Bucky hadn’t meant to overhear.
He was walking past the common room—intending to grab coffee before heading to debrief—when the elevator doors slid open and her voice drifted out.
“Guys, I said I’m sorry—”
“Yeah, well, ‘sorry’ doesn’t show up for pizza night three weeks in a row,” snapped the taller girl—Jules? Jamie? Something with a J. “You just vanish. No texts. No calls. What are we even supposed to think?”
Another voice, softer but no less biting: “We’re not stupid. You’re hiding something. Just admit it.”
He paused by the corridor wall, invisible in the angle of the shadows.
“I’m not hiding anything,” she said too quickly. “I’ve just been... busy.”
“Doing what?” the first girl challenged. “Your uncle’s rich, and you live in Stark Tower, and you still don’t have five minutes for your friends?”
Bucky didn’t need enhanced hearing to catch the silence that followed. The kind that meant something had stung.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she mumbled. “I’m trying, okay?”
“Well, try harder. Or maybe don’t bother.”
And then the elevator dinged shut.
Bucky stayed still for a beat. He didn’t like eavesdropping—but God, he knew that tone. That awful, splintered loneliness of being made to choose between the life you wanted and the one you were trapped inside.
By the time he reached the kitchen, she was gone.
Later that day, he caught Stark pacing near the main holo-table.
“She’s fifteen,” Tony muttered. “She’s not even legal to drive. And somehow she’s got more classified mission hours logged this month than Clint.”
Bucky folded his arms. “You’re the one who said we needed her phasing ability in Berlin.”
Tony waved him off. “I stand by Berlin. But that doesn’t mean the kid doesn’t need a break.”
He tapped the screen and sighed. “One day. One night. I told her she could have tonight off. Friends, movie night, pizza—the works.”
Bucky raised an eyebrow. “That’s surprisingly thoughtful.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Don’t get used to it.”
That night, the Tower was quiet.
Too quiet.
Until Bucky’s comm buzzed sharp in his ear.
“Barnes—this is Cap. We’ve got a problem.”
The mission was supposed to be clean: intel grab, in-and-out. But the facility they’d raided had something alive in its core. Not human. Not machine.
Ghost tech.
Something intangible, fluid, bleeding through walls and systems like fog through glass.
“We can’t contain it. It’s reacting to everything. We need someone who can phase inside and stabilize it from within.”
“Shit,” Bucky muttered. “Stark gave her the night off.”
“Override it.”
“She’s with friends.”
“We don’t have time.”
Bucky cut the line with a grimace.
He reached the Tower’s rec room twenty minutes later.
It was glowing dimly with fairy lights, popcorn bowls scattered across beanbags, and a dumb romcom playing on a projector. Laughter, quiet and cautious, echoed as the girls settled in.
And there she was.
In fuzzy socks and a too-big hoodie, curled up between two girls who’d clearly stopped being angry. There was peace on her face for the first time in weeks. Not the sharp vigilance of combat. Not the fatigue of wounds healed too fast. Just… normal.
But when she saw Bucky in the doorway, that peace evaporated.
She didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
Just looked at him—and knew.
He saw her shoulders slump before she even stood.
Outside, in the corridor, she didn’t ask what happened.
She just wrapped her arms around herself and muttered, “What is it?”
“Something bad. Something ghost-adjacent. We can’t get close.”
She didn’t sigh. Didn’t protest. Didn’t beg for one more hour. She just pulled the hoodie tighter, nodded once, and let her eyes glow—indigo and violet sparking to life like a flame lit behind her skin.
“Tell them I’m coming,” she said quietly.
And she walked toward the jet without looking back.
Bucky followed. But as he did, something inside him twisted.
She wasn’t supposed to carry this weight. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
And yet—she carried it anyway.
Because nobody else could.