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The name on the caller ID isn't one Bucky recognizes...but the list of people with this number is extremely short, and most of them have been involved in stopping at least one global doomsday event, so he doesn't let it go to voicemail unless he is literally dodging bullets.
"Pick up," he tells the phone mounted on his car dashboard. It switches from the navigation to a call screen. "Barnes here."
"Hi?" says an unfamiliar voice, the accent peppy and British. "Mr. Barnes? There's a bloke here, doesn't have a phone, asked us to help call his emergency contacts. You're the second number on the list. Can you help him?"
She doesn't give a name. "Is he injured?" asks Bucky, mentally running through all the people he knows who might be on an undercover op right now. "Can he talk? Can you put him on?"
"He doesn't look hurt...just, uh..." The stranger's voice lowers. "Like he's on something? Or like he's supposed to be on something, and he's gone off it."
The next line is more distant, as she holds the phone away from her face: "Hey, it's okay, this one answered. You want to talk to him?"
Then, at last, a voice Bucky knows: "Hi. I don't -- I don't know where I am. Can you -- come get me."
Marc Spector. Ex-Marine turned Avatar of Khonshu, with all the mysterious moon powers that implies. Rarely gives out his contact info, but has appeared for surprise team-ups with half the superhero community. Still refers to himself as Sam and Bucky's "work friend," even after he and his wife have crashed in Bucky's guest room.
Sounds like he's ready to crash again now. He's slow and halting on the other end of the line, like something (or someone) turned his brain to toffee and he has to pull every word out of it one-by-one.
"Are you safe?" asks Bucky, already pulling the car into the nearest parking lot. (If they tow him for not buying anything from CVS while he's here, well, he can burn that bridge when he comes to it.) "Any hostiles still tailing you?"
After a couple long and heavy breaths, Marc repeats, "I don't know where I am."
Oof. Something's done a number on him. "Okay. Okay, don't worry about it. I'll come pick you up. Can you give the phone back to the lady now?"
"Hi?" says the phone-owner, a moment later.
"Hey. He's a friend of mine, yeah, thanks for helping him out. I can come get him. Can you tell me where you are?"
At this point Bucky has his sleeve rolled up, and the bonus tech in his arm online. The stranger gives him the name of a cafe chain, and an intersection of street names he doesn't recognize; a holo-display pops up from his forearm and starts mapping it without being asked.
It pulls up half a dozen possibilities. None of them within a hundred miles of Bucky's current location. Going by the caller's accent, he guesses, "The one in London?"
"Uh, yeah, mate," says the caller. "Are you not in London? Should we just call him an ambulance?"
"No, it's no problem. Just not where I expected him to be, that's all," bluffs Bucky, now tapping a different signal into his arm. "Listen, I need a minute to arrange a ride, then I'll be right there. Any chance you folks can stay there and keep an eye on him for about...half an hour? I'll pay for your coffee and everything."
☽︎
The portal opens right in the middle of a crowded kitchen. One probably-underpaid barista yelps and spills a kettle. Another drops a whole tray of...something in the glazed-bun family.
"Sorry! Really sorry," exclaims Bucky, while Strange swishes the portal closed. "Seriously, you couldn't have dropped us in an alley next door or something?"
"You told me a cafe, I got you the cafe. You're welcome," says Strange, doing some fancy hand gestures that make the spilled food swirl back into place. To the staring employees, he adds, "Hey, any machines in here that never seem to work right?"
One of them points a shaky hand at a toasting rack of some kind. "Burns half the stuff we put in it."
More jazzy hand gestures, and a multifaceted orange spell does some whirling in front of the toaster. "Not anymore, it doesn't," says Strange, before following an exasperated Bucky out into the front.
The whispers start almost immediately. Bucky can go a lot of places and be inconspicuous, as long as he wears gloves and keeps his head down, but it's hard not to notice the guy with the iconic goatee and the levitating bright-red cape. People are already pulling out their phones.
"Can you do something about the paparazzi?" mutters Bucky.
"Depends. Is your guy here?"
Bucky's already scanning the room. There, at a table by the window -- a guy in a tan jacket and a Cubs hat, bent over with his hands covering his ears, rocking in place a little. "Yeah."
"Okay. Go get him," says Strange softly, then raises his voice: "Attention, everyone! Your cameras and wi-fi connections have all been switched off. Don't panic, it's all temporary, you can get back to Instagramming photos of your sandwiches in a few minutes. I will make an exception if anyone wants a selfie with me, though! I'm also available for autographs."
...all right, maybe there's a point to the doc's flamboyance after all. Nobody's looking at Bucky as he heads for Marc's table.
Sitting there with him are three...women? Bucky's first guess is women, but they all have dyed hair in avant-garde styles and he still hasn't quite caught up with all the new genders they have nowadays, so he's trying not to assume. They're looking apprehensively between Strange and Marc -- probably worried all the commotion is going to stress him out even further -- until one of them, with bright green hair, catches sight of Bucky.
"Ho-lee crap," says Green Hair, eyes wide. "You're the Barnes he was talking about? Bucky Barnes?"
"That's me."
Pink Hair, the one right next to Marc, looks down at him. "Hold on hold on hold on. Is this guy an Avenger?"
"Nah. I keep trying to get him to apply, but he doesn't want to put up with the paperwork." Bucky slides a roll of pound notes across the table (courtesy of a quick rifle through the London Sanctum's petty cash drawer), and crouches down into Marc's line of vision. "Hey, buddy. How are you feeling?"
Marc stops rocking, but his eyes are glassy and he doesn't seem able to make them focus. "Bad."
"Yeah, looks like it." No visible injuries, at least, and no blood on his clothes. Did someone drug him, or give him a concussion, and he hasn't been able to summon the Moon Knight suit? Or is this just a PTSD episode, something the suit can't handle? "We're gonna extract you to somewhere quiet and check you out, all right?"
"N-no."
"Uh. Okay. Why not? If there's any mind-control or possession here, the sorcerers will be on top of it, I promise."
"Omigod, he might be possessed?" exclaims Purple Hair (the person seated between Pink and Green). "We thought he was just...you know..."
Green Hair elbows Purple in the ribs, cutting short what looked like the start of a "cuckoo" hand-motion, and finishes the sentence with, "...autistic."
That...sounds like a topic Bucky is not qualified to comment on, so he doesn't even try. "Give him a minute to answer, okay?"
Strange works his way through a good chunk of his selfie line before Marc manages to whisper, "I called...I told her...I said I'd be here."
"Um," puts in Green Hair. Bucky looks up. "He had another emergency number, before yours? It went to voicemail, so we just left the address. Someone named Layla?"
"Ah!" Bucky grins, relieved at how much sense it makes. "That'll be his wife."
"He's married?" blurt Green Hair and Purple Hair, in shocked chorus.
"Yes, yes, we're all learning a valuable lesson about books and covers today," quips Strange -- no, quips an astral projection of Strange, leaning translucently over the table, while his body keeps charming the crowd. "Are we ready yet?"
"Just a second," says Bucky impatiently. And, to Marc: "We will call Layla back, okay? We'll tell her where you went. We'll make sure she can come get you."
"You'll...call her," repeats Marc.
"That's right."
"You'll tell her. Where I am."
"Yeah."
"She has to know," insists Marc haltingly. "Where I am."
"We'll tell her," says Bucky again.
After an unsteady pause, Marc nods, and grips Bucky's shoulder, and lets Bucky help him stand.
"Is his wife also a maybe-Avenger?" pipes up Pink Hair.
"Nah, she's an international antiques smuggler," says Bucky, as a new portal spins open in front of them. "Seriously -- thank you again. If Steve was here, he'd say something about how you guys are the real heroes. And it would sound really cool and inspiring and you'd know that he meant it, too."
The portal finally draws attention from the rest of the cafe, but to Bucky's relief, nobody makes a lunge for it.
Not only that, as he walks Marc across the threshold, the patrons burst into applause. Like the poor guy was a cat who's been stuck up a tree all morning, and (though they were doing their stoic British best not to notice) they're relieved somebody finally got him down.
"Thank you for your patience! All your food for the rest of the day will be twenty percent more delicious!" calls Strange, giving the customers one last wave before swishing the portal closed behind them.
☽︎
Marc curls up at the end of one of the New York Sanctum's obnoxiously-elaborate couches: hugging his knees to his chest, head down.
The Cloak of Levitation detaches from Strange's shoulders, and drapes itself comfortingly over his.
Bucky sits on the other end of the couch and leaves a text for Layla El-Faouly, then a voicemail. Strange paces around them, casting scanning spells in a range of colors and muttering under his breath.
"Okay, good news, your friend's not on drugs," he announces, once Bucky hangs up. "Or concussed. Or having a stroke. Or replaced by an exact-duplicate robot and/or alien."
"...wait, what? Is that a thing now?"
"You would not believe how many things are things now," sighs Strange. "Gonna check for possession and mind-control next. Hang tight."
"I'm not sure that's a good--" begins Bucky, as Strange touches his own temple with one set of fingertips and Marc's with the other.
Before he can finish, the sorcerer jumps back with a yelp, clutching his hand. "Ow! What the -- he stabbed me!"
"And stay out," hisses Marc, without looking up.
"He will. I promise." Bucky aims a meaningful glare at Strange, who rolls his eyes but keeps his distance. "What do you mean, stabbed? He didn't even move."
"Obviously he didn't physically stab me," huffs Strange. "Something in his head stabbed me. It was a psychic stabbing. I've met people with good mental shields before, sometimes people with entire frickin' brick walls in there, but this? This is next-level."
Bucky wonders if that's a Moon Knight power too -- Marc's version of the suit does come with an unlimited supply of blades -- or if it's someone helping him out. All three Knights describe Khonshu as having a sharp-edged staff...and the skull of a long-beaked bird.
He stifles a snicker at the idea of a cranky moon god giving Strange an astral pecking.
"Oh, sure, laugh it up." Strange reflexively tries to straighten the Cloak -- which doesn't work, since it's still on Marc. "That means you have a good reason to believe your buddy is not possessed by an entity with lots of psychic knives, right?"
"Sure do." To Marc, Bucky adds, "If you need anything, say so, okay? Otherwise, we're going to just hang out until Layla calls back."
Marc lets out a disconsolate murmur and hugs his knees tighter. A corner of the Cloak pats him gently on the head.
☽︎
The next time Bucky's phone lights up, he answers in the middle of the first ring. "Barnes."
Layla cuts straight to the chase. "Bucky Barnes, what the hell is going on with my husband?!"
"We're hoping you can help work that out," says Bucky, waving to get Strange's attention -- the man was doing something on the second floor, but slides down the banister to join them. "We've got him at the Sanctum. Doesn't look hurt, he's just not saying much. Heads-up, he's still out-of-uniform, and nobody's said his wallet name."
"All right. Okay." Layla is audibly wrestling her panic under control. "I'll fly over. The London Sanctum?"
"Uh...no. Strange's home base."
"You took him to New York?"
Strange bends his head next to the phone, which is already glowing as he does something magic to it, and says, "Where he got to have his weird panic attack in complete safety. You're welcome."
"I'm in Cairo," says Layla desperately. "I could've gotten back to London in a few hours, but crossing the Atlantic? I've--"
A portal swirls open.
"--never tried to do that in one shot, and there's nowhere to land on the way," continues Layla, her voice doubled as it comes both out of the phone, and out of the woman pacing around a cul-de-sac with Arabic-language street signs between the palm trees. "I've--"
She looks up, startled.
"Well, come on in," says Strange, beckoning her over the threshold. "You're letting all the AC out."
☽︎
Layla talks softly with Marc on the couch. Well, softly at Marc. Whatever non-responsive brain fog he's in, her presence hasn't snapped him out of it.
Obviously Strange isn't going to let them hang out at the Sanctum unsupervised, but he stands back, giving them a surprisingly generous amount of privacy. Bucky lurks next to him, making sure he keeps it up.
At last, Strange says -- ostensibly to Bucky, but loud enough that he knows he'll be overheard -- "So, this guy's a Moon Knight, right?"
Layla's head whips up. "What? Why would you say that?"
"Well, come on, he's obviously something. Random guys off the street don't make distress calls to the Winter Soldier's personal phone number," says Strange matter-of-factly. "He's not another super-soldier, or there would've been more stuff broken when we picked him up. Got too much testosterone to be Dora Milaje, or an ex-Black Widow. And he's not one of the Captains America, they still haven't had a Hispanic one of those yet. So who else does Barnes here hang out with?"
Layla is glaring daggers at Bucky, who tries in vain to keep his expression blank. Maybe he should've done more to obscure what was going on -- but it was a bad situation, okay, he was trying to act fast...
"Oh, don't hold it against him, Scarlet Scarab, it's not like you even bother to hide your face," points out Strange. "Also, before you all race to fawn all over my Sherlockian powers of deduction...his eyes are doing the thing."
Bucky and Layla both turn to Marc.
The Cloak has pulled back from his head, though it still sits guard around his shoulders. He's sitting up, straight-backed and eerily still, gazing at his wife with glowing white eyes.
"...I mean, that could be anything," stammers Bucky.
Not convincing at all. But at least he's loyal?
Layla sighs. "You know what, fine, we're going with this," she announces. "Yes, this is Orthodox Moon Knight. Right now, though, this isn't my husband behind the wheel -- this is a sort of failsafe mode all the Moon Knights have. It kicks in when they get overwhelmed."
"HAH!" barks Strange, loudly enough that even Failsafe Moon Knight turns to look at him. "Sorry! I just knew it. I knew it had to be something like that! Wong owes me fifty...uh, it's not a currency from this dimension, but trust me when I say it's a lot."
"I think I've seen Failsafe Mode before too," says Bucky. When the moon-bright eyes fix on him, he adds, "Uh. Is that the right thing to call you?"
Eerily expressionless, Failsafe Mode turns back to Layla, tilting its/Marc's head in a wordless question.
"I think so." Layla puts her hand on Marc's. "Do you mind if people call you that?"
It shakes its head.
"Do you know who these two are?"
Another head-shake.
"Well, they're allies. Especially Barnes -- the one Marc called, the one with the metal arm. He's a good friend of ours, all right? Any time you're not sure what to do, and I'm not around...you can listen to him."
The glow around its eyes flickers as it looks Bucky up and down, then gives a slow nod.
"Um, wow. Thanks," stammers Bucky, face hot. He was already feeling pretty honored to be on Marc's emergency-number shortlist. Being on the (probably even shorter) list of people that fugue-state-Marc can rely on is...a lot. "Doesn't talk much, does it?"
"To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't talk at all," sighs Layla. "Usually doesn't have much to say in the first place, which keeps things simple. But that also means it can't tell us what happened..."
"Boat full of refugees," chimes in Strange. "Capsized not far from the coast of England, a couple hours ago. Orthodox Moon Knight showed up to help with the rescue. Dragged a bunch of people to safety, then disappeared, nobody caught where."
"Ooh." Bucky winces -- that would do it, yeah.
"Are you reading his mind? He wouldn't appreciate you doing that," says Layla suspiciously. "Or is this some kind of divination?"
The sorcerer holds up a phone. "It's the mystical ancient ritual known as 'Google News'."
☽︎
Giving Strange their exact flat address is apparently one privacy-breach too far for Layla. Bucky offers his guest room again -- it's close enough to the New York Sanctum that they wouldn't even need magic to get there. She puts her foot down against that too. Makes the fair point that Marc needs to rest in his own bed.
After some tense negotiation, Strange opens a portal on a London street, and pinky-swears he won't track them afterward.
The Cloak of Levitation swoops back to his shoulders as they leave him behind...but it waves goodbye with a corner of its collar as they step through, and Failsafe Mode waves back.
Its/Marc's eyes are still glowing. At least the sky is bright enough make it less obvious. Bucky puts his hood up, making his own moderately-famous face less obvious, then he and Layla walk Failsafe the few blocks home.
"Are the other Moon Knights there already?" asks Bucky casually. "Or should I hassle Strange into portaling them over too?"
On the other side of Failsafe, Layla grimaces. "Right. The others."
Uh-oh. Bucky hopes that doesn't mean there's trouble in the polycule. "I'm not angling to get their secret identities, I swear. Just want Marc to have all the support he can get, so you have some backup."
"Yeah, no, of course." She sounds oddly tired. "The others were also at the boat rescue."
"Wait -- what? Are you sure? How do you know?"
"My source on that is confidential, sorry."
That's a little odd -- it's not like Khonshu told me or They called before Marc did or even Special mysterious moon telepathy would be revealing a secret power Bucky doesn't already know about -- but he puts that worry aside. "Hold on, only one of them can use the suit at a time, right? Are the others okay? Should we be checking hospitals?"
"They're fine. Holed up somewhere safe. ...We do have protocols for this, I promise." Layla gives him a reassuring smile, so that's something. "Basically, they sent Marc to get help. When he checks back in, he'll reach out to the others -- you were at the Cleveland team-up, right, when Marc opened up about their special mysterious moon telepathy? -- and we'll game out the rest from there."
"If you're sure," says Bucky reluctantly.
His offers of help have been politely rebuffed. If he keeps offering, she's gonna stop being polite about it. It just really, really sounds like the kind of plan that would go faster if you had a portal guy.
"I'll have Marc give you a call when he's feeling better?" offers Layla. "He's not the type to talk about his feelings -- you might've noticed -- but I'll bully him into it if I have to."
"Would you? Thanks," breathes Bucky. "Doesn't have to be a long call, I just -- I'll sleep easier."
"They'll be so much better, all of them, once we get them back together. You'd be amazed. It's really sweet...I know they've turned down invitations for group hangouts in the past, and I won't bully them into that one, but I'll pitch the idea again."
"Thanks for that too."
All this time Failsafe has been silently keeping tabs on the scenery around them, swiveling Marc's head back and forth. As they turn down a quiet unoccupied side street, it takes a couple quick steps ahead of them, spins to face them, and gives Bucky a polite old-fashioned bow.
Then the suit...appears. Swirls into existence out of nowhere, ribbons spiraling around Marc's limbs, gold armor pieces shimmering into existence over his torso.
Bucky's seen the Moon Knight suit shapeshift. He's seen bits of it disappear -- the mask when Orthodox needs to catch his breath, the gloves when Reform wants to hold hands with his girlfriend -- and reappear afterward. Makes total sense that the whole thing can appear out of nowhere! Still not a reveal Bucky was prepared for!
"...and it's going in through the roof," mutters Layla, as Failsafe Moon Knight springs into the air. "Of course. Gus only shows up for emergency situations -- it might not even know how to use a door."
"Who?"
Layla jumps.
Then does a quick scan of the street around them, like maybe she'll find someone else to blame for that slip of the tongue.
At last she sighs, shoulders slumping, and admits, "For complicated in-joke reasons that are too long to explain right now, the guys sometimes refer to Failsafe Moon Knight as Gus."
"Seriously?"
"Oh, I wish I was kidding."
"...I realize I'm in no place to say this," says Bucky, "but your lives are so weird."
It gets a short, dry laugh out of Layla. "You have no idea. No, listen -- they've trusted you with a lot of personal information, Marc especially, and I'm sure you've dug up more on your own time than you've let on -- but. You have no idea."