Embered Coal ° BUCKY BARNES | VOL. 3

two; the sokovia accords

"This- this is crazy," Steve said, staring down at the file in his hands. Lara sat not to far away, munching on one of those cookies. She had actually had to hide a few for Tony after she had given Steve the file. Lara had made them for Tony, and found it unjust for him to come back to nothing.

"I thought so too," Lara stated, before taking the last of the cookie in her mouth. She smiled sheepishly at Sam and Rhodey, who were looking at her oddly. They both were still wondering about her, and why she was here. Though, it wasn't hard to decipher when Steve finally passed the file to the two dark skinned men, each glaring at each other as they reached for it.

Steve stood up, walking around Lara's seat, motioning to her shoulder. "May I?" Lara nodded, a little confused about what her best friend was doing, but nonetheless let it happen. She felt his cool fingers pull down her shirt's shoulder, before they lightly touched a spot on her shoulder blade.

"What's there?" Lara asked, trying to get a look but her neck didn't stretch that way. Steve let her shirt go, fixing it into the right position before walking around her again.

"The file said that there was your number tattooed on your shoulder blade," Steve said, and they look on Lara's face made him continue. "Your number seventy."

Lara almost choked on her saliva, looking at Steve with huge eyes. "So you're telling me, that seventy of these clones have died? Killed by this-this Winter Soldier?"

"No, some of them said that the DNA wasn't quite right or the child didn't survive," Steve said, but Lara wasn't paying attention. Her eyes were in the news screen that had been playing for a while, though nobody was paying attention to it.

It was displaying a fire, one that was on a higher level of a building. The place it seemed to be in was foreign, and Lara had no idea where it was in the world.

"Unmute," Steve spoke, the TV suddenly increasing in volume. Lara sighed, sitting back as she listened to the news anchor talking about the incident in Lagos.

It was something about the Avengers, and more importantly, someone by the name of Wanda Maximoff. Lara sat forward a little bit when she watched Steve walk away, towards where the one girl had disappeared to. And then, a red head appeared in the kitchen, her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at the island in the middle of it. "Are those cookies?"

"Yes," Sam said, looking over at Lara with a somewhat proud smile on his face. "Lara made them."

"And who's Lara?" The red head said, before her eyes came in contact with the brunette's. "You're Lara. Who sent you? How did you even know where this place was?"

"Um," Lara shifted uncomfortably under the red head's stare, feeling like she was getting scrutinized. "Nick Fury sent me. I'm a clone, made by S.H.I.E.L.D. And not Hydra S.H.I.E.L.D, actual S.H.I.E.L.D. Is there any hot chocolate here?"

God, was she ever awkward. This was worse then the one time Bucky had taken her out on his break from the war, and everyone was telling her how cute the two of them were. She had stumbled over her words so many times she had been afraid she had developed a stutter. When announcing this to Bucky, the man just laughed and told her he thought it was cute, before placing his lips in hers. Where was Bucky?

As Lara got up, she was surprised to see Tony back in the room, followed by a man in a crisp suit. Lara's eyes widened as she starred at the Secretary of State, and she almost bowed at him. Though, instead, she walked over to where she hid Tony's cookies, grabbed the plastic bag, and held them out to him.

"I saved these for you, Tony. Just in case the others stole them. Rhodey, Sam, and Steve have been eating them since they got back."

Tony face-palmed.