familial | MCU x Riordanverse

Chapter Two: Parley and a Dream

Bucky looked like he hadn't gotten a decent night's sleep in ages.

Not that Nico was one to talk, given he looked like a walking skeleton half the time. Still, Bucky's face was tight and yellow-ish, bagging under his eyes, and his hair lay in greasy strands across his forehead. Despite all of this, though, he seemed to have a healthy fullness to his figure, a mystery for later.

The first mystery to be solved, though, was the metal arm connected to Bucky's left shoulder, because, what the fuck. Nico hadn't seen anything like that-- at least, not on a mortal.

"How do you know who I am?" Bucky asked, breaking Nico's train of thought. Very suddenly, he remembered there was a pen held against his throat, and while Nico wouldn't normally consider that a threat, something about the way Bucky held himself (and the writing implement) lead him to believe that such a mundane item could very well be his doom. "And again. How did you get in here?"

"Uh, neither of those are really... easy to answer. But. Uhm. Shit. Let's... let's start with how I got in here. You see. I have this sort of... teleportation power. I... don't really know how to explain it to you other than that I just sort of... run into shadows and think about where I want to go, and. Poof. I'm there." Nico thought it was probably best he didn't mention the gods until he knew Bucky a) could handle that particular truth and b) wouldn't kick him out of the house because of it. It was hard to help someone-- or get help from them-- when they thought you were a total freak of nature. Nico had experience to back that claim up. "And, uh. Well. This part may be hard to believe--"

"Harder than believing you can walk through shadows?"

"Teleport, but yeah. You're... I'm...." Nico sighed and pursed his lips, before deciding that tact was for losers who didn't have a pen shoved into their jugular by a semi-unstable 90-something year old young man with a metal arm. "I'm your cousin."

~*~

Bucky blinked. "My what now?"

"Your cousin."

"How is that... how is that even possible?"

"Before I start to explain, could you, uh... stop threatening me with a ballpoint pen? Also, could you get off me? I'm an anemic-looking twig and you're, well, not, and my ribcage is starting to hurt a little."

"Yeah," Bucky said, realizing very suddenly that if this kid really was his cousin, then he probably shouldn't kill him. At least. Not this soon after meeting him. "Sorry."

"No problem," Nico said as Bucky got off him, "I was, after all, an unannounced stranger in your place in the middle of the night." Still, he winced and grabbed his side as he sat up.

Bucky waited a few minutes, questions filling his brain. His eyes scanned over Nico, assessing. He really was an anemic-looking twig, but at the same time... there was a strength about him. If you took pre-serum... Steve... and gave him dark hair, dark eyes, and a bit more muscle, the result would be pretty close to the kid sitting right here in front of him.

Steve. God, Bucky missed him.

"So," Nico said, and Bucky realized very suddenly that this kid must have been assessing him, too. "I'm sure you have questions."

"Yeah," Bucky said. He said that word a lot. "Uhm. So how did you get you powers? And is the only thing you can do teleport through shadows?"

"I..." Nico chewed on the inside of his lip. "I was born with my powers, though they didn't really manifest until I was ten. And uh," he paused, apparently racking his brain for words, "as for powers, there's Geokinesis, Necromancy, Death Sensitivity, Osteokinesis, Umbrakinesis (which is how I can travel through the shadows), and also limited Thermokinesis, Hypnokinesis, and Phobikinesis. I can also sense people's life auras, I can turn people into ghosts, and can go into a, uh, Death Trance, which is tricky to explain."