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Now, Bucky’s not saying that he’s seen everything—he’s been around too damned long to be stupid enough to think that’s the case. There’s always gonna be something new and crazy and awesome or twisted to see. Always.
But he would probably have been inclined to say that nothing could surprise him, anymore. Like, not really.
But then he sees the goddamn raccoon climbing up to steal his perch—and more than that, he sees what the raccoon is packing—and all bets are fucking off.
The raccoon blinks at him owlishly—and Bucky damn near snorts, just then, because it’s a raccoon, but it’s owlish, and it’s funny, or it’s kind of funny, or something; but the raccoon’s just blinking at him, heaving his a big ass gun into place, the likes of which Bucky’s never seen before.
“Who you aiming for?” the raccoon finally asks, gaze turning suspicious. “The purple one?”
Bucky glances back toward the battle unfolding below them, surveying above the cut of his scope.
“Which purple one?” he asks, as Clint soars past, propelled by a tight grip on Vision’s cape.
“Big, shiny gauntlet,” the raccoon waves a paw. “Bad teeth.”
Bucky grins, which is fine, because he has nice teeth. “Yeah, that one.”
The raccoon eyes him for a split second before setting up and taking aim toward the enemy. “Good enough for me.”
And so Bucky doesn’t protest the unexpected addition of company up here; he’s a little territorial about his perch, but like, now’s probably not the time to push it.
He takes down three hostiles about to take Steve out from behind, and yeah. Not the time to push the point.
“You shoot pretty good,” the raccoon comments idly. “With that thing.”
It takes Bucky a second to realize that, by ‘that thing’, the raccoon means his left arm.
“You talk pretty good,” Bucky bites straight back, because who does this asshole think he is? “For a furry critter.”
He lines up enough shots to give Tony a clear shot at the blue woman with the bionic hand before Bucky takes the gamble that maybe alien prosthetic tech ain’t too different from his own, and swaps out for an EMP grenade, shoots for the joint.
She goes down—it won’t last, but Bucky’ll take it.
He’s grinning when he notices that he’s the only one taking shots, and he chances a glance to the creature at his side.
A creature who’s staring at him with enough fury that Bucky thinks he’s lucky the little guy’s not fucking exploding with it.
“What did you call me?”
Bucky frowns. “A critter,” he says. “Y’know. ‘Cause raccoons don’t normally articulate themselves so well, is all.”
“I ain’t no critter,” the raccoon snarls, swings the gun that’s bigger than he is around as he gestures wildly in indignation, and Bucky should probably know better than to say a goddamned thing, just then—he’d been telling Steve to zip his fuckin’ lip for long enough that his failure to do this same, here and now, is downright hypocritical.
But, well. Sometimes he doesn’t think.
“You look kinda like one.”
“There ain’t nothing like me, pal,” the raccoon is ranting, and Bucky ends up having to duck, misses his chance at a clear shot on one of Thanos’ goons because he has to duck to avoid being whipped across the jaw with the monstrous canon-thing. “Not in the whole freakin’ galaxy, you under—”
“Down!”
Bucky’s reaching for the handgun at his left thigh while he swings his right, swiping the raccoon off its feet to get a clear shot at the cosmic-android thing that was flying by, all lined up and ready to cap the furry bastard in his fucking brain.
“Maybe you talk too good,” Bucky can’t help but snark; “if you can’t shut up long enough to not get your ass killed.”
“You tryina’ play with me?” The raccoon is fucking bristling, hairs on end as he leaps to his feet and starts to charge Bucky straight-on. “You tryina’ mock me, huh?”
“No, I’m being fuckin’ serious,” Bucky protests, palms held out, innocent as he can manage. “Next time I’ll let ‘em take the shot, Jesus.”
“You think I’m a moron?” the raccoon’s yelling, face wrathful as fuck. “You think I’m some fuzzy pet, some funny fucking joke, huh?”
Bucky opens his mouth to say something, though he’s not really quite sure what, but the raccoon doesn’t give him a chance.
“‘Cause you know,” he keeps raving; “I didn’t ask to be this! I didn’t even ask to be here, y'know?”
And something about that—and it could mean anything, really, it’s probably nothing like what it sparks, what it brings to the front of his mind: but something about those words makes Bucky pause, makes the grip on his gun loosen, just a little.
“I didn’t ask them to make me what I am, to make me do what they made me do, and then just,” and the raccoon, his voice cracks, and oh—he’s a talking raccoon.
He’s a talking raccoon, and even alien raccoons, Bucky suspects, aren’t supposed to talk.
“Then just leave me like this,” and the raccoon is gesturing not to the world, but at himself, and Bucky’s looked at his own body, his own frame like that enough times to know what it means. “After they took me apart and shoved what they wanted in and made me some freak of natur—”
“Hey,” Bucky tries to cut in, and his voice is maybe too soft to make a dent, but he thinks he gets it, now: he thinks he understands this strange, fuzzy lab-rat more than he understands most people, most things. Because the nightmares don’t go away. Because the reality is still horrifying. Because there are some ways you get broken that heal crooked, that don’t ever go away.
“Well you know what?” the raccoon’s screaming, and Bucky tries not to think on how fucking lucky they are, just now, that no one’s taken a kill shot at their asses while their compromised—he tries not to dwell on calculating how long that luck’s liable to last. “I don’t have to take this from you, I—”
“Hey!” Bucky shouts it this time, halfway through another duck when the raccoon stops midswing with the big ass gun.
“Hey,” Bucky says, voice lower now that he’s got the raccoon’s attention. “What’s your name?”
And the raccoon blinks at him—owlish, again, but it’s not so funny, now; the raccoon blinks, and Bucky remembers what his name meant to him, in the beginning, once he’d started to understand. He remembers what it still means: on bad days. When Steve says it.
“Rocket.” The tone isn’t trusting, not by a longshot, but it’s wary, a little: in that way that makes it seem like he’s under consideration, like maybe this Rocket fella’s gonna hear him out.
“Okay Rocket, look,” Bucky gestures behind him. “One,” he ticks off: “war happening?”
Rocket tosses his head from side to side, like he’s weighing that as a possibly-important factor to consider, but isn’t quite sold.
Bucky’s almost amused by it; recognizes the mentality well.
Too well. Fucking hell.
“But two,” he grabs for his weapon again and gets back into position. “We both live through this shit? I’ll buy you a drink after.” Bucky’s finger slips on into place, curls around the trigger as he smirks. “Think we could both use it.”
Bucky figures they’ll have more in common than either of them expect.
Bucky figures it’s best not to think too hard about having that much in common with a raccoon-like alien. Yep.
Best not to think about it.
“You’re in my way.”
Bucky huffs, rolling his eyes over his shoulder at Rocket, who’s staring at him with barely-contained exasperation. Like Bucky’s out of line. “You’re on my roof.”
“You don’t own this roof.”
“I live in the building that is attached to this roof so it’s my fucking roof.”
“Well, I need it more,” Rocket shrugs, and Bucky isn’t particularly proud of it, but he does, in fact, take his eye of his target to gape at this fucking crazy bastard, because seriously. Seriously.
“I cannot even—” Bucky starts, but then the foundation of the Tower shakes for the explosion that rocks from below; Bucky’s heart shoots into his throat as he squints, relies on the serum to find his people, to confirm status as best he can at a distance.
“Shit!” Bucky hisses, because he finds most of them but not all of them, not—
“I’ve got a plan.”
Bucky’s spinning around to fix eyes on the crazy not-raccoon next to him, and his breath catches for a second before it lets him breathe: he sees the blue of the uniform move across his line of sight: Steve.
His eyes slip closed with relief on the exhale.
“How much of a plan?”
“Enough of a plan,” Rocket shrugs. “But in order for it to work, I’m gonna need your arm.”
Bucky wastes three whole seconds with his jaw wide open.
“Yeah, no.”
“C’mon, though,” Rocket whines, and Bucky’d have to be fucking stupid not to hear the snark in it, the edge of humor, and it’s so wildly out of place and so fucking absurd that Bucky almost can’t handle it. “It’s pivotal to the plan.”
Bucky almost can’t swallow the urge to laugh himself.
“It’s pivotal to me smacking you off my roof,” Bucky ultimately gasps out, moving to the edge, ready to leap in and cover his people from the ground as he shoots a glance toward Rocket as he calculates the best angle to make the jump to the adjacent building, to bounce ledge to ledge until his arm can take the impact of the rest of the ride down.
The fucking raccoon is grinning at him.
“Smart man,” Rocket smirks, nodding in something like approval before he walks back to his gun and turns back to the fray. “Drinks it is.”
Bucky watches as Rocket starts clearing the line of Bucky’s descent.
“No weird alien-god brain juice, either,” Rocket tacks on over the din of blaster-fire. “Real booze.”
Bucky catches an ill-timed glance of Thor, just then, and yeah, wow, right: he was never going to stop being surprised by the crazy-ass bullshit this universe had up its sleeve.
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