Relapse ★ Bucky Barnes

You're A Catastrophe

"There's something important that I need to tell you two," Tony's voice sounded, removing Wanda and Marlena from their thoughts.

Their heads snapped over simultaneously, their eyes meeting Tony's very regretful ones. They had been waiting on him to finish up his evaluation on Pietro for the last half hour, and now that he was present, the two were actually quite terrified to hear what he had to say about it. His facial expression only contributed to that terror.

"What is it, Stark?" Wanda asked, her voice dry.

Tony glanced at Bucky and Steve, both of whom had been waiting with the girls, and cleared his throat. "I'd prefer to speak with you about this alone."

"Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of them too," Marlena spoke through the burning pain in her throat, her gaze fixated on the floor below.

"Wow, you sound horrible. Maybe you shouldn't speak," Tony remarked.

Marlena gave him a warning look. "Maybe you should."

Tony let out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. "Y'know what? Maybe you two should stay just in case they decide to jump me."

"What are you talking about, Stark?" Steve asked. "What's going on with Pietro?"

"Well. . .um. . .I don't really know how to say this," Tony took a pause as he tried to find the necessary words to use in order to explain to the two girls that Pietro wasn't exactly the Pietro they knew; he wasn't the Pietro they had grown up with, nor was he the Pietro in Sokovia that had lost his life at the hands of Ultron.

Marlena's and Wanda's expressions changed as Tony's increasingly loud thoughts made their way into their minds.

"What the hell do you mean by that, Tony?" Marlena forced out, her throat slightly constricted. Bucky watched her with narrowed eyes as he tried to understand where her question had come from. Sometimes he despised the fact that he could not do what she or Wanda could do; he hated feeling so out of the loop.

Tony's expression grew puzzled at the sound of her words. "What do I mean by what?"

"Pietro—he's not the Pietro we grew up with or the Pietro we lost in Sokovia," Wanda spoke to keep Marlena from doing so. "What do you mean by that?"

"Fuck, I forgot you two are telepaths," Tony murmured.

"Tell us," Wanda instructed him, her tone sharp.

"Okay, okay," Tony sighed, "There's this new technology that I was working on around the time I created Ultron; it was similar in mechanism to Doctor Cho's regeneration cradle, but it worked differently. To make a very complex explanation comprehensible, it was a cloning chamber of sorts, I guess, and it cost a shit ton of money. It required the DNA of a patient in order to work to its designated potential.

"Thor was my first test subject; I chose him, because who the hell doesn't love Thor Odinson? The more the merrier. I took a small snippet of his hair while he slept one night and stayed up all night trying to get everything to work smoothly—it didn't.

"After my failed experiment, I decided to take a break from bettering the technology and continue my work with Ultron. Then Wanda and Pietro came along, both of whom we were very surprised to find out were of relation to Marlena. Then Pietro was killed, and it was my fault, and I felt like shit, especially after watching you two completely break in half because of it. I decided then that I would use my tech to try to make things right, so I took Pietro back to the tower with me and began working on a way to bring him back for you two.

"It took six months to actually succeed in bringing him back, even if he was just a clone. There were still issues with him, however, so I kept him locked away in cryostasis until I could correct the problem. I let him out a few months ago, though, so he could help during the fight. I was so consumed with everything that I had forgotten about the dangers of actually letting him out."