Possibility of Tomorrow - 12

Cont...

 Soon the "tradition" became clockwork. No matter what, whenever they got in over their heads, Darling would come and bail them out, right as things got more bad than usual. They were still tracking the group who was trying to recreate the Hammer drones and doing well. Or at least not getting blasted by the malfunctioning wannabe drones. Word in the area also said that Tony and Rhodes were looking into it with multiple sightings over the months from the surrounding area.

It all climaxed when they crossed paths with Iron Man and Spider-Man by accident, and everything hit the fan. Both parties weren't planning on the other being there, and both missions went from in and out to miniature disasters in the Mediterranean.

 Barnes blacked out in the middle of it; his head against an unmovable object didn't end so well, apparently. When he slowly blinked awake, he was handing at an awkward angle upside down. He could hear voices, and from the snippets he was putting together, Sam and Steve were arguing. At least it wasn't Steve and Tony.

 "Shut up." Bucky moaned out, getting used to the oddly lit room. 

"Look who finally decided to join us, Sleeping Beauty." Sam teased. 

Bucky groaned again and experimentally leaned so he could see Sam, who wasn't hanging upside down, lucky duck, "Does the concept of silence mean nothing to you?" 

Steve laughed, "Has it ever?" 

"What alternate universe did you three just drop out of?" Tony Stark snapped from behind Bucky. "Normally, Steve Rogers would be all serious, but no, you three are just heckling each other like you're not captured in the middle of the ocean." 

"It's not an ocean, Mr. Stark." A young voice piped up from beyond Stark as Bucky struggled to swing around.

 "Yeah, yeah, short stuff. So how hard exactly did you hit your head, and did you all do it?" Tony waved off the younger voice. 

Sam snorted, "Says the man who sarcastically comments on the situation." 

"You know what, Wilson?" Tony retorted back without heat.

 "Eh, we'll be fine. Our rides coming." Steve said causally. 

"Your ride?" Stark asked incredulously.

 "Yeah. How long have I been out?" Barnes craned his neck to ask Steve. 

"An hour total. 45 minutes since we got caught. You got to sleep through the bad guy droning fest." Steve responded with a cheeky grin, "Whatcha think?" 

"I say 30 minutes," Sam said sagely. 

"Naw. I'm going 20 at best. 30 is pushing it." Steve shook his head, "Buck?"

 Bucky hummed back in acknowledgment, "10."

 "10? What is that, wishful thinking?" Sam's sarcastic response made Bucky smile. 

"Kinda. You're not the one hanging by your feet. What is this stuff anyway?" Bucky kipped his body up so he could see what was holding his legs. 

"My webs." The young voice piped up again, "Sorry." 

Bucky swung around carefully to face the voice, "Why?" 

"They kinda just went crazy with it since you were unconscious, and it takes like two hours to dissolve, and you're gonna land on your head." The brown-haired kid at the far end gushed out, "So, sorry. My gear, my fault."

 "If you didn't actively stick me up here, not your fault. Dang kid, how strong are these things?" Bucky strained to look up at his feet again. 

"I'm not completely sure. This was a new batch, and I haven't tested them before." The kid admitted sheepishly. 

Bucky stared up at the white sticky substance and tried straining his legs to no avail, "Huh."

 "'Huh'? That's all you have? All those science papers you're always reading and stuff, and all you have is 'huh'?" Sam mocked. 

Bucky huffed and swung back down, "Just cause I read the stuff doesn't mean I know it, birdbrain. I'm more into flying cars than mystery chemical compounds, thank you very much."

 "Since when were you into science?" Tony asked, sounding somewhat scandalized. 

"Since the first StarkExpo. Fascinating stuff until you start slinging science lingo too fast to understand." Bucky said, trying to swing around for a different angle to pull on the webs. That seemed to shock Tony silent, and that's when he heard the explosion.

 "What was that?" The young kid, Spider-Man, asked. 

Bucky stopped what he was doing and dropped back down, "Steve, did you hear that?" 

Steve frowned, listening. A scream and gunshots. "The sound of our lecture coming? Yep, I hear that." 

"Hear what?" Tony asked the same time as Sam groaned. 

Bucky was grinning, "Wilson, you owe me twenty bucks!"

 "You have got to be kidding me!" Sam pouted. 

"What you don't want to get out of here?" Steve teased. 

"No, I want to. I just don't want to pay Mr. Smug twenty dollars!" Sam snapped, glaring at Bucky, who was grinning.

 "Pay up, bird boy! I so win this round." Bucky chortled. 

"You won the last two rounds, Buck." Steve pointed out. 

"That's because I'm great at this game. Wilson, money." Bucky scoffed.

 "Guys, for those of us that don't normally have this whole who-cares routine, what's going on?" Tony cut in. 

"Our ride's here," Steve said like that explained it all.

 "Romanoff?" Tony guessed. 

"No, not a bad guess, though. No, currently she's taking care of something in Greece, I think?" 

"Croatia." Bucky corrected.

 "Right, Croatia." Steve nodded, "You haven't met our ride before. Her name's Darling." 

The crashing and screams were getting closer as they talked before the door slammed open, and Darling's small frame stepped through the door a machine gun the size of her torso in one hand as a body fell in the hall behind her. She stood there a moment regarding the five of them. 

"How in the world do you even get in these situations?" She finally asked, half amused, half exasperated.

 "Ask Steve." Bucky quipped. 

"Hey!" Steve protested. 

"Yeah, that'd be a good start to figure out where it all went wrong." Sam agreed like Steve hasn't said a thing. 

Darling snorted as she disassembled the machine gun and tossed it on the ground, "Got it." 

"This is not my fault!" Steve insisted, sounding offended.

 "I have to say I agree with your amigos on this on Rogers, definitely your fault." Tony joined in.

 Steve made a scoffing sound. 

"According to them, it's always your fault, Steve." Darling played along with a teasing smile.

 "I didn't do anything this time!" Steve protested.

 "That insinuates that there had been a time you have done something." Tony's voice had a playful edge to it. 

"Cyprus." Sam provided.

 "Baghdad." Bucky agreed. 

"I don't know. I didn't seen Mr. Rogers actively do anything necessarily wrong." Spider-Man said innocently. 

"Thank you!" Steve said at the same time Tony snapped back, "Disowned."

 "But that's not to say he did something when I wasn't watching, leaving the margin for error pretty high." Spider-Man finished grinning cheekily. 

Steve groaned, and Bucky and Sam exploded into laughter.

 "That is my child. You are hereby back in the will, kid." Tony grinned. 

"Alright, boys, enough chitchat. Let's get you down." Darling said, pulling herself up onto some crates, so she was equal with the webs hanging from the ceiling.

 "How do you plan on doing that? This stuff has the strongest tensile count known to man." Tony leaned over so he could see her. 

"With this." Darling pulled out a small bottle from her belt.

 "Where did you get a bottle of my dissolvent?" Spider-Man asked, shocked.

 "I have my ways." Darling dipped her small throwing knife into the bottle. 

"That still leaves the question of how you're gonna cut us down. I really don't think you can reach this far." Sam joked from across the room. 

"Who said I would need to?" Darling asked innocently as she capped the bottle off, "This might hurt."

 She proceeded to throw the knife through all the webbing strands, cutting them all down. They all let out noises of varying surprise as they crashed to the ground. They were all tangled together, and someone, Tony, was swearing in Italian as the others groaned.

 "Get off!" Tony muttered, shoving Bucky's arm off him. 

"Seriously?" Bucky muttered, rolling over to glare at Darling, who hopped down. 

"No blood, no guts, no broken bones. You're fine." Darling shrugged, retrieving her knife. 

"Girl, you are crazy." Tony sat up, groaning. 

Darling grinned, "Why, thank you." 

"That's wasn't a compliment." Tony deadpanned.

 "All in the interpretation." Darling countered. 

"Not all of us are Super Human, remember?" Sam snapped as he got up. 

"I think you bruised my sternum with your elbow Sam. Watch it." Steve groaned back, sitting up. 

"Sounds like the Senior citizen is finally feeling his age." Spider-Man quipped. 

Everyone burst into laughter as Steve shook his head. "I see how it is. It's gang-up-on-Steve day. Got it. Alright. Heads up next time we have one of these, though? Yeah, that'd be nice." 

"Quit whining, and let's move." Darling rolled her eyes.

 "Where did you find her?" Tony pulled Spider-Man up. 

"Would you believe me if I said she found me?" Bucky muttered, getting up.

 "Seriously? And she stuck around?" Tony asked, faking flabbergasted.

"By found, he means she tried to kill him," Sam said casually as they headed out of the cargo hold.

 "How'd that go?" Tony asked curiously. 

"He threw her out of a fourth-story building." Sam grinned back. 

"And she stuck around?" Spider-Man asked, shocked, "I definitely would not do that. Even I'm not that stupid. Someone throws you out of a fourth-story building you start running. That and you don't try and kill the freaking Winter Soldier!" The kid rambled on. 

"Oh really? The whole get thrown out a building and start running thing a moral choice of yours buddy? Cause if that's the case, I will definitely remember this conversation for the next time it happens." Tony said, raising an amused eyebrow.

 Spider-Man sputtered, "Come on!" 

"Are you guys always like this?" Sam asked, also amused. 

"Basically." They two said in unison. 

 "Wilson!" Sam turned in time to catch his wing pack, "Get your head out of the clouds." Darling ordered, tossing him his wings. 

"Yes, ma'am." Wilson tugged on his pack.

 "You're still using that outdated pack?" Tony asked, scandalized.

 "Not all of us can update our gear every few weeks, Tony." Steve pointed out.

 "Guys, timetable, let's go." Darling snapped, tossing Barnes a black duffle. 

"How long we got?" Sam asked, heading out the door of the storage closet.

 "Ten minutes. Topside." Darling closed the door behind them, "Sixteen hostile still on board. Play it safe."

 "Alight. Let's get out of here." Steve nodded, heading for the stairs. 

Spider-Man put on his suit, as did Tony before they followed. They made it up two levels before they hit resistance. Sam took them out before they got into a serious gun battle, but the shots were enough to alert the rest of the crew. They hit major resistance on the third floor, but Steve and Bucky were a destructive pair, and they made it topside relatively easily. That was when they hit a problem. 

The instant they left the stairs, they were in a bottleneck. Tony and Sam were in the sky as fast as possible but were dodging bullets left and right. That and the whole deck was on fire. 

"What in the world happened?" Tony asked, diving past some flames. 

"Darling happened," Sam yelled back, kicking one of the insurgents overboard. 

"What the heck does that mean?" Tony asked, blasting two insurgents. 

Out of the corner of his eye, a dark shadow jumped from one of the buildings' roofs and proceeded to land on two unsuspecting insurgents and shoot two there in the same motion before vanishing into the shadows again.

 "That is what it means." Sam nodded to the carnage. 

Tony filed that bit of information into his head and focused on blasting the heavy artillery in the ship. The field was thinning out, letting the others out of the bottleneck. One thing was for sure, Barnes didn't miss. Tony would be impressed if he didn't have bad memories plaguing him from his last encounter with the man. They had cleared the ship of hostiles quickly, allowing them to let down their guard.

 "How are you planning to get off this wreck?" Sam asked as Darling came over. 

"You really think I don't have a contingency plan?" Darling teased. 

"Of course you do. I just want to know what it is." Sam shrugged. 

"Look up." Darling pointed behind them. They turned around to find a sleek jet coming in to land on the deck. 

There was a gunshot that made them all jump back around. Barnes was holding his weapon at the ready, pointed at Darling, who had turned around and was looking at the newest dead terrorist, "Guess we missed one."

 Barnes made a scoffing sound before lowering his weapon and striding over to Darling to pull her into a hug, speaking to her quietly. Tony didn't miss the softness between the two or the protectiveness they had. The relationship that mirrored him and Peter. 

"Ready to go, boys?" Natasha's voice made Tony turn back. The redhead was standing on the ramp of the jet waiting.

 "Romanoff." Tony greeted, coming to stand next to Spider-Man. 

"Tony. You look horrid. How much sleep have you gotten?" Nat greeted back with casual concern.

 "Never enough." Tony agreed. 

"I second that notion." Sam groaned, marching up the ramp, "I'm sleeping till I die."

 "Completely overrated." Steve deadpanned, following Sam into the jet. 

"Shut up, man," Sam grumbled. Tony couldn't help but smirk. Steve never used to joke like that. It was nice. 

Darling and Barnes came over his arm around her shoulders. She stopped short of the ramp, though, making him turn. "I'm not coming with you. I have some other things that need finishing." Darling said gently. 

Barnes frowned, "You sure?" 

"Always. I'm thinking of going to Prague next. Know anything good?" Darling asked playfully. 

"Not that I can recall." Barnes smiled back before giving her another hug, "Stay safe."

 "Try and make sure Steve doesn't die." Darling retorted. 

Barnes shook his head and headed into the jet. Tony watched, looking between the two. There was a familiar feeling there, melancholy maybe. 

"Tony." Steve's call made him jerk. "It was good to see you. Maybe we could meet again. Without the terrorists and gun battle, though." 

Tony nodded, "That'd be," he paused. Two years spent against each other, but then today, it had been normal, easy, familiar. "That'd be nice."

Please tell me what you think in the comments!

Follow if you like it!