Red Room

24: Fury

Three days. 

 Three days of everyone dodging your questions, stopping conversations as you walked by, and overall acting weird. 

Either they were overly, uncharacteristically sweet, "busy", or very very quiet near you. The main giveaway was Steve saying no to training, c'mon dude, he's known to love training. 

To any average passerby, nothing was wrong, but you seemed to have a gift for reading people, and that was pretty inconvenient for everyone else right about now. And today was the day that you decided to get answers. 

A whisper was coming from the halls, the sound of Clint's voice barely echoing through the door of Bucky's room, "No. She's not finding out that way, in fact, she's not finding out at all. 

That's it. 

You maneuvered out of bed and tried to storm out into the common area, but ended up in an awkward half-limp. 

"Okay, does anyone want to tell me what the fuck is going on?" you asked in a eerily calm tone. 

Alarm rang present in everyone's faces, "What do you mean?"Tony asked, making his was over to you. 

"No! You know exactly what I mean! Everyone is tip-toeing around me like I'm gonna snap at any point, or avoiding me, and don't tell me I'm imagining it, I've been through some shit with my brain, I think I would know." you growled, backing up to avoid the billionaire. 

"Y/n, sit down and we'll talk about this." Nat began. 

"Just for the love of God, tell me!"

"You need to calm down, right now, this is bigger than what you think. Just breathe." Steve cut in. 

You were fuming at this point. Were they really trying to calm you down right now? You needed and deserved an explanation for your own life, they had no right to with hold that from you. 

"What does that even mean!?" you cried, voice cracking. You looked to Bucky for some form of comfort to grasp onto, but he seemed lost and trying to figure out what to do. 

Tony ignored your distress and continued to make his way over to you, holding your arms up in defense, backing into a corner, "Just. Sit. You're gonna-"

He was cut short by a high-pitched whistle tone that grew louder with each second. 

The team stood stagnant in fear, looking up to the sky, awaiting the fall of...something. 

A small capsule, no larger than a baseball dropped through, bouncing slightly, fear growing with each clank against the hard floors. 

Your curiosity mixed with fear was soon aided by a shock wave that did enough to knock everyone to the floor, but not injure them. 

You fell against a wall, legs failing you. Smacking onto the surface, you managed to catch yourself enough to prevent further injury. 

Opening your eyes and attempting to pull yourself to your feet, well, foot, you scanned the room only to find everyone in a similar state. 

Catching them off guard, a buzzing began from the kitchen counter. Your heads darted to the source of the noise- Tony's cell phone. Signing in relief, Sam made his was over to the phone, praying to God that it wasn't any reason to stress further. 

 Suspiciously, Sam picked it up and turned it to speaker, only to be met with the sound of pure enragement from Nick Fury. 

"What did I say? What was the one thing I said?" he boiled. 

Sam dropped his head and shuffled his feet, "to keep her calm."

"Mhmm. And why was that so goddamn difficult? I can't trust the dumb asses who defeat Ultron to babysit for a few days so I can get this under wraps?!"

"Fury we-"

"I'm on my way right now. This one's on all of you."

Nothing was said as the end call tone filled the room. 

--------

You were now not only angry and confused, but now terrified. You had seen Nick through some pretty high stress situations, none of which milked this much outrage from him. 

Within minutes, the man was marching in and death-glaring the entire room. 

It didn't take a genius to realize that the team know they messed up. Fury turned to you, dropping the pissed-off look. 

"You, go wait in the car." 

Deciding now was not the time to make a comment, you obliged. 

Still sitting in the corner from the shock wave, Bucky walked over to help you to your feet. You slung an arm around him to stand up better and he looked to Fury for permission to leave. Nick nodded to him and you limped down to the SUV. 

"I'm sorry this is all-" 

"It's fine, Buck." you shot back.

"No it's really not, but-"

"You're right, it's not fine, but it kind of has to be for right now. I don't know what's going on, I barely know myself, and can't recall a single time in the past few days where someone was straight up with me. So yeah, it's not fine I guess."

He seemed to not know how to respond, he opened the door and guided you into the car in total silence, calculating his response. 

"That was mean..." you began, "Look, I'm not mad, just scared, I guess."

Bucky looked up and made eye contact for the first time since everything went to shit today, "Gee, I wonder why."

You smiled at the fact that he managed to keep that disarming sense of humor, even though sanity was currently falling apart. 

"Gosh, what's that show Parker was talking about the other day?" you giggled, remembering how passionately a 17 year old was about old kids television. 

"Hannah Montana?"

"Yeah, this is kind of like that, huh?"

He snickered at your almost-correct pop culture reference, "Not exactly, but close enough."

Out walked Fury, rage still rolling off of him, but not nearly as much. 

"Where's she going?" Bucky asked. 

"SHIELD, I pulled enough strings for her to be filed as a manipulated hostage, I just need to take her and and prove she's not still being manipulated."

Tension escaped Bucky as he understood that you were going to be safe, okay, and likely home by tomorrow, "Alright, love you y/n!" he called as Fury hit the gas. 

"Love you too!"

A/N: lmao not me just now realizing that I never titled the chapter...fixed it lol, also currently writing next chap, so it may be up tonight, but no promises yk