seemed to make sense to them. I'd been given the edited version, before my food was stolen from me by Bruce.

It started like a normal game of Tag; whoever's It Tags a second person and therefore passes the Tag on. Then they split into teams announced by JARVIS, where one person with the Tag can pass it to someone in their team without physically touching them. After that, it becomes final death; whoever is It is out of the game once they've passed the Tag onto someone else. The last man standing wins the chocolate bar I'd been dreaming of eating all morning.

I sighed and slid my phone into my pocket, tapping on it twice to make sure it was secure, then stepped out the room. As suspected, the stairwell I used was empty, but I still didn't dare approach the more common communal ones.

I kept my breathing quiet, listening for a noise that could hint to the others' whereabouts. There were ten of us playing in total, but I'd taken so long in moving that everyone was now scattered around the building. I had no hope of finding anyone, especially as I still didn't know my way around the entire Tower yet.

"JARVIS?" I rose my voice above a whisper in the hope the AI could hear me.

"Yes Miss Parker, how may I help?" His voice rang through the stairwell, and I immediately jumped back from the volume. I was still a bit jittery around loud noises that I wasn't expecting, and took a deep breath to steady myself.

I stepped back into the living rooms and paced the floor. "Where are the others?"

"Are you asking me to inform you of the location of the other players in order to beat them at this game?"

I narrowed my eyes, looking up at the ceiling where JARVIS' security camera lived. "Yes?"

There was a slight pause, before JARVIS spoke again with a hint of a smile in his voice. "Mr Stark is in his second lab updating his suits whilst waiting for you. Mr Banner and Thor are making their way to the roof, and Miss Romanoff is setting up a base in the gym."

I bit my lip as a holographic map of the tower appeared in front of me, and blinking red dots appeared in the corresponding rooms.

"What about Steve and Clint? Where are they?"

"The Captain Rogers and Mr Barton are two floors below you." Two more red lights appeared below the living rooms.

I ran a hand through my hair and sighed as I realised there was no way I would be able to Tag any of them. "Wade and Peter?"

"Currently in Mr Parker's rooms though it looks like they're about to exit via the lifts."

I tapped my foot on the floor, but as I was turning to leave through the back stairwell I heard a voice that made me yelp in surprise.