Absolute Gravity

I woke. To a pounding, god-awful, splitting monster of a headache. But I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I wanted to see the ceiling of Tony’s basement. I wanted to see Bucky.

But there were palm tree shadows on the ceiling. The air felt stale as if it had been pushed through numerous filters before reaching my lungs. A shadow shifted from beside me. And then a face was staring down at me. An older version of Clara with crow’s feet, laugh lines, and steel-colored curls. My brain struggled to catch up until I realized I was looking at my mom. My dad came into view beside her, looking down with worry.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. I tried to smile. Tried to hide it like I always did. Never let them know I wasn’t well. Never let them see I was breaking. But she wouldn’t buy it. Not this time. There was no distance between us to make the lie sell. I could barely move.

“Like I got hit by a truck,” I admitted. My dad pressed a palm to my forehead like he did when I was little and faked the flu.

“Tony said you’re sick. He didn’t tell us what it was. Just that you collapsed at the wedding, and they had to bring you back separately. They had your doctor fly in on a helicopter.”

“Always making a fuss over me.” I tried to sit up but flinched from the ache in my bones.

“We figured something wasn’t right when we discovered they had you locked in here.” My dad pushed my shoulder to force me back onto the pillows. I was too weak to put up a fight. I blinked up at the twisting shadows again. They looked unnatural. There was something important I needed to tell Bucky. But he was so far away. Lost.

“Ivan never told you why, did he?” I asked. I was still looking up at the ceiling, but I could see my mom’s expression change. We’d never talked about it. They knew I knew the truth now, but we’d all awkwardly danced around it like it didn’t matter. I wanted to talk about it. But I didn’t want to hurt them. And in the end, I decided it never mattered. Ivan and Beata may have brought me into the world, but they were my parents in all the ways that mattered.

When Tony told them he’d found me and brought me back, they’d begged to come and see me. They’d been worried sick since I went missing. But I asked them to stay in Ohio. Claimed I was okay and I’d be there to visit for the holidays. They knew there was a man involved. Mainly because Tony was still bitter about it and let it slip. They knew I was unwell. At least a little. And I knew it hurt them to keep them at a distance. But now I couldn’t hide. And they understood. I was just trying to protect them.

“Not exactly,” my dad answered, finally bridging the divide between us. “Just that these Hydra people wanted something from you. Something his wife did to you.”

“It’s a biological weapon. I’m a biological weapon. Beata turned herself into a host. And then me by accident.” My mom frowned.

“What kind of biological weapon?”

“It’s like a cosmic parasite, more or less. Undetectable. They could send me anywhere, and no one would ever know. Beata thought that if she made herself the perfect host, they wouldn’t be able to replicate it on a wider scale. Instead, she bred an even better host born with the parasite already part of its DNA structure. So all Hydra had to do was reintroduce it to the part of it they kept in captivity, and—boom. You get this.” I gestured to myself. My fragile body and the fact that I still hadn’t gotten out of bed.

“What does it do exactly?”

“I don’t know. There’s this—darkness—that comes out of me. It’s like it eats away at a person. It hurts me every time it does it. I accidentally set it off on a man in Romania—the newspaper explained it as an aneurysm.”

“Whatever it’s doing—it’s doing to you, too,” my dad realized. I nodded.

“It wasn’t meant to be contained. I’m only a temporary Vessel. Whatever it is—it expands. And one day, it will outgrow me. And probably kill me and a lot of people in the process. The only good news is that Hydra can’t really detonate it on their own terms.”

“How long do you have?” My mom sent him a glare but didn’t scold him. She obviously wanted the answer too.

“Five years. Well, that was the diagnosis eight months ago. So less than that now.”

“Is there anything we can do?” I shook my head.

“Tony has the best doctors in the world working on it. A whole team. They’re geniuses. But I’m getting tired of being poked at all the time.”

“You should come home,” my mom suggested as she took my hand. “Let us take care of you.”

“I can’t. I wish it was that simple. Hydra can’t detonate it only because they can’t control it. It’s sentient. And it lashes out sometimes when it thinks it needs to protect me. Or when it—gets hungry, I guess. But the stronger it gets, the harder it is to control it. And it can’t always distinguish between a real threat and a false one. People get hurt. They die. That’s why Tony has me locked up most of the time. But someday, even this cell won’t be enough to hold it. So I’m right where I need to be.”

“Maybe we should stay here then.” She looked up at my dad with pleading eyes. “That way she’s not alone?”

“I don’t want you here, Mom.” I took her hand again. “I love seeing you, and I miss you both, but—I can’t—I can’t hurt you too. I can’t ask you to uproot your entire life, so I’m not lonely. I have everything I need. And I’m not alone. I can’t live with myself if you get hurt because of me, and I know it’ll hurt you to watch me deteriorate.”

“It isn’t healthy for you to be locked up all the time,” my dad pointed out. “I remember a little girl who lost her mind whenever she got stuck indoors during a storm.” I smiled.

“I know. You know I hate it. But the idea of hurting you is worse. And now that Tony finished my suit, I can leave sometimes. Once I’m feeling better. Graham and I actually have a road trip planned in a few weeks. It’s only for a day, but it’ll be enough.”

“There has to be something we can do,” she said. My dad swept my hair off my face.

“I just want you to be happy. Go home. Live. I’ll be home for Christmas. They’re working on a cure. So really—I just want to go on pretending everything is normal. You know I hate it when people fuss over me.”

“Of course we’re going to fuss over you. You’re our little girl.” Her voice had gone wobbly, so I squeezed her hand with what little energy I still had. My dad was chewing on his lip, eyes on the photo on my nightstand.

“Is that the man you were with?” he asked. “Why isn’t he here with you?” I glanced at the photo of Bucky and me. They’d asked about him on the phone a few times. But I never gave them much. My mom noticed my discomfort.

“You don’t have to answer that,” she said.

“It’s complicated. He doesn’t know where I am or what’s going on. We were both running from Hydra. They hurt him too.” I caught a shared look between them. The secret language of couples who’d been together so long.

“You said his name is James?” my dad asked, looking back at the photo.

“Yes.” He sighed.

“Let me guess—James Barnes.” I didn’t answer. But that was answer enough. “Jesus Christ.”

“John,” my mom scolded.

“You know who he is?” I asked. She pinched her lip between her teeth.

“We saw him on the news.” Then, finally, my dad turned to her as if he couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer.

“Where did we go wrong?” he wondered. “We got one who had to marry Iron Man, and the other one went for the Winter Soldier? Is this punishment for something?”

“You saw him on the news?” I prodded, ignoring my dad.

“Tony told us you were in Romania, but we didn’t put it together until now.”

“How did this even happen?” my dad turned back to me.

“Just after SHIELD fell, Captain Rogers asked for my help, and we sort of—hit it off,” I explained. My dad stared as he took that in. Then he turned back to my mom, face disturbingly calm.

“They hit it off,” he repeated. She looked anxious.

“If she loves him, I’m sure there’s a good reason. We have good girls.”

“He’s a good person,” I told them. “I promise whatever you’ve heard about him is untrue. Mostly. Hydra did awful things to him, but it would be hypocritical for us to hate him and forgive me. I’ve killed people too.”

“Well, at least you have something in common,” my dad remarked dryly. “That’ll be a nice story to tell the grandkids.” My mom glared again, and I flinched. Well, if anything, I knew where I got my sarcasm.

“Just be careful,” she said. I shrugged.

“He doesn’t know anyway. I don’t even know if we’ll ever see each other again. He’ll turn to dust, and I’ll be all alone.” They ignored that part. Or didn’t hear it more like.

“Do you wish he was here with you?” I nodded.

“I miss him. Even though it’s been long enough now. I don’t think I’ve ever felt something so right in all my life. I miss him all the time.”

“He’s alive,” she said, rubbing my hand again. And I knew it wasn’t her anymore. “And he misses you too.”

“Then let me see him.” I looked up, unsurprised to find it was no longer my mother. At least not the mom I knew. It was Beata’s face looking at me now. And while her eyes were paler than my own, they were wide like mine. Innocent, my mom used to call them. Even though I felt anything but that. “Let me see him,” I repeated. She frowned.

But she gave me what I wanted. In a blink, the Malibu apartment was gone. I was in Tony’s cabin in the basement lab on a cot in the corner of the room. It was darker now. As if the entire house had gone to sleep. There were no windows, but the lights were dim enough to suggest it. Bucky was still awake, though. He had his back to me as he sat at one of the desks, dragging his hand through his shorter hair in frustration.

The pain was agony. This wasn’t the involuntary control I got when the pain faded back. I’d come to smack in the middle of it. My bones ached. My blood burned. Every organ felt as though it was bleeding out. I tried to hold onto the memory of what I’d learned while I fought with it.

“Separate us,” I said. He turned to face me. I couldn’t move my head through the pain. But I turned my eyes to him. “It’s not as simple as curing me of a disease. Or even killing Chaos. You just have to pull us apart.” He stood up when he realized it was me.

“How do we do that?” he asked, setting a tablet aside. He looked exhausted, and I doubted he’d get any sleep until this was resolved. Even though he clearly needed it.

“I don’t know. She says there’s no way to do it without killing me, and that’s why she’s holding back.” He approached slowly. My body was already shaking. The pain was almost too much, and every time I blinked, I was sure I saw another memory trying to take control. I made a sound I couldn’t stop, and he touched a cool hand to my forehead.

“If we can find out what it is, maybe we can figure out how to do that,” he suggested.

“Darkness. It’s what she’s made of. Not what she is. But I—she said something—I said something. In a memory.”

“What was it?”

“I said Darkness was bred into my DNA. I think it’s as much part of me as it is her.” He frowned.

“I don’t know what any of that means.”

“I miss you. This isn’t the reunion I imagined.” Tears were rolling down my cheeks now. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t hold on anymore. The pain was too much, and Darkness was creeping in from the corner of my eyes.

“Jo,” he said. But I was already being sucked back into the abyss of memory.