capsquared

This is an AU I've been playing around since 2017 or 2018, where Bucky's sister Rebecca marries Howard Stark and therefore is Tony's mother. I have almost 13k words written so far. Some needs to be re-worked as I've changed some plot points, but I'm pretty happy with what I do have.

Becca and Howard first meet when he drops by the Barnes's to fill in a few extra details after Bucky falls from the train. She shows up at his office a few days later to find out what he didn't say as he almost slipped up and called Captain America Steve during that first conversation. He shows up again after Steve crashes into the ocean. After the war, he offers her two jobs, one of behalf of the SSR and one to work for Stark Enterprises. She takes the latter job, which her father doesn't approve of because he doesn't trust Howard's motives. I have a solid framework for this part of the story written and then I jump ahead to 1991.

I haven't figured out yet how her presence impacts the events of Agent Carter season 1, but I have established that she and Howard weren't romantically involved yet. And given the way Peggy was treated, the SSR agents obviously aren't going to take her seriously either.

I'm assuming that both Howard and the Barnes family are Jewish, though Howard isn't observant, as anti-semitism would have harmed his business if anyone knew. The MCU version of Howard grew up on the Lower East Side, which at that time was a predominately Jewish neighborhood. Given the shit that the real-life Nazis did, it's a fair assumption that the soldiers Hydra picked to experiment on where Jewish, hence Bucky and his family being Jewish.

When Howard and Rebecca get engaged, Mr. Barnes doesn't approve and cuts off ties with his daughter. Howard tries to keep the lines of communication open with the rest of the family, but with little success.

The one thing that MCU canon seems to gloss over and/or forget about is Howard's age - John Slattery's portrayals always seem to be too young for the age he's supposed to be at the time. He's the same age as Bucky and a year older that Steve, which means that he was 53 when Tony was born. I've been assuming that Becca is two years younger than Steve, which would make her 50. Theoretically, Becca could possibly still conceive at that age, but if she were to have conceived naturally at that age, they'd have had other children before Tony, so I'm assuming they has some struggles with infertility and then science happened. This is part of the huge block of time that I haven't done any plotting for yet, so not sure exactly how that's going to work.

Jumping to 1991, Bucky is sent to kill Howard and Rebecca. He kills Howard first and as he's about to kill Rebecca, she manages to break through the brainwashing. He has a minor breakdown over being sent to kill his own sister, then helps her destroy the serum and cover up the fact that she was in the car. She wants Bucky to come home with her, but he says it's too dangerous, and that he needs to disappear until it's safe.

Becca tells Jarvis, Peggy, Tony, and Tony's on-again boyfriend Rhodey what happened and they all kind of go "well fuck, does that means Steve's still alive and the bottom of the ocean somewhere." Tony's love for his mother and the fact that Steve isn't dead outweigh his daddy issues, so he picks up Howard's search for Steve, ending up finding him 50 years to the day he crashed, so significantly sooner than in canon.

I still have a lot of details to work out, but Steve is understandably pissed that Hydra's still around and vows to destroy the organization for good. Tony takes it upon himself to build a Hydra-hunting suit to help out, which is the Iron Man origin story for this universe. I haven't worked out the details yet, but Rhodey probably becomes War Machine because they need the extra manpower.

Tony knows that they're going to need to get information from Peggy to figure out how Zola managed to regrow Hydra - thanks Operation Paperclip - but she's already in the early stages of dementia, so that might be easier said that done. Fortunately for this fact-finding mission, on her bad days she confuses her son for her late husband - which is Daniel Sousa - so he's able to help out from and intel perspective. This leads them to Alexander Pierce. I started writing a scene where Steve and Tony break into his house, but I have no idea how it ends yet.

Tony and Steve become romantically involved, but I have no idea at what point in the plot that occurs.

Up until this point, Bucky's been in the wind, but as Hydra starts to get dismantled, Tony finds a note in his office with coordinates for the Red Room, with instructions to rescue a little girl named Natalia, who is the result of experiments to see if the super soldier genetic enhancements can be inherited and is therefore Bucky's daughter, and then burn the place to the ground. When I first started plotting this story, there was no one else of consequence in the Red Room. Fast forward several years, and now I have to figure out how to save Yelena too.

Original plot had Natasha being raised by her "Aunt Rebecca" and being a complete thorn in Tony's side. Again, I have to figure out how to shoe-horn Yelena in, but I'm assuming I'll have them being raised as sisters and both being thorns in Tony's side.

Sometime, after the Red Room gets destroyed and enough to Hydra gets dismantled, Bucky reappears permanently.

I plan to bring Nick Fury, Carol Danvers, Clint Barton, and Bruce Banner into the story somehow, but I have no idea how yet. Bruce is a big question mark because with Steve already back to the land of the living, the research project that turned Bruce into the Hulk may never have happened. Fury and Carol could be part of Steve's "excuse me, where the fuck did you put the tessaract, I need to destroy it" mission. Sharon Carter will also be present, but Steve knows he she is the entire time as she's still a kid when he wakes up from the ice nap. Not sure if Thor will show up, because if the tessarect is already destroyed, Loki can't come steal it, and therefore the entire plot of The Avengers is gone.

I've taken a back seat on writing while I work on plotting, as I'm trying to be better about not just writing random stuff out of order and then having to rewrite scenes that contradict each other.

Back when I first started plotting, I fancasted Eve Hewson as young adult Becca, and Rachel Weisz as middle-aged Rebecca. Given that Nat and Yelina are going to end up in Becca's care, Melina probably won't be part of this story to avoid that mental minefield. I hadn't settled on a good fancast for old Becca, so I'm open to suggestions there.