Chapter 11: The Hovering Shadow
The quiet in Sage’s room was a learned thing. It wasn’t the absence of sound—the Compound thrummed with its perpetual, low-grade heartbeat—but an absence of invasion. She practiced Wanda’s lessons in the long stretches between visits, building and re-building the mental wall. It was exhausting, like holding a weight at arm’s length for hours. But she could do it. For minutes, then half-hours. The psychic noise of a hundred distant minds became a muted river she could choose not to step into.
The door chimed, the tone gentle, a request for entry rather than a demand. The monitor behind her ear gave a soft, green pulse. No spike in her biometrics. No perceived threat.
“Come in.”
The door slid open to reveal Peter Parker, balancing a stack of three pizza boxes and a fabric cooler bag. Bucky Barnes stood behind him, holding a large, old-fashioned projector under one arm and a crate of physical film reels under the other.
“We come bearing... artifacts,” Peter announced, edging into the room. The smell of pepperoni and baking dough cut through the sterile air. “And pizza. Mostly pizza.”
Bucky set the projector down on a low table. “Stark said no more holographic feeds. Said the light particles were ‘agitating your neural landscape.’ His words. He dug this out of storage. It’s analog. Softer light.”
Sage eyed the equipment. It was a relic, all metal and glass, utterly divorced from the floating data pods and holographic displays that filled the room. “You know how to work that?”
“I’m from Brooklyn, not the Cretaceous,” Bucky said, a faint, almost invisible tug at the corner of his mouth. “I remember projectors. Simpler time.”
“He means he just learned this morning,” Peter stage-whispered, opening the pizza boxes. “But he’s a quick study. Now, the important question: do we start with the cinematic giants of the seventies, accepting that Bucky here has missed like, everything, or do we dive into the modern era and completely overwhelm him?”
Bucky plugged the projector into a wall outlet. It whirred to life with a comforting, mechanical grind. “I saw Citizen Kane in a theater in 1941. Everything since is just commentary.”
Peter stared at him, a slice of pizza hovering halfway to his mouth. “That is the most intimidating humble-brag I have ever heard.”
Sage found herself sitting on the floor, leaning against the foot of the bed, a paper plate warming her hands. The casual, ridiculous normalcy of it was a foreign country. She took a bite. The taste was overwhelming, real in a way food hadn’t been in weeks.
“Okay, rules,” Peter said, wiping grease from his chin. “We explain cultural references. No spoilers for historical events he’s literally lived through. And Sage, you have to tell us if the… you know, the volume gets too high.” He tapped his own temple.
She nodded. With them, it was manageable. Peter’s mental state was a whirlwind of friendly, hyper-analytical energy—‘is she okay, this cheese is perfect, did I leave my webshooter charging, ooh we should watch the one with the space raccoon’—but it was a bright, open book. Bucky’s mind was a fortified keep, but the door was slightly ajar tonight. What seeped out was a focused, practical calm, a conscious effort to project stability.
Bucky threaded a reel. The projector clacked, and a beam of white light cut through the dimness, throwing a flickering image onto a blank wall. It was a black-and-white adventure serial, something with cliffhangers and obvious stage villains.
For a while, there was just the crackle of the film, the rhythmic click of the projector, and the sound of chewing. It waspeace. A negotiated ceasefire in her own skull.
The door slid open without a chime.
Jake stood in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the brighter hall light. He had a duffel slung over his shoulder, fresh from the gym or a perimeter check—Marc’s way of coping. He took in the scene: the pizza, the archaic movie, Bucky sitting cross-legged on the floor a few feet from Sage, Peter gesticulating with a crust.
His eyes locked onto Bucky’s proximity. A flicker of something primitive moved across his face.
“Hey,” Jake said, his voice a gravel rasp. He stepped in, letting the door shut behind him. The room felt instantly smaller.
“Jake! Perfect timing. We’re educating a super-soldier on pre-computer-era special effects,” Peter said, blissfully unaware of the shift in atmosphere.
“Yeah. Charming.” Jake dropped his duffel with a thud. He didn’t sit. He leaned against the wall near Sage, his arms crossed. A sentry.
On screen, the hero was tied to a log, heading toward a buzzsaw. Bucky didn’t turn. “This is where the robot double shows up,” he said, his tone dry.
Peter gaped. “How did you know?!”
“It’s always a robot double.”
Sage felt it before she saw it. The shift. A new frequency cutting through the warm, analog hum of the room. It was a low, insistent thrum from Jake’s direction. Not directed at her. A pointed, territorial broadcast aimed squarely at Bucky.
Mine. Watch it.
It wasn’t words. It was pure, protective instinct, raw and unfiltered. A wolf marking its space.
Bucky’s chewing slowed. He didn’t look at Jake. His own mental shields, usually so tight, didn’t bristle or push back. They absorbed the silent challenge, acknowledged it, and did nothing. His calmness became a wall in itself. She could feel his conscious choice: Not a fight. Not here.
“So, Buck,” Jake’s voice was casual, too casual. “You come here often? Make a habit of babysitting damaged assets?”
The film reel clacked. The buzzsaw spun merrily.
Bucky took a sip of water from a canteen. “Tony asked. Parker needed a chaperone to carry the antique.” He finally glanced at Jake. “You got a problem with the seating chart?”
“Just noting the pattern. You’re around. A lot.”
“I’ve got time to make up. And Stark’s snacks are better than army rations.”
The tension was a live wire stretched between them, humming in a register only she and perhaps Bucky could fully sense. Peter, sensing the weather change but not the storm’s source, scrambled to defuse it.
“It’s a buddy system! Totally standard. Like in Alien, you know, the sequel, where they have to stick together in the hive? We’re the non-facehugger version.”
Jake’s stare didn’t waver from Bucky. “Sure. A buddy system.”
Sage’s appetite vanished. The comfortable wall she’d built wavered under the pressure of Jake’s unshielded emotion. “Jake,” she said, her voice quiet but clear. “It’s a movie.”
He looked down at her. His expression softened, just for a second. The possessive broadcast dimmed, replaced by a wash of frustrated concern. He was afraid. Not of Bucky. Of everything else. Of the Compound, the tests, the unknown programming in her head. And Bucky, with his own history of being weaponized, was a walking trigger.
“I know it’s a movie, Songbird,” Jake muttered, using the old nickname from the safehouse. It was an apology, of sorts. He unfolded his arms and slid down the wall to sit beside her, his shoulder just touching hers. A point made, but the aggression banked.
Bucky let out a breath so slow it was almost invisible. On screen, the robot double was dramatically revealed. No one laughed.
They made it through two more reels. The pizza cooled. Peter filled the silences with enthusiastic commentary. Jake’s presence was a steady, warm pressure against Sage’s side, his mind a quieter, more watchful storm. Bucky remained a statue of calm, but Sage could feel the fine-tuned awareness in him, the part that was always assessing angles of attack, lines of sight. He was, in his own way, just as territorial as Jake. He just expressed it by being an immovable object.
When the last reel flickered to its end, Peter jumped up to rewind it. “Okay, next we gotta do the eighties. Blade Runner. Philosophical quandaries in a dystopian neon hellscape. You’ll love it.”
Bucky began methodically packing the projector away. “Another time, kid. She’s fading.” He nodded toward Sage. The adrenaline of the earlier tension had drained away, leaving the familiar, deep fatigue of mental exertion.
Jake stood, offering a hand to pull Sage up. She took it. “He’s not wrong. You need rest, not replicants.”
Peter looked disappointed but complied. “Right, right. Neural pathways need downtime. We’ll reconvene. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” He grabbed the empty boxes. “Come on, Bucky. Help me find where the super-secret trash chute is.”
Bucky stood, hefting the crate. He paused, looking from Sage to Jake. His gaze was unreadable, but his mental space offered a final, clear transmission—not anger, but a straightforward acknowledgment. I’m not a threat to her.
To Jake, he simply gave a short nod. “Lockley.”
Jake returned the nod, the movement stiff. “Barnes.”
Peter waved, and they were gone. The silence they left behind was different. Charged.
Jake ran a hand over his close-cropped hair, a gesture of pure fatigue. “I don’t like him,” he said, the words simple and blunt.
“You don’t know him.”
“I know his file. I know what HYDRA made him do. I know how easy it is for a broken tool to fall back into familiar hands.”
The accusation hung in the air. It wasn't really about Bucky.
“You think I’m a broken tool,” Sage said, not as a question.
Jake’s head snapped toward her. “No. Hell no. You’re… you’re in the shop. Getting rewired. It’s different.” He struggled for the words, frustration etching lines around his eyes. “He’s been where you are. That’s what they see. A project. A redemption arc. I see a guy who knows how the wiring works. And I don’t trust anybody who understands the machine.”
He was protecting her, in his jagged, possessive way. From herself. From her past. From anyone who might see her as a problem to be solved or a weapon to be calibrated.
Sage walked to the window. The mist over the lake was thick, swallowing the pinprick lights of the far shore. “Wanda helped me build a door in my head. Tony’s trying to build a lockpick for the chemical leash. Steve sees a mission. Bucky… he just sees another person who hears voices.” She turned to look at him. “What do you see, Jake?”
He was silent for a long time. The hum of the Compound filled the space.
“I see the woman who stole my cab,” he said finally, a grudging, rough semblance of a smile touching his lips. “And who didn’t scream when the world went to hell. I see someone who’s still here. Fighting. That’s all I need to see.”
It was the most unvarnished truth he’d offered. It didn’t erase the complexity, the danger, the sheer mess of it all. But it was an anchor.
Her monitor gave a soft, warning ping. A neural fatigue alert. The wall was crumbling.
“You should sleep,” he said, his voice losing its edge.
“Yeah.”
He moved to the door. “I’ll be right outside. Not going anywhere.”
She believed him.
Long after he’d taken up his silent vigil in the hall, Sage lay in the dark. She replayed the night—the pizza, the flickering light, Peter’s chatter, the silent war of dominance between two damaged soldiers. She sifted through the psychic impressions she’d gathered.
Bucky’s mind, behind its fortifications, held a sorrow so vast and old it felt geological. But no malice toward her. None.
And Jake’s? A cyclone of protectiveness, fear, and a loyalty so fierce it bordered on self-destruction.
She was mapping them. All of them. Their fears, their intentions, their soft spots. It was no longer just noise. It was data. And for the first time, the awareness didn’t feel like a curse or a violation.
It felt, distantly, like a form of control.
As she drifted toward an uneasy sleep, a final, clear thought surfaced, unprompted and wholly her own: If Barnes understands the machine, and Jake fears it… then I need to become the engineer.
Outside her door, Jake shifted his weight against the wall, eyes scanning the empty corridor. He didn't hear her thought. He just listened to her breathing slowly even out through the reinforced wall, a sound he’d come to measure his own pulse against. For him, that was enough. For now.
Down in the lab, a subroutine in Tony’s private server finished a decryption cycle. A file tagged “Krivets: Project LORIKEET” opened on a screen to an empty room. The first image was not of Sage, but of a sprawling, minimalist complex carved into a mountainside. The location tag was blurred, but the architectural style was unmistakably of the same origin as the Pharmacist's lab.
The second image was a schematic. It detailed neural uplink protocols, bandwidth thresholds, and a desired endpoint: Remote Cognitive Assimilation.
The file scrolled. Tony’s AI, analyzing the data in relation to Sage’s latest scans, flagged a 94.7% correlation. A warning, in soft crimson letters, flashed once and was archived.
Conditioning not for obedience. For receptivity. Preparing asset for external piloting.
The screen went dark. The Compound hummed on, oblivious.
The Compound hummed on, oblivious. Two floors below, in a sparring gym that smelled of ozone and old sweat, Bucky Barnes methodically wrapped his right hand. The tape was a ritual, each loop a tight, precise constraint. He’d asked Jarvis for the location after leaving the projector in storage. He’d known the question would draw the right party.
The gym door hissed open. Jake walked in, fresh from his vigil outside Sage’s room. He didn’t look surprised.
“Figured you’d find the heavy bag eventually,” Jake said, his voice bouncing off the sterile walls. He shrugged off his jacket, revealing a worn grey t-shirt. “Need a live one instead?”
“I need a conversation,” Bucky said, finishing the wrap with a firm tuck. He didn’t look up. “About boundaries.”
Jake let out a short, humorless laugh. “Boundaries. That’s a fancy word. You want to talk about the movie seating? My bad.”
“It’s not about the seat.” Bucky finally met his gaze. The overhead lights glinted off the vibranium plates of his left arm. “It’s about the interrogation.”
The air in the room got thinner. Jake went very still. “What about it?”
“I read the mission summary Stark filed. Just the facts. You had her in a safehouse. You thought she was a plant. You worked her over.” Bucky’s tone was flat, analytic, every word a measured drop. “You used threat, isolation, psychological pressure. Standard extraction protocol. Until you decided she wasn’t the enemy.”
Jake’s jaw tightened. “She wasn’t. I figured that out.”
“Did you? Or did you just swap one kind of control for another?” Bucky took a step forward, his movement eerily smooth. “What I saw tonight wasn’t protection. It was marking territory. She flinches, and you move closer. Someone else offers help, and you get between them. You interrogated her to break her, and now you can’t stand the idea of anyone else putting a single hair out of place on her head.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about it,” Jake snarled, the words ripped from a low place. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see what they did to her. You didn’t pull her out of that hell.”
“I’ve seen it. From the other side of the glass.” Bucky’s voice didn’t rise. It grew quieter, more dangerous. “I recognize the methodology. Break down the asset. Create dependency. The handler becomes the only fixed point in a collapsing world. It’s textbook. And now you’re playing the part of the handler who ‘saves’ her. Tell me I’m wrong.”
The accusation hung, ugly and specific. It cut through Jake’s anger, hitting something closer to panic. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it?” Bucky pressed. “Because from here, it looks like you’re afraid she’ll realize she doesn’t need a guard dog. Especially one with your teeth.”
Jake closed the distance in two long strides, getting into Bucky’s space. He smelled of cheap soap and restless energy. “I am the only reason she’s breathing. Not Stark, not Rogers, and sure as hell not you. I have her. That’s the only fact that matters.”
“You ‘have’ her.” Bucky didn’t retreat an inch. “That’s your problem. You talk about her like she’s a thing you retrieved. A prize. Not a person with a head full of forced commands who might mistake your brand of loyalty for another voice telling her what to do.”
Something fractured in Jake’s control. He shoved Bucky, a sharp, testing push against the vibranium shoulder. It was like shoving a building. Bucky didn’t move, but his eyes went cold.
“Try that again with the other arm,” Bucky said, his voice a whisper of pure ice.
They stood there, locked in a silent combat of wills, the specter of Sage’ programming a ghost in the room between them. Jake’s chest heaved. He saw the logic in Bucky’s words, and he hated it. Hated that this relic, this walking monument to violated agency, could see the shadow he was casting.
“She trusts me,” Jake said, the statement sounding hollow even to him.
“She might not have a choice,” Bucky countered, unblinking. “That’s what you should be scared of. That you’re just another authority her conditioning is waiting to bow to. And you’re too busy enjoying the view from the throne to check.”
The truth of it was a physical blow. Jake remembered the safehouse, the fear in her eyes when he’d loomed over her. The way she’d obeyed Steve’s command voice. The trembling. He took a staggering step back, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a sickening doubt.
“I’m not her handler,” he muttered, more to himself than to Bucky.
“Prove it,” Bucky said. He unwrapped the tape from his hand, a slow, deliberate reversal of his earlier ritual. “Step back. Let her breathe without smelling you in the air. Or you’re just another cage, Lockley. A nicer one, maybe. But a cage all the same.”
He dropped the used tape in a bin. It landed with a soft, final sound. Without another word, Bucky turned and left the gym, the door sighing shut behind him.
Jake stood alone in the bright, silent room. He stared at his own hands, remembering the feel of the safehouse chair, the cold metal of his gun, her ragged breathing. The memory had faded, replaced by the warm weight of her sleeping against his shoulder during a quiet moment in the medical wing. He’d told himself that was progress. That was trust.
Now, he wondered if it was just a better-trained response.
The doubt snaked through him, toxic and familiar. Khonshu’s distant, sand-dry laughter seemed to echo in the hum of the fluorescent lights. The soldier sees you, servant. He knows the shape of the leash you won’t admit you're holding.
“Shut up,” Jake rasped to the empty room.
He left the gym, but he didn’t go back to Sage’s door. He walked the compound’s perimeter instead, under the synthetic moonlight, each step an argument against the phantom Bucky had unearthed. The rift was a clean, painful cut. And for the first time, Jake was forced to consider which side of it he truly stood on.
And for the first time, Jake was forced to consider which side of it he truly stood on.
He walked until the synthetic dawn bled artificial light into the corridor skylights. His knuckles were raw, though he couldn’t remember striking anything. The ghost of Bucky’s assessment—handler, cage—dogged every step. It mingled with the older, fouler voice of Khonshu, a symphony of disapproval. He found himself outside the medical wing, staring through the observation glass not at Sage, but at his own reflection, superimposed over the empty bed.
“You look like hell.”
The voice came from his left. Steven stood there, holding two paper cups of terrible compound coffee. He offered one. Jake took it, the scalcholding heat a grounding pain.
“Barnes,” Jake said, the name an entire confession.
“I heard the broad strokes.” Steven sipped his coffee, wincing at the taste. “He’s not entirely wrong, you know. Our approach has been… monolithic.”
“She needs protection.”
“She needs autonomy more.” Steven’s tone was clinical, a doctor stating a prognosis. “We are, by our very nature, an overbearing proposition. The three of us in one skull, a literal committee. Adding our collective weight to her fragile state may be more of a burden than a shield.”
Jake’s grip tightened on the cup. He hated the diagnosis. He also knew its truth. He’d felt the rightness of his claim over her, the violent comfort of it. That was the problem. “So what? We just step back?”
“We rotate,” Steven said softly. “We let the persona best suited for the environment lead. My therapist would call it healthy boundaries. Right now, your particular brand of intensity may be exacerbating the very instincts we’re trying to help her unlearn.”
A long, slow breath escaped Jake. He watched the orderly rows of empty beds in the sterile room. He thought of Sage’s face in the flickering projector light, a moment of peace he’d poisoned with his own noise. He thought of the fear in her eyes when Steve had spoken in that tone. Another authority. “Tell Marc,” Jake said, the words tasting of ash. “Tell him it’s his watch. For a while. I’m… I’m too close to it.”
Steven nodded, a silent understanding passing between them. “She’ll notice the difference.”
“I know.”
The transition was not a dramatic event. There was no flicker of light, no shift in posture a bystander would notice. Jake simply closed his eyes, relinquishing the driver’s seat with a final, weary thought toward the woman sleeping down the hall: Don’t forget me.
When his eyes opened, the texture of the gaze had changed. The sharp, hungry edge was gone, replaced by a weary, observational calm. Marc Spector took a sip from the coffee cup, frowned at its bitterness, and set it aside on a hallway bench. He turned and walked toward Sage’s quarters, his footsteps measured, his presence a quieter storm.
Sage woke to the scent of bergamot and clean linen, not old leather and subway grit. Marc sat in the chair by the window, polishing a crescent dart with a soft cloth. The morning light cut across his profile, highlighting scars Jake’s ferocity usually overshadowed.
“You’re here early,” she said, voice thick with sleep.
“I’m here often,” Marc replied, not looking up from his work. The cloth whispered against the bone-white metal. “You’re just used to a noisier version.”
She propped herself up on her elbows, the monitoring pod behind her ear chirping a gentle morning readout. She reached out with that new, tentative sense. Jake’s frequency—a broadcast of jagged protectiveness—was absent. In its place was Marc’s mental signature: a deep, still lake, its surface calm, its depths holding unseen, ordered layers of violence and grief. It was professional. Guarded.
“Where is he?”
“Around.” Marc finally looked at her. His eyes held her without possessing her. “He thought you needed space without static. I’m less… static.”
It was true. His presence didn’t press against her mental walls. It simply existed nearby, a watchful, silent sentry. He asked concise questions about her sleep, her dreams, the solidity of the psychic barriers Wanda had shown her. He discussed defense strategies, escape routes from the compound, the tactical vulnerabilities of various Avengers with a detached, analytical air. It was smart. It was safe.
She began to miss the static.
Three days later, the movie night sequel proceeded without territorial disputes. Peter arrived first, wiring a small, flat panel to the wall. “Stark 2.0! It’s a micro-LED screen. No holograms, no projectors. He says it emits ‘psychologically neutral light waves.’ I think he made that up.”
Bucky followed, carrying a bowl of popcorn so large it obscured his face. He set it down between them on the floor. “No butter. Banner’s request. Something about lipid interference with neuronal… something.” He caught Sage looking past him toward the door. “He’s not coming,” Bucky said, softer.
“Who?” Peter asked, fiddling with the remote.
“The other guy,” Bucky said, his eyes on Sage. He understood the shift. He’d perceived the change in the psychic climate around her quarters.
Marc entered a moment later. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a polite distance from the gathering. “Don’t mind me. Jarvis is running a diagnostic on the floor’s security protocols. Just verifying blind spots.”
Peter shrugged, used to atypical chaperones. “Cool. We’re doing a thriller. Something with paranoia. To set the mood.”
The film was all sharp angles and mounting dread. Sage sat with the bowl of popcorn between her and Bucky. Peter offered a running technical commentary on the surveillance tech depicted. Marc remained a silhouette at the periphery.
Halfway through, a scene flickered where the protagonist was betrayed by someone he trusted. A cold spike of anxiety, not her own, jabbed at Sage’s mind. She turned her head slightly. Bucky was staring rigidly at the screen, his right hand curled into a loose fist on his thigh. The emotion was a brief, contained burst—a memory, not a broadcast. He instantly clamped down, sealing it off.
But in that split second, she felt the echo of his understanding. It wasn’t about the film. It was about the silent doorway, the absent guardian. It was about missing the devil you know.
She missed Jake’s predictable heat. She missed the way his thoughts battered against her walls like waves, constant and honest in their tumult. Marc’s stillness was a void, and in that void, her own uncertainties grew louder. She picked at the popcorn, the plain kernels tasteless.
When the credits rolled, Peter stretched. “Okay, that was objectively stressful. Next time, a comedy. A farce. Something with no subtext.”
Bucky stood, gathering the empty bowl. His metal hand brushed against Sage’s shoulder as he passed—a deliberate, grounding touch. “You good?”
She nodded, offering a thin smile. “Just tired of thinking.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” He glanced at Marc, a silent communication passing between soldiers. Your watch.
Marc pushed off the doorframe as Peter and Bucky filed out. He looked at Sage, his head tilting slightly. “The anxiety spike at minute forty-three. That was Barnes’s, wasn’t it?”
She was startled. “You could tell?”
“I’ve spent a lifetime learning to read micro-expressions. You flinched like someone tapped a raw nerve that wasn’t yours.” He moved into the room, lowering his voice. “It’s getting easier for you. Separating the signals.”
“It’s getting harder to pretend I don’t hear them,” she admitted.
Marc knelt, putting himself at her eye level. His closeness was different. It didn't scorch; it demanded focus. “Jake thought his way was the only way to keep you safe. To keep you here. He’s bad at sharing. Worse at doubting himself.” He paused, choosing his words like arranging tools. “He’s not gone. He’s regrouping. And him stepping back? That might be the most protective thing he’s ever done for you.”
Sage studied his face, the map of scars and sorrows. “Do you believe that?”
“I believe restraint is harder than force. I believe it’s what she would have wanted.” He didn’t specify who she was. He didn’t need to. The old pain in his voice was answer enough. He stood. “Get some rest. The static will be worse if you’re tired.”
He left, leaving her door open a crack, a sliver of hallway light cutting across the floor.
Alone, she practiced the exercises Wanda had taught her. She built the wall, brick by mental brick. But in the quiet behind it, a new sensation took shape. It wasn’t the invasive noise of others. It was an internal, hollow ache. A missing frequency.
She cared for Marc’s solemn, wounded honesty. But she missed Jake’s incendiary, selfish, desperately needed fire. Outside, in the compound’s network, the file tagged “LORIKEET” auto-updated. A new sub-routine logged a status change.
Asset emotional baseline: fluctuating. Attachment to primary handler (designate: LOCKLEY) noted. Stressor identified: separation. Recommend monitoring for increased suggestibility during perceived abandonment window.
The AI assigned a probability: 67%. A recommendation glowed softly on the dark server: Prepare conditioned priming sequence. Await external signal.