fossilised | military mistletoe

Army of One had never meant more than it did now. Tony was powerless to stop Barnes from doing what he wanted to do, and he was too shocked to protest it at first either. It took the guy’s body heat on his clammy skin to finally cause him to blink, and that smell—

Shit.

“You need to keep yourself alive,” he snapped. He wasn’t being proud, though he was capable of caring for himself, thank you. He just was very well aware that if Barnes went septic, that was literally it for him. “Get yourself water.”

Tony wasn’t a selfless man but the guy had probably saved his life in the blast at a huge cost to himself. And that was why he needed to return the favor. If these assholes wanted weapons? Fine. But he wanted antibiotics. “Hey!” Sorry, Barnes. Hope you’re not deaf. “We need medicine in here. You cut open my chest. You’re going to kill me before I do anything for you. Antibiotics. Got it?!”

Bucky reeled backwards as Tony suddenly shouted and ended up having to grasp the edge of the table thing that Stark was laid out on to keep himself from falling over, though it make his eyes water with the pain to do so.

"Jesus, Stark, I've been keeping myself alive too. But I can move and you can't, besides, I was assigned your protection detail."

A lot of people would say that ended now that they were captured and it should be every man for himself, but Bucky wasn't that sort of guy. He was a good soldier through and through, no man left behind, and he'd damn well spit in the eye of death to make it so. Another lesson learned from Steve.

One of the captors put their head in and spat something in Pashto at the pair of them, before retreating again.

"--don't think they're gonna bring medicine, but I've been washing us both as best I can with what they give me for drinking."

It was easier to wash Stark, because as soon as he touched his own wounds he generally either passed out or vomited from the pain, which was why his smelled sweet and Stark's just smelled of dried blood and sweat.

“I thought I wasn’t your type,” Tony teased since there wasn’t much else to do in this particular situation. If he let this get to him, he’d be done for sure. His mind was his best asset here and it needed to be sharp. Putting the situation down was just something he had to do.

Bucky would understand that. He’d been a survivor before. He knew the drill.

He wasn’t missing an arm or in grave danger of being killed through shrapnel plunging into his heart, but at least he could call up past experience to get him through this one. All Stark had was memories of surviving boarding school.

Luckily, Tony was too valuable an asset, for now, to allow him to die. It meant that medication would, in fact, be delivered with the next meal and Tony was going to insist on Barnes taking most of them. They could argue about it, but Barnes would find that Stark could be as tenacious as his bestie back home.

The medication that Stark foisted on him would, without doubt, be one of the main reasons that he would survive this instead of dying of sepsis over the next few days, though he was still stubborn enough to make sure that Stark took some of them and insisted on continuing to move about to clean them both up as best he could.

It was on the fourth night since they had both woken up, when the fever from his infection had finally started to go down, that Bucky felt clear headed enough to start a conversation that wouldn't just end in silence and sleep as it had so often over the past few days.

"--people will be looking for you, we just have to hold out until then."

What Bucky said wasn’t wrong, but given the timeline, if anyone had been looking for him, they had likely given up by now. Tony didn’t know the full amount of time that passed but it had been at least a week. “They probably are planning my funeral,” he said. “Yours too.”

The Army has a no man left behind policy but they obviously weren’t here banging down the makeshift door now were they? No. Tony looked at Barnes with half lidded eyes. He was in pain but he was getting more lucid. More aware of the situation.

“We’re going to cooperate.” He needed to have access to parts. To metal. It was the only way.

"I'm not giving them any information, and I'm not leaving a weapon in their hands."

He might be down an arm, and likely considered dead, but he was still loyal to his country and he would go down as a man of honour if he had to go down. At least then he might have a chance to rest easy once he was dead.

"What exactly is this cooperation you intend?"

They had to be listening. They had to be watching. Tony couldn’t allow anyone to know what he was doing, even if it meant having Bucky’s cooperation. The older man gave the younger a hard look. “We don’t have a choice. I intend on living through this,” he said, trying to convey his plan in thought alone.

Of course it wouldn’t work. Bucky was too proud and too trained. He didn’t see Stark for anything more than a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

“You don’t have to help me but I wish you would. I’m going to need it to get around.”

Bucky wasn't psychic, but the look Stark was giving him was hardly subtle. Okay, so he had a plan, though Bucky had no idea what this plan was, he just hoped that it didn't make a traitor out of either of them.

He moved as if to scrub a hand through greasy hair and winced, because there wasn't an arm left to do that with on the side he usually did that.

"You and me are a team in this Stark, I'll help you. I want to get home too, I have someone waiting for me."

That probably sounded more romantic than he intended it to be.

Of course Bucky has someone waiting for him. Most soldiers did. Family. Friends. Romantic partners. What did Tony have? A tech empire? His dad’s best friend who kept pushing him towards weapons contracts. And some hired helped he liked to think of as friends but weren’t.

The look on Tony’s face was half amused. The other half was honestly unreadable. He made a gesture for Barnes to help him upright so he could bang on the door.

“I need a workshop. With good lighting,” he said, not exactly yelling though he had raised his voice. “And access to a real bathroom because I am not shitting in a pot any more today.”

He’d get his wish, though the space he and Bucky were put in was still a shit hole. It was, at least, a cleaner shit hole with access to running water and raw materials. It was a good start.

Honestly, the soldiers would have happily allowed the spare to die by now, Barnes was of no interest to them and they had expected him to bleed out from his injuries, but if he could be used to keep Stark in line then they would allow him to keep living for now. Allow Stark to believe he was allowed to call the shots, give him his stupid work space and his toilet.

Bucky stood guard over Tony like a trained dog, keeping him safe and making sure he ate and slept. He didn't see the other man as just a silver spoon idiot, he was being brave to stay through this without breaking, but it was harder to become close to him because he seemed to only have the settings of quiet or sarcasm.

"...who's waiting for you?"

It was a quiet question while Stark worked one day, just something to break the oppressive silence.

“Roughly four hundred employees,” Tony said, bent over car battery and trying not to nick any wires as he worked on an innocuous looking piece of metal he was hoping to make into a serviceable radio.

They left him with a whole lot of broken radio pieces to work into his smart missiles, probably an error on their part, but how else was he supposed to craft a guidance system without them? It was quite a task to make a weapon into a communication device and mask it as such. Especially when they were rarely left fully alone.

Tony briefly glanced up at Bucky, who probably had to be bored to tears sitting there watching him working together pieces of wire, and smirked. “But I don’t think they’re waiting unless the board dissolved my company.... and then they’re probably just waiting for unemployment checks.”

Bucky frowned, half annoyed by what seemed to be another glib and sarcastic answer, and half concerned in case that was the truth. Maybe Stark's sarcasm was all a deflection away from how lonely his life was.

"Then when we get out of here, you can come and have a beer with me."

Maybe they didn't know too much about each other yet, but if they survived an experience like this then Bucky would consider them friends. And he sure as hell had no interest in Stark's money or connections in return.

"If you're not too busy signing unemployment cheques."

“I have people for that,” Tony said, oddly brightening. A few round of beers for Bucky and his friends was not going to break his bank and spending a little time with the guy after all of this would be fine with Tony. The guy helped him do everything, he’d seen him literally at his worst. And while Barnes might not think he was bonding with Tony, Tony had already latched onto him.

There’d be no hard feelings if Bucky never got back to him after this. And Tony was pretty sure no invitation to get that beer would ever come. But it was still nice to have the offer.

“I’ll be free for drink. What about you? Who do you have holding a candle for you?”

"Well-- my sisters are probably missing me, I have three of them and I pretty much raised them since my folks passed on. And Steve, he's my best friend, almost like a brother. He's gonna kick my ass when I get home, especially if the army have done something dumb like go round and give him a flag and condolences."

Which, knowing the situation they were in now, was highly likely. That actually made his heart hurt a little, imagining what that would be like. Would Steve be in art class when the call came? Maybe getting a coffee someplace? Would he cry? Would he get mad?

"That's about it. I have a few other friends, Nat and Sam and so on, but they're not as close to me as Steve."

Family. Friends. Tony doesn’t know what any of that is like so he’s not upset or jealous about it. He has money enough to buy company when he needs it. And he doesn’t often need it. “I’ll come to Brooklyn after we get out or send a plane to pick you up if you’d rather come to Malibu.” Most people would rather the private jet travel.

Tony was rattling it off like it was nothing, talking about plans like they were at a bar now and planning a get together in a few months, all while planning their escape.

The latter wasn’t going to come quickly. Progress was slow and he needed to prove to their captors that he was doing the best he could on their situation too. Days kept passing but Tony learned more and more about Bucky’s life while they were awake, and returned the favor with stories about being in boarding school or what it was like to be fifteen years old at MIT in the early nineties... right around when Bucky himself had been born.

It was weeks before Tony put down his tools and set the warhead of a large missile in front of him before he folded his hands. “Okay. Finished.”

There would have to be a test, he knew, but one that would ultimately prove to be detrimental to their captors. The missile would do very little damage when it exploded in midair, but it would ping the radar and communication satellites of every branch of the armed forces and the news media with a message designed to get them extracted from this hell.

By the time that the missile was built, they had been missing for four months. Both of them were malnourished, both of their wounds had healed over badly and caused frequent infections or pain, but they had also formed a bond of friendship that Bucky was sure would last forever. Sure, Tony could be a pain in the ass, but he was also a really nice guy underneath it all.

He watched as the missile went up and then laid his remaining hand on Stark's shoulder, voice a concerned undertone.

"Good job, pal. Guess that's our final hurrah, now we find out if you've saved our asses or if we're due for nothing more than a shallow grave in the desert."

“With this soil, it really will be shallow. Maybe they’ll have me build a digging machine to get through all the rock,” Tony mused. It wasn’t funny by any stretch of the imagination but he couldn’t help himself but allow his gallows humor to shine. He was tired. Breathing had become a chore of late. All he wanted to do was put his feet up and have a drink.

The test was success, for their captors, and they immediately put Tony to work on a second missile. No rest for the weary, he supposed, and let their captors drag them back underground.

It would only be for a small while, however. The earthen cell they were kept quaked as aircraft screamed overhead and ground troops flooded the compound. The lights went out but Tony couldn’t stop grinning.

“You really do owe me that drink now.”

"Are you kidding me? I'll buy you a whole keg. Jesus, Tony, you saved our lives."

Bucky had been strong this whole time, he hadn't even cried when the pain from the loss of his arm got too bad, or about how fucking terrified he was when they beat him to make Tony work faster. But he found he was getting kind of wet around the eyes as the whole place was invaded with the sheer relief of survival.

At the back of his mind, he knew they'd both have a buttload of issues from this mess, but that was a problem for another time. Right now they were alive against all the odds, blissfully, perfectly alive, and... separated.

The troops that swarmed in surrounded Tony, high level elite troops that bore him away, all talking nineteen to the dozen. He was the one they wanted to save. The cash cow, the one that would give them media attention. Bucky was an afterthought. Not even that. The letter of condolences, and the flag, had been sent back to his sisters over two months ago, they had forgotten he even existed.

Tony might hear Bucky calling something after him, but then he would be hustled into the back of a field ambulance and a woman with bright red lipstick and nails too long for field duty, was smiling soothingly at him.

"Welcome back, Mr. Stark. My name is Lavinia, and we're going to take you right to a hospital, and then back home. We're so glad to see you again."

“Where’s Bucky?” They’d kindly left the car battery on the gurney beside him but he still felt weighed down. They had likely strapped him in for the flight, and he wasn’t exactly in the position to resist much. That was the problem with terrorists for captors. Even though he had been working as hard as he could, sometimes they would just punish himself and Bucky both by starving them. His strength was barely existent, though he struggled all the same.

The woman looked confused for a moment and Tony reached up to grab her sleeve.

If she’d been Rhodey, he might have tried to punch him... or, honestly, probably cried against his chest. Thankfully, it was just some woman he didn’t know and didn’t care about. “The man. The one that was held with me. He’s coming along. Same hospital. He saved my life and he needs more help than I do.”

“The soldier? Mr. Stark, the military will provide—“

“Like shit. I know how the VA works. It’s why I donate so much. I want him with me!”

The thought of being without his only lifeline for the last few months was impossible.

The woman hesitated for a moment, torn between not wanting to piss Tony Stark off and not wanting to inconvenience herself more than she had to be. In the end, the prospect of getting a large donation for her department was what decided her, and so she whipped out her cell phone and barked directions in it for the soldier - nameless, she hadn't bothered to listen to his name - to be brought too.

After that, everything would go a bit fuzzy for Tony, because he'd be injected with first morphine, and then anaesthetic when they reached the hospital, and he'd still be alone when he went under.

He wouldn't know it, but he was out for nearly five full days. They had to do four separate surgeries on him to remove all of the shrapnel and get the car battery no longer needed. He had to have a mini pacemaker installed, but other than that his chest was closed up and bandaged heavily when he did come around. At least Bucky would be in a bed in the same room, as per his wishes, not looking a whole lot better. He was covered almost up to his neck with the sheet, but his eyes were fixed on Tony in worry.

Tony relaxed the moment he caught Bucky’s stare. His head turned back around and he closed his eyes, smirk on his still gaunt face. They’d only just removed the feeding tube that morning at the first signs that he had been waking up, and his throat was scratchy from disuse and lack of moisture. He didn’t feel a whole lot stronger actually, but he did feel clean. “You smell a lot better,” were his first words, because of course he had to be a dick.

Tony didn’t know the hospital but a glance out of the window told him that they were in California. Palm trees swayed in the breeze. He almost hated it. It was too serene. Too calm. How could he go back to Silicone Valley’s endless beauty and wide open spaces after what he had been through.

He already knew that he was going to hate the quiet.

Bucky snorted quietly, voice also a little hoarse. He hadn't had the feeding tubes like Tony, but he had been quiet for a long time now. He had mostly refused to talk to the military people who kept coming through wanting him to sign official secrets papers, or being cagey about declaring him alive again.

Some bullshit about it not reflecting well on the military to be seen to be wrong in the eyes of the public. So what the hell is he supposed to do to keep them from being wrong? Be legally dead forever?

"Yeah? Because you still smell like ass."

“My ass smells great,” Tony shot back, curling and uncurling his fingers just as a team of medical professionals rushed in to lol him over. The process took forever and while he did want to be left alone, it was pretty nice to have some hustle and bustle around to keep his mind occupied.

His personal assistant was here to see him, but Tony didn’t want any visitors. Bucky might not feel that way, though, and so he glanced at his friend, also being tended to, and arched his eyebrows at him.

“Let’s get the sergeant’s family here. Three sisters and a best friend?” He had no idea about the whole play dead scenario and if he did, well they’d be on a plane already out to California. Tony liked to throw his money around. His legal and financial teams were often appalled but what did he care? This was for a good cause.

"I'm afraid the sergeant's family are otherwise engaged," one of the doctors replied smoothly, prompting a snort from Bucky that was anything but amused.

"What they mean is that they haven't told them I'm not dead, and they're not letting me do it either. I'm a walking PR disaster because they already shipped condolences about me months ago, and if I show up alive then it looks like they're heartless assholes who give up on missing soldiers too soon. They're scared the public won't like that."

"No," the doctor said, looking a bit nervous. "That's not it at all, the situation is a lot more complex than that. And now isn't the time to discuss it, if you don't mind, we need to get Mr. Stark checked over now he's awake. How are your pain levels, Mr. Stark?"

“Manageable. More manageable if you would just do your damned job. Actually, you know what? Bring in my PA. I’d like a press conference set up.” Tony had stopped being diplomatic. He was tired of being confined and told what he could or could not do. He also didn’t grasp the larger issues at hand, he didn’t know half of what was going on or why.

Tony just had too much money and a powerful tech company to back him up. He thought he was invincible and if their escape from Afghanistan was worth anything, it just proved to him that he could do whatever he damn well pleased by virtue of brain power alone.

“I want to recognize the hero who lost an arm saving my life and who kept me alive when I was going to die any number of times. Oh, get hair and makeup in here too. He looks terrible for the camera.”

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