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for endgame!gamora
Assassination Nation
no subject
But it turned out to all be the same: blandly-smiling white men in identical suits and blandly non-geographical accents, like they'd been printed from a catalogue. Bucky sat opposite them at a desk and shuffled through the briefing notes, and he listened to the pitch.
Afterwards, he texted Sam: So apparently I'm still a gun.
It was a joke — a dark one — but it still held true, in his opinion. Aim him and shoot. Turn Barnes out to do the brute work. Dangle that pardon in front of his nose like a carrot in front of a donkey.
But he knew that it was necessary, and he'd keep playing along if it meant being labelled cooperative; a good citizen; a credit to society. (Each day, he was metaphorically scrubbing at those bloodstained hands, and they weren't clean quite yet. Likely wouldn't ever be.)
So Bucky read the file with meticulous attention, memorising the details, jotting it away in the same mental place where he'd once partitioned assassination jobs. The slightly-blurry photograph of the green-skinned woman. The list of known associates (he actually recognised the raccoon). Doctor Lewis' scribbled notes about temporal anomalies, about the unique radiation wavelengths coming off their visitor from another planet, the way they were trying to track her across the Earth. She's a clear extraterrestrial threat, they say. Dead or alive, they say.
The incident reports. The lists of injuries and casualties, the now-decommissioned SWORD agents who'd been sent after her and who hadn't come back. The Avengers weren't a thing anymore, Thor had already gone off-planet, and Captain Marvel had come and gone like a soaring meteor, off to handle other greater problems in the wider universe, and so that left one resource left: one (1) supersoldier, wolfing down free donuts, and wondering when the hell he became a lapdog.
But he says yes. He accepts the resources. The bullet-proof vest, the gun, the plane ride to the location, the agents backing him up, although they're sending him in alone. Gamora has gotten backed into a corner like a feral spitting cat that the hunting hounds have treed; and now here he comes, James Barnes, the hunter. The gun.
It's a warehouse that they've covered from all angles. Whenever she tries to exit, a smattering of bullets drives her back indoors. It's been days. But they can't go in and she can't go out and it's an endless stalemate, so he's here to break it.
"Good luck, Sergeant Barnes," one of the agents says (Smith? Jones? he has literally forgotten the man's name already), and Bucky tilts one shoulder in a shrug. He's not happy about this job — this woman was one of the Guardians of the Galaxy, from what he'd heard; she'd fought alongside them in the Battle for Earth — and he doesn't particularly want to haul her in by the scruff of her neck, but when his sponsors and benefactors say jump, he grouses but does eventually ask how high. There's very little but the arbitrary grace of the American government and their soft spot for Captain America (both old and new) keeping him from prison.
Carrot. Stick.
He shoves open the warehouse doors, and he goes inside.
FINALLY getting to self-indulgent PSL stuff
She's done little else but run ever since...
The image of Thanos crumbling to ash and dust is seared into her mind. Freedom, at last. But at what cost. And it shouldn't feel this way, right... she shouldn't hurt so much over his death. Gamora's wits are as sharp as her blade. Thanos is not her father, despite his claims. He's just her abuser.
And yet, the hurt in her is near as sharp as the relief. Like being able to breathe for the first time in a lifetime, but you forgot what it feels like. So you take that breath, and it feels like breathing glass. Like what was meant to bring you sweet relief cuts you up inside out all the time.
When the dust settled, she snuck away from the battlefield. The man in the metal suit who snapped his fingers lay dying, and with all surviving eyes on him, she'd found it easy to slink away. Has pondered, in the aftermath, how she was spared. Part of the invading army, throwing her weight behind the defenders of not just this planet, but the fate of the entire galaxy. Strange, how the stones found her worth sparing for that.
Strange, how no one else does.
She gets it, on some level. The last of an extinct intergalactic species that outclasses humans on a physical level with ease. The last survivor of Thanos' army. Of course they want her. For questioning. For dissecting.
She knows that they're trying to get her alive - but that by now she's given them little choice but to be okay with taking her dead, either. She's cutting through their agents. They've resorted to bringing in the heavy weaponry - in more ways than one, it seems.
Gamora tried to get a ship, to get off planet. But it turns out when you're stranded out of time on a planet you're unfamiliar with, with your green skin a neon sign pointing you out to every single being you could meet, some things are easier said than done. And not for the first time, it makes her loathe this backwater place that is dominated by a single species and not used to intergalactic travel to the point where she struggles to stay hidden.
And it's not even like they're the only ones on the hunt for her. Gamora knows for a fact that the people she apparently met in a future she'll never get to live now are looking for her, too.
She has no intention of following that call. So... here she is. Cornered like an animal for days without sleep when the heavy warehouse doors open as she stifles a yawn, rolls her shoulders. Gets ready for a fight. Tastes her own blood on her teeth. Stays still to avoid the grind of metal inside her flesh to give her away, where broken parts of cybernetics grind against each other unpleasantly on her rib cage. Gamora's hurt, and badly. She knows time is against her right now. But that doesn't mean she's going to make it easy on anyone - so when Bucky steps inside, eyes not yet adjusted to how dark the warehouse is, Gamora's already lined up a shot.
Truth be told, she was going to aim for his head or his leg, having learned her lesson about vests - but she sees the black and gold glint of his arm. Remembers that from the battlefield months ago. And that changes things, just enough. She pulls her punch, so to speak - and the bullet whizzes past Bucky, missing his ear by very little.
A warning shot if there ever was one.
no subject
As Bucky walks right into the warehouse, the sharp crack of the bullet instantly flies past his ear and drives into the wall behind him. He jerks, head snapping to the side, and takes in the surroundings in one split second before he immediately spots cover and dives for it. There are old metal machines and storage crates throughout the floor, already pockmarked and dented with bullet holes and smears of blood, the signs of battles already fought with previous agents. He should’ve been more careful, but it’s been a long, long time since he’d done a more discreet infiltration. The Winter Soldier tended to just kick down the door and barge right in like a wrecking ball.
He’s not that creature anymore, but he can feel those instincts still humming beneath his skin. They’re what’ll help keep him alive.
Hunkered down behind the cover, he winces. His augmented hearing means the sound of that close-shot bullet hurts him more than it would’ve someone else; there’s a distant whine of tinnitus ringing through his skull. “Thanks for not going straight for the kill shot,” Bucky shouts to her, his head craned back against the metal. There’s no doubt in his mind that she could’ve taken it, and not missed.
But part of sending in these big guns, a supersoldier, is the fact that they have a faint, tenuous connection. They were both in the Battle for Earth. Maybe he can get through to her, SWORD had reasoned.
no subject
So perhaps he's good - but she's a daughter of Thanos. Has to believe that if push comes to shove, she's better. Her survival depends on it.
"Is this how the organisation of the blade rewards your service on the battlefield, human - by sending you to an unworthy death?"
Gamora makes herself sound calm, level. As if she's unperturbed. As if she's not exhausted down to her bones, on the last reserves of her strength. He's correct though - she could have killed him, had she so pleased. There's a subtle, cloying scent in the warehouse hinting at the fact that he wouldn't be the first agent to meet his end at her hands in here for trying to take her.
"Walk away. I have killed greater things than you with less reason."
no subject
Bucky’s voice is conversational, as if they’re seated across each other at a coffee shop rather than sitting across a dim warehouse with her sniper sights trained in his direction, ready to take his head off. It had taken him a moment to parse; the alien’s speech is stilted and yet somehow familiar in tone and cadence. He had spoken like that, once upon a time: clipped and curt and emotionless, the Winter Soldier relaying its information in flat straightforward speech, the bare minimum, cut down to nothing. Her affectation is just a little more formal than his.
He’s been awake longer, and out from under his master’s thumb longer. Over the last few months, the more nonchalant, casual speech has been slowly coming back to him in little fits and starts. So he keeps it up:
“I’m sure you have. But I just wanna talk. You’re Gamora, right? Do you remember me?”
Gamora. Using the name tagged to her file, not the asset, not Incident #L4A-19, not the alien.