Winter Kitten
The cardboard box that had once held a giant office-sized printer/copier was yowling.
It was sitting in the front offices of the unfortunate government agency in charge of cleaning up the whole SHIELD/HYDRA mess, with a bit of paper taped to the front saying “FREE TO GOOD HOME”. As it was making the amount of noise more appropriate for a Raganarok Warning Siren, no-one had volunteered to be that good home.
Bucky had an appointment with his “parole officer” today, mostly to make sure he’d been good and not murdered anyone. He’d come a bit early because Steve had been called in to supervise the questioning of one of the HYDRA agents who was being held here. Apparently the noisy thing in the box was that HYDRA agent’s pet cat.
Having exhausted all the crappy magazines in the waiting area (he’d even read the psychic one, which featured a woman claiming that Bucky Barnes had been reincarnated as her pet parrot and wasn’t this “Winter Soldier” character at all, which Bucky found a little unbelievable), he’d gone up and looked into the box. At the bottom of the box was a litter tray, a bowl of food and water, a cushion, and a fluffy white kitten staring at him with blue eyes. The kitten resumed its screeching soon after. Bucky put his metal arm in the box. (The metal arm was more resistant to things like tiny scratches.)
The second a finger got within grabbing distance, the kitten was climbing up Bucky’s arm with a little metallic skittering noise. Once it had reached his shoulders, it draped itself around his neck and closed its eyes, purring like a little motorcycle engine. Bucky sat down again, and picked up the magazine with the story about how women managed to date “Italian Stallions”. The kitten chirped a little as Bucky sat down but continued purring.
After the parole meeting, Bucky met up with Steve in the waiting room. The kitten was still draped around his shoulders. When it heard Steve’s “Hey, Buck”, it opened its eyes and stretched one of its front legs, extending its little claws.
“You have a cat.”
Bucky reached up and tickled the kitten’s head. “It didn’t want to get off, so I guess I’m stuck with it.”