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I Sing a Secret Song: A Wintershock Story

Summary:

Summary: Falling in love with your soulmate is easy inside the Soul Stone. But in the real world, things aren't always that simple.

Canon through Infinity War... then, who knows?

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Soul Stone

Chapter Text

Darcy

 

The first of Darcy's senses that seemed to come back was her sense of hearing. Followed by intense vertigo.

She was so very ready to turn her hearing back off around the third time she heard the plaintive call, “Mr. Stark?”

Darcy opened her eyes, slowly. Dizziness overwhelmed her, so she sat.

The voice rang out again, “Mr. Stark? Are you there?”

“Hello?” Darcy called out. As she did, she opened her eyes and her other senses flared to life. The air was thick, humid, hot. The whole world was strangely orange, with an eerie mist. It was flat and empty, other than the orange haze. And it was quiet, in an unearthly way, with the exception of the kid, and his calls for Mr. Stark that echoed through the expanse.

“The afterlife...sucks,” Darcy muttered as a hysterical giggle rolled out of her.

“It's not the afterlife,” A strong feminine voice reverberated in her head. “I'll explain soon.”

“Mysterious voice in my head....feels like I'm hungover... and there's an annoying kid who can't find his daddy? This is definitely hell,” she mumbled and then let out yet another hysterical laugh as she realized that she was sitting in a strange liquid, but she wasn't wet.

The boy's voice called out a response to Darcy's laugh which had echoed in the empty void, “Hello?”

Darcy tried to stand, but nausea hit again, so she sat back down, hard. “Over here.” She closed her eyes against the waves of nausea and when she opened them again, the boy's face hovered over her.

“Hey puppy,” she murmured, because, let's face it, the kid in front of her looked like a picture of a sad little beagle puppy.

“It's Peter, actually.”

“Or Spiderman?” She asked, glancing down at his suit.

“Yeah. But Peter is fine, really ma'am.”

“Nope. Nope nope nope. I'm too young to be a ma'am. It's Darcy,” she scolded, as she took his offered hand to pull her to her feet.

“It's nice to meet you, Darcy. I mean, apart from our not-so-good circumstances. And um, this is is gonna sound weird, but... Did you see the little green girl, too?”

“No...Did you hit your head when we...?? Shit. I don't know how we got here. Or where is here.”

The dizziness hit her again and she swayed back a bit. Peter reached to grab her, but strong hands caught her from behind and her back was supported by what could only be a man's body.

“Whoa there, gorgeous. You okay?” Darcy glanced up at the man smiling down at her. His skin was flawless chocolate and his eyes had a twinkle. His easy smile was punctuated by a gap between his front teeth, which Darcy thought was the mark of all really awesome smiles. But she wasn't biased or anything.

“You're Sam Wilson.”

“You heard of me?” he smirked.

“Hi. Hi again, Mr. Falcon, sir.” Peter sputtered. “About the um...last time we met...at the airport... super sorry about that.”

“No worries, kid. I don't hold grudges in alternate planes of existence.”

“About that...” Darcy asked, turning to Sam, and immediately regretting her decision to leave the warmth of Sam's supportive grasp, “Where? And what? The hell?”

“Long story short?” Sam asked.

Darcy nodded an affirmative.

“We lost.”

“Too short. Lengthen the story, please. Thanks.”

“You see the space ship over New York?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. Jane and I were watching it on the news.”

“I was on it.” Peter volunteered, raising his hand. “I was on that space ship. Then on another planet. Now...another... planet...maybe?”

“You're inside the Soul Stone,” the feminine voice that Darcy heard earlier answered. But she wasn't in her head this time. She was approaching them through the mist. And as God was Darcy's witness: she was green.

“It's the little girl!” Peter nudged Darcy in the ribs.

“That is no little girl...” Sam eyed the woman appreciatively.

“Well not now.... but she was...”

“My name is Gamora.”

Peter nudged Darcy again, with great excitement, at her name.

“Puppy! You have got to stop that!”

“Sorry. You weren't there. And neither were you. But... your friends.” Peter reached out toward Gamora like he was offering something tangible. “They're looking for you. Or they were.”

“I know, Peter. Thank you. I'm trying to find them. I'm gathering the souls of the people that can be of use. We're going to be here. In this facet of the soul stone. I'll be bringing us all together. Please. Just be patient.”

As she turned to walk away, Sam asked, “Why do you have this power?”

Over her shoulder, she replied, “Thanos sacrificed my life to obtain the stone. The stone is repaying me for that sacrifice.”

“You gonna make him pay?” Sam called out.

“Oh yes. He will pay.” Her response sent a shiver down Darcy's spine. Gamora had gone from a reassuring wise-woman to a 'holy crap badass' in the space of a few seconds.

“Glad she's on our side,” Darcy muttered under her breath.

“Wait!” Peter called out, “Were you a little girl, earlier?”

“That was Thanos's idea of who I am. He doesn't control that anymore.”

Darcy blinked a few times, trying to decipher the information that was just given to her. “Did she say we were living inside a stone?”

 

Bucky

 

“Sergeant Barnes? My friend, you are frightening me. Are you all right?”

Bucky's voice came out somewhere between a whisper and a growl, “No.”

T'Challa didn't seem to hear him, as he surveyed the area around them. Bucky had started to look around when they arrived, seeing very little because of the visibility issues created by the fog. But then, Bucky had noticed his hands. And the shock of what he was seeing made him feel dizzy. So he sat before he fell. Sat right on the orange ground. He was so shocked by his hands that he barely even registered that the ground was, in fact, orange, and a strange liquid that didn't actually make him wet.

He was vaguely aware of T'Challa's hand on his shoulder. “Sergeant Barnes.”

“What happened to me? Was I asleep?”

“James? Do you remember anything? Think.”

Bucky wanted to follow his command but he couldn't think. All he could do was stare at his left hand. Human. Whole.

“Sergeant Barnes! Think!” T'Challa commanded again.

“Barnes? T'Challa? That you?” the voice came cutting through the mist. It was familiar, friendly. Bucky remembered that voice...

“Sam Wilson? We are over here!” T'Challa called back. “Our friend is here, James. We won't be alone for much longer.

Darcy

 

Darcy held Sam's arm as they walked through the heavy mist. Peter held onto the hem of Darcy's cardigan. It was the only way to be sure they didn't get separated as they headed toward the voices.

“Gamora needs to work on climate control in this joint,” Darcy muttered, eliciting a chuckle from Sam. As the figures began to take shape through the haze, Darcy said, much louder, “Holy shit! I think that's the king of Wakanda.” She unlooped her arm from Sam's and smacked him on the shoulder. “You didn't tell me you knew the King of Wakanda!”

“You and I just met like three minutes ago!”

“No excuse. If I knew the King of Wakanda, I'd be like, 'Hey there, I'm Sam Wilson, I know the King of Wakanda. And I know Captain America and …. that's Bucky Barnes.”

“No, it's not...oh my God.” Sam surged ahead, leaving Peter and Darcy to catch up. When they did they could see Sam kneeling in front of Bucky, talking to him quietly and calmly, “It's ok man. You think you can stand?”

“Yeah. I think so. Sam? What happened to me?”

Darcy couldn't help but stare. She knew about the Winter Soldier. About Washington and Belarus. She knew he was framed for the attack on the UN. But this wasn't the Winter Soldier that Sam was talking to, each of them reaching out with one hand on the shoulder of the other. This man was straight from her history textbook; Bucky Barnes: Howling Commando. His hair was short but tousled on top. He had a touch of five o'clock shadow, but not the scruff she had seen from his images on the news. He was thinner, wirier. And there was no metal arm. He was even dressed in the clothes he was wearing in his picture at the Smithsonian.

“I don't know what happened.” Sam told his friend, “We were in Wakanda. Now we're here. And it's orange. And there's a really hot green chick...”

“Excuse me, did you say green?” T'Challa asked.

“Like the Wicked Witch of the West?” Bucky scoffed quietly, still wobbling on his feet.

“The Wicked Witch is the good guy now.” Peter offered, drawing the three men's attention. “It's a Broadway musical. She's the good guy. Hi. I'm Spiderman.”

“I remember,” Bucky said, with a hint of a smile, that quite frankly, knocked Darcy's socks off. “You got a real name, kid?”

“Peter.”

“I'm Bucky. This is T'Challa.”

Then Bucky cast his steel blue eyes Darcy's way, and she legitimately felt a little dizzy again. Then he stuck out his right hand to shake hers, like a god damned actual gentleman and she blurted out, “Darcy Lewis. I know Thor.”