Chapter 2: The Devil at Lunch
The synth-coffee in Steve’s mug had gone cold, a bitter, oily ring marking the ceramic where he’d left it untouched on the kitchen counter. Avengers Tower’s communal space was too quiet, the usual hum of appliances feeling like a held breath. Sam leaned against the fridge, arms crossed, watching Steve pace a slow, tense line across the polished concrete floor.“He’ll be here,” Sam said, checking his phone. “He said he was just finishing up a run in Brooklyn.”
“I know.” Steve’s voice was tight. He stopped, staring out at the skyline, but he wasn’t seeing the geometric sprawl of New York. He was seeing a smirking face from 1943, haloed in the glow of a reactor that hadn’t been invented yet.
The soft shush of the elevator doors broke the silence. Bucky Barnes stepped out, his hair damp from a shower, a familiar wariness in his blue-gray eyes. It softened when he saw Steve, then sharpened again as he registered the atmosphere.“You two look like someone canceled Christmas. What’s up?”
“We need you to look at something,” Steve said, avoiding Sam’s pointed glance. He was going about this all wrong, he could feel it.Sam took over, his tone deliberately casual. “We saw someone in the park this morning.Steve recognized him from way back. Took a picture.” He tapped his tablet on the counter, waking it to the blurry photo. He slid it toward Bucky.“Ring any bells?”
Bucky picked up the tablet, his organic hand steady. His eyes scanned the image—the man’s profile, the smirk, the poised confidence. For a second, nothing.Then his breath hitched, a tiny, almost imperceptible sound. His pupils dilated.The color drained from his face, leaving his skin a sickly pale.
The tablet clattered onto the counter, nearly skidding off the edge.
“Buck?” Steve took a step forward.Bucky didn’t look at him. He was staring at the spot where the tablet had been, his jaw working.His metal fingers clenched, the servos whining faintly. When he finally spoke, his voice was a cracked whisper, stripped of all its usual rough edges. “Where did you get this?”
“Central Park. Just a few hours ago,” Sam said, his watchful eyes missing nothing. “You know him.”
Bucky’s gaze flicked to Steve, a storm of confusion and something like betrayal.“Of course I know him.” He swallowed hard. “That’s Lucien. Lucien Moreau.”
The name landed in the quiet kitchen like a physical object.Steve wracked his memory.“Moreau? I don’t…”
“You wouldn’t.” Bucky’s laugh was short, hollow. “He was… he was from my life.Before you got big. Before the war.” He looked back at the frozen image on the tablet, and his expression did something terrible—it softened, just for a heartbeat, with a fond, wounded ache that Steve hadn’t seen in him for decades. “He worked at a gallery in SoHo.Loved awful, abstract art. Hated that I called it splatter-painting.” He touched the screen, his fingertip hovering over the man’s face. “He was my… we were together.For almost two years.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. He opened his mouth, then closed it, opting for silence.Steve felt the ground lurch under him. This wasn’t just a ghost from his past. It was a ghost from Bucky’s most intimate, stolen history. A history the Winter Soldier had tried to bury, and Bucky had fought to reclaim in fragments. “Buck… he’d be over a hundred years old.”
“I know how old he’d be, Steve.” The fragility vanished, replaced by a sharp, defensive heat. “I’m not an idiot. I watched him… I read the reports after I got my head straight.He enlisted after Pearl Harbor.Infantry.He died at Anzio. I have the letter his mother sent to my mom.” His metal hand flexed again. “So this… this is impossible.”
“The picture’s real,” Sam said quietly. “And the guy had this.” He zoomed the image in again, focusing on the man’s hand, on the ring with its telltale soft, blue pulse.
Bucky leaned in, his breath fogging the screen.“What is that?”
Before anyone could answer, the kitchen’s other entrance hissed open. Tony Stark wandered in, trailed by the faint scent of motor oil and expensive cologne. He was engrossed in a holographic schematic floating above his wrist, muttering to himself.
“—if the conductivity rate drops below forty, the whole manifold fries, which, hey, fiery death, fun for the whole family…” He looked up, blinking as if surprised to see people in the common area. “Oh.Support group meeting? Don’t mind me, just need the expensive nitro-brew that funds my genius.” He beelined for the coffee machine.
His eyes swept over them—Steve’s rigid posture, Sam’s alert stillness, Bucky’s ashen face. “Who died?” he asked, then winced.“Too soon?Always too soon. Sorry.”
“Tony,” Steve said, his voice strained.“Look at this.”
Sam lifted the tablet. Tony took it with a greasy hand, his eyes scanning the photo with a quick, analytical detachment. He frowned.Zoomed in.Zoomed in again on the ring. His demeanor shifted, the casual sarcasm evaporating.“Where did you get this?”
“We saw him.Today,” Steve said.
Tony’s face went through a series of minute changes: recognition, confusion, then a dawning, cold understanding. He looked from the photo to Bucky’s shattered expression, then back to the ring’s glow.“You know him too,” Sam stated.It wasn’t a question.
Tony put the tablet down very carefully, as if it were primed to explode. He took a long sip of his coffee, buying a second. When he met Steve’s eyes, his were uncharacteristically grim.“Yeah.I know him. That’s Lucifer.”
Bucky flinched at the name.“His name is Lucien,” Bucky said, the words icy.
“Not according to his payroll file and his surprisingly comprehensive dental plan,” Tony shot back, then held up a pacifying hand.“Okay.Context.He works for me.Well, for Stark Solutions. Special Projects division.Quiet guy.Brilliant with energy mitigation and retro-engineering. He’s been with the company for six years.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. The only sound was the faint hum of the fridge.
“Special Projects?” Steve echoed, the words feeling numb in his mouth.
Tony nodded, not looking at any of them now, studying the schematic on his wrist like it held answers.“The discreet stuff. The things we don’t put in the annual report. The things,” he added, his voice dropping, “that sometimes involve recovering or containing legacy Stark tech.” His eyes flicked to the zoomed-in image of the ring. “Legacy tech like… early, failed arc reactor prototypes.”
Steve remembered Howard’s furious words in a smoke-filled room.A vulture.A thief.Bucky took a step toward Tony. The movement was smooth, deadly. “You’re saying the man I watched get on a troop train in 1943, the man who died in Italy, is working for you. And he’s wearing a piece of your tech on his finger.”
Tony finally looked at Bucky, and for once, there was no deflection, no joke.Just stark, unsettling honesty. “I’m saying the man who has been my employee for six years, who goes by Lucifer, looks exactly like your photograph. And yeah, he always wears that ring. Says it’s a family heirloom.” Tony’s lip curled. “Guess the family business was theft.”
Bucky’s world wasn’t just tilting.It was shattering. The past wasn’t just chasing Steve; it had been here, working in the very tower they stood in, wearing the face of his first love, a love he’d grieved for in the quiet moments when the memory was clear enough to hurt. A love that was now a lie, wrapped in stolen light.
“I need to see his file,” Bucky said, his voice low and dangerous.“Everything.”
Tony exhaled. “FRIDAY?Pull up everything we have on employee Lucifer.All of it. Project histories, access logs, biometric scans.Send it to the secure server in the workshop.And lock down his lab. Now. No one in or out.”
“On it, boss,” the AI responded, her voice cool.
Tony looked at the three of them—the supersoldier from the past, the man out of time, and the pilot who’d brought them the proof.“We all go. Together.” He set his coffee down, the mug clicking too loudly against the stone. “Let’s find out who—or what—has been stealing from my family for a very, very long time.”